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STATION 72 ; mental link
KALI She Who is the Great Destroyer ; She Who wears a Garland of Skulls | LAKSHMI She Who Believes in Truth ; She Who is the Mother |
DRAUPADI She who was Born of Fire Sacrafice; | DURGA She Who is perpetually endeavouring to protect the weak and the poor and remove their misery. |
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In all of this, there's a sense of... exhaustion. He hasn't slept very much, doesn't know how to keep a sleep schedule anyway, doesn't see a point when there are rotating guards and people he has to keep tabs on that might blow their lid while he looks away.
Still, he sits down with as much care as possible to not disturb whatever order she has in her room.]
Guess this is the first time we've really met. Name's Nyx.
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[ She walks past him, pushing her veils past her own head. Carefully laying the material over her head. A practised motion to her, that it comes without looking to lay it neatly across her hair. Because she couldn't be neater. Her hair piled neatly up on her head, her clothes perfectly arranged in the shades of red and blue she favours. Gold that glitters where it hangs in low light, the flat red stones that dimly glint. All of it as a royal should be, if not for the scars that are at her knuckles, not sightly for a Queen but all hers.
Though he's - handsome, in that sort of way and if she were the kind of woman to think very much of it. Bold with it. The sort of bold that would be whispered about in court, she knew. Beautiful men gathered as much attention as beautiful women. The sort that would get him hated for it, just as much. A gaze she assess him with before she continues on to pour them both a drink. Slowly setting a cup for him and for her. ]
And yet, we are made so as to never be strangers to one another.
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She has the looks of royalty, the particular features of stress that could only be brought upon by war and rule. He'd seen it enough in the former King Regis, despite his features being warped by his magic, aged too rapidly and making him seem a man closer to his 70s than his 40s.
But she has a hardness that mirrors her earlier words. She is a beauty that is cut in rubies and diamonds, with an emphasis on the flat surface, the sharpened points. Nyx could measure and weigh her all day, for all the good it would do him, but it came down to just one thing.
There was a fight and a chaos in that order of hers. He'd know something about it.
As for his own good looks? Well. He'd certainly received hatred, certainly based on his looks, but not necessarily his beauty.
He scoffs lightly, thanking her with a simple bow of his head.]
We could've gone the whole mission without ever seeing each other, you know. Probably longer, if these people are anything to go by.
[He'd mentally spoken and challenged enough people without ever really meeting them properly. Likely they'd get a whiff of the particular brand of fire and electricity that made up his headspace and know this was Nyx Ulric.]
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[ Because that's the difference she finds in herself, not here, but always. It isn't good enough to her to passively accept anything. To be as was simply because that is what others do or find proper.
She pours out the drinks, filling them full. A need always to give as much as could be that comes as absent minded. The trickling sound she lets fill up between words. When it's done, she puts the drink container back, taking up the drinks in either her hands before turns back to him. A stiffness in all her limbs that comes with ceremony she uses to put a wall between herself an others where - his mind is so distinct to hers. Different to her own fires. But not displeasing for it. Lets it curl around her own like ground mist. ]
But then, I suppose. If we were in my home, as I was raised - my face would never be seen in public. I wore veils for much of my youth. So which people are you referring too?
[ A moment, just regarding him from her position. That still flat, still demanding gaze that clearly hasn't lowered for anyone, not for a very long time. Not to make him drop his own, but in sheer expectation he will meet it. She will look, she will see, she will drag it all up and expose it to the unforgiving light. Then it cools, striding up to him in the same soft patter of bells, holding the cup up for him to take. ]
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Though he is of wildfires and thunderstorms, he remains steady and true. Elemental, in a way. Count on Nyx to be the man who keeps himself anchored by his ability to remain the purest element possible: himself. Somewhere in there is the earth and the stone that never cracks, never yields, always holds true despite the wear and tear.
He takes the cups, the warmth seeping through the gloves. He had a mind to take those off, too, but he didn't want to risk an emergency and needing to dress himself all over again.]
I don't even think we'd be talking if I were in your presence in your home. [He knows what he is, where he stands. A nothing. A speck of dirt in the passage of time that would likely be forgotten. And if that weren't enough, he's a foreigner without a home and barely anything to his name.] Some people here, they're not willing to work together. If it were up to them? They'd keep themselves separated, probably never see or talk to anyone else. It's only going to hurt us when it comes down to it.
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We would. I remember where I was born, where I grew up. In a shack with a dirt floor to a poor and honest man and a devout woman, who were no one and nothing but one more supplicant to greater leaders. I was born as insignificant as ash. When it is my time, and the Gods feel it is fitting at least, no doubt I will become it when they burn my body.
[ It's not mournful, only restful, peace, relief from herself, and right now - she wants it - she wants out of this skin, this body that is connected to that which makes her wretch so with disgust. The mistake there, of Sam. To call it prejudice, like she simply awoke one day - to decide that she hated them. That she was ever that kind of woman. It wounds her, even as she imagines she deserves it, but it does.
A want to curl away, lick her bleeding heart. This time it will close up, this time she will remove it. ]
It is not acceptable to me to simply remove myself from my duties. I will stand side by side to my knees in my own blood, if I must. I have never found such a thing so precious.
[ She turns away from him, and with it, she goes to settle, covering up that too open expression by instinct. She is adrift, in purpose, and to it, she has taken that one available in front of her with both hands. ]
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I hope you mean your duties, not the whole standing in a pool of your own blood part.
[Because even for him, that's pushing it. He's willing to sacrifice, willing to let himself be the least important factor of an equation, but he has no notions that his sacrifices are beautiful or precious. They're necessary, and most of the time, dirty.]
Besides, you've got a one-up on me still.
[He grins that half mischievous grin of his, still sincere all the same.]
I don't remember my father. A mother and a sister, that's all I had, with our backs to the forests. Couldn't say we had much either, even when I was working.
[And then the war came to their footsteps in full force. That part of him, he carries it with him everyday. There is nothing else but himself and his past to propel him towards the future.
For a brief moment, he wonders if his mother got out of the city in time, wonders if she was able to get far out enough to avoid the Nifs.
And then he realizes, it would've been the second time she'd seen the Nifs invade. Once, their homes. Once, the last place they could call a place to live, but never home.]
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And her father - her father had a heart enough to have taken Nyx and his family in, without question. He, in turn, would have urged her to do the same. She did not learn her generosity from a position of privilege. He would have told her what was right.
If only she had been ever able to do what she ought to have: and cut his body down from where the British swung him high. A pause, no more than an inhale and a blank. From another, it would be nothing - but for how deep that wound goes and how much she never looks back - it is too much. She lets out a shaky laugh.
She carries on, as she does best. Like it does not touch her. A bemused flick of her fingers, angleing away anything else. Brutal necessity, that soldier to soldier, was simply the price that was called for sometimes. Offhand dismissive, in order to carve herself out of such things like she does not care for the flesh underneath. ] I am glad you had them. Perhaps between our two sets, a whole family could be made. I do not remember much of my mother, and my brother was born - when I had to depart.
[ Simplest way to put it, when the echo comes, do you not understand, I can never return? ]
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All he could ever do was embrace the pain and make it a part of him, and learn to live with it. What good would it do him to deny that anything ever happened, when it was in his face over and over again, every day of his life?]
Looks like we come from the same place.
[And yet, not quite. He and what was left of his family didn't simply leave, out of some necessity. It was life or death. They could stay and die now, or hope to die later and survive.
Help mother!
The voice shoots through his mind, as it does, except these days, the world outside can hear it too. He only inhales sharply and says nothing. He won't deflect the question, but he's not entirely willing to dive headfirst into his loss.]
We were whole in our own way. We had everything we needed with each other.
[And how could he have known anyway they were broken or missing something? It had always been that way. Nyx couldn't really remember asking about a father. He was raising so much hell it never occurred to him to stop and wonder if there was something missing in his life.]
Now, it'll just be my mother, if she made it out.
[When he drinks from his tea, he realizes something that hits deep and hard, makes his eyes visibly flicker and the link of his mind skip a heart beat, the mental forests shudder and rustle as if each leaf could fall in fell, heavy swoop.
He was dead. His mother, without children, without their bodies, would be mourning, if she survived the attacks.
The Ulric children were gone without graves and the bodies that went with them.]
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And before all of that, a mother, that had lost both her sons, now. The first to his death, the second to her own departing. It shudders through her, a grief that has no end, a bottomless pit that is beyond weeping - a listlessness that is never in her gaze otherwise. For it, she snaps, taut and away. Does not reach for her veil, even if the flicker of instinct thought wants too, but after so much dragged up - between the encounter with Sam, the conversation afterwards with Shiro and his beasts, she cannot stand her own anymore.
Not her veil, though it's only because that means moving from where her hands are white knuckled in their placement balancing her. She would never, has never let, not since those days, let another see her become such a thing: a woman grieving a hole in herself. She does not weep anymore - not like that - not since then.
But a woman of position still, and she knows she cannot keep it out of her face. To that, she turns away, in profile at least, she does not have to look at him. And somewhere below all that is the soft sound of a child's laughter. High and sweet, and the singing that is all stolen out of her throat. ]
You should depart, Master Ulric.
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It's tiring. He's tired of needing to be extra cautious. Tired of fighting it out with everyone to deal with each other and work together. Tired of pretending they can't all see and feel everything.
He's only 32. He feels like he's aged two lifetimes. Days when he thinks it's better to accept defeat and surrender, instead of remaining resilient and fighting for what's left and what's to come.
Too many times has he seen the effects of grief denied. And it haunts him. Grief wasn't an emotion meant to be locked away. It was meant to be set out into the world.
Nyx does begin to rise. His intention hadn't been this, but when had his intentions ever really ended well? Not since he got here, at least, did he ever see his own intentions not take a turn for something painful and dark instead of sincere. He couldn't help it.
If only he could block out his emotions so easily.]
I'll tell you the same thing I told Noctis. You don't grieve, you don't give yourself the time, you'll hurt yourself and everyone else around you. I don't care what happened or what you did. Just know it'll start to swallow you whole.
[It almost sounds like he knows what he's talking about. The purples of his mind sink lower, into lilacs, glacial ultraviolent, flickers of black and blue. Even a fire sometimes wavers and starts to die down sometimes.]
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My son was four months old, when I lost him. Gone. I put jasmine on his crib every day, while he was with me. I put jasmine around his body the day he was taken from me to the pyre, one string was enough to cover him.
[ There is nothing like that feeling, and it is vivid in her mind - perhaps it will never be again, even here, she had thrown herself deep into a time and place for Sam to see all of it those memories are part of it too. The settle of his head under her chin and against her chest, how his fingers, so little, would curl around his father's, the newness of his gaze, so unfocused to the world around him, the just beginnings of his laugh.
If she ever wept for wanting anything, it was just to hear so pure a sound again of her ladies, pouring over the Prince of Jhansi, as he squealed in delight for their games. ]
But how could I weep? Because I had not lost a child. I had let the death of my Kingdom's hope for freedom die along with him. I had lost my son, and our people had lost their Prince. And my husband, my husband could not take it. He wept and he wept and he wept.
[ She swallows. ]
A year later, he wept himself into his grave. The day after he died, I turn nineteen, and a whole kingdom, looked to me to lead them. I could not keep my boy, I could not save my husband and to what purpose, did all my pain even have? Bad enough that it should be visited upon me, worse still that so many others should suffer for it.
[ She grimaces, grips harder. She is not her, not since she was married, was she her. She is Jhansi ki Rani. She was Lakshmi of her husband's home, wife to their needs, mother to their children. ] Perhaps, Master Ulric, you can find it in yourself to grieve for me. I am afraid I cannot.