STATION 72 ; mental link

[shri]

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.

( CODE BY WHAMBAM )

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[wille]

( Old wounds. )

[ Both a repetition of her reply, a tacit agreement, and an answer to a question unasked. That is, both of them are clearly up beyond reasonable hours and both have their reasons. She doesn't concern herself with expecting new ones when that would risk slowing her advance. ]

( Huh, I didn't think he'd come to you to buy friends for her too. )

[shri]

[ She laughs again, this - meaner, lower, a drawn in breath. ]

( Oh no, only seek to place me at her mercy it seems. He made me apologise to her for attempting to kill her when we first met. )

[wille]

[ Misato has had plenty of time to think, and her thinking invites trouble. It's true. ]

( When we idolize someone, it becomes a threat to your self when others disagree. )

[ That is to say, Damon wants the world to be complicit in his adoration of Elena, by hook or by crook, because each who refuses to bow down is another proof against her apotheosis which weakens the ideal that he has wrapped his life around. It's understandable, because she can see through a sliver of his viewpoint, but still unconscionable. ]

( Should I worry about a second attempt by you? )

[shri]

( No. I gave my word and am not a fool. My blades will stay in their sheaths. )

[ That aside - ]

( I must admit, I find their affection... troubling. Not just because I worry over the breeding of a pureblood. But it is not at all what I was raised to the notion of union to be. )

[wille]

( Okay, that's good. I know it's him you're after, but it hurts me too -- as creepy as that sounds. )

[ The mental wince is there at having to even voice the sentiment. To be no longer one's own person, the proof inarguable in the way the pain rakes through her skin when the wound scores another's body. ]

( How should a union be? )

[shri]

( I do not wish to hurt you. )

[ As much as she can say to - "I am sorry, for stabbing Damon, like a lot". But it was not her desire to hurt Misato at all and causing her that such pain. ]

( Uplifting. Not only for those in it but those that bear witness to it. My people... for us, love is worship. It is how I was raised. Perhaps... I was not usual. Master Shiro informs me marriages are not arranged anymore, and not at the age I was. Let alone to become royal in such a moment. ) [ Thirteen, her mind supplies to the details. She cannot separate that moment from the day itself. Filled with noise, colour, laughing, her own nerves, the gentle assurance of her new family. She clears her throat. But her tone is - wistful, even so. Warm and full, drinking from a deep cup. ] ( But for me... for my husband and I. It was... to make ourselves in all ways, complete. Not in a day, or in a single instance, but many days, many moments. A lifetime in what it was to be joined, in each moment, always working so that we may uplift the other through our own actions. He told me... it was a path. Not a destination. One we would lay for ourselves and others to walk upon, stone by stone. )

[ He is in her mind's eye, a kind feature man. Bold, elegant. It takes nothing to remember him not in face or form so exactly. But how his fingers would sweep under her jaw. I am a lucky Vishnu, to have such a consort as the Goddess Lakshmi. The sound of his laughter high in the air - that he was always quick to mirth, something they had shared. His love of beauty. Not a frozen painting on a wall, but all a lifetime gives two people together. ]

[wille]

( I can handle it. )

[ A kind of pardon given without the requisite apology. 

She is unusually guarded as Lakshmi tells her story, eyes and ears wide open but lips and mind shut lest her own bitterness seep through. She doesn't quite believe the tale and the promise, like a man hearing tales of the sea without ever having seen it, it only sounds too good to be true, something that exists only in dreams or memory. That the queen speaks in the past tense doesn't escape her, how much easier it is to gaze fondly on the ones that have come and gone. ]

( All I know is -- what they have is juvenile and selfish. Romeo and Juliet took others with them when they died, right? It's ugly. It takes a lot of denial to believe in that kind of thing, but that's how it goes with feelings. You make yourself feel a certain way and the feeling helps you believe whatever you want. )

[shri]

( Because Romeo and Juliet is not a tale of love - it's the warning of pride of parents, and the foolishness of youthful impulse. )

[ A cluck. Shakespeare had been as popular in her homeland as it was in any other place - but she had no fondness for that story. As doomed as Bajirao Mastani. ]

( She can't even be clear enough to make up her mind over him, I am treated to her agonizing over it. And that he is selfish is a given. )

[wille]

[ The quip about the old tale is enough to make her stop, because she doesn't know enough to continue the conversation, her familiarity based only on vague cultural reference. Even so, aren't all stories about the pride of adults and the foolishness of children? Humanity's tale summarized in a single sentence. ]

( It kinda helps to know what's mine and not mine, you know? So he's obsessed with her. I'm unimpressed. )

[shri]

[ The taste is visceral in her mouth over it. Elena's adoration of him. Rich as Damon's blood, soft as the kiss she so wrenched herself over. ]

( She too. We arrived together, so I neither of us had the skill to shut each other out. I've heard far too much of it. I struggle to call it love, that self-destructive twisting over itself. )

[wille]

( I don't know. Maybe it is. Maybe love is an ugly thing dunked in hormones to make us think otherwise. )

[ Romanticism created the idea of true love, couching selfish passions in divine terms, like how capitalism exalted greed as the pinnacle of human trait, calling it righteous, deeming it an absolute good. Both ring false once seen from a high enough vantage point. ]

[shri]

[Love is sacrafice. or so Bellamy had told her in much the same tones. Annie's rejection over the mere concept of husbands. In more than one form, she encounters it over and over again with those she has met her. Rust's recoil from the word husband. Shinji shying away. She cannot understand. This shuddering away from what she finds so plainly to live for. ]

(when was the last time you were in love, Misato? )

[wille]

[ Being in love is different from loving, the former is akin to falling while the latter is about learning how to fly. She doesn't know how to fly. Being loved isn't the same as loving. And so, this is a question she can answer: ]

( Eight years ago. I left. )

[ This is important, that she was the one who left. That she didn't let him abandon her. ]

[shri]

[the form of her thoughts come as they always do: a hearth fire for the companionship she feels to Misato, a settled heat that she as speaks, there is oil poured and thoughts come like shadows on her great fortress walls. ]

(did he not return the affection, is that why you did? )

[wille]

( I-- )

[ How easily the mind betrays what she would never say: yes. He had one foot out the door, no, he left. Again and again, without a word and for days at a time and she had had enough of the hurting. How terror and heartache can feel the same. Her mind betrays a no, as well, he meant to say the words eight years ago. He loved her then, loves her? Now.

She left behind a wreckage, see: a room torn asunder, a steel-wire fan dented on the floor. She left him a wreckage, her cruelty was vengeance against him, against her father, against herself. ]

( I was terrified. Wouldn't you be? You feel so helpless. )

[shri]

[No, oh no, a mother clucking her tongue, the sensation of arms in sure warmth that hold in utter surety. The motion is for all she is and all she is not, practised to the embrass. A flag surety of holding, together and up and away from the place where such hurts can reach. ]

(Love, no. No, it should never be like that. )

[wille]

[ She allows herself the warm embrace for a moment before the recoil comes fast at the sound of should, this blade to the bone. Should and shouldn't. She isn't how she's supposed to be and whose fault is that? That there is a lack in her is something she knows all too well, and she holds fiercely to what hurts, because it is hers. ]

( Anyway -- I'm not made for it. It doesn't matter. )

[shri]

[ the blade that cuts too bone, but she isn't herself if she isn't in some way trying to take the wounds herself. Let her suck the poison out. Let her sew this poison out. ]

(Who told you that? Because they were wrong. You are. You always were able too. )

[wille]

[ She laughs, every bit good natured, and why not? It's just a scratch, it's nothing to worry about. ]

( Like I said, it doesn't matter. Are you really going "love conquers all" at me? After what you said? )

[shri]

[she stays flat, open, still, but immovable, she knows the game too well to let Misato slip past still bleeding like that. To not push back with the one argument she knows to be true, if love is worship and all acts of it holy, then it is to be considered in every step, in every rise of a lovera voice. To know that Gods do watch and that love is to be felt in actions just the same. ]

( Love has never conquered all. Because love is an act, not a force. No one is made less or more able to love. Like no one is made truly good or truly evil. Like loyalty, duty, we feel it's pull and we make our choices. We drive ourselves to act. It is terrifying, yes, it weighs in ways that cannot be imagined. But if you make such choices otherwise, to be brave and true, why not those again?

And I have seen you make those choices, Misato, I am sure you did it long before I came to bear witness to it. Should the same not apply? )

[wille]

[ Love is an act. This is a truth she has held to be self-evident. The words one uses define the window through which one views the universe and she knows the highest form of love is an act. Aishiteru is the promise to act upon love made permanent by the continued exercise of it, and Ai is a verb removed from the constraints of time. Will, forever, both these things are implied. Lakshmi asked her if she was ever in love, where Koi is a lesser and indulgent form of it. Koi is a force, a feeling, a state of mind. There is a world of difference between loving and being loved.

The long silence she allows to stretch since the admonition says more than whatever reply she deigns to give. ]

( If you've ever tried and failed to fix a broken mirror, Lakshmi, then you'll know what I mean. )

[shri]

( He did not act? )

[wille]

( It wasn't for him for sort out, it was mine.

He is kind to me when I least deserve it, and he tells me the truth that I need to hear. That's enough. )

[shri]

[ She clicks, hovers, a hand that settles, a chin that might be set to Misato's shoulder if she were closer, but as is - the sensation of surety is there. ]

( Have you ever heard of the palace of mirrors, Misato? )

[wille]

[ And there is a flinch, a tensing of the muscles, the potential for flight should another advance be made -- but it is this potential she takes and converts to stand her ground. She returns Lakshmi's surety with quiet defiance, and stays. ]

( No. You're going to tell me. )