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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[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. )

[shri]

[ She unfurls through the child's eyes she saw it once in: the fort of Amra. The Sheesh Mahal, splendid in the morning sun. Patterning outwards in rows and rows, thousands upon thousands of mirror that make it all at once as if stepping into the light of the sun itself. The arches and clipped edges covered. Some simply to be panelled in light, others form mirror patterns of flowers in bloom, animals at play. A majesty of a fading empire, the beauty of the Marathi's to whom she first was no more a servant of, and then a ruler of. Making each movement roll in unreality reflection where they ceiling was built to move like the heavens and the dancers she remembered as a child, seemed as many as the wives of Krishna himself, and just as lovely. They move a step out of divinity themselves, the room a removed heaven of beauty. Here, great love was born, here, great sadness too. Here, a empire rose and fell all of itself.

It is, to her child's observation, a overwhelming feeling. ]

( Even shards create beauty, Misato. Even the pieces that slice us deepest. )

[wille]

[ The hardest part of this is looking away. The vista captivates and absorbs her in, and for the briefest moment, she can almost believe in the reality and the reality it means to present. Such is the power of the mind. Her retreat is jerky, fumbling hands over curious eyes, her body and mind not quite agreeing on what she wants. ]

( No. No, stop it. It's nothing like that. I know who I am and how I've had to put myself together, and I know there's no beauty in it. But I'm here and I will go on. )

[ Then she thinks of how it must be so insulting, to have shown her such magnificence only to have it rejected. And she is so hungry still for approval. ]

( Let's just talk about something else. Like, I don't know, your husband. )

[shri]

[ She recedes it, by measure, not all at once, not slowly. The lights in the great room going dim. ]

( Is there no beauty in that? If there is not, then it is no measure of beauty I wish to partake in. )

[ But she does leave it alone. Her point made, she settles back. Thick coat in long grass, she draws it up around herself, warm and settled. ]

( Very well. What would you like to know of him? )

[wille]

( There's strength in it. Something to admire and be proud of. Something worthy, sure. But beauty has nothing to do with it. )

[ Beauty is purity. This is the word she uses: Kirei. Innocence lost can never be regained. Mirrors can't be pieced together. The Japanese piece together their broken plates with gold, but they remain broken. ]

( Tell me about the time you knew you loved him. )

[shri]

[ That is a sentiment she would never agree to it. Beauty was more than that, it had to be, else what was the point?

But an argument for another day, as she settles herself to old memories, old thoughts. A moment stolen and perhaps it is only the moment in retrospect as if love could be something so instantly defined. But, at least, for Misato's ]

( The day I realized the choices he had given me, that are not shared amongst most women. Not that either required love - duty would have sustained us. )

[ Because of course, it would have, and that it would is why perhaps they had found love. Not in looking at each other - but in looking out. ]

( He gave me time to know myself, and to then learn him as that person, to show him who I was in return. In that moment, when we did, good and bad, for ill and our own betterment, knew each other wholly? )

[ It is honey in her mouth, in her thoughts, the softness, a memory that is not Misato's, not the nests, it is a woman and a man's. It is the softness of dirt under her knees, the warmth settled between her legs as she perched, steady. It is the fingers the press one, to her collarbone, two to her beat of her heart, three against her breast. His hair was gold in the dappled sunlight through the trees, and his smile was rich where it pressed against her throat.

The warm of his voice, an older man, that rumbled through her. It is Lakshmi who is part of you, Manikarnika. I do not think it, I just see it.

She shudders with that warm breath still, even these years later. ]

( Then. Then I knew. )

[wille]

[ As she says, not in looking at each other but in looking out.

Misato grasps these fragments greedily, eyes and ears wide open, but she maintains distance still. She holds to the edges of these photographs, listens to the voices from the room next door, reminds herself that it isn't her skin but Lakshmi's and those hands belong to another man's, so take care. These boundaries are important. Her self would be too porous otherwise.

Even so, she returns the favor. It is summer, the sky velvet black, the relentless clack clack clack of the fan doing nothing for the heat or the humidity, but it punctuates her whispered words against his neck, her rage against their enemies and her hopes for the future turning into vapor to form the slick layer of sweat on his and her skins. And he doesn't stop her, and he listens, and he says, You have everything you need. Go forward, don't hesitate. He is the one to witness her first flight, the one to fold away her wings for the next morning. It should've been enough. ]

( What was his name? ) [ And on the heels of that. ] ( What happened to him? )

[shri]

( The Maharaja Gangadhar Rao Newelker. )

[ That part - that part is easy. He is a man proud, strong. Too proud perhaps, sometimes, arrogant as a King always wound be. But one that had given her leave to her own strength.

If only that had been enough. ]

( Our son... he did not... ) [ Stiff, harsh, the stick of something in her throat. ] ( A ruler only has a future in our children, and when he did not... it broke his heart. He did not last a year more. )

[wille]

[ She readily fills in the blanks. Survive, that is, he did not survive. A part of her rebels against this, wants to tell Lakshmi that it is not brave and honorable and manly of her husband to have lost hope so easily. There could be other children, right? There would be other sons. Giving up isn't an option and one carries on even with a broken heart. It is the only possible way.

When she swallows back all these words, it is for Lakshmi's sake. ]

( You lost a son and a husband in just one year. )

[ She can't resent her for this. ]

( Were you angry at him for leaving you too? )

[shri]

( Be angry?

Perhaps, for a day - I suppose I was at angry at it all. But being angry over a broken heart is like being angry for the rain falling or the seas rising. It changes nothing and the waters keeping coming.

We are royalty, our people look to us - he knew that too. So we adopted our second son and a few hours later, it was only then he allowed himself to pass. We knew our roles. We only know the end of our duty when we die. So he saw to the end of his. )

[ She shakes her head - and then - realises, in a half step between the memories and herself and this all caught up in her skin - she cannot separate it out of herself. Remember the past or the present or that her own failure - her son, so small in her arms gone in a moment and - with him - everything.

She asked her ladies why they wept, with her, when she sat staring at the crib now a empty basket, in a grief that poured out and out and out. She had stopped being conscious of her tears. Or of anything else in those haze of days laughter. 'He is but one boy, why do you share my grief?' 'He is your son, Maharani, but he is our future. Now we will fall.' ]

( But - I know who my anger belonged too. Three months later, despite everything he had done in those last hours, the vampires and the lycans wearing British Laws and British diplomacy, took it all. My Jhansi was taken from me - and I was forced to watch as they stripped her down like jackals feasting on a corpse.

So, truly, what time did I have to be angry? )