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]

He liked to do that, didn't he?

[ She settles, leaning her hands behind her to brace her weight. The heavy fall of night above them. Stars that are nothing she knows, stars that are so much but... a comfort to her, still. ]

[sistershoggoth]

He was an asshole.

[ A vibrant bastard who didn't take anything lying down and who had made her feel for a whole second like maybe if she collapsed someone really could deal with her shit. But of course, she'd put her hopes on someone else: and they'd left.

She tilts the bottle up over her head again, letting it pour down her throat. She's only just now beginning to feel stable, halfway in to the drink. ]

[shri]

Somehow still, a good man.

[ Her sigh, is thick heavy in her throat, she reaches to hook the bottle again. Another longer sip, heavily drawn back into herself. When was the last time she did this? Years and years ago. Here she is now. ]

Naturally, the most foolish ones always are.

[sistershoggoth]

[ She raises an eyebrow, turning to look at her. ]

Dude, are you actually getting misty over assholes of days gone by?

[ She grins, a little goblin expression of total mean spirited laughter. ]

Tell me. Pick one.

[shri]

[ Her hand lifts to the gold jewelry about her face, a circumspect little scratch to the mark between her brows. Because the truth of it is - a little more shameful than that. ]

You say that like there is many, I'm afraid there hasn't been. I haven't... haven't had the time.

[sistershoggoth]

Quit bein' so damn coy, get on with it.

[ She nudges Lakshmi in the ribs, grinning childishly. Nothing makes Annie quite as amused as sticking her fingers in other people's sore spots. ]

[shri]

[ Her eyes shut, her nose wrinkles - oh, what is she doing anyway? Pining over some lout, some wretched fool. ]

Damned idiot through himself off the houses of Parliament. Fool, wretched fool. He had to be fished near dead out of the river. [ She snatches up the bottle. He's clear in her mind, clear a glass. An older man, he had been full, of himself when she was being sharp with him, but of his own honor, too. But her memory of him was his form weak, laying in bed, unconscious and half a breath from death. Devoted to it and she -

- she laughs. Because what else is there to do? ] He is my gallant knight.

[sistershoggoth]

You've got a type.

[ Snickering. God, no wonder she'd liked fuckin' Nyx of all people. Annie had gotten a heaping dose of his gallantry, fighting his way through a war he wasn't going to win, chasing after a princess he couldn't curtail. ]

C'mon, you gotta have a little lesbian in you. What about a lady knight? I'll do you right.

[shri]

[ !!!!!!!!

...


????????!?!?!!?!?! ]

[shri]

What did you just say?

[ She clearly misheard that. ]

[sistershoggoth]

Which bit? The bit where I called you out for having a soft spot for dramatic, overly principled doofs? Or the bit where I offered to have sex with you?

[ She doesn't think either are particularly noteworthy. ]

[shri]

The - [ her mouth opens and shuts and - she quite probably deserves this, somehow, for everything she has ever done and - is this what it's like when she does it to other people? ] - latter.

[sistershoggoth]

What, you're super hot and regal and shit.

[ Who wouldn't want to...... ]

[shri]

Oh.

[ Well that's. Something. Good job, Lakshmi. When was the last time she got a compliment from anyone? Not a courtly half poisoned thing, but just - super hot and regal and shit.

This might be easier to process if she were a mark more sober but like any moment of hindsight, it didn't help particularly much in dealing with the consequences. ] Is that how they say that now?

[sistershoggoth]

[ She snorts. ]

That's how I'm sayin' it.

[shri]

[ Well, right, right. She clears her throat, trying to think of how to. ]

I am afraid I am not usually... propositioned, in such a way. By women... [ Wait, that isn't exactly true - ] Often. By women. Who aren't requesting, ah, payment.

[sistershoggoth]

I was raised in a girl's school, I pretty much sleep with chicks.

[ Drinking happily, babbling without much thought. ]

I think I was up to... eight dudes, as of Nyx.

[shri]

[ She thinks about it, for awhile - her dealings as a Queen had been particular, ceremonial. Not that she had the interest truly but - well, if for that same ceremonies purpose, she knew how things were for the tawaifs.

A education that had been furthered, so to speak, after living so long in brothel houses and slum streets. ]

There has only ever been... four men in my life, if that. I simply... did not have the time.

[sistershoggoth]

Who's too fuckin' busy to fuck, Rani?

[ Most of what Annie thought about was fucking. All day, every day. Noctis has asked her, in despair, do you ever think about anything else? She certainly tries not to. ]

[shri]

[ Oh thank god she looks younger than she is, or this would be all the more tragedy. Her laugh is ginger, gentle at the edge, have mercy, Annie. ]

You answered your own question, I'm afraid. I would be taking advantage of most of the women I know - in such a case, with my rank, and men become... assumptive.

[ Men are garbage, Annie, and her ladies either way to take advantage, as Malhari so often did - or could not so no to their Rani. ]

Besides... that is not satisfying to me.

[sistershoggoth]

Shit!

[ Annie bursts out eagerly, laughing, imagining Rani taking advantage of her handmaidens. Fans herself. No big deal, this isn't a big deal. ]

Well, you don't actually have any rank on me.

[shri]

[ That's a vivid image - and she feels the flush of heat up her neck. ]

I would never do that to them. They look to me for their livelihoods, their care, not - [ except, she's thinking about - how many of them... would not have minded? It might have been at relief, in the days of the war. The particular not quite image, not quite sensation, of laying on her stomach, where Sita so carefully dotting the lines of henna on her back, pushing her hair back up her neck and - it was the cool-warm, of fingers bracing on skin to the dot of the paste. ] - not like that.

Besides... what on earth do you even feel for me apart from appreciation? [ It matters, it does not matter. That feeling that sits under her tongue that says - there was never a half ]

[sistershoggoth]

[ It is her ardent preference not to feel anything for anyone, but that's incredibly difficult here in the Nest with all of its strings and ties, constantly resonating like a forest strung up with bandit alarms. The booze keeps her mellow and thoughtless, there was a point to it, to all this. ]

I like other soldiers. It's comforting.

[ In all the ways that Rani herself imagined, the comfort of her women, knowing they were at her side. Annie's idea of that subtle senuousness just wasn't so subtle. She liked to be touched more directly, to be battered around in it, to batter others, and come out still whole. ]

[shri]

I only ask, Annie - [ Her name is not said, it's carved, as she brings herself to look and look properly, at her, at all of her, thick with drink in her mouth. Heavy with the taste of something she can't quite place that sets her shoulders in a roll and parts in her mouth. Hard and sharp and a vulnerability to it, she supposes, so far as emptying herself out like a over turned prayer plate, petals and spices and the fire that burns it all and like she means to do just the same. She carves it out of herself, like she means to carves Annie into her instead.

A purpose that pushes her up - and why should it be any different? Annie asked her as a soldier, like Lakshmi has some line between woman and queen and battlefields in herself. Like she hadn't all fed that into kindling that settles into her fingers, her limbs, in each movement as she leans in close, snatching at the pushed back veils, holding her and holding her and holding her and it isn't a kiss so much. Isn't polite, and maybe that's why she doesn't let it happen often, can't be sure of herself or others, not all turned out. A test that this is - this is something she is doing and then the fact that she is means:

She catches her mouth against Annie's as she yanks her closer, against the corner of her mouth in a thready exhale that when she draws back in she lets fill her like smoke, lets it bleed between the connection. That she won't have comfort, or another soldier - she will have Annie and she will have as much as she can. Turns herself that little more, rolls her shoulders back, pushes herself up a inch, to slant her mouth fully against hers, the hand that runs the edge of possessive in it's need to have, over her shoulder. Her tongue against her teeth, the set of her own in turn against her lip. The way she pushes even when she knows she shouldn't, takes when it isn't her, these things she wants to burn inside of herself.

That when she pulls back and away - it is kept, if barely, inside of herself. ] - because I only know how to play one sort of game.

[sistershoggoth]

[ Oh. For all of her ladykiller bullshit, Annie Westwind almost fumbles the drink in her hand as Rani presses on her. It's the dissonance of things: reality and unreality that live inside of her at all times. The shapes and colors she wears as deflection and then the layers of true sentiment underneath. The realness of her words: that she's comforted by others who have been conditioned as she has been conditioned, who have suffered as she has suffered. The unreality where sex solves any of that. The realness of the desire. The unreality of thinking Lakshmi might actually want that.

It exceeds the shape that Annie had made of the Jhansi Queen in her own landscape. She'd thought too small, and now Lakshmi Bai has risen up to show her what she's really toying with. God, it could make a girl's heart catch in her throat.

And then she's not fumbling the carafe so much as no longer finding it important, her hands lift to twist into the front of Rani's robes. ]

S'okay. I won't tell on you.

[ What's to tell? That a burning tiger prowled across her mind, whiskers and claws kissing, sizzling across the landscape? Sounds like Nyx, too full of passion to ever just fucking lay down and be quiet. ]

( Come here, come here. )

[ All the way back in, with or without hands and mouths, come back in and stay, keep me warm. Languid with liquor Annie is perfectly ready to be set alight. ]