THE GOLDEN SUN KINKMEME (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
goldensunkinkmeme) wrote2012-03-14 03:30 pm
goldensunkinkmeme) wrote2012-03-14 03:30 pm
Entry tags:
POST #1
Oh wait there's supposed to be more here, isn't there?
OH WELL.
Make sure you read the rules here, but otherwise, have fun!
When fills and requests start coming in, a post tracking them will be made. (◡ ‿ ◡ ✿)
OH WELL.
Make sure you read the rules here, but otherwise, have fun!
When fills and requests start coming in, a post tracking them will be made. (◡ ‿ ◡ ✿)
Out Flew The Web And Floated Wide [Felix/Jenna, M] [2/4]
(Anonymous) 2020-12-10 12:58 am (UTC)(link)She nestles her head into the crook of her brother's neck, welcoming his warmth. Nominally, she's doing this more for his sake than for hers; the strangers dismissively remarked that, as a Mars Adept, she could warm herself, and she didn't have the heart to contradict them. Their sole concession to humanity was warming blankets for Kraden, and that mostly because even they recognized an old man would not survive the chill.
In reality? It's for her, though she hopes he gets some comfort out of it as well. Here, swaddled up and held in his arms, she can pretend for a brief time that they're safe and together and there's nothing else in the world - no Alchemy, no journey, no fear that she'll not live to see either her parents or her home. Nothing but the faint roar of the winter wind outside their tent and Felix in her arms.
Some nagging thought says it should have been Isaac, but of course that's absurd. She and Isaac were... Well, they were... That was... Anyway, that doesn't matter now, and the thought's almost funny. This is Felix. Why would she be thinking of Isaac when she's in her brother's arms?
The answer carries the weight of the doom she can feel coming ever-closer, and so she doesn't seek it out. She just buries her face in his hair, inhaling deeply, and shuts her eyes. One hand comes up to stroke her hair as the other presses against her waist, gathering her closer to him, and she smiles. It shouldn't be possible to feel so happy under these circumstances, yet...
I love you, she thinks, and doesn't bother examining the thought further. It's natural for a sister to love her brother, isn't it? The most natural thing in the world.
The wind howls outside. She doesn't care. It can howl down the whole world, and she'll be safe here, just so long as she has Felix to keep her warm.
It's taking every nerve in his body not to bolt.
Menardi looks like she'd love the excuse to take her mounting nerves and frustration out on something, but it's precisely that which he finds so tempting. He knows Karst, well enough to know the sisters are much alike - both have poor judgment when in a temper, both can be taken off-guard when thinking with their hearts over their heads. He remembers that from the one time he beat Karst in a spar, and she looked at him afterwards like she didn't know whether she wanted to tear his clothes off or his throat out... Yes. Well. He knows Karst.
And he knows Menardi well enough to know her movements aren't as steady as they should be, that her mind's not as clear as it should be. And that very lack is fraying her temper further, making her even less clear-headed. Add to that the flicker of worry in her eyes, as time ticks onward and Saturos doesn't appear...
He has no chance of beating her in a fair fight. He knows that. But he might have a chance of catching her off guard, and he equally might have a chance of taking to his heels and outrunning her, with Mercury's beacon burning blue in the sky. Kraden would be a lost cause, of course; the old man has no chance of keeping up.
But the same part of him that's screaming that his chance is now has also decided, quite to his surprise, that it doesn't care that much about the old man. It cares about the girl in his arms: the girl who just wants to go back home, the girl who's looking up at the beacon with the same fear as Menardi, if for the opposite reason, the girl whose friends are blindly doing their best to ensure the world continues drifting to its fated destruction...
Feeling every inch the traitor, he gathers her shivering form close to him and gives Menardi a look of weary obedience, with the right note of reproach to make her believe it. She just sneers at him, then resumes her sidelong glances towards the Lighthouse beacon. Looking at it directly seems to hurt her. If he could get her to look straight at it for a moment, and be blinded by it...
He buries his face in Jenna's hair and shuts his eyes against temptation. The world is at stake, Prox is at stake, his parents are at stake. The beacon is lit, besides; it's too late to back away now. Menardi, even weakened, is too strong a warrior to take lightly. He's not betraying his sister, he's not, he's not...
A snarl and the sound of footsteps come as a guilty relief. His head jerks up, and he blinks twice.
Saturos is bruised, bloodied, and barely on his feet. Felix's eyes flicker between him and the fresh stains on Alex's otherwise-immaculate clothing - about right for Saturos to have been leaning on him until a short time prior. Perhaps just before they came into view.
What happened up there?
"Saturos?" Menardi asks, disbelieving.
"We need to go." The lines of strain are clear on his face; he shoots a hate-filled glance up at the beacon, and he keeps his gaze on it even as his eyes obviously burn with the effort. "Now."
Without another word, they all comply. Saturos tries to run ahead, but staggers; Menardi wraps her arm around his waist for support, and they stumble forward at a decent speed. From behind, Felix eyes them, heart suddenly speeding. This is his chance. Menardi won't leave Saturos, not like this, and with him slowing the two of them down... He could outpace them, he and Jenna could outpace them quite -
He catches a sharp glance from Alex, and pushes back his thoughts. His chance already came and went. He let it pass. There's no use in fantasizing now.
As much to fill the awkward silence that follows as anything else, Alex begins filling them in as they follow behind the two. Felix can hardly believe his ears - Saturos, defeated? Defeated by four against one, a Mercury Adept among them, in the direct light of Mercury's beacon - but still, defeated? By a group including Isaac and Garet, who'd hardly seemed warriors worth any mention but a short time past?
Maybe, on this day and in this place, Menardi would have proven easier to defeat than he thought...
"You neglected to mention that you were sitting on your hands the whole time," Saturos spits over his shoulder as Alex winds down his tale.
"Nonsense," Alex says, smoothly as ever. His smile is angelic. "I kept them from finishing you off and bluffed my way out of further combat - isn't that enough?"
Saturos's eyes are slits. "Is that all you expect me to believe you were capable of, Mercury Adept?"
The smile flickers. "Much as I'd like my enemies to believe otherwise, my skills in battle are-"
"And as a healer? Swimming in that wretched blue light?" Saturos jerks his head. "You could have turned the tide of that battle at any time. You chose not to do so."
"Is this true, Alex?" Menardi demands. Felix does not miss her hand tightening around her scythe.
Alex is sweet as the morning dew. "Forgive me, for respecting your warrior pride-"
Menardi lets out a high, manic laugh. "You? You speak of warrior pride?"
Saturos stays silent, but his gaze is murderous. Alex licks his lips, eyes growing warier above his unwavering smile, and lets out a little laugh in turn. "Surely you can't be questioning me? I, who desire the ignition of the Lighthouses just as much as you do? Whatever would be my reason for in any way impeding your possession of the Mars Star, and-"
"The girl."
For one insane second, Felix thinks that he's referring to Jenna; that it's nothing more than a product of his own fixation is proven a moment later, when Alex bursts out, "Were you deaf, Saturos? Certainly you heard our conversation atop the Lighthouse? Mia and I are no allies, and-"
"Allies?" Saturos gives a laugh that turns into a wet cough, and Menardi grips him harder as he coughs into his fist. It's hard to tell in the blue glare from the Lighthouse beacon high above, but Felix thought it might have come away red. "I said nothing of the sort." He clears his throat, trailing off into a series of small coughs. "It matters not to me in the slightest how she feels toward you. How do you feel toward her?"
The smile drops off Alex's face. Tightly, he says, "Mia is naive, pious, and utterly lacking in comprehension of the powers at play. Any attempt to reason with her on these subjects is hopeless. She will never understand, until all four beacons are lit - perhaps not even then -"
Saturos makes a dismissive gesture with his free hand. "Why don't you try answering the question, Alex?"
"I did!"
"He was asking if you deliberately refused to intervene out of fondness for your cousin's pretty little face," Menardi says over her shoulder. "Yes or no? Which is it, Alex?"
Alex's lips press together in a thin, tense line. "You two are being absurd. Perhaps you'll see sense when you're further from the fount of Mercury's power-"
"One syllable, Alex. Or rather, one of two," Saturos says. "Which one? Look me in the eyes and tell me."
Alex's face tightens further, and he trains his gaze on a spot just over Saturos and Menardi's heads. "As I said, the lighthouse's radiance is clearly having an untoward effect on your psyches... I'm sure you'll feel better later."
Saturos gives an unpleasant, sly little laugh. "You're fond of her, aren't you?"
Something tightens until it snaps. Felix raises an eyebrow at the ice in Alex's eyes. "I will not be mocked by a man who lost because he made sure he sent his w- partner ahead of him, out of harm's way."
Saturos's teeth snap shut into a snarl. "That was to watch the hostages!"
"I could have done that-"
"And you didn't!"
"No, because you'd sent a vastly overqualified warrior to guard a pair of novices and an old man," Alex sneers. "What more could I have done? Challenged her to a card game to pass the time while-" He cuts himself off, but even Felix can hear the words hanging in the air: while a bunch of novices shoved your teeth down your throat and made you swallow them.
"Oh? So now you're claiming you're not worthless as a warrior-"
"Warrior? Whyever would that be necessary? Where would they have gone?" Alex laughs, but the air of affability is gone. Felix half-wonders if he remembers the rest of them are there. "This is my homeland. What do these children of earth and fire know of Imil? What do they know of the white wastes, awash in Mercury's light? They could run wherever they wanted. I would find them. And, by the time I did, they would be begging for me to take them back." His eyes are shining blue, and Felix thinks this is the first time he's seen Alex's real face. "This is my domain. Don't forget it."
Saturos eyes him a moment longer, and gives a short laugh. "The light of Mercury is deranging my head? Pfeh..." Then he faces forward again; the movement carries a gesture of dismissal. Felix doesn't think Alex is in a state to notice.
Or maybe he does. "I notice you didn't deny what I said," Alex says sweetly, his angelic smile returning.
"He doesn't need to deny it. It's absurd." Menardi's voice is flat and hard. "Nor does it matter. There won't be Mercury's light next time. And I won't leave him."
"Menardi-"
"If you value your dear cousin's life, you'll find some way to keep her away from the battlefield, by fair means or foul!" Menardi snaps, overriding Saturos's interruption as though it wasn't there. "Because I'll stand with him next time, and no one and nothing will prevail against us! So, if you value her hide, you had best make sure she isn't there, am I understood?"
Her eyes are alight with a terrifying fire, and Felix realizes, with a sick twist of his stomach, that Isaac and Garet might have survived, but not for long. They will not let this insult pass. There might have been a slender chance Saturos would let the boys live if they were defeated here, out of sheer contempt more than anything else, but now...
Alex, for his part, just looks back at them with a set smile and eyes as cold as ice. Menardi's too furious to see it, but Felix thinks he might see the plan unfolding behind Alex's eyes; warping in and seizing his cousin as she lays prone on some foreign battlefield, then warping off before the deathblow can come crashing down upon her. It will end their association, of course - Saturos and Menardi will not forgive being denied their vengeance, even in this small thing. But they have no need to be associated any longer, save Saturos and Menardi's convenience and Alex's curiosity.
Or perhaps he's thinking something else entirely. Who can tell, with Alex?
Felix looks off to the side, into the drifts of snow, and sighs. He wonders, sincerely, how they can hope to alter the foundations of the world while half-blinded by their own petty concerns, puppets dancing on the strings of the desires they insist they don't have. Alex and his cousin, Saturos and Menardi, him and Jenna -
Felix freezes, and retreats from that thought. No. Not him and Jenna. No. Wrong. Completely different. Completely.
But even as he denies it, it dawns, deep in his gut, that he's failed his sister in yet another way, and this one he can't fix.
Out Flew The Web And Floated Wide [Felix/Jenna, M] [3/4]
(Anonymous) 2020-12-10 01:06 am (UTC)(link)Jenna can curse Mercury Lighthouse, as Saturos and Menardi are doing with every breath, but it's more than that. Unless it has the power to turn hearts cold as well as bodies, which she's beginning to believe it might.
Felix is cold to her now, and she can't understand why. He says he's not, but she's not stupid. She half-thinks he's afraid to touch her, now; he shies from contact, and he won't meet her eyes. Reluctantly, he still lets her sleep in his tent, but she sleeps next to him rather than with him. It doesn't keep out the cold.
Is it because of Isaac and Garet? She can't imagine that was it, yet she can't imagine any other reason for the change. Is he angry at her for not immediately obeying Menardi's orders? No, that can't be it; she read the wariness in his eyes at Mercury Lighthouse, and the way his thoughts wavered from one course of action to another was clear in his face. It's a blessing Menardi was too distracted to read it for herself.
It must be because of Isaac and Garet. It must be that he's angry at them for opposing Saturos and Menardi, and angry at her for still caring about them. It can't be anything else - there's no other reason for him to go from the most loving brother alive to looking like the sight of her appalls him.
It's stupid. If she was feeling more herself, brother or not, she'd take it out on his hide. She'd demand to know how he thinks he can get away with treating her like this, going from warm to cold as ice, over some grudge between others and the madness of Alchemy. She'd bring him to his senses, she'd -
She wouldn't have this emptiness in her chest, she wouldn't feel so hurt and desperate that she'd do anything to bring him back to her. And isn't that stupid - thinking of 'bringing her brother back to her' when he's only a foot away? But it might as well be an ocean, for how he's acting.
What's wrong with her? She's never felt anything like this before. Objectively thinking, the pain is less than when she lost him and her parents in that monstrous night, but objective thinking makes no dent on her emotions. It's as though, when Felix turned his back on her, the whole world fell apart.
Why? It makes no sense. He's here and safe and well, no matter how he's acting. Isaac and Garet are alive and unhurt - perhaps better than ever. Even Kraden isn't about to come to any harm, the way Saturos and Menardi are seeking to speak to him at all hours, desperate to know more about something called 'Djinni' and all the myriad nuances of Alchemy. She should be happy. She should be happy and relieved and grateful, and her only concern should be whether the lighting of Mercury Lighthouse tips the world further towards salvation or destruction.
So why won't these tears stop?
He knows he's hurting her.
He's doing this for her sake. She can never understand - he will never let her understand. This is his fault and his sickness, and he'll shoulder the responsibility for it alone. It's not her fault that she has a broken brother - a brother who can't just look at her as a brother should, a brother who sees a lovely woman in the flower of her youth where he should only see the child she was. Karst is always whining that Menardi only sees her as a little girl rather than the warrior she's become - at least, whenever she thinks Menardi's nowhere nearby to hear her whining in a manner more befitting of a little girl than a warrior.
Why can't he be like that? Why can't he look at his little sister and be outright appalled at the thought of any boy touching her, of his baby sister growing up? Why is it, that when he tries thinking in that way, his stomach does an uneasy flip-flop at the thought of a boy touching her, and from there his mind wanders to...
Oh, why...
Jenna doesn't know any of that. She's an innocent girl who was appalled by the things that befell her through no fault of her own, but grateful to get her brother back, and now she can't understand why she can't even have that. He can never tell her. It kills him to do this, but...
Their parents...
It could all go back to normal if he could stop feeling this way about her. If Jenna could be the center of his world because she's his sister and he owes her so much, for all the hardship she's gone through, and not for any other reason... then they could be together again. No, no, not together again, not together... Then they could be a family. Nice. Normal. Natural.
It's not hard. Even Menardi can be a good elder sibling, and if not for Karst, he'd think she didn't have any sweetness in her at all. Even Menardi can do it, why can't he?
He's doing it for her sake, and it's selfish and monstrous of him to want the comfort of holding her again. Of breathing in the scent of her hair, of feeling her nestle her face into the crook of his neck, of...
What's wrong with him?
He's beginning to think the worst mistake that Saturos and Menardi have made, the vilest deed they've committed, was fishing him out of that river at all.
Jenna cringes at the sound of flesh hitting wood, and then wood hitting the water.
"It's. A. Tree," Saturos says, fist still raised in the air. "I know you're squeamish, Felix, but truly... Trees?"
"I really don't think these are ordinary trees," Felix persists, his eyes darting to the feeble trunk lying in the water and back again. "Look at them, Saturos - you must agree there's something unnatural. Trees don't grow like that. And they don't feel right to my Venus Psyenergy-"
"Well, they obviously do grow like that in this part of the world," Menardi says, hand on her hip. "Honestly, Felix. Not everywhere is Vale."
To her shock, a petty part of her agrees with Menardi for once. Not least because her brother cares for a tree more than her.
"Something isn't as it seems," Felix insists. "We should -"
"'We'?" Saturos repeats. "We will do nothing. We are heading to the next Lighthouse. And after Venus Lighthouse?" He rolls his eyes and smiles. "You may come back here and tend to your trees all you like. Perhaps you'll even find some slender, willowy sort to occupy a special place in your heart... But, do mind the splinters."
Alex stifles a laugh - he's horrible, if better than those two - and Menardi, while trying to look disgusted, can't quite disguise her smirk. Felix just reddens and ducks his head, with an expression Jenna can't quite read.
"Why can't you just -" He makes a sound of frustration. "It wouldn't kill you to stop and think for once. Rather than just - acting."
"I walk and think," Saturos says drolly. "It's faster." He jerks his head. "We've wasted enough time on this. Let's get moving."
Felix looks to Jenna for support, but she just smiles and follows Saturos. Let him feel what it's like to not have any support for once. Let him! He speaks up for the sake of some strange-looking trees, when he'll barely acknowledge her presence, when she can't even lay a hand on his arm without him jolting away, as though her touch might burn him...
She's angry at a tree because her brother likes it better. What's wrong with her? Has she gone mad? This is just - No, it's the world that's gone mad, when her brother shows more concern for a tree than for her. Isn't it? Oh, she doesn't know.
It hurts her to be angry at him. All she wants is for him to look at her again... Like he used to, just a short time ago... And a short time before that, she thought he was dead...
Menardi makes some jab about his supposed interest in trees, and Felix actually snaps at her. It's the first time Jenna's seen him really backtalk her, and that should raise some alarm, but it doesn't register in this moment. All she can think is that he's still defending that tree more than her.
"What's gotten into you, Felix?" Menardi asks, and Jenna represses a bitter snort. She should have been asking that weeks ago.
"Mind your own business!" he snaps. "We're wasting time, after all! Let's keep moving!"
Menardi looks at him like he's grown a second head, and Jenna can't quite control herself. "Well, I'm sorry you can't be with your lady love, then, Felix, since she means so much to you-"
"It's not-" He makes a sound at the back of his throat, like an animal stuck in a trap, and storms ahead, outpacing even Saturos for a moment.
She scowls at his back, then ducks her head, tears prickling in her eyes. She just wishes she knew what went wrong between them. He was the sweetest brother there could be, everything she could have wanted amid this turmoil, a light in the darkness... More than a brother, a tall, dark, and handsome stranger, who took her in his arms and swore to protect her, and...
She doesn't know where that line of thought would take her, and it doesn't matter, really. Felix is changed now. He's become a stranger in truth, his face closing off behind a mask more opaque than the one he wore at Sol Sanctum, and she doesn't know him anymore - if she ever did.
A flicker of movement catches her eye, and she looks up. Saturos is staring over his shoulder at her, and his gaze slides from her to Felix, then back. His expression is very strange: if she were to guess at its meaning, it would be the face of a man who can't quite believe what he's seeing, and yet is watching all the pieces slide into place.
He raises his eyebrows, then looks away. Anger burns in her gut at the thought of him understanding what's going on between her and her brother better than she does, then despair at the same thought, then anger again. If even he can see it -
But what is he seeing?
Jenna seems to hate him now.
It's better that way, he assures himself, even as he feels sick. It's better this way, for her to lose her attachment to her diseased brother. It would have been better this way all along - to have been totally forgotten, rather than remembered.
He shouldn't have blown up like that at Menardi. She was jabbing at him mindlessly - nothing she hasn't done before. It was just - did she have to ask, in the course of her mockery, whether his sister knew about his perversions -
Damn it.
If he'd been guiltless, he would have just shrugged it off, or turned it around into some jab about whether Karst knew such-and-such about her. That was what he would have ordinarily done. No one could live around Saturos and Menardi for three years without growing a thicker skin.
He just wants...
What does he even want? He doesn't know, anymore. He wishes he hadn't realized there was anything wrong at all, perhaps. That he and Jenna could have kept growing closer, the adoring younger sister and her caring older brother, the lively young woman and...
He's failed his sister. He's failed her, and their parents, and himself. The boy he was three years ago would never have had these thoughts. He would have smiled at his younger sister's antics, watched with annoyance as she acquired a circle of admiring boys, and reluctantly accepted it when she found a man worth keeping. Not this. Never this.
It was easier before the Lighthouse. When - though he shudders to think of it now - there was just him and Jenna, nestled together for warmth against the cold, and nothing in this world could come between them...
It's better this way. It's better for Jenna to hate him, and be safe from the contamination of his perversions. It really doesn't hurt that much, to rip one's heart out of one's own chest. It really doesn't hurt that much at all.
Out Flew The Web And Floated Wide [Felix/Jenna, M] [4/4]
(Anonymous) 2020-12-10 01:08 am (UTC)(link)Regardless of that, this is her life now, and so, when Saturos pulls out a chair at a table and tells her to sit, she obeys. He sits down heavily in a chair opposite her and leans over the table, regarding her coolly.
"What is it?" she asks after a long silence; she feels like nothing so much as a small animal must feel when cornered by a snake.
Saturos seems to consider his words. "Venus Lighthouse requires a Venus Adept. You understand this, don't you?"
She hesitates, then nods. She's overheard the discussions with Kraden and Alex. "Yes, of course I do, but what does this have to do with..."
"We have no Venus Adepts who might be amenable to our purposes for..." Saturos casts his gaze upward. "...quite some distance. And I have no plans to sail back to Prox, drag your father onto our boat, and sail all the way back here, simply because..."
"But you have Felix...?"
Saturos's gaze sharpens and fixes on her, and suddenly she regrets speaking. "Yes. That's exactly it. We have Felix." He leans closer, hands curling into fists. "Which is why you are going to fix whatever's going on between you and your brother, and do it shortly. Am I understood?"
Her temper flares, and her muscles tighten; fix whatever's going on between her and her brother? Fix whatever's going on between her and her brother? Doesn't he think that, if she could - "I have no idea what Felix's problem is, and -"
"Look at me, little girl," he snarls, and she's well aware the only thing keeping him from reaching across the table and seizing her by the collar is the sight of the rest of the inn's guests. Which won't stop him for long, if he's angry enough. His eyes are the bright red of fresh blood. "I don't care about either of your reasons, whatever little spat you had, or any injury to your childish pride. I care only about you fixing this for long enough that your brother doesn't pitch himself into another raging river before Venus Lighthouse, because we may not be lucky enough to fish him out in time. Do I make myself clear?"
"What?" She sits back in disbelief. "What are you... Felix...?" Her heart clenches. "He... He wouldn't..."
Saturos makes a sound of disgust. "As I said," he says after a few moments, "I don't care about your petty drama. All I care about is having Felix cease to wallow in his misery until after he's opened Venus Lighthouse. So, if you would kindly just go to him and-"
"He doesn't want me to go to him," she says with a sudden lump in her throat. Blinking furiously and staring at the wood of the table rather than meeting Saturos's eyes, she adds, "He hates me-"
A sound of strangled fury comes from Saturos's throat. His fist bangs on the table, and her head jerks up; it draws attention from the other patrons, but he's past caring. "Spare me," he spits. "You are not, in any way, special. You are a whining little brat with hurt feelings, as is your brother, and the world will see many, many more of you in ages to come. Provided there are ages to come." He shoves his chair back with a clatter, getting to his feet, and leans over her, hands braced on the table; there are murmurs, but he's deaf to anything but rage. "We do not have time for your little lovers' quarrel. The world does not have time for your little lovers' quarrel. You will reconcile, and you will do it now. Do you understand me?"
"Lovers' quarrel?" erupts from her throat, the cry coming without conscious thought. "Lovers' quarrel? He's my-"
Her throat works. "My-"
The doom that's been hovering around her for so long comes crashing down all at once, and her face falls forward into her hands.
Several long seconds pass, with no thought or sensation save horror. Then there's a strong grip on her upper arm, yanking her to her feet. Saturos drags her out of the room; she sees brief, numb flashes of the other patrons' faces, bewildered and appalled but doing nothing to help. They don't want to get involved.
It doesn't matter. There is nothing they can do to help. Not when - When -
Why-
She stumbles as Saturos drags her up the stairs, her breath catching on a sob. He just snarls something about idiocy and continues hauling her along, rounding the corner and muttering under his breath as he goes past each door. Then he stops and bangs on one, so hard that he could wake the dead.
It comes open, and the voice of the person she least wants to see at the moment comes out. "Saturos, what-"
He throws her like a sack of grain, and she hits Felix's chest with a hard thump. "Neither of you are leaving this room until you resolve this," Saturos snarls, and the door swings shut with a slam. Felix lurches forward, and she distantly hears him rattling the handle; it doesn't budge. Saturos must be pulling it shut from the outside.
"Saturos?" Felix's voice is hard, angry, protective - and she doesn't deserve - "Saturos? What did you do to her?"
"I? Shouldn't you be asking that question of yourself?"
She's in her brother's arms again, even if he's probably not thinking about the movement, and she's never been so utterly miserable. Because he's not just her brother, and -
"No wonder you can't stand to look at me..." she manages in a weak voice, so threadbare that she feels it will just crumble away. It should. She shouldn't... She doesn't deserve... She... Why...
"What?" He looks down at her, then jerks his head up again, his expression fierce. "Saturos?"
"This is your quarrel," comes the voice from outside. "I have neither anything to do with it nor any desire to get involved. All I want is for the two of you to stop your miserable moping and fix it." A pause. "I'm willing to stay out here all night, so you'd better start talking."
"What..." Felix's breath catches, and Jenna feels like vomiting. He understands, doesn't he? He understands, and any moment, he'll shove her away and not want to touch her, not want to get near her, not ever look at her again - It's what she deserves, she deserves every bit of the way he's been treating her, she - "Saturos?" At the unexpected note in his voice, she looks up, blinking through his tears; what she hears makes no sense. She expected horror, not terror. "What do you - What did you tell her?"
Saturos laughs. It's an unpleasant sound. "That's a good question, Felix. Why don't you ask her?"
Felix looks down at her, and his face is a mask of pain and fear and grief - It startles her. That should be the look on her face, not his. Then he looks back at the door. "You - you don't understand," he says frantically. It doesn't sound like her brother's - oh, why - voice; she's never heard that tone of fear, of pleading. "I don't know what you think you - But it wasn't - I -"
Saturos gives a disgusted sigh. "Both of you need to understand this," he says through the door, his growl vibrating the wood. "What I think doesn't matter, any more than what you think matters. Nothing matters, save seeing the Lighthouses lit. Nothing." He lets out a short little laugh. "So I can think whatever I like. It doesn't matter. For all I know, this is normal for you Vale folk-"
"It's not normal!" Jenna cries, and regrets it in the same instant she speaks. "It's not normal - I -"
"Jenna-" His hands brush her shoulders, and she recoils; the stricken look on his face breaks her heart, but not as much as the disgust she knows must follow. "Jenna-" Felix's voice cracks. "I'm so sorry-"
"Why are you apologizing to me?" she asks with a half-laugh, half-sob. "It's - it's all my fault - it's my-"
She slides down the door, burying her face between her knees when she's on the floor. She can't bear to look at him. Not when she's...
She remembers the feeling of his arms around her, and the utter bliss she felt nestled into his warmth. Bile rises in her throat. No. She understands - as she should have understood then, as a part of her must have understood all along - that those weren't the feelings of a girl toward her brother. Not that happiness, that contentment, the faint heat she felt -
She gags, and her throat burns. Choking it down, she swallows it back and pushes her face into her knees. The pain is a distraction from her own mind. No wonder she repulses Felix, no wonder he went from the kindest brother alive to a stranger - she wasn't his sister, not in any way save blood, no sister would -
"Jenna? Jenna?" She hears the thunk of his knees hitting the wooden floor. She can't bear to look up. The mere thought makes the tears flow faster. "Jenna, please look at me - please -"
A glove brushes her temple, and, against her will, she raises her head. Through a sheen of tears, she sees Felix's desperate face, and it's enough to make her break down again. "Jenna-" She hears a sob, and her heart breaks a little more. "I'm sorry, I- I never wanted this. I -"
"I know you didn't," she says miserably. She wishes she were dead. If the Wise One was going to spare her family, why didn't he take her in exchange? They'd have hurt, but that would still be better than... Anything would be better than... "It's not your fault, Felix-" Her voice rises on a high note of pain, and she fights it down. "You did nothing wrong... I just..."
For what seems like an eternity, he just kneels there, his hand on her face. "It's my sickness," he says at last, his voice raw. "If I could have just been a brother to you, rather than..."
"Your sickness?" She gives a little laugh, bordering on hysteria. What he says is so incongruous that she can't make sense of it. "You're not sick. It's me who-" She breaks off, shaking her head, and looks away. It's easier to look at the corner of the room than at her brother's face - and the revulsion that, any moment now, he won't be able to repress any longer. Yet, despite herself, she leans into his hand, knowing that the gesture will only hasten it being yanked away - miserable in the prison of her own selfish need, a stupid child in the most horribly unchildlike of ways -
"What do you mean, you're the one who's sick?" Felix repeats, his voice rising. "Jenna, it's not you who - I'm the one who -"
She looks back to him, and their eyes meet. In that moment, there's a flash of recognition - of realization, dawning across both their faces, mirrored as perfectly as twins.
For what must be a second, but seems to be an eternity, they sit paralyzed, staring into each other's eyes. The doom that she felt crashing down upon her before was a phantasm; this is so much worse, a creeping fog that wraps itself around her shoulders and drifts up to smother her mouth, drive the air from her lungs. Suffocating, all-encompassing.
It's so much worse because she has no desire to resist it. Her hand comes up to cup the back of Felix's head; she sees it as though watching something in a dream, and her motions feel like those in a dream. But the soft hair under her hand is real. Her brother is real.
Her brother and her lover, why-
But there are no tears now - not when his hand, shaking uncontrollably, drops from her face to her back, his arm wrapping around her and bringing her closer as the other hand threads through her hair. The doom has come upon her, the doom she felt almost at once, the doom that, perhaps, began when the tall stranger at Sol Sanctum took off his mask, and she found herself staring into a handsome and foreign face that was somehow unmistakably her brother's -
And the worst part about it, the worst part of all, is that she doesn't mind and doesn't care. She's happy. Why is she happy? Some part of her, the same part that, in her brother - her brother, why - that, in her brother, turned his eyes from her and kept his embrace from her, in what now was unmistakably grievous guilt and shame - that same part is screaming, it's screaming uncontrollably and unendingly, perhaps it will never stop screaming -
And the rest of her is deaf to its screams. It's impossible to listen to its screams, when she's this happy. Whether it's her conscience or her better judgment or anything else, she's never felt happier than now, with Felix's mouth on hers, the pressure of his hand on the back of her head, the warmth of his arm -
"Felix," she sobs, and kisses him again before he can mistake her emotion. "Felix - brother-"
Somewhere, there's a sigh and the sound of footsteps heading away from the door, but she doesn't care. The world could burn down around them now, and she wouldn't care. It doesn't matter whether the world dies in fire or in ice. All that matters is the feeling of Felix's hands over her clothes, his mouth against her skin, his fingers fumbling with the laces of her clothing -
"Jenna-" he groans, half a moan, half a sob, and then she draws him down to her, and there's nothing in the world but the two of them at all.
Meanwhile, Next Door [coda/4]
(Anonymous) 2020-12-10 01:27 am (UTC)(link)The door swings open, then shuts again. Saturos throws himself down on his bed and regards the ceiling, hands behind his head.
"What is it?" Menardi asks from her bed, only half-interested. He inspects the rafters.
"Resolving..." He considers how to phrase it. "Fraternal disputes."
"I could have done that," Menardi scoffs. "There was no need for you to bother yourself with it. I have a sister-"
He takes a deep breath, then exhales through his nose. It's that or burst out laughing, and she wouldn't understand why. "I don't think that you have quite the same relationship."
"Not precisely, but it can't be that different between an older brother and an older sister," Menardi defends. "The same principles apply. A younger sister-"
She stops mid-sentence, and he looks over to see her regarding the wall strangely. Her head cocks, as if listening to... He bites his lip. The thought disgusts him, yes, but not nearly as badly as he wants to laugh at her look of perplexity, the confusion, the lack of comprehension...
After the moans grow to the point that even he can hear them, she turns to him with a disbelieving expression. "I'm sorry," she says, jerking her thumb at the wall, "but I must have misunderstood... The rooms we booked... I thought that was..."
He nods and raises his eyebrows as far as they'll go. She continues to stare at him, unwilling to understand, until one of the moans is quite audible as "Felix!"
Her head jerks around, and his breath comes out in a sharp exhalation that doesn't quite disguise that it's a chuckle. His tongue licks around his lip: the teeth drew blood. Ah well. It was worth keeping a straight face.
Menardi's mouth hangs open, disbelieving and appalled. He sits up, wanting to memorize the expression. It's the funniest thing he's seen in his life, and likely to remain that way, even if he lives for a hundred years.
"You know," he says once he's etched it into his memory, "they say that if you hold a face for that long, it might freeze that way."
She turns to him, her face still frozen in that expression of incredulity. Behind her, the moaning beyond the wall has now been joined by an unmistakable rhythmic thumping. She gestures spasmodically at the wall, then lets her hand fall to her side and stares at him. He arches an eyebrow and spreads his hands.
At last, she manages an appalled whisper. "I have a sister..."
He nods.
She gestures futilely towards the next room, then throws up her hands. She's really making a lot of expressions he's never seen before. It's interesting.
"How can you -" Her voice comes out in a strangled gasp. So does one of the voices from the neighboring room, come to think of it. "They're siblings!"
"We need a Venus Adept."
She sits and stares at him, the thumping behind her growing faster and rougher. "Until Venus Lighthouse," Saturos says in measured tones. "Only until Venus Lighthouse. After that..."
In mute shock, she turns back and stares at the wall, with no further reaction than a muscle in her cheek twitching every time there's a particularly loud moan or hard thump. He sits and watches her, torn between his amusement at her reaction and his own disgust, until there comes a high, piercing cry of "Oh, oh, oh, Felix, oh, brother, ohhhhhh-"
Menardi buries her face in her hands just as the pounding reaches a crescendo and comes to a merciful stop. Saturos can't quite disguise his snigger.
"It's not funny," she hisses at him, raising her head just enough to shoot a glare his way. "You don't understand, but I have a sister-"
"And you were going to help them with their problem, you said?"
Her hand moves in a blur, and a pillow takes him right in his grinning face. He flops down, waving a hand in defeat, but still letting out muffled snickers. She gives a disgusted sigh.
"Someday, you really are going to anger me to a point you'll regret..."
"Tch." He pulls the pillow off his face and sits up. "And what do you plan to do to me then, hmm?"
"Wouldn't you like to know," she says flatly. She glares at him, then drops her gaze. "How can you-" Glancing at the wall, she brings her hand to her mouth, as though to stifle a gag. "It's an abomination."
"Is it the worst abomination Vale has visited upon us?" he counters.
The room is silent for a few moments, and then she dips her head. "No."
"We do as we must," he says, leaning back against his own wall. At least that one will mercifully remain free of thumping, unless... Alex and Kraden... No, he doesn't think so. At least the only disconcerting thing there would be the age gap... "Until the Lighthouses are lit... nothing else matters until that time."
She begins to nod, then freezes and slowly turns to the wall behind her. He raises an eyebrow. As the distant creaking of a bed becomes audible even on his side of the room, he casts his gaze back up to the rafters. Hm. To think that he used to wonder if Felix was interested in girls at all. Must just have been the wrong sort of red-haired younger sister-
But best to not mention that to Menardi. He'd get something thrown at him that was harder than a pillow.
"Don't tell me they'll be at this all night-"
"You could always come over to my side," he offers, looking back down at her. "It's quieter."
For a moment, he wonders if he's pushed too far; then, she tosses him a calculating gaze, warming with more than anger, and he relaxes. "I do need to retrieve my pillow," she says, her gaze traveling down to where it rests on his lap.
"That you do," he agrees brightly, and she pushes off her bed.
Yes... they just have to endure until Venus Lighthouse. Only until Venus Lighthouse.
Everything will be different after that.