But I drive by night, and I travel in fear [Closed/Complete]
Characters: Agamemnon and Cassandra
Date/Time: December 7, evening
Location: Apartment 5C, Agamemnon’s bedroom
Rating: PG?
Warnings: Frankie can't write sex but she can write sexually... Sort of... Barely. (Also: shushing?)
Summary: We would like to say "pieces are moving into surprising places," "the pot is simmering," "the frog is boiling," "a chess game is being played," or "players are determining their own ranks." We hope this will make us sound cool (we and us purely being Frankie). However, we have been assured by a sibling that it will not and is way too vague. After the reunion of Aggie and his concubine--yes I am using euphemisms--there is some discussion, some crazy, some conditioning, some warnings. I guess. (It's late guys. Gimme a break. xD)
Cassandra sat on the bed and boosted herself back so she was settled on it before she swung her legs up onto it. She lay down on her stomach, resting her head on her crossed arms as she looked over at Agamemnon. “The forgotten queen still holds anger for me,” she said softly. Cassandra didn’t fear death, just what lead up to it. If the seer warned Agamemnon, she might able to help him avoid his death and to stop the queen from chasing her down.
She reached over and ran a finger lightly over his arm, tracing a random pattern as she lost herself in thought.
Agamemnon lounged on a throne of sheets and comforters, contently observing the patterns on the ceiling, and the glowing florescent that peeked out from under his door; he lay on his back comfortably, hands folded on his chest, enjoying the breezes that wafted through the apartment room from the air conditioning’s muffled, electronic din. He enjoyed that, the general hushed quiet of the moment, and he enjoyed Cassandra, moving back to the bed. He glanced at her shaded form, blanketed in a wispy, warm shadow, its outlined crusted with a thread of light leaking from the outside apartment. He grunted, and adjusted himself to lie on his side and better accommodate his gaze and it’s target.
“You may say her name,” he frowned, grabbing her hand to remove it from his arm and give it back to her. He sighed. “I honestly don’t find that title altogether fitting--or appealing.”
"If I say her name it makes her real," Cassandra said. "Her threats and the violence become real and I can't escape them." It made sense to her-she could continue to deny the existence of the other woman, just making her a threat in voice only. Clytemnestra couldn't hurt her if she didn't say her name. She shifted to her side so she could stare back Agamemnon, enjoying the view in her own way as she stretched a bit. A thought occurred to her, "Have my brothers spoken with you yet?"
The sheets were bunched and crumpled in various patterns not quite random. In the blurry night, the shadows they cast were greatly dramatized, and from the position on his throne Agamemnon vaguely perceived them as mountains. There Cassandra and he lay, on a bed of mountains and hillsides and great plots of land. Nearly like it should be. It appeared to Agamemnon that by all accounts it should be Clytemnestra. Given circumstances, Cassandra was fine. Cassandra was perfect.
“Why would they?” he asked, as seriously as he could with his lack of interest for the present subject. At the moment, he cared very little about Hector, Helenus, or the absent Paris and Deiphobus although Helen’s constant infidelity in speech, and movement, and everything she did shined dimly and constantly in the very back of his mind. There was very little chance of reconciliation with the Trojans, and very little want for it presently.
“Cassandra,” he grunted, combing away her hair with his hand, fondling the tresses, and keeping a light cradle on her head. “Clytemnestra is real.” He paused, and held her head down. “She’ll bother you whether you accept it or not.”
“But you will.”
"They might try to chase you away. Protect me from the supposed threat you present," Cassandra explained. She would try to explain to them how he saved her, kept her from being taken again by Ajax, but she wasn't sure if they would listen. The men in her family could be irrational when it came to women, as their refusal to give up Helen had proven. "I'll tell them the truth, but who can say if they will believe me?"
She purred when he tugged on her hair and settled down into his touch. "If I accept it, will it change our fates?" Cassandra turned her head slightly to kiss his wrist with the corner of her lips. She remembered what it felt like to be stabbed in her vision, the tearing, ripping rush of it. "Trading one kind of stabbing for another, which is more painful? One never should have happened and one will happen. Another kind altogether continues to occur."
There was something in Cassandra’s insanity that certainly enticed him. Somewhere among the babble and frenzy was a strange attraction to the helplessness of her lunacy, and although it seemed fairly well tucked away he spied-or rather heard-what he presumed to be small traces of it in her speech, and smiled at the familiarity and recognition of these hints. They were an old friend, and an intrinsic part of Cassandra that he could not move away from nor had any present desire to. It was, after all, the loose grips that ultimately bound her to him-tight as can be. Due to this brief comfort of hearing the discordant strokes play faintly again, he worried very little about Cassandra’s brothers or Clytemnestra as he lay there next to her.
Which is not to say, of course, that he worried about them frequently. As a matter of fact, Agamemnon’s life was hardly plague with worry at all. He was fairly certain that the production would play out as directed, and there was no risk of anyone breaking character with the exception of his wife-an anomaly that he pushed to the very back of his mind and buried fatally.
“I’m sure whatever it is it can be worked out,” he assured, shushing her and massaging the her neck with his thumb. “I am not altogether concerned about any issues your brothers may present. I am not concerned about Clytemnestra, dear. Being here is a changed fate as it is. Honestly, everyone seems so baffled and shock that they’re too afraid to do anything but speak ceaselessly. In any case, do not, in turn, concern yourself with these issues.” He shushed her again, as if anticipating a reply.
“Come closer.” As there were traces of insanity in her speech, Agamemnon incorporated traces of an order in his own.
Cassandra was comfortable in her insanity; without it, she felt she wouldn't exist. It had been her closest companion for so long, ruling her every move and interaction with people. Most of the time it was under control, but when it got out of hand...she was happy there was someone there who would understand, or at least attempt to understand, what she was feeling. Someone who would make her focus on what was happening around her to try to ground her.
She rolled her neck so that it was resting more fully against Agamemnon's hand before she pushed herself over to him. "Yes, General," Cassandra murmured quietly. "I'll try to not let it worry me." She forcibly stopped herself from babbling off on a tangent, though, if one looked they could see the madness sparkling in her eyes.
Agamemnon recognized a slightly familiar sense of victory from a breath away-separated by just mere inches, curled up under the comforter, giving off the most exquisite pulses of heat and life. For the time being, it gave him a great amount of pleasure to have it there, by him, trapped under a blanket, wound and tangled at his will. Eventually, the euphoria would subside for a more logical, sensible point of view and his mind would revert to the strict processes and productivity that he was accustom to. Cassandra would be a smaller accessory than she was now, occasionally growing on nights to be his world-as she was now. And this constant pattern of reliving victory would live from here on out. His delight presently uncontainable at her immediate presence and smoldering insanity, he strove to push that victory a little further-onto her back on the bed, where he pressed his dry lips to her shoulder blade. Mid-back. Shoulder. He raised the hair away, and kissed her neck-chaste, dry pecks-just enough to get a small taste of the vitality that radiated off her body.
“I would like you to stay here tonight, Cassandra,” he breathed, kneading his hand and fist into her hair and tangling it there. He brushed her shoulder again, and let a moment pass before saying, “Are you taking medication here?”
Cassandra purred as she lay on her stomach, humming a quiet tune when he pressed his lips to her shoulder. Eventually, she might not come to him anymore, she certainly didn't love him the way she thought one aught to love a person they slept with. She was so comfortable with him though, not only had he saved her, he provided the grounding she needed ever since Helenus disappeared-Helenus whom she wasn't sure was real now that she had him again. Being his concubine had been an easy way to grow steady again, get her insanity a bit under control ever since Ajax, not that Cassandra could ever be totally sane. She shivered and pressed back against Agamemnon.
"I'll stay," she whispered back. Anything to keep being touched and grounded. "Medication? The little white poison packets? No...doesn't know what's in them."
“I think you should try it, Cassandra.” The words were vaguely muffled against the maniac’s skin, but there and articulate enough to be heard and understood at the very least. There were only so many ways the King of Kings could secure a greedy clutch on something, and there was a small amount of hope that medication would soothe her spirits. While, admittedly, it was her madness that drew him to her at all, he possessed a small desire for that fire to be contained-calmed, and stroked to a pleasant, smiling flame. Cassandra on the bed smiling, eased, subdued. He rubbed her back and brushed her ear and buried his face into her neck and touched her hands and kissed her hair. He pet her down and sculpted her and kept a careful eye on the flame.
“I wouldn’t suggest such a thing if they put anything terrible into them, I promise you. I think it would be helpful to you. I think you might find you can enjoy things easier--a wider range of things if nothing else. You could relax. Function. You could get a job.” He moved his hand around her neck, searching her face absently. “I’d give you one if you needed it.”
The silence of the room was heavy and thick and Agamemnon rubbed sleepy circles on the woman’s skin, and massaged her throat. “They are expensive. I’d pay the fees for you.”
“It would be good for you.”
Cassandra bit her lip. "Would they work on a god's curse?" She wanted to be part of the real world again, not lean on other people like this all the time. She wanted to be able to repay her brothers and figure out exactly if this world was real or not. Granted, taking medicine based in the fantasy world might not help with that but if it calmed her, then maybe it would be worth it. She fisted the pillowcase in her hands as she bared her neck for him.
"I...would like a job." She shook her head. "I cannot beg off of you, Agamemnon. I already ask for too much. Taking and taking and never giving back, digging my own grave..."
There was a grunt and a small squeak from the bed as Agamemnon smoothly slowed to a stop, removing his hands, stretching his neck, and rolling onto his back again. There, he comfortably settled into a state of thought and content, raising his arm and motioning Cassandra to come next to him. He let his head dip to the side, and smiled at her reassuringly. “It will work on you.”
He said it as if he were a god.
“Beloved,” he chuckled, petting her head. “I have excessive amounts of enough and only you and my daughter to give it to. Let me do this.”
And then, expertly, “I’d consider it a favor--from you to me.”
Cassandra slid into his arms and rested her head on his chest, one arm curling against her chest, the other one slowly inching its way across Agamemnon's waist. "If you say so...I will try it." The asking for the favor is what did it. She may have originally gone with him to get away from Ajax and to ensure his death for what was done to her people, but he had helped her in a way. More than most of her family had. "If the medicine makers think they can conquer a god."
Almost immediately, Agamemnon wanted to translate all his feeling on the gods to Cassandra. The gods and Man. How conquering a god depending on which area you wanted victory in-what’s right or power. At the former Man would always win, and at the latter, presumably, the gods would. It was only at this turning of the tables that things were made right. The gods had committed far too many crimes to ever be hailed as grand, divine saints. Why there were worshiped was beyond his comprehension. And so he said:
“Go to sleep, Cassandra.” That was very much an order. He kissed her head.
"Will try," Cassandra whispered. She nuzzled into his chest and sighed quietly. It still didn't seem real to her, but maybe in the morning, this would be real. She wouldn't feel like a broken, dirty doll taken out of her dollhouse. If this medicine could help her be sane, she would do almost anything to gain some clarity in her life and if that meant staying with Agamemnon for longer, so be it. "The shadows here are too long."
“Then close your eyes.”
"Did. They're hiding now."
“Just shhhhh.”
Date/Time: December 7, evening
Location: Apartment 5C, Agamemnon’s bedroom
Rating: PG?
Warnings: Frankie can't write sex but she can write sexually... Sort of... Barely. (Also: shushing?)
Summary: We would like to say "pieces are moving into surprising places," "the pot is simmering," "the frog is boiling," "a chess game is being played," or "players are determining their own ranks." We hope this will make us sound cool (we and us purely being Frankie). However, we have been assured by a sibling that it will not and is way too vague. After the reunion of Aggie and his concubine--yes I am using euphemisms--there is some discussion, some crazy, some conditioning, some warnings. I guess. (It's late guys. Gimme a break. xD)
Cassandra sat on the bed and boosted herself back so she was settled on it before she swung her legs up onto it. She lay down on her stomach, resting her head on her crossed arms as she looked over at Agamemnon. “The forgotten queen still holds anger for me,” she said softly. Cassandra didn’t fear death, just what lead up to it. If the seer warned Agamemnon, she might able to help him avoid his death and to stop the queen from chasing her down.
She reached over and ran a finger lightly over his arm, tracing a random pattern as she lost herself in thought.
Agamemnon lounged on a throne of sheets and comforters, contently observing the patterns on the ceiling, and the glowing florescent that peeked out from under his door; he lay on his back comfortably, hands folded on his chest, enjoying the breezes that wafted through the apartment room from the air conditioning’s muffled, electronic din. He enjoyed that, the general hushed quiet of the moment, and he enjoyed Cassandra, moving back to the bed. He glanced at her shaded form, blanketed in a wispy, warm shadow, its outlined crusted with a thread of light leaking from the outside apartment. He grunted, and adjusted himself to lie on his side and better accommodate his gaze and it’s target.
“You may say her name,” he frowned, grabbing her hand to remove it from his arm and give it back to her. He sighed. “I honestly don’t find that title altogether fitting--or appealing.”
"If I say her name it makes her real," Cassandra said. "Her threats and the violence become real and I can't escape them." It made sense to her-she could continue to deny the existence of the other woman, just making her a threat in voice only. Clytemnestra couldn't hurt her if she didn't say her name. She shifted to her side so she could stare back Agamemnon, enjoying the view in her own way as she stretched a bit. A thought occurred to her, "Have my brothers spoken with you yet?"
The sheets were bunched and crumpled in various patterns not quite random. In the blurry night, the shadows they cast were greatly dramatized, and from the position on his throne Agamemnon vaguely perceived them as mountains. There Cassandra and he lay, on a bed of mountains and hillsides and great plots of land. Nearly like it should be. It appeared to Agamemnon that by all accounts it should be Clytemnestra. Given circumstances, Cassandra was fine. Cassandra was perfect.
“Why would they?” he asked, as seriously as he could with his lack of interest for the present subject. At the moment, he cared very little about Hector, Helenus, or the absent Paris and Deiphobus although Helen’s constant infidelity in speech, and movement, and everything she did shined dimly and constantly in the very back of his mind. There was very little chance of reconciliation with the Trojans, and very little want for it presently.
“Cassandra,” he grunted, combing away her hair with his hand, fondling the tresses, and keeping a light cradle on her head. “Clytemnestra is real.” He paused, and held her head down. “She’ll bother you whether you accept it or not.”
“But you will.”
"They might try to chase you away. Protect me from the supposed threat you present," Cassandra explained. She would try to explain to them how he saved her, kept her from being taken again by Ajax, but she wasn't sure if they would listen. The men in her family could be irrational when it came to women, as their refusal to give up Helen had proven. "I'll tell them the truth, but who can say if they will believe me?"
She purred when he tugged on her hair and settled down into his touch. "If I accept it, will it change our fates?" Cassandra turned her head slightly to kiss his wrist with the corner of her lips. She remembered what it felt like to be stabbed in her vision, the tearing, ripping rush of it. "Trading one kind of stabbing for another, which is more painful? One never should have happened and one will happen. Another kind altogether continues to occur."
There was something in Cassandra’s insanity that certainly enticed him. Somewhere among the babble and frenzy was a strange attraction to the helplessness of her lunacy, and although it seemed fairly well tucked away he spied-or rather heard-what he presumed to be small traces of it in her speech, and smiled at the familiarity and recognition of these hints. They were an old friend, and an intrinsic part of Cassandra that he could not move away from nor had any present desire to. It was, after all, the loose grips that ultimately bound her to him-tight as can be. Due to this brief comfort of hearing the discordant strokes play faintly again, he worried very little about Cassandra’s brothers or Clytemnestra as he lay there next to her.
Which is not to say, of course, that he worried about them frequently. As a matter of fact, Agamemnon’s life was hardly plague with worry at all. He was fairly certain that the production would play out as directed, and there was no risk of anyone breaking character with the exception of his wife-an anomaly that he pushed to the very back of his mind and buried fatally.
“I’m sure whatever it is it can be worked out,” he assured, shushing her and massaging the her neck with his thumb. “I am not altogether concerned about any issues your brothers may present. I am not concerned about Clytemnestra, dear. Being here is a changed fate as it is. Honestly, everyone seems so baffled and shock that they’re too afraid to do anything but speak ceaselessly. In any case, do not, in turn, concern yourself with these issues.” He shushed her again, as if anticipating a reply.
“Come closer.” As there were traces of insanity in her speech, Agamemnon incorporated traces of an order in his own.
Cassandra was comfortable in her insanity; without it, she felt she wouldn't exist. It had been her closest companion for so long, ruling her every move and interaction with people. Most of the time it was under control, but when it got out of hand...she was happy there was someone there who would understand, or at least attempt to understand, what she was feeling. Someone who would make her focus on what was happening around her to try to ground her.
She rolled her neck so that it was resting more fully against Agamemnon's hand before she pushed herself over to him. "Yes, General," Cassandra murmured quietly. "I'll try to not let it worry me." She forcibly stopped herself from babbling off on a tangent, though, if one looked they could see the madness sparkling in her eyes.
Agamemnon recognized a slightly familiar sense of victory from a breath away-separated by just mere inches, curled up under the comforter, giving off the most exquisite pulses of heat and life. For the time being, it gave him a great amount of pleasure to have it there, by him, trapped under a blanket, wound and tangled at his will. Eventually, the euphoria would subside for a more logical, sensible point of view and his mind would revert to the strict processes and productivity that he was accustom to. Cassandra would be a smaller accessory than she was now, occasionally growing on nights to be his world-as she was now. And this constant pattern of reliving victory would live from here on out. His delight presently uncontainable at her immediate presence and smoldering insanity, he strove to push that victory a little further-onto her back on the bed, where he pressed his dry lips to her shoulder blade. Mid-back. Shoulder. He raised the hair away, and kissed her neck-chaste, dry pecks-just enough to get a small taste of the vitality that radiated off her body.
“I would like you to stay here tonight, Cassandra,” he breathed, kneading his hand and fist into her hair and tangling it there. He brushed her shoulder again, and let a moment pass before saying, “Are you taking medication here?”
Cassandra purred as she lay on her stomach, humming a quiet tune when he pressed his lips to her shoulder. Eventually, she might not come to him anymore, she certainly didn't love him the way she thought one aught to love a person they slept with. She was so comfortable with him though, not only had he saved her, he provided the grounding she needed ever since Helenus disappeared-Helenus whom she wasn't sure was real now that she had him again. Being his concubine had been an easy way to grow steady again, get her insanity a bit under control ever since Ajax, not that Cassandra could ever be totally sane. She shivered and pressed back against Agamemnon.
"I'll stay," she whispered back. Anything to keep being touched and grounded. "Medication? The little white poison packets? No...doesn't know what's in them."
“I think you should try it, Cassandra.” The words were vaguely muffled against the maniac’s skin, but there and articulate enough to be heard and understood at the very least. There were only so many ways the King of Kings could secure a greedy clutch on something, and there was a small amount of hope that medication would soothe her spirits. While, admittedly, it was her madness that drew him to her at all, he possessed a small desire for that fire to be contained-calmed, and stroked to a pleasant, smiling flame. Cassandra on the bed smiling, eased, subdued. He rubbed her back and brushed her ear and buried his face into her neck and touched her hands and kissed her hair. He pet her down and sculpted her and kept a careful eye on the flame.
“I wouldn’t suggest such a thing if they put anything terrible into them, I promise you. I think it would be helpful to you. I think you might find you can enjoy things easier--a wider range of things if nothing else. You could relax. Function. You could get a job.” He moved his hand around her neck, searching her face absently. “I’d give you one if you needed it.”
The silence of the room was heavy and thick and Agamemnon rubbed sleepy circles on the woman’s skin, and massaged her throat. “They are expensive. I’d pay the fees for you.”
“It would be good for you.”
Cassandra bit her lip. "Would they work on a god's curse?" She wanted to be part of the real world again, not lean on other people like this all the time. She wanted to be able to repay her brothers and figure out exactly if this world was real or not. Granted, taking medicine based in the fantasy world might not help with that but if it calmed her, then maybe it would be worth it. She fisted the pillowcase in her hands as she bared her neck for him.
"I...would like a job." She shook her head. "I cannot beg off of you, Agamemnon. I already ask for too much. Taking and taking and never giving back, digging my own grave..."
There was a grunt and a small squeak from the bed as Agamemnon smoothly slowed to a stop, removing his hands, stretching his neck, and rolling onto his back again. There, he comfortably settled into a state of thought and content, raising his arm and motioning Cassandra to come next to him. He let his head dip to the side, and smiled at her reassuringly. “It will work on you.”
He said it as if he were a god.
“Beloved,” he chuckled, petting her head. “I have excessive amounts of enough and only you and my daughter to give it to. Let me do this.”
And then, expertly, “I’d consider it a favor--from you to me.”
Cassandra slid into his arms and rested her head on his chest, one arm curling against her chest, the other one slowly inching its way across Agamemnon's waist. "If you say so...I will try it." The asking for the favor is what did it. She may have originally gone with him to get away from Ajax and to ensure his death for what was done to her people, but he had helped her in a way. More than most of her family had. "If the medicine makers think they can conquer a god."
Almost immediately, Agamemnon wanted to translate all his feeling on the gods to Cassandra. The gods and Man. How conquering a god depending on which area you wanted victory in-what’s right or power. At the former Man would always win, and at the latter, presumably, the gods would. It was only at this turning of the tables that things were made right. The gods had committed far too many crimes to ever be hailed as grand, divine saints. Why there were worshiped was beyond his comprehension. And so he said:
“Go to sleep, Cassandra.” That was very much an order. He kissed her head.
"Will try," Cassandra whispered. She nuzzled into his chest and sighed quietly. It still didn't seem real to her, but maybe in the morning, this would be real. She wouldn't feel like a broken, dirty doll taken out of her dollhouse. If this medicine could help her be sane, she would do almost anything to gain some clarity in her life and if that meant staying with Agamemnon for longer, so be it. "The shadows here are too long."
“Then close your eyes.”
"Did. They're hiding now."
“Just shhhhh.”