Arms Hotel, Room 618, Monday Afternoon

[notyourpawn]

Alice sat cross-legged on the floor, shuffling cards together and dealing out another hand of Patience. Alice wasn't very good at Patience; she got bored and cheated. One could turn that into whatever metaphor one liked

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[atreideslioness]

"Alice." There was the rustling of skirts as Ghanima rearranged her robes to sit down beside her guest. "That is not going to help."

[notyourpawn]

Alice sighed and put the Ace of Clubs back into the deck. "I was only trying to shorten the game," she said, dealing out three cards and looking for a black seven that could host a red six.

[atreideslioness]

"And cheat yourself of the experience? That wouldn't be worthy of you," she said mildly, holding her hand out for the deck of cards. "There are no futures in these cards, dear one."

[notyourpawn]

Alice swept the cards together, haphazardly, and offered the topsy-turvy deck to Ghanima. Some of the cards were face-up, and some had their corners peeking out.

"I wasn't fortune-telling," she said. "I've never wanted to know the future. If it's good, it'll ruin the surprise, and if it's bad, I'll dread it."

[atreideslioness]

"No? Odd, you seem to be trying to change the outcome," Ghanima pointed out gently. "Once the cards have been dealt, you have to finish the game."

"Why haven't you spoken to Leto yet?"

[notyourpawn]

"And cheating's not allowed?" Alice asked.

She should have seen that one coming. Ghanima seemed to be far more skilled at cheating than she was.

"I have spoken to him," she said. "Briefly."

Very briefly. To him. Towards him. In his direction, before hanging up on him. That counted.

[atreideslioness]

"Cheating to get what you want is allowed, but cheating yourself is counterproductive," Ghanima replied. "The other players are supposed to get a turn, you know."

She didn't have to say 'You haven't, not really, and you know it.' It was possible Ghanima's eyes said it for her.

[notyourpawn]

They did. Alice dropped her own gaze to the carpeting, not bothering with a denial.

"I feel like if I pretend hard enough, this will all go away," she said. "I could always go to Wonderland, before. Slip away from life and escape. And now I can't. It isn't safe, for her. So I suppose I do care about her, after all. Or maybe it's some sense of duty."

Besides, the child was Leto's. She couldn't bring harm to any child that was his.

[atreideslioness]

"Alice, you are pregnant with a child that is developing slightly faster than normal, due to her parentage," Ghanima said. "She is very much not pretend, and so much more than some sense of duty."

"If it were merely honor or obligation which drew you here, you wouldn't be this upset."

[notyourpawn]

Alice wished she still had the cards in her hands; they would allow her to fidget. She had to settle with lacing her fingers together and watching them as if they might do tricks.

"I can't ... do this," she said. "Be part of this. If I could remove myself from the process entirely, I would. I suppose medicine hasn't advanced that far yet. And so instead, I wait."

And grew more fearful every day.

[atreideslioness]

"What part of 'this' is it that you feel you cannot do?" she asked. "Be a parent? I needn't glance to my Other Memory to know that there are far worse mothers in history than you could ever be."

"Or is it knowing that Leto will want both you and the child to be with him on Dune, and all that entails?"

[notyourpawn]

Alice was worrying her lower lip between her teeth.

"I was so protective, when I first realized," she said. "I thought I would do anything for her. But I can't ... love her. I can't have a family again. I lost that too long ago. It would ..."

She huddled against her knees, trying to protect herself from the very thought of it. How vulnerable she would be. How lost. And how utterly broken, the moment it all fell apart again.

[atreideslioness]

Ghanima took a breath, shushing the inner voice of the Reverend Mother Mohiam, who was advocating shaking some sense into Alice. It wasn't helping that Chani and Jessica were agreeing with her.

"You'd be joining good company," she said instead, a small smile playing about her lips. "Alice, I never got the chance to meet either of my parents in the flesh, they live solely through me. My grandfather, the Duke Leto, is the same."

"Our older brother was murdered as a baby, long before Leto and I came to be, and I watched Alia - the person who perhaps understood me best, loved me best, aside from Leto - kill herself rather than lose to Abomination."

[notyourpawn]

Alice was nodding. "Alia," she said. "Your aunt. Was she the one, in class ..."

She'd watched a woman surrender to madness, and then choose, in a moment of sanity, to grasp at suicide as the only possible exit. It had been heartbreaking even before she had gotten close to any of the family involved.

Possibly because she could only too easily imagine herself in that very position.

"So you've only ever had one another," she said.

[atreideslioness]

"Stilgar, uncle of my mother. Harah, one of his wives... among Fremen, no child is left homeless or unloved. I believe the phrase here is that 'it takes a village,'" Ghanima replied. "Life is often short and brutal on the sands, but that does not invalidate what was had, and what will be in the future."

"We make new families. People come and go, but the love is always there."

[notyourpawn]

Alice shook her head. "It was never that," she said. "Not for me. They were gone, in an instant. There was no one else. There never has been."

Only Dinah, a cat who grew older and frailer each year.

"It can all be stripped away," she said. "I don't think I could survive it again. I know I couldn't."