[Drabble] [RP/AU/IDEK] A Loss Perfected
Because it had to be done. All italicized lines and cut-text taken from James Richardson's Vectors: Forty-five Aphorisms and Ten-second Essays.
A Loss Perfected
i.
I lie so I do not have to trust you to believe.
She is looking for a key that does not exist.
Or no, no -- a door. She already has the key; it is a smooth curved shape, polished ivory cool in the recesses of her mind. When she wraps her thoughts around it she remembers afternoons spent in gardens thicketed with flowers, tall and white, and the scent of memory, of a life slowly being unraveled from itself the way one unravels a cobweb to spin new veils and bridal dresses from spider silk.
She remembers opening her eyes to a world that existed only in light and shadow. Chiaroscuro, the defining of shapes with darkness, how the visible emerges from what cannot be seen. Such paintings, she has always been taught, consist as much of deceptions as of true revelation; artifice as opposed to art, the image both less and more than what it is, existing only because it is viewed. An illusion.
Much like this. Uni looks at the band of white gold, a glint of captured light encircling her finger, and sketches a smile with lips like the petals of lilies.
"My lord," she says, and thinks: Byakuran-sama. "Good morning." And again: sunlight reflecting off the Fiertia's deck.
When he returns the greeting she lowers her gaze and pretends she isn't shutting her eyes to it, the way his smile rests on her like a visible thing whose curve defines the existence of this farce.
She is looking for a key. A door. A way out.
Uni of the Giglio Nero knows it will only lead her in deeper.
ii.
Greater than the temptations of beauty are those of method.
"The Melior project," she says one night, as he shrugs off coat and snow and the burden of his profession, "is requesting more funds."
She imagines more than sees the arch of that eyebrow, the glint of those eyes. Telling him was unnecessary, of course; he knew it as soon as the messenger arrived, or perhaps even before then -- it is difficult to tell how many moves ahead in the game his eye can see. And he knows that she knows, the weight of his knowing a faint pressure along her nape, as if he had rested two fingers there in an idle caress. Circles and circles, thinks Uni, and bites back a sigh.
That she is efficient, that her touch in its very lightness and delicacy is so very, very precise: what do these matter? She does what she does because she can do nothing else, but she is not like him. She will never be like him. When she sees herself reflected in his eyes she shivers at the terrible beauty of her face there, still and white, eyes like the ocean, hair dark as blood.
"If the request has been justified by good performance, my lady," he says pleasantly, folding his coat and moving to join her on the couch, "then certainly there is more than enough basis for generosity."
Uni smiles, but it is a hollow thing. What his eyes are telling her: It is as always your choice.
What she knows: This project will be sacrificed in flames to further the Bellcius proposal, one month and five days from now.
What the curve of his smile means: Whatever you choose, then--
So long as you move.
"Of course," she says, and turns to dial a number. He leans forward, lays a hand on her other wrist. His touch is warm and very gentle.
"It can wait until the morning," he says. "I do not want you to tire yourself out."
She stops herself from biting her lip and allows him to draw her, slowly, tenderly, into his arms. Just another piece. Black queen. White queen. The moves she makes to order men to die or kill for her are nothing. It is these concessions that matter. The yielding--
Only Byakuran-sama can touch me.
--again and again, until what is mere shadow turns into substance, solidity, truth.
But there is no truth, she thinks, as his hands gently cup her cheek and his mouth trails over skin to press a kiss to the corner of her mouth. I gave it away.
iii.
Who breaks the thread, the one who pulls, the one who holds on?
It is futile to refuse the game. She was born into it, spent her childhood learning its rules, her adolescence breaking them, and now--
And now what is she but yet another one of its players, as much a slave to it as it is her servant, her fingers (so slender, so white) as much tangled in its webs as they pull the strings? Uni does not complain; she was not made for complaining. She only acts with the effortless grace that has taken her (damned her) from castle to airship to this stony parapet, the wind tossing her hair into stormclouds of silk, as she watches a fire burning in the night.
He opens the door quietly, but she hears. She always hears. "It is done," she says without turning, her voice as soft as the rain beginning to fall lightly over the city. It will not be enough to put out that fire, the last smolder of a House that had once served her own. But it is something.
It has weight. Unlike her, maybe, who is bleeding away, day by day, into a ghost, a phantom formed of conflicting desires and hopes and the vanished, twisted need to protect, to serve -- no one, now. Byakuran-sama is only a grave waiting to be filled, the Fiertia a piece on the verge of being discarded, and him--
Her husband's arms encircle her waist as he rests his chin on her shoulder, presses a kiss to her neck. "Is your mind now at rest, my lady?" he asks, breath like a memory of summer against her ear.
"It always has been, my lord," Uni says, and she no longer knows whether she is lying or telling the truth. Both, maybe. Neither. He will give her everything she wants and call it freedom.
That has always been her downfall.
iv.
Opacity gives way. Transparency is the mystery.
Sometimes she dreams of poison and blades and how easy, how very very easy, it would be to slip a knife under those ribs, draw a scalpel against that throat, a betrayal that would cut across string and skin and the promises he has made her. That it would be easy makes it impossible: it is what he gives her that undoes her.
So instead she endures until she forgets she is enduring, waits until waiting loses its meaning. One morning she emerges from sleep as carefully as a pearl diver rises from the ocean, only to come face to face with the blinding light of his form, outlined in the pale yellow and white that is the morning sun filtering in through the curtains of their bedroom, bending over her to seal a kiss onto her brow. He smiles at her bewilderment, whispers, "Wish me well," and she remembers that he is leaving to discuss the acquisiton (the terms of surrender) with the man who had once been her master.
The thought wakes something in the numbness of her silence that makes her wince. Not pain, but almost. He pauses in the doorway, turns back, settles himself beside her on the bed, the richness of his suit a contrast to the thin, almost transparent, pallor of her skin.
"Would you rather I stayed," he murmurs, cradling her as one might cradle a child on the verge of weeping. And oh, if she could -- but tears are for flesh, not for marble or ivory or ebony or jade.
"It is all right," she says, and closes her eyes. She cannot bear to look. She should, if only to impress upon her memory the illumination of victory, its emergent fire, but--
Another kiss, pressed like a benediction to a closed eyelid, then to the other one. "The last move, my lady," he says, his very voice a caress. "And then it will be over."
"I know," Uni answers. "I know."
He holds her until the slant of the light, its warmth on her bare arms, tell her to release him -- and so she does, sighing as she opens her eyes and looking up at him as if she would memorize the curve of every feature, every line. There is no condemnation in his eyes, no reproach. Only something that could be gratitude.
If he were not who he is. If she were not who she is. People such as they do not have that luxury. One does not thank another for giving him leave to cut out her heart.
"Light," she says, just as he reaches the door -- and he stops at the threshold, something nameless and dark but real, like ache, like surprise, like an unlooked-for echo, uncoiling in his eyes -- "Be well."
"Always," he says, and smiles. "Uni."
A Loss Perfected
i.
I lie so I do not have to trust you to believe.
She is looking for a key that does not exist.
Or no, no -- a door. She already has the key; it is a smooth curved shape, polished ivory cool in the recesses of her mind. When she wraps her thoughts around it she remembers afternoons spent in gardens thicketed with flowers, tall and white, and the scent of memory, of a life slowly being unraveled from itself the way one unravels a cobweb to spin new veils and bridal dresses from spider silk.
She remembers opening her eyes to a world that existed only in light and shadow. Chiaroscuro, the defining of shapes with darkness, how the visible emerges from what cannot be seen. Such paintings, she has always been taught, consist as much of deceptions as of true revelation; artifice as opposed to art, the image both less and more than what it is, existing only because it is viewed. An illusion.
Much like this. Uni looks at the band of white gold, a glint of captured light encircling her finger, and sketches a smile with lips like the petals of lilies.
"My lord," she says, and thinks: Byakuran-sama. "Good morning." And again: sunlight reflecting off the Fiertia's deck.
When he returns the greeting she lowers her gaze and pretends she isn't shutting her eyes to it, the way his smile rests on her like a visible thing whose curve defines the existence of this farce.
She is looking for a key. A door. A way out.
Uni of the Giglio Nero knows it will only lead her in deeper.
ii.
Greater than the temptations of beauty are those of method.
"The Melior project," she says one night, as he shrugs off coat and snow and the burden of his profession, "is requesting more funds."
She imagines more than sees the arch of that eyebrow, the glint of those eyes. Telling him was unnecessary, of course; he knew it as soon as the messenger arrived, or perhaps even before then -- it is difficult to tell how many moves ahead in the game his eye can see. And he knows that she knows, the weight of his knowing a faint pressure along her nape, as if he had rested two fingers there in an idle caress. Circles and circles, thinks Uni, and bites back a sigh.
That she is efficient, that her touch in its very lightness and delicacy is so very, very precise: what do these matter? She does what she does because she can do nothing else, but she is not like him. She will never be like him. When she sees herself reflected in his eyes she shivers at the terrible beauty of her face there, still and white, eyes like the ocean, hair dark as blood.
"If the request has been justified by good performance, my lady," he says pleasantly, folding his coat and moving to join her on the couch, "then certainly there is more than enough basis for generosity."
Uni smiles, but it is a hollow thing. What his eyes are telling her: It is as always your choice.
What she knows: This project will be sacrificed in flames to further the Bellcius proposal, one month and five days from now.
What the curve of his smile means: Whatever you choose, then--
So long as you move.
"Of course," she says, and turns to dial a number. He leans forward, lays a hand on her other wrist. His touch is warm and very gentle.
"It can wait until the morning," he says. "I do not want you to tire yourself out."
She stops herself from biting her lip and allows him to draw her, slowly, tenderly, into his arms. Just another piece. Black queen. White queen. The moves she makes to order men to die or kill for her are nothing. It is these concessions that matter. The yielding--
Only Byakuran-sama can touch me.
--again and again, until what is mere shadow turns into substance, solidity, truth.
But there is no truth, she thinks, as his hands gently cup her cheek and his mouth trails over skin to press a kiss to the corner of her mouth. I gave it away.
iii.
Who breaks the thread, the one who pulls, the one who holds on?
It is futile to refuse the game. She was born into it, spent her childhood learning its rules, her adolescence breaking them, and now--
And now what is she but yet another one of its players, as much a slave to it as it is her servant, her fingers (so slender, so white) as much tangled in its webs as they pull the strings? Uni does not complain; she was not made for complaining. She only acts with the effortless grace that has taken her (damned her) from castle to airship to this stony parapet, the wind tossing her hair into stormclouds of silk, as she watches a fire burning in the night.
He opens the door quietly, but she hears. She always hears. "It is done," she says without turning, her voice as soft as the rain beginning to fall lightly over the city. It will not be enough to put out that fire, the last smolder of a House that had once served her own. But it is something.
It has weight. Unlike her, maybe, who is bleeding away, day by day, into a ghost, a phantom formed of conflicting desires and hopes and the vanished, twisted need to protect, to serve -- no one, now. Byakuran-sama is only a grave waiting to be filled, the Fiertia a piece on the verge of being discarded, and him--
Her husband's arms encircle her waist as he rests his chin on her shoulder, presses a kiss to her neck. "Is your mind now at rest, my lady?" he asks, breath like a memory of summer against her ear.
"It always has been, my lord," Uni says, and she no longer knows whether she is lying or telling the truth. Both, maybe. Neither. He will give her everything she wants and call it freedom.
That has always been her downfall.
iv.
Opacity gives way. Transparency is the mystery.
Sometimes she dreams of poison and blades and how easy, how very very easy, it would be to slip a knife under those ribs, draw a scalpel against that throat, a betrayal that would cut across string and skin and the promises he has made her. That it would be easy makes it impossible: it is what he gives her that undoes her.
So instead she endures until she forgets she is enduring, waits until waiting loses its meaning. One morning she emerges from sleep as carefully as a pearl diver rises from the ocean, only to come face to face with the blinding light of his form, outlined in the pale yellow and white that is the morning sun filtering in through the curtains of their bedroom, bending over her to seal a kiss onto her brow. He smiles at her bewilderment, whispers, "Wish me well," and she remembers that he is leaving to discuss the acquisiton (the terms of surrender) with the man who had once been her master.
The thought wakes something in the numbness of her silence that makes her wince. Not pain, but almost. He pauses in the doorway, turns back, settles himself beside her on the bed, the richness of his suit a contrast to the thin, almost transparent, pallor of her skin.
"Would you rather I stayed," he murmurs, cradling her as one might cradle a child on the verge of weeping. And oh, if she could -- but tears are for flesh, not for marble or ivory or ebony or jade.
"It is all right," she says, and closes her eyes. She cannot bear to look. She should, if only to impress upon her memory the illumination of victory, its emergent fire, but--
Another kiss, pressed like a benediction to a closed eyelid, then to the other one. "The last move, my lady," he says, his very voice a caress. "And then it will be over."
"I know," Uni answers. "I know."
He holds her until the slant of the light, its warmth on her bare arms, tell her to release him -- and so she does, sighing as she opens her eyes and looking up at him as if she would memorize the curve of every feature, every line. There is no condemnation in his eyes, no reproach. Only something that could be gratitude.
If he were not who he is. If she were not who she is. People such as they do not have that luxury. One does not thank another for giving him leave to cut out her heart.
"Light," she says, just as he reaches the door -- and he stops at the threshold, something nameless and dark but real, like ache, like surprise, like an unlooked-for echo, uncoiling in his eyes -- "Be well."
"Always," he says, and smiles. "Uni."