It goes in quick steps, light on her feet, following after him, watching his back as he did hers, if in different ways. That press up on the curve of her toes. Sharp and direct, ready, ready, always ready - sinks so far deep into the pressure of the Blackwater in her limbs, her mind, her body, it directs and it counts and it tells her - preternatural except it isn't, just she is always too ready, and too keen on every sound and movement and smell - when she watches the bomb roll out of the corridor ahead of him.
A yanked, breathless second, where she feels something split - not him, anything, anything but him. She could bear to lose all of herself, but not him. It makes her stupid, makes her impulsive, that maybe there are better options that aren't reliant upon the secrets she has kept from him for so long now she knows there can be no forgiveness for - when she snatches forward, pulls him in a strength that isn't natural to put herself between him and danger and curl over him like a shield of too vulnerable skin.
The second later, she feels it go off, a second later - there is pain and the familiar hot-cool of blood and shock. Then she is not holding onto him to protect him, she is holding onto him to keep herself up where her whole body curls away weakly under her own weight. Where she can't breathe at all, because when she takes to inhale, exhale, it comes through a lungful of blood that drips from her nose, her mouth.
In that moment, there is nothing he can do. The intruders are swift, a bomb of making he recognizes commonly used by Komarran's dissatisfied with the Barrayaran Empire enough to seek violent retribution for perceived crimes. The damage done would be swift and the only thoughts in his mind are his regret that he could not do more to save his wife and that their children would be orphaned, all due to the rash actions of individuals fighting for a pointless cause.
The thoughts leave him when he feels Lakshmi suddenly shielding him, feels himself hold onto her for if they were going to be maimed, die it may as well be in each other's arms.
But then it's over and she seems to have acted as she had intended in her movements for he was shaken yet breathing. He holds her, keeping her upright even if it means them falling on top of each other in the end.
"Lakshmi?" he calls, his voice feeling small and foreign as his ears ring from the sound of the explosion. Was he underwater? It sure as hell felt like it when he needed to keep his thoughts about him. ImpSec would be here, they would be descending on them within moments with a med team. He cursed his own mental failings and faltering hand that he was unable to help when all he held dear was dying in front of him.
She slips in his hold, unable to get the strength to do the one thing that will save her life. Kept from him, and - she was never sure if she would ever have to come to this. Would he hate her, would he forgive her?
It doesn't matter. Only acting now does. She curls uselessly against his shoulders. The words so hard to force up her throat, to be audible against the violent ringing against her mind. "The phial - " it hurts, she realises belatedly, it hurts like nothing has for years. As she moves, can feel every slice of that metal embedded in her skin. The trickle of heat and blood. " - around my neck. Quickly. Please."
Been years and years, never took it off. Always brushed off his questions about - a trinket, important, she never wants to lose it, nothing important. But now, only thing that matters.
The phial? She was dying in his arms and she wanted the phial? The request sounds absurd enough to shake some of the surrealism of the situation from him.
He keeps an arm wrapped around her, unwilling to let her fall even if he's unsteady on his feet. Brows furrowed in his confusion, he fumbles until he finds her phial and pulls it from her neck to hold it in front of her. What good could this possibly do?
"Now isn't the time--" There were so many things he wanted to say, all jumbled and floating through his mind. Yet none of them would take form, much to his frustration. How did he tell his partner in all things that he loved her and couldn't see himself going on without her by his side? That he couldn't raise their children alone?
She shakes her head - can't correct, there isn't the time. He'll understand soon enough. Another cough - and it is a misery of pain, as it causes it all to open, blood, shift and slice a new. Desperate, desperate, a little longer, a little longer. "Please, I need to drink it - "
She never begs, not for anything, but she can't can't lose him, can't let her children be taken from her - not again - and distantly, though it has been years, she couldn't lose her wars. Couldn't let him be, she had to protect him, all of them, and she would never let herself die as readily as that.
For that, for that she does beg. " - Duv, please."
A piece of her religion she had never wanted to speak of? His frown deepens, but if this would grant her some peace, some small comfort in her final moments of life. It's a solid enough thought that he finds himself fumbling with the phial and carefully trying to tilt her head back to make it easier for her to drink.
"I can't lose you, not now," he murmurs, hurried and in a state of almost panic. "ImpSec will be here soon, please." Please last that long.
Her breath comes small, hitched, desperately held on. A little longer, a little longer, as she feels the first drop of that dark, dark liquid, water and blood, copper and pure - hitting her lips as she swallows down. Letting it fall back her throat like she had never drunk anything before. Down, down, down, and a moment later - she shudders.
It takes her another breath, before she cries out into his shoulder.
It never hurt for the slightest things to heal, but then, normally, it isn't so much: as the blackwater begins to take effect. Undoing all that damage, as bit by bit, shrapnel is either pushed out of her by stitching up and out wounds, or healed around. The heavy open wounds, beginning to sew themselves shut. The blood that begins to stop flowing. Held stiff in his arms, together if nothing else. Shuddering, the wet choking noises of pain hidden into him because she has done this enough to never let it out of her throat, be heard - because why should the undoing be anymore pleasant than the doing? Life was ever but one kind of pain after all.
Until at least, at long last, she's weakly held there, a mess still, her clothing torn to shreds, to weak to stand - but alive, now. Whatever that meant, right then.
She's crying out into him and he has never felt more useless in his life as he holds his wife, pained and dying. The wetness in his eyes amasses unabated as he grips her tightly, afraid of what is about to come, of what is going to happen when all is said and done and--
It takes him a moment to realize that the sound of metal hitting the floor is coming out of her. That the pieces that had sought to embed themselves in her, to wound and end her life, were leaving her body and... And what? He's confused as a hand goes down her back, seeking any sort of blood or wounds that had been there moments before. The remnants are there on her clothing, torn and ruined as they are, but on her they seemed to have vanished.
Was he dreaming? Had the bomb going off simply been part of an elaborate hallucination? Or was her sudden recovery the joke his mind was playing on him?
"Lakshmi...?" he says quietly, scared to say anything lest this be shattered. He's not sure what is happening beyond that his wife appears to be farther from death's door than she was moments before.
There is nothing left when he looks. Just white lines that match the bite marks and the claw marks. The scars she has told him of and just - took for granted surviving. Never wanted him to think anything else of it, of her. Other than her love of him. That when she said she would never leave his side - she meant it.
"Not now... I'll explain everything - later. Go to the children... I will deal with... them."
It hurts more than the wound, to have to do this now, to unwind her arms around him. Because whoever it was that had attacked them must have seen that - and she dares not risk it. She had kept this secret too long and too well and Duv was too powerful for it to come out this way.
Everything was gone. All that had been done to her, gone. Had he hallucinated it all? But she's telling him that she'll explain later, to go check on their children. He's in a daze as he regards her, but he loosens his hold, ready to see that their young ones don't wander out. There was much he, they, needed to speak with them about.
First--
"Are you all right?" he asks and he holds her gaze, seeking an answer. He's not leaving her until he knows.
"I told you, don't you remember - ? You would never lose me." A gaze she meets, open for once and it's almost a relief even if this was never how she wanted to tell him. Gone is any sign that the injury had ever been on her except for how covered she is in blood. Best to deal with that too: give herself another reason to be sodden like this.
"Don't come out until the screaming is done."
A flat order as she straightens. Turns the blade out in her hand with a stiffening of her shoulder. What will follow is a surety. She wouldn't let them live, not just because there was a chance they could expose her secret: but because they had threatened him, her children. never again, she had promised herself, then as now: never again. She had carved out her name in blood and whoever had done it would learn that too. "Now go."
"I hadn't thought you were literal," is the first remark that spills out of his mouth. She wants him to stay away until the screaming is done? The blade makes it obvious what she intends to do and he can't say he's of a mind to stop her from chasing them down, if they weren't long gone by now. Imperial Security could intercept, they likely had a trace on the intruders and would be descending on both them and the attackers soon enough.
Their children however took priority and Duv could already hear one calling out for them in a panicked voice that urged him forward. He nods to Lakshmi.
"Come back." It's less a demand and more a statement of fact. She would come back, they would have whatever talk they needed to about what the hell had happened to her. First he needed to take care of their children. His eyes lock with hers once more and he makes his way quickly to their children's room.
The blade turns out in her hand - and some of them might escape. ImpSec would be on them soon and all of it meant she needed to reach deeply inside of that cool water that sits in her limbs like a dark river. Dredge it up and and up. A flat purpose that extends from the hard swallow down in her throat to the curl of her fingers upon the pommel of the blade. A nod - yes, she will, even if it is to tell him the truth and leave, she will come back.
"Wait for me."
She turns away as he does. Striding long, easy back into the acts that so many years now of hiding never had need of - but it never went away, it never dulled, and she could never bring herself to forgot if only for this: her husband was a powerful man, now, just as before, and she knew her duty and the roles it meant.
( It shouldn't have felt as good as it did, to slip back into this place ).
Her footsteps are silent as she moves through the halls of their home, until she finds the first one. Easy to snatch him up, easy to throw him down and block whatever weak attempt he attempted to defend himself. Hear the sputtered scream that - she's dead and he saw before his throat is slashed open. Another of his conspirators to follow. It does it's job, being this close, this intimate death makes a mess of her. The splash over her clothes and body. Mattering into her hair with her own. The third and last she can find, hunted now. That thick rich smell of blood and death she has not had in so long stuck to her and free in the house between the smoke and rubble dust of the explosion. Somewhere outside she could hear the booted steps of ImpSec, started to pour in. Not that it stops her. Not until there was no chance of any story being told. The last one goes down with a ripped open chest and leg. Her bare foot hard enough to snap his neck to stop the dying being slow.
There she's found over ImpSec, and it's from there that she leads them back to where she left him. Cooling off the last of the adrenaline from her - and it's outside the room she stays, once they go in to find Duv and the children. Dared not go in there - face their family, soaked like this, still breathing hard like this, that ugly bright light in her eyes that borders on the exhilaration.
All his world has narrowed down when he has their children in his arms. Quick words, hushed and said into their heads as he holds them tight. He doesn't have to break the news that their mother is dead, that he is the only one left to care for them beyond the staff he's been assigned. No, he's not sure what happened to his wife, but it had not been death.
Imperial Security descends on them within a minute of him reaching his children and he's not sure whether to address them with scorn for having let this fall through their net or relief. He knows it wasn't intentional, the guilt-ridden expressions he's greeted with tell him that. They were the same men he's worked with for decades, he knew the dedication to the Imperium they had and it would extend to him in his appointment as Imperial Counselor. But they had failed him, ultimately, and he should be grieving for that failure. Lakshmi would have to explain very clearly to him why he was not.
When he's finally calmed his children and given his report to ImpSec, he's informed that his wife has returned. No doubt from her own revenge that he could hardly fault her for, but she had left him with far too many confusions in his mind. He's reluctant to leave his children, but this was a conversation that was best had without them present.
With a heavy sigh, he moves to leave the room and is led to where Lakshmi is waiting. Bloodied and battle-hardened, as he had expected. The expression that meets hers is tired though no less piercing for what has happened tonight. This was a moment he would let her have, her one chance to initiate this conversation how she wanted before he forced it.
The sword clatters loudly to the ground, the second he appears. Imperial Security took one look at the mess she had left, the sword in her hand, and taken her nod to tell them that she was fine with the understanding she needed them too - not that any of them would meet her eyes, fear or guilt, she couldn't tell as she stands bloody and satisfied.
At least until he reappears - and she has much, so much to explain. Doesn't know where to even begin - how long now, had she been keeping this? Long enough that it would start to become obvious soon, long enough that their children would age, he would age, and timeless, she would stand behind them. That one day, she might just outlive them all, if moments like this did not get her first.
Thoughts she had been putting off for years. Thoughts that right now, she nearly had to face sooner than she thought, and it burns so sharply in her throat as she watches him step into the room. Something she could not bear as she reaches for him. Her arms going around his neck - to kiss him hard and once, not for the sake of passion - but to make sure he was there and still alive. She couldn't, couldn't do this again. "The children - ?"
The only thing that mattered. Everything else could follow.
He sighs into the kiss, unable to stop himself from wrapping his arms around her. No matter how much his anger and frustration threatened to consume him whole with the secrets she kept from him, nothing would change that he had almost lost her. He had almost become a widower and finally he knows what his mother must have felt when she thought his father had died, all those years ago. At least he would have only had a wife to mourn, and not a wife and child.
"They are fine," he answers, once their lips part. "And being taken care of. I made sure of it." After he had comforted them, made sure they were well himself. That was something he could not simply accept someone's word on.
It isn't good enough to hear it from anyone else but him, the only person whose word she could take it from. Because she had hold lost it all once before. Stood there, with this empty thing in her chest, carved apart - but not this time. Not again, and for it, she nods, taking in the first real breath she has in hours as she settles into the bracket of his arms, holding as close as she thinks she might for the last time. She would not expect another, not with everything that had just passed.
and for that - her eyes lower. Where to start? How could she even begin? "You must... have questions for me."
He frowns slightly at that. This was not a conversation for him to begin. She is his wife, his love, and this was a great mercy he could not afford with his head reeling. No, she would have to find a beginning, a place to start and provide him context. That was the least she could do after keeping this hidden away from him, from her family.
"I would hope you would have an explanation before I asked anything."
Her eyes lower, her grimace slight. Frowning. It has been all this time, surely she would know how to start. But she hadn't planned for this, not now or ever. To ever let him know just what she was. What - like she wasn't a person. Like this lie went that far. But then, she remembered, the day she had been dropped into his office and spoken of her own home as she knew it, how he had looked at her. But it hadn't stopped him from taking her in, accepting her, loving her.
When she looks up again, there is for the first time, in so many years - regret. Pain. "Would you have believed me? Before this?"
There's a moment of hesitation there. Would he? Fact and reason always won out for him, he was reluctant to delve too deeply into supposition or assume anything. Finding the truth was what he always strived for and this would have been no different. But she was his wife and he trusted her. Even if that made how little he seemed to know about her hurt all the more.
"If you had told me, yes," he says finally. No sign of hesitation remains and he's confident, clear. "Not easily, but yes."
If it had come from her lips, through her voice, he would have believed her. Why would she lie after all else?
She turns her face away then, swallowing in a low contemplation about what needed to be done, in the immediate. The bloodied weapon, her ruined clothes. She knew she must be a sight. From the look of the guards when they had found her, it wasn't much of a supposition that she stepped out too far in her rage, her need to preserve him, their family, and slipped back to the woman who screamed herself hoarse over battlements, who took death in both her hands and begged it to do worse.
But it's faded away, in the face of all this. What's left after is a brutal and unforgiving thing between them and - she turns the blade over in her hand and steps away from him. Not to go far, just to the door that stood open, and the guard that was the other side of it. It's to him she gives the blade - she trusted a Barrayaran to its proper care far more than the last Komarran she saw attempt to clean the thing. A ruse - as she tells him to fetch her water, a cloth, and clean the blade. No, don't bother to replace someone at her position. If he did not mind, she needed a moment, with her husband, alone. He would understand, of course.
Waits there, a bid for time, until the guard comes back with just what she had asked and she takes it with a nod and a slow shut of the door behind her. She walks back to the low table of their rooms, and sets it down before she sits, and puts her hand into the water. She'll bathe, properly, after wards, but for now -
She needed to get some of this off her skin. And she starts, with water wet fingers trickling pink with diluted blood, to fish the phial from around her neck and over her head to let it drop and clatter onto the surface with a dull ring. "I was sixteen when I first met Sir Bors de Ganis. I did not know it then, but he was only one part of something far greater I would be witness to. My ... first husband was still alive then, and Jhansi attracted many travellers, after all - one lone Englishman did not seem - did not seem particularly strange." There's a hitch to the breath, she does her best to never speak of those days as they had happened to her, only that they happened at all. An observation of some other woman's life.
He sighs softly when she steps away from him. The apology is noted though he's far more interested in what words would be coming after that. Instead, she seems to be busying herself, likely to ground herself before she can speak freely. He keeps his hands at his sides, no matter how much they ached to hold her, and watches as she speaks with their guard, seemingly settles in to clean.
A slow nod as she starts to explain. If she was willing to speak now then he would listen for however long she needed to tell her story, as difficult as it clearly was. It was a part of her life he needed to know, wanted to know.
She nods, hovering on that taken in breathe, once her fingers are clean, she takes up the washcloth that had been given to her as well to let it soak in. Dropping it with a splash, turning it over to soak it through before she lifts it to squeeze off the excess water. Her wet, clean fingers move up to her hair, to push it out of her way as she begins at her neck, in slow strokes, beginning to clean the muck away.
"I did not know it then, but he was 900 years old."
She has heard his own people talk of Gods and Magic, the dismissive tone of any theism, and it had not bothered her. For them, it was a question of faith - but there was no faith when she knew such things. Such seemingly impossible thing. Perhaps now, after all these years, the way she could so easily laugh off the questions about her Gods being real. "He had fought in the days of King Arthur, and when others took up an eternal fight in England, he had left, to wander the world. Until the summer of that year, he walked into my husband's court."
"Nine hundred...?" What? His eyes widen as he studies her carefully, searching for any signs that she had misspoken or he had misheard her. No, that was what she said and meant.
He had told her he'd believe her. He had proof that something was... strange from the moment they had met, with her so far from time and place. Again now, he had seen her survive something no one should have. And now she speaks of someone who had lived for centuries, far beyond what anyone has now with the aid of genetic modifications and illegal practices.
"Did he say why he came to your kingdom?"
I never tagged this back so guess what I'm doing now
To that, Lakshmi can do not much more than shake her head. Because even after all these years, she remembered Bors face well, but that did not mean she had come to understand the man even now.
"No. He never said. I suspect at his age, he was tired of explaining things, so he simply didn't."
She can't in the end, offer much more than that.
"I did not know who he was, it didn't matter. He fought by my side, for my country. But when he finally died. He passed it on to me."
She fishes it out, then. That little silver phial. Perhaps Duv would find it a novelty, now. A piece of ancient history, perfectly preserved around her neck. Swinging pendulum like from her fingers.
"It is called the Blackwater. Some call it the holy grail. An immortal elixir. Those who drink it, do not age, they heal all wounds, with just one sip, every day, once a day, you may live for eternity."
Her eyes lower, he knows - the next bit, about the war. About what she had lost, how... How she had been forced to leave as her homeland burned. But here was the part she had always brushed over, "I was shot, through the heart." her hand hovers, just over it. he has seen that scar on her bare body, he has kissed that scar, breathed against it when he held her tightly. how many times, had he wondered about it? He was kind enough never to ask. "I had to choose. Whether I would die, pass on, or live and fight again." a swallow, a dry little laugh. "I think you know what is in my nature."
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A yanked, breathless second, where she feels something split - not him, anything, anything but him. She could bear to lose all of herself, but not him. It makes her stupid, makes her impulsive, that maybe there are better options that aren't reliant upon the secrets she has kept from him for so long now she knows there can be no forgiveness for - when she snatches forward, pulls him in a strength that isn't natural to put herself between him and danger and curl over him like a shield of too vulnerable skin.
The second later, she feels it go off, a second later - there is pain and the familiar hot-cool of blood and shock. Then she is not holding onto him to protect him, she is holding onto him to keep herself up where her whole body curls away weakly under her own weight. Where she can't breathe at all, because when she takes to inhale, exhale, it comes through a lungful of blood that drips from her nose, her mouth.
She has not died immediately.
For that, it will be all the slower.
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The thoughts leave him when he feels Lakshmi suddenly shielding him, feels himself hold onto her for if they were going to be maimed, die it may as well be in each other's arms.
But then it's over and she seems to have acted as she had intended in her movements for he was shaken yet breathing. He holds her, keeping her upright even if it means them falling on top of each other in the end.
"Lakshmi?" he calls, his voice feeling small and foreign as his ears ring from the sound of the explosion. Was he underwater? It sure as hell felt like it when he needed to keep his thoughts about him. ImpSec would be here, they would be descending on them within moments with a med team. He cursed his own mental failings and faltering hand that he was unable to help when all he held dear was dying in front of him.
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It doesn't matter. Only acting now does. She curls uselessly against his shoulders. The words so hard to force up her throat, to be audible against the violent ringing against her mind. "The phial - " it hurts, she realises belatedly, it hurts like nothing has for years. As she moves, can feel every slice of that metal embedded in her skin. The trickle of heat and blood. " - around my neck. Quickly. Please."
Been years and years, never took it off. Always brushed off his questions about - a trinket, important, she never wants to lose it, nothing important. But now, only thing that matters.
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He keeps an arm wrapped around her, unwilling to let her fall even if he's unsteady on his feet. Brows furrowed in his confusion, he fumbles until he finds her phial and pulls it from her neck to hold it in front of her. What good could this possibly do?
"Now isn't the time--" There were so many things he wanted to say, all jumbled and floating through his mind. Yet none of them would take form, much to his frustration. How did he tell his partner in all things that he loved her and couldn't see himself going on without her by his side? That he couldn't raise their children alone?
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She never begs, not for anything, but she can't can't lose him, can't let her children be taken from her - not again - and distantly, though it has been years, she couldn't lose her wars. Couldn't let him be, she had to protect him, all of them, and she would never let herself die as readily as that.
For that, for that she does beg. " - Duv, please."
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"I can't lose you, not now," he murmurs, hurried and in a state of almost panic. "ImpSec will be here soon, please." Please last that long.
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It takes her another breath, before she cries out into his shoulder.
It never hurt for the slightest things to heal, but then, normally, it isn't so much: as the blackwater begins to take effect. Undoing all that damage, as bit by bit, shrapnel is either pushed out of her by stitching up and out wounds, or healed around. The heavy open wounds, beginning to sew themselves shut. The blood that begins to stop flowing. Held stiff in his arms, together if nothing else. Shuddering, the wet choking noises of pain hidden into him because she has done this enough to never let it out of her throat, be heard - because why should the undoing be anymore pleasant than the doing? Life was ever but one kind of pain after all.
Until at least, at long last, she's weakly held there, a mess still, her clothing torn to shreds, to weak to stand - but alive, now. Whatever that meant, right then.
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It takes him a moment to realize that the sound of metal hitting the floor is coming out of her. That the pieces that had sought to embed themselves in her, to wound and end her life, were leaving her body and... And what? He's confused as a hand goes down her back, seeking any sort of blood or wounds that had been there moments before. The remnants are there on her clothing, torn and ruined as they are, but on her they seemed to have vanished.
Was he dreaming? Had the bomb going off simply been part of an elaborate hallucination? Or was her sudden recovery the joke his mind was playing on him?
"Lakshmi...?" he says quietly, scared to say anything lest this be shattered. He's not sure what is happening beyond that his wife appears to be farther from death's door than she was moments before.
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"Not now... I'll explain everything - later. Go to the children... I will deal with... them."
It hurts more than the wound, to have to do this now, to unwind her arms around him. Because whoever it was that had attacked them must have seen that - and she dares not risk it. She had kept this secret too long and too well and Duv was too powerful for it to come out this way.
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First--
"Are you all right?" he asks and he holds her gaze, seeking an answer. He's not leaving her until he knows.
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"Don't come out until the screaming is done."
A flat order as she straightens. Turns the blade out in her hand with a stiffening of her shoulder. What will follow is a surety. She wouldn't let them live, not just because there was a chance they could expose her secret: but because they had threatened him, her children. never again, she had promised herself, then as now: never again. She had carved out her name in blood and whoever had done it would learn that too. "Now go."
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Their children however took priority and Duv could already hear one calling out for them in a panicked voice that urged him forward. He nods to Lakshmi.
"Come back." It's less a demand and more a statement of fact. She would come back, they would have whatever talk they needed to about what the hell had happened to her. First he needed to take care of their children. His eyes lock with hers once more and he makes his way quickly to their children's room.
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"Wait for me."
She turns away as he does. Striding long, easy back into the acts that so many years now of hiding never had need of - but it never went away, it never dulled, and she could never bring herself to forgot if only for this: her husband was a powerful man, now, just as before, and she knew her duty and the roles it meant.
( It shouldn't have felt as good as it did, to slip back into this place ).
Her footsteps are silent as she moves through the halls of their home, until she finds the first one. Easy to snatch him up, easy to throw him down and block whatever weak attempt he attempted to defend himself. Hear the sputtered scream that - she's dead and he saw before his throat is slashed open. Another of his conspirators to follow. It does it's job, being this close, this intimate death makes a mess of her. The splash over her clothes and body. Mattering into her hair with her own. The third and last she can find, hunted now. That thick rich smell of blood and death she has not had in so long stuck to her and free in the house between the smoke and rubble dust of the explosion. Somewhere outside she could hear the booted steps of ImpSec, started to pour in. Not that it stops her. Not until there was no chance of any story being told. The last one goes down with a ripped open chest and leg. Her bare foot hard enough to snap his neck to stop the dying being slow.
There she's found over ImpSec, and it's from there that she leads them back to where she left him. Cooling off the last of the adrenaline from her - and it's outside the room she stays, once they go in to find Duv and the children. Dared not go in there - face their family, soaked like this, still breathing hard like this, that ugly bright light in her eyes that borders on the exhilaration.
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Imperial Security descends on them within a minute of him reaching his children and he's not sure whether to address them with scorn for having let this fall through their net or relief. He knows it wasn't intentional, the guilt-ridden expressions he's greeted with tell him that. They were the same men he's worked with for decades, he knew the dedication to the Imperium they had and it would extend to him in his appointment as Imperial Counselor. But they had failed him, ultimately, and he should be grieving for that failure. Lakshmi would have to explain very clearly to him why he was not.
When he's finally calmed his children and given his report to ImpSec, he's informed that his wife has returned. No doubt from her own revenge that he could hardly fault her for, but she had left him with far too many confusions in his mind. He's reluctant to leave his children, but this was a conversation that was best had without them present.
With a heavy sigh, he moves to leave the room and is led to where Lakshmi is waiting. Bloodied and battle-hardened, as he had expected. The expression that meets hers is tired though no less piercing for what has happened tonight. This was a moment he would let her have, her one chance to initiate this conversation how she wanted before he forced it.
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At least until he reappears - and she has much, so much to explain. Doesn't know where to even begin - how long now, had she been keeping this? Long enough that it would start to become obvious soon, long enough that their children would age, he would age, and timeless, she would stand behind them. That one day, she might just outlive them all, if moments like this did not get her first.
Thoughts she had been putting off for years. Thoughts that right now, she nearly had to face sooner than she thought, and it burns so sharply in her throat as she watches him step into the room. Something she could not bear as she reaches for him. Her arms going around his neck - to kiss him hard and once, not for the sake of passion - but to make sure he was there and still alive. She couldn't, couldn't do this again. "The children - ?"
The only thing that mattered. Everything else could follow.
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"They are fine," he answers, once their lips part. "And being taken care of. I made sure of it." After he had comforted them, made sure they were well himself. That was something he could not simply accept someone's word on.
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and for that - her eyes lower. Where to start? How could she even begin? "You must... have questions for me."
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"I would hope you would have an explanation before I asked anything."
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When she looks up again, there is for the first time, in so many years - regret. Pain. "Would you have believed me? Before this?"
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"If you had told me, yes," he says finally. No sign of hesitation remains and he's confident, clear. "Not easily, but yes."
If it had come from her lips, through her voice, he would have believed her. Why would she lie after all else?
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She turns her face away then, swallowing in a low contemplation about what needed to be done, in the immediate. The bloodied weapon, her ruined clothes. She knew she must be a sight. From the look of the guards when they had found her, it wasn't much of a supposition that she stepped out too far in her rage, her need to preserve him, their family, and slipped back to the woman who screamed herself hoarse over battlements, who took death in both her hands and begged it to do worse.
But it's faded away, in the face of all this. What's left after is a brutal and unforgiving thing between them and - she turns the blade over in her hand and steps away from him. Not to go far, just to the door that stood open, and the guard that was the other side of it. It's to him she gives the blade - she trusted a Barrayaran to its proper care far more than the last Komarran she saw attempt to clean the thing. A ruse - as she tells him to fetch her water, a cloth, and clean the blade. No, don't bother to replace someone at her position. If he did not mind, she needed a moment, with her husband, alone. He would understand, of course.
Waits there, a bid for time, until the guard comes back with just what she had asked and she takes it with a nod and a slow shut of the door behind her. She walks back to the low table of their rooms, and sets it down before she sits, and puts her hand into the water. She'll bathe, properly, after wards, but for now -
She needed to get some of this off her skin. And she starts, with water wet fingers trickling pink with diluted blood, to fish the phial from around her neck and over her head to let it drop and clatter onto the surface with a dull ring. "I was sixteen when I first met Sir Bors de Ganis. I did not know it then, but he was only one part of something far greater I would be witness to. My ... first husband was still alive then, and Jhansi attracted many travellers, after all - one lone Englishman did not seem - did not seem particularly strange." There's a hitch to the breath, she does her best to never speak of those days as they had happened to her, only that they happened at all. An observation of some other woman's life.
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A slow nod as she starts to explain. If she was willing to speak now then he would listen for however long she needed to tell her story, as difficult as it clearly was. It was a part of her life he needed to know, wanted to know.
"As long as you need," he murmurs.
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"I did not know it then, but he was 900 years old."
She has heard his own people talk of Gods and Magic, the dismissive tone of any theism, and it had not bothered her. For them, it was a question of faith - but there was no faith when she knew such things. Such seemingly impossible thing. Perhaps now, after all these years, the way she could so easily laugh off the questions about her Gods being real. "He had fought in the days of King Arthur, and when others took up an eternal fight in England, he had left, to wander the world. Until the summer of that year, he walked into my husband's court."
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He had told her he'd believe her. He had proof that something was... strange from the moment they had met, with her so far from time and place. Again now, he had seen her survive something no one should have. And now she speaks of someone who had lived for centuries, far beyond what anyone has now with the aid of genetic modifications and illegal practices.
"Did he say why he came to your kingdom?"
I never tagged this back so guess what I'm doing now
"No. He never said. I suspect at his age, he was tired of explaining things, so he simply didn't."
She can't in the end, offer much more than that.
"I did not know who he was, it didn't matter. He fought by my side, for my country. But when he finally died. He passed it on to me."
She fishes it out, then. That little silver phial. Perhaps Duv would find it a novelty, now. A piece of ancient history, perfectly preserved around her neck. Swinging pendulum like from her fingers.
"It is called the Blackwater. Some call it the holy grail. An immortal elixir. Those who drink it, do not age, they heal all wounds, with just one sip, every day, once a day, you may live for eternity."
Her eyes lower, he knows - the next bit, about the war. About what she had lost, how... How she had been forced to leave as her homeland burned. But here was the part she had always brushed over, "I was shot, through the heart." her hand hovers, just over it. he has seen that scar on her bare body, he has kissed that scar, breathed against it when he held her tightly. how many times, had he wondered about it? He was kind enough never to ask. "I had to choose. Whether I would die, pass on, or live and fight again." a swallow, a dry little laugh. "I think you know what is in my nature."
Giving up had never been a choice she made.