mahalakshmi | AU - MAGNI & LAKSHMI

"She hurt you."

Anger simmers under her words, rare in the Jarl but baring its fangs now. Despite all her efforts, she looks to Lakshmi, moves closer. Hesitantly reaches for her, raising only a little before her hand drops. Now she's looking at her she can't pull her gaze away again.

"I know you— have disdain for me and for this place, but I won't see you hurt."

It takes her so much by surprise. That ire, anger on her behalf that she does not deserve. That Jhalkari does not deserve to be the brunt of right now either. She breathes, slow. Shaking her head.

"No, I struck her first."

She could not have started this conversation. But suddenly it does not matter, her hand reaches to catch Magni's before it can fall totally away. Catching to bring it up, against her streaked, dirty cheek. Bracing it to stay like she had so desperately craved.

"She said I was being a old stubborn cow, and that I deserved to lose you for being like this. That I was going to - I got so angry. That I might, that I had driven you away, when you are the one thing -"

There is an echo of a conversation in the rain the last time she had worked herself up this, taken odd half baked in hurt, that left babbling like this. "I was a fool and I have been a fool for weeks."

Her hand stays at Lakshmi's cheek, not needing to be held in place, but so glad for the contact that she's sure she should condemn herself for it.

"You said this place was a prison." Or maybe she didn't speak it in such words, but the sentiment had been close enough. "And that leaves me as good as your jailer."

That had hurt almost as deeply as all the rest, but those things felt too difficult to speak of for now, how Lakshmi had raked her claws right across her belly and the wounds did not feel even close to healing. "And you have— this temper."

A monstrous temper, it seemed like, that made her ready to tear the people she cared for to ribbons.

Her hands stay there, smoothing across the back of her knuckles in thought as much as appreciation.

"I know. I had it long before I came here and I have been trying -"

For as much as Magni found it hard to speak. So did Lakshmi, at times, the training of it different, perhaps. About what could be said and not said. What was acceptable and what wasn't.

"I am the daughter of warriors, I was raised as one. The only thing I have been taught to do when I am upset, was fight. So I do. I do it until there is nothing left."

She sucks in a breath, wouls Magni hate her for this? Not want her anymore. But then was it love? "I was upset, that man humiliated me and I had no weapon to protect myself with, not against words, so I took it out on you... That was wrong of me. You are not my jailer. You never have been. I have never thought of you as such. But..."

This is what she was, always had been. She could try to pretend, but then what would their love be? "... As your grevinne, I know, I must be everything otherwise."

A daughter of warriors, where Magni was the daughter of smiths, not of mountains and skies and all Talonhold was meant to be. More comfortable at the forge than in a throne room, better at ease in the vicious heat and hammering metal than the dance of words.

Leaning forward, stooping with it, she brings her forehead to rest against Lakshmi's. Never mind the dirt and the mud, and her other hand cradles the other side of Lakshmi's jaw, so for long moments she can just lean against her with her eyes closed.

"I don't understand," she says softly, uncertain. "I don't— you don't have to be everything. Just you."

Too simplistic, probably, naive in some ways. She was never meant to be a leader and she doesn't really want to be, and she doesn't want Lakshmi to suffer from the burdens of it either. "Even with that temper."

She swallows, rough on her dry throat. Desperately leaning up into the affection, drinking it in like a desert under rain. "Then something must change."

Its hard to say, hard to admit like she might wound Magni further. To admit something like unhappiness. "You want me to be happy, I know this, as I want you to be happy with all my body and soul."

Tries to get it out before she stumbles, before the world returns to ruin their newly return peace. "But I am not just your wife, I am your Grevinne. I rule in your stead when you are not present. But I had to hear from stranger that you were somewhere I had no idea about? it makes me, us, look... "

Weak. She grips harder both her hands over Magni's, holding on. "Talonhold has wealth, but she does not know how to defend herself. That is why we married, because someone had laid its most precious heart bare. Let me be your blade, let me defend our home. Let me be that extension of you, and I will not bite so much in feeling useless and unprotected." and to that - and that, she is terrified to ask because no matter how she hard she worked, she was still an outsider to some. "Let me sit on your meetings with your advisors and when you make plans for the hold."

Edited 2019-03-03 05:45 (UTC)

Magni nods her understanding, though— her mouth twists unhappily, like she should have grasped all this sooner, understood it better. Their marriage, their union, it had not been a matter of love and adoration. It had been pragmatism, an arrangement between their families, and perhaps she had... not seen all that she should have done.

"You're right."

Quiet, voice rasping a little, and she leans down to rest her forehead against Lakshmi's shoulder, hands dropping away from her face so instead she can wrap her arms around Lakshmi's waist. Hell with the dirt, she just wants to hold her close.

"They're your meetings to attend." She suspects, now it's been said, that they always should have been. Was that the expectation that she had failed to grasp? It makes sense. It feels— absurd, a shortcoming, not to have considered it sooner. Perhaps her head has been too full of too many things. "I— feel foolish."

Lakshmi nods, silent, wrapping her arms around her in return. Sliding against her hair, her back. Holding onto her tightly.

"I was the fool. Not you. I made an assumption that hurt us both because I was frustrated."

She in returns burrows her face against Magni's hair. It is palatable the comfort she feels in her closeness. Rolling over her like a river, washing down and clearing it away. Til she was no more than a smooth pebble, and not the bundle of barbs she had been before.

There was a wonder in that, how Magni could soothe her so wholly in a matter of minutes when it usually required what Jhalkari had done to work it out of her. "Can you ever forgive me?"

Magni's arms steady around Lakshmi's waist, and then she hoists her up easily. Moving so that she can take them out of the hallway and into their chamber, rather than her barging into Lakshmi's, and bringing her wife back into that shared space. Keeps Lakshmi held up easily with one arm as the other hand opens the door and she steps the both in.

Silent, for a moment, as she sets Lakshmi down and kneels down in front of her, gently taking both her hands. "We're both learning. We are... forging a new path. I forgive you, and I— I hope you can forgive me. And that... that when we make mistakes we can talk about it, and— and learn together."

Still kneeling, she looks up at Lakshmi. "I don't— can you sleep in here, tonight?"

She so loves when Magni does that - makes her feel so precious, so particular with her, that she barely wants to detangle from her when Magni drops Lakshmi back down.

Happily, she finds, she does not have to. Because that question had but one answer, she swoops down and kisses her for the first time in weeks. Doing so soundly, almost tearfully, happily. "Of course, of course. I have hated having you gone."

There are prayers of thanks she might offer later, when she does not need to pour all her focus and her energy into Lakshmi.

She's so relieved with the kiss, but— "Careful, your lip."

Her arms wrap tightly around Lakshmi, and she is so relieved she could almost laugh. "I hope your dog has been worth this," she murmurs between kisses, hugging Lakshmi closer.

She laughs, brightly into kissing her.

Which is a mistake for exactly the reason Magni warns her about - "ow." is the soft little mutter of regret that she barely feels.

"He has. I think I would have snapped at someone else if not for him. He is a good companion for me, he soothes me when you are not there."

Exactly as Magni intended, no doubt. "I should get cleaned up." she says, eventually, without doing anything about it.

"We're only just at each others sides again," she protests, a very undignified whine, though she looks at Lakshmi with a sort of nervousness born of them re-learning each other. And she presses her forehead to Lakshmi's chest, staying determinedly.

It sounds practically petulant. Endearingly so, that Magni - Magni still wanted to be near her, not just after their argument, but messy, dirt smeared and sweat cooling on her skin in the lighter air inside the heavy stone walls of the keep that made everything always colder.

A smile plays, and rather than answer that, her hands moves. She supposes, Magni has never seen her in her own clothes, which is to say those from before she became of Talonhold. She makes sure most times to dress as her position dictates.

But she knew what she preferred for riding. The wrap of her saree to form pants. The way her kurta by contrast was tight to her upper body.

That - to all the layers of talonhold, these northern's rightly need for their weather. She right now, does not. So little in fact that when she decides upon it, it's over as quick as that. Bold enough, sure enough that the door is open behind them and they are half in the corridor but she barely considers it when she yanks off her top and pulls at one knot -

And suddenly there is nothing between her and Magni but skin, and a pool of fabric at her feet. Her top balled up and tossed at Magni's head.

"You were saying?"

She turns, slinking into her room, waiting, watching and the wink is probably too much, when she ventures it over her shoulder in the backwards glance when she reaches for the pins that hold up her hair. She figures, Magni can figure out the rest quickly enough.

"Uh." Quiet, swallowed awkwardly as she stares after Lakshmi. She gathers up the material, lips parted as she looks after her wife. How does she breathe, how does she grasp all of this? How does she get her head around the fact that Lakshmi just nonchalantly winked at her, that she can take in the curves of her that she's missed so much these past weeks?

Saree in hand, she strides after her, kicking the door shut with her foot. Staring at her, seemingly at a lost. It feels so simple, and she wants her so badly and yet it seems impossible that Lakshmi has undressed before her, that she wants her, and there is a moment of hesitation as her gaze drops and she bites her lip.

"I'm—" Nervous, I missed you, what if—

But that wink and that smile. Magni moves towards Lakshmi in long strides one hand anchoring at her neck and tangling into her hair, the other at Lakshmi's waist as she pulls her closer, and leans down to bite at Lakshmi's lip, before her tongue presses against her lip.

AU - MAGNI & LAKSHMI

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