Paul Atreides (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
terriblepurpose) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
deercountry2022-12-08 11:40 am
terriblepurpose) wrote in deercountry2022-12-08 11:40 am
terriblepurpose) wrote in deercountry2022-12-08 11:40 am
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No. But I hate hearing her cry.
[Gideon is still snuffling, and unlike Ortus, she is intent on Ianthe and her glittering arm. She reaches out one chunky infant hand in the direction of Ianthe's hair, but she's far too small to grasp at it. This creases her face with frustration underneath her misery, and she arches her back like a fussy inchworm and yawps her annoyance aloud.]
I think she wants you to hold her.
[It's not a suggestion that Ianthe do so, but it is a tepid, reluctant offer if she does, for unimaginable reasons, want to participate in the playing pretend.]
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[She can't imagine that he is. Even she feels some level of sympathy for Kiriona in her vicious and spiteful heart. When Kiriona was first brought back, she thought she'd take pleasure in watching her bend and break to the will of the Empire. But Kiriona was the only friend she had left.
The only company she had left except for the ones who served her and God who needed someone to take his anger out on.
She looks down at the baby, so confused and dumb and frankly disgusting, a half formed fragment of a person, and she feels a distant twang of affection too. And pity. Kiriona didn't talk about her life in the Ninth House often, but Ianthe picked up bits and pieces. The daughter of god, left to rot in the house that wasn't.
She lifts her up into her arms, surprisingly gently considering all the ways in which she is herself, and she lets baby Gideon put her hair in her mouth.]
You're very little, aren't you? [She says softly, even fondly.] One could pick you up and toss you like a basketball... [Normal baby talk from a normal girl. It's still said in the exact same soft tone of voice though, so she hardly reacts negatively to it. Ianthe's always been surprisingly good with children.]
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Gideon gnaws toothlessly at Ianthe's hair with wide, fascinated eyes, her mewling silenced by the imposing novelty that is this person so unlike anyone she's ever seen before. Drool puddles at the corners of her mouth as she nestles into the bony cradle of Ianthe's arms, which are the one point of familiarity in the whole arrangement of God's own blessed Lyctor.
She doesn't understand a word Ianthe says. The tone is all that matters to a baby, and Gideon is already beguiled. Ortus watches with fallen shoulders and a punched in misery of a face, not knowing how to reconcile the gentleness with which Ianthe handles Gideon with everything else he knows about her, even with the quiet inappropriateness of her endearments.
Perhaps there's more to know. It doesn't matter much at the moment, as Ortus' spine abruptly stiffens and his eyes go wide, alerted by some incidental noise that Ianthe would have no reason to pick out over the thrum of ancient electronics and the smooth hiss of the ventilation system.
Ortus has a very good reason. He turns to face the door, standing between it and Gideon, and so Ianthe by extension. His attempt to square his shoulders is as pitiful as the tremor in his hands before he closes them.]
I don't want this to happen.
[He says, uselessly, almost bewildered at his own denial. It has never mattered what he wanted to happen.]
no subject
She's, of course, aware of Ortus' reaction. The way his heart rate changes in response to the grief, the way his body shifts, the way his eyes watch her. She can almost reach out and taste the hurt. She thinks it would taste rather a lot like blood.
She's not sure why she cares, but part of her feels a twisted satisfaction at that pain. On some level, she's sure he knows better than most that he deserves it. For a moment, she can close her eyes and pretend she's hurting the people who ripped her soul away from her and forced her to work her fingers to the bone while she got to play dress-up.
Which probably isn't fair but also, as much as Ianthe might sit and passively judge as she flicks through Ortus' delicate memories, Ianthe knows she's an absolute fucking nightmare.
But her eyes do flicker to Ortus when he speaks, in terror, and she can hear it and sense it and again, almost taste it. Her tone of voice is still soft, and not at all laced with the sneering mockery she usually speaks in, but it's still cold.]
It already has. [She doesn't know what this is. But she doesn't bother to ask either. She'll find out soon enough.] It's not like anything in here matters.
cw: child abuse
This moment exists only and forever in the confines of his reconstructed skull, scraped together out of a million fragments of all that would have been left of him spinning frozen in the void. It exists only in the shade of his soul, in the sunken well where he keeps all the memories he does not wish to return to.
His stomach is a hard, hurt clench. The footsteps in the hallway are as loud and heavy as they ever were. He's never ready for them to stop.
Mortus the Ninth appears in the doorway like the rock being rolled over the Tomb. He is a mortuary monument of a man, almost absurd in his scale. The Ninth will not see his like again. Ortus will never find the last inches of his height. It was one of his many shortfalls.]
What are you doing, boy?
[This is not the weakened, diminished shade that haunted Ortus once. His voice grinds out like bone in socket, quiet in the manner everyone on the Ninth is quiet, but inexorable, unyielding.]
Nothing.
[He is frail and reedy before it, crumpling helplessly in on himself like he did at fourteen, eleven, six, three, a cringe bred into his marrow. Mortus' dark eyes, set in his craggy, fully painted features, flick to Ianthe, then to the bundle in her arms.]
Is that what you call nothing?
No. [The word cracks like ice in his mouth. He shakes his head, stepping back.] No, stop.
cw: child abuse continues
The cavalier that wasn't. Not even his own mind allows him to be brave.
She looks at the father, not a glimmer of fear or respect in her eyes and she can see the family resemblance, and the lack of it. She hushes the baby consolingly as the old man's booming voice threatens to make her spill over back into tears. She rests Gideon's eyes against her shoulder, so she doesn't have to look at the pitiful slug or his oversized tumor of a father. The sight of which would be enough to make Coronabeth cry when they were little. And when they were twelve and she was always bloody crying because apparently all the fucking attention wasn't enough for her.
What is a sister but an oversized baby really?
She hums.
There's a certain satisfaction, in realizing that nothing matters. Because with the person she is now, in the empire she's in now - years and years in the future, this man is nothing to her. She could peel his skin off and then condemn his soul to hell for not thanking her every step of the way. His family would have to apologize to her because their patriarch just made it so unpleasant to skin him, and she would wave them away and say "I'm already over it, it's all skin under the bridge. In fact, I made him a nice hat."
It's nothing like being a little girl and sitting with her arms around Coronabeth, kissing her tears away. It's nothing like sitting at a lavish dinner table and being poked and prodded as if she wasn't the only fucking thing keeping Ida standing. It's nothing like bearing the brunt of John's pathetically human mood swings.
So her lips curl into a smile, and she looks back at him, and at Ortus who is defeated by]
Do you know what the punishment for upsetting the Lord's own flesh and blood is? I'd suggest you quiet down a bit, little man.
[Never-mind that Mortus is huge. He's so tiny when compared to her.]