lepis, comtesse of taiga
RUN AND TELL ALL OF THE ANGELS; THIS COULD TAKE ALL NIGHT
i think i need a devil to help me get things right
He paces, and she remains still.
Only her eyes follow him – back and forth and back and forth. Like when he had appeared beside Noah, she sees the ghosts of the memory-linked changes in his static shape. Broad white wings where there are bare shoulders, the flaming red and brilliant golden stripes he had worn on their last night together, a row of freshly plucked flowers that Pteron had lined along his ribcage while he napped, an indescribably larger self that had loomed over Aten. They’re all there, all him, and she finally begins to understand the depth of the changes in him that she has tried so hard to pretend weren’t happening.
Another sin to list: that she had not asked (at least not listened well enough). She’s ready to recite them, realizes this as he tells her that they had both needed their space. Yes, she agrees with a nod. They had needed it, and as long as the two weeks apart have been, Lepis finds relief in knowing that at least they are over. He is here now, and the dun mare is certain that is all that is important.
Lepis knows about the fuses, those not platonic devices her husband had laid and then set off in the already-crumbling structure of their marriage. When the blue-haired woman had told Starsin that there were some things she could not forgive, Lepis had meant it. She had thought those detonations were unforgivable at the time. (A bit of her still does, but she does not listen to it, tells herself it is something they will talk about, something they will resolve and move past).
In the weeks since, the Comtesse has admitted to herself that there truly are worse things in the grand scheme of things, and that perhaps the tally of sins between them need not be identical to be equal.
There are worse things than what Wolfbane has done with sweet-voiced Lilliana, but none of them are worse than this. Nothing is worse than this. Wolfbane does not offer to rebuild, or even start to hack away at what remains of them and set fire to the rubble that had once been their marriage.
Instead he denies that it exists at all.
Every shattered bit of debris Lepis clings to turns suddenly to ash in her hands.
She is left with nothing.
For one agonizing and desperate moment, Lepis thinks she could change his mind. That she should change his mind, even. If she asks - pleads - surely that would change things? He could listen; surely he would. ‘Not quite sure’ is not the same as ‘Not at all’, says a fragile voice inside her that she hardly recognizes.
If the tears welling in her eyes spill over, if she begs, he might listen. If she shows him she means it, if she tells him that that there is not a thing in the world she would not forgive him or give him. She would give anything, everything, and just as she starts to say it...she stops.
Because he has more to say, more than just the admission that he has betrayed her, and then still more even after he confesses he has broken his vows.
And in the end, it’s not what he has done that is the worst. Rather it is what he stillintends to do, what he means when he speaks of falling in the present tense, of feeling things in embraces not only past but future too. True, the recounting of his trangressions is a knife her already hollowed heart, yet it is his lack of remorse, worse still that he means to continue, that drives it in and twist it so cruelly.
”Fall, then.” She tells him, finding it is easy to sound emotionless when every bit of her that has been so recently gathered up again is dust in her once-hopeful hands. “Fall, and when you find that the landing feels nothing like what we had, don’t bother coming to tell me about it.” She will already know. There is something building, the rattle of pebbles she had sensed earlier precluding a landslide. It builds, emotions with it, a writhing mass of anguish and rage and agony and fury.
“Before that though, before that...” She takes a breath, and though a tear falls, it does so alone, a single glittering streak down her golden cheek. “Stop lying to yourself. You know you don’t love me anymore, it’s not something you’re not quite sure of.” These words finally accompany visual emotion: a sneer, one that reduces her handsome countenance to a mask of pity. “If you still loved me, you wouldn’t be falling. You chose to take that jump, and if you loved me – loved me like I loved you – you’d have never taken the leap at all.”
Lepis never realizes that she has spoken of her feelings for him in past tense, and it is clear from the way she shakes her head, the way she backs away from him with an expression nothing less than shell-shocked, that she has no intent of arguing with him.
“Say no more,” and just those three vicious words act as a shield from the pain that she knows will break her if she lets it waiver for even an instant. “We’ve been over since the moment you thought that you might find something better with Lilliana than what we had.”
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