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rainbowfic2015-06-08 05:40 pm
crossfortune) wrote in rainbowfic2015-06-08 05:40 pm
as the perpetual star
Name: Mischa
Story: i never promised you a rose garden
Colors: halloween orange (I think you'll find the line is fine between the saint and sinner), octarine (Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness.), bistre (The links that bind one person's ambition and desire to another's fate are complicated things)
Supplies and Styles: seed beads, charcoal, fingerpainting
Word Count: 1764
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: death, implied (described possibility) of mutilation, a country of religious fanaticism,
skip
suicidal ideation: new readers might not notice it without a lack of context for what Tristan's promise was, so far only mentioned in cages
.
Summary: "I am the Sword of the Morning. Witness me." Solange, daughter and heir of High House Lemieux, has always been in her elder brother's shadow, always second-best. Until she isn't, anymore.
Notes: I know I need to go back and revise cages to account for a lot of the details that I refined between when I originally wrote it and now. also wow my tendency to reuse names. I should really write a piece lampshading that somehow.
EDIT: I forgot to add a particular warning tag, and I'm sorry.
All her life, Solange has always been second-best: she remembers being small and trying to run after her elder brother, never able to catch him no matter what. Tripping and falling, scraped and bloody knees, and Tristan never helped her, never came back to her, no matter how she cried. She never could keep up with him, he was always better.
Beautiful beloved Tristan, who had been the finest swordsman Romnia had ever known, who had been raised as the heir to High House Lemieux, who might have been worthy of Lightbringer and the title Sword of the Morning, the finest knight ever to live - except that in the end, he hadn’t been worthy. Faith and striving and service to the Steel Maiden and a good death hadn’t been enough for him, nor Lightbringer, nor his heirship, nor being the Sword of the Morning: he wanted more, and more, and still more, and turned to demons to fill the lack.
(she remembers watching as they tried to burn him. tried but he broke free and killed his executioners, cut through the knights who tried to stop him, and she vowed to someday surpass him-)
But she has always been second-best: if he had never fallen so short, had never fallen, then she would have all been forgotten. She’s trained now most of her life for this: to be heir to Lemieux, to their legacy, to Lightbringer, the sword of their House. To be worthy of wielding its faith-blessed steel, of being the Sword of the Morning.
(the sword has lain by, in centuries past, when no generation’s children had been worthy of wielding it, of being the Sword of the Morning: Solange had prayed, hours spent under the fierce stone gaze of the Steel Maiden, her only wish to be worthy. she couldn’t have borne the disgrace if she hadn’t been)
She bears the title, and has since she was a slip of a girl only barely a woman: but sometimes, in her darkest hours, she kneels before the statue of the Iron Lady and prays. She hunts heretics, turns her sword against the horrors born from the scars left by the Sundering - their war will never end, as long as the very heart of their land is scarred by magic - , stands against the tide and wonders if what she does will be enough.
***
If it weren’t happening before her very eyes - if she weren’t participating in this travesty - Solange would have called anyone who dared tell her of what she would someday do mad. Letting the song-witch from Cezayir along with his two catfolk companions flee across the border, when they had been hiding in Romnia for Maiden-knows how long before she’d managed to catch them, doing goddessknowswhat...her skin crawls at the thought of their magic, and chills at the thought of how many innocents had come into contact with them. What she should have done is capture the lot of them, turn them over to the priests to deal with as they should. Have the boy’s tongue cut out so his songs would never again bewitch the unwary and his eyes blinded so he would only ever see the visions that the Iron Lady allowed him to see, and the two cats drowned.
Instead, she is standing between them and her no-longer-brother and his catfolk bride. Or so she assumes, between the long black hair and the antiquated dress that the pale catfolk standing next to Tristan is wearing, with the long swinging sleeves of a bride. White, embroidered with white roses in a purer hue of white: a poor color for a marriage dress, one white for death, but fitting, for that was all Tristan would have to offer a bride. At best. Lightbringer hums quietly in her sheath, with all the fury of the Steel Maiden: Solange’s hand is on the hilt, but she does not draw yet.
If her brother wants them, then he will not have them. Solange judges it against the Destroyer’s scales: it would be a greater sin to allow Tristan to have what he wants. The Black Knight formerly of Romnia will ever be denied, as long as she draws breath. She will let them flee, so long as they never return.
“Go,” she tells the song-witch and his two companions: the boy opens his mouth, and she cuts him off. “I need neither your help nor your sorcery.” it takes almost too much effort to not sound like she was holding three dead fish in her mouth - three lutefisk, rather. “My blade and my faith are more than enough.”
The last she sees of the three of them, the boy seems about to protest, before the irritated-looking catfolk woman by his side, closely followed by the younger catfolk just behind her, drag him away and they’re swallowed by the shadows, cold air rushing in to fill where they were. The less she knows about that sorcery, the better, as far as she’s concerned.
“This was none of your business, Solange.” Tristan growls - who is he that dares to chide her, as if she was still the errant little toddler instead of a woman grown and the finest swordsman in Romnia (technically second, given that he is standing here). The catfolk by his side doesn’t move, head bowed and long black hair hiding her face. Unnatural stillness.
Solange doesn’t bother to tell him that it was, in fact, her business: Tristan, even in her earliest memories, had a remarkable lack of ability to listen. And this thing wearing her brother’s face, this infernalist who had once been her elder brother, didn’t seem to have learned over the years. “Done is done.” she tells him, sharply, and means it more ways than she can ever say. She regrets little: she’s done what she must, what she thinks is right. “Stop pretending to be something you’re not. You stopped being my brother when you sold your soul,”
She’d meant to slap Tristan with those words, if there was anything at all left resembling shame in him: instead, the dark, infinitely sad, ancient eyes of the catfolk beside him widen in the otherwise emotionless, delicate face, almost as if she had been slapped. She hadn’t known, Solange realizes, and almost feels sorry for her. Almost.
“Thou...thou promised me an ending,” the black-haired catfolk speaks for the first time, voice like a music box in a too-wide room, and the laughter hurts to hear. Solange can barely understand the words: the language is old, far older than living memory, mixed with broken fragments of what she knows. Broken glass and broken hopes and broken music-box, and she’s heard the like before: suffering that had gone on too long, too much, to be endured. “Thou promised. And thou speaketh lies.”
“Myca-” Tristan protests, but the catfolk cuts him off before he can even try to deny it and coughs, blood bright against ivory skin. Broken and lost, and the shattered laughter of even this last hope denied. This final betrayal. And Solange knows, with stark clarity, that even if he had never fallen, even if he had never sold his soul, that he never would have been the Sword of the Morning with how he lies so easily and just so casually breaks every promise he ever made. Even to someone so dependent on him.
“Thou serveth the demons,” Myca hisses, ears pressed back against his head, voice like shattered crystal, an elegy to broken hopes and lives long, long dead. “From one prison to another. How the gods laugh,” And then suddenly he’s gone, cold air rushing in to fill the space he was in.
For a moment, Tristan looks absolutely stricken, but Solange feels no sympathy for him at all. He’s more than earned everything he just lost. Punishment long delayed, and as she watches, his face hardens again. Ultimately without remorse.
“You know the penalty for returning. Death.” Solange has every intention of at least attempting to carry out the punishment herself: Myca might want Tristan dead, but she will do her best to ensure his death first. She has never run from her duty, from anything that the Wrathful Lady has asked of her, and she does not intend to start now.
Slowly, he grins, the cruelty in his smile distorting his handsome features: she remembers, again, the young man who had fled his execution, the flames leaping behind him, bodies strewn at his feet. Men and women who had never done a single thing wrong in their lives, dead for simply trying to do what was right. “You’re right, little sister, except for one thing. When you’re dead, I’ll take that sword from your corpse. You’ve played at being something you’re not long enough.”
“I am the Sword of the Morning,” Solange says, and draws Lightbringer, feeling the blessed power in the sword course through her. For the first time in her life, she feels as though she is worthy of the title, worthy of the blade she bears: and if her brother wishes to reclaim the birthright he lost years ago, he will have to come and claim it. To kill her: not that he has any compunctions about running her through, nor she for killing him. Their shared blood means nothing: Tristan would have murdered her in her cradle, sacrificed her to his demons, for whatever more he had seen as his. And he truly isn’t her brother anymore: her brother had died the moment he’d sold his soul. Oathbreaker. Kinslayer. Faithless. What was left wearing his face was worse than any heretic.
Her duty is clear. Her path set.
Her heart is strangely light: win or lose, live or die, it matters naught to her anymore. If she wins, then she’s killed the lingering stain on their family’s honor, the traitor that betrayed everything just for power. If she dies, then she dies well in the service of the Destroyer: a good death, the best of the gifts of the Lotus-Eyed Lady. Even if he kills her and takes the sword, he will never be the Sword of the Morning, will never again be the heir to Lemieux . Either way, she will be remembered.
Her heart sings as steel clashes against steel, a blow Tristan only barely manages to parry: they are a match for each other, and even if he might still be better, she can give him a close fight. A true challenge, for the first time in his life.“Witness me.”
Story: i never promised you a rose garden
Colors: halloween orange (I think you'll find the line is fine between the saint and sinner), octarine (Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness.), bistre (The links that bind one person's ambition and desire to another's fate are complicated things)
Supplies and Styles: seed beads, charcoal, fingerpainting
Word Count: 1764
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: death, implied (described possibility) of mutilation, a country of religious fanaticism,
skip
suicidal ideation: new readers might not notice it without a lack of context for what Tristan's promise was, so far only mentioned in cages
.
Summary: "I am the Sword of the Morning. Witness me." Solange, daughter and heir of High House Lemieux, has always been in her elder brother's shadow, always second-best. Until she isn't, anymore.
Notes: I know I need to go back and revise cages to account for a lot of the details that I refined between when I originally wrote it and now. also wow my tendency to reuse names. I should really write a piece lampshading that somehow.
EDIT: I forgot to add a particular warning tag, and I'm sorry.
All her life, Solange has always been second-best: she remembers being small and trying to run after her elder brother, never able to catch him no matter what. Tripping and falling, scraped and bloody knees, and Tristan never helped her, never came back to her, no matter how she cried. She never could keep up with him, he was always better.
Beautiful beloved Tristan, who had been the finest swordsman Romnia had ever known, who had been raised as the heir to High House Lemieux, who might have been worthy of Lightbringer and the title Sword of the Morning, the finest knight ever to live - except that in the end, he hadn’t been worthy. Faith and striving and service to the Steel Maiden and a good death hadn’t been enough for him, nor Lightbringer, nor his heirship, nor being the Sword of the Morning: he wanted more, and more, and still more, and turned to demons to fill the lack.
(she remembers watching as they tried to burn him. tried but he broke free and killed his executioners, cut through the knights who tried to stop him, and she vowed to someday surpass him-)
But she has always been second-best: if he had never fallen so short, had never fallen, then she would have all been forgotten. She’s trained now most of her life for this: to be heir to Lemieux, to their legacy, to Lightbringer, the sword of their House. To be worthy of wielding its faith-blessed steel, of being the Sword of the Morning.
(the sword has lain by, in centuries past, when no generation’s children had been worthy of wielding it, of being the Sword of the Morning: Solange had prayed, hours spent under the fierce stone gaze of the Steel Maiden, her only wish to be worthy. she couldn’t have borne the disgrace if she hadn’t been)
She bears the title, and has since she was a slip of a girl only barely a woman: but sometimes, in her darkest hours, she kneels before the statue of the Iron Lady and prays. She hunts heretics, turns her sword against the horrors born from the scars left by the Sundering - their war will never end, as long as the very heart of their land is scarred by magic - , stands against the tide and wonders if what she does will be enough.
***
If it weren’t happening before her very eyes - if she weren’t participating in this travesty - Solange would have called anyone who dared tell her of what she would someday do mad. Letting the song-witch from Cezayir along with his two catfolk companions flee across the border, when they had been hiding in Romnia for Maiden-knows how long before she’d managed to catch them, doing goddessknowswhat...her skin crawls at the thought of their magic, and chills at the thought of how many innocents had come into contact with them. What she should have done is capture the lot of them, turn them over to the priests to deal with as they should. Have the boy’s tongue cut out so his songs would never again bewitch the unwary and his eyes blinded so he would only ever see the visions that the Iron Lady allowed him to see, and the two cats drowned.
Instead, she is standing between them and her no-longer-brother and his catfolk bride. Or so she assumes, between the long black hair and the antiquated dress that the pale catfolk standing next to Tristan is wearing, with the long swinging sleeves of a bride. White, embroidered with white roses in a purer hue of white: a poor color for a marriage dress, one white for death, but fitting, for that was all Tristan would have to offer a bride. At best. Lightbringer hums quietly in her sheath, with all the fury of the Steel Maiden: Solange’s hand is on the hilt, but she does not draw yet.
If her brother wants them, then he will not have them. Solange judges it against the Destroyer’s scales: it would be a greater sin to allow Tristan to have what he wants. The Black Knight formerly of Romnia will ever be denied, as long as she draws breath. She will let them flee, so long as they never return.
“Go,” she tells the song-witch and his two companions: the boy opens his mouth, and she cuts him off. “I need neither your help nor your sorcery.” it takes almost too much effort to not sound like she was holding three dead fish in her mouth - three lutefisk, rather. “My blade and my faith are more than enough.”
The last she sees of the three of them, the boy seems about to protest, before the irritated-looking catfolk woman by his side, closely followed by the younger catfolk just behind her, drag him away and they’re swallowed by the shadows, cold air rushing in to fill where they were. The less she knows about that sorcery, the better, as far as she’s concerned.
“This was none of your business, Solange.” Tristan growls - who is he that dares to chide her, as if she was still the errant little toddler instead of a woman grown and the finest swordsman in Romnia (technically second, given that he is standing here). The catfolk by his side doesn’t move, head bowed and long black hair hiding her face. Unnatural stillness.
Solange doesn’t bother to tell him that it was, in fact, her business: Tristan, even in her earliest memories, had a remarkable lack of ability to listen. And this thing wearing her brother’s face, this infernalist who had once been her elder brother, didn’t seem to have learned over the years. “Done is done.” she tells him, sharply, and means it more ways than she can ever say. She regrets little: she’s done what she must, what she thinks is right. “Stop pretending to be something you’re not. You stopped being my brother when you sold your soul,”
She’d meant to slap Tristan with those words, if there was anything at all left resembling shame in him: instead, the dark, infinitely sad, ancient eyes of the catfolk beside him widen in the otherwise emotionless, delicate face, almost as if she had been slapped. She hadn’t known, Solange realizes, and almost feels sorry for her. Almost.
“Thou...thou promised me an ending,” the black-haired catfolk speaks for the first time, voice like a music box in a too-wide room, and the laughter hurts to hear. Solange can barely understand the words: the language is old, far older than living memory, mixed with broken fragments of what she knows. Broken glass and broken hopes and broken music-box, and she’s heard the like before: suffering that had gone on too long, too much, to be endured. “Thou promised. And thou speaketh lies.”
“Myca-” Tristan protests, but the catfolk cuts him off before he can even try to deny it and coughs, blood bright against ivory skin. Broken and lost, and the shattered laughter of even this last hope denied. This final betrayal. And Solange knows, with stark clarity, that even if he had never fallen, even if he had never sold his soul, that he never would have been the Sword of the Morning with how he lies so easily and just so casually breaks every promise he ever made. Even to someone so dependent on him.
“Thou serveth the demons,” Myca hisses, ears pressed back against his head, voice like shattered crystal, an elegy to broken hopes and lives long, long dead. “From one prison to another. How the gods laugh,” And then suddenly he’s gone, cold air rushing in to fill the space he was in.
For a moment, Tristan looks absolutely stricken, but Solange feels no sympathy for him at all. He’s more than earned everything he just lost. Punishment long delayed, and as she watches, his face hardens again. Ultimately without remorse.
“You know the penalty for returning. Death.” Solange has every intention of at least attempting to carry out the punishment herself: Myca might want Tristan dead, but she will do her best to ensure his death first. She has never run from her duty, from anything that the Wrathful Lady has asked of her, and she does not intend to start now.
Slowly, he grins, the cruelty in his smile distorting his handsome features: she remembers, again, the young man who had fled his execution, the flames leaping behind him, bodies strewn at his feet. Men and women who had never done a single thing wrong in their lives, dead for simply trying to do what was right. “You’re right, little sister, except for one thing. When you’re dead, I’ll take that sword from your corpse. You’ve played at being something you’re not long enough.”
“I am the Sword of the Morning,” Solange says, and draws Lightbringer, feeling the blessed power in the sword course through her. For the first time in her life, she feels as though she is worthy of the title, worthy of the blade she bears: and if her brother wishes to reclaim the birthright he lost years ago, he will have to come and claim it. To kill her: not that he has any compunctions about running her through, nor she for killing him. Their shared blood means nothing: Tristan would have murdered her in her cradle, sacrificed her to his demons, for whatever more he had seen as his. And he truly isn’t her brother anymore: her brother had died the moment he’d sold his soul. Oathbreaker. Kinslayer. Faithless. What was left wearing his face was worse than any heretic.
Her duty is clear. Her path set.
Her heart is strangely light: win or lose, live or die, it matters naught to her anymore. If she wins, then she’s killed the lingering stain on their family’s honor, the traitor that betrayed everything just for power. If she dies, then she dies well in the service of the Destroyer: a good death, the best of the gifts of the Lotus-Eyed Lady. Even if he kills her and takes the sword, he will never be the Sword of the Morning, will never again be the heir to Lemieux . Either way, she will be remembered.
Her heart sings as steel clashes against steel, a blow Tristan only barely manages to parry: they are a match for each other, and even if he might still be better, she can give him a close fight. A true challenge, for the first time in his life.“Witness me.”
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I can't help but feel for Tristan here as well as Solange.
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Eventually!
when I actually decide what happens, hahahaI'm curious what about Tristan makes you feel for him - I wasn't expecting anyone to feel for him, really.
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Even when dealing with supernatural or powers outside of control, that story and the success, failure, likeablity, or distainability of a character seems completely in their control to me, so I'm rooting for them. I feel invested and even if they crash and burn into full on villain, I can rest the blame on them. It's not that they're woobiefied, it's that they have more agency.
If any of that makes sense.
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I'm definitely glad that he provoked an emotional response.
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Her confidence definitely took a boost thanks to her brother and realizing what she did about him.