#and it basically was that they realized Gortash doesn't have a poetic bone in his body

[truly-sincerely]

Dark Star Falling (6 of ?)

Darling can tell this saccharine sentimentality is grating on Gortash. It’s hard enough for Darling, whose memories of Alfira are all wrapped up in guilt and regret, and of course there’s the Urge.

The thought is interrupted by another groundquake. Each of them reaches for the same candelabra instinctively. Darling swings their legs off the table and smirks at Gortash as the tremors subside. “This is the part where you tell me I should go.”

“You shouldn’t be wasting your time here. Orin has your–what was it?”

“My bear. She stole my bear,” they say, pretending to be hurt.

“Distracting me isn’t going to get your bear or our netherstone from Orin,” he growls, tiring of whatever this is. “Return to your little adventurer friends, clean yourself up, get some sleep, and make your father proud, or whatever it is you do in that gory ossuary.”

Sharp, hard laughter splits the room like a lightning strike. A wholly different laugh from earlier, but still Darling. They’re on their feet so fast their chair falls over. “That’s the answer! I figured it out! Fuck me, I really am that good,” they crow, their tail lashing back and forth behind them. They slap the table with both hands, “I know why this is all falling apart.”

“Get a hold of yourself, Dearest,” Gortash says. The guards have all taken half a step forward in alarm. He doesn’t look at them.

“We talked about this. You said we discussed why our predecessors failed, so we could succeed. No, I still don’t remember. But I solved it. Like the sphinx’s riddle.” Darling climbs up onto the table, completely losing themself in their revelry. He can see all of their sharp teeth when they say, “Now it’s my turn. I get to eat the sphinx. You’re so fucking clever but everyone has a blindspot.”

“Even you,” he keeps his voice firm as they advance on him on their hands and knees, spilling books and papers onto the floor. The candelabra they saved earlier goes too, but its everburning candles are harmless. It’s the tiefling on the table that seems surrounded by a halo of heat.

“Yesss,” they purr, sliding their hands over the embellishments on his lapels, pressing him against the chairback. They smell like sulfur, blood, and soot. “My blindspot got me killed and yours brought me back.”

They’re above him now, face as close as a kiss but only heat and breath pass between them. All of their weight comes down on him as one leg and then the other transfers from the table to the chair.

“Perhaps we should remove your armor,” he suggests, as the front of their chain skirt grinds into his lap. They snicker at him and slide their hands apart, pulling his jacket down around his elbows, ostensibly pinning his arms to his sides. Their hips sway, pushing the mail up against him rhythmically, and very quickly there’s even less room between the two of them.

“Don’t you want to know?” they whisper into his hair.

“You want to tell me, so go on.”

“People. You are utterly incurious about people. I misjudged Orin once but you misjudge everyone. They’re all statistics for you, and generalities. They have to be, don’t they? Anything else would be self-destruction,” Darling punctuates their sentences with little nips at his ear and neck. “Even me. We were partners for a decade or more, weren’t we? I’m sure of it. You didn’t mourn my loss. You went on without me. As tho I’d never been here. You let me be replaced. That’s when the plan failed.”

“You sound like a scorned, jealous lover.”

“This is why you need a poet too. What am I jealous of? You? Your praise? Your love for me? No. At the coronation it was our hard work, our plan. Did you mean any of what you said?” They’re pawing at his chest like a cat. If they weren’t wearing gloves he’d be in ribbons.

“I meant every word,” he says, taking one of their arms by the elbow and pulling the glove off.

“I wasn’t merely scorned. I was dead. Gone. A failure. A weakness that was excised,” they say with confidence, describing his rationale with unpleasant accuracy. “But without me you had no one to tell you that you were wrong. Ketheric was a self-important scold and Orin had nothing to contribute except as a warm body. Neither of them could’ve warned you not to send the Emperor after the prism. What was even the point of any of this without me to see it thru? You think you can rule your kingdom of ash, little tyrant? If anyone else had walked into that throne room with Ketheric’s stone you’d be lost already.”

Dearest had never said any of this to Gortash. They had never been this combative. They had never needed to prove anything with words–their actions were always enough. This desperate need to convince him of their competency is bordering on pathetic, but he can’t find fault in their words, as hard as those words are to hear.

They cup his chin in their hand, pulling his gaze back towards their face. “You can’t do that again,” they insist and the look in their eyes is so intense, so familiar, it doesn’t matter that they don’t remember. It doesn’t matter how much they’ve changed. Nothing matters.

“You’re making it sound as tho you’re going to disappear again,” he says. Darling slashes him across the chest in response. He groans and buckles, leaning into them and clenching his fists. They wrap their arms around his shoulders, using one to pull the glove off the other, while looking straight at the guard standing a few meters behind Gortash’s chair. Some idiot in a mask, probably called a Black Hand or something like that. Hard to tell thru the mask what they’re thinking about this turn of events.

“Were you around before? Do you remember me?” they ask rhetorically, knowing the goon won’t answer. They only answer to Banites. Darling’s expression is a challenge. The guards are all stock still. It’s kind of fun, having an audience. Darling sits up again and pushes Gortash’s shoulders back against the chair. “And what if I do?”

He clutches his chest, blood oozing thru his fingers, sliding off gold, coating skin. “I would wait for you,” he says, looking up with some effort, thru his fringe at Darling. They run bloody fingers thru his hair and loop their arms around his neck and wonder if it’s going to come to that.

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