#di likes talking and ulysses has a high cha whether she knows it or not

[iironwreath]

Common Ground [Ulysses]

Ulysses figured that if the succubus escaped, she’d be the second person to know—and then she wouldn’t know anything at all, because she’d be dead. Her curiosity was motivated by her will to live by appealing to Dicentra’s good side, but also existed nakedly and pure. She wanted to know more about Dicentra, plain and simple, and she was right there to ask. 

“You said you don’t eat food or water,” Ulysses said the following day. “What do you live on, then? If anything.”

“Souls.”

“Is that a joke?”

“Am I laughing?”

“I dunno, you could have a good poker-face.”

Dicentra sighed, arcing horizontally across the cage so her other shoulder took her weight. Her legs and tail curled closer to her body. “I’m half-serious. I eat food for pleasure, but what we need to sustain ourselves is the life-force of mortals.”

Ulysses shrivelled backwards. “Does that happen…passively?”

“No. I need to do it.” Dicentra’s eyes fluttered shut. The shadows made the shallows under her eyes deeper. “Unless your wizard friend has a hidden stash of humans for me to drain, I’m going to wither.”

“So you’re like a vampire?”

Dicentra’s eyes flew open to glare at her. “No, I don’t drink blood. It’s not the same.” Her wing-stumps flexed reflexively behind her—an angry tic?—and she winced. She used her pain to infuse more heat into the glare. “Most living things break down some sort of sustenance for energy. You eating food and drinking water is a form of that; are you a vampire?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“You could pass for one, the way you dress. Or are you the victim who falls for the vampire’s seduction?”

It was Uly’s turn to glower. 

—

“Does skin contact help with charming?”

“It makes no difference. I’m going to dispel your preconceived notions about succubi.” Dicentra paused. “And also probably confirm some others.”

“I don’t have that many,” Ulysses said, scratching their jaw. They’d been reading what they could find in Aldous’ archive. He probably had better information in his personal library. “Not because I don’t think of you in a stereotypical way, but because I don’t know much about fiends.”

“Do you think about me in a stereotypical way?” Dicentra asked.

“That’s for you to decide, I think.”

“Do you think I’d sleep with anything with a pulse?”

“Not really?”

“Then you have a head start.”

—

“Will they grow back?”

"You ask a lot of questions."

“You keep answering them. I’d make a shit apprentice if I didn’t ask questions. Not that he seems to think so. But if you’re telling me to fuck off, noted.”

Dicentra’s expression lost some of its edge. “They would, normally, if the bastard didn’t keep cutting them off.”

Ulysses pinched her lips and nodded—not just to acknowledge that they'd grow back, but that Aldous was, indeed, a bastard. She hoped that carried through. Dicentra nodded back.

—

“So,” Ulysses said, hands thrust deep in their pockets. “Gender.”

“What about it?”

“Aldous said you were a shapechanger,” Ulysses explained. “It got me wondering: are we misgendering you?”

Dicentra shook her head. “No. Our relationship with gender is as varied and complicated as yours. Our advantage comes from being able to change our bodies to match how we want to present, whether it be static or fluid or physically fluid even if our gender is static. I’m a woman, personally, but I have a sibling who’s very different from me.” 

Ulysses’ brows ascended towards her hairline. “You can have siblings?”

Dicentra frowned; not with fury or malice, but regret. “Forget I said anything.”

“Do you miss them?”

“Annoyingly, yes.”

“I don’t have any siblings,” Uly said, hoping to ease the sting of the admission with information about herself. Why they wanted to do that, they didn’t know. It was both impressive and depressing that Aldous made a literal devil—a supposed creature of evil—civil and enjoyable to talk to by comparison. “That I know of. I’m adopted.”

“Tragic.”

“Wait until you hear why.”

“Don’t tell me,” Dicentra warned. “I mean that.”

Ulysses shrugged. “Alright, I won’t tell you about my moonstone dragon mother.”

“Shut up. You’re kidding.”

“I’m not.”

“Explains you.” Dicentra twisted her restraints, remembered she couldn’t move her arms, and sagged into the bars. “Am I…misgendering you?”

Ulysses wanted to delve deeper, ask what Dicentra meant by Uly's moonstone dragon mother "explaining" her. She could think of why, but she wanted to know what Dicentra picked up on, what her unique perspective was.

At the same time, she didn’t. It was an invitation for mockery. “I’m not a woman, but no, you’re not.”

—

“I’m adopted, too, actually,” Dicentra said unprompted while Ulysses reshelved books.

Uly abandoned the books and walked around the shelf. “Are you fucking with me?”

“No.”

“How does that work?”

“How would it work differently? You have someone who takes you in, teaches you, cares for you, loves you.”

“I don’t know if that’s my experience with my adopted mother,” Ulysses scoffed. “But fair enough.”

—

Ulysses dragged a stool outside the cage and sat down.

“Why do you keep answering my questions?” she asked.

Dicentra studied them, then stared straight ahead, her face too listless to hold any expression for long. She looked more etiolated by the week. Ulysses had told Aldous about the lifeforce thing; she wanted Dicentra alive to mollify Aldous’s wrath as much as she wanted their talks to continue. But even if he wanted to feed her, could Dicentra do it without the use of her innate magic? Would she even eat, or would she starve herself so she could die? Maybe he and Doolan were figuring out a system; they were powerful enough for it. 

Was it even talking, though, with one of them behind bars? Didn't that make it interrogation?

“I like your voice,” Dicentra said. “You’re funny, sometimes. It's the only entertainment I have.” The corner of her mouth twitched with the phantom of amusement. “I get satisfaction from giving you information Aldous has to struggle for. Unless you’re telling him everything, in which case, fuck you.”

“You seem smart enough to know that was always a risk in telling me anything, so I’ll take the compliment. Do you like books?”

Dicentra’s gaze turned towards the shelves rising about her on all sides, her eyes brimming with longing. “Yes.”

“I can’t share my research, but maybe I could read to you sometime.”

“Why?”

“I would rather be at the Hall of Erudition, but they saddled Aldous with me and me with him. I get bored, too.”

“Is that why you’re asking so many questions?”

Uly mirrored her miniature, vindicated smile. “Maybe a bit, yeah. And to spite him, too.”