#mark mitchell really went galaxy brain

[lalalaugenbrot]

“[Clive] is found in chapter six sorting out ‘a castle of pianola records’ of the march from Tchaikovsky’s Pathéntique; then, when he goes to play them, a mutual friend tells Maurice, 'You should get away from the machine (Pianola)’ — and therefore Clive himself — 'as far as you can.’ The Pianola manufactures music in the same way that Clive 'manufactures’ heterosexual passion […] That the way one makes music — or connects to music — signifies one’s value in Forster’s work is illustrated beautifully when Maurice meets Alec Scudder at Penge: together they move a real piano from under a leak in Clive’s ancestral home. The instrument, like their relationship, is the genuine article, and worth protecting from the decay of that society. The instrument itself embodies virtue.” 

— Mark Mitchell on the imagery of pianos in Maurice by E. M. Forster in: Virtuisi: A Defense and a (Sometimes Erotic) Celebration of Great Pianists (2000); as quoted in the annotations of the Penguin Classics Edition of the novel

[basilone]

This little piece is born entirely of me waking up with god-chosen Billie in my head this morning. Set in the form & void series, acting as a semi-continuation of this piece but also perfectly capable of being read as a standalone.. This is pretty much me borrowing @mercurygray’s lovely OCs and playing with them in my sandbox for a little bit again! (Thank you, seriously, for your continued indulgence of my galaxy brain’s ideas. ❤️)

the divine knife’s cut

“WHAT. DID. YOU. DO?!” He roars the question at his god. Bares his teeth as he grasps her arms and slams her up against the nearest tree. Huffs out a breath, angry, furious, livid, and snarls out the question again and again when she doesn’t respond. “What did you do? What did you do?”

Ron resents the throaty laugh that escapes her. Hates the way her leg curls around his thigh possessively, as though his rage means nothing to her at all. As though she loves him all the more for the tight grasp he keeps on her throat and the threat he attempts to level at her now. 

He’s felt the air tighten all around him earlier. Has felt the surge of heat between his shoulders, the bite of familiarity in the markings she’s left on his hip, the deep knowledge that he is no longer the only one in these woods who has said yes to her.

“You’re welcome,” she says, then, and he wishes he could leave her for dead when she has the audacity to smile at him. Dark eyes glitter in amusement – callous this time, uncaring for how he feels – and her hands tighten around his uniform to pull him closer to her body. His name is a caress murmured against his ear. “Ronald.”

“Don’t claim you did this for me.”

“No. She asked for me.”

“Who?”

He thinks he knows the answer. Thinks he’s seen it, long ago, at Toccoa, in a woman whose smile was too sharp and who’d stepped closer to him rather than taken steps backward. Thinks he knows, because he taught her how to dance with blades at his god’s insistence.

“Speirs!”

“What?” he snaps, hissing through his teeth as he recognizes Harry Welsh’s voice from somewhere behind him. “I’m busy.”

“Hate to interrupt the lovers’ quarrel,” says Welsh, not sounding sorry at all, “but there’s a really great girl back there who needs your help right now.”

He sighs. Releases his god from his grasp and turns his back on her. He’s not done, not close to done when it comes to voicing his displeasure about this recent development. He’s not finished with her – wishes he could be, at times like these when she caters to her own whims and cares not for what they do to others.

“Lead the way,” he tells Welsh, because he’s not a cruel man and his god can stand to wait. Hunches in on himself as he follows the man. “It’s Mitchell, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. Went on patrol with about ten others.” He’s always liked Welsh’s matter-of-fact way of presenting information. Listens intently as they step closer to the small congregation of god-chosen near the command post. “Ambush. One of the replacements got killed. Krauts were gunning for the others, but our girl wasn’t having that.” There’s a grim smile on Welsh’s face now. “She said yes to that god of yours just like that. Krauts are getting their people back in pieces.”

He sees her now. Mitchell. Bloodied, beautiful, batting Warren’s hands away and hunching in on herself under the watchful gaze of Wisdom-chosen officers.

“– can’t stay,” he hears from Winters before he sees the worry that creases the man’s brow, “but Strayer isn’t going to –”

Steely-eyed Warren, now beside him, interrupts to inquire about suppressants as though she’s speaking about the weather. Warren’s hand strays close to Mitchell’s shoulder, but refrains from reaching out as the newly chosen rebels more fiercely than anticipated. Mitchell snarls out a protest that constricts the air – dims the world, steeps it in shadow a moment – and she’s War-chosen all right, this one, brighter-eyed than the god he loves but born of the same fight.

Ron almost hesitates, but then Lewis Nixon shakes his head at his two companions and refuses to take her off the line. Lewis spits out ire at the thought of giving Mitchell pills – “as if they help, Dick, Joan, are you fucking kidding me right now” –  and his voice turns almost chastising in the strength of its rebuke. It’s easier to step in now that he knows Lewis is on his side. Easier to step forward and claim responsibility.

“Suppressants don’t work as they should,” he says, carefully picking his words for Warren to dissect, “not in this phase of her being chosen. Normally, they work for a week. A month. A year.” He shrugs. Takes care to not make his gestures too callous, not now that he’s being watched like a hawk. “Eventually, our god breaks through. The longer it takes to learn control, the worse the breakthrough phases are.”

“Control?” Winters, now, turns his head to observe him as impassively as Warren already is. They’re cut of the same cloth, these two, intelligent and vexing in their tactics and conversations. Not for the first time, he wonders how Nixon copes with both of them and their god besides. “Billie can learn control?”

“She belongs to your god, then?” Warren frowns at him. He thinks he detects concern in her voice, even as her eyes don’t stray to Mitchell anymore. “Are you sure?”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” sighs Harry beside him, “can you all get a move on and actually help her first? I didn’t risk life and limb pulling Ron away from killing his god just to have you Wisdom-riddled lot treat this as the next tea party.”

He doesn’t quite listen to Lewis’s loud guffaw of amusement that’s followed by a heated remark from Warren, nor does he hear the content of whatever Winters replies in low tones that has Lewis argue back in snippy fragments of whichever insight the other two are missing. He’s sat through rounds and rounds of this sort of argument since the war began. He doesn’t envy Harry the task of navigating the decision-making process that surrounds Easy Company.

“Hey,” he says instead, dropping to his knees in front of Mitchell, “want to get out of here?”

“I’m not leaving the line,” she says, and her bright eyes are full of fight once they meet his own. He almost smiles as he spots the red, angry mark on her lips. Isn’t surprised to see War acknowledged the agreement with Mitchell the same way she did his years ago. Isn’t surprised at all when her eyes spark and her voice dips into honeyed tones so similar to those that have purred a god’s longing into his ears a hundred times before. “You can’t force me off the line. You need me here.”

“Not in the state you’re in,” says Warren, voice all definitive as if she has a say in this at all. “You.. Billie..”

“She’s going to stay with me.” Ron laces his voice through with command. Summons War’s edges to his voice and senses the Wisdom-chosen recoil from him. Mitchell, eyes alight and almost smiling, edges closer to him at the sound instead. “She stays on the line. My responsibility. Mine and my god’s.”

“Ron, are you sure?”

“Yes, sir,” he says, tired, resigned, “I am.”

----------------------------------------------------------

Exhaustion settles deep in him tonight. Settles deep in her, too, and he supposes he can be grateful that her questions finally ended in a yawn and the sleepy blinks of someone who’s spent an extraordinary amount of energy on keeping herself together today. He blinks as he watches the moonlit snow gleam before him. Keeps himself mostly awake through his willpower.

Keeps himself awake through residual ire, too, if he’s honest, and perhaps this is what summons her.

“I’m still mad at you,” he murmurs as his god seats herself on the edge of his foxhole. “Choosing her. Having her say yes because she wants to fight with all the power she can have. Because she’s tired of being angry, and even more tired of seeing loved ones suffer.”

“Valid reasons, as you remember,” she says, and there’s really no refuting that. “Desperation is how you all come to me. A desire to see the world put to right, put to the way you envision it, put to the way you know it can be.. It’s a powerful thing.”

“You could’ve told her more.”

He doesn’t mean for it to sound like an accusation, even when he was left floundering in this space earlier through the magnitude of everything she hadn’t told Mitchell about. He knows Mitchell’s learning is newer than his. He’s spent his whole life at her feet, by her side, in her bed, and perhaps it’s why he spoke of loving her even when he wishes her harm in these moments. Mitchell had listened. Hadn’t walked away, and maybe he counts his blessings a little more for it.

“And deny you this?” Her voice is a murmur. Her head’s inclination to Mitchell’s sleeping form so minimal he almost misses the gesture. “Deny you closeness?”

Mitchell stirs at the sound a moment. He lifts his arm before it’s trapped beneath her weight as she moves closer to him in her slumber, but is rewarded for the effort by having her burrow even closer to his body. He sighs. Wraps his arm around her shoulders after a moment’s pause. She murmurs faint protest a moment before sighing and shifting closer to his heart. Her hand closes around his dog tags moments after, and he thinks his god and this woman must surely conspire together for how similar they move against him.

“It will fade,” he whispers. “It’s just this night, because I’m the only thing aside from you that feels familiar to her now. It’s only these hours.”

“And if it’s not?” The tilt of her head, not unlike a cat’s, speaks of curiosity. “What then, Ronald? If she keeps trusting you more than she ever will me?”

“Then you will answer to me.”

His voice is void of threat. Void of power. He glances down at Mitchell. Catalogs the residual bright red of the blood that coated her hair, the bruised knuckles that speak of how much like him she is, the curve of her mouth he knows is as easy to smile as it is to utter sharp cuts of words, the careful press of her smaller body against his own. Blinks up at the snow, the night air, and the knowing gaze of his god.

“Shut up,” he says, even though War does not speak. “Just.. shut up.”

His god’s laugh echoes through the woods.