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freuleinanna · 2 years ago

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trials (and errors)

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 AO3

Chapter 3: Lovers

Love is not a static force. It needs a vector, and god help lovers whose vector is rage.

Masriel reunion (derogatory)!

Also, am I going to push my Marisa and Father MegaFail being besties (worsties) agenda? Yes, yes I am.

The crowd parts before the sinner.

No, to correct that: the crowd parts before a man of church who, in his turn, is followed by the sinner.

Either way, Marisa walks past lawmen and clerics hardly recognizing ones from the others in their black attires. The comfort of isolation has now scaled off of her entirely: after roaming endless stuffy rooms, the air feels too fresh to swallow, too brisk against the skin. Not unlike tiny cold burns. Her dress – the only moving spot of color – cuts through the pool of black drawing unreserved attention from all angles. Makes for an easy target. Whispers and looks hit it equally.

Oh, the prudes. A year back they'd stare even worse. Of course, a year back she was still a respectable, well-married lady they didn't mind eyeing occasionally as an indulgence, not a whore dragged out of exile. Maybe not the exact words she'll hear today, but surely the prevailing sentiment.

Marisa keeps her face neutral and wishes them all dead.

Another corridor, less packed with people.

'You'd profit from looking more sorry,' her guide mutters, finally slowing his step to walk side by side. 'Repentance will go a long way.'

He seems a bit nervous, but then he always does, that's the most Hugh MacPhail trait Marisa could think of. Heaven forbid people notice them frivolously conversing, today of all days. He throws lots of quick, alert glances around. The lizard daemon on his shoulder scans the space and gives him a little tap whenever someone gets too close – a note to drop his voice, or pause.

Marisa's tone, when she leans closer to reply, is a heartless mockery of his hushes.

'I think you underestimate how sick I am of acting sorry.'

Without fail, a frowning look follows. He recoils from her touch, but in a manner that speaks of habit rather than resentment: Father MacPhail, always so diligent in his priestly ways. On some level, Marisa applauds him for not falling victim to her beguiling nature. On all others, she knows that statement lacks a great big ‘yet’. She scoffs, bemused.

'This is serious,' MacPhail snarks, clearly misinterpreting the sound.

Doesn't she know.

'I'm not sure... Yes, Father Jamison,' a shoulder tap – Hugh greets another cleric with a nod and waits until he's far enough behind them before continuing. 'I'm not sure you see how serious it is, Marisa.'

He appears genuinely concerned. There’s evidently an affection, except the why of it remains as elusive to Marisa as his goals. She’s twenty-three, Hugh is bearing on his forties. She would have understood physical desire, what woman of her looks wouldn’t, but it’s not all there is.

Hugh encourages her ambition. When she’s denied academic growth, Hugh suggests she takes advantage of her husband’s status, along with his access to the sacred libraries of the Magisterium, and puts her brain back to work. Hugh even writes to the Saint Sophia’s board and inquires about a place for a prominent young scholar to give her grounds.

It’s not exactly a patronage. She’s not exactly his protégé. Should the concept of friendship be more familiar to Marisa, she’d probably recognize the similarities, but the thought never visits her. Fits of spite do, though. Spending weeks locked up in a house, wallowing in rage and a mind-numbing lack of anything to do, certainly didn’t help her moods, but it wasn’t when it started. She’s always pushed away, and one time she didn’t, look what happened.

'What do I care if I’m done for anyway,' she hisses.

'Stupid girl,' MacPhail hisses back–

–and shoves her into a narrow passageway, making a sharp swerve. It would be wonderful to break his neck for calling her stupid, but she ambles angrily along in her heels until Hugh grabs her ‘round.

His eyes are transparent-green and heavy. Perhaps, the best precaution against sin: Marisa can't imagine them offering compassion. Better not sin at all than confess to those eyes.

'Now listen to me.' The lizard slides down his sleeve to the crook of the elbow and peers at the golden monkey, him staring up with a scowl. Hugh’s hands are crushing Marisa’s shoulders. 'They want to hear from Asriel – oh, don't make that face. They want to hear from him, and they will. But it's to determine his fate, or the child's. Yours is pretty much decided.'

'And what did I just say,' she breathes out, barely unclenching her teeth.

'They can easily make it worse.'

'Oh, I doubt that.'

'Want to try them?' Hard stones bump against the back. Why does everyone insist on shaking her today? 'Go ahead. See if you like being sent to a convent for the rest of your days.'

It’s so easy to dismiss. For the longest beautiful moment, threats are just threats and words are just words, mere noises they exchange. Silly, even. Marisa opens her mouth to say exactly that, venom already rising to soak up the tongue and every word it forms, when it hits her. It hits her good.

Raw, animal fear.

'No.'

'Oh, yes.'

Splashing all over, on her face, in her guts. Inches away, Hugh is being needlessly cruel, hammering in the point that’s already reached her with sternness one can only expect from a man of god.

'Maybe you'll get to Saint Sophia's still. I hear they offer a place for women in your position, setting them back on the path of righteousness. Repentance and prayers, all day, every day.'

'No!'

This time literally, Marisa pushes away with all her strength. Hugh takes a hard step back, the green of his eyes sparks up with fury. It only takes him a heartbeat to charge at Marisa again but as soon as he does, a painful grimace twists his face – his daemon falls from the sleeve. Kneeling hastily, distracted, he stretches an arm to the floor. The lizard climbs up quicker that the monkey can reach her, leaving black paws to crush air between them.

The four of them freeze, riled up and panting. Someone once said that tragedies caught mid-action always make for the most comic statues, and well, they weren’t wrong.

Marisa breaks first.

She groans in disgust, feeling ill. Serene hallways and dull clothes, never a spark of hope, or a new idea, or an interesting conversation, forever and ever, until she's dead. She'll go mad. She’s half there already.

'I will kill myself. I will kill myself if they do that, Hugh.'

And she means it.

Hugh straightens up, smoothing his clothes, his daemon once again on his shoulder.

'Then don't tease them,' he reasons sharply.

Then, perhaps seeing her distraught face, a little kinder, 'You're very young, Marisa. Think of the future. Don't dig yourself a grave.'

Marisa’s mind scatters, as wild as it was this morning, fingers fumbling with the dress in search of something to torture. Tugging at her consciousness, her daemon's presence. He is raging because she is. He is scared because she is. As if they haven't been horrible to each other all day (and many, many exiled days before that), he's offering support. Marisa cannot bear that any more than the horrid idea of a convent.

Her feelings are too big; that’s the issue, always has been. Swelling up beyond control, they’re threatening to crush this wormhole of a corridor – and they are not for the audience. She’ll feel them later, she decides, analyzing the way her skin stretches, as thin and unreliable as the membrane of a soap bubble; she’ll feel them when she has the space, or power to withstand them. Despite the deal tasting like bile at the back of her throat, making it for the hundredth time comes slightly easier. If only her soul would quit pushing her into emotional pits, always hanging about, always wanting to connect when she can bear it the least – if only he would just quit.

Weakling.

With a sharp headshake, Marisa folds her arms for composure and walks past him, ignoring the way his beautiful gilded tail falls and twitches, tucked between the legs. One day, she’ll walk far enough.

Hugh follows her, resuming the role of a silent guide.

It takes them a few more passages, each narrower than the other, to untangle themselves from a poorly lit cobweb and reach a more familiar part of the building. There are once again people in the corridors, so whispers and looks make their return. Hugh must have taken a longer route to avoid those, for her sake. For what it’s worth, it’s a gesture.

The path ends, as all merciful things do, far too quickly.

'You can wait here. They'll summon you.'

'Will you be there?'

A pause.

'No.'

To think, she had actually hoped.

Hugh leaves.

Anxiety doesn't.

The monkey almost gets jammed by the door because Marisa doesn't care enough to hold it. She hears a loud chatter, rushed steps – and fails to be touched. A golden lightning zings around as she presses her palms tightly to her ribs and takes a few hard, shuddering breaths. Her lungs are spasming. She’d very much like to throw something at her daemon to keep him fucking quiet because it’s all too much. All around, it’s all too much, it’s all…

'I thought you'd wear black.'

Ripping through her, a familiar voice.

Of course, now the monkey shuts up. The only sound bombarding the room is her own gasping for air. Marisa cuts it immediately, then breathes again, quieter, and opens her eyes. Invisible hooks are already pulling at her flesh in multiple directions – what's another one.

Asriel is standing a bit away, as sure as a death sentence: half-turned, cradling a glass at his chest. She doesn’t have it in her to be surprised. Whatever monstrosity they’ve committed together on a cosmic level must have been grander than murder and adultery combined because it’s bound them, pulling at the threads at the worst possible moments. Inside, a morbid feeling rises, about as gentle as a flood that breaks the dam: they won’t ever leave each other alone. She could climb the highest mountain of the farthest north, and he’d still be there.

Marisa gropes for the door handle, fully set on leaving; then doesn’t. Her eyes, for some reason, fixate on that drink Asriel's holding: something pleasantly amber, warm, leaving trails when swirled. A thirst that’s been tormenting her since the morning parts her lips – alcoholics have more will, for heaven’s sake. Marisa can't move. She doesn’t even blink, just holds herself perfectly still. Prey always does.

Asriel chuckles, noticing.

'Need a drink?'

She could kill him. She’s an open wound in indigo, and despises Asriel for seeing it. For mocking it, too. It takes an actual, physical effort to move her eyes up to his face, but finally – there he is, the bastard. Hard jaw and a five-day stubble. She also despises herself for knowing what his five-day stubble looks like.

He nods an invitation: a bottle on the table, some empty glasses.

'Don’t drink alone. Never ends well, especially for women.'

Every word – a taunt. Between the grown hair and the shirt sleeves he, for once, didn’t roll up, it is the same man Marisa knew, yet as soon as the haunting spreads, the image falters. Something fundamental in him has changed, sending a sting of sharp loss right to the heart. It’s not in the stance, or in the voice, or the clothes; more subtle than the line of his cheekbones, less obvious than a grey streak falling on his forehead. His eyes are different, she thinks. The way Asriel is laughing, it only makes them darker with hard, grim triumph. Like he’s playing a game that he knows to inevitably end in a massacre.

Still, it is him.

It is him.

Marisa tries out different phrases in her mind. I hate you. How are you. Are you well.

She says none of it.

Out of nowhere, a long silvery shadow moves across the floor, causing her daemon to perk up in what feels like acidic burns in her lungs. Stelmaria brushes past Asriel’s knees, and for a moment, Marisa loses her god-given, natural ability to breathe. It feels murderous, hope. Whoever invented it must have been a sick brute.

The monkey glances over for permission he knows he won’t have, but the sadness in him. Sadness and excitement, beating somewhere so deep in her own heart she's choking on it. Marisa clenches her fists, pushes it down, and glares a warning. It isn’t a conversation, those have withered between them like flowers on a fighting arena until nothing remained but orders: chisels and scalpels, to carve, to mold. With the same woeful expression, her soul ignores her. Never been mellow, this one, yet now he turns away, treading a few careful steps to sit before the leopard, quiet and mesmerized.

It’s so different from the way he sat this morning, aiming for a strike across Marisa's face. He's looking. He's admiring.

Stelmaria lowers her big head. A touch more–

At the same time, Marisa and Asriel jerk their chins, and the daemons instantly return, yanked back, looking ashamed and scolded. Just before Stelmaria hides behind the table again, she finds Marisa’s eyes. Fresh burns sizzle with guilt. It shouldn’t be possible to hate one part of the same soul, yet love the other.

Asriel seems shaken, too. Conflicted even – he who has always been as one with his daemon. Get used to it, Marisa wants to say but locks her lips for fear of saying something else entirely.

'Well.' He rubs his eyes.

'Well,' she echoes.

Well, first words poorly spent. Should have been something eloquent and scathing.

'She speaks,' Asriel smirks from across the room and just like that, he’s back at it. That first glimpse of a man he’ll become, unparalleled in strength and coldness, goes unnoticed by Marisa at the moment, but will scratch her memory for years to come.

He waits for a reply. With every second, his face falls a little, until finally he just shrugs and starts walking around the table. Wanders mindlessly, deeper into the room. It's someone's study, must be. A giant desk is set on a podium at the far wall. Asriel sips from the glass going shamelessly through the papers lying around, so uninterested in her presence it fires Marisa's insides right up. Oh, she speaks. She will maim you with words as soon as she decides what to say.

Fists and hair, she marches up to him. Asriel doesn’t even fully turn, just looks at her sideways: walls and walls and walls behind storm-cloud eyes. She forgot he was tall. Beginnings of a rough beard make him older in appearance, but that’s the thing. That’s the thing. He is young, and so is she, and youth is violent.

'You have ruined everything.'

Asriel raises his eyebrows, dully unintrigued.

'Exactly what?'

Her emotions are a swarm of foul bugs rubbing wings. Exactly what, he asks. How to even formulate it.

Being thrown back so far, the road she'd taken seems but a vague thread near horizon, completely out of her reach.

Exactly what.

Every door that's now closed, every victory clawed out in battles turned to ashes. All scarcely accumulated freedom, taken.

Him offering her marriage without even realizing how that would be the last shovel of dirt into her grave of public acceptance, and then acting so offended about her refusal.

Exactly fucking what.

The crippling, boiling fear of living out her life among brainless clucks interested only in talking of sin and salvation, because one damned reckless man fired a pistol and did not have a decency to miss, blowing it all out of proportion.

'You killed Edward.'

'Ah,' Asriel exhales throwing his head back, and Marisa feels deranged enough to go for the jugular with nothing but her teeth. Then he looks down again. 'You must have loved him so.'

Massacre.

…massacre.

A slap rings through the air. Immediately, Marisa’s palm stings, stunned from the impact, Asriel's sharp inhale lingering on the skin. His posture, if only for a second, changes to resemble that of an animal ready to chase its prey. Marisa half-wishes he did, because the alternative is watching him slowly straighten his shoulders and sneer in a way that drops the temperature in the whole room.

She hears Stelmaria growl behind him. That, for some reason, feels like an even bigger betrayal because she's never growled at Marisa before.

Asriel touches his cheek. Nods pensively as his eyes wander to the table. Something long and silvery finds its way into his hand – a letter opener, with a thin blade and a richly incrusted handle. A piece of value, it seems. Asriel keeps turning it in his fingers.

'That's right,' he says at last. There's nothing right about that. 'That is exactly why we're here. Let's cut each other's throats and be done with it.'

He doesn't mean, of course, literally – although Marisa wouldn't exclude it. When he looks up, it's like stepping under the waterfall, except instead of water, there's resentment hurling its rushing weight off the cliff. It breaks Marisa's bones a little, just so she can barely stand, but not much else. She wonders where her fear went. As she explores every last corner of herself, she only finds white-hot rage.

Marisa doesn't mean it either, of course, even when she forces his hand out of spite. A silver blade – not too sharp, but sharp enough – presses against her neck: move it sideways, and it will leave a cut. Asriel's palm is wrapped around the handle, warm in her grip.

'You'd like that, wouldn't you?'

They're standing so close you’d think them lovers. Swallowing, Marisa feels the metal scrape her skin with intimacy only sharp edges possess. Asriel stares at the motion with a truly horrible expression. On his face, hunger is bleeding into hatred and contempt has a tinge of admiration to it, all feelings rooting so deep in each other it’s like excavating ancient history from ice. Ice cuts your hands, parting with secrets.

His chest rises, Marisa can feel it with her own.

'You're insufferable,' says he, a man who made her a widow in her twenties when she had plans for life.

Way behind, the monkey lets out a loud hiss – always closer at their worst. Up dart Asriel’s eyes, above Marisa’s shoulder, and she suspects her own eyes looked about the same when she saw Stelmaria. Full of longing. There’s a lot about connecting with someone’s daemon: for one, it doesn’t often happen. For all else, and that’s a nuisance if you come to hate the person, the connection doesn’t break.

No, that’s not it. Connection leaves room for all kinds of things twisted into it, when in reality, you’re specifically unable not to love.

She wakes disoriented, dizzy from the gentlest aching in her heart, only to find Asriel asleep with a ball of golden fur curled comfortably under his arm, the memory flashes and fades in a second. She’d never felt weaker. She’d never felt happier. She’s holding a knife to her own throat and doesn't know how to tell Asriel that she wants to crawl inside his chest. Slither between the ribs, and nestle against his giant pulsating heart, and stay there for a while before returning to her normal size and ripping him up from the inside. A payback for every good thing she still remembers.

'I hate you.'

Asriel blinks. Looks at her again. His hand is very steady, tangled in vines of Marisa's fingers.

'I've taken the child,' he says a little hoarsely, 'just so you know.'

Oh, that is low. And somehow even worse than I hate you, too.

That one time, when they were fighting, Asriel asked, 'Would you rather I’d let your goddamn husband kill our child?' Well, not asked; he was shouting like a madman. Doesn't matter. 'WOULD YOU RATHER I’D LET YOUR GODDAMN HUSBAND KILL OUR CHILD?!' And Marisa thought, yes. Yes, you idiot. Children are replaceable. You know what isn't? Reputation.

Her reasoning hasn't changed much over the days of isolation. Ignoring every reason, her body keeps exploding with the need of a child she doesn't want. There’s not a chance Asriel could have guessed, but pushing random buttons seems to be just as efficient as inflicting pain on purpose.

Another hard swallow.

'Is she safe?' Marisa strikes the perfect dry, pragmatic tone despite the most vicious yearning building underneath.

'From you? Yes.'

'Good.'

It is good. She doesn't know what her body could enslave her to do if there existed the slightest chance of getting near that child. It is very, very good that Asriel hates her enough to spare her the turmoil. She’s almost grateful.

'I'll fight you to death.' It’s not a warning, not a threat, he simply states the fact. They say all the wrong words. Come to think of it, they're both really bad at saying the right ones.

'Mine on yours?'

Oh.

Right there, it slips away from her: yours, with a trill, throat slightly vibrating against the blade. She blinks. That unexpected soft rolling from the language Marisa only spoke in childhood, and still it creeps into her voice whenever her heart is turbulent enough. Maybe it's stuck. Maybe she's stuck. Just an emotional child who's used to mumbling excuses in French, drowning in chamomile.

But she isn't excusing herself now.

Asriel's eyes narrow – of course, he knows that little thing about her, that little sign of her weakness. What an inconvenient thing for lovers to share everything. He'll wander off to the world holding that knowledge above her head like a sword, and Marisa couldn't torture it out of him if she tried. There are parts in her that to Asriel, by Asriel, will never be un-known. The thought is dooming.

Asriel is watching her, their hands entwined over the handle of a knife pressed to her neck. That's probably the best description of what he is to her.

'Have courage, Marisa Delamare,' he says finally, butchering her maiden name into a vague pronunciation of its meaning: de la mer – of the sea. Thorold, for some reason, was ecstatic to learn it, and Asriel...

You're a sea creature through and through.

He never called her anything but Delamare in private.

I love you, sea creature.

'Have courage to hate me.'

He hugs Marisa then. She fights back on instinct, only there's no space between his arm pulling her close and the blade that the bastard doesn't even lower. She reaches for Asriel’s shoulders to push him away. She ends up clinging to him. Nothing about it makes sense, except that her heart is slowly shredding itself to pieces with longing and hatred. That makes perfect damn sense. As they stand in this monstrous embrace, Marisa thinks that if it's always going to be like this, them meeting by chance and instantly wanting to be whole, she'd rather just step forward and slit her throat now.

She also plans on never forgiving him for kissing her hair: after all, she is young, and youth is full of always' and nevers, among other things that rarely stand the test of time.

Asriel's hand is unresisting when she takes the knife from it; silver clanks back on the wooden table, and then it’s quiet. Still close, they stop holding each other.

'Right,' Marisa exhales, taking a step back before meeting his eyes again: storm-blue and sapphire-blue, on the same spectrum, yet irreconcilably different. 'So, let's go kill each other. It'll make a great show.'

She turns to leave. Asriel grabs her wrist.

'I won't spare you, Marisa.'

'I don't need you to.'

His lips are dry and angry, then wet from hers. No fight this time. Resistance takes a coherent line of thought from the impulse to the action, and Marisa is not in possession of such a treasure anymore. Her impulses and actions are all over the place mixing, overlapping, clashing to the point of disaster. It’s all too much.

Somewhere close, their daemons are grumbling in the softest voices. Opening her mouth to Asriel’s tongue, she imagines them playing: gleams of silver and gold, small hands curled around a thick neck, caressing the spotted fur. Noses pressed together; slightly out of breath, because they are. Kind, kind. The sheer need for the same kindness twists Marisa’s insides, leaving her vulnerable, malleable like a piece of clay in Asriel’s arms when all he’s giving her is rough. Not at all like a lover saying farewell, just rough – merciless even, scratching her with a beard, grabbing her, squeezing so hard that her hips are already anticipating the bruises, and soft like bruised skin, she takes it.

Her daemon whimpers in pain in Stelmaria’s claws, and only then, mid-kiss, Marisa chokes on understanding. They’re not lovers, and they aren’t saying farewell. Whatever she’s doing is her fault entirely because Asriel is sealing a deal they made, a deal to crush each other, stealing her breath and lips to sign on the horrors. Only forward with it now.

He leaves abruptly without giving Marisa a second look, just a slight push as he lets go of her, the slightness of it delivering the worst insult. Stelmaria shadows his step across the room – the leopard’s head hangs low, but it’s not enough to matter, let alone change anything – and out of the door.

There's nothing else.

Except – the monkey racing around.

Except – Marisa's own hot gasps and the furious tears she blinks away. That’s what you get for remembering good things, that vile feeling of being killed in a very precise, specific way. She should have stuck with rage. She should have put another promise into her kisses, a violent one. The regret of giving away tenderness slashes at her stomach with full ferocity of a too-late realization.

She tries to rub Asriel's hands off. She rubs, then rubs more: her palms fire up immediately from the dress, but the handprints persist. At least in the process she disturbs a sore spot from when the maid pinched her this morning. It's better to focus on that. Focusing on honest physical pain, Marisa finds, mostly helps.

She allows herself one sip from Asriel's forgotten glass.

Then downs it.