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Entry tags:
ic inbox/voicemail
"Hello, Hermione Granger here. I must be busy, so please leave a message. Thank you very much!"
(text, voice, video, action;
locket, compass, bone charm, letter, owl)
"Hello, Hermione Granger here. I must be busy, so please leave a message. Thank you very much!"
(text, voice, video, action;
locket, compass, bone charm, letter, owl)
no subject
[ Katsa's voice rises both in pitch and in volume. She doesn't know what has happened in this conversation, and her blue and green eyes are wide almost with horror at what she's just heard slip from her own lips.
She's killed too much, this past year, it seems. It had never been herself who had been better—she'd always suspected that. It had always been Po, with all the goodness. Alone in this now, her true nature is returning. The nature of a killer.
She will not cry now. ]
After the fall of Caer Scima. I asked Morla who was responsible, for the names of people who were in charge, because I was angry and I wanted to do something. Morla didn't name you but she named your title. Of course I won't kill you just because she wants it. But to take the rest out of power for the corruption I've seen with my own eyes—that's my decision.
no subject
[ Hermione's voice drops and she stares at Katsa, completely at a loss. Something awful and cold is sliding through her body and making her feel sick - not horror, exactly, but fear, and she has to blink back her emotions, swallow them, her body mirroring the urge; she takes a step back and away from Katsa, her hands shaking.
If her friend knew. Who was responsible for the fall of Caer Scima? Well, that person was standing right in front of her and she had no idea. No one had any idea, no one, and the mark on her face was a reminder of what she had done - that her giving up her sigil had done that, had cost so many lives. The candles she had lit at Samhain, the duelling, the fighting so hard to make peace with herself...
It's almost hilarious and if Hermione had less grasp on herself she might laugh. ]
Your decision is to tell me that you're going to come to my home and kill my friends. That you're going to come and kill the people that I care about because Morla told you to, because you want the person responsible to be held to account. Do you think I'm going to just let you do that? That I'm going to step to one side and give you an open invitation to the Citadel?
[ She shakes her head, the tears welling up in her eyes even as she forces them back with all her might. She stares at her friend with determination, her hands gripping at nothing as she tries to calm her own raging emotions. ]
I gave the monarchs the power that helped them take down Caer Scima. I didn't do it on purpose, I had no idea what they were going to do with it, but it was me. If you want to kill the person responsible for what happened then you're looking at her, Katsa, but I am not going to go down without a fight. Not knowing that you want to kill people I care about too. I refuse to let you.
no subject
[ Now she really is crying, her cheeks hot and her vision blurred, upset and furious that this is going all wrong. This isn't what she wanted, isn't what she meant. But she has no idea how to fix it. Katsa is floundering, lost in both the strangeness of this situation and the fact of her own inability to communicate, this horrible loss of words that always strikes her. Hermione's confession isn't the worst of it, terrible as it is, for Katsa believes even through all this, wholly and completely, that Hermione is the good one, and that about this she would never lie. ]
I don't want to kill. Especially not because a queen told me, not again. And for that power, when you didn't know what it would do—that's not why I'm doing this, and if you think that's the kind of person that I am who would kill you just for—
[ And she stops, horrified. Is that assumption about the kind of person she would be to do that even wrong? She likes to think she's better than she once was, not the snarling monster of her early years. But even if her Grace is not killing like she once believed—she's still a killer and has been one all along.
She wants nothing more than to turn and run. ]
no subject
[ Hermione's heart aches but she is afraid. She's afraid that if she gets too close that she might end up hurt, that this is a game, that the confession is just the beginning of something worse. She doesn't know what to do - and she'd never thought that there would come a time where she would be faced with something like this. She feels sick with it, the myriad of feelings inside of her like a weight on her shoulders, baring down on her and dragging her into a pit that she can't escape from. ]
You told me you would kill Reul, that you were going to take the rest out - the other Marchionesses, the Marquis. What did you want me to do - to say? That I'd stand by you and - and watch you take them down, remove them, do whatever Morla asked you to do? You know me, Katsa. I help my friends. I protect my friends. From any danger, no matter what the cost might be.
[ She breathes out, closing her eyes, her own tears burning at her now. It hurts, it hurts so much, and she doesn't know what to do. She doesn't know how to handle this, the suffocating weight of her pain and Katsa's both. ]
What am I supposed to believe, Katsa? What will Morla say if you attack everyone but me, especially with what you've told me?
[ She bows her head, hands clenched. ]
I can't let you hurt them no more than you can hurt me - no more than I can hurt you.
no subject
[ Oh. She's making this worse, isn't she? Katsa's growing only angrier, her voice hotter. She knows how she sounds. She knows this feeling, and she puts out a hand to steady herself against the wall, her head spinning with tears and sick fury and disgust. ]
And you have to see what's best for everyone. For you. Hermione, please.
no subject
[ Hermione stares at Katsa for a long moment before she shakes her head. ]
So I step down. I stop being a Marchioness. Who replaces me? My second, yes, but what if she disappears or goes home or steps down - [ because Anne was pregnant and had a baby, for goodness sake, this would be madness for her ] - and someone like Tarz takes my place? Is that what you want?
[ She shakes her head, voice a little ragged. ]
I am not just a Marchioness. I am a Protectress, I am the Lioness of the Path. I'm doing everything I can to protect all the people I love and that means staying where I am. If you want to get to the Citadel then fine. You can try. But Katsa...
[ She breathes out, sharp, throat tight. ]
You'll have to get through me.
[ It's the worst choice to make. To protect her friends she has to try and use her power, to keep it, to shape herself to be a true Protectress. She doesn't agree with everything Solais and Ridire were doing, but Lancelot? Flora? Kayneth and Anne and Mako? All of the people she loves that would suffer because of this? She can't abandon them. Not even for Katsa. ]
no subject
But she doesn't believe that she is wrong, either. Only that she is worse. And maybe that's why Hermione doesn't see it. Katsa has to be willing to do this, to throw the knife, because she can fathom doing terrible things that others wouldn't—like using a knife simply to stop a man from talking, all on reflex. She can't change her mind—but she can't stay here with Hermione, either.
She'd felt like this once before, and it had felt just as terrible then, crying her heart out in the forests and wondering how two people could love each other and still have such broken hearts. This is not unlike that moment, except that Katsa is not deciding between keeping her heart or risking giving it away. The answer doesn't just require time to think about it; Katsa already knows the answer. And Katsa is afraid that if she stays here any longer that she will do something that she regrets—a knife to stop someone from talking, and she hadn't even known what she was doing.
Katsa looks at Hermione and holds her eyes for a brief instant, takes in the familiar and dear shape of her face. And then—
She turns on her heel and flees. Down the stairs out the door, it does not matter where she is going, nor who sees her with tears tracked on her red cheeks, loud choking noises in her throat. She simply needs to go. ]
no subject
[ As soon as she turns away Hermione tries to chase after her, but she knows the limits of what she can do now. A Seelie shardholder running around an Unseelie owned tavern, randomly, without having a reason or an excuse? There would be talk and she wouldn't have anything to say for herself other than the truth; that today she hadn't just broken her own heart but she had broken Katsa's, too.
She has information, though. She can go back and tell Lancelot that there is a specific bounty on them all, that there is more than what they thought ahead when it came to danger, but... She didn't want to. Her emotions were a sick weight on her and she didn't want to consider all of this, what it all meant, the way that her heart felt like it had been ripped out of her chest.
What had she done?
Today she had stood in front of Katsa and, in no uncertain terms, told her that she would fight her, possibly to the death, to defend the Citadel. She knew what Katsa had experienced there was horrific in the worst possible way, but... She couldn't let that happen. She couldn't let anything happen to her friends, even as the burst of pain and sadness pressed down her and made her feel sick, something hard in her throat, a lump that she couldn't swallow away. She had sworn to fight Katsa, her friend, and fighting in the Drabwurld...
Fighting back her tears, the knowledge that all their meetings, their friendship, was tinged with Katsa and her mission, the knowledge that each word she'd shared might have given her more room to explore the Citadel, that none of it was an accident, Hermione turned and disappeared with a pop. ]