( OPEN ) ☀️ part-time soulmate;

[peasant]

CHARACTERS: alina starkov & ???
LOCATION: around the ship.
DATE: post mushroom mission.
CONTENT: just some station downtime!
WARNINGS: n/a for now.

( open prompts to be dumped below! possibly some closed starters to come. feel free to hit me up if you'd like a personalized starter! ♥ )

Comments

[peasant]

[ somewhere along the way, a miscalculation was made. namely her surprise that he's addressing it all at, where she had expected a more predictable approach. avoidance, maybe. denial, if he could muster the energy. outright anger — in hindsight, she doubts he's prone to explosive fits of emotion at all. too uncharacteristic of her to expect, she supposes, with a little pinprick of disappointment.

if nothing else, it might have been satisfying to irritate him.

she smothers out the tiny spark of surprise in her eyes, after a flash of a moment. in the silence that follows, there's nothing critical that warps her expression — only the quiet thoughtfulness of someone who lets it sit in the air, as though his confession deserves space to breathe and time to process.

finally, ] If humanity were so predictably one or the other, our lives would be less complicated.

[ but that's the crux of the issue, isn't it? she'd admired kirigan, at one point, with the same respect zoya and genya had offered him. believed in his crusade for grisha like the rest of his lost ducklings. propped him on the same pedestal ravka had elevated her to. and though he'd been a monster — she still has to live with the complexity of knowing she had loved him, once, when all she had seen was the humanity in the cracks of his cruelty.

revolting as that feels, most days, knowing he had inherently changed her for better and for worse. she resituates the books in her arms, jostling them into a more comfortable position. from her scrutinizing look, it's difficult to discern whether she's accepted his explanation for what it is. after a lingering moment of chewing the inside of her cheek, though, she seems mildly placated. it's a better result, really, than any severe doubling down she might have anticipated from him.

faintly, the edges of her mouth twitch. ]

If this is an apology, I only accept them in the form of chocolate or groveling.

[ which is a way to say — some bickering with him is pleasant enough, when she means to brattishly provoke it. like now, for instance. ]

[dispassioned]

[Well, she’s not wrong. In a way, his life had been easier when he assumed the worst. You can’t be disappointed if you keep your expectations nice and low. Except maybe in yourself, but even then you have something to blame. Humanity and the world.

He hums in something like agreement.]

Maybe so.

[But then he raises his eyebrows at her…peace offering? Seems a little like an offer of truce. He glances at her, amused.]

Ah, well, I’ve never been any good at groveling.

[Or apologies in general, actually. Which probably won’t surprise her. Look, at least he knows his faults.]

[peasant]

Color me shocked. Do your knees not bend?

[ she does not, in fact, look or sound any shade of shocked. that sounds on par with her impression of him. if the ground they were treading didn't feel so fragile, if she was confident her boldness wouldn't lend itself to another accusation on his part — she might voice the thought swirling in her head. namely — he'd probably fuss about the inconvenience of investing effort into kneeling.

truly, she might have expired from actual shock if he had acquiesced to her uncommitted and ridiculous demand.

her head tips, faux-concerned, before she expels an airy breath. it rings suspiciously too close to amusement, which is to say: considering it an olive branch extended, for now, is a fair assertation to make on his part. ]

I can fetch a pillow for them, if it helps.

[dispassioned]

[He snorts at that. A light, brief huff of air through his nose.]

A pillow won’t help much, if my joints don’t work.

[Although, perhaps ironically, he’s here to find a place to do some stretching and yoga, actually. Or was, before she distracted him.]

[peasant]

If? Ah. So your joints must work.

[ a flick of her eyes skims his knees, flitting back to his face. her eyebrows lift, almost expectant. or what would be expectant, if she were solemnly committed to the idea. breezily, she continues, ]

That's alright. But I'll have to postpone my forgiveness until my conditions are met.

[ surely he doesn't care for her absolution at all. that he's even extended an explanation to her is more than she might have expected, after his seeming apathy; more than some others have bothered to give her, in fact. there's no need to press for more than the truth. if there were any doubt she wouldn't hold him to some sort of contrition, she taps a drumming rhythm on the back of a book's binding, and then moves to skirt past him.

there's still a spot in the sunlight and a questionably written book calling her name, after all. ( more than that, there's no need to scurry back to her room and pretend she's not going to read, now, just to save face. ) ]