[i]”No!”[/i]

Skotia’s vehemence rings out dangerously in the dark, his fingers curling tight on Bella’s dress. He is firm against Bella’s softness, his muscles taut against her skin. He’s not blushing any more, the way he lit up when accused of talking like a character, a barb that hit squarely and left him acutely embarrassed. No: he burns, but not with embarrassment. With passion. With pain. And with indignation.

“I’m not giving up on you, and she didn’t either,” he says, one arm around her shoulders, forehead resting against her cheek. His breath is only a little ragged. “Isn’t it obvious, Praetor? She wanted to [i]save[/i] you. She was stupid and selfish and impulsive, but she left because she thought the whole universe was the only thing big enough to give you, to give her loyal kitten.”

One hand crawls up his neck towards his face, but he almost playfully nuzzles it into Bella’s neck, the way that Redana might have when they were both so small. “Besides. How was she supposed to give that love back, even if she’d been smart enough to see it? Her holos were full of slave-girls and servitors being saved from cruel masters who wanted to force them into bed by the heroes and heroines. How could she have [i]ever[/i] touched you and known that it was because you wanted her, not that it was only because she wanted you?” Skotia’s voice isn’t entirely [i]his[/i] voice any more; there’s a quality to it, an antique, like listening over long-gone radio waves. It’s not just Skotia talking. “She probably dreamed of you every night. Of how it hurt when you struck her, how she never thought you would; how betrayed you looked, stuffed in that closet, and how much it hurt to leave you behind; that you must have thought her stupid, and that maybe she was. No, that she definitely was. And that you knew it now, too.”

One hand finds hers, wraps around her fingers, holds it close to his throat. Close enough to choke. He simply trusts, despite everything, that she will not. “Because [i]you[/i] were always the clever one, Bella. The elegant one. The pretty one. The one who could fill out a dress. Do you think she never compared herself to you? She, small and artless and flat, an athlete who could never live up to her mother’s expectations, living beside someone who effortlessly, [i]seemingly[/i] effortlessly, fit into her social role and found happiness in it? She wanted you and she wanted to be you and she wanted to be good for you, and she couldn’t be any of those things, so she ran off to make a universe where maybe she [i]could[/i] be. And when I look at you? I can see it, Bella.”

In the dark, his eye gleams for a moment, a sea-blue. In the dark, his lips on her neck are just like the princess’s. In the dark, he smells of cigarette smoke mingled with a familiar cologne. In the dark, he could be her, except that he speaks with a clarity and cleverness that she never had. But he’s just as idealistic, in his own way.

“You deserve the kind of love she couldn’t give you. You deserve the kind of life you could never have at her side. And you deserve love. So, no, my Praetor. Tonight, by the stroke of midnight, you [i]will[/i] be reunited with your lover, no matter what it costs [i]Skotia of Paris,[/i]” and there, the deep cut, the joking reference to [i]The Golden Apple,[/i] to Bella in the garden reading out loud to a princess burying her face in a pillow as her purr accentuated the passion, and there too the martyrdom, the tossing-aside of his own feelings, the same impulse that led to the splitting of pancakes in bed, “or may Aphrodite open my ribs and remove my beating heart for my failure to beauty, love, and truth.”

And he nips at her neck, the hand tossed around her shoulder reaching down to pull her dress to one side, and in the dark it could be Redana, couldn’t it?

“How’s [i]that[/i] for a holo, Bella?” And in the dark that could be Redana, too, making a dumb joke that makes those fluffy ears burn and makes fingers want to knead an apron, that send lightning down that perfect spine to the very tip of that white tail.