white lace and promises (black leather and threats)
"You were not alive when last I had been awake."
It was the duty of a sole few to negotiate Brighid's objective statements that lacked objective, pierced without stating, presented a front and did not advance. The Jewel did not ask a question, but neither did she press an accusation. The words hung in the air solider than the whips made rigid. They did not melt, did not chill.
How very like Brighid, to beg a response without even engaing the mark of a question.
Regardless, Mòrag rose to the challenge. "And if I had been, Brighid?"
"If it were so," Brighid began, propping chin upon flaming fist, "my suspicion is that you would have been no different. You would have been a child, of course, but to imagine you as irresolute, childlike..."
She shook her head. "No." As simple as that.
Mòrag frowned. "As if I have not learned all I know from you, Brighid? As well as Aegaeon."
"You learned cunning from being underestimated. You sponge up technique from your surroundings. You must realize that I could not have taught you a thing - and would not have wanted to - if you had not been equal to it."
"Equal." The thought made Mòrag scoff. "Yes, Brighid, we are equal, as Drivers and Blades are equal, but it would be pure folly to deem me equal to you."
With enough repetition, the word almost seemed to lose its meaning. What quantifier, upon such a relationship as they had? It had only been a year, if that, and already they cleaved to each other as tightly as any two souls could.
"You desire control, Lady Mòrag, and you have it."
She had held firm to that title ever since the first time it had crossed her lips, as she stood in a column of receding flames with her Driver and felt the reality of Ardainian monarchy settle around her once more. Mòrag did not call her Blade Lady Brighid. Seldom did anyone call Special Inquisitor Mòrag a lady.
"Control of you, Brighid?" Mòrag felt a whinge seep into her voice - not to a degree that anyone else would, could, should mark, but it chafed at her. Such weakness.
She had been priming herself for adulthood long before the whispers had started that it might indeed fall to her to awaken the Jewel. At first, she had separated herself from the impulse, the impetus; she was merely fitting herself into the mold that stood before her.
But by and by, the conditioning became integrated. She had become the Special Inquisitor and the Special Inquisitor had become her.
Mòrag did not display smugness openly, did not taunt when not necessary. But when the opportunity came, when the victim of her victory appeared, Mòrag was ruthless and she knew it.
And now Brighid knew it. Had it ever been a secret?
Brighid's jaw betrayed her; it gentled, softened. "You are an officer, Lady Mòrag. It is an ugly task, if a proud one. Even, because it is a proud one." She reached out a polished hand, lifted Mòrag's chin. "We must bear that together."
We must. Together. Mòrag, bolder and bolder, brought her own hand up to place over Brighid's that had moved to her cheek.
"Are you not protective of your legacy, Brighid?"
"My reason to be..." Was it battle, and only battle? Indeed, beyond battle, war? To be an instrument, and one of destruction principally?
Not destruction, but keeping the peace and conquering. Two destructive lots, by their nature. Brighid sighed.
"Of course I am. I do not dream that I should ever be anything else but by your side, in this work that we do."
Because they both would lose themselves, and mightily, if not for this identity in the Empire, the Sword and the Shield. This routine, this step from palace to plateau and stage to summit, bore what countryside life could not.
Mòrag's control. Brighid's precision. The dances they danced about all of Mor Ardain, all of Alrest, only growing swifter and only swirling deeper into the vortex of power. Perhaps it was not tricks that Mòrag resorted to, but it was an array of ideals implicit that braced at her back and gave her the advantage she needed, desired, over any senator, any soldier, any Gormotti farmer or Driver hopeful.
And yet, it could be romantic. Each new horizon, each tactical recontextualization. For this pair, it was as brisk and as immediate as gloves, and Mòrag never acted with the gloves off in a way that could be recognized.
Indeed, no one else would ever be equal to the promise and the prowess of the Jewel.
A Blade's dream. A Blade so privileged as to be able to have one, to covet one, to realize it. Of course Brighid, who had voiced it, would be the one to receive it. "And I cherish that dream," Mòrag made her transparent reply. Was this not all they had?
Brighid retracted her hand, tapped her foot and pursed her lips with a single bout of impatience.
This was not only a discussion of pretty-pink preternatural accord.
"You must swear to me" - it was the most unsure, vulnerable, even innocent that Brighid had ever looked - "that you will never use that brass tongue of yours to rile me."
She was not commanding. She was asking, begging, pleading.
It twisted Mòrag's heart, surely, to bear witness to this rare moment, but it was not only a strange, acute grief that she felt. No, she felt her own posture, never quite so malleable, bear up under the weight. Mòrag Ladair, inbecoming, partner to Brighid and sworn adversary to wickedness.
Brighid here admitted that she could be manipulated, that she could be led by the power of Mòrag's hand just as any other soldier, from the simpering to the sinister. That she was not above the intelligence that Mòrag herself wielded, separate to the driving whipswords. And it was not only due to her being a Blade, but that, too, was a factor.
She could see it painted plainly on Brighid's eyelids, which always inexplicably sparkled with a fine shimmering film of glitter. The faintest twitches that only Mòrag was ever close enough, still enough, to see.
An imperative that did not command.
The answer was not "Of course I wouldn't" or "How could you ever suspect such a thing of me?"
(It was surely not Mòrag's place to broker offense.)
The answer was, in plainest tones, "I swear it, Brighid. To the last of our lives."