song_tra_bong | (no subject)

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Six months down, three to go.

Given that most of her normal activities (ex. war, drinking, picking fights) are off-limits, Mary Anne has set up shop in one of the smaller rooms of the castle. It looks like some sort of entertaining-guests-with-tea-and-gossip room; she's made it a reading-the-classics-to-her-child room.

"Sun Tzu said: the good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy..."

They say motherhood changes you. Some things never change.

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Coira lets herself into the castle.

After all, Numbers, Zodiac, Tarot... they all come from the same place, so one home is another's.

She's heard the whispers among their kind about Ruin's wife.

(Four hundred and twenty years together barely spent four with me and now--)

Coira lets herself into the tea room-like place and watches Mary Anne through veiled, narrow eyes. There is quite a lot of hatred in her too-blue eyes, and perhaps behind that a shitload of jealousy.

Not that she'd ever admit to that part of it.

"To secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands..."

Mary Anne looks up from the book, marks her place with a finger and smiles.

It is a very sharp smile.

"Coira. What brings you here?"

She returns that sharp smile with a vicious one of her own.

"I came to see if the muttering were true. Ruin's whore is bearing him a child after all these years. Did he threaten to finally leave you? Having his child won't keep him close, you know."

Her tone is bitter and acidic, her eyes cold.

"Took you six months to work up the nerve? Nice."

She swings her feet off the couch, but doesn't yet stand.

"And as for my husband, he didn't leave when I told him, he hasn't left yet, and given that this is only our first child, I don't expect him to leave for a while yet."

"Actually," Coira says as she slithers into the room, "it took six months for the mutterings to reach my ears."

She glares at Mary Anne's belly.

"First?" She laughs. "As if he will want it, let alone any beyond it."

"I wouldn't have thought immortal gossip traveled so slowly."

She shrugs. "Believe what you want. Or just wait for us to send out the next round of birth announcements."

"You must be aware how slow immortals are to do anything, Mary Anne," she purrs. "It took you almost half a millennia to nail him down with a child."

She arches an eyebrow.

"It took me almost half a millennia to decide I was ready to have kids. Your sources aren't as good as you think."

Beat.

"Or maybe you're just projecting."

Her eyes flash.

"What is it you're implying, Mary Anne?"

"I didn't get pregnant to keep him with me," she says.

"If anything, it would have been safer for me to not have kids, for fear of him taking that as an excuse to run. But I finally felt ready and I wasn't afraid of what he was going to think. If he ran...that was his problem and I'd have sorted it out with him later. I did this for my daughter, not for me."

Her eyes narrow. "But you tried to nail him down, didn't you."

It's not really a question.

"How could I have tried to nail down what was already mine?" she asks. "It wasn't fair of him to try and withhold a family from me because he had some stupid notion in his head he'd screw it all up. Though it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. It was ruined because he ruined it!"

"You ever ask him why he thought he'd screw it up?!" she snaps.

"He might not have withheld it forever if you hadn't tried to outmaneuver him!"

"When? When I was old and it didn't matter and he was young and could move on?" Coira stalks a little closer. "He loved me."

"But you didn't know that!" she counters, eyes bright and defiant.

"As far as you knew, you were going to grow old together and die in each other's arms. But you were scared, so you rolled the dice. It's past time you learned to live with the consequences."

"Of course I live with the consequences," she hisses. "Everyday. My child and husband gone because he couldn't stand strong!"

"Strong's not his problem," she snaps.

"Trying to manipulate him is."

"You think you know him."

Coira laughed as she shook her head.

"He doesn't love you," she insists angrily.

Her eyes are still burning, though her smile is small and satisfied.

"Then he must be lying to me on a daily basis."

"He can't love anyone. Even you said so yourself. No card for love in the suit of Swords," she tosses back at Mary Anne. "He's an accomplished liar."

Her smile is softer still.

"True. But I like the way he lies."

She watches Mary Anne.

Silently.

For a long time.

Then she says, "What did you promise him in return for the child?"

Because it made sense to her that Mary Anne would've had to bribe the man she once called husband.

Mary Anne is quiet in turn, thinking.

"Well, let's see."

She ticks points off on her fingers.

"I promised him I'd love him forever if he rubbed my ankles. I promised him a blow job if he'd get me ice cream when I had a craving at 3 AM. Promised him whatever he wanted for moving a body out of Ramon's kitchen...

Don't believe I promised him anything for my kid."

"Then why is he happy to have a child with you and I had to trick him into having one with me?" she demands viciously, fury red in her eyes.

"That," she says (so frighteningly calm),

"is a question you are going to have to ask him."

"He doesn't want to see me," she says with an annoyed sniff. "Even if he did, he didn't give me answers four hundred years ago... I doubt he'd do it now. But I want to know!"

Coira, in many ways, seems more than a bit childish. One might expect her to stomp her foot and throw a tantrum.

"Understandably," she murmurs.

"If you'd like, I can see if he's willing to talk."

Not that she expects it'd be successful.

Not that she's hoping to succeed.

"I don't need you to be the go-between," she sneers. "You're but a nuisance I keep hoping will disappear."

And any good will Mary Anne may have been harboring goes right out the window.

She doesn't miss it.

"You've been waiting an awfully long time, Coira. I thought immortals knew futility when they saw it."

She laughs.

"Immortals also know everything is just a matter of time."

She smiles.

"Then I hope you enjoy the wait."

Coira glares at her.

For quite some time.

When she finds she can't locate any words to throw back at her ex-husband's new wife, she turns on her heel and storms out.

Mary Anne stares right back, that infuriating small smile playing about her lips the whole time.

She watches Coira leave.

Only after the sound of the other woman's footsteps has quite faded does she check the safety on the gun hidden behind one of the small pillows beside her on the couch.

That done, she returns to her book.

"...but the opportunity of defeating the the enemy is provided by the enemy himself."

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