Write about your father

[birthrightgreen]

My father? He had no right to such a name. She denied it, and I never called him so. But all right, sugar. If that's what you want. Let's talk about the man who sired me.

Women rule in Terreille, and the whole concept of Protocol has been perverted. It used to be a balance. District Queens served Province Queens who served Territory Queens--the strongest and the best, chosen by the dark Jeweled Blood of the Territory. Males served the Queen their heart led them to. The Blood looked after the landen, and the land flourished and it was good. Caste, social standing and Jewel rank worked together, a triumvirate of power and position that kept our people always in a dance of power and protocol and in balance. The strong protected the weak.

Or so I have been told. It is not so, now. Males, even privileged ones, are no more than slaves. Frightened, weak males strip any weaker female of all her power and frightened females ring strong males before they can become a threat. A strong Queen could challenge and change this, but males bed them too young and they rise from their Virgin Night broken and useless. No threat to the SaDiablo reign.

Kartane SaDiablo. Only son of Dorothea SaDiablo, Red-Jeweled High Priestess of the Black Widow Coven and ruler of Hayll. Most of Terreille has fallen into Hayll's shadow, into Dorothea's shadow. She perverts everything she touches, and her son is no exception. Weak-willed, cowardly bastard, he took his ire out on the weak, the helpless. Darkness forbid that a Queen could rise, strong enough to challenge Dorothea's rule. Any such she saw broken, and her son soon became one of her favorite instruments.

He was a pretty boy, I've heard tell. A broken man when I finally saw him, caught in the web that Jaenelle wove around Briarwood, but a pretty boy. His mother thought so as well. He was naught more than a child when she took him to her bed to pleasure her. They say that sort of thing can break a man. He couldn't stop her, so he took it out on those weaker. Servant girls speared so viciously they had to send him away because the other men complained they couldn't use the girls. He hated whores. The gossip in the houses was that he could only rise to the occasion if he caused pain, and only the lower houses allowed the games he wanted to play. He was banned from houses before he found ways to just dominate the young girls without marking the goods. But houses had rules, and he didn't have absolute power.

So he took to playing his mother's game. Find a witch, young, still a girl. Spear her, hard and vicious. Break her web of power and drive her beyond herself. He'd keep them sometimes. Make them play his game until he seeded them. Sometimes they aborted spontaneously. Sometimes he gave them a brew to drink. When the child was gone, he tossed them out to go back to their families or a Red Moon House or the gutter.

My mother escaped his depraved games. She'd worn the Green when he broke her past herself. She couldn't use more than basic Craft when he was done the first night. She escaped and she whored for her keep so Kartane couldn't find her and destroy the child she gave birth to. His child.

Me.

His mother's pawn found her while I was at school. Slit her throat. I ran, so they wouldn't find me.

And then I trained. I killed. Planned men's deaths carefully and cruelly and sent them to it.

Dress rehearsal, sugar. For the right place. The right time. For my meeting with my father.

Comments

[birthrightgreen.livejournal.com]

She stared at him, not really seeing him and took the knife to her skin again.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_deadlydance_/]

"What are you trying to do." he asked quietly.

[birthrightgreen.livejournal.com]

"I want him out."

[http://users.livejournal.com/_deadlydance_/]

He still did not touch her. Not yet.

"He's not in there Surreal."

[birthrightgreen.livejournal.com]

"He is. His blood. Her blood. Dorothea's..." Disgust in her face, shaking hand as another line of blood welled up.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_deadlydance_/]

"It's never just the blood," he offered, one thumb touching her arm, gently swiping at the red there. "It is never just Blood. It is also what is done with it."

"He's not in there."

[birthrightgreen.livejournal.com]

"He raped her. She was twelve. Maybe thirteen.. He took her, and he made her do things.... He had her killed when I was twelve. He hunted....for over three hundred years he hunted...and he hurt more in the meantime. Kept hurting little girls. And she...she let me live because she thought I was finally going to give her what she wanted. Wanted my children. Daemon's...."

She stared at his thumb, the blood, shaking a little.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_deadlydance_/]

"And that is their crimes, not yours. Their blood, not yours. You grew up in the shadow of your mother's strength but the strength you have now, is still yours."

Gently he wiped at more bood, still repeating the words.

"He's not in there."

[birthrightgreen.livejournal.com]

"Is she? Everyone keeps saying, she's in me, still, though she went into the Darkness. But she's not really gone, so long as I'm here, because she was my mother and in me. But if she's in me, then so is he. He's in there, too..."

She cut at her arm, viciously, barely missing his fingers, flinching at the pain.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_deadlydance_/]

His whole hand tightened over her forearm, attempting to staunch the flow of blood.

"She's there because you choose. Blood will choose, Surreal, remember? Who we let in, who we serve. Wo we will be. Your mother choose to hide you. To deny paternity and to protect you from them. You chose her live in her strength. You chose to protect others. No, he's not in there."

[birthrightgreen.livejournal.com]

She snarled a little, trying to pull her arm back.

"He killed her. And now she's gone forever and I don't know where she is...I don't know....she's gone..." Tears running down her face, and she was trembling from emotion and loss of blood.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_deadlydance_/]

He wrapped her into his arms, doing his best to stop the shaking.

"Her choice though," she said into her hair. "This time it was her choice. Her way to help."

[birthrightgreen.livejournal.com]

She resisted at first, struggling a little bit, before collapsing against him, sobbing.

"I miss her. We were just...and she...." The rest of the words were lost in his shirt.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_deadlydance_/]

He held her. Rocked her. Held her more.

[birthrightgreen.livejournal.com]

She was a little lightheaded from the sobbing and the loss of blood. She didn't know how long she'd been sitting there, how many cuts she'd made. Just to get him out. To get the pain out. Maybe if she bled enough, hurt enough, the other hurts would go away.

"I used to hunt...kill...find a mark, take him out. Hard. Bloody. Purifying. I can't...There's no one left to hurt...to kill..."

Except him in her. She could cut him out if she tried hard enough, she was sure.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_deadlydance_/]

"You're hurting wourself," he pointed out evenly, still holding her. "You're cutting yourself. Hurting you, not him. The thing your mother died to prevent from happening."

[birthrightgreen.livejournal.com]

"There's too much..." She was shaking, harder, clinging to him, getting him as bloody as she was. "I have to get it out.,."

[http://users.livejournal.com/_deadlydance_/]

He wanted to take the stiletto from her hands, but wondered at the wisom of it.

"It was never there to begin with."

[birthrightgreen.livejournal.com]

"Always there. Driving me. Pushing. Harder. Faster. Be ready for him..." Her thoughts lost their coherency. "Pain. And hurt. And loss. And now there's nothing to fight. Nothing to dull it. Nothing to make it go away..."

[http://users.livejournal.com/_deadlydance_/]

"I'm here," he said soothingly, finally daring to touch the weapon. "I want to help make it go away."

[birthrightgreen.livejournal.com]

"You can't." But she didn't pull the knife away. "It's all inside. And I don't know..." She looked up at him, eyes still filled with tears and haunted. "I don't know what else to do to make it stop."

[http://users.livejournal.com/_deadlydance_/]

"Don't hurt yourself, for one," he reapeated. Pausing to kiss the tears from just under her eyes. "What they wanted to do to you for so long. What she died for. Don't be the one to actually succeed in the pain. Succeed despite it. Keeping helping. Keep fighting. Keep killing if that's what he takes." He pulled with gentle pressure on the knife. "Just stop cutting away at yourself."

[birthrightgreen.livejournal.com]

She let him take the knife, though there was faint panic in her eyes at the loss of it, and she almost called in another reflexively.

"Who do I fight? There's no one left to kill...They're all gone..." Or near enough.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_deadlydance_/]

"Dorthea's shadow won't be gone for a long, long time," he murmered. "Fight them."

Like he did.

[birthrightgreen.livejournal.com]

She didn't know where they were. How to identify them. All focus...everything she based her life around was gone. It was weakness to cling to him so. She'd never...but she did anyway, sobbing again, exhausted and scared.