Chapter Text
Summer on Ravnica was tolerated, not enjoyed. True, the plane had festivals and fairs and shopping opportunities unrivaled in the multiverse, but none of it could completely distract from the heat. Even the chill that clung to Liliana’s presence as a habit of necromancy could not insulate her from the torrid city. She would have planeswalked away by now, were it not for...
A knock came at the door. “Hi Liliana!”
“It’s open,” she called back from her seat on the balcony. The thunder of boots across her clean floor would be unmistakable even if the voice wasn’t.
“Board games!” said Chandra, her face a signal flare of triumph and expectation.
“Board games,” echoed Liliana, smiling. Chandra could be exhausting, but she was the only member of the Gatewatch whose company Liliana enjoyed. Keeping it that way meant things like ‘board game night.’ And she would never admit it, but the apartment felt empty whenever Chandra cancelled to go on dates with-
Oh.
An elf was hesitating in the doorway, her arms around a paper grocery bag that apparently contained an assortment of fruit.
“I invited Nissa to join us tonight, hope that’s okay,” said Chandra, dumping a stack of brightly colored boxes onto the table. “A lot of these are better with multiple players anyway.”
Two is multiple, said some venomous fang in her mind’s jaw. Liliana shrugged it off, and turned to give the elf a sinister smile. “It won’t bother me. Are you able to brave the terrors of my abode, Miss Revane?”
Nissa made her mouth smile. Liliana is making a joke out of me being scared to enter her apartment, which means that it is safe . “Thank you. Chandra was very excited for this.”
Chandra nodded with vigor, her face almost entirely covered in grin. “So to start us off, I picked up a copy of pachisi last time I visited Mom...”
...
The afternoon crept into evening. Half of the games had been hastily returned to their boxes as Chandra eagerly opened fresh ones, Liliana’s wine bottle was nearly depleted, and Nissa had barely spoken except to ask Chandra about rules. It was entirely too pleasant. As if on cue, the chittering faerie of self-sabotage crept its way into Liliana’s voicebox.
“So Nissa, have you and Chandra been getting along?”
Chandra turned to look at Liliana, suspicious. Nissa simply nodded. “Yes, we’ve been spending a lot of time together. It has been... very nice.”
“I bet,” says Liliana, smirking.
“You should see her paintings,” continued Nissa. She thought of a long day spent watching flowers bloom on the easel. What her girlfriend lacked in botanical accuracy was more than compensated for in emotion.
Chandra, midway through a massive bite of pear, nearly choked. “No she shouldn’t!”
“Oh?” Liliana turned, her eyebrow halfway to her scalp. “Something you don’t want me to see in there, Chandra? Maybe something featuring your girlfriend here?”
“What? No, they’re just really bad.” Chandra thought for a moment. “Actually, Nissa, could I try painting a picture of you sometime?”
“If that makes you happy,” said Nissa.
The elf’s voice was bright sunshine too early in the morning. Liliana clawed at the curtain. “With or without her robes?”
The temperature in the room increased several degrees as crimson blossomed across Chandra’s face. She took up a vigorous interest in organizing her game pieces. “We, ah, that is, it’s not-”
“Really, Chandra?” Liliana laughed. “You surprise me, refraining for so long from horizontal refreshment.”
The table made a soft hollow sound as Chandra’s head hit it. Nissa looked from Liliana to Chandra and back again, her expression blank. “My apologies, but I am missing something. Is... is painting pictures of each other a courtship ritual among humans?”
“No,” came Chandra’s muffled voice.
“Sometimes,” said Liliana, shrugging. “Mostly I’m just marvelling that Chandra hasn’t asked you to sleep with her.”
“Oh, we often sleep together,” said Nissa. “She is very warm, we rarely need a blanket.”
“Not like that, babe.” Chandra raised her head up to stare at the ceiling, her hands clasped as if in prayer. “Lily’s asking if we’ve ever... y’know. Done it. Which, yes, we haven’t, if you have to friggin’ know,” she said with a stern glare at Liliana.
“That’s a pity,” said Liliana. “I encourage you to get the vanilla out of the way so you’ll be ready for the interesting stuff.”
“What’s interesting?” Nissa’s wide eyes under furrowed brow swung between the two women as if watching Izzet rocket tennis.
It gave Liliana no small satisfaction to see Nissa so desperately lost. “Oh, lots of things. Leather and chains and whips- fairly standard stuff, but the classics are classic for a reason. We called it ‘painlove’ when I was younger, I imagine the terminology varies.”
“This is... a thing that couples do?” What kind of person would hurt someone they care about, thought Nissa. Or is it that someone asks to be hurt?
“Some couples, yeah,” said Chandra. “I never saw the point of that stuff.”
“The point, dear Chandra, is the thrill. The danger. The surrender of power to someone else, knowing you are at their mercy.” Liliana took a sip from her empty glass. “And trust, of course.”
“Trust,” repeated Nissa, grasping for something that she understood. She turned to her girlfriend. “I do trust you, Chandra.”
A dopey grin spread across the pyromancer’s face, and the bright red turned pink. Liliana pretended not to roll her eyes. “You two would both make fine subs, I imagine.”
“Hey I could totally be a dom!” Chandra said, offended.
“Of course you could,” said Liliana, turning back to the game. “Whose turn was it?”
“Yours,” said Nissa. “And I still do not understand. Could you teach me, Liliana?”
That was not the reaction Liliana had anticipated, but she had not gotten this far in life letting people know when she was surprised. “Are you sure you want to skip to my neck of the woods? It can make everything else seem... plain.”
“You said it is what couples do,” said Nissa, “so Chandra and I should try it.”
“Nissa, we don’t have to do that sort of thing if we don’t want to.”
The elf turned back to Chandra. “You can tell me if this is making you uncomfortable.”
“Uh,” said Chandra. “I mean, I guess I’m a little curious. but I don’t want you to feel like you have to do anything that you don’t wanna.”
“Taking risks is part of life, and Liliana says that it is enjoyable.” Nissa’s green eyes were fixed on the necromancer. “I would like to learn more.”
“Hmm. I don’t have any toys here with me, but perhaps we can improvise.” Liliana stood up and walked to one of the columns that decorated the threshold to her balcony. “Can you grow some vines here, Nissa?”
“Of course,” said the animist. She closed her eyes and muttered to herself for a moment. Vegetation crept up from the side of the apartment building towards Liliana.
“This’ll do,” said the necromancer. She was getting excited, presumably because it had been so long. “Now, wrap the vines around me and this post so that I can’t move away from it. Do be careful not to crush me, I can’t imagine your girlfriend would be happy about that.”
“I understand.” The vines crept up around Liliana’s dress, loosley wrapping around the column. Good start but she needs to be less gentle to get the intended response was how Liliana rationalized the instinct that screamed Tighter!
“Is there more I should be doing?” asked Nissa.
“Yes,” said Liliana, her voice emphatically not wavering. “You need to talk. Tell the sub what you’re going to do to them, that you own them, that they’re a bad girl who needs to be punished.”
“Is that it?” said Nissa, “is it the same for everyone?”
“Well, no,” said Liliana. Why all these questions? “You can personalize it if you want, but you’re trying to flaunt how much power you have over the person submitting to you.”
“Power,” said Nissa, almost as if it was a foreign concept to her. What does it mean to be powerful? Is a baloth powerful because is can smash through trees, even if a germ can kill it? Is a river powerful because it can carve out a canyon, even if it does not choose to do so?
Nissa looked to Liliana. The necromancer thought of herself as powerful because she could make corpses move, and that enabled her to do... what? Liliana frightened people, and used that to control her interactions with them. The dead bodies were only important in the context of the living ones.
So to have power over Liliana, thought Nissa, I should not do what she wants.
“Nissa? You okay?” Chandra waved at her from the edge of her vision.
“I am fine.” The animist strode toward the column as her vines still slowly spiraled around it, creeping up to the ceiling. Liliana gave her a languid smirk. Nissa held one hand up to Liliana’s face and gently caressed her cheek.
“Good girl, Liliana.”
The smirk dropped for a moment before reappearing. “Is that really the harshest you can be, Nissa?”
“No. I understood your instructions, and I will not be following them. You are not in charge here, Liliana. I am, and I say that you are a good girl.”
The smirk was gone now. Nissa continued, “I am grateful to you for being there for Chandra, for your aid in battle, and for your explanation of how to use authoritative presence in a romantic context. In return, I release you from your need for control.”
Nissa saw Liliana’s hands twitch, which she took as an encouraging sign. “Do not struggle,” she continued, “I am not finished.” Nissa stroked Liliana’s hair for a moment as she collected her thoughts. “Your beauty may be the result of enchantment, but it nonetheless striking, and you are adept at accentuating it with your manner of dress. You are the most socially adept member of the Gatewatch, able to commandeer conversations with grace. And your magical abilities demonstrate considerable willpower and intellectual rigor. You are a remarkable person, Liliana Vess, underneath all the barriers constructed around your self. You could not hide what I see in you, not even if you buried it in the deepest tombs of Innistrad. You are a good girl.”
Like a wave of icy water, necrotic magic blasted from the column and knocked Nissa to the floor. The vines, which had barely crested the capital, shriveled and turned brown before collapsing into dust.
“What the fuck is wrong with you!” shrieked Liliana, magic pouring from her in swirling purple clouds.
“I did not mean to hurt you,” said Nissa, fumbling to sit up.
Chandra bounded down from the stairs to hunch over Nissa, glaring at Liliana. “This was just supposed to be fun, Lily.”
“Don’t call me that , ” Liliana spat back. “And what, I’m supposed to just stand here and take that... whatever the hell that was?!”
“She was complimenting you! For Jaya’s sake, do you just not know what being nice is?”
Liliana scowled, and pointed a finger at the couple. “Do. Not. Mock. Me. Either of you. Just because you have your whole lovey-dovey... thing, it doesn’t mean I have to listen to whatever asinine jokes you try to make at my expense.” She turned away. “I’ll see you both at the next meeting. Do not be here when I return.”
With that, Liliana planeswalked away.
Chandra helped Nissa to her feet. Silently they collected their belongings and made their way out of Liliana’s apartment, into the streets of Ravnica.