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Vraska stirred, her scales glinting in the low light of the Undercity’s fungi-illuminated dawn, and Jace reflected on how lucky he was.
“Morning,” Jace murmured, reaching up from his position resting on her chest and tracing Vraska’s cheekbone. A scar marked a tiny notch on her jaw, a trophy from times long past, and one more struggle that Vraska had seen, met, and then lived through to tell the tale.
( God she was beautiful.)
“Not yet it isn’t,” Vraska said, tugging one of their half-dozen blankets up to her chin, cleanly covering Jace’s head and sheltering him from the day. Vraska craved heat, and would gravitate towards anything warm if she couldn’t pull it close. This included Jace, who woke up pulled against her heart more often than not.
Jace closed his eyes and dozed, inhaling the scent of rich earth, cut rock, and the slightly-sweet scent of orchids which trailed Vraska. After a few moments, taloned fingers settled into his hair, claws gently combing through his hair, and Jace let the ease of simply enjoying life take over.
Then the fingers stopped, and the chest under Jace’s cheek heaved with a sigh. “The people are the timekeepers of the regent, not the other way around.”
“It’s too early for politics,” Jace grumbled, nonetheless levering himself up, away from the pocket of heat in their bead and into the brisk real world.
Neither Jace nor Vraska enjoyed the process of waking. Call it one too many sleepless nights, call it a predisposition for the darker hours, call it anything but trauma, but neither slept well and neither wanted to willingly give up hard-earned rest. Not when peaceful rest was still little and limited between and the private hell of nightmares each visited just less than half the evenings.
Vraska had the responsibilities of a Guildmaster, though, and Jace still couldn’t feel comfortable in a day without doing something , and so, reluctantly, and with no small amount of regret, the two of them slipped into morning clothes and went about their day.
The first matter of business was breakfast. Roasted mushroom caps, heavily seasoned with spices from half a dozen planes, and oatmeal made with thick, heavy milk. Jace would finish first and brew a cup of chai (a habit from Kaladesh, the perfect pipeline for caffeine and sugar), while Vraska would check the icebox for old coffee. If there was none, she’d sigh, reluctantly pull out a bag of beans, and begin making a new batch.
(The first time Jace had seen Vraska drink coffee straight from the lip of a pot, he’d nearly choked on his own coffee. He’d offered to make it new, to throw out the days-old brew, and the anguish on Vraska’s face had made him back-track immediately. They had money now, the kind which made reusing old grounds more expensive in time than buying new ones, but no amount of money would let Vraska throw away three perfectly good cups of coffee just because they were old and cold.)
Once Jace felt human and Vraska felt like herself, they’d dress, exchange one more hug and kiss, and head off to their respective lives.
Jace still solved mysteries. He refused to be a tool for the Boros, refused to officiate Azorius hearings and trials, refused to be a living invasion of others’ minds, but he’d never needed telepathy to peel a problem apart and find something more true. His commitment to good, old-fashioned detective work had slowly built credit with the stone-jawed minotaur who ran case assignments for the Boros, while his (admittedly tarnished) reputation as the former Living Guildpact served to open the Azorius archives in their entirety.
(“This is all new law. No one knows anything and anyone who does is probably lying,” the scribe said and he handed over a visitor’s badge to Jace. A Rakdos mask had been tattooed across his face, and Jace recognized the orange stains on his fingers which spoke of a smoking habit that’d been quit for at least a month. “You could say that part of your retirement package as Living Guildpact is a handie from anyone you ask and free drinks and it’d probably fly. The only person who could contradict you is Azor, and I doubt even you could track him down.”)
(“That might be beyond my capabilities,” Jace said, smiling painfully as he stepped back. Supposedly the Azorius had removed the truth compulsion wards from their libraries as part of the post-war reforms, but he wasn’t about to be the one who tested them.)
The fine details of Vraska’s labors were largely unknown to Jace, both because she didn’t like talking about work when they were relaxing and because the cases that took him to the Undercity were largely divorced from the arenas Vraska fought in. Jace found missing money, missing goods, and occasionally missing people, all on scales which could be devastating on a personal basis.
Vraska?
She fought for millions at a time.
There were days Jace felt inadequate. Here he was, tracking down a shipment of grain that had been paid in full, trying to untangle the receipts and charters to see if it was actually a cover for a trafficking ring, and just yesterday Vraska had managed to secure reparations for every Kraul who’d lost either land or life to Azorius law enforcement and Dervakin zoning laws. While Jace was busy playing detective, Vraska did the painful, dangerous, and mind-numbing work of breaking down millennia-old systems of discrimination.
(Jace would sometimes pause in the middle of his life and just stare, trying to wrap his head around the scale of what Vraska did relative to his own work. Vraska was changing the legal and political landscape of an entire plane, and he solved mysteries .)
(It was the sort of thing which made him feel small, some nights.)
Some nights, Jace and Vraska missed each other. It was unavoidable, really, the natural consequence of leading incredibly significant lives. A particular bill would get filibustered in the Golgari senate, a certain case would turn out to have living consequences, and for one reason or another Jace and Vraska would not end up in the same bed that night. Jace would send telepathic messages, Vraska a letter carried by beetleback riders, and the apology would be both accepted and validated as worthy work.
(It didn’t stop Jace from worrying, though.)
On some days, Vraska wondered how she’d earned the life she had.
Vraska was an unrepentant murder, many times over. Yes, assassination was legal on Ravnica. Yes, most of the people had it coming, in one form or another. Yes, she’d been doing what she needed in order to survive and she’d do them all over again in a heartbeat if she’d been forced through it once more. A vestigial part of her, however, something which was either propaganda or a soul (she couldn’t tell which was which, these days) wished that there weren’t so many specters in her dreams.
Being a revolutionary also seemed a path destined for misery. Vraska was constantly the target of jabs (political, social, and literal), constantly kept in meetings which felt utterly pointless despite the fate of multiple species for the next century regularly hanging in the balance, and drew a target on the back of the man closest to her with her proximity. Jace didn’t care about the occasional attempt on his life, actively encouraged her to not leave the governmental offices until she was satisfied, and would sit vigil with her to copy write legislation during the emergency sessions where no one else could be trusted.
(“Happened often enough as Guildpact,” Jace had commented dryly, Vraska’s dervakin assailants staring blankly into nothingness as they lived out some absurd fantasy. “Besides, I think this one is actually from a labor violation case. The clan markings are too low for your class of enemies.”)
(“If you leave it unfinished the project will eat at you endlessly,” Jace said, leaving a paper cup of coffee at Vraska’s elbow. Touch was hard when work was hard, and that bit of space that was worth more than gold. “Besides,” he added, smiling with the shy confidence which had slowly been becoming more common as they moved further past the plane-wide war, “Once you’re done I get to spend the rest of the evening with you, and I don’t want to split it with that pulp-based bastard.”)
(“You really think of everything,” Jace would mutter in awe, eyes blue with magic as he scanned reams of farming reforms with a speed and attentiveness that would put an Orzhov advokist to shame. “You’re amazing, you know that?”)
Despite the murders, though, despite the ongoing political turmoil which was Vraska’s regency, despite the hundred and three reasons there were to never date someone who, until recently, had been classified as a ‘monstrous humanoid’ (as if monstrous was something born into, rather than something done ), Vraska found herself in the regular embrace of perhaps the most wonderful man she’d ever met.
Jace touched Vraska. He did so carefully, like the privilege it was, and asked for permission every time. He brought Vraska gifts, lost texts and spices and scrimshaws that seemed to disturb him immensely but fed her desire to decorate their (now-spacious) rooms with personal touches. He found ways to compliment and praise her, to fawn , and while from the courtiers of the Dervakin such actions were pitiful...
The same sentiments felt different coming from Jace.
Honestly, everything was different with Jace.
Vraska wanted time with Jace, instead of just tolerating it. It was easy to do things for him, to go half an hour out of her way to track down his favorite food stall, to slip into a loose silk robe that had made him trip over their coffee table the first time he’d seen it, to see a relatively calm week coming up in her schedule and organize with the Boros sergeant that issued Jace his cases to make sure that the place’s police could do without one bedraggled telepath for a while.
( If only I could secure interguild cooperation for issues besides my love life , Vraska thought idly, turning the page on a previously-censored history of the Golgari Purges.)
(She paused, finger hovering above a paragraph on the use of healing spells on the undead. I wonder if that minotaur cleared Jace’s cases to keep the peace, or if he’s genuinely rooting for us .)
Then the door opened up and Vraska had more important things to consider than Guild politics.
“You’re a vision,” Jace said, the illusion over his robes flickering once, then disappearing. Underneath the glamour was dirt, both in stains and clods, everywhere from his knees to a smear across his face. Detective work apparently demanded a good deal of rooting around in filth, and despite the fact that Vraska literally worked underground Jace always ended up needing a bath more than her.
Vraska nodded, allowing herself to smile and glance away at the compliment. “Thank you. I’ll heat some takoyaki and get a screwdriver together.”
The sound that Jace made as he staggered over to the bathroom was somewhere between whimper and praise, and Vraska smiled mournfully as he slowly shed his garments, baring his back and chest. He had too much scar for his skin, twisted and glassy where Tezzeret had taken a manaknife to his back, lighter white lines across his chest where half a hundred misadventures had led to him getting closer to sharpened metal and primal claw than he’d intended. Jace had lived through it all, and eventually came out of it all a better man.
Vraska hated the scars. She hated the way Jace was afraid to be shown appreciation, afraid of praise. She hated the knowledge that some amount of Jace’s mind was missing at any given time, that he’d put part of it behind walls, destroyed entire years of his childhood, and lost segments which explained precisely how his personal history had ended up more riddled with holes and gaps than a kraul hive.
So Vraska adapted. She worked with Jace to figure out his tastes (again), left notes to explain where she was going and when (just in case), and whenever Jace came back from a case that reminded him of something he couldn’t remember Vraska made sure she had time to sit down with him and listen (instead of heading out to turn whoever hurt him into a lawn ornament).
With two drinks and a platter of fried octopus in hand, Vraska made her way to the bathroom. Jace’s cloak (which by all counts deserved the trash heap) was strewn over the floor, and one long, toned arm hung over the edge of the clawed tub.
“I love you,” Jace said, head lolling over to look at her, a smile on his face.
Vraska smiled back, settling onto a chair left beside the bath for just this purpose. “I have food and alcohol, of course you love me.”
Jace’s gaze turned to the plate, and he reached out one hand. “I also love Simic cuisine, though not as much.”
Vraska tsked , batting his hand away. “You’re soaking wet, don’t just grab it.” Vraska, plucked a fork, stabbed one of the treats, and held it out towards Jace. “Here. Try it this way.”