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It’s rare, Petra thinks, that she feels the bitter, acrid-yellow tang of heavy guilt clouding the mind-link buried in her head.
“Mara?”
Her single eye slides open and nothing seems amiss. Mara lays where Petra had left her, exhausted and happy in the aftermath of their night off from running a kingdom that’s never in a hundred years edged more than an inch away from its war-footing. But she doesn’t seem happy anymore.
“Guilt will crush your soul, in the ascended planes.” Mara Sov sighs and Petra takes her hand, her head conjuring automatically the sense-memory of that ascendant realm to the forefront of her mind. The cold black-metal taste of Queensfoil like liquid mercury and thrice as toxic on the back of her tongue, walking in the twisted mirror-space to a dimension that already shouldn’t exist as dark wind howls and Mara Sov’s voice is borne to her in fleeting snatches on the air.
”Do not linger, my Wrath, lest I give in to my temptations and keep you here forever.”
Petra’s still not sure if that was really Mara, she doesn’t have the head for the complicated web of dimensional rifts and rules necessary to understand why the things she sometimes does work the way they do.
”My Techeuns need mathematics.” Mara says as neon glitters in her eyes like she’s caged an entire element as hers alone. “But I have sung dimensions into being. No such crude lens is needed for my mind.”
Petra’s still not sure what that means, entirely, but asking questions of magic and science makes her think of Pinar, so they’d dropped the topic.
“Guilt over what?” She asks in the present, and Mara’s gaze contains a sorrow that could drown Sol in its magnitude.
“For what I have done to you, my Petra.”
It’s rare that the mind linked to Petra’s like an alloyed metal melted and reforged into her soul stops twisting in intricate plans long enough to reckon with the weight of its own perceived sins, but not unheard of.
“Talk to me, my love.” Petra hums softly, squeezing Mara’s hand. Unable to stop her eyes luxuriating over Mara’s lithe and contoured form, down her face and chest to where the blankets bunch at her waist, then back up, to the shock of pure-white, wavy hair set above bright blue eyes.
Mara rolls willingly into her arms and tucks her head under Petra’s chin, her wife smiling at the willing contact. Mara smells like petrichor, like a lightning strike, with a hint of the ozone-scented fire of an accretion disk’s plasma and the rich darkness of the scars left behind by antimatter weaponry. Mara smells like the Reef -or the Reef smells like Mara- and to Petra that’s all that matters. Mara is home. The thing she fights for, bleeds for.
“The thing you gave up an eye for.” Mara completes the thought process in a markedly different tone out loud to the one of Petra’s internal voice. She mumbles ‘thing’ like it’s made of lead, dragging at her tongue when she speaks of herself.
“The woman I gave my life to.” Petra presses a kiss into the crown of Mara’s breathtakingly soft hair, mouths the words against her scalp. “That’s what soldiers do.”
“My Wrath is no mere soldier.” The words are pressed into Petra’s clavicle by the soft breath of a doubting god, but Petra has always been a true believer.
“I was back then.” She traces fingers down Mara’s back, following the dip of her spine and ghosting fingertips over bones. “Just a soldier. I had a gun and a knife and two different coloured eyes. Do you know what I have now?”
“One less eye.” Mara sighs. Petra huffs laughter.
“One more wife.”
“Alas.” Mara’s voice is soft. “I sometimes wonder why you don’t curse my name with every breath. Why you don’t condemn me to life without your presence? The weight of my heresy should stay my feet.”
“Heresy?” Petra presses another kiss to the forest of Mara’s hair. “What heresy can a god commit?”
“Were I a true god.” Mara counters. “I am a mere mortal.”
“A mortal, perhaps.” Petra cocks an eyebrow, not that Mara can see it. There’s several dozen asterisks on Mara Sov’s mortality but that’s not important, they’re just talking their way around to the real issue. “But mere? Never.”
Mara laughs gently and Petra counts it as a victory.
“Forgive me, Petra, for I have sinned. It has been…” She pauses, for even when working through her guilt Mara is a creature of melodrama. “...never since my last confession.”
“All you need to do is talk to me.” Petra promises.
She feels Mara take a deep, cleansing breath, and relaxes her embrace slightly to let her wife’s arms up as they take their customary spot on Petra’s back.
“I made you.” Mara confesses. “I took you into my service and I broke you, took you to pieces on battlefields across my kingdom and when I was done you didn’t have all the pieces left to put back together.” She rests her chin on Petra’s heart and her Wrath stays quiet, knowing there’s more to come.
“I shattered Petra Venj into uncountable shards, moulded her anger into a weapon and her hate into fuel, turned a soldier into an instrument, my Wrath, nothing more than an extension of me.” There’s the barest hint of wetness coating Petra’s chest and she knows this is as much as Mara ever cries. “You wouldn’t be the woman I love if I had not done those things to you, Petra, I have been so selfish with your devotion, so careless with your love, so cavalier with your sense of self-.” She takes a shuddering breath and Petra hums comfortingly.
“My loyalty.” Petra rests her chin on Mara’s head and talks softly. “My life, my flesh, my blood, my bones and spirit. All given willingly. Every drop and every shard and every iota of my being. Yours.”
“Because you see a god to serve.”
Petra can’t help it and she laughs in spite of the gravity of their discussion.
“I’ve never seen you as a god, Mara.”
“Then why so much.” Mara tilts her head and her ear is pressed to Petra’s sternum, over her heart. “Why so much for me?”
“Because you are Mara.” Comes the simple answer. “Just Mara, whether you have the powers of a god or of a newt you are still Mara Sov, and she’s the woman I love.”
Mara is silent for a long moment, listening to Petra’s heartbeat thud steady under the cage of her flesh.
“A newt?”
“Well the Guardians think you’re a witch.” Petra chuckles and Mara gives her a soft laugh before she speaks again.
“Could I trouble you to say it again?”
“I love you.” It rolls as easily from Petra’s tongue as it always has. “I am not who I am because you made me into a woman who loved you, Mara. I have always been a woman who loved you, and I am only so intact as I am because of your efforts. I do all that you ask and more because I love my Queen, and I trust my Queen.” She tilts Mara’s head up and looks into eyes that still glisten with phantom tears. “Queen Mara Sov has never once let me down.”
“Have I not made you suffer?” Mara asks.
“Never.” Petra kisses her, lifting Mara up in her arms until they’re equally situated on their pillows. “I have suffered, but never have you made me suffer. You asked, and I answered, because for you there is nothing I would not do.” She kisses Mara again, softly. “Because I love you.”
“I am unworthy of your devotion.” Mara whispers, head shaking. Petra kisses her again.
“We’ve had this conversation before. Nobody unworthy of love would worry about it. Mara you have my forgiveness should you need it, always and unconditionally, but you have never lied to me, never cheated me, never forced me into more than I was willing to give you or more than I know you would have given me.”
Mara kisses her and Petra smiles against soft lips.
“You are a treasure to this kingdom, Petra Venj.”
“I serve at my Queen’s leisure.” Petra rests her chin on Mara’s forehead. “It is my pleasure to do so, always has been.”
“I love you.” Mara whispers into her neck as she presses kisses to the pair of ice-bright sabre scars that cover otherwise smooth skin.
“And I you.” Petra smiles and a giggle escapes her throat as Mara’s lips tickle.
“Where would I be without you?” Mara asks and Petra shrugs.
“I couldn’t venture a guess, your Grace, but I do not imagine you would be alone.”
“You’re more unique than you give yourself credit for.” Mara kisses her jaw and Petra ends up on her back with Mara tucked into her side. “But we’ve had this conversation before.”
”And again, I will remind you, you are not lesser than Sjur.”
“That we have.” Petra agrees. Her hand moves up until fingers rest in the delicate hairs at the back of Mara’s neck, caressing a sensitive area in a way that makes Mara hum delightedly and cuddle herself closer. “A new question for you though.”
“Mmm?” Mara makes a questioning sound, buried as her lips are at the point where Petra’s neck meets her shoulder.
“Do you feel better now?”
Mara stops her ministrations and genuinely considers the question.
“Yes.” She decides after a moment. “As so many times before my Wrath has dragged me back from the brink.” She leaves a little bite on Petra’s neck that makes her gasp enthusiastically. “Back to my Petra.”
“A pleasure to bring you back to myself, your grace.” Petra laughs and Mara joins in.
“You are a charming woman, Petra Sov.” Long eyelashes flutter against her neck and Petra can feel in the back of her mind Mara’s perfectly warranted emotional exhaustion is dragging them both back to sleep.
“I learned from the best.” She reaches down to pull the blankets up over them both.
In the quiet of their bond, a thought echoes back and forth.
”I love you.