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Kanaya lies with a woman tucked into each arm. It's not a bad place to be, even for someone who struggles with sleeping as much as she does. Before them, before this, she would have listened to the push and pull of the water to try and quiet herself. Now she has them and their breathing and that is enough.
Feferi sleeps with her face pressed into Kanaya's neck. The great mass of her hair tickles Kanaya's nose but this has been going on for long enough that she only frowns a little before the urge to scratch it goes away. Feferi sleeps whole-heartedly, on her belly with limbs sprawled and eyes covered - far more trusting than any heiress should really be. Then again, Kanaya would probably be the same if she'd grown up with guards at her door.
Aradia sleeps differently, her body curled and her hands curled into fists. Her breathing is lighter, and she always faces the exit. That's what life as a redblood will do to you, and even in the glory of the palatial building that paranoia hasn't had a chance to fade.
Not everyone appreciates their leader's choice in partners. Kanaya knows this plenty enough as a jadeblood, but Aradia is four shades lower on the hemospectrum, and Kanaya knows she has it worse even if she's never had a chance to see it.
Kanaya blinks up at the ceiling. It's a riot of pinks and purples that still seem outrageous even after a whole sweep at Feferi's side. Kanaya doesn't think she'll ever grow tired of seeing such bright colours - as bright and lovely as Feferi herself. Most of the pinks come from luminescent seaweeds that creep and curl along the ceiling, and they shine brightly enough that when Kanaya looks between Feferi and Aradia the differences between them are shrunk so much that they're hardly noticeable. The delicate fans around Feferi's face are the only real clue as to who she is, in this light. Out in the sun-drenched surface waters that Kanaya knows so well she would be blatantly royal, what with her brilliant pink scales and the flashing patterns on her fins. But here the glow of the seaweeds paints Aradia in the same colours, and Kanaya a muddy green not even worthy of being called jade.
Kanaya's beautiful queens, the both of them.
Feferi scowls in her sleep, and Kanaya runs a hand over the floating cloud of her hair to soothe her. Predicatably, her fingers catch on a knot approximately the same size as the entire rest of Feferi's body, and Kanaya rolls her eyes and pulls back her hand before she loses it. She pulls back further, lifting herself from their bed with a flick of her tail and then propelling herself to the doorway with another. She settles there, tail coming round in a sleek green curl, her eyes on the bed. It only takes a minute or so for Aradia and Feferi to move away from one another. Feferi sprawls wider, all lazy confidence, and Aradia shuffles away from her without waking.
Kanaya is conducting an experiment. She waits until they're both deeply asleep, and then she extricates herself and watches to see how long it takes for them to move apart when she'd not in the middle. She waits and she watches and she worries. She doesn't want to be an auspistice. Kanaya loves them both in a different way to that, and she feels as if the shape of her place in this relationship is shrinking in around her, locking her into a role she doesn't want. Aradia and Feferi are both so bright and passionate and she loves them for it, but it’s those similarities that push them apart where Kanaya is close to both of them. Feferi - the world on her shoulders, a young woman who are learnt too young what it means to pick her battles where Aradia sees each and every injustice as something to be personally fought. Politics rules both of their lives, and Kanaya's in turn. It's inescapable, Kanaya knows, but it doesn't stop her from wondering who the three of them would have been on an Alternia that was just a little bit different.
Perhaps Feferi's smiles would be more genuine rather than the quick, sharp things they've become. Perhaps she'd be softer, in heart and in body, without the need to protect herself from assassins. Maybe Aradia wouldn't take every defeat so personally, and would have time to focus on her own happiness rather than the wellbeing of the countless redblooded strangers she feels so indebted to help.
They might never have met. They'd certainly be very different people.
Over on the bed, Aradia tosses her head and then rolls towards Feferi, looping an arm around her. Kanaya begins to smile, but it slips sideways and then falls when Aradia frowns and rolls away again.
Gl'bgolyb grumbles somewhere in the deep, and even from a kilometre away it rattles the walls of the palace. Feferi sleeps on, unbothered, but Aradia shifts for long moments until sleep takes her again.
Kanaya presses herself flat to the wall and slowly relearns how to breathe.
Gl'bgolyb is hungry. She always seems to be, these days, and her tantrums unsettle their world from the dark depths right up to the shallows where the redbloods live. Even when she's quiet she invades their lives and their bedroom - she's the source of many of their worst arguments, ones that leave Kanaya wondering if she's watching her quadrants splitting apart right in front of her.
They'd had a rule that their bedroom was a safe place where they couldn't argue, once, but that rule is long forgotten. So they argue in the throne hall and they argue in their bedroom, and some nights they don't sleep together at all. Aradia angry at Feferi and Feferi angry at Aradia, and both of them angry at Kanaya for never taking a side.
Gl'bgolyb is hungry, and Feferi is right in that if she isn't satiated she could kill them all. Aradia is also right in that lowbloods shouldn't be the only ones to suffer the consequences of Gl'bgolyb's hunger. They argue over it ferociously, and then they look to Kanaya, and she can't choose. She won't. She does in many things - it's the reason why she worries about whether she's becoming an auspistice, or is one already - but not in this. She's not a politician. Not like them.
Kanaya almost falls asleep like that, curled by the door, when a soft shrill sound wakes her. Feferi is stirring, and she's fierce as always, flinging out a hand tipped with claws sharp enough to slice flesh. Kanaya is off the floor and by the bed in a sleek motion of her fins, pulling Aradia gently to the side and then running a soothing hand over Feferi's dark curls.
"Hush," she whispers, as Feferi heaves and twists, her gills flaring so wide that Kanaya can see the pink of the blood-rich filaments that line them. "Feferi. Hush, sweetling."
Feferi wakes. She has no moment of half-awareness - she is asleep one second and awake the next. Her hands flex, and her eyes dart to the trident leaning against the doorway. Kanaya strokes her hair again, and Feferi's eyes jump to her face. Her breathing slows, and her gills flatten. "Kanaya."
"You're safe," says Kanaya. "I'm here."
Feferi nods and closes her eyes. Her face is creased with stress, and it doesn't even leave her when she's sleeping. Feferi goes from waking arguments and a nightmare for a lusus straight to horrorterror dreams. She says that she's always had them, that they show her the future - a future where Gl'bgolyb will save them all. Kanaya has never seen the dreams herself, so she can't say whether it's the truth. She's only ever seen the aftermath, and for all Aradia in her greatest moments of anger will call Feferi a spoilt princess Kanaya doesn't know if that's true.
"This isn't your sole responsibility," she tells Feferi, with as much severity she can muster when Feferi is in this state.