001

[solmate]

WHO: Alina Starkov + OPEN
WHAT: July catch all, including backdated dungeon visits
WHERE: Dungeons, Horizon
WHEN: post-Frostwurm event through July event
NOTES: Starters in top levels, feel free to pm me or send me a private plurk (hellbender) if you want a custom start. I'll also take wildcards!

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[solmate]

Alina's chin tips back, confused. Is she supposed to know him from somewhere else? Tall and pale and one of the two that actually didn't find her domain terrifyingly hostile, it's easy to mentally associate him with Kirigan. Younger, of course, but she'd bet good money that everyone is. Certainly not as collected either.

"I haven't done anything to deserve being down here," her protest comes quickly. It's not a lie, she honestly doesn't like to dwell too much on that Frostwurm encounter that it's easy to push out of her mind. Especially when there are other encounters with him on the brain...

[photophobic]

"No?"

Kylo's tone is more curious than combative, which might be more infuriating than he'd intended depending on just how similar to Rey she truly is.

"From what I've learned, I think most of the summoned have done something that could justify imprisonment. Perhaps all of us."

[solmate]

Her lip twitches, pulling taught into the faintest sneer borne more from immaturity than anything else. She's tired and impatient. She wants little more than to be free of these dungeons. No... not even that. The dungeons are tolerable. It's the stifling emptiness that's taken the place of her light that robs her of a peaceful night's rest more than the thin, straw mattresses.

"Then just call me unlucky," not a new thing. She could go on a tirade about how other people deserve to be down here more than her, but it's not exactly an easy transition from that to needing a note delivered to him.

[photophobic]

"Or unwise," Kylo points out. "If you hadn't sided with your friend with the shovel, you might have been pardoned along with Kirigan. The others who proved themselves willing to co-operate and were released."

He watches her expression for a moment, then lets his eyes track down to the antler points piercing up through her skin. Somehow, he'd expected them to be a fiction of the Horizon much like his own fire-tipped fingers. Interesting.

[solmate]

All Saints, of course they already know each other. She presses a quick breath through her lips, unimpressed.

Should she warn him about Kirigan? It almost tumbles out, a snide comment about how well he's playing the amenable and respectful role so well, how appropriate it is that he wears the mark of patience, but how fitting it is to be marked with death, an omen she was blind to. She thinks she needs him to get back, though. That's the whole point of the note in her hand, the one she's crushing in a tight fist.

Instead she sees him eyeing her collar, and after taking a measured breath, she goes for something slightly subtler.

"I am well aware of how Aleksander feels about obedience," Tipping her chin up, she lets the rest of her hair fall out of the way. He had already seen it in the Horizon. Let him see it here too. Besides Mal, Kylo is the first one she has purposefully shown it to.

"And it was my shovel. I was the one who hit him," she is quick to fall on this particular sword. After all, that whole interaction wouldn't have happened were it not for her, so really what changes if she take the rest of the blame?

[photophobic]

Kylo's head tips slightly. "That's not what your Aleksander claimed. Or what I reported, after I retrieved him from the tunnels where the two of you left him to die."

But he's only half-interested in all that. The grotesque beauty of Alina's collar has his attention, alongside the mention of obedience. The shackles she had worn in the Horizon. Kirigan's mention of their difference of opinion, in the world they had both been brought from.

There's an intriguing picture developing here.

"Kirigan was far more interested in pinning the blame on your friend and his youthful exuberance," he murmurs. "He was surprisingly protective of you, for a man who could hardly walk unaided."

[solmate]

Alina has no face for cards. Briefly, Alina looks surprised to hear that he might have been protective of her. It's close enough to caring that she can get confused, tempted and trapped by the thought that she isn't quite so alone clawing at survival.

It's short-lived, schooling her features back into defiance. She is a tool, a prize that he needs. She cannot forget that. It makes this note— setting the stage of a plan to use him to return to Ravka and then dispensing of him by whatever means necessary —easier to reconcile in her gut. That's all this is.

"He should be happy to receive this then," she offers the note, more crumpled than it was just a moment ago before her fists tightened around it.

[photophobic]

Kylo looks down to her hand, and for a moment it looks like he might not take it.

But he does. And, notably, he doesn't make any attempt to open it to read the contents for himself— examining the rumpled folds where the paper scrunched up in her grip instead, then smoothing it out slightly.

"You want me to pass him a letter," he prompts. Curiosity lingers in his eyes despite the carefully flat expression he wears as he studies her reaction. He tucks the paper up a sleeve. "I'd be risking my good standing with Thorne, to carry this past the guards."

[solmate]

She almost pulls her hand back.

But then he takes it and there is no moving backwards. She cannot take this back. He even treats it delicately, like it's worth something and not the basis for her half-baked plan, a half-truth played like Aleksander might have. It's just survival right?

It hadn't even occurred to her to think of the status with Thorne. She's so used to being on the wrong side of power's good graces that she hadn't considered the implications.

"Then don't get caught," or don't do it. But she doesn't say the second part out loud because... she really does want him to do it.