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!

Comments

[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.