@misericordii ; og thread.
muted huff scrapes in her nose. ‘ i think you’ll find being ordained has very little to do with anything. ’
something cool and hoarse snaps in mouse’s voice, just for that instant, eyes glued to the road all the while. she isn’t, and the muscles in her throat still shake at that pitch when her, when her fury has her, cold and still and unyielding. the fire lit from or by her hands still burns. the demons still die. a title is just a word, just a name. ( more artificial, even, than mouse. ) a title is just an excuse to drive your boot into the back of those who don’t have names – more precisely, of those who had their names stolen from them and bastardized into something else, something that could be owned, controlled, kept at heel. ( she’s coming off the back of a thousand-yard stare and an aggregate of memories that feel centuries long – seeing in herself every woman they ever burned or drowned for daring to want more or better or for presuming to open her mouth, every little girl held hostage to the supposition that she was curious and out of line and at fault when they found her withering under a grown man’s hands, every time the jezebel, the heathen, the witch, the devil’s wife is always bronze-skinned or darker in every iteration and cast spitting at the feet of some pale-eyed holy man – and there’s no room left in her skull for titles, or the men that would wield them as though that gives them any kind of right to the authority they’ve taken or the costs of the same. )
an exhale threads, thin, through the narrowed gap between mouse’s teeth, lips. jaws tight but gathering herself.
‘ – you know as well as i that secrets only get in the way. ’ a pause. ‘ all this is why i work alone. but that isn’t a luxury we have anymore. ’
her knuckles bunch, and then loosen, on the steering wheel. ( he’s right, that he has nothing to do with it. she isn’t putting blame where it doesn’t rightfully belong. but he’s been loyal to the same church they might yet have to raze to the ground, and she doesn’t think she can be faulted for wariness. his hands still have room to tremble from what they might have to do. to hesitate. hers don’t. – she’ll be ‘heathen’ and ‘murderer’ enough for them both, if it comes to that. but there’s no room left to pretend their hands are clean, either of them. no place for the superior or the sanctimonious. )
‘ i just think we’ll work better together if we can at least pretend to trust each other. don’t you?’
he gets it and he doesn’t. tomas is a man, not a woman. even men of color have more of a chance to be heard in the church. stacked against all odds, she’s coiled and ready to kill and burn and fight until she can’t fight anymore. there’s something to admire in that. he felt a similar fire burn in his belly, but when he wanted to be bishop. when he was called rising star and was promised the world. and now -- now he sits in the dark, alone, with only his nightmares and the persistent feeling of demons in his head. no, being ordained really does have little to do with anything anymore.
“or we could actually trust each other,” he counters, half-smiling, though he’s lost hope when it comes to lightening the tense air around them.
does he trust her? he doesn’t know if he has a choice anymore than she does.
“when we stop, i’ll take first watch. you’ve driven for hours.” he anticipates she won’t sleep much, if at all, but he can’t fault her for that either. the gnawing in the pit of his belly has less to do with hunger and more to do with the feeling of loss and darkness trying to swallow him whole.
their work has barely started.