OOC: Takes place the day after this thread. Previous thread takes place after the recent SL challenge.

Day had rolled into night and the passage of time had slipped by, lost and forgotten amongst the throes of her grief. Before she knew it, the sun had risen high once again and she had still been there, at the tree, curled up having fallen asleep to the exhaustion of her own tears. Now that sun beamed down through the canopy of jungle trees upon a wearied queen as she crossed the Ecrosian border with the gazelle calf clamped between her teeth.
She had not been away for a whole night since before her daughters were born and the thought of them missing, perhaps worrying for her grips her heart in a vice, another sin she has committed against her family.

Slaine disposed of the carcass in a nearby pride cache, glad to be free of it's burden to walk the rest of the way home. To her den. Their den. The azure lioness paused, raising her head a little, breathing a little harder as she realised that her body had moved on autopilot, that she had thoughtlessly intended to slink back into their home and into her husband's bed as if nothing had happened.

What a foul creature she had become. And how she despised herself for it.

No. It would be easy to fall into Alaric's arms, to chase back down all the thoughts and feelings that had been brewing beneath the surface for months. But he had to know, had to finally know that it wasn't he who was at fault. It had never been him. It was her. And she could no longer go on lying. He had never deserved it.

She stands, stilled by purpose, tear stained eyes closing, mustering a resolve from deep within. Lips part, calling for her husband. @Alaric

ART BY KIM, CODE BY LARS

Alaric was painfully naive for such a mighty King. Oblivious to the secrets harboured by both of his wives, even if he is somewhat aware of Slaine’s distaste for his lifestyle. Despite the fact that he had never hid himself from her (hell, she had raised babies that were not her own) and she had fallen in love with him all the same, he knew she was not happy.

It wasn’t his ideal, either, with tinuviel in the lagoon. Long he had envisioned a cohesive family, a united force, and being stretched between two prides (with tension brewing, always) was not the dream. It felt impossible to keep them both satisfied when he was torn between two places, feeling emotionally wrenched from one pride to another. Back and forth.

And on top of it all there was duty, and with that the looming threat of open war (verbalized, now, by the Brook. Luther’s actions had brought him grief lately, too, and he knew damn well there would be consequences to pay for the attack on Leonie (despite the girls smart mouth that had deserved the harsh lesson).

At the end of the day he grew tired of it all. Alaric was long ago ready to hang up his crown, holding fast to it out of an unwavering need to keep them all safe and protected. He could not trust his sons to do so, not yet, and could not imagine handing over the long established Mire to any other.

All of this weighs on him when her summons rings out, striking instant fear to his heart. Why the hell would she be calling him if she was not hurt or otherwise waylaid? Slaine knew well the way to their den, after all.

So his paws hasten and when he spots the shimmer of dried tears his first instinct is to press close, to comfort, to soothe. “I’m here, mon liebe; what is it?” There is no visible sign of harm and so he looks to her, confused, while seeking to pull her in to his arms all at once.

image to kim + code to pine

He comes, of course he does. The pale King of the swamp appearing before her all at once, powerful and protective. He reaches for his azure queen but she shies from his touch, taking half a step backward with a small shake of her heavy skull."Nae, my love. I dae nae deserve yer concern." Sláine cannot allow him to touch her, she would crumble, fall into him and then the truth would only sting all the more.

And yet she still looks upon his skin with hunger, a longing that she has held for so many years now. How it had all eventually fallen at her feet, everything that she had wanted had become hers. Alaric had given her it all. She had arrived in Amaryllis a stranger from a foreign land so remarkably different to this one, but he had given her purpose, family, love. But it had not been enough, not for a wretched, broken soul like hers.

"I need tae speak o' my betrayal." She began, tear stained eyes pressing closed and opening, having little idea how she was still able to remain standing. But the strength must come sometime and it arrives then, shoring her up to look her innocent husband in the eye. She has been asleep in an ice dream for too long and now she had begun to thaw and waken. "I hae made our marriage strained an' difficult because I felt jealousy over yer other lovers, yer other wife. I haed nae right tae make ye feel like ye were in th' wrong. Nae when I ken(knew) all along how it was, how it would be." Of course she had known, there were many children between them and only a few were of her body. But they were all family, nonetheless.

"I wanted ye fer myself." Her tail snaked about her thigh, coiling tightly. "But I hae been hypocritical, treacherous. I hae nae let go o' Ronin... I kissed him yesterday an' I asked him tae be mine, tae which he said nae." Alaric had never struck her outside of sparring, but Sláine braces herself anyway, unflinching, almost willing him to strike out. To measure out the pain of her heart in welts across her flesh. "I am sae sorry fer making ye feel tha' this was yer fault. Nae any part o' it was. It was me." @Alaric deserved so much more and she had finally grown the backbone to let him know it.

ART BY KIM, CODE BY LARS

Alaric offers comfort and she gives him a shoulder, instead. A rejection with words that send an icy pit to his stomach. Amplified when she mentions betrayal, and dammit he knows.

He wants to stop her. The urge is abrupt and smothering, consuming, as his claws flex against the loamy floor of the Mire. Winter has hardened it but even so it is no match for the weapons he keeps sharpened and ready, always prepared for the next threat to rear its head.

So, then, what does he do if the threat is from within? What does he do if the threat comes not in the form of the physical clash of teeth and claw, but the emotional rending of deep buried organs. Strange how he can feel his heart already tearing before she even speaks, knowing damn well what was coming. Hadn't he always known? Hadn't he seen it, felt it, every time they were in his damn company?

So why the fuck had she chosen him?

@Sláine speaks of other things, of jealousy and the tension in their marriage. Things he had known of but had felt helpless to fix, no more able to change that part of himself than he was able to change the color of his fur. For a brief second -- a breath or two, maybe -- he thinks that this is it. This is the betrayal she has come to make amends for, and maybe (just maybe) this can be the start of something better. His ears rise fleetingly from where they had pressed against his head for that momentary second of hope.

And then she lifts it over her head and smashes it to the ground, shattering it in to irreparable pieces. Instinctively a mask slides in to place, hiding away the raging grief that douses the Mire King. Slaine might see it for a second, this howling pain, before his eyes drain of it all. Empty.

Internally, though? He wants to scream. He wants to yell and shout and rage and throw a tantrum like a child. He wants to hurt her the way she has hurt him. Again his claws flex, scoring gouges in to the half-frozen earth, his body practically vibrating with a barely restrained hurricane of emotion.

"Asked him to be yours," he repeats in a voice that is chillingly lacking of any emotion, "and then what? You'd just... leave? Just like that?"

It struck him, then, that it must have meant nothing to her. All of their time together, their friendship that had strengthened and, eventually, blossomed in to something more. When he had thought Ronin dead and gone and Slaine's marriage another casualty of life's brutality. Remembering how certain he'd be that she'd leave when the man returned from the dead; his shock (and awe) when she had chosen him. Their children; cubs born of an unshakeable love, to be raised with the woman who had taught him so damned much. Opening his eyes to a whole new way of life.

Their children....

"Have you been fucking him all this time, Slaine?" Because this is the next thing that occurs to him. If her feelings had not changed (and damn for all that Ronin pissed and moaned he knew that no man rained hellfire on a pride if not for love) had he been played a fool all along?

image to kim + code to pine

She was not blind to the distress of his talons as they sank in to the winter earth. Azure skin rippled in a cascade of goosepimples as she observed the movement, perverse in hope that his claws would find a way forward, that he would seek to dole out his punishment only upon her body and then be done. Their union to remain in tact after a heated and emotional exchange of claws. She would deserve neither of course and it is her selish wants that have brought her here and caused so much pain. But violence was a language she could comprehend far better than the aching twists and turns of the heart. Especially when she was forced to witness the full affect of her actions on those she loved.

But @Alaric does not deliver his vengeance so impulsively and though it slips by quickly, Sláine is witness to the emotional toil that flares across his handsome face, igniting into a fire that is so quickly smothered by... nothing. Her own ears strain forward, feet pressing in turn against the swamp floor. Her movement anxious and defeated in comparison to the agitation and rage of his own.

They stand apart, potential battle lines drawn. But it is the hollow tones of his voice that threaten terror to stir within her. "and then what? you'd just... leave? just like that?" "Nae!" She replied, incredulous and firmer than she had any right to be as her gaze locked on to his own. Once honesty had begun to flow she was not able to stem it. "I wanted what I thought ye haed. I wanted both." Though of course now (And even then, really) she realised what an impossible and selfish dream it had been. "I wouldnae hae left." She continued, tail ever tightening upon her thigh. "I love ye still. Ye ken(know) tha' ye hae been everything I hae built my life around. More than any other an' more than Ronin. Nae just now, but fer years. But I ken(knew) tha' ye may hae ...left me." Her features wilting in defeat. It would have destroyed her to be apart from Alaric, and yet, who would blame him? They had agreed and she had promised. A promise she had smashed in to pieces.

"Have you been fucking him all this time, Slaine?" Her chest trembled and though dry, her mouth finds a way to answer once again. "We lay together once." She tenses, watching him for any flicker of movement, readying to defend herself and at the same time, hating herself for the pain she would cause with this confirmation. "It was afore th' cubs were conceived." She added, her skull shaking slightly from side to side. "It was a mistake an' we agreed tae keep away from eachother after tha'." And for a time, they had, though Ronin himself had suffered an accident and forgotten the encounter.

"I hae tried to move on from him. I cannae help my love fer him anymore than I can deny my love for ye, Alaric." Tears formed fresh in her eyes. "I chose ye sae many times. I chose this." She gestured with her chin to him and then to her. Ronin had given her ample opportunity to change her mind, but she had always refused before, choosing Alaric again and again. Until eventually she had admitted the truth, that she no longer wanted to choose. But that had come too little, too late and Ronin's feelings had changed.

"If I haed asked ye tae choose between me and Tinúviel, could ye hae?" She asked, raising her head, though her expression was one of sorrow rather than confrontation.

ART BY KIM, CODE BY LARS

Once upon a time he would have carved his anger in to her flesh with teeth and claws, leaving her bloodied and broken, lessons laid harsh upon her skin. In a world much different than this one he would have reminded her what her infidelity cost, and then he would have hunted down the bastard who dared try to take what was his. Where he was from there was not love like this and thus there was not pain like this; there was reward and punishment and he had doled them out equally.

Alaric would have forced her beneath him to claim her as his again and again, and he would have known her betrayal to be only that of flesh and blood and not of love. Wives were possessions and if he lost her to another it would have meant he was not worthy of leadership, 'lest he find the bastard and prove himself superior.

This, though? This agony that clenched so tightly around his heart? This was new to him. It was not the same as the consuming grief that had wrenched it from his chest when he had lost Erna; in a way it felt even more powerful. For it was not death that tore her from him, it was not something so final.

"Both," he repeats, because it is the only word that his mind grabs on to. There is an emptiness to his voice, a numbness that bleeds all emotion away, and for all her protesting (and for the pain he can see in her, too) his expression does not shift. No matter how the pain crashes over him, there is little more than a twitch of his lip, a half-sneer as she reveals that she had not only kissed the man but fucked him, too.

A mistake. A fucking mistake? "Not a mistake, Slaine. It was a choice." He wasn't fool enough to be played so easily, and he wasn't keen to hear how she had regretted it. Not when she had gone and asked him to be hers just recently. If it was a mistake she would have stayed away... forever.

"How can you sit there and tell me you chose me when you were out there fucking HIM?" No, she had chosen nothing. Alaric was convenient and easy, he gave her stability and safety and a damned crown with which to rule. He had given her everything he was capable of giving and turned his head to the rumors and the anger that had swelled because of it, caring nothing for the insults cast by those who did not know the whole truth. All of this because he had believed she truly had chosen him, but shouldn't he have known better? Once a cheater, always a cheater, wasn't that what they said?

As much as he tries to keep his expression chillingly neutral there is a shimmer in his eyes, a glisten that speaks to just how much the King fights to keep the emotions at bay. Fights and loses, for he blinks rapidly, refusing to let the unshed tears fall. "No, I could not. But I have never deceived you about my nature. Not ever. You knew who I was, Slaine. You knew..." he breaks off, swallowing back the rest of his words, knowing there was no reason to keep on. What was done was done, and at the end of the day there was one thing looming over his head.

She had asked him to be hers.

coding and art by dusk

For all her deception and betrayal over the last few months, the nature of it did not sit easily within her. It had taken root and spoiled everything she had touched, it had infiltrated her marriage like a poison and her guilt had seeped out from her in resentment and ice.
"Not a mistake, Slaine. It was a choice." She nodded slowly, acknowledging the truth in the statement. "I was weak, I loved him."

With the pain both hers and Alaric's, the scoring of hearts and minds, it is despicable but undeniable that she feels at last the thaw. It sweeps across her like undeserved relief and she can suddenly breathe again. The night before this one had been spent weeping, sorrow felt for a life longed for now lost forever. But after the tears had fallen and after they had dried like scars upon her damp azure skin, what had she risked? When she rose in horror from the shadow of that ill begotten tree in the field, what life did she move toward then?

The truth. At last a return to the lioness she had once, briefly, been. Like this, she can take Alaric's fury, his disdain and disgust. It is what she deserves but it is not all that she is or has been.

"How can you sit there and tell me you chose me when you were out there fucking HIM?" "I did chose ye. I chose ye again an' again until weakness o' what he haed meant tae me, felled me." Parched tongue moved briefly infront of dry lips. "But tha' daesnae mean ye are nae anything tae me, Alaric. It means I was weak, nae tha' I did nae love ye, tha' ye dae nae sink intae my bones an' make me weep with devotion. Hae ye ne'er been weak?" She looked up at him, needing him to know what he has meant to her. Though it was unlikely that he would believe a word of it.

"You knew who I was, Slaine. You knew..." @Alaric had never lied to her, never deceived her. That was the difference between them and she should not expect his mercy and so, she does not.

Instead his queen takes a deep breath, shoulders slumping. Relieved, tired, heartbroken. "I hae nae excuse tae offer. Nae mitigating circumstances. I hae been jealous o'er ye an' yer lovers. I hae betrayed an' hurt ye far beyond ye deserving. I was selfish. I would hae haed him if he'd accepted." That was the worst of all, of course. That she'd have taken a second husband against Alaric's wishes, his enemy no less. All for her own heart.

"But he didnae want me." Honesty cannot be stemmed as it flows from her. "An' I lay there, grief stricken fer a long while, realising tha' th' person I most wanted tae talk tae, tae share my darkest pain with... was ye. I hae hated this coldness I put between us. I hae missed what we were." Back when truth and peace had reigned between them. "I put all tha' we -ye an' me- haed at risk. All fer a man who didnae care much in th' end."

"But those feelings are unfair tae put on ye an' I willnae burden ye with a request fer forgiveness." She cannot ask for what should not be given, for what can never be hers.

Slaine was tired of hating herself, of deceiving the man stood before her, who had given her everything and resenting his happiness because she could only live in part of it. Whatever happened next, it was beyond her control now. Wherever this road led, she would forge a path somewhere, somehow. Alaric would not be short on choices for queen or wife and he deserved the life he'd thought he had with her.

Emotion drenched her, wettening those tired eyes without any attempt at disguise. "I daenae expect tae remain yer queen an' I expect ye wish tae end our marriage. I only ask, if it can be sae, tha' I remain in Ecrosia tae care fer th' children and..."

She sniffed but stood a little taller, allowing every muscle to take on this newer, more honest version of herself. "Sae I can be near ye, from afar, fer yer causes will always be my own."

ART BY KIM, CODE BY LARS

Weakness.

Alaric could pretend he did not know of it, but he would be lying. For all his strength and bravado he was weak in many ways -- though he could not determine if it was his nature or merely the way he had been raised. Taught from a young age that he had a right to take what he wanted, that it was part of being male and a king. Guided to protect those that belonged to him, keeping emotion far from it all.

Amaryllis had been a culture shock to the extreme. At first he had thought he could navigate it just the same as home, finding a release for his anger in Erna. Claiming her as his with teeth and claws, marking her so that the whole damn world would know who was her King. It was only after the earning of his throne that he had been forced to play a different game, learning the politics that he had known so little of in his youth.

Tempering the hot blood; watching it drain almost completely after the death of his Rike queen. Knowing, then, what true grief was and recognizing that the love they had spoken of was genuine, at least on his behalf. Alaric had loved her, fiercely, and yet it was her death that had shaped him the most.

Raising children alone, doing his best to do so in her vision while his own had altered. Forming friendships and losing himself in the embrace of others -- healing his heart and building new pathways in his mind. Changing, piece by piece, even as he did his duty and made the Starke name prosper. Convincing himself that it was all an act, carefully told lies, whispered promises that he could easily break. Telling himself that none of it was real and that all that truly mattered was the upbringing of his children.

Lies he had told himself; lies that were rapidly unraveling. Shattered by the soul-shaping love he had found in Aidoneus, the tender and gentle love he had found with Tinúviel, and the strong foundation he had built with Slaine, a friendship turned love that he had believed to be unshakable.

"What I don't understand," he murmured, because the fire had dimmed and he felt disturbingly empty, "is why you stayed when he returned." If she had still loved Ronin (and he had no doubt that she did) why had she chosen Alaric, only to betray him in the end? "This.... was still new..." Ish. "It can't have meant more than what you had had with him..." How could it? If she could so easily turn to Ronin, meeting him time and again (for there had been more than a few encounters, from what he gathered), then surely the bond was stronger, there?

He frowns, because for all her admissions there is one thing that sticks -- "you would have had him, knowing I wouldn't accept it. You would have had him, Slaine, knowing damn well it would have been the end of us." It pains him, and for all that he tries to hold on to the anger and fight back the tears he loses in the end. They run silently down his cheeks and it would be one of the first times he had cried so openly in front of another. "You're only here because he rejected you." There, too, was another thorn. He tugs at it, tries to wrench it from his heart, but it sticks fast. If Ronin had accepted he did not imagine she would be here, in front of him, laying her infidelity out for judgement. In fact he imagined that she'd be beneath him, now, thinking nothing of her husband-king.

Slaine talks of her own crown and he cannot think to address it, now. It seems so secondary to the heart of the matter; meaningless compared to everything else. He wants nothing more than to pull her in to his arms and pretend like none of it had happened, but it was too late for that. Alaric wanted to tell her, over and over, how much he loved her, but the words lock behind his lips and he swallows them down like broken glass.

"I don't know what to do." He admits this in scarcely more than a whisper, and his gaze turned pointedly away.

Weak.

coding and art by dusk

There's a moment where the only sound that existed, was that of her breathing and his, expelling from her own lungs as if they were lovers spent and renewed. But reality is that before their conversation is done, there may be little left of the great love affair that had shaped her life more than any other.

Her heart thuds in much the same time, tired and rushed from the exchange, wishing she could reverse time and yet, anxious to move forward and discover a future she could finally live with.

@Alaric spoke, but he is like death, the void. Slaine is forced to lick her lips, agitated by but understanding of his despondency. If he fought for her, if he raged and claimed her, she might better understand those emotions. She does not want his defeat. But if this was the end, then it was only what she deserved. "It was nae new." The Scot said, resolute, pressing an aching foot into the hardened swamp floor but otherwise devoting her entire attention and posture to him.

"It was a long time coming. Fer me at least." She admitted, to Alaric, it might have been a friendship like any other. "I remembered what I felt in yer presence even afore Ronin left." Ronin had once suggested leaving the Mire in those early days, but Slaine had refused, wanting to stay beneath Alaric's rule. "Th' joy I felt taking up yer causes, fighting with ye, taking yer bairns tae my breast, nourishing them sae tha' they were as mine own..." Thoughts, memories and feelings flood her mind, washing over her like only once before, when Ronin had shockingly returned from the dead and she had realised what she was about to lose with Alaric. "An' when ye were mine.." Sapphire gaze shifted down, ashamed perhaps, or too raw in emotion. "I thought I'd perish if I couldnae hae yer touch again." Had she not told Ronin that? She had told him she burned for Alaric like no other.
She looked up, finding courage. "We... ye an' me Alaric, were a family long afore we were lovers. Afore we even loved one another." That was why she chose him. Whatever her greedy heart desired in the after, she could still no sooner define where he ended and she began. The Starkes were her family, the Mire was her home, her roots ran so deep that perhaps Alaric had not noticed the extent of it.

"You're only here because he rejected you."
"I would be here. Asking ye for understanding an' asking ye tae measure my worth tae ye in more than being yer sole property." The words spill out softly, but confronting all the same. "But I am here now, asking ye understanding fer my foolish mistakes. What I thought I haed with him was wrong an' sae it is over." For good. "I will nae lie tae ye again, whatever becomes o' us."

"I don't know what to do."
The azure lioness watched as his gaze slipped away, moving away from her, as if he was already beginning to sweep her from his heart and mind. Her heart sinks, body aching for him. "Then think on it." She replied gently, closing her own gaze briefly, swallowing down the fear and the urge to plead. "I hae wounded ye, sae I cannae expect ye tae ken(know) what must happen straight away. Let me ken(know) yer decision when yer ready." There is no doubt for Slaine that she will become undone, her life will be altered. She does not dare to hope for forgiveness.

Slaine did not attempt to shoulder past him to go further into the Mire. Instead she let her body fold down into a sit, weakened by emotional exhaustion. She cannot return to their den, but she cannot leave either. Where would she go? Everything she was and ever would be lay within these walls. So she slumps down, relieved to at least be home for a little while longer.

ART BY KIM, CODE BY LARS

No, perhaps it was not new. Theirs was a relationship formed first of necessity (the Mire was new and growing) and then of lust. Passion that turned to friendship, her heart stolen by another. Alaric would have made her his wife long ago, long before Ronin, but he knew his lifestyle was not meant for all.

Not even for many; strange, really, when he came from a land where it was everything.

Slaine speaks of all of it and his heart aches, awash in the memories she throws down at his paws. Of fighting and fucking and a thousand moments more -- and yet they feel tainted, now. Tainted, knowing she had never stopped loving him. Tainted, knowing she had sought Ronin out even still, even with all that they had built. Alaric is overcome with the need to erase any thought of the bastard from her flesh, to carve his name in to it time and again so that she would never forget again.

He wants to punish her -- in his early days, he would have -- but he holds his ground. Alaric Starke is a changed man, and now he only stares at her with eyes that are too-watery. Weak Struck deep by her reminders, for she had been here longer than most, standing at his side from the very beginning. In fact, he reflected, she was the only one that stayed.

No wonder it hurt so fucking badly.

There are a hundred things he wants to say but it is pointless. Alaric could spin in circles over it, asking again and again why it had had to be him, reminding her again and again of what she had done wrong. But what was the point? It would do neither of them any good, and no matter how he wanted to hurt her like she had hurt him he also... doesn't.

And when she sinks to the ground he wants to nudge her back to her paws and lead her back to the den. Alaric goes so far as to take a small step forward before he stops himself, the expression on his face one of unmistakable anguish. "This is still your home," because he has to say something, and he cannot bring himself to torture her, "no matter what." While he did not know how to come to terms with everything he wasn't about to remove her from the swamp that was just as much hers as it was his.

He cannot stop himself from closing the little space that remained, lowering his nose to press to her cheek. A lingering touch that is not quite a kiss, but merely a warm breath against her cheek as he breathes her in once more.

And then he is gone, turning away so that the tears might fall in private.

-exit-