WESSEX
the wraith
“Jail time. Arrest,” she says quietly. There is some middle ground between freedom and death. They’ve got a place to house a criminal, might as well use it. And who knows, it might even keep the woman safe. Letting a little more emotion out, Wessex fairly growls, “I am angry. Furious. At her, the Gods, The Voice, the storms, the Fae -” she stops herself with a strangled choke-laugh, something that might border on the edge of hysteria if they could see how tightly she’s wound. “But I’m not -” No, her lips close again, sealing them up tight. Try again. “It’s not just me, anymore. Before Zariah, I could have died - again - and it wouldn’t have mattered to very many people. Now I have responsibilities. People to answer to. LongNight -” And, well - it still might not matter to many. But the fact remains that the Wessex who sits before Amalia now is not the Wessex she knew when she was a child, or the Wessex she found at the Cataracts. Just as Amalia is no longer a girl, nor ignorant of the cruelties of the world.
It’s all very complicated. While the Queen is observant and able to read emotions, she isn’t exactly emotionally intelligent (or maybe she just doesn’t care), and struggles to put things nicely. Vulnerability has never served her well. People are shit and they abuse trust. Wessex doesn’t know who she can tell things to, so it’s better if she just doesn’t admit anything at all, keeps it all close to her chest, because eventually, one day, she will tell the wrong thing to the wrong person and it will fuck shit up. If she manages to hold on to her crown, there might be dissertations written about the complexity of Wessex’s reign and how she balanced being an Ascended while her Goddess wreaked havoc on the Old God’s favorites. If. A very big if in there.
At least Amalia can promise her good news. Wessex smiles when she hears it, scoots forward a bit to change her position and cross her legs in front of her. “Good. It’s a path I don’t want for you. Purposefully causing death changes a person.” And there are so many hardened people in the world already - they don’t need her to be one. The Wessexes of the world need good things, sweet things, gentle things, and kind people to remind them that they don’t always have to be wrecking balls.
“Do you want to talk about why you were crying?”
she's pullin' the trigger
cause it's me and the moon, she says
and i have no trouble with that
