SuNJATA
the flood
He nods enough, that the comfort that comes with knowing that there are many worlds out there, many different versions, one where Lusea might be able to live that life that he had wanted for her. A place that was better, far less dangerous. Perhaps she’s right. And he breathes a bit deeply, inhales and lets the capacity fill his lungs until they almost ache, until he exhales quietly and offers a small nod. She continues on, however, and he resonates with it. That… Perhaps he had been selfish in wishing to be there, that no matter how much he had wanted it to be him, that it wouldn’t be. It never would be. At least in this way it had happened, she had spoken to him through Delphia, words and thoughts of which he couldn’t deny. She’d been there, fiery as ever, if only ghostly and spiritual.
At the mention of it, at the recalled thoughts, he pours his glass a bit more and pours some more into her own, and takes a deep drink of it, letting the feelings and thoughts resonate deeply into his soul, into his mind, into the pillars that made him him. And from there? He asks of her reign, of her beloved, of her children. And despite how much of a mess he knows he is, he doesn’t expect it to tear and rip open her wounds the way he does. He feels terrible for having asked, the moment that she offers a weak laugh, wondering which part he had misstepped at. But he gives her his full attention like she had done for him, offering a small weak smile in response to her initial comment of her reign.
It begins with Ashamin, a name foreign to him as many were. An introspective man, a softness, and yet where he stands he thinks that she does deserve certain softness to rival her edges. He doesn’t dare voice it, he doesn’t know her well enough, but there’s the thin line between the alcohol and heartbreak they share, the moments spent as two lonely people who’ve lost everything dear to them. He pushes it to the back of his mind as she continues on. How he had loved before, how children had been birthed with them, how he never stayed. Sunjata nods as she tells him the name of the children, not ringing a bell either, but twins? Gods.
Her voice breaks, and he reaches out momentarily to offer support – a crumbling pillar to her own crumbling architecture. And how terrible it was, to watch a daughter die, to bleed out – likely how he had watched Lusea’s death, the last moments. But she rages on, a storm amid the terrible things she’d lived through. How Ashamin had left, how she’d moved on and loved her children, and part of him yearns for her. He never wanted children, never wanted to see if he could provide stability. But there’s a part of him that imagines he’d never end up like Ashamin, that he’d never just leave. He’d told Phoebe that over and over again. That if it happened, he’d be there. Regardless.
But talk of Thranduil recaptures his attention, face attentive but stone, like steel, the way his eyes follow her face. A thorn in her side – he pegs himself like that, but to a lesser degree. He’d never consider her his enemy. But that… That spot where she says he’d refused to say that he loved her, that Sunjata has done before. And he can’t truly dare to look at her anymore as he focuses on the glass in front of him, thinking of Phoebe briefly before Lusea’s arrival, about how he couldn’t say the words because it brought back the thought of his flame, his Vlam, how it never quite seemed right.
But he hadn’t berated her, had he? He inhales deeply, refocusing while she does too. He’d never mock something like that, and it manages to start a small burning frustration within him. She had forsaken her crown, had started a family, things he had wished to do with Lusea perhaps in a different life. And then she’d had twins again, returning to the land to continue the cycle of birthing them where it had all started, and he nods enough to her with that. “Helovia?” He comments quietly, recalling Melita’s own frustrations at it.
His gaze snaps to her face when she tells him that Ru’in had died, had walked into the first wave of death. And perhaps it was worse, the thought of it all, to have to watch as your child walked into the arms of death willingly rather than what had happened to Sunjata and his family, those he loved and cherished that had perished beneath the actions of his father. And gods, how he understood her. How he understood the need to avenge, to die with, and to be ripped of that small mercy, well… It was terrible. “I fought against the guards that held me when Lusea died the first time. I would’ve died with her the first time, but they hadn’t let me either.” He rumbles quietly to her. Not to take away, but to show his support, that he had thought and tried the same.
That the two of them were much the same.
And perhaps he was lucky to not have to dive through world upon world, how he had moved to Dorobo and simultaneously ended here, well. She had traveled and traveled under vengeance and justice, and found pieces of her family here. And hadn’t that happened to him? Before it had been taken? It seems she, too, understood that. The son, Ru’in, having perished before she’d arrived, and he frowns deeply to her, steel eyes meeting her as her voice wobbles and breaks, and he stands to go sit beside her, to stare into the flames of the fire with a huff a sigh.
“It seems you and I are much the same.” A sad admittance, a sad smile crossing his face. He lets a few heartbeats pause before he decides perhaps, that since he now has a full understanding of her history, while he’d only given bits and pieces, that she should hear the parts that made it all the more different for him, how Lusea had meant so much, how she’d changed his life. He drinks deeply from the glass before focusing on her at his side. “You’ve dealt with so much more, and you’ve held it together far better than I have. How’d you craft the mask so well?” A gentle teasing, like she had done for him, bitter truth and honesty lingering in the pulses of his accent.
“My father, back in Korofi, was called the Arbiter. He was essentially the king of our county. They were all separated by what we could contribute to the most. The Senzaok house was the one that wrote the laws, enacted justice, were the juries and the executioners.” He rumbles by way of explanation. “Families were allowed to have one son and one daughter. And growing up required a lot of training. When the son reached seventeen, they were… Tossed into a pit and forced to fight to the death, and whoever was left standing had a chance at becoming the new Arbiter when the current one died.” His steel gaze drifts over to her, an open wound of his own. “I won mine. But I hated every inch of it, wanted nothing to do with it. And my Father was so proud, that his son could’ve done something so much like himself. Be ruthless. Be a killer. I didn’t want to be one.” His jaw clenches slightly as he shakes his head, gaze drifting to the glass. “But they trained me anyway, taught me the ways required of being an Arbiter, made me a soldier and stuck me on the front lines to try and catch out the rebellion before it grew too much.”
But then, he decides to tell her something he only told Lusea once. Perhaps it gives her a broader idea of his destructive tendencies, and that how despite this sad attempt, at least it wasn’t like it could have been before. “But I planned to take it down, somehow, by bits and pieces, but it was taking so long and I’m very impatient.” A soft, sad, breathy laugh at that. “So I thought maybe… If I wasn’t around anymore, that he’d have no star soldier to take out the rebellion. A monsoon was coming in so it was starting to rain badly, and I went to the top of one of the rooftops alone. I spent ten minutes on the edge of the building trying to talk myself into it when I saw someone leave a secret door, start a fight in the alley. And so then I decided that perhaps… Instead, I could join them. I left a note for my fellow soldiers telling them I had special orders from my father and to not look for me, and I attempted to join them. It took a while. Everyone knew who I was, saw my face around town after I’d won my trial. They didn’t trust me.” An echo of their earlier conversation. He still sighs heavily.
“And after everything, after it all, years later when it had worked out… Lusea and I were on a rooftop, celebrating a recent win… When someone ratted out our location. We had been so close to hitting my father where it really hurt, and then we were surrounded. I had asked her that day that if we won, if we made it through it, we could go to Dorobo and start a new life – a right one. She had said yes, but we never got the chance. They surrounded us and the only option was to go with, or jump off the building.” Steel eyes slip over to hers, yet another echo of what he had almost attempted before. But her hand had been in his, and they had one foot over the side of the building, only to be dragged back up it and taken in handcuffs away to his childhood home.
“They got us, in the end. Took us back to my home. Tortured her for weeks and made me watch. And then they drug us to my father’s foyer where the guards held me back and away from her, held her away from me. Lusea had been weak physically, but she was sharp as ever mentally, and she… Well, still defied my father until her last breath there.” A brief fleeting smile at that. “So he slit her neck. I raged against the guards, like I told you earlier, and I pushed against the guards holding me back with knives to my neck. I was ready to go with her there, to hold her until we both went, but they had pulled me weak from her after she’d left. Healed me, dragged me back to my father for him to tell me he’d arranged a marriage.”
What shit lives they both had lead. “I guess the cards were never in our favor, huh?”
At the mention of it, at the recalled thoughts, he pours his glass a bit more and pours some more into her own, and takes a deep drink of it, letting the feelings and thoughts resonate deeply into his soul, into his mind, into the pillars that made him him. And from there? He asks of her reign, of her beloved, of her children. And despite how much of a mess he knows he is, he doesn’t expect it to tear and rip open her wounds the way he does. He feels terrible for having asked, the moment that she offers a weak laugh, wondering which part he had misstepped at. But he gives her his full attention like she had done for him, offering a small weak smile in response to her initial comment of her reign.
It begins with Ashamin, a name foreign to him as many were. An introspective man, a softness, and yet where he stands he thinks that she does deserve certain softness to rival her edges. He doesn’t dare voice it, he doesn’t know her well enough, but there’s the thin line between the alcohol and heartbreak they share, the moments spent as two lonely people who’ve lost everything dear to them. He pushes it to the back of his mind as she continues on. How he had loved before, how children had been birthed with them, how he never stayed. Sunjata nods as she tells him the name of the children, not ringing a bell either, but twins? Gods.
Her voice breaks, and he reaches out momentarily to offer support – a crumbling pillar to her own crumbling architecture. And how terrible it was, to watch a daughter die, to bleed out – likely how he had watched Lusea’s death, the last moments. But she rages on, a storm amid the terrible things she’d lived through. How Ashamin had left, how she’d moved on and loved her children, and part of him yearns for her. He never wanted children, never wanted to see if he could provide stability. But there’s a part of him that imagines he’d never end up like Ashamin, that he’d never just leave. He’d told Phoebe that over and over again. That if it happened, he’d be there. Regardless.
But talk of Thranduil recaptures his attention, face attentive but stone, like steel, the way his eyes follow her face. A thorn in her side – he pegs himself like that, but to a lesser degree. He’d never consider her his enemy. But that… That spot where she says he’d refused to say that he loved her, that Sunjata has done before. And he can’t truly dare to look at her anymore as he focuses on the glass in front of him, thinking of Phoebe briefly before Lusea’s arrival, about how he couldn’t say the words because it brought back the thought of his flame, his Vlam, how it never quite seemed right.
But he hadn’t berated her, had he? He inhales deeply, refocusing while she does too. He’d never mock something like that, and it manages to start a small burning frustration within him. She had forsaken her crown, had started a family, things he had wished to do with Lusea perhaps in a different life. And then she’d had twins again, returning to the land to continue the cycle of birthing them where it had all started, and he nods enough to her with that. “Helovia?” He comments quietly, recalling Melita’s own frustrations at it.
His gaze snaps to her face when she tells him that Ru’in had died, had walked into the first wave of death. And perhaps it was worse, the thought of it all, to have to watch as your child walked into the arms of death willingly rather than what had happened to Sunjata and his family, those he loved and cherished that had perished beneath the actions of his father. And gods, how he understood her. How he understood the need to avenge, to die with, and to be ripped of that small mercy, well… It was terrible. “I fought against the guards that held me when Lusea died the first time. I would’ve died with her the first time, but they hadn’t let me either.” He rumbles quietly to her. Not to take away, but to show his support, that he had thought and tried the same.
That the two of them were much the same.
And perhaps he was lucky to not have to dive through world upon world, how he had moved to Dorobo and simultaneously ended here, well. She had traveled and traveled under vengeance and justice, and found pieces of her family here. And hadn’t that happened to him? Before it had been taken? It seems she, too, understood that. The son, Ru’in, having perished before she’d arrived, and he frowns deeply to her, steel eyes meeting her as her voice wobbles and breaks, and he stands to go sit beside her, to stare into the flames of the fire with a huff a sigh.
“It seems you and I are much the same.” A sad admittance, a sad smile crossing his face. He lets a few heartbeats pause before he decides perhaps, that since he now has a full understanding of her history, while he’d only given bits and pieces, that she should hear the parts that made it all the more different for him, how Lusea had meant so much, how she’d changed his life. He drinks deeply from the glass before focusing on her at his side. “You’ve dealt with so much more, and you’ve held it together far better than I have. How’d you craft the mask so well?” A gentle teasing, like she had done for him, bitter truth and honesty lingering in the pulses of his accent.
“My father, back in Korofi, was called the Arbiter. He was essentially the king of our county. They were all separated by what we could contribute to the most. The Senzaok house was the one that wrote the laws, enacted justice, were the juries and the executioners.” He rumbles by way of explanation. “Families were allowed to have one son and one daughter. And growing up required a lot of training. When the son reached seventeen, they were… Tossed into a pit and forced to fight to the death, and whoever was left standing had a chance at becoming the new Arbiter when the current one died.” His steel gaze drifts over to her, an open wound of his own. “I won mine. But I hated every inch of it, wanted nothing to do with it. And my Father was so proud, that his son could’ve done something so much like himself. Be ruthless. Be a killer. I didn’t want to be one.” His jaw clenches slightly as he shakes his head, gaze drifting to the glass. “But they trained me anyway, taught me the ways required of being an Arbiter, made me a soldier and stuck me on the front lines to try and catch out the rebellion before it grew too much.”
But then, he decides to tell her something he only told Lusea once. Perhaps it gives her a broader idea of his destructive tendencies, and that how despite this sad attempt, at least it wasn’t like it could have been before. “But I planned to take it down, somehow, by bits and pieces, but it was taking so long and I’m very impatient.” A soft, sad, breathy laugh at that. “So I thought maybe… If I wasn’t around anymore, that he’d have no star soldier to take out the rebellion. A monsoon was coming in so it was starting to rain badly, and I went to the top of one of the rooftops alone. I spent ten minutes on the edge of the building trying to talk myself into it when I saw someone leave a secret door, start a fight in the alley. And so then I decided that perhaps… Instead, I could join them. I left a note for my fellow soldiers telling them I had special orders from my father and to not look for me, and I attempted to join them. It took a while. Everyone knew who I was, saw my face around town after I’d won my trial. They didn’t trust me.” An echo of their earlier conversation. He still sighs heavily.
“And after everything, after it all, years later when it had worked out… Lusea and I were on a rooftop, celebrating a recent win… When someone ratted out our location. We had been so close to hitting my father where it really hurt, and then we were surrounded. I had asked her that day that if we won, if we made it through it, we could go to Dorobo and start a new life – a right one. She had said yes, but we never got the chance. They surrounded us and the only option was to go with, or jump off the building.” Steel eyes slip over to hers, yet another echo of what he had almost attempted before. But her hand had been in his, and they had one foot over the side of the building, only to be dragged back up it and taken in handcuffs away to his childhood home.
“They got us, in the end. Took us back to my home. Tortured her for weeks and made me watch. And then they drug us to my father’s foyer where the guards held me back and away from her, held her away from me. Lusea had been weak physically, but she was sharp as ever mentally, and she… Well, still defied my father until her last breath there.” A brief fleeting smile at that. “So he slit her neck. I raged against the guards, like I told you earlier, and I pushed against the guards holding me back with knives to my neck. I was ready to go with her there, to hold her until we both went, but they had pulled me weak from her after she’d left. Healed me, dragged me back to my father for him to tell me he’d arranged a marriage.”
What shit lives they both had lead. “I guess the cards were never in our favor, huh?”
love will save you, but it won't save me
BASE INSPIRED BY ODD <3
Feel free to use magic/force on Sunjata, without killing him <3
Sunjata speaks with an Australian accent and has a passive magic that makes him produce a subtle scent that matches exactly to whatever those around him most desire him to smell like.
