Private Dust Never Settles

[Corazona von Ascania]

Cora swallowed thickly. Like Alicio, she knew well the virtues of dampening visual signs of strong emotion. Unlike Alicio, she was visibly uncomfortable.

Her lips parted, hesitated for a few long seconds, then she spoke quietly:

"Nearly every night."

She let the implication sit heavily between them without need for further elaboration.

Cora glanced his way from the corners of glassy eyes. Alicio's expression was unreadable, but he radiated sorrow. Whether that was for what she'd suffered, or how she'd reminded him of something he'd suffered, she couldn't be sure.

The shelter, and now his answer to her bitterly posed question. She'd started to put together little pieces of who Alicio was.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have asked it like that. It wasn’t appropriate.”

Cora sighed, dropping her shoulders.

Alicio Organa

 

[Alicio Organa]

"Nearly every night."

Those words hit him like a hot poker to the heart. There was no hiding his true feelings now- they forced themselves onto his face, the twist of pain, a blinding flash of anger like a lightning bolt in his hurricane eyes. For a moment, Alicio was a storm.

Then, he was Alicio again. He went still, his expression once again guarded and placid. There was no doubt she didn't want him to shower sympathies on her. But she received it regardless, quietly but surely.

"My experience... was not the same as yours." Alicio crossed one leg over the other, his hand tracing down his own jawline, to rest on his neck. A grim mirror of Cora's own motion. "Mine was... more recent. In a battle with a vampire." He didn't dare smile at the absurdity of the statement, but the creases above his brow shallowed, and his words slowed with thought. "But... I know what it felt like. For me. The world gets... small. You simultaneously feel... absently peaceful, and violently terrified. Your thoughts abandon you, and some animal occupies your mind, wanting to be free."

Alicio prepared himself, then went for the throat, so to speak.

"Do you believe the weight of your guilt disqualifies you from doing, being, good?"

- Corazona von Ascania -