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[preborns]

[Daughter, she says, and Alia hates herself for the rush of warm, satisfied giddiness that races through her, like she hasn’t heard it a thousand times before, like the missives from offworld don’t address her as such again and again. Jessica’s concession, her one allowance to the connection of blood and bone that binds her to her mistake of a child, conceived in preemptive despair, nurtured in mourning, born in war. If Paul had been Leto’s joy, Alia was his eulogy.

There’s a thought to arrive in the state she’s become accustomed to – light, airy clothes, unsuited for the sun or snow, the clothes of the frivolous, carefree girl she’s never been, not since that first shattering awareness inside Jessica’s body. Alia had worn a veil since near-infancy, had taken her first tottering steps in a Sisterhood cowl, had studied histories she already knew swathed in layers and layers of silk. The carnal fervor of her temples had come later, when Jessica was back on Caladan, paying tribute to Leto’s bones.

But she eventually chooses something in the middle, an unconscious echo of Jessica’s own clothes – dark, long-sleeved, close-fitting, her hair in a neat braid. Alia can’t veil the wideness of her eyes, the soft shape of her mouth (Paul’s mouth), the way she stops inside the doorway and adjusts to the quiet thrum of Jessica’s presence, in the same room as hers for the first time in years. It’s like a heartbeat she forgot she had. It’s like a nightmare she’s had every night.

Alia waits by the door, waits to be summoned closer, face expressionless, arms crossed over the papers she’s brought – accounts of the allies Paul has made, writ emotionless and spare, none of the emotion or warmth that had made such alliances, none of the tenderness either sibling feels for those listed. These feelings Alia pushes away, locks tighttighttight into the vault of her chest, and prays her mother will not sniff out.]

[babies]

( there is nothing of leto in this child. she inspects alia as one would an urn — an unfamiliar shape, meant to hold the ashes of the man she had loved above all, a vessel intended to contain him. whether she's satisfied or disappointed by her findings (the likeness of herself sculpted into this strange girl, just off-kilter, as though an artist warped her features), it's a quick assessment. a flickering shift of her eyes, and no more, kept so seemingly brief.

it hurts to stare for long, in truth. hurts the same as it had staring into the devouring flames of the siege of arrakeen, blinding and bright, eating away at the remnants of house atreides. jessica shifts, angling herself away, toward the matted flooring laid out. )

Come.

( it's more command than invitation, lacking the warmth that comes with opening a door to a home. stretching the limber sinew of her muscle is an unnecessary function, for a body capable of readying itself for combat, as primed as any well-oiled machine — jessica moves through forms, regardless. graceful. meaningful. a means of lowering the threshold for alia's suspicion, if she thinks her too occupied to analyze the wrinkles and creases in her expression.

she is less willing to grant the illusion of mercy to alia's writ list. a simple name put to a page is a detachment — a deliberate disconnect, jessica suspects. like flaying supple flesh from bone, she orders, neutral: ) Their names. Read them to me.

[preborns]

[I must not fear. Fear is the mindkiller. It’s Jessica’s voice in her head, Jessica’s words commanding her obedience, Jessica’s teachings echoed like a stone dropped in a well, tumbling through darkness before hitting still water. Her mother tests her, but her mother taught her, therefore Alia herself is scarcely involved. She is a vessel for Lady Jessica, Reverend Mother, beloved and longed for and loathed at once, a letter from Caladan, a life’s memories implanted in her psyche like a wound, like a parasite, like a warning.

The page is folded, the crease of it drawn between two fingernails, slowly, the movement buying time to pinpoint the exercise – a warm-up, the same ones Paul does every morning, Bene Gesserit taught with a touch of Fremen tradition, though Jessica’s forms lack this latter flavor. Paul moves like the desert, Alia even more so as she shakes back her hair and begins her own forms, reciting the names in a calm, near-monotone.] Alicent Hightower and her sons Aemond and Aegon Targaryen count our house as allies. Jacaerys Targaryen, though tenuous, owes us a debt, as does his mother, Rhaenyra and her husband, Daemon. They all come from one world, one planet, with a contested throne.

[Alia’s forms are closer to Paul’s, closer to the dancelike movements of sandwalking, stilling often to test her endurance, her ability to wait in the shadow of a sietch and watch the horizon for wormsign or enemies. She half-expects Jessica to correct her as she continues.] Lauralae is a gifted, deadly witch and shapechanger. Hawkins Fuller is a keen politician, who I owe a debt of honor to. Alina Starkov has experience with war and tactics, and she runs a shop where Paul works. [Alia lets that sink in, allying the name with Paul’s directly, Paul’s preferences, Paul’s love named before her own.

But then, straightening, calmly:] She is dear to us both. [An understatement, one she knows Jessica will read in the flush of her cheeks, the heightened pulse, the spark of endorphins that rushes through her body. Alia had considered denying the attachment, but – Paul wouldn’t. Paul would be open, honest, transparent as water. Alia will not undermine this. And she won’t harm Alina, even in absentia, even in her thoughts.]

[babies]

( dear to us, alia says, and jessica's insides recoil in shame, an underground parasite flinching from searing light. from the moment he had been conceived, paul had always carried too much of her softness within him, an infection passed from her bloodstream to his. his mother's son, to the bitter end. watchful, jessica's eyes trace alia's slithering form in the mirror, silently frightened to find her heir to the same weakness. a mother's devotion can only shield them from so many blades, when they so recklessly welcome it against their flesh. )

Even children understand the purpose a beloved toy serves.

( knife-tongued as ever — cutting, in its dismissiveness, to spare them from greater wounds. she can trust her own to aim with precision; the same cannot be said for a nothing girl with ambition and the folly of her sentimental children, prone to end in nicked arteries. alia is young, paul moreso, beholden to the follies of youth — once the shine has dulled and teenage hormones have faded, they'll come to understand any toy, no matter how adored, has limited uses.

none of which bring them armies, protects their lineage, saves their house. jessica's lips thin into a taut, disapproving line. )

Your stance is too loose. ( her own remain fluid, undistracted in focus, not a step missed, despite the sharp correction. ) Have you been vigilant with your training?

[preborns]

[You would know, unspoken, but throbbing on Alia’s tongue, ready to be volleyed back towards her mother’s sharp disdain. Whatever they are now – cold allies, shared flesh, an imperfect echo with all the weaknesses Jessica pretends she doesn’t have – Alia can recall the moment of her conception through her mother’s eyes, and knows it was done with adoration that burns similar to her own. If it were possible in this place, Alina would’ve been as Jessica was: cherished, protected, standing beside Paul and carrying his heir, Alia’s heir, conceived in nothing but love.

That is their legacy, that of a beloved, useful toy who turned against it’s maker, it’s master, who became wife and widow in all but name to a doomed duke. For all their power, Paul and Alia can not disentangle the thread of their parent’s love from their veins, cannot scourge it from their bones. How strange, to know her mother’s love, to taste it in her mouth, and to see none of it in her face.

Outwardly, though, Alia’s mouth twitches only once as she moves through her loose stances, fluid to the point of carelessness, disdain. She knows it irks Jessica, can feel it in the terse note in her voice, and counts this as a victory – were she actually in a fight, her body would conform to that of her mother’s, would invoke the Way to defend herself.

Now, though, spoiled and indifferent child is a safer role. Perhaps Jessica will grow impatient and dismiss her, write her off as useless. Perhaps her freedom lies along the same path it had on Arrakis: fail her mother often enough to make her disregard Alia entirely.] I’ve been preoccupied. [Careless, sighing.] The house has it’s myriad diversions. Have you not partaken?

[babies]

( jessica's eyes move placidly as a bottomless lake, a depth of blue without a ripple of emotion. alia's triumph lies in the wrinkles of jessica's irritation — she will grant her no such thing. the sounder strategy is for pampered pets is to starve them of their petulance than reward its disobedience with scraps of attention. in this, she sends a message: alia may fashion herself a reverend mother, but she lacks the proper mind for it, if she thinks herself so skilled at eroding jessica's practiced patience.

as if she did not, presumably, learn at jessica's knee. as if she is not an incubator for jessica's terrible weaknesses. )

I haven't been a child ruled by hormones for some time.

( the implication, hidden inside jessica's words like a dagger slipped inside a sleeve: not as her daughter is. distracting herself, endangering their house, for impulsive whimsy. it's cold in its steel, a distraction from the anger she does not allow herself, the privacy of a heart alia is not entitled to see: how the mere question of it disrespects her father's memory, tarnishes jessica's love for him.

much of her heart died with her duke. the rest, unwelcome as it is, belongs with paul. how cruel a girl she must've raised, to look into the eye of jessica's grief, and suggest pleasures of the flesh to soothe it.

a knot in her neck unravels with a swan-like stretch to its side. then, jessica straightens, projecting nothing — before she strikes her leg out, serpent-certain, to twine around alia's ankle and sweep her toward the soft, mat-lined floor. if alia won't take her efforts seriously, then she'll be made to do so, as beasts chased into corners must. )

Do you believe I'll coddle you, because you've deigned your training beneath you? ( she leaves no breath for an answer as she half-steps back — less a measure of mercy than predicting the punitive rise of alia's juvenile anger. ) Rise.

[preborns]

[There’s a soft huff of annoyance, at the thought that Alia’s hormones have pushed her anywhere – forgetting the training room, clad only in her own sweat and droplets of water from the bath, forgetting the close thopter cockpit, shoulder-to-shoulder with the ghola, with the man-who-wasn’t-a-man, the way both situations (eyes on her, eyes on her body, her back, her thighs, her chest) made her blood grow hotter, her pulse thrum like a beast. Choosing not to think of nights in Paul and Alina’s bed, the glue between them, squirming into the warm, close space in her flowing nightgowns, finding the sticky sleep-hot crook of Paul’s neck to nuzzle, feeling Alina’s soft curves mould to her back like a second blanket.

Those thoughts stay locked away, far from Jessica’s prying eyes – let her think infatuation and hormones and youthful blood responsible. Do not expose the inner, bleeding core of who you are, Alia, for the disdain and disapproval of your mother. Do not reveal that your heart is promised, claimed, as much as Leto had claimed Jessica’s own heart. She learned love before her birth, drank it along with the bile in her womb, fed on it like a wobbly-kneed calf on it’s mother’s milk. Love for Leto, love for Paul, love (she imagined, she lied to herself) for her. Love and love and love. She would never purge herself of it, and sometimes – sometimes Alia wishes she’d been raised on poison instead. She would never long for poison the way she does for love.

She opens her mouth to retort, to say something snide about the strategic advantages of coital alliances when there’s a sweep of Jessica’s foot, and Alia is tumbling onto the mat, breath leaving her in a rush, wide eyes staring at the ceiling. Her mouth parts – to yell, to retort, to let loose her indignation, but instead. Instead she laughs, props herself up on her elbows, shakes her head, hair coming loose from her braid already.]

You’ve never coddled me. [Huffy, fond, aching, everything she is writ across her face for an instant – lonely and wild and snarling and wanting, always wanting, always scouring the missives from Caladan for some sign, some clue that she’s been forgiven for her crimes of existence, of birth.] And I expect nothing from you. [Alia rises, slowly, makes a show of brushing her clothes off.]

[babies]

( she tips an eyebrow, silently accusatory, aiming attention at the falsehood in the room with them. jessica doesn't need to listen to the rushing tide in alia's blood to pinpoint the lie — her presence is a testament to familial obligation, her resentment proof of a grudge born and belonging to a mother that is and isn't jessica. it would be a greater truth, jessica believes, if alia were to claim she has come in search of something inexplicable, something even she cannot name, under the guise of counsel — love, or punishment.

girl that she still is, it seems she hasn't yet learned love and punishment are one and the same. thorns, by any other name. )

Then behave like it.

( instead of this image of a creature alia has presented: petulant with a golden spoon in her mouth, all of the childish temperament her son had learned to let pass over him as a wave, despite his youth. all of the girlishness jessica and her sisters had never permitted themselves to entertain. she doesn't waste time allowing alia's performance continue — seconds into alia returning to her feet, she latches onto alia's hand — and uses the leverage to try to toss her back, pinned down by jessica's knee to her stomach. unrelenting, unsympathetic. repetition, until the lesson sinks in, until her frustration lends itself to something productive.

her knee presses harder. strands of swept hair dangle into jessica's vision, a stare that bears down into alia, the color of electrified thunder. love and punishment. one and the same. )

Such weighted words you spoke before, daughter. ( do not speak to me of knives. i have not been idle. jessica's gaze says, prove it. ) I expected more from this showing.