kinkfest | Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth (Lezard/Mystina) (Reply)

I know, I know, this is terribly late. Real life intervened. I'm really sorry. (It is rather long, though--does that help make up for it at all? No? Drat.)

Anyway, I (finally) present:

Title: Unforgivable
Author: Lindenleaves
Rating: PG-13... ish.
Warnings: The pairing, as they say, is your warning. Also, the prompt.
Word count: 1,451
Summary: "A game with set rules--with boundaries--only entertains up to a point. But an out of control game amuses eternally."
A/N: Prompt was Valkyrie Profile, Lenneth, Lezard/Mystina: Rival sex/dark magic - "An out-of-control game."

As she hits the floor, she muses that the sad truth of the world these days is that some people actually envy her a private audience with Lezard.

His lips twist, but his mouth stays closed—a smirk, not an incantation. “Give up yet, Mysty?”

She ignores him, focusing instead on the wisps of lightning readied in her palm. She doesn’t even bother to get up, just flicks her wrist, fingers splayed against the echo of his last spell—but he snaps his fingers, and a wall of force bats her spell to the side; a stray spark shatters his wine glass, spattering the clutter on his desk. It’s a good thing she stayed down; getting knocked off her feet twice in as many seconds is a humiliation she’s quite happy to do without.

People tend to have irritatingly short memories, and the Consortium’s residents are no exception. They’re all in awe of the image Lezard’s built up for himself of late, the rumors—carefully crafted by the boy himself, no doubt—of danger and discovery, the whiff of the forbidden that wafts from him like cheap perfume. True, it helps that it’s been many years now since he surpassed her in height; he doesn’t hunch his shoulders, and his robes are not only spotless but splendid (conveniently, no one ever asks him where he got the money). He cleans his glasses—she’s seen it herself—twice over, once by hand, once by magic.

Perhaps it’s enough to satisfy the common lot. But she knows all the little unforgivable things about him, his skinned knees, his grubby face, his secondhand robes. She remembers, even if no one else does. Even if he himself does not.

She shoves off the ground, tries to push her offensive, but she’s just managed to regain her feet when he reaches her, and his fingers close around her wrist and he’s burning it, she realizes, just before the first jolt of pain wracks her. Is he crazy?

“Lezard,” she nearly screams, “Lezard, all right—”

He opens his fingers, regarding her almost amiably from behind those over-polished glasses. “Knew you’d see reason eventually.”

Oh, this sparring isn’t over, not by a long shot, and just how much pain she plans to inflict depends on how badly he’s—

She stops. There are no burns. Not even the imprint of his fingers show on her skin.

He’s smirking again, the bastard. “Never let it be said that I am unappreciative of beauty.” He flexes his fingers, starts to move the hand to his face, to push his glasses up his nose, “It was quite simple; I merely—”

And she’s already lunged, summoning the spell in mid-spring. It’s hot and eager at her command, needle-sharp in her veins, under her fingernails, and this, this is living, the taste of it, sulphur and starlight upon her tongue—

And then skin. His, searing clean through the cloth in his hip, and a hiss escapes from between his teeth and she’s satisfied, hits the floor for Odin knows how many times tonight. She lifts her face from the carpet, but she does not speak. She’s remembering the time he caught her perched, eyes closed, at the top of the tree she always pretended was Yggdrasil. He was still shorter then, and, even if he happened to spot her, she never thought he’d make it so high—and then suddenly there he was, sitting at her shoulder. He hadn’t laughed then, just as he isn’t angry now. But he’s wearing the same expression, curiosity mixed with something she can’t name.

“Well,” he says at last. “That’s new.”

It is—a spell stitched together from fire’s heat and lightning’s pervasiveness. Dammit, she’d been saving that. “Don’t even ask,” she snaps back, getting to her feet. “Unlike you, I don’t vaunt my innovations.”

“Pity.” He crosses to the desk, fumbles idly with a stray shard of glass. “If you could stop testing your mettle against me for five minutes, we could learn much from each other.”

She doesn’t even bother to look up, just keeps dusting herself off. “It’d be a waste of time. Those who break the rules tend to work together only out of fear.”

“Bend,” he corrects her gently.

“Oh, please.”

“It’s true.” The shard slips from his fingers, and he rubs his cheek with one hand. “Destroying anything utterly is almost always a waste. I prefer to simply keep the parts of each rule which please me and find a way around the rest.”

She massages her casting hand; she’s in the mood for fighting, not semantics. “And what of the rules without any redeeming points?”

“Ah well, as for that…” He shrugs, flashing a sheepish grin. “Easier to simply ignore such a rule than waste time and energy breaking it, wouldn’t you say?”

Can insanity be called logic? If anyone ever achieves such a feat, it’ll be Lezard. “Are you going to cast?” she asks, impatient. “I didn’t come here to be lectured.”

“Hasty, aren’t we?”

“Shut up and cast.” She calls up a spell of her own to hurry him along, but it’s only just begun to lick at her bones when he’s at her side, light gleaming opaque off his glasses.

“This won’t satisfy you,” he says.

Is her grin bitter? She doesn’t care. “Nothing ever does.”

“It’s no surprise. You stick to the same routines ad nauseum; fighting me is merely one of them.”

She sidesteps to face him, an abortive twirl. “What do you suggest, then?”

“Something new.” She isn’t sure exactly when he got so close, but suddenly his cheek is brushing hers, the musty parchment smell of his skin and hair cloying and immediate, and he is just turning his face to the desired angle when she recovers, staggers back and leaving him bending there.

A boy, she reminds herself, a shabby, obsequious boy with a beseeching whine that ever rang foul in her ears, even when it became a cockerel’s trill. “You are always old,” she says, and aims for scorn, and almost hits her mark.

He straightens, stands tall and stares. “Mysty,” he says, set and serious, “I am new every moment. I am ever remaking myself. A thing in flux can never stagnate, and if I stagnate I pray the gods grind me to dust.” The smirk returns, curving half his mouth. “And I don’t consider myself a god-fearing man.”

“Well… that… believe what you will,” she spits out at last. “But that’s no reason why I should suffer you to—”

“Oh, come now.” He turns, and his serpent’s grin turns with him, long and languid in profile. Then he’s facing her again, closer than before. “You know it as well as I. A game with set rules—with boundaries—only entertains up to a point. But an out of control game amuses eternally.”

Damn it all, she does want him now, wants to possess, however briefly, the ideal others prize: Lezard, the genius. “Don’t expect this to be a common occurrence,” she warns at last.

“All the more exhilarating, then—though of course you’ll be free to extract whatever world-weary disillusionment you please from it on the morrow.”

She thinks, again, of that day in the tree. What is she to do with a man who knows her so well?

He has always understood her dreams. That, too, is unforgivable.

“You start,” she says. “And no talking.”

---

When Einherjar look into the eyes of the Valkyrie, they see things. It is not correct to say they see what they want to see, yet neither is it what they fear. Mystina refuses to call it what they need to see, refuses to attach any importance or lesson to the ghosts of the past that invariably appear in the Battle-Maiden’s gaze. Yet every harvested spirit knows these ghosts; even sightless Shiho speaks of them. When she first joined their ranks, the whispered knowledge of this phenomenon carried to Mystina’s ear. She put it off for some time, but pride and stubbornness won out in the end, compelled her to meet the Valkyrie’s mirroring stare.

Somehow, she’d been expecting that scene in his chambers—the set of her jaw as he kissed it, the curling of his fingers and her own white knuckles, every hitch of breath and arch of her spine, every tear in his silken robes. But instead, every time, the same tableau fills her vision: a tree in the wind, and a young girl, eyes closed, at its peak, her arms spread wide to the fluttering leaves. And beside her, as yet unseen, a small boy, staring with upturned face, with a glance that takes in everything.