Xilanada - Pursuit Of Regretted Truths/Part 15

"Where are you taking me?"

Solitary Coil glared at her wife as the two of them marched down a hallway together. It wasn't the one the demons were coming out of, which meant it was very much deserted, except for the bodies of the dead. The smell of blood made her stomach rumble, made her feel guilty for thinking of eating people, and then it made her mad. Would she ever be free of Final Starry Night's influence?

"Right here," Xilanada said, pushing open a classroom door.

Inside, three schoolchildren shrieked from beneath some desks and more furniture toppled as they knocked them down in their effort to scamper away. "Get going," Xilanada said brusquely. "Go to..." she closed her eyes, concentrating. Solitary Coil watched her warily, wondering what trick she was up to. "Go to the pantries, you'll find safety there. Go on, this place isn't safe."

The children ran screaming from the room. Solitary Coil almost snickered to watch them go, little sheep running in terror, begging a predator to eat them. A predator like her. It helped that none of them were her students.

"Was I too hard on them?" Xilanada asked, suddenly sounding tired. She leaned back against a desk, then tried hopping up on top of it. Solitary Coil did snicker this time. How often did you see the glorious Twilight conqueror, the Destroyer of Grayfalls, the Conqueror of Xi'arna, have trouble getting up on a desk?

"They're mortals," Coil said. "You know how I feel, or you should."

"Yes, that's precisely the problem." Xilanada sighed and rubbed her forehead with her palm. Between her fingers, sunlight spilled out like water from the flaming caste mark on her head. "It's happening again."

"What is?" Solitary Coil asked, wary again. Xilanada smelled of too many mixed emotions to easily separate them out. Was this a delaying tactic? What could the Solar hope to gain by stalling her here? Piiro was more than a match for Sen, if it came to it.

Solitary Coil truthfully didn't know if she had it in her to kill her Solar mate. For now, she was doing what she did with all things without an easy solution; she was ignoring the problem until it came to it. But Xilanada was making it harder for her, talking as if it were old times between them.

"I try, Coil, I really do try. But when I least expect it, it creeps upon me. Remember the Acropolis of Bad'a'dai? Remember the sand trap?"

"I remember you were foolish enough to fall into it," Coil said, grinning at the memory. "People aren't meant to get out of those alone, that's not how they were designed. You should have let me help you out."

"That's what I need...my wife." Xilanada met her eyes fully and Coil now recognized that bitter-black sorrow, the grief that haunted what Final Starry Night had become. With all that had happened between them, there was no anger in Coil's wife, no hate anymore. It made Coil feel self-conscious. It made her feel...small. That was not a feeling Solitary Coil, No-Moon of the Silver Pact, enjoyed.

"I don't understand you," she answered sharply.

"I'm turning into a First Age tyrant, Coil. Oh, in private, I remember who I am and what I want but then things happen. I'm under pressure, action must be taken. I don't think, I do. And what I do...it's terrible. I kill armies, I slaughter a Wyld Hunt, strike the rulers of Nexus, and I scare little children."

"It's our nature," Coil answered without much conviction. "It's their nature. We must rule and they know the power we have over them. It's that simple."

"Is it? I wonder." Xilanada ran a hand through the tight curls of her hair, the other resting on the hilt of her daiklave. Coil thought the sword suited her wife. It was smaller than Final Starry Night's legendary blade but it fit her form better. "Coil, with power comes obligation. The Gods gave Exaltation to us, that we might free Creation from those who would oppress it. They gave us charge of it afterwards, that we might rule wisely. You and I both know the old histories, of what life was said to be like under Primordial rule. I look at what the Solar did in the First Age...and I see parallels. I look in the mirror, and I see the same pattern again."

"You're not like they were," Solitary Coil said harshly. "For one thing, they weren't as weak as you."

"No, they just turned your whole race into slaves."

White hot raged burned through Coil, followed by shameful acknowledgement. Coil couldn't meet her wife's sincere eyes. Perhaps there was something to what the Solar was saying.

Xilanada hopped off the desk and stood up ram-rod straight. "I don't want to fight you, Coil. I do, but I don't. Look at me!"

Xilanada's Anima burned with deep purples and golden reds and her dress made the whole room seem to be on fire. Terrible power radiated from the woman who had been Final Starry Night. Solitary Coil hated herself for it...but she slowly bent her knees. Xilanada's face was tense with wrath and Coil realized the Solar could kill her. She would make Xilanada work for it but, in the end, she was no match for her.

"Do you see, Coil? Do you see what I am?"

"You're crazy!" Coil shouted at the display of might. "How can you be so strong and so afraid to use it?"

"The strongest chisel against stone can uncover a lost treasure of the First Age, Coil, or it can destroy it. You taught me that, remember?" Xilanada's daiklave swept up into a ready stance. It wasn't the practice pose Coil had grown used to in the few years she'd spent in Night's company. "Do you know what I want to do? You could always read me, Coil, you always knew how I felt. What am I feeling now?"

"Killing anger," Coil said reluctantly. "You've got the fighting-mad smell of a disturbed badger, of an army of ants on rampage. You're mad enough to kill."

"So I am," Xilanada said, more calmly than she seemed by her scent. "How do you think it makes me feel, to see a woman I spent years with on the side of demons? On the side of Hell and Death? Goddamnit, Coil, you've taken a stand against Creation! What's the matter with you?"

"I've done no such thing," Coil said, shaking her head. "The demons will lose this fight, as they have lost every battle since the First War. As for Death, well, Piiro at least has the strength of will to make use of his power. He would rule, Xilanada. That's more than you're willing to do."

"Oh, Coil," Xilanada breathed sadly. "You and I need the same thing, after all."

"Each other?" Coil snarled in frustration.

"A conscience."

"Your weakness disgusts me." Solitary Coil turned her back on her Solar, knowing the woman wouldn't strike her. "The Lunar know a better way. A way that has worked well for a thousand years, a way that could build peace Creation-wide once the Realm is swept aside. It would make a paradise for the strong of this world and all would know their place."

"Just as the Dune People knew their place, to suffer as slaves, trapped with no escape," Xilanada answered from behind. Coil winced at her words, denying their truth even as that truth burned inside her. "That is what happens when the strong rule. You're a historian, Coil. Remember our mutual commitment to the restoration of the Old Realm? That Realm was beautiful, when it was ruled justly by the strong. But when the strong began to abuse that rule, who could stop them? It took centuries of oppression before the Usurpation, and that was with great cost."

"It won't happen again," Coil said.

"Won't it?" Coil felt Xilanada's hand on her shoulder, felt the unwelcome delight at her wife's touch. Her body knew what it wanted, what it was meant for, even if her heart rebelled. "I won't take that chance again, Coil. It was wrong to destroy Grayfalls, to just demolish their armies. Even the Silver Pact would have sneered at that action. Tell me the truth, Coil, what 'face' did I win in that battle?"

"Not everything is about Face," Coil argued, bowing her head, refusing to look at her wife.

"I studied in Denandsor for fifty years, schooling myself at the feet of the old masters. I thought I knew every word, every warning, every example of what not to do. The Shogunate Era sections offered ample material for that. Within a couple of years, I already committed my first massacre. I don't know what's wrong with me, Coil, but I need what the First Age rulers lacked. I need a conscience. ...and I do wish it was you."

"So you're crazed," Coil shrugged. "There are No-Moon healers who could find this sickness of yours and purge it from you."

"I'm not so certain the Lunar are free of it," Xilanada sighed. "Consider what you've told me about Raksi or Ma-Ha-Suchi. You've read a lot of the same old books I have. You know what the Lunar used to be like. What are they now? What terrible things would they do, if they really ruled?"

"Would you turn to the traitorous Sidereal then?" Coil sneered.

"No. I will never trust our once-advisors. Whether they were justified or not, they've made an absolute mess of Creation. I think their motives are right but their methods are simply inadequate. If they could be persuaded to set their vision aside and take up another...perhaps, but the ones I've spoken to seem unwilling to open their minds."

"So instead you will go to your...lover," Coil said, trying not to gag on the word. "Your affair. You would use your breach of your vows as your conscience? You really are a fool."

"I'm not Final Starry Night," Xilanada said sadly. "I will never be again. Nor are you the Coil he knew. I doubt she would have been with Piiro the way you were." There was no animosity in her voice, which was the only reason Coil didn't snap at her.

Solitary Coil's hypocrisy was not lost on her, though, whether Xilanada knew the extent of their relationship or not. She'd been as unfaithful as her Solar. More so, for Xilanada hadn't used her lover the way Coil had used hers.

"Final Starry Night swore to be faithful to you always," Xilanada said. "You were what he thought he needed. He was wrong. Both of us need what the other can't provide. Compassion, clarity, objectivity. Someone to tell us when we're straying too far."

"And you've found yours," Coil said, the bitterness choking her words as she spoke them. "Leaving nothing left for me."

"Coil...I do love you."

Hearing those words from her Solar made Coil's heart clench in her chest. It felt like Piiro had stabbed her again, with one critical difference; it lacked the certainty of recovery. Coil reached into a pocket and pulled the oricalcum wedding band out and looked at it.

"So it's really over. We are over."

"I don't know," Xilanada said, her voice thick with tears. "I don't see a way for us. I love Sen and he is what I need." She laughed shakily. "I wish that he could be what you need. He's a Dynast, I'm sure he's used to the idea of...well, if not a polygamous relationship, at least a non-monogamous one."

"Would you share your man with me?" Coil asked, turning around to face Xilanada. The Solar's eyes were wet with tears, her cheeks streaked with them. On that pale blonde face, haloed by sunlight, those tears looked like tiny rivulets of copper.

"I..." Xilanada abruptly winced, as if thinking about it for the first time. "...I don't know. Heavens, I don't know. Maybe?" She grimaced and clenched her jaw. "It would be hard but no harder than it's been for you. If it meant giving you peace, if it meant blessing you as he's blessed me. It would be a way for...you and I."

Solitary Coil found herself deeply touched by her wife's compassion. The Solar had made her final choice, it was obvious now, but still she was willing to sacrifice what she exclusively wanted, for her Lunar's happiness alone. Could Coil herself do any less than follow such an example?

Part of her wanted to die and another part hated Xilanada for defying nature, for all that had happened for the past few months. But the part that Solitary Coil most thought of as herself, the woman she'd been all alone for centuries, the scholar and archeologist, saw with more rational eyes. Xilanada would never be happy with her and, knowing that, Coil would never be either.

The Silver Pact understood that life was pain. Lunars got used to it. So Solitary Coil bore it and put her happily-ever-after aside at last.

"Thank you, my wife...but I don't love him," Coil said simply. It was all she needed to say.

"I doubt very much he loves you either," Xilanada said, sniffling as she smiled a little. "But he is a good man, with a good heart, and time may tell. Can you wish me luck?"

Solitary Coil breathed deeply, held it, feeling herself reeling on the precipice. She was not a creature of casual change, for all that Luna was the God of adaptability. Solitary Coil was named well and she had existed on her own for a hundred years or more before ever meeting Final Starry Night. It had been hard to become his wife, though she had been fighting for the past several months to reclaim that time. Now she was forced to change again. But she would.

"Xilanada." Coil looked at her as she said her name, inhaled her subtle nuances, and marveled as she did, seeing her wife as if for the first time. She didn't look, smell, taste, or act like Final Starry Night. Perhaps it was time to start judging her on her own merits.

Perhaps it was time to start seeing them.

"Xilanada, I need time to think about what you've said. I promise I will. But you're right, there are enemies of Creation here and they must be put down before anything else is resolved. I'll help you do it."

"Thank you, Coil," Xilanada said softly, with the respect that marked her understanding of how hard even that had been for her wife. "Shall we?"