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killing is overwhelming; dying might just be your thing (rule 63 bakuratem)
How could they not be? Less light, less sense of being watched over by something ineffable and yet uncaring. And so reliably they appear, cycling through the sky, faithfully permitting the people to mark their calendars by them - as if something regular is, by its mere ordinariness, made more worthy of enshrining.
Bakura sees things differently. The moon always returns, yes. But, like an egg swallowed by a snake, it always disappears, too.
She reappears in the capital, in the palace, on a very special new moon indeed. With all she's learned on her...pilgrimage...it's easy to infiltrate, now, for not even the guards notice the Beautiful Festival of the Valley has obtained a guest who, if not uninvited, was unexpected. After all, what is there to see? One more supplicant, hood up, flowers held in one jeweled hand. If she slouches over she might even trick people into seeing someone other than herself, someone who isn't out of place in a shendyt. She's not built to Egyptian beauty standards, and besides, she likes her new red coat.
Nothing's changed here. She hadn't expected it to. People are still getting drunk off their asses in the name of holiness; people with more power are still trying to figure out how to snatch it from people with less. The boy people once had tried to get Bakura to befriend - let the foundlings stick together! - until he proved to be such a pompous ass she tried to drown him in the lily pond is, true to the stick that's been up his butt since birth, lecturing some peon or other on propriety. Being scolded by the old man who's taken him under his wing.
Bakura is going to kill that old man last.
No, her target is elsewhere, will be somewhere there's no clamor, because she's all about duty now, isn't she, duty and honor and family and nobility, and it's a good thing Bakura hasn't eaten yet because she just might retch (psyche, she thinks it's funny, but in a fashion that makes her want to break shit, which is how most of Bakura's humor goes nowadays). So with that in mind -
Ah. There. Cornered by the administrators who review the year's taxes, doing business even on a holy day, how terrible, surely someone must rescue this captive Princess. Bakura tosses the flowers she's holding onto someone's memorial - she doesn't even know who; these aren't for them, anyway - and slips around from the back.
She's tall for a woman. And the Princess is short. ]
Barley tithes and goatskins! Now this is a party.
[ Her grin is feral, crooked on one side. Nearly slashed through by a scar she hadn't been sporting when she'd snuck out of this very palace, an eternity and yet no time at all ago.
When she sees the administrator's face spasm like he's trying not to notice curdled cheese, it's like she never left! ]
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She has dutifully led the statues of the gods down the river on the barge made for them, she has dutifully recited the names of her ancestors, and she has dutifully returned to the palace, where the administrators' words are going in one ear and out the other, because all of her attempts to get a word in edgewise have been met with a yes my lady but-- and she's not certain how to handle it besides letting them blow themselves out. Her posture is usually excellent, and even now it can only be read as a slump if you know her, but she's more tired than anyone should be at one of the year's big parties.
...until a very familiar voice speaks up from behind her, a voice full of memories of escapes from lessons, escapades to places forbidden to them, afternoons of games, fun -- everything this conversation isn't -- and her back straightens.
She whirls around, eyes flashing.]
Bakura!
You've got a lot of nerve showing your face at a time like this...!
You should have been here twenty minutes ago. Before these fellows realized they had nothing better to do at the heb nefer en inet than to talk to me about temple business! By the gods, Bakura, where have you been? What are you wearing?
[!!!]
What happened to your face?
[Is she ok?? It doesn't look fresh, but...!]
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[ Amazing. Incredible. Bakura beckons over a passing serving girl, grabs the amphora she was carrying - oh, excellent. Red wine. Not something typically consumed once one becomes a Pharaoh.
Which is ridiculous, because who is supposed to stop a King from getting anything?
She hefts the amphora, inserting herself between Atem and the noble. Draping an arm around Atem's shoulder - which, yeah, excellent, mister taxes excuses himself rather than try to watch this with a straight face, and the people around them are all conveniently finding other things to do, too. ]
So you only missed me as a distraction?
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Luckily, Bakura's always had permission to approach, and will always be granted audience. Atem supposes her father had a soft spot for the girl, rescued from death of exposure, and knows no more about it. Her red eyes cut sidelong at the woman whose arm is slung over her shoulder in a very familiar manner, and she answers the accusation with one of her own.]
You didn't answer me about your face.
[She can't decide if she should be concerned...or just envious.]
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Her smirk is daring, now, daring and close. She leans in to murmur: ]
Want to touch it.....?
[ which is not an answer, not yet, but Bakura has never believed in giving things to the girl whose every wish is a command. No, Bakura alone (save maybe for the magic teacher, and, psh, he is kind of a sad sack and no fun) makes her work. ]
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[Does she want to what...?! She just makes this face, the one up there, for a split second, before breaking into a sputtering laugh.]
You're always so weird, Bakura...!
[She doesn't think anything of how much of her personal space is being invaded right now. It's just Bakura playing, like she always does -- she likes to get a rise out of people, and she's clearly going for familiarity with the princess that will scandalize the people around them. So, Atem rolls with the murmuring, and certainly doesn't fight being steered away from the action of the party! She's being reunited with an old (albeit weird) friend, and that friend is effectively repelling anyone else who might approach, and while that's not necessarily a good thing, it does mean Atem gets to take a break, and talk about something interesting for a change. She's smart, the gods know it, and she's got an excellent head for strategy and mechanics and spotting loopholes, but she wasn't made to run a religious-cult-slash-state-agency. She's overworked and bored all at once, so Bakura showing up again and keeping everyone else away is precisely what the doctor ordered.]
At least some things never change....no, I won't touch it!
But I don't mind telling you, you were missed dearly.
[Not by Seto, or by Mahaad, or Siamun, or Uncle Akhenadin, or any of the courtiers, but, uh, definitely by her.]
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[ This grin both calls Atem's bluff and reaffirms the parts of it that weren't. And Bakura has to admit: it's kinda good to see Atem too. No one else comes even close to being a match for her.
As an opponent, that is.
And it seems the feeling may be mutual: are those lines in the noble brow? Bags disguised beneath the royal eyes? Oh, an official's life must be so scintillating, Bakura is so sorry she skipped out on it! What a dreadful fate it is that she instead went OUT PLACES and DID THINGS.
Gods, if the path Atem's father laid down for her ends up leading her to Bakura hook, line, and sinker, Bakura's going to laugh for days.
Her eyes sparkle in all the ways she knows a pampered palace life can never provide. ]
I'll tell you how I got it if you tell me why you look like shit.
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I look fine.
[(but isn't this always how it is? Bakura, despite being a frustrating fully-fledged liar, can also be counted on to tell her the truth, directly, when other people won't, for fear of angering the most powerful handful of individuals in all of civilization. even seto doesn't argue with her; when he disagrees, it's couched in bowing and scraping and surely I must be misunderstanding your highness and I would be honored if the royal daughter would show me my error and going behind her back anyway. no one but Bakura would call her out on looking tired.)]
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But you also look like shit. These two things are not mutually exclusive. ]
Uh-huh. You're having the time of your life.
[ She swigs directly from the amphora, then offers it to Atem: thirsty?
And she just waits. Expectantly. She has always been more patient than one might expect, when there's something in it for her. When it means getting the other person to make the first move. ]
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....
....
She takes it.
She is not, at all, ready to talk about her many worries, some of which are quite predictable, and some of which are wild and incredibly unexpected. But one dramatic glug of wine can't hurt, and performing religious rituals has done nothing for her theatrical streak. Bottoms up.]
Maybe I'm a little tired....
[She hands it back.]
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As for me - [ She tips more wine into her mouth, smacks her lips; manners are valued by the sorts of people who'd talk about her when they didn't know she was already skilled at sneaking, so anything she overheard people lamenting, she made sure to do double. ] - it was nothin' big. Just a scuffle. With a spell.
[ She wipes her thumb along one of the horizontal ridges now etched into her face, remembering. Her heart quickens at the mere thought, both of the memory and of sharing this with Atem. Of driving in the first wedge.
It's sweeter than the wine, really. ]
And a ka.
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Oh, oh shit.]
You got into a fight with someone with a ka?
[If that's the case, she's lucky to have gotten away with a scar...]
Was it one of ours?
[Does someone need to be talked to, about Bakura's right to move freely around the kingdom? Because Atem will speak with them about it.]
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It wasn't one of anybody's! Remember the magician whose funeral we attended that week you caught the fever?
[ ....the funeral where Bakura made out with one of the professional mourners, but that is neither here nor there ]
He left parting gifts for concerned guests checking up on his eternal slumber. One of them got bored of the wall when I stepped on the wrong stone.
[ She snorts. ] It wasn't even discreetly wrong......
[ yes she sprang a magical trap on purpose that is definitely the crucial part of this story ]
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[Bakura...you shouldn't be breaking into magicians' tombs...Bakura, you're going to give her a heart attack and leave a power vacuum in the church.
As fun...as it used to be...to try to figure out the traps, see if they could get past...it's a bad idea.]
Why on earth did you deliberately spring a buried magician's ka-trap?
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[ UTTERLY UNREPENTANT GRIN. Is Atem going to play priestess with her? Is she going to remind Bakura about safety and duty and piety?
Is that really what's going to happen? Atem???? ]
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...you don't have to prove anything by getting hurt, you know. Everyone already knows you're strong, Bakura...no one doubts that! What matters is making it to the end.
[It's a miniature lecture, sure -- or it would be, if the tone were more harsh. As it is, her tone's gentle enough that it's barely even advice...what comes across is less preaching and more concern for a friend.]
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Dammit, there's that feeling again, the one from when she was a kid and she hated everybody in this damn palace except for Atem. Now she hates everybody in this damn palace including Atem, but she still...she doesn't want Atem to get her wrong.
Atem doesn't know. Atem doesn't know a thing about the world, what the world is really like, what this palace is really like, so of course this shit was going to happen. Not a big deal. She's fine. She's Bakura, who doesn't need to prove a damn thing to anybody; she's Bakura, who has walked through wreckage and known in her gut she was home.
Nobody else needs to understand her. But before the Princess draws her last dying breath, Ankhsunatem must.
A flush of color seeps beneath that new scar. Use this, Bakura reminds herself. Use this. ]
Like you've seen the end.
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They're talking about the end of a tomb's trap-run, ostensibly; the goal at the end of obstacles, the game's victory conditions. But something about the way Bakura's skin flushes makes Atem think that's not all they're talking about.
Funny Bakura should bring up the end at this particular festival, where everyone remembers the dead, lending power to the people they've lost to the afterlife by saying their names and leaving offerings. They know, don't they, precisely what the end looks like? Even if she hasn't seen it, Atem has known what it will look like all her life.
And she knows what it'll look like getting there, doesn't she? She'll run the temple as gods-wife, until she marries someone and becomes his principal wife -- not the only one, but the one with greatest status, thanks to her birth as princess -- unless, of course, she's too old by the time her father dies and passes the throne on. Either way, she'll get a tomb, her last rites will be performed, and her name will join the others that get recited under the summer's new moon.
Bakura's end won't be that different, right? She'll get permission to have a tomb, Atem will see to that, and on it it'll have pictures of all of her adventures, and among her other titles and epithets, it'll say beloved of Ankhsunatem, great royal wife of Pharaoh Whatshisname.
So.....
....what's Bakura on about, here?]
Don't I know what it looks like?
....
What do you expect is waiting for you, at the end of the game you're playing now?
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[ She grins at Atem, and for a moment, she lets herself look not like a friend but like a thief eyeing her prize. She wants Atem to see the naked want on her face, the need to take, and let Atem assume...what she will...of what Bakura wants.
Atem, Atem, what has being royalty done to you. She'll kill you for you, you know! Kill you for the sake of what you could have been, all that fire and intelligence and wildness. Kill you to free you of that blood in your veins, the blood that tried to stamp out the blood in hers.
But not before she unleashes that fire, not before she drags you down with her. Never revealing it all, mind; that would be a fool's move. The best way to win a game is for the opponent to think they're playing a different one. ] But you could be. If you let me show you.
[ She leans in, attempting to press their foreheads together, murmurs: ]
Want to play?
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Want to play?
· Against you? Always.
· I don't have time for this.
Because there's so much she has to do, so much that she can't catch a break even on festival days, and the religious rituals that hold the country together, that connect the people to their gods, are her job to see to, the wheel of the year turns steady and unstoppably and will wait for no lazy priestess who falls asleep in the holiest-holy god-shrine, and Bakura luring her away from that will be nothing but trouble, nothing but chaos.
...but she's so bored. After her dreams, rituals that act like the statues are the real bodies of the gods feels like clumsy child's playacting, what is even the point of parading them around and making them kiss when she's dreamed what they really look like? It'd be a violation of tradition to say anything, though, and while she's greatly favored by the king as an only daughter, she's already pressed her luck hard...
When's the last time she did anything she was actually excited about?
And, Bakura....she loves Bakura like Isis loves Nepthys, she's missed Bakura, and she's concerned that Bakura is going out and getting herself hurt just because she can, and -- this soon after Bakura came back, it feels wrong to push her away.
Their foreheads press together, and that look on Bakura's face is absolutely shameless, though. Atem can read a face as skillfully as she can read the mood of a crowd, but it doesn't take much to see that Bakura looks like she wants to eat her. What is that? She knows Bakura's never cared much for decorum, hasn't been restricted by what's expected of her in the same way Atem has, but surely this isn't really about a tryst, because this advance is very sudden. Something's up. Something's happened.
Eyes, eyes so bright they look red in daylight, search Bakura's face from inches away, flicking over her -- there's that intelligence, that curiosity, that sharp analysis that she only digs up when she cares about what she's looking at. This isn't simple, is it? There's a hidden room, and Bakura is dangling one key in front of her, but it's a trick, and she can't see the true shape of this yet.
The best way to find out is going to be to play, she knows. She doesn't have enough pieces yet to determine the final shape of the puzzle, and in order to see more, she has to engage. Put some skin in the game, so to speak.
She doesn't seriously think Bakura's going to try to sleep with her, though. It's just an opening move, meant to get her interest, as calculated an attack as you're not capable is to her pride.
Dialogue option: selected.
She grins.]
Against you? Always.
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She pulls back, downing quite a lot of the remaining wine, and then hands Atem the amphora again. ] Step one! Drink this, or pretend to. We need an excuse for your upcoming scandalous behavior.
[ Her brows quirk in a manner implying Atem, if nobody else present, is going to have the time of her life with this game. And so is Bakura.
Just let her see Atem, the real Atem, one more time.....
No, there's no real Atem. There's just the Princess, and what could have been. But she's going to steal what could have been, before the end. ]
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Oh boy.
She raises it to her mouth, her eyes looking over the rim, and her words echo in it for a moment.]
Just what do you have in mind?
[Atem doesn't expect to be told. She does expect that this will be messy. She also trusts her ability to think on her feet, to adhere to her principles, to play this game with Bakura without compromising herself or the kingdom.
She drinks much less of the wine than she pretends to. She'll want her wits about her for this. But, really, at a festival like this, after how hard she's been working, it wouldn't be unbelievable for her to act up a little bit...]
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That's at least step three.
Oi!
[ This to the group of musicians, playing for the delight of the nobles and royalty in attendance. ] The dead're in a better place, right? Let's show we're happy for 'em! Somethin' faster!
[ The musicians stare at each other, and then at the unruly muscular woman in company of....of....
Gods almighty, what do they DO with this?! This woman is completely out of turn, but that's the Princess...!! ]
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When they hesitate, she lends her support. Because she's in, now, wanting to see where this is going, wanting to understand. She's not going to block Bakura's moves.]
Was she unclear?
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Good, good. A new tradition!
[ She holds out a hand to Atem. ] Care to dance? Your Highness.
[ Step two is apparently make complete fools of themselves in public. Bakura likes step two. ]
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Atem has been working very hard to fulfill the expectations on her and she's still not always taken seriously. So...why not cut a little loose? It's not like those dead statues she's responsible for are the real gods anyway. It has been so long since she's gotten to play...]
Are you sure? It's been a long time. I might step on your feet.
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gets tagblocked, then listens to one (1) rica line and is suddenly fine
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