killing is overwhelming; dying might just be your thing (rule 63 bakuratem)

[shegypt]

[ New moons are Bakura's favorites.

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! ]

Comments

[knifemonopoly]

[This time, Atem gets her arm up in time to shield her face. The gauntlet's been thrown. The lots have been cast.

Splash fight.

It is messy, silly, and makes a lot of noise; it's a good thing no one's trying to sleep in the apartments around the courtyard. The sounds Atem makes are grunts of effort as she gives it her all, cries of horror as water goes into her nose or ears, or laughter -- at a well-placed splash on either side, or just the absurdity of it all. She's going to fight until she's tired out, and her muscles give way; if Bakura keeps it up, Atem will start to slow down, being the one of the two with less physical endurance.]

[shegypt]

[ Oh, Bakura is so keeping it up - and when she thinks she sees her opponent faltering, tired from laughter and giddiness and the relief of not being at that stupid party any more, perhaps of being Atem and not the High Priestess anymore - she pounces, aiming to tackle Atem down into the water.

It would be so easy, she realizes. So easy, while Atem's guard is down like this, and she's having fun. Bakura wouldn't even have to bring out Diabound. Just hold her down, keep holding her down, and -

But it wouldn't be enough. Wouldn't make up for everything she's learned, everything she's remembered. Her people have suffered for fifteen years. She's not about to let their tormentors off easy with a single night.

Not about to let Atem slip away before Bakura's stolen all of her.

So she shoves Atem down into the water, and grins at her through it, Bakura in the air with Atem's sight blurred, Bakura the one who can see clearly - but once she's made her point, she'll let the Princess up. And keep staring at her. And grinning.

In her exhilaration, she even looks fond. ]

[knifemonopoly]

[She doesn't have enough air. Atem's muscles are already burning when Bakura pushes her down and holds her under, and she breathes out half her air in surprise when Bakura doesn't let her back up.

What? What's she doing? Surely this isn't a murder attempt. Bakura wouldn't. They're friends. This is a joke, surely...

(Drowning's a cursed way to go. Usually, it's in the Nile. Fall into the wrong part, and your body is lost forever, impossible to preserve, part of the teeming masses that rely on the charity of Hathor to cling to any kind of existence in eternity.)

But Atem's body wouldn't be lost, if she died here. She'd be found, and it'd be clear what had happened. This has to be a joke. Bakura will let her up.

She kicks, hard, at Bakura's shin, with the last strength in her muscles, a flash of temper more than a real struggle for her life. It may or may not actually connect.

--and then she's up, gasping for air, coughing the pondwater out of her nose and throat, feeling like someone's stuck a poker up there and scrambled her brains. Atem squints at Bakura, wearing that stupid, affectionate look.]

You're not -- koff koff! -- not very funny.

[shegypt]

[ Bakura points at Atem. ] Wrong. I'm hilarious. It's your judgment that sucks.

[ Never mind the whole living embodiment of ma'at thing. The only royal verdict that matters is the King of Thieves'.

She lounges against the side of the pond, not letting up on her stare. Even the finest cloth the Two Lands have to offer can't keep itself from clinging all over a short stack gone for a dip, huh. Weird to think that this tiny stick of a Princess, with her little round head and her littler rounder breasts and her outsized pout, carries that much fire within her.

Time to plunder it. ]

I've been gone too long if you're losing your sense of humor.

[knifemonopoly]

[Her nasal cavities are still burning, her makeup is running down her face, and she feels like she's spit up half the pool, and Bakura is still staring at her. Atem doesn't feel particularly ashamed of her linen's state; a fine weave means translucence, it's not a secret what her tits look like, and she and Bakura have bathed together plenty, but for some reason, that stare feels like sun on skin that's been out of the shade too long already. It puts heat under her flesh the same way wine does, and Ankhsunatem sinks down into the pond to douse it, all the way down to her chin. The cool water does exactly what she was hoping it would do when she left the party; this is better, this is good.

The pout, though, goes nowhere, as immovable as Atem's need to have the last word. Her eyes flick over to Bakura, sullenly noting the effortlessness, the power in her build. Unfair, that Bakura can have both. That she can be born a woman, and go where she likes, and have that kind of strength, as well as the clever nimbleness that let her get through tombs when they were small.]

My sense of humor's fine. It's your jokes that are bad!

[She's put out, but not truly angry. The water's relaxing. Now that her head's not under the surface, she feels safe in it, held by it, her dress floating around her like an underwater plant.]

[shegypt]

Now you're just recursive.

[ Which, this smile implies, she's going to take as another victory.

Bakura reaches for the wine, still in grabbing distance on the shore, and takes a swig. Wades over to offer it to Atem. ]

Drink up. You'll get cold.

[ Heavens forbid the most important woman in the Two Lands so much as shiver in discomfort. ]

[knifemonopoly]

Everything's recursive.

[She takes the wine. The jug half-sinks in the water in front of her, so that Atem can tip it into her mouth without raising herself from the water, her chin so low the ripples lap at it. Her voice echoes inside the jug.]

Days and nights and years and regencies, it's all the same, over and over and over.

[Every year, the same festivals. Every year, performing the same rituals, asking the gods to bless the flood and growing and harvest, knowing the metal bodies of the gods are cold and hollow and false. The same kings, the same living Horus, born and dead and born again from himself. She's a part of the cycle, too. She'll be married to the next king, unless she's already too old by the time her father dies and retires to the priesthood instead, just like what would have happened if she'd been born twenty years earlier, or forty, or sixty.

She takes a gulp of wine with a glug.]

I envy you.

[shegypt]

Hrmph.

[ Dampen down the ire at that - it's the intended response from the target, can't let the grudge get in its own way! - play it calm, play it cool, set the trap. Bakura runs a hand through her hair, wet bangs spiking and separating and highlighting her scar. You know, the proof she's seen shit, and Atem hasn't? What a coincidence.

...Damn, it would have been fun to have Atem along for that adventure; the real Atem, the Atem she's hoping to let loose before even that Atem has to die for the sins of her father, her father and the whole fucking dynasty. The Atem to whom a curse is a challenge to crack, to whom the world is a game. The stakes are higher than that Atem can imagine, but damn, does she have fun!

Funny Atem, who believes the world is just. Who wants to do the right thing.

Perhaps the right thing will be turning on her own father, once she knows. Ah....It's not the chill night air that gives Bakura a shiver.

Bakura sidles closer, offering body heat in this trying time. Offering a soft murmur, a shoulder to vent on, an escape. ]

D'you know the real difference between me an' you?

[knifemonopoly]

[Atem's response is dry, but not as dry as she'd like it to be. It's meant to be Saharan, but the quiet, intimate mood, her own inebriated honesty, and the low-volume tone she takes due to the proximity make it land softer, friendlier.]

Shirts?

[The water's warmer coming from around Bakura. Now that Ankhsunatem's cooled off, it feels nice. The closeness feels nice. The seriousness, for as long as it lasts, does too. Bakura really was missed, by her, if by no one else.]

[shegypt]

[ The remark gets half a smirk, and a fleeting (and unexamined) thought that perhaps garments, too, are something of which the King of Thieves should divest her target. One step at a time. ]

This.

[ Her thumb now strokes the noble hairline, along where the crown of the Two Lands would one day sit, were the Princess a Prince. ]

You've let them build a trap in your mind.

[ Her thumb trails down, tracing the life pulsing in along Atem's neck. There's another spot it would be so easy to press, and - but no. Not yet.

Savor. ]

I can spring you.

[knifemonopoly]

[A trap....?

Her brows furrow, under the touch, as Atem thinks, denies, rejects.

No...no, she's not trapped, she understands through the wine in her brain. She's not trapped the way a pillar holding up the roof of a great temple is not trapped. It has its place, its very important role, and it must not move not because it's imprisoned, but because it is proud to be where it is, performing an important function, maintaining stability and preventing death and disaster.

...

...

Since when has a pillar been what Ankhsunatem wanted to be?

Oh, she hates that.]

It's not a trap.

[She murmurs it, her voice making her neck buzz under Bakura's hand, and the touch of that hand making her feel like she's swallowed a snake, that it's coiling down below her navel, restless. Her breathing is even, her voice low, but her heartbeat, picking up like a horse nudged from a walk to a trot, gives her away.]

It's duty. Necessity, to maintain harmony between the people and the gods.

[shegypt]

[ Yes, that's right. Recite the sacred "facts". But you're too bright for that, aren't you, you're the smartest person Bakura's ever met, possibly the only smart person Bakura's ever met, because Bakura measures intelligence by ability to think for oneself, and that's precisely what the monarchy wants to drum out of Atem, Atem and everyone else, a cruel game nobody knows they're playing, nobody but the thief, who sees the only winning move is to rewrite the rules....

and, eventually, destroy the board... ]

According to whom....?

[ She can feel Atem's heartbeat quickening, and they're so close Atem can probably feel her voice, too, purring and reverberating from Bakura's chest directly into Atem's skin. Seeping in.

Infiltrating. ]

[knifemonopoly]

[Her eyes drop.]

According to nature.

[This, here, is her sticking point. This is the fact that makes her situation inescapable.]

The people depend on the flood. The flood depends on the gods. Therefore, if I don't fulfill my duty...the harvest will be bad, and food will be scarce. It's the common people who would suffer most, in a situation like that. So, I can't lose the gods' favor -- the cost is too great.

[And all that she upholds would come crashing down, crushing the people below, noble or common. Her heart beats hard as she shows Bakura the counterweight, the enormous limestone block that holds the cage-door closed, even though they're close enough that the air and water between them has begun to feel hot. Bakura may be disappointed. Atem would like to come with her, to ride her horse again instead of being driven on a chariot along precisely guarded streets, to face a challenge more exciting than disputes over taxes, to test her power and smarts against something worthy...

...but she can't.]

This is one trap even you can't get past, Bakura. I can't be sprung.

[shegypt]

[ In the face of this incontrovertible proof, the mighty thief heaves....

A sigh. Not a sigh of defeat. The sigh a scribe might sigh when dealing with an uneducated laborer. One cannot expect the other, given their position in life, to operate upon the same plane, and yet - interaction proves tiring. ]

And that's why I'm sayin' the trap's in your head.....

[ Dipping her hands down beneath the water, she tries to hoist Atem up in her arms. Fine. Okay. She will do this the brutal way, the way she'd always kinda figured she would, because she's gonna scream if she keeps it to herself much longer. ] Close yer eyes.