There isn’t any desire to do harm in Kensa, there almost never is. Though she has committed her violences. At the moment she doesn't want to talk to our touch Starsin enough to fight with her but she rises to the provocations anyway. The trees in which they sand are quiet and their voices bounce off of the trees and stones around them, now and then raised other times hissing. Kensa turns her head only slightly as Starsin prowls and spits at her, topaz eyes tracking but her posture carefully restrained. This is about you.
Kensa knows that already, but it is about Starsin too, and oh so much of it is about Litotes. There are two things that strike Kensa. First the incredible guilt and loss of being reminded of how Litotes had once loved her. It makes her look for a hollow place inside herself to hide, so she doesn’t have to recall the things he said when he realized at last that she has become so selfish, a contradiction in gold leaf and chocolate. Second, the fact the other woman with all her pride in her own loyalty cares so damn much about Kensa’s connection with another man.
Starsin circles but Kensa remains still except for those few steps she took to put malice behind her suggestion about Ophanim.
"Isn’t that the game though Starsin? Telling a man you have no business interfering with just what the whore he cares for has been up to? ” But it isn’t about that at all. If Starsin didn’t have feelings for Litotes it wouldn’t have mattered what had grown between his wife and Brigade. She might even have understood it. Detritus around their feet rustles, Kensa side stepping away, warning Starsin back with a sneer. “Except we aren’t whores. We’re women who take what we want. Enjoy your choice but don’t tell me I’m required to want the same bullshit fairy-tale. Even if Kensa had the option...Starsin doesn’t know what she would decide. Starsin has cast aside Litotes and it makes Kensa sick and sad and angry. She’d done it too, but never on purpose. Not really. In her own unusual way Kensa’s love for Lie would have extended to seeing him have whatever it is he desired. Whoever. Or it would have if not for the poison of wanting Starsin herself… but Kensa’s jealousy had burned up died when Litotes had cut himself free.
Today Kensa would choose nothing to avoid feeling all that she had in the last week. Let them all leave her the fuck alone. It is pointless to stand here and argue like she doesn’t know what she’s done, and Starsin obviously enjoys the opportunity to gouge at her. Head high, her topaz eyes widen mocking. “Congratulations. You’re the heroine.” —the Primarch hurls a thought, sad and furious into her own mind—I didn’t need your fucking help. “ I’ve built my own hell. I watched myself lay every brick but couldn't fucking stop. Go ahead and pretend you've never been there.” Kensa doesn’t need her to admit to having gotten in too deep with Litotes, no one needs to tell her that was an accident. Not after everything that Starsin has done and said.
”I never wanted anyone to come between myself and Litotes and in the end I didn't need Brigade to ruin my marriage."
A pause, a flick of her eyes across the other woman's features, the next set of words so much softer, anger yielding to pained resignation "I only needed you. And her own jealousy, the brutality of honesty, and a little good old fashioned selfishness. The end of everything born not of Kensa’s infidelities or her foolishly requited love for Brigade, but her need to lay some claim on her husband’s lover, some vengeance that she now can’t make any sense of. This said, this ironically romantic but dejected scrap, Kensa turns her face away. There is no point to this.
@[Starsin] Hot fresh traaaaaash
