30 - Ariadne #3
“Ari,” Iona sighs. “You are using this bond as a substitute for trust in me, but it shall never work. You do not decide how I feel about you. I tell you my feelings and you discard them as lies unless they reinforce your own insecurities. These delusions of my betrayal, your malignant habit of deception and omission, and your crippling doubts of my devotion… Even with our souls connected you still cannot believe that my love is as true as yours, no matter what vows I promise to keep. This anticipatory grief is tearing you apart, poisoning our love, and the bond only worsens it.”
Iona’s stare is like looking into the sun, but Ariadne refuses to let a single tear fall.
“I will love you eternally, but it seems that is not enough for you. You still doubt it even now,” Iona observes. “That’s the difference, isn’t it? I bonded with you because I trust you with every part of me. You bonded with me because you are afraid. You do not trust me-”
“But I do-”
“No! Stop lying to me! I hate your lies. I cannot bear to hear them a moment longer! Do you think I cannot feel your fear? I live with it day and night! Your paranoia, your forgeries of jealousy, are my constant companions. I shall go mad from them… I don’t…
” Iona chokes on a sob. “I cannot take away your pain. There is nothing more in this world I wish I could do…”
“Stop,” Ariadne whispers, hating the pity in Iona’s voice. She would rather it be hatred, disgust, anything else.
“I won’t. I cannot live with these words unspoken. No longer.”
“I do not need your pity.”
“There is a difference between pity and sympathy.”
“A subtlety you’ve yet to master.”
“I’ve grown immune to your malice.” Iona straightens her spine. “Your mistrust has naught to do with me. I’ve done nothing to deserve it. It is of your own construction, and so long as you refuse to believe me, we can never be content.”
Despite her very best efforts, despite knowing it will do no good for either of them, Ariadne’s heart is entombed in stone, fortifying it from harm, rendering her cold and numb.
“How could I possibly depend on you?” Ariadne asks, and Iona’s face falls.
“I cannot rely on you to protect me. I can depend on no one but myself! You and everyone else expect me to fix… everything! I cannot be the only one… I cannot keep you alive in a manner that is palatable to you. Not when there is a monster out there threatening to hurt you! Who’s nearly killed you thrice now!
” Her voice echoes across the desolate hall.
“The bond is necessary, or otherwise you could be dead within days. I may hate it more even than you, but we cannot break it, even if it has… less than desirable effects.”
“You’ve not given me a chance to protect you! Always casting me aside and pushing me away whenever danger comes for us. What use were all those lessons? Was it merely to preoccupy my time and humor me in my ambitions?” Iona asks.
Ariadne scowls. “I told you that first day, it was all in an overabundance of caution and-”
“I’d say that our circumstances have vastly changed since that first day,” Iona says. “Others are relying on me to defend them, as well as myself. I must stand on my own two feet! I have the pendant-”
“You would not possess it if it weren’t for me.
You had hardly any magic after Elise’s leeching curse.
I fended off the wolves and healed the dragon’s wing.
I taught you spells and kept you alive long enough to enter the trials at all.
Without my guidance and protection, you would not have succeeded,” Ariadne says.
“And now you’ve come to regret giving it to me. Is that it?” Iona asks. “What of the things you said to me in your dream? When you held me and told me that the pendant would never come between us? I told you to take it-”
“I did not want it!” Ariadne shouts.
“Yes, you did!” Iona yells, “but I see now why you abstained. It was not an abstention at all! It was an abdication. I now shoulder obligations to your Goddess, to covens who look to me and Xiomara and others for protection from darkness. You were not forthcoming about any of it! I entered this world for you, endure your family for you, stayed at college for you! Why are you now punishing me for it?”
Ariadne turns away, her mother’s words repeating in her head, making her rethink her every motivation, her every choice and action.
“You blame me for Euphemia’s death,” Iona whispers.
“No,” Ariadne says immediately.
“I fought all I could-”
“I know,” Ariadne says. “I shouldn’t have entered the woods alone. It was… It was my fault.”
Iona stays silent.
“If I hadn’t sent you back to Rome, Kokuro would be dead, too,” Ariadne says, hating the words even as she says them, but unable to stop.
“You do not know that for certain. I am not so helpless as you claim. I rescued Nenet in the desert, I healed you after you so recklessly decided to face the Crone without me, saved you from Elise when you nearly flung yourself off a cliff!”
Ariadne’s anger reforms as she’s inundated by memories of aster flowers.
“And I more than illustrated my improvement when I fought the Crone alone and lived to tell of it. I was so close… I nearly…” Iona lets out a frustrated sigh. “I would rather die than let anyone harm you.”
Ariadne rolls her eyes. “You say you would die for me? Well, I would in turn. That is easily done. But I would fight for you, kill for you, if need be, and that is the difference between us.”
Iona’s jaw drops. “I do not want you to… kill for me. I never asked-”
“And you would never need to. You never…. You gave in. When Elise was near to overtaking us, you relented, were willing to die and leave me to live without you. I cannot live without you! You didn’t fight for me like I do for you, and so I must fight for the both of us,” Ariadne says bitterly. I love her more than she loves me.
“That’s not true,” Iona says, her face falling.
“Stay out of my head!” Ariadne screams, and Iona flinches away.
“Do not raise your voice at me!” she cries. “I could never harm Elise. How could I face Samuel again if I cut down his only daughter, regardless of her crimes? Her betrayal left me wretched… I could hardly think! How could you possibly compare that to this? It is not the same.”
“You will kill the Crone then, when the time comes?” Ariadne challenges.
Iona hesitates, her brow furrowing to betray her conflicted emotions as she falls silent.
Ariadne sighs angrily and puts a hand against her brow, then runs it across her face and lets it fall in a gesture of utter abandon and loss of hope, only to behold Iona’s big hazel eyes appraising her.
“You said you were not a killer,” she whispers.
“I did not wish to be,” Ariadne says, “but after what the Crone has done… A quick death will be a mercy compared to what I truly wish to unleash upon her.”
Another trace of fear crosses Iona’s face, and hatred blooms within Ariadne, resenting the constant battle between who she was born to be and who Iona wishes for her to become.
She sets her jaw. “What point is there to any of this if you will only grow to hate me later?”
“What?” Iona asks.
“Your future self ignored me all those times I came to find you in Brazil,” Ariadne says. “You would not… You would not even set your eyes upon me.”
Iona throws her hands up in exasperation. “I cannot account for what may or may not happen in the future. If I ever did turn away from you, I swear it would be some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy, if you insist upon ignoring my words and actions in favor of your rampant paranoia.”
“This is not all in my head, and I resent your saying so,” Ariadne says.
“I knew from the start that you are insecure,” Iona says, recalling her first aura reading a year ago, “but this is ridiculous, Ariadne. I cannot go on this way.”
Ariadne winces slightly as the beginnings of a migraine brews behind Iona’s eyes. She brings a hand to her forehead and lightly runs her fingertips across her freckled brow.
“Why do you try so hard to maintain a bond you know is hurting us?” Iona asks. “Why do you cling to a bond you frequently ask me not to use? What are you so afraid I might see?”
Ariadne’s thoughts flit erratically, until she stifles them, hiding them away. Iona’s scowl deepens.
“I’ve decided… that my mind has changed,” she says, and Ariadne’s stomach turns. “I do not believe I’m owed your every secret, but so long as they lie between us, I see now that we cannot move forward. Do with that what you will.”
Ariadne stares at her. “If you knew what I did… you would not love me.”
“So long as you refuse to show me, you will never know,” Iona says.
“I know.”
“No, you merely think that you do.“
Jaw clenching, Ariadne stares at her, appraising her stubborn frown and glistening eyes, her arms crossed, and feet planted firmly on the ground, and the very slight waver of her balance betraying her persisting inebriation.
“You wish to gaze upon my greatest shame, and believe that will somehow fix this?” Ariadne asks.
“I want what you are willing to give me,” Iona says. “Do not speak a single word if you mean to hurl them back at me later. You decide if I am worthy of your candor, if I’ve proven by now that my love for you,“ her voice breaks, “is everlasting. Or otherwise, do not speak at all.”
Hanging her head, Ariadne closes her eyes, indecision rendering her speechless.
The fear of losing Iona makes her tremble, until warm hands reach up to cup her cheeks.
For a moment, all she wants is to pull away, but Iona’s gentle fingers push her stray curls behind her ears, running her thumbs along Ariadne’s cheekbones, and it’s all she can do to keep from collapsing in Iona’s arms and begging her to let this go.
“We will trust each other. We will protect each other. We will be loyal,” Iona whispers.
“Those are words easily spoken,” Ariadne says.