fandomtownies | Infinite Consortium, Monday

Honestly, really, as far as Ignis was concerned, with regards to what was likely to fall from the sky on any given day in December, at least the tinsel was something relatively easy to clean and hardly even gave him concern for his jacket without needing an umbrella. And with the treats he'd brought along with him were of course covered, so there was nothing to worry about there, either.

He brushed a little tinsel off his shoulders before entering the shop with his usual precautions and considerations of the...vibes of the place to anticipate what sort of mood he might find his paramour in as he ventured in with his usual questing call to know which direction his path should follow.

"Over here, my darling," Liliana called, her voice pensive. She'd been much brighter when she'd left, easily finding the Christmas spirit she'd had last year, so this new quiet was quite the change.

But there were no sounds of struggle or strife, no dangers or frustrations his sharpened senses could detect. Just a kind of soft melancholy.

It was certainly enough of a shift that it was clear to Ignis exactly what his next move would be. He continued his path directly to her, setting down one of the boxes before leaning in to brush a soothing kiss against her pensive brow, and another still soft but aching lingering one for her lips, for that 'thinking face' that could now be conjured up so easily in his mind's eye with little more than a tone, a disposition, a distracted affect, a thoughtful distance.

"Sounds as though perhaps you've had an introspective morning, my love," he said. "I haven't got a zino, but," and here, he smiled,as soft and warm as his kiss, while offering out the other, now opened, box, "but perhaps a truffle or two for your thoughts might suffice instead?"

Even with the promise of delicious sugar treats, Liliana didn't move with her usual enthusiasm to indulge her inner sugar gremlin. She did reach for one, of course, she wasn't in crisis, but the difference was certainly noticeable, especially since she didn't immediately pop it into her mouth.

"Likely worth far more than the thoughts themselves," she murmured, twining her fingers with his, and tugging him in again. She rose, looking to guide him to the chair she'd just vacated, intending to curl up on him when he'd seated himself. "I was...reminded, this morning, about the Mending and the years that followed."

You know. No big.

And it was a funny thing, wasn't it, how it still managed to catch Ignis oh-so-slightly off-guard when he didn't have to tred so carefully or expertly dance around what might be troubling Liliana when an ill wind colored her mood, that she revealed her thoughts so openly with him, without even needing that thin pretense of coaxing. It was fleeting, though, that notion, as he let himself be guided by her gentle reconfiguring, and, as they settled, the explanation all fell neatly into place.

Just as they themselves so often did.

Just as they themselves so succinctly did now.

"Ah," he breathed out,expression gone tender in that way so rare but for a very select few. As he pulled her in closer, his hand moved comfortingly across her back. "Hardly the most pleasant stroll down memory lane to fill your hours, then."

"No," she agreed, tucking her forehead into the crook of his neck. "I don't think we've...ever discussed it much, beyond generalities."

Not that much discussion was required to know it was the worst thing that had ever happened to her, save one.

And that really hadn't happened to her had it? More like she'd happened.

Ignis tilted his head to rest against Liliana's in kind, but not until after he'd brushed another kiss there where it settled.

"Would you like to discuss it now?" he asked, still tracing those soothing patterns along her back.

A long pause.

"I mean, I should rather never talk or think or hear of it again," she said with some wry amusement--which, Ignis would note, was not a no. Or even really a deflection.

An even longer pause.

"I am...not sure how," she added, voice halting. "There is...so much that...hurts. Leaves me vulnerable. I don't know...how one would simply begin."

People really out here volunteering information about something that was like a knife in their soul? Able to just dive into it without thinking twice?

Sounded fake. Nobody could do that. It was impossible.

"It's like trying to open an egg without first cracking the shell."

Ignis was clearly willing to wait for as many long pauses as Liliana may need, content to have those silences filled with nothing more than just their heartbeats, their breathing, the drag of his fingers against the fabric of her dress.

And the first sound otherwise from him was a familiar, thoughtful hum. "And what is," he added, "an untracked egg but a denial of the the richness awaiting within?"

There was a faint, incredibly slight by comparison pause of his own before he ventured, "Why not start with the inciting incident? What occurred that had guided your thoughts into such unsavory territory?"

Another long pause. "A strand of silver in my hair," she said. "It was only tinsel, but I had a moment where I thought it might be--"

And then she laughed, arrogant and easy, sitting up to pop bit of toast in her mouth. "You know I'm far too beautiful to have to worry about grays in my hair," she declared, with only the slightest inhalation at the beginning of it.

In a very different conversation, with very different people, Ignis would have made that ever-reliable wry joke that he'd have to take her word for it, but he took a moment to just revel in the fact he simply did not have to.

"There is certainly no denying that," he said, instead, with a faint breath of a laugh with the same sort of lightness to match her own. "Although, really, darling, you are talking to a consummate oenophile. You'll find I have nothing but good things to say about the ways that subtle and graceful aging can only improve upon an already excellent vintage."

His hand reached to find her again, to cradle her cheek and gently bring her back to his so that he could kiss her again, drinking as deeply from it as he would one of those intoxicatingly smooth wines, and when he drew away again, his voice had softened with a more serious sincerity.

"But there's certainly no denying," he said, "the complicated brew of emotions that even such an errant, passing thought may have stirred up."

And she would have pointed out that he'd known she was beautiful long before he'd seen pictures of her, either as a child or from Irrim.

"I certainly didn't go through all of this rigamarole with demons to have them double cross me on the immortality," Liliana sniffed. Because the double crossing only went one way, demons!

~~or two, counting Nicol Bolas.~~

"But yes, it reminded me of the first time that happened," she continues, voice softer. "I'd - painfully - learned that my body was now distressingly physical that...first night. But I don't think I'd truly realized that I was also once again subject to the ravages of time and mortality that way until then, too." She gave him a smile. "Have you considered, my darling, that I would be a withered crone in my nineties, had I not struck the bargain I'd struck? Or simply dead, carried off by old age to a shallow and likely forgotten grave."

"Forgotten?" Ignis asked, lifting an eyebrow. "You? Impossible. You'd never stand for it, no matter what the ravages of time and mortality tried to throw at you." He gave her a small smile back. "You wouldn't even know the meaning of the words 'aging gracefully.' You'd make it everyone else's problem, and they'd thank you for the privilege."

Liliana tossed her hair, a fresh wave of mulberries and cedar making its way to his nose. "I mean, you're here fighting my demons, darling. Are you thanking me for the privilege? I don't believe you can get much less graceful than that."

Her words are light and airy, ever-so-playful.

"With nearly every single breath I take," said Ignis, and his words were very much not, and neither was the kiss he followed it up with.

Nor were either of them even remotely apologetic. Not with that hair flip.

She kissed him deeply, almost a little desperately, the lightest tremble in her hands before she cupped his face with them instead.

And when she pulled away, she rested her forehead against his and closed her eyes. "I...told you, that I learned to play the piano after the Mending, while I healed. And that's why I don't use piano pedals," she said slowly. "Before Kothophed, I...my legs would hurt. And my hip. In the cold. Along the breaks. From when I fell. But that wasn't..."

Ugh. Liliana, you were a grown woman. Planeswalker. Necromancer. Full sentences, please.

Just as Ignis would be willing to give Liliana all the time she needed for her long pauses, enough time that even he might have to suffer the ravages of time and mortality for all his waiting, he would easily do the same for her words.

But words, at least, gave him something to work with in gentle nudging.

"Wasn't what, my love?" he asked, fingers brushing through her hair.

"The worst of it," she murmured.

She sighed and sat up. "We...didn't know what was happening. We were at a party, of all things. A Planeswalker party. Remember, most Planeswalkers were thousands of years old--I wasn't even a hundred and fifty, and I was the absolute baby of the bunch. So parties weren't uncommon, though...they were also on a Planeswalker's timeline. A party a decade ago was considered recent, you know? But we were also the only true peers each other had and even that was a bit of a stretch.

"So, a party. Someone was showing off the newest plane he'd created or something. I'd decided to go, though hardly alone. I brought some of my zombie servitors and...a living woman."

Beat.

"Her name was Annika. We were--companions. Friends. Lovers." Liliana waved an airy hand. "Before the Mending, we could 'Walk with others. Urza, remember, I told you, he'd brought whole battalions of the kor with him to Dominaria...well. I had brought Annika. I was hardly alone in bringing a retinue, people brought all sorts of things. Musicians, exotic creatures, body servants...It was just how it was done. And I'd thought that Annika would...enjoy seeing such a party."

Another pause. "I'd...liked finding things that made Annika happy."

It didn't require some grand stretch of the imagination to start assuming where the continuation of this story was headed, especially not when one considered the firmness at which Liliana had insisted against even entertaining the idea of anyone not a Planeswalker traversing the Blind Eternities...

Ignis let out a slow breath, as his hand fell gently from her hair to her shoulder.

"Oh...'Iana..."

"When the blinding light lit up the night sky, everyone thought it had been a party trick," Liliana said with another of those airy laughs. "But I'd seen his face, his confusion as he'd looked up, too. And you know me, ever-nosy, ever-curious, I had to go see for myself. So I transformed into a black falcon and flew up into the sky, high up in the upper reaches of the atmosphere to try to see what it was, certain that I was safe...And that's when the pain hit. It was so sharp and so sudden, slamming into me like a lightning ball, feeling like my spark had been snuffed out, like we were both being choked into nothing..."

She was far too intimately aware of how it felt to be throttled.

"And then I was falling, a bird no longer, forced back into my human shape. I was horribly disoriented - in agony, my magic wasn't working right, my spark, which had been a raging inferno of power inside me was a guttering matchstick...It felt like I was being twisted, folded, spliced, unwritten and then rewritten...I wasted so much time, falling to the ground. Trying to shapeshift again, trying to blink to the ground, trying to do any of the old tricks that I'd done as easily as breathing, but now could not...I was maybe a few dozen feet in the air still before I realized that the only thing I could do was summon spirits and my zombies to try to slow me down...break my fall...which they did. Somewhat. Enough so that it was only my legs that broke, not my spine, not all of me."

She laughed and it hurt. "I fell into utter madness. Everyone was panicking, terrified, furious. It was a mob, people were dying, I was in agony, and none of this was supposed to be happening. None of it should have been able to happen, it was happening in defiance of logic, or reason, or reality...The plane was too new to survive, and after the host was killed in the riot, it started falling apart. I heard Annika scream...the zombie that was carrying me sprinted to her and every movement was new pain, but I had to get to her, get us off of that plane and somewhere else, somewhere safe."

Her eyes burned and stung, but no tears fell. She hadn't had tears in centuries. "I Planeswalked the three of us away from there. I saw. What happened to them. When my spark no longer protected them from the energies of the Blind Eternities. It was...unpleasant. But quick, at least. Mercifully quick. The shock and horror staggered me and I fell onto a different plane. High on a mountain top, in the cold and snow. Legs and hip still broken in several places...and alone."

For all that Liliana's laugh was among Ignis' favorite sounds to hear, he was almost couldn't bear it when she laughed like that in this moment, trying to cover up all that pain and emotion she was trying to keep to a low, disaffected simmer, and doing so poorly with it, at least to his ears. And it would seem that what tears she couldn't form had found their way into his eyes. Not just for the pain she felt then, or the pain she was trying not to feel now, but also for the fact that he knew that pain all too well himself. Not nearly to that extreme extent of what Liliana had gone through. But to have everything go so terribly wrong and the desperation to make it out, to save that one person who all you wanted was to just make happy and have none of it be good enough in the end, to watch it all go horribly before your own eyes...

...to be broken and battered and isolated afterwards...

...and he'd only lost a fraction of what she had, in the broader scope.

It was so rare that Ignis found himself at a complete loss for words, so he just wrapped his arms around Liliana, to hold her close, to hold her tight, until he was able to find them, and, when he did, he drew back enough to lift a hand to her cheek, and the faintest, grateful smile.

"And even that," he said, "couldn't stop you."

And he knew that wasn't...entirely it, but it just might have to do for now.

Her, "Of course not, my darling, I'm spectacular," was delivered mostly by rote, Liliana clinging back to him, letting him not only hold her for the moment, but shield her, willing, in that moment, to be vulnerable and small in a way she so rarely could let herself be.

"I believe I shall keep the story of how I got off the mountain for another time," she murmurs. "And speak of happier things."

Infinite Consortium, Monday

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