closed.

[exequy]

WHO: Caspar, Kostos, Lakshmi, Lexie, Marisol, Nell, Nikos, Petrana
WHAT: Coming into a Merchant Prince's house, on the day his daughter is to be married, and asking him and all his friends to quit with their stupid neutrality. Plus Truth or Dare.
WHEN: Mid-Harvestmere
WHERE: Antiva City
NOTES: Will update with CWs if needed.

Comments

[exsecutus]

"I'm Kostos."

A joke. Not a clear joke, maybe. He says it steadily, without hesitation. And to someone who doesn't know to look for the differences, perhaps they'd be convinced. There's something like a smile in his eyes, despite everything: Nikos isn't happy, but he's happier than he was a few moments ago by a few degrees. He has always liked Aunt Constanze.

"Still rare to see at a wedding. The sentiment stands. You look rich."

Also kind of a joke. Kind of.

[champions]

"Is that so? Then I suppose I will not ask you to dance. You're much clumsier on your feet than your brother."

The uninitiated might suppose she believes him. The familiar would know better, by the way her eyes crinkle with amusement.

"The secret to looking rich is to not feeling the need to be excessive." Across the room, Marisol dances with Archimede Santaniello, a man in his late sixties, whose hair was streaked with silver and fingers adorned with gold. Marisol was certainly a fan of the lavish, but Constanze had taught her that personality and gaudiness were different. For the most part, she thought Marisol did rather well at distinguishing, even if she could do with her daughter being a little flamboyant, at times.

The smile she gives Nikos is conspiratorial. "So really, you look rich as well."

[exsecutus]

The slim chance that he has fooled his aunt is eviscerated on the sharp points of Nikos' immediate scowl. Any good feeling curried by her insult to Kostos is likewise murdered.

Rich.

"Not," he tells her, in that flash of anger, "by choice. By order. And I am not at this event, by choice, when it displays and rewards and embraces the power structures and institutions that I hate." And there is Marisol, at the corner of his eye, too, looking beautiful and rich and happy on the arm of fucking Archimede Santaniello, who would probably die mid-fuck of a heart attack, so what good is he even to Marisol's stupid adherence to her duty both self-professed and imposed and reinforced by gaudy displays of wealth and waste just like this one.

Nikos grabs another cup of wine for himself from the next servant's tray. "And I don't want to dance."

Which is downright petulant, as well as partially untrue, but whatever.

[champions]

She sips her wine, and shakes her head, although there is no expression of judgment or distaste. "I know," Constanze replies, "but you'd do better with your plans if you could control that temper of yours. Such things can be used against you."

Constanze takes a step forward, and corrects his collar. "If you are to fool anyone and undermine them, then you must move amongst them seamlessly. Give them no reason to believe you are not one of them, befriend them, learn about them, and then you can destroy them."

A little quirk of her brow. "And if you cannot destroy, it serves to have a hand where you can influence, while you build something better, and freer." #pirateforlife #yolohoho #freedom

[exsecutus]

Caught up in his anger, Nikos is too late to twitch away from his aunt's cool capable hands. She adjusts his collar; he barely suppresses the urge to mess it up again. At least he's grown up a little since childhood. As a child, he squirmed away from kisses, ran around corners to avoid embraces, mussed his hair with his fingers, growled like an animal, declarative in his independence. The stage is different, the cast has changed, but she is still his aunt and he is still her nephew, their roles cemented by time.

"I prefer to move straight to destruction."

He's heard lines just like hers, before. Aunt Constanze's approach is more Caspar's, and at the thought of him, Nikos' attention jumps to the room around them, scanning the crowd for Caspar.

"If you burn a building down, you can build on the ashes. The earth is often improved by it: a controlled burn, to eradicate the withered and the dead and the dying, and build anew. Instead of inhabiting the corpse, and building inside it."

[champions]

"Maybe that is why you failed in your Nevarran efforts," she replies, rather bluntly. For all the bluntness, her gaze is affectionate, sympathetic.

"Then take a place within to lay down more fuel for the fire, and then depart." Constanze's head tilts, a gesture very similar to Marisol. "Are you too proud to see the merits in what I say?"

[exsecutus]

Familial love is often obligatory, habit, a grudging alliance. Marisol is the exception. Nikos would do anything for Marisol. And Aunt Constanze is too much of Marisol for him to get as angry as he would like, though her strike hits true and deep. His hands curl into fists--one at his side, one around the stem of his wineglass.

This is where Caspar would differ with her, a divergence toward the destruction that Nikos craves quicker. Convince them. Talk to them. Reason with them. And then, if it fails, destroy them. A boulder can be ground down by a steady drip of water, over the course of a hundred years. But if you wanted the boulder out of your fucking way, and you had access to a torrent of water that could eradicate the boulder, wouldn't you do it?

"We failed," he says, stiffly, "in Nevarra because we were fucking betrayed. Because our honest hope for true change was corrupted by human greed. Because Nevarra was not interested in revolution. And making nice speeches, and smiling, and simpering, would not have gotten our cause any farther."

So fuck you, he implies, but does not say outright--because she is his aunt, because she so resembles Marisol. Especially when she tips her head, just so, and gives him that look.