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One can always tell, when Sienna is fresh off the boat from Haven. After all, the sun sets different in Menagerie. It hangs in the sky during different hours of the day. In Haven, as soon as the morning mine workers leave for home, the sun is already rushing down the skyline, making room the moon. The Menagerie sun is never in any hurry to share its spotlight. Much preferring to sit languidly in the sky, illuminating an entire nation in hue of golden honey for hours, rather than take its bow and making way for the cool comings of the moon and stars.
You can witness the readjustment period within the woman. See as her eyes lay on abstract places in the room in heat addled disfocus, rather than keeping watch of any body or door as she usually does. Glassy eyes weighed down with heavy bags. There is an energy in her voice that is absent, and a purposefulness in her words that is, also extremely absent.
Such things are the observations Kali would vocalize, if she was interested in being polite to such a weary traveler. The stark and true way to tell when Sienna hasn’t been back for long, is her reaction to the heat. It was not the Grimm, nor the animals, nor the geography, that made Menagerie inhabitable to the humans. It was the climate, the constant overwhelming heat. Humidity that stuck clothes to your skin and air to your lungs.
Those that live here have grown used to it. Go about their days sweaty but content. The pathetic woman before Kali, cowering into comforts and lies in her living room, is no longer a local. No longer of Menagerie. Grown much to used to Haven as of late, and Kali can tell. From the way the heat occasionally keeps Sienna swaying on her graceless feet, and the way the damned woman can’t even fucking lie to her, without having to go through a coughing fit first. For all she preaches strength through unity, her very body can no longer handle the very conditions she wishes to bring her people out of. That she herself, had pulled herself out of, yet now has forgotten the true oppression of. Used to lavish dinnings and residency in a city whose poverty outclasses some of the wealthiest of their home nation.
Kali still lets Sienna into her home, though she briefly contemplates on the impulse to not. Neither of them speak at first, as Kali watches The Khan languidly walk to the couch she had once lazed upon so magnificently in her youth. Now, she manages to bump into a new coffee table on her marvelous journey, before finally flopping in a sweaty heap upon her cushioned throne, more so than laying on it. Kali has her eyes on the woman’s back the entire time.
After a few seconds of readjustment, Sienna flops herself over in a position she must think is a heady mixture of seductive, commanding, and relaxed. To Kali, she’s hitting null for three.
“Kali…” She has to heave it out while pretending that the heat hasn’t gotten to her as much as it has. “It’s always a pleasure to be called back to the center of our operations, especially by someone as lovely as you of course. I am ever at your beck… But I admit to being confused, for there is no issue wanting for us to be discussed, is there? Or perhaps… you just wished for my company?”
Ah, so that’s how she was going to fucking play it.
Kali bristles, growls her frustration out while letting her hairs raise. “Where. Is. Our. Fucking. Daughter.”
Sienna has the gall to sigh, not moving from her spot as Kali hovers over her with the uncertain wrath of both an angry parent, and a spurned lover. Confused, mournful, not sure if she should go to the kitchen to make tea, or throw herself at Sienna fist first.
“Kali… Love, Blake is her own person now-“
“SHE IS BUT SIXTEEN.”
“An adult. In the eyes of both the academies, and The Fang.”
“She is… You… How could you not know where she is!? How long has she been out of contact? How long have you kept this from us!?”
“I would never overbear my presence onto her. Lest she not grow into the fine young woman I last saw her as. Lest she not come to us with her problems.”
Kali makes her choice and lunges, something nostalgic makes her fist stray just to the left, and so Kali looms above The Khan on the couch. Sienna does not hide her smug and leering grin, as she chooses to stare at the heaving sway of Kalis chest, instead of her enraged eyes.
“COME TO US WITH HER PROBLEMS? You and Ghira both… she’s GONE. She’s gone and we don’t know whe-“
Sienna swats at one of Kali's tits, watching the ripple effect of her choice take effect like a pendulum. Kali leaps back scandalized, arms crossing her chest, as she glares at Sienna with shock and complete fury.
“Relax, my love, will you? She’s with Adam as it is. So, perhaps we do not know her exact location, but we know she is still within the safety of The Fang. She will return to us, speak to us again, once she feels as if she is ready to do so. She has always been a moody girl, we knew that the way she clinged to us would not last into her adult years. Let her have a taste of freedom.”
“Safe… SAFE!? You think Adam is safe for her? I know you think he-“
Sienna reaches out towards Kali. Reaches for her hands. Memory, and the fading instincts of an old affection, have Kali unfurling them from her shoulders and reaching out to Sienna. Sienna takes Kali's hands, and covers with her own, holding them as a reassuring prayer.
“I know you’ve always hated that boy, but is this not the very argument that drove her away from the two of you, and in turn, drained her confidence from me as well? It is not only futile, but counterintuitive to rehash it. I can assure you my love, Adam is strong: Driven, purposeful, and at the end of the day, obsessed with our girl, as all men should be of their woman. As long as he breaths, and he does, the armies of Atlas could fall upon her. and she would not come to harm.”
Kalis hand flinches back to her sides. Sienna responds with calm, sitting herself up on the couch as a normal person might.
“My Love…That’s what he calls her, isn’t it?”
Sienna tilts her head, as if in thought, but clearly already knowing the answer and is instead, pausing to consider the meaning of the question. “Yes, I suppose it was? Is there any significance to such a comparison, ‘Miss Belladonna.’”
“You’ve always considered strength to be the only movement behind progress. Drive, to be merit. And purpose, to imply moral soundness.”
“Ah, I see. You mean to insult me by mere comparison to him. I can take that from you Kali, I could take many things from you,” Sienna adds an eyebrow wiggle at this, completely unbothered by their missing fucking daughter. She… she really never will feel urgency over any individual soul, Kali realizes. She really is so sure of both her strength, and her justice, that death, even as her own machinations bring it upon her men, will only ever be a distant number to her. Unbothered to the dangers facing the people that respect her.
“I’d take the vitriol of the world from you, if I must.” She continues, unaware or ignoring Kali's vacant expression, drowned in thought. “But that aside, I don’t see the connection between your distaste for my ideology, and any danger Adam might impose upon Blake? This disagreement between us is decades old my love, its intricacies do not reflect themselves within the young. And just as Blake is not you, Adam is not me. Do not hate our child’s choices, as a mere extension of your dissatisfaction with your own. And do not hate the man she loves, as an extension of how you hate me.”
Sienna pats the top of her thighs, as if she just had a grand idea. As well as to ask Kali to get closer to her.
“Why Kaliiiiiiii, I just had a grand idea! Let me stay here for a week or two, with you and Ghira. Just the three of us, as if we were young again. My work can maintain itself for a month, and the two branches of The Fang have grown so successful, so separate with time and our leadership, that at long last such a stark divide need not exist. Not between The Fang, and not between us.”
Sienna stands from the couch. She moves towards Kali in what the older woman would later think of as a saunter. Eyes loving, needing, hopeful, pleading. Words low and hungry and childlike. Kali, for a second, doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak, doesn’t show anything with her face.
“My love, the three of us can unite in our differences. Settle in the knowledge that all any of us want, is a better future for our people. Please, this political divide has grown nonsensical. It has inflamed hatred in the hearts of our sisters and brothers, towards their very own kind. Their family. Their allies. When our daughter comes home, let us show her a united front. Three parents, who despite ideological separation, were able to join again as equals and lovers. Who, despite time and political desolation, are here for her now. No matter who she might have become.”
Sienna begins to lay her arms around Kali's shoulders. Begins to lean in towards her, breath light, and mouth open for a kiss that the woman clearly has begun to need with a gentle and crushing passion.
“Get out of my house.”
Sienna freezes stiff. Movement halted in its entirety right before skin touched skin. Hurt and confusion crawl across her face, as slow as she herself was just moving.
“Wh-What?”
“Get out of my fucking house.”
Sienna pulls back as if the moment had never happened. The tension of the room depressurizes so quick, that the two of them can feel the fragility of their old bones and the laxing of their muscles. Kali looks at Sienna, and where she just saw a hurt that destroyed her heart to cause. Pained it so, that she briefly considered reaching back out and pulling her in. She now sees an utterly blank calm.
“Alright then. I see how it is. I came here hoping we could… settle, the differences between us and our factions. That time had led you to reason, and hope had led you into a desire for a divided unity. But I can see it clearly now. You, Miss Belladonna, shall always be a coward of unimaginable proportions.”
“And you, you fucking bitch. Will always be blind and hateful. Once I had sympathized with you. Told Ghira to go easy on your cell, as I foolishly believed you would grant it merit. But than we had Blake. And I realized that burning through our own lives, our own villages, our own people, was all well and fucking good until there were children on the line. To die for a better tomorrow would mean fucking nothing, if it came at the cost of our today. It would mean fucking nothing, if we couldn’t appreciate the love, the possibilities, of what we already had. That change, slow and painful, was still worth it, if the people we loved lived with us to fight through it. We would all suffer through the vitriol of the world, but we would do so together, and without despair. I realized that this courage, no blood, not tearing down those who would stand above us till they collapse upon our heads. I thought you would realize the same when you saw Blake's face for the first time, as I had. Perhaps you did. Perhaps you know all this. And yet you choose fucking retribution anyways, you selfish, desolate, hateful, cunt! You claim this is all for our people, for our family, but you don’t even fucking care what happens to our daughter.”
Kali hunches over into heaving breaths. Glaring up at Sienna as she regains herself. She hadn’t realized she was shouting. She hadn’t realized she walked Sienna to the door at the end of her pointing finger and screaming tirade.
Sienna looks down at her, with a sniffle to her nose, and sweat coating a disinterested face.
“Bravo, bravo for a fine speech.” She says flat and bored. “And you shall tell me yes, how this love you lay placated upon the ground for, goes for you when the humans put a bullet through your families skull for no other reason than that they can, and that they hate you. Children shall always exist, it is the purpose of us elders to burn ourselves aflame until their future is bright, is it not? Don’t answer that, I know the very thought of it scares you. No point in letting our daughter have a good life, if you aren’t in it. Isn’t that right, Miss Belladonna.”
“Fuck you.”
“Yes, I’m quite sure you’d like to. But I must be going. An effective organization doesn’t run itself from afar. I would say I’m looking forward to my next visit, or that perhaps you should swing by if you’re ever in Haven. But it wouldn’t be truthful of me. What I shall say instead then, Kali, is that I’m looking forward to which home of hers Blake shall return to when the time is right, and I’ll be sure to alert you of her safety, next time I see her in Haven.”
Sienna Khan walks out the door of The Belladonna's household.
That night, she gets on a boat to Haven.
She never sets foot, in her home country, or in the house of her family, ever again.