Chapter Text
I know this story ends in bloodshed, all our stories do. It travels down the bloodline like a curse.
*
How bad can poison be when your tragedy has been planned and accounted for? When the great universal machinations go on way past your end?
What is it that really, actually, kills you?
Alia puts down her chalice and the collision sounds off in the empty room like a clang. She pushes her feet back and forth against the carpet underneath; a thick, well made depiction of Shai-Hulud in the desert. Its hump cresting over golden dunes as the suns set behind it.
Her mind races, but she finds her muscles tight and coiled. Hayt has to die. This much seems clear enough.
She does not know yet how, but her mind is whispering up a storm of ideas. There are ways. Her heart trails after the decision, clamoring for some mercy she won't ever display. There is more at stake here than love ever could give her. What's love in the shade of real greatness, anyhow?
The Baron's voice presses the matter.
Alia knows she isn't what the Bene Gesserit planned for, she is not the desired outcome of her lineage. She is nothing but uncontrollable. She is the worst case scenario. Yet, with Paul lost to the desert, she was all that was left until the children came of age.
Nevertheless, her control of the empire was not desirable and if she did not a good job of keeping it at hand, someone would definitely make a move for it. She spied it in the dark shadows of every room, their hungry watch approaching.
With her mother's approach, Alia felt the burn of the gom jabbar come nearer and nearer. Her supervision would come with a judgement. The mother of prophets was coming to speak her mind; a rare event indeed. A dangerous portent, too.
Alia knows the woman who left her in the desert would not return to her husband's grave without strong reasons behind it.
Alternatively, she also knows that her mother's presence would only showcase her faults. As much as Alia would enjoy the relief of believing the famous Lady Jessica wouldn't read through her choices with a fine comb, pulling every vicious knot she had placed for the pleasure of the man inside her mind, she knows better. As does the Baron, who makes the urgency of his requests known by the thundering of his voice meddling her every thought. His desires supplanting her very own needs.
Hayt is a worthy sacrifice. A necessary pain.
He is the love of her life.
*
Love has never saved her, she admits in the quietest part of her mind, like a defeat. It hasn't saved any of them, has it?