How to Train Your Channeler

[Oriena]

Oriena didn’t pull away when his fingers brushed her leg, but she certainly noticed it. The contact was light and careless, warm skin against skin, the pad of his thumb grazing the edge of ugly damage he hadn’t bothered to catalogue as something to avoid. She was curious more than irritated. The last person to explore the scars like that had been Ezekiel, though for vastly different reasons. Sasha, meanwhile, was still half-lost in the burn of vodka and the novelty of not being in pain, smiling like someone who hadn’t quite remembered he was supposed to be afraid of her. For the moment she felt no inclination to shatter the spell of it.

Instead she watched him while he poured them both another round, as if the bottle had become his now by default. Yet he’d coughed at the first burn. A drug-dealer who couldn’t hold his liquor seemed vaguely absurd, but she knew practically nothing about him. What she did know was that she liked watching him watch her like that. Sasha didn’t calculate. He didn’t weigh responses or hide his interest. He didn’t even seem aware of how disarming that kind of unguarded attention could be. But she wasn’t looking for a new shadow either. Men who unknowingly oriented themselves around Oriena’s gravity, who forgot how to stand upright on their own, bored her. Worse, they broke too easily. She could already feel the pressure point here: how little it would take to push him into something smaller, obedient, grateful. All she had to do was lean the wrong way.

His answer about burning the snake down earned a soft, humourless huff from her chest. Of course that was the first impulse – fire was honest like that. Simple. Brutal. Tempting. Ori tilted her head, considering him properly now. “Do whatever the fuck you like,” she said, bemused he sought her counsel, or expected her to give it. “Just don’t waste it all on catharsis. That’s for people who don’t know how to last.” A smirk curved her mouth – wicked, and very knowing. She rolled the glass along her lips and laughed under her breath, low and private. “And if you do decide to burn something down anyway, make sure it’s worth the attention.”

She held his gaze a moment longer. There was something bright there now. Dangerous. Old memories stirring, maybe. Then she rolled her eyes – not at him, but at herself.  Because despite the ferocity of her reputation, she’d always had a soft-spot for exactly this. Power that apologised for itself, that made itself small. Sasha was tantalizing, frustrating, and alive in a way that made her want to push harder. She set her glass aside, leaned closer. Her hand curled deliberately over the space near his flame, knuckles close enough to invite pain. She toyed with it. Heat licked her skin – sharp, immediate – and for a moment it eclipsed the caress of his thumb on her leg entirely.

“Power like this doesn’t buy you peace,” she said. “It buys you attention.” Her eyes locked onto his. He already knew that. He’d been running since he sparked, she’d warrant. “In my experience, leverage lasts people like us far longer than revenge.” Her fingers flexed once, slow and deliberate. “So learn what you can actually do. Learn who knows. Make it inconvenient – and very dangerous – for anyone to put hands on you again.” She paused, let her smile sharpen. “Especially her.” Then she leaned back just enough to let the implication breathe. “Turn it into something that actually changes your position instead of just scratching the itch. That’s not what I’d do, it’s what I did.”

[Sasha]

Sasha wasn't sure what he could do to change his station. He didn't know anything. He was a nobody and he liked it that way. But he didn't like being hunted like a dog. He'd disliked it when people had hurt him before as a child. This was no different. But he wasn't sure what he could do.

He dropped the flame and picked up the second round and downed the vodka. It still burned but he didn't cough. It wasn't so bad this time. "How do I make it so they don't want to touch me? They just keep coming. Trying to kill me. But if she tries again I won't hesitate."

His fingers still lingered on her skin. He liked touching her. But it wasn't helping me make a plan. Not that he had to do it now. "Your friend, will he help me now? Even after I ran away from his inept help?"

[Oriena]

She watched him, eyes never leaving his face now. There was no softness in her expression, but there was interest – the kind that sharpened instead of soothed. She wasn't built for reassurance, and his worries were better spent elsewhere.

“Oh, he’ll help,” she said immediately, without hesitation. “He doesn’t know how not to.” There was something almost fond in the way she said it – buried deep, but there, even as she rolled her eyes at the thought. Even without the power himself she didn’t doubt he’d fathom a way. “But he’ll only teach you what you’re willing to learn. You could do worse than give his ineptitude a chance, though.” Her words were dry on the word Sasha had chosen, a brow drawn up in challenge, but the smirk remained even if it had taken on a more dangerous cast. As far as safety was concerned, it really was as simple as that: all Sasha had to do was learn enough control to stop dropping the fucking bodies, and then he could disappear. Which was fine, if that's what he wanted. His torrent of questions suggested it was what he wanted. To stay small. To remain content with that tiny flame in his palm. To be left alone.
 
She leaned to take hold of his chin, force his gaze, though she hardly needed to. The flame had winked out, though, and she knew it’d drain that sense of invincibility and power. Even the vodka wasn’t a match for that. “Stop thinking like prey. Take what’s on offer, or don’t, but Sasha: what do you actually want? Quiet life? To just carry on peddling Ezekiel’s wares in the shadows? Or to take back some control for every shitty hand life's dealt you and live on your own fucking terms?”

[Sasha]

Sasha wondered what he could teach him. He couldn't even touch it. It was why he had ended it early. Or at least that's what he thought he remembered. It was a bit of a blur thinking past the pain.

Oriena asked what he wanted. And he honestly didn't know. No one had really ever asked that question before. As a kid he wanted to be safe, loved. Now... now he just wanted a warm bed, a roof over his head. A hot meal would be nice. Sasha sighed. "What more is there beyond the necessities, Oriena? What does power get me if I have nothing? Had nothing. I can't rule like the Ascendancy. I don't want to save people like your friend. What did you want?" He ran his fingers across her jaw and down her neck. He caressed her skin like she deserved. He wished he could do more, take more, but this was not a woman who would be taken like that. At least not for long.

[Oriena]

Oriena didn’t move away when his fingers traced her jaw and slid to her neck, but something in her expression tightened. It wasn’t the touch itself that unsettled her; it was the absence of intent behind it. There was no claim or performance. No caution. No attempt to manage her reaction. Just warmth, thoughtless and sincere, in a place most people only touched when they meant something by it. Her pulse jumped under his thumb before she could stop it, and she resented that more than the contact.

But it was only his words she bit back at.

Nothing.

He said it like a conclusion, like a closed door, and that was what irritated her. As if the absence of safety, love, or ownership meant the absence of worth. She had dealt with men who had everything and were still hollow. Sasha made necessity sound like endpoints instead of baselines. Ori immediately saw the child in it – the one who must have learned early not to want too loudly, not to reach past the bare minimum because disappointment hurt worse than hunger – but she didn’t indulge it with comfort. That kind of mercy would have made him smaller, and she refused to do that. With anyone.

“You’re confusing having nothing with being nothing,” she said, voice flint hard. “Those aren’t the same thing.”

Her expression was fierce, perhaps all the more for the idle softness of his touch.

“You’ve got a body that keeps standing up after it’s been broken. You’ve got power people are afraid of. You’ve got options – even if you don’t like them.” Her gaze flicked briefly to his hand, then back to his eyes. She didn’t remove it. She let the tension sit there deliberately. “That isn’t nothing. That’s raw material.”

Power didn’t give meaning on its own. It certainly wouldn’t give him love, or safety, or absolution. She wouldn’t insult him by pretending otherwise. But it did give him something far more useful: the ability to say no. To refuse the hunt. To decide when to vanish and when to stand his ground. Choice was a luxury most people mistook for ambition.

“Necessities keep you alive,” she said. “They don’t keep you free. And power doesn’t buy anyone meaning – but it does buy you the right to choose what happens next. Even if you’re too fucking blind to see it.” Ori half scoffed at the idea of ruling – who wanted that kind of responsibility? And she was hardly one to try and tell him he ought to use it to do good. One Nox was enough. But Sasha didn’t get to pretend the world was going to leave him alone just because he tried to stay small. He could choose anonymity, of course, if his shitty little life was enough for him. But not by running. At least not without ending up dead.

The question trialled her nerves. Irritation simmered low. She wasn’t going to tell him what to do or what to want. But neither did she push away from the innocence of the way he asked. Ori had spent her life in Moscow, and her origins were not obscure in the right circles, just how exactly she’d come by her later wealth. But most people didn’t even know the club was hers anyway, and those who’d known her long enough to know about her mother also knew to keep their mouths shut about it. Everything Ori had was earned, though – not necessarily righteously, but because she had fought for it. Or taken it. No one else would do that for you. And Oriena refused to be a victim, even when life shit on her.

“I got tired of other people deciding what I deserved,” she said eventually. Her jaw clenched after, like maybe the truth had cost her something. Or the memories did.

[Sasha]

Sasha grinned at the last bit of words that flowed from Oriena's mouth. His fingers still caressing the sides of her jaw, but he took her chin firmly between his thumb and forefinger. He licked his lips and his grin turned to a wry smile. "No one will tell me what I deserve anymore. They can hunt me. They will die like the others. And if I see that bitch again I will not play nice. She wants to see a fireball. I'll give her a fireball." It was more decisive than he'd ever been before. Less like the Sasha he was and more like something else. Maybe he needed to reinvent himself. Maybe not, he liked his name.

He leaned in close "I won't presume to tell you what you deserve, Oriena. But I will tell you anyway. You deserve everything. And you can take it. You are strong enough. But you deserve someone who wants to give it to you anyway. To be worshiped and loved. To be their goddess. Not just some side piece." He didn't presume to know much about her relationships, but he expected she didn't have many. And none were serious lovers just the side peices he spoke of. He was probably just another one -- he didn't get ahead of himself. But he spoke the truth. Didn't everyone deserve that? Didn't he?