"Enter the Rose of May." Kuja lowered his head in an Alexandrian bow, with a careful flick of his slender wrists to show that he was unarmed, a traditional sign of respect from a superior to his subordinates. "My Lady. Are you enjoying our lovely weather?"

General Beatrix, feeling the unceasing rain trailing chill rivulets through her heavy hair, felt less than appreciative, and pointedly did not return with the appropriate gesture. She glanced around the rain-slick palace courtyard, the ring of grieving statues-- Burmecian heroes all, and all helpless to save their assaulted homeland. She tossed her hair, tried to ignore the tired ache at the small of her back. The living soldiers might as well have been made out of stone, for all their stubborn resistance... until his black mages came.

She shook herself, noticing his curious spun-gold eyes resting on her. "Save it for Her Majesty; I know how she enjoys your dramatics. If this is a play, I for one will be grateful to leave this dreary stage."

Kuja looked up at the sky, unblinking against the steady rain. "Sweet Burmecia," he whispered, and from his silvered lips it sounded like an elegy, or a curse. "Has your rain dampened the spirits of our Lady Rose?" The soft blue feathers at his crown danced beneath the spattered weight of raindrops, and his eyes were thirsty for the sky.

"How fares the city?" Beatrix snapped, her patience long since frayed with this, her Queen's new favorite. Very well for his army of insensate magic-dolls, but her arm was burning from the weight of her sword, and her steel itself felt weary. She had yet to see him lift one delicate finger.

"You must know it is ours," and his voice changed yet again, gentleness playing across his words. He lifted one long pale hand, as if to cup her chin. "How hard we have struggled, such a valiant effort! The poets will sing of our conquest here."

Which meant, of course that it was a slaughter. Just as the Burmecian defense in the Grotto had been annihilated. This was too easy; this was not war. Beatrix took a step back from his extended hand, suddenly aware that they were alone, standing flagrantly and cruelly triumphant, beneath the stone cold gaze of a circle of fallen warriors.

She had never been a superstitious woman. Suffice it to say, for a moment she wanted nothing more than Alexandrian sunshine, dry sand of a practice yard beneath her boots, and the fine lethal edge of Save the Queen demonstrating nothing more deadly than how to dispatch a training dummy from his wooden steed, to the cadence of the clever laugh of the young Princess, and the approving applause of her Queen.

Closing her eye, she drew a long breath. "Don't touch me," she said evenly, her cool tone her only victory. She met his surprised glance with impassive heat. "If you wish to raise your hand to me, I advise you'd best have a blade in it."

Threat flared in his greedy eyes, and her blood sang danger. He dropped his hand, but slowly; she kept her own arms folded neatly across her chest, making no move for the security of her weapon. The rain seemed colder, and Kuja stood absolutely still, only his hair-feathers bobbing, and Beatrix thought he might actually fight her. She saw power in his eyes, power beyond the soft curved exterior of him, power that had nothing to do with those milky-white hands-- and everything to do with the hunger in those crucible eyes.

For a fleeting second she imagined his blood on her sword, inhuman, indigo-silver and smelling of teardrops and violets, and the livid rage on Her Majesty's face when she discovered that her General had killed her dearest war-pet--

Kuja laughed, and Beatrix felt her skin quiver with more than the freezing rain. "Ah, but Lady Rose, I only kill the ones I love." He was not smiling. "And I'm afraid I have no reason to watch you die, this fine evening."

"A shame," Beatrix said, lowering her arms and standing at ease, though she kept every muscle taut and battle-ready. "I think-- I would enjoy swordplay with you."

He did smile then, genuine delight across the generous curve of his supple mouth. "How dear Brahne would love to see that happen!" Beatrix could not help fingering the hilt of her sword. Anyone else would certainly have felt the sting of her blade, for presuming such base familiarity with her Queen. But his smile became what would have been a pout, on a less dangerous face, and his eyes narrowed in irony. "Such a pity that I have no taste for girls, isn't it?"

The language of court intrigue and scandal, naturally; not just his power but his smooth honeyed tongue had slid him so effortlessly into Alexandria's castle and into the favor of the Queen. Beatrix granted him a thin, impatient smile, wondering if she could yet surprise him. "...More's the pity that I have little interest in men." Her gaze lingered on the slender flower-stem height of him, willowy and effeminate, but she made no comment.

He laughed again, a melodious and terrifying sound, like death and scattering cherrypetals. "Sweet Rose, you spurn me so!" Amused by his own little joke, he tossed his hair and tilted his upturned face to kiss the falling rain. "In, that, at least, we are of one mind. So we must put off killing one another until some other day, I'm afraid."

Unsettled by his logic, she watched numbly as he shook his head, the rain sparkling bright from his hair, his slight shoulders. His skin was like warm alabaster, slick and sheened with the Burmecian downpour, and he opened wide his arms in welcome to the sky.

Beatrix resisted the urge to stomp one sodden boot into a nearby puddle in the ornate courtyard floor. Ridiculous. He was insane. He was-- unfairly beautiful, smile undampened in this dreadful weather, while she mustered all the miserable dignity of a cat, caught in the rain. She haughtily swiped the wet hair out of her face, unconscious imitation of Kuja's earlier movement.

"You mustn't scowl, Beatrix; it doesn't suit you."

It might have been the first time he had ever spoken her name. She turned to him in spite of herself, her eye wide. She could not remember the last time someone had called her by her given name, not a quavering Knight of Pluto snapping to attention with a stuttered "G-general!", not the simple respectful "sir" she had trained into her own Alexandrian soldiers-- not the "Rose," "sweet Rose," that she'd been hearing all too much of late.

"What of it?" she demanded. Kuja stepped closer, his hands tracing the rainy air between them in an echo of her shape-- lift of hair there, arc of hip here-- as if to call forth a phantom image of her very self. She shivered, but she stood her ground, watching him watch her. "What does it matter to you 'what suits me?'"

As if not quite satisfied with his airy creation, he bit his lower lip, shaking his head. "How unseemly. What would your Queen say of you now, General?" His eyes narrowed, molten gold keen on her face, reading her reaction as his elegant hands played indecently about her ersatz form. "Or your sweet young Princess?"

She felt her cheeks sting, but whether from anger or surprise she could not determine. "I wonder who you are, to criticize my face or mode of dress," she all but spat, gesturing herself in pantomime, all swooping curves, caricature of her generous breasts and hips. "Are you afraid I will not conform to your fashion?" Her hands were almost shaking as she dared to mimic him, the affected twist of his girlish thighs, the simper of his shoulderblades. How dare he, how dare he insult, how dare he insinuate-- "Do you presume to interfere in my personal affairs?"

Kuja smiled beatifically, as if she had just done exactly what he'd wanted her to do.

She realized she was shouting, hands raised against him, and for a heartbeat she thought she'd been tricked, duped into attacking her Queen's right-hand man, swiftly and mercilessly removed from Her service, to be tried and sentenced for treason and all for one off-handed statement about her face--

"This, truly, becomes the Rose," Kuja purred, and his flowerpetal fingertips brushed her right cheek, from eyepatch to chin, his skin wet and warm against the mortified cool of her face.

She forgot to wrench herself away, losing herself mystified and furious into his otherworldly gaze. Somewhere, it wasn't raining; somewhere, the sky was a rich flat gold like the color of his eyes.

"I don't know what you're looking for," she heard herself whispering, leaning unconsciously against his hand, "but it is certainly not me."

Before Beatrix could even hear the heavily belabored footfalls, or the incessant insect-wing flutter of the royal fan, Kuja sighed. "Interrupted, ah, such tragic timing. Enter your fealty-sworn Queen, sweet unplucked Rose, and I must depart." He relinquished his touch on her face, and her heart remembered to beat.

So angry she could not find the words to fling at him, she stared breathlessly at his retreating back, the calculated swish of his cloth-draped hips. When he had nearly cleared the circle of stone soldiers, she found her voice. "Kuja! You know that the Queen has demanded--"

He paused, and smirked over his shoulder at her, hair-feathers swirling. "She will wait for my entrance, Beatrix. As will they all."