so let me go towards the morning star, with hope it won't disappear

by halfalifeline

Summary:

“He walks out into the desert every day and searches for you. You are an oasis to him, Desert Spring. He will seek you until he’s mad.”

To herself, she thought: he already is.

-

Or: Irulan takes a very different approach to the problem of Chani.

Notes:

SO I watched both Dune movies and immediately had to buy the books to read, and I'm enjoying them immensely. I'm captivated by Princess Irulan and her strange, tragic arc into jealously and revenge, and I keep finding myself wishing that we knew more about her and her thought process. So this is my attempt to do just that.

This is essentially a "what if?" exploration of how I think things might have played out if Florence Pugh's Irulan was given the challenge to kill Chani.

I hope you enjoy. x

(for best results listen to wife by mitski)

Chapter 1: Prologue

“Stronger than lover's love is lover's hate. Incurable, in each, the wounds they make.”

-Medea, Euripides (trans. Michael Collier)

 

Princess Irulan did not love him. Any ability of hers to love him had died with Feyd-Rautha.

Not that she loved that creature, either. But he had been predictable, and predictable men were easier to tolerate. Irulan had predicted she would leave Arrakis with him. (She did not want that fate, but it was hers. It had been hers from birth.)

She had not predicted that he would die.

She looked at his body, faintly annoyed that Mohaim had been correct to breed him early.

Perhaps Paul Atreides will be just like his cousin, Irulan thought as she studied him from behind her veil of chains. Feyd-Rautha’s black blood dripped from his knife as he staggered forward, one hand pressed to gash in his stillsuit. When he looked up, his eyes–blue as water, blue as day–consumed the light as darkness should.

The set of his jaw betrayed his boiling blood, so she did not flinch when he screamed at her father to kneel.

Just like a Harkonnen after all.

 

---

 

Paul hardly looked at her, even at their wedding.

Her fine gown, his royal suit, their promises spun from the space between stars: cold and empty, like his eyes as he lifted her veil and kissed her chastely, like her heart as she bowed her head and was crowned Empress of the Known Universe, like their bed, when he left her, later, alone and tearless in the night.

He only crept under the covers when the moonlight had mostly waned. At dawn, she made the bed alone, shaking sand out of their sheets.

It was the only time they shared a bed in six months.

Irulan supposed that she could not complain. Margot had bedded the monster than had almost been her birthright. She knew better than to lament this twist of fate. She knew better than to resent the power that her voice now held. She knew better than to beg for love from a man who could not offer it.

Because she was now heiress to a fortune of falling stars. From her silent seat beside Paul Atreides, Irulan caught the snippets of her Sisters’ fervent sign language discussions and the weighted glances they cast across tables at one other. The Bene Gesserit fought in silence. It was their way. So unlike the brutality of man–and the men warred, too. The spacing guild had crumpled under the fist of the new occupant of the Golden Lion Throne. Any Houses that rejected Paul's ascent were swiftly embargoed, their names slashed through with red in the records of her mind as they withered out of political relevance. She saw the histories of their people sprawling behind her with each step she took into the uncharted future that spilled from her husband’s lips.

History did not recall love fondly. Poets did. And a poet she was not.

Love had sacked Troy, brought Rome and Egypt to their knees. Love had driven men madder than power ever could. So if Paul spoke to her only at meetings and meals? She would allow that to suit her. She did not need his love.

She needed to fulfill her destiny.

 

---

 

Irulan studied the ceiling. Without even looking to her left, she knew that Paul was not there. She shivered as slipped out of bed into an adjoining room, where her lady’s maids waited with her day clothes and a cup of hot tea. It was so horribly cold in the mornings before the sun rose over Arrakis, and so devastatingly hot as soon as it did.

“An impossible climate to curate a wardrobe for,” Irulan’s seamstress had muttered during their first week on the planet. She was inclined to agree.

Today, her ladies wrapped her in layers of deep blue silk and set a veil of silver netting over her blonde hair. It was as lovely as anything else in her closets. Countless gowns had been made for her on the Emperor's dime, one of his few concessions to ease her transition from Kaitain. With new Houses folding under Paul's Jihad almost as quickly as new silos popped up across the spice fields, their coffers would not run dry for centuries, and few of Irulan's clothes had been suited to life on Arrakis.

So, Irulan had the fine dresses, the pearls in her hair, the heavy, golden crown.

But Chani had the Emperor’s heart.

Even if Irulan hadn’t been scorned each night for six months, even if it wasn't common knowledge amongst the staff that the Emperor and Empress kept separate quarters, it would be obvious that Paul did not love his wife. He had been erratic and inconsolable since Chani left. He paced the stone halls of the Arrakeen palace, muttering into his fist. He frequently lapsed into a silence from which not even Gurney Hallek could shake him, his open eyes flickering like he was asleep. He frightened servants with whispers of corpse ash blowing on the spice-laden wind. And Irulan–along with everyone in the palace–heard the rumors of how he thrashed himself awake each night, alone and screaming.

Irulan wondered, as her sun veil was settled over her eyes, what it had been about Chani that had captivated him so. Since he would not speak to her about anything, let alone his prodigal lover, she would never know. But she had seen how Feyd-Rautha had used his barbs as mental picadors, goading Paul, throwing him off balance. If he would not speak to her, she could hone her words into a dagger and hurl them at him until he bit back. She could skewer his limbs with the pins of his own pride. She could taunt him, as Feyd-Rautha had, about his beloved pet, disappeared into the desert, his own, personal Ozymandias.

She would not do it. Her position was too precarious. But the Bene Gesserit in her craved it, longing to understand the mind of the Kwisatz Haderach, to know what he saw when he went into those dark channels of the mind that she never could. If she twisted the knife just right, would he scream? Hit her? Did he relish pain like Feyd-Rautha, or affection like his father?

She had always thought god could only love himself, but he had a wound in his side that he had licked until it was festering.

She only needed to get close enough to soothe it--or, if he would not behave, to prod it.

 

---

 

Paul was dressed in his usual black and stood at the balcony, staring out over the dunes as they rose and fell like waves. Gurney was at his side, explaining the latest developments from their current war of attrition. Irulan lingered in the doorway, sweat clinging her hair to her temples. Paul was not listening to Gurney. He was looking for her, his desert spring. Gurney sighed, noticing Paul's absent mind, and rapped his knuckles against the railing. When Paul did not react, Gurney's mouth tightened, and he turned to leave. His steely eyes met Irulan’s and he shook his head imperceptibly. She nodded in like, stepping back from the door. This was their way of navigating Emperor Atreides’ moods: softly, like sandwalking.

Irulan spared one last glance towards Paul before following Gurney inside. Paul pressed the heels of his hands against his head. Just above the wind, she could make out the hiss of one of his fragmented soliloquies.

And it struck her, in the rasp of the sand against the dark stone, in the shape of the husband who refused her, how she missed Kaitain. She missed the dark trees and the cold rivers and the soft, green grass. She missed the gardens and the blue sky and her bed beside the window overlooking the lake. She missed the grand cities, with their lights and libraries and endless noise. She missed Princess Irulan of House Corrino, who spent long afternoons copying histories and refining her prana-bindu with her mother. She missed the little, golden haired princess who had once thought herself a poetess and did not feel her father’s godhood like a snare around her neck.

Irulan pulled her eyes off of Paul’s silhouette and over the scrape of Arrakis visible from his balcony. As she stared out into the living sands, she dreamed of what it might be like to run.

 

---

 

“You will need an heir.” Reverend Mother Mohaim sat at the head of a long table, around which her Sisters, clad in all black, looked on silently. “His reign will be long, but he is a man and he will die. He will need a son. Soon, preferably.” The ancient woman’s eyes shifted, pinning Irulan to her parlor seat. Irulan shivered. She would never get used to how deceptively cold the lower floors of the stone palace were.

“I am aware, Reverend Mother,” Irulan said. She folded her hands together under the table to keep them from trembling. “The Emperor does not wish to consummate our marriage. Until then, I cannot–”

“You are a Bene Gesserit, girl,” Mohaim said, cutting Irulan off. “Regardless if he is our Kwisatz Haderach or not, you must procure his genetic material. He is an anomaly that cannot be wasted. If you cannot complete your duty, then we shall have to instate another Sister as his concubine.”

“He won’t take anyone else, I promise you.” Irulan’s voice was flat. “He won’t have anyone but the Fremen girl. He won’t even speak to me. He spends every moment he’s not in meetings staring out at the sands.”

The Reverend Mother turned to her left.

“Lady Jessica. Have you spoken to your son?”

Paul’s mother pressed a hand to her stomach and closed her eyes.

“He will not take a concubine that is not Chani Kynes. He will not consummate his marriage with Empress Irulan. Not unless...”

Jessica fell silent, and Irulan felt the unspoken suggestion crumple the air in her lungs. She breathed deeply until her revulsion melted into void. In her mind’s eye, she was above herself, observing as she was vivisected on the table and dutifully taking notes, ignoring her own thrashing and screaming.

She looked to the Reverend Mother, then to Lady Jessica. She held the void in her mind like clay. The warp of the world was this: she was Padishah Empress, she needed an heir. The weft:

“Give me one month. If by then I have failed, kill the girl. But if she dies now, he will know it was at our hand, and whatever tenuous trust he has in us will be shattered.” 

One by one, the Sisters around her nodded. The Mother Superior, finally, bowed her head in acknowledgement.

Mohaim’s praise had always felt to Irulan like lightning. Now, it was a chain.

Irulan’s neck prickled. To her right, Lady Jessica was staring at her with those uncanny blue eyes.

As the Sisters filed out of the room, Irulan remained at the table, hand pressed to her jaw. She burned through pages of the histories engraved into her mind, decades of Bene Gesserit breeding plans building to this.

To her.

She slid the flat of her palm over her stomach and imagined it distended, imagined each minute hormonal fluctuation her body would undergo, how she would draw upon her biochemical control to influence her child's development according to the Reverend Mother's wishes.

Not for the first time since coming to Arrakis, Irulan's mind drifted to her mother. Anirul had been young--around Irulan's own age--when she was wed to Shaddam and birthed her first daughter. In all her childhood memories, Irulan had never seen her mother falter or question the Sisterhood, even when they demanded of her daughter after daughter, even when Shaddam cursed her for not giving him a son.

Now her mother was dead, her father had been disgracefully exiled to Salusa Secundus, and Irulan had failed, for half a year, to seduce the Emperor.

My, how House Corrino has fallen, she thought.

She would have to hurry to another meeting soon, pretend she didn't just sign off on another woman's death. But for just a moment, she leaned back against her stiff chair and let herself sink into the blissful quiet of the empty room.

 

---

 

She found Paul still on the balcony once the sun began to dip below the horizon, sending a blessedly cool breeze through the palace. She had not been summoned, but she walked up to stand beside him anyway, and gazed out over the ocean of sand.

“It is a beautiful country,” she said. Paul turned his head ever so slightly, studying her like a stranger. But he had not sent her away yet, so she continued. “Every time I look out the window, the surface has changed shape.” Irulan kept her gaze turned out towards the horizon, resisting the urge to meet his assessing gaze. “On Kaitain, we had some deserts, but mostly jungles. Hot, but not like this. The air there could drown you with its humidity.”

Paul brushed a hand across his tensed forehead, turning away. Irulan took this as her cue. She leaned her forearms against the still-hot stone and finally looked at him. His angular face was stained with dirt, and the cut above his left brow from his fight with Feyd-Rautha had puckered into a scar. His black hair was growing long, his curls static with frizz. If she did not know better, if she hadn’t seen the feral magnetism with which he preached his own gospel to a desperate people, he might look like any other Fremen boy. In this light, his cheekbones gaunt, he hardly looked like any of the dukes she’d known, let alone the Emperor.

“Your family comes from Caladan,” she said. His spice-blue eyes flickered over her face. He seemed surprised that she was still talking. But she would not stop now. “Do you miss the rain?”

Paul was quiet for a long while.

It was Maud’Dib who answered her.

“Arrakis is my home, my people.” He traced a finger through the fine coating of sand on the balustrade. “I do not miss the planet that bred me. I care now only for the future of this one.” The red sun was rapidly disappearing beneath the dunes. It would be time, soon, to shut the doors to keep out the brutal night winds. Irulan breathed out slowly. This pathetic exchange had been their longest conversation since the day she pleaded her life for her father’s.

What good had that been? Her father would die on Salusa Secundus, and she would die and be deathstilled for her water to feed the desert. The only victory would be that future historians could say she faced her destiny with her head held high.

Irulan dug her teeth into her lip and left. Paul did not look after her.

When the chill of night permeated the stone walls at last, Irulan curled into herself and watched the moonlight creep across the ceiling. She flexed her fingers. Her long nails had grown brittle in the dry air and snapped off at different lengths. She would have to cut them tomorrow.

How strange, she wondered, the things that never make it into the filmbooks. The Empress cuts her nails. The Empress longs for home. And what will? That the Empress sleeps alone while her husband rolls the bones of the Great Houses and longs after his lost lover? That she will kill that lover if she must in order to bear his child?

Will this be how I am remembered?

Chapter 2

Summary:

Irulan asks a favor.

Notes:

Hi! I am so sorry this chapter is coming out later than I expected! Work got in the way, unfortunately.
I hope you enjoy this one, and please check out the end notes for some news! <3

The sun had only just risen, and Irulan already felt too warm. But Paul always took his breakfasts outside, so she waded through the thick air and sank into the chair opposite him. He glanced up at her, brow furrowing.

“What is it?” Paul’s voice was so foreign to her that at first, Irulan was startled by it.

“I came with a personal petition, my lord.” The lengthening, westward shadows cast his face half in darkness, but his eyes remained somehow luminous. She watched as he spun his coffee cup idly and inclined his head. “It regards Lady Margot of House Fenring. I’m sure you’re aware—“

“Of how close your Houses are? Yes, I know. Surely you’re not here to give me a history lesson, princess.” Paul said, leaning back. “What do you want?” The hollows under his eyes seemed deeper today. Irulan chewed the inside of her cheek.

“I should like to invite her to stay with me for a few days. She and her House are valuable allies to us, but given our current… political climate, I figured it would be wise to seek your permission before allowing any Landsraad delegations onto your planet.” Paul drummed his fingers against the side of his cup. He was a bundle of kinetic energy, a wick burning too fast. Irulan hesitated. “I understand this is a delicate time, but the Fenrings are completely loyal to House Corrino, and thus, to you.”

Paul’s dark eyebrows lifted.

“So it should comfort me that the Bene Gesserit who puppets Lord Fenring is loyal to House that orchestrated my father’s death?” His laugh was hollow. Irulan gritted her teeth behind a smile.

“My father’s actions were not my own, my lord. I simply wish for Lady Fenring’s counsel on a matter too sensitive to entrust to a courier’s ears. I will take full responsibility for her during the duration of her stay. She would not be an imposition or a threat.” A hot wind rolled through the courtyard, stirring up glimmering specks of sand. Irulan coughed. “Is that cinnamon?”

Paul did not reply. He had gone entirely still.

A thin bead of sweat crept from his hairline and down past his unfocused eyes.

And then his arm jerked, sloshing coffee over his hand and sleeve. Irulan gasped and Paul winced, his eyes at once snapping back into clarity.

“Fuck,” he hissed, pushing his chair back as a servant ran forward to mop up the spill. “Fuck!” He shot to his feet so fast his chair clattered onto its side and strode to the edge of the terrace, raking his hands through his hair.

Irulan was cemented to her seat even as the hot coffee dripped into her lap. She was hyper-aware of the adrenaline thrumming through her body with each elevated heartbeat. Allow the feeling to eclipse, her mother’s voice whispered to her. Irulan turned her palms up and studied the greenish veins that branched through her wrists until she could see each minute chemical current like colored beads racing through her blood. Carefully, she manipulated the threads, staunching the flow of stress through her system. Her pulse slowed, her muscles unwound.

When she looked up, Paul was standing before her. His hair was crumpled, and every line in his body was strung taut. The servants were gone–either dismissed, or clever enough to busy themselves indoors.

“More coffee?" Irulan asked mildly.

Paul’s glare was a shade shy of withering.

“I am not doing this for you."

Irulan straightened up.

"What?"

"She will see no more of Arrakis than your rooms, and she will stay no more than three days.” He turned towards the doors as the sunlight finally crested over the palace and spilled down into the courtyard. “In case you need the reminder," he said over his shoulder, "House Corrino dies with you, princess. If there is even a rumor that you or your companion conspire against me, then the Fenrings will be buried beside you.”

 

---

 

“I hate him.”

“Hate is irrelevant, Irulan.”

“Well, it would be a hell of a lot easier if I loved him. Or even somewhat enjoyed being around him, for that matter.” Irulan paced the length of her bedroom before turning on her heel and marching back to Margot’s side. She was going mad in this room, and it had only been half a day. “It shouldn’t be this hard to seduce him,” Irulan said, exasperated. “He’s a man!"

Margot brushed a hand across her rounded stomach and nodded thoughtfully.

“You’ve tried an appeal to his pride?”

“Of course I have,” Irulan said, striding away again. The wall of her room was adorned with a massive bas-relief depicting boats on a flowing, palm-lined river. Margot offered it a cursory glance before sinking into one of the low chairs positioned near Irulan’s bookshelves.

“Tell me what your conversations are like,” Margot said. Irulan scoffed.

“Non-existent. He allows me to speak in trade meetings and occasionally the war council. Outside of those two rooms, it is like I’m no more interesting than a potted plant.”

“A potted plant is an extraordinary thing on Arrakis.”

“You know what I mean.”

“But you do not know what I mean. You are a relic of a foreign planet and a dying House, Empress, and he is a naturally curious man.”

“You don’t have to call me that,” Irulan said halfheartedly. “I told him a bit about Kaitain once. It was… strange.” She idled halfway down the relief before one of the many miniature, carved palms. “How is Kaitain these days?” She had tried to sound casual, but the blatant ache bled through anyway.

Margot tipped her head, twisting a strand of her corn silk hair between her fingers.

“It snowed more than usual up north this year. The gardens are breathtaking, and your mother's roses are still blooming. Hasimir and I would welcome your visit any time, Irulan. The planet mourns the loss of your family.”

“Thank you,” Irulan said. But I doubt I will be allowed to leave until all the Great Houses bend the knee.

“Maybe he would visit with you,” Margot suggested. “My husband would be honored to host the new Emperor. Perhaps that will be your foot in the door.”

"No. Any planet that is not Arrakis is disposable in pursuit of his ridiculous war.” For the breadth of a blink, she was standing behind her father again, her future dangling like a sword above her head. The entire universe had narrowed to boy covered in black blood with the power to destroy the spacing guild in his hands. “Sometimes, he even seems to think Arrakis is disposable.”

Margot hummed softly.

“Perhaps your perspective on the world would intrigue him from a political standpoint.”

“Are you saying I should I read to him from my history of Kaitain? Arousing.” Irulan said dryly.

“I know it is for you,” Margot said with a twinkle in her eye. Irulan contemplated if it would be cruel to throw a pillow at a pregnant woman. Before she could decide, Margot asked: “You said he had a Fremen concubine?”

“She's not an official concubine, but yes. Her name is Chani Kynes.”

“What is she like?” Irulan started pacing again.

“I don’t know. I’ve seen her, but not met her, not really. She was made Lady Jessica’s Sayyadina, so she must be trained in some of our ways. And she stood before Paul and my father like… like their titles were incidental to her. Like her voice was worth just as much as theirs. A fedaykin with the confidence to dissent against fate and the rulers of the universe.” Irulan shook her head. “Foolish. Awe-inspiring.”

“Well, we knew he liked strong-willed,” Margot said, her amusement betrayed by the slight quirk in her lips. “What else?” Irulan’s brows knitted.

“Tall. Lovely face. Dark hair, I think. I couldn’t tell much else from where I stood.”

“The face you could contend with. The other two?” Margot tapped her chin with a long finger. “You should focus on befriending him. Making yourself invaluable.” A pure, Bene Gesserit assessment. It did not sting; Irulan knew she was beautiful, but she was not Chani. “Perhaps you should talk to her.”

Irulan laughed.

“And say what? ‘Lady Chani, please kindly tell the love of your life to get over you long enough for him to fuck me a few times?’” Margot coughed into her fist, barely disguising her smile.

“Perhaps not so bluntly. Think of it as part of your research. If you can spend time with her, you can discern what it is that makes Paul prefer her over any other woman. She has also captured his heart. You must discover how, and use it for yourself.”

Irulan skimmed her fingertips across the warm stone carving of a laden barge and sighed.

“If it were as simple as imitating her, I would have a husband who loved me already, Margot.”

Margot heaved herself to her feet and rested a hand on Irulan’s shoulder.

“This is not fair to you,” Margot said, voice low. “Your first mark, and he is the most important and complex creature in the universe. There are few that envy your position, yet many who desire it. You know Hasimir and I will help you however we can. But you must stop talking in such terms as love and hate.” Irulan turned her head, meeting Margot’s wide, serious eyes, and felt her stomach churn. “As your friend, trust that I understand.” Margot’s wedding band was cool against Irulan’s skin. “But as your Sister: remember your duty. You are here for his bio-materials, not his heart.”

Irulan pushed her hair off her sweaty forehead. The heat must have been making her sluggish, because she was struggling to parse through the emotions lodged in her throat.

Margot had endured Feyd-Rautha, but then she had gone home to the arms of a husband who spoke to her, who held her, who wanted her around. For Margot, duty and personal fulfillment were neatly isolated from one another, yet both were easily satisfied.

Irulan had no such luxury.

“I don't why I said it that way. I don't even wish for him to love me. He's detestable. I just..." Irulan cleared her throat. "I just wish that fate had dealt me a different hand.”

Margot pulled her into a hug, and Irulan froze.

She could not recall the last time she had been embraced by anyone.

“Would he allow you to take a concubine?” Margot asked, leaning her cheek against Irulan’s shoulder.

“I’m not sure that he would care.” Her limbs felt stiff and awkward as she curled them around Margot. But once she did, it almost felt easier to admit her fear, as if something had unpinned itself inside of her.

“Perhaps it would make him jealous.”

“Let’s not lie. He would be relieved.” Margot released Irulan, but stayed close to her, their shoulders brushing.

“You could always wait out the month. If you kill the girl, then your only competition is eliminated. All you would have to do is play the noble wife and support Paul through his grief. It would be your best opportunity to garner his affection. Perhaps even his love, should you still desire it.” Irulan folded her arms across her chest.

"I cannot kill her, Margot. He would foresee any attempt of mine on her life. My House would be further disgraced."

“Why did you suggest it, then?” Margot asked, resting her glass against her chest.

Irulan, suddenly desperate for something to occupy her hands, crossed the room to retrieve two drinking glasses from a cabinet. The water in the carafe beside her bed was lukewarm, but she poured it anyway, and offered one to Margot before draining her own.

"It's the only way. Paul will not leave Arrakis without Chani, and he will not let me leave for fear I'll try to contact my father. I needed a plan to keep myself in good standing with Mohaim. I need Chani Kynes dead so that I can have either a husband or my freedom. No matter how I try to fit these pieces together, they end in me dead or exiled. I cannot be the one to kill her." Irulan looked to her friend, her mouth painfully dry. "Our Houses have long taken care of each another, Margot. Please. I need your help."

Notes:

Thank you all against so much for the response on the first chapter! I was blown away by how many people are interested in this little AU. You are all so wonderful and had me giddy all this week. I so hope that you enjoyed this chapter as well. This one was a bit different than the first, so please let me know if you have any feedback.

I plan to switch to updating on weekends instead to make things nice and consistent. So, see you this weekend!

Love, lifeline x

Chapter 3

Summary:

In a rare, quiet moment, Paul is faced with his fear.

Notes:

Thank you all for the continued love! Your comments and kudos mean so much to me, and I really appreciate every single one. I hope you all enjoy this chapter; it was so much fun to write, and I think it will help answer some questions. I can't wait to hear what you all think! <3

Also, I've attached an explanation of this AU's timeline & character ages in the end notes.

It was rare that Paul slept. More nights than not, he woke, covered in his own sweat, throat raw, the afterimages of his perpetual nightmares still seared into his retinas.

Doctor Yueh’s replacement, a hunched, spindly man named Stockwell, had offered Paul sleeping pills. Paul declined. He could not explain why. How could he? How could he tell the lambs that he was herding them to slaughter? How could he explain that the smell of their blood was the only thing that kept him from forgetting what he had done?

“You are doing what you should,” Jessica assured him, over and over.

“I am doing what your people want,” Paul always replied. At first, he screamed it at her. But after weeks, it wore down into a lifeless refrain, until it the only thing he had left to cling to.

He had once desired to keep the legacy of his father alive. Paul-Maud’Dib, he had fashioned himself. The boy who walked between worlds, both Outworlder and Fremen, both Usul and Atreides. But he had split an ax straight down his own center when he promised his hand to the Corinno princess. Muad’Dib had crawled out into the desert, gurgling blood. Paul was trapped inside his body, screaming.

Maybe he was the Kwisatz Haderach. Maybe not. It didn’t matter to him.

Nothing did. Except for the Way. The blinding, gold thread cutting the carnage of his creation.

That was all there was anymore.

Except for the hope of her.

Paul waded out into the sand. His stillsuit felt tight around his ribs. He’d filled out somewhat since his return to Arrakeen, but his stomach convulsed at the idea of trading in the stillsuit he’d been given at Sietch Tabr. It was his last relic of the bombed city he’d called home, the girl he’d loved, the life they built together.

Since Duncan’s death, Gurney had taken over as weapons masters, and the old man had not once let Paul miss a lesson. But even daily fights couldn’t replicate the strength needed to run through sand and steer Shair-hulud. Paul’s thighs burned as crested a tall dune, and black spots swam in his vision. The evening heat pressed into him. His hair was already stringy and damp. He lifted a hand to shield his eyes and scanned the horizon for wormsign.

The desert was quiet.

Paul sank down onto his haunches. He had a thumper with him; he could ride out to the closest sietch and demand her returned to him. He could turn every grain of sand on the planet over until he found her.

Paul loved Arrakis. He loved the ebb and flow of desert life, the winds and sand and worms and sky. He loved the coolness of the caverns and the blistering heat of midday. He loved the little Maud’Dib and the massive Shai-Hulud. He even loved the shimmer of spice when the wind caught just right.

But now, he hated it, because it had taken her from him.

You’ve made your choice, something deep in his chest reminded him.

He grabbed a fistful of sand and watched it cascade through his fingers. There was no wind today, only the heat like a blanket wrapped tightly around the world. Constricting. Comforting.

Something slammed into him.

“Shit!” Paul’s hand flew to the chrysknife at his hip as he was bowled over into the sand. A familiar, impish face popped into his vision, and Paul dropped the knife he had been about to plunge into his attacker’s side. “Alia! What the—“ Alia scrambled off of her brother and plopped into the sand beside him, giggling. Her white-blonde hair was braided around her head like a halo, and it shone so brightly in the sun that Paul had to look away.

“Gotcha,” she yelled.

“Yeah, and I was about to ‘get you’ with my knife. You can’t just—“ Paul blew out his cheeks and sat up, shaking sand out of his hair. “What are you doing out here?”

“Exploring.” Alia was only seven and tall for her age. She had been born with liquid blue eyes, their father’s olive skin, and an unsettling intellect. Apparently, self-preservation instincts had not been included amongst her gifts.

“Does Harah know you’re skipping lessons?” She shrugged in answer and pulled her legs criss-cross. “Alia, you can’t just wander out here when you’re bored.” Paul said, but as his adrenaline deflated, so did his irritation. Alia frowned at him.

“Well, shouldn’t you be in a meeting or something?”

“I was bored,” Paul said, lips curving. Alia punched his arm, and he laughed.

“See?” She whined.

“I’m serious. You can’t come out here alone. It’s dangerous.”

“You do it!”

“I do it because I’m older.” He crinkled his nose at her. “And I’m the Emperor, so.”

“Not fair!”

Paul chuckled.

“Not at all. But no more flying solo until you can beat Gurney in a fight. Got it?” He mustered a serious expression and stuck out his pinkie.

“But I’m not solo,” Alia pointed out. “You’re here. And I can totally beat Gurney in a fight. He’s ancient.” Paul snorted. After a heartbeat, Alia groaned, then looped her pinkie through his. “Fine. Promise. But only if you don’t tell mother.”

“I won’t. But that doesn’t mean Harah won’t when she finds that you’re not at your desk.” Paul stretched his legs out in front of him and leaned back on his palms. Alia grumbled something that sounded like a threat, then flopped backwards into the sand.

“Why were you just sitting out here? It’s hot,” she grumbled. Paul started to answer, but then Alia shot up and grabbed his arm. “Oh! Show me how to ride a worm! Come on, Paul, please?” She shook him, her smile a touch more feral than excited. 

“One, it’s easier for me to think out here. Alone, where it’s quiet,” he said, pulling his arm away. Alia huffed. “Two, that’s for Stilgar to decide, not me. Besides, your mother would kill me if you got eaten by one.”

“You’re boring. When’s Chani coming back?”

All the oxygen escaped his body.

Of course. Alia had been born in Sietch Tabr. She knew Chani for the first three years of her short life. And she had loved Chani. Idolized her, even.

“I miss her,” Alia continued plaintively, as if to prove his point. “I gotta show her how good I can fight now. Maybe she’ll teach me how to catch a worm.”

Paul struggled for breath, his hands digging into the sand.

“I don’t know,” he said, voice rough. “She’s… very busy.”

“No, she’s mad at you,” Alia said, and Paul let out a strangled noise. “'Cause you married that dumb princess instead of her.”

The world was spinning. He wasn’t sure if it was exhaustion, dehydration, or something else. Maybe all three.

Alia scooped up a handful of sand and threw it down the hill. It drifted lazily through the still air, shimmering. For a moment, he swore he heard a silvery laugh.

“You could kick her off the planet,” Alia said like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Just—boom!” She mimed slamming a button. “And send her into space. Or back to whatever planet she was from. Then Chani’d like you again.”

“It’s not that simple,” Paul said. His voice sounded far away to his own ears, like he was hearing himself from the end of a tunnel. Alia dragged her finger through the sand in a wiggly line, drawing what Paul assumed was a sandworm—but it was hard to tell with his vision swimming, and his ears ringing. The heat was suffocating, burrowing into his skin like teeth, the ground opening up around him, and then he was dragging himself across the fetid, bloated bodies of his mother, his friends, Fremen fighters and Landsraad soldiers, and he could see her—there, at the top of a vast dune, white light spilling around her--

Chani stepped down from summit, over the viscous, red sand, and lifted his chin.

“You’ve made your choice, Usul,” she whispered.

“No, please,” he gasped, reaching for her. But cold hands were wrapping around his legs, his waist, his arms, pulling him back, dragging him down into a pit of flesh and rot.

And then the wind hit him. He staggered back, flinging his hands up and squinting as a sandstorm crashed over him. Chani stood before him, her black gown billowing around her. As Paul stumbled towards her, two smaller shapes swam into view, clinging to her sides.

Chani looked back over her shoulder and smiled softly before melting into the sand.

“No!” Paul screamed, fling himself forward. The two shapes wavered, their blue eyes piercing. “No, this isn’t it!”

And then, there was another voice. Cooler, less familiar to him, but undeniable.

“Forward leads to death."

He turned, scanning for the source of the voice. There, beyond the raging, red clouds, was a distant, golden glow.

“This can’t be it,” he screamed, the wind ripping his voice and tears away.

“Go.”

“But Chani is—“

“Let go.”

“Go back.”

“Go back, Paul.”

“Paul.”

“Paul.”

“Paul!” Alia shrieked. His cheek stung, and his face was wet. Alia crouched over him, one hand bunched in the collar of his stillsuit, the other lifted to slap him again. The sky above him was dusky blue, the twin moons hanging low in the sky.

Paul sat up, coughing. Sand cascaded off of him. He had rolled partway down the dune. His body ached like he’d been thrown from the top of the palace.

“’M okay,” he managed, even though sitting up made his breathless lungs sting. Alia hovered nervously next to him, her little face screwed up.

“That was bad,” she whispered. Paul pressed a hand to his forehead and nodded numbly. His ears were ringing. Yeah. Pretty fucking bad. To her credit, Alia bit back the dozens of questions Paul knew she had racing through her mind and sat next to him quietly, her arms wrapped around her knees. Paul wiped his face, and blood smeared on his glove.

“Nosebleed?” He asked tiredly. Alia nodded. Paul sighed and let himself sink back against the slope of sand. “Sorry. You shouldn’t have had to see that.”

“It’s okay,” Alia said with shrug. “Mine are bad, too.”

Paul couldn’t tell if the noise he made was a laugh or a whimper. He forced himself to his feet despite his spinning head and held out a hand to his little sister.

“C’mon, kid. Let’s get back before Harah kills you.”

 

---

 

“What did you see?”

Paul gritted his teeth.

“Alia told you?”

Jessica was quiet for a moment. He heard a clink as she picked up her teacup. A terrible pressure was building between his temples.

“She tells me many things. You do not.”

“I wasn’t aware I had to tell you everything I do,” he said, avoiding his mother’s eyes  even though her face was shrouded.

“When it concerns the integrity of your mission, Paul—“

“My mission?” He said sharply. “Even now, you seek to avoid blame?” Jessica folded her hands, but he could see the tremble in the corners of her mouth.

“Tell me what you saw, Paul.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Jessica set her cup down with a clatter and stood.

“We are at war. Everything matters. You must discern the path forward.” Paul’s flaring temper was stamped out by the nauseating pain that pulsed behind his eyes. He grimaced.

“It was the same as yesterday." He clenched his hands. "And the day before. I don't understand it. It's been like this since she got here."

Jessica drifted past Paul towards the door.

"Then perhaps you should speak with her."

Notes:

About the timeline of this AU:
I like that Villeneuve aged the characters up and I wanted to keep that. However, I also really wanted to write Alia because she's one of my favorite characters, and having her as a infant (even a preborn one) didn't quite work for the role I want her to play in this story. So since I've already kind of been Frankenstein-ing book and movie canon, I smashed the two timelines together as well.

Using the birthdays from the books, which were helpfully compiled on r/Dune, I aged everybody up a bit. At the start of the fic:
- Paul and Irulan are both 22
- Chani is two years younger than them, making her 20
- Alia is 7

To maintain Alia and Paul's 15-16 year age gap, I had extend the time frame of Dune pt. 1 to include the three years Paul and Jessica spend in Sietch Tabr in the books.

Does this mean Leto II the Elder happened? Don't worry, we'll cross that bridge later.

Please let me know if you have any questions about this breakdown! I've done my best to make it easy to follow, but I'm happy to explain anything that's gotten confusing on convoluted.

Thank you all again. See you next weekend!

lifeline x

Chapter 4

Summary:

Irulan has an unexpected meeting.

Notes:

I'm back! Sorry for neglecting this fic for so very long.

It's been a very tumultuous few months in my personal life, but I'm here again, and writing again.

I hope this double update makes up for it. <3

“He is driven by blind devotion to his own Jihad. Your task is to convince him that sleeping with you is not just practical, but necessary to his—or Arrakis’—survival. He needs to not just think it to be ideal, but essential.”

Margot and Irulan sat at the stone table set at the center of her entertaining room, clay cups of cold, earthy tea resting on geometric saucers before them.

“The issue is that he knows of its practicality and rejects it out of love, which is why I need her gone.” Irulan spun a quill between her fingers absently as she spoke, one of her many overflowing notebooks open on the table.

“He won’t stop loving her if she dies. Love does not end in absence.” Margot paused, looking out the window, her eyes distant. “In fact, it rather seems the opposite.”

Irulan thought, at once, of her sisters on Kaitain, of the lack of couriers sent to her in her exile. Of all the men and women who slipped in through the cracks of her parents’s marriage. Of good Count Fenring, waiting eagerly for his wife’s arrival on the morrow.

The fine end of the quill snapped between her fingers and blue ink dribbled down her fingers.

“This is why Mohaim hates loves,” Irulan said flatly, throwing the pieces to the floor in frustration. “It disrupts everything.”

“Oh, Irulan,” Margot murmured. She stood laboriously and circled behind her chair, brushing her palm over Irulan’s sleek hair.

“Don’t.” Irulan started to pull away, to stand, but Margot rested a hand on her shoulder to keep her in place.

“Life is not kind. That is why we do what we do. And that is equally why you and I are good at what we do. But… I want you to know that I am sorry.”

Irulan hated how her eyes stung, how her blue-stained hands were balled and shaking in her lap.

“I did not invite you here for your pity,” she said.

“I am not giving you my pity.” Margot squeezed Irulan’s shoulder. “I am giving you my grief. And I am telling you what you should do.”

At this, Irulan looked to her friend’s face.

“You have a plan?”

“You cannot kill her.” Irulan shoved to her feet, but Margot, quick even now, caught her wrist. “Listen to me, Irulan. You must know that you would be commuting mariticide. You would condemn us all.”

“And you would condemn me to a life under the thumb of a tyrant! I will die either way, Margot!” Irulan ripped her wrist free, gaping like she’d been burned. Margot’s eyes were steady, but not even her mastery of the Way could fully conceal the twisting sadness in her eyes.

“Irulan, listen to me. That way lies danger. Do you know what you are?”

Irulan’s chest was heaving. She loathed it, how her anger had seared through her restraint, how it scraped through her like knife on bone. Her face felt hot, her eyes stinging like she’d been slapped—and she was, at once, as small as a girl, staring into the frightful eyes of her Reverend Mother.

She wound the anger tight, following the spiral into the blissful silence of white-hot rage.

“I am your Empress.” It was more whine than snarl. It felt good to say either way.

Margot’s mouth twitched into a weak smile.

“Yes, you are my Empress—you are the Empress of the Known Universe. I trust you know what that means.” Irulan stared at her. Her clenched jaw had started to ache. “You are my sister, Irulan. In the Way, and out of it. Please know that I would have put the sword in your hands myself if I thought it would help.”

“So instead you would put it in my back.” Irulan turned from her, unable to hide the sudden gush of blistering tears.

“No, Irulan. You did this to yourself with your foolish bargain.” Margot did not sound accusing. And somehow, that was worse. “Emperor Atreides has requested an audience before I leave. I will speak to him, then depart.” A pause. “I will send a courier soon.”

Irulan, back to the door, heard only the faint click as it shut.

 

---

 

Irulan’s chest was tight. Days of labored breathing bled into nights of restless, dreamless, sweaty sleep. Her serving girls skittered in and out, quiet as ants, clearly afraid of her mood.

It angered her further, that they would think her as cruel as him. She was not the tyrant. She was not mad with her own deification. How could she be? She was hardly even a princess anymore. Her power was bled from her and poured into her Emperor-husband’s veins. His to wield. His to own.

A crown melted and poured into a sword.

A sword she felt pressing at her throat every time his gaze skimmed over her, his brow furrowed, his body tensed. When they sat opposite one another at war council, she could feel it, the smart of steel on her skin, the perplexed knot of anger in the way he studied her.

Like she was to blame for this wretched union.

Margot’s traitorous words dogged her: you did this to yourself. You did this to yourself. You did this to yourself.

She was right. Anirul, Kwisatz Mother, would have promised Irulan’s hand to Paul at birth if the Way had willed it so. But she had not, for reasons Irulan could not comprehend. The Corrinos and the Atreides must not to have been intended to breed just yet.

But Irulan had stood as her father was crushed beneath the heel of the burgeoning Atreides empire. She had inserted herself into the tapestry of fate, and now the crown-sword demanded a child. Another chance, she supposed, at bringing about the Kwisatz Haderach. Maybe it was a honor, stolen though it was. Maybe if it had been planned, if she had prepared, it would even feel exciting. Maybe if Paul was kind, it would feel like something akin to love.

You did this to yourself.

Irulan stood in the hall, staring at her hands. Her vision doubled, blurring her skin into a blue-tinged smear, and she swayed on her feet. It was so, damnably hot, and her throat was so dry, and she was going to die on this godforsaken planet any day now.

But she had a plan.

 

---

 

Lady Chani was beautiful, like the desert itself. In constant motion, yet decisively still. She held herself not like an empress, but like a warrior. A fedaykin, Paul had called her once. Irulan remembered. She always did.

Irulan herself was tall, but Chani looked down on her with wary eyes.

Irulan set her jaw and indicated, politely, for her to sit. Chani did, tucking her long limbs up, like she was ready to leap away at any moment. Desert Spring, Irulan thought. Always running.

Like Paul.

It had been a surprise to even herself when Irulan wrote the letter. It had been an even greater surprise when the stillsuit-clad courier returned with a short note from the Fremen woman: Fine.

A serving girl poured cold tea, and Irulan drank first to prove to Chani that she posed no threat to her life. Irulan felt, in that moment, the faintest twinge of irony. Once a moment had elapsed without Irulan collapsing or foaming at the mouth, Chani downed her tea before the dry air could claim any more of it to evaporation. She looked warily around the room. The low lights pulled the threads of auburn from her brown hair.

“He’s not here,” Irulan said. Chani assessed her, then nodded once and set down her empty glass, which was promptly refilled. “He’ll be away until noon. He’s overseeing the improvements to the atomics.”

Irulan did not need to explain more Chani—the threat their emperor had made on the day of his coup still loomed between them like a slavering hound. Chani ran her thumb around the rim of her glass absently, but her uncanny blue eyes were alert.

With a wave of her hand, Irulan dismissed the servers.

“I do not love him.”

Chani’s head snapped up, the lines around her mouth deepening as she frowned at Irulan's words.

“And he does not love me. He loves you. He wants you as his concubine if I must be his bride.” Irulan curled her hand around her glass, unflinching. “He walks out into the desert every day and searches for you. You are an oasis to him, Desert Spring. He will seek you until he’s mad.”

To herself, she thought: he already is.

“Why did you bring me here?” Chani asked, voice flat. A hunted tiredness hung beneath her eyes and lined her mouth. Paul-Maud’Dib loves her, Irulan decided, but the Emperor is destroying her. Like he will destroy her world.

“I do not want us to fight.” Irulan met Chani’s eyes and held them. Human green, spice blue. “I do not want his heart. That is yours and yours alone.” Irulan picked up her glass and set it back down untouched. “But I am required to bear him a son. If I fail, I will be killed.” She pressed her hands flat against the table, steadying herself. “If you let him go, I will have him for one month. Then, I will beg him to send me home. I will scream and cry in public, I will tell everyone I know how I hate the Emperor of the Known Universe. I will make him sicker of me than he already is, until he finally concedes to send me away. Then, when I am back on Kaitain with a child, he will come back to your arms, and he will be kinder to you for it. He will be grateful for you, and your steadiness, and your love, and he will never again invite me here.” Irulan smiled wanly. “I will have my title and my heir. You have your love, and have him in whole. It is victory for us both.”

Chani stared at her. Then, she rose abruptly to her feet, her hands gripping the edge of the table like she might upend it.

“You were born a chess piece and you love the game.” Her voice was the roll of a sandstorm, slow and consuming. “You move across the board as you’re told, and you think because you’re a Bene Gesserit you’re in control.” She paced away from the table, massaging her temples. When she reached the end of the room, she whirled on Irulan, who still sat at the table, watching. “I loved Usul Maud’Dib. I hate Emperor Atreides. I would help you, Empress, because I know how he is. But I will die before I step back onto this board. I will not be pushed around as a pawn by you or your husband.” The last word was venomous on Chani’s tongue. She paused, her chest heaving. Something stretched taut between them. Pity, perhaps, but for who, Irulan could not say.

“And what of Arrakis?” Irulan asked, not bothering to be soft.

“What of it?” Chani replied, clipped.

“Do you think he’s the Lisan al Gaib?”

Chani strode back to the end of the long table, bracing her hands against it.

“I think that the Lisan al Gaib is a fable meant to yolk us to whatever masters your people sell our planet to,” she said.

Irulan smiled.

“You’re right.” Chani blinked, surprised at her candor. “It is a Bene Gesserit fabrication, part of our design to ensure the right outcome of humanity.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

Irulan shook of the brief, acrid sting of guilt.

“Because if your people knew the truth, they would rally against him. They would upend his rule, cast the Golden Lion Throne forever off of Arrakis. You would all be kings, if you were to control the spice without the Imperium holding you by the scruff.” Irulan took a long drink of her tea, letting the words hand like dust in the air. “I don’t care if Paul Atreides lives or dies. I don’t care if Arrakis owns the universe or if I do. I care about my family. I care about my work. I care about going home. And I think you, Chani, understand that.”

The still, heavy air weighed on Irulan as she waited.

At last, Chani sank back into the chair at the end of the table.

“I cannot give him to you. But that is because he is not mine to give. He ceased to be mine the moment he sold his soul to the Imperium.” She hesitated. “But if you are good for your word—“

“I am.” It was an easy lie.

“—then I will do as you ask. Under the condition that you do not act against us.”

Irulan crossed the room to meet to Chani and extended her hand. Chani took it. Her skin was soft and warm, and again, Irulan felt that terrible, dizzying scrape against her rib cage as they shook hands.

Chani met Irulan’s eyes one last time, her expression indecipherable. Then, she strode from the room, her tan cloak and auburn hair billowing behind her.

Chapter 5

Summary:

Paul and Irulan speak.

You did this to yourself, the wind whispered as it rolled across the sand. You did this to yourself, crooned the shift and creak of the ancient stone palace. You did this to yourself, said every fluttering beat of her heart as she crept to the East Wing of the Arrakeen palace, trying hard to not feel conspicuous.

Voices swelled around the corner. Irulan bent her mind inwards, feeling for her thin pulse and forcing her disquiet mind to sharpen. She needed to listen.

“He is…” There was a soft intake of breath as Lady Jessica paused, exhaled. Irulan inched closer towards the corner, her white shift catching and dragging on the porous stone of the wall.  "Not himself, as of late. Not since she--" Tiny pellets of sand crackled under Irulan's sandals as she shifted her weight and she froze, heart pitching into her throat. “What was that?” Lady Jessica said sharply.

I am going to kill whoever tramped this in, Irulan thought, holding her breath.

“Just the damn sand,” came Gurney’s reply. But their voices dipped low, and Irulan could not parse out whatever else was said besides Gurney’s eventual, raspy goodbye, darlin’.

Heavy footsteps started down the hallway towards her hiding place. Irulan peeled herself out of the shadows and took a few silent paces back. Must act like I just arrived.

“Earl Halleck,” she said as Gurney turned the corner, whistling.

“Princess,” he said, concealing his surprise with a stiff half-bow. Empress, Irulan thought.

“You’re far from the West Wing.”

“Do I need an excuse to visit my husband?” She asked pleasantly.

“I don’t suppose so.” Wariness stilted his reply.

“So His Majesty is in?” Gurney’s whiskers twitched as he frowned.

“He’s with his mother. Come back later.” A lie. Irulan had heard Lady Jessica's footsteps recede in the opposite direction.

“I understand, but I must bring forth an urgent matter. You understand.” Irulan started to walk forward, but Gurney set his arm against the wall, blocking her.

“Come back later,” he said more firmly.

Irulan’s jaw ticked.

When she spoke, it was the almost-forgotten hiss of water over stone, pouring through his ears, soothing him into pliability.

“Step aside for your Empress, Gurney Halleck.”

His arm jerked like he might resist, and fear sparked in her. But then he dropped his arm, stepping to the side and bowing his head.

“Empress,” he grumbled, and Irulan smiled sweetly at him, hurrying down the hall before he could realize that it was not loyalty but the Voice that had moved him.

She had only been to Paul’s chambers once. That dark, sleepless night, alone in a bed far too large and cold for one person.

And suddenly, though she was Empress, though she was a Sister, though she walked now in myth and starlight—

She was afraid.

Irulan had once thought herself fortunate to have been raised abnormally twice over. The royal-blooded broodmare-to-be, the prettiest bargaining chip in the Padishah Emperor’s purse. The Bene Gesserit witch-girl, too clever for court, not clever enough to be given escape in form of the Agony.

But now, she felt that she had been damned as much as freed by her blood.

The massive, black doors into the Emperor’s rooms loomed over her, insurmountable.

Without knocking, Irulan pushed them in.

The lights were off so that only the setting sun pouring in from the long, horizontal window across the opposite wall illuminated the spacious foyer. It was similar to Irulan's own entertaining room, only much larger, and more ornate. Near the window, there was a seating area furnished with well-worn leather armchairs rather than the low-backed stone stools Irulan had been given. They must have been imported from Caladan.

Irulan glanced around the room and shut the doors behind her, sealing herself in with the bluish shadows. It was strange to be there, stranger still to see the evidence of life from a husband she did not know. Academic curiosity pressed impatiently against her mind, and she allowed herself a moment to luxuriate in it. It was research, she thought as she paused beside one of his overflowing bookshelves. She picked up a small, pale stone statue of a bull fighter that had been set on one of the shelves. It reminded her of that awful, mounted bull head in the dining hall that she hated so much, and she set it back down before circling over to the lovely armchairs.

When she reached them, she froze, shocked.

Paul sat in one of them, folded nearly in half, his arms wrapped around his middle, dark hair brushing his knees as he sobbed.

Irulan stumbled back towards the threshold, praying he hadn't see or heard her, but made it only a few paces before he spoke.

“She’s not coming back.” His voice was so small, so broken—so unlike him. Irulan's stomach bottomed out. What does he know?

“I cannot know the answer to that, my lord,” she said carefully.

In the faint light, Paul’s throat flexed. She watched as he unwound his legs and straightened up just enough to gaze resolutely out over the horizon.

“But I can.” It was so miserable that something unwelcome twisted beneath her sternum. In the fading light, his dark lashes glimmered with tears. “I can see. I can see everything—every golden thread, the wax and wane of possibility in the face of decision.” He lifted one hand, palm up, and flipped it over, moving it through the air as if time were palpable to him. At last, he glanced over his shoulder at Irulan, his eyes slack and glossy.

She crept slightly closer, slow and cautious, like one might approach a coiled snake. The hairs on the back of her neck were prickling.

In even the one night they had slept at each other’s sides, she had never been this close to him. A deep breath, a twitch of the hand, and they would be touching.

A strange, static charge crept up her arms.

“I once asked her to trust me. To believe that I am doing this out of her best interest.” Paul swallowed. “She doesn’t. She doesn’t know. The blood, the knife, the children.” The fine wire of his voice snapped in two, and Paul’s hand shot out, seizing Irulan’s wrist. She jerked back in reflex, but his nails dug into her flesh.

“Paul, what—“ she whispered.

“She can’t—I can’t. I can’t tell her.” He twisted in his chair, his other hand curling around her forearm. Paul leaned his head against his hands, his dark hair crumpling against her skin. Irulan stared at his bent head, his hunched shoulders, the way he clung to hand as he trembled. Paul Atreides, who ruled the universe with his bloody fist—a broken boy. An unpleasant feeling lodged itself in her throat, and she swallowed it down.

The tipped crown of his head pressing into her cold arm made her realize, again, just how… young he was. They were the same age, of course. But she thought of herself as older. Ageless. The product of her upbringing as the eldest, both adviser and war prize. And Paul? His anger ran deep into the foundation of the world. Older than him. Older than the Federation. Perhaps older than Arrakis itself. His anger had not aged him: it had transcended him, and eclipsed his body and mind in a sort of void divinity. He could have been a child or on his deathbed. He could have been a month younger than her or decades older.

He was undefinable. Detestable. Her mad dictator, her zealot.

And his lukewarm tears were dripping down her wrist, pooling in the divots where his fingertips pressed into her arm.

“Paul,” Irulan said quietly. “Muad’dib.” His hand jerked at that, his thumb digging into the soft underside of her wrist.

“I never told you that name.” His breath was humid against her skin, his tears beading in her gold bracelets. Such a waste of moisture, she had heard him say of others.

Irulan bowed her head.

“Forgive me, my lord. I had heard it in passing."

Paul drew back suddenly, releasing her. The air felt cold on her clammy wrist. She took the opportunity to step away, relieved by how the fizzling tension that was knotting in her stomach dissipated with space.

The sun was a pinkish semicircle behind the irregular horizon. All across Arrakeen, night shift soldiers, mechanics, and ecologists were waking up, and small children were bursting out of their homes to run around as the heat settled into the briefest hour of livable warmth. The light bled through the window into the chamber, staining Paul’s skin golden as he leaned forward on his elbows, his fingertips braced together.

Yes, Irulan had always felt older than her bones. And Paul was the same: not a child, not a man. An idea. An Emperor. But now, with the sun casting color onto his skin, he looked young for the first time.

Irulan averted her face back to the darkening sky.

“The Way is clear,” he murmured.

When he stood, walked to stand next to her, she had to tip her chin up to look him in the eye.

It was such a wide expanse of blue.

He studied her for the hundredth time, thoughtful.

Then, he swept past her.

The thin line of pink sunlight slipped into the indigo of night as Paul shut his bedroom door behind him. Irulan stood alone in the dark of his chambers.

With a shuddering breath, she smoothed her hands over her stomach, then through her hair. And then, she strode to the chamber doors, pushing them open.

By the time she reached the end of the hall, she was running.

Notes:

It was high time these two had some sort of emotional interaction, right?

Thank you, as always, for reading. I am having so much fun writing this and appreciate every one of you who's still here for the ride.

<3 lifeline

Chapter 6

Summary:

Alia spars. Part 1/2.

Notes:

I'm back!

Life has been hectic, but while I was away, I took some time to plot out the rest of this story. I expect to write several more chapters following the next two or so years of canonical time.

Thank you so much for all the thoughtful comments. I so appreciate them and I reread them all the time. I hope you enjoy <3

“Again.”

Irulan sucked in a breath as the needle pressed into her inner arm. Cool liquid flooded her veins. Her eyelids fluttered shut, sealing out visual stimuli as she inverted her attention. The soft rustle of Anirul’s robes and the faint hiss of the sand faded into the rhythmic rush of her own blood.

The poison was subtle. Her eyebrows knit as she followed her pulse down her arm and up again, feeling for its effects. A stinging in her chest. An irregular heartbeat. Sweat beaded on her brow, slicking her veil to her skin.

There.

Her jaw was trembling, her left arm spasming. Her heart raced, erratic, in her chest, traitorously pumping the poison through her system. Her teeth worried into her lip as she fought to clear her mind around the searing in her bloodstream. Ephedrine. She held onto the word like a lifeline, feeling for the microscopic pulse of adrenaline in her mind and staunching it.

One, two.

Her breath slowed. Her heart rate calmed.

But the burning had clawed its way through her shoulder and down her chest. Her arm was limp at her side. No longer blinded by panic, Irulan observed the pain quietly. Her torso flexed, diaphragm heaving. She followed the rush of white blood cells along her arm, parsing through the chemical composition of the poison while her body obediently eliminated it.

The pain subsided.

Irulan blinked her eyes open.

Her muscles were sore, her skin clammy. She found Anirul standing across the room, peering at the world of green outside the window.

“Basilia,” Irulan said. “Manufactured here in the Imperium. Favored as a blade treatment by assassins and our Sardaukar. Once it reaches the bloodstream, it causes incredible pain that renders the affected limb useless. Fast-acting and immediately fatal once it reaches the heart or brain.”

Anirul returned to the table, green eyes unreadable.

“And how do you reverse the effects of such a quick-acting agent?” She asked her daughter.

“Control ephedrine to slow the heart rate. Isolate the agent within the bloodstream, ideally before it reaches any vital organs. Dilute the chemicals until the white blood cells can destroy the agent without disintegrating.” Irulan looked up at her mother eagerly as the last grains of sand trickled into the bottom of the hourglass.

Anirul upended the hourglass, her rings tinkling against its metal frame, and selected a new syringe.

 

“Again.”

It was Lady Jessica who spoke.

Gurney circled the ring, boots scuffing across the packed sand. Alia mimicked him, crouched low like a leopard, a blunt dagger in each hand.

At the edge of the ring, Irulan sat beside Paul in the shade, her back ramrod straight. The memory of her mother clung to her like the sweat beading down her throat. She wrung her ink-stained hands and watched her husband out of the corner of her eye.

He was slumped, chin in his hand, but he studied Alia with a knife-like gaze. His dark brows pinched ever so slightly. A half second later, Alia lunged. Gurney, deft despite his age, ducked to the side, and the girl shot past him, nearly careening into the high stone wall that enclosed them. She recovered, skidding on her knees through a cloud of kicked-up dirt before launching herself back at Gurney with a shriek.

“Too fast,” Paul murmured into his palm.

Alia lashed out with her blades, but Gurney’s electric shield crackled and burned blue. He struck out, sending Alia stumbling backwards. She screeched something ferocious and surged at him again, but Gurney rolled forward, sweeping her legs out from under her. Alia slammed to the ground. Her shield flared red as Gurney's knife froze a half-inch from her throat. Irulan leaned forward, eyes wide.

“Don’t throw all your weight at me then act surprised when you lose your balance,” Gurney chided. Alia dropped her daggers and clung to his wrist, trying to force his arm away from her neck, legs scrabbling for purchase against the sand. “Never give up your only weap—” Gurney grunted as Alia drove her knee into his stomach. Seizing on his momentary distraction, she swung herself out from under him and wrenched his sword arm behind his back.

Paul sat up.

Gurney surged to his feet, cursing and trying to shake her off, but Alia clung to him. She prised the knife from his fingers and drove it at his throat. The air snapped and hummed with the force of the electric current repelling her blow. It stung the roof of Irulan's mouth.

“Again?” Alia said sweetly.

Lady Jessica tilted her head, blue eyes impassive. Alia let go, dropping to her feet with the grace of a dancer.

“Well done, princess," Gurney said, clapping her on the back. Alia beamed at the praise. She turned his knife over in her hands, handing it to him pommel-first, but Gurney shook his head.

“No. You’ve earned that knife, Alia. Keep it.” He closed her hand around the wrapped grip. "Imperial make," he added, teeth flashing. "Won it off Shaddam's very own honor guard."

The words scraped their way through her, but Irulan willed herself still. She would not honor such easy bait with a reaction.

Paul stood.

Alia looked up at her brother and lofted the knife above her head with a whoop. The slats of sunlight streaming in from the low windows seemed to warp just to pool around her. With her braided hair gleaming white, she was incandescent. She could almost have been a Corrino, but for the eyes.

Irulan was not prescient, not the way her husband was. But for a brief, delirious moment, he looked back at her, and she saw a glimpse of something strange and far ahead in the tilt of his full mouth, in the flicker of worry he could not disguise, in the rare and shocking clarity of his gaze. 

Alia was so small. Smaller than Irulan’s youngest sister. And yet, framed in light and holding a knife the length of her forearm, she looked—

Ancient. Terrible.

Just a girl, Irulan reminded herself. Bene Gesserit. No more. No less. A Sister. My sister, now.

And yet.

How much more could the sister of the Kwisatz Haderach be?

Irulan itched to know. To study . To peel it all apart and hold the pieces up to the proving ground of the past, to rearrange what she knew until it fit into a pattern that made sense. She missed her old laboratory, her library filled with endless histories, every sprawling museum on Kaitain. She even missed her mother's tests, the adrenaline of a test aced or fight won. But her favorites were the books. They were kept locked away in temperature-controlled chambers. But when she was patient, when she was lucky, a benevolent librarian would take pity on her and let her slip inside those tepid, airless rooms and drink her fill of stories. Once, she had even seen an old Bible, its paper pages stiff with bright ink. Of course, it was considered heretical now. Most of the universe’s few remaining faithful followed the Orange Catholic Bible instead. But even though Irulan herself had never been religious--the Bene Gesserit did not allow such frivolities--the art had fascinated her. A million tiny saints in red and blue and orange and gold, rendered by a worshipful hand. Irulan had never been good with a brush. She could not conjure up images as she did words, and even that had taken practice. But she loved those illuminations.

Her father had called her nostalgic. His little scholar, always a half-step out out of the present. But it was more than nostalgia. It was science. It was devotion. The rhythms of the past echoed long into the future; cycles begun eons before her birth now played out beneath her feet. She did not need prophecy to predict.

Irulan rose to her feet and joined Paul at the edge. He did not step away. She rested her palms on the balustrade and peered down into the ring.

Alia lifted her chin.

A striking image, a figurehead—these were things the masses clung to, things her sisters had spent millennia orchestrating. It took a special hand, a trained hand, to determine who would be deemed holy.

And yet.

Maybe some gods did not need to be crafted. Maybe some saints were born without sisterly intervention.

Now that thought was heresy.

Nothing that was had simply come to be, she knew. It was all spice and gold and mathematics and genealogies, woven together on the Bene Gesserit loom. Families created, lives snipped short, threads twisted and knotted together while she observed from far away. The shimmering thread of time passed through her watchful hands, but did not pull her along.

Until she had stepped in, had bartered a crown for a life. A discordant note in the eternal song. A wrinkle in the tapestry. A wedding band on the wrong hand.

No, Irulan was not prescient. But the ones who create the future do not need to be prescient to see it.

Alia weighed the knife in her palm, then flipped it, catching it by the hilt. She stabbed at the air once, twice, then stopped, waiting for her command like a soldier.

Across the ring, Lady Jessica's eyes gleamed blue.

"Again."

 

Notes:

This chapter is a bit quicker because it's part one of a longer scene I wrote! There's more here, but I wanted to get something out to you all asap. As a teaser, next chapter will have way more Paul and Irulan interaction!

Notes:

Thank you so much for reading!

This was about 6 pages out of a document that's grown to 20+. Please let me know your thoughts and if you'd like to see more--there's a lot I hope to explore with this one.

Chapter 2 coming soon. <3