((Alips doesn't even have to do that...the moment the door opens, Fiona will extend her parma over her.))
Fiona shrugs. [color=blue]"I can't complain. There was a lot of talk about House politics that I didn't understand, though I tried to follow as best I could. To be honest, I would rather have been up here with you, to see how you're doing and to catch up. It's been so long since I've talked to you, and I've missed you. May we come in and chat? How have you been doing? Are you enjoying your travels?"
Alips invites Fiona and Stultus in, but more in a manner of being polite since she was asked, rather than wanting any company. She crosses the room sits at a chair which has a mate on the other side and a side table in between. She has a glass of wine sitting on the table. She smiles a forced, wan smile at Stultus, "I enjoyed politics. I was rather good at it, too." The word enjoyed seems to carry a measure of finality to it, as if she won't ever enjoy politics or anything else again. She sighs and seems lost in thought, while looking out the window. She dabs a kercheif to her eyes, and doesn't say anything else, ignoring the other questions.
After a few minutes of watching Alips sit at the window gently weeping, Fiona looks down at Stultus and shakes her head sadly with a roll of her eyes. She wedges herself into the other chair in the window and looks out the window with her, watching Alips out of the corner of her eye.
After a few minutes of sitting in silence, assuming that Alips has said or done nothing yet, she will softly ask, [color=blue]"Is this how you want to honor his memory?"
"What do you know, Fiona? For what it's worth your knowledge of Praxiteles could fill a thimble. Knowing him in the biblical sense doesn't tell you much more about the man. And knowing me, as I was a few years ago doesn't help. How long am I going to live, Fiona? How long am I going to live without him, now that I finally understand what love is?" Allips, not being a magus is at extremely low risk of going into Final Twilight like Hermetic Magi. Further, her longevity ritual is extremely powerful and could reasonably sustain her for a couple hundred years before it fails.
"You will probably live for a good long time," Stultus says quietly. "I know that's not what you want to hear right now."
"Look, you're right. Fiona didn't know Praxiteles as well as you did, and I didn't know him at all. We can't measure your pain, or comprehend what you're going through. I've lost people close to me too, so I can at least empathize with you, but it's not the same thing."
He shrugs, voice quiet and sympathetic. "All I can tell you is that after a while, your grief will change. It won't go away -- you will always miss him, and you will always mourn him -- but after a time, it no longer feels like you're breathing razor blades. No longer feels like your body is one huge raw wound."
"You will, eventually, step through your sadness and find your life again on the other side. I know the idea seems incomprehensible right now. I know it seems an outrage, or a betrayal. I know it seems like you won't enjoy anything ever again, and that life has no meaning. It won't always seem that way."
She turns to Stultus and shakes her head, "You don't understand. Most of my life with Praxiteles, until a dozen or so years ago, had been a web of lies and betrayal. I played politics for my cousin, shared his bed, shared all the secrets of Laurus Argenti that I had, and I had many. I know now that Praxiteles must have always known on some level, but said nothing. Even when his sodales wished me gone, he took their punishment for me, without complaint." The tears and sobs come out strongly and for several minutes, Stultus and Fiona can do little more than watch. Her chair is purposefully position to make it difficult for Fiona to get close and try and hug her.
Through the torrent of tears, she croaks out, "That's when I learned what love was, and then almost as soon as I learned what love is, it's stolen from me."
[color=blue]"You're right. I didn't know Praxiteles as well as I would have liked. Or you, for that matter. I'll freely admit that a lot of that was my fault. When you left Mons Electi the first time, we did correspond. But...putting ink on parchment is nowhere near as effective as sitting across from you. I've always been a very private person. I have a hard time expressing myself, opening myself to other. And you're right, I don't know what love is. I've never been in love, I've never had the kind of love that I saw between you and Praxiteles. But I have seen people in love, on occasion.
"And I do know this. He wanted you to be happy. He wanted you to do the things you enjoy doing, the things you were good at. And I know how much you enjoyed doing the things you were good at. I only got a glimpse of your political savvy, but it was above and beyond anything I had ever seen before. I don't think...let me rephrase that. I would be surprised to learn that he would have wanted you to be this miserable for this long. It's almost as though Valerian murdered your spirit with the same stroke that felled your husband."
Fiona pauses a moment to take a deep breath. [color=blue]"I don't want to see him get away with what he did. To Apollodorus, to Praxiteles, or to you. But I can't do it alone. I'm not even sure Mons Electi can do it alone. I need your help. I need that political mastery, the cunning, the guile that I've only seen glimpses of before. I need you to help me to destroy him, and the people holding his leash. I don't want to see him dead...not yet. That would be too merciful. I want to see him destroyed. I want to see him reduced to nothing, I want to see him abandoned, I want to see him cast out, I want to see him torn to pieces. And I want to be there when he looks up at us and begs to be marched."
"He did murder my spirit. When my betrayal to Laurus Argenti was unmasked, Praxiteles was the only one who could stand by me. And while I've made amends to the magi there, I couldn't continue living there, for so many reasons. But I don't want to continue talking about this, it's making me feel worse."
Changing the subject, "Tell me about Augustina's plans. She sometimes doesn't think them through as much as she should. Without my help, Marcus wouldn't have been able to ask Petronius just the right questions at your last Tribunal."
Fiona looks over at Stultus, waiting to see if he fields this question since he (presumably) knows more about Augustina's plans than she does and may or may not want them divulged to Alips.