#ATTWHITD

[stardustmorozov]

All The Things We Hide In The Dark (part 2)

Pairing: The Darkling x Reader

A Beauty and the Beast AU fic collab between @thatbritishactor and me

Summary:  Chased by Drüskelle and out of options, Reader (You) seeks refuge in the remote Little Palace which is rumored to be haunted by a beast and his ghosts. But he is not the only one who hides dark secrets…

Warnings: None, I think?

Word count: 3661

A/N: It has been quite a while since we posted the first chapter and a lot of things have happend in the mean time. Aside from me being not a very fast writer, some complications have come up in the collaboration, so with her permission I will continue writing this story and posting it here. If there are going to be any changes in this regard either me or @thatbritishactor will tell you guys.

Part 1

The following morning you awoke with more of a start than you'd liked. Strange dreams had plagued you all night. Dreams of a castle appearing only in the silhouette of a lightning flash, wisps and a strange, masked man who could summon the shadows.

The room around you seemed strange, but you were certain you had seen the place before, trying to rack your brain for any clues as to where. Then it dawned on you. Last night had not been a dream. You could feel your stomach drop as you revisited the memory. You had been on the run from the Drüskelle and a storm had guided you to a castle where you had desperately pleaded for shelter. Shaking your head you tried to erase the terrifying image out of your mind with little success.

And then there was the strange man in shadows.

If you were honest with yourself he was terrifying and if it hadn't been for the giant locked door, you would have gladly made your way out of here hours ago at his command. Instead the wisp called Genya had given you your current room.

You knew it was rude to leave your host without saying goodbye, but you had no desire to run into the mysterious, shadow shrouded man again and possibly suffering his wrath for overstaying your welcome, so you moved to one of the windows that looked like it could be opened.

You judged the jump down wouldn't be too far and in the worst case scenario you thought you'd end up with two sprained ankles, but you had survived worse. What you did not expect to happen however, was the fact that the lock of the window suddenly made a clicking sound. As if it had locked itself when your fingers touched it.

But now that you weren't overcome with fear and desperation, you remembered the fact that you had a set of lock picks in the pockets of the dress you had been wearing when you arrived here. A quick search through the pile of fabric yielded the picks and in silent triumph you returned to the locked window.

"Now we'll see who's boss," you muttered under your breath , putting the picks carefully in the lock as you moved them around, moving tumble after tumble in the right place and when the lock finally gave out after a few minutes of trying, you couldn't help but grin. But as you tried to push the window open, it gave resistance and after a few more pushes you heard the lock springing closed again.

You wanted to scold the window for being rude, but the idea of doing such a thing to an environment you didn't even know felt wrong. And it was quite silly now you thought about it.

Stepping down from the windowsill you turned to your old dress, not really feeling like putting on one of the other dresses in the closet when you were going to leave anyway at the first chance you got. And who knew when that might be.

Back in the bathroom where you had shed your clothes the previous evening you decided to get dressed, not exactly feeling up to dressing up in what felt like a living room to you, which just so happened to have a bed.

The fabric was still stiff from all the dirt and filth that clung to it and it made you crawl in your skin, but you reasoned with yourself that you'd get used to it soon enough once you had left this sanctuary.

Your stomach growled as you finished putting on your dress and you turned to unlock the door and the hall appeared to be empty as you stuck your head around the door. Relieved by the fact that the mysterious man in shadows was not nearby, you tried to remember the way Genya had taken you from the kitchen, hoping to find something to still your hunger with, at least for a few hours.

The silence in the halls was deafening and every supposed sound had you on edge, still feeling like an intruder in this strange, luxurious environment.

Soon, the giant staircase of the hall you first entered the castle came into view and with a guilty sort of curiosity, you made your way to the door, gently trying to pry its locks open, but as with the window in the room you'd spent the night, it locked itself again as soon as you had it open.

Feeling slightly defeated, you made your way back up the stairs and towards the kitchen where you found two wisps in conversation, which halted as soon as one of them noticed you in the doorway.

"There you are! I was wondering when you'd wake up," Genya chittered excitedly as she floated over to you taking her somewhat human form again, taking in your appearance.

"Shame I haven't been able to fix your dress though," she mumbled as she turned away again to guide you to the cabinets where the bread and toppings were stashed as you heard a chuckle come from the second wisp in the room.

"Genya darling, always the perfectionist, aren't you?" the wisp chuckled, its voice sounding younger than Genya's and you curiously eyed the shapeless form, before moving over to the cabinets where Genya hovered.

"And you must be our highly esteemed guest then," the voice said to you as you tentatively pulled the bread, toppings and a plate out of the cabinets.

"Highly esteemed?" you snorted as the last of the toppings hit the hardwooden surface of the table, "Has word of my arrival gone around the place that quickly?"

"It is not every day that we get visitors." His tone was playful, but you couldn't help but notice the sadness in his tone. "Anyway, where are my manners? I am Fedyor," Fedyor introduced himself, taking the form of a man you would definitely have fallen for were it not for your circumstances.

"Nice to meet you Fedyor," you said, extending your hand to shake his, before you remembered that he, like Genya, was a wisp and not a physical being, so instead you gave him a polite nod, redirecting your hand to take a piece of bread.

As you ate, you managed to make friendly conversation with both of the wisps before coming onto the topic that brought you to the castle in the first place.

"How long do you plan on staying?" Fedyor asked, causing you to nearly choke on the water you were drinking, eyes darting towards Genya who simply gave you, what you guessed to be a shrug.

"I uhhh… I actually didn't plan on staying at all…." Your voice was barely audible as you spoke, in part of the shame you felt towards admitting it to your host, the other part still scared of the man you encountered the evening before.

"You found the castle," Fedyor argued, "You must have had some reason to come here."

A pitiful chuckle left you as you shook your head, stuffing the last piece of bread into your mouth. "The only reason I came here was because I was on the run. I was looking for shelter and this was the first place I came across."

Even though it was the truth, you felt like you were lying to them. Perhaps it wasn't the entire truth, but it was all they needed to know. For now.

If the castle would truly keep you locked in, you'd have no choice but to stay and maybe, just maybe, you'd have the courage to open up to them one day.

"Who were you being chased by?" Genya asked in a curious tone, just as intrigued by your arrival as Fedyor, even though she did a better job of hiding it.

"Fjerdans," you answered simply, picking up the plate and looking for a sink to put it in, before putting the rest of the food back where it came from.

"So you're Grisha then?"

"I don't see why they would give chase if I weren't."

You guessed they sensed you weren't keen on any more questions about your background, they invited you along to show you around the castle, which you reluctantly accepted, not wanting to run into the mysterious man again. But as the two excited wisps dragged you from corridor to corridor, that fear subsided, more and more, though your curiosity demanded you to find out who he was.

So when they pulled you into what appeared to be an empty corridor, without any doors, you mustered up the courage to ask.

"Genya, who was the man in the shadows? From yesterday?"

"General Kirigan?" Fedyor said, as if he were surprised that you had seen him.

"I think? I've never met someone who could summon the shadows."

"The general is a mysterious man," Genya joked, though you sensed some pain underneath and you wondered why.

Fedyor stayed silent as you progressed through the long hall, seeming too caught up in his own thoughts as he started floating higher and higher.

"Fedyor," Genya snapped and the wisp suddenly seemed aware of his surroundings again, dropping back down to eye level as he came down like he was under the sudden influence of gravity.

"Sorry, I got into my own head," he said quietly to Genya, who gave him a soft smile and you noticed you had arrived in one of the bigger halls of the castle, admiring the grand works of art displayed on the walls and the craftful chandeliers suspended from the ceiling.

Even though you had seen multiple of these halls already, they never seemed to fail to take your breath away as you tried to make out every detail in the paintings and all the different shapes of glass worked into the heavy chandeliers above you.

You could hear Fedyor say something in a teasing tone, but you were too busy to actually notice as Genya playfully responded.

"I still can't believe you live here," you said as you spinned around to take it all in.

"You should've seen it when there were still people here, that was truly a sight to behold," Fedyor said wistfully as he and Genya started to reminisce about old times.

"Oh yes, and the Fete, that was truly something else."

As Fedyor and Genya drift off in old memories, you wandered off to a smaller room that was directly adjacent to the hall that looked to be a lounge as your hand trailed over the back of one of the velvet couches, while story high windows made up the outer wall with half sheer curtains in front of them.

On the other side of the room there was a huge fireplace, though whatever fire had been burning in it was extinguished a long time ago. The windows looked out over a giant garden, though the only greenery that was visible were the fern bushes as the rest of the plants had lost their leaves or had sought their refuge underground as the bright colors of the forest that laid beyond the garden broders heralded the new season.

"I thought I told you to leave." The cold and threatening voice of the general ripped you out of your thoughts, your gaze snapping to where he stood only a few feet away from you as his shadows swirled menacingly around him, slowly filling the room.

The feeling of every bit of blood leaving your face for other places had you frozen where you stood and for a few moments you were too shocked to do anything, but you refused to let him know how scared you truly were as you mustered up the courage to stand up for yourself.

"Believe me, I gladly would have. If every way out didn't keep shutting itself right in front of my face." You could only hope your voice didn't tremble as the words left your lips, silently bracing yourself for what might come now that you defied him and the anxiety and fear you had felt when you first met him was back in full force, but you refused to move. You wouldn't be intimidated like this a second time, but it was hard as the darkness around you kept getting thicker and the man that seemed to be the source of it all took a few steps closer to you.

"People don't arrive here by accident. What brought you here?"

"Drüskelle," you answered simply, not trusting yourself to say any more words than you thought strictly necessary, "they've been chasing me from Kribirsk to here." You could see his shadows recoil and stir fearfully, though you didn't understand why. He was terrifying enough that you were sure that just the presence of too many shadows would send even the most hardened Drüskelle running for the hills.

"The Little Palace was made to be a safe place for all Grisha, so stay as long as you need. But I hope for you, you're telling the truth. I do not take kindly to being lied to."

As he spoke, the shadows dispersed as the grave tone in his voice seemed to calm them, only for them to get thicker and thicker until you were sure you could feel them if you were to move your hand through them when he made it clear that he had no good intentions for those who tried to deceive him.

You couldn't find it in yourself to speak up again, the grateful words dying on the tip of your tongue as fear had you still frozen in your place. Your body stiffened as he brushed past you, the shadows cold against your skin as they furled over you like windcurrents.

Your mind raced with thoughts of how lucky you were. That maybe the saints had watched over you in this moment as they had granted you the dumb luck to still stand.

"There you are! We almost lost you." Genya's voice pulled you out of your thoughts and the adrenaline that had kept you from moving finally released its grip on your body. "Come on, let's get out of here. We've got much more to show you." As she spoke, her humanoid form returned, but you barely had the energy to care that she was not human.

You didn't look back as you walked out of the room, closely sticking to the sides of the wisps that accompanied you and showed you more of the Little Palace, though the curiosity they had felt at the beginning of the tour had mostly been beaten out of you by your unexpected meeting with the general.

By the time you arrived back at the room Genya had given you the previous evening you just wanted to be alone. After you'd given them your thanks for showing you the palace, you simply collapsed face first onto the bed.

Genya and Fedyor had been beyond kind to you and you couldn't say you weren't grateful for that, but the man they called general Kirigan terrified you and the lockpicks were starting to feel like an attractive option again.

You'd almost completely forgotten about them when you were with Fedyor and Genya, but now that you were alone, it didn't seem so bad of an option, despite what had happened that morning. And like you had done a million times before, you fished them out of their place and slowly worked the lock again, the satisfying click of it being opened not coming nearly as soon as you'd like, but when it did, you were careful not to pull them out in the hopes of preventing the faulty mechanisms from locking themselves again.

As you pushed at the glass however, the frames didn't budge under your weight and you cursed under your breath.

"Let me out, dammit!" you cried out in frustration as you hit the glass, hoping it would finally be the push that was needed, but to no avail.

Defeated, you curled up against the bed, your back resting against the side of the mattress as you realised you were truly stuck here. You had little hope for trying the heavy front doors again and now that you thought about it, you wondered how you'd gotten in in the first place.

What little strength you still possessed that evening would not nearly have been enough to open the heavy doors that guarded the Little Palace and for a brief moment you considered that the palace had its own mind, but you quickly dismissed the notion. Wisps you could believe, but a building with a mind of its own was too far fetched of an idea. Even in a world where Durasts existed.

You drifted in and out of sleep as the exhaustion of being on the run for days caught up to you again and the adrenaline from your sudden meeting with the general finally subsided. By the time you could keep yourself awake without immediately wanting to doze off again, your stomach was begging for food. You contemplated simply staying in this room, ignoring the growling of your stomach and simply hoping it would go over.

After a few minutes however you decided to throw that idea out of the window and cautiously made your way to the kitchen. You knew you were not welcome here, despite what the general had said about the palace being a safe place for Grisha and Genya and Fedyor doing their best to make you feel comfortable.

The kitchen was quiet when you opened the door. The bleak light of the last stretches of sun lit the cold room and the deafening silence that hung in the room only amplified the feeling that you were more of an intruder than a guest.

You called out for Genya. The echo of your own voice startled you and the silence in the room reminded you of how utterly alone you really were. Lost and trapped with no one to look for you. Or to mourn when you would inevitably leave this world.

You rummaged through the cabinets, hoping to find something else than bread. The sound of the closing doors closing was nearly deafening.

As you systematically moved through the kitchen, you got the strange sense that someone was watching you, the burning feeling in your upper back making you itch to turn around and see if there was actually someone there.

When you couldn't find anything that didn't need preparation before you could eat it, you went to the place where you remembered the bread being stored.

"I see you have made yourself familiar with the kitchen already."

For the second time in a few hours the general had managed to scare the living daylights out of you and you nearly dropped the plate you were holding, the porcelain landing rather loudly on the hardwooden table.

"Do you make a habit out of scaring the life out of your guests?" Despite how shocked you are, a teasing tone slips by you as you watch his shadows swirl and spike at your words.

"I try not to."

The next few minutes are spent in silence as you finish setting the table. You consider setting a plate for the general as well, but with his masked face and the shadows that shrouded him it was hard to read him.

Deciding you didn't want to come off as rude, you put down a second plate, even if he wasn't actually hungry, you couldn't say you hadn't cared.

The silence in the kitchen was deafening, only distrubed by a soft whooshing sound that seemed to come from the shadows that surrounded the general and the occasional clinking of cutlery against porcelain.

"It seems you have already met Fedyor and Genya, but I can imagine you have a lot of questions."

The sound of his voice had you stop eating, swallowing the large bite of bread and ham before answering him.

"How long has this place existed? I thought it was just a fairytale."

"It has indeed existed longer than most people remember, but if memory serves me right, the building of it started a couple of decades after the appearance of the Fold. Construction finished about fifty years later. Since then, Grisha from all over the world have sought their refuge here." His tone left little room for discussion but it made you all the more curious as to why the palace seemed so abandoned. If people indeed used to seek sanctuary here, what had made them stop coming?

"Have the wisps always been here as well?" The flaring of his shadows told you'd struck a nerve and the silence that followed almost made you regret asking in the first place.

"It... depends on how you look at it. Yes they have always been here, but they didn't always exist."

"Cryptic," you chuckled as you stuffed another piece of bread into your mouth. "But how did they come into existence then? I can't imagine it happening out of nowhere." The already dark kitchen was further plunged into darkness as the shadows crawled in thick layers over the walls and windows and you had to fight the urge to summon your light. To drive away the darkness and provide yourself with a sense of safety. Not when you didn't know if the man in front of you would reject you for your strange powers, even if his seemed just as odd as yours so you kept your hands on the slice of bread in your hands. The soft dough flattening between your fingers.

The only thing that told you that he left was the sound of his boots on the tiles of the kitchen stairs and them fading down the long hall of which you'd already forgotten where it led to, the shadows that hung in the kitchen following him a few minutes later.

Tag list:

@blissfullybarnes @stuckysdaughter @hagarsays @ohsorandomlyme @bat-revival @littlebobree @profoundme444 @psychomanias @joossieisdabomb @thecatempire @hummelmia @kahlanmars @intothesoul @sarcasm-n-insomnia @jack-napier-2008 @phantomofmoon