#Her defiance of him at times serves her no purpose other than to be defiant or protect utena

[the-cooler-king]

Anthy himemiya gives me the strength once again to get through the day...

[ikeromantic]

Sparks and Flame

First: Mitsuhide and the Maiden

Previous: Sweet Reward

Mitsuhide fanfic, around 1200 words, FLUFF: scene occurs toward the end of chapter 3

Kyubei stepped into the garden. His carefully blank expression told Mitsuhide there was something wrong.

“The chatelaine has arrived.” 

Mitsuhide calmly waived Chimaki away and stood. “I wasn’t expecting her. See her to the hall. I will be there in a moment.”

Kyubei gave a short bow and left again, steps silent. 

His little mouse came visiting. But Mitsuhide could only guess what she wanted. He took a moment to fix his hair and straighten his clothes. A moment to gather his thoughts.

She should still be angry with him. By now she knew the truth of his work. Murder. Torture. Spies and lies and deeds done in dark places. The left hand had to be bloodied to keep the right hand clean. Why had she come?

Curiosity held him until he entered the sparse hall. His little one was the only thing to look at in the room, though if Mitsuhide was honest, had it been full of priceless treasures, she still would draw his eye. 

She was searching the hall with her eyes, trying to find something of the man that lived there. It was adorable. He wanted to press a kiss to the back of her neck, just above the line of her kimono. He would trace that edge with tongue and teeth to her delicate ear. Nip the lobe, and then press his mouth to her sweet lips. 

She turned, startled by his sudden appearance. “I- I’m sorry for snooping,” she stammered. “I just thought this room matched you pretty well . . .” She cast about for something else to say and came up empty. 

Her flustered response gave Mitsuhide time to pull his own wild imagination back from its fantasies. “Is that to say you admit to having an interest in me?” He widened his eyes with mock surprise. “My, and I hadn’t the slightest idea.”

He took a step closer to her and spread his arms. “You are welcome to examine me just as closely as you have my room, if you like. Go on. Look.” His pulse beat a rapid rhythm, and there was no holding back the faint edge of hope that she would reach for him though she should not.

She backed away as expected and shook her head violently. “No thanks! I’m retiring from the snoop business.”

“Disappointing.” He let his arms fall, but moved toward her again. He wanted to be close to her and it served his purpose. She should be afraid or disgusted. Why didn’t she fear him? 

“I didn’t expect you to come visit me,” he added before she could comment on his teasing.

His little mouse did not shrink back this time. She looked up, defiant. “That’s fair. I didn’t expect to visit you either. But I heard some rumors about you. They say you’re working with Kennyo to defeat Nobunaga.”

That rumor. Of course. So she hadn’t come to confront him about his misdeeds. Odd. He shrugged, “That is what they say. So you’ve come to discern the truth?”

Her defiance faded to alarm. He took advantage of the moment. “It’s natural to be afraid that the person watching you works for the enemy. Who knows what harm they could inflict on you?” He waited a beat to gauge her reaction, but her surprise did not fade.

Mitsuhide continued. “But you know, you should never put yourself in a position to ask someone accused of betrayal if they mean to do so.”

Her shock melted into a smug grin. “That’s not why I’m here. I came to tell you that even if everyone else has their doubts, I trust you.”

“What?” He could barely hear the rest of her response over the beating of his own heart. It raced in his chest. She must surely see it at his throat. Somehow, he kept his expression a neutral smile while struggling to control that wild organ. 

“Don’t let all that mean talk get you down,” she finished. 

Though his throat felt tight and hot, he replied with careful banter. “I have a dreadful suspicion you’ve come here to cheer me up.” He swallowed the other words that wanted to spring to his lips. “I missed you.”  “I need you.” “Thank you.” They gathered in his chest, a building pressure.

Thankfully unaware, she only smiled up at him. “That’s right!”

Mitsuhide wanted to gather her to him and let pour his affection for this bizarre, brave, mysterious little mouse. She was so good, so pure. So perfect. He began to laugh. What kitsune fell into such a trap, after all? 

“Why are you laughing? I’m being completely serious.” 

“You were actually worried for my emotional condition in light of this news?” Deflection, misdirection. She must not see any emotion but mirth and ruthlessness, he thought. For her sake, he could not be honest. Not about this. Not about anything.

The corners of her mouth turned down and she looked away. “Yes. I was. Shouldn’t I be? I’ve been the subject of nasty gossip before. It ruins your concentration and makes you angry but you can’t act on it. It sucks!”

This would have been a perfect moment to push her away. To shame her weakness, mock her empathy. But he could not do it. He sighed. “I fear your ability to sympathize with people will put you in danger someday.” Soon, he did not add. “Besides, what if this gossip turns out to be true?” 

Mitsuhide pushed a lock of hair back from her cheek. “Fewer people than you think act with good intentions. You must learn that.” He knelt, his fingers light on her chin to make her look down at him. “Little one, please. Listen. More take advantage of the good hearted than you suspect. Playing sympathy for their ill purposes. And they may be closer to you than you think.”

His words were a plea. A plea to stay away from him, to stay safe. He needed to make her hate him, to fear him. Mitsuhide leaned forward, his cheek brushing the satin softness of her skin. He whispered, “This is my manor. No one will come if they hear screams. Knowing that, what will you do?”

She went still, her breath held. And then in a sudden burst of ferocity, she pushed him back. “What if I did this?” The chatelaine shouted as he fell back. 

A lifetime of hard work and training came in handy, moments like this. Mitsuhide righted himself, and caught her hand. “What do you think you’re doing?” The words came out with menace, a threat. He hated himself for them. 

“Putting the lessons you taught me to use, that’s what!” She tried to pull away, but she couldn’t. “I’m trying to talk to you but you won’t stop taunting me!” 

His little one was in a fury. She struggled against his grip, but he didn’t release her. She needed to hate him, but he couldn’t stand the thought of her being gone. He was afraid if he let her go, she would not come back. It was best for her, but he couldn’t do it.

“Tell me the truth!” Her anger was giving way to tears of frustration. Mitsuhide could see it in the flush of her cheeks and the damp shine of her eyes.

“I am sorry,” he said at last. “It seems I took my teasing too far.” He let go and she lost her balance. The chatelaine flailed, overcorrecting, falling forward. Toward him. Sense told Mitsuhide to step aside. Let this be another part of her shame. But his body wouldn’t obey. 

He caught her in his arms and held her to his chest. She fit perfectly against him. He could feel the flutter of her pulse in time with his own racing heart. Her breath tickled the skin of his neck. 

“Wha- what are you doing,” she mumbled. 

He pulled her closer. His whole body burned with a need to feel her. She was the spark to his flame. Mitsuhide let his cheek rest against the top of her head. “Do you not cheer someone up when they are sad? Isn’t that why you came to see me?” 

This was not pushing her away, he thought. Quite the opposite. His little mouse relaxed in his arms, laying quietly on his chest as he stroked her back. Her breath puffed lightly against his skin, in little silent huffs of contentment. Mitsuhide was afraid to admit to himself what that might mean. 

Next: Dragon and Kitsune Squabble

[sylvanfreckles]

Torture (FebuWhump 21)

Fandom: Supernatural Summary: (Sequel to “Buried Alive”) Castiel has been captured by Raphael and is subjected to some of the worst tortures Heaven has ever conceived. Rescue is coming, but will there be anything left to save?

(I tried, but again, it might not live up to the hype)

* * *

“We're almost there,” Joash, the wind ruffling his dark hair, cast a smile back at Castiel. “Once you see it you'll understand what I mean.”

Joash was a recent convert in the battle against Raphael, and as such Castiel was trying to limit his interaction with the others until the angel could prove himself. So when he claimed he knew about a place that had been touched by their Father and had some deep, primordial power connected to it, Castiel went along himself rather than potentially endanger any of the others.

“Here we are!” Joash threw his arms wide and turned in a slow circle. They were in a small, cup-shaped valley deep in the Appalachian mountains. It was a beautiful place, to be sure, but Castiel couldn't see much worth beyond the aesthetic.

“You said there was a source of power here,” Castiel replied. He stood beside Joash, hands thrust in his pockets, and squinted at the scenery around them. While it was true that every atom of their Father's creation sang with the glory of His power, this was merely a place of physical beauty.

There was a rustle of wings, a burst of pressure, and Joash was gone. Castiel whirled around, trying to trace the other's path through the ether but the air around him was suddenly crackling with angelic power. He leaped, wings outstretched, trying to throw himself into the etherial plane only to be slammed back into the physical one.

Lightning arced out of a cloudless sky to burn the grass around him, tracing and dancing in complicated patterns. His true form was struck, his wings crippled, and he fell to one knee at the sudden weight of pressure descending on him.

Raphael was standing in front of him now. The archangel had found a new vessel, a dark-skinned woman with chin-length hair. She stared down at him imperiously, lips pressed into a thin line.

“Castiel.”

He tried to stand, but another jolt of power knocked him down to his hands and knees. “Resorting to lies and deceit, Raphael?”

“Joash told you there was heavenly power here,” Raphael countered. She took Castiel's chin in one hand and forced his head up. “He just didn't tell you it was mine.”

Castiel steeled himself, knowing what was coming next. Every day, every fight, there was always the risk that this would be the time Raphael caught up to him. This would be his last day, his last moment. “Go ahead,” he spat. “More will rise in my place. You will never have your apocalypse.”

Raphael clucked her tongue. “I'm not here to make a martyr out of you, little brother.” She leaned in, until the electric fury of her essence set the hairs of his vessel on end, practically pressing her cheek against his. “What was it you said? Ah, yes...I'm here because today you're my little bitch.”

* * *

They pulled him through the ether, Raphael's essence battering him the entire time, until he was dumped on the floor of a large, empty space with his true form too wounded to fight.

“Check for human devices,” Raphael ordered. Joash and another angel stepped forward to strip his coats away and pat through his pockets. She watched them intently, fiddling with the rings she wore on the index and middle finger of her right hand.

“What purpose does this serve?” Castiel demanded when Joash triumphantly held up his cell phone. He'd pushed himself up to his knees, trying to maintain some sense of dignity even as more and more celestial power gathered around him. Raphael was obviously mustering her forces to guard her new prisoner.

“I want you to yield to me,” Raphael announced. “Admit that you were misled in your zealotry and acknowledge that our Father's plan is just and true.”

“The apocalypse is not our Father's plan,” Castiel growled. He surged toward Raphael, but two angels were at his side to force him back to his knees. “You should know more than anyone. The apocalypse-”

Raphael raised one hand, the rings on her fingers glinting, and light coursed through Castiel's body.

Blinding, burning, pitiless light. He could feel it crackling his skin, singing his feathers, feel his blood beginning to boil under the onslaught of sheer, terrible light.

She lowered her hand and Castiel sagged forward against the clutches of his captors, panting for breath. His entire being—true form and vessel—felt cracked and raw. “I'm sorry, little brother,” Raphael intoned, though her voice sounded far too triumphant. “You left me no choice. You've gone too far this time.”

Castiel craned his neck to look up at her. His vision was swimming with blinding after-images of that horrible burst of all-consuming light. He could still feel it, could hear it, under his skin and through his true form. “No.”

It was a whisper, not a shout, but it was still defiance. Raphael's eyes narrowed and she raised her hand again. “We have all the time in the world.”

The light consumed him.

* * *

He lay on his side, curled around himself, as the other angels moved about the space around him. They hadn't bothered to bind him after the third hour of torture—or was it the third year? Not with his wings burned to tatters under the onslaught of the Rings of the Accuser.

They had been a flail once, wielded by Zachariah to enforce discipline in the ranks of Heaven. The greater angel had taken delight in doling out discipline for even the smallest infraction, usually with his Flail of Admonishment. Castiel had felt it more than once, as had many of the angels in his flight.

Then the unthinkable had happened. Balthazar had enraged Zachariah on purpose, to protect one of the younger angels from his wrath. Zachariah had punished Balthazar so severely that when Castiel was finally able to haul him to the Rit Zien they had spoken only of a mercy-killing. Castiel had refused and fled, sheltering his injured brother with his own essence.

He'd carried Balthazar for days, weeks even (though time had very little meaning in Heaven). Sharing his own power to soothe his brother's wounds, lending him his strength, and bit-by-bit he brought Balthazar back from the brink of death.

Michael had ordered the flail destroyed, but Zachariah had only melted it down and reforged into five rings. The rings had disappeared along with the other weapons from Heaven's armory, but it appeared Raphael had gotten her hands on two of them.

Castiel was pulled out of his memories when he realized Raphael was standing above him again. She had her arms folded across her chest, her ringed fingers casually tapping against her bicep. “Do you yield, Castiel? This can all be over.”

He didn't have the strength to form the words. The skin of his vessel was scraped and bruised from his rough treatment at the hands of his brothers, and his true form was burned and ravaged from the Rings of the Accuser. There were no shadows left in his mind, no quiet places of peace or memory. He is friends' faces—Dean and Sam and Bobby—they were nothing but blurs in his mind's eye now. He could no longer remember the warmth of Jimmy's soul, or the glory of the firmament, or the dark peace of the bottom of the ocean.

“Still defiant,” Raphael sighed. She raised one finger and Castiel flinched back as light rushed over his true form. His ethereal eyes, already singed from her attacks, burned under the onslaught. The eyes of his vessel swelled as though in sympathy, the skin dry and needle-sharp from burn after burn after burn.

“Do you want me to find Naomi?”

Castiel shuddered at the new voice (familiar voice? Everything in his head was twisting back in on itself...had there been anyone but him and Raphael and the light?).

“He yields of his own will or not at all. Prepare the prism.”

“No!” Castiel found the strength to protest. He lunged up, barely catching the hem of Raphael's jacket.

Not the prism. Anything but the prism. Anything but the golden column, the light reflecting in on itself, the pressure erasing any sense of the outside world.

“Don't touch me,” Raphael hissed, backhanding him with the hand that wore the rings. “You dare to be insolent and defiant and still expect mercy? Yield to me, Castiel, or you will see that your suffering is only beginning.”

He had so little left. The only thing he could cling to was that this was wrong, and that even though his essence cried out for relief or oblivion he had to refuse her demand.

Raphael sneered. “So be it.”

They dragged him to his feet in the middle of the floor, at the center of the overlapping lines of spell circles. Raphael held her hand out, her face twisted in concentration, and a golden light streamed forward to wrap around his legs and ankles. Castiel struggled against it, but it was no use. It wrapped around him, pinning his arms to his sides, twisting his true form back in on itself.

Before the column closed he caught one last glance of Raphael's exultant face, then there was nothing.

Nothing but the all-consuming light.

* * *

Ages passed...or days, or hours. The light battered him, broke him, burned him. It swept through his mind and left a blank ruin in its wake. It tore through his wings until there was little more than ash remaining.

And then...silence.

Darkness.

Pain shuddered through his being, but there was something else there. Something familiar. Something warm, wrapping around his ruined body.

He tried to press in closer, begging for the protection of his brother's grace, only to be denied and kept at arm's length.

There were hands on his vessel now. An arm wrapped around his shoulders, cradling him close to another physical body. Fingers in his hair, tracing comforting shapes.

“Come back to me, Cassie. I've got you. You're safe now.”

Castiel shuddered and tried to burrow into Balthazar's grace, only to come up against a physical barrier. He longed to shed his vessel, but doubted he'd survive more than a few seconds in his current state.

“I've got you. It's safe to come back now.”

He followed the voice through the twisted wreckage of his own thoughts. The light was gone, but in its place darker shadows loomed. For so long he'd wished for darkness, for something to end the terrible, brutal light but now that it was here he was afraid.

Darkness hid what light revealed. Either way, something was always there.

“C'mon, Cas. Sammy's worried.”

Castiel started. He couldn't feel Balthazar anymore, but somehow the nearby presence was familiar anyway.

“Shut up, I was gonna—yeah, yeah. Okay. I'm worried about you, man. I guess...we just miss you, all right?”

There was a knee under his shoulders, a hand on his chest.

“They're hoping I can get through to you,” the familiar voice muttered. “Profound bond and all...look, man, I know the last year's been rough. And I know...I know we've got some things to work out. So just come back, all right?”

Suddenly, his mind was alight with hellfire. The roar of the pit, the scent of blood and sulfur, and the broken, beautiful soul he was sent to rescue.

“Hey, call the dickbag, I think he's coming around—Balthazar, Sammy. Yeah, and I hope he heard me; he's a dickbag. Just go!”

Castiel cracked his eyes open, his vision blurred in shifting colors of red and brown. There was movement overhead, voices raised in argument, but he focused on the paler shape above him. It slowly pulled into focus—a familiar face that he'd once forgotten, eyes bright with worry.

“Hey, Cas,” Dean said gently. He was smiling, but his eyes seemed wet. He patted Castiel on the chest a couple of times, then gently took one of the angel's lax hands. “Good to have you back, man.”

He let his head loll into the crook of Dean's arm, his eyes tracing every shadow of the hunter's face. “Hello, Dean.”

* * *

See all this and more in “The Light of Attrition”. coming this Summer to an internet near you.

[waywardwhump]

💧 Any

💧 What is something from your OC’s past they’re the most ashamed of and why? What is something they’re really proud of? And lastly what is something in their past that could make them shake with dread?

Ooohhhhh let's do this with my main whumpee's.

Thariel: She is most ashamed of her naivety. For her once unwavering belief in the goodness of humans, and for ignoring those that once tried to warn her.

She is most proud of every soul she's saved, of her sacrifice in heart and mind for the good of the people who got to live, and are living, their lives despite any injury she sustained helping them.

The attic, of course, is the thing that would make her shake with dread.

Danielle: She is most ashamed of the times when she was younger when her agression and anger had her lashing out at people who didn't deserve it. She's a defiant one through and through, which is her best strength, but that defiance is a problem if you're of the mindset that all the world's your enemy. She's grown and matured since then, but the guilt lingers. A part of her will never forgive herself for cruel things she's said to people who never hurt her.

As mentioned, though, her defiance is her biggest strength, and it is the thing she is most proud of. No matter how badly she's hurt, she doesn't break. She's stubborn, and strong, and she'll sooner die than give her tormentors the satisfaction of control. (Which is why, of course, the only way to get to her is by threatening someone else. She can't stand the thought of someone suffering on her account.)

The thing that makes her shake with dread is crowds. The thought of a big, angry crowd turning on her. Sure, a single person hurting her is bad, but she can at least fool herself into thinking that she'll eventually get away. Being outnumbered, though? Being surrounded by a bunch of people who hate her? That's terrifying. Danielle has dealt with bullies all her life, and her fear of getting harassed by a group has grown to a phobia as an adult.

Ranizel: He is most ashamed of how he's hunted down fallen in the past. Knowing Thariel and almost falling himself gave him perspective. How many fallen has he attacked, and killed, because he was convinced they were all bad? (And, related to that, it bothers him deeply that it was Lucifer that got him to see it)

He...doesn't have much to be proud of these days, actually.

Lucifer makes him shake with dread.

Valperel: He is most ashamed of the human he killed, no matter if it was an accident or not. Humans are fragile. He knows that. He should have known better.

He has saved people in the past. He is mildly proud of that, even if it was just his job, even if it's something he's expected to do by virtue of being an angel...he's proud that he served his purpose well, up until the point everything went wrong.

The thing that fills him with dread is punishment. Particularly punishment he feels he deserves. He can fight an enemy: but feeling like he's earned his suffering is so much worse.

Project A, (Alyssa)

There is no shame. She does what keeps her alive, as every living thing would. If she's done anything wrong, it's on the people who created her and on the people who control her.

There is no pride. She only cares what others think in terms of whether they're a threat, whether they're useful, and whether or not she can endear herself to them in some way. There's no point in being prideful, there is only survive or not.

The thing she dreads most is death. Specifically death by starvation, as this is the only way she can die, outside of being obliterated.