#in which zen and shirayuki share dreams (in the more literal sense) | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

sabraeal · 4 years ago

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Minimum Distance

If there’s one thing Obi’s sure of, it’s that this is Hisame’s fault.

Not the lockdown-- though honestly, he wouldn’t put it past the bastard if it meant having things go his way-- but everything else. This fucking party. That stupid fake dating plan. The kiss.

He scrapes a hand down his face. This whole ‘day trip’ is turning right into a disaster weekend and god, if he had the ability to fly right back to DC right now, he would. But instead he’s trapped here, in the middle of the New Mexican desert, in the Smart House of some elusive and shady billionaire. He must have kicked a puppy in the last life-- no, bags of puppies-- if the universe is exerting this level of karmic violence on him.

His back hits the door. He needs like, five minutes. Just until he learns how to breathe again.

Which he’s not going to do, if he keeps replaying that kiss in his head. You know, the only thing he’s been doing for the past twenty-four hours, including breakfast, where Rougis just stared at him with that grin on his face. Like he knew. Like he could somehow see every last mortifying second of his dreams last night, and thought it was funny.

Doc’s informed him this whole pandemic thing is serious, that there’s stuff with r’s and knots and things being close to two. He is tangentially aware aware of how a logarithmic scale works, and he’d never wish anyone actually sick, but-- if Hisame could just shuffle off this mortal coil in the next few hours, that would really pluck one of the bigger monkeys off his back.

He takes a deep breath-- more like a deep hiccup, honestly-- and lets the tension fall out of him. It’s fine. He doesn’t have time to stand here and freestyle mental scream. He has to work on getting them back home. Which means getting this Rugilia guy to sign off on funding.

And then he can hop on a plane, pandemic permitting, and get instantly fired for kissing his boss’s girlfriend. Bingo bango bongo. Job well done.

God, it would be just great if he could resist fucking up just one good thing in his life. At least Ryuu will still write.

Right, no time for catastrophizing. They’ve got a billionaire to woo. Or something.

He swings open his door-- no, it’s her door, but also his, because switching rooms seemed prudent when the guy holding all the keys spent a night trying to get Doc alone in a garden-- only to run into Doc. Literally. Right there. In her borrowed pajamas.

Whatever intel Rugilia had on her was clearly not as good as his, since Doc is really a matching pajama sets kind of girl, and not--

Well, after living with her for three years, Obi can firmly say he’s never seen a cotton teddy. At least, not on Doc herself.

He could get used to it, though.

“Oh, Obi!” She blinks, taking a step back. Adjusts her glasses, too. Tugs at a hem that is not going to get any lower, no matter how much she tries. “I was just coming to see you.”

“Ah.” He scrubs at the back of his head; it gives him as good an excuse as any for looking anywhere else. If he gives her more than a glance he’ll start counting freckles, and well-- they have separate rooms for a reason “Me, too. I was thinking--”

“The room thing isn’t going to work.”

He blinks. Blinks again.

“I mean...” Her cheeks bloom to a pale pink, the start of what’s sure to be a painful blush. “We should be sharing a room.”

He hopes there’s an actual, medical doctor in this group of useless socialites, because he’s about to have a cardiac event, and Doc’s doesn’t have the right alphabet soup to handle that kind of thing. “UH.”

“No, no!” She waves her hands, and god, they’re so close her fingertips practically brush his chest. Which wouldn’t be a problem if she didn’t follow up with, “I just mean, we should be sleeping together.”

Oh, it’s too late for medical intervention now; he’s already dead. “Ah, Doc--?”

“I just mean,” she yelps, fingers fluttering nervously between them, making it real hard to not look down and get some solid ideas about her cup size. “I know we switched rooms. For safety.”

“For safety,” he echoes dumbly, because that’s the level of thought he’s at right now. Or at least, the level he can safely be at without risking a real containment breach on all the things he’s not allowed to think when Doc’s around, wearing almost nothing, and telling him they need to put their bodies in close, horizontal proximity.

“But if we’re trying to be a couple, I don’t think...” Her tongue pokes out, pink and spongy, and draws his eyes right to the lips he definitely shouldn’t be staring at. “Well, I just don’t think that we-- that you-- that it looks--?”

“You mean,” he says, so slow, like she’s a rogue possum and he’s animal control, “I don’t look like the kind of guy who wouldn’t be taking advantage of a king bed and silk sheets?”

“Ah...” She’s the one that blinks now, eyelashes fluttering against red cheeks that are begging him to take their temperature. “Not-- not the way you were, um...”

She lets the implication hand in the air, and god, fuck Rougis for putting that fucking idea in his head, for even allowing the memory of her against him like that, sighing into his mouth--

“I thought we were supposed to be keeping it on the down low,” he says, leaning in with a grin. “Since you’re slumming it with the help.”

Her mouth goes from sexy to scowl. “I’m not slumming it with anyone.”

“Right, right, I know that,” he assure her, “but Rugilia--”

“No.” It’s loud enough that he flinches, because fuck, he can pretend to be normal all the live long day, but the second a voice raises-- “Oh, Obi, sorry, I didn’t--” her palm wraps warmly around his arm, thumb rubbing over the cotton of his sleeve-- “I just meant that I’m not-- it’s not-- being with you isn’t slumming.”

It’s all a little much having her so close, having so little of her be clothed, and smell so good as she does. She must have taken a shower or something before rushing out here to make herself his own personal problem. In any case, all he manages is a half-dubious, half-distracted hum.

“Besides,” she adds, one of her eyebrows rounding in a teasing arch, “as far as I was aware, doctors and lawyers were considered the same pay grade.”

Obi coughs on his own spit. “I’m not a lawyer.”

“And I’m not that kind of doctor.” Her arms fold neatly-- distractingly-- beneath her breasts, A cups giving off a distinctly B-cup vibe. “But Eisetsu doesn’t know that. I told him I was here about a vaccine, and you said you were here to keep me out of trouble.”

And with a man used to dealing with pharma rather than the academic side, the legal representation would be implied. Obi scrubs a hand through his hair, staring down at his silk pajama set, and tries to discern what about him says ‘went to a four-year college,’ let alone law school. “Me?”

“Well...” She really shouldn’t look at him like that, all coy from the corner of those big eyes, if he can’t give her a repeat performance of last night. “It only makes sense. I mean, who else does Zen hang out with.”

Now, that-- that gives him pause. Mitsuhide, lawyer. Kiki, lawyer. Doc, doctor, but Not That Kind. Him--

“Fuck me,” he breathes, “that actually makes sense.”

“It does,” she agrees primly. “I’d thought the keeping it quiet angle was more along the line of, uh, conflict of interest, rather than, um, other reasons.”

Other reasons, like that half of his other aliases were on No Fly lists. “Conflict of Interest?”

“Well, um...” Her flush is brighter this time, spilling over her cheeks and down her neck, flirting with the lace edging her neckline, and he certainly is feeling both conflicted and interested about how far it might go-- “There’s probably fraternization rules.”

He blinks. “Fraternization?”

“You know,” she says slowly, taking a step back, right into the doorway of her-- his room. “That employees can’t date or, um--” her skin’s barely a shade lighter than her hair-- “do other stuff. At least without clearing with HR first.”

It shouldn’t be so cute that a woman with a doctorate can’t say sex, but this is it, this is his type now.

“Other stuff, hm?” He steps close, their toes sharing the jamb. So close that when she sucks in a breath, shallow and quick, her chest brushes against his. “If we’re supposed to be fraternizing in this room tonight, a few things are going to have to change.”

She shuffles back, an arm’s length--one of hers, at least-- toes curling on the carpet. “O-oh?”

The thing is: Obi can’t resist a good joke. It’s why he works so good with the boss-man; no matter how transparent, how dumb it is, all his teasing crawls right under that lily-white thin skin of his and sends Wisteria climbing right up the wall. It’s satisfying.

So when he closes the gap between them with a single long stride, he expects Doc to just-- tell him to quit it. Yelp maybe. Slap his chest. Scold him, if he’s lucky.

But instead she just peers up at him, chest quivering, and doesn’t get the joke. By the way she’s looking at him, she--

Ah, well, it doesn’t look like she minds overly much either. Which is going to make this Not Funny real quick in a southerly direction.

Strange, he doesn’t feel much like laughing either.

“The bed.” His hips guide her back a step, then two. “For one.”

She really needs to stop him, to put her foot down, to really get it through to the parts of him below the belt that she’s not interested in bringing some realism to this little show they’re putting on.

Instead, she lets him herd her four more steps back, body following every slow, rolling suggestion of his. “Bed?”

“Yeah.” Her knees hit the edge of the mattress-- well, considering how tall these beds are, her waist. She wobbles, hands bracing on his chest. “We need to get this bed messy.”

Her breath sighs into the air between them, eyes so round, so dark, and--

She realizes what he’s about to do five seconds too late. “Obi, n--!”

Feathers fly everywhere. Damn, this Rugilia guy really did spare no expense.

There’s a long, quiet moment, Shirayuki staring up at him with confusion and betrayal warring in her eyes, and she-- she laughs. It’s all the warning he gets before he’s blind-sided, pillow knocking him to his knees, and god, she’s going to regret starting a fight with--

Tap tap. Tap tap.

They both freeze, staring at one another. That was on the door. Her door. No, his door.

“It’s Eisetsu,” comes the soft voice through it. “Can we talk?”

#obiyukichopped #obiyuki #akagami no shirayukihime #snow white with the red hair #my fic #modern au #quarantine au #ans #this is another one of those fics where I really just gotta...write out the whole thing #and i will!#hopefully in Feb/March you'll see the first chapter of this particular fic #i have got some IDEAS for how this is going to go down #and oh boy is it gonna be fun

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sabraeal · 5 years ago

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With Ribs Laid Open

A companion to Creatures of a Brief Season, written for @inkybookwyrm who won 5th place in my 500 followers raffle! She requested some Obi backstory for the daemon AU, which I was only too happy to oblige. This fic has literally been a year in the making (2019 was a terrible year guys), and I’m happy I finally get to share it with all of you!

There are few moments that Od Ana considers precious, those few memories tucked into the secret place in her heart to be pulled out when the hour seems dark or the fog of misery hangs low. She and Obi have walked a long path together, but it has not been one of comforts, of quiet talks, of soft touches.

It has not been one of trust.

At least, not until now. Maybe all of this would be easier if that hadn’t changed.

“Did you know,” Shirayuki begins in that bright way of hers, eyes shining, “that birds have four-chambered hearts?”

She hadn’t. It had never occurred to her that such a thing might matter one way or the the other. After all, a blade stopped one from beating no matter how many it had, and that was the only metric that mattered.

But she didn’t say such things to Shirayuki. Anyone else-- and certainly Suzu-- she would have, but Shirayuki...

Never. Not when she tip-taps her slender finger right against the bone of her breast and makes the world light up like Longest Night.

“Usually it’s only mammals,” she continues, one dimple dinting her cheek. It’s a good thing Obi isn’t here; he thinks so loudly about how he wants to put his mouth to it. “But birds do too. Just like humans.”

It’s a significant point to make, she knows, but she can’t fathom why, not until Shirayuki casts her gaze toward where Obi stands, Little Ryuu perched on his fur-clad shoulders as he reaches for the top shelf, Perkunas’s pointed face staring up from his feet, and she says, “Your heart beats just like Obi’s.”

Od Ana thinks of that now as she spirals over the forests, feeling along the ache of her tether. Her own bird heart beats in her chest the same way Obi’s does, blood in, blood out, lub dub, lub dub. And though Shirayuki would huff to hear it, mincing politely through yet another the brain in the center of thought lecture, it feels the same pain his does too. The distress that thrums through her veins is as much his as it is her own.

She clicks her beak, annoyed. You’d think it’d make finding him easier.

Her eyesight is acute, enough to count the hairs on the rabbit dodging through the forest’s underbrush, but that amounts to less than nothing when Obi doesn’t want to be found.

Which he doesn’t. That part he’s made abundantly clear.

She swings lower, just above the trees now, relying less on her physical sense and more on the game of hot-cold she plays with the tether, triangulating her human by the amount of nonsense she can feel rattling her teeth as she gets closer.

Od Ana knows the rumors by now, how the guards and maids at Wistal whisper behind their hands when they see her in flight. Their tether’s broken, the most ignorant will say, they’re soulless, the both of them. The smarter ones will watch with fearful expressions as she swoops past, murmuring, I heard only those Samese witches have daemons like that.

It doesn’t bother her. When it had been just the two of them, clawing tooth and nail through the underground, those whispers had kept a fair share of blades in their sheaths.

She could only wish it did the same with wagging tongues and loose lips in the castle. Still, it changes nothing; their tether exists, as strong as any other, just...stretched.

A feature she regrets every time he pulls something like this.

She descends into the forest itself, gently spiraling through the canopy. He’s nearby, she can feel it, but Obi’s fond of hiding in plain sight, tucking himself into a branch or shouldering into a hollow. It takes hours to find him like that; it was a habit that had come in handy before they’d come here, but now--

Now he’s standing in the clearing, plain as day, still clad in his dress blacks.

Huh.

Her landing is ungainly, a series of hops as she tries to negotiate the forest floor, but it seems important to meet him as he is, to face him head on like a knight instead folded in the branches, like a shadow.

His back is to her, but she can tell by the set of his shoulders that he knows she’s here, that he’s been waiting. His placard is buttoned up to the chin, not a single one loose; she hardly recognizes him.

He’s no longer the starving boy he was. Od Ana doesn’t quite know what sort of man he’s becoming, but she likes it. Like the fact they’ve lived long enough to see it happen. “Two years is a long time.”

He doesn’t move, doesn’t even twitch.

“A long time to miss someone,” she presses.

“Master will get used to it.” His voice is hollow, falling flat as he strains for his usual humor. “That’s what Sir said, anyway.”

Her feet shuffle in the soft fill beneath them. “Will you?”

His chin jerks, so stiff; a puppet tugged by its strings. He’d moved like that today when Shirayuki looked to him, expectant and resigned. She’d jumped to surprise when he’d tottered toward her on stilted legs, arms reaching out like a clock figure about to clang its cymbals more than a man trying to embrace a woman but--

Her chest has sparked like tinder when Shirayuki touched him, when her arms wrapped around him like he belonged.

Would he miss his mistress? She knows the answer as well as her own feathers. But still, still...

Some poisons need to be sucked out before they fester. It’s the same for truths, as well.

“He’ll ask you to go.” It’s superfluous to say it; their tether wouldn’t be all twisted up in knots if Obi didn’t know that. It’s not the melancholy that’s choking him, it’s the guilt.

“He will,” he says, too late, too light. There should be a joke to follow, a crack at the prince’s prowess, but--

There’s only silence.

Od Ana tires of these games, as if she is not another part of him, as if she is not acutely aware of how he feels. She just doesn’t know what he’s thinking. “What will you say?”

The silence stretches. “Obi?”

“I’m sorry,” he says, too quick.

She blinks. “Sorry?”

His head turns just so, the sun catching the gold in his eyes until they burn. “I promised I would never bring you so close again.”

The air burns when she sucks it into her lungs, each breath coming harder, shallower than the last. Wolves are big, bigger than anything she’s allowed herself to become, but it doesn’t solve her exhaustion, or the way the cuts on his legs sear into her own.

Blood still ran down his legs in fresh rivulets when they left the master’s compound, staunched only by the scraps of cloth she’d helped wrap around them with her dexterous monkey paws. If master had been willing to wound him so easily, over so little-- well, they did not have time for them to heal.

Slaves did not get shoes, at least not the ones that worked inside, but he’d wrapped old laundry around those too, three layers thick. The snow seeped in anyway, soaking the cloth through before the compound had even rolled over the horizon. That had given way to chills, and now a painful numbness the burns her own paws as she walks.

He lost the ability to walk a mile ago; he is human, and his body gives out long before his heart. She had to sneak under him as a mouse and change to a wolf to get him on her back, and now she wishes that she could be something bigger, something warmer instead. A polar bear, like the ones men said roamed the northern tundra, or maybe even one of the dogs witches keep, if she dared.

It’s all just dreams. He may be small and undersized, but so is she. Food may not nourish her as it does him, but there are other ways for a soul to starve. As much as hunger has stunted him, privation has stunted her as well.

“This is stupid,” she says finally, the words lost in the wind. A waste of breath, but anything is better than the silence, than listening to the thin strain of his breathing. “We should just go to the border. There are people there, that’s what the traders say. They’ll help us.”

“This is the only way,” he insists, stubborn, the words muffled in her fur. “People will just hand us straight back to the slave-catchers for coin.”

“Not in Clarines,” she huffs, “it’s different there.”

“People are the same everywhere.” His fingers clutch tightly into her pelt. “It’s the only way.”

“How will they even find us?” It’s the doubt that been nagging at her since they left, since he first mentioned what he might do if they ran. “How will they even know? It’s not as if they sit around this wood, is it? Just waiting around for little boys to wander out? They’re w--”

“I don’t know,” he admits, heart racing in her chest. “But they do.” His breath pulses out of him, ragged. “They have to.”

“What are you thinking?” Od Ana’s claws dig into the window’s sill, if only so that she might not sink them into his own neck. “You want to go! Or did you forget?”

Obi’s back stands to her, hunched as he packs his trunk. His movements are stiff, unnatural, like a puppet in a market show. “No, I didn’t forget.”

“Then why are we heading south?”

He stills, back straight as a poker, hands clenched around a pair of trousers. Even from where she sits she can see his jaw clench.

“You want to be with her.” The words are sharp as an arrow’s head; he flinches as they hit. “I can feel it.”

“I never said I didn’t.” He sighs, a tight hiss between his teeth as he drops the bundle in and reaches for another. “It’s just...complicated.”

Only because he insists on it. “Do you want to stay?”

“Yes.” He shakes his head, almost violent. “No. I don’t know. I don’t want to stay here. I want to-- to--”

Words may fail him, but his heart beats in her breast too. “You want to stay with Shirayuki.” At his pained expression, she adds, “And Zen.”

A breath pants from him chest, like she hit him. “Yes.”

Od Ana leaps from the sill, swooping to his bedpost. It’s strange now; bare months ago she had perched in the same place as Obi pried up the board that would hide their stash. They’d kept a rucksack in there, stuffed to the brim with whatever supplied they could pilfer without getting caught: food, clothes, things to trade. She’d spent weeks flying above the roofs, picking out the best routes to escape, which exits were guarded least. They’d been so certain it was only a matter of time.

And the food had gone bad. They’d replaced it that first time, and every week after, over and over until--

Until they stopped.

From where she sits she sees Obi too, hand clutching his shoulder, mouth bared in a rictus of pain, and with a chill she knows-- he’s scared.

Abruptly, Od Ana is too. They aren’t like this. They’ve never not had an escape ready. They aren’t the sort of people who do this, who stay. They aren’t the sort of people who have homes.

And yet there’s a seed that sits in his pocket, heavy against his thigh. Even if he never plants it, it’s already taken root.

They belong here. Or at least, they want to.

“It doesn’t feel right to go. Not right now.” Obi’s chin jerks to the side, every line of his face tortured. “Not when I feel this way, and Master...”

Her wings itch at the title. She’ll never understand how he can bear to say it, how he can apply it to any man and not have his skin crawl at the sound. How even after all that they’ve been through, he can give his leash-- his fealty to someone so fully.

Zen is a good man, a good prince, but still, still--

“It would be lying.” Obi’s lips press together, another white scar slashed across his face. “I can’t feel this way and go.”

Od Ana is loath to let any man stand above them again. “The prince is a good man, but you don’t owe him anything.” Her beak clicks, annoyed. “Especially not your heart.”

He huffs out a laugh. “That’s good advice.”

They say that daemons are man’s soul made flesh, an expression of their truest nature. Od Ana doesn’t often brook with scholars, doesn’t often delve into the philosophy of the spheres, but she’ll allow that she knows Obi better than he knows himself.

He closes the trunk, slipping leather through its catches, and offers it a pained smile. A quick series of raps completes the ritual, and he leaves, a spring to his step and a shadow to his shoulders he just can’t shake.

Od Ana knows what happens to good advice he’d given:

It goes unheard.

He’s been gone too long.

She’d been a fool to let him go. She should have dragged him to the border, kicking and screaming if she had to, finding anyone who would take them south, as far from the mountains as they could. It would have been better to take their chances with tradesmen and thieves, to risk discovery by the slave-catchers. Anything but letting him walk away from her.

He’d rolled off her back, staggering to his feet with skin more blue than bronze. He’d given her that cocky smile, the one that had seen them punished more often than she could count, and limped through the pines.

He’d left blood on the snow.

It’s gone now, if she’d thought to find it. The wind’s picked up and the storm with it; she can feel the way it stings his skin, the way the cold has sunk bone deep, but--

But she can’t see him. Only the mad flurry of snow and the muted green of the fir around them. And--

And, oh, she knows the moment he reaches the end of their tether.

It’s a game all children play, even those who slaved under master’s thumb: how far can you be from your daemon? One at a time they go, human children huddling as they watch their friend turn down a hall or disappear into the wood. They all shriek when the daemon does, then laugh, and then the game is over.

But it’s not playtime, not anymore.

It’s quick, a bee’s sting; he takes a step and shies back, breath caught in his throat. He’s gone farther, though. In their games he’d never stopped at the first bite, stretching the taffy of their tether until they were breathless, until black had threatened to eclipse their vision.

And he doesn’t shy from it now. His next step is deliberate, and the next.

It hurts more than the whip.

The muscle beneath her skin roils, each step a spasm as she rushes toward the wood, her only thought to close the gap, to end the pain--

She bounces off, as if the boundary were made of glass.

A second attempt sends a shock through her, enough to rattle her teeth, but it’s better than the pain of this separation, than the way her body is stretched to its utmost. She races, running her shoulder into the boundary, trying to find a place where the magic is weak, where it gives, but it’s no use, no use.

The pain is searing now, and she cannot hold her shape, losing the wolf to a mouse, the mouse to a butterfly--

She drops to the ground, pain too much to bear. Her shape will not stop, will not ease, and darkness rings her visions, gaining ground with each of his steps. But still, still, he will not stop, will not give up--

As her breath tears from her lungs, light leaving her vision, the last thing she feels is not the pain, not the cold, but, but--

The weight of settling.

There are no sailors on the deck tonight.

“You asked him up here, alone?” Od Ana asks, every word sharp as she shuffles on the rail. “Haven’t we been over this? You don’t need to do this. You don’t owe him--”

“It’s not about owing.” She expects the words to be scathing, to be angry, but instead they are oddly flat, almost resigned. “Or about what I need to do. I’m trying figure out...”

He lets out a long breath, hand clenched beside her. “I’m trying to figure out what I want to do.”

“Obi.”

Obi turns, but Od Ana only needs to drag her gaze up, watching warily as the prince of Clarines emerges from the lower berths.

“This is the first time you’ve called for me.” The prince’s mouth lifts at a corner, amused. Fondly so, Od Ana will give him. “You want to end the postponement, I hope.”

A luminous pair of eyes emerges behind him, followed by the sleek, golden coat of his lioness. Od Ana shifts, wings raising subtly as Feronia prowls closer, her gaze fixed to where she’s perched. She clicks her beak, agitated. They might be daemons, outside the savage circle of predator and prey, but a bird will never sit easy with a cat.

“Yes.” Obi’s voice is strong now, determined, and even though she cannot see his face, she feels his fondness for the man before them. “Actually, I already made my decision a long time ago.”

She hisses, annoyed. Now that’s news to her.

Obi gives her a quelling glance before he turns back to the rail, gaze fixing out toward the night’s horizon. “I told you there’s something I had to tell you myself.”

“Before you do that.” The prince keeps a careful distance, almost wary. “There’s something I’d like to ask you first.”

There’s a tension in the air that itches, that feels like the press of bars, of the snap of a trap. This is how it ever is with these royals; as clear as the air is one minute, the very next can be a test.

Od Ana tires of taking them.

“Obi, you...” The prince hesitates, and there is not a part of Obi’s body that is not tense, that is not braced for impact. “...Like me, don’t you?”

“Yes.” The tension snaps like a whip’s crack, Obi’s mouth cocked in a grin.

“T-that was quick!” Zen’s face flushes cherry red, and oh, he should have known better than to ask Obi about what he likes. “Though it’s-- fine, I guess.”

Obi tilts his head, grin easy. “Is that all?”

Zen goes still, only the wind moving him, and the air is so thick she could choke on it, so heavy with expectation that she wishes Obi could turn to a bird as well, and they could fly from here--

“What about Shirayuki?”

Lie, she wills, but oh, she knows that smile, knows that Obi never hesitates to stick the knife even, even when it’s his own back--

“Yes,” Obi says, easy as a breath. “I love Miss.”

He’s never known pain like this.

Master has kept him hungry, has kept him tired, has beaten him until he’s little more than a bruise, but none of it has ever left him so empty as this, so alone. His stomach churns, boiling at a ceaseless roil as he stumbles toward the boundary. It’s a miracle he’s come so far on his feet, but they are too numb to warn him of the root he turns his ankle on, and he sprawls, face-first, on the thick snow beneath him.

He won’t make it. He’s come so close to death before, only for fate to save him for another day, but now, now--

His luck runs out.

He can’t feel her. He can’t feel her.

Maybe he’s already dead.

No, it can’t be. His breath rasps out of his lungs, misting on the air as he drags himself forward. Death wouldn’t hurt as much as this.

There’s no way to know when he’s passed the boundary, if he’s past it. When he’d entered, it’d been like walking through a cobweb in the dark, a faint shiver across his skin, but coming out--

Who knows. He no longer has her, and every tree looks like another.

He throws himself to his back, squinting up into the snow, into the dregs of the storm, and sees only endless gray. His breath fogs above him, but it’s weak, thready. One of these will be his last.

“Please,” he calls out, even though it’s no more than a whisper. “Please.”

The only answer is his own echo, lost in the wood.

She had been right. She always was. There was no way for them to know where he is, no way for them to even know he took this test. He’d taken rumor for reality, and now he’ll die as he never lived: alone.

A dark shadow circles overhead, wings nearly blotting out what light falls from the sky, and oh, he’s heard of this too. Birds circling above a wounded animals, waiting for them to die so their feast might be fresh. It makes sense, in the end; he’s only ever been an animal, never a boy. Maybe the scavengers will find some satisfaction in him, the way his master never had.

His stomach growls, and he can’t help it, he laughs. More likely they’ll go hungry picking his bones.

It drops closer, closer, until something impossibly huge soars over him, landing with a soft crush in the snow.

He rolls, curious to the last. He is not disappointed.

It’s looms before him on the path, the size of a small child, feathers glimmering in the bare light of the forest. Not a single one is the same color, dappled in black and whites, and browns and golds, and as it breathes its topography changes. It meets his eyes, just as gold as his own, and sweeps open its wings to the height of a man.

It’s majestic. He’s blessed to have it as his last sight on this earth.

It drops what it carries in its beak, splattering crimson across the fresh snow. He squints to see it, a large body and long ears: a rabbit carcass. It’s so fresh it still steams in the air.

He stares, mouth salivating, and wonders if the gods mean to mock him as well as bless him with this feast for crows.

“Look,” she says, snapping her beak in triumph. “I can hunt for you now!”

His breath stops in his chest, and-- and yes, he feels her, their tether stretched like a muscle over-used. “It’s you.”

She cocks her head, and in her eyes, humor shines. “Who else would come to you here?”

He’d thought himself near death, on his last legs, but somehow he stands, somehow he runs to her, throwing his arms around her warm body. “You’re so big.”

“Then you best get tall to match,” she teases, wings fluttering around them. Already he feels more alive than he has in days, in years. This is his daemon, and she is glorious. “I won’t have people laughing at me tipping you over when I perch.”

He picks up the carcass, finger numb. “Then I guess you’ll need--”

His words catch in his throat as he sees them, the men first, impossibly giant dogs at their hips, and then the red-wrapped figured next to them.

“--more rabbits,” he finishes weakly. They were here. They had been found.

One of the red women step forward, face utterly obscured by her scarves.

“Congratulations,” she says, voice ageless, “you have passed.”

The porcelain is chill against Obi’s fingers; it shocks him after all this time to feel it, to have bare hands. But there is no other way he can come to her, not now, not when she said, I have a feeling I’ll see you there, and this is his answer.

“You could have worn gloves,” Od Ana snips, shuffling on the step next to him. “It’s cold out.”

“No.” He shakes his head. “I couldn’t.”

Hidden hands have something to hide, and for once, he isn’t that man. Not with her. Not with what he needs to say.

“If you’d just done it last night it would already be over,” she continues, as if he hadn’t spoken at all. Od’s greatest talent by far is ignoring him. “And we’d be inside.”

“You have feathers.” He turns the mask over in his fingers. His hands may need to hide nothing, but his face always says too much in front of her. “You’re warm enough.”

“Shows what you know.” She clicks her beak, like she’s thinking about crunching one of his fingers. “I--”

“Last night it was snowing, I think--”

Her voice chimes like bells down the hall, and he nearly fumbles the mask trying to get it up, to get it to hide his face.

“--so now it’s completely white outside--”

He knows the moment she sees him, her breath catching so loudly that it nearly echoes in the arcade, and oh, he had worried shouldn’t wouldn’t recognize him even if he’s worn this fancy get up before, but no, no--

His miss would know him anywhere.

“Little Ryuu.” It’s so much safer to talk to him than to Miss, than to look anywhere near her while his eyes sting. “Did you shut the windows?”

“Mm,” he hums, but it’s lost in the way Miss shouts, “Obi!”

The name sings through him, from his chest to his toes and back, and even though it’s not his, it suddenly feels like it is, like--

Like he’s home.

His fingers tug at the cord, and he turns less for drama, and more because taking any moment longer to see her is torture, like being in that forest all over again, alone and in agony.

“Mistress,” he says, watching the way she glows, feeling the way he lights back, “I drifted in with the snow.”

#obiyuki #akagami no shirayukihime #snow white with the red hair #my fic #Creatures of a Brief Season #daemon au #this was so incredibly fun to write #and joanna had actually been needling me about it for a while #so i'm glad I finally got a chance to put it to page

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