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hongism · 4 years ago

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mists of celeste ➻ 37

➻ pairing: ??? x fem reader ➻ genre: space au, pirate au, space pirate!ateez, angst, smut ➻ word count: 16.9k(? i think?) ➻ rating: M ➻ warnings: language, violence, guns and weaponry, blood, future warnings tba chapter specific warnings: talks of torture, talks of past self-harm, nothing directly graphic all mentioned through conversation, graphic depiction of a panic attack ➻ summary: Sneaking aboard the ship of a renowned space pirate may not have been the best idea, but you’ll have to make do with what fate has handed to you

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✧✧✧ act five ➻ part four

“I’m going to kill the king, Hyunwoo.”

“Y/N, you can’t… that’s going too far.”

“I don’t think we have a choice any longer.”

“We always have a choice, Y/N. It’s just about what you decide to do with that choice that matters. Think about why you’re doing what you’re doing, and what your intentions truly are. It’s not about revenge or payment for a crime — the crimes of his people cannot be put onto his shoulders.”

A sigh passes through your lips, one that sounds more exasperated than anything else, and Hyunwoo lifts a brow upon hearing the noise.

“This is revenge, Hyunwoo. He allowed my past to be taken, he created the law that allows the military to do that. Not to mention the other crimes he has committed — even if they are a result of him sitting idly by and watching them happen. I’m not saying Jisung is always right or that he is a saint for wanting to do this. But if Jisung won’t commit to doing it, then I’ll do it for him.”

“And we swore to find a way to get those memories back, Y/N. Don’t let this cloud your judgment. Don’t let your devotion to making Jisung happy decide your future. If this is something he wants, then he should do it himself and face the consequences on his own! It’s not a burden that you should bear as well. I know this is something you will come to regret!”

“Then you’ll have to stop me with force because I’ve already made my mind up about this. I don’t see Jisung getting in my way right now. But after all, isn’t this what he wants? He’s just too much of a coward to do the dirty work himself!”

“We both know where he stands on this, which is precisely why he’s not here. Just — please let us try one more time. I’ve spoken with a few of my off-planet contacts about this, and we have one last idea that might reverse the effects of the serum. You know how difficult this is; the military keeps such a tight wrap on everything about the serum. It’s near impossible to just get a spare vial, and even harder to examine how it works with test subjects while still being ethical. We are trying our best, I promise, just please hold out a little while longer. Jisung is getting things set up now… so please… just come with me and try before you do anything drastic.”

The man extends a hand, palm facing towards the ceiling and fingers outstretched for you to take. There’s hope in his eyes, a hope you haven’t seen from him in a long time, and that look is what brings your feet forward. You place your palm over his and curl your fingers tight around the side of his hand. He squeezes back as a small grin overtakes his lips.

“If this doesn’t work, then you know what I have to do, Hyunwoo.”

“I know,” he whispers. The hope in his eyes flickers a little, like a flame hit by a gust of wind. “In that case, I’ll do whatever I have to so that you don’t come to regret that decision.”

“Hey, get up. It’s go time.”

You wake with a start, not fully come out of the memory that paints the insides of your eyelids until you look around at your surroundings. Yeosang seems to be the one who woke you seeing as his hand is still outstretched to your arm. The sight of him brings you back to reality and reminds you of where you are and what exactly is going on. Jongho sits on your other side, dressed in nicer clothes than you’ve ever seen him wear before — a pleated and pristine navy suit complete with a bright yellow tie and hair gelled back on his head. Yeosang too wears a somewhat expensive garb although he appears more natural in the silk tunic covering his torso. His naturally dark roots are starting to peek through the blond near his scalp, accentuating the harsh part down the middle of his head.

Despite the fact that both look relatively harmless in this state, you know they each have weapons hidden somewhere on their person underneath that formal wear, just as you do with the knives strapped over your thighs under the skirt attached to your waist. Such an outfit like yours is something you hardly agreed to — it was moreso an insistence on Seonghwa’s part to at least dress the part (although he had to listen to some of your incessant nagging about how you could never fight in a dress so he had to settle on finding a substitute in the form of a jumpsuit with a skirt wrapped around the back. Yet the more you pick at the seams and touch the fabric, the more you recall the none too pleasant conversation you and Seonghwa shared as you were preparing to leave for the mission.

“Perhaps I do have an eye for beauty after all, or is it that you simply look breathtaking in anything?” Seonghwa stands in the doorway to your bedroom, not a mind for privacy as he watches you struggle to tug the zipper of your suit up.

“Can’t even breathe on my own, huh?” You huff out as you drop the zipper in defeat.

“I’ve already seen every inch of you, have I not? There’s nothing to hide that I haven’t seen before,” Seonghwa says through a laugh. He watches your cheeks flush with color before dropping his arms to his side and coming closer to you. He remains wordless as he pulls your zipper up for you, smoothing the fabric under his fingers down once it’s pulled up to your neck. “It suits you. Things like this, I mean. The silk makes you look… softer, yet the color combination of black and white makes you look lethal. Perfect definition of beauty, no? That something so delicate could also kill you? A wonderful dichotomy in my eyes.”

“Someone is in a poetic mood today.” You don’t hide the way your eyes roll to the back of your head, but Seonghwa doesn’t seem all too bothered by your show of faux-annoyance. Instead, his hands find your hips and turn you to face him directly, staring so intently into your eyes with his own dark ones that you lose the rest of your retort.

“I’m sorry. I wanted to go on this mission so desperately but that didn’t quite work out.” You’re quick to shake your head, already in the midst of denying his words before he even finishes his sentence.

“It’s alright. I’ll have Yeosang and Jongho there with me.”

“I would go if only Hongjoong would let me bu—” The thought cuts short as you place a hand over his forearm.

“Seonghwa, it’s okay. Hongjoong is right to have you stay here while you’re not 100% better. And you can both keep an eye on Jisung this way. We’ll bring Wooyoung back as quickly as possible, I swear.” Instead of consoling the man, your words seem to have an opposite effect as he drops his gaze to the floor.

“If I were stronger, this wouldn’t even be an issue. You should not have had to waste so much time having to look after my fragile and weak mental state when you could have caught up to the ship sooner and had all three of them back in one go.”

“This is what we’re working with, Hwa. It has nothing to do with your welfare. We still would have been too late regardless of whether that night had happened or not. So please — it will all work out and be okay. It has to.”

Seonghwa’s smile is quaint, a small twitch of his lips, then he’s leaning in to close the distance between your lips. You lift your hand to push hard against his chest, furthering that distance before he gets the chance to meet your lips with his.

“I just put on this black lipstick and you already want to mess it up? How rude,” you scoff. That isn’t a real reason, and you both know it, and you only solidify that further when you speak next before biting your tongue. “You shouldn’t push it right now. I still haven’t forgiven you for not fighting my decision to go with Jisung. Besides wasn’t the decision to… stop whatever this is mutual?”

“It was, of course,” he murmurs back, not quite meeting your eyes. “I am merely a creature of habit, so it will take some time for me to adjust to this change. But… Y/N, might I be so bold as to ask you something?”

“Hm, isn’t that a question right there?”

“I’ll take that as a yes then?” You regard him with a small nod but pull away so that his hands drop to his sides again. “Were any of the feelings you had for me something real and tangible? Not just because of what we are and that comfort of both being Sirens, I mean.”

You should have known he would bring this up eventually, especially with how the two of you are constantly dancing around each other and the topic. Still, you aren’t ready for it.

“I… don’t think I know the answer to that question, but even if I did, I-I might not be able to answer with complete honesty.” The smile that comes to paint Seonghwa’s lips is nothing short of sad and painful, not quite reaching his bright eyes with its usual mirth.

“It’s a conversation I wish for us to have one day, but I too fear that I might not be able to be completely honest either. Perhaps — perhaps we got a little too caught up in the heat of things without truly thinking about why we were doing the things we were doing.”

“Why did you do it then? I was the one who gave the initial push, I started things, I claim responsibility for that, but you pulled right back. So why?”

“I have found time to think about such things quite a bit lately since I was left in the medbay alone for so long; however, now is not the time to talk about that as it would take too long. Has Wooyoung brought you back yet?”

“No, not since the night in the medbay. But San very clearly said three days until they would land on Dorado, and it’s been six since then. They should be there by now, and the deals should have gone through. Wooyoung’s was to be immediate after all.” Seonghwa’s smile drops into a half-hearted scowl.

“Without Wooyoung on the inside, we will have no way of knowing where San and Mingi are.”

“Unless Jisung decides to be kind with his information.” You run a hand through your hair, mussing the already down tresses enough to be somewhat noticeable. “We’ll have to make do.” Seonghwa stretches across the empty space between you

“I won’t keep you any longer then. Tell the others good luck from me, and please… be careful? No unnecessary risks if you can avoid them. I’d like to see you all back in one piece.”

Reality swoops in on you as Jongho places a firm hand over your thigh.

“You alright? I can practically feel you thinking so hard.”

“Yes, yes, of course. Just… wondering about the mission.”

“It’ll be okay,” Jongho murmurs, squeezing at your leg a little tighter. “It’s a straightforward mission — easy in and out.”

“Hopefully.” Yeosang is the one to hum the word but he doesn’t look at either of you as he speaks. “Once we’re in, I’ll talk to the main desk and ask for someone with Wooyoung’s general appearance. It’ll be a bit difficult because they will have given a new name — something a prostitute would have. I’m not sure how many people in there will have similar appearances to Wooyoung but we’ll have to do our best. You two remember what you’re supposed to do?”

“Yes,” you nod. “Follow suit, wait fifteen minutes for you to pass through the reception area, then ask the same thing. A male short in stature with black hair and tanned skin. All prostitutes have collar so it won’t be Wooyoung’s defining feature any longer.” The recitation rolls off your tongue with ease after having heard Yeosang repeat it so many times by now. He nods in approval nonetheless.

“Remember there are cameras in each of the rooms. Don’t know how they use them but it’s something to be aware of. Hopefully, one of us will be able to come across Wooyoung, and in the case that you do?”

“We are to stay in the room with him for the allotted time, ping back to the ship and let Hongjoong know we have him, then wait for his signal,” Jongho responds. “His contact here on Dorado will be hacking their surveillance systems once we are certain that we have Wooyoung in a safe position.”

“Hongjoong sure seems to have a lot of contacts for someone who doesn’t trust people,” you murmur more to yourself than to anyone else, but Yeosang picks up on it nonetheless.

“His contacts are few and far between. This is one he has known since before he became a captain, so he holds a bit more trust with him. Back to the plan though, after his contact confirms our safety, you’ll crack a window and hop out hopefully unscathed. Remember that the Upper Echelon of Dorado is tight on security. Whoever gets Wooyoung out will have to be mindful of guards and try not to look suspicious. If any guards stop you, do not engage with violence. Simply do as they ask you to and tell them that Wooyoung is your slave. And one last thing: don’t forget we’ll be going in silent so keep a close eye on your wristbands. Understood?”

“Clear as day,” Jongho says while you offer only a hasty nod.

“Good, stay sharp then. We’ll be landing soon, and it’ll be go time immediately after that.” With that, Yeosang sits back and shuts his eyes, leaving you and Jongho to stew over the plan again in silence. At least until you decide you can’t take it anymore and turn to talk to the Berserker again.

“Are you nervous at all about the mission?”

A shrug.

“No more than usual. Recovering Wooyoung won’t be easy by any means, of course. It’s a step in the right direction, right? How are you feeling?” As though sensing your nerves, he pats your thigh a few times, and you simply stare down at the dirty floor beneath your feet.

“I feel a bit guilty in a way because I’m not too worried about the mission,” you admit, albeit quietly because you aren’t sure how please Yeosang would be to hear the words. “The only thing that is on my mind right now is how San is doing and if he’s okay.” Although you told Seonghwa otherwise, the sudden radio silence that Wooyoung has given you has made you anxious to an unspeakable degree. And not having the security of being able to see San through Wooyoung’s eyes is plaguing you more than you’d like to admit.

“I understand that,” Jongho says through a deep exhale. “I feel the same way about Mingi right now honestly. No matter how much faith and trust I have in Mingi, that fear always lingers and resides in me.”

“That’s how I feel about San. I shouldn’t be worried about him but part of me is just fearful that we won’t make it in time. That he’ll accept the serum before we can get him out.”

Jongho brings his hand up to take hold of one of yours, squeezing around your palm as tight as he can without hurting you.

“I know San better than I know anyone on the crew, besides Mingi perhaps. I’ve spent years at San’s side. He was the only person who trusted me at first and trusted me enough to let me in. That trauma he bears, the scars on his past, the red in his ledger, those lingering pains that resurfaced when the mutiny happened — I have felt them all. I spent months at the foot of his bed, taking what pain I could away for as long as I could, just existing to comfort him and help him get through even one more night. And in that myriad of emotions I felt from San, not once did I ever feel him desire to take it all away. Those scars he bears are part of him, and he treats them as such. Something like… small accessories on a bigger picture that he won’t let go of. So no matter what happens, I have confidence that San won’t let them win. He’s far too stubborn for that, his heart is too big, he has too much love in his body for such a thing. He would rather die before he forgets the crew, and that fact alone makes me confident that San will hold out.”

You are left in the wake of Jongho’s words for too long, letting them crawl under your skin and find a home there. You count the seconds that pass before your voice finds you again.

“I understand that.” Forty-one seconds. “It’s just the fear of him being hurt when I’m not around to stop it that is hard to get past.” Jongho’s smile is nothing if not soft and gentle, the epitome of understanding.

“In our line of work, that fear is always present. It’s always a possibility too, but at some point, you reach a point where you accept that sometimes, you won’t always be able to save someone from all pain. Just because you can’t prevent every ounce of pain doesn’t mean that you are doing something wrong or that you’re not doing enough.” Jongho pauses. Some emotion fills his red eyes and leaves them swimming with something unspoken. “There are some pains that we must allow to happen, no matter how much we wish to do the opposite. Even something as horrid as pain can be necessary and needed to move forward in life. Try not to dwell on it too much and focus on Wooyoung for now, yeah?”

“I’m trying my best,” you sigh and drop your head back against the seat. The second your thoughts begin to drift, you are brought back to another memory, this time one of Hongjoong’s dark office with Seonghwa at your side.

“You punched Jisung in the face?”

“Please, I let him off easy,” you huff back, ignoring the lieutenant’s slight shock in favor of finding interest in the wall.

“That’s not the important part,” Hongjoong cuts in from where he sits behind his desk. You shift to glance over the captain. “Does Jisung know anything about you being a Siren?”

“No, not that I recall,” you mutter after little thought. “I never slept with him or anything like that, and I can’t remember him ever seeing my back so it’s safe to assume he doesn’t know. Besides who would just see tattoos and immediately assume ‘Siren’?”

“Then his interest in you has nothing to do with you being a Siren?”

“Exactly, but why is that important? I can tell you why he wants me if that’s what you’re curious about.”

“We’re just eliminating suspicions right now.” Hongjoong shifts his focus to where Seonghwa stands. He wears a bit of a cocky grin as they stare at each other, both feet slung up on the edge of his desk and one brow raised. “See? Jin has nothing to do with this.”

“That doesn’t eliminate the possibility altogether!” Seonghwa retorts. A frown mars his otherwise pretty features, twisting his lips into a scowl so deep that you feel your own muscles ache at the sight of it.

“You live your life in fear of Seokjin. For what? Do you not trust me to keep you safe?”

“That isn’t it and you know it, Joong. I will not sabotage your plans simply because of what I am. That is why we keep my identity to be a closely-guarded secret yet our number one enemy knows of that identity. That is a weakness, and it’s one that you need to take seriously.”

“Why is that? Sheltering you would be more suspicious to the crew than anything else. Unless you would like to inform them of your identity? Allow me to call them all right this instant.”

“No! No, Hongjoong, I — fine. Have it your way. Keep believing that you’ll be able to fix where Jin went wrong by ignoring the issue altogether because th—”

“That’s enough.” You bristle at the tone of the captain’s voice even though he is not speaking directly to you. “I’m still on edge as well, Hwa, and I know you are as well. I know why you are too, but please have at least a little faith in me. Now, Y/N—” Hongjoong turns back to you now “—I’d like to ask about the nightmares you had that night.”

Your initial response is to inhale sharply and glance over at Seonghwa with panic boiling in your gut.

“Why do you want to know?”

All Hongjoong does is roll his eyes and drop his feet off the side of his desk. You purse your lips at the action, watching him with wary eyes as he shifts his position to prop his elbows up on the same wood.

“Seonghwa, you’re dismissed.”

“I — Captain?”

“Dismissed, Lieutenant. I need to speak with her in private.”

“Why is it something I cannot be present for?”

“That was an order, not a suggestion. Now go.” If possible, the temperature of the room would drop ten degrees. Seonghwa seems to want to retort further but he bites his lip instead. Then, he gives a quick bow at the waist and mutters a goodbye before slipping out of the office without any further issue. “What did your nightmares consist of?” Hongjoong repeats, arching a brow as he speaks this time as though it will get you to talk faster.

“You didn’t have to get me alone to ask me that, did you? What is this really about?” The questions flow without hesitation, and your second refusal to talk about the dreams draws a sigh from Hongjoong’s lips.

“Do you know anything of Seonghwa’s relationship with his mother, Y/N?” A beat of silence. You shift your weight from foot to foot, glancing away from the captain to find interest in something on the floor.

“I… did witness a few of his memories when the two of us were still with each other in the dreams, but — if you mean to ask me about his nightmares, I have nothing to offer. I didn’t see those at all.”

“No, he already told me all about those nightmares. I don’t need to know more of them,” Hongjoong exhales with a shake of his head. He draws his arms up over his chest as he talks, falling back to slump in his chair and letting his exhaustion shine through. “Initially, I was going to have Seonghwa go with Yeosang and Jongho on this mission. But now, that plan has changed and I will be sending you instead.”

“Why?”

“I can’t send Seonghwa down to Lynder unless I myself can be at his side the entire time. There is far too much of a risk if I am unable to do that.”

“Risk? Of what? He would be with Yeosang and Jongho, would he not?”

“Yet if even the barest whim overcomes him, they would have to listen to whatever he says because of his position as lieutenant. I am the only one with more power than him, and as such, he has to listen to me. If he goes to Lynder, the risk is of him abandoning the mission to seek out his mother.”

“That doesn’t sound like something he would do at all,” you counter. Both you and Hongjoong drop your chins at the same time, although yours is more of an accusatory and pointed action compared to the slumping defeat that comes over Hongjoong’s body when he lowers his head.

“I don’t know how much or what exactly you saw in Seonghwa’s memories. I do not need to know either. But something you need to know is that we have been back to Lynder exactly once since I met Seonghwa there. And that one single time, two years ago, we had to lock Seonghwa in the brig for six days straight to keep him from breaking out to kill his mother. Seonghwa tore cuts into his arms and shoulders so deep that Yunho had to come stitch him every night until we finally chained him to a wall to get him to stop. When he finally gave up on trying to break out, I went in and took the cuffs off, only for Seonghwa to choke me hard enough to fracture my neck and leave bruises that lasted for several weeks.”

“A-Ah…” The sound of your dry swallow echoes in your ears. It’s hard to imagine Seonghwa — cool, rigid, stoic, gentle and calm Seonghwa — ever being so depraved and rabid as to harm himself as well as Hongjoong. Seonghwa, whose greatest fear is losing his captain. Yet the grave expression coating Hongjoong’s delicate features remains serious and deadpan, and you know every word is one that holds a memory that is painful to recall. He’s telling the truth.

“Have you ever had that voice in your head telling you to be cruel, Y/N?”

“Of course I have,” you admit through a whisper, like the words are going to break the threads of tension hanging in the air.

“Seonghwa has lost his will and his mind to that voice time and time again, and it gave him his reputation as the Lieutenant of Death. Mingi may be a slave to a childhood which bred him to be a monster, but Seonghwa? He’s a slave to his own consciousness, the part of him that spent years trying to be perceived as an Elitist so that he could hide what he really is, someone cold and calculated without an ounce of remorse or emotion. He put his own monsters under the bed, but now he can’t get them out.”

Hongjoong sits up a bit straighter all of a sudden. His gaze is still unfocused and hazy though, refusing to look you straight in the eye. Either subconsciously or through the fog of that revisited memory, Hongjoong lifts a hand to his neck and rubs idly at the skin there.

“My Seon—Lieutenant is strong, but strength isn’t worth a damn thing when the person you’re fighting is yourself. He admitted to me once that the thought of letting that voice win is more terrifying than the act of killing his own mother. So for that reason, I can never allow such a thing to happen. Seonghwa’s demons are nothing if not rabid dogs begging for a pound of flesh, and if he can’t fight them on his own, I’ll do it for him.”

“Y/N, are you sure you’re alright?” Jongho yet again brings you back to reality, most likely a bit disturbed by the way you are squeezing his hand tight enough to hurt, but he takes it without complaint. “You keep drifting out of focus.”

“Yes,” you say, filling your chest with air when you remember to breathe properly again. “Everything is fine.” Rather than responding with words, Jongho just places his other hand over your joined ones and brings them to rest on his thigh. If you listen closely enough, you’re able to hear him humming a soft melody under his breath but the rumble of the transport car covers most of the sound up. Still, it’s a relaxing sound that brings you some much-needed peace of mind for the remainder of the ride.

And as it turns out, Yeosang wasn’t bluffing when he said the three of you would be there soon because you had barely started listening to Jongho’s soft song when the car comes to a screeching halt that leaves you lurching forward.

“Alright then.” Yeosang stands first, hands smoothing down the fabric of his tunic even though it’s still perfectly in place. It’s not against his nature to get nervous or anxious, but it is still odd to witness like this. He is usually stoic in an unsettling way yet the grim expression he now wears is only accentuated by the crude shadows cast over his face. “It’s go time. Let’s get Wooyoung back in one piece, yeah?”

With that, the three of you climb out of the vehicle to be greeted by a dark and pristine city with thick clouds of smoke billowing through the air below you. Looking over the lip of the road is like looking down a cliff with the dramatic fall to the lower portion of the city. You weren’t exactly prepared to see such a drastic difference between the upper and lower echelons, yet looking over that cliff is like looking into a different city altogether with wooden buildings and decrepit warehouses that can barely hold themselves together. Where you stand with Yeosang and Jongho feels like a different world altogether with roads lined with lights and technology, tall buildings made from wood with exquisite carvings detailing the sides. From what you saw of the city in Seonghwa’s memories, Lynder has not changed one bit since he was here last.

You can’t clearly see many of the buildings below your feet, but it doesn’t stop you from wondering which one could possibly be that bar where Seonghwa met Hongjoong, if it even still exists. Jongho pulls you away from the road by the arm, tugging you along behind him as you approach a new building. The swaying wooden panel outside the door is a dead giveaway, but it’s the absurd amount of lilies trailing over the railings that tells you what this place is.

“They weren’t bluffing with the House of Lilies name,” you mutter, wrinkling your nose a bit at the overwhelming stench. Yeosang has grown alarmingly still; he lingers outside the tall double doors with a hand hovering over the brass handles without budging even an inch for far too long. You could pretend to not know why he’s hesitating, you could act like he is merely holding you back and push past him in annoyance, yet instead, you find yourself laying a hand atop his shoulder and squeezing the fabric there lightly. “No matter what happens in there or what we find in there, we will bring Wooyoung out alive.”

Yeosang releases a shaky exhale that makes his shoulder quake under your fingers.

“I know we will.” He looks past your face to make eye contact with Jongho then gives a curt nod. “Here goes the first fifteen minutes of hell.” The Elitist pushes hard against the brass handles, and the door gives way to his effort.

If you thought the smell outside the House was horrid, you don’t even know how to describe the reeking stench of flowers that hits you with the force of a tsunami. It’s thick enough for you to feel as though you are wading through a sea of flowers when in reality it’s just a strange yellow haze hanging about the interior. Yeosang doesn’t let the smell affect him in the slightest; he walks inside without missing a beat, shoulders pushed back so far it nearly hurts to see. Despite that, he walks like a prince, like someone who knows how to act in high society with ease, and for the first time, you don’t see Kang Yeosang before you. Instead, it’s Kang Minhee, the forgotten prince of Aera, who walks before you and heads for the front desk where a middle-aged woman with dramatic hair and hefty makeup stands.

“We should mingle a bit and look natural,” Jongho whispers when the two of you stop just inside the doors. “May I?” He motions to your arm with a small smile, not saying anything else and leaving you confused.

“May you…?”

“Quit being dense and give me your arm,” he huffs back and extends his elbow for you to loop your arm through, and this time, you get the hint, hooking your hand around the inside of his arm. Yeosang shifts to look back at both of you as you pass, and you offer each other discreet nods before he returns to speaking to the receptionist.

You let Jongho lead the way for the most part since you aren’t sure what you’re supposed to be doing outside of “looking normal”, although even doing that is somewhat difficult. Jongho doesn’t stray far from the entrance area until Yeosang dips into a hallway and out of sight without looking back at the two of you. Moments later your wristbands buzz, signaling that it’s time for the first fifteen-minute countdown to begin. Jongho shifts to fiddle with his wristband while you keep your hand folded over his elbow still. It gives you a chance to glance around the whorehouse without the distraction of having to act normal, but frankly, there isn’t much to see beyond the bodies filling the foyer and mingling about the lounge before you. There are flowers everywhere — probably an overabundance of them, and they aren’t just lilies as they were outside. You can’t pinpoint whether those flowers are the source of the clawingly sweet scent stuck to the insides of your nostrils or not, but that yellow fog seems partially responsible to some degree.

“You seem to know how to look like you belong in high society,” you mutter once Jongho pulls his attention back to your surroundings. A huff of laughter leaves his lips.

“It’s not because I grew up that way. I was merely an observant child who wanted to grow up and have more than what I had.” A smile cracks his stony expression. “Isn’t that what all children want?”

“I—”

Well, you wouldn’t really know, would you?

Jongho’s expression softens as he realizes what he’s said and who he has said it to, and his gaze turns apologetic seconds later. He turns to flag down one of the workers milling about with drinks, taking two glasses of what looks like wine in one hand. Jongho angles one of the half-full flutes in your direction. You take the hint with relative ease despite the clawing scent of flowers still muddling your thoughts.

“I didn’t mean to hit a nerve,” Jongho says through what seems to be a sympathetic smile. “What do you think your childhood was like? If you don’t mind talking about such things. We have time to kill after all.”

You draw your lips into a tight purse, curling them around the edge of the wine glass and pressing an imprint of your dark lipstick there. Subconsciously, your hand tightens around the inside of Jongho’s arm as well, although the Berserker doesn’t comment on the added pressure as he simply continues to regard you with the same steely and careful gaze.

“I think it must have been rather sad,” you admit after some thought. It must not be the answer Jongho was expecting at all because his brows draw together in confusion. “What kind of childhood must one have for them to willingly sell away their memories by fourteen? The more I think… about that time — when they gave me the serum — I recall fighting the doctors but I don’t think it was because I didn’t know what they were doing. I’m certain that I knew my memories would be taken from me. It was the act of them strapping me to a chair like a prisoner that frightened me.”

This time when Jongho smiles, all you can see is pain in his deep red eyes.

“I would have given anything in the universe to have my memories taken away at that age too, if it’s of any comfort to you.” He pauses to swirl the liquid in his glass, watching the red liquor dance before his eyes under the yellow haze around your bodies. “Don’t think you’re weak for wanting to forget that past. No child should ever deal with pains that strong, even if you can’t remember what they are.”

“People like you… San, Mingi… the whole crew honestly — how can I not view myself as weak in comparison? People who were given the choice but denied it and rejected it unlike me, who apparently didn’t want to be left with some shred of dignity. What did I become with that fresh slate they gave me? All I could do then was be weak, but it seems like that hasn’t changed one bit.”

Jongho won’t let up with that devastating smile, and you are about to turn away so that you don’t have to see it any longer when he finally lets it fall.

“For what it’s worth, you are rather strong in my eyes. During your fight with Jisung, I’ll admit that I tried to ease some of your pain then. It’s not something you know about — the others know of it by now so I should have told you sooner and I’m sorry for that but I have a special mutation in my genes that gives me the ability to take away and absorb emotional auras. I inherited it from one of my grandparents so it’s something I grew up learning how to use and I carried that over when I joined the crew. I attempted to do that with you because you were in so much distress and I was worried but — b-but your pain was too much for even me to bear. So before you go around calling yourself weak, you ought to give yourself more credit. Just because the pains you bear are different doesn’t mean that they are any less than the pains the rest of us bear.”

Jongho doesn’t say anything more than that; he slings his wine back in one shot like it’s nothing then places the now empty glass on a waiter’s tray as he’s passing by. You don’t touch your own, mulling over the glass as you fall deep in thought. If Jongho could feel that much from you, then it begs the question of what else he might be able to feel from you.

Can he sense that I’m a Siren too? Would he be able to tell that Seonghwa and Wooyoung are Sirens as well?

Your mind shifts to latch onto something else he said. Your pain was too much for even me to bear.

“It’s okay, Y/N. Stand down,” he murmurs. “You need to pick your battles, and this is not one for you to fight right now.” Again you feel that pull of warmth coming from him, like someone is trying to pull something from your chest, but it retracts almost instantaneously. Jongho falters. His eyes squeeze shut harshly, face contorting with something that almost looks like pain in your eyes, but that lasts less than a second before he’s recovered again. It’s not enough to stop the onslaught of emotions coursing through your veins.

You had been too preoccupied at the time to think about that moment until now.

“That time — did I hurt you? When you tried to take it away, did I hurt you even a little bit?”

“Nothing you did hurt me, Y/N. It wasn’t your fault, I promise you didn’t do anything. It’s something I have done time and time again for others on the crew and something I would do again as well. It’s what I’m good at, and something I was born with for a reason. If it helps even a little bit, then why would I not take the temporary pain?”

Every fiber of your being is telling you to fight those words, to tell him that it’s not worth it, your pain should not be a burden he has to bear as well, yet no words fall from your lips. Your mouth stutters uselessly without saying anything, and Jongho just keeps smiling like nothing is wrong. The clenching in your chest is not fine, however, and you force yourself to turn away from him in the hopes it will alleviate that pain. Instead, your eyes travel to a head of bright red hair that is so starkly different than anything else in the room that you have to stare right at it. It would be nothing odd or out of the ordinary to you since the crew you are now part of has such a wide array of hair colors. It would be something you look right past without much thought.

And yet you find yourself staring right at it. Right at the girl who turns to look around the lounge with red hair sweeping through the air.

You jolt.

Something hits your shoulder hard enough to tip your drink over and spill some of the red wine onto the floor. Your hand retracts from Jongho’s arm to touch the knife hidden behind the fabric of your skirt. You’re forced to pull your gaze away from the girl, finding the man who bumped into you to just be a stumbling drunk man with little sense for spatial awareness and direction. Jongho wraps an arm around your waist and pulls you a bit closer to his body. The man continues on without any regard for you or the wine he just spilled. Jongho takes your glass with his free hand, discarding it at the nearest flat surface before redirecting his focus back to you.

“It’s okay, Y/N, everything is okay.”

“I’m fine,” you murmur back, but your gaze goes straight back to where that redhead just stood.

“You look like you just saw a ghost.”

Instinct tells you to stay put and continue on with the mission, putting that familiar face to the back of your mind. But again your heart is clenching painfully in your chest, racing so fast that you feel the pounds echoing in your ears, and you know you can’t let go of her that easily. Not when she’s this close to you.

“I think I did.” You pull away from Jongho to go chasing through the crowd after that red hair, but the Berserker moves with you in a rush.

“Y/N, we can’t get off track. There’s only six minutes until it’s your turn to go to the counter.”

You wave him off with a dismissive hand rather than responding with words. Moments later, you find your target again, just as she is turning to head for the hallway that Yeosang went down not too long ago.

“Soojin?” You throw the name out as a last resort, mostly a desperate attempt to see if you are right and your eyes aren’t playing tricks on you in this heady yellow haze.

She freezes in place. It gives you just enough time to shove past the crowd and get closer to where she stands. You close your fingers around her shoulder, tugging with as little force as possible so that she turns to face you. There’s not a doubt in your mind when you see her face. She seems to recognize you as well based on the way her eyes are blown wide as saucers. The girl — well, you suppose she would be a woman by now — glances past your shoulder to look at Jongho. Her throat rolls as she swallows around nothing.

“You must have me mistaken for someone else,” Soojin whispers, bringing her gaze back down to you. She dips her head a bit then pulls away from you to head down the hall. You think back to Jisung — the threats and odd comments he made combined with the newly resurfaced memories of Hyunwoo lingering at the forefront of your mind, and you know without a shadow of a doubt that you can’t let her go this easily.

“P-Please, Soojin — I need to talk with you. It’s important, please, I have so many questions and no one else to ask.”

“I’m sure you do, little scapegoat,” she huffs back. “I actually have work to do though and a client waiting for me, so I’m not all too inclined to speak with you. I’m not sure why you came here, but I don’t think I have the answers you’re looking for either.” You don’t have a chance to keep her from leaving after that because she turns and leaves so quickly that it leaves you reeling. Jongho tugs you back by the arm, pulling you from the hallway and out into the lounge again before you can chase after her.

“What the hell was that?” He hisses under his breath.

“She — I-I knew her. She w-was my teammate, one of the p-people assigned to my unit in the military. I… I had no idea she ended up here of all places. Jongho, I have to talk to her, please, I have to. This c-could be what I need! If Jisung won’t tell me the truth, then maybe she knows something. She has to know something o-or else I—”

Your voice dies in your throat, but your unspoken desperation seems to reach Jongho nonetheless. The key to whatever memories you lost could lie in Soojin. Things happened so quickly at the end, perhaps she learned of something before leaving Eros with the others.

“She called you a scapegoat,” Jongho says. He swallows hard, Adam’s Apple bobbing with the motion. “What was that about?”

Truthfully, you hadn’t gotten that far. You didn’t even think to question that part but it is odd and not something you recall her calling you in the past.

“I’m not sure why she would say that. All the more reason to speak to her and ask. Jongho, please!” You attempt to pull away from his grip as you speak. The Berserker doesn’t budge, too strong for you to fight like this, and he doesn’t let up even when you try to slap his hand away.

“I’m sorry, Y/N.” He yanks you back to him and brings his free hand up to rest on your forehead. This time, you can physically feel the panic in your bones ebbing away and being pulled to your forehead where Jongho touches you. It’s a frightening sensation but the influence he has over you takes that fear away as well, leaving you in a daze of confusion because you know you should feel bothered right now but you cannot bring yourself to feel that way even as Jongho pulls away from you. His jaw twitches just a hair, not moving much beyond that, then he grits his teeth to hiss out his next words. “Wooyoung is our mission. You have to focus. You have two minutes to get up to that counter and do your job. We can try to track down your teammate later, but not on a mission like this.”

You have it in you to at least be angry enough to tug your arm out of his grasp.

“Don’t touch my emotions like that again. I understand you trying to take my pain, and as much as I hate that and despite the thought of you taking my pains for me, this is different. Emotionally sedating me for the sake of completing a mission better is different.”

You don’t give him a chance to reply before you’re heading off for the counter where Yeosang stood not too long ago. The woman who previously occupied the space behind it has disappeared, now replaced by a young man who must be younger than you from the looks of it.

“How can I help you, ma’am?” He asks as you sidle up to the desk.

“I’d like a room, an hour’s worth.” You fumble a bit with your pockets as you try to fish a credit chip out without exposing the knife strapped to your thigh, but the boy doesn’t look up until you slide the chip across the counter.

“Of course, of course,” he hums. “Do you have any preferences for pleasure tonight?”

“A male short in stature with black hair and tanned skin,” you recite back, forcing a smile onto your lips when the boy glances up at you. He tilts his head to the side. You swallow the saliva gathering in your mouth as the stare grows unsettling then he shakes his head and speaks again.

“Would you like someone more submissive or dominant?”

“Hm? Oh, um…” That wasn’t part of the plan. Surely Yeosang would have mentioned it if he had known they would ask. But what would he have said if they asked him the same? “Um, submissive is fine, I suppose?” The boy hums again then motions towards the hallway where Yeosang and Soojin both headed down.

“Your room will be on the second floor, Room 213. Please take the stairs at the end of the hall.” He passes a keycard your way along with your credit chip, leaving you with a grin and a soft-spoken, “Your courtesan will join you shortly. Enjoy.” You bristle at his words but manage to smile a little bit as you take both the card and your chip back. You leave the counter to head for the hallway, not pausing to look back at where Jongho might be, but you ping your wristband as you go. Nothing has come in from Yeosang’s side again so it’s safe to assume he doesn’t have Wooyoung with him by now. It leaves you and Jongho with more pressure and either more or less of a chance to recover him, so you can only hope for the best as you climb the stairs to the second floor.

Room 213 is empty as expected when you slip inside, and it’s free from that odd yellow fog outside as well, so you bask in the freedom and breathe fresh air deeply while you can. It’s a basic and standard room — much more like a small hotel room than anything else from the cabinet near the door and the double bed pushed up against the wall. There’s a metal sink as well close to the window but nothing else adorns the room leaving it rather dismal and simple. Not that you expected these people to treat the courtesans with even an ounce of respect; it’s still disheartening to think of Wooyoung being stuck in such a small and cramped space without a choice.

Whatever peace you thought you could have is cruelly interrupted less than five minutes later as a series of shy knocks reach your door. You blink up from where you sit perched on the edge of the neatly made bed. Is this how Yeosang felt waiting for his door to open? You inhale sharply, heart pounding mercilessly in your throat and choking you with the strength of an actual hand. And shamefully, you can’t even bring yourself to look at the door when it slides open, too afraid of not seeing Wooyoung standing behind it.

“Y-Y/N?”

You snap your head towards the door so quickly that your neck pops with the effort, eyes blinking open faster than ever, and even when your gaze settles on him, you still can’t quite believe he’s really before you. In that moment, the two of you merely regard each other with stunned stares like neither of you can believe this is possible, and in that time, the door slides shut again to leave you together in the all too small room.

“Wooyoung.” You bring yourself to your feet, standing on shaky legs as you face him. “W-Woo—”

He cuts you short by barreling into you with such force that it knocks the air out of your lungs. The metal around his neck scrapes against your skin hard enough to cut but you pay it no mind as he squeezes his arms around your waist and releases a heart-wrenching sob into your shoulder. Reason returns to you then, bringing you to ping your wristband again; although this time you tap it three times to alert the others that you have Wooyoung with you now. There is nothing more to do after that other than to hug him back as his tears soak your neck and shoulder.

“I-I didn’t — I di-didn’t want to lose hope b-but… fuck it was s-so hard not to and I was st-starting to think I wouldn’t ever s-see you again,” Wooyoung sobs. You almost want to cry with him if not for the small blinking light in the upper corner of the room that catches your eye and sends a surge of panic through you.

“The cameras, Wooyoung. They’re still on, we need to—”

“Y-Yeah, they’re — they only c-check if you hit the button by the bed.” Wooyoung pulls back from your shoulder, at last, rubbing at his tear-stricken cheeks so hard it makes his skin blossom with red. He pauses to catch his breath, or at least steady himself enough to speak without choking on his words. “That si-signals that you’re unsatisfied so they’ll c-check and see what’s — what’s wrong before sending a new courtesan.” Wooyoung puts his hand in yours and laces your fingers without hesitation. The touch seems to offer him some more comfort that helps calm his small hiccups and cries. “Is Y-Yeosang okay?”

“He’s alright, yeah,” you whisper back through a smile. “Misses you something awful, but he’s here too. He tried to get to you first, but they must have sent someone else to him. Jongho came as well. To get you. We came to get you, Wooyoung.”

Those words make Wooyoung’s eyes well up with sickening haste. He sinks to the bed before another sob forces its way out, and you sit down beside him like the mattress might collapse if you move too quickly.

“I’m so glad. So fucking g-glad. Being in a pl-place like this without Yeosang — it’s fucking hell.” Wooyoung sinks his teeth into his lower lip just to keep it from trembling.

“Have you…” Surely it’s not a question you have any right to ask, and part of you feels like Wooyoung did need your help but merely did not want to bring you to this place, even if just to watch through his eyes. Still, you swallow the nerves and force the question out. “Have they made you work yet?”

“It’s not important whether they did or not,” Wooyoung says through a weak smile, but that tells you all you need to know. It sounds too rehearsed and monotonous, like he’s been told to say this even if only by himself. “B-But what’s the plan? How are we getting out? Is someone coming to get us?”

“Um, we’re to wait the allotted time here until we get news from one of Hongjoong’s contacts here. He’s a hacker, and he’ll take care of the surveillance system so that we can open the window and get out that way. We’ll meet Yeosang and Jongho in an alleyway not too far from here after that. Then head back to the ship on a transport car.”

“Thought of everything, huh?”

“I sure hope so.”

“It should work just fine. We’re on the second floor though, so it’ll be quite the fall. Just remember to not go face-first.” Wooyoung’s smile is infectious, and you laugh along with his jest, hand squeezing around his. “How is Seonghwa doing?”

“A-Ah, I nearly forgot you knew about that. Um, he’s alright but Hongjoong didn’t think he was well enough to come on the mission with us.”

“Captain is up then? Yeosang mentioned he’d been out for quite some time because of his injuries. That’s great news that he’s up! I — he’ll be happy to hear that I have some info about where Mingi and San are being held too. I can tell him when we’re back on the ship. B-But Seonghwa is okay otherwise?”

“Yunho said there’s no lingering signs of health issues so he’ll be okay physically. I… I have so many questions that I don’t even know where to begin.” Wooyoung’s smile stretches a bit wider.

“I assumed you would. That’s okay though; we have a full hour to use anyways, so you can ask me anything while we have the time to be alone together. I would say we could do it later when we’re back on the ship but Yeosang probably won’t let me out of his sight for even two seconds from now on. It’d be best for us to get it all out now so we don’t have to hear him scribbling in that damn notebook of his.” Wooyoung can’t hide his elation despite the teasing words, and you know that getting to see Yeosang again soon means more to him than you could ever understand. Yeosang must be feeling the same way himself, waiting out this hour with painstaking patience.

“What happened in the days you didn’t let me in? You went quiet for so long I was getting worried.”

“Ah, we shouldn’t start there,” Wooyoung murmurs, glancing down at the floor. He pauses. The breath of hesitation leaves your stomach in knots. “Nothing you want to hear, I promise. That’s why I didn’t try to bring you in. It wasn’t anything pretty, but I assure you there was nothing they could do to hurt me physically. I’m too far gone for that sort of torture. It’s… over and done with now. More scars to add to my collection, and more for Yeosang to cry over probably. We’ll both be fine. You’re probably wondering about the whole connection thing and us both being Sirens and such, right?”

“I — admittedly yes, but looking back now it seems almost obvious? I can’t believe I didn’t see it sooner, I guess. But yeah, specifically that connection or whatever it is. Yeosang said he didn’t know much at all about it.”

“Right, yeah, I don’t know much myself either, to be honest.” Wooyoung presses his lips into a pout. “It’s hard to say what exactly it is. Seonghwa’s books don’t really have anything about this sort of occurrence, but what I’ve gathered from it so far is probably all that Yeosang told you. ‘There’s no place in the universe that you can hide from each other’. Daichi told me that once.”

“He told me the same actually.”

“Mhm, I think he knows a bit more about it than he claims to. For me, I can almost hear you in my head when you’re in distress, even when you’re far away. Except it doesn’t sound like you’re scared or anything like that. It almost sounds as though you’re softly singing to me? Like… I’m on a boat with gentle waves and you’re singing to me through the water. When I’m asleep and dreaming and you reach out to me for help, I can close my eyes and find myself on a boat like that. A white boat on a black lake. And I hear you singing to me in the water, look down, and see a tiny flickering light through the darkness. For years I’ve had that dream.”

“Yeosang… he talked about you having such a dream. Swimming in a black lake and trying to reach someone but not being able to?”

“Yeah! Um, I’ve woken him up so much because of that very dream. I would have that dream time and time again before you joined the crew, desperately swimming to reach you but it was like something was blocking me from getting to you. Like I could never reach you no matter how fast I was. I would never be able to get in. Then suddenly — one night I did, and I woke up in a box of fabrics in the cargo bay.” Wooyoung shifts to look you in the eye, a weak laugh slipping through his lips. “That feels so long ago now.”

“I’ve been wondering how to thank you for that,” you murmur. “If not for that moment, I would have died.” The skin around your nails suddenly seems a lot more interesting, and you busy yourself with picking at it mindlessly rather than looking back in Wooyoung’s direction. He doesn’t let your hand drift far from his though before he’s tugging it right back into his grasp. His other hand finds its way atop yours as well, holding your joined ones together tightly.

“I didn’t do it to get a thank you. It was just… the right thing to do. It’s sad that we live in such a bad and awful society where you feel the need to thank me for doing something as simple as that.”

“Did you not thank Yeosang for saving his life once upon a time?” You dare to ask. Wooyoung is a bit startled at first, caught off-guard by both your sudden question and the content behind it, but he laughs loud and clear without restraint.

“For someone who claims to hate talking about his life, he sure does talk a lot, doesn’t he?” Wooyoung brushes his bang out of his eyes, pushing the strands that have quickly grown unruly and long to the side. “Yeosang never lets me thank him. Any time I’ve tried, he shut me down before I could finish. Honestly, he saved my life twice. Once when he chose me from that lineup of slaves and spared me a crueler fate, and once when he broke those chains and set me free.”

Chose… me…? Then it wasn’t Yeosang’s mother who picked Wooyoung out for him?

You don’t get to dwell on that thought for long because Wooyoung simply continues to ramble, more and more peace coming to his shoulders as he calms down further.

“Yeosang only ever thanks me. As odd as that is.”

“Did you — have you ever saved his life then?” You already know the answer to that question, but it’s already hanging in the air between you by the time you catch yourself.

“Yes.” Wooyoung is beaming by now, lips stretched wide as he grins. “I got him out of prison when they charged him with treason.”

“And that’s what he thanks you for?”

Wooyoung’s smile doesn’t falter even as he shakes his head in denial.

“He never claims to have saved me, not even once. Instead, Yeosang says that I saved him.”

“B-But why? Objectively he did save you, so why does he not acknowledge that?”

“Because, Y/N, there’s a difference between loving someone and being in love with someone. Yeosang and I loved each other for many years before. But just loving each other wasn’t enough for Crown Prince Kang Minhee to break my chains and commit treason. When ”I love you“ turns into ”I am in love with you“ and ”I am in love with the mere idea of you“, then Yeosang set me free. Even though I would never have asked him to do it, he chose to on his own accord. So he thanks me and says that I saved him because of that. Because I trusted him enough to put my life in his hands time and time again and let him fall in love with me. He claims it to be a difficult thing — allowing an Elitist to fall in love with you. But with Yeosang… he has only ever made it easy. There are times where it is difficult and frustrating, where I wish that he could be anything other than an Elitist, for fuck’s sake, times when I would rather break his neck in an absolutely non-sexy kind of way, but that’s part of love and loving someone. That’s why he’s grateful to me. It sounds selfish and egotistical to say, but after having him repeat himself for so many years, I’ve grown to accept that even if I don’t believe I deserve it.” Wooyoung speaks with a raw conviction that you’ve heard before. It’s the same tone Hongjoong used when speaking to Seonghwa in the medbay, the same tone Yeosang used when talking about Wooyoung and their past together.

Even if you wanted to formulate a response, you don’t think you would be able to because of how overwhelming the emotion in Wooyoung’s voice is. He’s had every opportunity to blame Yeosang for the misfortune in his life, claim that if only Yeosang hadn’t picked him from the start he would be better off, claim that Yeosang got him out of being a slave only to put him in a more dangerous position. Wooyoung could even blame Yeosang for not protecting him well enough to keep him from being kidnapped and tortured.

Yet not once has Wooyoung blamed him.

Perhaps you were being unfair in pushing the blame onto Seonghwa’s shoulders when he didn’t fight your decision to go with Jisung. Is it so wrong to want someone to fight for you? Yet Yeosang has fought every day for Wooyoung and continues to do so. Wooyoung, who has been through hell and tortures he does not wish to speak about, asked about Yeosang’s well-being before anything else. Yet if they were in your position — if Wooyoung were the one agreeing to go with Jisung to save the others, would Yeosang not drop everything to fight for him?

Your mind screams back at you, telling you that it’s different, the situations aren’t the same, the relationships aren’t the same, and you cannot compare yourself to people like Wooyoung and Yeosang who have had years to figure this out. And so, you don’t compare yourself to them.

Rather you compare Seonghwa and Hongjoong to them. How Seonghwa’s worst nightmare is not being able to save Hongjoong from himself. The sheer will and determination in Hongjoong’s eyes when he said he would never let Seonghwa’s demons overtake him. You can’t help but wonder if perhaps that is similar to what Wooyoung and Yeosang have. Neither are anything remotely close to what you have — had, your mind suggests ever so helpfully — with Seonghwa yourself.

“It may be selfish, but I don’t want you to push me away. I would rather be hurt and still have you in my life rather than to be perfectly fine without you.”

That memory slips through unannounced and unasked for, and the mere prospect of why it’s coming back to you while you’re having such thoughts scares you so much that you slam the door in that memory’s face and throw away the key before it breaks loose.

“But anyway that’s — I rambled a bit too much, that’s not the point, um, have you ever had similar dreams like those? The ones I had, I mean? Before waking up in my body or before you came to the crew, any time you can remember. I know you haven’t had much opportunity yet, but you’ve had a few experiences by now.”

“I can’t recall ever having those sorts of dreams. That dream you mentioned about the lake — I had a dream that I was drowning in a black lake the night you came to save Seonghwa, but when I wake up in your body, it’s simply that. All I know is falling asleep and waking up like a passenger in your consciousness. I don’t have any control like you’ve had over my body.” Wooyoung’s eyes are oh so expectant and pleading, and it twists something painful in your gut. You want so badly to have information for him, to be able to give him answers or even a hint as to what could be going on, but frankly, you have nothing to offer. “I’m sorry, Wooyoung. I-I feel utterly useless in this whole situation. I d-don’t know what’s wrong with me or my head, I just can’t remember at all and I don’t… You and Seonghwa seem to have this whole Siren thing figured out, how it works, what sort of abilities you have, how to use them. I, on the other hand, have so many gaps and missing pieces in my memories. I’ve had one or two moments where I consciously used some sort of ability, then Seonghwa tried to help me learn, but other than that I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“It’s okay!” Wooyoung rushes to reassure you, squeezing his hand tight around yours as he smiles again. “Y/N, please don’t worry about that. I don’t expect you to have an answer right now, it’s really okay. We’re gonna figure this out together now that you finally know what I am and we’ll be back on the ship soon. And I can help you understand more about being a Siren in general too! If we can get to the Dreamscape together, maybe Daichi will be willing to talk.”

“Last time I was there, he tried to kill me and told me that if I kept asking questions he would end my life,” you snort. Wooyoung’s smile drops into a grave expression that doesn’t fit his features.

“In the beginning — when I first started seeing Daichi, that is — he wasn’t like that. He wanted me to find other Sirens. That’s what ultimately made Yeosang choose Captain’s crew because Daichi had told me there was a Siren there. Then as more time went on, Daichi seemed to get more and more frightened by the idea of Sirens finding each other. He started telling me that someone dangerous would find me, someone I should guard myself from.”

“He warned me of the same when I first came aboard. But Seonghwa mentioned how Daichi’s job is to guide Sirens to each other?”

“That’s true, yes, but Daichi seems to have changed his mind along the way. I can’t understand why, but I’m sure it will make it a lot more difficult to find two more for Captain.” Your conversation dies a bit there, leaving both you and Wooyoung to stew over the predicament. According to Daichi, you spent years denying your identity and refusing to listen to him, so you never made an effort to find any Sirens like both Wooyoung and Seonghwa have been apparently. Still, it leaves you more curious than before, especially given what all happened in your latest escapade in the Dreamscape.

“Tsukio can find you anywhere, even while far away! This mental connection you share, this link — the two of you are a dyad, a yin and a yang, a pair that cannot be severed. No matter how far apart you are, the two of you will always be able to come back to each other.”

“Did he ever tell you that we will always be able to come back to each other?”

“Come… back to each other? No, I’ve never heard him say such a thing before.”

“I remember seeing you in a dream before, not the Dreamscape but an actual dream. But that dream felt more like a memory, and I asked you about it once in the medbay. I know you told me no then, but does it have anything to do with what Daichi said possibly?”

“Hm, I suppose it could?” Wooyoung leans back and looks up at the ceiling. You can’t figure out what’s on his mind just through his expression, and what he says next doesn’t help much either. “But I don’t have any sort of memory like that.”

“You — you were wiped with a serum too, weren’t you?”

“Did Yeosang tell you that as well?” Wooyoung asks through a frown. “Did he mention how guilty he feels about that too? Probably, that would be very much like him to do so. Guilty for things that aren’t even his fault… but yes. Yes, my memories were wiped too.”

“I have another question. I’m sorry for asking so much all at once. Yeosang never gave me a clear answer though, so I’m still curious, but why haven’t you told Hongjoong about this?” Wooyoung doesn’t answer right away. Instead, he sinks his teeth into his lower lip and refuses to look your way for a bit. The silence drags but it’s nothing uncomfortable or unsettling. It isn’t like you’re on a time crunch right now either, so you’re more than willing to wait until he is ready to speak.

“It’s something stupid and selfish honestly,” he whispers after a bit. His other hand finds purchase on the bed, picking at a loose thread hanging off the sheets. “I didn’t expect Yeosang to take it so seriously, but now he’s adamant even when I try to tell him otherwise. Really it’s just that when I was still a slave, I didn’t always have to wear the collar. It dampened and muted my abilities so I couldn’t use them freely. Shocked me a lot too whenever I foolishly tried to use them without permission, leaving some really ugly and awful scars. Yeosang always treated the wounds when that would happen.”

His hand travels up to touch the band of metal hanging about his neck. You follow the movement with your eyes. You can’t miss the spreading scars underneath the metal as he shifts it, like little lightning bolts of pale skin hiding beneath it, and you wonder if that’s what you felt the first time you woke up in his body.

“I have a lot of scars from lots of different things. It shouldn’t be any different, and it shouldn’t even matter because it’s stupid and childish and I need to get over it. Even though the collar is dead and doesn’t work, like it doesn’t mute my abilities anymore or anything like that, just the idea of having it on keeps me sane. Being a Siren is both a blessing and a curse. Some abilities you’re born with are crueler than imaginable and can be used to do horrific things. The things I was forced to do with mine are not something I ever want to revisit again. So… I keep the collar on because the trauma I suffered while wearing it for so many years keeps me sane. Merely the idea of wearing it prevents me from using my abilities because I was conditioned into a state where if I tried doing anything while the collar was on, I would be hurt. When it comes to visiting you, it’s different because I’m asleep when that happens. And whenever people other than Yeosang or myself try to touch it, I get thrown back into the memories of his father taking it off me to use me as a weapon and I-I can’t — it’s too much to bear.

“I trust Hongjoong. I really trust him and admire him and respect him so much. As much as I do Yeosang even if it’s in a different way. But I have an innate fear of authority that tells me no matter who it is, the people who have power over me will abuse it. That if anyone above me knows I’m a Siren, I’ll be used again, and I’m afraid of that. So it’s not that I don’t want to tell Hongjoong. Just that as long as I have this collar on and as long as these demons linger at the edge of my mind, I don’t think I can ever tell him what I am.”

You want to express an apology for bringing those memories back or at least offer an ounce of consolation because you can almost feel the pain radiating off his body in waves. But the moment you reach out to pull him into a hug, the door to your room slides open out of nowhere. You jerk, and Wooyoung lifts an arm to protect the both of you, but you take the initiative in pushing him down to the bed. In one swift movement, you climb in front of him, one knee down on the mattress and the other stretched out in front of Wooyoung’s body. The blade against your thigh is cool on your fingertips, but you don’t pull it out quite yet. The flash of red hair before you stops you at the last second.

Soojin?

The girl is already halfway in the room, door sliding shut behind her, and the second it’s fully closed, she turns to twist the lock into place.

“W-Wait, we’re n-not supposed to lock the doors!” Wooyoung protests, leaning up over your shoulder to see better. Soojin levels him with a sharp glare. You reach behind you to push Wooyoung back enough so that he’s hidden behind your shoulder, matching Soojin’s stare with equal intensity. The girl steps closer to you, draws a single finger up, and stabs you hard in the chest with her dull nail.

“You and me need to have a chat after all it seems.”

“What do you mean?” You clench your fingers around the handle of your knife, still not completely at ease with the woman standing in front of you.

“What do I mean? I mean that my fucking client downstairs just tried to fucking murder me and gave me a message from Han Jisung of all people! Seeing you and hearing from that bastard on the same day after being free from that past for several years? That’s no fucking coincidence, Y/N.”

“Murder!? How did you — how did you get away?”

A laugh of disbelief escapes Soojin’s lips as she pulls back a few feet.

“I killed him, of course! What else was I supposed to do? I dumped the fucker’s body out the window for staff to clean up later. This sort of thing happens frequently enough for them not to question it, and besides, I told them it was a jealous worker so they won’t really care all too much about him. But what the fuck is going on? Why are you here and why did Han Jisung just tell me my time is up and try to have me killed?”

“I… I-I don’t — I’m not with Jisung, I know nothing about that at all. He—” You cut yourself short with a sharp inhale, eyes darting across the floor like it has all the answers in it. “Wait, he knew I would be coming here though. Did he know that you worked here?”

“Unfortunately, not by choice though. We ran across each other around a year ago in the city, and I mentioned working at the House in passing.”

You shift to motion back at Wooyoung and pull your hand off the knife on your leg at last.

“He was brought here against his will by Jisung. Well, whoever Jisung is working with at least. I only came to get him out. We’re — he’s part of the crew I’m working with now. Jisung knew where he would be and that I would come to get him.”

“And he’s still a psychopath when it comes to you then?” Soojin scoffs, brows knitting together to accentuate her disbelief. “He tried to have me killed just so that I would stay out of your business?”

“I don’t know, Soojin,” you exhale. “It doesn’t make any sense why he would do that. I already made a deal with him and he’ll get to take me regardless of what happens here.”

“T-Take you?” Wooyoung interjects. “Take you where?” His hand latches around your elbow and squeezes hard. You ignore the man in favor of maintaining your focus on Soojin, however, much to his dismay.

“Unless you know something Jisung wouldn’t want me to know and he couldn’t even risk the thought of us running into each other and speaking.” At that, Soojin tilts her head to the side in confusion.

“What could I possibly know that you don’t?”

“What happened before you left the crew?” Her confusion intensifies to a dramatic degree.

“Have you gone mad? Do you not remember or something? You were always a bit bad with memory, yeah, but has it gotten this bad?”

“Please, Soojin, I’m begging you please just tell me what happened before the crew fell apart. I know you called me a scapegoat for a reason, please.” You reach out across the empty space between your bodies, having to stand to reach her, but when you do, you close a hand around her wrist. Soojin blinks between where you hold her and your face without speaking for so long that you think she’s going to refuse you again.

“I called you a scapegoat because I thought you were in on Jisung’s plan at the time,” she says finally, pulling her other hand up to run through her hair. “You would’ve done anything for him so I thought that was just another part of it.”

“What did I do?”

“I should be asking what you remember happening instead.”

“What I remember is stealing documents and plotting to dismantle the military from the inside out with you guys but I fucked up. I know I fucked up and got caught and Hyunwoo took the blame for me and it got him fucking executed.” Soojin leans back, hand tugging out of your light grip.

“I know nothing of what happened after Ash, Juyeon, and I left Eros. But before we left…” It’s her turn to hold you by the wrist. She turns your arm over and exposes the inside of your left arm, right where that damned brand sits against your raised skin. “You didn’t deserve this. It wasn’t your burden to bear. You were the scapegoat, and that’s why the team fell apart, that’s why we all broke up and ran away. You didn’t plan to steal anything, nor did you plot a thing. Neither did Hyunwoo. It was all Jisung; Jisung wanted to dismantle the military and kill the king. When Juyeon, Ash, and I found out what he was planning to do, we brought it to Hyunwoo. All Hyunwoo said was that stopping Jisung wasn’t something he could do. So he told us to leave while we still had the chance and that he would take care of things. He would take the blame so that no one else would have to get hurt. But you didn’t want him to do that, so you ran off and carried out Jisung’s plan for him.”

“Which part? Did I k-kill the king… before Hyunwoo died?”

Soojin heaves a deep sigh.

“The last night we were all together as a team, you snuck out of the barracks and infiltrated the palace. You stole the documents Jisung wanted — whatever the fuck they were because I don’t even know why he wanted them in the first place if he was going to kill the king anyways — and you killed the king that night too. Everything went to shit. It all happened too fast for the rest of us to know what was really going on. You just came back to the barracks and turned the lights on and…”

You don’t realize how hard your head is pounding until the woman trails off, voice dying in her throat, and then it hits you will so much force that you feel your body beginning to lurch. You would fall over, most likely smack your head on the sink as well, if not for Wooyoung jumping up and catching you by the waist before you can fully go down. And thanks to him, all you do is hunch over and hold your head in your hands as a stab of pain sears through your skull.

“Breathe, Y/N, breathe for me,” he urges as you slump your weight back against him. “You need to breathe, okay? You’re hyperventilating. One breath every five seconds, slow it down, you’re okay.”

“Th-There was blood. There was blood, wasn’t there?” Looking at Soojin fills your vision with pure crimson, but it’s not because of her hair this time.

“Yes,” she whispers back, not daring to speak any louder than that. “You were… drenched in blood that wasn’t yours. And we were so scared you had been hurt somehow. I carried you to the bath and cleaned you but you didn’t have a single scratch on you.”

“O-Oh god,” you choke out. The red in your vision turns coppery as a different image takes over and a new memory swarms your head.

“What the fuck did you do!?”

Hands squeezing hard around your throat, shoving you under bloody waters.

“Let her go!”

“You ruined everything! How could you do this? Why are you so fucking useless? I told you to sit still and not do anything!”

The water spread to your nostrils and forced its way in as you struggled to find air.

“Jisung, release her right this instant!”

The hands around your throat just grew tighter.

Wooyoung eases you down to the floor when the rest of your strength leaves you. He keeps a hand at your waist, using the other to hold your head to his chest in a desperate attempt to control the wild tremors shooting through your body. You keep a hand pressed to your throbbing temple but it does nothing to alleviate the pain you’re in, one that feels as though something is trying to rip your head in half with their bare hands.

“C-Can’t remember more. I can’t, I do-don’t want to remember anymore, I — it hurts. It hurts too much, it hurts so much.”

“Shh, it’s okay, it’s okay. You don’t have to remember anymore, okay? You’re good, you’re done, no more. No more.” Even through the pain, you can’t miss the desperation in Wooyoung’s tone. His hand moves for your arm where your wristband sits, buzzing uselessly against your skin. “Y/N, what does this mean? Is something happening?”

You want to answer, You even open your mouth to do so. Yet the moment you do, the taste of that metallic soapy water fills your mouth and you choke on air.

“Y/N, please, what does it mean? Are we in trouble?” You think you shake your head but the panic in Wooyoung’s eyes isn’t reassuring and you aren’t sure you have any hold over the muscles in your body right now. “Please, do you know where our friend is?” He asks, directing his focus to where Soojin kneels in front of you.

“The brunette?”

“Brunette? No, no, I’m talking a blond?”

“J-Jongho,” you force out, gritting your teeth until your jaw hurts from the force. “Jongho… here too.”

“I saw that name on the register,” Soojin cuts in. “I checked it to find what room you were in and saw his name further down on the list.”

“Please get him and bring him. Please, I know you — we just need your help right now, please,” Wooyoung begs. His grip on your waist tightens a little as Soojin hesitates, and it doesn’t let up until the girl nods and leaves the room in haste. Wooyoung brings you back to his chest once she’s gone, matching your shaky breaths as he gently rocks you back and forth. “I can’t… know your memories or the pain you’re feeling right now, but I know what it’s like to suddenly be hit with memories you forgot you had. Ones that were suppressed behind an iron wall. I know what it’s like to have it slip out and hit you.”

“It fucking hurts.” You clench your jaw again, feeling a burn of pain up the side of your face with the movement. “Like someone is stabbing my b-brain with a da-damn icepick.”

“Are the memories painful?”

“I d-don’t know. I can hardly think straight. My head hurts. That’s all I can think about.”

“The serum… I’m assuming it’s the same one I was given back then. It can’t take away memories. Yeah, they tell you that it’s a wipe, but that’s only because they don’t want you trying to find those old memories. It can’t remove parts of the brain like that. They just use it to lock away memories but there’s no guarantee of it being permanent, so when you do remember something they tried to lock away, it hurts.”

“D-Does it hurt you like this too?”

“Yes, but I’m — pain isn’t something that bothers me all too much, and I’m lucky enough to have Yeosang nearby when it happens. I’ve got a prescription for the pain from Yunho too. We can… we can get you something long-term back on the ship.”

Another stab of pain hits as the door slides open, metal grating hard on your ears, but this time Jongho stands with Soojin. He rushes over to join you and Wooyoung on the floor in a panic, obviously torn between being excited to see Wooyoung again and your current crumpled state.

“Yeosang’s hour is up and he’s waiting at the meeting point. Captain hasn’t buzzed in on the contact yet.” Jongho reaches down to lay a hand against your forehead. You’re quick enough to turn your face further into Wooyoung’s shirt, inhaling the sickening floral scent that clings to his skin.

“Don’t even think about trying to take it away,” you hiss.

“I can’t take physical pain, don’t worry. I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

“Here, something for the pain.” Soojin interrupts the moment to lean over you with a cup of unknown contents. “Fast-acting pain reliever. Every room has some in it just in case patrons get too out of hand. We keep it in the cabinets, I promise it’s nothing bad. It’ll numb you and make you a bit sluggish for a while, but it’ll also take the pain away.”

“Thank you,” Wooyoung murmurs as he takes the cup from her hands. He helps bring the cup to your lips, pushing some of the murky grey liquid inside into your mouth, and you struggle not to gag around the taste of it. He doesn’t stop until the entirety of its contents are drained into your mouth then tilts your head back to keep it down when some threatens to drip out the corners of your lips. An unknown hand comes down on your knee.

“Y/N, I’m so sorry.” Soojin. “I didn’t mean to hurt you with this information.” You swallow hard only to choke a second later on the putrid aftertaste clinging to your tongue. Wooyoung lets you cough into his shoulder without complaint, passing the now empty cup back to Soojin.

“You couldn’t have known,” you murmur after escaping the coughing fit. “It’s not your fault.”

“I didn’t know what they would do to you after we left the planet,” she sighs through the quiet of the room. “I should have expected it honestly, knowing Jisung, but maybe I hoped he would be better than that. He always manipulated you so it only makes sense that he would try to manipulate your memories too. Do you at least know what happened a little bit better now?”

“Y-Yeah, yeah.” You try to pull away from Wooyoung and get up but his grip on you doesn’t let up. “My memories were taken away for a second time and replaced with something else. So instead of only losing fourteen years of my life, I lost eighteen and spent the last three years believing those manipulated memories to be real. I’m peachy.”

Another buzz from your wristband pulls your attention away, and Jongho glances down at his own too.

“Cameras are down.”

“Let’s go then,” you mutter.

“Are you okay to move? Don’t push it if you’re not strong enough.”

“We need to go now while we still can,” you protect, letting Wooyoung help you to your feet even if it’s on shaky legs. Jongho gives a curt nod then heads for the window, no doubt to pry it open. Soojin catches you by the arm before you can fully turn away.

“I’m sorry, Y/N. Even if you can’t remember all of it, there are still things I regret saying and doing to you. I should have known back then how much Jisung was manipulating you and not pushed so much blame onto your shoulders.”

“You can get out now with us, Soojin. While you have the chance.”

“And do what with that freedom?” She huffs out a dry and lifeless laugh. “Wander aimlessly? Ash and Juyeon are both missing in action. I have no clues or leads on where they might be or if they’re even alive. I don’t have anything left out there beyond the House.”

“I… if I hear anything out there about them, I promise I’ll send you a message. I’ll find a way to get news to you, maybe through my captain’s contact or something. I swear if I can help you get out of this hellhole I will.”

Soojin reaches up to ruffle her hand through your hair, mussing the loose locks more.

“You always were a good kid, Y/N. Too good for the life you were forced to live.” It hurts to watch her smile. It hurts even more to let Wooyoung guide you to where Jongho waits by the now open window. “Go while you can, you three. The medicine will wear off in a few hours, but hopefully, you’ll have access to something better by then. I’ll make sure you get out safely.”

Jongho dips through the open space first, hopping down to the pristine streets below with little issue.

“Send Y/N down next!”

You can’t tear your gaze off Soojin. You don’t know when you might see her again or if you even will, and it hurts to leave her behind like this but she just keeps smiling at you with bright eyes and blinding hair.

“T-Thank you, Soojin. Please stay safe, if you can.”

“Always.”

With that, Wooyoung hoists you over the ledge of the window and dangles you far enough down so that your fall is softened a bit. Jongho catches you by the legs, taking the brunt of your weight before you hit the ground. Wooyoung drops down beside you without warning a second later. As Jongho eases you down, you dare to glance up at the window you just left from, and it shuts slowly without a sign from Soojin inside.

Wooyoung rushes back to your side and loops an arm back around your waist when you start to slump forward again.

“That’s — that’ll look too suspicious,” you mutter, pulling his arm back to his own side.

“We just dropped out a fucking window. I’m sure that would look more suspicious.”

“I’ll be okay.”

Yet two steps later, you’re stumbling over your heels and Jongho comes to your rescue this time. He tugs your arm through his own as he walks forward without saying a word. You can only lean your weight on him and slump your chin against his shoulder.

“Thank you…”

Silence drapes over the three of you as you make your way to the meeting point with Yeosang. You aren’t in as much pain as you were earlier (Soojin wasn’t bluffing when she said fast-acting) but the medicine is already making you a bit groggy. It feels a bit like you’re wading through sludge just trying to walk a few steps, and frankly, Jongho is the only thing keeping you going at this point. Wooyoung lingers at your other side. Every once in a while, you feel his worried gaze find its way to your form. He might even be speaking to you at some point because you hear something that sounds vaguely like his voice through the radio static in your ears, but there is far too much on your mind and too much to think about right now for you to pay any attention to that.

If… if I killed the king before Hyunwoo’s execution, then who did I kill that night? Did I kill anyone at all? Was that memory fabricated? What have I been working towards all these years if that’s a lie?

Funny how your search for answers only left you with more questions instead. There are too many questions to keep track of and not remotely enough answers to them. You know you won’t be able to have those answers yet either, not while San and Mingi are still missing and Jisung is bothering you. Where would you even look for answers now? Jisung would never tell you a thing, Hyunwoo is dead and gone, and now you’re leaving Soojin behind.

The one thing that reaches your brain through the static in your ears is a dry and choked sob. You pull yourself out of your thoughts as Wooyoung disappears from your side. It doesn’t take much to guess why. You’ve reached the meeting point, the all too small alleyway where Yeosang waits for you three, and Wooyoung is running straight to him with reckless abandon.

“Y-Yeosang, angel, Yeosang, my god I’m—” Wooyoung’s voice dies in a cracked sob when he reaches the Elitist. His hands barely brush the man’s shoulders because Yeosang drops to his knees in front of Wooyoung, face hidden but no doubt bearing tears, and he balls his fists around the flimsy material of Wooyoung’s pants. He presses his forehead to Wooyoung’s hip, hands traveling further up to press against the small of his back. Wooyoung can only card a hand through Yeosang’s hair in response, but it’s enough for now. It’s enough for both of them like this, with Yeosang’s knuckles white from the pressure of clinging to Wooyoung, and you and Jongho maintain your distance as best you can to give them this moment.

“Are they happy?” You whisper to Jongho even though the answer is blindingly obvious before you. The Berserker’s lips twist into a small grin.

“I don’t think there’s a word strong enough to describe how they’re feeling right now.”

Yeosang pulls his head off Wooyoung’s hip and stares up at the man with tears on his cheeks and stars in his eyes. Wooyoung dips down to the Elitist’s height, pulling his face up to his own and slotting their lips together like nothing else in the universe exists around them. Again, it’s raw, as all emotions between these two seem to be, but it belongs to them and it’s something you can’t take away from them. When they part lips to gulp in desperate breaths of fresh air, Wooyoung places his forehead over Yeosang’s and takes the breath from his lungs like that. They don’t exchange words but there doesn’t seem to be a need for words either, not until Yeosang seems to catch hold of himself and come back to his senses.

“The car is waiting for us at the other end of the alley. Driver’s already pulled up.” Jongho nods when the Elitist drags his gaze over to where the two of you stand. Yeosang lets Wooyoung pull him back into space after that, unable to contain a smile as the Siren continues to press more kisses to his cheeks. You and Jongho trail behind them to the other end of the alleyway. Seeing them together like this makes it worth it. You knew it would and you were striving to bring them this moment, but seeing it unfold before you like this increases that feeling tenfold.

Once in the car, Yeosang sits Wooyoung down in one of the cushioned seats then drops to the floor between his legs even when Wooyoung protests and tells him to get up.

“Stop, that’s weird! It looks weird, Yeo, please! It looks like you’re trying to su—”

“Shut up,” Yeosang mumbles back as he drops his head to rest against Wooyoung’s thigh. “You’re the one who makes everything dirty. Get your head out of the gutter.”

Wooyoung obviously doesn’t mind all too much because he returns to toying with the Elitist’s blond locks moments later as you and Jongho settle into the seats beside the pair. And from where you’re sitting, they really do look like young boys again, more than just a former slave and ex-prince but also less than that. Just… boys who fell in love despite the odds set against them.

“I’m sorry, Woo, I’m so sorry.”

“Shh, angel, I know. It’s okay. We’re okay.”

You tune out of the conversation there. It’s far too intimate and personal for you to encroach on, and the medicine has you falling asleep in your seat anyways. Jongho seems to pick up on that, reaching over to pat your leg.

“Rest while you can.”

A hum comes as your reply as you slump to the side, head hitting the side of the car with a loud thud. Jongho exhales a quiet laugh and pulls you over to rest against his shoulder instead.

“’m sorry for snapping at you,” you murmur. You’re forcing your eyes to stay open long enough to get the apology out but it’s growing more difficult by the second. “I didn’t mean to, I was afraid… of her slipping out of my grasp but… that’s no excuse.”

Your fluttering eyes snap wide open when something presses down hard on your nose. You blink uselessly at Jongho and the finger he hovers over your face.

“Stop talking nonsense, yeah? Rest. I’m not going anywhere.”

“You’re not?”

“Hm, no, I’m not.”

“Promise.”

“I promise I’m staying right here.”

“And we’ll get San back?” You mumble just before the drowsiness wins.

“We’ll get your San back too, I promise.”

✧✧✧ a/n: yall imma be honest this chapter feels like a whole fever dream and a half but i love it nonetheless she’s my Baby i hope you guys love her just as much and enjoy her <3 lots happened but also not a lot happened? i feel like the wc is so dramatic for Not A Lot but yaknow that’s life ! next chapter we’re getting juicy and bringing a part 16 move back bc teehee that’s what i do best u know me anywho let me know what u think as always i love u all im so happy to bring u guys this chapter and so excited for the coming ones!

taglist: @faeriewoobin @sugarrimajins @atinyinwonderland @sparklychangbin @jeong-uwu @jeonartemis @anothershorthuman @xxbluestrifexx @haotheheckk @noonawriter @lostscenarios @nlost21 @mirror-juliet @okokokok123-45 @purple-aeon @theoinkypiglet @toothlessshiber @atinyarmyx1 @simpforhyunjin @hwangwoosan @vampire-jimin @softyubi @drumboydowoon @chatsgotmytongue @just-a-starfruit @babydolljo @scintillating-souls @khjssss @rawrrainn @hewwo-from-the-other-side @icekdy @eggteez @bangtanxberm @uglychildd @lucymultistan

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satohqbanana · 2 years ago

Text

Just a few updates (also mini rants on multiple topics in succession):

These days, I find tougher and tougher to allot time for certain endeavors. I like creating stuff; I still like playing games; I still like fan works. It's just been difficult to enjoy them, and recently they've been feeling like less of hobbies and more of obligations.

Speaking of obligations, doing an AV3 playthrough was probably not the best idea. I've spent 40+ hours on three of its games on normal mode. (Why normal mode instead of easy? Because easy mode makes battles less fun.) I really only wanted to play it for Mel's story, but I feel like it's dragged on for so, so long.

The writing mostly feels like a silly downgrade from AV1 and AV2. The first two parts were more or less tolerable, with a few things that irked me and failed to bring out an intended emotion from me. However, the third part just really... no. The only thing I enjoy here is gameplay, because AV did find a good balance of the battle system. However, the story is just too painful for me to read, because I feel like the story removed most meaning and development from its previous installments. For me, it's like a fandom-approved fanfic. And I had to do majority of this game consulting a walkthrough to navigate its too-convoluted mazes and equally convoluted side quests. No, despite my complaints, I'm a few steps away from the final fight, but I'm ready to move on to other stuff, really.

Speaking of moving on, I have no idea what to do with my SK fanfic. I promised a second arc rewrite twice; it feels sillier the more I think about it. I feel like I should move on, but I also feel an obligation to it. I started this mess; I know how it's supposed to go down; I should be able to at least write one more arc?

But, my muse can no longer connect with it that strongly. I do feel desire to continue it, but when I get to think about it, I get nothing. I don't get it. I love the characters. I love the idea. Why can't I write about them anymore? Why do most of my creative concepts now flow to a super new thing that can't even stand on its own foundations yet?

And these things make me think: Am I so jaded? Am I so cynical? Am I broken?

Why. Can't. I. Be. Normal?

Thankfully, there is a bit of good news, and that is: I'm moving closer to releasing an Arcanium: Magia demo for my friends (target: July-August 2022). It will only be limited to them; the purpose of the demo is to find errors and areas of improvement to guide the rest of the development. It will contain a lot of placeholder sprites and graphics; it will only have Area 1 and a preview of Area 2 (of 5-6 areas).

After I tweak things to their feedback and load in the final sprites and graphics, I could hopefully extend the demo to a proper Area 2 showcase. And by the end of this year (December 2022), maybe I could have a proper demo out.

Is this game going to be commercial? I don't know yet. Either way, I hope this game does get realized. Not only is it part of my attempt to reconnect with my interest in programming, but also it is a way for me to create something not fandom-related. My real own idea, donut steal series. It may be small, but it's mine. Something of my own.

Sorry; I'm having feelings.

#anne's life updoots #anne becomes the vent goblin

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dramaqueeenamby · 3 years ago

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𝙎𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘰𝘯𝘴 𝗈𝖿 𝗟𝗼𝘃𝗲 | seven

Parings: CEO!Chris Hemsworth x Stripper!OC // Words: 7.8K // Type: Series // Taglist: Yes/No (Inbox me to be tagged or removed) Warnings: Sexual harassment, racial themes, discussions pertaining to child death, miscarriage, alcohol/drug use, and suicide attempts. Angst.

A/N: I'm so sorry for the inexcusable delay in updates. This chapter is hella long and perhaps should have been split into two, but I promised ya'll some answers in the last chapter, so here they are!

“What is that haircut?”

“Why are you zooming in?”

Kaya said nothing, continuing to pinch her fingers to gain a closer look, her smile widening by the second. “Holy shit, you weren’t kidding. “

Chris rolled his eyes. “All children go through phases.”

“This is beyond a phase, my friend. Don’t even get me started on the outfit.” As she erupted in yet another fit of giggles, he took advantage of the opportunity to snatch the iPad away from her.

“Go to sleep.”

Quieting herself down, she wiped at her eyes. “No. Come on. I’m enjoying this, and like you said, you were a dumb kid. How were you supposed to know these photos would haunt you till’ the end of time?”

“Only if they get out.”

“Don’t tempt me with a good time, sir.”

Chris closed the app and looked over at her. “What about you?”

Kaya’s brow lifted. “What about me?”

“What about your phases?”

She snorted. “Absolutely not.” He continued to stare her down, prompting her to cave, a surprising move even for her. Kaya’s tenacity was typically much stronger than that. “Fine.”

She grabbed her phone and unlocked it, opening Google Photos and scrolling mindlessly. She knew that any horrifically embarrassing snapshots would be from as far back as her library went. The older the photo, the higher the likelihood she would regret ever caving.

It took roughly two minutes for her to locate a set, her eyes shutting and a small moan leaving her partially closed mouth.

He smirked. “Found it?”

“Shut up.”

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

“You’re going to make me regret this, aren’t you?”

“Without a doubt.”

She couldn’t help it. She laughed. “At least you’re honest.” Blowing out a breath, she issued a formal forewarning. “In my defense, I was young and dumb.”

“How is that diff—fine, I will reserve my judgment.”

“Liar.” When he said nothing else, she took another deep breath and gradually pulled her phone away from her breast, twisting her wrist so that he could see the screen. “I give you, thebaddestputa69.”

She watched the corner of his lips lift upward as he fought off a smile in favor of a smirk. “Hotmail or aol?” Her surprise at his knowledge of the fallen email servers must have shown because he commented, “I’m old, not ancient.”

She matched his smirk and leaned over to whisper. “Hotmail. Definitely hotmail.”

“AIM username?”

“Come on, the same as my email. I wasn’t creative enough to have multiple aliases.”

He chuckled, grabbing her phone to examine the photo. “I certainly do not miss the peace sign era.”

“I’m pretty sure I used that same pose in all of my photos back then.”

He gestured to the plastered graphic that read ‘jealousy is a disease, get well soon’. “With the same masterful level of editing, I’m sure.”

“But of course, blingee and picnik were a staple.”

A comfortable silence befell them as he returned her phone, and she quickly swiped up to close the app. Kaya was grateful that he didn’t swipe right or left, something she was expecting him to do, if she was being completely honest with herself.

Kaya yawned and naturally laid her head on his shoulder as she reached over to grab the book she was reading when they somehow got on the topic of rebellious and wild phases of days of past.

“Are we th—”

“Finish that sentence, and I will personally throw you out of this damn plane myself.”

Kaya looked over at him, eyebrows furrowed, and mouth pronounced. “It’s a legitimate question.”

“No, it was a legitimate question. However, it stopped being one when you asked me the fifth time.”

“I’m just trying to keep the conversation going. Damn.”

“No, you’re just trying to pester me.”

“Look, it’s obvious you don’t want to hear me talk anymore, so I’m just going to shut my mouth for the remainder of the flight.” He snorted. “What?”

“We both know that’s not possible.” He finally broke his gaze from his phone as he looked over with that knowing smirk that she despised. “You always have to have the last word.”

“That is not true.”

“Kaya, you’re like a child.”

“Keep it up, and you’ll be the one who’s personally tossed from this jet.”

“See what I mean.”

Groaning, she threw her hands up and shook the book in her right hand. “This is the second book in this series.”

“And?”

“And I started the series when we were still on the taxi.”

He shrugged. “Read slower.”

“Chris!”

He laughed, reaching to place his hand on her thigh as she sighed while banging her head back against the headrest. “Relax.”

“Don’t you think if I could, I would?”

“You were doing great five minutes ago.”

“That was in the past.”

“Next time, we’re taking separate jets.”

She didn’t know why but hearing him refer to future happenings both excited and saddened her, for more reasons than one. She cleared her throat. “This is a work trip, right?” He looked down at her as she placed the book down on the ground and held onto his bicep. “You know, something for your company.”

He studied her for a moment and looked up, closing his eyes as he laid his head back against the headrest. “I have the cover of this month’s GQ Italia.”

“Fancy,” she remarked, still unsatisfied with his answer-non answer. “So, I was right. This is a work thing.”

Chris thought about what she said, what she asked, as well as his response before he replied. “They offered to contract a photographer in LA.”

Brows scrunched, she had to ask, now more confused than she was just a few minutes ago. “So why go to them?”

His silence only irked her, the seconds dragging into minutes, which felt like hours. Frustrated and impatient, she called his name again. “Chris-”

“Jesus,” was all she heard before his lips were on hers, palm of his hand pressed against her cheek. Everything else after that was a sensual blur. His other hand moved to her hip, pulling her onto his lap, never once breaking their kiss. She placed her hands on his shoulders, giving a light squeeze, inching her body closer to his, close enough to feel the heat that always emanated over him.

And then, it was over.

Eyes fluttering and breath staggering, she nearly whined when he ran his thumb over her swollen bottom lip.

“This isn’t work for me.”

----

“This is our room?”

Chris looked up and chuckled, watching Kaya spin around the middle, eyes soaking in their suite. He placed her bag near the closet while crossing his arms and leaning against the wall.

“It is.”

Kaya nodded and grabbed the bottom of her sweatshirt, tugging it over her head. She extended her arm out and turned around, lifting a brow. “And we have maid service, correct?”

He eyed her. “Of course.”

Kaya smirked and let the garment fall to the floor.

Chris chuckled. “You wanna explain that?”

“What?” She played innocent, fingers toying with the waistband of her joggers as she began to shimmy out of them. “Staying in a fancy hotel where I don’t have t0 clean up after myself?” She walked toward him, moving to grab her suitcase so that she could find her next outfit. “Granted, we have the maid service at home, but—” Both Christopher and Kaya paused at her statement, equally surprised by how easily it flowed, but more so with the statement itself.

Defense immediately kicked in and Kaya cleared her throat. “I mean, ya know, your place.” She refused to make eye contact that exceeded ten seconds, grabbing the handle of her suitcase and dragging it in the direction of what looked like the bathroom.

“Dibs.”

Her feet weren’t moving fast enough for her liking. In fact, they were slow enough that Chris was somehow able to cross the room and grab her by her arm. She looked up, managing to remain calm while inwardly panicking.

God, please don’t let him ask anything.

“Don’t take too long.”

She swallowed. “Why?”

Her grip on the handle tightened when he moved his hand to her face, the back of it brushing against her cheek. Had he been paying close enough attention, he would have noticed the way she shivered at his touch.

“You want dinner, don’t you?”

-----

“This isn’t exactly what I meant.”

Kaya looked up from her pizza, pausing mid chew. “What? Pizza in Italy? This is goals.”

He intended to take her to a fine restaurant, one where only the elite could afford to dine. Instead, she requested pizza delivered to their room. Kaya never ceased to surprise him. “And why are you eating pizza with a fork?”

She shrugged, adjusting the thin strap of her shirt. “Because pizza is messy, and my life's already messy enough. I avoid when I can.”

Chris didn’t say anything, simply watching her eat. She caught his gaze and looked away. If she could, she’d go back in time and stop herself from ever saying what she did. It’d ruined everything. He’d been acting different around her since, and she hated that. She also hated that she hated it.

Since when did she give a flying fuck about what people thought of her? Let alone him.

It was out of character for her, and she didn’t like it.

She didn’t like it at all.

Similarly, Chris also found it difficult to focus on anything other than the encounter from earlier, but not for the reasons Kaya thought.

Not even close.

“So, what’s the agenda for this trip?”

He chuckled and brought the champagne to his lips. “And ruin the surprise?”

Her eyes narrowed as she replaced the fork with her fingers so that she could eat the crust piece by piece. “What surprise?”

“What kind of question is that? Who gives away a surprise?”

“Are you capable of ever just answering my questions with a straight answer?”

He pretended to think. “I could.”

“But?”

“Where’s the fun in that?”

“You and fun? Never realized they were synonymous.”

“I’d like to think we have fun.”

“We have sex. Really, really, great sex.”

“You don’t consider that fun?”

“Fun isn’t a strong enough word to describe it.” He lifted a brow, and she scoffed, tossing a red pepper packet in his direction. “Stop it. I am trying to have a mature conversation here.”

“Not quite sure how possible that is when both parties are inebriated.”

“Bullshit. You know damn well neither one of us is drunk. You haven’t seen me drunk. Hell, I haven’t seen me drunk in a while.”

The way her tone changed toward the end of her sentence garnered his interest. “Why not?”

She looked at him, her smile faltering as she nervously cleared her throat. “I—uh—I get really bad migraines, and Excedrin is the only thing that works for me.” Telling him the truth, well, a fraction of the truth, felt strange yet relieving, probably because she’d spent so much of her life hiding and lying that the truth was unfamiliar territory. “Needless to say, meds and alcohol? Never really a good combo.”

“You’re drinking now.”

“I haven’t taken any medicine yet.”

“Maybe you won’t have to.”

She smiled sadly. “I will.” A beat. “It’s all I have.” Kaya snatched another piece of her crust and swallowed fully before explaining. “That’s why my sleep schedule, if you can even call it that, is so fucked up.”

He thought about it. “Excedrin has caffeine.”

“An insane amount.”

“It helps your migraines—”

“And keeps me up in return.” When he grew quiet, she offered. “Trust me. The insomnia is much better than the pain.”

“I’m sorry.”

She grimaced, eyes darting in either direction. “Why?”

He sighed and ran his hands all over his face. “That’s why you get so upset when I wake you up.”

“I wouldn’t say upset.”

“You threatened to slit my throat in my sleep.”

“Okay, maybe I was a little upset,” she confessed, and they shared a laugh before his tone grew serious again.

“I’ll be mindful of that.” Head tilted to the side, a sign she was still confused, he continued. “So that you can sleep.”

She smiled teasingly, abandoning the last bit of her food, and pushing her plate to the side. “Is that consideration I hear?”

“It is.”

The way he was looking at her, the lack of typical sarcasm in his tone, it was both welcoming and conflicting. Crawling across the floor, she moved his plate to the side and climbed into his lap.

Hands on his shoulders, she lowered her voice and whispered into his ear. “Well, I’m up right now.”

He made a sound and brought his hands to her hips. “You are.” Her eyes shut when his lips moved to her shoulder. “You should get some sleep.”

Immediately, she coiled back and glared. “Are you serious right now?” He laughed, which only upset her further as he stood up, her legs locking around his waist. “It’s been at least 8 hours.”

“You keeping a timer or something?”

“Look.” She waited for him to place her on the bed before she grabbed the bottom of his shirt and tugging so that he laid back on the mattress. She quickly climbed on top of him. “If there’s one thing I know about us, we are ideal intimate partners. Our sexual chemistry is astronomical.”

His eyes drank her in. “Is that it?”

“Is what it?”

His voice lowered. “Is that all you think we have?”

At that moment, Kaya realized a couple of things. This was wrong. She was suddenly very much uncomfortable. And this was a mistake. This was why she didn’t tell the truth. It meant putting yourself at risk for being vulnerable.

She was never good with that.

Clearing her throat, she climbed off him and flashed a crafty smile. “I’m gonna go shower.” She couldn’t handle seeing his face, so she turned around, purposely pretending she had to look around the room to search for her luggage.

“You should know I hate sleeping with blankets.” Kaya needed to redirect the conversation to another topic. This was becoming all too much for her.

He sat up and rolled his shoulders. “So, strip the bed? Got it.”

“Absolutely not. I could freeze.”

“You just said—”

Kaya stood by the door that led to the living room area and smiled sadly. “I’m a hot ass mess, Chris.” A beat. “The sooner you accept that, the better.”

-------

We need to talk when you get a chance. Please?

No matter how many times she looked at the phone, a new incoming gray message never appeared. She waited and waited, even scrolling up only for it to bounce back with no change.

She missed Nia. She missed their banter. She missed making tik toks with her. And she especially missed the advice giving, of which she could desperately use right about now.

Something was happening between them. With her and Chris. Of which she didn’t know, nor did she understand. It drove her mad because it was a new experience, one where she didn’t feel as though she always had to walk on eggshells.

Being with Chris….

“God.” She ran her hand over her face. What the hell was she doing? She wasn’t with Chris. Not like that, anyway. This was a business transaction. They were both using each other for selfish purposes.

Maybe it was the sex. Nia always warned her that behind every sexual encounter, there was at least some trace of feelings.

Kaya always thought that was bullshit.

Now….now she wasn’t so sure.

“You alright?”

She looked up from her chair and saw Chris walk in. She chewed the inside of her cheek as he sat down in the chair opposite of her. Kaya took in his wardrobe, so casual and laid back. She’d never seen him in denim before, but he looked good.

She didn’t even know the photographer, but she was a fan. A billionaire in Levi’s? Iconic.

“How does it feel to dress like us common folk?”

“Poor.” He winked as she glared. “We should be done soon.”

“Don’t rush on my part. The snacks here are delicious, and who knows, I could play dress up.” She wiggled her brows and straightened when there was a knock on the door.

“Sorry to interrupt,” the photographer spoke up and offered Kaya a friendly smile. “You’re Kaya, yes? I’m Elena.”

Kaya was surprised by the fact that this woman was both speaking to her and actually knew who she was, so her response was delayed. “Yes. It’s nice to meet you.” She offered her hand and noticed the woman was staring at her. Welp. It was nice while it lasted. “Is there something I can help you with?”

“I’m sorry,” she apologized but continued to stare. “It’s just...has anyone ever told you that you have amazing bone structure?”

Kaya sputtered. “Not unless they wanted something from me.”

Elena smiled. “Well, I suppose this is no different.”

“I don’t understand,” Kaya asked, looking over at Chris. He was surprisingly quiet.

“How about we get some shots of the both of you?”

She immediately protested. “Oh no. I—I’m just here for moral support.”

“You did say you wanted to play dress up,” he reminded. She glared. Of course he would choose to speak up now.

She turned her narrowed eyes on him and harshly whispered. “Not while being photographed.”

He placed his hand over hers. “Relax.”

Kaya remembered that they weren’t alone and therefore, had to keep up the act. Even if it was starting to feel less and less like acting.

“I’m used to people watching, not photographing.” He lifted a brow. Laughing, she slapped his chest and took a deep breath. She looked over at Elena. “Will I at least get to see them before you pick which ones to use? If any.”

“Of course.”

Kaya caved. “Fine.” He kissed the top of her head and mouthed a thank you. “You owe me.”

“Sure, I do,” he dismissed, slapping her on her ass as Elena grabbed her to drag her away.

“Time to make magic.”

-----

It was a bad idea, one of many that had occurred, Kaya realized.

When she joked about wanting to play dress—up, she didn’t think that it would actually happen. She didn’t think that she’d become involved in his shoot. Kaya especially didn’t expect to have as much….fun as she did.

And she hated that, too. The fact that she managed to smile and laugh more in one setting than she had in, hell, longer than she could remember. She didn’t like it. She didn’t like it at all.

She really, really didn’t like the way Chris looked at her every time she walked onto set in a new look, and there were a couple of them. The way he focused on her, eyes taking in every bit of her form, all the way down from her shoes up to her hair. Like he didn’t want to look away. Like he couldn’t look away. She despised the way he held her when they were photographed together, often being the reason for her smile or laughter with his comments that he whispered into her ear, sneaking in a kiss against her temple or holding her against him.

It was all so domestic and sweet, and it made no sense.

He was starting to make no sense.

And she especially didn’t understand why she was putting off leaving the bathroom, having sat on the toilet for at least 15 minutes.

As if on cue, two loud knocks on the door pulled her from her thoughts.

“I’m coming, damnit.”

“That’s what you said last time. Come on, Kaya.” She was both surprised and annoyed that it was Chris. She expected it to be members of the glam team that he’d hired to help her prepare for the GQ function he was invited to, and of course, she was forced to accompany him. Turns out he wasn’t just chosen for the cover. He was man of the year. “We’re going to be late.”

“Maybe you should just leave me behind,” she muttered.

“Maybe I can just kick this damn door down,” he countered.

“Then you’ll have to pay for the damages.”

“Then I’ll buy the damn hotel,” he shot back testily. “I’m not going to ask you again, Kaya.”

She scowled and rolled her neck. Kaya knew he was being serious. The bastard could buy his way out of anything.

If only….

Blowing out a deep breath, she swallowed and stood, holding up her dress. It was undoubtedly beautiful, gold, a slit in the middle of her chest and on her left leg exposing more skin than she would have thought appropriate. Her curls were styled in a fancy updo, and her makeup was equally as bold as her dress, finalized with a red lip. She knew that she looked good, and that’s what scared her.

Chris had been looking at her like that all day, and she couldn’t keep handling it.

If she could even consider it handling. Managing was perhaps a better term. Poorly managing was the perfect term.

Kaya ripped open the door and plastered on a fake smile. “Happy?”

And there it was, his eyes widened and softened as he gave her a onceover. “And don’t tell me I look beautiful, cause’ I already know it.”

Kaya figured if she said it for him, she wouldn’t have to deal with the weird and uncomfortable knotting in her stomach that she experienced every time he complimented her.

And it worked, he said nothing, only helping to hold up her dress as they walked to the SUV that would escort them. In the car, she was also pleasantly surprised that he didn’t attempt to make small talk with her during the drive. She was certain, however, that it was because he took at least three different work calls during that time.

She made drafted Tik Toks in the meantime.

When they finally arrived, Kaya nearly ran out of the car right then and there.

“Is that a red carpet?” Her mouth dropped. “What the hell? You said nothing about having to walk a damn carpet that is red.”

He chuckled. Kaya realized his hand was on the exposed portion of her thigh. “Stay close to me, and I’ll take care of you. You’ll be fine.”

Kaya was used to having eyes on her, but that didn’t mean she liked it, especially when it didn’t involve money being thrown her way. “I don’t have to say anything, do I?”

He squeezed her thigh. “You’ll most likely receive compliments.”

“I can handle that,” she spoke more to herself than him. “Just long as no one asks if I prefer cats over dogs or whatever shit they ask.”

He laughed quietly and looked at her. “You ready?”

No. “Yes.”

Chris climbed out the car first so that he could help her out of the vehicle, and as soon as she stepped out, she cursed to herself. There were so many damn people. People taking photographs. People being photographed. People helping both the people the photographed and the photographers. And then there was her. She felt so out of place.

If he wasn’t already holding her hand, she would have grabbed for his.

Kaya used her left hand to hold up her dress, while making sure that she stayed close to Chris who led the way, smiling for the camera while sparing her glances every so often to assess her level of comfort.

Kaya played along, evoking a smile as she posed with him for a few photos. That’s when it started again. Like the photoshoot from a few hours ago, she found herself feeling less forced and more comfortable. Like, it was natural.

Like it was real.

Kaya was eventually allowed to stand to the side as he gave a few interviews, some in English, most in Italian. She’d meant to ask him earlier when the hell he learned to speak so many languages. This was the third she’d learned of. She had a feeling at least one or two journalists asked about her, because he would look in her direction and shoot a wink or something of the sort.

Her smile was a natural reaction.

The process was less daunting than she anticipated, not that she’d ever admit that to him. It was once they moved inside that Kaya realized they’d yet to reach the hard part. That hardest part was “socializing” with the guests, many of which were white, spicy white at best. She spotted some minorities but found that they were just as distant as the rest.

The vim of the event was welcoming, however, which confused Kaya to some extent. She simplified it down to the event was nice, the people were trash, and Chris was both an ass and a gentleman for forcing her to come.

He’d introduced her to a few people, most of which spoke poor English. That, she could acknowledge, was nice. Not the strained English, but his obvious concern for her wellbeing. He was going out of his way to make her feel as comfortable as he could.

It was also irritating because it resurfaced those damn knots.

They were seated at a table, and he was texting someone when she leaned over and tugged on his sleeve. Kaya also took a moment to appreciate how nice he looked. The man was something sinful in a suit. “I think I know him.”

He looked up, immediately locking his phone. “Who?”

She gestured with her chin. “The guy over there talking to the girl with the green dress. But don’t look at them.”

His eyes lifted to the ceiling. Right before he proceeded to look right in that direction.

She laughed despite her irritation. “What did I literally just fucking say?”

“I’ll never understand why people want to do something without actually doing it. I don’t have the time.” She shook her head. He was so impatient. “And how do you know him?”

She lifted a brow. He asked with a newfound sense of urgency. If she didn’t know any better, she would have guessed it came from a place of jealousy.

Kaya studied the stranger across the room again when her eyes widened. “I know. He’s that actor from that porn movie we watched.”

“We don’t watch porn, Kaya. We make it.”

“Stop it.” She leaned closer, hating that her smile contrasted the frustration she felt with how vulgar he was speaking in such a public setting. “And you know the movie where they…..ya know, basically the whole time, and he kept asking in that godawful delivery, are you lost, baby girl?”

Her equally terrible impression caused him to laugh quietly. “I think that is him.”

“I told you.” She spoke a little louder than she would have liked due to her excitement at being correct. “He looks better on screen.”

Chris glanced over at him once more and scoffed. “He’s scrawny.”

“Sir, not everyone is like you and built like a fucking tanker.”

“Not my problem.”

Kaya rolled her eyes and gathered her dress. “I’ll be back. I have to use the restroom.” She stood and leaned over, arms around him from behind as she whispered. “Try not to be too much of a dick while I’m gone, okay?”

He turned to look at her. “And where’s the fun in that?”

Turns out finding the bathroom was a harder task than she’d anticipated. She’d asked one of the servers while maneuvering through the crowd, but it also turned out that Kaya wasn’t the best with directions. She did find it, though.

Eventually.

Kaya was navigating her way back to Chris when she was stopped by a man in a suit along the way.

He was of average height, average build, and average attraction. She was immediately annoyed.

“Hi,” Kaya greeted with a tight smile.

“Hello,” he smiled. Add in average dental health. “You are very beautiful.”

Kaya realized he didn’t have an accent, either. American, most likely. “Uhh, thank you.” When she moved to walk past him, he blocked her. “Sir, I really should—”

“How much?”

Her eyes darted to either side. “I’m sorry?”

“Money is no issue, as I’m sure you can see, and I’d like you for a week.” He stepped closer, bringing his hand to trail it down her arm. “Longer even, perhaps.”

“Sir, I have no idea what you are talking about, and please do not touch me.” It wasn’t so much of a request as much as it was a demand. “Now, I really should—”

“You’re not American.” Kaya continued to be confused as hell when his eyes lit up with excitement. “That explains why you look so exotic.” Confusion easily morphed into rage as she finally caught on to what he was referring to. “I bet you feel di—”

“You’re disgusting,” she hissed, pulling away from him. “I am not a fucking prostitute—”

“Call it what you want, girl,” he dismissed. “I don’t judge. I can pay you well.”

“Go fuck yourself, you sick son of a bitch,” she cursed, turning away when he grabbed her arm. “Let me go.”

“You think that you’re special?” He’d taken on another tone, one that conveyed his anger at being rejected. “The fuckin’ stall I just pissed in is worth more than you, bitch.”

Kaya refused to allow him to see her cry, but she’d be lying if she tried to say that his words didn’t sting, especially his next verbal attack.

“You can slap on that expensive dress and let Hemsworth make you feel special, but I know, you know, and everyone else in this fucking place knows that you’re nothing but a cheap, illegal whore—” Panic arose when he moved his hand to the exposed skin of her thigh, squeezing tightly. His hand started to inch upward when Kaya acted on instinct. He cursed aloud while Kaya gasped as she realized that she’d silenced him with her fist dead square in the middle of his face. “You fucking bitch!”

Shock and fear took over as Kaya gathered the bottom of her dress and ran, as much as the gown and her heels would allow, that is. Certain he was going to chase her for retribution, she consistently looked back, unaware that she needed to be just as aware of what was in front as what was behind.

She shrieked and immediately went to pull herself away from the strong body she’d collided with.

“Kaya.” Refocusing her attention, she looked up and realized it was Chris. “Where the hell—” He stopped amid his statement when he took in her appearance and realized that she was crying. “What happened?”

“Nothing.” Kaya looked down, speaking more to herself than him. Not that it mattered. He was judging based on what he saw instead of what she said. He’d learned by now that her words rarely matched the truth. “Let’s just go—”

“Kaya,” he repeated, softer. Chris brought his hands to her face, forcing her to meet his gaze as he asked again, slowly. “What happened?” A strike of anger flashed in his blue eyes. “Did someone touch you?”

“No,” she answered, quickly. Too quickly.

The anger escalated exponentially. “Who? Tell me.”

Kaya could have slapped herself. She wasn’t helping the situation. She was making it worse. “It doesn’t matter, I hit him, and now he’s probably going to sue you—”

“Where is he?” Chris was looking behind her, eyes flaming. He was livid. “Show me. Now.”

“No.” Speaking was becoming an increasing challenge, especially against the backdrop of overwhelming emotions. Everything she’d been feeling, preventing herself from feeling, and afraid to acknowledge was gradually bubbling to the surface. “Just—just let me go back to the hotel. I’m messing everything up for you.”

He calmed for a second, realizing what was happening. Chris was unfamiliar with this side of her. Unfamiliar with seeing her so vulnerable. “What?”

Kaya suddenly realized that her eyes were burning again. She was fighting back tears. “I’ll give you back the money for the day, it’s—it’s fine, you’re better off without me here—”

Her offer to pay him incensed Chris. This wasn’t about the money. It stopped being about the money a long time ago, even if he hadn’t realized that until today. “I don’t want the fucking money, Kaya.”

She shook her head and closed her eyes. “Don’t—don’t say that.”

“Why? It’s the truth.”

“Please,” she plead. Control over her emotions was a battle she’d all but lost at that point. Her words, she was certain, would be next.

He raised his voice. Chris sensed, saw that she was uncomfortable, but he also realized that this was what she needed. A push. “Why?”

“Because this all about the fucking money, okay?” She matched his volume, accepting that her tears were going to fall no matter how much she willed them not to. She’d lost the war. “It has to be about the money, because if it isn’t then that means you care, and—you can’t, alright?”

He studied her, wondering if she realized this conversation was difficult for him too. He brought his hand to the side of her face. “Why is it so impossible for you to accept that I fucking care about you?”

She looked up, glistening eyes and wavering voice. “Because then I have to admit that I care about you too, and I can’t do that.” She spoke to herself, as if vocalizing it would cement a decision that was already out of her hands. “I won’t do it.”

“Why?” He pressed. Chris brought his other hand to the other side of her face, cupping it and moving closer. He gave zero fucks about where they were and who could have possibly overheard. “Why are you fighting this so hard?”

She pulled herself away from him, back colliding against the wall as she blurted, “because all I do is hurt the people I care about alright?” In that moment, Kaya realized she was so far gone that the point of return was no longer an option. Her mouth trembled as she struggled to form her next sentence, listing off names with her fingers as props. “Mami, Papi, Nia. Hell, my own brother is dead because of me.” A beat. “I’ll only hurt you, and I care about you too much to do that.”

“Kaya—"

A newfound heaviness started to weigh upon her chest, another blockade to her speech. “I’m standing here in a dress I can’t afford, a building I can’t even fucking pronounce, and with a man I don’t deserve.”

His voice lowered. “Did you ever think that maybe, just maybe, I don’t deserve you?” Kaya looked at him, her eyes softening before she squinted, her face scrunching up in obvious pain.

He took note of this. As invested as Chris was in finally getting Kaya to open up about how she really felt, her wellbeing would always be his primary concern.

“Kaya.” He placed his hands on her waist, steadying her. “What’s wrong?”

“I—” She blinked several times, blinding lights obscuring her vision. “I—can’t—" Kaya felt the firmness of his chest, inhaled the scent of his cologne, and heard her name on his lips before everything faded to black.

-----

She awoke on her side, body clutched against a pillow, and a thin sheet covering half her body. Never one to take her time returning to her senses, she forced herself to sit up, eyes still scrunched from the sleep.

Looking down she realized she was dressed in only one of Chris’s dress shirts, her dress discarded.

Memory returned as Kaya replayed the events that transpired prior to her slumber. The photoshoot. The party. The asshole.

Chris.

“I don’t care. Tell them to send it in the mail or something.”

She recognized his voice traveling from the living room area, prompting her to swing her legs over the bed, her toes submerging into the soft carpet. She’d never been in such a fine hotel where the carpeting probably cost more than six months’ worth of rent on her one-bedroom apartment.

“Evans, I don’t give a flying fuck about any of that right now. You can handle it. I don’t care.”

Kaya contemplated remaining where she was, eavesdropping without being detected. She quickly decided against it. She’d done enough.

Her feet carried her out of the room, and she stood in the doorway where she saw he was standing against the massive window that provided a breathtaking overview of the city.

Again, she considered leaving him be, but he either had exceptional peripheral vision or caught her reflection in the window because he spun around. Kaya’s eyebrows furrowed when she realized he was still dressed in his suit, with the expectation of the jacket and dress shirt which were both discarded, leaving the white undershirt.

Uncomfortable with the way he was looking at her, more concern than that, she settled onto the sofa, pulling a decorative pillow to her chest as she crossed her legs.

“I have to go,” he spoke briefly before pulling the phone from his ear and hanging up.

Kaya swallowed. He’d yet to speak, so she took the opportunity to do so. “Still don’t believe me when I said I’m a hot mess?”

“What happened tonight, Kaya?”

“Which part?” She knew that playing coy wasn’t the best route, but she was forever stubborn and would fight until she had nothing left. “Where I ruined your evening, assaulted a millionaire, told you one of my deepest secrets, or fainted in your arms? There’s a lot.”

“All of it.”

She looked away and licked her lips. Kaya felt cornered, absolutely trapped. Emotionally. She’d always assumed being physically stuck would feel far more suffocating and frightening. She was wrong.

Kaya considered her options, though far and few in between. She could deflect. She was a master at that. She could redirect blame onto him. Call him out on even making her go on the trip, for not telling her ahead of time what to expect, maybe throw in a few insults. And lastly, the most frightening of them all, she could be honest.

That was the scariest of them all.

“I lied to you.” The words spilled out before she realized it, but Kaya accepted the fact that she was tired. There was only so much she could carry, and she’d reached her limits. “My—my parents aren’t dead. They still live in the same house in Parlier that I grew up in with Denes. He’s—he was my brother.” It felt strange talking about, verbalizing what she’d quietly struggled with for so many years. And yet, there was a peace that accompanied the release. “He was such a beautiful little boy, but….different. He didn’t talk much, life skills were….hard for him, and he had these fixations on certain things. He didn’t like change.”

“Kaya, you don’t—”

“When I was eleven, and he was eight, my parents found out they were pregnant. They’d been trying for so long….they were so happy.” She roughly wiped at her face to do away with the silent tears that fell. The crying, however, was inevitable. “One day, they had a checkup appointment, and the babysitter fell through, so they asked me to watch Denes.” She nodded slowly, reverting to the same rush of emotions she felt that day. “I was so….mad, because my friend had just gotten Guitar Hero, and I was supposed to walk down to her house so we could play it.” To that day, Kaya felt a strong surge of rage whenever she ran across a throwback picture or read an article referring to that game. It was a trigger.

“My parents promised that I could go when they returned, but I just couldn’t wait.” Her nose turned up with disgust, disgust directed 100% inward. “I just had to go play that stupid fucking game.”

“Denes loved birds. They were one of his fixations. They think—they think he saw one outside our living room window or something and walked outside to see if he could catch it because, of course, I forgot to lock the front door.” She stared off into space before closing her eyes. “I had just walked into my friend’s house when I heard someone scream like I’ve never heard a scream before.” Kaya tugged the pillow closer to her chest and lowered her head. “I ran back so fast because I thought—I thought I could help him. I thought I could save him.” Her voice cracked. “—But there was so much blood, and he was so hurt—he died in the middle of the street, bleeding, terrified, and it was all my fault.”

Chris closed his eyes and shook his head. “Kaya—”

“They never found the driver,” she added quietly, chewing on the inside of her cheek. “The shock of it all……it was too much for my mom, and she miscarried.” Kaya laughed, but there wasn’t a trace of humor. “I spiraled after Denes passed. Everything bad and terrible I could get myself into, I did. I—I skipped class, I partied, I drank, I tried drugs.” She scoffed. “I lost my virginity when I was thirteen to some guy whose name I still don’t know because I was so drunk.” She leaned back into the sofa, staring at the intricate pattern of the rug. “I just—at the time, I thought if I did enough, I could make my parents hate me, because it’s what I deserved. But for everything I tried, they kept giving me chance after chance.”

“So, then I attempted suicide, twice, and I couldn’t even do that right.” She groaned and wiped at her eyes again. The cuffs of the shirt were nearly soaked. “I realized that God or the universe or whomever clearly wanted me to suffer and to live with my guilt, but in the midst of trying to punish myself, I failed to realize that all I’d done was cause my parents more pain.”

“Day of my high school graduation, I woke up at the crack of dawn to pack up my bags, told my parents that I was going out with some friends, but I’d be home by 7—and I haven’t seen or spoken with them since.”

She clapped and lifted her hands. “And there you have it. You’ve now seen me naked; you’ve seen me cry, and now you know that I’m a murderer—”

“You’re not a murderer, Kaya,” he was finally able to complete his sentence, still very much in shock over what she’d disclosed. “And what happened to your brother wasn’t your fault.”

Chris watched her demeanor soften, shifting from her previous facetious tone to a more somber tone. “You’re just saying that to make me feel better.”

“I’m saying it because it’s the truth. You were a child.”

She shrugged sadly. “So was he.”

“That still doesn’t make it your fault.”

She turned away from where he sat across from her. She hadn’t even realized he’d moved from his initial position by the window. Untangling her legs, she moved the pillow to the side and stood in front of him. “Why are you so nice to me? You should be running for the hills.”

Chris brought his hands to her waist and pulled her in between his spread legs. “Why do you keep asking questions you already know the answers to?”

“Even after everything I’ve done?” She whispered, emotion betraying her for the umpteenth time that day. “You—you still—you still feel….like that about me?”

“You’re stubborn, impulsive, argumentative, flippant, and undoubtedly one of the most complicated women I’ve ever met.” He slowly stood up, never once breaking eye contact as he cupped her face, fingers brushing away the dampness of her flushed cheeks. “And yet, seeing you smile is the highlight of my day.”

She chuckled and nervously cleared her throat. “So, was today subpar? Like, medium light? Half-light? It all went downhill after 12pm.”

He shook his head and kissed her forehead. “You are, in fact, a hot mess.”

Her fingers grasped at his sleeves. “I really am sorry about ruining your evening.”

“You didn’t ruin my evening, Kaya.” He brought his hand to her hair, pushing back the tendrils that had fallen from her updo. “Thank you for opening to me. I know that wasn’t easy.”

“It’s a lot easier opening up my legs,” she muttered, watching as he closed his eyes. “I’m sorry—you’re right. It’s—it’s not easy, and I don’t like talking about….feelings.” Her eyes lifted as she chewed on her bottom lip. “But, I do have feelings for you.” She shut her eyes and licked her top lip. “And there’s something else I need to tell you.”

His gaze softened. “Anything.”

It was so simple, the opportunity was available, the setting was perfect. She’d already told him the hardest part, now all she had to do was tell him the rest. The problem though, was that what she’d shared hadn’t changed much. It only helped him to understand her better. It would potentially improve their relationship.

This would destroy it.

She cleared her throat again. “If you tell anyone I’m capable of crying, I will smother you in your sleep.”

He chuckled and kissed her temple. “It’s late. I’m going to shower.” He studied her. “Try not to get into any more trouble, yeah?”

She smiled softly. “I make no promises.”

He gave her side a gentle squeeze before yawning as he walked back into the bedroom. Finally alone, she fell back onto the sofa and hugged the pillow against her body. Kaya felt both disgust and frustration. If there was a perfect moment to tell him, that was it, and now it was gone.

She was running out of time

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TAGS: @islandvamp @toni9 @destinyg237 @tashawar @valkryienymph @letsshamelessqueen-m @missyperle @kpizzletrash @brittyevans @mani-lifes @amorestevens @periodtcevans @hello-therree @shegoesbyarose @lettytheletdown @yanniebunnie @iwrite4poc @nycoledon @fangurlingismyforte @babe-im-bi @amirra88 @cocoamoonmalfoy @goldenrosexx @liquorlaughslove @ljstraightnochaser @jurneesjourney @bestyums-ever84 @notacamelthatsmywife @champagnesugamama @cest-la69vie @yanniebunny5151 @goldenrosexx

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#chris hemsworth #chris hemsworth fanfiction #chris hemsworth fandom #chris hemsworth fanfic #chris hemsworth x black!reader #chris hemsworth x black!oc #chris hemsworth x woc!oc #series: seasons of love

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wallwriterstuff · 4 years ago

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Get It? ‘Cause Your Old? ||Felix Volturi x Reader||

Warnings: A bit of swearing, some mild angst and mentions of insecurity.

Words: 2728

Summary: Felix is very touchy about his age, so how is the reader going to show him it really doesn’t matter to them?

Since meeting your mate you had gotten to know him rather well, quirks and all. Felix was a summer baby. He liked to swim in his spare time. He had degrees in graphic design, architectural design and electrical engineering, because (though he had learned since becoming immortal) he still found reading and writing quite difficult and preferred more creative subjects he could use his hands for. He loved the smell of lilacs, but hated the colour purple after coming across Barney the Dinosaur once in a shopping mall where the toy store had a character visit occurring. Your absolute favourite fact about your mate was his age however, and it was your favourite fact because you didn’t really know it.

“Are you kidding me? The Romans! Felix you’re not just old you’re ancient!”

“And you are obnoxious, shortness.”

Felix did not find this fact as amusing as you did.

You had begged and pleaded to figure out when his birthday was, determined to see if you could make one of those Happy Birthday banners where the number was replaced with question marks. He had refused to tell you with a knowing gleam in his eye, his expression stern. He’d found rather creative ways to shut you up. In fact, it had become a habit you realised, that every time you brought up the topic he found some way to silence you.

“I just don’t understand! I don’t want to do anything mean, I just want to make sure he has a good birthday! I mean, you lot never celebrate anything. Who do I have to kill to get some balloons around here?” You huffed, resting your elbows on your knees and dropping your chin into your hands. Since the Guard were away on a mission you had been left alone in the castle for the past three days, the secretaries too temporary for you to seek comfort in and the other vampires too aloof to consider human company any company at all. Santiago was the only exception to this rule, as he trained with Felix often and therefore ended up spending a lot of time with you as a by product of your presence in the training room. You never really saw anything per say since they moved so fast but occasionally, they slowed down to practice techniques and gave you a good view of the complex moves your mate could manage.

“You have to realise that we don’t really place the same value on birthdays as you do,” Santiago reminded you, “To some of us, we’ve had so many they’ve simply lost meaning, for others they are reminders of things we would like to forget.” Your brows furrowed. Who would want to forget their own birthday? Birthdays were so much fun! You spent them with friends and family eating good food and doing things you loved...

“You want to forget your own birthday?” you asked, the confusion evident in your voice. Santiago tilted his head.

“You forget most of us were born when your birth status dictated your lot in life. Some of us were born poor and we lost loved ones young, others of us were forced to marry young.” He pointed out. It was definitely food for thought. Felix had been born a really long time ago and you really had no gauge as to what life might have been like for him as a human; hell, you weren’t even sure Felix remembered what his life had been like. Santiago chuckled, clearly following your line of thought, and you couldn’t help but stick your tongue out at him.

When Felix returned to your side two days later you were quieter than usual. You couldn’t bring yourself to just forget about your conversation with Santiago. If Felix noticed he didn’t say anything but there was an increased amount of physical affection that let you know, in his own silent way, he wasn’t sure what was wrong with you but he wanted you to feel better. Simple things like a squeeze of your hand here and there or a tender brushing of a hand along your hair. It took you almost another week before you cracked.

“Why won’t you tell me your birthday?” you asked, curled into his side as you watched a movie together one evening. Felix tensed ever so slightly.

“Is that what you’ve been moping about the place for? Really?” he sounded both incredulous and exasperated, like he wished you’d drop the topic and couldn’t believe you hadn’t. Your tenacity was something he did want to admire but by god did you obsess over the most trivial things. Bobbing your head you sat up, frowning slightly.

“I was talking to Santiago about it and he said that maybe-“

“You shouldn’t have bothered speaking to any about it. It’s not worth wasting your time over.” Felix said firmly. You recoiled at that, not expecting his tone to be quite so sharp. Maybe Santiago was right and Felix didn’t enjoy remembering his birthday, but if that was the case all he needed to do was say! He didn’t need to get snappy about it. You sat up, turning your gaze away from Felix and towards the fire in the hearth.

“It’s my time, I’ll waste it how I like.” You muttered.

“I didn’t bargain to give you more time as a human for such trivial things, you wanted to finish your degree remember? I don’t see much work going towards that recently since your brain is so occupied by the unimportant.” Felix’s comment was almost snide, and you couldn’t help the hurt that ripped through you. You immediately scooted away from him, pushing up off of the sofa and moving to grab your bookbag. Felix sighed. “Now where are you going?” he asked.

“The library, I’ll sleep there to since I’m wasting so much time elsewhere.” You bit back.

“Now you’re being ridiculous,” Felix huffed, flitting to stand in front of you, “This isn’t something we need to argue about, let’s just – Y/N!” you pushed past him and made for the door, determined that he wouldn’t see the tears welling in your eyes. You knew he hadn’t meant to be so harsh, but his words had implied just how worthless your humanity was to him. You had thought there were perhaps things about your human self he enjoyed; he commented on your warmth when he held you often, and how quiet the room would be without your heartbeat. Was this really the only reason you were as you were? Your education was the only reason he cared about your humanity? You had hoped at least one of your qualities would take the top spot on the list of ‘Top 10 Things to Love About Y/N’!

Felix didn’t follow you, and you didn’t bother to return to your room either, your stubbornness winning out as you did exactly what you said you would. It was Alec who found you, curled up on your side on the sofa in front of the fire. It was the only thing keeping you warm considering you had forgotten a jacket or blanket of any kind but your pride wouldn’t let you go back for one.

“I’m almost certain Felix has a bed in his room that is more than suitable to sleep in.” Alec quipped. You scowled at him, irritated by your inability to get a proper nights rest and the fact Felix had just let you walk away from such a stupid argument. He’d not come to find you either, though you hadn’t exactly gone to find him either.

“We’re fighting.” You grumbled. Alec’s head tilted.

“About what exactly?” he asked.

“Stupid stuff.” You curled up tighter with a shiver. Alec snorted.

“So your resolution is to freeze in the library all night? Are humans selectively stupid?” he wondered.

“Not you to!” you complained, “There’s nothing wrong with being human!”

“Ah, and we get to the crux of the problem.” He chuckled, leafing through the books to decide which he wanted to read tonight. Your scowl only darkened. It was no secret that your humanity was not favoured among the residents of Volterra and you really couldn’t be bothered for another argument with the witch twin about the perks of remaining mortal.

“If you’re here you’re not in your room, right?” you asked. Alec faced you with the most dead-eyed stare you’d ever seen, and if you hadn’t known the boy any better you might have feared for your life in that moment.

“An astute observation, allow me to counter. If I return to my room and find you in it, I’ll show you exactly why it doesn’t pay to be human here.” He promised. You all but ran from the room, leaving your book bag behind as collateral damage, and Felix welcomed you back silently with nothing more than a nod. You ignored him in favour of getting ready for bed, grateful for the warm covers and completely unaware of the way the giant pressed a feather light kiss to your head as you slept with a mumbled apology his pride wouldn’t let you hear.

It had been almost a month since the day you had met when you were hit by the brainwave that seemed to just…solve everything. It had been purely accidental. You had gone shopping, in need of some new socks, when you saw them. They were nothing spectacular, just plain black with some little green dinosaurs all over them, but the moment you had thought of what a funny little present they would be for your ancient-ass mate you had realised that they could be a birthday present.

Who said Felix needed to tell you his actual birthday? Your stupid fight a few days ago was still causing tension and it needed to be resolved; since the big dummy didn’t want to back down it seemed you (as loathe as you were to do so) would have to. You had everything you needed by the time you arrived back at the castle, completely forgetting what you had gone out for originally of course, and hurried back to your room to prepare your surprise for him. You had had helium balloons pumped up that said Happy Birthday on the side, but you crossed out the birth part and scribbled in sharpie beneath the printed message so the balloon read Happy Birthday we met instead. You had snagged an anniversary banner and some wrapping paper of course for his socks, including a card and some cake for yourself.

You just had to wait for your mate to finish his guard duty for the day.

With your slice of cake in hand, you had curled up on the sofa to eat it and watch some old reruns of your favourite sci-fi shows while you waited, not daring to look up and see his reaction when you finally heard the door open. There was a very long moment of silence where you dared not even swallow before he finally spoke.

“Happy day we met?” he questioned finally. He stood just in front of the door, his eyebrows raised and impressive arms folded. You merely nodded once and held out your present to him in silence. His eyes betrayed his surprise but he didn’t comment on it as he came to sit beside you. He went to open the envelope attached to the colourful paper and you reached out to stop him.

“Present first.” You insisted. Felix’s eyes rolled but he obeyed, tearing away the paper to reveal his dinosaur socks. There was a pregnant pause as he digested the meaning.

“Really?”

“Just open the damn card next.” You huffed. Neither you nor your mate were very good at speaking about how you felt, but writing…well that you could do. Felix took his time, and you knew better than to interrupt him since it took him so much effort to read simple things. You suspected he had never been taught as a human and was probably dyslexic, so when he turned and the Volturi tried to teach him to read he very much struggle; it was less learning and more remembering what words were supposed to look like, and since those words looked wrong reading was not his most favourite thing to do. The silence stretched and you wondered if perhaps you’d written too much in your card, but just as you were about to speak up Felix disappeared from your sight. Your jaw dropped, your eyes bugging slightly. What the hell did that mean? Was that an outright rejection? Did he still not get what you were trying to do?

“Y/N.” his voice was soft behind you, and you turned to find him down on one knee with a velvet box in hand. Your eyes widened and you scrambled to your feet with a dry mouth.

“Whoa whoa whoa Felix I know I just wrote the L word and all but a ring is-“

“Just open it you idiot.” He smiled slightly as you swallowed past the lump in your throat and hesitantly reached for the box. There was a beautiful silver band inside, very plain, but there was an infinity symbol intwined around it that was studded with tiny diamonds that glistened in the light the same way his skin did. Your eyes widened. It was gorgeous, and after the way you’d treated him it felt entirely undeserved.

“Felix…” you trailed off.

“I had it inscribed.” He told you. You very gently pulled the promise ring from its cushion and tilted it till you could see the word he’d had painstakingly etched into the metal.

Forever.

Felix stood till he was towering over you once more, his touch tender and soft as he carefully slid the ring on to your middle finger. His brows were somewhat furrowed, and he didn’t meet your eyes, but he didn’t let go of your hands either.

“Are you still mad at me?” you asked. Felix sighed.

“I was foolish to ever argue with you to being with, neither of us put forward our arguments clearly enough to see there was nothing to argue about.” he admitted, thumb stroking over your knuckles.

“I’m sorry for being so stubborn, I just wanted to celebrate you…you’re kind of cool so…” you stumbled over your words, blushing slightly. Felix chuckled, his free hand moving up to trace your blush with the backs of his knuckles. You leaned into his touch, understanding the gesture as a silent moment of appreciation for you. While he leaned in to kiss the top of your head, you gazed down adoringly at your ring.

“I shouldn’t have gotten so defensive, I should have told you outright. I really don’t know my birthday since we didn’t have calendars, but I lived as a slave. Every year I prayed to my Gods to deliver me from my servitude, and with every winter that passed I remained a slave.” Felix confessed quietly. You pulled him into a tight hug, burying your face in his chest. It was really no wonder Felix had gotten so defensive, they were not the best memories to have, fuzzy or not.

“I’m sorry,” You mumbled, “I don’t care how old you are, and I won’t bug you about your birthday anymore, I just…wanted you to know how much you meant to me.” His chuckle vibrated through your skull.

“There will be plenty of anniversaries for us to come, shortness. I never meant to hurt you by implying I didn’t care for your human self. There are many things about you I will miss when you turn, but the sooner you do the sooner I can start forever with you…patience has never been my strong suit.” He tilted your chin upward, red eyes boring into yours as his lips inched closer.

“Truce?” you whispered. He hummed in agreement, thoroughly distracted by the way he moulded his mouth to yours in a slow, sweet kiss. With forever at your fingertips you would find plenty of way to celebrate your mate, but for now you would carry on into this blissful little part of your promised forever, savouring the little ways you were learning to love the dinosaur that had decided out of all those he’d met over centuries of existence, you were the one he wanted to keep at his side.

#twilight #twilight fanfiction #volturi #felix volturi #felix volturi x reader #alec volturi #yes i really do headcanon that Felix can't read #Demetri beats the hell out of anyone who teases him for it

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melisa-may-taylor72 · 4 years ago

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ROGER TAYLOR: THE QUEEN'S SOLOIST- PELO MAGAZINE- JULY, 1981

As a group, QUEEN has accomplished almost everything that a rock band can dream: big international tours always crowned by success, exploration and conquest of new territories, several albums number one in sales, double live album, conceptual album, soundtrack of a film. And now they will complete one of the few missing achievements: A solo album. The first to set foot in these waters was Roger Taylor, the drummer.

Although Roger Taylor began his musical career as a teenager, when he wanted to become the best drummer in the world, he soon realized that it was going to be difficult for him to reach those heights, and changed his goal for that of knowing success through Queen. However, the years passed, there were fewer challenges to accept, and then now the thoughtful and coherent Taylor decided to make "Fun In Space", his first solo album (which promises to be a blast), revolving around the subject of science fiction, which has always fascinated him. Two years ago he started working on this project, in Queen's studios in Montreux, Switzerland, gathering all the material and all the ideas that did not fit within the musical spectrum of the band, but obviously, were going to serve him in this work outside the band.

FUN IN SPACE

When he began to think about this project, Taylor had doubts about whether or not his bandmates would accept his need to make a solo album, and whether or not they would like the result. Today, after the album's initial success, everyone seems to be happy with Taylor and his work; even he himself, plans to start with another solo album as soon as the recording of Queen's next work, in this month, is finished.

Taylor composed, played and arranged his entire disco-galactic experience. "Fun In Space" reflects, from beginning to end, all of Taylor's fascination with the cosmic and the ethereal, which he skillfully mixes with rock. Technically, it's an impressive achievement, but overall the album gives the impression of being, seen as a whole, a toy of a rich man who has nothing else to do 😠😠😠😠😠. It lacks a little feeling, is lyrically lazy, androids abound. On the inside of the cover, Taylor says: "I like it. If you don't like it, I'm sorry." 😛There are really nice parts, like the acoustic introduction to "My Country" or the riffs to "Let's Get Crazy", but, again, something is missing. There's no doubt about Taylor's talent, which is perfectly appreciated within Queen, and there's no doubt that most of the band's fans will like this album either. But,... But maybe Taylor's opinions are better than the critics. (They sure are!!!)😏😏😏😏

INFINITE HORIZONS

-Is there a particular reason why you chose this subject as the core of your first solo album?

Yes, I've always liked the spatial, the cosmic, I've always been attracted to it, ever since I was a kid. I have tons of books on the subject at home. Graphically and imaginatively, it's a very strong subject, with infinite horizons. In this field there is everything to invent, to say, to create, and we have to take advantage of it while we are on time. Another reason why I chose a spatial topic is that I wanted to start from something totally distant and different from Queen, to make the thing varied.

-What did the others say about the finished album?

Well, when I announced them that I was going to do a solo album, Freddie was the first to react, and he said: "From now on I tell you that if it's a piece of crap I'll tell you without any consideration". But finally everyone liked it, I even think they like it a lot more than I expected. I don't think they have any reason to be upset that I want to diversify a bit, because they have to know that just because I make a solo album doesn't mean that I want to separate myself from Queen or that I'm not happy with the work with the band. Sometimes you just want to do something different.

Did you ever think of doing a solo tour playing your album live?

No, not at all, it wouldn't make the slightest sense. This album was, for me, a bit like an exercise, a way to show people that drummers can do other things besides drumming.

Do you think this album could be a consequence of feeling frustrated for not being the main figure of the band?

I don't know, I haven't thought about it... Yeah, I guess there must be some of that, to some extent. But I feel good and satisfied with my role within the band. My professional life is totally dedicated to Queen. This album I made it, more than anything, to give it a bit of free rein to my personality, to liberate me a little in an non-group aspect. There seems to be a kind of tendency for drummers to make solo albums nowadays: Phill Collins has just made one, Nick Mason, from Pink Floyd, is bringing out his...

What do you think of yourself as a drummer?

When I started playing I wanted to be the best drummer in the world, but when I heard John Bonham and Buddy Rich, I realized that this aspiration didn't make the slightest sense on my part. I don't think I can expect so much from my technical skills. Besides, I don't like drum solos anymore; I think the era of the drummer's shining in rock is over and over a long time ago.

But then what is your professional goal? To be a well-known drummer and nothing else?

No. What happens is that the story of pretending to be an excellent drummer no longer attracts me. I'm part of a band; no more, no less. That's it, and that's enough for me. For me, the most important thing is not to get the first place in the world as a drummer, but to reach to people. That's what I'm most interested in right now, and that's what I'm trying to achieve.

THE FUTURE SOLOIST

Do you think being a great drummer and reaching out to people are opposites?

Not opposite, but different. I don't criticize those who are great drummers, they are exceptional musicians. There are very few drummers who reached a truly excellent level, and they did it because they gave the drumming a new and extraordinary dimension. John Bonham was the greatest rock drummer of all time. And, of course, so was Keith Moon.

Do you think the success of your album is or will be due to, basic and mainly, the fact that you are a member of Queen, or do you think your own name will also sell too?

It's very likely that there going to be a certain number of albums sold because I did it, Roger Taylor, Queen member, or not. I think the name weighs in either case. But you have to remember that the individual parts of a band are not equal to the unit, to the total result. However, I think there will be a lot of people who will buy the album itself, because they like it, regardless of my name and the band I belong to. In general, people don't just buy records; they buy what they want.

Do you plan to continue making solo albums in the future?

It's very likely that if I have more ideas, things that interest me and I like, I'll make another solo album. But it's not certain at the moment. Anyway, I want it to be very clear that for me Queen will always occupy the first place.

@natromanxoff, @mephisto92, @moviestorian, @x5vale, @39-brian, @onegoldenglance, @crosmopolitan, @an-abyss-called-life, @his-majesty-king-mercury, @i-live-for-queen, @brian-39-may, @toomuchlove-willkillyou, @brimaymay, @sail-away-sweet-sister, @drummerqueenrmt, @old-fashioned-roger-boy, @briianmaay, @l-over-bo-y, @inui-mycroft, @deacytits, @iminlovewithrogscar, @drowseoftaylor, @brianmayislongaway, @balticlover, @astrophysicist-guitar-god, @miez-lakatz, @brianmayoucease, @jesus-in-a-life-boat, @aslongasthereismusic, @roger-taylors-car, @silapril, @sherrifanciesfriskyfreddie, @tenderbri, @brianmydear, @thosequeenboys, @millionairewaltz-carpediem, @painandpleasure86, @bribrifrenchfry, @xlucylennonx, @a-night-at-the-abbey-road, @inthedayswhenlandswerefew, @madformeddowstaylor, @queenrogertaylorfan, @let-roger-get-a-lunch, @queen-for-life, @rethought, @darlinginnuendo, @mymakeupmaybeflaking, @old-but-still-a-child, @let-roger-get-a-lunch, @warriorteam1924, @funnydressesweirdhairanddance, @painkiller80, @thefanhuman13, @yourtieddownmother, @hgmercury39, @brimi-stardust, @thefairyfellermercury, @retroromantics, @sailawaysweetbrimi, @sophiaintheskywithdiamonds, @candelataylor, @holybrianmaywritingbear, @lydiannode, @39-yellow-daffodils, @ure-gonna-loveme-when-u-seeme, @kaykaybeachgirl, @sensitivedna921, @rhysjoejoshtomfarisblog @redspecialandclogsandcurls, @briansrainbowsocks, @delilahmay39, @ohmybribri, @bless-the-queen, @infunitehearbeat

(Original Material)

#Queen #Roger Taylor #Interview #Pelo Magazine #Thank God they never played by the rules of the critics #🎵🎤💖💖#It's been a while since I published stuff #Hope you enjoy it 😊🤗😉

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hoodwinkd1 · 4 years ago

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Your Eyes Whispered Ch 4-7

Fic Summary: After Eris becomes High Lord, there's only one thing on his mind, now that his father is dead and he can finally leave his horrible façade behind. A slow burn romance featuring the misunderstood prince of flame and his mate, a powerful teacher who can't seem to step out of her small town life.

Chapters 1-3 here! Ch 8-10 here.

Some fuffiness, some angst, some drama, and a cliffhanger!

Chapter 4: the lingering question kept me up

"What was it like?"

The question sat between them, as tangible and heavy as a bottle of wine. A tense silence fell, after three hours of lighthearted conversation.

Rhia blushed, absolutely mortified that the question had slipped between her lips. "I'm so sorry, that was wildly intrusive of me. Pretend I didn't say anything."

They had been trading stories like playing cards when Eris had mentioned Beron, briefly and without emotion. And yet Rhia could hardly stop herself before blurting out that damned question. She silently berated herself. What kind of heartless bitch asks about patricide without prompting?

She watched him grin without humor, his eyes turning blank when they'd been alight before.

"I suppose that's quite a normal thing to wonder about," Eris replied, in a tone that sent a small shiver down Rhia's spine. "How does a person feel after murdering their father, after premeditating the act for decades."

"No, really, I'm horrible for asking," Rhia pleaded. "You shouldn't answer that, especially not for someone you barely know." Anything to get that cold stare off his face. She took a sip of wine.

Eris seemed to catch himself, rubbing a hand over his face and also reaching for his drink. "I wish I could answer. I still don't know what I feel or how I should feel. If there's anyone I would wish to tell, it would be you."

Rhia let out a small sigh in relief that he wasn't about to storm out of her kitchen. "You don't have to feel a certain way. I can't imagine how difficult it must be to balance family and duty to the rest of the Autumn Court." Afraid of pushing too far, she hesitated a moment before adding: "Every citizen I know is grateful for what you did."

He laughed. "I doubt most Fae believe me to be any better than he was. Not after centuries by his side, doing basically nothing."

"Most Fae don't know what to think," she argued. "You were never overtly cruel or kind. Honestly, I'd thought you quite shy before...this."

"I've been cruel countless times, to countless people," Eris snapped. "Maybe not to Autumn Court citizens, but certainly to other High Lords and their close ones."

Rhia sat straighter, determined to get her point across clearly. "None of us have a clue about what happens between the nobility, especially not across Court borders. Forget their opinions and focus on what we think." He opened his mouth to respond, but she wasn't finished. "I've already heard rumors about your changes in the capital and I think they'll go a very long way towards gaining favor."

She wasn't just saying that to make him feel better. Eris had restructured the tax system to account for old-money families hoarding obscene amounts of wealth, funneling most of that money to finishing repairs from the war. He'd also banned the practice of arranging marriages for children, mandating that both Fae consent after they'd passed the age of maturity.

"I shouldn't consider the opinions of other Courts?" he questioned, ignoring her other point. "Even your idol, Feyre Cursebreaker?"

Damn him. She'd made all of one comment about how incredible Feyre Archeron's feat against Amarantha was and Eris had labelled her a fanatic.

"What does she care about your leadership? Haven't we always allied with the Night Court?" Rhia had had enough of Eris' self-deprecation and obsession with what others thought.

He looked distinctly uncomfortable, moreso than she'd thought the topic warranted. "All of Rhysand's Inner Circle hate me, deservedly so. But you were asking about me murdering my father, apologies for getting off-topic."

Rhia gaped at him. "What could possibly be so uncomfortable to speak of that you'd rather discuss murdering your father?"

Eris looked down at the table. "Something for another time."

The tension was back.

"I keep asking horrible questions," Rhia said softly, attempting to catch his eye again. "You know you never have to answer me, right?"

Eris spun his glass around a few times. "I wish I wasn't afraid to tell you."

"There are things I'm afraid to tell you," Rhia blurted out. Truly, she had almost told him about that dreadful night several times now. Every time she tried to push the words out, her lungs seemed to stop working and her head seemed to start spinning. There was something incredibly terrifying about looking into someone's eyes and giving them the darkest part of herself. Even if it wasn't her fault, Rhia couldn't stop the rush of shame that overtook her whenever she thought about it.

"I meant it when I said I'd take any part of you, in any way." Eris straightened in his chair, meeting her eyes now that he felt the compulsion to comfort.

The Cauldron was either brilliant or damned for putting the two of them together. Two Fae incapable of holding normal conversations without trauma ruining an otherwise lovely evening.

"I've made things terribly awkward," Rhia scrambled for something to fill the silence. Eris smiled at her lame attempt.

"Truthfully, I thought this conversation would be much worse," he appeased. "No one's in tears or injured, so let's count 'awkward' as a win. Tell me more about your students."

And so the conversation and evening continued to be lovely.

They met four more times over the next four weeks. Each time, Eris got a bit closer to naming his emotions about becoming High Lord and Rhia got a bit closer to attempting physical contact. Not that the other ever picked up on it.

A particularly hostile thunderstorm and cold autumn wind hit the town that night. Rhia couldn't wait for Eris to arrive, mostly because his ability to heat a room far surpassed hers. She cleaned the studio after her last class, worrying about which families had firewood and whether anyone face the storm unprepared. The door slammed, jerking her back to her body.

"Sorry to startle you," Eris apologized, snapping his fingers to dry out his clothing. He continued to enter through the door after the first night, refusing to break her wards even if he was fully capable of putting them back in place. He frowned, noting the chill in the room, and sent a warm breeze through the house.

Rhia smiled. She loved watching the flames in the fireplace jump in his presence, like a puppy excited to see its owner.

"How are you?" A loaded question, if he chose to answer truthfully.

"Much better now," Eris replied cheekily, winking at the flush that spread across her face. He never missed a chance to flirt with her and she never missed a chance to blush like a teenager. "I actually slept well last night, but my morning was immediately ruined by one of my brothers' return home."

Rhia didn't know much about the princes, but she doubted they had good intentions. "Which one? Not that I know any of them personally."

"Auster." Eris shrugged off his coat and started heating up the tea kettle. "He is...not the worst brother I have left."

"What a charming description." Rhia finished locking up the supply closet and started to join him in the kitchen, before a frantic knock at the door stopped her in her path. Eris whipped his head around and both of them sent a tendril of power to sense who it was.

"Oh fuck," Rhia swore, turning around to walk towards the door. "Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck."

"Who is it?" Eris asked, his tone a bit panicked at her reaction.

Rhia shushed him. "Just--I don't know, just sit down and don't say anything." He did as she commanded, but continued sending her concerned looks.

The knocking kept up until Rhia swung open the door.

"Were you going to keep me out here all night?" Sofine demanded, shoving her way into the house. "It's pouring, in case you hadn't noticed."

Rhia tried to grab her best friend's arm before she made it too far into the room. "Sofi, hold on one second--"

But it was a second too late. Sofine had inhaled, recognizing the scent of another person, a male, in the house and froze.

"Who's here?" she asked, in a tone far too tense to be casual. Rhia grimaced. This was certainly not how she planned to make introductions.

"I, uh, you see, well a few weeks ago," she stammered, her brain refusing to produce an actual sentence. Eris chose that moment to speak up.

"Hello! You must be Sofine, I've heard so much about you." He walked towards the two females, his hand outstretched. "I'm Eris."

Rhia had never seen Sofine stop talking, but in this moment she was utterly speechless. She shook his hand, without saying a word, before spinning to face Rhia again.

"You have the High Lord in your kitchen."

"Oh, that reminds me I put the kettle on. Would you like some tea?" Eris asked.

Sofine shot Rhia one last glare, silently demanding a full explanation as soon as they were alone, before joining him in the kitchen. Oh shit. In all her worries and hopes about her burgeoning relationship with Eris, she hadn't even considered how he would fit in her life, or how she would fit in his. If that were even possible.

Chapter 5: these are the words I held back

TW: mentions of past sexual assault, nothing graphic. I put "XXX" at the start and end of it, please please skip it if that could possibly harm you. I will never, ever write anything graphic or specific about sexual assault, pinky promise.

Beron’s shot of flames slammed the side of his face before Eris could duck out of the way. Hissing in pain, Eris tried to ignore the feeling that half his face was now on fire. His father kept coming with the attacks, pushing him back until he could feel the stone of the bedroom’s wall on his back.

“I’m going to kill her next,” Beron taunted, slowing his attacks now that he saw his son fully cornered. “She’s given me nothing but useless heirs, disgusting upstarts who think they can overpower me.”

Eris tried to look around the room, but there were no other options. No final play, no additional power to grasp from. Why had he thought he could overpower his father?

He grasped at his wrist to find it empty. Where was the damn bracelet?

Eris stood alone and alone he would fail.

Beron continued to taunt him, sending flames to match each word. “I could always take another wife. Someone more beautiful. I’m utterly bored with your mother’s face.” The tyrant stepped even closer so Eris could see the utter hatred in his eyes. “Maybe even that pretty little mate of yours. What was her name again? Oh right.” Beron cackled as he prepared his final blow to murder his son. “Rhia.”

Eris woke up gasping for air, his father snarl still ringing in his ear. He ran a hand over his face. He’s dead, he’s dead, he’s dead. The refrain calmed his breathing and slowed his heart rate, like it did every morning after nightmares haunted him every night. Neither tonics nor working himself to the bone had helped bring Eris a restful night of sleep.

Hearing his mate’s name in his father’s voice had been a particularly effective type of torture. Eris had done everything he could to avoid even thinking about her while his father was still alive, especially after that horrible incident with Lucien’s first love. Jessminda had done nothing except bring one of Beron’s sons happiness, and yet she paid the ultimate price.

He’s dead. He’s dead. He’s dead.

The rest of the day continued in a similarly joyful manner. One of Eris’ advisors, an ancient male named Julius, had attempted to undermine the latest efforts to modernize the royal court by poisoning the newest Minister of Finance for daring to be a female. Leanna had recovered quickly, given Julius’ ineptitude at everything except for being a misogynist, but Eris still had to handle his punishment. He then missed lunchtime because one of his spies had to give him an update on Auster’s movements, which still did not reveal the prince’s intentions or goals. Finally, Gerwin absolutely demolished him in the afternoon training session, shoving him into a weapons rack and giving him a lovely bruise on his forehead. The headache that manifested during dinner felt like a fitting way to end the day.

“Are you even listening?” his mother admonished, though her smirk suggested she was anything but annoyed. “I would rather not repeat myself for a third time.”

Eris put down his wine glass, feeling as though alcohol would only make the day worse. “Sorry. Horrid day. What were you saying?”

The Lady of the Autumn Court placed a gentle hand on his arm. “Dare I hope that the cause for your distraction is a happy one?” At his hesitation to respond, she added: “I know the walls have ears and you keep your secrets close. But come to me when you’re ready. I hate seeing you handle so much on your own.”

“I have happy reasons to be distracted, but no, today I’m simply tired,” he replied, turning his palm face up to grab her hand. “I wish I could say more and I hope I’ll be able to soon.”

His mother smiled, appeased for the moment. Eris wanted to tell her more than anything, let her know that he was happy and in love. Shit. He was in love. The thought made him cringe, because surely no undamaged person fell in love so quickly and easily. Surely only someone deprived of affection and wounded as he would consider 5 nights of conversation enough. No, Eris reasoned, he probably wasn’t in love, but the horridness of the day and the bitter taste of his nightmare had twisted his mind into thinking so.

He couldn’t tell his mother because he would not subject her to his heartbreak if Rhia decided she only ever wanted his friendship or no longer wanted him at all. She already had to watch Lucien, the true joy of her life, suffer without a true home and without love from his mate for so many years. Eris would not add to her burden, even as merely her second-favorite child.

“Go to bed early tonight,” she declared, giving him a look that made him feel like a child again. “I’ll oversee Julius’ imprisonment tonight and send word if anything goes astray.”

Eris nodded and kissed her on the head as he stood to head to his bedroom. If nothing else, murdering his father had been worth it just for his mother to live freely. If she was capable of finding her freedom once again.

Luckily, one tiny thing went right for the High Lord of the Autumn Court that awful day. The glowing piece of parchment in his top dresser drawer might as well have been a star coming down from the night sky, shining bright enough to scare away the dark. Rhia had written to him.

I’m glad you didn’t think it was terribly awkward two nights ago. Sofine can be quite abrasive, but I think she may have liked you. She worries about me, you see, even if she can’t argue with the High Lord. I’m very glad you met her though. I have a silly thought for you when you reply.

Eris couldn’t remember a single thing on his to-do list. The only possible thing he had to do was reply and reply quickly.

Let her know she is allowed to argue with me any time. I’ll probably regret saying that. My day was absolutely horrible and your silly thought is the only thing that might bring me joy again. Please share before I perish from curiosity.

She took a few minutes, either caught up in cleaning her house or making him wait on purpose. Masochistically, he hoped it was the latter and she enjoyed playing games with him.

If you mock me for this, I will, well I don’t know what I’ll do but it won’t be pleasant.

After you both left, I thought about how I might never have had the courage to introduce you or include you in my life. But then, I thought about how relieving it was that Sofine knew about you. Because that makes it real. I can’t back out now and I don’t want to.

No one was watching, so Eris could deny that a few tears pricked the corners of his eyes when he read that. Yes, Rhia was often withdrawn and overly cautious with him, but she was still moving forward. The two of them were still progressing into something, something more beautiful than anything Eris had ever experienced before.

That’s not silly. That’s a wonderful thought that I enjoyed immensely. Can I share a silly thought with you now?

Please. If only to make me feel less alone in my mortification.

You’re so easily mortified. Have you considered that I’m much more desperate and embarrassing than you are? Here’s my thought:

He hesitated, wanting to write so many things. He could write three dangerous words, but knew it was much too soon. He could ask her for permission to tell his mother, but knew that might bring more danger and scrutiny than could be prevented. He could even tell her about the worst mistake of his life and pray to the Mother that she wouldn’t see him like Mor did. Instead, he added:

I think once a week is ridiculous. I think about you too often to only hear your voice once a week. How would you feel about twice a week? If we’re feeling reckless, three times?

Infatuated, but not damaging enough to push her away.

I’m amazed this Court continues to run if you truly are thinking of me so often. If it will help the High Lord function, two-three times a week is acceptable to me. (more than acceptable). When should we start this crazy, reckless plan?

Not to upgrade the recklessness to outright foolhardiness, but tomorrow night? Unless your social calendar is full.

You know I have one friend, don’t be rude. I’ll see you tomorrow night. Bring food and wine.

She always did love trying the foregin cuisines he brought from the capital, offerings that weren’t available in more rural areas. Eris enjoyed nothing more than watching her try a new food cautiously before digging into it enthusiastically. Rhia’s face had seemed unreadable when he first met her, but he had begun to understand her expressions the way some scholars learned new languages. Food certainly helped soften their relationship, as indicated by the way her eyes narrowed when she saw something interesting and her lips quirked upward when she discovered a new favorite flavor.

Eris frowned as a realization swept over him. He was thinking about her lips, yes, but not at all in a sexual manner. This fact alone was not troubling; Eris only felt sexual attraction rarely and towards Fae he had some sort of prior connection with. However, Rhia was his mate and he thought he could be in love with her; desire surely should follow. Yet it felt as though some boundary stood between them and intimacy, as though sex was not even on the table at this moment. Too exhausted to unpack that strange feeling, Eris decided not to question the best thing in his life. Sexual desire would come or it wouldn’t.

----

Rhia had another bad night. One step forward, two steps back, her thoughts ran like an angry river towards an endless sea. She could feel the Mother laughing at her predicament.

XXX

As Rhia started trusting and liking Eris more, she thought about them as a couple. Every time she thought about them as a couple, a cold wave of terror rushed over her at the thought of being intimate with him. Eris could overwhelm her without a second thought, his power ten times her own. Even with Rhia’s strongest gusts of wind or quickest winnows, she would not escape him.

He wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t do that. Her constant refrain did nothing to quell the anxiety that followed any time she thought about sex. The logical side of her brain screamed and yelled that he had not even touched her yet, had observed every boundary she set, had made no move to pressure her forward. Unfortunately, logic did not win out against trauma.

Rhia gripped her bathroom sink, staring at herself in the mirror like she always did when her thoughts grew too loud. Looking into her own eyes and seeing that she’d survived that night, survived her fucking rapist, slowed her heart rate back to normal.

Cauldron, this stupid problem only existed because she wanted him. Rhia had wanted him the moment she laid eyes on him. She thought about kissing him every time he stepped through her doorway. But males never stopped at kissing and Eris might walk away if he understood how truly fucked up she was.

You’re not the first female to ever get attacked. Pull yourself together. Rhia screamed at herself until her inner voice was hoarse. Do you know how much worse others have it? Can you even imagine what his own mother went through for centuries?

A voice that sounded eerily like Sofine’s challenged her back. Just because others have it worse does not lessen your burden or your worth.

Rhia breathed in, then out. In, then out. She would hopefully be able to fall asleep soon, this panic attack lasting less time than last week’s.

XXX

Exhaustion finally came, crashing over her as she finally felt her body relax. Rhia gave herself one last, long look in the mirror before coming to a decision.

She would not let herself ruin this relationship before it even had a chance to start. If it took jumping off a cliff and telling Eris about the worst night of her life, that was a small sacrifice to pay for potentially finding happiness. Smiling at that unusually optimistic perspective, Rhia washed her face and grabbed her silk bonnet, hoping that tonight’s dreams would carry her towards that mysterious, happy future.

Chapter 6: shifting eyes and vacany, vanished

TW: mentions of past sexual assault. same thing as last time, absolutely nothing graphic, will put an XXX before and after.

Eris had just grabbed his cloak, preparing to winnow to Malefic, when he heard a sharp knock at his door. He grimaced, imagining some sort of bureaucratic nonsense that could have undoubtedly been saved for tomorrow morning.

Instead he found Gerwin, nervously pacing the hall outside of the High Lord’s bedchambers. The weapons master rarely brought Eris news directly, and wouldn’t disturb him at night unless it was absolutely urgent.

“Come in.” Eris stepped back into the sitting area, tossing his cloak on the back of the nearest chair. “How long do you think this will take?” He’d rather send a quick note to Rhia then leave her waiting for hours.

Gerwin remained standing. “Not long, but I suspect you’ll want to take action after you hear this. One of your spies was found dead last night. We suspect Auster figured her out.”

“Who?” Eris mentally ran through the five Fae he had employed to look into his brother, shocked and hurt at the prospect of losing any of them.

“Mellie,” Gerwin responded, naming the air wraith who could walk as silently as the wind. Eris could only imagine how his brother had caught her and what detestable things he had done before killing her. “Jyn found her body an hour ago and we’ve covered the area up so none of the other staff will find out. How would you like to proceed?”

I’ll be a bit late tonight. Would you rather reschedule?

No, I want to talk to you and I’m afraid I’ll lose my nerve. Come when you can.

That message from Rhia certainly didn’t calm Eris’ anxiety.

The two males debated and strategized over the next hour, going back and forth on how to manage the prince. Since he surely left no evidence behind, Eris couldn’t arrest or prosecute his brother without possibly inflaming any support Auster had. They didn’t want to send any more of the spy cohort after him, since he’d proved tragically capable at sniffing them out. Unfortunately, the best move at the moment was to wait for Auster to make another move or present his purpose. Eris strengthened the wards around the palace, including extra alarms for anyone entering or leaving Auster’s chambers. It was an infuriatingly small response to Mellie’s death.

Eris had one person he considered asking for help, but she wasn’t in the Autumn Court and he didn’t like the idea of his familial problems becoming gossip across Prythian. Another thing I should probably discuss with Rhia , he mused, as he finally gathered his cloak and set off for her house.

Eris winnowed and raised his fist to knock, but Rhia flung the door open before he had a chance.

“Hi.” She sounded almost out of breath, but looked stunning as always. Her dark curls were pulled back into a low ponytail, with several strands escaping in the front. Eris could have looked at her face forever, her smile illuminated by the lantern above her door.

He stepped inside after her. “I’m sorry for the delay. Sometimes I actually have to do work as High Lord, contrary to popular opinion.” The joke fell flat, his anger at Mellie’s death darkening his tone.

Rhia placed the tea kettle and two mugs on the table, gesturing for him to sit. “Would you like to talk about it?”

Eris grabbed one and poured some of the tea, smelling cinnamon and honey. “I believe you had something you wanted to talk about first. I’ll tell you after; I don’t want to ruin the evening too quickly with my melancholy”

Rhia laughed. Eris frowned, his remark hadn’t been humorous.

---

Rhia laughed. She couldn’t help it. Eris had said didn’t want to ruin the evening, as if he imagined she had something funny, endearing, or whimsical to share. He shot her a confused frown, which only made her laugh harder.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she giggled, pouring herself a cup of tea and attempting to find her composure. “This isn’t funny at all.”

“I would never deny you an opportunity to laugh,” he replied, smiling a bit at her oddity. “But would you mind letting me in on the joke?”

She took a deep breath and a sip of tea, forcing herself to calm down. She often laughed when nervous and she hadn’t realized how nervous she truly was until this moment.

“I’m sorry,” Rhia said one more time. “It’s just, you said you didn’t want to ruin the evening with your news, but I’m afraid my topic of conversation is quite unfortunate. Also, I laugh when I’m nervous,” she finished lamely, looking down at her mug instead of his face.

“There’s nothing you could tell me that I wouldn’t want to hear,” Eris encouraged.

She only wished encouragement was enough.

Rhia took another breath. “I don’t quite know where to begin. I guess, well, I’m sure you had some sort of expectations for your future wife.”

Eris interrupted. “I told you, I don’t have any expectations for you. I just--”

She placed one of her hands on his instinctively. “Please, don’t interrupt me. I know you have no expectations for me and I appreciate that so, so much.” She tried to continue, but her tongue seemed to stick to the roof of her mouth. He had gone completely still.

This was the first time they had touched. Their eyes locked.

Rhia couldn’t help herself. She let out another giggle. Eris grinned at the sound of her laughter and at the absurdity of the situation.

“We’re quite useless, aren’t we?” She looked down at her hand on his again. “Two Fae over a century old who can barely hold hands.”

Eris flipped his hand so his palm touched hers. “I’ve told you time and time again the effect you have on me.” His fingers ever so slowly interlocked with hers. “We’re either extremely touch-starved or incredibly pathetic.”

Somehow, the small action of holding hands spurred Rhia to continue. She felt grounded and calm, trusted and trusting.

“I knew you were pathetic, but I had no idea I was also so wretched,” Rhia replied. “This sort of adds to my point.”

She allowed herself one more breath before continuing.

“I’m aware you have no expectations for me, but we both know what a mating bond or a marriage usually entails. I want to tell you this because it affects both of us, our relationship. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to have an intimate relationship with you.”

Eris, to his credit, stayed silent. Rhia didn’t sense any shock or strong emotions coming off of him, so she took that as a sign to keep going.

XXX

“Halfway through Amarantha’s rule, while myself and a few others were warding Malefic off from the outside world, a group of males somehow broke in. Everyone else was left unharmed, except for me. My power was depleted from maintaining the constant security, and one of the males had enough magic to keep me still.”

Her story was definitely not clear or easy to follow. Rhia couldn’t find the energy to make it make sense.

“And, well, that’s that. I’m...well I’m improved. I thought I was back to normal. I usually don’t have a problem with intimacy and I’ve had plenty of sex since then.” She glanced up. “Sorry, is that too much information?”

Eris cleared his throat. “Rhia, if you think that your sex life is at all one of my concerns with this conversation…”

“Right, the trauma is probably more important.” She realized she was still gripping his hand and loosened her fingers a bit. His fingers opened, as if to give her the space to back away. She didn’t take it.

“If I have my full strength and I know the male isn’t powerful, it’s really not a problem.” She looked up at him. “So it’s really fucked up that the only person I can think about now is the most powerful male in the damn Court.”

XXX

His face was still frustratingly unreadable.

A wave of anxiety hit Rhia. “You can talk now.”

“I love you.” Eris swore under his breath. “Fuck, that’s really not how I wanted it to come out. I know it doesn’t fix anything and I know I can’t fix anything, but I am just so incredibly honored you chose to share this with me. And it doesn’t change a damn thing about wanting to be with you however you want me.”

Rhia breathed in his confession like a drug. Love won’t fix trauma and a romantic partner won’t fix a broken person. But it felt undeniably good to have someone there, someone who wouldn’t look at her differently or see her as less worthy.

“That wasn’t a good response,” Eris continued. “Let me try again. Thank you for sharing your story with me. I am so sorry that happened to you. What can I do to make you more comfortable?”

“Both responses were good, you idiot,” Rhia sniffed once, a little more emotional than she thought she would be. “Stop it or I’m going to cry.”

“If you cry, I might also cry,” Eris warned. “And then I’ll feel guilty for the rest of my life for crying and taking the attention off of you.” He slowly placed his other hand on top of hers and squeezed once. “We definitely do not have to continue this conversation now, but I would appreciate knowing how I can help you feel comfortable and safe.”

She didn’t reply, but gave him a weak smile in response. “Tell me about your thing now. I’m emotionally fried.”

“Are you sure?” When she nodded, Eris added: “I feel a bit silly now, complaining about my brother and his mysterious intentions.”

Rhia let go of his hand briefly, only to stand and walk over to the kitchen. “I’m sure it’s not some trivial matter if you were late tonight.” She grabbed a bottle of dark brown liquor from a cabinet above the sink. “And please, anything to change the subject.” She poured a splash of liquid into each of their teacups, causing Eris to grin.

“Nothing like alcohol to dull the ache of familial drama. I actually found out one of my spies died tonight, surely at Auster’s hand.” His expression quickly morphed from amused to solemn. “Mellie. She was absolutely brilliant and I wasted her life on pure suspicion. I should’ve investigated him myself from the beginning, instead of risking my employees for a personal cause.” Eris finished this thought with a few large sips.

Rhia also took a drink. “Is it truly a personal matter? If your brother is willing to kill someone, it sounds like he’s actually a risk to your entire court. And I’m very sorry to hear about Mellie.”

“Thank you,” he replied automatically. “That’s...I hadn’t thought of it that way, but you’re right, murder wouldn’t be the typical response to finding a spy. I just wish I knew what he hoped to accomplish.”

“Tell me more about him and I’ll take a guess,” Rhia offered. “It’ll be poorly thought out, but another perspective can’t hurt.”

So Eris began to describe his younger brother. Auster had been a quiet child growing up, never as violent or hostile as the other Vanserra siblings. Youngest only to Lucien, Auster hadn’t even bullied his younger brother to the extent the middle brothers did. However, once they had all reached maturity and especially after the Jessminda incident, Eris suspected that Auster’s quiet demeanor had more to do with remaining unnoticed than introverted tendencies. After two of the brothers died and one escaped Beron at Tamlin’s hand, Eris had investigated the remaining three brothers to maintain his role as Heir. Morian and Dedus were idiots, all brute force and horrible manners. While those characteristics endeared them to Beron, the former High Lord kept the twins far away from the capital and wouldn’t risk giving them actual power. Auster, on the other hand, seemed to have half the staff on his payroll according to financial analyses.

Eris had his own casual spies in the palace and began a more formal cohort, led by Gerwin, at this point in time. Auster never seemed to take action, but Eris suspected he had a role in revealing secrets of multiple political rivals. Beron had also put him in charge of punishing any traitors accused of treason, allowing Auster to demonstrate his cruel tendencies.

Months before Eris had taken the throne, Auster had simply disappeared. Beron had never addressed his missing son and they received no news of his death. Eris had spent those months clearing the palace of anyone with ties to his brother and hired new staff completely loyal to him. Only weeks after Beron’s official funeral, Auster had returned and pledged his support to his older brother. He had spent the time since holed up in his room, without any obvious communication to the outside world.

“Sorry, that was a bit of a rant,” Eris finished. Both Fae had finished several cups of tea-and-liquor during his explanation, and Rhia could feel her cheeks heating up under the alcohol’s influence. But she attempted some logic and reasoning for Eris’ sake.

“He sounds horrible and manipulative. Just the kind of male to come back in the picture only when it suits him,” she theorized. “If he hasn’t spoken to anyone outside the palace, maybe he’s trying to get some of the staff under his control again. Or one of them is sneaking messages out for him.”

Eris nodded, eyes drifting off into the distance as he considered her words. “I’ve been lazy. I’ve put up wards, but that would only detect magic or Fae who don’t belong in the palace. He could have easily snuck out paper messages with one loyal servant.”

Rhia wanted to help out, she really did. But his fingers had been unconsciously playing with her, lightly skimming her wrist and forearm, as if they had a mind of their own while he spoke. Distracting, and devastatingly tender.

She stood suddenly, concerned about where her thoughts might take her. Eris’ gaze snapped back to her face.

“It’s late,” she offered as a clearly fake excuse for her behavior. “I feel terrible, keeping you up when you’ll have to deal with all this in the morning.” Not to mention, she had a group of children coming in for a class in less than six hours.

Eris stood as well, grabbing his cloak. He seemed so hesitant, so unwilling to leave, staring at her face as if to memorize it. “I don’t know if it’s a good idea for me to come back here for awhile.”

Rhia’s heart dropped to the ground. “What?” He saw the panic, noticed her heart rate elevate and immediately corrected.

“Not because of you! Not at all because of tonight. Tonight was everything to me,” he emphasized, holding out a hand between them. “Because of Auster. If I start seriously investigating him, I worry he’ll try to follow me. Or figure out my weaknesses. Rhia, I only introduced myself to you because I thought you’d be safe after I became High Lord. If my brother were to ever try to harm you, I don’t know what I’d do.”

She breathed a bit easier. “How long?”

“I’ll write to you. The paper is safe, enchanted for only our eyes.” Eris shook his head. “Hopefully a couple weeks? I wish it were simple, but Gerwin and I decided to wait for his next move. So it’s difficult to know.”

The idea of not seeing him for a couple weeks hurt. It hurt so much more than Rhia wanted to admit.

So she decided to be brave. She stepped close enough to him that she could feel his breath on her face. She grabbed each of his hands in her own and pulled them up to rest on his chest. For a moment, she swore their hearts beat in synchronization.

“I don’t think anyone would miss him if you had to kill him,” she said, her voice steadier than her thoughts. “Just handle him quickly.”

Eris laughed lightly. “I am very motivated, trust me.” He kissed her knuckles. “Good night.”

Eris gathered his cloak and winnowed back to his palace. As he drifted into an uneasy sleep, he wondered how it would feel to fall asleep somewhere he felt safe, somewhere full of good memories, with someone who cared about him.

Funnily enough, Rhia fell asleep wondering the same thing.

Chapter 7: until I see you again

After five days of silence, Rhia was about ready to lose her mind. Eris hadn’t written or called her in any way, and there wasn’t even any new gossip about him from the capitol. Her mind wandered off at inopportune moments, imagining him dead by his brother’s hand or finally deeming her unworthy of him and moving on to someone else.

“RHIA!”

She jumped, startled at the high-pitched squeal that cut off her most recent vision of Auster chopping off Eris’ head. One of her students, Raquel, stood outside one of the studio windows, banging on the glass.

“Shit,” Rhia swore under her breath, glancing at the clock above the wall of mirrors. Her next lesson was starting now and she hadn’t set up anything.

She jostled over to the door and opened the door to see Raquel standing with two of their peers. This group was one of her favorites, three young Lesser Fae who manipulated nature and lived right at the edge of the forest. Raquel was the certified leader of the group and took that role seriously: they made sure Leyora and Aliar always arrived on time.

Rhia usually loved all the sass and attitude that came with this trio, but today she was close to strangling the little jerk.

“Come in, come in,” she said instead, herding the children into the room and helping them with their coats. “I must’ve forgotten to unlock the door. How’s everyone doing today?”

“We were having a good day until you left us in the cold for so long,” Raquel grumbled, their cheeks pink from the frosty air. “I screamed your name four times before you noticed me.”

Leyora nodded. “Raquel was very loud. You really should answer your door faster.” She looked extremely serious after the minor inconvenience, in the way only children can.

Rhia finished hanging the coats and walked over to her supply closet. “Well I am very sorry that I ruined your morning. Blow breezes at each other while I set up.”

As they sent blasts of air at each other, the children soon forgot their anger and quickly turned to laughter, describing their breakfasts and every little detail of the walk over. Rhia tried to be engaged and charming, like she usually was, but kept glancing at the empty piece of paper sitting on her counter, yearning for it to glow.

An hour later, and after several very close calls with fire and her curtains, Rhia stood staring at the paper again. She’d tried, she really had, to give Eris time to deal with his brother and let him write her first. The last thing she wanted was to distract him while he was potentially fighting for his throne. Well, he could always ignore her if he didn’t want to respond, so she might as well write something.

Just let me know you’re okay.

---

After five days of hunting, Eris was ready to lose his damn mind. He’d returned home to find the palace in complete chaos, with the staff fleeing and his mother missing. Gerwin gave him the quick update as he sprinted to her chambers, sure his brother was to blame.

“Thirty minutes ago, we found half your mother’s guard dead and her rooms empty. Whoever it was left the damn bodies in the kitchen , like a maniac, to scare everyone away and cause all this.” Gerwin gestured to the general panic and disarray. “We’ve already searched for your brother and he’s long gone. I don’t think he came anywhere near here”

Eris ignored him and burst through the door of the bedroom. Indeed, Auster’s scent was completely absent.

“We found a note and left it untouched for you,” Gerwin explained, pointing at a delicately embossed letter sitting on the coffee table

An oathbreaker is not fit to be High Lord. Relinquish your title before the week is up.

“Shit,” Eris swore. “This is bad.”

Gerwin glanced at the note again. “What does it mean?”

Eris scrambled for a plan, an idea, anything that would fix this mess. “It means the Court of Nightmares knows I broke the alliance.” He grabbed a piece of stationery off a random dresser, scrawling out a quick note. “Auster found himself an army of bastards, willing to help bring me down.”

I need your help. Come to the palace immediately.

With a flick of his fingers, Eris sent the message to the only person who might be able and willing to help him.

“The advisers are waiting,” Gerwin said hesitantly. “I know they won’t have anything useful to say, but I believe it best if you appease them tonight.”

“Fine,” Eris growled, in no mood to handle the overly emotional politicians.

As expected, he could hear the arguments and heated debates from down the hall. Entering the main conference room, Eris shot a wave of power across the room, silencing the chatter.

“My mother is missing. Don’t waste my time.” He glared directly at Moris, one of the ringleaders and most vocal on the council.

To his credit, Moris inclined his head in respect and kept his tone calm. “My Lord, I cannot imagine how stressful tonight is for you. We only wish to help you come up with a strategy.”

“The note is quite concerning,” added another male. “Could you elaborate on the meaning of ‘oathbreaker’?”

Eris let out a breath. “I don’t have time to explain everything to you all. Clearly, my brother had some hand in this, and I believe he had foreign aid.”

“That’s quite a claim,” Moris responded thoughtfully. “Without evidence, however, how can we take action?”

“ You won’t be taking any action.” Eris resisted the urge to snarl. “I don’t remember seeing any of you hunting down fugitives in the past few centuries.” Gerwin snorted behind him. “I’ll track down my brother and bring him back to stand trial.”

The room erupted into discussion. Beron would have never taken on such a task himself, leaving the throne empty and the palace unruled. Eris ignored every one of their complaints,

He couldn’t recruit anyone else from the Autumn Court for this task, or he would risk revealing the secret that threatened his legitimacy as High Lord.

“Well that could have gone better,” Gerwin remarked, following Eris away from the conference room. “At least you didn’t set anyone’s hair on fire.”

“I thought about it.” Eris stalked into his bedchambers, waving the door closed behind his weapons master.

Gerwin stiffened. “Eris, someone’s in here--”

Eris cut him off. “Hello, Carina.”

The infamous Heir to the Night Court stepped out from the shadows. Dark haired, dressed in all black, and heartbreakingly beautiful, Rhysand’s daughter winked at him.

“Already trouble in paradise?” she smirked.

Gerwin grabbed Eris’ arm. “This is your idea? Bringing in the Night Court again?”

Eris shook him off. “If Keir is involved in any capacity, then her family will need to know about it.” Gerwin opened his mouth to argue, but Eris continued. “Besides, she’s already helped me more than anyone can know.”

He looked at the female who might be his only other friend. They’d grown close after Eris had called in his deal with the Inner Circle, demanding they support him in overthrowing Beron. Carina had convinced them to take it one step further, providing magical bracelets that let two Fae share power, to ensure that Eris could actually defeat his father. She had lied to her parents and mate when she had actually worn the bracelet herself, letting Eris use her strength to kill Beron.

If anyone found out, the advisers could use the information to call for Eris’ resignation. The Court could likely agree with them.

“Can I see the note?” Carina asked. Eris handed it to her. After inspecting it for a moment, she gave it back. “It stinks of Keir’s right-hand male, Toren. I’ll have Azriel look into him.”

Eris sighed in relief. Finally, a small clue into his mother’s location. “Thank you. I already owe you so much--”

She waved his gratitude off. “It’s what friends are for. I do enjoy extravagantly expensive dresses, if you must know. What else can I do?”

“I can’t ask anything else of you,” Eris insisted. “Just--anything you find from the Hewn City.”

“Of course,” Carina smiled. “We’ll find her, I promise. Absolutely do not give up the throne.”

And so Eris had spent the next four days across the Autumn Court, running into dead ends and even a few traps. Gerwin returned to the palace after two days, promising to keep any nobles from attempting a coup.

Carina had sent a message, letting him know that Keir remained in the Night Court and no one had seen any sign of Auster. Azriel had assigned several Fae to watch everyone in the Court of Nightmares, and had begun sifting through all their communications. If they are working together, they’ll have to discuss at some point. Her words did not inspire much confidence.

The High Lord was exhausted. He missed Rhia every second of every day and wished he’d thought to grab their parchment before leaving. The logical side of his brain screamed at him to return home, get some rest, and request help from his spies. The guilt fueling him, however, demanded that he never put someone else in danger again, that he alone murder another family member to keep his Court safe.

Eris shook some leaves from his hair and splashed cold creek water onto his face in a lame attempt to wake himself up. He was outside a small town where Auster’s scent lingered, but found no actual trace of the murderous prick. There were no other trails, no further moves to make.

He closed his eyes for one moment, gathering his composure to winnow back to the palace as a failure. Eris woke up several minutes later to a sword at his throat.

“What in the name of the Mother are you doing?” Lucien demanded. “Falling asleep in the middle of a random forest like a vagabond? Our fucking mother is missing.”

Eris shoved the blade away and got to his feet. “I’m searching for our fuck of a brother, you bastard. And looking for her. Why are you here?” As the question slipped out of his mouth, he suddenly remembered that one of the only Fae Lucien still loved had been stolen in some twisted plot.

The younger Vanserra looked even more exhausted, if that were possible.

“Trying to find you.” Lucien tucked his sword away. “I was hoping you’d have tracked him down by now or have found some new information.”

“Nothing,” Eris groaned, running a hand over his face. “This was all a huge mistake. I shouldn’t have let Auster run me around the Court like a fool.”

Lucien snorted. “Your savior complex is going to kill you one day. I have news from the Night Court, if you’re awake enough to listen.”

Eris hated accepting help, especially from his youngest brother, but took the hand Lucien offered anyway. They took turns winnowing back to the palace, as Lucien gave him a summary of the last few days.

Keir had thrown a massive temper tantrum when members of the Inner Circle appeared in the Hewn City and demanded to search his palace. After failing to link him directly to uprisings in Illyria several months ago, Carina had done everything in her power to find evidence that Keir was working with Auster.

“She’s bitter,” Lucien noted. “They all are. This is the second time this year that Keir has attempted some sort of terrorism or treason.”

Eris ran a hand through his hair. “Well, I’m just grateful for their help, even if it has nothing to do with me. Did Carina find anything?” Only one more jump and Eris would be in his chambers again. He almost cried at the thought of a nap in an actual bed and a chance to contact Rhia after days of silence.

“Yes and no,” Lucien continued. “Azriel tracked down the messenger who connected Auster and Keir in the first place, confirming our worst fears, but no sign of Mother.” The male sighed, preparing to winnow them the final few miles home. “I’m concerned that there’s something else going on, some other plan that we aren’t seeing.”

“I agree,” Eris replied. “Auster’s trail was authentic; I knew for certain he had visited the places I tracked him. But I think he set it up weeks ago, before staying in the palace.”

Lucien didn’t answer immediately. He grabbed Eris’ arm and vanished them, landing directly in the High Lord’s chambers.

“Fuck,” Lucien swore, looking around the room. “I can’t believe you sleep in here. Lovely decorating, though.”

Eris couldn’t agree more. He hated living where Beron had abused and fought him. “I wish I had a choice. If I remained in my old rooms, the advisers would’ve pounced on my weakness.”

Gesturing to one of the large couches, Eris continued. “You’re welcome to stay, rest for a bit, if you don’t want to announce your presence to the entire Court.”

Lucien looked taken aback at the offer. “I--That would probably be smart, yes.”

Eris barely heard his agreement. Mumbling something about a bath, he stumbled into his bedroom, stripping off his disgusting jacket and pants. Cauldron, he was an idiot for letting Auster wear him down so thoroughly.

Eris sat on the edge of his bed, staring at the door of his bathing room, debating whether he shouldn’t skip the bath in favor of falling asleep immediately. Something glowed in the corner of his vision, dragging his gaze to the nightstand.

“Rhia,” he breathed, snatching up the parchment. He read the message, drinking in her words like a life-saving potion.

Just let me know you’re okay.

Magicking a pen, Eris scrawled back as quickly as he could.

I’m so sorry to have worried you. I’d like nothing more than to rush to your side and never leave again. Unfortunately, I do not have any good news. Lucien is with me now, and we’ll resume our search after I’ve rested. I’m back at the palace, so I can promise my safety for the time being.

When she did not respond instantly, Eris put down the pen and took off his undershirt. She would know he was alive and back home, without a reason to worry for at least the next few hours.

With that thought comforting him, he leaned back on the pillows. His eyes fluttered shut a moment before his head hit the soft fabric, meaning Eris did not watch the massive blade appear above him and stab him through the heart.

#eris vanserra #eris #acotar #a court of thorns and roses #sjm #acosf #autumn court

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xiaodejunletsact · 5 years ago

Text

say it | dong sicheng

word count: 4,021

genre: royalty!au, princess!reader, servant/ best friend!sicheng, fluff and lil bit of angst and smut.

warnings: attempted sexual assault (nothing to graphic but still), violence, implied sex (well, kinda just sex)

author’s note: hey!! so i literally pulled this out of my ass as a little present for all of my followers as a thank you for getting me to 1K followers!!! i can’t thank you guys enough for supporting my work and i can’t believe im already at 1k what the fuckk. anyway,, i wrote this little au for y’all just a warning; its not very good since i wrote it so last minute but i still hope you guys enjoy it. actor!xiaojun is going to be done soon so please look forward to it!! once again thank you :)

synopsis: after years of not knowing what the feelings stirring in your heart for the young servant boy you know as your best friend were, an incident with a disgusting duke and the moonlight on sicheng’s face help you find your answer.

The only thing more suffocating than the corset wrapped tightly around your waist was the predatory stare the Duke of the neighboring kingdom was giving you from across the dining table.

Out of all the potential suitors your mother has picked in her 4 months of searching, this one was surely one of the worst; he was evidently almost twice your age; the top his shiny head was beginning to appear beneath the three pathetic strands brushed over to conceal the clear sign of his age. His hands were free of calluses and his neat nails were clear indication of the amount of work this man does in his everyday life. Once you finally look at his face, you realize that you have found the worst part of him: his eyes. The light blue of them that is usually seen as beautiful leans more towards grey causing an almost lifeless and frightening affect upon them, they’re hooded as they stare back at you; the shivers that go up your spine force you to look away, redirecting your gaze to your hands.

You smile when you see the neatly bent wire wrapped around your index finger, the helix shape it made as it circled your finger takes you back to the moment you received the makeshift ring.

You hadn’t known Sicheng very well at the time but you knew that he came from a poor family, your mother had taken in with the exchange of them doing the labor and work around the palace. He was only 16 when you met him for the first time, black hair falling slightly over his eyes as he frantically apologizes for god knows what only to stopped by your gentle hand on his, telling him it’s okay. He visibly calms at this before standing up straighter, trying hard to rebalance all the tray of pots and dishes he carries in his shaky hands. You can tell he’s struggling, but he covers up his failed attempts to calm down with a sweet (and slightly embarrassed) smile. That’s when you decide that you liked Sicheng. Maybe not in a romantic way, but in a way that you knew you wanted to spend more time with the young servant boy.

Which you did by following around the boy as he did his chores and asking him any questions that popped into your head, which he tried to answer the best he could while he body was racked with nerves. However, after a while, the conversation started to flow easier, Sicheng started to ask you questions back and openly display an emotion other than stoic. He would laugh out loud and even nudge your shoulder from time to time in playful gesture. Sicheng realizes he likes you too.

That’s why one day, as you two side by side down the palace halls on the way to the kitchen, Sicheng pulls a silver object of the pocket of his worn out pants and brings it up to your face. “My mother told me that my father gave her a ring as a promise to forever be loyal to her and… I just wanted you to know that I will forever be loyal to you, princess y/n.”

It’s difficult to explain the emotions that were going through you at the moment but they lead up to you happily throwing your arms around the boy, squeezing him tight enough that he can feel the genuine appreciation for the thoughtful gift. You don’t see is Sicheng’s face becoming beet red as you wrap your arms around him but you feel his arms wrap around you slowly, hesitantly, and his head lean on top of yours. When you slip the ring onto your index finger with a fond smile on your face, Sicheng has to look down at his feet to ensure that he hasn’t elevated off the ground and is floating above your head because of how happy he is.

“Is there something you find humorous, my lady?” You immediately snap out of your daydream as the taunting voice of the Duke brings you back to reality. You almost roll your eyes but smile politely, shaking your head.

“No, not particularly.”

“You were smiling just seconds ago.”

“Was I? I must have done it unconsciously.” You almost sighed in relief as he seems to buy it, nodding his head and standing up.

“Shall we take a walk around the palace?” He walks around the table and towards the exit of the dining room, not awaiting your response. You reluctantly stand get on your feet, sending reassuring smiles to the maids you sent apologetic ones you way before leaving the room.

“It’s a bit dusty on this shelf don’t you think?” The man’s white finger comes down on the counter in a swiping motion, picking up the grand total of about 4 dust particles. He shows you he clean finger as he makes a disgusted face. You think you might die.

That is, until you see a familiar face turning the corner. You feel relief rush through your body as you see the black hair you know so well. The voice of the Duke drowns out once again as you watch Sicheng dust a painting at the end of the hall. He has changed since the time you first met, he’s taller and slimmer. The baby face you once knew is long gone, replaced with sharp angles. The broadness of his shoulder has surely reached maximum capacity by this point, and you it quickly turns into one of those moments where you begin to wonder when did Sicheng get so… hot? These days you often catch yourself staring at him but so did every other normal person in the castle. While you were busy thinking about the hotness of your best friend your potential suitor has taken the liberty of calling him over to dust the shelves on the palace walls.

Sicheng’s presence is like a lavender candle, the closer he gets the more relaxed and at ease you feel. You nearly jump of joy when he’s right beside you. “Yes, your majesty?”

“Clean these shelves, boy. The person who did who did clearly didn’t know what they were doing because these shelves are filthy.”

You nearly snort at his statement, seeing as that you and Sicheng had dusted the shelves together that same morning.

“Of course.” Sicheng replies, carefully maneuvering the duster around the designs of the fancy shelf, cleaning off whatever it is the Duke has seen. Meanwhile the Duke goes off about the time he spent studying in Spain, and this conversation, much like the others gets drowned out. This time, by the outline of Sicheng’s back muscles through his white shirt as he dusts those shelves like a pro.

“Princess, your mind is awfully distant today.” The old man shoots you an accusing and annoyed look that shoots between you and Sicheng. You realize that he had caught you staring at the servant and was now giving you a judgemental look. “Is there something you need from this servant boy?”

Sicheng finally turns towards, keeping a straight face while making eye contact with you for the first time since you entered the hall. (Sicheng was told to not interact with you with suitors came to visit since it could put them off.) The Duke must see the corners of your lips tug slightly into a soft smile at the interaction because he suddenly steps between you two, clearing his throat simultaneously reminding you of his question. “Not right now.” But there is. You need him to get you out of here, you need him to whisk you away to the garden so you can water plants together and be at peace. Though you would never say any of these things to the old man because he would realize that you needed Sicheng in a way very different to the one he had thought of.

He watches you with suspicious eyes as you try your best to not show any of the emotions running through you right now, which proves to be harder than you expected. What with the scrutinizing gaze of the Duke and Sicheng’s gentle smile peering over his shoulder.

“Shall we continue the tour?” You suggested, desperate to move to a different topic of conversation. Thankfully, the man agrees and walks ahead of you, only after sending a dirty look Sicheng’s way.

“This is my bedroom.” You trace your hand across the intricate design of the familiar door, slowly moving past it to next room only to be stopped by the Duke’s hand on your arm, pulling you back. The second you meet his eyes you wish you could run away. The pale blue, dead looking eyes you hate so much stare back at you, this time, they hold a predatory feel. His intentions clear.

“I would love to see it.” You gulp, thinking of ways to politely decline his offer. However, you have no time to do so since the man is suddenly opening your door and dragging you into the room.

He examines the room with a somewhat judgmental look. Frowning slightly as he sees the odd knick knacks and artifacts you had collected with Sicheng over the years lining your window sills and filling up the majority of your desk. “This is very…interesting.”

You notice the wince in his voice as he says the words still, you force a smile. “Thank you, I got them from a good friend of mine.”

“Sit on the bed with me, princess.”

You feel your body go rigid when he says those words. Sweat begins to pool around the neck of your dress and you become hyper aware of all your surroundings. You’re nearly shaking as the man pulls you to the bed. No matter how hard you try, you can’t find it in you fight back. You don’t know why. Maybe fear. But you seem to become his puppet for a moment as he sits you down next to him on you nearly made bed.

“You know princess,” The man whispers into your ear causing shivers of disgust to go down your spine, you feel like you might cry as he moves even closer to you. His breath fanning your neck in a way that makes you sick. “I can’t be your suitor until I see what you have to offer.”

You feel yourself begin to feel sick and even then, you do nothing to stop it. It’s like you’ve lost full control of your body. Tears start running down your cheeks as the man leans forward and presses a sloppy kiss on your neck. You curl away in disgust, causing the man to look at you with an offended look.

And that’s when you see the familiar shoes from under your door frame.

“Sicheng!” You shoot up, pushing the man’s hands off of you. “Please, help!” The Duke’s hands are immediately on you again although now, they are over your mouth, being used to silence you. You try desperately to push away but his grip on you is tight. That is, until his hands are being pried off of you and his body is thrown on the floor in front of you. Suddenly you feel a pair of rough yet soft hands of either side of your face.

“Y/N?”

It’s only when you open your eyes that you realize that they were closed to begin with. The sight of Sicheng’s eyes calms you almost immediately (you were almost positive he was your remedy). His worried eyes bore into yours as he wipes away your tears with his thumbs. “Y/n, what happened? What did he do to you?”

You can only hiccup as you recall the event, the helplessness you felt and the pure disgust the memory brings you. Sicheng watches in concern as you sob in his hands, anger rushes through his blood as he turns to the man lying on the floor. Crouching down to his level, he grabs a fistful of the man’s expensive dress shirt. “What did you do to her?”

You don’t think you’ve ever seen Sicheng this angry. His forearm is bulging from the tight grip he has on the man’s shirt, the veins on his flushed neck protruding as he clenches his jaw at the man under him. “What did you do to the princess?” He repeats through clenched teeth.

The Duke stays quiet beneath him before daring to utter the words with a laugh: “Just sampling the goods.”

Before you know it, Sicheng’s fist was connecting with the side of the man's jaw. Only to be followed by another and another. Until two of the guards who had heard the commotion came running in, they both woke together to detach Sicheng from the bloodied man. Who stands up and sends Sicheng a threading glare before turning your way. He laughs incredulously in your direction and leaves the room with the little dignity he had left.

Once the Queen catches word of the incident, the Duke is banned from ever setting foot in the kingdom again, and she promises you to not bring in any more potential suitors for the time being. Saying she wanted to give you some time to recover from the traumatic incident.

And although she is grateful for the fact that he had stopped the Duke from taking advantage of you, The Queen was adamant on carrying out punishments. Sicheng was told not to interact with you while the suitors were here much less in such a violent manner. Even though the Queen loved Sicheng almost as much as you she did give him the weak punishment of staying two weeks in the underground servants quarters. Which moved his duties from the main palace floor to the kitchen and stables, which were inarguably the hardest jobs to perform around the palace, although you felt guilty for your friend, you knew you’re mother was only giving him a light punishment compared to what she could’ve done, so you stay quiet. Sicheng assured you that he would be fine down there but even then you found yourself sneaking out of your room at half past 1 with your thick duvet wrapped around your head, dragging behind you on your way down to the underground servants quarters.

When you reach the room Sicheng was staying in, you turn the doorknob gently as to not make too much noise. Then you’re met with makes your heart ache slightly. Sicheng is lying on a small bed with his bare back facing you, nothing but a thin sheet covering his legs. He shivers slightly as a cool breeze comes through the window and brushes against his body.

“Sicheng.”

The poor frightened boy shoots up from his bed at the sight of your unexpected presence. His hand falls over his heart as his eyes widen, his breathing calming down as he realizes it’s just you. “You scared me.”

You giggle, “I can see that.”

Seeing you like this makes Sicheng heart flutter, duvet wrapped around your head and sweet giggles leaving your lips. He nearly becomes mush as he remembers that this is a sight only he gets to see, and a memory that will be just his forever. He smiles, “What are you doing here?”

“I just can’t stand the thought of you being alone down here. It’s really chilly tonight too.” Your words scause Sicheng to smile once again, he scoots over until he’s against the wall to make room for you. You lay your body next to him and throw your duvet over the two of you. Sicheng sighs as he’s engulfed by the warmth of the duvet and your body, he then nuzzles his head into the covers cutely.

The bed is smaller than you thought it would be; you and Sicheng were practically pressed against each other. (Not than either of you were complaining.) The feeling of his bare skin under the covers causes your heart to race.

Once you’ve both settled in, facing each other as your eyes take in his face and his yours, a comfortable silence settles. The moonlight coming in through the window looks extra beautiful when it’s draped across your face, Sicheng thinks. His hand reaches up to stroke your cheek softly in an affection gesture that is not rare between you two.

“Thank you for stopping that guy yesterday,” you break the silence with the words you’ve hadn’t gotten the chance to say, “You’re my hero, Sicheng.” Though your words are childish, you couldn’t have meant them more. Without Sicheng, you would be nowhere. Those words were the only ones even remotely close to doing justice to the gratitude and love you feel for the boy laying across from you. Who smiles slightly at your words.

“You don’t have to thank me, princess. You know I would do anything for you.” It’s your turn to smile as he gazes down at you affectionately. You bring your hand up to his face and show him your ring.

“My most loyal companion.” He chuckles lightly before taking your hand in his and laying them, intertwined, between your bodies. “I want to give you something too, so you can remember that I will also always be loyal to you, Sicheng.”

Sicheng smiles but shakes his head politely, “You coming all the way down here in the middle of the night just because you thought I would be lonely was enough to remind me of your loyalty.”

You chuckle before looking up at Sicheng’s face once again. Then, it’s like the scene begins play in slow motion, the soft smile he’s wearing tugs your heartstrings a specific way, the moonlight in his eyes twinkle a bit brighter and it dawns on you…

Sicheng was your best friend. Sicheng was the one you could confide in the most. Sicheng has always taken care of you and helped you through your hardest times. Sicheng was someone you could always count on. Sicheng is the love of your life.

You’re in love with Sicheng.

The feeling had always been there, but you never knew what exactly it was that you were feeling.

The realization crashes into you like a wrecking ball, and the boy in question seems to notice. “What’s wrong?” Concern has seeped into the features of his face and you desperately wanted it to go away and be replaced with the gentle smile he was wearing moments ago. “You face turned serious all of the sudden.”

Another silence washes over the two of you as watch him be for another few minutes, processing the new found information. You know there’s no time like the present, there is no man like the one across from you and there’s no chance you’re going to let this perfect moment pass.

“Sicheng?”

“Hmm?”

“How would you feel if I told you I was in love with you?”

The boy immediately sits up on the small bed, eyes wide giving you dejavú to the moment you walked into the room earlier that night. “What?”

You swallow the lump in your throat as you realize that maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. All that courage you felt just minutes ago nowhere to be see. “I’m… I’m in love with you.”

You avoid his gaze that is currently burning holes into the side of your head. You attempt to hide your blushing face under the covers only to have them pulled down by Sicheng, who pulls you into a kiss that was gentle enough to send you mind reeling but hard enough that you feel all the oxygen in your lungs leaving. Leaving you breathless.

You can’t believe this is happening.

Neither can Sicheng.

As you pull away and look Sicheng’s glassy eyes and swollen lips, everything feels so dreamy, you have a hard time believing this is real.

Sicheng decides to speak first, “Are you really in love with me?”

Your eyes quickly become teary like his, you nod. “I am, Sicheng.”

A laugh escapes his lips as a tear falls out of his eye, though he wipes it away quickly. “You’re in love with me. I can’t believe… you love me back.” The sincerity that stares back you as reaches up to wipe away the tear that had fallen from the corner of your eye.

The room is filled with the sound of soft sniffles and the love that radiates off of your bodies. Which settles for a few minutes until Sicheng decides to break the silence.

“It won’t be easy for us, you know.” His words carry a worrisome tone that reminds you of the fact that you are the princess, and (even though you didn’t see him as one) Sicheng was in fact a servant in the castle. You were supposed to marry a rich prince that would benefit the political affairs of your kingdom, Sicheng can’t do that.

But Sicheng can make you laugh like no other, he can ease your stress and cure your sadness like it’s his specialty. Sicheng can protect you and keep you safe from the world.

Sicheng takes care of the older maids when they fall sick, he helps people around the town with their chores when he has finished his own, he always thinks about the people around him before he thinks about himself. He doesn’t have anything to offer other then a heart of gold and good intentions.

What better person is there to be king?

“I know,” you bring your hand up to stroke his messy black hair, running your fingers through it before letting it fall back to its original place on his forehead. “We will have fights and people won’t agree with our relationship, we will have to be strong Sicheng. It will be worth it in the end.”

A closed lipped smile makes its way onto Sicheng’s face and he pulls you closer to him, his hand grips the back of your nightshirt tightly as presses your foreheads together. His breath fans on your mouth as he whispers the words he can now say whenever he pleases, “I love you.”

You chuckle and say them back. You say it again and again and again until his lips are back on yours. You keep saying as his kisses reach your neck and jaw, this time with a breathy tone to them; elated and breathless at the feeling of his warm mouth on your neck.

You say it when he finally finds his rightful place between your legs, hands on your hips as he slowly enters you, the sheets thrown off your bodies because of the increasing heat radiating off the two of you. “My Queen.” He sighs as he looks down at you, his eyes are hooded and lust filled, messy hair sticking to his forehead. Sweat drips down his chest and toned abdomen causing your mouth water.

You say it with your hands in his hair as his sweaty body crashes onto yours, your breaths meet and mix between you before he leans forward and presses one last long kiss on your swollen lips.

His sleepy smile is the last thing you before you fall fast asleep that night, Sicheng’s arm around your waist pulling you against him so he could feel you while he slept.

The Queen chuckles slightly as she walks into her daughter’s bedroom only to find it empty and the duvet missing. She figured you would end up in the underground servants quarters with Sicheng. You always did have a pull towards that boy, as did he for you.

Sighing, she leaves the room towards her office in the castle where her maid sits at the desk writing. “Darling, will you please send a message to the Southern prince who was supposed to come here in 3 weeks? Tell him to not go through the hassle of traveling all the way up here.” The Queen sees the confused look on the woman’s face and clarifies her words, “I think Princess Y/N has already found what she has been searching for.”

#nct scenarios #nct wayv #nct #sicheng #wayv scenarios #winwin #dong sicheng #nct imagines #nct smut #nct fluff #nct dream #nct 127 scenarios #nct 127 #wayv #nct hard hours #nct soft hours

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fakeyellow · 5 years ago

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Forget Me Not

Based on an angsty anon prompt that @poor-bi-choices first wrote a story for over here (Bloodkeeper MC seeing Kamilah’s bloody memories). Set some time in Book 2.

Part 2 here.

“Just give me a little time and I’ll come back to you. I promise.”

It didn’t take long for Kamilah to notice that something was wrong.

Nightmares weren’t an uncommon occurrence for Isla; after their encounter with Vega, it had taken weeks before Isla had stopped waking up in a cold sweat, her mind still trapped in those final moments of terror.

And yet these were different.

When Isla’s heartrate spiked for the fourth night in a row, Kamilah turned to hold her in their bed, nuzzling the back of her neck.

“What’s wrong?” She asked, her voice husky with sleep.

There was a long silence during which Kamilah would have thought Isla asleep if not for the fact that she could hear the woman’s shuddering breaths.

“Nothing,” Isla finally breathed out, “Just another nightmare. That’s all.”

The younger woman tightened Kamilah’s arms around her, even as goosebumps covered her flesh. It was several long minutes before she fell asleep but it was even longer before Kamilah fell asleep with an unsettled look of concern on her face.

—

It was the weekend when Kamilah noticed another sign.

“Chinese food night, Chinese food night, Chinese food night!” Lily chanted as she walked through the hall, her arms overflowing with various red boxes.

“I don’t see how you can call that Chinese food. It’s as authentic as ‘Dracula’ is about Vlad,” Kamilah said with a distasteful crinkle of her nose at both the overwhelmingly greasy smell of the food and the thought of her rather... flamboyant acquaintance.

Lily stopped in her tracks, a thunderous expression of shock on her face.

“So what you’re saying is Count Dracula is real,” she spoke slowly, as if she was struggling to catch up to the mind-blowing revelation.

Kamilah smirked, silently walking ahead of Lily.

“This is not over,” Lily swore before entering the apartment, her stupor over Dracula replaced by her enthusiasm for the food in her arms.

“Isla, I got your favourite Moo Shu pork!” Lily sang, shaking one of the cartons in a tantalising manner.

Isla looked up from the sofa with a smile before a sudden pallor came over her.

“Sorry, I-“ Isla managed to get out before clapping a hand over her mouth and running to the bathroom.

Setting the food down, Lily and Kamilah quickly followed Isla to the bathroom, where they found her retching up the contents of her stomach.

Lily ran to get a glass of water as Kamilah knelt by Isla’s side, pulling her hair back and stroking her back in soothing motions.

When at last the vomiting had ceased, Isla gratefully accepted the cup from Lily and drank, closing her eyes with fatigue.

“I saw one of those really graphic documentaries on the meat industry yesterday and I don’t think I can forget it,” Isla said before weakly smiling, “I’m thinking of going vegan.”

“Aw yeah,” Lily exclaimed, holding her hand out for a high five, “Good for your body and the environment! I’m proud of you bestie! I’d join you but the best I can do is drink humanely sourced blood.”

Kamilah watched as Isla and Lily quickly fell into their usual easy banter, and although it didn’t feel like Isla was telling the whole truth, she let it pass for now.

—

When Isla woke up in the middle of the day and ran to the bathroom to puke up the meager contents of her stomach, Kamilah had had enough.

As she knelt to hand Isla a glass of water, Isla instinctively flinched away from her, fear visible in her widened eyes.

Immediately, Kamilah withdrew as if stung, and Isla seemed to realise what she had done, remorse washing over her face.

There was no denying that there was something wrong now and they returned to the bedroom together, a heavy tension hanging around them.

“I didn’t mean to-“ Isla began to say before falling quiet.

“What’s wrong?” Kamilah asked gently and yet Isla’s fear-filled eyes was still branded onto Kamilah’s mind despite her best efforts to push it back. She’d seen a myriad of expressions grace Isla’s face, from the mischievous smirk she made when doing something she was explicitly told not to do, to the sheer annoyance that rolled off her in waves when Lester made a pass at her, to the cute face she made whenever she was determined.

But Kamilah had never, not in all the time she’d known Isla, expected to see Isla’s face full of fear of her.

Isla gripped the glass of water in her hands, veins straining against the taut, pale skin of her hands.

“I’ve been seeing memories of your past,” she admittedly, her eyes downcast.

And Kamilah knew immediately what she meant. Her eyes closed, and she took a deep breath.

“Before Gaius Turned me, I was consumed with anger. My brother had been taken from me, and I craved vengeance,” Kamilah confessed, “Gaius granted me the power to claim it. Together, we brought a swarm of death onto my enemies the likes of which the world had never seen.”

“I fell in love with him then. On that battlefield, soaked in blood, back to back. And it was so easy to just… keep going from there.”

“From one massacre to another. From one war to another. So much blood.”

“I did terrible things and at the time, I enjoyed them,” Kamilah said, her voice filled with such pain and regret.

“It was only in America, after centuries, that I tried to reinvent myself. To bury those things so far down I’d never remember them… For so long, I tried to close myself off, refuse to feel, to care, to grant myself even a moment of joy. It was a small price to pay for all the lives I’d taken and the suffering I’d inflicted.”

Kamilah paused, her voice turning impossibly tender, “And then I met you. I let myself feel again.”

“But now the past is coming back to haunt us… This is my fault,” Kamilah admitted heavily.

Her fingers twitched as if to hold Kamilah’s hands in hers, but Isla kept her hands to herself. She spoke carefully,

“I know you Kamilah. You’ve done so much for all of us. What you do now is more important than what you did back then.”

“And yet,” Isla began with a tormented expression, “It’s just so difficult to have actually experienced them.”

“It’s not just the sight of blood everywhere, it’s the sound of screaming, it’s the smell of iron, of burning, decaying flesh...” Isla squeezed her eyes short as if trying to force the memories away.

She finally opened her eyes, “I think… I think I should go back to my apartment.”

“Just for a while,” Isla quickly added, “Maybe the nightmares will stop once I have a change in scenery.”

Instinctively, Kamilah felt her face close off, all of her emotions pushed back into a cold, dark recess of her mind after having so openly bared her heart. She couldn’t blame Isla for her reactions (she’d taken it very calmly) but there was still a large part of Kamilah that felt hurt after having been so vulnerable.

“I understand,” Kamilah said stiffly, and she made to get up when Isla suddenly grabbed her hand.

“I love you,” Isla said sincerely, staring directly into Kamilah’s eyes.

“I really do love you,” Isla repeated with an almost wistful smile, “Just give me a little time and I’ll come back to you. I promise.”

And Kamilah’s stiffness melted away as she pulled Isla into a tight embrace, too overcome with emotion to respond.

—

At first, everything seemed to be going well.

Isla regained her energy, the bags underneath her eyes disappearing. She was even more attentive at work, more energetic in all that she did.

And even though Kamilah and Isla went to their respective apartments at the end of the night, they seemed to be going strong.

They went on dates and Isla was more affectionate than normal. She initiated touches and kisses, the first to entwine her hand in Kamilah’s and the first to wrap her arms around Kamilah’s waist as they walked somewhere.

Things were going back to normal.

—

“Moving onto the next topic-“ Kamilah addressed the Council when a resounding crash suddenly sounded throughout the room.

All heads turned towards where Isla had been sitting, dutifully taking notes, and found her collapsed on the ground, her overturned chair next to her.

Isla looked drowsily around her, as if she wasn’t sure herself what had happened.

There was a series of concerned cries but Kamilah was the fastest to reach Isla, cradling her body in her arms and easily lifting her.

Kamilah and Adrian shared a glance, and Adrian began to redirect the Council back to the matters at hand, even as Priya cackled delightedly at the sheer ridiculousness of Isla’s fall and the Baron chuckled uproariously.

Without another word, Kamilah walked out of the meeting with Isla in her arms.

—

Upon being set down on the couch, Isla clutched her knees to her chin, as if trying to escape Kamilah’s discerning eyes.

It was futile though. Even if Kamilah hadn’t been graced with the keen vision of a vampire, they were far too close for Isla to hide anything.

Thoroughly scanning over Isla, Kamilah felt her heart sink.

The whites of Isla’s eyes were shot through with burst, spidery blood vessels and dark, sunken bags lied underneath, having deepened rather than disappeared. There was a thick layer of foundation on her face and yet the unnaturally pale pallor of her face could still be seen.

And although Isla had been wearing looser clothing as of late, Kamilah had felt her undernourished frame in her arms. Isla’s collarbones protruded noticeably from her skin, and she seemed to be all angles.

“Sorry, I don’t know what came over me,” Isla laughed but her laughter sounded forced and Kamilah remained serious.

“Don’t lie to me,” Kamilah said, “Have you been getting any sleep?”

“I…” Isla began before trailing off. Her shoulders slumped down, revealing the weight of all the exhaustion she’d tried to hide.

“No,” she said.

“The nightmares haven’t stopped.” Kamilah stated.

Isla hesitated before eventually confirming, “No.”

“I tried Kamilah,” Isla uttered, clutching her knees even more tightly to her chest.

“I thought that if I could just focus on how much I loved you, I’d be okay with it. Because I know that you’ve changed, Kamilah, so much. I’ve seen firsthand how much good you’ve done. It’s unfair to judge you solely by your past.”

A note of despair entered Isla’s voice and although she shut her eyes, a tear managed to escape.

“But every. night. I’m forced to relive one of your memories. Every night is a new nightmare, a new slaughter, a new massacre. I just… I can’t stop seeing you murdering all of those innocent people. I can’t stop hearing their cries of terror and pain. I can’t stop seeing the blood dripping off of you as you smile and glow with pleasure like some cruel goddess of death. It’s just so much.”

“I don’t know if I can do this anymore,” Isla finally said in a small voice, her eyes downcast. There was no energy in her left to cry.

Every part of her drooped down as if she were a wilting flower and Kamilah felt her heart clench with pain at seeing the woman she loved so utterly defeated.

Even in their darkest times fighting Ferals and Vega, Isla had been a fortress of relentless optimism. She’d never once given up on them.

And here she was now, a shell of a person, after having been plagued with Kamilah’s own bloody memories.

A deep sense of guilt and shame overcame Kamilah and she let out a heavy breath before enveloping Isla’s slight figure in an embrace.

“It’s my fault. I’ll fix this. I promise, I’ll fix this.”

—

Isla hadn’t put up much of a fight when Kamilah had taken her home. After all, the nightmares had come regardless of her location.

Now, Kamilah sat on their bed, watching Isla sleep. The woman’s brow was furrowed even now as she turned fitfully in her sleep and Kamilah could only imagine which of her memories Isla was living through.

She reached out a tentative hand to tuck an errant curl behind Isla’s ear before tenderly stroking the smooth skin of her cheek.

When Isla suddenly moved, Kamilah froze, but the woman just turned toward her touch with a sigh, her face smoothing over.

And with this single action, Kamilah felt such an overwhelming swell of affection overcome her, even as she already felt filled with an infinite sadness.

Taking in a deep breath of Isla’s scent for the last time, Kamilah finally tore away from her, feeling her heart fracture into smaller pieces with each mm. of space that grew between them.

“Do it,” she ordered, her lips drawn into a thin line.

“Are you sure?” Serafine asked worriedly, seeing through her friend’s composed demeanor to the sheer devastation that lay beneath.

“I don’t know if I can ever return her memories back to her.”

Unable to speak, Kamilah nodded.

—

A/N: Long italicised quotes are taken from Bloodbound Book 2 Chapter 12.

I saw the prompt on @poor-bi-choices‘ blod and I just couldn’t stop thinking about it! I haven’t read hers yet because I don’t want to be influenced by it / unconsciously copy it.

I have 3 different endings that I’ve semi-written/outlined and I’m probably going to post them all as a single second part to this because they each have different aspects to them I like, although I am leaning towards a specific ending. Are they all angsty or have I included some happy endings? You’ll have to wait to find out lol

Also Isla is from an anon who sent the name in so thanks! (I got caught up on trying to find a name with a meaning but Isla like “eye-la” sounds pretty 🤗)

#bloodbound #kamilah sayeed #kamilah x mc #playchoices #lily spencer #serafine dupont #playchoices fanfic #My writing

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carriagelamp · 4 years ago

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Since it’s 🍁 Canada Day 🍁 I figured I’d do the same thing I did for Pride Month and post a round up of Canadian books. Canadian literature has a tendency to be overlooked, but there’s some amazing gems out there!

That being said, this is definitely not a definitive list. There’s lot of lists out there that probably better, more relevant books. This is just a personal list as a Canadian person of Canadian lit I’ve read that stood out to me for whatever reason. I definitely encourage you though to look into some of the new Canadian novels being written write now, especially all the awesome own voice stories being written by First Nations authors across the country!

I’ve read a fair few Canadian novels over the years, so I’m going to break them up into one post of highlights each day for the remainder of the week: one for Children’s Novels / Chapter Books one for YA / Adult Novels, one for Graphic Novels and one for Picture Books.

Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery

This is like… The Canadian Novel ™ isn’t it? I imagine that even if you’ve never heard of any other Canadian novel, you’ve probably heard of Anne of Green Gables, if for no other reason than it’s been adapted a million times over. If you’ve never bothered to read the original though, I highly recommend it. Since it was written in 1908 the language is definitely old-fashioned, but that somehow makes it engaging enough to keep an adult reader hooked, while not being too difficult for a child reader who’s moved on to full length novels. It also, of course, makes a fantastic read aloud – I’ve reread this book easily a dozen times over the years since first having it read aloud to me by my mom, during which we both bawled our eyes out together.

If you somehow haven’t heard of Anne, it’s about Anne Shirley, a wildly imaginative (and just wild) orphan girl who is adopted by the Cuthberts and brought to live with them on their Prince Edward Island farm, Green Gables. The Cuthberts had originally intended to adopt a boy who could help with the farm work, but when Matthew Cuthbert finds a girl waiting for him at the train station he can’t bring himself to turn her away. And so begins the hijinks and misadventures of Anne as she grows from child to young adult.

Le Champ Maudit by François Gravel

I’ve always loved the genre of child-horror and this book absolutely delivers. The creature, vieux Nick, and the way it exists in space is delightfully chilling even as an adult. The story is about Oliver, who has often been warned by his uncle not to go into the cornfields – it makes sense after all, the cornfields are vast and uniform, it would be easy to get lost in them. Oliver has no reason to assume there’s something more sinister lurking in them, or that it could be tied to the other people who have gone missing over the years. That is, not until he makes the mistake of chasing a rabbit into the stalks one evening…

The Dragon’s Egg by Alison Baird

I was absolutely a “dragon kid” as a child, I loved any sort of dragon book I could get my hands on and I read this one over and over when I was in grade three. It’s about Ai Len who is given a lovely river stone by her father from his trip to China. Ai Len is shocked one night when, all of a sudden, she realizes that it wasn’t a stone at all, but rather a dragon’s egg. Lonely Ai Len befriends the baby dragon (who disguises himself as one of her gold fishes during the day) and helps him grow and learn as they try to figure out how he can get back home to the river his family inhabits.

Fatty Legs by Christy Jordan-Fenton and Margaret Pokiak-Fenton

Fatty Legs is the true story account of Margaret Pokiak, an Inuvialuit child who grew up with her family in the Arctic. At the age of eight, despite their reputations and her father’s reluctance, Margaret begs to be allowed to attend the Catholic residential school because there was nothing she wanted more than to learn to read. There, far from her warm, loving family, Margaret learns about the cruelties and humilities of residential school. This book is a good introduction to residential schools for young children – it shows the horrors while still keeping the story child-friendly and relatable.

The Incredible Journey by Sheila Burnford

The classic novel that inspired Disney’s film Homeward Bound. This story is about three pets – two dogs and a cat – who are left behind under the care of a family friend at an isolated cabin. These three determined pets though refuse to abandon their humans that easily. After a couple weeks of no contact, a decision is made: they will make the trek across the dangerous North Ontario wilderness in order to find their owners. This is a great animal story that genuinely feels perilous at times as these three house pets are forced to contend against the elements, wild predators, and even other humans.

Inkling by Kenneth Oppel

Kenneth Oppel is a human name in Canadian middle grade literature – not only is he a great writer, but an incredibly prolific one. If you have a middle school child in your life, consider checking out this man’s library of works because he has books that range across all sorts of different genres and topics, and they tend to be unique and gripping. They’re a staple in any Canadian school library.

Inkling is about a boy, Ethan, who is struggling with his life. His family has gone through a personal tragedy, his artist father is struggling to write a new graphic novel, and Ethan’s been entrusted with drawing the art for his school group’s graphic novel assignment, and he can’t bring himself to tell them his father’s talent wasn’t hereditary. Everything changes though, when one night, his father’s ink wakes up… This book is really heartwarming, with sweet family moments, lots of action, and an adorable ink blob that’s just trying to do its best.

My Name is Seepeetza by Shirley Sterling

Another own voice novel, this time written by West Coast Salish and residential school survivor Shirley Sterling. This novel is written like a weekly diary by six year old Seepeetza who is taken from her joyous family home and forced into a residential boarding school. While there she is forced to change her name, her language, and all the things that made her life happy and complete. Despite all this, Seepeetza finds ways to survive and still find joy. This book is written for a slightly older audience than Fatty Legs, more of a thin middle grade novel but still balances the brutal horrors of residential schools with a child-friendly narration.

The Secret World of Og by Patsy Berton

This is another Canadian children’s classic, though a much less well-known one than Anne of Green Gables. My mom read this to me and my brother in early elementary school, a chapter a night, and I remember being completely wrapped up in it and it’s strange, quirky pictures. It’s about the five Berton children who discover a strange, cavernous world hidden beneath their club house, inhabited by little creatures called Ogs.

Secrets in the Sand by Sharon Siamon

This is exactly what it looks like: a true to form Horse Girl book. There’s nothing overly special about it, but I read it this month and was charmed by it. This is technically the second book of the Saddle Island series (and she has two other Horse Girl related series as well though I haven’t read them) but for whatever reason I read the second first and actually enjoyed it more of the two. It has it all! A spunky, head-strong girl! Her best friend and annoying brother! A small, financially struggling Maritime town! A brave horse that loves the ocean and swims into underwater caves! The promise of pirate treasure! Saving The Family Farm (and rebuilding it from the ground up on a tiny island)! Want a fun mindless horse adventure? Well here it is!

Silverwing by Kenneth Oppel

I know, I know, another Kenneth Oppel book but listen… he is so prolific and also it might be a crime to do a Canadian book list and not mention Silverwing. This was a childhood staple when I was growing up, practically everyone had either read it for class, read the entire series on their own because who wouldn’t want to, or watched the weird ass TV series. Or done all three! If you haven’t read Silverwing but like animal adventure stories, this is honestly one of the peaks of the entire genre imho. It’s about Shade, a small silverwing bat that struggles with the rules and limits placed around bat colony life. He’s constantly pushing things, constantly challenging others regardless of if they’re his bullying yearmates or if they’re the clan elders. But one day, Shade takes it too far and breaks a vital law: he stayed up and saw the sun. Now the owls are determined to have Shade killed and the clan is prepared to exile him for his transgression. All this just as the clan is preparing to migrate, and Shade, with his small runty wings, ends up falling further and further behind in the storm…

Underground to Canada by Barbara Smucker

I debated whether or not to include this book, given all the BLM movements going on. This book isn’t own voice, and in the research I’ve done since becoming an adult has made me realize a number of the problems that surround it. But still, it felt wrong to leave out, both because of the social climate right now and because this was another classroom staple when I was growing up. It’s about a pair of young slave girls who are horribly abused on the planation they live on, and who eventually join in on a plot to run away, to find the rumoured “underground railroad”, a network of people who help black slaves escape captivity and escape – in this case across the border into Canada. Despite its flaws, this was a book we read in school and, through the book and classroom discussions, really introduced me to the concept of slavery and racism… and the fact that racism is still horribly alive today. It shook me as a child – it was written to be optimistic and adventurous for children, but it still had more violence and horror than I was used to in books at that age and it really shook me. So I included it in the list because, for me at least, I believe it had a positive effect on my growth as a person.

Up In Arms by Amanda Spottiswoode

This is a woefully underrated series because it really delights me. It’s about six friends, spread across two families. Though they’re from the UK, this series is all about their adventures with their uncle in Canada. Spottiswood writes children travel adventures, all set around the 1940s. The first, Brother XII’s Treasure is a treasure hunt along the West Coast during a sailing vacation; the second, The Silver Lining take them into British Columbia’s interior on cattle drive as the kids get drawn into adventures on horseback, a familiar villain, and old mining secrets. This third book I actually read before the others, and is my favourite of the series. It’s back on BC’s west coast, only this time rather than a vacation the kids of be sent to Canada because of the outbreak of WWII. You get high-flying adventure, wilderness survival, and planning a heist to help right the wrongs done to a local Indigenous community by the white settlers. It’s just a lot of fun.

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jereviendrai · 4 years ago

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||| ooc; does every character on this blog have bpd symptoms? is this problematic, considering they’re all villains or would-be villains? is there a way to give a villain a mental health disorder without stigmatizing the disorder? well--

OH AND BIG TRIGGER WARNING FOR A WIDE RANGE OF MENTAL HEALTH TOPICS SUCH AS: eating disorders, mental illness, stigmatization of mental illness, self harm, suicidal tendencies, and a fuckload more. I don’t go into detail. There are just mentions. I’m not gonna say a bunch of graphic shit, I promise! If I went into graphic detail, this would turn into a PhD thesis proposal, and that’d be WAY too long to be worth writing. Also I have BPD, but I’m not going to pretend that I’m an expert on the subject. I’m not. My word is not law, but it’d be nice if my word was taken into consideration.

this post got so fucking long and disorganized jesus christ

The answers are: yes, not inherently, and absolutely.

I want to get into the mental health of all three characters in a second, but I think it’s important to talk a little about the other two points first. That said, though -- yes, they’re all borderline. All three of them! And they all experience it differently! I will come back to that. Anyway--

I feel like it’s important to talk about villains, mental illness and stigma. There’s a really common (and insanely lazy) tendency for writers to explain a villain’s villainy by simply saying, “oh, well they’re a psychopath,” or, “they’re just crazy.” This is not only lazy and offensive, but it contributes to an unfair stigma against the mentally ill.

Mental illness might, say, compel someone to steal a chocolate bar or snap at someone out of anger. It might make a person’s emotions volatile. It might make someone unreasonable. They might suffer delusions of abandonment, of some plot against them, of people’s secret intent to humiliate them, etc. They might suffer and handle their suffering poorly. They may cause harm. But that doesn’t make them... evil. It makes them complex. And how they react to and handle their negative actions says more about them than any diagnosis could.

When you have a villain with a mental illness, you need to examine how the illness is hurting them. Write about how it hinders their progress. Write about how isolating it can be for them. Write about the impact and struggle. Not how the illness makes them so evil or so irredeemably awful. The illness should be what humanizes them and helps to make them relatable. No matter how untouchable and powerful your villain is, they have some personal struggle that is independent of their villainy. When done correctly, it can go a long way in fleshing out your villain and adding interesting inner conflict!

I know, I know. You might be asking, “yeah, but don’t people with mental health issues sometimes cause harm directly related to their symptoms?” To which I say: yeah, duh, of course. Just like a depressed person might say something mean when they’re having a bad day. Just like someone with ADHD might make someone feel like they aren’t being listened to. Just like someone who has social anxiety might make a friend feel unloved. Just like mentally healthy people also occasionally cause harm.

I’m not saying mental health issues don’t cause problems and maladaptive behaviors. I’m just saying it doesn’t... make someone inherently bad -- real or fictional. And I need people to internalize that.

ANYWAY ON TO THE CHARACTERS AND THEIR BPD

(i know, you’re probably like, “dude oh my god shut up and get on with it” sakjlfdkjsa)

I’m going to be referring to the four subtypes. I know these are controversial to some people. Some really don’t like these labels, others feel comforted by them, etc. They’re just to make it easier to talk about this whole thing. No one fits neatly into any one subtype! Some people don’t resemble any particular one! Everyone is different! Don’t box people into these subtypes if you haven’t been given consent, thanks!

Mr. A / Clark Donovan Mr. A is a classic example of the Quiet Borderline. Someone with quiet BPD mostly directs their symptoms inward. It’s harder to detect than other types, as the symptoms that are most prevalent are mostly expressed, well, inwardly. Self-esteem issues, self-blame, insecurity, withdrawing emotionally, pretending you’re not angry when you are, self harming tendencies, suicidal thoughts, etc. He’s also kind of clingy. Mr. A is an extremely loyal person to a fault. He is a people pleaser and will go to the ends of the Earth to make his loved ones happy, even if it hurts him. This is of detriment to him, as he often finds himself getting hurt on behalf of people who might not care as much as he does. He’s let a lot of bad people into his life solely because they made him feel loved, wanted and useful. He views everyone he loves through rose-tinted glasses and only takes them off long after he’s been laid to waste by them. He has terrible issues with self-image and has thus developed an eating disorder. He also has severe depersonalization/derealization disorder, which is a result of how his mental health interacts with his reality-warping powers. It creates a lot of anxiety with him, watching himself phase through things and bend the world around him on a whim. His motivations in life are connected to this, but his motivation to do evil things is not. He wants to bring other superpowered people together as a united front against humanity, as he feels that humanity is a threat to their continued existence. This has nothing to do with his mental health issues. The part of it that does tie in is that he’s painfully lonely and has chronic feelings of boredom, so being surrounded with a shit ton of different people mitigates that. It’s a motive for him bringing people closer to him, but it is not a motive for him to launch an attack on all humanity. He’d be really offended if you tried to accuse him of doing this on the basis that he’s just a bit ill. His illness literally just makes him crave contact with other living beings just like him. He sometimes does bad or stupid things because of this, but it literally has nothing to do with his motives as a villain. As an addendum of sorts, Mr. A’s alias and reluctance to use his given name (Clark Donovan) are a result of identity issues he suffers due to his BPD. He finds it hard to maintain a stable sense of identity, so he just... doesn’t.

Ivan Chanteur Ivan closely resembles what we like to call an Impulsive Borderline, comorbid with ADHD. He is an impulsive person, as the name of the subtype suggests. He’s a thrill-seeker who suffers from extreme levels of chronic boredom, which he desperately tries to combat by any means necessary. Staying still and doing repetitive tasks is literal torture for him. If he cannot get up and move and do whatever it takes to keep himself feeling fulfilled and occupied, he is probably going to fucking lose it. When he is actively vocalizing his boredom on a regular basis, this means the chronic feelings of boredom have reached critical mass. It’s not just boredom. It’s anxiety, it’s agitation, it’s existential dread, it’s an inability to focus, it’s pent-up energy that needs to go somewhere and can’t just stay in him anymore. If he can’t get it out in healthy ways, he usually resorts to self-harm or less-than-healthy pursuits. He’s been known to dabble in drugs, self-harm, occasional promiscuity on a bad night. While therapy’s helped him get a handle on it, there’ve been a lot of stressful and traumatic things going on in his life have have made it a lot harder to keep himself in check. Ivan is pretty charismatic, able to cast a wide net and catch all sorts of people in his social web. He has a sort of natural magnetism that, on a superficial level, should make him quite popular. But underneath it all, he has difficulty trusting people long enough to actually let them into his life. He’ll act like an open book, only to slam himself shut and reshelve himself before anyone can get anywhere near the end. He’s easy to befriend, but difficult to get close to. This has caused him to feel lonely and frustrated. He wishes he could easily form deep connections, but it’s hard and it hurts him. In addition to all of this, he engages in a wide variety of attention-seeking and risk-taking behaviors. He often spends time with people who are not good to him, simply for the thrill of it. This has often gotten him hurt, but he finds it hard to cut this habit in spite of everything. This leads to a lot of frustration and self-hatred, as it makes it hard for him to protect himself. Every time someone hurts or betrays him, he beats himself up over it and tells himself he should know better by now. All that said, though, he’s come a long way in therapy. He’s not quite able to keep a handle on all of it all the time, but he’s managed to secure one or two decently stable friendships along the way.

Eve Laurier Eve is particularly difficult to talk about, but I’m going to try my best. Eve is what happens when you make a conscious decision to be bad. He knows beyond a shadow of doubt that what he’s doing is wrong, but he feels so wronged by the world that he just cannot seem to motivate himself to care. This... again... has nothing to do with his BPD. If anything, it’s his struggles with this disorder that keep him at least somewhat... grounded in reality. Eve suffered a personal tragedy -- the loss of his twin sister in a housefire. Though ruled an accident, he cried foul play. Consumed with grief at the loss of the only person he felt could truly understand him, he vowed to find the culprit and make them pay. This set him down a path of vengeance that would make John Wick blush. Eve grew up as the heir to his family’s criminal enterprise. This put him in a position of power the very moment he was born. This also left him exposed to a lot of terrible, violent crimes from a very young age. Because this was normalized by his family, he internalized and compartmentalized any misgivings he had about violence. By the time he was ready for university, he had been thoroughly trained to carry out hitjobs on behalf of the family. He was a weapon from the moment he left the womb. He was groomed to do terrible things, and it’s because of this ongoing and continuous trauma that he developed his particular cocktail of mental health issues. He mostly fits in with the label of Petulant BPD. Repeated and violent trauma did a number on him, leaving him angry and hurt over what his parents let him fall victim to. He also experiences feelings of self-loathing over the part he feels he played in his own trauma, despite the fact that it started in early childhood. He is self-defeating and self-blaming. He has a difficult time expressing his feelings and has angry outbursts fairly regularly, often resulting in self-harm and suicidal ideation. He’s been known to reach for the nearest mind-altering substance just to get out of his head for a bit. His mood swings are intense and leave him feeling fatigued and anxious. He has severe social anxiety that sometimes manifests as cold indifference. He also has issues with control, has paranoid delusions about the people in his life and doesn’t often believe it when people say that they care for him. He will find any and every piece of evidence that points to the contrary, even if he has to make it up himself. This usually ensures that he’ll end up alone again. He doesn’t have very many close relationships, if any at all. His BPD is not the reason he hurts people. Any hurt caused by his BPD is directed at himself, not at others. His BPD is a direct result of what actually has primed him to hurt people. It’s a direct result of trauma. He’s traumatized. And no, trauma is no excuse for what he’s done -- but his BPD didn’t make him kidnap and torture Ivan while he waited for Ivan’s parents to send in the ransom. That was all Eve. That was his conscious decision to make, in spite of everything in his head telling him how awful and wrong he would be to do such a thing. He knew it was wrong and ignored it, as he was under the impression that Ivan’s family had a hand in his sister’s death. If anything, his BPD aggravates his feelings of shame and self-loathing when he does precisely what his parents had been training him to do his whole life.

Anyway-- I hope this was helpful or at least interesting.

The point I’m trying to make here is that mental illness isn’t some kind of ultimate litmus test of good and evil. A disorder doesn’t make you good or bad. It’s just another facet of who you are.

So... to that end... please for the love of fuck stop using personality disorders as the reason for someone’s villainy. Please. I am begging.

I wrote a bunch of BPD villains in various stages of villainhood because I have BPD and this disorder often makes you feel like you’re evil, a monster, etc. Honestly, on good days I feel like an inherently bad person who consciously chooses to do good. That’s very flawed and I know that logically I’m not inherently bad, but that’s kind of what stigma does. It makes you feel like you’re inherently bad. And that feeling influenced how I write all three of these characters.

This is an incoherent mess but today’s the day I find out if I have coronavirus and I’m so fucking stressed out and hopped up on DayQuil. Thanks for reading any of this, I guess?

#||| ooc;#||| canon; ivan chanteur #||| canon; mr. a #||| canon; eve laurier #||| canon;#PLEASE READ THIS I SPENT SO MUCH TIME #I LITERALLY SPENT HOURS ON THIS FOR NO REASON AKLJFJSAJDLKSKJDKSL #i'm listening to 'the spider' by weezer and it's a fucking mood right now #fucking christ ok tumblr lags so goddamn much when i open this in my drafts so i need to post this now #also yeah i guess this is me telling the world i have a personality disorder hi surprise i'm Messy and Traumatized who knew haha

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nymphl · 4 years ago

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Lie to Me - Hux x Reader x Ch. 16: Guilty & Innocent

A/N: Hello there xD As promised, here it goes chapter 16 of Lie to Me. I’m working on chapter 25, but it’s getting quite difficult right now because whenever I get some time to write, my mom starts talking about just... about everything. And I feel extremely bad to tell her to stop even when she talks for hours nonstop and it gets on my nerves? haha So bear with me just a little more. This quarantine is being harder on her than on me.

Story Summary: Falling for the enemy… That’s probably the stupidest thing you’ve ever done. Letting him live… for he should be dead. And you should’ve been the one to kill him. You had him, right there… and you let it escape through yours fingers. He lived. And now only the time could tell if you made the right decision — more likely wrong — by saving the amnesiac General of the First Order and telling him he was your husband. [Hux x Reader - Hux x You]

Warnings for the entire story: Will contain at times; graphic violence, sex, drugs and manipulation, coarse language and OOCness.

AO3 Tags: from enemies to lovers; eventual romance; memory loss; fake marriage; fake marriage becomes real marriage; rebellion; married couple; canon divergence; slow burn romance; politics; rebel alliance; resistance; first order; OOCness; eventual smut; eventual sex; power play; power dynamics; syndicate; lies; you lie; Hux lies; Hux backstory; manipulation; political alliances; political betrayals; secret organizations; tros fix it; anti tros; nobody likes general pryde.

Wordcount: 3420

PREVIOUS CHAPTER

IT HAD BEEN A LONG TIME SINCE ARMITAGE HUX LAST SAW THAT ARMOR. The only indication he had his words had not gone to waste were the slight and occasional nods he could see through the compromised transmission.

The poor broadcast made it difficult for him to understand the already muffled words because of the gigantic helmet. Yet, he insisted. There was something he needed to know, and it could not be delayed any longer.

Depending on the answers he got, he would have to change his plans drastically. The future — his future, her future and the First Order’s as well and why not the whole galaxy? — depended on what Captain Phasma would say. She was, in no way, a reliable source — he doubted anyone in the First Order could be considered as such —, but the Captain of the Stormtroopers was no Politian.

As a militarist, she was good at following orders, not defying them, and yet…

…they had history together.

And if there was someone he came closer to ever trust, he could say it was the chromium-armored stormtrooper. In truth, she said very little, but more than enough for someone such as himself. Out of the triumvirate — one out of many in the First Order —, Armitage Hux could say he was the best strategist — not blessed with either the Force or physical strength, the slim and awkwardly tall boy had to work on his forte: his brain.

In any case, the possibility of another betrayal — something he quite did not expect the first time around — would not come off as a surprise at this point. He was counting on it. In fact, he planned the probable outcome for each situation. No one could say the General was a man who enjoyed the unexpected — that was why he never had time for people nor relationships; feelings were unpredictable —, and while he adapted quite easily, his distaste for such was immeasurable.

The unforeseen made him feel powerless and everything that did not add for his bright future as Supreme Leader — Emperor, no one could say he dreamed little — was disposable. A controller. Armitage Hux was a control freak and everything — people and feelings included — that could not be controllable was better left behind. Thankfully, Captain Phasma fell in the first category.

“There’s word out there that you betrayed the Order.”

He narrowed his eyes — something she would not be able to see given the transmission.

“Careful, Phasma.”

His strategy was quite simple, really. After his reveal, Captain Phasma would either keep his secret or she would tell the Supreme Leader — or even Ren himself. Or they would read right through her — he could only hope she learned by now how to conceal her thoughts.

Nevertheless, he was ready for any outcome. If the latter happened, his plans would only be hastened a bit.

“The Resistance attacked us in Rioza. They stole the shipment in its entirety. Some believe you feed them information.”

He thought that a smirk would have looked too suspicious. And yet he smirked. The slight tilt of his lips went unnoticed by the Captain.

Instead of giving her an answer — of soothing her fears and insecurities —, he chose silence. And she knew better than to expect a response for such a stupid statement.

“So… You’re coming back? You’ll prove them wrong.”

It sounded like a question — and it was a question; Captain Phasma lacked the intricacies of a more modulated speech —, but it was also a half-assertion. Once he was alive, it was expected of him to come back. The First Order was his life — after all, he had been molded for the position and role he fit in right now; the fact he was at the sore end of the bargain, with less than he deserved was a mere casualty —; he had pledged his life to it.

Not satisfied in taking his life — or almost taking, it would be a surprise when they saw he was in fact very much alive —, those who plotted against him managed to destroy his reputation in the Order.

He almost snorted.

The irony was too good to miss. The poster-boy, the golden General — a Grand-Marshall if they would so give what he deserved and worked so hard for —, was no more than a traitor.

Shaking such thoughts away, he concentrated in her question.

I make no idle promises.

The words were on his tongue, dying to be unleashed. He knew better. Even though he said it once, in a vastly different context, true, the meaning applied for the situation at hand. Suffice to say that Armitage Hux was a man whose distaste for the unpredictable rivaled his aversion to small talk and stating the obvious. If Phasma learned to battle with her physical strength, the slim, tall, awkwardly ginger Arkanisian boy was forced to quickly understand the power of the words.

Instead, he nodded.

Guilt…

You felt guilty before, but it could not compare to how you felt now. It was destroying you to know he had left and was yet to come back. When he said do not wait for me, you thought he meant for the night, not for whole four days.

A monster…

You felt like a monster for not giving him an answer.

But what else could you say? What else could you do? You were caught in your lies once, it was not like you could say you trusted him when you were not sure you did. You were cornered. Afraid and feeling guilty.

You had not realized it before, but you regretted saving him — you thought that was not something that would go away. He was the enemy. He and his precious First Order had invaded your planet — your home. It is true they betrayed him and tried to have him killed — and only the Maker could know why. You wondered if the General knew the truth himself — not the twisted lie you told him.

Besides, he said himself he probably knew about the new virus wreaking havoc in Dantooine, causing the death of so many aliens right now.

He could have lied. He could have said he had nothing to do with it, but he decided to be honest, and so did you.

You just did not expect him to leave for good.

It had been four days since he left. Obviously, you paid no heed to his warning. You had to go back. You had to work. Your coworkers — the few of them who did not stop working — were counting on you; lives depended on you. You had to go back to the Hospital. Your own life and safety meant very little face to the gravity of the situation.

The possibility of getting infected by the disease was no longer a threat — it was confirmed it was spread through the water and only alien species were vulnerable to it. Unlike the Krytos Virus, this one — the alien flu as your coworkers called it — could not be reversed by using bacta in the treatment. And if the most powerful healing substance could not kill it, you doubted anything else would. You had discovered — out of sheer luck or utter despair, you were no longer sure — that a small substance, not found in abundance in Dantooine and already out stock, seemed to alleviate the symptoms and delay the impending death.

Yet, even if the risk of getting sick was nil, at least one healer had been eaten by the crazed aliens quarantined. You would be lying if you said the possibility of being eaten alive did not scare you. However — and you could not help the comparison —, Aquilla would never let it hinder him. You could only hope the General understood it. Saving people was in your DNA, you could not help it.

At least, that was what you prepared yourself for when you returned to the Cave — your own house had been invaded by homeless, sick aliens; something you would not and could not complain about, they needed it more than you ever did —, only to find it empty. D-Five was making dinner for you only. The always so very efficient and proactive protocol droid told you he would not come back that day, but he was ready to be your company and talk about whatever topic you saw fit. The talk did not take place in the next day either, for you were welcomed with the same words. On the third day you gave up on the talk. You would not return to find the Cave empty.

Today, you felt very inclined to stay at the Hospital again.

A tired sigh left you as you entered the refresher. It was a very hot day in Dantooine and even though you longed to get home — if you could call the cold and dark Cave as such —, and get some rest, you knew you had to stay awake to take care of the children in your care.

You splashed cool water in your face, trying to wash away the sleepiness that began to take over you. The mirror placed on the wall showed you a very different face from not even a week ago. You had dark circles under your eyes and your skin lacked the luster of a healthy person. It did not help you could barely eat for the past few days — worry always compromised your appetite greatly.

Placing your hands over your face, you took a moment to breathe deeply and keep your thoughts at bay. A part of you wondered if he died — it was quickly dismissed; he was too smart to die that easily and you thought you would know, you knew when Aquilla died, it was not something rational, more like empirical, you just knew —, and part cogitated the possibility of him going back to the First Order.

I am loyal only to myself.

…and to you.

Is he though?

You shook your head. He would not go back to them. They betrayed him. They conspired to have him killed — or so he said, and could you trust him? Senator Organa was still to get back to you…

…And he said himself you should not wait for him.

It was impossible not to wonder if he was back to the First Order. He was a General and someone of his position — in control of such immensurable power — would hardly let go.

Your thoughts were interrupted with the buzz of your comm-relay. You took it with you as soon as you left home in the first day, too worried to stay parted from it — you had to know what happened to General Organa, you needed to. However, you were afraid of sending a message and it falling on the wrong hands — only the Maker could know how many lives such a message could affect.

Not giving it much thought, you opened the comm-relay only to be greeted by the tired and old face of the woman who invaded your mind more than you would like for the past few days.

“Were the Coordinates right? Did everything go—

You stopped yourself, biting the inside of your cheeks to the point you felt the coppery taste in your tongue. You closed your eyes — well, it was too late to say anything else now.

Kriffs.

If she did not know before that you did not trust your contact, she knew now. In her place — even if everything went smoothly, you would not trust this deserter of the First Order. It was clear that unlike Finn — or FN-2187 and what a dehumanizing way of calling someone —, your contact was not reliable.

I trust him with my life.

As if.

If she noticed your internal conflict, she chose not to comment on it, “Tell your contact we are grateful for all the information he has provided.”

You were not sure if she noticed it either, but you straightened your back. It felt as if a heavy weight was lifted off your shoulders. It felt as if you could finally breathe again. And you took a deep intake of breath. Your lungs burned with the amount of air you inhaled. And yet, you would not trade this sensation for anything else.

With the relief, came the regret.

You were once again guilt-ridden.

You should have trusted him.

You should have believed him.

You should have…

…let go of your apprehensiveness and listened to him. Listened to your heart that wanted so badly to accept his words and not to your mind, that wanted to paint him as the villain of your story.

He was… innocent all long and you were just… Kriffs. A monster for judging him so harshly.

“…not only right, but useful as well.”

Shaking your thoughts away, you decided to actually look at her and pay attention to what she said.

“What took you so long?” you asked, not really sure you overstepped your boundaries. The nature of your relationship was not clear as of yet. However, you had to know. If the cause of her delay was not related to an imaginary — you were such a fool — betrayal on Hux’s part, you needed to know the reason.

General Organa took a moment to answer, as if testing her words. As if testing… you. It was clear she was surprised at your disarray, but once again she chose not to comment on it. If she was preserving your privacy or if she did not trust you to such extent, you did not know.

“A new disease spread in the outer-rim territories kept the Resistance busy.”

Your eyes widened.

“The Alien Flu…” It left your lips in a meek whisper. You knew it was bad, but you had no idea it was spread in planets other than Dantooine. If eradicating a disease in a single planet was almost impossible, you could not say what you expected of part of the galaxy. “Kriffs!”

There was moment of silence.

Senator Organa was most like analyzing your reaction. And you could not say you judged her. In her place, you would do the same — if Aquilla had not spoken about this, you could say the General taught you with his posture, but you knew that silence spoke volumes about a person or a situation.

“Perhaps your contact knows something about the disease and its cure.”

It was your time to keep silent, however brief it was. Soon, the words came to life in your mouth, “No. He doesn’t.”

Her expression was somewhat blank. You had no idea if it meant she believed you or if she thought everything you said was utter bullshit. General Organa did not strike you as someone who trusted others — even if they helped her once — that easily. On your part, you were surprised for defending him so vehemently.

He could be innocent.

He is innocent.

Even if the concept of innocence did not apply to those in an organization that profited by waging War in the galaxy — by those who believed in a project of a fallen Empire, the very embodiment of tyranny and villainy.

Kriffs.

You did not know what to believe anymore. The fact that he simply vanished did not help the tiniest bit.

“I thought as much.” She brought a bottle of water to her lips. It concealed most of her face. “Only someone of the highest ranks would know about that.”

You bit your bottom lip.

She knew.

A shiver ran down your spine.

“Listen.” You swallowed. “I have to go.”

As soon as you ended the transmission and shut down your comm-relay, you left the Hospital. This time you did not care about your clothes or your own sanity — which you knew was lacking right now.

The fact that you did not sleep coupled with the discovery of his… — you had no idea what to call it, honesty, perhaps? — coupled with the truthfulness of his words made your heart beat faster and not only because you were running towards the Cave.

You had to get to him. You had to talk to him. You had to… see him. You were not sure you could trust your words right now. Seeing his face would suffice. However, more than the imperious need to see him, you needed to know.

By now, he already knew if he had a hand in what was taking place in Dantooine and other territories in the outer rim.

Only someone of the highest ranks would know about that.

If he still had most of his accesses to the First Order database, then he knew why they did it — and it was getting increasingly difficult not to understand their reasons; aliens ate humans and humans hated aliens. Only a racist organization, product of that dictatorship called Empire, could unleash such a hateful disease upon the distant and forgotten planets — and how to possibly end it.

Because there must be an antidote.

There has to be.

If you were to find him, D-Five would give you his coordinates. The protocol droid would know where he was. You just had to make him talk.

You ran as fast as your tired limbs would carry you. As fast as your own heartrate would allow you to. Part of you was grateful for his harsh training, without it, you doubted you would be able to stand on your legs right now. Getting almost no sleep for the last few days helped very little.

It was with some relief — great relief, actually — that as your feet brought you to a stop in front of the Cave, and you spotted not only the General, but his partner — was she really a partner or they were only analyzing each other and waiting for the best moment to end not only their partnership but the other’s life? — as well. Behind them, there was a Personal Petite Yacht you have not seen in years.

“You look like shit, hon.”

Pursing your lips into a thin line, you breathed deeply through your nose. You almost — you knew the General would scowl if you did that — placed your hands on your knees to support yourself. Even if it was a short distance between the Hospital and the Cave, you felt like you had run a marathon.

“Aurra.”

The General straightened his shoulders and shut off his electronic cigarette. You shifted your attention to him. You were not the only one who looked absolutely terrible. If you slept little, the General got close to no sleep whatsoever.

His cheekbones seemed even sharper now. Besides not resting properly, you could say he was not eating as well.

If the situation was any different, you could say you were worried about him. Right now, all you could feel was a crushing guilty and extreme relief — he was alive, and he had not gone back to the First Order. And it sufficed.

He had no time to say anything — and you doubted he would —, for she hit her walking stick on the rocky ground, attracting your attention.

“You arrived just in time, dear.”

In time for what?

“Go ahead.” She pointed at the ship behind her. “You two shall leave for Canto Bight.”

The General outstretched his hand for you to take. Even if you hesitated — to depart for Cantonica right now made no sense whatsoever, not with the medical crisis in the outer rim territories —, you placed your fingers upon his. He immediately pulled you into his embrace.

You bit your bottom lip — not risking a glance at Aurra; you had no idea if she still believed you were his weakness and honestly you did not want to let her know there were problems in paradise — and moved one of your hands over his shoulder.

“Do you trust me?” he asked. His voice was no more than a whisper in your ear.

Do I?

Part of you wanted to say you did. If you learned something today, it was that he was far from the lying monster you believed him to be — and you had lied to him as well! You were sure of one thing only — if you wanted to survive, it you wanted to find the cure for that damned disease, you had to trust him.

“Do I have any other choice?”

You expected silence. Instead, you felt the tip of his nose running over the sensible skin of your neck as he breathed in your scent.

“No.”

A/N - See you on Friday. Guys, I’m also posting Lie to Me now on Wattpad. I update every Wednesday xD

#hux x reader #hux x you #lie to me #ltm #armitage hux #general hux #hux #hux fic #hux fanfic #star wars fanfic #star wars #Star Wars Sequels #sequels fanfic #fanfic #armitage hux x reader #armitage hux x you #general hux x reader #general hux x you

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connan-l · 4 years ago

Text

Cleavered

Fandom: The House in Fata Morgana & Higurashi: When They Cry

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence

Relationship: Rena Ryuuguu & Morgana (The House in Fata Morgana)

Summary: Rena was lost, all alone and far away from her village and country. But while trying to find her way back, she gets herself involved into a sordid story of blood and witch…

Content Warnings: A few graphic depictions of violence, including slashing, blood, blood draining, attempted murders. Panic attacks and vomiting towards the end. Briefs kidnapping and slavery mentions.

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Link on Archive of Our Own

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Notes: I promise this initially started as a silly joke. I only wanted to write a ridiculous crack one-shot with ‘what if Rena Ryuuguu saved Morgana’ as a premise, and for some reason it ended up as this giant taken-too-seriously mess. It was actually pretty hard to write though — took me months before finishing it, and it was a real challenge to find a way to fit Higurashi’s plot in FataMoru’s setting. Rena was also pretty difficult to write, and I wish I would’ve been able to reread Tsumihoroboshi before that, but oh well.

Again though, it’s principally just a self-indulgent crack fic, so don’t try to think too much about it if there are some details that don’t makes sense and roll with it haha.

I’m thanking Ried (@kosongnonsens) too given I started writing this after we joked around about this idea.

Spoilers for the entirety of The House in Fata Morgana and A Requiem for Innocence, and for Higurashi: When They Cry’s sixth arc Tsumihoroboshi-hen/Atonement Chapter.

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She was definitely lost by now.

Whether she looked right or left, behind or in front of her, none of the landscapes and surroundings had one once of familiarity. She had been walking for hours now, at least — but she was pretty sure she had just managed to get even more lost than she initially had been.

Disheartened, she let out a long, heavy sigh, and sat down on a rock in the shade of a tree. Her big satchel that she’s been dragging around since she first came into this country was starting to really hurt her shoulder and back, so she also put it down on the ground. The soil was probably going to tarnish it, but it didn’t bother her much. It already was an old, deteriorated bag anyway, and there wasn’t anything of value in it — just a few clothes, some fruits and bread, and her cleaver.

She wished her father was here. And her friends. She wished she could just go back to her village, which she hadn’t seen in months now. What was she even doing out there in this foreign land she knew nothing about? People only looked at her weirdly, as if she was some sort of exotic animal, and she felt terribly uncomfortable and unwelcome.

(But maybe this was part of the curse of Oyashiro, too…)

As she unconsciously sighed again, she suddenly heard something. It sounded like footsteps. Then, after a while, she was sure she could feel a presence — a human presence. She always had a good instinct for stuff like that. She instantly grabbed her satchel, ready to welcome anything, but the person who showed up in front of her emanated absolutely no danger or suspicion whatsoever.

“Ah, as I thought! I truly had seen someone coming here!”

It was a girl, a bit younger than her, with long wavy blonde hair and sparkling sunny eyes. Her first thought was that she looked really cute, and she if wasn’t feeling so tired she probably would’ve loved to try squishing her round cheeks. Her second thought was that on the other hand, her pale face, chapped blue lips and dark circles told her she wasn’t in the best of health. Still, the girl bounced towards the newcomer like a rabbit, smiling from ear to ear.

“That’s so rare to see people!” She exclaimed. “No one ever come around here.”

“Really?” A part of her still felt suspicious, but the girl’s smile was contagious so she couldn’t help but mimic her friendly tone. “I got lost in the forest… I’ve been walking for hours trying to find my way back. Do you think you could help me?”

Th blonde girl grimaced. “Well… I can try, but… Honestly, I don’t really know my way around here either…”

“Oh… I see…”

Well, of course, that would’ve been too easy. At least she wasn’t lost in the middle of the woods anymore, she supposed. She had never been afraid of forests or dark, isolated places, but those were still tricky areas when you knew nothing of the surroundings.

“Um…”

The girl cleared her throat, getting her attention back to her, before smiling shyly with a hopeful gaze.

“Uh, well, I don’t think I can help you find your way back, but… you said you’ve been walking for hours, right? So you must be tired. If you want, I can invite you at my home!”

“Y-You would? I-I mean… it’d be very kind, but I don’t want to bother,” she stuttered.

“It’s okay! I’m all alone right now, and I’m sure the Saintess wouldn’t mind either!”

“The Saintess…?”

“I know how to make excellent tea, with rose petals! I promise you won’t regret it if you come!”

The blonde girl took her hand and begins to pull on it excitedly. She seemed oddly happy at the idea of sharing her afternoon with this stranger she knew nothing about. Maybe it wasn’t a really prudent decision to follow her, but honestly, at this point she felt too tired to refuse such an alluring invitation. Plus, she felt pretty charmed by that girl, and she didn’t think she was dangerous.

“Okay!” She replied. “You lead the way then.”

The girl’s face instantly lit up and her smile got even wider as she saw the stranger rose up from the rock and grab her satchel.

“Aahh, that’s so great! We could bake together too! Ohh, and chat about all sorts of things! Ah, by the way, I’m Nellie. What’s your name?”

She smiled at her new acquaintance, her hand still intertwined with hers.

“I’m Rena! Nice to meet you.”

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Nellie hurriedly guided her to her home all while making little mindless talks (“You’re ‘Rena’? It’s the first time I hear that name! It sounds so weird!”), and it only took them five minutes to reach it. The place where she lived looked more like a little cabin than an actual house, to be honest, but Rena thought it’d be rude to say so she kept quiet. The interior was fairly cozy, and with all the adorable, tiny decorations put all around the walls it wasn’t hard to guess that Nellie was the one who was spending most of her time here.

“Do you live here all alone? Do you?” Rena asked tentatively.

“No, I live with the Saintess… Ah, the Saintess is a nun who works at the church up there! Before that, I lived with my brother in another house, but we moved here a few months ago.”

Rena nodded while the younger girl ran up to the kitchen. She had spent enough time in this country to know that ‘saint’ and ‘nun’ were religious figures here, though she wasn’t sure what were their roles exactly. She sat at the table and waited patiently for Nellie to reappears a few minutes later with a plate in her hands.

“Haoo, those teacups are so kyute!”

“Hehe, I know, right? They’re ones of the only things I was able to bring back from home.”

“From where you lived with your brother?”

“Yes— Ah, I mean, no, even before that. Initially, we didn’t even live in the same country. We used to be rich, you know? Living in a huge mansion and all.”

“Ohh, it sounds nice! I’ve never been in a mansion.”

Well, she supposed her friend Mion’s big house could count as one, but from what Rena had seen it was still very different from what Western people called ‘mansions.’

“Well, if you want, there’s a mansion not far from here, so I could show you. I mean, it’s technically a church, but it still looks more like a mansion than a church.”

“Aw, really? I’d love to see that!”

Nellie giggled. “You’re funny. I like you. I wish I could show you my own manor too back in my country, but… I probably will never be able to go home…”

The blonde girl sighed, and a sad expression spread on her face. Rena guessed it was a touchy subject and that it was better to just change the topic rather than push the issue, but at this moment Nellie stared straight into her eyes, her smile back in place, as if it had never disappeared.

“What about you?”

“H-Huh?”

“You’re a foreigner too, aren’t you?”

“Oh… yes, that’s true… I come from the Far East. Um, well… I came to this country some months ago because of my father’s work. He’s a trader and came here for a new business opportunity… but then we got separated, and I got lost, and so here I am.”

It was a pretty simple summary of her situation and she left out a lot of complicated factors, though. No matter how cute Nellie was, she still didn’t felt like telling her whole life story out of the blue like that.

“You speak the language really well for someone who only came here months ago,” she noticed.

“O-Oh… thanks… I still don’t know how to write it though…”

Nellie seemed to ponder her words for a moment in silence, and Rena thought she was going to keep questioning but instead she just grinned and rose up from the table.

“Well, whatever! It doesn’t matter where you come from if I like you. Hey, what do you think about baking with me? I feel like eating sweets!”

Rena didn’t get the time to reply that Nellie grabbed her hand and dragged her in the kitchen, but she didn’t try to complain and instead just let herself be subjugated by the other girl’s cheerfulness.

“I love cooking, actually!” She only added. “What do you want to bake?”

“Hmm…” Nellie crossed her arms and frowned. “I dunno… Something with sugar. Lots of sugar.”

Rena giggled, then looked around the room to quickly catalog the ingredients at her disposition. “All right, then I have a proposition: how about I try to make some sweets from my country?”

As she had expected, Nellie’s eyes brightened with enthusiasm and curiosity. “Yeah! You do that! I’ll help out too.”

And thus they started to bake together, spreading flour and butter and sugar all around the house. Rena thought she felt a little bad about the so-called ‘Saintess’ if she were to come back home and see all this mess, plus all the food they squandered. But to be honest, she was having so much fun right now that she didn’t even care.

Nellie reminded her a little bit of her friends, and especially of Satoko. Maybe it had to do with the way she spoke about her big brother with so much love and admiration. Either way, it had been a long time she hadn’t had so much fun. For a moment, if she closed her eyes, she could even pretend she was back home in Hinamizawa…

The sun was starting to set and they were almost done with their cooking when the door from the house suddenly opened. Nellie seemed surprised — she apparently wasn’t expecting anyone to come home so early. When they both went to look, Rena saw a young man with the same blonde hair as Nellie standing in the room.

“Dearest Mell!” The younger girl exclaimed, and all of a sudden it was as if Rena’s existence had been completely erased from her mind.

She ran in the room and jumped in the boy’s arms, who caught her as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

“Hello, Nellie,” he said gently.

“What are you doing here? I thought I wouldn’t see you at all today!”

“Yeah, I, uh… I forgot my bag here, and I felt the need to check on you. But, I won’t be able to stay long… maybe half an hour, at most…”

Nellie’s happy face instantly fell upon hearing that. “Are you sure? We were baking some sweets together, stay at least to taste them!”

“‘We’?”

At this moment, the boy ‘Mell’ finally noticed the other person at the end of the room. Rena smiled in a friendly way and waved at him, hoping to make him understand she wasn’t anyone suspicious, but it seemed to have the opposite effect on him as he instantly tensed and glared at her.

“Nellie, who’s that?” He asked in a stiff voice while grabbing Nellie’s arms in a protective manner.

His sister didn’t seem to notice his unease, though, because she just replied happily: “Oh, it’s Rena! Rena, it’s my big brother, dearest Mell!”

“R-Rena…?”

“Yeaaah, that’s a weird name, right?” Nellie added.

“No, that’s— I mean, who on earth is that girl, Nellie? What is she doing here?”

“She’s a foreigner I found outside. She told me she got lost, so I invited her here to play together.”

“Nellie!” Mell exclaimed, his voice firmer and almost panicked. “You cannot do that! Didn’t I tell you a lot of times to never let inside any strangers and to open the door to no one?”

“But… she’s not dangerous. I like her, she’s really nice. We baked toge—”

“It doesn’t matter how nice she is, you just can’t do that!”

Rena listened to the siblings’ argument from afar, and the more she observed the more… off, it seemed. Of course Mell had every reason to not want his little sister to interact with a stranger, but his reaction still felt wrong, somehow. He looked almost desperate, and Rena clearly wasn’t the only one to think he was acting weird.

“Dearest Mell,” Nellie said in a softer voice. “It’s fine. She really didn’t do anything but bake with me…”

Maybe his sister’s calmness and reassurance managed to cool him down a little bit somehow, because he blinked, looked at Rena, and took a deep breath.

“Yeah… uh, sorry. I’m just… a bit tired. That’s all.”

“Oh, it’s okay!” Rena replied. “I understand being tired.”

She also understood what it was like to feel paranoiac as if the entire world was against you, and to lash out at anyone as a result. And maybe that was why she couldn’t help but find Mell’s behavior more than suspicious.

“I… I need to get back my bag,” the boy blurted out, before heading towards the end of the cabin.

As soon as he had turned their back to them, Nellie’s expression darkened, and she looked down. Her eyes were shining so much Rena thought she might start crying. She didn’t, though.

“Could it be that… you two are not getting along well?”

Nellie shook her head. “We get along fine, usually. But these last months, Mell has been… so distant. First, he’s wanted to move here all of a sudden, and then he spent all of his time at that mansion… I know it was because I got sick, but…”

“Because you got sick?”

Rena didn’t need to read mind to guess the girl wasn’t healthy. She saw her cough quite a few times during their afternoon together, and there were moments where she even had to sit down because she felt dizzy. But she wasn’t sure how that was related to them moving. Nellie looked up and stared at Rena for a while. She seemed to hesitate, then nodded.

“Not long ago, the church up there started giving out a miraculous medicine that can heal everything, called ‘Saint’s Blood’.”

“Everything…?”

“Yes, and it really works! I was extremely ill, but after I started drinking it, I started to feel better. It’s temporary, though, so Mell has to get me some of it every once in a while. But…” Nellie bit her lip. “Well… you probably won’t believe me if I tell you…”

“Try me. You’d be surprised.”

Nellie looked at her once more, then finally made up her mind. “This medicine — it’s actually real blood from a real saint.”

“You’re drinking real blood?”

“Yeah, from the nun who lives with me. But it’s not like my blood or yours! It’s special, because she’s a saint. The real deal.”

Rena tried to register everything Nellie had told her with the little of what she knew of this country’s culture and religion. ‘Saints’ were some sort of divine figures here, weren’t they? Were they similar to the priests and shrine maiden serving the gods, like Rika? Maybe Rika would be considered a ‘saint’ here too then. So it wasn’t surprising that the blood of such a being could realize ‘miracles.’ She wondered if Nellie would believe her if she were to tell she also probably knew a ‘saint’ of her own…

“It’s good that I was able to get better… But if it comes at the cost of my brother… then it’s not worth it…”

Nellie’s small voice sounded so defeated and sorrowful. Rena looked at her with sympathy. She might not have known her for long, but seeing her like this was still painful. She wanted to try to say something to comfort her, but couldn’t find the words, and at this moment footsteps got her out of her thoughts.

“All right, I have it,” Mell declared.

Nellie’s sad expression disappeared, and a wide smile replaced it. For some reason, seeing this made Rena even sadder for her.

“Does that mean you’ll stay here then?”

“Just for half an hour,” Mell reminded her strictly. “But yes. I will.”

“Aha, yay! Thank you, dearest Mell!”

The girl jumped at her brother’s neck. Mell patted her head, then turned around towards Rena, his suspicious look back on.

“Do you… intend to sleep here?”

“Oh, no! Don’t worry, I will not bother you like that! Actually, I was just going to leave.”

“Eh? Already?” Nellie exclaimed disappointedly. “That wouldn’t have bothered me for you to stay sleep here…”

“No, it’s okay! I’ll find another place to stay the night. But thank you.”

Mell kept staring at Rena with distrust, but hearing her affirm she was leaving now seemed to put him a bit more at ease.

“Plus, I need to do my best to find my way back.”

“But…”

“Thank you for helping me, Nellie. But I can’t abuse of your kindness any longer. Oh, and of course I’ll leave you the sweets! I hope they’ll be good.”

All while talking, Rena took her satchel. She gave a tight hug to Nellie, smiled at Mell who just stayed quiet, then headed towards the door.

“Bye!”

The last thing she saw before closing the door was Nellie waving her hand sluggishly at her. Once outside, Rena sighed. The sky was orange, and it wouldn’t be long before the night fell. The smartest thing to do would be to try to find a place where she could sleep. She actually came around a small abandoned ranch earlier in the woods, so if she finds nothing else that would be her last resort, but it was a few hours away from here and far from being ideal.

But apparently today Rena didn’t feel like being smart. Instead, she thought about Nellie’s sad face, about the shady story of saints and blood she had just heard, and about the growing, insatiable curiosity that was starting to form inside her. And so, after a few moments of hesitation… she decided to hide in a bush next to the cabin, and wait here.

As Mell had said, it was about half an hour later when he finally went out. She looked at him say good bye to his sister, and when Nellie went back inside the cabin, he finally started to walk off.

Rena hesitated. She had a bad feeling. She knew she shouldn’t meddle. But her curiosity was stronger than any common sense she might have right now.

So, she tightened her grip on her satchel inside which resided her cleaver, and as discreet as a cat, she started following Mell.

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The house started to get into sight a few minutes later. It was a huge, intimidating building — and just like Nellie had told her earlier, this looked more like a mansion than a church. Mell stopped for a few seconds in front of the door, manifestly hesitating to go inside. He sighed, shook his head, then pushed the door and disappeared behind it. Rena waited a few seconds, then followed him.

The interior made her stop and gasp. She had arrived inside a giant room, with two rows of benches and a big, beautiful stained-glass at the end of it. Was that what the natives called an angel? She heard about this, too, but the one on the stained-glass looked so beautiful and dignified. The entire place seemed magical, and she couldn’t help but stop to admire it. She had already visited a ‘church’ once since she arrived in this country, but it was far from being as grand and pretty as this one. It’s only after some time gawking at the architecture that she heard the sound of a door opening, which brought her back to reality and reminded her of her original goal for coming here. Obviously, the boy hadn’t waited for her, and so she hurried to run in the direction of the noise. She arrived just in time to see Mell’s flaxen hair, then instantly hid behind the wall and froze in place when she heard a grave, severe voice roars.

“You’re late.”

“I-I’m sorry… I had to get back home because—”

“I don’t give a damn about your reason. Next time you are late, I’ll order the dog here to cut off your head.”

With all the precaution she could muster, Rena leaned very slightly from behind the wall and took a glance of what was going on. Mell was there in front of another closed door, looking like a lamb that had just been cornered by a pack of wolves, and she distinguished two adult men with him. Both of them had peculiar appearances that made them stand out from the majority of the people of this country, and Rena wondered if maybe they were foreigners — the first one because of his dark skin, and the second one because of his unusual features. She also was quick to notice the threatening long sword hanging at his belt. Was that man from the Far East like her? Maybe in other circumstances she would’ve felt a sense of kinship with him, but right now she could only feel suspicion and confusion.

“Then let’s go now, we’re not going to spend the night here,” the man with the wavy hair ordered, while the other one silently stood behind him like a shadow.

All three of them then took out a key from under their clothes and inserted it in the heavy lock that hanged in the middle of the door. After a loud click resonated, the man with the most expansive-looking outfit removed the lock, opened the door and started to climb the stairs, swiftly followed by the other two.

Rena frowned, and hesitated once again. She felt that keeping on trailing them would be making a mistake, and she still had time to go back. She could just leave the mansion right now, and forget about everything. She knew it was the most logical, safest course of actions. But for some reason, her body refused to listen. With uncertain and quiet steps, she opened the door which they thankfully had not locked behind them, and started climbing the stairs.

The circular area seemed infinite, as if this tower leaded directly to heaven. Each of her steps resounded abundantly inside the staircase, no matter how quiet she tried to be, which made her feel anxious Mell or anyone would spot her presence at any seconds. Yet, she managed to reach the top without anyone stopping her, to her surprise.

“Hurry up and go feed her,” was the first thing she heard upon arriving.

“Y-Yes,” Mell squeaked, before quickly hobbling towards the door.

His hands were shaking and he struggled a bit to open the door, which only served to aggravate the annoyance of the disgruntled wavy-haired man. When finally the door opened, Mell reached to take a tray on the ground, then penetrated inside. At this moment, Rena tried her best to get a glance of what was in there without getting noticed. At first, she couldn’t see anything — then she caught sight of a chain on the soil… and she gasped.

At the very bottom of the small room, shackled and curled up on herself, was a girl. Rena couldn’t really tell much from how far she was, but she seemed young, clothed in a dark robe and with long, braided red hair. Her head was bent and hidden in her knees, dissimulating her face. The most noticeable thing was the way her right sleeve was sloppily hanging to her side, completely empty, indicating her missing arm. Rena’s brain shut down, as she felt unable to comprehend the situation that was happening in front of her eyes.

What? What? Why is there a girl chained up at the top of this tower? Why are those three men bringing her food? What on earth is going on here?

Mell approached the girl with shaking steps, and kneeled in front of her.

“It’s… uh, it’s time to eat,” he muttered weakly.

The girl didn’t react. In fact, she didn’t even seem to calculate his presence at all. Mell sighed.

“Come on… You almost didn’t eat anything yesterday either…”

He took a piece of bread and handed it to the girl. As she seemed decided to ignore his very presence, the boy awkwardly tried to push the bread on her mouth, which finally managed to get a reaction out of her. She raised her head and turned it towards him, before glaring at him. Her eyes were so full of hatred that it made even Rena want to step back, but it wasn’t the thing that was the most surprising. The girl’s face… was covered in some weird scars. It looked as if her whole face had been burned, the only exception being her pale golden eyes. Rena felt unable to stop staring at her, as if hypnotized.

Hao… She’s… She’s so kyute! I wanna take her home!

“If she really insist for not eating, then leave her be,” the wavy-haired man said, getting Rena out of her daydream.

“B-But…”

“If she doesn’t eat, she’ll die though,” the swordsman replied, but there was no hint of sympathy in his voice.

“She’ll eat tomorrow. For now, we need to take care of the blood.”

Rena didn’t understand what he meant by that, but judging by Mell’s livid face, it wasn’t anything good.

“I… I can’t—”

“Hmph. You have a lot of demands for someone in your position. But be reassured, I had no intention of asking you to do such a task.”

Instead, he looked at the other man, and made a sharp chin movement.

“As you wish, lord.”

And with this, the swordsman entered the room, while Mell hurried to get up and go away. Just like the boy earlier, he kneeled down next to the girl — but it was not to give her food. Instead, he took out a knife in one hand, and a bowl in the other. Seeing this, the girl had this time an extremely intense reaction. She shrieked and tried to get away as much as she could from the man, almost crushing her body against the wall.

“No! No! Go away!” She screamed, almost hysterically. “S-Stay away from me!”

But the yells didn’t seem to faze the man one bit. He continued to approach her and firmly grabbed her shoulders. The girl started to struggle and scream and scratches at him like an insect caught in a spider’s web. Despite this, the swordsman had no problem immobilizing her, as if he was made of stone, and then plunged the knife in her arm. As red, shiny blood started to flow, he quickly put the bowl under her wound and simply waited. The girl kept on screaming and twitching, but no one reacted to her cries. The swordsman simply drained her blood in silence, the wavy-haired man looked at the scenery with arms crossed and a frown, and the boy seemed to want to run away from the place and forget about all of this. But none of expressed any guilt or sympathy for the girl that was being tortured under their eyes.

Rena also watched in silence, her whole body frozen by the surreal experience that was happening in front of her. Her eyes just couldn’t register what was going on. Or rather, she could understand, but her mind had way too many questions about it. Why were they doing this? Who was that girl? Who were the other men? But the questions felt minimal compared to the screams that were lacerating her ears. Her first reflex was to come in and put a stop to this, but she was well aware that it would be suicidal. Mell probably wouldn’t be too much of a trouble, but the other two were well-built adult men, one of them holding a sword at his waist. No way a lone young girl like her could just overthrow the three of them all at once… not like this, and not right now, at least.

As she was still lost in thoughts, she suddenly felt a gaze pressed on her and her blood froze in her veins. Slowly, she turned her head, and her eyes suddenly crossed the ones of the wavy-haired man. Her body reacted by reflex, and she instantly turned around and ran down the stairs as quickly as she could. Once she reached the chapel, she hurried to join a corridor and hid in the first room she saw. She stayed there in the dark a few minutes, to calm herself down. Then, she slowly opened the door, and glanced outside.

Nothing. There was nothing. No voice, no footsteps, no sounds. That was… odd. She was sure that for a brief instant, that man had seen her. That their gazes had crossed. Rena remembered how the swordsman had called him ‘lord,’ and it indeed had seemed that he was the mastermind behind this whole mess. If this man had noticed a stranger spying on them, surely he would have instantly ordered someone to go take care of her. She couldn’t believe that them draining the blood of a girl was public knowledge, so it certainly must’ve been a secret they didn’t want anyone to know. So why…? Did she just imagine him staring at her, after all?

Voices and footsteps reverberated from the chapel, and she instantly tensed up again. She tried to hear what was being said, but she was too far away to manage to grasp anything. After a while, the silence returned, so she glanced once again from behind the door. Upon looking at the end of the corridor, she noticed someone walking. The place was dark, but the fluffy blonde hair that shined in the obscurity made no doubt that it must’ve been Mell. She saw him stop in front of a door and enter a room. Rena returned inside the chamber she had taken shelter in, and collapsed on the bed.

She had two options. She could just sneak out of the mansion in silence, forget everything she had just saw, and move on with her life. Or… Or what? Infiltrating herself in the tower and save that girl she knew nothing about? That sounded like some silly fairy tale. To begin with, the door was locked. She had seen earlier the men use three keys to open the lock, which each had one. That meant she would need to steal their keys to open the door, gets the girl, and ran away with her, all of that without getting caught. That sounded… pretty much impossible.

She knew what the logical decision should be. This whole thing was none of her business. She knew nothing about this girl, about these men, about this entire affair. For all she knew, maybe they were even doing a good thing! Putting her nose into this would only mean trouble for her; and she was a lone foreigner who barely knew anything about the country. But…

But when she started to think that way, the girl’s screams resonated inside her head. The oppressive atmosphere of the room, the heavy scent of blood. Nellie’s sad face… Did Nellie even know about this? No, probably not. Rena might barely know her, but she couldn’t imagine that girl would agree to keep silent about such an inhuman thing. Once again, those scars-covered face and shining golden eyes flashed into her mind. Rena sighed, and smiled very briefly against the pillow.

“I can never abandon a kyute thing, after all.”

She stood up, grabbed her cleaver with her two hands, then got out of the room.

________________________________________________________________

With all the delicacy of a feline, Rena approached the door behind which she had seen Mell disappears. Nellie had told her that her brother didn’t sleep in the cabin with her, so she guessed it must’ve been his room in them mansion. The lights were turned off. Best case scenario, he would be asleep. Otherwise, well… She tightened her grip on her cleaver, took a deep breath, and opened the door.

The room was dark, but thanks to the light from the corridor she had no troubles to distinguish the bed, nor the boy who suddenly sat up on the mattress. So, he was not asleep. Well, it wasn’t a big deal. Unlike the other two, the boy looked quite spineless, so she shouldn’t struggle too much with him.

“Y-You…!” He exclaimed, recognizing the strange orange-haired foreigner. “Wh-What are you—”

But Rena didn’t let him the time to make any more noise. She didn’t want him to alert the other two right now, if they were still around. So she instantly brandished her cleaver and put it just under Mell’s neck. As soon as he saw the blade, the boy paled and stared at it with wide eyes.

“Keep quiet, and you’ll keep your head,” Rena ordered in a firm voice.

It took a few seconds for Mell to regain his spirits, and when he did, he raised his eyes towards Rena and glared at her.

Oh? Then maybe he’s not as spineless as I thought… Unless he underestimates me?

Well, it didn’t matter what he thought of her. She still objectively had the upper hand here.

“I knew it, you’re trouble after all,” he said, but he was pretty bad at hiding the tremor in his voice. “What did you do to Nellie?”

“Nothing.”

“Don’t play innocent! You couldn’t have gotten close to her by coincidence!”

“It was absolutely by coincidence,” she replied genuinely. “And it’s also completely by coincidence I found you three draining this girl’s blood at the top of the tower. What would you little sister thinks of that, I wonder…?”

“You… You don’t intend to tell Nellie—”

“I saw you enter the tower by using three keys. I want the one you have.”

Rena’s tone didn’t vacillate in the slightest and her voice was as threatening as she could, but Mell was completely bewildered. He looked at her as if she had just told him she was a ghost or something.

“You… want to go save her…? Th-That’s impossible!”

“I don’t care what you think. Give me the key.”

“You don’t understand! You can’t open the door without the two other keys that the lord and the swordsman have! M-Maybe you can get the key from me, but those other two, they definitely won’t let you do! They’ll kill you without hesitation, and me too—”

“The. Key.”

She took a step further, putting more pressure on the cleaver’s blade. Mell gasped.

“You… You wouldn’t do that… I did nothing wrong, I’m innocent…”

Rena snorted. “I don’t care. I’m not afraid of killing.”

All while speaking, she gently slashed the blade against the white neck of the boy, and a thin trail of blood trickled on his skin. He shrieked, then instantly reached in one of his cloth’s pocket, before taking out a pretty, golden key.

“I-It’s there! It’s there…”

“Thanks!”

Rena smiled at Mell, her threatening aura instantly vanishing while the boy still stared at her with an astonished face.

“Y-You’re still making a mistake,” he added shakily. “You don’t stand a chance against—”

But he didn’t had the time to finish his sentence that Rena swinged her cleaver and hit him on the head. It was only with the back of the blade, so there was no way it was a fatal hit, just hard enough to knock him out. She still checked just to be sure, and while his forehead was bleeding a bit, he would survive.

“Sorry, I just don’t want to take the risk of you getting in my way…”

All while talking she took the key and put it in her satchel. She’d probably usually think it is a kyute thing she could bring back home, but she wasn’t in the mood for that. After she saves the girl, maybe.

Before stepping out of the room, she glanced one last time at the boy. She didn’t have strong feelings towards him, but she still hoped he’d be able to get out of here alive, if just for Nellie’s sake.

“‘I’m innocent,’ huh…”

She chuckled, then got out and closed the door behind her.

No matter how pitiful Mell’s claims had been, he had actually been right about one thing: it would be a lot harder to obtain the keys from the two other men than from the boy. She had guessed just upon seeing them that threatening their lives wouldn’t be enough — and her instinct was telling her that the swordsman was a lot more skilled as a fighter than she was. She would need to think about a plan to get them, then. The question was what plan. Hopefully they still mustn’t be very far from the house yet, maybe were they even still inside, so she shouldn’t have troubles finding them. She tried to think about the possibility of other people being here too — the ‘Saintess’ came to her mind, but from what she had understood she lived with Nellie so she probably wouldn’t be here this late at night. Unless she was also involved, which made things more complicated. She also remembered the third man was supposedly a ‘lord,’ so shouldn’t he have some guards posted around? But she couldn’t recall seeing any on her way here…

Once again, she really wished her friends were with her right now. Together, they would certainly have come up with a good plan in just a few minutes… But, no, maybe that was too naïve of her. She shouldn’t rely like that on people. She was all alone now, and even if she wasn’t, it was more certain to take of serious matter by yourself. Not even ‘friends’ were always reliable and trustworthy allies, and they could just as much become betrayers who stab you in the back, after all.

“Hey, you there!”

Rena froze. When she turned around, she found herself face to face with the swordsman. Apparently, fate refused to give her a chance to elaborate a plan before having a confrontation. She thought about acting innocent for a moment, but with her cleaver in her right hand, it would be difficult to swallow.

The man narrowed his eyes at her. “You’re… a foreigner, aren’t you?”

His expression told her he mustn’t have seen someone akin to him since a long time. Which wasn’t surprising; in the ten months or so since she’d arrived in this country, she didn’t think she had come cross anyone from the Far East like her.

“I am,” Rena simply answer, seeing no reason to lie here.

The swordsman contemplated her for a moment, then his gaze slid towards the cleaver in her hand.

“What were you doing here?”

Rena tried to think up something to get her out of this situation. But no matter how much she ransacked her brain, nothing came to her. So in the end, she just sighed, and smiled at the man.

“I’m here to save the kyute girl in the tower.”

The swordsman had no reaction at all to her arrogant nonchalance. He just stared at her coldly, before an odd, distorted smirk slowly stretched his lips.

“I see. Then I’m sure the lord won’t mind if I kill you in that case.”

And then, before Rena could retort anything, he drew his sword and ran up towards her. Rena’s body reacted instinctively, and when he raised his weapon to cut her she instantly managed to parry it with her cleaver. The two blades clashed in a metallic ringing, but she didn’t have the time to catch her breath that the man went on with his next attack. He assaulted her with a strong rain of hits, one after another, so swift and sharp that the girl could barely see them at all. She greeted her teeth and glared at him, but the man didn’t seem unsettled in the least.

Rena gave the sword a hit more forceful than previously, and managed to get away momentarily before starting running in the mansion’s corridors. The man instantly chased her down, of course.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” He shouted at her from behind. “Are you really running away after talking so big? Let me hear you beg for your life and maybe I’ll consider letting you live!”

Rena stayed quiet, not falling for the preposterous provocations. She wasn’t trying to escape, just to buy some time. She knew that man was stronger physically and more skilled than her, by a large margin. There was no way she could beat him in a face-to-face fight. So she had to find another solution, somehow.

In her dash, she inadvertently ended up finding herself in the chapel again. The stained-glass angel was shining of an ominous light thanks to the moon behind it. However, Rena didn’t have the time to admire it this time, as the swordsman quickly caught up to her, chasing her down like a beast towards his prey. Finding herself cornered, she had no other choice but to yet again fend off his sword in the middle of the bench rows. Right under the angel’s impassive gaze, they kept on exchanging hits after hits.

The girl was defending herself quite well, but there was no doubt as to who had the advantage in this fight. In fact, Rena was pretty sure the man was holding himself back against her, maybe just for his own amusement. She groaned, trying to find the slightest opening she could use… but in her impatience, she let her guard down, which the swordsman didn’t hesitate to profit off. He swung down his sword, and the blade mercilessly cut through the girl’s shoulder. She screamed in pain, then lost her balance and fell down on the ground, letting go of her cleaver at the same time.

Despite the vivid pain and the blood already soaking her clothes, she still had the reflex to rush towards her weapon, but at the last moment the man crushed her hand with his heel. She moaned then threw a glare at him. The only change in his expression was now the clear sick pleasure he had to have the girl at his mercy.

“You run quickly and you do know how to use that weapon, I will give you that,” he said, his voice vibrating with sadism, and Rena was pretty sure it was the first emotion she had felt coming from him since earlier. “But it stops here now.”

She said nothing; not letting an ounce of fear transpiring through her blue eyes, not a single hesitation shaking her body. Just anger. The man narrowed his eyes at her curiously; maybe was it because he had expected her to beg and cry for her life. But Rena would never give him the satisfaction.

“Well, I’m afraid I can’t play much more with you sadly, otherwise I could in troubles. Well then—”

He raised his sword, his eyes shining like a predator’s, while the girl was still lying on the ground, bleeding and gasping painfully. And then he struck it down—

“Wait.”

—but stopped at the last moment. Both he and Rena turned around in surprise, to see the shadow of a man drawing near them — the last one of the three, of course.

“Lord…”

The swordsman seemed almost irritated to have the other man barge in, but he still managed to stay courteous enough. The ‘lord’ didn’t seem to notice or maybe care about it though, he just stared down at the teenage girl on the floor.

“Who is she?” He finally asked. “What is going on here?”

“She is an intruder who knows about the witch,” the swordsman replied, his monotonous, indifferent face back in place.

The witch…? Rena repeated in her head, but didn’t have time to ponder much more about it.

“She knows?”

“She told me she was here to save her. This is why I decided to take care of the problem before it could reach you.”

“And since when a dog acts without his master’s orders? The least you could have done is consulting me about it before making that decision.”

“You’re right… I apologize, lord.”

The swordsman politely inclined himself in front of the lord as a sign of excuse, as Rena watched the scene in silence. The wavy-haired man then eyed her with disdain, and crossed his arms.

“Well, it doesn’t matter much either way. We can’t keep her alive if she knows. So just get rid of her.”

Right at the moment he finished his sentence, Rena seized her chance. With the arrival of the lord, the swordsman had stopped paying so much attention to her, which meant it was the only opening she could have. As quickly as she could, she grabbed her cleaver, got back on her feet and almost jumped on the lord. Before the two men even had the time to react, she was already tightly holding the lord’s arms and had her cleaver’s blade under his neck.

“Don’t move!” She yelled, as the swordsman was reaching for his own weapon. “Don’t move or I cut off his head!”

As if to show she was not kidding, she pressed the blade against the skin of the lord even more. The swordsman frowned. He didn’t try to reach for his sword anymore, but he didn’t seem particularly distraught either.

“Do you think I care even slightly about what might happen to this man?” He asked.

Rena smiled. “Probably not,” she admitted. “But he is your boss, isn’t he? You must be working under him because only he can offer you something. So his death would be pretty inconvenient to you. Am I wrong?”

She certainly wasn’t, because a slight annoyed scowl formed on the swordsman’s face.

“I want you to put your sword on the ground, and make it slide towards me,” Rena ordered. “Or else…”

“Don’t listen to her,” the lord finally spoke. “I doubt a girl like her actually could kill anyone. She’s just playing tough.”

However, the swordsman seemed less certain than his employer. He eyed the girl suspiciously, deliberating her order while staring at her in the eyes. Rena sustained it with determination.

“I don’t want to offend you, lord,” he finally said. “But I think I disagree on that one.”

And then, just as he had been told, he put the weapon on the ground and slides it towards Rena, while the lord sighed heavily. She quickly retrieved it, then threw it as far away as she could without letting go of her hostage.

“Now I want you to come towards us.”

They were about three meters away from each others. The swordsman looked at her once again, then stepped forward. Two meters. One meter. And before he could get even closer, Rena suddenly slashed the lord at the waist, and then with a slick movement of the wrist, she cut the swordsman’s throat with great precision.

Blood splattered. She heard the lord groan in pain and fell on his knees, while the swordsman put both of his hands on his neck in an instinctive attempt to block out the blood. But it was fairly vain, as only a few seconds after he collapsed on the ground. Before it, he glared at the girl, an inhuman shine lurking in his eyes, and she thought his lips parted to say something, but she couldn’t tell what.

She looked at his agonizing body drenched in blood on the floor with an emotionless gaze, then she turned around towards the last man, her cleaver still in hand. He was still on his knees, breathing heavily and holding his wound. Rena stared at him in silence for a long time, before finally speaking out.

“You saw me earlier, didn’t you?”

The man only lifted his head towards her.

“When I was in the tower. You clearly looked at me in the eyes.”

“That… must’ve been your imagination…”

“No, I know you did. You saw me. And yet, you said nothing. It would’ve been easy to chase me down and kill me at that moment. In fact…”

She took a step forward, her gaze not letting go of his.

“It would’ve been easier to just let him kill me earlier too, instead of stopping him. Or to try to disarm me when I was holding you. Even with my cleaver at your neck, you’re still stronger than me physically.”

The man sustained her stare, but he said nothing back.

“Could it be… that you did that on purpose?”

His expression didn’t change at her accusation, as if his face had reverted to a mask of stone. But no matter behind which kind of layers and facets he would hide, Rena was still exceptionally good at reading other people.

“Did you want me to do this? To get the keys and free that girl?”

Finally, a haughty grin formed on the man’s lips.

“Hmph. Don’t be ridiculous. I am the lord. There’s no way on earth I’d ever want to do something as ludicrous as this.”

Rena kept on staring at the lord in silence, her eyes as cold as ice. She knew he was lying. But she also wasn’t exactly interested in getting him to say the truth. Her only goal was to free that girl. The rest didn’t matter.

“Well, I suppose so. Either way, it is none of my business.”

And so, she raised her cleaver once again, and gave the man one final blow. He didn’t try to protest or resist, and just collapsed on the ground like his subordinate. Rena then quickly kneeled besides the two bodies, searching them, and finally retrieved the two last keys, as well as another one which she guessed was for the chains.

The young girl was standing here in the chapel in front of the angel, her white dress all drenched in red, with two barely-alive bodies at her feet.

If she were from this country, she would probably find this to be quite the profane picture.

But she wasn’t, and there was only one thing she was interested in.

________________________________________________________________

She took out the three keys one by one, and slowly inserted them. Her hands were greasy because of the blood — both her own and others’ — but she still delicately handled them. The lock opened right away, she barely had to force at all, and then she pushed the door.

Climbing the circular stairs almost felt ceremonious, and the steps seemed a lot longer than the first time she had came here, as if they had suddenly grown infinite during the instant she was dealing with the three men. It took a few minutes for her to reach the top, and when she did she stopped in front of the closed door. As if nervous, she grabbed her satchel in which she had put away her bloody weapon. Her cleaver wasn’t the only thing covered in blood — her dress, her hair, her entire body were completely dark scarlet, and even if she had managed to stop the bleeding, her wound was still hurting quite a bit. She looked as if she had just been out of a war battlefield. She definitely was far from looking like a brave knight rescuing the princess.

But well, she wasn’t a knight, and that girl wasn’t a princess.

With hesitation, she grabbed the handle and stopped. For some reason, she felt… anxious. Why, she had no idea. She had done all of this just to save this stranger, and now that she was so close to her goal, it felt wrong, somehow. She knew she had to hurry before anyone notice something was off inside that mansion, but her feet refused to move. She didn’t even know how she should greet that girl or what to tell her. What if freeing her was a mistake, after all? What if the best choice was to just run away right now?

Rena shook her head, then breathed in forcefully. That wasn’t the time to hesitate. She couldn’t go back now. So she opened the door.

The dim luminosity hurt her eyes, and it took a few seconds for her to adapt to it. Once she did, the familiar, pitiful scenery she had seen earlier appeared yet again before her, in the exact same state, as if nothing that had just happened had been real. The girl was still there, chained, slumped against the wall. Her eyes were closed. Was she asleep? She seemed to be barely alive, to be honest. She looked more… like a corpse.

Wouldn’t that be funny if Rena had done all of that just for the girl to die at the least moment? But she pushed that thought away and took a step further. At this moment, and to her relief, the girl twitched. She suddenly opened her golden eyes and stared straight through her, making Rena almost jump out of surprise. But with the shook cooling off, she was just glad the girl was definitely still alive.

“Hi,” she said in a friendly tone, smiling gently. “I’m Rena.”

The girl replied nothing. She just kept staring at her vacantly, as if she wasn’t really seeing her.

“Ah, d-don’t worry! I’m not here to hurt you, or— or anything like that,” Rena added hurriedly, waving her hands in front of her. “I’m here to save you!”

But her reassuring words seemed to do nothing for the captive. Rena quickly started to grow uncomfortable, and she tilted her head.

“Can you… hear me? Can you?”

No answer. Rena sighed. Well, she seemed to be really out of it. It probably shouldn’t be surprising given what she’s been through until now. Rena didn’t know since when she had been detained here, but she guessed it must’ve been quite some time. Well, it didn’t matter much if she could speak or understand her or not. She just needed to get her out of here as soon as possible. First, she needed to—

“—el…”

Rena suddenly stopped when a hoarse, barely audible voice resounded inside the dark tower. It took some time for her brain to understand that it was coming from the girl.

“—gel…”

“Huh?”

Her murmurs didn’t even sounds like words, more like some background noises that struggled to get out of her mouth. Rena slowly approached the girl, and kneeled in front of her, putting herself down to her height and staring at her in the eyes. But the girl acted as if she didn’t even see her.

“—angel…”

“Angel…?”

“Are you… angel…?”

Rena blinked with surprise when she realized the question. She wasn’t sure if this was addressed to her exactly. Maybe it was addressed to no one. Even so, she slowly took her hand in hers — a tattered, dirty, covered in scratches small hand.

“I’m sorry… I’m not an angel. I’m just some foreign girl who got lost and wandered around here by mistake.”

The girl became silent again, her golden eyes empty.

“But I’m still going to save you.”

And with that, she searched for the keys she had retrieved on the lord’s body, and freed the girl from the chains. As she expected, this got no reaction out of her, so she then grabbed the only remaining arm, and then, after struggling for a bit, she managed to hoist her on her back. It wasn’t easy to carry another girl of the same age while wounded, even if she was extremely light, but Rena could handle it. She had no other choice.

With fumbling steps, she hurriedly get down the steps, walked through the chapel without doing so much as glancing at the men’s bodies spread there, and finally got out of the mansion, not even the stained-glass angel daring to stop her.

________________________________________________________________

She was bleeding.

Red liquid poured out from her wounds, trickling on her bare skin, sullying her body and the ground. It seemed as if the flow was endless. She felt no pain, though — the throbbing and aching had left her a long time ago, and in its stead there was only numbness and emptiness. Her vision was a blur, her mind a haze. She could only perceive shadows moving in front of her, vague laughing and chuckles, joyful voices rejoicing in her torment, like demons dancing in front of her. If someone had told her she was in Hell, she would have believed them.

But she wasn’t in Hell — this was earth, and those were humans, and maybe this was the most disgusting of truth to face for her. The chains around her wrists bounded her to the altar, preventing any escapes she could have.

Suddenly, the shadows stopped moving, and her surrounding began to scramble. Before her mind could understand what was going on, vivid pain reached her arm, lacerating and pitiless. All sorts of landscapes scrolled in front of her eyes — a carriage full of bloody corpses, a cottage in front of a lake, a mansion, a tower.

And finally, the figure of the lord, always standing in her way.

Despair, agony, betrayal, anguish all agglutinated inside her heart at the same time — but the most powerful of all, the one that overwhelmed everything else—

—was hatred.

She rose up, clutching sorely at the sheets as her eyes darted right and left around her. She felt like she was lost inside a fog, the walls around her waltzing and shrieking as if they had a will of their own. As she painfully tried to regain possession of her broken five senses, yet another shadow took shape to her side, producing sounds.

“—ke… —p…”

But she didn’t even try to decipher what it was saying. There was only one and unique shadow that appeared both in her dreams and reality, after all. The lord.

So she pushed him with all of her forces, making him fall on the ground, and then, desperately groping blindly around her, she was able to feel the cold touch of a blade brush her fingers. Without waiting, she grabbed the handle of what looked like a cleaver and jumped on the silhouette before it could move again. She wasn’t strong enough to actually stand up, but she could still hold a weapon. Or stab someone with it.

“Die!”

That was the first word that escaped her mouth. The most precious wish she had cherished during all these months, the only thing that had kept her alive all this time — her voracious hatred.

“Die! Die…! I’ll— make you pay…! You… You—!”

The lord she was straddling caught the blade with his bare hand, unbothered by the blood that soon trickled down his hand. She tried to get back the cleaver, but his grip was too strong.

“Let… go! I will— I’ll kill you!”

“Given how weak you are, I doubt you’ll be able to even kill a fly like this.”

The voice made her stop instantly. Because this… this wasn’t the lord’s voice.

That person didn’t sound like the cruel man who had haunted her nightmares since she was a child… but like a young girl she didn’t know. No, that wasn’t true, she had heard that voice before—

“—I’m still going to save you.”

She felt completely lost, and the shadow took the occasion to push her away and get back the cleaver. She collapsed on the ground, and all of a sudden it was as if she was a puppet whose strings had been cut off. She had no strength anymore, and just lay there on the floor, her whole body hot and aching. She heard a few slow steps coming towards her, and soon a face came into her view.

Blue eyes like the sky, and orange hair like the sunset. A sweet smile.

“I’m glad you’re awake! Please wait here, I’ll bring you back something to drink.”

________________________________________________________________

The girl came back in the room a few minutes afterwards with water and bread, and helped Morgana get back into the bed. Well, it wasn’t actually a bed, more like something that looked like an old mattress with some blankets thrown on it. As the other sat next to her, she took the glass of water and stared at it absentmindedly.

“I promise it’s not poisoned,” the girl said in a joyful voice. “It’s just water.”

There was a part of Morgana that felt silly of being suspicious of a simple glass of water… but then she remembered that given she had no idea where she even was, it was only natural. So she still didn’t try to drink it.

“I’m really relieved you woke up and seem well! You slept for almost two days, you know? So I was worried. So, um, well, anyway, I already introduced myself before but you probably don’t remember so… I’m Rena! Hey, what is your na—”

“What happened?”

“Wh-What? What? About what…?”

Morgana let out a big sigh and looked away. She could already tell that girl was going to be hard to deal with.

“About everything.”

“Oh… um, um…”

The girl, Rena, fidgeted with a flustered face, as if she was about to tell a very embarrassing story. After a while, she finally managed a small friendly smile.

“Well, it’s a bit, uh, messy, but I’m a foreigner who got lost, and I found out this church by coincidence. I saw you and those… men in the tower, and so… so… I thought I should do something, you know? You know?”

Morgana stared blankly at her, somehow expecting more. But there was nothing else.

“You make absolutely no sense,” she finally declared. “Why would you randomly decide to help out a complete stranger at the risk of your own life?”

“I-I know it’s not very logical! But, well, I just…” Rena closed her mouth. Looked down. “I just couldn’t do nothing.”

“Yes, you could have. That wouldn’t have been very difficult.”

“Are… Are you actually angry at me for saving you…? Are you?”

“So how did you do it? How did you manage to get past the lock and get me out of the tower? I can’t believe these men cooperated willingly.”

“Oh, that. Well, I just cut them with my cleaver, retrieved the keys and got out of here with you as soon as I could.”

She said all of this with a wide smile, as if it was no big deal at all. Morgana stared at her, expecting her to tell her she was kidding, but nothing came afterwards.

“And?”

“Th-That’s all…?”

“That can’t be all. There’s no way a single girl could overpower three men with just a cleaver.”

“Well, it wasn’t easy, it’s true, but it’s possible. As proof, you wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

Morgana felt the urges to yell at her, but managed to stay calm. She didn’t believe her, but she had the sensation that even if she kept asking questions she wouldn’t get another answer. So she breathed in deeply, and tried to gain the most knowledge possible.

“Where are we?”

“Oh… um, I’m not really sure to be honest. I think it must’ve been an old ranch to keep cattle or something, but it seems to have been abandoned for a while. It’s in the middle of the forest, about an hour away from the city. It’s not ideal to hide in, but for now we’ll have to content ourselves with that.”

“What happened to them?”

“The men? Oh… I just knocked out the flaxen-haired boy, so he should be fine, but I dunno what must’ve happened to him afterwards. As for the other two…”

Rena grimaced and looked away. She seemed hesitant to continue speaking, so Morgana had to push her.

“Are they dead?”

“I, uh, I’m not sure? I cut them pretty badly and they were bleeding a lot when I left, but I didn’t actually, um, checked if they were still alive or not…”

“So there’s a chance they’re still alive?”

“Yes… I think.”

“I see… Good.”

“Are you… relieved they’re possibly still alive?”

Morgana snorted at this, which quickly morphed into full on chuckles.

“I suppose you could say that,” she finally blurted out. “Yes… these men, they can’t just die like that… Not after what they did to me…”

She clutched the blanket and her long hair fell in front of her face, darkening her usually pales eyes.

“Dying would be a way too easy fate for them… They need to suffer… Suffer just as much— no, even more than me…”

A fate worse than death. A fate worse than being locked up in a tower and having their blood drained.

A curse — she wanted— needed to inflict a curse upon them, watch their lives slowly get torn apart, one by one—

“Do you intend to take revenge on them?”

Morgana turned her head towards Rena at the sound of her question, and their eyes met. The orange-haired girl was staring at her without saying anything, her face unreadable. She didn’t appear disturbed by Morgana’s grudgeful words in the least, and her question had a surprising innocuous tone to it, as if she had just asked her what was her favorite food.

“Aren’t you… scared of me?”

“Huh? Why?”

“Isn’t that obvious? Because of… my scars.”

“Oh, those!” Rena chuckled. “Not at all! In fact, I think they are really kyute! That was why I wanted to take you home, you know?”

Morgana felt as if she had just been hit with a rock. ‘Cute’…? Did she just call her scars ‘cute’? Was that girl completely insane? Maybe it should’ve made her feel happy, to hear someone call her hideous face ‘cute’ for the first time, but it actually ended up have the opposite effect.

Instead, she felt angry. Like that girl was mocking her. Mocking her suffering, her struggles, and entire life.

She tensed up and grinded her teeth.

“What are you going to do with me now?”

Rena blinked ingenuously and tilted her head. “What?”

“I’m not an idiot. If you saved me, it must’ve been because of personal interest. So what do you want of me?”

“Wh-What? No! Did you think I was lying earlier?”

“Of course. Who would believe such an inane story? I’m betting you must’ve heard about my blood and came here to profit off it.”

Rena frowned, and she seemed to think for a while before replying:

“Your blood… I saw the men drain it from you in the tower. It’s what the church is giving out as medicine, isn’t it? I heard it was called ‘Saint’s Blood,’ but… it’s actual, real blood. Yours.”

Morgana narrowed her eyes, but stayed quiet.

“Did these men kidnap you? I mean, I can’t believe you would’ve ended up in this tower willingly…”

“This is none of your business.”

“I wasn’t lying earlier. I told you the truth, I promise. So the least you could do is told me your story as well, right?”

“Please. Do you honestly want me to believe you just randomly decided to save me, out of the kindness of your heart? What a generous person you are.”

“Is that something that sounds really so impossible to you? That people just do kind things sometimes?”

Of course that was impossible to her. Everyone in her life had only thought of her as a tool and acted kind as a way to profit off her, even her own mother.

And the only people who hadn’t… well, they were dead now. She had absolutely zero reasons to trust this suspicious foreign girl. For all she knew, she wasn’t even the one who had saved her.

And then, suddenly, Rena started to giggle, which made Morgana even tenser.

“You know what? You’re not wrong, actually. I didn’t save you just out of kindness. I’m not a kind person at all, really.”

Her voice sounded a little off, and Morgana felt a chill goes up her chine. Rena stared at her, but there was an odd shine in her blue eyes, something unwell.

“I just thought you looked kyute and wanted to take you home. So I did. That’s all.”

“What… What are you…?”

“But for now, I don’t intend to do anything with you.”

She suddenly stood up, her smile not leaving her face. “After all, you can barely get out of the bed yet, right? I am also wounded, to tell you the truth, so for now we’ll have to stay here for at least a few days. We won’t be able to stay too long, though, because I can’t believe people won’t do anything after what happened to their lord, so afterwards it’d be safer to just leave the region…”

Morgana couldn’t bring herself to say anything as that girl seemed to plan her next few weeks all by herself. She definitely felt irritated and wanted to shut her up and tell to stop taking all these decisions by herself… but the fact was that, she wasn’t wrong.

Morgana could barely walk, she had one arm missing and had lost a huge quantity of blood during the past few months. There was no way she could just go off on her own.

As if she was reading her thoughts, the girl smiled again and told her in a light voice:

“So in any case, it seems we’re stuck together for now, that you like it or not.”

And then she left the room and closed the door behind her, leaving Morgana all alone in the dim room.

________________________________________________________________

It took Morgana at least three days before starting to feel like she was regaining some strength. She still almost couldn’t get out of bed though, so she was spending most of her time in the arranged room, in that bed that wasn’t one, staring at the ceiling and counting the spider webs while she was lost in thought.

Her thoughts, of course, usually came back to what had happened to her. A lot of her memories felt fuzzy, and trying to think too much about it would give her a headache, but she still had managed to retrace the events she had been through in the last few months. Her encounter with the flaxen-haired boy. His betrayal. The beast cutting off her arm and kidnapping her. And finally, discovering it was the lord, out of everyone, that had been behind all of this, for some disgusting greedy plan of using her blood yet again.

Just recounting all of this made her hatred feel stronger than ever, but at the same time, it all felt surreal, as if she had dreamed everything up. As if it was a story she had read somewhere and not something that had actually happened to her. But her missing arm was a sore reminder that all of this was true.

She wanted revenge. That was the thing that had been on her mind all these long, insufferable days inside that tower. She wanted to kill them. Tear out their eyes. Stab their stomachs and watch them bleed to death. Just made them suffer, as much as possible, and by her own hands.

But despite how overwhelming her anger and hatred was… she still felt that slight pang of guilt at this. Not because she pitied the men, but because wishing harm upon others would just go against her very identity as a saint. Saints were martyrs. It didn’t matter how much humans could hurt them, they had no right to retaliate in any way, because they were pure and selfless.

But could she really call herself a saint, after how much she had been mutilated and tainted and mangled?

(Had she ever been a saint to begin with, though?)

“Hey! Lunch’s ready!”

Her door brusquely opened, and a smiling young girl burst into the room with a tray full of food.

“I tried to make something new today, I hope you like it! Sorry, I’m not too used to the food of this country yet, so hopefully it’s not so bad…”

The girl kept babbling happily while sitting next to Morgana, not seeming bothered in the least by her glare. She had acted like that for the past few days, as if the two of them were friends and not strangers clearly suspicious of each others.

Rena was a weird girl. She was a cheerful, friendly person, and despite how coldly Morgana treated her or how much she tried to ignore her she kept talking and taking care of her with a sweet smile on her face. From time to time, she’d have odd reactions like getting flustered about the most ridiculous of things or getting lost in thought and fawning about things that escaped common sense. She wasn’t afraid or disgusted by her scars, either. She loved cooking and pampering her and ran around the abandoned ranch energetically despite her own wound.

She had told her some vague information about her, how she came from a country in the Far East and had been here for business with her father and how they got separated, but she never gave any details about it.

In a way, Rena reminded Morgana a little of her time at the brothel, as a weird mix of the blonde woman who acted as a big sister to everyone and the exhaustingly cheerful dark-skinned girl. (But no matter how she tried, she couldn’t remember their names, or even their faces.)

And all of this, actually, made Morgana more uncomfortable than anything. She actually would’ve preferred that Rena treat her coldly rather than that, it would’ve been less tiring and unpredictable. Because she was sure these acts of kindness and friendliness would end soon enough, at any moments.

There was something… dark lurking in Rena’s shadows, in the deepness of her blue eyes, and that darkness couldn’t help but make Morgana suspicious of her whenever she’d smiles at her.

“You don’t eat?”

Rena asked her with a worried look, as she was biting into her own piece of bread.

“I’m not hungry.”

“No, that’s not good! You have to eat, otherwise you won’t get better.”

“Maybe I don’t want to get better. Maybe I just want to stay here and wither away all alone.”

Rena’s happy smile fell from her lips, and instead a frown darkened her face. This was a serious expression she would take sometimes, when Morgana acted a bit too cold towards her.

“No, you won’t,” she said, and it almost sounded like an order. “You will eat now. I didn’t prepare all of that for you to waste it, and I didn’t save your life for you die now.”

“I never asked you to prepare this, or to save my life, for that matter.”

“So you would’ve preferred to stay in that tower and die all alone there?”

Of course not, who would want that? Morgana almost spat out, but she restrained her tongue.

Certainly, she wasn’t content with her situation right now and it was more than frustrating to be at the mercy of this weird, suspicious stranger… but she knew there were still worse fates. Like being chained up on that altar under the cruel mad eyes of a lord. Or dying little by little in a tower without anyone even knowing about it.

She sighed, then after a few moments, finally grasped the fork Rena was holding out to her and piqued inside her plate. She made a point to not look at the other girl, but she could still guess her satisfied smile on her face, which pissed her off. She had the reflex to want to use her second arm, before having the painful realization she could never do so ever again. She still wasn’t used to this, and with the pain having fading away, she sometimes had the sensation to still have it.

Her life would never be like before ever again. She already knew that of course, and it wasn’t the first time she had experienced that feeling, but right now she felt even more lost and disoriented.

She had her hypothetic revenge to keep her alive, sure. But then what? What was she supposed to do after that? She couldn’t go back to being the witch of the lake selling herbs to whoever would dare to come. She just…

“Do you want me to help you eat?”

Morgana glared at Rena. “I am not a child,” she dryly replied. “Don’t treat me like one.”

“A-Ah, sorry, sorry! I didn’t mean it like that, it’s just, uh…”

Morgana angrily started eating her food while Rena fell quiet, her cheeks as red as a tomato. Their meals were generally just a handful of vegetables and bread, or sometimes potages. Which was comprehensible given they were technically in hiding, so Rena couldn’t go in town often to buy supplies. Furthermore, they had no money.

Well… I don’t have money. I actually don’t know about her… That’s right, how did she even get the flour for the bread? And the dishes?

“So, um, don’t you think it’s time for you to tell me now?”

Morgana stopped eating, and looked up at Rena strangely.

“What?”

“I want to know your name,” Rena specified gently. “And, well… I’d like you to tell me a bit more about you, too. Like, what were you doing before getting… in that tower? Don’t you have any family?”

“You don’t need to know my name.”

“But I told you mine. You can’t risk much by telling me your name, right?”

Well, she had a point. But the last person she had trust with her name had betrayed her and she found herself with one arm missing locked up in a mansion.

“I… don’t have any family,” she finally decided to say. “Before that, I lived by myself in a small cottage near a lake.”

“Oh. That sounds… lonely.”

Rena grimaced while saying this, and the idea of being pitied by that girl felt incredibly insulting for some reason.

“And then those men kidnapped you?”

“Yes… Well the beas— the swordsman did. The flaxen-haired boy lured me in so he could have my arm. It was all under the lord’s orders.”

“Hmm…”

Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to tell her all of that, but those were all things she could’ve guessed by herself anyway. More than anything, Morgana still expected her to ask her information about her blood, and then to give some to her… But apparently that wasn’t even something that crossed Rena’s mind.

“Don’t you have any friends either?”

“What? No… Why would you demand that?”

“Well, for nothing? I did have a nice group of friends back in my village, you know. We were pretty close, I think… I think.”

For some reason, her gaze became a bit vacant, as if she was doubting her own words.

“Then what happened to them?”

“Nothing… They’re still back in my village.”

And then she stayed unusually quiet. Not like Morgana was all that interested in knowing more about this girl or her so-called friends, anyway.

“So, so! You finished eating, right? Let me bring all that back, then!”

“Ah— Wait—”

Morgana tried to grab Rena to stop her, but she missed her and instead fell on the ground. She heard Rena gasp loudly and run towards her instantly.

“A-Are you okay? Are you? O-Oh, wait, I’ll help you get up, I’ll—”

“I’m okay! I’m okay…”

Morgana raised herself up with her only elbow, and grinded her teeth at how difficult it was without her other one. Rena stared at her worryingly.

“How did you fall so bad…?”

“It’s… my arm, I think…”

“Huh?”

“I’m… still not used to it, so I lost balance… It’s nothing.”

“Oh…”

Morgana instinctively brought a hand to her shoulder, where the rest of the arm should have been. It felt so off. So wrong, to have just an empty space here, and it made her stomach turn. They both sat on the ground face to face, without saying anything for a moment. It felt too awkward, for some reason. Then, suddenly, Rena broke the silence:

“You want me to bring it back to you?”

Morgana almost strangled herself.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“You said the one who took it was that boy Mell, right? Then I could go ask him to give it back.”

“Y-You want to bring me back my arm?”

“Yes? That’s a bad idea?”

“D-Do you even hear yourself? That’s insane. Even if you were to get it back somehow, what would I do with it now?”

Rena put a finger on her lip, and tilted her head innocently. “Sew it back?”

“You’re completely crazy!”

Morgana shouted at her, and the process made her whole body hurts. She coughed a little, and then heard a giggle. When she raised her head, the other girl was laughing softly.

“It’s the first time I see you getting angry like that,” she simply said, smiling. “Actually, I’m pretty sure it’s the first time I see you having any kind of emotion at all… Well, except for glaring at me. Does that count as an ‘emotion’? Does it…?”

Wait. Could it be… that she said all those inane things on purpose? To makes me react?

Morgana stared at Rena blankly for a moment… then she snorted.

“You are really weird,” she mumbled.

“Hmhmm, I know.”

Maybe… being at the mercy of this strange girl wasn’t the worst of fate. Maybe it was something she could actually survive, this time. She sighed, then looked up at Rena.

“I… am Morgana,” she said softly.

Rena blinked at her in astonishment, her mouth opening so wide an entire apple could fit in it.

“Don’t get the wrong idea. I don’t trust you in the slightest. But like you said, it would be pretty awkward if I was the only one knowing your name…”

A big, silly smile brightened Rena’s face. She giggled yet again and nodded happily.

“Your name ends just like mine,” was the only comment she made.

________________________________________________________________

“—ou think?”

“Huh…?”

Morgana gasped, and looked around her with agitation. Rena was in front of her, looking strangely at her.

“Morgana? A-Are you okay…?” She asked warily.

“I-I… ah…”

The first thing she saw was a blinding light. There was a soft wind brushing her skin. Her eyes stung and it took her a few long seconds to make sense of her surroundings. She was outside, in front of the ranch. The entire area was covered by enormous trees, so the place felt fairly dark, but some sunlight still managed to pierce the foliage. In a way, it gave her a sense of security, as if no one would ever be able to find them here.

Morgana was drowsy and numb, her mind a mess, as if she had just wake up from a particularly deep slumber. The sudden light made her feel a bit dizzy and she quickly sat on a rock nearby to not stumble, under Rena’s worried gaze. What was she doing here…? She remembered waking up this morning, eating lunch, and then… then nothing came to her mind, like she had just blanked out.

“Hey, what’s going on…?” Rena asked again.

“I’m… fine,” Morgana blurted out, massaging her temples. “What… uh, what are we doing here?”

Rena blinked, a clear confusing sprouting on her face. “What? What do you mean?”

“I… mean what I mean. Why are we outside?”

But her precision only seemed to worsen the situation. Rena looked at her as if she had told her the world was going to get destroyed.

“We… um, u-um, th-that’s… I mean, well, uh, you— you don’t remember?”

“Remember what?”

“Ah, a-after lunch I proposed we go outside for a bit, and you accepted, and we were just talking about what we would do if it started raining…”

This time, it was Morgana who was confused. She stared at Rena as if expecting her to explain the situation, but manifestly the other girl didn’t understand any more than her.

“You… really forget?” Rena asked again. “Y-You were talking with me normally up until now though…”

“I… was?”

She had no recollections of such a thing, though. After lunch, she had no recollections at all. What had happened? Had she really just… blanked out? She breathed in, trying to regain her calm and reflect about this logically. Now that she was thinking about it… this wasn’t really the first time this happened. She had vague memories of experiencing something similar as a child during her time at the brothel, but she was pretty sure it had stopped after she started living at the cottage. Or, well, maybe it did happen again, but given most of the time she was alone it was hard to tell…

“Morgana…?”

But in any case, it wasn’t something she needed to tell Rena about.

“I’m fine. It’s nothing important.”

“Are you sure…?”

“Yes. Forget about it.”

Rena stared at her for a while. It was obvious she wasn’t convinced at all, but still one of her usual smile blossomed on her face and she nodded.

“All right! Well, I’m just glad you’re able to walk and go out by yourself now. I’m sure you’ll be full of energy in no time!”

“I have… never been ‘full of energy’…”

Rena laughed light-heartedly and started to spun and bounces on her legs, as if practicing some sort of weird dance. Morgana sighed. Just watching her move like that was tiring to her. But… in the last few days, she had managed to get used to it. Sort of.

“What about you?”

Rena stopped moving and looked at Morgana interrogatively.

“What?”

“You were wounded too, right? At the shoulder, if I recall.”

“Ooh! That! Haha, I’m okay, I’m okay!”

“It seemed like it was a pretty severe injury, though…”

“It did hurt quite badly, but I’ve always recovered very quickly! I’m tougher than I look, you know? You know?”

“Is that so…”

“Were you worried about me?”

“Don’t be stupid.”

Rena laughed yet again, and Morgana rolled her eyes, and it seemed it had pretty much been their relationships since at least their first conversation.

“And…” Morgana started again, a bit hesitantly. “What do you intend to do now? Didn’t you want to find you way back? To search your father?”

“Hmm…” Rena crossed her arms, a pensive look on her face. “I guess so. Yeah, that’s probably what I’ll do, once you’re completely fine again.”

“You don’t seem convinced… Aren’t you worried about your father?”

“I think he’s fine… He’s a bit clumsy, but he’s still a grown up, you know.”

Even so, Morgana thought she was talking about him in a weird detached way, like he was some random neighbor or distant relative she didn’t know well.

“Aren’t you very close?”

“We are! Of course I’m worried. I’m just… I dunno. Maybe it’s just better that way, because I can’t really go back to him, or to my village…”

“Why? What about your mother?”

“My mother’s gone.”

A smile was still on her face, but it was a cold one. It made Morgana uncomfortable, and she understood she wouldn’t be able to get anything more out of her about this. The more she tried to learn about Rena, and the more mysterious she felt. It was almost frustrating…

“Anyway, how about we play a game?”

Morgana felt startled at Rena’s sudden change of mood and proposition. At the very least, she couldn’t say she was bored with that girl…

“A game?”

“Yeah! Look, I have this with me…” All while talking, she began to look through her satchel and pulled out what looked like a deck of cards. “One of my friends, you see, is a big game collector, and she gave this to me before we come here. The rules are really easy! Wanna try?”

“I don’t like games.”

Rena looked suddenly horrified, as if Morgana had given her a death sentence.

“You’re kidding, right? Right? There’s no way anyone dislike games!”

“Well, I do,” Morgana added. “I never even played one.”

Back in her village, the other kids would never approach her. At the brothel, maybe some of the prostitutes had proposed her to play some simple games with them at times, or the slave man had tried to get her to play with other children her age, but she had always refused. As the daughter of God, she couldn’t let herself be associated with such baseless entertainments.

“N-Never?” Rena sounded even more shocked. “Not even when you were a child?”

“No, I never had any interest in that. It is just meaningless.”

At this moment, Rena’s expression changed. Her face grew serious, and she frowned, as if Morgana had said something particularly offensive.

“It is not meaningless,” she declared, in a tone so serious Morgana wasn’t even able to retort anything. “Games are so important. They can bring so many things to people. So many things! If you have never even played one once, then there’s no way you could be able to understand that.”

Morgana felt bewildered. Why did she seem so angry about something ridiculous like that? Wasn’t that just a game? But before she could say anything, Rena fiercely grabbed her hand, forcing her to stand up, and dragged her inside the ranch.

“I’ll show you!” She said with determination.

“Wh-What?”

“We’ll play together! Whether you want it or not!”

Morgana felt like yelling at her, but for some reason the strength of Rena’s hand holding hers and the firmness of her steps felt undefeatable. So she let herself got dragged inside, sat on a bench and watched the other spread the cards in front of her without saying a word.

Rena explained the rules to her in a confident voice, as if she had done this her entire life (maybe she had, after all). The rules were, indeed, fairly simple: the cards had all different colors with some cute animals drawn on them. There was also a few characters on them which Morgana guessed were in Rena’s country language, but she told her it was just the names of the animals and not necessary to the game. To win you had to get rid of all the cards.

She was given one mercy round to get used to the game, but when things actually started Morgana quickly realized behind her sweet façade, Rena was extremely ruthless. She may be an airhead, slow girl in appearance, but she was in reality pretty shrewd.

“You have to cheat,” Morgana suddenly said after losing for the eighth time. “It’s not possible to win so many times.”

“I did not! I’m just really good at this game, and you’re not.”

“You liar. I refuse to play against you again until you tell me your trick!”

At this moment, Rena smiled maliciously, and looked at her with a mix between amusement and endearment, which felt incredibly condescending.

“Wh-What?”

“You know, despite the fact you act so composed and mature most of the time, you’re actually a really sore loser.”

Morgana felt her cheeks flare up, and never did she felt as glad that her hideous scars were there as now to cover up that fact.

“That’s quite the accusation, I am certainly not a sore loser. I think this is fair of me to ask for a proof that you are not cheating.”

But Rena simply starting laughing and Morgana suddenly felt like a flustered child trying to deal with a bully.

“S-Stop making fun of me!”

“Haooo, you’re so kyute! I wanna take you home! Ah, but I guess we’re already home, huh… Then can I hug you? Can I?”

“No. Stop that, you are grossing me out.”

“H-Hao… How mean…”

“I already told you to stop treating me like a child.”

“S-Sorry! You’re just… really making me think of one of my friends right now. She was also quite the sore loser.”

“Like I said, I am not—”

Morgana stopped, and let out a deep sigh. Evidently, Rena would not listen to her no matter what she said. The other girl giggled a little, and then an odd, nostalgic smile stretched her lips.

“My friends and I, we used to play these games all the time. We would gather everyday and play together like that… It was fun.”

For a few seconds, she seemed lost in thought, as if thinking back about her hometown. Then she looked up at Morgana, this time with a gentle smile directed at her.

“It felt a little like when I played with them right now,” she admitted. “It was fun too. Thank you.”

Morgana only looked away while restraining another sigh. She couldn’t say she had ‘fun,’ — she even felt quite annoyed she hadn’t been able to win even once — but… it had not been a bad experience. She would never bring herself to say this to Rena, though. Or to anyone, for that matter.

“You sounded close,” she suddenly blurted out, without looking at Rena in the eyes. “With your friends.”

“Yeah… I guess…”

“You ‘guess’?”

This time, it was Rena who looked away — not out of embarrass or shame, but in a contemplative way. Her face was neutral, as if all emotions had left her.

“I think… other people are quite weird, you see. I like my friends, but we were only just playing around together. We were close while laughing, joking, messing around… But…” She stopped. “When things actually started to get rough, I still was unable to believe in them and ask for their help. I couldn’t help feeling they’d betray me anyway. I was stabbed in the back like that in the past, you see.”

Morgana almost felt like Rena was more talking to herself than anyone else, so she simply listened to her in silence.

“I wanted to be… happy. And I thought I was happy, in my village. I was around people I loved and who loved me. But sometimes I just wonder if it all wasn’t just some façade. A factice happiness, maybe. Or maybe it’s just all part of Oyashiro’s curse too…”

She turned her head towards Morgana, and smiled at her in an odd self-deprecating manner.

“What is happiness, though? How do you know when you are truly happy?”

Morgana was unable to answer to that.

________________________________________________________________

The lord was laughing.

His voice was strident and raucous, rasping her ears, piercing her mind. But she couldn’t do anything, couldn’t stop listening to it. The ground seemed to get loose with each chuckles, and the walls appeared to want to swallow her alive. Everything was hurting, aching, crashing. She wanted to scream, but her throat didn’t even allow her that.

“No tears — now that’s a good girl. Dignified and saintly — that’s what I need you to be.”

Mangled words resounded in her head, but she couldn’t make any sense of them. The only thing she could feel were the chains around her ankle, and the vivid, unbearable pain in her arm.

It hurts, it hurts, it all hurts so much — and it was all their fault — those three disgusting men. The lord.

That’s right, she had swore to get her revenge against them, to get their heads, for what they had dared to do to her. They locked her up — she who was a saint, the daughter of God — and treated her even worse than cattle — made her a witch, draining her blood day after day until nothing was left of her…

Everything was hurting her, this whole world was worse than Hell itself — and the only way for it to end was to finally kill her torturers.

I wasn’t born to spend my whole life suffering—

She woke up with a start, gasping for air and feeling nauseous. Her entire body was trembling and she couldn’t breathe. She felt like a fish out of water and her mind, still trapped inside that tower, could see nothing but blood and chains and death. Her surroundings was spinning around her, but in a desperate attempt to make a term to her suffering, she jumped out of bed and ran outside the ranch.

It was pitch dark outside, even barely any stars shined in the sky, and the giant trees in front of her looked more like demons ready to tear out her soul at any moment. Yet, she kept running into the woods, bare feet, not caring about the way her long red hair got caught in the branches or how her skin got scratched. The feeling felt familiar, like an odd sensation of déjà-vu, and for a moment she thought she was back to being eleven years old in the slums, running without any goal in the middle of the narrow streets.

(Except this time, no kind young man would come calm her down and carry her on his back to show her the sunrise—)

She only managed to stop when her legs stopped supporting her and she collapsed on the ground. Leaning on the trunk of a tree, she kneeled down, coughed, and finally threw up everything she had in her stomach. It was as if she was trying to evacuate all the horrifying events she had gone through, trying to purify herself from all the pain and suffering and hatred. When she finally stopped, she felt empty — both in her stomach and in her heart. With no strength, she simply lay down against the trunk and stopped moving, before slowly closing her eyes.

Suicide was a sin and she would never even consider this an option, no matter how tainted she was, but in this very instant… she honestly wished she could just die. Just slowly fall asleep here, and never open her eyes again…

Unfortunately, fate wasn’t on her side, as instead she heard noise that instantly got her out of her slumber. She immediately turned around, and in the horizon, she saw some vague small lights. There were footsteps, too. And voices.

Who on earth could be out there in the woods this late at night? The will to know the answer to this question was stronger than her exhaustion and numbness, and she gathered all of her strength left to stand up and slowly approach the lights. After a few moment, she noticed apparently a group of men — at least four of them, on horses, with torches.

Actually, those weren’t simple men. They were wearing heavy armors, and swords — which meant they were likely knights or guards. At first, she didn’t think much of it. These men were working for the Church generally after all, weren’t they? Anyone serving God was deserving of respect. But then she suddenly remembered that actually, there was another authority they listened under other than the Church: the lord.

At this moment, a chill ran down her spine and she instantly backed away. A part of her wanted to believe it was only a coincidence. But it would be too naïve a way of thinking. Why would a group of guards wander in the middle of the woods at night? If the lord had survived, then there was only one answer…

They were searching for the witch that had escaped the lord’s clutches.

Panic grasping her, she started to run yet again despite how much pain her legs was in, but this time in the inverse direction. She traversed the forest with even more speed than earlier while her heart was beating so strong in her chest she thought it was about to explode and that her mind was only focused on one thing: that she didn’t want to go back there. She didn’t want to go back in the tower, not back to being chained and getting her blood drained. She’d rather get killed horribly than this.

The ranch appeared in sight rather quickly, but it was barely a relief at all, and she entered it before slamming the door behind her. There, she had only the strength to fall on the floor, gasping painfully.

Why was this happening? How did these men manage to arrive there? It had been about two weeks since her escape, but still, it felt too early. How were they able to find them in the middle of these lost woods? Had someone told them? Had someone—

“Morgana?”

A sweet voice got her out of her thoughts, and when she raised her head, Rena was here, in a pink nightgown, holding a candle.

Rena.

“Is everything okay? I heard noise…”

There were only the two of them here, after all.

“Morgana…?”

With some strength she didn’t know she still possessed, Morgana stood up, grabbed the cleaver that rested against the wall, and jumped on Rena. The candle crashed onto the floor, plunging them in darkness — only the dim moon through the window lightened the room. It was like a reenactment of their first meeting, except this time Morgana was fully aware who she was threatening with the blade.

“What are—”

“Shut up! You’re the one who warned them, right?”

Rena’s blue eyes, shining like jewels under the moon, widened like saucers.

“Them?”

“I knew it! You were suspicious from the start! Of course you’d do something like that!”

“I have no idea what you—”

“Stop lying now! I knew you’d betray me!”

An odd expression spread across Rena’s face that Morgana couldn’t exactly identify, but she had no intention to anyway. Anger and panic and fear all overwhelmed her mind and reason, and flashes of the flaxen-haired boy and of his kind smile and sweet words turned in a circle inside her head.

This girl was just like him, after all. Her smile was only there to trick her, and all of her words were honeyed poison.

“Calm down, you don’t make any sense,” Rena talked again. “Think about it, why would I—”

“I told you to stop lying!”

Morgana raised the cleaver and lowered it towards the other girl’s neck, but she managed to block out the blade and kick her in the stomach with her knee. Morgana momentarily coughed and lost balance, giving Rena enough time to got away from her and stood back up, but she didn’t let this rattle her. Quickly getting back on her knees, she yet again swung the cleaver at Rena, who avoided it by only a few margins.

“Stop that! You might be better now, but there’s no way you can win against me with my own cleaver!”

But Morgana couldn’t care less about Rena’s words. That girl was just like the three men. No, maybe she was worse — because she had actually tried to save her and gain her esteem before throwing her back into hell.

She wouldn’t forgive her. Not Rena, not the lord, not the three men, not anyone—

She kept swinging the cleaver at Rena, again and again, destroying quite a few of the woodwork in the process, but the girl was as agile as a cat and managed to get away from her hits with only a few cuts.

She couldn’t forgive, because that was all she had left now.

Everything else had been taken from her.

Her identity, her life, her possible happiness and future… everything had been crushed at the hands of humans.

Everything was just unfair and cruel and disgusting.

“Just… disappears!”

For some unfathomable reason, her Father had just abandoned her.

No… maybe he had never been at her side from the beginning.

Maybe her mother had been right. Maybe she was not the child of God, but of some devil.

Maybe she truly was a witch, after all—

“Die!”

Finally, blood splashed onto her face and dress. It looked black under the moon. She had hit Rena on her left hip, which made her let out a constricted moan while glaring at Morgana, before putting her back against the wall and letting herself fall on the ground. Morgana looked down at her coldly, taking slow steps towards her.

The girl was completely at her mercy. There was no way she could defend herself with such a wound. She would probably bleed to death if she left her like that too. Yet, Rena’s eyes showed no fear. It was as if death wasn’t something that even crossed her mind… or maybe it did, but it wasn’t something she cared about. Well, it was fine either way.

She raised the cleaver one last time, her eyes glaring down at the gasping girl.

She saw the flaxen-haired boy figure in her stead. The beast’s. The lord’s.

Her hands tightened around the handle, and she lowered it.

But the blade didn’t hit Rena at all.

Instead, it planted itself inside the wooden ground next to her.

Morgana was shaking. Her trembling hands let go of the cleaver, and she fell on her knees, her long hair scattering around her like a veil. A long silence swallowed the room, where even barely their breathing could be heard.

“What are you doing?” Rena suddenly asked softly.

Morgana shook her head.

“I have… no idea…”

She plunged her face in her hands.

“I have… honestly no idea at all. I don’t know what I should be doing anymore… I lived all my life being so sure of who I was and what I should be doing, but now… I have nothing of that anymore… The only thing I desire is revenge, but I don’t even think I have the strength to get it…”

She didn’t know why she suddenly bared her heart like that. Maybe she wasn’t really talking to Rena. Maybe she was just letting out feelings that had been swarming inside her head for the past days… no, maybe even for the past months and years.

“I really… don’t know what I should be doing from now on anymore… I feel—”

—like the entire hate me. Like God Himself hates me. Like fate and the universe have just decided to make me miserable for the rest of my pitiful life.

‘I wasn’t born to spend my whole life suffering,’ she had yelled in her heart, as hatred and anger and despair boiled inside her…

But what was she born for exactly?

“I feel… cursed.”

Another silence — no sounds, no noise to disturb her intimate monologue. Until a giggle break the moment. Morgana lifted her head slowly, and stared with confusion at the girl who was chuckling heartily as if she had just said the funniest joke ever.

“What a coincidence,” she finally said. “I am cursed too.”

Morgana blinked, her eyes stinging. She wasn’t crying, though — she felt as if all of her tears had left her a long time ago already, maybe when she had been brought inside that tower — and now she was just completely empty.

But in this moment, the girl in front of her looked just as empty and lost as her.

“I might… have lied to you a little,” Rena suddenly admitted. “I didn’t actually come here with my father.”

Her gaze lifted up towards the moon behind Morgana, as if to help her focus.

“There’s a deity called Oyashiro in my village, you see. She protects it and its inhabitants, and prevents any strangers to come in. But, on the other hand, there is also an unspoken rule you are not allowed to leave the village or you’d trigger her wrath.”

“A… deity?”

“I know in your country there is only one God who rules everything, but in mine, we have different faiths. Our ‘deities’ are not really the same as yours, but at least I know Oyashiro is real. She spoke to me, quite a few times. And she also cursed me.”

Morgana restrained her instinctive envy to say this was nonsense and that there was only one God in this universe, as stating the contrary felt like a personal insult to her. But she felt too exhausted to fight Rena on this, and just wanted to keep hearing the rest of the story. Maybe Rena guessed her train of thoughts, and Morgana wondered if maybe denying her village’s ‘deity’ would feel like an insult to her too, but she made no comments about it.

“Why did she curse you? Oh… Because you left.”

“Yes, though I was cursed before that. As a child, my family left the village to find jobs in a bigger city. I’ve lived there a few years, but then my mother… left,” she said, spiting the word, and Morgana felt there was a lot of grudge in that sentence, but she didn’t ask about it. “So my father and I came back. And then I thought it would be okay. It was, for some time. I met my friends. I thought I’d be happy again. But… Dad was still jobless, and in the end, he attracted the attention of some bad people.”

Her eyes darkened, and she clenched her jaw.

“These people wanted to use him. They wanted to take away my happiness. So I had to do everything I could to prevent this. I had to.”

“What did you do?”

Rena stared straight into Morgana’s eyes, her gaze resolute.

“I killed them.”

This should’ve come off as a surprised. This should’ve shocked Morgana to her core. But for some reason, it didn’t. Maybe she had already understood, somewhere deep inside, that this girl was a killer.

“But… I suppose I made a mistake. Or maybe that was just the curse. I think, some people related to the two I killed discovered it, and tried to come after me. I was knocked out, and when I came back to myself I was inside a boat’s hold, chained up, with a lot of other people.”

The blurry image of the aftermath of the brothel’s raid flashed through Morgana’s mind, as she was tied up inside that carriage with all those other strangers… just before the beast slaughtered all of them.

“Slave traders?” She asked.

“I’m not sure,” Rena added. “I was dragged around for quite some time, in boat and carriage, and thankfully none of them thought of checking my satchel. So when I got the occasion, I slashed them up and escaped. And that’s how I ended up here.”

Morgana sighed. She could understand why Rena would make up that lie, it certainly wasn’t a story she could to tell to everybody.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to get back to my village, and even if I do… with what I did, I don’t know if I’ll be able to ever gain my happy life back anyway.” She chuckled. “Well, that’s something I’ve always known. Happy days never last.”

That was something Morgana could relate to all too well, and she hated how much similarities she could find in Rena’s words. The girl in front of her had just admitted to her she was a killer, a sinner of the worst category. It was disgusting and almost above salvation. And yet… she felt no disgust towards her at all. Only…

Maybe only something akin to sympathy.

That just illustrated how far she had fallen. But right now, she didn’t care all that much about it.

Without saying a word, she rose up, disappeared in the other room and came back her hands full of bandages. Rena watched her kneel besides her and starting to clean up her wound.

“What are you doing…?”

“Isn’t that obvious? I’m treating you. We can’t stay here any longer. I spotted some guards afar from here, and I bet they’re working for the lord. We need to get out of here before that.”

“Oh… so that’s why you suddenly panicked.” Rena chuckled. “Do you not think I betrayed you anymore?”

Morgana stopped her treatment, her eyes staring fixedly at the ground.

“I don’t know,” Morgana admitted. “You’re a killer and a sinner. I cannot trust you.”

“I bet,” Rena said, and there was clear amusement in her voice.

Morgana wondered how she managed to use a joking tone with such a heavy wound, but then again, she had been able to narrate her entire life story without so much as flinching despite it.

“But,” she added, still without looking at the other girl in the eyes. “I… can’t let you die here.”

“Really?”

“Take this as thanks for you saving me from the tower.”

“It’s you who inflicted this wound on me, though…”

“I won’t apologize for that, if that’s what you’re expecting. I still think my suspicions were fair enough.”

Rena opened her mouth to reply, but instead she just let out a moan as Morgana started to apply the bandage.

“You’re really rough,” she complained.

“I’m more used to handle dead bodies.”

“You what?”

“It’s nothing… For now, this should okay. We can’t spend any more time here anyway.”

All while talking, she helped Rena to stand up by handing her a shoulder and letting her lean on her body. Morgana was far from being a strong girl, so supporting the other weight of another human was quite the struggle for her. She thought about how Rena must have carried her all by herself from the tower to here, and wondered how on earth she managed to accomplish such a prowess. She certainly didn’t look any physically stronger than her.

Am I really starting to trust her words now? Stop being silly, Morgana.

But despite lecturing herself, she still gathered all of her strength to help out support the other girl as best as she could. As they slowly passed by the window, they could see a few lights twinkling in the distance. The guards had probably noticed the ranch by now, and were starting to approach dangerously close to it.

“They seem to be quite a few…”

“I’ve seen at least four of them earlier. Let’s hurry.”

In spite of these words, they couldn’t exactly run with Rena in this condition, and Morgana could hear her hiss and groan with each steps they took. She knew her wound was still bleeding too, but now was too late to regret her hysterical episode from earlier. She still thanked God that the ranch had a back door, and they managed to reach it after a few minutes of hobbling, finally leaving behind the dilapidated habitation they had occupied for the last weeks.

Once outside, they staggered a little in the middle of the forest, then took a pause against a large trunk. Rena was already gasping heavily, and they hadn’t even been walking for five minutes.

“How’s your wound?”

“Pretty bad,” she groaned. “I… doubt I’ll be able to run away from them like that.”

“We don’t have a choice, though.”

“You have a choice, however. You could just leave me here.”

“Not interested.”

Rena chuckled. “You really are a sore loser.”

“Shut up.”

Morgana sighed and sat down next to Rena, and the two of them stayed quiet for quite some time.

“You’re really okay with taking the risk to get back inside that tower because of me?”

“Then what about you? I just tried to kill you, and you seem completely fine with putting your life in my hands.”

“That’s right. That’s really weird, huh.”

“It truly is.”

Rena giggled yet again, and if Morgana didn’t felt so exhausted, maybe she would’ve let herself laugh with her.

“If we do manage to get out of these woods…”

Rena started talking again, her voice a whisper.

“What do you want to do?”

That was a question Morgana had asked herself ever since she had been out of that tower. How ridiculous that she’d spent the last few months wish for any kind of miracle to free her, and now that she was free, she was even more lost than she’d ever been in her life.

“Do you still intend to take your revenge?”

“Probably…” She hesitated a little, trying to search for the stars behind the heavy foliage of the trees. She found none.

“That’s the only thing I have left.”

“I see…”

“And you?”

“I still have no idea either. Healing that wound would be a start. And then maybe I’ll be able to find another kyute thing to take home.”

“We really won’t have much to look forward to then, huh.”

“I guess.”

They shared another moment of silence. Behind them, the sounds of the guards breaking open the door resounded brutally, but this put neither of them into a panic.

They just kept staring at the sky, entirely camouflaged by the trees.

Until, Morgana finally stood up again, and handed her hand to Rena. The girl smiled, neither a gentle or cruel one, before grabbing it.

Morgana had no idea where they could go, and they had very little chance to be able to run away from the guards.

But, in this instant, putting aside all of her complicated and complex feelings, she swore to herself they’ll manage to escape this place no matter what.

This was her gratitude for the lost girl who had saved her from the tower.

A mean for both of them to find their ways back.

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