#tethered to the underworld

[littleeyesofpallas]

[nemo-writes]

⋆˚࿔ ⋆˚࿔ 𝐝𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐦𝐚𝐜𝐚𝐛𝐫𝐞 ; 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐞 𝜗𝜚˚⋆𝜗𝜚˚⋆

↣ pack!tf141 x witch!reader

↣ chapter summary; torn by their obsession, the pack crumbles—now feral shadows of themselves. ghost, spiraling into hunger and rage, unleashes his fury.

★ warnings; obsessive behaviour, unhealthy coping mechanisms, violence (sybil gets hurt!), blood and gore

☆ story masterlist

The Rose District was a place of shadows—where the dimly lit streets bled into the underworld, where the stench of decay lingered in the air, and whispers of trouble hid behind every corner. Ghost had never liked coming here, but tonight, he had a purpose.

You had been raving about some rare herb for the past few days, an ingredient you couldn’t find anywhere else. Ghost, seemingly indifferent to your ramblings, had made a mental note to find it for you.

He moved with silent efficiency, his half-wraith nature allowing him to blend easily into the darkness. His eyes scanned the corners for any signs of the itinerant vendor he knew to hang around the area. The herb was supposed to be rare—dangerously so—but he couldn’t bring himself to care beyond getting it and making you happy.

That was, until he heard a soft voice, muffled and frightened, cutting through the usual hum of the Rose District. It wasn’t the sound itself that drew him—plenty of people got into trouble here—but there was something in the air, a pull.

He stepped out of the shadows, his eyes narrowing as he saw the scene unfold a few feet away. A young woman—her honey-brown hair gleaming faintly in the dim light—stood cornered by a group of rough-looking men. They smirked, closing in, their intentions clear and unkind.

Ghost could have turned away. He didn’t know her, and getting involved in these kinds of situations wasn’t exactly his style. But something in him shifted, a tug in his chest that he couldn’t quite shake. He sighed, his usual apathy mixing with a sense of obligation he couldn’t place, and stepped forward.

“Leave her,” he said, his voice low, barely a whisper, but it carried an unmistakable weight. The men froze, eyes flicking up toward him. They were the type to recognize danger when it appeared, and Ghost—his towering frame half-hidden by his hood—was clearly not a figure to be trifled with.

One of the men sneered but backed off, motioning for the others to follow suit. “Not worth it,” he muttered under his breath, casting one last leer at the girl before disappearing into the shadows.

Ghost watched them retreat, then turned to the girl. She was trembling slightly, her brown eyes wide with fear and gratitude. This was routine for him, helping folk when he had to, stepping in only when necessary. He was about to turn and leave, to forget this ever happened, when she spoke.

“Thank you,” she whispered, her voice soft, vulnerable.

Something about it made him pause, just for a moment.

“Are you hurt?” he asked, his voice rough, more out of habit than genuine concern.

She shook her head, a slight smile forming on her lips, but before she could respond, her hand brushed his arm.

It was nothing—just a fleeting touch, accidental. But in that instant, something shifted. Ghost pulled back slightly, confused by the sudden wave of emotion crashing over him. It was subtle, at first, just a faint whisper in the back of his mind, but the longer he looked at her, the louder it became.

He tried to shake it off, tried to remember why he had come to the Rose District in the first place—there was something he needed to find, something important.

A strange sensation crawled up his spine, sinking deep into his mind. He felt… tethered, as if something in him latched onto her presence, a root slowly winding its way into his thoughts, making her impossible to ignore. His apathy slipped away, replaced by a growing need to stay close, to keep her safe, to protect.

He found himself stepping closer instead of retreating, his usual detached composure slipping as he studied her. She didn’t seem aware of the effect she was having, of the slow, insidious way she was beginning to unravel everything inside him.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, his voice a little softer than before. The words felt automatic, like he was trying to regain control, but his mind was already clouded.

“I got lost,” she said, her eyes darting nervously toward the dark streets surrounding them. “I didn’t mean to—thank you, again. I’m Leah by the way.”

Ghost’s thoughts were hazy now, unfocused, as he repeated her name over and over again in his mind.

“We should go,” he muttered, gesturing for her to follow him. He couldn’t explain it, couldn’t understand why he felt this way, but he couldn’t leave her alone now. Not when the pull was so strong.

By the time they reached the edge of the district, the thought of the herb he was supposed to find for you had completely faded from his mind. All that mattered was Leah—and keeping her near.

. . .

Plates sat piled in the sink, crusted and acrid with the remnants of old meals. Dust had settled over every surface, thick and undisturbed. The smell of neglect filled every corner, the windows streaked with grime, letting in only the barest slivers of weak, muted light.

The pack's home lay in shambles, reflecting the twisted obsession that had taken root in their minds. Every room told the same story—untouched and uncared and ignored like everything else that wasn’t Leah.

John’s instincts as a hunter—the sharpness, the clarity of purpose—had dulled, eroded by worry and exhaustion. He barely left the house, even though he should’ve been out there, doing what he did best, leading them. His guns, his gear, lay untouched, gathering dust in the corner. The man who had always been their steady hand, their anchor in the storm, was unravelling, his focus split between trying to hold the pack together and his concern for the woman who had somehow become the centre of all their lives.

Gaz rarely touched his books now, his once-meticulous study routine had been discarded, left to gather dust along with the shelves sagging under the weight of broken trinkets and forgotten potions. The thought of casting a spell, of focusing on anything outside of Leah, seemed almost impossible now.

Soap, once the energetic heart of their pack, had become consumed by his inner beast. His werewolf side, once held in check by a fierce loyalty and steady self-control, had slipped its leash. The wildness in him had grown more pronounced, his pacing erratic, his growls more frequent. He snapped at the others, a low, rumbling threat in his throat whenever they got too close. His restlessness filled the air, his anxious energy like static that crackled between them all.

And then there was Ghost. Of them all, he was the worst.

He had stopped taking the tonics you prepared especially for him—those essential mixtures that kept his half-wraith nature in check. Without them, the feral part of him had completely taken over, spiralling out of control. His skin had taken on a pale, deathly hue, his eyes burning red with the hunger that gnawed at him from within.

Things eventually did break apart.

The air in the house was thick with tension as the four of them gathered around in the dim light of the living room, a fire crackling in the hearth but offering no warmth.

Leah, despite having her own space above Laswell’s bar, had made herself at home in their place. It seemed so natural at first, like she belonged there among them. For a while, she stood out in the chaos, pristine and pretty amid the disarray.

But then, a sudden illness settled over her.

She had stopped eating days ago, and with every shallow breath she took, each spiralled deeper into their own madness.

The tension was unbearable, each day blending into the next, an endless cycle of sleepless nights and anxious pacing. They had stopped caring for themselves and each other. Fights broke out over nothing, their frustrations boiling over with every glance, every word.

The house that had once been a home was no longer a sanctuary. It was a reflection of the decay in their hearts, a hollow shell of what it had once been, crumbling under the strain of their obsession love.

“She needs more than we can give her,” Gaz said quietly, his voice laced with frustration. He rubbed his temples, as if trying to ward off the pounding headache that had settled on his temple for days. “I’ve tried every spell I know. None of it’s working.”

“Spells?” Johnny scoffed, his pacing agitated. “Spells aren’t what’s gonna fix her. We need to get her out of here, take her to someone who knows what they’re doing.”

“And who, exactly, is that, Soap?” Price shot back, his voice rising. He was leaning against the wall, arms crossed, his face shadowed with exhaustion. “You think there’s someone out there who can handle this? Someone we can trust with Leah?”

Soap growled low in his throat, his enlarged nails flexing at his sides. “Better than sitting here, watching her waste away while you all argue over nothing.”

“We don’t know even what’s wrong with her!” Gaz snapped, losing his temper.

“And sitting here debating it is helping how?” Soap shot back, his eyes flashing in the low light. “We’ve been going around in circles for days. She’s getting worse, and all we do is talk, talk, talk!”

Price stepped forward, his face dark with anger. “We can’t just run off blindly. You think you’ll make it two blocks without something worse happening? The moment we leave this house—”

“This house is a tomb!” Soap snarled, his voice cracking. “She’s dying in there, and you want to sit here, playing it safe? You’re the one losing it, Price. You’ve lost your edge. You’re not thinking straight.”

Price moved so quickly that Johnny barely had time to react. They were face to face in an instant, both of them bristling with raw anger, their tempers flaring. “You want to say that again?” Price growled, the hunter in him itching to lash out.

Gaz stood up abruptly, pushing them apart with a frustrated grunt. “Enough! This isn’t helping anyone, least of all Leah.” He turned to Ghost, who had been eerily silent throughout the argument. “Ghost, you’ve barely said a word. What do you think?”

Ghost, standing in the corner, his form barely visible in the shadows, seemed almost detached from the scene. His eyes, bloodshot and wild, flicked to Gaz, but there was no recognition there, only a raw, feral hunger. He hadn’t taken his tonic in days, and it showed—the half-wraith within him was clawing its way to the surface, gnawing at the last vestiges of control he had left.

“We’re wasting time,” Ghost finally muttered, his voice guttural, barely human. His muscles twitched with unspent energy, his body wound tight as if ready to explode. “She’s dying. And we’re doing nothing.”

“We know that,” Gaz said softly, trying to reach him. “But we can’t just—”

Ghost’s eyes flickered, a dark intensity flashing across his face. “Then stop talking. Do something. Or get out of my way.”

Before anyone could react, Ghost was gone. He moved with inhuman speed, disappearing through the door in a blur of shadow and cold air. They barely had time to process it before the chill of his absence settled into the room.

Price cursed under his breath, turning back to the others. “Damn it, he’s gone feral.”

Soap’s pacing resumed, even more agitated now. “We can’t keep him locked up forever. He was bound to snap.”

“And now what?” Gaz asked, his voice hoarse with worry.

But despite the renewed sense of urgency, the argument had changed nothing. Leah still lay feverish in the other room, her condition worsening by the hour. And with Ghost gone, it felt as if the last thread holding them together had finally snapped.

And outside, in the night, Ghost stalked the streets, driven by an insatiable thirst, slipping deeper into the feral haze that consumed him. The city, bathed in the cool autumn moonlight, was ripe for hunting.

. . .

That cool evening you strolled through the dim streets with Sybil at your side. It was a rare moment of quiet, a stolen breath of normalcy after weeks of carefully orchestrating your life away from the pack.

No contact, no messages, no nothing. You were trying to move on, and of course failing miserably.

You tugged your cloak tighter around your shoulders when something suddenly felt… wrong. An icy chill washed over you, setting your nerves on edge, like a storm creeping in from the horizon.

Then you saw him.

Ghost.

His eyes, usually so sharp and calculating, were bloodshot, wide with hunger, glowing faintly in the dark like a feral animal.

Then you noticed the blood. Fresh streaks ran down his arms and neck, his clothes stained and torn, his skin smeared with it. Clearly not his own. He had already hurt someone. Maybe worse.

Your heart dropped into your stomach.

“Simon?” you called his name softly.

He didn’t answer. He just stared. Unblinking. And then, with terrifying speed, he lunged.

Panic surged through you, and without thinking, you ran—your only thought was to get back to the shop. Trusting wholly that Sybil was by your side, you sprinted through the streets, your breath coming in frantic bursts, the pounding of his feet behind you growing louder, faster.

You barely made it through the door, slamming it shut and locking it just in time. But there was no time to catch your breath. Ghost was right behind you, slamming into the door with such force that it cracked. Your heart was racing in your chest as the door gave way under the weight of his attack, splintering open.

He barged in, and the destruction began.

He tore through the shop like a whirlwind, knocking over everything in his path in his blind attempt to catch you. Shelves collapsed under his weight, glass bottles shattered, herbs spilled across the floor, the once-familiar scents mixing with the pungent stench of blood and sweat.

“Stop!” you screamed, but it was useless. He couldn’t hear you. Couldn’t stop.

He pounced at you again, and Sybil, ever fearless and faithful, intercepted him. She sank her teeth into his leg, snarling fiercely, and for a moment, it slowed him down. He roared in pain, staggering, his bloodshot eyes narrowing in fury. But with one hard swipe of his hand, he sent her flying across the room. She hit the wall with a pained whine, her body crumpling to the floor.

“Sybil!” you wailed, heart splintering at the sight of her.

He stumbled on his injured leg, collapsing like a rag doll. But he wasn’t done.

Before you could react, his hand shot out and latched onto your ankle, dragging you down with terrifying strength. You hit the floor hard, pain shooting up your leg as he pulled you toward him, his grip crushing, his nails digging into your skin, drawing blood.

You cried in pain, instinctively twisting your body and kicking him—hard and square in the jaw. The impact was brutal, and his head snapped back with a sickening crack. For a moment, his grip slackened, and you scrambled to your feet, gasping for breath.

But it still wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough.

You limped towards the cauldron over the hearth, the brew still bubbling inside, before latching fiercely into it and toppling it towards him. The boiling liquid splashed all across the floor and against Ghost. His howl of pain ripped through the air as steam rose as his skin sizzled and burned, blistering down to the bone where the unfinished position had hit him.

You were barely holding on as you manoeuvre yourself around him and the torrid concoction, your body trembling as you picked up Sybil and darted towards the stair, desperate to get away. Every step was agony, your ankle throbbing from where he’d grabbed you.

You managed to slam the door to your apartment shut, locking it with shaking hands, but it felt so fragile. Too fragile. The sounds of Ghost’s growls echoed below, followed by the scraping of claws on wood.

He was coming.

You fumbled for your phone, hands shaking uncontrollably as you dialled Laswell’s number. The line rang and rang, but there was no answer. Your heart sank, panic rising again. You tried over and over, but no response came.

The door shuddered as he reached it, his nails scratching and clawing at the wood, a relentless assault that made your heart pound painfully in your chest. You clutched Sybil tightly in your arms, her body trembling against yours. She was hurt, but alive. You pressed your face into her fur, tears streaming down your cheeks as the scratching continued, a reminder that he wasn’t going to stop. Not until he had you.

The weight of it all—Ghost’s betrayal, the destruction of your shop, Sybil—threatened to suffocate you.

All you could do was wait. Wait for the sun to rise, for the light to finally push back the nightmare.

But deep down, you feared that by then, it might be too late.

banner credit

[strawberrystepmom]

i'd crawl home to her

pairing: hades!geto suguru x persephone f!reader

word count: 10.8k

about: the god of the underworld brings his most valued prize home at the risk of tearing the realm itself apart.

contents: cw dark content - kidnapping, possessive leaning on yandere behavior, stockholm syndrome to a degree, lore accordant misogyny (ugh i know). this is a retelling of the hades and persephone myth, it is not exact to the prior iterations - creative liberties, etc. reader is quite naive but has her own personality and genuinely cares for suguru. piv sex, reader is referred to with feminine pet names, virginity loss. zeus gojo, hecate shoko. weird happy ending bc ofc this is something EYE wrote.

notes: i was personally asked to repost this and figured finishing the story and posting it full length would be the best way. this is the full and final version of what was formerly known as crawling. thank you for reading and i hope you enjoy it.

floral divider is thanks to @/saradika

Earth’s sun rises with you, Suguru concludes on his fourteenth morning outside his bleak domicile.

Perched high above the meadow you tend every morning, the sun rising higher in the sky with every step you take across soft green grass, he watches. The backlight drenches you until you’re a mere silhouette, hard even for his superhuman vision to make out. 

He doesn’t need the sunlight to do anything but glow across every curve and dip of you - his mind can easily paint the rest of the picture.

You live behind his eyes every time he closes them.

He luxuriates in the feeling of shutting them to imagine you while he’s in this form, something inhuman that may belong among your trees and your blossoms. Something unlike who he really is. 

Opening his eyes as he hears branches creak beneath where he rests, he readies himself to swoop into the landing you are approaching. 

Sighing with each step, the gentle sweep of the hem of your dress across your feet tethers you back to your reality. The grass tickles the bottoms of your bare feet and you squint as you peer into the distance ahead, unable to make out more than vague shapes of flora. 

A golden cage with crawling vines along the bars is still a cage, one to which your mother holds the only key. You are reminded of this impenetrable truth with every muffled step that grows quicker as you notice something in your clearing. 

A bird, larger than any you’ve ever seen, rests atop the grass with its wing twisted at an unnatural angle. The sight makes you gasp and you begin to sprint, filled with concern. The dryads haven’t yet arrived to tend the meadow with you - you’re alone. 

You’re unprotected. 

You’re his.

A pathetic caw leaves the large bird’s beak as you approach. The sound is strangled and makes your heart squeeze, mind immediately reeling imagining the suffering this animal must be going through. 

Despite being kept under lock and key, this meadow is your domain and nothing will hurt as long as you are here. You vowed long ago to make this so. 

You sink to your knees beside the bird. Suguru sees the tips of your fingers before he sees anything else, the beady eyes of the body he’s inhabiting keeping him from taking in too much of you at once. 

“You poor thing,” you speak without a trace of irony or false sympathy. Your voice is more beautiful than any melody he has overheard the dryads cast into the sky and relief washes over him as the sound. “What’s happened to you?”

He caws again, the sound stronger this time and you smile. Perhaps he’s feeling better, you ponder as his shift away from you and shut. His soul shutters with anticipation as you lean over him. 

This bird is unlike any wildlife you’ve ever tended to in your lands, large and inky in color. You are more accustomed to robins or the occasional duck, things as gentle as the life you lead. Ducks don’t even have claws, Suguru thinks as you stroke a pattern across his beak with your index finger, suddenly too aware of his own talons in this form. 

Those same talons twitch and you frown, moving from his beak to gently petting his head. 

“Are you in any pain?”

The concern you hold for Suguru makes him feel a bit hazy, your mind too precious and concerned with helping him to notice the rapidly browning grass surrounding the two of you. 

He eventually kills everything he touches, smothering the light out of every last brightened corner in his life. It makes him feel guilty knowing you’ll just be one more light to extinguish but he can’t allow this to continue.

This want he has for you - the need growing into a pit as endless as the one he alone casts souls into. 

You are his. 

A soft gasp leaves you as the once injured wing of the bird you sit next to appears to be healed untouched. No longer bent and dangling, the strength returning as the bird lifts his head. Fear paralyzes you when you recognize something distinctly human in the darkened eyes that glance up in your direction. 

This is no bird of your lands.

Adrenaline rushes but you stay, watching the bird twitch as he begins to transform into something inexplicable before your eyes. Feathers give way to hair, a beak to a face. You draw your fingers back as wings become hands but they’re captured quickly between cool fingers much larger than yours. 

Fear blankets your mind and you gape at Suguru as he transforms into a man - nude, bare to the sunlight. You can make out every defined plane muscle and scar, the sight as terrifying as it is alluring. You know all too well who has trapped you between his talons. 

“Why are you here?”

Despite the terror in your widened eyes, desire flickers within them. Suguru notices you do not flinch or stray as he reaches out and caresses your jaw with his fingertips in the same pattern you were gently etching across his beak. 

“For you.”

Almost as if you are no longer in control of your own body, you melt into his touch and your eyes grow heavy. His large palm cups your cheek and he gently pinches the soft round between his index finger and thumb.

He wishes you’d come willingly but he can’t be certain and will not leave room for error. 

Your eyes flutter shut gently, your body slackening as the magic he used to coerce you to sleep takes hold. Bundling you against his bare chest, a victorious smile crosses his handsome features.

You are his, wrapped in his embrace, and he holds you as delicately as a fragile newborn as the ground shakes beneath the two of you.

“Let’s return home,” he mutters down at you knowing there will be no response. Your breathing is steady, little puffs of air leaving your barely open lips. He presses his palm against your cheek, your throat, your chest. 

He resists the urge to map you out knowing he’ll have plenty of time to do so as soon as the two of you have settled in the underworld. 

The God above answered when your mother cried out to the heavens and Earth herself the first evening you did not return to your mother. 

Your routine has been the same for many of your living years - trudging back to your family estate with muddy feet and eyes you have to force open to stay awake through the evening meal you used to share with her. Days spent beneath the sun turning to evenings withering beneath another light altogether.

Satoru set his cerulean gaze on the lands below, the verdant rolling hills of Demeter's domain, and he knew without a second thought the encroacher who had been there. Brown grass in the shape of footprints led straight to your clearing - where he knew Suguru trapped you.

His need had become insatiable, a fear they’d all kept to themselves for far too long.

Lounging across an ornate chaise in the social room of Demeter’s estate, Satoru eyes her home carefully. Everything here is so polished, so prim. It’s a wonder she has ever let you get your hands dirty at all, her little blossom ripe to be plucked straight from her stem. 

“Go to him,” Demeter begs the god with teary eyes, his snowy hair framing his unnervingly handsome face. “Please make him return her to me.”

Satoru chuckles and lifts a chalice to his lips, the two legged land nymphs and servants that also serve the woman across from him tittering anxiously. They’re lucky to be witnessing the handsome god in front of them, they’ve all remarked several times over. He sips and lets the taste of the richest wine this world has to offer drench his taste buds before smacking his lips appreciatively. 

A lazy grin crosses his features which infuriates your mother. 

“You know I can’t do that, Demeter,” he holds the chalice out to the waiting hands of a servant who graciously accepts with a measured smile. “I’m as unwelcome in his domain as he is in mine.”

Suguru simultaneously watches the conversation through a looking glass hanging on the wall of his quarters and you as you sleep, an enchanted rest he created with a spell he has not yet decided when to break. 

This transition will be easier for you if you rest, he decided when he concocted the plan to bring you here in the first place. He rips his gaze away from the glass before him and wistfully gazes at your little form. Your soft breaths, your little hums and yawns. The way you shift against him when he joins you at your side, looking for warmth he cannot give.

He balls his fists and returns to his watching.

“He kidnapped my daughter!” Your mother shouts, back of her hand pressed to her forehead as an unimpressed Satoru raises his brow unenthusiastically. “Do you have proof?”

Suguru can’t help but smirk, shaking his head at his old friend. He wishes things could’ve been different between them but Satoru belonged amongst the clouds, a god and friend to all. He finds himself exactly where he belongs - in the darkness below, the unknown depths at which mortal life ends and everything else begins.

His attention shifts as you do in his bed, little mutters spilling from your lips in a rapid enough pace he grows concerned and stands over the edge. His hair is so long it nearly graces the edge of the bundled blankets below him and he listens to your soft voice intently, as if nothing else matters. As if he weren’t just eavesdropping a mother’s desperate plea for the safe return of her child.

“Where am I?”

Suguru believes he can make out the words spilling from your lips and your eyes flutter open. He sinks to his knees beside you, a large hand cupping your cheek. He cannot tell if you are unafraid or just too unaware to shrink at his touch. I’ll take my chances, he thinks as he grabs your other hand with his free one.

“You’re home and safe, my treasure.”

Looking around the dimly lit room, your brow furrows and he softens at the sight. You delight him, in your soft and beautiful glory, and he wants you so badly it’s going to consume him. It already has.

Nodding at his words, your eyes begin to focus and you feel hands upon you. You aren’t sure how long you’ve been sleeping, it could be hours or months, but you feel rested and whole. Your fingers do not hurt nor are they blistered, your feet are warm and dry.

“Are you…him?” 

You ask and Suguru leans further onto the bed until his chest is pressed against the blankets, his face resting against the bundle of them directly over your stomach and chest. He shakes his head gently, still cupping your face. He uses his hold to point your chin downward so that your eyes meet his. 

“Who?”

A gentle sigh escapes you and you lean into his touch, head heavy with fatigue. You are still not completely aware of your surroundings but you can think back to the times as a child your mother warned you of a man who offered nothing but darkness.

“You are the light of this world, my child.” She would warn you as you sat upon her lap and let her brush and manipulate her hair into the style she liked best. “Don’t ever let darkness consume you. Do not let him reach you.”

You giggle softly and your sleepy gaze dances over the handsome face of the man next to you. Angular and sharp, yet something distinctly and indescribably boyish lives inside of his eyes. Perhaps it's an internal softness, a fondness for you, turning outward.

“The God of the Underworld,” you whisper and he feels your palm pressed against his where he holds your other hand. “You’re Suguru, aren’t you?”

For a moment, he wonders how far a lie could take him. He could keep you here in his quarters forever, never revealing himself as anything more than a concerned traveler that found you passed out in the meadow. He could lie. He could transform himself again just to eliminate all risk of you leaving.

He could chain you to the bed. He could keep you here, never to let the sun’s rays grace your skin again. He could pluck those beautiful butterfly wings straight from your soul and cage you.

Instead he shakes his head and offers a small smile.

“You’re right, it’s me.”

You laugh again, still groggy and he wonders silently what you find so funny until he hears the raised voice of your mother from the screen behind him once more.

“How could you even insinuate my daughter would leave with a beast like that?” She shouts, snotty sniffles punctuating her words. “A man so vile you cast him out yourself, Satoru, and yet you allow the most delicate thing on this planet to be sullied by his hand.”

Suguru shakes his head and turns his attention back to you, watching as you glance across the room to make sense of your surroundings. How are you so trusting?

“It’s a little dark here.”

He nods, eyeing the sconces on the walls for a moment before saying a name you can’t quite make out in your state. A servant enters the room and he asks that they turn a small knob on each of the fixtures and they do so with a nod, exiting as quickly as they entered the room. The light is still far dimmer than the sunlight you are used to but it helps you further examine the features of the man next to you.

“Thank you,” you whisper as your eyes flutter shut again, the magic taking its hold over you as Suguru grasps your hand tightly between his. He needs to break the spell completely but he will let you rest, he reasons as you gently fall back into a deep sleep. It pains him to break contact with you, letting go of your hand but keeping your cheek cupped in his palm until he feels satisfied. 

Your mother continues to shout behind him. His interest is only piqued when Satoru speaks, turning his head to glance over his shoulder.

“I will see if I can speak with him, Demeter. You rest until then. Looks like you need it.”

Suguru freezes in place, wondering exactly what his old friend has planned. Perhaps it’s a deterrent from further outbursts from the goddess screeching at him. Reluctantly, he lets you go and rises to his feet and rushes toward the door where one of his most trusted servants is posted outside.

Pulling the door open, he peaks around the corner and the woman in waiting gazes at him expectantly. 

“Yes, my lord?”

Suguru offers a measured glance, dark hair falling over his shoulder as he leans. 

“Please prepare a raven, I have a letter to send.”

Things have been tense since your arrival and Demeter's angry cry to the other gods for your return. Even the lowest of his servants feels strange seeing a sunbeam trailing through the corridors, each of them surprised at how easily you seem to have taken to the human embodiment of darkness itself, although they’d never speak the thought aloud. It’s as if you’re hiding your fear of him, no alarm despite the fact he eyes you hungrily every time your back is turned. 

“My lord?”

The unlucky servant currently standing in his proximity knew the look as soon as he saw it, glancing at the back of your head as if he could look directly through your skull and into your thoughts. The only wish of the God of the Underworld would be to find himself in your thoughts as you are in his.

Despite how easily he loses himself in observing you, Suguru’s brows raise as he shifts his attention from where you gather your skirt in your hands, carefully appraising his estate to the servant approaching him gingerly. Their posture is slumped with anxiety, shoulders rounded forward.  

“You have a visitor.”

Raised brows furrow, the skin between pinching. Folding his arms over his chest, the god lets a sigh he’s unable to stifle escape and turns his back to you reluctantly. It’s not that he doesn’t trust you, it’s just that he would rather not leave any of this up to chance. He risked so much bringing you here - why would he leave anything up to chance when fate has deemed it so that you are to be together?

Glancing over his shoulder to where you stand, still curiously staring at the vines that crawl along the columns that make up the structure of the property. The sidelong glance shows him that you are still within an arm's reach and he turns his attention toward the servant. 

“Who is it?”

The servant shakes their head and the pinched skin between his eyebrows further puckers as a frown crawls across his features. The words don’t have his usual bite, despite the frustration on his face, and the servant feels as though they can speak until they see you turn toward Geto’s back from over his shoulder. 

“Excuse me, Lord Geto?” 

Suguru’s attention is pulled away immediately when he hears your voice from a few feet away, your hands grazing the petals of flowers growing despite this unnatural habitat. The ground is dark and cold, no light to warm the soil, yet yellow daffodils spring through the near black dirt. 

“What is it, my treasure?”

In an instant he is by your side, gazing down at the yellow petals that dot the otherwise dark ground. The servants hadn’t mentioned to him that flowers were beginning to bloom again, instead he noticed it now, watching you bend at the waist to grasp delicate yellow petals between your thumb and index finger. 

“Have these always grown here?” Nodding his head at your question, his long hair fans against his chest and you gaze up at him through your lashes curiously. “Yes but it has been a long time since they’ve bloomed.”

Despite knowing he took you against your will, it’s difficult for you to find contempt for the man given how kindly he has treated you. He has given you a space to call your own and expects only your companionship in return. No tilling fields, no guarding the dryads, simply being allowed to exist for the first time in your life without paying a toll to do so.

This is a stark contrast to the life you were plucked from - working sunrise to sunset to appease your unappeasable mother. 

If you miss your home, you haven’t told him so yet. The thought has crossed his mind that you are only playing to his sensibilities, trying to outsmart an old god with your clever youthful ways, but he sees the genuine warmth in your smile when it appears. Aimed at servants, even the damned begging for his forgiveness, your compassionate nature shines through. 

Despite the fact this is not a place meant for one as beautiful as you, he only hopes there will come a time when you his home as a place the two of you are meant to share. The way you eye the daffodils only allows hope to grow inside of him, dark eyes drinking in the sight of you as you pluck the yellow flower from its stem and hold it in his direction with an uncertain smile.

“You won’t be able to keep her here for much longer, Suguru.”

Another voice draws his attention from you and he clenches his jaw, molars grinding together so roughly the joints begin to ache. Shoko, he thinks. Fuck. You stand and gasp, recognizing the woman yourself although you cannot begin to fathom what this visit could mean for you. 

“Good to see you, old friend.” The Goddess of Magic pats his shoulder as she breezes past him to your side, chocolate colored hair parted to expose her face.

You can recall seeing it numerous times throughout your childhood, attending feasts at your mothers’ home on more than one occasion. She’s as beautiful as she is powerful and you can hardly hide your confusion wondering why she would be here, extending a hand in your direction. 

Suguru looms from over your other shoulder, eyes practically blazing as he looks toward the scene unfolding in front of him. She’d come to take you and he simply would not allow it, stepping closer until he stands directly behind you and braces a hand on your shoulder. 

“What business do you have here, Shoko?”

She laughs at his informality and shakes her head, grasping your hand for a moment before dropping it. Looking between them, you swallow thickly and she sighs watching your eyes immediately look upward at Suguru, looking for answers. 

He looks back down at you in the way one may view a treasured pet. She realizes in that moment, as Satoru had warned her, his obsession had won and disrupted the careful balance of the heavens.

“My business is currently gazing up at you as if she’s afraid to look away, my lord.” 

The words strike you between the ribs and you quickly avert your gaze, fixing it on the single flower in your hand. Anger practically pours off of Suguru as he looks over his shoulder at the servant still waiting and nods them over to where the three of you stand. 

“Please return her to her quarters,” he commands and you scoff in protest. Eyes wide, you feel him gently push you in the direction of the servant. Without thinking, you press your heels into the ground you stand on and turn to face him.

“I believe I should be present to find out my own fate.”

The servant gasps bearing witness to your first act of defiance since your arrival. You wait for a flash of anger to cross the Lord of the Underworld’s face but it never comes, a fond smile the sight you see instead. 

“Your fate has already been decided.” The finality in his tone makes you feel captured, mirroring the emotions that swirled through your mind on the day he took you. “You needn’t worry about all of this.”

Lifting his hand from your shoulder, he pets your hair gently before giving you another gentle push in the direction of the waiting servant. This time, you are too stunned to argue and you’re whisked away in an instant. Left only to glance over your shoulder at him, you feel hot tears spill out of the corners of your eyes but you find it difficult to explain why.

Geto’s gaze follows you until you are back inside of the estate and out of his view completely, the goddess staring at him expectantly in a means to end his lovesick antics. It’s beneath him to act like this, as if he’s a parched man and you are a cool stream. 

“Are you aware that her mother is prepared to tip the realms upside down if it means she’ll be returned?”

Shoko doesn’t bother to hide the judgment dripping from every word and he rolls his eyes in response, arms folded over his chest. It’s always a treat to see her longtime friend act as if he were young again, petulantly sulking because his favorite toy needs to be put back in her box. 

“Let her return, Suguru.”

He says nothing, his friend turning to him with an unimpressed glance.

“No young goddess is worth war. I assumed you would’ve figured that out by now.”

He decided long ago that you are worth ripping this realm apart for.

Weeks have passed since the last time you graced Suguru with your presence.

Shoko's visit created unexpected tension between the two of you and he wonders what he could have done to upset you enough that you have completely frozen him out while he takes long strides through the courtyard, eyes falling to the ground below him to see once blooming yellow flowers droop sadly.

They need you just as badly as he does.

"Please call for her again," he mutters to the servant that walks with their head pointed downward to his left. "Explain that is an order and no longer an invitation."

Suguru's discerning gaze doesn't leave the ground but he hears the footfalls that tell him his orders will be fulfilled without question, as expected.

Upon bringing you here, he decided he'd use the gentle approach with you. No reprimand, no demands, just gentle redirection and letting you come out of your shell at your own pace. Those first few weeks were blissful, you'd wait outside his chamber door until he arose to walk along the grounds with you. You refused to touch him, uncertain of where boundaries lie, but you remained curious enough that occasionally your arm would brush against his.

He'd have to claim other duties needed attending to get away from the near suffocating rush of blood from his head to his cock, length stiff and uncomfortable beneath his robes.

Part of him misses that feeling, the rush and flutter of what he has justified in his own mind as love. It certainly must be, he reasons, given the way he has miserably through his own kingdom for weeks while you've refused meals and visitors. Even damning has become uninteresting without the promise of the sun's radiant light across his face once the dirty work is done. You are his sun, his world, his everything.

Why don't you feel the same about him?

A sickening feeling settles in his gut as he wonders if you are communicating with your mother behind his back. Perhaps Shoko's visit brought you the means to do so, a plan to run and hide and stay away. His fist clenches at the thought and he clears his throat, an uncomfortable thickness coating his tongue. That is a possibility he will not, cannot, allow.

Footfalls draw his attention upward and he notices you walking alongside the servant he sent to fetch you. The look on your face is unreadable, you think, but he plucks you out like a ripe little pomegranate with little effort.

You're throwing a fit as a young goddess does. You're old enough to know better, an adult, but young enough not to care and looking the Lord of the Underworld in his face with a pout makes a feline smile spread across his face.

He's so handsome you almost stop in your tracks but you choose to avert your gaze instead, pretending dying vegetation has captured your attention for the first time in days. Suguru chuckles at your insolence, the dangerous man as unintimidated as one can be.

"She rises," he says flatly and he can almost see your shoulders deflate as you continue to refuse to meet his eyes. "Come, come. Let's discuss what's bothering you."

The servant leads you to his side before being dismissed with a wag of his head and you glance at him out of the corner of your eye.

He's everything you remembered seeing a few weeks ago but you cannot shake the way that his dismissal on the day of your goddess visitor upset you. You believed he saw you as more than a pawn, a person rather than a vague outline for his own desires, but you began to question his intentions that day and have ever since.

"Are you happy here?"

The question makes you turn your face toward him, pout falling. Never in your life have you been asked to consider your own happiness.

In your realm, your happiness is directly tied to how happy you make your mother. How hard you work, how harmonious your meadows are, how productive you can be. You struggle to recall the last time anyone besides the dryad, who you technically had and have dominion over, bothered to ask you about yourself.

The act leaves you speechless, his face pointed downward in your direction. You dare to glance up at him and the elegant slope of his nose, his dark eyes narrowed but radiating a warmth you never imagined a man enshrouded in such darkness down to the cape of hair caressing his shoulders would be capable of.

Moving closer to him, you let your arm brush against the sleeve of his robe and he attempts to keep his face stoic despite the sheer gift of your touch. He must keep his cards close to his chest in case you've found a way out - he cannot afford to spare any vulnerability.

"I think that I could be, my lord."

You're choosing your words carefully and he knows it. He watches as you swallow and your face twists, bottom lip quivering. Despite his better judgement he reaches out for you, cupping your soft cheeks between his cool hands. You don't attempt to dodge him or stray, meeting his eyes.

"If I wanted to be forced to meet demands, though, I would have already returned home."

He knows all too well the demands of which you speak, his years spent watching you from below giving him knowledge of the fact you've never been happy locked away while your mother holds the key to your freedom.

"I understand," he starts, dropping his grip on your face and bringing his hands to his sides. It's not that he does not wish to give you the freedom you desire, it's that he cannot do so and please his own desires as well. "Do you wish to return home?"

He asks and you shake your head quickly, firm in your decision to remain here despite things feeling uneasy with Suguru. Locking yourself in your room and spending all of your time alone is better than what awaits you above, the wrath of your mother promising you'll be working in the fields for the rest of your life.

"Lady Shoko promised me safe passage if I wanted to return but I would prefer to stay here if you will allow it."

That smile crosses his face once again and you can't help but mirror it, cheeks heating knowing it's meant for you. In the time the two of you have spent together you can't seem to recall a single time you've seen him smile, much less like that, at anyone else and it sends a swarm of butterflies drifting through your stomach and chest.

"Of course, my treasure," he reaches up to cup your face once again and you gingerly lean into the kind touch, cheek rubbing against the heel of his palm. "As I've told you, this is your home."

Your home. Not his domain, not a place he's graciously allowing you to take residence until he decides his plans for you.

Nodding between his hands, you offer a smile of your own that fades as his face suddenly turns serious.

"This is your home but all homes have rules," he reminds and you nod, eyes wide. His rules cannot be any more confining than the ones you previously dwelled under.

"You are not to contact Lady Shoko without informing me first, understood?"

Uncertainty dances across your face and he tightens his grip on your cheeks for a moment, dipping his head so that your noses nearly touch.

"It's for your safety only," he comforts, spurred on by the way your posture has tensed as you consider what he's saying. "We cannot trust she won't inform your mother and she won't drag you back with her by your hair."

Doubt falls away from your face at mention of your mother and it takes all of his willpower to keep himself from smirking at how quickly you give in at the mere mention of what you left in the first place. Nodding, you accept his words without question and he's reminded of why he's so terribly fond of you in the first place.

"I understand," you mutter, mirroring his previous words to you and the corner of his mouth lifts in a smirk as he dips his head low enough that your noses do touch this time, the tip of his brushing gently against yours.

"I'll pay any cost to keep you safe and that's why I had you sent away during my conversation with Lady Shoko," he apologizes and you believe he's earnest given the way he looks down through heavily lidded and lashed eyes. "I won't make that mistake again. You do deserve to decide your own fate."

He keeps the fact your fate has long been decided to himself, the illusion of choice more important than actually having choice itself. You smile sweetly, nodding between his palms, making your noses brush once again.

"Thank you, Lord Geto."

He shakes his head, backing away from you. The smile on your face dims with the loss of him so close and you send a message to your fingertips to stay at your side - you haven't been given permission to touch him as badly as you want to.

It's isn't the first time you've considered how he'd feel between your palms. Would he be cool to the touch, as his own hands are? Would he let you explore each divot and crease of his body, your eyes roving and your imagination doing the same? Would he allow you to kiss him, lips brushing against lips, noses brushing once again?

Heat you feel fearful of blooms in your gut and you look away, cheeks warm. You hope he can't tell what you're thinking as you wait for him to respond.

"Suguru," he corrects. "I'm always Suguru to you."

He swears he sees the yellow daffodils at his feet spring to life with the warmth of your gaze when you avert your eyes from him to the ground, girlish embarrassment keeping you from looking a god in the eye. Chuckling, he reaches for you again and pulls your face toward him, pressing his cool lips against your forehead.

You gasp and he drops his hand, squeezing yours that lies at your side before turning to leave but not before tossing another glance in your direction over his shoulder.

"Let's do this again soon. I've missed it terribly."

You nod a response, too shaken to speak.

"What do you bring before me?"

Suguru never looks more grand than when he sits on this throne of bone, the picture of repose with his legs spread wide enough that his robes fall between them. His arms rest on either side of the chair, generally, but right now he rests his chin between the thumb and finger of one hand watching while his servants bring forth another soul for his judgement.

You watch from your own spot in the crowd, flanked by guards, simultaneously curious and horrified at how easy this is for him. He is judgement and you simply get to witness the process of life created above being squandered down below due to its own misdeeds.

He has been doing it for a long, long time, you remind yourself if only to quell the way your stomach turns as he denies another lost soul passage.

The job he's performing isn't entirely unlike yours - the ability to bring forth life, even if it is just simple vegetation and flora, a gift you were born with. Flowers bloom where you walk, trees grow leaves to shield you from the sun. You're the sole reason little yellow daffodils have once again sprung up across the grounds, the servants marveling at life dwelling the halls of the otherwise dismal realm.

"My lady?"

Your eyes flit from where the man you are so enraptured by sits to your left, one of his servants kneeling at your side. You greet them with a smile and they shrink slightly, uncertain of how to react to the unweighted offering. A smile means something down here and usually it isn't anything good, a lesson you haven't yet had to learn given the way the Lord of the Underworld reciprocates the sunny glances you give him.

"Lord Geto has asked that you join him in his chambers momentarily."

That isn't what you were expecting to be told and it must show on your face, smile falling into a small "o" shape as you look down at your unimpressive robes. You took care to look nice today, of course, but you don't feel as though you should appear before him looking like this.

"I'll escort you," the servant offers and you nod, still uncertain of what will be happening behind the heavy, closed doors when he has you alone.

The two of you haven't truly been alone until this point. There's always a servant, a courier, a guest. You aren't sure one can ever be truly alone in a place like this that dwells with the damned but you rise to your feet anyway, bowing your head as you walk through the crowd and toward the corridor that leads to your destination.

His chambers are empty when you arrive but you are ushered through the doors anyway, jumping as they shut with a heavy slam behind you.

Just like that, you are left to your own devices.

The already cavernous space seems even larger when you're standing in it, eyes darting from the walls to the ceiling to the bed itself. You remember, vaguely, spending time there. You can almost recall the way the linens felt against your skin, cool and comforting. You know he touched you then, held your hands and your whimpering form if you'd wake up in the night disoriented and fearful.

It couldn't have been more than months ago but it feels like a lifetime, you're a different woman than you were the first time you rested beneath those sheets but you will always remember his kindness.

Gingerly, you step out of your spot and begin to pace around the room with your hands clasped behind your back. Your footsteps fade into background noise as you look around and wonder when he will join you, still feeling anxious about why he called you there in the first place.

Part of you hopes he will finally kiss you in the privacy of his chambers. That he'll finally do what you've felt he's on the precipice of doing for weeks, gentle brushes of your hand and his body against yours sending you reeling and running back to your own quarters to catch your breath.

Without noticing, your fingers flit to your lower lip and you rub it gently, imagining what it would be like to be kissed by a man for the first time. This is no mere man, though, this is a god.

You want to be kissed by a god.

Giddiness makes you giggle to yourself, your fingertips still rubbing an idle pattern across your lower lip as the door opens behind you. Dropping your hands to your sides, you turn toward the open doors with a smile as Suguru steps into the room.

He smiles at the sight of you too and your palms bead with sweat as he approaches you, towering a head above your own and tilts his head to the side.

"Do you remember the last time you were in here?"

Despite recalling the fuzzy outlines of what occurred during the weeks you were too tired to move just moments ago, you shake your head. You'd like to hear own retelling of the events if he'd be generous enough give it to you. He chuckles and brings his hands to your biceps, holding them gently.

"You slept for weeks," he reminds, smile still spread across his features. You don't have to know his own magic is the reason that you slept and he has no intention of informing you of such. "I sat by the bed and kept watch, I wanted to make sure personally no harm would come to you."

It's romantic, you think, the way that he cares for me.

It can't simply be the thrill of being away from home any longer that makes your stomach flutter in his presence. It isn't the forbidden fun of doing something you know your mother would hate, frolicking in a realm that doesn't belong to her at the side of a man with more power than you can imagine.

You are feeling something dangerously real and it emboldens you to bend your arms upward and grasp his wrists in your palms. His smile dims into a sultry smirk and you return it with a moon-eyed look of your own.

"I wish I remembered more about it," you mumble. His hands slide from your arms toward your face and he gently rests them on either side of your neck, thumbs resting on the delicate column of your throat.

"We have plenty of time to make memories you do remember in here," he offers and you giggle nervously. "That's not why I asked you here, though."

Your smile dims as you look at him curiously, hands still wrapped around his wrists. His smirk falls and his face becomes unreadable, eyes darkening.

"Do you believe me a monster after witnessing my work?"

Those words aren't what you were expecting to hear following his prior ones but you shake your head with urgency, tightening your hold on his wrists.

"Of course not, Suguru," you let his name slip past your lips and he squeezes the sides of your neck in response. Your eyes flutter and you stutter. "W-we all have jobs we must do even if they're ugly."

He nods once.

"I knew you'd understand."

Nothing further is elaborated but you don't mind, basking in his praise of you while watching him carefully. You look over his lips, his cheekbones, his dark eyebrows that seem knit together in concern.

"Is something the matter?"

Your voice is delicate when you ask, sweet a spring breeze it has been far too long he's felt caress his skin, and he chuckles darkly.

"I've been called away to meet with your mother and Lord Gojo."

Frozen, your eyes widen and he moves to soothe you, pulling you into his chest and pressing your cheek against his robes. Your arms fall to your sides but you move to wrap them around his waist instead, burying your face and inhaling the sharp, clean scent of him.

He smells nothing like the death you've experienced in the meadows, a bird or a faun, at times an unfortunate wanderer. He carries none of the smell of decay or ruin. Not of the rot of dead flowers, earthy and pungent enough you have to turn your head away to clear your nostrils.

Just clean, simple, pure. You inhale and savor.

"They haven't asked that you accompany me and I am making no plans to bring you."

This should concern her, he thinks. Your fate is once again being decided without your presence but you don't seem nearly as offended this time as you were the last.

"I'd rather stay here, if that's alright," you mumble against his chest and he squeezes you. This is the answer he desired, perhaps even expected, but it delights him. You made it there on your own without any gentle direction.

"Of course it is," his big hands rub your back as he soothes you. "I'll ensure you're taken care of while I'm away. You will want for nothing, I promise."

His assurances settle in your chest warmly and you unbury your face from his robes, looking up. Without thinking, you crane your neck as long as it will stretch and stand on your tip toes, pressing your lips against his chastely.

The last thing he expected was for you to be this bold but he presses his lips against yours in return nevertheless. The kiss is merely a peck, a rubbing of skin on skin instead of the tongue and teeth and saliva he'd love to share with you, but it's a message. Return home safe dances across his lips sure as your soft skin grazes them and he misses the feeling as soon as you step down, feet flat on the ground below.

Smiling down at you, he presses his lips against your forehead the same way he always does when he's about to take his leave and you deflate almost visibly knowing this means the two of you will be separated for an unknown amount of time.

"No harm will come to you nor will any decision be made without you present, understand?"

He's making a promise he can't keep yet you nod, eyes searching his face for any inkling of what could be coming.

"I must go immediately but I will return to you as soon as I'm able."

You sigh, the sound light as air, and he chuckles despite himself. Holding you for a moment longer, he kisses your forehead one final time before creating space between the two of you. You watch him head toward the door with a frown, lips still tingling with the touch of a god.

"You can stay here until I return," he mentions breezily as if the two of you are discussing meal plans and not the potential of violence that awaits him in the earthen realm. "These quarters are your own now."

You nod, looking around.

"I'll see you soon."

He exits the doors in a rush, muttering under his breath while shutting them tightly behind him. The small army he has requested to flank the doors while he's gone approaches him, standing at rest while they await their orders.

"She is not to leave this room except to take meals or explore the grounds. At least four of you must remain with her at all times."

The guards nod in unison at his orders knowing their options are obey or die and you stand blissfully unaware on the other side of the door of the fact you've just been locked into a cell until he can figure out how to keep you here permanently.

"We can't keep going this long between seeing one another, Suguru."

Geto hums unenthusiastically, stomping through the entry of your mother's sprawling estate while Lord Gojo joins him at his side, jovially sipping from the same chalice that has remained full for his entire stay on the grounds. He's certain the nymphs utterly dote on his old friend, tittering over his pretty eyes and hair, the same way everyone does.

"If it were up to me we would not meet at all, Satoru, but I appreciate your warm welcome."

Gojo clutches his chest with his free hand and cackles, tipping his head back as he matches Geto's pace with ease. The sunlight that pours into the open marble halls burns the darkened eyes of the man who was summoned here for no reason other than to be threatened and he finds his patience thinning with every word he is being forced to listen to.

"You wound me, old friend. Have you forgotten how much fun we used to have?"

Suguru snorts.

"Unfortunately, no."

They did have fun at one point in time before a war and their responsibilities turned a friendship into something uneasy - a constant power play between the man gifted with the divine dominion over everyone and everything and the man doomed to herd them after they've done their earthly wrongs. It hardly seemed fair but as you said, sometimes jobs must be done no matter how ugly they are.

"Well, if it's any consolation, I do not blame you for your misdeeds in regards to the young goddess. She is very pretty."

The mention of you makes Suguru bristle and the other god just shrugs, chuckling as he sips more wine and the two of them finally approach where your mother rests among her nymphs with her arms folded over her chest. If looks could kill, the Lord of the Underworld would surely find himself one of the damned.

"Nice of you to join us, Lord Geto. Finally able to carve enough time out of your schedule of torturing my daughter to show up?"

He offers a polite bow of his head, refusing to speak any further. A servant offers him wine and he refuses, raising a palm.

"So now you refuse an offering of wine? You truly have no sense, that's one thing about you that is perpetually true."

Satoru chuckles at his side, amused by your mother's undressing of the fellow god before her, and he recalls just how long all of you have known each other. Since you were young gods and goddesses, much like you who hasn't seemed to realize you are his captive and not his prize as he keeps insinuating.

"My demands are simple so I will not keep you for any longer than I must," your mother starts and Suguru's eyes flick upward to examine her. The two of you resemble each other enough that it's striking but you lack her venom, something he's grateful for having been bit by the snake more than once so to speak. "My daughter will be returned to me by next sunset and there will be no harm to you or your realm."

Finally, the man breaks his silence and he shakes his head with a chuckle, raven colored mane fanning around him with each movement.

"And if I refuse?"

Your mother chuckles in like, leaning forward in her sitting position. A man is smart enoguh to know when he's about to be bitten again so he takes a few steps backward.

For being a gentle Goddess of the Harvest, she sure is rotten.

"Then there will be repercussions."

He nods.

"She's happy where she's at. Come take her if you'd like to try."

Moving to turn on his heel and exit, he's stopped by a hand on his shoulder. He knows it belongs to Satoru and he sighs, tensing his shoulders to shrug him off to no avail.

"Now don't be hasty, Suguru. There is a lot at stake here."

The only thing he can think of is what's at stake being you. He could agree, send you back to this realm to pick and grow and dig until your fingers bleed. He could watch you as he has for all these years, cold and alone wondering when he'd have the opportunity to make you his own.

"If there's so much at stake, come claim what you desire so badly."

Satoru drops his hand and turns his head to look at Demeter, shrugging. His friend takes his leave, exiting through the corridor he just entered through

"There's your answer," he sniffs. "I did all I could."

If death himself is willing to die for you, there isn't much more than Satoru can do besides sit back and wonder what about you has become so enchanting to the man he'd risk it all for another taste of his little prisoner.

It has only been days since the last time you saw Suguru but you grow restless within his chambers despite the comfort they bring you.

You snuggle into his bedding, the familiar scent of him bringing only temporary ease to the pain in your heart his departure has brought, and wonder how his meeting is going but your mind drifts to things far less worrisome than if you'll be forced to return home or not.

Oddly enough, your mind settles on thinking about the man that Geto mentioned before his departure.

Lord Gojo is someone you've met a few times and you've always found him to be jovial if not a bit grating at times, flirting with the nymphs and servants without a care in the world despite his massive power. You take a moment to consider the differences between the two men, one wearing his power like a halo and the other like a noose.

You can't help but wonder if it's a difference in who they are in their hearts that led them to such opposing views of their power, perhaps even the world at large. You make a note to ask Suguru more when he returns, stretching your legs beneath the blankets over them with a frown.

The chamber doors open and you sit up, smiling as Suguru enters but your face falls noticing the droll look across his. You don't move to further cover yourself, allowing him see your bare flesh in person for the first time but the view doesn't spur the look off of his face.

"My treasure," he starts before sinking to his knees at the side of the bed. "You need to listen to everything I'm saying, okay?"

You remember this sight all too well, big hands capturing one of your own but you're grateful to be cognizant this time. He allows himself the luxury of one moment to look over you - your soft skin, your pebbled nipples topping perfect breasts, the delicate divot of your bellybutton - but the moment is fleeting as he meets your eyes and you understand the situation must be serious.

"I am willing to send the realm into disarray to keep you but I have to know that you want to be here with me and nowhere else."

Granting you a moment to think, he watches your face carefully for any sign of uncertainty. The faintest trace will mean that he failed, all of this was for nothing, but it hasn't appeared yet. You reach for his face, cupping his cheek in your small palm and he exhales, smiling serenely.

"Can you promise me freedom, Suguru?"

Pondering your words, fear seeps into his limbs but he decides to, for once, give you an honest answer. No deception, no hint of trickery despite how easy it would be for him to keep you here as his captive and not his lover. He could lock you away, post all the guards outside your door for all eternity and you'd never leave but he wants you to want him. To need him. To desire him.

"I cannot promise you freedom but I can promise you devotion like you've never experienced."

You nod and lean toward him, lips brushing against his once again. The intent is far less chaste than the first time, the heat you always feel stir inside of you when you look at him for just long enough sending fire through your limbs. Pulling away from his face for a moment, you smile and reach for his shoulders to pull him into the bed with you, to which he obliges. Kneeling above you, he searches your face and you brush his hair off of his face and over his shoulder.

"Then I promise you the same."

The confirmation he needs leaves your lips and he can hold back no longer, hungrily enveloping your lips in a kiss that you eagerly accept. It would take more time than you currently have to consider when you began to fall for this man who plucked you from your home and dropped you into a world not meant for you, so you simply choose to focus on the way his hands feel across your bare flesh.

They're as cold as you expected they'd be but it isn't unwelcome, deft fingers dancing along the underside of your soft breast while he dots your jaw and neck with sensual kisses that make your head feel the same way it does after you've enjoyed dandelion wine with the dryad back home - lighter than air and heavier than lead.

Groaning, he begins to rut his hips gently against your bare mound and you reach for the tie fastening his robes over his waist, fingers moving to untie the knot as quickly as you can. You don't expect to feel him pressed against you so quickly, the searing heat of his heavy cock sliding through your already slippery folds and catching on your sensitive clit in a way that makes you gasp.

"I-I've never done this before," you confess as if it's a sin, your stomach in your throat. He leaves his task of lavishing attention on your neck for a moment to meet your eyes, smiling in a way that makes your thighs clench around his torso.

"I'll take good care of you."

He will and he does, returning to kissing a path down your neck until he reaches your breasts, taking one pert nipple into his mouth with a lewd moan. The sound of him laving his tongue over the sensitive spot makes you arch your back, his cock still rubbing you just short of where you need him most and you whine. He releases your nipple from his mouth, the bud shining with his saliva, and cups your face.

"Patience. I'll make it worth your wait."

Switching to your opposite nipple, your back arches again, forcing more of your breast into his eager mouth. He loves seeing you already on the precipice of coming apart, fortunate to be the first and only man to ever see your lust heavy gaze.

You tear me apart, he thinks as he gazes up at you with your lashes resting against your cheek and your mouth open in a beautiful display just for him. Releasing your nipple, his hands trail down your torso and he moans, aloud, at the feeling of the hair covering your mound beneath his fingers. It's as luxurious as the rest of you and he promises on a day when less is at stake, he'll give you the attention you truly deserve. He'll bury his face in the thatch of hair and even lower, giving your cunt as many kisses as he wishes to give your pretty mouth, but with an uncertain future time is of the essence and he doesn't want to hesitate in claiming you.

Tentatively, he traces his finger along the seam of your pussy and you hiss at the teasing, canting your hips messily into his touch. This is true need, the sum of your want greater than any mishap that your clumsiness could cause, and he smirks against the top of your breast and watches your face contort in pleasure as he spreads your lips with his index finger and thumb of one hand, using his middle finger to rub methodical circles over your clit.

"Is that alright?"

He asks and all you can manage is a nod and a pant, walls flexing with each circle his finger turns over the engorged bud. Your head continues to swim and your eyes shut, your chin tipping toward the ceiling but he cannot allow you not to witness your own undoing. Using his free hand, he cups your chin gently and tips your face back down to give you a full glance at his sticky finger working its way to your entrance.

A squeak leaves you as he gently spreads the wetness seeping out of you from your cunt upward toward your clit, the slick feeling of his just his finger making your eyes roll backward in your head. This is nothing you've ever felt before but it's everything you've imagined, the gentle way he keeps kissing your breast as he finally works one finger into you making you moan. Open mouthed, hot faced, chest heaving - the exact noise he wants to hear you make for all eternity.

"Feels good?" He asks, dark eyes meeting yours as they open while he thumbs at your clit messily. Your walls constrict around his finger and it makes his already painfully swollen cock jump when he imagines how you'll feel wrapped around him like a glove.

Hips moving on their own, you try to match the pace of his finger plunging in and out of you but struggle and he takes control, hand dropping your chin and sliding down your torso to hold your hip. He helps you rock your hips gently, soft mumbles and moans leaving your lips and he knows what's about to happen before you do, cunt locking his finger inside of you.

"Oh Suguru," you pant, gnawing your lower lip and shutting your eyes tightly as you cum so hard your thighs shake with the force. He smiles against your breast and positions himself so that he's on his knees, hand that was just playing with your pussy running along his length to spread his silky pre-cum and your arousal along every inch.

Watching, your eyes widen when he slides his tip through your folds before positioning himself at your opening. He leans over your body, resting on his forearm and kisses you as he moves to enter. Blunt tip slipping inside of you, you gasp but only out of dizzying pleasure.

The noises encourage him to bury another inch, slowly giving himself over to every slick, warm part of you and you gasp in unison as he continues to bury himself deeper and deeper, finally bottoming out with a deep groan right above the shell of your ear.

"Mine," he whispers and you nod, chin resting against his shoulder as he buries his face in your neck.

There's surely no disputing it now as he begins to gently thrust, hips moving in a small, merciful rhythm.

"Yours," you whimper back, kissing the expanse of his shoulder blade between staccato moans. He feels too much, too big, too hot but you can't deny that it feels good, your walls flexing around his length as if you were made just for him.

The sensuality of the moment makes him realize he's coming close to his own orgasm and he reaches between your bodies to thumb at your clit, each touch making you squeeze around him tighter and tighter until you hold him in place once again, cumming for him twice and giving him unspoken permission to do the same.

He spills himself inside of you, the heat making you whine and he chuckles while trying to catch his breath.

"Still want to stay?" He asks, face still pressed into your neck and you nod, wrapping your tired legs around his waist to trap him against you.

A square piece of white sheet dotted with small spots of blood is dropped in front of your mother by a messenger sent from the Underworld courtesy of your beloved and she shakes with rage upon immediate understanding of the meaning of what's laying on the marble before her.

You are no longer her daughter, her prized little lamb, you belong to him.

The threat of war was just that - a threat.

Autumn and winter both passed without further questioning aside from a few additional visits from Shoko who has become your reluctant ally if not friend and confidante. She has kept you as informed as you need to be about the happenings above but, at your own request, keeps the rest to herself. You're blissfully unaware and fine with it.

Your mother's refusal to invade the Underworld with her own thin resources and Satoru's refusal to send any of his own troops after a now sullied goddess rendered all attempts to return you home as futile but you do return, on your own accord, to your meadow the day before you know your duties to bring forth the fertile season begin.

"And you're sure that you will be alright on your own?"

You nod, Suguru refusing to let go of your hand while Shoko watches him unamused. It's one thing to watch your friend fall in love, it's another to watch him behave like a lovesick child with no other choice.

"Let her go, Suguru. She has work to do."

He glares in the direction of the goddess who shrugs as if to say "it wasn't my choice" about your decision to return to fulfill your duties each spring. You know things cannot run without you here and he agreed knowing how much it means to you, letting you live barefoot in the sunlight for three months of the year.

His flowers stay in bloom even while you're gone, yellow painting his walk every morning while you're away.

"I'll see you soon, okay? Don't miss me too much."

Returning to your work came naturally, watching life spring forth from you as comforting as the sound of your own heartbeat and you can't hide your smile looking overhead to watch your very own protector in the form of a blackbird flying in wide circles above you.

"You think that's him?" A dryad asks innocently and you nod, gaze still fixed above despite your hands already working their magic on the yellow and brown grass below your feet.

"It is."

[azsazz]

Tethered

Azriel x Reader

Summary: Trying a little something different here...not sure how I'm going to explain it yet, but this fic is more of a fantasy aspect than my other fics.

Warnings: Mentions of burns and death.

Word Count: 3,569

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Pain.

The first thing you recognize when you come to is pain. That, and the darkness.

It consumes you from all angles, a darkness so deep and ancient it feels otherworldly. It coils around you like a frightened snake, smothering what little air you’re able to choke down. You blink once, twice, to attempt to clear your vision, but the black coating the space around you doesn’t so much as shift.

It’s how you know you’re in deep shit.

A sharp pounding pierces your skull, preventing you from shoving your shaky arms beneath your aching body and pushing to your feet. The feeling is worse than that of any wound bestowed upon you up until this point. Not even the King of Hel’s rigorous training or your mother’s disappearance had been so painful.

There’s a gnawing so deeply in your bones that you wonder if the feeling has always been with you, if you’ve somehow become accustomed to the feeling of your body screaming in agony.

Growing up in Hel, you should be used to such things.

Sunbursts spot your vision, the bleeding eclipses warring with the darkness. You hold your breath for a beat or two, trying to force your pulsing heart to calm. Exhaling slowly doesn’t help, only forces your breathing to become shakier.

It’s eerily silent, save for your panting breath. The screams of agony still ring in your ears, the King of Hel’s malicious laugh accompanying them as he splays himself across his throne, grinning at the two maidens sat in his lap.

As you scramble to gather your bearings, you wrack your muddled mind for where you might be and how you survived. You take inventory of as much as you’re able—the sharp flares of pain in your ribs, jagged and harsh with each inhale and exhale you take, and there’s a ringing in your ears that gives even the wailing spirits of Hel a run for their coin.

Hel. The last thing you remember was standing before your King, the sovereign of the underworld. He’d smirked down at you from his throne made of obsidian and bones, towering over not only you, but the entirety of Hel itself. The wicked curve of his lips and piercing dark eyes had only forced you down to your knees by looks alone.

You had not wanted to meet the gaze of your ruler, always hated his attention on you, but as one of his favored, you were often in his presence. Forced into doing his dirty work because of what you were born into, powers that were unlike anything in either Hel nor Haven, a one-of-a-kind ability he sought to take advantage of.

Your glittering quiver had been strapped across your back, and the image comes back to you vividly—clutching the grip of your bow as the King sealed your bargain with a red-hot hand to your skin and a wicked grin on his face.

A shuddering inhale makes your nose scrunch. You can still smell the remnants of your burning flesh beneath his palm.

You had nearly passed out from the pain. Maybe you did, because no matter how much you furrow your brows and wrack your brain, you can’t seem to figure out how you ended up where you are now, face down on the cold, hard ground.

Reaching out blindly for the bow that’s fallen from your fingers, you groan, the long sleeve of the silky white shirt you don beneath your armor brushes against the sensitive mark on your forearm. Your fingers creak as you uncurl them, rubble and debris scratching against your hand, burying deep beneath your nails as you search for your weapon.

The lightweight of your quiver is comfortable at your back. You choke down a shuddering groan as you lift your wings, biting your lip at the tenderness you feel at your back. They seem to be in one piece, as you twist them this way and that, only throbbing dully with bruises. Creatures of all sorts could be lining the darkness surrounding you, and you understand that you’re taking too long to rise, the shadows and nightmares of The Void keeping you off balance.

The King must have had one of his goons throw your hardly-conscious body into The Void after your bargain sealed. That’s how you ended up here. A spine cracking shudder makes bumps rise on your skin as your body stills.

Stories of The Void come rushing to you, and if you try hard enough, you can smell the lingering scents of the other worlds’—a smoldering smoke as black as The Void surrounds you, cloying your throat in thick waves as if trying to choke you, brand you with the reminder of where you are to return to. Cutting through the utter wickedness is the sharp perfume of something other, a fresh breeze lined with citrus that must be a figment of your imagination because there is no scent like that in Hel, nor breeze in The Void. It simply is.

It must be Haven, you decide. You only recognize the heavens from stories trickled down through the rift of worlds, from picturesque stories and secrets in shadow.

You haven’t known anything other than Hel. You cannot recall your father, hardly any of your mother, nor how you ended up in the King’s care. All you remember from your earliest memories are the soothing tones of your mother when you were young and scared, calming you in her arms before you ended up with the King, and the gleaming bow you never go without.

Forged by a millennia-old weapons-master, you’d been gifted the very weapon you seek now. No one knows how it had gotten to her—not even the King himself—only that the exquisite piece had come from the best battlement blacksmith Hel had to offer. You were no older than eight, eyes rounded with wonder at the sight of the gleaming gold bow settled on your bed, matching quiver and arrows accompanying it.

You shove the thoughts away. Your heart leaps into your throat the longer you search for your weapon. The pain zipping up your body help to focus you, and the strain threatens to give out as your fingers finally find the familiar metal grip of your bow. You hold on tightly and drag it to you, feeling the weapon for signs of damage.

Your bow soothes you as you trace your fingers across the solid gold riser. You know this weapon better than you know yourself. You could be blind and know the inside outs of your beloved weapon, like you are now, vision clouded with black as your fingers slide down the string, taut and flexible as ever.

Once you’re satisfied with the condition of your bow, you attempt to rise. The thick robes you’re clothed in had broken none of the fall. They’re heavy against your body as you struggle to gain your footing, stretching your wings wide to balance. The fabric brushes against your wound and you bite back a yelp at the pain that burns through you like a wildfire.

You had thought that without parents or a family to lose there would be nothing for the King to hold over your head, to force you into his tricks and deals, for him to rip away for his enjoyment, but the wretched ruler always found a way. You clenched your teeth so hard that you thought they would crack as you were forced to your knees before him, glaring daggers up at the beautiful ruler while he only grinned like a wolf, licking over those sharpened canines like he was out for your blood. Again.

He hadn’t let you agree to the terms of your bargain until you screamed.

Shoving to your feet, you splay your arms wide for balance. The harsh ground offered no grip beneath your boots and the blackness does little to help you stay stable. You try to keep your breathing calm when it sharpens as you look around. There’s nothing but the darkness and yourself, not a pinprick of light to guide you nor a sound to be heard. Not even your own thick-soled shoes make noise as you test a step forward.

The silence doesn’t break and the prowling creatures that reside in The Void don’t stir. Beings of nightmares, you’d been told when you were only a child and before your mother was taken from you. Your imagination couldn’t be sated when you were young, always begging for more and more stories of the world outside of Hel, questioning why you weren’t allowed to go anywhere else.

You hated the fires and heat of Hel, always burning a spot in your mind or your skin. You craved more, to see the open sky instead of storming clouds of thick smoke that perpetually covered Hel in charcoal waves. You yearned to see the stars and the moon and the heavens of Haven, with their buttery sunrises and dreamy dusks.

Your mother’s face is a long-forgotten memory, but the stories she told are not. Tales of animals and creatures so large, fit with razor-sharp teeth and glowing eyes stalking around The Void, monstrosities that not even the King of Hel could conjure.

Okay, you remind yourself, shaking the worry from your head. It’s time to make a move.

You’re sitting prey if you don’t. The feathers are a familiar comfort brushing your fingertips as you reach over your shoulder, sliding a singular arrow from the quiver with ease. The gold tipped point sings as it’s unsheathed from its home at your back and you notch it in the bowstring with controlled practice. It’s a motion that keeps your hands from shaking and soothes your breathing, a warrior at the ready, should any of the nightmare’s attack.

As you move, you realize that making your way through the darkness is no easy feat. Not a sound to guide your way nor a flicker of a torch to assess your surroundings. There is only darkness and silence and it beats at you with each tentative step you take. Slow progress is still progress, you try to remind yourself, but you can’t help but feel as if you’re talking in circles, the maze of shadows spinning your sense of direction, offering no reprieve.

Even the scents of Hel and Haven have faded, though you feel better about the former washing from your senses. If only the perfumed scent of Haven remained—you’d gladly follow the trail right up to the heavens, King of Hel be damned.

It had once been a dream to see Haven in all of its glory…before you realized that there was no escaping Hel, no escaping the King and his sinful grins and wicked games.

A sound forces her to still, limbs locking up before you force yourself to steady your stance and take aim, squinting through the black. Your pointed ears perk as you listen intently, not daring even a shallow breath. A soft noise sounds, like a cloth brushing across glass. It’s fleeting, morphing all too quickly into a screeching, grating noise that reverberates in your bones. Talons. They. Sound so similar to those of the King’s hounds giving chase down the long halls of his palace that there is no doubt in your mind the creature stalking you could shred you limb from limb.

The noise ricochets against the hard ground of The Void, echoing off of the nothingness that surrounds you. It makes your head spin, torso twisting to follow the movement as you search desperately. For the source.

Standing frozen, boy taut as you strain to glimpse any sign of where the lurking creature may be, a barely recognizable purr accompanies the grinding claws. With the darkness of The Void swallowing all movement, it feels as if the noises are consuming you, echoing in all directions and baffling your sense further.

Glowing, white eyes blink open, startling you. Your heart skips a beat in your chest as you jump, tightening your grip on your weapon and swinging it in the direction of the lurking beast, the tip of your arrow aimed right between those bright eyes.

You don’t dare more, though the smart thing to do would be to release the sharp-tipped arrow the beast’s way, but the creature doesn’t move. It blinks slowly, sleepily at you with its gleaming eyes, staring at you as if it’s curious instead of the horrifying nightmare the King and others had warned you about.

You curse silently as it stands. You’re pinned by those unnervingly bright. Eyes as it bounds closer. A reflection of what you’ve heard the moon looks like lies within its stare, though you don’t think the creature has seen the luminous beacon in the sky either. In the low light reflecting from its gaze, you catch sight of the sharp teeth as the nightmare licks its maw, and the pointed talons that clack against the stone ground as it closes in on you.

You could run. You can turn around and spring through the darkness for your life, pray to Haven that you don’t trip over a worse dark-dwelling beast, but with the deep ache in your bones you know that you won’t make it far fast enough.

The King of Hel hadn’t been lying when he taunted you with how terrifying these beasts could be.

You wonder for a fleeting moment if the ruler of Hel even expected you to make it out of The Void.

Heart racing in your chest, for the first time since you’ve mastered your bow, your fingers tremble around the taut string. You can let lose an arrow between its glowing hot eyes. There’s no falter in your aim, even with the miniscule shake. If you will it, your arrow will strike true.

The prowling beast halts only meters from you. Your heart pounds loudly in your chest and the beast must be able to hear it beating against your golden breastplate from the way that it cocks its head and blinks up at you. It nearly reaches your chest and you swallow harshly, knowing that one wrong move will have the beast snapping at you. You hardly breathe as lips curl away from blade-sharp teeth that glint in the glow of its blinding eyes.

There are only a handful of seconds to decide your next move—to bare your own teeth and show the creature what you’re made of, firing the gold-tipped arrow, or stand down and hope that the predator does the same.

One breath, two, and you watch the creature lower itself onto its haunches. Your hands fall to your side in relief. The arrow is a surety in your grasp as you slowly sheath it back in place at your back. A surety that if the beast attacks, you’d be even more of a fool than the King ever claimed.

Following your movements with bright eyes, the growling of the beast falters, then quiets. It straightens, sitting taller, more menacing, and nearly meets your gaze straight on. It stares at you until your empty hand is back at your side, bargain mark throbbing as it brushes against your cloak.

You’re just as confused as the creature across from you, staring at each other like two sides of the same coin. It’s like you know the beast, seen it in your dreams or heard tales about it from your mother, but your mind is muggy, and you can’t grasp where the familiar feeling is from. You see yourself in its eyes, lost in the darkness with no light to guide you out.

As if the creature understands this, it dips its chin to study you.

Its breath is balmy against your throat and it sends shivers up your spine. Your lip’s part to gasp at the same time the creatures open to taste your scent, deciding if you’re a threat or not. The heaving breaths against your skin tickle, but there’s nothing funny about the way the creature stills, as if the raging beast wants to slash through your delicate flesh, to feel your hot blood sticky beneath its paws.

“Help me,” you dare whisper. It’s spoken as quietly as your voice allows, but the sound carries into the void as if you screamed it.

A howl answers that makes you flinch and itch to press your palms against her ears. It hadn’t come from the beast before you, who snuffs in response, its full row of teeth reappearing as its eyes narrow, staying tightly locked on you.

“Help me,” you plead, desperation clinging to your words. You need to get out of here, need to breathe the night air and see the real moon and feel its silvery rays upon your skin just once, you need to find somewhere safe so you can begin working towards what you came here for, why the bargain mark burns with every movement. Your freedom. It’s all you want from the King, from Hel, to be able to roam as you please, leaving the underworld to find something greater.

You want to remember something other than the harrowing sights of Hel, than the King’s sharp smile mocking you every time you close your eyes. The things he’s made you do, the things you’ve made yourself do. This cannot be the end.

You won’t let it be.

“I’m trying to find Velaris,” you continue when another yip joins the first. A hunting party, likely moving this way. The sounds are closer this time, but the darkness doesn’t allow you to gauge just how far they roam or how many there are. Your gaze sweeps around as if the soft light emitting from the beast’s eyes will allow you to see the others. The blackness leers in response, no longer the sinister silence but instead filled with a terrifying array of noises that will only enhance the harrowing nightmares that plague you. “I need to find the city.”

Your fingers tighten around the handle of your bow but the action does nothing to ease the worry eating at you.

Maybe it’s the raw despair in your tone or the glistening look in your eyes or the thunderous beating of your heart that makes the beast take pity on you.

Blinking up at you, the creature slinks closer, damp snout pressing into your hand. You hold back the flinch at the coldness of it, and it gives you a gentle nudge as if to say, ‘Why didn’t you say so?’

Releasing a sigh of relief, the beast allows you to press your hand to the top of its furry head as it leads you towards further darkness. The creature’s mane is soft and thick between your uneasy hold, leaving you to wonder if this being isn’t a menacing creature bred to hunt within The Void, but one that had been just as scared as you.

The howls of creatures around them die down as you’re lead through black. You don’t know if you should be breathing easier or harder when the noises die out completely, leaving your breathing and the clacking of the beasts claws against the stony ground as the only sounds as you walk.

Blinking, you are convinced your mind is playing tricks on you at first, as you begin making out different shapes. Black turns to a deep navy, then lighter until you can see silhouettes of trees and mountains beyond. The hard stone turns to soft earth laden with thick grasses reaching nearly to your knees.

The air is sharp, crisp with the oncoming scent of a storm. Your head snaps towards the sky, searching for a star, the moon, anything you can to ensure you’ve ended up in the correct place, but thick, rumbling clouds cover every inch of the star-smattered sky.

Disappointment floods your veins with ice. You’d been wishing to see for yourself since you were a child and your mother had spoken so highly of the bright splotch in the sky, and it has gnawed at you as you grew into the female you are now, proud and strong.

With a disheartened sigh, you turn to face the creature who’d been leading you through the darkness, only to find it gone. You hadn’t felt the beast slip from your grasp, entranced on the opportunity to see the beautiful night sky. It had disappeared on those stealthy paws, dipping from your hold and back into the swallowing darkness of The Void.

It looms behind you, an open, cavernous mouth that seems to creep slowly, consuming the trees and stars and sky. You wonder if it had somehow consumed the moon, if The Void is a living being all its own—a trap waiting patiently to devour what wanders into its well laid snare.

A shudder works its way up your spine as you stare. You know well that you will be back, when it is time to return to Hel with the King’s prize, and then and only then, will you have your freedom.

The word burns your skin just thinking about it. A time where you will be able to roam freely from the nightmares of Hel, doing as you please without the King there to loom and rule over you. The taste of the salty night breeze is only a tease of what you will soon have.

[bitterrfruit]

houndtooth [2]

[masterlist]

Ghost x f!Reader - tags: slow burn, enemies to lovers, abduction, bodyguard, forced cooperation, smut 18+ mdni - 3.9k words

If I cannot be loved, I must be feared.

Simon Riley doesn’t consider himself a violent man.

Practical, perhaps. Purposeful.

The life he has lived has invariably demanded a brutality from him; a sanguinary ruthlessness, one that he would never foolishly deny he has the capacity for. He had told himself, in his bitter youth, that his barbaric appetite for carnage and control was not innate. Not a sticky black disease webbed in his genetic code, inherited from his cunt of a father, or his cunt of a father before him.

No, instead, his savagery is an incidental asset. An arbitrary talent. Of course, he only uses it when it’s urgently called for, only when no other option presents itself to him.

It was only by chance that in his adolescence he stumbled into the underworld of blood sport and fight clubs, only a fluke he discovered his gift once he started pocketing mounds of cash from countless victories in splattered basements. And it's only happenstance that he found himself a career that necessitates his proficiency, that relentlessly rewards him for it – he can’t help what he's good at, after all.

So, he assures himself - not violent.

Not the kind of violent his father was, anyway. Violent in the sense of haphazard bloodshed, the kind of violence with flagrant collateral. No, Ghost has lines he won’t cross. People he won’t hurt. His fists, his blades, his bullets aren’t hurled indiscriminately; he is scrupulous in his sadism. Not a rabid cur, he doesn’t growl with pointed canines at anybody who intersects his path – he’s well trained. Meticulous. Keeps himself muzzled, tethered on a short leash.

Still, he can’t help froth at the jaws when he’s given the opportunity to play his hand, to boast his brutality. Can’t help but relish in the savage fortuities that his profession provides him, permission to lay waste to the men his mission briefs instruct him to.

Only preys on the evil, he says. Only maims the kind who deserve it.

You, standing tremulously in the open door to the bathroom, you’ll be his prey tonight.

You, as informed by his commanding officers, as described to him by his intel, will deserve it.

You, the very kind of degenerate oligarch filth he scorns so deeply, utterly undeserving of the magnitude of wealth and power you have unjustly acquired without merit - will need it.

Even if you haven’t had an acting hand in in your husband’s machine of depravity, at the very least, you’re a repugnant, iniquitous whore; happy to receive and spend mountains of blood-dripping money for a spread of your honeyed legs, apathetic to its murderous origins, uncaring who had to die to buy you that fucking negligée.  

That sliver of blush pink, so sheer, so short - you might as well not be wearing it at all. A cotton-candy veil, translucent enough to allow the yellow glow emerging from behind you to carve out the shape of your silhouette; the image of a renaissance muse with the contour of your waist, the swell of your hips. The chantilly hem barely grazes the highest point of your thighs, not quite covering the fragile lace of the knickers that conceal your pernicious cunt from him.

It’s almost a sick joke.

As if you’ve been planted there as some test of his fortitude, a trial of his moral compunctions. That voluptuary sway you have on his restraint, just by standing there, with your fingers hesitantly clutching a glossy Beretta, keeping obediently it pointed to the floor; it riles him. Repulses him. Infuriates him.

The pistol makes a dull thud as it tumbles to the dense carpet, your claw still shaky as you hesitantly part your fingers to release it.

“Умная девочка,” he growls, as he flips his night-vision goggles off his eyes, clasping them to his helmet with a click. “Clever girl.”

He makes sure you understand him when he patronises you, putting his near fluency in your language to some use – all the while, he wants you to know where he has come from. To know that he’s not another competitor nor accomplice of your machiavellian prick of a husband. That he’s a foreign arm of justice. Your retribution. Your punishment.

But he’s taken aback, when your syrupy voice glides from your nervous lips, in a language he didn’t expect you to speak.

“What do you want.”

He stalks towards you, slowly, maliciously, lowering his gun and straightening his hulking back to loom even further above and over you. You’ve seen his skull, now, the painted mask that wilfully camouflages his humanity. He can tell, relishing in the widening of your pretty eyes at the sight of it. Your reaper. Your fate.

His objective is to make you cower. To make you question his intentions. To intimidate. To threaten.

Should be easy.

With a vindictive boot he kicks your Beretta, sending it skidding noisily across the marble floor of your ensuite.

“Not a bad accent,” he grumbles at you, mocking, carnivorous eyes swilling the sight of you as he closes in. Exerts every effort to avert his sights from wandering, sinking, from your skittish countenance to the pillows of your oligarch tits, cupped behind their restraining triangles of sheer pink lace.

A disturbed crease furrows in your brow, you stumble onto your back foot as he menaces over you; you’re poised to bolt, light on your little bare feet – but he readies himself for the chase.

“Are you here for Victor?”

Your velvet tone is more austere than he would have anticipated, a cadence of hoarse impatience belying the endearing panic engraved in your features. Catlike eyes flit between his, as though mining into the windows of his mask, puncturing his irises and burrowing within. Maybe you hope to find something in there, in those pinprick black openings, now that they’ve dilated in light of your prying.

He answers with a single shake of his head, a sharp and cocksure suck of his teeth.

“Comrade’s got him already,” he gloats, deeply coarse voice resonating from his throat, an arrogant grin audible in his words while concealed by the thick knit of his balaclava.  

He lets you sit with that news, expecting a tearful exhibition of some histrionic spousal grief, at the very least. But, no, you remain steadfast in your quiet courage. Unnervingly indifferent to the possibility that your husband had been coldly assassinated, a mere few feet from where you had been preening yourself in the ensuite mirror.

Fitting, he thinks, that an avaricious, gold-digging slut like you is entirely unfazed by the sudden and savage death of your malefactor husband. You’re probably glad of it; if Ghost weren’t here to terrorise you, maybe you’d be beaming with glee, knowing his exorbitant wealth would trickle down into your manicured little fingers.

But your husband isn’t dead yet, perhaps to your dismay – instead he has been wrapped up with duct tape, suffocatingly tight, and carted off by the Sergeant with a sack over his head. Probably on their way to exfil. Efficient, that Scottish sergeant. Focused.

Unlike Ghost. He likes to play with his food.

He justifies it, though, knowing a bit of terror will loosen up your lips for later. After all, they have questions for you. Demands of you. And there’s nothing like a squealing, pleading, sobbing wife to pry open the shut jaws of an obstinate prisoner – that is, after other, uglier methods fail to extract the intel he desires. He quietly hopes that it comes to that.

So he prods, head stooping down to callously address you.

“I’m here for you.”

Your cautious yet analytical glare jumps down the length of him, before you surprise him, again – tempting your fate with a temerarious retort.

“I’d sooner let you shoot me. Чертовски уродливый укол.” Fucking ugly prick.

He cocks his brow, sniffing irately as he adjusts his low ready grip on his gun; he raises it just slightly, a malignant push of its vertical barrel into your soft belly. Reminding you of its presence, its size; the length of your entire torso, from mound to forehead. Reiterating its willingness to shred your ripe flesh, your cowed bones with its lead rounds.

“Tempting.” He snarls, as gravelly as cruel.

There’s the tiniest movement in your legs, a minuscule shift in your muscles, your agitated eyes dart past him just briefly – Ghost is seasoned in the hunt. The unconscious change in your breathing pricks his ears, from heavy and quivering to shallow and pointed; a small nibble on the meat inside your lip, a fluttering of your eyelashes as you scan for an escape route. His perception is honed and inhuman, predatory vigilance akin to a stalking wolf, he can smell your next move, it oozes from you like sweat.

So when your weight shifts onto your front foot, prepared to bolt, he lets you.

It’ll tire you out, a healthy chase. It’ll terrify you, and exhilarate him.

He watches insouciantly as you dart to his left, almost condescending in his apathy, as he makes no effort to snag you, no attempt to ensnare your body and trap you with a hook of his heaving arm.

No, that would be too easy. You dash past him, elbowing him in the side of his shielded ribs as you flee.

He listens with perked ears to the sound of your bare feet pattering against the carpet, the silent whisper of your negligée brushing against the doorframe of the suite.

You’ll figure out eventually that there is nowhere for you to run. That there is nobody left to save you. Your options are extremely slim – he made very certain of that. Escape your fortress and brave the Russian midwinter, and endure the agony of your bare flesh freezing black in your pitiful excuse of a nightdress. Or, face him. Which, he concedes, in your eyes may well be a more horrific fate.

He has knowingly been keeping his intentions ambiguous. And a woman that looks like you, in a piece of fucking fabric like that, must be excruciatingly familiar with the kind of intentions most men in this position would have.

No, Ghost isn’t that barbaric, temptation notwithstanding.

He just wants you to believe that he is.

So with heavy feet, he stalks you.

Taking measured steps, he follows the trail of your sweet perfume, your vanity betraying you once again as it lingers in the air behind you, leaving a conspicuous path of jasmine and silk down the extravagant hallway.

His boots tread over the Persian runner that spans the length of the hall. Velvet. Ostentatious.

How much did that cost you?

Disdainful glares observe the hideously gaudy and indubitably priceless paintings that hang on the walls, framed by ornamental moulding, taller than him. Florid. Tasteless.

How much did you spend on those?

How many roubles did you spend on all this garish fucking décor? How many lives did all of it cost?

Can you see the blood on that avant-garde sculpture when you look at it?

Do you see the redness of that blood emulsified in the oil paint of those hideous paintings? Does it stain the wall behind them?

Do you see the coagulated mess when you remove them, to replace them with newer ones?

His jaw clenches involuntarily with the disgust that swallows him. Sucking cold air vexedly through his nose, he slings his rifle over his back, freeing his hands for the catch.

His blood, viscous and dark, thumps in his temples, prickling cold under his skin; like Pavlov’s dog, he salivates at the quiet noises that barely echo from elsewhere in the mansion, the sound of you scuttling away from him. He hears your frightened panting through the walls, soft little squeaks like a hunted mouse.

“Any luck, L.T.?”

The gruff Scottish voice emerges through the crackling speaker of his radio, dampening the thuds of his bestial heart, dispelling the blood red that encroaches his vision. If only slightly.

His thumb goes to press the talk button. He contemplates how honest he will be.

“Having some trouble.”

He makes no effort to speak quietly. He wants you to hear him advance on you. He wants you to wonder hopelessly which corner he might turn, through which door he might check.

“Don't do anything I’ll have to defend you for.”

Ghost grumbles deeply as he exhales. Soap is keenly aware that he is purposefully taking his time with you. You could only ever cause him trouble if he allowed you to, after all.

“D’you think I’m that much of a brute?” Ghost retorts, growl doused in facetiousness.

“Only when you want to be, sir.”

He jerks his head at the echo of a quiet thud, the chime of crystal glasses vibrating on impact.

Dining room.

He’s silent for too long, though. Soap follows up.

“We’re waiting for you, mate. It’s fuckin’ cold. Get a move on, will you?”

“Won’t be long, Sergeant.”

“You'll have plenty o’ time with her when we’ve got ‘er in captivity, eh?”

He hears a stifled squeal escape you, through a single wall. He’s found you. No need to answer Soap – the boy can wait.

With smug nonchalance he strolls the corner, in no rush, he steps through the flamboyant archway into your dining room, vulturous eyes squinting to scan for you in the shadows.

Banquet hall might be a more apt label for the sheer magnitude and glitz of the room, soaring ceilings bordered with ornate floral plaster, moonlight glowing through the towering windows reflecting in diamonds off the polished parquet floor. He imagines you must have hosted and overfed many of Zakhaev’s snivelling accomplices at that very teak dining table, that could easily seat sixteen.

He wonders what their Soviet maws might have snarled at you through their greedy teeth as you bent over that table to top up their chalices. He wonders which cut of your meat they would have liked. He wonders if your husband would have served you up for them if they asked. He wonders if they ever dared to.

Your shadow reveals your whereabouts, dead still and peeking across the floorboards through a second archway, in the wall to the right.

Not very good at hiding, are you?

He sees you flinch at the deep sound of his boot on the wooden floor, closing in on you once again. His ready hands clench into reactionary fists at the sight of you standing motionless in the grey moonlight, arms tight by your side, frozen solid like you might have already ventured out into the subzero night.

Only as he approaches you, does he see what you’re stuck on.

One of your mercenaries.

Ghost thought he had executed him, with a stealthy blade to the throat, a crude slash from jugular to jugular. A ragged incision into his windpipe to ensure his silence as his life drained out of the gaping wound.

But the prick is still alive, by the sounds of it, the unpleasant music of his wet choking; the squelching and popping of him sucking air through the hole in his throat, impeded by the flow of fizzing blood.

It seems to have alarmed you, the sight of the slaughter, sending you into trembling shock as you fail to break your sight away from the twitching corpse.

“Y-you–”

He’s uncertain if you’re addressing him, as you stutter so winsomely, that brave little show you put on for him earlier now crumbling delightfully at the recognition of your fate.

“You’re – why did you…” you stammer, before drawing in a steadying breath. “You’re a fucking animal.”

Ghost releases an ireful sigh as he lurks to stand behind you, tugging a pair of cable-tie cuffs from one of the many pockets on his thoroughly outfitted tactical vest.

With a careful spin on your heel, a floaty dance of your negligée, you face him. Glowering up at him through wet lashes, lumps of mascara stick to your cheeks like tar, flushed from your eyes by a spate of tears.

Now you’re emotional.

That convulsing, blood-drenched cadaver is real enough for you, is it?

It must be easier to compartmentalise, easier to dismiss like flicking spilt salt over your shoulder, when the bloodshed you’re responsible for is mourned miles and miles from you.

No, that carnage can never reach you, can it? Not while you’re in your fucking fortress, lazing on a velveteen chaise lounge, painting your toenails with that glossy coat of cherry red as if it were the very blood your regime spilt.

Well, here it is. The kind of brutality you’ve been sheltered from, safeguarded against, blissfully ignorant of.

You pampered bitch.

He can’t help but be disappointed you’ve given up, you’ve let him gain on you. His muscles, his bones, his teeth, were ready for a hunt, aching for the catch. His carnivorous body had primed him for a breakneck pursuit through the halls of your mansion, and he now felt viciously unsated.

He wanted to hear you shrieking, pleading to be spared, squeaking like a bitten rabbit when he finally caught you in his jaws. He wanted to be the one to stifle your squeals with his gloved hands, gargantuan weight crushing the air from your weak lungs, thwarting your attempts to flee. He wanted to relish in your squirming, fighting, kicking underneath him, and he wanted to watch the flickering light of resistance in your darting eyes be snuffed out by the futility of your escape.

Yet even as you evidently surrender, still quaking with frigid trepidation, that glimmer still glows. A stubborn little flame.

“Are they all dead?” You murmur, defeat weeping through the monotony of your dull voice, hoarse from exertion.

Ghost grants you a solitary nod, a flick of his head. “They are.”

He observes as you sip in a slow, quivering breath, not parting your wary lour from the window of his mask – still reading, still digging, still burrowing.

“Are you taking me somewhere?” You cautiously probe, your sweetly soft tone a likely effort to temper the ferocity of your hunter. “Or are you just here to hurt me?”

A gritty huff of laughter jumps from his chest, muffled by the densely knitted mask that sits over his nose.

With a languid hitherto gesture of his fingers, his head bowed from his towering shoulders, he answers you.

“Both.”

You oblige him, you clever girl. Lifting your timid hands and holding your wrists together for him, you make it easy for him to take you.

He slips the loops of stiff black plastic over each of your pristine hands, tugging the tails though the head and tightly ensnaring your wrists. His dark eyes bounce to your twisting face as you wince, the shrill zip of the teeth jerking through the pawls rings piercingly in the silence of the room – music to him, torment to you.

“Will you make it quick?”

He finds himself dissatisfied by your resignation, your stoic defeat; as though you were so disillusioned, so expectant that this fate awaited you, that you had long girded yourself for it. It deflates him, your capitulation, your impassivity – leaves him high and dry.

From a pocket on his utilitarian trousers he unveils a fabric sack; thick black cotton with a drawstring closure.

“No.” He responds dully, as he tugs the bag over your head, finally veiling your probing eyes. With gloved hands he holds you by the crux of your shoulder, thumb gripping tightly over the base of your throat. He tightens the drawstring of the sack under your jaw, constricting it around your neck. Just snug enough to be uncomfortable, to impede your swallowing, to dampen your breathing.

“Fucking pig.” You seethe through the fabric.

Grasp of you not wavering, he yanks you toward him, you stumble over your bare feet as he cranes his head so it hangs beside yours, mouth by your ear.

“Don’t make me gag you.”

He faintly makes out the sound of you scoffing in silent contempt. “You won’t.”

Standing upright, he tilts his head in bemusement. “Won’t I?”

“You want a challenge, don’t you? That’s why you let me run, isn’t it?”

He’s flummoxed for the moment, speechless, only allowing an inaudible grunt of dispute to escape him. 

“Like a little fight, do you? You sick fuck?”

He’s careful in his reaction. Prudent. Controlled. Refuses to let you believe that you’ve read him like a book.

No, instead, he toys with your conjecture.

Sinister, guttural, he growls,

“Maybe I do.”

[hollowed-theory-hall]

Been reading a lot here. You’ve said both that you believe Harry to be the “Master of Death” and Sirius as a “shadow of death” as his animagus is the Grim. That’s a neat connection! Any thoughts on it having anything to do with their relationship? I’m personally feeling a Hades/Cerberus thing

Thank you so much! I'm glad you enjoyed reading!

As for your question, like, yes and no. Death had such a major part in both of their lives they both lost a lot in different ways. Like, I think their losses are a major aspect of who they are and of their dynamic with each other.

Like, I don't really think Sirius is a shadow of death in a magical way (besides his Animagus form). I think he is followed by death more metaphorically (and literally because some of the most important people to him die, but not magically). But, as I mentioned, each of their connections to death does color their relationship.

I mean, Sirius is this odd, friendly parental figure, the only adult Harry sees as wholly trustworthy and loyal because of the death of his parents. Sirius is as protective and honestly obsessed with Harry's safety and well-being because of how death follows him and how his brother, his parents, his best friend, and his friend's wife all died.

Sirius' animagus form is a dog because he is loyal and protective — truly man's best friend. And I think it's practically written into the books with how Sirius is willing to live in a cave off rats if it means Harry feels safer. How he would stay in his childhood home that he thought he would rather die than see again because Dumbledore said it would keep Harry safe. Sirius would go so incredibly far to keep Harry safe. He really is like the dogs that'll stand guard over their owner's corpses until there is nothing left to guard.

And Sirius can be vicious when he wants to. He can be cruel, petty, and ruthless. He can be the kind of dogs that bite through bone when needed.

As Cerberus guards the gates to the underworld for Hades' sake, to help Hades' job be just slightly easier, I can kinda see the Hades/Cerberus dynamic in a way. But, I don't think Harry really sees Sirius as a loyal dog, or anything like that. Harry looks up to Sirius for advice and help while simultaneously being worried about him and feeling responsible for his well-being too. Harry at the end of OotP shouts at Dumbledore he wishes to die after Sirius dies, he is just as insane with his loyalty as Sirius is, so it's not as clear cut as a Hades/Cerberus dynamic, it's more mutual.

But I definitely think death and loss are why they are so determined to protect each other. They are connected by death, even if it's not a clean dynamic. They are each other's only "real family". As warm and accepting as the Weasleys behave, Harry still feels like an outsider. He still calls Molly and Arthur "Mrs. and Mr. Weasley" after 7 years of knowing them. And even though Remus, Sirius' other best friend was around and lived on the outskirts of wizard society as much as Sirius did post-PoA, Sirius didn't stick around with him. He went out of the country because it was what Harry thought was best, but then, when Harry didn't feel safe in GoF, Sirius left everything and came.

Sirius and Harry are kinda insane with each other. The way they latch on to each other and how protective they are over the idea of each other after all their loss. Harry was ecstatic to move to live with Sirius 3 minutes after he thought he was a serial killer. Sirius lived off rats for Harry, just, like... they are not normal in a very different way to James and Sirius' not normal.

James and Sirius were so close they couldn't survive detentions without each other's company because they wanted to always talk to each other (hence making the two-way mirror). Harry and Sirius are different, by the time they meet they each lost so much that they are each other's tether that can be called something like family, not friends, family, and they are so very protective of it. They are each other's connection to James and Lily and the life before they died. A singular connection to that distant what-if where James and Lily lived. I still think they like each other as people too, separately from that, their relationship can be affected by death and trauma and still be real and meaningful on its own. But, yeah I think their respective life experiences with death really affected how much they latch onto each other.

So, while their bond is definitely shrouded by death in a very human way (not a magical one), I don't see their dynamic as a clear Hades/Cerberus sort of thing. You can headcanon and read their dynamic however you want, it's just that I don't see them that way.

[lailoken]

The Gloaming Tethers

The Gloaming tethers are a pair of ritual fetishes that hold great significance in my personal tradition.

The first of the two pictured here (from left to right) serves a talismanic link to my Witch-Queen—who I often call Bone Mother—and to the Chthonic Realm of the Underworld that she oversees. It was fashioned from a Black Basalt Hagstone, secured by a cord strung with 13 bone beads, including six beads made from Prehistoric Horse Bone, six beads made from Prehistoric Deer Bone, and one bead made from Antique Whale Bone that I inherited. The end-piece is a token of 6,000 year old Bog Yew, carved with a triskelion, and glazed with a wood varnish made using Storax resin. I utilize this Talisman when working with Ancestral Spirits, or with Chthonic Wights, such as psychopomps.

The second of these serves a talismanic link to my Witch-Father—who I often call Wilding King—and to the Upper Realm of the Elemental World that he oversees. It was fashioned from a White Quartz Hagstone, secured by a cord strung with 13 handmade wood beads of alternating Elder, Hazel, Hawthorn, and Rowan. The end-piece is a token of local Elk shed-horn, carved to resembled a great tree, and glazed with a wood varnish made using Amber resin. I utilize this Talisman when working with Animistic Spirits or Elemental Wights.

Each of these Ritual Tethers are sacred to me. They each rest in places of power, pertinent to their respective magical nature, when not in use.

[scrollonso]

Moira — Marcmarc

The weight of Olympus pressed heavy on Marco’s shoulders. He was no Atlas, condemned to bear the heavens, but the burden Marc had laid upon him felt eternal — a punishment from a god for sins he hadn’t even known he’d committed. He wasn’t divine, merely mortal, yet the agony felt like a curse, his suffering etched into the fabric of their lives like a tragic myth.

Their year together had been a labyrinth, one Marco had willingly entered without a thread to guide him back. Now, trapped in its endless corridors, he realized he was not only Theseus, the hopeful hero searching for salvation but also the Minotaur — beastly, broken, and doomed to perish at the heart of his monstrous love. Every step had brought him deeper into the maze, and every glance Marc cast his way tethered him further, tighter, leaving no escape.

It hadn’t always seemed so dark. It had started innocently — or so Marco had believed. There was no innocence in Marc’s molten gaze, though, sharp and electrifying like Zeus’ thunderbolt. If there was any purity in the way Marc pursued him, it was the innocence of a predator baiting prey. His charm had overwhelmed Marco, drowning him like a wave crashing over an unguarded shore. Marco had been in awe, as mortals always were in the presence of gods, and Marc had reveled in that power.

Marc whispered promises of forever, his voice sweet and golden as stolen nectar from Olympus. Each word was a lie Marco wanted to believe. Marc seemed every myth come to life — a hero without weakness, a god untouchable in his perfection. And Marco had fallen, not like Icarus, recklessly soaring toward the sun, but like Persephone, dragged unwillingly into an underworld he’d never agreed to enter. Once there, he was both enchanted and terrified by the one who had taken him captive.

Valentino Rossi’s shadow loomed over everything, as though his presence were a curse spoken in an ancient tongue. Marco could never escape it. Valentino’s influence was as unshakable as if their lives had been woven by the Fates themselves, each thread tangled in inescapable knots. Valentino and Marc’s history wasn’t hidden; it was as bitter and ancient as the roots of a gnarled olive tree, their animosity weathered by time but never eroded. Every interaction between them was a clash of titans, a silent war beneath the surface.

What no one saw — what Marco had come to understand too late — was that Marc hadn’t simply fallen for him. That would have been too human. For Marc, winning Marco’s heart wasn’t enough. He needed to use it, shape it into a weapon to wield against Valentino. It wasn’t love that burned in Marc’s gaze but vengeance. Every smile, every touch, every whispered promise was a calculated strike, and Marco was nothing more than the blade Marc wielded in his endless war.

“Did you ever love me?” Marco’s voice broke the silence of the dimly lit room, his question soft yet jagged, like the edges of broken glass. He sat on the edge of their shared bed, his shoulders slumped under the invisible weight of what he already knew.

Marc leaned against the doorframe, his arms crossed, the faintest flicker of something — guilt? amusement? — in his eyes. “Why would you ask that?” His tone was measured, calm, but it didn’t hide the storm brewing underneath.

“Because I need to hear it,” Marco replied, his fists clenching against his thighs. “I need to know if this — if I — was ever real to you.”

Marc stepped closer, his shadow stretching across the room like a dark omen. “What is real, Marco?” he asked, his voice low and dangerous, yet laced with a strange softness. He reached out, his fingers brushing Marco’s cheek with a tenderness that felt like mockery. “Does it matter if I loved you? You stayed anyway.”

Marco’s heart twisted painfully at the words. “You used me,” he whispered, barely able to keep his voice steady. “Everything we had — every moment — it was just a weapon. A way to hurt Vale.”

Marc’s expression flickered, but his grip tightened on Marco’s chin, forcing their eyes to meet. “And you let me,” he said coldly. “You let me because you couldn’t walk away. You wanted to believe I loved you, even when you knew better.”

“I stayed because I loved you,” Marco spat, tears brimming in his eyes. “Because I thought— maybe—”

“Maybe what?” Marc interrupted sharply. “That you could change me? Save me? Don’t be a fool, Marco. Mortals don’t save gods. They worship them. They sacrifice for them. And sometimes, they burn for them.”

Marco wrenched his face free from Marc’s grasp, rising to his feet. “Then I won’t burn for you anymore,” he said, his voice trembling but resolute. “Find someone else to play your games, Marc.”

For a moment, Marc said nothing, his gaze inscrutable, the silence between them stretching unbearably. Finally, he smiled, slow and cruel, and stepped back. “You think you can walk away from me?” he asked, his tone almost amused. “There’s no thread to guide you out of this, Marco. You’ll come back, just like you always do.”

Marco turned away, his chest tight with the weight of Marc’s words. Maybe Marc was right. Maybe there was no way out of the maze. But somewhere deep inside, Marco clung to a fragile, fleeting hope — a thread of his own weaving — that he could still find his way to freedom.

At first, Marco hadn’t seen it. He was blind, or maybe he hadn’t wanted to see. He thought Marc’s love was a gift from Eros himself — golden arrows piercing his chest and leaving him breathless. He mistook Marc’s fire for passion, his intensity for devotion. Like any mortal in the presence of a god, Marco had believed, foolishly, with a heart full of blind faith.

But the truth came like the icy grip of the River Styx — cold, unrelenting, dragging him into its depths. Marc’s hands on him weren’t only for him. They weren’t acts of love. They were tools, instruments of pain wielded not against Marco, but through him. Every kiss, every touch, every whispered promise was a thread in the tapestry Marc wove to ensnare Vale. Every lingering hand in the paddock, every sly smile aimed at the older Italian from across the garage — none of it was love. It was war, and Marco was the weapon.

“Do you even care about me?” Marco asked one evening, his voice hoarse, a quiet desperation in the words. His eyes searched Marc’s face, looking for any sign of sincerity.

Marc, laid delicately against the silk sheets of their hotel bedroom, didn’t flinch. His eyes flickered to Marco briefly, a cool smile tugging at the corner of his lips. “What’s to care about, Marco?” he replied, the words sharp, edged with something Marco couldn’t quite place. “You’re here, aren’t you? That’s all that matters.”

Marco shook his head, frustration building within him. “No. No, that’s not enough. I’ve been used, haven’t I? All this — everything we’ve shared — it’s been a game to you. A weapon, and I was the pawn.”

Marc’s smile widened slightly, as though Marco had finally understood something he’d been too blind to see. “A pawn?” Marc repeated, stepping closer. His voice softened, but the venom beneath it was undeniable. “You were never a pawn, Marco. You were the perfect tool. A beautiful one, but a tool nonetheless.”

Marco recoiled, the sting of those words hitting deeper than he wanted to admit. “I—" he choked, his chest tight. “I thought you— I thought I meant something to you.”

Marc’s gaze was unreadable, and his voice dropped to a low murmur. “You did, once. But the truth is... you were never meant for me, Marco. You were meant for this.” He gestured vaguely to the distance, the track, the tension between them. “You were meant to be the one who brought Vale closer to me. Everything we’ve done together? It’s been for him. Not you. Never you.”

The realization hit Marco like a punch to the gut, and for a moment, he couldn’t breathe. His world, already shattered, seemed to splinter further. “You— You used me to get to him?” His voice cracked, disbelief and betrayal tangled in every word.

Marc’s expression softened, but only slightly. “Did you think I wanted you, Marco? Not in the way you wanted me. I needed you to make it hurt, to make him see what he couldn’t.”

“God, you’re sick,” Marco whispered, his heart sinking into his stomach. “You really don’t love me, do you?”

Marc stepped even closer, now right in front of Marco, his presence overwhelming. He placed a hand on Marco’s cheek, his fingers brushing against the skin gently, almost lovingly. But the coldness in his eyes made Marco’s skin crawl. “You were a means to an end. You’re not the first, Marco. You won’t be the last. But you’re right about one thing.” Marc’s voice dropped to a low, almost conspiratorial whisper. “You meant something to me. You meant to hurt him. And that, Marco, is all you ever were.”

Marco’s chest tightened painfully, as if his heart was being ripped from him. “And what about now?” he asked, his voice barely a whisper. “Do you even need me anymore?”

Marc paused, studying him for a long moment before his lips parted in a slow, calculating smile. “I don’t need you,” Marc said, his words soft, final. “Not anymore. But you’ll stay. You always stay.”

“I shouldn’t have,” Marco replied, his voice trembling, though his eyes were burning with a mixture of anger and sorrow. “But I’m too far gone now, aren’t I? I’ll never escape you.”

Marc’s gaze softened, a flicker of something almost like pity passing through his eyes. “No,” he said, almost gently. “You won’t. But you don’t need to. You’ve already done your part.”

Marco turned away, his hand gripping the edge of the table as if it could anchor him to something real, something solid. “You’ve already broken me, Marc. What else is there to take?”

Marc didn’t answer right away. Instead, he let out a slow breath, the silence between them thick with the weight of unspoken truths. “Nothing left, I suppose.” Then, he added, his voice light, almost dismissive, “But that’s not the point, is it?”

Marco stared at the ground, his heart torn between the harsh truth and the cruel remnants of his love for Marc. You’ve already broken me, he thought, but somehow, that wasn’t enough for Marc. Nothing ever would be.

And still, Marco stayed.

He stayed because to leave would mean casting himself into an ocean as vast and uncharted as the myths of old, a lone ship doomed to drift without anchor or direction. Marc’s touch, his words, were like the sirens that lured Odysseus — beautiful, irresistible, and utterly lethal. Marco knew the song was a lie, but he couldn’t plug his ears, couldn’t tie himself to the mast of reason. He couldn’t look away from Marc’s molten gaze, even as it burned through him. And he couldn’t face the endless void that yawned before him, the terrifying expanse of life without Marc.

So, he endured.

He let Marc press his lips to Vale’s cheek during the post-race celebrations, a gesture that wasn’t affection but a declaration of war, the sharpness of his laugh cutting through the air like a spear hurled by Athena herself. He stood by, swallowing the bitter bile of humiliation, as Marc’s hand lingered too long on Vale’s arm, their smiles exchanged like cryptic messages from Apollo — inscrutable, mocking, and meant to exclude him. Marco saw the game they played, each move deliberate and cruel, their reconciliation nothing more than a battlefield where he was the casualty.

He stood there, still as a statue carved of marble, a monument to endurance and despair. He was no hero. He wasn’t Achilles, whose love for Patroclus shook the heavens. He wasn’t even Orpheus, whose song could move the gods. He was the forgotten mortal, the offering left on the altar of their endless feud, sacrificed for the sake of their pride.

In the darkest moments, Marco thought of Achilles and Patroclus, of their love that ended not in betrayal but in fire and grief, forged in loyalty and sealed in death. He wished for that kind of love — a love so pure it scorched the earth and left nothing but ash in its wake, a love so unyielding it defied gods and fate alike. But he wasn’t Achilles, destined to be remembered as a hero. He wasn’t even Patroclus, the quiet strength behind a warrior’s fury. No, Marco was neither hero nor martyr. He was a pawn in someone else’s game, a nameless figure caught in the margins of a tragedy penned by gods who didn’t even care to learn his name.

And perhaps that was the cruellest twist of all: that he was here, drowning in this endless myth of his own making, and yet he knew Marc loved him. Not in the way mortals deserved to be loved, not with tenderness or honesty, but in the way gods loved their creations — possessive, all-consuming, and cruel. Somewhere beneath the manipulation, buried beneath the cruelty that sliced at Marco’s soul like the blade of Perseus, there was a spark of something real. He could see it, feel it, in the moments Marc held him close as though he were something divine, something worth worshipping. But love from a god like Marc was never freely given. Like the fire Prometheus gifted mankind, it came with a cost. And Marc’s love was no exception — it was a curse disguised as salvation, a golden apple that brought only ruin.

Marco bore it like a crown of thorns, his every breath weighted with the knowledge that he could never escape, not truly. Each night, as Marc pulled him close and whispered sweet lies about forever, Marco felt the chains tightening around his heart. He could almost hear the Fates laughing as they wove his story into their tapestry, a thread of pain and longing twisted into eternity.

"Does it hurt?" Marc asked one night, his voice low, soft, almost tender. His fingers traced the lines of Marco’s face as though sculpting him into something new, something more than human — something Marc could claim entirely as his own. The touch was gentle, reverent, but Marco knew better. He knew it was just another tool in Marc’s arsenal, another way to carve away at his sense of self.

Marco didn’t answer. What was the point? Words wouldn’t change anything. His silence stretched between them, heavy and ancient as the myths he clung to for meaning, a reminder of every mortal who had loved a god and paid the price. His story was no different, a tale as old as time itself: a mortal ensnared by a god’s fickle affections, doomed to suffer for a love he could not let go.

Marc’s eyes flickered to Marco’s, searching for something. Maybe an answer. Maybe a sign that Marco would finally confess, finally ask for more than Marc was willing to give. But Marco’s gaze remained empty, locked on a place beyond Marc, somewhere where his heart didn’t ache quite so much.

“You know,” Marc murmured, his breath warm against Marco’s ear, “You could leave. You’re not trapped here, Marco. You could walk away from me, from all of this.”

But Marco shook his head, lips pressed together in a thin line. "I can’t."

Marc’s fingers stilled on Marco’s cheek, his expression flickering with something almost like surprise. He laughed softly, the sound bitter. "You truly do believe I’m a god, don’t you? You think you’re just... powerless?"

"I think I’m a fool," Marco replied quietly, "but I can’t escape, not yet."

Marc’s fingers tightened around his face, forcing Marco to look at him again. There was a coldness in Marc’s gaze, something dark and calculating. “You really believe you’re trapped? You have a choice. But you choose to stay, to endure, like all the mortals in the stories. You know what that makes you, Marco?”

Marco didn’t reply. Instead, his thoughts drifted to Ariadne, the girl who had given everything to help Theseus defeat the Minotaur, only to be abandoned on a distant shore. Ariadne, the forgotten piece of the myth. Marco wondered what happened to her after Theseus left her behind. What would happen to him when Marc no longer needed him?

He thought of the labyrinth, the one Marc had created for him, with no thread to guide him out. Marco was trapped, no escape, no hope for salvation.

“Does it hurt?” Marc repeated, his voice cutting through the silence.

A small, pained smile tugged at Marco’s lips. “Yes. But not in the way you think.”

Marc’s brow furrowed, but he said nothing more. He didn’t need to.

Marco looked at him, really looked at him for the first time in a long while. Marc, the god of his world, the Minotaur that kept him locked in the labyrinth. Marco had been so certain he was the hero, but now he knew. There was no hero here. There was only the sacrifice.

And still, he stayed.

Because walking away, turning his back on Marc, was the scariest thing he could ever do. It was easier to endure, to suffer, to survive — even if survival meant becoming a shadow, nothing more than a pawn in someone else’s war.

“Don’t you ever wonder,” Marco whispered, his voice breaking, “what it would be like to be free? To not have to live in your shadow anymore?”

Marc’s lips curled into a smile, soft but cruel. “Freedom is a myth, Marco. Just like love. But you’re here, aren’t you? With me. In my world. Because you belong to me now.”

Marco nodded, defeated, and let the silence swallow them both whole. There was no escape. There was only Marc.

[genericpuff]

I really adore your blog! It’s was my haven when I got so…disappointed and disgusted by Lore Olympus. One feeling I noticed while reading the comic is whenever Persephone describes the mortal realm, I just felt like I wanted her to go back there. The nature looks so beautiful, she’s away from awful men, and Demeter seems tough but fair. I know Rachel likes the Underworld and Olympus as the high life, but the Mortal Realm had beautiful imagery. It just felt like loss the further she went.

Her getting to spend more time in the Mortal Realm was exactly what I was hoping for when she got sentenced to work there after the trial arc. Like obviously it's under not-so-great-conditions, but I was really hoping Rachel was gonna use it as an opportunity to actually give Persephone more character growth, and so she could prove herself as a lot of her character arc at that point revolved around her being a "B-grade goddess". We didn't get that though, it felt like a missed opportunity back then and it still feels like a missed opportunity now, especially with Persephone waxing poetic about how she doesn't know who she is like... yeah, you don't know who you are because you went from being tethered to your mother to being tethered to your husband 😭 She never got a chance to define herself as a person 😔

[toocringeforinstagram]

Epic from the perspective of someone on the other ships is like, so funny to me

I mean, imagine you have just got through the worst war of your life. Ten long years and you’re finally able to see your family again. Then your captain/commodore I guess/king says he’s going to go check out this creepy island.

Whatever, you were feeling hungry anyways. Then it’s off to a cave, where you sit around waiting for a weirdly long time until the crew of the fleet’s flagship emerge significantly worse for wear. The really nice guy who used to share his lunch with you sometimes is gone. The king is busy having an argument with thin air on his ship. Everyone is covered in blood.

Oh well, at least you can enjoy this mutton they brought back.

Then there’s a massive freaking storm and you’re literally about to die before you’re handed a harpoon and told to throw it as hard as you can at the sky? And you end up tethered to this beautiful floating island but you can’t even appreciate it because the king is busy having an argument with his first mate. It’s super awkward for everyone else.

The king disappears and returns with a cool glowing bag which these weird little creatures seem to think is treasure, but the king insists is dangerous. You shrug it off and go back to your ship.

Finally, nine days of peace! Nothing weird happens and you’re starting to believe you might actually make it home when THE FREAKING STORM COMES BACK YOU THOUGHT YOU WERE DONE WITH THIS!!

You’re blown away from your home and your family and end up in this scary place with a whole bunch of giants and a very angry Poseidon singing about a cyclops. And you’re like what?? We never blinded a cyclops?? What are you talking about?? And then before you have a chance to question it you straight up drown in a tidal wave conjured to teach someone else a lesson.

No wonder they were so mad in the underworld. When does a man become a monster?? Probably when he doesn’t even bother providing context to his men before they die!

[cherrycola27]

false god

Series Warnings: Mythology!AU. Language, alcohol, drinking. Military inaccuracies. Mutual pining, unrequited love. Allusions to and full smut. Minors DNI. 18+. Individual chapter warnings will come as needed. Banner Credit @thedroneranger

Masterlist Previous Part Next Part

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Chapter 18: Lose Control

The bed was cold without Bradley this morning. He'd left early to go to Maverick's workshop. The Bronco needed a few tune ups, and Maverick's shop had everything Bradley needed. He'd kissed you goodbye early this morning with a promise to be home by dinner. It had been a while since he'd been able to spend some time with his pseudo-father, and you encouraged him to have fun.

Resolving that you weren't going to get any more sleep, you rolled out of bed and stretched before meandering into the shower. Without Bradley in there with you, you felt the anxiety of being around water creeping in, causing you to spend less time in there than you would have liked.

You got out and dried yourself off before dragging your hand across the mirror to clear the steam.

You froze as you stared at your reflection.

There, looking back at you, was something you'd only see on other people. The neat row of numbers ticking away just above your head.

A lifetime counter.

How was this possible? You were a Goddess, never meant to die. But there, right above your brow, was the proof that you would. And what was worse is you didn't have much time. A few months. After doing the math, you realized your time would run out on your birthday. You'd barely get six months of marriage with Bradley.

You just didn't understand. It didn't make sense. But then you thought back to the cut from the mug at his aunts house. The soreness in your muscles. The fatigue you had. The bruises that seemed to come from nowhere that took ages to fade.

Something was wrong, and you needed answers.

You threw on some clothes and raced to your kitchen.

You grabbed a sprig of mint and quickly lit it. Moments later, Minthe appeared before you with worry written on her face.

"Hades." She breathed out as she took your hands. "I have horrible news, my lady."

"I'm dying." You say before she can speak again.

"How? How do you know?" Minthe asks. "I saw a lifetime counter above my head. I'm going to die on my birthday. But I don't understand. How is this possible? I thought I had one lifeline left." You say.

"Hecate and I weren't sure either. We were doing our regular check of the lifelines when we came across yours, and well—simply put, it's crumbling. It's very similar to when a mortal has a disease that kills them slowly rather than a fast snip of the line." Minthe explains to you.

"But I'm immune to mortal diseases." You insist. "Yes, we know that, which it was why we found it so strange. So we immediately consulted the Fates, and well—" Minthe sighs.

"What did they say?" You press her. "They said your lifeline is crumbling because you've spent too much time away from the Underworld and because—because you're married and tethered to a mortal." Minthe looks at you with sad eyes.

You swallow thickly. "So, if I go back to the Underworld, turn into my true form for a bit, that would help restore it?" You ask her.

"No!" She shouts at you. "Turning back into your true form takes so much of your strength. It would kill you!" She says. "The— for lack of a better term— best solution would be to ask Hera and Aphroditie to cut your tether with Bradley. That would give you enough time to complete your quest of worthiness."

"No." You state firmly. "I will not be doing that. Bradley is one of the few good things I have in my life. He is the first person to truly love me. He is my soulmates, and I will not cut our tether. If loving him means the end of my life, so be it." You tell Minthe.

"I understand, my lady. Hecate and I will see what we can do to help stop your line from crumbling. But for now, please he careful. I do not wish to see you back home unless you are sitting on your throne." Minthe says. She takes your hands and gives them a squeeze before hugging you and disappearing, leaving only the smell of mint behind.

The rest of the day, you wrestled your inner demons on whether or not you should tell Bradley. On one hand, he deserved to know. But on the other, him knowing that he was the reason you were dying, it would kill him. So, you decided not to tell him, at least not yet.

You'd give yourself a few weeks to figure it out.

.............

You could tell that someone was wrong the moment you and Bradley stepped onto base Monday morning. The air was charged with negativity.

You'd no sooner made it through the doors of the building before you were being pulled into a briefing room with Cyclone, Maverick, and Warlock.

"Gentleman," you began, "to what do I owe the pleasure?"

"Commander Bradshaw," Cyclone cleared his throat, "we have credible intelligence that there is a cargo ship in the Pacific right now that is bringing a large amount of illegal weapons a bomb making materials to a nation that doesn't have our best interests at heart. It's currently being escorted by a foreign Naval aircraft carrier, which provides surveillance for it. We have been asked to take a small team out to destroy both the cargo ship and the carrier." He tells you.

"Admiral, when I came here, it was for a teaching position. I was brought here to train the next generation of aviators and to take the Daggers from good to the best. I did not come here to lead another death-wish mission." You say.

"Hades. We aren't asking you to lead the mission." Maverick chimes in. "Then what are you asking me?" You turn towards him.

"We are asking you how you would fly it. What would you do." Warlock tells you as he pulls up a graphic. You study the picture in go over the scenarios in your head.

"You're going to need five jets. Three singles and two doubles." You say after a long while. "Why?" Cyclone asks you.

A single and a double to drop a coordinated bomb strike on the cargo ship at the same time another pair strikes the aircraft carrier and then a single to provide back up in case you're spotted before taking them out and they launch their own airstrike." You reply.

They shake their heads, whispering amongst themselves.

"And of the Daggers, who would you pick to fly this?" Warlock asks you.

"Hangman, Coyote, Phoenix, Bob, Payback, and Fanboy. Rooster as mission leader." You tell them.

"And why Rooster for mission leader?" Cyclone asks you. "Because he listens. He cares. He looks out for the whole team." You tell them.

"Well then, who would fly as the spare?"

"Me. Obviously." You say without hesitation.

"Commander Bradshaw, I'm sure you're well aware of Navy regulations and why you can't do that." Cyclone sighs.

"Admiral, with all due respect, I don't give a fuck about the Navy regulations." You chuckle. Everyone's eyes go wide.

"With the information you've given me, there is no way that our planes aren't spotted before delivering the payload. The other carrier will have time to launch aircrafts. The Daggers are going to need a spare ready to launch and go straight into a dogfight or tactical position. Who else has more experience in that than me? Furthermore, there is not a pilot, living or dead, in the Navy that's better than me. I'm not sending my friends and my husband into a situation like this without the best possible backup." You state.

"Well, Hades. If you're the best pilot in the Navy, why are you not naming yourself as the mission leader?" Cyclone challenges you.

"For the same reason you never put your best batter first in the lineup, you need someone to clean up the mess everyone else makes." You lean back in your chair.

"Commander Bradshaw, while your reasoning is sound. I can not send you on a mission of this caliber with your husband. I'm already bending the rules by keeping you on the same squadron!" Cyclone tells you sternly.

"Then I guess you'll have to find another squadron to fly this mission, sir." You chuckle.

"Excuse me?" Cyclone grits out, surging forward in his chair.

"Admiral Simpson, as you know, I have thirteen confirmed kills and zero failed missions. Do you know what thirteen confirmed kills and no mission failures get you in the Navy?" You ask him as you cock you head to the side. The men across from you are silent, their eyes fixed on you.

"I'll tell you what it gets you. It gets you a lot of friends. Powerful friends who are grateful for your work and owe you a favor. And I won't hesitate to go to one of those friends who out ranks you cash in one of those favors. Face it, you need me and the Daggers to fly this mission because no one else is as good as we are. So, either you bend the rules even more, or we all walk away. Your choice, Simpy." You click your tongue before crossing your arms.

You can see the rage in Cyclone's eyes. He knows you're right. Everyone in the room knows you're right. Cyclone holds eye contact with you, waiting for you to break, to call your bluff. But you're a goddamm Goddess who has never bowed down to a mortal and you're not about to start now.

"Fine." Cyclone breathes out when he realizes you're not bluffing. "I thought you'd see it my way, Admiral. Now, when do we leave?" You ask the men in the room.

"Friday. We will tell the rest of the Daggers today. That means every moment from now until we ship out is spent training. Is that understood?" Admiral Bates says.

"Understood. Now, if there isn't nothing else, I'd like to be dismissed to regroup with the rest of my team." Bates nods his head once, and you get up and exit the room.

..............

The news of mission doesn't settle well with the Daggers. You can tell they feel under prepared and caught off guard. You sympathize with them. Being given a mission of this caliber on such short notice, it's scary.

The car ride home with Bradley is silent. Neither of you know what to say.

The rest of the week goes by in a blur.

Soon, you're standing in a parking lot holding your husband's hand as you watch the rest of the Daggers, and the crew say goodbye to their loved ones.

Reuben holds his wife close, and Bob kisses his wife while cradling his son in his arms. Mickey's mom and dad hug him while Nat and Javy say goodbye to both of their families. Jake's girlfriend Jasmine clings to him as he buries his face in her natural curls and kisses her head. Maverick and Penny whisper hushed and tearful goodbyes before breaking apart and boarding behind you and Bradley.

You wish you could go up to all of the families that your friends are leaving behind and tell them that they are all going to be okay. You've checked. You know. The only person who might not come back for this mission is you. You'll keep them safe. You vow that to yourself.

You've decided to still not tell Bradley about your impending death. He has enough on his plate. You know that you probably aren't supposed to, but the two of you share a bunk. And even though the bed inside it is barely big enough for Bradley, every night, you're crammed in there with him, practically on top of him, soaking in every moment the two of you have together.

The night before the misson, you and the rest of the Daggers gather in the mess hall. You eat and talk, and it's almost carefree. But you and everyone else no better than to let your guard down.

That night, in that shared, cramped bunk, Bradley makes love to you like it's the last time he will ever get to hold you, and you love him back just as hard and just as fierce and with every ounce of your soul.

It's the early hours of the morning when the two of you finish. You both know you should sleep, but neither of you can.

"Everyone is going to make it. Right?" Bradley asks you as the two of you lay naked in the dark. You turn on your side using his tattooed bicep as a pillow. He drapes your leg over his hip and begins to trace the lines and patterns of your tattoos that he knows so well. Including the rooster that now adorns your hip.

"Yes. I promise." You say trying to make eye contact with him. It's dark, but you can still see the lines of his face relax. "I wish we could tell them, tell their families." Bradley says. "I know, me too." You agree.

Bradley cups your chin and brings your lips to his, and kisses you tenderly. "Why'd you name me mission leader?" He asks you. You'd been waiting for that question. "Because you're the best person for the job. You'll take care of everyone." You tell him. He opens his mouth to speak, maybe to argue with you, but a yawn comes out instead.

You both agree that you should rest. You need to be sharp for tomorrow.

A few minutes later, Bradley is fast asleep. Soft snores fall from his lips. You lay there in the darkness, gently tracing over his features. His forehead, his nose, his cheeks, his lips, his scars. You're committing all of them to memory just in case. Your lifetime counter hasn't changed, but you can't shake the feeling in the pit of your stomach that this is the last time you'll hold Bradley in your arms.

..............

The salt air stings your face as you stand on the deck of the carrier with your helmet in your arms. The sea breeze whips the stray strands of hair that refuse to stay pulled back around your face.

You and the rest of the squad have gone over the plan and your planes more times than you can count.

You linger at the side of your jet, looking at your name, Cmdr. Y/N 'Hades' Bradshaw, in the thick, black, and blocky letters.

You hear a siren indicating that it's almost time. Everyone starts scrambling on deck. Bradley finds you and grabs you by the shoulders, forcing you to face him.

"We all come home." He says. "What?" You ask him, looking confused.

"We all come home." He emphasizes. You know exactly what he means when he says that. Bradley has your number. He knows that you wouldn't hesitate to sacrifice yourself for him or the others if it came down to it.

"Bradley—" You breathed out, but he cuts you off.

"No buts, Angel. We all come home. Six planes in, six planes out." He leaves no room for argument. "We are leaving this boat with eight souls. We are coming back with eight of them, too." Bradley says, as if speaking it into the universe will somehow make it true.

You check his counter. It's still got the same fifty years it had earlier today. You sigh and nod your head, trying to ignore the feeling in the pit of your stomach.

................

Sitting in your plane as you listened to what was happening in the mission was torture. So far, everything was going according to plan.

Overwatch hadn't picked up anything unusual, and the weather made flying smooth. Maybe you were wrong, and maybe you wouldn't even have to deploy, and everyone would land back on the carrier safely, and they would unload you out of the catapult and tonight you and Bradley would stay up having wild celebratory sex.

But the idea of all of that was soon banished from your mind as you heard Coyote call about a rouge strike team.

You lowered the canopy, ready to be launched at a moments notice.

Your heart thrummed in your chest, beating so loud it filled your ears to the point that you almost didn't hear Cyclone screaming for you to launch.

You did so quickly. Your F/A- 18 sliced through the air as you pushed the throttle forward on your way to rescue your team. You were a few minutes out, and you could hear them calling out moves and counter moves to help each other stay safe.

Hangman was out of out of flares, and you could hear Bradley saying that he was coming to cover him. The closer you got to the team, the more smoke and gunfire you could see.

You quickly lined up a shot before sending a missle through the plane of one of the bandits that was on Phoenix. She and Bob thanked you as you circled back around. You directed them to head back to the boat and for Coyote, Payback, and Fanboy to follow them. You would help Bradley and Jake. There was only one other plane and you knew you could take them.

Jake called out desperately that he was out of ammo and missiles, and Bradley was almost out of flares. Thankfully, you were able to force the pilot of the enemy plane near some cliffs of some tiny island that ran along the shores' edge.

It confused their navigation enough for you to take them out. Quickly, you, Bradley, and Jake all made your way back towards the safety of the carrier while breathing a sigh of relief.

Only, it was short-lived because moments later, another bandit was on Jake's tail.

Before you could do anything, Bradley swooped in to protect him, using the last of his flares to throw the missile attack of, giving Jake time to fly ahead to safety, leaving Bradley with the bandit on his tail.

You were out of missiles and down to a few rounds of ammo left, but them enemy was locked on and so close to Bradley that if you fired, you might risk taking out your husband. You didn't know what to do.

Then, before you could think of a plan, you hear Bradley cry out that the other pilot and missile lock on him, and he had no way to deflect it.

You told him to quickly get as much altitude as he could. Bradley listened and jetted back up towards the clouds, giving you a chance to fire at the other pilot.

But you weren't fast enough. The enemy pilot was able to fire a final shot before plummeting into the water below. The shot was just close enough to clip the tail of Bradley's plane causing him to lose control.

You screamed for him to eject, panic setting in because you couldn't see his lifetime counter. You had no clue if this was the end for him. All you could think about was how it wasn't supposed to be this way. It wasn't supposed to end like this.

Thankfully, you heard Bradley eject and saw him burst from his cockpit before seeing the bright orange of his chute open.

But as he fell, you realized he was falling too fast. His parachute was tangled. If you didn't do something, he would surely crash into the sea below and die.

So, you ignored the warning that Minthe gave you because you knew what you had to do. You didn't think. You acted as you let the fire of your true goddess form burn through your veins one final time.

Taglist: @shanimallina87 @teacupsandtopgun @wkndwlff @roosterforme @daggerspare-standingby @dakotakazansky @startrekfangirl2233 @hecate-steps-on-me @na-ta-sh-aa @katieshook02 @je-suis-prest-rachel @soulmates8 @diorrfairy @eli2447 @xoxabs88xox @djs8891 @roosters-girl @sebsxphia @rosiahills22 @dempy @callsign-magnolia @alchemxx @gretagerwigsmuse @withahappyrefrain @lt-spork @bradshawsbaby @seitmai @kmc1989 @bcarolinablr @roosterisdaddy36 @itsdesiree86 @waywardhunter95 @hisredheadedgoddess28 @whatislovevavy @asshlyyyy @inkandarsenic @tomanybandstolove @jiminie-08 @dingochef @skipchat @sunlightmurdock @princess76179 @schoollover @cheyrenee @briseisgone @angelbabyange @marvelouslyme96

[scarabjewels]

Corpse Bride had the PERFECT ending.

SUE ME.

The number of people who wanted Emily to be Victor's endgame, with myself included, have a similar issue or lack of growth with Emily's arc throughout the movie.

Clinging onto the idea of love, to the point of forcing it onto someone. I'm calling us and her delusional.

She also went through a sort of roundabout response of the stages of grief: grieving her life.

Shock and Denial

She knows she's dead, and yet she delusionally believed she was still a young bride waiting for her groom

Emily was murdered and Barkis, her now ex- fiance, took her dreams with her life. My theory is that after she died, she had to grieve his betrayal first. She probably coped by clinging on to her dream, convinced that she had just found the wrong guy, and that the right one would come eventually. While we see she is popular in the underworld, she was not able to find a young enough suitor or one that sparked her interest.

She also exhibited extremely idealistic scenarios of her finding the right guy. Hey, the girl was murdered the last time she took a chance on an impulse. While her pattern of falling hard fast still exists, she probably convinced herself that Victor was better because she had no dowry to present for him to take and leave her, yet he still asked her to mary him (despite being an accident), so it must be "true love". This is the kind of behaviour a loottt of people with reoccuring similar toxic relationships tell themselves, I know because I was one of them.

Emily was our hot dead girl with the delulu issues. She was in denial of the reality of the situation, even when she was aware of this.

Pain and Guilt

Notice how when Emily has a fit about Victor seeing Victoria, she said the words "you should've thought of that before you asked me to marry you" and he responds "don't you see it was a mistake, I would never marry you". The silent blinking and realization of Victor's lack of tact, out of so much frustration, and Emily's small glimpse of what kind of person she had become, was perfection. She obviously knows she was holding him captive, but she was denying the truth until the wedding. It was painful for Emily, but her reality is so twisted that she can only see her pain before Victor.

The essence of guilt came when she was given the option to poison Victor to forever be tethered to his marriage to her. With guilt, there is kindness, and her kind heart shined before guilt. She couldn't bear to kill him for her dreams because she genuinely cared and loved him still. Another time was the wedding scene. She had second thoughts and finally realized that she was taking Victor and Victoria's chance.

Anger and Bargaining

When she caught Victor seeing Victoria, not only was she pained, she was blaming and angry at Victor, as in her eyes he was cheating on her, when all he did was to escape from her, because duh, he is held against his will.

Going back to their argument, while Emily felt jealous and envy, she subtly wished she was alive. In the lamenting musical scene "Tears to Shed," she accepted her death a long time ago but envied Victoria's main asset that she can never compete with: being alive.

Depression to upward turn

Emily's lamentation of being dead and that Victor will eventually leave her, being lonely again, was evident during the Tears to Shed song and just before the infamous chemistry induced piano scene.

While we see her depressed, she had calmed down and was able to be serenaded into a neutral mood again.

Emily was in this stage completely when Victor and her were gathering everyone and getting ready to get married upstairs.

Reconstruction and working through

Emily was in her full delusions of her dreams finally come true, but her reconstruction stage flashed when she was delivering her vow and saw Victoria watching.

My own little headcanon is that she saw herself in Victoria, and she saw herself as Barkis, taking her dreams away.

She stopped Victor drinking the poisoned wine and finally spoke her truth, the raw truth that Emily is seeing the reality she is in and what she has become.

Her dreams were taken, and now she is the one taking from someone else, and she hated it. She loved Victor so much, but he wasn't hers. She brought the Vs (keehee) together, deciding to call off the marriage.

Now, facing her past is probably her final stage of reconstruction. She meets her ex-fiance and is able to protect Victor from him in the midst of the two men's showdown. She was absolutely disgusted and hated his presence, pointing the sword and telling him to get out.

The karma probably hit best when Barkis drank the poisoned wine, his last words showing how full he is of himself. He was dealt with by Emily's underworld friends soon after he died.

Acceptance

While Victor and Victoria were finally in each other's arms, Emily smiled with bittersweetness and began to walk away. Victor stopped her, attempting to keep his promise. Emily reassured he already did. He set her free, and now it is her turn to set him free.

She literally walked the aisle alone. She accepted the truth, the past, and the present. Her only future was to move on.

As a sign of moving on, she tossed the bouquet that eventually landed on Victoria's hands. With her last breath, she bursted into butterflies. Finally free.

My Conclusion: Delulu got her the Solulu

I think a major theme in Emily's arc is letting her delusion get the best of her, almost portrayed humanely. Just an observation, aside from the art style of Tim Burton, Emily looked lowkey deranged? While Victor looked tired and scared, Victoria had wonder and curiosity, and Emily looked low key crazy and held on to what little sanity she had left. I think the reason why I couldn't see that aspect as much is because she also looked so beautiful, sounded sweet, and looked delicate, albeit being a red flag and literally a horrifying, decaying reanimated corpse.

Corpse Bride really was Emily's story, told through Victor's perspective. Let's be honest, if it was from Emily's perspective, it would be similar to 500 days of summer, an unreliable narration from a delusional protagonist. That is the difference between her, Victor, and Victoria. They saw what was actually going on.

Victor was already a developed character, in my opinion. He was just a young man living with anxiety. He liked Victoria at first sight and wanted to get married. He was kind and musically inclined. He was much more of an established person than say a character needing another character for their development like Joel from Eternal Sunshine (that's a read and I meant it). So was Victoria, she was a young woman who wanted to get married, looked forward to getting to know her betrothed more, and was quite outspoken and courageous. They were just bothe caught up in an arc. Emily, albeit the different girl, was probably the one who needed a manic pixie dream man, and she got Victor. She really needed character development.

One more theme the movie has is what a broken heart can do to you. Emily loved and was betrayed. She clung to an impossible dream even after death. Victor saw the opportunity for a rebound the minute he heard Victoria was going to get married to another man. Victoria was in total shock when she was going to be betrothed to someone else and accepted to help her parents, but also stood up for herself from Barrkus the minute he showed his intentions of marrying her.

I really loved Emily realising what was happening, it took her a good minute but she got there. I also loved that Emily and Victoria never got into some kind of argument or showdown, seriously I feel like that would have happened in early to mid 2010 fantasy romances, ehem Twilight (I hate the story and the characters but it was entertaining hot garbage). It was a graceful story of love and let go.

I'm sure we have a collective head canon of Victor's and Victoria's first daughter to be named Emily.

[squidtriggered]

Boyd "Boy" Merrick boyd, a nonchalant and distant figure in the streets of saint louis. he is a small artist and full-time waiter who uses both as mere distraction's. his blood comes from a long line of criminals who left an unfortaunte mark on boyd's concious, with that he's determined to make amends for his families treacherous lives. but of course, not without a price.

The Merricks a wealthy and infamous family, tangled in the twisted web of secrecy, crime, and artistry. at the helm of this clandestine empire stood Alexander "Alex" Merrick, a man whose charm was as sharp as his wit. A professional gambler by trade and a screw-loose artist by nature, Alexander navigated the treacherous waters of the underworld with the finesse of a seasoned captain. His speakeasy, hidden in the heart of St. Louis, served as a den of vice where the rules of society held no sway. Yet, behind the façade of prosperity and power, lay a man haunted by his own demons. Alexander's organized crime ventures had earned him notoriety and a legion of rivals who coveted his throne. His mastery of persuasion was his shield against the encroaching darkness, but even the most cunning minds could not escape the shadows forever. Beside him stood Elouise "El" Merrick, a woman whose innocence was as radiant as her husband's darkness. Devoted to her art and oblivious to the true extent of Alexander's sins, Elouise found solace within the confines of their home, shielded from the harsh realities of the world outside. Her silence spoke volumes, a testament to the fear that gripped her heart and tethered her to her husband's side. Their son, Boyd, was a reluctant witness to the unfolding tragedy of his family's descent into madness. Denied the chance to roam free by his parents' iron grip, Boyd's childhood was one of isolation and silent observation. He watched as his father's drunken rages tore through the fragile façade of their domestic bliss, leaving behind a trail of broken dreams and shattered illusions. And beneath the surface of his silence, a simmering rage lay dormant, waiting for the spark that would ignite it into flames. That spark came with the sudden disappearance of Alexander and Elouise, leaving Boyd alone in the world, a target for the adversaries who sought to settle old scores.

[audreyscribes]

Ω PJO DEMIGOD HEADCANONS: ♟EREBUS: PERSONIFICATION OF DARKNESS 🌑

Author’s note: *put head into hands* Alright, so I may or may not have went off from the usual formula (Do I even have a formula for writing these at this point?) and I think I may have made the primordial demigods here more cryptid cause they’re the literal by-product of primordial beings that are also half-mortal? I won’t be including the usual blurbs at the ending cause all of them are probably pushing the word limit Tumblr has but worry not, I made up for it by putting more storylines into the whole thing. PRIMORDIAL DEMIGODS MASTERLIST: [LINK]

You’re a child of darkness. Quite literally. You were born in darkness and rose out of darkness; figuratively and literally. You were wrapped in the clothes made from darkness, a comfort to you as you were brought into a world with a cycle of light and darkness. You were born almost alongside Nyx’s own demigod, Erebus following Nyx’s example; however while Nyx’s demigod was born from curiosity, Erebus sired a demigod that while he was born alongside Nyx, her own child must have to be with them as well.  

You grew up relatively well and peacefully in the darkness, hidden under Erebus’ cloak of darkness. He showed you his domain of darkness, and the darkest region of the underworld where you saw and learned from the ghosts of the dead. 

One night, you were guided to meet the child of Nyx who is your other half, with Erebus telling you that much like him and Nyx were a pair, the two of you were a pair as well. 

You and the child of Nyx stuck together, with you either leading them somewhere or them following you, or you following them as they went from one place to another. This was true when the child of Nyx was ordered by her mother to join forces with the demigod child of Gaea and Tartarus. You knew the Nyx demigod yearned more for Nyx’s affection so they would follow Nyx’s order, regardless of their own violation and feelings. You decided to follow the Nyx demigod, hoping to protect her from whatever may happen; you only can hope that they would remember they could always hide in the safety of your darkness. 

As you can imagine, you can wield the darkness. It can range from simple shadow traveling to manipulation of it. However, your special trait is that whenever there is darkness, you can wield it; within objects to mould like clay, absorbing it, or even manipulating and peering the darkness within others. You can travel through the darkness but careful walking through it; unlike the shadows who have a tether to the world, the darkness is an entirely different domain. It is unexplorable, hides many things, and can cling to you in ways you will not be able to know.

As a part of Erebus and wearing the cloak of darkness cut from Erebus himself, you can relatively travel through the darkness in most domains (the exception of its opposite like light itself), but be careful in bringing others along with you for they may be lost into the darkness or be affected in the ways. 

You tell this power to the child of Tartarus whose power is similar to you, warning them when you both bring those who don’t belong in the same realms as you do (the other being the child of Nyx). When you warn them of the consequences, you are confused when you see the look of uncertainty and fear on their face, before they ask what happens if someone borrows your cloak of darkness. You mention that it would protect them to a degree but it would be little good if they’ve been already affected by it and continue to pursue it. 

Another ability you may have falls under Erebus’ other domain; the darkest part of the underworld. Many souls end up casted into the darkness for their crimes or end up lost in it. In a sense, you can summon the dead but those especially within those that reside in your godly father’s domain. 

A key feature about you, much like the child of Tartarus, the blacks of your eyes seemingly go forever with how dark it is. However, what different is that light doesn’t seem to touch you in a way like others. When the light touches your hair, it doesn’t shine or change like others do; your shadows seemingly dark than others. Fortunately, people don’t usually notice your shadows too much to see something is odd; and you can play off your hair being dyed which also doesn’t shine or filter light like natural hair does.

[moonagedaydreamsofrhiannon]

The parallels between Yellowjackets and the myth of Persephone and Hades…

The Yellowjackets are Persephone, ripped from their old life in the sun, and trapped in hell. The Wilderness is both Hades and the underworld itself. Both the kingdom and the ruler. The only way to survive is to eat the fruit, but by consuming the pomegranate seeds, they’ve sealed their fate. Once they’ve tasted the food of the dead, they can never leave. A piece of them will forever remain trapped in the Wilderness, always calling them back. Those who didn’t partake in the feast never made it out, but at least they found escape in death. Those who made it out will never truly escape, they will be tethered to the Wilderness for the rest of time. This is a vow that can never be broken. This is a tie that can never be cut. This is the price of survival. Eat and be consumed, or abstain and be eaten.

[ananxiousgenz]

TPP HADESTOWN AU PART 8: song for a caged lovebird

IT'S PART 8 WHAAAT this is absolutely insane, i'm having so much fun rn <3

this is a lil shorter but it's very interesting, so as usual, enjoy

EDIT THAT I FORGOR: this is now gonna be titled "song for a caged lovebird" from here on out, thanks for the idea jay <3

all my tpp homies in the house!!! if you are in my walls, please leave (jk i love you i'll bring you snacks)!!!! @smidgen-of-hotboy @ceaseless-watchers-special-girl @one-joe-spoopy @urjover @waters-and-the-wilde @demonic-panini

His eyes fluttered open at the sound of the door. It was dark.

He wasn’t quite sure of the time or his location. He was laying on something soft, he knew that much. A bed, maybe? He had been sleeping, or so he thought. He felt groggy, disoriented, still tethered to the world of dreams by a song that he couldn’t quite seem to shake out of his mind. Was it his own voice singing it, or someone else's? He almost thought he heard a train whistle in the distance, but knew the train line hadn’t run in months, not since the rails had frozen over with ice so thick it couldn’t be melted.

The world felt so strange. There was a heavy knot lying in the pit of his stomach, like something horrible had happened, but he couldn’t quite tell what. Was it his own doing? Someone else’s? He felt almost completely certain it had to do with someone going missing, but no more details sprang to mind.

The person who had entered the room was talking. He didn’t process what they said. 

He tried to sit up to face them. He knew whatever was being said was important. He had to pay attention. But a wave of dizziness overtook him, and he fell back down. They asked a question, and when he didn’t respond, they turned and left.

He let them go. He didn’t have the energy to stop them or ask them to repeat themselves. Sleep was already tugging his eyelids closed again. He let it come, and gently slipped back into a world of dreams.

—------------------------------

Far below the ground, there was a factory town.

This town was old, old enough that no one could really remember when it began. All anyone really knew was that it was hell on Earth. Giant metal works spun rusty gears through all hours of the day and night, and blast furnaces and refineries threw their dragon-fire heat out into the town. Housing was small and cramped and never used, stacked like smashed crates in the rare cooler corner of town, right next to the assembly lines for cars and TV screens. Mines worked overtime to produce rare gemstones and pure gold, and on the outskirts of town, there was a wall. And that was where most of the people worked.

There were a lot of people. Maybe millions, if one really took the time to count. Backs bent to their work, eyes milky white with focus, pickaxe or shovel or wheelbarrow in hand. Different ages and races and genders, but they all had two things in common: they kept their heads down, and they belonged to the king of this land.

Some had signed their souls away in an attempt to avoid their own death. Some had done it in the name of a loved one. Some had even done it in the hopes of getting paid. But that didn’t matter now. None of them could remember anything about their lives before Hadestown anyway. They did what they were told, and they had been told to forget and to work.

So they did.

At the center of town, in a grand office in a high tower, staring out a window at his beautiful city, was the king.

He had always been a crafter, an inventor of sorts. But this was on a far greater scale than anything he had ever imagined when he was a child. He was proud of his beauty, his greatest creation. But it had always been missing something to him. As grand as his factories were, and as many souls as he and his executives had gained to carry out the work, something was just never quite right. He had always hungered after something else, something from his past he hadn’t been able to take with him into the underworld.

Now, though. Now he had finally acquired the missing piece, and everything would finally be perfect.

One of the executives appeared in the doorway behind him. “The target you requested is nearly here, my associate.”

He nodded, not turning away from the window. “Very good. Bring him up to the office as soon as he gets here. I need to speak with him.”

“As you wish, my associate.”

He grinned a bit to himself. It had been years, but he was certain the man he was bringing here would be happy to see him again. They had been so close when they were younger, and he had never forgotten the time they spent together. He hoped that, even for old times sake, the man would want to stay with him a while. He hoped he would be impressed by everything he had created in his absence. It was all for him, after all.

The door creaked open behind him. “You have a visitor, my associate.”

He finally turned away from the window to face the door and watched as the man stumbled through into the office.

The years had certainly changed him. He was tall now, not short as he had been, but still as thin as ever, hair dark and messy and heavy circles beneath his eyes. One lens of his glasses was shattered, his clothes were ragged and torn, and there was a large dark stain cascading down the front of his shirt, coming from a mostly closed wound on his neck. Gods, even looking as terrible as he did, he was still as handsome as he had been when they were kids. He looked tired and frightened and horribly angry, but as soon as he saw him, he went completely pale in disbelief, jaw working furiously as he struggled to find something to say.

The man by the window grinned. “Hello, Petya. It’s been a while.”