Demon’s Haven 9
I’m also working on Hazeshift I prommy but I’m just feeling this series again, though I’m a little rusty and tryna get back into these characters, so sorry if the writing or interactions feel a little stilted
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masterlist
warnings: blood, past torture, description of wounds, basically just more comf but they are both sad and awkward about it
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The demon seemed relieved when Haven finally finished washing the wounds on his chest, but it was a short-lived comfort. She moved behind him to start cleaning the blood from the wreckage of his back and knew the worst was yet to come. The demon had been doing well so far, wincing only slightly without uttering a whimper of pain as Haven had dabbed at the cuts and burns on his chest. Looking at his back, such a thing seemed unavoidable now.
She cringed at the sight. Sitting down in the chair behind him, Haven took stock of the damage. There was almost too much blood for her to even see where the wounds were. She couldn’t tell where one injury began and one ended, as if they all melded into his flesh so that there wasn’t a speck of unbroken skin. Long, ropy scars dragged from the tops of his shoulders and down his body, ending at the small of his back, crisscrossed over one another.
Haven sighed. This was not going to be pleasant. For either of them.
The demon’s head turned slightly to the side, as if he meant to catch a glimpse of her, but his hair had fallen into his eyes so it was likely not a clear picture.
“Are you alright?” Haven asked.
She knew he wasn’t, but what else was she supposed to say? How did she comfort someone who had been through something as horrific as this?
The demon nodded lightly, ignoring what Haven could not. Red stripes gouged his back, stretching from his shoulders and moving downwards. Ropes of bloodied wounds overlayed on top of each other, some healed more than not, others fresh and weeping. A grotesque sight that made Haven want to gag, though she swallowed and contained herself.
She wanted to look away. She wanted to run from the room and forget this had ever happened. That this was something that could happen to someone.
But she was done with fearing for nothing—the demon had been hurt already, and there was nothing to undo that fact. Only to cleanse the wounds and bandage them would they disappear from her view.
“This might sting.”
It would do a whole lot more than that. The wounds that littered his skin…Haven didn’t want to believe they could be from a whip, but she didn’t know how else to describe them than as lashes.
The demon nodded again.
Haven touched the wet cloth to the back of the demon’s shoulder and instantly he flinched, drawing out a hiss. Haven drew her hand back.
“Sorry,” the both of them said at the same time.
A beat. Neither of them spoke, neither of them moved. The demon clenched and unclenched a fist.
“Silver,” he said.
Haven waited for him to explain, but as the seconds passed and turned into minutes, she realized he wasn’t going to. She touched the cloth to his shoulder again and ignored the flinch this time, as there was no way to avoid it. She brushed the cloth along a long red gash, trailing in between his shoulder blades and down to the small of his back. Again. And again.
“It’s the silver,” the demon said. “The angel liked the silver-lined whip because it leaves scars.”
Haven paused. Lifted her hand away from his skin. Blinked. She had no idea how to even respond to such a thing.
“That’s horrible.”
The only words she could manage, the only consolation to a man now forever marked by what had happened to him that no healing powers would ever be able to fix. The demon seemed to feel this knowledge as keenly as she did, for he trembled under her fingertips. His skin jumped as tiny tremors ran through him, muscles taut and unyielding.
Haven set her cloth in the bowl of water, already pink with blood. She moved from behind the demon and sat in the chair facing him, and saw that he was crying. Silent tears rolled down his cheeks and his breaths hitched, but he bit his tongue to keep himself from crying out.
“You don’t have to do that,” Haven said.
The demon tilted his face up to look at her, a few more tears escaping from those viridian eyes. He blinked at her. Droplets of water caught in his lashes like morning dew.
“Keep quiet, I mean,” Haven clarified. “Cry all you want. Scream, if you must. I don’t mind.”
The demon blinked a few times, his face pinched in confusion. “You would…like me to scream?”
Haven’s eyes widened. “No, no, that’s not what I meant!”
“I can, if you’d like me to. The angel said it was a pleasing sound, though she was rather more vicious than you.”
Haven exhaled, seconds away from pinching the bridge of her nose in exasperation. “I meant, you don’t have to be quiet! You’ve been hurt, terribly and irrevocably, so you can react to it however you want to, and you needn’t feel ashamed or that you must soften your grief in front of me.”
“Oh.”
The only word that fell from the demon’s lips, plainly and without intonation. He stared at her, watching her again as if she were the only thing he had to keep him from falling into an endless abyss. Haven leaned in and wrapped her arms around him, making sure not to startle him as she enveloped him in a hug. She felt the demon lean into her and nuzzle his face into the crook of her neck, just as he’d done when she’d helped him from the cave she’d summoned him to. Some of the tension in his body dissolved, and while he still shook either with fear or with pain, Haven took it as an improvement that he could find some modicum of comfort with her.
After releasing each other, Haven found her hands red with blood. The demon opened his mouth, no doubt to apologize, but Haven shushed him before he could. She washed her hands with her cleaning cloth before dropping it back in the bowl of water.
“I could draw you a bath, if you’d like? It’d help you get clean faster than this, and it’d probably feel better too.”
The demon drew back from her as if she’d just told him she was going to waterboard him. The thought occurred to her that, given what had already happened to him, that wasn’t too far out of the realm of possibility for him to believe.
Haven held her hands up, palms out, to reassure him she meant no harm. “Just a bath. Nothing to hurt. No holy water. Just cleaning.”
The demon hesitated, choosing his words carefully. “And you won’t…try to drown me?”
Haven really hated that her suspicions were correct.
“Of course not,” she said, offering him a tight smile.
She held out a hand to him, which he took shakily in his own. Haven wrapped his arm around her shoulders so that he could lean on her and they made their way up the stairs. It was a slow procession due to his broken ribs, and that every time he whimpered, Haven wanted to stop, but knew they had to keep going since it would do neither of them any good being stranded halfway up the stairwell.
Haven pushed open the door to her bedroom and wished she’d had the foresight to pick her things up off the floor beforehand. The demon didn’t seem to mind. His eyes had glazed over, hazy with pain and exhaustion. The night had been tough on him with the journey here. Being thrown from the front door by her protection ward she’d foolishly forgotten about and then being made to sit while Haven fruitlessly tried to scrub the blood off him with damp cloths from the kitchen had likely exhausted him beyond what he could reasonably stand.
“I’m sorry,” Haven found herself saying.
She wished she could convey just how sorry she was in those words, but didn’t know how else to say it. I’m sorry you were tortured. I’m sorry you were hurt so terribly. I’m sorry I didn’t help you when I first saw you, that I doubted you, that I don’t know how to help you, that you’ll have to live with these scars for the rest of your life and all the comfort you have is me when you deserve so much more—
The demon shook his head. “The cell I was held in was far dirtier than this, so pay it no mind.”
Haven found her cheeks reddening. She’d meant to apologize for not letting him rest as she’d wanted to get his wounds cleaned first, but huh. It seemed he had noticed the mess of her room after all.
Turning her gaze away from the wreck of her floor, she lead the demon into her bathroom en-suite. Sat him down on a little round stool she had by the door. Fetched some water for the bath and a few towels. Busied herself with getting everything ready, trying not to think about what she was doing and how she was likely breaking so many rules of what a good witch should not do.
Making a contract with a demon? Check. Letting a demon out of the summoning circle? Check. Bringing said demon not only into her home, but into her bedroom? Double check.
Oh well. She’d never particularly considered herself a stickler for the rules.
A quick spell, and the water was heated, good and steaming. Haven plucked a bottle from the windowsill next to the tub and dripped a bit of floral oil into the water, hoping the scent of lavender would soothe the demon enough that he wouldn’t panic at the thought of being left alone for however long it took for him to wash.
Haven looked back at him and saw his head lolled to the side, resting on the wall next to where he sat. His shoulders had lost their tension and his hands no longer fidgeted restlessly. No more tremors wracked his body, fraught with pain and terror. Haven stood motionless, not wanting to disturb him when he was clearly so exhausted, but it was as if he sensed the lack of energy where there previously had been an abundance of, and his eyes flickered open.
Blearily, his gaze found hers. He lifted his head from the wall and Haven made her way over to him with a towel.
“Here, for when you’re done,” she said, then placed it to the side of the stool he sat on.
The demon looked at it, then to her, then to the bath. Haven moved to help him up, then drew back when she was sure he wouldn’t fall without her support.
“Well, I’ll be waiting outside if you need me.”
Haven made to leave. She’d barely touched the doorknob when she heard the demon voice a single word, small and fearful.
“Stay.”
Haven whirled around. “I’m not going far.”
The demon squeezed his eyes shut, clenching his hands into fists. “Please,” he said, forcing the word from his lips like it pained him to do so. “Please just…” He opened his eyes and fixed them on hers. “I don’t want to be alone.”
He stood there, body rigid, barely holding himself upright without her help. Bruises painted his skin like he were abstract art and the holy water that had been drawn on him trailed lines across his chest and shoulders and even around his neck. Scars—thick bands around both of his wrists—were inflamed and red. Even more Haven couldn’t see lined his back, a permanent reminder.
Haven nodded. she could do at least that much.
“Okay. I’ll stay.”
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