#what is love except a litany against death. what is fear except the embrace of it.

[cryptocism]

one of many compelling devils minion things 2 me is how it starts out as a horror story from daniel's pov and a romance from armands. like daniel gets tortured and stalked and deals with every possible moral & ethical inner conflict Especially wrt his own desires and self disgust, meanwhile armand has decided to cast himself in the role of manic pixie dream girl. (emphasis on manic)

and then as soon as armand realizes his remaining choices are to turn daniel into a vampire or let him die, there is a Hard Reversal and suddenly armand is living his worst nightmare while daniel is granted his greatest wish.

tvc is full of almosts and parallels but i do love the specific brand of tragedy inherent in the genre disconnect of the dm relationship. theyre perfect for each other and horrible for each other and they can never and will never be on the same page. any change you could make to their stories to make the relationship actually function healthily would necessitate an irrevocable & irreconcilable change in character. their love cant fix or change the people that they are. they keep loving each other anyway. it kills them both but sustains them like a curse. do u see??? do u see.

[dreamsheartstory]

Anya/Raven/Luna, H

First, this got ridiculously long (like nearly 4k)... so under the cut or go over to Ao3. I know this one starts out rough but bear with me guys, (spoilers) you know i’d be upfront about anything related to character death and this is not that

It hits like a knife through her chest and Luna’s knees hit the ground. Raven reaches for her but she’s in her own hell.

A fairly routine skirmish on the edge of the coalition borders resulted in heavy losses for both sides. Anya’s warriors had limped back to Polis. The first wave arrived a week later than expected, Anya, nor word of her, nowhere in sight. All anyone could say was that they hadn’t seen her body amongst the dead.

This is the moment that Luna has feared since she was young, the reason that, despite the pull she felt, that she would never let herself be with Anya. The moment Anya is hers and doesn’t come back from battle is the moment she loses everything. This has always been her greatest fear.

Raven is screaming beside her, still standing. Luna looks up at her through blurry tear filled eyes. She is wild and feral like Luna has seen her few times before. She knows whatever the tek did to Raven’s brain has left her with a rage that burns her up if it isn’t soothed.

“You left her out there? You don’t know if she’s alive or…” Raven chokes on the word, even in her anger, she can’t bring herself to say it. “She’s your general, your Heda’s second in command.” She stalks forward ready to grab for the lone warrior making the report to Lexa.

“Raven,” Lexa says cooly.

Raven doesn’t stop. “There are bodies out there that deserve a warrior’s funeral pyre. Anya deserves better than to be left behind, alive or…” She catches up the front of the warrior’s tunic. He almost flinches, but Raven is smaller than him and the brace on her leg makes her slower and weaker, and without her bombs and tek she isn’t much of a threat. It only fuels her rage, and that is what makes him flinch.

“Raven,” Lexa warns.

Raven lets him go with a shove.

Luna picks herself up off the floor. She eyes the others warily. Clarke hovers halfway between Lexa’s throne and Raven, watching them both. Her own ambassador is on his feet, slowly making his way to her. The others, almost friends, acquaintances, no one that needs to see this moment. It’s far too intimate. She swallows thickly and tries to push down the storm building inside her.

She reaches for Raven, knowing that Raven needs someone to bring her back from the edge, that even if she wants to she can’t fight it when she’s this far into the pain of the anger. No matter how hard she tries she needs help, and Luna has always been the one to help coax her back. She wraps her arms around Raven, intending to whisper to her and take her to the ground. Hold her tight until the struggle is over.

“Raven, repeat with me,” Luna starts the phrase. “Ai giv ai op…”

Raven struggles and breaks out of Luna’s grasp, hits at her, fists and nails trying to claw her way out. Something she hasn’t tried to do in a long time, the word no dripping from her mouth like a litany and a curse. Luna grabs for Raven and she whips around. The room around them freezes, waiting to see what happens.

Luna’s shattered heart breaks as Raven pulls away from her.

“Please, Raven.” Luna’s voice shakes.

Raven pulls but doesn’t let go, she shoves at Luna, but doesn’t distance herself. “No!” Raven screams the word and it’s echo is deafening. “How can you be so calm? They left her out there. They failed her. They don’t deserve our silence. She’s gone, Luna. She’s gone.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Luna snaps. “You think I haven’t imagined this very day a thousand times over, that this is why I never let myself love her, until you. You came along and everything got turned upside down.” She snatches her hand out of Raven’s and reaches for the rings on her left, one for each of them, rough cut natural gemstones, rings they exchanged on their binding day. She slips them off, fire burning in her chest like it hasn’t in years. The sea had calmed her and now there was nothing left but the storm.

She holds out a fist, the rings inside, and pries Raven’s fingers open to drop them into her hand, ignoring the shocked, hurt look on her wife’s face.

“Hold these for me, because I can’t right now.” Luna turns and storms out of Lexa’s throne room.

“Luna!” It’s Lexa that calls to her. She only hesitates for a moment, knowing that while Lexa is her Heda in this moment she knows Lexa is calling out as her friend. Her only friend that survived from childhood. The doors slam behind her.

The weight of Anya’s likely death presses down on her. It feels like she’s drowning and her feet take her toward the sea. She brushes through the tower and the city, not seeing anyone as she passes them. Once or twice she hears her name and she continues on. There would be no stopping even if she wanted, and by the time she hits the edge of Polis she’s running.

The water is cold around her ankles. It’s early spring and the is out but it doesn’t warm anything yet, the flowers only just beginning to bloom. She tears at her top and tosses it to the ground behind her not caring if it hits the beach or not. Her pants go next. All her clothes until she’s standing naked in the freezing ocean. She screams as she walks into the water and falls to her knees, letting the waves crash over her.

She lets the ocean take her, hold her, beat the feeling from her until she is as numb outside as she is inside. The cold steals away the breaking of her heart, and all she can feel is the weightlessness as the sea carries her out. She closes her eyes, her lungs burning. Her hand, most of all, feels naked and light.

It comes back then, as if this pain is too great for the ocean to wash away. Her body is on fire by the time she breaches the surface. She gasps for air and coughs out water. The tide has carried her far from shore and she has to swim back against it.

Bone weary and heartsore she washes up in the beach. She lays down in the sand there and waits, cradling her left hand in her right, knowing she may have broken the one thing in her life that would keep her afloat.

~ ~ ~

Raven goes silent as Luna leaves.

The rage in her fizzles and dies, still a burning fire in her chest but she can’t breathe so there’s no oxygen to fan the flames. Her hands close around Luna’s rings. One wife more than likely dead and the other… She tightens her grip on the rings until the stones cut into her palm. Even when she feels blood drip down the edge of her hand she doesn’t lessen her hold.

Anya is… dead. The word crashes into her chest like a blow and she stumbles to her knees.

Luna walked out.

The rage coursing in her veins shifts, the energy no less intense and it steals her breath. She knows she needs to leave, to get to her room, away from the prying eyes. Public is nowhere to have a breakdown, not when the politics keeping them safe are a delicate balance of showmanship and appearance. She is one of the pillars of strength that Lexa draws on - the reason the grounders have started to shift their reverence of technology from fear to awe. Her people rely on her to keep them useful.

She sits back on her heels, despite the protestation in her leg. One deep breath at a time. She can do anything for the thirty seconds it will take her to get to her feet and out the door. When Clarke appears, hovering at her side she shakes her head no and finds her way to her feet.

She’ll regret it in the morning but the ache in her body is nothing compared to the pain where her heart was. Tears still drying on her face Raven turns and dips her head to Lexa, “Heda.”

Lexa nods, dismissing her. Raven catches the way she glances to Clarke and back to Raven once more, Clarke shifting her head. She isn’t surprised when Clarke follows after her as she leaves the throne room. Her exit is much quieter than Luna’s but no less attention is paid. She can feel every eye in the room on her.

In the quiet of the hallway Clarke takes her hand and Raven sniffles and chokes and holds back a sob. When the war ended and they settled in Polis she thought that the Earth might have given up fighting the Skaikru, but it was just playing the long game, determined to break them before the end.

Raven loses time walking back to her quarters that she shares - shared with Anya and Luna. Everything is as it was that morning when they thought Anya still alive.

Raven stands in the middle of their sitting room and looks around feeling like she doesn’t belong.

Clarke hovers nearby, clearly uncertain on how best she can help. “We don’t know for certain that she’s dead.”

Raven turns red rimmed and watery eyes to her and slowly opens her hand to reveal a bloody mess of binding rings. “Not certain it matters.”

“Raven…” Clarke says her name softly asking her not to give up. She wraps her arms around Raven but Raven can’t get herself to respond, she barely even leans into the embrace. Her body feels numb and empty and hollow as if she felt too much as so all her emotions erupted out and now she’s left hollow. There’s no point in hoping because that which she held close and precious has been ripped from her.

Clarke tries for a while to get her to soften, relax, but Raven feels too far away to even begin to respond. After a time Clarke moves her to sit down on the couch, moving Raven as if she’s a small child half asleep and afraid in the night. She doesn’t speak just guides her gently. Raven lets her.

She lets her wash and bandage her hands. The bloody rings sit on the table and neither of them touch them.

The sun begins to set and Luna doesn’t return.

“Send for me if you need anything,” Clarke says softly leaning over to kiss Raven on her forehead. “I’ll be back to check on you before bed.”

Raven glances up at Clarke but can’t bring herself to speak or even nod her head. She’s heavy and empty all at once. Clarke leaves and the room is silent except for the beating of her heart. It feels strange that it’s still there since she’s certain hers has been ripped from her chest.

A minute later, or maybe an hour, she isn’t certain, she reaches out and picks up the rings from the table to cradle them gently in her bandaged hand. Her back screams with the movement but she doesn’t shift, just lets the pain burn through her nerves. It’s something, she’s alive, but even that fades into numbness as the room fades into dark with the setting sun.

~ ~ ~

Luna flinches when she runs into Clarke in the hallway of the Polis tower. She’s been keeping to the shadows as she makes her way back through town. The last thing she wants is to run into anyone, to talk about what happened and her very public heartbreak.

She understands why Clarke is cross-armed and clench-jawed and terse. It doesn’t make it easier to take. She lost Anya too. She lost Anya in the one way she’s been fearing since she knew she was in love more than a decade ago.

“Where the fuck have you been?” Clarke blocks Luna’s attempt to walk around her.

“Mourning.” Luna shrugs slightly and her shirt crinkles with it, caked with drying sea salt.

“Did you think about what your little fit did to Raven?”

“Did she think about what hers did to me?” Luna snaps back.

“I’m going to let that go this once because Anya is missing.” Clarke takes a step closer and reaches out to rest her hand on Luna’s shoulder but Luna shies away from the touch. Clarke nods and drops her gaze along with her hand.

“She isn’t missing, Clarke, she’s dead.” Luna’s voice trembles.

Clarke looks up and her smile is sad, “We don’t know that yet.”

Luna shakes her head and pushes past Clarke who doesn’t try to stop her. “Then where is she?”

Clarke’s voice is small and tired, “Please go be with your wife, Luna, she needs you. Raven needs you right now.”

That cuts through Luna’s anger and she swallows down the bitter rebuke waiting on the back of her tongue. She’ll go, but she doubts that Raven wants her there at all.

The room is dark when she enters, not a single candle is lit. She leaves the door ajar and fetches one from the hallway. Slowly she makes her way around the one, lighting the candles one by one. Halfway through she makes out Raven’s still form on the couch, sitting hunched, head hanging down, forearms pressed to her thighs. When Raven doesn’t acknowledge her she steps from the room once again to call for handmaidens to draw a bath and light a fire. After the ocean she hasn’t warmed and she doesn’t want the ice to take hold of her heart.

She wants the soft warmth that Raven and Anya had given her, even if it hurts.

Luna kneels down in front of Raven and is met with glossy eyes and unshed tears. Raven barely turns to acknowledge her. She reaches for Raven’s hand but Raven doesn’t move. When she tries to open Raven’s hand to press theirs together Raven is pliant but she doesn’t move on her own, as if she’s just gone.

“My love,” she whispers, tears stinging her eyes. She presses her lips to Raven’s knee and it breaks her heart when Raven’s gaze barely even flicks in her direction. “I need you here.”

“You left,” Raven’s voice cracks. Her hand tightens around the rings.

Luna sits up onto her knees and presses her forehead to Raven’s even though she’s at an awkward angle. “I… I shouldn’t have left you.” She needed the sea but she shouldn’t have left Raven behind. “I still need you, want you, now more than ever. If I lost you…” Luna trembles and she lets Raven feel it. Even though she hates the weakness, she needs Raven to know exactly how she feels right now. “I’m afraid I already have.”

Raven grips the rings in her fist tighter and shakes her head softly against Luna’s, “You haven’t,” and then again after a few moments. “You smell like the ocean.”

“Come bathe with me?” Luna tries to smile through watery tears.

“How do we do this?” Raven asks. “Without… without her?”

Luna tilts her head and presses a ghost of a kiss against Raven’s lips. “I don’t know exactly, but I think the answer is together.”

Raven nods, her nose brushing against Luna’s and Luna feels hot wet tears on her cheeks that are not her own. “Help me up?”

Luna has to take more of Raven’s weight than she’s had to in a long time. Raven’s back having seized up, she almost swoops Raven up to carry her, instead of making her take the small painful steps to their bathing chamber, but that was something Anya did. There had been an understanding between Raven and Anya when it came to her physical limitations. Luna slips her arm under Raven’s despite the awkward height difference and wraps it around her waist. As it is, when she straightens, she’s half carrying Raven anyway.

The bath is drawn and warm and the room empty. Luna strips first with Raven watching. Her clothes are stiff with seawater and her hair flakes sea salt as she moves. Raven’s gaze is intent, somehow longing and soft and needing all at once. Luna helps her undress noting the blood that stains most of the pieces, and the reddish bandage on her hand. She leaves that for last, the two of them naked and shivering in the night air.

Raven shakes her head and pulls her hand to her chest.

Luna drops her hands and helps Raven into the bath instead. They overflow the tub, making a mess of the floor, Luna having forgotten to specify that two of them would be bathing. The water is hot on her skin and it feels a little like coming alive again after drowning - painful and sharp but there’s an edge of relief to it.

Luna pulls Raven to her and just holds her for a moment before dunking them both underneath the surface of the water. It’s Raven that holds them there in the silent cocoon of warmth, only signalling to resurface when both their lungs burn. Luna curls forward around Raven and holds onto too tightly.

The tears come then, heaving sobs, both of them breaking as they hold on tight. Raven’s fingernails dig into Luna’s arms and she doesn’t protest the pain.

Their tears last until the water runs cold.

Still, they hold each other in the bath water, not wanting to move away from each other quite yet.

Luna reaches for Raven’s left hand, the bandaged one, and slowly opens it. Finding her rings there cracks her just that much more.

Gently, she dips Raven’s hand beneath the water, removing the bloody bandage and gently cleans both the rings and Raven’s hand. Tears stream down her face and she hopes Raven can’t feel them on her shoulder. Luna presses her lips to the back of Raven’s neck, and stays there, sobbing and shaking silently. Knowing it was useless to try to hold this in.

She could live a hundred years and she fears her biggest regret will have been taking off those rings when she did. She could spend a lifetime trying to make up for her decision and never be worth the love that she might receive.

Raven’s body shakes with tears, and by the time they’re both done crying the second time, they’re shivering with cold. She watches as Raven takes her left hand tracing her fingers and kissing the palm.

“Can I wear them again?” Luna asks softly, breaking the silence with words for the first time since they sank into the bath. She continues, uncertain, “Only if you want…”

Raven half turns and presses a kiss to the corner of Luna’s mouth as she slips the rings back on her fingers. “I want.”

~ ~ ~

Anya is sore and stiff and in dire need of a bath when she stumbles through the gates of Polis one late afternoon. She doesn’t make much fuss, just another warrior coming back from battle, albeit a bit late. She had woken after the battle with a pounding headache and a dislocated shoulder. The former she had sated with water and food, the later she had popped back into place with the help of a boulder.

Her horse had run off and she had walked all the way back to Polis. Tired as she is, she hardly notices the whispers and stares until she’s nearly in Lexa’s throne room.

It doesn’t occur to her that she’s unexpected until Lexa trips over her sash as she stands too quickly from her seated place at her throne. Or the flash of relief in Clarke’s eyes, quickly replaced by cool anger. Several other ambassadors sit around the room, and it’s clear she’s walked into a council meeting. No mind, she has a report to make.

And make it she does, with Lexa staring her down as if she’s trying to believe that Anya is real. She keeps her gaze guarded however, and Anya makes no indication she’s noticed anything amiss at all.

As she turns to leave Lexa practically whispers, “I would advise being careful when you see your wives.”

Anya turns back, one eyebrow raised, but can do nothing but take in Lexa’s indifference and Clarke’s glare.

She opens the door to her living quarters and is met with the shattering of a ceramic bowl.

Luna and Raven are both still dressed for bed though it’s well past midday and neither looks like they’ve slept much more than Anya in the past week. The bowl shattered at Luna’s feet held fruit.

Raven half runs, half hobbles across the space knocking into Anya with such force that they both nearly hit the ground. Anya gently returns the embrace that crushes her ribs and makes her wince in pain. She’s about to tease Raven when she realize that Raven’s body is shaking with sobs, wet hot tears rolling down Anya’s neck where Raven’s face is pressed.

She tightens her grip and threads her hand through Raven’s hair. Anya closes her eyes and breathes in her wife, who smells much like her other wife in that moment. She’s been gone too long, and she’s only realizing that perhaps it’s longer than she thinks.

Raven’s grip doesn’t lessen, nor do her sobs abate. Between breaths she chokes out, “We thought you were gone.”

“I’m right here,” Anya whispers. She looks up, acutely aware that Luna hasn’t joined in.

Luna stands there, pale as a ghost, tears streaming down her face. Her hand covers her mouth and Anya can tell she isn’t quite breathing. The pain in Luna’s eyes is a look she’s seen before someone’s loved one coming back unexpectedly from war.

It hits her then, that she’s not the first of her troupe to return, and they must have reported her missing, or dead. Everything Luna feared. Back before Raven they had argued long about being together, because Luna swore she would never be able to survive losing Anya in battle. Her heart wasn’t built to survive loss. It had taken leaving everything behind to find steady ground after the conclave.

Anya watches Luna watching her hold Raven and her heart breaks.

Everything she promised would never happened became real for Luna.Pressing a kiss to Raven’s temple she extracts herself from Raven’s embrace and crosses the room in two short strides. Her shoulder protests as she lifts both her hands to cup Luna’s cheeks but she does so anyway, brushing away tears with her thumbs.

There are tears in her own eyes.

She leans in and kisses Luna, their tears becoming sobs as the soft kiss turns into a hard press that is more a clash of teeth than kiss. “I’m here,” Anya whispers between kisses. “I’m alive. I promise. It’s me.”

Luna throws her arms around Anya who hisses in pain as Luna squeezes her tight. Still she holds her back, just as tight, only letting go to reach behind her for Raven. When Raven joins they slowly sink to the floor holding Anya in the middle, trading kisses and touches, tenderly holding onto each other's broken hearts.