#also quite probably my 13 yo ass saw this and decided to stan forever the problematic couple

[freuleinanna]

the lost heartbeats

golden ones so fiercely burning hearts regretting, falling, yearning Pairing: Marisa Coulter x Asriel Belacqua Short summary: A heartbeat tells a story, but when it skips, it writes a novel. Just a little something to recount the moments two people with the steadiest heartbeats felt their hearts fall (aka me sobbing over every parent moment ever). Pre-canon and canon Masriel. Word count: ~ 1600 I am not sorry, this is for my feral heretical parents & lovers 💔

~ 1 ~

It happens in the most unfascinating way possible, over dinner, when they find themselves sat across each other at the table. A young man hurries to his place, and something in the way he carries himself, pressing the all-too-new jacket to his chest while listening on the go, tells her he's used to being late to everything. He sits. He looks at her.

Her husband is by her right side and she feels the need to tug at his arm, and tug again, and quietly say 'Edward, take me away, please', then add 'I'll do something terrible if you don't'. In her mind, she does that. She goes to their room and doesn't give another thought to the young man with blue eyes so fierce as though he'd just stepped in from the cruel blizzard. In reality, her heart stops - at the faint, yet painful loss this prospect sets in her. She's somewhere between intrigued and instantly infatuated. She doesn't know his name. What foolishness.

He sits, and he forgets to listen. Someone very important is speaking about something very important, and he vaguely remembers that he'd put a lot of efforts into getting here. He wanted to listen. He forgets how to. The young woman in front of him is staring in a way people give you a side-glance just before taking their eyes off of you, yet she doesn't. Nor does he want her to. His chest is like a stone wrapped tightly in his ridiculous suit. Just for a moment, he can't breathe. Then it comes again, the familiar steady beats against the rib cage. He suddenly chokes at the free-fall emptiness preceeding them.

He doesn't fully realize where that skipped heartbeat went. It's lost somewhere between 'Edward Coulter's wife' and 'Marisa, my love', and he later finds that he had never truly reclaimed it. She stole it. He gave it away gladly. And then, again, later - when he tells a stupid joke to her husband and sees laughter in her eyes, and her dark hair shine with soft golden gleams like the fur of her monkey daemon.

He comes too late, as always, and she's already a Mrs. Neither of them stops at the obstacle.

~ 2 ~

Lyra is born, and she is everything like her father, and nothing like her mother's husband. Marisa will never admit that, but when she's holding her daughter in her sinful arms, prepared to reject her, she suddenly shudders at the thought. She falls, with a heart bursting out of the chest. It forgets to beat properly. Her daemon, exhausted just like her, looks at the child in helpless admiration.

 Asriel once told her that, should she want it, he'd fight for that child. He would rise and fight anything, anyone, with all his ferocity. There's always so much fight in him. She almost regrets refusing his offer.

Lyra is sleeping, while her mother, despite all her best efforts, is falling in love with her. It's like being plunged into a bottomless pit. Marisa thinks that, if that little bundle opened her eyes now and sweetly asked her to jump in an abyss, she would. She would jump in them all.

'Pantalaimon,' she whispers to the tiny mouse, clutching at her daughter's chest. Means, merciful. She's going to need all mercy after what she's about to do.

~ 3 ~

Giving Lyra away strains at her heart the same as being separated from her daemon. The same as with her daemon, Marisa doesn't show pain. Doesn't mean it's not there, in the glassy calm eyes and a thin arhythmic beating of her heart.

Asriel is furious with her, she knows, and yet he doesn't have time for their daughter either. He forbids the Master of the Jordan College to let Marisa in. She pretends she doesn't care, he pretends he doesn't give a damn about her not caring. They both hurt. Neither of them hurts enough to get them off their magnificent ambitious paths.

~ 4 ~ 

It's the worst in Bolvangar. Her dark, truly northern heart, cold through and through, simply stops at the sound of Lyra's voice.

A mother couldn't bear it. Marisa Coulter can, because she was late for motherhood just like Asriel was late for that dinner, but still, between the realization and the frantic salvation of her own child, there is nothing in her chest. Heartbeat - lost. Maybe it leapt out to Lyra. Maybe it left her actual, physical body for just a moment. She wouldn't be surprised. That girl was greedy. She loved that girl with everything she had.

That missed hearbeat feels like falling towards a sure, inevitable break.

~ 5 ~

Asriel loses his heartbeats, too. When she refuses to join him, his chest explodes inwards. He wanted her to say yes. When she paused before the answer, he already knew.

He hoped Marisa would see through him when he threatened her, and his giant, steady heart, that kept him going through snowstorms and the wilderness, stumbled helplessly when he realized that she had seen through him, indeed, but chose to stay. He felt untethered. She stood there with his heartbeat bleeding off her fingertips and looked at him like she had always done, with her constant, unbending 'Asriel, no...' dried silently on her lips. Strange how he didnt recognize the taste.

He wanted to ask for this heartbeat back. This one, she stole.

Though if he was being honest with himself, he still gave it to her gladly.

~ 6 ~

Bolvangar was not, in fact, the worst. The worst is when Marisa looks at her daughter, feeling Lyra's primal fear of her, and can't find another way to protect her except by hurting her even worse.

'Let us go,' Lyra whispers, half-asleep, because that's the thought that comes to her first when she regains consciousness. That's where they are at. Her own daughter hates her enough to beg for her freedom.

But I remember the day you were born, Marisa wants to say, blinking the raging tears away, as if it would change anything. I remember holding you, I remember loving you, I'm not as awful as you think. I'm not a monster. I love you. It's my way of loving you. She bites it right at her lips, crushing bitter words before they ever leave her mouth. Her maternal love is like barbed wire. Cuts both of them. She doesn't know how to stop.

Her heart falls silent for a fraction of a second every time Lyra looks at her with suffering, pleading eyes.

~ 7 ~

'We should have married, and brought her up ourselves.'

He blinks at the thought. She says something else, continues talking, and eventually, he manages to reply, but his mind is still caught. They should have. The should have, a relentless echo. There's a lot they should have done. They should have done everything. Her hair catch a billion tiny fires from the light, and she looks so tired, so pale and tired. He remembers the night they met, and how he thought, hungrily, joyfully: this is it. She's the one. He looks at Marisa now and still thinks the same, only with sudden doom. He wants to break something. He wants to touch her hair.

His beastly heart misses a beat, and it's like Stelmaria's claws. He looks at Marisa. He doesn't know how to say that she's right. Should-haves and what-ifs hang heavily in the air. Thorns everywhere. They can't untangle them.

~ 8 ~

Every second beat now, sometimes even every first. He thinks, he'll die. Crushing blows keep pouring down on his head and shoulders. No one can be that desperate and still alive.

Too many at once now. Heartbeats flooding out of him, and when Asriel gains enough consciouseness to understand that, he doesn't want them to go in vain. If anything, they should go to her.

'Marisa! Marisa!'

I loved you. I love you still. I'm scared. I was wrong. He doesn't care about his war anymore, nor about the angel trying to shake him down to rise and kill his daughter. Their daughter. He's just crying out her name. There's no more powerful an authority for him, than her name. He should have known that earlier.

Another beat lost. Young Mrs. Coulter laughs at his joke with her eyes, arm at her husband's elbow, beautiful hair he wants to dishevel gleam in the soft light, and he knows he's won. He knows he won't let go. He mustn't.

And for her, he doesn't.

~ 9 ~

She jumps. And it is all worth it, because, as a very wise man once told her, her life is, too, worth a mere one-tenth of her daughter's. Even less. Much less, if she's honest. Her heart falters.

One beat. She knew that abyss would find her from the day she held Lyra in her arms. She has no regrets.

Two beats. Forever falling, next to Asriel. Almost comforting. His hands are bloody and spasmed with effort. She touches them briefly as they fall.

Three beats. Young Asriel Belacqua sits across from her, and his eyes are piercing blue like she's never seen before. They will fight, she knows it even then. And she wants it anyway. In a way, they have been falling together ever since.

Four beats. Lyra's face. Her daemon holding out his paw. It allows one painful, shattering thrust into her heart. She wants to call Asriel's name to tell him that it's alright, that they did well, or just to feel his name on her tongue; but can't.

And, after that, no count is needed, because all heartbeats are lost and fall eternally around them.

#something i wrote #because i had an ounce of free time and a full-blown obssession #the way i love these motherfuckers UGH #magnificent characters #also quite probably my 13 yo ass saw this and decided to stan forever the problematic couple #hdm #hdm fic #hdm fanfic #his dark materials #his dark materials fanfiction #his dark materials fic #hdm spoilers #marisa coulter #asriel belacqua #lord asriel #marisa x asriel #asriel x marisa #chaos family #masriel