#and then my hand slipped and i wrote 800+ words about the time guillermo was one of nandor's wives

[ineffably-human]

She's a young woman, but there's a way she looks at him that feels older. Nandor has razed and pillaged many places, taken many women he found pleasing to him, and he thinks he has seen every face a person can make. But she's already watching him approach, when he rides up on his horse (not beloved as his Jahan was, but still a talented beast, a steady one), and her eyes are searching as they meet his. She has an unreadable smile at the corner of her mouth that surprises him, when these days so little does. He opens his mouth to speak, but she is already mounting his horse behind him, arms around his waist without hesitation.

He thinks perhaps she's eager to escape. She is a lush, vibrant thing and her home is so unimportant, a footnote in his latest sweeping campaign. To be taken by a great warlord, it must be like touching the heavens. But he has wives and concubines who pay such respects. They squabble and bicker for his scraps of affection, or to be the first to perform some task, eager for the rewards that come with such devotion. There are others who only come when he raises his voice, whose anger and scorn does not fade with the passing of the years.

This one, she's patient. She waits not for when he calls, but when he needs. She anticipates his moods, his more fanciful whims. She is not the prettiest or the most talented, but she's clever, and she is not afraid of him. (He tries to make her afraid sometimes, back straight and voice booming with all his authority. She merely lifts her brows like a shrug of her shoulders.)

He asks, once, why she was so ready to depart with him to an unknown world. "You looked lonely," she says, and he's not sure if she even speaks the truth, but the answer stays with him. Perhaps they both were.

He returns from campaign one day with deep shadows beneath his eyes, a wound that still throbs when it should have closed. She washes the sweat from him and helps him turn in his bed, as the golden tones leech from his skin and turn to a deathly pallor. She feeds him meat, berries, broth, then holds the hair from his face when he's sick. She is far from the only woman to come and attend him, the guards muttering disapproval, the physicians giving their increasingly nervous council. But he sleeps many hours, still as death, and when he wakes again she's there waiting. She helps him from his bed, to stand on legs that are stronger than ever but shaky like a newborn's.

Nandor hisses at the light of the sun when it so much as peeks through the drapes. He refuses food, snarls his orders, hands trembling like he is fighting some inner thirst he once reserved only for war. He returns from battle in the dead of night, hands and mouth stained crimson, eyes black like an animal's. There are rumors his heart has ceased to beat in his chest. He knows, he knows the tales have reached his wives and lovers. His complaints to the ones who wash him clean have an ugly bite, a kind of self-conscious snarl. He gives orders with a finger extended, jabbing the air, like the moods of a child. The piercing stabs of a dagger.

Like the change, it doesn't happen all at once. There are fewer servants, and then there are fewer concubines. He has not harmed them, not really, not like he could. But one day he realizes there are horses missing from the stable, and as he counts he sees they've simply gone. His wives are next, the ones with young children first, and then the others in turn. It's a deep, angry ache when some of his favorites are missing. It was foolish, perhaps, thinking he'd meant something to them.

But they haven't all left, not yet. There is still a young woman there to take his hand in the morning. She is a lush and vibrant thing, with large, gentle eyes. Her hands are steady as they comb through the tangles of his hair. They only shake a little when he wraps a hand around her wrist, whispers 'please' with an urgency he can't name.

He fucks her fast and rough, relishing her cries of pleasure, the way she clings to the coolness of his body. He smells the perfume at the nape of her neck, and imagines she's craned it towards him. She never pulls away from him. Her fingers stay laced in his, squeezing tightly. It helps to keep the blood flowing.

There are only a few servants left to bury her, and the next day they're gone too.

Nandor will always say that he had thirty-seven wives, and loved thirty-five of them. He won't call what he did to her 'love.' He cannot.

#so i was writing a reincarnation fic #and then my hand slipped and i wrote 800+ words about the time guillermo was one of nandor's wives #blood cw #death cw #murder cw #wwdits #what we do in the shadows #nandermo #fanfic