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m1ckeyb3rry · 1 month

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── THE GLASS PRINCESS // THIRTEEN

Series Synopsis: You wake up in a strange room with no memories, broken glass at your bedside, and a prince named Zuko as your only chance at figuring out who you really are.

Chapter Synopsis: Things in Ba Sing Se come to a head, taking a violent turn you are unprepared for.

Series Masterlist

Pairing: Zuko x Reader

Chapter Word Count: 5.4k

Content Warnings: complicated relationships (strangers to friends to lovers to enemies to strangers to lovers to enemies to lovers), amnesia, alternate universe, lots of secrets and lying and mystery

A/N: as seen in the chapter summary this is chapter leans on the more violent side #sorry BUT just wanted to say i love you all thanks for reading and sorry i’m so mean to your character

“Quynh,” you sniffed, holding onto one of her claws. “Quynh, they want to kill Kuei.”

She growled, low and deep, which only made you cry harder. Only when she noticed that did she stop, though her breaths still came quick and short as she rubbed her cheek against your body in a vain attempt to comfort you.

“Who?” she said.

“I don’t know,” you said. “They haven’t done anything yet, but I heard them. I heard them!”

“Tell me what they said, my dear,” she said. “As best as you can, so that there is no chance of misunderstanding.”

“They said that if I turn out to be an Earthbender, they will get rid of Kuei so that I can take the throne,” you said. “They want a powerful ruler, and they don’t — they don’t think that he can be that. But I don’t want to be queen! I just want to play with Kuei!”

“That’s contingent on you being an Earthbender, though,” she said. “You haven’t shown any signs of bending yet, have you?”

You hiccuped. “Yes. Today. I was on my way to show Kuei when I overheard the conversation. But no one can know. Pinky promise not to tell anyone, Quynh! I don’t want Kuei to be in danger.”

“I won’t tell anyone,” she soothed you. “But you are a bender of Shan’s line. If you do not learn to control your power, you will destroy this palace.”

“Huh?” you said.

“Bending without control is based solely on a wild instinct. If you do not train in some way, shape, or form, then your every emotion will be like a stone on the surface of a pond. For the everyday individual, this isn’t anything devastating, but you are the princess of the Earth Kingdom. Your bloodline begets only the strongest of Earthbenders, and so the consequences of your bending running amok are that much greater,” she said.

“But if anyone catches me, then Kuei — Kuei — I don’t want Kuei to die!” you said, bursting into tears again.

“He won’t,” Quynh said. “Listen to me, Y/N. If you cannot train properly, if you cannot learn the Earthbending forms and movements that are specifically designed to calm the mind and focus the art, then we must come up with a suitable replacement.”

“What can replace a teacher?” you said.

“I will be your teacher,” Quynh said. “And the crystals around us will be your element. Crystals are a step removed from stones, and so they are difficult for the more traditional benders to master, but you are skipping over to them entirely by virtue of your situation.”

“Will that be enough to ensure that I am not caught?” you said.

“I think so,” Quynh said. “Once you are bored of crystals, we will move on to glass. You see, dear girl, there is a truth that is oft-ignored in this new era of bending: it is no harder to move a mountain than it is to emboss a window. Perhaps one is more ostentatious — who ever takes the time to be impressed by the minute details of a piece? — but both are of the same difficulty. The explosion and the implosion are equally as destructive, are they not? If you cannot practice with the mountains that are your birthright, then you must turn to the other extreme. You must endeavor to bend with an exact perfection; allow no blemishes, so that your mind does not turn on itself in its solitude.”

“Princess Y/N,” a slippery, cool voice said as you rounded the corner towards where the tea shop was located. “It was surprising enough to see you hanging around the Avatar and his friends, but to find a girl of your birth and stature in the Lower Ring instead of in the palace is definitely unexpected.”

You froze. It was a voice you did not recognize, but if they knew you had been with the Avatar, then there was only one group they could have been from. Your swore as stone gloves warped into cuffs around your wrists, binding them behind your back and dragging you into the custody of a man wearing a familiar uniform.

“Dai Li,” you hissed. “What are you doing here?”

“Between the two of us, I do not think that you are the one who has the right to be asking me that,” the agent said. You ground your teeth as another agent dropped down beside you, grabbing your shoulder roughly.

“Long Feng will be furious,” this new agent said. “You’ve disobeyed his singular order. What an ungrateful girl you are! A princess who was given everything she ever asked for and was only asked to stay in her rooms in return. Yet you could not even do that much.”

The people on the streets were beginning to stop and stare, whispering to one another at your state. It wasn’t every day that Dai Li agents made their presences obvious — there was an unspoken awareness that they were always there, creeping about in the corners of the collective consciousness, but it was rare for them to become forefront. Even in the crime-riddled Lower Ring, it was the militia-men who enforced the common laws. The Dai Li only appeared for the gravest infractions, and for you to be led away in stone cuffs like this was a scandal of unprecedented magnitude.

“There are more important things for Long Feng to be furious about,” you said as you were pulled through the streets by the Dai Li agents.

“Nothing is more important than you, your royal highness,” the first agent said sweetly, mockingly. “The safety of the Earth King’s heir is paramount to the kingdom’s security.”

As you passed the tea shop, the door slammed open, and the Dai Li agents paused as Lee sprinted out, his face like a thundercloud, his shoulders tense and expression in a scowl darker than any you had ever seen him wear.

“What’s going on here?” he said, crossing his arms and staring down the Dai Li with none of the fear and respect that they rightfully commanded. The way he stood was if he were the one that they should be afraid of, though it was a ridiculous notion — what could a simple tea shop worker do to the famed members of Ba Sing Se’s secret police?

“Out of the way, boy,” the second agent said.

“Where are you taking Y/N?” Lee insisted. “I won’t move until you tell me.”

“Y/N? You’re on a first-name basis with her royal highness?” the first agent said. “How impetuous! It’s laughable, really, for you to think that this girl cares about you.”

It was meant to be nothing more than humiliation. By exposing your identity, the Dai Li were ensuring that you could never again return to the Lower Ring, not if you valued your life or at least your dignity. The people who lived here hated you, after all, hated everything you stood for. The spoiled princess who cared little for their suffering…now that they knew the truth, they would never accept you again.

The whispers grew louder. Her royal highness? Y/N, as in Princess Y/N? The Earth King’s sister? What is she doing here? How dare she show her face after everything? How dare she pretend to be one of us?

“Get out of here!” a man shouted. The declaration was like the breaking of a dam, as the people’s voices rose higher and higher. The Dai Li stood beside you grimly, doing nothing to shield you from the insults thrown your way.

“Is this how you royals entertain yourselves?” a woman said. “Is this what we are paying our taxes for? So that you can live our lives for fun and then go back to the luxury of your palace?”

“Give us our money back, thief!”

“Do we look like tourists, huh? Why’d we have to pay to enter the city?”

“Why are we second to a bear? Why does the Earth King care more about his pet than his people?”

“Selfish witch! You’re no princess. You’d abandon the kingdom if it meant you could live a life of luxury! You ought to be sent to the front lines, let’s see how you like it there!”

“Down with the tyrant! Down with the traitor!”

It was exactly the kind of uprising that the Dai Li had been employed to quell, but they stood there and watched, faces impassive as people came closer and closer, pressing in on you, screaming things that you could not cover your ears from, not when you were still restrained.

“Ain’t she the princess they said was made of glass? I wonder if she’ll break like it, too!”

You weren’t sure who hurled the first brick, but it was only thanks to Lee’s quick reaction that it did not hit you in the head. He yanked you out of the way, but the missed opportunity only incensed the people further.

“You have to get out of here,” you said to Lee. “This is the culmination of years’ worth of anger. I am the target for their rage, but if you’re near me, then you will be caught in the crossfire. Take Mushi and go somewhere far away until this has blown over!”

“Will I see you again?” he said. A window shattered, glass raining down around you as people began to fight one another, too. They were just furious now. They just wanted someone to hate, and whether it was their neighbor or their princess mattered little to them. As long as they could inflict the hurt they felt onto another person.

“I don’t know,” you confessed. “I don’t know anything anymore, if ever I did. But I want to, Lee. I want to see you again, and so I believe that I will.”

“Death to the Glass Princess! Death to the Glass Princess! Death to the Glass Princess!”

“You have to go now!” you said. A nearby produce stand was turned on its side, tomatoes rolling out and bursting as people stomped on them in their haste to destroy something, anything, everything.

Out of nowhere, Dai Li agents manifested, using their Earthbending to trap the citizens in constructs of stone, the riot stopping as abruptly as it had started. You used your shoulder to shove Lee away from you, shaking your head at him when he tried to protest before turning away, knowing that he would not leave unless you dismissed him in a way so inarguable that it left him with no choice.

In such a short time, the road had been utterly destroyed. The storefronts had been torn apart, glass and stray stones and smashed goods everywhere. The street itself ran red with tomato juice and pulp and blood, and the people who were encased in rock by the Dai Li were bruised and worn from the effort of the riot.

“Where are you taking them?” you said as the Dai Li moved with brutal efficiency, restraining everyone in the crowd before releasing them from their temporary prisons.”

“They’re all due for a visit to Lake Laogai,” the Dai Li agent standing at your left shoulder said.

“This is why you were forbidden from leaving the palace,” the other Dai Li agent said.. “Do you understand now?”

“I understand,” you said, though what you understood and what he was saying were at odds with one another. It was the kind of conclusion you were only equipped to draw now that you had left the palace and seen the reality of Ba Sing Se, of the impenetrable city whose walls contained any explosions and turned them inward.

As you were marched down the street towards the palace, you could not help yourself from craning your neck for one final glimpse of the ruined street where you had spent so much of your time. Your happiest days had been on these very cobblestones, in and out of these very shops.

Those days would never come back. They were gone now, destroyed as surely as the setting in which they had taken place.

You caught the eye of the man who had started it all, who had shouted at you to leave the Lower Ring. He had been forced to his knees and held there by stone restraints, and a Dai Li agent stood above him with a severe expression on his face.

When the man noticed you looking at him, his eyebrows drew together, his irises shining with fear and desperation. He mouthed something at you, or perhaps he said it aloud and you were too far to hear it, but either way you comprehended the message.

Please.

Your eyes widened, but you were shoved around a corner before you could react. And then there was a scream, followed by a horrible cracking sound, followed by an eerie, disconcerting silence.

Upon arriving in the palace, you were brought to the throne room. The throne itself was noticeably empty, but Long Feng was standing in front of it on its dais, his sly face adorned with a mournful frown. It only deepened when he saw you, and he sighed as the Dai Li agents paused before him, bowed, and then left, leaving the two of you alone.

“Princess Y/N,” Long Feng said, trying to adopt the same fatherly tone he always took on around you. “I cannot begin to describe how disappointed in you I am.”

“Then don’t,” you said. “And tell the Dai Li to free me of these restraints. What would my brother say if he saw me like this?”

“Why, certainly, he’d agree with me, if not my methods,” Long Feng said. “You’ve nearly died so many times in the city that it’s clear I was right. You never should’ve left.”

He might as well have dumped a bucket of ice over your head. So many times. How had he known about any other instance? How had he known that assassins had come for you, and more than once?

“What will happen to the people of the Lower Ring?” you said. “What will you do to them?”

“Do not fret,” he said. “The instigators were publicly executed, as a reminder to the others of the power of the Dai Li. As for the rest, well, the only ones hurt by their little demonstration were themselves. That’s an even better punishment than anything I could come up with.”

“Executed?” you said.

“As long as you stay out of it, Ba Sing Se will remain safe,” Long Feng said. “Now that the dissenters are gone, the public sentiment will return to its usual.”

“But I don’t want it to return to its usual! The people of Ba Sing Se hate Kuei and I, and for good reason,” you said. “They are struggling, and instead of helping them, we are making things worse. Surely you know this, so why have you not yet advised my brother to stop what he is doing and enact policies that will benefit our kingdom?”

Long Feng scoffed. “You know nothing of ruling a kingdom; in fact, you know even less than your brother. If you and he would leave the running of Ba Sing Se to the more qualified, then things would not be so dire.”

“There’s a war,” you said. Long Feng paled, and for a moment, his well-schooled expression dropped into a sneer. It was brief, but you were quicker than he. You saw it, and the beginnings of a theory formed in the back of your mind.

“Who has fed you such vicious lies?” he said. “There is no war.”

“The Avatar,” you said. “I’m sure your men told you that I was with him. If I am lying, then he must be, as well. Do you still deny it?”

“The Avatar is a young boy,” Long Feng said. “Young boys are prone to exaggeration and boasting. In a world that has survived for so long without him, don’t you think he would do anything to gain some legitimacy? Fabricating a conflict isn’t beyond that scope. Of course, occasional skirmishes are a natural consequence of the size of the kingdom, but an actual war is unthinkable. The world is at peace.”

“And the refugees are tourists,” you noted. “Isn’t that right?”

“You’re confused,” he said. “The overload of information that you were faced with in Ba Sing Se has muddled your poor mind, so that you are susceptible to the mind tricks of outside actors like the Avatar.”

“That’s not true!” you said. “I know what I saw. Why are you denying it so vehemently?”

Speaking to Long Feng always reduced you to childhood. With him, you were once again nothing but a little girl throwing a tantrum. It did not help that he was perpetually looking down his nose at you, like you were lucky to have gained his attention at all, like he was doing you a favor by acknowledging you in the first place. You despised it, despised how small he made you feel, despised how powerless you became whenever he rebuked you.

“I’m afraid I must ban you from your brother’s chambers for the time being,” Long Feng said. “I cannot have you contaminating his clear-headed judgment with your hysterics.”

“You’re confining me to just my room?” you said. If that was the only punishment you received, then it’d be a blessing, but of course you could not reveal that to Long Feng, who would then come up with something even worse to thoroughly chastise you.

“Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe not. How did you escape?”

“Why would I tell you that?” you said.

“If you ever want to see Kuei again, you will,” he said, his smirk growing cruel as you gasped despite yourself. “You two are all-too-similar. Perhaps you think that because you have found a way out of the palace, you are invulnerable, but I can promise you one thing, your highness: if you do not cooperate, I will forbid you from your brother for good.”

You clenched your fists by your sides. “The window.”

“The window!” Long Feng said incredulously. “Do you expect me to believe that? You live on one of the highest floors of the palace. Even for an Earthbender, that route would be suicide, but you are not so much as that. You are worsening your own case by lying.”

Closing your eyes, you bowed at Long Feng, though as a princess you were required to bow to no one but your brother. He did not stop you, though. He never stopped you.

“You’re right,” you said. “I was lying. I apologize. The truth — the truth is a little more incredible, and I had doubted you’d be convinced by it, but that is out of my control. The only thing I can do is speak it and hope you have faith in me as your princess to stand as a bastion of integrity and truth, even when I tell tales that are all but outlandish in nature.”

“Get on with it,” he said. You took a deep breath to calm your racing heart, whose pulse beat like a drum in your chest, behind your eyebrows, around your ears.

“I disguised myself as a servant,” you said. “Once I was dressed like that, no one paid any attention to me. Making my way to the kitchens, I snuck out of their door, and from there, I ran into the city.”

“No one noticed the truth of your identity?” Long Feng said.

“It’s amazing,” you said. “The kind of things that you pay no attention to when you think of someone as lesser. When I looked like a servant, I was treated as one. For better and for worse.”

You waited with bated breath, hoping beyond hope, praying to Quynh, to Agni, to Tui and La and every other spirit that he would believe you.

“It seems I underestimated you, your royal highness,” Long Feng said. “Chhay!”

From behind the dais, a man appeared. He wore the same uniform as the rest of the Dai Li, though the collar of his undershirt was gold instead of green, a signifier of his elevated status. You knew without being told who he was: Captain Chhay, the legendary captain of the Dai Li and Long Feng’s second in command. The stories told about him were numerous; he was the closest to a national hero that the Earth Kingdom had, as well as the main reason that the Dai Li were so loyal to Long Feng.

“To ensure that you never have the cause to don a servant’s garb again, I will assign Chhay to be your guard,” Long Feng said. “He will stay with you at all times and watch over your every move. In that way, we can be certain that you are where you are supposed to be at any given moment.”

“Don’t worry, your royal highness,” Captain Chhay said. Fear spiked in you, because the voice was not unfamiliar to you, and you suppressed a shudder, doing your best to remain neutral. “I’m sure we will get along.”

“Yes,” you said, fighting to keep your own voice steady. “I’m sure we will.”

Captain Chhay emanated an aura of cocky, self-assured smugness. He knew that he was powerful; maybe he even knew you feared him. Either way, he had to understand that between the two of you, he was the stronger, and so he walked with a swagger to his step as he escorted you to your room.

“Captain Chhay,” you said, holding onto your skirts, wishing you had someone there to protect you. The Blue Spirit…Lee…you would’ve even taken Sokka, at this point, though you doubted he would’ve done very much besides maybe demand the captain do a cartwheel. But you were alone, without even the Water Tribe cartwheel-fanatic as an ally, and so you had to figure out how to do this on your own. “How long have you been in the Dai Li?”

“I didn’t take you as a student of history,” he said.

“It’s one of my hobbies,” you said, wiping your palms against your bodice. “I’m sorry. I’m really nervous.”

“Nervous? Why?” he said, though a smile tugged at the corner of his lips. “Not because of me, I should hope.”

“It’s — it’s just that you are so famous,” you said.

“And you are a princess,” he said. “I am but your humble servant. As for your question, I joined the Dai Li shortly before your brother’s coronation.”

The next question was the most delicate, and you could almost persuade yourself to not ask it at all. After all, did you really want to confirm this? Was it worth it, or did you ought to leave well enough alone?

No. If you were right, then you were the only hope left for Ba Sing Se. For your subjects, who were crumbling under the oppressive injustice they faced daily to the point that they had almost killed you in an attempt to restore some semblance of order. If not you, then who would defend them? Who cared for them nearly as much? Who knew them in the way you did?

“When were you promoted to the rank of captain?” you said.

“When Long Feng was appointed your brother’s regent,” he said. “The information is public, so why are you asking me?”

“There’s no better source than the one which lived through the event,” you said. “I am going to take a bath. I trust that you do not need to be at my side for that?”

“I will remain just in front of the door,” Captain Chhay said. “Don’t even think of doing anything funny. I’ll detect it immediately, so it’d just be a waste of time for the both of us.”

Your bathtub was more like a small pool, constructed at Kuei’s behest when you had told him you longed to learn to swim. It was filled with warm water at all times by servants who never introduced themselves to you, and it was deep enough that you could float in it and not touch the bottom if you so desired.

It was only once you had submerged yourself that you let your mind wander. What did you do now? You were just the weak little princess, the girl who could do nothing for anyone, including herself. You could not even go to Quynh for advice, not with Captain Chhay all but atop you constantly. If you exposed that secret, then there was no telling what might happen, to both you and her alike.

You were trapped in a vipers’ enclosure, and the vipers were of such deadly stock that you really had no hope of survival at all. You could only submit to Long Feng’s demands, could only beg Captain Chhay for mercy, so that he was not overly harsh when the time came.

The pool had begun to cool off by the time that you ascended the stairs to leave it, wrapping a towel around you to ward away the chill you had been feeling ever since Long Feng had unknowingly revealed his hand. But that chill was internal, and the towel could do nothing to protect you from it, so after a moment, you set it aside and put on your nightclothes, exiting the bathroom with trepidation.

Captain Chhay was leaning against the wall, his hair let out of its braid and loose around his shoulders, his helm low over his brow, though he was by no means asleep, tilting towards you as you scurried towards your bed like a mouse.

“I will rest now,” you declared, pulling the blankets up around your shoulders and staring at your desk, which was at the other end of the room. It was covered with your glass sculptures, the ones Quynh had been so proud of you for making. A dragon. Twin fish. A badgermole. A flying bison. A bear, constructed so carefully that the fine points of glass covering its surface appeared to be fur, appeared to be genuinely soft to the touch. And uncountable others, each different from the rest, united only by the perfection that you had attempted to attain with every attempt.

Sleep evaded you, though you were not actively trying to seek it out, either, not when Captain Chhay still stood in your doorway, his half-lidded eyes trained on your motionless form.

If you fell asleep, there was no guarantee you’d ever wake up again. You mulled over the events of the day as you tossed and turned, hating how things had changed in such a short span of time but realizing it was necessary. It was in the end not a change that had occurred but a shift in your awareness. These things had been happening for quite some time already.

More than yourself, you worried for your brother. Maybe you could escape, could open the door and run into it and demand Quynh close it before you were pursued, but what would become of Kuei? As long as Captain Chhay was around, it was not safe for him. It was not safe for either of you.

With that in mind, it was obvious what you had to do, but were you capable? Well. You supposed you had to try. For Kuei. For your kingdom. You had to try, or else your people would continue to die, would continue to endure agony and blame your family for it, though you and your brother had never done anything but try to love them.

So you threw the blankets aside and slid off the bed, shoving your feet into a pair of slippers, and you did not pray to the spirits for help. It was your father you called upon — not the 51st Earth King, but your father, the man who in a sense constituted half of your being. It was him you asked for guidance, even though he could never give it to you, even though he had never known you enough to care.

“What are you doing?” Captain Chhay said.

“I had a nightmare,” you said. “Can I talk to you about it? I am still so — so shaken up.”

“I’m not your babysitter,” he said. “Talk to someone else.”

“Aren’t you?” you said. “I have no one else. Please, captain…I am all alone in the palace. In the world, in fact. Won’t you at least listen to me? If it were your own daughter asking, wouldn’t you want for someone to show her that consideration?”

“I don’t have a daughter,” he said gruffly. “My wife died before she could give birth.”

Still, he softened imperceptibly, making his way towards you. You backed up towards your desk, his every step matching your own as you grew closer and closer to where you wanted to be.

Please, Father.

“It was such an awful dream,” you said.

“What was it about?” he said, finally giving in, taking off his helmet so that you could see his shrewd eyes, which were as gentle as he could make them. It was almost as if he felt sorry for you, as if he were seeing his never-born daughter in your place.

“The day my father died. I saw it in such vivid detail,” you said. Your back hit the desk, and your hands trembled as you reached for one of the statues, slick fingers glossing over their surfaces before finally finding enough purchase to grab onto one of them.

“You weren’t even alive when that happened,” Captain Chhay said. “How can you dream about it?”

“I’ve been told the story so many times that it can sometimes feel as if I were there myself,” you said. “Besides, it was a dream. All sorts of impossible things happen in those.”

“That is true,” he said. “Was that all? It happened many years ago. I’m sure it was frightening, but there’s nothing to be done about it now.”

Please, Father. You disguised the twisting, undulating motions of your hands by pretending to wring them behind your back out of distress.

“Something different happened,” you said. “Something new. You see, this time, I heard the assassin’s voice as he killed my father, and to my surprise, it was one I recognized.”

“Your mind cannot conjure up new sounds, so of course you recognized it,” Captain Chhay said, though the softness was rapidly fading from his eyes, replaced with wariness.

“No,” you said. “That’s not why. I recognized it for a more meaningful reason, I know I did.”

“Whose was it, then? Are we to place a man on trial just because, what, you had a nightmare?” he said.

Please, Father.

“Actually, the trial has already begun,” you said. “And the verdict has already been decided. The voice really does belong to the man who murdered my father all of those years ago, and I know that because it was the same voice which belonged to the man who tried to kill me so many times. Because it was your voice, Captain Chhay!”

I’m sorry, Father. Please, Father. Father.

Before Captain Chhay could react to the accusation, you used your bending to impale his heart with the spike of glass that had once been the bear statue. He collapsed immediately, blood bursting from the site like a fountain, the glittering tip of the makeshift weapon poking out of his back.

“How — did — you — bend?” he choked out, voice gurgling as even more blood welled up in his mouth and spilled past his lips, forming a puddle by his cheek.

“Long Feng isn’t the only one who’s been keeping secrets,” you said, bending the glass out of his body so that there was no evidence of what you had done. Smashing it against the ground to further the deniability, you bit your tongue to push back the bile rising in your throat. “You were assigned to kill me, weren’t you? Weren’t you? Answer me!”

Captain Chhay’s body convulsed once, and then he was completely still, his eyes glazed over, frozen while looking somewhere distant, forever stuck searching for something he could not find.

You had done that. A choked sob escaped you, your horror at the deed mixing with the relief you felt that he could never hurt you again. He could never take Kuei from you like he had taken your father.

Patting your palms, now stained with crimson, against your white nightgown, you turned towards your dressing room, where the door to Quynh’s Den had just appeared. Walking towards it, you pulled it open and gave the room one final look, taking in the violent scene created by your own hands.

Then you stepped into the passageway and closed the doorway behind you for good.

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danikamariewrites · 1 month

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𝕊𝕖𝕔𝕠𝕟𝕕 𝕊𝕚𝕘𝕙𝕥

Prologue

A/n: welcome to my first series! I’m so happy to be putting this out and I’m excited to hear your thoughts. Please feel free to comment or ask questions :)

Warnings: slight angst, mentions of death, reader being trapped in a tower, deceptive Beron

At thirteen years old you were still showing no sign of powers. Your father had always told you tales of the fire that runs through your veins. What your birthright is as the last living heir to the Autumn Court.

He had always seemed so happy to have you as his child. So proud.

Though the expectations he set terrified you, you were happy you have Beron as a father. When your father visits your tower he always asks what you’re learning this week or if you found any new hobbies to enjoy. There wasn’t much to do in your tower but study and draw. In your free time art had become your passion. So much so that your father and tutor, Lady Briar, couldn’t ignore your talent.

Everytime your father visits you ask him to tell you a story. Finally, after a decade of begging him for the tale of your family, Beron gave in. Your mother and two older brothers had loved you very much, he would tell you.

“When you were just a babe,” he would start the same way every time, “Relations between us and the Night Court were unstable. Their High Lord was hell bent on dominating Prythian.” This tale would always scare you. Make you afraid of what you would have to face once you took the throne of the Autumn Court. You’d be alone as High Lady. You didn’t like to think about being without your father.

During their legendary battle your mother and brothers had perished at the hands of the vile High Lord of Night. It was so awful and graphic your father never let you read any of the history books about it.

After he would tell the story he would leave. Giving you no other information about your family. Only left with your imagination to draw up what they looked like.

By twenty-two your powers had come, but you didn’t dare speak of what they were. You didn’t have the bright flames he’d hoped for from you. Father had told you of the blue flame that came once in a generation. An Autumn High Lord hadn’t produced a child who could wield such power in centuries.

On your own you have discovered your daemati powers. You knew about them from the history books Lady Briar had given you about the High Lords of Prythian.

Every time father talked about powers your gut twisted. Your heart rate spiked. And your palms would sweat. Father mistook it for excitement about learning how to control the fire that was your birthright.

On the day before your fiftieth birthday your father came into your room. He was frantic and disheveled. Telling you he loved you, cherished you even. He told you that you are the most important person in the world to him. That the day you were born he was blessed by the Mother herself to have you in his arms

The next day he didn't visit. Nor the day after that. Then a week had gone by and nothing. No one had come to your tower.

He never missed your birthday.

Calming your mind and body you sit criss cross on your bed. Slowing your breathing you cast your mind out to the main house, far from your lonesome tower.

There was chaos and quiet. Advisors scrambling but no solid answers. But not a soul is worried about you.

A knock at your door brought you back to your body. Unlocking the door with your mind you quickly stand, smoothing out the skirts of your dark autumn red gown. Lady Briar enters, looking as solemn and stern as ever. You give her a deep curtsy. “Lady Briar,” you greet. Looking up you see her expression changed to one of slight sorrow. “Princess,” she starts. “Your father, he…he has been taken with the other High Lords. That is all we know for now, your grace.” Without another word Lady Briar turned and left.

For weeks you paced your room, going about your usual routine. Reading. Painting. Sleeping. Repeat. You were going stir crazy. You were also desperate for answers as to who dared keep your father captive.

Something wasn’t right. You could feel it in your gut that there was more to what happened.

If no one would tell you then it was time to hunt for answers on your own. Which means going somewhere you’ve never gone before.

You have to leave the comfort of the tower. Well, it’s never been comfortable. As the years droned on you’ve felt more cramped and isolated than anything.

You had no supervision. No one to tell you no. Lady Briar certainly isn’t an authority figure to you anyways.

It took days of projecting your mind into the house, watching to learn the guards patterns. Where you would need to hide yourself and whose mind you would need to hold on to.

Throwing your cloak on, taking a deep breath you make your way down the spiral stairs of the tower. There were less than you thought there would be.

Letting loose another breath, resting your hand on the door that separates you from the real world, you square your shoulders and push.

Taking in the night sky from below was so different than your window. It seemed wider. Endless. Feeling the soft ground under your boots made you want to run and jump through the Forest House grounds.

Perhaps another night.

#acotar #acotar fanfiction #acotar reader fic #acotar reader imagine #acotar imagine #the vanserras #acotar Autumn court #y/n vanserra fic #eris vanserra acotar #eris vanserra fic #acotar eris #eris acotar #eris vanserra #Lucien Vanserra #lucien acotar #acotar lucien #lucien vanserra acotar

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thatbitchkayla30 · 1 year

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I've decided that I'm compiling a list of Danny & Damien Twin Crossover AU's

Twin Souls [Updated 02/22/2023]

What Happened? [Updated 02/01/2023]

One Fall, Two Rise [Updated 02/04/2023]

Prodigal of Lazarus [Updated 02/03/2023]

Tell me to stay [Updated 01/21/2023]

And You're Always Free To Begin Again [Updated 01/18/2023]

Because I Could Not Stop For Death / Death Kindly Stopped For Me [Updated 01/29/2023]

Soulbound Brethren [Updated 01/24/2023]

King Daniel Aidan Phantom of the Infinite Realms , [Updated 01/19/2023]

Undead (Technically) Demon Twin [Updated 01/27/2023]

Finding Valhalla [Updated 02/03/2023]

Shadow of the Demon Heir [Completed]

Endless Road to Rediscover [Updated 01/27/2023]

Green never looked so sad before I lost you. [Updated 01/26/2023]

Schrodinger's Danny [Updated 01/03/2023]

Ghost Kings and Gotham Bats [Updated 01/03/2023]

What do I think of life? (Baby, not much, I wanna die) [Updated 12/30/2022]

close enough to be whole again [Updated 12/31/2022]

A Phantom's Perch [Updated 12/29/2022]

Turning Shadows into Shapes [Updated 01/20/2023]

Hey, Who is Damian? [Updated 12/26/2022]

You Look Like You’ve Seen A Ghost [Updated 02/08/2023]

It's Only Me (Though Not As I've Appeared Before) [Updated 01/18/2023]

Cheat Combo: Assassin Overdrive [Updated 12/25/2022]

But I Want to Be Let In, Not Out [Updated 01/14/2022]

birthright [Updated 12/21/2022]

Bat Ghost [Updated 12/20/2022]

Leap Before You Think [Updated 01/17/2023]

O Brother, Where Art Thou? [Updated 11/27/2022]

How to introduce your eldritch ghost king twin brother [Updated 11/27/2022]

The Lost One [Updated 11/25/2022]

inversion [Updated 11/21/2022]

the ghost in the mirror [Updated 11/20/2022]

Finding Bones, Finding Ghosts [Updated 11/19/2022]

you’re stardust under my fingers [Updated 11/14/2022]

Who Else Is Also Real? [Updated 01/27/2023]

Phantom Pain [Updated 01/28/2023]

The Missing Piece [Updated 09/12/2022]

Seeds Of the Father [Updated 09/08/2022]

Everything is Something to Somebody [Updated 09/06/2022]

Long Lost Love (Holds On to Me Tight) [Updated 07/15/2022]

Trial and Error [Updated 06/22/2022]

When I'm not mobile I'll probably organize them by unfinished, finished & one shots. For now this is the list lol

#danny fenton #danny phantom #damian wayne #robin #batman #bruce wayne #batfam #batfamily #dc

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satorutini · 3 months

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above snakes - kamo choso

pairing: choso x reader

summary: “At your service, ma'am,” he says, with an earnest grin and the tilt of his gallon hat. “Always.”

rating: explicit

wc: 7.6k

ch: 1/2

You can’t imagine the number of things I had to google that probably don’t matter but would’ve driven me up a wall if historically inaccurate. Idk how to fucking paint so pls forgive me, artists and art history majors.

read on ao3

There was a particular brand of wildness that seemed to touch everything this far west.

It had to, you surmised, come from the lack of seasonal rain. Something must’ve mixed into the well water with the first wave of settlers. Grown into the dry cracks and crevices of the desert with the rest of the shrubbery. Crept into the hearts of every untamed beast that could endure the sweltering heat, timid or truculent.

You’d experienced that wilderness in bits and pieces in your short time this side of the Mississippi River. You’d heard it through the stories men traded on bar stools. Felt it in the rough callouses of the hands that traded coin for drink and paint. In the first few weeks after you had settled, you had attempted to capture it yourself. But no matter how long you spent bent over a canvas, painting broad blue skies and looming canyons and bands of wild horses, your brush simply could not replicate that untamed, beautiful something, native only to nature herself.

It intrigued you. It called to you from the safety of your New England home and the polite society you’d been indoctrinated into all of your life. The desert and its residents were both beguiling and dangerous, in real, tangible ways that tea parties and gossip circles back home couldn’t even begin to compare to.

On its worst days, the sun and the heat did terrible things to people who linger in it for too long. But for most of your life - and much of your stay thus far - you’d been lucky enough to have never seen that kind of violence up close, not if you could help it. Not if your father could help it.

The unbearable heat, however, is something you had willingly signed up for the moment you rejected your birthright and fucked off into the countryside for good - something you try to remind yourself at the sight of half of your paints gone runny in their cases.

A sudden wave of anger causes your fingers to twitch against the wooden lid. I don’t understand.

“Is…Is everything alright?” You blink and straighten up, taking a second to compose yourself before turning to face your inquirer with an expression as blank as you can muster. You don’t understand how the paints had melted in storage - since you had moved, you had done what you could to keep them cool and out of the sun. For the two years you had taken residency in the ramshackle saloon, your materials had managed to survive the desert heat from the safety of the trunk you kept under your bed.

And yet today of all days, half of your case is a watery, separated mess.

Had you been back home, this could have been easily resolved within a day with a few silver dollars and a quick trip to an art store - that very same day if you were early and lucky. The largest commission of your life wouldn’t have to be postponed for longer than mere hours, and you and your standoffish companion could be on your way in a few days.

It’s been two years since you made the journey west and settled in this small haven in the middle of a dry sea. It was a purposeful two-day travel by horse to get to the nearest train station. When you first rode into this tiny town, it had been the perfect place to escape. He was determined and astute, but you doubted that your father and family would follow you this far out into the middle of nowhere. Life here wasn’t perfect or easy, and there were often times (like now) when you longed for the conveniences of modern society.

But it was yours . For the first time, you could confidently say that you were in control of your own life and content - happy, even.

And yet looking at the mess in your hands, all you can feel is unadulterated rage as you calculate about many weeks it will take for the general store to have black paint again.

Weeks. Months , maybe. You don’t have months.

The sheriff had paid good money to have his deputy’s portrait remade, despite his lack of knowledge in your lack of knowledge. That I-don’t-have-to-worry-about-food-or-rent-for-the-cold-season kind of money that you couldn’t just pass up on. All he had heard was that you were a painter from the north - a skill no one had the luxury for this far out west - and all you had heard was the promise of financial security .

In your turmoil, you’d nearly forgotten about your unlucky patron - a tall, broad, and stolid man with inky black hair and sullen eyes that tracked you about the room as you had prepared to paint him. Deputy Choso sat atop your rickety stool, poised for his portrait to be painted. His impatience radiates throughout the room.

The portrait painting hadn’t been his idea, but his mentor’s. An apology from the sheriff after his original portrait - the one he received after his installation as deputy of your quaint township, conceived by a much older, real artist passing through town - was bullet-whipped in a close call with a gang member turned near - escapee at the station.

While you weren’t there for the initial conversation - or however Sheriff Nanami decided to break the news to his young deputy - judging by the icy demeanor and rigid posture he had maintained since his arrival, you can only imagine that the gift had been met with some measure of reluctance.

The deputy had arrived at your doorstep in the early hours of the morning looking haggard and half-ready to jog back downstairs and escape on his horse, maybe relay some poorly composed excuse to his mentor about why he couldn’t see this through when you first opened the door to greet him.

It wasn’t like you hadn’t seen each other at all in the two years since that fateful encounter. Your tiny town was exactly that - tiny. The proximity of everything compared to the vastness of the empty desert made it so that no one strew too far from home without the purposeful intent of doing so. You had always seen Choso in passing on the way your way out of the general store, making his survey rounds about town, or on his way into the saloon after a long day, pretending not to see the way you slide from the bar to the furthest corner of the room at his arrival.

Admired him quietly from afar all the while he seemed to avoid you like the plague. Straight up ignored you, even.

Head down, gaze averted. Worn gallon hat shielding the upper half of his face. Never offering more than a polite nod if you happen to be roped into the same conversation. But seeing each other like this, up close, without the usual buffers of his colleague, your nosy neighbors, or drunken bar patrons, was an entirely different beast.

At the sight of you, the shock on his face was plain as day no matter how quickly he schooled his expression into one of impassivity. You couldn’t blame him, maybe even look at him similarly - overnight, the anxiety leading up to this appointment had crept into your bloodstream and buzzed in your ears like a pesky mosquito. If he ever asked how you had gotten to the door so quickly, or if you had been waiting up on him by the door, you would lie. Profusely.

After inviting him in wordlessly with a tight smile and excusing yourself to gather your things, Choso had taken a moment to take in your other works littered about the tiny studio - horses, lots of them, racing thunderously alongside dusty mesas and atop desert plateaus. Vivid oranges, murky browns, and brilliant blues dance across his vision.

Snakes too - long, scaly reptiles with cavernous maws bearing thin, murderous, and razor-sharp teeth. Choso feels like he could prick his finger just touching the painting.

You’d taken careful time to mimic the way the relentless desert sun made the scales of the reptilian appear nearly wet and shiny, its eyes glinting soullessly back at him from different angles. No people, though , he notices. No faces.

He’s in the middle of wondering when the last time you saw a snake this close to town was when he notices you freeze in his periphery, staring into a wooden case.

The deputy shifts in his seat; this is already taking longer than he anticipated, and you have yet to even start painting.

“Ma’am,” he calls out again when you don’t respond, pursing your lips as you struggle to think of what to say. You can hear him trying to bite back the bark of annoyance in his voice. “Are you okay?”

Not at all. “Absolutely.” You offer him a placid smile if only to see him relax a little.

Recalling the pale look on his face when he first marched up to your little studio above the local saloon, you get the sense that despite his usual impassivity, this appointment isn’t easy for either of you.

Deputy Choso Kamo is the young gunslinging protege to your town’s sheriff, a champion fighter with his own tall tales from the desert tied to his name.

In any other situation - if you were anyone else - this would be an honor beyond your imagination for the amateur artist you considered yourself to be.

There was a time when Deputy Kamo would stroll through the center of your dusty little square in the early morning hours of a Sunday on his brooding black mare, surly and stolid, and the sun would roll in behind him as if waiting for his arrival for permission to set. Women would flock to the windows of the chapel to snag a glimpse of the gunslinger and peak behind their hands at him in passing. Men would amble out onto the deck of the saloon to gawk at him in the guise of appraisal, arms crossed, fingers resting on the hostlers of their guns.

Of course, that was in the earlier days, when he first took up the position as Sheriff Kento Nanami’s secondhand man. Before you arrived. That was what was told to you after you had already made your own unforgettable first impression.

You knew the deputy as simply Choso, the man who you fucked half senseless the first night you arrived in his small town.

You had been drunk, celebrating your first night of true freedom with as much ale as your silver could carry. And he had been there. Hair long and unruly, observing you from his quieter corner of the saloon. Never looking away when your gaze caught his, finally noticing him looking, watching. Not a belt or badge or holster in sight - just quiet, confident resolve, and enough money to buy you one more drink before you invited him back to your closet-sized rented room.

He had probably figured you were a city slicker just passing through, journeying to the booming mining cities near the coast. It had probably never crossed his mind that you would stay.

And yet here you were, having never spoken to each other again in the two years since that fateful night and clutching your half-melted paint palette between the two of you like it would shield him from you.

Or vice versa.

Choso glances at the wooden case again and then places both hands on his belt with a sigh, arms akimbo. “Look, if you’re going to be weird about this-,”

“No, no, not at all!” You grimace and sigh, flipping the oily mess in his direction, frown growing when the paints slosh in their pans. “I’ve run out of black. That was the last of the only tube I had.”

“So what does that mean? You can’t paint?” You try not to feel a bit hurt at the hint of hopefulness in his voice. You know this interaction is awkward - you’ve been dancing around each other for two whole years, there’s only so many people in this tiny town - but you hadn’t thought your company was that unbearable.

“No, I can still start, it’ll just take a little longer. It takes a while for the general store to order the paint, and even longer for it to get. But maybe I can order the materials to make the paint a little faster if I can just get my hands on some linseed oil…”

At this point, you’re murmuring more to yourself and into the canvas propped in front of your reluctant subject than to the young deputy himself, who has quickly schooled his expression back into one of disinterest. All he hears is that he’ll be seeing you a lot more often than he already had expected, quickly coming to the same conclusion you have.

Much of his appearance and uniform attire were comprised of dark greys and browns - hell, his hair was black. His skin took on a gold tone from long hours in the sun. Tiredness cast a dark shadow beneath his low-lidded eyes. Like many of the men who spent their time out in the wilderness, he seemed to carry pieces of it with him. If you didn’t come into possession of any black paint any time soon, this process would take much longer than either of you had anticipated.

“I can still get started.”

As if sensing his uneasiness, you meet his gaze full-on for the first time since greeting him at the door. And then you add, a little quieter, “But we don’t have to do this if you really don’t want to.”

His brows shoot up in surprise, contemplative, as if recognizing that this is the closest either of you has ever gotten to addressing the massive elephant in the room. His fingers idly fiddle with the gold plate at his belt, palms curling over the leather at his waist, and you try not to remember the way they felt bracing your hips. Your thighs. The way his grasp had trembled when you touched him.

It was all so long ago, and yet somehow not long enough. The faded memory is now clear in your mind at your forced proximity.

Choso considers leaving. He thinks of Nanami, of how he’ll probably pry the real reason for his reluctance right out of him with little to no effort the moment the young deputy tells him that he’s no longer interested in receiving the sheriff’s gift. He thinks of how the man will most likely march him right back into your meager studio and sit in the corner and watch . He’d rather not have this debacle unfold in front of an audience, much less his mentor.

The deputy is facing an internal uphill battle of his own as he struggles and fails to repress the memory of your last private encounter with every minute of sitting in your presence. Fighting back a warm blush that threatens to spill over his cheeks when he remembers the last time he was in this room. If he is uncomfortable now, he can only imagine the immense discomfort that would come with the sheriff seeing him so on edge like this. So openly undone by your mere appraisal..

Choso is a grown-ass man who will not run away from a gift just because he can’t unsee you bent over this very same stool two years ago, crying out on his cock.

“I can do this,” he resolves and then reddens with the realization that he has exposed a bit of his inner dialogue when you frown, scrambling to rephrase his words. “It doesn’t matter to me.”

His heart aches a little at the way your expression shutters, closed off, but then again maybe you’re just reflecting his own. “Take as much time as you need, I mean. It’s up to you,” He tries again, but you’ve already returned your attention to your easel with a sharp nod, ducking behind your canvas.

This way, he can’t see the way your hand trembles when you make your first brush stroke.

Your appointments are sparse and brief.

At first, the whole ordeal is kind of a burden. It’s not that Choso is too busy to give it much thought - not really . Your town is quiet and picturesque - an unknown speck of nothing smack dab in the middle of nowhere. A watering hole, maybe, to those who wandered across the wild desert in gangs. Choso has done his best to keep the peace in your region, even in the few years before your arrival. Between him and the presence of Nanami - a legendary quick draw - keeping the unruly at bay, it’s been a while since the young deputy had come across anyone that he could truly consider his rival.

The problem is that he does give it too much thought.

He only sees you maybe once or twice a week. The appointments are brief - there is only so much you can do to add to the portrait when you’re missing such a vital color, and for all of the patience and timeliness rumored to have carried his infamous gunslinging career, Choso is terrible at sitting still for too long.

You being, well, you , doesn’t help his case much either.

When he is not with you, Choso finds his thoughts drifting back to your studio. He thinks back to your many landscape paintings; the snakes and the way you paint their glittering scales. The distinct lack of portraits in your gallery despite being commissioned to make one. There seem to be more iterations of the desert each week he comes to visit as if you’re missing something you can’t quite put your finger on with each new edition.

He daydreams about the way your bare ankles cross as you sit on a stool of your own. You’ve eventually stopped wearing shoes in his presence (he takes that as a sign of you being more comfortable with him rather than just simply too lazy to do anything about it when he comes through).

His mind wanders to the pensive look on your face when you tune him out and really get to work. To that scrutinizing gaze you turn on him every so often while he poses, in the moments when you’re willing to pry yourself from the canvas to refresh yourself on the subject you’re replicating. He ruminates on the furrow of your brow, and how the first time he saw it he was knuckle-deep in your wet heat, wringing the sweetest sounds from your mouth.

But worst of all he thinks of your hands. Your fingers more accurately. The digits that wield your brush and paint palette with practiced ease. He imagines the grip of your fingers on the brush and recalls a time when they braceleted his neck and squeezed. The ghost of the delicious pressure of your fingertips against his skin, the band of your knuckles wrapped around his throat, haunts him on the hottest desert nights.

Choso is reluctantly obsessed with the memory of you choking him, subconsciously chasing that shock of surprise at the sensation, followed by the rush of pleasure that sent him quickly tumbling over the edge faster than he ever had in his life. The feeling had hit him before he had even known was what happening. He remembers with stark clarity wrenching out of the grasp of your tight heat in surprise before spilling onto the wooden floor with a sharp cry. The cocktail of shame and confusion in his stomach at the sight of your pleased smile.

And then, as he makes his way into your modest studio, mentally preparing himself for another round of sitting as still as a statue, he reminds himself that that night was a one-off, one-time thing.

When he’s not plagued by his growing hunger for you, Choso has come to enjoy this moment of silence and stillness away from his usual routine. Typically, his days are filled with patrols about the perimeter of the town or hauling overzealous drunkards from the bar. He has been long familiar with the mercilessness of the desert this far west, the maliciousness that lurks in animals and people alike.

While the bored bumble of your small town was reprieve itself, the young deputy can’t help but begin to look forward to his afternoons cooped up in your rented room.

He stares at you from behind the canvas and wonders if you’d sound the same as you remember if he got his hands in the way he’s been itching to. Restraining to. Wonders if he got up from his station and crowded you by your canvas if you’d brace his neck with your small hands again just to keep him at bay.

You refuse to speak to him and yet he craves your presence even in your tense silence. He craves the solace of your company. Knowing he is your singular focus for just a small portion of time. Watching you watch him as you - supposedly – immortalize his face into a masterpiece.

When you finally receive news that the general store has ordered your paint and it will be here before the summer turns to autumn, Choso can’t help but wonder if you’ll paint him with the same quietly murderous black eyes as your snakes.

He knows now that you are actually capable of painting human bodies, despite his earlier skepticism. Albeit only from the chest up, Choso’s painted double takes on a broad and heroic stance, filling out his deputy uniform with all of the muscle and build of somebody sculpted by hard work and hardship.

All that’s missing is his face.

The deputy talks to you now, speaking freely, offering quiet words here and there. There is a shared sense of amicableness between the two of you. A shared, unspoken understanding that you’d both silently chosen to ignore whatever had transpired up to this moment, for the sake of the commission. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t notice when your gaze lingers on his face for longer than probably necessary. That doesn’t mean his eyes don’t track your hands as you move about the canvas.

Eventually, every time he comes by, you update him on the last thing the general store told you about the status of your paint order, and he wracks his brain to calculate when he’ll see you next. How long this will last.

He doesn’t know if he can go back to ignoring each other after this.

It wasn’t until Deputy Kamo became a regular fixture in your routine that you would feel the cool bite of the steel and the worn wooden handle between your own two palms.

Guns, the indiscriminate dictators of the lawless West, were not an uncommon sight. Men carried them as casually as cigars. It was a less common occurrence for women, although the wives of cow wranglers were known to be familiar with riffles. Every so often when he would visit, you would curiously watch out of the corner of your eye as he would remove the weapon from his holster and place it gently on your rickety excuse for a kitchen table. When you ended your last painting session by asking Choso if he could teach you how to handle a revolver, he almost whited out at the concept.

He looks at you now as you balance the device in hesitant hands, impassive as ever.

“You’re going to hurt yourself more than someone else with a grip like that.”

You huff and wordlessly adjust your hold on the weapon, frown furrowing your features. Trying hard to recall the deputy’s earlier patient instruction. The pair of you stand on the outskirts of town, at the lip of his patrol range. As far out into the desert as you’re comfortable venturing. The candlelights of your township twinkle in the distance like little figurines in the fading sunlight. 30 feet away, a beer mug balances on a dead log, perched directly in your line of sight.

You hope he can’t feel the way you tense when Choso wraps his arms around your frame from behind, readjusting your grip with his own.

“Breathe,” he admonishes.

“I am.”

“Right.”

His tone is clipped as he takes a step back, and you can’t help but frown a little as he steps away.

“Shoulders,” he corrects you, and you adjust accordingly, rolling them down and back, away from your ears. Not having made your first shot yet, you’re silently taken aback by how cold and still the device is in your hands. Unable to fully comprehend the violence it could administer - loud and quick and unforgiving. Permanent.

The sun sinks. The sound of crickets gets a little louder.

“You’re alright,” the deputy calls from behind you, softly, as though sensing the fear crawling up your throat. “Focus, don’t think. Steady.”

You level the revolver.

“Aim,” your finger rests on the trigger. A slight tremor in your stance.

“Fire.”

Too much happens all at once. The crack of the revolver is deafening, the force of the firearm rocking you back in your stance. You cringe. Your ears ring, and your shoulders burn. Tears well up in your eyes on instinct. The once cool metal now radiates with a minacious warmth. Your elbows drop but you keep the weapon extended as far from your body as possible.

“Did I hit it?” You face him rather than your makeshift target, as if afraid to be greeted with the sight of the aftermath of some sort of carnage and not just some shattered beer mug.

The air tastes like gunpowder when you speak. Choso takes one glance over your shoulder and grimaces.

“Depends on what you were tryna’ hit.”

You whirl around, indignant. “What-,”

A gaping hole now graces the side of the barrel. In your haste to shoot, you’d completely missed your target, the mug having fallen into the shrubbery with the force of your firearm.

Choso is patient and watchful. He slips the revolver from your grasp, easily dismissing your disgruntled look. “Go pick it up. Try again.”

You try not to roll your eyes and gripe at the patronizing tone he’s taken on and fail as you trudge toward your fallen target. Wondering again why you had thought that he of all people would be better to ask to sate your curiosity rather than any of the other gun-totting residents of town. Nanami was just as accessible as his deputy.

He’d probably charge me for the lessons, you muse, take it out of my commission or something.

As you reach for the beer mug, the snake sees you before you see it, but Choso is faster.

A flash of reptilian skin and teeth whips in your direction, sending you startling backward and falling on your ass.

“Shit!”

Two gunshots ring out in quick succession, but you feel the whiz of the bullets go by more viscerally than you hear them.

The deputy’s gentle hand on your shoulder wrenches you from the shock of your fright.

“Are you okay?” The question is asked with such sincerity you have to look up at him in astonishment. The sight that greets you sends chills up your spine. Choso’s stolidity largely remains the same, but after studying his figure for weeks on end, you can see the cracks in his composure. The tightness of his jaw. The knuckle-white grip on the weapon in the hand not holding you. You zero in on his comfortable grasp on the metal, trailing your gaze up his sun-warm arms and well-toned neck and nearly flinch at what you see when you meet his eyes.

It’s a fleeting look, one you would have missed if you had looked back at him a second too late. That wild thing that is found in all desert things. That violence. It dances in the blown pupils of his eyes, wicked, sharp, and hungry and suddenly you understand the stories. Suddenly you can’t help but marvel that once long ago, there had been a moment when you had a creature capable of such violence crumble beneath your simple touches. You know he can feel the way you tremble a little in his grasp, even as you nod and straighten up, dusting off your skirt.

“Yeah I’m-,”

The snake twitches violently in the dry grass and the deputy is quick to react, drawing back from you to stomp on the beast’s neck with such force and precision it shocks you more than the initial attack. The thing makes a pained, high-pitched wheezing sound akin to a shriek before going limp under his boot as Choso twists his heel sharply. Blood turns the desert floor a murky brown.

For a moment, the two of you stare at the thing. It’s nearly as long as you. White, reptant eyes stare unseeingly back at you.

Choso sighs, turning away from you almost sheepishly. He considers asking if this is the snake you’ve been painting. Instead, he shakes the blood off the bottom of his shoe and starts with, “‘Sorry you had to see that.”

He knows that despite your few years here, you’re still not akin to the dangers of the wilderness. You never wander too far from the confines of your township. You are far from the comforts and safety of the city you once called home. He doubts the men of New England are shooting each other willy-nilly in the streets. Knowing this, the guilt he feels is immense. He shouldn’t have agreed to teach, let alone see you outside of your appointed painting sessions.

So it is his turn to be shocked when he registers the look on your face to be one of approval. Admiration, naked and plain on your face. The expression of someone who just experienced a revelation. As you stare up at him in wonder, something hot coils beneath his stomach.

“Don’t be,” you finally say, sneering at the snake and spinning sharply on your heel. The moment is broken. “I’m not.”

The day you finally get black paint is more momentous than it really should be. The general store owner has to keep you from nearly breaking down his doors when the morning after the shipment arrives, relieved to put an end to your incessant hounding. If there was anyone else more ready for you to complete your portrait commission than your deputy, it was the store owner.

Choso tries not to frown at the news when he meets up with you for what would now be the very last time, especially when you seem to have lightened up significantly at the return of this pigment to your arsenal. You’re giddy - you can finally give this man a face. And hair!

Caught up in your satisfaction, you hardly notice the subject of your masterpiece fidgeting in his seat more than usual. He’d rather not admit it now, but the deputy is distraught at the thought of things returning to normal after this. The sense of finality that lingers in the room disturbs him. He revels in your quiet but stern presence, the passion and dedication to your craft. That odd hunger for danger and risk that reflects in your paintings a craving you seem too embarrassed to put a name to, but too curious to fully ignore.

Choso would like to consider himself an honorable man of the law - he dons his badge with pride and purpose. But before that, he was a boy in the desert with a gun and enough bullets and anger to strike as deadly and indiscriminately as that snake. That life, no matter how far in the past, sticks with him and reflects off of him in an intangible way that even without seeing his scars and bullet wounds, people just know . Most strangers and visitors, especially women from the city, would turn their cheek to his particular brand of unruliness.

For a moment, you seemed to want to eat him whole despite of it.

As you meticulously mix the black paint, your movements are precise, almost reverent. Choso watches you work, the evening sun casting long shadows across the room. The air feels heavy with anticipation, charged with an energy neither of you can ignore.

With each stroke of your brush, the likeness of Choko begins to take shape on your canvas. His features emerge from the blankness with startling clarity.

The sun sets, dying your small studio in hues of pink and orange, and you finally step back from your easel with an air of completion. Choso can feel his heart pounding in his chest when you gesture for him to come to look, his breaths becoming shallow and quick. He thinks of taking a glance, granting you a decisive farewell, and never speaking to you again, and his chest aches.

“What do you think?” you ask as he rounds the canvas.

Your voice is smaller than he’s ever heard it. Choso silently takes in his painting and tries not to sigh in relief. You have captured his stoic demeanor perfectly. Looking astute in his deputy uniform, you have portrayed him as a figure of pride and power. His face looks back at him with a gaze so steady and confident he’s almost unnerved.

“So?” You ask, trying and failing not to appear anxious.

“Have you always known how to paint faces?”

You blanch and whirl on the man you’ve spent most of your summer studying in this exact same studio. “Did you not think I could do it?”

Choso shrugs, and nods to the little corner cluttered with your other discarded pieces of work. “Didn’t see any other portraits."

“It’s just not what I’m into painting right now,” you sputter, indignant. “Why didn’t you think to ask?”

The deputy mumbles, aptly studying the heel of his boots. “Thought you’d paint mine in the shape of a horse or somethin’.”

The man admits it so forlornly, you can’t help but chuckle, turning away to pack up your materials and allow him to take a closer look. “Maybe I should’ve.”

He says nothing in response, and you don’t look back to catch his expression. The silence that follows. You’re both hesitating and you know it.

Choso is the first to break.

“I’m sorry for what happened after…after we met for the first time. I shouldn’t have left like that.”

You sigh and put your brushes down, unwilling to turn and face him just yet. “I feel like all you do is apologize to me lately. We gotta put a stop to that.”

You wait for him to laugh you off and excuse himself, trying to offer him an out. Your tone is playful, joking, but Choso can sense the sincerity in your words. You can’t see it, but he shakes his head, adamant. “I was scared.”

The omission weighs heavy between the two of you.

“That I’d hurt you?” You wonder aloud, knowing that’s not the truth but pressing him anyways. You think of how he towers over you easily, how he could probably snap your wrists with two of his fingers, and can't help but laugh at the idea of this death machine of a man finding you physically threatening. But there was something else -

“No,” he admits, almost a whisper this time, still full of resolve. “That I liked it.”

You finally face him, inching closer, still unsure. Your breath catches in your chest at the sight of his expression. Open and vulnerable, eyes wide and expressive with want.

“We can try something else,” you offer, pouncing on the opportunity. “If you’re feeling brave.”

A challenge. For the first time, he is willing to confront the suffocating something between the two of you - desire . The pure longing and awe on your face after the snake incident is imprinted on the forefront of his mind and haunts him as frequently as this memory of your hands around his neck.

He reaches for those very same hands now, in silent askance. Pleading you to collar that untamed unruliness lurking beneath his skin, quell the hunger that boils in his blood.

Choso has been bored . He loves the slow pace of your quaint little town. The stability and predictability are a welcome change from the life he once lived. But… he misses the thrill of the fight. The adrenaline pumping through his veins, the euphoria that follows the moments after brushing that thin margin between life and death

He feels it again, that buzz, as he allows his odd little painter to guide him back to a seated position on the stool, undo his belt buckle and slide the leather through the loops with delicious intent. Permits you to secure the material around his wrist. Encourages you to free his hips from the denim fabric of his pants.

He is suntanned beneath his trousers too and the thought of how that came to be makes you feel a little lightheaded. The deputy is completely bare beneath his trousers, and it occurs to you that he had been squirming in his seat originally for reasons more than just impatience.

“Oh,” you sigh at the sight before you, breath ghosting over his cock, and Choso nearly pitches forward in your grasp at the sensation. He wrenches his bound arms towards his chest, away from where you kneel between his knees before him on the floor.

“You’re so pretty down here,” you murmur absently, thumbs rubbing along where the waistband of his pants press into the tops of his thighs, tucked just beneath his balls, and its true. His erection throbs from where it sits propped up against his tummy, red and leaking under the weight of your attention. A smattering of soft, curly hair runs a trail from his stomach to his groin.

He keens when you press a kiss to the base of his dick, thumbs tracing a new path at the crest of his hips.

“Please, quickly, please-,” he stammers, flush from the neck down and willing himself not to tremble in your hold. “Gotta get back soon and, ah -,”

Choso’s resolve and dedication to his job falls apart at the feeling of your wet mouth on him, warm and insistent. You nod and hum in understanding, wordless, but he feels it all with you pressed this close to where he wants you. The deputy would have half a mind to be embarrassed at the high pitch of his voice if he weren’t so eager to feel you again.

“You remember my first night here, right?” You say, mockingly, pressing a soft kiss to his dripping head. “You were pretty then too. With my hands around your neck.”

Choso’s knuckles are pressed tightly to his forehead as he purses his lips. He can’t respond, can’t even bite back and tell you to shut up when you call him something as silly as pretty. Eyes rolling back as he sinks into the warm cavern. He’s in heaven. He’s in hell.

You can’t help but marvel at how pliant he is in your hold, drawing back to press a quick kiss to the inside of his thighs when they tremble. A warmth and wetness builds between your own legs at the sight. When you draw him into your mouth again, you have to brace an arm across his hip to keep him from fucking into the back of your throat.

“Please, fuck, hurry ,”

He’s writhing, throbbing as you swallow him down. You had had your fair share of promiscuity on your journey west - part of the reason you had departed high society - but Choso was an impressive task. You moan at the weight of him in your mouth as he struggles against the slow, relentless suction of your mouth. The patch of hair beneath his stomach grows damp with a viscous mix of your saliva and tears.

When you pull back suddenly, his hips stutter forward, and you have to duck out of the way to avoid being blinded.

“Fuck, sorry,” Choso gasps. “Really sorry.”

He watches with breathless anticipation as you draw two fingers from the hand not braced across his hip to your open lips, coating them in spit until they’re slick and shiny.

“Scoot forward a lil,” is the only direction he receives before he feels rather than seems that same arm wrap behind him, wedged between his legs and the seat of the stool. His ass hangs precariously off the ledge, the seat of the stool digging into his lower back. You’re much closer in this new position, straddling one of his elongated legs he sits with a slight bend in his knees to balance against the seat.

When he feels your slick fingers brush his puckered hole, Choso lurches again at the foreign feeling, and you narrowly avoid being stabbed in the face once more. You can’t help but grin, all teeth. Choso gets the foreboding feeling like he’s about to be eaten alive.

“Fuck, wait, wait,” he pleads, pitiful, but you are already rubbing slick circles around his rim. “N-not there.”

You coo, "Relax, I promise I’ll make you feel good.”

The deputy shakes a little more in his seat, but doesn’t protest further, not when you’re returning the attention of your hot mouth back to the head of his cock, tongue torturing him with tight circles and light flicks before you press him further into your throat. He rocks his hips into your mouth with draw out pants of ha, ha, ha that only serve to fuel your own arousal. The sight of such a dangerous man, crumbling at your simple ministrations, has you pressing your thighs together You rock back on the deputy’s leg with a moan, subtly shifting so that the tip of his point leather boot presses blissfully into the soak crevice of your undergarments.

“Huh?” The deputy hiccups, having given up hiding his face in order to lightly balance his bound hands against the top of your head. “A-are you-?”

Your fingers quicken in pace from where they slide around his untouched rim. This time when he bucks into your mouth, you don’t pull away, leaning in further to trap him between the heat of your mouth and the relentless sensation of your fingers. The deputy cries out, feeling helpless.

“I’m gonna, fuck, fuck m’gonna-!”

Choso sobs, his bound arms fully wrapping around the back of your head to thrust fully into your throat until your lips press fully into his abdomen and hold you there. Barely able to warn you before he locks up in your hold, cumming hard and damn near babbling at the sensation as you choke and struggle in his grasp, surprised. He cums long and and hard, gently rocking his hips into your face even as his comes down until you’re slapping profusely at his thigh to release your head.

The gunslinger is silent, eyes tightly shut as he struggles to catch his breath and regain his sense. Distantly, he hears you get to your feet, allows you to pull his hands away from his face so you can unwind the leather biting into his skin. The red marks they leave behind cause the red flush of his cheeks to flare up again.

He sits upright on the stool and peaks one eye open to glance at you, puttering around your small kitchen for a glass of water. Then he glances at his boots. “Did you get off on my shoe?”

He wonders idly if it was the same foot he used to kill the snake. You don’t respond, but the way you slam a glass of water beside him on a work table is answer enough.

Not much is said on his departure. You clean up and share soft smiles. He picks up his portrait, makes his way to the door, lingers with his hand at the handle.

“‘Ppose I should get going then.” His tries to keep the resignation out of his voice, but you pick up on it easily.

He makes to head out resolve to bother you any further fizzling at your slow response, but then you’re crossing the small distance to stop him, fingers digging into the thick material of his uniform.

“This won’t be the last time I see you, right?” You ask him. Implore him. “This time?”

The deputy breaks out into a grin, expressive as you’ve ever seen him, before pressing a kiss to your forehead and ducking before you, hand on his hat.

“At your service ma’am," he says, with an earnest grin and the tilt of his gallon hat. “Always."

“Hm.”

The town’s sheriff stands beside Choso, gazing contemplatively at his new and improved portrait from where it hangs in the place of its predecessor. He watches his mentor tilt his head to the side, hand at his chin. “I dunno. Something about it feels very..”

Sheriff Nanami’s gaze flicks between Choso and his replication. “Horselike?”

Choso nearly keels over in his boots. The sheriff waves him off dismissively. “Ask her to do it again, or at least touch it up a bit. We paid good a good amount of money for it.”

He sighs, pinching his brow, remembering the shoot out and prison escape in the manner parents do when reminded of delinquent children. The deputy gawks at the portrait. Maybe he really didn’t understand art?

As if sensing his subordinate’s hesitation, Nanami clasps him on the back, marching back to his desk. “Can’t hurt to ask, right? Beside, how long could it possibly take?”

#choso x reader #choso smut #choso x reader smut #jjk smut #choso fanfic #jjk fanfic #gunslinger!choso #cowboy!choso #above snakes #choso angst #choso fluff #jjk

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weirdmorefics · 8 days

Note

benedict with a younger sister who he catches at one of the parties he goes to talking to a man who has less than innocent intentions with her and she’s oblivious and just thought it would be a fun place to drink bcs that’s what she’d heard when was out at the park earlier that day

A/N- Sorry for it taking a while I really am starting to believe in the fanfiction curse. I also made up the seedy guy who had unhonorable intentions in this story just an FYI.

Readers Pronouns- She/Her

TW- Sexism

Word Count- 1,653

Summary- Benedict goes to a local gathering of artists and happens to find his darling younger sister enjoying the company of some of Benedict's unsavory friends.

Unhonorable Intentions

I am a rake. I take no shame in this fact. I am allowed to be a free spirit it is my birthright as the second-born son. No obligations no responsibility. I would loathe to be in Anthony's shoes. Though Y/n seems to have made it her mission for me to walk in his shoes tonight. What is she even doing in a place like this? Last I knew she preferred literature over the arts. Yet she hangs on a man's arm as he explains his next work. in progress that he is sure will be his Magnus opus. I glare at them hopefully sister notices my gaze burning into her side so I can continue my night as if nothing happened. However, when I glare at them I realize who the man she is talking to is and now I know there is no way I can continue my night. Unfortunately said man felt my gaze instead of Y/n and smiled and pulled her forcefully along with him.

"Bridgerton! It's grand to see you! We've missed you at the club!" Alexander shakes my hand roughly and I return it with an insincere smile. "Saw you eyeing my new muse, I regret to inform you I don't share." God, I want to gag as I know what he does with his so-called muses. Y/n smiles at being called his muse she does love it when I draw her but this man does not have honorable intentions. He and I have very different definitions of what a muse is. My idea of a muse is someone who inspires you to create, Alexander's idea of a muse is a woman to sleep with and then abandon.

I straighten back to assert my taller posture over the man, "And I regret to inform you your so-called muse is my darling baby sister." I look down at her with demanding eyes, "I do say it is time we get back to Mother. Isn't Y/n?"

She looks taken aback by my tone, "What do you mean? I just got here."

Alexanders' grin increases tenfold, "A Bridgeton! Benedict I had no idea you were hiding such a beauty to yourself! If I was her brother I'd never let her out of the house either." This man is truly revolting the artist community here is unfortunately very small and I have to find a way to remain civil.

Y/n smiles, "So you know Alexander? That's too bad really I was hoping to learn some different art techniques from him to impart to you! I had no idea you knew such a famous artist!"

I grit my teeth, "Famous now Alexander are we?"

This flusters him for a moment but he recovers quickly, "Aren't all artists famous in a different sort of way?"

I want to laugh at such an absurd response… sadly Y/n is far too naive for her own good.

"I agree wholeheartedly! Benedict is the most famous artist in our family! I'm quite jealous of his talent I must admit! It makes sense he would be at such a regal event filled with so much talent. To be truthful I overheard this soiree would have fabulous drinks on this morning's promenade and couldn't resist," she gushes over my talents and breaks my heart for not being more present in my siblings' lives.

Anthony just seemed to have it all handled, Daphne was married off, Eloise could certainly hold her own ground, Francessa was so busy with her studies, and Mother had Gregory and Hycanith under control. Even though Y/n is Eloise's twin she couldn't be any more different she believes the best in everyone and is too quick to forgive in my opinion and Alexander is taking advantage of that and I will not let that stand.

I smile down at Y/n, "Y/n you downplay your own talents no need to associate with a man whose talents consist of preying on women through false pretenses."

Her eyes widen to the size of quarters, "Benedict you can not make such outrageous claims!"

I pretend to not know exactly what she is talking about, "You mean your talents? Your poetry talent is outrageous and that's not a claim it's just a fact."

She blushes at the compliment but for some asinine reason still wants to defend Alexander. Though it seemed her brain could not keep up with the unusual compliment from me and the unflattering words I spoke about Alexander she just stuttered unintelligible anger, shock, and joy all marking her face. Alexander on the other hand was just fuming red.

"First you insult me Bridgerton then you demean poetry as a genre by encouraging a woman to write it." he snarls.

I have never seen Y/n turn so quickly and before anyone in the room knows what's happening a resounding slap is heard over all the chatter and everyone turns to the noise. Alexander's eye is twitching and a red welt in the shape of my sister's hand is forming on his face. He glares at her with murderous eyes but she holds her head high I have never seen her this determined and it makes me wonder what else I missed while she was growing up and I was galavanting around with men like Alexander.

She points an angry finger at him like Mother would when she would scold us, "Gentleman like yourself actually I wouldn't even call men like you gentleman but that's beside the point. Men like you say women are too emotional to do anything but care for the home. Poetry is all about emotion it's supposed to make you feel something like the art you make, or apparently don't make from what I just learned from Benedict's side comment. I would also like to remind you who is in charge of our country or rather what sex they are?"

All eyes are on us and Alexander looks like he might strangle Y/n with his two hands if the vein bulging out of his forehead is any indicator.

"Oh and by the way when I complimented your line work on your latest piece I was lying it was shit but you know how men can be so emotional I didn't want to hurt your feelings," she fake pouted. This is definitely not the young sister I once knew she may still be naive but she has now learned to use her talent with words as a knife.

Alexander's arm shoots to roughly grab her but I am quick to block, "I'm Alexander but we must be going. It was so nice talking to you as always. I would definitely take my dear sister's words under advisement to spend more time working on your line art." I then pull him very closely into my body and if anyone hadn't seen the previous incident they would have thought it was just two chaps hugging. I whisper, "Less time with lines of ladies and coke you might find yourself able to make straight lines. And if I ever hear you laid a hand on my sister I will kill you myself." I roughly release him and he scrambles backwards ungracefully as all eyes on him.

I link arms with Y/n, "Come on we must really be going now."

Once we make it outside away from prying eyes she quickly bursts into sobs, "Gods what have I done! I was just so angry he'd judge me just based on my sex. God, what if Lady Whistledown writes about me!" She starts pacing with her hands on her forehead and this is the Y/n I am all too familiar with, " Oh God what if Mama reads it! What if I ruin the Bridgerton name? Anthony will never forgive me!"

I clap and quickly gain her attention back, "You certainly won't be the first Bridgerton featured in Lady Whistledown and I am certain you will not be the last."

"Not helping!' She shouts back.

"No one will be mad you stood your ground… in fact, I am quite proud of you."

Her eyes study me, "Are you serious? I just slapped your friend in a soiree full of your peers."

"Anthony was more of an acquaintance," I add.

She rolls her eyes, "That is not the point!"

I sigh, "Yes, I am proud. You defended your honor and didn't need my help to do so. Though I am sure any of your brothers would be there in a heartbeat to defend it including me."

She smiles, "You're proud of me."

"I am not saying it again," I state.

she starts to repeat you're proud of me in a sing-songy voice.

"My pride in you is diminishing and my worry is growing. I think I will be around more often seems like Anthony isn't keeping a watchful enough eye on you if he let you go to a seedy event like this."

She tilts her head, "But you were at the event?"

"Exactly I only attend seedy events, though it appears now I must reform. Think of me has your second Anthony," maybe having responsibilities won't be so bad if I get to see Y/n chew out more men like Alexander.

She groans, "I don't want another Anthony how will I ever do anything fun."

"That's the point Y/n," I smile.

She groans, "I hope Lady Whistledown writes you into the story and makes you sound dreadful."

"As long as she writes how daring and smart my younger sister is we will be on good terms," I smile as she groans again at her failed attempt to get under my skin.

"Thank you, I guess," she responds.

I may be late in helping my siblings but at least they all still have some more growing to do and I plan to be there for all of it.

#bridgerton x reader #bridgerton x y/n #bridgerton fanfic #bridgerton fanfiction #bridgerton x you #bridgerton request #bridgerton siblings #bridgerton!sister x reader #bridgerton!sister x y/n

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oathkeeper-of-tarth · 6 months

Text

Moon Above And Stars Beside Her

Me, rising from the dead after a hundred years to post fic? It's more likely than you think! These specific characters were laser-targeted and lovingly crafted to activate every single one of my neurons and I am immensely grateful for them. Please enjoy the result of me endlessly rotating them in my mind ever since I met them.

Be warned that this fic is pretty much made up entirely of spoilers for Act 2 of the game.

Fandom: Baldur's Gate 3 Characters: Dame Aylin/Isobel Thorm, Ketheric Thorm, Balthazar, Withers, and a smidge of Selûne herself Length: ~11000 words Rating: M, for canon-typical violence and sexual content

Hurt/comfort, dealing with trauma, an overabundance of righteous anger, a smidge of Came Back Wrong, and some pretty complicated and peculiar parent/child issues.

Summary:

What of the gnawing in thine holy gut, the rage clawing up thine throat? A great weight, inclined to tip the scales once more. Which way shalt thou cast it? When you had nothing else, caged in darkness, you learned to cultivate your anger like the finest of crops. And yet there seems to be so little for you to reap.

The Nightsong is no more and Dame Aylin is returned to her most holy duties. Isobel Thorm is free of her grave. How they handle their past, present, and future is, perhaps, up to them.

Also on AO3.

—

Moon Above And Stars Beside Her

"And what of thee, god-child, moon-graced, silver-blood?"

It is the Scribe who addresses you one entirely unremarkable evening, looking up from his scroll to arrest your gaze with his deathless one. They introduced him, a camp guest most unexpected, by some nonsense name you cannot even call to mind. But you would know him anywhere. And so you stop in your path, as you are bid, and listen.

"A tipping of the scales most severe: thine mother freshly spared mourning her daughter, her dark sister's triumph snatched away at the very last moment."

"You have guided these adventurers well, Scribe," you incline your head in respect and a small measure of thanks.

"I do not guide," the grave-wind voice is raised just enough to convey something resembling annoyance at a minor inaccuracy he simply must correct. "I offer what services I am bound to, nothing more."

You arch an eyebrow at him. "And yet you wish to speak to me, who did not ask any service of you."

"Yes," he responds, and leaves it at that for a few moments that feel like an eternity. A timescale he is used to, one would imagine.

"Dame Aylin. Thou art a curious creature, I admit - immortal, yet appearing in my records many times over. Moreover, thine fate stands indelibly entwined with one whose name has been freshly struck from the archives in a manner most uncommon and highly questionable."

A tension floods you as you realise he talks of Isobel, and your hands tighten into fists at your sides.

"What of her, pray tell?" It comes out more curt than you intended, perhaps, but the words are spoken before you can properly settle on them.

"She lives, and shall do so for the time that is given to her, as it is to most. And still," he nods, unnervingly calm, all taut paper-thin skin, a being of unlife if you've ever seen one, "thou wouldst cleave thine malefactors in twain and rejoice in their screams. Thou, who burnest so deeply to reflect back upon them every spear-strike, every lash, every cut, every shattered, twisted bone and sinew, every drop of blessed blood they dared spill."

You breathe in a leaden breath, knit together as you are, the divine birthright of your Mother lacing your scars with shining gold, proclaiming that the testament of your newly ended immeasurable suffering is something to be proudly displayed. You know the marks on your face glisten in the firelight much like the woven gold that decorates his skull, his sunken cheeks, as he looks upon you half-expectantly.

"I would, and I do," you can but confirm through grit teeth.

"What of thine anger? What of the gnawing in thine holy gut, the rage clawing up thine throat? A great weight, inclined to tip the scales once more. Which way shalt thou cast it?"

"I would destroy them. I would scorch the very traces of them from the world. Some, I already have - as you are doubtlessly aware, Scribe. Much like they tried, and failed, to destroy me."

"Or did they?" There is the infuriating calmness again, and a question meant for no answer, or perhaps merely a word of caution aimed at you.

His withered countenance is as utterly illegible as a weather-worn tombstone, but if this was meant to stir hated doubt in you, it does. For you have grown well aware it is not just the bright, righteous blaze of justified anger that fuels you now, but something relentless that stings and cuts you as it wants out, out, out. This is not the way of Protection, of Devotion, of measured Justice. This is not the duty you were once sworn to, the sacred oath that has resounded in the marrow of your very bones since the first breath you ever drew upon this land. No, it is something new, and yet Vengeance has served you just as well - better, perhaps - in this brief time you've been free.

"For all their infernal efforts, I have pieced myself together over and over and over again. It is my nature to do so, not a choice to be made, nor a conscious effort. Their betrayal and their sins against me are but a chapter in my tale, nothing more. My task is not done, and for as long as it is so, Dame Aylin will not stop, will not falter. You know this as well as I."

The calm of the tomb refuses to be disturbed in any way, least of all by your tirade. "And yet, along the way, a piece of thee was lost and replaced with another, ill-fitting. Many stand to win from this, as many stand to lose."

You frown as you scrounge around for a reply, and find yourself lacking one. He looks not at you, but into and through you, and it is uniquely discomfiting.

The Scribe raises his hand in dismissal, and offers solemn parting words. "A godling thou art, but no god. It is in thine nature, too, to wonder, and question, and change in response. As it is in mine to observe, and take note, and stand witness to the weaving of fate. Forget not: thou art not near as tide- and cycle-bound as thine divine moon-mother."

You are given little time to contemplate the Scribe's weighty, ominous statements. Yet another comes seeking, coveting, poaching. Craven-clever mouth full of honeyed praise for your "gift" and only ever wanting to take, take, take, all for himself.

How dare, how dare he, how dare they how DARE--

A thousand echoes of deaths upon deaths swarm and you take the vainglorious fool, lift him bodily up and--

He breaks upon your knee like a dry kindling scrap and your breaths come loud and half-choked and heaving. What was once a vile wizard is now nothing and for a moment, the briefest, most fleeting of moments, neither are you.

Until the world rushes back in, exhausting in its sheer weight. There is no glorious, triumphant rush of battle-roused blood singing through you. Vengeance didn't taste sweet. It didn't taste like much of anything.

When you had nothing else, caged in darkness, you learned to cultivate your anger like the finest of crops. And yet there seems to be so little for you to reap.

As the sounds of the city far, far below slowly fill the enchanted tower, competing with crackling magic and bubbling potions and a complete absence of words spoken by any of your present companions and allies, all you can pinpoint whirling within you is a rising despondency.

One more, and then another, and another after that, extending before you all in a line, down the endless, endless years that await you, immortal and eternal. Magus or sorcerer or ruffian or necromancer or halfwit charlatan, it won't matter much, will it? Because they will try.

Do you dare ever again let your guard down for even a few precious moments of respite, when another villain with designs on your person could be lurking, scheming just around the corner?

Worse yet, far more chilling - what if they, conniving, decide to aim their ambitions at a different target, at your soft underbelly, and come for Isobel in turn?

When you draw yourself out of the crowding thoughts and return to camp at long last, subdued, tired, painfully aware you are far removed from your usual mighty bearing, hours have flown by and the sun has already set. Isobel is there, and for a moment that is all you know. She is there, and whole, and alive, and it is all you can do not to drop to your knees once more and offer prayer upon prayer of gratitude.

She looks at you, eyes brimming with a potent mix of concern and questions, then rushes towards you and wordlessly takes you by the gauntleted hand to the small sanctuary you've carved out for yourselves in the midst of your newfound allies: a simple tent, a soft, warm rug, a comfortable enough cot. A small washbasin Isobel keeps filled with conjured, moonlight-laced freshwater.

"It was a glorious victory, my love, worry not," you rush to reassure, though even you can tell your heart is not in it. "Yet another villain slain, his devilish designs denied - as has become the habit of our merry retinue. The battle has tired my mind somewhat, that is all."

You can see the doubt writ plainly on her face, but it is no lie you tell her (never, never could you bring yourself to lie to her). It is more that… you do not know the reason yourself, or, rather, that it feels too manifold to ever encompass in simple words.

"I wish you would give yourself time, Aylin, let yourself rest," Isobel says, soft, endlessly caring, achingly perceptive, and only slightly disapproving. She starts taking your armour off piece by piece as you sit on the small campaign stool you appropriated recently, then dampens a washcloth to wipe the traces of recent battle from your face. "Please. You endured more than a hundred years of horrors I can scarcely imagine."

You grit your teeth at the mention and try, foolishly, to hide from her the tension that runs through you at the mere evocation of the thought. She palms your cheek and tilts your face to look up at her - her, standing above you and yet barely exceeding your height, though you remain seated - and oh, how you adore the sight!

Isobel frowns as she notices a scrape on your temple, slightly singed in a near-miss from one of the mage's commanded elementals. It is nothing, you want to insist, no need to fuss over it, but you know how to recognise a battle lost before it has even begun. "In Her radiance, you are made whole," she murmurs, and you feel the familiar tingling and slight warmth of the gash knitting itself closed.

Her incantations are perfect and as subtly melodious as ever. There is healing even before her spells take hold simply by the fact she is here. It is Isobel's touch that has ever been a balm when you returned from a skirmish, feathers ruffled, just as it is now when you feel burning echoes of abuse tear through you at some unintended motion or runaway thought.

Satisfied for the moment, she dips the cloth in water again, and runs it gently over you, in a cycle as regular and comforting as that of the Moon itself: brow, nose, cheek, jaw, neck, then brow again, and again. For a little while the gentle, refreshing, cleansing caress is the only thing that exists in your world, and you let go of the death-grip you only half-consciously had on her other hand.

"I confess… I hate to see you throwing yourself back into the fray like this. I understand why, and that it is necessary, but…" she trails away and pauses for a heavy moment, cloth in hand. She resumes, more determined, now scrubbing at a stubborn mark on your chin. "I wish it didn't have to be so soon. Duty or not, you shouldn't have to. You should be allowed to recover in your own time, to heal in peace, until you are ready."

You cannot help but bristle at that. "You would deem me unfit for my purpose? My duty and my self are so entwined, it is not possible to have one without the other - would you call into question a sword's place in battle?"

"Listen to yourself," Isobel snaps, harsher than you can ever remember hearing her, stopping her ministrations and standing tall to face you down, cheeks reddened. "Can't you hear what you sound like? Like a misguided Sharran, making yourself out to be nothing but a tool to be used and used and used until you are useful no more!"

You gape at her, useless, wordless. "Isobel…"

"Yes, you are the resplendent Sword of the Moonmaiden, performing great deeds in Her name… but you're so, so much more than that, and I treasure all that you are." The words are so impassioned and so openly honest you are struck silent in pure awe. Isobel, clutching a dripping, bloodied washcloth in the middle of a patched-up tent, might as well be a queen making proclamations before her devoted court assembled in a lofty palace. And oh, devoted you are, endlessly, endlessly. This can never change.

"My Aylin, my angel. You always have been, and always will be, and if it takes me years to remind you of all of these things I know you once knew, I promise I will." Her palm is back on your face, a gentle caress that soothes many wounds long invisible, never healed.

She speaks her promise as solemn as any vow you have ever made, and you bow your head to kiss her hand.

"There is no need for recklessness, after all," Isobel smiles, the slightest wry twist to it, as she tips your chin back up, leaning down to press a kiss to your forehead and murmur against your freshly washed skin. "The Moonmaiden's shield is mine to wield. You know its strength, the blows it can take. Let it be a sanctuary for you as well. Give me - give yourself a chance. Slowly, step by step - there is time."

You have time, she is correct, even if you've never managed to have a very good grasp of it. All the time in the world, and then some.

Isobel does not.

You've already lost her once, had her ripped from your arms by whims of fate, or rather something far more sinister. There is no way to know, but you suspect, oh, you do. Your Mother's dark twin schemes ever on, and Moonrise, beacon that it was, surely seemed to her a provocation, Ketheric Thorm a crown jewel to be poached, and Isobel, your Isobel, a mere means to an end.

Isobel, brought back, a miracle paid for so very dearly. It would be foolish to count on another.

You stand up and reach over and almost crush her to your chest in an embrace - one she returns not a moment after completing her surprised exclamation. You hold her and hold her and allow yourself to lose track of time again.

Moonlit, timeless, subdued in her glory, you listen to Isobel recite the Words as she pours fresh milk into the small silver ritual bowl before her.

"Our Lady of Silver, whose light falls upon us all, hear me."

Her reverent voice is barely above a whisper but carries impeccably, harmonising with the gentle bells and chimes surrounding the private little altar.

"Sheltered by Your radiance, guided by Your hand, I come not to entreat, but to reaffirm."

Motes of moonlight buoyant around her dance in the rhythm of the prayer you've heard and repeated so often it feels like breathing itself. It would feel stranger not to join in, so you do, if only in your mind.

Ever-changing, ever-returning, as the silver Moon waxes and wanes, so too does life.

You lurch back into awareness in a place you have never seen before, but that you recognise without a shred of doubt. The utter absence in the dark dome of the sky above you, the storms that swirl and rage all around, the assault on your ever-heightened divine senses - the reek of the Shadowfell feels like it has sunk its claws into your lungs already. You shudder, then startle, scrambling to stand when you realise your armour is gone, your sword nowhere to be found.

Your feet are bare on the cold, cruel rock; your mind reeling, disoriented. Half-blinded by the glowing runes that encircle you, your tunic still stained with the fresh blood of your latest, very recent death, you come face to face with the two men you made the mistake of believing and turning your back on mere moments ago, in what must have been a different pocket of the dark realm.

And so, the last time you see him for what is to be more than a hundred years, Ketheric Thorm locks gazes with you and wordlessly draws a dagger. Then he cuts his palm, deep and deliberate and unflinching, and your own muscle and sinew feel the slice.

The hideous grin of savoured success on his pet necromancer's face upon witnessing your startled, pained reaction chills you to the bone. It is then, perhaps, that you begin to grasp the scope and shape of what they have in store for you.

You try to rush at them, charge and claw them into submission with your bare, bloodied hands if needs be, but the boundaries of the sickly-bright rune-inscribed circle flare up, the cage tightens around you, phantom hands grasp and wrench and restrain and keep you in place, your foes and would-be tormentors only just out of reach.

"What are you doing, you dog ?" You roar at Ketheric, your insides twisting at the sight of the dark disc newly burnished on his armour, Sharran symbols adorning his brow, his chest. "Oathbreaker! How dare you conspire against Dame Aylin, against Selûne herself! How dare you so betray Isobel--"

A heavy gauntlet smashes into your jaw as soon as the beloved, yearned-for name leaves your lips, and Ketheric's voice rises above the ringing in your ears.

"You do not get to speak her name, thief. I am the one betrayed, abandoned. By your witch of a mother who hoarded my misguided service for far too long."

Ketheric steps back and calms, somewhat - or merely restrains his rage into something crueller and colder, while you recover enough to speak.

"Shar will not help you, Ketheric Thorm. Oblivion does not heal, does not mend - and oblivion is all she offers. But what she will ask of you in return will damn you forever."

He waves a claw-armoured hand in mock-dismissal of your warnings.

"Do what you will with her, Balthazar, as long as it doesn't impede my Lady's plans. Break her, if you can. Let her rage and pace and fume and rot, if not. But I want her to know," he steps closer again, so close, almost close enough to touch, if not for those accursed hands holding you back, "when our Dark Lady's acolytes come calling, when her wretched silver-stained blood fuels the creation of an army the likes of which the world has yet to see - I want her to know and never forget: it was on my orders."

You calm your breathing enough to answer, the burning rage within you forging your words into steel - the only steel you can aim at him, for the moment. But the tides will turn, as they inevitably do. "The Moon shows many faces. Our Lady of Silver is ever-changing. You should be careful, traitor, lest the Hunter's Moon marks you as Her prey."

Ketheric scoffs, unimpressed. "Let her try! Let her come, let her send all her legions after me, when she would not lift one holy finger to help me when I needed it most, for all my decades of faith and devotion. No, you will see," the quiet conviction in him is chilling to behold, in all its sheer wrongness. "This place, this bond, will sustain me, and it will take everything from you, piece by piece, until you whine and cry and beg your moonwitch mother for salvation. And when you are met with the same merciless silence as I was, perhaps I will consider it payment enough for the precious hours of my daughter's presence you dared steal from me, interloper."

You cannot reach him to wrap your hands around his worthless, treacherous throat and wring. But the trap, the cage, is imperfect, and you spit silver-flecked blood at his face easily.

He flicks his cheek clean, all dismissal, then motions to his foul, death-reeking companion to come forward. "Start with her wings. She has no need for those anymore."

"I would be delighted, General," comes the sickening, rot-sweet voice of Balthazar from somewhere behind you, along with the deceptively gentle sound of him tinkering with his ghastly tools and implements. "How very appropriate, how symbolic, to start by clipping our little bird's wings."

You roar your rage at Ketheric's back until he is out of sight and your throat is raw and bloody and capable of nothing but a hoarse whisper. You strain and pull and beat your wings in great gusts with all the desperate force you can muster; you burn, entire, with a scorching radiance unlike any you've manifested before. But the newforged bonds persist, and drag you down, down, down, merciless, until you see and breathe nothing but dust, the magic of one of the caging runes stinging against your cheek as the sounds of what can only be termed butchery fill the stale air.

It is the perhaps unfortunate attribute of your particular strain of immortality that you are obliged to feel every wound, every hurt, every blow that seeks to lay you low. That you rise to fight again only after you have been truly felled. That your memory is one made to suit your long life - blade-sharp, exact, and infallible.

You lie there afterwards for a long, long, quiet while; unmoving, though the spectral hands loosened their grip and vanished along with Balthazar, a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year ago. There is too much pain still, you think almost idly, feeling quite far removed from your own self. Too much for any of it to have been a killing blow.

It is the first time in your storied existence you dare to think of death as a possible mercy and wonder if you might ever welcome it.

Let all on whom Selûne's light falls be welcome if they desire.

You do not see Ketheric after that, except in gory fantasies produced by your mind's eye. But you do get to know, intimately, each and every battle he deigns to fight personally, each scrape and cut and bruise and jab, arrow and spear and sword - all unseen, but far from unfelt.

Then comes the steady stream of misguided Sharrans, would-be Dark Justiciars.

You try to speak to them, at first. Reach out. Try to make them see their terrible error while retribution might still be within their grasp.

You fail, each and every time. And each and every time you pay for that failure with a death. Some of them are more decisive about it, quick, almost merciful. Some stretch it out, savour it. Some can't bear to meet your eyes.

But all of them, in the end, do it. And you choke back to life over and over and over again, knit together anew, as the murmurings mount.

Descend to her. Look upon her. Listen to her.

Kill her.

You remember the first time you died: out on a quest taking you through a steep mountain pass, falling into an ambush, peppered by poison-tipped crossbow bolts. You remember also the slight fear, the uncertainty of what exactly would happen to you - the fact of your Moon-blessed immortality until then only a suggestion, a curiosity somewhere in the back of your mind.

You remember the gradual change into certainty over several misadventures and the ensuing determination - you were indestructible! Indomitable, as befits the Sword of the Moonmaiden, put upon this earth to enact Her will. Who would dare stand before you, resplendent, eternal, uncowable?

And you remember the long, slow slide into being utterly used to it, down in these seemingly bottomless shadows, stuck on another Sharran spear, listening to your own blood drip drip drip as the darkness grew even heavier, laced with increasingly triumphant whispers.

As we turn to the Moon, we trust She will be our true guide.

Exhaustion overwhelms even the most righteous of furies, and you fall into a fitful sleep now and then. You dream of Isobel, soft, warm, brilliant, alive, and it makes the cruelty of awakening all the worse.

Balthazar comes, sometimes, your most frequent and most despised visitor by far. He delights in letting you know how much time has passed - impossible to tell, in the umbral pocket of your prison. Regales you with tales of Sharran tyranny being visited upon the land and the people you were sent to watch over and protect and guide, your one mission and the purpose written into the very blood flowing through your veins. And yet you did nothing but fail. Precious Isobel, dead; Ketheric, lost, determined to tear down with him the world entire.

Balthazar rejoices in the disgust you cannot help but bear openly upon your face as he expounds on his experiments, hands unbound by any trace or suggestion of morality and propriety and with Selûnite victims in abundance. He crows endlessly over his successes, his sick triumphs - but oh, none as impressive as you!

He does much worse, later, and you learn you do not need a tongue to curse him.

You know nothing can come of it but even more pain and sick retribution, yet you goad the corpse-rotted bastard every chance you get. The necrotic embodiment of every foul undead creature you would have wreathed your sword in radiance for, if only it were at hand. Whom you would have longed to smite until nothing but ash remained.

There is nothing else here. Empty shadows, as befits the Lady of Loss. A void without and within, yours to fill with gnawing, searing, holy wrath. Nothing left to sustain you but the thought of a long-distant but inevitable escape and vengeance.

One day.

"I keep a tally just for you, Balthazar." You pace the infuriatingly familiar bounds of your cage, precise in your steps in order not to trigger the wretched closing in, the grasping--

He looks up from the stitching he is doing, morbid handiwork on some poor Moon-devoted stonemason he wanted you to see. "Aylin! I did not know you cared so."

"Why, yes," you bare your teeth at him in mockery of a smile. "When your little spell inevitably fails and this game of yours runs its course, I will come find you first. I will tear you apart, limb from mismatched limb, into your grave-robbed constituent parts. And then I will mince them further, until there is one rotting morsel of you for each and every hurt you have ever visited on me."

"You will find," you prowl closer, just out of reach of the necrotic claws, "I have an excellent memory."

Infuriatingly, the corpse only smiles, laughs in your face.

"I was expecting just a touch more creativity, but then I suppose that has never been much of a strong point for you moon-followers."

You scowl and swallow back a growl and want only to provoke him further, itch to make him react, to make a mistake.

"So very boring and predictable. Painfully straightforward. Laughably easy to trick."

He waves a hand and conjures a muddy image of the lost Selûnite child you were made to chase down here what feels like a lifetime ago, the perfect bait they contrived just for you.

"You were nothing, Aylin. A meat-headed little errand girl for your useless mother. I, well, I have made you into a treasure."

Balthazar's smile splits the corpse-bloat of his face. The stench makes you want to gag, makes you yearn for the duller senses of one not trained from birth to be a paladin.

"As thanks, let me leave you with a thought you will doubtlessly appreciate. Do you know, I wonder, how very little it would take for you to be freed? What little effort I had to invest to ensure your captivity? One friendly touch would break the confinement spell, a mere moment of kindness. Nothing more."

He steps forward, waving your clawed shackles into existence. Then he moves as if to pat your head or caress your face - but instead pulls at your hair, whipping your head back, and sneers.

"How lucky for both of us you will never find such a thing here. There is not the slimmest hope of reprieve, not for you."

And for a hundred years, he is right.

The Moonmaiden will never allow us to bear a burden we cannot carry.

The burning flare of indignant rage sours somewhere deep in your belly along the way. You are not of Ilmater's stock, made for the rack, proud to endure all pain, indignities, and abuse, for oh, good things would come to those who waited! With idle waiting you were long done. There was no glory to be found in suffering. No, you were made to be a beacon soaring through the sky, driving away shadows and fear and doubt, illuminating with the stark, silver light of your Mother's truth all the myriad lies your foes so loved to wield.

What have they done to you? When it might be easier to ask what haven't they, over the months, years, decades, uncountable. Tongue, eyes, wings, heart. Yours to lose, all of it, when it was never theirs to take. And then, darker still - what use it all, when your heart's love had gone already? Isobel, most cherished of all, taken so suddenly and cruelly - you always knew you were going to be painfully parted, for your nature made that an inevitability. But not so soon. Not cut so short so abruptly, when she had so much still to give, and do, and be. When you were supposed to watch her grow old and say goodbye slowly and gradually with every precious day.

You try to fill the hours between deaths with something kinder: memories of her gentle smile, her soft touch, her grace and her wit and her light. But all you can picture here among the accursed shadows is the beautiful, heartrending serenity of her laid on her bier, awaiting her final rites.

Your own words to Ketheric resound in your mind. "Dear Isobel," you whispered, reverently, words you now know fell on deaf ears, "in my Mother's care at the Gates of the Moon, no doubt, with noble Melodia by her side. One day you shall be reunited on the silver shores. One day, my mission will be deemed complete, and I will be released from my duty… and I shall be permitted to join you." A tentative, tender smile to the bereaved father, and a hand on his shoulder. Trying to meet the man's grief with your own and perhaps thus relieve both your burdens.

In a kinder world, you could have mourned your mutual loss together. But it wasn't to be. Instead - this. Instead, you, here, caged, tormented, made to carry more than just the hurts visited upon Ketheric's flesh and bone. Though in your mind it seems it has all done little to soothe his own pain, instead merely doubling it and vomiting it back into the world.

Your contemplation is cut short by a sudden agony. This in itself is nothing new - Ah, you think, Ketheric has run afoul of a Harper's blade or a druid's claws again. You know enough from Balthazar's boasting to distract yourself with dreamed-up possibilities, a comfort as meagre and thin as the rags that clothe you. As if you could will his own hurts back onto him.

No, the pain is nothing new. But there is something different about it this time - it feels like it has no end, it does not ebb, and you take such a very, very long time to die. And when you awaken again, the crushing in your chest continues, then stops so abruptly you feel like you can breathe for the first time in years. This was clearly no normal battlefield injury and it makes your entire being burn with hope that, for all the unusual suffering it is foisting upon you, it means that something shifted --

That perhaps, somehow, miraculously, even with leeching off of you, fat and silverblood-gorged, Ketheric failed. Was defeated.

That perhaps your torment is reaching its end, and soon enough some enterprising hero, a fellow Selûnite perhaps, will find themselves guided into your prison to help you pry the bars wide open--

And then, a roar. A quake of the very foundation of your unseen cell so strong it knocks you down, and a surge of darkness and fury greater than anything you've ever seen. An entire storm of shadows, howling, screaming with a thousand enraged voices, ever-wretched Shar's above all, rushing up and up and up and blasting through the black dome that stood for the sky in this abyss.

You dare not think of what this could mean: the Shadowfell pouring out its umbral essence over the world so suddenly and violently.

It is a moment, perhaps, of ultimate weakness - for a precious few seconds you had the nerve to think it might finally be over, but instead… this.

"Hear me, Mother," you rasp out against the ground stained over and over with your own blood, unable even to lift your head and address the words up high, where they belong. "Hark, Moonmaiden Selûne, Your blade is dulled, stolen. Your will delayed, undone. Your daughter… begs for Your aid…"

"I need… I pray… a boon. Bless me with Your help, so that Your bright sword can once again be lifted as an instrument against the darkness. At Your service, as I ever must be, I incur this debt gladly. Let us answer this invasion with all our might."

There is no response to your prayers. Not a glimpse of your Mother's ever-changing face. Not a single droplet of silver moonlight penetrates these shadows, and no other voice reaches your ears.

The thought rises, unbidden: is this what Ketheric meant?

There is no shadowy shroud of Shar that a moonbeam of Selûne cannot pierce. You have staked your entire being on this belief, a thousand times over. And yet not a mote of light reaches you in all your years of captivity, and you, curse you, you wonder. The swirling shadows whisper and tickle your mind and your very soul and you despise this intrusion but--

If she can, and yet she does not - does that mean she does not want to? Does not care to?

Among the wild shadowy storms and the gusting winds and lashing lightning, the silence is deafening. When you repeat your prayer, a year later, then a decade, there is still no answer.

An incredible loneliness stretches before you, a nothingness so profound and so very, very long you think you might even miss Balthazar's rancid presence.

And then, a sudden crushing in your chest again, and an agony exploding behind your eyes. Mercifully brief, as far as these things have gone before, but igniting such unspeakable anguish in you that you bellow and pound your fists against the ground until they are raw and bloody. For you know this can only mean one thing: the cycle is starting anew after all this time, and what you took for Ketheric's defeat had somehow only been a temporary setback.

As Your starglow soothes and bolsters, so we promise to aid our fellow faithful, and guide those whose path is not yet clear.

You've flown over these lands countless times, but now, as you rush forward to your long-promised reckoning, you might as well be flying over one of the hells. The ruin and desolation drains away even the heady rush of newfound freedom, the sheer relief of feeling the wind on your wings once again.

It is hard to reconcile the shadow-swollen horrors below you with the magnificence of Moonrise Towers as you once knew them, striking pillars of faith without question. Reithwin itself and the land entire have changed, twisted, in the end but a mirror to the devotion of their ruling family.

There is nothing here of what you remember, nothing left of the simple, blessed life you got but a taste of, not even an echo to be found of all that you once came to treasure alongside your beloved. Fields and orchards you helped work; vineyards you helped bless; fine, silver-wrought fountains you helped make ever-pure, all in your role as your Mother's emissary.

Ketheric Thorm, now False twice over, in whose throne room you stood in audience, promising your fealty and your aid, as recognition for his family's long list of deeds in Selûne's name.

And Isobel, his daughter, still fairly young for one of half-elven descent, but an accomplished cleric in her own right. Her mother's daughter through and through.

The first in Reithwin to stop being star-struck when faced with you, made of far sterner stuff than she might have at first seemed, and insisting on meeting you as an equal. Wise, caring, and skilled. And achingly beautiful, with a soft face and rosy cheeks meant to be bathed in the gentlest of moonlight.

It was odd, but meant to be - clearly part of some plan you happened not to be privy to, but had no desire to question.

All love alive under Her light shall know Her blessing.

Isobel, living and breathing before you, is a miracle if you've ever seen one.

Isobel, still hurt, bruised from what you are told was a kidnapping attempt ordered by her own father - you bristle, and bite it down.

"It is nothing," she insists when you belabour the point, and you want to chastise her for never thinking of herself enough, even after a century, always putting her own wellbeing last, knitting everyone else's wounds closed and leaving no salve for her own.

Instead, you take her face between your palms, trace her cheeks with tentative fingers and carefully, carefully tap into the healing magic you've ignored for a hundred years. The face of the Moonmaiden is ever-shifting - the fierce, warlike guise of martial prowess is but one of many in Her exalted repertoire, and so, too, in yours.

Then, in the privacy of the spacious upstairs room granted to Isobel as the haven's pivotal goddess-touched protector, the very embodiment of the Last Light, you do the same for the rest of her.

Her body is warm, though she complains of a coldness she cannot be rid of.

You fall before her, on your knees as if in supplication, as has always felt like the most natural thing in the world. Face buried in the softness of her bare stomach, a dam in you breaks, and you weep for the joy, the relief beyond all hope, of her real and breathing and whole before you.

She leans down to press a kiss to the top of your head, like a benediction, hands running through your hair and cradling you ever so softly until you regain yourself.

"My darling, my angel. I can hardly believe you are here."

In this, she speaks for the both of you, and spurns you to action.

"Then let me banish all doubt," you murmur, trailing kisses all the while, reverent hands on soft thighs. "I would taste of you, my love, if you allow it."

There is a fleeting moment of hesitation that was never there before as her hands and lips still. But then her shiver becomes one of anticipation as she murmurs into your ear. "I welcome it."

It is yours, then, as ever, to do as you are bid.

You wish to touch every inch of her, impress upon her again and again in a thousand kisses the affection and adoration welling within you inexhaustible. You crave to recommit to memory what you once studied and learned like the most fastidious of students. You need in a way you never have before. And she obliges - no, answers, just as eager and driven by your age-long separation, though her experience of it has been so wildly, incomprehensibly different.

The sounds you draw from her (familiar, dearly missed) are like a balm, a private song you were certain you would never hear again.

You hold her as close as is possible, and she returns the favour. Her caress is familiar, warm, healing in ways few things could ever be. After the hundred years of emptiness interspersed with biting, death-inviting pain and foul, crushing hands holding you in place, after unspeakable things visited upon your body, your person, a gentle, loving, careful touch is a treasure unmatched. The sharpness of the contrast makes your throat tighten.

"Isobel," you breathe into her shoulder, neck, and can think of nothing holier to say than her name.

She holds you entire in her gentle hands, heart and soul and body, and whispers fervent vows to never let you go, never allow you to feel hurt and harm again.

Isobel is slight compared to you, small and soft, for your strengths have ever lain in different areas. Treasured and safe in the circle of her arms, in the sanctuary of her embrace, finally, finally, you find rest.

You are back in your circle-cage, face down, limbs leaden.

The bloated corpse-face of Balthazar leers over you and you launch upwards, swipe at him, near-desperate to drive him away before he continues his wretched work. Aching to make him pay for every insult he has dared commit upon your blessed flesh.

Only to find yourself gasping, gulping down cool night air, seated on the bed in the pleasantly twilit room on the upper floor of the Last Light Inn.

You focus for a moment and effortlessly as ever manifest your wings and take stock of yourself. You know you have not escaped unscathed, unchanged, but your strong limbs are still there, as if nothing had ever happened. Shoulders wide and sturdy, downy feathers, wings. Every sleek vane and fine bit of plumage in their place, pearly white-silver and perfect.

Yet any human rosiness that used to reside there is long gone out of your skin, grey like marble, criss-crossed with precious gold. If you look down, there is a severe, pronounced crack lying right above your heart. It makes sense, of course, if you think on it, though you so desperately prefer - try - not to.

And the dream - nightmare - insists on sinking vestigial claws into you, leaving you with a burning, torn sensation between your shoulder blades.

Isobel stirs beside you, and you curse for having woken her from such hard-won and rarely granted serenity. She sits up, sleep-cottoned, and traces gentle fingers down the tensed, trembling part of your back, though you have said nothing. But Isobel, wise, insightful Isobel, always seems to know at least part of what ails you.

"One of the Flaming Fists encamped here... a traitor. Marcus," she speaks somewhat haltingly, cautiously. "We were all struck by his betrayal, but I... when I saw him, when he came for me, when he was sent for me..."

Her eyes meet yours, almost reluctantly.

"He had wings. Hideously warped, blackened, rotten things, but..."

A question is raised, a mirror of one you've asked yourself, during long hours-turned-days of morbid contemplation in your prison.

"Balthazar. He got them from that wretch Balthazar."

"And he got them--" Isobel cuts herself off, fully awake and alert and wincing at the confirmation of her fears.

You swallow, throat parched and burning as if the screams from then still scrape against it. Harvesting, he called it.

"He got them from me."

It is simply not something to be thought about. The bile of wrath rises, crawls up your throat instead, and you spit out words almost in a growl.

"He has been dispatched, I trust? The traitor?"

Isobel understands.

"He has, of course," she rushes to reassure. "Jaheira and the Harpers made quick work of him and the horrible creatures he called to his aid."

You hum, move to sit back against the headboard, then change your mind as soon as it touches your skin. "It seems I have much to thank High Harper Jaheira."

Your hand is still tightened into a fist in the coverlet, and Isobel reaches over, pries it open, to hold it ever so gently between both of her palms.

"We both do. We'll see them all come morning, exchange tales over breakfast. Outside, perhaps, in the sun, at long last." Her smile is as bright as this promised dawn, but there is a note of silver-filigree steel behind it. "We can thank her then. Make sure she knows she can count on us through whatever is to come."

She reaches over to cradle your chin, tugging you down, and kisses you softly. "Let us get some more rest, my love."

The both of you slip back under the moth-eaten but soft covers and she burrows insistently into your side, under one wing. You lie - and, blessedly, sleep - on your stomach, Isobel's arm thrown over your lower back in that perfect balance she is mastering of being reassuring while not calling too much to mind.

When we are beset with shadows, You mend our hearts with the silver thread of Your radiant loom.

You let Isobel braid your hair, one idle evening in camp. You can sense she is just as starved for simple contact as you are - her hands seem restless, even more so than usual, and flit over your back, shoulders, arms... so you let her occupy them, as she perches in your lap and peppers you with kisses, and speaks not a single word.

There is no mirror at hand to see her handiwork when she is done, but she looks pleased with herself, and with you, and you feel like this should be... enough.

But another memory stirs and inches through, of the times you knelt, crouched, sat in that glowing circle that your world had seemed shrunken to, and, for want of anything to do with your hands (now past punching, past clawing for the freedom that was out of their reach) you set to braiding your hair, as if preparing to don a helmet and march off to glorious combat. It was something to do, and pretend.

You undo the braids as soon as Isobel falls asleep.

The city, that meeting point of fates, draws ever nearer.

Isobel's cough comes and goes. Nothing as bad as the fits that sometimes awoke her while you were still in the cursed lands, but it persists, frustratingly.

"Isobel, I--" you barely get to begin to voice your concern before she brushes you away.

"Please, it's nothing. Don't worry about me, dearest."

"I find I cannot," you state simply, as it is a very simple truth.

"I- I don't want to burden you. You've enough on your plate as it is." She gives a small smile so forced you almost feel insulted. "It'll pass, I'm sure."

"Burden…? Isobel," a mess of words past her cherished name stick in your mouth, awkward, nigh indignant, and you take a moment to calm and order them. Simple and earnest is what you settle for, in the end. "Isobel, my love… You are first in my thoughts, always, you know this. I would gladly bear all your burdens if I but could, if you were to allow it - each and every one."

She frowns, shakes her head, and you hate that you seem to have somehow displeased her. "That's just it, isn't it? I don't want you to. I don't need you to. You've born more than anyone's fair share."

"Ah, but Dame Aylin is hardly anyone, is she?"

You aim your most winning, blinding white grin at her, but fail to induce the reaction you were once used to getting on a whim. No blush or giggle hidden behind a dainty palm at your deliberately overtuned charm being pointed at her, no smirk and tease in return.

No, Isobel is subdued, troubled, and, most vexing of all, everything you say seems to only serve to make it worse.

There is something new behind her eyes, too, those beautiful, wise eyes that won your heart entire the first time you met them. A darkness, you would dare call it, a shadow not unlike the curse once fallen upon the land. A question, a yearning for some understanding that never seems to come, a futile grasp for something in an emptiness that was not there before.

"Please, my love," you say with the utmost tenderness, reserved for Isobel alone, "do not hide your heart from me. You know I cherish it as if it were mine own."

"I haven't felt… myself," she haltingly begins in answer to your plea, as you step forward and encircle her, first in the embrace of your arms, then in the shelter of your wings. A treasured sanctuary saved for the two of you alone.

"I cannot… the death, it clings, I..."

She buries her face in your chest as she struggles to pick out words one by one, plucking them out like painful thorns. You let her rest tucked under your chin, restrain yourself to quietly running one gentle, slow hand through her hair.

"I am afraid," she settles on, finally, almost a whisper, hiding still, refusing to look at you. "I am afraid there is no fixing this wrongness I feel day after day, that's been… in me, over me, ever since I awoke. That something has been taken from me, and now there is no way to remove this vile mark that's been left on me instead, whatever it is. Not even by the grace of the Moonmaiden."

She shivers, and you tighten your hold on her, even as the sentence after that tears into your very heart, sharper and more jagged than any Sharran knife.

"I am afraid, most of all, that no matter how much I pray or plead, that whatever I do to try and prove myself worthy, I… cannot be. Ever again. I will never be worthy of Her light again. Or of yours."

"No," it comes out far rougher, angrier than you ever intended, ever wanted to aim anywhere near precious, beloved Isobel - not at her, never at her. But she is wrong, because it is an impossibility, unthinkable, ridiculous to even suggest. Her, treasured, cherished, held high above all in your regard, and lofty in your Mother's.

"Please, Isobel," you move a half-step back, if only to make it possible to cup her face, tilt her chin up and look at her. "Do not ever, ever think such a thing again. You could never be unworthy, not you. Not you."

The hitch is back in her laboured breath as she moves to protest, the haunted look shadowing her eyes. "How? How can you be so sure?"

And that is the question, isn't it? Your love for Isobel and faith in her intertwined, utterly certain and utterly relentless. Like the rage that sustained you through a century of torment, settled heavy and deep in your bones. You don't know any other way to feel, to be.

"I will prove it to you, I will drive away any shadow of any doubt. Her light, through me. For you alone, Isobel."

She acquiesces, at least, to being led over to the bed and sitting down. You lower the shoulders of her tunic. Place a gentle, reverent kiss on the revealed skin, trying to press in with it all the love and devotion you desperately need her to be aware of.

You lay a hand on her bare back, palm flat and flush with warm skin. The rush of joy and slight disbelief that she is once again yours to touch is still fresh, and yet the familiarity of every freckle, shift of shoulder blade, and light shiver of gooseflesh is ancient and deep and right. From the outside it is the same, perfect, unchanged Isobel. But you believe her unquestioningly when she says something is wrong.

A mere moment of focus has a silvery glow bathing the room, unwinding from underneath your fingertips and sinking into Isobel's back. She breathes in deeply, breathes out, then in again, shifting under your touch, until she seems to find at least some relief.

"Thank you, that's…" she murmurs, barely above a breath.

There is a dawning, deeply saddening comprehension rising in you - Isobel, insisting on pouring all her heart and soul into taking care of you, healing and protecting and doting on so devotedly, driven not just by your love most mutual, but also by fear. By a desperate need to prove herself worthy of Selûne's grace again, prove her return to life was not a horrifying mistake. Chasing redemption where none was ever needed, not for her, clinging to the thought like a lifeline.

"Whenever, whatever you need of me, however many times." You allow your fervour to seep into your voice as you feel your eyes burn, and continue trailing moonlight-dipped fingers down her back. "If you but say the word, I will provide what relief I can, I swear it, until you are free of any shadows haunting you, or until there is no light left in me - whichever deigns to come first."

Isobel smiles wryly, turning to steal a glance at you over her shoulder, a tiredness in her that she has only ever shown you alone. "I promised I would take care of you. And yet here you are, taking care of me. After… after everything."

She knows enough not to specify. Even this brief almost-mention is enough to make a darkness creep at the edge of your thoughts, but you swallow it back hastily, and focus only on the treasured countenance before you, on brushing stray silver locks behind her ear with your free hand.

"A fair and just exchange, I would think, if you are amenable."

Isobel hums something that is neither agreement nor disagreement, then turns to face you fully, sombre in the circle of your arms.

"I always thought that when the time came, I would be ready," she begins, slowly, as if every word was a trial. "Foolish and naive of me, probably. But I thought I knew what to expect, what I would have awaiting me, after a life of service. The City of Judgement, as awaits us all, and then, hopefully, and - I pray - deservedly, an audience in Argentil after being Claimed."

She stops, swallows, looks at you so pleadingly you cannot help but pull her back into your embrace.

"But instead…" you hold her tighter as she shudders, "...nothing. Darkness. A void."

Nothing. Like the black hole of your prison. And it seems fitting, for a moment, that fate has decided to match you in this, too.

"It is I who failed you. When it truly mattered, when it was of most consequence, I wasn't there. And you… you were lost to me. To us."

A small frown furrows her brow as she grasps around for something, anything. "I don't remember."

"Perhaps… perhaps that is for the best," you exhale, half-sick of dredging up shadows you would prefer remain buried. "My own memory is prodigious, and yet how I wish I could forget much of the past century."

But Isobel looks at you longingly, searchingly, and you oblige, at least for a little bit, calling to mind what should have been the darkest days of your long life. "For all our efforts, we were never able to capture your attackers - the cowards struck so suddenly, fled so swiftly. You were laid in state, for a while. The entirety of Reithwin mourned - the Silverbrow Priestess conducted the funeral services most beautifully. The very Moon, full to bursting, cried over it. And your father…"

Your throat seizes up. Her father, your tormentor. A wretched man you feel the two of you have to speak of, some day. The man who gave the world Isobel twice over, but selfishly, impossibly, wanted to keep her all to himself both times.

Her countenance grows steely and determined in a way you have yet to get used to. "My father was lost to me far before he died at your hand. I mourn the man I remember, not the monster you killed. A loving, kind, generous man, who should never have been capable of such horrors as Ketheric brought down upon my home, upon you. And yet... if I was all that was keeping him from such a fall, I cannot help but think--"

Isobel's voice cracks and you wonder when, in your absence-captivity, he stopped being Papa and became Ketheric. Your anger towards him tastes bitterer still.

And you think of Isobel, fleeing her own grave and the twisted visage of what was once her beloved father. Dragging her own burial shroud across a land of shadow and horror, full of echoes of a life half-remembered.

Isobel, alone, convinced of your demise, mourning you as you endlessly mourned her, both of you unknowing.

Isobel, left to desperately and single-handedly guard the only meagre surviving pocket of her childhood home, doomed and destroyed by her father's violent, misaimed grief over her own death. A pillar of light in an all-encompassing darkness and one final, crucial defence against it, without even a fair promise of hope or future to sustain her.

It sounds, at first, like a noble task you would think worthy of a cleric of Isobel's most excellent calibre. But you can't help but think it a test of devotion far too harsh, and entirely superfluous. Such incredible weight to place on any one person's shoulders. And for what?

Needed and necessary she once called herself and her efforts when you asked, insisting on dismissing it all in a way you perhaps understand entirely too well.

Perhaps, together... you, hollowed, and her, overflowing. And, in turn, her aching for something that is missing and you fit to burst with wrath and vengeance and violence. Perhaps there is hope yet, and healing to be found for both.

Together. Only ever together.

We trust in Your radiance, Moonmaiden, even when it is out of our sight.

The battle you were waiting for is over - won, by most reckonings, but not without great cost. What is left of the city now needs care and careful restoration. There are still stray cultist enclaves to root out, remnants of the illithid army, as well as mere opportunists who always show their vile selves in such circumstances. As part of an array of unexpected, colourful allies, you make short work of them all, whenever any come to light.

But rebuilding takes precedence, as does healing, and Isobel has taken point among Selûne's devoted in a way that is nothing short of awe-inspiring. The situation seems altogether more suited to her talents rather than yours at the moment, so you follow her readily, without question, and provide whatever aid you can.

It is a cycle as old as time, after all, as reliable as the phases of the Moon. Building, destruction, rebuilding - the world will always need both of you.

But tonight is the night of a full Moon, and Isobel has gone to conduct the requisite rituals with the rest of the Selûnite encampment that has been so welcoming to you. Isobel, death-touched but untainted, no matter what she may fear, will excel in whatever role they set out for her, of this you are certain.

You, on the other hand, have begged off, your own communion awaiting you elsewhere.

Your path leads you away from the outskirts of the city and up into the hills, your back turned on the Chionthar. Through remnants of farms and hunting lodges, up and up to cliff and brush and down again to sparse woodland, your steps are guided, as is your birthright.

It is becoming easier to hear Her voice once again. She does not always speak in words, but Her presence She makes felt.

And so you stop in a clearing, before a pond, crystal clear and fed by a jolly, clamouring stream. It is quiet, otherwise. Peaceful.

You dismiss your armour, letting it dissipate into motes of moonlight. You remember with a touch of warmth and immense fondness how sweetly Isobel would pout whenever she did not get to take it off you piece by piece.

The air is crisp and the water, once you touch it, is almost icy. The moonlight on your skin cleanses and soothes, combining with the chilly water into a refreshing blessing. It is the sensations of the world that you so dearly missed during your captivity, that you now allow to rush over you, all at once.

It is the first time in over a hundred years you stand and behold the full silver face of your Mother, the trail of Her Tears beside Her, and wonder, idly, if She shed any for you.

Please, you beg as you step into the pool, without shame, without words. A kinder fate for Isobel, this time.

A kinder fate for the land she still calls home.

A kinder fate for me.

The cool silver water seeps into every crevice of your being and washes away with it some ichor of darkness you didn't even know still clung to you. You lie back and let yourself float, the rush of water in your ears drowning out even the small nighttime noises of the clearing and surrounding woods. In the soft waves you hear your Mother's voice, and She sounds kind, inviting, forgiving.

Why, you want to ask, why would you allow…

There is new dampness on your cheeks, and you realise haltingly that it is tears. "Hello, Mother."

The light of the Moon is caring and compassionate, and bathes you in love. It is the only embrace She has ever been able to give you, here. It is almost enough to forget a century of sorrow and the cries that went unheard.

No more, She says.

Rest, the murmur continues, soft and sad - a familiar melancholy, though not one you would expect during a Moon so full and bright. Earned, a hundred times over. My Sword, tempered to perfection. My Daughter, put through trials undeserved. Lost to me for so long. You are welcome here. Safe. I would have you know peace once more.

"Not… not yet. There are still too many, I cannot--" You sit up, rivulets of water running down your face, following the crevices of your scars. It is unlike you to struggle so with your words. You proclaim and vow, you do not stammer and hesitate.

What would you have for yourself, then, daughter mine?

"I would seek and extinguish the tyrants, the oppressors," your hands tighten into determined fists as you channel and reflect all that has been done to you, aglow with silver, wings unfurled. "Those who would bind, capture, enslave, who would subjugate and rule another for their own gain - let them sleep with one eye open. Let them know: Dame Aylin sees their deeds and offers no mercy."

Your cause is righteous, and I bless it as my own. But a burden should be shared. And you are not the only champion at my call.

It is true, of course, and you grasp the intent, but you cannot help but bristle. You may not be the only one, but surely you are the most--

--fearsome? Reliable? Accomplished?

Doubt creeps in, that most rare and hated of sensations. There is a shift, then, into a plea for you to understand, from a mother to her child.

A broken sword can accomplish little. And even the finest steel has a breaking point. Do not too eagerly seek your own.

You sink back into the pool, water up to your chin, as if bowing in acceptance.

If you crave a task, I task you: offer aid in healing and rebuilding, and thus rebuild yourself. Worry not - I will call upon you when the time comes. But for now, shore up the bulwark within you.

A smile, a tender grace.

And let each and all know yours is a blessed union.

The last fading words leave you puzzled for a few moonlit moments. And then Isobel is next to you, bare and glowing and embracing you, holding you to herself as if she will never let go.

"Isobel," you start, a host of questions forming on your tongue, but she places a finger over your lips.

"Guided back to you, as you were to me. As I promise I will be, for as long as I can."

A shiver runs through you at the undercurrent of steel and sheer devotion in her sweet voice.

"Then I vow I will never let myself be torn from your side again. And any who seek to part us will meet a swift end by my hand."

You spoke such promises to each other once already, what feels like a lifetime ago, even though it should by rights have been nothing compared to your eternal years. It is a heavy lesson to have learned so well in breaking them, though - that no tomorrow can ever be guaranteed. Not even for you.

Not near as tide- and cycle-bound, the Scribe had said, and you wonder at the recalled words. No endless rise and fall for you, then, perhaps. No waxing and waning. No rote repetition of tragic history in this world changed and strange, but instead something altogether new, hewn by the two of you.

Isobel takes your face between both her hands and kisses you, putting a swift end to your reverie.

In response, you pick her up out of the water, twirl her around, splash the both of you back down happily. Your smile turns into a grin, then a laugh, open and simple, and her giggle is crystal-bright and utterly free of the grasp of the grave. You feel lighter than the feathers you leave behind like a snowy trail.

You hold her and kiss her again and again and again and allow yourself to lose track of time.

#baldur's gate 3 #dame aylin #isobel thorm #aylin x isobel #bg3 #fanfiction #bg3 spoilers #oathkeeper writes things #my fic #i love them and wish them all the succor in the world #cross-posted on ao3 if you prefer to read there #poor unprepared me starting the game salty that they didn't let me play my aasimar paladin staple

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canonkiller · 9 months

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As a fellow trans person your art is making me start to kin the king lindwyrm. The idea of being born into a body you didn’t want and others punishing you for it is something that speaks so deeply to me. (at least that’s how I interpreted the fairytale)

oh I think it's got some incredible angles to it especially in the metaphor of an unwanted transformation to "human" - to condense a lot of past ramblings, the lindworm is rarely asked if it wants to be human, but within the narrative every character acts in the belief that it can be turned human because it "should have" been born as one. it's assumed that the lindworm wants to be human because it wants its birthright as the eldest child, because it being a lindworm denies it that, because obviously the Easier Way is to force the lindworm to be human rather than to accept it for what it is.

also I think if you're marrying someone and they're repulsed by you that you should get to eat them. I'm a lindworm apologist. He was right.

TLDR join me in lindwormposting it's beautiful and freeing. pick a fairy tale of your choice to throw yourself into wholeheartedly even

#lindwormsweep baby!!!!#ask #anon

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hexonthepeach · 8 months

Text

a gentle tongue breaketh the bone | 13: shock

pairing: fem hybrid fox omega!reader/hybrid Alpha!nct 127

tags: reverse harem, non-traditional omegaverse hybrid! cyberpunk au, pack dynamics, polyamory, slowburn/slowbuild, angst & hurt/comfort, heavy content warnings inc. torture, graphic violence, suicidal ideation, explicit sexual content

summary: the year is 2127. decades of eugenics and warfare have led to the rise of designated populations: the ruler Alphas and their rare, prized omegas sequestered from the Beta population. in the aftermath of the War of the Two Tigers, New Goryeo ushers in an Imperial dynasty determined not by birthright but by the alliance of the Syndicate’s clancorps to choose the best pack of your generation. you are destined to take your place within the Imperial harem as a queen, and–perhaps–Imperatrix herself

but you have a secret, written into your skin and bones–one that could easily kill you, depending on who finds it out

ten years ago you chose your Alpha and their pack in a fateful meeting

now, you must make them choose you

[masterlist & glossary] [read on AO3] [0: prologue] [1: escape, again] [2: lost and found] [3: returned] [4: bound] [5: home] [6: gift] [7: reunion] [8: security] [9: secret] [10: prisoner] [11: gambit] [12: haze]

wc: 5.3k

chapter warnings: torture, dubcon explicit sexual content

recommended listening: chrome arts - onlyoneof

Everything inside you is agony. Your heart aches, your body throbbing relentlessly, cramping with the need to be filled by your Alpha. You hadn’t thought it wouldn't feel right–that you'd feel worse rather than relieved. Your fox keens, not accepting the encounter as anything but a brief distraction, starving for the real thing.

Haechan is inside you still, knot barely deflating, occasionally bubbling back to consciousness only to drop back down into the hole you knew so well with a muttered word or a weak sob.

You'd accidentally overdosed him–an easy mistake with your tolerance and his complete lack of it. He'll live, but it’s doubtful you’ll ever get his trust back, not after what you'd subjected him to. It had to be done, you think. It had to.

Haechan's agent blinks on his wrist, pressed against his face where he's shielded his eyes from the overstimulating light from the screen.

A call, of course–Mark checking in. You have to think fast, a little clearer with the warmth inside you and Haechan's taste in your mouth. You seize his wrist and angle it so it captures your weeping face as you answer the call.

"What the hell–are you alright?"

"I made a mistake," you babble. "Please don't be mad at me, please don't hurt him."

"Calm down," Mark says. It's obvious he's in transit, Yuta saying something you can barely hear.

"Where's Taeil?"

"I had to sedate them. Both of them. They couldn't help it. They both tried to . . . They're fine but I'm scared. You said you wouldn't leave me alone . . . "

"Stay where you are," he shouts, the screen flickering as he runs. You hang up,

"Monster." Haechan says, pushing at you weakly. "Get off of me."

"Sleep," you order. It's effortless to push him into unconsciousness, feeling him finally slip out of you. He looks pathetically undone. It makes your chest ache to see his soft lips parted, the memory of them still a warm phantom against your own.

You’ve been awash in his misery since the bite but it didn't change how you felt about him–like he was someone to be cherished and cared for. If anything it’s worse. After all, he’s yours now. Your first, hopefully not your last.

You push his hair back into place and fix his clothing, restoring some of his decency. It's the least you can do.

This would have all been so much easier if you weren't up against Johnny's order. It had to be the reason they'd resisted and would continue to resist instinct–you had to find a workaround.

You clean up quickly, showering to get rid of the disgusting mess of spend and slick and worse drying on your thighs. If you cry again, no one has to know it’s not because of the pain and fire wracking through you.

You don't feel changed, like they said it would–of course you wouldn't, without a bite mark administered to you. That’s what Taeil must have meant when he said that it wouldn’t be enough: you needed a real mating, not this farce.

All those missives in the Academy’s intimacy training and books about it being a sacred, beautiful union were lies, you knew–methods to get you to accept the Alpha boot on your neck. But maybe if you were more careful you’d get one of them to agree to help you before the fire ate you up inside and burnt away your last shreds of control.

But who?

There are only two options left.

You get dressed quickly, pulling on one of your nicer sets of clothing–something unassuming and modest for your next target.

You make it only as far as the doorway, the doors hissing open to reveal the smiling face of not your first choice.

Jungwoo is dressed casually in dark streetwear, but he's still armed, nightstick prodding you in the chest as he closes in.

"Going somewhere?"

"I thought you were off duty?" You say, raising your hands.

"I was, but you caused such a scene." He shakes his head, tsking. "You really have a knack for getting into trouble."

Your heart sinks, skin flaring hot.

"You saw?"

"This room isn't private, you know. You did a good job getting the cameras. Well, most of them." Jungwoo chuckles at the sight of Haechan sprawled out, sniffing the air in a way that has you clenching your thighs together. "They really didn't stand a chance, did they?"

"Why didn't you stop me?"

"It's more fun this way.” He turns to cock his head, admiring you. “I don't think I've ever seen someone dig their own grave so deeply they kept going all the way to Hell."

"Are you going to tell Mark?"

"Tell me what?"

You'd heard his footsteps down the hallway, never more grateful to see his face and Yuta's as they flank in around the taller man threatening you.

Before you can come up with a well-crafted response, Yuta answers for you.

"Taeil sent me a message about getting you out to clear your head," he admits to Mark, crossing his arms. "Thought the old dog just wanted some privacy with his favorite patient.”

He smiles at you, nose wrinkling. "But it was you, wasn't it?"

"What are you talking about?" Mark asks.

"Princess here has a lot of hidden talents. Hacking agents, shutting down security," Jungwoo says, thoroughly pleased. "Using Moon's credentials to send encrypted messages to the Dome."

Your heart is no longer in your stomach, it's in freefall. You'd known the risks, but you'd had to.

"I think it's safe to say she's not just an ordinary little omega. But none of that is even the most interesting, is it, Princess?"

You don't answer, unconsciously moving between them and the man passed out behind you.

"The brat found out the hard way," Jungwoo says.

"I didn't think he had it in him," Yuta laughs.

"Oh for fuck's sake," Mark flares into anger, rounding on the two. "This is serious. Be serious. What did you do to them?"

The question is directed at you, rage controlled in his features as he approaches you.

"I just wanted to make it stop hurting," you say, meekly, not lying in the slightest. "But I got scared . . ."

Unlike before Mark seems wholly uninterested in your theatrics, eyes darting to the couch. His eyes widen as he seems to put two and two together.

"Did you . . .?"

"You can't smell that?" Jungwoo stifles a laugh.

"Tell me exactly what happened," he says, a little more softly but twice as dangerous as he stands over you. You could lie and pretend to be afraid, you could simper and break down. But the pain makes you angry, quick to let all the bottled rage within pour out as you hold your ground.

"Why don’t we start with you telling Taeil to put me in a coma," you say, glaring up at him.

Mark sputters a little, hand running over his head to tug at his hair. "For your safety!"

"For yours!" You hiss, tail swatting behind you. “I was right, you’re all cowards. A whole pack of useless degenerates and not one of you can do your gods-granted function. I should never have come here."

Mark's confusion quickly transforms into ready-action.

"No. You shouldn’t have. Down."

His order rolls off you with the wild rush of jimseung tearing through you. You adopt a defensive stance, hunched to spring.

Mark grabs you by the shoulders, surprised when you flow into the motion rather than against it, seizing him by the wrists so hard your nails sink into his forearms, teeth snapping inches from his collarbone. He knees you in the gut, the targeted attack making you scream in anguish.

It breaks your hold long enough for him to pin you to his chest, feeling the threat of cold metal against your temple and the click of a safety.

"Little kitten has claws after all." you mock him, twisting so your spittle flecks his face. He’s so close you can see his jaw clench. "Not such a nice guy, are you?"

He shakes you off, baring his teeth.

"Johnny was right about you," he says, tone bitter. The words hit like targeted strikes through the feverish haze of your anger, finding your heart.

"Coward,” you repeat.

He doesn't take his eyes off you, shoving you at Yuta.

"I should have listened to Taeil. She can spend the rest of her stay in Containment."

Mark watches the collar snap around your neck with finality, the muzzle over your nose and mouth already constricting. Yuta checks the fit, pinching your ear when he's done.

You sit in silence, eyes locked on Haechan asleep in the hospital bed across the room, elevated to keep from accidentally choking on his own vomit. As much as it hurts to be reminded of your sins, you feel like it's a necessity to stay fixed on him.

You need to protect your new claim.

It hadn't taken long for Mark to check the security footage, or to find the evidence of your worser crimes. He looks at you with disgust now, clearly uncomfortable even being in the same room but keeping you under careful watch.

"I’m calling Doyoung," Mark says. "We need to get a plan started for sending her back to the Syndicate."

"Good luck,” Yuta responds. “You heard her little story about the guy she marked in the Palace. It explains what happened to Johnny."

"Neither claimed her the way he did. They'll get over it.” Mark doesn’t believe his own words, tasting you more clearly than he had in the last few days. Johnny hadn’t been hyperbolic when he’d said something about feeling like God was in the room with him when you were near. You’re omnipresent, that lotus scent permeating everything.

"They’re not going to want to give her up. Taeyong especially. Even if she wasn’t a liability, you’re going to have a hard time separating them," Jungwoo adds, scrolling through files on Taeil's station.

"Three of us in a few days, four if you count Johnny. She's more pack than most of us," Yuta says.

"Never." Mark can’t imagine you ever being accepted. Not after this.

"Can't fight biology," Jungwoo says, looking over his shoulder at you. "Impressive, isn't it?"

You stare at him blankly, walled off.

"The thing I don't get is why?" Mark says. "What would be the benefit of sacrificing a potential Queen or even that valuable of an agent just to fuck with us?"

"Would you want that thing running the Imperial Palace?" Yuta shrugs. “Seems like a good set-up to get us to execute her and take the fall for it.”

"There's something off about all of this." Mark sighs. "I need Doyoung to advise on it. And we need to bring the whole pack together for a tribunal."

"Good luck. He's probably balls deep in Taeyong right now," Jungwoo says, so casually you wonder if you'd heard him right. "If it isn't Johnny's turn."

“Watch it." Mark snaps.

"It's natural." Jungwoo returns to scrolling, eye flicking to where you're trying to stay composed. "You'll know if you ever catch a rut."

"I said shut up." Mark's hand reaches for his gun unconsciously, checking himself. Perspiration has appeared on his jawline, and he swipes it away with his upper arm as he takes over Jungwoo's place at the monitor bank.

"Feeling hot under the collar, Mark? Need a booster?" Jungwoo winks at you over the other man’s head.

"Just get her out of here," he snaps back. "I'd rather not deal with her if Johnny picks up."

You're desperate to hear the conversation but Yuta lifts you by your elbow, zip tie cuffs digging into your wrists.

"We'll be back in a few. Try not to jerk off to the security footage."

Mark flashes him his middle finger, still focused on the pulsing screen in front of him, call accepting as the doors whoosh shut.

"He's so uptight," Jungwoo comments, falling into step beside you. "It's too bad she hasn't pushed him out of puberty yet."

"You start the feed?" Yuta asks.

"T-minus 5 minutes to account for a slow walk to solitary. I'm not too worried, though. You know Doyoung, he'll keep him on that call for at least half an hour."

"And Jaehyun?"

"He's doing a deep run to intercept the dove she sent past our ice. Very nice work on that, would have slipped past us if we weren't trying to flush you out in the first place." Jungwoo's voice is soft, the sentiment genuine as he ruffles your ears over the muzzle’s straps.

"Should we take her to her cell first, get some better footage with her new accessory?" His gloved fingers trace over your collar and the nape of your neck, making you flinch.

"And wake up the white knight?" Yuta asks, dripping sarcasm. "No. Let's get in as much time as we can with her."

You have no idea what they mean but things quickly become more real the moment you're steered towards the living quarters versus your future prison. You pause, dragged a little as Yuta's hand tightens on your arm to pull you along with Jungwoo's help.

"Just a little trip to your new bedroom, precious. Nothing to be afraid of." Yuta's easy cadence has you actually feeling fear, now.

You shake your head, resisting with your bare heels dug into the cold floor.

"You know what's wonderful about these collars?" Jungwoo taps the thick strip of metal mesh. "A tiny bit of coding and you can get whatever level of control you want over an Alpha. Well, at least they're meant for Alphas who need taming. Never needed to use one on an omega before. Orange."

At the word you hear a beep and feel a tingle in your skin on the back of your neck, right before your eyesight flashes white and your legs give out from under you.

"Now we have to carry her, dumbass."

"Had to be sure it worked," Jungwoo says, catching your slow-motion fall. There's no sedation, you realize, just temporary paralysis from the spinal shock. It's painless but the worst part is that you are completely and utterly helpless.

You can't even scream with the muzzle on, the sounds trapped behind your closed lips as they haul you towards the hollow doorway of Johnny's residence.

"Love what you've done with the place," Yuta comments acerbically as you pass by familiar wreckage, carried up to the second floor between them. "Didn’t Mark give you clean-up duty?"

"Why should I be responsible for his messes?" Jungwoo pouts, kicking a shattered partition down to cascade over the black tile below. "I fed his turtles at least."

"I forgot about his stupid fucking turtles," Yuta says, tossing you on the bed. Johnny's room has been destroyed and put back together in the strangest manner possible, couch cushions fortressing a bed piled high with blankets and pillows and items of clothing.

Of course they’d built you a nest, or at least a mockery of one.

"I took the liberty of making the place more comfortable for you." Jungwoo confirms his hand in it. He props you up to cut your zip tie cuffs off, swaying back when you swipe at him with your freed hand.

"Yellow." Yuta says.

They both laugh as you keel over onto a pile of bedding, breath captured in your lungs until the muscles can work again.

It takes a few seconds to pass, Johnny's deep scent easing you back to earth and washing away the bitterness of Yuta and Jungwoo's evergreen and citrus pheromones. You feel clearer now than before, almost soothed by the invisible presence of your Alpha. If only it didn’t hurt twice as worse to remember that you’ve been abandoned.

Jungwoo sits next to you as Yuta crouches down to eye level, sharp features softened with a deadly smile.

"So, Princess–"

"–we have a few questions." Jungwoo interrupts, picking strands of hair away from your eyes with gentle movements. There’s something sinister about the fact that they’re both gloved–as if they need to conceal the evidence of whatever they’re going to do to you.

You shiver a bit, turning away.

Yuta shoots him a look. "You don't need to talk, just nod or shake your head when you're supposed to. We'll play nice if you do."

You don’t move, neck still twitching from the stimulation.

"First off. Did you plan on infiltrating our organization?"

You shake your head, eyes narrowing as your ears flatten.

Jungwoo pulls you up by your collar, tongue lapping at the moisture collected under your ear.

"Tastes like lying to me."

"Not a good start," Yuta intones. "Orange."

You wince as the command takes, inhaling sharply through your nose before the wind can be knocked out of you again. There's no way to get used to it: your autonomic systems flare into alarm with each minor jolt to your heart, adrenaline making you tremble.

There was no way this was a light treatment even for an alpha–clearly they didn’t care what your physiology could handle. Sweat soaks your skin, mingling with the tears.

"Do you have a handler in the Syndicate? Someone who gives you instructions?"

You shake your head limply, not bothering to sit up.

"I think she might be telling the truth." Jungwoo says, hand back on your cheek. "Interesting."

Yuta’s posture stiffens as he contemplates the next question. "Did you put the bounty on Johnny?"

His head angles as he watches your response, your panting breaths stilling as the words sink in.

Bounty? Johnny? Icy shock numbs you. You blink at the Felid, shaking your head more violently.

"She didn't know?" Jungwoo whistles a bit. "Thought that one was common knowledge."

You sit up, woozily, not breaking eye contact with your captor.

I didn’t know, you channel, eyebrows knitted together. They seem to understand, whether or not they believe you is another matter entirely.

Yuta lifts his shirt and pulls down his belt a bit to show you a scar distorting one of his many tattoos at the crease near his hip, the tissue puckered.

"The first time we got flagged on the dark networks was after your little stunt at the debut. Three different attempts, all highly paid and well chosen. Almost got us."

You know it can’t be an understatement. Any wound that large and healed without shifting should have killed him.

"You owe me a kidney," he says, with that wry, jocular tone you know so well. This time you know he's serious.

Your mind races. Even if you had the resources, even wanting to be free of them, you would never broker their lives for your peace. How could you with Johnny at the other end of so many links in the chain tying you to them? Panic has you desperate, shaking your bowed head with added submission.

You make a garbled sound in your throat: no, no. Not me.

"Fooled me," Yuta says. "What do you think?"

"Aside from the fact she’s turned on by the idea of killing us right now, she seems remarkably not guilty." Jungwoo says. He seems to be proud of your reaction, stroking your head as a wave of cramps begins again, a whimper leaving your throat.

You curl up on the bed, holding yourself against the deep ache accompanying a sudden rush of slick. You're nauseated by the pain and the fact that you have zero control, immersed in your Alpha's scent and losing the sliver of relief Haechan had given you. Worse is the way your heat makes even the proximity of these beasts more arousing than terrifying.

“Well,” Yuta continues. “If you didn’t do it, I’m sure there are plenty of others who could orchestrate a hit like that on your behalf.”

“She’s definitely hiding something,” Jungwoo agrees. “Or someone.”

"Be a good girl and tell us who you are working for, then," Yuta says. "Who would start a war with us for you?"

You glare at him over the knees tucked to your chin, channeling your annoyance at being asked to speak with your mouth clamped shut. It was almost flattering how much credit they were giving you when you were just as much a hostage in the Dome as you were here.

"Take it off," Yuta instructs Jungwoo, rocking back on his heels. "Don't bother screaming, no one can hear you."

With the muzzle removed you rub your face, soothing your cramped jaw.

“I didn’t put a bounty on anyone.” Your voice is a croak. “I don’t have that kind of power.”

“But you know who could, don’t you? Who did you tell?” There’s a second layer to Yuta’s purred question, words of a threat drifting up from years ago.

"If you want to protect him, you'll keep quiet. You tell anyone and he dies, do you understand?"

Those green, slitted eyes are just as cold now.

"You're the ones who lied and told the Syndicate the Alpha who marked me was dead,” you hiss. "Of course they'd want to finish the job."

"If it was the Syndicate there would be a smoking pile of rubble where this building used to be," Yuta says. "Try again."

"One of your Tekhne Princes, maybe?" Jungwoo asks.

"I've never even met them." It was true–you'd been completely isolated from the heirs, lest they be influenced by you. But from what you knew of Tekhne they were harmless: uselessly spoiled heirs to the Choi clancorps.

"Family, then." Yuta remarks.

You don’t have a response for that, glaring at them.

"Oh now there's something," Jungwoo murmurs, nose pressed to your temple. "Do you know you smell like pink pepper when you're distressed? So spicy . . ."

"You idiot," you deflect. "I'm related to half of Old Seoul."

“That’s a lot of options. Feel free to narrow it down.”

“I only have my brother. And Taeyong,” you begin, quickly stopping. “There’s no one else.”

"Little liar, aren’t you? I thought you’d be better at this. Yell-" Jungwoo says. You curse him mentally as your body anticipates the shock, pulse pounding erratically in your ears. The second syllable doesn't land, and you blink up wetly at him.

"You know who it is, don't you?" He licks his lips, searching your eyes. He’s satisfied with what he finds, nodding at Yuta.

"Please. No, I don't." Your voice is tinny in your ears.

"You want to protect them?" The Felid asks. He smirks, watching you hesitate. “A stupid little thing like you? Who’d benefit from your protection?”

You shake your head, almost agreeing. "I don't know."

“They must be special to you,” Jungwoo adds, hoisting you up. “Who else would kill for you?”

“No one,” you say, mouth gaping. “There’s no one–”

"Crimson." Yuta says.

This time it's excruciating–you bite your tongue as your muscles spasm in jerks and twitches, as your heart beats like a bird against your rib cage once it’s started again. The seizure has you wrenching in Jungwoo's hold as he elevates your head. Tears stream down your face, but without a single working muscle you can't even blink.

Hatred and resignation animate you long before the myoclonic shock wears off. You breathe shallowly through your nose, torching Yuta with your gaze.

He smiles at you, lazily.

"The next words out of your mouth better be a name," he says.

You sit up, shakily, relying on Jungwoo’s support as you lean forward, like you're going to tell them both a secret.

You spit, instead. Blood-tinged foam splatters across Yuta’s face.

You challenge him, expecting another punishment. Instead he dabs at the red with his fingers, wholly unfazed, as Jungwoo collapses into laughter.

"Well that's good enough for now," Yuta says. "We don’t need to talk anymore, do we?”

You struggle as you're forced back into the leather and metal cage of the muzzle, swallowing blood.

"Positive reinforcement?" Jungwoo asks.

"Go ahead. Give her a taste."

You squirm as you realize what's happening, pulled into Jungwoo's embrace. He murmurs placations, none of them assuring you the moment he spreads your legs for Yuta to see the damp spot in the soft fabric of your pants, slick oozing from you.

You toss your head, jamming the hard lines of your mask into his chest in terror.

"Relax," Jungwoo finally orders, voice soothing.

"You think we'd take you against your will? Like you did to the kid? Claim you even?" Yuta cleans a spot of blood from the back of his hand with his tongue. "Neither of us are that stupid."

“We just want to take care of you,” Jungwoo says.

His gloved fingers sink under your shirt, drifting over your breasts through the fabric of your simple bra. Immediately you groan and push away, unable to move far enough to escape. He trails circles around your twitching stomach, dipping lower the more you respond.

“Even if you are trying to kill us,” he continues. “It’s not your fault you’re not trained.”

You buck, protesting his words more than the constant touches.

Yuta chuckles, kneading your thighs with his thumbs where he’s knelt beside the low bed. “Did you know that Johnny said he'd kill the fool who fucked you? Too bad for the brat."

Haechan. You come up from the compulsion, kicking against the sheets. Yuta registers your will to fight, holding you down with barely any effort.

"Oh don’t worry. Johnny won't have the heart to cull his favorite. But he'll have to punish him or the whole pack hierarchy breaks. Maybe take a hand for touching you? Or the whole arm?”

He blows a hot breath across your legs, “Would that please you, princess?"

No, no, no. You whine, trying to break loose, subdued by Jungwoo's hand moving into your pants, slipping into your heat.

You can’t help your fox’s response; you bend into the foreign touch without resistance. Your tail crushed between you is wagging, unwilling to admit to yourself that this is what you wanted all along–your physical needs attended to, the lack of control only enabling your animal side to sink into long-awaited stimulation.

"I thought that's what you wanted?" Yuta's voice is raspier, lowered. “Alphas killing each other for your prized little pussy not good enough?"

He makes firm eye contact as he tugs down your ruined leggings by inches, exposing you to the cool air and their view. You blink tears away–more relieved than upset.

"You have to admit it's very nice," Jungwoo purrs. "Prettiest I've ever tasted."

Yuta's nose wrinkles, gloved hand tracing up your thigh through cooling drips. "All I smell right now is that dog's cum."

"Why don't we clean her up a bit? Get her ready for her mate."

Yuta nods, giving the Canid the green light.

A shriek bubbles up in your throat as Jungwoo's fingers broach your entrance, soreness and embarrassment melting away into relief. Your fox forgets fear, tasting pleasure again without the haze of ketamine and human emotion dulling the experience.

"You’re wound so tight. Did that boy leave you wanting more?" Jungwoo asks. His breath is hot on your neck, hand holding your legs open as he pulls you against him with each pump into you.

"All of us and you choose the virgin to sacrifice," Yuta sneers.

Like everything it’s not enough, at all, your body protesting in quakes as his fingers slowly dip in and out, squelching sounds louder than your muffled cries. Jungwoo adds another digit, knuckles pushing into your walls. You can feel yourself twitch and seize, tightening.

"Poor thing, sucking on nothing. Should we give her something more substantial to come on?" Yuta asks.

You shake your head weakly in answer, abdomen fluttering each time the heel of Jungwoo's presses into your mound. It's so good–so right–you're moaning when he pulls out of you, wishing you could find a way to break the tangle of pain and pleasure under your skin.

"You could have had your toy," Jungwoo says. He rubs his fingers on the mesh of your muzzle, letting the thick drops fall onto your closed lips.

"She could have had a real knot. If only you'd kept your teeth to yourself," Yuta says. "Hold her steady."

Your eyes fly open as you realize the thing pressing at your entrance is thick and rubbery but cold, awkwardly shaped in comparison to what you need–too straight and solid. A handle. The familiar nightstick–telescopic side away from you–disappears between your legs and you buck off the bed, trying to avoid the intrusion at all costs.

"Relax, or it will hurt more. You don't need me to make you, do you?" Yuta warns.

The shape is wrong, the artificiality of it making your animal break down in terror. The only comfort is that the size is right–stretching you full, reaching deeper inside you than fingers. It feels strange, the sensation diluting some of the sharpness in your belly.

Yuta twists the handle to coat it in your slick as he pushes it in as deep as it can go. You cling to the man behind you to pull away, only held tighter, tears splashing on his exposed forearms.

"You're gonna be a good little omega and take what we can give you, aren't you?" Jungwoo says.

You nod, letting sobs rack you as Yuta fucks you slowly with the weapon, opening you up. Jungwoo is especially gentle with you now, tactile gloves soaking slick into your clothing as he brushes your nipples into peaks. You stop fighting, carried into bliss in the rhythm of their combined movements.

"That's right, such a good pet for us, so pretty and soft.” He strokes you leisurely, one of his hands slipping to the sensitive bud at the apex of your thighs, drawing circles around it in a way that has you shaking.

“Now you're ready to be bred. But you don't get a knot, yet. You have to earn it."

There's a growing pressure inside of you, rattled each time Yuta's hand thrusts forward. It's unlike anything you've ever felt, sustained and perfect build making even this debauchment something worth enduring.

You let it take up every conscious thought or instinct, finally boneless and willing. Both notice the change, Yuta's movements slowing, Jungwoo's noise of approval as he presses the expanse of skin between your hips. It makes the penetration feel so much deeper and you arch into it, hating yourself for how easily you’ve folded.

"You're close, aren't you precious?"

You make an approximation of an mmhmm, teeth gritting. You have no idea what it means to be close but if this is it, you never want it to end. The little shocks you’re feeling in your lower half are consuming you like the collar’s effects had, erasing everything painful and ugly about this moment.

"You want Yuta to make you come?"

You whine eagerly, grinding against the thing inside of you, trying to make the bubble burst like you had with your toy earlier, before Haechan had interrupted and then refused to play with you. Your fox doesn’t understand why they won’t just reach out and take an offered morsel, why they insist on holding back.

"Do you think she's earned it?" Jungwoo teases.

"No," Yuta says.

Your eyes fly open, pleading at the man between your legs. You see his lips crack open into a toothy smile, fangs exposed.

"She can wait."

You plead in so many garbled sounds, hands reaching for him–for the length slid out of your body and tossed aside. You're shoved back into the softness of the pile with a knee in your back, weeping silently as you're restrained again.

"Such a nasty little thing. You'll fit in perfectly, once you know your place." Yuta finishes restraining you, wrists bound to your ankle cuffs behind you so you can only move awkwardly, buried deeper in ripped-apart pillows.

"Mark’s asking where we are," Jungwoo says, tapping his wrist. "Take her to Containment?"

"No, I think you're right: Johnny can clean up his own mess,” Yuta says, voice monotone. “Kill the fake feed. We'll leave her here.”

He leans down to wipe his slicked glove across your exposed chest, distaste mingling with the arousal illuminating his handsome features.

“It’s where she belongs."

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