#tried something diff with rendering so that's a slay

[o-mellowy]

Quick doodle

[officialtrashbin]

To Begin Again

The thing is, Corvus and Hela do have a history, and it isn’t pretty.

Backstory and some events leading up to GotG 2019 #1. Birthday gift for @senpoiypul <3

Rating: M, smut and dark themes Contains Corvus/Proxima and Corvus/Hela

* * * * * 

He was not the first person to reject Death, nor will he be the last. Hela thought that strange, and intriguing, and sad—Death was pathetic, always pining for the ones that desired her the least, but unlike all things in the universe, she gave meaning, and it came as no immediate surprise that the quality of her love came with the quantity of gifts bestowed by those most affectionate of her.

Corvus did not love Death, but he was no exception.

* * *

He did pine for her, though. As all immortals did, at one point or another, as Hela herself once had. In the beginning he wasted his unending days trying to find meaning, trying to find purpose, trying to find Death. Even apart, the glaive healed him slowly, refusing its master the forbearance of eternal rest. He tried to find mercy.

He found Hela instead.

* * *

Technically, she’d found him, a shell of a beast, heir to a throne of a collapsing kingdom, with his claws desperately clutching the weapon of a dead god. He splayed across the rubble of the charred throne room in a tattered cloak, gasping for breath, returning from unlife for the first of what would become many times, and terrified.

What manner of chaos has befallen this place?

He looked at her, eyes blown wide open with adrenaline and fear. The kind of a cornered animal, one subtle movement away from explosive violence. He did not answer her.

What is your name?

He swallowed the rock in his throat. “I—I am Sevan.”

Sevan.

“It means bringer.”

Hela crossed the floor of blackened bodies to reach him. She kneeled, and learned; her hands read the sharp edges of his face like braille, partaking in the intense warmth of his flesh, in the otherworldly scent that emanated from the ruined earth beneath the castle, and relished in the understanding that he was now something else, undying.

Do you fear death, Sevan?

He choked out a sob, and then, a cruel, triumphant laugh. “No, My Lady. Never before and never again.” His claws lanced her skin as he grabbed her arms, anchoring her in place. There was such a delicious desperation to how he held her. In an instant, he’d become someone who needed something to lose. “And who are you, if not her servant?”

I serve only myself.

“Will you show her to me? Show her to me over and over and over again, so that I may finally know her terror.”

Hela’s tongue darted out to wet her lips. Death does not fear the immortal, glaive-wielder.

“She does,” he said. “She does, and she is beautiful.”

* * *

Their companionship was accidental, though not coincidental. She lingered to relish in the violence he’d caused by obtaining the glaive, and taunted Death a little when she systematically appeared to usher their souls to judgment. Sevan remained in the shadow of a-now-dead god; he piqued Hela’s curiosity the way little else did, so she followed his wake.

He retreated to a secluded area of the mountains which overlooked the valley of his people’s kingdom, and she found him on the edge of a plateau, where he considered the distance to the bottom, and the mist made nothing below them distinct.

“I don’t care if you remain,” he said to her, “but will you at least tell me what you’re playing at?”

Why do you assume I want anything from the likes of you?

“You are unlike anyone I have met before. It must have been the scent of death that brought you here, across the great void—though I suppose it is unfair of me to assume you are associated with any of what transpired today.”

She grinned, baring her teeth at him. A mortal killed a god on this day. That is cause for celebration, or perhaps enthusiastic admiration. Dare I miss such an occasion?

“I see,” he uttered, “though, I am no longer mortal, and there will be no celebration. Yet you remain.”

Tis my curiosity which keeps me bound to this world. I wish to observe what you choose to do with your newfound immortality. What is the first lesson you will learn?

He faced her, so suddenly that she almost thought he might strike her with his glaive. Instead, he perched up on a lonely boulder, and asked her, “What was your first lesson?”

She pressed her lips into a thin line. Everything is without meaning. The immeasurable emptiness of which lives and empires and stories are built upon is rendered illegitimate by time, and it can all be filled, quite helplessly, and quite desperately, though it will always amount to nothing.

Sevan’s claws curled tight around the neck of his glaive. “I will have to see if this is true.”

You call me a liar?

“No. I call you beautiful, and sinister.” He smiled, or smirked; it was difficult to distinguish between the two with his mouth crammed full to bursting with sharp, horrifying fangs. “You gain nothing from lying, now that I am no longer bound to mortal restrictions.”

Then it is time for your first lesson.

She reached out to him, her palms cradling his rough, warm face. It was not intimacy she supplied. He took it as such though, and pressed a kiss to the inside of her wrist.

You are meaningless.

* * *

Sevan was pleading for death again, the sole survivor of a battle between his family’s kingdom and the rebellion that sought to overtake it, when Hela finally returned to him. It had been months, perhaps years; she couldn’t tell. The mountains were no longer covered in a veil of frost, and the water that ran down from it formed the deep river which he kneeled by. This was not the first time she’d heard him. This was, however, the first time she’d entertained his wish, and appeared in a flourish of theatrical green mist.

“Mercy,” he cried to the water, as though it would carry his voice to Death Herself. “Mercy, I say! Have you no shame?”

It is you who requires a humbling touch, Sevan.

“But it is you who told me I am meaningless.” He rose from the grass, and he seemed taller, more menacing than when they’d last spoken. “If I cannot be something, and if I cannot be nothing, then what am I to do?”

She considered him. Personally, I do whatever I deem more entertaining in the moment. Fulfill your heart’s desire.

“I desire death.”

Do you truly?

It was his turn to consider her. “I want to leave this place,” he admitted, turning his gaze up to the sky, where the planet their moon orbited rose into view. “I have the means, but no direction.” Then, quite absurdly, he asked her, “What did you do first, when you realized you could become anything?”

I became the Queen of Hel.

“Did it give you meaning?”

She frowned, and found his terrifying visage became less intense the more she gazed upon him. He was handsome, in a way, composed of gnarled curves akin to that of a feline, a creature evolved to exist at the top of the food chain. He was quite fascinating, unfortunately for her.

Hela canted her hip, and snarled.

Yes…I suppose it did.

* * * 

They weren’t in love, not now, but maybe they had been. Hela figured that’s what this had to be. When he called, she answered, beckoned forth by his uncanny resolve to experience death or kill everything else trying. How could she possibly deny him her presence when such cunning should be rewarded?

At first, she called it curiosity. In due time, he began to come to her. Sometimes they found each other by mere coincidence in this vast and empty void and it all felt planned, somehow, in some way, by powers greater than their own. They became the opposite of amnesia. Bound to togetherness.

She learned that eternity is a long time to get to know someone.

* * * 

What are you doing, Sevan?

“That is no longer my name,” he said. “My people have crowned me Corvus. They believe I am the god I slayed, absurdly reincarnated, as if I did not kill Him with my own two hands.”

Answer my question.

Blood spooled into the dirt. A laceration cleaved his face in two, along the right side, and for whatever reason he’d deemed it logical to leave his glaive, which would heal him instantly, abandoned, where it was ceremoniously impaled through the chest of a T’Varah militant.

She didn’t know what forces compelled her so, but she took ahold of his glaive, and yanked it free. Corvus went to her as if summoned. He put his hand over hers. The proximity to his ethereal weapon became enough—the flesh on his face amended, seamlessly, between two heartbeats.

“I am finding meaning.”

Why bother? This all amounts to nothing in the end.

“So you keep saying.” His other hand went boldly to her waist, pulling her close. “The rebels send swarms to kill me. I meet them alone, and I return victorious. They tell stories of me. Is that not meaningful?”

Whatever eases the ache of immortality. Tis a long way down to where the earth grows cold.

Maybe it was the way she said it, or their close proximity, shortened by the long years of knowing each other, or a culmination of both these things—either way, he took her by her waist and pressed his mouth to hers. She reciprocated the kiss, gnashing tongues and teeth, the blood of a split lip filling both their senses. They didn’t know which of them was bleeding. It didn’t matter.

Corvus, she whispered between breaths. God of battle and ravens and death. Glaive-wielder, war-bringer, world-ender.

My love.

* * * 

In the bedchambers within a dark corner of the castle, a prince and a goddess made love until it hurt. The air was filled with violent tendencies: he bit her shoulder, leaving the impression of his teeth; she clawed up his back, drawing blood; their groans and gasps ascended through the room.

Harder. Corvus, give it to me.

“I don’t know if I—”

Had enough already?

“No,” he growled against her neck, and pinned her down on the bed, “I will never have enough of you.”

Those are dangerous words.

“You are a dangerous woman,” he said, “and I find myself drawn to your apathy. When did this all go so horribly wrong?”

I’m unsure. You are quite…different.

“Different?” he echoed, sucking a bruise into her waist. Of all the things he was, with his lithe proportions and sharp edges, she hadn’t expected him to be the sensual type. Hela didn’t know if she liked that about him—nor how completely loved he made her feel.

Only the old gods know how I cannot figure you out. Do you feel the same?

He kissed her chest in worship. Flicked one of her nipples with his tongue.

“Who’s to say I feel any particular way? As you’ve told me before, everything will eventually amount to nothing. Stars, souls, us… Do my feelings make a difference?”

Sometimes, things are more complex than they should be.

He kissed her cheek. Her lips. “We are cursed, and that is that.”

I do not remember cursing you. Not recently.

He snorted, and put his mouth fully on hers. The taste of her still lingered there; she groaned into him as he complimented her flesh with his again, filling her full. His tongue lapped at her sternum, then trailed up in one, unbroken path to the valley of her shoulder, where he found the flutter of her pulse, and bit. She groaned out a swear in her native tongue.

“Cursed,” he said, “to be sentient forever. Is that so meaningless?”

Move.

He grabbed her hips and slammed into her, fucking her rough and fast against threadbare sheets. Her homeworld’s language filled the air amongst the cacophony of moans and grunts and primal snarls. She got louder. More desperate. Her nails raked over his back, digging up curls of warm, gray skin.

“I love you, My Lady Death.”

She gazed up at him through slotted eyelids.

“Is that meaningless, too?”

She took his face in her hands.

No, she said, and she meant every word. No, it isn’t, but you will regret this.

“I doubt that.”

You shouldn’t. When it is all over—she rolled them both over and pinned him down by his neck, her nails cutting into his flesh, drawing blood—you will plead for Death’s mercy, and receive only Her eternal silence.

* * *

Complicated. It was always so complicated, to be close to someone. Hela knew Corvus’ life—war, ambition, meaning—wasn’t self-sustaining. He listened to her, somewhat, about her objections to his approach to immortality but his stubbornness frequently outlasted his other whims.

Hela liked that about him, though it meant nothing in the end.

* * *

The creature came with a name, Czazer, which meant peace. Hela gazed down at the beast with contempt, for he too was a prince, and painfully unaware of the irony of his name. From what she understood, the conjoining of Corvus and Czazer’s parents meant an uneasy alliance between the races; the kingdom had been unsettled by Sevan, king-heir, obtaining the weapon of the late god of death, so Czazer stood as a…remedy to that situation.

Czazer was so young he was barely hip-height, a lanky thing, half-grown bones and off-kilter from the rapid growth of his species; he grasped Corvus’ cloak as they made their way across the courtyard, through the ceremonious passage of servants and soldiers.

Hela appeared later to Corvus, in the shadow at the corner of his study, and said, Does he know what you are?

“He will.”

Do you believe he can love you then? Your people do not care for you, knowing you have killed their god. Some resent you. A tightly wound cord, ready to snap.

Corvus went to her and stroked her cheek. “Why do you speak this way?”

Do you love me, Corvus of the Glaive?

“Of course. Have I done something that warrants your concern otherwise?”

She slid her hand along his shoulder, under his chin, and tilted his gaze up to hers like a coin flip. It is time for your next lesson, Sevan—the love of Death comes with a price. Break the cord.

“The cord?”

Your brother. Take his life. Throw this pathetic world into the chaos it’s been brewing for generations. Appease Death. Appease me, and I will make you the ruler of a worthy kingdom that bestows upon you all the love you deserve.”

There was no hesitation. “I will not.”

I beg your pardon?

“You ask me to kill my own blood. No, absolutely not.”

Hela felt a blade lance through her chest, and for a moment thought Corvus had struck her, only to realize it was deep, horrible sadness. Don’t you love me, Corvus of the Glaive?

“I do.”

Then why do you refuse to prove it?

“You do not love me, for if you did you would never ask me to spill the blood of my own kin. If I must live for all eternity, I will not do so with that guilt bearing down upon my shoulders.”

Devotion, Sevan. Það er sterkara en blóð.

“That is not my name!” He cast his glaive down and it struck through the floor, ripping up the sheetrock and wood.

Hela’s own anger reflected his, though hers was less imposing; she whipped away from him, knowing her control over death would not aid her against an immortal. Then you have learned nothing! Someday, whether you appreciate the sentiment or not, you will be forced to make a choice. One of chance. Of devotion. It is the sacrifice of life which earns Death’s desire.

“Then I will find someone else to devote myself to!”

The silence in the room was deafening. Hela slowly closed their distance, half-anticipating him to cast her out, but he stood his ground. She framed his face with her hands.

Oh, Corvus.

She pressed her frigid lips to his, committing the sense of his closeness to her memory for all eternity, and then stepped backwards and away from him, into the deep shadows.

It will never be enough to begin again.

* * *

They called her Proxima Midnight. Corvus had her name spoken to him by the council’s messenger as the Mad Titan’s legion descended upon their kingdom, fore-fronted by a woman of black lightning who crashed through their front doors only minutes after the messenger’s arrival.

Corvus felt tilted in her presence.

He thought of Hela.

She declared herself Proxima Midnight of the Black Order, and told his parents, with a dramatic gesture of her spear, “Your world will bow to Thanos!”

Corvus stood from his seat to his father’s side. He gave them a sideways glance, a knowing nod, and then ventured across the hall to meet with her.

“Mercy, Proxima Midnight,” he said. “We do not wish to bend to this—Thanos, but we are not beyond negotiation. Clearly, you are a formidable army, and you must certainly bring with you a great force.”

She stood above him. “You speak for this planet?”

“I do. I am Corvus, heir to the throne.”

“Then come with me to my Master.”

He did. Later that night, after agreeing to join with Thanos and spare his people, he was alone, working his stress out in the dark of his chambers—he’d try to conjure up the image of Hela grinding herself down on his hips, but in her place was Proxima Midnight, and he didn’t think he was opposed to such an idea.

* * *

Hela learned of Corvus’ whereabouts many years later. Though there was an ache she felt when she considered the empty place in her bed, she found something else: he’d taken to a master, a Titan named Thanos, who served Death.

She went to the kingdom to find that it’d been totally eradicated. Those few that remained lived now in tents and shacks upon the grounds of an old, mighty kingdom, and one whispered to her of the story, of Corvus Glaive and his brother Black Dwarf, who’d tricked their people into going to war, and slaughtered everyone.

Hela’s fingers curled into her palms, sharp nails biting her skin.

He listened to me after all. What kind of deity did he devote himself to, one which could convince him to cause such annihilation?

Hela thought she heard Corvus’ voice in the back of her mind, speaking of purpose, and decided she would pay this Mad Titan a visit.

* * *

Another lifetime later, Corvus thought of Hela for the first time. The memory of her started to the front of his mind when the light of a blue supergiant refracted through their bedroom window and through Proxima’s hair, giving the silver an almost greenish hue. He trembled by reason of traumatic corollary. He’d been naïve, back then, to allow Hela a place in his life, simply because she felt, at the time, like the only other person who understood him.

Proxima noticed his sudden hesitation, and closed the distance between them to put her hand on his cheek. “My love, what is it?”

“Ah, forgive me. I remembered, quite suddenly, a woman I used to know.”

“An old lover?”

He rolled his shoulders. “A goddess to those on her world,” he said. “She appeared to me the day I obtained my…affliction, and at the time, it seemed she was merely seeking the warmth of another who understood her endlessness.” He thought of their final moment, in his study. “We were not compatible.”

“Did you worship her?”

There was something about how she said it. Corvus tilted his head quizzically, and Proxima stepped backwards towards the bed. She undid her helmet, her armor, letting the pieces tumble to the floor. Corvus grasped the neck of his glaive mercilessly.

“Midnight—”

“Will you worship me?” she asked him.

She unzipped her suit. Dragged the thick material away from her skin and pushed it down until it spilled off her body and pooled at her feet.

He set his glaive against the wall, then unclasped his cloak and rolled it free from his shoulders.

“It would be an honor,” he said. “May I worship you until the end of our days?”

“Yes,” she uttered breathlessly, and kissed him. “Yes.”

* * *

The past had a way of bringing things back.

Hela knew it would be a matter of time before they collided again, and oh, how they did, right there on the rock flats of her outpost, where she summoned the Black Order to assist with her mission. She’d theatrically pulled herself out of the shadow to greet them, and in the same moment was forced to conjure a blade to deflect Corvus’ glaive.

“You dare approach the Black Order?” he snarled, and lashed out at her again.

She considered crucifying him, parried his strike, and sent him sliding back with a burst of energy from her opposing fist. He recovered quickly. The other members of the Order readied themselves to join the fight, but it was, much to Hela’s surprise, Proxima Midnight who gave the command to stand down.

“We will hear your offer,” she said.

Corvus looked at her, blew out a winded breath, and went to be at her side.

Hela gritted her teeth. You should be overjoyed to see me. I plan to resurrect your beloved Master—

“Thanos,” Corvus said, “is no longer our Master. We will not serve him, and we will not serve you.”

You owe me—

He slammed the rear blade of his glaive into the ground. “I owe you nothing, wretched witch!”

Sevan. Af hverju hegðarðu þér eins og við séum óvinir? Þú sagðir að þú elskaðir mig.

He seemed taken aback, for a moment; he hadn’t heard that name in such a long time. It tasted like death in the air. A forgotten lifetime. “That was then,” he hissed, “and I was wrong. You killed two members of the Black Order. For that, I have no other desire to do anything but cut your head from your shoulders.”

Do you think so little of me?

“On the contrary, My Lady Death. I think far too much of you.”

“We should leave, my love,” Proxima said to him.

Hela tried again.

Corvus. Ég mun láta þig í friði að eilífu.

His eyes darted up, and met her frigid stare.

“Swear it.”

You have my word. I am bound to it.

After another moment, Corvus sighed. “Fine, but when this is done, you will uphold your end of the deal.”

Of course.

She closed the distance between them, and put her hand on his face. He’d thought she remembered him, by the way she touched him so tenderly. It was not a comforting embrace. He learned long ago that she was the opposite of familiarity.

And now, we begin again.