dissonancedance

[dissonancedance]

Hello, Arcane! Tremendous to see us both surviving! (Pardon the pic, your original ask vanished into the ether). I've been hoping we might resume our conversations as well. If you have any suggestions for a chat client with... looser content rules (not Telegram however, I'm 86'd there too), I'm all ears. Otherwise, the easiest place to reach me is here on tumblr. Looking forward to it!

[dissonancedance]

Chapter 98

His daughter was many things to him, but making her the mother of his child had always been a step too far, the one sweet taboo he had intended to keep forbidden to them.

Leif found it hard to believe that it had only been one week since he'd last entered this part of the infirmary for a CT scan of Simone's stab wound. Far more time should have passed than that, but time moved strangely in the compound. Just five weeks ago, this add-on construction existed only as a proposal on Aguiyi's desk. Just five weeks ago, he had still been able to hope that his daughter’s delayed menstruation was due to stress. Every day since that hope was dashed has darkened the shadow of dread pushing him to delay so many inevitabilities. 

“Would you like to go over the NIPT results first?”

He watched his daughter's stare latch onto the middle distance as she answered the doctor's question, “Later. I need to know if it's still… viable. If it's not, then… then I don't need to know anything else.”

He wondered if her response would've been any different if he wasn't there, and if so, whether she was aware of it. He could not simply ask her, or even command her to be honest. Him being there was enough to put his desires above her own to the point that she would often not be able to acknowledge what her own desires could even be. His work through the years in conditioning his daughter to fear, respect, obey, and love him has proven successful. He had his Simone as he had always wanted her: daughter, lover, pet, slave, partner. She lived at his side within the restrictions of her role and she could not break free of it any more than he could break free of his role to her. He wished now, as he so often did since waking from his death and shedding the shackles of his former life, that she could also always just be herself with him. 

Leif held Simone's hand as she leaned back on the examination table. He let her grip him as hard as she needed while the sonographer explained what to expect during a transvaginal ultrasound. The lights dimmed, the electronics whirred. He held her as the endocavitary transducer was inserted into her. She wept into his shoulder, nightmares and memories clambering inside her fear of a stranger's touch. He whispered sweet half-lies to her, telling her that everything would work out alright, she would be fine, she could trust the medical personnel.

“I'm here with you, darling girl,” he smiled, stroking her as she hid her face against him. “You’re safe. There's nothing to be afraid of.”

Of the desires she had put above his, he wished the tragedy growing inside her wasn't one of them. The doctors, the specialists, all the tests and technology necessary to simply try to make this pregnancy safe did too well to remind him of how dangerous this was. Only pain could be reaped from this. She could not let this pregnancy come to term in this prison and she could not bear to lose another one. It shouldn't happen to her again so soon, it shouldn't happen to her ever again. He should have been more careful, should have slipped her an abortifacient before she tested positive. So many shoulds and shouldn'ts. So many mistakes littered his path like breadcrumbs leading to his regrets. 

“Would you like to see, Ms. Valstad?” the sonographer asked softly.

The impulse to attack the woman nearly had Leif detach himself from his daughter, but he couldn't move away. He had to spare Simone the pain of seeing what she could not have. Whatever was on that screen would only hurt her in the end.

He grabbed her chin before she could turn away from the shelter of his body and commanded, “Don't. Don't. You don't have to do this to yourself, Simone.”

“I want to,” she winced.

Her hand covered his. So much smaller, so much weaker. He hadn't intended to interfere, he was only there to provide her comfort and guide her to see reason, but he couldn't let her make this mistake. He could end her pregnancy whenever he chose to. He should've done it already, he shouldn't have tried to wait for her to make that choice. She wasn't ready to make that choice, she was still his little girl, she still needed him to look after her. It would be a mercy to both her and their child. He owed her that kindness. He owed her so much he couldn't give her anymore, but he could still give her that.

“I want to,” she rasped. Her fingers curled under his palm, holding the hand that held her away from that pain. “Even if I can't… Even if this doesn't last, I want to see our child.”

Leif hugged his daughter tighter. Our child. The longing those words conjured in him pulled too deep. His daughter was many things to him, but making her the mother of his child had always been a step too far, the one sweet taboo he had intended to keep forbidden to them. They almost had it before. Almost. That loss had opened him up and torn apart what should never have been allowed to sprout. He didn't dare want this one too. To want this one meant only to want that loss again.

“Please…”

Yet she did. She had carried in secret and before she could share their joy and hope, she had it taken from her. She had mourned alone, surrounded by the madness of his family's legacy and the uncaring greed of his brothers. She held that pain in her still, feeling it more than he ever could, yet she wanted this. Her desire wasn't rooted in delusion or in a need to replace what was lost. She wanted this, pain and all. His Simone had grown so strong. 

He lifted her chin and kissed her the way he used to, back in that other life when father and daughter had meant something so different. Getting a little too close, staying a little too long, parting a little too slowly. Then, he let her go.

Her silver eyes caught every light in the dim room to shine so bright up at him before she turned. A weight settled over him, thick and sticky. There was nothing else he could do, he loved his daughter too much. He loved their children. That one, and this one too.

“What… What is that?”

The surprise in Simone's voice made him look at the screen. He had to correct his assumption. Not just one. Two. The sonographer's voice floated in and out of his awareness as she pointed on the screen to direct their attention to each observation. His training kicked in, automatically transferring fear into focus and organizing the scattered thoughts cycling through his racing mind.

“... can see that there is only this very thin divide, which means…” 

Eight chambers made up two fully shaped hearts that beat within his daughter's womb. Two brains, two spines, two bladders, two amniotic sacs, one placenta.

“... monochorionic diamniotic. So not only are they…”

Identical twins. 60% chance of preterm labor. Shorter gestation, 34 to 36 weeks instead of 40, significantly less time to finish development of respiratory and digestive systems. Higher risk of complications with the umbilical cords, amniotic fluid levels, birth defects, low birth weight, blood supply, miscarriage.

“... actually puts the gestation a little over 12 weeks, so you're already out of the…”

Twice as likely to develop gestational hypertension and diabetes. Higher rate of necessity for emergency C-section. Higher risk of postpartum hemorrhaging. 2.5 times higher maternal death rate.

Leif stared at the screen, hatred boiling inside him at himself, at this prison, at the threats that stacked against his daughter's life and wellbeing. He would not lose her, not to this, not to anything. He would put an end to this and get them out of this place to start again somewhere they could leave all of this far, far behind them.

Then one of the little shadows kicked out its legs, the other stirred, and the cold calculations of pain fell away. Simone had kicked just like that during her mother's first ultrasound. He'd almost forgotten. He was too numb to feel anything then, back when Bjørn's death sat on him like stones as the river of time passed above and around him, but he could feel something about it now. Something more than the duty to continue the bloodline. Dread transmuted into excitement, risk gathered itself into wonder, and a profound sense of connection formed within him. All of these reached back through time to the little shadow that would become Simone and looped forward again to hold her with those two little shadows that would become their children. He could not redo those early years with his first child, but those cold memories were given new life and new regret as he felt now what he should have felt then. It staggered him, struck him down and pinned him up. Too bitter, too sweet.

Simone's hand reaching out and wrapping around his fingers anchored him to the present. He didn't know how long he'd been caught in the tumult inside him. The shadows on the screen receded back behind the wall of staticky flesh as the sonographer pulled the wand out of Simone. It was over, but it would not be over for him. A daughter and two sons. 22 weeks left. Leif wanted this too.

“Lamb would be good,” Simone whimpered, her answer to Leif's sudden question about dinner coming out thin and quivering as she shivered when his teeth scraped the shell of her ear.

“I'll see what we have hanging on the hooks,” her father smiled. He pressed her harder against the wall and his teeth moved down to her neck as he asked between sucking bites, “What cut would you like, darling? Leg? Loin? Noisette?”

She squirmed, caught between the pleasure of his sudden passion and the awareness of the people passing through the hallway as he ravaged her.

“L-Loin,” she murmured. 

He pressed his open mouth to her lips, his breath rushing hot over her before he sealed them together. She cringed at the moan his tongue forced from her. Everyone there knew who they were. Everyone there knew what they were. She burned in shame and desire, those opposing emotions feeding each other instead of fighting, making her need for him immolate every thought and reason against it. His affection and greed to touch her during the discussion with the doctor had cut the appointment short when he pulled her out of that office and pinned her just beside the door.

“How do you want it?” he asked, his long canine teeth gleaming in his grin as she panted. 

She tried to slow her breathing, desperate to clear some of this fog from her mind before she lost herself. She stuttered to form a protest against him hiking her skirt up to her hips, but he kept talking in that low and breathless voice that made her throb. 

“Do you want it rare, baby? I know my little girl likes it bloody. Oh yes, you'd eat it raw if I let you. I remember when you took a bite out of a package of ground beef in the supermarket. I looked away for one second and you had a mouthful of meat when I looked back. You've always been a wild animal. It's taken a firm hand to tame you, Simone. It still does.”

“ Papa… ” she pleaded. 

He was everywhere. Touching, reaching, grabbing, pushing, kissing, licking, biting, rubbing. It was too much. Her cunt had been slippery with the lube from the ultrasound, but now it was dripping hot and aching for his cock to fuck away the memory of having that strange tool inside it. His thumb pressed to her panties, wriggling against her clit, and she gasped at the shock of pleasure. The cutoff oh from someone down the hall reached her ears and she wanted to curl up and disappear.

“Papa,��please- ”

“You’ve always loved the taste,” Leif grinned, pressing the hard bulge of his erection between her spread legs as he fondled her clit. He rubbed himself against the damp on her panties and she pushed back, the tease of his sex becoming unbearable. He sighed in delight as she locked her legs around his hips for leverage to grind against him. “Mmm… good girl… You don't remember how you'd beg for me to cut my finger to let you suckle on my blood, do you? So cute. You're still my cute, funny little girl.”

Simone did not remember that. Like everything else she didn't remember, it made her long to have that memory, regardless of how grotesque it was. She hated that she yearned for him to show her how he'd do it, to let her suckle on him as he said she had. That childish need to be nurtured by her father in any way spilled into her need for his sex.

“ Papa… ” she pleaded again. 

The raw lust in her plea stripped her bare to shame, but the strength of his hold to keep her grinding on him made that shame yield. He was so terrifyingly strong and, infinitely more terrifyingly, always eager to use it at his whim. Terrifying, and trustworthy. His strength told her to set herself down, all her tremendous need and pain, and trust that he would carry all of her. Whether she went willingly or not, Leif took her within the shelter of his horrible strength, and she loved him all the more for it when he forced her to surrender her need and pain to him. He would always take care of her. 

He would always take care of their children too. That was another need he'd reached down and picked up for her. Come what may, she knew now that Leif would be the father to their children that he couldn't be to her. It took them both so long to get here, through so much agony and loss, but they were together as a family at last.

And here we are, she thought, dizzy with joy and relief all over again at the memory of the change in him as he watched their sons. She would cherish that moment forever. Here we all are.

All but one. She couldn't forget that. She couldn't let Leif find out about it either. That one would have to stay a secret.

“Can… I want to… We should-”

He dipped down and caught her mouth in another kiss before she could cobble a sentence together, the hard edge of a growl rumbling from his chest to melt the words like cotton candy on her tongue. The taste of his love was just as sweet. Nothing in life or death was simple, but some things had the courtesy of being direct enough to seem so. Throughout everything that had happened, this love had remained a fixed point between them where they could always return to be renewed. Not an itch to be scratched, not a hunger to be sated, but a love that was fed further by its own fulfillment. When they sunk into this point between them, the rest of the world seemed so far away. 

That was why, she supposed, she didn't hear or notice someone trying to get his attention until Leif growled through his teeth, “Not now.”

Simone's head swam as she turned to blink blearily at Mr. West, her father's personal assistant. The young man's nervous attention twitching to her for just a split second brought her awareness back in an instant. A deep embarrassment heated her from the scalp down, an embarrassment that Mr. West apparently shared in the garish pink coloring his white cheeks, which made her blush harder. She hid against Leif's chest and he sighed in aggravation, but he didn't move to set her down as she silently prayed he would. Instead, she had to bite her lip to stifle her gasp as he rolled his thumb more intently against her clit while he addressed his assistant. 

“Make it quick or make it gone, West.”

“My apologies again, sir!” Mr. West quickly responded, his high voice cracking. “It’s Skinner, he's making contact from-”

“Fucking Project Seaborne,” Leif seethed. 

Simone tried to move away from his thumb pleasuring her clit, an effort that she ceased when his nails warned her against it. That all of this was hidden from his assistant's sight was the only comfort she could cling to as her cunt began to clench down around the lacking inside it and her thighs began to tremble. Her father's voice betrayed nothing of what he was doing to her. 

“What is it this time? Don't tell me they lost another field operative.”

“They, uh… Yes, sir, but, um-”

“You have my authorization to deploy another. Baby Bubblegum has been requesting a bloodbath objective for quite some time, so tell him the good news and I'll sign off on the orders later.”

“Dr. Aguiyi has already excluded Mr. Bubblegum as a-”

“Frank doesn't have that authority. Seaborne is a time sensitive project under my-”

The pressure whooshing in Simone's skull drowned out the conversation when Leif's steady stroking switched to circling the pad of his thumb firm and fast over her clit. Her hips twitched and a moan squeaked past her restraint in a whimper. She couldn't take this. Her cunt ached to cum, the tightening and tensing inside her only expanding as she tried to resist. Her panties were soaked to uselessness, the fabric gliding slick with his thumb, rubbing wet and slippery on her throbbing clit. She rocked against her father's torment, attempting to edge out just a little relief, but at the first miniscule roll of her hips, she broke to the pleasure. Her moans were muffled for only a moment as she grit her teeth, but her mouth would not hold them back as this peak climbed higher under his merciless touch.

“ Hnn! Ah! Hahh! ”

Her control fell through her fingers like water until all she could do was feel as this climax took over. She clutched Leif's shirt and let herself go. The world shrunk down to sensation. Nothing else mattered. Her entire pelvis felt as though it was throbbing with each deep, pulsing contraction. A flake of a thought fluttered by her mind, a silly worry about if this was safe for pregnancy, until the next wave crashed through her. The trembling in her legs declined into quaking and, as though they shook all the strength out of her, she sagged soft as taffy in his hold when the waves finally receded.

Panting, exhausted, Simone became aware of their silence first and her humiliation second. She didn't know if it was worse to remain hiding her face from this reality or to uncurl herself from hiding to flee from it as fast as her quivering legs would let her. However, on this matter too, her father chose for her.

“Darling girl, are you feeling alright?” Leif cooed as he tilted her chin up.

His grin was all doting concern, but the shine in his eyes peeled back the veil to reveal a well-fed cruelty as well as the promise of more to come. A cold, shivering sweat washed over her with the conjoining of fear and desire his promise gave her. Suddenly, this present humiliation seemed the least of her concerns if all it did was excite his appetite for greater cruelty. This humiliation was not lessened by it.

As he eased her onto her numb feet, he affectionately cradled her cheek in his palm and said to Mr. West, “Either way, Frank shouldn't be using you as a go-between. The old man wants more structure, then he will operate within that structure. If you'll be so kind as to escort my daughter back to our quarters, I'll go settle these matters.”

“Of course, sir.”

Simone winced, and then winced again at her mistake of showing how badly she did not want to be left alone with Mr. West after what he witnessed. Leif's eyes crinkled infinitesimally at the corners, but he might as well have been laughing aloud. He leaned down and kissed her forehead.

Before he pulled away, he smiled at her, “Don't forget, darling: blood tonight!”

The weight of a double meaning to his words drooped heavily on her and she leaned against the wall to keep from sinking. 

Leif gave her cheek an adoring pinch before he left, glancing over his shoulder to remind his assistant, “Keep her out of trouble, West.”

Simone waited until the echo of her father's steps and his cheerful whistling faded into the distance before allowing her back to drag against the wall. Mr. West was courteous to allow her to stay sitting on the floor in silence for almost as long as she could bear it. Perhaps his courtesy was rooted in understanding of their roles in Leif's game, perhaps not. Again, she found herself uncertain of which option was worse. The fakeness of Mr. West's cough to clear his voice made her cringe with the expectation of him speaking.

“Do you… require assistance, miss?” he asked, stiff with discomfort and strained with the force it took for him to address her through his reluctance.

Simone wondered how a man who seemingly had no awareness of his tone had survived this long in her father's company.

“Um,” he tried again, squeezing out a painfully awkward, “I can, uh… Like, carry you? If you want? O-or we can just hang out here, you know, I don't, uh, I don't know. I mean, whatever you want, I'll, um. Yeah. Are you okay? Can I get you something, or… do? Something for you? Anything?”

There was something he could do for her. She looked up at him, measuring the risk of this idea, both to him and to her. He did not give her the impression that he was pressed for time and her father would be occupied for hours. Mr. West's boyish looks with his smooth milk skin, wide set eyes, and delicate beak-like nose gave him a trustworthy look. She looked beneath his innocent flesh and stammering eagerness to please to confirm that was true. But he also wasn't as stupid or harmless as he wanted her to think. No one here was afforded such luxury. He would not be fooled away from the task Leif had given him and he would not hesitate to use force to complete it. If she should try anything with Mr. West, she should try the truth.

“Actually…” she muttered, speaking past the bitterness of her shame, and then noticed how this young man lit up with delight at the expectation of a request to fulfill. Maybe some things in life and death were this simple after all. The thought brought a trickle of comfort. “If you have an hour to spare, Mr. West, there's a patient I want to visit. It's a… private concern, so I'd like to go alone. If I promise to return to you, would it be alright if I go visit them now?”

Mr. West's delight bloomed in full at the opportunity to say yes.

The makeshift infirmary had developed far beyond makeshift to resemble a modern medical facility in both form and function. In such a short amount of time, the old world attributes of an entire wing of the mansion had been stripped, replaced with gleaming steel efficiency and sterile white sleekness. Routine services, internal med, surgery from plastic to neuro, radiology, intensive care, long-term convalescence, everything they needed could now be done in-house. 

The dedication and cooperation of the people here seemed able to surpass goals that would be unthinkable in the outside world. What Simone once saw as a murderous cult militia centered on manufacturing only violence seemed more and more like a functional society of members united under a common faith. The discipline, determination, and devotion hardwired into each member through Bjørn's vision and Aguiyi's proprietary method of indoctrination have made Ouroboros into something more than what should exist. Bjørn's world grew every minute, spreading through thousands of people in hundreds of places, each of them tied to the other as one.

An older woman smiled kindly and saluted her as they passed each other in the brightly-lit hall, the white coat and red scrubs signaling that she served Ouroboros as a surgeon. Simone met her eyes and realized, all at once, the absence of the static that had once lacerated her from the gaze of strangers. There was no memory of it leaving, no way for her to tell if it had faded or had ceased one day so completely out of the blue that she hadn't noticed. But this surgeon wasn't exactly a stranger either. None of them were and they hadn't been for some time. The only phenomenon she had to compare this to was her mother's family reunion. That same vague sense of certainty she'd felt among people she'd never seen before. She did not know them and they were all different, but none of them were strangers. The connection they shared was all that was needed to cherish each other.

Simone didn't have to wonder what drove people to join Ouroboros. She understood how the world could be for those who have been betrayed by the systems they once lived to serve and for those whose very existence threatened the persistence of order within a society that only disdained them. Bjørn understood, too. Watching his vision come to life around her had been strange. Horrifying and then fascinating, but always strange. His dream wasn't supposed to be real, just like how so many of her dreams weren't supposed to be real, and yet there they were, joined together to form the gestation of this new world of dreams. This dream would be delivered into the greater world to continue to live, grow, and thrive beyond them. This, aside from Leif, was the closest thing Bjørn had to a child.

On the third floor, down a plain narrow hallway of evenly spaced doors, she found the door marked 39 and checked the patient’s chart on the clipboard hung next to it. David Marlow. Male. 35. 195 cm. 64.5 kg. She skimmed the page, stopping at the words written at the top of the notes, thickly underlined in red pen. AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY . This was definitely the one. She was surprised to find the door unlocked when she tried the handle. She shouldn’t be surprised by now. All that a fully functioning member of Ouroboros needed to keep a door shut was the instruction to not open it. As for the less than functioning members on the other side of each door there, she had no doubt that the lock would engage automatically if she let it latch behind her. She took down the clipboard to use as a doorstop, but couldn’t make herself move. Not yet. Not while her knees shook and sweat crawled down her back.

Breathe.

She counted the seconds as she inhaled through her mouth, held it for a beat, and then just as slowly exhaled through her nose. She found her center and took stock of every part of her body. Her eyes shut and her heart rate slowed. Blood flowed back into the places it had retreated from. She was whole, she was here, she could do this. She had a duty to fulfill. The door was lighter than she’d expected and opened too quickly when she pushed her shoulder into it.

The patient inside was already facing her, standing perfectly still. He looked so different. She could still see that man behind the cosmetic procedures done to him, but if she didn't know who the occupant of this room really was, she would have only thought him to be similar. That thin mouth had been sculpted into a more genial shape. Keratopigmentation covered the violent blue of his eye with a hazel green that looked natural. The reshaped, lower hairline and completely new nose gave him a less acerbic aspect. The botox and fillers that altered the topography of his skin weren't permanent, but they would not need to be so long as he remained here.

The single chair in the room was next to him, turned towards a view of the surrounding woods from the window. She couldn’t tell how long he’d known she was on the other side of the door. She couldn’t tell if he had waited for her every day, if the passing of days occurred to him, or if he was capable of wondering why she hadn’t come back to him yet. His neutral expression conveyed nothing except attentiveness to her. As she bent to wedge the clipboard between the door and the frame, his eye followed her. She wondered if the socket of its missing twin was still empty beneath the bandage taped over it.

She kept her grip on the door, ready to throw it open and run, and made herself say, “Hello… David.”

He did not return the greeting. He did not do anything but stand there immobile as a mannequin and watch. When he gave no sign that he would move, she let go of the door. It pressed softly against the clipboard. His eye remained still as his head turned and tilted to follow her approach towards the bed. She tried not to think about how disturbingly inhuman that made him seem, as though what they did to him had changed him into something else entirely.

Simone sat down on the edge of the bed, consciously turning her body to face him and nest her hands together in her lap passively palms-up before saying, “It’s been a while. I’m sorry I haven’t been able to come sooner.”

He stared at her but, although he showed no observable sign that he even understood her words, his stare wasn't blank. She remembered the horrifying absence behind his eye after they had brought him out of the coma, the way he had looked through those who spoke to him and heard their words as nothing more than noise. There had never been peacefulness in his passivity, not then when he was empty and not now as something in him was present to watch and listen. His calm was only ever like the calm of a shark hunting its prey through senses humans did not possess, and after they had altered his mind, his violence was now just as dispassionate.

She counted the seconds as she inhaled, counted the seconds as she exhaled.

“David, would you please bring the chair over here to sit with me while we talk?” she asked.

He responded to the politely concealed command, obeying her request with mechanical efficiency as he picked up the chair and set it only a couple feet before her without ever taking his eye off her. At the sound of his footsteps coming towards her, memory lit up in her like the flash of flame igniting on a stove left to run the gas too long. The steel links of a chain bit into her wrists and clinked against one another, a strip of leather trapped the urge to spit and scream under her tongue, and the unwanted yearning and pleasure stuck to her like oil, more hateful than the pain and suffering he reveled in. All of it arrived at the front of her mind in an instant. 

The panic was too sudden to stifle and she flinched away from his approach, but then something strange happened. He pulled the chair back a foot and waited for her to recover before completing the request to sit down. She did not know what to think of this. How he would interpret the vagueness of her request was supposed to inform her more about what he’d retained of his cognitive reasoning, but he ended up showing her much more than that. She had to remind herself that the old him would not have done anything of his own volition to benefit her comfort. The man who sat before her may have been capable of far more than she’d anticipated, but he was not himself anymore. No matter what else he was capable of now, he should no longer be capable of hurting her. He was only able to do what she wanted. She turned towards him again, forcing and failing to make her voice steady. 

“Thank you, David. Do you… remember who I am?”

He only watched and listened as though she was nothing more than a recording being played for him. She wondered exactly what he saw when he looked at her, if she was still a person to him or not. She looked down at his long fingers and, despite still feeling the phantom of his grip bruising her neck when he would take his pleasure in hurting her, she wanted to hold his hand in comfort. She couldn’t say whose comfort she sought. She could not recall what, if anything, she saw her father as when she went through this as a child. She couldn’t remember when she forgot that she’d forgotten her father, nor could she remember what relearning him was like. It was all just absence without loss.

“I’m sorry. I wish I had some advice to give about what you're going through,” she said. “I don't remember what this was like. I don't know if it's because I was too young or if that's just part of what it does. Maybe you won't remember any of this either. That would be nice for you.”

She smiled sadly at him, tried to go back to looking him in the eye and, failing that, looked around for something to focus her nervousness away from him.

“Remembering is a tricky thing. Our memories are such a fundamental part of our identity. Memory and identity… Both can be pretty slippery.” She picked up the Rubik's cube and began to twist it. The toy worked to draw her attention and she let her speech slow to a distracted, halting pace, pausing briefly between sentences and sets of words to manipulate the squares where she wanted them. His attention never wavered as she continued, “Every time we recall a memory, we put it back a little changed from what it was before. There's a point during recall where a memory becomes pliable to new information, different… contexts, different emotions… That memory can end up very different, or it can be put back in the wrong place… or… it can just… go missing.”

His eye fixed on the Rubik's cube as she placed it back on the table, every color matching except for the center squares on all sides. When his eye moved back to focus on her, it was with a slowness that conveyed some sort of intentionality. She couldn't read what that intention was or what it could be, but it sent an equally ambiguous chill down her spine. His reactions were so subtle that it was difficult for her to discern when he actually had them and when it was only her imagination projecting what his reactions could be, but there was more going on in him than passively absorbing this one-sided conversation. She just couldn't tell how much more and he could not tell her. It unnerved her. It more than unnerved her, she was terrified, but it was a terror she could hide for now. She couldn't let him follow the path of her fear to the places where she was weakest. Not again. 

“Sometimes the best you can do is forget. Forget and make room for something better. If you can’t forget, then those memories will never let you be anything else,” she continued. She pressed her palm flat against her belly, over the hope that was growing inside her. “You know that quote, something like, 'you are the stories you tell yourself’? I'm not into that simplistic kinda self-help mantra crap, but. Anyway. After my father lost his uncle, he didn't want his story to end, so he… he tried to write his uncle's story over mine. I know. It’s a wild idea, right? I guess grief'll make you do wild shit. He just wanted to bring something of the only person who really understood and cared for him back to life. But he didn't have to… He didn’t have to cut me open and grow a dead man inside me. The dead are supposed to rest. The dead aren't supposed to… to…”

A sharp, old ache flared in her. The bitterness of not having been enough as she was. The strain of having parts that don’t fit and don't belong stitched onto her child mind. The seams itched, the scars gnarled, the parts deformed, but what was done was done. Nothing healed the same as what it once was and nothing healed without pain. 

“I'm sorry, David,” she whispered, that ache squeezing into a stone in her chest. She leaned her head back to keep the tears that stung her eyes from falling. They crawled down her temples, heedless of her will. “I'm sorry… I'm sorry, I… I thought I had to do this to you. You were just getting worse and I couldn't… couldn't let him…”

She bent forward, folding herself over her lap, and let the tears fall to wipe them away. She had no right to cry for what she did.

When she straightened, she calmed herself and finished with what she had to explain, “Change is constant, but patterns repeat constantly. The patterns in genetic structures repeat through generations. The same pattern that repeated through Bjørn repeats through me. Leif did not need to do what he did to me. But he did.” 

A chuckle boiled up from inside her pain, so she threw her head back and laughed. “He did! And here we are!” 

The mirth evaporated as quickly as it had come, carrying the pain out with it on a sigh. Simone lowered her head and looked at the patient to see them all looking back through his changed flesh. Vidar, Anders, Henrik, Einar, Bjørn, Leif, herself and so many others stretching backwards through time to look towards and beyond her. Those who had been and those who would be were connected by the pattern that twined and twisted through them all without beginning or end. The Ouroboros, tail in mouth, creation in destruction, eternal revolution, entangled unity.

“Here we all… are .”

Vidar stared at his reflection on the reinforced glass of the window. There was no mirror in the little bathroom, only the studs left in the wall where a mirror was once mounted, so he waited as his reflection in the window grew clearer as the outside darkened. No one came at night anymore to restrain him to the bed and turn off the lights until morning, so he could look and see who stared back at him from the window at night. Familiar and not. Most things were familiar and not. The taste of canned peaches, the smell of hospital antiseptic, the German that Dr. Braun often spoke. David's face and Vidar's face were the same and not the same. Vidar and David were the same and not the same.

She had seen Vidar, but She had talked only to David. She had talked as though She knew him, but David didn't know Her. David wasn't with him yet the last time Vidar had seen Her, when She had taken him from the first room and had left him with Dr. Braun. She had touched him then, leading him by the hand and then washing him clean after he had filled his stomach with what he could bite off of Maier. Vidar wanted Her to touch him again, and She wanted and did not want that too, but She did not touch him and She did not want him to touch Her. David was content to listen, and that was fine. They both wanted to listen. Wanting was familiar and not for both of them. It felt odd to want, though they've already wanted many things, and lately, not at the same time anymore. David still often needed to wait for instructions to act on his wants, but Vidar no longer needed to wait.

Vidar left their reflection to kneel on the floor beside the bed. He leaned over the spot where She'd sat, careful to not disturb it, and bent close to breathe in the bit of scent still clinging to the sheet. He knew this part of Her scent. He knew it by the wanting it stirred in him, and now David knew it too. He knew many things about this scent that David didn't yet. He knew how to make Her smell like this. He wanted to do those things to make Her want and he thought about them as he breathed in Her scent again and again. This interested David, drawing his vague and undefined attention to that knowledge, and that was fine.

The wanting grew, and David felt something new growing with it. An energy ballooned into an urge to be used. This restless, hungry energy needed to be spent somehow. Vidar waited to see if he would act this time. David grunted and coughed, loosening his larynx to speak. Their bones vibrated at the sounds he made. It hurt, both in their head and in their throat. David did not know what else to do with this energy. The need to speak was not new, it was a thing they could do, but words gathered too slowly on the tongue. They could use the words of others, though. He thought of Her and wanted.

“Me-m-or-y… a… nd … i-den-t-it-y,” David rasped, their voice halting and rough from disuse.

“Pret-ty sl-ipp-er-y,” Vidar added.

Vidar pulled the elastic waistband of their pants below their erection to teach David a way of using up this energy. Vidar had learned many things by teaching them to David, and he learned now. He curled to rest his forehead against the edge of the bed and looked down at his open palm before spitting in it. He stroked their erection and spat on it again before he began to masturbate. In the roughness of his hand and the inadequacy of his saliva, Vidar learned that what he wanted from Her was warm, soft, and slippery on this part of him. He shut their eye and learned more as he thought about sex and Her. David grunted and sighed while Vidar taught him about warm, soft, and slippery. The wet sounds of his hand stroking fast and tight, the pressure building low in their body, and Vidar's thoughts taught him so much more.

“ Ah… hah… hhah… ” David moaned as he drove his hips up into the tunnel of Vidar's hand.

Vidar pushed him back down once they reached the edge of orgasm, wanting this to last longer, but David pressed up again and pushed them too quickly through this mounting pleasure. David rutted into Vidar's hold, his hips twitching erratically and their throat aching around his moans as these new sensations overwhelmed him and spilled their ejaculation under the bed. They continued to sit there on the floor and pant to catch their breath, dizzy from exertion and stimulation, until Vidar wanted again. David could do nothing but shiver and begin to weep when Vidar's hand wrapped around their hardening erection once more. Vidar smiled at David's tears, learning and wanting as he abused him again and again.

[dissonancedance]

For @dissonancedance. Thanks for your wonderful story. I love Simone really much.

This year I decided to challenge Inktober with characters from stories I love.

Starting with Simone from Closing the distance by YipYapYams. Although it's not a story for everyone, but Simone is a great heroine that taught and inspired me a lot. Simone holding Bjorn's head will always be one of my biggest source of inspiration, too.

I still haven't decided what to draw for the later days, but using pen and ink in black and white only really makes drawing become simple. I love it ❤️.

[dissonancedance]

Worth Keeping Chapter 4

She brightens up with a smile that shines with an excitement that's barely held in check by the sincerity of her gratitude. 

“Thank you, uncle Harvey,” she says, her words thick with emotion.

She shifts weight back and forth, a particular restlessness in how she now holds herself, and he sighs in exasperation before asking, “Are you in want of another hug, Tabitha?”

“Yes, sir.”

CW: noncon, underage, incest

Chapter 4

Childhood

Harvey will not sleep that night. He compartmentalizes his way through talking with the Walshes and avoids looking at Tabitha as she sits still as a statue next to him. He is aware that Tabitha's stillness is the stillness of someone absolutely not still on the inside. He glances in her direction without seeing her, only the anxious need that she broadcasts at him too blatantly to ignore. He doesn't give her the reassurance she begs for so loudly without making a sound. He can't give it to her without also touching the chaos locked behind his mind. 

He goes through the paperwork with Roscoe, listens to the old man rattle off the guardianship process. The home check, the physician’s affidavit, asset protections, probate, more fees and more forms to wait for more fees and more forms. Roscoe tells him that they should be glad this process is so thorough; they don't want kids to end up in the wrong hands. Harvey only nods.

He confirms again with Roscoe about meeting them at Nancy's house in the early morning and then he leaves. It isn't until he's back in the hotel room, lying in bed with the drone of the air conditioner humming and the dark muddled by the illumination of the alarm clock, that the compartmentalization begins to break down.

He thinks, inevitably, of his father and his sister. He's still not sure why he felt so much more betrayed by his father than she did at that time. Why no one else felt his outrage. He wasn't the one who had been molested and raped, but the injustice of it had spread from his sister to him like all the illnesses they'd passed between each other growing up and it had infected him deeply. Jack had recovered and been forgiven. God’s grace was abundant enough to allow Jack forgiveness while Katelynn was allowed to suffer living with her rapist and Harvey was allowed to be ostracized for passing judgment and denying Jesus’ gift.

He wonders, if it had been done to him too, would he have still done this to Tabitha? Not that the experience had turned Katelynn away from recreating that trauma and continuing the cycle. No. That's a cowardly deflection. Katelynn had abandoned her infant child into the care of her rapist not out of the desire to see what was done to her be done to her daughter, but out of simple selfishness and perhaps, uncharitably, a dislike for competition when the next pedophile had come along. It is a disgusting act to seek explanation and clarity from hypotheticals when the reality is abundantly and terribly clear. He carried this hatred and rage with him since the day his father's sin had torn his family apart and it didn't even matter.

Katelynn, with all her self-centered destructiveness, is blameless for what's become of her. Harvey, with all his hatred and rage, can only blame himself for what he's become.

It should matter. He thinks of the shock that took the place of the love in Tabitha's eyes when he pulled away from her unresponsive lips. He thinks of her scrawny arms around his shoulders, her face buried against his neck as she tells him, over and over, it's alright. She was sorry, she was just surprised, she had never been kissed before, she had vowed to be with him no matter what happens, so it's alright, uncle Harvey.

Tabitha doesn't look like her mother. She doesn't look like anyone in their family. But when he saw the shock in her eyes, he saw his sister as she was when their father had begged her for forgiveness. Katelynn was 10. Tabitha is 13. Children.

All of this should matter. It does matter. Harvey just can't make any of it matter enough.

He knows what he should do. The only certain cure for what he is lies stashed in his nightstand drawer at his apartment. One moment of steel in his mouth and then he will be rid of this evil, never to hurt Tabitha or anyone again.

He buys two adult tickets from Omaha to New York for Saturday. The cut-off age for a child's ticket is 11 years old.

“Sorry we're late!” Roscoe calls out as he marches up to the front porch.

“Not a problem,” Harvey calls back, keeping his eyes on Tabitha as she trails behind the old man. Another modest, amorphous dress, one that he, in utter horror, recognizes as something Nancy used to wear. It hangs off of her tiny body like a sack.

She looks back at him, sheepish and uncertain, those Bambi eyes still begging him to reassure her. This time, he gives it to her, stepping close to cup her cheek in his palm and show her a smile meant only for her as Roscoe fumbles with the front door. She gazes up at him lovingly, returning his smile with no agenda to placate or play along, and he feels that same frisson of lust that had brought him all this hell to begin with.

The house whines out a long, loud beep when the door opens and Roscoe bellows, “Ah, god fucking damn it! Tabbycat, baby, do you remember the code to the alarm?” 

She scampers away and Harvey follows her inside, the instinct to chase the prey that runs making him forget to prepare for the dread of crossing that threshold. The shift in pressure is nauseating. His steps stutter to a stop when Home engulfs him. The thick dusty smell beneath the sour reek of stale vinegar, the off dimensions of decrepit wood and plaster having settled wrong, the low ceiling sinking down, the floorboards that lie warped like funhouse mirrors. All of it transporting him back to when he was powerless, ignorant, and enraged.

“Alrighty, now where in the hell did Nancy hide those friggin documents…” Roscoe grumbles as he passes him.

Harvey swallows the bitter hatred, pushing down a past that won't stay where it belongs. That's not him anymore. He will never be that again. Jack is dead, Nancy is dead, Katelynn is locked away in prison and dead to him. He has long gone far away from the boy he was. He forces one foot in front of the other, walking through memories he refuses to see. The cat-shaped clock in the kitchen doesn't shift its slitted eyes or swing its tail to the seconds anymore. The appliances are all shiny new, Jack having made the error of forsaking the ancient machines that never truly died for the upgraded technology that's built to be replaced. The framed photographs along the staircase stop featuring Katelynn, freezing her in time at her 15th birthday, denying the pregnancy and ruin that became of her afterwards. An infant Tabitha then takes her mother's place in the frames, already damned to Home as she lays swaddled in Jack’s arms, his severe face giving the camera a guarded look. It's a face Harvey resists seeing in the mirror, each year shifting his features closer to the monster he remembers when he was a child.

The door to his old bedroom is shut. He passes it. There's nothing inside that he ever wants to see again. Nothing in there has had anything to do with him since the day he escaped this place.

He stops in the doorway to Katelynn’s old room, which has become Tabitha's room and, after today, will become Tabitha's old room. His niece is on her knees, folding clothes into one of two suitcases open on the floor next to her.

“You may pack one suitcase to bring with you,” he says.

She startles with a yip and a jerk so powerful that it bowls her onto her hip, but upon seeing him in the doorway, she settles immediately and responds, “Oh! I'm sorry, I didn't know.”

He hides his amusement at her amazing jumpiness behind a stern, “Don't bother packing a lot of clothes, those will be going into the trash where they belong. I'm going to have you start dressing properly. And a simple ‘yes, sir’ would be better, kid.”

“Yes, sir.”

He lets himself smile for her briefly and enters the bedroom. Dozens of glass bead eyes stare into nothingness from the dolls and stuffed animals conscientiously positioned with consideration to their imagined comfort. On the vanity, a music box that sits open to reveal the dancing ballerina inside is prominently displayed among several other ballet-related figurines and girlish trinkets. It’s all similarly childish, the furniture and decorations never having gotten the chance to mature with their occupants past early adolescence. As he examines a diorama composed of small pewter figurines and homemade scenery of painted sponge, clay, and carved styrofoam, it occurs to him that Tabitha seems to have had a profoundly lonely childhood. Or rather, she's still enduring that profoundly lonely childhood.

“We won't be staying for Sunday,” he says. She looks up from choosing which clothes to take out of the suitcase, sitting at attention as he speaks. “I need tomorrow to arrange the room you'll be using, so we’ll be leaving for the airport at 3 this afternoon. If there's anyone you want to see before I take you out of Nebraska, act quickly.”

“Oh...” Her gaze drifts down and to the side in thought, but it only takes her two seconds to determine, “No, I already saw almost everyone yesterday. Um. If it's alright… I just want to be around you.”

“There weren't many other,” Harvey's tongue slips at the word children, saying instead, “people in your age group at the funeral. There are no friends or classmates you want to say goodbye to?”

She shakes her head. “I don't get along as well with other kids.”

“Why's that? Do you think you’re above them?”

“No, not at all! It's because…” Her gaze drifts lower still, her shoulders stiff with shame. “Well, it's mostly because I'm weird and I smell like vinegar, so they don't want to be around me much. It's easier when we just avoid each other.”

“I see.”

Nancy's solution to her issue with using chemicals, as she put it, was vinegar. Shampoo, dish soap, laundry detergent, insect repellent, weight loss aid, all-purpose cleaner, everything. Stinking of vinegar wasn't much of a social barrier for him as a rough boy among rough boys and Katelynn was willful enough to bully the other girls into pretending the reek wasn't there, but Tabitha is far too sweet and weak, an unfortunate mismatch to being the weird smelly kid.

He shrugs. “People your age are typically incapable of handling norm violation with anything but rejection. It’s plain to see how that would make you dislike them.”

“I don't dislike them,” she's quick to counter. “I don't want anyone else to be picked on for being my friend.”

“Kid…” Harvey's brow knits into an incredulous frown. This absurd application of compassion and people-pleasing frustrates him, but those are among the qualities that draw him to her and are enjoyable tools for him to use, so he continues, “Going forward, if you have trouble with someone or they have trouble with you, come to me about it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you won't have that problem again. Vinegar, baking soda, salt, and all of that crap Nancy used are for food only. I'll teach you which real products you will use and how to use them for their intended purposes.”

She brightens up with a smile that shines with an excitement that's barely held in check by the sincerity of her gratitude. 

“Thank you, uncle Harvey,” she says, her words thick with emotion.

She shifts weight back and forth, a particular restlessness in how she now holds herself, and he sighs in exasperation before asking, “Are you in want of another hug, Tabitha?”

“Yes, sir.”

He crouches down to her height and opens his arms. She hugs him with her whole body. Her warmth and weight press hard against him, her fervent affection ignorant of the ways he savors where her form swells and recedes. His enjoyment draws her closer still, lifting her up off her feet to press her pelvis tighter against him, positioning her so that his cock presses into the tuck of her crotch. A few layers of thin summer fabric are all that separate her pussy from rubbing against his cock, but as long as he doesn't get an erection, she won't know. What she doesn't know cannot hurt her.

The warm junction between her thighs and cunt makes him eager to get her alone in his apartment. The pressure building low in his body lets him know that he's getting far too eager. With her hands locked behind his neck and her cheek resting on his chest, she is blissfully content in his arms. So innocently unaware of the cock steadily hardening from her teasing, creeping further into that yielding crevice. He has to stop before her unawareness runs out.

He wonders, in the way the back of his mind is constantly teeming, how long it was before Katelynn became aware of what Jack was doing with her. If his father tried to keep her ignorant or if Jack was as out of control as he feels now. Instead of enraging him like these intrusive thoughts usually do, he cuts that mental spiral off with a calm conclusion: he won't get sloppy like his father did.

He sets her back on her feet and she smiles up at him, as undisturbed as she can be.

She looks down and then to the side, the adorable habit letting him know how seriously she chooses her words before she says, “Everything is changing so fast. I miss grandma. I'm going to miss everything and everyone here. But since… what you did last night, when I'm with you, I feel different. I've been made new as yours, like you said. You’ve done so much for me, you always have, so… thank you, uncle Harvey.”

He rewards her gratitude with a pet on her head that makes her beam pink-cheeked from his silent praise. He considers giving her some space to pack her suitcase without being watched, but part of what she said snags his curiosity. 

He sits down on the end of her bed and asks, “What do you mean, I've always done so much for you? You've only ever seen me once per year, and not even every year.”

Her cheeks take on a deeper pink and she, bafflingly, walks to the dresser, slides it over a few feet, and yanks off the grate covering the old floor vent that was hidden behind it. When she hauls up a heavy tote bag, Harvey is rather impressed with this level of resourcefulness in such a goody-two-shoes little girl. She sits next to him on the bed and pulls a book out of the bag: Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

He takes it from her and lies back, examining the worn spine and warped pages as he asks, “I gave this to you years ago, didn't I?”

“You gave me all of these. You told me to hide them from grandma and grandpa, so I did. I've never shown them to anyone.”

She stacks the books, emptying the bag of 12 in total. Dostoyevsky, Le Guin, Orwell, and other solid required reading he knew she'd never see if his parents had their way. She always was a good girl, so he's perturbed but not surprised that she apparently only transgressed against his parents’ rule on unapproved media when he told her to.

He picks up the weathered copy of The Road and remarks, “I didn't know you actually read any of them.”

“I’d always tell you that I did the next time you’d visit,” she says.

“Well, I did find your presence aggravating, so I probably wasn't listening.”

She scoots up the bed and lies down on her side to face him at his eye level, staring at him. He shifts onto his side and stares back. She's lying so close, leaving only enough space between them to fit the stacks of books. He reaches over, puts his hand on her waist, feels how the fabric drags against the smoothness of her skin as he strokes her. The span of his hand covers so much of her.

“Can I ask you some questions?” she asks.

He can't look away from how much of her hip he can grasp in one hand, but he manages to respond normally, “You may ask.”

“Why did you give me these books if you didn't like me?”

“Don't put words into people's mouths, kid. I never said I didn't like you, I said I found your presence aggravating. I gave these to you because life here is bullshit. At least with these, you’d be able to imagine a different life and escape this one for a while.”

She smiles warmly, gazing at him like he’s not the pervert currently tracing his fingertips along the curve of her cute bubble butt, and says, “You’re a kind man, uncle Harvey. These stories get scary in places and a lot of it’s still hard for me to understand, but I’ve always loved them the most. That's how I feel about you too.”

“Jesus, kid,” he groans. “You always lay it on this thick?”

“Is that bad? Should I try to be, uh…  more reserved, I guess?”

“No. Absolutely not. Keep it coming.”

She laughs, a pleasant but brief sound. “Yes, sir. Um. So… Do you still find my presence aggravating?”

“Obviously not. Although you should keep in mind that I do find most things that are rooted in insecurity quite aggravating. Try to only ask questions out of curiosity or to seek clarity.”

“O-oh. Then… how do you feel about me now?”

He searches her expression for any clue as to what she could be thinking and only sees her waiting for an answer. “You really don't know?”

She shakes her head. “No.”

“I kissed you, remember?”

“Yeah, but…” she murmurs, nervousness making her curl her knees up into a halfway fetal position. She's blushing again, that pink tinge on her cheeks endearing him to how transparent she is even when she doesn't say anything.

He smooths a stray lock behind her ear and strokes her hair with his thumb, prompting, “But what?”

“But I'm your… I mean, isn’t that…” she trails off, her shy and troubled gaze fixed on Dracula between them. “I'm sorry. I don’t understand. Is it okay if you just tell me?”

He moves in close and her eyes snap back to him, that same shock from last night widening them and stiffening her posture. 

“How I feel…” he drawls, amusement drawing the corners of his mouth into a sly, subtle grin as he grabs her by the back of her neck. 

His prey can't back away now that he's caught her. She looks like a fawn frozen in the path of headlights, unable to see the fatal danger reflecting off her eyeshine as it speeds towards her. It makes his blood run hot. 

“I feel like…” 

He draws closer, staring at her lips, the sweet pink sheen of that plush flesh competing with the pink flush from her scalp to below her neckline. Her breath brushes warm against his grin; the too fast, too shallow pace of it telling him that she knows enough to be afraid even if she isn't quite sure of what exactly.

When he's close enough to touch their noses together, he whispers, “... we're in the wrong bed to answer that question, little girl.”

“W-what?” she stammers in a squeak.

He plants a swift kiss on her forehead as he sits up and says, “You'll find out after I’ve got you in my apartment. Let's go tell Mr. Walsh that we’re flying out today.”

[dissonancedance]

Worth Keeping Chapter 3

 “Humiliation begets humility. To be humbled is a gift I provide to you as your Master, but only if you are able to receive it. Is what I've done to you causing you to feel embarrassed, Tabitha?”

CW: noncon, underage, incest, ritual abuse, humiliation, bondage

Chapter 3

Vow

Before the old man can cuss him out, Harvey cuts him off, “I need to talk with Tabitha. Alone.”

“What the fuck else can you say to her, you miserable shit?”

“It's okay,” Tabitha speaks up. Roscoe doesn’t stop her from opening the door wider, revealing her standing beside him. She looks so tired. Harvey can't tell anything past that. “I want to talk with him. Please.”

Roscoe gives him a somehow dirtier look than he was already giving him, but steps aside. As Harvey passes him, he warns, “Don't make her cry again.”

Harvey ignores him, following Tabitha as she says, “We can talk upstairs if that's okay, uncle Harvey.”

She leads him into the room that once belonged to Roscoe and Barbara's youngest son, a boy he was forced to be friendly with under threat by Jack. This room hasn't changed much since the day that boy left it. The model airplanes are more pleasingly displayed and the clutter of daily usage is hidden away, but the room stands preserved as though waiting for its intended occupant to return and resume his childhood. Harvey pauses at the threshold, girds himself against this sickening symbol of a past always waiting to trap and consume. Tabitha sits on the edge of the bed, her and what he recognizes as his sister's Barbie pink suitcase on the floor the only two things here to anchor him away from that insane notion. The sight of her now changed out of that frumpy funeral dress and into a pair of baby blue sleeping shorts and a matching T-shirt makes it surprisingly easy to let that stale hatred go and bring him back to the insane notion at hand. 

He shuts the door behind him. The click of the lock engaging stirs that same prickling shiver from the morning within him. He doesn’t distance himself from it this time. He followed her in here to give her the choice to stop this, but it's too late for that. It was too late since the moment he looked at this sheltered, naive, trusting girl and saw how perfectly he could use her.

He sits next to her, the bedsprings groaning under his weight in a way they didn't when it bore her meager mass. She watches him with such hope shining behind her patience, completely unaware of how it makes him salivate to maul that hope from her gaze forever. It should make him sick from what he's doing, but it only sinks him further into that savage, predatory thrill. This shouldn't be happening, yet here she is in the palm of his hand. He only has to close it to possess her.

“I’m not a good person, Tabitha,” he says, keeping his voice low and soft in case someone tries to listen through the door. She looks at him as he speaks; a practice he's glad to see his mother did well to drill into her. “If you're thinking I'll only ever be good to you, you're wrong. I'm not your father, I'm not your friend. I'm not like Jack or Nancy.”

She responds just as discreetly. Such a smart little girl. “I know, uncle Harvey.”

“I'm intolerant of misbehavior and disobedience. If I find you unsuitable, I won’t hesitate to put you into foster care.”

Her hands, politely folded on her lap, tighten. “I understand.”

“I'm not kind or patient. You will suffer, sometimes incidentally…” He glances at the door. There will be no chance he can explain away what someone might overhear now. He lowers his voice further. “... sometimes because I want you to suffer. When I want to hurt you, what will you do? Will you run away? Will you fight back?”

That finally gives her pause. Her smooth brow furrows with a wrinkle of uncertainty. He grants her this moment, curious to see just how far he can push her before she catches on.

When she answers, her words come in halting, uncertain bursts. “I won't run or fight… I'll try not to make you want to hurt me, but… if that's what you want, then… then that's what will happen. I know I’ll cry, but I'll try to stay good.”

He hides his smile behind his face. It would please him to kiss this precious lamb to the slaughter as much as it would please him to bruise her.

“I can't abide children, Tabitha. If you are to stay with me, you can no longer remain a child. You will belong to me as my property. I will own you ,” he explains. He watches her carefully. She’s anxious, her wide eyes alert with fear and her chest rising and falling deeper, which means she does understand something. “You may find that I care for what belongs to me quite well, but just the same as anything else I own, you will exist to serve and please me. You will always obey me and you will always put my interests above yours. Not only when you want to, not only when you think it really matters. Always. Can you do this?”

Harvey notices that her eyes dart down and to the side when she thinks. It's adorable. He hopes she'll retain that habit once he's broken her.

She looks back up at him, passion bolstering her where confidence is missing, and answers, “Yes. I can. I want to be good. I want to be of service. I make mistakes and I don’t know how to do everything right, but I can learn. I want you to be happy more than anything else, uncle Harvey. I love you.”

Ah . She doesn't understand. Painfully familiar with her upbringing, he can map the framework of her perception easily. Philippians 2:3-4. That phrase, to be of service , is to make oneself a reflection of Christ’s love through serving others.

It would be the right and merciful thing to correct her interpretation of his conditions, but he doubts she currently has the basic knowledge to understand what his intentions are rooted in. It's simply too alien to her. In the end, they are both products of their environments. The environment he’ll be putting her in will correct her if he’s patient enough to allow it. If he isn’t patient enough, she’ll learn the hard way and he’ll teach her well.

He lets his smile reach his face. “You’re a very nice girl, Tabitha. But the thing nice girls want most is to please people. You’re not just telling me what you think would please me, are you?”

She shakes her head, her stare never leaving his. “I’m not. I’ll do anything to stay with you.”

“Is that so?” he mutters as he sets his hand on her thigh, the heel of his palm dragging her shorts up as he caresses her. He’s hard, his erection pressing against the leg of his pants, the outline plainly visible if she knew to look. She hasn’t yet, not even as his thumb digs into her impossibly soft inner thigh when he squeezes. Barely enough flesh to give him something to grab. He’ll correct that too. “I’m not the only family you have left. You know you have second cousins out there who would give you a much easier life than I will. Why do you want me to have you so badly?”

“It doesn’t matter what you do to me or what you make me do as long as we stay together,” she says, her voice growing tight as she pleads, “Please, please don’t leave me! I don’t want to be with anyone else! I want to be with you! You’re my uncle Harvey!”

He licks his teeth and swallows the excess of saliva pooling under his tongue. That deep well of devotion and sincerity has been cosseted by the faith she was raised in, but it is wasted on God. He can't wait to make far better use of such virtues. 

“Tabitha,” he says, admiring the way she tenses when he speaks her name. "Why would you think that I would risk wasting my time just because you want it? You're going to have to give me something better than a child's promises if you're trying to get what you want.”

She's nearly in tears, barely able to rasp, “Please. Please . I'll give you anything.”

So sweet. So pathetic.  

His cock is aching to hurt her deep and hard, but there's so much more to be reaped from her than just sex. If she keeps being this fun to play with, he's not sure how far he can delay that gratification. When her lower lip begins to tremble and one of those pretty tears crawls down her cheek, he knows he can't delay himself entirely. There is a range of fun he can have without her knowing. It's not worth the risk. If he’s read her wrong, he will end up losing a lot more than just her. He tries to care. He does care.

It simply doesn't matter.

As he removes his necktie, he says, “You claim devotion so quickly. Nothing I’ve said so far has worked to dissuade you, but words are tools of deception. You can even deceive yourself into believing what you say. I won't fault you for this, it's something to be expected of a child.”

“Please, uncle Harvey, I'll do anything to prove-”

He stops her useless pleading with a look that makes her wince as though he made a motion to strike her. “That's what I'm giving you, kid. An opportunity for you to prove your devotion. If you can manage to be good, I’ll facilitate such opportunities frequently. Now, kneel on the bed, face the wall.”

Tabitha does, watching him with that nervous furrow in her brow as she settles on her knees in the middle of the bed. He slides his necktie off as he orders, “ Face the wall, kid. Take that shirt off.”

She turns her head and grasps the hem of her shirt, hesitating only a second to gather courage before quickly pulling it over her head. She stares forward, remaining perfectly still as he gets up and stands behind her, leaning above her to observe her. He has to amend his earlier assessment of her puberty status; she has the beginnings of a nice figure, only that every part of it is small. Delicate shoulders, narrow rib cage, stunningly tiny waist, and small nipples that are puffed with he recognizes as breast buds atop a hint of roundness. He places his hand on her shoulder and watches in amusement as goosebumps erupt across her skin at such a chaste touch. It's only amusing until he sees how it hardens her nipples into suckable little points. 

His voice carries the rough edge of arousal as he orders, “Hands behind your back.”

She clasps her hands politely at her lower back, not resisting in the slightest when he corrects their position to cross her wrists and bind them together with the necktie. The black silk looks good on her bare skin. He takes out his phone and begins recording.

“You’ll never know where your limits lie until you've been tested beyond them. When you are ignorant of your own limitations, it can leave you open to hubris,” he says as the video captures a slow pan from the nape of her neck to the bow at her wrists. “Lower your forehead to the bed and keep your eyes closed.”

She obeys and reacts well to him lifting her hips. He owes her ballet instructor thanks for making her so cooperative with being manually repositioned. Face down, ass up and defenseless is a good look for her.

“A quick remedy for hubris is humiliation,” he says before yanking her shorts down.

She gasps and whines like an anxious puppy, but keeps her eyes scrunched shut and doesn't move. Considering she wasn't wearing anything underneath, he has to acknowledge her dedication to obedience. He unbuckles his belt and unfastens his slacks to free his erection. If she's able to identify the slick repetitive sound of him stroking his cock, she makes no indication. It only occurs to him as he lines up the video to include both her exposed ass and his penis a few inches away from it that he's making child porn. He smothers the urge to laugh at how distant the repulsion of that concept feels in contrast to knowing full well how accurately it applies. Looking at them through the screen, his erection appears as a monstrous appendage looming at the miniscule dent of an asshole tucked between those tight cheeks. There will be no use of her holes without injury. His cock throbs in his fist at the tantalizing prospect of wounding her, precum drooling at its maw for her blood demurely lying in wait. Not yet. Not until she is safely in his possession.

As he fucks his fist, each thrust drawing his tip dangerously close to his niece, he continues, “Humiliation begets humility. To be humbled is a gift I provide to you as your Master, but only if you are able to receive it. Is what I've done to you causing you to feel embarrassed, Tabitha?”

Her miserable mutter is blunted by the bedding when she answers, “Yes.”

“Do you feel resentment towards me and what I'm doing?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Her voice breaks as she forces the words out, “Please, don't… don't think that. I… It's hard for me to understand and it… hurts, but… I know it's for my own good. I'm grateful. I'm so grateful.”

Clever little whore .

It still works to make him huff out a hot breath at the swell of pleasure her submissiveness brings. There's simply no chance Home could allow someone this pure to exist. And yet here she is, so trusting, so devoted, so loving. He won't let the world ruin her. It's a sobering reminder of what he must keep intact as he breaks her, but not sobering enough to avoid the risk he's putting himself in right now.

Baring his teeth in a grin, he responds, “That's very good, kid.”

His balls tense as he focuses on her tiny slit of a cunt. It would be so easy to rape her, just keep pushing his big, horrid cock against that underdeveloped hole until he splits it open. He sighs, shivering in delighted repulsion at his desire, and strokes faster as he allows the full thrill of this taboo to fill him. This truly innocent little girl, his own flesh and blood niece, belongs to him as his slave to train and use as he pleases.

“Have you undergone baptism yet, Tabitha?” he asks, strained and breathless.

“Yes, I have been saved.”

He hums in approval, the sound dragging out from deep in his chest as his pleasure climbs. “Then I will anoint you and make you new again as mine. Do you vow to always obey with faith and loyalty for your Master so long as I keep you?”

“I vow to always obey with faith and loyalty for my Master so long as you keep me,” she answers, as eager and hopeful as any true believer.

He tenses his thighs against the imminence of ejaculation, holding it back only a little longer. “Do you vow to turn away from all fear and desire that would hinder your service to me?”

“I vow to turn away from all fear and desire that would hinder my service to you.”

Almost there . “Will you give your whole body, heart, and soul to me?”

“I… I will give my whole body, heart… and soul to you, uncle Harvey.”

“Yes,” he hisses through his teeth. As the pressure of his climax crashes down and floods through him, he growls, “Say you’re mine!”

“I'm yours!” her sweet voice rings so true.

His semen splatters up her back, each pulse carrying him through this dizzying height of pleasure. He gasps in resistance to the dark encroaching the wondrous sight of his slave being anointed with his seed.

“Say it!” he rasps.

“I'm yours! I'm yours! I'm yours, uncle Harvey!”

He shudders and groans, fulfilled and then deliriously overflowing as his peak extends into a plateau and he pumps his cock to spill every drop on her skin. When he finally reaches the edge and tips into euphoria, he’s hunched above her, huffing like a beast. 

“Uncle Harvey?” she asks, uncertain, waiting.

“Ssh,” he hushes her.

He smears his semen across her skin, caressing her as he rubs it in, watching in fascination as he makes her shine with his claim. Soft and smooth, she is infinitely pleasing for him to touch and now she is truly his to enjoy. He ends the recording, puts the phone back in his pocket, and tucks his cock back into his slacks. She remains in position, her wrists still crossed behind her even after he frees them from the tie, and he smiles at the warmth her natural obedience lights in his chest. The way her hands tremble rekindles the warmth lower in him, but he's far too fulfilled for it to catch with any serious intent.

When he feels more or less composed enough, he gently grips her around the back of her neck and says, “You did well, Tabitha. You are relieved of this service for now. You may get dressed.”

“Yes, uncle Harvey.”

He leans against the desk wedged into the corner of the room and watches as she slowly rises. She's subtle in how she tests her joints and muscles while she pulls her shorts up and pushes her arms through her shirtsleeves, aware of her audience and courteously avoiding any sign of complaint in her body. He smiles. His slave is a considerate girl. She wipes her face of tears before standing and turning to him, her expression shifting from bewildered and anxious to just bewildered when she sees him smiling at her.

“Come here,” he relents with an exasperated sigh, opening his arms.

She hurries to him, embracing him in her small hold and nuzzling into his middle as he bends and envelopes her against him.

“Thank you,” she whispers. “Thank you, thank you, thank you so much, uncle Harvey! I'm so… so happy! Am I really yours now?”

“You really are mine now, Tabitha,” he smiles. 

He squeezes her tight, pressing his nose against the top of her head and breathing deep to find her scent beneath the Walsh household’s drugstore shampoo. It's a much better fragrance than the apple cider vinegar concoction Nancy had insisted upon her family, but the perfume nearly overtakes the clean, natural scent of his girl. He suddenly can't wait to get her into his apartment, using his products, eating his food, wearing what he chooses, smelling like his.

He pulls away from the hug, placing his hands on her shoulders and crouching to her eye level to say, “When I tell Roscoe and Barbara the good news, you will stand by everything I say. Nothing that's happened in this room will be known outside of us. Do you understand?”

Confusion bleeds into her attentive expression, but she nods and answers, “I understand. I'll keep this secret.”

“Good girl.” 

He shifts to stand up, then pauses. The weight of his affection towards his niece keeps him there, unwilling to look away from her face. He's sure it's only the afterglow still blissing his mind into a pleasant soup as he cradles her face in his hands, admiring how she's looking at him with such innocent love shining in her eyes. There isn't a single thought in her to ever guard her heart from him, no hint of hardness or artifice. He wants to…

He kisses her. 

[dissonancedance]

Worth Keeping Chapter 2

This attraction isn't part of him, it is an aberration, a mistake, this isn't what he is. In a few days, he’ll be far, far away from this problem.

CW: incest, rape fantasy, blood, underage

According to Harvey, the best thing about funerals is that no one expects the bereaved to sing along to the hymns or act like you’re praying if you look sad enough. The worst thing is that everyone else will still sing along to the hymns and act like they’re praying. Between each transition, which are long enough to prevent the elderly from feeling outpaced, Roscoe leans over to whisper to Harvey.

“She's got a heart of gold, that girl. Don't know where she gets it. Don't get me wrong – Jack and Nan were decent, God-fearing people, but, well, you know what I mean. And she’s nothing like her mother, that's for sure. You won’t ever have to worry about her turning out like that.”

Harvey considers pretending not to hear him, but knows that doing so would only make Roscoe repeat himself louder. “Are you talking about Tabitha?”

“Well I’m not talking about the fucking- the freaking first lady,” Roscoe grouses.

The new pastor– who has been there for eight years but the congregation still refers to as the new pastor– invites them all to join the choir as they sing We Praise You, O God, Our Redeemer. Harvey continues to stare at the angular, forlorn face of Christ depicted in the carving of the crucifix behind the pulpit, just as he had every Sunday for as far back as he could remember until he left for college at 17. It is, as Harvey has come to find out, despite avoiding houses of worship whenever possible, an odd thing for a Baptist church to display Jesus on the cross. It is one of many ways that Home is an alienated and alienating place. The figure itself is large, but certainly not life-sized. Actually, he can’t say that. This Jesus is about the same size as Tabitha and she’s considered life-sized, though only by the technicality of being alive.

Before the new pastor moves on to talk about the Lord’s game of giveth and taketh, Roscoe leans over again and whispers, “You know that Nan had her taking ballet lessons since she was a toddler, right? Extracurricular activity is vital for kids. It's important to keep that going.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Nan never had a bad thing to say about raising Tabby. Sure, every kid makes trouble from time to time, but Tabby is a good girl. I don't see that changing either. Boys are gonna be a problem, though. She's gonna be a beauty when she's older.”

Harvey glances down at his niece seated at the other side of him. If she’s hearing what her godfather is saying, she gives no sign; all her attention is on the bullshit beginning to be shoveled on the pulpit. 

She’s already a beauty and it’s already a problem , he does not say.

When the new pastor asks that they turn their bibles to somewhere in the Philippians, Roscoe manages to fit in, “Something I've noticed about her is that she never wants to be a bother, which you’d think makes looking after her real easy, right? Wrong. Get this: I see her limping on Saturday night, and I had to get stern with her for her to tell me that she strained her knee pretty good when she was trying to help Nancy out of the tub. She didn't tell anyone, didn't want to make a fuss. Drives me nuts! You gotta be careful she's not hiding that she needs something.”

“Yeah.”

Harvey supposes that it’s nice that her godfather is excited about her. It’s a more interesting topic than baseball or the weather. The extra Xanax he took before entering the church helps him leave it at that. Then, remembering about the Xanax, he second guesses it all. Perhaps Roscoe has been talking about Tabitha because the old man noticed him looking at her so much. It wouldn’t be a far leap for anyone to guess why a child-hating bachelor would suddenly take an interest in his very pretty, very emotionally fragile, very naive niece. The old man hasn’t gotten there. Not yet. Harvey can’t let him.

The next time Roscoe leans over and starts whispering, he cuts him off by saying, “Please, Mr. Walsh, I’m trying to mourn.”

By some miracle, the old man buys it and shuts up.

Harvey escapes while the crowd is still shambling and shuffling in the pews. No one catches him glancing back at his niece as he steps out. She’s already being swarmed with sympathy, presently in the form of being crushed to Mrs. Johnson’s doughy bosom while a circle of mourners wait for their turn at the effectively orphaned child. She really is a good girl, doing her best to reach around Mrs. Johnson’s mass and pat her back as she struggles to breathe.

He stops a safe distance up the sidewalk and lights a cigarette, taking a shallow puff off it every few minutes to keep the flame alive as he watches so many familiar faces dribble out of the chapel and head towards the church hall for the reception. The Walshes eventually appear. Roscoe sees him and gestures for his wife to continue to the reception. Harvey takes a long, languid drag as the old man marches towards him.

“You don’t smoke indoors at home, do you?” Roscoe asks, grimacing in the sunlight.

“No.”

“Good. Secondhand smoke kills too.”

Harvey doesn’t comment on this non-sequitur. The old man will always take the opportunity to say something preachy whether it applies or not. 

“What day are you flying back to New York?”

“Tonight. 6:40.”

Roscoe’s grimace takes on an edge of disapproval. “Change that to Sunday night. Tabby needs more time and we need to get some stuff at Jack and Nan’s house.”

Harvey doesn’t feel the need to explain that he’s not someone Tabby should lean on for emotional support. It’s much more wise to continue avoiding discussing her at all.

“We’ll go to my parent’s house tomorrow and I’ll leave that night, then,” Harvey decides.

“You’re gonna have to start thinking about more than just what’s best for you, Harvey. Come on. Sunday.”

He drops the cigarette and stamps it out as he says, “I’m going to go back to the hotel in Omaha. What time do you need me to come over to talk about the will?”

The old man’s forehead scrunches into a deluge of folds as his eyebrows raise in disbelief. “You’re going to skip your own mother’s wake. Is that right?”

“That’s right.”

Roscoe shakes his head and sighs. “Alright, that's your choice. You should let Tabby know.” 

“No, I'm just going to go.” 

“Really?” 

“Really. I'll be at your house later anyway.” 

“Fine. Okay, we’ll be finished here in two, three hours, I'll let you know. Do you remember my address?” 

“Text it to me.” 

“Sure. Alright, Harv. We’ll see you in a few.”

The suffocating, claustrophobic feeling of Home that has been eating at him since knowing he'd be coming back becomes overwhelming as he drives to Omaha. The flat terrain stretches on all sides in monotony, each mile ratcheting that horrid familiarity. The instinctive urge to escape nags at him even in the hotel room with the curtain drawn to block out the view. He tries to distract himself with work but he can't focus. Even the air feels wrong, too open, too dry. He lies flat on the floor, stares at the ceiling, but the ceiling is here . He shuts his eyes, tries to conjure his apartment, the clean lines and sharp edges, the high gloss modernity, looking out of the windows to the extravagance of lights and buildings. That almost works. He needs something more, something stronger to flood the feeling of Home out.

“Tabitha.”

Her name falls from his tongue like a hex he casts out onto the world. He can see her lying beneath him on his bed, those darling Bambi eyes glittering with those pretty jewel tears. A warm, comforting pressure sinks low in his body. That's it . He presses his palm against his erection, coaxes himself to slip further into this feeling. She's so afraid. She should be. She will be . He unfastens his slacks, spits on his hand before he pulls out his cock. The wet friction is harsh, a poor substitute for the soft, smooth flesh he craves.

“Tabitha.”

Her neck feels good under his hands, fragile and weak like the rest of her. That fearful whimpering is lovely, it's almost a shame to silence her. He squeezes his shaft as he squeezes her throat. Her mouth gapes, desperate to suck in more air through her narrowed trachea, and he licks inside to the soft meat of her tongue. He strokes himself faster, chasing this thrill deeper, outrunning the sickening shame. Her thin legs are spread wide as he forces himself between them and he makes her watch as he presses his tip against her little goody-two-shoes cunt. She screams when he tears her open. Too young, too small. Her blood coats him, spilling hot and fast from inside her as though it's as eager for him as he is to release it. The blood of his sister, the same blood as his, taken and reshaped to belong to him as his again. Bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh.

“ Tabitha .”

His hips jerk and a groan scrapes out of his throat with each deep pulse as he cums. The frenzied pleasure recedes, but the desire she invokes is clearer, louder than before. He doesn't have to worry, though. This attraction isn't part of him, it is an aberration, a mistake, this isn't what he is. In a few days, he’ll be far, far away from this problem.

Roscoe and Barbara Walsh’s home has changed from what Harvey remembers of all those frequent barbecues and holidays that his parents would drag him and his sister to. Roscoe in his semi-retirement and Barbara in her full retirement have been busy remodeling and trading out the deplorable farmhouse and dated fake Tuscan influences for a more defined and current coastal style. It's heartening to see change occurring to Home. Even though the memory will not die, knowing that a piece of it has been killed and replaced in reality is comforting. 

He's staring at an arrangement of teal glass balls in a driftwood basket on the coffee table when he catches something odd in Roscoe's rambling about the legal responsibilities in regards to Nancy's will.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Harvey says, leaning forward to listen carefully now. “What do you mean ‘once Tabby settles in with’ me?”

Roscoe waves him off. “You know, after you enroll her into whatever school is out there and get her a primary care doctor for the health assessment, the nuts and bolts stuff.”

Harvey’s gut clenches with a cold suspicion of something he's apprehensive to confirm. “But she's living with you. You're her godfather.”

Roscoe stares at him in bewilderment, the crows feet around his eyes deepening in a squint that widens when his confusion abruptly clears into shock.

“Nancy didn't tell you!”

A headache begins to coalesce in the back of Harvey's skull. “Didn't tell me what?”

The older man leans back in his chair, watching him in astonishment before asking, “Remember when your sister came back to the house a few months after your father died and robbed it?”

Harvey swallows his impatience with this man’s annoying non-sequiturs. “Yes. Katelynn has 16 years left to serve for that and the meth.”

Roscoe nods, then carefully continues, “After that, Nancy made some changes to her will. One of those changes was to remove Katelynn entirely. She gets nothing. Understandably so. Nancy also made some changes in regards to you and Tabby. I guess losing Jack and having her home broken into made her rethink the situation Tabby would be left in if something happened to her. I'm 70 years old. There's a strong chance that Barb and I might not even live to see her reach adulthood. She's already had three parents leave her, there can't be a fourth or fifth. Nancy wanted to make sure Tabby will be cared for, so… she named you as Tabby's guardian in the event that she becomes incapable of raising her. And that event happened.”

“But I can't…” Harvey starts, then takes a breath to calm himself. “I can't do that. I'm not… I don't have room in my life to do that. I decided to never have children, there's no way that can work.”

Roscoe nods again, a solemn disappointment etched into the deepened grooves of his face. “Well. That explains the conditions Nancy set around your inheritance.”

Harvey presses against the tension between his eyebrows. “Just tell me, Roscoe.”

“Before I do… I want you to tell me why you can't take Tabby in. Is it where you live? You have a room she can use.”

“It's not that.”

“Is it money? You won't have to worry about that, there's a trust to cover anything she wants or needs.”

“It's not about money.”

“If it's about not having time, Tabby is a very mature girl, she doesn't need 24-hour supervision. You can still work late, you can still go on business trips.”

“No, Roscoe, it's not-”

“Then what is it? What's stopping you? Out of the family she knows, you're all she has left. And she's all you have left. That kid loves you, she's crazy about you, are you really going to let her down? What is so fucking important that you'd turn away a little girl who only wants to be with you?”

“It's not that simple!” Harvey snaps louder than he meant to. He hadn't meant to snap at all. Roscoe only glares at him in disgust. Harvey buries his forehead in his hands and sighs. He doesn't need him to understand, but he explains anyway, “I'm not someone who should have her. I don't know how to care for a kid. I never had to know. I never want to know. I'm not good for her. If I had her, if I had Tabitha, I… I don't trust myself enough to have her.”

“You don't have to be good. You just have to be good enough. A roof over her head, a bed to sleep in, food to eat, family who gives a shit that she's alive… That's what she needs. That's good enough and that's what you can give her.”

“No. I have my life the way I want it.”

“The will explicitly states that you must adhere to your role as Tabby's guardian and have her reside with you until she comes of age or you get nothing.”

“I don't need any of it.”

Roscoe grits his teeth the same way Jack used to when he got angry. “Fine. If that's what you've decided, then you'll have to explain that to her. Go on and tell your niece that you're turning your back on her. Please leave when you're done.”

Harvey shoves down the urge to show his contempt for this judgemental interloper. He wants to remind him that he never agreed to this in the first place, but more than anything, he wants to leave. If this is the quickest way out the door, that'll do. It's better she hears this from him than from that vindictive asshole anyway. He pushes himself up from the couch and heads towards the kitchen where Tabitha and Barbara are preparing dinner, only to find Tabitha standing around the corner. The expression on her face is enough to tell him that she heard everything. That sad smile plastered over her pain.

“I'm sorry,” she says. “It's okay, uncle Harvey. I understand. It's not fair that you had this put on you. You never asked to take me.”

“Tabitha…”

No, she doesn't understand. He hates that this is what he's leaving her with. If she knew the whole truth, she would understand that this is what's best for both of them. If she knew the whole truth, she would run screaming from him. 

“I'm sorry too, kid,” he says, actually meaning an apology for once.

“No, no… it's okay, I…” Her brave facade crumbles before she can finish and she turns away, her voice breaking as she rasps, “Please excuse me.”

She hurries away, retreating with her heart broken and leaving him standing there. He lets out a sigh, runs his hand through his hair, and walks out of that house. There was no other way for this to go, really. Nancy had to have known that he would refuse; it was vile of her to harm an innocent in this final spiteful act towards him. No. He's the one who hurt Tabitha. He had to hurt her now to avoid hurting her far worse later by trying to be something he can't.

He sits in the rental car in front of the Walsh residence, the engine idling as he lights a cigarette. Fuck the cleaning fee. He leans back against the headrest and sighs out the first drag. Smoke curls and billows along the ceiling as he stares. If he leaves now, he can probably make that 6:40 flight. He lets the flame in the cigarette die, relights it to take another drag, lets it die again. If he rushes, he can still make it. He'll be back in his dark, silent apartment in a matter of hours. He’ll have a couple more days to piss away ignoring his fake girlfriend and jacking off to ignore this feeling. Maybe one of the masochists who still haven't blocked him will let him use them to take this feeling out on, or maybe Judith has something that will screw him up enough to take care of it. Then he'll go back to work until next weekend when he’ll make up with Rebecca. He’ll go to another BDSM party to play those safe and sane games with safe and sane people who only like to pretend with him until they're done. Then he’ll do it all over again. This is his life. This is the way he wants it. Unattached and unattainable, keeping everything and everyone far enough away to stay in control, never surprised, never at risk of being known. Always the same, always alone.

“Fucking bullshit,” he mutters.

He lights another cigarette. It's better this way. It's safe. Tabitha is safe from him. What he wants from her isn't something he's allowed to have. If he had agreed, if he had taken her away from this shit hole that will only ever reduce what she might become into another God-fearing sow, he would be taking her from all that she knows. He would have her isolated from any other influence but his, completely dependent on him, susceptible in her ignorance, vulnerable in her innocence. He would make her into his in a way that would be impossible to do to anyone else.

The cigarette is cold. It's too late to make that flight. He kills the engine, gets out of the car. He has to ring the doorbell three times before Roscoe answers.

[dissonancedance]

I started this as writing practice in preparation to continue my other project, but it's coming together into its own horrific little story so I'll keep posting it here and on AO3.

He wants to hold her. Use comforting her for an excuse to feel her chest quake with each sob and her hot, wet breath brush his skin as she weeps so enticingly. Get her used to the strangeness of her mean uncle caressing her. Let her interpret it as the love she’s always been so open and patient to receive from him. He wonders how her polite, quiet weeping will change when he starts to hurt her. 

CW: underage, incest, nonconsensual

Chapter 1: Death

“It’s so beautiful. My family goes every year. Just… idyllic.”

Harvey watches the couple seated at the table behind Rebecca as she speaks. The man is a bit too old and the girl is a bit too young for him to immediately identify their relationship.

“The lakes are just so peaceful, you know? My grandparents have a vacation house close to the water in Skaneateles.”

The man has money, that much he can tell. Enough money that he doesn't need to advertise it with anything obvious, only a very nicely custom tailored suit in current fashion. Harvey hasn't seen him before, though.

“That’s the area they call the ‘jewel of the lakes’ and that's absolutely the vibe. My brothers and sister bring their kids and they are such a blast, just, so adorable.”

The girl, though young and attractive, is not quite young and attractive enough to be a girlfriend or mistress. No wedding ring on either of them, so not a slowly aging trophy wife either.

“You should come. Just for a day, just to get out of the city.”

The man puts his hand on the girl's shoulder and leans in to tell her something that makes her laugh. His eyes crinkle at the edges as he chuckles along with her, more as though the sight of her enjoyment brings him happiness rather than finding his own joke funny. Their easy humor seems comfortable and familiar between them, no pretensions or pretending. Fond and casual, but certainly too intimate for them to be friendly coworkers. Envy crawls into Harvey’s thoughts. Envy not of either the girl or the man, but of the connection between the two. The ability to have that connection.

“And my family would just love to meet you, they're all super chill. What do you think?”

Harvey looks back at Rebecca's hopeful, nervous smile and says, “I think I don't want to be around children.”

The waiter arrives before she can produce a point to nullify this reason for his rejection and she shifts her attention to her dish for the waiter’s benefit. The moment the waiter leaves them, however, she picks up her fork and continues.

“We don't have to be around them, I mean, it's not like a kid-focused thing, you know?”

His phone vibrates in his pocket, but his hope for a distraction from this topic dies when he sees the Nebraska area code. He declines the call and sets the phone on the table.

“We can just go wine tasting with just my parents or just meet them for dinner.”

Just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just. Harvey blinks away the urge to display his annoyance. She has his answer, it just isn't the one she wanted.

“I just mean…” she starts.

The phone buzzes and lights up with that same number.

She tries to continue, “... we’ve been dating-”

Harvey picks up the phone. “Harvey Sullivan.”

“Harvey! It's Roscoe. How've you been?”

It's been four years since he’s gotten a call from his father's lawyer. The exact same jocular greeting before being told of his father's death.

“I’ve been good,” Harvey answers, watching in amusement as Rebecca somehow manages to inject passive aggressiveness into the way she's holding her fork, “but I have the feeling I'm about to be less good. What happened?”

“Straight to the point, huh?” Roscoe chuckles, the sound trailing off with a groan. “Well. It’s your mother. She, uh, she's passed. I'm sorry.”

“Oh.” Harvey tries to sound surprised. Part of him is; Nancy was only 49, just 17 years older than him. “When? How?”

“An hour ago. Tabby called for an ambulance when Nancy couldn't get out of the bathtub this morning. Had a stroke. Had a few more on the way to the hospital. She hung in there for a while, but, um… She's gone.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah. I'm real sorry, Harv. This is such a shit way to find out.”

“No, no, thank you for calling to let me know, Roscoe. So, there's going to be a funeral I-”

“I'm handling all that. Looking at holding the service on Friday at Holy Light. Tabby’s gonna stay with me and Barb for now. Poor little girl is taking this hard.”

“Yeah. Well, alright. I should be able to take next Friday off.”

“If you can come any sooner, it would be a comfort to her.”

“To who?”

“To Tabby!"

“Oh, right. Tabitha. She knows you better though, I don't think there's much I can do for her.”

“I'm not blood. I know you're busy, you've got your own life. It would mean a lot to the kid to have her uncle here, that's all.”

“I’ll be there. Not likely before Friday. Maybe Thursday night.”

“Work on it, okay? Let me know because I have to get the paperwork in order.”

“I'll let you know.”

“Alright. Well, I've got a lot of phone calls to make.”

“Sure. Thanks for calling, Roscoe.”

“Oh! One more thing before I let you go, Harv. The place you're at now has two bedrooms, right?”

Harvey had almost forgotten the frequent non-sequiturs of his father’s old friend, but old habit kicks in and he answers without question, “That’s correct.”

“Okay, thought so, just wanted to make sure I had that right. I'll talk to you soon.”

“Right. Talk to you then.”

Harvey puts his phone back in his pocket and picks up his fork to resume eating.

Rebecca's souring mood seems to have shifted, her tone carrying a perhaps equally annoying concern as she gently asks, “You're going to a funeral next week?”

“Seems like it.”

“I hope it wasn't anyone you're close to.”

He drags a piece of duck through the sauce artfully drizzled along the rim of the plate. “No. Not really.”

“It's going to be out of town?”

The skin is wonderfully crispy, crackling as his teeth gnash through to the tender meat. “Yes.”

“Where?”

The glass of brunello does well to cut the fattiness from his palate. “Nebraska.”

She smiles. “Nebraska is… nice?”

The new potatoes don't look worth the additional carbs. He cuts into the duck again. 

“Well then…” She clears her throat, tries again, “Would you like some company while you’re there, just to keep you from getting bored?”

He glances at her as he pierces another chunk of flesh. There’s already an expectation of disappointment poorly concealed by her smile before he answers, “No.”

The girl at the table behind Rebecca lets out a jokingly scolding exclamation loud enough for him to hear what she says to the man.

“Dad!”

The envy that Harvey felt evaporates. However genuine that connection is, there's nothing as dull to him as fatherhood.

It's only 11:19 by the time Rebecca falls asleep. Harvey takes his clothes into the living room to avoid disturbing her as he dresses, but regardless of how quietly he leaves, she always wakes up at the sound of the door locking. He knows this because she will text him every time. Like clockwork, his phone vibrates as he’s waiting for the elevator.

When will I see you next?

He wonders if he should let her know how annoying this is. If he starts correcting her behavior, he won't stop. He puts his phone back in his pocket. Even if she could be made responsive to correction, she's not worth the work it will take to make her into something more than she is.

There's a chill in the breeze that hints of the approaching autumn. No longer needing to mind the state of his hair, he drives with the windows down, allowing the noise of the city to reach him. Laughter and shouting from the smoking crowd outside of a bar. Psytrance reverberating from a club, the murmuring cacophony from the line outside competing below it. An outlandishly adorned group walking to their next destination, joyously cackling and cursing at each other. 

The door to the lobby locks the noise outside behind him, sealing him in a silence interrupted by his footsteps echoing through the cavernous space. He rarely bothers turning on any lights in his apartment. Everything is always exactly how he's left it. He showers in the dark, not needing to see as he works his way down the line of different cleansers arranged on the shelf. 

His phone is bright even on the dimmest setting when he checks it. Only 12:29. No missed calls, no new messages. A notification from a fetish hookup app, but it's an event reminder. He could still go out. He could see if anyone he knows is available. He could call Judith, check if she's gotten her hands on any real coke yet. 

It's 1:30 when he decides to keep scrolling on his phone until he falls asleep. This works just as well as anything to keep himself from thinking about Home. 

The problem with flying to Nebraska is that no one wants to fly to Nebraska, so there are no Friday flights that will allow him to arrive on time. Harvey touches down in Omaha the night before, having left work early to make a flight out of LGA. It takes the Xanax too long to kick in, so he ends up pulling into the gravel lot behind Holy Light of the Gospel Baptist Church only twenty minutes ahead of the funeral. For all the money his parents had given to this church, it still looks like a shabbily-adapted McMansion someone had gutted and put a sign in front of.

The front doors are open, but the lights inside are still off. The morning sunlight pours through the open windows to provide enough for him to see the monstrosity of bouquets propped up around a casket raised in front of the pulpit and, oddly, a large creepy doll standing in prayer next to it. Its mouth moves. For a delirious moment, Harvey wonders if he brought the wrong pills before realizing that’s Tabitha. He walks along the wall, keeping to the darkness so as not to disturb her, stopping just a couple meters behind her.

His niece is still the puny, scrawny runt with unkempt brown hair constrained into two long stupid braids down to her tailbone. Harvey is not sure what 13-year-olds are supposed to look like these days, but she seems unusually small from what he recalls of his childhood classmates. The girls were all within at least a couple inches of 5 feet and fat had been accumulating on their chests for a year or more already. In that frumpy black dress, he can’t tell if she’s even approached the vicinity of puberty, but he’d guess not.

He steps closer to hear her soft, clear voice whispering, “That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me and bend. Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new…”

She stops as his shadow blocks the light pouring over her back and she turns around. This Tabitha is not the impish kewpie doll gremlin he remembers. Big dark doe eyes, fantastic bone structure, delicate chin, prominent cheekbones, small but shapely mouth, symmetrical features, flawless skin. A true gamine beauty still in the bud of its development, but striking despite being so young. Though she's attained this through nothing but the plain luck of genetic roulette and he has absolutely no stake in it, the warmth of pride in being her uncle touches him for the first time.

“Uncle Harvey…” she whispers in astonishment before her dazzling smile crumbles with a sob and she ducks her face into her hands.

Oh, right. Tabitha loved Nancy. Of course she did. She loves everyone, even her horrid grandmother.

He smiles, amused at this silly little creature, and asks, “Am I really that scary, Tabitha?”

She huffs out a short laugh. “I'm sorry, I'm… I'm so happy to see you.”

She sniffs, wipes her face with the handkerchief clutched in her fist, and looks up at him again with pain in her smile and tears shining in her now pink-rimmed eyes. Harvey’s lungs seize up, stunned at the thing he sees in her, invisible but present. This girl, this wide open, honest and artless sincerity shows him something he can't look away from. An intangible thing given an almost material existence from inside her. A nameless thing that calls him to somehow pull it through her and give it form. 

The passing curiosity he had of her sharpens into a predatory focus as a prickling shiver sets alight in his gut. The sensation, a sensation he’s rarely if ever felt so strongly for a person, is immediately chased with a terrifying realization that floods the strange unidentified wonder from him. He is… attracted to a child. This is not supposed to happen to him. 

He's still reeling from this unwelcome revelation, his stomach clenching and his brain on fire, when she asks, “Is it alright if I hug you?” 

No, do not touch her, keep your distance and fix this disgusting glitch. 

No, he responds, it's absurd to assume I am affected. It's nothing serious.

He forces himself to calm down. His arms open for her and she steps into them, hugging him around his hips and nuzzling her cheek against his abdomen. Her warmth seeps through his suit to erupt a wave of goosebumps across his skin. She feels even smaller than she looks. He's not sure how to hug someone who is two feet shorter, awkwardly pulling her tighter against him with his hands spanning her upper back. Judging by her shaky, tantalizing sigh that drives this depraved infection deeper, she doesn't seem to mind. He lets his hands slide down her back, his fingers curling around her ribcage, mapping the meager body hidden beneath that modest dress. It would be nothing to lift her up off her feet and embrace her properly, with her legs wrapped around him, her dress hiked up as he– 

He should have listened to himself. He's not a pedophile. He is the opposite of a pedophile, he hates kids. She’ll do something obnoxious soon that'll clear up this confusion. He'll become disgusted and annoyed with her as he should be. He disengages the hug and she takes his hand as they part, looking up at him again with such startlingly genuine emotion so nakedly displayed, he looks away in embarrassment as though he'd caught her in a private moment. 

“Do you want a moment alone together?” she asks, that dulcet voice intimately low, nearly a whisper.

His lungs seize up for a second time, the blood draining from his face in alarm at how immediately this new abomination within him was known to another. His mind rushes through everything that transpired in the last three minutes. Was it how he looked at her? Did he press her too flush against him? Did his fingers creep into any indecent territory? Panic rises as he can find nothing that would have given him away, no hint of behavior he should have avoided. It’s impossible that she could know the sick way he’s drawn so strongly to her.

And it really is impossible. She’s looking up at him innocently, awaiting his answer with effortless patience. It’s as impossible for Tabitha to know as it is impossible that Tabitha could be so forward and promiscuous to ask him with that intent. He realizes, with a cascade of relief, that she meant alone with his mother’s remains. He’s not disappointed. He won’t allow himself to ruminate on what he would have done to her if she’d meant anything else.

“No,” he answers.

“Do you want to say anything to her before everyone arrives?” she asks.

He tries to be annoyed, only able to put forth an affectation of it. “I’ll do what I want when I want to, kid. You don’t need to prompt me.”

“Okay,” she smiles briefly and releases him. The slide of her fingers gliding under his palm tingles and lingers. He closes his hand into a fist, willing the sweet venom of her touch away. There’s a chance, however unlikely, that he may have accidentally dosed himself with a slight amount of MDMA this morning. He hopes so. “I'm sorry this happened. I’m so sorry, uncle Harvey. I’ve been praying I would see you this year, but…” Her words cut off before she can finish and she ducks into her handkerchief again.

He wants to hold her. Use comforting her for an excuse to feel her chest quake with each sob and her hot, wet breath brush his skin as she weeps so enticingly. Get her used to the strangeness of her mean uncle caressing her. Let her interpret it as the love she’s always been so open and patient to receive from him. He wonders how her polite, quiet weeping will change when he starts to hurt her. 

He moves to lean down and reach for her. He can have a little bit of this. Only enough to taste. She might not even know until the day comes that she looks back on how he made her feel and gives what he’s done a name. Violation. Molestation. Defilement. He could do worse. He wants to. Isn’t it enough that he shows this much restraint?

“Harvey! When did you get here? I gotta talk with you about your situation!”

He jerks upright at the raucous of Roscoe’s voice snapping him back into reality. A cold sweat instantly coats him from his scalp to his soles. It was only a daydream. He couldn’t do something like that, not to someone who can’t consent even if they asked for it. That’s not part of what he does. Of what he’s allowed.

“Hello to you too,” he says, only a tad more rudely than he’d normally back talk to the old man.

“Is that Roscoe I hear in there?” an even older man bellows from the entrance.

“Aw, shit,” Roscoe cusses, then winces and gestures vaguely to the illustration of Jesus hanging next to him. “Sorry! Shoot. One second, Milton! We’ll iron everything out later, Harv. Tabbycat, will you hand out the pamphlets? We might as well start letting people sit down. I’ll get the lights!”

[dissonancedance]

UPDATE

Due to widespread discrimination against shameless perverts, I have been permabanned from Discord

Do you have a Discord?

Full confession: I had to download the app to figure out what a Discord is and... somehow I already have an account that I don't recall signing up for. I've never used it, but I want to give it a try. Here's a link to this thing: https://discord.gg/dS7CPh

[dissonancedance]

Hello! I’m currently on chapter 90 and dreading reaching the end of Closing the Distance. I am deeply obsessed with this story and don’t know what I’m gonna do when I finish. Just curious if this blog is still active or if you have plans on returning to this story, starting another one, or have any other novels, fics, ANYTHING else available to read? Trying to preemptively plan for the inevitable “post book blues” I am guaranteed to feel after finishing this one. RIP my heart.

oh god I'm so sorry, I didn't see this ask until now and it's so late!! Despite my snail pace at writing, I've got a couple other story ideas lined up for when Closing the Distance finishes. I'll post them here to this blog once that happens, and I promise that CtD will get an ending.

[dissonancedance]

Hey, I'm the one that's been caught up in CtD and commenting recently lol. I'll admit that I created a tumblr account just so I could ask you a writing question. I would like to know how you get into each character's headspace when you write from their perspectives? I'm finding it extremely challenging to stop projecting my own rationales or thought processes into my characters. For instance, I'm writing a new first person story from the perspective of a nineteen year old girl. I am far from nineteen lol. It's difficult to put my "years of wisdom" aside and let her make dumb decisions because it's common sense to me. Know what I mean? Like, how you write Simone. You are obviously not a brainwashed schizophrenic with homicidal tendencies, but the way you write from her headspace is seamless. Any suggestions would be marvelous!

Thank you so much for your comments! They're great; I absolutely love hearing from writers!

(I'm afraid of accidentally stepping in discourse here because Teens Are Mean Online, so let me make a coward's preface by stating that I am a pervert of a certain age talking about teenagers so we are all aware that I am the worst person on the internet right now. Attn all: Don't @ me, I'll cum.) Oof, teenagers. Screw writing teenagers. Even when you get the mentality right, by the time you've got your teen character written, the vernacular in their dialogue is already outdated and their interests are alien to the current trends.

To get into a character's headspace, I have to put aside my own thoughts and just empathize with them. I might not be a brainwashed schizophrenic with homicidal tendencies (at least not diagnosed), but I know the desperation that results from feeling helpless, out of control, and in danger. Keeping a focus on the emotional reasoning lets my characters make all kinds of dumb decisions. I would simply not fall asleep with a loaded rifle accessible to my victim, but even the sharpest mind can be dulled by exhaustion and lulled into a false sense of trust. It helps that cute girls in peril holds my attention like a dog stares at a steak, so letting Simone make mistakes is fun for me.

I'm already excited to read your teen girl story. As hard as it is to write teens, there's no denying that they can get into the funnest kinds of trouble.

[dissonancedance]

Chapter 97

Her father's love crowded inside her, filling her too full, burning her too deep, and she gave herself wholly to the pain of bearing it.

Leif fixed his glare to the map projected on the wall behind Francis, trying not to stare at the clock as it nudged its way past 18:00. His impatience was annoying even to him, aggravation at being away from his daughter for so many hours eating up what little interest he had left in strategy building and intel organization. Creating mission briefs for specialized teams thousands of miles away required him to catalog and arrange countless pieces of constantly shifting information, and he found that he couldn't juggle that with the trouble his Simone was so adept at getting into.

"The target location is a high security prison on a flat terrain," Francis' brittle voice informed, his thumb tapping the keyboard to select the next slide to illuminate on the wall. "That provides the facility kilometers of visibility, making helo extraction a risky but perhaps necessary endeavor."

"Why make them aware at the time of extraction at all?" Leif asked. "This should be a covert infiltration. They won't look for what they don't realize is missing until the extraction has long since occurred."

"We don't have the time to organize covert infiltration. The target is scheduled to be transferred in two days."

"Alright, so we hit them during transport, avoiding the obstacle of the site entirely."

Francis sighed, and Leif pressed his fingers against the tension building behind his forehead. He was being rash, latching onto whatever information was put in front of him in his eagerness to get through it, no longer collecting anything to be put into play in the steps ahead. The old man sat down in the chair across from him, the light of the projection painting schematics over his wrinkles, and lit his cigar.

"You know," Francis started, puffing flame into the cigar until it bore smoke. "Simone's presence has brought a surprising boost to morale. Our boys and girls like what she's been showing them."

"Simone shouldn't have a presence here at all," Leif snapped, knowing his temper had been goaded and far too irritated to care.

Francis let the smoke drift and curl around him, his teeth worrying around the cigar in a rhythmic habit before he finally asked, "Is there anywhere else in the world you would want to be when Simone grows up from being your little girl?"

Leif tightened his jaw against saying something unwise to the Ouroboros leader and bit off the most destructive parts of his sentiment with a firm, "Keep my daughter out of your fucking mouth, Frank."

"It's just a conversation, Leif," Francis responded, his hands held up in an exasperated shrug. "One that you've been avoiding with yourself for years."

Leif gave him a warning glare, that being enough to signal the end of the topic as Francis surrendered with a dismissive wave of his gnarled hands.

"Fine, fine!" the old man said as he turned the projector off. "Go home to your little girl. Get what you need and come back with a fresh mind tomorrow."

The sunlight had faded to a dirty orange smear above the reaching hands of the treeline, prompting the odor of propane to waft up from the courtyard as the torches were ignited one by one. Simone had to stand on her tiptoes atop the headboard to see out the window, the view interrupted by the iron bars on the other side of the glass, but she could make out the thin young man loping across the grass just fine. She followed his lumbering gait until he stopped at the center of her viewpoint, turned to face the direction of her window, and slowly wiped the sweat from his brow with his palm. The glass fogged from the sigh of relief that left her at his signal, that sigh catching in her throat when the lock at the door rattled and scraped. Her skirt billowed like a parachute when she jumped down, settling onto the mattress just in time for her father to walk through the door. Leif's immediate glance over the room to ensure she had remained in their quarters deflated the little bit of hope that he might have started easing off restricting her.

As he set a stack of files down on the edge of the bed, the tension around his eyes relaxed with a smile and he asked, "Have you eaten dinner yet?"

"No, Papa," she answered.

His smile faded with a sour pinch while he loosened his tie. "I hope you weren't waiting for me. You know how late these meetings can run."

She slid off the edge of the bed and walked to him, watching his face carefully for any warning of what his mood might be as she wrapped her arms around his middle in a hug. The stench of the war room clung to him; Aguiyi's cigar smoke, ink, and stale blood.

"I don't mind waiting for you," she said, neck craned back and chin resting over his sternum to smile up at him.

Leif's hooded eyes hid his thoughts, but his hands slid down her back to press her firmly against him. The materials of his clothes were thin for the summer heat and let his warmth bleed through, the firm musculature of his body easy to map against her. She swallowed the shudder that ran through her at the reminder of how much horror that body was capable of.

"Is that what you do when I'm not with you?" he asked. "Wait for me?"

Her scalp crawled where his fingers rose to slide into her hair. The thought that he might feel how rapid her heart hammered against him made her throat tighten, cutting off her ability to speak. She nodded, a slight motion he could have missed if his attention wasn't so horridly, intensely focused on her. The corners of his mouth twitched into a smile again and his thumbs moved through her hair to stroke her cheekbones, but the gesture brought no comfort or assurance. The cold steel of his stare went through her.

"And yet," he whispered, each consonant stabbing ice up her spine. "You're still waiting for something."

Simone's knees turned liquid, certain to give out beneath her if she tried to run like the loudest part of her mind screamed for her to do. Her father's long arms had her locked against him and his hands held her face from turning away from his piercing stare. The silence stretched thin and brittle between them, each second ratcheting the dread that squeezed her lungs. He could see every piece of fear that he instilled in his daughter and his gaze was greedy.

"I…" she squeaked, then swallowed to try again with a soft and wavering, "I was waiting to have dinner with you?"

Leif searched her face, looking for something she knew didn't even have to be there to incur his violence, until his smile split with a huff of a laugh and his hold softened. The breath that had been locked in her chest let out a short laugh in response, a mimic of his in the hope that whatever had roused his suspicion had dissipated.

"My silly little girl," he chided lovingly, bending down to kiss her cheek.

She leaned up into the peck, her knees now wobbly with relief as the fearful tension drained out of her. He bent further and picked her up, tucking her against his side like when she was a small child. All at once, the shift in gravity pulled her back to a time when all that his terrible strength told her was he would never let her fall. It was a sweet, cruel trick of the mind. She wrapped her arms around his neck to hold onto him.

"What do you want to eat tonight?" Leif asked, scooting her up high against him to bring her to his eye level.

Her appetite had never been the same since Vermont. She could still remember what wanting food was, though.

"Cornbread," she answered.

"Name a protein and a vegetable to go with that."

"Corn is a vegetable."

He leveled a frown at her, but it had none of the danger of his usual displeasure.

"Try again, darling girl," he suggested flatly.

"I'll eat anything you cook," she said.

"Even brussel sprouts?"

This time, the laugh that bubbled up out of her was genuine. "You're the only one who can trick me into eating that."

He smiled as he watched her laugh, his gaze warm with amusement, no longer that predatory searching. "I still blame your mother for your poor introduction to vegetables. Frozen brussel sprouts steamed in the plastic bag they came in are an affront to the culinary arts."

The mention of her mother hit Simone like a splash of cold water, but she managed to keep her smile and make a sound close enough to a chuckle. These lighthearted moments were too rare to be ruined by all the ugly factors of her life. She stuffed that burgeoning wave of grief back down before she could remember her mother's love, burying it to where it wouldn't be stained.

"There should still be okra and tomatoes in the main kitchen, according to the inventory reports," he said as he carried her into the kitchenette behind the wall. "We'll bring down some sausages and spices and see what we can make with that."

It had been 5 days since Simone had been allowed outside their quarters, 5 days since she'd coaxed one of their men out of his PTSD episode, and stepping into the open air of the loggia lining the courtyard now brought her mind back to the moment of escaping the prison of Henrik's apartment. There were not as many stars out yet and the view was narrowed by the structure of the compound around and above her, but looking up into the endless sky brought the same sensation of vertigo as it did in that moment. She tried not to think about how that was the last night she'd seen Henrik alive or what she'd done to him then.

"Come along, darling," Leif's voice pulled her back into her body, the hardened skin of his palm sliding along hers to clasp their hands together as they walked.

She couldn't help but wonder where Henrik's body was now. If he was still lying in cold storage, his bloodless flesh carved for Aguiyi's research, or if he was entombed in the same crypt that held Bjørn beneath them. Even with the image of his dead body seared into her mind, she couldn't find enough space inside herself to piece Henrik's death to the kind uncle she remembered or the tortured warden he had become. He had tried to stay good, tried in his own way like Anders had tried, and they were both dead now. Running from it without knowing it was part of them all along, but that wasn't what killed them.

"Keeping the seeds and membrane intact within the pod can mitigate the mucilaginous aspect," Leif explained as he cut the okra. "The acidity of the tomatoes also aids this. There are many methods you can use to manipulate nature, but in cooking, I find simple and direct to be most reliable."

Standing next to him at the gleaming stainless steel counter of the main kitchen, Simone mimicked his motions chopping the okra, guiding the knife exactly as he did to produce the same uniform pieces. The shadows of the armed men shifted in the doorways and windows, their radios occasionally chirping to signal their location and status to one another. As Leif used the side of his knife to pile the pieces together in a bowl, she knew that if she screamed, those men would not interfere beyond their current orders to track and report Leif's movement within the compound. She let herself relax into this knowledge. Here, she could scream and no one else but her would have to get hurt.

She wiped her hands off on her skirt, the flowy gauze a pretty blush color that dampened to organ pink, and took a fortifying breath before saying, "I'm going to go see Dr. Braun tomorrow."

"Are you?" Leif asked. He didn't look up from his task of dicing a bell pepper, this sign of his guard making her even more nervous.

"Yes. For an ultrasound," she said carefully. When he didn't respond, she wrung her hands in her skirt and focused on her breathing before adding, "We might be able to determine the baby's sex, if you want to find that out early."

The rapid tempo of his knife stopped, the clatter of its handle hitting the cutting board and the abrupt movement of his body stepping away from the counter making her alarmed that he had cut himself, but then he sighed and finally looked at her. "Simone. I'm not going to make this choice for you, but you know where I stand. You cannot carry this fetus to term. Not here."

"I don't know if… if I can have this," she said, her words not as strong or as angry as she wanted. They came just the same. "If my body will let me have this. I want to try. I want to try to have this baby with you, Papa, if you'll accept it."

Leif kept his eyes on her, but she didn't feel watched as he stared. Whatever he was thinking and seeing in his mind was shut beyond her perception as it so often was when it came to him. When he leaned down and embraced her tight to him, her inability to predict him held her stiff in fear of what he might do until he kissed her in hot and open desire.

"Of course I will," he whispered against her mouth. "Of course I accept our child."

The heated press of another kiss warmed her in a wave of release from a tension she didn't know she'd been holding for so long. His hands slid up the back of her scalp to cradle her head, not to trap her this time, but to deepen this contact and she let her mouth open for him in gratitude. The slide of his tongue and the hard press of his erection were abrupt, the ferocity of his desire startling a whimper out of her that fell blunt against his kiss. Her father's love crowded inside her, filling her too full, burning her too deep, and she gave herself wholly to the pain of bearing it.

"Papa!" she gasped, her panting ragged on the edge of distress when he dragged his lips down her neck.

"That's right," he smiled. His sharp teeth scraped the delicate skin of her throat as he spoke, but it was his words that made her shiver in horror. "Look at how far I've broken you, Simone. You want to bear your own father's child. Say it. Tell me who fucked you pregnant."

The depravity of it twisted a knot of despair and disgust in her gut, but she obeyed and shut her eyes tight as she whispered, "My father fucked me pregnant."

He laughed cruelly. "Haha! So quiet! Are you ashamed that your papa knocked you up? Well, I'm not."

A shocked yelp escaped her when he hauled her up onto the counter, the steel surface frigid on the backs of her thighs as he slotted himself between her legs and yanked her skirt above her hips. That moment of vertigo hit her again, that same overwhelming sense of falling into something endless as she watched him look down at her with lust and greed steeped in his eyes. He pushed her to lie flat on her back and she stared at the ceiling as his hands traveled down to her navel. She tried to remember to breathe when his touch came to rest over her womb.

"My child having my child…" he said softly. His affection was thick enough to choke her on how deep her need for it ached. His fingertips caressed the scar she'd carved into her skin there, the thin curve pink with new flesh. "You're all mine, Simone. Every part of you. You've denied nothing to me and I will always love you for that. Do you regret any of it?"

"No," she whispered, throat tightening on the horrible truth of that answer.

"Such a good girl," he cooed. His hands moved to her thighs, spreading them wider, her moan catching in her throat as his thumbs rubbed up and down the sopping wet center of her panties. "My good, perfect little girl…"

"Papa?" she breathed, lifting her head to look down and see him unbuckling his belt. There wasn't even a door separating them from the men standing just outside the kitchen. What they'd surely heard already was terrible enough, but anyone could look into the room and see them.

As though reading the worry on her face, Leif smiled down at her as he pulled his cock out of his slacks and said, "Let them know what we are, darling girl. In a few months, everyone will be able to see what a good daughter you are for me."

She couldn't do anything but watch as he tugged her panties to the side and rubbed the reddened tip of his cock through the wetness at her opening. The sight of him pressing at her, the thick head spreading her little cunt open and forcing her hole to stretch around it, never stopped making her pant on the edge of panic. No matter how many times he's forced his cock into her much smaller body, that stretch hurt. She whined against her bitten lip, scrunching her eyes shut and forgetting how to make her body relax as he pushed into the resistance of her cunt and sighed in delight. The ache of taking him in all the way, the deep slide of that heavy cock dragging against the walls of her cunt, had her overfull and overwhelmed. Her legs wrapped around his hips, heels digging into his back as she lifted her ass up to press him deeper and mash him past her limit. The pain was perfect.

"So sweet," he smiled.

His hands gripped her hips, fingers digging into the softness of her ass while his thumbs pressed along her pelvic bones, and he began to fuck her in earnest. His thrusts knocked breathy little grunts from her and each ram inside her cunt made her body tense in shock until the high that sex inflicted on her mind transmuted part of that pain into pleasure.

"Papa, please," she panted, no longer able to think about anyone or anything but how her father fucked her. "Can I… ah… Can I touch my…?"

"Not yet," he said.

She groaned, the frustrated sound cut off into a yelp when he rammed inside her in chastisement. Her body tried to curl in on itself to contain the agony, but he kept fucking her hard through it. She shivered instead, that heady rush of endorphins from sex and pain tipping her towards a sweet delirium that had her moaning as he kept hurting her deep and hard.

"That's it," Leif growled through gritted teeth. The wet slide and slap of their skin echoed obscenely in the spacious kitchen. "Show me how well I've trained my little girl to take my cock."

"Y-Yes, Papa!" she forced herself to respond.

She had no choice as he pushed her thighs up, folding her until her knees reached her ears and he leaned over her to leverage his weight into pressing deep into her. He gave her no time to adjust to this position, his cock cramming into her again and again as she tried and failed to stop herself from crying out. Through tear-blurred vision, she could see him watching her, that dark stare greedy for her submission as he gleefully punished her for giving it to him. There was no end to how much he wanted to take from her, no satiating that ravenous greed in him, his love too thick and corrupted by the sickness in both of them as he gave it.

"So good for me," he muttered between the heavy breaths of his exertion. "Made to be mine…"

He leaned further down, testing her flexibility as his weight crushed her legs further behind her, and a spike of fear stabbed through her as his teeth drew close until his mouth pressed to hers. His kiss was soft and sweet in contrast to the punishing pace of his sex and she leaned up as much as she could to chase that sweetness. The tender cradle of his hands at the nape of her neck pulled her delicately into that kiss, the gentleness of his touch marking the ragged map of her childhood with faint memories of how caring he could be. The love of her father that would tuck her in at night and soothe her pain when she scraped her knees was not in contrast to the love of her father that would fuck her bloody to enjoy her pain; it was the same love, too deep and too much.

"Mm!" she moaned into his kiss, the building pressure toward her climax taking her by surprise.

His tongue delved further into her open mouth and the rumble of his moan vibrated through her. She couldn't stop the rising crest of release pulsing from low inside her. The wide column of his cock tensed and swelled in response, his weight bearing down just slightly more, and her cries were muffled into the hunger of his kiss. She came on his cock at the first hot gush of his semen spilling into her, the dizzying height of her pleasure drowning everything else out except for where they were joined. Her senses were muted and distant, filled only with him, his sweat, his skin, his movement.

As awareness bled back into her dulled perception, she kept her eyes closed and held only to the sound of him breathing heavily against her neck. They were alive, their bodies lush with time and vitality, able to heal and create and continue. She wept in gratitude for these gifts, clinging to the body that had created her, reveling in the joy of their survival until exhaustion and the reassurance of his living warmth pulled her into a blessedly dreamless sleep. When she next woke, it was to the sweet smell of cornbread.

[dissonancedance]

Do you ever beta read other people's works?

Giving feedback and light editing doesn't require any special training and it's a great way to help others further their craft, so I enjoy doing it when asked. I have no idea if I'm any good at it. Given the graphic nature of my writing and the gentle nature of those I do beta reading for, I've never had a beta reader, so I don't have many examples to go off of beyond what I know to look for from editing my own work.

[dissonancedance]

Chapter 96

Her barriers were thinning dangerously, sweat starting to slick her palms and douse the nape of her neck, but she had to play this through.

Content warning: Graphic descriptions of violence, references to sexual violence, medical horror, incest, cults, and forced captivity.

Read below the cut

Closing the Distance

Chapter 96

Simone’s words died on the breath that shock had stolen from her as Vidar crushed the breath from Maier. Black lines marred the concrete floor with each scrape of Maier’s shoes as he kicked in inept attempts at traction, his white skin shifting red to blue in a smear of pain. Unable to look away from the pale-knuckled grip around Maier’s neck, she watched her uncle strangle a man with the same quiet placidity as when he lied in a drug-induced delirium. The strength in those long fingers echoed memories of terror and helplessness around her own neck, but the terror and helplessness she felt now was wrapped in defeat.

After all the horror, secrecy, and guilt of turning to these experiments and participating in the irrevocable destruction of the person her uncle once was, they still couldn’t carve the monster out of the man.

“Vidar,” she said, watching his clamping hands grow still at the sound of her voice. “Off.”

Like the loyal doll she’d reduced him to, he backed away from the battered, coughing Maier and turned to her with the same eerie calm that never left him. Before, she could fool herself into thinking that placid lack of expression was peacefulness, maybe even contentment, but what remained behind his blue eye was just as empty as the hollow socket next to it. Having that empty eye trained on her now, alone but for the hacking lunatic on the floor, reminded her too well of the monster still clinging to the cavity of his mind.

The long, puckered scar curled up Maier’s cheek as he laughed between heaving coughs, "Tha-... he-heh, that could have gone better."

“Sick son of a fuck…” Simone muttered, helplessness and frustration transmuting fluidly into rage at the slick drone of that voice. Maier’s shirt ripped when she yanked him up by his collar and snarled into his gasping face, “You stay the hell away from us! If I see you around here again, I'll fucking peel the rest of your face off!"

The corners of his mutilated mouth twitched and writhed into a smile.

“Pretty promises, but not the one I want,” he grinned, the injury to his throat breaking his monotone up into a more human sound. “The deal I had made with you, Ms. Valstad, was to experience the glory of Leif Valstad’s specialty firsthand after helping to free him.”

“You lost that deal when you sold my family out to Aguiyi,” she hissed.

A sharp agony shot up from her wrists as Maier’s hands grasped them, shocking her into losing her grip, and he yanked her down in a swirl of motion. Her rage made her sloppy, gave him the split second of advantage to slam her under him. Her vision flashed white from the force of her skull slapping the concrete. There would be no help coming; Maier’s methodical nature alone had assured her that he had cut off the security cameras before ever entering the lab to indulge his desires in private.

Below the ringing that muffled her hearing, Maier's words came through distant and flat, “The deal still stands, but I have since concluded that this institution is not what he needs to be freed of. The factor that has been preventing Leif Valstad from achieving his full potential is you, Ms. Valstad. We need to discuss your role in the family.”

The fuzzy stirrings of a concussion made her tongue thick, her words slurring as she ground out, “Yeah, well, last time I took your advice, I got fucked in the ass.”

“I would wager that has also occurred since you stopped taking my advice, therefore the consequence is no fault of mine,” he responded in that flat, emotionless drone that enraged her more than the spitefulness of his meaning.

Simone twisted to drag Maier’s grasp to the side and destabilize him enough to shove her hip up and roll him. The maneuver she'd recited a hundred times under her father's training paid off, only for her to be wrenched back before she could clamber away. His grip on her dress stopped her short, the expensive muslin finally tearing loudly when she jerked free from his grabbing hands. The cold, sterile air of the lab plastered itself to her sweat-slicked skin as she rushed to put as much distance and obstacles between herself and the man crawling after her.

“The path Bjørn had left for Leif Valstad did not contend with the possibility that he might reject it,” Maier said, ragged with the effort of dragging his lower half. “So long as you remain alive, his attachment to you will prevent him from embracing his destiny.”

The medical tools laid out on a tray near the sensory deprivation tank caught Simone’s eye as she registered the threat Maier had made. In his state, it would not be difficult to pin him down and drive a scalpel along his arteries until his broken body finally quit. No, not difficult, but it would be risky. She’d underestimated him once before to know that he would not be deterred from his task by mere pain. Her move had to be precise.

"Aside from that being none of your fucking business,” she frowned, trying to hide the wooziness that wobbled her gait as she started towards the tray, "you should know better than to think that killing me would make Leif more cooperative."

“And you should know better than to come into this lab alone. Vidar Valstad is an unstable patient, after all. You see now how the seed of violence still germinates within him.”

She snatched up the scalpel as she circled the back of the lab to stay out of his path, distancing herself from him as well as keeping him far from Vidar. Her uncle’s vacant stare followed her, unaware or unalarmed at what was happening around him, and she shuddered at what was so obvious to both her and Maier. Dangerous or not, she couldn't leave her uncle with this snake. She couldn't surrender to fear again.

“Even if you framed Vidar for my murder, Leif would blame Ouroboros for putting him close enough to get to me,” she said. The scalpel was light in her hand as she held it out of his line of sight and stepped slow enough to goad him into maintaining his pursuit. "He’d rather burn in the fire he lights under Ouroboros’s ass than have vengeance go unfulfilled.”

“Like father, like daughter.”

The exit was past Maier, no safe route out of that room without leaving her uncle there with him. All her weaving and maneuvering hadn't tricked him into giving her an opening to grab Vidar and escape. He had her backed up into an ultimatum: kill or be killed. Even without full use of his legs and caught off guard, Maier had still forced her to play by his rules. More than the fear of what consequences awaited her for killing Aguiyi's right hand man, more than the risk of injury or death in the tussle, it was the bitterness of being forced into this standoff that made her pause.

Simone rubbed the smooth handle of the scalpel restlessly, letting a decision weigh against her hesitation before carefully saying, "There's an unfinished remodel in an attic space that some of the men climb through to get to the roof. It's out of view from the rest of the building, with a clear jump into the trees on the street outside. Someone should seal that off before Leif finds out and gets any ideas of leaving with me."

The length of Maier's silence told her enough for her to confidently lower her scalpel, but his knife did not falter.

"You won't leave without Vidar Valstad," he said, more as a statement of fact than calling her bluff.

Simone looked past him to her uncle, meeting his remaining eye directly before turning her attention back to Maier.

"I won't leave him," she admitted, keeping his focus on her as she laid the scalpel on the edge of the sensory deprivation tank. "Vidar is safe here. We all are. Everyone here acts on behalf of the interests of Ouroboros, and we are Ouroboros."

He didn't detect Vidar coming up behind him with steps as slow and quiet as a phantom's. Simone kept her eyes locked with Maier's as her uncle's shadow loomed over him.

"Everyone except my father, Aguiyi… and you, Maier," she said as Vidar's open hands reached for him.

--

Simone leaned against the wall as she watched Liu, the nearest member with crime scene forensic experience, assess the smears and splatters on the floor. She was careful not to let her gaze linger in any one place for too long as Aguiyi shifted his attention between them. The smooth concrete obscured the stains in darker shades of gray, but the reek of what they were wrinkled her nose with a horrible familiarity. The good ventilation in the labs had granted these cramped corridors a false sense of openness and had blunted much of the sharpness of the solutions used to keep them sterile, but she could still smell the blood oxidizing steadily into rot. Her uncle’s blood, and not a drop of anyone else’s. She had been careful to assure that. Her frantic scrubbing had eaten through the nitrile gloves she’d used, the cleaning solution stinging the blisters from her father’s training.

“The patterns from the lab to the hall clearly indicate a struggle,” Liu said, mostly to herself while she photographed the mess, although the halted lilt to her tone suggested she only spoke in English for their benefit. Simone moved closer to show she was still listening despite the fatigue and nervousness that weighed her steps into a shuffle. “I only see one set of footprints, so he was maybe carrying something... something that threw off his balance.”

“Couldn’t’ve had much balance,” Dr. Wallis muttered rapidly. He shrunk a little more into himself when they looked his way, but continued, “... kept ‘im sedated near constantly for over two months. Wouldn’t’ve been able to walk straight, haul things about.”

“Never underestimate a Valstad,” Aguiyi warned.

Dr. Wallis choked back a whimper as he nodded, cowering even further into his hunch under the attention of the old man. Simone looked away from him; that would likely be the limit of what he could say for the next few hours at least and it hurt to see what had become of the once-confident, witty neuropsychologist. It was a cold reminder of what she risked in this subterfuge. Aguiyi had allowed her to be punished for running from him before; she could not imagine what penalty might await her for taking Vidar away from him.

“Maybe he had a weird reaction to the drugs?” she suggested.

“A severe reaction from sedation explains it until we reach here,” Liu said as she gestured with her camera to where the bloody path ended in the middle of the hall. “It also doesn’t explain how or why the video feed was interrupted and the lab was unsecured.”

Simone pursed her lips against the urge to frown. “So someone cut the cameras and opened the door for my uncle to slip out like a loose housecat… and then simply vanished?”

“Any ideas, Liu?” Aguiyi asked.

The expert shook her head. “All my ideas are in the evidence. How many others knew Vidar Valstad was down here?”

“No one I wouldn’t trust.”

“Apparently at least one you shouldn’t,” Simone muttered.

A resounding silence brought her to look around. Aguiyi’s wrinkles deepened into a gnarl of a scowl, Dr. Wallis’ pallor turned a sickly shade of buttermilk, and Liu watched her with curious surprise. She wasn’t aware she’d said that out loud until Aguiyi announced, “There are none within these walls who do not live to serve our shared cause.”

The shadow of a scold in his tone raised Simone’s suspicion enough for her to follow where that statement had stung him, chasing that hunch with, “Not everyone here is sharing the same cause, doc. You made Leif their leader, don’t act surprised when they follow his will.”

“You know too little of how Ouroboros operates to be making those kinds of assessments, Little Scratch.”

The ire that fueled his defensiveness spilled over the deepening furrow of his brow and infected her with a corrosive, unyielding frustration. Or maybe it was her own frustration rising to meet his. Her barriers were thinning dangerously, sweat starting to slick her palms and douse the nape of her neck, but she had to play this through.

“Don’t give me that bullshit,” she sneered. “Maybe someone left the door unlocked. Maybe he hurt himself stumbling out of here. Maybe the cameras glitched. Any of these alone are generous assumptions, but all of that together is quite a fucking coincidence.”

“We don’t yet know what happened and neither do you.”

“I know my father wants his corpse displayed in the yard. I know that’s a lot of my uncle’s blood on the floor for anyone who could care to keep him alive to have spilled. Why isn’t anyone asking Leif?”

“Leif doesn’t know about this project.”

“He doesn’t need to know, what he needs is Vidar’s head delivered to him. And all you care about are your fucking projects. Is twenty years all it takes for you to-” Simone snapped, her teeth clicking shut to bite off the rest of what had slipped between the cracks of her composure.

If she didn’t have Aguiyi’s attention before, she clearly had it now. Those broad, sagging, leonine features turned fully to her, eyes now alight with a deadly intent behind thick cataracts as he waited for her to continue. Somewhere on the boundaries of her focus, she knew Dr. Wallis was curling into himself in an attempt to disappear and Liu was watching with wide-eyed wary interest, but all she could see were the decades carved into that face falling away. The cataracts sank back until fiery brown irises glared at her from a face nearly unrecognizable yet too familiar for her to not know.

“All it takes for me to… what?” he prompted, slick with venom.

Simone swallowed the self-consciousness that stalled her tongue before doing her best not to spit out, “Forget your word to Bjørn.”

The fire in his glare receded to a smoulder, but his tone was no less hard as he responded, “We’ll find Vidar Valstad. He’ll need you when we do.”

She held his clouded stare until the buzzing, burning sensation of direct eye contact frothed just below her tolerance and she let her sight drop to his cheek. That roving anger seeped out of her, all the bluster it had garnered departing with it in a sigh that left her feeling deflated, tired, but good.

They hadn't suspected her involvement in Vidar’s disappearance, hadn’t kept her there to watch her sweat and squirm despite her not needing to be there at all. Aguiyi had summoned her to the scene to include her and the gratitude that gesture had implanted in her was inescapable. She was among the first to be alerted to the disappearance of her uncle. She was also brought because Aguiyi correctly guessed how important it would be to her to be included. It was almost easy to believe that he did all of this out of respect and courtesy to her.

Aguiyi reached out to give her shoulder a firm, fraternal squeeze. She did not try to dodge it and the lack of revulsion at his touch burned her all the worse. Such grand gestures of courtesy and respect still felt odd despite the annoying compulsion to appreciate it.

“We’ve got everyone on the lookout, Scratch,” he said, warm and assuring, welcoming her trust with the patience and wisdom of a leader steeped in experience. “You have my word on that, too. If you think disclosing this project to Leif is necessary to help find your uncle, then I won't hold you back.”

The tug of a bond she did not want and was not hers to begin with grated against what she had set into motion. She could see why Bjørn had saddled Aguiyi with his legacy. Bjørn may have been insane, but he could see the inner workings of people as clearly as the movements in his skeleton watch. Through the same pale gray eyes as his, Simone could see Aguiyi as she imagined Bjørn may have seen him: a man with a knack for leadership and devotion that ran so deep it pulled those around him under his wing. It would have been easy to fall into where Aguiyi had attempted to manipulate her if she had let him.

The watch ticked steadily at her wrist as she clasped her hand over his and said, “I'm counting on you, doc.”

--

“Never thought a French summer would be so warm. Do you want a shorter taper?”

Leif glanced over the document in his hands, considered the clippers the barber held, and answered, "No, let's keep it a scissor cut. Can't go changing my image without consulting the committee first."

The barber let out a chuckle as he traded the clippers for shears. "I thought being on top would give a guy more freedom, Scratch. Doesn't seem all bad, though. Least you got the best barber in the complex to keep your image sharp."

Leif smiled at his easy humor. Only a few months ago, this same man could barely hold a comb steady in his presence. Leif was pleased that his penchant for violence against his fellow Ouroboros members hadn't affected the reproitoir he'd built with the barber.

"You're the best of the best, Athanasios."

Leif turned his attention back to the stack of reports, eager to assess the situation on the Mozambique Channel, but both his and Athanasios's attention turned to the sound of shouting outside the makeshift barbershop.

"What the hell-"

"Stay here," Leif commanded as he pulled the sheet off his shoulders and rushed out of the makeshift barbershop.

Casual though their reproitoir might be, Athanasios obeyed orders as well as anyone among their ranks. Or, at least as well as most. The guards assigned to ensure that Leif was where he was supposed to be were not where they were supposed to be. Instead, the hallway was only filled with the sounds of shouting and scuffling echoing from around the corner.

There were few opportunities that afforded Leif a moment outside of constant supervision. He could use this moment to run, hide among the estate's many forgotten passages, find a way to get him and his daughter out somehow. This was ahead of his plan, but he didn't know when a moment like this would present itself again. Before hesitation let this opportunity slip by, he turned in the opposite direction of the clamour only to be stopped by a woman's voice among the shouting. Leif was rushing towards it before he fully recognized it as his daughter's, his heart hammering and throat tight in a single-minded panic to reach her.

"Simone!" he cried, his voice lost among the many as he rounded the corner and pushed into the tight crowd of men.

A path cleared quickly as they realized who was now among them, but not quick enough as he shoved his way through the throng. His mind raced with a thousand fears only to be confronted with one of the worst when at last he pushed his way to the clearing at the center of the crowd. There, his daughter stood before a man with a knife gripped in both of his hands, her blood oozing around the tip of the blade held against her chest. The urge to rush in and kill this man had him lunging forward, but the grasping hands of those around him held him back in time for him to assess the situation. The blind panic in the man's eyes was zeroed in on Simone's grim stare, the knife seemingly frozen in time. Any interference could kill her.

"What's happening here?" Leif demanded of the men next to him.

"Apologies, sir," the man to his right spoke up above the din. "It's Deleon. He was sparring and started to panic, pulled a knife on his partner. Little Scratch intervened, stopped him from killing."

Leif whipped around and snarled, "And you let her?"

The thin stream of red blooming under the fabric of her bodice made him jerk against the hands holding him back. He had to deescalate this situation somehow; going in hotheaded and half-cocked could easily get her killed. His mind raced with a dozen useless ideas leaping out of the panic that gripped him while he forced himself to watch and wait as Simone slowly reached up to the Deleon's shaking hands.

Leif couldn't hear what she said, only see her lips form the words, "Don't be afraid. You're safe. You're with family now. Understand? You're with family."

Deleon, a man three times her size, trembled and muttered rapidly as her tiny hands slowly pushed the knife away. Leif stood frozen, his breath burning in his chest while she continued to hold Deleon's wild stare as she loosened his trembling hold on the handle. Then, bafflingly, she wiped the blood off on her dress and slid it in the sheath at his thigh.

"We take care of each other," she said, placing her hands on Deleon's slumped shoulders. "That's what family does. No matter what, we take care of each other."

Sensing the threat was low, Leif jerked again to be released to run to her only for those hands to hold fast. He turned to the men to order them, the order dying on his tongue when he saw how they watched his Simone. He knew that look, that stalwart stillness and attentive stare. They looked to Simone and saw a leader.

[dissonancedance]

Her barriers were thinning dangerously, sweat starting to slick her palms and douse the nape of her neck, but she had to play this through.

Chapter 96 of Closing the Distance

[dissonancedance]

I was wondering why the story is no longer on Wattpad?

The story is no longer on Wattpad because Wattpad took it down and banned my account due to the content being found in violation of their content guidelines. I couldn't get an explanation from their moderators as to which section of their guidelines the story had violated given the vague way the guideline is written, but I wasn't too surprised. Closing the Distance is not a tale fit to promote corporate advertising sales.

[dissonancedance]

Damnit man where is this chapter? My sexual serf-dom needs liberation!

I let perfect be the enemy of good and started rewriting it while in the midst of 60+ hour work weeks and Covid fatigue :')

I may not be in possession of all my marbles lately! But! The chapter is coming. Probably still going to release it in halves because I love mess.

Thank you for showing interest. It really cheers me up and reminds me to keep at it! Motivation to do anything past surviving is hard to come by these days, so I do appreciate this rare and valuable gift.

[dissonancedance]

Closing the Distance is an absolute masterpiece! Cannot wait to see what you have planned next for this brilliant story. You are an extremely talented writer. Thank you for sharing your creativity with us. Hope you are well.

These have been trying times, but this kindness is what I needed to keep going. Thank you, Anon. I'm doing a bit better with the lasting effects from having had COVID-19 and work is finally starting to level out, so hopefully we'll see the next installment of CtD within the coming few weeks.