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glimmeringtwilight · 1 year ago

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Daffodils p2 | Yandere Diluc x Reader x Dottore

this might be incoherent. i still dislike the ending but atp if i keep chipping away i'm going to abandon it lol

CW: referenced reader death (from p1), angst, captivity, yandere themes, body horror (mild for. y'know. my usual), minor character death, NSFW (not super explicit, and no specific wordage for uuu parts), cuckholding, blood, non-consensual voyeurism (diluc), dubcon, unhealthy relationships, unhealthy coping mechanisms (do not imitate)

Word Count: 2.6k

It’s a dreary autumn day when the master of the winery returns with you in tow.

The manor is quiet, still as the Snezhnayan winter that he trekked through for the past several sleepless days and nights to get you. More quiet, however, is you, who hasn’t spoken a word since Diluc dragged you out of that dimly lit, dilapidated lab stinking of chemicals that he found you in.

He’s tried everything he knows on the journey back. You didn’t struggle once as he carried you back home– didn’t try to run when he’d rest with you in his arms– but you didn’t say a single thing to him no matter how hard he tried to get you to speak.

That’s fine. It’s shock, he supposes. He doesn’t know what that madman did to you, and if he didn’t have such precious cargo he would have gone back there and burned that place to the ground; charring the snowy, lifeless landscape surrounding it.

But he has you. He has you now, and that’s all that matters. Even if your skin has lost some of its color now, dull and cold. Even if there’s a quiet ticking in your chest in place of a heartbeat. Even if you only ever look through him, now. It’s enough.

This is what Diluc tells himself as he returns you to the room that had been your prison for months, as he dusts off the bars of your gilded cage before locking you back inside.

You don’t say anything. But it’s enough, just having you. It’s enough, he thinks.

Adelinde keeps checking in on him now that he’s returned. Her face is always pinched with a quiet concern when she speaks to him, and the servants in the manor part like the sea against jagged stone when he walks past them in the halls.

The estate seems to hold its breath around him; no longer a ghost, but perhaps something worse. As though the light he’d held against the darkness was snuffed out, and the shadow cast in its wake was long. But he’s fine. He swears it. He’s fine, now that you’re back. He’ll be perfect for you, the perfect gentleman; the man he swore he was but could never seem to be, before.

It’s enough to just have you. To hold you every night as he lays next to you, still in your bed like a corpse, listening to the ticking in your chest like a clock counting down to nowhere. Diluc finds himself dreading the ticking and seeking it out all the same.

Weeks pass like this, with Diluc unraveling slowly as he tries to cling to the crumbling memory of you, bastardized by his selfishness and immortalized in the husk of you he keeps locked in your room.

None of the servants are allowed to see you. He hears them at night, whispering to each other when they think he’s gone to sleep.

“He’s lost his mind.”

“Are they even alive, in there? I haven’t seen them at all. Adelinde said they–”

“Keep your voice down– are you trying to wake him?”

He hasn’t lost his mind. He has you here now, to ground him, to make him whole. Even if your body seems to be crumbling, tearing apart with every passing day.

You don’t say anything anymore. You don’t eat, but you choke down whatever food he forces down your throat, teeth clacking against silverware as you stare off into nothing. Most of his days are spent taking care of you, keeping you together, stoking the fireplace in your room to keep you warm.

You don’t seem to mind the cold, but he still forces you to sit by the fire, warming you up in a facsimile of living flesh. He tries everything– cleaning you carefully every morning before dressing you, tending to the sutures that never seem to heal.

But he can’t seem to bring you back fully. Can’t seem to warm the skin that cools quickly when you’re not kept by the fire, can’t seem to wipe that glassy look from your eyes, can’t seem to drown out the ticking in your chest.

Adelinde comes home one day from running errands to find all of the clocks in the estate smashed and left out on the front steps, some of the servants already tending to the mess as the master of the estate slips back inside the manor like a shadow of the setting sun.

He can’t figure it out. You won’t talk to him, won’t hardly look at him unless he takes you by the jaw and forces you. He can barely stand to hold you.

It’s enough. It’s enough. It’s enough.

But he knows it isn’t. He can’t bear living with the ghost of you, settling for the corpse he keeps in his bed. He wants you to smile at him like you used to. Needs to hear your voice again. Holding you close while you’re still so far from him is driving him mad.

It’s another dreary day when he finally breaks. Rain pours against the roof of the estate, blazing trails down the window panes. You’re sat by the fire again as you always are, most days.

Diluc kneels at your feet, his head buried against your knees as he begs you to speak.

“I love you,” He says. He reaches up, pressing a trembling hand against your cold cheek. He can’t seem to chase the snow out of you. You don’t respond. He tries again. “I love you.”

Your eyes flick to his, the barest indication of life in them– but you look through him all the same, as you have been for weeks, now. He sits up, eyes wild, and leans over you, grasping your face desperately. He can’t bear to look at it anymore.

Diluc pulls you close, burying his face against your nape and gritting his teeth at the smell of chemicals clinging to you. You still smell like that place. Like chemicals. Like the Doctor. No matter how many times he bathes you, no matter how hard he scrubs. It’s there. Always there. Faint, but still there.

“Please come back to me,” He whispers, clutching you against his chest like you’ll slip through his fingers at any moment. …Like you haven’t already. “Please. I’ll do anything.”

For the first time in weeks, you speak. Your voice is hoarse, quiet and wispy from disuse. It’s like the sun peeking through the clouds after a long storm, a refreshing wind–

“Take me back.” You rasp, and his blood runs cold. When he doesn’t respond, you repeat yourself. “Take me back.”

Diluc stays there a minute, gasping through clenched teeth as grief and anger rattle through him. You don’t mean it. You can’t. You let out a quiet, pained sound from how tight his grip on you has gotten, and he pulls away like he’s been burned.

He can’t look at you. There’s a ticking behind your chest, behind his ears– whatever it is the Doctor replaced your heart with– he can’t unhear it. Without a word, he leaves swiftly, locking the door behind him as he goes.

When he returns, the fire in the hearth has dimmed to embers, and you’re still perched exactly how he left you. Like a doll. He breathes a shuddering sigh and moves you to the bed, laying you down and tucking you in with all the tenderness and care his trembling hands can manage.

Instead of begging you to speak, he slips out of the room again, instructing Adelinde to look after you while he’s gone.

He knows how to fix this: it must be your heart. Must be that facsimile of a beating heart stuffed into your chest that’s causing you to act so hollow and lifeless. If he can just find it, he can bring you back. He’s sure of it.

Diluc journeys for another several days and nights, returning to the lab he’d found you in and tearing the place apart until he finds what he was looking for– your heart, preserved in formaldehyde and kept in a jar like some sort of sickening keepsake.

There’s no sign of the Doctor anywhere, but Diluc doesn’t have enough mercy left in his heart to spare for the Fatui grunts unfortunate enough to get caught in his path. Blood stains his jacket an even deeper shade of red, sinking into the stitching deep enough that he’s certain even Adelinde wouldn’t be able to remove the stains.

He burns the place down once he’s finished, true to his word, leaving the smoldering building behind as he makes the journey back with bloodstained boots and clothes, carrying the final piece of you; the missing puzzle piece in his hands.

Biting winds at his back keep his pace hurried as he rushes home; he has barely slept by the time he finally returns, the sun rising over the peaceful estate of the winery like a promise of hope.

He’s delirious and exhausted from hardly pausing to rest throughout the entire journey home, but he has it– he has what he knows will fix you, bring the light back into your glassy eyes.

The manor is quiet when he steps inside, and Diluc freezes when he sees Adelinde’s body laying at the bottom of the stairs, neck twisted at an unnatural angle and her expression frozen in horror.

No-

His first instinct is to find you, stepping over Adelinde’s body despite the pang of grief that lances through his chest. Every step only turns his blood cooler in his veins, cutting through exhaustion and delirium like a blade.

The door to your bedroom is cracked and he throws it open, freezing as he sees what’s there.

You’re smiling. For the first time since he lost you, you’re smiling, eyes crinkled with warmth as the number two of the Fatui Harbingers looms over you like a malaise.

Floorboards singe underfoot, but Diluc isn’t given time to act before hands snatch his arms, ripping his Vision from him and tossing it aside. Whatever angered curse he was going to say is cut off by another pair of hands shoving a gag into his mouth, and it takes several agents to drag him into the room and force him into the chair set up by the bed.

There’s the sound of breaking glass as the struggle knocks the precious cargo he’d carried all this way from his hands, shattering against the floor. Whatever grief he may have felt at the sound is drowned out by the sight of you as the Fatui grunts forcibly sit him down in the chair and start to tie him down.

Rope cuts into his wrists and his legs as he’s tied to the chair; two of the pyro agents stay behind to keep him from thrashing or knocking the chair over as the rest slink back into the hallway.

It isn’t until the last of the rope is secured, leaving the frazzled wine tycoon seething from behind the gag but unable to do much else, that Dottore finally speaks up.

“I’m glad you could finally join us, Master Diluc,” The Doctor drawls, words dripping with condescension and cyanide. “I was beginning to worry.”

A knowing smile tugs at Dottore’s lips when he turns to see Diluc’s expression, distress creased in the lines of his brow as his attention remains fixated solely on you.

Diluc sees now. That bastard is sitting in your bed, the bed you’re meant to share with him, as gloved fingers lazily toy with your nipples. The clothes you were wearing are haphazardly strewn about the floor.

Dottore readjusts. Takes hold of your legs and wraps them loosely around his hips as he situates himself more comfortably on the bed. Diluc feels nausea roiling in his gut.

He can’t tear his eyes away when Dottore’s fingers drift downward, tracing over your stomach before dipping between your thighs. The soft sound you make burns him.

It’s torture, listening to you. He’d wanted so desperately for any sound from you– anything at all– these past few weeks, but not like this. Not while you’re looking up at that monster like he’s the moon– the most life Diluc’s seen in your eyes in weeks– as he defiles you.

Every noise seems to chip a piece of him away, cutting deeper than any blade could hope to manage.

As much as it rends him to watch, he can’t tear his eyes away, taking in the sight of you shuddering and moaning softly in response to another man’s touch.

Something acrid and bitter swells in his chest– he can’t help but think that if it weren’t for him, you’d never be here. If he hadn’t stolen you, held on too tight so that you’d run away the first chance you’d gotten, you never would have died… Never would have wound up under the Doctor, on his operating table or in this bed.

Worse, still, is the selfish insistence he still feels. If he hadn’t taken you, he fears the worst may have happened to you– as though the worst hadn’t already come true. He did all of this to protect you– yet he’d failed to do even that.

You eventually shudder in a way Diluc recognizes and he sags against the chair, feeling something crack inside him. This is killing him. As much as pain rips through his chest, he can’t help but cling to that rending heartache, tolerate it if it means he gets to see you smile again. You’re still in there– not a doll, not a ghost.

He loves you; he always will. Even this will never make him hate you– it’s not your fault that you’ve been caught up in the jaws of a monster. It’s not your fault that he’d failed you.

Dottore adjusts, and whatever self-loathing Diluc had felt starts to wither at the sound of rustling fabric. No. No-

He tries to thrash in his chair, held down by the two agents standing behind him with a firm grip on his shoulders. He tries to turn away, to close his eyes and shut out the world as the whimper from you that follows sears him like a brand. Hands dig into his jaw, prod at his eyelids with a force that threatens to blind him until he unwillingly opens them again.

Months ago, when Diluc thought you’d finally settled, finally adjusted to your new life here, there was the barest beginnings of warmth in your eyes. Acceptance. Love, his heart hoped. He’s reminded of that again; you have the same embers of warmth in your gaze as you once did before the sky fell.

That same look you’d once given him, but now it’s directed at the monster grinning down at you. He never thought that warmth could ruin him, but the grief that settles into his bones is a worse pain than one he’s ever known.

The hope that he’d journeyed home with withers and dies at his feet like the heart the Doctor had stolen from you– to know it wasn’t merely literal is agony. His greed had been the undoing of you both.

In the garden, the daffodils had died months ago; it was the end of their season. They’d planted sunflowers near where your grave once was instead, but those are dying too, afflicted by some disease or pest.

Diluc had once hoped you’d go out into the garden to see them, but ever since he’d brought the ghost of you home you’ve only ever haunted this one room; days spent staring at the hearth instead of out the window like you’d used to.

Jealousy is ugly and loud in his head, clinging to his throat like tar.

Perhaps he’s damned; he wishes that you hadn’t found the light that he’d stolen from you in another man.

#morning bump <3 #srb

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