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maddytrout · 2 days ago

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shadowzel AU — medusa and her blind lover

'What was it that stayed my hand then?

With dagger held unsheathed, blade pointing in its side'

Upon learning of Lae'zel, the terrible local Gorgon that occupied crumbled ancient ruins somewhere out in the country, Shadowheart had been set on killing her and turning in her head for the reward. She was blind, after all, and likely would be unaffected by the monster's terrible curse.

But when Shadowheart becomes prey herself, hunted by a band of brigands crueler and greedier than her and after the same prize, she is fated to a brutal mauling. Unknowingly she flees straight into the Gorgon's den, and when Lae'zel locks eyes with the criminals they seize, turning to stone within seconds, allowing Shadowheart the chance to slip away and hide. With Lae'zel distracted, she has the perfect opportunity to ambush the monster; what she does not expect is the sound of the tall, rippling form of Lae'zel slithering around the corner of a ruined column to confront her.

Shadowheart can hear its raspy breathing, can feel the coolness from the way its shadow blocks the sun as it towers above, only feet from her; she grips the pitiful knife in her sweaty palm and prepares to strike as close to the neck as she can get. All she needs to do is cut off its head, and then she was rich.

Her grip on the dagger tightens and her blood runs icy when the creature cornering her utters a single phrase in its gritty, underused voice.

"Are you injured?" it croaks coldly.

Shadowheart hesitates. Turns out her theory was correct; though she can feel the Gorgon's molten gold eyes bearing into her own, her body remains soft, alive. She tests her lungs, and fresh air flows in through her nose. She is alive.

'I'd been set upon by a predator

It was just looking for a meal, I saw ribs and fearful eyes'

Lae'zel is not stupid; she's been hunted day and night for years now, but nobody has ever gotten close enough to harm her.

Until Shadowheart.

She cannot immediately deduce Shadowheart's original intentions, for all she appeared to be was a helpless blind girl pursued by rapists and murderers. However, her disability proved itself a threat to Lae'zel; she can get close, too close. Close enough to land a deadly blow if Lae'zel is caught unawares.

So she decides to kill her. Eliminate such a threat once and for all, and Lae'zel can go back to her cold, isolated life in the ruins.

It had not been long since Lae'zel sent her away, letting her leave freely if she promised not to try anything stupid. That was her first mistake: showing her mercy. Shadowheart took this opportunity and fled, battered and exhausted. She'd be slow, easy prey.

She finds the girl in the evening, struggling through a waist-high grassy field. She must have lost the path at some point and failed to find it again. The tall foliage made the perfect cover for a creature like Lae'zel, who could easily weave her way through the blades and take her prey by surprise. As she draws nearer, the scent of copper fills the air. Peeking over the grass she can see that Shadowheart is struggling for a multitude of reasons; the thick grasses slow her down, yes, but she is more slowed by the deep gash in her side, blood bubbling out between her fingers as she attempts and fails to staunch the flow.

Lae'zel may be a monster, but she is more honorable than kicking a creature while it's down. She watched the ailing girl for a few moments longer, gauging how far she might make it. She only gets a few dozen more steps in before she crashes to the ground, uttering a pained groan before going still and quiet. Lae'zel quickly scans the area for any other life. Satisfied by the silence, Lae'zel darts forward and peers down at Shadowheart tangled in the grass, covered in smears of dirt and dried blood. She seems much less threatening in this state, and the Gorgon cannot help but give in to her piqued curiosity; she scoops the white-haired woman up and roughly tosses her over her shoulder, sliding effortlessly through the field once she finds a useable path that leads toward her temple.

Shadowheart is all but dumped on the dusty floor to wait there until she regains consciousness. Then, she will be Lae'zel's to do with whatever she pleases.

'What is it that stays my hand now?

With so much misery that I could mercifully put ends to

For that animal I let slink off into the undergrowth, unscathed

Do I not fear death, but just pretend to?'

Shadowheart is not a prisoner, Lae'zel insists. She is a merely a guest who is not allowed to leave until she recovers. This leaves her with plenty of time to plot and scheme, to plan the slaughter of this demon and be done with it. But night after night, she lies awake sleepless, unable to bring herself to action. She cannot bring herself to kill the creature who likely saved her life, who continues to let her stay in its home and asks nothing in return.

Maybe she plans to wait until Shadowheart is healthy again to kill and eat her. She doesn't know. Instead of worrying over it, she talks.

She mostly talks to herself for the first few days. When Lae'zel is around—usually only to check that Shadowheart had not tried escaping for the third time—she says little to nothing; her vocabulary seems to consist primarily of grunts and sighs and hissing. A lot of hissing, especially when Shadowheart accidentally shifts too close.

She comments on the Gorgon's collection of swords one night as she is slithering away into the darkness. It's a desperate grab at any kind of communication, and Shadowheart knows she's struck gold when she hears Lae'zel halt, then turn a fraction in the dirt.

"You wish to know of my swords?" she whispers, her tone suspicious with the barest hint of surprise.

Shadowheart nods all too eagerly, and she spends the rest of the night listening to Lae'zel tell the stories of nearly each and every one. Some she left out; whether they were too painful a memory or an insignificant one, Shadowheart did not know. But she listened.

And then the person behind the monster began to show through. Shadowheart would garner little bits and pieces of her history throughout the stories. She pointed to the jagged scar running down her right shoulder blade and told the tale of a clever thief who used mirrors to try and outsmart her. He'd managed to sneak up behind her and land a brutal slash down her back, but it wasn't enough to kill her. She puffed with pride as she regaled how she twisted and snapped him up by the throat with her injured arm, and grinned wickedly as his face froze in terror, the expression forever carved into stone.

She also tells stories of recent onslaughts of attacks, some by targeted monster hunters and others who happened to wander into her domain and wanted what she had for themselves, and what she had admittedly wasn't much. Shadowheart learns, through glimpses into Lae'zel's past, what a tortured life she's lived. She almost wonders if killing her would be a mercy, but shakes the thought away as Lae'zel dives into another tale centered around a bejeweled dagger. Then another, this time a hunter's bow.

By the time she is telling the story of the ogre and his crystalline club, Shadowheart is drifting into sleep.

'For it was starving, it was hungry

But had eyes too close to let me'

For a very long time, Lae'zel killed anyone that walked into her temple, whether she meant to or not. Innocent, curious children and poor lost elders were not even spared, and over time her heart grew cold and hardened from it. She learned to accept that she would be alone until her final day, and made surprisingly easy peace with that fact.

But then Shadowheart came into the picture; an equally as lonely annoying little farm girl with an overambitious sense of adventure, given her particular limitations. She intrigued and infuriated Lae'zel to no end. Why did she keep her up into the late hours of the night, when her time could be better spent curled into some cold corner, fighting for any scrap of rest? Why did she return day after day, sometimes staying away for as long as a week at a time, yet always comes back? It distressed Lae'zel greatly how empty and chilled the temple felt without Shadowheart's presence when only a month ago it would not have bothered her. She may have even preferred it. But now the wind whistles too loudly as it tears through the columns, the echoes of crumbling structures startle her when she is too deep in her head. It is driving her mad.

She watches the sun during the day and the moon during her sleepless nights, both in an endless rotation but never touching. How she longs for them to touch. The thought disgusts her, but she dimly wonders when Shadowheart will come back anyway.

'If you were easy to kill, I would have done it already'

Some days, when thoughts of Shadowheart torment Lae'zel to no end, she once more considers killing the girl. Out of sight, out of mind. But the image of Shadowheart bleeding, choking, dying by her hand tortures her far worse than even the tenderest of desires.

'Plagued by phantom noises

That that skeletal beast was haunting all my steps'

During the first few nights of Shadowheart's recovery, when she was delirious with pain and sweating with fever, she thought she could hear the heavy drag of a serpentine body around every wall and column. Her heart would race with panic while her body remained sluggish and weak, trapping her in place. If she were to be Lae'zel's prey, there was nothing she could have done to stop it.

Even after some flimsy semblance of trust had been established, both women slept with daggers under their bedding for some time.

'Questioning all my choices

With that dagger held unsheathed, I felt sick at my contempt'

Even after her body recovered, Shadowheart suffered. She struggled with the guilt of her choices; she could have killed Lae'zel as she intended to and save hundreds of travelers from a stony demise. But as she comes to learn, it is not Lae'zel who is the monster. It is instead those who seek to harm her.

For as long as Lae'zel has existed in her current form, she's been hunted. A target was planted firmly on her back the moment this terrible curse was inflicted upon her. She refuses to share her origin story, how she came to be this way, and Shadowheart does not press. Instead, a thick, sickening lump of empathy, remorse and fury lodges itself in her throat and sticks fast.

Every time she sees Lae'zel, with every new bit of information she learns, the lump grows and it chokes her further.

'For you were lonely, you were like me

Like some outside force had sent me

If I was easy to kill, you would have done it already'

Lae'zel's loneliness is not as apparent as Shadowheart's. She hides hers well, whereas Shadowheart's desperation for connection shows more plainly, and that scared Lae'zel. She kept her distance, only checking on the girl once a day at first, but over time Shadowheart's tendency to chatter away in that clipped, sarcastic tone of hers wore down Lae'zel's walls. The way she asked questions drew her in. Unbeknownst to Shadowheart, the monster's heart ached in very much the same way as her human one did.

Shadowheart gave up on killing Lae'zel a long while ago. She kept their visits a tightly bound secret; it wasn't as if anyone would notice she was missing anyway. Even without her eyesight, by now her feet carried her to the temple through memory alone.

'You are at my feet, we're by the fire

You're a gentle beast and I'm alive

You are at my feet, we're by the fire

You're a gentle, purring beast and I'm alive

You are at my feet, we're by the fire

You're a healthy, gentle, purring beast and I'm alive'

As Shadowheart slowly peels back Lae'zel's layers, she finds something she doesn't expect: a highly intelligent, fiercely loyal and passionate companion. She became somewhat protective over Shadowheart in the weeks they grew closer, threatening to hunt down and slay anyone who even mildly inconvenienced her. Underneath Lae'zel's pointed scales, sharp teeth and head full of writhing snakes is a women starved of loved yet too prideful to admit it.

One night, as Shadowheart reclined by the fire with Lae'zel curled next to her, she studied the beastly woman she harbored a thinly-veiled affection for. The serpents sprouting from the Gorgon's scalp formed a languid pile of warm bodies in Shadowheart's lap while her head rested atop a pillowy thigh. She found it interesting and endearing how the snakes mirrored Lae'zel's condition. When she slept, they slept. When she was ill or injured, so were they. They showed excitement and thrill in their own way when Lae'zel discussed a topic she was passionate about. They even seemed to like Shadowheart.

Past her broad shoulders, the wiry expanse of her body was cradled comfortably by her serpent half, and Shadowheart wondered with some shame whether she could fit in there next to her. She stroked a finger along the length of a dozing snake's head and smiled to herself when its strange reptilian eyelids fluttered. Lae'zel twitched and muttered in her sleep, and Shadowheart's heart clenched painfully at the implications of this kind of trust. She couldn't hope for something more than this.

She brushed her fingers along Lae'zel's long bony ones where they rested palm down against her thigh, and froze when she shifted. Groaning softly, Lae'zel's clawed fingers unconsciously wrapped themselves around Shadowheart's smaller, chubbier ones, gentle with her even in sleep.

Shadowheart's breath staggered and caught in her chest, and considered letting herself hope after all.

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