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ashintheairlikesnow · 6 months

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I Can't Cross O'er: An Interlude

CW: Captivity, child of whumper POV, blood, referenced whipping, magical whumpee, siren whump. For @amonthofwhump Tropeathon Day 4: Monster! Monster!

Bones in the Ocean Masterlist

Six years ago

A door shut, clicking into place, just down the hall. Carefully hidden inside one of the seven bedrooms in this wing of the house, Ford and his sister Nathalie waited, listening, as the man in the hallway took a deep breath. “By God,” The man muttered. “What a voice he has.”

Nathalie tried to peek around Ford's arm. “Is he-”

“Sssshhh.” Ford swatted at Nathalie without looking at her, and she swatted back.

“Like an angel…” The man continued, not realizing he had an audience - if currently a distracted one. “An absolute angel. The way he sings..."

Nathalie poked Ford right in his ticklish side with one finger, jabbing roughly. "Ford-"

"I said sssshh!"

"Don’t you dare tell me to shush, Guilford,” Nathalie hissed.

Ford looked at her, and whatever she saw on his face made the momentary triumph of mocking him with his hated full first name drain from hers. She laid a hand on his arm, then, awkwardly patting, whispering, “I’m sorry. I'm so sorry, Ford, I didn't mean it-"

“Don’t ever call me his name,” Ford said, but his voice was weak. Like always since his mother died, he felt tears rise unbidden and had to fight them back below. “Please, please don’t.”

“I didn’t mean it,” Nathalie whispered. Her eyes were huge and sad in the light that filtered in through the gauzy curtains across the room. “I really didn’t. I’m sorry, Ford. You’re not like him at all. I promise you're not."

He found a smile for her, just to watch the way her shoulders, which had hunched up, relaxed again. “It’s… it’s all right.” There was another sound, and Ford turned back, trying to peek through a crack in the door they were hidden just behind again. He couldn’t quite see the man, but he could hear him still muttering to himself. Thankfully, the Lord Fellswooth spoke to himself loudly enough that he hadn’t overheard them and realized he was being spied on by two of Lord Wentworth’s children.

Or grandchildren.

Or... prisoners.

Whoever they really were to him.

Seconds passed, and Ford could see in his mind the way the tall, strikingly thin Lord Fellswooth must be patting down his shirt, checking for wrinkles or any detail out of place. He’d been a fussy one at supper earlier, the sort to surreptitiously check the tines of his fork over before taking a single bite, as if checking for a smudge or a bit of tarnish he might make a barbed comment about. He was probably running quick fingers through his hair to get the little curl of salt-and-pepper over his forehead just so - he’d done that over and over since he’d come to meet with Lord Wentworth, as if it were some sort of compulsion rather than simple vanity.

Ford’s teeth worried at his lower lip as he listened to Fellswooth take a deep breath, murmur it was only a business call, of course, Theresa, that’s all, as if he were rehearsing his lines for a play, before he turned to leave. The two children eased back and away so no hint of them might be seen as he went past them - Ford's eyebrows knitted in confusion at a spot of bright red he saw on the Lord's cheek, smeared like he'd rubbed open a wound. The Lord's steps were nearly soundless thanks to the plush gold-threaded rug that ran the length of the hall all the way to the grand staircase that would take him right out the front door.

The butler met him there.

Mr. Keller was chilly sometimes but Ford mostly found him kind. His voice filtered up the stairs as he let Lord Fellswooth know his horse was saddled and waiting for him just outside. Mr. Keller had been around forever, he was very old and soon to retire, Father- the man who made them call him Father, anyway - said. He’d made mistakes, sometimes… more often lately.

There had been some sort of trouble with Mr. Keller writing letters that made no sense, begging for rescue from employment, that had led to some distant relations coming to the door last month, worried for his health.

Father had assured them all was well, and after speaking to Mr. Keller over a few days, the cousins or whoever had gone away again. Mr. Keller had been... different, ever since, but still mostly kind to the children.

Ford’s father read all Mr. Keller’s letters now before he sent them, and he’d put out an advert and told his very important friends he was looking for a new butler, that Mr. Keller was ready to step down and have a well-earned rest.

If he didn't just get thrown in the pond with the monster, like Ford's real father had been.

Once Fellswooth was safely gone, Ford eased out into the hall, the well-oiled hinges moving in perfect silence as he swung open the door. Nathalie was on his heels, creeping just behind him. They made their silent way towards the door that the fussy Lord had just come out of.

Ford paused just a foot away and turned to look at his sister over his shoulder, putting a finger to his lips.

Nathalie nodded, solemnly. Like Ford, she still wore a black armband, the sign of mourning after their mother’s death the year before. At ten, her face was losing the child’s roundness and thinning out. She looked like their mother had, more every year, and sometimes it hurt Ford to look at her at all. It would be six more years before their father would want to start looking into marrying her off, which meant only four years until marriage might happen for Ford.

The thought terrified him.

Ford had become a part of his father’s grasping ambitions only a month after Mother died, when she could no longer protect her children from Lord Wentworth’s plans for his family. Ever since, he’d been subjected to endless lectures on business ventures he didn’t care about overseas, tutored for hours every day on how to convince other nobles to speak to his father about those business ventures, or selling land, or… whatever it was that Guilford Wentworth wanted from them. All those lessons, in the end, centered around learning how to lie - or how to bring the aristocrats and royalty to meet with his father and his father’s awful creature.

Alongside all that unwanted education had been a rise in the careless, constant violence that had already dogged him all his life. He was not good enough at the skills Lord Wentworth wanted him to learn. He did not lie so easily, he did not care about colonies and copper mines a thousand miles across the sea. And he paid for not caring with bruises like the ones he wore even now, always and only in places that his clothing might hide.

Nathalie, though, wore no bruises, and neither did the twins. He’d done what he could to protect them all the way his mother had once tried to protect him. If he were married, though, especially if he were married to someone with more money or land and he had to go live with her family, he couldn’t keep Guilford’s anger on him any longer.

It would turn on his sister, until she was found a husband - and then it would finally turn on the twins, who had never known violence and would have no one to keep them safe any longer

What if whoever was picked for his sister’s husband was cruel, too? What if his own wife turned out to be some terrible witch, like Guilford Wentworth, just with hair ribbons? He’d rather die than be married, but he knew enough about his father’s monster by now to know that it wouldn’t matter what he wanted, when the time came.

He’d want whatever he was told to want, once the monster sang its hideous song. He'd be a dutiful, loving husband, or he'd be a dutiful loving son, or he'd have his throat torn open and turn to bones in the bottom of the pond in the garden, just like his real father.

Ford closed his fingers slowly around the doorknob, turning it as quietly as he could before he gently pushed the door open so he and Nathalie could peek inside.

They had come to peek at the monster.

The awful thing looked handsome and harmless. It perched along the edge of a heavy mahogany desk, leaning against it and looking away, towards the window, one hand over its mouth. Jet-black hair fell wavy, as if it had only just dried after a swim in the ocean, over beautiful eyes and curled around its ears. Its hair was all mussed up, as if it’d been grabbed at and pulled on, but the creature didn’t seem to notice.

It looked, with the last of the sunset’s yellowed light shining on its warm brown skin, like a sort of perfectly sculptured mockery of a human man, the most beautiful one Ford had ever seen in his life. It was only a trick, of course - it was more of a demon.

Ford had seen its real face when it killed his real father, a mouth that opened too wide and was full of hideous sharp teeth.

It wore some sort of loose robe that fell off one shoulder. It was covered in embroidered flowers in white against the shining pale blue fabric and tied at the waist. Its arms were crossed in front of itself and it hunched over, just slightly. The markings like tattoos that began just under his jaw on one side disappeared into the neckline where it lay over the thing’s collarbone and then reappeared along one delicately formed wrist, running all the way into its palm and over its long, elegant fingers. One of its legs was marked, too. When Ford looked at the monster’s feet, he could see one was covered in the same markings all the way to the very end of its toes.

“It's done, for now,” The monster said to no one, its voice soft. It spoke like a melody, a rumbling bass that could just as easily soar to tenor. Ford had taken singing lessons, for a while. He was hopelessly rubbish at it.

The twins, though, were good. And the monster sang like heaven.

There was a pause.

“Done,” It repeated, dropping to a whisper. Its voice cracked and broke this time, rasping. There was a horrible sorrow and anger in the lines of its beautiful face. “For now." Its voice rasped, suddenly, went rough-edged like it was talking around something blocking its throat. "Until the next, and the next, and the next…”

When it looked to the window, towards the sunset, the light glimmered along trails of shimmering wetness that ran down its cheek. Its body shook, and it dropped its head into its hands, letting out a wretched, shuddering sob.

He’d seen this thing murder his real father, sing him into the pond in the garden and then rip out his throat and stain the water red while Ford had watched, unseen, his own hands clamped tight over his mouth beneath his wide, nearly bulging eyes. He had been screaming, desperately muffling the sound, until he’d run for his mother, and discovered that she… she wasn’t the same either, anymore.

She hadn't died for years after, but really she had been mostly dead already, as soon as his real father was.

Once the monster sang to you, he took whatever he wanted of you away, and only left what was useful for the family. Which just meant useful for Lord Wentworth, which Ford’s real father hadn't been any longer.

The monster had taken from Ford’s mother even the memory of his true father. No one had cared enough to bother to take it from Ford, or Nathalie. No one listened when they insisted their father was someone else, someone no one in the house even knew had ever existed any longer. The twins had only been babies, and they wouldn’t remember anyway.

Weeping or not, it wasn’t a person, and Ford steeled himself against how much it hurt to watch the thing cry. It might weep like a man, and look like one, but Ford had seen it kill on command.

The creature turned away toward the window, its back now to the children spying on it from the doorway. Ford and Nathalie both inhaled sharply as the robe it wore slipped a little, dipping low enough to show that it was bleeding.

Ford felt something cold and shivery-sick dip in his stomach as he saw stripes of torn-open skin smeared in a horrible too-bright red just above its shoulder blades and down its back, disappearing beneath the shining black satin, only to still show through in spots here and there that seemed to stick to its skin. The blue robe turned the blood soaking through it purple, a sickly color that made Ford think he might be sick all over the floor.

There was-

There was so much blood.

Ford’s throat suddenly felt like it might close all on its own, and he jerked in a hissed breath. He felt sick just looking at it, too bright and too red. His stomach flipped and twisted, his heart racing its way up his throat as if it might come flying out his mouth.

There was blood on the floor, spattered on the wall by the window. It looked like a murder had been done, and yet Lord Fellswooth and the monster had been alone, and only the monster wore wounds.

What had Lord Fellswooth done to it?

Fellswooth had lifted his upper lip in a sneer just looking at how dusty Ford had been when he’d returned from the afternoon ride on his favorite horse. He’d run fingers over the washbasin stand checking for specks of dust Mr. Keller and the other servants might have missed. He’d shuddered just walking in the front door when the stable boy’s wolfhound had tried to lick at his palm.

What sort of man who could be so fussy as all that could tear the monster’s back to shreds and simply leave his blood running down his body to drip to the floor as he stood by the window?

How badly must all those wounds hurt?

Not that Ford cared, or anything. It was a murderous monster creature his false father used to enthrall and get what he wanted out of everyone who came near him. It wasn’t even human, it spent almost all its time in water hiding under the surface, coming out only when Lord Wentworth summoned it. Ford didn’t care about it at all.

But…

But that didn’t mean he thought it should bleed like that.

Even monstrous animals were only animals, after all, and this might be a creature of murder but did it need to suffer for that? For someone else's fun?

The monster, standing before the window staring out at the setting sun, began to sing to itself. Unlike the song they’d heard before when it was alone with Lord Fellswooth, this song was neither strident nor even very loud - it was a private song, one it sang only for itself. Its perfect voice did not swell or even rise much. Instead, each note seemed like a sidestep to the last, a winding staircase of melody that it wrapped around itself like a kind of blanket.

Ford caught his breath, listening. He could almost hear where a harmony should be, if there had been more of those… things… singing at once. Maybe this had been a song it sang with its own family, if it had had one.

Did monsters have mothers, like men did? They must. Everything living had a mother at one point or another, didn’t it?

The song was his pain, Ford realized. Winding and circling itself, neverending, a river even monsters would drown in when they never found shore. It was the creature's way of crying, beyond human tears. It wept, by the window, in a way that stole Ford's breath and made him want to weep alongside it.

“He’s so pretty,” Nathalie breathed, just beside him, her own wide eyes shining with tears. Her voice was too loud but his own felt too caught in his throat to shush her again. “He’s so pretty, Ford, isn’t he?”

The monster’s voice cut off all at once.

It spun around to see the two children who had - without realizing it - leaned further and slid the door a little more open. Ford’s heart dropped to his knees as those fathomless dark eyes locked on his. He and Nathalie both gasped as they fell under the thing's direct regard.

“Oh, no,” He whispered. "Nathalie-"

The monster opened its mouth in a snarl as it pulled its robe so tightly around itself nearly none of its skin could be seen any longer. Ford and Nathalie both froze at the sight of row after row of razor-sharp pointed teeth as it bared them.

“Go!” It snapped, in a voice that was not human, that spoke the human tongue in a roar and with a mouth not made for it. “Go away from me! Now!"

Ford's heart was in his throat "We're-... w-we're sorry-"

"Fear the monster your father keeps more than death itself and get away from me!”

The last was a shrieking command, not a song but a singular deafening note. Ford felt himself turning before he could even breathe. The command took effortless hold and he grabbed Nathalie's hand.

Get away from me.

The children could never have done anything but obey.

They fled shouting their fear of the monster, half-falling down the stairs and racing outside until Mr. Keller, who had seen Fellswooth off, caught them in his arms. Both of them burst into tears, there, while the stableboy and the groomsman stared surreptitiously in confusion. Mr. Keller held them, and shushed them, and finally took them to the stables in the hopes that he could calm their tears before Lord Wentworth overheard.

Inside, Guilford Wentworth’s monster sagged and then sank to the floor, his knees simply giving way until they touched the rug beneath him. He bent over until his forehead brushed the fibrous cloth, and he wept again.

This time, he wept in silence.

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