#even as he is punished barely out of his sickbed

[littlesparklight]

Opening snippet from a post-war, pre-reaching Sparta Helen/Menelaos/Paris fic I'm not writing yet but planning to write. (Tt follows the eight years of wandering, with Helen/Menelaos reconciliation and reconnection developing into OT3.) The scene came to me today so I had to get it out, other fics will be written before this one, haha. Paris survives his duel with Philoctetes, barely... *

"There you are!" Menelaos bellowed as he slammed the door to the bedchamber open - not the bedchamber he'd expected to open, not the one he'd first stormed through the second they'd reached the palace's gate, following the implication of Helenos' words.

He couldn't put a finger on why, but that Helen was still sitting in Alexander's rooms incensed him far more than the prospect of having to find her in yet another man's bedroom.

"Menelaos," Helen said quietly, smoke from the city drifting near the ceiling, head bent and hands around the handle of a dagger she had resting against Alexander's throat. White-knuckled and trembling, that was obvious even from a distance, but the throat so close to the blade was unmarred. "I was going to give him a gentle death, but I find I can't."

Menelaos stopped in the middle of the room, looking from wife to wife-stealer. Thought Alexander looked rather dead already, pale and sweaty, but he was still - barely - breathing. Helenos had clearly simply mistaken on how soon Alexander was going to die from the poisoned arrow he'd taken, but in that case there was something ghoulish in Alexander's brothers having fought over his stolen wife before he was already dead.

Shaking that thought away, Menelaos fixed his stare on Helen, his hand aching around his sword.

"And why can't you?"

Not out of a wish for a punishment, that much was clear, for Helen's voice had been soft with sentiment, and her large, shining eyes were dark with many emotions, but not anger. Fury slid cold through his limbs, carried on a snake bite pain in his heart, at the realization that Helen still loved Alexander.

"He has many faults, but he doesn't deserve to die in more pain or humiliation than has already been visited on him," Helen said firmly, looking up now even as she reached out - to brush a couple limp curls for Alexander's cheek. Menelaos' jaw hurt from how hard he was grinding his teeth, but a glance down at the sleeping, or unconscious, man didn't deepen his anger. Alexander looked small and fragile, pale where he'd been tanned just a week ago. Angry at himself now, for how weak his heart was, Menelaos snapped his gaze back up to Helen, drawing a too-hot breath. She got there before him. "If you promise me you will do it kindly, right here and now, I won't stop you."

Perhaps that hurt just as much as Helen leaving originally had, as finding Helen sitting here beside Alexander's sickbed, tending the pale flame of his struggling life.

"Fine," he ground out, stomping across the room and snatching the dagger from her lax grip. Turned around - and maybe that was his downfall, maybe that was why Helen hadn't been able to do anything either, but to slit his throat gently, to allow Alexander's life to slip out on a quiet, bleeding breath and not just stab his in the throat or chest, one had to see what one was doing.

If it was only the throat, it wouldn't have been an issue. A throat was a throat, one much like the other, even graceful as Alexander's was. But Menelaos was staring at his throat, the pointed chin, above that a slack mouth that looked wrong, caught in tension sleep ought not to have, robbed of an ease of movement and smiles Menelaos remembered. Alexander laughing in the sunlight during a hunt in Sparta. Quiet, smothered huffs as they hiked up Mount Ida, little curls dark with sweat sticking to his forehead, but never complaining out loud. The angled, low-lidded looks thrown his way while long-fingered hands caressed strings, both in Troy and Sparta, before everything.

And that was the problem, wasn't it?

It shouldn't be one, not with what Alexander had done to him, but it was. It was, and Menelaos found his hands trembling with tension as he stood there, the idea of killing this pale-faced, fragile-looking version of Alexander while he couldn't even theoretically defend himself sitting ill on his heart. It was his right, though. It was. Shadows danced with the bare few oil lamps lit, but they didn't match the steady little flames.

"Well?" Helen snapped, her hands tightly folded in her lap, not having moved from her seat other than shift away enough to give Menelaos a chance to squeeze in next to the head of the bed to reach. "Are you going to do this, or not?"

"Be quiet!" How was he supposed to think, with Helen's liquid honey voice in his ears, accusing, knowing? The tunnelling vision the threatening darkness closing in despite the oil lamp just by the table on Helen's other side had caught him in wavered with her words. Why was he even hesitating, dawdling here? He could just take Helen and go, even if he couldn't kill Alexander. The room grew darker again, easier to do what he was supposed to, for now it was harder to see Alexander's face. In fact, he should - but someone else would find him, and if they didn't kill him themselves they might just take him along and present him to Menelaos in front of all the commanders, because surely he should want this one, particular life to spill by his own hands.

He should want this.

"You can't, can you?" Helen asked, accusation weighed down under that knowing, needling him. "You, who when faced with the man who had wronged you so, didn't reach for his sword, within such easy reach, when you lost your own, and didn't reach for a nearby spear either. You dragged him away instead, choking but not killing by will, and you're going to sit here and accuse me o---"

"Curse you!" Menelaos shouted, whirling around and tossing the dagger away. The shadows retreated, settled back where they should be while the knife bounced off a wall and only after that fell to the floor, spinning and skidding over the painted plaster to come to a gentle stop up against the feet of Helen's chair. He had his sword in his hand now, but he could use that as little as he could the dagger, and was facing his wife now anyway. "Curse both of you!"

His sword up between them, Helen stared at the bronze edge close to threaten her body, gleaming faintly in the light from a nearby oil lamp. She looked up, eyes huge and infinite, lips thin and bared her throat.

"Well?" A repeat of her earlier demand, but this time it was soft. Weighted with emotion, and surely she had more words than this - Helen always had more words, she wouldn't just sit here quietly while faced with a sword intended for her neck. But she was, hands still folded in her lap, nails digging into her skin. She didn't need to say anything, anyway.

"Helen---" Menelaos' voice cracked partway through and he reached out - not with his sword, but with his other hand. They both flinched when his fingertips brushed her cheek, but whereas the hot, wet weight in Menelaos' chest spilled up and over, flooding him and burning his eyes, sight turning blurry, Helen's gaze was steady.

Her lips trembled briefly as she, still staring, tilted her head just slightly into the cradle of Menelaos' hand.

"We're leaving," he proclaimed, sheathing his sword and feeling lighter than the heavy tears he had to scrub away should account for.

"We're not leaving him here," Helen countered, her voice firm but her eyes begging-wide.

Menelaos should be angry, he felt, but he'd already had the same thought. The risk of leaving Alexander behind and then be presented with his still-alive but unconscious body and be expected to kill him like that - be expected to want it, when Alexander currently barely looked capable of breathing - dragged the unsettled weight on his heart down into his stomach, unwieldy and nearly nauseous. If he could be assured no one would find him, maybe. Leaving him to die by fire wasn't the kindness Helen had demanded from him, but Alexander would surely die from the smoke alone before the fire came for his flesh. The thought brought no pleasure, despite that it should.

"Why - how - is he even alive?" Menelaos asked, grunting, as he dragged a hand down his face and turned back to face the bed. Not acknowledging what Helen had said, but his answer was plain in his attempt of wrapping Alexander up enough he might pass unnoticed through the confusion of the city. He just needed to get both of them to the camp - he would have gone directly there with Helen anyway, would be expected to. This might yet work. "From the way his brother talked, I expected to find you with another brother of his, not sitting by his bedside. Is he even alive?"

Menelaos glanced between Helen and the bed. Alexander didn't really seemed to be, despite his shallow breathing and thundering, too-thready heartbeat when Menelaos lightly touched his throat, skin hot and dry. He didn't stir at all when moved.

"He is," Helen insisted with the fervent intensity of belief. Menelaos almost felt bad for her, but if Alexander never woke again, or died out at sea, then this would've been a small price to pay. "A nymph came a couple days ago, and though she didn't stay, she gave me a mix of herbs. Said they wouldn't have been enough if he wasn't born of the blood he was. Apparently there's enough naiad nymphs and river gods in the bloodline of the Trojan family to fight against Hydra poison."

Helen chuckled, a soft, dry sound, and shook her head. "He woke up the other day, if only briefly. He eats, what little can be encouraged into him, even when he can't fully wake. He's alive. No thanks to Deiphobos. If I hadn't been awake when he slipped inside here, Paris really would be dead. Is he dead?"

Menelaos might have startled from the crack of Helen's voice, vicious in the smoky air, but for as long as it'd been since he heard it, it wasn't too surprising. He'd heard stories of Helen's anger when she'd been kidnapped by Theseus.

"He is," Menelaos said, and the slight shudder through Helen, as well as her drooping shoulders, was not relief just out of anger at Deiphobus attempting to, if not kill, then speed up his own brother's death to marry her. Whatever Alexander had been, the reasons she'd followed him, Dephobus wasn't something she'd wanted.

Deiphobus shouldn't have happened at all, Alexander dead or not - the weight of judgement on Troy would be a little lighter, from the gods at least, if they should've given his wife back, then. But they hadn't. Shaking his head, Menelaos picked a thoroughly swaddled Alexander up in his arms, and even with the extra weight of blankets he definitely weighed too little. He turned around to face his wife, and they stood there for a few, far too long moments, staring at each other. He was burdened enough - would she choose to run, now, despite this? Despite everything? Maybe because of it?

Helen stepped close, her hand latching onto his elbow and her nails now digging into his skin instead of hers. It was as much a relief as it only made the weight in his gut lurch sideways with an uncomfortable awareness of beginning, and it didn't even have to do with the softly brown curls tickling his mouth. Alexander's presence - whether he truly survived this or not - wouldn't make this easier, no, but his absence wouldn't heal fifteen years gone, either.

He had what he wanted, but now, as he got himself walking and Helen followed, Menelaos had no idea what to do, going from here.

[mythologyfolklore]

Baldr in Hel - Ch. 02

(A/N: This contains Baldr having a mental breakdown and also a brief discussion about when an unborn baby gets a soul. There is also a cameo of foreign underworld gods.)

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Baldr's POV

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It had been two days since he had arrived.

At least he thought so.

The underworld sun never set and the UV-A light¹ bathed the entirety of Niflheimr and Helheimr in permanent ghostly twilight. There was no day-night cycle. It seemed to Baldr, like time stood still in this murky, chilly world.

Fortunately the Bright One had quickly figured out, that Hel had a rigid schedule he could orientate himself on.

The meals played a big part: there was a warm and simple breakfast for the Queen of the Dead (and for him, since he had a seat of honour at her table), an opulent lunch and a warm, but light dinner (Hel had told him, that it was better not to eat too much in the evening).

Baldr didn't believe, that the ingredients for the food were home-grown; that was impossible around here. But he didn't dare ask, where they came from.

Hel also had the habit of getting up early, earlier than Baldr was used to. Perhaps it was because his habit was to rise with the sun, or maybe it was the black light of the underworld sun, which made him feel like he was woken up earlier than usual.

Hel's two personal servants, Ganglöt and Ganglati, worked rather slowly (no surprise with how elderly they were) and Hel had advised him to make requests at least an hour in advance, whenever he wanted something.

Baldr had also learned quickly, that Hel was rather morbid, when it came to naming things.

Apart from her gargantuan palace, Éljúðnir, her own bed was named Kór (sickbed), its curtains Blikjandabol (gleaming bale), her table was named Hungr (hunger), her knife Sultr (starvation).

(“Why do you give your possessions such dark names?”

“Why not?”

Later he had learned from her manservant Ganglati, that her gallows humour – which she clearly had got from her father – was her way of coping with her ruined youth.)

And last but not least …

“Uhm, Hel? May I ask you something?”

“Certainly.”

“Why is there a pitfall in front of your audience hall?”

“Oh, you mean Fallandaforað²? That's my threshold.”

Threshold???

“It sorts out anyone who has malicious intent and or is guilty of hubris.”

Now Baldr was even more confused. “Uhm … could you elaborate please?”

“Alright: every soul has an individual signature, made up of character, memories, thoughts and good or bad deeds they have done in life. Over the chasm of my threshold goes an invisible magical film. Most people are able to cross it, no problem. The really bad ones stumble over invisible obstacles, but they get across. But those guilty of hubris or ill intent fall into the chasm. Their punishment is to be lost forever in the deepest and darkest pits of Niflhel.”

Baldr felt a cold shiver run down his spine.

Hel's emotionless tone and face hadn't made her explanation any less scary. Neither did her sudden changed of disposition, when she suggested talking about something more pleasant.

When he asked her personal servants about it, Ganglati, her elderly butler, just laughed: “Well, that's how our queen is. She's very changeable, both in appearance and in demeanour. If she has a blank expression all the time, well, that's just Hel being Hel. But here's a tip; if you want to get a hint on how she's feeling, pay close attention to the state of her left half. The worse her mood is, the more decayed her face is. But if she's happy, it looks just as lively and beautiful as the right side of her body.”

The light god tilted his head in interest. “Is that so?”

“Mhm.”

“You two must have known her for a long time.”

Ganglati nodded affirmatively. “Oh yes. We were already long here, when she came here as a young thing. Such a frightened, poor little lass she was. Such a burden on the shoulder of a ten-year-old. It took her a while to grow into her new role, but we were there through all of it, Ganglöt and I.”

Compassion struck Baldr with an intensity he hadn't felt in quite a while (and he was quite a compassionate person, a “bleeding heart”, as Loki had called it scornfully).

The things this woman must have gone through!

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Hel's POV

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Hel allowed Baldr to roam through the castle, so that he could get used to it (among other reasons).

The Bright One was curious and once he got over his initial apprehension, he asked her a lot of questions, which made her really happy. He was genuinely interested in her place.

Maybe it was selfish, but she would have been a fool, if she hadn't been grateful for this indeed very special revenge kill/“birthday gift” from her father.

Her life wasn't boring per se, just … repetitive. Always the paper work and the soul judging.

Well, at least the upside of the latter was the soul reading. Whatever the soul had experienced, she knew it, their memories, their wishes and hopes, their deepest secrets – some of which even the persons themselves didn't know – and of course their silly little mishaps.

Sometimes being a death goddess could be really fun.

She always had a story to tell and a friend from Hellas had given her the idea to write those stories down. Now she had to employ thousands of librarians to administrate the nigh infinite amount of media in her Halls of Knowledge. But hey, the dead might as well make themselves useful.

Hel was quite sure, that Baldr would be dying to see them, once he found out about them. Maybe she would have to drag him out of there; reading his soul had revealed, that he loved stories and reading.

One thing was for sure: he was really curious about the little light that floated about the hallways of the entire castle. Once Hel was showing him the halls he was going to inhabit, once the problems were fixed, when Baldr caught one of the little lights in his hand. The next moment he yelped, let go and the light quickly escaped.

“It bit me!”, he exclaimed in shock. Hel took a look at his hand. There was no blood, but one of his fingers had a visible bite mark.

She smiled lopsidedly. “You have to excuse them. They panic easily and when they panic, they bite.”

“What are they anyway?”, Baldr asked. “I've been wondering for a while.”

“These, Baldr, are the souls of stillborn children”, Hel revealed. “Babies, who just transformed from a bunch of cells to living, sentient beings, who just gained a soul – only to lose this spark of light almost immediately, before they could even see the world and take their first breath. Some of them had already been born, when they died – usually of sickness, or because they were considered weak and were abandoned. So they're as confused and upset as babies can be.”

Baldr looked pained. “That's awful”, he whispered.

“It is”, Hel agreed. Then she hummed a little melody and the baby souls gathered around her head and hands, including the one that had bitten Baldr's finger.

“Hello, children”, she greeted them. “How are you today? Are you playing nicely?”

Their answer was a barely audible hum, a chorus of susurrated words only she could hear. The tiniest of them (the little finger biter) nuzzled her right cheek.

“Hey there, sweetie”, Hel smiled. “I see, you're growing teeth.”

She turned to Baldr. “Come here, Óðinnson. This little soul wants to tell you something. But pay very close attention and keep your voice down; the souls of the stillborn have the faintest voices and are most sensitive to noise.”

Baldr approached and hesitantly opened his hand. The tiny soul floated onto it, then up his arm and onto his shoulder, right next to his left ear. His eyes widened in evident surprise, as the soul whispered something into his ear. But then he smiled and whispered back, that it was okay.

The soul nuzzled his cheek too and made a humming sound, which prompted the other souls to float over and orbit around the glowing god.

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Baldr's POV

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Baldr wasn't quite sure, what to do, but at least the souls seemed comfortable around him, so that was a good thing. Hel seemed pleased at the sight.

“Are they attracted to my light?”, he asked softly.

“Oh yes. As I said before, most of these children have never seen the light of day, but some have. The big one on your hand, that's Ragnar. He died at the age of three and is the oldest of the group. He just told the little ones, that your face shines like the sun. So they're really excited. They had no idea the sun was so bright, warm and beautiful.”

“Oh”, he breathed and his cheeks reddened considerably (seriously, what was that with all the blushing lately?).

Some of the souls made a noise that sounded suspiciously like giggling.

Of course this wasn't the first time, that someone likened Baldr's brightness and fairness to the sun, but to him it meant so much more, when it came from a child.

“I agree”, Hel responded to his process of thought. “It does mean a lot more from a small child. They don't say these things to flatter or to be poetic or romantic, but because to them it's a simple truth.” She smiled. “Look at them, they really like you! They orbit around you like planets! Seems like you're called 'The Beloved' for a reason. Even the dead love you.”

These words made him glow a little brighter with joy. “I'm glad”, he said gently.

They stayed there for a while, before continuing their tour, leaving the souls to play.

After walking for a while, Hel asked her companion: “What's the matter? You're so silent.”

“Just wondering, that's all”, Baldr mumbled. “When does a being get a soul?”

“Hm, I think it's an ethical or philosophical question”, Hel mused. “Some say, it's at the moment of conception, some say it's at birth. But to me, it's the moment, when their tiny little organs start working; the moment they become viable.”

“Why can the souls talk?”

“Unlike their mortal shells, souls have a voice, mind and conscience from the moment they spring into existence. Even if the creatures themselves can't speak, their souls can. And if you can hear the soul inside a creature, you can understand them. You can read them like books.”

“Like you can?”, Baldr asked.

“Yes and no. I can only read the dead. The living are an enigma to me”, Hel admitted. “That's one of the reasons I prefer the company of ghosts. Another being the way the living look at me. The horror, fear and disgust in their eyes … I hated going outside in Jötunheimr.”

He gasped: “Your own kind was afraid of you?!”

“Yes. We led an isolated life deep in the Járnviðr. But sometimes mother would have to travel to the next settlement for groceries and then she would take us along, because she couldn't leave us alone at home. But it's not fun to go outside, only to be called a 'monster' a 'freak', or other charming things like that.”

Baldr felt his heart crack.

This wasn't right. She didn't deserve this.

Unable to stop himself, he took her hand.

“I don't think you're a monster or a freak”, he spoke softly.

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Hel's POV

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Hel felt a blush rise to both of her cheeks and for the first time in quite a while, her left side turned lively.

“You don't?”, she asked

The dead god shook his head vehemently: “Absolutely not! They were fools for not seeing your magnificence!”

Her blush intensified and she couldn't help but smile.

“Thank you, Baldr. That means a lot to me.”

Of course it didn't escape her, that her apparent joy made him happy in return.

Oh Baldr, you sweet and messed up summer child.

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A few hours later, at the lunch table, he thought of another question.

“Hel, can I ask you something?”

“Of course you can.”

“Uhm … do you come after your mother? I mean, you definitely have Loki's wit and gallows humour, but except for that, I don't see much of a resemblance between you and him.”

Hel smirked.

Baldr giggled: “Okay, scratch that. That is definitely a Loki-smirk.

“Why, thank you!”, the Queen of the Dead snickered. “I'll take that as a compliment. But to answer your question: yes, I do come more after my mother – at least on the good side.”

By his curious eyes she could tell, that he wanted to know more, but was afraid to ask.

“Go on”, she encouraged him.

He fidgeted a little. “Your mother … what was she like?”

Hel tilted her head. “Why did you hesitate to ask me that?”

“W-well … I thought … I …”

“That it would hurt me to be reminded of her?”

“Y-yes.”

“It doesn't”, she assured him. “I like remembering my mother. She was the most unimpressed person you could ever meet. Very outspoken too, though she didn't talk much. She didn't smile much, but never got angry either. She would teach us her magic and all kinds of runes and spells. Mother didn't play with us, that was father's job. But sometimes she would do something sweet. Small gestures here and there. When I was a little girl, I asked my mother for bells to play with. She said no, but on Yule I found them in my Yule bag. It was father, who gave them to me, but he whispered into my ear, that it had been mother's doing. 'But that's a secret, sweetie', he said, 'Don't tell Mama I told you'. These …” She took the scythe, which was leaning against the table and shook it, making the bells ring, “… are the very same bells. They're my most priced possession.”

Baldr was smiling from ear to ear. “That's such a sweet story! You and your family must have been so close.”

“We still are”, Hel corrected. “We always were, always are and always will be. I'm sure that as an Ása you know that kind of love. During my brief stay in Asgard I could tell, that your family is a very tight-knit group.”

He clearly understood.

“I want you to understand, Baldr, that it doesn't upset me to talk about my family. I have nothing but fond memories of them. What upsets me is what your family did to us. My brothers and I, we were only children, when your father tore us apart. I do not truly hate Óðinn, because I know and understand, why does what he does. Still he hurt us and for that I resent him.”

Baldr nodded sadly. “I think I do understand. You're a strong person to not hate my father.”

Hel sighed: “I wouldn't call it strong. It's not so much strong as it is wise. It's the sensible thing to do. Hatred doesn't resolve anything. It just makes you more miserable, blackens your soul and clouds your judgement. My father is the hateful, vindictive one.”

“Can confirm”, Baldr said wryly and pointed to where he had been pierced by the mistletoe dart.

Right that moment, the waiters came in and brought lunch.

When Baldr saw the content of his bowl, his face brightened up.

“Ohhh, girolle stew with mussels!”, he squealed in delight.

Hel chortled, as the light god proceeded to practically inhale his food.

“You certainly have a healthy appetite!”, she snickered.

Baldr laughed sheepishly: “Yeah, Nanna would say that too. She used to joke, that, if we weren't so rich, I would eat us out of house and home.”

Hel snickered some more: “Don't you worry, Bright One. There is no danger of that happening. You can eat as much as you want.”

The blond beamed and refilled his bowl.

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Later Hel was sitting in her office doing her paperwork and making zoom calls.

She was on the call with a few of her foreign colleagues, when a knock on her office door got her attention.

“Wait a second, guys, someone just knocked on my office – ENTER!”, she called out to whoever was waiting outside.

She was a little surprised, when the door opened to reveal …

“Baldr! What can I do for you?”, Hel inquired.

He was smiling sweetly – primordial cow, it looked so cute!

“Hi, I just wanted to- oh, wait, I see you're busy”, he noted sheepishly. “I'm sorry. I'll just come back later-”

“Don't be silly! Come here, Óðinnson!”, she ordered.

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Baldr's POV

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Baldr obeyed, albeit hesitantly.

“Come”, she repeated. “I want you to meet my colleagues from abroad.”

He joined her behind the magical screens and saw the faces inside them.

“Everyone”, Hel addressed her colleagues, “I want you to meet my new companion. This is-”

“Baldr!”, one of the other underworld rulers exclaimed and waved behind their screen. “What a surprise! Hi!”

Baldr recognised the other and beamed. “Oh, hey, Persephone!”

Hel blinked: “You two know each other?”

Baldr nodded. “Yes, I've met her a few times, when my family and I would visit the Olympians for business-”

“So this is the dead god you're hosting now?”, one of the other zoom call participants asked. “I've heard of some god dying and entering your realm.”

“Yes, this is him”, Hel confirmed. “Baldr, this is Osiris, son of Nut and Geb. He's the king of the Egyptian underworld and very much like you. Osiris, this is Baldr Óðinnson, formerly the god of light, peace, joy, justice, spring and all that stuff – which should be obvious by the way he glows.”

Some of the foreign chthonic deities laughed.

Curiously Baldr regarded the Egyptian god. Through the screen he could tell that the other had green skin, was clad in white linen and wearing a white crown.

“So you died too?”

“Yes, no thanks to my brother Seth”, Osiris sighed. “My wife and some helpers sewed me back together and resurrected me. But since I was already dead, I couldn't return to the land of the living, so here I am, ruling the afterlife. But it's a nice gig and I'm comfortable here. I'm sure, you will like living with Hel too. Once you get used to her aloof demeanour, you will find, that she's a very likeable person.”

“Oh, I do!”, Baldr agreed eagerly. “I really like it here!”

He couldn't help but laugh, when Hel gawked at him like he had just grown a second head.

“What's so funny?”, Hel complained, “This is the first time I hear that sentence!”

Baldr gasped: “What??? Well, then I will have to tell you more often, because it's true!”

He was very pleased with himself, when the left side of Hel's face turned significantly more lifelike (though she was still deathly pale) and a blush tainted her right cheek.

That means she's happy, right? According to Ganglati, that means she's happy.

“Awww!”, some of the foreign underworld rulers cooed.

“So cute!”, Persephone gushed.

“Does anyone have something of importance to say, before I end this conference?”, one of the participants – a skeletal god with a splendid, colourful feather crown – asked.

Everyone else said no.

“Good. The meeting is over.”

Hel lost no time in switching her screens off.

Baldr gave her a questioning look. “Not even so much as a goodbye?”

“Not among us underworld gods”, she muttered. “Besides, I don't need to hear their gossiping. In that regard many chthonic deities are just as bad as most upperworld deities.”

Ah. No wonder she wanted to get away as quickly as possible.

“They're going to ship us, aren't they?”, he sighed.

“Like GodEx”, she grumbled. “Especially the married ones. You have to excuse them. Every time they suspect that one of us singles has even so much as a crush, they get all … stupid.”

“Ah. Yes, I've been there.”

“I know you have. By the way, you can sit down.”

Baldr smiled gratefully and sat on the chair in front of Hel's desk.

She leaned back in her own chair and regarded him across the table.

“So! What brings you here?”, she wanted to know.

He shifted in his chair.

For a few minutes he had forgot about what he had come here for, but now he was reminded. He had just wanted to … wanted to – oh Allfather, what had he been thinking? She was the Queen of the Dead, she had so many better and more important things to do than listen to his stupid-

“Go on. Spit it out.”

“I … I just … I …”

He grew pale, when he saw how the left half of her face decayed again and she began to frown. He was displeasing her. She was getting agitated, just because he couldn't even … damn it!

And just like that he broke into tears.

“I'm sorry!”, he blubbered, “I'm sorry! I didn't mean to- I'm sorry! I'm sorry!”

Through the blur he could just about make out Hel leaping up and darting around the table, then her right hand cupping his face and the other dabbing at his eyes with a paper tissue.

“Hey now.” Her voice was so gentle. “There is nothing to say sorry for. You don't owe me an apology. You don't owe me anything.”

“But … but …”

“Listen to me, Baldr”, she spoke sternly. “You don't have to please me. You don't have to live up to my expectations. I expect nothing of you. You don't have to put on a false smile and pretend that everything is fine, when it's really not. I know everything, Baldr. I saw the hurt, anxiety and depression, that broke you to the point where you wanted to die. I saw the lone moments, when you sought comfort in your twin's arms, because the pressure was too much to bear. But you know what? It's gone now. You're dead. You're free. Just let go.”

Let go.

Only one person had ever told him that in his life: Höðr, his dear twin-brother. No one else had ever understood.

In his beauty, purity and wisdom, Baldr appeared to be perfect.

He was not.

Blinded by admiration or envy, the people, who flocked around him, forgot that he too had his shortcomings. Höðr had been the only one, who had never forgot, had never expected anything of him. And now there was another person, who asked nothing of him either, who understood his feelings?

Baldr cried harder. He couldn't help it.

For a second he was confused, when Hel moved to take him in her arms, only to stop short. But then she shifted and let him lean into her right shoulder, instead of the left. Honestly, Baldr wouldn't have given a damn, he just wanted to be held, to cry his heart out and be told that everything was alright now.

This was wrong, because he was just one of many dead people and she was his new queen and sovereign. It was undignified and improper, downright insulting and disrespectful even, to get emotional in front of a monarch.

But for some reason Baldr couldn't bring himself to care.

He just drank in the physical closeness and Hel's soothing and placid aura and listened to her murmured words of comfort.

.

“Are you feeling a bit better?”, Hel asked, when he had finally stopped crying.

He nodded, sniffling. “Yeah … I think so. Thank you so much. I really needed that, I suppose.”

“No need to thank me”, she replied and handed him a jug of water. “Just know that, whenever you need someone to talk to, I'm all ears- uhhh, Baldr, why are you pouting like that?”

“Why are you wearing your hair like that?”, he all but huffed. “You haven't done that since Nanna saw your face and couldn't stand looking at it.”

She had brushed her black hair forward to hide the decayed part of her face and for some reason that bothered him even more now than it had a few days ago.

Hel made her “owl face”, tilting her head and looking at him with that bottomless black eye.

But it soon gave way to her usual blank expression.

.

Hel's POV

.

“Can you stand looking at it?”, Hel questioned earnestly. “Your breakdown happened after you saw how my condition worsened. You saw my face decay and flipped out.”

Baldr blushed and mumbled: “Uhm … it wasn't because of that. You see, I noticed that your left side changes condition and your butler explained to me, that it's affected by your mood. So when that happened earlier and you started frowning, I … I thought …”

“That you had displeased or even angered me”, Hel realised. “I see. Looks like I owe you an apology. I didn't mean to frighten you. I was getting impatient, because of your stuttering, yes, but angry? No. How could I ever be angry at someone like you?”

She flashed him a half smile.

For the first time in his life, Baldr acted on impulse: he brushed her hair out of the left half of her face and tucked it behind her ear.

“That's better”, he smiled.

It took her a heroic amount of self-control not to blush again, like a flustered teenager (Niflheimr, she was thousands of years old and had never once gotten flustered before Baldr had showed up!).

But damn, he's so adorable!

She coughed awkwardly and returned to her chair behind her desk.

“Now, that you have calmed down, what did you want to talk about?”

Baldr blinked, as if he had forgot.

But then he laughed: “Oh, right! I just wanted to know, if we could talk more about our families, you and I. If you want to and have time, of course.”

She could feel her left side become more lifelike, enabling her to smile fully.

“I would very much like that, Óðinnson.”

.

---

.

1) Ultraviolet-A light. The proper term for black light. As a god of light, Baldr would know everything about light and the different spectra and would probably say UV-A light, rather than black light. 2) Fallandaforað: "Falling Bale/Falling Danger", Hel's threshold.

[llendrinall]

Omg what if Draco was also a spy for Dumbledore? Like imagine him biting his tongue when everyone is hateful and cruel to him cuz he's gonna have the last laugh when it comes out he was a spy. And in this version Percy still fucks off. Draco stays behind cuz he wants to see everyones reactions (especially his asshole boss that made his life fucking hell) He could be a seer in this and secretly became friends with Harry during Hogwarts. Idk, add whatever you want ❤

Ha! I don’t know why that “Idk” at the end made me laugh.

I have different mental versions of Draco. I can see him more or less happy, more or less certain of what he wants to do or of his relationship to the wizarding world. Other things are fixed, they are the things that make him Draco and appear in all versions of him, like:

1.- He can draw. He might have more or less practice, but he can draw pretty well.

2.- He is smart in the sense of doing very well academically, being able to understand something instantly. He doesn’t need to put many study hours, so he doesn’t.

3.- He doesn’t like Dumbledore. Regardless of his relationship to his father and Voldemort, he just doesn’t like Dumbledore as a person. It has nothing to do with how Dumbledore treats people (although that certainly doesn’t help) it’s more visceral. Just like some people will look at an actor or celebrity and go “no, I do not find Jimmy Fallon funny and can’t tell you why”. This is the same.

So Draco would never become a spy for Dumbledore. Dumbledore’s spy, hell no.

However, at some point Draco looks at Voldemort’s white flabby face and thinks “oh, no, I’m not doing this.” He decides he is going to work against Voldemort, but with whom?

(Draco is very proud of knowing when to use “whom” and also lives in fear of getting it wrong).

Draco has to find someone who can be an actual challenge against Voldemort. The Ministry is out because they are stupid, incompetent and infiltrated to the brim. And who else is there? Potter? Draco goes to class with Potter. He has seen how he spells, meaning both his charm use (Potter knows one a half spells and that’s it) and his orthography. He simply can’t consider Potter a serious contender against Voldemort. Nothing against him, Draco actually, (secretly) kind of likes the guy, but Voldemort can read minds, knows all kind of ancient magic and performs incredibly complex curses and conjurations.

Draco has seen Potter lick ice-cream out of his t-shirt.

If Draco wants to get rid of Voldemort, there is only Dumbledore. Draco doesn’t spy for him. He does nothing regarding Dumbledore that involves the preposition ”for”.

But he shares information. There is a “to” in there. Give information to Dumbledore. He can do that. Draco is quite smart, so he is able to deduce Voldemort’s strategy from little clues. He knows about Voldemort’s quest for information (both for the prophecy and the elder wand) months in advance.

This does not happen in the same universe as Percy Ministry Spy, but Percy is acting as a spy nevertheless. This means that Dumbledore has a pretty easy run setting his plans in motion and ensuring Voldemort’s defeat. It also means that he suffers though some absolutely miserable months which probably have something to do with his enthusiasm for the let-Draco-kill-me plan.

Each and every interaction with Draco is a reeling experience. Draco is not handing the information for nothing. He wants Voldemort dead by next month and when Dumbledore doesn’t deliver, he complains. He complains (note the italics). Draco doesn’t ask for the manager because there isn’t one, but he actually asks if Dumbledore has any older siblings Draco could talk to. You could say Draco acts entitled, demanding and full of expectations, but those words mean nothing. Draco breathes past entitlement to land somewhere between “Angel of Vengeance” and “Greek fury”, only instead of a flaming sword or claws, he has attitude and an excellent command of grammar. What a horrible little child.  

Meanwhile, Snape has developed the habit of twisting every conversation so he can say “pity you don’t have any other orphan available to sacrifice” and “oh, if only we had a child to endanger” and “yes, but how can we solve this by killing a child?”. It is very rich coming from him. Dumbledore is not amused. Apparently there is a line for Severus Snape and that line is drawn when sacrificing oneself for the greatest good.

(“Ah, but it is not yourself who will do the sacrifice, is it?” Snape says, and a week later Dumbledore tells Draco that of course he will let him kill him. Draco scoffs and rolls his eyes as if somehow that wasn’t enough).

And then, there is Percy Weasley. Neither Snape nor Draco are supposed to know about him, but they both know and it is unclear how. Probably Percy himself let them know (no, he didn’t). He would do something like that (no, he wouldn’t). Percy is a horrid nightmare (he… he may be). Dumbledore despises him (and how!). Snape will talk about Dumbledore not doing the greater sacrifice but Dumbledore honestly can’t think of anything worse than working with Percival Weasley.

(70% of Dumbledore’s dislike comes from the suspicion that Percy might be two or three points more intelligent than him. After almost a century used to being the most intelligent person in the room by far, Dumbledore does not like this new scenario. He misses Grindelwald.)

Dumbledore dies. Then so does Potter (briefly), followed quickly by Voldemort (permanently). Surprisingly, Snape also jumps into this dying fashion until he thinks better about it and survives, although severely wounded. Percy doesn’t die but as soon as the battle had ended and all Death Eaters are either dead or apprehended, he dissaparates right there from the Hogwarts grounds.

He sends a postcard to Draco a month later, which is kind of nice. There is also one for Snape and Draco props it next to the vase of flowers by his sickbed.

Thus begins the After-War.

By day two, Draco understands why Weasley left so quickly. It is a fucking disaster. Potter has to plant himself by Snape’s bed to stop the Ministry from arresting him. The man is barely coherent and barely alive and yet they wanted to interrogate him and transport him to a holding cell. The Ministry. The ones who allowed themselves to be infiltrated.

It is perhaps unsurprising that when the Ministry sends a hastily formed examining tribunal to Hogwarts, so students can sit their OWLs and NEWTs in August, the examining tribunal refuses Draco.

Draco doesn’t particularly care. He is rich enough that he doesn’t need to work and, in any case, once they finally start proper investigations and find Dumbledore’s trove of notes and testimonies in his sealed will, Draco will be exonerated and recognized as the hero he is. This insult or punishment, whatever you call the Tribunal’s unfair treatment of him, doesn’t hurt. Draco is immune to their attacks.

Soon after, he receives a letter from bloody Hermione Granger saying of course he can sit his exams, they expect him on Tuesday at ten. McGonagall will be there to put the fear of herself on the Tribunal and ensure they are fair.

And… he appreciates her intervention, he really does. Awfully nice of her. True moral backbone. It’s just that… Draco actually enjoyed the insult? He realizes now that he only attempted to sit the exams because he expected them to say no.

He sits the exams and aces them. They are particularly hard in the last one, the astronomy test. McGonagall coughs three times, rolls her eyes and finally says “bloody enough, don’t you think? He has shown he knows the material.” He sends her a handwritten thank-you letter just to be annoying.

Draco realizes that his behavior is very odd, but given that Weasley has fucked off to somewhere and that Snape refuses to heal so he won’t have to talk to people, Draco believes he is entitled to some oddities of his own. Thus, he begins collecting insults. From the low-brow and simple “Death-Eater scum” to the vitriolic “murderer”. The best, and the worst, are the ones that don’t come wrapped in words. Shunning and discrimination. Oh! He can’t explain it, but they taste tart and sweet.

He likes it. Not the dismissing, no, but the idea that they don’t know him and that their judgment of him is wrong. If that means they will also wrong him and treat him badly, so be it. It doesn’t change that he and Snape and Percy Weasley, are the heroes of the war.

He applies to a mediwizard program and is naturally denied. Then he tries a traineeship at the Wizengamot, also denied. Just for the fun of it, he applies to the Auror Office and receives a wonderful letter of rejection that has an actual dead spider inside the envelope.

It has been three months since the end of the war, now, and Weasley refuses to let himself be found. Snape barely manages to stay awake for three hours, and only with Draco. Evidently the stress of the war did a number on them, so it’s perfectly understandable if Draco keeps prodding and asking and applying to things knowing full well that he will get a resounding “no”.

You would think this was some sort of atonement for his past misbehavior and his admittedly awfully narrow views and even more abysmal manners regarding muggleborns. But Draco is quite sure he atoned for all of that when he lied to Voldemort’s face and, more terrifyingly, he lied to Aunt Bella’s face, stole their secrets and passed them to Dumbledore. He doesn’t need to punish himself any more.

No, it’s just… it’s just hard. He has spent three years with a carefully crafted lie as his only protection. It is not so easy to discard it. He liked that lie. It kept him alive.

And then, come October, the Ministry takes Malfoy Manor and all associated assets. Just like that. Puff. Seized. They haven’t even begun an official investigation on Draco, but they have taken his house as a precaution.

Now it’s personal.

It turns out that Draco is a vindictive asshole, who would have guessed? Probably everyone but him. Doesn’t matter. He will make them pay. The Ministry, the papers who ran the headline about Draco becoming homeless and the people who cut the page and framed it. They will regret it.

He moves into Snape’s ugly cottage because he has no other place to go and if Snape has any objections, he can say so when he pleases. Oh? He can’t talk? Too bad, then.

The Ministry has also seized his funds and Draco draws a line at using Snape’s meager savings (he assumes they are meager, he hasn’t actually checked) so he gets a job in the only place that would employ him: a seedy tea shop in the North side of Diagon Alley. The only reason the owner hired him was because the previous assistant tried to burn the place down and he was in a bit if a rush to find a replacement. After a week, Draco understands why someone would want to burn the place down, and that’s before his boss realizes that Draco is drawing a small crowd of people who like seeing him serving tables. From then on, he takes to screaming and insulting Draco for absolutely everything before turning to his customers with a smug smile.

Every time he or any of the customers complains, Draco smiles a cheap version of the smiles he used to give Voldemort and vows. Sometimes their words sting and sometimes they break against his armor. He lives in a weird state between immunity and pain.

Dumbledore’s actual true will, to be open by Hermione J. Granger (funny how he didn’t address it to Potter) is found in late December. Given the state of the Ministry, Draco expects that they will only get around summoning Granger by early February at best.

Weasley sends another postcard around Christmas. This one comes with an address, in case either he or Snape also want to drop everything and fuck off, he supposes. Draco writes back explaining he is bidding his time to exact just retribution over all those who wronged him and Snape is in no condition to travel. Weasley writes, well, he doesn’t write, he sends a third postcard with quite a nice drawing of a thumbs up.

Snape can now sit up and read the paper. He still can’t get a single sound out, but he can manage sighing in a very meaningful way. They receive another summon to have Snape declare before a Tribunal and he groans before passing out and staying unconscious the next two days.

All things considered, Draco is evidently the one coping better so he feels he can afford a little extravagant behavior like sitting in front of a mirror and practicing his own sighs of heroic suffering for when the vindication comes.

It comes in March.

The world goes absolutely insane. People knew that Snape had done… something, mostly because Potter had very obnoxiously advocated on his behalf.

(Potter is so obnoxious. He comes every Tuesday to Draco’s tea shop and asks for a cup of tea that he barely touches and stays there for an hour saying nothing).

But they had no idea of the extent Snape’s involvement. None. All the curses he surreptitiously knocked aside, all the misfired spells. It wasn’t just gaining Voldemort’s trust and acting on Dumbledore’s plans, he, Snape, personally saved two dozen lives with none the wiser. He was so good at acting covertly!

That should be enough to make any good newspaper editor foam in their mouth, but there is more. There is Weasley, going twenty steps ahead and being ridiculously clever and talented and just… knowing what to do. There is already a shrine to him in Coleraine because he did something very important there and the locals were merely waiting to find a name to put to it. Percy Weasley has been declared tax exempt in all of Ireland.  

Draco merely has a meager thirteen lives saved on his ledger, but he also has three years of cleverly betraying Voldemort. It doesn’t look like much, but once details emerge of how he stole information and passed it to Dumbledore, the whole thing becomes charming. Double-o-Drac-o, is what the muggleborns are calling him. Snape assures him it’s a good thing, but he doesn’t elaborate because he is a bastard who pretends that writing tires him horribly.

Snape wasn’t planning on surviving the war and for the first time in years he is unprepared. He deals with it by trying to shut the world off. If he wasn’t so weak from his wounds, Draco is quite certain that he would have buggered off to wherever Weasley is now, to sit on the sun and be silent together. He certainly does not appreciate the wizarding world’s earnest interest in him. You would think that the fact that he can’t (or, at this point, won’t) speak would deter them a bit, but it only adds to Snape’s tragic charm. Some women and many young men are particularly attracted by it. Fortunately, Draco has only had to chase two of them out of the house because even though Snape can’t say a word, he remains very skilled at non-verbal magic so he hexes every journalist and deranged fan that has the misfortune of coming close to him. Meanwhile, Weasley doesn’t want to be found (“nooooo” says his last postcard, Draco is a bit worried at the lack of capitalization) and has a ten-month head start. He won’t be found.

This means there is only Draco. Shameful bronze medal in the saving-lives business, but with a delicious aura of cleverness and bravery, a whole year of suffering in silence during the post-war, and a face that was made to be dramatically lighted, photographed and printed in the front page.

Wil you answer our questions, Mister Malfoy? Oh, but he will, he will answer every one of their questions and give all details. No one has given so much, sacrificed so much, suffered so much as him.

“I literally died, Malfoy.”

“And I couldn’t afford dying, Potter. I had to survive. Now, get out, these people have some more questions.”

Potter has moved from coming every Tuesday to the stupid tea shop to visiting them at Snape’s cottage. Draco only lets him in because he might annoy Snape into talking. Plus, he is nimble, he can avoid all of Snape’s hexes and the extra exercise will do Snape good.

His relationship with Potter is… strange, but fittingly so. Everything else has been weird lately, why not this? Potter had always elicited interest, but once people learn that Dumbledore had more or less raised him for the slaughter and that when Potter found out he nevertheless went ahead and died, the press and the public in general goes even more rabid. You would think that with so many shocking stories the scandals would dull each other. But, far from that, the public is on fire, incensed, and each piece of news is kindling for the flames.

Potter, unfortunately, does not have a photogenic face (he tends to look like a sad lost deer in all pictures) and all the attention stresses him out. Draco offers him a mutually beneficial deal: Draco will take care of the press for him and Potter will stop the Ministry from returning the manor and his fortune.

“How is that beneficial?”

“I want to tell the press that they took it from me with no evidence before they have the chance to hand it back.”

“Ah, fair enough.” Potter says. He does not seem to be a big fan of the Ministry, which is a pity because this time the Minister is not attempting to kill him, use him, or run a smear campaign against him, unlike the previous ones. It seems that the odd behavior isn’t restricted to Weasley, Snape and him. The other Weasley (Ronald), Granger and Potter are also displaying oddities. Mostly, there is a lot of yelling at the Ministry (Granger) and at every single adult who ever interacted with Potter (Weasley, Ron). Potter isn’t doing any yelling, but he has taken to following Draco around and chatting at Snape.

(No, not “to” or “with”, “at”. He chats at Snape and Snape suffers in silence having accepted that Potter will deflect every hex thrown his way).

Draco doesn’t judge. He is still working at the horrible tea shop with the even more horrible and petty owner (who has no idea how to treat Draco now and spends every waking second alternating between insults and clumsy flattery) simply because he wants to lord over the Ministry that they took his house and money. If Potter feels like he has to follow Draco and harass Snape into making a full recovery, so be it.

There is, of course, the question of Weasley (Ronald) wanting to know where the only tolerable Weasley (Percy) is. Draco doesn’t tell, despite having his address on postcard number 2. That would be a betrayal bigger than anything he did to Voldemort. He could never do that to a person who managed to annoy Dumbledore so much.

What he does is sit down with two cups of tea and explain to Weasley (Ronald) what his brother did and what he went through and why he might not want to interact with any one he knows when, instead, he could be lying face down on a nudist beach in Spain. It helps. Weasley (Ronald) doesn’t track his brother down, but he manages to get him to reply to his letters. He is overjoyed.

The news about having lost his ancestral home and fortune come out and people are adequately irate. He enjoys it, but not as much as he expected. Some people squirm and blush and walk into doors with the embarrassment of how badly they judged him. Some even apologize to his face which is frankly disrespectful because then Draco has to be civil to them. Overall it is unsatisfying. He wants more, but he doesn’t know what he wants.

He almost accepts one of the multiple offers he keeps receiving to enter this or that prestigious program. He would make a good a lawyer. Fortunately, Weasley (the cool one) talks him out of it via postcard. The postcard has nothing written on it other than a smiley face (evidently the brother talks are going well) but it shakes something inside him.

This gives him the idea of apologizing to Longbottom (extremely uncomfortable for both of them) and Granger, who gets him in a number or boards and committees as punishment. Draco competes to be the most disliked person in each committee, which is hard because Granger is in some of them. She asks for immediate liberation of house-elves and a transition program for them and Draco finds himself demanding (just like he did with Dumbledore, full of bile and entitlement) historic reparations. Each blood-line who ever held a house-elf will contribute proportionally to the transition program. He gets death threats over it, it’s great.

Two years after the end of the war, Draco finds himself back in his manor, with most of his money (he doubled his contribution to the elf fund because then the families who want to wash their names would have to do the same) and, mysteriously, Harry Potter in his bed. He has no idea how that happened. He is quite certain he was too busy being a little shit to seduce anyone. Was he seduced when he wasn’t looking? How dare he?

He also has half a dozen very important postcards on his mantelpiece. The only thing he doesn’t have is an ex-Death Eater, ex-potion professor, living in his mansion because the old bastard finally got well enough to say “bugger off, both of you” and then fled to Ireland where the nice Weasley has got a nice little cottage of his own.  

[funkzpiel]

Recover

The second and final part to ‘Smother’, because wow this story was way more exhaustingly elaborate than I thought it would be. Fun. But fuck.

Also they fuck now, so that’s a thing somewhere in these 27-fucking-pages-of-word-doc-hell. The first half of it is relatively decently edited, but shit unravels quickly. I’m tired, I’m sorry. Enjoy.

For all her long years, Yennefer had always assumed that a witcher’s proclivity to accelerated healing came purely from their trials and mutations. Sterility in compensation for longevity. Even now as she traced a faint, gnarled pock mark of a scar on Geralt’s shoulder idly, she remembered the first night she had ever laid eyes on it. How it had been hot and puffy under her fingers as she traced its edges, lying in bed with him one night after having rendezvoused at some nowhere inn. She had been high from a newly found boon of research and he had been freshly bathed after a contract done exceedingly well, his purse unusually heavy.

She remembered how the gash had been barely closed and somewhat weeping when they started, although the witcher didn’t seem bothered by it at all except for a hiss through his teeth here and there when he moved it just slightly more than he ought to have. They had their fill of each other, supping from the cup of one another’s company and victory, and by morning the wound had closed. Puffy still, but it looked more like a gash three days along rather than hours. She remembered being fascinated. At the time she had wondered what, if anything, could keep a witcher down. It was thrilling to bed a creature as tailored by human machinations as herself. Thrilling, comforting even, to be known by someone so intimately familiar with that very distinctive existence, that pain. Like hearing the pitch of a string plucked that matched the sound of your own heartbeat, vibrating in your bones.

But now, the more she was left to suffer with a bedridden Geralt, the more she wondered if a witcher’s inclination toward swift recovery was not in fact simply a blessing from the gods to spare both witchers and the mortal world from their impatience and bullheadedness. Surely they’d all be dead, if not. Particularly Geralt.

She sat at his side, her back cushioned by pillows and the headboard as she took her time perusing the world-weathered pages of one of the Kaer Morhen’s very many bestiaries. Despite the white wolf’s restlessness, he was not recovering from his weeks-long stint of suffering as quickly as he or any of them hoped. Vesemir had mentioned more than once that Geralt was the first known case of a witcher surviving what they referred to as a ‘witcher’s blight’ or a ‘witcher’s passing’ – the end of the “Path”, so to speak – so there was no telling how long it would take the wolf to recover, particularly given how closely the man had come to death. The older witcher didn’t seem surprised that Geralt slept for hours at a time and woke for less. She tried to take comfort in that. Tried to take comfort in watching her witcher rest, but neither she nor Jaskier found much comfort in it at all – particularly when Geralt began to press for freedom from his sickbed.

She remembered still leaving him for but a moment and returning to the sight of the wolf just after having picked himself up from the floor – hip already blooming into something purple and puffy, cheeks red knowing he had been caught. Jaskier had rushed to him, hands on the witcher in an instant as he lifted Geralt’s shirt, babbling all the while like a panicked mother. Dramatic as always.

“M’fine,” Geralt had muttered, but she knew how much the fall had smarted his pride. He wouldn’t meet either of their eyes, and furthermore, he allowed Jaskier to fret over him instead of shying away or snarling something cruel to hide his own apprehension. His surprising patience was likely a mixture of leftover guilt for the things he had said to both of them, despite having been forgiven as he vomited his self-inflicted punishment – and perhaps, just perhaps, the smallest sliver of fear. The wolf had never been left weak for long before this. She wondered if he had ever fallen like that after standing from any of his prior stints in sickbeds. He was used to returning to his feet quickly.

Instead he shook like a fawn before them, all lanky and trembling limbs. Despite how he towered over the bard, exhaustion stooped him somewhat from his normal stance, and Yennefer could tell by the cant of the man’s hips that he was using the bard as a crutch in whatever way he could that displayed that fact as little as possible and yet still supported him. Perhaps Jaskier could not tell, consumed in his fretting as he was, but Yennefer’s eyes were keen to the lies of a man’s body. Most men were like books written by children, perhaps four pages long at best.

“Fine? You’re black and blue! Why didn’t you just stay put, we were coming right back!” Jaskier bickered, giving Yennefer a look as though he expected her to weigh in.

She was hardly about to fault the man – particularly one used to fending for himself – for hoping he could make use of the privy under his own volition. But that hardly meant she would allow the witcher to keep making foolish choices either. Just as she knew why he had done it, she also knew he had purposefully waited for them to leave lest one of them insist on supervising at best, assisting at worst. Prideful beast.

“I did not think we had all reached this point in our relationship yet, but I’m more than happy to introduce ropes and bindings to how we share our bed, Geralt. Jaskier and I have discussed it at length, even, while on the road. Evidently our learned bard knows a lovely way to frame a body such as yours with knots.”

Surprising them yet again, Geralt blushed something beautiful at that, pale as he was. It rose up his neck to the tips of his ears, made a rosy home in the flesh of chest that peaked out from beneath his night shirt. And his cheeks!

That had cowed the witcher suitably; for a day.

They took turns watching him after that. Slowly, he began to regain the energy to leave their bed, albeit for small stints. It began with relieving himself, then bathing. Short walks, making it to a table to eat – a feat he conquered eventually, albeit as pale as a sheet that hung in a field and shaking like the wind that dried it. He improved, always with one of them beside him like a shadow, chatting casually as they tried their best to look as though they were not always anticipating the possibility that he might fall again. He got better slowly. Still, unease curled in Yennefer’s gut.

Despite his longevity and his hair and his eyes and every inch of him that said ‘I am more than a man’; despite the names society called him and the stories they told about the ferocity of witchers… he was so painfully mortal.

Even now Yennefer could not help but feel ill at ease despite the peace of it all. She had Geralt curled against her hip, his face pressed into the warm curve of her thigh, fast asleep. Jaskier had left to stretch his legs, and with any luck he’d return with a treat for them all – a plate of cured meats or fruit or cheese, perhaps. This particular little “nap” had already lasted four hours. And to think, he once struggled to sleep in the slightest… A part of her enjoyed it, of course. It brought a strange flicker of warmth to her chest to see the normally stoic man like this: soft in his sleep in a way he refused or perhaps simply did not know how to be while awake. Unburdened by his many layers of mental shields and emotional barriers that training had engraved into him as deeply and stoically as the groves on a bloodletting table.

But another part of her worried. She wanted him to rest just as much as she wanted him to wake and prove he was healing, that he’d be fine. Patience, as it turned out, was perhaps not her strong suit either.

He was still so thin, and his thinness only served to draw his scars tauter about his body. Not that they were unsightly – rather quite the opposite – but it served to make her larger than life witcher look strangely small. He’d eat, he’d regain what he had lost, she knew this. The question was not ‘how long until he was back to full form’ but rather ‘could they keep the witcher still long enough to heal before his restlessness got the better of him’.

As if he could hear her thoughts Geralt huffed against her skin, lips parted sleepily and just barely grazing the curve of her thigh from his nearness. A quirk of his she now recognized as the witcher growing closer to waking. She knew what would follow: a grumbly, stir-crazy wolf without the energy to back up his restlessness. Her hand drifted down to his hair out of habit rather than any true intention, nails grazing his scalp kindly as she burrowed her fingers into those thick white locks made soft as silk thanks to Jaskier’s endless soaps and oils. Beneath her hand Geralt slowly but surely settled, his breath evening once more. Another moment of peace bought, however brief. She’d let him wake when Jaskier returned, armed with meats and no end of rambling thoughts with which to distract Geralt with. Until then, she let the hush of the witcher’s breath and the beat of his heart against her leg soothe her worries – perhaps she too just needed to learn how to enjoy rest.

— • —

Jaskier woke, curled into the sheets alone. It wasn’t altogether uncommon in one sense – Geralt and Yennefer were both terrible sleepers. Yen had likely gone to the library to read her restlessness away. Since coming to Kaer Morhen, however, Jaskier usually woke with at least one large arm around his waist and Geralt’s nose pressed to his hair. The man had yet to return to his lighter sleeping habits, still neck deep in recovery. And yet, Jaskier woke alone with only sheets to keep him warm.

He came to slowly, his body and mind fighting waking viciously. His eyes felt swollen and gritty and he knew immediately that it was not yet close to morning, his lethargy far too intense to be even remotely close to a full night of rest. He felt struck dumb, everything connecting slowly. He had woken – but why? A sound. Wheezing. Close and relentless, steadily getting louder, more frantic.

Slowly that began to rouse him. It set off a warning bell somewhere in the sleepy fog of his mind, shrilling and ringing as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. The moon spilled in through the window, shadows from the tree outside dappling the man sitting on the edge of the bed in shifting greys and pale moonlit patches. He could see the way Geralt’s back was quaking in tight, twitchy bursts. He had seen the look before, the way the coughing could seize the man up into a terrible knot of tightness. But there was no coughing, no flowers. Just awful, wrenching wheezes.

“Gr’lt?” he mumbled first, rubbing the worst of the grit from his eyes as he tried to understand what was happening. When the witcher didn’t immediately reply Jaskier tried again, “Geralt?”

Wheezing, high and thin and reedy. Now that Jaskier was looking, he could see the painful stretch of Geralt’s ribs against the taut stretch of his skin, flexing and expanding in short, aborted bursts – as if he couldn’t breathe. That sobered him.

“Geralt!” He gasped, fighting with the sheets to disentangle himself and make his way across the bed to him. Geralt turned somewhat to look at him with wide eyes, feverish with a glaze of fear and embarrassment. He had one hand to his mouth, trying to smother the sound of his panic beneath his knuckles as he waved Jaskier off with his other.

He tried to wheeze ‘sorry’ and failed spectacularly.

Jaskier pressed a hand to the man’s broad shoulder and he could feel every ripple of struggle in those muscles, every cut off breath that couldn’t quite be drawn deep enough. Geralt felt cold to the touch.

“What is it? More flowers?” Jaskier stammered, words coming in a quick tumble as adrenaline burned the last of his sleepiness away. “Geralt, what’s wrong? Should I fetch Vesemir? Yen? By the gods, Geralt, say something, I don’t know what to do!”

Geralt reached for him, nose flaring wildly as he struggled through the wheezing. A large pale hand curled in the front of Jaskier’s nightshirt and for a mindless moment the bard feared he might be struck – the movement far too similar to the men he’d cuckolded who’d caught him – until that fisted hand suddenly went flat against Jaskier’s chest. Bracing, as if trying to use him as an anchor.

“M’ – M’fine,” Geralt managed to mumble through whispered, harsh exhales and short, throbbing little inhales.

Jaskier grabbed his wrist, something hot and fierce rising in him at that as he snapped, “Don’t you dare lie to me. Not right now. Not after I nearly watched you die coughing flowers because you were lying to yourself. Don’t you fucking dare, Geralt. Do I need to go get someone?”

The witcher watched him for a long moment, yellow eyes flickering eerily in the low light of the room until finally he shook his head no. No, as if everything were fine, as if he wasn’t panicking. But Jaskier had seen Geralt face down all manner of monsters and bandits and dangerous situations. He knew what Geralt looked like when he wasn’t afraid because he was certain everything would be fine, confident in his training. He knew what that looked like, and it certainly was this: Geralt, wide eyed and wheezing and shivering so hard that Jaskier could feel it through the hand firmly planted on his chest.

Jaskier pressed forward. He grabbed Geralt by the jaw and looked for any sign of petals on his lips, in his teeth or on the bed. Then, and only then, did he feel some modicum of comfort fall over him. There were no flowers, no petals, no blossoms. It was more the memory of choking that choking itself; as if, even after being cured, Geralt’s body could not quite forget.

“M’fine,” Geralt wheezed again, jaw tight under the cradle of Jaskier’s hands. Pained. Afraid.

“How can I help?” Jaskier asked.

Geralt shook his head weakly, fingers digging into Jaskier’s chest ever so slightly, and bowed his head. His breath whistled and clicked something awful, but beneath all that, Jaskier saw Geralt’s breathing steady ever so slightly. Just somewhat deeper than before.

Jaskier wasn’t a stupid man. A man doesn’t go to a university like Oxenfurt and walk away with nothing under his belt but debt. Cause and effect, dots connecting like stars shooting across the sky, illuminating constellations. Jaskier was an anchor. An example to set his breathing to like a Skellege war drum urging rowers on to battle.

“Come,” he said firmly, taking Geralt’s hand from his chest and urging the witcher to follow him further back onto the bed. Confused, Geralt stiffly remained on the edge of the bed, eyes narrowed. Jaskier blew out an exasperated breath and reached forward again – twisting awkwardly – and tugged the witcher to him with a pleading, “I know I’m not mage or healer, but just trust me.”

Begrudgingly, wariness high in the exhausted fever glaze of his eyes, Geralt gave in to him. He followed the bard’s hands until he was sitting back against the head board, legs spread. Jaskier removed his shirt and wormed his way into the witcher’s lap in a flash, not hesitating for so much as a moment lest Geralt question him. He caught a glimpse of a struck-dumb expression on the wolf’s face before Jaskier was pressing his back into Geralt’s chest, his slighter frame engulfed against the witcher. He took either of Geralt’s hands and wrapped them around him, placing either palm flat against his belly and his chest, his own hands and fingers entangled in the witcher’s, keeping them firmly in place.

“Follow my lead,” Jaskier said, then took a slow breath – just a few seconds – held it for a short beat, then exhaled it. Each time he drew in a little more air, held it a little longer, exhaled a little more. Geralt didn’t catch on, not quite at first. Jaskier could feel the awful hitch of his breathing through the skin of his back and the slim curl of his ribs. But slowly, ever so slowly, Geralt began to follow the tempo of his breathing. In, hold, out, hold, in, hold, out, hold. Jaskier, despite himself, did not talk. He didn’t want to talk over the sound of their breathing. Didn’t want to miss one second of Geralt’s breathing as it steadily began to even out. He ached to babble comforts and frivolous encouragements, but witchers took actions to heart with much more gusto than words and he knew without looking that the sound of their breathing was helping Geralt far more than any conversation might. The hands he cradled began to warm in his. The wheezing eased, the clicking faded and the whistling disappeared. At some point Geralt had fully curled around him, his stubbled jaw a soothing burn against the smooth skin of Jaskier’s shoulder. Heavy and anchoring as Geralt’s limbs loosened around him.

The witcher hummed against him, soft and acknowledging. A thank you, Jaskier liked to think. Not that he could ask, what with the witcher quite nearly asleep. He eased them both down, careful to keep Geralt’s front to his back and his hands on his chest. And like that, finally, they fell back to sleep – legs entangled, the wolf’s nose in his hair, breathing easily.

In the morning, while Jaskier was still dizzy with waking – loathe to leave the warmth and comfort of sleep – Geralt pressed a kiss to his neck and murmured, “Thank you.”

Jaskier mumbled sleepy nonsense at him and Geralt kissed him again, confident in those early moments where Yen and Jaskier’s cleverness was made soft by morning and he could make small gestures with abandon, the two of them too sleepy to comment on it or see.

— • —

Jaskier told Yennefer the next day about the little episode. Privately, of course. He wouldn’t wish that scare upon anyone. Not the terror of seeing Geralt that way, nor the heartbreak of seeing that frustration in his eyes. The question rang in all their heads: why wasn’t he better yet?

— • —

Eventually, Geralt demanded to see Roach. It did not matter that she was safely tucked away in Kaer Morhen’s stable or that she had a whole pasture to graze from and enjoy. It didn’t matter that Vesemir was looking after her. Geralt needed to see her and that was that. He refused for them to bring her directly outside the entrance to Kaer Morhen. He’d make it to the stable or not at all, he had told them, and they could see by the set of his jaw alone that the matter was not up for negotiation. Not when it came to Roach.

He made it – nearly as pale as his own hair and stinking of sweat, but victorious nonetheless. Yennefer saw the softness on Jaskier’s face as the bard watched the witcher with his horse. Not that she could blame him, it was hard not to love Geralt in these moments – glimpses into a world where the man lived and loved openly because Roach would never tell him not to. Not like his training, not like the people who rebuked him and feared him.

He had a special sort of calmness to his face whenever Roach pressed her head into his chest, demanding attention. Without a doubt, the horse had worried. It fretted and nibbled and lipped at Geralt’s hair and the shoulder of his shirt, snuffling and touching as though convincing herself that her human was upright and alive. And Geralt, despite his weariness and the way the wind destroyed the mask his clothing had built to hide his thinness, looks years younger in her presence.

“I know emotions aren’t a witcher’s thing,” Jaskier whined playfully from the entrance of the stables, one hip pressed to its frame, “But I can’t believe I’m jealous of the way Geralt looks at a horse.”

Roach paid him no mind, far more enraptured with eating apple slices from Geralt’s somewhat trembling hand. He was strong enough to love her, and that was all that mattered to Roach. Geralt, though, couldn’t help but snort through a small, wry smile – an expression just as much a part of his vocabulary as words to a linguist.

“Speak for yourself,” Yennefer purred, taking up the other side of the door frame, “I’ve seen that look before.”

“No, no,” Jaskier continued, “You’ve seen a look. But I am quite fluent in witcher, and not every look is the same. He’s shared many a loving look with us both, but there is a special one for Roach, his first love.”

“First love,” Geralt grunted, the sound flirting with the tenor of a chuckle. When he moved for the brush, Yennefer sighed.

“Geralt, you cannot be serious,” Jaskier said, brows dipped in concern as he expressed, as he did in all ways, his theatric concern.

“I don’t often agree with the bard on principal – far more fun that way – but I can’t deny him now. Grooming is a long endeavor, Geralt,” she said, and it was as close as she could come to saying ‘I don’t think you’ll last that long’ as she could manage without fearing his pride anchor him mulishly.

Geralt merely grunted again and said, “The promise a man makes when he takes in a horse is a simple one: you carry me and I’ll carry you. If I don’t have the strength to see her well-kept, then my right to her companionship and service is forfeit.”

“Speaks more about the horse, too,” Jaskier scoffed, crossing his arms as his face twisted somewhat, as though he were taking into consideration something distasteful. Yennefer knew the look, her face likely matched. Neither she nor the bard had ever had a liking for taking care of working animals, and yet here they were, all for their fawn-legged witcher.

She sighed, the roll of her eyes heavy and pointed as she hung her lavish cloak onto a peg as far from the animals and the stink that followed them as she could. Then she took up another brush and said, “Jaskier, tie back my hair, if you’d please. If I’m to do this fool thing for our witcher, I refuse to let Roach’s lovely perfume follow me home too.”

The bard didn’t utter so much as one complaint, taking to her hair as though it had been something he had wanted to get his hands into for some time. She took note of that, but not before she turned her gaze to Geralt. Geralt who was staring at her somewhat owlishly, as though she had grown a second head.

“Don’t give me that look, I’m hardly heartless,” Yennefer snapped, sniffing disdainfully even as something playful flickered in her eyes. “But this doesn’t come without a price, Geralt. You’ll agree to a stool if we are to do this. And dry maintenance only.”

They spoiled her that day, the three of them. Roach whickered and nibbled at them cheerfully as three sets of hands went about taking care of her hair, her fur, her shoes and anything else Geralt deemed worthy of their attention. Surprisingly Geralt stuck to the terms of their agreement. He used the stool Jaskier found him, albeit grumbling somewhat at first. And by the end of it, despite his love for Roach, he seemed just as eager as the rest of them to return to the warmth of Kaer Morhen.

He didn’t even argue when they pressed close to him, worried by the way he stumbled. There was a glaze to his eyes that bespoke how much energy tending to Roach had costed him. A sluggishness in his grumbling and a lack of protest as they handled him that was both relieving – tired as Jaskier and Yennefer were – and concerning.

Yennefer had long ago enchanted Kaer Morhen’s tub into something larger, something far more similar to the one she and Geralt had first shared. It was a squeeze, but they all managed to slip into it together; a memory that, if pressed, Geralt actually thought was a dream and still didn’t quite believe it happened. But it had. Together, Jaskier and Yennefer had tended to him first – Jaskier behind him, kneading the worst of the tension from his shoulders as Yennefer went about erasing Roach’s smell from him. By the time they were done with him, the witcher was leaning back against the edge of the tub nearly asleep, watching them with lazy eyes as Yennefer and Jaskier then tended to one another with an easy familiarity that once again reminded him of the time the two had spent without him.

“M’we shoul’do this ‘gain,” Geralt had murmured, eyes fever bright beneath the glaze of exhaustion that dogged him.

“You like what you see?” Yennefer purred, reaching an arm back to cup Jaskier’s neck behind her, her breast exposed beautifully by the motion, twisting her face easily into the crook of his neck to peck a light kiss into the curve of the bard’s jaw, lilac eyes on Geralt all the while. That woke him up. “Perhaps if you are a very, very good witcher and don’t argue when we feed you – no, don’t give me that look, I’ve noticed your lack of appetite – and tuck you to bed early, we’ll keep that in mind. For when you’re better.”

He grunted, that crisp, growly sort of sound she was ever so familiar with; and behind her she felt Jaskier stiffen, his hands tightening around the soft give of her waist, dimpling her hips with the long fingers common to artists. Amber eyes watched them keenly, lazily, as they bathed one another. Watched where Jaskier’s hands cupped a firm breast. Watched as they switched, as Yennefer’s slimmer ones ran slowly down from Jaskier’s chest, over the slope of his flat belly, down to the thatch of hair at his crotch and semi-hard dick between his legs.

“But we could give you a show in the meantime,” Yennefer mused, now behind Jaskier, her chin on his shoulder as she exposed the bard to Geralt. She took her time stroking the slim man. Clever fingers tracing the slit of his head, making him grow fully hard as he whimpered and croaked, “Don’t tease, Yennefer, it’s cruel.”

“Should I stop?” She asked Geralt, one brow raised, her hand still on Jaskier’s prick. Jaskier looked at him like a drowning man.

Geralt ached to join them, but even now he knew willpower alone was keeping him awake – willpower and curiosity. To stand and join them felt like a feat more akin to climbing a mountain. But watching? His dick twitched in his lap and he rumbled, “No.”

He wanted to see this.

Jaskier mewled, something torn between surprise and eagerness and overwhelmed as Yennefer brought one hand up to tweak a soft, pink nipple – eyes on Geralt all the while.

“You need not be an inactive participant,” she said to Geralt, drinking in the hunger building in the witcher’s bones, “Direct me. I shall be your conduit.”

Jaskier moaned.

Geralt watched them a second more before he grunted and said, “He’s sensitive,” and let his lips curl ever so slightly into a smirk when Jaskier’s startled eyes darted to him. “Think you can make him come with just his nipples?”

“Mercy above,” Jaskier gasped as Yennefer crooned, plush lips against his shoulder. He could feel her grinning against his skin as she purred, “I’m sure I could figure it out.”

He whined when her hand left his prick and Geralt took his own in hand, eyes on them both. He felt hollow from their excursion to visit Roach, but if his cock could harden, he could find the energy to attend to it. The witcher thumbed the head as Yennefer brought both of her hands up to Jaskier’s chest, letting the man lean into her weakly as his knees threatened to buckle – but held.

“What lovely songs you sing,” Yennefer hummed between kisses to the man’s nape and shoulder and jaw. “I don’t know what I enjoy more, your lyrics or the sounds you make when you’re incapable of words in the slightest. What do you think, Geralt?”

Geralt growled, his cock twitched.

Yennefer grinned with a slow, “I agree,” and bit Jaskier’s shoulder. The man made a keening sound that made Geralt dribble a spurt of precome excitedly, unexpectedly. But he kept the tempo of his hand slow and steady, intent to follow Yennefer’s pace as she unwound their bard. Jaskier’s hands went absent mindedly toward his prick, but Yennefer gave him a more pointed nip and said, “None of that now, you heard the witcher. No touching,” and Jaskier moaned a wrecked, “I can’t.”

She flicked one nipple and pinched the other, and Geralt bite his cheek at the sight of how that made Jaskier’s cock jerk openly, neglected and aching.

“Perhaps I should suck them,” she mused, pinching and tugging and rubbing those small nubs mercilessly into hard little peaks. Jaskier brought a hand back to clutch the nape of her neck, to steady himself, and something hungry flashed in Yennefer’s eyes – pleased.

“Please, Y-Yen,” then, when she didn’t answer pointedly, he looked to Geralt and whined out his name.

“Tell him what you would do to him, Geralt,” Yennefer said, eyes on him over Jaskier’s shoulder.

Jaskier – horny by words as he was prone to be – was helpless as Geralt finally spoke.

“I’d fuck him,” he started, eyes sharp and bright and locked on them both. “Open him up with my fingers. Maybe my tongue.”

Jaskier jerked in Yennefer’s hold, an aborted sound caught in his throat as he craned his head back to rest on the woman’s shoulder.

“Gods, have mercy,” he wheezed as Geralt continued.

“I’d go in slowly. So slowly he’d be writhing. Maybe have’em on his hands and knees so he could service you while I service him. Put his clever tongue and fingers to use making you wet while I focused on making him sloppy from pleasure. Not let’em off until he got you off. Bring you off together. Fuck you by fucking him, like a chain.”

“F-fuck! Fuck!” Jaskier stuttered, hips jerking uselessly, seeking friction – anything – as Yennefer tweaked and rubbed. He wanted her mouth on him; on his cock or his nipples. Anything. “I – oh – fuck.”

“I’ve never heard him so ineloquent,” Yennefer purred.

“Yeah, well—” Jaskier’s words fled him in a shout as Yennefer did something tricky with her fingers. Something magical and electric, and a burble of precome dribbled helplessly from Jaskier’s cock.

“I can’t,” Jaskier babbled, “I can’t, I can’t!”

“You can,” Geralt said, voice so low it sounded more like rocks sliding down a mountain than a man, “You will. Do what you showed me in that tavern in Velen, Yen.”

Her eyes twinkled, and she said, “Gladly,” before drawing Jaskier’s face to the side for an awkward kiss, distracting him as one hand left his nipple to reach down into the bath water and slip a finger inside the bard. Geralt watched Jaskier’s eyes widen, then his mouth fall slack against Yennefer’s own domineering lips as she found that place inside him and pressed.

“Oh,” Jaskier whined, breathy and lost as he came, his whole body drawing taut like a sail in the wind. He came without a hand on his prick, one hand buried in Yennefer’s thick hair, the other braced against the edge of the tub and shaking, knuckles white. Geralt came to the sight of it, jaw tight as he grunted and released.

Jaskier melted into her a second later, chest heaving as he said, “You cruel, tricky devils,” with no real heat. “Utter monsters, you are, the both of you.”

Yennefer just looked pleased as punch as she guided the bard’s face up to look at her – soft and fuzzy from orgasm – and asked, “Think you can do one more thing with that beautiful mouth of yours?”

She traced his pink, puffy lips with a thumb. Jaskier sucked in a tired and yet intrigued breath, and Geralt saw it the moment the bard decided to rally.

The two of them agreed to wait for the bed though. First they had Geralt sit on a stool outside the tub. Jaskier dried the wolf’s hair as Yennefer attended to her own. Then they moved to the bed, Geralt beside them as Yennefer lowered herself onto Jaskier’s face. The witcher pet her sides, traced her breasts, brushed back her hair as Jaskier did his utmost to return the favor and render the mage just as senseless as she had him. Yennefer was unabashed with the sounds he drew from her. Long, lingering purrs and moans meant to direct him. And Jaskier – musician that he was – followed her music beautifully. Leading her to stunning crescendos and heady choruses until finally she came, his chin wet and his smile glossy. He cleaned himself up on shaking legs and returned to curl with them both.

Geralt made a contented, grumbly sort of sound, at peace – pleased to find the two people who had been taking care of him sated and satisfied. And then they curled together on the bed, the craft of fitting three bodies on the groaning thing long having become a science with Jaskier tucked into one of Geralt’s arms and Yennefer tucked into the other. The two of them traced idle patterns into his skin and made light conversation until slowly, inevitably, they lulled the wolf to sleep.

— • —

Kaer Morhen was no lord or lady’s courtly estate, that much was certain, but the longer Jaskier lingered in its marble halls, the more he found himself charmed by the place. It was a strange mixture of old and decrepit, and yet homely and comforting. Despite its delipidated look, it was obvious that the witchers of the School of the Wolf had made a home of this place; or at the very least, Vesemir had. In its nooks and crannies Jaskier found odd luxuries such as the open window seat that overlooked the gardens; although ‘garden’ was likely a generous word. It was not so much a garden as it was that the training fields had become somewhat overrun by flora. All the same, it looked beautiful and served to bless him with quite an astounding view whenever he took to playing his lute there as a ruse to watch over his rather stubborn witcher.

He and Yennefer had managed to persuade Geralt to bedrest for a week by various means, but the inevitable had come for them all – riding on Vesemir’s heels, of all things. The older witcher had made the case that Geralt should train now that his feet were beneath him again, that weeks of choking on flowers and focusing on getting to Ciri to Kaer Morhen above all things had taken its toll. And Geralt had latched onto that olive branch immediately.

It did not, however, go quite as Geralt had undoubtedly expected and precisely as Vesemir had thought. The white wolf had slowed. He was spryer than a man, yes, but slower than a witcher ought to be. Vesemir led him through grueling sessions, short at first and increasing each day – each one leaving the wolf dusty and more exhausted than the day before.

“Is this truly wise?” He had asked Yennefer from his perch one afternoon, eyes caught on Geralt as he let loose a font of Axii that knocked him back – his stance correct but his legs too exhausted to bear it. “How can he recover if Vesemir beats the shit out of him each day?”

Yennefer held her silence for a moment, lilac eyes drawn to their struggling wolf as well, before finally she said, “We could not keep him in our bed forever. He’s a witcher, not a pet.”

“Never said what he was or wasn’t,” Jaskier pouted, too worried to react as he usually might to the barb, “I just… I’ve never seen him struggle like this. How long before he goes hunting for contracts again?”

Yennefer drew closer then, her hip against the bard’s ribs as she lured his face away from the training fields to instead look upon her. She brushed the boyish cut of his hair from his brow with a seriousness that nearly made Jaskier comment on it, and yet he couldn’t find the words in the face of her intensity. Her hands were soft, softer than his own despite all the oils he used. Soft in a way human hands just couldn’t be, the double-edged reminder of her power and the price she paid to have it.

“I’ve come to find that the moments in which I was told I couldn’t do a thing only drove me to ruin as I tried to prove that I could,” she mumbled, eyes distant even as she stood so close. A memory played behind those lilac eyes and for a moment, Jaskier thought that maybe he could see it. Fire. Pain. “Perhaps the best thing we can do for him now is have faith, despite what our eyes tell us, lest we run him into the ground with our worrying.”

Through the open window and out on the field, Geralt gave a bitten off shout as the sound of a wooden sword striking his knee pierced the quiet, gliding in on the breeze that swayed the curtains. Jaskier’s gaze drifted in Geralt’s direction but Yennefer would not let go of his face. That alone made him return to her, face twisted in a grimace, nothing elegant or theatrical about it.

“How can you stand it?” He asked.

“Because that is what he needs: for us to stand it.”

— • —

Even as physically he improved each day, the sessions drew his emotional well-being tighter and tighter until Geralt was nothing more than a thread pulled too tight – practically singing with tension – ready to snap. Jaskier and Yennefer could see it in him. Could see that storm brewing in the painful constriction of his shoulders and the way he stopped himself during his training to close his eyes and breathe through flared, frustrated nostrils, jaw tight and teeth grinding. Witchers were quick healers, and yet the ways of witcher appeared to return to Geralt slowly; as if his body were loath to leave the peace of those healing days.

Learning as they were, it was hard to gauge whether he needed space or comfort – harder still because even when he needed comfort, he often ran from it. Reminding them all just how he had ended up in that state in the first place.

But no one turned out to be a better buffer in those early training days than Ciri. She sat in the yard often to watch him. At first Jaskier and Yennefer had worried if Geralt’s pride might be exasperated by the extra witness, but Vesemir had said letting her stay was a good idea --  and he wasn’t wrong.

Ciri crowed for Geralt often. Everything the man did was awe-inspiring to a mind so young, so new to fighting and so enamored by the man who had almost died protecting her, but didn’t. The first man who had survived the mark of fate and destiny that had ruined her life for unknown reasons. She’d sit on broken pillars or warped scaffolding. Sometimes she’d even attempt to mimick Geralt’s forms – crudely, but adorably, and Yennefer and Jaskier often enjoyed watching from afar as Geralt’s little shadow performed behind him.

Her opinion was only that of a little girl, Geralt knew it just as much as anyone. He was still recovering slowly, and that knowledge lingered on the heels of his patience, snapping at his ankles. But the company of a girl so innocent and optimistic despite everything that had happened to her seemed to soften Geralt like a bloom thawing in the spring. Ciri was sunlight and cheer and warmth wrapped in a small body, with small hands and too large eyes – and damn if her excitement wasn’t contagious.

“You were right,” Yennefer mused one afternoon, watching from the library window as Vesemir began to stack books for Ciri’s eventual education. The old man looked excited almost at the prospect of teaching again. It seemed no one was immune to Ciri’s charms. “She’s good for him.”

“Geralt may not remember this way, but this is a technique we’ve often used with mending witchers. Not everyone is as well off with their mutations as Geralt, afterall. He was always an almost unnaturally adept healer. For the others, when impatience and frustration began to rankle them, we’d put the new lads into the ring to watch. Their excitement and awe always did wonders for a man’s brittle ego. Geralt’s no different.”

“You mean to tell me Geralt was once one of those little boys cheering like Ciri?” Yennefer asked, amusement obvious on her face and in her tone as she turned from the window to look at the elder witcher.

Vesemir was smiling ever so slightly, fond and introspective – eyes blind to the room itself as he remembered days long since past.

“Yes,” Vesemir mused. “It took him time to open up. Geralt took his role as his father’s child surprise as sourly as any child would – but he eventually opened up to be a wild young boy, eager to learn. Had somewhat of a hero complex, actually.”

“Still does,” Yennefer laughed.

“No,” Vesemir chuckled, hanging onto the vowel, “Not in the manner that he does now. He has finicky morals in comparison to a lot of the witchers that have passed through these halls. No, when he was young, he had more a mind of being a hero than a monster hunter. He confused the two in his training. Learned the truth of things right quick though.”

Yennefer frowned slightly.

“What do you mean?”

Vesemir looked up from his stacked books, surprised, and said, “You’ve seen the signs, how townsfolk treat us. Mutants. Geralt could save a babe from a fire, and maybe that mother might appreciate it, but not a single man or woman – mother included – would invite him into their home to rest or sup or drink. He is a monster hunter. A damned good one. But witchers can’t be heroes. Not the way that little boys hope, at least.”

“You haven’t heard Jaskier’s songs then,” Yennefer said, turning back to the window. She watched as Ciri hooted, excited as Geralt’s tempo steadily began to pick up on a training dummy. He was improving, thank the gods. “Many have changed their minds.”

“Love, like hate, is quite contagious.”

That startled her. She turned to look at him, to delve deeper into that insight, but Vesemir was already heading out of the room – leaving her to stew in that way, she quickly found, he loved to do.

— • —

Geralt had never been a fussy eater. Yennefer, Jaskier, Ciri – all three of them had seen him eat all manner of (sometimes revolting) things on the road, albiet Ciri less so. Of them, she was the most accustomed to his recent lack of appetite. How he’d gag when trying to eat, only manage a few morsels or bites, then ultimately give up. Flowers, cloying and smothering as they had been, had made eating all but miserable. The petals and stems had scratched up his throat, made it a swollen and tight terrible mess. Swallowing anything heavier than water had been an exhausting task, and the aversion that followed had ultimately taken its toll on Geralt’s body.

They wanted him to eat. He wanted to eat. A witcher that could be blown over by a stiff breeze was no witcher at all. But even the mere sight of food sent his stomach flipping – torn between cramps of hunger and nauseating memories of the pain of swallowing.

Thus he found himself at a table, a bowl of stew before him and Yennefer looming across the table, both hands braces as she scowled. He drank the broth, picked at the vegetables made soft by the stew, but the meat – hearty and thick – laid untouched at the bottom amidst dregs of broth. His stomach curled painfully. He could practically taste the meat in his mouth. He wanted the protein, knew he needed it. Knew that Vesemir was excellent with beef, that each cut would be thick and juicy and satisfying.

But the thought of swallowing something so thick, even after chewing, made his gut clench dreadfully. It was stupid. The affliction was gone, his throat long since soothed since the flowers’ passing. Yet the memory persisted, cloying and demanding attention.

“Surely this isn’t too heavy for your stomach,” Yennefer said, hand waving at the bowl, agitated, “You can’t live off broth and vegetables, Geralt.”

“I know,” he growled, earning a sharp look from the woman. He hadn’t told them of his aversion. He didn’t even know how to describe it. It was nothing; a nonsense paranoia that was slowly starving him. It was easiest to say his stomach needed time to adjust to food again. They had done their best to cope with that – starting with bread and soups. Bread, well… they had long given up on that but soups, at least, he could make it look as though they were making progress.

It was Ciri that noticed first.

Children, so absorbed with learning everything that they could like sponges, saw it the moment Yennefer left – frustrated and needing space. Had seen how Geralt had grimaced and rubbed at his throat, just as he used to by the fire and in the many inns they eventually began to stay at. How he’d set his plate aside and rub at his throat. Pour himself something hot and soothing, sometimes even just hot water if they had nothing else. As if he could burn the pain away.

She went to Vesemir. He reminded her of Mousesack and Eist. Steady, clever as a whip – albeit much more subdued than either. Like the stone that won’t bow to the river’s wrath, worn smooth by experience and time, but still unmovable. Despite his quietness and despite how hard he drilled Geralt, there was a tempered kindness there – back, far behind his eyes. Something patient and weathered, the soft of love that grows in even the coldest of people after years and years of attending to children, watching them grow. Getting invested.

“Do we have apples?” She asked. ‘We’, as though this were already home. Something flickered in Vesemir’s wizened face – surprised and a little soft.

“Apples?”

“Yes,” she said, “I want to help Geralt.”

“Did he ask for apples?” Vesemir asked, one brow quirking. Ciri shook her head, but offered no other explanations – and much as she expected, that kindness bade the old man listen, even despite the way he grumbled. Just like Geralt.

He brought her one apple. She said she needed more. So he brought more.

She took them to the kitchen and Vesemir followed – more curious than anything else. She watched as she looked in drawers and cabinets before she finally pouted, turned to him curtly and asked, “Do you have anything to smash them?”

“Oh,” Vesemir said, smiling not so much with his lips so much as his eyes as the dots slowly connected, “Kaer Morhen’s kitchen may be no castle’s kitchen, but I think we can figure something out.”

— • —

Ciri found Geralt on the training field, battering a practice dummy with his silver sword. Vesemir had warned her to wait if she found him like that, so she did – more than willing to watch the witcher work. She had heard the adults whispering about her. That soon, once they no longer had to worry over Geralt, she would need to be trained to protect herself. How to focus and hone her magical talents as well. She was eager to get started, and that excitement and impatience grew every time she saw Geralt train in the fields or witnessed Yennefer perform an act of magic as if it were no harder than breathing.

She sat atop a large stone, one of Kaer Morhen’s many fallen pillars or walls, and set two bowls beside her, careful to cover both with a napkin.

If Geralt noticed her, he didn’t make it obvious. He continued, legs working into fast, firm formations to support the twist of his waist, the reach of his arm, the swing of his sword. Despite the fluidity of his form, however, he was breathing hard, nearly thready. She saw him sway and have to readjust his footing more than once – the movement so quick she almost missed it.

But she knew what it was like to go hungry. A princess was expected to fit into no end of fine, slim gowns, after all. Yes. Even young as she was, even as Eist coaxed her and Calanthe scolded her, she knew hunger. ‘You look as though a stiff breeze might take you, love,’ her grandmother used to say, her crisp critiques made softer by the worry in her eye. ‘Like a bird, you are. My little bird.’

Yes. She knew hunger. And she knew how it made one swoon.

She saw when it finally hit Geralt – both the swoon and the dummy. A strike made too wide, one he rebounded from too slowly and which gave one of the dummy’s many arms too much momentum, costing him a smarting blow. The wooden arm slammed into his shoulder and made him stumble with a short, cut off grunt of pain. He stepped away, watched until the arm slowly drew still, then let his eyes crawl over to where Ciri perched. He sighed, set the sword aside to be cleaned and sharpened, and made his way over to her wordlessly.

He sat on the ground, his back pressed to the stone she sat on, and leaned his head back. His eyes drifted closed.

“I’m not ready to teach you,” he finally said, as though expecting that to be why she had come.

“I know,” she said, making him open one wry, narrow eye at her like a sleepy, wary – albeit amused – wolf. She smiled playfully, then grabbed the bowl beside her and said, “I made you something.”

Geralt grunted quizzically.

She passed him the bowl and watching him pale ever so slightly.

“You don’t even know what it is yet,” she said, partially pouting, partially excited for the eventual reveal. Because while she had often been left helpless in the face of Geralt’s pain, hunger she was intimately familiar with. This, she could help.

He lifted the napkin with another grunt, then raised his brows. She could smell the crisp, sweet aroma of apples that wafted up. The kiss of cinnamon, the notes of something sturdier and bland hiding beneath it. Chill in his palms, just as hers was as she grabbed her own bowl.

“What is this?” He asked.

“Apple sauce,” she said cheerfully, not looking at him as she made her grand reveal that she knew what the clever adults didn’t. “Eist used to make it for me when my throat was sore.”

And that… that hurt to say. More than she expected, even as she had tried to prepare herself. But it felt good to share this piece of him with someone. As if this small meal meant he carried on. It was a recipe from Eist’s mother, and her mother before her, and her mother before her. A remedy for every little boy or girl who felt fussy at the table, whether it be due to a scratchy throat or an upset stomach or even just the whims and moods of childhood. Eist had recognized in her what others hadn’t. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to eat, it was just the thought that eating something so heavy – thick slabs of pork or heavy cuts of steak, buttered and roasted and complimented with side dish upon side dish – brought forth a dread so fierce she could not swallow. Not when her figure was so closely tied to her worth, her destiny. Not by her grandmother’s standards, of course, but by the courts. She had heard their whispering. She still remembered a group of gossipers commenting that another princess not far from her age was sure not to get any reputable suiters with a waist of that size.

Not that any of that mattered anymore. That realization nearly made her laugh – something weak and trapped like a bird in her ribcage. To think she had starved herself for nothing.

She remembered Eist drawing her aside. Remembered how he took her into an empty kitchen because the recipe was top secret, not just any chef could know. Her throat felt tight as she recalled his hands steadying hers through the movements of smashing the apples. How one had flung across the room on accident, how they had laughed until they were a giggling pile on the floor.

Her eyes felt hot, but not like before. Not like how they would get in the forest, when she would try to smother her cries in her fist lest Geralt notice. It was more like a gentle reminder of the pain than anything else. As if Eist had passed by and squeezed her shoulder fondly. Warm, like hello. Bittersweet, like goodbye.

Geralt didn’t comment on her phrasing, nor on her sudden silence. He never did. He always seemed to understand, and she him, as though they had a language all their own. She wondered if it was because she had been promised to him. She liked to think it was just because they had found the words together their own way.

He tried it. She knew what he would taste. Sweet red apples, making the sauce both sweet, tangy and textured. Cinnamon, to make it warm and spicy. Small oats, to make it filling, and finally powdered protein, to make him strong and fend off the ache of his hollow belly. Easy to swallow. Cool on his throat. Soothing and sweet.

He hummed as he did whenever he knew not what to say. In its inflection she knew he was pleasantly surprised. Touched, even, though he would never say it. Geralt bumped his shoulder against her leg where it dangled over the stone and she said simply, “You’re welcome,” knowing what he meant.

From the balcony, Vesemir smiled knowingly and watched one child surprise share a meal with another; as was the way of witchers.

— • —

The biggest celebration they have is the night that Geralt is deemed well enough to climb the vast set of stairs of Kaer Morhen’s tower. For at the top is not only what Vesemir had dubbed as ‘Geralt’s Room’, it is also where the largest bed in Kaer Morhen resides; and while they had enjoyed learning each other in the tiny sickbed, every one of them was eager for the space of a bed made for more than one and a half witchers.

It is a large thing – evidently a gift from a merchant Geralt had once saved. With no home of his own, he had sent it to Kaer Morhen. Since it was his boon, it had gone unused until now. They washed the sheets, aired out the quilts and furs. And that night, they slept in a bed big enough for all of them –

And woke one atop the other, like always. Like a pile of puppies, drawn to each other like moths to the flame as they slept.

“I suppose your witchering was good for something,” Yennefer moans as she stretches into such ample space before curling back into Geralt’s front, his back confidently and skillfully spooned by Jaskier who has turned out to be more octopus than man now that they all had space to utilize.

“Glad I could be of service,” Geralt said dryling, the littlest curl to his lip at hearing a boon of his journeys had brought one of his lovers’ pleasure. It was nice to provide for them, for once, since their reunion.

— • —

Geralt began to sleep lightly once more as the worst of the Witcher’s Blight finally ebbed from his bones, leaving him feeling more and more like the man he once was. That was how he found himself in the library one night, wandering the halls with an apple and knife in hand, cutting off small and idle slices to nibble on as he paced. Ciri’s apple sauce had done wonders in easing him back into eating, and the comfort that taste had brought him while at his hungriest had transferred into a love of the fruit in general now that he was back to eating solid food. He had just bit into a crisp slice when his roaming eyes had fallen upon Yennefer in one of Vesemir’s high backed chairs. She had a pile of books that reached up nearly as high as the arm rest, her attention lost in the pages in her hands.

Geralt smiled, something making his heart flutter for just the briefest moment. He liked this, he realized. He liked seeing Jaskier safe in his large bed and Yennefer curled pleasantly in Kaer Morhen’s high backed chairs. He liked seeing them here, in what he had suddenly realized was in fact his home.

“Enjoying yourself?” He asked, “Or just can’t sleep?”

“When is it ever truly just one or the other?” She mused and he could hear in her words the breathy glaze of exhaustion that dogged her. She was close to being able to return to bed, then. Good. He wanted her to rest. Wanted to see her curled into Jaskier, their limbs entangled, the both of them safe in bed.

“Hmm,” he said, because he couldn’t exactly argue that. Not that he particularly missed the ability to fall asleep easily at the moment, not after so long bed bound. He would, eventually. But not now. He was more than happy to wander the halls in his sleeplessness for now if it meant he was improving, returning to his former self.

“I should have thought to visit ages ago,” Yennefer mused, eyes still caught in her book, “You witchers have an astounding collection of knowledge in these ugly old stones.”

“Kind of you to say,” Geralt chuckled wryly, amused by Yennefer’s amazement of their library as much as he was by her inclination to avoid admitting that she liked it here. It was no castle, no lord or lady’s house she might be used to – but it was charming in its own right, with more a sense of home than those of royalty or glamor.

She looked up at him then, her eyes roving up, then down over the sight of him.

“You look good,” she purred, letting her book fall closed in her lap as she better focused her attention on him, “Very good.”

“Feel good,” Geralt agreed, cutting another slice from his fruit. She leaned up at that and plucked it from his fingers, eyes blazing merrily as she placed it to her lush lips and took a bite, gaze on him all the while.

“Eating again too, I see. Good. The white wolf returns.”

He hummed again, moving to sit at her feet in lieu of dragging another chair across the stones. A part of him, though he would not admit it, sat there if only because it increased his chances of having her fingers in his hair again. He put his back against the chair, his shoulder pressed against the long line of one of her legs, and spread his own out before him lazily. He cut another slice, offered it up to her, before cutting one for himself as well.

“I’m happy to see you up,” she said idly as she nibbled at her apple, “But also displeased. Can’t sleep?”

“Was bound to happen eventually.”

It was her turn to hum this time, and Geralt tried not to think too hard about the little electric bolt of pleasure that flared in his chest when – just as he had hoped – Yennefer’s fingers drifted to his hair. He leaned his head back against the chair and her leg as she dragged her nails lightly over his scalp, sending pleasant shivers down his spine.

“You really are more wolf than man,” she said lightly.

“Hmm.”

“Though Vesemir tells me that before you were either, you wished to be a hero?”

His eyes slowly fell open at that, his body still. Her fingers continued to brush through his hair, soothing and steadfast. Geralt swallowed. He didn’t precisely want to talk about it. It felt foolish. A childish desire that had been stomped out of him quickly. But bottling things up had nearly killed him, and after everything she had done to save him, trusting him despite the Djinn, he could offer this at least.

“Yes,” he croaked. Winced. He cleared his throat and tried again when it became obvious that Yennefer was waiting for more, her fingers still against his scalp. “Yes… a foolish story, hardly exciting. As boys, we don’t run into many folk outside of Kaer Morhen. Those we do tend to have a generally decent opinion of witchers. I was… unprepared for how afraid the world would be of me.”

Yennefer leaned her own head back at that, her eyes falling shut.

“I can sympathize,” she said softly, resuming her stroking. After all, how many nights had she spent asleep with the flour sacks, dreaming of a prince charming coming to rescue her from her abuse? How many nights had she prayed her father would come for her even after he sold her to misery? Or that she’d actually found love in the circle, even as she knew better? Childish hopes, all crushed – then crushed some more.

“I know,” Geralt offered softly, one hand falling to curl around one of Yennefer’s ankles.

“We make quite a pair, you and I? We both grew up wanting the best, to be the best. Look where we are now,” she mused slowly.

“I quite like where you are now,” came a voice from the doorway. Both of them turned to see Jaskier there, done up in their quilts in such a way that he looked more like a kicked puppy or a sleepy boy than the man who could swoop into a pub and charm everyone into dancing with nothing but a lute and his voice.

Yennefer watched him with smoldering, considering eyes for a long moment before she patted the arm rest on the free side of her legs, opposite of where Geralt sat, and said, “I did not expect to see you, puppy.”

“Rude,” he said, but came to her nonetheless.

“Which part?” Geralt asked, a wry curl of amusement every so slightly tinging his mouth.

Jaskier just glared balefully, the effect ruined as his sleepiness turned the expression into more of a pout than anything serious. He settled in next to Geralt, the two of them crowding either side of Yennefer’s legs. She slide the fingers of her free hand into Jaskier’s hair and felt that man, too, slowly calm beneath her touch.

Jaskier mumbled something.

“What was that, dear?” Yennefer purred, almost certain she had caught it but unable to resist having him repeat it.

Jaskier drew in a deep, annoyed breath – utterly put upon – and repeated brattily, “Ican’tsleepwellaloneanymorethankstoyoutwo.”

Geralt watched him, something unfathomable in his face – blank but steadily showing more and more each day. Jaskier almost called it fondness. Above him Yennefer hummed happily and said, “How sweet. Now was that so hard?”

Jaskier curled his legs up to his chest and hid his blush in his knees, but did not pull away from Yennefer’s clever fingers.

“Used to sleep just fine, thank you,” Jaskier whined. “You’ve both ruined me. Your sleeplessness is contagious and unwanted.”

Geralt let out a soft, hushed bark of a laugh before leaning back into Yennefer’s touch, his eyes sliding closed, and grunted warmly, “Welcome to the club.”

— • —

The time was vastly approaching in which Geralt would finally be able to help supervise Ciri’s training. He could feel it building in him, day by day, and while he was not at full force quite yet, he was strong enough to begin what Vesemir and the others had long held off. Soon, but not quite. However, Ciri was restless. In her he saw himself – eager to leave his sickbed, to be back in his armor and on the field. To be well again.

She had to wait a little longer, but that did not mean he could not help her divert a little of that impatience and steam. He took her down to the stables one morning as Yennefer busied herself in the library, building a curriculum with which to begin Ciri’s training of magic; and as Jaskier took up perch in the garden, working on new tunes and songs with which to work through everything he had not yet had time to even think about.

“Roach saved us, you know,” Geralt said as they walked – swiftly now. It felt so good to walk swiftly. Ciri was skipping beside him with the same energy of a bouncy border collie capable of sprinting and yet choosing to stay by its master’s side. Buzzing with excitement and surplus energy.

Ciri swiveled her too large eyes on him and said, as if it were plain as day, “I know.”

Nothing else. He smiled at that. Ciri felt like a jigsaw piece he hadn’t realized was missing, and while he’d be forever bristly about the fact that that feeling was large and wide because of fate rather than any built up relationship – he still enjoyed it. Perhaps that was fate’s doing too. He shook his head of the thought before it drove him mad.

“Good,” he said with a nod, holding the stable door open for Ciri to pass in. She went to Roach immediately, and Geralt felt a strange flutter in his chest – affection, he told himself, working on identifying such things – at the sight of Roach pushing her long face happily into Ciri’s hand with a cheerful whicker. “One day you’ll have a companion like Roach.”

“I will?” Ciri turned to look at him, excited.

Geralt arched a brow and said, “Don’t expect me to believe your Grandmother didn’t give you plenty of horses.”

Ciri blushed a little, but went back to stroking Roach when the horse made it plain that she did not approve of Ciri’s sudden distraction.

“Not like Roach,” she said, and immediately Geralt understood. They had learned to talk like this on the road. Bits and pieces that would mean nothing to most, but said everything to them. Of course she had had her pick of horses, but she was right. None of them would be like Roach. Those horses – pretty and thorough bred – were made for royal aesthetics, symbols of power. Horses like Roach were different beasts entirely. Bred from only the most loyal and steady steeds. Trained as a colt to remain steadfast in the presence of danger, albeit sometimes with the help of a swift Axii. Raised beside their witcher-to-be until an unbreakable bond was forged. Roach was no mere horse. Roach was Geralt’s partner, his trusted confidant, and she had more than once saved his life.

“You’ll have a steed like her one day, yes,” Geralt said, stepping forward to brush some of the mare’s forelock from her brow. Roach watched him with big eyes. “We’ll select a colt for you when the first of the colts are born and begin the process of training you both. In the meantime, there’s things you should know about horses like Roach. Things I don’t think you had a chance to learn as a princess.”

He almost expected her to whine when she found out what those things were. Stables had to be shoveled, after all, and attended to. Roach needed her blankets washed, her coat and mane brushed, her shoes maintained. It was not a beautiful process. In fact it could be downright tedious – but it was important. It was the deal a witcher made when they took up a horse.

“Your horse carries you, as Roach did us,” Geralt explained as he guided Ciri’s small hand on the brush in long, slow stripes across Roach’s body. “And in return, you must provide for them.”

“So like you, Yen and Jask?” Ciri asked innocently, the question no more blithe than if she had asked after the color of the sky. Geralt’s hand fell still and Ciri’s continued on without him, unaware.

“What do you mean?”

Ciri looked up at him, her little brow furrowed as if she thought he was making fun of her.

“You all do the same thing, don’t you?” She asked. “I’ve been watching. Listening. Jaskier talks when you can’t. Yennefer is bold where Jaskier might cower. You are steady where Yennefer wants to do three things at once. You all give and take. Like we do.”

“You and I give and take?” He arched a brow now, something amused if a little exposed edging into his tone now, any embarrassment blown away by his amazement of how keen children could be.

“You teach me, watch over me,” Ciri nodded, continuing to work on Roach, eyes focused on her task. “And I watch your back, teach you things too.”

“Like what?” Geralt asked, amusement plainly obvious now.

“Like the apple sauce,” she pointed out, and he hummed dutifully, “Or, uh…”

He smoothed back her hair as she thought that over, drawing her gaze back to stare up at him. He had the wildest urge to kiss her brow but managed to smother it down. Instead he allowed himself a smile – she’d die, people who get too close die, they’re mortal and they die, and they’d be gone from old age soon enough anyway long before he began to feel the weariness of witchery in his mutated bones – and said, “You saved me on the road when you listened to Roach and fetched help instead of trying to fix things yourself, you’re right. We give and take.”

She beamed up at him, and that warm feeling rose in his chest once more like sunrise peeking over the horizon after a long night.

“Come on, let’s finish up. Roach detests blathering.”

“You detest blathering.”

“Hmm.”

— • —

By the time Geralt had finally healed, Yennefer and Jaskier quickly realized that they had a much different problem than they had anticipated. Although, honestly, they should have anticipated it. It was as if the white wolf felt he had to make up for lost time, because the man had gone from a cantering amount of activity each day to full out galloping through chores and training and building curriculum for Ciri and brushing up with the bestiaries and attending to Roach and, and, and –

“He’s going to wear himself out at this rate,” Jaskier said from the kitchen table before he plucked a grape from the vine and tossed it in his mouth, watching with an expression mixed between awe and horror. Geralt was currently leaning with one hip against the counter, a spread of pages across it, his hands full with a book and totally oblivious to the kettles beginning to steam and rattle behind him. He licked the tip of his quill and quickly jot down another note, only to startle comically when the kettle finally began its shrill screaming.

“Serves you right,” Jaskier snorted, grinning when Geralt cast him a dark glower over one shoulder before returning to pouring out water into three mugs, setting each to brew.

“I know this might be rich coming from me,” Yennefer said idly, watching Geralt work, “But you can afford to narrow your work to one thing at a time, Geralt.”

“No really,” the man grumbled, flipping a page, “We were lucky nothing happened while I was down, but that doesn’t mean that Ciri’s safe. Or any of us, for that matter. She must be taught. Trained. We—”

“—must be ready for a fight, if any, at any time,” Jaskier said, reciting the man’s words perfectly. Geralt glared at him again, but Jaskier didn’t back down. Instead he stood, taking a vine of grapes with him, and forced them into Geralt’s hand when the man had become distracted with his notes once more. “Eat. At least in this you must agree that you’re useless without food.”

Geralt grunted, but obliged.

Yennefer rolled her eyes at the table and muttered, “Stubborn mutt.”

They wouldn’t see him again until evening, they knew. And like clockwork, Geralt disappeared to fulfill various tasks until evening, returning only once his shirt was thoroughly ruined by the scent of a full day’s work, his hair tangled and the line of his shoulders weary. They managed to convince him to sit for another meal – relieved to hear that Ciri had managed to get him to eat lunch when he had insisted they break so she might eat lunch. Why should she eat and not him? Clever girl.

But when Geralt moved to return to the study where Vesemir would normally be waiting for him to go over next steps in training Ciri and reinforcing the keep, Jaskier and Yennefer struck. Yennefer came in behind him – one hand on his shoulder easily leading the witcher back down onto the bench – and Jaskier came to her other side. The two of them crowded him into his spot, and Geralt looked utterly bewildered. Or at least as bewildered as blank-faced witchers ever looked.

“Vesemir—” he started.

“—Is resting. As you should be.”

“Resting,” Geralt repeated dumbly, as if not familiar with the meaning of the word.

“Yes, you know, that thing when people sit down for a moment to decompress, just exist? Take a bath, lay down, read a good book?” Jaskier blathered easily. Geralt snorted.

“I’ve bathed and laid and read plenty,” he said, and tried to stand again, only to be forced down. Again. He blew out a haughty breath, bristling and confused.

“This is unhealthy and unnecessary, Geralt,” Yennefer pressed.

Geralt grit his teeth, but didn’t bother arguing. They were right, after all. There was no immediate need to act as though war were on their doorstep. But the sickness that had stolen so much time from him curled in his stomach, filling him with dread.

“I’ve done enough ‘resting’,” he said finally. Yennefer hummed as though Geralt had suddenly pulled back the curtains and revealed everything.

“There isn’t just one way to rest, Geralt,” she purred, bending and looming over him to brush back a wild lock of white hair and whisper in his ear, “And you haven’t rested with us yet.”

And that drew Geralt’s attention.

— • —

They coaxed him to the bedroom – two foxes luring a white wolf up the very many steps that led to their bed. They had set the mood as well, it would seem, because there were candles burning, filling the room with the heady scent distinctly Yennefer’s. Lilacs and gooseberries. If not for how far they had come, the things they had forgiven in one another, it might have made Geralt shiver – remembering the first time he had smelled it, the first time Yennefer had bent him to her whims.

“If you’re so restless,” Yennefer said smoothly, walking toward the open window to gaze upon the moon and twinkling stars beginning to rise in the sky, “Perhaps it is our fault.”

He expected Jaskier to balk, unsure of where this was going himself, and yet Jaskier just slid up beside Yennefer – looking downright scolded if not for that mischievous glint to his eyes – and said, “We’ve been poor masters indeed.”

“What?” Geralt asked dumbly, blinked, but in his gut something stirred hungrily, like a beast waking from a long nap, and yawned with sleepy interest. He nearly flushed.

“A master is expected to wear out their energetic hounds, lest they drive themselves mad,” Yennefer supplied helpfully, one hand slipping up to her shoulder to gently expose the skin beneath, the collar of her dress dropping down her arm somewhat. “I imagine a wolf is no different.”

Jaskier grinned with too many teeth, drawing up to Yennefer to give her a quick peck on the corner of the mouth and murmured softly, “I’ll get things set up,” before going to the vanity and picking up a box that Geralt couldn’t remember being there that morning. A chest, actually – one that Jaskier brought to the bedside and opened, plucking out vials and ornate jars, among other things Geralt couldn’t quite name.

“What’s going on—”

“—I didn’t say you could talk.”

Geralt’s jaw clicked shut despite himself, his eyes darting back to Yennefer who had removed the top of her dress, two round breasts illuminated by the milky light of the moon. Her nipples were peaked with chill. That hunger in his gut woke more properly now, actively invested. Distracted enough that he didn’t even question the order or when orders like that had started in their bedroom.

“Ah. Thought so,” Yennefer said, eyes twinkling and smiling a pleased, knowing little smile as if Geralt had revealed some great tell in a game of Gwent. “Excellent. You’re doing so well, Geralt.”

And that stoked the beginning of a blaze, catching him off guard. He had liked that. More than he ever thought he might. But there was a simplicity to her orders; they were easy to follow, chased by praise. It made it easy to turn off the racing thoughts that had been haunting him ever since he had properly recovered, and he found himself wanting to chase that feeling. To turn off.

“Strip.”

This was it. Now was the time to decide how much power he was going to give them. Should he continue the game or should he leave? He didn’t have the sense that leaving would ruin some element of their relationship that could not be fixed. Yennefer was testing, experimenting. He had a decently certain feeling that if he didn’t play along, she would not force his hand or try again – and there would be no ill will. They were merely learning one another; and there was no better way to learn than to try.

He grunted, but obeyed. Neither of them helped, but they both watched. Watched as he untucked his shirt without flourish, unlaced his britches, ditched his shoes. He stripped himself clinically, with the efficiency of a man who was unused to stripping for the pleasure of others. Yennefer was decently certain that the concept of stripping lewdly had never crossed Geralt’s mind – a game for another day.

He stopped with his underthings still on, maintaining his last step of modesty, and forced himself not to react when Jaskier chuckled, amused.

“Everything, Geralt,” Yennefer purred, eyes already roving up and down his body.

So he stripped himself of everything but the medallion of his house and stood there, flanked by two lovers – two very clothed lovers – and gestured with his hands in a ‘now what’ sort of maneuver.

Yennefer smiled, plump lips pulled into a pleased little line, and directed her gaze to Jaskier as she asked, “Well? What do you think?”

Geralt’s gaze followed hers and met Jaskier’s – smoldering with a hunger that was both naked, bold and unabashed. Jaskier very much looked the part of the fox, perched on the corner of the bed nearest the nightstand, hands loose around a bottle of some sort. Distracted by Geralt, he realized. He felt… strange. Not a bad strange. Just not familiar. He had seen Jaskier chase skirts and trousers alike in bars and court affairs. He had watched Yennefer take him apart with her hands in that tub. He had seen Jaskier aroused.

But he had never been on the receiving end of that look before, not directly. Not like this. Not just from Jaskier, but in general. He had never received a look that appeared as though someone wished to eat him. Well, not like that.

Plenty of monsters wanted to eat him, of course. Just not fuck him. Fuck. Shut up, Geralt. He felt his cheeks flush hot when Jaskier’s grin just grew wider – sensing that the witcher was off balance like a shark might scent blood in the water.

“I think he’s being startlingly good for us, Yen,” Jaskier praised, and Geralt startled when that shook a shiver down his spine and stoked the fire in his belly. “So good as to deserve a reward, in fact.”

“You heard him, wolf,” Yennefer said, catching Geralt’s very divided, very frayed and confused attention again. They were doing it on purpose, he realized. Corralling him now just as they had corralled him to their bed. They were dangerous together. Hunters working together. Geralt felt small between them. He shouldn’t like that as much as he did, but gods above, his cock twitched openly where all might see. And they both knew somehow he would like it. Foxes. “Time for your reward.”

Geralt’s brows furrowed, not following their train of thought. He looked between them – and even in hindsight he wouldn’t admit that he was looking for direction – at a loss. Jaskier took pity on him first. The bard patted the bed beside him and said, “Come on, wolf. Belly down for me.”

Now he was really lost. He glanced between the two of them again, but when they both just kept watching him approvingly, waiting – still both bloody dressed – he went to Jaskier and laid himself out prone on his stomach. He tried to brace himself up on his elbows to keep them in sight, but the bard merely tsked at him sweetly and gently guided him until he was completely flat.

“The effect isn’t the same without music,” Yennefer said, gliding over to the bed to sit beside him, not close enough to touch but enough to be present, to watch. “But Jaskier is about to have his hands quite busy, so you’ll have to do without.”

Geralt turned his head to look at her, still so utterly confused, and asked, “Without wha—” the question choked off when something decidedly warm trickled down onto his spine in a long line. He felt like a startled cat, bristly and arched, but Jaskier didn’t give him more time to react than that before he was climbing atop him, straddling his ass.

Another position Geralt was unfamiliar with.

“Hush, Geralt. Close your eyes, trust me, and be a good boy.”

Geralt shivered again, eyes on Yennefer because he couldn’t see the bard without breaking their unsaid desire for him to remain flat. She nodded at him, looking oh so pleased – an expression that grew when Jaskier pressed the heels of his hands into the small of his back and dragged them up the column of his spine. He full body shivered, something fluttering in his stomach. Even at brothels a touch like this was uncommon. He was a bit clinical in his general approach to sex. It meant that sensitive areas like his back – areas he never would have guessed were sensitive – left him reeling with new sensations. Jaskier did that move with his hands again, the heels of his palms digging into the thickly corded muscle beneath, and Geralt couldn’t hold back the shocked little breath that squeezed out of him.

“You witchers, I swear,” Jaskier sighed, rolled his eyes dramatically, “How any of you have survived is astounding to me. Have you really never had a massage before, Geralt?”

He opened his mouth to answer but Jaskier chose that moment – likely intentionally – to zero in on a knot in Geralt’s shoulder. He worked it with palm heels and thumbs, putting some leverage into it, and Geralt would never admit it, but his eyes had rolled up from the sheer relief of it. He hadn’t even realized the knots had been there, that they shouldn’t be there; what it felt like to have them loosened. He huffed out a long, slow breath – lashes fluttering weakly against the span of his cheeks – too melted into the moment to care when Yennefer let out an amused chuckle.

“So good for us,” she purred.

“Our soft witcher, our beautiful wolf,” Jaskier agreed, then a little more tightly when he worked on another knot, “Our mess of a beautiful white wolf – gods above, Geralt, you’re as tightly wound as a priest whose made his vows of abstinence with the gods!”

He didn’t answer. His brain was mush. The oil was so warm, Jaskier’s hands so soft and confident. Every knot released left him more and more like loose clay to be molded, his lips slack and his breathing sleepy.

Jaskier’s hands loosened his back, his shoulders, his biceps. They moved down, down past his lower back and – ah, yes. This was familiar.

“Can you really say we’re not friends when I just rubbed chamomile on your lovely bottom?”

Yes, this was familiar. Jaskier kneaded his cheeks like they were a baker’s dough. Pressing in with his thumbs, rolling them in steadily wider and wider circles.

“Don’t think I believe your sleepy ruse for a minute, Geralt,” Jaskier said cheerfully, his thumbs slowly moving in a way they hadn’t before. “I fully intend to put you through your paces before the night is done.”

What did that mean—oh.

Jaskier’s thumbs had slipped between the crack of his cheeks, brushed over the tight ring of muscle beneath. Slippery as they were, it was easy for the bard to flirt with his entrance. Pressing in with a thumb nail only to pull away and press with the flat of his thumb instead – again and again. He felt as though his limbs were made of molasses, his reactions slow.

“Far less resistance than I anticipated,” Yennefer commented, her hands reach out to brush back a sweaty lock of hair from his brow. The wolf’s gaze looked positively hazy, lost beneath his touch. Soft and trusting and curious, she noted, so curious. “Though I’m pleasantly surprised to see how utterly receptive you are, Geralt. Such a good boy.”

Geralt moaned despite himself, then turned to hide his face into the pillow when he realized what he had done, what he had let slip out. Yennefer chuckled fondly and curled a hand around the back of Geralt’s neck soothingly, her thumb petting over the knob of his spine. Jaskier’s progress was so steady, so minute, so gradual that Geralt didn’t even realize he had a finger up his ass until he had two of them in there.

“Jaskier,” he murmured into the pillow, feeling picked apart and exposed in a way he couldn’t even describe. That steady buzz of anxiety that had driven him to working nonstop these days was a distant thing now – buried deep beneath a layer of thrumming, hot-blooded pleasure.

“I’ve got you, Geralt,” Jaskier promised gently, so surprisingly gently, as he adjusted his fingers, his angle. “You’re being so good.”

Good. Theirs. Good. A good boy. His head felt abuzz with it all. Then that buzz scattered like stars streaking across the night sky when those fingers bent, crooked inside him, and left him reeling. White hot pleasure seared up his spine, tightening and rippling every muscle Jaskier had just loosened deliciously. Geralt had just sucked in a breath when Jaskier and Yennefer said something pleased to one another that he couldn’t make out and Jaskier crooked his fingers again. He clenched his teeth around a sound that was building in his chest, threatened to slip free, but managed to hold it in.

“Next time I’ll eat him out, I think,” he suddenly came back to, down from the high, Jaskier’s fingers gone as he adjusted his position. “If he reacted like that for my fingers, well… it’ll be quite a show with my tongue.”

“Tongue…?” Geralt repeatedly, woozy and fuzzy in a way that was not unlike being drunk, but so much better because he didn’t feel sick, didn’t feel dizzy. Just pleasantly floating. He didn’t have to think, have to move. Just follow orders and feel. He wish he had known about this feeling ages ago.

Jaskier’s hands were slipping under him now, coaxing him to kneel, and while his mind felt distant, Geralt’s body did it’s level best to follow on instinct. It left him propped in Jaskier’s lap, his ass above the bard’s crotch – his naked crotch. When had that happened?

“You undid him so beautifully, Jaskier. Remarkable work,” Yennefer hummed, that electric current of hunger sharp in her voice. He opened his eyes as she cupped his jaw, suddenly in front of him. Not just in front of him, but practically in his lap and getting closer. “Are you certain this won’t crush you, darling?”

“Only one way to find out,” Jaskier said.

Something was parting his cheeks again. He nearly twisted to see, to understand, when suddenly Yennefer had her hands on his prick, slicking it with that too-warm-just-right oil that Jaskier had used on his back. He moaned, the sounds too strong to hold back now as Yennefer teased the slit of his cock with a thumb nail. He tossed his head back, white hair spread across Jaskier’s shoulder, leaning heavily into the bard’s chest.

“I’ve got you,” Jaskier promised in a whisper against the flesh of his throat, peppering it with kisses and nips as he babbled, “You’re doing so well. So proud of you for trusting us. For letting us in.”

And in he definitely let them, because he was decently sure Jaskier was slipping into him with his cock. It spread him slowly, so fully, taking him in a place he had never been taken before – too buzzed to be anxious, perfectly content in letting Jaskier guide him to whatever destination he had in mind.

“Such a good wolf we have,” Yennefer said as she lifted himself over her lap. Something sparked at that, he knew this, knew this posture, this look. Her eyes met his as she sunk her wet heat onto his prick and his slack lips pulled back to bare his teeth at that – overwhelmed, taken at two ends. She clenched and writhed around him, walls of slick warmth undulating and tugging him deeper as she shimmied down further. He couldn’t even lift his head from Jaskier’s shoulder anymore, too torn between two worlds to function as Jaskier began to set a pace for both of them, fucking up into him, thus into her.

Above him Yennefer moaned like a litany, her hands cradling his jaw, forcing him to look at her, to keep eye contact as she said, “I want to see you. All of you.”

Gods above, how much more was left to see? He felt scraped clean and laid out to dry, every bit of him exposed and over sensitized. Her hands moved to loop around his neck – as well as Jaskier’s – and she kissed the bard over his shoulder before returning her attentions to him. Jaskier’s hands moved from his hips to his nipples. Yennefer’s hands guided Geralt’s to her breasts, urging them to cup and pinch and grope.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Geralt breathed in a reedy, broken chant. That fire in his belly was a blaze now; roaring and searing him from the inside out, stoked that much higher with every order – kiss me, now my neck, suckle my breasts, reach back to cup Jaskier’s neck, yes good – and every kind word of praise – so good, our good boy, our witcher, so good and all ours. There was a sound now, high and breathless and keening, and with a blink he realized it was him. He was whining, as close as he could get to begging, as Jaskier and Yennefer both closed a hand over his cock and began to stroke him as one.

Jaskier, the bastard, had remembered where his fingers had pressed to make Geralt react like that before and he was relentless in his dogging of that spot. Thrusting in short, abortive little burst, then in hard, deep slow strokes, then bursts again.

Geralt moaned, words beyond him, lost in the haze they had dragged him into. They had peeled him of every layer, laid him out beneath them, framed him on either side until there was nothing left but more and tell me what to do and don’t stop.

There was a deep, instinctual, almost animal pleasure in this. In simply existing, sandwiched between them, worrying only about rutting and being good. Something relieving in not making the decisions or the plans after decades of having no one but himself to make every decision and bare the weight of every plan. He melted into them totally, finally, and let them drive. He drifted, lulled by the hum of their voices now – nonsensical and far away, dancing over him like a stone sending ripples across a still pond.

“So good, such a good man.”

The haze broke only when that pleasure-heat had finally been stoked to a writhing inferno. It gripped his gut, sending his hips into a rolling, writhing mess atop Jaskier and pinned beneath Yennefer as he came, the force of it blinding him, head thrown back against Jaskier’s shoulder, mouth open – deft to his own howling. His hands would leave bruises on Yennefer’s hip and Jaskier’s thigh beneath him, he would find out later, but for now he held onto each of them like a life line until his orgasm passed. He wilted between them, chest heaving, as Yennefer chased her own pleasure atop him and Jaskier followed quickly after inside him – teeth buried in his shoulder and growling with more force than a bard had any right to growl.

“Downright territorial of you, Jaskier. Beautiful, albeit surprising. I was much more inclined to believe you would wax poetic to us or sing,” Yennefer mused as she removed herself from Geralt’s lap.

“Anyone else, I would,” Jaskier said, the littlest bit surprised himself it would seem, “But this was different.”

“Indeed,” Yennefer hummed, easing Geralt off of Jaskier’s prick – eyes on his hole as it gaped slightly with Jaskier’s absence, pearly cum beginning to leak from it. She gathered his jaw in her hands again, sought out his eyes, and smiled wolfishly as she said, “He opened up to that rather beautifully, didn’t he?”

Jaskier hummed, just as pleased, as he peppered Geralt’s back with kisses. “Better than expected, I really thought we’d need to coax him there with far more guidance. How long do you think this will last?”

“This deep? Hard to say with a witcher,” she said, easing up from the bed, drawing Geralts hands in her own as she murmured warmly, “Up we go, wolf. To the baths, then some meats and some cheeses, and bed. Up, up. Be good now.”

He followed. In a pleasant, cared for haze he let them ease him into the tub. He hummed and purring and grumbled pleasantly as Jaskier washed his hair and Yennefer cleaned his skin, each of them taking their time. He watched lazily as they attended to one another. They dried him. Plied him with food.

Then they tucked themselves into either side of him, petting him through the submissive daze they had helped him reach. It was some time later, the three of them dozing lightly in the bed, that finally his lashes fluttered open – some semblance of clarity in his amber eyes.

“Ah, there he is,” Jaskier said, propping his chin up on Geralt’s chest to beam at him, “Hello there.”

He felt Yennefer’s gaze fall on him as well, expectant and waiting – although for what, he wasn’t sure. His mouth worked open and closed a few times, but he had no words, no idea of where to even start. Yennefer smiled, pleased.

“Good. It worked. We struck the witcher too dumb to keep working himself into the ground,” she said. He grunted, grumpy – albeit too wrung out with pleasure, too loose from sex and exhaustion for there to be any real heat to it. She leaned over his chest to share a celebratory kiss with the bard, short and sweet and chaste. Geralt just stared on, almost owlishly, before letting his head fall back into the pillows with a soft, stunned ‘fuck’.

Jaskier patted his chest consolingly, but his grin was anything but remorseful as he said, “Don’t worry, Geralt, you’re in good hands.”

And he was.

[louiserandom]

old friends and new companions

for: @greeneyedtrickster :3 the formatting for the ask reply got wonky so i’m reposting it like this :D Hope you like it :3

Rating: T

Pairing: Jiraiya/Tsunade

Summary: Jiraiya is reckless and a bit of an idiot.

Orochimaru, too, is reckless but by no means lacks intelligence.

Tsunade is just done. So done.

A/N: alternatively, the latest of the Bizarre Adventures of the Legendary Sannin :D I took so many creative liberties in this lol and I hope it turned out fine. Enjoy!

Read on AO3 or under the cut :3

“Care to explain why you didn’t wait for backup like we told you to?” Tsunade demands, bandaging the worst of Jiraiya’s wounds perhaps a little too harshly.

“He’s an idiot,” Orochimaru replies helpfully from where he’s lounging on the other side of the cave.

“Hey!”

“I know.” Tsunade sighs, iryo chakra pooling out of her hands onto Jiraiya’s other injuries.

“I’d have liked to see you face off against that monster, dumbass!” Jiraiya growls, trying to sit up from his makeshift sickbed, a deathbed not two minutes earlier, but Tsunade forcefully restrains him, hitting him lightly over the head for good measure.

“I will,” Orochimaru says sweetly, “and unlike some people, I’m not going to behave like a suicidal moron.”

Jiraiya huffs but holds back his explosive retort, conceding the fairly good point. Perhaps facing off a giant disgruntled leech with a Noh mask wasn’t the best idea when he was wounded and stranded in the outskirts of Sky Country.

“I knew you’d still be busy with that platoon and I was tired of lying in wait,” he grumbles his admittedly poor excuse, “and that creepy guy controlling that monster was right there! So I thought, why not? Two birds, one kunai.”

“Did you actually attack with just the one kunai?” Orochimaru asks, eyeing the many, many wounds Jiraiya is sporting.

Orochimaru dodges the shuriken his friend flings his way, smirking when Tsunade gives Jiraiya her signature glare, making him wilt. Both of them know too well the pain that befalls those who don’t heed Tsunade’s first warning before she gets annoyed enough to inflict punishment.

“Anyway,” Jiraiya says with a put-upon sigh, “the man’s dead. The beast is wounded but I have no idea how fast it heals. So that’s still half the job done for us.”

“Yes, us,” Tsunade says firmly. “We’ll face whatever that thing is together,” she emphasizes the word with a meaningful look at Orochimaru, “so I don’t have to bring anyone back from the brink of death again. That seriously pisses me off.”

Orochimaru blinks, feigning innocence. “What? Why are you looking at me?”

“Maybe I’m well aware I’m the only one on our team with an actual self-preservation instinct.”

“Questionable. But even if that’s true, I at least have more than a modicum of intelligence… unlike some people.”

And now it’s Orochimaru’s turn to withstand Tsunade’s death threat of a glare. As well as an unnecessarily complicated set of rude gestures from Jiraiya, presumably depicting the physical harm he plans to inflict on Orochimaru once he’s completely healed.  

Orochimaru rolls his eyes and presses his palm to his chest. “Fine. I promise not to go out to kill the monster by myself.”

Tsunade eyes him suspiciously, wondering if she should make him solemnly swear by his experiments. But, she supposes, there’s probably nothing in existence that Orochimaru holds sacred, so she simply nods and sends a quick prayer to the gods for patience, if nothing else.

She returns to the task at hand, touching up and cleaning the last of the injuries, now healed enough to become yet another set of scars adorning Jiraiya’s arms and chest, some of them crawling dangerously close to his heart. She takes a deep breath to calm herself, finally out of the sickening mental loop of fearing yet another loved one’s death. Jiraiya’s usual quips and one-liners help lighten the mood as she works, but just to be contrary, Tsunade doesn’t give him the courtesy of a smile.

“Here.” She cuts off Jiraiya’s ramblings that were just on the verge of straying into the perverted territory, offering him the medicine he so abhors taking. Predictably, his face twists in a grimace and he tries his best to keep himself from pouting, with little success. “Just a couple of hours of sleep, and your chakra will be replenished. Drink up.”

Jiraiya crosses his arms. “It tastes sour.”

“Oh?” Tsunade raises an eyebrow. “You know what else will taste sour? The disgusting, humiliating taste of defeat if you decide to do this the long way and we end up wasting so much time that the monster gets away from us. Again.”

Another fair point, Jiraiya supposes, but that doesn’t mean he has to be happy about it.

“Do I get a kiss from the beautiful lady for my heroism despite the many trials and tribulations?” he asks, waggling his eyebrows. “And what’s my grand prize once we get home victorious?”

Tsunade rolls her eyes. “The prize of one kiss, knucklehead, will be bestowed upon your brow only once you’ve proved you’ve learned your lesson.”

“Oh, come on!” Jiraiya whines, ignoring Orochimaru’s unnecessarily dramatic sigh as he promptly leaves the cavern muttering something about ‘keeping it the fucking bedroom.’

“You knew the consequences.”

“I didn’t! Tsuna, look, I underestimated the wound I got from the battle up north, yeah, fine—but if not for that, I would have won!”

“And once you see the lack of logic in that statement,” Tsunade says with a derisive look that’s very much uncalled for, “I’ll see about that kiss.”

“And the victory sex?” Jiraiya says, because being a little shit never fails to make Tsunade smile.

He’s not wrong. It’s a beautiful smile, despite the exasperation on her face. Her shoulders have finally relaxed, and her hands have stopped shaking, and that’s all Jiraiya needs for now.

“Stop bringing up sex to annoy Orochimaru,” Tsunade cuts the fun short. “And drink.”

Not masking his displeasure, Jiraiya downs the disgusting potion in one go, and instantly feels the familiar, debilitating drowsiness settling in. He groans. The world dulls, then sinks as he flops onto his back, everything blurring into a mesh of colorful blobs. He can only just make out Tsunade standing up from where she was kneeling in front of him to go somewhere out of sight—which is unacceptable, really.

“Hey,” Jiraiya tries, willing his eyes to stay open, “wait, don’t leave…”

“I’m not leaving, silly.”

Warm arms cradle his head and Jiraiya suddenly finds himself lying on Tsunade’s lap, her presence soft and comfortable, radiating warm, lively, calming energy he’s grown to love so, so much.

“Tell me again,” he whispers, snuggling up to her.

“I’m right here.” Jiraiya isn’t sure whether it’s his imagination or not when he feels the faint press of warm lips against his forehead, his eyelids, his cheeks. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Mm,” he protests, “not what I wanna hear.”

A chuckle. A playful nudge. Jiraiya’s sure he’s grinning like an idiot, what with his eyes closed and his muscles relaxing steadily with each second.

“Maybe I’d like to hear it from you first,” Tsunade says.

“Hm. You know I love you,” Jiraiya says, barely holding on to consciousness as the dreamless chemical-induced sleep fights to drag him under.

“Well.” Another dream-like kiss, to his lips this time. “You know I love you too.”

It’s the last thing Jiraiya hears before he sleeps.

He awakens to the dawn light grazing his eyelids and gasps for breath as the adrenaline from that weird fucking potion rushes through his veins, making his heart beat at twice its normal rate.

Ugh, he thinks, at least my chakra’s back to normal.

Jiraiya sits up, stretching his arms and relaxing the muscles that yearn to hit something, happy to see all his injuries completely healed—thanks to the genius lying beside him.

He smiles as he watches Tsunade, completely relaxed for once, sleeping on her side with her hair undone and a slight smile curling her lips. This despite her own injuries that Jiraiya only now notices she didn’t bother to heal; minor cuts and bruises that she always dismisses because she cares too much about her best friend and lover to notice her own pains. And despite the battle-worn clothes, streaked with blood and grime, and singed in some places because apparently the Sky shinobi she and Orochimaru fought were uncannily skilled in Fire Release—bathed in the burgeoning sunlight, she looks beautiful.

He wishes sorely that he didn’t have to wake her up. But a few minutes is all they should be able to spare at this point.

“Oi, snake boy,” he calls to where Orochimaru is sitting near the entrance.

“Call me that one more time,” Orochimaru says, turning around to glare at him, “and I’ll feed you to one of my summons.”

“Yeah, yeah, same threat, different decade,” Jiraiya says, standing up and looking for the storage scroll with his change of clothes. “You ready to tackle that monster thing? You have that seal for tracking it down, right?”

“One you didn’t need apparently, because of your dumb luck,” Orochimaru says, tone tinged with irritation. “But actually,” he announces, standing up to face Jiraiya, “we’re not going anywhere.”

“Huh?”

Jiraiya tenses once the Shadow Clone before him dissipates and the real Orochimaru (hopefully) shunshins near the entrance.

“You left a clone to keep guard, you dumbass? What if—what if it…” It’s then that Jiraiya notices what—or who, he really is uncertain at this point—Orochimaru is holding in his arms. “Orochimaru, WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?!”

The scream has Tsunade awake and already forming hand signs before she realizes there’s no intruder.

Well.

Technically.

And Orochimaru, the bastard, acts like there’s nothing out of the ordinary.

“I would very much like both of you to calm—"

“Why the fuck do you have that monster in your arms, you godsdamned idiot?”

“Orochimaru,” Tsunade growls, angry enough that her chakra starts glowing, crackling in the air around her. “What, exactly, did you do that I explicitly asked you not to do?”

“I broke no promises, Tsunade, as I did not go out to try to kill the ‘monster’,” Orochimaru emphasizes the word with a pet of said monster’s head. Because Jiraiya’s pretty fucking sure that’s a miniature version of the slug-snake thing with the Noh mask he’d fought cuddling into Orochimaru’s hold like it wants to be there. “See, we never thought about befriending him. Talking him out of being Sky Country’s glorified weapon and letting him be an honorable asset for our village.”

“Asset?” Tsunade can feel the onset of one hell of a migraine.

“Him?” Jiraiya asks weakly.

“Yes.” Orochimaru smiles. “This is Zero-Tails. He hasn’t chosen a name for himself yet, but since I’ve officially adopted him, we’ll get to that shortly. Isn’t that right?” he all but coos over his new pet.

“Yes, master,” Zero-Tails answers, its mask shifting into an expression of pure innocence.

Its—his—voice is deep and far too evil sounding in Jiraiya’s opinion, and he will not fall for the innocent act, but for all his indignation, all he can manage is,

“Master?” Jiraiya is fairly sure he’s going to lose his mind with a best friend like his. “Orochimaru, why?”

Tsunade snarls and kicks the wall of the cave, making a big chunk of rock fall off and the whole part of the mountain they’re nestled in trembles dangerously.

“I need Grandpa’s fucking moonshine to deal with this,” she seethes, and Jiraiya couldn’t agree more.

Orochimaru simply keeps smiling and says, “Of course! We need to have a house-warming celebration for our new companion after all.”

[freyalor]

[For the headcanons:] Of all of heavenly bodies, the fairest; the moon shifting from full to crescent to new. The Earth’s most trusted servant, my dreams orphic larcener… Am I being clear enough? :3c

You know what you’ve done, don’t you? You KNOW I can’t do THAT in 100 words. Well, you’ve asked for it. 

Headcanon A:  realistic

I think my most realistic headcanon is my bipolar disorder diagnosis for Armand. It is timidly shared by one or two specialists among the handful that ever considered the question, but not enough to make it a serious historical fact. So at this point, it’s still headcanon. 

There are traces of him going through phases of reckless, ecstatic dominance, followed, at the slightest failure, by a rapid crumbling of his health and mood, with significant symptoms of self-harm (self-starving, refusal of medicine…). Medici herself once said that though he could be shot down by the mere misfortune, he was “worse than a dragon” when the wind blew his way. Success was likely to trigger feeling of supreme power and invincibility in him, pushing him to headstrong extreme “conquest” behavior, as in La Rochelle, or in the Huguenot wars that followed around 1629/1630, where he took drastic military and political measures without a sign of hesitation, building schemes and systems, overworking himself with no regard for his own health. Then, at the (false) news of Medici gaining the favor of the King in November 1630, he crumbled in one day from all-victorious to sickbed, stopped working entirely, refused all food or care, and called for death. 

He is also likely to have developed, as consequence or in addition to his bipolar disorder, a form of anxiety, with his paranoia, insomnia, and general state of agitation clearly growing over the years (his conduct during the Cinq Mars plot very much beyond reason at this stage of his life).

As mental illness is my work and my passion, I of course emphasize the disorder in my writing and art, adding the finger biting to the self-harm symptoms, because GOTHIC AESTHETIC, and low self-esteem/ extreme guilt to his self-punishment behavior.  It doesn’t make him more interesting than the original, it only makes him more complex for me to handle, and I enjoy that so very much. It might be Cardinal abuse, but I swear I only gave him more sickness to make the therapy and care (might it be from Treville, or Louis) more epic.

Headcanon B: while it may not be realistic it is hilarious

((It’s kinda hard to be funny with my Richelieu, I now realise. He is many things, but fuck he ain’t fun at all. ))

BUT. I have been keeping this headcanon for a while without ever finding an opportunity to insert it into my writing. My headcanon is Armand does try to be funny from time to time, but it’s always in very subtle, very sarcastic way, and almost always in private. With Joseph, by example, he really can put on a show. He quotes the words of an annoying diplomat earlier in the day with dreadful accuracy, ridiculous accent included. He’s quite gifted with impersonations actually, and it send Joseph rolling on the floor in tears of laughter. By example, as Richelieu led a French diplomatic delegation to the Court of Frederic-Henri of the United Provinces, known for his avarice, he bit his lips real hard not to laugh in front of the wealthiest man in Europe yelling “PARCIMONY” to his servants every time they poured wine to the guests to encourage them to be thrifty. He keeps using this word for YEARS after, dropped under his breath from time to time as wine is poured in his glass, with a perfect imitation of Frederic-Henri’s accent at the most unexpected times.

(Joseph, distractedly)-“Do you want more wine, Eminence?

(Richelieu nods, but as Joseph pours wine he suddenly mutters: )-“Parcimony!

(Joseph, snorting VERY LOUD)-“PPPRRFFTT !

Headcanon C: heart-crushing and awful, but fun to inflict on friends

Since the summer of 1620, Armand has been doing these discrete journeys to Anjou at least once a year. He had to grow more careful as years went by and his rise to power unfolded, but hiding things has never been a weak point for him. He goes alone with a trusted carriage driver, and crawls around daybreak through the back door of that miserable castle of Milly. He never wears robes for those visits, and may it be summer or winter, he hides his shoulders under the same nameless brown coat. He never looks up in this doorframe, he keeps his eyes low, with the same soft sadness hung around the corners of his mouth.The valet knows him, he doesn’t ask questions. He simply nods, and leads him to the same small room, to the same thick gates where every year one more lock has been nailed. The room is dark, because the windows have been broken too many times to be replaced, and the shutters are locked forevermore.

On the wide bed, between medicine and torn gazettes, someone lies there, curled on the side and humming softly.

-“Bonjour, Nicole” Armand says, but she never looks at him.

She sings, most of the times, she sings or recites shattered verses of a Bible only she knows of. She prays, most of the times, ignoring the gentle touch of Armand’s resigned care.

Then at some point, she screams at him.

She screams, spitting on his shoes, spitting on his hands, and she insults him so loud, so violent, that three valets need to barge in to pin her down. She shouts, twisting in her sheets, and the solid ropes around her wrists creak in their effort. Armand just steps back, lowers his head and looks aside.

Every year, she gets thinner. Every year they have to tighten up the knots. Every year she gets dirtier, her eyes wild and her hair thick. Every year she steps further into darkness, that darkness Armand knows so well, because every day of his own life, he spends dancing on the edge of it.

-“Bonjour Nicole”, he breathes, but she doesn’t recognize him anymore.

He sits, then, on that chair next to the bed, the same chair every time, and for one hour exactly, he just watches that woman die, swallowed by madness, inch by inch, day by day. He sits in desperate silence and watches, for one hour a year, over what remains of his younger sister.

What remains of his family.

Henri and Françoise, both dead and buried. Alphonse, barely coherent. Isabelle, exiled.

Nicole is all he has left.

And she’s tied to a bed twisting and shouting in her own excrements. He watches, for one hour no less, one hour no more, and eventually he gets up to leave.

-“Au revoir, Nicole” he tells her every time, but she’ll never answer.

He’ll walk out in a sigh, eyes low, wrapping his frame in that same cloak. It happens every year, even in his busiest times, until the shortest of letters, written by the local physician, informs him, 1635, that there is nothing left to visit anymore.

Headcanon D: unrealistic, but I will disregard canon about it because I reject canon reality and substitute my own.

I think the biggest twist I inflicted to history is Richelieu’s sexuality. He was historically very straight and that’s a fact, the gonorrhea he caught in his early life with tavern whores and his ambiguous adoration for his niece D’Aiguillon might be enough evidence. 

But for my own devious purposes I erased D’Aiguillon from existence and made Armand more opportunistic than straight, feeling sexually attracted to people he looks up to, for virtue or power, and if they happen to be men, well, so be it. I added a whole system of submission kink to that, all of it derived from the fact that his only purpose was to serve France and the King, and this is of course pure invention, because I find the idea of the most powerful man alive in France at this time kneeling in front of the man he loves because he craves for relief from responsibility and power ABSOLUTELY PERFECT. 

It adds contrast to the character, it adds surprise, and it makes him more real, more conflicted. He actually struggled and schemed and plotted to gain himself absolute power, all of this because he wants to serve the absolute. The moment of switch between the almighty Generalissime Minister Richelieu and the lovely devoted whimpering creature he can be in bed is pure beauty to me. The sigh of relief, the floof of robes as he drops on his knees. Unf.

That also allows me to insert more GOTHIC AESTHETIC such as soft BDSM and the active search for pain. It blends smoothly into the mental illness patterns I made up for him and creates intense emotional porn, which is My JamTM.

[xtruss]

US Robbery Adds Insult To Injury To Afghan People

— Xin Ping | February 21, 2022 | Global Times

Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

Picture an old patient huddling under a patch of sunshine on his sickbed. He's breathing heavily through an oxygen mask, with his eyes half-closed and bones almost protruding through the wrinkled skin barely covered by a piece of worn-torn cloth. He has been like this for more than 20 years, alive but not living.

Suddenly, a bulky figure blocks the sunbeam. The intruder lays his hand on the oxygen mask, pulls off the life support, cuts the oxygen supply by half, and thrusts the mask back. "That's enough for you to take in," he spits the words down and strides away. The intruder was the very reason why the old man ended up in a ward 20 years ago, when he beat the man almost to death without any justification.

This sad story is an example of the effects of the US war in Afghanistan. According to Anadolu Agency, the most conservative estimates by local and international rights group suggest that close to 47,600 civilians have been killed in Afghanistan during the 20 years of war since the US invasion. Among others fortunate enough to survive, the number of Afghans in need of assistance keeps rising. In 2021, more than 18 million Afghans required some form of "blood transfusion", nearly doubling the 9.4 million reported in 2020. The UN estimates that 97 percent of the Afghan people suffering the world's largest humanitarian crisis could fall into poverty in 2022 while facing a serious risk of widespread famine.

More than half of the country has already been in humanitarian need and the possibility of further deterioration is very real. The UN has recently requested nearly $4.5 billion in global aid for 2022, the largest humanitarian appeal ever. According to estimates, if no sufficient action is taken to support the country and regional response plans, "in 2023 we'll be asking for $10 billion".

The Afghan civilians, who had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks, are bearing the brunt of stifling sanctions and assets freezing by the US. The result is a severe economic downturn that throws millions into poverty and hunger and sets Afghanistan back for generations, as UN Special Representative for Afghanistan Deborah Lyons pointed out. The US is not unaware of this. Four dozen US congressmen wrote to President Biden in December 2021 after America's hasty withdrawal, highlighting that US confiscation of $9.4 billion in Afghanistan's currency reserves would contribute to soaring inflation and the shuttering of commercial banks and private businesses.

But no one with a speck of conscience and compassion would expect the US to rob Afghans of their life-savings. The Biden administration recently announced the plan to dispose of $7 billion frozen assets held in the US, freeing up one half for families of America's 9/11 victims. The US chose to ignore the fact that the frozen assets belong to Afghan people who are also the victims of its post 9/11 counter-terrorism war and are in dire need of war compensation and humanitarian aid.

The US keeps Afghanistan's money as its own with a more despicable agenda, i.e., to vent its anger after the humiliating failure in Afghanistan, to punish the Taliban authorities that burst the bubble of US invincibility, and to warn other countries to keep succumbing to US hegemony. This ruthless "leader" is telling the world, if the US is not living a desirable life, no one else even has the chance to live a normal life.

As winter set in, at least a million Afghan children under five have been at risk of dying from starvation. These kids may have already lost their parents in the bombings by the US. But the orphans cannot escape the shadow of the US' abuse of power in the foreseeable future. Like previous generations, they will grow up learning that there will be two scenarios when the US treats others as inferior—when it invades a country and when it does not.

This will send more chills down the children's spines than the cold winter wind they are enduring. They will soon realize that the US is "generous" enough to torture them slowly rather than eliminate them in one single stroke.

— The author is a commentator on international affairs, writing regularly for Global Times, China Daily etc.

[sidrisa-blog]

Power and Magic

Read it here on AO3

Pairings: Loki x Reader and the lightest Sif X Thor

Chapter: 3/104 Don’t Let Her Fall

Warnings: the usual: sex, death, and violence with light smatterings of misogynoir

Summary: The princes come with their exalted Father arriving amidst a hail of pomp and pageantry all parties would rather forgo. This is war, where men die, their blood purchasing land and peace until it's time for more men and more blood. But your mother adheres to the old rules of hearth and hospitality. The Lords of Asgard must be given their due despite the grim business precipitating their arrival. It is too bad they don't deserve it. There is nothing to recommend him, Loki, Prince of Asgard. He is rude and cold and childish. You try to find some merit in him. You find none. Exactly none. But maybe, after trial and tribulation,

You will.

You wake in grass and dirt, something cold and wet presses to your face, nudging you. A long nose, black and pebbled. A snout.

A horse.

You try to groan but all that sounds is a gurgle of blood. You try to move and you can’t. You feel nothing but sharp stabbing agony across all of your body and a heavy weight pressing down on your chest.

An arm, stiff and still.

Hava’s.

Grief tears you up worse than Fa’Rey’s blades and Fa’Dan’s betrayal. You expel all the air in your chest turning the gurgle in your throat into a choked scream. The horse whinnies softly, maybe it’s Cephalus, you can’t really tell. ‘Calm Mistress’ he tries to say to you in an animal language only the heroes of your fairytales know how to speak.

The horse whinies again, then neighs full blast. He kicks his rear legs, bringing his hooves close enough to smash the mud by your ear. You’ll be trampled if it keeps this up.

Good.

Death under a horse’s hooves is a blessing unlooked for.

“Don’t worry Father! I will wrangle this beast! A fine horse befit Odin Allfather’s stables!”

“Perhaps, you should check to see if its owner is nearby.”

“Nonsense Loki! The horse is obviously wild. What fool would let such a resplendent creature roam free?”

“Resplendent? You shouldn’t use words you know you can’t spell Thor.”

The horse feints a charge at his would be captor before looping around him and trotting back to the body in the grass.

‘Come closer you brute!’ The horse challenges, rearing and snorting, hoping to lure the man closer.

“Careful Thor that you don’t get bitten!”

“Easy boy! Easy!”

The horse screams, swinging his wide neck to avoid the rope Thor means to loop around it. The Prince falls forward, tricked, and lands in wet he thinks is mud, but is really your--.

“By the--! Loki! Come quick!”

The horse stops screaming and drops his head, nudging you again with his nose. He doesn’t fight when other men come to take him away.

‘You are saved Mistress. You are saved. Cephalus saved you.’ **

You don’t see the princes’ shocked faces as they uncover you from the protective shell Hava made around you with her body. You’ve passed out before you can hear Thor swear and Loki hiss at the barbarity of your wounds.

“Brother? This is…”

“The Little Princess.”

“She has been waylaid by a highwayman. We must return her to her Uncle. Poor man. Loosing his sister and now this. Such terrible blows inflicted one after the other.”

You don’t see the way Loki narrows his eyes, surveying the gruesome scene before him. He shakes his head, what has happened to you is not so simple.

“Use your eyes and brain, idiot. Look.”

You’re in a dream somewhere, with your mother and father, so you can’t see when Loki points to the sack at Hava’s feet. He crouches down and sifts through it pulling out your jeweled diadem.

“These are their crown jewels, and the seal of their house. If she were robbed these would be long gone. No. This was done in haste. Her greatest riches shoved into a bag. She was fleeing something--someone perhaps. Regardless of her reasons for bleeding in a ditch, she will die without Mother’s attentions. Her healing magic is stronger than mine and we must get her to the palace quickly.”

If you were awake, even though they are saving you from certain death, you would fight them. Scream and beg for them to leave you in the mud with Hava, to let you die, ignoble death it may be.

“Please. Leave me.”

But you are not awake and so you cannot beg them, and so they do not leave you. They bear you away, Cephalus straining against his captors to follow closely behind the litter that takes you away. ‘Sleep mistress. We are here. We will watch you for as long as we can. Sleep.’

You have no choice so you do, unable to beg them to at least bury Hava before they go.

**

“Oh Sweet Mercy. Loki, set her here.”

You’re still gone when they get you to Frigga Allmother, “What happened?”

“I don’t know, a coup perhaps? Father has sent scouts to her kingdom to investigate, it will be some time before we hear back.”

Frigga’s hands warm with gold light as she passes them over you. Her face changes, heart rending as your injuries are made known to her through her hands.

“Oh poor child, this is monstrous.”

“Will she live?”

“With constant attention yes.”

Loki’s own face wrinkles. “You do not have the strength for constant care Mother.”

“I do not, no. But together, we can manage.”

He scoffs rising from the sickbed--. “Get another to tend to the Horse Princess, I have better things to do.”

“How dare you!”

Her hands are still wreathed in gold when she slaps him, making the blow sting far harder than with any force she could have applied.

“As I hear it, her mother died in service to your father! Her mother who has been ever our loyal subject. We owe... it is our honor to care for her daughter in her hour of need.”

Censured Loki looks no different from any other form, still icy, no shred of compassion on his face, in his tone, or in his eyes. “I am not fit to care for her, my healing magic…”

“Will improve with practice and application. To wit.” Frigga nods to your still form, covered in filth and stab wounds. “I will have her bathed and bandaged, and I will keep watch during the daylight hours, since you can’t ever seem to rise before noon. The nights are yours. Have a servant call me if she changes, for better or worse. Do not let her fall, Loki. She can be saved. We will save her.”

“Yes Mother.”

**

He sneers at you when his mother isn’t around, considers you a punishment, ball and chain to which he is tethered. The first night he can barely stomach being near you, you’re wrapped head to foot in bandages saturated with blood.

“It’d be a kindness to just let you die.” He mutters to you. You can’t respond.

But you’d agree.

He considers it, staring at your mummified almost-corpse. He considers just letting you go and admitting the fault in his magic as the reason for your death. But he remembers the tired look on his mother’s face when they exchange places. Frigga spent her whole day locked in here giving up her powerful magic to save your pathetic life.

“Don’t let her fall, Loki.”

So how could he do any less?

It is difficult to summon the life magic forth, he’s far better suited to illusion cantrips than this. But when his fingertips tingle then shimmer green, he smirks, proud that he’s gotten this far. Loki places his hand over your chest--.

“N’ara!”

He flinches hard, drawing his hand back as though from an intense flame. He’s sick, repulsed by a lingering shield of magic cast over you and the true nature of your wounds.

He was right, it was a coup.

He tries again, the shield over you dissipates, it’s sentient almost and the magic can tell that he means you no harm. He feels a woman, her life-force weaves through the magic that protects you.

“N’ara.” He hears again. He can’t translate the language, he never wasted time on your country’s gutter tongue like he has on the languages of Alfheim and Midgard. But he somehow understands it, how much such a short word means.

That woman who they found you with. This is her. She put her life into this last spell to protect you, the sum of her existence, and now it slowly fades as the green in his hand intensifies, as his magic strengthens.

She’s helping him help you.

But he doesn’t want the assistance.

He pushes the woman and her magic away, rejecting the idea that he needs help with anything, least of all dealing with you. He doesn’t think about the pain he feels when he tears away the dead woman and how her grief literally makes his hands sting.

The infirmary room is already quiet, that silence deafens him when the woman disappears completely.

**

“Did anything happen?” His mother asks when she takes his place in the morning.

“No.” He lies, departing quickly, unable to bear you a second glance even though you’re still locked away in a deep coma.

It could be disgust.

Or guilt.

No matter the reason, he stops a scout on his way to his chambers, a soldier who campaigned with him and his family against the barbarians.

“The dead woman we found in the road. Do you remember her?”

“Yes My Lord Prince.”

“Go back there and ensure she is properly buried, full honors.”

“My lord?”

“Do it!”

God this is so damned cheesy I want to bury my head in sand. But y’all I had the mightiest of needs. It HAD to be wrote okay.

[alexandralyman]

Fic Update

Summary:  A Hook/Emma angel/demon AU. They hide in plain sight, the servants of heaven and hell. The angels and the demons, who can save your soul or damn it. They stand on opposite sides, they are the bringers of light and the agents of darkness, they are enemies in an eternal war, but what happens when an angel and a demon are inexplicably drawn to each other?

Read this chapter on ff.net here or on AO3 here

                                               Part Nineteen

Saint Luke's was lit up against the night sky like a Christmas tree, the bright red EMERGENCY sign followed by an equal sided cross that was the universally recognized symbol of first aid across the Western world were both clearly visible from across the wide street as Emma parked her Bug in a miraculously open spot behind a van emblazoned on the side with the logo of a local news channel. Two more news vans were parked a little further down the block and white floodlights pierced the darkness, each coming from atop a TV camera aimed at the hospital. Emma stood next to her old yellow car for a moment and watched, taking in the stone-faced security guards who had come outside to hold the clamouring reporters at bay just outside of the entrance to the ER. They were like a flock of vultures, swooping down to pick apart the latest juicy carcass that had crossed their path until there was nothing left but the bones.

"-unconfirmed reports that Caroline Spencer, wife of longtime city councilman and mayoral hopeful Albert Spencer, was brought here to Saint Luke's by ambulance from the Prince Hotel approximately an hour ago. A source has told us that Mrs. Spencer was found in a suite at the hotel in considerable distress and hotel security called 911. It is not known if Albert Spencer was with his wife at the time or the exact nature of her medical emergency, hospital representatives are refusing to confirm if she even is, in fact, a patient, citing confidentiality laws. We'll remain on scene as this story continues to unfold, now back to you in the studio."

The light on top of the camera switched off as the burly cameraman stopped filming and the reporter was on his phone almost immediately, still holding his microphone in his other hand. "Have we found Spencer yet? Tim's on his way to the house and I've got Niri and Dan staking out the other entrances at the hospital so he can't slip in without us seeing. Wait...a drug overdose, are you serious? Caroline fucking Spencer OD'd at the Prince Hotel? Who's the source on this? Is the maid willing to appear on camera?"

He was whispering furiously, obviously trying to keep his voice down with his network rivals standing so close by but Emma heard him anyway, eavesdropping on his conversation easily with a flick of her fingers that made it sound like he was speaking right to her. While Ecclesiastes strictly forbid eavesdropping, warning not to take heed of the words of others, lest you hear them curse you, angels were not subject to the same rules as man and she needed all the information she could get right now. When the conversation turned to the amount of money they would be offering their "source" under the table to spill all the dirty details - and bribery was illegal by both divine and secular law, but she wasn't in the mood to enact punishment for the sin, the reporter could answer for that one to Saint Peter, eventually - Emma stopped listening and pulled out her own phone from inside her jacket. The picture Elsa had sent filled the screen when she tapped on it and she stared down at it with a frown, Caroline Spencer, the elegant society hostess and potential new queen of City Hall if her husband managed to unseat Regina Mills in the rapidly approaching election, was lying on a gurney with a bloody track mark in her elbow and a demon's brand on her skin. It appeared that the Heaven's Gate heroin had claimed another hapless victim, but this one made no sense.

Hospital security could keep the reporters out, but they couldn't stop an angel. She could bypass entire armies, and had, in the past, during ancient battles in the Holy Land and more recently when all of Europe had been laid waste by a madman whose name was as reviled now as Lucifer himself. Emma stepped into the ER and strode through the crowded waiting room without a single questioning glance from a nurse or an orderly thrown her way. Another set of doors required a hospital ID badge or for someone at the triage desk to open them by pressing a buzzer that was mounted safely out of public reach - but that didn't stop her either. The doors parted like the waters of the Red Sea with a mechanical screech as they swung open, but it wasn't the Promised Land of milk and honey that awaited her on the other side. She was greeted by the Angel of Death herself, with flecks of dark blood drying on her snowflake-patterned scrubs and a halo of fluorescent light shining down on her from above. Death was the final step on the earthly path and when a mortal soul went into the light, they were looking into Elsa's eyes. She too had followed armies once upon a time, walking the fields of battle in their wake, entering the cities devastated by plague. The final visitor to the nursery, the sickbed, the sinners and saints, both old and young, healthy and ill, rich and poor, she came for them all, in the end. Hearts ceased to beat and skin went cold, so cold, under her divine hand. Had that been the fate of Caroline Spencer tonight with the mark of a demon on both her flesh and soul?

Damn you, Killian.

His silky voice immediately answered back in her head, "Too late."

Emma followed Elsa to an exam room at the end of the hall, where another security guard was positioned outside, eyes forward, thumbs in his belt, oblivious to them both when they passed right in front of him. It looked like the most private space available for a high-profile patient in the busy ER, where worried parents sat with fevered children still dressed in their footie pyjamas and what looked like an entire bachelorette party in skimpy clubwear were all huddled around a woman with a rhinestone tiara sitting askew on her head and a ripped sash that read BRIDE-TO-BE slung over her shoulder who was dry-heaving over a plastic basin. A woman in a matching MAID-OF-HONOUR sash with dark makeup smudged under her eyes was rubbing her back and talking to the same doctor that Emma remembered from her last visit, looking even more tired and worn with another paper cup of coffee clutched in his hand as he nodded and listened to whatever had gone wrong on what was supposed to have been a night of celebration.

"I think it was one of the paramedics who tipped off the press that she was brought here instead of City General or Mount Sinai, I'm going to pay him a little visit later," Elsa said, shutting the door behind them, "I always knew Hans was an asshole and his whole modest, first responder, "don't thank me I'm just doing my duty" routine with the new nurses was nothing but a big phony act. Let's see if he can still keep it up with the flaming sword pressed right against his neck."

She waved a hand over the door handle while she talked and it shimmered under her silver light, looking like it had just frosted over with a thick covering of ice. The room had no lock, but no one would be able to enter it now and Emma quickly looked around. There was the usual stainless steel carts laden with supplies and instruments, a box of latex gloves, a canister of swabs, more of those kidney-shaped plastic basins. Machines beeped, and a black silk robe was lying in a haphazard pile on the room's lone chair with a red lace bra peeking out limply from between the folds of fabric, she supposed they were the clothes Caroline Spencer had been wearing when she was brought in. The robe had been swapped for a plain hospital gown and plush hotel lines for a thin blanket that was faded from constant washings in industrial machines. There was an IV needle taped into the back of her left hand, folded on top of her right and both resting on her stomach. Her wedding and engagement rings were still on, a large diamond solitaire and channel-set band that together took up half her finger all the way to the knuckle. She had more diamonds in her ears, a pair of large, square-cut studs that could easily have been a birthday or anniversary gift from her wealthy, older husband.

Or from someone else who was both wealthy, older, and had a keen eye for fine jewellery.

Black pearls hung from round diamonds the size of cherries, delivered to her in a velvet box several lifetimes ago at Versailles with a note written in elegant script and signed with a single K.

His first attempt, but not his last.

"She's still alive," Emma whispered, both surprised and relieved. The blanket was not pulled over Caroline's face but her eyes were closed, slightly sunken in their sockets. Her cheeks too, had both seemed to collapse inward and feathery lines stood out around her blue-tinged lips as if she'd lost twenty pounds and aged ten years overnight. She was virtually unrecognizable from the polished political wife in designer suits and perfect French twists who'd stood next to her husband and smiled for the cameras while he gave speeches and shook hands all over the city during the last few weeks of his high-profile campaign.

Elsa huffed out a breath, pushing back an errant lock of hair that had escaped from her braid with the back of her hand, "Barely. She was seizing when they brought her in and I could feel that her soul was about to slip free, but they managed to stabilize her at the last possible second. If she'd been brought in even a minute later she probably would be dead, but-"

"What?"

Emma looked up and met Elsa's gaze across the bed while the machines and monitors quietly hummed and recorded each fragile heartbeat, every sluggish breath. Caroline Spencer looked like she was asleep, but it was clear that something else was going on. If she was aware of the two angels above her she gave no sign, there was no flicker behind her eyelids or twitch of her fingers at the sound of their voices. She lay unmoving except for the slight rise and fall of her chest, tucked underneath the blanket with her hands folded atop it like a child's discarded doll.

"They're pretty sure she had a stroke," Elsa explained, dropping her voice below what mortal ears would be able to hear, "The neurologist on call wanted to consult with the head of the department in person before confirming it officially, he's on his way in now. Even if she pulls through, there's no telling how much damage has already been done."

Alive, and not. Emma knew that a stroke nowadays could mean anything from a near-total recovery to major impairment, it all depended on so many factors like the speed of treatment, the patient's age and general health. She was caught in a shadowy limbo with her ultimate fate hanging in the balance, in more ways than one. The sin was like perfume, invisible to the naked eye but clinging to her ashen skin and filling the air in the small exam room. But it wasn't the scent of flowers or vanilla of Chanel No 5, it was dark, insidious, and all too familiar to Emma.

Both Spencers had been present at the mayor's gala. Albert had even danced with Regina Mills, Emma had seen them together in the middle of the dance floor, all practiced smiles and ostensibly putting their differences aside for the evening though they'd stood as far apart from each other as possible and barely managed to make it through one song. And while her husband had his hand on his rival's back and was probably wishing for a knife to plunge into it, Caroline had been dancing with someone else.

"We had to pump her stomach before we could even do the MRI, her blood alcohol level was dangerously high. Hans said that in the hotel room the whole minibar had been emptied and there was bottles all over the place, vodka, champagne, scotch, you name it. He was probably sneaking pictures of it all on his phone that'll be plastered online tomorrow, the prick."

"Scotch," Emma repeated, feeling hollow and empty, "There was scotch."

"And then there's this," Elsa continued, completely oblivious to the significance of what she'd just said as she reached for Caroline's folded hands, "It's why I called you."

The mark was even uglier in person, a jagged knot of dark, twisted tissue on the inside of her left wrist that seemed to pulse along with every beep of the heart monitor next to the bed. Mortals might only see a mole, a harmless blemish or birthmark, but to their eyes it was like a tiny curled serpent that had sunk its venomous fangs deep into the delicate skin and blue vein and was draining the lifeforce from its victim more than any physical wound ever could. Neither she nor Elsa dared to touch it directly, and for the first time in a long time Emma felt a sense of cold apprehension along with the suspicion that was clawing relentlessly at her heart. It was unmistakably a demon's mark, and it was fresh.

Elsa's eyes flashed silver as she carefully placed Caroline's hands back on top of the blanket, her own palms filling with light. She was clearly furious, and an Angel of Death's fury was more dangerous than any other's. The temperature in the room dropped as she clenched both hands into fists, her face pale as snow and her lips thinning to a tight line.

"Daemoniacus!" she practically spat in disgust, the light glowing bright through her fingers. Demonic. "They're behind this somehow, all these overdoses. Men, women, even children! The one who was here that night, with the dark hair and blue eyes, the Corrupter-"

Killian. Let me be damned to the rest of the world, but I am Killian to you.

He couldn't be Killian to her now.

"-he's not just corrupting them, he's killing them! They are dying before their time and I can't stop it, it's like a new, unnatural plague has taken hold and it's only getting worse by the day. I'm going to find him and he will pay for this."

"No."

Her voice was colder than ice and a shard of it seemed to have lodged somewhere in her chest where her heart should be. She smoothed back the tangled hair from Caroline Spencer's brow and calmy met Elsa's surprised look. Emma squared her shoulders and felt her own hands fill with golden light. He might have been born from infernal flame with the soot of it on his lashes and the reflection behind his eyes, but he could still burn like the succubus had. She'd spared him once in Paris, and this was the price she had to pay for that mercy.

"If the Corrupter was the one responsible then I will destroy him myself."

It was more than a promise, it was a holy vow that echoed in the tiny room as if it was the grandest cathedral even as someone began to pound on the other side of the door. The handle rattled but refused to turn, Elsa's seal held fast. But she couldn't keep it locked forever. Her head whipped around to look, her thick braid bouncing over her shoulder. Voices rose in consternation and they were clearly out of time.

"Emma-"

Elsa grasped her wrist, her light eyes narrowing as she searched Emma's face. She felt like she was made of stone, as much a sculpture as the marble angels that decorated Saint Raphael's. Cold and forbidding, and yet capable of shattering into a thousand pieces if she fell.

"Vale, beata angela Elsa."

Farewell, blessed angel Elsa.

The light enveloped her and the exam room disappeared in a blink, Elsa's snowflake-patterned scrubs and silver-blonde hair turning into the starry sky and the silver moon as she reappeared outside, hidden in the shadows next to her car. She leaned against the driver's side door and tipped her head back, staring up at the heavens above and wondering if she'd ever see Elsa again. The choice she'd been trying to avoid for centuries suddenly loomed in front of her like a mountain, forcing her to face what she could no longer ignore.

Killian answered on the first ring, probably wondering why she had called him directly instead of sending a text. They were supposed to limit their contact unless absolutely necessary until he'd taken care of the demon he called the Dark One, but this wasn't a conversation they could have with abbreviations and silly emojis.

"Emma, what's-"

She cut him off before he could finish, not bothering to beat around the burning bush, "Are you having an affair with Caroline Spencer?"

His silence was her answer and she huffed out a frustrated breath, reaching up to pinch the bridge of her nose, "Killian."

"Audistis quia dictum est antiquis non moechaberis," he quoted, softly, in Latin. The seventh of the Ten Commandments, thou shalt not commit adultery. "You know it's still a sin, and you know what I am."

Emma sighed, she did know what he was, knew it intimately, and the word slipped past her lips, "Damnate."

Demon

Damned

"That I am, beata. But I won't lie to you."

She wondered if that was really true. "So your answer is yes."

Another moment of silence passed before he whispered, "Yes."

The lights of Saint Luke's continued to twinkle across the street, virgin white and blood red. Even more reporters had shown up while she was inside, eager to pull back the curtain and expose the human frailty behind the polished surface. Caroline Spencer had been found guilty, and the world had come to judge her for it. She'd join the long line of fallen women stretching back to Eve, even in this day and age an unfaithful wife was punished more severely than a cheating husband in the court of public opinion, at least. The madonna/whore complex was still alive and well, and Emma wasn't naive enough to think that anyone would believe she'd been in that hotel room taking drugs alone. Not with the red lace lingerie and demolished minibar and any other juicy details that were sure to make their way onto the front page.

But just who had she been with tonight?

Killian was either innocent or trying to play dumb, she could hear the confusion in his voice but she couldn't trust it, couldn't trust her own instincts when it came to him.

"Why are you asking me this now, Emma? Do you want me to break it off? Do you...do you want sexual fidelity from me? You've never asked-"

"You're not capable of that," she interrupted, scuffing the toe of her boot hard against the curb and trying to ignore the burning knot inside her stomach that was making her cheeks flush hot in the cool night air. The feeling was unsettling, the sudden flash of anger and something else that she couldn't quite put her finger on. Something that made her voice bitter and her eyes burn.

"Of course," Killian agreed, but it came out tight and clipped and sounded almost...hurt, "Demon, as you said. And who am I to ask that of an angel, the next time a starving young artiste prays to you for inspiration and you deign to answer him."

Emma felt her back go straight against the Bug, "You're not...you are not still jealous of Auguste, are you? Seriously, Killian? It's been almost three hundred years!"

His voice dropped even lower and took on a dangerous edge, "I watched you cry because of that man, Emma, and he was not worth your tears."

The memory washed over her where she stood, a vision of the single tear that shone brighter than any diamond falling to the hard-packed dirt at his feet on the road outside of Paris and the rose that bloomed from it. She shook her head, feeling a shock going through her at the realization that Killian was still holding a grudge against the man after all this time. Sure, he would occasionally toss off an insult about Auguste's paintings that usually included some kind of dig at his obvious lack of skill between the sheets as well as on canvas...but they were getting wildly off track and she needed to steer the conversation back to the present, not the past.

"Look, just forget about Auguste for right now, okay? I need to know, were you with Caroline tonight, at the Prince Hotel?"

She could sense the shift even through the phone, as he suddenly realized that she wasn't asking the question just out of the blue.

"Yes, I was. Why?"

Emma chewed on her lip and when she didn't reply his voice got even more urgent.

"Emma, tell me what's going on."

"I take it you haven't been watching the news," she finally sighed, "Killian, she overdosed on heroin tonight. At the Prince Hotel. She's currently at Saint Luke's."

"WHAT? But….how? That's not possible...she's not...is she?"

The shock and surprise in his voice certainly seemed genuine, but the devil lied. She quickly explained about the seizures and the stroke and Elsa's suspicions.

"Tell me you had nothing to do with this."

It came out as more of a plea than a demand and she heard his sharp intake of breath.

"You think that I….that I what? Held her down and forced her to shoot up?"

"Well what am I supposed to think, infernal one? You just admitted you were with her tonight and I don't think heroin was on the room service menu along with the thirty dollar salads!"

"Oh, you'd be surprised, darling," he drawled back, suddenly dark and knowing, "Grease the right palms and anything is on the menu. Of course they don't advertise it openly along with the free wifi and continental breakfast, but every concierge in this town has a little black book of contacts, including the Jolly Roger's address. I am sin, angel, and you, out of all people, have always known it. I'll confess every last one to you and flagellate myself bloody at your feet in penance, but I swear to you I am not guilty of this!"

Her own breath caught in her throat as her vision swam at the edges and the lights swirled together, crimson and alabaster. The fork in the road, the eternal choice, sin or salvation.

Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.

She wanted to believe him and that scared her more than anything, that even in the face of all the evidence to the contrary she still thought there was a chance he could be redeemed. Not by Him and His grace, but by herand her alone. Her own sin was the sin of hubris, for thinking she could keep playing with fire and not be burnt. He'd consume her long before she could ever save him - it was his nature. Like the old fable about the scorpion who'd stung the frog carrying him across the river and drowned them both because he couldn't help but strike down his own saviour, they couldn't change what they were.

"Emma? Emma, are you still there?"

She heard him but she didn't answer, pressing the phone to her ear and listening to his ragged breathing coming across the line. Telephones had been hailed as a miracle once upon a time, a wonder of science that bridged oceans and crossed impossible distances in the blink of an eye.

Emma.

She heard that too, even more miraculous than the small device she held in her hand that was now so ordinary and commonplace. Despite everything, despite every reason why she shouldn't, she still wanted to answer him.

"I'm still here, Killian."

Why did she keep answering him?

"Give me one more night and I will end this, I will drive the Dark One and his fucking heroin out of the city no matter what it takes but I need more time. Please, blessed one, please put your faith in me for one more night, I know it's asking a lot, but I swear I won't let you down."

It could be one more night to cover up his tracks, to make the Dark One into his scapegoat and wash his hands clean of the sin. She should say no, she should stop pretending they could be anything other than enemies and whatever was between them had to end before it drowned them both, she should keep her vow and do what she should have done when she'd found him held prisoner by the Holy Church in Spain.

"Have you come to dispatch me properly then? Well, just do me the courtesy of making it quick."

He hadn't resisted her then...and he wouldn't resist her now, if she went to him. At least, not until it was too late.

"One more night, damnate."

She hung up before he could say another word and the phone slipped from her numb fingers, bouncing off the curb and landing on the street with a thump. When Emma bent down to pick it up she was startled to see a large crack had appeared on the screen from the fall, a lightning bolt that cut diagonally across the glass. It cut her shadowed reflection in two when she angled it in her hand and stared at it. Above her head the whole row of streetlights started to sputter and pop while across the street the reporters all stopped, frowning as they tapped their suddenly unresponsive earpieces and shook their dead microphones. An ambulance pulled into the emergency room bay, sirens wailing, lights flashing, turning their skin red and their eyes black while the noise drowned them all out. It looked like they were screaming into the flames, lost and tortured souls crying out for someone to listen.

But for a moment that lasted for the eternity between heartbeats, everything inside her head was completely silent.

                                               -------------

His rage flared almost incandescent, white-hot and boiling under his skin. Killian could feel his eyes turn crimson, his teeth sharpen, his face and form shifting from man to demon and back again. Even the worst of the Inquisition's torture hadn't revealed his true face, he'd maintained the facade and laughed at the pain while his bones were shattered to powder and his infernal blood was spilled was spilled in that vile dungeon all those years ago. But the thought of losing her had snapped his control and his fingers turned to talons around the phone in his hand, cracking the screen clear in two. He flung it across the room and watched it smash against the wall, bursting into flame from the force of his anger. The acrid stench of melted plastic filled the air and he slammed his palms down on his desk, dropping his head and catching a glimpse of his own reflection in the polished black marble.

Damnate

Killian

The pull inside was almost too strong to resist. Every instinct was screaming at him to go to Emma, answer her summons the way he was really meant to and mark her indelibly as his. If he did then she'd have no choice, his brand would bar her from Heaven from the rest of eternity and she'd be unable to return to the one place he couldn't follow. He'd come close in the past to doing it...so close...one night in particular when he'd sensed that she was teetering on the edge of surrender and wouldn't try to stop him, but he'd forced himself to hold back. He could bring her right to the brink and he'd spent centuries trying his best to do just that, but he couldn't push her over. She had to take that final step on her own and fall willingly, if she didn't want it of her own volition, didn't want him both not-human body and damned soul...it had to be her choice, no deceit, no trickery, none of his usual tactics, or she'd despise him forever. Literally. Eternity was a very long time and while he'd openly sneered in the faces of priests and popes, boldly told saints to go fornicate with themselves and gleefully thumbed his nose at the Holy Inquisition itself, wearing their disdain as proudly as a king wore a crown, but if she turned her back on him-

Smoke curled out from under his fingers and started rising towards the ceiling in thin spirals like stairways that dissipated long before reaching heaven while a single tear fell from his eye, landing right on the glowing, pinprick reflection of his pupil with a tiny splat. But no perfect red rose sprang to life from the heated marble, as he'd told Emma once nothing grew in Hell and he was incapable of miracles. He bought her the flowers he couldn't grow, and all he could do was watch while the tear etched into the stone like acid, destroying the perfect and expensive slab in one fell swoop.

"Dark One."

The moniker fell from his lips as a bitter curse and his reflection showed that his eyes were twin flames, burning from within as he dug his claws into the ruined desk and slowly dragged ten parallel lines across it. He'd been so close to getting the one thing he coveted above everything else and now it was slipping through his fingers like sand thanks to the oily dealmaker. All the years of waiting patiently for his angel to fall, biding his time across Europe, the West Indies, the New World...and now his carefully laid plans had been shot right….

...to Hell.

"DARK ONE!"

He wanted the other demon's head on a silver plate, to lay at her feet as the spoils of war and to hear the last confession from the shrivelled lips that would prove his innocence before he burnt his offering to his divine lover and took what he wanted in front of the smouldering pile of ash. But he had to be careful, and Killian forced himself to take several deep breaths instead of overturning the desk completely. Rumpelstiltskin was clearly taunting him, there was no other explanation as to why he would have gone after Caroline Spencer. He'd told Emma the truth, he'd been with her earlier that night at the same hotel where they'd had their first tryst after meeting for lunch to "discuss" the heritage building preservation project she was spearheading with the local historical society. It had gone exactly as he'd expected from the moment he'd received her email, money, power, sex, she had the first and wanted the third, probably knowing full well that her husband was also getting some on the side. Both Spencers played the game, but Caroline's drugs of choice were Botox and skin fillers, not heroin. There was no earthly reason for her to just suddenly decide to start shooting up out of the blue.

No, Killian was certain that the Dark One was sending him a message, just like he'd sent his imps into the Jolly Roger to cause a bit of chaos without getting his own hands dirty. It could be payback for insulting him in Paris, these kinds of petty spats between demons could go on for centuries, spawn entire wars and topple kings in their wake. Rumpelstiltskin had no scruples, destroying one human soul to enact revenge wouldn't even register with the demon who'd been right in the thick of the French Revolution making deals with everyone from the nobility to probably even Napoleon himself. The strike on Caroline was a taunt, a goad, and the vibrating bass from the music playing downstairs was like the ticking of a clock in his ears.

Your move.

He didn't have time to play Rumpelstiltskin's sadistic games, he needed to end this, now, before he lost his angel for good. She was on the verge of leaving him, he could sense it like a shark that smelled blood in the water, and there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it with the Dark One skulking around unseen in the shadows. He'd carelessly led the other demon straight to Emma once, he wouldn't make that mistake again. The threat to break her wings echoed in the back of his mind and if he so much as tried to touch her, then Killian would destroy him, no matter what the consequences. Even demons could be killed, as Zelena had discovered in Paris under a shower of holy water that melted her right into the sewers with the rats. Rumpelstiltskin was much more powerful than the succubus had been, but he didn't care. He'd risked Heaven's wrath and seduced an angel, he didn't fear anything or anyone. Not the Dark One, not the Angel of Death, not his own unholy master or even the one who'd banished him to Hell.

Except...but he refused to even think it. She'd come back to him, she always did. At the end of every Lent, every time he called...she always answered.

Always.

The thought was his anchor, the only thing keeping him from flying off the handle completely. Killian rolled his shoulders back under his suit jacket and straightened up, ignoring the damage to the expensive desk as he fussed with his silver cufflinks. Jefferson was still analyzing the heroin sample and the cops were still searching fruitlessly for the dealer while continuing to keep the existence of the new drug a secret from the press, but he was done with waiting. He wasn't after the Dark One's minions, he needed to cut the head off the snake and the rest would take care of itself. It was time to summon him and finally settle this face to face.

When he opened the door and stepped out of his office not a single soul in the Jolly Roger would be able to tell that anything was amiss just by looking at him. His eyes didn't glow, his nails were short and clipped, his teeth were blunt behind unsmiling lips. To the naked eye he was human, body, blood and soul. He'd burn anyone who tried to touch him, but one look at his dark expression should warn anyone from trying to get too close.

Scarlet pushed off from where he'd been leaning against the wall, clearly debating on whether to open his mouth or not. He'd driven Killian to the hotel and back to the club afterwards in silence, keeping his head down and staying a step behind, not drawing any attention to himself, but he was entirely focused on his employee now and he gave Scarlet a hard look, eyes narrowing with sudden suspicion. His first assumption was that the Dark One was having him tailed, learning about his affair from whoever he'd engaged to follow him around. It wasn't like he'd been particularly discreet about it, she was the one who was married, not him. Caroline had even visited him at home more than once, although she'd been somewhat put out by his refusal to fuck her in his own bed. Emma's scent still clung stubbornly to his sheets, her presence imprinted right into the silk. He'd slept in the other bedroom to keep it off him, unwilling to let go of even that tiny little piece of her.

"Do you believe in sin, Mr. Scarlet?"

The music continued to thump under their feet like the beating of a guilty heart while he stared Scarlet down, watching his face carefully. The man's eyes were normally very expressive, large and open with every thought in his head passing behind them. Windows to the soul, indeed. At the question they went hooded, his head jerking back a fraction and his fingers twitching at his sides. Will Scarlet knew about Caroline Spencer, knew Killian had been with her earlier at the Prince Hotel. Will Scarlet knew about Emma, even if he had no idea what she really was.

He knew far too much for his own good.

"Sin?" Scarlet repeated, sliding his twitching hands into his pockets and rocking back on his heels.

"Yes, sin. You know...sloth...wrath…lust...greed."

He'd felt it from Scarlet, felt the heat of his lust when he looked at Lacey or Ana up on stage, felt the simmering anger hidden behind the blank poker face when he purposefully needled the man, felt the greed that wrapped around his heart and soul with grasping fingers and whispered in his ear that he deserved more.

"Yeah," Scarlet said at last, with a cocky defiance that few dared show him, "You know what, Mr. Jones? I do."

Killian smiled, but it was far from pleasant, "Do you pray for forgiveness from your sins?"

"Do you?" Scarlet shot back.

He clapped a hand on Scarlet's shoulder and gave it a hard squeeze that made the other man's eyes water and his face twist in a grimace. Killian leaned forward and spoke directly into Scarlet's ear, "I pray for one thing and one thing only, and it isn't forgiveness. I know I'm too far gone for that."

If Scarlet was secretly working for Rumpelstiltskin behind his back then it wouldn't be forgiveness he'd be praying for, it would be deliverance from the Hell he'd discover hidden underneath the world he thought he knew. But no angel would come swooping down to save him, Killian would make damn sure of that.

The club was full, drunk, nearly-naked bodies writhing like a pit of vipers everywhere he looked when he entered the main room. It reeked of the deadliest of sins, the teeming mass was indulging in them openly right under his watchful gaze. Gluttony in the form of endless bottles of champagne, the sloth of the soft-bellied men who sat on their asses and leered at the lithe dancers with lust glittering in their eyes. They were oblivious to the flames that licked unseen at their heels, the creeping darkness behind the pulsing lights. Killian moved in shadow, crossing the floor while the flashing strobes from the stage hit everywhere except where he stood.

"Shut it down."

Peter paused halfway out of his seat, shock crossing his face at the order, "Boss?"

"We're closing early. Kick everyone out within the next twenty minutes and tell the employees not to come in tomorrow, cancel all deliveries and call everyone on the schedule. The Jolly Roger is closed until further notice."

"But-"

At Killian's glare Peter shut his mouth and swallowed heavily, giving him a nod. He turned to the DJ booth and made a slashing movement across his throat, pushing through the throng and getting swallowed up almost at once. Killian glanced towards the bar and saw that the thief was working tonight, probably with a wad of pilfered bills stuffed into her low-cut bandage dress. She caught his eye and her face immediately flushed with guilt, liquor sloshing over her hand as she missed the shot glass in front of her.

Non furtum facies

Thou shalt not steal.

He didn't say a word, he just wrapped his hand around the bartender's elbow and pulled her through the kitchen and into the storage room. The music suddenly shut off, followed by faint exclamations of surprise from the dancers and customers as he threw open the door that led down into the basement.

"Mr. Jones, sir, listen, I can explain!"

It was clearly dawning on her that the jig was up, her heels scraped loudly on the stairs as she twisted and tried to pull free of his iron grip. Killian ignored her pleading, quickly punching in the code on the keypad with his free hand, one eight one two. The door swung open and revealed the secret room where the imp was still locked up in a steel cell. He looked up with a grin as Killian pulled the cord to turn on the lightbulb.

"Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate," the imp intoned, sticking out his tongue. It split into two long forks that wiggled and waved obscenely and the bartender jumped almost a foot in the air, losing a shoe and falling back against the bars of the empty cell behind her.

"Shut up!" Killian ordered, rolling his eyes at the reference. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

"Oh, Corrupter, have you brought me a friend? Fi fi fo fum, I smell the blood of a sinner."

The imp giggled to himself while Killian pried her fingers from his sleeve and pushed her gently into the cell. She made a mewling noise in the back of her throat and he grasped her chin, tipping her head back so that she was looking right into his eyes.

"Stealing from me was not a good idea, Jacqueline."

Her face was ashen under the heavy makeup and she tried to shake her head, "I..I didn't, I swear!"

She was only compounding her own sin with the denial. Killian glanced down and saw the outline of something square under her dress, he tapped it with a finger and she paled even more.

"Try that again."

His suspicions had been correct, Jacqueline pulled out a damp wad of cash and handed it over with slumped shoulders while the imp hooted and hollered.

"What the fuck is that?" she cried, glancing at it over his shoulder. Killian thumbed through the money, counting it quickly before slipping it into his pocket. She had been getting bolder and bolder with her thefts, there wasn't anything under a fifty.

"What the fuck are you?"

He ran his own tongue over his teeth and lifted his head. Jacqueline had her arms wrapped tightly around herself, gooseflesh prickling over her bare skin. Killian smiled and watched her shiver even more.

"I am your employer, and you didn't read your contract closely enough before you signed it."

She opened her mouth, probably to scream, but he laid a finger over her lips before she could make a sound and whispered, "Shhh."

The effect was immediate as her pupils dilated wide and her hand crept to her throat. She stumbled back to the wall and slid down it, her legs folding under her as she stared up in mute horror. Killian stepped out of the cell and slid the door closed, locking her in. He didn't want her to scream herself hoarse even if the room was soundproofed, he would have need of her voice tomorrow.

"Say your prayers, Tweedledee."

He watched the imp snort with derision, the tattoos on his arms rippling and moving under the light. A snake uncoiled along his forearm and the gates of Hell swung open, the tiny sinners inside struggling to break free. Killian reached up and pulled the cord again, plunging the room into darkness. One more night and it would all be over.

Scarlet was waiting out front with the Escalade, sitting in the driver's seat with the engine running and his phone pressed to his ear. When Killian emerged from the Jolly Roger he quickly ended the call, his face turned away from the darkly tinted window. The leather seat creaked when Killian sat down in the back behind him, pulling out Emma's miniature from his inner jacket pocket. He flicked it open with his nail and stared down at the faded paint.

One more night….and he would have what he wanted. The Dark One...the Angel of Death...no one would stop him.

Killian lifted his head and met Scarlet's gaze in the rearview mirror. He slipped the portrait safely back into his pocket, over his heart.

"Drive."

[agoodflyting]

Take Me To Church - Southern Gothic Kylux

How lucky, how blessed, how fucking fortunate he is now to have a Messiah who answers every prayer directly. Especially the ones that go 'more', or 'god just like that, don’t stop-' or, ‘please, lord, fuck oh please-'

Part of my Southern Gothic AU. Hux is the leader of a backwater cult and Kylo is their prophet. This one-shot deals with Kylo and Hux, their backstory, and their relationship.

Kylo’s hands smell like camphor and antiseptic when he slides them against Hux’s bare skin, crawling into bed behind him. It’s an astringent, sickbed smell, from the creams he uses to keep his master comfortable. It calls to mind the hiss of a respirator and the steady beep beep beep of a heart monitor. It’s the smell of illness and decay.

When Hux turns over in the dark those hands nearly span the whole of his ribcage. Like if he spread his fingers wide enough Kylo could almost wrap them all the way around his body, cup Hux in his palms, cradled and safe and cozy. He loves Kylo’s hands. They’re a healer’s hands- big and rough, but not clumsy, with ragged cuticles and the clinging remnants of week-old, drug store nail polish. Sometimes when they’re alone Kylo presses them palm-to-palm against Hux’s own, and Hux delights at the contrast with his own soft, manicured digits.

Hux takes good care of his hands, he remembers from watching his stepmother at the kitchen table with her little buffer and file when he was a kid, just like he does his clothes and his hair and his teeth and his car, because that’s how he was raised. Press your shirt. Polish your shoes. What his father used to call ‘putting a shine on’ and what Kylo calls ‘a pile of vain bullshit.’

Kylo thought shampoo was a waste of money when you had dish soap, and would be perfectly content to wear the same three band t-shirts for concerts he had never been to, musicians he’d never heard, (the ascetic life didn’t allow for a lot of indulgence), until they fell apart. That was why he and his master needed Hux.

Shine is what draws people in. The smiling preacher with his brand new SUV. Shine is what people remember, and if you’re good enough at it nobody looks close enough to realize that it’s only spit.

Hux knew all about shine. Pastor Hux’s little boy had been working his father’s congregation, echoing promises of fire and brimstone with his hair slicked back and his shoes polished, from the time he was fourteen.

It is dark outside and the world is heavy and still as it languishes in that interminable stretch between very late and very early. The cicadas are out in force, warring with the crickets to be the noisiest damn things in the blackness outside. It’s proper country darkness, all the way out here at the end of the gravel road where Kylo and his master dwelled. The kind that swallows you up, makes you think you must have been struck blind.

Buzzing and chirping and warm, sticky air drifts in where they’ve opened the window to offset the lack of A/C in the derelict old mansion. The master didn’t indulge in pointless luxuries- not for himself or his chosen son. Hux was sweating a little, even sleeping under nothing but a thin cotton sheet.

Kylo’s clever hands trace the shape of Hux under the sheet, rubbing idly up and down his pale chest and vulnerable belly like a man trying to re-familiarize himself with something that’s been lost. He gets like that sometimes when he is with the master too much- lost in his own mind. In the dark bedroom, Kylo sighs through his nose, tired, hair making an inky black halo on the pale cotton of the pillowcase. Kylo is beautiful, in his strange, uneven way, and Hux wouldn’t trade him for the world.

“Stay,” Hux mutters, voice gravel-rough from sleep. He knows, even as he says it what the answer will be, but he tries anyway. “Rest. You’re tired.”

“I can’t.”

The apologetic skim of knuckles over his bare ribs makes Hux suck in a tight little breath, but he lays still and allows himself to be caressed. Another hour and Kylo will have to leave again. Every hour, on the hour. Like clockwork through the night. Hux doesn’t understand how he ever gets any sleep.

But the master needs tending and Kylo, with his healer’s hands and his sleep-ringed eyes, is the only one who can do it.

There are so many things that only Kylo can do.

Bring Hux from the depths of sleep to sighing, stretching, aching wakefulness with just his hands is only one of them.

“You smell good,” Kylo mutters, low, rubbing his prominent nose against Hux’s hair. Hux knows he stinks like summer sweat and restless sleep from tossing under the sheets but his mouth pulls into a tight smile at the flattery anyway. It’s a distraction Kylo wants now, not rest. Precious boy. The words, mixed with the feel of those hands pressing, warm and insistent, at the small of his back make him shiver. A callus scratches at the soft skin over his hipbone as Kylo’s hands venture into new territory, and Hux doesn’t bother to bite back a moan.

When he was a little boy, Pastor Hux’s son used to pray to Jesus every night.

Help me be good enough, please just this once, make me strong enough, help me be smart, punish those who hurt me, make these feelings stop-

By the time he was eleven he’d realized that nobody was listening. He’d still knelt at the end of his bed every night and said his now I lay me down to sleeps, pressed his hands together and furrowed his brow sitting in the pew on Sunday, because, like daddy said, you put a good shine on it and nobody can tell the difference. But God had gone away and left the answering machine on, but he sure as shit wasn’t checking his messages.

How lucky, how blessed, how fucking fortunate he is now to have a Messiah who answers every prayer directly. Especially the ones that go 'more', or 'god just like that, don’t stop-' or, ‘please, lord, fuck oh please-' When he arcs his neck, that silent plea is answered with sharp teeth and wicked tongue right where he’s been aching for them. Kylo growls, low and dangerous, right under his ear, just the way he knows makes Hux’s legs fall open. If it’s his body, his acquiescence, that’s needed, well, Hux is humbled to serve the lord. How many men can say they’ve seen firsthand the power of their savior? That they’ve touched it, felt it on their tongue and in their veins. He can feel it right now. The air in the room tenses, building tight with Kylo’s arousal. It reminds him of the electricity in the air just before a summer storm; all that power waiting to be unleashed. It’s intoxicating. Where he leans over Hux, his hair smells like ozone and, faintly, like Ajax. One of those healer’s hands finds Hux’s where it is twisted up in the front of Kylo’s wash-worn black t-shirt. Long, deft fingers encircle his wrist and pin it to the pillow. There’s a gleam in Kylo’s dark eyes, something wicked. He’s seen those hands start fires with a gesture before, and half believes Kylo’s doing it to him now. The pale skin under Kylo’s palms seems to be burning up from the inside. “What do you say?” “Please,” Hux breathes. Still, Kylo takes his time, whiling away the scant minutes they have together. His palm is warm on Hux’s sternum, flat over where his heart is beating rabbit-quick there, underneath bone and wiry flesh. “Please, Kylo, please-“  

A callused hand moves over his pectoral and then skims down the concave little hollow of his belly, fingertips tripping over his naval. He can still faintly smell the camphor on Kylo’s skin.

“So soft… You know what I want to hear.” Hux resists, spinning it out, giving Kylo his sorely-needed distraction, until that hand slides down and begins taking him apart with quick, tight strokes, and then he is babbling, panting, twisting against Kylo’s iron grip on his wrist, “Oh fuck, oh jesus, fuck, just- that, like that, oh lord, oh Christ please-“ Kylo was a funny little thing. He would shrink up on himself, broad shoulders inching up towards his childishly overlarge ears, when Hux spoke of him as their prophet, but here in the quiet darkness of the little bedroom Hux has claimed for himself in their master’s home, he lapped up the platitudes and prayers like any earnest savior. Or maybe he just liked to hear Hux blaspheme while he came, the awful man. When he drifts back down from his orgasm, Hux finds Kylo sitting on the edge of the bed with his back to him, still fully dressed. He won’t touch himself. He never did. The ascetic life doesn’t allow for indulgences.   Kylo got something else entirely out of their encounters. There’s a soft sound and then Hux can sense light flickering around the edges of Kylo’s bent form. When he sits up to get a better look, there is a perfect ball of flame cupped in Kylo’s palms. It’s bigger, brighter, than last time Hux saw this particular trick. Kylo stares at it, entranced, his hair hanging in lank tendrils around his shadowed face. “It barely hurts now.” When Kylo parts his cupped hands the flame splits into two. He twirls one hand idly and the fire moves with him, hovering just above the skin. A miracle fit for kings in Hux’s a shabby little guest bedroom. “You’re getting better at that.” Hux leans forward to kiss his shoulder. He remembers when just controlling the fire would leave Kylo's knees shaking. “It isn’t mine. It’s yours- ours. I can only do it like this when you’re here.” “Well, it’s beautiful.” When Hux reaches out, he can feel the heat radiating off the nearest one before he gets within inches of it. A part of him aches to stick his well-manicured fingers into the fire anyway- to see if they would blacken and burn. It’s a miracle, in every sense, that Kylo’s hands aren’t blistering. Kylo closes his fists, first one then the other, extinguishing the twin balls of flame. “How much longer do you have?” Hux asks, leaning around him in the darkness to grab tissues from the antique nightstand. It was a dusty old thing, covered in layers of flaking paint. “I have to go.” “Sleep a little when you get done this time. Promise me you will. I need you conscious at the meeting tomorrow. We have new converts coming.” Kylo grunts his assent in lieu of a promise, but he takes the tissue Hux presses into his hand and dabs at his bleeding nose with it instead of wiping the blood on his sleeve. It’s barely a few drops this time. He was getting stronger. The old bed creaks and groans when he lifts his weight off of it, and then Hux is alone in the sticky summer warmth of the bedroom, listening to Kylo’s heavy footsteps as they receded down the hall to the plantation’s grand bedroom, where the master lay dreaming, surrounded by tubes and wires and things that hissed with every breath the shriveled figure took. It wouldn't be forever. Kylo's power was growing. He'd be strong enough to restore his master soon. And then... The Lord works in mysterious ways. That’s what his father taught him to say when a parishioner came to him in tears because things hadn’t worked out. The Lord never failed to answer prayers, oh no- he just worked in mysterious ways. Just like he helped those who helped themselves. Like any neglectful father, God had worked out a way to take all the credit without having to do jack shit. And, just like poor old Pastor Hux, he would die on fire when Kylo was through with him.

Hux hums a little to himself, in time with the cicadas, as he drifts back asleep. For I was blind, but now I see…