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seravphs · 8 months

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Act One, Chapter One: half agony, half hope

Knights are bound by duty and honor, but Gojo is more devoted to his princess than he ever was to his oaths.

Main Masterlist | AO3

wc — 10k

tags — royal au, knight gojo, princess reader, forbidden love, ballroom scene, dancing, court politics, blood, minor character death, period-typical misogyny, complicated relationships with fathers, secret meetings, flouting social etiquette by sneaking out to meet your childhood best friend who is also your loyal knight, title from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Next: the beginning of devotion (coming soon)

He was so still Shoko almost mistook him for a dead body. It was a common misunderstanding in her line of business, but not one she was usually startled by. As a poisoner, legally and officially a herbalist, the occasional corpse on her table wasn’t such an unexpected occurrence. A lord, on the other hand, was.

Especially if it was him.

Gojo Satoru wasn’t just a lord. He was the son of the former Hand of the King, the greatest swordsman in living history, and connected to the princess. There wasn’t a man alive who didn’t know the Gojo name. It was synonymous with the royal house itself as the clan that had produced scores of advisors to the king. In nearly every generation, the heir to the throne was accompanied by a Gojo, acting as a living sword and shield.

But even with that storied history, this one was special. A young man who had risen to prominence during The Silent War, he returned home from hell as a knight unlike any other. The bards would adore him. They already did.

Most generals earned their titles by leading campaigns. Gojo hadn’t needed one. He turned the tides of the war as a single man army. They had started calling him a grim reaper, a god of death.

Shoko disliked him on principle, but she couldn’t kill a man like that. They’d have her head on a pike. She didn’t mind the idea of dying so much. What she did shrink from was the idea of dying painfully.

The princess was known for abstaining from most decisions involving the crown despite being in line to inherit it, but Shoko somehow doubted that she would remain so passive if her favorite knight was murdered. Thankfully, Gojo let out a soft breath to show her that he did remain among the living.

“I thought you died,” she remarked.

“Sorry to disappoint you.”

She said something else, but Gojo wasn’t listening anymore. He was floating through a shapeless world again, chasing that moment. It slipped away from him despite his redoubled attempts to capture it. He remembered the tang of iron in his mouth. Blood spraying in the air, a mist that he could smell and taste. The leather grip of his sword in his hands, slippery with sweat.

He was trying to win back enlightenment, briefly attained and lost again just as quickly on the battlefield. A feeling of deep and solid peace had settled over him as he hacked through bodies, as if that was what he was meant to do. It should’ve concerned him. He already confused the ever thinning boundary between man and monster. That bloodshed brought him such euphoric tranquility could only mean it was growing worse, but he hated things he couldn’t understand.

He needed to experience it again. Just one more time, so he could make sense of it. The smell of blood. Wading through the dead and the dying, thigh deep in gore - it was no use. Frustrated, he let it go.

There was something soothing about the cracks in the ceiling. He stared up at it, letting his breaths come as shallowly as they had while he had been immersed in his meditative state. Shoko’s basement was chilly and dark, but it was necessary for the illegal autopsies she performed at his request. Those, and the poisons she crafted for him, were its primary purpose. It was only a stroke of luck that these qualities were also helpful for his attempts to recover his short-lived state of grace.

He was tempted to try again, but not today. There was someone too precious to keep waiting if he delayed any longer. He wouldn’t impose upon her the way he often imposed on the elder lords who tried to remind him of his place by pulling rank. While they deserved his spite, she didn’t.

Even Shoko was surprised by his sudden desire for punctuality. “You’re not going to stay?”

“I have a princess to rescue,” he said. “Dragons to slay, things of that nature.”

Shoko scoffed. “You are the dragon they have to save princesses from.”

Well, Gojo thought as he hurried down the corridor, she wasn’t wrong. He was sure others agreed with her. He didn’t waste his time with children’s tales anymore, but he remembered his mother’s voice whispering to him in the dark, curled around him in his bed. A dragon was a tool to lock princesses away. His presence deterred anyone from coming too near to his princess, so by that definition, he was most certainly a dragon.

Gojo found that he was a little proud of himself for that. Thinking of his mother had made him nostalgic. He thought she might be proud too, that he had taken such good care of the princess she herself had looked after. A dragon might trap, but it also guarded and hoarded. He had polished his princess like a treasure, lavishing her with attention until she had become a gem.

She was beautiful.

He was a soldier, so he had long since rid himself of the ability to lose his breath, but if he still could, he would’ve choked at the sight of her when he broke past the doors. She was seated so that the eye of anyone who entered the ballroom would be drawn to her first, but he would’ve found her regardless. He had promised.

Wherever you were, he would always find you.

It’s difficult to hide, being as tall as he is, but Gojo managed. He didn’t want you to see him coming. Already, he has to bite his lip to fight down his smile as he draws closer and closer. A few more steps, a detour to duck behind some random noble, and he’s in front of you.

“May I?” You don’t have a chance to speak before he’s already dragging a chair closer.

The smile on your face doesn’t match the harsh delivery of your words. “The next time you leave me alone with these miserable fools, I’ll order you to fall on your sword.”

Gojo laughs, unfazed. “Good choice. You’re too pretty to get your hands dirty. Although, you are a bit more murderous than expected for a princess.”

“You try putting up with Naoya’s simpering gibberish for an hour.”

“I don’t have to.” He slips into the chair beside you, avoiding you neatly when you try to trip him. “Watch your feet, my lady. People like me don’t have to put up with Naoya.”

People like you shouldn’t have to, either. You’re both higher ranking than he is, a princess and a lord each, yet Gojo’s the only one who gets to escape his painful-to-witness affections.

It’s only natural. A royal dowry comes attached to you. Any eligible man would have to be an idiot not to fight for your hand, but really, they’re vying for a chance at kingship. You can’t go one day without someone reminding you that you’re a physical embodiment of the crown, something to want and own.

Gojo pours himself water with a heavy hand, bypassing the wine. Watching him sip at it, you realize you’ve actually never seen him drink.

“Come now,” he says, a little softer. “Don’t look so desolate. What will I do if everyone sees you pouting? You’ll ruin my reputation.”

“You don’t have a reputation to ruin.”

“Don’t underestimate the things I’d do for the smallest sign of joy from you. Shall I procure one right now to destroy for your amusement?”

You know he wants you to smile, but you can’t. Even if Gojo can usually pry laughter from you with the ease of a trained jester, this time, your sadness weighs over you like a heavy wool cloak. It’s your birthday, but it’s not a happy occasion. Every passing year tightens the noose around your neck.

You’re a princess, and that means your life was arranged for you before you breathed your first breath. There’s nothing you can do about it. You’ve never had a choice.

“Don’t,” he whispers.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t make that face,” he says. “I’d marry you. If it came down to it, I’d take care of you.”

His words nearly cause you to spill your drink all over your finely embroidered dress. If it set in, it would never come out. He grasps your hand just as the cup begins to tip, saving you.

“Did you mistake your water for wine?” It’s a genuine question from you.

He waves his goblet around carelessly. You’re worried he might be actually drunk, but you smell no alcohol on him. He couldn’t get inebriated from just a sip, anyway. Whatever wild whims have overtaken him tonight are entirely of his own design.

“Better me than Naoya, no? I’d keep you safe.” He cracks a crooked smile in your direction, like you’re sharing a secret. “Admit it. I’d be a good husband. If I were around, you’d be untouchable.”

He’s telling the truth. If Gojo Satoru was your husband, no one would dare anything with you, but you chase the idea from your mind as quickly as Gojo plants it. You’re your father’s daughter, raised on his practicality. You don’t waste time on pipe dreams. Better the hideous truth than a lie costumed in beauty - the bite of thorns was infinitely preferable to the impermanent fantasy of petals.

Instead of answering him, you push your plate in his direction. You don’t even have to ask. Gojo dutifully takes your knife and fork in hand to cut up your meat. “Not even going to consider it, princess? I’m hurt. That was a serious offer, you know.”

“You’re insufferable. Be quiet and eat.”

Gojo’s mother used to say that the more adamantly someone denied something, the closer to the truth it likely was. You can only hope Gojo doesn’t remember, because she was right. The reason you won’t give him even an inch on the topic of marriage is because a proposal from him is the only thing you want but can’t have.

Predictably, he ignores you. He’s never known when to quit. With so little that can genuinely stand in his way, Gojo has difficulty understanding the concept of a limitation. You’re both spoiled in that sense, noble children who had never been told no.

“Think about it,” he says casually. “We’d be invincible. What other house could stand before our union?”

“I said- hello, father.”

“A little early to be calling- oh, hello, Your Majesty. You look well tonight. Is that a new ring?”

Your father cuffs Gojo around the ears. “Brat.”

He’s in a good mood, then.

“My little girl,” he says to you. “How pretty you look. I’m surprised no one has stolen you away from me yet.”

You’re not so little anymore, but you forgive him. It’s just the two of you, ever since the queen died. He’s the reason you are what you are, as cultivated as a rose in a greenhouse. The climate that nurtured you is one carefully tailored by his own hand.

“Not for lack of trying,” Gojo says brightly.

“Boy,” your father calls him, despite the fact that Gojo isn’t a boy either. A deep sigh escapes his lungs. He looks truly sorrowful for a moment. “You look just like your mother.”

Gojo’s smile freezes on his face. It’s true, he does. Through him, the king’s former hand lives again, but you know Gojo doesn’t want to be seen as an extension of her, even if he misses her more than anything.

You’re familiar with the way your father knows exactly what to say to make you feel small again. The king is someone who exudes power. His uncanny ability to pick out what you’re most sensitive to and exploit it makes even the most proud of noblemen revert to children in his presence, as if they’ve been scolded by a nanny for stealing tarts from the kitchen. It’s strange that you feel the need to protect Gojo, the strongest person you know, from that.

He reaches out and pats Gojo’s cheek now that he’s reduced him to silence. “Enjoy the night, my dear child.”

When he leaves, Gojo slumps back in his chair with a tick in his jaw. Even if the king is your father, he can’t help himself. “Nasty old man,” he mutters.

You pinch his thigh beneath the table. “Smile and look pretty.”

“Ugh, who is it now?”

“Lord Zenin and his son haven’t gotten their fill of tormenting me.”

“Hm,” Gojo says. “I wonder.”

“If you have a plan to avoid them, hurry. They’re nearly here.”

“I don’t know,” he teases. “I don’t think you’d like it very much.”

“Yes, well, I don’t like conversation with Sir Zenin very much either.”

He grabs your hand. “Then you’ll forgive me for anything that happens tonight?”

“Anything is questionable, but do as you please.”

He tugs you from your seat, pulling you through the crowd of people. Caught in his wake, you float past faces familiar and unfamiliar until the patriarch of House Zenin and his infernal spawn fade behind you.

When you turn to face him again, he’s dipped into a bow. His smile is sweet, boyish. It’s as if you’re children again, and he’s stolen you from your lessons to waltz in an empty ballroom, motes of dust that you’ve stirred up floating in the sunbeams.

He extends his hand, a sapphire burning on one finger. A dragon curls around the silver band of the ring, a nod to his heritage. Though the Gojos are a powerful and ancient house, in this moment, Gojo looks young, foolish, and all the better for it.

“May I have this dance, my lady?”

You giggle, wishing you had a fan to pretend to hide behind. You’re playing pretend again, acting as if you’re characters from a storybook.

“I’d be delighted to, my lord.”

The music swells. Gojo takes your hand and presses a kiss to your bare knuckles. His lips are soft against your skin, temptation incarnate. In his grasp, your fingers tremble slightly, torn between wanting to seize him and wanting to run away.

You’re terrified by how much you want him.

If you let him in for one second, you can imagine how easy it would be to never stop. He’s every one of your desires and hopes made manifest, tied up in a single person. Although it’s impossible, you still feel the heat of him. The warmth of his lips linger on you, a stolen moment before he sweeps you up in his arms.

This is how you remember he’s a boy no longer. The breadth of his shoulders is wide. He’s lost the roundness of youth, his face growing angular and cunning. There’s solid muscle underneath your hands as he pulls you with him, his feet beating a steady rhythm that you have to fight to keep up with.

He’s doing it on purpose, you know, testing how much you still retained all of those years of tutoring. You’re determined to show him they weren’t for naught.

When you catch your breath and master the music once more, gliding with him rather than being tugged along, he smiles like he always expected you to. He’s been like this since you were young, dangling challenges in front of you that he’s equally as excited to see you pass as fail.

The music slows. All around you, the frantic steps melt into slow swaying. You’re feeling brave tonight, so you step closer. You allow the arm curled more tightly around your waist, the tender look in his eyes. When you steal a glance around, no one is watching the two of you, but how far can you go before you lose it all?

“Don’t talk to Naoya again,” he murmurs against your skin. It tickles, and you squirm until he presses so close it petrifies you. “I don’t like the rumors around him.”

“What rumors?”

“Bad ones. He tumbles girls and leaves them with nothing. Hurts them, takes whatever he wants, and ruins their lives. I don’t trust him, and especially not with you.” His hand smoothes over a stray ruffle on your petticoat, the gesture impossibly loving. “Never with you, princess.”

You shudder at the way he says princess, feeling cut open, exposed. What has gotten into him tonight? You don’t understand. It feels like drowning, your brain always three steps behind, struggling to break the waves of your confusion.

You know you’re weak. It’s your name that protects you, the threat of your father and the royal house behind you. Alone, you’re a lamb to slaughter. You’ve been spoiled your whole life, leaving you naive and helpless.

Gojo is someone you trust implicitly. He’s always protected you. You’ve relied on him for as long as you’ve been alive, but perhaps that’s conditioned you to feel comfortable putting your hand into the mouth of the beast. Even at the chance of exposing how poorly you’ve been trained for the court’s schemes, you don’t hold back when you’re with him. He makes you feel at ease to speak freely without fearing how much you’ll reveal of your own vulnerabilities.

“I can’t,” you tell him honestly. “House Zenin is one of the Three Great Houses. I can’t refuse Naoya without good reason.”

“Then marry me,” he says softly. “Marry me and be done with all of this. They don’t deserve you, anyway. They won’t treat you like I will.”

You close your eyes, feeling the telltale hotness of incoming tears burn behind your eyelids. Why did he do this to you? He was so gentle it hurt, even though you knew he was capable of terrible things. Somehow that made it worse, the knowledge that he was choosing to be kind.

“You should go,” you say instead.

Marriage between you and Gojo would never happen. Forget your father. An alliance between the strongest house and the royal house? It would be akin to tyranny. There would be blood in the streets before any of the other nobles would allow it. It’s better not to dream about impossible desires.

Thorns, not petals, you remind yourself. You can suffer the truth.

“Why?” He says. “I want to stay with you. I want to be good to you.”

“This isn’t something to joke about, Satoru.” He looks like he’d rather you have slapped him. “Never talk to me about this again. Find someone else to dance with.”

There. Your brain snags on something to distract you. You’ve been dancing with him for too long. It’ll reflect poorly on your reputation to give an unmarried man so much of your attention.

“Pick another partner,” you urge him.

His brow creases. Stubbornly, he holds onto you even tighter. “Don’t want to.”

“You have to. Everyone will whisper. I’m surprised they aren’t already.”

“Then let them,” he pleads. “It doesn’t mean anything to me.”

Regretfully, you pull away. Darkness clouds his beautiful face. It’s unnatural. When you remember him, he’s always smiling. The instances when he directs a genuine frown at you are few and far between, but you’ve already made your decision.

Gojo stalks off in search of a new partner. Somehow, even though you were the one who forced him to leave, your heart stings to watch his back fade into the distance. If you didn’t want him to go, you shouldn’t have said anything. This is what you hoped for. Still, it’s painful.

You want to find somewhere to rest after your spat, drained from a rare argument with him, but nowhere is secluded enough for you to let your guard down. Suddenly, you feel a wave of hatred for your stupid, glittering palace and the stupid, glittering fools infesting it. You just fought with your best friend and you’re tired, but you still have to keep up appearances.

Somewhere nearby, Gojo is spinning another girl, her skirts flaring out around them. You wish you could press your palms to your eyes, letting the pressure relieve your headache, but you’ve shown enough weakness tonight. Instead, you tilt your head back and breathe, trying to appear calm and in control.

It’s a good thing you restrained yourself, because Naoya is the one that finds you. His shoes are the first thing you see, black leather with steel accents. Steel, not silver, because he wants it to hurt when he kicks.

You know. You’ve heard the stories.

“Abandoned by Satoru, my lady?” You hate the way it sounds coming out of his mouth. Gojo makes it sound so intimate, like it’s for you and him only. Naoya’s version is a bastardization, much like the man himself.

You’re too tired to deal with him, and yet, you’ll have to. House Zenin is important to your father and thus, important to you, especially when you inevitably replace him. “What are you insinuating about your princess, Sir Zenin?”

You use the proper address, the way he should’ve spoken about Gojo. They’re not close enough for him to be calling the other man by his first name.

“Nothing, nothing,” he says. “Don’t get defensive now.”

You want to tell one of the knights stationed around the hall to drag him away. Instead, you smile and let him prattle on. Court politics. If you ever want to prove to your father you deserve everything you’ve been born into, you have to play the game. No matter how terrible some of the players are.

“Since you graced Satoru with one, I hope you wouldn’t mind another dance.”

Turning him down isn’t an option, but when you see that everyone’s watching, you realize even more how much it really isn’t an option. He probably arranged it that way too. Demonspawn. You’d curse his house if you could, instead, you offer him your hand, cringing internally when he tries kissing it.

You can’t help but compare the two. Gojo did it better.

Like any son of a high born house, Naoya’s a good dancer. It’s the one compliment you’re willing to grace him with, as everything else about him, especially his personality, is hideous. His hand is solid against your upper back, the other leading you as you spin around the room. It makes you want to scrub yourself clean, even under the layers of clothes.

You’re doing this for your house. Your throne. This is nothing. None of your mantras diminish your desire to shove Naoya’s head in the cake waiting at the banquet table.

“I’ve been waiting for this for a long time,” he tells you.

“Forwardness is unbecoming in a man,” you say with a smile, as if he’s telling you the sweetest nothings. “What would my father say?”

“Don’t play coy, princess. We both know how this ends.”

“Please excuse me,” you say as soon as the song ends. One is enough. “I find myself rather dizzy.”

Naoya’s lips whiten with anger. He tries to grab your wrist, but someone steps between you. “Watch your hands with Her Royal Highness, Zenin. I won’t tolerate your disrespect.”

Naoya’s eyes flash, but the interloper is sweeping you away already. His hands hover above your dress, never actually touching, as he guides you in the opposite direction.

“Sir Getou, what are you doing?”

Getou looks down on you in amusement once you’re a safe distance away. “Satoru sent me to rescue you, of course. I didn’t think he was serious when he said you would get into trouble without him.”

“Trouble finds me,” you reply archly.

“Yes, yes,” he placates, sparking annoyance even though he just saved you from Naoya. “Are you tired of dancing yet, or do you have room for one more? I’m hoping to make an impression on potential wives by dancing with the princess.”

You’re smart enough to know that one more is rarely truly one more, but Getou did save you from Naoya. Besides, if you’re busy with him, no one else can ask for your hand.

“I suppose I can spare you a dance.”

Like Gojo, Getou is an adept dancer. He is, after all, a trained court noble, and the sons of House Getou are unusually predisposed to the arts in any case. If the Gojos are known for their strength, the Getous are known for their crafts.

Getou doesn’t flinch from your unwavering gaze. If anything, he seems to find it amusing, although in the way one would find a puppy amusing. Gently, he leads you around the ballroom.

“Stay alert, my lady. Someone’s watching you,” Getou warns.

You follow his gaze to Gojo. There’s a beautiful woman in his arms that takes you no time at all to place, so infamous is her notoriety. Yuki of House Tsukumo is second only to Gojo in her blatant disrespect for everything the elders held dear.

They make a striking couple. Everywhere they go, heads turn to watch them pass. Her gold to his silver, her lion to his dragon - it would be a powerful match. They would be perfect for each other, if only because no one would be able to challenge each other like they could.

Excellent dancers each, together they become an instrument for the music to shine through. Getou is gentle with you, each movement as delicate as lilies floating across the surface of a pond. In contrast, Gojo and Yuki dance like they’re fighting, each trying to gain an advantage over the other. They’re magnetic, drawing every eye in the room to watch them.

Everyone else may be entranced by the pair of them, but the pair itself seems disinterested in the crowd around them. Yuki’s eyes are closed but Gojo-

Gojo’s looking at you. Your cheeks heat with his attention. His stare is intense, eyes half-lidded. Every move is prowling, almost predatory. His eyes remain fixated on your face as he and Yuki move in a complicated, sinuous series of circles. There’s something impossibly filthy about his gaze. It borders on indecency, combined with the way he barely seems to be paying attention to dancing, giving you all of his focus instead.

“We can’t let them steal all the attention,” Getou says. He really is Gojo’s brother-in-arms. “Let’s give them a show.”

You’ve never been trained in statecraft, but you’ve been given the very finest of tutors in the elegant manners of the court. A show, as Getou puts it, is more than within your capabilities. You close your senses to the rest of the world, focusing on the shift of your skirts and Getou’s quiet voice as your steps weave intricate patterns across the floor.

He’s a naturally friendly man. It’s easy to talk to him, whispering between each peak in the music. Although he’s friends with Gojo, your social circles rarely overlap enough for you to spend much time in Getou’s company. You’re almost surprised by how much you enjoy it.

“I think it’s time to change partners,” calls a familiar voice.

As Getou takes the hands of Lady Yuki, her eyes still closed as she sways, someone takes his place. Gojo’s hand slides from where Getou’s were placed appropriately on your upper back down to your hip. You drag them back up, ignoring his pout. He’ll be your last dance of the night.

“Should I be worried about being replaced?” He murmurs.

“It was only one turn,” you tell him.

“And I never want to do it again,” he says. “The other girls don’t dance like you do.”

He’s an unrepentant liar. You might have been tutored by the best dancers your father could find, but at this level, first and second place might as well be interchangeable. He’s only saying it so you know that he wanted to come back to you, despite the fact that you forced him away.

Gojo’s a contradiction wrapped inside a paradox, at once sadistic and merciful. No one’s capable of making you feel as much as he does. Without the guidance of formal tutors to give you the education of a prince, you have no idea how to navigate the dangerous world of alliances and betrayals, war and peace. Once, you clumsily blundered through diplomacy, watching your father’s disappointment grow by the hour. You’ve since learned that complete silence is preferable to gaucheness. At least that is something your education as a princess has taught you.

But Gojo knew you before you grew into the woman you are now. He still remembers how to pull smiles and tears from you, how to push you to the brink of exasperation and coax you into brilliant happiness. He has a key to all the gates you’ve erected. No matter what you do, he always slips past your defenses.

If you keep letting him do as he pleases, you’ll be the only one who loses. Gojo is a man. If he’s rumored to be attached to the princess, it’ll elevate his reputation. He’s already the best swordsman in the entire kingdom. Being thought of as a profligate would only make them worship him more. People love a little hint of degeneracy to their heroes - not too much to make them immoral, but enough to make them attainable.

A princess is not a hero. You’re not someone to attain, you’re someone to obtain. When people look at you, they only see the crown. If you’re thought of as a ruined woman, it would prevent you from finding a husband. It would destabilize the entire kingdom.

It hurts to realize that you’re that selfish. Gojo would’ve chosen you over anything, but you’re letting something as empty as reputation displace him.

Not that it’s exactly a choice. Your life has been forfeit since you were born. You don’t belong to yourself, but to the royal house. As the only child of the king, you can’t allow yourself any mistakes, not when even the barest twitch of your fingers is scrutinized.

When Gojo offers to escort you back to your chambers at the end of the night, you swallow down the desire to agree. His eyes are hopeful, mirroring your own expression. It could be like back then, when you were children, running through the halls of the grand palace without a care in the world. Except you know you can never return to the halcyon days of your childhood, before your mother died, before his mother disappeared, before everything went wrong. You try not to let the disappointment on his face bother you when you allow the knight your father sent to bring you back to your rooms instead.

You attribute the strange feeling you get in the morning to the leftover melancholy of last night. Sunlight trickles across your face lazily, not enough to raise you from your bed but just bright enough to remind you that morning was here.

You’ve never slept long enough for the sun to warm your face while you were still entangled in your sheets before. The window faces your bed at such an awkward angle that the sun has to be high in the sky before it can light across your pillows.

Usually a maid wakes you by now if you aren’t up already. Where were they?

A gentle knock at the door only makes you more apprehensive. It can’t be Utahime. You know the sound of her steps. The pacing is stilted, awkward, as if whoever was behind the door was nervous.

“Hello?”

“Oh, princess!” Definitely nervous. Not a voice you can recognize. A new maid, perhaps? But why would they-

The door bursts open. You scream as a cloaked figure lunges at you. She throws herself on top of you, trying to pin you to the bed so she can run you through with the knife she has raised in her left hand.

She’s crying. “You weren’t supposed to be awake!”

Crying and angry. Fluffy white down bursts into the air, obscuring your vision as she stabs a pillow so brutally it vomits its contents. She’s not very good, which explains her terror. Unfortunately, you aren’t very good either, and you’re pinned underneath her. Thrashing doesn’t work - at the very least, she’s stronger than you, if badly trained.

When she finally immobilizes you, she has a growing bruise over her arm from a terrible punch you had thrown, trying to mimic the way Gojo does it. Keeping your thumb outside your fist was all you remembered, and it went wide. You barely managed to hit her, and it came with a cost. She snags your wrist and pins it down.

The knife plunges towards you. It’s rusty, which terrifies you almost as much as the implement itself. If by some miracle you survived, you’d be at risk of infection.

Blue eyes flash before you. In this moment, an inch away from death, you wish you had gotten to say goodbye to him. Fear robs you of rationality. You don’t know anything but that you want to see him one more time and feel the warmth of his embrace.

“Princess, it’s okay. I’m here.”

You crack an eye open. The girl is no longer visible. The only person leaning over you now has white hair and the characteristic Gojo eyes, impossible to fake. You decide you must’ve died already. This is heaven, where your wishes have been granted.

Gojo pulls you up. His hands are warm and solid. Vaguely, you realize that you’re trembling with the same nonchalant distance that you would use to catalog the color of the pillows.

“You’re not dead yet.”

“Did I say that out loud?”

He chuckles. His thumb is rubbing soothing circles into your palm. “No, I could just tell by the look in your eyes.”

“The girl…”

“Dead.”

You scramble to the edge of your bed and peek over. Sure enough, she’s lying in a pool of her own blood. Her throat has been cut so surely her head is nearly separated from her body.

You gag.

“Wait,” Gojo says. He kneels to tear off her cloak and holds it in front of you. “Here, princess.”

You don’t want to give in to your queasiness, especially not when he himself is so stoic, so you shake your head. More insistently, he pushes it towards you.

“It’s only natural,” he soothes. “I’m used to this. You’ve never seen a dead body before.”

“Just come here,” you say weakly. “No, actually. I’ll come to you.”

“Give me a second,” he says, dropping to his knees. Under the bed, he retrieves your silk slippers. He slips them onto your feet gently, standing when he’s finished with his task.

Obligingly, he waits as you gingerly step over the girl. When your slipper threatens to dip into the red stain spreading across your floor, he simply grabs you underneath the armpits and lifts you over it.

Even though it’s a horrific scene, you can’t look away. Her face is frozen in a still mask. Bile fills your stomach. Gojo gently turns your head in another direction with two fingers, the touch delicate. “Don’t look.”

“I think I’m going to be sick.”

“I told you not to restrain yourself,” he says disapprovingly.

“You’re not- you’re-“ You can’t figure out the right way to finish your sentence. “Does it really get that easy?”

His laugh is short and brutal. “Easy? I didn’t even think about it. All I know how to do is kill. I don’t mind it, for you.”

You shake your head. There’s nothing to say, with a body between you and blood pooling around both your shoes, but still, your heart aches. You had known him when he was a boy. It would always be hard to see him with calluses where once his hands had been chubby and soft.

He chucks you under the chin, the gesture fleetingly affectionate. “Don’t be so despondent, princess. I’m glad to do it. That’s what knights are for.”

Knights and maids, all meant to lay down their life or other lives for you at your convenience. Utahime was too loyal to have let an assassin into your chambers by choice. Your breath catches. It concerns him that you’re teetering into upset again, just when he’s calmed you down.

“Satoru, is Iori-“ The thought is too horrible. You can’t finish it.

“She’s not dead,” he says.

Noticeably, he doesn’t say that she’s alright.

Utahime will be scarred forever. They found her slumped at the bottom of the stairs, her body dumped unceremoniously after they stole her from outside your bedroom. A massive gash opened her right cheek up, crossing just slightly over her nose bridge.

You almost can’t bear to look at her. Not because her scar makes her hideous - far from it. Utahime will always be beautiful to you. The scar is only a reminder of how you’ve failed her.

You’re a princess without any power. All you can do is fuss over her after the fact, unable to change the past.

“Princess,” she hisses, jerking away from you for the third time in as many minutes. “You must stop! I’m your lady-in-waiting, not the other way around.”

“You got hurt for me,” you say, hands balled helplessly at your side. You refuse to touch her more aggressively, for fear of aggravating her wound. The bandages wrapped around her cheek are an ever present reminder of how much she’s sacrificed for you. So are the whispers. The looks. She holds her head high, acting as if it doesn’t bother her.

“I was glad to do it. I didn’t want to be shipped off to some far away baron anyway. Be grateful,” she cracks a smile you don’t feel. “I certainly am. At least I could still join the church, if anything.”

Why do the people around you insist on destroying themselves for your benefit?

“You don’t need a baron.” Loyally, you vow, “I’ll take care of you for the rest of your life.”

“Be careful, my lady. Some would take that as a marriage proposal, and then I’d have twice as many death threats.”

“I’d protect you.”

“You, princess? I doubt that,” Gojo calls.

You’ve been watching the knights move in and out of the arena from your vantage point on the royal balcony, but very few of them have dared to address you, much less speak to you so casually. They’re all too focused on the tourney you’re set to watch this afternoon. Only he would be so familiar with you and so unconcerned about the sparring, knowing his chances.

Utahime lets out an aggressive sigh with no regard as to whether or not Gojo could hear her. In fact, she’d probably prefer it if he had overheard. Gojo, for his part, ignores the chance to antagonize her for once in his life in order to focus on you.

“You know, my lady, I’ve heard an interesting rumor going around.”

You walk to the edge of the balcony and peer over the railing. Utahime gasps in fear and grabs onto your petticoats, afraid that you’ll tip over the fencing. “Go on, Sir Gojo,” you say.

“If a fair damsel grants a knight her favor, he’ll fight ten times as well. Twenty, even. And all the more so if it’s the princess, who everyone knows is the fairest in the land.”

Unwillingly, a smile twitches to life upon your lips. “Is that so?”

“Won’t you grant your most loyal knight a token of your affection?”

“Don’t,” Utahime gripes. “What has he done to deserve it?”

A scrap of pale blue fabric flutters in the light breeze, reminiscent of doves. Gojo catches the ribbon you’ve loosed from your hair, his fist enclosed in armor. He brings it to his lips for a chaste kiss he can’t place upon you. The entire time, his eyes are on yours, searching.

“I’ll win this whole thing,” he says. “I’ll defeat every knight here for you.”

The trumpets blow, calling the contestants. He’ll be wanted. Utahime shakes you lightly as he leaves your sight. “Get yourself together,” she says sternly.

“But mama, I love him!” You joke.

Her frown can’t last in the face of your teasing smile. She fixes the lace on your sleeve and collar, though they’re hardly ruffled. She can’t help herself. It’s her second nature to dote on you.

“Ah, my princess,” she sighs. “You worry me.”

You poke her uninjured cheek, trying to get her to smile. “It’s not me. You worry too much.”

Another voice cuts in. “I feel the same way sometimes, my dear Lady Utahime, but I trust no one more than you. Her mother left her to your capable hands, after all.”

Your father has arrived. Utahime smiles as the king kisses her cheek, but you can’t. You know he means it lightheartedly, but it galls you all the more that he says it so blithely. When your mother fell ill, Utahime had been the one who took charge of looking after you.

Not your father.

Not your only living parent, the man who was supposed to feel all the closer to you for your loss. Instead, he pushed you away.

You knew you weren’t being fair.

The king had been wracked with grief over the passing of his beloved wife. Along with his other royal duties, he couldn’t possibly have been expected to watch over an infant as well. You know better than anyone the toll the crown takes on a man. Stewardship of this land asks a heavy price. It’s not an easy role.

No, you can’t blame your father for choosing the country. It’s his duty, as it is yours.

You only wish it hadn’t been Utahime’s burden to carry instead. She was just a few years older, a child still when she had raised another child. In many ways, she had been a mother to you. Only now that you’ve grown older than she had been back then do you understand how much responsibility she had accepted at such a young age.

Your father turns to you. “Are you enjoying the tournament?”

“It’s barely started. Only the squires have been jousting. We haven’t seen any of the real knights yet.”

“Those squires will become knights themselves one day. Watch carefully, and you may discover a treasure worth keeping.”

As he speaks, you finally find someone worth watching, as if your father only had to say it to cause it to happen. A boy with rosy hair lunges towards his opponent. He disarms him and forces him to the ground - only to offer him his hand in exchange.

The other squire hesitates. Doubt crosses his face. Finally, he accepts the proffered hand like someone expecting an attack at any minute, but all the other boy does is pull him to his feet and dust him off. He’s more honorable than most of the knights of the realm you know, too focused on humiliating their opponents to flaunt their own glory.

Your father doesn’t notice your distraction. He’s still speaking. You bring yourself back to the conversation just in time to hear him say, “Sukuna, the King of the Curses.”

“Sorry?” You laugh.

“It’s no laughing matter, I’m afraid,” your father says gravely. “He’s the ruler of the Western Kingdom, the land where the sun never sets. Perhaps he’s grown tired of his arid land and seeks gentler climes, for his invasions have earned him the title ‘King of Curses’.”

Utahime’s lip curls in disgust. “King of Cruelty is more like it. I’ve heard of what he’s done to his prisoners. That man has no honor.”

“None,” your father agrees, “and yet it is necessary not to antagonize him. We are small if prosperous. We can’t afford it.”

Utahime looks as if she wants to speak, but she holds her tongue. She’s always been good at navigating the court. Trained under her, you wait as well. Taking your cues from her is something you’ve done since you were a child.

“Yes,” your father says, his eyes distant. He’s ruminating over something he won’t share. “He can’t be provoked. The representative he sent us for this tourney must be carefully attended to.”

That representative, Uraume, doesn’t fight like any knight you know. Their sword is wider than most of those found in your country, and half as tall as a man. Precision is lost in favor of brutality. They wreak havoc with the brutality of a butcher, tearing through the ranks of your best and strongest. Of course, he’s not the only strong fighter. There are other knights to watch as well.

“That Lady Tsukumo is doing quite well for a woman,” your father notes in surprise. “What prodigious talent. I don’t think her house has produced a fighter like that in years.”

“She’s better than half your knights,” you remind him. “Lady Tsukumo already defeated most of her bracket.”

“Yes, yes,” your father laughs. “You know I don’t mean it like that. I’m simply admiring her.”

As the day progresses, clear victors emerge in each division of the tournament. Uraume is one of them. Gojo is another.

They placed him against Getou for his penultimate match, knowing the crowd would go wild for a contest between not only two of the best knights of the realm, but sworn brothers. Although Getou is better than most, Gojo is more of a natural disaster than a real, human adversary. At the end of their round, Getou smiles even as Gojo brings him to his knees.

The next round is even more hotly anticipated than Getou and Gojo’s.

Gojo strides into the center of the arena with the classic arrogance he’s known for. He delights in riling the crowd up. They cheer louder and louder on each circuit he laps around the arena on his silver stallion, pale as moonlight. By the last, they’re nearly delirious with passion for him.

Uraume has no such pretenses. They’re a cold creature, as frigid as they come.

It matters not. Gojo beats them so easily that it can only be described as disrespectful. He rides past Uraume and thrusts the hilt of his sword into their stomach with such force they fall off their horse. Gojo dismounts casually. He hadn’t even used his blade. He flips Uraume onto their back with a boot and steps onto their breastplate, pinning them in place. His sword hovers underneath their chin, a whisper away from death. “Yield,” he says pleasantly.

You, remembering your fathers speech about Sukuna’s chosen representative from that morning, glance to the side. He’s smiling as gently as ever. Underneath his cloak, where only you and Utahime can see, his hands clenched so tightly his knuckles have turned white.

After the match, you recognize one of the men rushing Uraume off to be one of your father’s most trusted advisors. He must be doing damage control, but then again, when is he not when Gojo’s around?

Your father stands, as composed as if he had never been upset in the first place. You envy that self-control. You’ve always aspired to your father. In your eyes, he was the perfect ruler - perhaps because he was the one who taught you what a ruler should be.

Gojo waits in the center of the arena. He’s beautiful as always, as fierce as an avenging angel. There’s a fine sweat beading at his temples in a way that makes you want to wipe it off with your handkerchief, but you abstain, knowing thousands are watching.

Gojo has no such scruples.

When it’s time for him to be awarded his laurel crown, he kneels - not to your father, but to you. A gasp rises from the crowd. You stifle your own shock. Here, where every sign of weakness is clearly visible and easily taken advantage of, you can’t reveal that this wasn’t planned. The royal family’s control over its retainers must appear immaculate - even if Gojo had always been uncontrollable.

Wordlessly, your father passes you the laurel. You know something is brewing. He can only tolerate Gojo’s outlandish behavior so many times. But this isn’t the place to worry about your father’s incumbent wrath, so you take over the duties of honoring the victor. It’s easy. You’ve seen your father do it enough times to be able to replicate it in your sleep.

Gojo rises from his knees, a hungry smile on his face. “I told you I’d win.”

“That you did,” you reply noncommittally, trying to figure out how you’re going to discreetly get him out of the arena without your father attempting to try him for treason.

He frowns. Knowing him and the type of maneuvers he’s likely to pull, you put a respectable amount of distance between the two of you as you mark his brow in gold paint.

When you grasp his hand to lift his arm into the air, he presses something into your palm. Years of sharing secrets and playing pretend at espionage have trained you not to flinch. When you lower your enjoined hands, you slip the shred of paper he’s passed you into your pocket.

People are cheering. You notice with warmth that he looks heroic, like he’s stepped right out of an old legend. Your father doesn’t seem to agree.

Arguments between the two of you used to be few and far between, but lately it seems like you can’t do anything right. You’d forgotten what it was like to retreat to your parents’ bedroom for a scolding. It hadn’t happened since you were a child, yet here you were again, studying the fabric of the draperies to avoid eye contact with your father, just like you had when you were younger.

“He wasn’t trying to be disrespectful,” you start. But that’s not true, and you know it. So you try again. “He wasn’t trying to cause problems. He cares about the kingdom, father. He was just trying to show off his - our - strength.”

“Gojo is a liability.” How easily your father casts him off, marks him as defective. He’s always been like that - clinical in his appraisal. You lacked that precise, indifferent ruthlessness. You’ve tried.

“He’s a good man, a good knight. House Gojo has always been loyal to us, father. Remember his mother? Remember Sorashi? She wouldn’t want you to treat her son like this.”

Your father flinches. First comes sorrow, then, anger. “Don’t speak to me about Sorashi.”

“You can’t just pretend like they never existed! Sorashi, my mother-“

“Child, you are testing my patience dangerously.”

You fall silent, hating yourself for it. Always a child. Never someone worth listening to.

“You don’t understand anything,” he says more gently.

“I don’t understand anything because you won’t tell me anything!”

“You’re a princess,” he snarls. “You’re not supposed to know anything!”

You reel back, stunned. You had always been afraid that this was how your father truly felt.

“You have no sons, so it’s me or no one else.” Disgust fills you at the fear in your own voice. Weak. Pathetic. After all these years, the lessons your father gave you still haven’t sunk in. Perhaps he’s right, and you’re not fit for the throne after all. You’re still begging for what you want instead of demanding it like it’s what you deserve. A prince wouldn’t act like this, but you’re not a prince - only a girl who was never taught how to rule.

He throws up his hands in exasperation. “I didn’t say anything about sons. See, you’re too young and inexperienced. This is why I won’t let you in yet. You’re not ready to rule.”

“But I will?”

He gives you a wan smile. He’s tired. Guilt seeps through you. These days, all you do is fight. You miss the times when it felt like you had worked together. At the end of all of it, you love your father. You hate that it’s been like this.

“All in time, my child. I love you, I really do. But you’re not ready.”

Mutiny curls under your tongue. You’re not ready because he waited too long, hoping for a male heir until your mother died. By then, it was too late for you to catch up on years of lessons you should’ve had. Regardless of what he says, you know how he feels. You were never the one he wanted but-

He’s still your father. When he reaches out to stroke your cheek, a peace offering, you close your eyes against his hand and don’t give voice to your treasonous thoughts. It’s nothing to suffer the humiliation of your status for a while longer. You have all the time in the world to earn your place.

Your father is right, in the end. You can be patient.

Back in the privacy of your room, you unfurl Gojo’s note. Gojo’s mother had him trained in elegant cursive that he uses for formal documents and letters. In his messages to you, it degenerates into chicken scratch. It’s a lucky coincidence that it’s all but unreadable to anyone else, making it a code only you can decipher.

The gardens at midnight. - S.

Only a place and a time. Is he trying to tempt fate?

You indulge in the idea of not going, especially since things are already tense with your father. All the way up until the hour you need to leave, you let yourself believe it’s not happening. It’s too risky. People are already suspicious of you as it is. The minute passes, and if you go now, you’ll be late, so you won’t.

You grab your shawl with a huff of annoyance. You’re going. You were always going to go, from the very moment you got the note.

You aren’t used to sneaking through hallways you usually glide through. There are several close calls as you make your way closer and closer to the gardens. Multiple times, you’re forced to make a run for the nearest door or drape to hide behind.

You’re barely two feet away when you’re finally caught. A hand slaps over your mouth before you can scream as someone tugs you into a dark corridor. You kick and lash out, forgetting everything Gojo has taught you in favor of blind violence.

“Shh,” comes a voice in your ear. “It’s just me.”

You bite him.

He hisses and pulls back, shaking out his hand. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Why would you do that? You scared me!”

“You’re not careful enough, princess. Did you even notice the maid coming up the left hallway?”

Admittedly, you hadn’t. It’s lucky that he was there to save you.

Gojo has always been there to protect you. The tension bleeds from your body. You sigh and lean into him. You can’t help it.

He laughs. “Are you that happy to see me?”

“If you don’t be quiet, I’ll show you exactly how happy I am.”

“Come on,” he tugs you out towards the gardens. It’s dangerous, but you follow him anyway. Being with Gojo is so threatening not despite his strength, but because of it. You rely on him too easily, trusting him to see you safely through any peril. His very presence is the promise of security. It makes it too easy to relax when he’s with you.

You expect him to tell you why he called you here, but he remains silent when he tugs you down on the bench next to him. “Satoru?”

“Here,” he says, opening his hands. A single crushed violet sits on his palm. You raise it to your eye. It’s all the more fragrant because it has been mangled, the delicate petals bruised to release the scent into the air.

Gojo’s mouth lifts in a smile. “Sorry,” he says. “I didn’t realize.”

“You really know how to win a girl’s heart,” you tease.

“Hopefully I know how to win over her father’s too.”

You freeze.

“If not marriage, then knighthood. Let me be yours, in whatever way I can have you.”

“You have me,” you tell him. “You always have.”

You don’t know how to answer such devotion. Besides the obvious political ramifications of being wedded to Gojo when your marriage is meant to be a bargaining chip used for the sake of your kingdom, you don’t want it. Not like this.

Gojo has been your dedicated shield for so long, the two of you have forgotten a life where he wouldn’t give up everything to protect you. He’d do anything for you - even that which he should hold sacred for himself. His very body is littered with scars that he’s received on your behalf. How much more can you take from him?

Does Gojo really want to marry you or does he want to protect you? Will he play the part of the devoted servant for the rest of his life?

“You don’t have to…” You realize you don’t know how to say it. Or that you don’t want to. Selfishly, a part of you can’t bear to release him from the oath he gave you when you were children, though he couldn’t have known. Neither of you could have understood what it meant for him to kneel at your feet and swear his life to you. It had all been in good fun, the way children understand things. “I don’t want you to- Oh, Satoru. You don’t owe me anything. You’ve done enough for me.”

For a second, your imagination plays tricks on you. The cobalt of his eyes kindles into a terrifying flame, like the lightning in the town he hails from. It’s as if the draconic blood his ancestors claimed still lives within him.

He continues as if he hadn’t heard you. “I’m going to ask your father tomorrow. I want to be your dedicated knight; I won’t wait any longer. I’ve waited enough.”

His pushiness feeds your annoyance. You cling to it, preferring it to the dreadful hopelessness inside of you. The right thing is not always the easy thing. Gojo deserves his freedom after wasting his youth on keeping you safe, yet letting him go feels as difficult as willingly driving a nail through your hand. You want to cling to him forever, reassured by his strength.

“Don’t,” you say, trying to sound firm.

“At the ceremony,” he says determinedly. “When he gives me captainship in the army. He’ll have to say yes if I ask him then.”

“Satoru, please-” Your voice wobbles embarrassingly, and you have to pause. Silently, you beg your tears not to fall. The way he disarms you is humiliating. You turn away, but Gojo understands. Years of watching after you has taught him a lot. He bandaged the scrapes that you refused to cry over and avenged your honor after you pretended your pride hadn't been hurt. He can see right through you. “Please don’t.”

You see the frustration on his face. He’s not a man used to holding himself back, and yet he does.

“It’s alright,” he says. “We can wait.”

It’s just another number to add to the tally of favors you owe him. “It’s not that I don’t want you to be my guard,” you say in a small voice. “I just-”

“I know. Though I do think the king will ask me anyway, so this is all pointless.” He looks away. “I just wanted you to- Nevermind.”

“Really?” Doubt colors your voice.

“I’m the strongest. Who else would your father ask to protect you but me?”

“He doesn’t like you,” you point out. “No, he does, but it’s a very begrudging like. I don’t get it.”

It makes you smile, thinking about the way your father can’t stand Gojo but won’t allow anyone else to speak poorly of him. He’s still a Gojo after all, no matter how much trouble he causes your father, and your father loves Gojos. The royal house has always held their house dear. They had been close for decades. Always, they were something to the other, no matter what form that something took.

“There you are,” Gojo murmurs. His fingers trace the arc of your mouth. “So pretty.”

You glare at him through tears. “And whose fault is it that I cried?”

“Your father’s?”

You scoff. “You see? This is why he doesn’t like you.”

Gojo looks at you seriously. “I’ll get down on both knees and beg him for it if I have to.”

“Don’t do that,” you gasp.

“I don’t care,” he says. “You’re what’s most important to me. More than pride, more than honor.”

You look at the crushed violet in your hand.

Who else but Gojo?

He breaks you down so easily. You press the flower back into his palm. “I know you’ll do what’s right.”

His eyes soften. He leans closer.

“Gojo,” comes a voice. “What are you doing in the gardens this late at night?”

You stiffen. The owner of the voice is drawing closer.

“Do you trust me?” Gojo asks, as cool and collected as ever.

You nod, fearing your voice will give you away. He cups your face in his hands and ever so delicately presses a light kiss to your cheek, tilting his head towards you. Does it look like a real kiss from afar? Did he mean it to?

“Stop,” he tells the man behind you. “Don’t come any closer. You’ll scare her.”

“A new plaything?” Asks Yaga. “I’m not so scary, am I?”

Gojo notices you tremble harder as the voice registers. Lord Commander Yaga is close to the King. As the captain of the kingsguard, he could ruin everything.

Gojo lifts a hand to the back of your head and presses it gently towards his shoulder, obscuring your face. He pulls you towards him, arranging your legs around his waist. A soothing hand traces a warm path up and down your back. It calms you as much as it shames you. You’ve never been this close to any man, not even him, and now you’re cuddling only for the sake of protecting your secrets.

“The Lord Commander of the Kingsguard is a terrifying man, or so I’ve heard,” he says casually, as if the two of you aren’t trapped in an extremely compromising position. As if your father wouldn’t demand his head on a pike if Yaga realized who it was.

“Just escort her to her room when you’re done,” Yaga says gruffly. “I don’t need to tell you to be a gentleman, do I?”

“No, sir,” Gojo says cheerfully.

That night, you breathe a sigh of relief. Yaga gave no sign he recognized you. He acted as if he normally would upon encountering any soldier of his on a late night escapade, profoundly disinterested and deeply desirous to get away. Only in the morning do you begin to doubt your deception.

#sera writes #gojo satoru x reader #gojou satoru x reader #gojo satoru x you #gojou satoru x you #jujutsu kaisen x reader #jjk x reader

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achromant · 2 months

Text

AND HERE WE ARE! My project for the gw2 'zine!

Featuring Baruhn, reflecting on his life so far, the challenges, the small sparks of joy, the horrors, loss and gain.

For clarification's sake; I did in fact plan to depict every stage of Baruhn's life, but uuh. File was already too big.

Might do a series of short comics (graphic novels?) though, because i fking love storytelling.

Let's look at my idiotic level of detail a bit, eh?

[Long Text Ahead]

Baruhn's story begins in the Plains of Ashford. An unsuccessful attempt to stem the tide of Ascalonian Ghosts leads to the demise of many year-long allies. Dozens of brave soldiers gave their life for a mere week of peace until the ghosts reformed. They always do. Soldiers don't.

Shaken in his faith in the Legions, the first seeds of doubt arise.

Until finally he found someone to trust with his pain. In a tavern at the edge of the Black Citadel, he gets to know this odd fellow, who is continuosly follow by the faint smell of sulfur. Although Baruhn knew where that path led, the warmth radiating from the old veteran in front of him was not only a physical, but an emotional one.

With the Three Legions busy with their internal quarrels, fighting over an empty promise, Baruhn took the first steps down a previously thought to be dark path.

Surprisingly, die Flame Legion was welcoming, their fires offered light and guidance, the embers igniting the skies like stars. Surely this was better than the cold metal over the Black Citadel.

Baruhn took to learning first, handling the small flames with ease after years of throwing fireballs at ghostly shapes. Then, he figured out how to teach, and that is where the real magic comes from. Nurturing a flame, protecting it from harsh winds, adding a bit of kindling and coal here and there. He even taught the more elusive ways of magic that wield smoke and ash.

Baruhn knew about the war, the countless lifes lost on the other side of the fence. But those were humans, and here he was among family.

That is, until he met Molly.

After a small recon mission that was assured not to be much of a hurdle, Baruhn found himself alone in a forest. The small fires he conjured for light and warmth only drew in the nearby villagers. Those with pitchforks and torches, with crude swords and a thirst for blood. He couldn't really bring himself to hate them, this was war after all. But at what cost are these battles to be won?

Trying to escape the villagers was a futile attempt. He sank to the ground, his own hot blood dousing the little flames beneath his weary head.

For some reason - maybe hope, maybe resignation - he forced open his heavy eyes, only to discover his wounds cleaned and bandaged with fragile white cloth. A small human girl, of all things in this damned forest, tried to help. Even in his weakened state, even with just one hand, Baruhn could have easily grabbed her and cracked her skull. But the only thing he did was listen. He listened to the ramblings of the small human, going on and on about faries made of leaves and gnomes of stone. She called him "bear".

When the villagers came, they saw the girl at his side. That was all it took for them to turn on her. She was to be executed like that beast that now slowly stepped in front of her. For the first time, Baruhn spoke to the girl. "close your eyes."

Fire roared, not red, not orange. not a warm, welcoming fire. Not one that belongs in a hearth, that thrives in the arms of a family. This was so much worse. This was years of inner conflict, of doubt, of closing his eyes on the other side of the fence. For the first time in his life, this was the only thing that he wanted to do, protect the little insignificant human behind him. Fire roared, and it burned wood and it burned flesh.

Baruhn picked up the little girl, she held tight to his horns, nestled in his mane. He ran for hours, years of military training finally useful. The little girl, Molly, lost her mother years ago. She burned in the fires of a war she tried to escape. "And your father? What about your family?", he asked between deep breaths. Molly was quiet for a while, then whispered, her voice barely audible, "My father burned today."

They stayed together, for quite a while. He protected her, and she, with her head full of stories, and a book full of dreams, protected him.

Things came, things went. Baruhn rejoined the High Legions, acting as a spy for Ash, keeping an eye on Iron and Blood.

Baruhn ultimately took on his role as Novice, then Archivist, then Commander. He helped during the struggles against Scarlet. A small flame here and there, some shrouding smoke, a well timed lightning strike. It was other people that finally defeated Scarlet, but he was always in the background, with all the small things at just the right time.

Mordremoth came, but with him new allies.

It was but a small tangent in the grand scheme of things. Watching the fragile sapling while waging war on the jungle itself.

Their relation was something more than friendship, something else than love. They were there for each other when they needed to be. Be it only to keep a flame burning or to banish the voices to the back of the head again, they walked the same path for a long time.

Tarir, the Egg. Aurene. A new flame entrusted to him, his to nurture, his to raise. A gamble, again. What if that little flame would some day devour the world? But Baruhn did, what he could do best. Teach.

Darker times came. Caudecus and the White Mantle. The raid on the Mursaat's prison. Then facing the last Mursaat himself.

Balthazar came, and in his wake a new kind of fire. A war, similar to the ones Baruhn had seen before, but still different. A war without a cause, war for war's sake. War against nature, against the world, like a child lashing out when there were none to help them up. Maybe Balthazar's flames were not too different from his.

After the festering swamp that Joko was, came the mountain, Kralkatorrik. Death was not a hindrance anymore, not for the Commander and his dragon. The story went as the story goes.

When it came to face the frost, the whispers, Jormag. Everything fell apart. Jormag pried into the deepest, darkest corners of Baruhn's life, dragged every doubt, small as it may have been, into the light. In the ice, every truth was warped, encased in whispers, in lies. It suffocated any hope and planted even darker seeds than anyone thought possible.

It was the spirit of the Raven that aided Baruhn. Even the black feathers of its wings were shimmering like rainbows in the moonlight.

A small piece stayed with him, just a fragment. Nevermore.

After that, the stars themselves. Astralaria.

So many stories that make a life, so many pieces. Every encounter, every step along the way is another fragment of the whole. People are made of other people, that is what it means to be alive.

#gw2 #guild wars 2 #charr #bit of a long read but nonetheless #thanks for reading <3 #furry art

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daechwitatamic · 3 months

Text

Of Ruin: Chapter 8 || KTH

(banner by @itaeewon)

Of Ruin (Masterpost)

Rating: NSFW - minors dni Genre: vampire!au magic!au royalty!au, s2l, slow burn, eventual smut, angst and fluff

Summary: Taehyung of House Rune, Prince of Infracticus has been cursed. You’re the human world’s leading curse-breaker. It should be simple. But unraveling the curse becomes the least of your problems in the face of a world on the brink of civil war… and the love you start to feel for the prince.

A/N: Thank you endlessly to @sailoryooons for betaing!!! 💕

Section Warnings: injury and blood, angst wc: 4.8k

When you’d studied casting - in the framework of counter-curses, never much else - you’d learned like a human. You’d learned the methodology of pulling magic from the air around you, like one might pull water from a cloud. You never knew there was magic inside you, rising up to meet the rest. You never knew that you might possess something of your own, stronger and more readily available than what the world around you could offer.

Now, as you stand in your tiny bedroom in the palace practicing the same deflective spell over and over again, you wonder how you could possibly have been so oblivious. The magic that races through your system nearly makes you high.

You know that you should stop and sleep; you know that you need to rest, to recover. But every time you consider putting the book away, turning off the lamp, and laying in the dark, your heart begins to race again.

And then, instead of doing any of those things, you run the spell again. You imagine the Infracti who’d attacked you, and you push back with all your might.

You run the spell so many times that it becomes muscle memory - your tongue repeating mindless syllables, your hands pushing and pulling magic like you’re conducting the ocean tide. You’re barely thinking about what you’re doing. Your mind goes blank, a low buzzing like static settling at the base of your skull.

Say the words, do the motion. Knock down anything that comes close. Say the words, push the magic. Say the words, push the magic. Get them away, keep them away, get them away away away -

Your wardrobe explodes noisily, wooden splinters flying through the room followed by your shirts and slacks. You scream and drop to the floor, covering your head, just as one of your shoes crosses the room and takes out your lamp, leaving you in the darkness you’d been avoiding. You shake on the floor, still covering your head even though the danger has passed.

You hear Namjoon shout your name before he throws your door open, flooding your room with light from the corridor.

“What happened?” he asks, trying and failing to turn the light on with the switch on the wall. The lamp lies on the ground, shattered. You can see it because you’re still at eye-level with the floor.

Namjoon must spot you, cowering, and makes his way towards you.

“Careful,” you warn him, finally uncovering your head and trying to sit up. Your arms both sting, and you bet you have chunks of wardrobe in them, like giant splinters. Lovely. You don’t even want to look. “There’s pieces everywhere.” You’re not sure if you mean the wooden splinters or the shattered lamp. You feel delirious.

Namjoon freezes midstep, one foot raised in the air.

Satuel appears behind him and seems to understand what happened. She waves her hand and you watch as the wooden pieces of the wardrobe and the ceramic pieces of the lamp slide along the floor to a common spot, making a nice, neat little pile of debris.

“Come,” she says. “Out here where I can see you.”

Out in the common room, she looks you over, tutting when she looks at your arms. Your heart begins to slam in your chest as she examines you; you’re very aware, suddenly, that you must be bleeding.

Namjoon and Satuel look at each other, having a silent conversation that you are very much not a part of.

“Go back to bed,” she tells Namjoon, who is hovering a few feet away, unsure how to help. “I’ll take care of her.”

He does as he’s told, a bit robotically, and you’re sure he was half-asleep for the whole encounter. He might wake up in the morning and think he dreamed it.

Satuel procures a pair of tweezers - from where, you aren’t sure - and guides you to sit at the small table where you eat. She gingerly takes one of your arms and bends it so she can see better as she starts to work.

“Care to tell me what happened?” she asks evenly, her focused gaze only on what her hands are doing.

“Was practicing a defense spell,” you mutter. Your eyes suddenly feel heavy. “Must have messed up. My wardrobe exploded. It broke the lamp.”

“You should have been sleeping,” she remarks, putting down the arm she was working on and motioning for you to hand her the other.

You don’t answer this. You don’t want to admit that you were too scared. You don’t want to look weak and frightened. You don’t want to offend her by admitting you’re afraid of her kind. You don’t want to give her the satisfaction of knowing her kind can frighten you. These feelings contradict each other, yet somehow both manage to be true.

She seems to know anyway. She finishes working on your second arm and places it on the table, sitting back and looking at you with wet, black eyes. Your stomach turns, and the hairs on your arms raise.

You hide them under the table.

“Prince Taehyung can heal those when he… wakes,” she says. It occurs to you, as she stumbles over this wording, that at this moment Prince Taehyung is simply a monster. If you needed him, now, he would be no help at all. In fact, in his current state - wherever they have him tucked away - he’s the most dangerous one here.

Everyone else would need to use discretion if they fucked with you. Under the curse, Prince Taehyung would have no such qualms.

“Okay,” you say quietly. “Thank you.”

She continues to watch you, then cocks her head slightly. “There is a tea I could bring,” she says. “It would calm your nerves. It would likely help you sleep. I’ll bring some.”

You want to object; you don’t know what it’s made of, what the effect will be. You want to stay clear-headed. You want to stay awake. You never want to close your eyes again.

But this is the first kindness Satuel has shown you. This is the most she has spoken to you at length. You don’t want to reject her, lest she never try again.

“Thank you,” you nod. “I’ll try it.”

Still, when she brings you a steaming mug, you sit on the couch in the main room and hold it between your hands. You inhale the steam deeply, noting what you can recognize: chamomile, definitely. Perhaps lavender. Something else that you can’t name.

You look up at her, nervous. “Will I be able to wake when Prince Taehyung is ready for the ritual?” you ask. “Or will I be -?”

Drugged, is what you want to say. You don’t.

She smiles, and it almost looks warm. “You’ll feel normal,” she assures you. “It won’t make you groggy.”

You nod in thanks and sip at it. When you’ve finished, you set the mug on the low table, and you bring the heaviest blanket from your bed back to the couch. You curl up in a ball, the blanket over your head, and breathe slowly, waiting for sleep.

You leave every light in the room on.

—

It is not Satuel who wakes you, but Namjoon, gently shaking your shoulder and pulling the blanket just enough that your eyes peek out. You squint up at him, the light almost painful in the wake of your dark little blanket cave.

“Sorry,” he says, grimacing. “I wanted to let you sleep more, but the prince has asked for us.”

You groan, closing your eyes again. You feel awful - your body aches, your head is pounding, and your arms throb in the places where Satuel had removed wooden splinters sometime early this morning.

Still, after a moment of wallowing, you push yourself to rise. “Do I have time to shower?” you ask, the blanket over your shoulders like a thick, winter cape.

Namjoon glances at the clock. “Maybe, like… a fast one?”

You do your best to hurry, though the water stings the open cuts you sport, which makes it tricky as you hop in and out of the water, hissing and wincing. When you’re ready, both Dansoo and Satuel lead you and Namjoon through the palace, up the steps to Prince Taehyung’s wing.

You’re greeted in the front room not by the beautiful, dark haired Infracti, but by a breakfast spread.

“Prince Taehyung will be with you in a moment,” one of his staff tells you. “Please help yourselves to breakfast.”

“God, coffee,” you manage, making a beeline for the table. Namjoon follows, and when Prince Taehyung comes through the door he finds the two of you sitting on opposite ends of the couch, each clutching a mug of dark liquid like they tether you to life.

He nods in greeting as he passes Namjoon, but slows his stride to pause by you. You look at him guiltily, already knowing where this is going.

“I heard there was an incident,” he says, voice low.

You shake your head as Namjoon nods. Traitor.

“Hardly,” you say. “I was practicing magic. I made a mistake. There was… uh, a problem.”

“An incident,” he repeats. Then, he sighs like he just doesn’t know what to do with you. “Can I heal you?”

You lower your gaze and hold up your arms.

He sighs again as he surveys the damage. Then, gently, he takes one arm and begins to run his spare hand over the cuts, and you feel the tingling sensation that lets you know the healing is working.

You swallow down how nice it feels to have his hands on you. It’s not productive, you remind yourself. Not only unprofessional, but unrealistic, too. Doubly foolish.

He’s dangerous, too. He’s one of them, too.

Triply foolish.

“I’d like you to stay out of trouble for maybe a day,” he scolds under his breath, barely audible.

“I’m finding that harder here than I ever did in the real - I mean, back home,” you joke.

The real world, you’d almost said. Like this one isn’t real, but truly just a dream you can’t seem to wake from.

It does feel that way.

If Prince Taehyung notices, he has the grace to ignore it.

He hovers as you work uneasily on your coffee, and then asks, “So, are we trying the ritual today?”

“That’s the plan,” you answer, and Namjoon shoots you a look like you aren’t being polite enough. But you feel like you and the prince have gotten, maybe, a little friendly on your visits to the stable, enough to give you the leeway to speak casually.

At any rate, he doesn’t object to your tone, instead leaning his arms on the back of the couch and asking, “Do you need anything for it?”

“Actually, yes,” you say, sitting up straighter. Now that the caffeine’s hit your system, you’re feeling more human - but definitely still sore from top to bottom. “Could you get us a metronome?”

“A metronome?” he parrots, brows furrowing.

“You know,” you say, flapping a hand. “The thing for music that keeps the beat for you? I saw your piano room, I’m sure you have one here somewhere.”

A smile grows on his face. “You saw my piano room?”

You don’t answer this, feeling your face flush; you’d found the piano room on the night you’d gone wandering, when Prince Taehyung had literally saved your life the first time.

Namjoon watches this exchange with raised brows, but says nothing. You try to ignore the look on his face.

Prince Taehyung’s smile grows, and he shakes his head a little. He looks like he wants to say something but thinks better of it. He controls himself, mouth twitching back into something more neutral, and then he says, “Yes, I’ll send for it. Anything else?”

You consider this. “Somewhere quiet to work? We need a bit of space, and your staff can’t come too close or their energy will mix into the reading.”

He nods absently, already moving to ask one of his staff to fetch the metronome. “Don’t worry about that,” he says over his shoulder. “I’ve already thought of the perfect place. Come on, I’ll show you.”

—

Taehyung picked his greenhouse for the ritual. It’s spacious, far from his main quarters, quiet… and soothing, with several water features that bubble quietly. He thinks, though it’s just projecture, that this will be good for rituals or magic.

It’s calm and safe, and Taehyung thinks that’s important.

The other curse-breaker, the man, stays by the door, making sure none of Taehyung’s staff accidentally enter, and keeping a safe distance himself.

You sit cross-legged on the ground, facing each other. Taehyung watches you carefully, listens - from his place opposite you - to your pulse beat through your body, quickened with nerves and excitement. He feels your magical signature like a caress, and it astounds him that you can’t feel it, can’t feel the magic brimming at your fingertips, ready to be directed.

“This is supposed to be different than before,” you remind him. “I’m only going in with the intention to look.”

He nods. He hears what you’re telling him - it shouldn’t hurt this time, shouldn’t drain him, shouldn’t feel like his insides are being funneled backwards through his body.

Before the curse had tried to kick you out - before the pain had started - having your magic toy around with his… well, it hadn’t been unpleasant at all. It had felt good, if he was being honest. Like something was clicking into place, as it was meant to.

“You’re going to feel me poking around, just like before,” you repeat his earlier words. “You’ll also likely feel things that… belong to me.”

He feels his brow furrow. “What does that mean?”

You twist your mouth and eye the ceiling. Taehyung waits, lets you decide how to explain it.

“It’s like…” you say slowly, still thinking as you talk, “we both open up and let our magic through. So the same as I can steer my magic to take a look at the curse, you could steer yours to investigate mine. It’s… available.

“If that happens,” you continue explaining, clearly intending to do a better job looping him into the whole process this time, “you might, without meaning to, interact with it. You might feel emotions that belong to me - that’s most likely.”

“You’ve done this before?” Taehyung asks, though he knows the answer.

“Once,” you nod. “A long time ago, though.”

“What happened that time?” He leans back on flattened palms, putting a little more space between you.

“It went well,” you say, something energized coming over you. Like you perk up when you talk about your work, your successes. “I was breaking the curse for this woman - she was like, so old -”

“Older than me?” Taehyung asks, failing to hold back a teasing smile.

You laugh. Taehyung likes the sound of it. “Old for a human, okay? Anyway, we did the ritual and I was looking around at her curse and I could feel her magic kind of… pressing back? Not in a bad way, though, just… presence. And when we finished and ended it, she told me something…” You break off the story, letting out a laugh that’s maybe a bit bitter - Taehyung can’t tell. “She told me some things about myself, about what I was feeling, things I had gone through recently at that time - like while she was in there she just got a little film of my life, or something.”

“That sounds invasive,” Taehyung murmurs.

You shrug. “I knew what I was agreeing to. It was sweet, and kind of funny. And I cracked her curse.” The pride in your voice is evident.

“So,” Taehyung asks, back to playful, “what film am I scheduled to see today?”

You laugh again, and his smile widens. “Books, probably,” you tell him. “Hours and hours and hours of books.”

Taehyung waits patiently as you get ready. He places his hands palm-up on his knees, and you place yours palm-up on top of his, resting lightly. They’re small, he notices for the first time, fitting neatly inside his own.

You lift one hand and reach to set the metronome at a slow pace. It’s so slow, in fact, that Taehyung thinks for a moment that it must be broken.

“This is to pace our breathing,” you tell him. “Inhale and exhale between the beats. We’re going to do that first - just breathe in time, together.”

“I don’t need to do anything else?” he clarifies. He wants this to go well, he wants this to work.

He wants it to be done and over so you can look at him and tell him, I know exactly what’s missing, we’ll have the curse ended before midnight tonight. He wants you to tell him, it’s over - the curse is gone.

“I’ll tell you,” you assure him, your voice becoming almost melodic as you step into your role as a magic-wielder. “For now, breathe. We’re inhaling - ready?”

He does as he’s told - inhales until he hears the device’s click, then begins a slow exhale. Click. Inhale - click. Exhale - your own breath mingling with the gurgling body of water behind you is the only other sound in the room. Click. Inhale.

“Good,” you say on the exhale. “You keep that rhythm - that’s your most important job.”

He nods, concentrating on the rhythm, the clicks, his breath in and out.

“Next job,” you murmur. “Keep your eyes on my eyes. Don’t look away.”

He lifts his gaze to meet yours, and you hold him there, steady, as you breathe together in time. Your eyes dance as they take his in, and he thinks he can feel you already - your magic starting to touch its fingers to his, tentative. He’s not sure he’s ready for when your magic opens for him, when he’ll be able to press against it and feel what you’re feeling, not just see it reflected in your eyes.

“Good,” you say finally, lips barely moving. “Don’t do anything but what you’re doing right now. I’m going to start the incantations.”

You do, quietly, your voice calm and even. The chanting is musical, almost like you’re singing to him. Taehyung can feel everything as it happens - so strongly that it almost startles him out of his breathing, almost makes him lose focus and tear his gaze away from your eyes.

As if you can sense him faltering, you press the backs of your hands more firmly into his palms, silently reminding him of his only tasks.

He focuses, but he can still feel it - your magic rising up, strengthening, beginning to expand. He can feel it when it touches his, cautiously, like letting a dog sniff your hand before you stroke its head. It’s somewhere between a tingle and a warmth, your magic, and it slips seamlessly into his, filling up every empty space. Like water, like air, like every element he needs to keep existing.

It feels good - just as it had last time your magics had mingled, and this on its own is distracting.

Focus. Inhale. Click. Exhale. Click.

Your magic begins to explore - he can feel that, too. He can feel it as it lifts and examines, feel it as it prods and dives within him. He could lose himself in this - in the way the controlled breathing lulls him into calm, into the warm and pleasant sensation of having his magic matched and complemented, into the cool press of your hands into his.

He could - but he doesn’t want to. You’d said that he could - “without meaning to” - explore your side. You were forgetting: he may not have done this ritual before, but he is Taehyung of Rune. No one has better magical control than his family. It’s in his blood, just like yours, and he can steer his magic just as well.

He presses in, watching your face for any indication that you recognize the feeling. There’s none; your eyes are unfocused, muscles slack except for your mouth, which repeats the incantation hollowly, over and over. Emboldened, he presses further.

The memories come without context in quick-moving bursts; they’re hard to follow. Some are still images, some play like a video clip on fast-forward, others are just dark but sound rings through Taehyung’s head, foreign and jolting. Each comes with a feeling - or more than one - that Taehyung feels so deeply they must be his own.

The faces of humans who might be your family, and the feelings of both love and disappointment.

Books, as promised, and feelings of comfort, of pride.

Cities, waterways, more faces, more books, an old man, books again, another city, another pile of books -

Loneliness. Loneliness stitched into all of them.

Images begin to ping in Taehyung’s mind as familiar -

Namjoon’s sharp eyes, and the feeling of gratitude.

The throne room of the palace, his parents, the image of Infracti eyes - fear, fear so engulfing that Taehyung’s fingers flex against yours instinctively, and he fights to keep exhaling until he hears the click somewhere in the back of his mind.

His own face, his own form approaching from the end of a hallway. Taehyung is swept with surprise to feel excitement attached to his image, something tinged with affection, and danger, and thrill, and something that Taehyung can’t - or won’t - put a name to.

Guilty, he pulls back, letting his magic simply simmer along with yours instead of steering it into your consciousness.

He listens to the clicks, focuses on his breathing. Feels a stupid little smile sneak across his face, feels relief that your eyes are too unfocused to clock it. Feels a swell of affection for you, the human - no, witch - sent here to fix him. Feels a twin swell of protectiveness as his mind replays your fear.

He’ll do better, he promises himself. He’ll do better at staying with you, at keeping everyone else away.

He becomes aware that he no longer hears you chanting and watches your eyes carefully for the moment you come out of the trance.

You come back to yourself with a gasp, and Taehyung is startled to find you gaping at him, wide-eyed, struggling to get a word out.

“What?” he asks, stomach sinking. “What?”

You look around frantically like you’re trying to place yourself. “Maiesti,” you finally whisper, horrified, wild eyes coming back to find his. “I think someone tried to kill you.”

—

Prince Taehyung leads you - at a fast clip - to a small room that reminds you of a meeting room that an office building might have.

As you walk, you fill in Namjoon, talking almost faster than you can think.

“One of the threads,” you say breathlessly, “was definitely, absolutely intended for ending life.”

Namjoon stops walking; Prince Taehyung does not, carrying forward, causing you and Namjoon to scurry to catch him.

“You’re sure?” Namjoon asks.

You look at him evenly. “Entirely.”

“So, I was right,” he says quietly. “Remember? When I said I thought death magic might be involved?”

“I remember.”

He shakes his head. “I think my grandfather knew, or at least suspected.”

You look at him quizzically. “What do you mean?”

“That’s why he called me. I’ve been wondering. He had to suspect there would be an element of death magic - that’s my area of study. He knew you’d need me for that.”

You huff. “If he thought this was a murder attempt, that would have been nice to know ahead of time.”

Prince Taehyung acts like he hears none of this, simply leads you into the meeting room and asks a guard to fetch his parents.

The three of you wait in tense silence. You don’t know about the men, but your mind is racing with possibilities - the who, the why.

The Queen looks alarmed when she enters, and while the King doesn’t look as frantic, there’s definitely an air of concern.

“Thank you for coming,” you say, greeting them respectfully. “We wanted to speak to you right away. The Prince and I completed a ritual this morning -”

“You what?” The Queen asks sharply, but she seems to be directing this at her son, who ignores her with the polish of someone who has ignored their mother for over five hundred years. He motions for you to continue.

You continue again, a little shakily. “We completed a ritual whose purpose was to feel out more of the curse, identify some threads of intention that we missed before.”

“Was it successful?” the King asks.

“It was,” you say carefully, “but I felt you should know about a major thread that I uncovered.”

Everyone looks at you, waiting - those who already know what you found, and those who are about to hear for the first time.

You take a breath and lay your palms flat on the table. “I found a thread whose intention was death.”

“How sure are you?” the Queen demands, standing up straighter, her brows furrowed.

“There’s no doubt,” you say calmly. “That’s what it was. Whoever cast this curse… they included the intention to kill Prince Taehyung.”

The King shouts someone’s name and an Infracti hurries into the room, leaning down to listen to the King’s request. He leaves again, and the King addresses the table.

“My cabinet members are being summoned,” he says. “We’ll address this at once.”

“Why would they bother with all the other threads,” the Queen asks, her eyes on you, “if they just wanted to kill him?”

“I’m not sure,” you admit. “It doesn’t make sense to me, either - but the intention was there.”

“I can speak to that,” Namjoon says calmly. The Queen snaps her attention to him. “Death magic is my specialty. A curse like that - just to end a life - it can’t be done. Magic… as I’m sure you know, magic is life. Magic wants life. It will not end a life unless it is twisted just right. It’s likely that whoever cast this curse had to… add padding to sneak this piece in. Perhaps they hoped that if they failed - which clearly, they did - then at least the prince would suffer.”

“Which he is,” you add, unhelpfully.

“The Scores must be behind this,” the Queen says.

“There’s nothing that particularly indicates them,” the King points out.

“Except seven thousand years of war,” she shoots back. “Who else? Who else would benefit from killing our son?”

The King rubs at his temples. “I want to know where their little venefici was the night the curse began,” he muses. At that word, you feel blood rush to your face. You expect Namjoon to pat your arm, but it’s the prince who meets your gaze across the table, his face open and apologetic.

“Father,” he murmurs reproachfully, the first time he’s spoken since you all gathered.

You wonder what he thinks about all this.

You wonder if he’s frightened.

The King follows his gaze and frowns. “No disrespect intended,” he says, though his tone indicates that he’s displeased at being corrected. “We appreciate your skill here. But I need to find who cast on my son, and bring them to justice.”

“And cure him,” you say. This time, Namjoon does knock into your arm, trying to shut you up.

The King narrows his eyes at you but doesn’t address your insolence.

“And what about you?” The Queen asks, directing her attention at you and Namjoon. You try not to squirm. “What does this discovery mean for the counter-curse?”

You exchange a look with Namjoon, and you give him a nod. Death magic is his forte, not yours.

“I’m afraid it’s a bit of a good-news-bad-news situation,” he says, inclining his head respectfully. “The good news is we identified that element of the curse so we are able to begin finding how to counter it. The bad news… well… the thread of intention called for loss of life. In countering that… only life can pay for life.”

Prince Taehyung’s head snaps up. “Will someone have to die?” he asks, horrified, eye wide.

“Not necessarily,” you hurry to soothe him. “It may take Namjoon and I some time, but I’m confident we can find a way that isn’t so… drastic.”

“You’re dismissed, then,” the Queen says, her voice still even and cold. “I don’t want you wasting a single minute until you have something worth trying.”

You nod in understanding and move to leave. Satuel and Dansoo are waiting in the corridor, ready to walk you and Namjoon back to your quarters. You glance over your shoulder as you go, trying to get one last look at Prince Taehyung.

To your surprise, you find him standing still, watching you walk away. From this distance, he looks more like you expected him to look the first time you’d met him - somehow both haunting and haunted.

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thank you for reading! chapter 9 coming next friday!

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sgt-seabass · 11 months

Text

𝒂 𝒕𝒊𝒅𝒆 𝒐𝒇 𝒘𝒂𝒓 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒃𝒓𝒐𝒌𝒆𝒏 𝒅𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒎𝒔

✧˚ · . a collaboration between @navybrat817 and sgt-seabass

Is this the way it's got to be? Ignite the fire inside of me. Embrace the life of tragedy. A tide of war and broken dreams. (x)

pairing — bucky barnes x reader w/c — 6.3k this is a dark fic. 18+ only. listening to —♫3 am walk

warnings — bucky barnes is a sweetheart, implied (consensual) smut, kidnapping, assault, violence against reader, mention of bodily injury, stabbing, knives, blood, bad guys being cunts, hydra exists, degradation, threat of non-con, whump, threat of violence against an animal (but the animal is not touched or harmed), death threats a/n — after months of brainstorming and writing together with Navy, this has finally been born. this piece is part of a larger AU we made together, so watch this space for more in the future.

Waking up next to Bucky was the easiest thing you ever did, because that was your happiest dream come true.

Even when his alarm blared before the sun had even considered rising, in the early hours when birds were still in their slumber, and the moon lit the bedroom with its ethereal glow, you would still give everything to wake up to the sleepy smile of your boyfriend.

You went to bed thinking of him as he ran his fingers down your back, helping ease you into a restful sleep, and you woke thinking of him as he tried to cover your eyes from his lit-up phone.

You both groaned, begging the stars for more time in bed. But as the incessant beeping filled the room, neither of you would get back to sleep soon.

Bucky was an Avenger. And that meant he had to go save the world. But that didn’t make it any easier when he had to leave for missions.

As Bucky leaned over to turn his phone off, you wrapped your arms around him, spooning him with your chin on his shoulder. “You could just stay home.”

Something in your gut was calling to you, warning you that he needed to stay home. It made you fearful. What if he got hurt?

In hindsight, it was you who needed the protection.

Bucky sighed, turning off the annoying buzzing of his phone. “You know I want to. But I can’t. Duty calls, sweetheart.”

God, you’d never get sick of the gravelly twinge to his voice in the mornings.

“Steve and Sam need backup,” he yawned, rolling over so he could cradle your head to his firm chest as he lay on his back, allowing you to smell the fading scent of his cologne.

“I’m sure they’ll be fine on their own,” you smiled, placing a kiss on his pec. Bucky’s habit of sleeping in only boxers always had you wanting to kiss him all over. Covering him in your affections was always tempting, even when he got shy, especially around his scarred shoulder.

“Baby, stop it,” Bucky almost whined, like a toddler tempted with treats. “Please don’t make this harder for me.”

“Sorry,” you placated, that nauseous feeling in the pit of your stomach not easing as your eyes adjusted to the dark room.

Outside, you could hear the occasional car and pedestrian. But for the most part, Brooklyn was asleep. It was a peaceful silence between you, enjoying each other’s touch while it began drizzling rain outside.

“Well, it’s raining. Now you’ll just have to stay home.” You cheekily nipped at Bucky’s side before shuffling up to kiss his stubbled cheek.

“Is that so?” Bucky chuckled, eyes crinkling in your favourite show of joy.

“Mhm. No missions on rainy days,” you said matter-of-factly with a serious look on your face, a look you couldn’t hold when Bucky tickled your sides. You burst into giggles, gasping softly when Bucky rolled you under him so he towered over you, your body caged between his bulky arms.

“That’s too bad. I thought you were going to have a fun day with Natalia.” Bucky’s hair fell forward and covered some of his face. But there was no missing his twinkling blue eyes, reflecting the lights outside in his orbs. “Weren’t you going to have a girls movie night?”

“Yes, but I’d rather you join us.” Your hands ran up his sides, feeling rippled muscle until you reached his neck and jaw. His stubble pricked at your fingers as you cupped his face.

“I don’t want to be the third wheel. What are you ‘gonna watch?” As he spoke, Bucky began placing gentle kisses on your cheek that trailed down your collarbone.

“Cruel Intentions,” you muttered, revelling in the feeling of his plush lips against your skin.

“You’ve shown me that one,” Bucky murmured against your neck. “That’s the one with the lesbian kissing scene, right?”

You rolled your eyes with mock offence. “Of course that’s the bit you remember. And it’s not just any kissing scene. It’s the legendary kiss between Sarah Michelle Gellar and Selma Blair.”

Bucky pulled himself back up, raising his brows and trying, and failing, to hide his smirk. “Sorry, how could I forget.” His tongue darted out to wet his lips. “Let me see if I remember correctly. It goes like this, right?”

Your heart was ready to burst out of your chest when Bucky’s lips met yours. Morning breath be damned; there was simply nothing better than kissing Bucky Barnes.

He licked across your bottom lip before you opened your mouth to let him in. “Bucky…” You moaned, your tongues sliding together like a choreographed ballroom dance.

Your hands held his scruffy jaw while his hands, one cold and one warm, held your waist. You could always tell when he was getting aroused by the way he’d lose some motor control of his silver arm, the hand twitching and metal plates shifting.

In hindsight, you’d miss the way he’d hold you the most.

Bucky slowly pulled away, his metal hand rising so his thumb could brush over your spittle-smeared lips. “Something like that, right?”

“Yeah.” You breathed out before taking the digit into your mouth.

Even though he couldn’t feel it, you could see how Bucky’s pupils dilated as he watched you suck.

His metal arm had been used for so much evil. But you always wanted to remind him of who he was. Your lover, your best friend. Your everything. Just like you were to him.

You weren’t afraid, and you embraced every part of him. While many cowered away from the man with the metal arm, you gravitated towards him, as if your heart was connected to him with impenetrable strings of fate.

“God, I love you.” Bucky’s metal hand cupped your cheek, his breath hitching for a moment as he gazed at you, as if so full of emotion his words were caught in his throat.

You placed your palm over his hand, snuggling into the cold metal like it was a warm hug. “I love you too, Bucky baby.”

An embarrassed flush spread over Bucky’s cheeks as it always did when you spoke to him sweetly. He might have been a soldier, but he was still a soft romantic at heart.

With the pitter-patter of rain against the window, the room no more than illuminated shadows, you were entirely enraptured by Bucky. You both stayed silent, just soaking in the moment as sparks flew. Even though you’d been together for two years, the chemistry was still like the first day you met. The first time you kissed. The first day you fucked.

The world around you was dark, yet you weren’t scared because Bucky was there.

The languid movement of Bucky’s lips to yours was tender, a familiar movement that he’d done so many times before. Feathery light, yet full of heat, he brushed his lips over yours. “I wish you could come with me.”

“I could stay in the jet.” You offered with sincerity. But that part of Bucky’s world wasn’t for you, you both knew that. You were no agent, a mere civilian with a super soldier boyfriend. But something told you that’s what drew Bucky to you, your normalcy. You gave him a chance at a life that had been stolen from him for so many years.

“I wouldn’t forgive myself if you got hurt. You’re safer here.”

In hindsight, he was very wrong.

Bucky captured your lips again, caressing and lingering in a way that had your heart fluttering and cheeks burning.

You tangled your hands into his locks, deepening the kiss. If he was going, you needed every moment you could get.

Bucky gripped your chin with his flesh hand, opening your mouth for him.

The sweetness turned sultry, and before long, Bucky was grinding himself against your pyjama-covered core.

Words couldn’t describe the desire that was awash in the room. Two lovers revelling in a happiness that was so rare, as if a million I love you’s were condensed into a single moment. No poet could describe this connection or the way it made you feel.

With Bucky’s embrace, you were home.

Bucky slowly trailed kisses down your neck, chest and stomach until he reached your pulsing pussy.

“I better tire you out before I go.” He smirked, cheeky as ever.

And tire you out, he did.

It wasn’t about his pleasure in that moment. He solely focused on you.

The way he moved his tongue, the way he pulled you apart, it was damn near artistic.

Steve may have been a painter, but Bucky was an artist in the act of love.

In hindsight, you should have cherished this moment more. Because it was the last happiness you would feel for some time.

The unease in your stomach began to grow in intensity as time passed, and by the time Bucky pulled himself away to get ready and leave, there were unexplainable chills wracking through you.

Bucky had done a thousand missions in your time together and had come home safe each time. Steve knew you’d likely kill him if something happened to Bucky. So why was this time different?

It was like your soul was trying to reach out and tell you something. But it must have been speaking another language, because you didn’t understand what was wrong.

You made the most of your fleeting time with Bucky before he left. He changed into his workout gear so he could kit up at the compound where most of the Avengers still resided, and Bucky had once lived. He didn’t leave many weapons in the home; you preferred it that way. The only one you knew of was the knife hidden under the couch, but you were sure there were other blades around.

Bucky had never told you why he didn’t live at the compound anymore, but Nat had hinted at tension between Bucky and Tony. You’d found it odd, given that Tony had been friendly to you each time you’d visited the compound.

But it wasn’t your business and didn’t matter to you anyway. You were content living with Bucky in your cosy apartment. There was more than enough space for both you and your fur child Alpine, plus a second bedroom for when Steve stayed over.

You snuggled into the duvet when Bucky left to make you a cup of tea before he headed off, and seeing as there was now a free spot, Alpine entered from the main area and took her chance to cosy up next to you. You pet the long-haired white cat as you waited, listening to her soft purrs to help ground you.

And when Bucky returned, you felt rather teary, your vision blurring as your emotions almost got the better of you. “Stay safe, please.”

Bucky set your earl grey down on the coaster on your bedside table before his concerned gaze turned to you. “I’ll be just fine. I’ll have my phone on me the whole time.”

“Is the mission dangerous?” You couldn’t help but ask. But you always got the same answer.

“I can’t talk about it, baby. But I’ll be okay. I promise,” Bucky reassured you with a kiss on your forehead. “You and Alpine better hold down the fort for me, okay?”

“Yeah. We’re going to get up to lots of mischief,” you smiled the best you could, holding Bucky’s hand.

“That’s my girls.” Bucky gave Alpine a little scratch under her chin before doing the same to you. “I’ll be back before you know it. Now get some more sleep, soldier’s orders.”

“Yes, sergeant,” you mock saluted before Bucky kissed you and pulled away.

“I love you, doll,” Bucky called from the doorway, as if taking his chance to imprint the sight of you into his mind.

In hindsight, he should have looked a lot longer.

“I love you too,” you gave Bucky a little wave. Alpine meowed in her own show of affection.

And like that, he was gone; The final sound from him was the closing of the front door behind him.

You turned the television on for some white noise while you sipped at your tea before you did as you were told, allowing the talking of some trash reality show to become background noise as you fell back asleep. As you dozed off, you couldn’t help but notice one side of the bed a lot colder than when you first had awoken.

For the second time that day, you woke up. This time, the sunlight beamed through the open curtains, since Bucky loved being woken by the sun warming his skin. He hated being cold.

Next to you lay a napping Alpine, her fluffy body rising and falling slowly with each deep breath. You placed a hand on her side, smiling at the little yip that came from her in surprise. She rolled onto her back, deep blue eyes watching you as you gaily scritched her belly.

She took the chance to latch onto your hand, playfully holding onto your wrist while her feet kicked and teeth ran across your skin.

“Hey, silly goose. Let me go.” Your chastisement was light and playful. While you’d prefer waking up next to Bucky, Alpine was a good replacement on the lonely days. She was your family, just like Bucky.

When Alpine rolled back over with a tired huff, you decided to leave her to slumber. As much as you wanted to annoy her more, you didn’t want to push your luck and end up with a pissed off kitty. She was moody, just like her dad.

You slinked out of bed, taking a moment to stretch when your feet hit the cold floorboards. With a yawn, you looked around the room. You should really get a rug, but Bucky liked lying on the floors when he found the bed too soft. On those nights, you’d join him, even if it left your back stiff and sore.

Padded steps took you to the kitchen, your body on autopilot as you got Alpine’s food ready for when she got up. It was the same routine as every morning. Feed the cat, shower, and check your emails for new commissions.

In hindsight, you should have been paying more attention.

You hummed as you made your way to the bathroom, connecting your phone to the Bluetooth speakers so you could play some music while you tried to relax. Your mind would run without the interruption of songs. And you didn’t want to start thinking about work before you’d had a chance to breathe.

In hindsight, you shouldn’t have put the music so loud.

It was a luxury working from home, getting to pick your own hours. You had felt a little guilty when Bucky first proposed the idea of you quitting your crappy retail job to follow your dream of graphic design, as he could bare the brunt of the expenses.

But now you were flourishing; you were just grateful for his support. There were peaks and troughs like any job, but your heart was content sitting in your shared apartment, designing things that made the world a brighter place.

You turned the shower on, bopping along to your music as you shed yourself of your pyjamas and got into the tiled shower. You could have a bath, but you preferred to save those moments for when Bucky could join you.

The hot water made you hiss at first before your body acclimatised, skin heating up as the stream washed over you.

You faced the wall, resting your head on the tile as the spray rushed down your back.

In hindsight, you should have turned around.

The consequence of your various decisions throughout the morning came to a startling precipice.

With no idea of your surroundings, you were surprised when someone looped their arms under your armpits and over your shoulders, hauling you backwards.

You didn’t even scream for a moment, your brain unable to catch up before the adrenaline kicked in full force.

The assailant didn’t speak, which almost made it worse, as he started to walk backwards with your back to his chest, arms locked over your front. More than ever, you really wished you’d taken Bucky up on those self-defence classes.

“Thanks, Buck. But I’ll never use them.”

“I just want to keep you safe.”

“I am safe. My boyfriend is an Avenger, remember?”

Fight or flight kicked in, and your screaming started. You kicked your feet up and planted your soles on the cold tiled wall. With all your strength, you pushed back like a springboard, sending you and your attacker hurtling backwards.

He let go as he fell, and while he fell through one glass pane of the shower, you fell through another. The force had the glass shattering, sending thousands of shards all over the room.

You scrunched your eyes closed, wailing when you stepped in the broken glass, pain shooting through you when the shards buried themselves into the soles of your feet. But a second attacker caught you before your body hit the sharp ground. The piercing pain in your feet barely registered with how your body buzzed. Blood began to cover the floor, your essence coating the tiles a sickly red.

Your eyes shot open to see who caught you. A dirty blonde with a youthful grin. The man who had grabbed you first, another blonde with bright blue eyes and a scowl, had caught himself against the double sink.

Time froze for a moment when you looked at the door. There was another man with dark brown hair and an ominous expression, his features dark like his intent. Three men. You had no idea if more waited outside the door, but anything would be better than being stuck in this room.

“Nice catch, Damien,” the dark-haired man grinned.

“Yeah, no problem, Mads,” the man holding you spoke, chuckling like he wasn’t holding a hostage in his grip. “Not like Kage was any help.”

With them distracted, you bolted for the bathroom door, ignoring the way your feet tore with each step.

“Maddox! Grab her!” The man against the counter, Kage, yelled. Pushing himself off the marble to follow you.

You managed to duck under Maddox’s arms and stumbled into the kitchen. Your blood was already pooling on the ground with each step you took, like red footprints in the snow.

A meow caught your attention; Alpine stood in the bedroom doorway, her tail straight and her ears back against her head, the anxiety clear.

“Alpine! Hide under the bed,” you hissed, knowing you only had seconds before the unknown men came after you. If you were to die, there was no way you’d let them get Alpine too. Alpine stared at you momentarily, but as the tears welled in your eyes, she rushed off, perhaps understanding the weight of your command. This wasn’t belly scratches and joking around anymore.

You rushed for the knife block on the kitchen counter, but a hand on the back of your neck stopped you before you could reach it. “Nice try, bitch.”

Maddox gripped your neck and shoulders before he threw you over the kitchen counter, sending you rolling over and onto the bar stools that sat neatly on the other side. You tumbled to the ground, groaning instantly at the pain of the wood hitting you from multiple angles during your descent.

The trajectory sent you towards the dining table, and with Kage and Damien coming in close, you shot up and grabbed one of the dining chairs. You held it out like a weapon, with the legs facing outwards. Your breaths came out in short pants as tears trickled down your cheeks, while a shard of wood from the stool stuck out of your side. “What do you want? I don’t have any money, please.”

“Are you dumb enough to think we’re here for money?” Damien goaded, slowly closing in the distance between you two.

Maddox jumped the counter and landed behind you, boxing you in. With a scream, you threw the chair at Damien and attempted to flee under the dining table.

You squealed when Maddox grabbed your ankle, his grip harsh. You turned to look back at him, before you kicked him in the face with your free leg. He groaned in pain, and you didn’t check to see how bad you’d hurt him before you crawled out to the other side of the table.

Kage had been waiting for you, and when you reached him, he dealt a sharp kick to your side. The pain winded you, your mouth ajar with a shocked gasp before he kicked your ribs again.

You rolled onto your back, watching as Kage considered you from above. The way he looked at you – the malice. They were going to kill you. A woman could always sense the imposing threat that men had, for it was simply the female experience to be at the mercy of those who wanted to harm you.

You should have stopped Bucky from going – should have trusted your gut. Although, if these men wanted you dead, then there would only have been so much Bucky could do. He was a victim as much as you in the world of unfairness. A man out of time. A man who just wanted a semblance of normalcy.

It was mournful that his one good thing was becoming marred with the violence he had become so used to.

“I don’t want to die,” you wept under the man, pulling the wooden stake from your side with a cry of pain. "Please."

Turning over, you dragged your bloodied body towards your desk. The same desk you spent most of your days on. Your computer and sketchbooks were filled with hopes and dreams, colour and beautiful chaos.

Your ichor-covered hand grabbed onto the side, using it like a crutch to stand up. You couldn’t stop fighting. If you were going to perish, you’d go out swinging.

“You’re still trying? It’s pathetic. You can barely stand,” Kage growled as Damien and Maddox began wreaking havoc behind him. They were smashing and destroying everything in sight, demolishing the world you and Bucky had built with love and a cherishing touch.

“F.. Fuck you,” you weakly spat, legs burning with the need to sit down.

Kage snapped, grabbing you and dragging you across the desk. Your computer smashed onto the ground, along with all your notebooks and stationery. He threw you down on top of the mangled computer, allowing the glass of your screen to stick into your back. In a way, it wasn’t a new sensation anymore. The sharp piercing of your feet had dulled your body to the point where the new pain was no more than a sudden spike that turned into a dull ache.

“You think you’re special? You’re nothing. Not even worth expending energy on.” Kage left your side, and your sightline moved to the couch.

Bucky kept a knife under it.

Trying to not show your intention, you used your arms to pull yourself along the hardwoods towards the couch, while Maddox closed in and kept tapping your bare ass with the toe of his boot.

“I wonder what he likes about you,” Maddox considered. “Are you that good a fuck? Do you cook him meals just like the old days, huh? ‘Cause to me, you just seem like a puny helpless girl. There’s no fun in killing someone who might as well be already dead.”

His taunts made your blood boil, and when you reached the corner of the couch, you turned onto your back, facing the assailant. “Go fuck yourself. You don’t know anything.”

“Ah, see there’s a little fire. I like it when they fight back.” Maddox dropped to his knees, one on either side of your thighs so you were boxed in. “I want to watch the light drain from your eyes, see all that hope just whittle away to nothing. Because, like Kage said, you are nothing.”

He moved in closer, to the point where you could smell the stale whisky on his breath. “I wonder what body part your boyfriend will find first. Maybe I’ll put your head under the bed with your fucking cat. What do you think? Are you ready to die?”

You let out an almighty scream when you reached and grabbed the knife, pulling it out and slashing Maddox across the arm before he could react.

He was a lot faster than you, however, and the moment you got a hit in on him he jumped back, eyes turning a lot darker. “Oh, you’re fucking stupid.” He growled, before he quickly overpowered you.

In a struggle, you screamed and thrashed, but by bearing his weight onto you, Maddox could manoeuvre you. He picked you up, before slamming you back down onto the hardwood floors. Your head snapped back from the force, whacking against the ground with a loud crack.

Everything went black for a moment, and by the time your vision came back, Maddox was squatting over you with the sole of his boot stepping on your wrist, the knife still in your grip.

“You really don’t know when to stop, huh? Can’t you see you’re going to lose no matter what you do?” Maddox’s boot pressed harder, and your wrist creaked uncomfortably under the pressure.

You let go of the knife just before your bones would reach the point of snapping, the metal clattering to the ground. Despite the tears in your eyes and the fear in your heart, you were thankful for the life you had. If this were to be the end of your existence, you were okay with that. Bucky had given you a life worth of love in the short two years you’d known him.

As you watched the sharp eyes of the man above you, you thought of Bucky. You hoped this loss would not destroy him. The life you had experienced together would not change; those happy memories of laughter and smiles still there. You hoped he would not cry for you, but feel a blossoming love at the thought of you. Death wouldn’t have you becoming a ghost of a forgotten past, but a memory to be cherished in Bucky’s future. And you would be waiting for him on the other side, should he be expecting to see you there after his inevitable demise. You would be just around the corner, waiting like nothing had ever been lost. These men could try and take your body, but they would not take your soul. That belonged to the man thousands of miles away saving the world. “I’m not going to lose. I’ve already won.”

“Yeah? Does this feel like winning?” Maddox sneered before he picked up the blade and plunged the knife into your shoulder, the white-hot pain splintering through you like the broken glass of your shower. Your mouth opened into a silent, broken scream, the anguish unlike anything you’d felt before.

This was just a fraction of what Bucky had felt in his lifetime, yet this felt like the whole world was collapsing in on you, your body broken. Perhaps these men were right - maybe you were weak. Because the knife in your shoulder was enough to break you. Would Bucky be disappointed? Would he expect you to have put up more of a fight? The logical response would be no. But the blade slicing through your muscles made it hard to think straight.

Maddox slapped your cheek and twisted the blade. “I asked you a question, little bitch. Does this feel like you’re winning?”

Your choked cries painfully shook your shoulders, and despite it all, you nodded. “Yes. I’ve already won and you can’t take that from me.”

“Stupid fucking whore, listen to this slut. She really thinks she’s worth something.” Damien called out from behind Maddox, looking at you from over his shoulder. Kage joined the commotion, gazing at the knife lodged in your shoulder.

Without compassion, Maddox ripped the knife from your shoulder, your palms raising to try to press on the open wound. There was no reprieve with these men, however. Maddox grabbed your shoulders, ignoring your yelps and wails while he threw you over the back of the couch.

Your front dropped onto the sofa, while your ass stuck in the air on the stiff back of the couch. The fear that roiled inside you turned tenfold as Kage came up behind you, pressing on your lower back so your hips pressed painfully into the couch frame. Damien and Maddox came around your front, their crotches scarily close to your face.

“You know what we can take from you, though? Your dignity.” Kage’s hands moved from your back to the globes of your ass. “I could fuck you right here, and there’s nothing you could do about it.”

If the humiliation of being naked wasn’t enough, having the intruders touch you like this was an indignity that would change you forever. A small part of your golden soul blackened, and you didn’t know if it could ever be saved.

Damien gripped your chin, forcing you to look up at the two men. “And we could fuck that mouth of yours. Maybe even pull a few teeth if you dared fight.”

“I bet you’d love it. After all, you have to be all kinds of fucked up to fuck the Winter Soldier,” Kage said as his fingers moved to feel across your thighs.

“Don’t you dare speak about him like that. He’s more of a man than you three put together.” The mere mention of Bucky had your anger returning. You let out a huffed breath before you used the last of your depleting strength to lift your legs and kick Kage in the stomach. He didn’t move, body like a stone statue, but the movement pushed you over the couch and onto the living room floor. The plushness of the cushions did little to soften your fall, a whimpered breath coming from your tired body.

You were just so tired. The more blood you lost, the harder it was to keep going. As your ichor stained the rug below you, you glanced to the blackened television.

“Bucky, what are you doing on the floor? And is that all the stuff from the bed?”

“We’re having a pillow fort movie night. The popcorn is in the microwave.”

“It’s going to be a pain to put the bed back together, you know.”

“Then we’ll just have to sleep here. Don’t worry, I’m sure we can break it in. It’s one new surface I haven’t fucked you on yet.”

No. You couldn’t give up. You owed Bucky your best fight. You had no doubt he would do the same for you.

The assailants closed in again, the same dark-haired asshole taunting you with his menacing grin.

“Fuck you,” you spat, seeing red when he tried to grab you.

Most of the punches you threw didn’t land, but it didn’t matter to you. Your arms were a blur as you screamed and unleashed all the fury you had.

But they just laughed at your efforts. The blood loss had clearly taken full effect with the way you moved slower than you intended, your arms weakening quickly.

“Nice try, toy.” Maddox picked you up by the shoulders before throwing you into the wooden coffee table.

The thin tabletop cracked and fractured instantly, wood splintering around the dent your body left.

The pain had become immaterial, the agony reducing from a boil to a simmer as your ability to feel lessened to the point where nothing was at all. Perhaps it was your body protecting your psyche, or you were dying. Either way, it left you feeling somewhat euphoric.

"She still fighting?"

"Let her be. She isn't going anywhere."

"Dumb bitch thought she stood a chance."

Your dazed state had the men leaving you to finish trashing the house. With no immediate threat, you made your last-ditch attempt. You had to let Bucky know who killed you. You knew it would kill him to not know who attacked you.

Numbed, you took another look at the men. There was nothing too unusual about them, just their distinctive hair colours, eye colours and the symbol they all bore. You hadn’t noticed it at first, but now with your chance to inspect them, you sighted a circular insignia on the front of their black hoodies. A green… octopus?

When Damien threw a plate at you that shattered against your forearm when you raised it to defend yourself, your thoughts were cut off. The porcelain dropped around you, and you picked up one of the pieces. On it was a little drawing of a cat. You and Bucky had done a pottery art class and came home with a few plates. You picked up a second piece, a sob bubbling from your throat when you looked at the two fragments together. A little Alpine that you had drawn, and a little bird that Bucky had drawn with red wings.

You let the remnants of the plate drop to the ground, the once beautiful creation covered with your blood. They really were destroying everything. As Damien continued to vandalise the kitchen, Maddox and Damien tore apart your boxes of photos.

Even with the horror of having your life stripped away, you struggled to look away. You saw the green octopus again, and something in the back of your mind was trying to get out – to tell you what it meant.

The emblem was so familiar, and you turned onto your stomach as you thought. Pulling yourself to a free patch of hardwood flooring, you began writing out the word ‘blonde’ with your blood, trying to give Bucky anything you could.

Kage stopped you after the first word, and it was like there was cotton wool in your ears as he pulled your hand back. You assumed he said something to chastise you, but you didn’t register it.

You could see his expression, though. He was enjoying himself, laughing with his partners as he took your arms and dragged you on your back towards the front door.

When you looked up, you saw his hoodie closer, and that’s when it clicked. Hydra? But Hydra was red? And from what you heard on the news after the Triskelion incident, they were some power-crazed terrorist organisation bent on absolute control. What were they doing in your apartment? And why did they hate Bucky so much?

Bucky hadn’t told you much about his past, and part of you understood. You could tell by the vulnerable look in his eye that he was scared you’d leave him every time the Winter Soldier was brought up, which was rare.

All you knew was that he was under control as the Winter Soldier, and did some horrible things. But you never pressed, and you didn’t need to. You knew enough to know Bucky was a victim, and that was enough.

Good people like Sam and Natasha wouldn’t have continued to stand by him if Bucky was anything more than an innocent, manipulated prisoner of war. Steve would stand with Bucky regardless, but you didn’t blame him for that. Some relationships simply went further than right or wrong, innocent or guilty. Steve would stand by Bucky through thick and thin, just like you would.

But that didn’t explain why these men were here and tormenting you. This was more than just an attack – it was complete and utter destruction. The apartment was in ruins, completely desecrated.

Kage dragged and dumped your body against the entry wall, amongst the torn photos of you and Bucky. Your gaze turned to one where you were both smiling, huddling in close. It was taken on Steve’s birthday. You’d all thrown him a surprise party in the compound. You remember because Bucky had you both wear a comically bad Captain America t-shirt to tease him.

The photo, while tattered, was a reminder. While this moment was pure suffering, life was also full of moments that had your heart full of love. Life wasn’t always full of pain, and this torture was but a brief snapshot in the greater picture of your life.

Now, your heart hurt because you’d experienced such great love you knew what it was like to feel the loss. Tears trickled down your cheeks as you mourned what could have been. You should be experiencing many more birthdays and silly t-shirts, but it seemed that wasn’t what fate had planned for you.

The cries you let out were stricken with grief, and for the first time, the men went silent and just looked at you as if you were human, not just a toy for their enjoyment.

“Talk about a mood killer,” Damien sniggered, but Kage quickly raised his hand.

“Enough. Time to put her out of her misery.”

Your blood turned icy cold, dread settling in your stomach as you whimpered, too drained to run. “Please, don’t. Just leave me. I won’t tell anyone.” A blatant lie, but you had to try. You’d seen their faces, and that alone sealed your fate. "I don't want to die," you said more to yourself than to them.

“Pretty pictures. Too bad they’re a bit stained.” Maddox mocked as he picked up one of the discarded photo albums. It was the heaviest one, full of memories that were now soaked with your blood.

Maddox handed the album to Kage, unbothered by the drips of red that hit the floor.

They all stood before you as Kage flipped through the pages, his features hardened. “He’s so happy. Let’s see if the monster smiles now.”

Kage slammed the book closed, sealing your fate between his hands. That part of your life was ending, and these three were writing your future.

There was no point pleading with them, and you were too devoid of energy to do more than sit with shallow breaths, awaiting your death.

But one last ounce of adrenaline coursed through your veins as you tried to keep your eyes open. "His name is Bu-"

Kage raised the photo album before slamming it down on your head. It knocked you out instantly, the world going black as your body toppled to the side.

But the reaper didn’t come. Your heart continued beating, lungs filling with air.

Your suffering was due to continue. This wasn’t the end.

#ambswrites #navybrat writes #dark fic #bucky barnes #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x you #bucky barnes fanfiction #omc x reader #omc x you #sebastian stan #sebastian stan x reader #sebastian stan x you #bucky barnes imagines #bucky #james buchanan barnes #fanfiction

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viking-raider · 3 months

Text

Salt in Our Wounds - Chapter I

Summary-> You and your family live in a tiny coastal town, on the French side of the English Channel, during the Second World War. Things aren't easy for the four of you, for obvious reasons, with France being under German Occupation. But things become ever more complicated, when you find a wounded man washed ashore and you feel obligated to help him.

Dragging your family and town into a dangerous situation.

Pairing-> Gus March-Phillipps/Reader

Word Count-> 4.3k

Warnings-> PG: Blood, Language, Infidelity

Inspiration-> The one and only Chaos Major, Gus March-Phillipps.

Author’s Note-> I hope you enjoy! Line divider by @FIREFLY-GRAPHICS!

-> If you would like to get notifications for my writing! Just follow my Tag List blog, @VIKING-RAIDER-TAGLIST as well as my @VIKING-RAIDER-LIBRARY and turn on the notifications for it! It’s that easy!’

Climbing and cloudless, the sun beared down on the sapphire English Channel below. Its roaring waves lapped against the shore of one of France's many serene and far-reaching beaches, washing in bits of seaweed and sea life with its eddies and tides. A trio of gulls circled above one area of the shore, letting out their shrill call in agitated excitement, while making mock dives for the prize they had their beady eyes on.

You, out on an early morning, seaside walk, lifted your hand against the shining sun, to study the sea birds. Interested in what they were so adamant about, but also felt cautious, as you approached. Since times were not the best to find surprises on the beach. Especially not here, along the Channel. But you couldn't stop your curiosity, and edged ever closer to the birds and their would-be meal. The nearer you got, the more you felt a growing alarm, seeing the foamy, salt water tinged with something red.

You froze, horrified to see the water rushing by your bare feet. Realizing it was blood. Following the tentacles of blood a few meters up the beach, you found the shock of a lifetime.

Startling back with a yelp, you tripped over the wet hem of your skirt and tumbled backwards, falling hard and knocking some of the air out of your lungs. Eyes fixed on a limp hand gently floating in the water, the skin of the finger-pads wrinkled from long water exposure. But it was the man attached to the arm that alarmed you, his thickly bearded face turned to one side and rocking to the ebb and flow of the water he laid half submerged in, a wound somewhere on his person seeping out around him.

You were sure he had to be dead, why else would he wash ashore in the freezing Channel water. You had only been sitting in it for a few, short minutes and were already shivering, while he only stirred because of the current.

Poor man. You thought, your brow pinching with heartfelt sympathy for him and whoever his family was.

Finally getting to your feet, you twisted some of the water out of your skirt, frowning to see some of his blood had soaked into the rough fabric. But there was no help for that. You knew you'd have to return to the village and inform the authorities of him. So they could retrieve his body. Especially before the village kids found him. The evil little rascals. They enjoyed poking at anything dead that washed ashore. You'd seen them pestering a poor seal corpse just last week. But you also knew, you should actually make sure he was deceased, before running off to inform Director General Trottier about him. You just needed to find the courage to draw closer and touch him.

To hold a hand against his nose, in search of any breath.

“Perhaps I should just go get the authorities to do this?” You mumbled to yourself, wringing your hands anxiously. “They have the experience.” You tried to reason, looking over your shoulder towards the village. “But what if he is still alive.” You said, looking back at him. “And he dies, while I run back for help.”

“Christ, why did you have to wash up here?” You huffed, a rush of frustrated confidence flooding you.

You waded to him and bent, bringing your dripping hand up to his nose and held still for a long time. Wanting to make sure it was actually his breath against your palm, and not the wind. The longer you left your hand there, the more positive you became that this strange man was still, to some degree, alive.

That just left the conundrum of what to do with him.

You needed to get him out of the icy water, that was for sure. If he didn't die from his wound and blood loss, he would surely suffer from hypothermia. He only had on a thin, long sleeve and half-button down, collared shirt and pants of the same material, paired with suspenders, belt and boots.

“What were you up to?” You frowned at him, seeing he was bleeding from a wound to the right side, before hooking your arm under his shoulder and bracing it under his, then started pulling his heavy body further up dry land; as far as you could get him. “Mmph!” You grunted, laying him down in the sand, unable to carry him any further.

“Oh gosh.” You panted, flicking back several windblown wisps of hair out of your face. “You are a beast of a man.” You were about to try and move him a little bit more, when you heard your name being called, and felt your heart jolt into your throat. “Oh, Christ.” You fretted, hands beginning to shake, sure you were busted by one of the patrol officers.

You frantically looked around, but there was nowhere to hide the man, you were in the open and the beach was mostly flat and smooth. So, you did the one feeble thing you could think of, you rushed around and put yourself between them and him.

Though, you found it to be useless.

“What are you doing?” Your brother huffed, coming up to you, breathless, before finally spotting the unconscious man you were trying to shield. “Who the hell is this?” He barked, waving a hand behind you.

You started to lie to him, but saw the look in his eye and gave that up. “I found him in the water.” You blurted out, turning around to face him. “He's still alive. Barely. He's been wounded in the side by something. But I pulled him out of the water and I was going to get help.” You looked at your brother, eyes wild. “However, you showed up.”

Your brother looked at you, critically, obviously furious. “That's a bullet wound!” He hissed at you, grabbing the front of the man's shirt and rolling him onto his uninjured side, to get a closer look.

“He's been shot!” You gasped, leaning over to see. “We have to help him, Edmund.”

“Help him!” Edmund barked, lifting a brow at you. “Are you quite out of your mind! If the Patrol finds him with us, they'll finish killing him and likely throw us in an interment.”

“Edmund.” You whispered, gasping the back of his arm.

He stared at you for a long second, then growled down at the man. “Fine.” He huffed, begrudgingly. “I just don't know how you expect us to move him, without getting caught by the Patrol.” He said, looking back towards the village, it was a good two hundred yards away, plus the eighty or so yards from the edge of the beach, along the edge of the village and to where you lived with your elderly father.

“What about your truck?” You perked up, looking at him, your eyes bright with the idea. “We can carry him to the edge of the beach, hiding him. I'll stay nearby, to keep an eye on him, while you go get your truck and come back. Then, we'll put him in the back and cover him with some of your tarps. Perhaps, take a short drive to some place and go back home. To reduce suspicion.”

Edmund stared at you, his expression conveying how skeptical he was about your plan, before he shook his head and threw up his hands. “If we get caught, I'm going to be so angry with you!” He chided, grabbing the man beneath the arms, much like you had. “Grab his feet.” He huffed at you, jerking his head at the man's boots.

“Yes, right!” You nodded, flustered, rushing around and grabbing his ankles. “Oh gosh, even his legs are heavy.” You groaned, stumbling to keep up with Edmund's quick pace as he rushed down the beach, wanting to work quickly before anyone came along.

“How do we not know this man isn't one of them?” Edmund puffed, breath wheezing in his throat as the exertion became too much for him, but he pushed through it.

You frowned at your brother, then looked at the man, and studied his pale face. Something in your gut told you he wasn't a collaborator or one of the enemies inflicting war on so much of Europe and Humanity.

“We don't.” You murmured, biting the corner of your lip. “However, I just feel that he's not.”

“Oh, you feel it.” Edmund huffed, mocking you. “Well, let's go on a woman's intuition.”

“There's no need to be crass, Edmund.” You barked at him, irritated by his remark. “You have no more evidence that he is, than I do that he's not. But you can't tell me if he was one of them, they'd not have called the patrol to come out and look for him by now.”

Refraining from answering for a short time, to save his breath, while you moved him to the edge of the beach. Resting him beside some brush and rocks that were there, Edmund finally answered you, wiping the sheen of sweat from his brow with the back of his sleeve.

“Aye, you're right. I don't think they would have left him.” He sighed, staring down at him, still troubled by the situation. “I'll be back. But if you see a patrol coming, don't try saving him. Just turn and walk away.” He told you, grasping your wrist and staring hard into your eyes. “Let them have him.”

“He's not worth your life.” He said, his eyes pleading with you.

“Go, get your truck.” You answered, softly.

Rolling his eyes, Edmund headed back towards home, walking at a quick pace, but not fast enough to hopefully draw any attention or suspicion. He turned the corner onto the street your family lived on. You and your father, Mael, lived in the cottage across the road from where your brother lived with his wife, Willa. He said a silent prayer, finding the street empty, minus a few vehicles, including his truck, that he used for his trade as a handyman.

“This is going to get us killed.” Edmund muttered to himself, pulling open the driver's door and sliding into the worn, black and leather bench seat, then pulled down the sun visor for the keys.

The truck roared to life and Edmund maneuvered it away from the curb, nervously drumming his thumbs on the steering wheel. “I could have been a Private in the Army, fighting in Belgium or some place. Maybe even join the Rebellion, help liberate this country.” He rambled, gritting his teeth. “But no! I get stuck with a medical condition and a sister that wants to save some bloke that could be a Collaborator!”

You paced nervously, giving the man quick glances, then shooting a look towards the road, mentally urging your brother to hurry. It felt like every eye in the village was secretly watching you. You wouldn't be surprised if at least three pairs were watching from some high window. But you didn't dare look at any of the windows that lined the other side of the road from the beach. Knowing if you did happen to meet someone's nosy eye, it would only implicate them later on, if you and Edmund were caught.

“Thank Jesus.” You gasped, hearing the rumble of your brother's truck coming up the road, though it did little to dampen your anxiety.

Edmund pulled his truck to a stop and got out, never killing the engine as he moved to the back, dropping the tailgate. “Is he still alive?” He asked, coming over to you and glancing at the man.

“Yeah.” You nodded, biting your lip. “I can actually see his chest rise now.”

“Great.” Edmund sighed, carding a hand through his hair. “Looks like the fool is going to live.” He said, grabbing him under the arms again. “Let's get him in the truck. Rounds are going to start soon.”

You grabbed his feet and helped haul him over to the bed of the truck. It was a bit of a hassle, but the two of you finally managed to get your mystery man in and covered up with a couple of the cloth drop tarps Edmund used for work, making sure he was able to breathe. It was just as Edmund was securing the gate closed, that the hard tap of a boot heel echoed down the street towards the two of you, causing your stomach wrench and Edmund to grunt; catching sight of the Patrol Officer through the back window and windshield.

“It's just the kid.” He muttered to you, under his breath. “Go, get in the trunk.” He told you, taking a deep breath.

“Ed-”

“I said, go.” He hissed, the muscles of his jaw flexing.

Gulping and trying to act casual, you walked around to the passenger side, yanking open the heavy door, as the young Patrol Officer reached the truck's front bumper. You gave him a sweet smile and a nod of your head, then slipped into the cab and pulled the door shut. So he couldn't start a conversation with you. He stopped by the window of the driver's door, giving you a wide and overexcited smile, then turned his attention to Edmund.

“A good morning, yeah?” He greeted your brother, who had started for the driver's seat.

“Yeah.” Edmund replied, glancing up at the sky. “Looks like a very good morning, indeed.” He said, grabbing the door handle.

“Truck?” The officer motioned, a questioning look on his face.

“It's my truck.” Edmund answered, frowning at him, not quite understanding.

“What's—in?” He asked, trying hard to work through the language barrier.

“My trade tools.” Edmund told him, turning to face him, putting himself between the younger man and the truck. “I'm a carpenter.” He tried to explain, reaching into the back and pulled out his tool belt, holding it up for him to see.

“Ah.” The Officer nodded, smiling. “And, that?” He asked, pointing to the tarps.

“Nothing.” Edmund said, setting his belt down. “She...” He pointed over to you. “Found a dead seal out on the beach and pestered me into taking it away, before any of the village kids found it.” He hoped to convince him and prayed he wouldn't want to take a look. But, that worry soon passed, watching the kid blanch.

“Yeah, you go.” He gulped, taking a step back, as if he had gotten a whiff of the dead seal underneath the tarps.

“Well, have a good day.” Edmund smiled, giving him a small wave and yanked his door open.

“That took a moment.” You muttered as he slammed his door.

“He was asking questions, that's why.” He huffed back, glancing into the rear view and relaxing as he watched the kid continue on with his Patrol, not look back at you. “Luckily for us, he's squeamish.”

“How does someone that's squeamish get drafted?” You commented, shaking your head.

“Well, he's not really doing anything in the War, now is he?” Edmund snapped, glancing over at you, an offended glint in his eyes. “He's a damn Patrol Officer for a town his Country is occupying. He's not seeing any of the real action.”

“I'd laugh to think if they let his rifle have bullets in it.”

You snorted, bringing your hand to your mouth, in an attempt to cover it. “I'm sorry.” You said, when Edmund shot you a look. “But that boy does look like he'd injure himself with a pocketknife.” You explained, staring back at your brother, who held his angered expression for three seconds longer, then burst, filling the cab with his hearty laugh.

Edmund could never be angry with you, or not longer than a few minutes at least. The two of you were ten years apart, but were closer than pearls in an oyster. Edmund had been planned by your parents, well mostly by your mother, who thought a child would help your father snap out of his shell shock from his time in the First World War. But having a screaming child in the house had only seemed to exacerbate it. Until Edmund was four years old, when he started to show an interest in Mael's metals and memorabilia.

As for you, as Edmund always put it, seemed to have just shown up one day.

He didn't remember your mother being pregnant, only her going away for a few days and coming back home with you in her arms. He remembered her rushing about the house every time you made the slightest sound and telling him to make sure you didn't cry. Which, honestly, wasn't all that often. You had been a quiet and easy baby, compared to him. But he looked after you, showing you his favorite metals of your father's, and telling you how he had gotten them in the War.

When you were five and Edmund was fifteen, the two of you came home one day from school to find your father in one of his episodes and your mother gone. Edmund had sent you next door to stay with a neighbor, while he worked on calming your father down and found out your mother had been seeing someone and ran off with them. It took Edmund calling your father's doctor to finally calm him down, giving him a sedative. The physician had suggested moving somewhere else, that the city life was too much for Mael's nerves, somewhere quiet and abundant with sea air. That would do him a world of good.

That's how the three of you ended up in your quaint, coastal village on the French side of the English Channel. It had a population of just under five hundred. A real, everyone-knows-everyone community. They welcomed the three of you warmly. It's where Edmund had met and fell in love with Willa. It's where the four of you were now under the thumb of German occupation, and with a strange man in the bed of your brother's truck, just passing by the last building and into the rolling hills, that took you to the nearest town.

“All right, wise woman.” Edmund sighed, folding his arms against the steering wheel and leaning forward. “What's your grand plan on getting your Robinson Crusoe into the house?” He asked, cocking a brow at you and dying to hear it.

You had sat beside your brother for the last twenty minutes trying to figure out that very plot point. Part of you really wished whoever this man was, would do the two of you a favor and come back around to consciousness. Then, maybe, you could just say you found him injured on the side of the road and help him into the house. However, you knew if that happened, word would spread and the Director General would be knocking on your door, demanding to see him.

“I don't have one.” You finally admitted. “I shouldn't have gotten us into this mess, Edmund. Maybe, we should just turn him in?”

“Oh no!” He snapped at you, straightening up. “That one Patrol Officer already thinks he's a dead seal! If we go back into the village and confess, we'll be in deeper hot water than if we'd been up front.” He rambled, dragging both hands through his hair, in his agitation.

“Could we keep him in the truck til night fall?” You suggested, weakly.

“And if he wakes up by then?” He asked, blowing a hole through it.

You sighed softly, glancing down at your hands as they rested in your lap, but frowned seeing the brownish outline of dry blood on the light blue fabric. You were rubbing at it, when an idea finally popped into your head and looked over at Edmund.

“How heavy are all of your tarps rolled up together?” You asked him, lifting a brow, curiously.

“They can be pretty hefty.” He replied, rubbing the underside of his scruffy jaw.

“So, it would be almost believable, say we carry him into the house, wrapped in a few, under the pretense we're making a couple renovations to the house?” You inquired, your eyes steady on your brother's face. “It's not like we and the village don't know that Papa and I's cottage need them.”

“Badly.”

Edmund sat there, staring out the windshield, as he processed the likelihood of your little idea working. He drew his bottom lip in between his teeth, pressing his top lip down on it for a moment, before popping them forward, a slow wag of his head building into a nod.

“It might work.” He finally said, convincing himself of it. “I'll have to bring in a few of my tools and spend some time there every day, to make it look like I'm actually putting the work in.” He built on top of your plan. “Of course, I'm not leaving you and Pops with this guy, so I'll be coming over anyway.”

“We could use the old cellar room in the basement to hide him.” You chimed in. “In case, someone from the Patrol or anyone from the village comes over.”

“That's a good idea.” Edmund nodded, licking his lips. “I can build something, along that wall, for a hidden door into the cellar.” He said, already mapping out the plans in his head. “This could actually work, Peanut!” He grinned over at you.

“There's the confidence I love seeing in my Captain!” You beamed back, slapping him on the knee. “We should get going too. It looks like our beautiful morning is turning into a dark afternoon.” You said, peeking at the sky. “I'm worried it'll start raining on our friend back there.”

“Oh, he's our friend now?” Edmund teased you, pushing open his door. “We don't even know his name! But, by damned, he's our friend!”

You smirked at him, shaking your head. “I'm just trying to be positive, Eddie.”

“I know.” He replied, a gentle smile on his face, as he reached over to playfully pinch your cheek.

“Quit!” You laughed, slapping his hand away. “You brute!”

“We should do it here. Where no one can see us.” He suggested, heaving a sigh as he got out.

“That's a smart idea.” You nodded, following suit.

Edmund did a quick look around, before dropping the tailgate and hopping into the bed, beside your friend. You peeked over the side of the trunk, watching Edmund pull away the tarp from him, and let out a small breath of relief to see him still breathing. But frowned seeing the small pool of blood underneath him.

“I'll need new tarps after this.” Edmund commented, snarkily. “There's nothing I can say to explain blood stains on them. Short of sawing my arm off.”

“I'll compensate you for them.” You replied, pulling yourself up beside him.

“With what money, exactly?” He asked, cocking a brow at you.

“Hey, I get a decent enough salary working at Remi's store.” You cut back at him. “I've been helping you keep food on our tables.”

Edmund nodded, not about to discredit you on that. “True enough, Peanut.” He replied, then returned to the task at hand. “I'm going to turn him to his good side. I want you to support him and his head, while I situate the tarps to go underneath him.” He instructed you, carefully pushing his hands underneath the injured man.

You nodded, as Edmund grunted with effort to lift and roll him towards you. Grabbing onto the thigh of his pants and cradling his head in your palm, you watched Edmund spread and straighten out the tarps, draping one half of them over the side of the truck. You could feel his faint and warm breath on your forearm, coming in an irregular pattern, but it gave you an odd comfort to feel it, nonetheless.

“All right, that's all of them. Put him down on his back again.” Edmund pointed to the smoothed out tarps as he stood outside the truck now.

Biting your lip, you pushed up on your knees and leaned forward, trying to roll him onto his back as gently as possible. Unsure of how much he could feel. You didn't want to cause him any more pain than necessary as you situated him, catching a slight twitch of his brow as you let go of his trousers, only supporting his head.

“Sorry.” You mumbled to him, automatically, wincing.

“Come on, let's get him covered up, so we can go.” He rushed you, feeling antsy and the cool, damp air stir around him, indicating the imminent rain.

Tenderly letting go of his head and reaching out for the other half of the tarp, you carefully covered him up, tucking it in around him, mindful of the still seeping wound, while trying to make it not look so much like a body in a rug. Nodding at Edmund, you climbed back out of the truck and he rearranged some of his tools, hoping to add to the disguise.

“Here's to hopin'!” Edmund huffed, starting the truck and backing off the outlook, he'd pulled onto after putting several minutes between you and the village. “Or all three of us will be dead seals!”

You and Edmund laughed, having a light moment, before the village came into view and the sobering resolve of action came back over you.

#henry cavill #henrycavill #viking-raider fics #Salt in Our Wounds #Salt in Our Wounds *fic*#gus march phillips #Gus x Reader #Gus/Reader #Gus & Reader #Gus March Phillips x Reader #Gus March Phillips x You #Gus March Phillips/You #Gus March Phillips/Reader #Gus/You #Fluff #Blood #Language #German Occupation

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gabessquishytum · 25 days

Note

Oh OG Warprize Hob Anon wherefore art thou..... I just thought it was time to show thanks and appreciation for one of the best AUs (imo) to come out of the Dreamling ship. Not a week goes by where I don't think about their writing, and spin headcanons and scenarios of my own in my head. One of the most underrated aspects of their writing I think is Dream's ruthlessness and cruelty in that AU, it's so rare to see Dream just be a toppy asshole all the way through, fellow fans seem to prefer to see him as an emotional bottom twink 😭. One of the rare AUs where Hob is allowed to be the sensitive wanton bottom all throughout 🤤🤤 Ohh OG Warprize Hob Anon, I miss your writing so much, I hope to see your writing grace this dashboard once more, especially with more dark Dream moments. For my fellow fans, I thought I'd do a small thing and compile all their asks here. I'm so sorry if this is sloppy, but I just copy-pasted these here.

Warprize Hob AU

Anonymous asked:

I don’t know where this came from?? Dubcon/noncon cw, or it’s kinky roleplay if you prefer that. But...

Hob fought bravely, a solider in the war of greater men. He even crossed blades with terror in all black, the Nightmare King himself once. They said it was better for a solider like him to die with honor than to be taken alive. But when the tide turned and Hob’s own sworn sovereign fell, all he wanted was to live. He laid down his blade, expecting to be taken into chains. But not chains like these.

He kneels, blindfolded, on the bed, naked other than pure gold bondage, thin chains that truss him everywhere. Gold binds his hands at his back. Gold cuffs secure his ankles, connected by a flimsy thread only put there so it could be snapped apart. Gold laces around his tits, catching in his chest hair. Gold threads between new ruby piercings in his nipples—still so sensitive that even the touch of silk sends bolts of pure heat through his body. Every time he twitches, he sees stars. Gold loops like garters around his thighs, connected to the glimmering chain around his hips. And gold ribbon cages his achingly hard cock and full balls.

Hob is so, so hard. He has been since they fed him sweet candied fruits laced with a magic that heated his blood until he was begging those faceless servants to please, please let him come. They didn’t. Instead, he was bathed and perfumed with jasmine oil brushed through his hair (everywhere). He was opened with gentle touches and generous oil, a marble plug nestled inside him, blessedly cool against his burning skin. He was left on the bed with a final chain connecting his collar to the bedframe.

His prick so hard in its confines, and the plug is not enough. He still feels terribly empty. Against his own will, he finds himself rocking back and forth, rubbing his thighs together, desperate for anything that might help him get pleasure where he needs it most.

Until with no warning, a hand touches his head. He stills. He thought he was alone. Strong, thin fingers brush down his face, linger on his lips. A gentle thumb pushes inside his mouth. Hob moans, body thrumming like a harp just to be touched so simply.

“Peace, my prize,” a deep voice, peaceful as slumber, murmurs. The blindfold is pulled down and Hob blinks blearily into the face of the Nightmare King himself. He smiles, confident and regal, and slim fingers caress his side, down to his ass, and push against the plug until it finally presses where Hob needs it. "I will give you what you crave.”

Gabe:

Mmmm yes!!!! I love this.

Hob as Dream’s chosen prize after his victory in battle? Oh yes, excellent. I particularly adore the idea of Hob being unknowingly fed some kind of aphrodisiac to make him needy - Dream wants him to be willing, so he will simply make sure that he has no choice but to be.

Also, the preparation... Hob would usually be utterly humiliated by such an act. It's so impersonal and degrading. But all he can think about is how much he wants to cum, so he spends the whole time whining and begging for more. By the time Dream gets to him, Hob is spreading his legs like a well trained whore who's never known anything different. He's nearly forgotten the battle and his instincts as a warrior, he just wants to be fucked. Anyone could come into the room and have him and Hob would just be grateful.

But he isn't for just anyone, oh no. He's the king’s prize, his spoils of war. He suckles desperately on Dream’s thumb, sticks his arse out temptingly and generally tries to make himself as tempting as possible. He aches, and his brain is fuzzy, the king is absolutely the most beautiful thing Hob has ever seen right now.

Not to mention his cock is perfect - the most perfect Hob has ever had inside him. It's as though his body has been molded perfectly for the king’s cock. He's not sure if he's ever cum so many times in his life.

When he comes back to himself several hours later, sweating and sticky and aching... he knows that he should be angry and hurt. He should get up from the beautiful bed and find some way to escape. But. He's tired, and hungry. The bed is comfortable, and the king is staring at him with sparkling black eyes.

He rolls over. Cum trickles gently down his thighs. The king holds out his hand, one of those candied fruits held between his long pale fingers.

Hob opens his mouth.

Anonymous asked:

Hiii I’m the originally war prize hob anon, lured back because I was blown away by how you and everyone else responded to the idea! Amazing work, go team.

Here’s more. (It’s so long. I’m sorry)

At first, Hob was confined to the bed chamber, a decoration, a pretty thing—and so rarely has Hob ever considered himself pretty. Pretty was for swallow-boned young men and women with smooth thighs. Pretty was not him, full bodied and furred. He has always pleased his lovers, they have found him handsome. But most have expected him to take charge and take care of them, not to—to—

Submit with spread legs and open mouth. To tempt. To eat sweet aphrodisiacs from those long, pale fingers until he’s begging to feel them for inside him. Sweet humiliation.

The king wants this. They pass long nights pounding Hob’s pride to shreds. He learns to beg under the king’s cock, his cruel mouth, and the touch of those inhuman eyes. Even sober, he only has to think of the king and his body floods with hot want. But still. Hob doesn’t understand.

“Why me?” He dared ask the first week, the king with a hand fisted in his hair, thrusting into him so deep and slow, Hob could feel it in his throat.

The king paused. A cool hand trailed down Hob’s back. Gathered the chains that pooled at his back, the ones he hadn’t yet snapped in his fervor. “I am interested.”

Hob meant to press him, even at the risk of his own peril, but the king slammed back into him and every thought vanished.

And then Hob is brought out of the bed and taken to kneel at the throne during the days too, chained to the king’s hand. At first, Hob assumes he is meant to be a symbol of the king’s power. Or a toy to warm the king’s cock when the duties of court grow dull. (Hob is both.)

But then comes a night when the king ponders battle plans for his next great war. And he turns to Hob.

“My general suggested we surge ahead and meet the enemy at their own gate. You rolled your eyes.” The king looks at Hob as if he is peeling the layers of muscle and bone away, finding the heart of him. And Hob realizes that all day, the king had noticed him listening. Not always—sometimes the king prefers to see him squirm, prefers to press the heavy gold plug into his hole and watch Hob strain for hours to keep it in, only to fail. During those hours, Hob had not heard a thing.

But when the king had allowed Hob to rest his head against his solid thigh, Hob had listened. And he had been seen doing it.

“Your enemy will expect a frontal attack. A show of strength. For you are a strong king. Respectfully, that’s a brave way to kill many of your own men.”

“Hmm.” The king says nothing else. He beckons until Hob kneels again at his side, the bowl of candied fruits, as always, sitting on the table. The king plucks one up and offers it to Hob.

“My lord,” Hob breathes. “Why do you care what I think?”

Hands brush through his hair. “Eat,” the king murmurs.

This king wants something. He waits for something. Hob cannot work out what. Yet.

He eats.

Gabe:

Assfggjkl og warprize anon!!!!!!

I am so taken with Hob’s thoughtfulness, his curiosity. His fearlessness. And I think that Dream is rapidly becoming besotted with these things too.

Hob isn't scared of him. No matter how ruthless and harsh he is, no matter which way Dream forces Hob to bend, he always springs back up with those curious eyes, wanting to know what's next. Dream suspects that he doesn't need the aphrodisiacs at all - that Hob would be willing to spread himself out in any arrangement of Dream’s choosing. But Dream is afraid of rejection, and Hob enjoys the lustful oblivion just a little bit too much to ask for a change.

Hob is clever and capable and good with his hands. When Dream comes to him wounded from some accident or skirmish, Hob knows exactly how to bind the flesh carefully but firmly. He rests his head in Dream’s lap after, like a beloved pet hound. His breathing is so soothing, Dream even manages to fall asleep. He wakes up and Hob is already between his legs, ready and waiting to be choked on the king’s cock as usual.

Dream fucks him instead, as ferocious as ever but this time with a purpose. Hob is his prize and the world ought to know about it. From now on, he'll have Hob smelling of his cum, always. He'll have him littered with bite marks and bruises. He'll keep Hob close, make sure the end of his gold leash is always within reach. He'll bring Hob to the battlefield, if he must.

A creature as magnificent as Hob must be treated as he deserves. And Dream alone can give him what he needs.

Anonymous asked:

War prize hob anon, here!!! I am loving the responses to this idea! So many amazing brilliant takes, love to see it.

The talk of whether Hob would escape or stay and be spoiled inspired me (glorious takes on both sides) so I drabbled on the subject…

It takes time. Trust. And a letter opener left unattended.

That night, Hob slides quietly as he can out of the silk sheets. He sits astride the sleeping king, his face turned toward the moon, his neck a deceptive swan’s curve. And Hob raises the blade to it.

One slice. And he is free.

It does not matter, he tells himself, that he has never been fucked so well. That the king is kind to him, relatively. He could take Hob with violence and pain or share him. Instead he feeds Hob fruits to heat his blood so that every time he plunders his body, with fingers, tongue and cock, Hob welcomes him.

Even the humiliations and hurts of his new service are given a sweet edge. The way he was spanked for misbehaving, hard and brutal, until his skin was red and tender. Followed by a hot tongue in his ass. The way he was made to kneel for hours and hold the king’s cock in his mouth. Followed by servants massaging the aches from his body and tending to his bad knee. (Yet another reason Hob is a poor choice for a prize.) In the king’s service, Hob might hurt. But he rewards him with such care…lavishes attention on him until Hob cannot come any more.

No. Hob has to do this. He must escape. He has his pride. This is just pleasure. Nothing more.

“Well?” The king’s voice interrupts his turmoil. Oh gods. He is awake. He surges up, knocking the blade from his grip. A hand clamps on his thigh, another on his wrist and he is rolled on his back, away from the blade. The chain between his wrists, once wide to allow him movement, slithers shorter until the cuffs kiss, and the collar tightens just enough to threaten his breathing. For all his battle prowess, struggling it gets him nowhere but squirming and pinned. The nightmare king settles over Hob like a dragon on top of its hoard. He stares unblinkingly down at him.

“You could not do it,” comes that deep whisper. Hob stills. “You are a well-trained solider yet for nearly five minutes you sat with a blade at my neck and did not make your move. Why?”

Hob swallows. A hot open mouthed kiss blooms just under his jaw, followed by the press of teeth. Even without the candied fruit his body sings for this man. What is happening to him?

“My pet. My prize. You must already face great consequences for this disobedience,” the king says. “I may not let you come for weeks. Answer me or it will be months.”

“I had to try. I had to—I don’t understand.” It isn’t the first time he has asked, pled, begged to know. “I’m at my wits end. Please. Why me?”

Fingers slip between them to tease at his hole and Hob resists the powerful, heady urge to submit and grind against him. For as long as he can before his resolve crumbles into lust. It will not be long. It never is.

The king gives the same maddening answer he always gives. The only one, whispered against his lips. “I am interested.”

Gabe:

Hnnnnng.

Og warprize hob anon…… i hope you know that you’ve created a beautiful monster and we’re all horny about it. i hope you also know that your words are beautiful and your prose is delightful. it’s a pleasure to read.

Oh but the turmoil Hob goes through. There’s nothing that the king can do to soothe the way his mind is twisting and turning, bouncing between loyalty to himself and some mad, misplaced loyalty to this nightmare of man. What does Hob owe Dream, really? His life? What kind of life is this?

He could set himself free. He thinks he’s almost worked it out. He could take away the one think the king seems to want. He could make himself… dull. Boring, predictable. Uninteresting.

But.

He thinks about long, thin fingers running down his spine and soothing the perpetual ache at the small of his back. Warm salve on his knee, applied at the king’s own orders. His body rigid and sweating in the night from some bad dream, suddenly embraced by cool arms. A kiss on his brow in the early morning. He’s been so greedy for those things, has coveted them and gloried in them. How can he live without them now?

Worse: what would the nightmare king do with a broken toy? Hob doesn’t want to find out.

He bounces in Dream’s lap with renewed fervor when he’s finally allowed the privilege of taking the king’s cock again. But there’s a heat behind his eyes, a kind of determination that he’d thought long dead and gone. He’ll find some way to win this game, this strange warped little battle. His own feelings be damned, Hob will not be broken. Even a king must have some chink in his armor, somewhere.

Dream raises a delicate eyebrow and almost, almost smiles. Pulls his prize closer by his golden leash.

“Interesting.”

Anonymous asked:

Hiiii warprize anon here! Glad to see people are still warprizing hob, I think it’s good for him. Truly, anons, you are doing glorious work with that AU.

I wanted to write dark obsessive dream next in all his dubcon glory next but no one cooperated? Have some less porny character introspection instead ig…

It’s amazing how little it takes for a grown man to become used to being a pet. As weeks stretch into months, Hob revels, just a little. In the lustful linger of eyes on his body. In the quirk of that cruel mouth when Hob pleases the king. The eager stirring of his cock even before he eats aphrodisiacs. Even his punishments—even the hot lash of the whip—begins to feel like sacrilegious worship. Gasping for breath, holding his thighs spread as the king buries himself in his body certainly is. In the blackest and most honest hours of the night, Hob knows the truth. He is starting to like it.

That’s the danger of the king’s service.

Hour by orgasmic hour, the king is twisting himself into Hob’s mind and body like a key carving out its own lock. He demands Hob’s submission, his pleasure and his desire for his own. But how many people had the king had in such a way? How many prizes have knelt, and learned to live at his pleasure? And where are they now? Abandoned surely, replaced. Hob is the chalice the king sips from now but he is one of dozens, maybe even hundreds. The king might have taken a prize from every battle won.

Hob is…not special.

He kneels on his cushion, waiting for the king who has stepped from the throne room, and reminds himself.

Footsteps approach and stop just behind him. Always, when the king is away, a guard is assigned to keep a close eye for Hob’s protection, though none are allowed to take his chains in their grip. Not unless Hob runs. Daring, the guard plucks at the chain between his nipples until it swings against Hob’s chest. He holds his breath.

“How’s it going?” A voice drawls. “Knees a little tired?”

Hob glances at the door for the absent king before raising his head. The guard above him smirks like he knows a joke and Hob is the punchline.

“Yes, rather,” Hob replies. “Even with the cushion.”

“His majesty seems to like that,” he muses.

Corinthian. That is his name. He’d heard the king give him orders with iron in his voice. The way one talked to a guard dog who wasn’t trusted. A creature who couldn’t be taught to fear the whip.

“You’d know better than me.” Hob meets his eye as best he can through the man’s dark glasses. He is very handsome, golden and strong. Perhaps this is the answer. Perhaps prizes who lose their luster are given other ways to serve.

Corinthian tilts his head. Hob feels his eyes trace down the marks the king left. Lurid love bites at his throat and faint fingertip bruises on his hips. “I really don’t. Suppose I’m not his type.”

“Surely you’ve seen the others then.” Hob replies. He keeps his hands folded where they’re bound at the small of his back.

“Other … prizes?” Corinthian’s grin only grows. “Sweetheart, no. You’re the first.”

Hon stares but senses no lie. “Can’t be.“

“Picking a prize always been his right but he’s never felt the need to use it until now. Until you.” The man leans closer, dangerously into his space. Hob feels him breathing, he’s so close. “I’ve heard the sounds he pulls from you at night. He must have years of pent up energy.”

Hob’s throat is dry. Something fragile, winged and stupid flutters in his chest. But before he has to think of a reply, Corinthian snaps back to a respectful distance an instant before the doors swing open, and the king sweeps in. He climbs the stairs, slinks back to claim his throne. Hob is still reeling when his cool hand finds his chin and tilts his head up.

“You did not move,” the king says. It is not a question but an expectation.

Hob shakes his head. For a long moment his eyes glitter down on him, simply watching. Then fingers card through his hair and he is guided to rest his head against his king’s knee.

Gabe:

Lying face down on the floor after reading this tbh. Like. What can I say? What can I add?

Knowing that he's the only one is a further kind of beautiful torture for Hob, because once again he's asking himself over and over again: why? Why him, above anyone else? There's a part of him in agony over his imprisonment, the curtailing of his freedoms, the fact that his mind and body are no longer his own. Then there's the part of him who wants to know why, so he can be good. He needs to know how he can keep the favour that he has miraculously obtained.

And Dream? He never gives answers. If Hob even dared to ask more than a small, sobbed "why me?" in the midst of some blissful torture, Dream wouldn't bother to answer. Hob thinks that the king likes him kept ignorant and confused. It's another way to keep him in line. He's always dancing on a knife's edge, wondering whether the king will eventually toss him aside - never knowing if he's truly safe.

So he'd better be as good as he can. Never give Dream a reason to throw him away. But he will slip up eventually - its only a matter of time...

Anonymous asked:

As requested, here’s some warprize!hob being punished by dark!dream for bad behavior. Also… thanks panickingstudent2’s last ask for some very specific inspo!

The king chains him up by his wrists. No gold cuffs with velvet interiors here. Not for this. This is punishment, work fit for dungeons, cold and deep as his king’s displeasure. Hob is already delirious from too much candied fruit. The cage has been cruelly clenched around his hot, aching cock for days now but he needs to be fucked, he needs it, he needs it.

“Mercy,” he begs but it won’t do him any good. He’s been begging for days, his cock and balls hot and aching.

Fury is divine on the nightmare king’s face. Other kings would simply kill him. Leave his body for the ravens. But Hob’s king will not let him go.

“I would have you obey me,” the king says. Fingers brush against his hole and don’t even push in where Hob yearns for them despite himself. He cants his hips back weakly, but the fingers go away. “But if I must bring you low again and again, I will. And I will enjoy it every time.”

He steps back. And the whip snaps through the air and white-hot fire flashes across Hob’s back.

Wet agony blooms across his shoulders and bloodred welts.

“You know why I must do this,” the king says. “You know why it is my pleasure to do this.”

The whip lashes again and again, fire licking across his skin. It doesn’t stop when Hob screams. Or when he sobs. When it’s done, his entire back glows like an ember. The king faces him, eyes black holes in his pale, sharp face. He places a cool hand on Hob’s back and he presses into the soothing touch, whining like a newborn babe.

“Please, I’m sorry, please, pleasepleaseplase,” he breathes. The king twists him around until the cuffs pull tight. He drags the plug from his hole, and finally buries himself to the hilt in his ass. Hob wails. Hands tangle in his chest hair and pull him flush against his king, as he plunges in and out at a ruinous pace. Being finally filled is sweeter relief than when the whip stopped.

“Say you are mine,” the king says. Once he was quiet, and constrained whenever he touched Hob and this is why—the need in his voice is barely bridled. Hob is not the only desperate one. “Say it.” The king bites, sudden and sharp at Hob’s earlobe.

“I’m yours—Morpheus!” His head snaps back as his body thunders through a cruel, dry orgasm. He doesn’t hear the king’s soft gasp against his ear, or register the name he’s cried. He’s in pain, from his cock to his shoulders—yet Hob floats. Perhaps he could fly.

Love, Warprize Anon

Gabe:

Hnnnggg. I am. Deeply obsessed with this. I love it when you drop these beautiful snippets for us!!! Hob calling the king by his name in the middle of a punishment/orgasm? Talk about a mind-fuck. Poor thing, he's truly terrified.

But it isn't just fear, is it? It would be so much simpler if he could say that he's scared and be done with it. So much easier to handle that emotion. What he feels is more that fear. He's grown attached to the king, longs for him when they're apart and fears him when they're together. When he tries to imagine a life away from his capture, he can't even manage it anymore. It's impossible to see beyond the king, who looms so large in Hob’s thoughts all the time. He's obsessed, addicted, terrified, longing to be taken and horrified by the idea all the same.

All he knows is that his king has power over him that he will probably never comprehend. Perhaps its time to surrender and acknowledge that he's lost. He no longer belongs to himself. He belongs to Morpheus.

-Love Yan Anon <3

Aww, hey Yan Anon!!! It's nice to hear from you. And thank you for highlighting OG Warprize Anon and their incredible work (you're a trooper for scrolling through and copy/pasting everything, seriously). Warprize au has definitely been a big hit, as it rightly should be, and it's great to look back on how it all started. Hopefully OG Warprize Anon is out there doing great and knowing that they inspired many, many people.

Hopefully we'll see more content for the Dark Dream enjoyers out there. I certainly lean towards a mean toppy Dream myself, although I'm not immune to Obliterating That Twink either. There's room for everyone in the fandom - and don't forget to leave comments for your favourite authors as Yan Anon has here. It's a great way to encourage your faves to write more of the stuff that you love!

#yan anon #the sandman #dreamling #nsft #warprize hob #cw dubcon #cw drugging #cw intox #cw pain #cw physical abuse

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lawsofchaos1 · 3 months

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Malec Promptlet: Royal AU

Asmodeus is the High King of Edom, a brutal and immoral overlord.

Edom conquered Idris two years ago after a long and protracted war, ended by the public execution of the King and Queen, Robert and Maryse Lightwood.

Alexander Lightwood, the Crown Prince and High General, is spared by Asmodeus, but only with the intention of having him serve as a living symbol of Idris' defeat by becoming the personal servant of Edom's own Crown Prince, Magnus Bane.

Prior to the war's end, Alec was able to send his siblings to safety in a neutral country across the sea, DuMort, even though he had to all but beg his sister and his shield-brother, Jace, to go. Alec had known that they were losing, the magic of Edom too powerful to fight much longer, and he'd played every emotional trick he could to make sure Jace and Izzy left their country and him behind. Max would need both of them with him to survive as a legitimate blood heir of a fallen kingdom.

Alec hadn't expected to survive himself.

But, when Asmodeus demands he bend the knee in the same room as his parent's bodies, Alec understands the trade at hand - his dignity for his remaining people's survival.

It's an easy decision for Alec to make.

The journey from Idris to Edom is hard, but Alec holds fast and eventually they make it to Edom's capital and he is thrown to the mercy of the Crown Prince's household. Every so often Asmodeus trots Alec out for some public humiliation, to prove Edom's superiority in front of visiting rulers wondering whether to take the offered treaty terms or risk negotiation, but for the most part everything is ... fine.

Magnus, as it turns out, is a kind master and Alec has no complaints.

As the seasons turn and begin to repeat, Magnus and Alec grow to be friends, confidantes even, though Alec is never truly able to forget the precariousness of his situation. Magnus desperately wants to be more, but he also knows that Alec doesn't have the power to say no, so he contents himself as they are.

Magnus dreams of Alec being confident enough in their firm friendship and trust to perhaps want to be together as well, dreams even more secretly of the two of them ruling one day together as fully equal partners.

(Alec refuses to admit, even to himself, that he often dreams of similar tidings.)

One night, however, Asmodeus calls Alec to serve him in his private rooms with a group of counselors and visiting officials from their southern neighbor. Magnus sadly watches Alec go, knowing exactly why Asmodeus wants Alec tonight of all nights. Negotiation begins tomorrow on a trade treaty, and watching Idris' fallen prince kneel to an enemy king is a powerful reminder of what it can cost to refuse Asmodeus' wishes.

Magnus goes to sleep, wishing futilely he was able to help without making things infinitely worse, hoping Alec will be well and whole in the morning.

It seems like his head has just touched the pillow when Magnus is woken up, suddenly and shockingly, the embers of the previous evening's fire providing just enough light to see by. Jolting up, heart racing, Magnus' mouth drops open to see Alec kneeling prostrate at the side of his bed.

Alec is frantic, broken apologies mixing in with barely intelligible explanations of something Magnus can't even begin to understand, so frantic and terrified is his friend. Magnus doesn't know what to do because Alec is shaking and trembling, and, even in those first days when Alec had thought he was to be executed and his people punished at the first mistake he'd made, he'd never been like this.

Magnus tries to comfort him, making calming sounds and promising that everything will be okay, but Alec doesn't seem to hear him. Alec won't rise and Magnus hates it because this is how servants react to his father, so he slips to his knees at Alec's side.

Thanking all the gods that Alec doesn't flinch at his touch - Magnus doesn't know what he would do if Alec did - the story finally comes tumbling out, Alec still refusing to meet his eyes.

Asmodeus and his retinue had been drunk, but Alec is well enough used to that. The casual slurs and violence they throw his way are what Alec has come to expect when he is called to serve the King.

(Magnus is livid at this unthinking confirmation. Alec is too quiet, too resigned to complain, has never mentioned this to him before - though Magnus had certainly suspected - and Magnus can do nothing but seethe helplessly as Alec mentions it as though it is nothing.)

But something had changed midway through the evening - there'd been a new horror lurking in the glint of Asmodeus' eyes. He'd grabbed Alec the next time he'd been close enough and forced him on his lap, laughing and wondering to the crowd exactly how well the Crown Prince of Idris would warm his bed.

Alec had panicked.

He keeps apologizing to Magnus and Magnus has a sudden, horrified image of Alec having grabbed a knife and slit his father's throat and the two of them having to run to escape charges of attempted regicide (because obviously Magnus isn't letting Alec run away by himself), but Alec keeps going and finally Magnus understands what had happened.

Alec claimed himself to be Magnus' bed slave instead- the only thing the King would have accepted as a reason for Alec to say no. Alec has no rights of his own in Edom. Only if Alec already belonged to Magnus, a possession that would irritate Magnus if someone else used it, could he refuse.

But Asmodeus won't hide this.

Asmodeus will think it hilarious, and Magnus heart stutters in his chest because he can't deny it without condemning Alec to the executioner's block now that it's been said.

Everyone will believe that Magnus cares not for consent and has chosen to use a former Prince and defeated enemy in the basest way possible.

And he cannot deny it.

But Magnus swallows his horror and holds Alec to his chest, running his hand soothingly across Alec's back until the trembling subsides and his exhausted friend is nearly falling asleep in his arms.

Tomorrow will be one of the hardest days of Magnus' life, but he will do anything to spare Alec from his father.

Anything.

[Insert Happy Malec Ending]

#lawsofchaos rambles #malec #shadowhunters #promptlet #angst with a happy ending #implied dubious consent #Only implied - it does not happen #and the implication is not between malec

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fromtheboundlesssea · 3 months

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She recalled that her father had once taken her up on Caraxes. It had been during one of his rare bouts of fatherly affection where he felt intrigued at the thought of his blood flowing in the veins of another. She had gone second—last. Her sisters were too young to go with any true safety and her twin had gone first as their father’s heir.

She had liked it. She had liked flying. That freedom it promised a girl who had no steady assurance of her father’s care and affection. But flying had felt like freedom. The air rushing about her, her stomach swooping down low in anticipation as Caraxes flew, seemingly pleased with himself at being the cause of her thrill.

She had liked that moment in the sky—the sound of her father’s laughter as she begged him to fly faster. To take her higher and higher until it felt as though she could see all of Westeros—grasp it in the palm of her hand with such ease that she understood why Aegon had conquered it all.

She remembered her father’s smile as he helped her down when it was time to return to the others, the way he ruffled her hair when she spoke to him with such earnest admiration.

But her egg never hatched and she never claimed a dragon as her own and her father never let her forget that she was less than the rest of them—she was not a true Valyrian, just like her mother.

She would not let that stop her.

While her cousins and sisters and brother had learned to master their mounts, she had mastered the court. She had learned just what she had to do to make sure everyone thought well of her—the dragonless girl of House Targaryen. All the dragonless Targaryens had met an awful end and all of them princesses. And many of them had fathers who actually cared. She would not be like any of those princesses—sold to the highest bidder or left to rot in a marriage where she would never have freedom beyond birthing babies. She had to carve a place for herself in a way none of the others had to.

What had she, except her wit? She was no longer the little girl that grasped at Westeros, imagining it at the palm of her hand. She was a woman grown who knew the very tide of the coming war could be turned by whichever hand she decided to grasp with her own.

If the world had been built to disallow a Targaryen like her to thrive, then she would unmake it and turn it into something better.

#house of the dragon #wildfire and blood #celia targaryen #daemon targaryen #alicent hightower #daemon targaryen x alicent Hightower #my video

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oksana-moods · 7 months

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Queen of Promise - Part 10

Summary: The hell you were put through seems endless.

A/N: To those who are still around: you are lovely. Please, make yourselves known, it’ll give some confidence and will certainly help with this detachment I’ve been feeling with writing.

You’ll gona ask, what about part 11. I know. Well, I don’t know when we’ll see it, I’ll try to work on something the next few days, but as I said to that anon, I’m going through some work stuff and it’s draining a lot. Let’s hope for the best.

Warning: Angst, blood, gore, torture?, mentions of death.

Previous Parts here

"Hopeless and taken"

There was something funny about the dark. How your eyes adjust to the environment to the point that first, you are able to discern things, later you can properly see things in the dark. And then, then you start to imagine it.

But maybe the imagination part is not related to the darkness that enveloped you in that cold stoned dungeon at all. Maybe your hallucination was due something else entirely.

Perhaps, how you could barely feel your toes because the weather started to show or how you hadn’t properly eaten ever since they left you in this hellhole had something to do with these things you supposed you’re imagining.

Or that rat really ate something that lingered around a piece of bone long forgotten in the corner and you swore there were no other leftovers except your own flesh, it probably would be the next thing that animal was going to eat. See, it was hard to tell one thing from another in the dark.

Also, in the dark, it was really easy to lose track of time. There were no windows, and usually dungeons are held underground, there wouldn’t be any windows, that’s why you didn’t know whether it was day or night.

Furthermore, it’s pretty hard to grasp how much time has passed while you’re out of consciousness. You don’t say you sleep, because this way, you’d be outstretching this word and its meaning. No. It was understandable even, you know you pass out after your body gives up due to exhaustion, hunger or because you’re beaten until you can’t stand anymore.

There was a lot to say about the dark, and you didn’t like it at all, but the dark is doable. The silence though, was something else.

It was deafening. It was maddening.

The silence remained imperturbable.

Except for the occasional sound of rats and mice fighting for some dirt somewhere your eyes often couldn’t reach, the sound of your chains clicking when you moved or the eventual whimper you failed to conceal in the depths of your despair.

There was no other sound.

After a while, your heart began to process the situation you were in. Alone, thrown into a cell, all the respect due to someone like you had been neglected. Not that you expected to be treated like a princess of your status should, but at least, you supposed you should be treated fairly, at least.

However, reality was far worse than the things you believed were fair.

You had experienced war, fights, battles, treason attempting, riot and several other crises throughout your short life as a ruler aspirer, by the gods, you even endured to be held as prisoner before.

Yet, nothing compared to the taste Wanda’s betrayal left in your mouth.

Maybe you were being silly, sulking into your misery instead of putting up a fight or trying to find a way out of this nightmare. Perhaps you should be doing these things, trying to turn the tide of events to your favor, however, there isn't a single bone capable of keeping going. You were paralyzed.

Frozen in time and place, your head still insisted on wrapping itself around the last events, filled with thousands of questions that you knew you probably wouldn’t get any answer to. Have you been naive for falling in love, or have you been just reckless?

When did Wanda decide that you were the weakest point in this whole story? Was this play obvious to everybody that you would fall for a lie incarnated in a perfect body with a beautiful face?

Maria did warn you, though. Maybe it was obvious to everybody else except to you.

Certainly, if you had your head in the right place, you would find this embarrassing. However, right then and there, you realized it was just sad, because to you Wanda was everything, and all she’s done was use you for her personal purposes. You were just a prey that failed running off the huntress.

Time seemed to drag itself at a snail's pace, but then again, you didn’t even know how much time had passed. For all you knew, it could be a month already. Even if you were able to count a hundred of days, you supposed your mind wouldn’t stop its assault with the thoughts of Wanda.

It was all too impressive the way your heart still yearned for the woman, even though your feelings were shattered on the floor, broken beyond repair. Too bad something so good took this unexpected turn and the bitter taste was just another reminder of how unbelievable this was.

How unfortunate your heart happened to be in the middle of everything.

All those beautiful moments you had shared were nothing but a ploy, a set up built on lies. And you wondered how long it would take for you to swallow down your throat the shards of your ego that threatened to choke you or to pick up the shreds of your heart poured in the wind.

The salty, ironed copper taste was the first thing your mind was aware of as it drifted back into consciousness. Usually the cold, hard ground felt like a twisted, sick embrace to your beaten body, except, you awoke on your feet, body hanging from the ceiling by the chains.

The dim light reaching your eyes creeped from the creak between door and floor betrayed the torches burning in the corridors. It could only mean one thing. It was late and someone would be walking through these halls. Other than this, the heavy door made with iron never allowed you a simple glance of anything else.

Besides, maybe, by the small opening in the middle that was usually closed except when the guards opened it to come and check up on you. It always made you feel like an animal in a zoo, and you supposed you were the main attraction in this godforsaken place. It was almost disrespectful the number of times they came to see if you were in the same place.

As if you could go anywhere else.

The chains hanging from the ceiling were their first guarantee that you couldn’t move more than a foot unless they loosened it enough for you to lay down on the floor. This mercy was granted only for a few hours.

They made sure you wouldn’t mistake your staying as an unwanted vacation in the Northern Castle. And this was definitely not your winter cabin to enjoy the glamor of the current season. You were a prisoner after all, not a guest.

And then, perhaps worse than everything else, there was the smell.

The room ricked to death, rot, and body fluids. The smell was awful. Sick. It made your stomach churn, and your vomit was a new addition to the horrid smell impregnating the walls, your clothes, skin and nose. Hell, even your brain was probably infected with this stank.

It hadn’t been long, you mused, but your clothes were wasted already, torn to shreds. Your hair clang to your head and face due sweat and blood, and you knew dirt was just another layer of your skin by now.

However, no matter how fucking dreadful your situation was, no matter how fucking awful you were feeling. Nothing would ever compare to the feeling of Wanda’s betrayal.

Right on your first day, Vision had come to your cell to gloat and brag about your stupidity and naivety of falling on their plan like a deer hunted by a huntress. Every word stung deep and deeper on your entire being, but you wouldn’t let it show.

That’s why you decided to headbutt him, which earned you the pleasant view of his face contorted in pain and embarrassment. But as the blood slid from his nose, blood slid from you too.

With an incredible amount of stamina, strength and hatred Lord James Barnes, pleasantly, whipped your back until your legs gave in and you couldn’t keep up by yourself anymore. Blood splattered on the floor, over the walls and even his face.

The wicked smirk present on Vision’s face turned into a satisfied grin once your low grunts of pain became higher, though never really screaming, he contented himself with your humiliation after you couldn’t stand on your own anymore.

Obviously, you were ashamed of showing any sort of weakness before your enemy, this was one of the first lessons you were taught when younger. The shame burned just as the wounds on your back burned with an angry fire as if your skin was boiling from inside out.

Still, it didn’t burn or hurt as much as the thought of Wanda.

The memories of your moments with Wanda Maximoff assaulted your brain mercilessly, without invitation, without stop. Nothing could erase the feel of her touch or her lips. No matter how hard you tried, though brief, your time with the Princess of Sokovia was beyond intense.

You’d experienced love for the first time. It was fast and strong like wildfire; it was only obvious that the devastation in its wake would be just the same.

You didn’t even need to be dropped in a cell to rot into oblivion to be punished because your broken heart was punishment enough. No matter how many physical assaults the Sokovians could think of it would still be nothing after what Wanda did.

Your internal whimper came to a halt when you heard the dungeons floor clicking with the sound of shoes. You weren’t aware if you were the only one in these chambers, but you knew better. This would be Vision, coming for another nice chatter.

He must be bored.

“Lioness, good to see you awake.” The man hissed as he entered the cell you were in. One would expect to be treated like someone of your status would, but this was a piece of Hell on earth. Sokovia didn’t regard the nobles as the other realms did.

Therefore, you didn’t reply. You stood there eying him with disdain, gritting your jaw and silently pleading to the gods to give you strength to not break his nose again. You could endure the pain, but you weren’t mad. Yet.

“Hm, not feeling so talkative today, are you?” Sir Rumlow snarled a few feet from you and in a span of milliseconds, your body moved so fast that one would think that you acted on instinct.

In a blink of an eye, your hands gripped the chains holding your wrists and with an unexpected force, you lifted your body and dropped your legs around Rumlow’s neck. You pressed your thighs hard against his head and the feeble lights coming from the torches allowed you to see his face turning purple due lack of air.

Lord Barnes stopped you from killing the man after he punched your ribs with the hilt of his sword. The searing pain ripped the air out of your lunges and your legs automatically left the knight’s neck and sought to support your body.

You were granted, though, with his embarrassed eyes, coughing lightly due the pressure your legs had put on his throat. You smiled lightly, taking this as little victory to your personal score of vengeance.

The good feeling was short lived, for Vision took one step closer to you, though a little more preoccupied about your fighting skills even chained to the ceiling like you were, and his smirk was on.

You’re yet to see this man without that smirk and you knew, somehow, that he posed like that because he thinks he’s won the war.

Maybe he did.

“I wouldn’t be so smug If I were you.” His eyes darted around the place as if to indicate that there was nothing to be amused about. “You’re still in this hellhole and I can see your face stained with tears.”

His expression morphed into a mockery of a dramatical sad face, lips now facing downwards and only then you were aware that you had cried. And you hated to show another sign of weakness to the man that was exceedingly fast becoming your archenemy.

Yet, you knew so little about him.

“Why are you so sad?” He asked rhetorically and pretended to search his head for possible reasons why you weren’t feeling so super lately. The nerve of this man.

“Is it because mommy isn’t here to clean her baby?” He mocked, then continued. “Is it because you weren’t as smart as you thought you were? Or…” His eyes went wide as if realization clicked in his head right then and there.

“Awn you truly thought she loved you, Lioness?” He laughed. He had the gall to laugh off your feelings, but you let him. “Know that in a couple of moons, I’ll have Wanda’s hand and you’ll be nothing in my memory or hers. Barely a nuisance long forgotten.” He made a movement of dismissing with his hands, but your tongue was sharper than his words.

Shrugging your shoulders, the best you could chained to the ceiling, you replied. “If you don’t mind where her hand was.” You were hurting but you would not give this man the satisfaction of seeing you broken. He’d see strength, nothing else.

However, you couldn’t deny that his words had an effect on you, you couldn’t deny that you were hurting and the idea of Wanda marrying this idiot hurt beyond explanation. Somehow, your stupid heart still hoped that this was a trick, or anything else but truth.

Jealousy simmered through your veins and stomach. Jealousy, confusion and betrayal. Was this her plan all along or did you do something that changed her heart?

The days you shared that house with the Princess of Sokovia were magical, past perfection. There was no word to describe the woman who owned your heart nor the moments of complicity, love and tender you had experienced. Too bad it was just a lie.

It was all but a lie.

And Vision made his job to remind you of that. She had lied to you, deceived you into a ruse just so they could lock you up and request a ransom deal. It was slimier than thousands of snakes. And you fell for that.

The wedding, though, was only a confirmation that you were stupid and fell for a woman that played you around like a ragdoll and didn’t even have the guts to come down to this piece of hell and look you in the face.

What for, though? To mock you? To laugh at your poor state? Maybe it was a mercy not having her present to rub it on your face.

But what you could and wanted to do was to bring the man standing tall in front of you down, lower than where you were now. And the good thing about rock bottom was just this, there was nothing holding you back.

“Tell me, Vision, do you taste me whenever she kisses you?” Your grin was clearly smug, you bare your teeth more like fangs ready to pierce a piece of flesh of those who dared to think that only because you were locked imagined you were tamed. Far from it.

He punches you, hard, but the anger boiling in his eyes was your prize. “Could you be more vulgar? You speak like a whore.”

Suddenly, you realized that physical pain was a solace from your internal misery. Maybe if you pushed his buttons hard enough, he’d kill you then you wouldn’t have to live with all this pain you were forced to deal with inside your heart.

A renewed salty, ironed copper taste danced on your mouth and his only answer was a blooded grin to his rhetorical question. You spat the blood on his shoes and asked another question. “Does she call my name whenever you fuck? Or does she call you babe afraid of making a mistake?”

Another set of punches and screams of anger and you could only laugh. Oh poor man, maybe Wanda didn’t love him either and she could very well be a woman playing with both hearts. If yes, he deserved it. Maybe a twisted god would say that you deserved it too.

“Stop.” A new voice was heard above the noise of fist hitting flesh and irritated mutters from Vision.

You had heard a lot about him. Official stories, reports, songs sung by bards, memories from Wanda and a lot else, but this was the first time you properly saw him.

Pietro Maximoff was a handsome man, and the stories did him justice when it comes to regal stance and beauty. He walked as if he had everything figured out just like a King should.

The knights Barnes and Rumlow bowed instantly, dropping to their knees but Vision limited himself to turn and look at the man as if he were annoyed by the interruption. He probably was annoyed. He probably wanted to kill you.

“Lord Vision, I believe I already informed you about my concerns involving our hostage.” The exacerbated formal tone caught your attention. Pietro was a king, yes. But this was a prison, he didn’t have to act all regal in a place that stank more than any sewer.

“You have, my king, I was only having a conversation with her.” He side-eyed you as if to engrave your distasteful state into his brain for later, as if this meant he had won.

“I see.” Pietro looks at you and you expect mockery, some snarky comment but nothing comes. “Leave, please.” He demands. “All of you.” The men were ready to protest but his somber expression left no room for any argument.

He didn’t know whether you were dangerous or not. Just as you had only heard about him, he had only heard about you and to step inside your cell without an escort or visible blade told you he was brave. Or he was a reckless fool.

“The tales credited you a few inches higher, I’m afraid.” Pietro finally says something directed at you after a while sizing you up and down.

You spat another amount of blood, that hit the floor, for his shoes were keeping a wise distance from you. “Maybe you’re confused with my sword’s size, Your Highness.”

He looks at you for a moment, then chuckles. “Ahh ever the brave cub that keeps roaring even on a leash.” Despite the grin on his face, his words dripped with sarcasm.

“Did you come here to kill me already or will you keep mocking me until I die of boredom?” Your impatience was visible. It’s been too long and no one told you what was going to happen. Except for Vision telling you he’d marry the princess.

Certainly, you wouldn’t be held in this place forever. You were too much of a precious prize for that.

Again, Pietro chuckled and clicked his tongue as if disagreeing with your idea. “You know how these things work; I can’t kill you. You’re too valuable.” He patronized and you wished he was closer so you could headbutt him as well. You didn’t mind if your temper could get you killed, you were past the point of caring for what’s stored for your future.

Then, your head stopped thinking about your broken heart for a second and understood what they planned. A ransom deal that would grant them everything that they wanted. They’d redraw borders and Taharr would lose a lot.

In a futile attempt to discourage him, you lied. “She’ll never negotiate with you because of me.” It was plain and obvious to every person that ever heard about Queen Calanthe that she’d trade her soul to protect her children.

Again, Pietro tsks because he knew his enemy’s greatest weakness. “You know that’s not true. And if something were to happen to you, I’m sure Queen Calanthe would gather every capable person to fight, every sword, march north and stop for nothing until she has my head in a spike after breaking brick by brick down.” He explained, rather amused at the idea he painted with his mind eye. Though you knew she’d do exactly what he had said and more.

“I bet she’s already restless knowing you’re my hostage.” He crossed his arms and looked at you again. “But I gave her my word that you’ll be back alive, unscathed, the moment we draw new borders.”

Unscathed.

Sokovians probably needed an update of the meaning of this word. Despite calling you hostage, you were a prisoner, and it was only obvious you were paying for your crimes and sins. One of them, the worst of them, was your little romance with Wanda.

You closed your eyes at his words. Your fears proved to be true, you’d be the demise of entire families, not to mention how much your kingdom would lose because of you, because you couldn’t keep your pants on. People would suffer and that would be your fault, so much so for trying to stop the war.

“What did you ask?” You questioned through gritted teeth. “The highlands above Ororo’s Fortress?” In your head, it was only reasonable, because that would represent a great deal of farms and the heart of the golden mines.

Your train of thought was interrupted by his voice, though. “Everything above Red Widow Valley.” He smirked triumphantly as your eyes widened.

“That’s outrageous! She’ll never agree with that.” They were asking for more than a half of Taharr’s territory. The farms, the people, everyone who depended and relied on Taharr to not starve would suffer. Guilt weighted on your shoulders like heavy iron.

“She already has.” He stated simply, with a smug grin hanging in his mouth.

“You’re probably thinking so high of yourself, aren’t you?” You looked at him with eyes cold as ice and continued. “You play war as if your people were nothing, you play with a mother’s love…” A scornful look morphed your semblance. “But it’s pitiful that you had to use your own sister to get you what you failed to.”

At the mention of Wanda, his chill demeanor turned into a flame of anger. “You do not get to talk about my sister.” He yelled and you spat the blood on your mouth on the floor once again, this time, you realized he was much closer than before. “You played enough with her and had fun. Now go back to the whores waiting for you in Taharr.”

He dared to speak with you as if you were the one playing her heart when, in fact, she was taking piece by piece of you these past months.

All the hate in you flared.

You wanted to hurt Pietro the same way you were hurting. All you wanted to do was to enumerate the despicable things you did in that bedroom with her. How you fucked her, how you had your way with her, and she still begged for you to fuck her harder.

You wanted to bring Wanda’s name lower than a whore’s, for, at least, with a whore you only get what you’re paying for. There was an urge in your heart compelling you to disclose your intimacy until his cheeks burned the same way your heart did from all the stabbing Wanda gave you.

But, in the end, you didn’t even have in you the strength to fight anymore let alone to pose as someone else other than a broken woman with a broken heart.

For once, there wasn’t in you that fire that was always present, that fire that compelled you to fight and stop only if Death claimed your body as hers. For once, the wild lioness couldn’t roar anymore.

“I loved your sister, Pietro.” Devoid of any humor or sarcasm, you spoke the truth of your heart. Why? There was nothing else left. “Even though she lured me to fuck with me and get your goddamn deal. We both know she was the one using me, instead of the other way around.”

Something shone behind Pietro’s eyes, but you couldn’t pinpoint what it was. They were so alike and at the same time they were so different that your brain short-circuited. When he spoke, there wasn’t mockery or sarcasm either. Which surprised you.

“Did you really fall in love, Young Lioness?”

He was close and you could finally headbutt him, but you were so devoid of fight or self-respect that you relented. Every single one of your mother’s rules went out of the window. That tale of not showing your enemy what’s in your heart? Or not showing your weakness? There was no point in hiding anymore.

You were defeated.

“How could I have not?”

—

The travel to the south was murderously slow.

As your retinue passed the villages that still belonged to Taharr but in a few weeks would belong to Sokovia, your heart broke over and over. You could swear that people looked at you with disapproving eyes at your actions even though they couldn’t really see you inside the wagon. Or know what you have done. Yet.

You hated wagons and asked to ride a horse, but they considered that you could run and disappear somewhere once in Taharr’s lands. They were probably right.

You hadn’t thought about escaping, but that idea would, most certainly, occur any time after you were surrounded by your kingdom’s vegetation, forests or villages. You knew basically everything about your territory, and this would obviously be an advantage.

Hence the wagon. And your boredom.

If the constant visits of Vision were a pain in the ass, not having visits at all were far worse if that makes any sense. You hated the man for gloating or mocking you but at least you could hate him and not suffer alone as you did when you were all by yourself.

Your wounds were treated before you could march south and the food was no longer distasteful, it was only bad. Which was a huge improvement, considering you still stayed in your cell with that smell, no longer chained to the ceiling.

Your routine of self-loathing was only disturbed by the guards serving you food, for not even King Pietro or one of the knights came to your cell again. Natasha Romanoff never showed up at your cell, doesn’t even need to mention that you never caught sight of Wanda, not even a glimpse of that auburn hair.

When you finally reached Triskelion, it felt like every single person was on the streets to see the Sokovian legion arriving at the Castle, something unheard of since the early days of the Golden Accords.

Only the noble dignitaries and their protection unit were allowed inside the castle walls, as for the rest of the Sokovians prepared their camp somewhere on the left side of the main wall, outside the Keeper itself, where your people would keep an eye on their movements day and night.

You expected loath and hatred in your mother’s eyes, but you were surprised when you saw relief. You had been reckless like never before and you were sure you’d be punished for it, yet it never came. Somehow, it made you feel worse. You didn’t deserve compassion.

“Oh darling, I’m so glad you’re back home.” Her kind words warmed your heart, that so desperately needed some love and rest.

Loki’s face was pale, and you knew he hadn’t been sleeping or eating properly. Just like when you were taken by the Kree and Witch Harkness, Loki probably thought you’d die, and he’d lose his sister. It pained you that you caused him more distress.

Maria and Carol greeted you with the same intensity as they chastised you and that brought a sense of normalcy that put your heart at ease.

The following days you were treated by the castle doctors, and you took your time to heal and rest. Your bed never felt so welcoming, but you couldn’t take from your head the memory of Wanda’s. How soft and how warm her duvets were whenever she laid by your side.

It was obvious that your feelings for her would take a long, long time to fade off. If ever.

As the negotiations advanced, you could sense the restlessness building up on the room full of nobles. Taharrians and Sokovians.

While the latter wanted to move on fast and redraw the borders, Taharrians insisted that they needed to wait for King Tony’s approval of the new border and, especially, King T’Challa’s arrival, for he had requested to be present for the negotiations.

It was only reasonable. Taharr had a peaceful agreement with both Kingdom’s about borders but when it comes to the Embaku’s Forest on the east between Wakanda and Taharr, things were even more complicated than that.

Wakandans believed this forest was sacred and their spirits wandered about the trees to connect again so they could guide their people into prosperity. Your mother and your past relatives always respected their beliefs and never invaded or hunted anywhere near the forest.

King T’Challa, however, wanted to make sure the Sokovians would understand and respect this as well. But if you had learnt anything at all, it is that Sokovians loved a good scheme, were power-hungry and untrustworthy.

Especially untrustworthy.

Your back ached and your bones screamed with every turn and strike you managed with your sword, just as it did with every blow parried by your shield. You looked around bewildered; only moments ago there was a group of nobles discussing new terms and agreements which, somehow, erupted into a fight.

And, with the increasing numbers of Sokovians flooding the halls and chambers of Triskelion, you knew this was an invasion. Someone opened the gates and now a crimson and silver legion inundated your home.

Anger filled you whole and your chest wanted to burst. How many times would you be betrayed by a Sokovian?

You saw Maria running like a wild mare trying to get the Taharrian troops into the castle, for there were only a few units serving as patrol and escort. With Lord Barton lost, deceased or prisoner, information yet unknown, his legion was still adjusting to the new commander so they would take time to arrive.

Lord Wilson fought by your side, and this was probably an order from your mother. You wouldn’t complain this time though, your body was still trying to recover from dehydration, starvation, and from the physical and emotional slaughter.

You tried and failed to get a glimpse of your mother’s whereabouts, because the sea of red was overwhelming. The castle was cramped, so much so that it felt like the air filling your lunges wasn’t enough.

A sword came dangerously close to your head, but you blocked it in the nick of the time. This wouldn’t be a great time to get headless, you mused. With extreme difficulty, and great effort, you pushed back the Sokovians out of the Castle.

They were strong, organized and knew exactly what to do. This was odd. There was a traitor among Taharrians, and you couldn’t, for the life in you, think who would be capable of such absurdity.

From the castle walls it was possible to see Sokovians outside the Main Wall reinforced with two units that belonged to Hydrarr trying to organize a siege, it was definitely odd. If Hydrarr was responsible for stealing and burning Sokovian’s farms, how were they friends now?

Something didn’t add up.

The attempt of railing and controlling the castle backfired and with the arrival of Wakanda’s retinue, Sokovians and Hydrarrians got caught between your troops and the Wakandans. The whole fight lasted almost a day, but you finally stopped the enemies and forced their retreat to the north.

It was certainly a coup.

There were far too many soldiers on your escort in the first place and, even if they were afraid of insurgents as they had said, there were far too many units for a simple border draw. The group of nobles representing Sokovia was made of low-ranking nobles, no one really important to lose in a fight and, except for Sir Rumlow, you didn’t know who they really were.

Sokovians and Hydrarrians tried to overthrow your mother in the most violent and less honorable way possible. The gods should be thanked that the Wakandans arrived in time.

You searched the castle after your mother, but she was nowhere to be seen and even people who saw her fighting said they lost track of her. There was this nagging feeling in the pit of your stomach that something was wrong, very much so.

There were people, friend or foe, being carried to the medical bays to be attended to. As were the bodies. After you left the great hall and reached the main corridor, your heart sank when you saw Lady Carol kneeled beside the lifeless body of Knight Belova.

Knight Yelena Belova was one of the fiercest warriors in the whole continent. First, she served as spy, then requested to serve as knight and soon was graced with the honor of being one the Queen’s protector. The most noble and valuable warrior. And now she was laying on the ground in a poodle of blood surrounded by enemies’ bodies.

She fell fighting like a giant, you thought. However, you hated yourself for not paying the proper respect to her service and sacrifice because all you could think of was your mother.

A trail of blood not far from Belova guided you to another room, a few steps away from where you were now. As soon as your eyes landed on the figure in red and white clothes laying on the floor, you felt as though your heart’s going to explode right then and there.

You ran towards your mother, but it felt like your feet were moving through the water.

The second you reached her, you sank to your knees and only then you saw Loki sobbing by her side. He had her head over his lap and held her hand tight. You grabbed the other and it was cold, sickening cold.

“Mother.” You cried but there was no answer. You hoped she’d crack a smile or maybe simply look at you, but she didn’t move, she didn’t open her eyes. “Mother!” You called, urgently, this time. As if some energy could wake her up.

“Sister.” Loki called. His tone was already mourning, grieving, as if to tell you the truth. A truth that you couldn’t take or accept.

“No.” You replied, shaking your head as if throwing a tantrum right then would make any difference, as if it could change fate. As if it could change the fact that your mother was gone and you weren’t there for her, even if to hold her and see the light fading from her eyes.

Your body shook terribly as though your soul was about to slip through your pores. She died a hero’s death, fighting. As she always said she wanted, but you couldn’t believe it, and in a selfish thought, you realized she was gone without teaching you everything you needed.

She was gone when you needed her the most. After all, you would always need her. She was your hero, your beacon.

“Sister,” He tried again. “She’s gone.” His voice had an edge of something, as if he was trying to convince himself. You took him in and saw his robes stained with blood but no visible weapon, though it didn’t look like he was hurt.

“What happened?” You averted your gaze from your mother and met his. There was so much going on behind his eyes that kept your attention until they finally focused. He was lost and so were you.

It was all your fault. If you hadn’t decided to sneak into Wolfgang City, you wouldn’t have gotten caught and this absurd ploy orchestrated by the Sokovians or Hydrarrians wouldn’t have existed. If this deal had never happened, your mother would still be alive.

Hot tears slipped down your face freely, you were responsible for her death in the same way whoever wielded the sword that took her life was. Grief already soaked your bones as all you could think was everything you did wrong.

“I- I- tried, but-.” Loki tried to speak, but his voice trembled just like his body. He was in shock.

“You saw who did this?” Your voice brought his eyes back to you, he was confused and hurting, yet there was something about his expression that brought that uneasiness back to your stomach.

“Ru- Rumlow. I- I- think.” He stuttered more so sobbed the answer as he used his sleeve to clean the blood, sweat and tears staining his face. Then, you took him in and his clothes properly.

“Loki…” Your brother wasn’t a warrior per se, but with an invasion like the one they had just witnessed it was only reasonable that he’d be sporting a chest blade or shield at least. But there was nothing visible around him. Not even a blade or his famous scepter. “Where's your armor?”

Your tone startled him. His eyes darted around like a cornered animal. “Where were you this whole time?” You asked because you couldn’t remember his whereabouts ever since the breakfast that he, uncharacteristically, skipped.

“I- hm. I was-.” Stutter is not a trait that you’d ever associate with him. His demeanor shifted from shocked to someone realizing they’re on thin ice.

Your patience waned off instantly.

“Spill it out.” You hissed and it was absurd that you were about to argue with your brother over your mother’s dead body, but his behavior was too strange for you to ignore. Or you were just too paranoid by this point.

“I- Please, sister, you have to believe me. None of this was meant to happen.” His voice waved, he was about to cry again and the lump forming on your throat made it impossible for you to breathe properly. “This wasn’t supposed to happen.”

You blinked. His words resonated in your ear as your brain tried to process every single word and what they really meant. You started to shake your head as they sank in, already dismissing the possibility of what was being presented before you. “Are you telling me you’re involved in this?”

“No.” He bellowed, as if your accusation was outrageous. “Oh gods, this is so messed up.” His eyes shot to the ceiling for a second then, they focused on yours again. “I was supposed to facilitate their entry, but they weren’t supposed to touch you. Or mother.” Loki’s eyes were hollow, haunted by his own actions.

You knew that. You could see it. His guilt was consuming him already, but you too were being consumed.

“You betrayed us, Loki! Your mother! Your sister! Your kingdom! And for what?” You grabbed him by the front of his robes and shook him violently, as if the action could knock some sense into his head.

“All I wanted was what is mine by right! I am a King with no kingdom.” He yelled, slapping your hands away from him. “They betrayed me.”

His slap hurt just as the weight of his words did. Though deeply hurting, anger was the only feeling accessible in that moment. “King of what, Loki?” Anger was the only feeling that you could rely on to not fall apart entirely, so you held onto it and let it course through you like the blood you had in your veins.

“In Jotunheim I’d be a King!” He puffed his chest as if it was plain obvious and anger boiled in him due your lack of understanding. And how could you? Loki thought. You were born and raised to be a queen, his unfaithful fate was barely a nuisance to you.

“In Jotunheim you’d be dead!” It was your turn to shout and bring him out of his head, bring him back to reality.

“Can’t you see that this is my birthright?” He asked, almost in a plea and you shook your head vehemently, as if he was being a stupid child.

“And you thought that overthrowing your mother, the woman that raised you as her own child, was the right way of achieving it?” Your head tilted to the side with your sarcastic question, and he opened his mouth to speak, but you weren’t done yet.

“As far as I know, Jotunheim is deep in a civil war again after the eighth in line killed the sixth. The third is crippled in a bed waiting for death’s mercy and all the others died, except for you, the seventh in line. And that’s because of her.”

Every word leaving your mouth felt like a double edge knife. Cutting him just as deep as it was cutting you. Tears streamed down his face as the bigger picture downed in his brain.

“I- I- sister, I beg you. You have to understand, I never wanted this to happen.” He was torn, his decisions would be the grave his grief would bury him in. “Please, forgive me.” He pleaded, suffering in advance.

Now his fate lies in your hands.

“No Loki.” You opened your mouth to continue, but you were devastated and devoid of words or strength to keep talking.

His eyes shot up and searched yours for something, anything. But there was just emptiness.

“No. There must be a way! You are my sister…” His eyes darted around, then focused on yours as he tried again. “Please, tell me what I should do. Anything and I’ll fix it-.”

You stared back at him as he searched his intelligent brain for a way to be forgiven. May your mother forgive you someday, but you couldn’t deal with it anymore.

“Run, Loki.” Your voice broke the silence, and he frowned at your answer or their meaning. “Run and don’t you dare to ever come back.” Your voice did not waver once, unlike how you really felt inside your heart.

“But I- you don’t-.” He stuttered once more, pale with the horrors he had just seen and with the horrors he would face as soon as he left the castle. Loki knows he’d be wanted and hunted down like a mad dog if he decided to stay in Taharr and knew that he’d be dead the second he stepped in Jotunheim territory.

Hells, without the queen’s protection, wherever he decided to go would be too dangerous for him. He was doomed.

Your disgust was evident when you interrupted him. “You don’t understand what your greed did to me. I lost my mother and my brother at the same time.” Sadness emerged in your eyes for the briefest of moments before you finished your sentence. “Leave immediately, you don’t belong to this kingdom anymore.”

Turning your back on him, you laid on the floor right by your mother's side and stood there. The cold of the marble floor impregnating your skin as her blood soaked your clothes, your soul and heart.

Despite the words spoken towards Loki, you knew you were just as guilty as he or Sir Rumlow was. Your greed brought your mother’s demise just as your brother’s did.

Your greed of thinking that you could end the war. The greed of thinking, wishing even, that you were allowed to love. Greed of believing that Wanda fell for you the way you did for her, when, in turn, you should’ve known better.

As you wept and mourned your dear mother, you remembered the last conversation you had had with her. If you only knew it’d be your last.

The what ifs would drive you mad before the sun rose in the horizon, for sure.

“I’m sorry mother. I failed.” Your voice was low, a far cry from your usually confident self.

“You did.” She stated as she offered you the cup of tea. “That makes you human.”

You smiled at her. Maybe she got too scared of losing her daughter, for she was being too subtle and forgiving in a way that was mostly out of character for her.

“You see, love, life is not an easy game to play.” She patted you on your face lightly, as she always did when she needed you to look intently at her and show you tenderness at the same time. “As a ruler, as a future queen, the path is even more tortuous.”

“Do you mean tortuous as complex or devious?” You took a sip from the liquid as lavender invaded your nostrils. Chamomile and lavender, she knew you hadn’t been sleeping. Of course she did.

“Both.” She smiled softly.

“Are you going to punish me?” You blatantly asked, almost ignoring what she had said. But you absorbed her words and their meaning. Life would be – was – difficult and deceitful at the same time.

You watched as Calanthe had the gall to laugh at your question, but then she shook her head lightly. “I believe you’re already doing it for yourself, love.” She patted your knee as she took a seat by your side.

The trees on the fields ahead were long naked, devoid of their leaves or fruits due winter, yet they were still beautiful, somehow.

“I was a fool and now our people will pay the price.” Your words were harsh, but not directed at her. It was all directed at you.

“They probably will, but you must not forget about the others under your command. If you keep looking at what you lost, you may lose even more by neglecting what you still have.” Her wisdom reached your ears and heart, but you retorted.

“How can we rebuild from this low?” Your voice resembled a child facing a puzzle or a challenge they cannot solve on their own and she smiled kindly at you, she probably saw it the same way.

“Well, love, I’ve learnt a long, long time ago to let myself get cut to always return whole with spring.” She spoke, not looking at you this time, but to the trees ahead on the fields.

“What?” You requested clarification and she gave it to you.

“You see how the trees always lose their leaves and get pruned over the winter? This is natural and the trim is a must so their branches can grow stronger. When spring arrives, the beauty returns to the trees, and they’ll grow whole again, with leaves, flowers, fruits…” The queen explained, all the while with a tender smile on her face, as though she’s explaining the meaning of life to an infant.

And, in fact, she was.

“You’re facing your winter, love, you’re getting pruned, and I know it hurts. But you’ll come back whole, you just must be patient and wait for the spring.” Her hand rested on yours and gave it a light squeeze. “Your kingdom will spring too, you just need to work through its winter.”

As her words sank in, your spirit felt renewed with a sense of duty and obligation to your people. You’d fight for their safety, and you’d work on deals to grant the families the decision to choose which realm they’d live in.

Nodding slightly, you replied. “I will.”

“I expect nothing different.” The warmth provided by her hand and words were so welcomed that had you closing your eyes. You missed home, especially, you missed your mother. “And to answer your question, I could never punish you for following your heart.”

You opened your eyes to see her dark orbs boring into yours with the same tenderness that she used to look at you after falling from your horse when you were still learning how to ride. They were intense, they were protective, they were everything you could focus on.

Out of everything you could or should say, your chest spoke first. “Will it hurt like this forever, mother?” Right then and there, you were only a child scared of their first time hurt and she softened her features even more.

“Oh love,” She hugged you and you reveled on the warmth provided by her embrace and love. “I’m afraid I don’t have the answer for this, as my short experience with your father, I still miss him.” You took a deep breath. Your father isn’t often mentioned, it was like an open wound how he died so soon after your birth.

“I feel so stupid for being lured into that trap.” Your voice was muffled by her chest as she caressed your head, fingertips playing with the baby hairs growing on your hairline.

“You shouldn’t feel stupid for having feelings.” She kissed your forehead lightly, then resumed her ministrations. It was soothing, healing. “If anything it shows me you have a heart.”

“I hate her for what she did to me, and I hate that I can’t hate her.” You felt her chest moving, she chuckled at your words and their ambiguity. You drew back to look at her in the eyes and spoke again. “I mean it, I- I hate her and love her at the same damn time.”

You sighed and relented, for you had finally come out with your true feelings. You didn’t count that desperate and pitiful confession to Pietro. “Because only love can hurt like this, right?” You asked and again, you looked like a youngling about to enter a maze. Insecure and scared.

She nodded, trying to bite back the emotion striking her chest, as a mother she hated everything you had been through. As a mother, she hated the marks – visible or not – the Sokovian princess had caused you. As a mother, your suffering was physically painful for her to testify.

As a queen, though, she knew this was a lesson you had to learn. As a queen, she knew this would only make you tougher, no matter how daunting everything looked now. As a queen, she knew this was a path for you to understand – fully – how one single action has its burdens.

“You should make Loki next in line, for I’m not fit to be a queen.” Your blunt words brought her out of her head, and she blinked several moments before speaking.

“Where’s this coming from?” Her head turned fast to look at you, to look you in the eye and maybe pierce the answer herself.

Completely uncomfortable, you shrugged your shoulders avoiding eye contact at any cost. However, you gave her the answer she had requested. “Look at the mess I’ve made, look at the mess I am.”

With the corner of your eye, you saw her frown for a moment, then spoke. “I see a strong woman and nothing less. As for the mess, Pietro can have the gold, love, but he’ll eventually learn that he can’t eat metal in winter.”

Her hand softly touched yours, the comfort of the gesture couldn’t be measured in words, in fact, you thought your chest could burst with unshed tears, as if you were just a child weeping after their hurt knee. Though you couldn’t. You weren’t just a child anymore.

“As for the mess, you made a mistake. Do you think I’m perfect?” She completed after your silence, staring at your intertwined hands. You didn’t have to look up to see a small smile creeping to her lips.

“I do.” You replied sincerely and finally looked at her.

Almost out of character, the queen laughed. A wholehearted laugh erupted from her chest. “Thank you, but no, I did a lot and still do nowadays. When we make a choice, it can be good or bad. You just must live long enough to see which one is and have courage enough to fight to make it right, to make another choice hoping it’s for the best.”

Her index finger touched your nose softly, just like she used to when you were younger when she wanted to make a point. To point at you. “And you, love, you’re the bravest person I have ever met.”

“My courage just gets me in trouble, mother.” It was your turn to frown and look at her as if to double check if she weren’t mocking you. You had a lot of courage, indeed. You never backed down from a fight, never settled for the easy thing to do but the right one. Yeah, and there was always a huge problem hunting after your tail.

“You were brave enough to love your enemy, this tells me much.” Her words caught you out of guard, but a fond smile told she wasn’t mocking, or mad, it was as if she appreciated your stupid decisions. “That’s no easy feature and that’s why I know you’ll protect and be kind to our people. Your kingdom.”

“It’s your kingdom, my queen.” Your brows were furrowed again, not quite liking her tone or the direction this conversation was taking.

“One day it will be yours, love.” A satisfied smirk punctuating her sentence.

A hand violently shaking your shoulder brought your head back to present and the pain coursing through your chest was now back on full force. Your eyes snapped open and found the source of the hand being Lady Maria Rambeau.

“Oh by the gods you’re alive.” The woman spoke at your movement, fussing all over to find a wound. “You’re so pale and there’s so much blood…” Her voice trailed off at the end, cementing your heart with the painful truth.

“Maria, she- she’s gone.” You sobbed and her eyes softened tons at your broken voice and expression.

“I know.” She spoke gently while trying to make you get up from where you were laying. “And now I need you to rise from the ground, my Queen.”

The weight of her words hit you like a spear piercing your heart. The weight of your destiny fell on your shoulders like a blanket made of ice-cold metal.

“How?” You asked dumbly. You were not sure whether she meant the literal ground, the cold stone ground your body was half laying, half seating on or the pit of madness and chaos you and your whole kingdom got into.

You were not sure of how you could do either.

You were lost.

Suddenly, you were transported to a memory of when you were just a kid chasing after a foal that got lost into the woods near the royal stables. Like a brave little silly, you entered the tree line, but it didn’t take long for you to get lost. Every tree looked exactly like the other and soon you didn’t know what was left and right.

Much like then, you felt that lost. There was no right or left nor up and down. Just a rock bottom of misery staring back at you.

The person who had found you cornered into the trunk of a tree crying like a silly lost girl back then, wasn’t here anymore to guide you. Your mother was gone, and this was a reality you couldn’t escape.

“Why do we fall?” Maria’s voice brought your attention back to her. A kind smile matching her kind eyes towards you, her protégé.

“What?” You asked, again, dumbly. Not really understanding what she wanted from you or for an answer.

“Why do we fall?” She asked again as if it would make any sense. After realizing you were too shocked to properly answer, she clarified. “So that we can learn to pick ourselves up.”

Her voice resonated throughout the room, but in your ears you could all but hear your mother’s voice and wisdom. This was the exact same sentence she had spoken so many years ago, after tenderly picking you from the ground.

Your mind was a whirlwind; This time it was your time to pick yourself up, you’d have to climb this hole by yourself.

Your brother betrayed you, your mother was dead and now you were the supreme ruler of Taharr. The people – your people – would look after you for guidance, for protection, to be their light in the darkest times, such as the ones you are facing now.

Getting up from the literal ground, you were back on your feet and though your knees were a little bit wobble, you kept your stance. Only now seeing Lady Carol and Lord Samuel also arrived in the room, eyes down with respect towards the body of your mother.

“Sam, help me take her to her room. Carol, gather the morticians to prepare her.” Your voice shook a little with grief and pain. Maybe being strong and trying to be a queen wouldn’t be an easy feat. Not that you thought it would.

After another intake of air, you turned to Maria and this time your voice was firmer. “Maria, you and I are climbing the north tower so I can light up the Goblet of Fire.” Some sort of reassurance took over your body as you decided to proceed with the costumes and traditions of when a king or queen dies in Taharr.

The next in line would be the one to light the fire that could be seen miles and miles away from Triskelion. The next in line would be the one to deliver the somber news to their people.

“We have an announcement to make.” You finished grimily.

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Final

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