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kiwisbell · 2 days

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helen ; chapter five

be seeing you

Si vis pacem, para bellum. Or, the choice.

series masterlist | my masterlist pairing: joel miller x f!reader tags/warnings: 18+ (MDNI), john wick AU, hitman!joel, husband!joel, established relationship, artist!reader, love as worship, sacrilege in the name of romance, flashbacks, graphic violence, guns, blood + injuries, tess cameo, childhood/religious trauma, criminal underworld, secrecy/lies, betrayal, ANGST, bamf miller bros, smut, fingering, joel is an emotional munch, shower sex, unprotected PIV, handjob, male whimpering, conflicting emotions, orgasms aplenty, Big Angst and Big Sad but also Big Epiphanies, ambiguous ending, i'm getting emotional writing these tags, it feels so final, the typical alcohol/smoking/profanity, dividers by @/saradika word count: ~ 9.3k a/n: hi, friends. i can't believe we're already at the end of the main story, and tbh if i think about it too much i'll probably cry. i want to thank @cavillscurls for beta reading this chapter as always and giving me the guidance and support i need. we'll have an epilogue after this chapter, so there's still more to look forward to, but nonetheless, i hope you enjoy and thank you so so much for reading. xoxo prev | next

Her eyes are so sad, you think, stepping back to take in the full scope of the canvas. It’s doused in paint from corner to corner, still wet to the touch, the woman and her lover intertwined so thoroughly that it’s difficult to tell where they both end. It’s in shades of glum blue and flecks of angry red and brown where his eye watches you. But it’s her eyes that cannot lift to meet yours. It’s her lashes that fan across her cheeks as she casts her gaze toward the bottom edge where the canvas is wrapped taut around the wood.

The sun will soon rise, but you haven’t slept. The contours of the sky are washed in a haze of greys and pale blues and light pink and the air smells warm, heavy—a storm about to roll in. The clouds on the horizon are thick with a blackening rage. You sit in the alcove by the window and put your temple to the cool glass. You yawn. Joel does not come back.

“Do you think it's true,” you asked him one night, your head on his chest, hand on his heart, “that art makes nothing happen?”

Joel, drawing shapes on your back, dozing off in the golden light of the sunrise, frowned. “Someone tell you that?”

“It's something my art teacher used to say,” you told him. “No matter how much it moves people, it doesn't do anything.”

“Your art teacher sounds like a fuckin’ downer.”

You laughed, hiking your thigh up over his hip and playfully biting his jaw. “So it's bullshit?”

“I think,” said Joel, tucking his chin to kiss the top of your head, “that your art makes people feel. It brings ‘em together. It's important because it's yours.”

You propped your head up on his chest and threaded your fingers through his too-long hair, overdue for a trim. A curl draped over his forehead, his beard patchy and soft under the pads of your fingers. “Sometimes I wonder why you chose me,” you said. “I wonder why the universe brought you to me.”

Joel shook his head, guiding his rough, callused fingers up your arm, curling them around your wrist, gently prodding your veins. “Wasn't the universe,” he said quietly. “Wasn’t a choice. I was yours the second I saw you. So, I guess it's your fault.”

You just rolled your eyes and kissed him, mouth to smiling mouth.

Your paintings may be yours, made with life and energy and colour, but when they are finished, they don’t move. They are stagnant as a heavy rock beneath a cliffside, washed over and over again by the cresting waves, its salt stolen for the water, eternal damnation to a fate of non-movement. And sometimes an artist will walk under the cliff, shove their easel into the fleshy ground the way a man erects his country’s flag in the earth he has stolen, and paint the rock. The artist is moved by the breathtaking colours of the shore and the way the wind flutters through the grass. But the rock does not budge. It never will.

Your art will never erupt from the boundaries of the canvas and tell you what it means. The lovers in your painting will not tear open their mouths like the seams holding a wound together. They will not tell you what they want, need, crave. They are you, and that is what you hate—because dimpled flesh and lustful fingers and the press of his mouth to her throat cannot tell you what you’re supposed to do.

You had become complacent in his love for you. You had let him press his worn hands to your body and pull your soul out through his mouth and you had been a wife, while all the time there was a stranger who occupied his heart, a spirit in an abandoned body. All the time, he'd been haunted. And although you had loved him, your love had not been enough to exorcise the guilt and trauma, pecking at him, an eagle at his liver.

Crossing the room and sitting back down in front of the easel, you press your fingers to the corner of the canvas. The paint is cool to the touch, and you leave behind fingerprints where your signature should be. Pulling your hand back, you examine the accumulation of colour, the blues and reds swirling into the deep purple of a bruise, the bodies on a canvas that may only ever mean something to you, and you wonder, Is this all I am? A cautionary tale, a love lost? A fucking footnote at the end of a clause that reads: “See, for example, the one who never loved deeply enough to make it count”?

You bring your hand to your face to wipe away the tears beneath your eyes and blink hard at the sting, realising you’ve smeared paint across your cheekbones.

In the bathroom, you scrub furiously, the cloying scent of it clinging to your throat and your tear ducts, washing away the evidence of their entwined bodies, their love, your pain.

Once, you tried to get Joel to paint. You sat behind him on your bench, your legs bracketing his hips, your paintbrush in his hand.

“I don’t know where to start,” he said.

Your lips brushed the shell of his ear as you spoke. “There’s no rulebook.”

He tried to turn his head and kiss you, but you nipped his ear in reproach. “Remember when you took me out driving at the airstrip because you wanted me to feel the road? Think of this like feeling the canvas. Go on, cowboy. Make nothing happen.”

Joel’s painting still hangs over your shared bed. The intruders never found it, or never cared enough to destroy it. It’s a candle, just a candle, its lines imprecise, the paint unevenly applied in places, the shine of the flame more orange than yellow. But it’s a painting, so the candle always burns. He titled it Love.

The pain still sits low in your chest, pulling down your heart as if tied to it by a string. But Joel is still out there, fighting his way back to you, the way he always has, always will. You look down at your left hand, clutching the edge of the marble vanity, and decide to clean your wedding ring.

“I’m sorry, brother,” says Tommy, turning the gun on Joel.

“What the fuck are you doing?” growls Joel, struggling against his bonds. The clip rattles faintly in his brother’s hand as a tremor courses through him.

“He’s following my orders,” says Cabrera, clapping his hand down on Tommy’s shoulder. “Fascinating what a man will do when he must consider his family’s well-being.”

Joel sucks on his teeth, his eyes not once leaving his brother.

“It's my son,” Tommy says through his teeth. “It's Maria. If I don't do this—”

“Yeah? You gonna kill me, Tommy? Is that why your hand’s shakin’?”

“Shut your goddamn mouth,” his brother snaps. “You think I want to do this? I gotta save my family, Joel. You know what that's like.”

“All I’ve done for you,” says Joel, his hands curling into fists behind his back, “and you put a bullet in my head?”

“Not just your head, Joel,” says Cabrera. “When we're done with you, we’ll take your pretty girl as payment for my son’s life.”

Joel growls like a dog, blood roaring in his ears. “Kill me yourself, you goddamned coward. Kill me yourself and don’t you mention my wife again, or I swear to Christ—”

“You take His name in vain a lot for a nonbeliever,” says Cabrera, pulling his sleeves through his coat and setting his teeth as he looks toward Tommy once more. “Do it.”

“Yeah, brother,” Joel says darkly, “do it.”

Tommy nods once, planting his foot and pivoting. Five distinct sounds of handguns cocking echo throughout the warehouse as Tommy points the barrel between Manuel Cabrera’s eyes.

“Now that I’ve got a gun to your head,” he says evenly, “you can go ahead and pull that contract.”

Joel at last twists his wrists free of the ropes that bind them and shucks down the sleeves of his jacket to rub the raw skin. Not one soul does a goddamn thing to stop him as he rises to his feet. His chest heaves, his open lungs coarse and wet with a brittle rage, his exposed heart throbbing red, transparent as the stained glass windows of the church.

God does not tolerate anger, said the Sisters, again and again, bringing down the whip across his back. Sinew and bone and skin peeling back to lay bare some tender part of him they sought to rot out. Put your energy into His worship.

Slowly, Cabrera lifts his hands, sneering. “Your wife,” he warns, “and your unborn son—”

“Are family,” says Tommy. “Just like my brother. Now tell your guys to put down their guns and I won't kill you where you stand.”

Joel joins Tommy at his side. “Took you long enough,” he says under his breath.

“Got held up,” he says. “Your wife’s a good artist.”

“Yeah, whatever. You bring me a gun?”

“I’m sure you can find one yourself.”

“Jesus, Tommy. I’m too old for this.” Joel turns to Cabrera and glares at the same stubborn arrogance that once gleamed in his son’s eye. “You pull the contract, and I’ll leave for good.”

Cabrera’s laugh weans out in the air like rings of smoke. “You think you can really leave, Joel? You think that there won't be consequences for what you've done to my son?”

“Yeah,” says Joel, “I think I’ll take my chances.”

“And you?” Cabrera’s lip curls up at Tommy, whose gun no longer wavers in his grasp. “I promised your wife and child security. You’re willing to throw that away?”

“My wife and child are safe because I don’t take deals from men like you,” says Tommy. “You trusted a Miller to turn on his own blood, Manuel. That was stupid. Now pull the contract.”

“So this is your great suicide mission.” Cabrera smiles, a man who knows he has lost or a man who still expects not to. “A man who has seen Hell does not willingly descend back into its depths—not unless he likes the taste.”

Joel feels the corner of his mouth twitch, a wound on his cheek reopening. “Maybe I do,” he says plainly. “Maybe it’ll taste even better when I take you down with me.”

The gleam in Cabrera’s eye shifts as his gaze flickers behind Tommy. Night has since descended, and yet the predator’s eye glints in anticipation of the hunt. Joel turns and shoves his brother out of the way—just as the shot rings out.

He hears Tommy’s breath punch out of him as they both hit the concrete hard. Joel tears the handgun from his brother’s grasp and puts a bullet between each of the two men behind them. He rolls behind one of the hulking bodies and holds up his weight as a shield against the incoming bullets. Tommy takes the dead man’s gun and fires at the remaining three assailants. Only one shot misses, but Joel sends his brother a look anyway and finishes the job.

“Rusty,” grunts Tommy, pushing himself to his feet.

Joel grimaces as he accepts his brother’s outstretched hand, his wrists bleeding from the relentless rub of the ropes. “He ran,” he says, grinding his teeth. “Goddamn coward. Just like his son.”

“Yeah, you’re welcome, by the way,” says Tommy, giving Joel the dead man’s gun and snatching back his own. “Saved your ass.”

“And he got away.” Joel kicks his chair, and the clattering echo of metal reverberates like a choir off the cavernous walls. His hands flex, open, closed, open, closed, until they make tight fists and he can see nothing but red and the silver moon mocking him through the broken windows high above.

“Joel…”

For a moment, he hears the young boy his brother once was, whispering across their shared bedroom to him in the middle of the night when they were both meant to be asleep.

Joel… Are we going to be okay?

“I gotta finish it, Tommy,” he says quietly, his hands shaking loose. Parts of him bite and sting, touched by new and old wounds alike, and he wants to come crawling home to you. He wants to curl into your side and wash away the blood in your cleansing pool, daisy and honeysuckle, some faraway field where you are the warden, where he knocks on the door to be let in, to be gathered, covered in white, buried, unearthed.

“Was he right?” asks Tommy. “Do you… enjoy this?”

Joel casts his eyes toward the ground, his trembling hand, the gleaming band on his ring finger, his skin speckled with blood but the metal pristine. “I don’t know,” he says.

This is who you are, Cabrera would tell him. The Sisters: Your place is here, under God, under His word. And God Himself, silent as the air, the ringing in his ears only ever quieted by the soft brush of your knuckle across his cheek, the whisper of My Joel in his ear.

“Think hard on it,” says Tommy, “because you may like it, but you’ve gotta consider if your revenge is worth more than what you’ve already got. And if you choose wrong, Joel, you’re gonna lose no matter what.”

A figure leans stone-still against the wall by the hotel room door, the gleam of a blade in the soft light the only indication that it is not a mere shadow.

“Hey, kid,” says the apparition.

Joel nods in greeting. “Tess. Could get in trouble with that knife out in the open.”

“You expect me to keep your girl safe with just my fists?”

“You make it sound like you couldn’t.” Tess snorts, and Joel places fifteen gold coins in her waiting palm. “I appreciate you doing this.”

Tess peels away from the wall. “You and your brother are paying me good money to babysit a door. I think I can live without the thanks.”

“Still,” he says, “you did us a solid.”

Tess, who itches at the prospect of gratitude as much as any other gun-for-hire, shrugs. “Everyone’s saying you’re coming back. That true?”

“Just visiting,” says Joel. “On my way out soon.”

Tess flips one of the coins and turns it over and over across her knuckles, evidence of a restless energy that’s always made Joel’s eye twitch. “One way or another, huh?” she says.

“One way or another.” He shakes her hand and watches her retreat down the hall, still twirling the godforsaken coin, before he turns toward the door. Joel presses his forehead briefly to the cool wood and turns the key to seek the field that awaits him.

A key rustles in the door and Joel steps through, closing it gently behind him. Judging by the quiet click of the lock, he expects you to be asleep, but you jolt upright from your seat in the alcove and cross the room toward him.

He meets you halfway, his right hand flexing at his side. You inspect him: the gash on his cheek, the bruise on his jaw, the blood splattered on his white shirt. He makes no footfalls as he walks but you can hear every stride like thunder between your ears. You feel his hand at the back of your neck, cool from the night air, rough as the underside of a shark’s belly.

The moment coils taut between you as your hand reaches up to grab the lapel of his jacket, and he smells of iron, cologne, Joel, some paint. Maybe that smell is you, stuck underneath your fingernails, embedded in your blood. Maybe this is a mistake, maybe you could never help but fall, maybe it never mattered anyway, and you’re already snipping the final thread, unwinding the spool, and kissing Joel Miller like it’s the first time.

He let out a small groan, tasting the first drop of water in a drought, steadying you with his arm around your waist, his hand cradling your head. He’s gentle, exploratory, careful not to jostle, to shock you out of it. You feel his heartbeat thud, strong, calm, steady behind his clothing and skin and muscle, and your body caves.

It’s coming home, you realise, your arms snaking around his neck, fingers tousling the messy curls on his head. It's the warm press of his hand to your spine where it begins to curve inward. It's a soft mouth, a plush lower lip, made for slow mornings and black coffee, for the aching release of a thumb pressing deep into a muscle knot, a wound. Old aches soothed in the space where bodies meet, beginning to colour the slate-grey world.

It’s the exchange of gasping breaths when you pull apart, his mouth still vaguely chasing yours, opposite charge.

You hold him tighter, swallowing the lump in your throat, your hands squeezing his shoulders. "Are you…"

Joel inclines his head. "Yeah."

"Did he..."

"Yeah."

Need pulses. Supernova. Bright as the moment of obliteration. "Can you—"

He nods vigorously. "Yeah."

Joel’s kisses are like raindrops: velvet-soft to the touch—his hands bringing the hem of your shirt up over your head, his fingertips scorching, branding, grazing the supple swells of your breasts—before the crescendo roars in your ears and he loses himself to the storm. He always does.

There is nothing reserved about the way he shows his love. Lightning crackles across your skin where he touches you, baring you to him, his lips making a map of you, mouthing at your jaw, your throat. You hear yourself hum at the press of his lips to the spot beneath your ear, detaching from your own body, absconding with the pleasure of being close to him and leaving the fucking world behind.

Joel staggers forward so he can press you to the wall and begins to sink to his knees. Your breath catches as he pulls down your ratty bottoms, your cotton panties, his mouth burning into your hips and your belly and the ring on your finger.

“Joel,” you say brokenly as he clutches your fingers. Tears prickle, pressure building behind your nose, and he shakes his head, unfurling your palm like a bud in bloom and kissing its heel. Wordlessly, you watch him, your eyes shuttering, blood singing.

Don't hurt me again.

He understands even though the words cannot come alive on your tongue. He squeezes your hips, his thumbs dumpling your flesh, his forehead falling to your belly.

“I’m yours,” he says. “I’m whatever you want.”

Your legs haven't forgotten the way they part so easily for him, one thigh on his shoulder, opening the core of you to his waiting mouth. His lips part, his tongue wetting them, glistening, and your stomach tightens at the sight of his eyes so black.

You could easily cower. His hands are stained with blood. His knuckles are split. But your terror has become an arid thing, no kindling to burn, no oil to ignite. Watching him now, as eager to please as he always has been or maybe more so, on his knees like a supplicant, the hairs on your arms do not rise in apprehension. Your body does not squirm in fear. You see a broad horizon, the sun outside spilling its golden blood over the city, and you see all of him in a way you never did before.

He’s Joel, who grew up in darkness, lashed and beaten for not believing in a false god. He’s a man who has lied and killed and yet he is no liar, no killer. He holds you as he always has, your body liquid in his hands, your mouth proclaiming the word he will follow. You're the truth he's always told.

It still unsettles you to see the dark eclipse that warm brown, to watch his desire consume the hypnotic shapes in his irises, and wonder if that cavernous black was the last thing so many men saw before he snuffed out their lives. But there's nothing of the death shudder in the way you guide your fingers through his hair and beg him—

“Please.”

He brings his mouth to your core and parts your folds with his thumbs, slowly gliding his warm, wet tongue through your slit. You die a hundred little deaths in the split-second of that first touch, that first agony.

You sigh, your head thudding against the wall as he licks through you, his hands holding your hips in place, keeping you from writhing. Joel flicks his tongue over the sensitive pearl of your clit, the pleasure searing, and you tug at his curls to push him away even as you cry out, More, please, please. God, I need more.

He obeys you as easily as breathing, though you suspect he can barely hear your pleas, opening his mouth and flattening his hot tongue to your clit. You gasp, your core pulling taut, your eyes locking with his as the muscle undulates over, over, and over again.

“Oh,” you whimper, your hips bucking to meet his face. He groans, his mouth working your clit, closing his lips over it and sucking. You cry out, your leg kicking, the sounds of the world muffled in his stifling closeness. Your thighs begin to ache, tensing and relaxing a hundred times over in the throes of his attention.

And his fingers are gliding across your hip, seeking the warmth between your legs. You gasp his name, your hips flexing, as he collects your wetness on two fingers.

“Let me in, baby,” he says softly, pressing a kiss to your puffy clit. It relaxes you enough to welcome the press of his fingers inside you, sinking to the knuckle, curling up against the spot he would know in his sleep.

You whine, your body keening toward him, tugging his face back toward your pussy. He obliges with a quiet moan, and you think he needs this just as badly.

The obscene squelch of his fingers inside you rings in your ears as he licks and sucks at your clit, his free hand grabbing desperately at your ass to keep you fixed to him. You’re crying, “Yesyesyes, Joel, please—fuck, that's it,” the pleasure stuck in the grooves of your brain. Absentmindedly, you reach for his hand and clasp it tight, your engagement ring digging into his palm. He holds you with the same fervour as he coaxes you higher, his face buried in your pussy. He grunts and groans like it's his own pleasure he seeks, his battered knuckles stinging.

“Joel… Joel, oh, I’m…”

He knows, of course, from the telltale squeeze of your thighs around his head, the relentless crushing of his fingers in your own, your body tightening for him, cavitating, unwinding—

You come with a shout, your throat raw, writhing in his grasp as he keeps sucking, keeps licking, rubbing, pressing. You're dizzy by the time your head lolls to the side, your muscles twitching, eyes glazed, and Joel is there, pulling his fingers out just to place them on his tongue and swallow you down.

Your breath rattles through your lungs. Joel presses his lips to your inner thigh, beard soaked in your arousal, moustache glistening. His mouth soothes your sore muscles and your eyes begin to droop.

“You need a shower,” you say, your tongue like lead in your mouth. You gently pass your thumb over a cut on his cheek and frown. “You're all bloody.”

He nuzzles his face against your thigh, inhaling you. “I know.”

“You were gone so long.” Your voice quivers, pressure prickling behind the bridge of your nose. “I thought…”

Joel rises to his feet, his hands cradling your face. “I’m all right,” he says. “I’m here, and I’m safe, and I’m so goddamn sorry.”

You shake your head, pressing your lips together so the sob will not escape. Tracing his face with your fingers, broken in places, healing in others, you see the echo of a boy who didn't know his place in the world. You see the haunt of days gone by. A ghost still occupies the cage of his ribs.

“I think you should tell the little boy that still lives here,” you say, putting your hand on his chest. “Tell him he’s alive. Tell him that he made it.”

Joel lowers his head, watching the way your fingers splay over his heart. He puts his hand on yours and pushes, and you feel the strong thump-thump-thump of his heartbeat.

“He knows.”

You lean forward and put your mouth to his temple. “Shower, Joel,” comes your whisper in his ear.

He nods, wrapping his arm around your waist and guiding you into the bathroom. The water hits you both true, scalding, the drain circled with red. He’s naked, his back to you as he sets his hair and lets his wounds bleed what they need to.

You lift your hands and trail them down his broad shoulders, your forehead dropping between his shoulder blades where your name is inked into his back. Joel’s muscles idly flex, his palm flat against the shower wall. His body shudders when you press your lips to the name on his back.

Wordlessly, you bring your arms around him, caressing his side, careful of the new bruises. Your other hand drops to his steel-hard cock and you begin to slowly stroke him. The noise that wrenches free from his throat is half pleasure, half agony, his hips bucking into your fist. You bump your nose against his back, your years-old sign to Just relax, and Joel hides his face in his bicep as you work your hand over him.

“G—fuck,” he grunts. “Goddamn… honey, I—”

You squeeze him at the base and twist your hand up and down the length of him, the weight warm and heavy, your thumb coaxing out a bead of precum. Your cheek is warm on his back, your arm struggling to reach around the width of him, your chest humming at the sound of his gruff moans.

“Let me…” He cuts himself off as you speed up your strokes, and you can feel his abdomen tense. “Fuck, let me make you feel good. Shit… let me…”

“Joel,” you say, “for once, stop trying to be my hero.”

His head falls back and you press your lips to his throat, nibbling the sensitive spot behind his ear: the old scar, that tiny circle, that hairless patch. He groans your name, and you’re smiling despite yourself, your mouth curling against his warm, tender skin.

“Inside me,” you whisper, the pace of your fingers over his length slowing to a crawl. “Remind me how it feels.”

He turns his head to look into your eyes, his lashes dewy, blinking hard to flick away the water, brow furrowed. His moustache bristles as his lips part in a question he does not (or maybe cannot) articulate, and you’re fractured into pieces by the intricate curve of his nose, the freckles on his jaw, the silver strands in his beard. A rough hand cups the back of your neck and another takes you by the waist, and you’re flattened to the wall, your hand braced on the glass next to you as he kisses you deeply.

Consuming, heady, warm—you give in, your hands avoiding the delicate skin of his wrists where he’s been bound, helpless. Sighing softly into his mouth, you let his kiss humble the part of you that still needs the walls you’ve built from the marrow of your anger. It circles the drain, lead-filled paint, as you remember under his hands how it feels to live.

You reach between your bodies, your leg wrapping around his waist, and slide the head of his cock through your weeping slit. Joel sucks in air through his teeth, the water lashing his back like a whip, and he surges forward, grasping you by the waist and sinking his cock into your tight hole.

You cry out his name, burying your face in his throat and baring your teeth. Your name leaves his mouth in kind, an apparition, sounds you barely recognise anymore. As you take him inside you, the memory of who you were with him pounds at your ribcage, begging to be let out. And you covet them, selfish as you are now for fucking him this way, needy and impatient, your fingers tugging his wet locks.

You see no point in scooping out the marrow; there is still sweetness stuck to the bones of your old life with him. Instead, you coat your teeth in this, the slow drag of his cock, the depths he reaches so easily, so knowingly. His fingers prod the bruised flesh of your hurt and yet you still guide him inside. You still pull his hair and kiss his throat where his Adam’s apple bobs and you still let him hold you close enough to splinter.

He’s grabbing fistfuls of your ass and sucking on your throat, his thrusts sloppy as he tries to hold back, to make you come first, but you tighten, clenching down on him, making his groans pitch up into whines.

“Joel,” you gasp, your needy fingers prickling his scalp where you pull his hair. His teeth graze your throat and you want him to bite, you want him to sink in deep, you want his jaws to latch onto your skin. You want him never to leave again.

He comes hard. His hips buck, pushing so deep he disappears into your body, and you see the blues, browns, reds of your painting as he empties all he has left inside you.

Panting, he drops his head to your breast, his open mouth still scattering weak, worn kisses over your skin. Your lungs expand under his palms, fingers stuck in the grooves between your ribs, his body an offshoot of yours, not the other way around. In the ringing afterlife of your pleasure, you vaguely feel him mouthing words you cannot hear. You run your fingers through his hair and enjoy the battering of the scorching water as it melts you both into one.

Later, in the sticky, humid silence of the bathroom, steam still swirling around your heads, fogging the glass, you trim Joel’s hair.

"Do you ever get scared?" you ask him, the shhhick of the scissors gliding across a chunk of his hair. "Do you ever go out on a job and think to yourself, What if I slip? What if this is it?"

Joel huffs. "It's not so much about myself as making sure the other guy goes down first."

“I think I’d be scared.” You twirl a lock of hair around your finger and let it fall over his forehead. “I don’t think I’d be able to look into someone’s eyes and take their life.”

He casts his eyes to his lap, flicking off some hair from his thigh. “One time, I thought it was over. I wasn’t quite seventeen yet, runnin’ drugs for some gangster. He sent me to El Sauzal to discreetly transport a couple kilos out of the city; someone had snitched and he didn’t want any rival gangs to find his stash. But the people there, they… They didn’t know any better. There were mothers, kids. Innocent people, y’know? Just strays. I decided I’d come back for ‘em.”

Your stomach twists. “What happened?”

A muscle in his jaw ticks. “I was too late. By the time I got back, the whole goddamn city was on fire. The people were either dead in the streets or close to it. They didn’t do anythin’ wrong. They didn’t ask for any of it. But they were weaker, slower. I couldn’t walk ten feet without seein’ some kid wrapped up his mother’s arms, burned to a fucking crisp. So, I came back with weapons, marched into the gang’s territory, and I killed ‘em all.”

Days ago, you’d be afraid of the man whose back warms your belly where you stand just behind him. You would hesitate to reach out and put your hand on his shoulder the way you do now. But you curl your fingers over the muscled curve of his arm and his head falls back against you, spidering open, his gooey molten centre bared for you.

Joel. Just Joel.

“Did you see the painting?” you ask him quietly.

“I see everything you do,” he says. “It's beautiful, baby.”

You drop your gaze from his face in the mirror and set down the scissors on the vanity. “I can't pretend to understand what you've been through, Joel, and that makes things even harder. All I've ever wanted is to love you, to take your pain, and all this time there's been so much I never even knew about. And I’m sorry.”

Joel’s hand comes to cover yours, clasping your fingers. They’re warm, rough, but you do not sense the phantom blood. “If I’d told you from the beginning,” he says, “maybe I never would've hurt you in the first place. All those years I thought I was protecting you from myself, I was hurting you—the one thing I swore I would never fuckin’ do.”

“Joel…”

“Baby, don't apologise to me,” he says firmly, putting his lips to your knuckles. “Never apologise to me. And don't you let me off easy.”

“Have I ever?” you say with a halfhearted smile.

“Yeah,” he says, “the day you let me marry you.”

You scoff. “Oh, please. Wedding planning was hell on earth for you.”

“Just because I didn't like the photographer—”

“You didn't not like the photographer, Joel. You wanted to draw and quarter the photographer.”

He huffs like an angry dog, frowning at you in the mirror. “He kept puttin’ his goddamn hands on you.”

You laugh, brushing your thumb over the patch in his beard to indicate you're finished. “He was posing us, cowboy.”

Joel rises to his feet and closes the scissors away inside the drawer. “Posin’ you, sure.”

“He was afraid to touch you. Probably thought you’d take off his hand. And the pictures turned out great.”

“Yeah,” he says, a smirk twitching at the corner of his mouth. “Way the sunlight caught in your hair, your eyes… I don't know. Beautiful.”

He was so shy the first time you kissed him. Cheeks flushed, eyes cast toward the ground, the wind ruffling his curls where it blew over the water. He was made in an artist’s image, you thought that night, the details pored over like paperwork, the sparkle in his eyes something the painter covets. But the portrait has never wilted in the years you've known him. It's grown older, sure, but it is not old. He's still shy sometimes; he still looks down when he smiles, and he still turns his cheek when you tell him he's beautiful.

“Do you…” He rubs his palms over his thighs, looking up at you through his lashes. “Do you wish you could go back?”

It's your turn to sit. You drop into his chair, your arms curling over the back of the seat, and watch him on his journey to his knees. “I don't know, Joel,” you tell him. “I think about that day and part of me wants the magic of it back. I want the breeze and the sun and the white canopy and I want you sliding this ring on my finger. But knowing what I know now…”

“You wouldn't have married me,” he says like it's the only answer. His eyes are wet and sad and they sparkle so bright in the day.

“I wish I’d known,” you say plainly, bringing his hand to your cheek and resting it over the cool wedding band. “I wish you would have told me everything. I wish you didn't make me question your love, even for a second. I wish you could have spared me all this anger I have—all this pain.”

He’s stone-still, a figure in a portrait, and you brush your fingers across his cheek. “But killing isn't what you are, Joel. It’s what you do. And I’m so tired of being angry.”

You say it fiercely, your tongue sticking to the roof of your mouth, your throat tightening. You swipe your thumbs under your eyes and meet your husband’s eye. “I love you more than my anger and my hurt have room for. And if I can love you this hard, if I can feel all this pain and still be that same girl who fell for the guy from the restaurant, then I can let myself get hurt all over again.”

Joel shakes his head, cupping your face in his hands as his eyes brim with tears. “Oh, baby…”

“I know it's never been an easy marriage,” you say, your voice breaking, “and I’m always travelling, and I know that I can get snippy and we bicker, but I wouldn't go back to that day, Joel, because I wouldn't change anything. Even if I have to feel all of this again, I wouldn't take it all back.”

His inhale shudders through him and your heart lurches out of your chest. “I don’t deserve that,” he whispers, his thumb stroking your cheek, catching a tear that falls. “I’ve hurt you too much to ever be worthy of what you've given me, sweetheart. I ain't a good man, or even a decent one. But fuck, if I can be good for you, I’ll pray to whatever God they want me to. I’ll scrape my knees and put my hands together and fake it ‘til I’m someone you want. I swear it, baby.”

“Joel.” You gently pry his hands away. “The life you've lived, the things you've been through… I can't change any of it. I can't be what you need all the time, and fuck, I want to be. I do, Joel. But this life is something you have to figure out yourself. Nobody should force you to believe in something that's only ever caused you pain.”

He never told you about the tattoo; you had to find it yourself. Shucking the hem of his shirt up over his head, two weeks separating the last time you’d been able to indulge in his body, you trailed your fingers up his back and paused at the sound of him hissing through his teeth.

“Easy, cowboy,” you cooed. “Are you all right?”

Wordlessly, he turned, taking your hand and lifting it to the reddish skin around the black ink. You gasped, your fingers jolting backward as if struck by a feeler of lightning.

“Joel,” you said tremulously, “please don't tell me you were drunk and this was an impulse decision.”

“Guys in the Marines would get tattoos that meant somethin’ to them. Easier to carry around with you when you're away.” Joel met your gaze again, your tearful eyes, and brought your knuckles to his mouth. “Tell me you want it gone, and it's gone.”

You shook your head, a laugh snaking past the lump in your throat. “Selfishly, I think it’s very sexy.”

He chuckled, kissing the breath from your lungs.

The memory is heavy in your stomach. It's something you'll have to roll around in your mouth a thousand times before the taste begins to dissolve.

“I need time, Joel,” you tell him. “I need to wrap my head around things. I… I can't be the girl you want right now.”

Joel brushes his thumb over your chin. “You have always been the girl I want,” he says. “If you need time, you have it. If you need a warm body, you have it. I’m whoever you want me to be. And if it ain't a husband, then… then that's okay. But I can’t promise you that I won't stop tryin’ to get my wife back. That’s not who I am.”

You sniffle, twirling the ring on his finger. “You’ll get sick of it. The waiting.”

He smiles so softly that you can feel a bud begin to bloom in the core of you, nourished by the way he keeps his hand on your thigh, absently rubbing the sore muscles there. “I waited my whole life for someone like you to come along—someone who could give me the purpose I’d been lookin’ for. I can wait another lifetime. I can wait a thousand.”

“You’ll resent me. You’ll start to hate me.” You don't know why it comes pouring out of you, but the gates are brittle wood and they snapped in the torrent. “I’m an angry drunk. I smell like paint half the time. I travel for work.”

Joel just studies your face, some inexplicable calm etching out the agony. “You take your coffee with milk and sugar and you can't stand it black, but you make it that way for me anyway. You sleep until noon when you're jet lagged and I sit up in bed just to watch you dream. You lie in my arms on the couch at home and ask me about my day even when you're noddin’ off. You dreamed about love when you were a little girl, the way it happens in books. You told me in your wedding vows that you'd found it with me. You think I could resent a girl like that?”

He smiles like it hurts and heals all at once, like it's a foregone conclusion, like you were meant to be loved by him.

“Time doesn't mean a goddamn thing. I know the girl I see in front of me now. Time won't change how much I love her.”

Flipping through the list of potential venues, Joel tucked into your side, you said, “We’ll have an outdoor ceremony. No churches.”

“Baby, I won't burst into flames if I step inside a church.” Joel playfully flicked his tongue over your nipple, obscured by his T-shirt. “Tommy, on the other hand… things he's done…”

You laughed, gently pushing at his head. “No churches,” you said again. “I don't care how much more we’ll have to pay or travel to get around it. You're my husband. You're my comfort, and I want to be what's comfortable for you. Understood?”

He looked up at you, his lips parted as if on the precipice of speech. You beamed, bringing his face to yours and kissing him deeply.

“But if the wind knocks over the gazebo, you're not getting your dick inside me on our wedding night,” you said against his mouth. Joel shook his head, yanking you on top of him and tearing the shirt from your body. Your binder landed with a flutter of loose pages to the floor.

“You didn't kill Cabrera.”

Joel lowers his eyes. “No. He got away.”

“So there's still a contract on your head.”

“For now.”

“So,” you say with a sigh, crossing the room and digging through your bag, “you have to go.”

“I have to go,” he echoes, following you like a shadow. “No matter what… I’m finishing it. Tonight.”

You pull the switchblade from your bag, open Joel’s fist, and place the cool wood hilt in his palm.

“Goddammit, Tommy,” he says under his breath. “He shouldn't have…”

“But he did,” you say. “He said I should be the one to have it. I think it should be yours.”

He curls his fingers over the hilt and flicks open the blade. It's light, but it seems to weigh him down. You rest your hand over his.

“Do what you need to do.”

He drops his forehead to yours and closes his eyes, soaking in this final breath exchanged between your silent bodies, dipping his fingers in the sanctified waters and coming out unscalded.

Bill calls Joel not a moment after he steps onto the street outside the Continental.

“That's a heavy price on your head.”

“Yeah, Bill, I know.” He breathes in the cool air, like cigarette smoke, his nostrils stinging. Trash and a new, fresh breeze carried into the city. Nothing that stays here ever thrives. “Stayed alive so far.”

“So I hear,” grunts the Manager, “and leaving behind a hell of a lot of cleanup.”

“I won't stick you with the check,” says Joel. “It's my business.”

“I don't conduct business inside this hotel,” says Bill, “which is why I won't tell you that a certain helicopter at a certain helipad is refuelling as we speak.”

Joel smirks, flicking out his cuff to check the time. “Any reason why you aren't tellin’ me this?”

“I like you, Joel. Despite myself.”

Silent, he waits for more.

“Besides,” Bill continues, “we live and die by honour. And you've saved my ass more than once.”

Joel snorts. “Which time are you thankin’ me for?”

“Just take my goddamn advice and leave this world. For good this time.”

“I will,” says Joel. “One way or another. Thanks, Bill.”

High above the ground, sitting in the alcove by the window, you watch storm clouds gather over the city, darkening the sky, the sun, and your Joel, so far away, slouching calmly toward whatever end he will choose.

It's raining.

The first time you kissed him, a downpour suddenly swept up the both of you and you'd scrambled underneath a bridge by the water. You both laughed until your ribs were sore, holding hands as you ran, a soaking wet playbill above each of your heads for cover.

“At least the show was good,” you shouted over the roar of the rainfall.

Joel was mesmerised into stillness by the colours of the traffic lights in your eyes, how they shifted over the planes of your face. Starting to think like an artist, you'd tease, and he'd lean into it, a planet circling its sun.

“It was all right,” he said, taking the playbill from your hand. “You could catch a cold. We should get a cab.”

“Always my hero.” You grinned up at him, your eyes scanning his face in that particular way they did, as if ingesting the sight of him to later put the lines to a canvas. “Did you have a good time, Joel? I mean, really. You won't offend me.”

He grimaced. “I, uh… well, see, I’m not the best judge, and… I guess—”

“Joel.”

There was a gleam in your eyes that could have been amusement or could have been hunger. He doesn't remember. He only saw you tilt your chin and lower your eyes to his mouth, to that one place the Sisters always called vulgar, obscene, a place meant only for His word—

“Can I kiss you, Joel Miller, or will you keep being all heroic?”

It was soft, gentle, exploratory. Your mouth opened his like a wound, setting the scorching blade of your lips to the gash, staunching the blood. You healed and burned him, one hand on his back beneath his jacket, the other cupping his face. It reminded him of the statue that lived in the theatre underneath the church where all the boys and girls trained. An angel cast in white marble, cradling the face of Saint Eustace. The statue was chipped where his eye was meant to be.

He remembers the way he shuddered when you touched him like that. He remembers the chill that started in his feet and crept up his spine. Something like coming alive, settling back into his own body—no longer a spirit haunting the shell of a home but a man.

You pulled back, but Joel curled his hand around the back of your neck and kissed you again, deeper, maybe a little too eager, too inexperienced—but you gasped, fingers curling in his hair, your body curving into his. Your noses bumped when you separated, and he remembers laughing.

The rain is nothing like that night. It's the lash of a whip across his face, seeping colour from the world instead of infusing it with light and movement. The water by the docks slaps against the concrete and boats rock and groan against their mooring. The lights of the city are distant now.

Joel steps out of the car.

He marches toward his target, cocking the pistol in his hand, and calls out a name. It gets lost in the roll of thunder across the sky and lodges in his chest.

Cabrera waits on the landing pad, looking wraithlike in a long black coat and a pair of leather gloves. His pilot fuels the helicopter nearby. Neither of them hear Joel’s voice in the air. The rising sun is what gives him away—or maybe the gunshot, as he lifts his arm and pulls the trigger.

It does not pierce flesh. It ricochets off one of the rotor blades. He had aimed slightly to the left.

The pilot scampers off into hiding, but the slash of the bullet through the rainfall is enough to get the attention Joel wants. Cabrera reaches inside the lining of his jacket and fires a single shot. Joel can feel it tear through skin and muscle, but it doesn't hurt.

“Joel,” greets Cabrera.

“Manuel.”

His chest heaves, his jacket soaked through, the cold sinking bone-deep.

“Let's finish this.”

The glimmer in those depthless black eyes is the panther at the hunt, relentless in its hunger, licking its chops at the sight of a challenge. For all the coward’s blood in his veins, it still pulses at the prospect of winning.

“Like men,” says Cabrera, tossing his gun aside at the same time Joel does. “With honour. No more guns.”

And it's laughable: the thought that there is any honour left in a world like this. A world where children are beaten and lashed and trained to hold a weapon too big for their hands. A world that burns villages, butchers families, and still claims that without rules, we live with the animals.

A world as unruly as this cannot be ruled. He never truly considered it until he saw the sad gleam in your eye, felt the empathetic touch of your hand on his face, and began to realise that maybe he should be furious.

But because he already knows he's going to win, Joel lets his opponent land the first blow.

The blood is tangy, near-sweet, as he swipes his forearm over his mouth and smears crimson on his shirtsleeve. It tingles faintly on his lips and crackles, warm as the melt from a late-winter snow. He feels it settle in the grooves of his palms, the hairs of his beard. He’s drowning in it.

Cabrera hits hard, but he’s slow. He’ll take five punches in the time it takes to wind up for one. Joel brings his arm up to block the next and delivers a blow to the sternum with his knee as his opponent’s guard drops. Wide open, Cabrera stumbles a few steps back, choking down the telltale wheeze of being winded. Joel marches forward, relentless in his crusade, grasping him by the scruff of his neck, teeth bared like a mad wild dog, and bears his skull down on the side of the railing. Around them, the wind howls and lashes at his clothes, but he still hears the pained scream as if it were poured into his ears.

Cabrera drops to his knees, and Joel grabs him again, bashing his head repeatedly against the steel bar, the lapel of an Italian leather coat bunching between his fingers, tainted by rainwater and the fist of the man who's come to take his life.

And fuck, Joel wants to make it last.

But there's a knife in his opponent’s hand, conjured from the darkness of his coat pocket, and Joel must release him to avoid the lethal slash of the blade. Blinking blood and lashing rain from his eyes, the man lunges with a snarl, and Joel recovers from his lost victory, stopping him with his fingers curled around his opponent’s wrist. He brings his hand to the crook of Cabrera’s elbow and uses his leverage to snap the bone.

Yowling, Cabrera drops to his haunches, the knife clattering to the ground. Joel, chest heaving, stands over him, flexing his fingers as he readies his fist for the killing blow.

His name leaves Cabrera’s bloodied mouth, accompanied by a mouthful of crimson-tainted saliva spat on the ground at Joel’s feet.

“Joel…” He lifts his head, cradling his broken arm, and sneers. There’s a chilling glow of satisfaction in it. “Did you get your perfect life, Joel? Do you really think you’ve won? It won’t ever stop. Not after you’ve killed me, not after you’ve killed all of them. Is that what you’re going to do? Kill them all?”

He could. He has done far worse. He has spilled blood for gold coins and superficial alliances and someone else's revenge. He has stalked, stolen, lied, killed, and he could finish this now, so easily, with the flick of a blade.

But the song of death does not call to him now.

For so long he had trudged, unmoored, through heavy crimson blood. Like pulling at the seams of velvet, he'd sewn more lives into the sea of red and he never looked behind him to see the souls trying to pull him down at the ankles. He didn't know purpose until he saw the way the candlelight flickered in your eyes, until he tilted his head to the side and realised your smile was a new kind of beautiful from each angle.

The rain sticks to his lashes and he thinks of an old song of prayer the Sisters used to chant. He remembers curling his fingers around one of the rosaries that hung from the large cross in the cathedral and wincing in anticipation. He thought he would burn—that the metal would leave a red stain on his palm. It never did.

Maybe that's why he never believed. Surely, if there was a God, Joel Miller would have burned by now.

He thinks of shopping for furniture and date nights and lazy mornings, tangled in bedsheets. Your mouth, smiling against his, whispering I love you across the breakfast table. Dancing—or swaying, more like—under the kitchen light. Loving easily, never feeling as if he must grab hold of the cross and burn himself upon it just to feel.

Joel turns the switchblade in his hand, lurches forward, and plunges the knife into Cabrera’s chest.

There is no noise but a faint gurgle from his mouth, his hand weakly rising to grasp the hilt. Joel drops to his knees and fishes Cabrera’s cell phone from his pocket.

“The blade is stuck in your aorta,” he says. “If you pull it out, you’ll bleed out and die.” He puts the rain-slick screen in front of Cabrera’s face. “Pull the contract.”

A few feeble taps are all it takes, and Joel Miller is no longer a target. His name glares back at him on the screen, from two million to nothing, not the boogeyman any longer but something akin to a civilian. Joel tosses the phone into the water and turns to leave.

“See you in hell, Joel,” Cabrera chokes, still grasping the shiny wooden hilt of the blade.

He barely hauls himself into the car, which chokes to a rumbling start. There's blood seeping through his shirt where Cabrera shot him, and his fingers shake as they pull away from the wound, the red so bright, so alive. Joel grits his teeth and squeezes his eyes shut.

If there’s a God, he thinks, I hope you fucking hear me now.

Tell me that we don’t get what we deserve. Because there is nothing I deserve in this world if I cannot keep what I’ve found.

His fingers trembling, smearing blood across the screen, he makes a call.

And your voice on the line, soft, sticky with sleep, whispering his name—just his name: Joel?—is what wrenches the first sob from his throat.

Joel, you say, like it means something, like it's precious. A jewel pressed from dusty black coal. Come back to me. Come home.

So he does.

#fic: helen #kiwisbell's fics #pedro pascal #joel miller #joel miller x reader #joel miller smut #joel miller x you #the last of us #the last of us hbo #tlou fic #joel miller angst #joel miller au #joel miller x female reader #joel miller x f!reader #joel miller fic #john wick au

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peachesofteal · 9 months

Note

I need the next part of the disco baby trap hospital drabble🥺 Simon and Johnny take Darling and Bee home, maybe their apartment where they can better keep an eye on them, but it’s so tense because Darling is worried they’re going to try to take Bee from her, is still feeling the sting of betrayal, maybe is afraid they’re trying to trap her again

🍄

🩵

18+ / Takes place after this / baby trap au

“Alright, alright.” Johnny murmurs, walking a pattern back and forth in the kitchen, arms slightly bouncing an unhappy Bee to try to settle her. “I know, ‘m not mum. I know.” He can’t help the anxiety that flickers through him, eyes casting quickly to the closed bedroom door, where he can just barely hear the low hum of Simon’s voice, vibrating underneath the echo of your coughing.

He paces in the between the countertops and the fridge, working a pattern, stepping in time to a melody that he’s barely whispering to his daughter, something old, a forgotten tune his mother used to lull him to sleep with. At first, it doesn’t do much to settle Bee, and a wash of emotions threaten to pull frustrated tears to his eyes.

Why should it? He’s but a stranger to her, after all. She does not know either of them, and there’s no one to carry the blame of it except for him, and Simon. She was miserable in the hospital, and neither of them could soothe her, the only thing that succeeds in calming her was to be placed in your bed, by your side, even though you were too weak and too sick to even hold her.

“Let’s get ye some food, eh?” He fidgets with the jar lid, and Bee’s brows furrows with indignation as she glares upwards. This attitude reminds him so much of you, from before, when things were good, and you were happy, safe and secure, confident. Bee fusses at him, but when he goes to put her in her high chair so she can eat, she wails in protest, like something new is upsetting her. “What is it?” He strokes a finger across her cheek and then up to her forehead, checking for warm skin, and breathing a sigh of relief when it feels normal. Her fever broke in hospital three days ago, and your doctor finally agreed to allow the two of you to go home yesterday, even though you were still incredibly weak and exhausted from the pneumonia.

“I’d feel better releasing you both if you could assure me there will be someone to support you at home.” Your doctor sighs, while she thumbs through a tablet at your bedside. Bee sleeps in the bassinet next to your bed, laying between where they sit on the other side of the room, and you. “You’re still running a low fever, and the shortness of breath is going to persist for a while.” Your lower lip trembles, and a tear forms on your waterline, spilling over onto your check when you try to take a deep breath as you quickly wipe it away.

“We can help.” Simon says, keeping his voice soft. The doctor glances at him, before looking back at you. “If you’ll let us.”

“We’d love to be there, for you and Bee.” Johnny adds, hopefully, rubbing a palm against the back of his neck. He’s having a hard time standing still, and Simon knows it, tries to calm him by pressing the outside of his thigh to Johnny’s.

“I’ll let you three talk it out.” The doctor says, before putting the tablet away and patting the bed. “I’ll be back in a bit.”

Bee cries aloud, and he holds her against his chest, patting her back gently, swaying side to side. “Okay baby girl, you’re okay.” He kisses her softly on the top of her head, trying to shush her gently. Your voice crests from the bedroom, a sob that fades into a cough, and he tenses, worry thrumming through him. Bee settles a little, her face going blissfully sleepy, and he picks the lullaby back up, eager to rock her into her dreams.

“You need more sleep.” Simon tries to ease you into closing your eyes from where he sits on the bed, halfway down the mattress, far enough away that you’re comfortable, but close enough that he feels like he can get you to focus. You’ve been in a fog, head cloudy and a little off kilter, the low grade fever still running through your system and the cough wrecking havoc on your rest. He doesn’t think he’s seen you sleep for more than a few hours at a time, and your body is weak as a result.

He’s trying to be gentle, to be soft, to let you choose and decide. He’s determined not to overstep, not to make you feel like you’re backed into a corner, or that they’re here for nefarious reasons. He knows, you don’t want them here. He knows you reluctantly agreed because you’re doctor practically demanded it.

He also knows you know, that you’re too sick and run down to take care of Bee right now. The realization is a difficult one to swallow because you’ve been so strong, so resilient all this time.

He’s in awe of it, of you. Of how incredible of a mum you’ve been to Bee, all the sacrifices you’ve made to give her an opportunity to flourish, how you’ve taken care of her, given her the best of everything you could find. It doesn’t escape him, the toll it’s taken on you, the way you’ve neglected yourself for her, the way you’ve put yourself dead last in every aspect to make sure she’s well and happy.

Their darling girl, so brave. So strong for your daughter, but never for yourself.

But at the same time, it makes him hate himself even more. Hates what he’s done, hates how he let himself get out of control and do something so hideous to the person he loves. Hates how because of him, you’ve suffered so greatly. Hates that he let his most selfish urges cloud his judgement, hates how he ruined everything for you, and Johnny. How he ruined your happiness, Johnny’s happiness, his own. He tries not to think about how it felt to see the fear in your eyes, how it was when you were convinced they were there to take Bee away from you, like he was a wretched monster.

Like he was a man as wicked as his father.

“No.” You shake your head, trying to reach towards where Bee is cradled in Johnny’s arms. “I wa-want Bee. Give her to me.” You cry, and push away from Simon, stumbling before careening towards the ground. He catches you, wrapping an arm around your waist.

“Darling, we’re at the hospital. We need to go inside.”

“No, no. I won’t… I won’t let you take her.” He grits his teeth, jaw tightening as he turns your face towards his.

“Look at me.” You try to twist away but he holds you still. “Shhh, darling. Look at me. It’s okay, everything is okay.” Your breath is ragged, wet and heavy, and he can feel how hot your skin is beneath his touch. “We’re not here to take Bee. We’re going to see a doctor okay? Bee needs a doctor, right? That’s why we’re here.”

Your hand curls into a fist by your side, and he beats back his urge to reach for it, to try to comfort you, even though he knows you’d recoil from him. He wants to soothe you, pull you into his chest, ease your worries and fear. He wants to take control and fix this, to do what he knows to do best, but he can’t.

You’ll never trust him again.

You cough, hunching forward, and he grabs the glass of water from the bedside table, pointing the straw towards your mouth. Your features soften when you sip, and once he’s satisfied you’ve had enough, he pulls away. You sag where you’re propped up against the pillows, practically wilting and he wants to scream in frustration, in fear. He has half a mind to take you back to the hospital, and almost did this morning, but stood down after talking to your doctor on the phone.

“Do you think you can sleep?” He asks, and you blink at him, lips parted, like you’re processing his words but unable to answer.

“I don’t know.” You moan, miserably, and his heart breaks a little bit while tears web in your lashes. You’re so sick, and uncomfortable, and he wants to help you but no matter what he does, nothing comforts you. “Where’s Bee?”

“Johnny was going to give her a bit of lunch. In the kitchen.” His fingers spread wide on the bed, desperately seeking you, like they’re moving on their own accord, pulling him closer and closer.

“I want to-“ your words are choked off by another cough and he grimaces. “I want to see her.” You cry, the tears that were gathering in your eyes spilling freely down your cheeks, and you gasp a sob. “I want Bee.”

“Okay, okay.” He tries to console you, and his hand moves closer, now resting against the outside of your knee. “You were resting, darling. He only took her to the kitchen.” He explains, and you shake your head before slumping farther into the bed, your body now overcome with sobs.

“Please.” You moan, and then cough between your tearful breaths. “Simon.” You cry his name, eyes half closed. Something shifts above the sheets, and then warm fingers are brushing against his.

His heart stops in his chest before he realizes it wasn’t intentional, that you were just moving. Still, he can hope.

He says your name, and you cry harder, head heavy, your lungs fighting for each breath, the combination of your distress and the pneumonia choking off your air. “Hey, hey. It’s-“

“Si-Simon.” You gasp, and then your eyes are widening in a haze of fear. “I ca- can’t… can’t breathe.” You’re panicking, you’re scared, and he can’t fight himself well enough to keep his hands for reaching for you.

To his shock, you don’t fight him. He moves slowly, painstakingly so while your body shakes with sobs, but you don’t tense or flinch away.

“Darling,” he whispers. “Can I hold you?” He wouldn’t dare try to without your say so, not when he’s hurt you so badly, betrayed your trust beyond a level of comprehension. If you don’t want him to, he won’t.

But you’re also free falling into a panic attack. Your body is trembling, and he’s scared, holding his breath while you answer with a nod.

It’s enough, enough for him to move forward and pull you into his arms, wrapping you up without holding you too tight, settling his palm on the back of your neck to gently squeeze you there. He runs his other hand up and down your back and you cry into his chest.

“I want Bee.” Your plea is interrupted by another coughing fit, and he leans you back slightly and tilts your face upwards to try to help you breathe.

“Shhh. It’s alright. She’s just outside, Johnny will bring her in. You’re okay. Everything’s okay.”

“It’s n-ot.” You wheeze as he coos above your ear.

The bedroom door creaks open, revealing a hesitant Johnny with a very sleepy baby in his arms, who stops dead in his tracks when he sees what’s happening the bed. The image of you, cradled against Simon, letting yourself be held, letting yourself be touched. He blinks in surprise, and Simon gives him a look. Do not make a big deal.

“She’s right here.” Johnny calls to you, crossing the distance and then sitting hesitantly beside Simon. “Bee’s right here. We didn’t go far, just to the kitchen. Promise.” Your shaking hands reach for her, but you don’t try to hold her, you just place your palm on her chest while you rest against Simon. Your breathing evens out slowly, matching his own, and Bee’s, and your cries quiet to occasional sniffles while your lungs rasp. Minutes pass, and yet you still don’t pull away, instead staying tucked into Simon, body relaxing slowly. His thumb rubs circles into your neck, and Johnny watches with wide eyes.

“Everything’s alright.” Simon murmurs into your hair. “It’s okay. Bee’s here.” You nod, eyes starting to slip shut, body and mind wrung out with exhaustion.

As you drift, Bee does too, until you’re both asleep, with Simon and Johnny holding their breath collectively, eyes flicking from you, to Bee, to one another every other second, like they can’t believe what they’re seeing.

#🍄 anon #peaches asks #peaches writes #soap x reader #soap x ghost x reader #ghost x reader x soap

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djarincore · 4 months

Text

The Name of Love

SUMMARY: You knew him by three names: Mando, Din, and finally, riduur.

PAIRING: din djarin x gn!reader

WORD COUNT: 6.9k

WARNINGS: fluff, angst, canon typical violence, blood, hypothermia, happy ending

A/N: a repost from my previous blog! i've only written 2 full din fics so far but this is def my favorite one <3 thanks again to @xiadeptus for beta reading this

─── ･｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

You first knew him as the Mandalorian, the stoic and aloof bounty hunter that drifted in and out of Tatooine looking for work or ship repairs. The glinting armor was hard not to notice under the scorching twin suns, along with his infamous reputation that followed in whispers—whispers which mainly revolved around the strange, green child he carried around in a bag and the fact that he never showed his face.

When you first got the job at Peli’s garage, thanks to the favor she owed your mother, the sight of the Mandalorian descending the ramp of his beaten-up Razor Crest had you slipping behind a couple of stacked crates with the rest of the quivering pit droids. He strode down the ramp toward your boss who was already reaching for the green child trailing after him.

“There’s my little guy!” She exclaimed, scooping him up and cradling him in her arms. The child cooed and clasped her finger in his three-fingered grasp. His keeper watched on with hands on his hips; the helmet remained solely focused on the child.

“We need a repair,” he said, the rasp in his voice still remaining despite the modulator.

“Sure thing but, just so you know, it’ll cost you a little extra this time. Got a new hire.” She jerked her thumb in your direction.

You took it as your cue to reveal yourself, noting the way his helmet turned, carefully looking you up and down, and his hand slowly moved toward the blaster at his waist, like he wasn’t above shooting the harmless mechanic’s assistant and a couple of droids. You lifted both hands, stained with oil, as a show of goodwill.

“Aw, relax, Mando,” Peli drawled, swatting the air with her nonchalant attitude. “They’re not a droid.”

His hand slipped off the handle, but remained at his side, ready to draw if necessary.

You sent him a friendly half-smile and his gloved fingers twitched.

“Fine.”

The remainder of the day was spent repairing the left wing and engine of his ship, which looked like it had seen the losing side of a gunfight, and you couldn’t help but wonder how he managed to limp down to Tatooine without crashing and burning once he broke through the atmosphere.

The job would have been faster if you had some assistance from the droids, but Peli made it clear they weren’t allowed anywhere near the ship or the Mandalorian, making his disdain for them abundantly clear. You wondered the whole day what a droid could have done to make him hate even the smallest of droids. The theories you built in your head ran wild, ranging from a nasty betrayal by a trusted ally to tripping him in a crowded cantina, embarrassing him so badly he vowed to never show his face ever again.

You leaned against the rope of the swing suspending you off the ground, taking a break from welding metal back together, and watched the Mandalorian move below your feet. He walked with purpose, something a fearsome bounty hunter with a widespread reputation was expected to do; every step was carefully calculated like a predator hunting prey. Behind him was the child clumsily waddling, as fast as his legs could carry him, after the man.

Your lips curved into a soft smile while observing the dichotomy of the two. It warmed your heart to see how attached the child was to his guardian. More questions formed in your mind about their relationship; the rumors didn’t contain the exact details of how the two came to be together.

Maybe the child is his biological son and beneath all the armor is green, wrinkly skin and comically large ears tucked into the helmet, you joked to yourself.

You pressed one of the buttons on the side of your swing to lower yourself to the ground. Your feet touched the floor, but you didn’t get up.

“Your ship should be up and running in no time.”

“Thank you for your help.”

“No pro- Oh!” You exclaimed when something poked at your leg. A three-fingered hand was tapping your leg; large black eyes gazed up at you. You cooed, “Hello there, little guy.”

He tugged at the cuff of your pants, waving his arms in the air. You waved back, fighting back the urge to smooth your fingers over his floppy ears.

“He wants you to hold him.”

“Ah,” you chuckled, cheeks warming. You didn’t have much experience with children; in fact, you didn’t know the first thing about caring for one. They had so many needs, so many different ways of communicating them too. The pressure to mold them into upstanding beings—it was just too much. But, you could definitely hold a child, especially one as cute as him.

You pulled him into your arms and he immediately found the strings of your shirt vastly entertaining.

“I think he likes me,” you quipped.

The child’s babble sounded like a positive response.

“Me too,” the Mandalorian said, leaning against a crate and watching the two of you.

There were multiple rotations between their visits. Each visit brought a new scratch, ding, or completely wrecked engine that made you look on in disbelief, but you were eager to see the two nonetheless. They brought stories of their adventures, bounties, and new people they met.

You would be the first to greet them, standing at the base of the ship’s ramp with a wide grin and many questions budding on the tip of your tongue.

“Hey.”

The modulated voice made you snap out of your thoughts.

“Yes, sir?”

You could hear him huff behind the modulator. He said to just call him Mando the first time you called him sir, but you never picked it up, finding it too entertaining to hear his exasperated sighs.

“Want to get off this planet? I’ve got a job proposition.”

Your goodbyes were easy—a hug for Peli, head pats for each droid—and suddenly, you found yourself sitting in the cockpit of the ship you had been repairing for the past few rotations.

You quickly learned space was cold and you were not prepared. The thin clothes you were used to on Tatooine wouldn’t cut it anymore and it left you shivering in the passenger seat.

You sunk down your seat, wrapping your arms around yourself to find a semblance of warmth.

You weren’t sure what your purpose was in the time between ports, but even if you knew, you were frozen to your seat and unable to move without feeling stiff.

Soon, you fell asleep, lulled by the stars and the sound of beeps and hollow groans of an old ship.

You woke to fabric being draped over your body and a glimmer of beskar.

The hands over the fabric paused; the Mandalorian stepped back, hands returning to his side, flexing at his waist. “Should have told me you were cold.”

You gripped the fabric and realized it was one of his thick, woolen capes which smelled of caf beans and leather. You resisted the urge to nestle your cheek against the wool and savor the comfort it offered.

“I didn’t want to be a bother.”

“You’re a part of my crew now,” he said firmly. “We take care of each other.”

Your heart stuttered, fingers curled tighter around his cape, and you muttered a pathetic, “Yeah.”

From the kindness he offered, you made a silent promise at that moment; as long as the three of you were together, you would do anything to protect them.

It wouldn’t be long before you realized he felt the same.

—

Then, you learned his name, his real name—Din Djarin. It had been a while into your partnership. You learned far more about the two than your theories could have imagined—his Creed, his force-wielding child.

The three of you had a good routine. He would scout out bounties while you either worked on the ship or found other mechanic work elsewhere if the ship was (miraculously) undamaged. Grogu would be passed between the two of you. If Mando’s bounty was too dangerous for him to follow you’d take him for the day, letting him pass you random tools and praising him for helping. And at the end of the day, the three of you reconvened with separate checks that would go toward supplies and other basic necessities. If it was a particularly rough day, you would be forcing him onto a crate and checking his wounds.

“I’m fine,” he would insist, attempting to push your wandering hands aside. But, you could see the unsteady shake of his hand and the sliver of skin and blood showing on his waist where he was cut.

It was a simple routine, but it worked. You had no complaints…

…Well, just one.

“ Kriff, we’re gonna crash!” You cried, shutting your eyes to avoid seeing your imminent doom that took the form of two towering cliffs of ice far too close together for the ship to slip through. The two tailing bounty hunter ships had followed you from Nevaro, after accusing Mando of stealing a bounty from them, which he rightfully caught.

You knew working for a bounty hunter wasn’t going to be easy, comfortable, or safe—but, you trusted him. He was good at what he did and you never doubted it.

The ship turned on its side, jerking your entire body to the right, and left you at the mercy of the belt across your body to keep you in your seat. You could hear the scrape of ice across the bottom of the ship and cringed, knowing you’d have to repair that (if you even made it out of this alive).

When the ship slipped free from the narrow gap and straightened. you let out a breath and opened your eyes. Snow, miles, and miles of it, touched everything your eyes could see.

He glanced at you over his shoulder. If you could see his face, you’d guess it was smug.

You were getting better at reading your faceless partner. He didn’t say much but his body did with every head tilt and shrug. And you would catch yourself spending a lot of time just observing him.

“You’ve gotta stop piloting like that,” you huffed, cradling your head when you feel the slightest throb. “You’re gonna kill me one of these days.”

“Don’t plan on it,” came his monotone response.

The ship cruised, his helmet scanning the horizon, and kept low in the meantime. There was no sign of the other two ships.

You unbuckled your seatbelt and stood; a wave of dizziness had you staggering. When your hand flew out to catch on to something, you found his, already reaching out to steady you in his strong grasp. The brush of his thumb over your knuckles made your breath catch.

“I have to lie down.” To stop your heart from racing at his subtle touches.

You thought you had gotten used to it by now—the way he made you feel safe. Whether it was his hand hovering over the base of your spine as he guided you through a crowded market or how he would always position himself between you and whatever shady character he had dealings with. The small gestures piled up and toyed with your mind. You understood the signs—heart racing, nervous tension in your chest—the budding symptoms of love.

“We’re not in the clear yet.”

You brushed the heat crawling over your neck off and said, “Can’t we land somewhere and wait them out a while? I’m gonna be sick if you start flying upside down.”

The beginning of his argument was cut off by the cockpit door opening. You slipped out and down the ladder into the cargo hold. Some crates shifted to the right of the ship as a result of the sharp turn. You weren’t concerned with them as much as you were with your makeshift bed space, a flimsy sleeping bag and some blankets, which were also flung off to the side. One of your blankets was stuck under a crate, too heavy for you to lift by yourself.

You groaned, weakly tugging at the fabric peeking out beneath. You were cold, tired, and sick—you already hated this planet.

You heard a curse from above and Mando shouted, “Hold onto something!”

You didn’t have time to react before the ship was nose-diving, throwing you against the wall. You clung to the ladder as the ship's sporadic movements jostled your entire body. It continued for a few more seconds before settling and the engines cut out. Everything was finally still, except your heart.

You heard the creaks of ice settling beneath the ship, then cracks. It wasn’t long before the ice gave way to the weight, shattering into a cavern below and dragging the ship with it.

You don’t remember hitting your head, just the scream that came before it. But, when you finally came to, numb and confused, Mando was rattling your shoulders with a panicked voice.

“Wake up.”

You could have sworn in your daze there was a desperate ‘please’ added at the end.

You groaned, peeling your eyes open, “Mando?”

He sighed like a massive weight was lifted off of him. “Yeah,” he said, there was a hint of a smile in his voice. He carefully slipped his arms behind your shoulders and knees. “It’s me. I’ve got you.”

You were half aware of him lifting you, too dazed by the cold settling under your skin and making a home deep in your bones.

The hull was dusted with snow and frost. You spotted a large hole in the side of the ship, crudely covered with a tarp and some crates.

“Got t’ fix,” you mumbled, leaning your head against his shoulder pauldron. You didn’t even know where to start with something that large on this barren planet. If you weren’t so cold, the dread would have set in, realizing you were stranded on a barren planet with little resources to dig yourselves up from a cold grave.

“Not right now,” he grunted, kicking your toolbox aside—the one he gifted you on Nevaro after you eyed it at a stall for too long. He approached the small corner beside his bunk, which was caved in, where there was little snow piled. He set you down, supporting the back of your head with his hand as he laid you against the wall. “I’ll be right back.”

You could’ve protested if your mouth or eyes didn’t feel frozen shut; all you wanted to do was drift off.

“Hey, hey,” he said. He ripped a glove off and pressed his warm hand to your cheek. “Don’t fall asleep.”

You moaned, pushing closer to the warmth, and tried to focus on his visor.

“There you go. Good.”

With your thoughts slowly catching up, you glanced around his shoulders, not seeing a floating pram anywhere. You wanted to get up and rush around him in search of the child, but all you could muster was a sharp turn of your head that still sent pain down your neck. “Where’s-”

Mando brought your face back to him. His steady voice pulled you out of your panic. “He’s fine. He’s up in the cockpit; I’ll bring him down after I get you some blankets.”

“Okay.” You rested your head against the wall and watched as he untied his cape and slipped it over your shoulders, tucking it close around your body.

He disappeared up the ladder. You heard his faint footsteps, scouring the upper level. He returned soon, a few blankets slung over his shoulder and Grogu tucked in his other arm.

He set Grogu down and moved you forward just enough for him to sling more blankets over your shoulders.

If you could feel your face, maybe you’d laugh at how ridiculous you looked and felt, like a small child being coddled by a worried parent. But, he wasn’t a worried parent, he was your employer—your incredibly kind and caring employer, who you often dreamt of as more than an employer, more than a friend.

“Aren’t y-you,” you chattered, “cold, too?”

You worried about him under all that shining armor; he could be hiding an injury like he always did, pretending he was fine and limping off somewhere else to lick his wounds alone. You wished he wouldn’t be so stubborn all the time.

Grogu crawled into your lap, playing with the tips of your frozen fingers. Mando said something about his armor keeping him warm, but you didn’t register any of it when his hands enveloped yours—calloused and warm.

“Try to keep your arms and legs moving,” he said, massaging the palm of your hands. Then he directed his attention to Grogu. “Okay, kid, keep your buir warm. I’m going to repair the ship.”

“Hm?” You cocked your head at the word. Sure, he liked sneaking Mando’a words into his sentences from time to time—sometimes calling you mesh’la or cyar’ika, which made you blush because of how sincere he sounded—but you just assumed they were nicknames. You assumed buir meant babysitter or something along those lines, too. “Stealing my job, Mando?” you quipped instead.

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

When his hands slipped from yours, your fingers twitched, almost asking him not to go. You would warm up faster if he were with you.

He slipped past the tarp, into the cavern of snow. Grogu’s babble drew your attention; his arms were raised.

You apologized, “Sorry, kid, I’d lift you up, but my arms are a bit sore right now.”

He continued to babble as he found comfort nestled in your lap instead. You rested your head against the wall and stared at the opening where Mando left, still feeling the ghost of his warmth on your hand.

The minutes you spent slowly flexing your hands and feet paid off; your strength was slowly returning. Grogu crawled off of your lap and watched as you, with the grace of a newborn calf, pushed yourself onto unsteady feet.

“Okay, kid, let’s go help your dad.” You scooped him up and braced yourself with Mando’s cape, making sure the two of you were snug beneath the fabric before pushing aside the tarp and stepping outside into the frigid weather.

The cold winds were the first to greet you; already, your cheeks were growing numb. Grogu let out a disapproving grunt, clearly not favoring the cold either.

You stayed close to the side of the ship in case your legs gave out and rounded the tail end before finding Mando, with frost coating his armor and hands on his hip, staring at a jumble of wires hanging from an open panel.

Upon seeing his father, Grogu cheered in your arms, alerting the Mandalorian whose head snapped in your direction.

He was already approaching you before declaring, “You need to rest.”

“I can’t cozy up in there while you’re out here all by yourself. Look at you.” You drew a line in the frost coating his chest plate. “You must be freezing under all that.”

“I said I’m-”

“Fine,” you finished. “I know, I know—you’re always fine, Mando.”

You were growing tired of his stubborn attitude concerning his well-being and of standing for so long. You were beginning to sway without realizing it, but Mando’s quick hand on your shoulder steadied you.

“I got you,” he murmured. He took Grogu from you and moved to your side. He wrapped an arm around your shoulders, silently guiding you back into the ship’s hull and onto the spot where the blankets were piled.

Once you were settled, you expected him to wander back out but, to your surprise, he began detaching pieces of his armor.

You watched, mouth agape, as one by one the shining beskar revealed a dark flight suit that molded with the contours of his body. The helmet, of course, stayed.

He eased himself onto the floor beside you and wrapped the three of you beneath the blankets. Your eyes widened when his arm pressed against yours. You dared to rest your head against his shoulder; you relished in the comfort of his presence, finally feeling warmer than ever. His body began to relax gradually with your head on his shoulder and his chest rose and fell in an even rhythm.

With Grogu resting in your lap it almost felt like the three of you were a family, settling in after a long day.

“You’re always protecting everyone,” you said, exhaustion beginning to creep over you once again. “We’re a crew, right? Let me take care of you too.”

You knew the irony in saying that while he was taking care of you, but you hoped he would remember it.

He slipped his gloves off to flex the stiff muscles. “I’m,” he started, “just not used to this.”

“Having a crew?” You guessed.

“Having someone care.”

Your mouth dropped open with a response dying on your tongue. Instead, you resolved to take his hand and curl your fingers through his. They were stiff from the cold, but relaxed once your thumb ran over the ridges of his knuckles.

“You’re a good man and I trust you with my life. Don’t think for a second I don’t care about you, Mando. I-” You cut yourself off.

You what? Loved him? Kriff. He just started opening up to you. Telling him you were in love with him right after would surely make him run in the other direction. You doubted he felt the same. You could read him, but not that well.

“Din.”

You snapped out of your thoughts, relieved he didn’t attempt to figure out what you were going to say. “What?”

“My name’s Din.”

He was looking at you now. Maybe if you squinted hard enough you could catch a glimpse of his eyes behind his darkened visor, but you wouldn’t disrespect his Creed and you didn’t think you could handle seeing his strong gaze, boring into you.

So, you turned your eyes down toward your intertwined hands; you tested his name on your tongue and smiled.

Getting off the ice planet took work—a mix of frustration and determination—and you swore to get a nice vacation on some far, far away planet, preferably with a warm, sunny beach.

But, the ship needed heavier repairs, forcing the three of you to find the nearest planet, Trask, for maintenance. A dock worker was quick to offer his services, charging more than necessary, once you landed.

You frowned when Din agreed without hesitation, dropping the credits into his slimy hands. You could have rolled up your sleeves and got to work yourself with better equipment at hand, but Din insisted on the three of you getting some real rest after the stress of the past three days.

The place was seedy, smelled of fish, and you couldn’t shake the feeling of unwanted eyes stalking the three of you as you passed through the quiet harbor. You and Din walked on either side of Grogu’s floating pram.

You, with a scowl glued to your face, pulled your cape, one of Din’s, tighter around yourself. The toolbox Din gifted you was clasped in your hand, deemed too precious to leave behind while strangers fixed the ship. You leaned into Din and whispered, “We should just go back to Tatooine for the repairs; I can do it.”

“I know you can, but the ship’s too damaged and you know it.”

You huffed.

Grogu mimicked your huff, putting on his best grouchy face, and your frown lightened into a smile, pointing at the boy. “See—even he agrees with me.”

Din let out an amused hum. “When did the two of you decide to team up against me?”

“We hold secret meetings when you’re out and conspire against you.”

“Guess I should watch my back,” he deadpanned.

Night fell quickly on Trask and before you knew it, the streets were oddly quiet, only lit by dim street lights in rounded sections.

Din’s stride grew cautious; his helmet subtly turned to scan the area.

You also took caution, straining your ears for anything out of place, but all you heard was the nearby tide pulling in and out.

There was a shift in the gravel behind you. Din’s hand shot out to shove aside Grogu’s pram, sending him off to a nearby stack of crates, and he could only brush your shoulder before turning and deflecting a blaster shot with his vambrace. The heat from the blast radiated in the air around you.

“Run!” He barked, ripping his blaster from its holder and firing off a shot into the dark.

Your feet hesitated and your heart stuttered when another blast hit his chest plate, forcing a grunt from him. But, the sound of worried coos snapped you out of it. You turned and ran toward Grogu who watched the fight with large eyes.

Three figures emerged from the darkness, dressed like pirates, and armed with unrelenting blasters all aimed at Din.

“Give up the armor, Mando.” One of them demanded.

“It’s time to hide, okay?” You said, tucking Grogu into the pram. Your thumb brushed over the mythosaur necklace he always wore like a lucky charm and you were praying it would work. You pressed the button on the outside of his pram to shut it.

The fight was coming to a close by the time you turned back, much to your relief. Two were knocked out cold, sprawled across the floor while the remaining one continued to fight. Both of them resorted to hand-to-hand combat after they managed to disarm one another.

Just when you thought you could relax, the remaining pirate pulled out a blade and took a swipe at Din, plunging it deep into his side and back out. Your breathing stopped when Din staggered and fell to his knees.

The pirate grabbed him by his cowl, pressing the bloodied blade to his throat, and sneered, “Give up.”

Your hands shook. Not like this, you thought. You couldn’t— wouldn’t —lose him. You dropped your toolbox and fell to your knees, wrenching it open to look for anything that would help. You pulled the largest item free, the hammer, and ran. Adrenaline pushed your feet toward the two and, putting all your weight into it, you swung at the pirate's head, sending him stumbling back.

Only dazed, the pirate sent you a menacing glare, lips pulled back into a snarl, and spat out curses, promising you’d regret it.

Your hand clenched the hammer, heart racing, ready to swing again as he prepared to lunge at you. Not even fear or the promise of death would stop you from saving Din.

Then, something ignited, cold and droning like echoes of the abyss, behind the pirate.

You smelt the smoke before the nauseating burnt flesh. It made your stomach roll.

A haunting glow emitted from the pirate's chest before it was sliced clean through. He fell—lifeless—with a thud, crimson leaking from the gash and pooling around him.

Din stood over him—one hand clutching his waist and the other holding the darksaber. His chest rose and fell; his helmet was fixated on the body. You could hear the leather of his gloves cry as his hand tightened around the hilt of the saber.

You never saw him use it before. It looked more like an accessory on him rather than a weapon. He once explained its bloody history and how he came to acquire it. The weight of its importance haunted him, a burden he never wished to bear.

“Oh, Maker,” you cried, rushing toward him. The darksaber unignighted; the heavy atmosphere disappeared along with it and time continued. You dropped the hammer and pressed your hand to his wound. Blood seeped through his fingers and onto yours.

He grunted, “I’m…”

Your wavering voice saying his name made him pause.

“Let’s get out of the street,” he said instead. He waved Grogu’s pram forward with the controls on his vambrace. It opened, revealing the whimpering child.

The three of you limped all the way to an inn. When the innkeeper sent you a weary look, you demanded the first room available and a medical kit—whatever the price. After slapping the credits on the counter, you snatched up the kit and dragged Din toward the room, not caring about the drops of blood staining the hallway.

The room was small and gray; a single bed set in the middle of the room, a nightstand on either side, and a fresher. You eased him onto the bed, where he slumped and groaned.

The medical kit was meager; a suture kit, antiseptic wipes, and a few bacta patches, but it would do. You dashed to the fresher to wash your hands. You scrubbed them viciously, watching his blood run down the sink. Tears blurred your vision. The red wouldn’t stop running.

When you emerged from the fresher, his shirt was already rolled up and he was attempting to clean his wound. Grogu was asleep in his pram, wiped out from all the excitement.

You released a tired sigh. “Let me.”

You moved to take the cloth from him, kneeling at his feet and wiping around the area of the wound gently.

“Don’t do that again,” he rasped.

“Save your life?” The playful tone you attempted fell flat. As much as you wanted to be amused, the fear of losing him still suffocated you. He was safe, your thoughts repeated.

Once the wound was cleaned you pulled the needle from the kit. You were in over your head and a bit nauseous. Cleaning wounds was easy, but stitching them up was something else.

You’ve seen him cauterize his own wounds and pinched your nose when the smell became too much. He didn’t deserve the scars they left behind and this was your opportunity to finally take care of him.

You willed your hands not to tremble as you notched the needle through his skin, apologizing when he sucked in a sharp breath or flinched.

“I told you to run.”

Your voice was finally firm when you said, “I’m not going to leave you.”

He was your partner, through and through, and you cared for him.

When you were finished, you unwrapped a bacta patch and laid it over the suture. You smoothed over the patch and withdrew your hands.

He was already sitting up taller, no longer hunched over or wheezing. You knew it was a good sign but you still trembled all over.

You raised your head, but your eyes were stuck on his cowl where a sliver of his blood was left from the blade. The tears were returning, flooding your bottom lashes.

Would that pirate have killed him right there on the street, stripped him of his armor, and left him like trash? You would have had to drag his body back to the ship—would have to tell Grogu his father was dead.

“Cyar’ika, look at me,” he said, finding your cheek with his palm. “Just breathe.”

You didn’t realize you were gasping for breath, tears running down your cheeks until your eyes finally connected with his visor.

“I just can’t lose you, Din,” you cried. “I can’t .”

There was so much you wanted to say—so much he needed to know. You were so close to losing him and losing the chance to admit how you’d grown to feel over the course of your partnership.

He guided you onto the bed and held you until the tears stopped and subsided into sniffles. Your face was buried in his cowl and your arms were thrown around his shoulder.

“I can’t lose you either,” he admitted, a waver in his voice. You were so close you could almost hear the sound of his real voice. His words were tender and sincere.

Your breath hitched and a realization washed over you.

He pulled back and you pulled yourself out of his neck with wide eyes. Cold metal met your forehead.

“You mean far too much to me.”

For a man of few words, he still said so much. Your hand brushed below the rim of his helmet. “I love you, Din,” you confessed.

Your heart pounded as you waited for his response—for even the sharpest intake of breath. But, it was silent—all but your heart remained still as he processed your words. Your hand slipped away, back to the safety of your personal bubble, which was beginning to shrink as the silence became an oppressive weight on your shoulders.

Say something, you wanted to shout. Did you read his words wrong? Was it just appreciation for his… employee?

“Close the curtains and turn off the light.”

Your brows furrowed and you cocked your head to the side. “What?”

“Please.”

You stood with a frown and shuffled to shut the curtains, then made your way to the light switch. You took one last glance over your shoulder, before flipping the switch and submerging the room in darkness. You could hardly see his silhouette as you shuffled back to the bed with your hands out in front.

A calloused hand found your wandering ones, carefully pulling you down to sit beside him once again, not letting go. Then, you heard a click and a hiss, like he was detaching his—

Your eyes widened when you realized what he was doing and you tried pulling away. Even in the darkness, where shadows fell across the silhouette of his body, you couldn’t risk seeing him—no matter how curious.

“Din, no-”

“It’s alright,” he reassured. The low rasp of his voice was no longer modified by his helmet. He chased after you in the dark; his hand moved to the back of your neck, drawing your face closer to his. You could feel the warmth of his breath brushing across your lips.

The smell of caf and leather drew you closer you and you fell into its embrace. It was your safety, your haven—the home you found in him, along with his son and his beaten-down ship.

“ Ni kar’tayl gar darasuum, ner cyar’ika, ” he whispered into the darkness, gentle devotion laced in his words. “ I love you .”

When he kissed you, it was slow, a tender meeting of lips which you both relaxed into. The weight off your shoulders disappeared and all you could do was smile against his lips and draw him closer.

That night you traced his features in the dark, committing every outline and curve to memory, with a content smile and full heart while he held you close. You didn’t need to see his face to love him; it could wait—forever if it meant you’d still have him.

“You know,” he said in the darkness with you tucked close under his arm, “you wield a hammer well. It reminds me of someone I know.”

“Really? Who?”

It was nearly a full cycle before you met the Armorer, the mysterious figure Din would mention from time to time, a woman he seemed to respect.

You were nervous. Though he never said it directly, she was like a maternal figure and you wanted to make a good impression.

Ever since Trask, the two of you were closer than ever. He had no reservations when it came to you. His hand would lay firmly against your lower back as he crowded around you, guiding you through busy markets, pulling you close whenever someone bumped into you. You no longer slept alone, trading out your flimsy sleeping bag for a cozy spot in his bed. At night when the lights were out, you’d finally get to kiss him and share dreams.

The covert was located on a barren planet. You wouldn’t have guessed there was any life if it weren’t for the scattered Mandalorian sparing at the mouth of a cave.

By the time you landed near the lake, only two Mandalorians emerged to greet you.

“It’s been a while.” A large, blue man said upon approaching, greeting the three of you with a simple nod. He towered over everyone, a mass of muscle and armor that radiated intimidation.

As he approached, your foot slid back as you bent your neck to meet his visor and you bumped into Din. He rested a hand on your shoulder. “This is Paz, my brother.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” you said, sticking a hand out.

The hand that takes yours is firm; he shook once and let go. The hand on your shoulder squeezed.

“It seems your clan has grown.” The figure to Paz’s right spoke, her visor trained on the hand over your shoulder. You needed no introduction for her. It was obvious in the way she spoke, authoritative and clear, that she was the Armorer.

Your lips quirked. A clan, huh?

She welcomed you briefly and Din requested a private audience in her forge. When Din handed Grogu off to you, he said, “Stay with Paz, cyar’ika.”

“Cyar’ika?” The Armorer paused. “Have you claimed them as your riduur?”

You cast Din a curious glance. Riduur?

“I… haven’t,” he said carefully.

“I see.” She resumed her pace and disappeared into the cave.

Din followed, not before pressing his forehead to yours. It was like a kiss, he explained once. You were fine with it. You knew as soon as the day was over, he’d make up for all the kisses you’d missed out on.

“He seems to like you.”

“I would hope so,” you quipped, turning to Paz once Din was out of sight. “He loves me, after all.”

You finally got your well-deserved vacation—on a planet called Pabu, with bright blue skies and a sparkling blue ocean—and more than you could have ever wished for.

Gentle waves lapped at your bare feet as you leaned back against the palm of your hands to soak in the last of the dying sun.

Relaxing like this felt rare and fleeting; part of you was worried some other danger would rear its ugly head and ruin the tranquility. But, a quick glance toward Grogu, who was splashing in the water, and Din, standing watch to make sure he didn’t snatch up any crabs as a snack, dispelled any worry and replaced it with a warmth that spread through your chest like the sun's rays.

You cracked a smile at the Mandalorian who was barefoot as well, after you convinced him to step into the waves, with his pants rolled up to the bottom of his knees.

“Stop that,” came Din’s chastising demand. Grogu was levitating a poor crab toward his mouth before letting it fall back into the water with a grumble, his ears pulled back as he looked up at his father with a pout. “You’ll ruin your dinner,” he reasoned, reaching down to scoop the fussing child from the water.

You stood, wiping away sand clinging to your thighs, and walked over to the pair. Din’s helmet followed you as you approached, his shoulders were far more relaxed than you’d ever seen them.

Even when you stood in front of them, finger brushing along Grogu’s ear as he cooed, his gaze did not stray. You just thought it was your bathing suit; it showed off more skin than usual. Which, you admit, you hoped would catch his attention.

“Problem?” You teased, looking at him with a sly smile.

He shook his head slowly. He was uncharacteristically quiet, more so than usual. Ever since his private chat with the Armorer, he’d been distracted. Staring more than usual—at you, the controls of the ship, the floor—like he was lost deep in thought.

You looked out at the sunset, a wash of orange and gold against a glittering sea. You let out a wistful sigh. “I could spend forever here with you two.”

“You mean that?”

“Nothing would make me happier.”

His hand drifted toward the pouch on his belt, fingering the hem. A nervous habit, you assumed, he picked up after visiting the Armorer.

You rested your hand on his and asked, “Are you sure there’s no problem?”

“Marry me.”

You froze, mouth agape.

“M-marry you?”

“I wish for more days like today, too—safe, peaceful days together with our son.” He opened his pouch and pulled out a silver ring that glittered against the setting sun, reminding you of his armor.

Your hand slipped from his to your mouth, covering up the shock written across your face. Your watering eyes moved between the two who’ve grown so close to your heart. They were your life, your home, and you’d spend forever with them. You knew your answer—you’ve always known, ever since he asked you to join them. In your heart it was always—

“Yes,” you cried, throwing your arms around the two of them. “Yes, absolutely!”

You stayed tucked in his arms with Grogu nestled between the two of you. And, in the foreground of a golden sky, he asked if you would cite the Mandalorian vows.

Riduur, he said, you would be mine, and I you. Our hearts will be written together in song.

“Mhi solus tome, mhi solus dar'tome, mhi me'dinui an, mhi ba'juri verde.”

“We are one when together, we are one when parted, we share all, we will raise warriors.”

Finally, he was no longer just the Mandalorian or Din, he was your riduur.

#the mandalorian #din djarin x reader #din djarin x you #the mandalorian x reader #the mandalorian fanfiction #the mandalorian fanfic #gn!reader #my works

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florencemtrash · 6 months

Text

Flame, Shadow, Beast : Flame

Azriel x Reader x Eris

Summary: Years after Eris frees you from his father’s prison, you’ve managed to find a new love, new friends, and build a life for yourself in Autumn. But when a certain Shadowsinger stumbles upon your home, dragging in painful memories of betrayal and longing, you’ll have to face the things you left in the past and make choices about the future you want.

Warnings: Fluffy Eris x Reader and our favorite monster, Bryaxis, makes an appearance.

Flame, Shadow, Beast: Masterlist

Masterlist of Masterlists

It was a cruel irony that winning a war was the easiest part of ruling. Eris thought about it often, doubts invading his rare moments of quiet; Maybe he’d made a mistake. Maybe the lives of thousands of Autumn Court members - both those loyal to him and to his father - hadn’t been worth the weight of the crown now sitting on his head.

The wood and gold had been harvested from the body of one of the Old Gods to whom some of the rural folk still owed their ultimate allegiance; the rubies had come from a land beyond the western seas as a declaration of war back when they’d been ruled by a more ancient race of beings - the predecessors to the Blood Rubies the Summer Court was so fond of doling out. Eris wondered if he’d ever get used to carrying so much history on his body.

The sun had barely crested over the treetops, blanketing the forest floor with streams of liquid gold, when he came across your village. The first fae he saw - a female with short elk horns extending gracefully from her temples - nearly dropped her basket at the sight of him. Eris gently bowed his head in greeting and her face flushed as crimson as the red garment dye that stained her hands.

“My High Lord,” She breathed out, dropping to her knees despite the prickling straw that perpetually littered the roads.

Heads of varying shades of chestnut and scarlet appeared behind closed windows like candlights. During the harvest months everyone woke and slept with the sun.

One by one fae streamed out of their homes, each of them carrying tribute in the form of freshly baked bread, baskets of apples and peaches, sheepskin cloaks, and barrels of mead.

“Stand.” Eris gently commanded them as they fell to their knees, “We’re just passing through.” He could see the hesitation in their eyes. They feared disrespecting him.

Eight years of being High Lord and he had yet to perfect the delicate balance between distance and familiarity with his people.

Halvor coughed from beside him, eyes raised from beneath the shadow of his bronze helm.

Get off your horse and talk to them. His eyes said, repeating the mantra that you liked to say around the royal pair.

Eris understood and dismounted with grace and power. With his scarlet and gold riding cloak, flaming hair, and ruby crown he looked like the spirit of Autumn come to life - all sharp edges and burning stoicism. He was a living fire.

But fire could give warmth as much as pain - nurture and grow as much as it could raze the world to the ground. So Eris took his time to speak with the people. He sampled their mead and ale, complimented the pixies who wove threads of warm oranges, yellows, and reds with their nimble fingers, and visited the rolling fields of corn, barley, and wheat that waved in the brisk breeze. The gray-tinged sky above tasted of power and freedom.

Under Beron’s reign, the fruits of the fields would have fallen entirely under the purview of the High Lord with little remaining for the people who tended the long grasses. Now that they were allowed to own their own land and keep what was due to them, the air was lighter here, happier. It was the first harvest in a long time where they’d feel comfortable enough to celebrate properly.

The mask ebbed away, leaving him feeling lighter than he had in ages as he walked through a town.

A familiar face stared out from behind the small crowd that had gathered by the wheat fields. Talk of this year’s harvest festival rose in the air until everyone could taste the spiced rum, roasted pistachios, caramelized apples, and pumpkin with fresh cream on their tongues. It was still months away, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t get excited now.

Eris broke away - an easy task when they parted ways for him like a hot knife through butter - and approached your smiling figure.

“I was wondering what was taking you so long.” You said, clasping your hands behind your back and smiling at Eris.

“So you came all this way just to investigate?” Eris arched his brow. You were no stranger to these people (and much beloved), but you preferred to keep to your little cottage beyond the town.

“Surprisingly, yes. For you, I would come all this way. And,” You shook the small parcel in your arm, “For Aliona’s candles.”

He grinned and offered you his arm, which you accepted, and quietly began to walk back to where Halvor had been dutifully waiting with the horses… and taking more than a few samples of drinks from beside his stead.

“I also wanted to make sure he hadn’t killed you in your sleep yet.” You said, tilting your head towards his brother.

“Careful, Y/n.”

Halvor was the youngest of Autumn’s trueborn sons, and had grown to become Eris’s second over the course of the war and the years that followed. Cruelty was still hammered into his bones - a disfiguring mark left by their father - but disloyalty was not one of his many negative traits. He’d been the only one to come to Eris’s aid in the war, and subsequently the last of Eris’s brothers to survive. That counted for something in your book.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it seriously, but I could’ve poked fun in a better way.” You said softly, gently leaning into his side. He forgave you quickly. He could never stay angry at you - he wasn’t even sure it was possible.

Halvor tipped his head towards you, eyes the color of freshly brewed coffee staring at you with mischief.

“My Lady.” He said half-mockingly, sweeping out his arm into a shallow bow.

You rolled your eyes. “How many times have I told you not to call me that?”

“Why not? Is my brother not a good enough romp for you? If you want better company I could-”

Eris cut off his words with a growl of warning. Halvor only tipped his head back and laughed - a grating sound that eight years of peace under Eris’s rule still hadn’t managed to file away.

“We’ll be walking to her home from here.” Eris said, slipping into his High Lord voice, “Try and keep your distance and be on the lookout.” Halvor nodded, turning serious at the shift in his brother’s voice. There were countless enemies who would be happy to snatch the crown away from a new, as of yet untested, High Lord.

He followed obediently, keeping his distance as you and Eris both bade farewell to the townspeople.

You lived on a patch of land too far to even be considered the outskirts of town, but you were a familiar face to everyone. A healer by trade and Eris’s most trusted advisor and friend, you were the one they called upon in the dead of night when evil whispered nearby or sickness fell upon them.

Evaldre, they called you in one of the Old Tongues. The exact meaning had been lost to time, but it spoke of someone cherished and highly regarded. Some of the bold ones even went so far as to call you “Our High Lady.”

Ten years ago uttering those words would have meant the swift swing of a sword on one’s neck. If High Lord Eris knew of it, he never seemed to mind.

Bryaxis waited for you on your doorstep, pleasantly lounging in a patch of light and watching the gentle fall of crisp leaves from the trees above. Both Eris and Halvor’s horses groaned low in their throats, hooves pressing into the soil to stop before the clearing. Halvor whistled at them to move forward, but they refused.

“It’s that devil dog of yours,” Halvor said, dismounting and tying off the pair on a low hanging elm branch, “Makes them anxious.”

He whispered words of comfort to them, sliding his hands along their thick necks until they stopped bucking against the reins. Eris had his dogs and Halvor had his horses.

“He’ll stay inside then. Wouldn’t want you to have to walk back to the Forest House with your tail between your legs because you lost the horses.”

Eris smirked when Halvor threw an obscene gesture your way.

The dog in question, black as night with shining silver-blue eyes, stretched and nuzzled into your outstretched hand as you reached your front door, Eris following closely behind.

“Will you be long?” Halvor called out to Eris, raising his eyebrows suggestively with his hyena grin.

“Go home if you’re so impatient. I can make it back on my own.”

“I’ll wait til noon.” If Eris was finished by then, it would mean they took care of business… if Eris wasn’t finished by then, it would mean they were taking care of other business, business Halvor would do no good sticking around for. He snorted at the thought, then lost himself in imagining the other females he might be able to seduce back at the Forest House.

You both passed through the enchantments woven into the wood of your home, feeling a rush of power pour over you like water over stone.

Eris snapped his fingers and the candles you’d placed on your dining table and mantle burst to life, fluttering about like dancers. The fireplace followed suit, sending a wave of warmth throughout the house. Firelight bounced off the rich velvet and creams that adorned your home - a cleaner mimic of the Autumn lands that existed behind the walls and flooded in through the open windows.

The Forest House was a place of luxury, massive enough that it would take you an entire morning just to walk from one end to another, and filled to the brim with treasures of gold, bronze, and enough precious jewels to sink a ship. It was a palace fit for a High Lord. But this was a home, so he took off his crown and hung up his cloak.

“What happened to him?” Eris said, kneeling on the ground and giving Bryaxis a well-deserved scratch behind the ears. The millennia-old creature closed his eyes in satisfaction. “The last time I saw him he was a cat.”

You chuckled, bustling about in the kitchen for a tea set that would match and piling pastries on a plate. The smell of browned butter and strawberry rhubarb jam waltzed in the air.

“He’s been experimenting with new forms.” You said, smugness and pride warming your chest. Not so long after Eris had freed you from the mountain and given you a new home, Bryaxis had found you, drawn to your power. Twin bargain tattoos snaked up from the bridges of your feet to your ankles like vines up a trellis - the first promised that you would do no harm to one another in exchange for dual protection, the second allowed you to take a portion of his power, giving him to opportunity to mold his being into a form that could experience the world in a more physical sense.

Gone was the shapeless creature of shadow and nightmares. Enter Bryaxis the wolf-dog (and occasional housecat) who still radiated enough power to scare away any creature (wicked or otherwise) that dared to disturb the peace of their home. But he could curl up by the windows and watch the night sky uninhibited, and in his heart he was a creature of violence and simplicity in equal measure.

“I like this one better than the cat.” Eris said with a grin, for the monster had copied the shape of one of his prized hunting dogs. Bryaxis seemed to growl in appreciation when Eris straightened up.

He sighed in contentment, feeling the stress of his crown melt away when you wrapped your arms around his middle, burying your face in the crook of his neck and breathing in the scent of cedar, smoke, and cinnamon.

“Hello.” He murmured softly, turning in your arms and pressing his lips against your forehead.

“Hello.” You whispered, brushing your lips against his with a sigh, “I missed you. Where have you been all this time?” The finished reports on your desk, much like your empty bed, had been waiting patiently for Eris’s next visit.

He hesitated, pulling away to look at you. He brushed aside a few stray strands of hair that had fallen out of your braid. “The Night Court.”

You stiffened, “Keir?”

He shook his head, frowning, “Rhysand.”

You blinked, and he saw darkness pass through your eyes.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I wasn’t sure how you’d take it.”

Twelve years.

You’d been Beron’s prisoner for decades before. Then you’d escaped and managed a couple of years of peace. You’d found a home and a family… or so you thought. And then twelve years ago you’d been betrayed - handed back to the now deceased High Lord on a silver platter and trapped beneath the mountain for four years. It made your blood boil to think about the people who helped put you there.

“You’ve been dealing with them for years now,” You forced out in a diplomatic tone, “It’s good for you to have allies, especially strong ones like them.”

“Y/n-”

“You should've told me. I don’t want you to worry about my feelings when it comes to these things. Autumn comes first and-”

“I’ll always worry about you.” Eris said, tilting your chin up and catching the moisture gathering in your eyes that you’d furiously tried to blink away, “And there’s no choice between you and my Court. You belong here. To protect Autumn - to protect you - are the same thing, my love.”

Your cheeks burned at the careful way he spoke, the sincerity in his voice he reserved solely for you in moments like this.

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you, Y/n. I promise it won't happen again."

Fury burned in his stomach, a continuation of the anger that had steadily been eating away at his patience during his visit to the Night Court. To see the Inner Circle look so safe and happy in the bubble they’d carved for themselves in Velaris, naive to the pain and suffering they’d caused you, had made him want to burn The House of Wind to the ground. Alliance be damned.

He hated them nearly as much as he had hated his own father.

“I don’t want to think about them.” You declared, setting your jaw and smoothing away the lines of anger that had formed on Eris’s forehead, “To hell with them.”

Eris smirked, loving the determination that settled in your eyes as you dragged him over to the living room and finished setting up the tea that had started to whistle on the stovetop. You would carve out a space for yourself in this world and be happy, even if it killed you.

“To hell with them.” He repeated.

Business and pleasure. The two were impossible for him to separate, which is why he cherished time spent with you. The pair of you spoke easily together, seamlessly transitioning from discussions of grain reports, treaties, and trade deals to banter about the Harvest Festival and the latest court gossip. Halvor was long gone, and Bryaxis off hunting, when the talking ceased and Eris found himself comfortably spread out on your velvet couch, shirt unbuttoned, and head resting in your lap as you wove your fingers through his hair.

He opened his eyes, lazy and slow, and quietly took in your features - the slope of your nose, the gentle curves of your cheeks and lips as you smiled at him, the contentment in your eyes that shifted into deep thought.

He waited for you to share them with him.

“I’ve been thinking about your proposal.” You said carefully and he froze beneath your hands.

“You-you have?” Eris swallowed and sat up, keeping his distance even as he dared to hope. You’d both been keeping your relationship secret, visiting each other under the guise of court business and court business only. It had certainly started out that way, but things had quickly shifted into something far more intimate and worthy of secrecy… Then Eris had asked if it could stop being so secret.

You nodded, searching his face for something more than the neutral mask every High Lord learned to master.

You moved onto his lap, laying your hands on the sides of his face as his eyes widened ever so slightly, “My answer is yes.”

“Yes?” He asked in disbelief.

Yes to living with him. Yes to going to court with him. Yes to showing the world that he was not alone in his duty. Yes to being by his side wherever either of you went.

No more hiding in this house on the outskirts. No more being afraid of what had happened in the past. No more loneliness.

“Yes.”

He shuddered under your touch and suddenly he was everywhere. His hands roamed the expanse of your back, pulling at the fabric of your bodice. Red locks as vivid as flame got knotted beneath your fingers, and his body pressed flush against yours, desperate for any contact as his chest continued to shake with laughter.

You stayed with him on that couch, neither of you wanting to bother with the effort of walking the extra twenty steps to your bedroom, as articles of clothing were hastily torn off and allowed to float onto the floor in crumples of fabric.

A growl from just outside your front door, low and gravelly enough to shake the ground, woke the two of you up. The sun was kissing the horizon on its way down, lateral rays of light streaming through the window and splashing onto the bookshelves and walls like gold paint. Eris groaned with displeasure, pulling you flush against his chest when you dared to draw yourself up on your arms to look at the door.

You giggled against him, pulling a rare smile from his lips when he felt your laughter.

He was all warmth and color beneath you as you shouted at Bryaxis to give you more time alone. He could practically hear the rolling of eyes with the huff that Bryaxis gave out. But he eventually trotted away to find a patch of soft grass from which to watch the sun set.

“It’s good to know a murderous beast like him still has a sense of humor.” Eris quipped, practically humming with pleasure when you melted into him. “You would know. You can be funny sometimes.”

“Sometimes?!”

“Sometimes!”

“You must give me more credit than that.”

“I will not.”

“You must. Your High Lord demands it.” Eris said, puffing out his chest and deepening his voice.

“Your High Lord demands it.” You parroted in a silly voice that made Eris chuckle and kiss you again.

You laid in the silence for as long as you could, until the sun was once again buried in the ground and the calls of the Forest House could not be ignored. With every piece of clothing Eris pulled back on his body, the vulnerable joy that came from being with you seemed to dim.

Was he a lovesick fool for asking you to come to court and be with him? Was the protection of a High Lord worth the dangers that came with it? Lucien had been the first of their brothers to fall in love and he had paid for it dearly. Sometimes Eris had nightmares that you would suffer the same fate.

Eris watched you as you laced up your bodice with quick fingers, fixed your hair, and smoothed your skirts. You looked heavenly in the light of the fire. You were everything he could have dreamed of and more… because you were real… and you loved him as fiercely as he loved you. Which meant he could lose you.

“Y/n.” He whispered your name like a prayer, drawing your attention. You drew close to him, pressing your forehead against his as he took a deep breath, “What you’re agreeing to… you know what it will mean, don’t you?”

You closed your eyes and nodded. This was no light decision and it was why you’d taken three months to come up with an answer for him.

“It will mean people will come for me, and never stop coming for me, just to hurt you and to hurt this Court.” Eris flinched, but you wouldn’t let him open his mouth to dissuade you. You’d given this much thought, and your decision was made.

“It will mean constant scrutiny from the other Lords and Ladies. A life spent in a house known for its history of cruelty and disloyalty. A life that will never fully be my own.”

Eris was beginning to think he’d truly made a terrible mistake in asking you to be with him. But before that cold mask of his could fall over his features, you grasped his face in yours hands and forced him to look at you.

“But it will also mean a chance to be with you. A chance to lead alongside the first person to give me a real home - a real family. A chance to continue to build and protect what I love. I love you, Eris, and I love Autumn, and I’ll be damned if I don’t protect what I love.”

Eris clenched his teeth, holding back the emotion that threatened to spill out like a ruptured damn.

“I won’t be like this at the Forest House.” He said, hating the truth of the words that fell off his tongue, “I won’t be able to show who I truly am when I’m around others, at least not for now. They’ll call you foolish, or cruel, or wicked for being with me. I can’t promise you an established and worthy court. I-”

“Then we’ll build it ourselves.” You said fiercely, pouring your power into the words, “We’ll build a new court, a new life for ourselves and everyone here. I know you’ll do everything you can to fix things, even if it breaks you.” You whispered the next words reverently against his lips, “Let me help you. Let me do it with you.”

Eris let the tears run rivers down his cheeks, even as he set his jaw, and stared resolutely into your eyes.

“Let’s do it then. Together.”

<- Previous Chapter Next Chapter ->

______

Author's note:

*shouts from the mountaintops* I just want Eris to be happy! And I want him to have someone he trusts that can rule alongside him!

That's it. That's the note. Oh and let me know if you'd like to be tagged in future chapters.

Love,

Florence B.

Taglist: @nightless @mmb-09 @thesnugglingduck @cleverzonkwombatsludge @kemillyfreitas @logankemaek @the-sweet-psycho @a-frog-with-a-laptop @flameandshadowx @applerubyy

#eris x reader #azriel x reader #azriel x reader x eris #eris fluff #eris vanserra #eris x y/n #azriel x y/n #azriel shadowsinger #eris acotar #autumn #autumn court #night court #the night court #the inner circle #azriel angst #eris angst #acotar #acotar fanfiction #bryaxis

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kowaiitenshii · 11 months

Text

[Wish We Never Met]

Pairing: Kylo Ren x Reader

Plot Summary: You haven’t seen Kylo Ren since he destroyed the Jedi academy you both called home in your youth, and you want nothing more than to forget about him. That doesn’t stop him from reaching out.

Warnings: Kidnapping. Kylo is his own warning. Angst?

Word Count: 2.3k

A/N: Hello again everyone! This oneshot is the product of a betrayal prompt from a good friend of mine! If this does well and people enjoy it, I will be open to prompts and requests and if the demand is high enough, I may even write a part 2 for this. Thank you so much for all the love on Sunkiller Lullaby again as well!! Please enjoy!

A perfectly clear night on Ossus, a rare meteor shower had been forecasted that night, and you didn’t dare to miss it.

You and your best friend, Ben Solo, had snuck out against your Master’s wishes to watch the shower together.

It was once in a lifetime, after all.

You couldn’t have thought of a better person to sneak out with, you’d known him since you were just ten years old; not that you had many other friends in the academy regardless.

The two of you never quite fit in with the other padawan learners, having earned reputations for being too reckless, too quick to anger, too ready for a fight. But you found solace in one another, always sparring, studying, or shirking off your responsibilities to go on some ill-advised adventure together.

As the two of you grew, as did your fondness for one another. Master Luke began separating you more and more, fearing that you would build ties too strong to sever.

Attachment, of course, was strictly forbidden.

But that did little to stop you from stealing away to see the person whom you were closest with in the entire world whenever you could.

The two of you laughed like the foolish teenagers you were as you ran through the lush green field littered with wildflowers together hand-in-hand, searching for the perfect spot to watch the show.

Cresting the top of the hill, Ben suddenly dropped to the ground, pulling you along with him as you tumbled down through the long grass. As you came to a stop, landing on top of him at the bottom of the hill, you playfully punched him in the arm.

“You really ought to be more careful Ben! We could have gotten hurt!” you scolded him, still laughing like mad.

“You know I wouldn’t let that happen!” he reassures you, laughing back at you as you shift off of him and take a seat next to him in the tall grass.

The two of you spent a long time in comfortable silence, watching the meteors shoot over your heads. It was an awe-inspiring sight, countless comets of every colour followed by their glowing tails lighting up the entire sky above. It truly was beautiful, and you were still unsure if you’ve seen such beauty since.

You spent hours just watching, enchanted by the ethereal lightshow.

That is, until you looked towards Ben, and instead of watching the beauty of the stars, he was watching you.

Your breath caught in your throat, and your heart swelled in an unfamiliar way as you looked at him, realising in that moment that he had grown up, no longer the awkward, lanky boy you knew as a child.

His eyes sparkled innocently in the dim light, reflecting the colours of the stars. His lips were pink and parted, as if to ask something that was caught just on the tip of his tongue. His long raven hair blew in the gentle breeze, tousled by your tumble down the hill.

For a split second, you envisioned running your fingers carefully through his soft locks to fix it for him before forcing yourself to look away.

Cheeks hot and heart thumping in your chest, you tried to remind yourself of the rules of the Jedi you so desperately tried to uphold. You knew attachment was wrong, and love could only serve to destroy you. And yet, the idea of a life lived without ever knowing love, that kind of love, left a hole in your heart that ached for it.

Clenching your fists so tightly your nails dug into the palms of your hands and closing your eyes, you tried your hardest to push your feelings down, to bottle them up and seal them away.

The gentle feeling of Ben carefully, almost sheepishly placing a large hand to your left cheek and turning you to face him snapped you out of your quiet rumination. The sensation of his touch was warm and tingling, spreading goosebumps across your skin like wildfire.

Your eyes met again, Ben measuring your reaction, looking hesitantly from your eyes to your lips and back again, as if he too could sense what you were feeling.

Given the tender, vulnerable expression that spread across his countenance, you knew that he could. The rough pad of his thumb ghosted over your cheekbone, your skin feeling electrified as he touched it, the energies between you rich and palpable.

“(Y/N)...” He whispered your name like a prayer.

Before he could speak again, you would take his face between your hands, crashing your lips into his in a moment of reckless abandon.

They’re soft and wet, the feeling of the kiss itself and the mixing of energies setting you both on fire.

You lose yourself in it, all teeth and tongue and burning desire, kissing him over and over again.

Ben is just about to lay you down right there, in the soft grass beneath the stars, before you force yourself to pull away. Sitting up pin straight and wiping the spit away from your lips, you were too ashamed to even look back at him.

The world goes black.

The next scene that plays is the one that has torn you apart for years.

Standing before the devastated Jedi academy you called home for nearly your entire life, you watched as it burned to ash. Tears flowed in rivers down your cheeks as you sobbed in agony of all that was lost, all because of the boy you loved.

Falling to your knees, Ben’s name tore its way out of your throat in a grief-stricken scream.

Eyes flying open, you jolt upright in bed.

You’re then hit by the same cold realisation that it was all a dream, as you are every time you have that dream. Although, you suppose it's more of a recollection than a dream.

Rubbing the sleep out of your eyes, you groan groggily as you spot the familiar silhouette of a man’s astral body across the room.

“Ugh… Go away Kylo.” you moan, already becoming annoyed.

Even if he wasn’t there physically, seeing him through the force hurt all the same.

“You know I can’t, even if I wanted to.” he replies matter-of-factly, and you know it to be true. Whatever unseen force it is that binds you to each other, neither of you could control it.

He haunts you like a ghost, torturing your very soul every time you would connect unannounced. His presence tonight is especially wounding, having been freshly reminded of the feelings you held for him despite everything.

Throwing your covers off, you annoyedly begin to stoke the small fire pit in the centre of your hut, doing your best to ignore Kylo’s dark and magnetic presence looming in the shadows.

“Where are you?” he asks abruptly, looking around the room and searching for any indicators of your location.

You roll your eyes, finally looking in his face. His eyes are locked on you as he stands in the darkness of the room, the light of the flames illuminating his features.

He’s every bit as handsome as you remember, all doe eyes and plump lips and strong nose.

He’s gotten taller, and bulkier in terms of muscle than you remember, no doubt enhanced by his new training. Your heart strings tug painfully in your chest, and you remember why you avoid looking at him when this happens.

“You know I can’t answer that.” you whisper solemnly in reply.

“Why not?” he snaps back instantly.

“You know exactly why, Kylo Ren.” you sigh in irritation, spitting his name at him as if it tastes foul. You throw another log into the fire before standing and turning around, crossing your arms and doing your best to shut him out as your anger and frustrations build.

“It would be so much easier if you would stop hiding, if you would just join me.” He continues, ignoring the vitriol in your tone and trying to coax the answer out of you.

“I’m not hiding, Kylo. You just can’t find me. There’s a difference.” you scoff back at him, vaguely pleased when you hear him let out his own irritated sigh.

You’ve been through this hundreds of times, your answers and his questions never changing. Everytime you speak to him, everytime you look at him, the void in your chest that calls to him grows wider. And with great pain every time, you deny him.

It’s torture, the purest form you could imagine.

“You called to me. In your dream. I heard it.” he asserts in a gentler tone, as if it would change anything. You dig your nails into the skin of your arms in an attempt to temper the rage bubbling up inside of you.

“I’m tired of fighting Kylo.” you sigh. “Can’t you see that? That’s why I’m here, in a hut in the fucking jungle.” you spit, an edge of hurt in your tone that you pray he doesn’t hear.

“Then why won’t you just come to me?” He tries desperately to persuade you. “I will take care of anything, everything you need. It could be so simple if you would just-” he starts on the same tirade that he starts every time you see each other.

The fresh pain of the memories, the aching of your heart at seeing him, listening to the same argument; it’s finally all too much. The dam you’ve built to withhold your emotions finally breaks, your hurt finally overflowing as you spin on your heel to face him, screaming out the truth as you cut him off.

“Because I love you, Ben! Because I love you, and you’ve destroyed everything else I’ve ever cared about! And I hate myself for it!” you bark at him through gritted teeth, hot tears welling up in your eyes and threatening to spill over.

His brow furrows in frustration and shock as he yells back at you.

“You know that isn’t the truth! I didn’t-”

Clutching the sides of your head in frustration, you continue screaming, cutting him off once more.

“Everyday I wake up and I’m forced back into the hell that is the realisation that this is my reality!” you gesture feverishly around the humble, run down hut in which you both stand, then between the two of you. “This is my reality, and I will never forgive you for it Ben.” your voice breaks, your anger spent and only leaving you with aching despair as the tears finally begin to fall.

“I loved you, I really loved you.” you choke out between cries, the growing lump in your throat making it hard to speak.

For once he’s silent, saying nothing as he looks upon you with widened eyes.

He’s visibly taken aback, and the realisation finally hits you that you just admitted your love to him, and that you hadn’t called him by his name, his true name, since the incident that ripped you away from each other.

He turns away from you, hiding the tears welling in his own eyes.

“I don’t need your forgiveness.” he whispers, and you take one last look at him before he promptly vanishes.

Left alone in the crippling emptiness of the hut you call home, you fall to your knees under the crippling weight of your sorrow, wracked with anguished sobs.

Elsewhere in the galaxy, Kylo Ren wipes the stray tears from his face and steels his nerves, before throwing on his cloak and helmet.

He could feel your presence even more acutely in the force now, the bond strengthened by your heated confession. It was certainly not one he had expected, but he had no doubt now that he would track you down.

All he would have to do is follow your signature.

Your words were all the confirmation he needed as he stormed out of his personal quarters to gather a fleet, barking the orders to gather his knights at a commanding officer.

If you refused to give yourself willingly to him, he would just have to take you.

The next morning, you awaken suddenly to the sound of Stormtroopers blowing the door clean off of your hut.

In an instant you leap to your feet, ready to defend yourself from any danger. Time moves in slow motion as you look out the door, the mass of troopers, fronted by the Knights of Ren parting like the fabled red sea.

Blood running cold, your heart drops to your feet as you lay eyes upon their leader who moves to the forefront, Kylo Ren.

You’re stricken with the awful, ice-cold revelation that he had used your bond in the force against you.

It lead him right to you.

Frantically turning to reach for a weapon, you’re cut short as a blaster hits you with a stun ray, rendering you unconscious.

Your body falling to the floor with a soft thud, Kylo Ren strides over to where your body lay crumpled, just within the doorway, sighing regretfully. Crouching over you, he frowns as he softly brushes a lock of hair out of your face.

“It could have been so much easier.” he whispers like an apology, before carefully scooping you into his arms.

He takes a moment to look at you, admiring the beauty of his prize before carrying you onto his ship.

#ben solo x reader #ben solo x you #ben solo x y/n #ben solo x f!reader #kylo ren x y/n #kylo ren x reader #kylo ren x female reader #kylo ren x f!reader #star wars x reader #star wars imagines #star wars imagine #kylo ren x you

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em-writes-stuff-sometimes · 1 year

Text

ñuhus prūmӯs (my heart) │Chapter 7: Betrayal (NSFW!)

terms of endearment ‘verse: see my Masterlist for the correct series order!

Chapter 1 │Chapter 2 │Chapter 3 │Chapter 4 │Chapter 5 │Chapter 6 │Chapter 7 │Chapter 8 │Chapter 9 │Chapter 10 │Chapter 11 │Chapter 12 (COMPLETE!)

Synopsis: Childbirth is the duty and dismay of all highborn women. Together, you and Daemon experience the trials, tribulations and triumphs of expectant parenthood. You learn the truth.

(Set post-episode 7, though Daemon never married Laena or Rhaenyra.)

Thank you to @angelqueen04, @evisnotok, @ewanmitchellcrumbs and @ajthefujoshi for holding my hand throughout the drafting, teehee!

Triggers: incest, age gap, purity culture, detailed depictions of pregnancy, discussion of abortion.

You dream in abstract.

There is no form to it—no faces to see nor words to hear in the fanciful void of your mind. Instead, it is shapeless, immaterial, washes of colour and vague impressions of sound like music in a far-off hall. It is a blessed reprieve from the convincing re-enactments of the day’s events your thoughts usually produce under the sway of slumber, and most certainly a relief in light of…

No.

A sensation enters your sleeping consciousness, one that does not fit the transience of those singularities swirling about in your head. It is far too concrete, unyielding, unrelenting to belong here. That strange feeling tickles throughout your body, coalescing low in your stomach and pooling warm between your thighs.

You sigh as you awaken slowly, as peaceful as the rocking of an infant in their cradle. Drowsily, you take note of your surroundings, the way in which you are propped up against the pillows with your shift gathered at your waist and your legs dangling over your uncle’s wide-set shoulders. You wonder absently how he always manages to rearrange you so without rousing you.

Why does he always choose to wake me with his carnal appetites? It seems to you that he has never once attempted to shake you or call your name.

It does not surprise you that he is once more availing himself of your particular assets, given his near unbearable persistence in proving that his inability to bed you previously was but a momentary impediment. You have considered hiding to discourage him from making this point yet again—but you do so enjoy the outcome of his efforts.

Your breathing must change cadence, for you are drawn further into the realm of awareness by his large, calloused hand smoothing a path along the side of your rounded belly.

“Sȳz ñāqes, dōnītsos.” Good morning, sweetling, Daemon murmurs against your heated flesh. His breath spools delicately across the puffed folds of your cunny. “Sh. Inkot edrugon jās.” Go back to sleep.

You mumble incoherently, lips curving up despite your reluctance to awaken. Your hand drifts down to pat against his, your smile widening when he flips his palm to lock his fingers with your own. Returning to his task and nuzzling inexorably at your yearning little bud, the stubble on his jaw rasps against your inner thighs in tantalising counter to the glide of tongue over tender tissue.

It is sweet, impossibly indulgent, with none of the bite of hurt that you have come to crave in your couplings. You are so sensitive these days that, at times, such contact borders on agonising. The blood in your veins thrums far hotter now that you are three dragons in one form, you and each of the babes in turn. But here in the quiet stillness of the morn, every swipe up the split of you or rumbling resonance through your responsive nerve endings or greedy suckle to your pearl tips you further and further to that golden finish. Your joined hands rest against your middle, stretched taut and full of your children. You send a silent prayer above in thanks that they are asleep as their father tends so amorously to their mother.

The release is a wave cresting to the coastline, gentle and buoyant and rapturous as it ever is. It is as though the ocean pulses out from deep within you, wetting the way for your husband’s return to the safe shores of your body.

“Daemon.” Tipping your head back, you let the surge take you. You hear the ruffle of fabric dropping and feel the press of skin against yours.

“Ah-ah,” Daemon says. “Open up, little niece.” Hands prying your knees from their clenched-together defense of your inflamed womanhood, he props your feet against the bedframe to force your legs wide, sliding the length of himself through your slick lips. “Your cunt is mine to use, even if you are already bred full.”

The velvet-steel line of his hardened shaft slips inside, a brief press to the scrunching firmness of your entry that gives way with a pop and a rush. He grunts as he cleaves you in two, the heft of his stones slapping against the skin of your rear being the only sign that he cannot invade any further.

You can do nothing but accept it, weighed down by your belly as you are. Arching your back, you let out a low whimper, feeling that terrible, wonderful overcrowding in your womb and in your cunny.

“Good girl.” He stills the discomfited shift of your hips with an iron grip. It is an abrupt taking—but like the curves of your figure, the efforts of growing his seed to their full has made you softer, rounder, more pliant. You blink hazily at him, mouth opening dumbly as you surrender to the tide. “Just lay back. Let kepa take care of you.”

His covetous gaze roams across the changes he has wrought in you; your plush thighs, plump cheeks, enlarged breasts and the sway of your distended middle as he pitches into you being but some of the most notable within his immediate reach. It is difficult to be self-conscious of these vicissitudes when his violet eyes fixate so zealously upon them, promptly trailed by the heat of his hands across those same places.

The sight of him—his silver hair rumpled from sleep, the prominent shelf of his brow and the exhilarated parting of his lips, the thrilling menace of his broad shoulders and thick-scarred skin, the flex of his arms as his hands seek new territory to touch—pools hot in your gut. The sound of your wetness being stirred with his every plunge into you is a churning melody that blazes beneath your skin.

You listen lethargically to the lustful affirmations spilling uncontrollably from Daemon’s lips. He is so terribly loquacious when his cock is in you, consumed by his ardour and forgetting any such difficulties he has in conveying the depth of his emotions.

“… so tight for me… barely any room left for my cock, but you just keep taking it, don’t you?… made to take me… fuck. I’ll fuck you forever. Keep you heavy and helpless like this fucking always…”

His obsession with your fecund form is flattering if a bit predictable. Grinning sleepily at his words, you yawn as you tug up your sleepwear to bare your breasts for him. Your nipples tingle as the cooler air makes contact, tightening them to hard tips. You smooth the pads of your thumbs over them to alleviate the sudden prickle.

His eyes zero in on the movement, ogling you heatedly.

“Play with your tits,” he says, holding the mass of your belly still so that he may speed the tempo of his cock inside you, thick and hot and catching against that high point along your walls that makes you clamp down uncontrollably. You moan faintly as you reach back up to cup the heft of your breasts. He makes an animal noise at the display. “That’s it. Are they sore, precious? A little harder—there.”

Tears spring to your eyes as you obey his command, squeezing the supple flesh, pulling at the teats just as your two babes will when they nurse from your body to nourish their own. They have been hypersensitive as of late. You are unsure if your own touch is painful or pleasurable. Regardless, the sheer strength of it is enough to reignite the familiar ember signalling a new climax.

Making a show of the ache, you wiggle down into his thrusts to feel the shudder ripple up your spine when he drives to the end of you. You are rewarded with a quickening of pace and the sound of his panting breaths as he exerts himself above you, flushed and sweating and entirely consumed by the welcoming clutch of your cunt. “Daemon. Can I pe–peak, please?”

“So well-behaved.” He chuckles, grinning wickedly as he watches a lone trail of liquid trek from your eye down your temple and disappear into your hairline. “I do love when you cry for me.”

You nod furiously at his words, blinking more stray droplets from your lashes. Eagerly spreading your thighs as far apart as you can, you yelp as the angle changes. Your uncle hisses at the sight, a hand disappearing below the protrusion of your middle; you cry out as he introduces his thumb to your bud, drawing back the hood and rubbing up in inescapable motions.

“I suppose you’ve earned it. Go on, then,” he says. “Come.”

As the obedient wife you are, you heed his wish. This time, there is little that is gentle about the way your walls constrict on him, making the rapid rock of his cock a near unbearable intrusion. The air flees your lungs and your limbs lock in place as the bliss washes over you, soundless in spite of the force of it.

“Thank you, thank you,” you say when you are able to catch your breath again, your grip upon your breasts becoming less of a cultivated show and more a necessity that keeps them from bobbing about wildly.

He ruts into you with jerky, uneven slaps, too fast and too hard for you to truly enjoy. You endure it—you have had your fill. Now, it is his turn.

“Are you going to spill in me, kepus?” you ask, falsetto pitch and airy tone, using what little leverage you have to push your lower body up into his urgent offensive. The burn in your thighs is immediate, but you will not need to hold this position for long. “I want you to, please, please—”

“Yes,” he growls, deep and dark, face contorted into something resembling pain and eyes closing in concentration, seemingly heedless of the spiel tumbling from his mouth. “I’ll come in this cunt, keep you in this bed fat with my heirs and leaking my seed, lick it out of you later—”

Your lip curls with feigned petulance, girlish and stubborn and exactly to his liking. “What if I cannot wait ‘til later, kepus?”

He gasps like he is winded by the suggestion of it, juddering strokes that begin to hurt, but you love it. You love how undone you can make him with such simple words, and you prepare yourself to deal the finishing blow.

“Maybe you should clean me up straight away,” you say coquettishly, nails digging into your skin to distract from the ache of him. “Taste us together and kiss me so I can, too—”

“Fuck!”

He moans, stilling inside, fully in your core, the spasms of his manhood pumping spend hot and thick into the very depths of you. His iron grip eases into inattentive pats across your skin as his stare refocuses on you, a look of such sheer relief on his face that you are momentarily overcome by the urge to laugh.

My poor uncle.

“Gods, this cunt.” Daemon hunches over you briefly, riding out the remainder of his release before withdrawing, catching sticky along your walls as he tugs away.

Your attention wavers when he rummages around out of sight for a cloth with which to wipe his shaft free of your mingled fluids, the tell-tale signs of breeches being yanked back up and laces being knotted easy to hear. Your legs close once more, an ingrained habit from the weeks and months of wishing your womb would do its work and catch your uncle’s seed. You shift uncomfortably at the unwelcome intrusion of reality into this sacred space.

The tea.

“Need help up, sweetling?”

You banish the disturbance from your mind. Taking his proffered hand, you allow your amused husband to assist you in sitting upright, again availing yourself of his geniality to lumber your way back into the arrangement he had facilitated you in achieving when you had gone to sleep the night previous. With your body fully covered and reclined, you flop on your side with an exhausted puff, already tired from your romp and the effort of moving about with such an unwieldy figure.

A dip in the mattress heralds his settling behind you, arm banding over your waist and palm coming to rest over your belly. “The babes give you any rest?” He punctuates this enquiry with an absent press of lips to your neck, breath humid upon your flesh.

You mumble noncommittally, distracted by the pulsating movements emanating through your middle. “I slept well enough—but you have gone and woken them.” You do not even try to conceal the complaint in your voice.

He laughs against your shoulder, hand tracking the activity under your skin. They are taking tumbling practice today, you think with some measure of vexation, though the exhilarated fascination remains ever near. You cannot help but to exult in the signs that your children are alive, that they are well, despite—No.

You will not think upon that night.

It is unhealthy to repress something of such magnitude. While you know this, you simply cannot indulge the thought of casting your memory back to the weight of that man bearing down toward your belly, the stink of his rotting breath and the sight of watery blue eyes wild on you, the warm stickiness of Miriam’s blood seeping from her cooling body through your sweat-soaked gown—

No. You shall not. The tears have come and gone. You have pandered to the urge to lay about in dazed silence for long enough.

“They’re lively little things, aren’t they?”

The urge to cry flows and ebbs in unpredictable rhythm yet again at the sound of Daemon’s quiet awe. Damn it all. You can even picture the expression he is sure to be wearing: eyes wide and dark, mouth parted with corners quirked, unblinking and trained steadfastly to the expanse of his babes as they wriggle and turn unknown within your womb.

“Does it hurt?” He sounds far too worried for such a simple query. Oh, Daemon. He might be asking about the babes’ movements, but you know what he really means.

‘Are you hurt?’ he wants to ask. ‘Are you safe? Are they safe?’

If the horrors of your time anew in King’s Landing have made you weepy and disconsolate, they have made him compulsive and paranoid, wholly preoccupied with the task of ensuring that even the slightest impediment to your peaceful confinement is removed post-haste.

“No,” you say. “It feels odd, but not painful. It… Oh, I cannot describe it right,” You turn to look at him. He is as always absorbed by you, hanging onto your every word. Taking his hand in yours, you tap your fingers across his skin, mimicking as best you can the sensation from within. “Like this—but on the inside. It does not hurt. It is just there.”

“Hm.”

You grumble as he tips you to your back, shuffling gracelessly down your body and bracing himself above you with his arms. The lower half of his face burrows into your belly so that all you are able to see of him is his violet stare and pale lashes and lined forehead. He rucks up your nightwear once again to lay his mouth upon your skin, something you usually catch him doing when he believes you asleep. The tell-tale vibrations of words spoken softly into flesh fizzle from the point of contact.

“What are you muttering to them down there?” you ask. “They are too young to become vassals for your unseemly behaviour, Uncle.”

“I’ll say what I like to my own children, little girl.” When his brows waggle with mischief above the crest of your middle, you kick him lightly in the side, the laughter bursting unrestrained from your lungs. “There are some things that ought to be kept between a father and his daughters,” he says, and you are sure he conceals a smile from beyond your view.

“If your sons take your guidance to heart, I shall not be dealing with the aftermath of whatever strife they decide to plague the Realm with. That is firmly in your hands.”

“If my daughters”—you squeal as he yanks you down by the thighs and parts them wide—“decide to follow in their kepa’s footsteps, you’re free to watch me teach them how to worm their way out of trouble.”

“Like you have?” Your voice is breathy, cracked at the end when you feel his fingers play with the seed that leaks from your raw opening, tacky and warm and squelching with each searching prod. “How many times have you been exiled again? Two? Three?”

You gasp as his hand strikes your mound, catching on your bud and your folds, hard enough to shock but not to cause injury. The feeling ripples out from its epicentre, slithering through your veins and lighting the tinder of desire anew. You sigh shakily as the sting sizzles along your skin.

“Don’t be naughty,” he says, breath travelling down, down, down along your bared flesh. “Impertinent brats don’t get rewarded.”

“Sorry, kepus. I’ll behave, I promise.” Silently, you bemoan how quickly he is able to redirect your changeable mood to one of lust. I want to sleep, you think.

“Good.” Daemon presses a wet kiss to the top of your womanhood, tingling with the blood raised from his slap. It is a sure sample of what is to come. “Now—I do believe you begged me to lick this little cunt clean before I left. I’d best give my wife what she wants, hm?”

Sleep can wait. You do so enjoy the outcome of his efforts, after all.

Though you adore him so, you are secretly glad for Daemon’s departure.

In the wake of the attack, he has become even more overbearing than before. When he is not embroiled in the business of searching out the architect of this plot—and truthfully, you know little of the details, partly out of desire to avoid as much mention of the event as possible and partly because he refuses to ‘burden’ you further—you are scarce to find a moment alone. It is not always a pretext for coupling, either, though that is in plentiful supply. Mostly, he watches you with intent eyes as you stitch gowns and bonnets and blankets for your babes, or rearrange the items you have procured for them, or nap out on the balcony in the late afternoon. You had been forced to put your foot down when he had attempted to accompany you to the privy. You hardly need his assistance in relieving yourself.

Remember what Ūlla said, is what you tell yourself each time he irks you with this irrational behaviour. You are impossibly grateful for the healer. If she had not dissuaded you from your anxiety after Daemon had stormed out in such a state, you might not possess any understanding of what induces him to linger so.

“He is man of control, Princess,” she had said to you. “So much control taken from him, so he cannot manage. He is very afraid. Be kind to him.”

She had been correct, of course. All of it—the untethered restlessness, the misdirected ire, the… performance issues—had very little to do with your own conduct and more-so his fear. You had comforted him as best you can, your beloved, stolid beast of a man. His fear has since taken on this new form. Truthfully, you are glad for such compulsive care, but you nonetheless welcome the opportunity to take respite from him on this day.

You turn your mind to your present task. “Thank you for coming,” you say to your sister.

Senna serves you and Helaena tea with shaky hands, spilling some of the hot liquid upon the saucer and the table. You do not reproach her for it. She has been nervous and withdrawn since discovering Miriam, in mourning for her companion as you have been.

Writing the letter to Miriam’s parents had been an incredibly difficult task. How do you convey that the girl in your service—a position that ought to be safest of all—was slain as an accessory to a greater scheme? Lord and Lady Butterwell had dolefully accepted your offer of a small monthly stipend, a mere pittance in comparison to the life that has been lost.

You nod kindly to your lady-in-waiting as she withdraws to the chaise to read, keeping to the background of your conversation should you have need of her.

Helaena glances hesitantly toward the tea before taking the handle in a delicate grip, sipping slowly from the contents within. “Of course. How are you feeling today?” Her attempt at a carefree enquiry falls flat in light of recent circumstances, her brow dipping in discomfort.

“I am well. The babes, too.” You watch her carefully for her reaction, and you are not disappointed. The wince at the mention of your children is slight, but it is there.

“I’m glad.” She takes another nervous mouthful, offering little else.

You sigh. It seems I must make the first play.

“We need to discuss it, Helaena,” you say, reaching out for her hand. She takes it, fingers trembling, a habit ingrained from years of doing the same. It generates a wistful sort of joy to know that you are still the only person she will so readily accept touch from. “You know we do.”

She had been far too hysterical last time, before. Before. You had scarcely discerned the truth of the matter before she devolved into weeping with such desolation that you had put all questions aside so as to console her. Knowing these details will not help you determine the culprit behind your enduring of so many barren moons, but it cannot hurt to learn where she has sought the concoction from. Perhaps her source and yours are linked.

Her eyes dart away from your face, and you squeeze her grip to catch her attention. You do not want her to retreat into her mind and escape from the present as she is wont to do.

She refocuses on you, timid and afraid. “What—what do you wish to know?”

You do not intend to press upon her reasoning further. The evening of the attempt upon your life, your sister had rambled on and on about ‘the time’ not being ‘right’. Any other may have claimed her mad, but you are certain that her mutterings are not the hallmark of insanity. No. Her decision is like to be driven by whatever signs and portents had been plaguing her dreams, the fractured visions of a child not yet meant to be. ‘Prophecy’ and ‘foresight’ are not words well-loved by the Faith, but her blood—that of Old Valyria—burns bright with magic lost to time.

Spool of green, spool of black; dragons of flesh weave dragons of thread.

You shudder at the recollection.

“How many times have you taken it?” you decide to ask. “Where are you getting it? Is it even safe?”

And that is the crux of the matter, is it not? One of your first thoughts had been anger toward her for risking her wellbeing so thoughtlessly. Moon tea, when brewed improperly, can cause all sorts of harm to a woman. You may not know much, but you do know this.

“I’ve taken a draught once a moon’s turn, partway between my blood’s expected coming,” she says quietly, eyes shining a little too bright to be anything other than tears. “I—the Maester has a supply.”

Your mouth parts in surprise. “Grand Maester Mellos? And he is giving it to you?”

It goes against everything you know of the man, far more concerned with his own perception of duty than that of offering succour to young Princesses frightened by the power of their own bodies. His maladaptive sense of obligation had led to your mother’s death in her childbed, scored open and bled out like a hunter’s prize game.

“No.” Helaena shifts guiltily in her seat, gaze flickering away again. She bites her lip. Her next statement rushes from her like a breaking dam. “Please don’t be angry with me.”

You catch her meaning immediately. “You are stealing it.” The judgement seeps out uninhibited.

“I’m sorry!” She clutches so tight upon your hand that you fear she may crack the bones. “I am not ready.” She sounds like a child. It is then that you remember that, for all intents and purposes, she is. “I want to be brave, like you. But I’m not.”

All at once, the ire departs, leaving little other than pity for the girl in front of you. To commit such acts as those Septa Marlowe had spent her entire life proselytising against—and you know this because she had subjected you to the very same—can only mean that she must have been very desperate.

My poor, sweet sister. You swallow the unpleasant acridity that hits your palate. It tastes like guilt.

“I should have fought harder. To stop your marriage, to—to take you with me,” you say. “It was awfully selfish of me to… let myself get caught up in my own life while you had to marry our deviant of a brother—”

She frowns. “I don’t hate Aegon as you do.” You had not realised your disdain for him was quite so vitriolic as to warrant such disapproval. “It is true that he is… not a good husband. We will never love each other like you and Uncle Daemon. But neither can we love each other as siblings should. Some days… I wonder where that leaves us.” She appears to have drifted off to some unknown part of her own mind, caught up in her convoluted thoughts and staring deeply into the polished oak surface upon which lay your refreshments. “But he is part of me, and I am part of him. Can that not just… be enough?”

If there had been nothing else to remind you that your place is no longer in the capital, this serves well enough. To hear her support for your brother is surprising, but perhaps it ought not to be. Too long have you allowed yourself to indulge the illusion that there is a clear separation between you and Aegon, that Helaena and Daeron had attached themselves to you while Aemond had traipsed about with his erstwhile brother, lines drawn and never to be crossed.

It is not so simple. You know this from experience.

“Alright.” You let the matter lie. There has been enough division amongst your family, and you are ashamed to realise how great a part you have taken in it as of late.

I must be better for Helaena’s sake, you resolve, taking your cup in hand and savouring the sweeter notes of the raspberry leaf tea as it percolates across your palate. It lacks the aroma that you have come to prefer in your hot drinks. Ire rises within you at the prospect of having become so accustomed to the taste of moon tea that you had developed a partiality to it.

It is then that an arbitrary thought crawls from the deep well of your mind.

Moon tea is by law a restricted substance. The Grand Maester is beholden only to the royal family. But then—

“Helaena,” you say slowly, searchingly. She looks back up from her own teacup. “The tea. Who is the Grand Maester brewing it for?”

She pauses, brow wrinkled. “I—I don’t know.”

“It has to be someone in the Red Keep.” You lean forward. The motion is hindered by the unwieldiness of your belly. “Your mother?”

You do not think your brother would care overmuch for preventing his seed taking root in another woman’s womb. Thus, if it is not Helaena, then it must be your lady stepmother. But Alicent is far too pious a creature to rid herself of a ‘blessing from the gods’, or so she would put it. Nor would it make sense for her to wish death upon her child before it enters the world, not after four previous successful births.

Though, you owe, it is entirely possible that she would request it made for any number of Aegon’s whores or maidservants or low-born companions after yet another eve of iniquity.

“Mother?” Helaena tilts her head incredulously. “What use would she have of it now?” My poor, naïve sister. You cannot bear to make implications as to her husband’s fidelity, and so you stay silent. She continues without noticing your turmoil. “Besides, she despises the very thought of it. She says that moon tea is an affront to the gods.”

A loud thump and shatter disturbs the relative peace of your conversation. You crane your head in the direction of the sound, startled to see your lady-in-waiting’s pale, pale face and her eyes wide with alarm. Her book is splayed on the stone floor, its pages soaking up the tea from the cup that is now shards of shattered porcelain before her.

“Senna,” you ask. “Are you alright?”

She looks as though she has seen an evil apparition or heard an unearthly echo from beyond the veil. “Yes, my Princess,” she says. Perhaps you would have been assuaged if not for the crack toward the end of her statement. Her lip trembles. She gulps. “I—”

Whatever she had intended to say does not come forth. Instead, she springs up from her seat, hastily sidestepping the chaos upon the ground and hurrying from the room through the solar door. You tug yourself from your chair using the edge of the table, glancing helplessly toward your sister.

“My apologies, Helaena—”

“Go see to her. I’ll stay here.”

You offer a brief appreciative smile before hastening after your companion, though admittedly your pace is slow and ambling. The weight of your middle tugs at your spine as you move. You grimace in discomfort.

Thankfully, Senna has not gone far. When you enter your solar—a room that you have not used once since being relocated—she is pacing through the weak light streaming in from the window, disturbing whorls of dust from the rug under her feet that dance iridescent in the glow. Her skin has taken on a ghastly pallor. It seems as though her lips have vanished from the sheer pressure at which she is pressing them together.

There is something deeply wrong here. You have never seen her so distressed.

“Senna?” You inch forward in unobtrusive increments so as not to startle her. “What is wrong?”

Your strategizing is for naught. She jumps in fright when hearing your voice echo in the stark chamber, entirely unaware that you had followed her through to relative privacy. Biting your lower lip, you ponder how best to coax a revelation from her.

You do not need to.

“I cannot keep this to myself any longer!” Clutching at her middle, you think Senna may have somehow injured herself—until she whirls to you, striding forward and sinking prostrate in front of you. “Oh, gods help me!” she wails, taking your hand as a penitent before a statue of the Mother. “Princess, please forgive me!”

A sinking suspicion settles in your gut. “Whatever is the matter?” you ask. A growing sense of foreboding looms near, one that leaches viscerally through your body, bitter and ashen upon your tongue. “I do not understand.”

She stares up at you with red-rimmed eyes, a contrast to the greyish hue of her flesh that is positively ghoulish. “I didn’t want to, I swear it! But you were so frightened about having children, and then you were married, and she told me that—”

Your stomach turns. The tea.

You no longer inhabit your body. Your soul has separated itself from its blood-and-bone prison and floats somewhere above, looking down upon this moment. There is an absurdity to the detachment, as though you are watching a garish pantomime or overdramatised spectacle designed for naught but sensationalism. It is not real. It is not real.

“It was you,” you hear yourself say as though through rushing water. You wonder if you might faint. “It was you?”

How long have I known her?

You had been but a youth when she first arrived to court, eagerly presenting herself for service to the royal family. Being so much more daring and adventurous and outspoken than you, the fact that you had become so close would seem unlikely to an outsider. At least, you had thought you were close. For her to have taken what little power you possessed over your own body, to steal any number of children that might have been before you had ever had the chance to know them, all at the apparent behest of another—

You swallow frantically, willing yourself not to expel the contents of your stomach.

“You know. Oh, gods. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” She weeps, tipping her chin down and kissing your hand. You fight the unwelcome intrusion of the desire to yank yourself from her grip, to slap her or throttle her for her treachery. “I promise I was thinking only of protecting you!”

“By making me think I was barren? By taking my chance to make a true family? By—” You shake your head to try and dispel the ache that has settled itself there like a heavy stone, solid and relentless. Taking a deep, even breath, you force your voice to say the words your mind rails so desperately against. You do not wish to know. “Senna. Senna, look at me. If you want to protect me, you will confess who is behind this.”

You had been right. The truth, pouring from the mouth of your friend-turned-traitor, is a knife to the heart. It is not real, the timorous whisper of the frightened girl you had been resonates noiseless throughout your hollowed form, a plaintive exhale into the air. It is not real.

You spend seconds or minutes or hours staring blankly at the city, huddled like a child upon the bench on your balcony. In the distance, you can hear the screeching protestations of Athfiezar. He had appeared in the capital a day or so after the attack—or so you are told, having been confined to your bed at the insistence of Daemon and Ūlla and thus unable to visit your boy in person—swooping and snarling and making a general fuss as he is so often wont to do when you are upset. If you squint, you think you can see the great black bulk of him atop the Dragonpit.

King’s Landing is abuzz with its usual frenetic activity. Yet, the sights and smells and the waft of coastal wind upon your cheek hardly register.

“I did not want this for you.”

It seems like so long ago that Alicent had helped you prepare for your wedding. She had voiced her concerns about the match even then. Perhaps such a thing ought to have made you even more anxious and fretful than you already had been, but the honesty had been refreshing on a day in which all had made deliberate prevarications as to their true thoughts. A frightful few had been genuinely congratulatory of your being given to your uncle as a wife, and Alicent was certainly chief among the naysayers.

Never would you have expected her capable of this.

Senna had told you everything—of how Alicent had pulled her aside after your wedding night, how she had pressed a batch of the tea into her hands and persuaded her to ensure you imbibed it the following day, how Senna had at first thought it a mere gesture of kindness from a stepmother to her beloved daughter. When she had discovered what the concoction did, she had been torn between duty and her love for you. She could not disobey a directive from her Queen, but at the same time could not abide the thought of harming you. From what you were able to gather, Alicent had discerned this conflict and swayed her into the belief that keeping your womb empty of a babe was the best thing for you.

“You were always terribly quiet after your mother was mentioned, and you avoided talk of childbirth wherever possible,” Senna had said through tears. “I wanted to help.”

A noblewoman receiving shipments from King’s Landing would hardly have been an uncommon occurrence for one stationed on Dragonstone. And so, it had been all too easy for the Queen to procure the tea from Mellos and send it forward to your island home, where you had regularly partaken in its consumption for moons.

You remember having expressed to Senna some wistfulness after spending time with the Princess Sarella Martell and her daughters in Dorne. Evidently, this had been all the motivation needed to finally risk rebellion. The tea had stopped, and Daemon’s seed had finally taken root within you.

Daemon.

What do you do? Do you tell him? Should you tell him? The questions swarm like a thousand stinging bees, loud and painful and frightening in their veracity.

He will kill her—he will murder the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, will wrap his hands around her throat and squeeze the life from her if he discovers what she has done—

But perhaps Senna is lying. Perhaps she is so overcome by her guilt that she seeks to incriminate another, to control the tale before her victim has opportunity to speak for herself. You do not wish to believe it, but nor can you bear the thought of the woman you had once felt such affection for betraying you in such a manner.

Alicent’s routine remains unchanged despite the summers that have passed since her ascension to your father’s side. Thus, it is with anxious resolve that you finally gather the will to drag yourself from your chambers and step out in search of her.

Ser Lorent Marbrand stands to attention just outside your room, hand springing to the pommel of his blade. “Your Highness?” Peering intently into the room behind you, he—like all others in your service as of late—is vigilant to the extreme. “Do you require assistance?”

“I wish to speak with the Queen,” you say, stepping forward. He moves to block your path. You frown up at him. “Please step aside, Ser.”

“My apologies,” he says, dipping his head, “but Prince Daemon has given me strict instructions to ensure you remain within these chambers until he retu—”

“If my husband discovers that I have elected to ignore his directive to you, then that is firmly my business and my consequence to contend with. I will be meeting with my lady stepmother. So, it is your choice whether I go alone or am accompanied by the Kingsguard assigned to my protection.”

The merest flash of temper, coupled with a deliberately-placed hand on your belly, is enough to make the knight quail. He takes his place at your back as you walk on, traversing the halls of your childhood home toward the Sept.

You reach deep to cling onto all the stubbornness you possess as the murmurs and gasps follow you through the Keep, the courtiers no doubt surprised to see you risk a public appearance. Though your father and his Council had done their best to quash any rumour that might have sprung to life, the news of your attack has spread like wildfire amongst those hungry for gossip in the capital. You are not brave, not in the way Rhaenyra or Daemon are, but you are more than these people see you as. It is time they learn that you can be just as resilient as those survivors of the Doom.

When you stop before the staircase leading to the Sept, steep and winding—and you remember climbing these same steps moons ago, when you were lonely and afraid and knew nothing of love—you contemplate giving up and returning to your chambers. Sighing resignedly, you make use of the overcautious Kingsguard to navigate the treacherous ascent, holding onto his arm to lug your ungainly form up and up. Ser Lorent says nothing, which you appreciate, merely proffers his bulk as resistance so that you may totter your way to the upper landing.

Your heart thuds discordant in your chest as you look upon Alicent, knelt before the effigy of the Mother with her head bent low in prayer. A thousand candles flicker golden in the chamber, giving the dark space an eerie, haunted atmosphere. The light ripples across her hair like molten fire. It is musty here, stifled from the windows being covered in times of disuse. For a place dedicated to the gods, it feels remarkably like how you would imagine the Seven hells. Given the task you have come to fulfil, perhaps the comparison is apt.

She startles bodily at the sound of your footsteps growing ever closer, echoing around the room so loudly it is as though someone far larger than you stamps onward. Rising from her supplications, her shoulders slump minutely when she sees that it is only you.

Alicent utters your name in surprise. “You should be resting after your ordeal!” she says, gliding forward to meet you. Her hand reaches out to take your own—and you notice that she carefully avoids your belly— a look of such matronly kindness on her face that you all at once feel ill again. You can barely feel her touch. “Are you well?”

“The moon tea.” It falls from your lips without conscious choice. You had intended to broach the subject cautiously, to manoeuvre her into admitting the deed under her own duress, but it seems your voice has other plans.

“I’m sorry?” she asks, brow knitting in an affectation of confusion. From the way her fingers tighten hard upon your flesh, a momentary squeeze then release, it is but a performance. She knows of what you speak.

You pull your hand from hers, stepping back when she pursues. Her mouth begins to part, concern forming on her tongue in consummate deception.

“Do not—” you start; pause. Swallow against the bile. Try to take stock of where your heart is, for it has escaped the cavity of your chest and swims untethered through your body, swooping and irregular. “I know about the tea, Alicent. What you asked of Senna. I know everything.”

There. It is said now, and it cannot be taken back. A strange sense of relief co-mingles with the terror.

Though she forces a bewildered laugh, you can see her eyes widen in alarm, shine with the fear she keeps contained with a resolve that is far stronger than even Valyrian steel. Puzzlement crosses her features, a politely baffled smile playing on her lips. “I have no idea what you’re speaking of, darli—”

“Don’t lie to me!”

It hisses from you like a flame, sizzling and incandescent. Your fury is near a tangible thing, an entity that seethes and writhes with a force you had not yet known you were capable of. The reverberation of it thrums in your toes, hangs upon the air and in your ears as though you are still speaking, though the chamber is silent.

Alicent lets out a quick, shaky breath. Few would notice—but your years of isolation have honed your observance to a sharp point, a weapon by any other name. The severe line of her jaw belies her clenching teeth, a woman hanging to the last vestiges of her decorum. “I think you ought to retire to your rooms. You are clearly overcome.”

“I’ll do no such thing.” The hurt, wounded creature inside you rears up, and you must fight the tears that spring up at her continued refusal to concede her wrongdoings. You have cried far too often. It is time for strength. “I have been a good and devoted stepdaughter these many years, Your Grace,” you say. “I have been your daughter’s chief companion. I am raising your son. If you have any affection in your heart for me, you will tell the truth.”

It is calculated, but it works. She wavers, and the veil of hostility drops, leaving something conflicted and unsure. This iteration of your stepmother is new.

She looks away, seeming to turn inward on herself, slow and pondering. “When I was your age, I had already birthed a child and carried another,” she says, the resonance of it like stray whispers on a breeze. Her eyes are glazed as she stares at some point beyond your own fixation, brown turned gold in the firelight. “I remember how… confusing and frightening it was, being so young and having such a burden laid on my shoulders. Mothering the King’s heirs… To be the vessel bringing forth more Targaryens is a weight I did not wish you to bear.”

The soft, sickening pulse of sympathy warms you. Though you love your father, it is true that he has not made for a good husband. Alicent is being kind by evading such an implication, but her marriage has been one of steadfast endurance, a stiff upper lip and staunchly-maintained silence.

Then you truly process what has been said. “To be the vessel… is a weight I did not wish you to bear.” It is an admission of guilt in so many words.

Something inside you breaks.

“That was not your choice to make.” Your mouth is moving and the words come forth, but you feel again as though you have been unclipped from your physical form and left to float elsewhere, distant and divided. You clench your fists, nails digging into your palm and threatening to draw blood. The pain moors you to reality. You clench tighter. “It is my duty as a wife to have my husband’s children. I felt like a failure each time my blood came—because of you.”

“That could not be helped,” she says, the tone so staggeringly at odds with the callousness of such a statement. “You are far too gentle a creature for the likes of Daemon. What he did to your assailant—”

“He protected me,” you snap, incensed. “He loves me.”

The rumours of what had taken place in the early morning hours after your attack have swirled for days. All who have come to your chambers to attend you have given your uncle a wide berth, gaping at him with fearful eyes and muttering to each other under their breath. You know not if he has heard the whispers that seem to be trailing him, though it is equally possible he simply does not care.

“He stabbed the man so many times that they could not tell it was a body at first,” you had caught a pair of maids muttering.

“The Prince gutted him and strung his entrails out of the window as a warning—”

“He cut the wretch’s head off and drank the blood that spilled—”

“He broke every bone in his body and left him there for his family to find—”

No doubt the brutality that had occurred in that establishment—an inn or a tavern or a brothel, each report differing in its account—had been truly obscene. Daemon is a vicious man, needing no provocation to inflict himself upon others. You cannot imagine the carnage that had ensued after his wife and babes had been terrorised. Nor do you wish to ask, truthfully.

You had felt an iota of guilt for being so accepting of his brand of justice, being so loath of it; you recall the time you told him how you “disliked violence”, how you would “not allow unnecessary savagery” should you consent to marry him. It did not last very long in light of the circumstances.

He loves you, and for that love he had put to the sword those who sought to take your life.

Alicent scoffs, snapping you back to the present. “He was supposed to tire of you, to put you aside and seek out whatever else he might wish. Perhaps then you would be free to marry a man worthy of yo—”

“So you wished for me to be disgraced? The laughingstock of the Realm?” You laugh, icy and piercing. “You desired my unhappiness. Somehow, you have convinced yourself that doing so means you care for me above all others.”

The Queen retreats behind her mask of wintry cordiality, expression closing off entirely. Her mouth opens and closes, a response gathering but not quite fully-formed.

There is no turning back from this. You think that you will never see her look upon you with warmth again.

“It is he who has corrupted you so,” she says finally, disdainful and disappointed in equal measure. “Never would you have spoken to me in such a manner before he sunk his claws into you.”

“You do not get to behave as though I have wronged you. You act as though my uncle is some sort of monster, when it is you who has violated my body and my freedom.”

“Violated?” She sneers down her nose at you. “I would think that feat should be recognised as another’s. ‘Tis a shame to see you so ruined, stepdaughter. I hope being Daemon’s whore is worth it.”

The slap rings sudden and strident, your palm burning. You do not remember striding forward. Alicent shields her cheek with a hand, looking upon you with indignant trepidation. An eye for an eye, a strike for a strike. Your scarred arm tingles at your side, the line where the knife had carved your skin open prickling with a memory that seems distant now.

“I would rather be his whore than your saint,” you hiss, squeezing and releasing your fist to work away the buzzing sensation.

Silence pervades following your assertion, the last notes suspended soundless throughout the room. The statue of the Mother seems to stare down at you both, the lit altar casting her countenance into something eerie and judgemental. That the flames dance still upon their waxen mounts is surprising. ‘Tis a reminder that the world remains unchanged despite your feeling that the ground has shifted beneath your feet, shaking and unsteady.

“I will tell Papa of what you have done,” you say, preparing to depart. You have earned your confession, but there is no victory to be won here. “Return to your devotions, my Queen. Pray that he will be lenient.”

“Tell him? Whatever will you tell him?” she asks loftily, arrogantly, her brow arching. “You have no proof.”

You frown. “I have Senna—”

“The daughter of a minor noble house, or the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms? Who is the King likely to believe?” Alicent smiles unkindly, a mockery of the geniality she had once shown you.

She has a point. You cannot stand it. The moment the words had left your mouth, you had known your father will do nothing with such information. So determined is he to prevent conflict in his household that he will turn a blind eye to most anything to avoid the uncomfortable truth—that House Targaryen is breaking at the seams, each day bringing a new tear upon the fabric of what you imagine must have once been a true family.

It is too much. There is nothing more to say. The cards have been dealt, but the game is unwinnable. You are so, so tired. What is left for you in the capital? You want to go home.

I want Daemon and Athfiezar and Daeron and my babes. I want to go home.

“May the gods have mercy upon your soul for what you have done,” you say. “For my part—I hope you burn in the Seven hells.”

You leave her standing there alone in the Sept, the last refuge of a woman who has maimed all the love and affection that might have lingered from her girlhood years. Her effigies and her prayers and her piety are all that is left to her now. They will consume her from the inside out, scorch her to a shell of the smiling, tender-hearted youth you remember from so long ago.

Let her choke upon her airs of godliness, you think. One day, she will pay the price for her crimes.

You hope you are there to see it.

Read it on AO3:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/44058132/chapters/114901333

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