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courtingchaos · 1 year

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Rent the Space Inside My Mind

1 I 2 I 3 I 4 I 5 I PT 6

Pairing: Eddie Munson x Female!Reader

Summary: During a hazy afternoon y'all get a little lost in your heads. Eddie tells you a really funny joke.

A/N: Jesus christ this got away from me. I've had this open for two weeks (???) just chipping away and rewriting and deleting everything. I need it off my phone. I'm so sick of looking at it! I really hope you guys enjoy it! This one gets a little spicy? Nothing crazy, just some daydreaming and just All of The Pining Imaginable. I'm not sick of these two being oblivious yet, so strap in friends. (AlsoAlso, just tossing this out there this is 18+, and will just get worse as it goes on so like don't interact if your a lil baby please) Y'all wanna see the gif again?

Friday afternoons were very specifically You and Eddie hangout hours. Typically quiet, never boring, it now usually started with a blunt since someone (you) had broken someone else’s ( Eddie’s) bong. It had truly been an honest mistake and while Eddie held no grudges, he did miss watching you pull on the thick smoke, so many thoughts rushing at him in those few precious seconds. You’d cough, eyes watering and he’d wonder if you’d make the same sounds with him buried in your mouth.

Slow your roll, cowboy.

It’d been maybe an hour since you kicked his bedroom door in, a McDonald’s bag held in either hand.

“Oh my queen, is that what I think it is?”

“Literally six large fries dude.”

You toss one bag at him where he’s laying on his bed, and beeline for his dresser to drop your stuff. You glance up at his first love while you shuck your jacket off and he’s obviously watching you because he playfully says “Go on, give her a kiss. You know you want to.”

Looking over, you’re 100 percent right. Fries sticking out his mouth, he’s got that shit eating grin plastered on his face, his dimples deep and soft and you just want to grab him there with your thumb and middle finger pressed in and push him back into his pillow.

“I’m not kissing your guitar.” You say flatly.

You on the other hand…

He pouts at you while you start digging around the top drawer, looking for the party supplies.

“You know, I wouldn’t go all haphazard in my drawers like that if I were you.”

“What, afraid I’m gonna find something dirty again?” You throw that over your shoulder while you search for the pre roll you know should be in there.

“Ha ha ha”, Eddie mock laughs, getting up from the bed to open a different drawer in the dresser. “I moved it, made more sense over here.” He pulls out a small wooden box and closes the drawer quick. You quirk an eyebrow at him and dart your eyes between him and the drawer his hand is still on. He just smiles easy and shakes the wooden box at you.

“Oh look at you, a whole box now? What, loose weed in your socks not your thing anymore?” You tease him and pluck it out of his hands to dig through it.

“Aha!”, the blunt you had so lovingly rolled on Wednesday in his van, parked outside of your own trailer before you went in for the night. Made like a pinkie promise for Friday afternoon, he’d taken it with a bow of his head; a knight receiving the fair lady’s favor.

“I’ll guard it with my life.” He meant it too.

Eddie had watched you, completely enraptured, run the tip of your pink tongue along a seam of the blunt, the smallest glint of metal peaking out of your mouth. He had tried being as sly as he could be, but he was sure he’d been actively panting by the time you handed it to him. This little fucking thing clutched in his hand had seen more action from you than he ever would. For that, it stayed in his possession.

“You better, that’s the last of that bag.” You’d held the empty ziplock up when you got out of the van, shrugging at him. Eddie promised to pick up only the best from Rick before Friday, so you dug forty bucks out of your wallet for him.

He’d long ago stopped arguing with you about paying since you were the one with an actual job. The bookstore downtown took up three of your afternoons normally, which is why Friday Fundays were created. If Hellfire wasn’t meeting and he didn’t have band practice, he’d sometimes bum around bothering you and your few coworkers.

They had all taken a liking to Eddie, firstly because he was pretty well read, and could quote Tolkien at them fast as lighting. Most of the older women you worked with were just as easily charmed by his big dimpled smile and his abundance of ‘ma’am’s’.

Secondly, he was typically quiet but always respectful so because of this, every single one of them had asked you on multiple occasions if you two had started dating yet. Always prefaced with a big sigh, you’d tell them ‘Why no, of course not, he is actually just my friend.’ It would always end with them tittering and smiling, talking about how boys were never friends with girls like that when they were younger.

“Georgia, it’s 1983, times do change.” You’d reminded your coworker one evening while you both watched Eddie rifling through books on a bottom shelf. Georgia had leveled a look at you and said, “I think after 62 years, I’d see when a boy likes a girl.” You’d wanted to remind Georgia of her coke bottle glasses but kept that one to yourself.

Eddie didn’t like you, not like that. You were positive. The two of you had come together as friends, nothing more. It wasn’t his fault you’d turned 16 and suddenly became aware of his dimples when he smiled at you, or how big his hands were when he’d grab at you when the two of you roughhoused. You’d kept this attraction on complete lockdown for two years and you weren’t about to let Georgia from the bookstore pry it out of you.

Firstly, and Most Importantly, he was your pit buddy. Very early on in the friendship, still both 15 and fresh faced and trying desperately to get into local shows, you’d realized you were both pretty hardy individuals. After saving Eddie from a beating by a Senior boy and then the next week starting a fight over one of the first uses of ‘Freak’ towards him, it’d given both of you an idea of what you could handle.

And it was glorious.

You’d only ever had girlfriends before meeting Eddie and while you did genuinely like doing the girly things, no one ever wanted to do the tomboy things with you. Now though you suddenly had someone who wasn’t afraid of getting into it with you, especially in the middle of a crowd of moving bodies. The first show had been some local band playing just outside of Hawkins, they were metal-ish and loud and fast and it was everything Eddie had promised it’d be. The two of you had spent the hour after the show waiting for your mom and wrestling in the grass next to the venue, taking turns throwing each other on the ground. That night had been the most fun you’d had in a long time and by the time you both climbed into the back of your mom’s station wagon you were breathless and covered in grass and laughing.

Your mom dropped Eddie off with Wayne, apologizing for the dirt child she was leaving on his doorstep.

“I have no idea what happened in an hour.” She’d kind of laughed, and Wayne waved her off telling her Eddie had come home looking worse.

“Tell Ms. Helen thank you.” Wayne said, herding him inside while Eddie yelled out goodbyes and thank you’s. On the short ride to your trailer on the backend of the park, your mom had tried to grill you for information about Eddie. You were honest with her, that the grass and dirt was from play fighting and the few cuts on your knees were from going nuts during the concert. Obviously she was concerned, but she admitted to you before turning the car off,

“I’m just happy you’re making friends hun, that’s all I want.”

Holed up in Eddie’s room, the window cracked just barely to help circulate air and keep as much warm in, you take your normal position on the floor, leaned up against the bed. His head is hanging off the edge while he tries to blow smoke rings.

He waves the blunt in front your face and you wave him off while you dig through your book bag to find your D&D notes. Diamond Head is on low in the background and you hum along while you look for the scribbles you’d jotted down during lunch earlier.

“What tragic character have you created now?” His voice is deep from the smoke and the angle he has his head tilted at. You don’t even chance a glance sideways, just clench your jaw and flex your toes in your shoes.

“No one new, I was thinking of some like, extra story for my cleric.”

“Oh Christ, not the corn god again.”

“Yes the corn god, all praise Helio.” You say it with no emotion but hold your hands up in praise above you. Eddie rolls his eyes and copies you, muttering ‘Praise Helio’ under his breath.

The two of you fall into quiet conversation, passing the blunt back and forth until it’s hard to pinch, stubbed out in the ashtray next to your leg.

Honestly you thought Eddie had fallen asleep with how quiet he was so you’d shifted away from the bed to lay next to it on the floor. Engrossed in notes from one of Eddie’s DM binders (and a good steady high), you don’t notice him slowly moving to keep you in his line of sight. He had been close to sleep but you shifting had stirred up your perfume from your hair and pulled him from his daze. Something sweet and deep that hung around his room long after you’d left.

He had only recently really admitted to himself just how head over heels he was for you so this attention he was leveling at you was still surprising to him. In fact, he’d picked up a new little habit: small things of yours that just happened to find their way into his pocket. Stuff you’d never really miss but little things that made him think of you. Hair clips that he actually used sometimes. A few chapsticks and one of your eyeliner pencils, a guitar pick you’d use when messing with his acoustic and a minifig that he knew you were looking for but it wasn’t important to this campaign so it didn’t matter right now. If a t-shirt of yours found its way in there it was none of his business.

Under the assorted stolen tchotchkes was a single Polaroid he kept tucked deep in the drawer under the little cigar box he’d handed over to you earlier.

That lived face down in the drawer lest you almost accidentally ever see it again. He’s not a pervert (Don’t lie to yourself Munson) but this was an accidental photo taken at an opportune time. Halloween the year before and you had shown up to his trailer in an Elvira getup that had Eddie clutching the counter to stay upright. Complete with black wig and tits out to the universe he was sure he’d never seen so much of you on display. Standing in the doorway you’d had to call his name a few times before he invited you in, Eddie stuck in a staring contest with your chest. You’d done a little half turn for him once inside where he all but vomited compliments at you over your painfully accurate costume. If he followed you around like a dog all night, it was only to make sure he was somehow marking you as untouchable to everyone else.

This was just one of the rich kids parties so Eddie was there to sell and you had tagged along for an excuse to dress up. Normally Eddie would plant himself in his van for an hour or two and then head home but you seemed to be enjoying the party, even though you barely left his side. He never actually partied with this crowd of rich assholes but the combination of you, beer, and everyone being moderately decent to him all night lent to him letting his guard down. By the time midnight had rolled around the two of you were a drunk giggling mess, looking everywhere for the wig you had eventually torn off in the heat of the house.

The morning had snuck up on you though, both of you jolted awake by an errant ray of light seeping through the blinds in the strange living room. You found your shoes by the front door and you two snuck out to Eddie’s van and headed home.

It wasn’t until he was sat outside his own trailer, smoking before heading in, that he found the Polaroid in the breast pocket of his jacket. Eddie had found a camera at some point, he can vaguely remember that. And he had taken this crooked photo of you, legs stretched out and propped up in front of you with the slit of your dress hiked up around your hip. Your head thrown back against the couch while a cigarette hung out of the corner of your mouth. The long line of your neck mapping a trail down to the deep cut neckline and just cleavage for days. Eddie stares and stares for so long before he notices in the bottom corner of the photo, your hand resting on his thigh, painted black nails digging into the dark denim.

It takes his forgotten cigarette burning down to the filter and burning his finger to snap him out of his lust daze.

That photo had lived beside his bed for a good while, serving as a bookmark in many things. (Which is how you’d almost found it one afternoon in his copy of Salem’s Lot.)

He’d stare at it before bed, imagining whatever scenario he could that involved you crawling over that couch and devouring him. Your lips painted dark red, leaving marks all over his neck and you hair, curled and soft from being pinned up all night dragging over his shoulder. He’d never been with a girl that had really taken her time with him but he imagined you would. He knew how soft your hands were, could imagine what they’d feel like dragging down his ribs over his stomach, tugging at his belt. You’d push his shirt up while pulling his jeans down and look up at him with that glint in your eye, the one you’d get before you really threw yourself fully into something.

Sometimes this would be the softest imagined scenario all quiet moans and gentle kisses, you handling him so carefully. Featherlight touches down his thighs, your hands soft around him while you whispered little praises up at him from between his knees. Those were nights where he was feeling especially lovesick (like when you were out on a fabled date). Getting deep into his feelings in the dark, sometimes not even actually jerking off, just thinking of you while he lay in his bed trying to sleep.

The other times though, those times he’d grab you up in front of everyone at that party and find a dark corner of that rich kids kitchen. He’d walk you backwards, up against a wall and cage you in with his body, one hand cradling the back of your head, the other ghosting down your side to grab at your hip. Without shoes on your only a few inches shorter than him, but you’d still have to look up at him from under your lashes. Your hands would wrap up the sides of his face and wind in his hair and you’d pull him down to you, lips soft and warm. He’d hook a finger in the neckline of your dress to try and get your tits out and he just knew they’d fit so perfect in his hands. You’d mewl at him and make all the little noises he could imagine you might make when he runs his fingers over the lace of your bra. He’d smirk at you while you pulled at his neck, trying to get him closer, pulling your body flush up against his. Slot your leg between his and grind up on him to feel the hard length of him against your thigh.

It didn’t take much for him to picture you bent over a bathroom vanity, hands braced on the sink in front of you and crying for him. His hand fisted in the velvet of your dress and pushing it up to your waist so he could watch himself bury his cock in you while you whined and moaned for him to not stop, never stop, keep going your gonna make me cum-

The shuffling of paper brings him back down into his room. Remembers that you are also in his room and he has to keep his fucking imagination in check because you can clearly see the raging hard on he has from your place on the floor. Only if you looked over that is, just a turn of your head and you could see him straining against his jeans-

He mentally slaps himself back in place and takes a deep breath to try to focus on something literally anything that isn’t you and your tits and your thighs and your breathing…

From your position on the floor you can see Eddie lying face up on his bed, eyes closed, fingers tapping on his chest along with the drum beat. The notes you’ve been looking at are held at such an angle that you’re actually just peering at him like a little creep over the top. Watching his fingers tap, watching his chest rise and fall, watching his face scrunch up when he hears the bass really kick in. It’s lulling you into a stasis of sorts; you’ve been good and toasty for a bit now, the two of you no longer essentially hotboxing his room. The floor was supposed to be grounding you so you’d stop imagining things like climbing up on the bed with him. Would he even open his eyes or would he just smile?

Assume you were trying to get comfortable.

You could surprise him. Tangle your hand up in his hair and pull his head back to hold him in place while you attacked his neck, leaving little red marks up and down the column of his throat. Maybe he’d laugh, all breath and a little gasping, the vibrations making you smile against him. You could move your way up to his mouth and he’d taste just like you’d imagined a hundred times before. Tobacco and weed and a little salty from the fries he’d been eating earlier.

This is not the first, nor will it be the last time, that you sit and wonder what secrets that mouth beholds.

You are slowly spinning out on the floor of his room, your mind going…well, more like an inch a minute rather than a mile. Eddie’s notes long forgotten next to you in the carpet, you’re just about to drift off into your daydream about his fingers tap tap tapping down your sternum when he clears his throat and turns his head to look at you, says something you don’t catch.

“What?”

“I said ‘can I ask you something?’” He repeats himself and rolls over to lean on an elbow. His eyes are fixed on you, a notch between his brows making him look worried.

“What’s up?”

“Can I rain check next Friday?” He asks you almost hesitantly. It takes a few seconds for you to catch up before you frown a little yourself.

“And postpone the Friday night french fry extravaganza? What, you got a hot date or something?” You think you’re being slick but a blush starts to creep up his neck.

“No way! Did Gwen change her mind?!” You sit up from the floor to crawl over to the edge of the bed where you prop your chin to grin up at him. Your daydream is left with the notes while you rush into his space, face close to his own. Weed is still hugging your faculties pretty warmly so you don’t get a chance to stop your eyes drifting down his face to his lips.

He absolutely does not miss that look, but he’s also dipped pretty deep in this high so he lets it go because this is new. He’s never seen you look at him like that before; bites his bottom lip because he’s not entirely sure what’s happening in this moment.

No harm in letting you stare.

No harm in him watching you worry at your own lip.

Please let me bite that for you.

Your eyes finally snap back up to his with a questioning look in them.

Yes yes yes do it first please I’m too much of a coward.

Time is molasses the way the guitar in the background is molasses and you’re just staring at each other when you huff lightly.

“So…Gwen?”

Yeah, Gwen. Who’s Gwen?

“Uh yeah kind of? Nothing like crazy or whatever.” He breaks eye contact with you to stare at his blanket and pick at it. He’s not even sure why he’s still set on hanging out with her honestly, not with this huge fuckin’ crush he’s got burning for you. That first time he’d asked Gwen it had been with some actual feeling behind it. It’d only taken her a week to come back after turning him down though, a quiet question on her lips. Cornering him in the parking lot after school she’d made it a point to get him alone by his van where they were out of eyesight of everyone else. That should have been his first clue that this wouldn’t be a real date, but he’d been too caught off guard by the god damn cheer outfit.

“Does that offer still stand?” She’s sweet and a little naive maybe and he’s kind of weak for that so of course it does. Anything to get you off of his mind.

“For what?”

“Going out for a bite.”

“I mean sure, if you’re free.”

“Of course silly. Next Friday though.” She giggles and tucks a note with her number into his vest pocket.

He tells you all this, not looking up from his blanket the whole time. He admits that he knows she probably isn’t really interested in going out with him but she seems fun and nice and like who cares right?

“Yeah, she gets to test out what kind of freak I am and I probably get laid so…” he trails off. You’re still all up in his space so you can see his eyes darting around his blanket, looking for a distraction. This isn’t the first of these kinds of conversations between the two of you and you’ve seen that hurt in his eyes before. It’s not like Eddie is laying waste to all the girls of Hawkins High. He’s got maybe a solid handful of conquest under his belt, but they’ve all mostly treated him like a big secret. Something they got to do on a weekend or three and then moved on to something better. Something brighter. Something more well rounded and presentable.

“It’s not like she’s gonna take me home to meet mom.” His laugh is small and hollow when he rolls back over to stare at his ceiling. You pull yourself away from the edge of the bed, the cozy little spell broken.

“Listen man, you don’t have to go out with her. Just cancel it. What’s the worst that’ll happen? She doesn’t talk to you anymore?” You’re trying to break the sad tension with a joke and a gentle punch to his shoulder. He doesn’t budge, just sighs real big and continues to stare up at nothing.

You’re not super worried about this. Either he doesn’t hang out with her and you two get to have your normal Friday, or he does and you wait it out like you have with the others.

See, Gwen is an easy obstacle. She’s one of the nice cheerleaders, and she’s a year below you guys but she has no idea what she’s dipping her toe into. Eddie is a special brand of person and with his ability to talk an ear off, he’s sure to scare her off quickly. They’ll go out on their date and probably fool around a few times and then she’s going to comment on Hellfire. Or his band. Or his music. And then Eddie is going to get bored. He’ll remember what it’s like to talk about his interest unhindered with his little group of misfits and he’ll come back, acting like nothing ever happened.

So you have nothing to worry about.

Gwen will be easy.

💕Tags List💕

@edsforehead, @fracturedarkness, @munsonsguitarpick

Thank you again you guys!

#Stranger Things #Stranger Things fic #My work #fic #Eddie Munson #Eddie Munson x reader #x reader #Eddie Munson smut #but only like a little #It'll get there I promise #This one really got away from me #4k words????#these were supposed to be drabbles and shorts wtf #lmao do you guys like my Dimension 20 reference?#blink and you'll miss it #Rentfic

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see-arcane · 14 days

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Blood of My Blood: Something to Cry About

Consider this a spinoff of a spinoff. Based on @ibrithir-was-here's Blood of My Blood and directly jumping off of @bluecatwriter's chapter, Overindulgence.

In which the Master of the castle runs into an unexpected concern regarding his dear vassal and being the monster in the picture is not quite as fun as he recalls.

(Warnings for suicidal ideation and domestic abuse.)

His eyes were shut, but he wasn’t sleeping.

It was not the first time his friend had greeted him so. Back in that first private summer there had been something of a game made from it. Whenever his friend was caught supine in bed or on a couch without the will to drag himself to consciousness and perform for his Master, the latter would sometimes test the limits of the act. A hand on his throat. Another under the shirt and over the drumming heart. That had been back when only one of them carried a chill.

What a distant thing that season was now. The dark-haired youth had only been able to hide his expression because fatigue still left its miserable countenance stamped on him. He had not been able to fully hide his shudders then; not when the hands began to move. Now here was his friend just shy of the full metamorphosis, human by the thinnest wisp of definition, a marble statue in his bed.

Stained marble. He was so drained as to nearly match the silver-white corona of hair on the pillow. There were the usual shadows under the eyes and the mottling spots that showed where his family nursed at throat and wrist. But the palette broke anew along one side. Even if it was to allow space for the bandages.

Bandages that had started white but now flared in spots of scarlet. Rings, rather.

Bites.

Ah, he had indulged deeply.

Enough to sand the years away to those earliest days when he himself had been a youth peddling soul and sacrifices away beneath the Mountain. Amusing as it was, and infinitely worth the woman’s face upon seeing the full claim of her husband in action, he did catch himself counting the hours until this whipcord stage would fade out of him. It would be a pain in and of itself for bone and beard and build to all even out again into full manhood. Just having his own voice in his ears would be a relief in itself. Unquestioned as his rule was, even he could not play deaf to the absurdity of the lord of the castle sounding a year short of his first shave.

He could almost fool himself into thinking dear Jonathan was playing ignorant because he did not recognize his Master’s voice. Almost.

“She wrapped it poorly,” he hummed. He sat at the faux dreamer’s hip. “The stain should not be visible.”

Jonathan’s eyes stayed shut. His breathing did not change, thin as it was. Perhaps the woman was in his head, whispering behind his back. But a simple check showed otherwise.

Mother and child were both out from underfoot for the moment, amusing themselves with animals. The boy maintained the wolves as his most cherished creatures, as was right, but the other beasts in the dark had hooked his eye as well. Bat and rat, owl and fox. The latter had scared him once, hearing it scream for the first time—a human shriek from an inhuman throat. The woman was out with another of her husband’s doting gifts, a book of fauna with all the airy definitions and dissections that mortal science had seen fit to cage the local range of species in. It was something to keep them busy and another little facet to add to the boy’s knowledge.

The woman felt him prying and a reflexive response tried to leap back at him. He shut her out before she could know where he was. Not that it would matter. He could revoke her meager privilege with his friend as he liked. But this was not for others to intrude on. Supposing Jonathan dropped his act sometime this decade.

“Oh, dear. I had not realized you were so depleted. Perhaps I should fetch some donors from the village and have them pipe their veins into yours. It worked so artfully for other patients. Or,” he made a show of slitting open a wrist to let the dark vein ooze, knowing the gesture was sensed even behind closed eyes, “since you are so set on the repose of death, we could go ahead and rescind all the playacting and reach denouement early. It would surely save much in time and tears and—,”

Jonathan’s eyes were open. Not looking at him. The pale hands remained folded atop the sheets. One was limp. The other was lax only from the effort to avoid becoming a fist.

“There you are. Ah, and there is the opportunity gone.”

His wrist was already healed. Sealed shut almost the instant it was cut. Even two nights on, he was swollen with his friend’s draught. He had to admire the vitality required for such a task. Poor Lucy would have wilted at the first two bites, with or without her impotent ring of suitors dumping their blood into her to drag out the inevitable. In truth, he had half-hoped that the sweet diversion of the Lesson would end with Jonathan’s heart stopping altogether. The feeding of blood was only a requirement if the transformation was intended to be a slower process, as it had been meted out to the woman.

Had Jonathan died, he would be undead within the same night. Perhaps even the same hour. Being siphoned for almost half a decade by three vampires would leave no room for the process to drag its heels. What a treat it might have been to see the woman realize what she’d done. All her beloved’s sacrifice thrown away because she’d grasped beyond what was hers. And better still to have the weight of the farce finally shrugged from his shoulders as it was ripped from Jonathan’s. The boy would have cheered, he knew, to see his Papa finally in their ranks completely.

And then would come their first hunt…

But he was woolgathering. And, in the fashion of a youth, chasing mere impulse when he knew the fruits were not yet ripe. Let the game play out, young man. He would have his way by the end, do not throw the foreplay away now.

Jonathan still did not look at him.

“You seem unable to turn your head, my friend. Did I truly spend so long with your neck? Memory does not lie and I can see myself that the shoulder received far more attention.”

Jonathan did turn his head—to face the wall. The ghost-light eyes hovered on the calendar, brow furrowed in reading the weeks. His lips moved in silent muttering.

A clawed finger reached out, hooking the pallid chin until Jonathan turned to him. There was a genuine wince as he did so. He had bitten deep and not with the usual set of teeth. He’d called upon the Wolf’s rows to be sure of strength and for the demonstration made before his greedy audience. But even with the heady extra helping of blood, even with the Lesson successfully taught, there was no sidestepping the fact of the method’s sloppiness. Intentional in the moment, yes, but…

But what? He will heal. And if he doesn’t, he will die and do better than heal. Call it a Lesson for him too. Such is the lot of one who clings to the role of livestock. Really, it is probably a boon to his penitent soul. A belated lashing for what he still considers his sins.

“Does it hurt?” he asked aloud.

Jonathan did not answer. Only stared at him. There was no fear there, nor even that constant element of melancholy. There was only a queer flatness. It might nearly be mistaken for the same glaze of placidity the woman tried to hide her rages with. But no, it was not even anger. What, then?

“Have you lost the use of your tongue as well?” The question came with a flicker of mesmer. It hooked the root of Jonathan’s tongue and yanked.

“No,” Jonathan offered blandly. And no more than that. As if there were truly no other words he had to spare for his Master.

“I had not realized you stored your vocabulary in your arteries.”

“Even if it were otherwise, I imagine I’d have little to say worth sharing.”

My friend, is this you sulking? It has been years!

Years since that last pregnant silence as he showed Mr. Harker the wolves at the door. Since he watched the young man sit and stew and struggle against tears before ascending wordlessly to his room. What a raw little thing he’d been then.

But the thing staring back at him was not raw. It was something leaden and tired and…bored? Was that it? Something near to that, perhaps, but sharper.

“Now, there is no need to pout. You know I have never ceased to cherish our little talks. But I do see you are making do with only water and bread. Dear Mina has left you like a lame pet up here.” In reality the water was fresh and the bread, baked the day before, was joined by what non-perishable goods the woman had scrounged by way of a breakfast. Even the boy had left him with what he considered a treasure by way of a bowl brimming with wild berries he’d picked himself around the castle. All this had been sampled, if thinly. “Yours is the only tongue here left to appreciate a vintage in its original state rather than filtered through a vein. Shall you have a claret or something stronger?”

“Neither. Thank you.”

Flat as a skipping stone. He did not even reach for the old half-joking insistence that he did not dare risk an overindulgence of wine or liquor as, quote, ‘If I drank every time I felt I needed it, I would be an alcoholic within a week.’ Instead, the stare. Still ongoing. Seeming to realize this, Jonathan made himself blink before trying to turn his head away. Back to the calendar.

His Master locked a full hand around his jaw and twisted him back. Another wince.

No fear. No sorrow. No anything. Just that blunt void of acknowledgment. That unknown thing hovering between ire and lethargy.

“Might I ask what it is that so fascinates you about the date? It must be some worthy holiday to outweigh your Master’s presence.”

“Not a holiday,” Jonathan allowed. “Though I suppose I should mark down the evening three nights prior as a milestone. Something to keep on record.” Three nights prior. When the Lesson was taught. “Your first bout of physical abuse on me. I had thought you couldn’t hold out beyond two years. Most of you don’t even make it past the first two months. Yet you are patient, so I figured there would be an insulation period.”

It was his turn to stare back. Jonathan waited as he did, seeming oddly like he was itching for a pocket watch to tally how many minutes he was wasting breath on this exchange. His Master’s hand moved from the pale chin to the bandaged shoulder.

“Most of who?”

The hand squeezed. Jonathan grimaced, but didn’t blink.

“The demographic of men I had hoped you were better than. There was evidence enough to suggest it. At least a ratio of odds that favored something less predictable. Despite what proofs there are to the contrary, you are not a violent man, Sir. Not when you can happily do worse than violence. Certainly not when the prelude to it provides better results and entertainment. Why else would you take such care to drag out a season of captivity or play your games on the Demeter? Why feed on a victim by drops rather than ravage outright but for the joy of watching their comprehension of the inevitable? The only instances in which you resort to straight aggression are when you want something over with.

“A mother eaten by wolves. Sacks of children thrown like scraps. Your own aide waiting ashore, slaughtered and stuffed in a stone wall to muddy your trail. Quick, quick, quick. Violence bores you in the same way doing linens bores a laundress. If it must be done, fine, let it be over with—but it is no more or less than something to scrape from the schedule. At a guess, that night’s violence was for Mina’s sake. I had not changed anything in my routine. Quincey had done no ill. Mina, I suspect…what? Blinked incorrectly? Asked to see me for a heartbeat beyond the scheduled feeding? Dared to request a moment of make-believe where you do not own us all, as if the very act of imagination equated a challenge to you?

“But that is all beside the point. You have stepped fully into the cliché. And I had accounted for that. The first round tallied. Fine. The issue comes with the timing. Your insistence on who else ought to be in the audience.” In his lap, one hand finally lost the fight and hardened into a fist. The other, attached to the bitten arm, only twitched. “Mina was the point of the show. But our son? Was he part of the Lesson too? Did you order him to stay as yet another hoop for her to jump through, to make her act and lie beyond all extremes? No, I should not ask. Of course he was.”

The ghost-light eyes burned.

“This, when he loves you as his Father. When the entire point of all this is giving him a life he can trust in. You saw him smile for you in this room. He held you and beamed and heard your stories. And then what? What did he ask before you left him in his coffin?”

The woman had not been in his mind at the time to overhear. She could not know. She could not have told her husband what the boy asked.

The boy, his smile fading, his eyes sunset-bright and wondering, blankets fidgeting in his hands.

‘Are you sure Papa is alright? He looked really tired…’

His Father had told him yes, of course, but Papa had been so enchanting that night that Father had not been able to help himself. Not to worry, his Mum would take care of him as she always did. All’s well, diavol. And the boy had tried to smile. Tried to believe him.

And couldn’t.

“He turns five next year. Five. And you are already blasting holes in the foundation of his faith in you. In what we have been building out of debris to produce a happy reality for him, in which his parents are not monsters.” Now a note of true venom slipped through his voice, the hollow-burning eyes narrowed to cold angles, and at last the feeling was recognized for what it was, and it was... “In which he does not have to be yet another actor for your benefit.”

…Disappointment.

Cold and grey and coarse with recognition. With experience.

“All of that being said, Sir, if you feel you must make another show of the obvious,” the fist uncurled to gesture at the mauled shoulder, “I ask that you reserve it strictly for the adults.” Finally the lambent gaze skidded away, looking not at Master or calendar, but at his still-resting hand on the covers. The fingers still hadn’t curled further than halfway to his palm. “Perhaps I’ll blame it on a doorknob next time.” Then, as if the entire topic were dismissed, he reached across to the nightstand. A notebook sat beside the dish of food. Not another diary, but a weighty planner. Jonathan folded it open to the latest page. The fountain pen’s cap was worked off with some difficulty by wedging it between the fingers of the lax hand. “Most of the itinerary was cleared a week ahead. The triplicates will take a little longer than I’d hoped, but they should still be ready within the month.” The nib poised on the page. “Was there anything else that needed attention, Sir?”

Besides you? said the ghost-light eyes.

His Master regarded him for a moment. Another. A third. As he regarded him, a clawed hand floated out and pinched the book out of Jonathan’s hold. The book flew like a discus into the furthest wall. Outside, a summer storm grumbled. He felt a distant twitch of his senses as the woman and the boy both prickled with worry. Storms were never just storms around the castle.

Jonathan capped the pen and waited. Even devoid of a psychic voice, his eyes spoke with an articulation so clear he might have talked aloud:

Go on. The moment fits the criteria. We are our only witnesses. Fetch a switch off a tree or a broken bottle while you’re at it. Really round out the scene.

“I came here,” his Master grated with rigid courtesy, “to offer some manner of respite. Perhaps even a token of reward for so expertly assisting in a much-needed Lesson. But I see I was mistaken. If I had known you were in such an ungrateful state, I would have waited. As it stands, it appears you need educating of your own. Poor Mina, she will be so disappointed to learn that her dearly-bought visits are now revoked.” He feigned his own interest in the calendar. Then at the vast window that looked out on the plummeting height of the tower and the half-moon squinting through the thunderhead’s cracks. “Our son’s as well, I think. He really is so spoiled in his free time. Bothering his poor beset Papa night and day when he has so much to do…

“Ah, but then, perhaps this is remiss of me too. I am no child despite my current face. I have run the entirety of this castle and its domain singlehandedly for centuries, all without any novice solicitors to flutter around my office. Likewise for the tending of the castle itself. Really, my friend, what reason is there for you to be so abused as to leave this room at all? To be bothered by maintaining the performance for mother and child? Such a labor, such a trial.

“Well, no more of it! You can stay here, they can stay without, and whenever it comes time to feed, you may empty your veins into a cup. Far tidier that way, and so much closer to the human façade besides! You do want the boy to learn how to pantomime humanity in full, yes? Of course you do. So that is how it shall be from here out. You in your tower, they in the crypt, and I shall endeavor to play go-between for all to the best of my ability. How does that suit you?”

He bared his teeth to the gums with his grin. Waiting for the tears. For the shattering of the dull mask. For the bribe, the plea, the grovel. He did all quite beautifully when the occasion called for it over the years. His wife did well enough, especially for one grappling with the impulse-weight of the Vampire, but Jonathan had it down to an artform. Indeed, he saw the first shine of dew come over the brilliant white-blue of the eyes, the quirk and twitch of his face into a grimace—

No. No, not a grimace.

A rictus.

The corners flinched up before Jonathan could hide it behind his hand. By then it was too late. Assuming the man could’ve stopped himself. A noise that tried to be a sob leapt through his teeth. It came out as a laugh. As did all the sounds that followed. A long hideous string of giggles boiling over into a cackle that brought rivers of tears to his shining eyes. It was not a man’s sound, but the mock-laughter of hyenas, the baying racket of jackals.

Unbidden, he leaned an inch away from his friend. Several inches. The movement snapped Jonathan’s eyes back to him, wide and wild and blazing and for one lunatic instant they seemed to brand the afterimage of the house in Piccadilly on the room, that surreal moment in which he first saw the uncanny Thing that wore his dear friend’s skin; a Thing that could and would kill him with his steel or his own hands. Even in a crowded street.

But that moment passed—long, long ago now, back before the insurance of the woman and her collared will were his precious cudgel—and Jonathan himself seemed wholly oblivious to the recollection. In his face there was only a madness of such profound despair and scorn that the effect dizzied.

“You do not understand. You really truly don’t, do you?” The words were cracked and brittle, barely holding an intelligible shape. “You talk of tokens and punishments. As if I have ever dared to hope, to even think of wanting anything for myself, since that night in October. As if I have not already imagined and lived, expected and met every possible nightmare that God could throw in my path and hers. I lived the first twenty years of a pointless joke of a life already under every bootheel the civilized human world had to offer, as did she. We grasped at crumbs of joy, of hope, of respite from the reality of our lots. This we could do because we had each other and our faith. Faith that for all the ills that humanity dealt out with the good, there was at least a chance for us. There was, we prayed, something better waiting on the other end of life. If we were good. If we did good.

“But then you had to prove it all wrong. To burst the lie. Not that God is not real. He so very clearly is. But you—all that you are, all that you’ve done, all you will continue to do without so much as a slap on the wrist from the divine Powers that Be—proved that He is fickle. That His love and protection is wholly conditional. That someone as good, as pure, as blisteringly virtuous as Mina could be burned by the Son for another’s sin, abandoned and denied like a used rag for the crime of someone else’s violation. All to have the ransom of her humanity dangled over our heads to spur a handful of strangers onto the hunt after…what? Four centuries’ worth of you owning these mountains and its people, all of them dutifully cowering and dying behind their own half-helpful crucifixes?

“But oh no! Too late! Complications abound! The mother is with child and it does not matter to the good men who swore to slaughter her! And God must have declared them good men, for they did so good with Lucy. Lucy, who has surely gone to Heaven with her slaying…or not. What proof is there? What guarantee is there that anyone with your poison in them can hope for salvation, alive or dead? They saw her corpse and nothing else. They choked on hope and called it evidence that this was the right thing to do. God’s will be done.

“I have already murdered to go against His will. I slew those good men to keep them from making an Isaac and a slaughtered lamb of my Loves. I damned myself then as I had been preparing to damn myself since the moment I woke to her screams and your work. Do you understand?”

Despite the sultry rainstorm air trying to bleed in through the window, the room was cold. Somehow it had grown outright frigid around the bed and the Thing hunching out of his sheets.

“I have nothing. Nothing at all but purpose. Nothing I would dare to want, knowing it will be lost. Nothing I have left to lose, having ceased to believe the lie that I have any potential for joy beyond a reflection of my Loves’ peace. Nothing resembling anything so laughable as respite on any level. I am reduced to a talking trough for the sake of a family who deserves worlds beyond the stain you and I would leave on them without supreme effort. So, go ahead. Play jailor. Play glutton. Play king of the castle and lord above all and whatever else you stopped being able to play with your last captive audience once they were worn down to cackling husks that only had room in themselves for hunger and jeering, knowing that you had no more to threaten them with after taking all that they had.

“In fact? Here. Since I still have some feeling in my left hand. Wouldn’t want you giving me a holiday from work without due reason, and it shall save you the trouble of inventing an excuse to maim the rest.”

As he spoke, Jonathan tore at the bandages. They fell away in grisly ribbons to reveal a far grimmer map of injury than expected. It was worse still when Jonathan twisted to show his back. Bites and bruises patterned him like gruesome puzzle pieces. There were stitches closing two flaps of skin together. In one portion there were small chunks of flesh entirely gone where the teeth had torn them loose.

“Go on. Get on with it. Or would it be better for you if I threw in a scream and a plea to top things off? Pick a script, Sir, let me know.”

Jonathan kept his back to his Master. His Master only stared. Then, with a hand laid gentle as a feather on the ruined shoulder:

“I believe you were right at the start. You do have little to say worth sharing.”

The hand traced the first of the marks. A broad bite clamped along the carotid; the kind that could have torn the entire throat out, Adam’s apple and all. If its maker were not cautious. It was only the ensuing that had been ragged, tearing at muscle more than vein. To make a necessary a point.

As if his friend cared. As if he should care whether his friend cared.

His thumb brushed over a small crater where a canine had torn away so thickly that the flesh dimpled.

Jonathan waited for it to be joined by others like it.

Waited. Waited.

It was almost a full minute before he realized the light touch on him was no touch at all. He turned to see his Master was gone. If he’d had the energy to leave the bed, he might have gone to the door. His Master was on the other side, turning the key over in his hand. As he lingered, a bat summoned to the window. Beady borrowed eyes peered through the glass, waiting for Jonathan to rise, to go to the door and see if it was open.

Should he lock it as he rose? As he tried to turn the knob? Or did he skip the key entirely and simply hold the door shut to watch him scrabble one-handed at it?

The bat watched Jonathan hobble from the bed and to the chair of the writing desk. He dragged the chair to the window. Sat. Stared out through the glass at the moon.

His Master willed the clouds to cover it.

Jonathan stared still.

Still.

His good hand was the only part that moved. There was something white being fidgeted with. A stick of chalk.

It was only when he felt the woman and the boy heading for the tower that the key was pocketed unused and its owner drifted as a mist through another window. The bat watched as Jonathan pocketed his chalk and stood from his chair upon hearing the child’s chirruping voice echoing up the stairs. Papa-Papa-Papa-are-you-up? Papa hid the bandages and donned a robe before grabbing a book at random for his lap while his good hand pinched cold food from his plate. The boy bounded in, mother in tow, Papa, Papa, look-look-look. Jonathan looked dutifully at the new drawings he’d made, including one done from life of a red fox that let them get this close before running off. Jonathan was duly impressed. His weak hand was in his woman’s fingers, gently held, more gently curling and testing the limp knuckles.

Their Master did not linger long enough to know whether Jonathan would tell her of their visit now or later. It was moot. The scene cloyed.

The bat flew and the mist sank away.

He couldn’t recall the last time he’d been in his women’s chambers. Even the sole woman left in the castle hardly bothered with them. Antique treasures were buried under the modern trappings he’d tossed their way in preparation for England. They would have been with him once he set the groundwork in London. Them and his good friend.

All dust now.

Like the dust now glazing so much of the old rooms. Jonathan had taken a Herculean task upon himself some years prior to try and chip at the disuse and damage of a room at a time between his usual work. The paperwork, the horses, the errands, the cautious playing of mouthpiece and shield between Master and subjects. Between all that, he set himself to the tidying of this hall or that chamber. It was as impressive as it was embarrassing to note whenever his Master passed by one of these rooms in a state of surprise. He’d half-forgotten most of them existed, let alone what they had looked like before the ennui set in. Even the tarnish on the fixtures and doorknobs was cleaned away.

‘Perhaps I’ll blame it on a doorknob next time.’

He curled his lip and shoved the thought away. Then shoved over a bookcase for good measure. Novels in half a dozen languages went tumbling alongside a few expensive baubles. Old gold bookends, glass statues, cut gems so large and hollowed they could hold a wealth of rings and bracelets. All to pair with the tailoring of the wardrobes. These stood at attention beside abandoned easels, instruments, and myriad other distractions. All things given to be taken away. Only as was merited, of course. Such lazy mincing things, his old Loves. Coaxing anything but bile or idleness from them was like convincing a snail to run.

And most of what was goaded had been—

‘You yourself never loved. You never loved!’

—not a fraction of what they had given at the start. Not even their beginnings had amounted to much after the consummation. Stolen or bartered or lured, his Loves had lapsed so quickly into backhanded camaraderie. They had made cats of themselves, knowing they were craved simply for the fact of their presence and it gave them as close to free reign as their Master would ever give. Not enemies, but pets. Pretty faces and musical laughter to populate the nights with more than his own echoes.

For there had been laughter. With him. At him. Sometimes he had even let them claw or snap at him just for the excuse of the punishment he would inflict after. Really, for the sake of something to actually do with them beyond their nightly sniping.

He left the chambers and frowned down the hall. Moonlight fell through the nearest southward chamber, the window clean for the first time in ages, the interior righted and swept. It held books he had read two centuries ago, an old chessboard he had lost a century before that, now with its polished crystal men standing at attention, fallen curtains beaten from their dust and hung anew, paintings and an elderly world map peppered with monsters reframed and set upon the walls. The latter had been drawn to his attention by Jonathan himself, smiling with the boy in his lap, mentioning idly that he had found a map of fascinating creatures he had no name for, might Father know them..?

Father had, of course. The boy had been enraptured for nights with his definitions, with the monsters proven wholly imaginary or simply animals or, he knew from experience, terribly real. Tales he had relayed giddily at the next family meal, his Papa wasted but smiling on between him and his mother who had already heard her dose of legendry down in the crypt. Holding his Loves with two good hands.

He knocked a dresser over as well.

What did he care? What did he possibly care whether his dear friend took some overdue recompense for his betrayal? For upending meticulous plans and striking a scar into his Master’s brow and daring to haggle for the chance to squat here, under his lenient aegis rather than order the woman to tear into him and their brat and bash her own skull to gruel? Really, his friend was lucky to have such a meager toll to pay.

Other than vassalage. Other than slaughtering in Love’s name over God’s and sending the hunting party’s scraps limping away. Other than complaining of his mangling only because it upset the child; because the child had to hide that he was upset, just like Mum and Papa hide from Father. Other than actively laying foundations for a second invasion of England once the boy is grown, selling himself further down the layers of Hell, for Love’s sake. Other than this, yes, most meager. Practically nothing. You are many things, old devil, but the least you can be is honest with yourself. Or are you not still preening to yourself even now at your bargain?

Your losses: A scratch on the head. A two-decade wait. A handful of women.

Your gains: Your mind. Your future no longer being a mere checklist. Your Harkers.

Your friend.

Draga ta.

He first bristled, then sighed. His mind was walled off. There was no spying. He could admit the obvious to himself.

Not now, not tomorrow, but eventually. No need to fret over it. Time is the sea that eats away all stone, however stubborn. He will break given ages enough. It took the weight of the Mountain and its Lessons, but you broke too. And you were better for it. This sour period will pass. They will all break and learn and be pieced into proper shape.

Obvious, obvious. Of course.

His feet took him to the southward room. Map, art, chess, books. One of many rooms with forgotten treasures. Converted and cleaned and left like little oases. For the boy, for the woman, for his Master.

And yet Jonathan’s own room remained bare.

There was a little bookcase, he knew. But was it used? Was there anything else in the man’s room but a bed, clothes, and a desk? Memory ticked back along his mind. All the visits made to drink or talk or, in his friend’s sleep, simply to watch. What was there to that room that was not already waiting for him when his Master first ordered him in?

Sometimes there were drawings or wild bouquets from the boy. Food from the woman whenever he worked into one of those stupors that made him forget his meals. No more than that. Almost five years under the castle’s roof, diving in and out of the place’s uncounted rooms, going to and from the towns or ordering from afar, and there was not a single thing within his personal four walls to suggest it. And was that not strange in itself? True, he might occasionally be locked inside the tower, but not as a constant.

If the point of giving something was to have it taken away, the reverse held true too. He did let his friend roam where he may more often than not. And his friend did make use of it and his limited access to his Master’s coffers.

For anyone other than himself.

Yes, well. He does have his chair and his window. If he has gone so long without need of more, so much the better. Far easier upkeep than some hangers-on you could mention.

The thought failed to raise a smile on him.

He gripped the bookcase before him—jammed end to end with hardcovers of multiple eras, not a volume out of place—and thought for several minutes of tipping it over. Perhaps throwing it into the courtyard. Instead, he walked his fingers along until they landed on a history text. Written in the native tongue, it was one of the less maddeningly misinformed volumes of the late 17th century. Even the illustrations were passable. Jonathan must have overlooked it. He had been as adamant as their son once upon a time when it came to unearthing old histories. More, he was making more than fair leaps with his practice in the different languages of the mountains.

The book left the room with him.

The book stayed with him for the rest of the night and all of the day.

His eyes were sent elsewhere.

The bats slept, but the rats were busy. Or they would be, if he’d had need of more than one left loitering in the shade under Jonathan’s wardrobe. Animal-fear waned to animal-confusion waned to animal-annoyance as hours ticked by and its verminous little belly went empty as it continued to keep watch for its Master. Eventually it was swapped for another, this one peeking through a crack near the roof. Fear-confusion-annoyance under his thrall again. The same went for a third and fourth rat. Their eyes all showed the same tedium.

Jonathan Harker only ever allowed himself leisure when he had no choice. He only had no choice when he was recuperating from exsanguination. It turned out that his idea of this amounted to either laying in bed or shuffling to the chair to look out the window. Sometimes he even stood and gripped the windowsill. And once, just once, he undid the latch and swung the pane open.

Looking out. Looking down.

His good hand moved on the windowsill as he stared. The chalk had returned. Scratch, scratch, scratch it went, all the way along the stone, like a student writing out a long verse. It was the damned shorthand, of course. Yet it couldn’t be a message for the woman. Her mind was sunk deep in the torpor. Deep enough that her Master could filter into her unnoticed. There was hardly anything worth digging for beyond the usual infantile fantasies of his brutal demise and carrying her Loves off into the sunset. All he needed was at the surface.

Just a few notes. Just enough to make sense of the arcane little dashes.

Scratch, scratch, scratch, Jonathan wrote.

His Master angled the latest rat so he could read it all and filter it through the woman’s knowledge. The rat squealed and flinched away into its hole as its Master’s own shock prodded its speck of a mind.

Scratch, scratch, scratch.

DO NOT DO IT DO NOT DO IT DO NOT DO IT DO NOT DO IT

FOR THEM FOR THEM FOR THEM FOR THEM FOR THEM FOR THEM

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE

He twitched in his coffin, almost rising wholly from the anchor of the death-sleep.

But then Jonathan sighed and closed the pane. The chalk was erased. A return to the chair, a return to the stare. This time with new tears tracking down his cheeks. He didn’t move again until his stomach snarled. The doorknob was checked—unlocked—and he took himself away to eat. His Master’s borrowed eyes followed him all the way down, watching him cook and carve a fish without relish. Watched him try and fail to open the office door—locked—before idling down one of the in-progress halls. He worked in the dust and the decrepit furnishings for a few hours before marching back up to the tower. His hands were empty despite having handled an array of oddments and literature and art.

Up. Chair. Stare. Bed. Wait.

It is nothing but a recent spell. He has been here almost half a decade. He’s not spent his time only in his little labors and bloodletting. Who could? Perhaps he dwells on the pending retribution for his outburst. Waiting for the sword to fall.

And what of the threadbare room? What of the trips that brought home nothing but sustenance to let him feed his family, give or take a new treat for them bartered from what allowance was spared for him?

What of it?

He did not answer himself. Only waited until the woman made her exit to the tower. The boy was called to under the level of her psychic awareness.

Come here, child. I have an important task for you.

The boy was still in his coffin, reading in the heap of blankets and fairy books. He poked his head up over the rim with a look that balanced between worry and curiosity.

A Lesson?

Not at the moment. Unless you wish for a Lesson on why not to keep your Father waiting.

But the boy was already scurrying out of his box and up the steps of the tomb. He paused to look up in wonder at his Father.

“Your face is coming back.”

So it was. Finally. He felt the itch along his cheek and jaw which told him adolescence was waning finally back to his prime, just as the shiver of bone announced the return to full stature. There was a reason he rarely drank this deep.

“It is. The body prefers its natural shape even after an indulgence too far. It may only be another night before I am myself again. But that is too long a wait for this. Here.” He passed the history text down into the boy’s small hands. “Be mindful of not turning to the wrong page. There are sights inside that your poor parents would not approve of.”

An easy bait, that. The boy’s eyes glittered like a little Pandora’s. For an instant. But then a cherubic moue passed over him as he mouthed out the title. What little blood he had in him flamed up to his cheek.

“I don’t think I can read this yet, Father.” The boy admitted as much as though it were a crime.

“I would be stunned if you could, child. No, this is something to bring to your Papa. He is a fiend as much for history as the trudge of modernity and I know he is as eager as you to master all tongues in the mountains. This shall be a fine practice for him as your little tales are for you. Come, I shall walk you up.” He reached to tuck the boy under his arm in the usual way only for the child to shrivel under his hand. His gaze had flicked away from his Father in the same moment as his buzzing little mind tried clumsily to bury something. “Diavol. Is there something you wish to tell me?”

The boy started to shake his head, knew better, and simply shrank deeper into himself. His eyes were nailed firmly to the hardcover. He hugged the volume like a paltry shield.

“Child.”

The lips trembled and cracked at the same time those brilliant ruby eyes rolled up to him. Fear hovered there, but it was not quite of his Father. It was the kind of fear a Father was meant to dispel.

“Are you and Papa fighting?”

“Where would get such an idea?”

His hand reached out again. The boy still cringed, but did not shrink from him. They walked from the tomb and on toward the stairs.

“Since our last meal he hasn’t talked how he used to.”

“Oh, dear. He has gone mute?”

“No. No, he talks. Only he skips over things now. Things he used to bring up all on his own.”

“We are not playing a guessing game, diavol. Speak plainly.”

They had made it to the floors aboveground now. The boy paused mid-step to look up at his Father, his face turned pale as ivory in a window’s moonlight.

“He has not talked about you, Father. Before he brought you up at least once whenever we were together. Asking what you taught me last. Sometimes he’d bring things up like you do. Little hints and edges of things I would have to go to you or Mum to ask about. Papa was the one who brought up journalism—the power that records the world—and told me to ask Mum about it. And he told me that you knew how to find buried treasure on a magic night, that everyone else was too scared to try. And…” His narrow throat worked with a strain. “And he told stories about before me. About how you and Mum and him all came together.”

A crest of the innate fondness rose and fell in the boy’s look at that. He was ever a fiend for the romance of his parents’ history before they came to live in the castle. The romance as their Master had scripted it.

Yet the child’s cheer over it blew out like a candle.

“He won’t talk about you at all now.” The ruby stare flicked up at him. “Not since we ate.”

Not since you tore at Papa like a wolf with a rabbit, Father.

“It has been less than a week, child. For all that I am an occasional favored subject,” he failed to ignore how something twisted in his chest at that, “it is nonsense to expect he keep a checklist of things to speak of. He is recuperating and things will slip a hazy mind. But, to answer your question, no, Papa and I are not fighting.”

The boy did not look away. Even the expected smile could not follow the rules.

And since when does he have rules of acting to follow?

“Was there something else?”

The fear was back. Redoubled. Not the kind dispelled by a Father.

“Father, are you the one who’s been making him sit?”

They had been walking again. Halfway to the tower. Now it was Father’s turn to freeze. Even to gawk.

“What?” The boy shivered at his tone, half-hiding behind the history book. He winced as the white hand at his shoulder grew out its claws. A long breath was forced. The claws retracted an increment. Then, again, “What do you mean ‘making him sit,’ child?”

“Do you remember when I had the Lesson about trancing?”

The one in which mother, child, and Master sank their psychic teeth in dear Jonathan’s mind and almost tore it three ways down the center with their mesmeric quibbling? Yes, vaguely.

“I recall.”

Now the boy looked away entirely. Facing the tower’s direction. Dread came off him like a perfume.

“Do you remember the sharp thoughts in Papa’s head?”

“…I do.”

“Mum said before—,” another lurch of the little throat, almost choking, “before we all jumped in him, when the Lesson started, that she could make him do things. Things people aren’t supposed to do to themselves. Like walk in a fire or make him stay in one place for hours and hours, not doing anything. No sleep or food or anything that keeps Papa alive. She could do that. But she didn’t. She hasn’t been. Papa would know and he’d not be so mad at her that time when she used him in the Lesson.” The child rattled where he stood, intent on the shadows that led up to the tower. “He was sitting at the window before that night. Lots of nights. And days. The first couple times, I thought he was waiting for me. Back when I first learned to do climbing. I snuck up to his door to surprise him. Watching in the keyhole.

“And he sat and sat and sat there, looking out the window. Sometimes he stood up to look closer, sometimes he scratched something out on the stone and wiped it off. Then he’d go back to sitting. It was strange. I didn’t know what it was. But then the Lesson happened and I saw—I saw him—,”

He could not finish and did not need to. His Father remembered.

Vision of a daylit escape. Rising from the chair. No message written on the sill. Just the open pane, his feet on the ledge, and a tipping over into gravity’s arms. Down, down, down. Gone. Among other methods by rope or steel. But the fall came first and crispest to his flailing mind.

Before. He was thinking of it even before that night. Since the boy started climbing. At least two years. And that was just when it was noticed.

The boy was making noise at him again. Accusing.

“Are you the one doing it, Father?”

He would have been mad if it was Mum. We all know no one is allowed to be mad at you. Right, Father?

He struggled with a sudden urge to snatch the child up by his scruff and drag him the rest of the way up to the tower. To hurl him squealing into the room where the loving couple roosted, watching their faces drop slack with horror, and then—

And then..?

Then his mind fell into a red haze. A livid shapeless blank where something like release from the growing storm behind his temples would finally come.

“No, child. I am not responsible.” He stole his hand back with a twitch. “Go the rest of the way yourself. There is something I must see to first.” The boy peered up at him. Doubt in miniature. “Do I need to tell you twice?”

The boy fled. Not walked, not ran, not ambled. Fled. From him.

What of it, old devil? Is this not the proper way? Your adversaries and their spawn cringing and scrambling from you at every turn, quailing under your thumb? This is victory at its height. Is it not so?

He thought of three harpies who mocked and robbed and tittered as he piled their centuries up with gifts and weeping sweetmeat.

He thought of the spur of a delightfully infuriating woman and the admiration of an impossible child.

He thought of his friend, red-handed with the enemies slain for his wife and his Master, slipping silently into servitude and his tithes of blood and obedience, the quiet misery free of charge, Sir.

He thought of his friend, sweeping dust from his mind as blithely as he banished it from his forsaken rooms, varnishing and whetting his nights to an edge finer than a surrendered kukri.

He thought of his friend, who had begun as a mere pending addition to his colony and was now evolved into a thing worth bartering for, worth sheltering and hoarding and honing despite a betrayal paid triply in death and deeds on his Master’s behalf.

He thought of his friend, screaming in his jaws. Clawing his way towards a laugh, look, son, see, son, it’s alright. No, Mina, no, let it be, let him do it, please, Mina, don’t, Mina, do not risk yourself, our boy, please, please.

He thought of his friend, mauled for another’s Lesson, half-dead, streaked in gore and sweat and tears, patched together with inexpert hands.

He thought of his friend in his desolate box of a room, staring out the window with a piece of chalk as the only barrier between life and death.

He thought of all these things and many more. He went on thinking them as he stalked away to his own room and went to work.

An hour had come and gone since he finished what was needed.

An hour and fifteen minutes since he masked himself from their senses and planted himself outside Jonathan’s door. He listened to the cadence of them as one might strain for snatches of birdsong. Only Jonathan and the boy were audible, but even the woman’s mental chatter carried a bristle on the air. His Harkers made such a warm sound all together.

The sound stopped as he turned the knob.

Three heads lifted like a trio of deer hearing a huntsman’s boot disturbing the grass.

They were huddled together on the bed, as always. The woman guarded her husband’s wounded side. The boy sat under his Papa’s good arm with two books open across their laps. Here was the history book and one of the fairy tale collections. They had been taking their turns reading a page apiece, son reading meticulously through a moment of fantasy in Hungarian while his Papa overdid a silly dull drone in the same tongue over the drudgery of an overpacked page for the child to groan at. Mum would cap the whole act by way of glancing at the page and then thinking a flash of knowledge into their heads. There, done. Thank you, Mum. Laughter abounded.

Until now.

“Goodness, such a hush. Do I interrupt?”

Jonathan, the immaculate actor, smiled and shook his head.

“Nothing that did not want interrupting. For some reason I’m failing to win any appreciation for the recital of 200-year-old politics across the Carpathians. Perhaps it’s my delivery.” The latter was directed half to his Master, half to the boy. He even cupped the child’s shoulder. Hinting. The boy offered him a smile in return.

And tried, “They didn’t make it like a story. Just a lot of, ‘This happened and then this and then this and then this.’ You and Mum could write it better.”

The woman offered a sing-song rebuttal of, Or you could, Dearest. It would make for very thorough writing practice.

The boy made a face of dismay and denial, pretending to take cover behind his book of fables. Cute. Precious, even. The whole charade was. Their Master felt his own grin strain to hold in place as he strolled to the bed. Anxiety thick enough to gag floated on the air.

“I leave such judgment to mother and son. For now, Papa and I must speak in private.” He set his gaze level with Jonathan’s. “There is something I require your assistance with, my friend.” His hand uncurled to take. “Come.”

“Of course,” from Jonathan. Not so much as a tremor. He turned to the woman as his good hand gave the boy a parting hug, then raised it to set in his Master’s palm. “I’m afraid you must take up the mantle of inflicting ancient territory disputes on him—,” But then found his good hand was trapped. By the boy. The woman tensed. Jonathan froze. “Sweetheart…”

“Papa, don’t go. Please don’t go.” The boy held fast around his Papa’s hand and half his arm, a feeble anchor whose attention jumped fitfully among his parents; not including his Father. “Mum, tell him not to. Please?” A hesitant thread of mesmer squirmed in his voice. His Father could have rolled his eyes. This tug-of-war again? Was the child dense? “He’s going to do it again.”

The room chilled.

Jonathan flicked a frantic gaze to his wife, blasting silent urgency through his thoughts. The woman fought an enormous urge of her own to spare her Master a glower before addressing her son:

Dearest. You know that night was only an accident. We are a long way from another meal besides.

Then, thrumming with the weight of a lie:

It’s alright.

But the boy would not swallow it this time. He was an amateur at playing pretend in the way of his parents. A child fed on blood and fairy tales full of monsters who lived in the house as much as without. The boy held onto his Papa and shook his head. Fear crashed up against sorrow and sorrow up against anger.

“It isn’t! You all keep saying it is, and it isn’t! Papa, he hurt you and he did it on purpose! He didn’t kiss you at all! It was just tearing and hurting and—,” a word stuck, choked, flew, “—and lying. He says you aren’t fighting, but you are, or he wouldn’t hurt you and make you sit and be sad and sharp all the time and…and…” His eyes were close to running now, the words melting into a hiccough. “…and he never even said sorry…” The boy forewent his Papa’s arm and clamped around his middle instead, hugging tight and hiding his face in the man’s side. “Papa, don’t go with him…”

Him, him, him.

Was he not even Father anymore?

“Quincey, I promise you we aren’t fighting. Even grownups make mistakes. That’s all that night was.” Then, silk-smooth, “Father apologized already.” He turned to the woman, expecting reinforcements, “Mina, you remember—,” But the woman was looking through him and into the boy. The boy, who had peeked up enough from his sniveling to think out at her, showing the little chat shared between Father and son on the way to the tower. Inhaling it, she looked to her husband with renewed alarm, reflecting their child’s tattling into Jonathan’s mind.

Jonathan lost another shade in his pallor. He turned all but snowy as his wife turned her attention to their Master. A blazing thing, all horror and hate and, surprised that she could still feel it, a new level of shocked disgust.

Even this is not beneath you?

‘This’ being the vision scraped from her son’s spying through the keyhole. Hours and nights and days’ worth of the sight of Jonathan Harker mesmerized by his window.

Her hands had drifted by reflex to grasp her husband, her position shifted in paltry protection of her prize. Likewise for the boy who now clung wholly around his Papa’s waist. Jonathan, meanwhile, appeared truly and entirely terrified to a degree his Master hadn’t seen since their last nights together in that long-ago summer. Afraid for them.

He held them each as best he could before lifting his good hand again—

“My Loves, it’s alright, I promise, I—,”

—and having it caught in his Master’s.

His Master, roiling with ire, pulled him forward. His kin, roiling with fear-hate-love, pulled back. Three iron grips all working against each other.

And what was begun in a battleground of the psyche not so long ago was made flesh upon the bed. Briefly. Just before they heard the pop.

A muffled sound, almost comical. Wet and cracking and quick.

Pop went Papa’s shoulder.

Papa made his own noise to go with it.

The iron grips turned to jelly, their owners flinching back as one. Jonathan caught himself on his working elbow and fought down another agonized note as its own pain throbbed up to the mangled shoulder. This he tried to turn into another smile as his breath came in a huffed stutter of a laugh.

“Oops,” he panted, wavering up on his knees. His only hand went to the sagging shoulder, the hold still too weak to hoist it. “See? Accidents happen.” A hoarse noise, fighting not to be a sob. “Darling, could you..?”

But she was already on him, aligning shoulder to socket, bracing, shoving—

Pop!

—the arm back in place. Another noise from Papa, this time through locked teeth.

“Thank you. See?” The fingers of his right hand flexed experimentally. Weak, but functional. “It’s fine, Sweetheart, it’s fine, you didn’t mean it, no one did, it’s alright…”

But the boy was past mere sniffling. Now he bawled. Red rivers of tears emptied from his eyes, turning his little face wax-white as he scrambled to his Papa, blubbering fragments of apology, of denial, of no no no, Papa, it isn’t alright, no no no. The woman’s eyes were running too. Shame and rage and pain streaked her face like a mask of grief as she wrapped herself around her husband, her mind a litany as garbled as her son’s.

Jonathan Jonathan sorry so sorry Darling my Love sorry sorry sorry sorrysorrysorrysosorry—

“It’s alright,” Jonathan echoed mindlessly back, the most he could do by way of dialogue through pain and panic. “It’s alright,” as his arms, now both water-weak and crippled, folded around wife and child. His back to his Master as if he might shield them.

His Master felt somehow as if he had ceased to be in the room. Now he was watching a lackluster play unfold. See here, the poor little family menaced and ravaged by the monster. The monster looms over them, gloating over the injuries left, waiting to strike again as they weep. The boy cries, the woman cries, Jonathan cries. And why not? The monster gives them something to cry about. As monsters should. As is right. The family belongs to the monster, not the reverse. The monster has no place within the family. Fragile and grating little thing that it is.

See how easily it’s wounded? How quickly it turns on the monster for a mistake? Not even his own! Not entirely his own, at least.

This time.

So. You can admit it.

The boy, the woman, Jonathan, all crying. All huddling against him. Away from him.

As if any of them can spare the loss of blood. As if they expect him to open his veins and refill them to make up for their own idiot blubbering. As if he can waste more of himself on their fumbling and failures. As if he has not hollowed himself of everything, feeding his blood and his time and his toil and his soul until he has only a husk left for himself, picture of the good husband and father, give give give, work work work, feed feed feed, and all they offer him is more need, more pain, more excuses, sorry, sorry, I did not mean it, Papa, I did not mean it, Darling—

He watched Jonathan raise his head enough to look over the heads of his Loves. A single pining glance at the window.

I did not mean it, draga mea.

“Enough.” It was not the bark he wished it to be. He was not even sure if his Harkers heard him. But they didn’t need to. Within a heartbeat he had shot forward snaked his arm around Jonathan’s middle. He hoisted the man like a doll, shock alone making him flinch and scrabble at the hold. The child keened piercingly and the mother’s mind erupted with hate-panic. Her Master flung an order out.

Hold the boy. Do not follow.

The woman spasmed against the order until every cord of muscle stood out from her like wire. Then she was giving a mute howl as she fell upon her son, snatching him up and trapping him in her arms. The boy shrilled deafeningly and fought his mother in a blur of little limbs, tugging, reaching, kicking, begging.

“Let go! Mum, let go! Papa! Papa!”

The boy’s face was a horror of running blood, his eyes turned to marbles of red glass.

Jonathan was little better. His Master had not allowed him to stand. He would waste time if he had; would have tried to dawdle, to scramble back and soothe the tantrum away, to trap himself and his Master another endless minute in this squalling hell of a room. So his Master had hoisted him up first as a farmer might trap an errant lamb under his arm, then threw him over his shoulder.

Then moved to the window.

The boy shrieked.

“Papa! Papa! No, let him go! Papa!”

“Please,” Jonathan’s voice was a hoarse whisper. His hands clung without strength to his Master’s back, trying to drag himself loose, straining towards mother and child like a dying flower bowing toward the sun. “Please, Sir, not like this. I have to go to them, have to explain things, I have to—,”

SLEEP.

Jonathan became a dead weight over his shoulder. The window was opened. Another scream from the boy, this one so great it turned into a nigh rupturing cough.

“Papa,” a reedy sound, “Papa, wake up, Papa..!”

Out the window they went.

Mid-descent, monster turned to mist, carrying his prey like a leaf in a breeze. Down and away and around the castle’s side. Finding the way back in that no eye or mind within the castle could discover.

Jonathan woke half an hour later.

He did so with a surprising lack of pain. As sleep melted off, he became aware of new wrappings layered on both shoulders. The left’s ragged side was plastered with a cooling sleeve of linen strips. His right was bound with something that felt like a fuzzing velvet numbness trapped under its bandages. Each side ate away their respective aches.

“Alchemy as men know it never did manage to turn iron to gold. But it bridged many gaps between simple medicine and magic’s bending of bodily law.”

Jonathan raised his head enough to see his Master sat at the opposite end of the bed. If one considered it a bed. They were in a nest of blankets and cushions that had been layered into a den of alien stonework. While not musty in the way of other ancient bedding strewn around the castle, they carried the spiced stamp of aromas from the work that was done in the adjoining room. Over his Master’s shoulder he could see a heavy oaken door left a crack open. A lamp glowed there, highlighting glass and clay vessels arranged on a far worktable. Some smoked. Some glowed. Some seemed to look back at him.

“Nature would have you heal over the course of weeks. Likely months. Supernature,” his Master gestured at the bandaged shoulders, “will see you healed within the next two nights at the latest. Of course, this will hardly matter if you decide to forsake your little chalk notes and throw yourself from the window.” Jonathan held his tongue as his Master sunk both eyes into him like brands. “The boy did not catch what you wrote on the windowsill, if it’s any consolation. You could let them go on believing I have been so monstrous as to force my poor friend, poor Papa, poor Darling, to sit dull and dead before the window for hours upon hours whenever he does not work or sleep or bleed. I am so suddenly the only monster under this roof as well as Master.”

Jonathan swallowed. Once, twice.

“Apologies. I shall—I shall explain things to them. Please, forgive me, Sir.”

“No.” Jonathan stared at him. Worry and confusion clashed and crumbled into each other behind the ghost-light eyes. “No,” his Master echoed, “this is not something that is forgiven any more than it is forgotten.” His hands clenched to white stones in his lap. “How long have you been like this, Jonathan?”

Do not lie.

Jonathan twitched but failed to catch his tongue in time.

“The first time was in mid-May. Back when I first started to suspect you. The prospect rose and fell in me more than once until the end of June. If it were not for the chance of seeing Mina again, I would have walked into the wolves on that last night together. I was still thinking of cliffs and wolves the day I escaped, prepared to take that route rather than have the Weird Sisters’ teeth pin me here forever. But those thoughts came and went.

“It wasn’t until October 3rd that the urge came back and never left. That was when I stopped being sure whether or not Mina would heed the threat of death potentially leading to undeath. I know she still thought of high buildings. Of train tracks. Fires. So I started thinking of them too. Just in case. After November, after the killing, I just kept thinking it. Whenever I was not busy or seen or sleeping. I have heard that suicides are damned outright. Murderers of good men too. I have thought sometimes that I could take that leap and die, but I would not know the difference once I woke to Hell. Sometimes I think I jumped an eternity ago and just can’t remember.

“I know I cannot risk it, of course. It would risk them too and leave them hurting besides. All it amounts to now is a sort of meditation. And I do appreciate the view. It is no more than that, I swear.”

“You swear,” his Master nodded. “You swear in this particular moment. Just as, not so long ago, caught in a snare, you thought of taking yourself away in earnest. The leap or the rope or the knife reached for in full daylight. A most effective slap to rouse your greedy little family from their play. But it does not bode well for this, your current oath. Only a thought, only a meditation. Not to worry. This is what you would have me believe?”

“Thought is not action, Sir. I would not still be here if it was.”

“Indeed, you are here. And doing what? Ah, let me specify. Doing what, besides working and bleeding?”

Jonathan frowned at him.

“Raising my family.”

“Which falls under work.”

A deeper frown, almost stormy.

“It hardly feels so, Sir. My Loves are not the burden you would paint them as.”

“Even if I believed you, you still have not answered my question. What are you doing, Jonathan Harker? What are you doing solely for yourself? You stare out a window that you must convince yourself every day not to leap from. You clear dust away from every room in the castle but your own. You touch a book only when you must be seen reading, you sing only when there is an ear besides yours to hear it, you wear your smiles the same way a maid dons her uniform. You do not answer me because you have no answer to give.” Lantern eyes burned. “In the five years since you have been here, you have done nothing but hollow yourself of everything. Blood and fealty and life and love. Yes, true, you live. Because that too is in your itinerary. Just another chore of maintenance.”

Jonathan sat up fully now.

“And?” A whisper. A thing of lead. “What does it matter?”

Why do you care?

“It matters because, even without a stomach, I am not immune to nausea. Call it secondhand indignation if you like. I have made deals with many devils and played pupil to the best of them. You see what bounty such Lessons have afforded me compared to,” he waved a clawed hand in Jonathan’s direction, “the usual lot of misery that comes to the would-be hero and the practicing martyr. If I should ever get around to some dire retribution from kismet, it will only be after nigh half a millennium of unchecked power and slaughter with nary an angel flying by to chide me for my play. Even Faustus got to have his allotment of pleasure before Mephistopheles tore him to shreds and flung his soul to Hell. But you? You spoke the truth before.

“You have nothing. You began with scarcely more than that. A narrow starving life with only the distraction of a woman who hardly merited the pedestal you lifted her on for playing nursemaid and starring, as so many muses do, within a theatre of high romance you painted around her; she, a soul as commonplace as a grain of sand in a desert. For her, you damn yourself. Her and the unholy miracle of the boy. You started with crumbs and gave away all you had and more, gaining nothing but the safeguarding of others’ fortune. Others’ lives. While you whore your life and veins away and tell yourself a chair and a window are sufficient for the last dregs of self you permit to exist.

“Do not mistake me. It is hilarious in the abstract. I would laugh if you were on a stage. But you are here and real and proving insufferable with your insistence on denying yourself any opportunity to do something other than play the role of grist in a mill.” He bared his teeth. It was not a grin. “But I waste my time telling you what you already know, yes? You have clearly made peace with this Spartan half-life. You did not even bat a lash at the prospect of mother and child’s visits being stripped away.” Jonathan’s breath stopped as his Master looked down on him. Lantern eyes now infernos. “Until tonight. There is a crack in the performance now. Father is suddenly a monster and he has stolen poor Papa away.

“And here, in this space, Papa can never be found. Not even by his wife’s prying mind.” White knuckles rapped against the strange black stonework. “It was not easy making this place. A genius loci can only flex so much. But the Scholomance exists in a space that is not possible and it was with brick from that Mountain that I formed these walls. A little sanctum away from Earthly meddling. Back before my condition required the grave soil. How nice to know it will not go to waste.”

Jonathan’s face fell as his Master stood. In less than a blink his Master was at the door, then through it, filling up the threshold. Perhaps too late it occurred to him that the nest of a room had no light lit in it. Not so much as a candle. The only illumination left was the faint glow at his Master’s back and the fires that were his Master’s eyes.

“You have a new task before you, my friend. Something to meditate on without distraction. No work. No window. No wife or child. The task is this: Think of something to do, to be, to want, that serves only you. An addition to your life that you can drop into the raw pit you have carved out of yourself to feed the clamoring maws of your dear family.”

His hand curled around the handle.

Jonathan’s eyes were wide and bright as stars.

“Wait—,”

“In the meantime, for as long as you fail in this endeavor, you will be here. To the boy and his mother, you will be a ghost. Undetectable by mind or sound or scent. They will only know you live by the taste of you in the cup. But do not rush yourself. Take however many nights or years you need.”

Jonathan fought his way out of the tangle of covers.

“Please, wait—,”

“I’m certain they will take it well.”

The door shut and bolted. A moment later there was a hammering in the dark interior, fists drumming against the thick oak. From the exterior it sounded barely louder than the patter of rain. The shouting only the buzz of an insect. Rain and insect grew slightly louder when the laboratory’s light was put out, erasing even the outline of the door. All was dark. Hammer, patter, shout, buzz.

Silently, the Master of the castle sighed.

He just as silently took a seat outside the door. His eyes were their own strange points of light in the pitch and they glanced down into the open face of his pocket watch. It stood out clearly enough to him. One hour. Two. Three. His friend carried on at intervals through them all. Shouts or sobs, pleas or pounding.

Out in the castle, mother and child were hunting. Father and Papa were nowhere to be found. They threw out the feelers of their psyche as far as they could go, scented the air, raced and called to each other on every floor and through every room. Nothing, nothing. The woman even dared to breach her Master’s bedroom.

Ah, close! So close! Did she detect her husband there? An echo of his presence?

Of course she did.

Her husband was the only one other than her Master to be allowed in that room, and then only with their Master’s beckoning. Even if she had no reason to doubt the freshness of the hint, there was still no following. Not into this space that only a student of the Mountain could detect, let alone enter. She came and went within walking distance of her beloved. All as he screamed out for her. For their boy. For their Master.

By the fourth hour the room had quieted.

He held his ear to the crack:

“Please…” came a croak almost too thin to count as a voice. “Please, I don’t understand this. What do you want from me? What am I supposed to say? Just tell me, please…”

I did. I did and you still cannot make sense of it. Draga mea, has this been you your whole life?

He wanted to laugh.

A curse was mouthed instead.

He stood, relit the lamp, unbolted the door, and found his arms suddenly full of his friend. The bandaged arms clung to him while a face streaked in tears and sweat ground into his chest, eyes somehow still running. He made a note to force a carafe down the man’s throat before he passed out. For now, he let his friend hold to him, shaking.

“Sir, Master, I’m sorry, I’m sorry for angering you. I only want to understand what has to be done to mend this. Please.”

He held his friend in turn, stroking through the white cloud of hair.

“That you say this means you have not taken the order to heart. How is it such a trial to want something? Whether you fear it being taken or not, how is it you cannot even name a thing you desire?”

“I don’t know.” The words left his friend like millstones. He seemed almost to deflate in his Master’s arms. “I don’t know.”

“You could not have been so before you were here. Before you were mine. Even the destitute will dream. Did you not want for anything then, however meager?”

Quiet unspooled for almost a minute. There was a small breath. He waited.

“…Wanting gets conditioned out of some lives,” was his friend’s answer. “Need comes first. Need is always there, taking up your mind and your time. Urgency. Efficiency. Every cent and minute hoarded. Books were a luxury. Second and thirdhand purchases, the rest from the library. Theatre was a treat to reserve once a season at most. No concerts, no revelries, no records playing in the apartment on a phonograph never afforded. The first time we did not know need was after the man I considered a father died and left the gift of his will behind. A house and a business and a bank account that finally did not sting to look at, traded into our hands at the loss of another precious life.

“Between Lucy and Hawkins, there was not even a heartbeat in which to be more than performative in appreciating our changed fortune. Not before the trap of you sprang again. Van Helsing’s call to arms. You know the rest. Even Mina, even the blessing of our child, those priceless wants above all others, were made into another thunderbolt from Fate. Another proof that some people are just not meant to want, let alone have. No matter how great or small a treasure. I learned that Lesson well enough even before you. And so I have schooled myself out of it. Wanting.

“The part of a mind that craves for itself has been atrophied and beaten into dust in me. But if you say I must want, I can perform otherwise. Tell me I am sick of the window and I shall board it up. Tell me to read, I will read. Or sing a song. Or dig up old recipes to enjoy even when I am not cooking to flavor myself. Or whatever else. Even while you all sleep. Even with no one looking.” Jonathan pulled his face away from his Master’s heart and turned bleary eyes up to him. Blue ringed in rose. “Whatever fixes this. Please.”

Throw him back in. He will do better in a week. A month at most. Do it.

He sensed mother and child outside the castle now. Running, circling. They had taken clothes from Jonathan’s wardrobe and, against the Lesson so gravely taught, son watched mother order the wolves to her, demanding they take her husband’s scent and search, go! The wolves would lead them to the usual route Jonathan took to the towns, no more. But they were desperate. Still weeping. Bloodless and starving for grief.

Do it.

Jonathan stared at him. Waiting for another blow. For a laugh, a sneer. A cold hand tossing him back into the dark. The dog laying before his Master’s rising boot, knowing the fine quarry brought home was no excuse for not wagging his tail as he did so.

A fine dragon you are, old devil. Are you so soft now? You laid out the terms. He has not satisfied them. Do it. Do it!

“Fifteen years. That is how long the boy has left to nurse from you if you have your way. Fifteen more years until he is a man, innocent of taking a single life. Likewise for his mother. Because you feed us all. Wasting and wasting until that final night. Do you expect to die and remain dead at that hour? Do you think I would lose you, even if Mephistopheles himself came up to collect?”

“No,” barely a breath. Jonathan seemed to wilt another inch as it left him.

“No. The wait ends. Your unlife begins. Which means what?”

Jonathan could not bring himself to speak. Only looked away. His Master thumbed away another tear.

“Eternity in potentia,” he answered himself. “Centuries. Longer. We both know the Vampire is made of its wants before anything else. Such is our nature. I will give credit to dear Mina for her control. She has far more cause for loathing me than her Sisters did and she does admirably against her own desires. Even if she only has as much will as my own allows, it is a thing of iron in itself. But what of you, draga mea?”

Recognition pinched Jonathan upright again. The ghost-light eyes gaped with what was uncertainty or else the wish to be uncertain.

“You will no longer be as you are. No more playing vassal. No more wearing the yoke of mere servility. No more stalling in your martyr’s Pit. You will be Vampire, you will be want. And what will you do if there is nothing of the latter there to catch you? What shall you do with infinity? Will you only be as my missing shadow? Only your woman’s faithful dog? Will you still have the boy, grown and whole, pulling at your apron strings? A servant, forever caught between bowing to others or laying as a corpse in the moonlight for lack of anyone to serve. That you would be for eternity?”

The hand that wiped the tear moved to Jonathan’s jaw. It held like a strut against his attempt to turn away.

“I always kill my pests. I may torture an enemy before his end. But I would ultimately be rid of them, not leave them to such a Hell as the one you seem so dedicated to crafting for yourself.”

The hand was a snare and it kept Jonathan facing forward. Straight into the basilisk gaze and the mesmer at its heart. An order that was a plea.

“Think. Think of one single thing you want for yourself tonight. Just one.”

The trance worked deep. Snapping at the heels of Jonathan’s mind like a hound after a fox. Further, further, down, down, through a pinhole of a tunnel into the abandoned gloom where the carcasses of hope and yearning had been thrown away. The trance dug. The trance prodded. The trance found a coin’s worth of treasure, like dead men’s gold hidden under a blue flame.

Here was another view from another window. After the departure of a captor. Before the arrival of the hypnotic mists and their hungry smiles. Sweetly in-between, here was the sight of the moonlit world back when it had been a beautiful balm. A sole comfort in his terror but a heartbeat from being spoiled by his hostesses’ threat.

Jonathan Harker had seen small shapes moving on the wind. An owl soaring far below. Moths fluttering past like living petals. So high, so close to the peaks and stars, a needle of nostalgia had found him. The boy within the young man who had wished with the hopeless fantasy of all hungry children looking up from their sparse plates and miserable families and through tatty curtains at the open and untouchable sky. Wished with sweet-somber futility for escape. For…for…

Jonathan spoke the wish aloud. A last wet trail fell from his bloodshot stare. His Master wiped this too.

And found Jonathan’s mouth with his before willing him back to sleep.

Mother and child were returning from the road. She had taken the boy up in her arms again, cursing as she half-ran, half-flew. The child had ceased sobbing, at last, but he rattled in her embrace. This had never happened before. They had not thought such a thing could happen. That anyone, let alone Papa and Father, could simply disappear. Especially from her senses. It was impossible to lose track of them. She always knew where they were. Always.

And now…

“Mum?” She had stopped. Her head cocked like a wolf’s, ears pricked high, eyes flaring. “Mum, what is it?”

There. They’re right there. How?

“Where, Mum? Are they close?”

She didn’t answer. Only took off at another rush, firing herself and her son like a spectral bullet through the forest. Perhaps the boy would have been more stunned than afraid that his mother could be such a blur if not for his worry. His senses were smaller than hers, still reaching and searching for whatever it was she’d found. It wasn’t until the outline of the castle came into view that he skimmed the presence of his fathers on the air. They were at the castle, but not within it.

Two frantic sets of eyes hunted around the grounds, trying to make sense of how the mingled presences could be so near and invisible at once. Closer. Closer.

Up.

They craned their heads until the moon met their gaze. That and the two shapes against the sky.

Jonathan was held close in his Master’s arms. The two of them were a speck against the stars. A moment more and they were drifting down to the ground. Jonathan was set lightly on his feet and almost knocked off them as his son clamped around his waist. His wife almost finished the job by locking her arms about his mending shoulders. Their Master watched on at a careful distance; no sudden moves to alert the herd.

The next hour was devoted to running both men’s tongues ragged.

Yes, diavol, he had lied. There had been a fight and he was embarrassed for it. But it was not what caused his Father’s tearing at Papa. That was his Father forgetting himself, forgetting how easy Papa was to break. Father grew angry at himself first for the mistake, then again when Papa was upset for frightening their son, and then most of all when, old man that his Father was, he had forgotten a remedy he had once known to cure away the injury and make Papa well again. It made him stormy, as all saw. He hated having a solution just out of reach.

But he had remembered at last. That was why he had come to take Papa away that evening. To put his mistake right. But then had come all the hurtful words from their harsh-tongued child, the tears, the fretting, and then that nasty surprise of a second mistake. Again, poor Papa was forced to pay the price for an unruly family. And Father had snatched him away before more pains could add up.

He had gone to a place that, he will be honest, did not exist properly inside the castle. Like a ballroom tucked into a woodshed. It was where his older magic was stored, back before Father was all that he was, back when he had need to worry about skin and bone. There he took Papa to heal. And to talk.

About his sitting and staring. About how he did this for lack of joy alone. Papa made himself so busy and tired that there was nothing left in him to play or take pleasure all on his own.

Was it the sharp thoughts again, Papa?

A tremor here from the boy. Begging, but bracing.

No, son, only absurd ones. The kind that grownups do not like to admit out loud because they do not wish to seem foolish or idle. Other things too. Little things that would need asking for. But your Papa hates to ask for anything, and so he hid all that in his head too, so he would not ask at all.

Yet Father had made him talk and ask and it turned out it really wasn’t such an absurd thing at all.

“I asked to fly.”

“Like us?”

“Like you. Isn’t that silly?”

“It’s silly that you didn’t ask! I always wanted to fly too, seeing Mum and Father do it so easy.” The boy held tight to him again, grinding the coagulation of old tears against his Papa’s neck. In a small voice he shuddered, “I thought you wanted to do something else. I thought…”

“I know, Sweetheart. I’m sorry for scaring you all before. I would never listen to the sharp thoughts like that. It’s just a sour part of imagination. That’s all.” He rested his chin atop the boy’s head. One hand cupped him close. The other looped around the woman’s shoulders, the ease of the gesture proving the strength of the medicine. Her eyes dug in his. Knowing and shelving the truth for later. “I promise,” Jonathan breathed.

…Do you still want to fly?

“Once you have another meal in you, Darling. I think we are all too worn out for now.”

“No,” the Master intoned from the castle’s shadow, “You need not soften it. You are worn out, all of you. I remain the only one overfed and hale. I shall still be so once you are ready to feed again.” He waved his hand. “I shall skip my helping at the next feeding, lest I burst like a tick.” The boy perked up in his Papa’s lap while his mother narrowed her eyes. Father never skipped his taste of Papa. Not ever. Father only grinned. “But before Papa plays family dinner again, it must be agreed that he needs a holiday. I believe he had some ideas he wished to share with you.” His gaze flicked to Jonathan. “Is it not so, draga mea?”

Mother and child each recognized the term as it hit the air.

The woman was considerably less enthused than her son, who knew the words from the fairy tales. The magic words between one true love and another.

Jonathan distracted them both with the first small thing: A phonograph and new music to play on it. Perhaps even sheet music of their own, if any of them would dare to risk each others’ ears with the practice.

What was a phonograph, Papa? Was that like the music boxes he’d brought home for them?

Something like that…

Chatter carried on under the moon until Jonathan’s stomach growled. The woman stopped just short of carrying him off to the kitchen. Master and child dawdled behind. The latter pretended interest in a moth that had landed first on a flower, then a stone, and then up on his Father’s shoulder like a great grim tree.

But the moth flew off and still he did not look away.

“…Yes, child?”

“I’m sorry, Father.” Thank every god below the Earth, he did not bring himself to tears as he said it. Though he looked close. “I should never have thought you’d hurt Papa.”

“Ah, but I did hurt him. We all did. By accident, with carelessness, without ill intent, still he was hurt. We are fortunate that he is so forgiving a soul and strong enough to weather us. Such men as him are rare. I do not think I have met another like him in four hundred years.” The child’s eyes shined just short of another bloody tide he could not afford to lose. Sensing this, he snuffled and squinted and fought the weeping back. Good boy. “He will be alright. Amends will be made and we shall not repeat our mistakes with him. Papa does so much out of love for us. We will do the same, yes?”

He held out his hand. The boy forsook it to duck wholly under his arm in his accustomed spot, huddled close as a pup to his kin. The open hand drifted down to stroke his hair.

“Yes,” the boy nodded against him, scrubbing the last dry tracks of tears away on his suit. “Promise.”

“Good. No more tears tonight, diavol. There is nothing to cry about.”

#I promise I'm working on the Dracula Daily-inspiration ref post #but my internet has been patchy as hell and I couldn't get some of the ref links and images I needed #it'll be up soon #but in the meantime enjoy this lovely terrible Text Brick #-throws it through Blood of My Blood's window and runs-#jonathan harker #mina harker #quincey harker #dracula #dracula bad ending #blood of my blood #horror #my writing

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reversedanatomy · 3 months

Text

Finding Peace: Chapter 1

Summary: The first chapter to a slow-burn Nat x Reader fic. Building the relationship between Wanda x Reader. First Marvel fic and post here so I'm still getting used to preferable layouts, writing styles, tags, etc!!

TW: 18+!!! sexual themes, bad relationship themes, alcoholism, swearing, aggressiveness, uncomfortable topics.

Gif not mine

You remember the first night that you and Wanda had gone on a date. You two met inorganically through a dating app. It wasn’t something you were too keen on using, but the dating scene was impossible in the area, and you thought you might give it a try. After meeting Wanda for the first night at a sports bar downtown, the sparks between you two were evident. Her confidence spread goosebumps throughout your body as she weaved her way through a crowd of people lined up at the bar to meet you at your table. She was more radiant than any of her pictures on her profile.

“Y/N?” She leaned over you, placing a locked arm on the surface of the table to emphasize her cleavage.

“Y-yeah,” you stuttered, in awe of the outfit she chose to shape her body. She then smiled and slid into your lap. Caressing your face with her hands, she pressed her lips into yours as if she’d known you for years. You let yourself feel every spark, every firework she set off inside of your chest. The callouses of her hands cupped your jawline. They slid up your face to push your hair behind your ear. Her kiss was warm as it traveled from your lips to the corner of your mouth and down your neck. Her hands followed.

“You waste no time,” you smirked and pushed her deeper towards you. It was all so warm, so familiar. “This doesn’t seem like the place we should be doing this, though. How about we skip the small talk and head back to my place?” You lifted her chin with the tips of your fingers and presented your offer. She gave you a toothy smile that reached ear to ear.

“That’s rather bold of you,” she replied with a twinge of sarcasm. You snorted and let your thumb glide across her cheek. "How about a few drinks first? I get a bit nervous on first dates unless I've had a few." You admired her forwardness albeit it wasn’t something you were familiar with.

“Could’ve fooled me,” a chuckle slipped from your chest. “I thought you were already a few deep and I needed to catch up.” Wanda smiled in response. She moved from your lap onto the seat next to you and pulled a five from her coat pocket. She slid it towards you.

“Catch me up, then,” she whispered into your ear and patted the five before crossing her legs and folding her arms in an act of seductive defiance. A grin curled at the corners of your mouth, and you rolled your eyes in response and clicked your tongue. You took the five and made your way to the bar.

After a few drinks and some small talk, you two left the bar hand-in-hand to wander the downtown streets. Winter was arriving soon, and the biting cold left you breathless. Wanda noticed quickly and drew you into her long, black overcoat with a light tan trim. Already, you felt warmer. Already, you felt safe.

The two of you wandered for hours, but it only felt like minutes. Once your feet started hurting, you two both settled onto the stair steps outside of some unlabeled Baroque-style building. Your hands interlocked perfectly together as you both shared her coat. Wanda made you laugh. It was a genuine, hearty laugh that you hadn’t laughed in years. She was laughing, too. She said that she loved your humor, and that made you grin even more. Your grin was followed, however, with a yawn.

“Starting to get tired?” Wanda yawned in response. You nodded, another full laugh slipping from your chest.

“I mean…kind of? But… I just don’t want this night to end,” you sighed. Wanda kissed your forehead.

“Who says it has to end?” You looked up at her, meeting her blue-green eyes with admiration. “I figured that was the intention from the beginning, so I may or may not have taken us to my apartment.” Wanda turned around and pointed to the third story of the building, where the faint glow of a lamp illuminated through the window.

“That’s rather bold of you, Wanda,” you made reference to her previous claim at the bar. Wanda struck you a side-eye, her auburn hair falling from behind her ear to frame her face. You shrugged. “Well, what are we waiting for? I’m cold as hell and it looks like there’s an apartment up there calling my name.” You stood up and took her hand into your pocket before turning towards the apartment. She stumbled a bit on the steps while standing up, but was eager and quick to let both of you into the building.

The rest of the night was one to remember. The way Wanda felt underneath you felt just as natural as when she kissed you in the bar earlier that night. When you two were ready to sleep, you held her close to your body. You never wanted to let go of this feeling. Everything inside of you buzzed, and a warmth rushed through your veins. You looked at Wanda sleeping in your arms. You never wanted this night to end.

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

Nearly three and a half years later, all you wanted was for this night to end. You locked yourself in the bathroom as you heard Wanda in the living room smash her liquor bottle on the wall. You held your hands against your ears as you listened to her shouting about how much this relationship was breaking her, how you were breaking her.

Tears fell down your cheeks. This isn’t what you wanted when you two moved in together into a small apartment in Chicago after dating for a year. For as long as you could’ve remembered, the honeymoon stage never left. The butterflies still fluttered through the garden of your body when you held her in your arms. It was all perfect. All perfect, until the first argument.

Wanda drank. A lot. It wasn’t a problem at first when the two of you were frequenting bars on date nights with or without friends. As time progressed, however, and the two of you moved in with each other, you realized she was just as much of a drinker at home as she was at bars. You mentioned your insecurities about it with her when you noticed that it was affecting your relationship, but she turned up her nose to you and poured herself another glass.

She blamed her alcoholism on a shitty childhood and high-stress job. She never told you what she did for a living, but you noticed she was often gone on extended trips to places she said she couldn’t talk about with you. “Think of it like I signed an NDA,” she would say as an excuse. You sighed and accepted there were things you were better off not knowing. If you pried, however, another argument would start. The drinking would start.

This was one of those nights. Wanda said she was leaving in a week for an entire month on an international trip for work. “We had plans for our three-and-a-half-year anniversary and my birthday, remember?” You said.

“I know, but you know how work is,” Wanda pouted and gave you the ‘eyes’ that she always gave you to get her way when it came to leaving for work.

“No, I don’t know how work is,” you snapped in response. “I never know how work is. You never tell me. For all I know, you could be off fucking somebody or somebodies in Spain or China or fuck knows where else.” You felt the heat rise in your face as a pit formed in your throat. You were choking out your words now because you were scared. But… it was okay to feel insecure about this, right? Wanda told you that you shouldn’t, but all of your friends agree with you that if she’s leaving all the time that you at least have the right to know where she is.

“What are you, my mom? Stop being controlling.” Wanda wouldn’t make eye contact with you. She was sitting at the kitchen bar, staring at the ice in her glass as she swirled her drink. You became irate. You ran your fingers through your hair, gripping into your roots.

“I’m controlling? You’re the one who’s disappearing for weeks or months on end without giving me the time of day. Sure, I was fine with your work trips when they were planned in advance and only for a few days at a time. Now, it’s like you’re leaving every other week, and I don’t know when I’m going to see you again.” The tears began welling up in your eyes. They burned. You began pacing back and forth between the living room and the kitchen.

“Jesus Christ, Y/N, I’m sorry,” Wanda put her drink down and began getting up from her stool. “I wish I could tell you. I really do.” She was drunkenly stumbling towards you, arms outstretched. You noticed her coming towards you, and you started for the bathroom. “Y/N, please don’t do this right now.”

Now you were here, in the bathroom. You turned the lock and slid down with your back against the wall. Wanda pressed her head against the door and started pawing at it.

“Y/N, please don’t do this. Just let m’in ‘nd we c’n talk about it,” Wanda stumbled over her words as she continued to paw at the door. When you didn’t reply, she started knocking. Louder. Louder. Louder, she knocked until you finally responded.

“Wanda, please, just leave me alone. You’re drunk, and I just don’t want to deal with this right now.” You were crying faster than you could wipe your tears, but Wanda wouldn’t leave.

“Then just tell me to leave if you don’t want me around,” Wanda smacked the door before you could hear her walking back to the kitchen. Then came a crash as you heard what sounded like a liquor bottle, or maybe her drink, being thrown to the floor. Jesus, what’s happening to us, Wanda? You thought to yourself as you reached for the tissues to dry your tears and blow your nose. There was more stomping, and the sound of walls being punched before you could hear Wanda trudging back towards the bathroom door.

“This is all your fucking fault, Y/N.” Wanda smacked her hand against the door again. You flinched from behind the door, but you refused to respond. It would only make her angrier if you said anything. “If only you just didn’t question what I did for work like what we agreed on when we first started dating, we wouldn’t be dealing with this problem.” It’s different when we’ve been together for three-and-a-half years as opposed to a few months, you wanted to say, but you held your tongue. Wanda continued.

“I’m not fucking anybody else, if that’s what you want to hear. I’m loyal to you. I’ve only ever been loyal to you,” Wanda started crying and hitting her head against the door. “I love you, Y/N. I only ever show you that I love you. You’re my everything.” The banging stopped. “But if you want me to leave, just tell me.” There was only quiet except for the quiet tears you could barely hear from Wanda. Your breath left your body in a long, exasperated sigh. You lifted your head from between your knees and twisted your upper half towards the door.

“I don’t want you to leave, Wanda. I just want things to go back to the way they were before.” You spoke monotonously, making sure your voice was emotionless enough as to not set Wanda off again.

“It’s never going to go back to the way things were,” you heard Wanda slide her back down the door from the other side. This made you start crying again, even harder. You were scared. If she left, you’d lose three-and-a-half years with the person you thought you were going to marry.

“What happened to us?” You forced a laugh through your tears. You paused after saying that to wait for a response from Wanda. Nothing. Your smile faded back into sorrow as you buried your chin between your knees and looked down at the floor. Maybe Wanda was doing the same. Maybe she was also contemplating the relationship—whether it’d end or whether they’d keep recycling the same arguments and this same drunken routine. You knew nothing was going to change, but you still wanted to try. Maybe it was because you were more scared to be alone than to keep hearing her slam on the bathroom door and smash bottles. When it was good, it was great. But there were so many moments now that left you feeling weak, tired, scared, and unfulfilled that you pondered whether the good moments just made you feel safe, or if they were actually great.

Wanda never responded to your question. You sat up on your knees, took one last breath, and turned to open the door. Your hand settled on the doorknob. Once you opened that door, you knew all the memories you two spent together would shatter like the glass from earlier. You felt that pit rising back into your throat as you unlocked the knob and started opening the door. The idea of facing Wanda right now terrified you—not because she was violent and angry, but because you hated those difficult, uncomfortable conversations about what happens next between you two.

You turned the doorknob and took a step back. You felt the door swing towards you with the weight of Wanda as she collapsed onto the floor. She was passed out. If this was two years ago, you would be rushing to her side and checking her pulse. Now, this was frequent. Weekly. Daily, even. You kneeled beside her to confirm her breathing before grabbing her by the forearms to drag her into the bedroom. As you dragged her, you glanced at the kitchen floor. She only smashed her empty glass, not the entire bottle. At least this time it would be an easy cleanup for tomorrow morning.

Once in the bedroom, you spent no time pulling her arm across your shoulder to help her into bed. You pulled back the bed sheets, set her on her side in the bed, and pulled the sheets up to her chin. You contemplated giving her a kiss on the forehead, but you recognized that this could be the last time you two ever had some kind of physical touch. You leaned in and gave her a quick peck. It tasted bittersweet.

You crawled into bed next to her and studied her face. Wanda was sleeping so peacefully. Her lips were slightly parted, and her auburn hair fell over her face. She always slept with her hand under her face when she laid on her side. You thought one more time about the first night at the bar and the confidence she had upon meeting you. You reminisced on the times you two made love, contemplated marriage, talked about what having kids running around the house would be like, and how you two would grow old together. You wanted so badly for everything to circle back to the sparks you two felt that first night, as that was what kept you going through this mistreatment all these years with her. These memories flooded through your mind, until you finally drifted off into a deep sleep.

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

The next morning, you woke up to the bed empty beside you. “Wanda?” You called out for her. No response. She must either be watching TV, or she left to head to the store for breakfast. The pain from the night before held strong in your chest as you composed yourself before heading into the living room. You scanned for any sight of Wanda. The TV was off and there was no sign of her. The site on the kitchen floor where she smashed her glass was swept and mopped. Then, your eyes lifted, where you noticed a note left on the bar.

You instantly rushed to the note, feeling yourself grow heavy as you got closer and closer to it. You picked it up and felt your hands shaking as you read it:

Y/N, I’m so sorry for last night, and I’m so sorry for everything I’m about to write to you. We both knew this day would come where we would part. You and I both have been going through a lot, and I think it’s time that we spent time apart so that we can work on ourselves. Also, work sent for me this morning. I thought we would have more time together before I left to get some kind of closure, but they needed me urgently. I’ll be gone for a while, they said. Months, maybe even years. Please don’t go looking for me. I’ll be okay. I love you.

-Wanda.

You fell to the floor and broke into tears. You let out an ugly, guttural cry as you held the note to your chest. It was over without any conversation. There was no closure. There was no last goodbye as Wanda would step out the door and leave. There was no watching her from the window as she’d walk through the city streets before melting into the crowd, disappearing from your life together. This note was quick and nonconfrontational. It was unlike her.

You put the note in your kitchen drawer and slumped onto the couch. Whatever came next, you could handle it. You always could. You switched the TV on and felt yourself cry. You let yourself cry. A new chapter would open for you, you just had to accept it.

#ojfuehrggterg it'll get happier i promise #I PROMISE IT'LL BE A SLOW BURN IT'S JUST SAD NOW #marvel #natasha romanoff #wanda maximoff #marvel wlw #wlw marvel #natasha romanov #fanfiction #marvel fanfic #wandanat #wanda x reader #natasha romanoff x reader #wanda maximoff x reader #slow burn

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