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sabraeal · 11 months

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Tenderness Like a Bruise, Chapter 2

[Read on AO3]

Took a small break from frantic bingo writing to make this for @puffdragongirl‘s birthday! Robin asked for MORE OD ANA, and since I had always meant to continue with this fic...I was happy to tack another chapter on!

The petal and wings of Wisteria may burst across this man’s throat, but he’s no royal messenger Od Ana’s ever seen. Too young, for one; his pale hair fluffs out from his scalp like a chick’s feathers, kind that shouldn’t be wandering so far out from under their mother’s nethers. His daemon’s been ridden hard too, her flanks heaving the way an experienced rider would never allow.

Still, she’s got enough spirit in her to give Od Ana one of those wall-eyed stares, the kind that shows white all around. That’s what they get, having their reputation precede them like it does. The prince’s messenger and his witch daemon. Sometimes he’s got her so far away you can’t even see her. Can’t trust a man like that.

They’re lucky that daemon doesn’t take more after a horse and balk for the shock of it.

Ah, but whatever she thinks of its bearer, the bad news is stamped with the royal seal all the same. “There’s the message. From the prince himself!”

There’s a certain amount of pomp to these things; the messenger holds it out, a little square that can’t have much more than a handful of lines scrawled on it, and bows like it’s some lordly edict. And for all that, Obi sits back in his hips and takes it, opening it with little more than a flick of his wrist.

There’s a trick to it, of course: apply the correct amount of force at the right angle and wax sheers from the sheet without even clipping the Wisteria wings. But messenger boy doesn’t know it; he just stands there gawping like he just fell off the wagon, impressed by nothing more than a party trick. Od Ana hopes for his sake he learns to hide it better. There’s plenty of thorns in Wistal’s garden that would enjoy having a bumpkin in their pocket. The king, for starters.

“Ah, but also...Sir Obi...on my way here...”

Od Ana glances up, claws flexing over collarbone, and, ah, she’s seen that wide-eyed gaze before, that starry shine. She may have no name to put to a face for him, but it looks like whatever reputation has wended its way back to Wistal has more in common with Hiro’s hero worship than city folk superstition.

The messenger’s reedy voice drops to a whisper. “I heard news about the string of attacks on noblemen.”

Obi glances up, the bristle of his hair brushing her feathers. “Oh yeah? A new development?”

“Well...” Under Obi’s direct attention, the boy shies the way young men do at a pretty girl’s doorstep. “They say that the lead suspect is, ah...”

Hisame Lugis. The name springs to her beak on reflex, instinct. She’s only seen the man once, malingering at the edges of a ballroom, but she’s heard enough about that little ladder-climber to know he’s the sort that wouldn’t be shy sharing a few knives to the back among friends. Especially if those lucky pals were thinking about putting their grubby paws on the same heiress of Seiran.

“...Sir Mitsuhide Lowen.”

The papers flutter to the cobbles, Obi’s hands boneless above them. “What?”

Obi might have a memory like a steel trap, but between the two of them, it’s Od Ana who reads faster. She hunches over his shoulder, skimming the prince’s sloping script, and still, she can’t put it all together, can’t make it make sense. The lords, the murders, Sereg, Mitsuhide. Maybe from a distance the edges blur into a big picture, like one of those fancy paintings in Wistal’s galleries, but from here, on the ground, she can’t see it. Can’t see how anyone would think a man like Mitsuhide Lowen would send another man to do his dirty work. Dust, that he’d have dirty work to begin with.

She’s got a hundred thoughts buzzing in her head, each more nasty than the last, but Obi doesn’t say a word, doesn’t do anything but lean over the stone and stare out over the plaza. Shirayuki’s down there right now, with Ryuu too, and neither of them know, neither of them could even suspect...

Her beak clicks, annoyance biting at her like mites. “You aren’t actually thinking of going.”

It’s not a question, it’s a hope. A blind one, flung out into the wind as an attempt to slow their descent. Because she already knows the answer: he is. And the longer he says silent, the more sure she becomes.

“Don’t.” It’s not in her to plead. Birds don’t have knees, she’d always say-- not where Shirayuki hear-- but, oh, Obi has enough for them both. What’d be nice is if he could stop getting on them. “Zen hasn’t even asked for you.”

“He has.” The words roll off his lips just like that first step he took in the forest. Playful, testing the edge of his limits, flirting with the promise of pain. The next one will be worse, she knows, and the next, all the way up to when it suddenly isn’t. To when it’s all gone. “There’s no other reason for Master to send another guard up here.”

Not unless he’s already expecting Obi to come sit at his heel. That’s how these Wisterias work, of course: everything written between the lines. Obi wouldn’t be sagging underneath his sir if he wasn’t fluent in it. If they both weren’t.

Doesn’t mean she has to like it.

“We have something good here.” And she’s not ready for that sting again, for the burning in her chest as another bond breaks, left to die somewhere out in snow. “Something real. There’s no reason to give that up to--”

“They need us.” One corner of his mouth lifts, helpless. “And if we turn our back on them now, on Mister...”

His shoulder lifts, and oh, she knows that hopeless look all too well. If we don’t go, his smile says, then we aren’t who she thinks we are.

The worst part is: he’s right.

“Shirayuki,” Suzu observes, far too mild. “Your flask is going to boil over.”

“What? Oh!” With a blink, the apparatus comes into focus, and ah, yes, that is too rigorous a roil when she’s looking for something just a hair above a simmer. “Ah, thank you.”

His shoulders shrug the way a hanger might, all wires and sharp edges, coat surviving through sheer hardiness of the fur. “Don’t mention it.”

And just like that, he walks away. No, ‘gee, Shirayuki, what’s got you so distracted?‘ or ‘is there something on your mind?’ Hermia gives a sympathetic blink, but she doesn’t so much as croak to slow him down either, just sits on his shoulder like a moss does on a log while he wends around the lab, aimless.

Shirayuki sighs, turning the valve on her burner until the flame flickers at a much cheerier orange. Fiddles with the legs on her alembic’s stands for good measure too; anything to keep her mind from drifting back out to the market, to the stairs she’d watched for nearly half an hour before Suzu came to distract her with work. His work, specifically, but it had been better than sitting on cold stone and wondering.

“Worrying,” Perkunas hums, paws catching her around the ankle. “You’d been worrying. Like you are now.”

“I’m not,” she snips, because she isn’t, not at all. It’s just that Obi and Od Ana exchanged one of those glances of theirs before they left, the kind that came just before a blizzard blew down from the mountains, or before adopted brothers climbed up a balcony to steal her away to the mountains. The kind that said trouble was coming, and they’d have to put themselves right in its path.

Not that she’s been turning that over in her head all afternoon. She hasn’t. It’s just been there, tugging at her thoughts the same way Perkunas tugs at her patience, siphoning off gulps of her attention until--

Well, until things boil over. Which she’s half tempted to do as well, if Perkunas can’t leave her hem alone. “Oh, honestly,” she huffs, ducking down to glower at him. “Aren’t you supposed to be the wise one?”

He only stares back, all glossy eyes and innocence, as if one of his claws weren’t already caught around a stitch. If only she were Od Ana, she could click her beak right at him and let him know just how close he’s coming to her limit, and--

The lab door clanks against the shelves, her only warning before an all-too familiar voice calls out, “My Lady!”

It’s impossible to tell who cries “Obi!” first, but it’s Perkunas who trundles down the stairs so quick it yanks at their tether, hard enough that she hits a hip against the table trying to follow. She hobbles over to the top of the staircase just in time for his head to butt into Obi’s shin, and oh, she feels that all the way back in her mouth, molars jittering together with every descending step.

The hand that scritches behind Perkunas’s round little ears is thoughtless, a habit, but when Obi stops in front of her, smile stitched poorly into place, the space he leaves is purposeful. For a moment, she wishes he might reach for her, might catch her elbow in a palm, but instead he turns to a spooked Suzu and lilts, “Sorry about that. Mind if I whisk her away for a minute?”

“Uh?” Suzu glances between them, wide-eyed. “Go ahead.”

Hermia ruffles her feathers, all mouth when she adds, “Doubt we could stop you.”

It’s Od Ana’s place to click her beak, to drawl a clear, you got that right, but--

But she’s not here. And that, more than anything, makes her breath catch, makes her practically gasp out, “Lead the way.”

It’s strange to see Obi how the guards must, his back to the pillar and arms folded, all his usual warmth filed away for professionalism. Perkunas scampers after him, parking his round bottom right over one of his boots, and-- and it’s the sort of thing that might make her laugh, if he could meet her eyes.

“According to the messenger--” Obi’s voice echoes in the empty hall, a low, rasping thing made for grim conversations and even grimmer secrets “--the royal guard is sending a messenger to Sereg to basically put Mitsuhide under arrest.”

“That’s...” Her tongue plumbs the cavern of her mouth, suddenly strange with unfamiliar words. “That’s absurd. H-how? Why?”

One of his shoulders shrugs, the lazy sort he used to do back when he spent more time hanging down from trees than with his feet on the ground. From when she used to wonder if he had a daemon at all. “The decision is based on the testimony of this knight, Taws.”

And who is he? she wants to ask. How is his word worth so much more than a man like Mitsuhide’s?

All she manages is a strangled, “Mm.” Partially from the anger constricting her throat, and partially--

Ah, well, it’s distracting for Perkunas to paw at him like that, hopping around and bapping at his waist, enough that the wool scratches at her own hands. And when Obi bends down, scooping him up...

“Master didn’t mention any of it in his letter,” he grunts, arranging the chubby body over his shoulder. Perkunas trills, the round dome of his head bonking into Obi’s jaw once, twice, before he figures out how to fit beneath it, like a child who had long outgrown a lap but is loath to admit it. “So I guess he probably hasn’t heard. Yet.”

Shirayuki smooths a palm over her waist; it does nothing for the phantom press there, nor the one just behind her thigh, but, well, it’s hardly unpleasant. “Ah...”

His gaze meets hers over Perkunas’ head, and oh, it would be nice if she could fit as neatly, if only so she might be held when he says, “I’d better look into it.”

Perkunas grunts, annoyed. “Why?”

Obi’s mouth pulls thin. “Because I know for a fact what kind of person Mitsuhide is.”

That steadies her, makes her knees feel more solid than commissary jelly. “Yeah,” she breathes, giving her head a stiff nod. “So do I.”

“What about us?” Perkunas whines, wiggling in his arms. “Do you think they might come after us?”

Obi’s grip stiffens, eyes pulsing wide.

“I won’t let that happen,” he promises, pulling Perkunas closer. He gets another head butt for his troubles. “You just stay here in Lilias, the both of you.”

“But--”

“Okay.” It’s a betrayed look her daemon turns to her, his clownish face rumpled in a grimace, but she just stares at him, serious. “We’ll stay put, if that’s what will help.”

Obi lets out a sigh, his whole body slumping down the pillar in relief, Perkunas cradled tight against his chest. “Yeah, it sure will.”

His head lifts, and Perkunas wiggles again, squirming until his back half plops on the the ground, front paws still clinging to Obi’s shoulders. “Anyway, you little sausage,” he laughs, scrubbing him behind the ears. “If they were gonna threaten Master through you, it wouldn’t make sense to go round about it like this. No--” his brows tilt, thoughtful “--they’re after him and the aides. I’m sure of it.”

“I don’t like it.” It’s so easy for Perkunas to say those things, to play the petulant child when he’s all clumsy cuddles and funny faces. If she tried-- well, there’s a reason she doesn’t. “Couldn’t you just tell them...?”

“Nah, they’ve got enough on their plate. This is my job.” Obi presses his head to his, serious as he says, “So I gotta do it.”

Perkunas sits back, arms hanging sulkily over his belly. “All right,” he whuffs, put out. “If you gotta.”

“That’s the thing,” Obi says, smile too tight. “I really, really do.”

It’s easy to keep her head when it’s all just...logistics. Shikito still has to arrive from Wistal, and Obi has a handful of leads he can chase all from the leisure of his desk. Permissions to seek as well, not the least from Makiri, who won’t be happy to see one of his most experienced guards snatched out from under him right before inspections. The more she doesn’t think about dates or times, the further it seems, like that lunch she keeps promising Izuru or Suzu’s thesis defense.

But when he leaves her in that hall by herself, begging off to go send off a few notes before dinner, it’s--

It’s real. Too real. And much, much too close.

There’s a fluttering by the window, a golden shape taking form on the sill, and all it has to say is, “Shirayuki,” and--

And that’s enough. Her eyes blur, and with a single step she buries her face into Od Ana’s breast.

“I’m not crying,” she tells her, because she can’t be if feathers catch the tears before they ever fall. “It will all be fine. I know it will be.”

“Of course,” Od Ana agrees, beak nuzzling at her hair. “It can’t be anything else.”

And oh, how nice that would be, if only either of them believed it.

#obiyuki #akagami no shirayukihime #snow white with the red hair #my fic #creatures of a brief season #daemon au #ans #AS PROMISED Od Ana being The Most Annoyed with her human #i'd been wanted to take this all the way up to when he jumps off the wall #but alas it was not to be #at first i wasn't sure if i wanted to put Shirayuki POv in what was supposed to be Od Ana's fic #but it just made more sense #logistics-wise #since Od Ana is just being huffy outside the window right now #like okay great you tell her you're leaving #cuz i ain't helpin'

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