Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

In a bout of curiosity, she’d dug through the storage room to find their old family photo album. It was the one she’d put together herself, mostly kept stowed away since they moved to the castle. Having staff and a media swarm meant that they never had to go out of their way to find new pictures of the family, even if they weren’t always the most flattering. Several castle employees had been perfectly willing to put albums together for them upon being asked. She treasured their efforts, even if they tended to lack the same homemade touch.

Though she hadn’t come just to reminisce. Dizzy put the bulky book in her lap and flipped through the older pictures. It was harder to get photos of the both of them together back then. Nobody was supposed to know she existed. They either had to set up a tripod and time it, or make due with single photos. For now, she made no effort in differentiating. All the focus went into finding as many pictures of her husband as she could.

As she delved deeper and deeper into the pages, her brow creased. She still couldn’t say with certainty what it was about Ky that looked so startlingly different. A few of the smaller ones were obvious enough- the new hair, the thinner face, how he struggled to look anyone in the face unless it was her. That wasn’t it, though. That was easy enough to see. Something deeper, something more, she just had to keep looking until she-

Oh.

It was the eyes. In the old photos, even when he smiled, his eyes were vivid and sharp. Now they only shone dully, like murky pools.

Dizzy doubted anyone even noticed something that deep, though. But they had taken notice of the rest. A man with a will like wildfire, now too sheepish and nervy to even make a public address, flinching at every camera flash. They’d finally stopped making him try months ago. His duties had been gradually, unsubtly whittled down by Leo and Daryl over time. It was rare that he even appeared in public anymore. If he did, the tabloids were quick to crop up. A chronic illness? A stroke? What had happened to that illustrious figurehead that had saved the world several times over, capturing the hearts of millions?

She had bought a few of the tacky magazines back when it had all started. Some part of her wanted to keep up with the gossip. Separate the accurate guesses from the absolute nonsense. Even gotten a few dry chuckles from the most outlandish of them- Dizzy would like to have thought she’d have known if her husband was pregnant and suffering from postpartum depression. It didn’t take long for that to weigh too much on her to bother. It didn’t matter enough. Nobody ever asked where it had come from, or what had caused it to worsen. Those sorts of nuances were beyond the public’s interest. Just something to be gawked at, or to look upon with unease. Even as he rotted, he was a novelty to be used and discarded. That wasn’t anything new.

Dizzy had paid attention to that kind of thing more and more lately. Not just the trashy journalism, but in the murmuring gossip that often made its way all the way up to the castle’s foyers. She liked to think that most of the kings’ staff were smart, well-meaning people, but she still heard plenty of hushed words murmured between scullery maids and butlers, maintenance men and bookkeepers. They all went silent when she rounded the corner, but quickly went back to their chatter as soon as they thought she was out of earshot.

Of course, many a theorist pointed to her as the problem. That she was some sort of black widow slipping toxins into her husband’s tea, hoping to usurp the throne and overthrow Illyria in the name of Gearkind, or some other such conspiracy. How she should be thrown in jail on principle until his majesty recovered and proved them all wrong. How they had invited a demon into Illyria’s capital and would all suffer greatly for it, deservedly so, until someone had the gumption to burn her at the stake and free them all from her witchcraft.

None of them understood. She was the only one who was capable of alleviating his suffering.

Whenever she closed her eyes, she could see his gaunt, terrified expression. She vowed to never let it grace his face again. Her husband had suffered more than anyone should ever have to.

“Dizzy, please…make it go away. Make it stop.”

He’d come to her in desperation, unable to support the weight of his own burdens as they sat upon his shoulders. In sleep, he was haunted by memories of the crusades and the many near-deaths of his family and himself. When it jerked him awake, what surrounded him were the endless royal duties of a job he had never asked to have. Ky was psychologically cornered, hyperventilating in terror and practically scratching at his face, begging for anything to lessen the suffering, whether it be calm comfort or a bullet to the head.

Dizzy had found something in-between. She’d placed a hand on either side of his face. Pressed their foreheads together. And with little more than that, all the stress and misery melted away as he went boneless against her. Still rattled, the two of them had just sat for a while. Ky, unresponsive and tranquil, not even twitching as his wife gingerly thumbed at the cheeks turned red from tears and clawing at his own skin. Both pairs of eyes glowed a soft ruby in the low lamplight.

Dizzy had never thought much about what she’d inherited from her mother. Certainly not the bloodlust and desire to conquer. But still, she was still the closest thing Gearkind had to a reigning sovereign, even if that sovereignty came from force. With a simple, forceful command, she stirred to life even the few Gear cells her husband carried. Wherever they were, no matter how sparse, that was her domain by birthright. Any carrier swayed to her orders, no matter how slight or overwhelming. If she ordered him into battle, he would fight until his last breath, survival instincts discarded. Were she to tell him to make a meal, he’d shutter himself in the kitchen and cook until his ceaselessly-moving hands broke and fell to pieces. Upon being told to relax and forget, his mind forced itself into an almost hypnotic trance, flooding itself with calming endorphins into a self-inflicted stupor without so much as a whiff of smoke or a pill on the tongue.

A tyrannical ruler would have used her powers to raise an army. Dizzy just used it to make her husband’s burdens disappear.

Temporarily.

It had only been a brief spell. Nothing irreversible, no lasting damage. She was terrified to do anything more than the minimum. What if she went too far? What if it overwrote his existence entirely?

She said as much to her husband. It would be too dangerous to do again. It was not a choice she made out of cruelty, but out of concern. Of course she hated to see him suffer, but she wouldn’t risk erasing the man she’d fallen in love with.

Yet when he came to her the second time, choking on his own breath, she broke down immediately and put him under again.

The same went for the third time.

And for the fourth.

And again.

And again.

He’d grown fixated on it, the only reprieve he knew that would take away his suffering. An incident turned into an indulgence turned into an addiction. How could she deny him? He came with haunted eyes, heavy shoulders, wet trails down his face. She embraced him. Cast away his agonies. He always came back after he woke up. Always came back to the same suffering. Nobody else would alleviate his pain, who else but her would lift a finger? He came to her. She loved him. So she made him forget.

Ky had never grown cruel. Not once. She would never accuse him of that. He’d always offer her something in return. Payment for peace. She could have done anything to him while he was in such a state. He had said as much, even granted it as compensation for his constant pleadings to be put under. Ky offered himself as a warm body to be used by his wife however she may have pleased, whether it be taking her frustrations out on something that would only whimper, no matter how harsh the punishment, or as a toy to pleasure herself with, to ruin as she pleased. He insisted, even as she looked at him with horror in her eyes, that she was free to use him however she desired.

And…and she had. God forgive her. It wasn’t his fault. He’d begged for relief thrice in a day, and his desperation had sounded so much like mockery that she’d struck him as soon as he was too deep to fight back. Her claws had left a gouge in his arm and, in her continued wrath, she ordered his cells to heal incorrectly.

When he’d awoken, he hadn’t even winced at the new, ugly scar, or asked what had happened. Didn’t even send her a look of upset. That lack of reaction had hurt the most.

And she wished she had ended it right there.

Oh, she’d been so complacent, so uncaring. Ky had made it sound like such a minor thing. He wouldn’t even remember. Wasn’t it harmless? He had made it sound so harmless. He wasn’t anybody when he was properly sedated, not Ky Kiske, not even a pale echo of him. Just a warm body with no thoughts of its own. He had been willing. He had offered it. He had…he had…

He’d bled. So much blood for something that had felt so small. Scratches along his back left scarlet patches on the bedspread, a faint crusty rust under her fingernails. Dull, sludgy red coated the surface of her tail, with more oozing out from his stretched hole underneath her. Without any kind of feedback- no, that put him at fault, without any of her deliberate, conscious care- she had nearly ruptured his lower intestine and flooded his bloodstream with bacteria until his body went septic.

Dizzy had refused to go near him for almost a week after. The castle medics were tasked with looking after him while she hid in shame. Despite what she had done, and what she’d very nearly caused, she could still hear his pleading wails echo through the castle, calling for her.

When her resolve had finally broken, and she’d come to visit him in the infirmary, Ky had crawled out of his bed on his hands and knees. He’d wept with joy and shame, begging for her to not leave again and apologizing profusely for disappointing her.

She had nearly killed him from blood poisoning, and he apologized to her.

Even if Dizzy had been hesitant to even touch him again, he still melted in her grasp, same as ever. Pressed their faces together. Gave himself to her, without the slightest hint of mistrust.

She handled him like a tiny, sickly animal, capable of being maimed beyond repair without the gentlest and most cautious hands. He had become more of a pet than a husband. She tended to his needs, kept him cleaned and fed. Leaving that to his own discretion while he was lucid was just as much an option, but those times had grown more and more sparse as of late, and Ky fumbled about as though still half-asleep. It felt too cruel. He was broken in a way she didn’t know how to heal, and all she could think to do was to slap the same remedy onto an unhealing wound and pretend it was alright.

Sometimes Dizzy took him along for her daily routine. Let him sit slumped against her shoulder, making no noise aside from slow, raspy breaths. Ignored the stares sent her way as she toted her partner around like an oversized china doll. Pretended they were having fun together. Look, darling, aren’t those flowers beautiful? Isn’t that bird’s song lovely? Shall we find a nice place for lunch? Let’s pretend, let’s pretend, let us play fantasy like children until we can’t bear to hold up the illusion anymore.

Most of the time, she just left him alone. Made sure that he ate, made sure he was washed, then left him in bed. He didn’t so much as move unless she ordered him to. She had to come back every few hours to make sure he hadn’t stayed in the same position the entire time and started forming pressure sores. It wasn’t as though any staff came to see him. Even the Illyrian public had found more interesting things to gossip about than their useless, withered king. Ky simply sat, catatonic and forgotten.

Sin liked to stop by. He hadn’t said anything about it. The only reason she knew was from spotting him come and go from the room when he thought she wasn’t looking. She didn’t intervene. Their relationship had always been…complicated, to put it gently. It made sense that the grief was complicated, too. If he didn’t seek her out for help, Dizzy thought it best to leave him to process it on his own terms.

Still, at times, she couldn’t stop herself from lingering by the door and listening in. At others, she’d peer through the crack of the open door. It wasn’t always the same. Sin would sit at the foot of the bed, stare out the window, crawl right into bed with him. The aging mattress creaked when he dragged his father’s limp body into his lap.

“Did you hold me like this?” He’d ask. “I guess I was a lot smaller. But I saw in the photo album. You had one hand like this, holding my legs, and one was like that. I know you gotta keep the head supported right, babies aren’t good at doing that yet by themselves.”

Sin just spent most of the time talking. Venting his frustrations, ruminating on how he felt about the world, reflecting on his own personal philosophies.

“Maybe I should have been the dad, and you should’ve been the son. Or maybe we both could have been girls. I’d have sewn you a pretty dress for your birthday. Would you have liked that? I dunno if that’d change anything. Maybe that’s how it went in another universe. I hope I raised you well. I dunno what I did, but I hope you grew up happy.”

He was happy. That was the part that she could never fully process. This wasn’t her forcing her own wants on Ky, assuming it was what he really desired. As far as any of them could tell, he was genuinely happier like this. What was the alternative? Was forcing Ky to confront the horrors really the kinder option? It was, at least, the braver option of the two.

Dizzy wouldn’t deny that she was a coward.

After all he had done, maybe it wasn’t unearned. He’d given himself to the world as a soldier and a king. He had brought the world peace and helped bring a kingdom to prosper. In what most did in a lifetime, Ky Kiske did in a few years, and then moved onto something new.

He had paid his dues in life. Ky had earned the right to hide away, to retreat from everything, to finally find his own peace…and to rot.