Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

This chapter will serve as a general overview for this collection.

First of all: Warnings. I know I tend to err on the side of caution, but please heed them. If you came here from my Raeda fics, you might think I’m all bark and no bite. But here, my goal for some days is to tear out your heart, stomp on it, and set it on fire for good measure. You can have it back afterwards, but in the meantime – if I warn at the beginning of a chapter, believe it. Additional tags will be added, I just don’t want to spoil you too far ahead for now.

But I don't have that much time, so these fics will be less edited and rougher than my usual works. I could just write drabbles, but... nah, I'll never manage to keep it short and concise. If you find any German/English hybrids or just mistakes, please tell me. You can also inform me if you have any wishes for certain days. I'll warn you ahead - apart from one day, I have my prompts more or less sorted. However, I'm open to just write a one shot with your specific prompt afterwards.

Despite where some of these chapters seem to go, there will be no sexual assault in this fic. You’re free to head canon whatever you want, but I did not write it with the intent to imply. A very small exception to this is Eda crossing a boundary with Raine once which will immediately be addressed.

Also: This is a month-long event. Depending on why you’re here, you might be reading lots of Whumptober fics. Please remember that it’s always okay to stop if you’re feeling overwhelmed, even if you like the fic you’re currently reading. In the past, I used to read myself into depressive episodes. Because of this, I will stop writing new entries the moment I notice that my mental health is getting worse, and I hope anyone reading this will do the same. All of the Whumptober fics will still be here after October is over. So please, grab yourself a glass of water, something sweet for your nerves, and take care of yourselves.

Finally, I will include all the prompts, with the ones that inspired each day in bold. Behind that, I will put first the POV person and then the whumpee in brackets.

1. “Please don’t cry.”: Gwen (Eda)
2. “You’ve got a lot of nerve to dredge up all my fears.” | Taking Accountability: Darius (BATTs and Darius)
3. “I look in people’s windows, transfixed by rose golden glows.” | Isolation | Candlelight | Found Family: Eda (King and Eda)
4. “Don’t be scared, I’ve done this before.” | Non-human Whumper | Iron Rod | Loss of Powers: Eberwolf (Raine and Mason)
5. “My panic’s at the ceiling, but I’m face down on the carpet.” | Quivering | Dream Journal: Eda (Eda)
6. “No grave can hold my body down.” | Pinned to the Wall: Raine (Raine)
7. “Tell me that you’re okay, and I’m fine.” | Trapped with the Enemy: Darius (Darius)
8. “Oh horror, oh horror, what did you see?” | Dissociation: Darius (Raine)
9. “We’ll make it alright to come undone.” | Touch | Flashbacks: Eda (Raine)
10. "There's nothing you can ever say, nothing you can ever do." | Without Consent | Secrets: Raine (Raine)
11. Laceration: Raine (Raine)
12. “It’ll all be for nothing.” | Cardiac Arrest | Sacred Place | Withholding Medical Treatment: Eda (Eda)
13. Alt Prompt: Innocent Bystander: Amber (Amber)
14. Wounded Caretaker: Lilith (Lilith and Raine)
15. “You can take a break, if you just tell me that it hurts.” | Failed Rescue Attempt | Live-Streamed Torture: Eda (Raeda)
16. “I’ve had the rug pulled beneath my feet.” | Repressed Trauma | Disorientation: Eda (Raeda)
17. “Tell me there’s a hope for me.” | Internal Bleeding | Coma | Redemption
18. “As the world caves in.” | Dystopia | Ruins | Environmental Whump
19. “You were on your own, lost in the wild.” | Dehumanisation | Living Weapon | On Patrol
20. “That’s new.” | Symptomatic | Fancy Event | Resignation
21. “Sold my soul, broke my bones.” | Kneeling | Makeshift Splint | Brainwashed
22. “All the battles I want to win, nothing matters but giving in.” | Self-Sacrifice | Collar | Hunted for Sport
23. “How’d I get to this place?” | Intubation | ICU | Choking
24. “I must confess that I feel like a monster.” | Came Back Wrong | Painful Transformation | Amnesia
25. “Have you earned your stripes?” | Lost Faith | Collision Course | Left to Die
26. “Nothing like a relapse to rehash the kid who was scared.” | Relapse | Drawn Curtains | Power Cut
27. “Would you even want me, looking like a zombie?” | Surgical Scars | X-Ray | Bedside Vigil
28. “I could always see straight through you.” | Backstabbing | Constellation | Creative Restraints
29. “I hope you see the sun someday in the darkness.” | Fainting | Broken Dishes | Last One Standing
30. “I’m putting my trust in an entire half-empty glass.” | Burn it Down | Mirror | Confrontation
31. “Even with the smallest cuts, you can still lose so much blood.” | Bleeding Out | Gunshot Wound | Rescued by the Enemy

Alternative Prompts

• "A smile so bright, he’s the devil in disguise.”
• “I hear you’re alive, how disappointing.”
• “If all my days are numbered, why do I keep counting?” 
• Concussion
• Viral
• Suicide
• Immortality
• Jealousy
• Organ Theft
• Ziptie
• Deal with the Devil
• Yearning
• Innocent Bystander
• Unreality
• Soulless
• “Hold my hand.”
• “Oh. Oh.”
• “I hate this job.”

Chapter Text

“Please don’t cry.”

The newest treatment is a bit too close to traditional healing for her liking, Gwen thinks as she lands. The two amulets are secure in her bag, wrapped in several individual layers of cloth, one ready to pull out the curse from Edalyn’s body, while the other one will keep her life force safe. The first one cost a fortune already, she didn’t expect the need for the second one until after the purchase, but the explanation from the vendor made sense.

In the past, traditional healing has proven so ineffective that it actually drove Edalyn away. It’s a shame that all her tries in the past turned out to be flukes, and it hurts to have fallen for scammers, but it’s still better than being treated by someone who can help almost everyone else, just not her daughter.

Edalyn always claims to hate anything alternative, calling it hogwash and swindle. But deep down, Gwen knows, her little girl is just scared that the next try at a cure won’t help either. Aggression is easier than fear, especially for Edalyn.

Nobody is home, it turns out, and the stupid house demon doesn’t understand that she should be let in.

That’s a bit of a shame, seeing as those two still haven’t given her a key. Especially since she’s here now with the cure for the curse.

Thankfully, it doesn’t take long. Edalyn - because there is no way Raine would fly this erratically - is arriving from the direction of the forest. Maybe she was looking for mushrooms. Or maybe - oh. Okay. Maybe Gwendolyn doesn’t need to know what her wild daughter was doing there, because it looks as if she’s not wearing anything. Thankfully, there are no neighbours anywhere close, Gwen thinks scandalised. She swallows, suddenly very happy that Raine must be trailing behind, hidden by the trees.

She turns away to give Edalyn at least a bit of privacy, but from the ruckus behind her, it’s clear that the impact with the ground was a bit too hard.

“Go away, mom,” Edalyn whimpers, and everything in her flinches at the sound. That’s not the voice of a young woman who just did whatever a mother never wants to hear about her children’s love life, that’s the voice of someone in pain.

She’s at her side in an instant. “Owlet, what happened?” There is no blood that she can see, but Edalyn is curled into herself, so there could be something hidden. No answer comes, so she gets up, barks at the startled demon to “Open!” and runs inside to get a blanket from the couch. Her daughter hasn’t even moved by the time she comes back, like a pale white and fiery orange doll just dropped in front of the door. The demon is whimpering small “hoot”s and carefully poking at her, but it moves away to give her enough room to put the blanket around the shaking shoulders.

“Edalyn, Eda, owlet,” she croons against the trembling head. “Come, let’s get you inside.”

She keeps the blanket around her,  guides the mass of fiber, hair and two legs sticking out of it towards the couch. Edalyn collapses without a care, one leg hanging off the couch.

She’s not talking, but she’s also not protesting, so Gwen takes it in stride. Right now, she only needs to know what happened to her child.

But first, a little Calmness. This is not what she joined the beastkeeper coven for, but she’s thankful all the same. It’s only a small spell, but the circle expands around the two of them, offering peace of mind, a slight relaxation if Edalyn will let it in. And by Titan, Gwen needs it for herself just as much right now.

Slowly, she puts her hand on her daughter’s chin, pulling her head up. There’s a scratch on her cheek, long but very shallow, and tears smearing her face. Her teeth are bared in a grimace of pain.

“Do you have any injuries?” Gwen asks. “Has somebody done this to you?”

“Nooo.” It comes out as a long, drawn-out moan. A hand appears out of the blanket, wiping across her face. “I’m– mom, go home.”

Okay. If she was injured, she’d at least have told her. But what else could– “Where’s Raine, owlet?” Oh titan. Are they– is that why she–?

Eda laughs shakily. “Gone.” Gwen stops breathing, comforting, everything, for a moment. “Left me.”

The relief slams against the wall of ‘left me’. “What- but- why-?”

Edalyn laughs, shrugs, cries harder. Gwen reaches for her again, but she weakly bats her hands away. “The- how could they live with this forever, mom? I-” her voice breaks for a moment, but she manages to push out, “I thought they could, but…”

Yes, Gwen thinks as she studies her daughter’s red, splotchy face for a moment before she gets up to look for tissues. Tears and snot everywhere, face pulled into a pained grimace. She thought they could, too.

As it turns out - over the course of a pained, halting conversation - they took her to ‘their’ spot to break up with her. Gwen can see the logic behind that - that place would be tainted now anyway, unlike other places like the house. But Edalyn, fueled by the fire of youthful passion, feels that this was cruel. Notably, she feels this was the only cruel thing they’ve done.

“Owlet, they left you,” she reasons, flabbergasted. “They left you because of something you couldn’t change.” The fact that the Owl Beast came out immediately afterwards only shows even more how much she needs - needed - them. “That’s not okay.”

It doesn’t reach her daughter. Even as she’s doubled over, shoulders hitching in pain from her laboured breathing, Edalyn insists on the fact that it was her fault.

Gwen just holds her, encourages her to breathe, while she sorts through her own feelings for the scrawny kid she welcomed with open arms, the young adult she proudly presented to all her friends. It’s always said that you can’t just turn off love, but the rage running through her is doing quite a good job burning through all vestiges of it.

“Stop defending Raine,” she finally says, exasperatedly, after another round of Edalyn trying to blame herself. She’s bullied her into replacing the clothes the Owl Beast destroyed with a sweatshirt and pants, and forced her to drink some water. It’s only helped the optics, so far. “Just look at what they did to you. The fact that you’re cursed doesn’t mean you don’t deserve to be loved. They should accept you the way you are.”

And for some reason, that starts another round of tears.

By now, Gwen feels a bit overwhelmed by the entire situation. It’s not just Edalyn who lost someone; it feels a bit as if her own child-in-law just died, to be replaced by a cruel stranger. And Edalyn doesn’t seem to understand any of her logic. She hates seeing one of her children this distraught.

“Please don’t cry,” Gwen finally bursts out. “They don’t deserve you, they never deserved you.”

There is a very deep sigh, and then the mess that is her daughter says, one more time: “Just leave me alone, mom. You don’t understand.”

“I understand perfectly well–”

“You don’t, you weren’t there and you aren’t helping!”

Very classy, Gwen thinks as she cleans up the mess of tissues her daughter left all around the couch. Typical of Edalyn to first ask for help and then, when her mother doesn’t do exactly as she wants her to, tell her to leave. The kitchen is also a bit of mess: It looks as if someone cleaned up anything perishable, but left out everything else from yesterday’s supper. There’s shards of glass in the bin, a drop of blood on one and another one on the floor next to it. Looks like whoever was cleaning up cut themselves. For a shameful moment, she hopes it was Raine. Right now, she wants everything bad in this house to fall on their shoulders.

Edalyn said they’d come by tomorrow to take their belongings. She said she’d clear the house for them, spend the day outside. Gwen has half a mind to confront them. There are only two reasons why she probably won’t: It would stress out Edalyn and she’s not entirely sure if she doesn’t still want them back with her daughter, so a confrontation might be unhelpful. They have always been a good influence on her, after all.

She returns to the living room, begs until Edalyn drinks another glass of water. “I won’t say anything about them anymore.” That’s her peace offering. “I’ll just stay with you, alright?”

A nod. Then, Edalyn’s body falls against her, head first on her shoulder, then down on her lap. Gwen stays there, dutifully, petting her younger daughter’s head and tries to not let the tears on her leg or the tremors in that too-thin body break her heart, too.

Chapter Text

“You’ve got a lot of nerve to dredge up all my fears.” | Taking Accountability

The air is still warm, the heat of the day clinging to the stone wall Darius finds himself pressed against while he waits for the guards to walk past. He hates this. He hates every second of this Titan-forsaken, stupid plan to rescue a bunch of idiotic kids who blindly followed their idealistic teacher into the trap set by the biggest fool on the whole fucking Isles.

All he has to do is alarm the students and have their back while they flee. The cell door has already been unlocked by a tiny abomination, but they have no reason to try and open it, if they’re even awake. He really hopes this won’t turn into a long wake-up session.

So, stepping out of his abomination goo next to the cell and hearing them whisper-talking is at least a tiny relief. The next part of this stupid plan hinges on them being scared enough or trusting enough to leave with him, despite the fact that he won’t show them his face.

Despite the mask, he pulls the hood of the coven garb lower over his face, steps in front of the bars and hisses: “I’m getting you out of here, come with me now.” In his – admittedly limited – experience, getting young people to do anything works best if one asserts authority early on.

And it does work, the three students immediately jump up in surprise and run over to the bars. Good, they’re pressed for time, but also a bit risky on their part. He gives them a quick once-over – good, no obvious wounds, everyone ambulatory. He remembers very little about how they should look, the only part of the report he cared to remember was their names.

And then the shortest one comes up right to the door – Darius opening it in preparation for her to step through – and she stops just inside. “Why would we trust one more coven guard?” she asks angrily. There are rings under her eyes and her hair is rumpled. He wouldn’t be caught dead like this.

“Because I’m the one who’s leading you outside the Conformatorium,” he whispers. Maybe he should have thought about a disguise for his voice earlier. “Now come.”

Getting them outside is laughably easy, getting them to put on the concealment stones even more. What isn’t easy is getting them to actually scram. He would like their help, yes. But they have to come to him, not the other way round, or they’ll think he’s using them for some kind of plot – to find the rest of the rebellion or whatever else they might come up with in their paranoia. He gives them money, offers to meet them again at the night market three days from now, “I will recognise you if you come like this,” and vanishes.

Except he doesn’t, because two voices start whistling together, and for a moment, his feet are locked. Darius doesn’t fight it because he’s still trying to keep his identity from them in case they get caught again, but the second they annoy him too much, he’s going to form a standard abomination… He can hear the boy approach, voice raspy but measured. “Don’t leave like this. We don’t trust you and we need information. Where is Raine? What happened to them?”

The mere idea of calling one’s mentor by first name is incomprehensible to him, but he’s more distracted by the audacity of those three, trying to fight and interrogate someone right outside the Conformatorium.

“I don’t know where they are,” he hisses at the kid – Derwin – when he comes into view. Thanks to the concealment stone, he’s looking bulkier now, hair a bit lighter, with ridges along his forehead as if he was part demon. “Not for lack of trying. I assume they’re somewhere close to the castle, but that’s it. You were easier to get out, so that’s where I started.”

The two girls have stopped whistling and he turns so he can watch all three of them, even as they try to surround him against the wall. “But why would the one who caught us act like this?” the taller girl muses.

Alright, that’s impressive. He still doesn’t give her the satisfaction of asking how she knows his identity. “Because you were supposed to be freed immediately, I only wanted to convince Belos of my loyalty,” he answers instead. “But then the fight got serious and Kikimora turned up and arrested Whispers.”

“So where are they and what happened to them?”

“Again, I have no idea. The Emperor isn’t exactly forthcoming with information. What I do know is that staying here like this is dangerous. I’ll give you all the information I have when we meet again–”

But the youngest one, now without any demonic appearance and sporting a mint-green bob, grabs his hand – his hand, as if he would just hold hands with anyone, much less someone who probably didn’t have access to running water for the last three days– “You’re coming with us,” she says easily as she starts pulling him away. “Drop the guard disguise or keep it, but you’re going to tell us everything now.”

“But where should we even go?” Derwin hisses behind his back. “Even with money and disguises, where–”

“Home,” the other one simply says. “He can’t hand us over again without implicating himself.”

Darius rolls his eyes, but he lets himself get dragged through the town. In the castle, Eber is being creative and probably making sure nobody else is getting any sleep, either. He doesn’t know how the beastkeeper keeps coming up with ways to annoy people without immediately making the presence of his animals known, but he won’t argue when the results are this good. Still, he’d much rather try his chances at sleep at the castle instead of traipsing through Bonesborough with three young adults.

There is almost nothing else he can tell them - he did his part with them already. But seeing which family provides their hideout is a sign of trust and could be helpful in the future. He’ll go with them for strategic purposes.

Instead, ‘home’ turns out to be a decrepit building on the outskirts of town. Darius stares at it in dismay, wondering if he really wants to enter, but the kids pull him in quickly.

The inside is vastly different - clean, walls and doors intact, a faint smell of paint lingering.

He wonders whether the outside is an illusion or building magic or if they simply made it look old–

“So,” Katya says as they drag Darius into what looks like a living room, filled with cabinets of what looks like music sheets. The only free space is the living room table and he rolls his eyes when she immediately nudges him away from the first chair he’s trying to use, shoving him towards another seat. “Tell us… everything.”

Darius watches the other two leave the room, surprised that they’d leave after that order. “I already did,” he grouses. “I don’t know what else you want me to do. This is all very unprofessional…”

“Oh, he talks about professionalism,” the boy tells Amber, voice dripping with sarcasm. They are carrying bread, cheese and all kinds of meat, he the usual way, she through humming. A giant jug and three glasses are floating along. “That’s good, he’s a professional.”

All three of them smile at him in a way that reminds him they think they have the upper hand.

The older girl takes the seat he wasn’t supposed to sit in – Whispers’s seat, he assumes. Her lips are chapped and she’s got dark circles under her eyes. She just stares at him while the other two go to town on the food, vigorously cutting everything into edible pieces. Darius tries very hard not to look at the unsophisticatedly thick slices. “Then go on, let’s talk professionally. Logistics. Were our families informed about what happened to us?”

“Wha–? I… have no idea.”

“Mhm. Have we been officially arrested?”

“I just told the Conformatorium where you were, so I assume they did it afterwards…?” These are all things he didn’t care to look up. Boring details, he only cared about getting them out.

Katya’s stomach growls loudly as she grabs for food. “Did you know that due to being a witch/long-lived demon hybrid, Amber is still considered a minor until her twenty-first birthday?”

At this point, the boy chimes in as well: “And that it is illegal to have more than one prisoner, or an adult and a minor prisoner in the same cell for any amount of time?”

Darius just shrugs helplessly. What are a few more illegal acts in this rotten regime? “You know I don’t know about any of these things.”

This is when Amber plops down next to him, immediately grabbing for food and drink. Without the concealment stone, she looks young and tired, and scared. “But shouldn’t you want to know about that?” she asks quietly. “It happened because of you, after all.”

He opens his mouth, but no reply comes out. What could he say to that? She’s right, he realises with a sinking feeling. Suddenly, the weight of all of their stares feels much less bearable.

“Now,” the young man says, hands held up as if to show that he means no attack, crumbs on his upper lip, “we understand that you said it was a mistake, that you didn’t expect Kikimora to follow you. I get that you didn’t have the time–”

“But I did.” He didn’t mean to interrupt, but suddenly, Darius can’t stop himself from spilling everything. “I did have time. We fought - they attacked Eber and me after I got you out of the way. We could have surrendered, let them come to us - they were trying to kill us, but I doubt they wouldn’t have felt bad and come up to talk, but… I was so angry.”

“You were angry they attacked you after you kidnapped us?” the younger one asks. Her voice is not accusatory, more forlorn, in a make-it-make-sense way. The slice of bread in her hand, stacked with food, looks almost comical against her despondence.

They’re trying to find out what happened to their mentor, a question that must have burned inside them for three days, and yet they can’t stop wolfing down food and water at the same time. And that’s when it hits him. These kids are starved. How much food – how much to drink did they get over the last few days…?

…damn, that makes his actions even worse.

He drops his head in his hands. “I have no idea what I was– I don’t know what I was thinking. I was just angry, they’d stained my coat and I wanted to get revenge. Eberwolf just went along with it.”

Katya gives him a disgusted look. “You’ve got a lot of nerve telling us you wanted revenge, when all we could think about for the last few days is what they might be doing to Raine right now.”

There is nothing he can say to invalidate that.

When Amber speaks again, she sounds even more confused and childlike. “Did you hurt them?”

“What? No!” But when he looks at the youths’ faces, he realises that he’s given them no reason to doubt the fact that he wanted to. “I just… wanted to prank them.” Titan, a prank. How old is he? It sounded funny then, but now it only feels… monstrous. “So instead of telling them everything, we incapacitated them and made them… watch.”

It was the wrong thing to say, all three of them flinching away from him, until the young woman who has taken the lead carefully asks: “You made Raine… watch what?”

He rolls his eyes. “There was a life stream of their old flame from school and it was all saccharine, this boy asking her to adopt him and…” He trails off at the unexpected sighs all around the table. Alright, maybe that explains the secret origins of the shoes he found. Maybe the old flame has been rekindled. Good for them, but bad under these circumstances. He hopes they don’t give her name away, or that she has had the sense to run. “They managed to get away and we ran after them. I thought I could tell them during the chase, but then Kikimora turned up and… arrested them for real.”

There is silence for a few seconds, and then Derwin starts laughing hysterically. They all stare at him, the two young women eating silently. “Wow,” he finally gets out, “you must have quite the bad conscience.”

And yes, he does, Darius realises - he just hadn’t put it all into context before now just how bad he fucked this up. “I…”

“Let’s, erm… let’s say it as it is.” Katya braces her hands on the table. “If they are still alive, they’re probably being tortured right now. We need to know where they are, how to get in there and how to get them to safety. We probably need to know how badly they’re injured beforehand.”

Darius is trying very hard not to connect the two points between ‘his fault’ and ‘tortured’, but it was easier just a minute ago. “I’m– I’m trying,” he stammers, voice hoarse under the intense focus of the young people. Being under scrutiny by someone else than Belos is not what he’s used to. “The Emperor was getting curious about what I wanted with them, so I claimed I was angry – I wanted to get my revenge on them…”

“Is everything about revenge with you? So if he lets you in there it’s only to – what? Let you hit them?” Now it’s the taller woman’s time to laugh sarcastically. “They’re a person, not a punching bag! What’s wrong with– you should be trying to save them, not turn them into an item that can be bartered for!”

“No,” the young man intervenes, “I get why he’d do it like that. Look, you have to try and make Belos want to give him access–”

“But not like this!”

Darius leans back, watching the two discuss the moralities of his approach. What has he gotten these three into? What has he gotten Raine into?

“They hit me,” the youngest one says in a soft voice right next to him. “All I did was tell them they only gave us one bowl of food for the three of us and they hit me. My eye was shut for half the day. And they kicked Derwin in the belly when he tried to defend me.” Someone should take care of her – someone should have taken care of her. To his own horror, he finds himself leaning forward and examining her face. He imagines that’s what Whispers would have done. The swelling is still there, as is the yellow-green colour, but it’s all sagged below the eye now. She continues, in an even lower voice so the others can’t listen in: “I heard people screaming, far away in the Conformatorium. I thought there were rules. Regulations. If they could treat us like that there, what do you think they’re doing to Raine?”

It all depends on whether the Emperor thinks that the rebellion is over or that there are more people that can be extracted from their mentor. He can’t tell her that, obviously. So, Darius only answers: “Maybe nothing worse than they did to you. Until we know for sure, you can believe that, alright?”

In the end, he does spend the rest of the night with the kids. He gets shown around the house: a bedroom for each of them, working bathroom despite the house being officially abandoned, cans and dried goods as if they were planning on hunkering down for a long time if push came to shove. It’s domestic, safe, a peaceful place he destroyed. 

There is no way to find out what happened to their mentor, but Darius can’t get himself to leave the students all alone while they recount stories and cry. And when the first rays of light creep through the windows, he realizes he’s stayed not out of strategy, but as a first step towards taking accountability.

Chapter Text

“I look in people’s windows, transfixed by rose golden glows.” | Isolation | Candlelight | Found Family 

It’s candlelight day.

She forgot. Well, obviously it’s not important to someone who isn’t in a relationship, so it’s more that she didn’t care to remember. Still. Seeing the advertisements, the glow in the shop windows… it hurts. A little.

If she’d known it was today, she would have waited one more day to– no, she couldn’t have. Money is sparse right now, she needs to sell some human junk. If there was a ship the Emperor sent out to redistribute resources from the hands, then she could at least try to make a quick buck. But right now, if she wants food on the table, she needs to be here.

Most people come to her in couples. Some, she supposes are more than two, but it’s really not her place to ask. Everyone holding hands looks so happy. They aren’t just shopping. They are looking for gifts, romantic things. She’s mostly got gags and funny gadgets. If she had thought of it, she might have tried stocking up on some flowery, cutesy things. She caught the date in time to tack her secret holiday-markup onto anything that could remotely be considered fitting.

People tend to chatter on holidays, and keeping up small-talk is good for business.

The only sales she makes are for the partners of nerds, judging from the chatter. At least that’s a language she speaks well, better than when customers tell her “I bet you can relate, she’s always on her scroll and doesn’t tell me who she’s talking to” or “maybe that will be enough, he’s never satisfied with my presents, you know” and then leave without buying anything anyway. She doesn’t know. If they asked her questions, she’d probably say “that’s not okay”, but the people complaining like this still seem to find happiness in the relationship, or at least complacency.

So, it’s a good thing they don’t ask her. She’s the one who was not acting okay in her own relationship, after all. Looking back on it, comparing herself with others, leaving her seems like it was the stronger, healthier choice.

And doesn’t that say enough about her? The string of one-night stands following is just the icing on the cake, as if she set out to fulfill a stupid cliché.

And it’s not just that. She can’t remember the last time she talked to someone just because, not while buying or selling anything. And yes, that’s preferable to pulling them all down with her, through the curse. It doesn’t make her less starved for interaction, though.

The only one she has waiting for her is the pup she found a week ago.

Leaving the little one alone was painful. But she can’t very well take a puppy to the market with her, not without him wandering off or getting scared by the admittedly not very big crowd. And there’s always the danger of having to make a run for it; a living being would slow her down immensely and risk both of them getting captured.

Packing up, Eda tells herself that it was only four hours. He has food and water, she put toys and puppy pads down. The fence she fashioned for him worked the past few days. It will have kept him safely in the pen today, too.

All around her, people are being lovey-dovey: hand-holding, kissing, carrying bags from various sweets or hobby shops and, oh wow – why would you openly advertise you just went to a store like that?

Money will last till next week. She’ll buy some potion ingredients for the more mundane, but lucrative part of work she can do. Steadier income with a second mouth to feed. Food that will last until she comes back to town. Maybe the pup will enjoy sharing a roast with her tomorrow.

She keeps up the practical thoughts, anything to distract her from the shop windows - candles in pairs, candles in adjustable groups, winding around each other. It’s not even that she liked this day that much. She’d put it down as just a ploy to sell more junk, but secretly buy a present just in case.

It was Raine who always came home with an elaborately wound pair of candles, Raine who’d do their best to pamper her, who wanted to watch the candle-pair burn down late at night. She remembers the flame reflecting in their eyes, skin shining a hue like dark honey in the candlelight.

The memories are everywhere. When she enters the last store, the dimmed light reminds her of the way they would look deeply into her eyes, the slightest smile on their face, before they blew the candles out. She’s paying with the memory of their lips behind her ear on replay. On the flight home, she feels the phantom touch, the exact same size and form of their hand in hers, on her waist. She’s blinking tears away, trying to forget the way their legs slotted between hers, by the time she opens the door.

Inside, chaos awaits.

She… didn’t expect that. She was sure - so, so sure – that the puppy was safe. This is the one thing that should have been okay today.

Instead, there are papers everywhere on the floor, a water glass she’d left on the couch table broken on the floor as if somebody swept it off the surface. Shoes are toppled over. It looks as if he summoned a mini-tornado or climbed out and threw whatever he could find just a tiny bit further away. For a heartbeat she can’t see him – panic floods her veins – and then she spots the tiny shape huddled exactly where she left him, the one place she thought was safe. He’s sitting in the middle of the playpen, crying.

The tiny body is shaking painfully with each whimpering breath, exhales exhausted wails. He doesn’t even hear her come in, doesn’t react to the thump of her grocery bag. Big tears are still spilling out of the corners of closed eyes by the time she reaches him.

Titan, what has she done? She thought– she thought he was alone before, he could easily– but she’s been with him all the time since then, only to leave him alone, no way to know she’d be back–

The tiny body still curls towards her, arms and legs scratching over her shirt as he tries to gain traction into her hug. Still trusting her – because who else is there but the woman who failed him like this?

Her own tears spill over before she lands on the floor with the baby she failed today. It’s not practice, but instinct that tells her how to support the small figure in her hold.

She left him all alone.

Hours and hours, no way to tell whether this is all there is. Whether this will ever change again. Basic needs met, at the price of company.

She presses a shaky kiss to his head, tries to find soothing words, but her own throat seizes at her sorrow for this tiny being thinking himself abandoned again, empathy mixing with grief for herself.

Alone.

That’s what they both are – completely, utterly alone, even while she was surrounded by people. She has to do better by him.

All they have is each other.

Chapter Text

“Don’t be scared, I’ve done this before.” | Non-human Whumper | Iron Rod | Loss of Powers 

They’re wandering through the half-finished stadium for the Day of Unity. Almost everybody keeps yapping about supply lines. Eber has already made his point. He’ll let them discuss whatever they need to and remind them of his views again if they forget.

Witches need to talk so much. No, he thinks with an amused grunt, they need to hear themselves talk so much.

Only half of them really listen to him, and of those who don’t, half can’t even understand him. He tries to keep still, but his tail twitches at the thought. It’s not his fault their vocal cords are so different from his. The Emperor should have made everyone learn how to interpret Eberwolf’s language the moment he appointed him. It’s not like he expects everyone to make the same sounds, just understand them.

But what should he expect from a bunch of people who see him as nothing more than the necessary ninth member? Who think he’s comic relief to their oh-so-important group of leaders?

Yes, being seen as barely more than a stupid beast is helpful. It allows him to come late to meetings, to be found in places he technically shouldn’t be and to casually do things others can’t because of their precious modesty. But it also means that people don’t expect him to have an opinion or that he can understand what they mean.

They don’t even notice the fear under each other’s laughter. The way it makes their eyes twitch before they join in, trying to impress the Emperor. They don’t notice their bodies reeking with it whenever he looks in their direction.

He scoffs. At least in this half-finished building, the dust masks the all-encompassing stench of arrogance and fear for their power.

That is, he can smell one person. Raine is stumbling along next to him. Eber’s legs are short, so walking on two takes either significantly longer or more effort to keep up with the others. And today, he sees no reason to try and catch up – let them wait on him if they want him to go through this drag. But Raine is injured and shouldn’t be here.

Of course, in the Emperor's twisted, unspoken logic, that makes it all the more important that they're here. They're doing a very good job as a warning sign not to cross Belos.

He can pick up the smell of dried blood and reopened wounds, of herbs from a salve he uses for his beasts – so at least they’re using the strong stuff – and a whole lot of hormones witches and demons are plagued with alike. Pain and fear cause a scent universal to all living beings and it irks him that he can’t do anything about it.

With the others walking ahead, him staying close to Raine seems to make them nervous. He can see the calculating look and the way they angle their body towards him. Prey keeping the predator in sight, as if they’ve forgotten that they could easily fight back if he attacked.

Obviously, he’s never tried to– but no, he realises with a sinking feeling, he’s never tried to attack them in a situation they can remember. Maybe they’re justified in distrusting him.

He doesn’t like this.

A long time ago, he dreamt of being in this position, of being part of this elite pack. Pack members should not fear each other.

So he grunts – forgetting, for a moment, that to witches every sound has to mean something and they’re probably trying to translate it – and says, “Legs short, walk long.”

Raine blinks at him for a long time. That hurts. He knows they made the effort to learn his language right after meeting him, not like some others out of necessity. But after recent… events, it seems they have forgotten most of it. Does that mean they were planning to revolt even then?

Finally, they smile, and he realises they’re probably relearning and just hadn’t expected him to start a conversation. At least not one without hidden traps. It’s only been five days since they were let go from the dungeon, but the other coven heads’ casual cruelty seems to have worn them down already, trust almost gone.

“We can inspect the building a bit more closely,” they offer.

Eber huffs a laugh, chest rumbling. He’d almost forgotten their habit of trying to make everyone else comfortable first. The only person left for them to comfort now is themself. He wonders how confusing the tea’s effects are for them.

They both walk a little slower after that. Not enough to fall behind that much, not enough to be noticed more than planned, but enough that Raine’s steps don’t hitch so sharply. Eber keeps beside them, pretending it’s his short legs that set the pace.

He can still smell the sour edge of pain-sweat under the salve, the dull metallic tang of seeping wounds. They’re hurt, and exhausted from it, they should get healed, or at the very least be allowed to sleep, and instead they’re here because the Emperor decided they should be. None of the others care enough to see it. Or worse – they see it and pretend they don’t.

His tail twitches. He knows that smell too well. Fear, pain, exhaustion – he’s seen it in beasts run too hard, pushed past their limit until their legs gave out. And you don’t do that to pack. You don’t let your own stumble and call it loyalty that they get up again.

“You shouldn’t talk to me,” Raine says suddenly. They don’t look at him, eyes fixed on the half-finished stonework ahead, but their fists are tight, knuckles white. The set of their jaw says more than the words: how much effort it costs them to push the warning out. “There’s… something wrong with me. I don’t– the others know that. It’s better for you to stay away.”

Eber flicks an ear. He huffs low in his chest, trying to turn it into a laugh. They’re seriously telling him it’s dangerous to be seen with them. As if it was their fault the tea is making them do and believe things they would otherwise laugh at.

Before he can answer, a section of the wall almost directly in front of them moves.

They both flinch, Raine stumbling a step backwards. It’s Mason, Eber realises. He’s casually manipulating the wall while talking to the Emperor.

Eber doesn’t bother listening to the two of them. Probably more about the layout of the stadium. Not like he hasn’t nabbed the blueprints yesterday evening.

They both stop and look around. It’s… kind of boring. This is supposed to be for the country’s morale, but he can’t really understand how a photo op of them in front of, entering and then leaving the building would make the people happy. It mostly means that they’re stuck in seemingly endless halls, unfinished and unfurnished.

He can hear Raine’s breath even out, a measured manoeuvre, just as leaning against the wall sideways is. Eber bares his teeth at the realisation that they can’t sit down – there are no chairs and they neither want to sit on the floor like a child nor can they get down or up without a lot of work.

Belos has wandered a few feet further away, deeply in conversation with Osran now. If Eber didn’t care about building materials, he really doesn’t care to listen to them talking about the alignment of celestial bodies.

That means he’s stuck with the current company. And what a company it is – Raine is busy staying upright and conscious, Darius and he are currently officially not on speaking terms in order to deceive the others about the strength of their friendship.  The other coven heads are not exactly interesting conversation partners, but he guesses they’ll have to do in order to keep face.

He tentatively decides to talk to Adrian, even though the buffoon’s currently in a one-sided conversation with Vitimir. The potions head will probably be grateful to him for distracting the other man, and Adrian is good at yammering. Eber just needs to ask questions about him and he’ll talk, make it look like they’re having a conversation.

Unlike with Raine, the others at least talk to – at – him, especially if it means they can brag about themselves.

A sudden cough makes him turn around, halfway across the floor. It didn’t sound natural enough, so his curiosity gets the better of him. Osran is staring at him deeply before turning back to the Emperor, a look of… of warning on his face? If he didn’t know it better, he’d say this is the same look Darius would use.

And then he can see Mason’s eyes settle on Raine.

They’re still leaning against the wall, looking as if they’re losing rather than gaining strength from it. Their eyes are still scanning the other coven heads every now and then – prey observing the sated hunters – but most of the time, they keep them closed, focused on breathing evenly. They have no idea that someone is looking at them. And, to be fair, up till now Mason has been very low on their list of problems.

Eber catches Darius’s eyes for a second. Don’t do anything, the look says. But there are a few things someone half-feral, unbound by society’s norms and rules can do without being obvious.

He stalks towards a beam of light on the floor, pouncing on a nail that immediately rolls away. It’s usually seen as cute and undignified, barely putting him above a common beast in other people’s eyes. It’s supposed to draw attention to him and his drollness.

Unfortunately, this time it backfires. Looking up, he only meets Raine’s horrified stare – why are you acting like this, their eyes scream, you are making yourself a target – but Mason has gotten the attention of Vitimir and Adrian. They are all watching the different kinds of building materials he’s floating around, arranging and rearranging. Eber doesn’t know what he’s planning, but–

One of the items, an iron rod, is hurtling in Raine’s direction. They don’t even notice for a second, still confused by his antics, and it takes them too long to react. Eber watches, transfixed by horror, as the rod purposefully changes direction at the last possible moment and ineffectively hits the wall a metre to their left. In a way, it has hit its target perfectly, though. Raine has thrown themself backwards with a gasp, obviously hurting their already compromised back. They bend half over, shoulder and head braced against the wall, panting through the pain. It’s the way an injured animal would behave: protect the core, make the target smaller. He hates that this is what he sees.

Even the Emperor has flinched and turned around at the sudden clang, but the leering trio is not reprimanded. Instead, Eber can hear a forced chuckle from behind the mask.

“Ooops,” Mason mutters. “So sorry, Whispers. It must have slipped my hand.” There’s a tremor in his real hands, uncertainty and fear palpable in the air. It’s the first time he’s played along with the other coven members. Eber can see that the fact that he’s never done this before is playing on his nerves. He’s just proved himself, though, judging from the laughter of the other coven heads he eagerly joins. He’s gaining no joy from this, only certainty that he’s a valuable member of the pack.

Eberwolf forces himself not to sneer at him. Collaborator. In a way, worse than instigator.

This is not how you treat pack. If a member betrays you, you throw them out. You don’t keep them around to take advantage of their weakness. No, worse, they’ve weakened a member of their pack just to play these games and bond with each other over it.

He can smell the way Raine’s body is close to shutting down after half a week of injury and stress. They’re in pain, they were just scared, and now they have to convince their body that no attack is coming. And they started with little energy to begin with. He can hear their heartbeat and their breath: both shallow and fast. Blood, fear and all kinds of stress hormones permeate the air.

Witches are always so concerned about the concept of ‘good smells’ versus ‘stench’. Of course he doesn’t revel in smelling this cocktail of horror and humiliation. But as a beastkeeper, smell is just part of life. There are good smells that can mean bad things and bad smells that mean good things.

Right now, the smell just makes him angry.

Eber gives the iron rod on the floor a long look and imagines picking it up.

It’s not like he needs weapons in any way. His body is his weapon. But for this – he’d make an exception.

He imagines walking over, picking up the rod, turning towards Mason. Nobody else is here any longer in this fantasy. That is – apart from Eber’s little helpers.

He imagines pulling dozens of critters from the surrounding area and sending them after Mason. Not to hurt. Just to… hold him down.

He’s seen beasts with broken bones: splintered from collisions during fights, crushed by falling logs, compound fractures from falling wrong.

In his mind, the rod comes down on a leg first. He knows the sound Mason makes well: A surprised, disbelieving gasp, followed by a scream. Controlling the way his weight collapses on the leg ensures that the fragments shear past each other, one piercing the flesh from the inside.

With his prey incapacitated and rolling screaming on the floor, he has time to carefully take aim. Mason is still too out of it to even think about asking for mercy. Eber lifts the rod as high as he can and brings it down on the witch’s ribs.

There is a satisfying crack as the ribs split, followed in a split second by the sound of air escaping compressed lungs. A scream that dies before it ever has the chance to become heard. He knows the way broken ribs reshape a torso, how they weaken beyond the obvious agony of any broken bone. He knows the whistling breath makes when it is pulled into a damaged chest cavity, and he hopes that the rasping breath will soon become coloured by a wet gasping sound – the sign of a lung slowly filling with blood.

The rod comes down once more – on his unprotected belly.

Eber might not be used to fighting with a weapon, but he is used to leading and finishing fights for territory for his charges. He knows how a body curls in on itself – folding forward, just like Raine’s did. How do you like it now? Mason may have more cushion, but it’s no protection against a rod like this. Again, the breath is pushed out of his body from the force and Eber revels in it.

That leaves the other two. Those, he would take on with his claws and teeth. He’d–

Hettie pulls him out of his fantasies. She’s already halfway towards Raine when she says to the others: “They can’t go on like this.” Eber sees her hand splay on their chest, Raine flinching back weakly. He knows the touch is supposed to target and energise their heart and lungs, but it looks too intimate. “Don’t be scared, I’ve done this before,” she croons, honey-sweet.

She steadies them with another hand on their shoulder and he remembers at the same time as Raine’s subconscious seems to because they yell in alarm, make a half-step back. There is a cruel smile on her face, obviously happy with the reaction, but her hand is only healing.

Eber can’t see what she’s doing inside their body, but he assumes that she gives them another burst of energy and dulls the pain a bit. Raine still tries to weakly escape, but he can hear the way their body grows alert again from the small changes in breathing pattern and heartbeat.

Hettie turns around, smiling at the Emperor as she steps away. It’s quiet – everyone is quiet, waiting for Raine’s panicked breaths to subside. Eber can see that they hold themself upright by their own power again.

“Oh, were you that tired, Whispers?” Adrian asks in the long pause. “Why didn’t you tell us? We could have found a babysitter, left you at home.”

There is quiet laughter, Darius joining in with one derisive scoff. Enough to keep his cover. Eber busies himself with the nail he was playing with. It just so happens to roll towards Raine’s feet.

Their face is flushed from the humiliation they just endured. Both of them look towards the other coven heads for a moment, but everyone seems to be back to talking, waiting for the Emperor to finish. Then, Raine stares down at him. It takes a second, but they manage to give him a tiny, confused smile, too tired and polite to ask why he’s playing this role in front of everyone.

“Stupid one not important,” he rumbles quietly. “Can’t help, not hurt you.”

Raine heaves a long, heavy sigh. He expects them to answer something sarcastic – what good is a promise not to hurt them in the same breath as admitting to being no help? “Sorry to hear that,” they answer instead. “If you ever need anyone to listen, I’m all ears.”

Eber flashes them a smile, races with his toy towards the far end of the corridor where he’ll have some more quietness. Probably half sympathy, half a ploy to get information out of him. Good to see them still plotting. Right now, their intellect is all they’ve got going for themself.

Chapter Text

“My panic’s at the ceiling, but I’m face down on the carpet.” | Quivering | Dream Journal 

King’s eyes are mercifully closed, but his mouth hangs slightly open. The drop was pretty deep, although not enough to be instantaneous. She can see tiny gouge marks in the dirt where his claws scraped at it uselessly. There aren’t any wounds that she can see because he’s lying on his right side, but a large piece of his skull, including the horn, is lying an arm’s length away, blood pooling underneath it.

Lily was with him, and their parents, too.

There is snow everywhere. King’s corpse is almost completely hidden, and she tries to dig him out. There is a horrible thud, a mixture of wet sounds and cracking. Not too far off, to her right, somebody is now lying, limbs twisted and still. The snow turns red immediately. Her sister’s face is turned towards her, eyes wide and unblinking. The cheek she’s lying on is concave.

Eda doesn’t have to come closer to know, so she falls to her knees where she is and screams.

After it’s all said and done – tears dried, hugs had, kisses given – Eda leaves a thoroughly spooked Raine to hopefully catch two more hours of sleep. She’s too wired to stay still any more, and too distressed to look at anyone she loves right now.

Keeping the journal helps.

It was born of a compromise, but it really, really helps.

In a way, she knows exactly what it is Raine wants from her. Being honest and open with each other are not such complicated concepts. Logically, she knows what to do to make them happy, and it really is the bare minimum. But the fear is rooted deeply in her memories, the point of view of a young woman still hurt and scared and confused that has burned herself into all of Eda’s perceptions, and it screams at her that not telling them about the dreams is a violation of their boundaries. That she needs to tell them the details, and merely saying “it was a nightmare” isn’t good enough.

She doesn’t know how little or how much it would take to make them walk away again. Raine obviously says that what she’s doing is good enough – because this is all in her head (they don’t say that part, though) – and they only need to know that she’s got nightmares and let them help her calm down to feel trusted. She doesn’t even want to know what she’s doing to them by having them soothe her about the possibility that they could leave her again. It feels cruel and manipulative, but the thoughts linger.

The dream journal was their idea as a way to alleviate her fear.

It’s been filling up steadily.

But yes, while writing down the dreams doesn’t make them disappear, it does allow the part of her brain that clings to the images to let go.

She jots down just enough to make it distinguishable from the other “people close to me died” dreams.

Luz is slowly getting covered by the fungus.

Bravely, she’s trying to comfort the Collector, a faceless and unimportant blue shadow, but it’s clear she can’t really breathe anymore, so she’s smiling and winking. Her right hand is first covered in fungal growth, consuming everything, then it breaks off at the wrist and vanishes. Luz’s mouth opens in shock, but the rest of her body is getting consumed as well.

When she looks at Luz’s head, she sees that behind her, Raine, mouth wrenched wide in voiceless terror, is pinned to the wall – not only by moss, but by fungus as well.

This time, she’s so disoriented that they have to half carry, half drag her into the bathroom before she’s sick all over the floor. The sight of parts of her dinner and bile remind her of the fungal strands. Raine has to flush it for her, hold her up while she’s stupidly afraid of what she could see in the toilet.

“What did you dream about?” they ask her, and the sound of raw fear in their voice makes her retch again.

“Luz died, she died, dead,” is all she can say, in different iterations, words all the same. How could she describe the way the strands grew over her daughter, brown skin giving way to green growths, body parts breaking off at joints? How could she ever describe the helpless terror of realising that Raine will be the next one to slowly break apart under the strain of something growing through their body? Of trying not to think about who would have been the next one if they hadn’t woken her up?

She’s dimly aware of being cleaned up, but she refuses to leave the space next to the toilet. Any moment, the nausea might take overhand again.

At some point, she’s alone, and then Luz is snuggled against her side as if she’s part of her body now, and Eda shuts the hell up to not scare the kid. King presses against her other side, both of them under her arms so she can pull them in just as hard. Raine doesn’t fit, but they’re holding her feet in their lap.

Much later, she writes out all the details, and is thankful that her brain deletes at least the images, if not the sequence of events.

Raine is naked, lying on black stone floor. They’re staying quiet, but she can see them trembling with pain while someone is slicing into their back. The knife is invisible because there never was a knife.

She screams their name, tries to run, but she’s pressed against the wall by moss.

The Coven Heads are hitting them, fists and knees and feet connecting with dull thuds. Raine tries to fight back, but it’s six against one, and soon, they’re curled up on the floor, shirt slowly blooming with red spots.

They’re only wearing dirty underwear, suspended in the air by invisible hooks through their shoulders. Someone presses a torch against their back and she sees their body jerk again and again, legs kicking uselessly. They are screaming and they are calling for her, voice distorted.

There is a horrible crack, and she doesn’t know if that was a hook ripping through their shoulder or if their arm broke off because of the fungus, and she doesn’t dare look, and she can hear them scream and shout her name at the same time, and-

–and she comes to in their arms, her own screams only slightly muffled by the fact that her face is pressed against their chest. Raine is wrapped around her, blanket hot and heavy against her back, but still it feels as if the whole world outside of this is nothing but horror and pain and they’re dead, or dying, and suffering, and she can’t help, and Luz and King might be–

She can hear their voice and it’s soft and not screaming, but that doesn’t really mean anything because she saw them keep quiet just a minute ago, so she shies away from the meaning that could be inside those words.

The ribs under her face start to vibrate and it takes a long time for her to recognise the accompanying sound. Humming – they’re humming. Slowly, the sound fills all the space around her, music reverberating from the walls, reminding her of… of being happy. Of being in these arms without fearing them breaking apart around her. The hum isn’t a tune, not really, just sound and vibration, enough to remind her she’s here and they’re alive.

Her trembling jostles them every now and then, changing the pitch for a second, before the sound is right again. Safe. Dependable.

Their shirt is wet against her face, tears, snot, and drool from her screaming against them surely making it unpleasant, but Raine just keeps on humming for a long time, until the shuddering starts to lessen.

They’re saying something, and then she can hear the door close, before she’s bundled up a bit more.

“It will get better,” Raine murmurs into her hair, voice rough from the prolonged strain. “I promise, it will get better.” That’s what they always say - that it’s just her brain working through this, that she’ll one day feel safe enough that the nightmares will become less. Repetition does very little to make her believe it.

Their calm voice takes most of her fear away, leaving nothing but heavy exhaustion. She nods, because she’s supposed to engage. Her hand, she finds, is gripping their shirt like a vice, so she tries to loosen it. She’ll write it all down, just like she always does. Maybe one day, she’ll shove the diary into their hands, hoping that her dreams will fade with it.

“There you are.” They reach up to her head, stroking her hair and scritching her scalp. “This is just your brain working through things now that you are safe. And you are. We’re all safe.”

They both don’t really fall asleep again, but they stay this way for a long time. Every time she manages to doze off, fear pushes her awake enough again to listen to their heartbeat. It jolts Raine enough to start stroking her back again.

All the while, she’s clinging to the words: It will get better. She’ll write this down. Maybe it’ll get better when she gives it to them one day, lets them read between the dry, sarcastic lines. Or maybe their assurances will die down like the feeling of safety does the moment they stop holding her. Or maybe they will finally find the magic words that will honestly, truly, banish the dreams from her mind.

At the moment, all she can do is lie here, exhausted by lack of sleep, exhausted from crying, exhausted from being scared, exhausted. It will get better. But it’s not, not yet.

Chapter Text

“No grave can hold my body down.” | Pinned to the Wall 

The silence is oppressive.

Raine is dimly aware of the fact that they made some kind of noise after the Emperor took over the heart. They remember the feeling of cold air when they were thrown, the taste of rot on their tongue when they gasped in a breath at the sight of it, the sound woefully inadequate for the horror they were feeling. They remember him taunting them, looking down from his new throne, now even higher up than before. And they remember air rushing through their throat, painfully, trying to get their hands up or at least purse their lips to whistle, everything overridden by instinctual sounds at being thrown around.

Now, there is nothing but silence.

They don’t even know where they are. The logical part of their brain tells them that they must still be close to the throne room, probably one room adjacent to it, that he didn’t move them that far. However, without their glasses, everything is blurred, and there is so much moss and decay over what must be months of destruction and graffiti that they don’t recognise their surroundings at all.

The Titan’s heart is no longer beating.

They never realised how used to the sound they’d gotten, not before now. It was like a constant reminder in the castle, a sign that some part of the Isles persisted, even if the current regime wasn’t conducive to it. Now, Belos has taken even that much.

It takes them a long time to understand that they’re still alive and that they shouldn’t be. The moss is holding them up, pinning them to the wall, but it hasn’t killed them yet. Why? What use could Belos still have for them? If he’s going to suffocate the whole continent under his moss, why would he leave someone right here, at the centre of it, alive?

They blink down at the floor, only partially covered in green. This posture puts a lot of strain on their torso, even with the unnatural growth holding up a lot of their weight. It pulls up their arms in ways they don’t care to remember, straining muscles they have felt pulled taut before. Breathing is more difficult this way.

He could have left them standing against the wall, or lying, immobilised, in a corner.

It all comes down to cruelty, then.

They think about that for a moment, and accept it. They survived worse, so enduring now must be possible for a little longer.

Everything is lost.

Everyone is dying.

Fiddle is probably already dead, killed by their own hand. They should hope for it, really, so she won’t suffer when the moss reaches her.

Speaking of it, there won’t be a lot of suffering Belos can pull out of them. Already, they feel themself numbing, the scale of despair is too big to allow themself to feel it. Dying won’t be a cruelty, but it also won’t be a relief – it’s just the thing that will happen next.

The moss is growing over them. It’s not piercing their skin, but it’s pulsating, growing in unnatural ways and in all directions. Every now and then, squelching breaks through the silence when it pushes against itself. They can feel it compressing their legs, tightening around their chest ever so slightly. It pulses against their ribs, damp and clammy.

Maybe he isn’t keeping them alive by design. Maybe he’s just looking elsewhere.

They really hope – Titan, they hope with all the conviction that is still in their body – that the Collector won’t wake Eda and her children up when the moss reaches them. That the BATTs are deeply asleep in their puppetification. And Eber, and Darius, Lilith – so, so many people they know and care about. Let everyone die in their sleep, the smallest mercy there might still be.

But thinking of Eda calls attention to one tiny spark deep inside them.

They’ve never been good at doing what was expected of them without a tiny act of rebellion.

That’s what brings tears to their eyes. They don’t want to hope. Hope is a luxury for those far enough away, for the humans, that he might not cross over to their realm. Here, hope is a torture device, a thorn slowly pushing itself under their skin.

They want to, with all their mind. They thought it was a given. But they just… can’t… give… up.

Raine blinks once, watches the tears drip down, disappearing into the blurry green beneath them almost immediately. That’s enough. They heave a sigh as they give up on giving up. Then, they gather as much air as they can, and start whistling the only melody their subconscious can still call up.

The moss recedes almost immediately. Belos isn’t holding onto them with an iron grip, he just wants to hold them here. The second he notices them breaking free, he’ll crush them into a pulp of flesh and bone splinters. But they can push against the restraint a little.

It allows them to breathe better, to whistle better. To decide where the moss is too painful and redistribute weight and pressure.

Any moment now, he’ll notice and the wall will close in. They can imagine it – ribs shattered, lungs punctured. Their instincts tell them to flinch away from that. Their mind tells them to welcome it. Hope is nothing but cruel. They don’t know what they want or should want.

They whistle anyway.

Somewhere else – everywhere else – people are dying. Witches, demons, beasts alike. Everyone is dying. They could just join them. Death is just the thing that happens next.

But they keep whistling, thinking of everyone and nobody at once. If nobody else is left to grieve, they will hold on a little longer and remember. At least one person will remember as long as possible. They let their head droop, think of the red grass outside. Of the mass of people they loved just as much as they hated their attention. Of a tiny demon who gave them a flower after a concert once. Of Perry Porter, accommodating their aversion, even if a live audience would have gotten better ratings. Of Darius complaining about specks on his coat. Eda’s desperate tries to lift their mood with compliments just shy of flirting.

Nobody will remember Raine.

Nobody will remember after Raine.

Everyone might be gone already.

There is a thud nearby. Even the castle is breaking down.

It will be over soon.

It will be over soon, so they try to imagine someone – anyone – so at least one inhabitant of the Boiling Isles will be remembered for as long as possible.

They don’t expect the hand grabbing for their face. They don’t expect the fact they can still be scared of pain.

There is something hard and cold, sliding along their temples, then warm, soft flesh on their cheek. Clear sight is back, a pain lifted they almost forgot was there. They still flinch, because it hurts to remember what hands can feel like. Hope is cruel.

Eda is alive. Luz is alive. King is alive. Hope feels cruel, and yet all three of them smile with the radiance of it.

Raine has no idea what is happening, but it seems that there is one more fight to be fought, and death might not be what happens next after all.

Chapter Text

“Tell me that you’re okay, and I’m fine.” | Trapped with the Enemy 

Awareness comes slowly, in small bursts that hurt in the absence of nothingness.

Sometimes, he’s dreaming, and sometimes, he’s almost awake.

Colours change before his eyes: grey, red, orange, pink, then black. Sometimes, the black is disturbed by a slight yellow sheen. Then, there is the grey again.

He tries to find meaning in that, but even attempting to follow that thought pulls his mind deeper into oblivion.

He’s asleep.

He’s asleep.

He’s asleep.

He’s almost awake.

After a long time of this, he realises that he is looking at smooth stone. A wall.

The light changes again.

He’s asleep when his body moves. There is sound and light and magic at one end of his body, and then there is the smooth stone wall again.

After that, he’s almost awake for a long time. Long enough to find his name and to remember that he was with someone before… before.

Darius remembers shouting, fighting, being overpowered. And then, much worse: Silence. Everyone was silent, transfixed by what was happening.

What was happening?

He can’t remember. He watches the light change colours, turn off twice.

Memories drag themselves out of the bog of his head, sticky and smeared with almost-forgottenness. Eber. The sound he made when he saw the scalpel at his throat, the look on his face. Raine’s face. The look on their face when they were dragged up there.

Up where?

All he knows is that his mind kept screaming that he’d tried to keep them away, that they’d done their part already.

A woman is speaking. He can’t understand her, but the soft voice isn’t meant for him.

He dreams. He dreams of moving and fighting and coarse paws on his shoulder and music. He dreams of music and Eber’s wide eyes and sitting and someone is screaming and sitting and I can’t help and sitting and–

He remembers.

The bog starts to dry out. Traces of oblivion still stick to the memories, but he remembers.

They were all dying. Everyone. He remembers thinking that he wanted to comfort Eber. That he wanted to be with his best friend. He remembers thinking that he should have sent Raine far away, even knowing that the stain on their wrist doomed them anyway, and that it must suck for them to have pulled the one they wanted to protect down with them. He remembers thinking that he failed them again and that he was glad that love was just a distant past for him, but that the pain in his chest surely couldn’t be greater. He remembers, remembers…

He can’t move. He can’t think clearly. Remembering all of that takes him over a change of light – longer than a day. But he does.

He drags what’s left of his mind onto slightly safer ground.

At some point, he must have lost consciousness. Now, he’s here. He’s not dead. He can’t be dead. After can’t be light on a wall.

Whatever happened to him, he wonders if it also happened to Eber.

He pondersleepworries for another day.

He wonders what happened to Raine. He failed them again.

Something moves on the edges of his sight. It’s grey and round and seems to touch his face, even though he can’t feel it, and then it’s gone. He tries. He tries so hard to move, but he can’t.

What was that?

There is not much to think about than to worry about Eber and Raine and everyone else. He worries about Edalyn, but with the way her curse reacted to the spell, he has even less hope for her than – oh, Lilith, too. He’s already accepted Edalyn’s death, but for a second, grief wells up for her sister. She wasn’t his most beloved coworker, but in hindsight, he should have seen the cracks in the façade and felt pity for her.

There are many people he feels pity for who hate that notion.

Right now, he feels pity for himself. He misses being able to move. He misses his best friend. He misses Eberwolf with a fervency he never experienced before. He looks at the orange on the stone and tries to match it to his fur. He misses the tight-lipped smile Raine would give him before they did something clever, never mind the consequences.

A voice is raised. Something surges through him, something like magic, but different. His body moves and turns and – and–

And there is something in front of him. Something that has moved the same way he did. That must have stood to his left all that time. It looks like the back of a witch-sized puppet.

His eyes move to the woman in front of him without any input of his. It’s Edalyn, a hand raised as if to appease, talking frantically. He’s happy that she’s alive, but she’s a known factor. He wants to see the thing between them, the thing she’s talking to. All he can do is try to make sense of what is in the periphery of his vision.

It looks like a very well-made wooden puppet, colourful and suspended by magic. Probably dangerous if provoked.

He can barely see the way its body bends, but there are hinges on the shoulders. He knows a great deal about how to make things move, so he can almost imagine the mechanics behind it. He can see the wood formed into a crude approximation of green–

Oh Titan, no.

He tries to see the figure’s fingers, as out of focus as they are. There is magic bubbling there. He can’t see the shape, but it’s yellow. He can’t remember ever seeing them use magic without an instrument or their mouth.

He can’t feel his fingers, but he can feel his own raw magic being pulled out to some place where his body ends.

The Owl Lady tries to touch Ra– the puppet’s face, but it crouches down in a fluid motion, ready to attack. Darius’ eyes still won’t move away from her until she steps back, tears falling. The second step must have triggered something because his body moves back to the original posture.

He only gets a split-second view of Raine’s profile, the hinge in their jaw.

Black greets him, slightly disturbed by the flickering light of a fire behind him.

Darius is not the most intelligent man on the Boiling Isles, but you don’t get Coven Head without being clever and cunning. He knows what this adds up to. He just… tries really hard not to.

Eventually, he gives in. If this is what Raine looks like, it stands to reason that it happened to him as well.

What does that mean for Eber?

Is he somewhere behind him, out of sight, just as out of sight as Darius must be for Raine? Are they all here? All the Coven Heads were close together, as was the Owl Lady.

He never wanted to turn his head that much in his life. All he wants to know is whether Eber is still alive.

There is the movement in the corner of his eyes again, first left, then right. He can’t see what it is. He finds himself wishing that Edalyn would do whatever it is again, that whatever this is might move his body again. He wants to follow the grey thing and he wants to look at Raine again.

Two days pass, time only distinguishable by the colour on the wall. He falls asleep again and dreams of Raine playing the violin with wide eyes, of pressing the sigil glove on a trembling woman’s wrist, of joking with a coven guard to establish rapport. He remembers the look on Eber’s face when the scalpel–

They move again. This time, he can see the fluidity in Raine’s movements better because Edalyn is a bit further to the left and therefore, Raine is almost between them.

He doesn’t care about the Owl Lady. She’s alive and talking and not looking as if she’s about to die. He tries to learn as much as he can from the back of the puppet that must be Raine.

Even when they both move back into their earlier position, his mind races.

Raine must be okay. They have to be. There just isn’t any other acceptable outcome. Because he owes it to them and also, if they aren’t, then Eberwolf has even less chance of being okay.

Titan, he knows how much Raine hates that he feels responsible for them. He knows. He can’t turn it off – still feels as if their wellbeing is his responsibility. He knows they feel as if he’s taking away their agency after so much has been taken. But he can’t forget – oh, he has so much time to remember. He remembers how low they were brought by the Emperor and his cronies. How he watched them play being mind-controlled and ordered around by the other Coven Heads, humiliated. All of that because he decided to play a prank on them for daring to attack him after he lured them into a trap.

They need to be okay because he can’t have been part of another plot to ruin them.

But, a selfish part of him also needs them to be okay because that would heighten the chances of Eberwolf being somewhere to his right, or behind him when he turns towards Edalyn. If Raine is okay, then Eber is okay, too. And that’s all that matters. The last two people he really needs to be okay.

The next time they threaten her, he realises that she could easily step to his right, and he would be able to see the rest of the room. He’d see whether–

He realises two things at the same time. First, she’s holding a grey feather duster, and she was dusting off Raine when she tripped the alarm. She’s been dusting him off, too. And secondly, she’s always come up to them from the left. They have no idea he is there.

Being alone with one friend is lonesome enough, but they are alone with themself.

He doesn’t know what it looks like in their head, if they’re awake like him, forced to relive memories, too. There might be nothing but ruins under that immovable green hair, memories upon memories of torture and threats and humiliations.

“You wanted me to think you’d send me here,” the Raine in his memory says. There are bruises to one side of their face, an abrasion on their cheekbone. “To– to think… here.” Even though he’s kept his eyes on their face the whole time, their legs are pulled up to shield their naked torso from him. “A prank.” They laugh, and it’s a high sound, confused and scared. “I… I don’t understand.”

He doesn’t understand where that cruelty came from, either. Why would you ever let anyone think you’d send them to prison, to a place like that dungeon – why would you incapacitate anyone to be pickings for someone else?

He doesn’t know how much of them is still left, but he needs them to be okay. He needs them to be asleep most of the time, or to have seen a glimpse of him. Oh, and if what he’s praying for is true, then there’s six enemy Coven Heads behind him. If they saw him, they’d see the others, too. He wonders whether the fact that he’s here would dull that blow.

He wonders whether Eber is thinking the same things, looking at his back while he’s turned towards Edalyn. Maybe they’re all awake and wondering about each other. He wonders whether the others feel guilt having to stare at their backs. Because they have to see their backs, because they’re on his other side.

He wonders a great many things. How they will get out of here. How he will find Eber (right next to him, no need to look for him, he’ll be right there), how he’ll put Raine back together, and how they’ll fight whoever is pulling their strings right now.

For now, all he can do is stare at the wall, sight sometimes vaguely obscured by Eda’s feather duster, and vaguely wonder whether his allies and enemies see the same play of light as he does.

Chapter Text

“Oh horror, oh horror, what did you see?” | Dissociation

One of the perks of being a coven head is that as long as the paperwork is done and the coven is working seamlessly, he can plan his workday freely. Darius has decided to interpret this quite liberally, revolving his workday around the times of his colleagues. Especially in relation to one of them.

However, it’s not like he can always just hover behind their shoulder, so sometimes, Raine quite literally disappears from his view. It’s getting harder to ask for them without drawing attention, but, strangely enough, the Emperor is helping. He has started to cultivate a reputation for Darius - that unlike the other Coven Heads, he has no reason to see the mind control as a warning and more as an ongoing reward because he’s officially still pretty miffed at the whole ‘trying to kill him’ thing. Eberwolf apparently doesn’t exist to the Emperor, which is just as well and allows him to act more freely. It’s obviously a ploy to seed mistrust between them, but seeing as he can’t stand most of his colleagues, he’s very much not complaining.

He has to ask around this time. It’s Hunter who gets him on the right path, and he realises with a start that Raine’s current condition is ever so slightly traumatising for the little princeling. Apparently, it makes Darius terrifying as well, which he wouldn’t mind if it didn’t undercut everyone’s position in the castle. He can’t be publicly feared by the Golden Guard, which means that he’ll have to find a way to toughen the boy up. But that doesn’t matter right now, not when he knows that two of his colleagues have taken Raine to the meeting room, a secluded place that could easily be used for further fun things like the fiasco when they visited the stadium two days ago.

And he’s right, because the first thing he sees when entering the room is Raine, standing ramrod-straight next to the table, clearly ordered there and not of their own volition.

Hettie looks up from her spot the moment he enters. She smiles. “Oh hello, Daemonne. I think we found something you will find interesting.”

Vitimir is smiling at him, too, at least that’s what Darius thinks he’s doing. It’s sometimes a bit hard to see with the mask. Anyway, he’s making a point to never look too closely at Vitimir because that guy is creepy.

“Does it involve reducing my workload?” he asks easily, slipping around the Potions Coven Head and sitting down next to him. Sitting next to Hettie is… not something he does willingly.

The other two laugh, and this gives him a moment to look at Raine. They’re holding a ledger, overflowing with papers, pressed against their torso. It looks ever so slightly off, he thinks. He’d prop something this heavy on his hip to lessen the strain- oh, great. These two have found a way to inflict harm without even touching them.

“I’m afraid not,” Vitimir’s always haughty voice drafts from behind the mask. “But going through the list of arrested enemies of the state and their processing gives some interesting results.”

Raine isn’t looking at either of them, eyes staring straight ahead. Darius has to give them credit - if anyone treated him like this, he wouldn’t be able to be this still. Even if the mind control makes them follow orders – he’s been told they’re still there underneath, so he expects that they must be quietly seething, even if they feel like they mustn’t show it.

“Such as?”

Hettie reads from a paper in front of her, slowly and loudly: “After three days of fruitless interrogation, involving the children was finally effective. Both of the father’s arms were broken to show them what would happen-”

Raine flinches ever so slightly.

Smiling, Hettie continues: “...to the children, and when the other parent still tried to claim they hadn’t spread rumours about the Emperor, both their and their children’s thumbs were-”

“That is enough!” Darius interjects. He didn’t come here to reunite with his breakfast, and what’s more, he really doesn’t want Raine to hear the rest of that sentence. “You know I abhor these stories. Way too messy. They always think that they need to involve blood.”

He tries not to look at the way their knuckles grip the ledger, skin almost white with the force.

Something is wrong, even more wrong than forcing somebody to stand like this while injured, even worse than reading stories of other people getting hurt to them. They aren’t looking like someone who pointedly ignores the rest of the room. “Do they remember?” Because if they do, and if the others notice, then he needs to find a way to act now–

“No,” Vitimir breathes, “but their subconscious does. It’s enough,” he coughs, and an acrid smell permeates the air for a second, “to make them retreat.”

“I suggest further experiments with slightly changed variables. It feels like the children get a reaction, but that’s just morals, not suppressed memories. I’m interested to see if we get varied results.”

Yeah, nice. Great talk. These are his colleagues, he thinks with a dull sense of horror, these are the people others lump him together with.

“Lovely,” he says out loud. “I’ll make sure not to tell Snapdragon you’re trying to break her toy. I do need someone to sort through my coven member list, though, and I was planning on… asking Whispers for help.”

“You can try,” Hettie answers, giving Raine up as if they’re nothing to her, “but I doubt they’ll be much use right now.” It’s unusual of her to give up so easily. His new reputation is working.

But he needs to get Raine out. Right this moment. His chair scrapes back before the words come. “Don’t care. If they don’t, at least I have a reason to yell at them. You have your idea of fun, I have mine,” he adds at her sceptical look. Slower, louder, he says towards Raine: “Come with me, Whispers. Let’s do some actual work.”

Raine doesn’t react for a few seconds, and he’s close to grabbing their arm when they finally turn around.

“No, leave the ledger–” He awkwardly takes it from them, and lays it on the table, careful not to let it drop and betray his anger. Raine’s arms have fallen down to their side. They walk towards the door without even looking at him.

He has to guide them to his office. The tea makes them follow every order; they stop when he does and walk where he goes. He hates this. It feels different from giving orders to a subordinate. At least his people can talk back and look at him. Raine just feels lifeless, face not just devoid of emotions but slack.

“You are one of the most intelligent people I know,” he tells them when he’s sure the corridor is empty. “If anyone can rationalise their way out of this, it’s you.”

But there is no reaction. They just stare ahead. Maybe they’ve retreated inside their head or maybe they’re ignoring him. Maybe his words aren’t landing at all. But he can’t imagine having to go through that kind of treatment without snapping at everyone, especially with no way out ahead.

“Two more days,” he continues in a low voice. The only reaction is that Raine takes a polite half-step away from him. “I have a plan. Two more days, and things will get better for you.”

He shouldn’t tell, but he can’t bear this look any longer. He knows that the missing money (money stolen by three very talented young bards, but with a forged papertrail of embezzlement) will be found, well, missing on Sunday. Terra will have no choice but to leave for the ankle to try and sort things out. And he’ll graciously offer to step in as the one making sure they drink the tea.

But Raine doesn’t react at all. It’s even worse, in a way, then when Eber tried to talk to them about their rebellion after Raine point-blank asked. They reacted with disgust and disbelief – and forgot it within minutes. His own promise, it seems, doesn’t even register in their current state.

They flinch the moment they enter the workspace, but then start towards his desk. “Not there,” Darius says. This time, it takes them less time to respond. “Sit down on the couch, okay?”

What is he going to do? What can he do? There aren’t any comforting words they wouldn’t forget immediately because they go against the conditioning. Most people would be comforted by touch, he theoretically knows that. But the thought of holding hands or even hugging another person – apart from Eber – seems… not like something he’d like to do. Gosh, he hopes it doesn’t come to that.

Raine sits down strangely, the mechanical movements turning into an almost-backwards topple. They right themself and then sit as if waiting for the next order.

Darius decides that this is all he can offer – a calm room, no more attacks on their nerves. He gets them a glass of water, and by the time he returns, they’ve slumped slightly. For a second, he thinks about telling them to drink, but decides that there were enough orders today. Instead he asks: “Are you in pain?” and when they don’t answer, he grabs the thin blanket from the couch and slowly drapes it over their shoulders.

Raine makes a small movement, as if trying to get away, but then stills. He hopes it helps and isn’t just painful.

“You can relax now,” he tells them belatedly. Their eyes almost move towards his face before staring at the couch table again, as if he isn’t there. “I’m not going to order you around. Just, ehm, try to calm down a bit.”

What a great help he is, Darius thinks sarcastically as he sinks into his own chair. He doubts that had any effect on them. But just being out of this situation must be good enough, right? He tries to tell himself that while he sorts his coven’s members, always keeping them in the corner of his sight.

Seconds pass without any movement, then a minute.

Chapter Text

“We’ll make it alright to come undone.” | Touch | Flashbacks

She’s only half-awake when she turns over, but the fact that there’s a warm body next to her stirs enough recognition to nurture a small warmth in her chest. Raine. She doesn’t have to be awake for that to mean everything.

It doesn’t matter when or where, if they’re here, then everything is alright.

She snuggles closer, one arm across their chest, slotting her front against their back, lips finding their nape for a sleepy kiss–

There’s a sudden, harsh movement, and then there’s pain in her breast, and her head and back collide with the blanketed floor of the nest hard enough to hurt. What…? Eda blinks into the darkness, trying to orient herself. Did they just… push her?

She can hear Raine, breaths fast and shallow, fumbling around the nest. Looking for something?

Eda wants to get up, maybe help with the glasses, but they got her good. She’s not sure if that was an elbow or they shoved that hard with their hand, but she’d rather breathe through the pain for a few more seconds and try to find out what is happening.

“I can’t see you,” Raine says evenly into the darkness, “but if you touch me again, I will kill you.”

Fuck.

“It’s me.” She cringes, that was about as helpful as not saying anything at all. “Eda. I’m not trying to attack you.”

“I let you play your games during the day,” they growl, “but if you sick people think you can break in here–”

“Rainestorm?” she tries very, very quietly. “I’m sorry for startling you. Can you tell me where you are?”

For a few seconds, all she can hear are their harsh breaths. They continue rooting around the nest. Her eyes are better in the dark – well, her eyes are always better, but she has night vision – and she can barely make out that they’re grabbing the lip of the nest where their glasses usually are with one hand, desperately searching under their own pillow with the other. It’s clear that neither the glasses nor whatever other thing they’re looking for are turning up. When they talk again, it’s clear they’re not here, not now. Their voice is still tinged with anger, but every word tips further towards confusion. “This is my bed. If you think you– you can–”

Eda really hopes the tremor in their voice means they noticed something is not the way they think it is. “No, it’s not. This is a nest, can you feel it?”

Silence for a few seconds, then, in a very different voice: “I don’t know what– what you’re planning, but I will kill you, if you– if you come any closer.” Raine abandons the search for the glasses, now both hands turning over the pillow, shaking it. Their breaths are fast and shallow in the quiet room.

The words and tone settle as a clump of ice in her stomach. “No,” she croons, “don’t be scared. You can be angry.” She thinks about sitting up, decides against it. “You’re in my house, in my nest. It’s me, Eda. You know me.”

“I’m– I’m not–”

“I know. You’re the one in control here. You got all that awesome whistling to defend yourself.” She hears them swallow convulsively. “But you don’t need it. You’re in the Owl House. It’s me. There’s nobody else here.”

The shallow breaths stop for a few seconds, then, still a lot higher than usual: “...Eda…?”

“Yeah, I’m here. You’re in the Owl House, in my nest, and you’re safe here.” She waits for a second, then carefully asks: “Is it okay if I sit up?”

They reach around immediately, grab her hand and pull her upright, their own hands so shaky she almost pulls them down instead. Eda retreats to the far side of the nest to give them space. “I’m– I thought… oh Titan, I said–” They put their hands on their face, just breathing for a few long seconds. Then: “I’m sorry for threatening you.”

The fear running through her slows down a bit at that – they are back, they know what happened and they’re not spiraling. “Don’t worry. I’m honestly impressed how fast you were to defend yourself. I would have been far too surp–”

But that was apparently the wrong thing to say because their next inhale is shaky and then they are on the move, their body collides with hers, pressing against her. They both move on instinct, her arms are around them even before their head lands on her chest, slotting under her chin. She can feel the tremble in Raine’s limbs, the beat their fingers drum against her leg to keep them here, with her. It feels like all the fight, all their strength has left them. “...thought I was in the castle…”

“I know. I know you thought you were attacked. I’m sorry.” Her hand is free, so she moves it to pet their arm. Raine grabs it and clumsily moves it to their cheek. She holds her hand still in theirs, awed at the trust, but continues petting with her fingers. “I didn’t want to scare you.”

A long sigh comes from beneath her chin. “Still feels wrong to have threatened you.”

“Ah well, you can just tell me how awesome I am everyday for the next week and then I’ll be over it.” She waits for the single exhale that tells her the humour landed, or that they at least try to sound like it. “What were you looking for?”

“Glasses,” they mumble, mostly invested in the growingly complex beat their fingers are drumming on her thigh. “Must have pushed them out of the nest instead. And… knife.”

“What? What would you even need a knife for? You can whistle and by the time they recover, you can have your violin ready.”

Another sigh. They drop the drumbeat, squeeze her leg instead. “You’re right. That’s why I gave it to Darius. Anyway.” They shift, half-landing on her lap, then ask quietly: “Can you just hold me for now?”

“Sure.” She leans back, allows herself to enjoy the closeness, to lower her defenses now that the worst is over. “Would it be easier if I waited for you to touch me first?”

“Probably, yeah,” Raine admits into her clavicle. They sound calmer, half-asleep again. “But I like what you were doing. I think I– I just need to relearn trust.”

“Okay.” She nestles her face into their hair, waits for several long minutes for their body to turn heavy against her, but they don’t fall asleep again.

“Can we– can we try again?” Raine finally asks through a yawn. They are shifting already, one hand pulling slightly at her knee as they move away. “Come here.”

She lets herself be pulled by the power they have over her, settling in behind. Raine pulls her hand around their torso, hugging it with both arms before she has fully found the spot. She can feel them lower their head to kiss fingers that aren’t there. They freeze, touch the skin on the stump with their lips. “Okay?” She hums, and they kiss her again before mapping out the unfamiliar shape and texture with their lips.

She goes back to what she set out initially – sharing the warmth of their back with her torso and kissing that sensitive spot. And yep, that does feel good for them too, judging from the full body stretch she gets in response, spine pressing against her chest.

“‘S nice,” they mumble.

She grunts her agreement and covers every part of their neck she can find in kisses, using her nose to pet. Raine is quiet for a long time, only a happy sigh tells her they’re not fully under.

“Don’t stop doing that,” they demand, and then their breath drifts off.

Eda snorts once, quietly, then presses her lips to their nape and stays like this, even as sleep takes her as well.

Chapter Text

"There's nothing you can ever say, nothing you can ever do." | Without Consent | Secrets

He’s taken two guards inside with him. Raine doesn’t know why there are always so many people – the sigil on their arm binds their magic completely. It leaves them nothing more than a malnourished, half-naked witch with fire running over their back in lines. There is no need for strength in numbers. The hands will land on them anyway, two or four or eight doesn’t really make a difference when they’re all pulling and positioning them as needed.

They could feel the movement of air when the door opened, approximately at the same time as yesterday and the day before. They can feel people positioning themselves inside the room now. Every movement creates just the smallest draft. And every current of cold air runs over their skin, pooling inside wounds and letting the agony blaze stronger.

Pain clouds every part of their being, but they had hours to plan their move.

Sleep rarely comes, so they used however many minutes of clarity they had during the familiar rhythm of exhaustion, sleep, and being wrenched awake by the smallest movement igniting the pain anew to try and plan.

Right now, Raine guesses they’re not supposed to know how many people there are. It’s great fun for everyone to scare them with a sudden touch, even when it doesn’t hurt. While it’s true that they can barely make out details on the wall two arms’ length away with their glasses gone, people tend to underestimate their eyesight and other senses. Their ears have started to pick up different cadences and rhythms, they recognise the different people accompanying him. The information doesn’t help, though, when everything is just cold precision.

Nobody expects them to know anything here. They’re lying on their stomach, legs slightly pulled in, face buried in the crook of their arm as if to hide. Maybe he thinks they’re too out of it to understand who is here when in reality, they can triangulate from the steps.

They are a tactician, holding all the details in their hand.

That’s also where it falls apart. They don’t know what to do with all the information because the end result will be the same, whether they collect data or not.

That leaves them with only one choice. They need to time it perfectly, because there probably won’t be a repetition. Also, there might be retaliation, so this needs to really count. It might buy them a few seconds or maybe a few minutes, and the knowledge that they did it. Not much in the grand scheme of things, but down here, all they have to barter with is time and emotions.

They let their body take over for the moment. His proximity is frightening enough, no need to play the trembling of their limbs. Every movement reminds their body that there is more than skin exposed to air. The simple act of somebody walking up to them briskly causes more ripples of icy air to sweep into the inferno on their back. They whimper, curl up a bit tighter.

A chuckle, his words slipping off their mind in their haze of concentration. A gloved finger strokes down from their shoulder, almost tenderly, across the landscape that is their back: running over the mountains of raised welts, catching on crevasses, pain rippling outwards in waves. They scream, try to wrench away, body convulsing against the cot. The fingers stay there for a beat longer before they withdraw. Coming down takes seconds they shouldn’t spend.

Thankfully, he waits for them to calm. The air moves as he bends lower, close to their ear. “Don’t think you can ignore me, Si–”

That’s close enough. That’s their chance. Raine uncoils, pushes up with all the strength they have. The back of their head crashes into his face, and then their left arm shoots out to grab him. It lands a bit lower than intended, but he’s disoriented enough that they can pull him towards the cot by the cloth on his chest. Fingers don’t always work, so grab, grab, hold on as hard as possible. They twist, turn, try to put their whole weight into it, hoping that however he crashes into it hurts.

They barely register his shout though, because the movement opened precariously-clotted gashes all along their back, broke up dried blood along unharmed skin and pulled at the deep ache in their shoulders. Raine keens, holds on with the last of their willpower, and dimly notices the hoped-for impact, the cot shuddering as weight hits wood. It’s victory, if only for a moment.

Then, there are hands on their arm, pulling at their own hand. They expected it, but bracing for something and actually going through it are not the same. They knew they’d be overpowered, but– but–

It feels like there are hands everywhere, bending their fingers until they let go, on their arm, their back. Heat and cold clash, they can feel warm blood running from reopened– “No” – and a hand presses their neck down – he’s already standing again – their fingers grab uselessly, nails scraping over wood – hands – “No” – hands – “Stop” – too many – scrabbling for purchase – hands on their shoulders, their back, everywhere, hip being pressed against the wood – “No!”

And then, one of the lines of fire across their back is doused in icy coolness, skin knitting closed under his steady hand, wrongness repairing the muscles underneath.

Their voice breaks on the next scream of protest, collapsing into broken syllables, no-no-please-stop, ignored as if all they are doing is making noise. Tears smear their face, limbs twitching uselessly, stone and torchlight and hands pressing down on them all the same, while the healer calmly forms them back into a blank canvas.

Chapter Text

Laceration

The pain in their arms starts the second their hands are at shoulder height. Raine stares at the manacles, willing them to not go too high today, to not put too much strain on their shoulders, to just let them go through this with both feet on the ground. Fighting it is futile, though, so they go with the pull instead of getting lifted, raise to the balls of their feet without any other sound of protest than their fast, shallow breathing. The metal is easy to see, even with their poor vision, glinting darkly around their wrists, forearms almost grey in contrast to the yellow and green under the shackles.

It stops.

They’re only halfway to the farthest point. The muscles in their soles burn already, calves working hard to keep them upright. The pain in their shoulders is a steady clench of overworked, hastily repaired muscles and tendons.

Raine breathes a sigh of relief.

They put their left cheek against the side of the post, clavicle and hip already leaning against it. In front of them, there is only blurry, confusing nothing, presumably the empty rest of the room. If the winch doesn’t go any higher, they can survive this day, too. It feels like that’s all they can do, barter with the universe to please not that high today, please not that much, that long, that harsh. They find something to be grateful for most days. Even if it’s the worst in one way, something else has probably been surpassed on another day - and they have already survived that.

They no longer try to turn around. They know they can’t see her well enough to finally gauge what kind of weapon this is. They never heard of anything like it and they can't see it. It doesn’t even matter anymore when the pain will come anyway, and keeping their front safe, protecting their face, is way more important.

When the guards came to drag them in here, they didn’t even fight. The outcome would have been clear anyway, and they don’t want another lesson in futility today. A horrible, insane part of them almost wishes for punishment for the ways they try to fight back – just one real acknowledgement that they’re a person, not just something to transport between the cell and this post.

This is all their world has been reduced to. A cell, a cot, a bucket in a corner, cold, uneven stone beneath their feet, and this post that serves as both help and source of further injuries. That, and the thirst, hunger, fear. The pain. The questions.

“Another day, another chore,” they imagine Eda saying. She’s standing in front of them in their memory, wearing that brown jacket they can’t really remember well enough to add details to it. But they do remember her fiery hair. “Don’t worry, we’ll get this over with quickly.”

Yes, they try to tell themself. Quickly. In the grand scheme of things, the time they spend in here must be a small portion of a day. A tiny fraction, barely a blip in the number of days they’ve lived. They realise with a start that they’ve probably been here longer than they were reunited with Eda.

That’s when the tears spill over. Because in reality, there’s always something, a new horror or a new low they are brought to. They didn’t know that one could endure this much and still be standing, still be themself. They don’t know how much further they have to go before they can finally give up.

“This won’t be forever,” the Eda in their mind says. “He needs you, he needs you whole, he–”

There are steps behind them. Raine braces, but the torturer whose name they never got only says: “I hear you attacked my colleague today. Seems like there’s a lot of fight left in you. I will do something about that.”

There is silence for a few seconds. Raine desperately tries to take stock to find a reason this is survivable. They can feel the way their shoulders shift inside the sockets. Their legs are nothing but a single strain, with burning arches at the end. They… they can lean against the post. If they lose their footing, they can lean against the post. And they still remember the way Eda smiled at them when they freed those wild witches a few days ago, when they knew nothing of pain and fear. They try to make her smile like that, but it doesn’t land correctly. At least she’s protected by the post, by their body. They’ve seen guards stand there. They put her memory in the safe zone in front of them.

Any second now, it will start. There is no way to brace for something they don’t know is coming. They can barely make out the direction the steps are coming from over their panicked breathing. And even if they understand their relative positions, that doesn’t mean the attack strikes from exactly the same dir–

The first hit impacts with their back with a crack, forming a line that instantly burns with heat. They groan as they’re driven against the wood.

The second and third follow in quick succession, each parallel to the first. It feels like fire already, but they know there probably isn’t even any blood. They have been patched up too thoroughly for their skin to split already.

“How small your mind must be,” Eda growls darkly, eyes fixed over their shoulder. “You don’t even see they were trying to save you.”

The next lash lands at an angle across the welts already forming. It’s the first one that presses a scream from their lungs. They try to breathe through the white-hot fire threatening to overtake them.

This is when the questions start. There are always questions, and always the same answers. “Only four,” and “Yes,” and “No-one else,” and “we were just that efficient”. The last one got them a slap the first time they first said it, but it’s been accepted as baseline answer by now.

The lashes keep coming, not as a punishment – just routine. This will stop when you start talking.

But even if they did – which they can’t, won’t, would never do – no-one believes in four, so no-one would believe in five. They can’t say it, even if it didn’t lead to her. It would only open the door to renewed efforts to scrape more names out of them. Eda agrees. They try to hold eye contact with her, but the way their body bounces between the impacts of the weapon and the bruising stability of the wood makes it difficult.

They scream. They can barely get enough air into their lungs for that, deep sobs burning through their torso. They haven’t begged for this to stop yet, not once. It wouldn’t stop anyway, and only prove further humiliation.

They try to hold onto Eda’s phantom voice, but the lashes drive it away, each crack louder than her words. The position of their arms steals their breath, ribs crashing against the post, toes desperately trying to keep position, until time is nothing but intervals of impact and the echo that follows.

They lose count. They lose their voice. They lose sense of what is happening to the body hanging in the manacles. By the time silence falls, it is nothing but sensation: agony blazing on one side, dull bruises and scrapes on the other, lungs and muscles burning and desperately holding on in-between.

Chapter Text

“It’ll all be for nothing.” | Cardiac Arrest | Sacred Place | Withholding Medical Treatment

Eda is still chuckling about the bread pun, basking in the presence of the kids next to her – uninjured, what a wonderful, unbelievable present from the universe – when she notices Raine stumbling around the yard. They’re favouring their right leg, left forearm pressed close to their chest, other hand rubbing their jaw. For some reason she knows they are looking for their palisman.

Hurriedly, Eda gets up and walks over, and they greet her with a small, grateful smile. “Can you help me look f–” They stop, cough once. For a second, they grimace. She watches them grip their left shoulder, left arm still pressed tightly against their torso.

“Are you okay?” she asks. “Do you want to sit down? I know where Fiddle is–”

But Raine cuts her off, smile still tight with pain, breath coming in short, shallow bursts. “Thank you, but I… need to find her…  myself.” They push past her and Eda turns around to follow. She doesn’t like the way they look, skin almost grey.

For some reason, she’s suddenly reminded of reading discharge papers, of reading about consequences from the possession– “At least sit down once we found her, alright? I think the possession has taken a toll on your body.”

The look on Raine’s face turns softer and they let go of their shoulder as they turn to her, stroke her cheek with their knuckles. “Eda, you’re so–”

And then their knees buckle.

She’s there to catch them, gripping their upper arms to gently lower them to the– Their head drops forward, too sudden for Eda to intervene, almost smacking against her shoulder. She guides them the rest of the way, tries to lay their head down gently.

They gasp; an awful, raspy sound, as if their body forgot how to breathe.

“Raine!” But it’s obvious they’ve lost consciousness from the slackness in their face, torso spasming with those horrible gasps, and then, worse – nothing. She shouts their name even louder, presses her hands against their chest. Nothing. This doesn’t make– how could they just– She cries, yells, shakes, yanks them upwards by their lapels – stopped by the way their head dangles backwards.

“Help!” She shouts. Luz and King are long gone. There are people strolling aimlessly all around them, one of them has to be able to use healing magic, there’s always someone with healing magic. One man turns his head a fraction in her direction. “Help me!”

But he only frowns. “This is just a body, the mind is elsewhere.”

That doesn’t make any sense! She shakes her head in impotent anger. “You need to help them!” She doesn’t know how to properly restart a heart, but anything, anything must be better than nothing – with both hands, she presses down in the middle of their chest – should it be more to the side, she doesn’t know – their skin sloughs off beneath the shirt, she can feel it move with the pressure–

“Help!” she shouts again, tries to will any of the people walking past to tell her what to do. They’re all so perfectly silent, everything, everyone is quiet around her, only disturbed by her own, panicked breathing. She never imagined anyone could be as silent as Raine is under her, body only moving along with her hands like a – oh Titan, like a puppet. “Please, I need help, I don’t know how to…”

Someone crouches next to her for a second, scoffs once. “You made it that far alone, you can do this alone, too, right?”

But she didn’t, and she can’t, and anyway, this is not about what she can do, this is about their life. If she knew how to– maybe they’d be breathing again. There are bloody handprints on their shirt, everywhere she pressed down and displaced their skin. Eda tries to ignore the feeling of movement under her hands, keeps pressing down in a rhythm that she hopes is close to an actual heartbeat. With a horrible crack, a rib gives. Terror wells up, and she screams, but doesn’t dare stop. They still don’t move, or breathe. She’d take one of those gasps again, any kind of sound or movement.

They fought together, just minutes ago. Everybody was supposed to survive. She just found them down there– it can’t have been for nothing!

“It’s their fault. If they were that strong, they would have kept their heart beating,” someone mumbles to her while walking by. Another voice, closer, slides into her ear, calm and cruel: “All you’re good for is helping others succeed. You’re just meant to lose. There’s nothing you can do.”

She can’t get a grip, the skin beneath their shirt is moving with the pressure, the broken rib a clear gap as if it never was there, she must have pushed it too deep inside to still feel it – she bends down to breathe into their mouth, but it’s overflowing with tea, no wonder they can’t breathe, so she turns their head to the side, but nothing comes and when she tries to help with her fingers, all she can feel is wet, wrong softness – their mouth is full of feathers. They come out red, bloody all over, and Eda’s tears are making it harder to see, but those must be hers–

“It’s over, it’s over, you’re alright,” a steady voice soothes. She’s being embraced, whole body pulled against Raine, their cheek pressed to hers. “Just another nightmare.”

It doesn’t make sense, nothing makes sense, but she still whines their name, confusedly grateful, helplessly grasping and moving against them as if pressure could let her crawl inside them. They’re here and talking, and she has to hold onto them, so her hands grab blindly, scrabble over their back– there is no feeling in her right hand, it’s gone, and for a second, another wave of confused terror rolls over her and she yanks her arms away from their back.

“It’s okay, don’t worry,” they whisper into her ear, pressing her even closer. “You’re okay, I’m okay, don’t worry about it.”

But they weren’t okay a few seconds ago, and she has to see, has to feel, to hear that the unnatural stillness was only in her mind. They let go after only a second of pushback and she scoots down, presses her ear to their chest, but her frantic sobs are drowning out any sound she could hear, so after a few painful seconds, she pushes her hand against their ribs.

It’s probably a bit too harsh, but the pain inside her own chest is almost unbearable – and she’s trembling too much, unable to find it, there is no heartbeat– She tries to say, but it’s broken up by gasps–

They are talking, scooping her up and moving both of them, but everything is drowned out by the memory of stillness, of desperately hoping for one more beat, one more gasp. And then, finally, she can feel their chest expanding under her head. Her fingers are guided, slowly, carefully, to a spot on their wrist, held there until she can make out the steady flutter of their pulse. Alive.

Her breath hitches, and she manages to stay quiet long enough to hear the heartbeat she so desperately hoped for. The hand she’s not clinging to is cradling her head, fingers stroking soothingly. They start whistling softly but stop at the shake of her head – she can’t hear their heart that way. For a long time, they just lie like this, until the shaking and sobbing turns down.

“I lost you,” she finally admits against their chest.

“I know,” they answer, thumb stroking soothingly over her cheek, and then, stupidly empathetic, “I’m sorry.”

There’s nothing else to say, and silence falls again. Eda clings to them, clings to the sound of their voice.

She’s overheated, but the sweat on her back is already starting to feel too cold. Fear is still cursing through her body, scattering thoughts like frightened prey. Raine keeps stroking her cheek, and their heart keeps beating under her ear. Useless musings flit through her head – what if she’d gotten them to sit down immediately, or started to pump the second they went down instead of shaking them uselessly? It’s moot because it wasn’t real, but the failure still feels like it was.

“There was no way you could do anything,” they whisper into the darkness. “That’s how nightmares work. But you can do something now, and that is try to let go of it and enjoy what we have in the waking world.”

Eda tries to imagine how that will look today, but her brain gets stuck on having to leave this room in the morning. It feels as if the night has bled all of her strength, her bravado away. All she wants is to be as close to them as she can, to feel safe in the knowledge that they’re breathing, moving, heart still beating. It takes most of her courage to let go of their wrist and start petting their forearm, their ribs. Uninjured, alive.

She’s still sad and scared. But they’re solid and whole under her, arms forming a safe, peaceful space around her, and that feels like it will be enough to carry her through the rest of the night.

Their heartbeat doesn’t falter. Her breathing finally starts to match it, slow and steady, until the rhythm pulls her toward sleep again. This time, she lets herself believe it will still be there when she wakes.

Chapter Text

Innocent Bystander

The last time Amber sees her parents is right before her violin lesson.

She knew that something was up before they even left the house. Usually, either mom or dad would take her, but today, both of them were at home.

They had a loud discussion in the kitchen, really loud. It started with her Mom holding up a kitchen knife and Dad shouting to put it down, and ended with both of them crying and hugging her. She didn’t like the tears, especially since nobody told her what was going on. But she got hugs out of it, and they both calmed down a lot after that, so she is kind of okay with it.

It was too early, so they packed her the snack she’d usually get to eat at home. And that’s when dad got strange too, he put all the fruit they had in the house in the bag, and quite a lot of sweets. Mom put a few pieces of jewellery on the bottom of her backpack, she can still feel them rattling around in there, beneath the sheet music, as she marches to the door together with her parents. They made her promise not to tell anyone that it’s there, not even Mx. Whispers who is the coolest adult in the world because they showed her how to make her toys dance around her as if they were alive and playing with her.

The next sign that something is wrong is when she can hear another kid play long before they’re knocking at the door. Mom is close to ripping the door open by the time the halting song is finished and Mx. Whispers opens it themself. What follows is another discussion, filled with pleading and increasingly confused questions.

Finally, they relent to let her stay. Amber doesn’t care either way, the other student is two years older and sitting in will probably be worthwhile, a production just for her.

Her parents hug and kiss her, and she half-heartedly returns it. She’s already thinking of whether that tiny demon will know how to slice through things, the way Mx. Whispers showed her once, and whether she could learn it from him. They tell her “We love you,” and “We’re proud of you,” and she hugs them once more before sitting down. Enough lovey-dovey, she thinks to herself.

But as soon as the door has closed, Mx. Whispers looks at her, then the other student, then the bag of fruit her parents pressed into their hands. They look the way her dad does when he’s thinking really hard. “Tell them you love them,” they say suddenly, all the usual playfulness gone.

Amber blinks at them, the only thing to say she can think of is a big “Huh?”

They crouch down in front of her, face all serious, and repeat: “Tell them you love them. They need to hear it. You should always say it back, as long as you mean it.” Their voice trembles in a way she’s never heard them talk before.

She doesn’t get it. But they want her to do it, and it’s not like she’s got anything against it, and she wants to make her favourite teacher happy, so Amber skips out the door, shouting “Mom! Dad!” as loud as she can. They’re just outside the Conservatorium, holding hands and staring into the sky. For all the hurry they were in before, now they seem to be very calm about time.

Both look at her with wide eyes.

“I love you!” Amber shouts at them – best to do it really well.

But adults are strange. Both of them start to cry again, so she hugs them as hard as she can, until Mom pries her off and sends her back inside the building.

After that, her memories are only pieces of what happened.

The boy’s lesson ends, and then Mx. Whispers starts calling people on the crowphone. Amber is bored, so she pulls out her sheet music, but the folders are way too thick and there are lots of words on there and no notes. Those pages make her tutor even more nervous once they look them over, and they check three times that they took all of them out of her folders, shoving them between their own sheets haphazardly.

She remembers almost nothing of the actual session, but at some point, she is really hungry, and some time later, she sits with her sandwich, Mx. Whispers is peeling a boringe for her, and she realises that the next student should have come a long time ago.

Instead, Mx. Whispers plays with her, alphabet and memory games, and tells her stories of another world they claim to have visited. That’s obviously a lie, but the stories are fascinating, and she likes listening to them.

It gets dark outside, and she asks for her parents, and Mx. Whispers say they don’t know. And then they see the look on her face and admit that they think her parents can’t come, but they surely will send someone else to take her home. That’s okay for a while, and then it becomes really scary, and then she is on their lap, and they rock her as she cries. She’s a bit old for that, but it still helps and she’s sure they won’t tell anyone she clung to them like a baby.

After what feels like forever, her aunt comes, together with people in white coats and masks. The adults are talking, and then her aunt is crying, and Mx. Whispers tries to give her the bag of fruit, but she refuses and then she hugs them and suddenly all the adults are crying. Amber doesn’t know what is happening, so she tears up, too.

The next thing she remembers is sitting on her aunt’s couch, being told that she can’t afford the violin lessons. She doesn’t know why her aunt has to pay them, but it upsets her nonetheless, so the tears come again.

It’s not until the next day that she first hears an adult actually say that her parents won’t come back. After that, they keep telling her, but she doesn’t believe it until the funeral. Her aunt has to pry her off one of the coffins because she can’t believe they are in there and she isn’t allowed to see them.

And then, she has to move and the kids she used to play with suddenly live on the other side of town. The kids on the school bus with her are unfamiliar. It feels like almost everyone she knew is gone, and her aunt says it’s good to tell her these things, but she doesn’t do anything against it, just holds her.

But then Amber is packed up and brought to another music lesson, and the week after that, too. In fact, no matter how little money her aunt earns, the music lessons never stop, and as she starts branching out to other instruments, Mx. Whispers introduces her to other students and helps her develop her own style.

Over the coming years, Amber obviously learns that her parents were working against the Emperor, together with wild witches who killed them for coming to their senses and trying to go to the authorities. She also remembers the pages that were between her music and disappeared inside a ledger that belonged to Mx. Whispers, who is now Raine. And yet, they keep insisting that it was nothing, that she imagined anything more than a quick note of “please take care of our daughter”, that they would have given everything to the guards investigating the murders of her parents.

Two of the students in her group disappear, and then another, and Raine stops talking to all of them about anything that isn’t related to their studies. It’s only when she mixes up her timetable and accidentally crashes a meeting between her tutor and two of the older students that she gets told about how brave they were and how they knew they were going to get killed for daring to question the system.

In a way, the decision isn’t a decision at all. She was always looking for the true reasons, and she was always going to follow Raine. And so, twelve years after her parents’ death, Amber finally becomes a revolutionary herself.

Chapter Text

Wounded Caretaker

She doesn’t remember the lightning or the crash. All she remembers is that one second, she was flying, the bag of documents safely against her hip, then she was curled around it, and suddenly, she’s in a forest, dragged by Raine who’s talking a mile a minute about this ominous bolt of lightning and something about precipitation. Her right shoulder burns with pain, white lights dancing on the edge of her vision with every movement of the arm. Her left arm is slung over their shoulders. Every time her hip bumps against theirs, the jolt burns along her back and crashes into her shoulder.

She tries to get away from them, but Raine only grips her hand and ribs harder, pulling her along.

They’re still talking, words incomprehensible through the white hot mess on her right side. Ugh. All Lilith wants is to sit down, curl up and wait for the pain to subside. Distracting, is what they are. A distraction for Eda, and now they’re distracting her from– oh. She presses her eyes closed for a moment, tries to gather her thoughts. They’re trying to keep her awake.

There’s a sudden pain on her left shoulder too, so unexpected she screams. As if something burning hot struck her, tiny and precise, her shirt and vest no protection at all.

Raine doesn’t react apart from dragging her along even harder, her right arm dangling uselessly with every step. Lilith tries to see where they’re taking her – ah. A cave mouth in front of them. There’s sparse vegetation all around them now, leaves bobbing under the… oh, no… under the raindrops.

Boiling rain.

That gets her to finally drag her feet along faster, limping along into the cave. Annoyingly, they don’t even let her drop right at the entrance, but insist on pulling her a bit deeper inside. Lilith goes along with it, lets them do the thinking. Her body has decided that these are very likely the last few steps she’ll take today.

Finally, Raine lowers her to the floor. They lift their staff, and light orbs blink into existence all around them. Lilith just stares at one of the lights until they turn back to her, kneeling on her right side. “I’m so sorry,” they say quietly. “I know you’re in a lot of pain. You dislocated a shoulder and I think I ought to set it. We’ll just get you leaning against the wall here. I’m… I’m so sorry, Lilith.”

For a second, she just stares at them. This is what she doesn’t like about Raine. There is no predictability, always jumping from extreme to extreme – be it their picky eating, followed by sudden hunger when they find something that ticks off whatever strange list they have inside their head, or the way they pull Eda away from a group at random times without her protesting once, or their propensity to suddenly start saying entirely the wrong things. Why are they apologising to her like an idiot, as if they were the one who injured her? It doesn’t make any sense. They don’t even know how much pain she is in right now. Lilith tries to put all of that into the groan that is pressed out of her lungs when they help her sit–

“Oh damn, not– Alright, Lilith, change of plans, we’ll let you sit sideways.” The pressure shifts and suddenly, she’s sitting slumped against the wall, stones digging into her side. Raine drapes her arm into her lap, guides her other hand on top to hold it there, and only then does she realise they must have kept the arm steady on the way down.

“Why,” she manages to get out. White lights are still dancing all around her, dizzying, some magical and some threatening to overtake her vision.

“There are gash– your back is a bit scratched up,” they say, voice trembling. “It’s good if you can’t feel it right now, but, erm, you don’t want to lean against it. Try– try to– I know you feel like you can’t, but try to relax.”

She heaves a deeper breath – they’re not helping, panting like that – and tries not to react as they gingerly lift her arm with both hands, one close to the shoulder, the other on her wrist. The muscles cramp around nothing, pain sparking further at the movement. Dimly, she realises that this was what they meant, but it’s really hard not just to clench every muscle on her right side.

“I’m– I’m sorry. I know it hurts, and I’m trying to be gentle. It’s not as bad if you don’t fight.” She tries to relax some more. The ‘fight’ comment doesn’t make sense unless this is going to be a long, painful– they aren’t even a healer, she realises with a sudden start. How would Raine know what to do, what if they make it worse? But they are already busy bending her arm into a ninety degree angle. It hurts, and she yelps. There isn’t really space for her to jerk away, and they seem to have a plan, so she tries to stay still. The hands on her are careful enough, if she ignores the trembling in their grip. Still, even looking at it causes her stomach to lurch, so she closes her eyes, lets them rotate and move the arm.

Raine keeps whispering apologies, interspersed with instructions, some clear and some inane. She tries to focus on their voice. “Now, one more move and it should slip ri–right back in…” And it does. She can feel and hear her shoulder rearrange itself. Lilith shouts at the pain, the unsettling feeling inside her. The pain drops abruptly, not gone completely, but a whole lot better than before. Lilith allows herself a sigh of relief.

Next to her, Raine just drops to the floor into what can barely be called sitting. They seem a bit overwhelmed, looking at the wall and the lights and her hand, focusing on nothing. They must be in shock from the crash, she dimly registers. There is a furiously red spot above their brow, and she tries to focus on it. Seems like she isn’t the only one who got hit by a drop of boiling water.

“Are you… are you alright?” Raine finally mutters. She can hear their fast breathing. In the few seconds that follow her soft hum of agreement, they apparently pull themself together enough to fuss again. “I– I know it still hurts. Just – just try to stay still, okay? If you don’t move too much, it won’t be as bad.”

She nods, just to stop them from overexplaining even more. The words are blurring into each other in her head. But then, the surprise at their unexpected efficiency cuts through the pained fog. “How did you know what to do?”

They exhale loudly. “Saw someone do it.”

Begrudgingly, she has to give them credit here. There is no way she’d memorise that chain of movements seeing it just one time, even if she had managed to keep her eyes open. “You did that very well.”

They are quiet for a few moments. Then they shrug. “Seemed worth remembering.”

Now that the pain has started to ebb away a bit, she can feel the stone wall seeping out her body warmth. The air outside might be hot and sizzling from the rain, but she can’t feel it in here. “It’s cold. Do you have any idea when we’ll be able to fly home?” She didn’t expect getting the proposals at the Hip to take the whole day – they don’t have anything to keep themselves warm, or food, no water…

“Uhm.” They look her over, and suddenly Lilith realises that the answer might not depend on the weather outside, but mostly on her. “I don’t know.”

“There was no rain forecast for today, so it might just be pressure in the air – one quick thunderstorm, some boiling rain and–”

“Yes?” they interrupt her. Lilith blinks. What?

Slower, she continues: “It might be over soon. In the meantime, we– we just need to stay put.”

“Mhm.”

It’s not like Lilith’s that big of a talker, but they’re acting as if they never held a conversation in their life. She shifts uncomfortably. Sitting like this is painful for her shoulder, but the new position briefly has her forearm drop from her lap, as if the arm was just a piece of flesh attached to her. The pain of the muscles cramping at the sudden shift has her yelp.

Raine is kneeling next to her in an instant, pressing her forearm against her belly, other hand carefully held against her shoulder. “It’s alright, it’ll be over in a minute,” they murmur, and she lets herself relax against the hands arranging her in the least painful position. “I know you’re in pain, and I’m so sorry this happened, but you’re alright, it will stop hurting soon.” They take a deep breath and for a moment, it sounds like a sob, fitting the trembling in their hand. “It’s over now.”

What even is that supposed to mean? The crash? The injury? The pain? From her perspective, it doesn’t feel like anything is over.

The pain has let her anger bleed away, little more than exhaustion remaining. Lilith leans her head against the wall of the cave and sighs. “I don’t understand half the things you’re saying. Why are you acting like this?”

They don’t answer. She can see them stare at their hands, fingers drumming a sharp beat on their legs. There’s a faint trembling in their frame, particularly their face. This is making her uncomfortable. She tries not to watch them too much, but there’s not a lot to look at, apart from–

“Raine?”

“Yes?” It’s the same reaction as before, and it spooks her a bit.

“Do you think you can cut off those roots?” Their eyes follow her finger easily enough, but no reaction comes when they look at the dried-out roots poking through the wall of the cave. “We could burn them, get a fire going.”

“Yes,” they answer immediately. When she turns her head, they’re looking her over intently, as if trying to think through something difficult. “Are you cold?”

“...well, yes.”

They nod and, finally, get up. Their staff jumps into their hands, turning into a violin instantly. Lilith breathes a sigh of relief at the staccato of notes, each accompanied by a disc gliding through the air. They slice through the roots poking out of the wall, and Raine even stops after an appropriate amount of time, even though they try a few times to dislodge the ones that haven’t fallen by themselves.

When they’re done, they just let go of the violin, and Lilith barely keeps herself from scrambling to catch it. Their palisman turns into a fox midfall, elegantly landing on the floor and whining at its owner. Raine doesn’t even look at it, as if it wasn’t theirs at all, simply walks over to gather up the roots on the floor.

They drop the wood next to her, drop down to sit too, leaving no room for any potential fire.

“Wait!” Lilith grips the bridge of her nose for a moment before gesturing from the meagre findings towards the other wall. “This won’t even last us for half an hour. Titan, have you just decided to stop using your brain? Go and get the rest down, too!”

Raine flinches at her tone, as if she’d struck them. Their eyes flick once toward her, wide, then away again. Without answering, they get to their feet, movements stiff, automatic.

Ugh. They seem hurt. Maybe that was a bit rude of her. But she can’t abhor stupidity and for all their faults, they’ve always been quick on the uptake with a mind to match her sister. This acting as if they’re half-asleep is another way they’re unpredictable now, and it makes her skin crawl.

Raine grabs the first root, effortlessly dislodging it from the wall and throwing it halfway in her direction. There. The roots are just stuck because they moulded themselves to the wall. It’s not hard work, so there really is no reason to breathe harshly like this. The next two are just as easily harvested, but then Raine falters and stares blankly at the remaining ones.

The fox streaks around their legs, looks back at Lilith. She doesn’t know what to do either. “Raine, please, come on. The faster you go, the faster you’re finished.”

They take a shaky breath and lift their arms above their head. From then on, it goes somewhat faster and even more mechanical: Pull, drop it behind them, take a slight step to the side to the next one.

Something is wrong. She doesn’t know what, but something about their behaviour is feeling more and more off. The fox is darting around, yipping and barking at both of them. But without knowing what is wrong, there’s really no reason to stop them from doing something that will help their situation.

And then, Raine steps onto a small outcropping, barely more than ankle-height and stretches for one of the highest roots. She can see the moment their ankle gives, and they just drop. They don’t even try to break their fall, to protect their head and shoulder.

Lilith jerks upwards, left hand cradling the right arm against her body. They’re not moving. Titan, did they hit their head? “Raine? Did you – did you hurt yourself?”

By the time she reaches them, the fox has already started to paw at their face. They’re just lying there the way they fell: limbs sprawled awkwardly, head turned slightly away from her, eyes open and glassy, staring through the stone ceiling as if it isn’t there, the rest of their face horribly slack. She can see them breathing: shallow, uneven gasps that don’t match the small physical effort they just spent. The fox noses at their cheek now, whining; but they don’t blink, don’t turn, don’t even seem to feel it.

Is this a head injury – or maybe their neck? Wary of shifting them, she tries to make out the line their spine forms – what if it’s broken, how will she keep them alive long enough…? Lilith desperately wishes she still had access to what little healing magic she possessed before. Very, very carefully, she drags the fingers of her left hand down their neck, tries to follow the outline of their spine, while her body trembles with the strain from holding the right arm against her belly. She can see them breathe, and, finally, they blink. But they look completely out of it. The blow to the ground must have hurt, must still hurt, and they just don’t react to it. She isn’t even sure this is from the fall at all, though, not with their earlier strange behaviour.

“Has this happened before?” she asks the fox, maybe a bit too harshly.

With palismen, communication is a bit hit-or-miss. She has to bank on Raine’s palisman to be of the clever sort because it could interpret her question in all kinds of ways. This one stares at her for a few seconds before nodding. She doesn’t have the time to decide whether its sass or cunning.

Okay. So, if this isn’t new, maybe they’re… in shock. Maybe something happened to make them – oh.

She’s seen this before.

Lilith drops next to them, tries to arrange her bad arm in a way that will keep it lying in her lap on its own. That frees up her left hand and she awkwardly pats their forearm before realising there are more small burns. Swallowing her discomfort, she grips their hand instead. She still doesn’t dare touch their head in case this is a real injury. “Erm… you’re okay. We’re in a cave, but I think you’re not hurt. It’s a bit cold, but we can make a fire.” What else could she tell them? “There’s rain outside, but we’re safe in here. Um… you’re safe. Don’t worry.” Ugh. She hates having to repeat herself, even though instinct tells her that it would possibly be soothing. “And… you’re not alone. I’m here.” She idly wonders how much comfort that is going to give them, with the way she’s been cold to them over the last few weeks, despite their tries to win her over. But she doesn’t have to like them to know that she will do everything to help.

She’s not rewarded with a quick return, but they do start blinking a bit more, fingers curling slightly against hers. Their breathing evens out the tiniest bit. Eyes start to focus, less like with a concussion and more like… waking up. For a minute, Lilith just sits there, stares down at their slack face. Did… did she do this? She’s only seen this when people felt confronted with something bad, memories coming back to haunt them. It’s something that the rigorous coven guard training begot; as sad as it felt, it was just a routine back then. But Raine never went through that training, and they were a coven head for a much shorter time than she was – so the idea that they’re reacting to the memory of something that horrible sounds ludicrous.

Still, she can’t shake the idea that that’s what this is, and that she somehow made it worse.

In the end, she manages to secure her arm with her own jacket. Funny how the cold suddenly is no problem at all when other problems are more pressing. She manages to kick enough wood together to form a decent pile and keep the rest far enough away to avoid any sparks.

At least she’s got enough magic left to cause small fireballs with the help of a palisman.

The fire catches at last, smoke winding up through the cave entrance, hopefully not too diluted by the still . Lilith lowers herself beside them, teeth gritted against the pain in her own shoulder and the one in her back slowly starting to pick up. Tediously, she props Raine upright with her good arm. They don’t resist. Their body leans into her awkwardly, too heavy for how slight they are, head lolling against the side of her neck. The touch tickles and sends fire through her veins. But this is not about her comfort.

She keeps an arm around them to hold them upright, gripping their ribs, then their arm instead when the first touch feels too intimate. Titan, she hates this much touch, and they probably do, too, but it feels like something that might help – be it the touch or the body warmth.

She expects them to shiver, or curse, or at least mutter something sharp, but there’s only stillness. A single blink, a shallow breath, the faintest tremor of fingers, fingers twitching in their lap, never quite closing. In the glow, she thinks she sees a tear track down their cheek, but their face stays slack, eyes fixed somewhere above her shoulder, unseeing.

The fox curls against Raine’s other side, whining low in its throat, and Lilith presses her palm more firmly against their arm. “We’ll just stay here,” she murmurs, more to herself than to them. “They’ll be looking for us and see the smoke. We’ll wait.”

The only answer is the crackle of firewood and Raine’s breathing, shallow but steady, warm against her collar.

Chapter Text

“You can take a break, if you just tell me that it hurts.” | Failed Rescue Attempt | Live-Streamed Torture

“Fuuuuu–”

Eda lets herself fall into the pillow face-first to stop the curse in case King is anywhere around to hear. She doesn’t have the energy for longer, more intricate curses anyway.

The children mustn’t hear, she tells herself. She can’t go raging through the house, not with Luz failing to help Kikimora – and damn, shouldn’t Eda have seen this coming, if she wasn’t that distracted by her own fears? – and probably working through her own feelings right now. All Eda wants to do is scream, and throw things, and move, move, move, or better yet, get in a fight with anyone who could be responsible for all this.

She can still feel the way their magic felt in the air, how it ebbed against her skin, vibrated deep within her. Like her, they were holding back, a lot probably, and still, it made her teeth rattle; half her body feeling slightly bruised.

Fuck.

If they really can’t remember, then that means something was done to them. The thought is so horrifying that she can barely hold on to it. Is it reversible? If it’s only about the few days they spent together, well, that would be sad but survivable. But what if Belos and his cronies took away months or years? Does Raine even know how much is missing? How much of them is still there, then?

They seemed… well, pretty unhappy to fight her, but they seemed otherwise okay. The whole situation with the parade would obviously be stressful, but they didn’t look distressed beyond that. Maybe they don’t know. Maybe they’re somewhat happy, or at least content.

It’s not like they were headed right back into a relationship anyway. So, if they only forgot her, then… then… then that will have to be okay. It must be okay because there is no alternative.

Her pillow is an excellent way to muffle any sound. But she can’t lie around feeling sorry for herself. She needs to do something. And the only clue she has is their contribution to the parade, so she drags herself upright, gets her crystal ball and looks for a rerun of the whole event.

On the stream, they look tired and uncomfortable. They don’t seem scared or hurt, just… exhausted.

Dimly, she wonders if she did more harm than good for them. Maybe she brought attention back to a topic that would be best forgotten. But nobody pulls Raine aside or even looks at them askance.

Everybody on the stage seems to have a purpose, acting on each other’s cue. It’s only after Belos has stopped talking and Raine leads an unseen orchestra into an increasingly triumphal hymn that’s clearly supposed to end the festival, that Eda sees it: they’re always following other people’s cues.

Terra Snapdragon is standing a bit closer than everyone else, and when she puts her hand on the small of Raine’s back, they just stand a bit taller, but she can see the tension in their body. She knows the way they hold themself. They are uncomfortable, but they can’t or won’t pull away.

Raine disliked Snapdragon even at HECK, she suddenly remembers. Their disgust with that woman is about an hour older than their acquaintance with Eda.

Oh, what she wouldn’t do to get them away from her.

If only she had more time – she can’t imagine what it would have felt like, if she actually managed to overpower Raine. She tries to picture it: Holding them here against their will, possibly restrained, shouting at her in confused anger. Maybe they would be scared of her. Nausea wells up. But she could live with the guilt if it meant getting them out of there, giving them a chance to rebuild what has been taken from them.

An hour later, Lilith has brought over her newest batch of the scrying potion. She’s unhappy because the ingredients are hard to get and she was saving it up for ‘more important’ stuff like trying to spy on the Emperor closer to the Day of Unity, but Eda very maturely tells her “Can’t hear you,” and sings obnoxiously until she gives up.

They both sober up long before the spell is activated. Eda has half a mind to beg Lily to go and let her do this alone. What if they are with Belos, what if he thinks they are working against him again, what if he’s – oh. Lilith agrees with her sudden idea that there’s a possibility they tell Belos of her involvement in the attempted kidnapping, and suddenly, she’s also invested in watching over them. She grips Eda’s hand, long fingers cold and clammy, her hold strong with worry.

Eda isn’t concerned about herself – she knows she could flee if necessary, get the kids to safety. What she’s worried about is that Belos could be hurting them – she doesn’t know how they got away with only their memory erased the first time, but there’s no way he’ll accept further insubordination.

The mood changes drastically once the spell is activated.

Raine is lying on a bed, still completely clothed, curled up on top of the covers. They’re crying, whole body shaking with muffled sobs.

Lilith gives her a look, mouth tight, and leaves the room.

That leaves Eda alone. She knows what her sister expects her to do. It feels like a breach of trust, an intrusion into their privacy to keep watching.

But she can’t look away, even as her own eyes grow hot. This is not a sight they would show to anyone – this is what they would have shown her a long time ago, probably. And she has to know if they’ve been hurt.

The sobs wrecking them are almost silent. She can still hear them though, she can hear the way they inhale wetly, the moan cut off by their own hand on their mouth. The other hand stays splayed over their sternum. Twin drops disturb the potion, the ripples obscuring her view.

Eda grits her teeth against the sound that tries to claw its way out of her, grips the table with all her strength to distract herself from the strain in her own chest. She stares, tries to make out whether they are in pain. That’s a bit stupid – they obviously are, but crying this hard is painful all by itself, and she desperately hopes that this is the reason their chest hurts. She can’t make out anything, almost none of their skin is visible. If there were cuts or bruises, she wouldn’t know.

There aren’t any broken bones at least, and they seem to be able to move, judging from the way they easily turn onto their back. The crying has subsided, seemingly all their energy leaving them with a drawn-out sigh. The sound is tearing at her, and she knows even if they were here, they wouldn’t want to be seen like this. But all she wants is to curl around them, tell them everything will be alright.

By now it’s her who’s trembling and sobbing, trying her best not to alert her sister. Stupid. How she hates that she’s making their pain about her, but it’s not like she has a choice. She doesn’t even know what is wrong with them. Maybe Belos hurt them, or they know that something’s not right with their memories, or maybe they’re just wrecked with sadness for days long past. Whatever it is, she caused this.

They are alone, with nobody to confide in. The least she can do is stay with them. She just wishes they could stay with her, too.

She could get Lily, there’s no way she just went home. If she told her how she feels, Lily would do her best to calm her down, even if she’d be a bit awkward about it at first. But it doesn’t feel like she deserves that.

At some point, Raine falls asleep. They don’t even take off their glasses, now smeared and askew. If they opened their eyes again, they would be looking almost directly at her. The fact that they’re no longer awake does little to soothe her. Whatever has been done to them has left enough of them alive to have felt pain until they couldn’t process it any longer. It’s Eda who has to work through it now, she’s the one crying for a relationship long gone. Her fault, and now her fault, again.

Her stupid body has to chime in, to ache in tandem with the emotions – the burning lungs, the pain in her clenched and tired muscles, the pain in her eyes. She has to pull a chair up, put the potion on the floor, just to keep watching without losing control over her knees.

The potion runs out of magic to fuel itself long before morning, the scene slowly getting darker, until she stares at nothing but the fluid in the kettle. It reflects a witch with wild hair, swollen eyes, teeth bared as if she’s ready to fight the potion itself.

She didn’t learn anything of importance – not what the Emperor did to them, nor whether they told him her name. Only that she might have done more harm than good.

Chapter Text

“I’ve had the rug pulled beneath my feet.” | Repressed Trauma | Disorientation

The floor is slippery, Eda decides as she traipses into the living room. Someone must have spilled some water because walking is difficult.

It shouldn’t be because of the alcohol. She’s only had that bottle open for – ah, yep, okay, it’s probably her.

But the couch isn’t too far away from the kitchen and muscle memory is her friend, so she deposits both bottles on the table with a flourish and sits down without any accident. Okay, that one bottle looked like it might tip over for a moment, but it righted itself, so all good. Even got Raine their own.

She’s quite proud of herself for having snagged those during her trip to Bonesborough earlier. The grownup version of appleblood might be nice, but it’s not strong enough to give a quick buzz. Bogwhisky is the way to go when it gets really bad. And boy, did it go bad today.

She barely got out of the house quick enough before she turned and Raine didn’t understand again.

She can still hear the way their voice broke when they called after her.

That means that she hasn’t drunk enough yet. What is she supposed to do, let them get mauled by the beast inside her? They just need to accept that some things, you don’t share even in a relationship and deal with the fact that sometimes, she needs to leave abruptly. Grateful, that’s what they should be. No need to deal with the feathers or the joint pain or the feeling of being a monster.

She takes a very big gulp after that.

So… yeah. Waking up near Bonesborough with Owlbert fluttering around her and enough of her mental fasul- facs- with her thinking still strong was great. Super. Could’ve done without all the fur and that tiny bloody paw on the ground, but fantastic. Only took a quick cry to get back up again. Possible to use a simple illusion spell and walk into town appearing clothed, almost too easy to grab these two bottles and turn them invisible. Most people in town have a sigil and know her as a student’s potion. No. Washout potions student. Whatever. Everybody forgets that she still hasn’t got a sigil.

The first bottle is empty and she eyes the second one. There was a reason she got two. Don’t know what she was thinking. Two might be a bit much. But she can just, just… leave the second one. Like, stop at some point. Leave it and come back later. Yes. Good plan. It takes just a- well, just a few tries of a flick of her finger to open it. The next swig feels great. Whatever it was she tried to forget, every drop pushes it further away.

“What the– how long have you been here?”

Raine is standing in the door, flushed and a bit disheveled. Sexy. She gives them a big smile. Now it’s safe. The Beast had its outlet, flying around and feeding on something. Now she can allow herself to want them close. “Hour, maybe?”

She knows she said something wrong. She knows it. Their face does that thing. But she doesn’t know what’s wrong. “I was looking for you. In the forest.” They look at her, at the couch table, then at the door to the stairs. “You could have called me.”

“Sorry,” she mumbles. Can’t remember why they were looking for her, so she probably didn’t remember back then. “Want to–” she looks around for anything that might distract them, finds the bottles, “try?” The first one she picks up is the empty one, but she tries to offer the other one, too.

They sigh, close their eyes. She knows that look. They’re thinking of walking away. Sometimes she thinks they should do that. And she’d respect it ‘cause, ‘cause… she does that too. Or something. “Whatever it is, I really don’t want it.” Their voice is soft. Nice. She loves to hear it. And she loves that they come closer now. They could cuddle.

“Gonna come here’n cuddle then, sexypants?” she tries. Usually, nicknames get them in a better mood. Flustered for a moment, but then they give her that special smile and they call her by an equally stupid nickname and then they kiss her and–

They don’t smile and they don’t blush. Instead, they take both bottles away from her. She lets them. Raine deserves their own bottle and one is already empty. She lets them read the words on the bottle. They like to do that, especially when they’re at parties.

But today, Raine doesn’t like it. They just sigh. “Judging from this, you should be in bed with an unobstructed way towards the toilet and some water. I’ll see if there’s something for your headache left.”

She doesn’t really get all of that – or rather, she does get it, but most of it is unimportant, so she lets it slide right off. It’s not like she has a headache, anyway. But she did hear something about bed. That’s a good idea, she thinks. With a smile, she reaches for them. Raine lets themself get pulled closer by one of the hooks in their pants, still looking at the bottles, the door and the kitchen, as if they’re doing some big thinking.

“Or you could drop your clothes riiiight here. D’ya want to go all the way up when we could stay on the couch?”

For a second, she thinks they’re about to laugh. But the look collapses from their face before any sound comes out. “Do I want to do anything to you while you’re like that?” She flinches at the volume their voice is climbing up to, and Raine drops it immediately. “Titan, that you’d even ask.” They shake their head slowly. “Eda, all I want is for you to sleep off that poison and never touch it again.”

Pfft. They have no idea what the alerna– the alternative is. She doesn’t really know, either, but she knows that this is the less bad version. “Keeps us going, though,” she murmurs, lays her head against their hip. It twitches away for a moment before Raine goes still. “We could have fun.”

“I’m right here, you know,” they say, softly laying a hand on her head. “I’ve never turned away from you. What can I– Why am I still not enough for you?”

“Always enough,” she murmurs, happy that the bone under her head is warm and solid, not moving like the rest of the room. “I love you.”

They make a funny sound that she can’t really place and then take a swig from the bottle. Looking up, she’s happy for a moment – that’s probably why she got two in the first place – and then they scrunch up their face in disgust, put a hand on their mouth and cough through their nose. “I don’t know why I – gosh, Eda, lately you make me hate myself so much.”

This pushes her off of them for a moment, confusion overriding the haze. Raine has put a hand over their mouth, eyes wide. What did– but they’re already moving away from her.

Raine has taken both bottles. She watches them idly as they walk to the window and open it. For a second, she wonders why they are breathing that heavily. Then, they throw the empty one with a lot more ferocity than she expects. And then, to her surprise, the second bottle goes out the window as well. It lands with a crash and the splatter of liquid.

“No, what–” she starts belatedly, but they talk over her.

“Bed. Now. We can take care of that in the…” they falter, look at the clock. She doesn’t look over there, it’s too blurry right now. “Later. Now, come, up you go.”

She whines as they pull her up, but one arm is already over their shoulder and the other swings wildly to keep her balance. Raine’s grip on her hip is strong, but not bruising. They are great, she thinks as they lead her towards the stairs.

Going upstairs is a bit difficult. If it was up to her, she’d probably try on her hands and knees, but Raine keeps pulling her back up. Their hands are a bit unsteady, shaking when they aren’t gripping her harder to keep her upright.

In contrast, their voice is a steady companion, keeping her up with what’s happening even as she tries to tell them everything that comes to mind. “That’s it, foot a bit higher, just four more steps. No, I’ll get you water in a minute. We’re just going to get you to bed, no need to worry about that. I know you’re dizzy, but it’s not that much further…”

Gosh, she hates this part. Walking is never fun. Or no, sometimes it is. But not when the world is turning like that.

Raine deposits her on the lip of the nest, hands lingering for a few seconds until they’re sure she’s staying upright. Then, they walk away and come back a short time later. It’s all a bit redundant, she thinks as they start to unbutton her blouse. But she likes the way this is going.

“Whatcha gonna do to me, sweetheart?” she asks in a flirty tone once they have gotten it off. She slides forward, face against their belly, to allow easier access to the clasp of her bra. While they open it, she grabs their butt and squeezes.

Immediately, there are hands on her wrists to pull her away. More force than expected. “No,” they say, sternly as if scolding a dog, before their voice turns softer. “Just… no.” They take a step back, arms reaching from further away now to continue undressing her.

That’s a bit surprising, but okay. She allows them to pull the bra off, then the wide collar of a shirt is pulled over her head. Ah, this is dressing, not undressing.

“We’ll get the trousers off once you’re lying down,” Raine says above her. Their voice is very calm, but a bit… wrong. “You’ll feel better with less in the way.”

She lets herself be half lifted, half guided down into the nest and helps as much as possible when Raine starts taking off her pants. She remembers that they want her to sleep. So she’s a bit surprised that they take her clothes and step away. For some time, she looks at the ceiling. Spinning. Pretty. She pulls the blanket over her body, not because she’s cold, but… cuddly.

At some point, Raine returns. They keep talking until she notices them. “There is a bucket outside the nest. I’m not putting it in there in case it topples over. If you need it, it’s just outside.” Their knuckles stroke her cheek lightly. She smiles when the touch lingers for a moment. Then, they sigh above her. “I love you so much. I’m trying so hard. Why can’t that be enough?”

She frowns, tries to find meaning in those words.

Before she can find a possible answer, a bottle is pressed into her hand, so unexpectedly cool she almost drops it. They take it away and tuck it against the empty pillow a bit to her left. “There’s water for you here.”

“Aren’t you… aren’t you gonna sleep, too?”

A sharp exhale. Then, they continue in the same calm voice: “No, I’ll… I’ll just be one room over.” They drag a hand over their face, voice going hoarse. “If you need me, call for me. Okay? Can you do at l– can you do that?”

“Okay,” she grumbles. Not tired yet? At least she’s comfy here. “Come cuddle later?”

“We’ll see,” Raine’s soft, quiet voice answers. That’s enough. She knows they always come back to her. With that thought, she topples over into sleep.