Yandere Stalker

⭐︎ Bruce feels like he did a good job when you walk over to kiss him. He hasn’t had too much contact with you for a couple days since he was keeping his distance so he welcomes your touch like a man starved.

“What is this for?” You ask after pulling back from kissing him. “Did I miss something?”

Bruce blinks down at you in confusion, “You were upset with me about arriving home late, I am sorry for worrying you.”

A look of confusion crosses your face before you start laughing.

“The whole time you thought I was upset with you?” You stop laughing to give himself something a soft look. “I’m sorry Love, I was busy with work so you must have thought I was ignoring you.”

Bruce feels sheepish now that he got the situation wrong. “You don’t need to apologize for my misunderstanding-”

You kiss him mid sentence, cutting him off.

“The flowers are perfect don’t apologize.”

Dick Grayson

⭐︎ Dick would like to think that you don’t argue often and you agree except for the constant back and forth of him stretching himself too thin and putting everyone’s needs over his.

⭐︎ The fight happens when he misses a date because they needed his help in Gotham. He had left you a note and a text about it. There was a lot of apologies in both. But when he got back to his apartment all the lights were off and you were gone.

⭐︎ Your fights are usually conversations, there isn’t yelling involved unless it’s really bad. You always wanted to talk things out rather than just leaving them lie. So you leaving without talking about it made him scared.

⭐︎ Dick is a little desperate when he feels like he is being left. There’s an involuntary coil of dread that settles in his stomach every time. He always needs to make it right as soon as possible, he can’t wait because he is afraid of never seeing you again.

⭐︎ So he runs down to the 24 hour convince store a block down from his apartment to get, admittedly, a lot of your favorite candy. Then he breaks into the florist shop across the street to grab a premade bouquet of flowers, he makes sure to leave them money plus a little extra because he broke in.

⭐︎ He is stressing himself out the whole way to your apartment. The thought that you won’t have the window unlocked like usual crosses his mind. He imagines you locking him out and refusing to even see him.

⭐︎ When Dick knocks on your window at 2am you open it up with sleep still in your eyes. You look beautiful even half asleep, confused and in one of his old tee shirts. Your eyes eventually focus in on the bag and flowers.

“Dick? These are wonderful,” You take the flowers from his slightly trembling hands. “but why are you bringing me flowers at 2am?”

Dick pauses midway through climbing through your window, “You are mad at me for missing our date so I thought getting you flowers would help.”

Your expression softens as you take a deeper look at him, seeing the anxiety in his rigid posture and the desperation in his eyes as he takes off his domino mask.

“Oh baby.” You says softly and pull him into a hug. “I am so sorry my friend had to rush her pet to the vet and had no car so I drove her. In all the rush I forgot to text you that it was fine.”

Dick exhales, all the tension in his body leaving with the air. He slumps a little as the adrenaline from crime fighting and this whole debacle evaporates.

“Thank god.” He whispers as you guide him over to your bed and gently pull him down onto it.

“I will always tell you if I have an issue,” You press a kiss to his brow, “promise.”

Jason Todd

⭐︎ You and Jason try not to fight often. It reminds Jason of darker days and you just don’t enjoy the conflict.

⭐︎ But when it happens it’s loud. Jason doesn’t start out yelling, he doesn’t enjoy it. But that’s usually what it devolves into, the two of you yelling over each other over something you can’t even remember.

⭐︎ Jason always needs time to cool off after. He leaves the apartment so he can get some air, climbing up to the roof or going on patrol early depending on what time it is.

⭐︎ This time was a little different, there wasn’t yelling or raised voices, just a slow sigh and you leaving the apartment.

⭐︎ The fight started over a bookshelf. You were insistent that you could put it together yourself while Jason wanted to help. After a couple minutes of him trying to help you told him that you wanted to do it yourself. He left the room then a few seconds later you were grumbling, putting on your shoes and slamming the apartment door.

⭐︎ Jason knew that you enjoyed doing things yourself so him trying to help must have made you angry with him. He didn’t leave like usual, instead he began to clean. It was a nervous habit that stemmed from needing control over something. He left the book shelf alone because it was the source of the argument but everything thing else he could clean was.

⭐︎ You came home an hour later to a spotless apartment and dinner ready. Jason was moving around the kitchen silently when you set the bag you got from the hardware store on the counter.

“Thanks for making dinner Jay.” You walk over to wrap your arms around him.

He tenses a little and you pull back immediately.

“You are sending me mixed messages.” Jason says with a furrow between his brows.

You frown in confusion, “What do you mean?”

“You left earlier because you were angry and now you aren’t upset.” Jason points out to you.

Your eyes widen with realization then soften, “Jay, I didn’t have the right screw for the bookshelf.”

Jason feels the tension bleed out of him at your words. You hug him again and he won’t say it out loud but he holds you tighter than he has ever held anyone else.

“If I am angry at you believe me you would know.” You laugh.

“Good.” Jason breathes out in relief.

“Now,” You pull away and walk to the bag. “do you want to help me put this together? I am way past the point of having any pride to defend.”

He grins, “It would be my pleasure.”

↑←↓→

The most common bond was pain resonance.

One soulmate scraped their knee, the other felt sting. One broke a bone, the other suffered for it too.

Entire support groups existed for those unfortunate enough to be paired with athletes, construction workers, and adrenaline junkies.

Other bonds were rarer.

Dreamers could meet one another in sleep.

Some soulmates heard each other’s thoughts.

Others carried first words on their skin.

There were even people who saw flashes of each other’s lives through mirrors.

Every bond was different. Every bond was special.

Yours was a mark.

A simple symbol resting against your hip.

You’d spent most of your childhood believing it was a birthmark.

It resembled a bird frozen mid-flight. Two elegant wings spread wide across the dip in your skin.

When you were younger, you’d trace it absent-mindedly after baths, wondering why it looked so different from everyone else’s.

Your mother had laughed when you asked. “You’ll understand when you’re older.”

At six years old, that answer had been deeply unsatisfying.

At ten, you’d become convinced your soulmate was secretly an angel.

At eleven, you’d grown embarrassed by the entire theory.

At fifteen..

The mark disappeared.

Not faded. Not lightened. Disappeared.

You remembered staring at your reflection for nearly an hour.

The skin was smooth. Unmarked. Empty.

The shape that had existed your entire life was simply gone.

Nobody knew what that meant.

There were stories, of course. There were always stories.

Old forums. Urban legends. Half-remembered articles. A bond breaking. The universe making mistakes.

None of them were verified. None of them made sense.

You tried not to think about it. ‘Tried’ being the important word.

Because something else happened that day. Something far worse.

You woke up feeling wrong.

Not sick. Or injured.

Wrong.

Like someone had reached inside your chest and scooped out everything that made you feel human.

Getting out of bed felt impossible. Breathing felt exhausting. Your limbs weighed twice what they should. Food tasted like nothing, and music sounded distant.

Your parents took you to a hospital.

The doctors couldn’t find anything. Blood tests came back normal. Brain scans came back normal. Everything came back normal.

And yet it felt as though something sharp had carved straight through the center of you and left a hollow space behind.

Weeks passed.

Then months.

The feeling never truly left.

It might have dulled. Became manageable. But every morning you woke with the same strange emptiness sitting beneath your ribs, like grief.

Except you weren’t grieving anyone.

You couldn’t. You hadn’t lost anything.

Had you?

Six months later, the mark returned.

You found it after stepping out of the shower. For several seconds, you simply stared.

Because it was there.

Those familiar wings.

The soul mark, back where it belonged.

Except.. It wasn’t exactly the same. The shape had changed. Only slightly, but enough that you almost missed it.

The elegant curve of the wings remained. But now thin fractures cut through the design, like cracks spreading through glass. Like something had shattered and been forced back together.

The mark looked older. Wounded. Broken and repaired.

You remembered touching it with trembling fingers. Remembered the overwhelming relief that nearly brought tears to your eyes.

Your soulmate was alive.

That was the only explanation that mattered.

Alive.

Somewhere.

Breathing beneath the same sky. Walking the same earth. Waiting.

The thought stayed with you through every year that followed.

Even after moving to Gotham. After learning just how cruel fate could be. Even then, some stubborn part of you couldn’t help believing.

Because soulmates were supposed to be the one good thing the universe gave people. The one person who would understand you completely. Who would never hurt you. Who would always choose you.

You didn’t know it yet, but somewhere in Gotham, your soulmate looked at the matching mark on his own body and believed exactly the same thing.

Moving to Gotham had taught you two things very quickly.

The first was that every story people told about the city was true.

The second was that nobody ever told the whole story.

The news focused on the murders. The riots. The Arkham breakouts. The masked lunatics who seemed determined to turn every holiday into a hostage situation. Every article painted Gotham as a city perpetually teetering on the edge of collapse.

What they didn’t talk about were the people.

The old woman who ran the corner store and slipped free candy to local kids when she thought nobody was looking. The mechanic who fixed single mothers’ cars for half price. The teenagers who organised food drives after winter storms. The apartment residents who pooled money together whenever somebody fell behind on rent.

Gotham survived because the people refused to die with it.

Your apartment building was no different.

The first person to welcome you was Arthur.

Arthur lived next door and seemed to possess the unique ability to start conversations with absolutely anyone. Within twenty-four hours of moving in, you’d learned about his late wife, his chronic dislike of modern television, and the fact that he’d somehow managed to get banned from three separate community centers over the course of his seventy-three years.

You still weren’t entirely sure whether that last story had been a joke.

The retired soldiers upstairs adopted you shortly afterwards. Every evening they gathered on the rooftop with cheap coffee and folding chairs, spending hours arguing over topics nobody else cared about. Weather patterns. Baseball statistics. Whether Gotham’s pizza quality had declined over the past decade.

According to them, it had.

The children living on the lower floors were worse.

Far worse.

Because children had an alarming ability to decide they liked someone and then never leave them alone again.

You made the mistake of helping one of them carry a backpack. That was all it took.

Within a week they knew your schedule, your favorite snacks, and which apartment belonged to you.

You’d accepted your fate shortly after.

The women above you remained unpleasant.

Some people simply seemed determined to be unhappy.

You’d received two separate complaints because your television had apparently been “too loud.”

You didn’t own a television.

The rest of the building ignored them. It was easier.

Then there was Jason Todd.

At first, Jason seemed normal enough. A little intimidating, maybe.

He was a large man. Not merely tall but solid in a way that suggested years of hard living rather than careful gym routines. Broad shoulders stretched the fabric of most shirts. Old scars disappeared beneath his collar and reappeared across his knuckles. There was a heaviness to him sometimes, filled with tension that never seemed to fully leave his body.

You’d caught glimpses of it occasionally.

The way he favored his left leg. The faint stiffness in his shoulders. The exhausted shadows beneath his eyes. Like someone who carried more weight than they knew what to do with.

Still, he was polite. Helpful. Generally liked by everyone in the building.

Arthur adored him. The children followed him around like ducklings. Even the veterans upstairs occasionally invited him to join their rooftop arguments.

Jason never stayed long, vut he always listened.

There was something strangely lonely about him. Not that you thought about it much.. At least not initially.

The first real conversation you’d had happened three weeks after moving in.

Arthur’s front door had jammed. Again.

The old man was muttering increasingly creative insults toward the lock when you’d returned from work.

Being a decent person, you’d offered assistance.

Being Gotham property, the door immediately declared war.

You eventually managed to force the stubborn thing open by bracing yourself against the frame and reaching up on you tippy toes for leverage.

The door finally gave way with a loud crack.

Arthur nearly fell backward.

You nearly fell forward.

And somewhere behind you, a man forgot how to breathe.

You never noticed.

Never noticed the apartment door opening across the hallway. Or blue-green eyes locking onto the sliver of skin exposed above your waistband. To the soulmate mark. The familiar black wings. The fractured lines running through them.

Jason did.

For one terrible second the world stopped. The hallway vanished. Arthur vanished. The city vanished. All that remained was the mark. His mark.

The same impossible shape he’d stared at in mirrors since childhood.

You.

The realisation hit harder than any bullet ever had.

You.

His soulmate.

Living directly across the hall. Close enough to hear through the walls. Close enough to touch. Close enough to lose.

The thought followed immediately after. Unwanted. Bloody terrifying.

Jason hated it.

Because suddenly every nightmare he’d ever had felt possible.

You could leave. You could move. You could disappear. You could die.

The Pit had returned his life, but it had never given him peace.

Now the universe had handed him something precious and expected him not to panic.

As if that had ever been one of Jason Todd’s strengths.

By the time you straightened, your shirt had fallen back into place. The mark vanished. The moment ended.

Nobody seemed to notice anything had happened. Nobody except Jason.

After that, things became strange.

Not immediately.

Jason tried very hard for them not to. He told himself he would act normal.

Normal neighbors talked. Normal neighbors said hello. Normal neighbors occasionally helped carry groceries. There was absolutely nothing strange about any of that.

The problem was that Jason had absolutely no idea what normal looked like anymore.

So he started noticing things.

You always carried exact change for the vending machines downstairs. You preferred reading digitally to hard books. You bought the same coffee every Tuesday morning. You tapped your fingers whenever you were concentrating. You hummed under your breath while checking your mail. Tiny things. Meaningless things. The kind of details most people forgot. Jason remembered all of them.

Which became increasingly difficult to explain.

You’d mention something once and he’d bring it up weeks later. You’d complain about work and somehow he’d remember every coworker’s name. You’d mention being tired and he’d somehow know exactly when your schedule changed.

The worst part was that none of it seemed intentional. Jason genuinely looked confused whenever you stared at him suspiciously.

As though he couldn’t understand why remembering things about you would be considered unusual.

Then one evening you discovered his weakness. Or perhaps he discovered yours.

You were checking the mail when he wandered into the lobby carrying a grocery bag.

“Red Hood got into another fight with Penguin’s people last night.”

You looked up immediately. The reaction was automatic.

Jason saw it.

The slight shift in posture. The sudden attention. The way your eyes actually focused on him for once.

A slow smile tugged at his mouth. “Oh,” he said. “So that’s the secret.”

You narrowed your eyes. “What secret?”

“The only way to get you to willingly hold a conversation.”

You scoffed, but you didn’t walk away.

Jason noticed that too.

Unfortunately.

From that day onward, discussions about Red Hood became alarmingly common.

You should have found it strange.

Most civilians didn’t spend this much time discussing vigilantes.

Jason always had opinions. Always had arguments. Information.

Somehow.

The conversations became routine. Comfortable, even.

And occasionally, very rarely, Jason would laugh. Not the dry, sarcastic thing he usually did. Not the sharp bark of amusement he used around strangers. A real laugh. Unexpected and bright.

For just a second it stripped years from him.

You’d catch a glimpse of someone younger beneath the scars and exhaustion. Someone who looked like they should have existed a long time ago.

Then it would disappear.

The walls would go back up. The tiredness would return.

And Jason Todd would once again look like a man carrying the weight of something nobody else could see.

You never understood why those moments stayed with you.

Across the hallway, Jason understood perfectly.

Because every time you smiled at one of them, he spent the rest of the day thinking about it.

You’d simply made the mistake of staying late at work and taking a shortcut home.

The Narrows looked different after dark.

The streets became quieter. The crowds thinned. Storefront lights reflected off rain-slick pavement while distant sirens echoed between buildings.

Most nights nothing happened.

Unfortunately, Gotham’s definition of “most” left a lot to be desired.

You were halfway down an alley when the shouting started.

Three men. Maybe four.

Members of the False Face Society if the masks were anything to go by.

They’d cornered somebody further ahead.

A teenager. Couldn’t have been older than sixteen.

The kid looked terrified.

One of the men shoved him hard enough that he nearly hit the ground. The others laughed.

You stopped.

For one stupid second, you actually considered intervening.

Then common sense returned.

You weren’t a vigilante. You weren’t bulletproof. You were just some idiot trying to get home.

You reached for your phone instead.

A mistake.

The screen lit up.

One of the masked men noticed. His head turned.

Your stomach dropped.

“Hey.” Suddenly four pairs of eyes were looking at you.

The teenager ran. Nobody stopped him. Because now their attention had shifted elsewhere. To you.

There was a very specific kind of fear that only this city could produce. The kind that arrived all at once. Immediate & primal. You felt it settle deep into your bones as one of the men stepped forward.

The alley suddenly felt much smaller.

Your fingers tightened around your phone.

Someone laughed.

Someone else told you to relax.

You took a step backward. Calculating escape routes. The odds. All of them terrible.

One of the men reached for you, and a gunshot cracked through the night.

Everything stopped. The sound echoed between brick walls. A flock of birds exploded from a nearby rooftop.

Silence followed.

Then a body hit the ground hard.

The man who’d been reaching for you collapsed unconscious. The others barely had time to react.

A dark figure dropped from above. Fast. Violent.

The first criminal went down immediately. The second lasted perhaps three seconds longer. The third tried running.

That mistake earned him a boot to the chest powerful enough to send him crashing into a dumpster.

The entire fight ended in under thirty seconds.

You’d seen videos before. Hell, everybody had.

Footage online. Security recordings. News broadcasts. None of them captured the reality of it. The sheer speed. The overwhelming physicality.

The way Red Hood moved like someone who had spent years surviving things most people couldn’t imagine.

When the final criminal hit the pavement, silence settled once more.

The vigilante straightened. The red helmet reflected nearby streetlights. Smoke curled from the barrel of a pistol.

For a moment, nobody moved. Then he turned toward you.

Your heart immediately forgot how to function.

Because it was him.

Not a photograph or old news report. Not some distant figure standing on a rooftop.

Red-fucking-Hood.

Close enough to touch. Close enough to hear breathing through the modulator.

You’d spent years reading articles. Watching footage. Defending him during arguments. None of that had prepared you.

“You’re bleeding.” The voice emerged distorted through the helmet.

Only then did you notice the sting.

Your arm.

One of the men must have grabbed you harder than you’d realised.

A shallow cut. Nothing serious.

Before you could answer, Red Hood stepped forward. His gloved hand closed around your wrist to inspect the injury.

You’d think about the touch for months.

“You’re fine.” The words sounded almost disappointed. As though he’d expected worse.

Then his attention shifted.

Already elsewhere.

Already moving.

A woman further down the street was crying. The teenager from earlier had apparently found police.

Somewhere in the distance another fight was breaking out.

Red Hood released your arm.

And just like that, the moment ended.

No dramatic goodbye. No lingering conversation. No special attention. No acknowledgement that you existed beyond confirming you weren’t seriously injured. He was already walking away. Already focused on somebody else.

Because the night never stopped needing him.

You stood there watching until he disappeared.

Continued to long after there was nothing left to see.

The obsession that followed was embarrassing. Truly embarrassing. You knew it. The rational part of your brain knew it. Unfortunately, the rational part had very little authority.

For the next week, every thought somehow led back to the Vigilante.

You replayed the encounter endlessly. The sound of his voice, the weight of his hand around your wrist, the effortless way he’d dismantled four armed criminals, and the fact that he’d barely even looked at you.

Arthur listened to your retelling twice before banning the topic entirely.

Eventually life moved on.

Work remained work. Bills remained bills. The city continued spinning. The memory dulled. Not vanished. Just settled into a quieter place. Something pleasant to revisit whenever your thoughts wandered.

Then two weeks later Gotham exploded.

Not literally for once.

The headline appeared online first. Then newspapers. Then on every Gothamites TV. Then every social media platform in existence.

RED HOOD’S SOULMATE? EXCLUSIVE PHOTOS SPARK CITY-WIDE DEBATE

You nearly dropped your phone.

The article contained several photographs from a confrontation between Red Hood and Black Mask’s men.

Most were blurry. Poorly timed. Worthless.

One wasn’t.

The image had captured him mid-fight. Armor damaged. The side of his tactical jacket torn open. And there, visible for the entire world to see, was a soulmate mark.

You forgot how to breathe.

The photograph filled your screen, the shape unmistakable.

Black wings. Thin lightning-like fractures running through the design. Like shattered glass repaired imperfectly. Exactly like yours.

Exactly.

The article itself became meaningless.

You couldn’t read it. Couldn’t focus. Couldn’t fucking think.

That was Your mark.

For a long time, you simply stared.

Then slowly, almost disbelievingly, your hand drifted toward your hip. Toward the soulmark hidden beneath your clothes. To the wings you’d carried your entire life.

The same wings currently displayed across every news station in Gotham.

Your soulmate.

The realisation felt surreal. Terrifying.

.. Wonderful.

Somewhere beneath the panic, excitement bloomed. Warm. Impossible to suppress.

Because after years of wondering, desperately hoping, of believing your soulmate existed somewhere beyond reach, you finally knew.

And unfortunately for your future peace of mind,

Your soulmate was Red Hood.

You groaned, dropping your face into your hands. This was ridiculous.

You'd exchanged approximately six words. Six.

You didn't know his favorite colour. Didn't know his age. Didn't know what music he liked. You didn't even know what his face looked like.

Yet your heart had apparently decided none of those details were particularly important.

A knock sounded against your apartment door.

You nearly jumped.

The article disappeared from your screen immediately. As though hiding it somehow made you less embarrassing.

The knocking came again, four sharp taps.

You already knew who it was. Nobody else knocked like that.

Opening the door revealed Jason standing in the hallway. A grocery bag hung from one hand.

His expression was unreadable. Tired. More so than usual.

You frowned immediately. "Jesus."

Jason blinked. "What?"

"You look awful."

A strange look crossed his face. Gone before you could properly identify it.

Then he scoffed quietly. "Thanks."

"You know what I mean."

"Do I?"

"You look like you haven't slept."

Something flickered in his eyes.

For a moment his gaze shifted past you. Into your apartment. Toward the phone still sitting on the kitchen counter. Then back again. "You hear the news?"

You stared.

Jason stared back.

Neither of you said anything.

Then simultaneously: "Red Hood." The words left both of your mouths at the same time.

Jason rubbed a hand across his face.

You pointed accusingly. "See? This is exactly what I'm talking about."

"What?"

"You are weird."

His eyebrows lifted. "You brought him up too."

"That's different."

"It literally isn't."

"It is."

Jason looked seconds away from arguing.

Then something changed.

The fight left him. His shoulders sagged slightly, exhaustion settled across his features. The expression aged him. Like someone carrying old wounds nobody else could see.

You suddenly remembered all those nights hearing his apartment door open at absurd hours. The bruises he occasionally showed up with. The limp. The scars. The perpetual exhaustion.

For the first time, a thought occurred to you.

Jason always looked like he was surviving something.

You weren't entirely sure what. Only that the feeling never really left.

"You okay?"

The question slipped out before you could stop it.

Jason froze.

You immediately regretted asking.

Not because it was rude, but cause of the look he gave you. Caught completely off guard. As though nobody had asked him that in a very long time.

Then he smiled. Small, genuine, and unexpectedly soft.

"Yeah," Jason said quietly. "Yeah.. I'm okay." The smile lingered. Just for a moment.

Then the walls returned. And suddenly he was Jason again.

Your strange neighbor.

The man who remembered everything. The man who somehow always appeared at exactly the wrong moment. The man standing in front of you while your soulmate's photograph sat open on your kitchen counter.

Jason shifted the grocery bag toward you. "Arthur asked me to bring these over."

You accepted it automatically. "Thanks."

"No problem."

His gaze raked over you for a moment longer, jaw clenching as he holds back from speaking up again.

Then he stepped backwards. Retreating towards his own apartment.

His gaze lingered on you for a fraction too long, almost imperceptible. The sort of thing most people wouldn't notice.

You did.

You always did.

Weirdo. The thought followed you as he disappeared across the hallway.

The door shut behind him.

A minute later you reopened the article, the familiar photograph greeted you immediately.

The wings.

The impossible certainty.

Your soulmate.

Across the hall, Jason sat alone on his couch staring at the exact same photograph.

Only his reasons were very different.

Because while Gotham was busy trying to discover the identity of Red Hood's soulmate, Jason already knew.

And for the first time since finding you, the rest of the world was looking too.

The grocery run had been an excuse.

Arthur had asked him to bring the bag over, Jason had just.. volunteered before the old man finished speaking.

An increasingly common occurrence these days.

His gaze remained fixed on the wall separating your apartments.

Thin drywall. Cheap insulation. A handful of feet. That was all. You were right there. Close enough that he could hear the occasional creak of floorboards. Close enough that he sometimes caught the muffled sound of whatever new show you were half-watching on your laptop through the wall. Close enough to know exactly when you got home from work.

Jason dragged a hand across his face. Exhaustion settled heavily behind his eyes.

He hadn’t slept. Not really. The article had been published thirty-six hours ago.

Since then he’d spent every waking moment putting out fires.

Some literal, some not.

The Bats had questions. Villains had questions. Reporters had questions.

The entire city suddenly seemed obsessed with the possibility of Red Hood having a soulmate.

As though the revelation somehow made him easier to understand. Like a soulmate transformed him into something less dangerous.

Idiots.

Jason leaned back against the couch.

His apartment was dark. Quiet. The television remained muted. Half a dozen news articles sat open across his laptop screen. Every one of them made him angrier.

Relationship experts discussing his future. Psychologists debating soulmate bonds. Random strangers speculating about the identity of someone they’d never met.

Your identity.

His jaw tightened.

One article had suggested that Red Hood’s soulmate was probably safer remaining anonymous.

Another had argued the opposite.

Apparently Gotham had collectively decided that your existence was public property now.

The thought made something ugly twist in his chest. Fear.

Jason hated admitting it. Even to himself. Especially to himself.

Fear was harder to fight than anger.

Anger was simple. Useful. Anger could be aimed at something.

Fear just sat there. Growing.

The photograph appeared on his laptop screen again.

The damaged armor. The exposed mark. His mistake. A stupid one.

He should have replaced the plating weeks earlier. Should have noticed the weakness. Should have-

The self-recrimination stopped.

It was pointless.

The picture existed. The damage was done.

Jason’s gaze drifted toward the opposite wall. Toward your apartment.

The memory of your soulmark surfaced immediately.

Arthur’s door.

The glimpse of skin.

The feeling that had followed.

For years he had imagined meeting his soulmate.

Not often. Not even consciously. But sometimes. Late at night, during patrol. On anniversaries he’d rather forget.

He’d wondered whether they were alive. Whether they were happy. If they hated Gotham.

.. if they thought about him too.

Mostly though, he’d thought about how they deserved better.

Jason Todd wasn’t stupid. He knew exactly what he was.

A resurrected crime lord with anger issues.

A vigilante who carried guns.

A man stitched together with skin he no longer recognised as his own.

Not exactly soulmate material.

Then he’d met you.

And somehow everything had become worse.

Because now you weren’t hypothetical. You were real.

You smiled at Arthur’s stories. You carried extra snacks for the kids downstairs. You argued passionately about things you cared about. You made faces while reading articles on your phone. You laughed with your whole body. You existed.

And Jason had become terrifyingly aware of how fragile that made you.

Not because you were weak, but because Gotham wasn’t fair.

Good people died here every day. Disappeared. Became leverage. Targets. Victims. The city took things.

That was what Gotham did.

A sharp knock interrupted the silence.

Jason’s head lifted instantly.

The pistol hidden beneath the coffee table was in his hand before the second knock arrived.

Old habits.

The peephole revealed a familiar face.

Dick.

Jason opened the door. “What?”

Dick took one look at him. Winced. “You look terrible.”

“Get out.”

“Bruce sent me.”

“Tell him I said no.”

“You don’t know what he asked yet.”

“I don’t need to.”

Dick sighed heavily, stepping inside anyway.

Jason considered throwing him back into the hallway.

“You’ve seen the articles.”

Jason barked out a humorless laugh. “Hard to miss.”

Dick studied him carefully.

Years of experience had taught the younger brother that particular look usually preceded unwanted emotional conversations.

Sure enough, “are they okay?”

Jason froze. The room suddenly felt very still.

Dick’s expression softened. There was no judgment there. No accusation. Just concern.

Which somehow made it worse. Because Dick already knew the answer. The family had figured it out months ago.

Jason hadn’t told them. He hadn’t needed to.

The Batcomputer had eventually connected enough dots.

They knew.

Not your name. Not where you lived. Not who you were. But they knew Jason had found you. And they knew he hadn’t introduced himself.

“..They’re fine.”

Dick waited.

Jason hated when he did that. Just sat there patiently until people talked. An infuriating habit. “They’re safe.”

Another pause.

“…Jason.” The warning sat unspoken between them.

Jason looked away first. His gaze drifted toward the apartment wall. Toward the space beyond it. Toward you.

Completely unaware of the storm currently gathering around your existence.

His grip tightened around the edge of the couch. Barely noticeable.

He wasn’t like Dick. Didn’t gush over his mate like they made stars. He kept them close, private.

To himself.

But he was beginning to realise that may not be enough anymore.

Jason swallowed hard. Then finally said the thing neither of them wanted to acknowledge.

“The whole city’s looking now.”

Silence followed. Heavy. Understanding.

Jason Todd had never trusted Gotham with things he cared about, so he wasn’t about to start now.

Sleep proved impossible.

You blamed the article. And Arthur for somehow managing to bring Red Hood into every conversation despite supposedly banning the topic.

Mostly, though, you blamed yourself.

→↓←↑

Eventually, the walls of your apartment began to feel too small. Too warm. Too crowded with your own thoughts.

So shortly after midnight, you pulled on a jacket and went for a walk.

The city never truly slept. Even at this hour, Gotham breathed around you.

Distant traffic rolled through the streets. Neon signs flickered overhead. Somewhere several blocks away, a siren wailed briefly before fading into the night.

The air was cold.

It helped. At least a little.

You wandered without much direction. Past closed storefronts. Past graffiti-covered brick walls. Past the small twenty-four-hour deli one of the kids downstairs swore had the best coffee in Gotham.

Eventually you found yourself standing beside the waterfront. The black water reflected fractured city lights.

For several minutes you simply stood there. Trying very hard not to think.

“You should be home.” The voice emerged from the darkness behind you.

Your heart stopped.

Then immediately attempted to beat its way out of your chest.

Slowly, almost afraid the illusion would disappear if you moved too quickly, you turned.

A figure stood atop a nearby shipping container. Red helmet. Dark armor. Broad shoulders silhouetted against Gotham’s skyline. Red Hood.

For a moment neither of you spoke.

You weren’t entirely convinced your brain was functioning.

“You’ve got a terrible habit of appearing out of nowhere.” The words left your mouth before you could stop them.

A surprised huff escaped the modulator. Almost a laugh.

“Occupational hazard.”

Your stomach performed an embarrassing number of flips. “So that’s your official excuse?”

“It usually works.”

“You need a better one.”

“I’ll take it under advisement.”

The conversation felt absurdly normal.

This was Red Hood. Standing ten feet away. Talking to you. Like this happened every day.

The silence that followed wasn’t uncomfortable. Just strange.

Heavy with things neither of you knew how to say.

His helmet tilted slightly, studying you. You wondered if he was doing the same thing you’d been doing for weeks.

Trying to fit reality beside expectation.

“You really should be home.” There was something quieter in his voice this time. Something that sounded suspiciously like concern.

You crossed your arms. “Funny. That’s exactly what my neighbor says.”

Another pause.

“..Smart guy.”

You snorted. The sound echoed softly across the water.

For a second you could have sworn Red Hood relaxed. As though hearing you laugh had eased something inside him.

The white lenses reflected distant lights.

“Get home safe.” Simple words.

Nothing special nor dramatic. Yet they settled somewhere beneath your ribs all the same.

Before you could answer, he stepped backward.

Already disappearing into the darkness he’d emerged from.

“Wait.” The word escaped fast, internally cringing at how desperate you sounded.

He paused.

You swallowed. Suddenly aware that there were a thousand things you wanted to ask and no idea where to begin.

In the end, only one managed to make it out.

“…Are you okay?” The question hung between you.

As though you’d somehow asked the last thing he’d expected to hear.

When he finally answered, his voice sounded different. Lower. Rougher. Human.

“Yeah.”

A pause.

“Yeah. I’m okay.” The answer felt suspiciously familiar. Heavy and tasting of salt from the nearby harbor. Like you’d heard it before.

The words were a hollow sentiment, a mask worn by a man who clearly knew the architecture of a lie far too well.

You watched him, your heart hammering a frantic rhythm against your ribs. There was a gravity to him, a pull that felt less like curiosity and more like a physical tether snapping taut.

You didn't know that he had been watching you for weeks. Didn’t know that he even knew that you were his soulmate.

Didn't know that he had gone through your balcony window far too many times to count just to smell the clothes you leave out across the floor or side of your couch, a starving man finding the only source of light in a dark world. To you, he was a legend. To him, you were the only reason to keep breathing.

"You don't sound okay," you whispered, the coolness of the night air emboldening you.

The silence that followed was deafening. The vigilante didn't move, but the atmosphere shifted. The air grew thick, charged with a sudden, violent electricity. He didn't disappear this time. Instead, he descended.

He moved with a predatory grace, leaping from the container to the pavement with a silent, heavy thud that made the ground vibrate beneath your boots. Before you could even draw a breath to gasp, he was there. He was towering, a wall of leather and pure heat.

He didn't stop until he was inches away, forcing you to meet the white lenses of his helmet. The scent of him hit you hard. A deep musk that made your knees feel dangerously weak.

"You shouldn't ask questions you aren't prepared to hear the answers to." The modulator was off. His gloved fingers catching the edge of the crimson plating.

With a soft, mechanical hiss, he lifted the helmet just enough. He didn't take it off just yet, just freeing his mouth.

Your breath hitched. You were staring at a face that was all sharp lines and bruised shadows, eyes that burned through the helmet with a hunger so primal it felt like it could consume the entire city. He looked like a man who had been wandering a desert and had finally found water.

And then, he leaned in.

The kiss wasn't gentle. It was a collision. It was the desperate, starving act of a hunter finally catching his prize.

His lips were firm, warm, and tasted of something dark and metallic. It was a claim. He tasted you like he was trying to memorise your very essence, his tongue sweeping against yours with a possessive rhythm that sent a jolt straight to your core.

You let out a muffled whimper, your hands instinctively finding the hard, muscular planes of his chest.

He didn't care about the shadows of the alleyway or the distant sound of a passing car. He didn't care that the Red Hood was supposed to be a symbol of justice, not a man driven to madness by a single touch. He only cared about the way you melted against him.

He’d dreamt of this.

His hands, large and calloused, slid down your sides. Gripping your hips with a strength that bordered on bruising. He forced you back against the cool brick of the building, the contrast of the cold stone and his searing heat making your head spin.

He broke the kiss, his breath coming in ragged, uneven hitches. His eyes searched yours, still hidden behind the mask. Frantic and obsessed, looking for the recognition that the bond was screaming in your blood too.

You didn't understand it yet, but you felt it. A deep, aching need to be undone by him.

He dropped to his knees.

It was an act of worship and a display of dominance all at once. The great Red Hood, the terror of the underworld, kneeling in the dirt of a dark alleyway at your feet.

His hands moved frantically, tugging at your clothes, baring you to the midnight air. He didn't wait.

He didn't even ask. He simply descended.

When his mouth found you, the world vanishd.

The sensation was overwhelming. The heat of his breath, the rough texture of his tongue, and the sheer, unyielding intensity of his focus.

He ate you with a desperation that was terrifying, his tongue swirling and probing, seeking out every nerve ending as if he were trying to find the very center of your soul. His jaw aching from the stretch. He was relentless, a hunter who had found the most precious treasure and refused to let a single drop of sensation go unharvested.

You arched your back, your fingers tangling in the collar of his jacket, a choked cry escaping your throat. You were unanchored, drifting in a sea of pleasure. Every lick, every suction, every flick of his tongue was a brand, marking you as his in the most intimate way possible.

He looked up at you for a fleeting second, his eyes dark with a terrifying, beautiful madness, before burying his face in you again. He wasn't just pleasuring you, he was consuming you. And as the tension coiled tighter and tighter in your gut, you realised with a dizzying sense of awe that you didn't want to be saved from him. You wanted to drown in him.

his hands slid from your hips to your thighs, spreading you wider, anchoring you to the brick so you couldn't drift away.

He was greedy. He swallowed your gasps, he drank in the sounds you made, as if he were trying to ingest the very proof of your pleasure. The rough texture of his tongue was a beautiful friction against your most sensitive skin, a rhythmic, punishing, perfect pressure that sent white hot sparks dancing behind your eyelids.

"Please," you choked out, though you didn't even know what you were asking for. More. Stop. Don't ever let go.

You hadn’t ever felt anything this intensely since you were fifteen and it felt like you’d lost everything.

He responded by surging forward. The sensation was too much. Like a tidal wave. A sudden, violent fracturing of your senses. You felt the tension coil in your gut, tighter and tighter, a spring wound to the point of breaking, until finally, the dam burst.

You cried out, your voice lost to the shadows of the alley, as your body shuddered in the throes of a release so powerful it felt like a seizure.

You clung to him, your fingers digging into his shoulders, your head lulling back against the wall as waves of liquid crashed through you.

He didn't pull away when you came. He stayed with you, his mouth still pressed to you, drinking in the aftershocks, his breath hot and ragged against your skin. Gulping as he attempted to swallow it all down.

He stayed there until the tremors subsided, until you were left limp and breathless, trembling in the sudden silence of the night.

Slowly, he rose. He didn't stand up fully at first, lingering in the space between your legs, his eyes looking up at you from the darkness. The white lenses of his helmet were gone, replaced by the raw, unfiltered gaze of the man beneath. He looked wrecked. You couldn’t recognise him in the darkness.

He looked like he had just survived a war, or perhaps, like he had finally come home from one.

He reached up, his gloved thumb brushing a stray tear or perhaps just sweat from your cheek, his touch unexpectedly tender for a man so violent in his passion.

"Don't ever look at anyone else like that," he whispered, his voice a low, dangerous rumble that promised both protection and imprisonment. "Do you hear me? Just me."

You couldn't answer. You could barely breathe. You could only stare at him, realising with a sinking, exhilarating dread that the man you had been idolising from afar hadn't just found you.

He had hunted you down. And he had no intention of ever letting you go.

To anyone else, the apartment was just a quiet, dimly lit space in a safe corner of Gotham. To Jason, the silence was loud. Deafening.

It was a constant, rhythmic thrumming that echoed the frantic beating of his own heart every time he thought of you.

He sat on the edge of his bed, the shadows of the room clinging to his broad shoulders like a shroud. He was stripped down to his joggers, his skin still humming with the phantom sensation of your warmth. It had been weeks since that night in the alley. Weeks since he had tasted you, since he had felt the way you shuddered under his touch and the hunger had only grown.

It wasn't a hunger for food or sleep. It was a hollow, aching void in his chest that only your presence could fill.

He closed his eyes, but that was a mistake.

The moment his eyelids fell, you were there. He could see the curve of your neck, the way your eyes had widened in the dark, the way you had looked so beautifully, helplessly undone by him.

His jaw clenched, a muscle jumping in his cheek. He hated how much power you had over him. He was a man who had stared down death and spat in its face, yet here he was, a prisoner to the memory of a person who didn't even know the half of what he was thinking.

He stood up abruptly, the sudden movement sending a jolt of restless energy through his limbs. He paced the small expanse of the room like a caged predator, his footsteps heavy and deliberate.

His gaze drifted to the door.

The door was a thin, pathetic barrier. Just a few inches of wood and metal separating him from the world. And just twenty feet away, you were sleeping in a bed that wasn't his. You were breathing air that he wasn't providing.

The thought was intolerable. It felt like a physical wound, a fracture in his soul that refused to knit back together.

He wanted to tear the door off its hinges. He wanted to storm through the halls and break down your door until he could wrap his arms around you and never, ever let go. He wanted to mark you so thoroughly that the world would know you belonged to him by the very scent of your skin.

A low, frustrated growl escaped his throat. He reached for his waistband, his movements frantic, driven by a need that was as much about desperation as it was about lust.

As his hand closed around himself, he groaned, his head falling back. He wasn't just imagining the sensation of your hands or the heat of your mouth; he was visualising the way you would look if he finally claimed you properly. He imagined you pinned beneath him, your eyes searching his, seeing the madness there and choosing to stay anyway.

He closed his eyes tight, his breath hitching as he moved. You, he thought. A silent, prayer like chant in the dark. It has to be you. Has to be mine.

Every stroke was a frantic attempt to bridge the distance. He pictured your face, the way you had looked at him with that mixture of awe and terror. He wanted to protect that look, to be the only thing you ever saw, the only thing you ever felt.

He wanted to be your savior, but more than that, he wanted to be your entire world.

When the release finally came, it wasn't peaceful. It was a violent, shuddering explosion that left him gasping, his body tensing as if he were fighting an invisible enemy. He slumped back against the bed, his chest heaving, the sweat cooling on his skin.

The silence returned, heavier than before.

He stared at the ceiling, his eyes dark and predatory. The hunger hadn't faded; it had only sharpened. The "hunter" in him was tired of the chase. He was done watching from the shadows. He was done being the ghost in your periphery. Done playing the annoying neighbour.

He was going to bring you home. And once he had you, he would make sure you never had a reason to look for anyone else ever again.

The decision settled over him with terrifying clarity.

For months, Jason had told himself he was being patient.

While he learned your routines. While he watched Gotham become more dangerous by the day. While reporters dug through every corner of the city looking for Red Hood’s soulmate. Patient while criminals, mercenaries, and psychopaths searched for weaknesses they could exploit.

Patient while the universe dangled you in front of him and expected him to trust fate to keep you safe.

He was done being patient.

Jason rose from the bed.

The apartment felt suffocating. Too small. Empty.

Too far away from you.

His jaw tightened.

People always talked about soulmates as though they were something soft. Romantic. Gentle.

They never talked about what happened when a man like Jason Todd found his.

Nobody wanted to acknowledge that fate had teeth.

The universe hadn’t given him a lover. It had given him a reason. A purpose. Something precious enough to protect at any cost.

And Jason had never been particularly good at respecting limits.

He crossed the room and stopped beside the window. Gotham stretched endlessly below. A city of predators. A city that took and took and took.

His city.

For years it had stolen everything from him.

His childhood. His family. His life.

It wasn’t taking you too.

The thought settled into his bones like concrete. Absolute.

A slow breath left him.

Then another.

The panic that had haunted him since the article disappeared.

The uncertainty disappeared with it.

Because for the first time since finding you, Jason finally understood what he needed to do. Not watch. Not wait. Definitely not hope.

Act.

The realisation settled like relief.

People would worry. People always worried.

Then life would continue.

He’d experienced it firsthand.

It always did.

Nobody would know that somewhere far from Gotham’s noise sat a small house hidden among thick forests and winding roads.

A place with reinforced doors. A stocked kitchen. Bookshelves filled with things you’d enjoy. Fresh fruit by the windowsill. A home prepared long before Jason admitted why he’d prepared it.

A home waiting for its rightful occupant.

Waiting for you.

His soulmate.

His future.

His.

Jason rested his forehead against the cool glass.

For a brief moment, he imagined the future.

You arguing with him over breakfast. Rolling your eyes at his terrible jokes. Curled against him on quiet evenings. Safe. Always safe.

You’d fight him at first.

He knew that.

He’d try his best to remember not to take it personally.

You’d be angry. Terrified. Confused. But eventually you’d understand. Eventually you’d realise nobody would ever love you the way he did. Nobody would ever sacrifice what he would sacrifice. Nobody would ever protect you so completely.

You were made for him for a purpose, after all.

The soulmate bond had survived death itself. Survived shattered souls and broken destinies.

The universe had torn you two apart once. It would never get the chance to do so again.

A smile touched his mouth. Small.

Outside, Gotham continued to roar.

Inside, Jason finally felt at peace. Because the hunt was over.

He had found what belonged to him.

And this time, Jason Todd wasn’t ever letting go.

Gang I tried really hard & researched what others have done to write gender neutral smut. I’ve read it over like a quadrillion times and genuinely can’t tell if it even makes sense anymore😩

8K+ Words, 48K+ Characters, 1K+ Sentences, 647 paragraphs, 24 minute average reading time, 39 minute average speaking time.

Read Dick Grayson’s part here

It's a random Tuesday as Bruce, and you stand in the middle of your grandfather's beloved attic. The wooden floors creak under your weight, dust particles moving in spirals as the early rays of sunshine flit through the glass panes of the dormer window. Your mother had asked for your help in cleaning your grandparents' place, and so you pulled in Bruce - offering him a break from his corporate duties, which he gladly agreed to.

"Wow, I did not realise my grandad hoarded so many things", you say, looking at the vast number of trinkets and boxes stacked along the walls on both sides of the attic. Each was well organised, with a label pasted on the top.

"Your grandad was a man of culture", Bruce chuckles, looking at the various band posters from the 40s and 50s. There were even autographs from some of them, neatly preserved.

Both of you got to work immediately, knowing it would be hours before everything was cleaned out. You had decided to split the work by concentrating on different ends of the triangular room.

Bruce had struck gold by ending up in the corner where your granddad had seemed to store much of the photo albums and cassettes, stacked on top of each other, labeled in detail about what the insides contained. It gave Bruce an insight to your family, a family from looking at the albums that had photos from back since your grandparents got married, having their daughter — your mother, to her getting married, and having you.

He had seen a lot of your photos since the early days of dating, but these were different. Your grandfather was an avid photographer, and Bruce could sense it through the varied angles and poses that he made everyone do.

"Having fun, huh?" you mumble, looking at Bruce as he suppresses a chuckle while looking at the pictures of you — a two-year-old, wearing a princess gown and a wand gripped tightly within your grubby fingers.

"You get stuck with the more fun part, while I have to dust some old documents", you grumble, looking at files and files of documents.

"Do you wanna exchange, sweetheart?"

"Nope," you say, emphasizing the 'p' as you shift to the next box, "Besides, I like hearing you laugh, even if it comes at the cost of my pictures"

An hour passes by.

You had finished four out of the twelve boxes. Heaving a sigh, you decide it's time for a well-deserved break. And what better to do than annoy your beautiful husband?

"Bruce, Brucie Wayne," you turn to look at him at the lack of any response "Bruce?"

Bruce doesn't answer, his broad back turned towards you. There is something different in the air from a few minutes ago, almost tinged with melancholic fragrance. You move towards, hoping to see what made him go so still, only to let out a gasp when you see it.

There you were, maybe five or six years old, wearing a large doctor's coat that reached well beyond your limbs, dragging onto the marble floor and a cute pink stethoscope around your neck. But that was not what made you gasp; it was the couple you were standing with in the photo.

Thomas and Martha Wayne.

Both of them were crouched next to you on either side. Thomas Wayne in his fitting black suit paired with a dark blue silk necktie embellished with motifs, while Martha Wayne wore a simple black silk dress paired with a blue plaid jacket.

There was a tiny piece of description below the photograph, a little shabby, like your grandpa wasn't sure what to write.

' Y/N & famous couple from Gotham (VHS #155)'

Bruce let out a laugh— loud but bittersweet. It made sense for your grandad to not know them, considering the only people he thought to be rich were the Queens.

You looked at Bruce, his eyes a little glazed as you cupped his face, fingers rubbing against the expanse of his cheek. Pressing a small kiss on his forehead, you whisper, "Shall we watch the VHS tape?"

He hums as you both try finding the exact tape among two hundred of them. Once retrieved, you dust the Toshiba VCR at the corner, pulling it slightly towards the center. You and Bruce try to get it to start since it probably hasn't been used in a while.

After a few minutes, the VCR lights up. Inserting the tape, you press play, and both of you stand back, Bruce's arm over your shoulder as you lay your head on his chest, arms wrapped around his waist.

The VCR displays a blue gradient before buzzing to a grainy film of you in a purple and pink frock , smiling widely at the camera. There's a lot of noise around you — people clapping , speeches being read as your grandad records the stage when Thomas Wayne was giving his speech. Bruce shifted a little, hand holding yours a little tighter, from hearing his father's voice after so many years.

The video then shifts to you, standing in front of the couple, wearing a pink stethoscope and a white coat a little too large for your frame. Martha Wayne smiles , a smile so radiant, before crouching down to her knees as she shakes your hand.

"Hi, there. What's your name?"

You say your name before letting out a giggle at her calling you beautiful.

"You want to be a doctor when you grow up?" She asks, hands pointing at the instrument hanging around your neck.

"Yes, ma'am. I want to be a heart doctor," you say, peering at the woman beside you. Thomas Wayne smiles before exchanging pleasantries with your grandfather.

"Oh, that's wonderful! You will be a great doctor one day, my dear."

And with that, the VHS comes to an end.

Bruce sniffles a little , his hands holding your waist, chin placed on top of your head. Silence fills the space along with the sounds of your nieces playing around the house. You don't know how long the both of you stayed like that, but it could have been forever, and you didn't mind at all.

Bruce is beyond happy. While it may not be visible to the naked eye, you could feel the joy emanating from the open crevices of grief and gaps of affection. He was happy that you —his wife, the love of his life — had met his parents. And they had gotten the chance to meet you.

Perhaps both of you really were soulmates.

From six until twelve (maybe thirteen?) he was your whole world, your partner in scraped knees and secret dares, the almost-boyfriend who walked you home until the day you had to leave. You remember that day clearly— you were both young and curious and that was the only time you ever kissed someone so passionately.

And though years have folded and unfolded since, and other boys and girls have passed through your life, the memory of him and the house atop the hill lingered like the last line of a bedtime story you never got to finish. Now, at eighteen, with your suitcases unpacked and the town you wander both changed and unchanged since, you find yourself wondering; 

What became of the little boy with rosy cheeks and crimson hair within the elusive house atop the hill? And more importantly… Had he waited for you as he promised he would? As you’d waited for him?

Oh, but the town, if anything, had waited for you. The same sloping lanes curled around themselves like the pretty ribbons every little girl has in her hair, the same shopfronts blinked their painted eyes beneath eaves of chipped wood, and the same cobblestones carried the same weary cracks as though not a day had passed since you last tripped across them. 

…Yet look closer; the illusion thins. The bakery that once smelled of sugared dough now carried the sterile tang of coffee beans. The playground, once rusted and loud with shrieks, had been repainted into silence. Faces that might have belonged to childhood friends now belonged to strangers instead. It was everything and nothing like you expected. 

You chastised yourself for the disappointment that rose in your chest. What did you think would happen? That the town would remain suspended in amber, unchanging, preserved exactly as it was on the day you left? That if you rounded the corner at just the right hour, you might find your younger self skipping along, hand in hand with a boy whose laughter always rang louder than the church bells? Perhaps you did expect it, though you would never confess it aloud. Perhaps a part of you did think the whole town had been frozen, a snow globe shaken only when you returned to stir its pieces back into place at your liking. 

But above it all— silhouetted against the sky that was as bright as you remembered— loomed the elusive house atop the hill. The house that did not blink when years passed, that did not repaint or refashion itself to meet the times. Its windows glimmered darkly, shuttered but watchful, and its slanted roof cut into the horizon like a blade. You told yourself it was only a house, only wood and brick and rose bushes, but you felt its presence all the same; patient, everlasting, a shadow stretched across your childhood, a shadow that had never quite receded from the corners of your mind. Did the boy with rosy cheeks and crimson hair still live there?

What was completely new to the town, though, was the music. 

Loud and brazen, the sort that rattled windowpanes and startled sparrows into flight. It did not belong to the town you remembered, yet you found yourself drawn, drawn toward it— pulled, pulled as surely as a tide toward the moon. Each step carried you further down the lane, until instinct led you to the very corner you used to round as a child.

And to your surprise, there the boy with rosy cheeks and crimson stood… with a microphone in hand?

His rosy cheeks were painted now, half-concealed beneath a mask of dark cosmetics. Nor did he wear a full crown of crimson hair, for black had been streaked through it, deep and dark as ink spilled across parchment. He was clothed in splendour you’d hardly seen anyone wear in person— an oversized coat of luscious red fur spilling from his shoulders, shoes so tall they lifted him out of reach— and there was no mistaking the passion that set his whole frame alight as he sang.

So you stood there at the edge of the forming crowd, mesmerised by the sight of him. Riddle. The name trembled in your chest like a secret only you could bear. He was beautiful in a way that startled you, sharp and dazzling all at once, his face carved in light and shadow, every line of him made for a stage rather than a playground. You scarcely dared to breathe, lest the vision collapse. 

And because you were so transfixed, you did not notice at first— did not see how his gaze broke from the crowd to find you, how his eyes locked as though they had been searching for you all along. It was only when the music faltered and the cheering dimmed that you realised; he was moving. 

He was moving toward you. 

Every stride devoured the distance, until suddenly he was there, close enough for the smell of perfume and faint cigarette smoke to cling to his coat, close enough for his arms to sweep you into him with a ferocity that stole your breath.

“Oh—!” 

The sound barely escaped you before he crushed you tighter, burying his face against your shoulder. His grip was iron, desperate, achingly familiar, and the years of silence seemed to mean nothing to him. If anything, they spurred him on more— he clung as if he meant to reclaim every missed moment in one embrace, as if you had never been estranged at all.

“(Y/N)! You’re back!” Riddle exclaimed, his cheeks puffing up in a smile like you remembered it to. “I missed you so much! Oh, you look so cute…!”

“Wh—” You sputtered. You’d been so caught up in what was different that you hadn’t anticipated being thrust into such affections so soon— nor did you expect him to hang off of you like this. Why, he clung to you like he used to on the monkey bars all those years back…!

“Mm, and you still smell the same!” He murmured, his words muffled by the fabric of your clothes. “I could pick you out of a crowd blindfolded.”

“Riddle! You don’t even seem surprised…?” You found yourself looking at the floor. You were scared of whatever emotions might come forward if you looked at him directly— for you wouldn’t be able to hold yourself back from kissing him.

“Oh?” Riddle’s lips pursed in thought as he pulled back. You knew he was examining you, but frankly… you were much too shy to look at him in return. “Why would I be surprised? You told me you’d come back, didn’t you?” 

“…I did say that, didn’t I?” You muttered, surprise softening your features. You had always meant it, of course, yet seeing him know it too, feel it as surely as you had, made your heart jump up out of your chest and into your eyes. 

Suddenly, the world around seemed to be tinted a shade of rose and devotion. And when you mustered the courage to look at him… through his eyes, you saw it—

His soul. 

In his soul, he knew you would come back, because you told him you would. So in that tender pause, the years of locked-away feelings slinked out of the depths, up to the surface.

For the first time in years, you let your own soul come out, and your hands found his, and it was as if you’d never left on that hot summer day; as if no time had ever come between you at all.

“…I’m not going anywhere this time, Riddle. So tell me, how have you been?”

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐒𝐄 𝐀𝐓𝐎𝐏 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐇𝐈𝐋𝐋 was elusive and that was all it ever was. It was intangible, something to watch and be watched by, but never touched. Never approached, or lived in, or any of the other things that houses were made for. So you never truly imagined what the inside might look like; somehow, you had never considered that there was an inside at all. And yet here you sat upon the living room couch, your shoes tucked neatly beneath you. 

Now, what struck you most were the photographs. If there was anything that you were expecting as Riddle dragged you up the hill— it certainly wasn’t this. 

Framed portraits littered the walls, frame after frame, almost cluttered in its quantity. Smiling children— you and Riddle together on the playground swings, faces pressed cheek-to-cheek. Candid portraits of you laughing, caught mid-motion. Family photos— Riddle between the mother you had always heard about but never actually seen until now, and a tall man you had never known existed. 

You did not recall these pictures being taken. You did not recall Riddle even having a father.

A warm breath brushed your neck, followed by the scrape of teeth against your skin. “What are you looking at?” Riddle hummed, his voice low and petulant, lips skating over the curve beneath your ear. “Kiss me back, won’t you?”

“Riddle…” You tried for composure, but the sound was already shaky. His hands were splayed over your waist, tugging you closer, closer still, and you could barely manage to push words through the heat curling in your chest. “These… photos. When did we take so many together?”

He hummed against your throat, but he did pull back— if only to resettle himself. His weight settled into your lap, his arms winding back round your neck. Your hands, hesitant, slipped from his shoulders to the edges of his coat, peeling it from him. The intimacy of the gesture struck you— it was everything you’d ever dreamt of— and yet your gaze returned inevitably to the wall.

He followed it, but not before pressing a lazy kiss to your jaw. “We always did. You’ve just forgotten, you silly thing.”

“…I think I would remember this many pictures.” You murmured. “I mean… I didn’t even know you had a father.” Your eyes stayed on the tall man, that easy smile, the hand on Riddle’s shoulder. There was a slight abashed feeling, having to admit it. Not knowing something so obvious about your friend was… embarrassing.

“My papa…” Riddle supplied smoothly, his lips grazing your cheekbone as though punctuation. “Of course you met him. He liked you.” He said it almost fondly, followed by another kiss, softer, more insistent. His nose brushed yours, his voice dropping to a whisper. “But your memory was always bad. That’s why I remember for both of us.”

His words weren’t particularly untrue. You never did have the best memory— you were always forgetful. That was fact, you weren’t going to deny it. But still, your brows pinched together in confusion. “I… I guess?” Your hand raised to brace your companion’s hip. “But I wouldn’t forget something important like that. I mean— I knew you had a mother even though I never met her… I can’t believe I’d forget you had a father, let alone meeting hi—mmh?!”

Your protest was cut short by the sudden press of his lips against yours. It was playful in its abruptness, yet deep enough to make your pulse skip. His mouth moved insistently over yours, stealing the rest of your thought before it could form. He tasted of sugared strawberries and the faintest trace of smoke, and when he finally pulled away you were left breathless, your words scattered.

“Don’t pout so much.” He teased, eyes glinting as he slid off your lap with eagerness. “I’ll prove it to you!” He straightened his coat, then tossed it carelessly over the arm of the sofa, already turning toward the stairs. “I’ll fetch the pictures from my room— the ones with Papa!”

You blinked, still gathering your bearings. “Your… your room?”

“Oh, and speaking of Mama…” He glanced back at you with a mischievous smile, as though he’d just remembered to mention something small and inconsequential. “Why don’t you go say hi?”

You froze sharply. “She— she’s home…? While we were—?”

“Of course!” He laughed, bright and carefree, the sound so at odds with your racing thoughts. “You’ve gotten so uptight over the years, you know. What’s a little kiss on the sofa between us?” He reached over to pat your head, almost condescending in its fondness, before pivoting toward the staircase in the hall.

“I’ll be right back!” He called, already bounding up the steps, leaving you alone with the walls of smiling photographs and the sudden, pressing knowledge that you were not quite alone in the house. 

At once, you made motions to neaten yourself— and rub the lipstick stains from your face. You rose, because the motions were better than sitting and staring, and because ‘one could not be frightened while busy with tasks’— as was what your own mother taught you.

So you began in the parlour, touching the picture frames to confirm their authenticity. Then the hallway opened up into a kitchen that smelled faintly of lemon polish and something sweet, as if a tray of scones had been set down and then, deliberately, removed. Drawers were closed. Chairs were pushed in. The kettle sat innocently on the hob. You opened the door to the back room on a whim and found nothing but a slant of sunlight and a chair with a forgotten scarf draped over it. Each room you moved through gave the same answer; empty.

The house, which had watched you from the hill for so many years as if it were merely an ornament on the horizon, felt suddenly hollowed and personal in a way that made your skin prick. All at once you were aware of how alone you were— not alone in the comfortable, peaceful sense, but alone the way one is when a room holds its breath and refuses to exhale. You thought of Riddle upstairs; he was only a flight away, and that ought to have comforted you. He had promised to fetch the photographs; he would be back in a moment. It was absurd to be afraid.

Still, when you reached the foot of the stairs you hesitated, the wooden banister sticky beneath your palm from some remembered summer, sweat gathering, small and hot, at the nape of your neck. You told yourself you were being ridiculous. Riddle was there. His mum was, too, probably bustling somewhere with the sort of domestic efficiency mothers showed only to those they loved. You took the first step.

That was when the voice came.

“My dear, what are you doing all alone? A house like this can swallow a girl whole if she is not mindful.”

The words did not arrive from one place but from many— blooming and settling over you, soft and impossibly near. From the parlour, the kitchen, from the walls, from every room you went in and from every room she wasn't present in— the voice had already unfurled itself into the house and claimed each corner. You turned, trying to place her— Mrs. Rosehearts— but there was no one to face.

“Ah, don’t look so startled…” Mrs. Rosehearts continued, each syllable sugared and coaxing. “There’s nothing to worry over, not here. You’re very welcome in this house. Very welcome indeed.”

The warmth of the words pushed in on you, invading the space where reason would sit. You listened to them as though to music you already knew the melody of, yet with a growing, illogical tension at its edges— a note just a fraction out of tune, the sort that sets teeth on edge only after the song has finished. Your throat tightened. Your mouth, which had been rehearsing a thousand sensible replies, went suddenly blank.

“My, my!” She chimed, an obvious smile audible in every line. “What a timid little thing you are. Won’t you sit down properly? I’ll fetch us some tea. Or perhaps you’d prefer cake? You do like cake, don’t you? Oh, I’m quite certain you must.”

You felt very small then, and very exposed. Where was she? Where was she calling you from? There was a basin in the mind, one full of thoughts that would never be answered. Why couldn’t you see her? Why hasn’t she shown herself? And in your confusion, there was only one sensible reply.

“Oh, Mrs Rosehearts…! I— I’d really like to see you, please. Could you… show yourself?”

For a moment there was silence— so complete it felt as though the whole house had leaned in to listen. The ticking of the grandfather clock stopped mattering, the creak of the rafters vanished. Then above it all was a laugh, elegant and affectionate.

“If that’s what you wish, little dearest. Of course I’ll oblige…”

A beautiful woman with cheeks of rose and hair of crimson. 

A hot flush came down the back of your neck, and suddenly every sense of unease you’d had went away. How stupid of you… Honestly, how ridiculous! Working yourself up over nothing, prowling around the house like some silly child afraid of the dark. You’d gotten way too in over your head— jumping at shadows, inventing ghosts where there weren’t any. This was only Riddle’s mother. His mother. Just what were you thinking?

Her thumbs brushed over the apples of your cheeks before you even realised she was approaching you. The touch was soothing, her smile impossibly fond as her eyes roved over your face. “There now…” She whispered, and now her voice felt normal. “So timid… no wonder my darling boy kept you all to himself.”

“Oh…” You breathed out. Was there still lipstick on your face? Sevens, you hope not. How could you explain your way out of that—? Or find another boy with black lipstick in a ten kilometre radius to pin the blame—? “It’s lovely to finally meet you, aunty.” Finally, you remembered your manners, straightening your spine and lifting your chin just the way your parents taught you.

The woman before you laughed. It was the kind of laugh that felt both indulgent and knowing, as though she were in on a secret you weren’t yet privy to. She leaned closer, her perfume sweet and heady— she smelled like smoke, too— and you felt her breath stir your hair as she murmured, “Go to him, won’t you?”

The words remained in your ear long after she’d withdrawn, and for a strange, uncertain beat you couldn’t remember if she had actually touched you or if it had only been imagined. Either way, by the time you blinked, she was gone. The house seemed oddly empty again. So you found yourself drifting up the stairs, each step taken half by will, half by instinct to not be alone, until you reached his doorframe. 

There, Riddle was kneeling on the floor, hunched over a small wooden box. His shoulders jumped when you knocked gently against the doorframe, but the startlement quickly dissolved into a bright smile and he sprung up to his feet.

“Look, look!” He beckoned, tugging you to his side with boyish excitement.

You lowered yourself to kneel beside him, smoothing your skirt with careful hands before folding them neatly in your lap. And then you did look—

Photographs. Polaroids. Dozens of them, stacked and scattered, all of you, all real. You, and Riddle, and a man whose features echoed his son’s. The man downstairs, who you swore you’d never met. His father. And in the background of one, unmistakable as day— your own parents.

It made perfect sense by all accounts— a family outing. Yet still you were shocked. You had… no memory of this. 

Riddle giggled, tilting his head towards you with a grin that was both triumphant and fond. “I told you so, silly girl.”

The words made you flush with a sudden, sheepish heat. …Perhaps he was right. Perhaps you really were being ridiculous. A laugh slipped from you, small and uncertain, but you forced it into something lighter, more natural. Your memory had always been poor— everyone knew that. It wasn’t impossible that you had simply… forgotten. Yes. That had to be it.

“…You’re right. Yes, silly me…!”

So you allowed yourself to relax, let the questions fall away like loose threads unpicked (even though you were always taught to flounder until everything was perfect). What did it matter, when everything here made such perfect sense? Riddle was beside you, his delight radiating like sunlight, and suddenly you became aware of something else thrumming beneath the surface; the low, insistent pulse of your own arousal. You’d been so caught up in what did and did not make sense that you hadn’t fully allowed yourself to enjoy what was finally yours.

Riddle seemed to notice your change of heart at once. His hand slipped over your shoulder, his fingers grazing the slope of your collarbone in a gesture so casual it made your breath hitch. You answered without thinking, leaning into him, closing the small distance— as your body had been waiting for, all along.

“Do you remember? You promised we’d do so much more when we saw each other again.” He whispered against your jaw, leaving new traces of black lipstick along your skin— and after you’d worked so hard to rub the last set off, too…

This promise, you did remember. It was all those years ago, that day, after you’d separated from him with nothing but a string of saliva connecting you; You’d swore that you’d come back, then you could do all the things that adults in love did with each other. You were so young, then— but you were filled with affection, and passion, and all the other things that growing teenagers felt when they kissed each other. Much like how you felt now— hot, bothered, desperate to arch and cling to the boy beside you and never let go.

You tilted your head, allowing his mouth to trail down the hollow of your throat, a sharp gasp torn from you as you leaned back on both hands. Riddle wasted no time in mounting himself atop of you, letting his kisses trail down to your chest. Thank God you wore a low neckline today— A contented, lazy smile crossed your face as you took a deep breath in, relishing in the way his fingers moved to cup your breast. 

“I do remember…” You hummed, moving to unbutton the first few buttons of his shirt. When his pretty, supple collarbone was exposed to you, you trailed your hand across them, before cupping the back of his neck. Pulling him close, you whispered against his lips; 

“So, take me in any way you want.”

𝐒𝐋𝐄𝐄𝐏 𝐒𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐋𝐃 𝐇𝐀𝐕𝐄 𝐁𝐄𝐄𝐍 𝐒𝐖𝐄𝐄𝐓. After the way his body had pressed into yours, after the way your throat still ached from moans you hadn’t known you were capable of, after the way you had given yourself up entirely— there should have been nothing left but exhaustion and contentment. Your skin was still warm from the heat, your core still weak from the aftershocks, your lips bitten and sore from the force of his kiss. You should have been lulled into the deepest, sweetest sleep, drunk on pleasure and closeness.

But sleep had other plans for you. When you pushed yourself from the plush duvet, it was not in the sluggish, half-conscious manner of one roused from slumber, but rather with the sharp and unthinking urgency of terror. There was nothing deliberate in it; it was instinct, the body leaping to preserve itself from some danger already forgotten— for the memory of the nightmare had fled the instant your eyes opened. Its claws had been deep in you, of that you were certain, and yet by the time you sought to grasp at its particulars, it had already dissolved into nothing. All that remained was the undeniable certainty that something had been there, and that you had to escape it.

The first thing you noticed, when you steadied yourself, was the absence of all things comforting. The bed was empty. Riddle was gone. The room around you was steeped in a kind of darkness that did not belong to ordinary night. So you turned toward the window, hoping for the pale reassurance of moonlight, or the faintest suggestion of a starry sky— but instead, you were met with nothing. 

The view opened only onto a smooth, endless black, as though the house were suspended in a void. How? How was this possible? You pressed your hand against the pane, half-believing that some obstruction had been drawn across it— but the glass seemed bare on both sides. You tried the latch; it refused to yield. You pushed harder; the frame rattled, but the window would not give.

And then— you could not help but feel it— the blankness outside seemed to shift, as if it were not absence at all, but a presence. A presence that had been watching long before you thought to look.

You shivered, though the air was not exactly cold, and your arms folded around yourself in a poor attempt at comfort. The room, so plush and indulgent only hours ago, now seemed stripped bare of safety. A thought struck you— maybe he had gone to the bathroom? You crossed to it at once, each step uncertain, and threw the door open with more urgency than you intended. Empty. Utterly empty.

So maybe you were still dreaming. Yes, that had to be it. That this was merely some cruel continuation, a lucid dream from which you had not yet parted from. The notion made a fragile sort of sense, enough that you pinched the soft skin of your forearm until the flesh protested. Pain flared sharp and real. But you did not wake up. Shouldn’t pain wake you?

Heart quickening, you returned to the room and slipped out into the corridor. 

What met you there was worse. Every picture that had once lined the walls— faces, new and old, of family… forgotten memories preserved— was black. Every window that ought to have revealed the night instead opened only onto the void. They were pools of nothingness, eyes of nothingness, gazing down upon you in silent judgment. Their regard was so heavy, so oppressive, that you yourself began to feel like nothingness, as though your body, your mind, your very name might dissolve beneath their stare. In that moment, as you clutched yourself closer, you found yourself deeply missing Riddle. What is going on? 

“(Y/N)?”

It should have been a comfort. You had been yearning for him with such aching desperation that the sound of his voice ought to have undone you. Yet the instant it reached you, your heart recoiled. It sounded like him, yes, but it did not feel like him. The warmth was gone. The intimacy was gone. Something was wrong. Something was terribly, irreparably wrong.

You ran.

You did not wait to see from where it came; you only fled. The corridor stretched before you, longer than you remembered, the familiar turns and doors rearranging themselves into a maddening geometry that led nowhere. You ran blindly, driven by the certainty that what followed you was not him and must not catch you.

And as you ran, the house changed. The pools of nothingness— those blank, oppressive eyes in the pictures and the windows— began to bleed red. First one pair, then another, until they multiplied, until the whole corridor swam with them. Blood-red, glaring, dripping. The black backdrops glowed as though veins had burst within them, and each new eye threw its own cast of crimson light. The glow spun across the walls like sirens, one moment lancing straight at you, the next wheeling away, only to return from another angle. 

The house atop the hill watched you all your life— now, so did the eyes. 

Some tracked you directly, following every frantic step; others swivelled without pattern, disorienting in their ceaseless movement. The corridor pulsed red and black, black and red, until you no longer knew which way you were running, only that you had to keep moving— because what was behind you was not the Riddle you loved. But your body betrayed you. Breath tore at your throat, your legs faltered, and at last you stopped. The silence that followed your ragged breathing was almost worse than the chase.

In the black and the red and the red and the black, and in the silence and the deafening sound of your breathing and heartbeat— you heard her; you did not see her.

“Dearest, where are you going?”

“Oh, Mrs. Rosehearts…! My parents will be wondering where I am.” The eyes knew you were lying. The eyes knew you were lying. The eyes knew you were lying. The eyes knew you were lying. “I was going to tell them I’ll be spending the night—”

“Why don’t you go back to bed? My darling boy will be missing you.” When it spoke again, its voice had drifted closer, though no figure stood before you. 

“…Mrs. Rosehearts,” you called into the darkness, forcing the words through a throat gone tight, “could you show yourself again?”

“You look so beautiful, dearest.”

“Please,” you tried again, your voice trembling on the edge of a plea, “I really want to see you…”

“Why don’t you go back to bed?” Its suggestion came sweetly. “Or, would you rather sleep beside me?”

No. No, no, no. This wasn’t right. The walls breathed red, and the eyes turned, one by one, until you were their singular focus.

“I’d rather like to see you, Mrs. Rosehearts.” You pleaded to it. “Please show yourself?”

For a long moment there was no sound but your own breathing. And then, very softly, the voice returned;

“…Go back to bed, dearest. He will be missing you.”

This wasn’t right. Why wouldn’t it answer you? Just one request. You only wanted to see its face. You knew it wasn’t Mrs. Rosehearts, but still, you wanted to see. It sounded like her, but it wasn’t her. It wasn’t her. Was it ever? And yet, even knowing that, some small, frantic part of you still wanted to see.

Then there was the sound of heels on the floor, approaching your direction from the right. You turned toward the sound and saw, not a body, but a shadow stretching far and thin across the red-washed walls. It was his shape— Riddle’s— the body you knew intimately, yet every familiar movement was made strange. The distortion of the light enlarged it until the silhouette blotted out half the corridor, crawling closer with every click of those unseen platforms.

Your heart lurched painfully against your ribs. Something was very wrong. You staggered back, despite the voice of Mrs. Rosehearts coaxing you to stay put. The shadow grew longer, wider, swallowing the corridor with every step. You didn’t wait for it to reach you. You turned and ran.

“Don’t let the walls cave in on you!”

The voice chased you down the hall, bright and ringing with laughter. A sweet giggle, laced with the happiness of childhood. It was the sound of afternoons in the park, the sound of hide-and-seek when you were young and innocent and unafraid. But here, in this corridor of red light and nothingness, it was wrong. Horribly wrong. The memory itself had turned against you.

Run, rabbit, run. The beloved childhood song pounded in your skull, faster, faster, a cruel song keeping pace with your desperate feet. Run, rabbit, run—

But your legs betrayed you. The floor clung to them, thick and sticky. You looked down— Black, searing tar had bubbled up under you, gripping your skin, dragging you down into its suffocating heat. Each step was slower than the last, every movement an agony of resistance. But when had it appeared? Where had it come from? 

The answer was nowhere and everywhere. The walls themselves were bleeding now. Every picture frame that had once held some cherished memory was spilling over rushing tar. Childhood portraits, family photographs— the father you never remembered hearing about, the photographs you never remembered being taken— all of them slick and running with molten black. The void was pouring out of them, flooding the hallway, surging around your ankles, your calves, latching and dragging and choking.

You tried to lift your legs. The liquid pulled tighter. The red light spun madly across the corridor, eyes upon you from every angle, watching as the black tide swallowed your steps. Now you were stumbling, hardly able to see. It invaded your eyes, and you were weeping salt and tar. So you shut them hard, and frantically felt around for something, someone to hold onto. Hands clawed at the floor, arms pushing through the sticky drag, every movement a battle against the tide. Your knees buckled, slipping, dragging you backward. 

With a final, desperate heave, you surged forward, feeling the resistance thin beneath you— and then gravity took you. You pitched forward, tumbling onto something soft and warm, the world lurching before settling.

When you lifted your head, the burning tar was gone, stripped from your skin as though it had never been. No suffocating heat. No tide dragging you under. Only the parlour, neat and whole, dressed in the red glow. The walls still writhed with shapes you could not name, eyes dripped wetly from the cluttered picture frames, but the flood had vanished.

And there, seated upon the couch as if he had been waiting all along, was Riddle. Your Riddle. At your gaze, a smile curled his lips.

This was right. This was right. You wanted to cling to him. To crawl on your hands and knees and cling to his legs— to hug his body which sprawled in casual elegance. …But— wasn’t he the one chasing you? You turned, wild with confusion, to the hallway. Red walls, glowing eyes— but no tar. Nothing but silence. …So it couldn’t have been him.

When you looked back, he was crouching before you and you had no time to question anything. His hands clamped your face, cold and firm, and he dragged you into a kiss. 

…You love his kisses— but this time it felt different. You could’ve sworn this was your Riddle— not what was chasing you in the hall. So why did this feel wrong? It didn’t feel like you were kissing him— you knew what it was like to kiss him; Erotic, tender, passionate. That’s what kissing him felt like. Empty, fierce, unyielding. That was what you felt now. 

So, who are you kissing? Who is kissing you?

Panic bloomed in your chest. You shoved him away, desperate for space. Now, everything judged you. Now, everything watched you. The house atop the hill, the eyes of nothingness, the eyes of red, the eyes of the boy in front of you— all honed in on you, you, you.

“Why did you push me away?” His voice was low, then cracked, higher, a whisper of someone else threaded through it. “Why did you try to leave? Surely you’re not trying to leave?”

You’d never seen him like this. Never so angry, so livid, so certain in unforgiving.

“Don’t leave us again.” 

The words split and weaved together until you couldn’t tell which voice was his and which wasn’t. Where he ended and his mother began no longer seemed clear.

“Won’t you come back to bed?”

It towered impossibly high, a strange fusion of cathedral-like scale and fortress-like strength. Every spire stretched toward the dark heavens, their tips nearly swallowed by the thick clouds above. The sheer scale of it was almost incomprehensible— it begged the question; who could possibly need a castle this massive? The archways were wide enough to fit entire caravans side by side, and the doors stood taller than any building you’d ever entered. It felt less like a home and more like a monument to something far beyond human understanding, and the thought made your stomach churn uneasily.

You clutched your lyre tighter, the polished wood now slick under your damp palms. With the backdrop of the full moon, combined with the surrounding, never-ending forest… this place reeked of foreboding. And truthfully, you were never meant for such things. There was a reason you’d stayed behind while Ace and Deuce chased glory. Ah… even in childhood, it seemed, they were always two daring boys with swords (stolen from your father’s collection, mind you), and you, a shy little girl with her worn lyre.

Somewhere ahead, said duo stumbled through the shadows with all the grace of a pair of toddlers in a glass workshop. Some things truly never change. Count on Ace and Deuce to foolishly decide to explore a castle well after daybreak, with nothing but lanterns and weapons in hand. You huffed lightly, observing their clumsy demeanour with a nostalgic fondness before forcing yourself to catch up with them.

The inside of the castle was just as strange as the exterior. The moment you stepped inside, the lanterns’ glow spilled across the vast interior, casting flickering shadows on walls that stretched unnaturally high into the darkness above. The sheer size of the space felt overwhelming— too… massive for what it actually seemed to hold. Sparse clusters of comically normal sized furniture scattered across the floor, each piece dwarfed by its surroundings. The tables and chairs, though intricately carved, seemed misplaced, almost absurdly small against the towering columns and endless walls. It were as if the castle was designed for something far larger, and these furnishings were added later, an afterthought to make it appear more lived-in.

Candlesticks stood upright yet unlit on the tables, their golden polish dulled by time but not tarnished. Tapestries, faded yet untouched by the dampness that often claimed abandoned places, hung from the walls, depicting scenes you couldn’t make sense of. It was all just so... odd.

"Guys... check this out." Ace whispered in awe, his voice cutting through your thoughts. 

He stood crouched in front of a giant door, the iron bands reinforcing the wood looking thick enough to withstand a battering ram. He pushed it open with a groan, revealing a grand hall beyond. The room was cavernous, lit faintly by beams of pale moonlight filtering through the countless high windows lining the hall. Better lit than the rooms before, at least. You stepped inside hesitantly, the soft echo of your footsteps engulfed almost immediately by the sheer space. Despite its grandeur— or perhaps because of it— there was something unsettling about the hall.

“Doesn’t it feel...” Deuce trailed off, glancing around nervously.

“Empty?” You offered, to which your companion nodded in agreement.

“Yeah. That.”

Ace, of course, seemed entirely unfazed, already crossing to the center of the room where a massive stone table sat. He ran a hand along its surface, then rubbed his fingers together, inspecting the layer of dust. 

“Whoever left this place behind had some serious cash...” he muttered, “look at this stuff! That chandelier alone could probably buy us a small town.”

You glanced up. The chandelier was an intricate mass, all crystals and gold, hanging precariously from the ceiling like some kind of jewelled leviathan. It looked heavy enough to crush anyone unfortunate enough to stand beneath it if it fell. It was mesmerising indeed… but the unsettling feeling only grew stronger. It wasn’t particularly that the castle was too big (though that’s not to say it wasn’t ornate and strange), so much as it was the sense that it wasn’t as abandoned as it seemed— that somewhere, in the silence and stillness, something was watching.

"I’m telling you," Ace hissed, his voice a notch louder than a hush, "this place has to be loaded with treasure. No one would’ve guarded a dump like this unless there was something worth hiding."

Deuce shot him a glare. "Yeah, and what if the 'guardian' is still here? Just look at the size of this place! That’s nothing any ordinary human would live in. Did you forget what happened in Greystone Keep?!"

Your expression was utterly blank as you listened in the background, trailing a finger against the surface of the table in front of you. You… had no fucking idea what the hell these two were prattling on about. ‘Greystone Keep’ might ring a bell— you think you’d heard of it in the drunken gossip in an inn, once— but that was the extent of your knowledge.

"Relaaax," Ace drawled from somewhere in the background, snapping you out of it, "if anything’s still alive in this shithole, we’ll hear it before it hears us."

As if on cue, a deep, bone-rattling rumble echoed through the hall.

The three of you froze in your tracks.

"Uh…" Ace’s voice cracked. "That was the wind, right?"

Another rumble followed, this time accompanied by a tremor that shook dust from the ancient rafters above.

Your heart plummeted. "Ace. Deuce."

"Yeah?" Their voices came in unison.

“…I fucking hate you two.”

It all happened in a blur.

Ace shrieking, Deuce yanking him by the collar— you think the two of them blindly threw around some of their weapons all for three seconds, before they bolted back down the corridor. And you in all your inexperienced glory… made the terrible, terrible mistake of looking back— something Ace and Deuce hard learned the hard way to never do. Something you couldn’t have known not to do.

The creature that emerged from the shadows stole the breath from your lungs. Black scales gleamed like a finely polished obsidian, and its enormous wings stretched out, blotting out the light trickling through the panes of the windows. Eyes like shining pools of emerald— and though it had no pupils, or any slits you’d associate with all things reptilian, you knew that it must be glaring down at you.

Deuce was right. Of course such an impossibly large structure… would be made to house an impossibly large creature.

You tried to swallow, but your throat had turned to sandpaper.

The dragon moved so very slow, each step sending tremors through the floor that reverberated up your legs. Its wings curled inward— even folded they dwarfed your form— giving the illusion that it loomed even closer than it already did. If you had to guess, you’d say it was at least fifty feet long.

You stood immobile. Every gasp was painful to your lungs, heavy with the scent of ash and metal, and every shallow breath you managed only served to fill your insides with that suffocating presence. Your limbs betrayed you, rooted to the spot as if the sheer weight of your terror had anchored you to the floor— some poor joke played by your body, leaving you to face this monstrosity upright; a lamb awaiting slaughter.

Your breath hitched as it lowered its head, its sharp snout a mere few feet from you now. It sniffed its surroundings, a low growl rumbling deep within its chest. The sound so loud it vibrated down your spine to the rest of your body, and the pull of air so strong it almost brought you closer to the dragon.

…In being the local bookworm, you’d read about death a great many times. Reports, studies, stories— all speculations and beliefs of what it must feel like to be inches away from death— to know you're about to have your life taken from you. To have your life flash before your eyes was such a timeless concept… something you'd admittedly thought of in the past. You had always contemplated how you’d die— what it would be like at the end of your life. But never would you have thought it would be like this. So visceral, so immediate, so unrelentingly real.

And as you stood in the face of certain peril, head beginning to grow hazy in overwhelm, there was only one conclusion to be drawn, one conclusion to be written within those odd reports, studies, stories—

Life does not flash before the eyes. There are no poignant memories or final epiphanies to bring you solace. Instead, you are entirely in the moment, every fiber of your being hyper-aware of the being before you. 

Is this truly how you die? Will you stand in place like a fool— let yourself die before you can hardly experience life? This can’t be. 

All you’d hoped for was to become close to your only true friends once more— and look where that led you. Straight into the jaws of an inconsolable beast, ready to end your life for simply stepping past an entrance.

The realisation clawed its way through the reaches of your mind. 

What a cruel jest, this all was.

You’d read about moments like this— when sheer terror renders someone deathly still, when survival instincts fail, and they can only wait for death to claim them. You’d always assumed that, if ever faced with such a fate, you would at least scream and run. But no— here you stood, the perfectly pathetic portrait of fear, awaiting the inevitable.

You are nothing to this creature. 

Every emotion, thought, memory, and experience that has made you who you are— it might as well be dust on the wind. You are but another insect to be ground beneath its heel, another trespasser to be erased from existence.

And yet, a desperate, absurd thought flickered to life in the back of your mind. If this was truly the end, why not go out with words? You were, after all, a bard. Words were all you had— all you ever excelled at. Maybe, just maybe, they could save you now. Or, at the very least, delay what was coming to you.

"Y-You are…" you stammered, your voice barely more than a whisper, "you are magnificent. Truly. To stand in the presence of such power and beauty… I— I can hardly believe it."

The words tumbled out shaky but oddly eloquent, as if your fear had sharpened your tongue rather than silenced it.

"If this is how I die," you continued, your trembling hands clutching the lyre so tightly your fingers ached, "then I suppose… I can’t think of a more fitting end than being claimed by a creature as awe-inspiring as you.”

The words barely got to settle in before the dragon’s glare sharpened. Its wings stretched, the tips brushing the walls, making the vast hall feel small. …If anything, the flattery only seemed to agitate it further— and as it directed that nasty glare onto you, its expression was impossible to misread;

It wasn’t buying your bullshit.

You froze, feeling uncomfortable beads of perspiration form at your brow. This wasn’t working. Of course it wasn’t working! What kind of dumbass tries to butter up a dragon like this? You were seriously, seriously done for. Your shoulders slumped in defeat, the weight of its stare pressing you further down. The act, the excuses— they all melted away, leaving only the raw truth. 

In the face of death, is it really worth not being yourself?

“Alright, listen man, I’m sorry. I give up, damn…” you admitted, "I shouldn’t have come here. None of us should have. I didn’t mean to disturb you, or your home, or anything else. I didn’t even WANT to be here. I was just trying to get on my friends’ good sides, y’know? I mean, they’re all I have— otherwise I’d just be a sore loser stuck in my home with nobody to talk to but the pigeons in my ceiling."

Truly, is it worth wasting your last moments? 

…You know what? If this damned lizard was going to kill you, it might as well hear all of your life problems first. Let it be known that you are more than just vermin— that it is taking your life away before you can even make it all right.

“I mean, all I do is sit in my room all day reading books and strumming the lyre all night for what— less than minimum wage? I’m not interested in your ‘treasure’ don’t get me wrong, but I just wanted ONE thing to spice up my life, you know? It’s just so frustrating being… being…” You paused, stumbling over your words.

“Being so damn idle all the time.”

The dragon stilled. The growl in its throat subsided, replaced by an eerie silence that felt, strangely, even heavier than its anger. It tilted its head slightly, as if your new words had been entirely unexpected. The nasty glare had yet to fade, but upon further inspection of its face, there was something different in its gaze now. It wasn’t anger, but rather it was something else entirely— Curiosity, perhaps? …Nevertheless, encouraged by the lack of immediate incineration, you continued.

“Now I’m going to fucking die for just trying to look out for my friends. Do you know how pathetic that is? To go out for ONCE in your life only for it to end so abruptly. I’ve hardly seen twenty winters— I can’t even legally DRINK in any of the taverns I play in. Would a dragon like you know what that feels like—?” 

You paused, your own words cutting you deep. Are you really going to die with nobody to hear your last words but a merciless dragon? What a pathetic fucking death.

At your sudden silence, the creature’s massive eyes narrowed— fully studying you. Then, after what felt like an eternity, it huffed— a short, sharp sound that sent a gust of warm air ruffling your hair. Its posture eased just a little, and you almost dared to hope that you weren’t about to be a snack.

"…Ah,” you leaned your head back in defeat, examining the ornate decor of the ceiling above you, “you really are magnificent, you know." 

The words slipped out before you could think them over. As you looked back at him, into his eyes… this time there was no ulterior motive, no desperate attempt to placate. It was the simple truth, spoken without expectation.

“All my life, I’ve only read about things like you. Dragons. Faeries that watch over sleeping children. Talking gargoyles that come to life… They were all precious stories in picture-books of unknown authors that I clung to while the other children played outside. I could only dream of seeing things as marvelous as you. Everyone else, even those two jackasses…” 

Your took a peek to the nearest window, thinking about Ace and Deuce— you wondered how far they must have gotten, by now.

“They all fantasised about slaying great beasts like you while I only ever dreamed of getting to SEE one.”

“…And how I so feel like a fool, being the only child to be killed by one, now.”

You couldn’t place the feeling in your chest— nor could you place the look in the dragon’s eyes, anymore.

Now… one thing about you is that once you begin to talk, you never seem to be able to quiet yourself. Thoughts spill into voice— words that spill into a spiel— and soon, that stream becomes a river too swift to dam.

Perhaps, in this case, it was the fear wound tight within your chest. Perhaps it was despair— despair of the last rites belonging to a person who knows they are not long for this world. Or perhaps— and most shamefully perhaps— it was because some wretched part of you liked being listened to… even if your audience was a beast large enough to gobble an army whole.

“…It is wonderful. Your home, I mean. I’ve never seen anything quite like it. I never even knew such… grand structures could exist. I can’t even begin to think about how much effort must have gone into constructing something like this. This kind of architecture just isn't possible for humans, I’m sure of it.”

“Honestly, it’s not even fair.” You continued, shifting your grip on the lyre. “People like me… We’re not… afforded the luxury to see things like this. We read about them. Hell, maybe even dream about them when it’s raining too hard outside and we’ve got nothing better to do.”

You gesture vaguely at the spires, the windows, the endless dark beauty around you. “And now it’s all just… here. Right in front of me. It’s like falling into the pages of the oldest book on the highest shelf. You know, the ones you’re not supposed to touch because they’re so fragile and cursed and probably bound in someone’s skin.”

Your voice trembled on a laugh. Now you find yourself remembering the old, superstitious woman who ran the local bookshop. A little sweet and a little crude. Clearly lived to see many things. Sometimes, she reminded you of yourself— of who you would become. A lonely lady with nobody to talk to but those who would kindly spare a little time out of their day to lend an ear. That’s what you did for her. And oh, she filled your head with such magnificent stories… and warnings that were twice as so. You always found her endearing, but now you realise you should’ve invested a little more than just affection when listening to her— for she was completely right; ‘Never fuck around and find out’.

“And I’m not even going to get to tell anyone about it. That’s the worst part, really. All of this. Every column, every decor, every inch of this ridiculously excessive, ludicrous chandelier— what is WITH this, anyway? Did you bedazzle it with your entire hoard?” 

You pressed the heel of your palm into your forehead in an attempt to soothe the oncoming headache. “It’s not fair. It’s really not fair— YOU’RE not fair. Am I really going to get slimed by an overgrown lizard with six limbs? Why do you have four legs and two wings? Is that biologically feasible—?”

“Do you play…”

The voice that reached you did not reach like any other you’ve heard. 

Perhaps it would be wrong to even refer to it as something to be heard. The words arrived all at once, like cold iron plunged straight into your brain— inside you before you even registered they were said. A voice with no mouth. A breath without ever having been breathed. It clawed its way into your head, heavy and wrong, vibrating beneath your skin. You did not hear this dragon speak— rather you felt it. Something never meant for a human’s mind. 

“…As well as you prattle?”

Do you play… Do you play… Do you—

It looped ceaselessly within the confines of your mind, ricocheting against the walls of your skull until it bloomed into a headache. Yet, by sheer force of will, you bit the inside of your cheek, willing the voice into silence.

“Uh—” you managed, voice cracking in a sharp wince as the sound of your own vocals nailed the coffin on your internal agony, “…depends on what you want played…?”

“Anything that will convince me to spare your life.”

Fortunately for you, the second time he spoke settled in your mind with greater clarity than the first. Yet it was hardly a comfort, for the only thought that gripped you in that instant was that you would much prefer to die here and now. Were you… really understanding this correctly? Did this dragon honestly mean to… Must you really—

Play your stupid little lyre to a dragon to save your life?

“…Just kill me…” 

Only a fool would mistake the growl that followed as anything but a warning. Low and guttural, it rolled from deep within his chest and rattled the very air, vibrating through the floor and up your legs. He stepped forward, one singular footfall—

That was all it took to send a primal jolt of terror through your spine.

“NO— No no NO—!” You scrambled back, clutching your lyre tighter to your  chest. “That was just— a force of habit, okay?! Just sarcasm! I didn’t mean it, I swear—!”

You shut your mouth so fast your teeth ached within the muscles of your jaw.

Music. He wanted music… Okay. You could do music. You’ve done music for coin, for food, for polite applause and for drunken sobbing. You’ve done it at weddings, at funerals, in taverns so loud no one even noticed. Surely, this was no different… except for the whole ‘dragon threatening to end your miserable life’ part. You shifted your grip on the instrument, fingers twitching. Think… Your hands were trembling, so you should play something easy… Something that always works, that gets a reaction from the crowd just from a few plucks drawn from muscle memory…

And so— 

Greensleeves.

Reliable… check. Calming… double check. The song that makes even the angriest drunk at the far table soften his glare and listen if only for a moment and hopefully, in your case, enough to soothe the slightly sadistic— who the hell makes a poor bard play for their life?— dragon before you… hopefully check?

Still, there was something humourlessly funny about it all. A song written for a queen… by the man who would later send her to the executioner’s block. That’s how some rumours go. You glanced at the dragon— your possible executioner— and huffed a weak breath of laughter through your nose.

Fitting, you thought. How very fitting.

You don’t think he’d know the tune or its history. You doubt he cares… But you care. That’s the joke, isn’t it? Playing the supposed ballad of an ill-fated queen while trying to soothe the king of the castle who could very well kill you before the last note. The notion almost pulls a dry laugh from your lungs. Just why the hell have you of all people ended up in this situation? But if there had to be a light at the end of the tunnel, however… you would like to think that you're rather skilled with your fingers— adept enough, at least, to strum a lyre with confidence. So if this was the task required to preserve your miserable life, perhaps you haven’t drawn the worst hand imaginable… yet.

The melody that spilled forth was as lulling as it usually was— each note coaxed into existence by trembling fingers that, thankfully, needed not be steady to sound true. The lyre didn’t betray your panic, for its strings sang the same whether touched by grace or desperation. The sound drifted, delicate and sure, and were you not the one clinging to life with every pluck, you think you could almost fall asleep to it.

Truthfully, you dreaded the moment the final note would fall silent. So you slowed the tempo, drawing out each chord as long as your trembling fingers would allow, desperate to stretch the moment between life and whatever came after. If this was to be your death ballad, then better it last— a painful, aching farewell rather than a sharp, sudden cut. The thought gnawed at you, and a persistent ache twisted low in your belly; what fate awaited you once the music faded?

And when the dreaded moment finally arrived… silence was not what you were expecting. Your death, perhaps. A growl. Maybe even an ego-shattering belittlement for mediocre playing— anything but silence. And after enduring the excruciating discordance of experiencing the creature’s voice for the first time… you could say you were qualified to know that his silence was infinitely worse. You wiped your clammy palms against the folds of your skirt, fingers trembling despite yourself. Your eyes flicked upward, searching his immense face— almost pleading, though you’d never want to admit it aloud. 

The dragon’s massive head tilted, his glowing eyes narrowing as he studied you. Then, with a deliberate slowness that made your heart skip, he lowered himself closer… and the faintest puff of air brushed against your face as he sniffed around.

“Uhm…” 

You breathed out, flinching backward as his massive snout brushed against you. The roughness of his scales was undeniable— each one like a hardened shield, easily the size of your hand, scraping softly against the tender skin of your chest. You squirmed, eyes fluttering closed as your lips parted just barely before pressing into a thin line of restrained breath. Times like these were when you cursed the low neckline of your kirtle— as turning your head away only bared more of your neck to him. The heat was so scorching you swore it would melt you down to the bone.

For a long, heavy pause, you stayed just like that; eyes wound shut in anticipation of something more. Every exhale from the dragon stirred the fabric of your clothes with a force more powerful than any storm’s gust, and you were almost convinced a spike of fire would follow.

“Play it again.”

It was a request no sane person would dare refuse. So there you stood, like some hapless jester, fumbling to recreate the melody you’d just played. This time, though, you let the notes unfurl as they were meant to, each one ringing truer than before. The dragon seemed to notice the difference in quality; his great head inched nearer, closing the space between you. You could only assume he was studying your hands, tracking the nimble dance of your fingers across the strings.

It was on his fourth time demanding the same song in a row that you paused. Your brows knitted together as you stared up at him, confused. “You want to hear the same song again? Would you not rather I play something else?”

"Do as I say. There will be time enough to wring every last melody from that clever little head of yours… but for now, I wish to hear that song.”

The words sank in slowly, much akin to spilled ink bleeding into paper— seeping deeper, staining more than they should. ‘Time enough’. Enough for what? Enough for him to hear every song you’d ever known, ever made… to keep you until there were none left?

You forced a laugh, though it came out thinner than you’d have liked. “Right… ‘time enough’. I’m guessing that means I’ll have to charge by the hour.”

The dragon stilled completely. For a moment you’d begun to wonder if you’d broken him— but eventually his nostrils flared, sending another puff of hot air over your face. “You will not be leaving until I say so.”

“Oh…!” Your fingers tightened around the strings. “So… I’m under your patronage, then?”

Slowly, he bowed his massive head until it pressed heavily against the floor, his eyes locking onto yours with a piercing, jagged sharpness that sent a cold shiver clawing beneath your skin.

“Label it as you might, but in the end, your freedom is no longer yours to barter.”

You forced another, even shakier laugh— clinging to the tattered edges of your playful facade. Some instinct within you whispered that if you kept playing dumb, you’d soon be playing dead— but nonetheless, you persisted. 

“B-Barter…? What, like a pig? Two pigs? For my lyre? I’ll take it—”

“Foolish mortal.” 

The dragon snapped at last, for it seemed even Lady Luck had become tired of your imbecilic ploys. 

"Must I spell it out for you? I intend to keep you for myself. You will speak. You will play. And it will be for me, and only for me— whenever I so desire. Now, the song?”

The harsh finality of his words stunned you into complete, feeble stillness. Whatever gambit you’d been trying to play was dismissed outright— This creature wanted no part of your tricks or pleas. And in that moment, it became painfully clear to you that your fate rested solely at the impulses of this beast. 

There was really no way out of this. 

Quietly, you accepted that you might very well end up as nothing more than dragon kibble, and let your fingers resume their candence— the melody of Greensleeves.

At the very least, for all that, you were able to console yourself with the notion that Ace and Deuce had gotten away unscathed. So perhaps, in the grand scheme of things… this wasn’t the worst possible outcome. And in any case—

When, in all the years of your life, had you not taken the suffering for your boys’ betterment, anyway?

𝐎𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐅𝐈𝐑𝐒𝐓 𝐃𝐀𝐘, 𝐓𝐇𝐄 dragon seemed utterly enthralled by every minor thing you did. He was no stranger to commands, either, and you were not one to deny a monster within its own dominion. For a good hour, he was transfixed by the way your body moved— so he instructed you to walk, to run, to leap, to climb atop heaps of gold… and then delighted in the way you slipped halfway through that. But to be fair, you couldn’t exactly gain proper footing on a great stack of metal. 

Furthermore… he appeared to be fond of suspending you from various heights to assess the strength of your arms— a habit you most definitely did not share an affection for in return. In fact, he seemed drawn to the idea of arranging you in different corners of the chamber altogether… almost like finding the perfect place on a shelf to set down a flowerpot. So in a matter of that first day, you were intimately acquainted with the vast cavern he called his own.

But for all his partiality to seeing you in different corners of his hoard, the same could not be said for the rest of the castle. On the second day, you were near certain he would kill you when he cast that glare down upon you for setting a single foot past the entrance’s threshold. …After that, you did not try again. The subsequent nights were spent curled on an old carpet (this particular one reminded you of the one displayed in your own home) spread across a mound of gold, so high that every shift or stir set coins sliding. It was a trap disguised as bedding; if you moved, the sound would wake him.

Though you were no doubt used to a solitary life, this one was unbearably dull— the sort of dull that made hours drag like weighted chains. Day in and day out, you found yourself trapped in the same cycle of gilded idleness, with nothing to measure the passing time but the whims of your captor. And those whims, you soon learned, could be mercurial at best. Some days he would lounge nearby, trading quips with you as if the two of you were old companions; other days, he became so cold and severe you swore the very air in the cavern sharpened around you, and you found yourself imagining the pyre that would follow. 

Yet without fail, what always framed this idleness was the music you brought him. Other nights, when you weren’t lazing around (the dragon was quite the sleeper himself, you see, so  his routine quickly became yours), you would pluck the strings until dawn. You offered him every melody you knew, every melody you were refining, and every melody you could conjure on the spot. Above all, though, his most beloved remained the first you’d ever given to him— Greensleeves. 

You weren’t sure how many days had passed— only that it was several, and that some days you went without speaking to the creature at all. The silence should have been a relief… but instead it gnawed at you, until the only highlight of your day became those rare moments he deigned to speak. You told yourself it was only because it broke the monotony— because in this endless, stagnant gold-dusted prison, even a single new word was a change in the atmosphere. Yet somewhere between one meaningless exchange and the next, you began to notice how your ears pricked at the sound of his voice, how you found yourself measuring time not by the sun or moon, but by when he might next decide you were worth probing at.

You knew not if he had a name, or if he even knew yours— for you never told him, and he never asked for it.  But over the days that ignorance festered into an insatiable curiousity, and the longer you remained in his company, the more intolerable it became not to know. Every word he withheld felt deliberate, a game you hadn’t agreed to play but could not stop participating in. You caught yourself watching him when you thought he wouldn’t notice— straining to glean something, anything, from that tilt of his head or the pause between his sentences. Even the smallest slip, the briefest hint, felt like a stolen jewel in a hoard you had no right to.

In the end— and you had realised this suddenly, with much bitterness— he had essentially made you into his mirror; just as fixated, just as incapable of letting go. Your hunger for the workings of his mind was as ravenous as his hunger for yours.

Perhaps it was because of this that you never ran, even when the chance was laid bare before you. 

On occasion, the dragon would vanish into the wilderness, returning with some unfortunate creature— scorched beyond recognition, its flesh blackened and bitter, the sort of meal meant only to keep you alive rather than thriving. (It was such a pitiful sight that you felt cruel each time you sliced into it with the knife at your girdle— the knife Ace had pressed into your hand on the eve of your birthday.) And during these times, when the dragon was gone, the opportunity presented itself to you on a silver platter. The world beyond was there, waiting, the open mouth of freedom gaping wide before you. Yet… your feet remained rooted. So the only taste of freedom you permitted yourself came in those rare, fleeting moments when you leaned out of the gargantuan windows (and you mean this quite literally… they were large enough for the dragon to crawl out) of the chamber, flask in hand, to catch rainwater for drink.

Ah… You remembered the times you’d complained of thirst, buzzing in the dragon’s ear (the general direction of it, at least) like some persistent mosquito. He would only huff (just a singular huff, without fail) and turn his head away— yet, almost unfailingly, a storm would break minutes later. The coincidence occurred so often you began to wonder if the rain answered to him, bending itself to his whims as easily as the rest of your world seemed to.

Because of all this… at the very least, life here had been survivable. You had food, you had water— and little else, perhaps, but that was enough. Enough to keep breathing, enough to carry on, and in these idle days… you were able to get by on the fact that this small mercy had seemed sufficient. 

…However, as of today— as you lay atop your carpet staring up at the unnecessarily high ceiling— 

Sufficient… was not that sufficient.

There was a certain… ‘problem’ with your life here— one that you could no longer ignore. Every part of you strained toward confronting it, until it made your skin crawl, your garments clung damp and close, and you felt swallowed whole by your own body. 

With a weary sigh, you let yourself sink down, sliding along the mound of gold until the coins shifted and clattered beneath your weight. The sound stirred the resting dragon; But when he saw your path bent not toward escape, but toward him… he merely closed his eyes again— completely unbothered by your presence.

“Ahem… Oh, fair dragon… I DO believe I am wasting away inside this dreary place!” 

Your voice carried an annoyingly theatrical flourish as you beckoned. Had you been any more familiar with the beast, you might have clambered onto his immense frame and made your boredom his problem. But alas… intimacy had not yet reached such heights— so you were reduced to planting yourself before his head, hands holding tightly to your lyre lest he request music as some odd payment.

One great eyelid lifted, revealing a pool of green that regarded you with indifference. (For a brute lizard, he was disarmingly expressive— and that made the weight of his empty stares all the more cutting when he chose to use them.) But after a single second his eye shut again, head angling away with deliberate dismissal.

“I do not recall requesting the sound of your voice or music. Why do you disturb my rest?” 

Your jaw fell open at the sheer audacity. (Yet beneath the offense was a flicker of gratitude; as it meant your strange companionship had evolved far enough that you could be sassed rather than sizzled. It was a dangerous kind of luck, perhaps, but luck all the same.) Still, you were not so easily deterred— so you darted around his muzzle once more, determined to recapture his attention.

“Won’t you at least hear me out…? I have a request… and— it’s an important request, too! I’ve been putting off asking you for days… But now it’s very unavoidable…!” 

The dragon did not agree to hear you out… but he did not refuse, either.

“I… I need…” 

Now that you actually stood here, having to say what you needed out loud… it dawned on you how odd (i.e, embarrassingly human and therefore belittling in the face of a mighty dragon) your ‘problem’ was. Your shoulders slumped, and you fidgeted, glancing around as if the walls themselves might bear witness to your mortification. 

“…I need to bathe…!” You admitted in a rush, each word heavier with embarrassment than the last. “It’s… it’s been a few days, and I’ve been… coping, yes, but… it’s— well, it’s uncomfortable, and, frankly, humiliating!”

The dragon cracked his eye open again, narrowing. “Bathe?” His tone was flat— and dare you say amused. “Surely, you can survive without it. You have managed thus far.”

“Yes!” You said, waving your hands— taking your instrument with it. “I have MANAGED! But I’m a human, remember…? We clean ourselves regularly, and I… I insist upon it! It’s only natural!”

A low, almost imperceptible bellow sounded from his throat, the closest thing he had to a laugh. He stood from where he laid, peering down at your ant-like form. 

“You… insist upon it?”

You puffed your chest out despite the heat rising in your face. “Yes, yes that’s right. I insist upon it.”

The dragon lowered his head, eyes boring into yours with unflinching scrutiny. 

“…Do not say that phrase again. Such language ill suits your youth. You sound like a fool.”

Yikes. You were quiet for a long time after that. 

“…So do I get to bathe, or…?”

What the dragon did next… it would only be right to say that it scared the living shit out of you.

His colossal jaws began to part, until a cavernous darkness framed by jagged pearls yawned before you. Heat and a faint smoky scent rolled over you, making your stomach pitch. You stumbled backward, a comically high-pitched scream tearing out of your throat. 

“Wait! Please don’t eat me! I didn’t mean—!”

“Shut up. Why would I eat you for that?” He interrupted sharply, the word vibrating through your body. “Just be quiet.”

The sheer absurdity of it struck you like a slap— this massive, terrifying dragon, scolding you like a schoolchild. Your terror cracked, and you froze mid-apology, lips pressed together to stifle the snort threatening to escape. Oops…

“Climb inside.” He ordered bluntly. “I am taking you outside. You will bathe in the mountains’ stream, but it’s quite a while to get there on foot. I have seen you move about— you’re not good at it. I shall carry you.”

…Ouch. You flinched, but forced yourself to ignore the jab at your physical capabilities. “C-climb… inside? You mean… like an alligator?”

A low exhale of impatience rolled from him. 

“…Yes, like an alligator. Now move.”

He tilted his monstrous head and, with an almost unnerving delicacy, scooped you into his maw. The gesture was more reptilian than draconic— really like an alligator ferrying its hatchlings— jaw unhinged just enough to cradle you in the cavern of his mouth. You hardly dared to breathe, lest a twitch of his tongue press you against the serrated ivory surrounding you.

Then the ground lurched. Stone groaned beneath his weight as he coiled through the tower’s circular chamber— your gilded idleness, your prison. For all its grandeur, you were beginning to resent it; the massive doors that never once opened for you unless it was to relieve yourself in the nearby chamberpot (and even then the dragon followed closely behind); the jewelled relics heaped in careless mounds; the shafts of light that pierced the gloom only when the sun angled through the windows— On such days, the chamber glittered like a cathedral of glass, colours scattering across the ceiling in rainbows, and it truly was a beautiful sight. …But more often than not, it had been little more than a dark vault, its treasures piled high as though mocking your insignificance.

The scrape of his talons along the walls reverberated as he pressed forward, squeezing through the window large enough to fit lesser beasts whole. 

And then, suddenly— wind.

You felt the air through the cracks of his mouth. Gone were the shadowed piles of metal and velvet— before you stretched an endless canvas of green and blue, rolling hills veined with rivers that caught the shining sun like threads of silver. The horizon unfurled into forests bristling like emerald seas, into distant mountains hazed in storybook blue. And the sky felt impossibly vast, clouds rearing like little castles of their own, shifting all the while.

Despite yourself, you leaned forward, craning your neck past the bars of his teeth to drink it all in. The wind whipped at your hair, tugged at your sleeves. For one delirious moment you felt as though you might tumble into the wide, bright world below— free at last.

“Back inside.” His voice came, low and warning. “Do you have a death wish, Child of Man?”

…But you barely heard him. Your heart pounded against your ribs as though trying to answer the sky itself, every page of every story you had ever read suddenly made real before your eyes.

“You have these sights around you all day and you choose to stay in that tower—?” You shouted, your voice nearly put away by the rush of wind.

“I have watched these lands for centuries, long before your bloodline ever came to be.” He responded, and that was all he chose to say.

“Oh… I guess even beautiful sights can get boring, huh…? You know what, I actually understand that. When I was a kid the whole town was my playground and then it became…” 

The words died off on your tongue, your shoulders sagging with them. At the mere thought of your hometown, your mind began to unravel. First came the memory of your solitude there— quiet, unremarkable, utterly stifling. Cobblestone streets washed in grey, hemmed in by rows of timber houses so tightly packed they seemed to lean over the narrow lanes. Air that always felt heavy, steeped in the dark smoke that came from a hundred chimneys. Yet the longer you dwelled on it, the sharper the irony became to you; For all its monotony… you found yourself missing it, now.

“It became merely the place you lived?”

“Huh?” You snapped out of it, blinking a few times in surprise. Hearing his voice invade your mind after thinking to yourself was always a sort of whiplash. “Oh, yeah! Just… where I lived. When you’re young everything seems so magical and when you’re grown it just…” You paused. “…I told you how I always read storybooks as a kid, right? Well… This is a sight straight out of one, I swear. Your… ‘mundane’ really is amazing.” 

“I would say your mundane holds its own fascinations, as well. But what draws me most is your sharpness of opinion. Only twenty winters you’ve lived to see, was it? How swiftly your kind ripens.”

…It seemed, perhaps, that fortune had favored you today— for the dragon seemed to be in a talkative mood for once. Such moments were rare, and you’d be damned to let this chance slip from your grasp.

“I just like to talk, that’s all!” You blurted, your voice fraying as the wind tugged it thin. In hindsight… maybe sticking your head out of his mouth to get a good view wasn’t the smartest idea.

A low, rumbling sound rolled in his throat— shaking you with it. His great wings beat once, twice, and the whole world seemed to shudder with the force of them. “That much is evident.” He said at last, his tone even. “And I would call it one of your strengths, little one. You… amuse me. When I was younger, I was often told that I was a quiet one myself.”

You gawked up at him, squinting past the press of his jaw. “Really?” The mental image of a cute, quiet little baby dragon got a snort out of you. “Can’t imagine you being young…” You muttered, a laugh finally breaking loose. “What, were you also once a tiny thing, getting scooped up in a bigger dragon’s mouth? Ooh! Wait— do all dragons carry their kids like this?”

“Hm.” He only hummed, and nothing else after that… leaving you to wonder if you’d actually close to the truth or missed embarrassingly by a mile. You were still caught in that thought when his voice finally followed;

“You may want to hold onto something.”

“Wha—?” 

Suddenly, your stomach was lurching out of your mouth alongside a scream. The world tilted on its axis, and you found yourself clinging to one of the dragon’s teeth. Wind battered your face, sharp and unrelenting, tearing tears from the corners of your eyes as the once dazzling outside spun into an incomprehensible blur of green and blue.

The dragon had plunged downwards… and like a complete and utter jackass— hadn’t bothered to actually warn you. The sheer drop made your insides somersault, so you pressed yourself tighter against the tooth— arms scrambling for purchase on smooth enamel. Every bone in your body swore you were about to be flung free, hurled into the dizzying expanse of sky.

But suddenly, as if the whole ordeal had never happened— all was still. At some point, you'd shut your eyes, and now they refused to open. You didn’t know where you were just yet, but as you stayed there in silence, you let yourself listen to the world around you. The low roar of rushing water rolled steady in your ears, a constant thunder that seemed to seep into your bones. Beneath it came the lighter sounds— the trickle of smaller streams, the soft lapping of water against stone, the sigh of a breeze stirring through unseen leaves.

And then— without ceremony— you were dropped. One moment surrounded by warmth and shadow, the next colliding with damp grass and stone, a startled yelp breaking out of you before you could stop it.

“Honestly!” You huffed, pushing yourself up, brushing at your clothes. “I could’ve climbed out on my own, you know—” You stopped, shaking your head with a mutter. “Whatever. Fine.”

“Oh? I believe what you mean to say is ‘thank you for bringing me here’.” His voice rolled over you, smooth as ever— if the dragon had eyebrows, you were certain one would be arched right now.

You froze. Then, with a reluctant sigh, you parroted back, “...Thank you for bringing me here.”

A soft puff of air came from his nostrils, and you could swear it was amusement.

At last, you dared to lift your eyes. The sight stole the rest of your irritation clean away. What you saw could only be compared to a scene being opened to you in a book— the kind that makes you wonder if such places could even exist outside of imagination. But the waterfall spilling into a clear, running stream cradled in by a meadow of bright, swaying green and scattered stone, with tall pines climbing skyward beyond was proof that they really, truly could. Your chest rose with a sigh you hadn’t meant to release. Almost without thinking, you stepped forward, drawn by the sheer beauty of it all.

The ground trembled with the weight of the dragon’s sudden growl. You froze mid-step, heart kicking against your ribs. The reminder was sudden and brutal; you weren’t here alone— nor were you even with a friend.

“Sorry—!” You blurted quickly, turning back toward him, hands raised in peace. “I’m not trying to run away. I just— this place is beautiful. I got a little carried away.”

“I brought you here to bathe. Do not run off, unless it is to the water.” 

To your relief, the dragon did not seem irritated. If anything, it felt more like a gentle correction. Swallowing, you turned toward a broad rock near the bank and moved to stand before it. Your hands found the ties of your bodice— but as you tugged them loose, unease prickled at the back of your neck. Slowly, you turned around to look at him once more.

“Uhm, can you… look away…?” 

He did not respond to that. So for a moment you hesitated, before continuing with what you were doing. With deliberate care, you pulled the lacing free, your kirtle slipping from your shoulders in one smooth motion to pool at your feet. One by one, you released the sleeves tacked over your shift, letting them join the rest of the fabric in a small heap. You were still clothed— your shift hung modestly over your form— but even so… you couldn’t help but feel a little more conscious of your body and your being under such an intense gaze.

“…I will do as I please.” He quipped suddenly, as if reminded abruptly that a response was still needed. “Now tell me, Child of Man… are such garments common where you come from?”

“Oh?” Your mouth parted in surprise. “You want to know about my clothes, is that it? Well… Yeah, it is common, I guess. Everyone wears uhm…” Your line of sight fell to the kirtle, now laid across a large rock. “Well, that right there is a kirtle. That’s the outer garment. If you’re not royalty, that is. Royalty will wear a gown over that, and—”

“I am aware of the garments of nobility. Tell me about you.”

You flinched at the interruption. There was no cruelty in his tone, and yet… he spoke with the kind of easeful command that left no room for disobedience. How could someone manage to speak like that in such a casual manner? 

“Me…?” You pointed to yourself, pursing your lips in thought. “…This is an old kirtle. I wear it when I’m running errands and don’t really care about what happens to it. Next to it is my girdle— that’s what I hold my flask and knife on, see?” You picked up the items, the ones you’d been sustaining yourself with for the past weeks. “I’ve never really understood the point in attaching a girdle book and well— pomanders would be nice but that’s much too expensive for me. And… this is my shift. And petticoat.” You ran your hands over the cloth on your body for emphasis. “There’s meant to be a bum pad too to support all the weight but I forgot it… Uhm, anyways, I… change and wash these often and that’s what helps keep the kirtle clean. That one is just a pain in the ass to wash…” 

You grumbled, reflecting back on all those dreadful wash days. It was times like those you truly did appreciate your mother, who used to take it upon herself to launder not only her family’s clothes but the neighbours’ as well. If she were still around, she would no doubt chide you for your disdain of washing.

“Oh! And these are my stockings. They’re tight on my skin so I never have to tie them in place like other people do.” 

You gathered the weight of your petticoat into your hands, lifting the firm fabric with care. Beneath it, your leg was sheathed in soft white— stockings pristine as porcelain. You’d long since outgrown them, but you took a satisfied sort of pride in how spotless you’d maintained them over the years. 

“I even say that they’re my lucky pair. That’s why I haven’t replaced them, you see…” A fond smile ghosted your lips. It was nice to talk about the niche things— things you’d kept to yourself with a quiet passion.

Then, as though doused with cold water, the warmth in your expression faltered.

Right. You were explaining stockings… to a dragon. You blinked hard, fighting the flush threatening to creep up your neck.

“So… yeah! That’s… what I wear.” You rushed, the words tumbling out in a panic. “And most people in my town wear it like that too. Uh, some people don’t bother to tack on extra sleeves because, well…” You gave a little gesture to the sleeves of your shift, flapping them for emphasis. “But I think extra sleeves are pretty, and they’re nice to perform in. The ones from the shifts are just so plain, you know? Actually, those ones over there were a gift from—”

Deuce. 

A gift from Deuce.

It had been raining that day, you remembered. Not hard— just the soft, steady kind that darkened cobblestones and made everything smell of petrichor thereafter. You’d been practicing an original composition beneath the awning of the smithy when he’d come bounding over, soaked to the bone, with a grin far too wide for someone dripping water onto your clothes.

The smithy was owned by a kindly widower with two children— a son and a daughter who reminded you far too much of yourself and Ace in your younger years. Perhaps that was why you so often chose to practice there, where you knew their curious ears would catch your music— especially the little boy, who thought you hadn’t been aware of his presence each time he hid behind the workbench. In time, it became your favoured haunt whenever you were not engaged in some performance— rivaled only by the old woman’s bookshop. More often than not, you could be found in one of those two places— so much so that your boys had long since learned to seek you there rather than at your own lonelier, emptier home.

Deuce hadn’t even waited for you to ask when he’d arrived in town or what he was doing there. He hadn’t said a word either— merely held out a strange parcel to you.

“I bartered for them in town!” He’d exclaimed, breathless and proud. “The man said he’d done work for nobles, even— and… well, you deserve nice things too.”

…You deserve nice things, too.

Your hand tightened around the folds of your petticoat, fingers curling into it until your own nails began to dig into your palm. For a moment, the forest around you seemed quieter, as though it, too, had been caught in the warmth of that memory. Every luxury you owned, from your beautiful sleeves to your beautiful knife— all of it was thanks to your boys. But then you shook your head— just enough to scatter the mist from your thoughts, just enough to return to the reality of where you were and who was watching you.

“They were a gift.” You said, voice quite soft now. “From a very good friend.” A pause. Then, with a sharper breath, you straightened your shoulders and cleared your throat. “Now… I have to bathe, so…” You met the dragon’s eyes, steady as you could manage. “Will you look away?”

The dragon did not speak for a long, long time.

“No. I do not think I will. I have not looked upon anyone in a very, very long time, you see… Allow me to indulge myself.” He said at last, and lowered his head so as to allow him a better view of you. 

Indulge…? Your shoulders tensed as you measured him in quiet disbelief. He truly meant to… watch you as you bathed? You swallowed thickly. …Well, you supposed there wasn’t any point in arguing. Not with something that could rend the forest apart with one lazy swipe of its claws. And certainly not with someone who thought your discomfort counted as indulgence. So you turned without a word, sliding your shoes off in the process, and you let the river greet you with its hush. Its waters trickled gently over stones worn smooth by centuries. Moss clung to the banks, soft and vibrant, and the air hung heavy with the scent of pine and something older still. 

Your hands trembled as you peeled your lucky little stockings from your legs. One, then the other— timid and slow, folded neatly away. You moved on to your shift without pause, lifting it over your head in a single breathless motion, folding it with a similar, rushed sort of precision.

The breezy air pressed in at once, cool against the places of your body it ought not touch. Places another person— let alone a dragon— ought not see. And only then, as you stood fully exposed, did you cover yourself— one arm curling instinctively across your chest, the other dipping low in a gesture both modest and childlike.

The dragon chortled. His head tilted, ever so slightly, as his eyes grazed slowly over you in a manner too measured to be anything but deliberate.

“You… You’re seriously laughing at me right now—?”

“Oh, why do you look at me so?” He asked, voice lilting with false innocence. “Your cheeks are flushed, and you seem even smaller than before. Surely you are not… embarrassed? Tell me— why is that, little one?” 

…What an unfair dragon. That stare of his couldn’t possibly warrant anything but embarrassment. Had it come from a person— you’re sure it would have sent ghost-hands trailing down the slopes of your hips, cupping your breasts without so much as a whisper of permission.

“Humans—” You winced at the crack in your voice. “We don’t… show ourselves bare to just anybody! You wouldn’t know because you’re… well, you’re…” You squeezed your legs together to conceal the meeting of your thighs, using your now free hand to gesture vaguely at the dragon’s entirety. “You’re a dragon! You’re covered in scales…! I don’t have scales.”

“You don’t have scales, no.” The dragon agreed, and you couldn’t tell if he was missing your point out of genuine ignorance or pure spite. “Quite the observant Child of Man, you are.” 

…So it was pure spite.

“Oh, haha.” You laughed dryly, completely unimpressed. “Yes, very funny. Quite the funny dragon, you are. Now SHUT UP.” You huffed, inching toward the river with the stiff caution of someone very much aware they were being watched.

It was harder than it should’ve been— because you refused to turn your bare back to the creature. Instead, you moved in clumsy reverse, each step accompanied by the rustle of grass and your own mounting dread. Then, your foot caught on a root— or a stone, or a curse sent by your worst enemies— and you very nearly wobbled straight into the water. A sharp yelp escaped you as your arms pinwheeled for balance. The cool splash that followed as you stumbled knee-deep was insult enough. 

But worse— so much worse— was the dragon’s laughter.

“Ugh…” You grimaced, kneeling on the riverbed with your hands curled into fists on your lap. You glared up at the dragon, a newfound sense of bravery now that you were covered by the water. “Yeah, yeah, laugh it up!” 

The dragon only responded by inching his massive head closer— close enough that the weight of his breath stirred the water and sent your hair dancing behind you. You squinted against the gust and stiffened as the tip of his snout brushed against your shoulder— then he pressed.

“Hey—!”

With a gentle nudge, he tipped you clean off balance. You fell back with a splash, the cold closing over your chest before you managed to scramble upright again— sputtering, soaked, and thoroughly humiliated.

He chuffed at that. A pleased sound, low and rumbling, not unlike a purr.

“Go on.” He urged, eyes gleaming with that slow-burning curiosity of his. “Bathe. As you normally would.”

You froze.

He tilted his head— again. That strange little habit, as though mimicking the mannerisms of something more human than beast.

“I want to see.”

The river curled at your waist as you reached down, cupping water in your hands and dragging it up the length of your arms. There was no cloth, no soap, no oils to perfume the air— only the biting chill of the stream and the weight of his expectant gaze. It was either this dragon was a massive (and you mean that quite literally) pervert or…

“Oh. You want me to tell you, huh?” You murmured, voice barely louder than the sound of the current. “You want to hear how I do it, am I right?”

The dragon was silent for only a moment. 

“Tell me.”

“...Okay.”

You reached again, dragging water up over your chest this time. Your hands swept over your collarbones, then slowly circled— palms flat, pressure firm— just above the area of your breasts.

“I start here.” You said, as clinically as you could manage. “Over the chest and under the arms. It’s where I sweat the most.”

Your hands slipped lower, dipping beneath the surface, dragging slowly along the undercurve of your chest. The motion was smooth, habitual— but under his stare, it felt foreign. Lecherous. Was it wrong to feel violated? He’s just a dragon, after all. Though his gaze may have felt like that of a man… he still wasn’t.

But as you worked your way down your sides, your waist, your hips— you couldn’t convince yourself of that. You shifted, twisting lightly as your palms swept over the place where thigh met pelvis.

“…I wash here after.” You whispered. “And then here. Between the legs. It’s… delicate, so I go gently.”

Your fingers slowed at your inner thighs, a feigned act of precision masking your trembling. Then your hands slid back up, along the swell of your hips and the gentle dip of your lower belly.

“Then the arms. The legs. Behind the knees. The back of the neck.”

He’s just a dragon. You hated that your voice had gone breathless. He’s just a dragon.

“Every part.” You finished finally. “Until the skin is clean. Uhm…” You quickly submerged yourself beneath the surface of the water, relieved that you were done with it. “It’s normally easier at home because I have a brush to scrub myself with. And… soap. I mean, you can clean yourself with water and your hands just fine but… it’s just nicer with soap and…” 

You trailed off. You couldn’t hide your bashfulness behind rambling any longer. …Why was he staring at you so intently? Your skin prickled at the sight. He’s just a dragon. He’s just a dragon… You had to keep reminding yourself, over and over. He’s just a dragon… but why did his wandering eyes, wandering over every bare inch of you feel so human? 

He hadn’t moved since you’d begun, nor spoken. It was as if he were memorising the sight of you… and not with the hunger you’d expect from a predator of his kind— but with a strange, unnerving persistence that made you wish you could vanish beneath the riverbed entirely. Is this what blushing brides felt on their wedding nights—? You wondered. It was only when you were completely finished did his voice break the uncomfortable silence;

“Play for me, Child of Man, the song I like best. Let me hear it, just as you are. I want to remember you like this, for I find I much prefer you in this state.”

…Any discomfort you may have felt— clearly, it mattered not to him. So you did the only thing left to you; reached for your lyre, where it rested beside the folded remnants of your dignity, and kneeled once more in the water, body still bared to this creature of stories. And you knelt there in the river, and you played— fingers steady despite the heat of his looking. 

And you pretended for your own sake that the music— Greensleeves— was for your ears alone. That in this act of playing, you may reclaim something that no eyes, not even his, can take from you.

𝐀𝐅𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐃𝐀𝐘, 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐃𝐑𝐀𝐆𝐎𝐍 allowed you to explore the forests— as long as he was there to accompany you. He had taken to overseeing— like a parent supervising their giddy child running around the streets— never interacting or partaking in the fun, but never letting you out of his sight. But even if he were not there, you couldn’t say you would have been alone. As you soon realised… the woods were far from empty. 

One day you strayed from the path with a laugh, chasing after the scatter of wildflowers that grew in the shade of the towering pines. Sunlight spilled through the branches in broken shafts, catching on your hair as you darted from mossy rock to fern-covered hollow. It felt almost like play, (and it would have been exactly like when you were a child, had it not been for the absence of your boys) though you could sense the dragon’s gaze following your every step, heavy and unblinking. Still, you spun through the clearing as if the whole forest might belong to you, and for a fleeting moment you’d nearly forgotten the dragon’s presence. 

It was just then, you noticed, that there were tiny lights which blinked in the canopy. Darting quick and erratic, they couldn’t have possibly been beams of the sun. In a sense, they almost looked like fireflies… and upon further inspection you realised they were not fireflies or any insects to name— but rather little beings no larger than your hand. They came in twos and threes, flickering just past your vision— glimpses of wings, comforting laughter that sounded just as the windchimes of your town did. They circled you the way minnows dart about a dropped crumb, not quite daring to touch, not quite able to resist. 

It continued this way for a few days, until they realised that the dragon took you here quite frequently— and that you were a new addition to their world. So eventually, they learned to interact with you as a dynamic being, rather than something to be observed.

And today, it seemed, the silent little things had unanimously decided to confront you directly. 

One creature stood on your shoulder and pulled at a strand of your hair until you swatted it away by reflex. You felt terribly bad at first, but if anything, it only served as entertainment to them. Another hovered near your ear, whispering syllables like secrets in a language you thought you understood at first— only to listen closer and hear nothing but nonsense. When you tried to swat at that one, three more tugged at your boots until you stumbled. Their laughter rose, the sound of the wonderful windchimes, high and bright.

You were absolutely charmed. They plucked flowers and wove them into chains to drape around your wrists, your throat, your crown; they tugged your fingers toward them and danced along your palms as though the creases in your skin were paths to follow. You laughed and played along— because how could you not? Nothing in your books or stories could compare to the delight of having them here, weaving daisies into your hair and tugging at your nose.

A bold one fluttered before your face, balancing a ring of blooms precariously on your head. You clapped your hands at their craft, only to feel a sudden warmth stir the crown. The dragon had lowered his head to peer at you more closely, and with a faint, amused huff of breath, the crown tumbled from your hair into your lap.

Your laughter spilled out— but for once, the faeries did not share it. In the instant the dragon’s shadow fell over you, their tinkling mirth snapped silent. They darted for the safety of leaf and branch, vanishing so quickly the clearing seemed empty again. Only when he drew back did one or two daring stragglers peek out from the undergrowth, their glow faint and watchful.

“You’re scaring them!” You chided playfully, putting the crown back atop your head. “These are my only friends now, you know. Please don’t run them off like you did my other ones.” 

“Ha.” The dragon laughed dryly. “They merely observe the proper respect that I require. You alone are the exception, little one.”

You tilted the crown slightly, glancing toward the shrubbery where more faeries trickled out. Watching, but not quite approaching— like how they first treated you. 

“Huh. So I guess they’re respectful, huh? Can’t say the same about me. You’ve really got to stop sabotaging my friendships, though.” You murmured, still smiling, though your thoughts had begun to drift elsewhere. For a moment, you imagined Ace and Deuce running through these woods instead of you. How would they have reacted, seeing these creatures? How you wish they could be here to experience it with you.

“Hm? What is the matter? Your mind is suddenly elsewhere.” The dragon said quietly, almost as if to tease. “Do not tell me you are thinking of those two?”

“Who? Ace and Deuce?” You questioned, not quite present in the conversation. But as soon as you uttered their names… 

Everything in the forest stilled. 

The tinkling of the faeries vanished; their movements froze, suspended in midair. Every sound seemed to drain from the clearing. The dragon’s stare snapped to you, sudden and unwavering, his attention fixed with an intensity that made the air feel heavy.

“Those are their names, then?” He leaned in, so much so that his snout brushed against you.

…You hadn’t really thought about it. Hadn’t really dwelled on the old, cautionary tales— the warnings murmured about the nature of fae. You’d assumed the ones you were warned about would be different than the ones you interacted with here, considering that these ones didn’t seem malicious. And therefore… you hadn’t really thought about one of the biggest cautions;

Never give a fae your name. 

A cold shiver ran down your spine. Words caught in your throat, and for a heartbeat, you froze, unsure how to respond. Surely, if that superstition were true… it could not have applied to your boys, as well?

Then, forcing your voice steady, you shifted the topic. 

“Ah, those boys… always argued about the silliest things.” You began, describing the way Ace and Deuce bickered over trivial matters, laughing quietly at the memories. 

You told of their little quirks, the clever tricks they played on one another… things you knew the faeries would find appealing. But you never, ever repeated their names. You just spoke about them, letting the warmth of the recollection fill your words, attempting to draw attention away from what you’d just revealed. At some point, you weren’t even sure of what you were saying— only that, at the very least, you weren’t confirming or denying the dragon’s question.

By the time you had stopped— and this was only because you’d become overwhelmed by the dragon’s undivided attention to every last word— the forest seemed a little more normal now.

The dragon was silent, looking down at you rather blankly.

“…You speak of these… cowardly fools rather fondly.”

Your chest tightened at the words, but you didn’t respond immediately. You shifted the crown slightly, your fingers lingering over the delicate petals as if they could anchor your thoughts. …Cowardly fools? Fools, for sure. But… cowardly?

“My friends…” You corrected carefully, almost to yourself at first. “They’re… wonderful. Clever, brave, and kind in ways you couldn’t understand unless you were there with them.” 

You glanced at him, and though you tried to keep your voice light, a subtle edge crept in— a rising passion within you. 

“When I was a child I had nobody else but them— they were the only people who didn’t ridicule me for being such a recluse. You like me, don’t you? They were the ones who taught me how to be like this in the first place… How could you be so quick to insult them like that?”

The dragon’s lips curled upwards in a snide manner. You didn’t know he could smile— let alone look so deliberately… cruel. 

“Friends? Is that truly what you insist on calling those who dragged you here? Who left you trembling at my mercy while they fled with their tails between their legs? So you have fond memories of them. What good does that do now, now that they have abandoned—”

“Oh, come on, you’re talking nonsense— that’s not fair!” You interrupted sharper than you initially intended— but you did not regret it.“They didn’t abandon me on purpose… it was you that was the problem—! They wouldn’t have left me otherwise…”

But the rest withered on your tongue. You knew the truth of your friends. You knew them better than anyone. Yet when you tried to pull the memories forward, tried to shape them into something solid to hold against the dragon’s claims, they slipped like water through your grasp. The more you reached, the less you caught.

Your thoughts tripped over each other, a dozen reasons surging to the surface only to tangle in your throat. It was a horrible, nasty feeling— one that brought tears to your eyes. You were certain, weren’t you? You were certain they would never leave you on purpose. So then why couldn’t you say it? Why couldn’t you answer him civilly, simply, the very way he spoke to you right now?

The heat rising in your chest wasn’t anger alone— it was panic, it was humiliation. He was speaking to you as though this were nothing more than a fair discussion, and you were the one floundering, flustered and foolish. But how could you argue against him, when your own thoughts betrayed you?

“Do not cut me off.” What scorned you most was that he did not even seem offended by your attitude. “It is the truth and you know it, don’t you? I did not think you to be blindly unreasonable. Tell me, am I wrong?”

His composure stung worse than any raised voice. Among all of the questions he presented to you, there was only one on your mind; How could you lash out at him so, when he is only trying to talk to you—?

“You stand here because they abandoned you. If they still valued you as you claim they did, they would not have let you fall into my claws. Yes, I intimidated them. Yes, I intended to kill you all. But circumstances do not matter when, in the end, your loved ones chose their own lives above yours. Selfishness is the nature of men— but nature can be changed, if one loves another enough to do so. But did they change that innate, selfish part of themselves for you? Did they strain every fiber of their being to shield you from me? I think not. I think they fled at the first hint of danger, and now you are here with me. Is that not exactly what happened, in truth?”

Too many questions. Too many questions. 

An unrelenting torrent of information coursed directly into your mind, each fragment pushing insistently for attention. You had grown accustomed to his voice— had come to accept its intrusion without the need for spoken words. Yet, just as it did in your first meeting, it began to reverberate within you, echoing with an almost unbearable insistence, and in an instant, all of your composure shattered.

A tear slid down your cheek before you even knew it. 

You jerked at a soft brush against your skin— tiny hands, delicate wings. A faerie hovered near, carefully wiping the tear away. The gesture, meant as comfort, only burned deeper. They were watching. All of them. Your humiliation laid bare before a court of silent eyes.

You stiffened, curling your fingers so the little creature had no choice but to rest on your palm. You forced yourself to meet the dragon’s eyes again, calmer this time, though the tear track on your face betrayed you. 

“…We will agree to disagree.” You said, and your voice almost held.

He regarded you for a long, unreadable moment before inclining his head. 

“As you wish.”

Your attention was already turned back to the faerie in your palm, who had now taken to toying with your fingers. It tugged gently at your fingertip, tiny hands pulling your attention down to where it played. You let it, stroking its gossamer wings with a trembling thumb… though your thoughts were far from present. 

Every word you’d thrown in anger replayed in your head, harsher with each remembrance, until you almost wished you could snatch them back. It was… incredibly embarrassing knowing that this faerie, along with all its companions, had to witness you in such a state. So letting the little one inspect your finger, tolerating the surprising and odd strength of its vigour, was your way of apologising to it— for making it get caught in your outburst.

“You will not speak of them again.”

Your head jerked up, startled. “What?”

“I do not want to hear their mention on your tongue. Not once more.”

The words landed like an unavoidable command— the ones that are final and absolute. You stared, mouth parting, some protest fumbling to rise— Why? Why can’t you? He can’t tell you to do that— But nothing left your lips.

“But… why?” Your voice cracked.“Why can’t I—”

“Because you must not.” His interruption was firm, and he offered no explanation beyond that— only expectation.

And suddenly, you felt it again— that cornered, breathless shame, as though your refusal alone made you childish, and as he’d said; unreasonable. You shook your head, cradling the faerie closer as if it may bring you comfort.

“…I hope you’re not trying to make me forget them. You can’t expect me to.”

“That is not what I ask of you. I merely ask for your obedience in what I command. Hm… How should I explain this?” 

The dragon mused to himself. It only served to make you feel even more of a dimwit— something you knew he must have intended.

“Look around you, Child of Man—” His words eventually fell with an even tone. “The trees that crown this valley, the skies stretched above them, the very grass beneath your feet. The faerie that perches in your palm, and the ones who hide among the leaves. Do you not see how they bend to my will?”

He looked to the river— and though he did not tell you to go… that is what you did. So you stood there, where the current caught the light in a resplendent show of glittered little dottings.

“Look there. Look at your reflection. I wonder, do you see it? That, too, is mine. The face you wear is not your own. The hand that holds the faerie is not your own. You breathe because I allow it. You live because I keep you. Every part of you has been claimed. Now do you see why you must listen to me?”

(And just like that, any affection you’d gained for him throughout the weeks seemed to vanish in all but an instant.)

As if you had fallen into an enchantment to forget the chains beneath the flowers, it was clear that you’d forgotten your place— grown much too comfortable, much too bold. But the dragon did not need to reprimand you for that. You did that just fine on your own. For you understood, then, the purpose of his words; not to reason with you, but to leave you cornered with nothing to stand on. To remind you that you were in no position to deny him, that disobedience itself was made absurd when the very earth bent to his command. 

His stare honed to a point, striking through you as clean and cold as steel. It was clear, now. Unlike the faeries, who accepted you as a guest in their realm— the dragon did not see you as so. It was all so, very clear. So clear, in fact, that you found yourself finishing his words in your mind before he put them there.

“You are mine to keep. Body, voice, and mind. And I shall eliminate anything to preserve what belongs to me. So, I will say it again; I do not want to hear of these boys— not even once."

𝐈𝐅 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐋𝐋 𝐁𝐎𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄𝐃 𝐓𝐎 wonder about your captor, you’d have to wonder if he knew exactly what he was doing. Too quickly, too cruelly, he had reminded you of your reality— while robbing you of the one thing that could have kept you sane; the freedom to speak. Now, what had once consoled your captivity was the belief that you could tell the dragon anything. A foolish hope, perhaps, but it softened the edges— that if all else was lost, at least you had someone to confide in. Someone to keep your memories alive, to let your thoughts spill into air instead of festering and wasting away inside you. But what you had failed to truly digest then… was that this ‘someone’ was the very being who had caged you here in the first place.

You never felt the need to go outside after that— and so, you never did. You never felt the need to talk to your captor, either— and so, you never did. (Unless he demanded it— which was something you used to find almost endearing… However, now it only makes you feel sick.) There was a fleeting thought that he would become irritated at your silence— but surprisingly (and if you cared to wonder, you’d wonder if you should be offended) he didn’t seem to notice. Or if he did notice, he didn’t mind it.

Yet even above the grief of settling into this quick, cruel reality… something else ran deeper still; offense on behalf of your friends— Ace and Deuce. To be trapped with a creature who, magnificent in his malignity, mocked to death the two boys you loved most in the world made a black, sticky hatred curdle inside your heart. So you sank into the carpet most days, refusing even to glance at him— because to look at him meant remembering, and remembering meant rage.

But for all your hatred, you were obedient. And so your captor, with a twisted tenderness, gave you one small allowance; to walk the corridors alone. It was meant as mercy, you supposed— though the stone passages did not feel merciful. And you could not enjoy the secrets within the walls either… for what purpose would it have served, if it was not in the company of the boys who were the ones truly interested in the first place? Still, you wandered those corridors, if only to keep your flesh from melting into the carpet.

It was during one of these meanderings that you saw them.

At first, you thought the castle was playing tricks on you, as everything else in this strange, new world did. Too many days in silence, too many nights curled in on yourself, and now your mind conjured what your heart ached for most. Two figures stood at the far end of the hall, blurred and trembling in the torchlight, as though stitched from memory itself. You rubbed at your eyes and blinked hard, then you looked again— expecting the mirage to vanish. It couldn't have been them. You had thought you heard their laughter before too, had felt their hands brush yours in dreams. You had woken to the echo of voices that weren’t there. This was no different. It had to be no different.

…But this time— not like the other times— they didn’t vanish.

Instead, they moved. And not like tricks of the eye, either. One careless and quick, the other desperate and wild. Ace’s sprint, Deuce’s charge— exactly as you remembered. And when they shouted your name, the sound split the silence so violently that your heart nearly stopped. No dream could shout like that. No vision could breathe your name so raggedly— breathe life into you.

“What are you doing here—?” 

But before you could finish your own sentence, you were already rushing to meet them. For a moment you were terrified your arms would pass through empty air— until they didn’t. You were able to take both boys into your arms. And you kissed them— right at the corner of their mouths as you always used to do. Right as you’d always dreamt of doing. And soon that kiss turned into multiple, and you weren’t sure where you were peppering them anymore— only that it was all over both of their faces as you squished their cheeks together.

“We came back for you, of course. Fuck… I didn’t think you’d be alive…” Ace breathed in between your flurry of affections, wrapping a single arm around your waist. The intimate gesture confirmed to you that this couldn't have been anything but real— and that was enough for you. 

So for the first time in months, your soul crawled out of its hiding place. 

“You could say it less like an ass…!” Deuce choked, glaring at his companion as he, too, cradled his arm across your back. “We’re so sorry, (Y/N), we thought bringing you here wouldn’t have been a big deal— we just wanted to let you go out and experience something with us for once… If we’d known that thing was here we’d never even have thought of letting you come— let alone have left you by yourself. I could’ve sworn I was holding your hand as we ran but…” His words came forward all at once and you could tell they must have been waiting to be let free for a long, long while. His shoulders slumped, and he looked nothing short of dejected. Then his hands moved to cup both sides of your face, pressing his forehead to yours. “I’m sorry. That was my fault.”

But you didn’t care for any of their apologies. All you were glad for was that they were here— that they were really here… and more importantly, that they were here for you. Every mean-spirited word from your captor, every implication of doubt he tried to force onto you— it all abated. Now, you were reminded just how much you loved these two— and how much they loved you in return. 

He was wrong— your captor; he was wrong. They love you. You love them. Nothing could change that.

You shook your head in dismissal, an overjoyed smile plastered on your face. Soon you were nuzzling your face into their necks, pushing yourself into them with such force they nearly lost their footing. Deuce was stroking the back of your head— you knew his hand by heart, so even though you couldn’t see, you knew it was him. And you knew it was Ace’s hand trailing from your waist to the small of your back— then down to your hips in a comforting gesture.

But the reality you had been forced to swallow… came rushing back as quickly as it fell away.

“I love you. And there’s so many things I wish I could tell you but you need to go… now! Before he finds you—!” You ushered, face contorted with worry. You pressed your hands against their chests, urging them back.

Ace didn’t seem deterred by your warnings. In fact, it only seemed to strengthen his resolve. He caught your arm and held it firmly. “Yeah, I don’t doubt you on that.” He said quickly. “All the more reason we have to move. Let’s go, before it DOES find us!”

“We won’t leave until we’re sure you’re with us.” Deuce assured, taking your other arm into his. “You have to trust us, okay? Just listen to what we say and we’ll explain everything after.”

Your feet dragged a little, the way a child drags when they don’t want to go— but your boys were strong and it did not slow them. They carried you along those long corridors you had never walked alone, past doors you had not dared to open, under arches where the lamps burned low. And then you looked at them proper and saw how their faces had gone solemn. You had never seen them like that before.

Outside waited for you like a basin of cold water. The air hit your chest and the night was wide. And with the night came the sound. Steel on steel like many bells. Men shouting and calling to one another. And above all of it a great roaring, the kind that shakes a rib. You knew that sound without seeing it. Your captor, the dragon.

Your head went light, full of the noise. “What’s going on?” You asked. “What’s going on? What’s going on—?” You asked again, because the answers did not come.

Now your boys looked troubled. They did not answer, only tightened their hold and pulled you from the noise. The clash of men and the roar of your captor slipped further, further, muffled as if under water. Your heart beat wild against their silence. Still they would not explain. Still they drew you on— and the forest opened to swallow you whole.

The trees grew thick and dark about you, branches low, shrubs scratching at your shift, and you had to keep close to them or else be lost. This wasn’t like the clearings your captor had carried you to, no meadows, no open sky. Only dark, and the hush of leaves, and the three of you moving quick through a new side of the world you were forced to accept— the one you were finally being taken away from.

Ace’s mouth was tense, set like stone. Deuce kept looking back, eyes shining too much, like he might cry if you asked him. And you did ask. Whispered, quick, before your courage left you— “Tell me what’s going on.”

Neither answered at first. They pulled you on, gaining quite a bit of distance until the noise was all gone. At last Deuce spoke, voice low, heavy;

“We sent those men to die.”

It caught you off guard entirely. You didn’t understand it much at all— but you did see the sorrow in him. You did see the guilt under Ace’s scowl. And in that moment you knew; Whatever fight had been raised behind you— for you… it wasn’t one to win— wasn’t one that could ever be won.

An execution.

Your eyes blurred. The steps went on, but you couldn’t stop the tears, sliding hot down your face. “I’m sorry.” You sobbed. “Fuck… I’m so sorry—”

Ace’s grip softened then, his fingers threading through yours, squeezing warm and steady. “Don’t. None of this is on you. If you were a burden, we wouldn’t have even come. All of this is worth it. Don’t cry now.”

Deuce leaned in close on your other side, pressing a kiss to your temple without the slightest bit of hesitation. “You hear him? Nothing’s your fault. Just keep walking. We’re never letting you leave us again.”

And so you cried between them, their hands sure, their words a shield, their closeness like shelter in the dark. And to be in their presence again was of the utmost reassurance. So for a little while, you let yourself believe what they were telling you; None of this was your fault. You’ll be with your boys forevermore, and that is all that could ever be.

Your boys, forevermore.

𝐀𝐋𝐋 𝐆𝐎𝐎𝐃 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒 𝐌𝐔𝐒𝐓 𝐂𝐎𝐌𝐄 to an end. That was what the old woman of the bookshop told you once, her voice quiet as she stacked the shelves, her back bent, her eyes lost far past what she was looking at. You had respected her words, for she carried a wisdom you never doubted, but you did not know what to make of them. At the time you thought— perhaps one day their meaning would come clear, and perhaps then you would understand. And so you put them away with the rest of the things that elder folk often said, the riddles and warnings, laid deep in the mind and left to rest. And that is where they stayed.

But you knew now. The time had come, it seemed, to understand what she meant. You understood because the sky parted with a roar, and the forest shuddered and bowed to him— as all the other things in this world did. Wings beat overhead, blacking the stars, and the air rushed cold against your face, past the shrubbery which was meant to be your cover— and down onto you. Your captor had come. Your captor had come for you. So now, you understood. 

As abruptly as it started, the good times… had now come to an end. 

The time of execution had come. Now, it was only a matter of who would be the executed. But you weren’t afforded the luxury of grief. Ace caught your wrist, Deuce pressed a hand to your back; both urging you down into the cover of particularly dense bushes. 

“Stay low.” Ace hissed. “Keep to the trees. He can’t fit in here.”

“Run.” Deuce urged, eyes too bright in the dark. “Don’t look back. No matter what you hear.”

And in that moment you understood what they meant to do for you. The memory of that first day returned— their flight, their fear— but tonight they did not run. So you kissed them, and they kissed back. Quick, desperate, a blessing and a promise all at once. Your lips to Ace’s, your lips to Deuce’s. It was something you wished you could take your time with, but no such thing was given. Tonight, you were the one running. 

You ran with the thicket tearing holes into your shift and wounds into your skin. Sharp branches and brambles opened streaks of blood across your arms and legs. Each inhale burned in your lungs; each heartbeat pounded like a drum in your temples. Behind you came the sound of battle— the crash of trees, the shatter of branches, the cry of your captor, the cries of your boys. Your strength wavered, hot pain and fatigue coiling through your limbs, yet still you ran, and you never looked back.

…But under all the weight— your fragile soul, which had only now gained freedom, finally split apart. 

So, though you had fought it, darkness had taken you for a while. Blood and screaming and execution put you under, and it laid heavy on you till it let you go. You did not know how long you were out, but you knew it couldn’t have been for much time— for the forest looked no different than when you left it momentarily. But when you regained all senses, it wasn’t to your boys calling you, nor to safety waiting— 

It was to arms pulling you up into a chest. 

A body was there to hold you up. But when you turned— no face was given to you. Your eyes went searching, but nothing would settle there. The shape of a man was made, yet the head was not made for seeing. Something blurred, something refused. Mind reaching, mind slipping. Your breath quickened, your chest rose hard. …Who was this? Why couldn’t you see his face? It was as if everything in the world came together to stop you from seeing the man in front of your eyes.

“Had I known what a sight you make from this close, I would have taken this form sooner and never let my eyes off you.”

The voice that reached you now was nothing like before. No iron in the brain, no thought forced beneath your skin. This one came pressed from lungs, shaped by a throat. A sound in the air, a sound the world could hear. That was what made it worse. For all its human weight, for all its mortal sound, you knew it was the same. The words came walking to you dressed in flesh. Your ears took them in, but your mind rejected them, staggering back from what it knew and what it could not bear to know. It was a voice with breath now— real breath, living breath— when it should never have been so.

Your captor, the dragon, the executioner; had taken the form of a man. 

And this man touched you in ways you never thought you would be touched. His hands gathered your shift as if he meant to wring it dry, bunching it slow, slow, hiking it higher up your thighs till the night air kissed what should have stayed covered. His palm slid over the dip of your waist, the soft hollow under your ribs, the valley of your chest, pressing as if to mold the shape into his own keeping. There was no shame in him— only the same hunger you had felt in his eyes when he watched you before, when his stare alone had set ghost-hands on your hips. Now those hands were real, and they traveled bold as any thief, claiming, groping, learning you as though proving you were his to unmake.

You looked down and saw the truth of his hands at last; claws dragging blood across you, smearing red into the white of your clothes. Not your blood. Not his.

Your boys. Your boys, your boys, your boys—

That thought alone was enough to bring the world rushing back. You shoved at him, desperate, and slipped free of his arms— and of his lips against your nape. You fell hard onto your stomach, then hastily flipped yourself over, scrambling backwards on hands and heels, dragging your body away from the monster who looked like a man without a face.

Roots clutched at your clothes, stones pressed themselves into your palms, until your hand slid across something sharper still. You hissed, pulling back instinctively— only to see blood beading on your fingertips. And there, half-buried in the dirt, was the knife. Your knife. Torn loose from your girdle at some point in time, now waiting as though it had been set there for you to find.

The opportunity was not lost to you. So with a shuddering breath, your fingers closed around the knife. And before you could think, you moved— heaving yourself up from the ground in a wild lunge. You drove it into him with all the strength you had, the blade sinking through his flesh with a sickening resistance before it slid deeper. And you twisted— savagely— dragging the steel down. 

You felt it tear a jagged path through muscle, felt the tremor of his ribs beneath the force of your strike, hot gushes of blood spurting over your hand, your wrist, your sleeve. For one frantic heartbeat, hope flared— surely, this was not a wound any living human should bear… But he only looked down at the ruin of his own chest with something almost like mirth, lips curving into a weary smile; a smile without a face.

Leisurely, he wrapped his hand around the knife’s hilt and pulled it free, the steel singing as it grated against torn bone, opening the wound wider so that blood spilled in torrents. He held the blade up between you, crimson dripping steadily. (It was a horrifying sight; the flesh of his chest flayed open, and yet he smiled at you.)

“Little one,” he murmured, “did you think iron could part me from you? An army? Come, now. I expected better from you.”

His hand caught your chin, forcing your lips apart. Then the knife— your knife, your wonderful knife given to you by your beloved Ace— was pressed into your mouth. 

Its edge carved messily against your tongue as he shoved it deeper, slicing its way past soft flesh, filling your throat with fire and iron. The taste was unbearable, metallic, salt-thick, a mingling of his blood and yours. You gagged, choking on the bubbling liquid as the blade cut its way down your gullet, warm rivulets running back up and over your lips, staining you in a mixture that was both him and you.

“Good.” He breathed, eyes without a face fixed on the convulsions of your body. “Even your rebellion leaves you stretched open, swallowing me whole. You’ll never be empty of me again.” 

Inch by inch, he dragged the blade back out, its edge rasping cruelly against torn muscle, leaving your mouth spilling blood instead of sound— your scream mangled, trapped forever in the ruins of your throat. You clutched at your neck with shaking hands, nails raking desperate fissures into your own skin as if you could claw the agony free, but it only spread like fire through every nerve, leaving your limbs trembling, your body buckling beneath the weight of it.

Your vision swam red, not just from the blood in your eyes but from the sheer, consuming hatred that clawed at your chest. You did not know if he was still smiling, for whatever sense you had was lost in the haze of your fury. Fury to him. Fury for your boys. Fury for everything he had taken from you and everything he was still tearing apart. You wanted to fight, to sink your nails into his skin, to scream until your throat shredded further— but the pain pinned you down, a white-hot spike through every vein. 

(It hurts—it hurts—it HURTS—) 

Instinct drove you to move, to escape. You clawed at the ground, dragged yourself forward, every twitch of muscle sparking agony through your ruined body. (You had to get away. You had to—) But before you could even crawl more than an inch, his hand clamped around your ankle. The strength in it was effortless, dragging you back into the shadow you hated more than death itself.

Crouching low, his shadow blocked out what little light you had left. Your legs kicked weakly, uselessly, until his hand caught at your thigh and tore downward. The delicate stockings you had cherished— once white, once untouched, once yours— ripped apart in his fist. The once pristine white, now soaked through with blood, clung wetly before peeling away— the ruin of it a mockery of everything that had been clean, everything that had been yours alone. A desecration of all things innocent.

“Where are you going?” He asked softly, as if you were a child caught in some silly mischief. The faceless smile reappeared to you as he leaned closer, voice curling into your ear. “I intend to fill you with much more than just blood, you see… So don’t go anywhere.”

“No—!” 

The word should not have existed. The very utterance of it should have been impossible— for just a moment ago, you know he pushed the knife into your mouth. Had your tongue shredded against steel— and you know the taste of nothing but iron and fire. You should not have been able to speak, and yet here you were— screaming, protesting… as though you had never been torn apart at all.

Your mind reeled, grasping for what was real— What was real—? You swore the memory was clear; of him split open from collarbone to navel, of the blood pouring in the torrents, of the sight of his chest flayed raw— …Was that real? What was real—? Here he crouched, looming over you— whole, unbroken, skin unmarked save for the grin that stretched widely across his lips. Nothing made sense. Nothing held. Pain drifted, sharp and sure, yet the evidence of it dissolved in front of your eyes.

Now he was crawling over you. The ground took your spine, and his limbs closed in, claws biting earth on either side of your head till you lay inside the prison of him. Now you could see that he was bare of any clothes— his body sculpted and naked like the statues meant to represent gods. But there was no beauty in this bareness, in the art of the pure human body; because this man could hardly be considered a man at all.

His mouth came onto yours, but this was no kiss. This was not a kiss at all. Kisses were supposed to be sweet, or passionate, or tender. A kiss was supposed to carry laughter and sorrow and every vulnerability hanging upon the lips, love spilling easy and steady out into your beloved. That was a kiss— you already knew about kisses. Your boys had taught you that much— shown you it, let you experience it. But this? What was being done to you? This was no kiss.

This was a brand, hot and heavy, but not in the way that made the world seem brighter and made life feel good. You wonder, was the world always so dull? Was it only your boys that filled your life with light, or did this monster just sap everything out naturally? Now everything seemed lifeless to you. Were the trees always dead? 

…And were these thorns always here? 

Now there were thorns wrapping around you. Barbed vines crawling, twisting, finding every soft place to bite. Thorns in your arms, in your legs, in the thin skin over your ribs. His claws too, cutting and wandering, so that you couldn’t tell where the plant ended and the man began. The air stung, the earth swayed. Breathing hurt. Thinking hurt. The thorns kissed and tore. He kissed and tore. His claws pressed and opened. Everything was red and black and moving. You felt his eyes on you as much as you could see them, and you felt them deeper than the wounds on your body. You wanted to close your own, but you couldn’t. You wanted to run, but there was nowhere left to run.

And through all of it, the questions fell away, one by one, until only one remained. 

What have you done to deserve this?

A gasp tore free at last from you, sharp on the lungs and wet upon your lips, for it came blood. It bubbled up your throat and spilled from your mouth in a thin red stream, slipping past and staining your chin. You choked on the taste of iron, gagging, coughing, spattering yourself.

And he— he bent to it as though you were a chalice poured for him alone. His mouth found the spill, tongue dragging up the line of your jaw, greedy as a beast lapping from the ground. He licked you clean as though none of it belonged to you at all. Then his lips pressed hard to yours once more. But this time the action managed to be even worse, and you hoped you would die before he did what he wanted to do; His tongue forcing its way past your teeth, sweeping the blood from the inside of your mouth, your cheeks, savouring it with a deep groan. 

But no matter how erotic and obscene he sounded, it would never make it a lover’s touch. He drank your pain but it was for himself— not in the selfless way a lover would.

“Ah…” His head lolled backward, and he licked his lips clean of any remaining fluid. “When I realised you were gone, I was going to find you and kill you. I would have kept your corpse around… but I think I’ve found a much better purpose for you. You shall be my mate. Would you like that?” 

Anything but that. Anything but this. 

Your head jerked side to side before the thought could stick, before the sentence could even take shape in your conscious thoughts. 

Not that. Not this. Not him. Not ever. 

The thorns knew what you wanted before you did, and they didn’t like it. They tightened at your throat, coiling and biting deeper, drawing a wet heat up into your collar, pressing, constricting, silencing. More gagging, more choking, more sobbing. Spit and blood and the hurt of it. Tears spilling hot. All you knew was that you were shaking your head no, and that you couldn’t muster a single word.

‘Please, just let me die’.

The thorns were angry at you for that. They hated you. They hurt you because they hated you. But he didn’t hate you. The sick glint in his eye said so. He smiled at you— right at you, only at you— and that made your wish all the more apparent. You wanted to die. His finger pressed to your lips, shushing you so sweetly, so softly, consoling you as one would with a child. You wanted to die then, too. Then the finger left your mouth, a claw snagging at your lower lip and leaving blood behind. He hurt you because he wanted you. That made you yearn for death. And then there was the way he held your head and kissed your temple in kindness— but it was no favour. 

“You don’t want to be my mate?” He frowned, and tilted his head in that familiar way. Now he was back to your cheek, holding your face gently. “Why?”

…Why? Why? Your mind grew all fuzzy with anger and confusion. Why? Finally, your voice returned. A strangled cry left you, ragged and raw, spilling out in a sound that was no longer despair— rather the unbridled rage that had simmered just beneath the hopelessness. Why? The vines constricted your arm, but you didn’t care anymore— you didn’t care for pain, or even in this moment; death. You jerked your limb upward with all the force you could muster. The thorns ripped through your flesh, tearing open your skin in long, jagged strips. Muscle knotted and pulsed beneath the exposed wounds, sinew stretched and glimmered wet with blood. 

Every nerve sang agony, every heartbeat roared, but still you tore free— and your hand struck for all your anger. Why? Your nail plunged into his eye, and it gave way beneath the pressure with a wet squelch— a horrible sound that made your stomach twist in disgust. You gripped, twisted, yanked at him with a feral desperation, and threw him off— and every muscle trembled but you ran.

…But why? Why were you still on the ground? Why was he here? Didn’t you just throw him off? Didn’t you just—? Why? Why? Why? Your arms strained, your legs kicked, but nothing moved. The weight— his weight pressed you flat. His hands— his impossibly heavy, unyielding hands, a constant to your body— pinned you to the earth. Why? Why? Why? Didn’t you hurt him? Didn’t you—? And yet, he was whole, above you, pressing you into the soil, bending everything you knew into something you could not understand. Why? Why? Why?

Now his fist was in your hair, yanking your head back harshly until his lips grazed your ear. Then his voice was back to how you always knew it to be— felt, not heard. And it felt horrible.

“I was going to make our first time sweet, but I think you need some discipline.”

(All you remember was the feeling of cool air against your bare skin. The feeling of being split apart, of blood running down your thighs, of other fluids filling up your insides. Of bites to your nape, your back, your shoulders. Of begging, pleading the word no— over and over. Yet through it all, only one thing stands out to you, now—)

“Look at me in my face, (Y/N), tell me… do you still think I am magnificent?”

(…That was the first time you heard him say your name. You couldn’t recall ever giving it to him— but you couldn’t think of that, then. You couldn’t even think of looking at him. No matter how hard he clawed at your neck, twisting it to force your eyes upon him— you couldn’t. No matter how roughly he made ‘love’ to you— you couldn’t. Instead, you closed yourself shut and let yourself drift off to what you could only hope was a land of no return. But even as you had shunned all the sights of the cruel world you would never escape… all you would see were the lifeless eyes of your boys forevermore; And that was all you could think of—)

(Your boys, nevermore.)

𝐈𝐍 𝐒𝐋𝐄𝐄𝐏, 𝐖𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐏𝐄𝐍𝐄𝐃 𝐓𝐎 you was a constant nightmare. Normally, rest was solace; a moment of respite from the every day— but what happened to you was far from what was normal. What happened to you was so traumatic that your mind was unable to do anything but relive it— even in sleep, which so often provided you peace. Ironically, when you opened your eyes and sank yourself back into the living nightmare, it was all much calmer than what you saw behind closed eyelids— and what you’d experienced before that.

You shot up from your position, atop your ragged carpet strewn. (The uneven surface is just as uncomfortable as it has been all these days, but at the very least it is something that is yours. The same could not be said for your body.) The first thing you noticed about yourself was how ordinary you felt. Your body was… fine. Unexplainably so. It was strange. How present the sensation of thorns did feel upon your skin— just as they did before, but there were no marks to show for it. You traced your clavicle lightly with the tips of your fingers to confirm, and indeed all that was met was smooth, untouched skin. You are fine. Your skin was unblemished, free from the physical scars you were so sure he would leave. 

A soft exhale escaped you, and your eyes drifted around the room. It looked the same, just as it always did. All towering arches and gilded patterns carved into dark stone, the faint flicker of candles casting shadows onto everything but what you actually wanted to see. You didn’t dwell on the sight— what would be the point in that? You already knew this place by heart.

And then your gaze found him.

Malleus. 

For whatever the reason, the name appeared to you, and it felt wrong to think of it— so you knew it must have belonged to him. So this was the dragon. And this was what he truly looked like.  

He sat atop a pile of gold, still as a statue, and like a living portrait; something too perfectly framed to be real. Regal, and utterly otherworldly. Dragon horns curled back from his head, wicked in their shape but elegant in design. His green eyes gleamed, brilliant and luminous in the dim, and there was an old cruelty hidden behind them. His face was as pale as it was beautiful— feminine in its elegance, masculine in its structure. He’d be perfectly handsome by any society’s standards.

What was most curious was the garments he adorned. Faintly, at the back of your mind, you recalled him assuring you that he was well aware of royalty’s embellishments. Now, you understood why— for the clothes he wore currently would be fit only upon the body of a king. They were not clothes typical of any fashion you’d associate with modern times, but that didn’t negate the fact it was gorgeous. Midnight velvet clung to him in sweeping folds, parted at the chest to reveal the pale expanse beneath. Silver wrapped around the base of his horns, casting a faint gleam over their black surfaces— framing a single emerald set into the metal like a crown jewel. But nothing commanded your attention so wholly as the shoulder guards— carved from gleaming metal, curved like the wings of the beast he once was.

You wouldn’t be surprised if he were a king, himself. 

You, by contrast, wore only a shift. Even your lucky stockings were gone. But like the body it clung to, this shift did not belong to you— for it was much too clean to be so. You were sure your old one, the one that was yours, had been ruined— stained with blood and whatever fluid that had passed between you and the man before you. (You think the same could be said for your own being, as well).

Your hand slipped from your neck and came to rest in your lap. You found yourself unable to look away from him, and in the silence of his gaze, fixed so intently upon you… all you could see were the things he had done. Yet for all the terror, disgust, resentment and humiliation— your expression remained empty. As long as you held his wordless stare, those ugly emotions became muted— just as the cusp of bubbling over, but ultimately unable to as you wish they could.

“You asked… if I still thought you were magnificent.” You began, and if you weren’t feeling the way you felt, you would have been surprised at the flatness in your voice. You looked him over once more, taking in the sight of him in full. You didn’t see him properly while he…

“I didn’t answer you then. But I have my answer now.” 

Malleus’ eyes narrowed, a sight you’ve long since been acquainted with— if only in the form of a great dragon. But no longer did you feel anything by it, not even with his new appearance. What should have made you sink back into the carpet instead made you rise. And you approached him— not with the caution you should have exercised, but with a sense of tranquility that could only come from one who’d already accepted their fate. 

For a moment, you remembered the song that forced your involvement with this man. And suddenly, the irony of it all became much more apparent. You approached him… as a queen approaches the executioner’s block.  

It was a cruel joke just waiting to deliver its even crueler punchline.

“I think you are horrible. The very sight of you makes me sick to my stomach.”

Malleus rose slowly. You had braced yourself for a snarl, perhaps even a threat— but none came. Instead, his ashen lips curved into something resembling a smile, and he drew himself closer to you. In moments, he stood mere inches away.

“You are rather cruel in your words.” He muttered. In this form, and in the still silence, his voice was no longer one that resounded within your head. It was grounded and real and it came from his throat— and it was right in front of you, just as he was. “I cannot imagine what I’ve done to deserve such disdain from you.”

“What you have done to me goes beyond cruelty! You are a vile, perverse creature.” 

His hand lifted to your face, a caress too soft for the malice you knew he carried— yet still, you did not falter.

“Hm? I have no recollection of doing such things to you. I merely presented you the most intimate parts of myself, and loved you to my fullest.” He responded quite calmly for an accusation that should have enraged the average person. Instead of that, he sounded almost amused.

“Stop that. Don’t say that. You always do this, you’re always getting in my head…! Telling me half-truths and giving me an illusion of choice— I know what you do to me! I should… I should strike you for what you’ve done. I should be terrified. My insides should be shredded. My body should be cut. I’m sure I should be dead…! And I should lash out at you for that— But when I look at you, when I look into those eyes…”

Cool palms, careful and deliberate, cradled you now— one on either cheek, as though you were something delicate and precious. It was obscene, and surely was audacious on all accounts, but you couldn’t pull away; neither physically nor mentally.

His face was inches from yours now, eyes fixed and unblinking. Everything else seemed to fall away, swallowed whole by the green glow of his gaze. It was all you could see— two glaring, unnatural lights, boring into your own.

“What is it that you feel?” His voice was impossibly soft. “Look into my eyes— do not look away. Tell me, how do you feel?”

“What do I feel…?” You echoed, as soft as him. “I hate you. That… That is what I feel.”

Now his nose brushed against yours, and you could feel his breath brush against your lips. His eyes eclipsed the world. He eclipsed your world. Everything you were, are, and would be. And without realising it, your body leaned in— drawn forward, head angled just slightly, as if pulled by the magnetic gravity of his mouth. His gaze flickered to your lips. Yours to his.

“Is that so?” He smiled, the words nearly a kiss themselves. “Do you truly hate me?”

Your lips trembled against the air that separated them. “Yes.” You whispered— if it could even be called that; for your voice had all but died in your throat. “I hate you…”

“Mmh… Do you know what I think?” Malleus asked, studying your face in between his grip. “I think you’re hiding something from me. You’re not telling me how you truly feel. How I make you feel. What were you going to say earlier, hm? Tell me, (Y/N), what do you feel when you look into my eyes? You know I do so adore when you start with your spiels. I have missed them, you know.” There was a pleading look in his eyes, one that was more mocking than genuine.

“…I feel… like a shell. But I also feel… like a pot that is about to boil over. When… the bubbles are just at the edge of spilling— then you take it off the heat, and they simmer down. Only to put it back on, and repeat the proccess… Everytime I think about what you did, how you killed them, how you raped me, violated me in front of them… I want to lash out at you but I just…” 

Now, your head was starting to feel hazy. You couldn’t say you were entirely aware of what you spoke— only that, somehow, you meant every word and that Malleus hummed thoughtfully at them. A simple conversation, he made it seem like.

“I want… I want to hate you. I know I should hate you. I… I do hate you. I shouldn’t be talking to you like this. But I… just—”

“But you just can’t bring yourself to act on your hatred, is that right? Clever girl. Then let me be honest with you, as you’ve been with me. All of this, everything you feel, and everything you cannot feel… is because of me. And it will always be so, and never has been anything else.” His lips, still curved in a small grin, brushed against your eyelid. It was a soft kiss. You’d shut your eyes to block him out, but even that small refusal was trespassed— just as he’d trespassed into your conscience. 

“Because of you…” 

The voice that came out of you was not a voice that you recognised. Soon, you were leaning into his touch, into his kisses— peppered all throughout your face. (You swore you didn’t want it. You’ll always swear that. By God, you didn’t want it.) Even more did that confirm your suspicions— he was doing something to you. You didn’t know what— only that it was something that subdued you. Something that rendered you immobile, standing in the worship of a man made of everything unholy in the world. The man you hated most.

You had so many questions. So, so many. (Why bother with all this? Why was he kissing you so tenderly? Why was he revering you? Why was his touch so loving? Why did it feel worse than any act of hate he could’ve given to you? Did he always intend to do this to you? Just what about you could have been so possibly alluring— Why you? Why your Ace and Deuce? Your boys?) But every one seemed to die on your tongue before you could get it out. You stood there in silence, letting him practically drape himself onto you.

“Your friends are dead.” 

He’d said it after a moment of silence. So plainly, so without warning… that for a moment you thought you’d misheard him. 

“I devoured that foolish army in its entirety.” He went on, almost idly in thought as he continued with his affections. “But those boys… I reserved them. I placed them at the fore, impaled them upon stakes myself. A fitting display.”

…Something within you surged— the pot just about to boil over. For a single second, the heat stayed on. And in that second, you shoved him away, staggering back so hard you nearly lost your footing.

“What are you talking about? What are you talking about—? Tell me this is your poor attempt at a joke—!”

But there was no reply. No correction. No cruel smile to betray a lie. If anything, the man only seemed confused at your sudden parting from him. You staggered back another step as if it would distance you from the images forming in your mind—

Ace, mouth open in a scream that never finished, lips split down the center by a sharpened stake. Deuce, crumpled around the spike like a rag doll, impaled clean through the gut. Their skin waxen and bloodless, eyes wide and dry in the sun. Or worse— already picked out by birds, the sockets hollow and oozing, tongues black with rot, flies and maggots and every parasite of the world nesting, wriggling in their throats.

You stared down at your hands.

Would you even recognise them, if you touched their faces now? Would you be able to kiss them tenderly as you always did— or would their jaws fall slack at your contact, flesh sloughing off like overripe fruit, teeth slick with decay clattering to the mud?

A sharp breath hitched in your throat. The pot boiled over— only to be yanked from the fire again. And in that space, something else returned. Your pain.

You remembered the feeling of thorns burrowing into your body— how easily they’d split your skin, tracing lines down your arms, your thighs, your ribs. Slicing through muscle, tearing through cloth, and everything else that belonged to you. But when you looked now, there was no mark. No sign that you’d ever bled. He had done that— the destruction and the mending. With a flick of his wrist, no less, or perhaps not even that.

“Surely, if you healed me completely when I was in such a state… You could bring them back? And let them go far from here, never to bother you—” You paused as you rethought your phrasing. Every word was a dance upon jagged glass. “…Never to bother— us… again.”

Malleus’ face contorted into an expression of what you could only describe to be pure, unfiltered disgust. As if the very proposal of showing your loved ones mercy were an insult to his very being. It was apparent, he wasn’t going to entertain the idea— not in the slightest.

Terror, disgust, resentment and humiliation. Of all those emotions within you— desperation was what surged through. You stumbled forward, right into the arms of the man you hated most, bunching the fabric of his clothing in your trembling fists. And you looked up at him with shaky eyes so pleading, with tears gracing just at the cusp of your lashline— if you could feel anything other than mania, you would feel ashamed of yourself.

“We have spent so much time together. You have listened to everything I have said about them— you know how much I care for them, how much I cherish them… and you take them away from me? Was taking me away from them not enough? Why must they suffer for—”

One moment, the words were still scattering from your lips. The next, they were strangled mid-sentence, caught in your throat as sobs often are. 

His fingers wrapped tight around your jaw— his palm flat across your windpipe, not quite crushing, not quite letting you breathe. You were silenced. He was silencing you. And soon after your silence did his grip on your throat loosen— though not in mercy, but in transition. Fingers that had crushed the words from your windpipe slid higher, curling beneath your jaw, then sweeping up the sides of your face. His palm held your cheek while his thumb and forefinger pressed in— firm and deliberate— squishing your cheeks until your lips jutted out in a helpless, involuntary pout.

"I recall telling you that I would kill for anything that belonged to me. I also recall saying that I never wanted to hear of them again. I do not understand why you are so confused… Was their deaths not the only plausible outcome from your foolishness?” His brows furrowed. “You know I am positively enraptured by your way of thinking, but I must caution you… this subject wearies me, (Y/N). For now, I merely wish to dote on my mate. Is that so horrible?”

You couldn’t believe what he was telling you. You wish you were too rattled to understand what he was saying— for that would have been a much more merciful fate. But you were painfully aware of the point he made— and of the blatant, twisted barbarity of it.

Malleus tilted his head in the way he frequently did as a beast. His eyes were half-lidded, almost curious as he stared down at the shape he'd made of your mouth. Then, with a ghost of a smile, he leaned in and pressed a kiss to the center of your puckered lips— so soft, so chaste it may have very well been mistaken for tenderness, had it not been him.

The kiss broke, but he didn’t move far. Instead, his fingers uncurled from your face only to slip around the back of your neck— and in the same breath, he pulled you back in. His mouth found yours again, no longer light nor gentle. His right arm remained firm around your back, caging you against his chest as his left hand held your nape fast, keeping you exactly where he wanted.

“Mmfh—!” 

Your mind only caught up to your body once the bastard’s mouth was already on yours again— hot and consuming and relentless. You gasped into that kiss, and that alone seemed to urge him on, as though the sound was something he’d been starving to hear. But then your hands, shaking but certain, found his chest. You pushed.

At first, he didn’t budge. Then, slowly, the pressure of your palms seemed to guide his mouth lower, until open-mouthed kisses scattered down your cheek, your jaw— no less fervent, but less precise. 

You thought that might buy you a moment, but it didn't. His right arm crushed tighter around you, locking your spine to his chest with such force it emptied the air from your lungs. His left hand at your neck kept you fast in place. Your head tipped backwards— and in that second, your fingers shot up.

You found them; the smooth curve of his horns.

You grabbed hold and tugged it as tightly as you could. He hissed— and it was a rather inhuman sound. Sharp and serpentine-like, and forced through bared teeth. Such a noise paired with the utter rage painted across his features took you back to the moment you’d first met him— a jolt of primal fear passed through you. This was the first time you’d ever seen him like this.

And in that singular moment as you found yourself paralysed in fear— in that singular moment… that was when he struck.

In one swift, brutal motion, his grip vanished from your neck— only to reappear elsewhere. Your body was yanked from the cradle of his chest and thrown down hard. The air punched from your lungs when you landed on your stomach. Your arms had scrambled to brace the fall, but they barely slowed it, and now your palms stung harshly.

“…You beg for your idiot friends, yet you’ve not once mentioned the countless lives they threw away in the process of ‘saving you’.” 

He spat the last phrase as if it were poison to his very tongue. 

“Are you so selfish a person? Do you not cherish the other men of the army who came to save you? I see… So, you only cherish those boys? Then, listen to me well.”

You were on the ground. You didn’t want to get up from there and you didn’t want to look at him. But you felt his footsteps stop right near your legs, and even without looking… you knew he must be looming over you right now. Your tears had begun to fall.

(And when he spoke, he killed you with words—)

“You would do me wrong, my love, to cast me off so discourteously— for now, I am all that you have. Those boys are dead, and I will never bring them back no matter how much of your pleas I must endure. Do you understand me? They will rot upon those stakes as long as I live to see it through. Therefore…”

(—your execution, your death.)

“You will either cherish me, or cherish nothing at all.”

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐓𝐀𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐍’𝐒 𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐏𝐒 𝐀𝐑𝐄 𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐌 and it’s a lazy sort of day. The sort of day which slows time to a crawl. Still, the street is far from empty. Carriages rattle by, and the scent of bread and ash drifts from a nearby baker’s stall. The tavern behind them groans under its usual weight— creaking doors, clinking tankards, the low roar of patrons arguing over dice games and spilled drinks. Its crooked sign swings above the entrance, the painted name faded, almost illegible, from too many summers. 

A brother and sister have gathered just outside, sitting on the step where a young bard once perched with a serene smile and a lyre in her lap, weaving melodies so lovely they made even the loudest drunk hush to listen.

“She’s not coming back.” The brother says, arms folded tightly across his chest. “Told you. She’s gone.”

“You don’t know that!” The sister pouts, sticking her tongue out with a childish stubbornness. “But… Papa did say she might have run away…” She deflates at that, puffing her cheeks in thought. Then, just as quickly, her eyes light up again. “Ooh! Maybe she ran away with a prince!”

The boy groans, tossing his head back with exasperation. “She didn’t run off with a prince. That’s dumb.”

“You’re dumb!”

“Maybe she got married?” A smaller voice pipes up from behind a stack of crates. One of the siblings’ friends peeks his head out shyly, cheeks round and flushed with the heat of the day. “When you get married, you have babies. That’s what happens. She’s probably really busy…”

“Hmm? How many babies?” The sister asks, already invested.

The two children fall into thoughtful silence, squinting up at the sky as if the answer might be written among the fluffy clouds. The brother rolls his eyes and mutters under his breath, but he doesn’t walk away.

“Maybe three!” The friend chirps at last, grinning. “Like… One for each wish, you know?”

“Two boys and one girl.” The sister adds, beaming. “Just like us! And like the bard and her two friends… Ooh, do you think I could be a bard one day? I’ll play the lyre just like her!” 

The girl’s eyes sparkle and her friend nods along fondly to her words. He’s clearly engrossed in her ramblings— but the same could not be said for the brother.

“She left us behind for some other kids? That sucks.” He mutters, scowling now as he kicks at a loose stone by his feet. “I bet you she only plays for them, now.”

His words carry a bitter edge, but they don’t fool anyone. Any adult watching would see it for what it was— a boy sulking not out of anger, but because he misses the songs of the pretty bard under the awning. The pretty bard whose name could never be remembered, no matter how beloved she was by all. The pretty bard who was only truly understood by the old woman of the bookshop.

Alas; no more bookshops, no more laughter in the smithy or melodies floating out into the street. Just rumours now, of over the hills and far, far away.

Somewhere no man shall ever reach.

𝐈𝐑𝐎𝐍𝐈𝐂𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐘, 𝐘𝐎𝐔𝐑 𝐃𝐀𝐔𝐆𝐇𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐇𝐀𝐒 𝐓𝐀𝐊𝐄𝐍 to the lyre. The memory eludes you; the last time you’ve played it. But for whatever neglect that has been shown to it on behalf of yourself over the past few years, your daughter certainly makes up for it. She seems positively obsessed with the old thing, grabbing at it with chubby hands that look too much like yours, pestering you to no end to teach her to play. And unfortunately for you, her father is just as fond of pestering you over it as she is. So you sit for hours at a time, with four pairs of the same, carbon copied green eyes (your sons love to do whatever their father and sister are doing) watching you strum strings with a rusted muscle memory.

A faraway part of you— a fond part that you suppressed a long time gone— reignites with an assured affection when you see your children stumbling around together. Two daring boys with swords (stolen from their father’s hoard, of course) and a shy little girl with her worn lyre. It’s all too familiar a sight, and really, it’s a miracle that your husband let you name them what you did—

Ace, Deuce, and (Y/N). 

Oh, your precious babies… They’re all you have, so you try to make it count. You wonder, is it wrong to project your childhood onto your little ones? To give your daughter your own name, and your sons the name of the boys you yearn for? Ah… maybe it is wrong. (Your husband, for one, never seems to try to hide his discontent for your frequent reminiscing of the life you’ll never get back.) But you can’t help it; pestering your boys to treat their sister just a little bit nicer— because they’ll never know when they may interact for the last time. You’ve yet to tell them the last part, though— they’re much too young to have their head filled with old musings like that. Such musings belong in bookshops, spoken to young bards by older, lonely women.

Buried deep within the confines of your subconscious, you have a hope that someday you will regain some sense of normalcy. That some day, your husband will bring back what was lost to you. But the present part of you that has long since wilted with an idle content reminds you that the only life he would allow is the life that you both have created. And that is all that will ever be.

Ace, Deuce, and (Y/N). 

As far as the rest of the world is concerned,  the three of them are dead. But you know. You know it is not entirely so. The rotting bodies of your boys rejuvenate in the little ones you and your husband call your own. You, as well, live on through the little girl who sits atop her mother’s carpet and her father’s gold. You may not rot with your boys upon stakes, but your spirit has long since rotted with them. 

There are always two deaths— the real one, and the one people know about. That is how the saying goes, and you couldn’t agree more. Death has rocked you asleep; brought you to quiet rest. So for your first death, you’ll give yourself to your husband— to have and to hold, in sickness and in health, till the second do you part. You’ll let your boys prance around the castle grounds, a little too close to the bodies from which they received their namesakes. And you’ll let your daughter live where you couldn’t, and carry on the refrain of your death’s ballad—

Greensleeves.

❝ Farewell … my pleasures past,

Welcome, my present pain!

I feel my torments so increase

That life cannot remain. ❞

— O Death, Rock Me Asleep

At first he expected you to take things slowly. You looked like the shy type. But the second the door shut behind him you pounced. As his lips met yours in a messy desperate kiss he knew he was gone for you.

His hands roamed all over your curves as he stumbled with you toward his bedroom. Hands memorized every inch. When your feet hit the edge of his bed he spins you around and folds you over in half. His feet kick your knees apart and pull down your clothes, gazing closely at the wet stain on your panties.

“Tsk, messy girl. Someone’s gonna have to clean this up.”

He ghosted his fingers along your clothed folds, listening to you gasp and tremble against him. Long strings of white gooey essence stretches wide as he pushes your panties aside, a long grown leaving him at the sight.

Then his fingers spread your folds open to the cool air till your arousal drips on the floor. Only then does he swipe his long digits down your slit, swirling them around your clit and exploring everything. Cataloguing every reaction you give him.

Fuck, he’s had enough, needing you on his cock this instant. You whimper so prettily as he withdraws and sheds himself of his clothes. Then he’s kissing up your frame, hand curling in your hair like the stroke of a brush, and he pull. Hard. Till your back is arched so nicely for him.

Yandere!Artist loved seeing you cry out at the jolt of pain combined with the sensation of feeling his long length spearing through your drenched folds.

Using the opportunity of having your mouth parted for him he stuffs his wet fingers in there, ordering you to suckle on them and taste how soaked you get for him.

He shuddered as your screams of pleasure vibrate on his hand while he works you down his shaft. Fuck, every part of you is like heaven. It’s as though a muse is caressing him as your silken walls glide down his cock and suck him in deeper with every thrust.

As needy to be inside you the same way you are. His free hand moves down to your belly, pressing on the bulging imprint of his cock and it’s like something in him snaps.

He ruts into you harder and harder every time you scream for more around his fingers. With his hold he keeps you pinned against him, not giving you a second to breathe without him filling up your entire being.

The force of his thrusts driving in so deep it’s like he’s rearranging your guts and leaving a permanent place for his cock to live. A shudder rolls through him and he presses against your back like he could merge you two together.

With a swivel his hips he desperately looked for your sweet spots until you wail harshly, your back arching to take him impossibly deeper. A near manic bubble of laughter leaves him.

“Did I find it, huh, pretty? Look at her thanking me so nice. I’m fuckin’ spoiling this pussy,” he rasps in your ear. Then in a blink of an eye he slips his fingers out of your mouth and smacks one, two, three wet swats right on your swollen sensitive clit.

Yandere!Artist watches like a predator who’s finally caught their prey when your body jolts forward, strangled shrieks echoing against the wall as you cum. The way your cunt clamps down and milks his cock for everything that it’s worth sends him into the ultimate state of bliss.

By now he’s so drunk on your pussy as he fights to fuck you through it no matter how hard you’re suffocating and squeezing his cock.

“C’mon, mmph, gimme more. I know you can do it, baby. Paint my cock with your cum, wanna drown in you,” he groans, lost in the sensation of having you wrapped around him.

It takes all the strength he has left to work you through your release, talking you through it the whole way, and continues right into the next. Even as you whine and squirm beneath him he just starts building you up again. He knows how sensitive you are.

Every tremor of your body coils back up his cock, making him tingle all over. His face falls into your neck and he inhales the scent of your sweat glistening on you.

“Hmm, not done with you yet, muse. Just one more. It’ll be quick.”

Yandere!Artist lies to you so sweetly but he can’t help himself when it comes to you. He fucks into you nice and slow for this one. Basking in the feeling of you throbbing against the veins on his length. You two just fit together like two broken puzzle pieces.

He’s falling.

He knows he’s falling again. The warning bells are nothing but white noise as he grinds the leaking angry tip of his dick into your gummy cervix till you’re nothing but a fucked out mess on the bed.

Yandere!Artist needs to cum so bad yet doesn’t want the moment to end. But the sight of you covered in his cum is too hard to resist. So his hand slips back between your legs, much gentler this time, and expertly rubs your clit. Not wanting to finish until you have. Just like he begged you for.

He waits to the point you cum where his fingers on your clit quicken but he pulls out with a sharp jerk of his hips at the same time. He was so close. So close to coming inside of you.

Instead he shoots spurt after spurt all over your back, painting you in his release. It’s the closest thing to a masterpiece he’s ever made.

Afterwards, taking care of your every need, cleaning you up and whispering sweet nothings about how good you were for him and how perfect you felt, the lovely noises you made, and all about how much he wants to keep you. He drags you into his embrace and molds his front to your back. You fall asleep surrounded by his warmth and comfort.

The next morning he finds you walking around his studio. Stopping in front of a painting that looks eerily similar to the one you saw last night at the gallery. He comes up and hugs you from behind, resting his chin on your shoulder. Wanting to see everything through your eyes.

“Are these part of a series, what are they supposed to represent?” You ask softly in the undisturbed light of morning.

Yandere!Artist chuckles at your question but squeezes you tighter. As if afraid that you’ll disappear any minute.

“They’re actually paintings I make whoever an ex of mine breaks up with me. It’s just a freak accident that one gained so much popularity.”

Your lips twist into a frown as you stare at the bold red painting. “Well now I regret complimenting it so much,” you say as if displeased imagining him with someone else.

Yandere!Artist grins at your response as it feeds the dark hungry side of himself that wants to wrap you up and never let you go.

“Don’t worry, I don’t plan on ever having to make another one of these again,” he murmurs and places a chaste kiss on your pulse before letting you go.

It takes a moment for his words to properly sink in. They’re sweet words, really. So you have no idea why they unnerve you so much as you watch him waltz over to the kitchen, whistling a happy tune.

Dick understood that better than anyone. He had been shaped by tragedy from an age far too young to understand it, his childhood torn apart in a single terrible moment. There were parts of him that would always carry that loss, always remember what it felt like to have the ground pulled out from beneath him, and there had been years where that pain threatened to become the foundation of his entire identity.

Most of the time, that effort came naturally. Most days he could shrug off an insult, let frustration fade before it settled too deeply, and walk away from situations that would have provoked a younger version of himself into an argument. But no amount of growth erased the fact that he was still human, and every human being had limits. Every now and then something would catch him at exactly the wrong moment, slipping past the walls he had spent years building and irritating him just enough to make control feel more difficult than usual. It was rarely anything significant. Whatever the cause, there were moments when irritation would settle beneath his skin and linger there, refusing to disappear no matter how hard he tried to ignore it.

He could have allowed it to pervail. There had been moments when he came dangerously close to doing exactly that. Yet every time he looked at the man he was becoming and found something he didn't like, he forced himself to change it. Because of you.

Somewhere along the way, without either of you realizing exactly when it had happened, you had become one of the reasons he kept trying. You had become one of the reasons he continued putting in the effort even on the days when it felt exhausting, one of the reasons he believed that the future could be something more than a collection of old wounds and unfinished healing. When he thought about the life he wanted, the version of himself he hoped to grow into, you were there in every image his mind created. The thought was all-consuming. He wanted to be better because he wanted to deserve the happiness he had found with you, and because every day spent at your side reminded him that the work was worth it.

Being with you felt almost therapeutic. The noise in his head, the frustrations that clung to him throughout the day, tand all the weight of every responsibility pressing down on his shoulders, all of it seemed to dissolve the moment your lips met his. It was as if every kiss gave him permission to set those burdens aside, if only for a little while. He kissed you with a desperation that was gentle rather than frantic, pouring every difficult emotion he refused to place upon you into the affection itself. Instead of burdening you with his worries, he transformed them into something softer, something warmer. His hands found you instinctively, drawing you closer as though proximity alone could soothe every ache he carried. The kisses came endlessly after that. Brief presses of his lips against your temple, lingering brushes along your cheek, a trail that wandered down the curve of your jaw. He kissed the corner of your smile when it appeared, the slope of your cheek beneath his palm, the delicate hollow of your throat whenever he could reach it. Every inch of you seemed precious to him, worthy of quiet devotion.

And somewhere amidst those stolen moments, a realization settled over him.

His life was good. Not perfect, never perfect—but good.

For so long, he'd moved from one problem to the next, always focused on what was missing, what was difficult, what still needed fixing. He had spent years carrying the expectation that happiness was something distant, something he would earn later. Yet here you were, warm beneath his touch, smiling at him as though he was someone worth loving, and suddenly he could see it. He could finally appreciate the life he'd built and the future that stretched out before him. The tension that had lived between his brows softened, the familiar furrow of irritation disappeared, replaced by a grin that spread so naturally across his face it seemed impossible not to mirror it. His lips lingered against yours, smiling into the kiss, and for once there was no trace of the exhaustion that usually followed him. His hands cradled your face, your hips, your shoulders, anywhere he could touch, anywhere he could keep you close. There was a quiet desperation in it, not born from fear of losing you, but from the simple desire to remain in this moment for as long as possible. He held you as though you were an anchor, something steady and certain in a world that often felt overwhelming.

And as he poured every ounce of affection he possessed into each touch and kiss, he felt something inside him finally loosen. For the first time in what felt like forever, he could simply breathe.

JASON TODD

Jason's breakdowns were few and far between nowadays but the traces they left behind were always the same, their broken remains spread haphazardly across the hardwood like the aftermath of a disaster that had come and gone hours ago, glass shards glittering beneath the low light and catching against your vision whenever you moved, each fractured piece reflecting distorted fragments of the apartment around it. Some frames had merely fallen, their corners cracked and splintered, while others looked as though they had been ripped from the walls and hurled to the ground with enough force to leave spiderweb fractures spreading across every inch of glass. The photographs themselves were scattered amongst the wreckage, corners bent, edges curled.

Despite how many times you had witnessed the aftermath of one of these episodes, your body reacted the same way every single time. Your muscles tightened beneath your skin until your shoulders ached from the tension, your heartbeat settling into an anxious rhythm that seemed far too loud in the silence of the apartment as you carefully navigated around the debris. Reason told you there was no immediate danger, that Jason had never once directed his anger toward you, but instinct had never cared much for reason. It was difficult to silence the part of yourself that remained poised for escape, always anticipating the moment something might finally change. Not that there was anywhere to run, you see that was the cruel irony of your situation. For all his faults, for all the ways he had twisted your life around himself until leaving had become little more than a distant fantasy, Jason had never harmed you. His temper was frightening, his moods unpredictable, and his emotional regulation seemed to hang together by frayed threads on the best of days, but somehow the line had always stopped there.

Your gaze drifted downward as you stepped over a cluster of shattered glass, only to falter when a familiar photograph caught your attention. The frame surrounding it had splintered completely, leaving the picture exposed amongst the wreckage, and even from where you stood you immediately recognized it as one of Jason's favourites. It was a photograph of the two of you, one he had insisted on hanging himself months ago after spending nearly an hour adjusting its position by fractions of an inch. You remembered standing in the hallway watching him work, listening to him mutter under his breath before finally stepping back to admire his handiwork with a rare, almost sheepish smile. Now the photograph lay discarded on the floor. Jason's side was crumpled almost beyond recognition, deep creases distorting his features beneath layers of folded paper, but yours remained intact. Not untouched, exactly. The edges around your image had been carefully smoothed flat, every wrinkle pressed away by rough fingertips, and even from a glance you could tell it hadn't happened accidentally. Someone had taken the time to fix it.

You already knew what tomorrow would look like. By the time you woke up the hallway would be spotless, every shard of glass swept away and discarded before you could accidentally cut yourself. New frames would appear where the broken ones had been, every photograph returned to its designated place on the wall with the same meticulous care Jason devoted to anything involving you. If a stranger walked through the apartment tomorrow afternoon, they would never know anything had happened at all.

Swallowing against the knot forming in your throat, you stepped over the photograph and continued down the hallway, following the thin strip of light spilling from beneath the bathroom door at the very end. When you finally reached the doorway and looked inside, you found him exactly where you expected. Jason was curled into himself in the far corner of the small bathroom, folded up awkwardly against the wall with his arms draped over his knees and his head bowed low. The sight always struck you with the same strange contradiction. He was a man built to take up space, broad shoulders and heavy muscle making him seem larger than life in most rooms, yet here he looked impossibly small, compressed into the corner like a nestling that had fallen from its nest and lacked the strength to climb back. In the cramped confines of the bathroom the image bordered on absurdity, and under different circumstances, in another life occupied by different versions of yourselves, you might have laughed at the sight of a man his size trying to disappear into a corner that clearly could not contain him.

Instead, your chest tightened. His shoulders were hunched so severely that they nearly touched his ears, every line of his body curved inward as though he were attempting to protect himself something only he could see. The rhythmic drip of blood echoed faintly throughout the room, slow and steady enough that you could count the seconds between each drop. Your gaze followed the sound to his hands, where split knuckles rested loosely against his forearms, fresh blood trailing down his skin before gathering at his fingertips and splashing onto the white tile below. Crimson smeared across the floor in uneven streaks, and although you didn't ask, you could piece together enough of the story yourself. Patrol had gone badly.

He didn't look at you.

He never did after nights like this.

Your gaze drifted to the mirror hanging above the sink, or what remained of it. Jagged fragments still clung stubbornly to the frame, cracked pieces protruding at odd angles like broken teeth. The rest littered the counter and sink basin below, reflecting fractured slivers of the room whenever the light caught them. It was expected. Just another thing to replace tomorrow morning alongside the picture frames in the hallway. Jason hated mirrors in a way that bordered on superstition. He avoided them whenever possible, glanced away from reflective surfaces before they could properly catch his face, and rarely lingered long enough to study his own reflection. Sometimes you thought he feared what he might find staring back at him., you thought he genuinely believed the mirrors would confirm every terrible suspicion he carried about himself, that they would reveal the ugly truth beneath the skin and prove that whatever had clawed its way out of the grave all those years ago had come back wrong.

You remained in the doorway for a moment, your shadow stretching across the tiles and falling over his hunched form, and were struck once again by the strange reality of your situation. There wasn't anything soft about it anymore. Whatever tenderness could have existed between captor and captive had long since been strangled beneath deadbolts and locked windows, buried under the weight of years spent confined to an apartment where your freedom ended at the front door. The only sunlight you received came through the living room window, filtered and distant, a reminder of a world that continued moving without you. Sometimes Jason hated that reality. On days when he hated everything, he hated the apartment, hated himself, hated the fact that he had allowed his need for you to grow into something uncontrollable. He hated how attached he'd become, how thoroughly your existence had embedded itself into the hollow spaces inside him until your name felt less like a memory and more like a splinter lodged deep within his soul, impossible to remove without tearing something vital apart in the process.

Yet despite all of that, despite every ugly truth neither of you could ignore, the moment you stepped forward and lowered yourself onto the cold tiles beside him, whatever resistance remained inside him dissolved almost immediately. His body tensed for only a fraction of a second before giving way beneath your touch, and then he was leaning into you with a quiet desperation that never failed to twist something painful in your chest. Your arms wrapped around his shoulders and back, and Jason folded into the embrace as though it were the only thing keeping him upright, pressing his face against your chest until his forehead rested beneath your chin. The resistance always ended the same way. With his breath catching sharply in his throat as though he'd forgotten how to breathe altogether, followed by the faint tremble that worked its way through his body despite his attempts to suppress it. His fingers curled against your shirt, bunching the fabric tightly in his fists.

Beneath the anger, beneath the obsession, beneath the grief and violence and ugliness he believed defined him, there was love. Twisted and possessive and often deeply selfish, perhaps, but love all the same. It clung to him with the same stubborn persistence as a heartbeat, surviving every attempt he made to bury it, and on nights like this, when the rest of him had been stripped raw, it was the only thing left keeping him together.

TIM DRAKE

Tim Drake valued his mind more than anything else.

Not because he was arrogant, nor because he believed himself superior to the people around him, but because he understood exactly what his mind had given him. It was the reason he had survived for as long as he had in Gotham, it was the reason he could keep pace with people older and more experienced than him. While others relied on strength or fear or sheer force of will, Tim relied on the thing he trusted most: his ability to think. When Tim Drake was exhausted, mistakes happened, details slipped through the cracks, patterns were overlooked. In his line of work, mistakes were not inconveniences. They were liabilities, end of.

That was why he knew, long before it actually happened, that eventually something in his life would have to be sacrificed.

The conflict between his relationship and his responsibilities had not appeared overnight. It had grown gradually, almost imperceptibly at first, into the fabric of his daily life through a thousand small moments. Missed calls because patrol had run longer than expected, cancelled plans because Gotham had decided to implode at the worst possible time, excuses became explanations, explanations became half-truths, and half-truths eventually became outright lies. Tim delayed making a decision for far longer than he wanted to because a selfish part of him kept insisting there had to be a solution he simply hadn't found yet. There was always a way to balance competing priorities if he thought hard enough. He wanted to believe he could keep you while maintaining everything else. But the longer the relationship continued, the more obvious the flaws became. Eventually you would begin asking questions he couldn't answer, questions about his disappearances, about the bruises and injuries that appeared without explanation, about why he was always tired, always distracted, always leaving in the middle of conversations to deal with emergencies he could never fully explain. The excuses would become repetitive. The lies would become transparent. Worse still, there was always the possibility that someone else would notice first.

That possibility was what ultimately made the decision for him. Gotham was filled with people who specialized in finding weaknesses. If somebody discovered who he was, truly discovered it, then your relationship would immediately become a vulnerability. Tim knew better than most what happened to the people caught in Gotham's crossfire. From a purely logical perspective, there was no decision to make at all. The relationship had to end. The problem was that logic failed to account for what happened afterwards.

Tim expected heartbreak and he expected loneliness. What he did not expect was how quickly everything else began to deteriorate. His sleep schedule, something he had spent years refining through sheer necessity, collapsed almost immediately. The carefully timed naps that had once come so easily vanished, nights stretched endlessly into mornings spent staring at glowing computer screens while exhaustion settled deeper and deeper beneath his skin. The dark circles beneath his eyes became permanent fixtures, energy drinks stopped being a convenience and became a requirement. Worse than the exhaustion, however, were the mistakes made on the job. It took him far longer than it should have to identify the cause because the answer was absurd. Embarrassing, even. Every aspect of his life felt slightly off-balance, as though removing you had shifted some invisible foundation he had never realized existed. The realization unsettled him in a way few things ever had. He still loved you. That had never changed. If anything, the distance had only clarified that fact. He loved you enough to leave, loved you enough to sacrifice his own happiness because he believed it would keep you safe. Yet loving you from a distance introduced an entirely different problem. He could no longer see you.

The absence of information bothered him more than it should have. He no longer knew whether you were sleeping properly. He no longer knew whether you had eaten that day. He no longer knew who you spent your time with or what routes you took home. Information that had once existed effortlessly at the edge of his awareness had vanished overnight, leaving behind gaps that seemed to grow larger with every passing day. Tim told himself it was concern. The kind anyone would feel for someone they loved. But concern gradually transformed into frustration, and frustration eventually transformed into something much more dangerous.

The thought arrived during one particularly sleepless night while he sat alone in front of his computer, exhausted enough that the glow of the monitors made his eyes ache. He understood immediately that he was standing at the edge of a line he had never intended to cross. He understood exactly what it represented and exactly how easily one decision could carry him beyond it. The frightening part was not that the thought existed. The frightening part was how reasonable it sounded.

After all, his relationship with you had always been built on deception to some extent. The secret identity itself was a lie so enormous that everything else seemed insignificant in comparison. Looking back, Tim found himself wondering when exactly honesty had stopped being the foundation of the relationship and become merely another tool he used to maintain it. So as he sat there in the quiet glow of his screens, staring at a problem that refused to resolve itself, Tim found his thoughts circling the same question over and over again. If he had already crossed so many lines for the sake of protecting you, for the sake of maintaining some semblance of control over his life, then what truly made this one different? And if crossing it was the only way to keep you safe, to keep you close, and to silence the growing chaos that had consumed his life since losing you, then perhaps it wasn't a line at all. Perhaps it was simply the next logical step.

And he knows exactly what he's doing.

He's never been under any illusions about that. Tim understands every line he has crossed with perfect clarity. He understands the implications of every decision that brought him here, understands that if anyone else were sitting in his place he would immediately recognize the behaviour for what it was. Tim has always been practical, always willing to make difficult decisions if he believed the outcome justified them, and he loves you. That part, at least, remains simple. It is love that brought him here.

In a life tangled with aliases, responsibilities, and impossible expectations, you became the one thing that belonged solely to him. Around Bruce he was a soldier, a detective and a son all simultaneously struggling beneath expectations he could never quite meet. Around the rest of the family he was constantly shifting between roles, adapting himself to fit whatever situation demanded. With you, however, there was no performance. Here, within the walls of the penthouse he had purchased through channels impossible to trace back to him, he was not Red Robin or a Wayne or a Drake. He was simply Tim, just Tim.

The adjustment period had been difficult. He knew that. The confusion in your eyes during those first weeks had lingered longer than either of you wanted, uncertainty clouding every interaction as you struggled to make sense of a reality that refused to fit within any reasonable explanation. You adapted because people adapted to almost anything eventually. Tim hated himself for being grateful about that, but he was. The calmer you became, the easier everything else seemed. It was why he always returned to you.

Whenever a mission collapsed into chaos and whenever Gotham demanded too much from him. Whenever another argument with Bruce left him emotionally exhausted and frustrated beyond words and whenever the noise became unbearable and the pressure inside his chest threatened to crack something vital, his feet carried him back here without conscious thought.

Which was exactly how you found yourself in the situation now.

The weight pressed against your back was impossible to ignore. "Tim," you murmured sleepily, your eyes blinking open as consciousness slowly returned, only to be immediately reminded that you were not alone. Tim was practically wrapped around you, his entire body curved against yours. One arm was draped securely across your waist while the other had somehow worked its way beneath you during the night, trapping you in a cocoon of limbs and body heat. His chest was pressed firmly against your back, his nose tucked beneath your ear, and his legs were so thoroughly tangled with yours that disentangling them would likely require active negotiation. Sometimes you were reminded of those nature documentaries where snakes coiled around prey until the distinction between one body and the next seemed to disappear, or there were times he reminded you of one of those strange symbiotic creatures from old science-fiction films, forever trying to merge himself with a host until they became inseparable.

The sound he made in response was barely coherent, somewhere between a groan and a hum of acknowledgement, but his grip tightened immediately. You could feel the warmth of his breath against the back of your neck as his hands shifted beneath your shirt, seeking bare skin with unconscious determination. His palms settled against your stomach, warm and familiar, and you immediately recognized the habit for what it was. Tim was perpetually exhausted, perpetually cold, and perpetually stealing your body heat whenever the opportunity presented itself.With considerable effort, you managed to turn over within the confines of his hold until you were facing him directly. The movement earned another sleepy noise of protest from s omewhere deep in his chest, though he made no genuine effort to stop you. Your fingertips drifted lightly across his side, tracing absent patterns against the fabric of his shirt in a silent attempt to capture his attention. Slowly, his eyes cracked open. He looked exhausted. There were faint shadows beneath his eyes and the lingering heaviness of someone who had not slept nearly enough in recent weeks, yet despite that he focused entirely on you. Tim stared as though the simple act of looking away had become impossible.

"Five more minutes," he mumbled, his voice rough with sleep.

You weren't entirely convinced he even knew what you had been asking for. Days with Tim were rarely gentle in the conventional sense. He wasn't affectionate in grand, dramatic displays. Instead, he clung and he burrowed. He attached himself to you with a quiet desperation that seemed almost unconscious. Physical proximity wasn't something he wanted so much as something he required. After difficult nights, especially, he behaved like someone trying to convince himself you were still real.

You let out a slow sigh and eventually closed your eyes again, surrendering the argument before it could properly begin. Experience had taught you there was rarely any point fighting him over things like this. If you succeeded in escaping the bed, he would simply follow. Tim Drake was many things, but subtle was not one of them when it came to you. Most days it was easier to let him have his way than spend hours enduring his increasingly creative attempts to reclaim your attention.

What you didn't see was the way his expression softened after your eyes closed. The tension that seemed permanently embedded into his features eased almost immediately as he watched you settle back against the pillows. His arms tightened around you once more, not enough to wake you but enough to pull you closer, and after a moment he shifted until your head rested comfortably against the hollow of his neck.

For the first time all day, his thoughts were silent. And for now, that was enough.

Tim closed his eyes and held you a little tighter, secure in the certainty that he had you, and he meant it. Even if this was what it took.

STEPHANIE BROWN

Stephanie Brown was exhausted.

Given her line of work, she really should have expected it. Anyone looking from the outside might have thought this was just another night in the life of Batgirl, a long evening spent fighting a psychotic martial arts master holding hostages and making increasingly violent promises. It wasn't even the first time Stephanie had found herself staring down someone like that. Somehow Gotham always managed to produce another deranged genius, another person convinced that killing a vigilante would solve all their problems. By the time she finally made it home, every muscle in her body ached, there were already beginning to bloom beneath her suit, and the lingering adrenaline that had carried her through the fight was fading fast, leaving only a heavy, bone-deep weariness behind.

Still, things were different once she stepped through the door. Inside these walls, she didn't have to worry about being Batgirl. Here, she could set aside the mask and the expectations that came with it. Over the past year, since you had "moved" in with her, Stephanie had discovered something she never expected: being Stephanie Brown was a role she genuinely enjoyed. It wasn't always easy. In fact, it had taken both of you time to adjust to the arrangement. Not that you had been given much choice in the matter. At first, you'd underestimated just how serious she was. What had looked like an ordinary home had gradually revealed itself to be something else entirely, the place was fortified far better than you'd originally thought, layered with precautions and safeguards that made leaving far more complicated than it seemed. Eventually, you learned that resisting outright wasn't worth the trouble. Stephanie could be surprisingly stubborn when she wanted something, and she possessed a talent for enforcing cooperation through annoyingly mundane means. If you refused to play along, necessities had an unfortunate tendency to disappear from the shopping list, toothpaste wasn't replaced, shampoo ran out, and all your basic sanitation products mysteriously failed to reappear once they were gone.

So, over time, an uneasy routine had formed between you. It was a strange thing to consider, looking back on how everything had begun. Which was how you found yourself sitting on the couch with Stephanie sprawled across it, her head resting comfortably in your lap. Your fingers drifted through her blonde curls, slowly combing through the tangled strands. The soft texture slipped between your fingers as you absentmindedly worked through knots and loose curls alike. It was a simple gesture, but one Stephanie seemed incapable of getting enough of. After nights spent fighting criminals and throwing herself into danger, she always melted the moment your hand found its way into her hair. For Stephanie, it was pure bliss. Her eyes remained closed, her expression relaxed in a way few people ever got to see. The steady motion of your fingers through her curls felt soothing enough to make the aches in her body fade into the background. If someone had asked her where she would rather be at that moment, she honestly couldn't think of an answer.

Well, almost couldn't.

A faint smile tugged at the corner of her lips as an entirely different thought crossed her mind, one she wisely kept to herself. Your gaze wandered over her instead. Even now she was still wearing most of her suit, the familiar purple-and-black material clinging to her frame after what had undoubtedly been a long night. There were faint scuffs and smears of dirt visible along parts of the fabric, evidence of whatever near-death experience she'd endured before returning home. Her boots had been kicked up onto the edge of the couch without a second thought, and you were fairly certain there were now dirt marks somewhere on the upholstery because of it. The realization drew a small sigh from you as your attention drifted.

Only for Stephanie to notice almost immediately. The moment your fingers slowed and eventually stopped moving, one of her hands rose without her even opening her eyes. Her grip found your wrist with effortless accuracy. Still looking entirely relaxed, she guided your hand back into her hair and resumed the gentle motion herself.

"Sheesh. Stay focused," she murmured.

The complaint carried no real irritation. If anything, it sounded lazy and content, spoken by someone far too comfortable to put genuine effort into being annoyed. Her eyes remained closed as she settled deeper against your lap, clearly satisfied once your fingers resumed their work. "Sorry," you replied instantly. The apology came more from reflex than any genuine feeling of remorse. Your hand never stopped moving, fingers slipping through Stephanie's blonde curls as you carefully worked out the occasional tangle.

"Got distracted by your suit," you added after a moment.

Your free hand drifted down to her arm, fingertips brushing over the textured material that covered it. The fabric was rough beneath your touch, designed for durability rather than comfort. Up close, you could see the evidence of the night she'd had. There were faint scuff marks along the forearm, streaks of grime caught in the seams, and small abrasions where she'd clearly collided with something harder than herself. Despite all of that, the suit still maintained its striking appearance.

"It's a very bright purple."

Stephanie's eyes opened immediately. "It's not purple," she said without hesitation. The speed of her response suggested this was not the first time she had been forced to defend the color of her costume. "Purple would look stupid."

"What?" Genuine confusion crept into your voice. "Then what color is it?"

For a moment, Stephanie simply stared up at the ceiling. The confidence that had accompanied her immediate denial seemed to falter slightly now that she was being asked to provide an alternative answer. Her gaze shifted away from yours, suddenly finding something very interesting about the opposite side of the room.

"A lady never tells her secrets."

An eye roll threatened to surface, but you resisted it. Somehow, Stephanie possessed a remarkable talent for avoiding even the simplest questions whenever it amused her. Rather than press the issue, you simply shook your head and returned your attention to her hair. Your fingers continued their slow, methodical path through her curls while the room settled back into silence. Stephanie's eyes drifted closed once more. The tension that had briefly entered her shoulders faded as she relaxed again beneath your touch. The steady rise and fall of her breathing became the only indication she was still awake. You had almost forgotten the conversation entirely when Stephanie finally spoke again.

"It's eggplant."

CASSANDRA CAIN

It was something Cassandra had always known about herself.

Long before she had the words to articulate it, before she had met people determined to prove otherwise, she had accepted it as an undeniable truth, that she wasn't good. Good people were raised with love, taught right from wrong, encouraged to dream about their futures. Cassandra had been raised for an entirely different purpose. She had been taught how to kill. Every lesson of her childhood had revolved around violence. While other children learned how to make friends, how to express themselves, and how to live, Cassandra had learned how to break bones and how to end a life before someone even realized they were in danger. Her worth had been defined by what she could do to others, not by who she was.

Living had never been part of the plan. For years, she had drifted through life carrying that belief. She survived because survival was expected of her, she fought because fighting was all she knew. There were stretches of her early life where the future felt like an empty concept, something distant and irrelevant. If she died tomorrow, it wouldn't have mattered. She had no dreams waiting for her and no reason to care what happened next. Then she met you and it happened so gradually that she barely noticed it at first. There were small conversations turned into longer ones, the shared moments became shared routines, the days became weeks, weeks became months, and somewhere in the middle of it all, you quietly settled yourself into every corner of her life. Now, when she thought about her days, you were woven into all of them. The mornings where you exchanged sleepy greetings before either of you was fully awake, all the meals eaten together, the idle conversations that wandered nowhere in particular. By all accounts, it should have become boring but it never did.

If anything, Cassandra treasured those routines more with every passing day. Predictability had become comforting rather than restrictive and she liked knowing what tomorrow would look like. She liked knowing where she would be at the end of the day, she liked knowing that no matter what happened outside, there was always a place she could return to where you would be waiting. For someone who had spent so much of her life merely existing, the feeling was difficult to describe. It felt like she was finally living. And at the center of all of it was you. Before meeting you, Cassandra had never understood why people fought so hard to stay alive. Now she understood completely. That's why she noticed the changes so quickly. Most people wouldn't have seen them. The signs were too small, too subtle. A slightly different tone of voice, slight hesitation before answering a question, a smile that looked convincing enough to everyone except the people who knew you best, there were tiny shifts in behavior that could easily be dismissed as coincidence.

Cassandra noticed every single one. She may be unable to read books but Cassandra could read people better than anyone. Especially you. At first she simply observed. She watched quietly, collecting information the way she always did. She waited to see if the change would pass on its own. Eventually, she asked and your response came immediately.

"I'm fine."

"You're lying."

Predictably, you looked surprised.

"What? No, I'm not."

Cassandra's expression didn't change.

"Yes. You are."

A frustrated sigh escaped you. "How do you always know?" The question sounded almost accusatory. You only recieved a small shrug in response to the question. She knew the difference between your real smiles and the ones you forced, the difference between how your voice sounded when you were tired, upset, anxious, or hurting. She knew the habits you slipped into when something was bothering you. She knew you better than anyone. And because of that, when something was wrong, she would always know long before you were ready to admit it.

"I'm a detective."

It ended the way it always did. After enough patient questioning and enough failed attempts on your part to insist that everything was fine, the truth eventually came spilling out. More often than not, it was something that would seem insignificant to anyone looking in from the outside. This time it was a coworker. A thoughtless comment made in passing, perhaps intended as a joke or perhaps not, but one that had lodged itself firmly in your mind and refused to leave. You explained it haltingly at first, embarrassed by how much it had affected you, only for the rest to come pouring out once you started talking. Cassandra listened to every word without interruption. She didn't offer advice immediately, nor did she try to dismiss your feelings by telling you not to worry about it. She simply listened to you. Her attention never wavered, dark eyes fixed entirely on you as though nothing else in the world existed. There was something intensely comforting about being listened to by Cassandra. Most people waited for their turn to speak but Cassandra absorbed every detail with complete focus, treating each word as something important simply because it had come from you.

The conversation slowly gave way to familiarity. Before long, you found yourself wrapped securely in her arms, pressed against her chest as though she could physically shield you from every unpleasant thing the world might throw your way. One arm rested around your waist while the other traced slow, absent-minded patterns across your back. Her chin rested lightly on top of your head, and the steady rhythm of her breathing gradually coaxed the tension from your body. For long stretches, neither of you spoke. Silence had never been uncomfortable between the two of you. In fact, some of your favorite moments together happened when neither of you felt the need to fill the room with conversation. When she eventually did speak, it was with the same blunt honesty that defined so much of her personality.

"You smell like strawberries."

The comment arrived so unexpectedly that it caught you completely off guard. You blinked, pulling back slightly to look up at her.

"What?"

"You smell like strawberries," she repeated with complete seriousness.

You stared at her for a moment before a laugh escaped you. The rest of the evening passed quietly after that. The hurt caused by your coworker's words didn't disappear entirely, but it became smaller. Cassandra had a way of doing that without even trying. Eventually exhaustion caught up with you. The emotional weight of the day combined with the warmth of Cassandra's embrace proved impossible to resist. At some point you found yourselves in bed, the familiar comfort of your shared room wrapping around you just as securely as Cassandra's arms had earlier. Sleep claimed you quickly and Cassandra remained awake. She lay beside you for a long while, watching as your breathing settled. The tension that had lingered on your face throughout the evening had finally vanished. Even in sleep, you seemed more peaceful now than you had when you first arrived home. She reached out once, brushing a loose strand of hair away from your face before allowing her hand to linger against your cheek.

Being with you had changed her in ways she still struggled to fully comprehend. Before meeting you, Cassandra's understanding of the world had been simple. Violence had been a language she understood instinctively. Her entire childhood had revolved around it. You had taught her that life itself was precious. Life was shared breakfasts and quiet evenings, it was arguing over what movie to watch and listening to you ramble about your day, it was the feeling of coming home and knowing someone would be there waiting for you. Through you, Cassandra had learned that living and merely surviving were not the same thing.

Because of that lesson, she had made a promise to herself long ago. She would never kill again. That promise remained unbroken. It would remain unbroken tonight as well. Her gaze shifted toward the darkened window as she thought about the coworker whose careless words had left you so upset. Nobody was going to die tonight, but death was not the only form justice could take.