#*layla

i thought that since it is pretty obvious that the order of resistance is going to lose, we'd get more of a captive bird-in-cage dynamic with hunger and vicky. i was fully expecting an unsettlingly creepy, eldritch-esque creature, who is unfathomably powerful and can quite literally end vicky's entire world without much effort. i mean... just imagine.... for a terrifying entity who is fascinated by someone who is both much weaker than him and much better at resisting him than others are.

just, it's the sheer potential of it. like he does not see her as a person, really, more of a captive bird-in-cage-with-clipped-wings. she herself is not intriguing to him; her ability to resist him is. after all, he's still in power. he could snap her neck with little more than a flick of his fingers. she is to him what humans are to immortals; weak, amusing, pathetic.

and just, her world becomes narrowed down to captivity. the gilded shackles around her ankles, the gossamer and bandage fluttering by her thighs, and the unbearable silence pressing in on her. mostly she is left by herself in a vast, endless room, the walls arching into nothingness. she lies on her back and on her side, she tries to roam the huge chambers and finds her movement restricted by those damned chains. she pores over memories of her time as councilor and distracts herself with thoughts of her lover and her mother, of the order; surely, now they will come. surely, they will attack now, and get me back. and i do think the order tries, at the very Least on account of vicky's LI, but of course. they're no match for the horsemen. she has to wait. she just lays there and waits, akin to how a wife may wait for her husband, except that it's against her will

hunger rarely speaks to her; he's more fascinated by how unaffected she is by his soul-crushing strength. when she pales at his hand on her knee, it is because of fear; when she flinches at his presence behind her back, it is because of disgust; and when she winces as he enters his own chambers, it is simply her hatred. she may react to him, but all of it is due to her own feelings, not his power — that, she is so simply impervious to, so untouched. it almost makes him feel ridiculed, that this pathetically weak immortal, this bird in her cage, turns her nose up at him. she gives him nothing but the same contempt he's been giving to other people for millenia. and he is enraptured, but hunger cannot change his nature. he can pretend at civility, but he is not. if he wants, then he craves; if he craves, then he devours.

made this for vicky's birthday and queued it only to find that it didn't post for some reason (😭). anyways happy very late birthday to my princess