#daxe

CW: manhandling, minor whump (14 y/o), very vague implied allusion to past dub/noncon, allusion to past domestic abuse

The first time Elvan hit Daxe, it was an accident. Well, it was intentional, but she had only briefly lost her cool. She had already been incredibly on edge all day and when she finally left the throne room she wanted nothing but peace, quiet, and Asenath’s calming presence. So when she opened the door to her chambers, she was not thrilled to find Daxe there. Hours earlier she had told him not to follow her to the throne room, and apparently he had taken that instruction to heart; the only indication that he had even moved from where she’d left him was that he was now kneeling on the rug rather than standing.

She heaved an exasperated sigh. “Why are you like this?”

The boy looked genuinely confused. “I...I’m not sure, master. Did—did I do something wrong?”

He seemed to shrink in on himself even as he asked the question. He had followed all her commands, hadn’t he? How had he managed to screw up something as simple as this? She was clearly angry at him for something.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Elvan muttered under her breath. “Daxe, stand up. I don’t know what you think you’re accomplishing here.”

He scrambled to his feet and licked his lips before answering. “I, I—I just wish to please you, master, if you would allow it.”

“Daxe...” Elvan started again, trying to keep her irritation in check. “It would please me if you stopped trying.”

“My old master, he—”

Before Daxe even realized Elvan had moved, she had grabbed the boy by the jaw, jerking his head up to look at her, fingers digging into his cheeks. For a long moment, they both stood in silence, wide-eyed and trembling, Daxe from utter terror, Elvan from a sudden tsunami of some unidentifiable emotion that wasn’t quite anger, but wasn’t far off. He had accidentally struck a chord that even Elvan didn’t know she had. She looked at him for a long moment before speaking again, quietly but forcefully.

“I am not Theos. Theos is dead, he is no one’s master now.” She clenched her jaw. “I know what he did to you. Whenever I put up too much of a fight, I know he would take it out on you. Theos was not a good man, but I’m not him, and whatever you had with him, you don’t have with me. You’re a child, Daxe. I’m not going to do that to you. Do not compare me to him.”

Elvan let go of the boy, who immediately dropped his eyes back to the ground and started stumbling through an apology. “I—I’m-m sorry, m-master, I’m—I d-didn’t mean to off-offend you. I just, just th-thought you'd—”

And with that, Elvan struck him, open palm colliding with his cheek with enough force to snap his head to the side and send him stumbling backwards, where he crashed into the table and fell to the ground. Everything was blurry through the tears that suddenly filled his eyes and he curled into a ball on the floor in anticipation of the beating that was surely about to happen.

For Elvan's part, it hadn't really been a conscious decision; it was just the most efficient way of getting him to shut up. But as the warm tingling spread across her hand where it had made contact, she felt a new sensation in the pit of her stomach. It wasn't anger this time; if anything, she felt calmer. No, it was something else.

She gazed down at the boy cowering on the floor at her feet. Daxe, realizing she wasn't actively trying to hit him again, got to his hands and knees and was sobbing incoherent apologies with his forehead pressed to the floor. In that moment she knew exactly what it was.

It was power. Total power, not like the political power she wielded as regent, dependent upon countless other people and the existence and stability of an intricate societal structure. No, this was the type of power that would remain when the rest of the world fell away.

It was intoxicating.

Elvan took a sharp breath in, shaking herself from her thoughts. She turned away abruptly and pointed to the open door.

“Get out,” she ordered. With only a moment of hesitation, the boy stumbled to his feet, ducking his head as he ran out of the room. Elvan closed the door and leaned her forehead against the rough wood, listening to the footsteps receding quickly down the hall.