Sliding in when it's still technically the weekend where I live. My phone might have accidentally stayed in the pocket of my shorts even after I was in the pool yesterday, resulting in a very frustrating today... Why does it take so long to get a new phone? Why????
Anyhoo...
I've been uno-reverse tagged by @lucretiouswept, @missfortunetherogue, @ele-millennial-weirdo, @gortashsrighthand & @saylofwaterdeep, and tagged by @michanvalentine.
Thank you! 🫶 It's such a joy to see everything all of you write and create!
Today, I have for you: a bittersweet dream and a rude awakening for Mara.
TW: angst, memories of non-graphic sex, attempt to steal a sleep-kiss, intimate touching without asking (non-sexual)
[Reminder: All companions are dead]
When Mara dragged her exhausted body back to camp, she almost collapsed onto her bedroll without changing clothes, but her stomach gurgled. She didn't want to eat, but forced herself to consume a meagre repast of fruit, raw vegetables, and nuts. The very sight of meat, even the fully cooked ham the hirelings ate, made her queasy; she caught a whiff of it and tasted bile. She left the fire, overcame her stomach issues and finished her food whilst sitting on the hill that overlooked Rivington.
Once the hirelings had turned in, she pulled Gale's old purple tunic out of her pack, stripped, and donned it without invoking the fitting enchantment. The sleeves enveloped her hands, the neckline hung off one shoulder, and the embroidered hem didn't stop until mid-calf. She gathered the fabric up to her face and inhaled deeply. The enchanted perfume of rare tomes competed with the scent of his skin, but it hadn't won yet. She shuddered as one tear squeezed from the corner of her eye, the only grief she would allow herself. The brief second of reprieve she felt from her persistent, relentless rage was nigh ecstatic in comparison.
Mara pulled her bedroll off the hay bale and placed it closer to the campfire. She curled into a fetal position as she stared into the flames, slowly slipping into sleep. A dream of him was swiftly upon her. It was partly memory. This time, it wasn't another nightmare in which she relived his murder.
It was worse.
It was the most beautiful moment of her life.
After he'd woven an illusion of a beautiful night, after they had both confessed their love, after he'd offered to “wow” her, after she'd said, “yes, but first… let me show you how much I crave you,” and he had agreed with a delighted twinkle in his eye; after she'd mapped every part of him with kisses, after she'd told him she knew that he had used magic to minimize the appearance of the toll the orb had taken upon his body, and that she wanted him no matter how he looked; after she'd made love to him, cherishing every note of joy she drew from his lips, every slight change in the shape of his eyes as she moved him from the depths of a passion that edged on panic to the height of rapture; after she'd dozed off on his chest for a short time, awoken and entered his incredible illusory creation; after Gale had unbound her, body and soul, held her inside pleasure itself and cradled her there, worshiped her in ways her shredded memory had not imagined possible, every touch, every thought charged with love, intention and presence; and after they'd finally returned to his tent in the wee hours, they had lain on soft furs topped with a thick, plush blanket.
The sex had been a glorious expression of the love that had grown between them, but it was the loss of what came after that gouged bruises into her heart like cruel thumbs.
Mara had nestled her back against his chest, one of his arms tight around her waist, the other crossed over her torso. A warm hand gently held one of her breasts as though it had always belonged there, as she traced the veins on his forearms with her fingertips. He murmured into her hair, listing off several of the many reasons why he loved her.
What she felt was deeper than love or comfort, too active for peace or safety, and stronger than home or even belonging.
She felt whole.
Her mind was riddled with pits and shadows, her impulses inexplicably cruel and violent, her grasp on reality fragile and fleeting, yet there, with him, the sharp edges softened, the overbright lights dimmed, the voice she hadn't known was her father's will fell silent, and the self underneath could finally be heard.
And more than anything, she wanted this.
Him.
A love that matched her own.
A partner.
She knew even then that she needed him too much, and that he did the same, but she thought they would work on that together. After all of this.
Mara had truly believed there would be an after.
Gale had talked in his sleep that night.
“Parsley… butter… salt.” He paused. “Not enough salt…”
Then he hummed a tuneless melody for a moment.
“No, I don't… need salamander eyes… for any spells, Mother, why… would you think that?”
He chuckled softly, then began, “Well… you can tell cousin Margery… that hex… is a warlock spell, but… yes, it is… the thought… that counts.”
A soft hush of wonder touching his tone, he confessed, “Speaking of warlocks… I have… fallen in love… and she's… wonderful! Truly… wonderful…”
He mumbled unintelligibly for a second.
“Yes, she's also a gifted wizard, and… she would… I know that she would… love me… without my magic.”
He made a startled noise.
“Oh… stop! No… you're going to over salt it.”
Another soft rumble that sounded like the start of a snore.
“Of course, I can… fix it…”
He sighed contentedly and confided, “She sees me… as no other partner ever has… At my worst, even… She's… broadened my perception… of everything, taken the world I once knew and… set it ablaze, but her flames… do not wreak destruction… they are the very fires of creation itself! I feel… free when I'm with her… Met at the same level… Not pandered to… Challenged...”
She could hear the smile that began to convey itself in the previous word as he continued, “I've… never been happier…”
Happy. Mara made him happy.
Gale dreamed of telling his mother how happy she made him.
Tears had filled her eyes before she drifted off.
If only she could stay there, in his arms. If only it wasn't a dream.
Nothing would ever be beautiful again.
The next day, she'd awoken to Gale gently stroking her cheek as he whispered, “Good morning, my love,” behind her ear.
Smiling involuntarily, she turned to kiss him over her shoulder, and reality seeped in around the dream, drawing her just close enough to wakefulness that her sense of smell exited the dormancy of sleep. Ropes of darkness shot out of her at the proximity of the scent—and the fact that someone was touching her without permission. Her eyes snapped open, and she shoved the cambion's puckered lips away from her with her whole hand blocking the lower half of his face.
“I almost sent you back to the Hells, moron,” Mara chastised, sitting up as her tendrils retreated into her. “What are you doing here?!”
Unperturbed, Raphael, who had just been fucking spooning her without her leave, his doublet half unbuttoned, chuckled, sat up and sidled closer to her, saying, “Such violence, Mara dear! I've earned a cuddle, fair and square. I come bearing good news.”
Her brows low, she prompted, “What news?”
“I know where your precious wizard's soul is…” he lured, a smirk curling his lips.
Warmth violently bloomed in Mara's chest at the very thought that somewhere in the universe, Gale still existed. Her features softened instantly; she couldn't stop her breath from hitching. She frowned as hard as she could to hide the hope in her eyes from Raphael. His smug look flawlessly illustrated her failure.
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So... remember the Raphael scene that I said that I might trim down? Welp, now, it's longer.
And I decided not to leave it hanging unfinished.
[It's still a WIP because it's only a portion of Part 3 of Cheese Partaken At A Late Hour, my Dark Mara AU series. I'm very excited because part 3 is almost done! 😄]
First half here.
We pick up immediately after the last line:
But... what if it wasn't?
TW: Raphael is an asshole (but what's new?), femdomme gnome Durge, angst, language, murderous thoughts, blood kink, smutty memories, bondage, dominance & submission, premature ejaculation, cumming untouched, blood drinking, masturbation, P in V, aftercare, violence, death threats and threats worse than death
Remember... companions are all dead in this AU
“You'll try? Not good enough. I know what the Emperor is. The moment I'm no longer the ticket to its freedom, I'm fair game to be thralled or killed. I can handle the Emperor, or dispose of it when the time comes.” She leveled her gaze at him, took a breath and ventured, “If you can't give me Gale, then you have nothing to offer me.”
A mischievous look passed through Raphael's eyes, he snapped his fingers a second time, and in a puff of embers, he was gone.
Only… the space he had occupied was not empty.
It had been filled.
With Gale.
He gazed at her just as he had almost from the moment they met, as if she had somehow personally blessed him merely by existing. The only thing that stopped her from diving onto him, covering him in kisses, and begging for his forgiveness was the firm, undeniably sobering knowledge that—underneath all the smiles and the pleasantry—Raphael was a cruel, miserable, envious son-of-a-bitch all the way to his core.
“Anything I can do for you—consider it most enthusiastically done,” Raphael mimicked Gale's diction, timbre and the pace of his breath exactly.
She recoiled from the ache to touch him, leapt to her feet and backed against the wall as if the distance could change that he would be alive if not for her. Rage boiled within, pressing behind her skin; she wanted to stab and stab and stab and stab until there was nothing left but the stabbing. Shadows spread around her, but this time they went everywhere, blotting out all light in the room. Raphael didn't need to know that in that moment all that kept her from killing him outright was the stolen face he wore.
Studies from a life she didn't recognize told her he'd simply reappear in the Hells, but somewhere in her addled brain she also knew he couldn't just snap his way back immediately. It would annoy him, and right now? She was feeling very petty.
“My love, I fear the amnesia has had a touch of an impact on your control,” he cautioned in Gale's voice.
He was such a piece of SHIT!
That thought thrust a memory upon her.
An encounter with a denizen of Raphael's house moved through her mind. It was a place whose very walls seemed to manufacture dread in a way that her former self did not actually feel as dread. It smacked of cruel certainty, of intention honed into purpose on a whetstone oiled with the blood of those who had earned their fate. It was fitting. Perfect in a way that remembrance dared call alluring, but it did not feel that way to her present self. A cold loathing coiled in her belly, snaking its way among her organs.
The denizen was a human man who had signed a five year contract to clean and preserve the devil's artwork in exchange for an enhancement to his own artistic eye. Mara watched as he delicately, diligently removed soot and evidence of blood spatter from a painting with a fine brush dipped in a vaguely sweet-smelling solvent.
She complimented his technique, and he paused, grinned broadly, and immediately told her all about it, explaining why a cleaning cantrip was too broad in scope and might inadvertently weaken the integrity and the beauty of the pigments by subtracting crucial elements responsible for the richness of the color. He expounded upon the precision required in selecting the appropriate solvent, and emphasized the importance of working incrementally to prevent a fatigued hand from growing shaky. His passion, his excitement, and his unrestrained joy at sharing it had made her smile at him. A deep, genuine, glowing smile. Its echo lived in the muscles of her face as she remembered.
She smiled at Gale like that. All the time.
Raphael had been expecting her, and she was late. Because of the aspiring artist.
The echo of his boot heels preceded his arrival. In his house, everyone must hear him coming. Whether the sound evoked anticipation or terror, he would be heralded. A shuffling noise as the clacks ceased announced his surprise at the view. She glanced over her shoulder at him, and the second he realized she had been listening to a lowly servant natter on while he waited, she watched a rage matched only by that which she'd viewed in her own mirror flash through his eyes. It was there and gone in less than an eyeblink.
At the time, he'd pointedly ignored the denizen, led her back to the boudoir, and savored every second of the limited period he was allowed to spend with her. She would be leading another incursion into the Abyss shortly after her departure.
The next time Mara saw the artist, he was nought but a soul in a hallway, gushing over a chamber pot filled with Raphael's own steaming excrement.
According to the cambion, he'd broken his contract. Her old self had been less concerned than simply curious when she asked how he'd broken it.
“Theft,” Raphael replied simply, settling against his silken pillows, his wings relaxed and spread out to the edges of the bed. In response to her raised eyebrow, he added, “He stole your time.”
“An admirable twist of words exploited to add another soul to your collection, but… I gave my time willingly,” she corrected as she stood in nothing but a black lace thong glancing about in search of her other shoe.
“That lump didn't steal from YOU!” he exploded, setting fire to his own bedsheets. “He stole from ME! Your time, your attention, your compliments, your SMILE?! They were MINE, and he stole them from me!” From within his own inferno, he bellowed, “NO ONE STEALS FROM RAPHAEL!”
Mara sighed, placed a fingertip just below the outside corner of her eye and traced a line to her jaw as if it were the path of a tear as she pulled a mock sad face at him. Then she ordered, “Put out the fire, you fucking toddler. Fix the godsdamned bed while you're at it. Find my shoe, and I'll stay for another… half an hour.”
As the flames died out, Raphael negotiated, “Make it an hour.”
With an elaborate shrug, she returned, “I don't see my shoe...”
“I know exactly where your shoe is.”
“Fine. An hour.”
Grinning deviously, the cambion reached behind a smoldering pillow, produced a half-melted black leather heel and presented it to her on his open palm.
“You conniving fuck…” Mara chuckled. “And it's ruined!”
Raphael scowled at her playfully, snapped his fingers, and both the bed and her shoe were perfect. “Good as new.” He plonked the heel on his nightstand next to the strap Mara had just finished ruining him with, opened his arms and demanded, “Now, come here!”
“Oh, you want me there, do you?” she inquired, pointing.
An image of a violent swirl containing every shade of every color she'd ever seen and some she never had before appeared in her mind's eye. The thought of mastery pushed itself into the swirl, of ownership, of possession. It slowed, growing almost still, and a slight tingle in her skin preceded the appearance of the shadows that had only been accessible when her emotions were heightened. They were almost entirely uncontrollable every time they had come.
But these ones were different… more defined, like black silk rope, and they didn't condense around her as she'd perceived them thus far, they came out of her body. Several gently pushed her up off her feet, carrying her to hover at the end of the bed.
“Tantrums… are boring, Raph. You know what happens when I get bored.” One of the shadows changed shape. The rope now had a hook at the end and a section of it had gone rigid; it caught the sheets and flung them off him. Her voice dropped low and threatening as she advised, “You don't want me bored, do you?”
He vibrated with anticipation as her shadows slithered up the bed toward him, his grin a slash of teeth as menacing as it was joyful. His voice was whispery and thick with desire as he replied, “A little boredom brings out the worst in you, and you know how I adore you at your worst…”
Mara's laugh slashed the air as viciously as Raphael's smile had his own face. Her shadows coiled around his wrists, ankles, wings and horns. In the same instant, his cock snapped to attention like a good little soldier; it probably would have saluted her if it could. He grunted and struggled, and the shadow ropes only tightened in response. Every muscle in his body was taut, his tendons raised, his claws piercing his palms.
Blood dripped onto the silk, spreading into the fibers. When the scent hit Mara, her panties soaked through, and she only momentarily suppressed the shiver of arousal that wished to move through her from head to toe. Her shadows positioned her directly above him, at a distance of about a meter.
Then, she let him see.
Lips parted, breath quickening, nipples hard enough to almost hurt, she let desire writhe through her.
Undone, Raphael snarled wordlessly, straining against his bonds. She watched pain bleed into the hellfire rings of his eyes as he nearly dislocated his shoulders trying to get to her.
After a few more bursts of strength did not free him or even budge the restraints, he panted, grinning, as he finally relaxed. Then he gazed up into her black and crimson eyes as a long, shaky, deeply contented exhale escaped him.
It was pure, abject... surrender.
It might have been the most beautiful thing her former self had ever seen.
Mara gasped as her insides pulsed and a drip of her moisture splashed onto Raphael's belly.
Surrender transformed to exultation edged with panic as he shuddered, his hips bucking helplessly as he shot up onto her thighs. His eyes fluttered closed with a choppy sigh, a tear running from one.
The shadow ropes holding her up slackened, but not the ones binding Raphael. She straddled his torso, and sat down on his ribs. Then she leaned over him, dragged a fingertip up his face, collected the tear, and touched it to her tongue.
It tasted of heat, salt, and bitterness. As she rubbed her tongue against the roof of her mouth, she found it. A molecule of joy. It filled her with the quiet victory of knowing that he was hers.
As if the way he looked at her didn't tell her that already.
She pinched his chin and asked, “Did you think we were done?”
A tired chuckle. Then he fervently replied, “I will never be done with you.”
“I thought you'd say that.”
After that, the memory changed to shorter flashes.
She pulled one of his hands to her without unbinding it, her shadow ropes maintaining exceptional tension.
Then Mara pressed her mouth to his wounds and sucked as she slipped her other hand into her panties and stroked her clit.
She drank his blood and fucked her own fingers on his chest until she came. All while he demanded that she stop and kiss him.
She did neither.
Raphael roared in frustration and intentionally bit his own lip. She laughed and licked the blood off while evading his attempts to turn it into a kiss.
She made him say please before she would.
He raged, but he eventually said it.
When he did, she kissed the tip of his nose.
Only when he gave her the most pathetically miserable defeated look did she finally kiss him on the mouth. Only then did she release his bonds and let him sate the hunger she'd wrought in him. Only then, vacillating between whimpers and growls, did she let him in. Again, he was quickly spent. Always quicker than he wished, twitching, clawing bright red grooves into her back and biting her shoulder.
Afterward, Mara… didn't let go of him. She held him inside her. Soft. She tightened her arms around him as he devolved into sobs, dragging her fingernails from the crown of his head to the nape of his neck.
It was always like this, she realized.
They fought and tormented each other, but this was how it ended up. Every time.
Two monsters carving a moment of tenderness out of the cruelty of the Hells.
Then the memory moved ahead in time. Mara didn't know how far.
They were fighting again, but this felt different. Raphael's rage shook the walls. He cursed everyone, everything. He flung fire everywhere; the smoke stung her eyes. She could barely see. Darkvision could only do so much against a naturally occurring obstruction. She narrowly dodged the center of a jet, but her left side was burning.
It was pure instinct that sent the tendril of shadow out to stop him. Her intention might have been to bind him, but her thought was survival.
Instead of wrapping around him, the shadow sharpened into a spike and pierced the back of his skull.
Raphael froze instantly; then he dropped to the floor, convulsing, the spike still lodged in his head. The flames began to peter out. Mara rushed to his side and bent her will toward the shadow, ordering it to withdraw, but it didn't. She knelt and tried to pull it out by hand, but it wouldn't budge.
She finally attached a command word to the thought that directed the shadows, but she had also applied the same word to the cambion for some time by then.
Aloud, she screamed it, and the shadow evaporated.
She touched his face and neck with greater hesitance than her former self had ever before directed toward a potential corpse. She felt herself rejecting the relief that washed over her in finding that he was merely unconscious.
Mara traced the curve and point of his ear with a fingertip. Then she kissed his forehead, stood up and left, intending never to return.
And… in that life, she didn't.
She doubted much time had passed outside her mind. Even in magical darkness, the blessings of her patron allowed her to see that Raphael hadn't moved.
Still, he vindictively held the shape of the man she loved more than anything, the man she hadn't been strong enough to save. She let the command word whisper through her mind and spread it among the shadows.
“You think so?” Mara asked the imposter, a trace of her old lilt in her tone. “Take another look.”
The less substantial, smoky darkness looked almost the same. It bore the same shape and allowed no light into it, but a devil's sight could detect the change. It now had substance. It was a web of thin, black ropes creating a dome over them both.
If she had blinked, she would have missed the momentary invasion of terror into the false features of her beloved.
“Change back, NOW!” she commanded, dropping the dome and using the shadows to hover as she'd done in the memory.
A smirk halfway between Gale's and Raphael's curled the fiend's lips as he snapped his fingers once more.
In the instant he was himself again, Mara was on him. She stood on the backs of his hands, delighted by how he winced from her weight on his broken finger. The green-bladed dagger bearing her father's symbol that she'd found buried under the Open Hand Temple was already in one hand as she snatched his face with the other and held the tip up under his chin.
“If you ever wear his face again, I will make you eat it! Then I will drag you back to the Hells and spend a century flaying you—”
“Don't threaten me with a good time, luv,” Raphael taunted.
“You interrupted me,” she chided, intentionally nicking his jaw. A thin line of blood seeped from it, reddening a splotch on his ruffled white collar. She pushed down her body's reaction to it. “We won't be in your boudoir. You will be on display at Zariel's fortress, in the torture amphitheatre, the tiers packed with the lowliest of devils: imps, quasits, and lemures. And they will all be laughing at you!”
As his face twisted in fury, he retorted, “I would kill us both first!”
“Not when I'm the only living being outside of Mephistar who can incapacitate you in less than a second!” A shadow honed into a spike hovered over her shoulder menacingly. “I will think about your deal. While I'm busy killing a nascent god, you can think of a way to guarantee me what I want most.”
“Fair enough. When you see reason, I'll be here, waiting. Right up until the moment the world ends.”
His smug grin irritated her just enough that she wanted him to squirm. She lowered the dagger, grabbed a handful of his hair, cranked his head back and licked the blood off his neck in one long stroke. Raphael couldn't suppress a small whine, nor could he control the way his lips tried to chase hers.
Her shadows pulled her back to the doorway, where she mused, “You know, I don't think I ever told you just how much… you taste like your Dad.”
His face was a mask of utter hatred as he slammed the door on her musical laughter.
[Yes, Raphael made the info-dumper worship his dumps. It's probably how he'd punish me, too.]
