#noarawrites

Notice

A/N: hi dear💙 I hope you are well! ( ＾ω＾ )

I know it's been a few months since I wrote more frequently, which must have left me a bit rusty (currently my writing is mostly focused on academic purposes). even so, I'm going to make this sweet request, specially because I'm very sick right now... (´ρ`)

Yet I hope you enjoy it! I have an interesting project coming up hehe(≧ω≦) I miss you all, love you guys and thank you SO much for staying here with me.🥹

Thank you! 🐻‍❄️ྀིྀི

The Beneviento estate breathed in a particular way.

You had learned this slowly, in the weeks since Mother Miranda had placed you here, assigned to dust shelves that nobody touched, polish floors that nobody walked, maintain a house that existed in a permanent state of beautiful stillness. It had terrified you at first.

The dim light filtering through heavy curtains, the flowers everywhere, the dolls tucked into corners and draped over furniture like sleeping things. The way your employer never quite interact with you, always from Angie, a speaking doll.

But you had learned the rhythm of it. The estate had it's own heartbeat and you had simply... learned to match it.

The only variable was Angie.

Angie, who had no rhythm whatsoever.

Angie, who appeared on bookshelves when you weren't looking and screamed directly beside your ear for what seemed to be pure entertainment. Angie, who narrated your chores with unsolicited criticism and knocked things off tables just to watch you pick them up. You had stopped being startled by her weeks ago, which Angie found personally offensive.

So the house was quiet. Predictably, peacefully quiet.

Except for you.

You'd been ignoring it since morning, the subtle scratch at the back of your throat, the way your chest felt slightly heavier than usual, the persistent need to cough that you kept swallowing back down out of sheer stubbornness. It was nothing. A little cold. You had floors to sweep and the library hadn't been dusted in three days and the vases in the east corridor needed fresh water and you were fine.

You were not, by any reasonable measure, fine.

The cough caught you off guard in the library. You muffled it into your sleeve immediately, shoulders curling inward like you could fold the sound back into yourself but the library was silent and the estate was silent and Donna Beneviento noticed everything.

Down the hall, Donna stilled completely.

She had been doing nothing in particular, sitting in her workroom, hands resting in her lap, existing in that quiet way she had that looked like stillness but was actually a constant, careful attention to the world around her. Every creak of the floorboards. Every shift of curtain fabric in a draft. Every small sound the house made as it breathed.

She heard the cough. Brief, stifled, immediately silenced but there.

Her hands tightened slightly in her lap.

Angie, draped upside down over the back of the chair, stopped talking. She had extremely good instincts about Donna's silences, had developed a precise taxonomy of them. This one was the worried kind. The specific worried kind that had a destination.

"Oh," Angie said.

Donna was already standing.

You had convinced yourself nobody had heard. You'd gone back to the shelves, duster moving in slow methodical arcs, and you were fine, and it was nothing, and your eyes were just watering because of the dust, obviously, and the slight heaviness in your limbs was simply because you hadn't slept especially well and...

You coughed again. Twice this time.

You groaned quietly and pressed your forehead against the bookshelf.

"You look," said a voice directly beside your left ear, "absolutely horrible."

You spun around so fast you nearly knocked three books off the shelf. Angie sat on the edge of it at perfect eye level, arms crossed, glass eyes somehow conveying profound judgment. You had no idea how she'd gotten there. You never did.

"I'm fine." you said.

"Your nose is red."

"It's the cold air..."

"Your eyes are like this—" Angie did something with her expression that presumably imitated glassy unfocused eyes and was mostly just unsettling. "You've been coughing since this morning, don't think we didn't hear, we heard, the whole house heard, you're sick and you're in here dusting books!!!"

"Angie." Your head was already starting to ache from the volume. You pressed two fingers to your temple. "Please..."

"She's worried!" Angie announced at full intensity, "she's been worried since the first cough and I've been SENT here to tell you to PUT THE DUSTER DOWN—"

You closed your eyes. Breathed slowly.

"I just need to finish the east shelves..."

Movement at the doorway.

You turned.

Donna stood at the threshold of the library, and she wasn't quite looking at you, at least that's what you thought, but she turned to your direction. Hands clasped in front of her, and there was something in the set of her shoulders that was not quite distress but was adjacent to it. That careful, contained worry that she wore like she wore everything else: quietly, and with great intensity.

She looked at you. At the duster in your hand. At your face, the red nose, the glassy eyes, all the evidence you'd been trying to hide since morning displayed plainly in the library light.

Her head tilted slightly.

You opened your mouth to explain.

Before you could produce a single syllable, something caught your wrist gently but with absolute certainty. You looked down. One of the dolls (you hadn't even heard it approach) had taken the duster cleanly from your hand. Another appeared at your elbow. Not grabbing, not rough, just present. Guiding. The way water finds a direction.

"Hey!" you started.

The dolls did not negotiate.

You looked at Donna, somewhat desperately. "I really am almost finished with the east shelves, if I could just.."

Donna raised one hand. A single, quiet gesture. Not commanding exactly. Just final.

You aren't winning this one.

The meaning was so clear you almost heard the words out loud.

Angie, now somehow already ahead of you in the hallway, called back: "COME ON then, we don't have all day, some of us are sick apparently..."

You looked at the shelves. You looked at Donna.

She waited.

You went.

Your room was small and warm and someone had already got it ready, before you'd even arrived, there was placed a folded blanket at the foot of the bed and a steaming cup on the nightstand. You stared at it. The tea smelled like chamomile and something sharper underneath, thyme maybe, and something else you couldn't name. You picked it up and it was exactly the right temperature, which meant it had been prepared with very specific timing, which meant...

You sat on the edge of the bed and had a quiet moment of realization about how long Donna had actually been paying attention.

Angie appeared in the doorway, leaned against the frame with her arms crossed, and pointed at the cup. "Drink that."

"I was going to..."

"Now. While it's hot. She'll know if you don't."

You drank the tea. It was, genuinely, very good and it was already doing something kind to the scratchiness in your throat. You didn't ask how Donna knew what to put in it. You suspected Donna simply knew things, quietly and without explanation, the way she knew everything else.

"Happy?" you asked.

"Marginally," Angie said. "Get under the blanket."

"Angie..."

"UNDER. THE BLANKET."

You got under the blanket.

The afternoon passed in a strange, supervised haze.

You dozed off without meaning to, the tea and the warmth conspiring against your insistence that you weren't tired, and woke at one point to find a fresh arrangement on your windowsill that hadn't been there before. Small and gentle, nothing like the dramatic compositions you sometimes passed in the main halls. Eucalyptus. Lavender. A sprig of mint. You looked at them for a long moment, in the soft amber light coming through the curtains, and something in your chest went a little complicated.

Angie appeared in the doorway approximately forty minutes later to inform you that you'd slept with your mouth open and it had been embarrassing for everyone.

Then, slightly quieter: "She wants to know if you need more tea."

"Yes please..." you said.

Angie disappeared. The tea arrived via doll, perfectly warm, without further commentary. You chose to find this charming rather than unnerving. You'd made that choice weeks ago and it had served you well.

By evening your cough had settled into something occasional and less vicious, your head ached less, and you were genuinely considering attempting to return to the east shelves when your door opened without a knock and Angie marched in like she owned the room.

"No." she said, before you'd moved.

"I wasn't..."

"You had the look. We know the look." She pointed at you. "Flat. Horizontal. That's where you live now."

"I'm feeling much better!"

"LIAR!"

"Angie, I have responsibilities."

"And your responsibility RIGHT NOW," Angie announced at a volume entirely unsuited to a sickroom, "is to lie there and be sick properly and stop making her worry!" She stopped. Seemed to recalibrate. "Stop making us worry. Generally. The house. Everyone."

You looked at her.

She looked back, utterly unrepentant.

"Go to sleep." she said, only slightly less loud.

You lay back down.

Sometime later, you weren't sure how much later, you'd drifted again, you became half-aware of the door opening very quietly. Not Angie's entrance, nothing like Angie's entrance. Soft footsteps. A pause near the window.

You didn't open your eyes fully. Just enough.

Donna stood by the windowsill, adjusting the flower arrangement by a fraction. Straightening the eucalyptus. Her movements were very small and very careful, the way all her movements were, like she was always aware of taking up space and was perpetually trying to take up as little of it as possible.

She stood there for a moment after she'd finished adjusting nothing. Just standing. Just present.

You closed your eyes again before she could notice you watching.

The door closed softly a few minutes later.

You were back on your feet by the second morning.

Not completely yourself, your voice had gone slightly rough and Angie found this extraordinarily funny but upright and functional and genuinely ready to address the state of the east shelves, which had been bothering you from a professional standpoint for two full days.

You found Donna in the main hall near the large window, tending to an arrangement on the long table. She looked up when she heard your footsteps, the way she always did, quietly, precisely, tracking your presence through the house like she always had.

You stopped a few feet away.

"I'm better." you offered.

She looked at you for a moment. Then she reached into the arrangement in her hands and drew out a single small sprig, rosemary, slightly silver in the morning light and set it carefully on the edge of the table near you.

Not handed to you. Just placed. Available.

You picked it up.

She had already turned back to her flowers, veil forward, hands moving through stems and leaves with practiced quiet. As if nothing particular had happened. As if she hadn't just said something that she didn't have words for.

Angie was balanced on top of a decorative urn across the room, watching the whole exchange with her arms crossed.

"Took you long enough to get up!" she said.

"Good morning, Angie."

"It's almost nine."

"Good morning, Angie."

Angie made a sound of profound exasperation. Donna's shoulders moved, very slightly, barely perceptible in a way that meant she was laughing and had no intention of admitting it.

You tucked the rosemary sprig carefully into your front pocket and went to find your duster.

The east shelves weren't going to do themselves after all.

so, alcina dimitrescu needs to learn how to patient because her wife (reader is an immortal biologist) is urgently need by mother miranda for cadou shit. the only communication they had is the old phone but reader is the one who must call alcina due to her limited time. if the first call rang and alcina missed it, it will never rang again.

the phone is static and barely audible which alcina's patience is wearing thin. she just needs her wife🥹🥺

HOW ARE YOU BESTIE!

Static

A/N: Hello guys! how are you? I hope you're all well💙 I'm so excited to post this, especially since it was requested by my dear friend, a long-time friend! I truly cherish the friendships I build here, a precious thing I value immensely, and besides that, I respect and I am very inspired by Aya's work, you are my muse! (PS: I still haven't forgiven you enough for deleting that story that I loved more than anything... hmph😭). enjoy it, baby girl! thank you for requesting 🐻‍❄️ྀིྀི

Plot: Alcina Dimitrescu has never been a patient woman, until a phone line that only works once forces her to become one.

The phone had been useless for three days.

Not broken, worse than broken. Alive, technically. A dial tone if you pressed it to your ear and listened hard enough, buried under so much white noise it might as well have been silence. Alcina Dimitrescu had smashed one already, the first time you'd been gone, when Mother Miranda's courier arrived with nothing but a folded note and no explanation for why her wife had been summoned like a servant instead of a woman who ran a house of her own. The pieces of that first phone were still somewhere in the receiving hall, swept into a corner, because none of the girls had dared clean them up and she hadn't asked them to.

She had not smashed the second one. She had learned, in her own graceless way, to wait.

It did not suit her at all.

She sat at her vanity with her hands flat on the glass, looking at the phone beside the perfume bottles as though staring would make it ring sooner. The candles had burned low enough that her reflection had gone strange and doubled in the mirror, and she hadn't called for more. Daniela had stopped bringing her tea an hour ago, after the second time Alcina had looked at her like being interrupted in her waiting was a personal insult. Bela had taken Cassandra and Daniela out hunting, the way she always did when she wanted to give her mother a moment alone. After the hunting, Bela alone had approached, curled in the doorway like a cat, watching her mother with the particular patience of someone who has seen this exact kind of waiting before and knows better than to name it out loud.

"She will call.." Bela said, not for the first time.

"I know that." Alcina said, too fast, too sharp, in the voice she used on soldiers who asked questions they already knew the answers to.

Cassandra didn't flinch. She never did anymore.

Alcina didn't say anything more than that. She turned the phone an inch to the left, as if angle mattered, as if anything about this ancient, Miranda blessed piece of junk could be improved by her touching it. Somewhere in the walls the house made its low settling noises, wood and stone breathing the way it always did at night, and every one of them made her hand twitch toward the receiver before she caught herself. She was too old, too tall, too used to being feared, to be sitting like this, folded in on herself, waiting on a sound.

You had told her, before you left, that the connection only worked once. That whatever Miranda had done to the line, some old, ugly magic stitched into copper and static it would carry a single call through, and if it rang and went unanswered, it would not ring again. Not that day. Not that week. However long it took for whatever process kept you tethered to this world to circle back around and give you one more chance to reach her.

One call, you'd said, holding both her hands in yours at the gate, your bag already over your shoulder. So please, for once in your life, be patient.

She was not, by nature, a patient woman. She had built an empire out of not waiting for things, for permission, for respect, for anyone to tell her no twice. But she had learned, somewhere in the years since you'd first stood your ground in her receiving hall and refused to be afraid of her, that there were exceptions worth making. That patience, when it was for you, was not weakness. It only felt like it, in the hours it demanded of her.

The phone rang at half past two in the morning.

She had it against her ear before the second ring finished.

"Alcina." Your voice came through a wall of static so thick it barely sounded like a voice at all, thin and warping, cutting in and out like something dragged underwater. "Alcina, can you—"

"I'm here." She said it too loud. She didn't care. Cassandra had already gone still in the doorway, watching. "I'm here, I'm listening, say it again—"

"—hear me? I don't know how long—" The line hissed, swallowed half your sentence whole, spat you back out mid-word. "Miranda needs the samples from the east wing, the ones in the— the cold storage, she needs them before the equinox or the whole cadou line collapses, I need you to…"

"Slower." Her knuckles had gone white around the receiver, the wood of the vanity creaking faintly under her other hand. "You're breaking up. Say it slower."

"—can't, I don't have…. Alcina, I don't have long on this line, please just listen…"

And she did. God help her, she did, she who had never in her life simply listened to anyone, who interrupted kings and any lord by fun, sometimes Miranda herself when she felt brave enough, sat perfectly still with her eyes shut and let your broken, static-drowned voice wash over her in pieces, catching words like they were coins falling through her fingers. Cold storage. East wing. Before the equinox.

"I'm here." she said again, softer this time, the way she never let anyone hear. "I'm here. I have it. I have all of it."

Silence. Not the static kind, a different silence. Her hand tightened so hard on the receiver that Cassandra actually rose from the doorway, alarmed, before Alcina waved her back down without opening her eyes.

Then, faint, unbearably faint, almost lost under the hiss: "I miss you."

Something in Alcina Dimitrescu's chest, something that had been clenched since the first ruined phone, unclenched all at once, so suddenly it nearly hurt.

"I miss you more than is dignified…" she said, and her voice cracked on the last word in a way she would have denied to anyone but you. "Come home. Whatever she wants from you, get it done and come home, do you understand me?"

"—trying. I'm trying, I—"

The static rose, a wave of it, drowning your voice syllable by syllable. She pressed the receiver so hard against her ear it left a mark. "Say that again. Say it again, I didn't…"

The line went dead in her hand, and this time it stayed dead. No dial tone, no hiss, nothing at all. The single call spent, gone, exactly the way you'd warned her it would go.

Alcina sat with the receiver still pressed to her ear for a long moment after there was nothing left to hear, long enough that Cassandra finally crossed the room and gently, carefully, took it from her hand and set it back in its cradle herself.

"Mother."

Alcina didn't answer right away. She was looking at the door, or past it, at the long dark hall and the stairs down to the east wing, already counting the steps to the cold storage in her head.

Then she stood, hands that were not quite steady, and her voice came back sharp and commanding, closer to itself than it had sounded in three days.

"Fetch Bela. Tell her to leave whatever she's doing, we have samples to prepare, and I will not have my wife come home to find this house has failed her."

Cassandra almost smiled. "So you were listening."

"I am always listening," Alcina said, already moving, already half a corridor ahead of her own daughter. "I simply choose, most days, not to act like it matters to me."

Behind her, the phone sat silent and dark on the vanity, useless now, nothing left in it but the shape of your voice still ringing somewhere behind her eyes. There was an equinox to beat and a wife to bring home, and for the first time in three days, Alcina Dimitrescu finally had something to do with her hands besides wait.

The house woke up in a way it hadn't in three days.

Bela arrived within minutes, hair still damp, boots not even properly laced, face still flushed from the hunt, and took one look at her mother's face before she stopped asking questions and started giving orders of her own. Daniela was sent for lanterns. Cassandra didn't wait to be told anything, she was already halfway down the east stairwell by the time Alcina reached the landing, calling back over her shoulder that the cold storage locks hadn't been touched since autumn and would need oil before they'd turn.

"Then find the goddamn oil!" Alcina said, and didn't slow down.

The east wing at that hour was colder than the rest of the house, so bitter only Alcina could go there, and as she worked her way into it, she kept thinking that she had not touched the cadou samples herself in years, that had always been your work, your careful hands and your careful notes, jars labeled in your small, precise handwriting that she'd never admit to reading over sometimes, alone, when the house was too quiet. Now she stood in front of the same shelves and had to think, actually think, to remember which markings meant which strain, which vials could bear the cold of the carriage ride and which would spoil before they ever reached Miranda's hands.

"This one…" She remembered the description you'd told her as she held a jar up to the light, "she'd have flagged this one for discard. Look, the color's wrong."

It took the better part of two hours. By the end of it Daniela had gone twice to check the road from the east tower, twice come back with nothing to report, and the third time she went Alcina found herself following, unable to stay in the cold storage a moment longer once the last case had been sealed and there was nothing left to do with her hands.

The night was clear. Cold, but clear, the kind of sky that made the stars look closer than they had any right to be, and from the tower she could see the road unwinding pale in the dark all the way down toward the tree line. Nothing moved on it. She stood there long enough that Daniela quietly stopped hovering at her elbow and went to find Cassandra instead, leaving her mother alone with the view.

Come home, she had said. As if it were that simple. As if saying it into a dying phone line could make the road produce you any faster.

She did not know, afterward, how long she stood there. Long enough that the cold stopped registering. Long enough that when the first sound finally came, wheels, faint, and then the particular creak of Miranda's carriages, a sound she'd have known anywhere after all these years, she almost didn't trust her own ears.

Then she saw it. A shape on the road, dark against dark, moving.

"Finally!" Her voice cracked through the tower like a whip crack, and within seconds all three of her daughters were at the window beside her, no longer pretending patience, no longer pretending anything at all.

"That's her," Daniela breathed. "That's her carriage!"

The girls were already moving before she finished speaking, down the tower stairs in a rush of movements and a flutter of wings from sheer excitement, Daniela laughing about something Bela said, Cassandra outpacing them both without seeming to try. Alcina stayed at the window a moment longer, watching the carriage grow from a shape into a shadow into something almost real, something with edges, something that was, finally, finally, coming up the last stretch of road toward the gate.

She let out a breath she felt she'd been holding since the phone rang three nights ago. It came out unsteady, more like a shudder than a sigh, and she pressed one hand flat against the cold stone of the windowsill as if the wall itself might hold her upright a moment longer.

Then she moved.

Alcina did not run, had not run in longer than she cared to remember, had built an entire life out of the principle that she arrived when she chose to arrive and never a moment before. But her steps down the stairs were faster than dignity strictly allowed, faster than she'd have permitted herself in front of anyone but you, and by the time she crossed the receiving hall the girls were already spilling out through the front doors ahead of her into the cold night air, lanterns swinging, voices rising over each other.

The carriage came to a stop just inside the gate. The door hadn't even fully opened before Daniela was at it, before Bela was calling something about the samples being ready, before Cassandra hung back just enough to let her sisters have the moment first, the way she always did.

And there, stepping down, tired, travel worn, achingly real after three days of static and silence and a phone gone dark on a vanity, there you were.

Alcina stopped at the top of the steps for exactly one heartbeat. Long enough to look at you. Long enough to let herself believe it.

Then she came down them the rest of the way, past her daughters, past everything, and pulled you into her arms like she meant to make up for three days of not being able to in a single embrace, one hand at the back of your head, the other locked around your waist, her face buried against your hair as though she could will herself to stop shaking simply by holding on hard enough.

"You're late…" she said, voice rough, muffled, nowhere near as steady as she wanted it to be.

You laughed, tired and a little broken, and felt her arms tighten in answer. "I know. I'm sorry."

"Don't." Alcina pulled back only far enough to look at you properly, hands framing your face like she needed to check, needed to be sure, that you were whole and unbroken and truly here. "Don't you dare apologize to me. Just." She stopped. Swallowed. Pressed her forehead to yours instead of finishing the sentence, because some things, even now, she couldn't quite say out loud in front of an audience.

Just don't leave again, she meant. Just stay.

Behind them, Daniela was already talking too fast about the cold storage, Cassandra was rolling her eyes fondly at her, and Bela stood a little apart with the particular quiet satisfaction of someone who had been right all along, she will call, she will come home, and had known it the whole time.

You reached up and covered one of Alcina's hands with your own, still cold from the road, and she held on like she had no intention of ever letting go again.

"I'm home now." you said.

"Yes," Alcina said, finally, finally allowing herself to breathe. "You are.”

A/N: hello guys, how are you?💙 I've been a bit absent, I know, I know, unfortunately I've been very busy lately to the point that when I'm free, I just want to rest.🥹

anyway, I wrote this story and had the encouragement of the brilliant and dear @emilydjgamer to post it and I hope you like it, another one of my favorite from RE8, hihi.

Plot: One quiet cook, one veiled woman, and a corner booth that's always kept warm for her.

The village restaurant was small, warm, and always full. It was the kind of place where the wood tables had rings burned into them from decades of hot pots, where the windows fogged up in winter from the ovens, and where everyone, from the butcher's boy to the old women who ran the market stalls, agreed that your cooking was the best thing to come out of the valley in years. You never boasted about it. You simply cooked, quietly, carefully, the way you always had, and let the food speak for you.

You were used to the regulars. You knew who liked their bread crusty and who liked it soft, who wanted extra broth and who wanted none at all. What you were not used to was the doll.

The first time Angie walked in, perched stiffly on the arm of a cloaked woman who never lifted her veil, the whole restaurant went quiet for a moment. People in the village knew of the Beneviento house, knew to keep their voices low and their eyes down when the topic came up. But you were not from the village originally, not truly, and something about the woman's stillness struck you as more sad than frightening. She sat in the corner booth, the one no one ever wanted because of the draft, and she ordered nothing. Angie did the ordering.

"She'll have the stew," the doll said, voice too bright for the room. "The one with the little dumplings. Not too much pepper. She doesn't like when it burns her throat."

You nodded once, wrote nothing down that day because you hadn't yet learned to, and went back to the kitchen.

The stew came out with barely a whisper of pepper. When you set the bowl down in front of her, the veiled woman went very still, the way a person does when they are trying not to be noticed enjoying something. She ate slowly. She ate all of it.

She came back three days later.

You started keeping notes after the second visit. Not because anyone asked you to, but because you liked getting things right, and this woman, whoever she was beneath the veil and the wide dark hat, seemed like someone who had not had many things gotten right for her in a long while. Angie was helpful in her own strange, unsettling way, chattering out preferences in that too cheerful voice while Donna sat silent and folded her hands in her lap.

"She likes the broth thick," Angie told you once, swinging her wooden legs from her perch on the table's edge. "Not the thin kind. And she doesn't like tomatoes touching anything else on the plate. She's very particular about that."

You wrote it down on a scrap of paper you kept tucked by the stove. Thick broth. Tomatoes separate. Small dumplings, not the big ones, she chokes on the big ones and won't say so.

Every detail became a kind of quiet devotion. You started leaving a little more on her plate than what she paid for, an extra roll wrapped in cloth, a second dumpling tucked under the first so it wouldn't be obvious you were being generous. You told yourself it was simply good hospitality. You told the other cooks it was because she was thin and probably didn't eat enough at home. You did not examine too closely why you found yourself glancing at the door every evening around the hour she usually came.

Donna never said thank you in words. But she started coming every single day.

By the second month, the whole village had noticed. The butcher's boy teased you about your mysterious admirer from the manor. The old women at the market stalls whispered that the Beneviento woman hadn't been seen out so often in years, not since her father passed, and certainly never for anything so mundane as food. You brushed it all off with a small, private smile and kept cooking.

You liked her quietness. In a life full of loud customers demanding faster service and louder compliments, Donna's silence felt like a held breath you didn't mind sharing. She always sat in the same corner booth. She always let Angie do the talking. But sometimes, when you brought the food yourself instead of sending it with the serving girl, you caught the faintest tilt of her head toward you beneath the wide brim of her hat, as if she were trying to see you more clearly through the veil.

One evening, business was slow and rain hammered against the windows. You brought her plate out yourself, as you often did now, and lingered a moment longer than necessary.

"The mushrooms are new," you said quietly. "I wasn't sure if you'd like them. Angie mentioned you don't care for anything too earthy tasting, so I roasted them instead of stewing them. Let me know if it's too much."

Angie's head swiveled toward you with unsettling speed. "She says thank you," the doll reported, though Donna had not moved her lips at all. "She says it's the first time anyone's asked before changing something. She likes that."

You felt warmth creep up your neck that had nothing to do with the kitchen heat. "I could ask more often. If she'd like that."

There was a pause. Angie's small wooden head tilted, as if listening to something only she could hear.

"She'd like that very much," Angie finally said, softer than usual.

The notes on your scrap of paper multiplied. You knew now that Donna preferred her tea lukewarm, never hot, because Angie said hot things reminded her of a fire from long ago that she didn't like discussing. You knew she liked bread with seeds in it but not too many, and that she always left exactly one bite of everything on her plate, not from being full, but from some old habit of restraint she couldn't seem to shake even now. You started leaving two bites worth extra on the plate, quietly, so she wouldn't notice the portion was bigger and feel obligated to finish it.

You never asked why a woman with a manor full of staff, presumably, needed to come to a village restaurant every single day. You suspected the manor was quieter than quiet, the kind of silence that presses in on a person until they ache for any sound of life at all, even the clatter of a busy kitchen and the low hum of village gossip. You suspected she came not just for the food, but for the noise, the warmth, the proof that the world outside her walls still moved and breathed.

You never said any of this aloud. You simply made sure her corner booth was always ready, the draft blocked with an extra curtain you'd hung yourself, and the candle on her table always lit before she arrived.

It was late autumn when she finally spoke to you directly, without Angie's voice standing between you.

You'd brought out her food as usual, a rich mushroom soup with the little seeded bread on the side, and you were turning to leave when a hand caught the edge of your apron. Small, gloved, gentle.

"Wait," Donna said. Her voice was soft, almost swallowed by the veil, but unmistakably hers. It was the first time you had heard her speak without the doll as a go-between.

You turned back, heart suddenly loud in your ears. "Yes? Is something wrong with the soup?"

"No." A pause, long enough that you thought she might not continue. "I… Thank you.”

You knelt slightly so you weren't looming over her seated form, an old habit from serving children, though you didn't mean it that way now. "It's not something done by obligation," you said gently. “I just want to."

Beneath the veil, you thought you saw the shadow of her lips curving upward. "And you wanted to."

It wasn't a question, but you answered anyway. "Yes."

Angie, perched at the table's edge, made a small delighted noise that neither of you acknowledged.

After that evening, things shifted slowly, the way seasons do, without any single dramatic turn. Donna began lifting her veil just slightly when she ate, just enough that you could see the edge of her jaw, the curve of her mouth when she smiled at something you'd said. She started staying later, long after the other customers had gone, the two of you talking quietly by candlelight while you finished closing up the kitchen. Angie still spoke for her mostly, out of old habit more than necessity, but more and more it was Donna's own voice you heard, low and careful, telling you about the garden she kept, about the moths that came to her window at night, about a thing she like that she rarely mentioned to anyone at all.

You still kept your notes, though you barely needed them anymore. You knew her preferences by heart now. Thick broth, small dumplings, tomatoes kept separate, tea gone lukewarm, and always, always, a little more on the plate than she asked for.

The village still whispered when she visited, still marveled that the reclusive Beneviento woman had found her way to your restaurant of all places and never left. You didn't mind the whispers. Let them wonder. You knew the truth of it, simple as bread and broth: somewhere between the roasted mushrooms and the seeded loaves, between the quiet notes you kept and the quiet woman who ate them, something had been fed that had nothing to do with hunger at all.

Donna came back every single day after that, not for the food alone anymore, but for you.

And you, gentle and quiet as ever, kept the corner booth warm and the candle lit, waiting for her without ever needing to say so out loud, hoping she hungered for you the way you hungered to know every last thing about her.

Plot: Deceived by whispers, Alcina shatters the one soul she trusted most—only to realize too late the truth and that winning her back may take more than a lifetime.

(Part II is here!)

Alcina x fem!reader

A/N: Hello sweet people! how are you?😽

I've been really creative lately! Tonight, I'm trying out writing in a more angst vibe. Let me know what you think, hihi

Unfortunately, soon I won't have the time to write anything :( I hate my job, arghhh

But enjoy this and send requests🐻‍❄️ྀིྀི

It was a cold winter night when Alcina sat alone, her head buried in her hands, long fingers trembling against her temples as if she could crush the ache blooming there. Tension coiled in her chest, searing and relentless, as though fire itself had licked across her pale skin. A few hours earlier, she had overheard the whispers of the maids. Normally, such idle chatter meant nothing to her, a distraction she dismissed with ease—yet tonight it was different. Tonight, it was your name spilling from their venomous tongues.

You were not like the others.

For over two years, you had walked these echoing halls, a survivor where countless girls hadn’t lasted a week. Loyal. Efficient. A silent fixture in the castle that had become almost… necessary. To her. And though Alcina would never voice it, you were no mere servant. You were a shadow stitched too tightly into her daily life. A presence that drew her eyes without command, a mystery she longed to unravel.

Yet the whispers struck her like a blade.

“That girl thinks she can lie to anyone.”

“It’s obvious! she’s only close to the Lady to use her for her own gain. Maybe she’s even planning an escape.”

“She never speaks of herself. I wouldn’t doubt it.”

The words echoed, cruel and sharp, long after the maids had scurried away. Alcina’s breath caught painfully in her throat, her back stiffening as though the air itself had betrayed her. She had stormed to her chambers, the hem of her gown dragging like a shroud behind her.

She told herself she did not believe them. She couldn’t. Yet—gods, it made sense, didn’t it? You, with your carefully guarded silence, your refusal to answer even Daniela’s sweetest probing questions. Always smiling politely, always shifting the subject when the conversation grazed too close to your past.

Her golden eyes burned with something raw and unsteady. Trust had never come easily to Alcina Dimitrescu… and now it trembled in her grasp like glass ready to shatter.

The next day came far too quickly. Alcina had not slept, not even for a breath of a moment. Her mind gnawed at itself in restless loops, and when dawn painted the castle windows in silver light, her humor was as sharp and cruel as broken glass. She had debated with herself, pacing the length of her chambers, but in the end, her conclusion was bitter and absolute: you had to be punished. Punished for daring to play with her family’s feelings, for daring to weave yourself into her heart only to betray it.

Her footsteps echoed with purpose as she sought you out, the stone corridors trembling beneath her weight. It felt almost destined that she should find you alone, bent over your duties in the library, delicate hands dusting ancient tomes.

You turned at the sound of her arrival, unaware of the storm darkening her gaze. Your smile was soft, genuine, as though nothing in the world had shifted.

“My Lady, good morning. Did you sleep well?”

The sweetness of your voice tangled with the fury in her chest, confusing her heart for half a second, but she crushed the feeling before it could bloom. Dimitrescus did not falter. She would not be fooled again.

“Good morning, pet” Alcina’s lips curved into a smile that tasted of venom. “I slept just fine. Though I found myself wondering… don’t you think it foolish, little rat, to imagine you could hide from my eyes? To think you could betray me under my very roof?”

Her words, laced with venom, made you stiffen. Your brows knitted, confusion sparking in your eyes.

“M-my lady… what happened? Did someone try to escape again?”

That single innocent question, fragile, trembling snapped what little patience Alcina had left. In a blur, her claws raked across your arm. Blood blossomed instantly, spilling scarlet down your sleeve. Your body jolted, eyes wide, trembling as though the very air had betrayed you.

“I will let you live” Alcina growled, voice low and vicious, “so you remember for the rest of your miserable life the price of daring to deceive me.”

And then came the storm. Her claws, her words, her rage, all of it raining upon you until the stone floor drank your blood. You hardly screamed; only soft, broken sounds slipped past your lips. Tears streaked your cheeks as your voice cracked out one single, trembling question:

“W-why?”

Her golden eyes burned with false certainty. “Don’t you think I know, pet? Your little plans to escape. Such a shame… I thought you were smarter.”

Hours bled away in cruelty before Bela stumbled in, her face blanching at the sight. Her voice shook as she said, “M-Mother… you’re mistaken. The two rats Cassandra caught today confessed.. they thought you’d be distracted punishing Y/N. It was a trick. She… she’s innocent.”

The word struck Alcina like a dagger to the ribs. Innocent.

Her claws retracted instantly, her eyes wide, her throat tight as she looked at your broken body slumped on the floor. The sight hollowed her. Guilt surged through her in suffocating waves until she could hardly breathe. She reached out with trembling hands, hands stained with your blood, with her crime and whispered frantically, “Bella, fetch the doctor. Now.”

Scooping you into her arms, Alcina moved faster than she ever had before, her composure shattered. Your blood seeped into her gown, and she did not care. Tears stung her golden eyes, hot and heavy, threatening to fall as she laid you down to be treated. For the first time in decades, she felt like the monster the world accused her of being. But never—not to you. Not you.

Days crawled by. Alcina never left your bedside as the doctor worked, her gaze haunted by the scars she herself had carved into you. When your skin knit back together, it was marred, but nothing compared to the invisible wound she had carved into your soul. That wound terrified her most.

Two weeks passed before your eyes finally fluttered open. Relief nearly dropped Alcina to her knees, but it curdled quickly when she saw it: the way you looked at her now, as though she were a stranger cloaked in shadows. When the doctor released you to resume light work, you moved through the castle like a ghost.

You were different. Untouchable.

You built walls, so cold, polite, impenetrable. You greeted her with the same words you once used, but there was no warmth in them now. You treated her daughters the same way, their laughter crumbling under the weight of your sharp, distant responses. Alcina’s heart cracked when she found Cassandra crying quietly after yet another failed attempt to draw out your old kindness.

The consequences of her cruelty had rippled outward, poisoning even what her daughters adored the most.

One evening, Alcina found you in the kitchen, your hands steady as you prepared the tea tray, though the sharp breath you drew told her you had noticed her presence.

“Dear,” she began softly, her voice trembling with regret,“I need to speak with you.”

“Yes, my lady.”

Polite. Distant. Terrified.

Your body stiffened, shoulders squared as though bracing for another strike. Alcina felt the urge to claw herself open just to mirror the wounds she had left in you.

“I must apologize for that night,” she whispered, words cracking with sincerity. “The thought of you betraying me… it tore something inside me. You are the only one who has stayed so long, and I feared you would leave me too. But I was wrong. Gods, I was so wrong. I let my own fears blind me, and in my blindness I destroyed what I treasured most. I can not ask forgiveness. I do not deserve it. But I beg you, allow me the chance to try. Allow me to show you my human side. Allow me to prove I am worthy of your trust, no matter how long it takes.”

Her eyes brimmed with tears she no longer tried to hide. She wanted nothing more than to fall to her knees before you, to press her lips against your scarred hands, to beg until her throat bled. But you met her gaze with eyes filled with anguish.

“Something you said that night was true,” you murmured, voice thick with sorrow. “You told me you thought I was smarter. And you were right. I was stupid. Stupid to think you cared for me. Stupid to think your family could ever be my family. Stupid to think you weren’t a monster.”

Your tears fell, each drop carving into her heart sharper than her own claws ever could. “Please… just let me die in peace in this hell. That’s all I ask.”

You brushed past her trembling frame, leaving only silence in your wake.

And in that silence, Alcina broke. Sobs tore free, raw, and unrestrained, echoing off the kitchen walls. You were right. She was a monster. She had destroyed the only soul who had ever made her feel something beyond hunger and rage.

Yet even through the storm of her grief, a vow formed in her heart, unyielding, desperate, eternal.

She would beg. She would crawl. She would break herself on her knees if she had to. She would conquer time itself if it meant earning back your trust.

No matter how long it took, she would have you back.

A Stitch in Time

A/N: hello darlings, good night 🖤 hope everyone's doing well! sorry this one took a little longer than usual, I ended up adding a few extra details along the way, hope that's okay with you all. also full confession, I had too many glasses of wine tonight so I really can't be trusted with proofreading right now lol, this is genuinely my last bit of brainpower going into making it readable... thank you so much for the request though, it was such a cute one to write 🥺✨

Plot: A wandering seamstress, a countess who's outlived everyone, and a seam neither wants to unpick.

You had been on the road for more than 20 years when the letter found you, forwarded through three different couriers before it finally caught up to the caravan you were traveling with. Castle Dimitrescu required a seamstress of exceptional skill, someone capable of finishing a commission another artisan could not complete in time. You almost didn't open it. Commissions from grand houses rarely wanted what you actually were, a nomad who slept in borrowed rooms and carried her whole life in a single case of pins and thread, who moved from village to village because staying too long anywhere meant someone eventually noticed you didn't age, didn't eat what everyone else ate, didn't cast quite the shadow you should.

But something about the wax seal, dark and thick as old blood, made your fingers pause before you could talk yourself out of curiosity.

You arrived at the gates on foot, having left your horse two villages back the way you always did, unwilling to explain why the animal grew skittish the longer it traveled with you. A maid with hollow eyes led you through corridors lined with portraits that seemed to track your movement, up a staircase curved like a question mark, into a room so vast the candlelight died before it reached the corners. You had been in grand houses before. None of them had made your chest tighten the way this one did, though you couldn't have said whether it was nerves or something else entirely.

She was already there.

Alcina Dimitrescu stood at the window with her back to you, and even from behind she seemed built rather than born, a woman made to be looked up at. When she turned, her eyes found you and did not let go, and you felt the particular vertigo of being seen fully by something that could see through most masks. You knew, somehow, before either of you said a word, that she recognized what you were. Not human. Something older, something that didn't belong to sunlight or mirrors or the slow arithmetic of mortal years.

"You're not what I expected," she said, and there was no cruelty in it, only appraisal. "The letters called you a wandering seamstress. They didn't mention you'd be one of mine."

"I'm not one of anyone's," you managed, and immediately regretted how sharp it came out, how your voice cracked at the edges the way it always did when too many eyes were on you at once. You looked at the floor. You looked at your hands. You looked anywhere but at her. "I travel alone. It's easier that way."

"Is it." She said it like a question she already suspected the answer to. "Sit. Or stand, if that's easier. I won't bite unless invited."

You didn't laugh, though you suspected she meant for you to. You unpacked your case instead, grateful for the ritual of it, the familiar weight of shears and thimble and measuring tape, because your hands knew what to do even when your voice failed you.

The first days were quiet in the particular way that comes from two guarded people circling each other without meaning to. You took her measurements with a professional distance you'd perfected over a decade of forgettable towns, but she made it difficult, watching you the way something ancient watches something it hasn't decided is prey or company. She asked questions you answered in as few words as possible. She noticed the silences you left instead and, rather than filling them the way most people did, out of some need to be reassured, she simply let them sit.

You liked that about her before you liked anything else. She didn't demand you perform ease you didn't feel.

By the second evening she had started leaving her study door open when you worked in the room beside it, and you understood, slowly, that this was invitation rather than accident. On the third night, unpacking a bolt of deep violet silk, you caught her watching your hands with an intensity that made you fumble a pin.

"You do that," she said. "Freeze, when someone looks at you too long."

"I'm not used to being looked at kindly." The words left you before you could soften them, and you flinched at your own honesty. "Most people either want something from what I am, or they're afraid of it."

"And what am I doing."

You risked a glance at her face and found nothing there but patience. "I haven't decided yet."

"Take your time," she said, and something about the ease of it, the total lack of pressure, made your shoulders drop half an inch for the first time since you'd arrived.

The days folded into each other after that, slower than you expected, slower than any commission you'd taken in years. You found yourself lingering past the hours strictly required by the work, and she found reasons to keep you there, a question about your travels, an offer of wine you didn't need but accepted anyway for the company of drinking it. She told you about her daughters in fragments, about the ball, about the particular loneliness of being the tallest thing in every room you've ever stood in. You told her, haltingly, about the hunger that came in waves you'd learned to hide behind excuses and early nights, about the strange grief of watching mortal friends age past you decade after decade until you stopped letting yourself make friends at all.

"You understand it, then," she said one evening, turning a glass of wine she wasn't drinking between her fingers. "The particular arithmetic of it. Watching everything around you wither while you remain."

"I understand it better than most," you admitted. "Though I don't think it's made either of us any better at explaining it to someone else."

"No," she agreed, and for a moment the two of you simply sat in that shared, unspoken understanding, the kind that doesn't need translating because it's already been lived. "Most people want comfort about mortality. Not company in outliving it."

You thought about that long after you'd left the room that night, about how rarely anyone had ever offered you company instead of comfort.

By the fourth day the space between conversation and silence had closed almost entirely. You found you no longer flinched when she stood close to check the drape of a half finished sleeve, no longer looked away quite so quickly when she caught you staring, which happened more often now than either of you pretended not to notice. She'd taken to sitting near your worktable in the evenings, not to hover but simply to exist alongside you, reading or turning correspondence over in her hands, occasionally reaching out to touch a swatch of fabric with a curiosity gentler than anything you'd expect from someone who could crush stone between two fingers.

"You hum," she told you once, amused. "When the stitch comes out the way you want it. Did you know that."

"I did not." Heat crept up your neck, embarrassing in a way that had nothing to do with blood. "I hum less around people. Usually."

"I'm glad I'm the exception, then."

You didn't have an answer for that, so you kept sewing, and she let you, and the silence that followed felt less like distance now and more like something shared.

It was on the fifth night, with the gown nearly finished and draped over its form like something waiting to be born, that she finally asked the question you'd both been circling for days.

"Why do you travel alone." Her voice had lost its usual edge of amusement, gone soft and direct in a way that told you she actually wanted the answer, not a performance of one. "A creature like you could have found a coven. A house. Somewhere to belong instead of always moving."

You set your needle down because your hands had begun to shake, not from nerves exactly, but from the particular vertigo of being asked something true and realizing you had a true answer ready. "Belonging asks you to stay long enough to be known. I've never been very good at being known. I'm better at being useful and then leaving before anyone asks too much of me."

"And is that what you intend to do here."

"I don't know anymore." The admission cost you something, you could feel it leave you like blood from a wound, but her expression didn't shift into triumph or pity, only stayed steady, waiting. "I've never stayed anywhere long enough to want to. I want to, here. That frightens me more than I expected."

She rose from her chair and crossed the room slowly, giving you every chance to step back if you needed to, and you didn't. When she stopped in front of you, close enough that you had to tilt your head to hold her gaze, her expression had softened into something you hadn't seen from her before, not amusement, not appraisal, something closer to tenderness worn carefully, like she wasn't entirely used to the shape of it either.

"I have had admirers," she said quietly. "Flattery, gifts, men who thought size and title would win me over. I have never had someone who understood what it costs to live this long without once asking me to be smaller for their comfort." Her fingers brushed a stray thread from your sleeve, lingering there longer than the task required. "I don't want you to leave when the gown is finished."

"I don't say things well," you admitted, voice barely above a whisper, the old anxiety rising even now, even here, wanting to retreat into work the way it always had. "I say them in stitches. In hems that sit right. I've never been good at saying them plainly."

"Then say them plainly just once," she said. "For me."

You swallowed hard, and for a moment you thought your nerve might fail you entirely the way it always had before, might send you reaching for shears and measuring tape as a shield the way you'd done your whole long life. But her patience held, steady and unhurried, asking nothing faster than you could give it, and that patience was what finally loosened your tongue.

"I think I've fallen for you," you said, clumsy and unpolished, nothing like the careful seams you were used to crafting. "I didn't come here looking for this. I came to finish a dress and disappear the way I always do. But I understand you in a way I've never understood anyone, mortal or otherwise, and I don't want to keep moving if it means leaving that behind."

For a long moment she said nothing, and old habit nearly sent you retreating into apology, into smallness, into the practiced art of taking up less space. Then she laughed, low and disbelieving, and reached out to tuck a strand of hair behind your ear with a gentleness that didn't match the size of her hands at all.

"Finally," she murmured. "I began to think you'd finish the gown before you finished your courage."

"You knew?"

"I've had more than five centuries to learn how to read silence, little seamstress. Yours has been saying this for days." Her thumb traced along your jaw, slow, deliberate. "I've wanted to kiss you since the third night, when you hummed over a stitch and didn't notice you were smiling while you did it. I waited because you needed to choose it. Not have it taken from you."

"Then let me choose it now."

You closed the distance yourself, rising onto your toes despite the impossible height between you, and she met you halfway, bending down as though she'd been waiting the whole five days for exactly this. The kiss was slow, deliberate, asking permission even as it took it, her hand sliding to the back of your neck to draw you closer until the space between you disappeared. You felt something in your chest loosen that had been wound tight since long before you'd ever seen the castle gates, some old certainty that staying always meant eventually being asked to leave.

When you finally broke apart, breathless, her forehead resting against yours, she smiled in a way you suspected very few had ever been allowed to see.

"The gown can wait until morning." she said against your lips.

"It can't. The ball is in two days."

"Then we'll simply have to make time for both." Her arms settled around you, easy and certain, as though she'd been waiting her whole long life for something to hold onto that wouldn't wither in her grip. "I find I'm no longer in any hurry to let you go."

Outside, the candle guttered low, and the unfinished dress caught the last of its light like something patient, something that had known all along exactly what it was waiting for.

A/N: Hello, friends! (^ー^) How are you? So I did something fluffy and comforting again. After all, we all need a little of that, hihi. Anyway, I hope you enjoy reading it, and I apologize because it isn't proofread again.(ー_ー;)

Plot: Through small gestures and unspoken rituals, a mute reader and Lady Beneviento learn that intimacy can grow without words, nurtured by patience, presence, and the courage to stay.

Winter arrived in the Romanian village with the same merciless regularity it always had. Before dawn, doors creaked open, boots pressed into frozen mud, and brief exchanges were conducted in hushed, wary voices. The villagers learned early that sound drew attention, and attention invited death. At the first hint of anything amiss—an unfamiliar noise, a shadow lingering where none should—they retreated indoors, bolting their doors and clutching their prayers, leaving the streets to whatever still wandered after nightfall.

You arrived knowing none of this.

A solitary traveler, burdened only with modest belongings and an unspoken longing for stillness, you searched for a place that might accept silence as readily as it accepted breath. The villagers watched with open suspicion as you built your home alone at the forest’s edge. It was not safe—nothing in the village ever was—but it was sufficient. And, it seemed, that was enough.

What unsettled them most was not your presence, but your quiet.

You did not speak.

No words ever crossed your lips, no matter how persistently some attempted to coax them free. Instead, you answered with gestures: a nod, the careful movement of your hands, an economy of expression that felt deliberate rather than lacking. When sound was demanded of you, none came. In time, the village learned to accept this truth. You were tolerated, as one tolerates a fixed landmark or an inconvenient road—always there, never questioned.

Eventually, you became useful.

When a roof collapsed beneath the weight of snow, they came to you. When supplies were needed from the forest’s more treacherous reaches, they came to you. You asked no questions, voiced no complaints, and required only enough payment to afford a simple meal at the village bar. In a place where excess invited envy and need invited cruelty, your restraint rendered you invisible.

You became familiar, but never close.

On Sundays, you attended church like the rest. You sat among the pews, head bowed, hands folded, but when the time came to offer devotion to Mother Miranda, you did not speak her name. You showed respect—never reverence. This, too, was noticed.

It was inevitable that the Lords would become aware of you.

At first, you were little more than a curiosity—something to be broken for amusement, toyed with until boredom set in. Lady Dimitrescu and Heisenberg alike entertained the notion of claiming you. Before either could act, Mother Miranda intervened. You were insignificant, she decided. More importantly, you were useful. The village was quieter with you in it. Content people asked fewer questions, and obedient people survived longer.

You remained.

What none of them understood was that another Lady had already taken notice of you.

Not with cruelty.

Not with possession.

But with something far more dangerous.

Lady Beneviento.

Your connection to her was unspoken, built not of words but of presence. There were no conversations, no declarations—only small, deliberate acts. For her, the first meeting had been terrifying.

Donna Beneviento had been gathering herbs near her estate, her veil absent for once. No one ventured this far into the forest willingly. Distance and silence had always been her protection. When she looked up and saw you kneeling among the plants, her breath caught painfully in her chest.

You had seen her.

And yet there was no scream, no recoil, no horror reflected in your expression. You merely watched her, as one might observe a deer in a clearing—alert, cautious, gentle. The fear, unexpectedly, was hers. She startled so violently that she failed to notice the thorn tearing into her skin. Blood bloomed bright against her pale fingers.

You were already moving.

Without touching her, without invading her space, you offered a folded satin cloth—clean, careful, reverent. The gesture asked nothing. You did not linger. You did not stare. You simply waited, as though waiting were something you had long since mastered.

After that day, nothing appeared to change.

You were not killed by poisoned wine, nor torn apart by dolls. Yet whenever you passed near House Beneviento, you felt it—the sensation of being observed. Not one presence, but many. Eyes where no eyes should be.

You never acknowledged them.

You knew of her. And though fear lingered, it was tempered by recognition. In that first encounter, you had understood something neither of you could have named: that solitude, when shared silently, ceased to be loneliness.

You worked for one of the families damaged by the relentless weather. You, more than most, understood the difficulty of surviving such cold. With your tools in hand, you repaired what had been broken, then ventured calmly into the forest in search of wood strong enough to endure the bitter days ahead.

You were careful in your labor. You always apologized when you felled a tree. It was not uncommon to see you replanting saplings, tending the soil with quiet patience. The forest, after all, sustained the village as surely as any prayer.

After many hours, you realized you had wandered dangerously close to Donna Beneviento’s estate.

You looked toward the mansion, unsurprised to find several dolls staring back at you, as though waiting for acknowledgment. With what might have been embarrassment—or perhaps reverence—you lifted a hand in greeting. A faint smile curved your lips when they returned it.

And until summer arrived, the routine persisted—three times a week, without fail.

Whenever you passed near the house, you slowed, greeting the dolls who watched from the windows with unwavering attention. On the final day of winter, when warmth at last softened the air, you chose to approach the estate, gathering wildflowers along the way.

At the gate, you waved as usual—comfortable, familiar.

This time, the front door opened.

Angie appeared first.

Then Donna.

She wore her lace veil, anxious hands clutching the fabric of her dress as she sat in one of the chairs outside, allowing the breeze to brush against her skin. She did not look at you directly—yet she did not retreat.

For the first time, your shared silence occupied the same space.

The breeze stirred the hem of Donna Beneviento’s dress, lifting the veil just enough to reveal the tense line of her jaw. She remained seated, hands folded too tightly in her lap, as though any movement might fracture the fragile moment between you.

You stopped a few steps from the gate.

For the first time since this unspoken ritual had begun, you hesitated.

Then, carefully, you lifted the small bundle of wildflowers you had gathered along the path—snowdrops, pale and resilient, their bowed heads accustomed to surviving the cold. You held them out, not toward Donna at first, but toward the dolls lining the windows, your expression warm and unmistakably sincere.

A gift, not a demand.

The dolls leaned closer.

You gestured again—an open palm, a slight tilt of your head—inviting them to accept the offering, or perhaps to pass it along. The silence stretched, thick but unthreatening.

Then Angie moved.

She appeared at the edge of the porch, dramatic as ever, her painted smile wide with mischief. She clasped her hands together with exaggerated delight, her voice ringing brightly through the quiet estate.

“Oh! For us?” she exclaimed. “How thoughtful! How romantic!”

Donna stiffened.

Angie laughed, spinning once before hopping down from the step. She plucked the flowers from your hands with theatrical reverence, inhaling their scent despite having no lungs to breathe with.

“Well,” she continued, casting a pointed glance toward Donna, “it would be terribly rude not to invite our guest inside, wouldn’t it?”

Donna’s breath caught.

You watched her—not intrusively, not expectantly—simply present. When Angie turned to you and tilted her head, waiting, you nodded.

Once.

Quickly.

Your excitement was unmistakable.

Something in Donna’s chest loosened, only to tighten again, unfamiliar and overwhelming. She rose from her chair with hesitant grace, hands fluttering uselessly before settling against her skirt. She did not speak. She did not need to.

She stepped aside.

Inside, House Beneviento was quiet in a way the village never was. Not fearful, not empty—simply still. Tea had already been prepared, the cups arranged with careful symmetry, as though Donna had anticipated company long before she allowed herself to hope for it.

You sat where Angie gestured, hands folded neatly in your lap, posture respectful yet at ease. Donna took the chair across from you.

Not too close.

Not too far.

Steam curled from the teacups, carrying the faint scent of herbs and honey. Angie poured with exaggerated flair, nearly spilling in her enthusiasm, before settling herself between the cups like a self-appointed chaperone.

“To new routines!” she announced brightly.

Donna flinched.

You smiled.

It was subtle—barely there—but Donna saw it. She always did. Her gloved fingers tightened around her cup, the warmth seeping slowly through the fabric, grounding her.

The tea was good.

You conveyed this without words, your gaze softening, shoulders easing as you took another sip. Donna watched intently, committing every reaction to memory as though afraid she might forget it later. When you glanced up and caught her staring, she looked away at once, veil shifting with the movement.

The visits did not grow frequent all at once. They deepened.

Some days, you remained outside, seated across from Donna in the pale afternoon light. Other days, the door opened without ceremony, and tea was poured as though it had always been meant for two. Nothing was arranged aloud. Nothing needed to be.

Silence, once a boundary, softened into something shared.

Donna learned the rhythm of your presence the way one learns a beloved passage in a book—not by memorizing the words, but by anticipating the feeling it left behind. She noticed how you folded your hands when you listened, how your gaze lingered not on her veil, but on the space just beneath it, as though you understood that looking directly might be too much.

You noticed how her shoulders eased when you sat, how her breathing grew quieter, steadier, as the minutes passed. How she lingered longer each time before retreating indoors, reluctant to be the first to break the spell.

One afternoon, the air hung heavy with warmth. Summer had settled fully over the estate, close and fragrant. The windows stood open. The dolls watched idly now, no longer vigilant—merely present.

You brought no flowers that day.

Instead, you sat.

Donna hesitated, then did something she had never done before.

She removed her gloves.

Her hands were pale and delicate, marked by faint scars earned through work and solitude. At first, they rested in her lap, fingers entwined uncertainly. You noticed—of course you did—but you did not stare. You never did.

After a moment, she reached for her teacup.

It trembled.

You did not speak.

You did not reach.

Instead, you slid your own cup aside and placed your hand upon the table between you—open, still, an offering without demand.

The silence deepened.

Donna stared at your hand as though it were something fragile, something sacred. Slowly, hesitantly, she extended her own. Her fingers brushed yours—barely there—a contact so light it might have been imagined.

She inhaled sharply.

You did not move.

When her hand finally settled against yours, it was not a grasp, not a hold—only the quiet certainty of shared warmth. Skin to skin. Real. Present.

Angie gasped dramatically from her perch near the window.

“Oh!” she stage-whispered, covering her painted mouth. “Should I pretend I’m not watching, or should I fetch the wedding china now?”

Donna startled, her fingers tightening for the briefest moment before relaxing again. You smiled—fully this time—a softness that reached your eyes.

Angie grinned.

“I’ll take that as a thank you,” she chirped, hopping down. “I’ll go… reorganize something. Loudly. Far away.”

She vanished with exaggerated discretion.

Left alone, the quiet returned—changed now. Warmer. Intimate in a way that felt almost reverent.

Donna did not pull away.

Her thumb brushed once, tentative, along the side of your hand.

It was enough.

Outside, the forest breathed. Inside, the world narrowed to this small, shared space—to an understanding grown not through words or promises, but through patience.

Through presence.

Through the gentle, unwavering choice to stay.

And in that silence, where neither of you needed to ask, love lingered—unspoken, unclaimed—yet held, at last, between your hands.

Plot: Through small, tender gestures, he proves what it truly means to be a real man, leaving your heart quietly stirred.

A/N: Hey guys! How are you?😽⭐️

As promised, here’s the second story of the week! Writing it was such a ride, fun, but also kinda tricky. Honestly… I’m a bit skeptical about this one. (-_-;)

But guess what? Next week, I’ve got something spicy coming: an RE8 story, full of angst and all the feels hehehe.. Thank you SO much for all the love and support, it really means the world to me! Now I’m curious… what did you think of this one? Don’t hold back, I want all your thoughts! 🐻‍❄️ྀིྀི

The teahouse was alive with gentle sounds, the soft clink of porcelain, the low hum of conversations, and the fragrant steam of tea curling from every cup. Couples leaned close to one another, their laughter forming warm bubbles that seemed to float in the air. But you felt none of it. The warmth of the room refused to touch you, replaced instead by a tightening in your chest, a cold unease curling around your ribs.

Across from you, your date spoke as though the world belonged to him. Each sentence overflowed with self-praise, his laughter echoing at your expense. You forced polite chuckles that tasted bitter on your tongue, each pause too fleeting to offer a word in return. When you shifted, trying subtly to retreat, he leaned closer, brushing your hand without consent. What had been a chance, an opportunity to open yourself to someone new had turned suffocating. This was not what you expected. This was not what you deserved.

And yet, you were not alone.

A few tables away, Gyomei Himejima sat quietly, his prayer beads slipping soundlessly through his fingers. His towering frame exuded calm, a quiet gravity that seemed to still the air around him. He had come seeking peace, a brief reprieve from duty in the comforting ritual of tea. But his stillness shattered the moment he heard you.

The tremor in your voice, the subtle faltering beneath each mocking word, your discomfort carried to him like a bell’s toll. Patience was his virtue, and he waited, observing silently, hoping for a correction that never came.

Then came the sharp tug.

Your date’s hand caught your wrist too tightly as you tried to move away. His voice sharpened, bitter and entitled, as he demanded why you were not enjoying the evening, as though your presence owed him thanks. That was enough.

The scrape of wood against the floor rang louder than the teahouse’s murmur as Gyomei rose. His presence alone drew silence; every head subtly turned. Each step he took was measured, deliberate, a river of calm power flowing toward you. His shadow fell across the table, and the air seemed heavier, charged.

“That is enough.” His voice rolled like stone, unyielding. “Let go of her.”

Your date froze, a scoff slipping out, but one look at Gyomei’s composed, unwavering gaze stole the courage from his chest. The grip on your wrist loosened instantly. With a muttered excuse and the scrape of his chair, he vanished, leaving only the echo of his pride.

Silence fell, pressing in around you. Your chest heaved, your wrist throbbing faintly, words caught somewhere between fear and relief. Then, softer, gentler, his voice came:

“Are you hurt?”

You shook your head, eyes lowered. “Just a little… mostly he made me feel uncomfortable. Thank you… for stepping in. That was very kind.”

He hesitated, his hand hovering near yours, warm yet respectful, never imposing. “Allow me.” he said, almost a whisper, reverent, patient.

When you gave the smallest nod, his large hand enveloped yours, impossibly gentle. His fingers moved in slow, soothing circles over the bruise forming on your skin. Each careful motion unwound the tight coil of tension inside you, leaving a shy warmth in its place. He did not diminish you. He did not frighten you. He simply allowed you to be seen.

Your chest tightened, a blossoming warmth spreading where cold had once lurked. You had admired him from afar before, his quiet strength, his steadfast discipline, but now, with his hands tending to your pain and his voice full of soft sincerity, you glimpsed something far deeper.

This was what it felt like to be respected. To be cherished. To be truly seen.

With a smile that softened the lines of his face, Gyomei offered to walk you home. Every word seemed to float, light as silk, and yet struck at the tender corners of your heart, sending butterflies fluttering through your chest. Side by side beneath the evening sky, your steps fell into a quiet, unspoken rhythm.

Conversation bloomed slowly, delicate as dawn’s first light. He listened with a care that made every detail of your life matter, the shape of your dreams, the small joys of your days. When the wind bit through the streets, he paused, draping his haori over your shoulders, his fingers brushing lightly against your arms. His gaze lingered on you with a soft attentiveness, as if he could feel the tremor in your voice before it surfaced.

Never once did he make you feel small. Instead, he carried himself in a way that lifted you, your presence treasured in his quiet attention. You stole glances at him, marveling at the reality of such a man.

By the time your door appeared, his soft chuckle followed a story you had told, lingering in the night air like a warm melody. “I am glad you are safe,” he murmured, bowing slightly. His hands rested before him, patient. “If it pleases you… I would like to see you again. Only if that is your wish.”

The choice was yours, and his presence lingered in your chest long after he stepped away.

A few days later, the marketplace hummed with life, vivid colors, the scent of fresh produce, voices calling above the crowd. You moved through the stalls, selecting the ripest fruits, when your eyes found him again. Instantly, the world seemed to blur around him. He was impossible to miss, yet moved with effortless grace. He bent carefully to lift a heavy basket for an elderly woman, his voice soft, kind, his touch gentle. Dust marked his clothing, but he did not notice. Respect did not cling to him because of his title, it radiated from the quiet humanity in every gesture.

Summoning courage, you approached. His breath caught, a subtle tilt of his head acknowledging your presence. A faint smile curved his lips, warmth flowing from the calm power in his stance.

“Good morning,” he said softly, voice rich with sincerity. “It is… a blessing to see you again.”

Time unraveled around you as you walked through the market together. He carried your basket, lingered when you paused at fruits, and offered the freshest morsels in small, tender gestures. When you teased him about trying your cooking, hope flickered in his eyes, and your chest lifted in response.

Later, he turned fully toward you, the market fading into quiet background. Relief softened his broad shoulders as you recounted cutting ties with your previous suitor. Then, his hand rose, hovering near yours, gentle, patient, seeking permission.

“A real man does not demand gratitude for kindness,” he murmured. “Nor does he measure his worth in coin or pride. His strength lies in how he listens… in how he honors the heart he wishes to protect.”

The words struck like a deep bell. You shivered, though warmth bloomed from his presence. His hands curved subtly as he held the space between you, reverent, protective, and full of care.

For a moment, the world fell silent. Then, your hand lifted to meet his. His large fingers wrapped around yours with careful warmth, lifting your hand slightly, thumb brushing lightly across your knuckles. Reverently, he bowed his head, pressing his lips to the back of your hand, a soft, sacred kiss.

The gesture was not hurried, nor bold, but unspoken and profound. When he lifted his gaze, his eyes held softness that made your chest tighten.

“You deserve nothing less than respect… and affection that does not falter..” he murmured.

Your breath caught, cheeks flushed, heart swelling not with doubt but with hope. Gyomei had not told you he was a real man, he had shown you. And in that quiet, tender moment, you realized you longed to see how much more he could show.

Plot: Determined to reclaim your heart, Alcina courts you with gentle care, each tender gesture a confession of the love she can not hide. This is part II of "Whispers".

(Part I right here!)

A/N: Hey beautiful people! how are you?🖤😽

I'm very glad to see people liking "Whispers", it's really gracious because it was my first time trying to write in angst, so it's beyond exciting to see the positive results! ♥︎

By the way, this was a request, this angel requested the sequel so here ya go^-^

Please enjoy it! Oh, send requests🐻‍❄️ྀིྀི

Since that day, you thought you’d feel Alcina’s fury again, sharp, unforgiving yet the wound festering inside your chest burned far more than what she had ever done to your body. You could never let her know that your heart had shattered into pieces when you heard her sobs echoing in the dark. You told yourself you deserved respect, that you would not let her crawl back into your heart only to break it again.

And yet… a different path unfolded before you.

It began with a note.

Tucked carefully between the pages of your favorite book, the one you only reached for when you sought comfort, the handwriting was unmistakable: Alcina’s. Elegant, controlled, and yet strangely tender.

“If I could speak without fear, I would tell you that each night without your smile feels like a century. But since my voice falters when you look at me, let these words bear the weight of my silence.”

You frowned, closing the book with a racing heart. The next day, another note appeared, slipped into a drawer. Then another, hidden in the pocket of your coat. Each letter carried no command, no pride, only longing, regret, and quiet adoration. They felt real. Sincere.

It frustrated you endlessly that even without her presence, Alcina lingered everywhere. She knew your habits too well. She remembered that you once told her your favorite flowers were tulips. She had noticed which dessert made you smile, which little things others dismissed as insignificant. You had never thought she listened… but she had. She had paid attention.

By the time the fifth letter arrived, trembling in your hands, you couldn’t hold back the words any longer.

“Why… why would she even write these?” you whispered to the empty room.

A soft laugh answered you.

Daniela stood at the doorway, leaning casually against the frame. There was mischief in her smile, but her tone was gentle, her hesitation clear.

“Perhaps I should suggest to Mother that being more direct would do her some good…”

You said nothing, too startled, and Daniela only shrugged, crossing her arms.

“She’s stubborn, you know. Never shows when she’s afraid. But this—” she tilted her chin at the letters in your hand “this is her way of saying she’s terrified of losing you. She’s a mess without you.”

For the first time in weeks, the anger didn’t feel so heavy. Confusion, yes. Hesitation, yes. But beneath it all, something softer began to stir.

“It doesn’t make sense. Any of this.” Your voice cracked, searching Daniela’s eyes for some trace of malice, some monstrous intent. But all you found there was devotion, and that infuriated you more than anything.

Especially because when Daniela smiled at you, wide, goofy, childlike, you felt your own lips twitch into a reluctant smile.

“If you asked Mother to leap for forgiveness,” Daniela said lightly, “she’d only ask how high.”

And with that, she slipped away, leaving you alone with your letters, your thoughts, and the fragile sound of walls beginning to crack.

The following morning, you wanted nothing more than to immerse yourself in your routine, to forget the tender moments you had shared with the Dimitrescu family. It was maddening, despite everything, despite all the horrors you had endured, you could not see them as monsters. All you saw was a family, beautifully flawed, striving to protect one another. Hate simply would not take root in your heart.

So avoidance became your only refuge. Steering clear of the daughters was almost unbearable, yet it felt necessary. It seemed Alcina herself was keeping her distance, and perhaps that was a mercy. You could not fathom how long you might withstand the pull of those golden eyes without surrendering entirely.

And then the terror struck: you had been assigned to serve the daughters their morning meal. Your instinct screamed to flee, but duty and an unspoken understanding held you in place. With a gulp and a heart heavy with apprehension, you made your way to the kitchen, each step feeling like a small battle.

By the time the preparations were complete, you carried the tray into the saloon. The moment their eyes met yours, softened by the gentle morning light, a warmth stirred within you. The three daughters lifted their heads in quiet delight, their excitement barely contained. And you allowed yourself a small, reluctant smile, your chest lifting despite your resistance.

They did not need words to speak. Daniela lingered at your side, her delicate hands brushing the edge of the tray, eyes meeting yours for a fleeting moment before she turned to wait patiently as you arranged the plates. Cassandra tilted her head, studying your careful movements, a faint, knowing smile playing at her lips, a silent question: you notice her, don’t you?

Even Bela, composed and reserved, leaned just enough to observe you quietly, her gaze soft and attentive, as though memorizing every subtle motion. Your heart twisted and softened all at once. Alcina had known about your fondness for the girls, the only maid ever to see them as three children rather than three vampires, and she was rewarding you for it. She was remembering the smallest details, tending to what brought you comfort, quietly, without expectation.

The realization struck you like sunlight through frost: Alcina was reaching for you in her own way, leaving delicate breadcrumbs of devotion, each one meant only for you to follow.

And somewhere, beyond the thick walls of the castle, you knew she was watching, waiting, hoping. Her golden eyes are unseen, yet present in every subtle act, every careful detail, every small echo.

For the first time in weeks, you breathed a little easier, letting the warmth settle where it had long been forbidden.

The morning passed without incident, leaving you with a peculiar, unsettling lightness. Since the moment you had walled yourself off from the world, you could not remember a single instant of such quiet happiness. Even the chores with the girls seemed to flow with ease.

Unexpectedly, your evening was free, unclaimed by duties. You suspected this was the hand of Alcina, though you would never dare question it. Deciding to make the most of the remaining sunlight, you wandered slowly toward the garden, hoping the flowers might steady the turbulence in your chest.

A small laugh nearly escaped you when you reached your usual spot. There, waiting, was a note, delicate, familiar. She knew you far too well, didn’t she?

Beside it lay a single tulip, your favorite, pressed and preserved with an elegance that spoke of thought, care, and time. The note was penned with an almost tender precision:

“For the moment, you need a reminder that you are not alone. That even when I falter, my thoughts are with you.”

Your chest tightened. This was not the commanding, imperious gesture of the Alcina you had once known. It was quiet. Humble. Vulnerable. A confession.

Instinctively, your eyes lifted, and for a fleeting heartbeat, you thought you glimpsed her reflection in the library window. Her towering form seemed distant, yet somehow closer than ever. You imagined those eyes upon you, waiting, watching, silently asking if you understood, if you accepted this small offering of devotion.

You decided, at last, to play her game, to open yourself, even if only a little, and see what Alcina might do this time. That night, in the quiet of your room, you wrote with care, shaping each word until it carried the subtle truth of your heart, without revealing everything.

By morning, you slipped the note beneath her tea tray. The maid tasked with delivering it hesitated, brow furrowed in confusion, but your firm glance left no room for refusal. After all, the Lady did not enjoy waiting.

The note read:

“Your actions confuse me, Alcina. They stir something I had long thought buried. I do not yet know where this path may lead, but your care has not gone unnoticed. It warms a part of me I had guarded for too long, even as it unsettles me. You are like the sun, brightening my day, yet leaving a burn upon my skin.”

Moments later, you imagined her receiving it. Perhaps she would glance at the paper with curiosity, then, with the careful grace only she possessed, read the words and ponder them.

You lingered near her workspace, pretending to tidy the room, though your heart raced with anticipation. Every tick of the clock echoed in your chest. You did not know how she would respond, whether with pride, irritation, or something softer. And yet, for the first time in weeks, the uncertainty did not feel like dread.

Somewhere deep within the castle, behind heavy curtains and closed doors, you imagined her golden eyes lifting to meet yours, watching, waiting, and perhaps, just perhaps, allowing herself to follow the trail you had left for her.

Later, in the garden, bathed in the golden afternoon light, you sat in your usual spot when Alcina appeared. Her towering form moved with the deliberate, effortless grace you had always known, and her golden eyes met yours, shimmering with a storm of emotions.

“I can no longer hide it,” she began, her voice low and steady, though a faint tremor betrayed the weight of her words. “I love you. I have loved you from the very first moment you entered my life, and I can not unlove you. I know who I am.. A monster. And I understand you may never forgive me. I will face that, whatever the consequences, for loving you is all I know how to do.”

Her gaze held yours, proud and unyielding, yet threaded with vulnerability. Her hands hung at her sides, quivering slightly, betraying the enormity of her courage.

You stepped closer, your voice soft, almost a whisper, carrying warmth and gentle amusement. “A monster… wouldn’t leave me cute, loving notes.”

“Nor remember my favorite snacks, my favorite book, or go to such lengths to win me back when you don’t even need to. I’m already yours, Alcina. I just… I don’t know how to do this. I beg you.. be patient with me.”

With that vulnerability, you finally allowed yourself to be near the one you desired most, even if it meant risking your heart again. You brought her hands into yours, feeling the slight tremble of her fingers, and then gently caressed her tear-streaked cheeks. She leaned into your touch, and a small, tentative smile curved her lips.

“I will give you all the time you need, I swear,” Alcina whispered, her voice quivering, tender and urgent. “Just let me be near you, let me love you, let me drown into you.”

Her face pressed against your hands, golden eyes searching yours, and you couldn’t resist running your fingers through her hair, feeling the soft curls against your palms. Her hands hovered, longing to hold you close, yet she hesitated, caught between desire and caution.

Not for the first time, you felt the irresistible urge to close the distance. Your lips sought hers before your mind could form the words, moving slowly, deliberately. Her eyes widened for a heartbeat, then softened as she adjusted, letting your noses brush, your foreheads nearly touching. With a tender, knowing look, you closed the final distance.

Her lips met yours, soft yet insistent, moving together in a rhythm that spoke of longing, trust, and surrender. Her hands roamed your body, drawing you impossibly close, and a soft moan escaped you against her mouth. Each touch, each sigh, each heartbeat between you was a confession, a reassurance, a promise. You lingered in that embrace, breathing together, before finally pulling back just enough to catch your breath. And in that tender closeness, with your whispers brushing against her ear and the warmth of your gaze holding her still, she knew that these were the only whispers she would ever need to hear, the only ones that would echo in her heart for eternity.