Preview of a possible whumptober/kinktober thing. Alpha/beta/omega with very vaguely defined biology. Wolfe, an omega, has just returned from Rome, and Santi, an alpha, is worried about what will happen if Wolfe goes into heat. And then Wolfe starts bleeding.
Warnings for implied rape, aftereffects of torture, pregnancy loss, blood, and a boatload of angst.
If I do continue this, it will eventually end with nice, healing Wolfe/Santi sex, but it will be very heavy on the whump before that.
In the first few days after Christopher's return from the hell he'd spent the past year in, Santi feared the coming of his lover's heat. Often, after a long separation, merely seeing each other again was enough to bring on heat in Chris, and the smell of his pheromones would send Santi into a matching rut. It made reunions most enjoyable, under normal circumstances, as weeks apart gave way to days in bed, their bodies entangled as they made up for lost time.
Chris's body wouldn't be able to withstand such coupling now. He wasn't even well enough to safely take heat-blocking medication, underweight and feverish as he was. The best Santi could do to avert disaster was to take his own pills, which would render him as insensible to omega pheromones as a beta. It wouldn't do a thing for Christopher's misery if his heat came on, but at least it would keep Santi from losing control and hurting him.
The Medica who came to examine Chris suggested that he was too unwell to go into heat, and Santi hoped that was true. He hoped a lot of things as he sat at Chris's side, tending to his needs. He hoped Chris would recover fully. He hoped Chris would speak again. He hoped Chris would sleep, and he hoped that when Chris opened his eyes, he would know where he was and who he was with.
He didn't always. Sometimes, he woke screaming with wild-eyes fear and struggled against any effort Santi made to help him. He resisted meals and baths and even medicine when those moods struck, and the only thing that seemed to help was to wait it out.
Sitting outside the door after the most recent of these episodes, Santi was certain things were as bad as they could get. Chris lay screaming and sobbing in their bed, and Santi could not even go to comfort him without inspiring worse terror. All he could do was sit there on the floor outside the door, watching the tray of dinner he'd brought grow cold and waiting for the cries beyond the door to quiet.
It hurt. It felt like rejection, even knowing that Chris was trapped in the past, seeing not his home and partner but the horrors he had endured. Santi hated those selfish feelings. But at least, he told himself, this was the worst of it. From here, Chris had to get better.
Time dragged on, and slowly, the sounds from the bedroom calmed from howls to sobs to sniffles to silence. After a few long minutes of silence, Santi took the tray and entered the bedroom, as slow and nonthreatening as he could be. Chris was asleep again, curled in the bed with his arms wrapped tightly around a sweat-soaked pillow. The blankets, too, were damp, and Santi put down the tray of food to change them. If he was careful, he could switch out the blankets without disturbing his partner's rest. Chris didn't move as Santi peeled back the blankets, listing them away from his shoulders, his chest, his hips.
And then he saw the blood.
He'd seen blood often enough in his line of work that he thought himself accustomed to it. He knew what to do for an injured soldier. But he froze at the sight of the ring of blood spreading out from around Christopher's hips.
There was just so much of it.
God, Chris didn't have that much blood to lose, did he?
The cuts on his stomach, Santi thought. Chris must have torn them open. His nails were all gone, but that didn't stop him from tearing at his wounds, and those cuts were fresh enough that even blunted fingertips could do real damage.
But, no, the blood was too low for that. There was only one thing it could be.
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Excerpt from the personal journal of Scholar Christopher Wolfe.
Interdicted to the Black Archives.
"He is a fool who tries to withstand the stronger, for he does not get the mastery and suffers pain besides his shame."Â
In these sleepless nights, I keep coming back to Hesiod’s fable. Its warning that I completely failed to heed. They called me stormcrow, and I thought that put me on the level of Hesiod’s hawk. But I know now that I am merely the nightingale, helpless in its talons.
 Excerpt from the personal journal of Captain Niccolo Santi.
Not yet available in the Codex.
Chris won't speak. Not a word. Remembering that awful old myth from Ovid, I checked his mouth. They didn't cut out his tongue. Thank God they didn't cut out his tongue. Still, he says nothing. Like Tereus, they have broken him and robbed him of his ability to speak and reveal their crimes. But even Philomela found her voice and her revenge, in the end. And powerful though they may be, the Archivist and the Curia are no gods. They will not turn my stormcrow into a nightingale.
Explanatory notes:
First of all, why yes, I am totally taking the “Stormcrow” bird metaphor and running with it. Guess what the working title of my post-Rome stuff is?
This is the fable that Wolfe refers to. There are longer, more developed variants in which the birds talk more, but this one is the original.
The story of Philomela in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Content warning: graphic violence, rape, mutilation, murder of a child, cannibalism, period-typical misogyny. Seriously, if you’re not already familiar with this story, it’s disturbing.) (This translation actually has Procne as the nightingale - it varies, but most versions have her as the swallow and Philomela as the nightingale.)
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 5/?
Fandom: The Great Library Series - Rachel Caine
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Relationships: Niccolo Santi/Christopher Wolfe
Additional Tags: Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Aftermath of Torture, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Torture, Bathing/Washing, Cuddling & Snuggling, Nightmares, Flashbacks, Reading Aloud, Panic Attacks, Suicidal Thoughts
Summary:
A collection of stories of Wolfe's recovery from his imprisonment and torture in Rome. There will be some significant variance in levels of angst, violence, and fluff between chapters; see chapter summaries for chapter-specific warnings. Chapters containing violent flashbacks will be clearly labeled as such, but since this is dealing with the aftermath of Rome, expect vague references to past torture even in fluffier chapters.
More chapters are up for language day! While the last deals with the theme most directly, you’ll see a recurring theme of language and communication in the others as well.
Chapter 2: Wolfe’s first night home. This one deals very directly with Wolfe’s experiences with torture and being drugged. All warnings apply to this chapter!
Chapter 3: Santi takes Wolfe outside to read to him. Sweet, comforting fluff. Reposted from Tumblr.
Chapter 4: Wolfe has his first panic attack after his return home. No graphic violence, but it’s in Wolfe’s point of view, and he is very afraid of being arrested and tortured again, so those things are mentioned.
Chapter 5: Wolfe spends the afternoon in the courtyard with Santi. Wolfe is frustrated by all the things he still can’t do. Santi gets him talking again with some truly awful reading. Fluff with a side of prickly Wolfe, no violence or detailed Rome memories here.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/?
Fandom: The Great Library Series - Rachel Caine
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Relationships: Niccolo Santi/Christopher Wolfe
Additional Tags: Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Aftermath of Torture, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Torture, Bathing/Washing, Cuddling & Snuggling, Nightmares, Flashbacks, Reading Aloud, Panic Attacks, Suicidal Thoughts
Summary:
A collection of stories of Wolfe's recovery from his imprisonment and torture in Rome. There will be some significant variance in levels of angst, violence, and fluff between chapters; see chapter summaries for chapter-specific warnings. Chapters containing violent flashbacks will be clearly labeled as such, but since this is dealing with the aftermath of Rome, expect vague references to past torture even in fluffier chapters.
This is very much a work in progress, but I wanted to get at least a bit up for ship day. More will be coming throughout the week.
Warnings for this chapter: it picks up immediately after Wolfe’s release, so he has some thoughts on the day’s events, including things that happened in the prison. No detailed torture scenes, but some brief mentions of Qualls, and some detailed wound descriptions.
Some post-Rome hurt/comfort that might or might not fit into anything
Santi looked for the uninjured spots. There were few enough of them that it was something of a challenge to find them between the cuts and burns and bruises, between the bandages and the scars. So much of Wolfe’s body was marked by pain that it hurt just to look at him, and Santi punished himself for his failure to save his lover by looking long and hard while Chris lay curled on their bed in feverish sleep.
But while he took in all the pain he had failed to prevent, he also mapped out the places that remained uninjured. It was the work not only of eyes, but also of hands, and there was as much despair in it as hope. Sometimes, close inspection revealed a thin and faded scar on skin that had appeared smooth at first glance. Sometimes, he touched what looked like a patch of healthy skin only to hear a pained whimper as his fingers found some invisible hurt.
There was sadness even in the places truly free of wounds. The sight of his fingers, dark from a summer spent out in the sun, against skin paler than he had ever seen it, nearly the same shade as his own. The feel of bones jutting out from too-thin flesh. Even the beard on Christopher’s mostly unmarred face saddened him. Chris hated having an untidy beard, and his was not one that grew out well under the best of circumstances, let alone over the course of a year in hell.
But there was hope in those uninjured spots, too. Those were the spots he could touch, and touch them he did, with gentle strokes of fingertips, and where there was space enough, palms. Chris leaned into those touches, nuzzling the hand that caressed his cheek, sighing with something between relief and actual pleasure at the fingertips on his shoulders. There was something gratifying in knowing that he could give his beloved some small comfort amidst all the pain.
Those were the spots he could kiss, too, and he covered each of the spots he found in kisses, pressing his lips again and again to the places that Chris seemed to like best. And then he placed careful kisses along the scars, and kissed the bandaged wounds so lightly that his lips barely felt the gauze. Because those places, even more than the rest, needed his love.
He had to believe that with time, and with love, the wounds would heal and the scars would fade. But until they did, he would keep looking for the uninjured spots, the places he could touch to ease the pain.
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An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Great Library Series - Rachel Caine
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Christopher Wolfe & Keria Morning, background Wolfe/Santi, background Keria/Eskander
Characters: Keria Morning, Thomas Qualls, Christopher Wolfe (The Great Library)
Additional Tags: pre-Ink and Bone, Post-Rome, Aftermath of Torture, Serious Injuries, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Whump
Summary:
We know Qualls released Wolfe. We know Keria was there to bring him home. This is that story.
Last thing I’m posting today. Mind the tags, this one’s whumpy.
A collection of stories of Wolfe's recovery from his imprisonment and torture in Rome. There will be some significant variance in levels of angst, violence, and fluff between chapters; see chapter summaries for chapter-specific warnings. Chapters containing violent flashbacks will be clearly labeled as such, but since this is dealing with the aftermath of Rome, expect vague references to past torture even in fluffier chapters.
CHAPTER ORDER HAS BEEN UPDATED!
Chapter order has been adjusted to keep things in chronological order.
Current contents:
1. Wolfe's Release
2. The First Night
3. Fever
4. Simple Comforts (NEW)
5. Reading in the Sun
6. Simple Triggers (NEW)
7. Panic Attack
8. Comfort and Memories
9. The Artifex Visits
10. Reading Aloud
11. Forgiveness
----------------------
Two new chapters! Well, ok, one actually new, one repost. First is fluffy comfort, second is heavy whump. As usual, see chapter-specific warnings and make reading decisions accordingly.
