As it Was

She wanted him, needed him, craved the way he made her feel. Her legs wrapped around his waist, her head tilted back to allow him closer to the sensitive nerves along her neck, making her fingers curl into his hair and her skin shiver. A soft, needful moan of his name escaped her as his hand trailed up her thigh, and his pause alarmed her, his pulling away making her eyes fly open. Why was he -?

When his fingers traced the scar on her thigh, she flinched. She’d kept it bandaged this last week, unraveling it just this morning and judging it decent enough to see a healer to get rid of it, to remove every last trace of him from her skin, and she’d been so caught up since then. Bas knew of it now, knew what those two carved initials meant, who they were from.

Lust fled in the face of quiet dread. She didn’t know what she expected – revulsion, perhaps? Disinterest? He’d scorned her with someone else once tonight, and there was still the fear that he wouldn’t take well to someone else’s touch on such a heartless place.

But his touch was gentle, his words soft, and his eyes promising death for the one that’d hurt her. Her breath hitched to see it, vulnerability flickering over her – because that, over all the beautiful words he could’ve given her, all the promises to be faithful, the gifts, the promises to stay, the kisses that made her feel alive – that was enough to turn the locks on her heart.  

He asked what Apollyn had done, and what she’d said a week ago was still true, that she didn’t want him to know just how far she’d fallen. She’d kept this scar from him up till now, kept the bruises under her clothes from his sight by dousing the candles until they healed, but this...

...she remembered the look on Jericho’s face when she’d told him the truth, the cold rage that’d fallen over him, and how warm she’d felt to know that she mattered enough to be furious over. She didn’t regret trusting Jericho with the truth, and she wanted to do the same for Basileios. Wanted so badly to feel that she wasn’t alone.

So she traced circles over Bas’s skin, the words coming slowly at first, then in a quiet torrent of sins she laid at her captor’s feet. She told him of how Apollyn had hunted her down in the dark woods, strangling her and stealing her cloak, how he’d commanded her to kill and leave the remains on the altar of Fortune, how he’d told her to wash the blood in the river and saw her stripped bare, how he’d played the game of letting her come close to try and kill him only to pin her down and claim her with his knife and corrupted kiss. How he let her go countless times only to give her false hope and chase her down again and again.

Worst of all was how he’d twisted her emotions around his finger with his magic, drowning her in false enjoyment of blood and pain until she couldn’t breathe, a marionette in her own body. She committed atrocities under his name, and often he’d cut his hold on her right in the middle, so she’d have full autonomy of the flesh beneath her teeth, the screams of those bled out in fear, and how she begged him to take control again if only to escape the feelings of horror and guilt that threatened to break her. It was easier to blame the bloodlust on him, far safer to lie to herself while she wished for the nightmare to end.

Lasair leaned her forehead against Bas’, a hand over his, and though her tone was kept patient and level as if she were recounting a tale that’d happened to someone else, her grip on his hand was white knuckled. She didn’t want him to leave her for this, didn’t want him to turn away from her for being so stained. The candle burned down low by the time she was finished, her last words trailing off to a whisper.

“....I don’t deserve faithfulness. I have nightmares of him, I keep trying to kill him, to wrap my hands around his throat to keep him from what he did, and then I open my eyes and it’s you, and I can’t –“ She closed her eyes. “I wish you hadn’t seen this. I’m sorry. For all I’ve put you through, I’m sorry.”

She wanted him to stay and feel whole with him, wanted him to leave so he wouldn’t know how broken she was; wanted to love and trust him, wanted to break and hurt him for the slightest transgression so he’d be just as stained as she was. She was out of control, a mess of contradictions dragging him down with her. She wanted to know if he was true, and was too afraid to ask.