under the skin, Tin Man (Azkadellia/DG)
Title: under the skin Author/Artist: shiegra Rating: PG13/R
Prompt: Tin Man - DG/Azkadellia - hurt/comfort - tell me where it hurts
The room was not as empty as it should have been.
DG hadn't wanted to find her sister there, but she'd more than half expected it. And Azkadellia always knew, by now, somehow--so she wasn't surprised when she straightened and turned, dark eyes meeting DG's with measured calm.
Her hair slipped over her shoulders, a dark silky curtain, and she wore a pale silk robe over a thin nightgown, one hand fisted in the material, holding it together. Her face was perfectly still, eyes unreadable.
"Hey," DG said softly. "You're up late."
Azkadellia shrugged, a sinuously graceful movement. "I've had enough sleep."
"I'm sure," DG said, obedient and wide-eyed. Azkadellia gave her a Look--a big-sister and little-sister look at once, exasperation and guarded hurt. Don't ask me, said her eyes. DG wouldn't have dreamed of it.
She knew--or at the very least was learning--the worth of secrets.
Instead she took her sister's bare fingers and pulled, tugging her from the witch's bedroom--whenever she talked to Azkadellia about it, she never referred to it as her own--and into the halls. Around corners, down stairs, finding her patient careful way back to DG's bedroom.
She was also learning how to navigate her new home, after a lifetime of a small house, worn steep stairs and attic bedrooms that spilled dusty sunlight across her bed. Now she had jet and marble and silk and velvet, and all the magic-spun amenities she could desire. It made her a little uncomfortable; in a different way from how it made Azkadellia uneasy, but uncomfortable all the same.
They both took comfort in the shared knowledge, wordless as it was.
There, Azkadellia shed her robe and they both crawled into bed, curling into each other little children or kittens, tucking their hands and heads together under the weight of the covers. A heavy comforter, flannel instead of silk. She'd asked, and it had been Cain that acquired it for her, not needing her fumbled attempt at an explanation, or the gratitude that was too intense for the gravity of the favor, and that she couldn't even begin to properly voice.
Azkadellia was rubbing at her skin again; a restless massage of the sweep of pale smooth skin above her breasts. DG remembered the monkeys that had curled like sedate tattoos there and swallowed hard; gone now, only human skin. "Does it hurt?" She whispered.
"No." Black lashes fanned against her sister's cheeks as she closed her eyes. "No. It doesn't. It just feels--"
"--strange," DG concluded, and Azkadellia opened her eyes, lashes sweeping her cheeks, to give her a wry, human smile.
"The hurt's deeper," she said quietly.
The hurt's under the skin, DG didn't have to be told.
She leaned forward and kissed her in the soft, enfolding quiet of the room, thinking only briefly of the witch's bold, ruthless savagery, of the mirror of darkness that sometimes flickered in her sister's eyes. Azkadellia was soft and sweet, her mouth almost trembling. DG touched where the familiars had rested in flesh and then dropped to cup the silky weight of one breast.
"Tell me where it hurts," DG said, and kissed the corner of her mouth again as Azkadellia sighed and finally, body shuddering, let the tears slip free.