shiegra (shiegra) wrote in no_true_pair, @ 2009-02-01 00:58:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! 2009 eight characters challenge, author: shiegra, crossover: kuroshitsuji/narnia, pairing: sebastien/susan |
Title: Nevermore the Tender
Author/Artist: shiegra
Fandom: CoN/Kuroshitsuji
Pairing/characters: Sebastien/Susan
Rating: R
Prompt/challenge you're answering: Susan Pevensie/Sebastien: the first day of the rest of our lives
"O daughter of dogs," the Tisroc said. His voice was empty, and pleasant, and as calm as though he complimented her once more on her beauty and calm, words dripping off his tongue like the poison that ran in his veins. "Fair northern slattern, when my son returns he will be pleased to find you with us."
She bled. She had bled each step of the way, leaving small perfect footprints behind her, and she bled still, standing under his eyes; black like raisins sunk into his corpulent face.
She said nothing, fixed her eyes beyond his head and dropped herself into silence like a stone into a still pool. This creature was not worthy of her words as a monarch of Narnia.
He smiled, a thin and cruel one, and gestured. Her chains bit into her ankles, her wrists, and she strained against them until they drew blood, locking her legs as the guards tried to force her down. The Vizier squalled, a distant and ignored background dissonant, berating her for her disrespect.
I kneel to no man, she thought, and even as fury misted her vision, a smaller, pragmatic and ice-cold voice said, you must, before he has them break your legs.
Her knees cracked painfully against the ground, even through the rugs. The Tisroc laughed, and the sound slithered across her skin and seemed to leave a trail of icy slime behind.
"You will learn," he said, and waved. "Take her."
The room was cold, and wide, with high stone ceilings. So dark, though; no lights but what lamp-glow managed to peek in through the open door, no window. They did not unlock her wrists, but simply threw her to the cold stone and retreated, hurriedly, nearly pushing to get out the door.
Her fingers found grooves, deep in the stone, and she lay her heated cheek on the stone and closed her eyes. Blood, warm on her fingers and the hard curve of her anklebone; slipping across her cheek where her wrist touched, drying thin on her skin.
Less of it than she'd feared, at least. She was being saved for the Tisroc's foul son, naturally. War with Narnia, she thought, bemused, and closed her eyes. It must be. What else could they be thinking?
Her hair provided a thin but silky pillow, even dusty and tangled as it was. She blinked once into the dark, sighed, and let her body spill into stillness against the ground.
Something touched her fingers in the dark.
The noise she made was a strangled scream, peircing the air like a well-honed knife, choking and childish in her throat. She was bolt upright and skittering backwards before her eyes even opened, and her heart pounded in her throat like a giant's drum, pushing against the skin.
They had left her in with something. Something else they'd trapped here, it seemed, and something--
There was only silence in the dark, and the harsh rhythm of her breathing.
"What," Susan asked, mustering every once of regal composure she could find, "are you?"
A pause.
And then: soft sound, the unnatural susurration of shadow. "Lady." A male voice, low and satiny purr like the glide of a well-honed and blood-soaked knife over skin. Red eyes gleam, the soft serrated edge of power touching her skin. It was nothing like the icy creep of magic that hung in the air during the Witch's reign, nor is it like Aslan's power, all fierce golden light.
But as elemental as theirs, and as deep a well as the concept of night itself.
Susan dragged herself to her feet, arranging herself with precise, rigid dignity. "Creature," she said again, voice as cold as the winter wind, "what are you?"
It laughed, and the darkness moved around her, almost caressing her skin. Susan refused to flinch, but her hair swept across her spine, tickling down her back as though something had playfully swept fingers through it. After a breathless second a hot sting bloomed on her shoulder blade; the fingers, apparently, had claws.
"Faithful servant." Inhuman amusement, razored and near-breathlessly soft. "Care to make a bargain?"
The air felt heavy and dry, the moment stretching like honey between a bear's paws and mouth, thick and golden. It felt like facing Maugrim, the eyes of something infinitely predatory.
"Art thou some demon of their creating?" She demanded, formality ridging her speech with protective ice.
"I am only what I am, lady..." A form briefly appeared, a man clad in shadow-black bowing with mocking depth, hair sliding over eyes that burned like the last coals, like a heart-deep wound. "And it is none of their making, I assure you."
"And I am to trust your word?" She inquired.
A long sigh, like fire relinquishing the last of its heat as smoke hissed up from doused coals. "You have felt the terms of my imprisonment," the voice murmured, much closer. "Surely someone like you..." a long indrawn breath like a beast scenting the air, "is familiar with such sorcery."
She rubbed her feelings together, remembering the carved stone of the floor. Her own blood drew tacky over her skin and she grimaced. "And why should I wish to make deals with an entity possessing power Calormenes desire?"
Her contempt showed too clearly, a ragged edge of hatred in the memory of the Tisroc's placid satisfaction, of Rabadash's fingers imprinted in her skin, of the Vizier's slyly delighted smile.
A soft purr that might have been laughter rose from the shadows. "They sent you here, into the dark. He thought I could break you." A sharp skittering sound, like countless insects or scorpions running along the walls. "You stink of pride." A quick harsh breath, and then a heated exhale, like an inferno on the back of her neck. "But so, too, is your scent saturated with magic," it breathed as she spun around, stifling another shriek. "And I could take apart these walls and set us both free. All that is necessary..."
Susan found herself holding her breath. "Yes?" She prompted sharply after a moment of silence.
"A little blood, a little bargain." The man formed from the shadows again, and somehow she could see him--either he had made up the pitch darkness of the cell, or he was making some light. Either way, his eyes glowed, and he lifted one pale hand, clearly visible.
She released a shuddering breath.
"I will not need your aid," she spoke steadily, and lifted her chin. "My kin will come for me."
He only smiled, and bowed, and dissolved into the shadows of midnight's waiting maw once more. Patient as a spider, as ready as a tiger to pounce.
Oh Edmund--Lucy-- Her nails sank into her palms, but old blood and new only mingled as she sank down, aching with fear, gazing into eyes that held a hunger vast beyond her comprehension. Hurry.
The Tisroc called her once more before him, and she staggered, near-fainting with hunger and weariness. The soldiers moved quietly, and not one jeered or mocked, but she felt the indignity as keenly as she felt the gnawing of her stomach.
A man knelt in chains before the Tisroc, and bruised and hollow-eyed with fear. They brought her to her knees, and the Tisroc's hand, soft as uncooked dough, came under her chin to turn her eyes to the prisoner.
"This man provided your people with sustenance for the journey," the Vizier announced. His thin face creased in a deep smile. "O light of the sky, oh glorious ruler, the Tisroc has decreed that his hands be removed and he be left for the jackals outside the city walls. And he bids you, prideful and unholy creature, to remember your brother, and your young sister, and all those that you value, and know their fate shall be innumerably more terrible as the Tisroc devises."
Susan was pinned by the mad terror in the man's eyes, a fatal spiral of death. Like a trapped animal, she thought distantly, ready to bite savagely at his own leg.
She did not return bleeding this time, but bruised, and the cool touch of the shadows was almost welcome.
"How long will you wait?" The demon murmured, a low silken night in the pitch black, and Susan closed her eyes and admitted to herself, not long.
One day there was a great uproar outside the walls. The Vizier took her to the walls, the guards dragging her stumbling forward, and showed her a small, forlorn figure hanging from the gates. People cried out in the streets--in joy, in rage indistinguishable--and the body had golden hair, wears a dress the color of Lucy's favorite riding-gown, a deep russet.
Impossible. Lucy is safe in Narnia.
"Our men know the desert," the Vizier hissed in her ear. "And we have closed in battle and mightily triumphed. She rode forth with the men, but she dies like a criminal."
It didn't matter if it was really Lucy. It isn't she told herself, praying desperately. It mattered that it could have been. It mattered that Susan could wait no longer.
"I will shed the blood you need," she whispered to the shadows, and the demon laughed, a deep shivering note, and took her wrist in cool white fingers.
His lips touch her skin in a blood-laced kiss, the white edge of an animal's fangs, the deep notes of magic vibrating in the cold stone. Shadows slid around her, and his skin touches hers through her tattered skirts, and she thinks he is in her veins, like fire, like wine, like spice--
He smells like black earth and blood and the essence of fire, and she shakes with the pain and the heat, and burns from the inside out as her skin sears and she knows she's won.
She kills the Tisroc herself, with the Vizier's knife, arterial jet striking across her skirts, breath sobbing in her throat. The world is blind--nothing else matters--but he has to die. For Lucy, she thinks, and with the power and the pain roaring in her she tells the demon, voice shaking and rattling hoarsely, to take her to the battlefield.
He bows to her, and he calls her Mistress, and in his eyes is the storm, gliding at her heels like a great cat, waiting to be unleashed. As tame as Aslan ever was--but controlled.
"I am yours to command," he whispers, and he takes her over the walls, over the long golden roll of sand and toward the majestic jut of mountains. Carrying her; he tore the metal the bound her hand and foot with bare hands, negligent, and she's left her mark on him, emblazoned on his skin like a name. Susan watches the mountains approach as he moves swiftly over the ground.
She bids him lower her once there, and walks on unsteady feet into the shadows of stone, feeling the searing sun fade. Takes his arm--offered like a gentleman, she has to laugh--and leaves Calormene on hobbling feet but her own power.
You stink of pride, he had said. All that matters is that she's walking.
Narnia's wind touches her faces and at her side he shivers all over, like an animal scenting danger. His eyes are deep as gemstones, burning like sunset, and when she turns to him she hears the echo of Aslan's roar and sees him smile, final and slow and sleek, painted with blood--gorged on it--as he allows this world to shiver and twitch and cast him away.
"What was that?" Lucy asks later, mercifully whole, placing steaming tea in Susan's hands and watching her face wide-eyed.
"A nightmare," Susan says, voice unsteadily reverent.