seven
"spilling blood beneath the moonlight"

That night, she slept alongside her nightmare. Fingers of skin and bone, cold and brutal run along her skin, pull her in close and hold her down when she thrashes. Her body stills, the nightmare smiles into her neck, breathing in the vulnerability like the sweet smell of roses on a Summer's day.

But nothing about her was sweet.

She was as much of a monster as he was. Without her, there would be no him. Nightmares are made, not an innate feature of a poor, unfortunate soul. To imagine such a fate upon a new born babe was a cruelty only the beings of hell itself would dare to conjure.

When she cracks open her eyes, three kneel before her and, in her inky palm, she clutches a dagger crusted with an ichor of a man long dead. A wolf brought to the slaughter and slain in grief.

She knows their faces well. The three warriors of the Queen brought to their knees before the woman they were ordered to murder. But now the tables had turned. All of them stare, watch her every move as she paces before them, the crown of diamond and bone glinting in the moonlight spilling through shattered palace windows.

No words are spoken as she stops before the first man, bare feet printing into the pooling blood. The former captain reduced to nothing more than a broken man was a sight she never thought she would see. He was supposed to be a husband, a father, not a traitor.

But there he kneels, loyal to the grief-maddened queen and brought to his death by the chaotic daughter as she clutches the dagger tight and slides it into his throat. He coughs and splutters, blood splattering across her pale cheeks in dashes of crimson betrayal.

She pulls the dagger free; he slumps.

The remaining two watch silently. Awaiting their death, the mirror of their fallen comrade with colour washed from their flesh at fear of the woman before them.

There was little they could do to escape their fate. She'd already beaten them, tooth and claw, and this was their punishment for the side they'd chosen.

She steps before the second, dagger still dripping in the blood of his friend. She wipes it in the black of her ragged dress, the stains hidden but he could see them burning there as his eyes stung with terror.

"If only you'd made the right choice, Levi," The woman says lowly with a voice radiating the power that had overcome them. A dark magic. A honed magic. "Long ago, we were in love." She traces the tip of the dagger along his jaw, blood buds along its march. "Do you remember that?" She questions, her hand snapping out to grip his chin and pull his eyes to meet hers as they burned with blackfire.

"Yes," He croaks out, swallowing visibly.

"But you bored me with your stupid games. Oh, how everything changed the day I decided to play too," She hears herself saying, spitting venom upon his face and burning through the flesh.

The void rejoices as she places the tip of the dagger before his heart.

"If only you'd made the right choice," She repeats, every word forged from a darkness beyond his wildest dreams, and, with one solid movement, she drives the dagger into his heart, grinning as she twists the blade and as he dies at her hand.

His blood runs down the dagger, along her fingers and arm to her elbow in ribbons of red. She kicks the corpse back, his skull cracking against the floor.

Then, to the last, she turns.

"You have seen your brother fall. You have seen your friend fall. Now you follow suit."

Her grip lunges for him. Slender fingers wrap around his neck and pull him from the ground. Where he was weak with exhaustion, she was strong with adrenaline and an untamed ancient power. With ease, he was at her command. His life lay coiled in the palm of her hand.

Waiting to die.

But he was still young. A teenager by Migardian standards and the shadow of his departed brother. Perhaps one day he would've been a captain too. The Aubade's had a habit of following one another's footsteps.

Her fire-lit eyes search his face as he braces himself for whatever deviance was about to be imposed. Their blue dyed black, staring straight into his soul as they crack in two and he is dropped to the floor once more.

She crouches down to his level and pulls his head to face her, nails digging into his tear-soaked cheek.

"You will always live in his shadow, alive or dead," She breathes, the tang of blood rampant on her tongue. "You will always live in the shadow of the choice you made on this day. You will be remembered as the traitor you chose to be."

When he attempts to pull his head away, she grips tighter, cracking his jaw as she pulls him back around.

A laugh rumbles in her throat. "Don't worry, Florian, you'll be seeing your brother again very soon. I send my best wishes," She says with a laugh so empty it echoes as she rams the knife into his chest.

When the blade stabs his heart, her eyes shoot open and she sits up with a start, shoulders heaving with breath and chest aching.

She lifts her hands from beneath the covers. In the gloom, she's not entirely convinced that they're not drenched in the blood of defeated enemies. The blood of hearts she used to adore. Blood spilled by her hand once again.

Leaving Steve in peaceful sleep, she climbs out of bed and slips into the bathroom. Almost frantically, she turns the tap on and lathers her hands in soap. Never before had she felt so unclean from crimes committed out of self-preservation, but no amount of soap could convince her that her hands were unstained by the crimson signature of death.

"Lusine, it's three in the morning, what are you doing?" Steve questions, rubbing his eyes as he leans against the doorframe still half-asleep.

"I—" Lusine glances from her stilled hands still held under the scalding water to him and then back to her hands again. "I don't know."

When he sees her wet cheeks and hands burning red from heat, he instantly wakes up. In an instant, he strides to her side, turns the tap off and pulls her into him, ignoring the woodenness of her movements. It was as if she was frozen in shock. An ice sculpture with the pristine curves replaced by jagged lines and turmoil.

"Come and sit down," Steve says, guiding her out of the bathroom with an arm around her shoulders.

Something was definitely wrong, if her scrubbed hands were anything to go by. Usually by now, she would've snapped out of it. Dragged herself back behind her walls and smiled at him from over its top. Blown him a kiss just to be extra convincing when he would simply ask if she was okay.

He leads her into the moonlit sitting room; almost afraid to leave her on the sofa alone. Deciding she would be okay, he wraps a blanket around her shoulders and dips into the kitchen to get her a glass of water, hoping it would bring some life back into her eyes and colour to her cheeks.

"Thank you," She rasps out when he passes her the water, but her hands shake as she takes it and lifts it to her mouth. The cool liquid runs down her throat, pooling in her stomach. She can feel the cold against the burning heat in her palms, not solely from the scrubbing alone.

"What happened?" Steve asks, taking a seat next to her. Strangely, he can feel the heat radiating off her even as she sits as still as a statue, as if she'd been locked in time.

"I killed him," She says quietly, hands trembling. "In my dream I killed them again and then I killed him." Lusine takes another small sip of water, praying the remedy would soothe the reimagination of events gone by that her dream world was determined to remind her of every single night.

"It was just a dream," Steve says, attempting to comfort her with an arm around her shoulders. She was rigid to the touch. Every bone and joint dug into his flesh when she cracks her neck around to face him, tears glistening in her eyes where there had only hours before been the beginnings of romance. "It's okay, Lusine, you're okay now."

She shakes her head, throat bobbing as she swallows back the wetness in her eyes.

"But it wasn't just a dream. The three men in my dream were there on the night my mother..." Lusine falters, tumbling over herself as the words catch in her throat. "They were there. I killed two of them. Florian is the only one who survived because he proved where his loyalties lie."

"You didn't have a choice. You did what you had to do to survive," He says, his faith in her unfailing.

It almost made her smile how naïve the man could be, even after everything he'd been through, after everything he'd heard of her past, even after the destruction he'd seek her bring upon enemies. He believed what he wanted to believe and maybe that would be his downfall. Maybe she would be his downfall. Maybe one day she would lose control and he'd be the next victim to fall at her feet, eyes rolled back, skin paled.

"I did have a choice. There's always a choice. My choice was no mercy for those who were prepared to murder me at any cost for the favour of a queen corrupted by grief." Her glassy eyes crack like a shock through ice after the swing of the pick. "My choice was to spare Florian," She says lowly, a shade of darkness rushing in and sending a shiver down his spine, even as she curls against him, heat absorbing into his skin. "He's just a kid, Steve. A kid with no family left. I want him to have a good life here."

"And he will, I promise," He says, meaning very word.

Lusine visibly flinches, her mouth twitching. Too many promises had been made to her by the man with the silver tongue for her to be so fickle as to beam at yet another.

This time she would not be fooled so easily by the temptations of hope in a promise forged solely by words.

"Do not make promises you're not certain you can keep, Steve." She stands from the sofa, pulling herself away from his touch and leaving his chest abnormally warm where she'd once curled against him. "We should get back to sleep. We've both got busy days tomorrow."

Steve exhales heavily as he stands, his height towering over her as she stares up at him. He reaches out to her, fingers curling into the ends of the blanket hung around her shoulder and pulls it tighter around her, not missing the way her eyes search him for lies, even now.

"You're going to be okay, Lusine, I know you will."

There was something about the utter belief in his voice that, as always, brought her back from stepping into the dark once more.

How easy it would be to make that step. To embrace all she'd ever been taught she was. A monster come home to bring hell upon all those who stepped into her warpath. A warpath of broken glass caked in blood and littered with bodies. That life would be simple to slip into once again. She could return home. Murder all those who opposed her. Become Queen and rule as an iron monarch, solitary until the end of time with no need for love. Love was only weakness in a place as hostile as Remulan.

But the light is where Steve stands and just seeing him there made her more and more determined to stay every single day.

He was her guiding light and she was compelled to follow.

-

-

The next morning, Steve awoke in bed alone, the space beside him cold where she had been soundly sleeping.

As soon as they'd gotten back into bed, Lusine had rolled over away from him, curled her knees to her chest and fallen straight back asleep. Breathing deeply until every so often air would catch in her throat and her face would crinkle into a frown and muttered words would slip from her lips, muffled by the pillow and covers pulled to her nose.

Whatever she was saying, Steve didn't need to understand to know that it was nothing good. Her dreams were not blissful, they were reminders of everything she'd ever endured. Nightmares born of tragic experiences stuck on repeat in her mind, a broken record.

Steve finds her sat cross-legged on the sofa, a mug of tea in one hand and a letter in her other, which was entirely consuming her attention. So much so that she doesn't even look up when he enters and freezes on the spot, realising what letter she's reading.

Without lifting her eyes from the paper, she reaches forward and puts the mug down to grip the letter with both hands. He watches her ravenously devouring the words that had gone unsent and can't find the words to break the silence.

She reaches the end and turns the paper over, expecting more. There is no more.

"Why didn't you tell me you'd written this?" She asks, both hands still clutching the paper tight as if it would fly from her hands or reveal itself to be a sick illusion and dissolve between her fingers.

"I wrote it before you came back. When you stopped sending your letters and I didn't know whether you were alive or dead and I just—I just had too much to say and no one to tell it to," He explains, morning voice low and eyes still fogged with sleep.

It was too early for a discussion of this calibre. This was a talk for the setting sun, the cold evenings wrapped under blankets and drinking wine, lapping up one another's company. This was not a talk for six in the morning.

"I'm glad you wrote it," Lusine replies, folding the letter in two.

"You are?"

"Yes," She says. "Are you glad I read it?"

"Yes," He says, deciding at last to ditch his awkward place behind the sofa and come and sit beside Lusine. "If I could've sent it to you, I would've."

Lusine folds the letter up small and shoves it into her pocket.

"I know." She reaches a hand out and pushes his bed hair into place affectionately, getting nowhere with the strands that were determined to rest the wrong way. "I just wish you'd say it out loud sometimes because I think," Lusine smiles wickedly as she lifts herself onto his lap, knees resting either side of him with her hands still pushed into his hair, a knot twisting itself into her stomach as he looks right into her eyes with admiration, "I've made it very clear how I feel about you."

Cold hands slip onto her thighs, thumbs running patterns that were driving her wild as he says, "Now you know how much I worried about you when you were gone. How much I came to care about you in such a short amount of time. How I'm terrified to fall in love with you too."

Her hands slip from his hair to cup the sides of his face, committing his features and his words to memory to take to the grave when the reaper finally came to bring her long life to a close.

Not being able to resist his touch any longer, Lusine connects their lips in one swift movement, their noses colliding as she hungrily kisses him, going beyond the slow and steady and moving into the fast and dangerous.

To her surprise and pleasure, he kept pace, even if he was a little less experienced. With every kiss, with every touch, he was growing more confident with her. Braver with his hands. Holding her a little tighter, no longer afraid he was going to shatter her between his fingers. Grinning cheekily against her mouth after a moan escapes her before she can grab it back and control herself.

Lusine pulls back, giving him a peck on his lips and barely letting him catch his breath before her mouth meets the sensitive spot beneath his ear, working her way down his neck, the breathy chuckles tickling his neck as she finds amusement in the way his hands clench around her as she finds the sweet spot.

She leaves a trail of kisses back up his neck and then whispers into his ear, "As much as I'd like to stay like this all day, we've got training to get to, Captain."

-

2845 words
2.12.18

welp

also, if anyone has any ideas for a faceclaim for Florian that would be super helpful. He's young so im thinking an actor around the age of 18-22ish? Thanks for any help!