The Emperor and the Witch: 2 of 2 Memories of Forgotten Days
Tap tap tap. Footfalls and a door pushing open and Caelum's cutting stare. She is not surprised.
Seven days, and that’s more than she could have hoped for. More than she deserves. Her nights have been sleepless, anyhow. She sleeps half in dreams and half in the wake, ears listening and eyes squinting into shadows.
He took his time – seven days - and that’s seven days of watching and waiting and sleeping so little that the weight of dreams bruises her eyes and slows her limbs, something that always seems to sing to him, whisper to him - come and touch.
“Why are you here?” she asks. She always must ask. She asked it that first night, when she truly didn’t know the answer, and now she must ask it forever after. Like an improper spell, a clockwork doll that winds and winds and can only say so many things when you speak to it. He expects it, so she asks it.
In her mind, behind the tick-tick-tick of her metal clockwork, she can imagine a time when she doesn’t care enough to indulge him. She can picture herself prone and disinterested and not afraid because she knows herself, and can see that one horrible day when she might dismiss what he thinks and expects and simply would rather he get on with it.
She is not so broken, yet.
“I had a thought this evening,” he begins to say, walking casually, slowly towards her. He will circle about the short length of her room, hoping, she supposes, that his calm will infect her for the moment, drugged and slow and unmoving. (Just for the moment, because he does like it when she squirms.)
This part she drowns out, his little explanation, his little ‘thought’ that he had this evening. She listens to the hum in her ears, the wind outside, and tries to ready her mind to be anywhere but the confines of her fragile, flesh body.
She does not listen, because it is always the same. This is Caelum’s tick-tick of clockwork. It took her some time before she realized that he rehearsed it, planned it. He did not, actually, have a thought on his way past her room. He did not oh so suddenly decide to turn her doorknob and pay a little visit. Perhaps he didn’t know that it would be tonight, but he knew the visit would be coming.
He had imagined this moment. Planned it. Relished the moment he might get to act upon it.
She expects his hand to caress down her cheek, and she doesn’t have to pretend to widen her eyes or shiver at his touch - it happens without her consent. She doesn’t need to glance up to see the smirk cutting across his jaw. She doesn’t need to open her eyes at all to see him edge onto the bed. The pressure against her shoulder is him guiding her to lie down.
One day, oh, one day she is going to scream. She is going to scream and bite him and run.
(She won’t. Screams are not private things – they are heard in all corners of the room, of the castle. And she can’t let the others know. Ever. Not if she wants to avoid a second night of this. She won’t ever do that, no.)
One day, oh.
With no scream to occupy her throat, it closes. She waits silently, fingers spread wide at her sides, ignoring Caelum in favor of feeling the texture of her blankets, the softness beside her.
Her body responds on its own. Even as she’s tracing the stitching on her bed, her skin prickles where he caresses it, her breasts tighten when he whispers to her - he chuckles when he can see this through her dress. But if she’s concentrating elsewhere, her body reacts for her, and she doesn’t have to live through this again and again.
Except, as his teeth graze her ear and he whispers something obscene, her mind feels trapped right where it ought to, and there is no escaping, never. She’s right here. She’s not leaving. Even in a dream, she is bound and tied to her body. Her fingers clench inwards – tight fists at her sides, and she takes her eyes from the ceiling to bravely meet his. (Well, she gazes between his eyes, along the bridge of his nose, but maybe he doesn’t know...)
“-and you have captured me, fully. Haven’t you, my heart?”
“Don’t have hearts,” she says. Watch, listen. Clockwork slowing, stopping, dying. No more wound up words, rehearsed and practiced.
It will be the last few words of the night. Soon, all other speech will be caught, will be tangled, will be chocked in her throat and stopped short. Sometimes by his mouth covering hers, catching sounds before they can become properly formed. Sometimes by hitched breath, coming so fast and ragged, her throat so raw and bare, there is no hope for anything but a whimper.
But not yet. Not yet. So Mika speaks on: “None of us have.”
“I like to think, maybe,” and he pauses, deliberately. His fingers move down her small chest, tapping against her bones that jut out as her spine curves up into his touch. (Treacherous flesh.)
Here she waits. What does he think? Sometimes he thinks his heart was stolen and caught in the wind. And with each sigh from her lips and flutter of her eyelids down, he gains a bit of it back. So he will make her breath pant here and now and always, and each bloody exhale is a personal triumph.
Sometimes he thinks their hearts have taken flight, the way lovers lose their own. Brilliant flashes of light, floating up and away from them. He calls her heart a bird, broken and scared, but he has found it and is nursing it back to health, precious. Does she see the cages on the wall? Does she hear its soft bird call – pleading? But where is his heart, then? See the care he has taken with her own? Where has she hidden away his own broken bird? Teeth and nails and cutting whispers against her skin as he searches her body for a torn seam. Searches for a catch in her flesh that he can tear wider, wider, open and see all that is inside her. Pull and twist and rearrange her insides, looking for his heart.
And then sometimes he thinks his heart is still in his own chest. Silent, frozen, incapable of beating. There are stories, he says, about man being brought to life. Stories of people sewn together with borrowed body parts, mismatched and stitches wide. Wires and electricity, and maybe if one shocks the nerve endings into life, the heart will beat, startled. No marring of his flesh though, no. No wires, no threaded stitch. But when he moves with her, it feels like his skin is on fire, he says. When he pushes into her, like electricity. And when he comes in her, why, did you hear a beat? Just for that moment, almost...? Let’s try again.
“Maybe,” he says, lips at her ear, “Maybe our hearts have taken flight.” Tonight then it is the bird, the cage, the torn seam he needs to find on her. She closes her eyes and sighs, stretching her legs and preparing.
“I didn’t expect this of you, I must admit. It’s not an unpleasant surprise.” He must remark on this, always. Sometimes it amuses her, that he marvels that she is not a blushing, terrified thing. He doesn’t remember when she was, of course. Sometimes he voices suspicions in the form of declarations: I know no one has touched you before now, or you belong just to me, and always will. And she can see often in his eyes that when this is over, he is going to stalk through the castle and look for faces turned in guilt and fear.
She is mine to touch, he will say. Mine to touch and bend and break.
He hisses, somehow gently, all of the things he would like to do to her untouched flesh. It horrified her the first half dozen times, and it does not horrify her now, but she can swallow his words and breathe carefully and force her hands into action instead of lying petrified.
She pushes with her hands, at his shoulders. Tracing down his arms, across his chest, she tangles her fingers with the zippered sides of his open jacket. His breath stutters in his chest, and he stops his own movements to look at her under hooded eyes. His eyebrow raises, questioning, but not before a flicker of surprise. He doesn’t expect her to be bold. He never does.
“Why?”
This is her question. Her simple question that somehow has a long and complicated answer, hidden in whispered words and fingers touching. She asks it every time he comes to her. The very first time, she asked it on every beat, on every thrust. Where some lovers cry yes yes yes , she just asks why why why. It echoes off the high ceilings of the room, slipping out of doors and window cracks. It’s a wonder no one ever hears.
For a few times, after that first, she didn’t say a thing. Staring stoically at the ceiling, as if she could memorize it, she just lay with her thoughts, her ragged breath, and the burn between her legs as he would move and move and continue to move in her, his lips casting crude spellwork into her throat.
But now... Now she always asks.
Why?
His answer is always different, never the same. The only thing that remains constant in his answer is this: she knows that it’s a lie.
She can read it hidden there, behind his eyes and his words and his body pushing against her own. But the words from his lips are never the truth. If she knew what it was, if she could find the proper answer, maybe she-
“Why, my heart?” he purrs, his fingers woven in her hair, tugging lightly to peel her attention away from over his shoulder, to meet his eyes. He’s startled, again, to see her meet his gaze so brazenly. She almost wants to smile, small. He ever so enjoyed those first times with her tears and her protests, but she’s - oh, don’t think it, yet it’s the truth – she’s become accustomed to him. She wouldn’t be able if he didn’t meet her the same each time – him always thinking that it was the first, the time to be gentle and shocking and finally giving in to his desires. If he ever got to visit her bed a second time, she thinks she might break.
“Why, it’s because of this,” he murmurs, spreading his palm along her side and hiking her dress until it’s past her navel. “It’s because of this,” and he slides them down her thigh until she shivers. “And this,” and oh – that part will never cease to bring pink to her cheeks and a hollowness to her stomach. She doesn’t understand her betraying body, and she doesn’t understand that she can feel like she is boiling alive with the anger thrumming through her veins and yet still – still – not be bone dry all over.
He brings his fingers to show her, tracing them along her mouth, wanting to catch her reaction here. She keeps her lips clenched tight, just staring at him. His eyebrows furrow, and she knows if she doesn’t give him a whimper soon, tonight will become worse than it need be.
“Wh-why?”
The catch in her breath is enough to satisfy him. He smirks, jagged, and his fingers slip back in between her legs. He moves them and it never fails to frustrate her that he doesn’t need a ‘second’ time to learn how to make her react, how to make this feel good. He knows right from the beginning.
He knows where to rub, where to push, when to slowly press a finger inside.
Not all whimpers are ones of pain or fright. Some are from pleasure, and they are by far the worst of all.
She can feel him, too. It never takes long, of course. If he’s decided to come to her, he’s halfway there already. A hard pressure against her thigh and he really has no patience, for all he’s planned this moment.
He removes his fingers, pushes them up along her sides until he reaches under her arms. His touch leaves a sticky trail along her skin. He lifts now, with his hands cupped, pulling her up to her knees. He slides himself into her old spot, leaning against the headboard, legs outstretched. His fingers reach to the zipper of his pants, and she is not watching.
He strokes himself a few times once he’s free, slow and watching her the whole time.
“Now you,” he says, reaching for her hand and guiding it over. She squeezes, hard, nails digging. He hisses and gently admonishes, loosening her fingers. He thinks she simply doesn’t know – how could she? It is a small pleasure, his discomfort, that she will be able to get away with again and again.
She’s stroking and rubbing, down at the base, up at the tip where it’s wet. But he quickly takes her hand away, only to give her whole arm a tug. She nearly tumbles across his lap, but he catches her and hastily rearranges her the way he wishes. So impatient.
Her legs are spread around his, knees resting against the outer side of his thighs. He’s clasped her nearly to him, chests together, though each is half-hazardly clothed. His own jacket is on but unzippered, and he only bothered to tug her dress up not off, so it slips down to her hips when he forgets to pull it back up.
He nudges her gently to sit, and she lowers herself off her knees to his lap. He sighs, dramatically, pulling her under the arms again.
“No, pet. Like this,” he says, and lowers her more precisely, more angled, as he finally guides himself wet and hard into her body. He hisses, a good sound this time, as she takes him all the way in.
She pulls at his hair, her voice in his ear. She has to make some noise, for all her surprising boldness, if she didn’t complain at the loss of her virginity, he really would storm through the castle trying to find out why. She’d like to claw at him, bite at him, do something worse than pull at his hair and elbow him in the ribs, but she can’t afford to leave a mark he might question in the morning.
This is always a reprieve, too. He gives her a moment to get used to him inside her, and even if it’s not the first time, it’s a few welcome moments to adjust to the stretching which is always uncomfortable.
Then his hands are at her hips, lifting her. “Shall I let you set the pace?” he asks, even as he pulls up, then releases, gravity tugging her all the way down his length again. “Or shall that be a treat for next time?”
“Why?” she asks, even as he pulls her up, lets her down, pulls her up, lets her down.
“Because treats are fun, precious.”
“Why?”
“Perhaps I simply find you too irresistible,” he smirks, up and down, up and down. He doesn’t even make a halfway lie tonight. He moves her faster, relinquishing none of the control though she imagines his arms have to be straining. His hips press upwards, and his breath is so ragged it almost has sound no to it.
Caelum is silent as he comes. He lets her fall to the bed, fingers again on the blanket stitching. He looks down at her, and he says something but she pretends not to listen. Pretends she is frightened and sick and nearly crying. It’s not a hard thing to pretend at all.
Between her legs aches. And the thought of him inside, touching, his voice in her ear... it always makes her stomach tighten and roll. The guilt that she liked this made it almost too much to bear and made her mind a haze.
He says something in way of parting, a caress across her face, and then he is gone.
Alone now, eyes at the ceiling once more, breathing short and fast and in a moment she will get the energy to clumsily bring her legs together, ignoring the wet there.
She is a child, stolen and wanted by no one. She is a girl, twisted and curled around his hands, his whispers, his false desires. She is a witch, with the power to rearrange thought and memory of one Emperor and those connected to him. Everyone connected to him.
Catch Caelum, now, before he has a chance to speak to anyone. Before he has a chance to leave any mark, besides the bruises on her skin. Watch the ceiling, but cast magic outwards. Out of the room, down the hallway, trailing carefully after his light footfalls.
Catch him, there. Smug, satisfied, warm in his victory and success. Her scent and voice are on his skin and his mind – he will not feel her slip inside. First dull the memory, like water dumped over charcoal drawing. Everything bleeds, blends – nothing is sharp or perfect anymore.
Now paint, black, covering everything of the evening. The way her hips tried not to help, her nails in his back, her eyes shut but aware as he came inside her. Darken it. Corner to corner, and everything becomes a splatter, becomes a mess, becomes a single shade.
Not all blank pages are white.
Chalk to black, draw a new memory.
He will be back. He always is.
Mika brings her legs together, turning on her side, small and close. She closes her eyes, does not dream, and begins counting days.
