Chapter 23
Previously: Obsidian: Ash and Moonbeams – Chapter 22
That question just reminds her of the Christmas tree, of hiding behind it to open John’s gift, and that has her tilt her head the other way. John didn’t want others to see he made her a gift. No, not the gift, the fact that he made her a plushie. And now she’s thinking about the conversation they had last night.
“Calidear, is it unmanly to make toys? Would somebody posture to hide that he can do that?”
She knows it’s totally not what they were talking about, but maybe it’s him ruffling her hair, like Daddy always does, like John sometimes does. And it’s not as if she can turn into a tree, she thinks, so not much help they can get that direction of the conversation.
She might just as well try to be better for John… If they don’t find her soon, it will be her last chance. No, bad, she can’t think like that!
~
Caliban pauses in his next bite because… where did that come from? But, if that’s what she wants to know, sure.
“Hm,” he says, takes a moment while chewing while he thinks about it. “Can’t tell you from personal experience, because unless it’s sex toys, those aren’t a thing in Asgard.” He remembers how Midgard had whole shops for toys, to go along with their absolute hordes of children. “I assume you don’t mean that sort? Then, yeah, in a Midgardian context, I’d expect so.”
~
“Oh.” She knows she should keep eating, she knows that even with the clean plates, there might be ash on her food, just, she’s hungry but she kind of lost her appetite with the worry and with having overlooked it. Also, she hates that she can’t go to her pile of plushies and dig the re’em out to hug it, and hug John while holding it. She told him that he is the man she feels safest with, needs the most, in thanks, but she didn’t tell him that him making her a plushie is very… fatherly. She thinks he would have liked that. Maybe it would have helped?
“I’m so stupid with these things. John made me a plushie and didn’t want anybody to see he did. I didn’t understand why, I just hid behind the Christmas tree to unwrap it. He made it because I love plushies. My papa always brought me plushies. And I didn’t tell John that it never crossed my mind that he might be uncomfortable because… well, because he was forced to learn how to sew.”
~
Caliban narrows his eyes a little – is she getting more emotional?
He flicks the side of her head. “How’re you supposed to have said anything if you didn’t get it? Tell him next time you see him, then.”
~
All she wants to do is lean into that loving gesture, but… she sniffles. “Quincy flicks me, too, when I say something silly.”
But what if she doesn’t have a next time she’s seeing John? Or Quincy. And she doesn’t want to think like that, it makes her… scared. So she just gets back to her food, she has to keep her strength up.
She has to hold out as long as she can.
As long as it will take.
~
Caliban looks at that sniffle and the forced way she seems to be focussing on her food, and decides: “Hey puppy, you want to come over here?” He waves at his lap, because she can eat there just as well, and maybe it’ll help her feel better.
~
“Always.” That’s the mere truth, of course she wants to curl up on him.
Honestly, all she wants is curl up there and fall asleep so she can run extra hard when she gets back up.
But she can’t.
Still, she’ll feel better anyway. Putting her food back down, she doesn’t bother getting up, just leans forward, turns wolf when her hands hit the ground and waddles over to turn into a ball on his lap. He’s so nice and big, she can at least feel safe on him, feeling so much of him, even if she still feels jittery. She’s not sure there’s anything she can do about that.
He pats her head, ruffles her ears. “There. Sorry, I don’t have any ideas on how to fix this sleep problem, yet. But try and get some rest anyway, huh? Can’t hurt, and maybe it’ll help.”
She wants to. And now he asked her to, she has to be good for him and at least try. And her appetite is shot anyway. No, turning rat and digging herself deeper into his lap until the world is just warm darkness that smells of him is really… really very nice and while it’s not sleep, it’s peaceful. It helps her push the bad thoughts away.
How couldn’t it? It’s hard to worry when her brain is full of him, intermixing, just a little bit.
~
Caliban rests a hand on top where he now has a rat squished in under his balls and along his thigh, feeling oddly… protective.
Like he wants to make her problems go away.
Unfortunately, he has no idea how to go about that. A magical requirement isn’t something he can bite or punch, and he is, as stated before, not a mage.
If it’s soil from her home on Midgard she needs… Well, they’re shit out of luck, aren’t they? That’s half a world tree away, and if they could travel there, they’d already be on their way.
He wonders idly if unconsciousness counts. He could knock her out, no problem. But that’d put her out because of brain damage of more or less severity, so he’s not sure whether that’d contribute anything positive to the situation.
He stays sitting for a long while even after he finishes eating, turning the problem over in his head, with no result, while somewhere above the clouds, the sun rises and turns the gloom more grey than red.
Eventually, though, he has to nudge her with a sigh. “Hey puppy, I’ve got to go piss.”
~
Does she care? Well, of course she cares about his need, but then, she’s been clingy before. Normally she’s in a pyjama pocket with John, but Caliban doesn’t have one. Still, same principle. Climbing up to his shoulder, she curls her tail around his neck and just sticks her head under his hair, tries to keep fake dozing.
~
Well, if she doesn’t mind, he doesn’t, either. The Midgardians he remembers were mostly ridiculously prissy about bodily functions, so he wasn’t sure whether she’d be puppy or lapdog about this. He’s happy to see it’s puppy.
So he heads down and around the mountain side a bit to his designated toilet spot. There’s some of that scrubby grass growing there now, even though he’s only been at this camp for a few days. Muspellheim plants are quick to take advantage of available moisture, clearly.
It takes him a few long moments to take care of business, because he’s pissing like a horse. That extra water he drank, clearly.
Well, the plants ought to appreciate it.
Back at camp, he uses a few splashes of the water mixed with the cleaning sand to actually wash his hands, at least a little, and then goes find his clothes to get dressed for whatever the day brings.
Darcy is a snoozing lump on his shoulder the entire time, and he finds himself resting his hand back over her when he doesn’t need it for something else.
~
His touch is so nice, so very nice, she wishes she could stay here but… it’s not sleep. She knows she’s not really getting better, it’s an illusion. There was one thing they said might help, and if she’s jittery, she might just as well be jittery with positive things. Might just as well enjoy what time she has. That’s what she has learned back in her room, isn’t it?
Papa left her there. She didn’t even know in how much danger he really was. And still she always feared it would be the last time she saw him every time he closed the door behind him. Carpe diem, she’s read somewhere.
If ever she had a sense of memento mori, it’s now. In the human sense, she means. Can vampires die, she wonders? Die of not having soil to sleep in, she means?
Maybe she’ll know soon enough.
She doesn’t want to.
So she makes her decision right there: She’ll live as hard as she can. For as long as she can.
In honour of having done that for Papa. In defiance of the fear that is so much not like her.
No, she doesn’t want to stay curled up and let the time just tick away.
It’s one long jump down from his shoulder, and turning, back to her human mask, only so she can talk, she declares with a stomp: “Enough! We said we’ll have a date. We said we are doing something Helheim magic. You said something death magic. That’s the only death I want to think about! Let’s go! Let’s live. Together. Please.”
~
Well. That’s more like her- or at least more like what he’s seen of her yesterday.
“Alright, puppy.” Yeah, she’s right- the future’ll have to take care of itself, seeing as he’s not come up with anything better to do so far. So he grins at her. “Let’s have us a hunting date.”
~
Good, that’s something for her to focus on. A date. A nice date! Like she would have with John. For those… Quincy would braid her hair up, would berate her already to make sure not to bring any kind of creepy-crawly in, to check her clothes several times over.
She doesn’t have her clothes on and she doesn’t think she’ll start now. What for? Yes, she’s supposed to dress nice for a date, but that’s for her Quincy dates, he would dress her.
She doesn’t have anything nice to wear anyway. But her hair…
Pulling the burnt part to the front again, and the curls trying to break free all along the long braid that was the best she managed on her own with the fae, she gives it a long look.
Maybe…?
“Calidear, do you know how to braid hair up? Is that something I can ask you?”
~
It’s that, of all things, that somehow brings it all back. Heimdall, the fucking hypocritical, honourless coward and the lovely public baths of Asgard and the swirl of the ley lines.
It’s that, somehow, that brings back the hot snarl of anger.
He misses his fucking hair clips.
You’d think it’s his knife he’d miss, and yeah, he does, he’s literally half-dressed here (ambushing a guy when he’s undressing for a fucking bath!), but… he also misses his hair clips.
He takes a deep breath, and pulls his thoughts back to the present.
“Yeah, puppy, I can do that,” he tells her, hears his voice come out gruff. “Hand me that comb of yours, huh?”
~
Her drac howls, it can smell and feel the anger, the anguish. It has been sticking to the ground only with sheer stubbornness, hanging on with its claws. But there it is, too much, all too much.
Somebody it cares for hurting.
Darcy knows what just happened, knows it even as the tears burst thick and heavy from her eyes and she throws her arms wide and runs at Caliban. Wants to hold him, wants to love it better, but also feels so very, terribly lost.
Blood bond. Broken. It’s broken.
She’s broken. Her drac, her poor drac.
And there’s nothing she can do. Quincy isn’t here. She’s lost lost lost.
And Caliban is hurting, and she’s probably not strong enough, and she didn’t want to live in a gothic fairy tale anymore, but, of course, she can’t escape. Can’t. Can’t. Can’t.
Lost.
Floating. Drifting. Alone.
No! She’s not alone! She clings desperately to him.
Claws digging in. Deeper. Don’t float away. Can’t float away. Need to hold on. Hold tight.
~
“Hey there, puppy, like that I can’t,” he points out, even as he closes his hands around her back and holds her tight.
What just happened? That seems like an extreme reaction to asking for a comb?
That’s her claws actually piercing his skin (and his shirt), and it’s not like he minds, but what brought that on?
~
“Bloodbond. Broken. Smell pain. Your pain. Drac break. Off ground. Floating. Holding on. Not want to float away. Want to love better. But… lost. Lost in here.”
Night, she hopes he understands the words that feel like gravel between her teeth as she presses them out. She doesn’t know if any of what she says makes sense. It’s so hard to think. So hard.
And she knows she’s being bad. So bad. She needs to be strong. She said she’d live. But… her drac is screaming and howling and not sure what life is good for. There is no life alone.
And on that, she agrees.
“No life alone. Lost in here. Alone. Can’t. Can’t. Can’t.”
She can tell the way her words only become more distorted with the way her drac is trying to claw to the surface. Claw itself tight into Caliban.
“Hold on. On. Ooon. Oooooooh.”
~
Alright, more magical side-effects or complications or whatever.
Caliban wraps his arms more fully around her, crushes her tightly to him, just on the edge of breaking bones (he hopes – he’s not hearing any bone breaking sounds, anyway).
“Here, puppy. You’re not alone. Okay? What do you need?”
~
Need?
Not being alone.
Her drac having a safe bridge to stand on.
Paws guided by love. By love so deep she can feel it in her heart. In her blood.
Quincy isn’t here.
What would he tell her?
She’s trying so desperately to think it through, but all she can remember is John’s voice telling Quincy to get a move on with blood bonding her.
John. John who smells like Caliban. Caliban who smells like John.
Love.
Not right love.
But love.
What does she need?
Love.
“Laawooph.”
Her mouth doesn’t want to behave. Her drac too close. Still screaming. It’s scared. So scared.
“Lawf. Lowoo.”
It doesn’t want to come out and what would it help?
Wait. Can she show him?
With how tight he holds her, it’s hard, but she turns her head and bites him.
Lost lost lost. Scared. Alone.
No!
Not that one.
Love, that’s what she wants to show him. Love so deep it’s in your blood. The enthrallment. She can show him the memory of the way she was sure about Radu. Close, so very close. The way she was hoping for with Quincy. Yes, that. That’s what she needs.
~
Fuck, that’s a lot of very chaotic emotion, but okay, yeah, he thinks he gets it.
Connection. She needs connection, a proper one.
And he wouldn’t have thought he’d be for that, but… he gets it.
But also, she talked about the blood bond, and that was the whole marriage discussion, and she said she didn’t want that again by accident.
And he’s pretty sure that’s what these emotions are about, because when she went full puppy earlier, she was also all over wanting at his blood.
So… he’s not sure what to do here.
But, wait. Didn’t she confirm that this is a two-way share thing, if you want it to be?
He takes a deep breath, and… tries to share.
How he wants to help, to fix this, but also his concern, because she was very clear on the whole blood bond thing. Which… isn’t so easy to put into emotions.
~
A trickle, a tiny trickle of him, in her. Her drac’s screaming stutters, rushes in so hard that she feels like somebody slammed her body against a wall. It’s so intense.
It’s licking and lapping at the bit of direction. It can see Caliban like this. A little bit. Just a little bit, but it’s better than that sense of floating isolated from the world.
Darcy fights to understand what he is telling her.
Why is this so much harder than last time? She was crying and disoriented when her blood chain with Gregory broke, but not like this.
Chain. It was a chain. Just a physical reaction.
This is Quincy. This is Radu. This is love.
It’s not disorientation, it is isolation. And that is so much worse.
Caliban feels warm and gentle in his emotions. He’s being sweet with her. So sweet.
But… sweet like Quincy was before the hunters.
Concern. Wanting to help. Yes. She knows these.
It’s not love.
If she wasn’t already crying, she would. But that’s silly. Would be silly if she didn’t feel so terribly silly anyway.
A day and a night.
But then… It was enough for Radu.
Love can be a raging river. John told her so many times.
Time.
Time doesn’t make any sense.
In isolation a second is an eternity.
She wants to love him so badly, would prefer the pain of that over this sense of being alone. But of course, how could there be love?
She needs it to heal the broken bloodbond, but she can’t have it.
But he’s sweet, so she sends him back her wish to be good for him, her comfort with him, the way he makes her feel safe even while she’s scared and tortured in the floating nothing that is her heart with only her in it. She trusts him. He’s safe. Safe. Sweet. He’ll defend her even while she’s fighting an enemy she can’t bite.
~
Okay, he thinks he managed something there, and… there’s an emotion she sends back that tugs at his gut in a completely new way.
A very satisfying way.
Not like sex, or sated hunger, and still kind of similar. The way she’s feeling how she can… curl up against him?
He has no idea what’s happening, but he likes it.
And he decides that if he likes it, he should go with it and have it.
And to share it with her.
Maybe it’ll make her feel better, too. Because… she’s being good for him with that, now isn’t she?
~
The trickle turns wider, her drac on the track now with the ferocity of a bloodhound, and that mental image makes Darcy, through it all, chuckle. Of course she is a bloodhound.
If there was love… Yes, she would run after his blood right now. But no, never again a chain, no matter how safe she feels with him.
He likes what she’s feeling for him. She’s being good for him by sharing. That means so much to her. He likes her sharing, didn’t want her to stop. And he feels so… pleased with himself? She thinks that’s what that is. And why wouldn’t he? He’s being so very good for her.
She has to be better for him. She wanted to before. She decided to live. Live hard.
Her drac, her beloved drac, is just… melancholic. Oh, oh, like Daddy sometimes! Papa had notes on that, too. That was extra naughty of her to read. But… Papa cares it better. She will care it better for her drac. More… she’ll trust Caliban to care it better.
It has to get better eventually. She just has to get through it. She has to. She wants to.
‘Thank you.’
That one is easy to feel. And she’s still crying, she knows that doesn’t stop when her drac is feeling like that.
But she still wants to go on that date. Yes, it’s something she can do. For him. For her drac. Even for her swarm, to maybe stay alive longer.
She doesn’t want to, but she should let go of the bite. His blood is too tempting.
“Thank you.”
Good, her mouth is behaving. She’s just sobbing. That’s okay. That’s just part of what being broken feels like.
“I felt your anger and pain. Want to love it better. Please?”
~
“My pleasure,” he tells her, because it was.
How strange. If someone had told him two days ago he’d enjoy having a distressed puppy (of any species) clinging to him and needing, of all things, comfort from him, he would’ve laughed.
That’s not what he does. That’s weak, and soft, and it should make him aggressive.
But it doesn’t, for some reason.
Probably because it’s her. A puppy who is tough enough that showing herself weak isn’t a threat to her.
Huh. That’s a new way of looking at it.
He’ll have to give that some more thought.
For now… “I’d say you’re doing a good job of that already, puppy.”
Because, yeah, fuck Heimdall and Asgard and whatever shit of theirs got him stuck here- he has a puppy and a killing date to go on with her.
~
“I like being your puppy.”
Puppies help. She knows that. She remembers her own puppies milling around her after the demon tried to kill her. They saved her. They saved her with being close to her, just loving her.
She can do that. She will do that. Tears and floating drac and all. They were trying to go out for a date. Her hair. That’s what got them there.
“Do you like my hair?”
~
“I do like your hair,” he agrees, tilts his head. “It’s very tame, though. In cut and styling, I mean. Or has Midgardian fashion changed? Pretty simple long hair seemed to be the norm for women when I was there, but that doesn’t seem very like you?”
~
“Cut?” With a sniff, she tries to manage to get her drac to let her move more. It’s alright, alright, they won’t float away if they get their claws out of him. Hush, hush, she’s trying to sing to it on the inside, but it’s hard. No, she can’t move, so she keeps speaking.
“My hair’s my virtue.” That makes her wrinkle her nose. “It doesn’t get cut. The curls, I don’t even have to put them in, that’s just how my hair is. I braided it best I could on my own with the fae. Quincy,” she hiccups a sob but keeps going, “likes putting all kinds of fancy things in it. John just brushes it. He calls me wolf-girl and always laughs that things get stuck in it non-stop. We try to keep it out of the way when we have our hunting dates. Once, Quincy made me look like a boy. Hid it all up under a hat. Short. Out of the way.”
It’s a bit of a struggle, but she manages to turn her head towards the outside world. “My hair is bad here for you, isn’t it?”
~
First of all, he has to snort.
“Puppy, you don’t care about virtue. That’s one of those human social concepts you don’t get.”
He picks up the singed strand, rubs the tips between his fingers.
“It’s not bad as such. I like braiding, there’s a lot here to braid. But we have one single comb and not a single bit of hair oil or anything to take care of it, so it probably won’t stay this nice and shiny, even if it doesn’t get into any more fire-related accidents. And it just doesn’t seem very… you? The curls, yes, those are wild, but the rest of it is just so… Midgard tame. So courtier lapdog instead of wolf puppy.”
~