"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
She has spent the last three days down here in her den, pacing and waiting. Sabbath has had enough children to know that when her appetite dissipates like this, it won’t be much longer. She can tell the sun has just begun to set by the orange hue of the light creeping down into her strange little nest. Then, as expected, her contractions begin. They aren’t so bad in the earliest hours of labor. Her pacing continues for a while longer before she decides to lie down in the bed of dry grasses and wilted flowers she’d made for herself.
Sabbath whimpers softly at the pain but she refuses to cry out and draw attention to herself. Instead, she grits her teeth and closes her eyes tight. Hours slip by and she judges the time by the hush of night outside the den. Finally, with one last push, her newborn son emerges into the world with soft cries. Her breaths are ragged but she lifts her head to observe him as he blinks his eyes open.
She always loves her children, but the depth of her adoration always surprises her when she first sees them. The colt is the same color as Leliana but with splashes of brilliant blue across his tiny body. And when he looks up at her, she is surprised that he does not have the typical green eyes like the rest of her brood. Instead, it is his father’s gaze staring back at her this time.
“You could at least look a little like me, you know,” she teases him gently as she kisses his small face. The boy leans into her touch and grins happily beneath her affections. “At least you’re not a kelpie.”
Her child sneezes suddenly, and a splash of water bursts from his back. Sabbath sighs as she begins to wonder if she spoke too soon. Was he some type of strange aquatic thing after all? The colt looks up at her in surprise as the water drifts back upward to form the approximate shape of two tiny wings.
“I’m as shocked as you are, honestly,” she tells him with a shrug as she begins to stand. “Come on, Crowns. You’ve got to learn to walk so we can show your grandmother your strange little wings.”
may my enemies live long so they can see me prosper.
so make your siren's call and sing all you want, I will not hear what you have to say --
He had not disappeared after that night quite in the way that he had promised. He had known, even as he spoke the words, that he had no intention of dropping entirely out of her life. It had been guilt that had driven him away after their night together; guilt that he had used his powers to persuade her into being with him. It struck him as something his father would have done, and Varick had no interest in being like Ivar. He had left, not because he had wanted to, but because it had seemed right. Maybe he wasn’t quite as good as he liked to think himself, and he knew the girl with the sharp teeth and even sharper tongue deserved better.
But when he had come back and seen the swell of her barrel, he knew, then, that he could not leave again.
He kept his distance, though, despite how much he did not want to. He watched her carefully, but he did not bother her. Not even once he could see that her time was growing nearer, and he could feel his own nerves tying themselves into knots.
She disappears, and though he knows he absolutely shouldn’t, he looks for her.
It is purely by chance that he stumbles across her den, and he is thankful that he had been stepping quietly and carefully and he hopefully does not startle them.
Them.
His eyes are immediately drawn to the colt curled on the ground, still damp and new, and he can feel his chest begin to clench. The colt has his blue – his blue coat, his blue eyes. But he is also his mother, too, and Varick, having never been a father before and never witnessing this beautiful melding of two individuals on this level, is immediately taken.
“Sabbath,” her name feels stuck in his throat, finding her sage-green eyes but not daring to step any closer to the pair. His jaw clenches, looking again at the colt, and the surge of pride again rises in his chest and floods across his face and into his eyes. “May I come closer? Please,” he asks her, his voice unusually quiet and soft, his head lowering to better look at their son. “I just want to meet him.”
She had prayed that the first few flutters of Crowns moving in her belly had been some illness come to kill her. How strange, then, that she bristled so fiercely when Eight commanded her to drink his blood and purge her body of the child. But now that he is here, she finds herself infatuated with him. He grins so eagerly up at her as he stumbles up onto his small legs and wobbles over to her. His strange wings flex and fold sluggishly while he learns the feel of them across his back.
“I love you,” she whispers gently against his temple as he comes to curl against her side. But he isn’t able to bask in her warmth for very long. The sound of someone approaching steals her attention from the tiny boy. Already, her fangs are bared and she meets the figure at the entrance of her den. Varick. He speaks her name and she answers only with a hiss. Sabbath turns her body to guard her newborn son carefully.
“I’ve heard kelpies eat their young if they don’t resemble them enough,” she purrs as she watches him closely.
But Crowns is already toddling over and ducking around behind his mother. The fluff of his tail wags excitedly as he hurries closer to Varick, bumping his nose against the frost coated scales of his chest. Sabbath can feel her body tense and her instincts command her to snatch him close to her, but she fears making sudden movements. Few things in this world terrify Sabbath, yet her eyes are wide with panic as she finds Varick’s gaze.
“Don’t.. Don’t hurt him,” she says in a wavering tone that flickers between a plea and a command. Their child seems unbothered by her nervous energy as he offers up his best smile.
may my enemies live long so they can see me prosper.
09-12-2020, 11:58 PM (This post was last modified: 09-13-2020, 12:18 AM by Varick.)
so make your siren's call and sing all you want, I will not hear what you have to say --
He remembers the first time he had met Ivar. He had smiled, kind of, and even at that young of an age, Varick had known there was no kindness there. He was not smiling because he had another son; he was smiling because Varick was a kelpie – the only acceptable offspring, according to his sire. Instead of feeling proud that he had hit the genetic lottery, all this had done was cause Varick to resent his kelpie form.
He did not want to be like them.
He did not want to be ruthless and cold, selfish and cruel.
It’s why when Sabbath suggests that he would hurt their son, there is a flicker of something dark that passes over his eyes, his jaw clenching as he quells the brief anger that tightens his chest. Not anger directed at her, because he had not given her any reason to think he was different than the rest. It was a blameless anger, one that had nothing to grip to and no roots to speak of. And so it passes, and he chases it further away with another crooked, half-hearted smile. “Sounds like you’ve met my father,” he says, not realizing that she has, actually, met Ivar.
His blue eyes move from her as Crowns begins to make his way towards him, tipsy and uneasy on his too-long, brand new legs. There is something else in his chest this time, an all-consuming pride and a whirlwind of emotions when his son touches his nose to the frosted scales on his chest. He lowers his head, pressing his muzzle into his dark mane, and breathes him in.
He looks up when Sabbath speaks, surprised at the panic that trembles in her voice. He frowns, ignoring the pang of hurt when she implies that he would actually harm his own son. “I’m not going to hurt him,” he says quietly, his eyes searching her face in earnest from the distance that he keeps between them. “I promise,” he adds, again looking down and running his nose against the boy’s neck. “What did you name him?”
Sabbath had never permitted Dacre to meet his father so long as she watched over him. He was perfect in every way, but she was selfish in her love for him. Now he lingers beneath the waves and she wonders if he has found the island where the marine herd gathers. She wonders if Varick goes there when he isn’t pestering her here in the humid jungle. Does he lead an entirely separate life there?
She watches the tide of anger rise and fall from his face when she speaks. She can recall only glimpses of Ivar, much as she could with Varick, before he returned to admire the swell of her stomach. But he is unlike his ancestors in that he has returned to see his child, she supposes. It opens the possibility that he may be different in other ways as well.
Her muscles tense as she watches him lower his head to their child’s slender neck. Crowns seems delighted at the affections, curling close despite the cold chill of his sire’s skin. Sabbath watches bits of frost flake off into the fluff of his newborn mane before she slowly steps closer. He makes her a promise and some fragile piece of her wants to believe him. That last sliver of her kindness breathes a calm into her soul as she reaches to kiss at Crowns’ temple.
“Break your promise to me and I will find a way to destroy you,” she warns him. The navy blue colt lifts his chin to gaze up at them for a short while.
“Crowns,” he answers, recalling the way she whispered it to him only moments ago. Sabbath peers down at him and nods with a gentle smile on her face. “Crowns, the little king of my heart,” she explains with another kiss to his small face.
may my enemies live long so they can see me prosper.
so make your siren's call and sing all you want, I will not hear what you have to say --
He wonders if things would have been different between them had he not resorted to using his hypnotism. He wonders if he would have managed to gain just a single ounce of her trust before he had tried touching her if she would be looking at him differently – without that same cold glint in her eye like when he had first arrived. The one that suggested she would still rather see him dead than standing here running a cool muzzle across the warm back of their son.
He had tried so hard to outrun everything that he was, everything that his genetics told him he was meant to be, and somehow it had still caught him
He wants to make her believe him when he says he won’t use his powers again. He wants to start over and never use them at all, but then Crowns is nuzzling against his chest again and he is torn because his own stupid mistake had resulted in something so beautiful and perfect he cannot bring himself to regret it. “I believe you,” he says in response to her threat, and he wants to smile because she’s beautiful when she’s fierce and sharp but he is afraid she won’t take him seriously if he does.
“Crowns,” he repeats, trying to ignore the way something again stirs inside of his chest when Sabbath steps closer. “I like it,” he says with another gentle touch to the boy’s neck, and when he looks up his eyes are locked with the cutting green of hers. His expression grows solemn, and his jaw clenches tightly for a moment as he tries to word what he wants to say. “I’ll give you space, Sabbath,” he begins slowly, watching her carefully, “I won’t bother you at all, but, please don’t keep him from me. I want to be a part of his life. I don’t want him to ever have to wonder where his dad is.”
09-16-2020, 08:44 PM (This post was last modified: 09-16-2020, 08:44 PM by Sabbath.)
Sabbath has always been carved from rage, unyielding in her temper and set in her callous ways. But she recognizes that, had Varick not used his spells on her, she would not have Crowns. She would not be speaking to him now. That day would have ended with her retreating back into the jungle to sleep alone in her den. While she will perhaps never forgive him for using her, she is weakened by her love for their baby. He is bright-eyed and eager to face the world. There is hardly a trace of her darkness in him.
The boy perks his ears when his father says his name and he grins when Varick gives his approval. Sabbath can’t fight the small laugh that builds in her throat. He will be trouble, she can tell, but he will be worth it. “Lay down and rest, Crowns. There will be time to explore the world when you get up, I promise,” she coos to him as she herds him back into the depths of her den. He fusses and whines, but he eventually surrenders and curls up in the bed of grasses and leaves she’d made him. Once she turns her back, one bright blue eye opens and remains trained on his father with an ear turned toward them.
Sabbath considers Varick for a while as he speaks. There is no trace of compassion or kindness to her face while she weighs his words carefully. If he bothered her enough, she could ask her mother to rip his scales from him so she could finally devour him. The thought crossed her mind during the worst of her labor pains. But Vulgaris had failed her as a father before and she knows just what brand of misery that brings.
“The only things I love in this world are my children, Varick. I let them make their own choices and I pick up the pieces when things fall apart,” she says as she steps closer, until her lips are nearly touching his. “He already thinks the world of you. Do not break his heart.”
She traces her fangs along his jaw, up to his ear.
“If you can do that, then you can bother me.”
may my enemies live long so they can see me prosper.
so make your siren's call and sing all you want, I will not hear what you have to say --
He presses a final touch to Crowns’ temple when his mother calls him away, watching with a faint smile as the boy reluctantly settles down to sleep. He can hardly remember being that small, but he does remember how desperately he had wanted to see the world, and how Chryseis had been reluctant to let him leave. His mother had been protective, though not quite in the same ferocious way as Sabbath. Varick’s mother had soft, sweet brown eyes that swam with ghosts of worry that she thought he could not see, and more than once he had caught her staring at him like he might hold with him the answers to a secret she didn’t know she was looking for.
Varick’s blue eyes look again to Sabbath when she addresses him, tracing the lines of her face and mouth as she speaks. He wonders if she has any idea how lovely he finds her; wonders if she would even care if he told her. He suspects she would spit venom in his eye if he said it out loud, and decides he will try telling her later.
She is close enough now that he can feel her breath when she speaks, so warm against the perpetual frost of his scales. “I know I have not given you a reason to trust me,” he tells her, his voice low, ignoring the fire that floods his veins when she touches him. Resisting the urge, at first, to touch her back. “But you have my word that I would never do anything to hurt Crowns,” and then he tilts his head just enough to run his mouth against her neck, aware of the way she might lash out but murmuring anyway, “I wouldn’t hurt you either, Sabbath.” He withdraws from her slightly, for once that crooked, boyish smile completely absent from his face when he tells her, “You’ll see that, eventually.”
Sabbath remembers being small - the snow, the sad look in Leliana’s eyes, and her father begging them to come home. She remembers being afraid and lost. But the memory of her mother weeping in a dungeon is sharp enough to cut her open still. Her mother suffered at the hands of those she loved most, including Sabbath. Now the image haunts her and she torments herself with the weight of it.
Even now, as Varick swears he won’t hurt their son, she doesn’t believe him. Didn’t she love Leliana when she abandoned her? Did Vulgaris cherish her when he locked her away? What had their weeping hearts done for her in her hour of need other than punish her? Sabbath knows that a lie rarely begins as a lie - it is born a truth and then it decays into heartbreak. She has watched honest men betray their own words to put her faith in him now.
She recoils sharply at his touch and the warmth it brings. Sabbath has trained herself to hate that sort of kindness no matter how good it feels. (Her mind toys with the idea of creeping back, of letting him embrace her just once, but she drives a knife through the thought without hesitation.)
“Everyone hurts me eventually, Varick,” she explains as she retreats further from him to keep from reaching out and caressing him once more. “So don’t apologize once you inevitably do. Just tell me I was right. I much prefer to hear those words.”
And then she lowers herself to curl around Crowns, resting her chin on his small ribs to feel the steady rhythm of his heart.
may my enemies live long so they can see me prosper.
