bakerstreet | Clip your wings

Entry tags:

[meme] shipping

Clip your wings

THE CAGED BIRD
shipping meme

From the moment you first set eyes on them, you've been drawn - but this is no meet-cute. Thy are beautiful, interesting...and so, so sad or angry, like a bird with clipped wings in a cage. They're a prisoner: mentally, physically, or both. Again, caged. You? You could be anyone, from an innocent bystander who happened to catch a glance in a faraway window, just a cog in the machine that keeps them trapped, to a fellow entombed creature. Even if you've never felt a thing like "compassion" before (or thought yourself incapable), you are sympathetic towards them now and your feelings only begin to grow, a fixation forming. At a certain point, you realize that you have but one option. You have to free them by any means necessary. You want to see them safe and content, more than anything in this world.

...even if they're free and don't want to be with you, that's enough. Right?

HOW TO PLAY

Comment with your character, preferences, role, and any other information to make you more taggable.
Reply to others.
RNG if desired.

WHO

Caged: You're the victim here, kept locked away.
Passerby: Here you are, minding your own business, when - who's that? Why are they there?
Rescuer: Whether you're a knight in shining armor type or someone simply paid or commanded to do this job, you never thought you'd fall for the one you had to rescue.
Conflict of Interest: You're a guard, but you can't very well do your duty if you want the person you're guarding let go.
Unknowing Villain: You had no idea your allies were keeping someone and you don't agree with their methods.
Enemies: They did wrong by you in the past; even they don't deserve this, though.
Should Be Reviled: Your people and theirs have never gotten along. You should hate them, yet you don't. You want to save them.
Who's the Monster?: They're being locked away because they're a monster. No one could be further from a beast in your eyes, however.
Never Felt Before: Usually, you're stone cold, but their plight has gotten under your skin.
In this Together: Both of you are prisoners, so you can't easily save them, can you?
Not All Bad: They're been told that they're being protected. You want to show them the outside world isn't so bad.
The Better Devil: To be honest, you're not much better than their captor. Still, you're something new.

HOW

Plot and Plan: You know busting them out won't be easy, so you'll put your mind to it.
Sneak: It's an old-fashion escape with all the subtleties and espionage to get out undetected.
Fight Anyone: Maybe you're more brawn than brains, or maybe you're just in a tight spot.
Bargain: Their freedom for yours. Seems like a fair trade.
Guilt: You can't really free them, can you? This fact tears you up inside.
Give You Hope: You might not be able to get them out of here now, but you'll keep them looking towards the future.
Keep You Happy: You'd do anything to see them smile again.
Be Healthy: They're being mistreated or ill-fed. You can at least try to remedy that.
Saved Themselves: They only needed an extra push. At the end, they pulled themself out of the pit.
Selfish: No denying it, you freed them for selfish reasons.
Selfless: What you want doesn't matter. Their safety and peace are paramount.
Sacrifice: If need be, you'll put your life on the line.
Used You: They didn't really love you. But they did know you'd be useful.
Failure: Your attempt failed and now both of you are looking death in the eyes.
I'll Steal You: They didn't want to leave their "home." You stole them away.
Indebted Friends: So they weren't romantically attracted to you. They, however, did platonically bond with you.
Finally "Together": You've wanted to touch them, hold them, kiss them, and be with them in every way possible, even if it's only for a moment. The smut option.
Happy Endings: You're both safe, far from danger, and together.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ooc: Open to discussion.]

[ A whole lot of these could work in different ways with Astrid! She's arguably trapped in her role as a Volstrucker, especially pre-canon. She could be a political prisoner somewhere after an assassination gone wrong. Or she could just as easily be the person holding the keys, or guarding a captive. ]

(ooc | Information, permissions, and warnings can be found here.

Open to canon, crosscanon, crossmedium, etc. OTA with genders, 16+ for shipping.

Ash will be the bird or the rescuer. He's very intelligent so we can go with literal or figurative trapping but if it's figurative, they'll have to be something very strong over his head. )

Edited 2021-10-23 00:23 (UTC)

(ooc | OTA, M/F for anything mutual. 18+ for shipping.

Yoo Se-rin will have to be the bird as she's not much of a fighter or captor. As a model/actress, she's often in the limelight which is something we can use. )

(ooc | Information, permissions, and warnings can be found here.

Open to canon, crosscanon, crossmedium, etc. OTA for genders, but m/m and 21+ for mutual shipping. Available in fox or human form. Just let me know which you prefer.

Bird or rescuer ((as long as he doesn't have to do a lot of physical fighting)). Sui is an actor so he has some fame. He's also known for flirting or teasing so it's not hard for him to get attention. )

[Open to plotting.]

_{[I mean...he's kind of the caged one really... but could go either way]}

[[Can take either side of this, although canon does pretty neatly put her in the "caged" role.]]

She has not enjoyed his presence. He has been a thorn in her side since first he was brought to Edoras - his braggart and coarse humour, his constant needling, and most of all, the trouble he poses. A prisoner from a distant land, who will not yield or offer up anything but insults, whose life has somehow become one more responsibility in the great and heavy list of responsibilities she must bear without thanks. A man for whose sake she has gone against what she knows was expected of her, and used leverage she did not have against the advisor whose loathsome presence so eclipses her world; a man whose death would surely have spared her no end of trouble. And yet, she has fought to preserve his life, and she does not entirely understand why. Honour, perhaps? A sense of fairness, that Rohan should be judged by its treatment of foes as well as friends? Defence of what she is sure her uncle would have done, were he still hale of mind and body?

Or perhaps it is only that he offered her a chance to fight, and when she took up a blade against him, gave him that trial by combat he so clamoured for, she felt life at last surge through a body that has seemed to her dead for years.

He has insulted her, propositioned her, shamed her. He has looked at her with both scorn and desire in those sharp green eyes. She half-hates him, but there is a part of her, too, that has kept drawing her back to the building where he is kept - guarded and unarmed, but no longer bound - and that has grown accustomed to how he can so easily find the weak spots in her armour, and raise her to anger. It is self-destructive, perhaps; a way to feel the sting that she has numbed herself to in the daily drudgery of life. But there is more, too. In raising her temper, in needling at all those raw spots that she must keep hidden, even in having matched swords with her... he has seen her.

And now, it is over.

Jaime Lannister is freed at the height of the day. They can justly hold him no longer; he has committed no grave crime, besides trespass, has proven himself no great threat, and she is confident that, for all his dissembling, he has given all the answers that can be wrung from him. So his things are returned to him - his garishly gilded armour, his horse sleek and well-cared-for, and even his ruby-encrusted sword, for to set an unarmed man to ride such a distance would be murder as sure as a knife to his throat - and he is led at spearpoint beyond the barrows of the old kings, and directed to where Lord Dúnhere found him, and he is gone.

It should be a relief. By all measures, this is a burden lifted - and one lifted without the need for intercession by her brother or cousin, no less, without great shame or wrongdoing on any part. But Éowyn does not feel relieved. There is only the same bleakness, the same obscure and hollow dread, that she has felt every day since her uncle began to sicken. She tends to Théoden's medicines and helps him to his bed; she throws herself wholly into the business of daily, grinding duty; and she does not let herself linger overlong on the strange grief that has settled into the pit of her stomach, to see gone the one thing that has, after so long, made her feel almost alive.

To see him freed, she thinks, and hates herself for thinking it, when I may not be. And that is the crux of it, she knows: that is the shameful truth that he saw in her even at the first, and that is why she was so fascinated by his stubborn refusal to be trapped. Duty binds her and makes her stone, and she could not help but be drawn to a bird beating its wings against the cage, to a lion snapping against the snare. To someone striving for freedom, where she must accept her captivity.

And now he is free, and she is still here, among the shadows of the Golden Hall, to fade into the background and wither in the darkness of bitter, unending duty. It is not, then, his loss that she grieves; but she remains, and that is far more painful. She cannot beat against the cage, or snap at the snare, or demand to be freed from her prison: her prison is built of love and duty, and she will deny neither. And yet...

And yet.

She is late to bed that night, dreading the darkness and the echoes it brings, desperate to distract herself from her thoughts as long as she can. For hours, her candle is lit, roaming through the halls, while around her, other lights go out. When at last she does sleep, it is not in her own bed, which seems to her cold and drear, and which repels her when she thinks of lying there in the darkness of her duties. Instead, as she has done occasionally since girlhood, she finds herself almost unconsciously drawn to the stables, her candle the only light as she crosses the dark and moonless courtyard. It is warmer in the stables, and the sweet smell of hay and horse surrounds her, and the gentle sound of steeds that breathe and stir and snore.

It is an indulgence. It is not what a lady does, to creep out in her nightgown to the stable and lie among the hayricks like a stable-boy; it is what a child might do, in grief and doubt and loneliness, when her parents are perished and all that seems familiar is here. And she is not a child, and she should not be here; but it is warm, and there is a comfort in it that is absent the heavy shadows of her own chambers, and one night will do no harm.

She blows out the candle, and closes her eyes, and darkness falls.

What noble people these are, and just; he is delivered back into daylight as if nothing of note has changed, as if one day has dulled and risen once more into another. He is outfitted again with armor, sword and horse, the latter in better upkeep, he is not loath to admit, than when he arrived. Neither armor nor sword are compromised, and when they lead him back out to that same ridiculous patch of ground where he had first been set upon, he laughs to find that the world has gone on as it pleases, as if he were never taken prisoner at all. He is dressed in the same routine gold and glories, and he is turned out as a stallion to pasture, to wreck what havoc he will. It is a justice that is clean and prompt, and when he is alone once more with his horse, having made no imprint upon this land at all, he can only fall again to his laughter.

It is not a true bout of mirth, for as he rides, as he strikes back out to retrace the utterly unproductive path that brought him here, he finds that he does not ride with any great resolve. He is not a man bent on a homecoming, and he is not a fugitive bent on a hasty, distrusting escape. He does not fear that a fresh detachment of dour soldiers will appear on the crest of the hill behind him, ready to chase him anew, to test the make of his pride twice. They have freed him, and it is not a freedom they will gamble with. They do not care to. There was hardly any care in them at all, at least for any worthy human matter. They would go back to feasting upon their cold soups of honor and their tasteless dignity, with nary a tart in sight. He ought to be thrilled to have slipped his captivity, to be cantering away with never the threat upon him that he must lay eyes upon that thatched hall again.

Or its lady keeper, he thinks ruefully, regretting that he must recall her, as if there were already so many leagues and days between them. A woman built of marble, or of driftwood - bloodless and resigned like a beaten mule to her fate. Frigid in her duty, she had been at the first, though he had been pleased to watch her thaw, over the course of his capture. She had returned when there was no immediate need, never completely deterred by his ribald greetings or his cruel banter. She did not give him any honest laughter for his jests, but neither did she give him a lasting isolation, which she must have known would be the simplest punishment and the surest torture. She kept returning, as if to take for herself always one more glance.

A loyal bitch, proudly chained, he had thought on more than one occasion, beholding her as she proclaimed her duties to those above her, and to the immensely dull concepts of honor and nobility in their entirety. The gods must have regretted bestowing such beauty upon so inert a soul, he remembers thinking, always cheered when he moved her to anger or flushing shame. What a strange gift it had been, then, to witness her blood in such motion one other time: when she had relented, to his surprise, and granted him the combat he so wished for. Queerly talented with a sword, she was, and he had been more startled than shamed when she'd knocked his blade aside. Her fury had been expertly honed, like any knight's, into a cutting edge, practiced and wonderfully wielded. The loss had been worth the sight, truthfully, though he declared ad nauseum that he was bested only because he had been held too many days a prisoner, just long enough for his hands to have their natural grace whittled from them. And still they freed him, these good and stalwart folk.

Fools, they are; ignorant and inept in all that does not come down to steel. It is an insult to have the sun of this place cast upon his armor as he rides, as he plunges through this dead sea of green. He ought to leave it to die, like any mangled or destitute creature. Why his steed's head is gradually turned, sure and without hesitation, back across those hills, steering him again to the site of his capture, and then beyond - why, he could not say, and does not need to. He does not correct this return course.

He will not be captured this time, and the risk of being seen is no doubt small, for who would expect the captive recently unbridled to return obediently to the master's door? But it is not in good-hearted obedience that he comes, and it is not to share courteous and decent words with those who saw him freed. He leaves his horse hidden among gray crags, in the shelter of a broken hill, and returns to the city as a thief might. Never would he count himself among criminals undisciplined and unshining, forgettable for their mundanity, but he counts himself among them now for their focused hunger: there is something he must have. There is one more chain waiting to be undone.

He has the raw, unbaked thought that he will take a horse from the stables and bring it forth when he plucks her from wherever she may sleep. The whole of the stone city is sleeping, he is certain, for what sort of man who has entrusted himself to decency does not give the night from dusk until dawn over to inactive sleep? He does not fear for a moment that he will be halted. He will, in the impulsive coloring of the scene as it is drawn in his head, spirit her away with him upon the stolen steed back down to where his own horse waits, and then they will ride together far from this place. At some point in this vision she is laughing, and her hair is streaming, and at other points she is flushed and breathless, and it is not clear whether it is because she has a sword again in her hand and fury in her heart, or because she is laid flat beneath him.

None of this comes to pass: when he ducks in silence into the stables, his gaze, heavy as a hand, falls not upon the shape of a dozing stable boy or a guard. It falls upon the shape of a woman, the very woman he had assumed he would need to assail stone or stairwell or window for, outrageously unguarded here atop a bed of hay. A grin pounces to his lips as he closes the distance between his shadow and her own, and his arms come around her with the solid, instinctive strength of a man lifting a craved weight, bringing her soundly against his chest while one hand fits firmly over her lips. His own mouth touches her ear, his voice all dark electricity, a storm gathering in the night.

"Don't scream, my stone maiden, for the horses are sleeping, and I must say neigh to such unforgivable rudeness."

For a moment, in the confusion of the suddenly-awoken, she does not know whether she dreams; whether, in her strange sorrow, her mind has turned the confinement of her station to a more literal grasp. Iron bands around her arms and chest, the solid press of imprisonment; she struggles against his grip, but her arms are pinned, and the hand across her mouth is so firmly-pressed that she cannot even bite, and this is a nightmare. This is the nightmare that comes to her so often, that she cannot move, that she cannot speak or fight or do anything at all, that she has become stone and shadow.

Then he speaks, hissing low against her ear, his lips and breath a hot and present thing; and she knows, in that moment, that she does not dream; and fury replaces fear. He is not an abstract dream, not a construct of shadow and shame; he is a real, tangible person, and knowing that, it is easier to pull herself together and seek to break free properly. Her hands are pinned, and she has no weapon, and she cannot scream or bite; but her legs are still loose, and she kicks out like a mule with one booted foot, aiming for his kneecap, hoping to knock his legs out from under him.

It is the strangest thing, to find that it is not her own imprisonment that so infuriates her, but the knowledge that he has doomed himself in his return. All that was given, all that was sacrificed that he might ride freely from this city, and he returns to make mockery of it. If you wished to die, you might have spared me some trouble by saying so sooner.

Perhaps that is why, even if his hand does loosen, she does not make any move to scream. Perhaps it is only that to scream would be unforgivably weak; would admit that, in the breach, she cannot stand in the face of her own mistakes. Her heart is hammering against the fine linen of her nightdress, and there are strands of hay in her braided hair, and the horses are sleeping, and she can feel the heat of his blood beneath the palm pressed to her lips, and she will not scream. She is made of sterner stuff than that. She is steel, and she will not buckle. And he will, she swears, find to his peril that she does not need men to aid her in saving herself.

And, in the same moment, she cannot help but think Where are they? Where is the doorkeeper, the guard, the stable grooms? Where is the clamour, the lighting of torches, the soft argument of steel blades? They have fallen asleep at their posts, she thinks bitterly, and there is a fresh wave of resentment that has shockingly little to do with the man whose arms encircle her. Must I take all duties, and be guardsman, too?

If so, she is a poor one. She strives to get an arm free, to fight his hand from off her mouth; but when she does get enough space to speak, it is in a low, if fierce, murmur, not in a scream. "If I do, they will kill you. Why have you come back?"

Edited 2021-10-24 14:25 (UTC)

He trusts that she will not scream - to do so would be a mark of cowardice, a stain upon her pride, when she has already proven that she needs no man's help in throwing him to the dirt. Of course, she will not be throwing him to the dirt now: this is not an honorable contest in the name of lawful justice. This is, now, his weight against her own, and he has the advantage of a well-muscled build, and height, and having struck by surprise. He has the advantage of darkness, and of his hand clamped over her mouth, and of her arms pinned, her pulse a bird flushed from cover where he can feel it at her throat. She ought to scream, for surely he would be given no quarter if he were to be taken prisoner again, but she will not. Stone does not scream. He abides no honor.

The sweet scent of hay clings to her, is worn now in her hair like a lady's perfume, where he presses his face. She wears too the cumbersome heaviness of disturbed sleep, like an overlarge cloak, though she is quick enough in recovering her senses. She realizes where she is, and who he is, no doubt, and what she can and cannot do about it. She will not scream, and she will not rally enough strength to combat him with her woman's arms and woman's hands. Two lean attributes he should not be so quick to dismiss, he thinks with amusement, knowing the strength she had called upon when they were pitted against one another in their brief mummery of combat. None of his thoughts stray to her feet.

Her kick catches him at the knee, and while the armor greets that unkind kiss with a blunt rebuff, he still stumbles back a step for the force of it. Hers is the panicked fury of an animal caught, but as he knows she will not scream, so he knows she will not run. His hand falls from her mouth to steady himself against her waist, and his breath is a husk of laughter, dark with humor and heavy with something less tame. If his armor has shielded him against the blow of her foot, so it does him the honor of shielding how her struggle has aroused him.

He does not release her, not completely, and he keeps the fingers of one hand curled at her elbow, the other digging now into her side, holding her as he means to keep her.

Her observation, clipped and straightforward as it is, brings laughter once more tripping past his lips, but he is not fool enough to linger where they might yet be caught. With her held still against him, he turns to begin maneuvering them out of the stables, moving slowly through the dark, a part of him wishing now to proceed unhurried, savoring the capture of his prize. His own heart is in cheerful hysterics, for the thrill of the crime and its success, and now for how close he is to seeing it through, beyond the reach of retribution.

"I would never rest again, princess, knowing what I left behind. It was not a loss I was willing to tolerate." While all that had been taken from him had been most nobly returned, he could not have ridden forth satisfied. Never was there an itch that he could leave unscratched. He holds her fast to his chest, a predator with his kill, and if he'd had a beast's jaws, they would have been agape, slavering.

"You did not have the decency to bid me a proper farewell, which can only mean you must have been anxiously awaiting my return."

She resists his grip, turning her head to fix him with a glare that is no less intent for the sleep-bleared edge to it. "It means," she hisses, "that I may save my farewells for those whose welfare is my concern, and whose absence grieves me."

And yet, his absence did grieve you. Why else was she here, after all, sleeping among the hay as she has only ever done in times of gravest turmoil? Is there not a bitter kernel of truth in what he so smugly asserts? She did not await his return, no, and she is not glad of it - but there is a reason that she did not ride out with his guard to see the back of him, and it is a reason that brushes altogether too close to sorrow.

There is no sorrow now. There is, to her great shame, fear. Not fear that he will hurt her or kill her - he would have killed her while she slept, if it was his intent, or have a blade to her throat now; and in any case, such things she does not fear, and never has. No, her fear is rather of the dark and lustful edge in his tone, and how he holds her so close against his armoured chest, and the knowledge that he may feel the frantic pulse of her heart and take it for something else. She fears his words, and what they portend: fears the shame of being spirited away thus, and the results if she, too, should take leave of her duty. Behind them, a horse whickers and snorts, awakened by the ring of her bootheel against armour.

Jaime's hands are iron, resisting her resistance. In a fair fight, she bested him - but that was once, and she was armed, and he taken by surprise; now she is the one surprised, and she has no sword, and it is clear once again that he is far stronger than she is. She digs in her heels, nonetheless, for she will not have it said that she gave no fight at the end, or that she did not try.

"And now you have returned, are you so determined to prove me wrong, in all that I did to see you set loose?" She spits it at him, twisting in his grip to try and see his face. "Let go of me, Jaime Lannister, let go and leave this place as you were bid, and you may yet live." There is, in her tone, that same steel that rang when he was the one bound and helpless; for she is no less the lady of this city than she was then.

But even as she says it, she knows he will not heed her, and again there is that fear, bitter as a gall in her throat.

Her outrage is, he knows, enacted more for her benefit than his own; they both know perfectly well that she is not going to break his hold, no more than a lamb might fight loose from behind sturdy rails. Nor would she appreciate being likened to a lamb, he thinks, smirking at the thought while it is still harmlessly unspoken, meeting her eyes with all the bright humor of this hour written carelessly across his face. Farewells were never saved. They were given freely, and the one she ought to have reserved for him should have been proud in its resentment, eager to chase him from her halls. Instead, she had elected not to appear at all, as if the thought of him being gone from those halls was in some way unwelcome.

The juvenile conviction that if she did not say goodbye, he would not really be gone? The justification, whatever it may be, is irrelevant; he has already relished in it, a tremendous feline with blood smeared about his grinning mouth.

She is a weasel in his arms, twisting and defying, surely knowing every jerk is futile, though he makes no demand for her to cease, to submit with a lady's humility, heeding what honor remains to her. No, he would sooner have her squirming in his grasp, slashing at him with the gray daggers of her eyes and the whip of her voice, spitting her courage like a dying fire spouting its wildest sparks. A hollow demonstration, but one that is tangible even so, her body all thin, swift muscle, in open and gregarious conversation against his own as he directs them together out of the stable.

His own body is, for the refusing strength of her own, asserted forward now in a shove, and one hand leaves her arm to instead come up to her throat, fingers curling just beneath her chin as if to discourage her from embodying her indignation. The heft of his body encourages her just as readily, each step keeping him as flush as his armor will allow, his breath falling heavier not for the exertion of their ungainly progress, but for the thrill of at last being so close against her.

So many easy jokes made at the expense of her virtue and her dignity, and each one not worth half as much as every touch he has upon her now, his fingers gripping tight where they hold her, his body crafted now of braced muscle, though still not out of any mortal or moral fear. Excitement has always bled enthusiastically from danger, and he has always supped upon it in happy hunger.

"Your devotion to seeing me saved at every turn was most admirable," he reflects aloud, pushing her through the dark, on the verge of swaggering as he robs Rohan of its pristine stone maiden. It would be a memorable insult to steal her right through the gates, but he will have no man's hands upon her, so it is over a bit of crumbled wall they must go. It is to this point of shadow-smattered escape that he steers her, his body an eager wall against her back.

"You set me free, my lady, and I have returned a free man. You slept unguarded in the stables. All is just. Now, climb."

"You would not know justice if it slapped you across the face." As I would fain do. She does not climb, will not climb. Obedience, creeping and mild, has never been to her taste; she will grant it where she has no choice, but she will not grant it here. What can he do to punish her for recalcitrance that he will not do in any case? Cut her down, here in her own city, and be hounded to his own death for her murder? Let him, she decides. She cares not.

(But she does care. She cares not that she may die, but she cares that she may die here, now: in her nightgown and with hay caught in her braid, in the darkness of her prison, and with her duty not discharged. She cares that the life of Éowyn daughter of Éomund may end as it has so long gone: in silent and unremarkable failure to defy what is inevitable, in a maiden's skirts and not the armour of a warrior, and without purpose.)

To obey without hesitation would be a worse death, one of the spirit. Beneath his grasping hand, her pulse is a bird, beating frantic wings against the column of her throat; her mind may urge calm, her pride may demand composure, but her heart is afraid. There is now no way forward which does not bring shame, disgrace, the dereliction of her duty. There is no way back, against the hard press of gilded armour and the hot breath of the beast who has her in its grip. It is not her state of undress, shameful though it is, that makes her feel so naked; it is the knowledge that, again, he has seen her a little too truly.

You slept unguarded in the stables. And why, if not to ride forth from them? Was it not the striving to be anywhere but where she is, the thunder of wild blood too long caged in stone and wooden walls, that drove her thence? What were her dreams, before he woke her, but those which plague her nightly: open skies and open plains, the roar of blood in her ears, the freedom which she has never found within these walls?

Was he not in her dream? She shudders to admit, even to herself, that he was.

"I will not go." It is a sharp retort to herself, as well as to him. "I am no coward, no weak and callow maid to bow to any command you give. My place is here, and my lord is here, and my purpose. Leave this place, Jaime Lannister, for I am not some trinket you have left behind. I have bested you once and will again, if in dragging me from my place you do not see me slain. Leave, now, and leave alone."

How fair a mistress justice would be if she were indeed in the habit of slapping her disciples. How fair would any of the gods be, were they so fierce and intimate, but never has he found them so. Perhaps it is a shame that he came upon his prey sleeping, for if she had been caught consciously lax, might she have slapped him? There is opportunity yet, of course, and his blood rolls in excitement, the fingers at her throat curling in blatant anticipation. Her pulse flutters there, and he will not dismiss it as unfeeling terror; he will not think himself alone in his thrill. He will not trouble himself to think that she had gone to the stables this night for any other purpose but to wait for him, to hope for his sudden and uncanny arrival.

She refuses his command, as he had known she would, and still he heaves a sigh, giving her another solid shove as he steps his weight forward. She will climb, with his assistance if need be, and his gaze scales the broken cleft in the wall first, assessing now for the travel of two, before he jerks her deeper into the shadows.

As he trusted that she would not scream, he trusts too that she will not fight. It would be a waste of her dignity, and a lost cause, and she would ultimately rely upon a rescuer to save her, and she would be made to confess as she has just been accused: that she slept unguarded in the stables. Why? To what end? Because she valued her present life so little that she would rather while it away with the sleeping steeds, dreaming of waking one so that she might flee like a coward in the darkness, never to be seen again? Was it because she was tempted to abandon the same duties she professed her numb loyalty to, to be turned loose as he had been, with every horizon open to her?

"Yes, yes," her nobility perseveres even now, in the conspiring dark, and he impatiently dispatches it, tossing golden hair from his eyes, "all you have ever known is here, and you are a coward for slicing off your hands and gouging out your eyes so that you could not be faulted for standing vigil at the death of your own life. Very noble indeed, and the histories will remember you fondly, but now you are going to climb this wall, or I am going to make you scream against it."

The predatory threat, which ripples with a muscular energy in his voice, makes no mistake: it is not by maiming violence that he means to see it done. The gleam in his eye belongs to a rutting animal, and while it is a decidedly ignoble coercion, he does not shy from delivering it. Neither does he mask his delight in its imagining, gaze raking down her body while his fingers glide in incongruous tenderness down her throat. She is no trinket; true trinkets are made of gold, not of stone. Reminding himself of this does not dilute the lust he bristles with, or the laughter that thickens wickedly in his voice.

"You do enjoy saying my name. I wonder how often you were saying it in your sleep before I woke you?" He brings his mouth to the shell of her ear, swilling himself drunk again on the hay-sweet scent of her, and there are splinters of his steel in his words, however jovially he has thus far carried himself. "You are mine. Climb."

"If I scream," she repeats stubbornly, "you die. Will the loss of my honour comfort you in the moments ere it costs you your life?"

A better question - and one she fears they both know the answer to - lurks beneath that one: Will the loss of your life comfort me for the loss of my honour? It will not. It will only mean that they are both of them destroyed; it will mean that he has won from her all that she has to take, and his death would soothe that hollowness not at all.

And there is worse beneath that thought, too: there is a shame that creeps like frost into the aching emptiness of her chest. Who would I be, without honour?

Honour is all that sustains her, in these dark and hollowing nights. Honour fills the empty caverns of her bones, and makes of her a king's nursemaid, a daughter of Eorl, a hard and unyielding bulwark to her people. Honour fastens the chains of love and obligation, which with her own two hands she has locked onto herself. Honour is stone; it holds her up, and it anchors her, and if she were not drowning, perhaps its absence would not have so strangely sweet a ring.

And she is not only stone. There is a living heart that beats, and it beats too fast now, and she will not linger on that husk and hunger in his voice, or what it reaches inside her; she will not think, must not think, on the heat of his gaze or the strange shivers of something like anticipation that follow his fingers along her throat. She will not allow into her mind any thought of how in dreams as well as waking she has wondered how it would feel to have a man's hands trace so close against her skin - nor how those dreams, which have not always been gentle, wake that same clenching and uneasy warmth between her thighs. Her cheeks are crimson now, her breath barely finding its way past the light press of his hand, and he cannot know what she thinks, what she feels, at the steel and laughter of his tone.

The air feels chill against her sweat-prickled skin, and that is, no doubt, the only reason she shivers. Without honour, I am worse than dead. But with it or without it, I cannot stay myself.

"I am not afraid of you." Rarely has she told so boldfaced a lie. "And nor can I climb with your hand at my throat. So let me go."

She will not scream, and so it does not matter, but even if she rallied the courage to do so, he is not burdened with his own imminent death. He is armed and armored once more, and any man who came charging to his lady's defense would need first to best him steel to steel. The lady herself already has, of course, but the reward here is different; it is not for bare freedom that he would be fighting, but for the prize he had been hankering for since the first hour of his capture. They would have to take from him what he had returned for, and that would mean surmounting his own furious energy, which would, at present, take no prisoners. He would take readily and eagerly to a fight if one presented itself, but only as a misdirected application of that energy. He has in his hands what he wants, the glory he was meant to take, and neither man nor death will take her from him.

"I care less for your honor than I do for your virtue, my lady, be certain of that," he corrects her coolly, smitten still by the play of her pulse beneath his fingers. It tumbles like a summer stream, and it beats so close against his skin that he can imagine the taste of her blood, the warm glow of her body, and how it would be kindled to fiercer fires still if he laid her flat against the wall. Her breath is troubled, he can feel, and a new grin brightens across his face, a cocky glint of teeth in the dark. He can feel her body's welcome, even if she will not speak it, even if she would rather uphold a frigid indifference to him. She will admit no excitement, no fear, nothing at all. Why then does it feel as if his fingers are sliding between her thighs and not along her throat? So certain he is that he can feel a honeyed, waiting heat, even if he must identify it by the rhythm of her blood and the fall of her breath.

Only a woman denying such a bodily truth would declare herself fearless, would threaten a death they both know will not come. And it may be that she indeed cannot climb with his hand around her throat, so he loosens his fingers enough that they drift from their guiding hold, funneling no more of her breath. A kindness, if she has the sense to be grateful.

"No, you are not afraid of me," he agrees amiably, his hand falling to her collarbone, and then down the front of her body, fingers closing around the thinly-dressed curve of her breast, lingering there long enough to take a firm handful of flesh, and then sliding down her waist, to the bow of her hip, to the top of her thigh. It is not fear he would have of her, and it is not fear which he believes colored her dreams in the stables, or any of the nights before, when he was a prisoner she might have come to if she'd been bold. He wears still a mad dog's grin, stepping forward and into her, without taking back his hands.

"A poor savior I would be if I let you go in full dark, princess. Climb, and I will be with you." Upon her, almost, with his body not half a breath from her own, his chest rising and falling with his thickened breathing, an exertion waiting to be spent. He knows the weight of shackles no longer, nor of shame, nor of honor. They have only the aloof moon holding court, and he has never been punished for his deeds in the dark. His fingers dip along the crease of her hip, a mummery of helping her to find her footing, his voice undisguised still in its hounding.

"You shall have to ride with me, since you did not have the forethought to ready yourself a horse. What a great shame."

Her breath catches as his hand roams, shameless in its grasping, over the lean contours of her body; when he squeezes her breast, she is ashamed to hear herself gasp, a sound of shock and outrage both. And nothing more, it is nothing more; her cheeks are flushed and her heart stutters, but there is nothing more than shame that fuels it. The hard press of her nipple, through the linen of her nightdress, is only proof that it is cold. There is no proof of the twining, coiling snare that has caught at the pit of her belly, or the dull throb of heat between her thighs. There is only fury, and nothing more. Fury burns hot; no doubt it may be mistaken, at times, for other flames.

"A poor saviour you are," she spits back, twisting as much as she can against the solid press of him to try and find his eyes. "What is it that you mean to save me from, o valiant knight? From the love of my kinsmen, the nobility of my station, and the shelter of my home?" She no longer whispers. She will not scream, but neither will she continue be a meek co-conspirator in his outrageous assault on her decency. On her. "And you will do it, I see, as a thief in the night, with trespass and threat; save me with kidnap and rape, and free me to imprisonment?"

Even in the darkness, the curl of her lip is clear. Even in the darkness, her crimson blush is clear, too. Let it be anger that fuels her, that sets the blood to rushing; let it be well-earned disgust that makes her shudder, and challenge that lights her eyes; and let his hand not move too far from its already ungentlemanly place, lest he know for certain what else moves her. She does not climb, even so, but twists against his grip, raking herself against the wall she is pressed so close against, to try and face him. If there is any shame in him, she prays that her look will wake it: if there is any honour left, then she would wish that her tone may rouse it to life, and force him to see what he does. (But she does not hope, for hope is vain; and she does not think she will find either in him.)

"If you will steal me away thus, ungrateful swine, then do not hide behind such words as saviour, even in jest. Name yourself as you are: an honourless and selfish brute. Name this as it is: a treason and abduction. There is nothing that you could save me from, not even if you wished it."

He is a valiant knight, far more than she knows; he has sworn the vows, after all, and been esteemed by the point of a legendary sword upon his shoulder. All the realm's innocent and helpless and lost and desperate have been entrusted to him, and the gods saw fit not only to raise him to such revered station, but also to grant his sword arm the strength of the Warrior's own. He has been made in that god's own image - the only god, so far as he is concerned - and he has been made without peer. He is not only a professed knight, but a fearsomely gifted warrior, and a man of title and prestige thanks to the respect command by his House. Regardless of how frequently and joyfully he has profaned his vows and his sword, he is a knight still, and a better one than any other man who has sworn the same vows, any man who wears lesser steel.

And she knows this; she must know it, by the way her body reacts to him, like an animal trapped in its heat, ecstatically flustered by the approach of a body which can answer it. He does not read in her gasping breath fury, and he does not attribute her pert breast to a brisk chill. It is because of his hand, it is for his hand, just as the quaver which slithers down her limber frame is undressed anticipation for his weight against her. Each of these things are as he makes them, and she does not climb, challenging him still on the manner of his return.

He has allowed her to turn in his arms so that she faces him, so that the blaze of her cheeks is bright even in the shadows which heavily drape the stone behind her, and she sneers, bandies on about honor, and he steps forward to crowd her decisively against the wall, forgoing for a moment the command to climb. They will dally, if she'd rather.

"Do not speak to me of love, stone maiden, which you are only now discovering this hour." There is laughter still in his voice, thorns between the words, and the hand at her thigh gathers now the gown which is her only protection against the night. A gown meant for sleeping, which she will not be given leave to do this evening. He makes a fist, hoisting that maidenly fabric to her hip.

"And do not act as if you do not pray. You have prayed, and I have answered." Few things are as delicious as bestowing upon himself a divinity recognized only in the seven idols of his own country, and perhaps here not at all. What stokes more genuine fear and veneration than the wrath of gods? And what true god would not bring that wrath to bear against any body he chooses? His hand delves beneath the folds of the gown he has crumpled, his shoulders angled so that he made, from the top of his chest down to his hips, as of steel - steadfast, insistent, unmoving. She may be right; savior may be a title which does him no justice.

The hot pad of his thumb slides now along the bare, inside curve of her thigh, up to where he means to prove how eagerly she has awaited a thief in the night, someone to whisk her from nobility and stifling shelter. His weight urges another step in as his searching fingers ply between her thighs, his own heart hurrying eagerly toward the heat he knows waits there. His breath is half a pant, as if she has just spoken in fawning praise: an honorless and selfish brute. Yes, with treason committed here within her own gates, and her, he thinks, throbbing for more of it.

"As you will, then. We will stay, since there is nothing to save you from, nothing from which you would dare step away. Surely you will come to find only honor here. I know you will not come meekly."

It is at this moment, with the night air cool against bare and muscular thighs, with his armoured weight pressed in against her and his hand between her legs, that she knows with cold and unyielding horror that she cannot leave this night behind her. There is no end to this, no sly or brutal retort, that will let her escape with her honour intact. He has cornered her, and not only against the crumbled stone of this wall.

And yet, at this moment, what stings her most of all is not how he threatens her, nor even how she has not yet found strength to force him back; it is what he says, and how he insults her. She has gone still now, rigid, fighting down her body's reply to his questing fingertips; but her eyes, when they turn up to his again, are burning with something that speaks less of hopeless fear or even blind fury, but of the frustration of one who finds herself misunderstood.

"Do not speak to me of love, o gilded reaver, which you have not discovered this hour or at all." Her fists clench so tightly as to ache, to make her knuckles white. She cannot find the space, in the close press of his body, to swing as she wishes she could: to break his jaw, which is not armoured like the rest of him, and take his sword, and do herself what must be done. All she can do is reach down between them, and try to force his hand down and away from that hotly aching space which no man has the right to touch; try, vainly, to push him back. "What do you know of love, who know nothing of sacrifice? What love has ever driven you but love of your own fool's gold? It is love that binds me here, blind atterbreóst, love that has made me stone. Love that you would have me step away from, for your blind and groping lust." She spits, then, square in his face. "Is it not enough that you will rape me, rob me, shrink even from granting me my own defence? Do not call me unloving. Love has cost me everything."

He is not sure, some dim part of him is aware, what exactly he expects of her. That she will melt back against the stones, declaring herself forfeit? That she will at last call for the guards, as threatened? That she will reach down and hike her skirts higher herself, begging him to do right here beneath the moon what he had offered in jest to do within minutes of meeting her?

She will not recoil, this he already knows; she will not abandon her honor or her cause, which is laughable, because she has none. She will not admit to wishing his fingers would find and part her, and she will of course not urge him closer here, like this, with propriety cast aside like armor after a sweltering day. What she does is continue to defend herself, to rally what she can in the name of her cold, dead honor, and he resists the push of her hand as it sweeps down between them.

He is stronger, and careless in his demonstration of it, knocking her fingers aside and locking her more firmly against the stone while his hand presses where she is hot, invading what has for days and days been hidden beneath the folds of humble skirts. He has hardly let fall a rumbling sigh, has hardly begun easing his fingers where they don't belong, valiantly ignoring her every word, when her spit snaps across his face.

If she'd meant to offend him, she is instead rewarded only with a bark of laughter, and then a rough hand at her shoulder, which finds its way to the nape of her neck as he hauls her around to face the wall.

"Do not speak to me of enough, o fair, wet septa, for you shall find no reprieve there." There would be no escape in the reasonable expectation of 'enough,' as if he were a mere mortal man, and he curls his fingers where they have taken her by the nape, repositioning himself to hold her flat while his free hand snakes again between her thighs, insistent that he will touch what he means to touch. It is no bother to him that he must wear the glisten of her spit on his face to do it, and he is rather enflamed to feel her dripping from him, dismissing all she had cared to lay before him while his fingers ply once more where her body has the wits to be yielding, inviting.

"Love does not bind, and it is not stone, and it does not leave you empty. You have grown so fond of your chains that you think them a part of you. You are as callow as you are lovely, but fear not, for I will not let you die a stone."

You must scream now. Scream for help, and forget all your pride; or it will be gone forever, and there will be nothing left. But the cry catches in her throat, comes out as a hoarse and strangled yelp as she is shoved anew up against the raw-edged stone. She can blame her silence on how roughly she is handled, how he drives his armoured chest against her and makes it hard to breathe; she can blame it on the dizzying horror that catches her, stealing her voice. She can blame it on any number of things, but she knows in her heart that it is simple shame; that some part of her would sooner be ruined and violated here than have anyone see her this way, with her legs bared and her cheeks flushed, her nightgown pulled up and a rough hand parting her thighs. And if rescue comes now, they will know: will see that she is not taken wholly against her body's will. The proof of it in the slickness beneath his fingers, and in the hard press of her nipples where she is pushed against the wall, and in the shivers that run unbidden through her when his hand passes against the swollen hood of her clit.

Nausea churns in her gut, and she closes her eyes tightly, striving against his grip to escape that aching, unwanted touch. There is nowhere to go, no escape that can be found. Her pulse is a living creature, rushing wild and desperate against the column of her throat - and, to her shame, not only there. She can feel how it beats, too, between her thighs, how her body cries out for that rough and unwelcome invasion of his hand, a tight knot of want that twists up into the pit of her belly, a sleeping beast that stirs and coils and roars.

She cannot scream. If anyone should know, in this moment, how great a part of her thrills to this monstrosity... if ever she must answer for that voice in her that cries out to give herself over to wild and careless desire...

She should, she realises sickly, have climbed. It would not have spared her, but she would not have been here, and if he took her beyond the city, beyond the walls, then who could ever know what passed between them? Who then could rightly claim that she did not fight, or that her body welcomed him? What proof at all could there be of her shame? But they are here, and if she is rescued, then it will be worse than if she is not, and she will not even have tasted the illusory freedom of air outside the walls.

"Let go of me." It is not a plea, nor even an order; her voice grinds out through gritted teeth, a sharp demand. "I will go with you. I will go, but if you do not take away your hands, then I will scream, and we will both of us be ruined."

And that is not entirely a threat; her tone makes of it as much a warning of what cannot be helped. She can feel the scream coiling there in her chest, tangled up with the sickness in her belly and the darker heat beneath, and she is not certain what timbre her scream might have, but she finds herself certain it will come. The thought of it darkens her cheeks with crimson humiliation, her breath stuttering against her ribs; and still, her body answers, her wet cunt hot and sensitive beneath his fingers, a desperation that pulls deep inside her.

She will go; he does not believe she is lying. She will make no heroic attempt at escape, she will not scream when he trusts her not to, and she will not rejoice in his capture and punishment, if either were possible, which they are not. He will not be captured a second time, and he will not be punished for a crime that none saw him commit. He will suffer no accusations, and he will not be haunted, as a better man might be, by the horror of what he had inflicted upon an innocent. There is no hell awaiting him which he has not already ravished.

She is not, most notably in this moment, an innocent. She is a mortal body, exactly as he is, as he grins for how his fingers have found her, pushing between her thighs, opening with the rough, hurried fixation of a beggar before a chest of gold. Hunger drives him, as she can no doubt feel in the hot rain of his breath as it falls against her throat, and in the roused, eager shove of his body. Gilded plate separates them still, but it wouldn't matter, not if he troubled to reach between them to unlace his breeches, to hold her pinned against the noble stone and give her more than the impatient stroking of his fingers. How innocent can she think herself to be when he can feel with his own hand how wet and reaching an invitation her body makes? She would have him right here, and graciously so, if she were not collared still by some cold, iron notion of honor.

"You're right," he agrees gamely, his voice a doggish jeer, and he makes a hard, purposeful rub of the pad of this thumb over her waiting clit. "You will scream for my hands upon you before this night is through, and your ruining will last well into the dawn."

But they must make it yet above and beyond the wall, otherwise she may well blunder his valiant rescue of her with an untimely and inconvenient hailing of the guards. She will scream, but they will be out of anyone's hearing, well out of a rescuing reach. There will be no one to hear, and no one to act even if they do, and it will make no difference, because he knows that she will scream and she will scream again, and it will be his name that carries over moor and vale, and it will be with her whole ignoble heart that she begs him to make her scream once more, and she will be wetter even than she is now.

That is the promise which sees him release her, though his hands withdraw only to her hips, to impolitely escort her up the silent stones, his voice still a black velvet threat.

"After you, then, my lady. The moon shines upon our hallowed journey."

She almost screams then and there, for the hot and stinging pleasure that spears up from his thumb against her clit is as violent as any she has ever felt, and so sudden that it almost robs her of her control: she bites down on the sound, tears springing to her eyes as her teeth dig sharply against her tongue, her breath momentarily lost in a strangled, half-muffled sob. It is worse than any torture to know that she is, in this moment, afraid only of discovery. To be violated is a terrible thing: to face the knowledge that some deep and animal part of her cries out for it is a thousand times worse.

"I will kill you for this," she hisses, but the venom in it is dissipated by the breathlessness that underlies it, and though she means it with all her heart, still she has no choice in this moment but to climb. This she does clumsily, aware at every moment of the grasping heat of his hands - and, more uncomfortably still, the grasping heat within herself, the ache and itch of desire that blooms unwanted between her thighs. She could kick him, she thinks. His face is not armoured: once she has climbed a little way, she could kick him, and see how well he threatens her with a broken jaw. She could grab up one of the stones from where the wall has crumbled, and turn at the top, and stove in his skull.

She could. She could kill him now, if she really tried. She might die in so doing, but she does not think she would: she has beaten him once, and he did not seem to want her dead, and she could kill him, or at least injure him, and drag her nightgown back down over the shameful proof of her unsatisfied desire, and flee. Or else drag herself from his grip, and leap over the lip of the wall and the hillside beyond, and break her neck and die unbroken.

Die, in the end, without ever once living. This is not what she wants. But she finds herself here at the end of the shackles she has built for herself, and the night air is cold and brisk against her flushed and sweat-slicked face, and the heat of bittersweet desire coils in her belly. Your ruining will last well into the dawn. She has dreamed such things, to her shame: has dreamed of being laid down in the long grass, and made to scream without thought of watching eyes; in the dark watches of the night she has let her hand stray between her thighs and thought of open skies and clear air and no honour or duty at all. And she has only ever thought of it briefly, and brought herself to a brisk and matter-of-fact release, for there is no time to linger on shameful and wild thoughts, when there is duty to be done.

She scrambles up the wall where, truth be told, she climbed so often as a child: she does not kick him, and she does not move to find for herself a makeshift weapon. She promised him, she tells herself: she gave her word that she would go. She tells herself, too, that she does only what she must. She tells herself that she will wait, for even scoundrels must sleep, and take his sword, and then his head, and ride back. And perhaps she will, but for now, she climbs; and there is, beneath the horror and the shame, a strange blossoming of excitement, a thrum of wonder higher and more exultant than the dark tugging need between her legs.

He must never know. He must never know that he is right: that, in this moment, she does feel inexplicably as though his violence and his assault is a kind of rescue.

She will not only scream, he gloats to think, having been treated now to no small assortment of her body's pleas. And they are pleas; they are nothing other, and they are nothing less. As she had been sodden and pliant for his fingers, so her breath now catches and tangles, and she will cry, too, he decides. She will sob and choke, and pant and shriek until the stars themselves shiver. He can hear it in the wracking of her breath as she strives to keep it at heel, and he can feel it in the bristling tension of her body as he holds her, as his steadying hands urge her up the wall. It is the bristling tension not only of aggression, but of a beast in heat. The bitch snarling even as she turns her back to the hound; the mare squealing even as she presses her rump to the stallion's lathered chest. Maybe he will have her first on her hands and knees, too, if the nature of her want is so wild.

Had her eyes been turned down to his face, she would have known the smirk that came skewed to his lips, pleased with her threat. She would have seen the cocky set of his jaw, ignorant to even the dimmest notion that she might think to crack her heel across his face, and she would have seen the feline gleam in his eye as he feasted upon the view of her from this ascending angle. Yes, he would have her on her hands and knees, without a doubt, posed to take him like any feral thing.

His fingers drop in their escorting, squeezing along a curve that is only thinly hidden by her nightgown, digging in a relishing grip there as he shoves her higher. And the moon does, indeed, shine down upon them. He is as proud as if he had hung it himself, eyes roaming in open possession over every point where it gleams: in the beaten gold of her hair, which has been too long hidden in dark and dour halls, and limning the lean curve of her shoulder, and down the script-drawn contour of her thigh, and his cock feels outrageously heavy, twitching with that vigor which flies so carelessly through him.

"Do wrap your hands around my throat if the impulse takes you," he does not hesitate to encourage her, all too happy to conjure up all the ways she might think to kill him. "If you touch my sword, you'll wish to all seven gods that you hadn't, of course. I won't insult you with the suspicion that you would seek for poison. You'll want to kill me with your bare hands, and so I will expect you to apply yourself most thoroughly to the task, your body in all its valorous defiance against mine. I wish you good fortune."

Cresting the wall, he asserts the shining heft of himself forward, making to keep her corralled between his body and the stone, should any untoward opportunities come to mind.

"Careful, now. Stone is fickle and a woman's heart more so. You'll be climbing down with me." Then, with a gallant flair, he flashes her a fanged smile and a gaze that strips. "Fear not, for henceforth, nothing shall touch you but me."

"You know nothing of my heart," she snarls, and brings herself to meet his gaze, lewd hunger and all. In forcing himself on top of her, it strikes her that he has left himself at greater risk: how easily she could find the leverage, between his bulk and the rough stone beneath her, to buck and push him off - and even if the fall did not kill him, would not the crash and clamour of his ridiculous gilded armour be enough to call attention, while she might steal unnoticed back to her own chambers, her own bed?

Her own bed is cold and dark, and there lies only duty and the slow death of ignominious invisibility. She knows that she has already made her decision. She knows, to her shame, that all her thoughts of murder are only a kind of weak self-defence - not against him, but against the knowledge that she would rather be ruined than remain now within these walls, with that wild and senseless freedom in her grasp. Her heart may be fickle, after all, to abandon all that she loves on so flimsy a pretext - but the thought of turning back, of returning to the shadows and the cold burden of daily work, is worse than any death. She will, she knows, swallow all her better judgement, and she will go with him, and she will offer herself up to him, and ruin herself forever. There is no sense in it; there is no honour in it; but she will do it anyway, and there is nothing that she can tell herself that will make it otherwise, for that wildness in her blood is now in full flow, and it cries out for anything that is not this dull and dragging captivity.

"If I meant to run, then I could still throw us both from this parapet, and trust to my luck that you land first." She twists beneath him, trying not to think how this rucks her nightgown almost to the waist as it snags on the stones, and seeks purchase on the other side of the wall. "Move off me, dullard, or we will neither of us find a safe grip on these stones. Have I not told you that I will go with you?"

He knows nothing of her heart, and he knows too that he would prefer to keep it that way - what man ever benefitted from groping into the plumbless depths of a woman's coiling heart? He has no need of it; all that interests him is pressed rather conveniently now against the impartial stone, and as she wrangles herself beneath him, he does not leave any room to spare. The stone will suffocate her on one side, and him on the other, if she struggles too lavishly; she will be caged where he has decided he will have her.

It crosses her mind, naturally, that she might buck beneath him and thus send him plummeting to his death, or at least an unfortunate maiming, down below. She assumes that she possesses the strength, and also the cold courage and conviction to see it done. Yet could she live with herself, knowing she had pushed to his demise a man who had so positioned himself for the sake of seeing her safely down? All incidental pleasures of the indecent descent aside, he has made of his body a most willing escort, and it is his own armor that shields her. It is his own arms that will see them steadily to the ground, and as she weasels in defiance, he digs his fingers into the bell-curve of her hip, roughly correcting her into place between him and the wall.

"A thankless wench you are, to refuse the chivalry of the only knight who ever cared to rescue you," he growls back, though any impish jibing is overshadowed by his appetite, which is both heavier and thicker. And, having her arranged now before him in an even less forgiving manner than before, he is impatient to slake that hunger. His face has known, this evening, no expression other than gloating delight, and his grin returns as he looks down to see her thin gown tangled about her waist. Her thighs are a bare invitation in the light of the voyeur moon, and he pauses any intent of a downward climb to instead risk snaking a hand between them, to the laces of his trousers.

Too long has his cock been furiously straining between them, and he springs it free now, a working huff heaving into a husky sigh as he shoves forward to seat himself between the pillowy heat of her legs. The farthest thing from his mind at present is any concept of a safe grip, but he has achieved some manner of a sturdy hold on the stones with one hand, has cornered her against the wall with the whole weight of his body, and thrills now to the reckless excitement of knowing she cannot squirm away.

She can try, perhaps, though he knows that in doing so she will only slide and writhe herself against the twitching length of him, and that seems a wholly agreeable reward in the gamble of losing his balance. From here he does not waste the recurring chance, either, to press the devil-dark heat of his mouth to her ear, a forward push of his hips driving his cock up between her thighs, a hearty throb that yearns to be driven higher, and deeper.

"I don't care for your heart or your word." Any resenting promise dragged from her is worth nothing, but she has come this far, and he will not lose what he has taken. He will not trust her honor, no matter how resolute it has proven to be, and he will award her no mercy for her compliance. In his voice there is unebbing humor, a bright and greedy challenge; there is a rampant and dangerous lust which fears no heights. "Have me off then, if you will."

Doom comes quickly, when it comes. So it is in songs and story; so it is here, with the prosaic dig of raw-edged stone against her chest and arms, and the heat of his armoured form crowding her, and the sudden pressing invasion of what must not be. It should not be so easy a thing for him to ruin her. It should not be so quick.

She does struggle, trying to close her legs against him, to squirm away from his grip; but she is too slow, and there is nothing that can be done in any case; even as she presses her thighs together, she feels the hard heat of him thrust against where she is shamefully slick and welcoming to it. There was some part of her, to the last, which still believed that she might somehow escape this with her honour - or at least her maidenhead - intact. But there is no safety in illusion and false hope. There is no safety anywhere in this. For how she feels herself suddenly teetering over the precipice of a sea change, perhaps their lofty position has a certain bitter suitability.

She cries out as he drives up against her - in surprise, and horror, and in pain, for there is no small measure of that between the sudden and intrusive force of him and the rough stone against her front - and at once fumbles a hand over her own mouth, the tears starting unbidden in her eyes. The worst fate of all, now that all is already lost, is to be discovered in its losing: to have anyone see her this way, half-naked and whored to a faithless man's whim, is a greater horror than she can fathom. Nor can she, for all her honest threat, pitch him and herself over the edge: too easily does the image come of how they might be found, with her nightgown still hoicked high and his breeches unfastened, tangled together perhaps even in death. Too easily is what little was left to her taken.

Her breath shudders out in a low, sobbing whimper that does her no credit at all. Dignity, honour, duty - all robbed from her in a stroke, in a driving, piercing press of flesh on flesh. Does he even know what he takes?

He does not care. He has said as much, and proved as much, and still his breath pants dragon-hot against her ear, and there is a sharp and aching pulse between her thighs, and the hand that she has not gagged herself with claws against the stone, instinctively seeking a purchase that offers no aid. There is no dignity left in this, and she cannot be stone; and too-soft flesh yields to his assault, opens wet and wanting to him, and the cold night air bites at the tears tracking down her cheeks, and she thinks with vicious force: I will go with you, all right, Jaime Lannister. All your life I will hunt you and harry you, and for all that you have taken from me, I will take tenfold from you. And you will laugh no more.

But that is the future, and all the curses in the world, all the heartfelt promises of vengeance, will not stand against this moment. When doom comes, it comes quickly; and here high above the plains of Rohan, beneath an unaiding moon, doom has come for her.

The Warrior himself could not have engineered a more precise and poetic victory: the fair maiden snatched from the jaws of comatose duty, to be held in the jaws of a thrilling depravity, instead. She is grateful - her body, anyway, is grateful - and her struggle only provokes his eager muscle to trap her hard against the stone, his foot kicking out to greet her ankle, to demand her legs further apart.

It is easy, the taking of this glory: it is as effortless as knocking a blade from a lesser knight's hand, delivering the blow that sends him to the ground, and then raising his own sword high for the finishing cut. Except this satisfaction will not be had in a single stroke; it will not be one bright ribbon of blood that announces his conquest. It is not the taking of a lone miserable life that is the marrow which he yearns to savor. This will not be so quick as every other victory he has taken, though she has been disarmed as thoroughly as any of them. This will not be a night that ends soon.

He sees the graceless jerk of her hand to her lips, as if she can bury again that cry he'd taken from her, and the moment he feels the wet kiss of her cunt, like a hot, ready mouth opening to beg the thrust of his tongue, he waits on no ceremony before heaving roughly up to furrow himself within her. The breath that falls over her ear goes thick with relish, a rolling snarl as he drives the throbbing length of himself where her body has so warmly obliged him.

That this sensation - the sleek, pulsing give between her thighs, hungry and grasping - is paired with such a wretched sob sets him alight with lust. It is better than meeting a rabid foe on a field of blood, steel trembling and keening against steel, and it is better than digging his spurs into the flanks of a mount already giving everything it is made of, coercing it to the fury of giving more. It is better than striding tall and proud down any street and knowing harlots and loyal wives alike would moan his name into his ear if he cornered them in a dark doorway, all else forgotten. It is better than fucking his sister, who comes wet and willing and then comes again, drunk on the same tireless sins. It is better for how he knows it hurts her, for how he knows she would refuse him, if she could still choose honor over living. It is better for how she sobs as he takes that choice from her, and for how he knows that she will, before the night is through, be crying out his name.

There is the chip of her nails against the stone, and the stunned tension of her resisting body, the hitch of tears, and so many hapless, sleeping bodies on the other side of this wall which might come to her rescue if they knew. But they won't, and he knows that she would not suffer them to behold her like this even if she could, and so he pounds forward to hold her shoved to the stone, withdrawing and then sheathing once more with gusto. Her body is made to hold him so breathlessly narrow that he knows her for the maid she had seemed to be at the start: tight and frigid and withdrawn, though clearly her empty body had longed for something more.

It is that face which he holds in mind as he ruts with leonine fixation between her thighs: the poised, marble maiden who had paid no mind to his jeers, who had turned an indifferent shoulder to the gleaming gaze which pursued and undressed her. How nobly she had spoken, how certain of her dignity and her standing among her people and her gods, if she had any. How disdainfully sure that she would never be crowded beneath his body, her cheeks glistening just like her cunt, no doubt cursing him down to the seventh hell and back. He pants atop her ear, the sound of mounting, bristling desire, rippling with satisfaction.

"The White Lady, painted red even before leaving the walls of home."

Her only answer, against the gagging press of her own hand, is a low and growling sob; in this moment solemn defiance is torn away, and only brute negation remains. He is not gentle, and she does not doubt that her thighs will, indeed, be painted red; she cannot doubt that the sharp and intimate pain of his violent intrusion must leave its marks. Her body is not used to being stretched so sharply; this one part of her has never been roughly-used; and he feels too swollen and too large to bear, his hard cock driving her open so deeply that she feels almost as though he must have driven her through, as though she will burst asunder at the force of each thrust.

And yet, even through the pain of it, even through the horror and the shame of her rough and ignoble deflowering, there is an answering swell and thunder within her; a desire of which her body's earlier betrayals were only a shallow echo. From deep in the pit of her belly, from the dark and primordial edges of her heart, there is a rush of strange exhilaration; her breath catches in her chest, her heart racing and her blood thundering, and it seems to her that the wind blows cooler against her tearstained cheeks, that the world gains that sharp and fearful focus that comes in the heat of battle, at the height of a horse's gallop. The adrenaline surges like a tide, and something else, darker and stronger even than that, washing up against her and carving away her defences like a flood.

The stone against her front is cold, but it is overruled by the heat of him - his breath against her ear, his body over hers, his body inside hers. The world is red and beats with the wild drumbeat of her heart, and the cold stars above, in the corners of her vision, blur and dissolve into the haze of tears. And she wishes that she could simply hate, that she could scream at the pain and the dishonour and the reminder of all that her sex condemns her to - but that is not the only reason that her breath shortens so against her hand, and if she writhes beneath him, her thighs tensing and her hips bucking, it is not only to escape him but to escape the urge to drive him deeper.

He is not wrong. He was not wrong, from the beginning, to see in her this desire; and she hates him, with all her heart she hates him, but she hates him all the more because with each rough drive of his cock into her wet and aching cunt, he proves to them both what she would gladly have denied. Honour is a chain, maidenhood a cage; in this moment, bloodied and sobbing as she is, ashamed and pained and grieving as she is, there is some part of her that sings like a bird set free.

Meng Yao had heard that Wen Xu was celebrating loudly in the Nightless City that they have caught one of the remaining Jiangs, who have scattered to the winds. He knew he didn't have a lot of time, how Wen Ruohan would either send her to the fire palace for torment or to his chambers as both a new concubine and a bargaining chip. He wasn't directly familiar with the Jiangs, aside from the occasions he would see them fly overhead in Yunping, but the people of Yunmeng all knew of Maiden Jiang's kindness to the smallfolk no matter what their position in life was, as much as they knew of the silly exploits of her brothers.

This was the reason why he had donned a mask and snuck down into the dungeons after slipping a sleeping draught to the celebrating Wens. They were drunk enough that nothing would really wake them in any case and slipping it in was easy enough. If he could get her out and into the hands of Lan Xichen, she would be safe from harm. Who knows perhaps it would win him a little bit of favour with Madame Jin who was her mother's sworn sister. He had to take whatever favour he could with the Jins to gain acceptance. The danger was of his master finding out but that loomed overhead always.

He took several deep breaths to calm his nerves and snuck into the dungeons, after tranquilizing the guards, he peeked into the cage.

"Maiden Jiang? Are you awake? It is time to go." he whispered, his golden eyes glinting in the low light.

Edited 2021-10-26 01:31 (UTC)

Jiang Yanli is awake if a little groggy. She's always been a heavy sleeper, even if getting her to rest can take a bit of effort. The shock and turmoil of the past few months have taken their toll on her. On top of that, she's been pushing herself hard with the housework in her safe house to keep herself busy instead of worrying constantly about the state of her brothers. It was only a matter of time before it all started to catch up with her.

In the end, there'd been a glimmer of sunshine through the grimdark clouds on her horizon in the form of news that Jiang Cheng was alive and fighting on the front lines. Without hesitation, she'd arranged for an escort to meet him in a recently secured location, eager and determined to see one of her precious family again, at least. However, it had turned out not to be nearly as safe as everyone had hoped for. The retinue of rebels escorting her to her reunion with Jiang Cheng had been ambushed and slain, leaving her alone in enemy hands to survive through her wits and charm that failed to ensnare the heart of her own betrothed.

Not that the strain of any of these experiences actually shows on Jiang Yanli's placid face as she rubs her eyes sleepily, sitting up on the hard floor that's served as her bed since her capture. She gazes out rather thoughtfully at the masked man, considering his words. If he was here to kill her, he could have easily entered her cell and done so while she'd been asleep. That he hasn't made her a little more inclined to hear him out.

She gets up and quietly approaches the door of her cell, leaning in close to the gap between the bars.

"Is this a rescue? What's the plan?" she asks, her voice a calm murmur.

It's not the first time she's placed her fate in the hands of strangers. She's starting to get used to it.

"It is indeed, but we do not have too much time. People will bound to notice we're missing if we do not hurry." his voice was calm. He had sent out a missive to Lan Xichen already but the rendezvous point was on the edge of Qishan territory.

"We are going to sneak out a side entrance, We should get you changed into servants' wear and we are going to meet up with my contact on the other side. You will be safe with him and he will get you to your brother. That is the plan for now. I can adjust as we go if things happen." it was how Meng Yao moved so far and he has been in more than one situation where he was almost caught. He slipped the key he had stolen from the guards and slipped it into the lock, turning it and opening the cell door.

He handed her a bundle of clothing. "I'll go return this to the guard I put to sleep, please get changed and put your clothes inside. The purple will be far too noticeable."

She'd been hailed as a warrior that saved all of China. And, for the longest time, she simply wished to travel along the countryside after being home for a short while.

She'd come across Jinlintai, understood that it was home to a powerful cultivator family, and had been welcomed in. Though, not without being well aware of how Jin Guangshan's eyes roamed over the famous Fa Mulan.

To distract herself and to keep herself from taking her sword to his injustice, Mulan settled herself with talking with the other members of the Jin Sect, including getting to know one Jiang Yanli, who was promised to the young master Jin. She was bright, sweet, many things that reminded Mulan of the other girls in her village. Her kindness and genuine heart shone through the finery that the Jin had draped her in.

And yet...there was something about her eyes. The sadness that laid deep within her that struck a chord. How can she ignore one's duty to one's heart? An arranged marriage where it's very clear that the young master Jin...well. He wasn't like his father yet it seemed clear that his interests were elsewhere.

When night fell and the entire tower fell to sleep besides the night guards, Fa Mulan disappeared. Fa Ping stealthily moved in between the rooms until she reached Jiang Yanli. She can't just let her live here, be taken and let that sweet light within be snuffed out by the people Mulan had encountered here.

Her movements were silent as she landed on her feet and made her way over toward where the young woman was.

In her more pensive moments, Jiang Yanli has reservations about this match.

She's a practical, reasonable woman. Of course, she is. No daughter of Yu Ziyuan would be so sheltered from the political realities of her lot in life. She's been groomed to be Jin Zixuan's bride since she was a child. For her, there was no other path for her to explore, not when their mothers so fervently wished for their children to be united in such a way. She'd never complained about the fate planned out before her, simply seeing it as a daughter's duty and embracing it utterly. As a little girl, she'd made soup for her betrothed and done all that she could to sway his heart in the years since so that they both might be happy, only to be rebuffed again and again.

Jiang Yanli consoled herself with the knowledge that as the wife of a future sect leader, her status and future would be secure and that her children would grow up comfortable, educated, and as long as she drew breath, very deeply loved. But it didn't take away the sorrow that her dreams of being cherished and held close by someone until her twilight years wouldn't come to pass.

She's drinking tea, lost deep in thought, when her new friend arrives through her window. She turns, lips parted in surprise, and just stares a moment before breaking into a slightly nervous smile.

"Good evening. Would you like some tea?"

Looking back on this decision, she should have slipped through as herself yet it would be strange for a woman to wander on her own at such a late hour, no matter who she was. Stranger still for a young man to enter an unmarried woman's chambers. She'd fooled her commanding officer and her comrades; it shouldn't surprise her that she'd fool Yanli as well. The nervous smile reminds her of this and she reaches up to take down her bun for just a moment.

"It's me; Fa Mulan," she replies quietly before bowing quickly. She keeps her distance just in case Yanli still feels nervous.

No guards were posted by her room but there were a few that wandered around the entire compound during the night watch. She peers outside of the window she'd just entered from to double check.

"I can't just sit aside and watch you go through with this marriage." Her lips twist in distaste as she looks at her. "Is this truly what your heart wants?"

She'd heard it from Anna during one of their game nights. Matters from far away that affected the merchants that traded with Arendelle and had made the new queen bristle at the very idea of a young widow left alone with a baby and how horrifically her husband had been murdered.

Anna's voice was quiet when she relayed that the people had thought that Jiang Yanli's former sect brother was a monster. A meaningful look passed between the sisters and Elsa made up her mind. She was going to go help this Jiang Yanli.

By the time she had arrived, she heard of people talking about a battle at a place called Nightless City. A flash of purple and white ran past her and Elsa gasped, knowing that it was Jiang Yanli. She quickly followed her, surprised and shocked that she would run straight into a battlefield.

"Yanli!" she called out.

But she already was running after the brother that Anna had talked about. A man in purple had yelled at both of them, reached for his sister. Elsa's eyes saw the blade before any of the trio did. It was aimed at whomever Wei Wuxian was.

Yanli had pulled the man out of the way, intending to take the blade.

Elsa moved before she thought about her action. Ice shooting out of her hand and knocking the blade out of the way.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Clip your wings

Nico Acosta | OC | OTA

Evie Montgomery | OC | OTA

Leonard L. Church | Red vs. Blue

Astrid Beck | CritRole C2 | OTA

Ash Lynx | Banana Fish | OTA

Yoo Se-rin | The Way to Confess

Gu Sui | The Best Actor is a Fox Spirit | OTA

no subject

Xie Wang | Word of Honor | OTA

Shin + Dorohedoro

Rapunzel | Tangled | f/m

Sansa Stark | GOT/ASOIAF | f/m

alexiel | angel sanctuary

Éowyn | Lord of the Rings | OTA

for perforo

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

nathan | original character

Jiang Yanli | Mo Dao Zu Shi (Novel/Donghua/Modern AU)

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject