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There is a strange kind of peace in control.
At first, they’d fought against it. With words, with finely strung magic seething from their tongue, from strums of string turned fierce from gentle. When it had happened the first time, when they’d been sealed by their own coven mark (imagine that, the very thing intended to give them power, rendering them powerless, useless) they’d sworn it wouldn’t happen again.
Then it had almost happened with Terra. Almost. They’d tricked her, sipped at her tea and sung a tuneless whistle, and they’d been fine. They’d remained free.
Except - not really.
Because whilst they were free in the technical sense of the term, they weren’t. They were still trapped by Terra’s whims, still forced to do what she asked. Aware of their imprisonment, but being forced to bide their time and wait it out. Forced to lie to the one they care about the most, to pretend, to act as though she was an enemy.
And then it happened with The Collector. Much of that is a blur. They’d been trapped in some kind of hazy half-sleep, just about aware, but not aware enough. They’d tried to fight it at the beginning. But after weeks, and weeks, they became lethargic. The task seemed impossible.
And then it happened with Belos. And they’d been aware of that. They’d felt that down to their very bones.
There is a strange kind of peace in control; as much as they loathe to admit it. They have never been one to follow orders to the letter, never been one to allow others to make their decisions, but - there is a quiet calm in giving in.
They dislike that side of themselves. The side that allows acceptance of control, the side that longs for a voice to speak louder than the others.
They take a slow sip of their apple blood. They don’t want to think about this. Not the different ways they’ve been controlled. Not the fact they’d allowed it to happen again, and again, and again, time after time. They think that perhaps they had been driven to weariness by the third time, forced to be quietly compliant by the last.
They hate the fact that Belos snapped the fight in them.
Raine drains their mug of apple blood. They contemplate, briefly, filling another mug, but decide against it. They don’t want to rely on distractions. They can’t have distractions. They are supposed to help build a new world. There are things to do, decisions to make. There is something rising out of the ashes of their twisted, fragmented society, but those flames need to be shaped.
“Raine?”
They glance up. It’s Eda. She’s softened by the glow of the moonlight, hair made almost silver by the sheen of it as it spills through the window.
“Yeah?” They answer. Eda steps closer to them, presses a gentle kiss to their brow. That makes them pause. Makes the pounding contemplation of - everything - swirling in their mind stop for a moment. They are increasingly thankful that they have this now, that Eda’s back by their side after everything. That they both made it out the other side. They didn’t think that would ever happen. Back in the old days, back when they were in the Coven, they’d always thought it would have had to be either them or Eda. One or the other. (They would have given their own life, if they could. The problem would be Eda trying to do the same.)
“What are you still doing up?” she asks, picking up the cluttered mugs and glasses from the table. They bite their lip. They don’t think that Eda would understand, not fully.
They know that the Owl Beast seizes her in a hold that she can hardly see clearly through. Eda has confessed before the lack of control that she feels whenever it overcomes her, how she can barely make out herself among the chaos.
But they don’t think they would understand. Not the feeling of being bound by your own coven mark. Not being forced to lie to stay safe, stay alive. Not the blurry jig of being The Collector’s puppet.
Not Belos. She wouldn’t understand Belos. Very few would.
Belos, Raine thinks, is the one that haunts them the most. Belos was all-consuming. Belos was utterly unhinged, a mere spectacle of a man, nothing but a shadow. He hadn’t cared about the body he was haunting, hadn’t cared about Raine until they’d almost outlived their usefulness.
Raine had felt it the whole time. Been aware of every twitch of their finger and creak of their bones. They had been wide awake; just powerless to fight it off.
They could have tried. They knew they could have. But they hadn’t.
(Weak. That’s what they were. Weak.)
“Raine?” Eda says, and Raine suddenly realises that they hadn’t answered her question.
They swallow. “Oh, you know. Just… can’t get to sleep.”
Eda sighs. Pulls up a chair, sits on it, tucked right next to Raine. “Why?”
Raine doesn’t want to lie. But they don’t exactly want to tell the truth, either. The truth is shameful. There is no weakness in being caught up in traumas of the past. But they still feel ashamed to talk about it. Especially since their thoughts on what happened are still so complicated. It’s difficult to talk to Eda about. Difficult to talk about at all.
So they swallow. Bite their tongue. “Thinking,” they murmur, and it’s not an explanation. Eda raises a brow, and they hurry to continue with what they were saying. “I… about Belos.”
Something in Eda’s gaze darkens. Nobody likes talking about Belos. He’s become nothing more than a memory, a story told to scare unruly children, but his name still feels like a curse. She hums thoughtfully. “What about him?” She says, and taps her nails against the wood of the table. Raine’s gaze flickers upwards at the sound. “There’s not much use worrying about him, Raine. He’s dead and gone now.”
“I know that,” Raine says, perhaps a little harsher than they would have liked to say it, “I know. I still… I still worry. You know that.”
“I do,” Eda agrees, “And I get it. I think about him too, sometimes. When the kids are in bed. And I just get so angry, because he nearly ruined everything . And he hurt them, too.” A feather falls from her hair. They catch it, and clasp it tightly in their hand.
(They keep most of them. Press them until they’re flat and preserved, tape them into a scrapbook.)
They get Eda’s rage. They feel the same - they feel that spike of pure anger whenever Hunter flinches when somebody touches him unexpectedly, on how Luz double-and-triple checks herself before trusting somebody.
But that isn’t what’s playing in their mind. They feel angry, yes. But most of all, they feel violated. The Collector took their autonomy away from them, Belos made their body into a living weapon.
“He did,” they agree softly. But they had hurt Eda’s kids, too, even if they’d been nothing but a mockery of themself whilst doing it. And they wonder, briefly, if Eda holds that against them. “But he’s gone.”
“He’s gone,” Eda nods, and when she smiles, it nearly lights up the room. “Good riddance.”
He’s gone. The Boiling Isle is as peaceful as it gets, now. The inhabitants of the isle no longer live in fear. Wild magic is something to rejoice, not something to restrain.
But Belos’ shadow still lingers.
“I just,” they murmur. Their voice is soft, they’re already unsure on what they’re going to say. How much they’re willing to admit about how the dead emperor has been troubling their dreams. “He’s not. Fully gone. I don’t think. Sometimes I think I can still hear him.”
Which is something they’ve never admitted out loud. Belos is undoubtedly dead, they saw his body, they watched him fall. But the memory of him occupying their body, of the way he’d set up inhabitance of their mind and bones and very being - it lingers. They feel the way he’d settled in the furrows of their spine like a mouse in a crack in the floorboards. They wake up every morning feeling watched. Not from the outside, but from the inside.
“Well, he’s dead,” Eda says. She touches their elbow though, a tracing reassuring touch. She’s always been one to put things bluntly, to take things as black and white. She understands how a memory haunts. But not in the way Raine sees it. “He’s dead, and he’s gone. From here, and from in here.” She raises her hand, places it gently over Raine’s heart. Raine blinks softly at her, and all they can really think is Titan, they love this woman.
They smile back at her. It doesn’t last for very long. They sigh, swallow, and realise that maybe they should confess what’s been eating them up inside.
“I know he’s dead.” They say. They wonder if Eda will think them crazy. They doubt it - she never has. “I just. I don’t feel like myself sometimes. It - not just because of Belos. Because of what The Collector did, and because of…what happened with Terra, and just - all of it.”
Eda blinks at them. “So when you said you still hear Belos, you mean-”
“When he was in my head. Yeah.” They shrug, agitated, frustrated. “I know. It’s stupid. I know he’s not really still there. I would know, it was -” they cut themself off. They hadn’t told Eda what it was like, not really. Not about the quiet kind of calm that overtook them after they stopped fighting to free themself. Not about how hopeless and utterly trapped they’d felt. Not about how they’d been conscious, how they’d felt the blood of their friends trickle down their hands. “It wasn’t good.” They finish lamely.
“I can imagine,” Eda says, “I want to say I get it. Because I think I get some of it. It’s like me and the Owl Beast. But - there’s no coexisting with Belos, I guess.”
“No,” Raine agrees, “He was all - it was draining.” They bear the scars of what happened. Thin jagged ones running down their face like tears. Thick brutal ones skimming around their arms. Where Belos had started to eat their body whole once he was done with them, once he was ready to move onto a new host. Parasite.
“I think you should talk to someone.” Eda says, sudden.
Raine glances up. Raises a brow. “Isn’t that what I’m doing?” They say, and they’re relieved at the slight teasing note in their voice. They keep thinking they’re losing that. Their sense of humour. Their sense of light, of life.
“Yes, but…” she sighs, “Look. Raine, I … I get some of it. But not all of it. Not Belos, not the puppet bullshit.” She glances up. “Have you spoken to somebody else who was - who The Collector cursed?”
Raine shrugs. They have. Darius in the most detail - they’d been propped next to each other, after all - and Eberwolf. Some of the others in passing. Darius had never been particularly forthcoming as he’d spoken about it, Raine got the feeling he didn’t want to remember. They didn’t either, but they think Darius took the curse much more personally.
“Kind of,” they say, “I… it’s awkward to talk about. Most people want to forget.”
“Wanting to forget doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t want to talk,” Eda points out, and then her eyes narrow, “You could talk to Hunter. About the Belos stuff.”
“He wouldn’t want to.” Raine says, straight away.
They don’t really want to drag Hunter into whatever is going through their mind at the moment. It’s fine with Eda. Eda has made it clear that she’ll listen to Raine talk until the end of time. But Hunter is different. Whilst they’re closer now - certainly fair closer than they had ever been in the Emperor’s Coven - it’s still awkward. And Raine doesn’t want to bring up Belos. They know exactly what Belos did. To Hunter. To his friends. It’ll be cruel, they think, to try and talk to him.
“I think it’ll help the both of you,” Eda says, “There’s a very limited number of people who’ve… you know. Had that happen.”
Raine nods at that. It’s true. Very, very few had Belos imprint himself upon them, and lived to tell the tale. “Maybe I’ll try,” they say, “I don’t want to scare him off, though. Poor kid’s been through enough already.”
“I’ll ask Luz to talk to him.” She says. “Just- Raine?”
“Yeah?”
“If you don’t talk to him - you can talk to me, you know that? I’m-” Eda chews briefly on the inside of her cheek. Raine knows she’s always found stuff like this tricky - being emotionally open. Letting people in. “I’m here for you.”
“I know,” they murmur, because they do, “I will. If I have to.”
Eda smiles, and presses a hummingbird-light kiss to their cheek. “Thank you,” she says. She doesn’t add anything after that, no term of endearment. They’ve always been an actions-rather-than-words couple. “Now… will you please come to bed? I’m surprised the sun isn’t up yet.”
Raine chuckles. “If you insist on it.” They say, and head up the stairs leaning against Eda, feeling lighter than they have in weeks.
Belos still hangs over them like a cloud, there’s no doubt about that - but they feel hopeful that perhaps that cloud may clear. That maybe one day, they’ll find less peace in that control, that they’ll cease to yearn for the quiet it provided.
They aren’t a quiet person, afterall. They are made of birdsong and delicate fingers against string and they refuse to give into silence.