Work Text:
Kaine Ferron thought he knew anger intimately.
Anger at Morrough, at the Undying, at the Eternal Flame, at himself, at her. Anger and the need for revenge had been his driving force since his mother had died. His constant failures in the last fourteen months were a whiplash to his very being-Unfailing- an inferno of mounting fury that kept burning him from the inside.
But since she had been found, his worst fears being realized-
I love you, I love you, I love you
- with her as living, breathing proof to his incompetence, his anger had solidified into another talisman of sorts that pulsed violently like a second heart, every beat a seething, unrelenting whisper, you failed her, you failed her, you failed her.
The incessant buzz of Aurelia’s voice, always complaining, served as an added fuel to his rage. This time was no exception.
Still, none of it, no emotion marred the lines of his face as he glanced up from the newspaper that he was ostensibly reading. Years of war, spying and his masters had honed his mask to perfection. He looked at her, his eyes cold, and with his voice like ice said, “The High Necromancer demanded it. You will do exactly as you have been instructed. I will hear no more of it.”
She looked away, those lips finally pressing into a thin line before walking out of the drawing room. He placed the newspaper on the side table and adjusted his cuffs. His eyes fell to his ring.
Hers. It was hers.
Had she felt his summons in the dark? Had she been as angry, as unforgiving at his broken promise? He closed his eyes for a moment and wondered what was worse- living in the unending torment of not knowing whether she was alive or dead or having her right here, in Morrough’s clutches. Was that gnawing hunger, that starvation better than this chilling terror?
Perhaps he should have felt relief at the mystery that her lost memories held- and he had. When Shiseo had told him that they were about to vivisect her brain- dead, she would have been dead- Shiseo’s presence in that moment and his lies had offered immeasurable relief. But now, all he could feel again was anger.
His resonance picked up the arrival of the motorcar and he made himself ready.
Had they found any trace of him in her memories he would have been caught in a vicious cycle of torment and death. So, no. There was nothing of him in her mind. Nothing that mattered anyway. If she had any memory of him, it would be of their Institute days.
She was closer now.
He wanted eyes everywhere.
He wanted to trace her every step, catalogue her every breath, search every piece of her with his resonance for everything she had suffered. He wanted to run his fingers through her hair- soft, it was so soft- and kiss every inch of her skin. He wanted to scream and shout at her for leaving that cursed room and breaking yet another one of her promises.
Above all though, he wanted not to fail again. This was without question his last chance to keep his promise. He felt the elements of the array sing on his back. He would not fail. He could not.
So he pushed down all his wants viciously, buried Kaine and let the High Reeve take his place. He stood and walked slowly to the windows, staring out as if her arrival was inconsequential and not earth shattering.
He felt her steps on the iron running through the house and willed his heart to a steady beat. He saw her through the eyes of others and thought very deliberately of the countless times she had broken her promises.
When he could finally feel her eyes searing into him he turned, mindful of his audience, both present and absent, and looked at her. The surprise was obvious on her face-her emotions always had been. She was not expecting someone like him. He watched her as she was taking in all the ways in which he had changed from the boy she used to know. All the ways in which she had changed him. He wanted to stare back unabashedly.
“--I believe you knew each other at the Alchemy Institute,” Stroud was speaking and he momentarily entertained the thought of tearing her tongue out. He refrained.
"Hardly," he replied and made himself turn away. The effort it took to tear his eyes from her was inhuman.
As Stroud listed all of Helena's weaknesses he thought of the havoc she had wreaked that night; how she had single handedly delivered perhaps the hardest blow on the Undying entirely on her own and if he hadn't been so cursedly furious he would have felt incredibly proud. But anger was all that was left to him.
So, no. He was absolutely certain that she would not be manageable at all. She never had been.
Stroud started explaining his assignment as if it hadn't already been drilled into him. As if all the ways in which he was going to hurt her again had not been circulating his mind relentlessly. He allowed his gaze to return to her before turning back to Stroud, his reactions delivered perfectly timed.
But then Aurelia started talking again, that unending whine, when all he wanted was to hear her voice. He had worn it thin in his mind. Torturing himself by replaying those words again and again-
I love you I love you I love you
-even if she had never uttered them out loud.
"Shut up Aurelia," he said simply and went on with the logistics- talking about clothes of all the asinine things. Amaris’ howl pierced the air, joining in his misery, while he kept droning on and on.
And then, instead of just leaving, Stroud was speaking again and those words-
She's all yours
Yes, yes she is. He wanted to shout it. To unspool the very existence of anyone who had touched her and made her suffer.
Mine, mine, mine.
He would take care of her-just as he had promised her. He only had to do this one last thing.
Pretend.
Pretend that she was nothing. Pretend that he was her enemy again. Hurt her again and again until he could send her away to safety.
To keep his promise.
Stroud interrupted his possessive streak when she asked him to examine her. Oh, he wanted inside her head. He wanted to know in detail what had happened from the moment she had woken up. He wanted to know who he would eventually kill.
If anyone touches you, immortal or not, I will kill them, he had promised.
And he wanted to see first hand where her memories ended. Exactly what was missing. But it all meant hurting her. Again. It was what he was best at, wasn't it?
He walked to her, and he could see the fear on her face, how she wanted the distance between them, so he held her still, his resonance slipping under her skin. As the space between them lessened this manic excitement seized him. He would touch her. He took off one of his gloves slowly and brought his finger up to her temple, barely touching her, for anything more was unbearable in this moment.
He ran through her memories impatiently, a different sort of hunger gripping him as he saw bits of Stroud's interrogation and Morrough’s animancy, and then went further back desperate for any clue of what had happened. But there was nothing. Had it been her doing? Someone else's? His head throbbed with the unanswered questions.
He pulled back his resonance but his touch lingered, if only for a moment.
“Extraordinary, isn't it?” Stroud said, somewhere behind him.
Yes. She always had been, despite how others constantly strove to lessen her, even now.
"Quite," he said, looking at her with an intensity he couldn't mitigate. The shape and colour of her eyes, her bow of her upper lip. He was desperate to hear her voice.
"The war is over,” he said. “What is it you think you’re protecting in that brain of yours?"
It was a simple question really. Given her memory loss, the thought that took shape on her features was hardly unexpected. Holdfast. Calculating though he was, this had been a terrible miscalculation. He was not prepared for his own reaction. Jealousy ripped through him-a bolt down his spine, blistering in its intensity. It was irrational. He knew the truth. It was him that she had been trying to protect that night. It was his life that she was trying to save when she condemned herself.
I love you I love you I love you
He knew that. But jealousy still spread inside him- a different kind of poison along with his ever constant anger.
What had Holdfast ever done to deserve such devotion from her?
He turned away from her, furious, and looked at Stroud. It was high time this particular charade came to an end. He said all the things that were expected of him exactly as he would have for any prisoner of interest. Then he turned to his captive.
"Aurelia will show you to your rooms" he told her, detached, indifferent and walked away, terrified that were he to stay any longer he would betray something. So he left, his mind and his emotions a maelstrom.
He would have to do better. No one could know. No one could ever suspect.
Not until she was safe.
Not until it was, finally, too late for him.
He kept away, keeping himself busy with trivialities, while part of him was focused on that room. He knew exactly what she was doing. Always so fucking eager to give her life away for them. The one thing that mattered to him was always treated as less than an afterthought by her. He would keep her alive despite her best efforts one last time.
That night he sat at his desk, consumed by her presence.
Not lost, not dead but here. Here, in this house, where he had once stubbornly kept her alive. Here, so close, with no memories of him and all that they had lived through. The anger, the pain, the lashings, the rescues, the confessions- and in the midst of all that, the most impossible blossom, love. She may never have told him but she had made sure that he would know.
I love you I love you I love you
But he? He had never told her. Not in the way that he should have. Not in the way that she deserved.
He had never told her that he was hers despairingly more than she was ever his.
What had love done for them? Nothing but tear them apart. Perhaps it was better this way. Her love had complicated, almost ruined everything. It was infinitely better that she did not remember. Everything would be so much simpler for him now that these stark lines had been drawn between them.
He was a murderer, a monster, her enemy.
And this time it was so much worse than the first. He was not here to help her precious Holdfasts. He was here so that he could extract valuable information in order to hurt whoever she hoped had remained alive. If she did not hate him already, she would soon enough.
He was her prison, her jailer, her tormentor.
What was it that he had told her in another life?
Yes, something about her being his new set of manacles. Irony had always found its way between them far too often for comfort.
Nothing but a vicious cycle for the two of them.
This time though would be the last. He would not fail again, no matter the cost.