Work Text:
In the first few weeks of Vernon’s capture, Iorveth sleeps curled around him, preventing his Scoia’tael from slitting his throat. It is not that Iorveth’s authority is questioned, only that placing a bloody steak before any wolf has a predictable outcome. There are no philosophies or explanations that can erase what Vernon Roche has done to their kind, and Iorveth sleeps beside him each night, knowing he might kill Vernon come morning.
In complete honesty, it is impossible to guess what Vernon will do once he wakes. Will he bathe the whole camp in blood before Iorveth can loose an arrow? Or will he blink in confusion, unsuspecting, before Iorveth can tie him to a pole?
Their encounters in the past were always quick and deadly. Both moving through the forest with ease, accustomed to each other’s presence and fueled by the danger they posed to one another.
Volatile and passionate, whenever he clashed with Roche.
There was no one else like Vernon Roche, because there was no one else like Iorveth.
Both hurt the other time and time again. Adding a new scar, a new memory, a new strategy to the other, but even that was fleeting, and there was nothing that bound them together.
Iorveth knew his time with Vernon would always be fleeting, as he watched his people, smoke drifting slowly from the pipe in his calloused hand. He reached out to fix Vernon’s hair. Vernon was a bundle tied beside him, slumped against his leg, while Iorveth sat contemplating.
If Vernon Roche was an elf Iorveth would have loved him.
That truth had settled in.
But Roche was human, and so he would die.
Not today, not while he slept, unmoving—but soon.
Once he woke, Iorveth would kill him, gently, considerately. That was all Vernon was going to get from his tender heart.