Chapter Text
Mandragora didn’t believe it when they told her they’d captured Horn.
She was looking right at her and she still didn’t believe it.
The particulars were unimportant. She got the story on the way: of the underhanded tricks they’d had to leverage her with: something involving some hapless innocent that had been at the wrong place at the wrong time, and they were standing too close for the range of her weapon, and too far to close the distance. Horn was Horn, but even she couldn’t pull a rabbit out of a hat. So like a good martyr she played along. She probably thought-and would be correct in doing so-that she’d be the most suited to torture.
It kind of pissed her off that she’d never again have the satisfaction of bringing her in herself.
Because there was no way was she going to let her go now.
She’s looking at Horn. Bound tightly to a chair, ankles in shackles, her whole body drenched in the scent of rust and battle. A cut dripped the kind of dark, wine red you could only get from a head wound from her hairline over an eye, the color shaming even the most ludicrously expensive imports favored by those bastard nobles -
Her eyes are the only light in the room, gleaming with focus even as she bleeds, meeting Mandragora’s, and all of a sudden they’re right there on that dark Londinium street again in the middle of the night. Horn with her wounded and infirm, Mandragora with her own.
Neither of them able to move a fucking inch.
“Leave us.” Mandragora snarls. No one moves. “Fucking- LEAVE US! ” She barks, and they all nearly jump out of their skin and file out the door.
Why don’t they listen the first time? No one has ever listened to her the first time, not once in her life.
Because no one cares when she speaks. Not really.
They’re alone, and they haven’t looked away from one another since the start.
She keeps her breath on an even keel as she approaches, but even that much is a herculean effort.
“Couldn’t keep away? You let yourself get caught? You must’ve hit your head a little too hard on the way down last time.” Her hand brushes along Horn’s throat-
-God, she could just strangle her, couldn’t she? The thought is nauseatingly intoxicating, stirs something inside her she’d long thought gone.
Her fingers curl to cup her face from beneath her chin.
Horn’s gaze is wary, but steel.
“In other words, you didn’t expect much out of your team.”
Mandragora’s lips curl venomously. “Better than expecting too much.” She drives the point home, leaning forward; “And losing someone along the way.”
Horn spits into her face.
She’s cold as it slides down her cheek. By the time it’s breached the corner of her lips, she’s lost to herself. She doesn’t care what happens next. Her stones sing to her, wailing with agony.
She just has to slam her knuckles into her gut and wrap her fingers around her throat-both hands-right as she gasps with pain. She has to bend her neck back over the chair and throttle this self-righteous bitch, and she has to do it right now.
So she does.
She strangles a cough out of Horn as she struggles, and it sprays red down her chin and drips down her chest with a ravaged wheeze. Mandragora shakes her like a ragdoll.
She wants Horn to piss herself as she dies. She wants to savor the slow dimming of the light in her eyes.
She’s never felt anything so close to euphoria in her life.
She doesn’t want it to end.
She doesn’t want Horn to die yet.
But the idea of tormenting her and pushing her body to its absolute limits, knowing she’s strong enough to survive if she chooses to let her-
Mandragora can’t get it out of her head.
Sliding one hand up from her throat, she leaves the other anchored by the thumb into her clavicle as she prises her fingers through her gasping mouth, sending her fingers all the way back before Horn can even think about biting.
Maybe she’ll make her choke on her own puke.
Horn gags and her whole body undulates, but nothing comes up. Mandragora stretches her fingers, presses back again, with the same result. The wet sound coming from her throat is obscene.
Last time she’d captured Horn, she didn’t harm a hair on her head. She’d shown her mercy and she’d disappeared. Horn could have stayed. Horn could have lived on, here, and not thrown her life away.
She won’t let anyone else be the one to take it.
Restraining herself hadn’t worked, so she’d restrain Horn instead.
Where she expects-maybe even hopes for-Horn to fight back, to bite down, her lips only spread into a snarl, exposing the sharpest of her canines.
Beautiful , Mandragora catches herself thinking.
She’s so shocked at herself that she withdraws her hand completely. Horn coughs and Mandragora’s eyes fall to her heaving chest. Distantly she feels that sensation again, that awakening of something , that godforsaken hiccup in her otherwise mostly-asexual existence.
Promptly terminating the thought, she turns and leaves without a word further.
…
Pathetic , Mandragora thinks to herself, fucking pathetic .
She shudders open-mouthed into her sheets, legs and body writhing, her hand moving furiously between her legs.
I hate her. I hate her. I hate her, so, fucking much-
-this is the only thing that bitch is good for.
“- Fuck ,” She pants, heat prickling behind her eyes, “-oh, fuck -”
She comes harder than she ever has before and hates Horn a little more for it.
…
“I was up all night thinking of how to pay you back.”
“Were you now.”
Instead of responding, Mandragora frames her throat in a hand, caging her jugular.
“Tilt your head back. Open your mouth.”
She’s shocked when Horn obeys her. But Horn probably knows what’s coming, and has likely inferred-correctly-that if she doesn’t, Mandragora will just put something in it to make her.
She doesn’t understand why her heart is in her throat as she continues.
“Stick out your tongue. All the way.”
Horn does it. Instantly, Mandragora feels herself aching all the way down to her cunt at the sight. She leans forward, lets her saliva collect at the tip of her own tongue, and lets it flow slowly down over Horn’s where it trickles down her throat. One salient connection between them, unbroken until Mandragora viciously spits the rest of it inside. Return to sender. Their lips brush and Mandragora convinces herself it was an accident.
…
That night when she masturbates to Horn it’s different. More details. More imaginative. Texture, taste, sensation; she pictures it all.
One hand inside her worn, threadbare tank top, her flesh spilling between her fingers. The other between Horn’s legs, stroking through, then beneath her sopping wet underwear, sinking fingers into her tight, drenched cunt. Horn’s body moving, grimacing and unable to suppress her voice, begrudgingly giving up every moan as she arches back towards Mandragora.
She pictures taunting her, ruining her, taking her hand away from the heat she’d built between her legs right when she’s about to finish, just to drag her tank top up and let her tits spill out of it on display. She’s seen firsthand, from the cold camp winds, that Horn isn’t wearing a brassiere.
So easy. She’d be so easy. There couldn’t be a faster way to tear down her spirit. She wants to hurt her and make her cry and finally feel a fraction of the pain and hopelessness she feels every fucking day. She wants to rub her face into the ground until her hope and virtue are smothered, dirty, useless to her.
What luxury it was. To hope.
Her thoughts have drifted too much. She can’t even finish herself off this time. The mess between her legs cools unpleasantly. Whatever pleasure she’d been chasing she now hadn’t the mood for. Worse yet that there was no satisfaction in her decision, only an empty lack of anything in the face of knowing she could if she wanted to, but feeling like she’s wasted enough time already.
Two minutes pass by. Two minutes where she’s just thinking of Horn and her body. Nondescript fantasies so juvenile she’s embarrassed even to be alone with them.
I’ll do something about it tomorrow.
(She knows she won’t. Would never, could never, no matter how debased she finds herself wanting. But fuck if she needs sleep tonight, and whether imagined or real, revenge is the only panacea.)
…
She tries to keep busy around the camp.
“Why the bloody fucking hell are the rations stored so close to the live wire we haven’t fixed yet? Sure, let’s torch it. Let’s get this far just to light our own shit on fire and starve.”
“Speaking of that-do I really need to ask? FIX IT.”
“If you have time to piss in the breeze, can’t you recalibrate the topography equipment?”
She’s so frustrated and so tired she could cry. She knows everyone’s on edge. Everyone aches with some bitter, bone-deep pain, compounded by the psychological deterioration of knowing that leaning on each other is just wearing them down faster.
For not the first time, she feels completely out of her depth. She’s been running on fumes, taking on the brunt of the impetus to get anything done. She’s the one that thinks ahead, that sees future consequences, and can’t even manage everything on her own.
She fucking misses Harmonie. Bitch.
Someone to share the load. Someone to keep her from imagining how she only felt this way when she’d been buried alive, when she was just desperate and just angry enough to pull herself through the decay and the filth to puke her guts out and curl up in a gutter, shivering with cold, until she could drag herself to the next place, and then the next.
Every breath of air she gets now is a luxury. She has to remind herself of this.
But she’s still angry. She’s still hurting. It’s still far less than she deserves…!
She can’t reconcile the injustices she’s experienced and the hard-fought second chance and third chance and fourth chance she’s taken with her own hands all by herself anymore. She knows she has to keep going, but there’s no voice beside her, not anymore, not that of an equal, of a partner, to share in the horror of it all.
Mandragora is barely awake on her feet as she trudges to Horn’s cell, when that dangerous thought breaches her worn psyche once again.
Horn could do it right. Horn wouldn’t need to be asked. All the emotional labor, housekeeping, morale, upkeep-she’d do it by instinct alone. If only…
Even imagining it is enough to comfort her. And that comfort…lingers, even long after it shouldn’t, even after she remembers again that what she has imagined is not so.
She remembers, but she doesn’t stop imagining it. Shoulder to shoulder with someone so competent. How dearly, how terribly, she finds herself wanting.
Mandragora walks in without preamble. Some last vestige of survival spurs her forward, to forget these flights of fantastical illusions, to see the state that Horn is in so she can put to rest these thoughts once and for all.
But all she sees makes her want more. The state of her body is far from ruined, though she finally wears the appearance of someone ravaged by war in a way that can scratch the surface of what will satisfy Mandragora.
“Are you awake?” Mandragora brushes hair from the front of Horn’s shoulder in a manner too gentle to pass as a taunt. No response. “How nice, to sleep so soundly.”
Horn has to be weak with hunger, if nothing else. Mandragora could wake her, but she almost feels better letting her have a reprieve, knowing that she could take it away as soon as she wants.
Maybe it’s just as much of a rest for Mandragora as it is for Horn.
The wave of fatigue she’s been fighting all morning hits her full force, here. She sinks to her knees and lays her head on the outside of Horn’s thigh. The skin that spills through her ripped shorts is warm. She can’t keep her eyes open anymore.
And for a moment she’s okay with the thought that Horn could wake up and crush her head between her legs like a grape before she ever opens her eyes again. She gets to imagine that there’s some form of consent, or symbiosis here. That they’re both tired and they both need rest so badly they’d do anything for it.
It’s not like she’s doing this out of the goodness of her heart, right? Right. Because there’s no greater mindfuck than having to provide comfort to your enemy.
…Enemies, Mandragora repeats in her head, before sleep takes her.
…
“Do you sleep on the lap of every prisoner you take? Or just of mine?”
With vague disappointment, Mandragora realizes that Horn has opted not to kill her.
The consequences of her actions are closing in on her. She doesn’t have to explain, but she’d really rather not.
Why the fuck did I do this.
“That…can’t be comfortable.”
“Better than nothing.”
She can’t stop herself from talking. She’s missed this too much. The exchange between two individuals that have nothing left to do, if only for a moment. Mandragora turns to face the ceiling (to face Horn), stays laid across her lap.
“Fair. But I think your options are more than ‘nothing’ in the first place.” A pause. “You need this that badly?”
Her words get stuck in her throat on the way out.
“Maybe I do.” That’s what she wants to say.
Instead, what comes out is how she actually feels.
“I think I might love you.”
A beat of silence between them. It is not enough time to process the absurdity of what just happened. But Horn shifts her legs, hikes Mandragora higher, bends forward, and does something even more absurd.
Mandragora has never kissed before. Not even in a context of simple, platonic affection. It just wasn’t for her. Even when she thought of Horn on restless nights, there wasn’t any of-any of this involved-
This being, whatever this pressure was, this wet sensation on her mouth-
She shoves Horn hard in the chest and backs up along the floor, scandalized. Get away get away get away-
“You, you…! Fuck…!” Panic blossoms in her chest as she realizes she’s warmer than she’s been in a long, long time. “Don’t you dare, don’t you DARE-!” She shrieks from deep in her throat and kicks Horn’s chair hard, her hands clutched over her chest, her mouth, fingers shaking.
Why, why why…?!
What gives you the right to touch me like that? What gives you the right to be…tender, with me-
She sees in Horn’s face that the strange distance, the nonsensical, heretical thoughts she’s been feeling since her capture-
They’re all mirrored there. From her back on the floor, still tied to the chair, Mandragora can finally see it in her.
Horn couldn’t be in more powerless of a position, and yet with one kiss, Mandragora feels like her skin has been flayed open, like every raw nerve has been exposed to frigid cold.
She did this on purpose.
(She knows that’s not true.)
She did this to hurt me.
(Horn is just as desperate as she is.)
She kneels over Horn’s stomach, her hands wrapping tight around her throat.
I’ll save kisses for my enemies alone, then. That’s what I’ll be. This is how I’ll live.
I’ll pour all my hatred into you, Horn. Just you.
(Because Horn is the only one who could take it.)
“Don’t, fucking kiss me-!” Mandragora snarls, her vision blurring over.
(Don’t remind me how much I need you.)
Horn strains against her bonds. Mandragora knows she can’t kill her, but she knows that Horn has, whether out of cunning or desperation, reached her and touched her in a way violence could not.
She introduced a foreign body to Mandragora’s system. To a failure that had not and could not process affection, let alone love.
Horn had infected her with sentimentality.
She doesn’t know how to translate violence into love. She’s dreamed of it, so many nights in a row. But now all she can do is follow those instincts, drag her nails down her chest, fumble over her thighs, and try, try, try to ruin her, to regain her footing-
I can do it. I can do this. I can smell her. She wants it too.
(I can’t.)
Mandragora covers her face and screams. She forgets choking Horn. She forgets, forgets, forgets everything. All that’s left is the frustration. The impotence. The desire.
(She wishes she could make love to her corpse. Free of her judgement, or her approval.)
She’s terrified. She can’t breathe. Suffocating all over again, from atop one body instead of from beneath dozens.
She doesn’t know what she wants but she knows she couldn’t take it even if she did.
She’s still screaming. The room shakes. The stone ceiling splinters like rotted wood.
She doesn’t understand what Horn wants.
(She doesn’t understand why it matters so much to her.)
For all she wanted- wants -to do to Horn, Mandragora can’t make that leap. No matter how salacious her fantasies run, no matter how tightly her fingers had wrapped into her damp clothing with intent to rip it apart, no matter how enticing the heat of her body was, she knows she can’t and won’t.
She has no one to blame but herself.
Mandragora had started it. Through thought, through action, through spoken word.
But would she have, if there hadn’t been just
the slightest
glimmer
of hope?
She screams her throat raw and a support column crumbles, a piece of the ceiling falls, and strikes Horn in the head.
She is still as the grave, her eyes closed, fresh blood pouring from her reopened head wound.
Mandragora’s fingers fly to the nape of her neck, trembling.
Fuck. Fuck, fuck fuck, no, no no no-
Horn’s pulse flutters against her fingers. She can’t begin to explain or justify the relief she feels. All of the tension from the minutes prior feels so empty in comparison to the seconds between the rock hitting Horn’s head and confirming that she yet lived.
A sunbeam illuminates Horn’s unconscious face through the newly-rendered gap in the ceiling, casting her blood in a rubine incandescence. The light drenches her-where had this light been, when she’d needed it so badly?-seeps into her golden hair as the wind whistles through, toys with it, lays it across the crease of her lips.
Mandragora strokes it aside, catatonic with sudden, unbearable envy.
She doesn’t know what to do next. She curls over Horn’s supine form. The light she’s always coveted isn’t coming from above her anymore. She touches her blood and leaves her hand there until it coagulates against her palm. Her forehead touches itself to Horn’s, eclipsing her. Her lips touch Horn’s and the vibration of the stones tremble around her, fearful.
Horn’s infection works its course, draws her deeper, closer to her warmth. What kind of expression is written on her own face, she wonders.
She could find out when Horn wakes. She could look into her eyes. She’s waited so long already. She could wait for that.
(She can’t wait.)