Post shard Devotion falling "back" in love with a freaked out Dominion. Either fic or art!
I’ll take “post-Shard” as them in the Beyond after Dominion and Devotion got splintered?? It’s mostly what I can associate “post-Shard” with soooo here we go! No readmore bc I’m answering in my phone
—She was in pain — enough of it to fill up all of her consciousness before it slowly drifted back from Godhood — when she opened her eyes. But the very place surrounding her seemed to try to ease it; welcoming, gentle, warm. Lovingly familiar to the point where she felt her heart ache from a past long gone.
Devotion— no, Aona eventually rose to her feet, trying to make some sense of the place around her. But nothing came. There were distant echoes of voices, but they seemed just an inch away from unreachable, and there was nothing in her line of sight. She knew she was dead, the still near overwhelming pain from Odium’s hand piercing her chest and ripping her divinity apart still well settled within her, so that could only be the Beyond.
“Well, this…is going to be a pretty boring afterlife.” She thought out loud, walking a few paces in no specific direction.
And then, a soft thud. And a body. Tall, slender, tan, doted of long and no-longer-braided blond hair. And Gods, she wished he wasn’t there. Devotion prickled and stabbed at her heart, trying to force her to take the blame for him being there, to dye pink the blood he had shed in his name in Sel and make him innocent and undeserving of anything his fate had reserved to him.
She loved that man more than anything but he hasn’t been Skai in so long…she feared he’d forgotten how to feel anything other than ownership, just as she’d forgotten how to not blindly adore and protect everything she took a liking to.
When he opened his eyes and voicelessly mouthed “mine?” with a smile on his lips her heart sunk and she felt her soul had splintered along with her Shard.
“Aona.” She quietly corrected, feeling like she’d need to rip her heart out of her chest to get through this. “And you’re…you’re Skai still, right?”
“Mmmh…I think so. I believe neither of us is still the same as before.” He seemed as thoughtful as someone who was just murdered could get when he took a look around. “But that doesn’t matter. How do you feel, my Aona?”
When he rose to his feet to caress her face she nearly jumped back, unconsciously feeling the clasp of the chains Dominion had kept on her for so long around her neck.
“Just. Aona…please.” She held his hand and brought it down, barely keeping her fingers intertwined with his. “I don’t really feel like being someone’s right now. I’d rather just be someone.”
She couldn’t face him. Making any request and not being amiable and accepting of all her beloved’s desires was going to kill her all over again soon, but now she could fight back Devotion’s will and she would no longer let it soften her to the point of becoming a doll for someone to play with or keep exposed.
“You always seemed to love it, though—“
She let go immediately. He was still too far away.
“That was Devotion, Skai.” Her voice grew cold and she took a few steps back. “Or is it still Dominion in there? Because I…if it is then we really can’t do this. Not now.”
Gods, he seemed so confused. All she wanted to do was to hold him and apologize and do everything her now powerless self could to make him happy, even if it meant bending herself backwards and turning into someone she never wished to become. But not anymore. Please, not anymore.
She had given up so much for so long. She was broken and shattered and incomplete and she might collapse if she gave up any other little piece of herself, no matter how much she loved him.
And so she did. She stayed away from him, in silence, avoiding physical and even eye contact no matter how much he tried to convince her to go back to his grasp and let him own her like some kind of contest pet.
But she couldn’t keep from looking when he wasn’t paying attention. Longing, loving, pained. She wished his embrace more than anything in the Cosmere but Gods, she could only accept him as Aona if he became Skai again.
Each time he braided his hair. Or meditated. Or slept. She felt something tugging at her heart and the need to touch him. And she didn’t know how long had passed, probably days, but eventually he started to change.
The proud posture loosened up, the confidence softened into knowledge and kindness, he started dragging his feet a little and nearly tripping sometimes when he walked. There was still a lot of Dominion in him, just as there was still a lot of Devotion in her, but…he seemed to start being able to balance it out.
“…are you still mad at me?” He finally asked one day, after so much silence between the two.
The silence held on for a few more minutes as they both seemed to nervously play with their hair, not daring to look to one another.
“Not mad. Scared of what part of me would let part of you do.” Aona’s voice was weak from the lack of use, but she tried to keep on. “I’m sorry for how I’m treating you. I just don’t know how much of you is…you.”
“All of it, Aona.” She heard soft footsteps, and he sat beside her. “I know a lot of me has changed because of Dominion, I thought a lot about it. But, changed or not, it’s still part of me. And Shard or not, all of me still loves all of you, so if there’s anything I can do to prove…”
She turned away from him, hugging her legs and choking back the tears. “Time.” Aona whimpered. “You’re doing a lot already, but also I fear I need time to…get used to the changes?”
“Time is a good thing to give, as we seem to have an unending stock of it.” There was gentle, soothing laughter in his voice. Oh, how much she’d missed it. “May…may I hug you?”
“Please. Whenever you want to.”
And the weight in her chest seemed a little bit lighter, and the world around them, far, far away from both, started to form in bits of meadows and cities, and the echoes would get a bit clearer every now and then.
