That's what you told yourself, in the beginning. When Bruce came home with reports about Gotham's crime rates spread across the dining table and his eyes passed over you like you were part of the furniture. When Dick ruffled your hair and said "Hey, squirt" on his way to somewhere more important. When Tim looked up from his laptop and said "Yeah, totally, I'll help you with that later" â and later never came.
You told yourself: they're busy. They're saving lives. You're not more important than Gotham.
You believed it for a long time.
---
You were six when Bruce found you.
Your mother was already gone by then â taken in a way that left marks on you that had nothing to do with bruises. You didn't understand all of it, not then. You just knew that the world was dark and cold and that sometimes men could do things that made you feel like you'd never be clean again, even when they hadn't touched you. You'd only watched. Hidden inside the closet, eye pressed to the crack in the door, too small and too terrified to make a sound.
That was your first fear: being trapped somewhere small and dark while something terrible happened and nobody came.
Bruce Wayne looked at you across a sterile hospital room and something moved behind his eyes â recognition, maybe. The shape of a child who had seen too much. He signed the papers three weeks later.
You had a home. You had a father. You had brothers.
For a while, you thought that meant you were safe.
---
Dick was twenty when you arrived, already Nightwing, already brilliant. He smiled at you like sunlight and called you little sister and the first time he did, your chest cracked open with something warm and desperate and enormous. You followed him everywhere. You learned his footsteps. You memorized the way he laughed.
He was kind to you. He just wasn't there. Not really. Not in the way that counted.
Dick existed in flashes â a weekend visit, a quick call, a laugh across the comms. He was the brother who said "I'm so proud of you" without asking what he was proud of. He saw the shape of you, the outline, and he loved that outline genuinely. He just never looked close enough to see what was inside it.
You stopped telling him things when you were nine. He always listened with one eye on his phone.
--
Tim was different. Tim noticed things â that was his whole thing, observation, deduction, detail. He noticed when Bruce's sleep patterns shifted. He noticed when Damian's training scores dropped two percent. He built files on everything.
He never built one on you.
Not because he didn't care. Because you were never a variable in any equation he was trying to solve. You were just... there. Present. Assumed. Like background noise that didn't require analysis.
You asked him once to help you with your combat assessment. You were twelve, newly suited up, still figuring out your footing. He said "Absolutely, let's do Tuesday." Tuesday came. He forgot. You reminded him. He said "Sorry, this week's bad, next week for sure." Next week came and went. You stopped asking after the fourth time.
What hurt wasn't the forgetting. It was that he never noticed he'd forgotten.
---
Jason.
Jason is a wound that never healed right.
Before he died, he was the one who saw you. Really saw you. He'd find you in the library at two in the morning when you couldn't sleep and he'd sit beside you without asking why, and somehow that was enough. He called you kid but it didn't feel dismissive â it felt like a claim. Like you're mine to look after.
He died when you were eight.
You grieved him in a way you didn't grieve your mother, because with your mother you'd been too small to understand permanence. With Jason you were old enough to know that gone meant gone. You put flowers outside his old room for a year. Bruce told you once, gently, to stop. It upset him.
You stopped.
Jason came back when you were thirteen, angry and sharp-edged and burning with something you didn't have a name for yet. You ran to him. You actually ran, across the cave, heart hammering, because he was alive, he was back, he wasâ
He stepped around you.
Not deliberately. Or maybe deliberately â you never knew. He looked at Bruce and the look between them was so full of history and fury and grief that there was simply no room for you in it. You stood there with your arms half-extended and slowly let them fall.
He never really came back. Not to you. The Jason who sat with you in libraries was buried in the pit somewhere. This Jason looked through you on a good day and said something cutting on a bad one â "Shouldn't you be in bed?" or "You're in the way" or once, terribly, "You're not actually his daughter, you know. You're just the latest project."
You didn't cry in front of him. You'd learned by then not to cry in front of any of them.
---
Damian arrived like a verdict.
He was Bruce's blood. His actual blood, and you understood immediately â with the cold clarity of a child who had learned to read rooms â what that meant for you. Not consciously. Bruce never said it. Nobody said it. But the shift was there, subtle and tectonic, and you felt it the way you felt changes in weather.
Damian didn't like you. He made that clear within the first week. "You were adopted out of pity," he told you, seven years old and vicious with inherited confidence. "I am a Wayne by birth. There is a difference."
You were thirteen. You already knew there was a difference. You just hadn't wanted to hear it said aloud.
You tried, for years, to reach him. You left his favorite tea outside his door. You covered for him with Bruce twice. Once, when he was injured on a mission and Bruce was unreachable, you sat with him in the med bay for four hours and held his hand when he was too delirious with painkillers to tell you to let go.
The next morning he told you to stay out of his room.
You did.
--
You became a vigilante at fifteen.
Bruce didn't exactly give you permission. You didn't exactly ask. You trained in the cave when nobody was there â which was often, because the cave was only crowded when there was something important happening, and you had learned you were rarely part of what was important. You built your own suit from components in the supply room that nobody had catalogued yet. You chose a name nobody had claimed.
Your first night out, you stopped a mugging and a convenience store robbery and helped a woman whose car had broken down on the highway find a signal to call for help. Small things. Unglamorous things.
You filed a report in the cave's system. Standard format, the way Tim had shown you once, two years ago, in a moment of actual attention. Case numbers. Location coordinates. Incident details.
Nobody responded.
You filed another one the next week. And the next.
After six months, you stopped filing reports. You just went out and came back and put your suit away and went to bed. Nobody asked where you'd been. Nobody noticed the mileage on the bike.
You had a symbol, a territory, a growing list of informants. You had a reputation in three of Gotham's worst districts. You had solved four cases that had gone cold in the GCPD for years.
The Batfamily did not know your case number. They did not know your informants' names. They did not know about the apartment you'd quietly rented in Crime Alley with the money from your trust fund â not to live in, just to have somewhere that was yours, somewhere your things weren't adjacent to theirs, somewhere you could breathe without waiting to be overlooked.
You were sixteen when you understood that you loved them and that loving them was making you disappear.
---
You tried, once, to say it.
Seventeen years old. Family dinner â one of the rare ones where everyone was present, even Jason, even Dick, even Alfred who watched everything with sad knowing eyes and sometimes touched your shoulder in a way that made you want to collapse.
Bruce was talking about a new lead on Scarecrow's operations. Dick was animated, leaning forward, offering tactical suggestions. Tim had his tablet out despite Alfred's pointed look. Jason was eating with the focused aggression he brought to everything. Damian was correcting Tim's analysis with the particular smugness of someone who knew he was right.
You had information. Relevant information â you'd spent three weeks building a profile on Scarecrow's new chemist, traced his supply chain to a warehouse in the Narrows. You had coordinates. You had a window.
You opened your mouth.
"I actually haveâ"
"The eastern route makes more sense," Dick said, talking over you without realizing it. "If we split the team intoâ"
You closed your mouth.
You sat there for the rest of dinner. You passed the bread when it was near you. You answered when Alfred asked if you wanted more water. Nobody else spoke to you directly.
After, you went to your room and sat on the floor with your back against the bed and breathed very carefully for a long time. Not crying. You'd mostly stopped crying by then. Just breathing. Waiting for the feeling to pass.
It passed. It always passed.
That was almost worse.
The accumulation of small things:
Tim promising to spar with you seventeen times over two years and canceling sixteen of them. The seventeenth time he simply didn't show up and when you asked later he said "Oh, was that today? Sorry, I had a thing."
Dick sending you a birthday message three days late with seventeen exclamation points, clearly composed in thirty seconds.
Bruce looking at your patrol report â one of the rare times he actually opened the file â and saying "Good work" with the tone of someone who had not actually read it.
Damian telling a visiting hero that there were "four" Batfamily members when you were standing six feet away.
Jason, once, when you were eighteen and tried to check if he was okay after a bad mission: "I don't need you to babysit me. Go back to playing house with Bruce."
The way none of them ever asked about your fear.
You'd mentioned it once, years ago, to Dick â that small spaces made you cold, that being trapped made your vision go white, that you'd had nightmares since you were six about a closet door and sounds you couldn't stop hearing. He'd said "Oh, that's rough, I'm sorry" and then his phone had rung and that was the end of it.
None of them knew. Not really. Not the shape of it, the weight of it, the way it lived in your chest like a stone.
---
You were nineteen when the Riddler's new syndicate took you.
It wasn't careless on your part. You'd been careful â you were always careful, you'd had to be, operating without a net, without backup, without anyone monitoring your comms. You'd tracked the syndicate for four months. You knew their patterns. You knew their safehouses.
What you didn't know was that they knew yours.
They'd been watching you watch them. Waiting. Patient in the way that only people with something to prove could be patient.
They took you on a Tuesday. Gray sky, cold rain. You were two blocks from your apartment in Crime Alley and then you weren't anywhere you recognized.
---
The room was small.
That was the first thing. That was the thing that split you open before anything else had even happened â the dimensions of it, the closeness of the walls, the single bare bulb, the door with no handle on the inside. The smell of damp concrete and something metallic.
You pressed your back against the wall and breathed.
They'll find me, you thought. They'll notice I'm gone. Bruce will pull up my trackerâ
Your tracker was in your suit. Your suit was in your apartment. You'd been taken in civilian clothes.
They'll notice I'm missing from the cave. Tim monitors the systemâ
Tim had not responded to a single report you'd filed in six months. The system showed your last check-in as four days ago.
Dick willâ
Dick didn't know your patrol schedule. Nobody did.
You sat in the small dark room and understood, with a clarity that was almost peaceful, that no one was coming.
Not because they didn't love you. Maybe they did, in the abstract, in the way you love furniture that's always been in a room. But love without attention was just sentiment. Sentiment didn't open doors.
---
They came eventually. Riddler's people, with questions you didn't answer and methods that made the room feel smaller. You held on to what you could. Your name. Your breathing. The memory of a library at two in the morning and a boy who sat beside you without asking why.
That Jason was gone. But the memory wasn't.
You held onto it.
On the third day you stopped counting hours. On the fifth day you stopped being surprised by the pain. Somewhere in there â you couldn't have said exactly when â you stopped waiting.
Not because you gave up, exactly. More because waiting required believing, and you had run out of the particular kind of belief that made waiting possible. You had spent thirteen years waiting to be seen. This was just the last version of the same thing.
You thought about your mother, in the end. Not the way it happened â you didn't let yourself go there. Just her face, which you barely remembered, which had mostly dissolved into impressions: something warm, something that smelled like cedar, something that had loved you before the world got its hands on you.
You thought: at least I know what that felt like.
The bulb flickered. The room was very small. The door did not open.
---
They found your apartment six weeks later.
Tim, actually â following a thread on a case that had nothing to do with you, a lead that happened to pass through Crime Alley and a building registry that happened to have your name on it. He stood in the doorway of the small apartment and looked at your things â the books stacked by the window, the mug on the counter, the suit folded on the table because you'd always been neat, always been careful, always cleaned up after yourself â and something shifted in his face.
He called Bruce.
Bruce came. Then Dick. Then Jason. Damian stayed in the car for a long time before he came upstairs.
They stood in your apartment and looked at your life, the one you'd built without them, the one that had existed in the negative space of their attention. There were case files on the wall. Years of them. Cases solved, territories mapped, informants catalogued. There were notes in your handwriting â careful, precise â cross-referencing their operations with yours. All the times you'd been working parallel to them, unseen.
There was a folder on the table labeled, in your handwriting: Reports â Unfiled.
Dick opened it.
It was everything you'd never said. Not a journal, not a letter â you hadn't written it for them, you'd written it for yourself, the way you wrote everything, because writing was the only place you'd ever been fully heard. Patrol notes. Case summaries. And threaded through them, small and unadorned, the record of being invisible: Tim canceled again. Dick called, didn't ask how I was. Bruce said good work without looking up. Damian said four.
And at the very end, dated two weeks before you disappeared: I think I'm going to stop waiting. Not for them â for anyone. I think I've been waiting my whole life and I'm tired and I think that's okay. I think it's okay to be tired.
I love them. I just don't think they'll notice I'm gone.
Dick sat down on your floor.
Jason stood very still in the doorway of your bedroom for a long time.
They found you three days later. What was left of you.
The Riddler's syndicate had moved on, left no living witnesses, covered their tracks with professional efficiency. The GCPD report was clinical. Bruce read it in the cave at three in the morning with Alfred's hand on his shoulder and did not speak for a very long time.
You had been afraid of small spaces. They had put you in one. They had known â somehow, because you'd never told your family but you'd mentioned it once to an informant who'd been compromised â what you were most afraid of.
You had died in the exact shape of your greatest fear.
Waiting for someone to open the door.
They held a service. Small, private. Alfred cried in the way Alfred cried â quietly, with dignity, with the devastation of someone who had seen this family make the same mistakes over and over and had never been able to stop them.
Nobody said we should have known. That was perhaps the most honest thing.
Dick didn't speak at the service. He'd tried to write something and hadn't been able to finish it. He kept thinking about the phone calls where he hadn't asked how you were. He kept thinking about how he'd loved the shape of you without ever learning the contents.
Tim thought about seventeen canceled sparring sessions. He thought about the reports sitting unread in the system. He thought about how he'd built files on everything â everything except you.
Jason thought about what he'd said. You're not actually his daughter, you know. You're just the latest project. He thought about it with the particular torture of someone who cannot take words back. He thought about a library and two in the morning and a small girl who had run toward him with her arms out and he had walked around her like she wasn't there.
He thought about that for a long time.
Damian stood at the graveside and looked at your name on the stone and thought about a mug of tea left outside his door. He had not thanked you. He had not acknowledged it. He had told you to stay out of his room.
He had been seven. He did not think that excused him.
---
Bruce went back to the cave that night. He opened your file â your real file, the one Tim had built after, pulling together everything, trying too late to see you whole. He read every report. Every case. Every small careful note.
He read the line: I love them. I just don't think they'll notice I'm gone.
He sat in the cave for a long time.
Then he closed the file.
He went upstairs. He stood in the hallway outside your room â your old room, the one you'd kept because you'd never officially moved out, the one with your books and your drawings and your second-best mug because your favorite was in the apartment in Crime Alley. He stood there and he put his hand flat against the door.
He did not open it.
He stood there for a very long time, in the dark, in the quiet.
And then he went to bed.
Because Bruce Wayne had always been better at grieving in retrospect than preventing it. Because the people he failed were always, in the end, the ones already inside the house.
Synopsis: What happens when a duke drinks one of your fake love potions and blames whatever he feels for you on it? Presuming you cursed him instead, he drags you back to his mansion and refuses to let you leave until you reverse the spell.
Youâve now been working for four months to cure a curse that doesnât exist, and the duke has somehow become even more obsessed with you.
âŠAt least youâre finally getting paid.
The duke has gotten moodier.
Like he wasnât moody enough, he was now as annoying as a pesky fly. Always hovering around.
And itâs unfortunately interfering with your ability to work. (Youâve become a workaholic ever since you stepped foot on his mansion, just so you could leave sooner.)
Heâd sit by your table, head propped lazily on his hand, and with the other heâd play with your hair.
âYour hair is weird.â Heâd comment casually, pointing out your hair type. It doesnât matter if other people also had straight, wavy or curly hair. Yours was still somehow the weird one.
Itâs become a routine for him to nitpick something about your appearance, habits, or personality whenever he could.
âItâs just hair, Your Grace.â You say with gritted teeth, his hand still stroking your hair distractingly.
âHm.â Heâd simply hum, and go to another strand, feeling the texture between his fingertips.
âIs it because youâre a witch you look like this?â
You pause the work in your hands, glancing up at him with squinting eyes. Is he saying that because of the rumors calling witches ugly?Â
âLike what?â You ask, trying to see where this was going.
âPretty.â
His answer came immediately, simple and clear. His face not changing one bit.
You stared at him dumbfounded. Somehow, heâd managed to call you pretty while making it sound like an insult at the same time.
You worried all the antidotes heâd been drinking were giving him such strange side effects.
Or, the other possibility is that someone mustâve hit him on the head. You wouldnât be surprised if heâd angered anyone by now with his prickly demeanor. Actually, you pray someone hits him just to satisfy your own desire.
His hand continued playing with your hair, while his eyes watched you languidly without shame. You hoped he could see the tick mark appearing at your forehead from anger, because you were this close to actually causing him brain damage if no one else does it before you!
Just one comment, I dare you! You glared at him. And he caught it, eyes widening for a bit.
âEven your eyes are weird.â He leaned closer, examining your eyes and pointing out their color like itâs something unnatural. But he doesnât stop there, gaze dropping down to your hands now.
He wrapped two fingers around your wrist, frowning.
âAnd what kind of wrist is this small? Youâre so weak itâs alarmingâ ACK.â
His comment was cut off by a hard bonk to the head from you, making him bite down his tongue.Â
âGET DOWN!â
The servants standing aside immediately duck on instinct, waiting for the splash of red to paint the room.
âŠ
A few seconds of silence passed before they finally dared to peek open their eyes. To see you were still⊠intact? And without a single scratch even.
Instead, they find it was the duke who looked harmed, rubbing his head with a sulky expression.
âWhy do you look so angry? Youâre supposed to be smiling like what the books saidâŠâ The duke looked down glumly, and the servants couldnât believe their eyes. Was the duke pouting?Â
You, however, didnât look fazed by the sight. âI donât know what youâre talking about but you should know better than to talk about a womanâs appearance like this!â
The duke stared back at you, his lips pressing into a thin line.
âLook, I donât understand why youâre even here butââ
He stood up straight, making you pause your words to crane your neck back up at him. His height even more intimidating with you still sitting down in front of him.
âYou⊠You are a violent woman. I can work with that.â He muttered the last part to himself, hand going under his chin to contemplate something.
Another vein popped up at your forehead. âThe only one trying to work is me! MEEEE!â
In return, heâd also frown at your words. A vein matching your own popping up his forehead.
âWork, work, work. All you do is work, maybe thatâs why youâre so prickly, woman!â He pointed accusingly.
Your lips parted in disbelief. âYOU brought me here to work, why are you getting irritated? And who are you calling prickly!âÂ
Cue another banter followed between you and the duke, while the servants standing by watched you both bemused.
Two maids shared looks between each other, blinking a few times.Â
âDo we⊠Do we stop them? Or her at least?âÂ
âNo⊠Just, leave them be.â The older maid sighed, shaking her head at the image of the most feared duke currently acting like an idiot. âIâve seen this happen four times already yet still cannot get used to it.â
When will the duke finally realize why heâs being so clingy?
Itâs been four months.
Four months since you were brought to this mansion, working day and night to reverse whatever spell heâs convinced you have on him.Â
You donât care anymore if his claims are true or not, just working to figure out whatever the hell he was complaining about and cure him.
And you were sure that at some point, heâd realize that you werenât behind anything. Maybe grow tired of you and have an ounce of mercy to let you go eventually. Or by a silver of luck, you might finally find a working antidote that will do the job instead.
But no. The manâs very stubborn, and he was adamant on keeping you chained to his mansion.Â
And luck wasnât on your side either, no antidote working so far in curing this mental illness of his.
âHow much longerâŠâ You sniffled, curling up your knees to your chest.Â
Rarely did you have any time to yourself without the duke by your side. Though, whenever you did, youâd quietly curse him (not literally) to empty some of your frustration.Â
Other times youâd cry from loneliness. Just like right now, heart swelling in longing.
Itâs been months since the last time youâve been outside. Oh how you miss the strolls youâd take in forests, collecting herbs for your potions, talking with other fellow witches, and most importantlyâŠ
âMoney!â
When was the last time youâve smelled the sweet unmistakable scent of gold coins? Four months!!!
This heartless dukeâs been keeping you under his thumb without any compensation or proper employment. Youâve been basically working underneath him for free, all labor and no reward.
âDamn you, dukeâŠ!â You mumbled, burying your face further between your arms.
âWitch!â An annoying voice echoed in the hallway, halting your sniffs. Followed by the undeniable footsteps youâve grown accustomed to, belonging to no one else but the duke.
Dang it, he finished sword training early today. You scramble off the floor quickly to find a new hiding place further from here.
Maybe the servantâs kitchen area will workâ
Slam, the door opened. Revealing the duke at the doorway, water still clinging to his hair from the rushed shower heâd taken. All to find you quicker.
âWitch, Iâve been looking for you everywhereââ His words die out once your eyes meet his own, still glossy and with cheeks tear-stained.
A sniff escaped you before you could even greet him, confirming the manâs dread that you were indeed crying.
âYou⊠What happened to you?â He crossed the room in seconds, leaning to take a closer look at you.
âWhat? Nothing!â You looked away, realizing the mess your face must look like right now. Youâd rather die than ever show this man a vulnerable sight, though youâve showed that sight to him a few times at the startâŠÂ
âNothing?â He frowned, stepping closer with a stomp. âYour eyes are puffy and red from crying yet you still dare lie to my face?âÂ
You still didnât face him, his lips drawing a firm line at the avoidance of your gaze.Â
âDuke, you should go dry your hair first. Or youâll catch a cold.â You gritted out, the last part more of a threat than a worry for his wellbeing, the urge to curse him for real this time emerged.
âAre you changing the subject? Do not test my patience and explain.â His words seemed desperate, angry and frustrated for a reason you did not care enough to understand.
âItâs none of your concern, Your Highness.âÂ
Can he not get a hint? You just really wanted to be alone right now, from him especially.
ââŠâ
The man did not budge, though his gaze lowered a little in contemplation.Â
Your words had irked him, none of his concern? How ridiculous.Â
You lived under his roof, ate the food he provided, and spent every waking hour in his manor⊠Whose concern would it be if not his?
âIt does concern me, actually. Now tell me, what⊠caused this?â He pointed awkwardly, unsure of how to address the state he found you in. And comfort was a subject he was not familiar with at all.
âI said, nothing.â You repeated, but it did nothing to convince him.
ââŠWas it someone?â He frowned, changing the question into a ââwhoâ did thisâ instead. That earned a scoff from you, giving him the wrong impression.
âSomeone from the staff? One of the guards who harmed you? Give me names, now.â He ordered, hands crossed in front of him as he awaited a hit-list to be given. If only he knew the first name on that list was his ownâŠ
âNo, and no. They did nothing wrong, donât accuse innocent people!â
âThen was it the gardeners? Just tell me which bastard was it, Iâll have their heads rolling in minutesââÂ
âAGH! Itâs no one, okay?â You covered your ears at the violent words he was spewing, enough to draw a disturbingly graphic image in your mind that had you feeling queasy.
Still getting no answer from you, the manâs lips turned into a straight line again.
ââŠYouâre my employee, so I have the right to know what has you slacking off work.â
You broke whatever personal rule of not showing him your face, turning around with a whiplash at his words.
Because this was exactly what youâve been tearing about earlier. How dare he bring that up so naturally without any shame!
âEmployee? Me? Since WHEN?â You threw your arms open in outrage, utterly offended by his words.
He just stood there confused. His crossed arms falling limply to the side.
You were sad, terribly. And he was just twisting the knife at the wound that had you down. âI am an undocumented slave at your hands! And slavery was banned years ago, you stupid Duke!â
He raised a finger to speak, lips parting to get a word out, but you werenât done yet.
âListen, weâre in a modern society now. Thereâs nothing wrong with seeking a therapist! Mental health is important, ya know?â
Itâs been on your mind for a while, a suggestion you were about to bring up naturally had he not forced you into this conversation.
Seriously, the âlove potionâ you brewed months ago mustâve already passed his system. And with little to no information about his symptoms, you had no idea what to do anymore.
You sighed pitifully, the man getting more confused by the second.
âI mean, like⊠Maybe you should seek a different method of treatment, yeah?â
He did not answer, pushing you into speaking further.
âI think itâs about time you let me goââ
Your words donât even get to finish before two rough hands latched onto your shoulders, making you wince.
âNo. You⊠What kind of suggestion is that?â His voice wavered, before he gruffly voiced the very thing he hated to presume you were saying. âYou dare try to leave?âÂ
The way he said that had you glance up at him in confusion. His eyes stared back dilated, and the hands on your shoulders gripped harder, attempting to squeeze out an answer from you.Â
âYouâre the one who cursed me, and youâll stay right here till the curse gets reversed. Until then, I wonât let you go.âÂ
His frown twisted further, just the thought of you leaving making him sick.
âŠOh. Your lips formed a small circle, parted helplessly without any words to respond back.
Youâd been too comfortable lately. Too confident in the fact that heâd never try to hurt you, and youâd completely forgotten about his true image as a feared duke.
But now you werenât sure anymore, that confidence you had which allowed you to speak freely weighed down on you belated.
Damn it, and youâd just called him a stupid duke earlier.Â
It reminded you once again that you were only here because of a misunderstandingâbreathing and alive because the man genuinely thinks youâve cursed him.Â
You didnât dare break eye contact, his red eyes never allowing you a glance away, and it had your fear skyrocket at once. All that sass youâve shown so far swallowed deep in your throat.
But then you felt it. Beneath your own shaking shoulders were the tremors of someone else. Him.
The fingertips of his handsâstill gripped uncomfortably on your shouldersâwere trembling.Â
ââŠâ
What was he afraid of� You dared not voice out your question, continuing to stare back at him in a frozen state.
The excruciatingly long silence finally broke when the duke spoke first.
ââŠSo itâs just about the employment? Is that why youâre upset?â His voice came out softer than before, the frown on his lips easing a bit into a straight line.
You slowly nodded, no use in denying it with him holding you hostage between his arms.Â
Though you werenât sure who was the hostage anymore. The way he looked at you wasnât that of a man holding someone captive, but one who had become captive himself.
ââŠVery well.â His answer came after another pause. âIâll have a proper employment contract drafted in no time.â
You blinked up at him a few times. This easily?
âReally?âÂ
âMhm.â He nodded, the grip on your shoulders relaxing at the glint in your eyes.
âAnd⊠Iâll get paid?â You asked, just to double check.Â
âObviously.â
You squint at him for a long moment, trying to see what was the catch.
ââŠYouâre actually agreeing?â
His brows furrowed, lips pulling down a bit at your distrust.Â
âYouâve only made one request so far. Continue.â He nodded curtly for more.
Permission was all you needed, not waiting any longer to ask.
âThen I want weekends off.â
âGranted.â His hands left to cross in front of him, satisfied at your compliance.
ââŠWith paid leave.âÂ
âDone.â Suddenly, a steward stood beside him noting down everything with a flick from the dukeâs finger. (âŠSince when had there been a steward in here?)
ââŠLunch breaks.â
âAlright.â He nodded with his chin, the steward working double to keep up everything.
âPlus monthly bonuses!â You pointed with a finger enthusiastically.
âIf your performance is satisfactory.â
Your jaw nearly hit the floor, but one last request still needed to be made.
âOh! Andââ You cleared your throat, hiding a smirk behind your hand.
His foot tapped impatiently. âWhat else?â
You couldnât forget the most important one of all.
âI want my own bedroom.âÂ
A moment of silence from everyone in the room took place.
One maid quietly covered another servantâs mouth before he could laugh.
Even the steward stopped writing.
The guards suddenly found the opposite wall incredibly interesting.
Simultaneously, they all finally remembered you never had a proper bedroom assigned to you. Usually staying up all night working in the dukeâs bedroom or sleeping in the servantâs quarters.
ââŠDone. Guards?â
Everyone relaxed at the dukeâs words, you especially.
The agreement brought you great relief, placing a hand over your chest to sigh. Finally, all problems solvedâ
Until he casually turned to the guards, one hand raised up for the closest to approach him.
âMove the finest bed in the manor beside mine.â
The guard bowed immediately. âAt once, Your Graceââ
âNO!â You yelled, pausing the duke in his place to stare confused.
âI said my own bedroom! Bed. Room.â You repeated twice, but the duke only looked back annoyed.
âYou will have one, as I just said.â One of his brows raised up, still not getting your point.Â
âUhh, yeah? One with four walls and a roof, all to myself!â Your hands moved to draw a box shape midair.
ââŠâ
The duke was quiet then, a hand came up his chin to contemplate something.Â
ââŠThree walls and no more.â He held up three fingers, and you stared back at them blankly.
ââŠA what now?â
âCompromise.âÂ
Haaah, after thirty minutes of negotiating, you ended up being granted everything but the last request.Â
You mumbled a few incoherent phrases as you signed the employee contract, one that was quickly whipped up and waiting in the hand of the steward.
True to his words, the duke builds a room for you with three walls.
âŠLocated in the corner of his own bedroom.Â
You were basically roommating with the man, and he dared look satisfied about it.
An infuriating smirk played on his lips as he exited the bathroom, dressed in a silk nightgown heading to his bed.
You face the wall to hide your scowl, listening unintentionally to how the bed rustled from his movement.
He made himself comfortable under the blankets first before finally addressing you out, rather cheerfully.
âIâm going to sleep.â He peeked an eye at your figure, back facing him.
âCongratulations.â You uttered dryly. The flat response visibly irked him, as he called out a moment later to ask.
ââŠWas that sarcasm?â
You didnât acknowledge him with more than a hum, annoying him further.
ââŠTurn off the lights.â He ordered, a frown you couldnât see was pulling his lips down.
You still donât reply, just getting up to extinguish the lamp as instructed. Not the response he was awaiting.
âTch⊠Donât you dare leave the room. Got that?â
âYeah, yeah. Go to sleep now!â You waved him off, kicking the blankets annoyed.
âGood.â He huffed, sounding oddly satisfied despite having run out of excuses to talk.
Silence engulfed the room, the only noise coming from the hooting owls outside and rustling leaves.Â
You laid on the bed facing the wall, never turning around to see if the duke was doing the same or not.
And just as you were about to fall asleep, a hushed voice called out softly.
ââŠGood night.â He murmured, never awaiting for you to say it back. Already succumbing to sleep with the soft snores that followed after.
You stilled in this new bed, the frown on your face easing a bit at the awkward gesture.Â
Though the anger in you still didnât subside completely, you did feel a toll of it leave you in a sigh.
ââŠWell,â you pulled the blanket over your head. âAt least Iâm getting paid to deal with him now.â
You then followed him into dreamland. No other thought lingering in your money-crazed head.Â
Zzzzzz.
.
..
âŠ
Hmm⊠But wait, arenât you forgetting something?
Likeeee reading the employee contract twice before signing?Â
Or, hey, did you even receive a signed copy of the contract?Â
Who knows what you just signed away. Maybe you shouldâve thought twice about calling yourself âa slaveâ in this manâs presence.Â
âŠ
Mightâve just given him ideas.
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