Prompt: “I shouldn’t be in love with you!”
For Matthias x Grisha!Reader please!!
Bestie, your testing my writing capabilities with Matthias and you know it, I will try my best but I don't think I got the skills to write him well
I Didn't Ask To Have These Feelings For You - Matthias Helvar
Content Warnings: Fjerdan Views Of Grisha. Canon Complaint Threat And Violence. Not Beta/Proof Read.
Love is the death of duty, those words have never meant much to Matthias, they were something he would hear people say outside of Fjerda, when he was travelling with the Drüskelle, but they didn't reach him, they didn't mean anything to him. Not until you.
He had not known you were grisha at first, you had found him, unconscious by the waters, the ship he was on had gotten lost in the fog on the trip by the Bone Road, and he had been headed for Vilka, under orders to bring back what he would undoubtedly find there. But he never quite mad it to Vilka, the black waters and the heavy air had gotten to his head and he got off the ship before they correct course. Matthias had planned to get himself back together and then continue his journey, but somewhere along the line things had gotten messy, he had been knocked unconscious by strangers that mistook him for a threat to them, and maybe he would've been, had he known they were grisha to begin with.
But when he had woke you had been cleaning the cut on his head with a warm rag and you offered him salted fish and honey water and he had not known how to respond to your kindness. You had been nothing but gentle, and welcoming, and he was a stranger in your home. Your home which you had brought him into, knowing what a danger he could pose to you, even if he didn't know it at the time, you had. You are grisha, and a Fjerdan is always a risk to you, but a Drüskelle, that's inviting a death wish into your home, and yet you couldn't just leave him for wilderness, for all the rolling fields and mountains, the landscape wasn't all that forgiving to strangers, you hadn't doubted someone from Fjerda could understand what what was like.
"You live alone?" he had asked you and you had laughed it off, typical for that to be the first thing he would ask.
"Yes," you had told him, "it's not as uncommon as you might think."
"Yet you brought me into your home," he stated. You had waited a moment for him to elaborate and when he hadn't you refilled his drink with a sigh and a gentle shake of your head.
"You have to believe there is good in people still, White Wolf," you had told him. He had ragged a hand across his blonde hair at that comment. "It's about honour is it not? Your whole thing?"
"Drüskelle are honourable," he had stated.
"Well I brought you into my home, unarmed and unchained, to tend to the wounds of a strange I had found who would've surely died or succumb to some dreadful fate, not being from this place, and being so close to the castle ruins, you're inviting danger in that. So surely, if Drüskelle are such men of honour, I had no reason to afraid, because what honour would there be in doing harm to me after that is what I have done?"
Matthias hadn't had a response to that, because you were right, you had shown him kindness, and you were to expect nothing in return except the respect to not harm you for such kindness, as a Drüskelle he meant you no harm if you were not a threat, and he saw you not as a threat at all. He saw just gentle smiles, and healing hands and slightly burnt bread in attempts to make him food.
He saw only how you hummed to yourself while you cooked, how each time he ate he felt better, he felt stronger, and how you could tell so much about the day by looking at the sky. You had asked about his home, about his faith and he had talked to you with more comfort than he would've expected, but you were quickly becoming a stranger no longer, and instead someone he knew. Someone he felt he knew.
You hadn't planned on falling in love with him, you had hoped that maybe through kindness and companionship he would grow to see you as a person, before he had any idea you were grisha, and you hoped that knowing you before he knew would give him grounds to consider that maybe grisha were more than witches. You knew it was a risk, but considering being found out would mean the Kaelish would come for your blood anyway, you weren't a stranger to the danger on the doorstep. Also knowing Fjerdan's were on the Isle's looking for grisha meant the risk was already at your doorstep, and you could run, you could fight, or you could try and change their minds, even if it was only one at a time.
You'd hoped to gain his trust, maybe even cultivate a type of friendship between the two of you, something that might withstand learning that you were born to use The Small Science.
But somehow it had gotten itself further along than that, deeper rooted, and you could feel him in your skin as you walked beside him. You'd fallen in love with a Drüskelle. And part of you was willing to believe he had fallen in love with you too.
That's what makes this moment, this moment you knew was going to come eventually, but you hadn't pictured it like this. One of the kids from the isle had fallen from the rocks and had hit her head, and despite keeping to yourself for your safety, the kids in the area knew you well enough as the one with the medicines. So it was no surprise when the kids turned up at your door searching for help.
You treated the girls wounds with the medicines you had, bandaging up the wounds, and while the kids paced outside you listened closely to her heartbeat, counting her breaths, assessing her quietly, in the way only you could. You felt Matthias watching you, but you knew it's all concern and not suspicion. But then you feel it, the cracked bone that is lodging itself in tissue where it will only do harm.
"Matthias," you said softly, "can you pass me clean water?" Your attempt to send him on an errand long enough to do what you can for the kid was well thought out, and it should have worked. But when the bone snapped back into place it was Matthias's sharp inhale of breath that you heard.
You turned to him and his eyes were on you, wide and filled with a hurt you recognised all too well. "Matthias-,"
You don't get to speak before he has disappeared into the fields. You finish bandaging up the child and as she wakes you explain what to tell her parents and you watch the distance as they walk her back home. You've done this enough times, enough times that you probably should have been caught out by now. But some children talking of the healer in the woods, always sounded more like a folktale or an exaggeration than something to investigate and if they ever came looking for you, your medicinal practice you hoped would be enough to cover your tracks, no one had seen you were grisha, not until Matthias, not until now.
You're walking the lower rocks of the mountain, you're not sure if he has disappeared to never return, or if he plans to come back with reinforcement. The look in his eyes before he left is haunting you, like the ghosts you were told stories of when you were young.
You hear a heartbeat, steady and strong behind you, one that is familiar in it's rhythm, and you know you should feel afraid, he is Drüskelle, he has been raised and trained to do nothing but hate you, to track and capture and eventually kill you. But you can only bring yourself to feel relief.
"Matthias," you say without turning around.
"I was told that you were crafty and but I underestimated how deep that scheming can run," Matthias says.
"It wasn't a scheme," you say, keeping your back to him, scared to see what is in those icy eyes of his, scared of the hatred you might find there, the rage. You cling to the last memory you have of those eyes, all confused and hurt, because hurt you could accept, hurt you had earned. You had deceived him, you had let him believe things because you were sure you could bring something better out of it by letting him live in the lie for as long as you could, and you had known that was wrong, you had known the trust you were betraying but it was the only option you felt was there for you. It was that or send him on his way, and let him go on believing all that he was taught, save yourself the pain, and whatever may come, but never take the chance to change something. To let someone see, really see, where they have been misguided, and if you wanted to change the views of the world for anyone, you wanted that for Matthias. He is gruff and he is stoic, but there's a softer man inside the skin of the wolf, he has a hero's heart, not a warriors. And you might just die in choosing to believe that, and you are willing to play those odds. "I did not bewitch you Matthias."
"You lied to me," he says. You move to look at him, trying to gather the strength of heart to face him. "Don't turn around."
"Why not?" you ask. "Scared to look at me Matthias, scared of what you will see?"
"I am not scared of you," he tells you. You nod and spin on your heels, your stare burrowing into his and he darts a look away, scared that you will see the way his harshness softens at the sight of you.
"I am not something to be scared of," you tell him.
"You shouldn't have saved me," he tells you.
"Because I came here for you."
"Romantic," you say, the world brittle enough it nearly snaps on your tongue. He shakes his head at you.
"I shouldn't?" you ask. "I shouldn't have what? Cared for you? I shouldn't have saved that girl? I shouldn't have helped every broken child that has come to me? I shouldn't have given you shelter, and food and comfort? I shouldn't have shown you kindness and understanding, despite knowing what you are because of the knowledge that if you knew what I was you would not do the same? Are those the things I shouldn't do? Or should I not use the Small Science at all? Should I let my body grow sick by not giving it what it needs, let my gifts go to waste and not protect those I can from harm? Or are you Drüskelle still so naïve to believe that this gift, is something I chose for myself, and not something I was given? No, because you don't think we grisha are human, so you know at the very least it isn't that. Tell me Matthias? In all the time we have spent together, would you say I am not human? Would you put me on trail and call me witch because I dared to care about others enough to risk my life to act on it? Is that what makes me less than human, that I am willing to suffer the consequences of doing everything within my capability to help others? Is that what I should not have done, Matthias?"
"You healed me," Matthias says slowly, as it dawns on him after all this time.
"Slowly, in small ways," you admit. "I shouldn't have done that?"
"No!" he sounds angry now, but the anger isn't all at you, part of it is at himself and you can feel it in the cold air between you both.
"What about what you shouldn't have done?" you ask. "You shouldn't have let me finish what I was doing, you shouldn't have let me heal that child, you should have carted me off to your commander in chains, ready for a judgement you know will only get me killed."
"Stop," he says, and the roughness around the edges of his voice becomes more dulled.
"Where in the list of all the things I shouldn't have done, can we compare to those sins of your own Matthias, shouldn't you have left by now?" you ask. "What else shouldn't you have done? Befriends a girsha-,"
“I shouldn’t be in love with you!” He snaps.
You lose all your fight with one sentence. It had been foolish of you to believe his feelings were the same of yours, and it had been even more foolish of you to believe those same feelings could withstand the knowledge of what you are. You were a fool to think he would love you, and a fool twice over to think he would love you still, and yet.
"But you are," it's a statement but it feels like a question as you say it, as if you could still be wrong, like you might just be the fool yet. But Matthias is a fool twice over beside you, for thinking he could not fall in love with you, and then thinking learning what you are would be enough to severe those feelings. It was not, and he doubted anything could break what he feels for you from him, his feelings were a part of him, his feelings for you as much a part of him as the blood in his veins.
"Love is the death of duty," he says through pressed lips, eyes closed tight as if he could wish the twisting feeling in his chest away, the feeling that he is betraying all that he has ever known.
"And to do that, I betray my country, my home, I become lost and forsaken, Djel-,"
"You think your gods know not enough about love to forgive you for being in it?" You ask. "Does your god not believe in love Matthias?"
He ignores you. "Then I am a traitor, and I am dishonoured and renounced, and then what do I have?" He asks.
"Me," you tell him, "you would still have me." His eyes meet yours with such a ferocity you fear you might fall back off your feet, but you stand your ground. "Would that ever be enough?"
He is silent for what might have been a blink of an eye or years before he speaks again. "In another life, you and I would not have been born to these roles, we might have had simpler lives, one where I would meet you in a place where music is playing, that song you hum to yourself, and we would have met and I would have brought you flowers and sweet things and you would have walked the paths of the places we knew and nothing would have cause for this much pain," he says. "But that is not our lives. You and I cannot deny what we are."
"And what are we White Wolf?" you ask daring to step closer.
"Lost," he whispers, reaching out to place a hand on your cheek, "and in each other, found." He is not at peace with himself, you can see the war in his eyes and the fear in them, the desire to run and hide and pretend that you never existed. His world could be so much smaller again, so much easier, where the rules all make sense and everything plays into a justice he understands, what he was raised in. But that would mean leaving you, and leaving you would be as good as handing you over to them, because you are not safe, not in this place and not in this world, too soft and too openhearted. Matthias is unsure of what it means, on a large scale or a philosophical one, but he knows one thing, that as hard as it pushes up against everything he has ever known and believed in, threatening to tear it apart brick by brick, he knows must be true. Love might be the death of duty, but he can let it die, if it means he gets to love you.
