:: based from a roleplay being written with @shiftingmuse ::
word count: ~ 2200
Packed snow crunched beneath her boots. Wispy flecks of snow swirled by with the wind. A yellow ring of haze edged the moon, and as Belle dipped to sit upon a crumbled rampart, her backside burned on the frigid stone. Summer nights were cold on the mountaintop and nigh unrecognizable.
It was contradictory to sit outside alone when he was actually there, in the fortress. There, probably in his study, pouring over tomes of ancient scrawling script and maybe even preparing her next lesson. Durza was there -- not away, bedding the concubine Galbatorix delighted in occupying him with. Pain squeezed in her chest at the thought, paired with that horrid swell of dullness in her stomach. She wished she didn’t have to think of it. She wished she didn’t have to torture herself with the thoughts of what he was doing when he was away, when he wasn’t at Belle’s side, but she couldn’t not.
Her cheeks burned, due in part to the biting cold but also for the blood rushing to her face with her angered pulse. She hadn’t been able to meet his eyes for days, stretched over weeks of dreadful lessons and stifling moments together in the study. Why couldn’t she just swallow the pit forming in her throat and move on? Knowing of his meetings with the king’s girl hadn’t bothered her quite so much in the past. It had disturbed her a little, understanding the gist of what happened between man and woman, and having some theoretical idea of a whore’s reality. It had made her uncomfortable knowing that as she read and scribbled notes on incantations and their properties, Durza coupled with her.
She hadn’t desired him, then. She hadn’t felt the fondness for him she did now, nor the warmth and the need that glowed within her breast. But much time had passed, and much had transpired between Shade and prisonerpupil.
It hurt to see him go. And Belle knew when he was answering her call and not the king’s. When it was Galbatorix who expected him, it was a resigned look of duty that settled upon his pale face. When it was she who awaited him, the stormy look of dread and resentment flashed across his features like lightning before it replaced itself with practiced indifference. The day before last she’d seen that thundercloud pass over his red eyes, darkening them; a guard had arrived at the entrance to the study with a message, and Belle didn’t need to tap into any telepathic skills to understand.
But he was here, now. He was here, and she could be by his side -- studying with him, parrying back and forth with their gentle banter, talking. Instead her jealousy ruled her.
‘Where are you?’ his voice suddenly demanded through the storm clouds roiling in her head. She detected frustration and impatience, with a hint of worry. Belle exhaled heavily, looked up at the moon. Her heartbeat had picked up at his call. ‘Belle!’
‘Outside,’ she replied reluctantly. And following that reluctance, a lovely little surge of nerves. Her weary eyes kept fixed to the ringed moon, her knuckles pointed as her hands curled around the edge of her perch. She could only wait for him, and it wasn’t long before she felt that pinch of electricity in the air and inky black smoke spasmed beside her, manifesting into none other than the Shade she so pined after. She didn’t look at him. She felt him there. She felt the pull of their bond, alerting her to his proximity. She heard the soft flap of his cloak in the breath of wind that blew.
She also felt the uncomfortable stretch of silence between them.
It hung for a couple of minutes in which Belle wished she could disappear as easily as he could.
“You should be inside. You need your rest,” he spoke at long last, his voice breaking the quiet with a faint echo, reverberating from the fortress walls and the snow. When she didn’t respond so much as to look at him, he continued: “It is too cold for you out here.”
Belle was well aware of the low temperature, the puffs of fog from her nose saw to that. So it surprised her when her entire body shivered at his statement, as though becoming attuned to the cold anew. She finally broke her stare at the moon, eyes falling away as she bundled herself in her cloak.
“I couldn’t stay in there. I needed more light, and air.” It was a lame response, but she wasn’t going to give him the truth.
“You are as capable as I of remedying that,” he said with a chuckle, stepping to bar her view of the snowy earth. So she cast her gaze to the side, swinging her head leftward to look at the fractured stone beneath her.
It shamed her to behave so childishly, but the jealous beast in her blood would allow for nothing else. “You’re right. Silly of me.” She stood and edged past him miraculously without brushing him, moving with half-hearted steps towards the shaft of golden light spilling across the snow ahead.
“Tell me what troubles you.”
His words slowed her, and she stopped, turned halfway, looked out into the snowy emptiness. “It’s nothing.” Lie. “I feel...restless when I’m inside. I need to get out. See something other than mortar.” A smidgen of a lie.
The whisper of cloth accompanied the crunching of snow as the Shade moved towards her, and she sighed, wishing he would stay where he was and just let her be. Let her return alone, to retire to her chambers and sort this all out in whatever peace she could muster. “You’re a terrible liar, dearest. You should not try to hide from me.” He came up beside her, and his cold fingers grasped her chin with that gentle firmness he only used with her, raising her face so that she had to look at him. When she looked into his strange maroon eyes she saw slight annoyance; she knew it to be the sentiment he harbored when she was being difficult. She also saw reserved concern.
For a moment seeing his care for her quieted her inner turmoil. She wanted to let it go, lean closer to him, maybe return with a playful quip that would earn her a smirk. Maybe sneak a touch to his arm or his shoulder. But any joy she stole for herself would be short-lived; he would be summoned to Urû’baen at any moment to tend to Galbatorix’s concubine.
She couldn’t return to being carefree when that image hung in the forefront of her mind.
“I told you, it’s nothing,” Belle insisted, her voice taking on a frustrated edge, as she pulled away from his grasp and moved away with more purpose in her steps. Just get away from him, it was what she needed.
But he wouldn’t allow that. “Do not walk away from me!” The command blared across the snowy ground, stark and insistent. A heartbeat later he appeared before her, and when her eyes found him again his pale flesh was illuminated under the light of the moon and hot embers flashed in his eyes. ‘Never forget that I own you. Never forget that you belong to me.’ His arms splayed out at his sides with a feral, feline prowess and Belle knew this to be a defensive stance. He seemed to remember that she wasn’t someone he ever should need to fight, because he wiggled the stiffness from his fingers and dropped his arms to his sides, and stepped closer. But there was still a rigidity in him that told of his wariness. “Belle, you know there is nothing you cannot tell me. Speak!” He moved closer, and a flash of frenzied desperation showed in his eyes before he concealed it. “When I have told you so much, why can you not tell me this?”
“Because I can’t!” She shifted on her feet, moving away from him, feeling cornered despite the open space around them. Electricity snapped in the air, and in the carved rune in her wrist, the alerting of their bond that he felt an extreme sense, and Belle gulped. “I can’t!” She shook her head, then looked away, at anything but him. “I can’t tell you that I don’t want you to see her again!” A hurried step backward, a rough rustle of fabric as she pulled her cloak around herself. “I can’t tell you that I know where you go when you’re called, and it p--” Her voice cracked and she swallowed, dipped her chin to her collarbone, then looked back up but squeezed her eyes shut. “...Pains me. Every time you go to her, and you don’t come back...” She felt that tell-tale constriction in her throat, and that warmth building behind it. She didn’t actually expect to become so emotional.
Taking a deep breath, she opened her eyes to see Durza staring back at her in quiet surprise -- head tilted, lips in a thin line, the tips of his eyebrows touching and red eyes fixed on her like glass as he seemed to calculate what was being revealed to him. “What is it you want, Belle?” It was an innocent question; surprisingly innocent coming from him. But so too was it an honest question. She could see that he wanted to fully understand, and wanted to find some resolution. Though it seemed, from the softening of the edges in his body, that he understood at least a little.
Belle gasped a breath, releasing a large puff of fog into the cold air. She blinked, a few times, her eyes drifted from his face down his front, aimlessly, before moving back to his face. Her mouth opened and for a long moment her lips hung parted while she tried to decide how to articulate herself. But she didn’t know how. “I want you,” she said at last, pressing her lips together as soon as it was said. She breathed shakily, trying to steady herself in spite of her unexpected emotional riptide.
The Shade stared at her a few moments longer until his gaze fell away, landing on her shoulder. She understood why when he reached a hand outward, his long, thin fingers grasping a hank of hair there. He was always so taken with her hair. He threaded his nails and fingertips through it for a moment before speaking. “Then I will not see her again,” he said deeply, an air of finality in the words.
“You must. You must obey the king. You must obey his will, and hers,” she said, shaking her head and feeling like the world wanted to see her crumble. Was it his willingness to please her that made her feel so much weaker?
Her words rang true to both of them, because he said nothing to that. He merely continued to soothe himself with her soft, loosely-curled strands.
“Let us go away. We can leave this place.” She reached out and took one of his hands, holding it in both of hers. Her eyes sought out his, wide and hopeful, even if she knew it was a long shot that he would agree. “We can leave Gil’ead and Alegaësia! We can go to a land where no one can find us, and no one will care. It will be just us,” she implored him, her heart beating with a new, hopeful pace.
She knew in the slowness of his response that it was a no. The subtle upward curve of his mouth, the way his eyes flit up to hers and held them. “One day we will, but there is still much that we must do. We cannot leave until our task is complete.” He almost sounded remorseful. It was of course something she imagined. And as she dropped her chin to hide her disappointment, he moved ever closer, his hand leaving her hair to cup her neck, his thumb extending to angle her chin up. His eyes were on her mouth, another part of her he often watched with rapt interest. And then the tip of his nose was brushing hers, and his breath was ghosting over her lips. Her own lips parted in anticipation. His thumb moved, and he stroked her jaw where he held her. The two of them held each other’s gazes, and Belle stopped resisting the need to reach out to him, bringing her arms to wrap around his shoulders. Some of the rigidity fell out of his frame as she did. “She is nothing, Belle. She will never be what you are.” The words were soft, a breathed whisper. His nose touched her cheek, and trailed downward as he dropped his head a little. “She is a command that I must obey. You are a treasure that I have searched for, for a very long time, that I will never be worthy of.”
Belle felt breathless with his admission, and turned her face in, nuzzling his cheek with her nose, and that was what they did for several heartbeats -- nuzzling one another, sharing breaths and warmth. And then the Shade woke to reality, feeling her shiver in his arms. “But I will try,” he breathed against her chilled cheek, and pulled her flush against him, before inky black smoke furled about them, and the magic in the air seemed to press in on them from all sides, before transporting them both back inside the fortress.
I just want to say thank you to everyone who has ever reblogged one of my Durzelle related things ( or anything I’ve made whilst jacking around ) or ever left me a comment. I mean at the end of the day I make these things for my own enjoyment, and because I love this ship, and because there really needs to be more art in the fandom... But that doesn’t mean I don’t like knowing that you guys enjoy it too :-) I love knowing other people who enjoy this pairing enjoy the little things I make, and I love hearing your thoughts.
dragonessdefiledarts replied to your post “A Heart as black as this (4/?)”
Holy crap Welp I need more!! What happens next?! He's so manipulative and cruel, I hope she shows him he was wrong
dragonessdefiledarts replied to your post “A Heart as black as this (3/?)”
Oh my freaking gods. Durza is an ass but woah was that amazing to read Love this!
dragonessdefiledarts replied to your post “A Heart as black as this (2/?)”
Oh my gods this is frikking amazing. I may be late to the party but daaammnn I love!! I'm glad you're keeping this in the character of Durza, and not shying from his behaviours. I can't wait to see what happens next (will she turn into a dragon and will he have a change of heart?)
dragonessdefiledarts replied to your post “A Heart as black as this (1/?)”
Yessssssss Durzelleeeeeee
AAAAAAH HEllo fellow Durzelle fan!!! ksjdhkjshgdkjs. I am ashamed to admit but omg yes I still need to finish this... oops? Especially since I already wrote the first chapter for a sequel but never came around to writing the last chapter of this... I’m so sorry DDD:
Durza in the Durza verse: Does he acknowledge to himself yet that he has feelings for Belle? Or is he still deeply in denial?
I don’t think he acknowledges having feelings period. So let’s go with the deepest denial and deepen it times four, and that’ll be about right. More or less. And here we have a depiction of Belle not caring and invading his pit of denial:
Twin brothers must face their lives without the woman the two once loved. Mourning their loss even in another world. As they try to cope with awakening in the land without magic.
- Durza/Belle/Rumpelstiltskin
ao3 x {Chapter 3 we're at the point the cup is stolen in Skin Deep but this also means the next chapter will diverge more from the episode.}
How had it come to this—the rivalry of magic, blood, and desire!?
Durza stood, feeling the runic on his arm burning. His connection to Belle had been for nothing. Rumpelstiltskin would always pull the strings in their unexpected deal.
"Deza, my dear brother. Where have you been!? We've been speaking about our arrangement, and it would seem Belle is ready to make a new deal." Belle's focus was on Durza, but something was off; something had happened.
"What are you in reference to, imp?"
"Well, it would seem she no longer wishes to have you part of this deal we share. Belle wants you gone!"
Belle's emotions were all over the place; she still had not told the dark one of their pact. "If that is so, let the girl speak it into reality. Let her make the deal again, Rumpelstiltskin!
