five times kissed (for sven)
send me five times kissed for a drabble about five times our muses kissed ;; accepting
Note: It hasbeen years. This has gotten way longer than intended. But here’s what’s new: I STILLhate writing in present tense and end up doing it still for this sort of thing.Auburn has had an identity crisis for about eight hundred years and I have a feelingthat I wrote Sven HELLA OOC but I tried,kay?
i.
She wakes up and suddenly, the silence around is what scares her most — silence means no one is around, silence means that she is alone. Silence means that something is completely wrong because she has not been alone when cold steel has touched her skin. She gets up and flinches because there is blood on her clothes — her own, likely — but it is not like this matters. They all have died before and they have always gotten back up because something about them is different. But she has never been the first one to get back up and so she has never experienced this sort of numbing fear and terror because
What if they will not wake again?
She cannot do this alone. She has accepted that she cannot stop others from dying, that her curse is hers to carry on through the years — but she has always had her family, her brothers. And while they cannot make the pain go away, they can make it bearable. So it is unacceptable that they could leave her behind, that they could die while she has to live on.
Somehow keeping herself from crying, she reaches out, flinching back as blood stains her fingertips red. It is strange, she thinks. There has been so much blood in her life, blood she has spilled, blood she has lost — and yet, she still flinches when she touches it.
Her younger brother stirs, opens an eye and then, he jumps to his feet — too fast, as it seems because he staggers, apparently feeling dizzy. “How long?,” he asks but she does not have an answer for him, she never has because there is no way of telling how long it takes to recover from a fatal blow.
They have to wait but patience does not come easy to her and so she starts to pace, radiating her nervousness towards her recovered brother who follows suit, leading them to circle around their less alive sibling. The youngest reaches for a can of water that has toppled over when they have been attacked (when they have been killed) and finds whatever water is left, cleans his bloodied face and only then she realises that her skin is bloodied as well and that her hair is redder than usual.But there is no water left and so he leaves her alone and only then, in the middle of a silence that is too heavy for her, she cries because this is nothing they have deserved. She sits down, next to the corpse, no, the body because he WILL wake up, because he will not leave her and their brother alone in this mess. And for the first time in more than hundred summers, she feels like there is something she cannot do, like there is something she cannot overcome.
For the past few years, they have worked because there has been never a reason for them to fall apart. Whether it has been discussed or not, they know which role they have to play to keep the family going on and the only way this works out is when there are three of them.
She wipes away the tears with her sleeve before she leans over her oldest brother’s lifeless form and pries the dagger from his grasp. Maybe so that she has the means to defend herself if something happens, maybe because she needs simply something to do and does not know what else she could do.(She has never done well when there is nothing for her to do.)
She is doomed to wait and so she does not move, the dagger in her left hand and her brother’s hand in her right. Waitingdoes not feel right to her, not when she is raging with fury and all she reallywants to do is to hunt down the person who has harmed them. Patiencemay a virtue but it has to be learned and right now, she realises that she has notyet learned how to accept endless suffering.
She sobs.
Then, she grits her teethand presses her lips against her brother’s knuckles for a moment, hating the wayhe feels cold and lifeless under her touch.
ii.
There has been no fight that has pushed her away from her family, no matter what some might say. She has not left because she has been furious — in fact, she has not left at all. They have been torn apart by the chaos and war around them and she has spent the past hundred-five years looking for her family. As much as she values independence, her first priority is her family and she prefers to know where her brothers are and that they are safe. As long as this is given, she cares only little about the details of their whereabouts.
But she cannot deny that she feels at peace when she sees her brother because it has been a long time and she has missed them both. She may have found new friends and made a few new enemies but this does not change that family matters most, especially after such a long time.
Lover came and went, not always in ways that pleased her, but her family? They would remain and so when she had heard whispers that sounded like her older brother was close, she had abandoned her current distraction without a second thought to follow the lead. After all, it was not like the mortal could not replace her with ease. As much as it hurt to think about herself this way, as a woman in the current time and age, she was easily replaceable.
(What the men who thought that she was nothing but a pretty face failed to realise: she had always been far too good at the game they played to be beaten.)
(Whoever tried to replace her would have to face the fact that from the beginning, they had been little more than a source for distraction themselves.)
(Eternity was a long time and Auburn grew bored easily.)
“Figured it’d be you,” she said as she brushed back a strand of her hair and toyed with the bracelet a suitor from a couple of years had given her as a present to demonstrate his fondness. “Reclusive and unmarried — quite obvious it would be you.”
She had not been looking just for him but also for others, for old friends, for passing acquaintances and for someone she wanted to walk more than just a part of the way — not that this was currently in her cards. Which made her wonder: had she actually been looking?
“And here I was thinking I was successfully hiding from you,” he said with a roll of his eyes as he turned, dark robes billowing around him as he approached her, “little sister.”
It was not necessarily the most mature thing to do but she pouted at him before she reached out, fingertips brushing over his shoulders as she dusted off what seemed to be chalk. Around them, scrolls of parchment had been partly unrolled and when she craned her neck, she could spot what seemed to be a model of a potential church in the background. “I am still taller,” she said as she briefly kissed his cheek before she moved away from him, her attention captured by the surrounding sketches. “Still mourning the old grandeur, aren’t you?” she asked as she picked up a sketch, something that was guaranteed to annoy him.
She has always been the one who has shown affection easier, the one who has done it because it simply happens to be part of who she is — and while she acknowledges that not everyone can be quite as forward as her, it does sometimes make her wonder how she has ended up with two rather introverted brothers.
(Maybe their parents have found her in the forest.)
(On some days, this would make a lot of sense to her.)
“Even you have to admit that not all change is in our favour,” he replied as he snatched the parchment away from him, completely missing that this had been her point from the beginning.
“I don’t have to like it to accept it.”
iii.
Broken glass cracks under his steps as he approaches and she does not move, her head still buried in her hands as he moves through the ruins her anger has left around her. For a moment, she remembers another time, one when his feet have whispered among the fallen leaves, one when his steps have been lighter. But this has been a long time ago and she sometimes thinks that it was wise of her to bury the girl she has been then.
(She has buried too many people and too many memories have faded.)
(She likes to imagine what their parents had been like but she knows that it is not likely that her mother has really had eyes as blue as the ocean, that her father has really had the same red hairs she has.)
“I am tired,” she says and she does not mean the kind of exhaustion that would follow a long day’s hard work. She means something else, something darker, something that is dangerous and lurks within her bones — the fatigue of having lived many lives within one that has been cursed.
(It can also be the tiredness that follows any outburst of emotion and she has burned up all her anger, leaving a trail of destruction in her wake.)
“I know,” her brother says and she lifts her head to look over her shoulder. He looks the way he always has and somehow, this familiar sight is both comforting and disturbing. He never changes, just like her, just like their younger brother. And she loves them both, sometimes to the point that she has to walk away from them because otherwise, she would cripple herself. She is her own person and simply clinging to her brothers is something she cannot do, not when they all live forever. If she would never leave, she might end up hating them at some point — and this was indeed something she feared for good reason.
“I cared,” she says.
This is what she does not say out loud because there is no need for it: why do the people I care about die? Why can they never stay alive? Why do I end up with a broken heart and more grief than I can carry again and again?
He does not answer. They have had this very same conversation more than once within the past sixteen summers and she knows that there is no answer she likes to her questions. But this does not change that he wipes away the tears that have left marks on her face before he kisses the top of her head.
“Will it get better?” she asks even though she knows the answer to this as well.
They are cursed people living in a doomed world. No, it will never get better for them. They will always look at people who draw them in with sunshine smiles and sea storm eyes — and they will always be left behind. To Auburn, the easiest way of translating immortality would be heartbreak —— because this is what they have to suffer again and again but it also is what they choose again and again because immortality also means to be very good at fixing oneself and a heart can only be broken when it has felt something before.
“It will change.”
And this is a promise he can make because as it has been said more than once: the only constant in life is change.
iv.
“Octavia.”
She haltsand for a moment, it feels like the weight of more than a millennium rests solelyon her shoulders. He has to know that this is not fair, that she cannot bearthis — that she cannot stand hearing her own name anymore these days. She hasabandoned it, more than once, and there is a different name she has made hersthese days.
But therehe goes, reminding her of a name she has taken away from her — with the samelack of respect others have accused her of so many times. The truth is: thewoman who has named herself Auburndoes not want to be remembered of the past and in fact, she has buried it whenshe has chosen a different name to go by.
And for abrief moment, she is nearly capable of turning against her own brother, her ownflesh and blood because he KNOWS. This is no accident, this is a choice he hasmade.
There havebeen names she has abandoned within the past centuries because they havestarted to hurt too much when someone has used them. There have also been namesthat have been chosen FOR her rather than BY her, names she has neverconsidered her own. And then, there is the name that has always been out of hercontrol because it has been given to her when she has been born.
This is aname of IMPORTANCE, of great relevance to her. This is no name to be thrownaround lightly — it is a name that still has a hold on her, no matter howmuch time has passed since she has last used it. It is a name she has nevertrusted anyone but her brothers with, a name she has kept solely to herself fora very long time, a name she has not heard in more than thousand years.
But even aname cannot keep the world from turning and so she moves away from her brother becausewhatever he has to say, she does not want to hear it. And if she pretends that shecannot hear him, she can evade whatever bitter truth he wants to tell her a littlelonger. It is, of course, a child’s game. But then, she has never felt more thana child than now.
“I know youheard me,” he says and her hand clenches into a fist around the book she had beenholding, threatening to break it apart.
“Do not callme that,” she says but it is not even a threat — a threat that would have beenempty anyway, making it pointless from the beginning. It is a request, plain andsimple, for him not to bring up the past for her again, to leave it where she hadburied it, a long time ago.
“I won’t ifyou listen,” he says and she grimaces because he holds all the trumps right nowand he knows that she knows this as well. It is a bad position for her because shecannot even negotiate unless she would bring up what he does not like to hear —and she would never do this out of spite, maybe to get him to listen to somethingtruly important.
She nods,not that he is leaving her much of a choice. But this, too, is something he doesbecause he has to, not because he wants to remind her of pains of the past.
“You havegrown sloppy,” he says as he leans against the table, taking the book out of hergrasp without even looking. “It’s worrisome.”
He does notmean that she has grown neglectful in ensuring that no one suspects that she isimmortal. He does not even mean that she has stepped over the thin line that separateswhat this culture believes to be proper from what is improper. All of this wouldhardly require him to confront her about it; she has been cleaning up whatever messshe has made for centuries and she has rarely needed his assistance to fix something.
No, what hemeans is that she has grown too attached too many times lately, that she has takento clinging to fading existences — and the sole reason for him to confront herabout this in such a manner would be that he has figured out why she is doing thisto herself.
(Not that ithas ever been much of a secret to begin with.)
(After all, distraction solelyhas a point if there is something similar one has to distract themselves from.)
She couldlie and depending on how well she did this job, Sven might even believe her. Butshe does not want to lie to him because lying is something she only does when shehas no other options left — and right now, the truth is a valid option. “I know,” she admits and she tugs ona strand of her own hair in frustration. “It’sjust —— I haven’t been this … worried in a long time.”
He sighsand his shoulders slump and something inside of her churns because apparently, hehas expected more aggression from her. Then, he pats her shoulder before he takesthe hair out of her grasp and tucks it back behind her ear, briefly pressing hislips against her forehead. “Whatever youdo, Auburn,” hestarts and she is immensely grateful that he has slipped back to the name she actuallywants to use, “do good.”
v.
It is not her first wedding day (and she doubts that it will be her last, too) but it is the first time that she is pacing around in the dressing room, taking off her gloves only to put them on again, still debating whether or not she actually wants to wear them. The December air might be chilly and Fay might have had a point when she had questioned what sort of person wanted to marry in winter —— but Auburn is tempted to agree with Jane; the gloves do not really match the dress after all.
The irony is that she has made jokes about nervous brides for centuries because she has never understood what their problem was. After all, they have to trust their husbands-to-be, right? So why the jittery movements, why the anxious fiddling with whatever bracelets or gloves they are wearing? The time might be right, Auburn decides, for an apology to brides everywhere because yes, the nervousness is completely justified.
Behind her, Fay ‘I will kill you again if I get called a flower girl even once’ Hunter huffs before she storms away, likely to track down one of the waiters to get her hand on something to drink that was stronger than the champagne served in the suite.
(Or the other woman might be looking for Adrian who probably has something to drink with him.)
April laughs, making the third joke about driving the getaway car in case that Auburn changes her mind and wants to pull a Runaway Bride but the redhead has known her best friend (and bridesmaid) for long enough to know that this is April trying to ease the mood.
But even April cannot keep Auburn from tapping nervous rhythms against the table next to her, her fingers bare for the moment. She has had now-or-never moments before in her life and she has been so certain that she is pretty good at handling stress but right now, she is proving the complete opposite.
“I think right now, she’s agonising whether or not she made the right choice with the sleigh and I STILL think she should’ve picked a reindeer instead of a horse but you know her hatred for THAT MOVIE—”
Auburn looks up and nearly wishes that she had brought her camera because Sven’s face is nearly priceless — and the degree to which he is bemused is an almost perfect reflection of how she feels about April’s latest antics. So maybe they are siblings after all.
“I told you, April,” she says as she gets upand smoothes out invisible and nonexistent wrinkles of her skirts, “no Frozen references on my wedding day.”
It wouldbe stressful enough without reminders that for some reason, Disney has decided touse her brother’s name for a reindeer. A reindeer.It has been years and she has yet to recover from this insanity.
“Guess that’s my cue to tellthe band to scratch Fixer Upper from the set list,” the other woman says as she rolls her eyes and twirlsout of the room, her laughter resounding in the empty hallway.
“Happy to see that you haven’tgone full — what’s the term again? — Bridezilla?yet,” her brothersays drily as he closes the door behind him, a fond smile in place.
“It’s not my first time gettingmarried,” she saysas she shrugs and rocks back and forth on her bare feet before her posture slumpsa little and she clears her throat.
“It really isn’t — you’veput me through this drama quite a few times before,” he replies as he scans theroom, finally mentioning towards the high heels that are still in their box. “Are you sure you can walk in them? — Justchecking if I may have to catch you when you trip.”
She scoffs,nearly offended. “First of all, I’ve wornshoes like that for about twenty years on a daily basis,” she says as she rollsher eyes at him, the grin on her face ever growing. “Secondly — you wouldn’t want to get caught upsetting the bride.”
“I am notupsetting you, I’m checking for potential security hazards,” he says as he pokesher side and scans the room again, tsk-ing in disapproval at the two empty bottlesof champagne. “Looks like you started the celebration without most of your — fartoo many, I might add — guests,” he drily states.
“We’ve been stuck in thisroom for five hours, getting ready,” she mutters, lifting her hands in a gesture of surrender.“And even if I had had both bottles all tomyself, I would’ve sobered up by now,” she adds with what nearly appears tobe a pout before she reaches for the shoes and slipped into them.
“Five hours?”he asks in surprise and she glares at him in a way that would have killed a mortal.
“Perfectiontakes time, you should know that,” she says grimly before she loops her arm throughhis and presses her lips against his temple for a moment. “Now, time to go, isn’tit?” she asks.
“I’m guessingyour … intense friend went through all Runaway Bride references that can be made?”
“If youcan trust April with one thing, it’d be that,” she sighs.
(And to answer Fay’s question: a winter wedding has been what has seemed most right to them while planning.)
