Prompt: “Sleep” for day 3 of @whumpmasinjuly 2021
Warnings: Discussion of murder (like, SO much murder), toxic/abusive relationships, brief & non-graphic mentions of sex
Word count: c. 900
Summary: After Auvo leaves, Lilac dreams. An introspective character study.
—
In her dreams, Auvo begs. Please and I can’t and don’t ask that of me. Sometimes standing before her… sometimes on his knees. Always, she shoots him.
In her dreams, he says he’s breaking. Her waking mind, vicious, whispers good, break then, suffer like you deserve to for leaving me, for leaving me like this at the memories, but in her dreams, she’s only ever confused. What’s the problem? What’s wrong with this, with you, with us, with me?
So she fucks other men, lets them stay the night—reckless, her logical mind cries, stupid, says the part that’s kept her alive. She sleeps better with a warm body in her bed. Some of them she kicks out in the morning, listens to them walking out and wonders if this is what Auvo’s footsteps sounded like, the day he left. Some, she kills. It’s not enough. She wants more. She wants Auvo. She knows Auvo’s body almost better than her own, his strength, his scars—the ones he had before her, the ones her picked up in her service, the ones she inflicted herself. Those were her favorites.
She toys with the idea of finding someone just close enough, scarring him up, satisfying herself with a replica, like a cheap knockoff of a beloved toy. It would be easy enough to do: in her world, her whims are law, even without Auvo’s threatening presence at her shoulder. She could. She wants to, but there’s no guarantee the scars would heal the same.
Auvo never scarred her, never indicated that he wanted to, never even left bruises, no matter how careless she herself got. He was good like that—content in his place, happy to be hers without her ever saying she was his. What a fucking joke.
Would it have made a difference? If she had told him? She’d thought he knew anyways, but she’d thought he was going to stay too, like he’d said, so clearly she thought wrong. Was it simply not enough, like he says in the dreams?
Fantasy, that’s all it is. Her unconscious mind, spinning through ideas like a roulette wheel, fabricating conversations that they never had and never will, desperately trying to fill in the blanks between what happened, what happened, what happened?
If she sees him again, she will kill him. He must know this, because he’s disappeared. She’s killed him enough in her dreams that she thinks she wouldn’t hesitate, wouldn’t bother asking why; she’s heard every answer her subconscious can imagine him giving when he says I won’t and she asks why not and none of them were good enough to stay her hand, even in the dreams, where he hasn’t left her, betrayed her in the worst way possible, and where she still knows, down to her marrow, that he never will.
Auvo should have killed her. It would have been safer. It would have been kinder. He’d never had any problem killing (except in the dreams), so the fact that he didn’t—couldn’t—kill her tells her… something, something that she refuses to name, won’t acknowledge. Instead, she hates.
Her hatred burns, heat flickering across her body like she’s told her electricity does when she thinks of him, but it doesn’t warm her bed as his presence had, and she wakes up shivering. The men come and go. Always blond, always tall, never quite right. His scent fades from the sheets, and she sleeps better and then she sleeps worse. The dreams fade too, eventually, become rare rather than nightly occurrences, and she hates how much she misses them.
She never yells, in the dreams, not like she wants to when she’s awake. Maybe because she’d never let herself yell—not before, at least, not in the world where the dreams are set, where everything still makes sense and he will never leave her—and her subconscious knows this, won’t let her act out-of-character with Auvo right in front of her. In her dreams, she’s cold, even in the face of losing (killing) her second-in-command and bodyguard and lover all at once, but it doesn’t bother her—she’s strong enough not to let it bother her.
He didn’t let her kill him. That would have been easy. Instead, he left, and it has made her weak. She hates him, more than she ever did when she shot him—when she dreams of shooting him. And she hates herself. She knows herself: killing him would have been better. Death is something that both of them understand, something he would forgive her for. In some of the dreams, he has, choking on the words even as blood leaks out of his lips. She never cries when she kills him in the dreams, never even wants to. (When she’s awake—well.) At her hand, his loss is a necessity, a promise kept, a mutual understanding. It’s what they both signed up for, an inevitability for which they had already forgiven each other the very first time he knelt on her office floor and told her that he was hers until she no longer wanted him.
Pretty words that she’d been stupid enough to believe.
In reality, Auvo is simply gone, and there can be no understanding, no forgiveness. She sleeps in a cold bed, left freezing by the unwilling revelation of her weakness. Even the well-tended ember of her anger doesn’t warm her. Even the dreams are a cold comfort.
Opus 11, part 1: Office Vignette in Hurt-No-Comfort Major
Warnings: gunshot wounds, abusive relationships
Word count: c. 800
Summary: Lilac debriefs Auvo after a messy mission.
—
Once the bandages are on, Auvo doesn’t bother changing his shirt or cleaning the blood off his hands before reporting back to Lilac’s office.
He knocks on the door before entering. Although it’s a mere formality between the two of them at this point, it’s better not to upset Lilac with any further misbehavior.
She’s seated at her desk, making a good show of focusing on some papers, but Auvo knows his employer. She’s been following the field reports all day, even before the operation went sideways.
He shuts the door and stands patiently before her.
“You have a lot of nerve, walking back in here like nothing happened,” she finally says, snapping a folder shut and tossing it to the side. “I can only hope that getting yourself shot will be enough to teach you a lesson.”
The gunshot wound in his side aches at the reminder. Auvo ducks his head. He wants to agree, to confirm that he’ll do better next time, but it’s never a good idea to speak before Lilac indicates it’s his turn.
“You act like you have no idea what’s at stake.”
Auvo knows precisely what was at stake. He sat through the planning meetings for this operation with her, knows the exact value of the assets she has tied up in its success. Knows in perfect detail what he almost lost her, which is why he’s going to stand still and silent, and take any punishment she sees fit to administer.
“So far as I can tell,” she says, finally rising, “this fuck-up is entirely on you, but I wasn’t out there to see it. Is there anything I’m missing?”
He lifts his eyes to meet hers before he speaks. Deference is necessary when she addresses him, but it’s his turn now, and Lilac abhors a coward.
Auvo knows he could lie, and Lilac would take him at his word. It’s why they work so well together: he knows she’ll never doubt him, and in exchange, he will never give her any reason to doubt.
“No, ma’am. Nothing. It was my fault.”
Lilac nods, then walks over to him. She’s shorter than usual—probably kicked off her heels under her desk sometime earlier in the evening. It would be an adorable habit if she didn’t get so grumpy in the mornings when she can’t find them. He makes a mental note to pick them up when he leaves.
“Mm. Thank you for your honesty.” She takes his blood-tacky hands in her cold, clean ones. “I can always count on you for that—even if not for any other part of your job.”
Auvo doesn’t flinch or argue, merely accepts her judgment. He doesn’t make mistakes often, and he knows Lilac is aware of that, but in their line of business, even one mistake is one too many.
Lilac digs her nails into the backs of his hands. He doesn’t pull away. The slight pain is grounding; the contrast of her cold fingertips and the heat gathering in the curved imprints beneath them helps him focus, keeps him from swaying where he stands as the blood loss and exhaustion take their toll on his body.
His job is to be perfect. It’s difficult, but for Lilac, he’s willing to shoulder that responsibility.
She tugs downward briefly, and he folds to his knees, gaze fixed on her dispassionate face. The crescent indentations from her nails burn in an almost tender imitation of the burning in his side.
Lilac cups his face in her palms and hums, half-tuneless. She strokes his cheeks with her thumbs, and scratches lightly at his jawline with the rest of her fingers. Auvo doesn’t allow himself to relax into it; his punishment is still coming.
He doesn’t brace when Lilac lifts a foot, doesn’t try to dodge when she kicks her heel firmly into his fresh bullet wound. He falls, gasping, and lets the tears well up.
The rush of blood and his own panting fills his ears for a long moment, and he misses Lilac’s footsteps, unaware that she’s moved until her bare foot nudges him out of his curled position. Obeying her unspoken directions, Auvo finds himself laid on his back, with Lilac’s foot pressing gently down on the center of his chest.
He catches her eye, and she speaks, loudly enough to hear clearly over his labored breathing. “You may stay here as long as you need, but I expect you to get proper medical attention by morning. Turn the light off when you leave.”
She removes her foot and heads for the office door. Auvo hears her open it as he rolls back onto his side, curling in around the pain, stifling his groans in case she says anything else.
The last and only thing she says before closing the door behind her is “Good night, darling.”
I used to see stars when the A note rang through the concert hall, strings on strings. I used to see stars and halos surround the heads of people whose parents knew me as the music was conducted through their bodies; it was part of their blood, and after weeks of worshipping upon the floor of their practice room, I could hear as all the notes finally aligned in orbit upon the stage. My temple, the stage, and my worship was listening, knowing the next bar of music by heart. I knew the music like the soles of my shoes knew the stairs of my apartment.
