Deckerstar Yellow ? c:
Yellow- Dragon/Shapeshifter AU
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The palace is grand. Massive stone arches, beautiful mosaics. It’s all covered under a thick layer of dust and ash. Chloe grips the torch tighter and keeps walking. If- if she can just talk to the beast, surely it can be reasoned with. She knows it makes deals.
“You’re quiet,” it speaks, voice loud and resonant, “But the pitter-patter of your heart gives you away, human.”
She freezes. Said pitter-patter kicks into a gallop. The darkness around her shifts, resolving into the massive form of the dragon that lives here, the Great Morningstar. Gods above, she hadn’t even seen it. She cranes her neck up, the creature is at least three stories tall, glancing down his long, scaled nose at her.
“I’ve come to make a deal,” she calls out, voice ringing through the empty space.
It laughs, a low, grating sound, distinctly bestial and masculine. “Of course you have. Why else would you be here?”
Chloe takes a deep breath. “My daughter-” her voice quavers. “She’s been taken.”
He abruptly moves into her space. A large reptilian eye lowers to stare at her, the size of a shield. Somehow, the gaze feels impossibly familiar, though she can’t imagine how. Eyelids flick sideways, as its gaze continues to rest on her. They’re...oddly beautiful, the deep swirls of color contrasted with the blacks of his eyes where any other creature would have whites. His scales are deep, rich red, like spilled blood.
“You’re the Captain, aren’t you?” he asks, and she blinks in surprise. “Why not gather your guards and fetch the urchin?”
It’s strange hearing her partner’s nickname for her daughter out of the maw of this great beast. “The man who’s taken her is on the Watch, I can’t trust them.”
“And there is no one else you could look to?” the dragon asks.
She thinks of her partner, Lucifer; his mischievous eyes, his wicked sense of humor, that cold look when he catches someone mistreating another. Not all noblemen are like him. No noblemen are like him, as far as she is concerned. After all, no other blue-blooded man of importance would care to accompany her on her tasks, protecting the city.
But he wasn’t there when she went to call on him and his household staff did not know when he would be back. She was desperate. There was no time. They had her daughter.
“There was, but- I can’t find him. I don’t have the luxury of time.”
“And so you’ve come to me.” The words come out less cold than she might have expected.
“I know the stories,” she says. It was a favorite past time of the Watch, to swap dragon stories. Most of it was nonsense, but there was a grain of truth in it, she knew.
He slips closer, his head easily three times as long as her body. “Do you.” There’s a warning somewhere in those two words, accompanied by the glint of teeth in the firelight.
She tilts her chin up. “I do. And in all of them, you never break your word.”
She can hear Lucifer’s voice in the back of her head. “My word is my bond.” Whatever code of honor Lucifer has, it’s shared by this creature.
He stares for a long moment and Chloe tries not to give away her fear because she does know the stories. Stories of hellfire and destruction, but always on the wicked. He moves back. “Very well.”
“Name your price.”
“My price? Oh, Captain,” and why does that cadence sound so right? “As much as I would enjoy having you owe me a favor...” it’s voice is changing, lessening, as he speaks, the shadows shifting. Is the dragon growing smaller? He steps closer to the light, its shape small and human, warm golden skin still flecked with red scales. “You know I would do anything to protect that little urchin.”
“Lucifer?”
He smiles with teeth just a little too sharp, uncertain. “Chloe.”
The torch falls to the ground from numb fingers. Then she’s rushing forward, colliding into his body, uncaring about his nakedness or the fact that apparently he’s the Great Morningstar, Dragon of Nightmare. She grips at him with shaking fingers slipping over strange, smooth scale. “Lucifer.”
He holds her, arms tight. “It’s all right,” he tells her and she can hear the otherness in it now, the odd, inhuman sonance that layers his voice. “We’ll find her, I promise.” He presses a kiss to her temple.
She shifts back, but doesn’t leave the circle of his arms. All this time. All this time he’d been stuffing himself down into human shape...why? Just- Just to be with her? She brushes a thumb across the heavy ridge of his brow, feeling the odd texture, still caught between dragon and man. ”How?” she asks.
“It’s a long story. I apologize for being so elusive,” he says. “But I’m done hiding. I promise to tell you everything, the truth about me, about what I am. But first we must go rescue your offspring.”
She nods. “Right, of course.” He lets her take another step back, breaking his loose hold on her.
“Who’s taken her?”
“Malcolm. Malcolm Graham.” A corrupt watchmen, lowest of the low. She’s been trying to root out his filth from the Watch for ages.
A growl rumbles from Lucifer’s chest, eyes flickering red. “Then his life is forfeit. By your laws and by mine.”
Suddenly so much about Lucifer makes more sense. The draconian view of right and wrong. She manages a smile. “The Captain and the Dragon? Sounds like a fairy tale.”
He grins, all teeth. “They won’t stand a chance.”
