alyse waking up from a bad dream and wondering if she can seek out valerius for comfort?
or maybe alyse hanging out with the kitty again?
idk i just love alyse and the whole story is great
Lamb To The Slaughter
Alyse has a nightmare, the poor thing.
CW: Assume The Worst (I'm sorry this took me so long)
Part 7: A Lamb's Nightmare
What could a lamb have a nightmare about? The well water running dry? The grass falling dead? A wolf in the pastor? A shepherd who has gone and not returned? Silly little things. Silly little lamb.
If she thought at all about the dream, Alyse that is, she would have realized it made no sense at all. But senselessness was lost on her. She did not think too hard about anything in particular, that was for her master to do. Thinking got her in trouble. Thinking started to make her feel and she wasn’t supposed to feel. Not really. Just happy and content when Valerius permitted.
Spoiled little thing. Rotten spoiled little thing.
“Ungrateful.”
“No– no, master- no, sir!”
The ground rumbled beneath her, cracks forming in the filthy concrete. Iron poles erupted like daisies, up, and up and blistering through the stone, forming a prison around Alyse. She spun, desperately, clinging to each pole, trying to find a way out but they just kept coming. An onslaught until she was entirely confined.
It was a space she knew, of course she knew it. She had spent her life within in. The tiny little cage that she’s merely survived in at the pet shop. The filthy and the flies and the odor… Oh god, she was going to vomit. Truly, she was going to!
“Master? You’ve never called me that before, mutt.”
A face flashed up against the bars, skin squelching and spilling through like melted butter. Alyse recoiled in an instant, landing on her behind, suddenly dressed not in her silk nightgown but in the pitiful potato sack garb of her past.
It was not Valerius as she had thought at first, not as the voice had been. Instead there, spilling over like bile was the shopkeeper. His fat squealed, popping as if it were placed on a castiron skillet, bubbling and oozing and– oh! She couldn’t look. She couldn’t!
“Look at me! Look at me, you worthless fucking lamb!”
No– no… No- she couldn’t. Please! She couldn’t!
A hand grabbed her, she expected a sloosh of grease, the awful little stubby fingers of the shopkeeper but that did not come. They were slender fingers, gloved in silk, rough and firm and pulling her head up. “Does my lamb have something in her ears?”
Master- Valerius but— It had just been the shopkeeper, hadn’t it? If only she was smart enough to know this was a dream, but alas, that was expecting too much from her.
The cage was closing in. The iron bars, slick with something she didn't want to name, pressed against her shoulders, her back, her ribs. The smell was the worst part—old straw, old fear, old sweat, and beneath it all, the sweet, cloying rot of something forgotten. Alyse's breath came in short, sharp gasps, her chest too tight, the air too thick.
The shopkeeper's face had melted back into the shadows, his voice still echoing, but the grip on her chin was new. Cold. Certain.
Valerius's eyes bored into hers, twin chips of amber in the gloom of the dream-cage. His gloved fingers were bruising on her jaw. "Have you found my orders disagreeable?"
She tried to shake her head, but the motion was trapped, stifled by the bars. Her lips wouldn't part. Her tongue was a dead weight.
"Am I not worthy of your eyes, my lamb?" His voice was soft, almost gentle, and that made it worse. The devil's tongue indeed—silk wrapped around a blade. "Have we grown a little big for our breeches?"
No. No, master, please. I was looking. I was trying to look. The shopkeeper was there—he was there and I couldn't—
But the words were stones in her throat. She could only stare, wide-eyed, as his grip tightened, as the cage shrank, as the familiar, hated stench of the pet shop wrapped around her like a shroud.
"You think you can leave?" he asked, his head tilting, his smile thin and cruel. "You think you can go back to the way things were? To the dirt and the chains and the hands that didn't know your worth?"
She was shaking her head now, frantic, desperate motions that made her teeth rattle. No. No, I don't. I don't want to go back. I don't—
"Then why do you dream of it?" His voice was a whisper, right against her ear, his breath cold. "Why do you return, in your sleep, to the place I rescued you from? Is my house not enough? Is my bed too soft? My hand too gentle?"
Gentle? The word was a foreign concept in the nightmare, bouncing off the iron bars. His hand was many things, but gentle was not the first that came to mind. And yet, compared to the shopkeeper's greasy, grasping fingers, compared to the cage and the flies and the endless, hopeless waiting—
"Master," she finally choked out, the word a broken, wet sound. "Master, please—"
"Please what, little lamb?" He released her chin, but the cage didn't expand. The bars held firm. He stepped back, just out of reach, his silhouette dark against the flickering, uncertain light. "Please save you? Please keep you? Please want you, when you are so eager to return to the gutter in your dreams?"
I'm not. I'm not eager. I hate it here. I hate it.
But the cage was familiar. The fear was familiar. The shopkeeper's voice, still echoing somewhere in the shadows, was a lullaby of misery she had known for years. And Valerius, standing outside the bars, watching her with those cold, assessing eyes—he was the stranger. The variable. The unknown.
“Alyse.”
His voice was different now, cutting through the fog and the grime and the fear. Alyse stilled, eyes wider than diner sauces.
“Alyse.” She jolted forward. That was him. That was her master. Her real one– “Wake up, lamb.”
Valerius had heard his lamb stir from his own chambers. Every whisper and every drop in the manor went to his ears. He could hear Alyse’s soft breathing, deeply twisted in sleep and then heard as it hitched.
Mercifully, he’d wake her if it got too much but for the moment he simply listened.
It was subtle– a shift from the deep, even rhythm of sleep to something shallower, more rapid. Valerius stilled, relcined in his own chambers, having been pondering away the hours til dawn.
A soft whimper. A rustle of sheets. Her breath caught, then released in a shaky exhale. There was something there, something in his lamb’s mind, crawling up from the very dark corners that she tried to keep hidden even from him.
Dare he think this to be… cute in a way?
The thought surfaced, unbidden and he examined it with cold amusement. A lamb, dreaming of wolves. Of course it was predictable. Of course it was, in its own way, pathetic and yet—
Through the slumbering halls, he heard her gasp again. A small choked sound, like someone trying to scream and failing. To anyone else, it would have been barely a brush of air but Valerius heard it so clear. His ears twitched. The sheets rustled again violently, a thrashing motion.
He should wake her. It was practical, merciful. A distressed lamb was a useless lamb. An inconvenient lamb.
Still, he did not move.
He listened to the symphony of her horror– the whimpers and the hitched breathing and the tiny broken little sounds that escaped through her clenched throat. He heard her mumble somethin, a word swallowed by sleep and then another, clearer this time.
“Master…”
It was not a call for rescue, she was still fitifully asleep. It instead sounded depserate, an unconscious reaching.
It did something to him. Something he didn’t care to name. It tightened in his chest, a strange possessive ache. He caused her fear, intentionally, deliberately, with practiced movements. This was not that. This was a version of him that he did not control, that he did not yield. What was it doing to his lamb? In her dream, she was afraid.
Of me? Valerius wondered. Or for me?
What could her head be dreaming up? Alyse thought of such wonderfully stupid things sometimes that Valerius couldn’t even begin to crack open that strange head of her’s.
He couldn’t figure it out. The distinction of fear of and fear for mattered, somehow, though he didn’t know why.
Her breathing grew more ragged. A soft, broken sob escaped her, followed by a wordless, keening sound that raised the hair on his arms.
Enough.
Alyse
His voice carried through the halls, slithering beneath her door and whispering in her ears. He waited a second but she did not stir.
Alyse. Wake up, lamb.
Her eyes flew open.
The darkness of her room was a different darkness than the dream—softer, familiar, smelling of lavender and old wood rather than rot and iron. For a moment, Alyse was suspended between worlds, her heart a frantic drum, her breath caught in her throat. The cage was gone. The shopkeeper's melted face was gone. But the echo of his voice—her master's voice—still lingered, cold and sharp.
She was alone.
The realization crashed over her, cold and disorienting. She was in her bed, in her room, tangled in her own sheets. The fire had burned low, casting long, dancing shadows on the walls. The silence was absolute, save for the pounding of her own heart.
He woke me.
The thought surfaced slowly, pushing through the fog of terror. His voice had cut through the nightmare like a blade, pulling her from the depths. But he wasn't here. She could feel his absence like a physical thing—the empty space beside her, the cold sheets, the stillness of the room.
She sat up, her body trembling, her chemise soaked through with sweat. The nightmare clung to her like a second skin—the bars, the smell, his cold, assessing eyes. Why do you dream of it? the dream-him still asked. Is my house not enough?
A sob caught in her throat, and she pressed her hand to her mouth to stifle it. She didn't know if he was still listening. He could hear everything—every whisper, every breath, every broken little sound. The thought should have been comforting. Instead, it was another cage, another set of bars.
It is enough. It is more than enough. She is grateful, so grateful. The most grateful lamb to ever be, didn’t he know that? Didn’t she make it clear? That was just a dream thought, not real, not ever real.
Except if it wasn’t real why couldn’t she stop these awful tears?
“Master?” She called out into the emptiness, praying that he was still listening. Her voice felt so small, swallowed up by the night air that cooled and stilled unlike her shivering form. “Please… Master, please…”
She wanted him. No, needed. She needed him.
“I am not–” She hiccuped, dropping her head down in a shudder. “ –allowed to leave my chambers undressed but– please, please… I need you. I really really need you.”
There was nothing that could calm her like him, nothing that would quell her fears. She needed her master. A lost little lamb needed her shepherd, but he did not answer. Perhaps he was no longer listening.
The thought was a blade, twisting in her chest. Of course he wasn’t. He had woken her, one his dutym returned to his own concerns. She was not his priority She was a pet, a possession, a creature to be managed, not coddled. She knew this. She had always known this.
Then why did it hurt so much?
Another sob escaped her, broken and raw. She pressed her fist to her mouth, bitind down on her knuckles, trying to stifle the sound. If he was listening. If he cared to listen.
He doesn’t. He woke you. That’s all. That’s all you get.
Alyse uncurled from herself, her movements slow and sluggish and out of her control. She needed him. Needed. She couldn’t wait here, not in the dark, not where the nightmare still clung ot her skin. She stepped out into the hall, dressed in nothing but a thin silk nightgown.
Stupid lamb. Rotten, spoiled, stupid lamb. He gave you a room and clothes and food and this is how you repay him? With tears? With nightmares? With pathetic, whimpering pleas in the dark?
She hated herself in that moment. Hated her weakness, her need, her endless, grasping hunger for his attention. She was supposed to be content. Happy, when he permitted. Grateful, always. That was her role. That was her purpose.
But she wasn't content. She was hollow and shaking and cold, and the dream was still there, lurking at the edges of her consciousness, waiting to drag her back under. And he wasn't here. He wasn't coming.
And just in those few moments, she found herself lost. The halls were not the same without the candle light. They were dark, wide, hopeless and endless. She wondered further, not sure how many times she had turned or if she had turned at all. Was she there yet? Or was she closer to stumbling down a flight of stairs?
Is my house not enough?
It is, she thought, the words a desperate silent prayer. It is enough. You are enough. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Please–
She bumped into something, hard and warm. It took her a second to feel the shift in the air. A change in pressure, the subtle unmistakable presence of him.
The candles flickered on, her head lifted, eyes wide, breath caught in her tiny throat.
He stood there before her, a silhouette against the dim light of the corridor. His face was unreadable, shrouded in shadow but she knew the shape of him– even the smell of him. Those were his broad shoulders, not the shop keepers. That was his proud set, his quiet commanding stillness.
“Master.” She breathed, watching to crash into him but instead only managing a broken, grateful whisper.
He didn’t speak, not for a moment. Instead he ran his knuckles along the side of her face, brushing away some of the tears that glistened off the fire light. He was unreadable but steady.
“You called for me,” He said. It wasn’t a question.
She nodded, a jerky motion, her throat too tight for words.
“And you left your chambers. Undressed.” His voice was flat, but there was something beneath it– something she couldn’t place. It did not sound like anger, but she rarely heard that on his tongue to begin with. “You broke a rule.”
The words were a slap, cold and sharp. She flinched, her gaze dropping to her lap. "I know. I'm sorry. I just—I needed—"
"You needed." He cut her off, his voice soft but edged. "And your need supersedes my rules?"
"No!" The word burst out of her, desperate and raw. She looked up at him, her eyes swimming with fresh tears. "No, master. Never. I just—I couldn't—the dream was so real, and you weren't there, and I thought—I thought if I just called, if I just asked—"
She broke off, a sob catching in her throat. She was making a mess of this, a terrible, pathetic mess. He would be angry. He would punish her. And she deserved it, she deserved all of it, for being so weak, so needy, so—
His hand came up and cupped her face.
The touch was gentle—shockingly, impossibly gentle. His thumb brushed across her cheek, wiping away a tear. She froze, her breath hitching, her eyes wide.
"You are a trial," he said, his voice low. "A constant, exhausting, bewildering trial."
She nodded, because it was true. She was. She knew she was.
"You call for me in the dark. You break my rules. You weep into my sheets and beg for my presence as if I were the air you breathe." His thumb traced the line of her jaw, slow and deliberate. "And I find myself—inexplicably, annoyingly—unable to ignore you."
Her heart stuttered. "Master?"
"Do not mistake this for weakness," he said, his voice hardening slightly. "I am not here because you 'need' me. I am here because your distress is an inconvenience, and I prefer my property to be functional. A lamb that cannot sleep is a lamb that cannot serve."
It was cold. It was clinical. It was exactly the kind of thing he would say.
But his hand was still on her face, and his thumb was still brushing away her tears, and he had come. When she called, he had come.
"I understand," she whispered.
"Do you?" He tilted her chin up, forcing her to meet his eyes. "Do you understand that this—" he gestured vaguely between them, "—is not a precedent? That I will not come every time you cry, every time you dream, every time you feel the vast, empty space of your own inadequacy?"
She swallowed, her throat dry. "Yes, master."
"Good." He released her chin, but his hand remained on her face, warm and solid. His thumb stilled, resting against the curve of her cheekbone. "Then why are you still standing in my hallway, dressed like a ghost, reeking of tears and terror?"
Alyse blinked, the question pulling her from the haze of relief. She looked down at herself—the thin silk nightgown, the bare feet, the trembling hands. She had broken a rule. She had left her chambers undressed, wandering the dark halls like a lost, pathetic thing.
"I didn't mean—" she started, but the words died in her throat. She had meant. She had meant every step, every turn, every desperate, stumbling search for his presence. She had needed him, and her need had overridden everything else—her training, her fear, her understanding of her place.
"You didn't mean to break my rule," he finished for her, his voice dry. "You simply… did. Because your feelings were too big, and your head was too small, and the dark was too dark." He tilted his head, studying her. "Is that an accurate assessment?"
She nodded, a jerky, shameful motion.
"It is not an excuse." His thumb traced her cheekbone again, almost absently. "But it is an explanation. And explanations, while not excusing behavior, can inform its correction."
She flinched at the word. Correction. She knew what that meant. The switch, the hairbrush, the sharp, stinging lessons that painted her skin in stripes of fire. She deserved it. She knew she deserved it. But the thought, in her current state, was almost more than she could bear.
"Please," she whispered, not even sure what she was begging for. Mercy? Punishment? His arms around her? She didn't know. She only knew she needed him.
Valerius was silent for a long moment, his eyes searching her face. The firelight from somewhere behind her caught the edges of his features, casting them in sharp, golden relief. He looked like a statue—cold, beautiful, untouchable.
Then, he sighed.
It was a soft sound, almost inaudible, but she heard it. She always heard him. "You are fortunate," he said, "that I find your distress more irritating than your disobedience. If you were merely disobedient, you would be over my knee by now."
A fresh wave of tears threatened, but she blinked them back. "I'm sorry."
“Do you want me to rethink my mercy?” He asked, sharp as a blade. “Are you truly sorry without my say so?”
She didn't know how to respond to that. She was sorry. She was always, always sorry. For existing, for needing, for being too much and not enough all at once.
He seemed to read the thought on her face. His expression shifted, something flickering in his eyes—not anger, not quite. Something softer, though he would never admit it.
"Come," he said, and turned.
He didn't reach for her hand. He didn't guide her. He simply walked, expecting her to follow. And she did, her bare feet silent on the cold stone, her nightgown trailing behind her like a ghost's shroud.
He led her not to her room, but to his.
The door was open, the fire within crackling low. His chambers were larger than hers, warmer, smelling of him—sandalwood and old books and something cold, like winter air. She hesitated on the threshold, her eyes wide.
"You have already broken one rule tonight," he said, not looking back. "What is another?"
It wasn't permission, exactly. It was an observation. A test. She stepped inside.
He moved to the fireplace, stirring the embers with an iron poker. The flames leapt, casting the room in a warm, golden glow. She stood in the center of the room, shivering, her arms wrapped around herself.
He didn't look at her. "The bed. Get in."
She blinked. "Master?"
"You are cold. You are shaking. You are wearing a nightgown better suited to a summer evening than a winter night." He set the poker aside and turned to face her, his expression unreadable. "Get in the bed, Alyse. Before you catch a chill and become an even greater inconvenience."
She hesitated for only a moment, then crossed to the massive bed. The sheets were cool, but the blankets were thick, and the mattress seemed to swallow her as she crawled beneath them. She lay on her side, facing the fire, watching him as he moved about the room.
He poured himself a glass of water—not wine, not spirits, just water—and drank it slowly, his back to her. The fire crackled. The silence stretched.
Finally, he set the glass aside and crossed to the bed. He didn't get in. He sat on the edge, his weight dipping the mattress, and looked down at her.
"The nightmare," he said. "Tell me what you saw."
She swallowed, her throat dry. "The cage. The pet shop. The shopkeeper, but his face was… wrong. Melting. And then you were there, but you were angry, and you asked me—" Her voice broke. "You asked me why I dreamed of it. If your house wasn't enough."
His expression didn't change, but something in his eyes flickered. "And what did you answer?"
"I couldn't. I couldn't speak. The words were stuck." A tear slipped down her cheek, tracing a hot path to her ear. "But I wanted to say—I wanted to tell you—it is enough. You are enough. I'm not—I don't want to go back. I never want to go back. I'm grateful. I'm so grateful. I just—"
"You just dream," he finished. "Of cages and shopkeepers and the past you cannot escape. It is not ingratitude, Alyse. It is memory. And memory is not something you control."
She stared at him, surprised by the words. He rarely spoke of such things—of minds and memories and the things that lurked in the dark. He was a creature of action, of consequence, of cold, hard reality.
But here, in the firelight, with her trembling in his bed, he seemed almost… human.
"Tonight," he said, "you will sleep here. In my bed. Under my roof. And if you dream again, I will hear you. And I will wake you. And we will do this again, if necessary."
She blinked. "You… you want me to stay?"
"I want you to sleep," he corrected, his voice sharpening. "I want you to stop crying. I want you to be functional in the morning. What I want is irrelevant. What is necessary is that you rest."
It was the closest thing to care he had ever offered. She clutched it like a lifeline.
"Thank you, master," she whispered.
He didn't answer. He stood, crossed to the other side of the bed, and lay down on top of the blankets, his body a rigid line beside her. He didn't touch her. He didn't pull her close.
But he was there. He had come when she called. He had brought her to his room, his bed, his space. He had chosen to stay.
She closed her eyes, the warmth of the fire and the weight of his presence wrapping around her like a blanket. The nightmare was still there, lurking, but it seemed smaller now, farther away. He was here. He was here.
"Master?" she whispered, her voice barely audible.
"Hmm?"
"Thank you for coming."
He was silent for a long moment. Then, so softly she almost missed it: "Sleep, lamb."
She did.
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@loreleiloon
@yet-how-they-creep
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