date posted: 2024-01-31
summary: In a nebulous world where Raven lives under her father's care, Tara is planted to be her handmaiden.
word count: 7,915 words
chapters: one (you are here), two
content warnings: violence, mildly explicit sex, implied rape/incest, gore
notes: alternate universe based on the handmaiden, a 2016 film directed by park chan-wook. kind of all over the place and rushed and i didn't worldbuild at all. holy fuck i am nervous about this one please be nice
Tara’s awoken by the sound of hysterical, pained screaming from the door across. She jolts out of bed, rips her door open, then barges into the girl’s room.
The girl’s sobbing, staring at nothing but the wrist she’s grasping from where she’s kneeled on the floor. Tara doesn’t immediately see any injuries, and at a closer look, there’s no blood, no scars, only darkened bruises. She falls to the floor, kneeling in front of the girl, rubs frantic circles on her back.
It’s barely six in the morning, barely light outside, and the girl she’s going to kill is screaming at nothing more than bruises on a wrist. What a freak.
It takes several long minutes until the lady seems to calm down. Her back is lukewarm to the touch, spine prominently jutting through her blouse. Tara decides the boniness comes from being a freak. A witch, as Slade said. It’s got to be that.
The witch stills, then releases her wrist, letting it fall limply in front of her. Tara stills her own rubbing, keeping a hand on her back in case she freaks again.
Eventually, she rises to her feet, and Tara follows along. The witch turns to look at her, and almost seems to deadpan as she says, “Raven.”
Tara blinks. “I’m sorry?”
The lady tilts her head. “I sensed your confusion. My name is Raven,” she says.
Like that’s what she’s most confused about. Tara suppresses the urge to scoff.
Instead, she nods, looks up at her, all doe-eyed, lets out a shaky breath, for appearances. “You should rest, now. You might be sick,” she says. Raven seems to consider this, then walks towards her bed without saying anything. Tara makes note of her stilted gait.
She stands still from where she is, until Raven turns to her, stiff, and motions for her to follow her. Tara does so.
Raven slides a curtain to block the light, then slips into her bed. Tara stands against the wall, watching her remove her blouse, only a bra underneath. Her shoulder blades are sharp, almost as much as her cheekbones, and Tara notices how pale she is in the dark.
She’s almost thankful that Raven doesn’t move to remove her shorts.
Tara stays where she is as Raven pulls the covers over herself, up to her shoulders, her head barely poking out. She’s facing Tara.
“Come here,” she says. Tara blinks at her from where she’s standing, staring at Raven and her gaudy bed. She fidgets, confused, but knows, ultimately, what Raven may be proposing.
This is not what she’s here for. This is what a handmaiden does. Slade must have known what he signed her up for with this. He will be okay with it. It will be fine.
Tara slides onto the bed, laying on top of the sheets exposed by the folded comforter. Raven, looking confused, tired, beckons for her to lay down, underneath the covers. Tara faces away from her as she does so.
A moment passes, then another. Raven’s breath is hot on her neck.
“What is love supposed to be?” she whispers. “How do you do it?”
Tara blinks, looking forward at the nondescript wall, a frame nailed to it with an image hard to make out in the dark. She blinks again.
“It’s…,” she starts, then trails off.
She thinks about hands, heavy and scarred, at the back of her neck, her shoulder blades, slipping lower. A gaze that cuts like staring straight into a lit candle. Pressed so, so close, too warm, too much, but it’s what you do, what you have.
She clears her throat. “Devotion. It’s that,” She pauses, then adds, “It’s all you have.”
Tara can’t see how Raven responds, but she feels it, how Raven pushes her shoulder behind her, beckoning her to turn over. Tara does so.
Raven’s expression is hard to decipher; some parts confused, others longing, yearning. There’s more to it, probably. The girl’s enigmatic; Tara’s known that since last night.
“Will you show me?” Raven breathes, the heat briefly warming Tara’s face, until it’s gone. She feels a hand on her cheek, and it’s almost unsettling how it snakes up, but then it gently presses on her face.
She swallows and nods, feeling more heat on her face. Tara snakes her own hand around Raven’s waist, pulling her closer; Raven slightly jolts at the touch, then pushes away, almost frightened.
Tara stares at her, breathless for a moment, confused. Raven stares back at her with something in her eye that glints like the sun reflecting off Slade’s glock. She’s breathing hard, Tara notices, seeing the heavy rise and fall of the girl’s chest, the sweat at her collarbone. Tara almost tightens a fist in frustration, until Raven scrunches her eyes shut, forcing the glassy look in them away.
Raven exhales, almost like she went through a million breathing exercises in a second, with the way she’s suddenly calmed. There’s still a jitter to her, something dangerous like before, and Tara thinks it both exhilarating and adorable and entirely stupid.
“Show me how you do it,” Raven says, shaky, but certain. Tara blinks, registering the words and their weight. She nods, as much as she can while laying down.
She doesn’t exactly have a way of doing it – not by herself. It’s usually Slade taking the lead, all rough callouses on her shoulders and stubble pricking her face and kisses that tasted like he wanted something violent out of her that she couldn’t give herself.
She gave it eventually, though. It gave like all the blood and guts he wanted to see from her during contracts, blood in her mouth, then all over his teeth, his fingers wrenching up in her and twisting and hurting until they didn’t because she couldn’t ache anymore.
Tara mimics Raven’s eye-scrunch thing, suddenly, and thinks she looks like an idiot in the process, just as much as Raven did. It wasn’t cute like Raven doing it. She knows it wasn’t, she never is.
Tara gets back on task. She grasps the end of her gown, so ridiculously white and clean it’s almost sheer, and slides it upward, as she spreads her legs open. She glances at Raven, curious to see if she’s making some stupid incredulous expression, but the girl only looks stern, for some reason.
She goes through the motions, does what Slade does to her, but slower, because she’s demonstrating it to a clueless witch girl who hasn’t a clue as to what sex is, at her age. She rubs at herself carelessly, lets out little faked moans just to sound satisfied.
A hand grabs her wrist, and Tara immediately stops, turns her head to the side, looks to Raven. She still has that freakish stern look to her, but there’s something determined about it now.
“You’re faking it,” she says, all flat and dry.
Tara almost lets her face crack, almost shows some kind of nervous, annoyed smile at that.
“What do you mean?” she says, feigning confusion. Raven sees right through it. Disappointed, almost, Tara realizes.
“You’re not feeling anything,” and at that, Tara has to bite her tongue, force herself from retorting something that’d probably get her fired or killed.
(Killed by who, she wonders for a moment, thinks about things like danger and contracts and that glint in Raven’s eye, then stops thinking about it.)
Raven still has her hand around Tara’s wrist. There’s a confidence in her grasp that makes Tara uneasy. The girl talks like she’s so confused, so easily, then acts as if she knows what she’s doing. Tara can’t get a read on her at all. It’s frustrating, the uncertainty.
She can’t wait for the end of this contract, and she’s less than a day into it. How miserable.
Tara notices Raven pushing herself up on the bed, leaning closer to Tara, her grip loosening as she moves. Tara wrestles out of Raven’s grasp and sets her hand on the bed. She feels entirely bare, all of her exposed to Raven and the rest of the room, her legs open like she’s waiting for a punishment. It’s embarrassing.
She turns to Raven, waits for what the girl will tell her to do next, stupidly. Even more embarrassing, that she’s waiting for her word while spread out like this. She wants nothing more than to sleep this away.
But Raven won’t let her, she knows. She’s too curious – about what, Tara couldn’t fucking guess at this point. She’s half turned on and has her legs out and feels the air up her crotch as some witch girl stares at her half-curiously and half-hungrily. Tara feels like a piece of meat, rotten, cold flesh, surrounded by desperate hunger that will satiate itself with anything it finds, no matter how wretched it is.
She closes her legs, expects Raven to do something unexpected and stupid. She waits as nothing happens, as Raven stares at her, quietly. Eventually, with her gown hiked up and the cold air nipping at her legs, the sunlight poking into the room slightly, she falls asleep like this, pathetically.
They don’t talk about it the next day.
Everything is as it should be: Raven orders her around, as nervous as she is doing so (she’s clearly unused to this – how many handmaidens has she had before, if any?), and Tara follows her at every beck and call.
She admires the halls they walk through, how threatening and foreboding they are, how Slade and her will conquer these halls sometime soon. It’s not a thought she can imagine well, but she knows it will come to pass someday, so she thinks of it anyway.
Raven leads her through these long halls and through corners and takes the long way, always.
Raven is an enigma, she’s decided.
She wants to spend time with Tara; it’s not hard to tell, with how close she gets to her, how… clingy she is, shockingly. For a demonic girl with a twisted destiny, she’s the opposite of impersonal; she drowns in every touch she can find.
Tara thinks she can read her like a book, but she’s too baffling in other areas for that to be true; she screams at the slightest scare, or anything, really, given their second meeting.
Raven shrugs away her secondary handmaidens, preferring only Tara’s company.
She doesn’t talk about the things that matter, until she does. Until she’s pulling her into a corner and leaning close, her breath hot on Tara’s face, but so reluctant and outright scared.
“Is this ok?” Raven whispers in this dark corridor, and Tara notices she’s shaking, her hand raised to touch Tara but almost too nervous to go through with it.
Tara just nods her head, and Raven slowly leans forward, and their lips gently meet.
Regrettably, Tara leans into the kiss, and lets Raven touch her shoulder, and Tara leans into the touch, and Raven has her up against a wall and Tara thinks she’s letting her take what she wants, and maybe she is, but a part of her doesn’t resist this as much as she should be, like usual.
A part of her eases into it, and as Raven kisses her more furiously, Tara leans forward, carefully, and puts her hands to Raven’s shoulders, and embraces all of it, all of Raven.
Days and nights later, she finds Raven’s touch has become more familiar, more comforting, more welcoming.
They’re waiting for Raven’s teachers to arrive for the day, and she absentmindedly starts braiding Raven's hair while she waits, sees Raven shiver at her light touches as she gently folds and arranges pieces of hair on one another. Tara remembers, so long ago, before she became wretched and tainted the way she is, how her mother used to hold her so gently in her lap, her gown folding and creasing in front of her as she sat, her mother's slow, soft touches as she braided Tara's hair, before she started to cut it short.
She never jumped at her mother's touch, never shivered. It was only them in her mother's room, the stars in the sky obscured only by the pouring rain, Tara lulled to sleep by her mother's delicate touch.
Once, she remembers, Tara asked her mother to teach her how to braid, just like she did it. She asked softly, while her mother held her as always, warmly in her lap. Tara stiffened before she asked, suddenly nervous at the thought, worried something would interrupt this moment, or that her mother would tell her to go off to bed.
But her mother listened to her, that time, showed Tara with a piece of her own hair how she did it. Tara watched fervently, imitating it with her own hair, letting her mother correct her mistakes, the words gently whispered to her so not to crack the silence in the room.
Tara continues to braid Raven's hair, tries to ignore her slight brushes against Raven's uncovered back, how they make Raven startle, how cold she is. Raven's hair is coarse and long - well kept, she knows, because she's the one to prepare her baths and soaps for Raven, but still rough at the touch, delicate like a fraying thread.
Raven is a lot like that, she thinks; fragile, on the precipice of something far greater, but unable to accept it, unwilling.
Tara has a flash in her head, a blip, asking why she should have to accept it. She tries to resist the thought, even shakes her head for a moment, stilling her hands, startling Raven. Tara blinks.
"Are you alright?" Raven asks, her voice soft, cracking with disuse. She's turned her head slightly to face Tara, and the sight makes something jump in Tara's chest - fear, or maybe something else. She wouldn't know.
She closes her eyes and exhales through her nose, blanking her mind. The time will come later.
Tara picks up the unfinished, split pieces of Raven's hair, and continues to wrap them together, over and under.
She mutters a reassurance and braids and braids until she's moving down, on her knees, sees Raven's back through the chair and behind her hair as she braids the last of the dark strands.
When she finishes, she whispers a "wait" to Raven, almost sounding as if she's excited with how short it's said, and looks around the room for a spare elastic or string. Raven's confused gaze burns on her from behind.
Tara finally manages to find something to secure the braid - a loose, cut ribbon on Raven's dresser - and quietly secures the braid, tying the ribbon into a small, tight bow.
"All done," she says, softly, stands with her hands folded behind her back. Her chest is shaky and unstable, jittery.
She watches Raven stand from her chair, inattentively lets her gaze travel down Raven's back, sees her sharp shoulderbones poking out through the square open back of the dress, and through the cloth that covers the rest of it.
Raven walks to the mirror across the room, and Tara continues to watch her from the corner of her eye, standing as still as possible. She watches Raven awkwardly turn to the side, stilted and disjointed, as she angles to see the braid. Tara recognizes the expression on her face, the confused, reluctant smile that almost crosses her face, restrained.
"I like it," Raven says quietly, something lighter in her tone. Tara allows herself to smile subtlely at that.
One day, Raven is called into her father’s quarters. Tara is told to wait outside for her.
Tara, despite her shyness being a facade, actually becomes timid at the thought of being near Trigon the Terrible, how he could crush her so easily, smack her around, do anything with her.
Strangely, the thought isn’t that terrifying. It’s nothing she hasn’t handled before; maybe it’s the thought that she wouldn’t be able to do anything about it that scares her more.
Still, she finds herself standing outside a large door, after seeing Raven’s nervous, almost trembling form escorted in by some of Trigon’s own servants.
Tara had brushed her hair out before they were brought to Trigon’s quarters, felt how warm Raven’s shoulders were in the few moments she accidentally brushed up against Raven’s skin. She had walked behind Raven, on the way, but in the brief moment their hands met, Raven’s hand was ice in hers.
She’s really worrying over this witch demon girl. How low she’s fallen.
But as she stands there, hands clasped together in front of her, looking down at the floor, she regrettably wonders if Raven is ok.
Through the wall, she hears more of Trigon than she does of Raven’s trepid voice, how his voice roars and roars through the walls, but his words rendered unintelligible by the sheer volume. She hears banging, slams, so much noise, but it’s so unnervingly subtle, how it sneaks up on her and rarely reaches an expected rhythm.
But she hears roars that aren’t his own, something pushing back. It can’t be Raven, she thinks, with how mousy she is, how reluctant she is to even lay her hand on Tara.
But who else can it be, in there?
The thought of Raven in a different form – her destined form – shakes her more than anything, so she pushes it to the back of her mind, as much as she can.
She wonders, fleetingly, if Trigon is anything like Slade. She almost hopes he’s closer to being like Slade, if he’s actually worse than she expects; at least, after everything, in the in-betweens, Slade is caring. Never gentle, but caring, in his own, twisted way.
Slade cares about her; she’s not stupid to think he doesn’t. After all, he wouldn’t have sent her on such a treacherous mission like this one if he didn’t care for her and believe in her, trust her.
If Trigon is anything like Slade, then he cares for Raven, even if it’s in a sick, demonic way. Tara knows more than anything how comforting that kind of care can be at her worst.
She hopes Raven is comforted by it, too.
After her meeting with her father, Raven is… odd.
She refuses to respond to Tara’s touches like she has lately, how she usually leans into them, ever so reluctantly, but eventually giving in. Tara shamefully thought it was cute, and even more shamefully, now, worries for Raven in this odd state.
Raven sits still in the chair before her vanity, staring at her hands, the rings adorning them. Tara pretends as though she’s not studying her, but knows Raven can probably tell without so much as looking at her. In the time she’s been here, Tara’s slowly grown used to it; it’s become familiar to her.
Tara stands in the corner, but glances at Raven occasionally, her unmoving form, and wishes for something, anything to happen, something to shake this stillness that’s gotten into the both of them, when they’ve grown so close now.
She knows that this will end soon, by her own hand or by Slade’s.
Somehow, that day in her mind’s eye has grown more distant.
In her quarters that night, Tara realizes how soft she’s become, and it keeps her up.
Was it the touches? Did she conduct herself too inappropriately? Where did she learn this from, this kind of reckless behavior? She should be handling Raven delicately, carefully; the witch is a ticking time bomb, after all, that’s what Slade had told her. She’s a time bomb that should be triggered at the right moment. Tara should’ve prepared herself for the moment.
She traces the lines of wood in the ceiling, feels her feet crushed up against the wall of the small closet-sized room. She’s wide awake, restless at the realization of her current position. She tosses and turns, then, in a cold sweat, and thinks of how she’s boxed herself in – she’s really done it this time, huh, she’s really fucked up, she’s fucked over Slade and this girl she’s come to care for, unfortunately, but Raven doesn’t mean badly, does she? But Tara knows it’s her nature to erupt and destroy, ultimately.
She thinks that’s her nature, too, that all she does is eventually destroy all that’s in her path.
Tara stares at the ceiling, tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. How dare she allow herself to be emotional over this, as if she has the right, knowing what she’s done.
She pulls the covers over her face and back down, gripping them tightly, thinking absently for a moment that she could rip this threadbare blanket apart with her bare hands, little force required. She tosses and turns and thrashes and kicks at the wall and suppresses every urge she has to scream and yell and cry like a fucking baby.
But eventually, she tires herself out.
She sits up, leans her head against the wall above her pillow, stares listlessly at the wall across from her. She shifts a leg up – briefly, she notices how gangly it is, and knows she’s always been like this, but her knee never jutted out quite like that, did it? It’s almost as bony as Raven’s – and rests her arm on her knee. She breathes slowly, in and out, knowing it’ll do jack shit to help her, but is willing to give anything a try to steady herself.
Moments pass, too short, too long, before Tara hears the door across from her slide open, precariously, and then the door to her closet room opens, and she sees Raven’s delicate, fragile form, shaking before her.
Raven really is pathetically weak, if she’s coming to her in this condition, not even managing to compose herself.
Tara wants to wrap her arms tight around her as long as she can until Raven inevitably slips out from under her and disappears for good, or until Tara slinks away guiltily, runs to her doom for her treachery.
But she doesn’t. She collapses inward and sobs, pushes a hand up to her forehead, feels Raven embrace her hesitantly, and just as hesitantly, Tara leans into it, leans her head on Raven’s chest and cries and cries and cries.
Absentmindedly, she hears Raven confused, asking what’s wrong, and Tara doesn’t have the heart to say why. Not yet.
She soaks up all of Raven’s touch for as long as she can, until she composes herself, blinks the tears out of her eyes and apologizes profusely for worrying her mistress.
“It’s ok,” Raven says, timidly, “I hope you’ll be ok,” she says, and carefully tiptoes into her room. She looks over her shoulder one more time before shutting the door.
Tara drowns in Raven’s eyes for as long as she can.
The next day, Tara quietly woke up, changed out of the thin, waifish white nightgown given to her when she first arrived, and made herself as presentable as she needs to be.
She meets Raven’s gaze briefly and immediately cuts it, looking away. Soft, she remembers, and chastises herself for it.
Tara knows Raven is looking her way, worried. She tries to keep her distance that morning, keeps their regular touches short and fleeting.
She has to cut this before it grows into something ugly. It always turns into something ugly, eventually; she wants, no, needs to cut this so she can preserve it the way it is, before everything goes to hell.
Raven, for her part, tries her hardest: she initiates touches, conversation, as awkward as it is, given Raven’s inexperience in continuing any conversation. But Tara stays distant.
Tara doesn’t want to hurt her, but she has to, because that’s how these things go, that’s how they end. They either end ugly or they never end and morph into something uglier. She’d rather cut the growing rot off in a bitter, painful manner than see this to its natural end, the way things have started to go between them.
Briefly, she wonders, if that natural end is even possible.
Ha!, her mind supplies, as if anything with that witch would be possible with this looming over you, and she knows her mind is right, that her true nature, their true natures loom over the both of them, more than their guardians do.
Raven is destined for greatness as a ruler beside her father; Tara is destined for… power, beside Slade, Raven squashed and leashed beneath them.
In a way, Raven and her are too alike for their own good. Maybe that’s what drew them to each other; fate thought it was funny to pair these doomed girls. How funny.
She wonders, then, as she dresses Raven, knots the tie that secures the otherwise loose flowing gown she’s chosen for today, one with fabric that drapes over her shoulders, hiding the warm skin underneath, who she’s really going to become in the new world.
Does she want this? Any of this?
As she walks behind Raven, gazes at the gown trailing slightly behind her, Tara walking carefully to not mar it with her steps, she remembers that there’s only one way to end this, no matter how painful.
Cut the rotted limb before it infects the rest of the body; gore in exchange for a peaceful end. Tara can live and die with that.
That night, after the afternoon of lunch in long, dark halls and a tense meeting between Raven and her father, Tara is icy, responding to Raven with one word answers. Raven tries harder, pushes harder, but Tara is unwavering, as much as it aches to be.
Raven looks shaken again, after her meeting with Trigon; Tara, grievously, worries about her.
She tries not to think about what happens behind those doors, the quiet, muffled noises of reluctant talking from Raven and roared orders and hushed, angry whispers from Trigon. She worries she knows, and the thought of how similar they might truly be haunts her.
But Tara forces herself to be cold, as if she feels nothing; she starts Raven’s bath for her, as Raven waits from her bed. Tara briefly leans her head against the cool tile, and wishes, for her own sake, selfishly, that she had never met Raven, that she’d been spared from this hell.
She wonders how different her life would be without Raven in it, how far she and Slade would’ve gotten with whatever his ultimate plan is. If they would’ve gotten anywhere at all without Raven as their missing piece, missing link to Trigon.
Tara wonders what Slade was getting at anyway, with all of this, with the connection to Raven and Trigon.
What does he truly intend for her?
She’s left little time to think about it before Raven calls for her from her bedroom, and Tara, reluctantly, scrambles to meet her where she is.
Raven’s waiting for her by the door, concern etched all over her face, her sharp features so jagged and delicate in the artificial light.
“Are you ok?” Raven asks, nervously. Tara looks down.
“I’m alright, mistress. There’s nothing to worry about,” she says, quiet.
Raven gently, so gently, takes her by the hand, then, and her hands are so warm, without any of the rings that usually adorn them; she’s laid herself bare for Tara, and it’d be an honor if Tara’s head wasn’t so rotted right now.
Raven puts a hand to her shoulder, lightly, and directs her towards the bed, away from the bathroom. Tara was prepared to do just about anything, then, humiliate herself again like she did on her first night. Anything would’ve been a better precursor to Tara’s plan than this.
Raven’s rubbing at her chest, having snaked a hand up Tara’s dress, from under her apron and the light fabric of the maid’s dress. It’s so gentle. Tara suppresses a moan.
Fuck it all, she decides. She’s ruined everything. This is the last obstacle. One more step and she’s done, free of this farce.
(She never should’ve agreed to this. It was always an insane plan. She doesn’t know what Slade was thinking, sending her here, all alone, up against an unstable demon girl and her all-encompassing, terrifying father. They’re in over her heads. She should’ve said no to him, but she can’t, can she? He always gets what he wants.)
She stops herself. No more of this.
“I’m not a handmaiden,” she blurts.
“What?” Raven says softly, so relaxed (she’s finally comfortable, for once) that she seems to have barely registered Tara’s words.
She inhales, feels something prick at her eyes, then exhales just as fast as she feels it. She hopes Raven doesn’t recognize it, but she probably will, the witch. She’ll miss that about her, she really will.
She can’t keep thinking like this. No more, no.
“I’m a spy. I was sent here by Deathstroke the Terminator to manipulate you into defeating your father and usurping his power. The plan was to have enough control over you to use that power for ourselves,” she rushes out in maybe one or two breaths. She’s shaking.
Raven looks incredulous, her breath coming out even slower.
“I’m sorry, Raven.” Quietly, she closes her eyes for a moment, trying to reconcile the shame and the fear she holds in her right now. She knows what Raven can – will – do, once she gets it together. She hears Raven’s slow, steady breathing, and waits a little longer to open her eyes, not wanting to see her face yet.
She tilts her head as close as she can to Raven, from where they are together on the bed, so, so painfully close. Tara has an arm around her shoulder, rubbing circles into Raven’s back. She tries to comfort her as best as she can, more than she ever tried.
In that moment, Tara realizes what she wants most of all, now that everything is ruined. She looks at Raven, who looks disturbingly numb, and wishes she said nothing at all, that she kept it to herself and found some other way to get out of this. She wishes she never met Raven, never went through with this plan, but Slade always gets what he wants. If she never met Raven, she wouldn’t have this pain.
But if she never met Raven, she’d still be with Slade. For some reason, the thought makes her chest tight.
She can have this, one last time.
Tara wants so desperately to kiss her right now. She forces herself not to.
Tara pushes her shoulder, the one that’s not leaning on the bed, mumbles something to get Raven moving, and eventually has Raven sitting on the edge of the bed, numb. Tara moves onto the floor and on her knees, hiking up Raven’s dress and spreading her legs.
Raven sighs, leaning back on the bed, but she’s still tense, judging by the tautness of her legs, how tight in place they are. Tara glances up from where she was kissing Raven’s thigh, sees how Raven forces herself to keep her head looking down, staring at Tara, not letting herself lean her head back.
One last time, for their sakes, before Raven kills her. She wants to do this for Raven, and selfishly, she wants all of Raven for herself, too. She figures she can live her remaining time with that guilt.
“For you,” she says, hot breath against Raven’s cunt, “I do this for you,” she says. “No one else.”
Which is a lie, of course. She and Slade did it all the time, but it’s more… guided with him, for lack of a better term, she supposes. He knows what he’s doing, knocking her back onto the bed, spreading her legs, ripping something terrifying and dangerous out of her every time.
She blinks in quick succession, getting the image out of her head, having briefly frozen in place. She’s with Raven right now.
She looks up to see if her words did anything for Raven, and realizes Raven’s had her hand on Tara’s head for a moment now, almost… petting her. She’d find it patronizing if it wasn’t all too familiar, how much it reminds her of Slade, how he holds her while they’re in the middle of doing it.
Her breath stops for a moment, and she doesn’t know why. She wants to lean into Raven’s touch, because it does feel good, it’s comforting, but it’s not, and something is wrong, and she forces herself to focus on her task, suddenly leaning forward and licking a long strip up Raven’s cunt. She feels like she’s somewhere else, but like hell will she let that show.
She distantly hears Raven’s nervous moans, and tries to listen more as she gives Raven’s clit some attention with her hand. It’s all autopilot for her now, doing what Slade rarely does to her sometimes after he finishes. He never cared much for it, but sometimes when she caught him on a better day, he cared about how she felt.
(Doesn’t he always care?)
Tara stops for a moment, her finger stilling from where it was on Raven’s clit. Raven sighs, loudly, and Tara briefly thinks about how brazen and uncomfortable that must be for Raven, being so open. It’d be funnier if she felt more present in her own body right now.
“Please–” Raven gets out, desperate. It brings Tara back to where she is, just enough.
Tara does what she’s supposed to do, probably for the last time, now (what will Raven do with her?). She licks Raven’s clit enough to send her over the edge, and Raven’s legs spasm. Tara stares straight ahead, dazed. She leans her head against Raven’s thigh, tries to bring herself back to reality.
“It…” she says, momentarily breathless, “it feels nice, doesn’t it? Letting go.”
Raven lightly pets her head again, still panting, her legs relaxed. Tara wants to bat her hand away, but she doesn’t, just rests her head on Raven’s thigh, quiet. She doesn’t think much, in that moment, doesn’t hear a lot.
Eventually, Tara leans back from where she was between Raven’s legs, and looks up at Raven from where she is on her knees. The collar of her dress is covered in spit and maybe something else, she notices. Mostly spit.
Raven’s quiet, the reality about to hit her. Tara waits for it like she awaits an avalanche of her own creation.
“I… I can’t believe it,” Raven says, like something in her ruptured. Tara winces at her tone, how defeated she sounds.
“You have to be strong,” she says, quietly, “for you and me. You can do this,” she whispers. She stands up, leans in closer towards Raven’s ear, brushing her hand against Raven’s hand on the bed. Her knees ache from the sudden stretch upward, but she ignores it.
“Let go. Let it out. You know you want to.”
She stands carefully, waiting for Raven to respond, but she just stares at the floor, registering what Tara said.
The breath is yanked out of her as Raven grabs her by the shoulders and pushes her backwards, back and back, into the bathroom. She feels the back of her knees hit the cool, marble bathtub, and then Raven is pushing her in. The water is lukewarm, Tara having prepared it for Raven, only for Raven to not use it, because they ended up cuddling.
Raven pushes her under the water, hands around her neck. Tara claws at Raven’s fingers, feels them scratch and cut deeper into her skin. She tries to breathe and only sees bubbles. Tara kicks and thrashes, barely hears Raven’s screaming through the water. She almost feels like she’s eavesdropping again. Raven’s yelling herself hoarse, tears streaming down her face. She feels like she’s supposed to be hiding in her quarters, head pressed against the closet door, some amount of distance between them as she tries to hear every word Raven says to Trigon, to her servants. To herself.
Raven becomes hazier to her, and spots grow in her vision. She eventually feels cool air on her skin, the stinging of water dripping into her eyes, and realizes Raven’s pulled her back up, head against the granite tile, all rough and textured, but not grimy, perfectly clean.
She’s staring behind Raven, dazed, looking at the bathroom tile, and thinks about Raven’s ice cold two-hand grip on her neck. She looks back at Raven, who looks… numb. Panicked, partially, but mostly numb. Unfeeling.
Raven’s breathing hard, her eyebrows furrowed and an expression that’s somewhere between rage and that unsettling numbness. Her eyes are blown wide and she’s breathing heavily through her mouth, hot breath falling on Tara’s face, with how close they are.
Tara tries to look at her longer, but the urge to cough overcomes her, and she ends up dry heaving into the crevice of her arm, convinced she’s about to spew unsubstantial soup and cold bathwater all over Raven’s fancy artisan bathtub.
By the end of it, whenever it is, she feels dizzy. She feels her head loll to the side, leaning on her shoulder. She hasn’t puked anything up, but she almost wishes she had. Maybe it’d knock something into Raven. Something, at all.
Raven still has her by the shoulders, but it’s lighter, now. Tara glances at her for a moment, and sees the girl looking almost worried. It’s probably closer to confusion. She doubts Raven knows anything about dealing with a retching, wet-dog handmaiden. She wonders, briefly, if Raven will fire her just for this, for almost ruining her bathroom. She wonders if Raven left bruises on her neck. It still feels tight there, a little hot. She doesn’t know if she wants it to bruise or not, evidence of Raven’s touch in one of her most vulnerable areas.
Tara coughs weakly, feels a little bit of phlegm and water coming up, but forces herself to swallow it down.
“Got what you wanted?” She says, cutting.
“You’re a traitor,”
“I did what I had to do,”
“I thought you loved me,” Raven says, almost like it’s torn out of her throat. It’s weak and angry at the same time.
Tara squeezes her eyes shut, thinks about faking a laugh, something to keep up appearances. “I don’t love. It’s a job. Nothing personal,” she says, grinning, eyes narrowing as she stares at Raven, barely avoiding flinching in front of her. She wants so badly to say that she loves her back, but she knows what she has to do.
She’s forever been selfish. She’s just seeing it to its natural end.
Raven’s eyes narrow back in response, and Tara thinks she’s about to fly into another rage, or actually kill her this time. Tara imagines herself – her corpse – in the tub, the air squeezed out of her. She wonders if Raven would pick her up, carry her out to another servant, or just dump her outside, on the cold, rain-wet grass, let the dirt stain her ribbon-tied apron and the spiders and ants crawl their way into her damp hair, claiming her body for their own. She thinks about Raven carrying her lightly, carelessly, and dropping her unceremoniously onto the ground, dirt flying up and grass crunching from the weight. Maybe Raven would squeeze her tighter, have to use all her bony strength to bring Tara out, and maybe she uses so much strength that it cracks a couple of her phalanges or maybe an arm or both. Her windpipe would be gone by then, she’d be gone, all of her, so more of her wouldn’t matter. Tara wonders if she’d watch her corpse mishandled from above and finally feel that something’s complete in her wretched life, all as it should be.
Would Raven bury her, or just leave her there in the dirt, let the roaches and water bugs climb all over her, taking her? Would she be discovered by the servants in the morning, Raven hearing and ignoring their screams of terror and disgust at the sight? Would they even be shocked, given the demons they work for?
Tara wonders if she’d just be another chore to them. Like a discarded, thrown away doll, all joints loose and exhausted from rough play, pliant to the point of being too loose to hold a pose. She couldn’t be manipulated anymore, by that point, unless they lay her down, pry her limbs the way they want, folded over her chest or splayed out like a beast having fallen into a tiger trap, limbs bent unnaturally by the spikes suspending the corpse.
She wonders how long it’d take for Raven to find another handmaiden. If she’d treat her the same, if the handmaiden would try to betray her and Raven would leave her no grave, just roadkill. All used up, squeezed out.
Slade hasn’t even crossed her mind until now. It’s funny, how he was such a huge part of her life, how clingy she was with him, all over him, never letting go, until he sent her off on this job, and she moved on just as fast, clinging to Raven, like a parasite. Raven’s right to kill her; she’s only saving herself.
Tara’s awoken by Raven’s lips on her, harder than she ever expected them to be, as Raven forces air into her. She’s not even having a hard time breathing. What the fuck is she doing?
She’s still in the bathtub. Her fingers are all pruny, every part of her soaked. The back of her head hurts, and her neck is sore from being in the same position for a while.
Weakly, she lifts her arms – they feel like they’re filled with lead, god damn it – and tries to push Raven off of her. She’d try to look at her better, but it’s hard to see with Raven’s lips still on her. Eventually, Raven backs away, realizing she’s awake.
“You’re – are you ok? You’re alive?”
Tara would scoff, if her throat didn’t hurt so bad. She doesn’t know how she was talking before – it hurts so bad now, so tight. She feels a wheeze rip through her chest and throat. Maybe Raven choked her more while she was out, just for good measure.
“You were the one choking me,” she gets out. She loves her, but fuck if the girl still doesn’t baffle her, even before her death.
She studies Raven, briefly. The girl’s on her knees, almost looking desperate as she holds Tara’s shoulders against the wall. Tara’s legs are bent over the edge of the bathtub, the marble so cold now. Raven’s hands are cold, but there’s a warmth in the coldness, with how long they’ve been there. Tara raises one hand to Raven’s, on her shoulder, but doesn’t try to rip it off, as much as she wants to.
“You didn’t need to get air into me if I was already breathing,”
“You weren’t,” Raven says, panicked, “you stopped. It scared me.”
It’s easier for her to breathe now, so Tara laughs, lightly, She hopes it comes out more sarcastic than she feels. She searches her brain for the proper response.
“What, scared I’d end up dead? You’d have to find another handmaiden?”
Raven then shakes her head, something ripping through her as she does, unceasingly.
“No,” she says, and god damn, the girl looks almost tearful. This is stupid. This is pathetic. Tara almost wishes she’d been killed right then and there, just so she wouldn’t see this ridiculous display.
Tara squeezes the hand on her shoulder, cranes her neck so she’s looking straight at Raven, as much as it hurts. “You gotta get it together, if you’re gonna be a good heir for your father,” she grins. Raven’s other hand squeezes her shoulder, an angry response. She wonders if Raven will finally do her in. She hopes she does.
“I will not be like my father,”
“You just choked me, though.”
Raven slams her against the wall, suddenly, and Tara laughs, weak and sardonic.
“You can’t run from it,” she says, catching her breath, only for Raven to slam her again, and again. She hears a tile crack loudly, and there’s probably cracked tile dust in her hair now. Tara feels that dizziness coming back. Black spots appear in her sight.
“You sound just like him!”
Through the darkness, Tara pulls a wretched smile out of herself, all teeth. Raven’s staring down at the floor, panting heavily, teeth bared. Unconstrained. She’ll make a great heir.
Dizzily, Tara leans forward, almost knocking her head into Raven’s, and finds her mouth with a weak hand, grabbing her by the chin and kissing her. She feels Raven’s teeth knock into hers, until Raven’s mouth parts, realizing what she’s doing. Tara half expects her to drive her into the wall again, or maybe tear out her throat, or squeeze what’s left of her windpipe, but she feels her lean into the kiss, feels Raven push her roughly against the wall (yeah, that’s a concussion), as Raven seizes control and sighs into her mouth.
They part, and Raven looks at her like she’s picking her apart. Tara would think it’s similar to how Slade looks at her, but there’s nothing… predatory in Raven’s gaze. It’s almost like something clicked for her.
“You don’t want this,” Raven says.
Tara sighs, closing her eyes.
“I’m tired,” she says. It’s hopeless.
“I’m tired too,” Raven responds, little affect in her voice. It’s unsettling.
“I…” Tara starts, “I wanted you to kill me,” she says. Raven looks distraught at her words as soon as she says them, her mouth falling open.
“Why would I do such a thing?”
“Because I’m a traitor,” she immediately responds.
“You’re not,” Raven says. She sounds so sure of herself, despite having a violent breakdown that Tara got the brunt of.
“I told you everything. It’s all I am. I’m all fake,” Tara’s voice almost cracks.
“I know you loved me. I know it was real.”
“How do you know I wasn’t lying the whole time?”
Raven suddenly inhales loudly. “Because you’re staying with me now! You haven’t given up! You’re still sticking to your stupid traitor thing because you want me to stay with you!” Raven yells, her voice having steadily risen in pitch as she talked.
In that moment, Tara realizes the roars she’d hear in response to Trigon were truly Raven; this is truly her nature.
Perhaps her nature isn’t as ugly as it’s meant to be.
Tara’s frozen. The bathwater has turned cold as long as they’ve been in here. Raven’s hands on her shoulders are the only truly warm thing she feels right now, besides the bruises on her throat and the bloom at the back of her head.
They stay like that for a moment, both quiet. Raven’s catching her breath, and Tara… doesn’t know what to say. She’s lost.
She’s known one thing for sure in the past hour, and she thinks she’s ready to accept it. Tara inhales.
“I love you, Raven,” she says, brushing a weak hand against Raven’s cheek, “you deserve better than the life you’ve been forced to live.”
“You don’t either– I– we both deserve better,” she says, and Tara knows it’s hard for her to admit that for herself. She knows it because it’s hard for Tara to admit that she deserves better, too.
“We’re both fucked, aren’t we?” Tara jokes. Raven furrows her brow.
“No,” she says, shaky but there’s something confident in her voice again. “We’ll be ok.”
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