date posted: 2024-03-12
summary: In a nebulous world where Raven lives under her father's care, Tara is planted to be her handmaiden.
word count: 9,662 words
chapters: one, two (you are here)
content warnings: violence, explicit sex, non-explicit rape/incest
notes: raven perspective of the last chapter. these girls have problems
When she was a child, Azar would tell her stories.
She didn’t know her mother, then. She never knew her until before she was stolen away by Trigon, resigned to her fate. She saw her in stolen glances, during the destruction, stolen moments between them as Arella brushed her hand against her cheek, remarking how wonderfully she had grown, how tragic that it was ending this way.
Raven doesn’t like to think about those days. The destruction, the terror; more than anything, the resignation of the people of Azarath, that this was their fate, that they would be reborn.
Raven fought against that belief, as hard as she fought against Trigon’s influence in her.
Before the destruction, Azar would tell her of beautiful, sprawling lands, where the grass would grow long and tall and the skies above would reflect so strongly in the ocean that it would look as blue as the sky above, the waves crashing back and forth, idealic and beautiful, more than anything.
Raven would dream of those crashing waves, the sounds carrying and clapping through to her ears, sharply, but still comforting in their repitition. Azar’s stories would slip into her dreams with the slipping ease of Trigon’s whispers to her at night, before Raven had a sense of how insidious those whispers were.
She dreamt of those waves, a sky rich and blue with only puffy, light clouds dotting the horizon, grass that would envelope her up to her ankles, that she could run through without her cloak, feeling the cold, alive air on her skin, through her hair.
But she learned, quickly, that those stories were nothing more than fables. Tales. Reality struck her like a slap to her cheek, faster than she could blink.
She watched Azar die, laid by her bedside, Azar’s very own prayers haunting her. Azar lifted her hand to her cheek, like her mother later did at their first and last meeting, and brushed it slowly, gently, down her face.
"You are strong, darling," Azar rasped out, "you will live, and we will forgive you for what you do as you live," she said. Raven didn’t understand then, preoccupied with restraining the tears pricking her vision like a rope binding wrists until they’re bloodied and bruised and burned.
Raven grabbed her wrist, then, clenching it with both hands, seized by terror and grief, all restraint briefly gone, as she begged her not to leave them, not to leave her, that she needed her guidance, needed Azar to help her stay herself.
The selfish thought stilled her as soon as it came to her. She released her grip on Azar’s weak, thin wrist, so gentle and warm, so hard to let go of. But she had to.
She watched the destruction of Azarath, eyes wide open, Trigon forcing her by his side to watch the terror, bleak and unceasing, and with her father’s hand on her shoulder, she did not attempt to close her eyes. She barely blinked. She watched and watched as her world diminished to nothing more than ashes and dust.
This is the way things are, she learned quickly, as her father’s hand slid down her back.
Azar’s forgiveness would only go so far, she later concluded, by her father’s side. She has sunken too low for Azar to reach her, now. She had to let go, she knew.
But she wouldn’t let go.
In her dreams, she can still feel Azar’s wrist in her hands, still feel the breeze through her hair, smell the fresh grass as she ran through it.
In her dreams, Azar is still alive. In her dreams, her mother never died before Raven could know her.
In her dreams, Raven is still herself.
She clings to that as much as she can, as she cycles through handmaidens, as she lies before her father, open and resigned.
She has her dreams. In this doomed reality, she still has a part of Azar within her.
Sometimes, she woke up screaming, the ghost of Azar’s wrist all over her hands, as she squeezed her hands closed, her fingernails leaving crescent moons in her palms. Every time, she’d wrench her eyes shut where she was, force herself to imagine Azar, then, so weak and losing life and light by the second, and force herself to remember that she was useless, in that moment, watching Azar die before her, and all she could do was grab her wrist and beg her not to leave, like the child she never was.
In these moments, she wraps a hand around her wrist and squeezes, as tight as possible, forcing herself to remember, until she screams in pain, as she cuts off her own circulation, as her breaths come out faster, as her pulse speeds up and threatens to burst out of her veins.
This time, she’s on her knees by her bed, having fallen out gracelessly, jolted awake by her own joyful dreams.
She has to remember. She can’t forget. She squeezes tighter and screams louder and louder as something inside her twists up and snaps.
Time passes. She realizes she’s gone quiet, her grip loosening. She’s lost time.
There’s a girl rubbing circles on her back, confused and startled. She turns to look at her, and the first thing she recognizes, before her handmaiden’s dress, is her messy, dirty blonde hair, jagged and short.
"Raven," she says, cold and stony.
The girl blinks, mutters something innocent. Raven tilts her head, almost involuntarily. "I sensed your confusion. My name is Raven," she says, as delicately as she can manage, as if something pained and wretched didn’t just burst out from her and out of her control.
The girl nods, stilted. It’s still so seemingly innocent.
"You should rest, now. You might be sick," The girl says.
Some part of Raven wants to laugh at that, so many things wrong with the thought, but Raven forces it down. She moves toward her bed, body like a machine, stiff and cold.
She lies on her bed, and slides out of her blouse, drenched in sweat from her incident, every part of her in a cold, painful sweat that pangs from within. She feels the girl’s gaze cutting through her, and part of her finds it familiar. She can’t tell if it’s a comforting familiarity or a frightening one.
Raven lets the covers envelope her, wanting their warmth (she doesn’t deserve it, like she didn’t deserve Azar’s warmth in her final moments, her words so caring despite everything Raven is, everything she was destined for, everything that came to pass).
She thinks of warmth and touch and impulsively tells the girl to come over, to come into her bed.
The girl moves, stilted and confused, following her orders. Raven’s eyes follow her as she reluctantly slides down the bed, shifts from sitting to laying down, until Raven only sees the back of her, jagged, sharp hair and shoulderblades jutting out like knives.
Shamefully, she thinks about Azar’s warmth, then the cold breeze that rips through her hair in her dreams, running across a landscape she’ll never know. She thinks about both extremes, familiarity versus freedom, love versus liberation.
She thinks about being on her back for her father, as he takes and takes what he wants from her, wrenching up and twisting inside her until something ugly erupts from her and he’s satisfied and sated.
Familiarity and love. Freedom and liberation.
Her voice rasps as she asks the confused girl, "what is love supposed to be?"
She almost reaches out and touches her shoulder, wanting to nudge her back towards Raven, wanting to see her face.
"How do you do it?"
A moment passes. A heartbeat or three.
"Devotion," the girl answers, suddenly. "It’s all you have," she says, mysteriously.
Raven, as it is in her nature, isn’t satisfied, sated. She wants to know more.
A hand snakes up to nudge at the girl like she wanted to do before, the impulse overtaking her. The girl turns over, shaky and reluctant, and Raven knows the feeling, knows it from the hours on her back and more, so cold, time unceasing and refusing to pass as her father loomed over her.
She forces down the feeling that she’s just like her father. She reminds herself, shamefully, of Azar’s words, of forgiveness, basks in a false reality that her forgiveness will extend to every shameful thing Raven does to live in this wretched world.
"Show me how you do it," Raven says, and loses herself.
It wasn't hard to tell that the girl was faking it.
Raven looked at her, rubbing herself like she'd rather be doing something else, and didn't look at her eyes, because she knew what she'd see. So she looked at her body, her fingers slipping around her clit, and Raven, in that moment, felt ashamed, dirty, like she was defiling something with her gaze alone.
Impulsively, she grabbed the girl's wrist. Something wretched rises up in her gut at that, something roaring within her, hot and painful at once, demanding something from her that she could give, give in to, but she didn't want to, because she always hated doing that, giving in, to those above her.
This girl isn't above her; she knows that, with the girl's wrist in her grip, her pulse suddenly rabbiting in her touch, something stunned in her. Some part of her wants to roar something about power and control and the both of them in her fingertips, just waiting for her to accept her fate.
Raven looks into the girl's eyes, then, determined. She won't give in. She won't let him win.
"You're faking it," she says, with the flattest affect she can manage.
"What do you mean?" the girl says, throwing up confusion, but Raven senses her annoyance. Frustration, even.
(How dare she be frustrated at me, a part of her wrenches up and roars inside her. She stifles it by biting her tongue and keeping her face as cold as possible. Don't slip, don't crack.)
"You're not feeling anything," Raven says, coldly. She sees the girl's face shift, senses something sharp, like she's cut herself.
Raven shifts on the bed, her grip on the girl's wrist slipping with it (did she leave a bruise?). She moves to sit up, and at that, the girl seizes the chance to fully twist her wrist away from Raven. Her gaze is drawn to the girl, then, sees her laid out on the bed, open and raw.
Take her, a part of her says. It's her duty to take it. It's your duty to follow through. It's in you. It always will be.
She blinks. She looks at the girl again.
Raw and exposed and spread out, like a pound of flesh.
Part of her wonders how she feels. Part of her wonders if she feels the same way Raven's felt before, all those times.
She's staring, but she lets herself. She forces herself; if she looks at the girl this way, she will not give herself the relief of looking away from the reminder.
They don’t talk about it the next day.
Raven doesn’t intend on bringing it up. She doesn’t want to remember how she treated the girl, laid her out before her like that, all exposed and clean and dirtied by Raven’s gaze. She doesn’t want to think about it.
She thinks about everything but last night.
Tara, she said her name was. Like the word "tear". Maybe it was naive of Raven for her first thought to be that it was more like the word "air", or maybe Raven is thinking too much about it.
She takes Tara through her father’s halls, long and winding and twisting. It’s selfish, she knows, to take up her time like this, just to think about her.
But she does. She thinks about Tara’s scraggly, messy hair, how it was barely combed together when she rushed into Raven’s room during her incident. A part of Raven wants to touch it, feel the rough split ends and finger comb the sharp edges into place.
She walks in front of Tara, always. She can’t be seen with her by her side, she knows. Her father would not like that.
Other handmaidens greet her as they pass, barely regarding Tara’s presence; Raven barely spares them a glance, unintentionally.
Is this wrong of her?
She’s shrugging off the attention of everyone but the girl she just met. Surely, this is ignorant of her; surely, this goes against everything she swore to herself when Trigon took her, that she would be kind, above all, that she would sacrifice everything to honor Azar and her true home, even sacrifice herself.
"We will forgive you for what you do as you live," Azar had said. In these selfish, wrong moments, Raven clings to her words.
In her most selfish, twisted moments, like now, as she whisks Tara into a darker corner of these already dim halls, pushes her against the wall, impulsively, her hands shaking, she clings to Azar’s words like a lifeline, as she whispers "is this ok?" to Tara, and as Tara nods her head slowly, she grips onto Azar’s words even harder as she meets Tara’s lips.
Tara’s hair is so bright, despite looking so scraggly. Raven likes that; it’s messy, but it still manages to shine under the candlelights in Raven’s room, all over Trigon’s palace. When illuminated by the candles, Tara’s hair is almost sunny.
Raven wishes she could see the sun. She misses it like a lost limb, took it for granted on Azarath, always cloaked by her hood and out of her sight, but she still saw how it blanketed Azarath’s beautiful structures and landscapes, reflected on shiny surfaces like glass, delicate, but so powerful.
It is night, almost time for them to separate, for Tara to set her bed, make sure it’s ready for her, and then go to her own room and the both of them would sleep, separately. Raven has come to dread these times, as much as she enjoys Tara’s company, because they’ll inevitably have to separate.
Raven looks to her right, where Tara has dozed off in her bed, accidentally, and Raven thinks it’s cute, seeing her jaw slightly ajar, her eyes gently closed; for once, Tara looks relaxed, not uncertain or perplexed or anything, just sleeping.
Raven lifts a hand to Tara’s shoulder and looks at her, how gentle her face is right now, despite her big, stabbing, emotional eyes that betray how she’s feeling so often, her sharp jawline looking more delicate now under candlelight.
She wishes this would last forever; the two of them, laying together, nothing outside between them. Just Raven and Tara, together, comfortable, for once.
Tara can be her sun. Tara can be her guiding light in this doomed reality, she’s decided.
Raven lets her eyes fall shut, and lets herself relax for the first time in ages.
Inevitably, her father wants her.
Raven knew it was only a matter of time, between meeting Tara and the inevitable. It was always a matter of when, not if, he would want her in his quarters. She tried to slow time as much as possible, drowned in Tara as much as she could, as often as she could, but she knew, knows there is no end to his desire, his cruelty. It is infinite and unceasing.
It is her fate, after all.
She’s questioned it before: is her fate, her destiny, to be under her father or beside him?
As she’s escorted to her father’s quarters, dread pooling in her stomach, she doesn’t think more about the question, for fear of making herself sick.
Tara walks behind Trigon’s servants, but Raven can still sense her uncertainty, fuzzy and unfamiliar to her. Raven wishes she could quell the thoughts for her, put her at ease, but she knows her place right now. She knows her fate.
As they walk, Raven’s hand briefly brushes against Tara’s, who’s walked closer to her than further away. She embraces the brief warmth from Tara as brief as she had felt it.
They stop in front of the door to her father’s quarters.
Raven knows how this goes: Trigon’s servants leave, Raven’s handmaiden waits outside until she is finished.
Tara is turned away from the doorframe, her head bowed and her hands folded together.
Raven, trembling, knocks twice, then opens the door, unlocked.
She sees her father sprawled out on his ornate bed, legs spread and uncovered, his face so bare and obvious that Raven doesn’t need her powers to read him; she can see his smugness, how he knows he holds everything that she is in his hands.
Azar, she hopes Tara doesn’t hear a thing.
Her father is relentless, she knows.
She lays on her back for him again, as he always desires from her. She lets him manipulate her as he wants, like she’s nothing more than a puppet, or even a corpse, devoid of all life and simply a rotting husk to be puppeted by those with control over it. Ownership, even.
Trigon’s thrusts are unforgivingly painful and unceasing in their rhythm, and Raven has to bite her tongue not to cry out, but then she forces out a scream anyway, knowing that’s exactly what her father likes to hear.
Time passes. Her back aches. Everything aches.
Her father rarely speaks, in these moments. He gestures. He pats his thigh, pats the side of the bed, gestures his hand for her to come forward. He treats her like nothing more than a dog, so easily manipulated and drawn to its owner, at every beck and call.
It makes the moments he does speak even more frightening.
"Raven," he says, his voice like a roar in her ears, amidst the silence; or rather, amidst the sound of skin against skin, the sound of Trigon taking what he wants. The sounds that she forces down and pretends she can’t hear.
He presses a thumb into her cheek, gnarled and rough, a claw digging into her skin, threatening to draw blood. He jerks her head forward. She can’t control her breathing, coming out as quick pants. He withdraws himself, his tip rubbing aganist her, and something hot pools in her stomach.
Raven looks up.
His shadow looms over her, blanketing her, in the cruelest way. She wishes he didn’t cover her the way he does, that she’d be able to see behind him, but in a way, she’s grateful, that she doesn’t have to see what goes on outside these moments beyond time.
She has her time with Trigon and that time is lost time. Lost to her, lost to everyone else. Inevitably, she lives through them. Inevitably, she lives to remember them.
In a way, she’s grateful that his body crushes every idea of an outside world beyond this certain fate of hers. It’s inescapable, she’s accepted, but she is grateful for the small mercies she is granted in these moments.
Trigon looks at her as if she is prey, so hungry, like she is nothing more than a bird stalked by a cat. A bug crushed by something unknown but big, more than anything.
"This is in your nature, dear," he says, reminds her. His voice is gravelly, kept under a roar by only the slightest restraint Trigon the Terrible will force upon himself.
"You will take, one day, like I do," he declares, tilting his head up, looking down at her, "you will learn," and he roars his last word, forcing himself back into her, and she’s split open, and cries out, and then there are tears going down her face that she can’t hold back this time, and then she herself roars, just like him, as much as she hates it, and she can’t control herself as she pushes him back with her hands, claws erupting out of her, skin turning red, vision expanding, and she roars again, and again, until Trigon stumbles back, until she sits up, slams her legs shut, and snarls at him.
Raven, not herself, looks at her father.
Trigon simply smirks back at her.
She barely registers his next words, as he declares, "This is you, darling. This is the demon fit to be my daughter."
"You will accept it," he says, and something swells up in her, something threatening to erupt again, until she digs her claws into her palms, digs into them until she feels her own blood dripping down her hands.
Her breathing is heavy and fleeting at the same time, coming out quicker than before, and she feels herself relaxing, winding down, feels her claws retracting into nowhere. Her vision clears, and all she sees is that smirk on her father’s face, and it threatens to enrage her once again.
She doesn’t dare voice her thoughts as she looks down, sees the blood dripping from her hands, cuts pierced open, all from her.
All the damage she wreaked by herself. The form she morphed into at the slightest push from her father. She fears it all.
Her father throws her discarded cloak and dress at her, like she’s nothing more than one of his whores. She lets the cloth lay in her lap briefly, feeling disconnected from the present.
Raven forces herself up, abruptly, and dons her dress, then her cloak. She pulls up the hood around her, not wanting to see any more of her father. Air hits her face as she draws her hood up and she feels the dried tear tracks on her face.
She dries her hands with parts of her cloak, ignoring the pang in her that thinks about the stains they’ll leave.
Raven leaves her father’s quarters wordless, numb.
Tara, to her credit, tries to get through to Raven, after.
Raven has noticed how the girl has grown more confident, with the two of them growing so close. She touches Raven without asking, without hesitation, lets herself touch Raven’s shoulder gently, or leans in for a sudden kiss when they are alone.
Raven resists all touches right now. She shakes Tara away, resists the urge to swat away her hands like she’s swatting a fly, knows that would be cruel of her.
She stares at her rings, at her lap, anything to distract her from the curdling dread and darkness within her, how they pool together, whirling into a storm fortelling the inevitable destruction she will bring forth when her father finally gets his wish.
Her heart rabbits in her chest, unceasing and impossible to ignore, the thoughts of the destruction she’ll bring, the sheer power at her hands, how easily she morphed into that fearsome form of hers when her father barely encouraged it in her… it swirls and swirls until she scrunches her eyes shut and steels herself, forces herself to concentrate on the present and not the past or future.
She doesn’t need to turn around to know Tara is looking at her; she feels her burning gaze all over her, curious and confused and worried.
Raven knows she feels too much. Azar had taught her that her feelings were a sacrifice she had to make for the world, and she dutifully listened, followed her teachings as she forced down her tears and joy equally.
With Tara, it has become harder to keep her feelings down.
Tara makes her feel in ways she’s only felt in passing; sadness, knowing the loss she’ll face when everything comes to an end, like how she lost Azar. The dread that comes with that sadness, with knowing her ultimate fate, and how Tara’s fate has become tied with hers, as her handmaiden.
But Tara has also made her feel joy, no matter how briefly; stolen moments in corriders and in between lessons and orders. Regrettably, Tara has made her feel lust, something Azar had taught her was forbidden, something she had followed deeply.
The lust makes her skin crawl; she recognizes it in her father’s face, often, his wanton looks at her, up and down, hungry and preying.
But she recognizes a similar, more gentler lust in Tara, one that isn’t so wretched and marred by a demon’s nature. Tara wants her, but not all of her; she wants what Raven will give, willingly. Raven finds herself giving more and more, wanting to give more, wanting to feel good, to feel what Tara can make her feel.
She blinks from where she’s sitting, still sensing Tara’s fleeting, worried glances at her.
Abruptly, Raven is awoken by a commotion from outside her room – cries, possibly? – and immediately, she worries for Tara.
She gets up, gracelessly throws on her slippers and robe, and just barely doesn’t run to the room across hers, barely bigger than a closet (she wishes she had the power to change that for Tara, that she could fit her with a better room, better than this shamefully small closet of a room).
Raven forces the door open with all of her might, feeling heavier than it is from how exhausted she’s been, and shakily, she clings to the doorframe as she looks at Tara in her bed, looking equally shocked and confused.
She feels all of Tara’s emotions: dread, pain, grief (where is the grief from, she wonders?). Some are stronger than others, though: stronger than anything else, she feels rage, frustration, both at war within Tara.
In that moment, she wants nothing more than to squeeze Tara tight, to salvage her from the inevitable destruction she’ll bring upon the rest of the world that Trigon has yet to conquer, the world Tara must hail from, where she’s likely been stolen away from. As weak and pathetic Raven is, she wants to protect Tara with all of her might.
Raven lets Tara lean her head into her stomach, and Raven wraps a hand, then both hands, around Tara’s head, letting her sobs rack her feeble body. Raven slides a hand down, rubs her back, the feeling of comforting someone unfamiliar, but knowing it’s what she has to do; that she wants to do it, to help Tara.
More than anything, she wants to know why Tara is crying; a darker, uglier part of her wants to find the source of her suffering and snuff it out like a pinched flame, nothing Raven in that form can’t handle, can’t conquer. That ugly part of her wants to hunt and hunt until the evils taunting Tara are properly extinguished.
Her ugly side wants to show that Tara is hers.
Raven shakes her head as lightly as she can manage, light as she restrains the fear threatening to seize her. She looks down at Tara, still rubbing slow circles into her back, still hearing the sobs ripping through her.
"Are you ok?" Raven asks, voice barely above a whisper, but she doesn’t get a response; Tara continues to cry, and cry, and cry.
Time stills as Raven holds her in her hands. She wants so desperately to look Tara in the eye and tell her that things will be okay, but she knows she can’t guarantee that. She never can, in this world.
She comforts Tara as much as she can, until Tara wrestles gently out of her hands, looks up at her and deeply apologizes (too formal for the two of them, at this point; it unnerves Raven).
"It’s ok," Raven says, "I hope you’ll be ok," and reluctantly lifts the last of her fingers from Tara, and walks carefully back to her room, sparing Tara a final glance over her shoulder.
Tara’s expression is nothing short of devastating. Raven wishes she could stay with her until the end of time, until all of Tara’s terrors die out, until Raven’s terrors grow old and tired, until it’s just the both of them, together, at peace.
Raven wonders how it’s flipped this way, how she’s found herself being the worrying one and Tara the distant one. It’s been days of this, of Raven worrying and Tara being oblique and unreadable. Tara has always been closed off, especially about her past; not that Raven needs to know her past, being perfectly content with knowing Tara in the present. But she has never been this distant, even when they had just met each other, that dreadful night, lit up by Tara’s comforting, though nervous, presence.
Raven goes about her day, and Tara follows; Raven goes about her day, brushes hands with Tara, briefly touches her shoulder, slips her hand down Tara’s back when no one is looking. But Tara, each and every time, shrugs her off, aloof.
It gnaws at Raven, the possibilities; has she been reprimanded by someone else in Trigon’s staff? Has someone hurt her in some way?
Has Trigon gotten to her, somehow? What could he have done to her?
Find them, that nasty part of Raven demands, hungry for blood. Discipline them for hurting her, it roars from within her. Raven tries to ignore its calls.
The part of the day she’s dreaded most has come. Trigon’s servants flank her, walking at a brisk pace slightly behind her, and she keeps her head down, the way Trigon would reprimand her for doing, that it’s unsightly of someone of her status to keep her head down like that.
On the way to his room, Raven thinks about what she shouldn’t:
Does Tara know what happens behind his door? Does she suspect anything?
What would she do if she knew? Could she do anything?
Would she do anything about it?
Raven stops before his door, waits for Trigon’s servants to walk away. She looks over her shoulder at Tara, and sees her shamefully look to the floor, folding her hands together, as she always does. It pains her to see Tara worried like this; more than that, she feels selfish for being relieved to see any emotion from Tara besides quiet apathy.
Raven turns away and knocks twice on the door, as always, then enters, because, despite Tara being a light in her life, even she can’t stop the inevitable.
Raven is silent as Trigon takes her. This time, she bites down every moan, every sigh that threatens to escape her.
If he has her this way, she has her small form of resistance. It’s all she has, and she’ll wield it for as long as she can.
Late at night, Raven is in her bed alone, uncomfortably so.
Her bed is ice cold to her, despite how long she’s laid there, as still as a corpse. Her hair is fanned out behind her, slightly tangled from moving ever so slightly to try to fall asleep.
The thought of what she wants to do, almost impulsively, makes her blood curdle, something in her guts churning.
It feels so dirty, so wrong, to want to ring that bell, the one that calls Tara in the room across her, just for the sole purpose of… satisfying Raven. It disgusts her.
More than anything, it makes Raven feel like him, as he calls for her when he pleases, and she comes, obediently, knocks at his door and spreads her legs for him, mindless and resigned to her fate.
More than anything, she doesn’t want to make Tara feel that way, to feel controlled, owned, possessed, by someone with immeasurable power over her.
But that’s the thing, isn’t it?
Raven is already dirty and defiled. Her father made sure of that, makes sure of it, constantly, with how often he calls her to her room. He wants her to stay this way, to grow further used to her fate, her destiny, as he calls it, snarls it out once he is pleased with her performance for him, and casts her away as if she is nothing more than a doll for him to play with, until she finally accepts her fate.
A part of her says to give in to her desires; that she’s already fallen so low, so far down, that doing that to Tara would be a drop in the bucket compared to what she’s already done to survive under Trigon.
Another part, the kinder, yet less forgiving part of her, reminds Raven that taking Tara in that way would only solidify her fate as a true demon, that sleeping with Tara would only hurt her, harm her in all the ways Raven would deeply regret, would rather sacrifice herself more to Trigon than put Tara through.
Raven blinks the tears out of her eyes, focuses on the dresser by her bedside, looks at the clock and the bracelets she took off last night for bed and forgot to put back on when she woke up this morning. It does little to still the storm brewing within her.
The thing is: Raven needs to know what it feels like.
Being under Trigon, all those times, but especially, being with Tara, that one time, showed her that she has a certain power, beyond her status, beyond her obvious power as a half-demon.
There is power in sex: there is control in sex.
Seeing Tara that way, spread out and going through the motions, as dirty and filthy and wretched as it made her feel, gave Raven a desire that she needs to squash before it grows into something even more despicable than it already is.
Raven knows what she needs to do.
Shakily, she sits up, avoids her slippers, and carefully, quietly, walks to the corner of her room, where the string for the bell hangs.
Shakily, she rings the bell, once, carefully, then twice in rapid succession, almost desperate. Raven blinks more tears out of her eyes, feels one streaking down and quickly snuffs it out with a brush of her hand to her cheek.
She has to do this. She has to know.
Tara knocks on her door once before stumbling into her room, clearly half asleep. Any senior handmaiden with power over her would reprimand her for not being ready for her mistress, but as the mistress herself, Raven, regrettably, only finds it a little cute, how sleepy she is.
Raven is almost grateful that Tara is sleepy enough that she doesn’t seem to remember to be so distant.
Raven ignores the dread stewing in her guts and walks forward, meets Tara’s gaze, and leans in close. More tears come and she squeezes her eyes shut briefly, as fast as possible, to squeeze them out and dry. Tara looks at her, expression a cross between confusion and… worry, oddly.
She’s been so far away, but she’s still worried about Raven, even slightly. The thought relieves her, but at the same time, it makes her feel guilty, that she’s done this to her, pushed her out of her distance in this way.
Raven clears her head as much as she can.
"Show me," she says, weakly.
Tara nods slowly. It’s tinged with an odd certainty, Raven senses, and that certainty makes her uneasy, almost confirms her worst fears about what she – they’re about to do.
"Do you want me to–"
"I," Raven interrupts, "I want to be… in control, this time," she finishes, nervous.
Tara nods again, just as slow, just as icy as she’s been lately.
Before she can say anything more, Raven takes her by the hand, and carefully leads her to the bed. Tara follows her without protest.
So many thoughts threaten to bubble to the surface: that she’s just like him, that she’s feeding into the destiny she fought so hard to avoid, that she’s betraying everything she learned on Azarath.
But Raven stifles the thoughts, her blood almost boiling at the thoughts, her determination coming through, as shaky as it is: she has to know.
Raven, without thinking, lays on the bed on her back. She sees Tara standing before her, confused and directionless.
Images threaten to come to mind, of his bed, his room, him, him, him.
"Just," Raven starts, unsettled, her voice unsteady and haunted, "do what you should do," she says.
"What do you mean?" Tara whispers. Raven blinks.
She realizes, stupidly, that she doesn’t know how to voice what she wants – that she doesn’t have the words for it. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Naive.
Raven squeezes her eyes closed again, tears pricking at the corners.
"I don’t know," she confesses, desperate, "just… what…" what he does, she thinks, and she wants to throw up, and the tears almost come out at that, and–
"Are you ok?" Tara asks, leaning in, leaning an elbow on the bed, next to Raven’s hip. Raven looks up at her, sees the concern etched all over her face.
Raven doesn’t know how to say that she wants control for the first time, wants to feel good without it being underlined with his greed, his power, no matter the position she’s in. She doesn’t want to confess that to Tara; no person, not even Tara, should know what happens between Raven and her father. It’s ugly and filthy, only between them and nobody else; Raven wants to keep it that way.
The realization strikes her like a backhand: does she want Tara to take the place of her father?
At that, Raven sobs, a dam broken, tears streaming down her face. Tara climbs onto the bed, next to Raven, and curls her legs behind her, brushing a hand against Raven’s cheek.
"It’s ok, Raven," she whispers carefully, "I’m here," and Raven cries, the ugly pain falling out of her messy and rough.
They stay like that, Tara curled up beside her, Raven pushing her palms into her eyes, desperate to slow the tears, to stifle and choke them out until they finally stop, until Raven feels comfortable again.
You never were comfortable, something from inside reminds her, you never will be.
Eventually, Raven’s tears slow and dry, and she blinks up at Tara, who’s leaned in closer, almost too close.
Tara whispers, "is this ok?" and Raven knows what she’s about to do, and whispers an affirmative, and Tara leans in and kisses her, hot but gentle, and Raven leans into the kiss, and then kisses back, just as gentle.
Raven lifts a hand to the back of Tara’s neck and pushes her down, closer to Raven, and Tara kisses her more furiously, faster, impassioned and heavy. Raven relishes in the feeling, of being wanted, as Tara pulls back for air, her breath slow and heavy against Raven’s face.
"Can I…" Tara starts, sliding a hand down Raven’s legs, until she finds her thigh, her fingers brushing the inside, so close.
"Yes," Raven whispers, "please," and that’s all it takes for Tara’s fingers to dive beneath her underwear, quickly finding Raven’s core, and Raven jolts when she touches it, and realizes that the heat she’s feeling is familiar, yet new at the same time; that she enjoys it.
"More," Raven says, above a whisper, more desperate, and Tara slides her fingers down, one still at her clit, and another finger circles her entrance, and Raven’s hips buck forward.
"Please," she begs, looking up at Tara, who looks gentle and certain, for once, that she finally knows what she’s doing, and at that, Tara slides a finger inside her.
Raven twitches slightly, unused to the small intrusion, but she spreads her legs more, and her head leans back, and she lets out a sigh, unexpectedly.
"You like that?" Tara whispers against her neck, having leaned in closer. Raven squeaks in response, and Tara thrusts her fingers in slowly, delicately, but it’s enough to light a fire in Raven, one that has her scrunching her eyes shut, briefly, then opening them to see Tara and the gentle lust all over her face.
Tara, doing all of this for her; Tara, hers, without it being unkind and ugly, she realizes.
She feels another finger prodding at her entrance, and then it slides inside her, and Raven’s moans are brazen and unashamed, finally, and she realizes, this is what she wanted, this is what she was looking for, as she looks up at Tara and sees the desire coupled with love in her eyes.
Raven’s hips move forward, meeting Tara’s slow pace, and at that, the rhythm Tara has set speeds up, and Raven keeps meeting her, and it doesn’t take long before she’s cumming, a moan escaping her.
Raven takes a moment to catch her breath, and opens her eyes to Tara, whose hand meets her cheek again, so delicate. Tara leans in and kisses her softly, and Raven kisses back, kind.
They lay together, after Raven’s calmed down, after they’ve exhausted each other enough, bruised each other’s lips and lost their breath in each other.
Raven, impulsively, asks Tara to start a bath. She leaves out the part where she wants to bathe with Tara, hoping that Tara will know what she means, that they’re close enough to read each other like that, now.
But something in Tara shifts, distant, again, far away from Raven. She senses it in her, the way her face dropped from relaxation to stoniness when she thought Raven wasn’t looking, her stilted walk to Raven’s bathroom.
What does it take for them to get through to each other? How much more will it take for them to trust each other like they did before?
The questions rack her brain as she hears the running water from the bathroom, something clinking against the tile ever so briefly. She imagines Tara accidentally knocking her knee into it as she runs the bath, and it’s enough to make her worry even more about her.
The water continues to run, until Raven’s fears for Tara grow, and that leads her to call for Tara from her bed.
But, before she hears Tara’s footsteps, she finds herself sitting up, deciding to meet Tara at the door. She slips off her rings and leaves them on her dresser, deciding to bare herself to Tara, giving her all she can.
She meets Tara’s gaze, and sees the uncertainty all over her face, whatever concentrated confidence she had earlier gone.
"Are you ok?" Raven asks. Her voice slightly quivers. She sees Tara glance down.
"I’m alright, mistress," Tara says, quietly, "there’s nothing to worry about."
Raven considers her words, how they worry her even more, and then, impulsively, but lightly, takes Tara by the hand, her other hand rising to meet Tara’s shoulder, and she walks them to her bed.
The bath can wait, she thinks. Tara needs her, like she needed Tara.
Raven stands in front of the bed, Tara leaning into her, and Raven’s hand slides under Tara’s dress, slowly and carefully, wanting to feel every part of Tara.
She’s almost close to her thighs, wanting to get near the crook in between them, when Tara abruptly stills, becoming stiff. She leans back and looks down at Raven.
"I’m not a handmaiden," Tara says, her voice cold.
Raven blinks.
What?
"What?" she says, her voice coming out deceptively soft, as she can’t believe what she just heard.
Tara inhales and exhales deeply, sharply, before saying, "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." The words come out rapidly, and Raven sees her whole body trembling, shaking.
Raven’s breath slows, almost frozen.
She… she can’t. No. No.
Not like this.
"I’m sorry, Raven," Tara says, quietly, resigned. Regretful. Raven scrunches her eyes shut in disbelief, her mind numb and blank.
She feels Tara leaning in again, closer to her, and then she’s pushing her shoulder forward, nudging her towards the bed. Raven sits, cold.
Tara kneels on the floor, and then Raven feels her pushing up her dress, spreading her legs. As away from herself as she feels, it doesn’t stop the reminder of him rising up from within her and almost arresting her, until she stifles it down, reminds herself of Tara’s confession, the numbness, how she prefers this horrid stillness to those reminders.
She leans back on the bed, detached, and a sigh escapes her, and she doesn’t know where it came from, and something has her legs tight in place, refusing to budge any further, but Tara’s touch relaxes her, just slightly.
Raven strains her head up, to look at Tara, who refuses to meet her eyes, instead looking forward, at what’s in front of her. She watches Tara lean in, concentrated, yet uncertain.
"For you," Tara says, and Raven feels her hot breath between her legs, and it makes her twitch. "I do this for you. No one else," and Tara’s voice is shaking, quiet and restrained, but still quivering.
Raven’s hand absentmindedly slides up to Tara’s head, and she thinks, through the numbness, that, despite everything, she would love Tara through this.
Forgiveness as you live; the words abruptly come to mind, and almost rip her out of her fugue, Raven only kept there by the shock of Tara’s confession. The heat in her rips apart and turns cold. She feels disgusting, as she lays there, cold, petting Tara like she said nothing, like she hadn’t confessed to that.
Raven leans back, stares at the ceiling, her vision unfocused and blurry with tears. Tara pushes forward, licking her, and Raven jolts as it brings her back to the present, as she feels Tara’s fingers around her clit, hot despite how still the rest of her body feels, unfeeling.
Another sigh escapes her. Raven keeps staring at the ceiling, thinking of nothing but Tara’s hands on her, so distant yet so close to her. Everything is detached, blurry.
"Please–" Raven begs, desperate for Tara to finish, for Raven to feel something, anything in this dreadful moment, be it desire or a disgusting orgasm or anything, anything before the weight of Tara’s confession sinks into her.
She doesn’t look at Tara; she feels her lick her clit furiously, and it pushes Raven, and then she’s cumming again, wordless, only sighs and moans leaving her, her legs twitching and spasming. She feels Tara’s head slowly touch the side of her thigh.
Raven continues to stare at the ceiling, tears blurring her vision.
She vaguely registers Tara’s breathy voice, through it.
"It… it feels nice, doesn’t it? Letting go," she hears Tara rasp. Raven’s hand rises up to Tara’s head again, mindlessly brushing her hair down.
Her hand stills, eventually falling back to the bed, limp. She continues to stare up.
"I…" she starts, her voice cracking, "I can’t believe it," she gets out.
"You have to be strong," Tara starts, her voice eerily cold, "for you and me. You can do this," she whispers, and Raven vaguely sees her stand up, barely registers her leaning in close, right by her ear, beside her.
"Let go," she says, stony, "let it out. You know you want to," and she registers her words, this time, thinks about letting go, letting it out, and as Tara leans back, away from Raven, leaving a cold void between them, something swells up in Raven, something wretched and dark, wanting something.
Raven gives in.
She stands up, her vision doubling, rendered dizzy, briefly, and seizes Tara by the shoulders, pushing her back, back, back, and something roars within her, cheers and whoops, that she’s finally taking her, finally becoming what she’s supposed to, and Raven lets it take over her, embraces the sudden rage, the numbness all but gone, not even haunting her anymore, as the disbelief melded into shock, into pure betrayal and anger.
Raven sees her scrambling, sees the terror all over Tara’s face, as she pushes her back, all the way into the bathroom, the tile barely cool against the burning hot hatred Raven feels thrumming throughout her body; more than that, the power burning in her, angry and bloodthirsty and her claws erupt out of her, and she barely notices her skin turning red in the scuffle, as she pushes Tara down into the bathtub and forces her under the water, rage clouding her vision, but not enough that she can’t see the bubbles coming through to the water’s surface, that she can’t recognize her hands slipping up and around Tara’s neck, squeezing, squeezing, squeezing as tight as she can manage.
A wordless scream escapes Tara. Raven, uglier than ever, almost basks in it, as she yells.
"How could you do this to me?" she cries out. She pulls Tara up and slams her back down against the bathtub tile.
"We… we had each other, and you ruined it!" Raven says, punctuating her last words with another slam into the tile.
Tara’s head knocks unnaturally, limply, against the tile. Raven pants, gritting her teeth, body nothing more than a vessel for her rage, something she hasn’t felt in so long, and it feels good, to feel this, to feel anything at all, to feel something so strongly.
Raven’s breath comes out heavy, and her grip around Tara’s neck involuntarily loosens. She leans forward, kneeling in front of the tub, trying desperately to catch her breath. A part of her begs for calmness, for some stillness, and she dreads it, she hates it with every fiber of her being, but she acquiesces to it, slowly, coming to terms with it, because it’s in her nature, just as much as this is.
She is both of them, she realizes, both miserable and vile and forgiving and ultimately, disgustingly, kind, as she watches her skin fade from its angry red, feels her claws retract.
Raven’s left breathing heavily, her chest tight, as she stares at Tara, who stares back at her, shocked and wide-eyed.
Raven almost says something, anything to fill the void, until Tara weakly moves to cough into the crease of her arm, and Raven watches it quiver as Tara barely has the power to move it up.
She watches Tara dry heave like that, and it feels like forever, hearing her pained, wet coughs, echoing throughout the huge bathroom.
Tara eventually lowers her arm, looking dazed. Raven’s hands move down from their now light touch on her neck to her shoulders, and Tara’s head falls to the side, leaning onto her shoulder. The way she slumps terrifies a part of Raven, briefly, until her eyes flutter open, half-lidded and tired.
"Got what you wanted?" Tara rasps out. Raven blinks, tears threatening to rise up from within her again.
"You’re a traitor," she bites out, but it barely has an edge to it, as she forces it out; more than anything, it sounds weak. She looks at Tara, who looks half-dead.
"I did what I had to do," Tara says, slowly, stonily.
Something erupts in Raven again, almost threatening to take over, again, but she forces it down, swallows it like a bitter pill.
How could she?
After all the time they spent together… and it was all a ruse.
Did Tara ever love her in the first place?
"I thought you loved me," Raven nearly cries, her voice cracking.
"I don’t love," she says, cold, "it’s a job. Nothing personal," and Tara grins, and Raven immediately feels a wave of dread, and longing, and pain above all, as she sees that grin.
Her eyes narrow in disbelief, but it’s… different, this time. There’s something in Tara’s words that makes her waver.
Before she can think about it more, Tara’s eyes fall shut, and she slumps to the side, and something strikes Raven’s chest – panic, she registers, as she catches Tara before she falls further, sees her chest slow and freeze.
Raven, before she catches herself, ends up pressing her lips to Tara, impulsively, trying to breathe air into Tara, anything to wake her up. The panic arrests her, freezes her in place, and she keeps breathing air into Tara, like some twisted kiss.
Time slows, and eventually, she feels something pushing at her; it’s Tara, and her weak, gangly arams, pushing back at her, trying to push her off. Raven could not be more relieved.
"You’re – are you ok?" Raven says, stumbling over her words, "you’re alive?"
Tara seems like she’s trying to talk, but instead she wheezes weakly, the sound ripping out of her.
"You were the one choking me," she rasps, finally.
Tara’s hand slides up to Raven’s shoulder. It’s so cold.
"You didn’t need to get air into me if I was already breathing," Tara croaks, rough and weak.
"You weren’t," Raven rushes out in one breath, "you stopped. It scared me," she says, her voice wavering. She feels those familiar tears again, feels the barely dry tear tracks on her face against the cold air of the bathroom.
Tara laughs, but it comes out more as a twisted, crackling noise, pained and feeble.
"What," she starts, a lilt in her tone, "scared I’d end up dead? You’d have to find another handmaiden?" and Raven can’t believe the sarcasm in her tone, the teasing, completely foreign for Raven to hear from Tara’s voice.
She shakes her head roughly, rapidly, ripping through her. Her vision shakes with it.
"No," she declares, out loud. Never, she tells herself.
Something squeezes her shoulder. Tara’s neck slightly twists, her gaze sharp and cutting into Raven, splitting her apart.
"You gotta get it together, if you’re gonna be a good heir for your father," Tara says, sardonic. Raven squeezes Tara’s shoulder suddenly, impulsively.
"I will not be like my father," she swears (to who?).
"You just choked me, though," Tara says, so carelessly, and Raven erupts again, ripping her apart, and she slams Tara against the tile again, abrupt, jerking her forward and back into the wall, Tara’s head shaking unnaturally with the motion.
Tara almost cackles once she catches her breath, and it enrages Raven, almost threatening to make her snap again, even more than she already has.
"You can’t run from it," Tara says, her voice almost rising into a yell, unrestrained and unleashed.
"You sound just like him!" Raven screams, almost roars, and she squeezes Tara’s shoulders tight, about to slam her back again, when something in her stills, arresting her, again, and she freezes, looking down at the floor, trying to catch her breath.
She grits her teeth as she tries to control her breathing. Tries to get it together.
She doesn’t want this, a small part of her whispers, slowing growing louder as she tries to concentrate on what’s in front of her. This isn’t her.
Before she can look up at Tara, before she can find the words to respond to her, she feels Tara’s hand snaking up to her chin, and Tara pulls her forward, weak but with all the power she can muster, and kisses her.
Tara’s kiss knocks straight into Raven’s teeth, but she parts her mouth, lets Tara in. Before she can think about it, she pushes Tara into the wall and kisses her furiously.
Raven sighs into the kiss, and after several moments, she parts, sees how dazed Tara looks, until Tara focuses and looks back at her.
A moment passes.
"You don’t want this," Raven says, cold, the realization clicking into place.
She never wanted this. This isn’t the Tara she knew.
Tara closes her eyes, a sigh slowly slipping out of her.
"I’m… tired," she says, wearily. Raven closes her eyes longer than a blink, still part shocked, part angry, and secretly, some part relieved.
She’s tired, too.
The words slip out of her, colder than she meant. She looks up at Tara, who looks… drained, more than anything, like she can barely keep up the facade she so confidently held up before.
"I… I wanted you to kill me," Tara says, and the words cut through Raven like a blade across skin.
Why… "Why would I do such a thing?" Raven says, quivering, the thought alone terrifying her.
"Because I’m a traitor," Tara snaps back.
"You’re not," Raven says, because she knows she isn’t, she’s known Tara for all this time, she was never wrong. Tara doesn’t want this, whatever it is.
"I told you everything," Tara says, exhausted, like she wants this to end, to be over already. "It’s all I am. I’m all fake," she says, her voice dropping low.
Raven squeezes her eyes shut. "I know you loved me," she says, "I know it was real," I felt it, she thinks, I felt you.
"How do you know I wasn’t lying the whole time?" and something snaps in her again, not enough to rupture her like before, but it still snaps, like a taut string. She inhales sharply.
"Because you’re staying with me now!" she yells, panicked, but confident, "you haven’t given up! You’re still sticking to your stupid traitor thing because you want me to stay with you!" and the words rip out of her, but she knows they’re true, as true as the form she morphed into before, as true and confident as she is that Tara is wrong about herself.
Moments pass, as Tara seems to register her outburst. Raven catches her breath. She still has her hands on Tara’s shoulders, but Tara barely moves, Raven only feeling the slow rise and fall of her chest. She doesn’t meet Tara’s gaze, nervous.
Then, she hears an inhale.
"I love you, Raven," Tara says, and she brushes a hand against Raven’s cheek, and Raven looks back at her, "you deserve better than the life you’ve been forced to live," she says.
The tears, again, threaten to return, at how soft, forgiving Tara’s words are.
It’s hard for her to say, but the words rush out of her, "You don’t either– I– we both deserve better," she says.
Tara sniffs, and Raven realizes she’s trying to laugh.
"We’re both fucked, aren’t we?" Tara jokes, light and sarcastic, but there’s something honest in her words.
Raven knows she’s wrong.
"No," she starts, shaky, "we’ll be ok," she declares, and she knows it will be true.
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