He has been increasingly withdrawn since his visit to Ananke, and the Morrigan knows better than to think it coincidence. Something is weighing heavily upon her Baphomet.
And he has yet to confide in her.
She knows where he was only because she sought the information through other channels - when Baphomet had come back to her with tension burning through every line of his body and refused to speak. He does not know that she knows, and the Morrigan has since given up the hope he will voice whatever dark thoughts keep him so sullen.
It bodes ill. They should not be keeping such things from each other.
But while this new intrigue leaves a bitter taste in the Morrigan's mouth, far more does it pain the triple queen to see Baphomet so consumed, he to whom divinity was intended a boon. His ill humor falls over them both, fashions her underworld a far gloomier dominion.
Without knowing what poisons Ananke has sown in her king's mind, there is only one way she knows to chase the haunted look from him and it is a bandaid on a bleeding artery, a temporary measure at best. While Baphomet withholds his confidence, the Morrigan can do no more - but she might wring the delight he owes her from their violent games and find her own content in it, however fleeting.
She seeks out her brooding lover in their darkness, and while the sight of his hunched shoulders elicits far more sympathy than the Morrigan must show, she trusts that he will bring out the rage she needs. His tongue carries as much venom as it does flame - much as she loves him, Baphomet provokes her ire far more than any other - yet it is one more reason she adores him so.
"No grave so cold as lonely sheets," she greets him. She's unsurprised when he turns his head away, refuses to meet her eyes, but it is hard not to imagine the chasm between them grows ever deeper. "What must Morrigan have done that you slight her so?"
"Not everything is about you, you know."
"You have made it so," Badb counters. "You bring corpse silence and refuse underworld queen, Baphomet's fire but ash on dead funeral pyres." She grabs him by the back of his hair, twisting in talons before Baphomet can escape from her, and forces him to see the tempest he has provoked.
The Morrigan fancies fear in his eyes. And then Baphomet is trying to yank free from her grasp, growling, "I'll give you a funeral pyre."
His skin burns to the touch, as if she holds a live flame, but Badb cares not. "Triple queen would have heard you speak straight," she schools him. "Now she wages war."
When she throws Baphomet to the ground, sends him sprawling, the fire Morrigan feared he'd lost bursts from him at last. His palms leave scorch marks on stone when he recovers himself; he hurls embers, but it's only a half-hearted attempt to set her feathers alight.
Badb's war-cry echoes through the empty tunnels and comes back the screech of carrion eaters, "Submit to me, or fight."
Baphomet throws his hands up in a gesture of exasperation. "What the fuck do you think I'm,"
She's on him before he can finish his sentence. He is off balance and Badb presses her advantage, sends him into the wall before Baphomet has fully straightened his spine. Bits of stone and rubble fall where he breaks through, and she smiles when she sees him grimace. No mercy will she show him. Not until she has broken down that which keeps Baphomet from her.
"You fucking-" He doesn't bother brushing himself off. Charges with hands ablaze, and here, finally, is the Morrigan's tempestuous lover. No confusion clouds her Baphomet's brow, no anguish making him of more than one mind. He is glorious; beautiful and burning, given over to most base, blazing wrath.
She battles him an age - delight in the tearing of skin from bone and seeding the earth with spilled blood - until with heavy, heaving breaths, Baphomet crashes to his knees before her. "I can't-" He is nowhere near spent, yet he grasps at her torn skirts, what of them remains, mouthing the words he has too long forgotten to speak. "I - take it, Marian, please."
His voice is wrecked, his grasp too tight - Baphomet may not yet share confidence, but Badb is vindicated still. It's too close to the surface, this specter that haunts him. And whatever the distance between them, he is willing to have what pain she can offer - as the Morrigan knew too well - to fend back what hell it must be.
It is a familiar endeavor; so much sweeter than any self-torment, the destruction he would otherwise visit upon himself. She knows him again in this, better than anyone.
"Prepare yourself."
It may be for his benefit that Badb's ravens retrieve her a whip while she tears the remains of Baphomet's jacket from his shoulders, but it has never been an altruistic impulse. The Morrigan knows better to take her fear and fury out on the helpless mortals that come to hear her shriek divine, but Baphomet - pretty, pale walking corpse - is no longer. He alone can withstand Badb's savagery. He alone is fool enough to crave it.
The stench of burnt flesh and feathers fills her nostrils, sparklers in her chest not unlike the feel of fragmented bone, but Badb does not bother setting herself to healing. She tightens her grip around the thick braid of leather in her hand and ignores the pain of wielding it in favor of splitting Baphomet's skin anew.
Braced against the wall, the blades of his shoulders draw together when he arches his back, stiffens in the wake of her lash. And he does not retreat from her now.
She didn't think he'd come so easy - didn't think he could, so ensnared - but in another instant it is all too clear how badly Baphomet yearns to be torn apart. Not to think, barely to feel beyond the fire lancing up his back at her hand, he gives himself over with a reckless abandon. No smart mouth on him tonight, no wicked tongue; Baphomet fails to urge Badb on with his pointed barbs and petty taunts.
The Morrigan knows better than to think his restraint promising, but she takes comfort in that she can still mark when his shudders and moans drift from pain to pleasure. Driven breathy and boneless at her feet, Badb's anger leeches away at the sight of him. Her king is reactive, his hips driving up into the empty space before him no matter how he struggles against the impulse, and the Morrigan is well aware how little it would take to have him cum by masochism alone. Baphomet groans deep in his throat at that which stains his skin in deep reds and dusky purples.
But tonight they don't play.
It is for him that the Morrigan doesn't let Baphomet enjoy it - quickens her strokes, deals him more damage than he can sustain long.
Until it is no longer so good for him, though he dares not complain. When agony reduces him to clawing at the cement beneath his hands, breathing far too fast and shallow.
There is a perverse beauty in it.
Baphomet so well becomes her dying champions of ages long past - struggling for breath, yet defiant to the last. The Morrigan cannot help but mark the line of Baphomet's throat as he throws his head back and prays to her in feral expressions, every line of him held strong against her onslaught.
She won't stop until she draws blood, tears, or both, and Baphomet knows this. Some nights they are easier to set flowing than others, but tonight his shoulders don't heave with the motion of sobs following her strikes and the Morrigan has yet to truly tear his skin.
Indeed, he doesn't come quite so easy as she'd marveled. The Morrigan lays into him with a fury, but it takes far longer than ever before to push Baphomet to the point of trembling. His skin is crisscrossed with welts in shades of crimson and plum, bruises forming almost instantaneously where she doesn't manage to break the skin. Blood wells up and smears across the rest.
Beautiful and perverse, to visit such destruction on the one she loves. The Morrigan feels her own blood pound in answer, her cunt clench with every noise that falls from Baphomet's lips. It is a thrill like no other, and all parts of her revel.
"Sing for me, pretty," Annie tells him, the only one he might indulge if Baphomet still has the breath.
It is different for her than for Macha, for Badb. She is fascinated by the blood, by the broken of mind and body. Her fingers tingle with the desire to touch - to trace the weeping lines across Baphomet's back and taste for herself. She'd wrap her arms around him to feel how he shudders in the aftermath.
"Annie," he breathes, in recognition. There is no fear in his voice, though he must know what comes. He ducks his head, and his arms are shaking where he's braced.
"Want you to cry, lover boy," she continues, casual, as if she doesn't throw the whip with enough force to crush the air from his lungs again, unhindered by passion or distraction. It is that humanity left in him, those messy, splintered bits, that fascinate her most of all. "Cry for Annie, and she'll make you better."
He huffs something that could be a laugh or a sob in response; exposed like live wires, Annie targets those cracks along which he'll shatter. Not too long now. Baphomet fights to stay himself beneath her lash, but is fast reaching the limit of what even he can endure. Each downstroke causes him to stiffen more violently in its wake, and he shifts more and more restlessly between, until his whole body is pulled so tight the Morrigan fears he might snap.
"No more," Baphomet begs at long last, buries his face in the crook of his arm, "Morri." His voice is pained, unsteady. Otherwise perfect - but all wrong. The release that should be is absent, nothing but defeat in the slump of his shoulders.
Baphomet curls in on himself, slumps forward until his hair is touching the wall, his arms falling crossed over his head. It is a bitter, broken sound that falls from his lips.
The Morrigan waits, but already knows he won't crawl to her, feels her heart sink as she looks over what she has done to her lover. The marks go far deeper than any excuse at distraction, so long past where she should have stopped - if only she'd realized - as if what Baphomet truly wanted was for her to be his destruction.
She can take neither pride nor pleasure. No victory in these tears.
The Morrigan should be furious with him, yet she can dredge up nothing more from the hollowness settling in her chest. Instead she moves to kneel behind Baphomet and wraps her arms around his waist, pressing her cheek to the torn skin between his shoulder blades. It is barely a comfort. "Tell me why," she pleads.
His blood is sticky against her face and in her hair.
Baphomet takes a deep, shuddering breath. "Death comes to us all. What difference would it make?"
All the Morrigan can do is tighten her hold on him, though her arms are no great safety. "And leave me no friendly drop of poison?" She cannot deny the request implicit in his question, but answers with her own rather than acquiesce.
It is hardly the first time she has painted herself in his blood, but the idea of a last gives the Morrigan far more pause than it should. She cannot imagine being without him in any universe, any fraction of a life; did not realize he grew so discontent as to abort this one. The triple queen does not beg, but it is close. "Need not hurry it along, Baphomet. Be glad for time yet."
"Time," he mutters under his breath. But then Baphomet laughs - almost convincingly, if not for the undercurrent of desperation to it. He leans back to kiss her, blood and tears smearing between them, and chases the Morrigan's fears from her with a promise growled against her collarbone.
"I'll take all I can get."