Title: Catching a Butterfly
Author: OpheliacAngel
Pairing: Bela/Ruby
Genres: Romance/Fantasy/Horror
Rating: Teen
Summary: She can't very well escape the world she had the audacity to step into.
A/N: Written for femslashficlets for prompt #035 fantasy. Faerie AU. Timestamp thingy for my story 'Underneath Our Masks.'
In her dreams Bela doesn't fret about stepping over the edge.
They're dreams after all.
Besides, it's not the falling that has always haunted her, but what there is at the bottom. Sometimes there are the faces of her parents staring up at her: wide, white eyes beckoning her to lie with them, fingers curling ever so slightly as they have the power to move her. She hovers above them, not able to pinpoint if what she's feeling is fear or something else entirely. But she never ends up lying with them, she always wakes up as she hovers there, staring at what she has wrought upon the world.
There are other bodies down there too. Faces she doesn't recognize. Faces she doesn't want to seek out in real life.
Tonight the pit of bodies grows wider. There are wide, gaping mouths, bloodless limbs and a low hum that emanates throughout the world Bela finds herself in. This hum seems to coarse through her, making her very insides vibrate.
She shakes because there are wings too. Wings pulled and crunched and discarded. Wings crushed into ash and dust. Wings strewn in the dirt, soaked in blood. There are humans too, mixed in with the wings until Bela can't tell them apart. These two worlds should have never mixed to begin with, yet they were destined to. She's destined to cause it. Her aim is to stop it.
She can't very well escape the world she had the audacity to step into.
Ever since she saved Ruby's life from humans… things have changed. Okay, huge understatement.
Ruby had left her home for Bela, to protect her, to be with her, and that couldn't have been an easy decision. Bela, who pretty much started a war because the Unseelie Queen has a thing for her. Bela, who's just a common thief who has a thing for the world of the Fae. Even though she's human.
Bela wakes up easily, trembling still traveling from the back of her neck to the very tips of her fingers. The bed is vacant beside her, sheets long grown cold given the chill hanging in the air. She's never been much of a morning person, it's just barely sunrise, but she unlocks the door against the far wall and walks out into the backyard. The bright beauty of the morning isn't what startles her.
Ruby is half-obscured by the awning to her left, huge, tawny brown wings outstretched and soaking up the first rays of sun. Not that they're not brilliant to begin with, but in the newborn sunlight they have no right to steal as much breath out of Bela's lungs as they do. In this light they're not just one shade of brown, but a multitude of hues. Bela has no wings of her own, yet she knows that Ruby is still holding a part of herself back. Her wings aren't stretched to their full length, only about three quarters, and Bela can practically read the ache in Ruby's skin to completely let loose.
Yet it's a danger. A danger neither of them can afford.
Ruby's head half turns toward her. She tucks her wings away quickly and Bela sighs. Ruby's been in the human world for a little over two months now and it's not surprising that she fears humans catching sight of her wings, but it's disheartening to Bela because that isn't the only reason. Ruby's shy about her wings, as if - even though they're more beauty than Bela's world could have ever thought up - they show that she's an abomination.
Ruby's the faerie that Bela couldn't have even dreamed up, but just because she isn't human doesn't mean Bela loves her any less. Ruby is god knows how old, with experience Bela could never live up to in matters she can't even begin to contemplate, but she is also incredibly shy when it comes to her fae nature. Bela knows she has barrels full of baggage, but so does she. It's what you take into yourself when you connect with someone.
Bela has never connected with anyone but Ruby before.
She doesn't say anything even though she knows she should. Even though she knows she needs to be the one who steps up.
"It's not good to retract them for so long." Ruby was never meant to live in the human world, so it's no wonder there are unexpected consequences. Like the fact that the water on Earth is too damaging to Ruby's skin and that keeping her wings away for days on end gives her backaches. Or if Ruby doesn't get enough sun she gets dizzy and nauseated. Bela doesn't even want to think about the encroaching winter, but she does because Ruby's living with her now. Because she has nowhere else to go.
"Well, I'm hungry," Bela snakes an arm around Ruby's shoulder. They walk back into their bedroom, Bela slipping on her silk bathrobe and Ruby itching her shoulder blades, which always causes Bela to wince in sympathy. There is such intense shame in Ruby repressing her nature for her. "How about some coffee?" She offers, knowing Ruby's developed a unique addiction to caffeine.
Ruby sighs and gives up as she takes a seat up at the breakfast bar, wearily watching Bela measure out the coffee grounds. Her wings pull out slightly, enough to decrease her irritation and apparently, the itching. Out of habit Bela triple checks the windows behind her, even though she did the same the night before.
She bustles around the kitchen, trying to keep herself busy as she waits for the coffee, but out of the corner of her eye she holds Ruby's wings. Even with the nightmares most likely foreshadowing horrors to come, even with Ruby's insecurities about his wings, even considering that neither of them have any idea what they're bloody well doing, Bela can't help but stare at her girlfriend's inhuman organs and feel complete bliss ignite within her.
FIN