Title: M A G I C
Author: Peachfish
Pairing: Beatrice x Battler
Genre: Romance/General
Rating: T – Language, gore, suggestive themes.
Description: [Beatrice x Battler, 50 Sentences] He supposes it must be real, but there are conditions—for him, she's one of them.
Essentially the challenge here is to take 50 words from a list and write one sentence for each, based on the theme of your particular fanfic, with leeway to insert three words of your choice (anybody wanna take a stab at which ones I threw in? ;D). I took on this little endeavor recently after I fell very much in love with Umineko and its crazy, crazy characters—two in particular just happened to stand out. :)
It should probably be noted that these are loosely in chronological order, but they're definitely not all canon events.
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01 Beginning
The witch is momentarily paralyzed with glee as her new toy lets out a small, pained little sound like a whimper, watching the people he loves crumble into heaps of unfathomable gore—but when the laugh bubbles up in her throat, rings in his ears, and floods the room like the blood all around them, he knows that sound will haunt him until the day he dies.
02 Stars
When little Ange asks him what he wished for, he cracks a big, goofy grin and says he asked the stars for a blonde bombshell, makes a lewd gesture, and starts to say "with cow t-"— but this is just enough time for Kyrie to thump him hard on the head, and shut him up for a good long while.
03 Sugar
Even when he's surrounded by the six disemboweled, sweet-stuffed bodies of his father, stepmother, aunts and uncles, nothing strikes him as more sickening than the way she's running her pointer finger down his jacket, like she's sampling the icing on a cake, and practically purring about how she killed them all.
04 Family
There are a lot of sadistic reasons she likes the sacrifice system, but lately it's just become a great excuse to get those pests out of the way so she can have him all to herself.
05 Mad
Meat overflows from her lips and dribbles down her gown and cakes her chin, and she throws her head down on the slick, clean plate with the fork upright in her trembling fist, throat raw, mouth askew, wheezing for air and licking her fingers as she madly snickers about what a delicious piece he was.
06 Good
When her hands drape themselves over his shoulders like vultures to their prey, and she breathes into his ear that he just doesn't know how good she is at massages, he lets out a loud laugh, sits bolt upright, and tells her she might as well just back off because there's no way in hell he'd be able to relax when she's digging those cat claws into his—ohh.
07 Cute
She throws up her arms, lets out a loud laugh, and lifts up her dress as she trumps down the stairs like she's Godzilla coming to destroy Tokyo, but he's so distracted by the horrible word that just assaulted his brain, which should never, ever, ever be applied to her ever again, that he can't even think of a reply to her loud shriek of "cat got your tongue, Ushiromiya Battler?!"
08 Sex
"Umm, well, I guess it's pretty straightforward—we just keep repeating the same thing, and it gets hard after awhile, but one of us eventually has a breakthrough, and if she comes out on top she can take me to the Golden Land, and— holy shit—oh my—gragh, Asmo, get your mind out of the gutter!"
09 Mine
"I still can't figure out why he hasn't quit yet," Lucifer muses one afternoon, but the self-satisfied beam that spreads across her mistress's face at this remark just says it all.
10 Fantasy
He could swear she has eyes in the back of her head, because he's only been staring at the back of that blood-red skirt for about three seconds before she turns, grins wolfishly, and croons, "Anti-fantasy, hmm…?"
11 Happy
Admitting it to himself sucks more than anything she could ever do to him, but he can't help but feel a little lighter when she babbles on about all the different ways she'd like to kill him, because it just makes her so damned happy.
12 Beautiful
When he finally glances up from the chessboard and asks her why the hell she's been staring at him, she just smiles, takes a drag on her pipe, and coyly replies, "no reason."
13 Fat
Telling her she had "cow tits" had seemed like a hilarious idea at the time, but when he catches her scrutinizing herself in the full-length mirror, her expression perplexed, shoulders slouching, neckline hiked up a little higher than usual—that's enough to make him twinge with a strange sense of guilt, ruffle her hair apologetically as he passes, and mutter just loudly enough to make her blush that you'renotfatBeato.
14 Envy
He is suddenly overcome by a strange, unsettling feeling as this fiendishly smirking "Ronove" character slides the Ushiromiya family ring onto Beatrice's (pretty, delicate, graceful, pretty) finger like everything the bastard touches turns to silk—but Battler just slumps back in his seat and gives the new butler a solid glare, insistently trying to tell himself that family honor, and nothing else, is what's making him want to pop that guy in the mouth so much.
15 Old
When she rubs her arm up against his and coos about his fetish for older women, he shoots her an electric glare out of the corner of his eye and calls her a name that makes her blink—but it takes her a good thirty seconds to swallow her pride, scoot a little closer, and ask him what a "cougar" is.
16 Truce
He can't help but smile at the big, furious, concentrated grin on her face as she claps like this little contest means everything in the world to her, suddenly feeling an entirely foreign desire to grab both of her hands out of motion, call this thing a draw, and kiss her until his lips are as sore as his palms are right now.
17 Hurt
She only realizes it now, when she's holding her face alone and a cold tear is running down a hot, red, stung cheek, that he's not the type of man who says what he doesn't mean.
18 Patience
The butler knows, when his lady rattles the whole table with a slash of metal spoon against glass saucer and buries her face into her sleeves, smearing already diluted mascara everywhere and wailing about how she wants to kill that insufferable idiot she wants him dead she wants his head on a bloody fork, that it's time to smile, coyly tell her not to break the china if she wants more tea, and hand her another plate of cookies with extra napkins.
19 Heart
A distinct something happens to her heart when he looks her straight in the eye, like no one else exists in the whole world, and says he'd wait for her forever if it meant she'd come back and face him.
20 Annoyance
When Eva-Beatrice wrinkles her nose like her predecessor just asked her to eat a plate of broccoli, crosses her arms with an impossible slouch, and mutters something along the lines of "what's the matter, did you and the pawn break up today?"—that alone is enough to make the former Endless Witch absolutely certain of all the horrible, horrible, horrible ways she's going to mangle that little thing once she's served her purpose, oh yes yes yes yes…
21 Hero
He watches her crawling, scraping through the remains of the massacre, the look on her face threatening to split into a rush of tears as she looks at him with a pleading expression like she wishes there was so much more she could do, but all he wants is to take her into his arms, tell her she's done so much more than he could ever ask of her, tell her everything he's feeling about the woman who has become his hero.
22 Heartless
He's standing over the bloody heap she has become, staring through her transparent form at the heart that has been ripped from her chest with the frozen foot about to crush it into a billion bright, beautiful pieces, and the irony drips down his cheeks as he regrets all those times he looked at her like he wanted this to happen and called her heartless.
23 Lies
A big strong hand squeezes around hers and he smiles at her like he loves her and he leads her to the altar with one hand and takes the quill to sign with the other and oh god she just wants to Stop. This. and wrestle the quill out of his grip and shove it into her heart.
24 Sunset
For a moment, she thinks she can keep up the "sun" strategy, thinks she can break down into crocodile tears and take him into her arms and say she'd never dream of deceiving the man she loved—but the way he looks into her eyes with such a deadly, raw need, and the earnesty in his voice when he whispers, "you would never lie to me… right Beato…?" are what breaks her, and she lets it all out in a laugh.
25 Troll
He takes a good, long, hard look at her portrait—the terrifying mistress of Rokkenjima, perched with a cretinous smirk in her throne, preying on the foolish souls who would dare to trip-trap over her island in hopes of finding the "greener grass" that is his grandfather's gold—and the more he thinks about it, she seems less like a witch and more like another mythical creature to him.
26 Secret
As she stares into the sleeping face of her opponent, sprawled out in his seat at the gameboard with a myriad of ridiculous written strategies for the next game strewn out on the floor around him, she slowly, gingerly brushes the wild red hair out of his face, leans in, and kisses him on the lips with everything she feels—because when he wakes up the truth will be nothing but a dream, and he'll never, ever know her secret.
27 Devotion
Battler shoots her a lethal glare, turns on his heel to leave, and tells her to just bite her damn lip and find someone else to put up with her problems, but when she grabs him ferociously by the back of his jacket and buries her face between his shoulders, screaming with a strange shaky voice he's never heard her use before that she doesn't want anyone else, he finds that he just can't move anymore.
28 Fun
Deciding that she can make this "third player" ploy work to her advantage, the witch leans forward—slowly, but with unmistakable deliberation—and gives her opponent a view across the chessboard that makes him drop his pawn and gawk, and makes his sister's jaw fall off its hinges as she realizes that he's actually looking.
29 Comfort
When the girl in the robe lets out a loud laugh and says she doesn't need anybody, drying her tears, leaning forward on the surface of the vanity and dusting blush onto her cheeks with a kind of crazed vigor, her mentor just smiles, ties the end of her braid, and quietly says Battler doesn't love anyone but her.
30 Color
He only realizes he's been running his eyes down that blue, beautiful royal blue silk robe and not listening to her when Beatrice roughly grabs the corners of his mouth with two fingers, like she's trying to pluck a fruit firmly attached to its branch, and her eyes turn to deadly slits of that same pretty color when she snarls, "Where the hell did you and those Stakes put my gown?"
31 Question
"… For God's sake, Rissy*, you've eaten all the chocolate in the house, you're moodier than Beelzebub on a diet, and you haven't stopped crying all day—I just want to ask you seriously, did he break up with you or get you pregnant?"
32 Present
He doesn't mind enduring the smirks, giggles, and squeals bubbling up between the Stakes, the knowing beams and chuckles from Ronove and Virgilia, a dark stare from Gretel and a little bit of embarrassment—because it's just so worth it to see her there, blushing as she snatches the roses out of his hand, and mutters something that sounds like a "thank you" and a "Happy White Day" before whapping him hard with the bouquet.
33 Forbidden
He tries to hide the wild terror in his eyes as he hastily buttons his shirt, asking her with the most level tone he can muster if she thinks anyone might have, um, heard that noise he made last night—but she just smirks and prefaces her answer with a solid kiss on his lips, straightening his tie as she coyly murmurs "of course" into the crook of his neck.
34 Caged
For some reason, she feels like she should say something to Lady Lambdadelta as the little witch clutches her knees to her chest, kicking her little feet under all the ruffles and squealing about how she can't wait to see what will happen to Bern's pawn in the next game, but Beatrice is at an utter loss when her keeper asks her, straight out, how she plans to break the poor fool's heart after all this "buildup."
35 Morning
He wakes up when the sunlight is already dripping in through the window, takes in a big warm waft of what smells like Ronove making pancakes and dropping snark, and smiles a heavy smile before flopping his head back onto the pillow—but the sound of her laugh filling up the air downstairs, and an audible cry of "How about I flatten you out and flip you over on that skillet?!" are enough to make him fly out of bed before she's even finished her sentence.
36 Gravity
One night on the balcony, he averts his gaze from the glitter of the stars, shoots her a triumphant grin under his arm and chides that real witches know how to fly—but it only takes her a few seconds to smirk fiendishly, fling them both hundreds of feet into the air, and silence his screams with a kiss more forceful than gravity.
37 Water
He's completely transparent no matter what he says, dangerous when he wants to be, but more a part of her than any other force of nature—and she supposes, with a sigh and a sip of tea that doesn't quite quench her thirst, that she can't live without him.
38 Stain
But she knows it's all over when he lets out a horrible, raw noise that rips through the air too sharply to be a scream, and Bern and Lambda giggle at the sight of his trembling figure falling to the ground, staining the white suit with his sister's blood and staring at the witch through tears and wide eyes like she did this, she did this, she did this.
39 Hate
There is a flash of blue that rips and tears and blinds and kills, but even when her body is rotting on a great spike of consequence, nothing makes her burn and scream and want to die like the hatred in his eyes.
40 Love
Battler knows what she's asking him to do, her voice raw, her body shaking, the words "kill me" echoing from her lips and her hands clawing at the back of his jacket like the fabric is all she has left in the world,but he can't bring himself to say anything as he buries his nose into her hair, pulls her a little closer, and wonders when it was he first knew.
41 Magic
He supposes it must be real, but there are conditions—for him, she's one of them.
42 Doll
The Witch of Miracles lets a rare smile drip from her features as she stands over the young man cradling his all-but comatose lover, and revels in the heat that fills his bloodshot eyes, the stillness of her gray, lifeless lips, and the way his fingernails dig into furls of her blonde hair when Bernkastel towers over them both and calls the doll dead.
43 Friend
Gaap wants to make a comment about how Beato always did have a thing for redheads as she watches Battler cup her expressionless face between his hands, kiss her on the forehead, and linger there for a few tense moments— but the demon merely smiles, closes her eyes, and takes a sip of her tea with a kind of uncharacteristic reverence for their privacy, because she decides it's what her friend needs the most right now.
44 Truth
The blue-haired girl takes a seat in his lap, smooths out the folds in her pearl pink dress, and sweetly asks why it matters to him whether that old witch lives or dies—but her expression twinges with unmasked, convulsive rage as he turns his head away from her like she's something disgusting, and says the three words she least wanted to hear in gold.
45 Loyalty
A pair of arms sweeping her hard out of motion and a gruff cry of "I gotcha!" startle her into breathing again, and the witch involuntarily grabs him by the collar for support— before she feels a steady hand tighten around hers, looks up into a loving smile, and feels herself tremble when he holds her a little tighter, pronouncing that this game is his and hers and theirs alone.
46 Future
She tucks a rogue strand of hair into her bun and offhandedly comments that Kinzo would have jumped from the window carrying her, but not even the leap from the balcony frazzled her as much as it does when he snakes one hand around the small of her back, gently pushes a lock of hair out of her eyes with the other, and says he'll make sure to take care of that in the future.
47 Useless
He feels her heart beat more rapidly than ever against his chest as the world closes in around them, but he's not breathing, not fighting, because he finally believes in his own words.
48 Consequence
Part of her hand reaches out for him, and her eyes say something he can't hear before the love of his life falls to bloody, trembling pieces, and all he can do is scream.
49 Regret
He is a flurry of golden butterflies, a flash of black and red, a man ruined by regret as he charges through the frozen mansion of their fifth game— and the Endless Sorcerer slams his hands down onto the epitaph, lets out a raw scream, and rips through the metal with his golden sword where the words "sleep peacefully, my most beloved Beatrice" are rotting his heart.
50 Belief
He stands before the jury, fearless and primed and brilliant gold, ready to deny everything in the name of the only person he ever believed in.
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* An adaptation of Gaap's nickname for Beatrice, "Riiche," which doesn't translate to English as well as I'd like it to—I thought "Rissy" was an appropriate substitution. :3
Thanks so much for reading!
[1.18.09] Mad props to Immortal x Snow, who called that "Troll" was one of my original words. The other two were "Doll" and "Belief." :)
I realized that the sentence for "Sad" directly contradicted with "Present," so I went ahead and changed "Sad" to "Fat" and wrote another sentence. Hee. X3
Thank you so so so much to everyone who has favorited and reviewed so far-- and I must say, it's just a lovely feeling when other people get my weird sense of humor. ^_^