Author's Note: You know the drill. Nothing belongs to me; I only play with other people's toys. Interested in a Fiona/whoever fic? Send me a prompt! I'm a sucker for this character, and I'll try to make it happen, the weirder the better. Hit me up on PMs here, in reviews, or on my Tumblr (username: acascavel).
"What's this?" Madison asked, her fingertips trailing softly over the dark ink embedded in the flesh of Fiona Goode's hip. The young witch hadn't noticed the mark before, having been too caught up in the feeling of Fiona's mouth on hers, Fiona's hands in her hair, Fiona's head between her legs. Now, though, with orgasms safely ripped from pliant flesh, lamps turned back on and bodies cooling in the afterglow, awaiting a second round, the starlet had the time and light to explore her Supreme's body with the painstaking concentration that it deserved.
"It's a tattoo," Fiona replied, her left forearm thrown across her eyes, right hand twirling a lock of Madison's blonde hair. Her cancer was wreaking absolute hell on her recovery time.
"I know that." Madison rolled her eyes and propped herself up on one elbow, letting the soft sheets of Fiona's bed slide away from her pale, lithe young form. "What's it of, though?"
"Do you read, Madison?" Fiona asked, and the question was less of a diversion than it seemed.
"Never," the girl quipped, and then bit her lip. Fiona had made it achingly obvious prior to their little engagement that flippancy of this sort was not to be tolerated and, honestly, they were past that point anyway. All of the little cat-and-mouse games that they had been playing with each other, or that they had thought that they had been playing with each other, had been effectively ended with Madison's death. They did not rekindle with her miraculous return. Instead, the women had fallen into an uneasy sort of truce; Madison was not the next Supreme, and therefore not a threat, and Fiona had done her worst and failed. She was not frightening anymore.
Madison had been angry at Fiona for a long time after returning from the dead, but after the spectacular failure of the Sacred Taking, the young woman had remembered just what had drawn her to care about Fiona in the first place—for of course she cared. Any anger that searing, that fierce, really had to stem from something else. In this case, that was betrayal; Madison hadn't quite known what they were to each other—still didn't quite know what they were to each other—but had thought that they had meant something.
Nothing like a knife to the throat to dispel any illusions. They weren't illusions, though, really. Both women knew it, and neither made mention. They weren't in love. It was nothing so silly or sappy as that. Each of them had gaping holes, though, that the other could fulfill—lack of a mother, lack of a daughter, loneliness at night. It would be a lie to say that they filled each other clinically. There was a certain warmth in their actions. Fiona had pressed her lips to Madison's forehead repeatedly as the girl sobbed out the remnants of her orgasm—the first time she had felt, really felt anything since her return—and Madison had pressed her palm softly against Fiona's spine when the older woman's dress first came off, trying to find the death there, trying to send it away.
"I…I used to. Read. Um, not so much anymore," the young woman said eventually, and Fiona gave a sagely nod, brushing hair out of her eyes.
"And did you ever read The Awakening, Madison?"
"Maybe. Should I ask for a refresher course?"
"If you want my tattoo to make sense, then yes." Fiona let her right hand slide slowly, sensuously, reverently down her naked body, across soft, smooth pale skin, the jutting rise of a collar bone, the soft, heavy swell of a breast, concaved abdomen (she didn't know if it was the chemo or the cancer itself, but she just couldn't keep food down, and that was scarier than the Supreme would like to admit), and slowly, slowly, over to the tiny little black design on her hip.
It was probably only the size of a quarter, all told, and it was hollow. The outline of a seagull with a broken wing, spiraling slowly, unendingly, helplessly down was tattooed on Fiona Goode's hip in neat curves and lines, no shading, no color, just black ink on paper white skin, sentiment bare against her naked body. She hadn't been young when she had gotten it; forty, maybe, maybe thirty-seven. At this point, it didn't matter when; it only mattered that, on one or another transatlantic flight, slightly drunk on champagne and high on coke, The Awakening had been the only book in her bag, and it had, for the first time in a lifetime, truly made sense.
Myrtle Snow thought that she had been the one swimming against the tide her whole life, but that was just one giant cosmic joke. It was Fiona who took to the ocean, and always had been. She sank under the waves as a kind of victory, drifting out of the lives of those around her simply because, though they wanted everything from her, she owed nothing to them.
"You can have my copy," the Supreme said, eventually, tired of the silence, her body finally finished coming down from their previous activities, ready to try again, reaching out to touch Madison's ribcage. "But not just yet." She rolled close to the girl who had been her protégée and brushed her mouth against the younger woman's, feeling desire thrum through her belly when Madison slipped her tongue out to run it against Fiona's lips. Neither of them were quite ready to retire for the evening.
Fiona's lips parted, and Madison pillaged her mouth, hands holding her face still. The starlet rolled atop her…her…whatever Fiona was to her, pushing the older woman's legs apart, bringing a knee up firmly against a soaking center.
"She walks into the water at the end, right?" Madison asked, pushing her knee up further, watching Fiona gasp and fuck her hips down against the friction. "Whatshername. The bitch."
"Mmm-hm." The Supreme let her eyes fall closed as shock after shock of aching pleasure shot up her body from her oversensitive clit, grinding herself on Madison's thigh without conscious thought. "Edna. It's the only way…oh..." Madiston, still listening, latched her mouth on Fiona's right nipple, pushing the woman's hands away when she tried to thread them through the younger woman's hair. "The only way she can be herself, free."
"Keep your wrists above your head." Madison bit Fiona's nipple, maybe a little too hard, and moved to the other breast. "Be free right now. Fuck my leg, Fi."
Fiona was, and it almost hurt. Her body was writhing on the bed, legs spreading wide and then squeezing as shut as possible, trying to find a way to get more pressure on the little nub at her center. And, in a way, she was free—or, as close as she could be without throwing herself into the sea. There was no death in her mind, no Cordelia, no Axeman, nobody vying for her affections, not even Madison. Just the disembodied voice, and the pleasure.
"Come on, Fiona, fucking come for me."
Fiona did. Her body went rigid and her hand flew up to her mouth, but no sound came out, just harsh breathing. Her hips gyrated frantically, and then slowed, and Madison felt the smear of wetness on her leg, and then the coolness as Fiona slipped her body away.
Madison moved close and pressed a cool kiss on Fiona's brow before rolling over and clicking off the lamp on her side of the bed.
"I assume you don't cuddle," she said.
"Not really, no."
Madison smiled at how out of breath the other woman sounded. There was no telling what the coming days may bring, but she doubted that this would be their last time.
"Goodnight, Miss Edna."
"Don't you ever fucking call me that outside of this room, Madison Montgomery. Your ass is grass, and I will mow it."
"Hm." Slowly, unsure of the response this would garner—and, of course, only with Fiona Goode could one be sure that rough sex would be fine but chaste touches would not—Madison Montgomery took Fiona's hand and twined their fingers together before she closed her eyes to sleep.
Their hands were still resting that way, palm to palm, fingers loosely joined, when Fiona awoke in the morning.