Underneath the Crystal Moon

a/n: I do not own Labyrinth. A little warning – this chapter does have a graphic and violent non-consensual sex scene. Avert ye eyes if you must.

Part Two: Damien

Chapter 8

Xen moaned as she hit the ground after dismounting from Dante. Damien laughed at her as she sprawled on the ground.

"Don't laugh! My ass hurts!" Xen admonished him.

"You will need to get used to riding a horse someday," Damien told her as he swung down. He offered her a hand and she regretfully took it.

"Why? I have trees, and mostly flat ground. I am small and fast," Xen explained.

Damien sighed and handed Dante's reins to a sullen Xdrea. The ride back to the Tree Kingdom had been a little less hurried, and they had not had to ride half as hard as they did going to Goblin City. Xen had spent most of the time talking enough for the both of them. She told him about her mother, a dryad who was very talented in juggling apparently, but little else. She had not idea who her father was. More than likely he was some elf that had wondered too far into the forest and had been ensnared by her mother's charms. Xen had told him her mother had been shorter than she was, and had very dark red hair. Her eyes had been blue. Damien surmised Xen's deep brown eyes must have come from her father. The extra bit of height must have come from him also. Xen was staring at him.

"What?" he asked her.

"You need a bath. So do I. I think we should both go our rooms and spend the rest of the day thinking about how blessed we are to have beds and bathtubs. I will see you tomorrow morning, bright and early?" Xen asked. Damien had been spending his mornings teaching her to use the short sword he had commissioned for her in Goblin City. She rose in the mornings when he woke her. Sometimes it was like waking the dead.

"I will wake you up when I get up," Damien told her.

Xen thought silently as she climbed the stairs to her waiting bed. When she reached her room she slipped off her tunic and unbound her hair. The curls fell to her backside, and she looked at the hairs with disdain.

"Lavina, please draw my bath," Xen ordered her maid. The sprite did as she was told, adding a healthy dose of bath oil to the water. Xen finally slipped into the steaming tub, and moaned with a healthy amount of volume. Her ass truly did hurt, but the warm water was slowly soaking away the hurt, along with removing the feeling of travel from her body. Her thoughts drifted when she closed her eyes.

Damien had slowly begun to start talking to her. Not monosyllables, but actual sentences. They had conversations! When he opened his mouth, he was intelligent and fairly charming, while still keeping it low and level. He debated with her, and she could sense the strength in him. Not just the physical strength, but the mental and emotional strength. When he cared about someone, like he did his family, he would become passionate, and would get angry easily. He was possessive, and he was fiercely loyal. She liked it. She felt weak around him. Well, she felt weak all the time. She felt like prey to everyone around her.

But strangely, the dreams had not returned. Those evil dreams of rape, molestation, torture, violence. Blood, her blood. They had not come back. She still could not sleep for fear of them returning, but when she did sleep it was dreamless.

Dinner was waiting for her when she got out of the tub and dried herself off. She sat down, nude, at a small table to eat the meal in front of her. She shook her head as she drank from a tea cup.

It will do no good to hope that the dreams do not return. You know they will, Xen. Horrors like that are not likely to ever be completely forgotten, Xen thought. And she was right.

Xen was wasting away. Her skin had taken on a sallow tone as she sat, rotting in that dungeon. She didn't cry anymore. She didn't bother. She could not even form a coherent thought anymore. Her small amount of water sat, still full. Her lips were cracked from dehydration, and her nails were broken, cracked, and bloody. Her eyes hurt to even keep open anymore. She knew she would die here. She just knew it. Her hair was a mess of lank curls, and the reddish gold of it had been caked in dirt and filth for so long she no longer remembered what it actually looked like. There were footsteps, and then the cell door opened. There stood an evil looking dwarf, who was frothing at the mouth and covered in mud.

"What a pretty little whore. Ol' Gorb will take care of you. Just spread your pretty little legs, you filthy slut," Gorb waited for her to do as she was told, but Xen no longer had the strength to do anything. Gorb raised his hand and punched her, hard. Her lip split wide open, and blood flew from it to splatter on the wall. Xen fell over on her side, and she curled up in a ball.

"Oi! Nogrod, this little bitch won't spread her legs!" Gorb yelled, and soon Nogrod came into the cell, a look of cruelty upon his malformed face. He rolled Xen onto her back and pulled her legs down and apart.

"Take what you deserve, Gorb. And we will punish her for disobeying," Nogrod laughed a maniacal laugh as Gorb pulled down his pants. He stroked himself a couple of times before slamming into Xen's delicate body. She did not make a sound. She would not make it fun for them anymore. She would not gasp, cry, wail, any of that. She just laid there, limp as a doll. Nogrod did not like that. He punched her in the belly, and viciously twisted her nipples as Gorb raped her. He pulled at the nipples and yanked them, as if he wanted them to come loose from her body. Xen was so far removed she did not even feel it. She felt like her body was going to return to the darkness. She felt like the link between her and this world would be severed. Then she distantly heard the sound of a dagger being unsheathed. Nogrod handed the dagger to the rapist between her legs, and then she briefly heard Nogrod speak, "Here is your punishment, you filthy slut"

Her skin screamed as it was split with the sharp knife. Gorb took the knife and carved underneath her breasts, like he was going to sever them from her small body. He went slowly, savoring each drop of blood that came out of the growing wound. Then Nogrod kneeled down and put his foul mouth next to her ear.

"I will have him take your breasts, you nasty fuck. If you do not make it worth Gorb's while, he will take these off your body. Even if you do survive this ordeal, no one will want you then," Xen heard him say. She swam back to the top of her sinking conciousness.

"Nooooo!" Xen screamed at the top of her lungs. Gorb went faster as she screamed, and finally he found release in her terror. Xen went limp again as the two dwarves left her in her cell and locked the door. Blood poured out from underneath her breasts, and she was bruised and bleeding from between her legs. She made no move to clean up either area. For the first time since she had become catatonic she spoke, "Please, by the goddess, let me die"

Damien heard a loud scream from Xen's room. He bolted out and down the hallway, not bothering to knock. His pajama pants fluttered slightly in the breeze that came from her open window. Xen was thrashing on the bed, her nude body tangled in the light covers. He was not looking at her body just then, but at the sweat on her skin, and the screams of horror that rocked her body. Lavina ran in behind him.

"Lavina, leave!" Damien shouted at the maid. She quickly departed. Damien ran over to the bed, and tried to think quickly. He did not want to touch her when she was so obviously having a night terror, so he went for the water. The pitcher held enough water for the job. He did not want to be cruel, but he did not want her mistaking him for whatever was terrorizing her in her dream. He closed his eyes and threw the cold water on the little dryad.

"Ahhhhhhcccccckkkk!" Xen screamed, and sat up straight in bed, her hair limp with sweat and water, her breath coming out in ragged pants.

Damien walked quickly to the bed and picked up the little dryad, "Are you all right?"

Xen's eyes fluttered closed with a little bit of shock, "What happened? Why are you here? Why am I totally wet?"

"I heard you screaming. You were having a night terror. I splashed water on you so you did not mistake me for a part of the terror," Damien told her as he sat down in a comfy chair. He formed a crystal and threw it at the bed, drying all the sheets on it. Another crystal dried the queen, and clothed her in a white nightgown that went down to her knees. She was definitely more comfortable now, "Do you want to tell me what it was about?"

Xen looked decidedly uncomfortable, "Did your mom or dad ever tell you how I came to be in your castle when you were a babe?"

"The only thing they told us was that you had been in the dungeon, and that you had been abandoned there. You were in pretty bad shape, from what I can recall. You one day called me a 'pretty baby'," Damien told her.

"They did not tell you all, not by half," Xen told him. She wiggled out of his arms, and he set her down on the ground. She made her way to the balcony. Damien used a crystal to create a cup of tea, and Xen gratefully accepted it. She stared out the window. Damien listened, grateful for an explanation as to her screaming, and grateful for an explanation of all the scars he had just seen while holding her naked body. She took a breath, and began.

"I was pretty high up in Xandra's dryad portion of the army. But I have always had a problem with keeping my mouth shut, as you may have seen, " she darted a small smile at Damien, "but one day I got caught. I did not want to go to the Goblin Kingdom. I did not want to ally with Nogrod. I hated the dwarf. I knew he would more than likely turn on us as soon as the opportunity arose. One day, word got back to Xandra as to my treasonous words. She threw me in the dungeon, and forgot about me. Much like one of King Jareth's oubliette's. Xandra wanted everyone to forget about me. But Nogrod and his dwarves became very fond of the dungeons. My dungeon in particular. There were a few other dryads, and maybe a sprite or two, but they gave out before I did. I would not die. Not matter what they did to me, " Xen put her teacup down and took off the white nightgown. She threw it onto the bed. Damien politely averted his eyes.

Xen stepped over to him, and stood in front of him. He could smell her, she was so close.

"No, don't turn your head. You need to know. I am not ashamed of my form, only of the scars on its surface," Xen waited for him to turn his head and look at her. She squatted a little until they were eye to eye. She pointed to her right eyebrow, "This one was the first one I got. A dwarf gave me that when I would not call him master. He punched me and gave me a black eye. My eyebrow split," she pointed at her left arm, "This one was given to me when I told a dwarf I wanted to die. He felt that he would help me along by slitting my arm. He was stupid. He did not know where to slit the wrist. That one was severely infected when I was rescued, " Xen grabbed Damien's hands and put them directly beneath her small breasts. He could feel the puckering skin where there were scars, "The nightmare I was having tonight was of the time where Nogrod held me down while a dwarf named Gorb raped me very violently. Gorb carved underneath my breasts so I would scream for him. He wanted my terror. It was an aphrodisiac to him. I am lucky I did not get necrosis from those cuts, " Xen pointed her right foot so Damien could see the scar on the inside of her right thigh, "This one was given to me by an unnamed dwarf. I would not spread my legs for him, so he took his dagger and cut my thigh. While cutting me, he threatened me with a special kind of castration if I did not spread my legs for him. And I did. Instead of accepting my fate and letting them massacre my body even more, I gave it to them. I let them rape me. I let them do it. I could have prevented it. The price would have been my beauty, my sexuality, but I let them take what they had not earned. I let them take me," Xen started to cry, and she collapsed to her knees, "For the rest of my life my body will belong to Nogrod. I feel like he will always possess it. I had hoped one day that someone would come along that was strong enough to erase that. Someone who could show me the pleasure of it all, but also let me know that my body is his. In a good way. I do not even know if that is possible"

Damien picked the dryad up off the floor and held her close. He used magic to place the cotton nightgown on her small body once again, and then he placed her on her big bed. He climbed in beside her, and gathered her in his arms. She was exhausted, he could tell. But he would not let her sleep alone when she might have this dream again. He gestured, and the covers came up over them.

"Go to sleep Xen," Damien told the little queen. The only response was a light snore. Damien let out a small chuckle and then settled himself in the bed. He inhaled her scent and felt it lull him to sleep.