Perfect Hatred

It's evening, and I'm thinking of heading back to camp when I hear rustling in the woods.

I come out here, to the Whispering Woods, every so often to think, or when I need to be alone. Increasingly often now that we've been driven from Brightmoon and forced to hide in them, cheek-to-jowl in our reeking tents. I'd have thought I'd have minded being around people less after all those solitary years on Beast Island – or minded lonely and isolated woods more. But still…

There's that damn rustling again.

I frown and head towards the sound, pushing through a thicket. As the concealing branches move aside, I find myself in a loamy glade, and only a few metres away is a red-robed figure I know all too well. My lips curl in disgust.

"Micah," she says, without turning around. I incline my head before remembering she's not looking at me.

"Shadow Weaver."

"Lost in the dark?" she asks, sounding amused.

"Pleasantly lost – until now," I retort. "What are you doing out here?"

"Gathering magical reagents," she replies, frustratingly-unperturbed by my hostile tone. "I had to leave my garden behind when we abandoned Bright Moon, and I needed Widowsweep Berries."

"Why?"

She stands up and turns around to look at me without saying anything. I meet her cold gaze, and suddenly it clicks. She's talking about dark magic; shadow magic. In my mind's eye, I see her again that night, twenty years ago, when it all went wrong.

"You can't be serious."

She sighs. A strand of her sable hair has fallen in front of her eyes and she automatically pushes it back behind her ear.

"We don't have a lot of options, Micah," she says, in that oily, infuriatingly-patient voice of hers. "She-Ra is gone. We can solve our own problems or we can hide in these woods and wait to be slaughtered."

She waves a hand as though in dismissal.

"I know what I'll choose."

"Are you insane?" I demand – although with Shadow Weaver, that's a rhetorical question. "After what happened last time –"

"This time," she interrupts, holding up a rigid finger, "that fool Norwyn isn't around to interfere. This time, we can do what we have to do."

I cross my arms and gaze defiantly back at her.

"You can't possibly believe I'd go along with this," I say, firmly. "There are some forms of magic I don't need to know."

"Don't need to know?" she repeats, in an acidic, mocking tone. "Really, Micah – you used to be a better student."

"A better student?" I scoff. "Because I let your tongue slither into my ear, and did what you wanted?"

There's a sudden silence.

"Let your voice…your ideas, slither into my ear," I quickly correct, but the silence continues to stretch. At her left side, I see her fingers twitch. She tilts her head fractionally to the left, and beneath the mask, her eyes flick down for a moment, then back up.

My pulse is pounding in my ears as an old memory scuttles into my head, seemingly against my will.

When I was young, when she was still Light Spinner, I'd had a crush on her for a while. I was young and stupid and horny and she was the talented teacher with the beautiful voice. Teenage boys are like that. Once, I had a wet dream about her grinding her body against me as she told me to obey and to come for her, and I woke up with soiled underwear, damp sheets, and the smell of my own semen thick in my nose. Just the stupid delusions a poor besotted boy comes up with in the night.

I breathe carefully, in and out, and will myself not to respond to the memory.

"I'm still not doing it," I go on, shaking my head to try and clear it out. "I absolutely refuse."

"Oh?" she begins, but there's an odd edge to her tone that I consciously refuse to think about. She clears her throat, then goes on, her voice this time its usual supercilious self.

"Then how are we going to rescue your daughter?"

She's trying to use Glimmer to manipulate me, and I grab onto how angry this makes me like I'm drowning and it's a piece of driftwood. Somehow, I'm glad – the anger is more comfortable than whatever the hell just happened.

I storm toward her but she stands her ground without breaking eye contact – doesn't shrink from me or cower. I let that make me angrier; let the fire in my chest rise.

"You don't get to talk about Glimmer," I grate. "You don't know what it's like to lose a child like that."

"Don't I?" she demands, her eyes glittering behind the holes of the mask. "Let me remind you, Micah, that my daughter is on that ship too."

"You've got some real nerve playing that card," I snarl, jabbing my finger into her chest. "Tell me – did you treat Catra as well as you treated me?"

"Oh, no," she hisses. "Not like you. She, for all her flaws, at least does what's necessary – I'll give her that. And so did Glimmer – she didn't turn her nose up at my help."

I seize her by the shoulders – and still, still she doesn't look away, doesn't so much as flinch.

"I told you," I menace. "You don't get to talk about Glimmer."

"Really?" she goads. "Or what?"

With a sudden, rapid movement, I reach out and tear her mask away from her face. I want to gouge my fingers into her eyes. I want to rip her face away with my bare hands, like I'm skinning a hare. But somehow that isn't what happens. Somehow, when I've pulled off the mask and cast it to the loam, the next thing that happens is that I'm kissing her.

She bites my lip, hard, and I taste blood. I pull away and bring a hand to my face, and she begins to laugh, but the sound trails away as she meets my wild gaze. I stare at the scores and pockmarks the Spell of Obtainment left upon her face. Her scar-split lips part. In her eyes I see an expression I don't want to put a name to.

How is this happening? How has it all gone so wrong? I reach a hand out to choke her, imagine the windpipe crunching beneath my grip and the life draining from her eyes, but instead my hand pushes a strand of her inky hair away from her face. I feel like a puppet, like someone else is controlling me. For a moment I think this is her doing, that she's cast a spell on me – but no, I'm a mage myself, I'd feel it and taste it if she'd ensorcelled me, and I feel nothing except the taste of my rising lust as I take her mouth in my own again.

Her left hand clutches the back of my head, runs through my hair. My right hand, the hand I mean to clench into a fist and drive into her stomach, instead starts pulling at her robes. She reaches out and fumbles with my trousers. But the robe becomes stuck, and the trousers trip me up, and before I've fully realized what's happening we've stepped back and are wrestling off our clothes.

I've struggled off everything but my loincloth before I think to look up at her again. She's gotten her robes off and is standing in nothing but a chemise – black, of course, to blend with her robes. The flesh at her throat and down her arms is riven with the same scars as her face. As I'm standing there looking, she turns and meets my eyes.

For several long seconds, we say nothing. In her eyes and her twisting lips I see anger, and shame, and desire, and her bitter pride cold as iron on a bleak midwinter night. Then, silently, she slips her arms out of the chemise's sleeves and lets it drop to the loam like a puddle of oil.

My heart is jerking in my chest, my stomach clenching as my eyes follow her winding scars down, down past face and throat and collarbone to where they spread like poison ivy across her breasts and navel, down to where they inevitably draw my gaze to…

I shudder with loathing, but even as my flesh crawls I can feel myself getting hard as I unwind my loincloth and let it drop; as she runs her gaze down my body in turn, lingering on my chest, as she steps closer to me, closer…

"You're a wicked woman," I say, trying to bring this back to where I wanted to be, to who I wanted to be; to get away from what's about to happen. "You vicious, cold-hearted bitch."

"Oh, yes," she hisses, shivering, "yes. I'm vicious, and so very wicked."

Her voice is hot with desire as she stares into my eyes. Without breaking eye contact, she cups the side of my face in her right hand, and traces the left up the shaft of my penis to circle the glans before taking the whole thing in her palm.

"I've been a very bad girl, Micah," she whispers, punctuating each word with a flick of her wrist, "and I need to be punished."

I feel myself twitch in her hand and realize with revulsion that I haven't been this turned on in my entire life. I can't speak. I can barely even think. Even my wedding night with Angella was nothing like this. I hate her, and I want her, and I hate her for making me want her, and I hate myself for wanting her at all. She's trying to manipulate me and I hate that it works, that I lose all self-control and push her down into the ground, spread her legs, and drive myself hard into her as she hisses like a gutted snake and digs her nails into my back.

The memory of an adolescent lust I thought I'd repressed and forgotten is like molten lead in my veins as I pull her – or is she pulling me? – into the darkness of my deepest, most shameful dream. I'm inside her, all the way inside her with my hips pressed against hers, and I lean down and run my tongue along her neck, from shoulder to jawline, as she gasps and wraps her arms and legs around my body; cold against my hot and feverish skin. Her hair is splayed over the ground behind her head like a tenebrous halo.

I'm thrusting into her over and over with such force that I can hear the wet slapping noises of our flesh coming together. I must be hurting her, and still she's running her hands up and down my back, still frenetically whispering encouragement in my ear. But I'm still angry; the fire in my chest has only gotten hotter. I'm angry, and I hate her, and the anger and the hate are all twisted up in how much I need her and how much I want her, want to be here fucking her right now, and how much I'm afraid that I'll never leave this moment; that I'll always be here with her.

I focus my fury; lean back and slap her in the face with my open left hand. She gasps and squeezes my ass with her left hand as she raises her right, seizes my ear, and twists.

"You little brat," she hisses, eyes blazing and teeth pulled back in a grin. "You miserable wretch; how dare you lay a hand on me?"

She pushes me over and I let her; let her climb on top of me and seize my cock and guide it back inside her.

"Is that all you have?!" she demands, rotating her hips in time with my gasping breath. Her eyes are wild with lust and her face is twisted into a delirious leer.

"I've got more for you right here, you slut," I snarl, bucking my hips upward and making her gasp. "You old hag; you worthless hateful black-hearted witch. Do you really think the world would be any worse off without you?!"

I mean what I say; I want it to be cruel and to hurt her and end this erotic nightmare I've found myself trapped in. The rage, the helpless anger is boiling out of me like water jumping out of a pot, and the worst part is that it's just turning us both on even more. She shudders and clutches me close.

"Micah," she pants in a juddering breath, the tone different, needy. "Oh Micah, you're going to…I'm going to…"

I respond with another slap, on her ass this time, and seize her shoulder and squeeze so hard I'm certain it'll leave a bruise.

"Ah," she rasps, and I feel her entire body convulse as she climaxes. "Ah, ah, ah."

I pull her down into another kiss. My hair has come unbound, and so has hers, and it gets in my mouth, and I can't tell whose hair it is. She leans back and spits it out of her mouth, pushes it out of her face, leans down again. I kiss the spot where the scar tissue pulls it away from her teeth, kiss each of her eyelids, then take her mouth in my own again.

She breaks the kiss first, gets off me. In response to my confused gaze, she pulls me upright into a sitting position. Then, slowly, she lowers herself into my lap; back onto me. I put my right hand on her back to support her; run my left along her thigh, tracing the jagged scar winding its way down from her pubis.

"Ahh, Micah…" she sighs, gently running her left hand through my sweat-soaked beard to cup my cheek. "Micah," she repeats, her voice still soft. "You…"

With a sudden, violent movement, she tightens her grip, and I gasp with the pleasure she inflicts.

"...Ungrateful, insolent child," she finishes, her voice suddenly a dangerous hiss. "Obey me. Come for your mistress. Come inside."

I clench her thigh so tight I can see the pallid skin flush. I'm unbelievably aroused, and it's all I can do not to respond. But I won't give her the satisfaction. I release my grip on her thigh and return her gesture, cupping her right cheek with my left hand. Our gazes bore into one another's eyes.

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" I goad. "Well then beg for it, Shadow Weaver. Begme for the privilege of my seed."

"It's you who's going to beg," she says. "And scream."

"Fuck you!" I spit, using every ounce of my will not to give in; not to give her what she wants, what I so desperately want.

"That's right," she moans. "Fuck me. Are you going to do it, Micah?" she goes on, not breaking eye contact. "Are you going to come in your teacher?"

I can't resist her any more. I've lost. I open my mouth to scream, but I only get out a strangled gasp before she clamps her hand down over it. I feel myself throb inside her, and she bears downward with her hips, again and again. And still she doesn't break eye contact, still she stares at me with a hot, icy hunger as I feel myself come, and come, until there's nothing left inside me.

"Mmmmmhh," I moan into her hand, my eyes bulging from my head. "Mmmmdmm mmmvrr…"

She laughs in exultation as she takes her hand off my mouth and runs it through my hair.

"Good boy," she says, then finally closes her eyes and leans in for the kiss. My lips part for her tongue, as she must have known they would.

We stay like that for a few long seconds, then she rolls off me to the left and lies on her back on the loam. I lie back myself and stare glassily up at the canopy. A dragonfly passes above me, hovers, then darts out of my sight. The smell of her sex and my semen and our sweat is cloying in my nostrils.

"Why the hand?" I manage to pant. "Over my mouth?"

"What if…Prime's troops had heard…caught us like this?" comes her reply, between gasps for air. "Or Casta. Or Bow."

I imagine Casta's look of bitter disappointment and disgust. I imagine Bow's jaw dropping as he sees us lying naked together and have a nightmare flash of him whispering the terrible truth into Glimmer's ear when we rescue her at last; the joy of the reunion tainted. The idea makes me shudder, but I keep my voice calm; jocular, and try not to show her how much she's disturbed me.

"If you were worried about making noise," I riposte, "you were a little late."

She laughs. I look back at her and meet her eyes again, and feel her hand moving to take my own, and I'm too tired and drained to pull it away. A bead of sweat detaches from her hair and trickles down her cheek. We lie there looking at one another as we catch our breath.

"I meant what I said," I finally tell her. "You are a wicked woman."

She rolls over onto her right side, so her mouth is close to my ear.

"I know you did," she whispers, tracing her left hand down my sternum. Even detumescent, the feel of her hot breath in my ear sends a shiver of pleasure up my back. "I know what hatred is," she goes on, "and I'm used to it. I hate the world, because it's always hated me."

I roll over onto my left side and put my forehead against hers. I take her shoulder in my right hand and feel her cooling sweat against my flesh as she nestles her head into the crook of my left elbow.

"You expect me to be sorry for you?" I murmur. She closes her eyes, and so do I.

"It's you I'm sorry for," I hear her say, and feel her stroke a damp strand of hair out of my eyes. "The world hates me, but it wants me, it needs me. Just like you did, my love…my love..."

Ice in my veins, and the feel of spiders crawling across my flesh before burrowing in.

"I know what you felt," she says, reading my mind, "because I feel it too. I hate, and I love, and I destroy what I love and I make it suffer. It's my fate; it's my curse. They hate me with perfect hatred, and I am their enemy, and I hate them and I love them, and I hate and I love myself…"

She trails off.

"I'm not suffering," I lie. "It's just complicated."

"Complicated," she echoes.

There's a long silence.

"I love you," she whispers.

"I love you too," I lie again, in the darkness of the encroaching night, in the aphotic shadows of the fading dream.