Disclaimer: I own nothing. I'm just a fucking nerd trying to calm my nerves during this trash fire of a year. So, y'know, don't sue me. I don't have any money.
Wildfires and Hurricanes
Note: I'm a garbage person because I think the only appeal here is that she looks like Aera. And I'm fine with that.
Too many times does this man insert himself into what little peace she has been afforded, and only ever while her dear brother is away. There is little coincidence in that, she thinks. After all, Ravus is beholden to the chancellor for his influence in the emperor's decision; his precarious position in the imperial army but a flimsy life raft cast out to sea by a man who would surely delight in seeing him drown.
Ravus' station is naught but a noose hung about both their necks. And it is a noose that Lunafreya herself wears perhaps too well.
The chancellor is a wildfire of a man, maddeningly untamed in all but pretty words and perilously false gestures, half-truths and damnable lies ever dripping from between the teeth of a charmer's smile. He wears his mask well, a second skin the likes of which ought not impress, but Lunafreya is – in no uncertain terms – a prisoner of politics and war within her own home, and so she's little recourse but to take notes. Kept in isolation as she is under imperial lock and key, it is little wonder she finds herself so keen on understanding the man who acts as her jailor, for he is quite often her only permitted visitor.
She is uncertain if that is ever a good thing.
It is always without warning that he arrives, tension hung thick in the air from the bated breath of the manor's attendants as he strolls through the parlor, appearing as though this is as normal a place for him to be as any. He clashes so drastically with the white walls and subtle accents, his attire anything but. He is as a gunshot through the air on a placid evening, a spray of fresh blood upon pavement and he knows it. Lunafreya sees the mirth build with every breath he takes, the fuss made over his arrival but another piece of the game he so loves to play.
She wishes very much to know the name of this game and why he finds it so amusing. That is perhaps the only reason she continues to humor him. And so it goes that, each time, she plays her part as both prisoner and hostess, and he chooses to pretend that their staging is only natural.
Behind closed doors or not, this man is thunderheads and hurricanes, an amalgam of mismatched pieces the likes of which she cannot make sense. She hates the feel of his rough hands in her hair, on her skin, and yet she finds herself drawing near to him in the dark, longing for it. He is cruel in the way he touches her, bordering on violent as he bites her lips, her jaw, her neck, all while shuffling out of innumerable layers Lunafreya cannot keep track of.
Each time they meet like this, she recalls the memory: That first glance of his bare skin had been startling, mottled with the remains of fearsome wounds that she has seen only on victims of imperial forces. Instinct, perhaps duty, had sought to usher them away, but he had stayed both her hands with one of his own, warning her with a glance. They share a similar moment now, her fingers buzzing with the divine, mistrust blooming in his strange amber eyes. Lunafreya tucks it all away, lets her hands drift into his hair and against his cheek, and the chancellor kisses her with the hunger of a man starved.
Even repulsed by him as she is – his duplicitous words, his abysmal patterns of behavior, his very open mockery of the gods and her sacred rituals – Lunafreya is pliant in his arms, bent over backwards as his teeth again graze her throat.
There's no doubt in the Oracle's mind that he could kill her if the fancy struck him, and she is paralyzed by the conjured image of blood spilling across the floor, making him appear as some manner of beast. Fingers walking down her spine pull Lunafreya from the vision, one of her legs hooked behind the chancellor's own as she's pressed flush against the bed.
They're both glaringly bare in the blink of an eye, tangled together as her blond hair is pulled free and left to rain upon the sheets. One large hand grasps the back of her skull while the other is braced against the mattress, and the Oracle can't help the sound of pleasurable relief that parts her lips as he presses into her.
Truly, she does not like this man, finds him reprehensible in nearly every sense; for he is one of her captors, dedicated to spreading war and disorder wherever he goes. But, from the time she was not nineteen has she felt some lingering attraction to him, if only because of his appearance and the small measures of kindness he's shown her these many years. It was only after her twentieth birthday that she found her fingers holding too tightly to his hand amidst greetings, and the electric flash in his eye had told her that he'd noticed.
Thus does the Oracle now find herself again entwined with him, nails scraping into his back and shoulders with enough force to make him moan, long and low. He grips her waist like a vice, panting hard against the junction of neck and shoulder, almost whimpering a name that she's only ever heard him choke out in the dark.
Aera.
Ardyn Izunia is not a religious man; he's made that quite clear since the empire took her homeland, and she's yet to forget it – the man had, after all, gone well out of his way to damn the gods publicly following her Ascension ceremony. But the tenderness with which he whispers that name is tantamount to a prayer, the process of recitation itself seemingly inundated with holy reverence.
She wonders who this person was, what they meant to him, and... why it is that all of this feels so incredibly familiar.
A shock rockets down her spine as he shifts his weight forward, sight obscured by a vision of golden fields of wheat draped in glorious afternoon sunshine. She sees a pair tangled together in the tall grass beneath a lone tree: A beautiful young woman laid out on the ground with gowns and robes pushed up to her belly, fingers are twisted in the tousled hair of the man between her legs, his name torn from her lips with each gasping breath. He lifts his head from the ministrations, and Lunafreya recognizes him as the chancellor himself, eyes blue as the morning sky. The angles of his face are softer, more gentle, and the woman pulls him to her by the front of his tunic to kiss him.
She needn't draw closer to the pair to know they whisper each other's names between kisses, hot breath returning the Oracle to the present where that very same man – broken perhaps by time – bites hard into her shoulder, murmuring the other woman's name again.
Aera.
Yes, she knows that name, for it is that of her distant ancestress, the first Oracle of Eos. Lunafreya begins to wonder how the chancellor could possibly have ties her, for the woman had lived some many centuries before this day. As if in answer, another series of visions strikes – that of a dark-haired man with a startlingly familiar face, the Isle of Angelgard, the Lucian Crystal, the convening of the Astrals themselves – in such rapid cuts of time that Lunafreya remains wide-eyed and silent, oblivious as he bites into her lip before pulling away.
She lies still for several minutes, skin flushed, piecing together the visions with a certain degree of doubt. The wills of the Six are oft shrouded in uncertainty, much of their intentions left unknown even in the wake of infrequent revelation. But the images strike at her very core, shaking what little Lunafreya has believed herself to know about this man.
It is then, as she sits upright and turns to trace Ardyn's silhouette with her eyes, that the voice of another strikes her.
My love, what has the world done to you?
Lunafreya watches him for an unknown amount of time, the space between them a wide open chasm that she fears to cross. It is only when his breathing becomes deep and slow that the Oracle deigns to move closer.
He moves far too much for this sleep of his to be restful, shifting as though rough ocean waves rise and fall beneath his skin. It's impulse, a near daily practice in her duties as Oracle, an arm outstretched to soothe, light of the divines thrumming beneath her fingertips. She's not so much as grazed his damaged flesh when it pools deep within her, dread and revulsion, the likes of which linger on the distant outskirts of the most isolated haven, snarling in the dark. Has she but imagined it, the visible ripple of darkness and starlight down his spine, or is it but a trick of nearly absent light?
There is hesitation, but once more she permits her fingers to draw close, tracing the raised and jagged lines between his ribs. When she breathes, her magic swells, a warm and gentle glow visible beneath the palm of her hand. With no reaction from him, no sign of wayward flecks of dark upon the chancellor's skin, Lunafreya's eyes fall shut, too familiar words lingering in her mind and upon her lips:
Blessed Stars of life and light –
That serves to elicit a reaction, and there is a genuine pang of fear deep in her chest as he startles, takes hold of her wrist, eyes projecting something black and utterly inhuman. Lunafreya swears that she's looking at something else, something beyond the face of this strange man. There's a palpable darkness in him that she feels as they touch, alarm bells screaming for her to run.
Even the gods themselves would not seek to touch this man.
But she is the Oracle, chosen like her mother and the many empowered Fleuret women before them both. She cannot flee in the face of this darkness, and it is with resolve that the light fades, fingertips of her free hand grazing his jaw as she stares into those strange eyes. Something in them, she thinks, bleeds.
His breath is hot against her lips, and Lunafreya swears that the sound he emits is that of an animalistic growl. Her own vision darkens as she clamps her eyes shut, a strong hand fisted hard in her hair. She expects her head to tip backwards, for him to lean in and sink teeth into her throat, for the sheets to run red with her blood. There is only surprise when the rumbling fades, his kiss gentle in comparison to that iron grip. She chances a glimpse at him, and is met only with the look of a man dangerously lost.
The ringing in her ears has at last died out, the danger appearing to have fallen to the wayside. It is here that she moves to push the chancellor back against the bed to straddle him, brushing hair from amber eyes and rubbing soothing circles into his skin as he rises to meet her. And, again, he takes to unceremoniously chanting that other woman's name between ragged breaths.
The Oracle is filled with a strange surge of pity, though she does not quite yet possess a full understanding of the things she has both seen and heard. Was she indeed perilously close to stirring heretical daemons to life? Had she witnessed something very much inhuman in this man, and if so, what is the source? What ties has he to the ancient world — to the Oracle of old, to the man with the prince's face — and why, and how?
The answers, Lunafreya accepts, will not be found amidst the darkness of this night. Only time will tell, and she steels herself for what may well be a lengthy silence from the divines as payment for her shortcomings.
Please, she prays, though the act of uttering silent benediction in his arms itself feels like blasphemy, grant this man the peace he seeks.