Fic: Dreams Free of Darkness
Title: Dreams Free of Darkness
Word Count: 1,970
Rating: R
Pairings: Pell/Rue
Summary: Abrimel witnesses his parents taking aruna.
Warnings: Dub-con, angst
AN: I've been amusing myself by writing about a hundred Wraeththu ficlets over the last few weeks. I thought I'd try posting one or two.
Abrimel was six years old - far too old to be running to Rue with a nightmare. But this dream had been particularly scary - full of a dark presence that wanted to rip apart his body and scatter it to the winds. He had a room that adjoined Rue’s quarters and he crept through the sitting room toward Rue’s bedroom.
He imagined that Rue would be lying in bed asleep and he’d sidle up to the bedside and pull on the sleeve of his hostling’s nightgown until Rue woke up and gently asked him what was wrong. He’d spell out all his fears, feeling a bit silly, but looking for comfort all the same. Rue would stroke his hair and baby him and then Abrimel would crawl into the bed. Rue’s bed was far too big for one, though he slept alone most nights. Abrimel didn’t worry that there’d be another har there - if there was, then Rue would just kick him out so he could attend to his son properly. Abrimel would fall asleep in Rue’s arms feeling loved and protected and his dreams would be free of darkness.
The door to Rue’s bedroom was ajar which was odd. Abrimel heard his father’s voice coming from within which alerted him to approach with caution. He cracked open the door, silently, and found that the room was lit up, not in darkness as he’d expected. Abrimel already knew that sometimes real life could be worse than dreams, but somehow he was still surprised.
Pellaz had Rue bent over the table that was directly in Abrimel’s line of sight. He had his hand buried in Rue’s long, blond hair and Abrimel realized that he was holding Rue’s face against the table. Rue was completely naked but for the spiked heels that he sometimes wore to make him look taller and his white body looked fragile in the firelight. Pellaz, by contrast was almost completely clothed, but his trousers were unbuttoned and he was thrusting his ouana-lim harshly into Rue’s body over and over again.
Abrimel realized that they were taking aruna. That thing that all his tutors had been so eager to tell him about lately. That thing which would soon happen to him, probably in less than a year.
“You just want me so bad, don’t you, Rue?” Abrimel jumped at the sound of his father’s voice. “You whore.”
But to Abrimel’s eye, it seemed that Rue didn’t want it at all. He was crying. “Please Pell,” he said in a pitiful voice, “you’re going too fast. You’re hurting me.”
“Tell me to stop,” Pellaz growled. “Tell me to stop and I’ll leave your rooms and not bother you anymore.”
Abrimel realized from the tone of his father’s voice that Pellaz was drunk. He’d seen his father drunk on a few occasions and it was a terrifying sight. Pellaz was power and usually he made some effort to restrain that power, but when he’d consumed alcohol it seemed ready to lash out at any moment.
“I don’t want that,” Rue cried. “I just want you to slow down. Please, Pell …”
Abrimel began to back away from the door. He wanted to run in and save Rue, to bite and kick at Pellaz until his father was hurt and bleeding, but what was the point? He might as well attempt to fight a tornado. Abrimel’s tutors had told him that he was a harling who could naturally sense the magical abilities of other hara. It was a talent he’d inherited from Rue. So he knew that Pellaz could crush both Rue and himself with mere force of will if he so desired. And there were times that Pellaz desired this, Abrimel knew.
“I just want … I just want,” Rue was still weeping.
Pellaz didn’t even pause. He was relentless. “You just want to have it both ways,” he said. “You want to manipulate and humiliate me and then to have me treat you like a loving, devoted consort. Don’t think that I don’t see your game - the way you act before other people to make me into the bad guy.”
“Pell …” Rue sobbed.
“Tell me stop!” Pellaz yelled.
Abrimel turned and ran. He barely noticed where he ran, but he ended up in Rue’s ornate bathroom. Without thinking, he climbed into the large, circular bathtub. He didn’t undress or fill it with water, but merely curled up in a ball at the bottom of the tub and cried. Why did his parents have to be this way? He pressed his face against the cold marble.
After a few minutes, one of the doors creaked open and Abrimel froze. What if his parents had come in here? His crying had mostly abated by this point so he was able to choke back the sound of his tears. He peeked over the edge of the tub, but it was only Rue. Pellaz was gone.
Rue was now dressed in a flimsy silk bathrobe. He looked awful. Kohl ran down his face in two grotesque smears, the evidence of his tears. His hair, which had been artfully done up in a little silver clips, had mostly fallen down and from the way he was holding his head, Abrimel wondered if Pellaz hadn’t pulled some of it out. He did not see Abrimel.
Abrimel watched as his hostling splashed some water on his face, still crying all the time. He watched as Rue took a cloth from one of the drawers, hiked up his robe, and held the cloth between his legs for a long moment. When he pulled it away, it had blood on it.
Abrimel made a soft sound and Rue turned quickly. “Bree!” he said, when he spied Abrimel. “What are you doing?”
Abrimel just shook his head and looked away. Rue climbed in the tub with him. “What’s wrong?” It seemed so strange that he should ask when his own eyes were red with crying.
Abrimel wrapped his arms around his legs and wriggled away from Rue who was trying to put an arm around him. “He hurts you,” he said.
“You saw that?” Rue asked, in dismay. He burst into a fresh wave of tears. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Abrimel scooted near his hostling and Rue hugged him close. “I’m so, so sorry.” Rue rocked him back and forth, apologizing all the time.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Abrimel said finally. “It was Pellaz.”
“Nohar should have to see his parents like that,” Rue said, resting his chin on Abrimel’s head. Abrimel looked up at his hostling. “That’s what aruna is really like, isn’t it?” All the adults made aruna sound like a beautiful, wondrous thing, but Abrimel had always had his suspicions that it was more complex than that. He thought himself very clever for discovering the truth.
Rue sat up and shook his head vigorously. “No. Oh, no, Bree, you mustn’t think so. Aruna is usually the best thing ever. You’ll see when you get older. Pellaz and I have talked a little bit about the har we will choose for your feybraiha and it will be someone gentle and considerate. And someday you will find someone to love who loves you and it will be - well, almost the opposite of what you just saw.”
Abrimel shifted, leaning away from Rue a bit. His hostling was trying to paint a rosy picture for him - an ideal - but if it were as easy as that, then Rue himself would have a perfect, loving chesna bond. He didn’t particularly trust Pellaz to pick his feybraiha partner. Why couldn’t he stay a child forever?
“We could leave,” he said quietly.
“What?” Rue asked.
Abrimel looked at his hostling’s delicate, kohl-stained face. “We could run away from Immanion. Go somewhere far away where nohar knows us. We don’t need Pellaz. We don’t need any of this,” Abrimel gestured to the luxurious room around them. “I’m almost an adult. I could take care of you, hostling. Get a job, whatever. You could find someone who treated you well.”
Caeru made an attempt to wipe away his tears and then took Abrimel’s face in both his hands. “I know that you’re upset, but don’t talk silliness,” he said. “I suppose you think that no one would ever recognize the Tigrina and his son? I suppose that you think that Thiede and Pellaz couldn’t find us in a minute?”
“We should at least make a try for it,” Abrimel said, pulling away and crossing his arms.
Rue looked away and fiddled with his hair. “I do all of this for you, Bree,” he said. “I don’t know if you remember how it was before we came here, you were a very small harling, but we lived in a run down little apartment with broken furniture and peeling paint. You deserved better. They say that I stayed here because I wanted a share of Pellaz’s good fortune and maybe I did. But answer me this: what right does Pellaz have to force his son and the hostling of his son to live in squalor when he has all this luxury?”
Abrimel thought that it might be all right living in a squalid apartment if he could have a father who wasn’t a terror and a hostling who wasn’t a victim. He also thought that Caeru enjoyed being Tigrina and that everything couldn’t be about just wanting a better life for his son, but he also knew that Rue loved him which was more than could be said for Pellaz.
When Rue turned back toward him, Abrimel saw that he was crying again. Abrimel took pity on his hostling and hugged him, stroking his hair and whispering words of comfort as if Rue were the harling and Abrimel was the parent. “Someday I’ll hurt him for you,” Abrimel whispered, though he knew it wasn’t true. How could he hurt Pellaz? Nothing he did ever seemed to affect the Tigron emotionally and the idea of hurting Pellaz physically was laughable.
Rue shook his head and attempted to dry his tears. “You shouldn’t say such things. Pellaz is your father and he loves you. What is between him and me is separate. It’s probably partly my fault, anyway.” Rue swallowed heavily as if to hold back another wave of tears.
Abrimel had nothing to say to this statement. He knew that Pellaz believed that Rue had turned him against his father, but this simply wasn’t true. Occasionally, in the heat of anger, Rue would say something derogatory about the Tigron, but in the end he wanted Abrimel to think well of Pellaz. He often defended Pellaz, even when Pellaz had done something inexcusable like what Abrimel had just witnessed. The truth was that Pellaz’s actions were perfectly adequate to turn Abrimel against his father with no outside interference.
They both sat in silence for a long while. Abrimel wondered if Rue was in pain, wondered if he should try to get his hostling to go to his bed. But he didn’t feel like moving.
“It wasn’t pelki, Bree,” Rue said after what seemed like an hour. “Not that. He would have stopped if I’d asked him to.”
“Sure,” Abrimel said. He thought that this was a pleasant fiction that Rue was telling himself. Sometimes, he was almost as angry with Rue as with Pellaz. But now was not the time to lash out at his hostling.
“I’m sorry,” Rue said once again.
Abrimel snuggled close to his hostling, breathing in Rue’s familiar perfume. After a moment, Rue began to sing to him, a soft lullaby that Abrimel remembered dimly from when he was a very small harling. He closed his eyes and slowly drifted off to sleep.
But his dreams were not free of darkness.