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"submission_left_thumb_huge_noncustom_y": "268" } ], "description": "Well this has been quite a journey. Many writer's blocks, many unrelated speed-bumps, and in the end, I think this story is... Just kind of fantastic? It feels good, to have weathered a lot of harassment from weirdo puritans along with my own body conspiring against me, and emerged at the other side with a story I think is a genuinely great exploration of these awful, awful themes.\n\n[url=https://imptwinsdeaddove.tumblr.com/post/709343666431475712/the-bad-kind-of-scary-afterword]I wrote a bit of an afterword for this fic over on Tumblr.[/url]\n\nAs much as this is meant to be an exploration of awful things though, Susie is definitely not going to empty that gun before shoving it in Noelle's asshole, and I just think that's beautiful.\n\nWanna support me? [url=https://www.patreon.com/imptwins]You can over on Patreon! (Though be warned due to Patreon's TOS I can't actually integrate my writing into incentives lol)[/url]\n\nWanna laugh at me being silly/horny/angry on Twitter, or make Inquiries™ about my writing? [url=https://twitter.com/imptwinsR]Check it out.[/url]\n\nWanna join my cool queer lefty Discord community? [url=https://discord.gg/ZAyYxnN]Come hang out.[/url]\n\nRather a queer multifandom Discord with a big Deltarune focus? [url=https://discord.gg/sZcz3Ypn2v]My friend Kimberlyeab has one of those.[/url]", "description_bbcode_parsed": "Well this has been quite a journey. Many writer's blocks, many unrelated speed-bumps, and in the end, I think this story is... Just kind of fantastic? It feels good, to have weathered a lot of harassment from weirdo puritans along with my own body conspiring against me, and emerged at the other side with a story I think is a genuinely great exploration of these awful, awful themes.

I wrote a bit of an afterword for this fic over on Tumblr.

As much as this is meant to be an exploration of awful things though, Susie is definitely not going to empty that gun before shoving it in Noelle's asshole, and I just think that's beautiful.

Wanna support me? You can over on Patreon! (Though be warned due to Patreon's TOS I can't actually integrate my writing into incentives lol)

Wanna laugh at me being silly/horny/angry on Twitter, or make Inquiries™ about my writing? Check it out.

Wanna join my cool queer lefty Discord community? Come hang out.

Rather a queer multifandom Discord with a big Deltarune focus? My friend Kimberlyeab has one of those.", "writing": "CWs in the tags, ware 'em.\n\n===\n\nA flutter. A moment to sleepily stare through bleary, cracked-open lids. And then Noelle's eyes shot open to the sight of a strange ceiling, only barely-familiar. For some reason that coral light-shade kept standing out to her, though it was dark now. The whole room was, bathed in a dim glowing purple from the blue-and-red Christmas lights and assisted only slightly by the muted TV, still on.\n\nThe pains came back first, the memories of what caused them trailing just behind.\n\nHer aggressor hadn't lied; she was acutely aware of parts of her body she'd never even considered could have sensation, let alone that kind of pain and soreness. She stung in places that really felt ought not to sting, cuts and bruises and burns, her fur feeling so mangy and matted that she'd need several showers even before she started to work at whatever filth tarnished her soul.\n\nSome deep, instinctive feeling told her that her memories couldn't have been real, there must be some other explanation, a dream or a fall. It was just too awful and the effects were too far-reaching, too life-changing, it had gone far too wrong in ways she couldn't have imagined. She didn't deserve it. She deserved nice things because she was a good person and she'd been taught this kind of thing only happened to awful people who had somehow brought it on themselves. Not that she bought that rhetoric, but in such a moment, its effect on her instinct revealed itself.\n\n[i]Only sluts, whores, and junkies get raped,[/i] her mother's words echoed in her mind.\n\n[i]Denial,[/i] Noelle grimly thought in her own voice. The evidence was right there in that slightly-familiar ceiling, in the fact she was naked under the sheets and her clothes were folded over the headboard, and-\n\n\"I'd say 'rise and shine' again, but it's like 2am. So it ain't shinin' and you shouldn't be risin'.\"\n\nAnd in the dragon, sitting over on the couch. She had an oddly peaceful expression on her face and was quietly working on something, measuring and marking a piece of wood as well as setting out metal miscellany. She had a joint pinched in her lips, on maybe the last third of it.\n\nFor a moment Noelle considered just shutting up. She still didn't want to make small-talk, or rather, felt she shouldn't. This person didn't deserve her idle conversation, didn't deserve [i]anything[/i] from her, and she certainly didn't want to grow closer to her.\n\nHowever, she was far, far too sore and tired to heed those beliefs, or to pretend she didn't have an openly unhealthy desire to find out more about this woman.\n\n\"What are you doing?\" Noelle croaked, trying to swallow but her mouth was just as dry as her throat. She looked around and there was a fresh bottle of water on the bookcase beside the bed. She took a glance to Susie, who didn't look at her, then shrugged internally and opened it for a few much needed gulps.\n\n\"Plannin' out a shelf. To replace the one I broke,\" Susie replied, totally nonchalant. As if breaking furniture was a total norm... Well, it probably was for her.\n\n\"You made the last one?\" Noelle eventually asked once she'd gotten enough water.\n\n\"Yeah. Made half the furniture in here. I like that kinda stuff.\"\n\n\"Father Alvin always said that staying busy protects from evil thoughts... Guess that didn't work for you,\" Noelle bit. She felt a pang of fear and regret at her unchecked words once she heard them out loud, but Susie just scoffed a laugh.\n\n\"Guess it didn't,\" the dragon agreed as she casually scooped up, examined, then put aside some screws from a few small bowls of parts, sorted by type and size. \"Still got a tongue on you after all that, huh?... I really was right about you. Fiery little doe. I respect it even if you're gonna have to learn your limits,\" she said with no small amusement in her voice, a genuinely contented smirk on her snout lit mostly by the dull cherry of her spliff. \"Lucky for you I fucked your throat two more times while you were out so I am well and truly at peace with the universe right now.\"\n\nNoelle swallowed again. That certainly explained her furiously sore throat and the unshakeable, bitter aftertaste on her tongue. To think that on top of everything else, half of her first time had been spent unconscious.\n\n\"Why are you like this?\" Noelle asked before she could stop herself. But once she'd said the words and Susie didn't jump across the room at her, more naturally flowed, her anger growing more apparent. \"Why are you so awful? Whatever happened to you, why take it out on unrelated people?\"\n\nAnother scoff, though a less jovial one as Susie at least put down her project to lean on the couch's arm-rest and stare directly over at the deer, jaw in her palm.\n\n\"You're so sure there's a story?\"\n\n\"Of course,\" Noelle asserted.\n\n\"Y'know, some people are just shit. Sometimes bad shit happens to decent people. There ain't always a reason, ain't always some tragic origin,\" Susie said in a sort of neutral, level growl.\n\n\"I think there is though,\" Noelle insisted without hesitation.\n\n\"Would that make it better for you?\" Susie asked, her eyes narrowing a bit. Some genuine irritation seemed to be creeping into her expression and tone. \"If my dad beat me, if my mom broke bottles over me, if my uncle [i]touched[/i] me, would that make you [i]feel better?\"[/i] For a moment she paused, before an animal grin spread over her muzzle. \"Would it comfort you or make me less awful if I had some sad-sap entitled justification for [i]raping[/i] you?\"\n\nNoelle gulped to try to hold back a shiver, unsuccessfully. The way Susie used that word... She enunciated it so carefully. Purposefully. Didn't even marginally break eye-contact. Never mind avoiding the word for some sort of cognitive dissonance, Susie seemed to explicitly seek the word out. She [i]liked[/i] it, Noelle realized. The humane woman didn't just accept that she'd raped someone, she basked in it.\n\n\"It wouldn't make you less awful,\" Noelle said sharply and Susie's grin only widened. \"And I don't know if it would make me feel better. But I'm sure there's a story there, even if you're acting like you're just some... Awful force of nature. That's bullshit. You just want to believe that. Maybe I [i]do[/i] want to believe that bad things only happen for a reason, maybe that's naïve, but how is it any better to actively want to believe that they never do?!\" Noelle snapped, very nearly growing into a yell.\n\nSusie's grin had slowly shrunk throughout, almost in direct proportion to how angry Noelle herself got.\n\nAfter a pause, the dragon carefully picked her way off the couch, taking the single step to the bed. Noelle wasn't sure whether to stare in defiance or shrink back into a ball, and wound up doing a little bit of both.\n\nBut Susie just leaned down, lips open to show off a hint of yellowed teeth.\n\n\"Watch your tone, little doe,\" she breathed out, voice even, eyes masked. \"I don't mind you bein' bratty and takin' jabs, even teasing, when we're alone. And you can be frustrated. You can dislike things. Can even be a bit of a princess. It's kinda cute,\" she said, before her voice dipped into just the tiniest rumble of a growl. \"But I've got three hard rules, Jingles. [i]Do not[/i] lie to me. [i]Do not[/i] fail to show appreciation to me. And [i]do not[/i] raise your voice at me.\"\n\nA pause. Noelle gulped, trying to will herself into pushing that anger down, just for the moment, just for her so-often-absent self-preservation.\n\n\"Understand?\" Susie asked, tilting her head up just enough for her golden eyes to peer from under her hair.\n\nAnother gulp, but nodding was easy. The dragon wasn't lacking for intimidation.\n\nSusie nodded - to herself more than anything - and stood upright again. She glanced over to the side of the bed and let her gaze linger there for a moment.\n\n\"You really want the backstory, huh?\" she asked after a delay.\n\nNoelle couldn't work out what Susie was staring at, but nodded, trying to be resolute. She believed what Susie had said about there not always being a reason, truly. She knew it already. That people are bad for no reason, that bad things happen to good people for no reason. And the dragon scared her so much whenever she got angry.\n\nBut there had to be a reason this time. Even if it was just her instinct in denial of reality, that 'it can happen to others but not me' reflex. There had to be [i]something.[/i] And if she could find it... She refused to let herself openly think that there could be hope for the horrible girl. Yet she had no other reason for wanting to know so badly.\n\nSusie gave a dismissive shrug and stepped over to the head of the bed. She noted the way Noelle instinctively bunched the blankets up around herself whenever she got close. \"That jacket of yours is nice,\" she said, seemingly off topic. \"Where'd ya get it? Wait, lemme guess. Some ritzy place in Homecity. It's way too well-made for anywhere around here.\"\n\nNoelle bit her lip with her front teeth, but nodded. [i]She[/i] didn't get it there, but it's where it had originally come from, so it was true enough.\n\nSusie reached for the mannequin beside her bed and, carefully removing all of the other things over it, pulled off the jacket Noelle had seen earlier. It was night and day compared to her own. Hers was a soft and plush material, a fashionable cut and design. Overtly expensive. Susie's was a plain black leather, it looked like an actual riding jacket, not that Noelle had ever seen one other than her dad's old one that was also expensive like hers. No labels, no brands, and just a no-nonsense tough and rough material with inbuilt armour padding.\n\nMost of the decoration - aside from some spikes in the shoulders and arms, and some studs in the collar, all of which had clearly been manually added - came from a denim vest that was seemingly sewn into it. Manually torn off sleeves, roughed up by who-could-say-what. As Susie turned it for Noelle to see, there was an elaborate insignia on the back. Two crossed axes - [i]hatchets? That's a one-handed axe, right?[/i] - with what looked like some kind of hybrid monster skull in front of them, but plated in metal.\n\n\"Do you know what kind of jacket this is?\" Susie asked, voice conversational.\n\nNoelle gulped softly. She wasn't born (entirely) under a rock.\n\n\"That's, um... I think so...? Is that, um, a gang jacket...?\"\n\n\"That's right,\" Susie said, and some warmth infected her voice. Just a tiny bit, and just for a moment. \"See, my mom ran with these people, in the town where I was born. She wanted t'make sure I was looked after. Comfortable... Hell, I remember her singin' to me when I was young. Reading me stories. She cared about me. Maybe loved me, even,\" the dragon said, voice the softest Noelle had heard it as she looked at the jacket.\n\nNoelle just stared, and let her talk.\n\n\"She even played games with me,\" Susie mused a bit, and chuckled at Noelle's confused expression. \"That shit about never owning a console, that was bullshit. We were pretty comfortable back home. Hell, I've still got my Mettatendo,\" the dragon nodded to the other half of her room. \"Swiped it when I left. You probably saw my phone too, when I was takin' those pictures of you.\"\n\nNoelle blinked, because she had seen it but phones were so commonplace that it hadn't clicked. \"Then why-\"\n\n\"Because you wanted to hear about a poor, tragic past,\" Susie said without even a hint of guilt. \"You wanted to see me cry some crocodile tears - literally I guess, heh - over not getting to play fucken' Lane to the Future or Harmonica of Epochs so you could swoop in to save me from such a [i]miserable life.\"[/i]\n\nNoelle opened her mouth to protest... And then closed it. She had nothing for that.\n\n\"Anyways. I think she thought the club would protect me too. Because they looked out for each other. Probably a big part of why she was with 'em. But thing is, they didn't even consider [i]her[/i] 'one of them.' They were all thugs, half of 'em had body-counts and the other half aspired to it. She was just someone who... Y'know. [i]Sold stuff,\"[/i] Susie decided on. \"And I was just her weird quiet kid.\"\n\n[i]Quiet?[/i] Noelle thought, but didn't speak it. She couldn't imagine Susie being the quiet type.\n\n\"So one day she gets a surprise job she's really gotta work. Nobody else is available, so she leaves me at the club alone for the first time. I'm like thirteen. Now, we may not have been 'one of them,' but this chick Piper, she is. Scruffy midboss monster, half rat half rattlesnake. Twice the rat,\" Susie scoffed, but there was no humour. She sat back down on the bed, then, and casually - as if they really were just hanging out - handed Noelle the jacket.\n\nThe deer took it, albeit with hesitation and significant caution. The material was so rough it immediately reminded her of its owner.\n\n\"Now Piper's fucken' [i]creepy.[/i] And the club? They all know it. And even those fucken' dogs have some standards,\" Susie continued. She re-lit her spliff with one paw then crossed her arms behind her head, crossing her legs likewise to get comfortable. \"But she's 'one of them,' so they look the other way. Plus none of 'em want to babysit this weird awkward kid anyway. So when Piper offers, they let her. They get sick of my stomach growlin', Piper offers to take me in the back and whip me up some dinner, nobody protests,\" she said, still as if rehearsing a normal story. A curious and interesting evening, a funny thing that happened with some friends \"But she winds up takin' me way back, into the upstairs area. A whole lotta rooms between us and the others.\"\n\nNoelle felt pity welling in her soul and tried to deny it. The direction of the story was obvious, but even that didn't dignify Susie's actions.\n\n\"Now like I said, they weren't blind to it, and they had [i]some[/i] standards. They would look away, but only so much. So, twenty minutes later. I walk back into the, I guess the sorta rec room of their little club. That open door is [i]just[/i] enough for one of 'em to hear the screaming from upstairs,\" Susie recounted. Her voice was hollow, 'casual' the closest to an emotion but even that lacking. The tone of someone who had confronted this story far too many times.\n\n\"So one guy turns, sees me, yells for the others. They all see me just standin' there, shiverin' like a leaf. Magic drippin' down my chin, dust caked on my claws. They all stand up, pullin' out guns n' knives n' shit, screaming, 'what happened to Piper'.\"\n\nNoelle never realized just how hard her paws were gripping the jacket.\n\n\"So I tell 'em,\" Susie says, voice taking on an empty cheer like she was reaching the punchline of the story. \"I tell 'em what happened. Exactly what happened. And I tell 'em that if any of them wanna get between me and the exit, they'll be the next person to lose their face.\"\n\nNoelle tried to speak but nothing came out. She tried again, and her voice was just a rasp. \"Did you... Have to fight them?\"\n\n\"Naw. Still alive ain't I?\" Susie laughed, again without humour. \"I ain't John Wick now let alone at 13. One adult with her guard down, sure, but dragon or not I was just a kid. Nah. They looked at me, looked at each other, nodded. Three of 'em went into the back to finish the job themselves. They ask more details, I tell 'em. They tell me they misjudged me. That Piper was too sick to stand up for, that anyone as hard as me deserves a place in the gang when I'm older. They give me her jacket, tell me to remember how I got it, how [i]strong[/i] I was.\"\n\nNoelle just stared at the crossed hatchets on Susie's jacket.\n\n\"Went home after that. Stayed alone. Told mom, when she got back, and... She [i]screamed[/i] at me so damn loud.\"\n\n\"Why?!\" Noelle finally found some of her voice to yell, incensed by genuine shock at the turn of events. Susie just smirked a little, up at her ceiling. Red and blue light played on her purple scales every time they tilted.\n\n\"She said that she'd raised me better. Raised me to be tough, to not let someone do something like that to me. That I had the knife she gave me and I shouldn't have let myself get separated from it. That it's eat or be eaten, and I'd let the world take a bite.\"\n\nA pause, as Noelle considered it all. She ran a hoof over one of the padded, protective bits of the jacket.\n\n[i]Only sluts, whores, and junkies get raped.[/i]\n\n\"That's... So awful.\"\n\n\"See, moms like mine, it doesn't [i]matter[/i] if they care,\" Susie said, far less bothered than Noelle was. \"Maybe they do. Maybe they even love their kids. But that's not [i]why[/i] they try to set them up, try to care for them. It's because of fear. Mom got mad at me because she wasn't worried about [i]me,[/i] not really. She worried about [i]her,[/i] what it meant [i]about[/i] her. How it would reflect on her, how people would talk about her, how they'd label her as a 'bad mother' and her kid a weak little faggot that she'd raised all wrong.\"\n\nNoelle's jaw tightened. She was too well aware.\n\n\"So I figure... Mom didn't help me. The club didn't help me, y'know, people like that only got loyalty for 'emselves when push comes to shove. There's only one person who can help me, and it's me. So I grabbed as much of my shit as I could fit in one bag. Sebastián died, sad and quiet and alone, and the violet terror was born, someone who'd never let the world get another taste,\" Susie said with another small scoff. The over-the-top title was clearly at least some degree tongue-in-cheek.\n\nNoelle's soul twisted just a bit. At both the stark reminder of Susie's transness and not at all wanting to know her deadname. \"And then you came here? On your own?\"\n\n\"Yep. Hitchhiked until I found somewhere cops wouldn't be on my ass for squattin'. Found this little place and, it ain't bad. People turn a blind eye to me stealin' shit and as soon as I gotta leave I can take the truck. It's the exact kinda life mom wanted to protect me from but, I gotta say, it's workin' out pretty nice for me,\" Susie finally concluded her story. That same disaffected expression of hers had barely shifted the whole time.\n\nNoelle's own expression of concern, tinted by horror and guilt, didn't move a whole lot either, staring at the jacket that she was holding against her chest. Out of comfort. The rough leather felt good. Familiar.\n\nAfter a long pause she handed it back to the older monster, who pulled it back around the mannequin.\n\n\"Jacket's nice at least. Shame I can't wear it out. Someone would recognize the style or the whole damn logo and then I'd be in some real shit.\"\n\n\"I... I don't know if I find it 'nice' given its history,\" Noelle said softly. Her mind was working so hard she didn't know what to think. Susie's story was awful. Of course it didn't totally dignify everything Susie had done but it definitely added some validity to Susie seeing her as a brat. She thought she'd avoided becoming the spoilt rich kid trope, but Susie sure made it feel like she was every bit the stereotype. Just how much excuse did it allow the dragon?\n\nDefinitely nowhere near one hundred percent. But something more than zero. She couldn't put a number on that.\n\n\"So are y'happy then?\" Susie asked with a snort and a wry smirk. \"Happy with your little bedtime story?\"\n\nAnother long pause, but Susie let this one sit. Didn't push. Then;\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\nThat made Susie raise a brow. \"What, that cheered you up did it?\" she asked sarcastically, still in relatively good humour. \"Happy for some... Retrospective karma, or somethin'?\"\n\n\"No! No, it... It was horrible. Awful. I'm so sorry you went through all that... But I'm glad I know you did. I... I think I understand you a little better.\"\n\nSome part of Noelle's soul couldn't let it go. Couldn't give up hope that the relationship could be salvaged, maybe if she made Susie see she wasn't going to mistreat her, that she-\n\n\"What, you think you understand me now?\" Susie laughed. But it was a rough and abrasive laugh, like it was moments away from dropping to a growl. It made Noelle shrink back, just a little. The good humour shattered like glass.\n\n\"No, I-\"\n\nSusie reached over and Noelle only curled up more. But instead of going for the doe, Susie went for Noelle's jacket hanging off the headboard.\n\n\"Then you should know what I think of this, right? This poser shit, this stupid fucken' expensive bullshit that wouldn't stop a [i]skateboard stack?[/i] This trash you bought with mommy's money and not a single drop of dust?\" The dragon was snarling again, and Noelle watched as her paws moved, one gripping the article firmly by the collar, the other moving to its middle, fully brandished her claws, and-\n\n\"[b]NO![/b]\" Noelle screamed and immediately jumped fully for Susie's arm, grabbing it and pulling on it with everything she could.\n\nShe was absolutely powerless, and Susie swatted her off like a child. Noelle tried to lean in again, tried to kick the blankets off herself to get more movement, but a familiar shock backhand caught her in the mouth.\n\n\"You still think y'can talk back to me you stupid doe?! Why not, huh? Why shouldn't I shred this fucken' garbage?!\" Susie barked, fully letting out the anger that Noelle's bratting had been slowly fomenting in her.\n\n\"Because it was my sister's!\" Noelle yelled, absolutely undeterred by the backhand and right back on Susie's arm again, still pulling with all her strength. It took a few moments, in her panicked state, to realize that Susie wasn't budging but also wasn't at all pulling against her, and the words were lingering in an air that was silent but for her struggling and whimpering.\n\n\"... December, right?\"\n\nNoelle froze and unscrunched her face, eyes wide as she looked to Susie, still afraid but overtaken by confusion. She'd never mentioned her sister's name, especially not her full name. The dragon was still positioned to destroy her treasured jacket but paused, her expression much more sober and looking at Noelle carefully.\n\n\"... You knew her?\" the doe asked, so carefully.\n\n\"Never met her, but that bitch had a reputation all the way from here to the port towns,\" Susie said slowly. \"Took a steel bat to a whole heap'a people twice her size and then some. Got nicknamed Krampus. Being the daughter of [i]Rudolph fucken' Holiday[/i] didn't help, she was really followin' in daddy's footsteps.\"\n\nNoelle's eyes widened and her jaw slacked a bit. \"My... Dad? I don't... I don't know what you're talking about...?\"\n\n\"Probably a lot you don't know about your dad,\" Susie snorted. \"Or your whole family. But Holiday and Blizzard are real well-known names even outside'a Hometown, and for more than just your mom bein' Mayor.\"\n\nAt that, Susie looked at the jacket again. Stared for a moment. Then finally lowered her paw and threw it back over to Noelle, who immediately gripped it protectively.\n\n\"You ain't earned that. Krampus did, though. I ain't shredding a ghost's stuff, but you'd damn well better try to live up to it if you're gonna wear it around,\" Susie huffed... Then her frown softened just a fraction, voice following suit. \"You probably can, though. You stood up to me again... There's somethin' special in you, little doe.\"\n\nThere was a pause as Noelle just held the jacket, comforted by its softness, its safety, that she'd managed to convince Susie not to do another thing that would have truly broken something irreplaceable. But her mind latched onto something else.\n\n\"You keep calling me special... You said you're treating me better than the, the 'other girls' like this... And you seem to know a lot about my family... Just what do you want, Susie?\" Noelle asked, not looking up from the plush leather. Adrenaline still pumped through her but having her jacket back made her feel some small measure of security.\n\nSusie kept those toxic-yellow eyes on Noelle. It was a habit Noelle was noticing more and more, how Susie would just [i]stare[/i] at her for long stretches, unblinking, subtly shifting over her features. Like she was watching for some kind of sign. Gauging something. A predator watching prey.\n\nThen, a little smirk pulled at her muzzle.\n\n\"Y'know, I didn't have a plan before dinner... When the little brat town-princess asked me out, I was gonna just do what I always do.\"\n\n\"Which would be...?\" Noelle asked.\n\n\"Which would be, dosing you up enough you wouldn't even remember me ruinin' your holes until tests'd be pointless,\" Susie said - almost gloated - in a broad grin, taking just a minuscule, idle puff of her joint. \"Wouldn't have given you time to practice and adjust to me like I'm plannin' now, time to make sure it's just as much pleasure as pain... Would've just about torn you in half, not one enjoyable thing about it. At least, not if you weren't a masochistic freak.\"\n\nNoelle gulped hard. She wanted to pretend Susie was wrong, that she didn't feel a throb of heat in her still-sore guts.\n\n\"But,\" Susie continued, \"I changed my mind at dinner. After I saw how you handled that bitch server.\"\n\nThe doe monster pursed her lips. She hadn't even decided whether she liked how she'd handled that, hadn't had time to really think about it... And yet, she couldn't deny a pang of pride at Susie's praise.\n\n\"You've got some real fire in you, Jingles... Actually, not a fire. A snowstorm. A blizzard,\" the dragon breathed. She glanced at Noelle a moment, tongue tracing her teeth. Then one arm came down, not quite wrapping around Noelle but more just lying around her and giving the dragon the position to lean over her. Cutting off any escape, even as Noelle reflexively shirked, but with a dragon on one side and a wall on the other she could only sink into the bed slightly.\n\nFire burned in Susie's eyes. A sudden show of appreciation, of want, of desire.\n\n\"The way you crushed her like that? The way you [i]pulled rank,[/i] used her family and her money against her? The way you went straight for her throat and then twisted the knife 'till she was practically on her knees, begging, asking whether she should polish your cock while she was down there?\" Susie breathed out, growing genuinely and visibly excited and having to take a breath to steady herself. \"That wasn't just impressive. That was. Fucking. [i]Hot.\"[/i]\n\nThe fire in Susie's eyes was matched by one in her throat, smoke pouring from it, and it was too dark to be just from the joint.\n\nNoelle remembered that smoke from earlier. When Susie had been really worked up, approaching her peak. There was no question that she meant the words.\n\n\"I've got strength, but you've got [i]power,\"[/i] the dragon continued, crawling over more and truly giving the deer nowhere to run, a paw coming down to cup her cheek. She breathed the last of her drag into Noelle's face; or maybe it was just her regular smoke. \"You can reach people I can't, could get me outta trouble that I can't just bite and punch my way out of. Sure, I can fuck someone up, leave 'em leaking dust - and other things - in a ditch, but you can [i]ruin[/i] them. Leave 'em with no home to go home to and no family to turn to, without even gettin' dust on your hands, without even leavin' the office.\"\n\nEven backed up like that, Noelle gulped softly and met Susie's gaze.\n\n\"So you just want to use me as a pet politician...?\"\n\nSusie grinned at the accusation, only amused by it apparently.\n\n\"Yeah... The idea of a get outta jail free card that also happens to be addicted to my fat fucking dick is a nice one,\" Susie teased in a playful voice, causing another flare to burn off in Noelle's stomach. \"But it ain't [i]just[/i] that,\" she said softer, bordering on a whisper and much more serious. \"Anyone I can't reach, you can ruin. Anyone who's just outside the rules, I can [i]remove.[/i] You cover for me, I cover for you, and we can get to places neither of us could get on our own. Fuck being some gangster and a pol-sci student trying to become a council worker or whatever. We could be something [i]incredible.[/i] We could own this fucken' town and that would just be the absolute fucken' start of it.\"\n\nHer words grew so warm and sweet. Promise laced with poison, a comforting fire that would burn you alive if the wind carried it one more inch, her eyes the colour of honey and nightshade. She sucked in another, larger drag of the joint.\n\nNoelle just stared, too afraid to talk because she felt like she might give away just how alluring, how [i]wonderful[/i] those words all sounded, and how much she felt some kind of perverse strength infusing her.\n\nA pause, as Susie held it.\n\n\"We could rule the fucken' world, Holiday,\" she breathed out. The smoke from her pull dripped up from the corners of her mouth to bathe her scales with her words. She reached to grab Noelle's scruff then dipped her head down and caught the doe in another kiss, the other half of the dragon's drag filling Noelle's mouth immediately.\n\nNoelle didn't fight it. She knew better by now, Susie's assaults burned into her muscle memory so quickly, and the dragon growled in satisfaction.\n\nIt didn't last long. Susie had no intention of stoking any embers when she was in such a contented mood. But she made sure to share a solid lungful with the little doe, the excess pouring out from their joined muzzles, before she pulled back and rolled onto her back again.\n\nNoelle breathed out more quickly than last time once she saw Susie wasn't checking her. But the kiss was still long enough to get a bit of it in her system, she was sure. Instead she spent a few moments looking at Susie, turning the dragon's offer in her mind before likewise rolling onto her back.\n\n\"And what does that have to do with my family? I mean, besides the fact that my mom being mayor would probably help my own position?\" Noelle eventually found her voice to ask.\n\n\"Because that's exactly what they were,\" Susie clarified to the ceiling. \"Rudolph Blizzard was a thug like me. Smart one though. He realized he'd die in a ditch somewhere if he didn't have boardroom power to go with more classic muscle. So he snared a political up-and-comer from some rich-ass elite family, took their name. Hell, maybe he had her in a position a whole lot like this one,\" the monster joked, making Noelle's muzzle twist a bit. \"But that's how they roll now. Covering each others' asses, covering their weaknesses. Bureaucracy when someone's out of reach of a fist, good old trusty violence when the pen runs dry.\"\n\nNoelle went quiet again. She had no idea if it was true... But she had noticed more than a few peculiarities to her family, and Susie's story filled an awful lot of gaps. Her dad's occasional sternly serious moments that gave her chills. How much Comet acquiesced to him even though she was the mayor and a staunch feminist. The way she'd come home complaining that she'd finally hit her limit with someone, and Rudy would just laugh it off and assure her that he'd deal with it somehow. How much that calmed her down. His occasional long, and always vague 'business trips'.\n\nHow he avoided questions about his work. His old 'riding jacket'.\n\nNoelle forced the thoughts out of her mind. She'd think of a way to verify that, and deal with the repercussions if it turned true. She didn't want Susie getting into her head over nothing.\n\n\"Still unsure huh?\" Susie asked.\n\n[i]Do not lie,[/i] the dragon's words echoed in the doe's mind.\n\n\"Yes,\" Noelle said simply. She didn't want to lie, but she didn't want to elaborate too much either. Thankfully Susie seemed fine with this and just chuckled.\n\n\"Tell ya what,\" she said, before her tongue snaked out, wrapped around the last of her joint, and snapped it into her mouth, crunching it down like it was a snack.\n\n[i]Gross.[/i]\n\n\"I'll give you a deal, Jingles. 'cus I really do want this to be, y'know. A give n' take sorta thing,\" Susie hummed, considering for just a moment. But it was clear she'd come with this idea pre-cooked. \"I'll give you some time, and space. I won't bother you for [i]one week,[/i] hell, I'll even skip school so ya don't have to see me. One week, and one of two things happens: either you come pay me a visit, or I skip town.\"\n\nNoelle blinked, sitting up just a bit in the bed to give an incredulous look over at Susie.\n\n\"Really?\"\n\n\"Yep,\" Susie said simply.\n\nNoelle had been starting to notice her tells. She couldn't stop herself from a cheeky little smirk when she did, had trouble with precise eye-contact, would fidget sucking on her teeth. She actually wasn't a very good liar at all. But there was no sign of them.\n\n\"You'd just leave?\"\n\n\"I'd need to skip town anyway, if you turned me in. Mayor would hunt me down like a dog, hell, your old man'd probably jump out of his hospital bed to find me himself,\" she chuckled.\n\n\"And what if I... Tell mom that? What if I tell her you'll run unless we corner you?\"\n\nSusie actually laughed outright at that, a harsh rasping sound that scraped its way out of her maw. \"If you wanted to do that, you wouldn't tell me first. And if you did, your old lady'd get all caught up in red tape. Rudy might get on the warpath, but not in just a week given what he's in bed for. And if you [i]did[/i] manage to work around all that even after telling me to my face?\" Susie asked, glancing down from the corner of her eye at the doe. \"Well, I think I'd be too damn impressed to be all that mad about it. For a while anyway. Who knows how I'd feel after some time behind bars... Might just feel a little resentful after a couple years.\"\n\nNoelle gulped, but she was quickly getting good at not letting her fear show on her face.\n\n\"'sides, I just don't think you will. I think you're a smart girl, I think you'll see the [i]potential[/i] we have together. And I think you wanna know, if I can turn your whole damn world on its head just by fucking your throat, what it'd feel like for me to [i]really[/i] make you mine, and blow your little back out... You won't be able to stay away, you'll drop in,\" Susie said, [i]assured,[/i] in an idle voice as if she was just stating facts to herself.\n\nNoelle pinched her lips more, annoyed at the arrogance. Mostly because the dragon's words made her breath catch.\n\nBut Susie's next words were... Different.\n\n\"Plus there's that, y'know. Elephant in the room. That little freebie I gave you.\"\n\nSusie's casual expression split into a wicked grin, looking even more the predator than Noelle had yet seen her. A level of cocksure arrogance that she hadn't shown before. Enough to make the deer's fur stand on end, just on reflex, even before the blow.\n\n\"I also think that you understand that you need me too,\" Susie said, and her voice matched her expression. Slower, steadier. Not a single, minuscule hint of hesitation or insecurity. \"You get it, right? That you'd be well and truly fucked without me?\"\n\nNoelle gulped.\n\nAngel, why was her magic running cold?\n\nWhy did she have such a bad feeling all of a sudden?\n\n\"What do you mean?\" she asked, cautiously.\n\nHer soul hammered.\n\n\"Y'know. That little secret between you, me, and Kris. I guess it's less of an elephant and more like a, giant golden statue of a bird or somethin'.\"\n\nNoelle's words and breath caught, her magic frozen in her veins. Her mind was blank, empty, wiped clean with chemical efficiency.\n\nSusie looked over and saw the expression, but just let her grin simmer into a smirk.\n\n\"Don't worry,\" she assured. \"I told you, it's a freebie. Even if I skip town, hell, even if you try to rat me out, nobody'll hear about that from me. I ain't a snitch. But I think you've got some honour in you Jingles. And opting not to tell anyone about that particular frozen nugget...\"\n\n[i]i didn't i don't i didn't it wasn't me it was kris it was them they made me do it it was him he got in my way he wouldn't move he wouldn't back down i had no choice i didn't know i didn't[/i]\n\n\"I think you'll show appreciation for that. And I think you understand that you can't go back to before that. What's done is done,\" the dragon said off-handedly as she got up from the bed, walked to turn the TV off, and then rolled back into the bed.\n\nNoelle got one last glimpse of that machete grin before the Christmas lights went off too.\n\n\"I've done some awful shit, Holiday. One day it'll probably catch up, and I'll probably need some help to sweep it under the rug. But now? So have you. And one day you might need something a little more off the books to wipe the record clean. Just hope ya know, if you have my back, I'll have yours too, little doe.\"\n\nNoelle swallowed.\n\nHer throat was dry, so dry.\n\nHer mind swam.\n\nDistantly, she could feel herself shivering.\n\nCold.\n\nSo, so cold.\n\nFreezing cold.\n\n\"I don't know what you're talking about,\" someone said, the words falling from her own quivering lips.\n\n\"Sure,\" Susie snorted. \"I remember that ole chestnut, yeah. Get some rest,\" the dragon all but commanded, pulled the covers up around herself, and then twisted herself into a comfy, snug blanket-cocoon. \"Sweet dreams, Jingles.\"\n\n...\n\nNoelle laid still for a moment, but that ball of blankets was emanating an irresistible heat compared to the jagged ice in her gut and her mind, and she knew the heat would help her cram that freezing cold back into whatever cage it had momentarily escaped from. So she leaned on it. But when she did, the body within squirmed, just enough to loosen the blanket cocoon, then pulled her into it. Strong arms captured her, coiled around her body, holding her against powerful muscles blanketed by soft hide. A flat chest to push her cheek to, and a huge paw against the back of her head to hold her against it.\n\nSomewhere she registered that the chest was wet. So was her cheek. She couldn't be sure why.\n\nShe had no intention of sleeping. But despite her mind being blank it was so, so loud, and she direly needed a temporary distraction. She found it, not only in the larger woman's chest and embrace, in the surprisingly delicate fingers running through her hair and the strong legs that wrapped around her own.\n\nBut also in her words, branded onto her brain, echoing over and over in the doe's mind. Sweet. Warm. Secure. Safe. Enough to fight that razor frost, to dig it out from where it stabbed into her soul and truly push it back down into the depths.\n\nAgain, and again, that sugary promise looped. A mantra. A testament, sweetly-sung gospel, a prayer to the Angel.\n\n[i]We could rule the fucken' world, Holiday.[/i]\n\n===\n\nAt some point during the night Susie rolled over, extremely deep in her sleep and snoring up a storm, and Noelle made her escape.\n\nNot that it was much of an escape. Her clothes had been surprisingly neatly folded over the headboard, her phone was on the table out in the open and her bag next to the stairwell exit with all of her things in it. The door was unlocked. Susie had made precisely zero attempt to keep her locked down after the initial show of the collar, if anything she'd prepared everything to make sure Noelle could leave quickly. It felt like she could have just left at any point after Susie had had her fun.\n\nMaybe she could have. After all, she didn't even try.\n\nWhen she emerged from the basement, and then from the old run-down house, she found herself only just barely ahead of the seemingly encroaching treeline, explaining some of the flora growing inside. That made sense. She often heard her mother talking about the troubles of abandoned houses and buildings in the forest south of town, the properties so cheap and undesirable that selling was out of the question and renovating was more cost than it was worth.\n\nIt was mostly still pitch black, but the grey-blue glow of the sun barely beginning to poke its head over the horizon was starting to fill the air, and Noelle dearly hoped she could get home before morning traffic started up.\n\nThe tree line was convenient for some privacy at least, letting her use one of the water bottles she'd swiped on the way out to freshen up a bit, cleaning at least some of the dried cum out of her fur. She was probably a scruffy mess, but that was definitely not the worst things could be.\n\nShe pulled her jacket on and did it up to cover her torn shirt. That didn't even register as a concern compared to her underwear situation; Susie had shredded hers and she best she could do was swipe a pair of (clearly used, [i]gross gross gross gross[/i]) boxers from what seemed to be Susie's laundry pile. They were too big and were visible under her skirt, but better than the alternative, and there simply wasn't anything more she could do about that.\n\nStreet lights greeted her when she got to the main road, early-morning mist rolling over the town like slow-motion waves, the light liquid dancing around amber lights.\n\nHer brain didn't know how to parse the beginning of a morning when she'd gotten so little sleep, torn between feeling like she was up too late or woken too early. But for a mercy it was empty of thoughts aside from the driving desire to get home and take a scalding shower, and she couldn't have been more thankful for that.\n\nNoelle got home and thanked the Angel for it being without incident, then had her solid two hours of shower. Though she unsurprisingly didn't feel clean, she did actually feel better than she'd expected. She could have crawled into bed then and there, but she didn't want to destroy her sleeping pattern completely.\n\nBesides, she had something she direly needed to do, one thought that wouldn't be pushed down into her subconscious, and was on a strict time-limit given her mother was due home either that night or the next morning.\n\nSo, Noelle raided Mayor Holiday's home office.\n\nThankfully she knew where her mother's keys were, and knew how to get around without evidence, old tricks Dess had taught her to try to inspire some rebellion. She was extremely thorough in noting the position of things before she touched them, systematically dealing with only one thing at a time, putting everything back [i]exactly[/i] where she found it and not messing with something after she'd done that.\n\nThe first thing to jump out at here were some very old warrants that had been personally declined by her mother. They were curiously sparse on details. Just singular locations, filed under 'gang activity,' and declined for being a waste of money to overreach into low-probability cases. Innocuous enough reasons, but their timing was clearly suspicious.\n\nBeyond that, it didn't seem that Comet stored many records at home... But the ones she did all followed a theme. Old legislation, mostly from when she'd first gotten into office. Unusually lax, completely out of character with her usual conservative approach. And often very specific. Shifting the restrictions on the possession of some weapons, nothing outlandish, the kind of stuff you'd expect of a rural Mayor trying to keep farmers safe and happy.\n\nA lot of personally approved developments. Ones that, again, were a bit more adventurous than Comet usually gave easy approval for.\n\nThe discharging of Asgore Dreemurr, Kris' father, from the police force jumped out at her. No reason was given, instead citing a piece of paperwork that wasn't actually attached.\n\nNoelle wondered if that other piece of paperwork had perhaps been mysteriously lost.\n\nShe wondered if those developments had been paid for via unusual means, or if perhaps the buildings themselves hid secrets.\n\nShe wondered if the guns that had been given loosened restrictions were, perhaps, any of the ones that her father owned and had occasionally shown her, mostly before her transition.\n\nThe doe gulped as she put back the last piece of paperwork from the work side of her mother's files. Nothing incriminating. Nothing that confirmed anything.\n\nBut that icy feeling in her gut just wouldn't leave.\n\nThe declined warrants, especially, kept returning to her mind.\n\nThe ability to simply put a stamp down, to shrug and state an investigation was going outside its scope and wasting taxpayer dollars on a lost cause. To just... Put an end to a trail with nothing more than standard bureaucratic process.\n\nIn the tiny window of her mind where Noelle accepted what had happened, that did sound potentially, incredibly, useful.\n\nWith her mind mostly occupied Noelle moved on to the more personal side of her mother's records, which she only even looked in on a whim, a compulsive desire to be thorough. It all seemed about what Noelle had expected; bank statements, tax filings, important receipts. Extremely mundane things.\n\nBut, on the verge of giving up, Noelle found one last batch of papers. Hospitalization records. Her father's.\n\nNeither he nor Comet had specified exactly why he was in that bed. From his coughing and fragile constitution, along with his reluctance to say anything or tell anyone about developments or treatments, Noelle had assumed the worst. Cancer was always at the front of her mind.\n\nShe had assumed wrong, and several of the terms she had to look up on her phone.\n\n[i]Perforated lungs resulting in traumatic pneumothorax.[/i]\n\nHypoxia.\n\nMultiple blood transfusions, some with accompanying complications.\n\nWith a dark and dry humour, she almost scoffed to herself when she'd spent all that time looking up terms, trying to connect dots, only to find another earlier record that spelled it out without any need for sleuthing.\n\nSeven bullet extractions.\n\n===\n\nMonday passed in a daze, and Noelle was certain it wouldn't be the only day that week to do so.\n\nSusie again hadn't lied, she was missing from class for the whole day, and Noelle didn't doubt her words that the day would turn into a week. It was an open secret that the girl was impossible to contact when she didn't want to be. Anyone else's parents would've gotten a call from Alphys or even Ms. Dreemurr, but never Susie. Now Noelle knew why.\n\nShe'd been getting closer with Kris lately, but they kept their distance for obvious reasons and she wasn't sure why. Normally Berdly would've been pestering her for help on homework, but he was missing too for even more obvious reasons no no no no nothing nothing happened there are no reasons none nothing none Even Catti seemed to be keeping to herself and Noelle didn't have the initiative to change it, wasn't even sure if she would've wanted to, given how conflicted Noelle always felt about spending time with the odd, intense cat monster.\n\nEverything was so normal but just so... Not. Here was school marching on like nothing was wrong. The teachers gave assignments, she was expected to do them and hand them in. Information crammed into her head, a break for lunch, more information. Her head was too full, and it all just dripped out as soon as it was stuffed in, drops of water poured into an ocean of tar already so full that only the surface tension kept it from bursting out of her skull. Lost subjects, lost hours, a lost day and she was certain that, too, would be followed by more.\n\nBefore she knew it she was home again, cooking dinner in that same trance. Having to remind herself to cook for two, because-\n\nA car in the driveway. A firmly shut door. Keys scraping in the lock.\n\nNoelle knew it was her opportunity. Susie had underestimated her. Expected her to just fall in line, a dog who crawled back to her master even after being kicked.\n\nBut all's it would take was one conversation. One exchange. She'd be brave and show her mother the scratches and bruises, because she could simply say she was drugged, which was true. Explain that they needed to act fast. Hell, never mind process. If it was true her mother was corrupt, that she was actually connected to some criminal underworld dealings, maybe they wouldn't even need to bother with the red tape. If Susie would've been surprised to find police at her door, how much more would she be if she found \"thugs\" - as Susie herself had put it - waiting in a car outside her house?\n\n\"Noelle, I'm home,\" Comet said in her always-even voice, not so much fanfare as simply announcing her presence.\n\nThis was her chance.\n\nAll's she had to do was take it.\n\n===\n\nA full moon loomed overhead and Noelle couldn't help but spend a moment enraptured.\n\nCatti had always told her that the moon represented femininity. She'd also said that the moon was a beacon, soaking and reflecting the sun at a time otherwise overrun by darkness, guiding people who needed light when there was none. These two things had, apparently, led Catti to consider the doe as 'having an aspect of shining umbral.' Which was a weird thing to say even before considering this happened before Noelle had transitioned, but it seemed weirdness was just a standard for her friends.\n\nIn that moment it made some sense, though. In her youth Rudy had always tried to get her to be more outgoing, to be more loud and strong and bright. Shown her his guns, encouraged her to maybe one day ask him to take her shooting, or even hunting.\n\n[i]Sun.[/i]\n\n[i]Son.[/i]\n\nThere were a lot of factors for her mother taking a more active role. Her dad's hospitalization and Dess going missing were certainly present, but how much did her transition weigh? Had it been, at least in part, because she had gone from the son to the daughter, solar to lunar? She'd always internalized the lessons that girls had been taught more than the ones intended for boys. Even if she didn't exactly follow those lessons - Dess was more of a role model to her than anyone and she violently eschewed them, and her mother rejected any notions of feminine submission - she still felt the pressures of them.\n\nIt didn't matter if her parents hadn't instilled those values, media was so eager to fill in for them. She'd heard the words on TV so often, but even if half the time they were uttered in irony or disdain, they were uttered none the less.\n\n[i]Shoulders straight, head down.[/i]\n\n[i]Listen, don't speak.[/i]\n\n[i]Good girls are seen, not heard.[/i]\n\nThe moon was like that. More subtle. More reserved, compared to the sun.\n\nAnd yet, the moon played such an important role. It may not bask the world in a flood of light, but without the moon she wouldn't even be able to find her steps on the sidewalk. It offered at least enough light for guidance. Its gravity pulled the waves, kept the waters of the world flowing. Just as much a key to life as the more obvious sun.\n\nMaybe, Noelle thought, the moon really was something to aspire to.\n\nBecause Susie was more like the sun. Bright and glaring. Loud. Dangerous. It could sear your eyes and burn your skin.\n\nOne could walk on the moon, but disintegrate millions of miles from even touching the sun's surface.\n\nThe sun's life-giving was much more obvious, but the moon was never, ever any less important.\n\nHer daze, and her momentary effort to build up her courage, fell away to the feeling of something pushing into the small of her back. Somehow, despite being only about two fingers in width, it felt enormously heavy. Perhaps the slight metallic clinking that accompanied it added to the feeling.\n\n\"Your valuables or your life.\"\n\nNoelle's soul froze. She was getting extremely well acquainted with her fight-or-flight reflex this week, and it seemed to keep opting for that third thing in 'freeze.'\n\nFor a mercy, the owner of the shrill and raspy voice seemed to understand this.\n\n\"Take your time, prey-bitch. Not too much though. That's a gun to your back. All's you have to do is drop your purse, your phone, any jewellery you're wearing, and that nice-looking jacket, and then we can both be on our way.\"\n\nNoelle swallowed.\n\nHer last week had been a haze as predicted. A whirlwind of events and non-events, of normalcy where there should have been uproar and chaos where there would never be calm ever, ever again. Everything had changed. Even in the face of the bizarrely normal school week she'd had, [i]everything[/i] had changed, warped, mutated irreversibly into something so warped as to barely be recognizable, so much that she could hardly recall what it felt like to exist before it. She could never go back to how she was before.\n\nShe'd run the weekend's events in her mind, over and over and over. It consumed her. It engulfed her like the sun.\n\nShe'd come to many conclusions about that weekend, and what it meant to her. She still had a lot of unanswered questions, a lot of untied threads, but some things, she'd decided on.\n\nHer teeth clenched, and her paws, tense at her sides, balled into fists.\n\n\"Do you know who I am?\" she asked, her tone razor.\n\n\"Should I?\" the voice asked back. It sounded like the owner was trying to come off as cocky but was more surprised than anything, that someone would speak up to them in such a situation.\n\n\"I'm Noelle Holiday. My mother is the mayor, Comet Holiday, and my father is Rudolph Holiday. I'm not some girl you can just disappear without anyone noticing.\"\n\nThere was a long pause, and Noelle felt the pressure of the gun in her back lighten somewhat.\n\n\"Is that so?\" the person asked, sounding cautious.\n\n\"It is,\" Noelle insisted, summoning her courage. Her voice shook as she stared down the street, more empty than any place had ever been, no world or reality beyond the short illumination of the single street light above them. But there was - she hoped - just as much angry resolve as there was fear for her life. \"You can let me go, and I'll forget this happened. I haven't seen your face. But if you so much as hurt me, they'll come for you. They're angry, y'know? Already lost one daughter. With what they'd do to you, you'll [i]wish[/i] that you just went to jail, or got gunned down by police, or-\"\n\nNoelle squealed as she was pulled and spun by one of her antlers, almost falling one way then the other and finally steadied, barely on her feet, by metal painfully jamming its way between her lips and her teeth, rattling her skull in the process. She still hadn't fully recovered from what she was sure had been a concussion on the weekend, adding a sludgy soreness to everything. It didn't compare to the absolute racing panic that shot through her body when her mind caught up with the fact that the barrel of a gun was wedged between her teeth.\n\n\"You're a hell of a mouthy bitch, y'know that? A little brat who thinks she can get whatever she wants in this world are ya?\" the figure asked in a hiss.\n\nNoelle could make out a few details under the street-light. A large round head, like a gecko, or maybe a frog, short fur like straw both in colour and consistency. A midboss probably. Nobody she knew. A baggy jacket obscured most of his body.\n\nShe didn't get any more time to look, as he rattled both her head, using her antler, and the gun in her mouth. Every scrape of metal against her teeth felt like sparking electricity through her skull and it made her body writhe, shivering from head to toe and having to fight against her instinct to run for her life. Her tongue recoiled but only ended up pressed directly against the muzzle itself, searing the impression of where a bullet would emerge into her brain.\n\nAngel, what was wrong with her that she could feel an ember in her abdomen.\n\n\"You really thought that was a good idea? Saying that? Thought you'd intimidate me, you dumb little princess?\" the stranger asked, still holding tight onto her. Despite everything, his voice sounded panicked. \"Think I won't just run with this good luck? Said it yourself, parents are desperate. Wonder how much they'll give me for your safe return after their other kid ran away from home? Enough to skip the border, that's for sure,\" he gloated, even as his breathing was so obviously picking up wildly.\n\nNoelle whimpered around the cold hard steel as she tried not to give in completely, to either burst into tears or just fight what she already knew would be a pointless fight. This monster was scared and desperate, and she'd only made him more so. More liable to do something drastic. She'd fucked up badly, yet again. However much her life was warped and twisted, now, it would probably, and simply, end.\n\nSomething loudly clanged against the street light beside them. The monster's grip on her antler tightened, ensuring she didn't have any chance to run, but he painfully scraped the gun out from between her teeth to point it at the noise.\n\n\"Who the fuck is there?! Keep walking!\"\n\nThe next seconds happened in an instant, yet long enough for Noelle to intricately parse every single detail. Belying its size, a figure near-silently leapt over a bush on the opposite side to them as the street light. In one smooth motion it landed, reached out, and grabbed the gun arm of her assailant. It jerked, barely, and the air thundered with a gunshot, putting a piercing ringing in Noelle's ears and setting her eyes to blurring and watering, yet she didn't, couldn't, flinch.\n\nJagged spears sunk into the monster's sleeve and he screamed in agony. Another gunshot, then the weapon clattered to the ground, distant and quiet compared to the two explosions of gunpowder. As soon as the gun was free, it was kicked into the bushes the figure had come from.\n\nA hand sunk into the collar of his jacket and pulled him clear off the ground, and the knives released his arm to gnash in front of his face.\n\n\"You stupid motherfucker. You thought you could jump from a random fucken' mugger to a kidnapper? You thought you could jump straight up the ladder to the mayor's daughter?\" that growl somehow twisted to form words, so full of gravel they took precious moments to even decipher. The other monster's face was splattered with his own blood-magic at every word.\n\nThere was a sickening wet crunch, then, as two foreheads met with incredible force. The grip on Noelle's antler finally slacked completely and she stumbled back from the fray, eyes wide with fear but still unable, unwilling to look away.\n\nSusie was hunched over the monster who had assailed her, one giant paw gripped around his wrist and the other around his throat, holding him like a limp doll while he squirmed in her grip, just trying to get as far from her maw as possible to no avail. A black hoodie did nothing to hide how massive her form looked beside him. Her pupils fully contracted into invisible pin-pricks, eyes smouldering with magic and rage, hunched down into a powerful stance yet still looming over him. Drool and aether both dripped from the enormous cleavers she called teeth.\n\nAs angry as the prior words were the next were so full of fire they carried black smoke with them, pouring out of the dragon's mouth like liqueous smoke off dry ice.\n\n\"You thought you could fuck, with [i][b]my[/b][/i] bitch?\"\n\nNoelle's soul thudded in her chest.\n\n[i]Hers.[/i]\n\nA whimper from the other monster. A whine. A mewling sound of submission, far more pathetic than any noise Noelle had made a week ago.\n\n\"I-I'm sorry, Asteria, I did'n-I didn't know, that, that she was-\"\n\n\"Y-Y-Y-You didn't know what, fucker, that she was mine? Didn't get the memo that I'd staked my claim? She's in this town, isn't she? And whose town is this, you little tadpole fuck?!\"\n\nTalons sunk into the frog monster's wrist where Susie gripped it, and more aether dripped down the sleeve of her hoodie.\n\n\"I'm sorry, Sebastián! It won't happen ag-\"\n\n\"[b]You missed that fucking memo too?![/b]\" Susie roared, and the frog squirmed more still. \"It's [b]Susie[/b] now, not that I wanna hear my name in your filthy fucken' mouth, and you're damn fucking right it won't happen again! Noelle is [i]my[/i] girl, [b]MINE[/b], you'll keep your dirty fucken' paws off her and whenever you wake up you'll tell everyone you meet to do the fucken' same, you'll let 'em know that [b]nobody[/b] fucks with the Holiday girl, got it?!\"\n\n\"I'm sorry I-\"\n\nThe monster's words trailed into yet more wails as Susie released his wrist, only to start hurling savage punches directly into his face. He tried to protect himself but the way Susie shook him so effortlessly by his collar with one hand loosened it, and each blow further still, as more and more aether speckled the dragon's fist and face.\n\n\"I [b]said[/b], got it?!\"\n\n\"Susie I didn't-\"\n\nMore swings, now with almost nothing to slow their descent. More aether. More of Susie's bloody teeth glinting in the street light. The other monster's voice was getting wet, [i]bubbly.[/i]\n\n\"[b]GOT IT?![/b]\"\n\n\"YES!\" the monster screamed.\n\nNoelle thought the blows would stop. And they did. After one more, final, decisive crunch of Susie's fist slamming into his temple. His whole body crumpled like a deflating balloon, falling limp and silent in Susie's grip, before likewise falling into a heap on the sidewalk when the dragon released him.\n\n...\n\nSilence filled the air, and Noelle just kept staring. The frog monster's arms jutted from his body in such an unnatural way, not broken but fully limp in a way that wasn't possible without consciousness being robbed in such a way.\n\nShe knew she should feel disgusted. Such violence shouldn't be visited on anyone, no matter what. Justice, she'd been taught, was for judges and courts to decide, and then meted out with things designed to either rehabilitate or just isolate. Such brutality was barbaric. Uncivilized.\n\nShe knew that was how she should feel.\n\nShe knew it.\n\nShe knew to feel otherwise was simply wrong.\n\nShe knew that, truly.\n\nA heavy paw on her arm pulled Noelle from her thoughts, looking up at the dragon that now stood over her.\n\nSusie's pupils had widened slightly, but not by much. Her teeth, her claws had retracted but still enlarged enough for the wicked talons to press against Noelle's flesh, for the dragon's teeth to extend over the sides of her lips, her mouth over-full. Some middle-ground between monster and animal, between person and beast. The viscera that proved her brutality speckled her entire upper body, dripped from one of her extended teeth.\n\n\"You okay, Jingles?\" Susie asked.\n\nNoelle's knees almost buckled that her tone, even so full of gravel, even with that terrifying visage, was so delicate and worried. She wondered if Susie's paw on her shoulder was the only thing keeping her upright. The fact her soul slowed in its beating a little was the only reason she noticed how fast it was hammering in the first place.\n\nShe tried to make a sound, but only got a rasp. Swallowed, then tried again.\n\n\"Yeah... Yes I'm, I'm okay.\"\n\n\"He didn't hurt you?\"\n\n\"He didn't.\"\n\nThat gentle demeanour cracked a little, a single hairline fracture in the form of a sharp grin over the dragon's maw.\n\n\"Feelin' a little hot there?\"\n\nThe doe's eyes widened.\n\n\"Wh-, It, I-I wasn't-\"\n\n\"Don't lie to me, remember?\" Susie asked, taking that increasingly-familiar tone of gentle with a distant hint of threat to it. She'd calmed down more still, her teeth back to normal at least. But she didn't wait for the stammering doe to reply, instead leaning down to pick up the monster's discarded gun. She examined it for a moment, turning it around in her paw and running digits over it while Noelle tried to form a response.\n\nBut no response came, because after a pause Susie raised the gun and pushed the end of its barrel to Noelle's temple. The muzzle was still warm from being fired.\n\n\"Bet it'd be even better with me doing it, huh?\"\n\nNoelle locked up to a degree she didn't know possible, her body and breath and mind all simultaneously freezing solid, her world reduced just to her pounding soul and Susie's suddenly calm, easy smile.\n\nThe hammer clicked as it was pulled back.\n\n\"This still work for you? Or did you like it more in your mouth?\"\n\nNo noise was possible. No movement. No thought.\n\nThe dragon raised a brow at the lack of response.\n\nHer smile dropped slightly.\n\nAnd the hammer fell.\n\nThe noise and vibration echoed through Noelle's skull like an empty auditorium.\n\nSusie's raucous laughter shattered the moment.\n\n\"Fuck, the [i]look[/i] on your face. Damn. You really are a freak. And this thing's pretty neat, haven't seen a semi-auto with a hammer block before,\" Susie hummed as she pulled the gun away and examined it again. She had an impressed look on her face at what it had achieved, like she'd just tested out a high quality tool instead of almost scaring the deer halfway-and-change to death.\n\nBut at that, she glanced over her shoulder, double-checked the safety, then stuffed the gun into the front of her pants.\n\n\"C'mon, though. This place is pretty empty but someone might'a heard those gunshots, so let's not sit around like idiots huh?\" the dragon asked, reached down to grab Noelle by the wrist, and started walking.\n\nNoelle followed limply, still recovering. For at least some kind of mercy Susie gave her a few minutes to recover, not even rushing her when she was falling behind a bit due to both shock and the differences in physiology.\n\nAfter a block or two Susie looked back at the deer and apparently judged that both they'd made enough distance and Noelle had recovered enough. The doe was still quiet and breathing hard but no longer in that glassy dissociation. Susie stopped, turned, tugged the doe's wrist towards her. One paw reached down to scoop up the small of her back, pulling their bodies flush, while the other pulled a claw up under the doe's chin to tilt her head up, towards the dragon's easy grin.\n\nThe gun in Susie's pants jabbed against Noelle's stomach.\n\n\"So. Now that we've got some time. Can't help but notice you were wonderin' in the direction of my little den. So what brings you to this neck of the woods, little doe?\"\n\nNoelle gulped hard but, to Susie's fairly obvious surprise, she kept up eye-contact and didn't even shirk away.\n\nHer week had passed in a daze, certainly, and she was still deep in whatever the hell Susie's stunt with the gun's safety had caused in her. But she'd still had a lot of time to think about the events, about her feelings, about her desires. Obviously. She certainly wouldn't have been in the south of town otherwise. Maybe Susie expected stammering or excuses, instead she got a relatively stony stare.\n\n\"You,\" Noelle admitted simply. She let it hang in the air for just a moment, just enough for Susie to show her surprise on her face, but then quickly followed it. \"You said not to lie to you, Susie, and I won't. I couldn't stop thinking about last weekend.\"\n\nSusie's expression had momentarily been broken by that surprise, but her grin pulled back in full form.\n\n\"Finally accepting it huh...? You have to have, right, since I don't hear squad car sirens,\" the dragon joked in a smoky chuckle.\n\nBut Noelle's expression still didn't budge.\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"... No?\" Susie asked, the confusion returned stronger.\n\n\"I didn't... I [i]don't[/i] accept everything that happened last weekend,\" Noelle said as she pulled away slightly, and Susie let her go, mostly thanks to how disarmed she felt. \"You hurt me, Susie. And... Some of the hurt, you're right, I liked. Some of it I didn't. I don't know where the line is. You don't either.\"\n\nSusie's mouth opened, then closed again as her eyes narrowed slightly. She'd expected either reluctant acceptance, gleeful submission, or righteous anger. Or just plain damn shock from the gun thing. Not... Whatever this was.\n\n\"But I do know what I definitely liked, and that was how you made me feel grown-up. Free. Independent,\" Noelle said, more softly now that Susie seemed to have been pacified a bit. She swallowed softly, brown eyes locked onto the dragon standing over her. [i]\"Strong.\"[/i]\n\nSusie's eyes crinkled a bit at that, and a hint of her smirk returned, if only a hint.\n\n\"You're still tryna tame me...?\"\n\n\"No,\" Noelle said quickly, and meant it. \"No, I don't want to [i]'fix'[/i] you. Not anymore. Maybe I want to meet you in the middle.\" She paused. Then a smile - one that was at once guilty, reluctant, and genuinely humoured - pulled at her muzzle. \"Maybe I want [i]you[/i] to fix [i]me.[/i] I don't know.\"\n\nSusie's smirk only widened. She stepped in again, this time her paw reaching to press, surprisingly delicately, to Noelle's cheek.\n\n\"Maybe you want me to make you worse?\" she rumbled.\n\nNoelle, still surprising the dragon, let herself lean into the paw, and her eyes close for a moment.\n\n\"Maybe I do.\"\n\nSusie's tongue dragged over her teeth, and her mouth pulled further still.\n\n\"A'ight then, Jingles. Another deal for ya,\" Susie said, in the middle of thinking to herself, this deal clearly more spur of the moment. A pause in a breath. Then; \"You stick to those hard rules I gave you last week. Remember 'em? Tell the truth, be appreciative, don't raise your voice. You do that, and I'll try to..,\" Susie trailed off, eyes wandering for a moment in consideration. Then, right back to the doe. \"... Slow it down, [i]just[/i] a little. Not give you too much too quick. Only hurt you the ways you want,\" she said that bit in a whisper, as if anyone could hear them. It made Noelle's fur stand up none the less. \"Hell, if you stick to that 'don't lie' thing, and trust me that I'm usually gonna know what's good for ya, I'll even listen if you tell me I hit a hard 'no'... Or at least consider it.\"\n\nAs if fearing that she was sounding too 'soft,' Susie's claws trailed Noelle's cheek. Not hard, not like last week, but enough to leave red trails on the flesh under her fur.\n\nNoelle hid a gulp. And for the first time, she actually let herself show the shivering breath that got pulled out of her.\n\n\"Deal,\" she breathed out, blinking as if in disbelief that she'd agreed to it. And yet, this time, it was the exact fantasy she'd imagined. The scenario she'd practiced, the words she'd rehearsed.\n\nSusie's smirk split into her familiar wicked grin, and her second paw came down to cup Noelle's whole face in her paws. She tugged the doe's chin up - just a bit firmer than she needed to - and leaned in to stare directly down at her.\n\n\"I'm gonna make you bleed for me, little doe. I'm gonna play with you 'till I've had enough,\" Susie breathed out, her breath washing over the smaller girl's face.\n\nIt was still too strong, meaty and bitter and [i]burnt.[/i] Yet, Noelle was starting to like it. Her expression stayed in its place for a moment, heavy-lidded and lips parted... Before she let out a tiny, cautious laugh.\n\n\"Fahaha... You looked in my phone, huh?\"\n\nSusie winked.\n\n\"Your taste isn't as bad as I thought. That track kinda slaps. No Protest the Hero though you fucken' poser, glad I shredded that top.\"\n\nAnother laugh, easier this time. Everything got easier with practice. What had been devastating a week ago was something Noelle could then, in a strange, hollow, surrendered kind of way, laugh about.\n\n\"I'd rather listen to them and become not-a-poser. Buy me a new one.\"\n\nSusie snorted, shaking her head. This dumb little doe kept exceeding her expectations.\n\n\"Maybe... Back to mine?\"\n\nA swallow, and Noelle silently nodded her head.\n\n\"You know I'm not gonna be [i]nice[/i] like this often, yeah?\" Susie added. \"That I'm still gonna take what I want and you can either like it or fuck off?\"\n\nA pause, then another nod.\n\n\"I know... The real you isn't 'nice.' I learned that. And, I think maybe, I like it that way. In some way. I don't know.\"\n\nSusie nodded back. She didn't mind if Noelle took some time to be sure, as long as she still got to fuck the deer up in the meantime. Maybe watching a more slow sort of acceptance would be fun, too. In fact, she could [i]easily[/i] see some perks to getting to spend more time with Noelle's conflicted, reluctant semi-rejection.\n\n[i]Dubcon? Is that the word? Whatever.[/i]\n\nThen, slowly, Susie leaned in. Her lips brushed the doe's, delicate and gentle, belying the way she towered over the deer monster.\n\nWhen she pulled back, Angel's tits, she was so proud to see a spark of obvious disappointment on Noelle's face.\n\n\"Don't worry. I'll give you a real one when we get back, yeah? With all the [i]fixings,\"[/i] Susie said, pulling her lips over her teeth just a bit for emphasis.\n\nNoelle's cheeks flushed that she'd been read so easily, yet again. But Susie seemed to be good at that. For all she was known as an idiot brute, she could decipher Noelle's feelings like they were plain text branded into her fur.\n\n\"Y-You'd better,\" she stumbled, yet still managed to honestly voice.\n\nSusie nodded, content with it, and finally pulled back from the doe. Her paw grabbed Noelle's on the way, and when she turned, Noelle had to half-jog to keep up with the dragon's long, easy strides.\n\nHer body wasn't used to going at that kind of pace, halfway between walk and run. It didn't suit her hooves. But she knew Susie would set the tempo. She knew she'd often go too fast, often go too far.\n\nBut she'd seen those glimpses of joy, of care. Of the dragon protecting her, trying to foster something in her. Seeing something so wonderful and precious in her that nobody else had ever seen. A kind of love that Noelle had never experienced before, that had hooked into her veins and dragged her back, that had blocked the words in her throat when she'd tried to tell her mother. That she felt she would endure anything for more of, especially with Susie's promise to try. That's all Noelle needed, just the assurance that she'd try.\n\nWith that nothing would be too much, to see greedy eyes and to feel covetous paws, to feel truly wanted and desired for the first time in her life. She'd give up everything, her dignity, her worth, her soul, if it meant Susie would truly see her as a priceless part of her hoard. If it meant even one more glimpse of that possessive dragon who would ruin someone just to make her happy.\n\nBecause it would. Noelle knew it, then. How happy it would make her. How happy it [i]did[/i] make her.\n\nShe wondered just how giddy and blissful she'd looked when the dragon had beaten a monster within inches of his life, all for her.\n\n[i]\n[/i]\n\n[center][i][url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DznlKlIrbo]I'll make you fight for me and pray I pay the bills,\nI'll make you die for me and watch your body spill,\nI'll make you cry for me and lie for me,\nAnd bleed for me and die for me,\nBut most I'll make you right for me,\nI'm sure I'm right for you.[/url][/i][/center]", "writing_bbcode_parsed": "CWs in the tags, ware 'em.

===

A flutter. A moment to sleepily stare through bleary, cracked-open lids. And then Noelle's eyes shot open to the sight of a strange ceiling, only barely-familiar. For some reason that coral light-shade kept standing out to her, though it was dark now. The whole room was, bathed in a dim glowing purple from the blue-and-red Christmas lights and assisted only slightly by the muted TV, still on.

The pains came back first, the memories of what caused them trailing just behind.

Her aggressor hadn't lied; she was acutely aware of parts of her body she'd never even considered could have sensation, let alone that kind of pain and soreness. She stung in places that really felt ought not to sting, cuts and bruises and burns, her fur feeling so mangy and matted that she'd need several showers even before she started to work at whatever filth tarnished her soul.

Some deep, instinctive feeling told her that her memories couldn't have been real, there must be some other explanation, a dream or a fall. It was just too awful and the effects were too far-reaching, too life-changing, it had gone far too wrong in ways she couldn't have imagined. She didn't deserve it. She deserved nice things because she was a good person and she'd been taught this kind of thing only happened to awful people who had somehow brought it on themselves. Not that she bought that rhetoric, but in such a moment, its effect on her instinct revealed itself.

Only sluts, whores, and junkies get raped, her mother's words echoed in her mind.

Denial, Noelle grimly thought in her own voice. The evidence was right there in that slightly-familiar ceiling, in the fact she was naked under the sheets and her clothes were folded over the headboard, and-

"I'd say 'rise and shine' again, but it's like 2am. So it ain't shinin' and you shouldn't be risin'."

And in the dragon, sitting over on the couch. She had an oddly peaceful expression on her face and was quietly working on something, measuring and marking a piece of wood as well as setting out metal miscellany. She had a joint pinched in her lips, on maybe the last third of it.

For a moment Noelle considered just shutting up. She still didn't want to make small-talk, or rather, felt she shouldn't. This person didn't deserve her idle conversation, didn't deserve anything from her, and she certainly didn't want to grow closer to her.

However, she was far, far too sore and tired to heed those beliefs, or to pretend she didn't have an openly unhealthy desire to find out more about this woman.

"What are you doing?" Noelle croaked, trying to swallow but her mouth was just as dry as her throat. She looked around and there was a fresh bottle of water on the bookcase beside the bed. She took a glance to Susie, who didn't look at her, then shrugged internally and opened it for a few much needed gulps.

"Plannin' out a shelf. To replace the one I broke," Susie replied, totally nonchalant. As if breaking furniture was a total norm... Well, it probably was for her.

"You made the last one?" Noelle eventually asked once she'd gotten enough water.

"Yeah. Made half the furniture in here. I like that kinda stuff."

"Father Alvin always said that staying busy protects from evil thoughts... Guess that didn't work for you," Noelle bit. She felt a pang of fear and regret at her unchecked words once she heard them out loud, but Susie just scoffed a laugh.

"Guess it didn't," the dragon agreed as she casually scooped up, examined, then put aside some screws from a few small bowls of parts, sorted by type and size. "Still got a tongue on you after all that, huh?... I really was right about you. Fiery little doe. I respect it even if you're gonna have to learn your limits," she said with no small amusement in her voice, a genuinely contented smirk on her snout lit mostly by the dull cherry of her spliff. "Lucky for you I fucked your throat two more times while you were out so I am well and truly at peace with the universe right now."

Noelle swallowed again. That certainly explained her furiously sore throat and the unshakeable, bitter aftertaste on her tongue. To think that on top of everything else, half of her first time had been spent unconscious.

"Why are you like this?" Noelle asked before she could stop herself. But once she'd said the words and Susie didn't jump across the room at her, more naturally flowed, her anger growing more apparent. "Why are you so awful? Whatever happened to you, why take it out on unrelated people?"

Another scoff, though a less jovial one as Susie at least put down her project to lean on the couch's arm-rest and stare directly over at the deer, jaw in her palm.

"You're so sure there's a story?"

"Of course," Noelle asserted.

"Y'know, some people are just shit. Sometimes bad shit happens to decent people. There ain't always a reason, ain't always some tragic origin," Susie said in a sort of neutral, level growl.

"I think there is though," Noelle insisted without hesitation.

"Would that make it better for you?" Susie asked, her eyes narrowing a bit. Some genuine irritation seemed to be creeping into her expression and tone. "If my dad beat me, if my mom broke bottles over me, if my uncle touched me, would that make you feel better?" For a moment she paused, before an animal grin spread over her muzzle. "Would it comfort you or make me less awful if I had some sad-sap entitled justification for raping you?"

Noelle gulped to try to hold back a shiver, unsuccessfully. The way Susie used that word... She enunciated it so carefully. Purposefully. Didn't even marginally break eye-contact. Never mind avoiding the word for some sort of cognitive dissonance, Susie seemed to explicitly seek the word out. She liked it, Noelle realized. The humane woman didn't just accept that she'd raped someone, she basked in it.

"It wouldn't make you less awful," Noelle said sharply and Susie's grin only widened. "And I don't know if it would make me feel better. But I'm sure there's a story there, even if you're acting like you're just some... Awful force of nature. That's bullshit. You just want to believe that. Maybe I do want to believe that bad things only happen for a reason, maybe that's naïve, but how is it any better to actively want to believe that they never do?!" Noelle snapped, very nearly growing into a yell.

Susie's grin had slowly shrunk throughout, almost in direct proportion to how angry Noelle herself got.

After a pause, the dragon carefully picked her way off the couch, taking the single step to the bed. Noelle wasn't sure whether to stare in defiance or shrink back into a ball, and wound up doing a little bit of both.

But Susie just leaned down, lips open to show off a hint of yellowed teeth.

"Watch your tone, little doe," she breathed out, voice even, eyes masked. "I don't mind you bein' bratty and takin' jabs, even teasing, when we're alone. And you can be frustrated. You can dislike things. Can even be a bit of a princess. It's kinda cute," she said, before her voice dipped into just the tiniest rumble of a growl. "But I've got three hard rules, Jingles. Do not lie to me. Do not fail to show appreciation to me. And do not raise your voice at me."

A pause. Noelle gulped, trying to will herself into pushing that anger down, just for the moment, just for her so-often-absent self-preservation.

"Understand?" Susie asked, tilting her head up just enough for her golden eyes to peer from under her hair.

Another gulp, but nodding was easy. The dragon wasn't lacking for intimidation.

Susie nodded - to herself more than anything - and stood upright again. She glanced over to the side of the bed and let her gaze linger there for a moment.

"You really want the backstory, huh?" she asked after a delay.

Noelle couldn't work out what Susie was staring at, but nodded, trying to be resolute. She believed what Susie had said about there not always being a reason, truly. She knew it already. That people are bad for no reason, that bad things happen to good people for no reason. And the dragon scared her so much whenever she got angry.

But there had to be a reason this time. Even if it was just her instinct in denial of reality, that 'it can happen to others but not me' reflex. There had to be something. And if she could find it... She refused to let herself openly think that there could be hope for the horrible girl. Yet she had no other reason for wanting to know so badly.

Susie gave a dismissive shrug and stepped over to the head of the bed. She noted the way Noelle instinctively bunched the blankets up around herself whenever she got close. "That jacket of yours is nice," she said, seemingly off topic. "Where'd ya get it? Wait, lemme guess. Some ritzy place in Homecity. It's way too well-made for anywhere around here."

Noelle bit her lip with her front teeth, but nodded. She didn't get it there, but it's where it had originally come from, so it was true enough.

Susie reached for the mannequin beside her bed and, carefully removing all of the other things over it, pulled off the jacket Noelle had seen earlier. It was night and day compared to her own. Hers was a soft and plush material, a fashionable cut and design. Overtly expensive. Susie's was a plain black leather, it looked like an actual riding jacket, not that Noelle had ever seen one other than her dad's old one that was also expensive like hers. No labels, no brands, and just a no-nonsense tough and rough material with inbuilt armour padding.

Most of the decoration - aside from some spikes in the shoulders and arms, and some studs in the collar, all of which had clearly been manually added - came from a denim vest that was seemingly sewn into it. Manually torn off sleeves, roughed up by who-could-say-what. As Susie turned it for Noelle to see, there was an elaborate insignia on the back. Two crossed axes - hatchets? That's a one-handed axe, right? - with what looked like some kind of hybrid monster skull in front of them, but plated in metal.

"Do you know what kind of jacket this is?" Susie asked, voice conversational.

Noelle gulped softly. She wasn't born (entirely) under a rock.

"That's, um... I think so...? Is that, um, a gang jacket...?"

"That's right," Susie said, and some warmth infected her voice. Just a tiny bit, and just for a moment. "See, my mom ran with these people, in the town where I was born. She wanted t'make sure I was looked after. Comfortable... Hell, I remember her singin' to me when I was young. Reading me stories. She cared about me. Maybe loved me, even," the dragon said, voice the softest Noelle had heard it as she looked at the jacket.

Noelle just stared, and let her talk.

"She even played games with me," Susie mused a bit, and chuckled at Noelle's confused expression. "That shit about never owning a console, that was bullshit. We were pretty comfortable back home. Hell, I've still got my Mettatendo," the dragon nodded to the other half of her room. "Swiped it when I left. You probably saw my phone too, when I was takin' those pictures of you."

Noelle blinked, because she had seen it but phones were so commonplace that it hadn't clicked. "Then why-"

"Because you wanted to hear about a poor, tragic past," Susie said without even a hint of guilt. "You wanted to see me cry some crocodile tears - literally I guess, heh - over not getting to play fucken' Lane to the Future or Harmonica of Epochs so you could swoop in to save me from such a miserable life."

Noelle opened her mouth to protest... And then closed it. She had nothing for that.

"Anyways. I think she thought the club would protect me too. Because they looked out for each other. Probably a big part of why she was with 'em. But thing is, they didn't even consider her 'one of them.' They were all thugs, half of 'em had body-counts and the other half aspired to it. She was just someone who... Y'know. Sold stuff," Susie decided on. "And I was just her weird quiet kid."

Quiet? Noelle thought, but didn't speak it. She couldn't imagine Susie being the quiet type.

"So one day she gets a surprise job she's really gotta work. Nobody else is available, so she leaves me at the club alone for the first time. I'm like thirteen. Now, we may not have been 'one of them,' but this chick Piper, she is. Scruffy midboss monster, half rat half rattlesnake. Twice the rat," Susie scoffed, but there was no humour. She sat back down on the bed, then, and casually - as if they really were just hanging out - handed Noelle the jacket.

The deer took it, albeit with hesitation and significant caution. The material was so rough it immediately reminded her of its owner.

"Now Piper's fucken' creepy. And the club? They all know it. And even those fucken' dogs have some standards," Susie continued. She re-lit her spliff with one paw then crossed her arms behind her head, crossing her legs likewise to get comfortable. "But she's 'one of them,' so they look the other way. Plus none of 'em want to babysit this weird awkward kid anyway. So when Piper offers, they let her. They get sick of my stomach growlin', Piper offers to take me in the back and whip me up some dinner, nobody protests," she said, still as if rehearsing a normal story. A curious and interesting evening, a funny thing that happened with some friends "But she winds up takin' me way back, into the upstairs area. A whole lotta rooms between us and the others."

Noelle felt pity welling in her soul and tried to deny it. The direction of the story was obvious, but even that didn't dignify Susie's actions.

"Now like I said, they weren't blind to it, and they had some standards. They would look away, but only so much. So, twenty minutes later. I walk back into the, I guess the sorta rec room of their little club. That open door is just enough for one of 'em to hear the screaming from upstairs," Susie recounted. Her voice was hollow, 'casual' the closest to an emotion but even that lacking. The tone of someone who had confronted this story far too many times.

"So one guy turns, sees me, yells for the others. They all see me just standin' there, shiverin' like a leaf. Magic drippin' down my chin, dust caked on my claws. They all stand up, pullin' out guns n' knives n' shit, screaming, 'what happened to Piper'."

Noelle never realized just how hard her paws were gripping the jacket.

"So I tell 'em," Susie says, voice taking on an empty cheer like she was reaching the punchline of the story. "I tell 'em what happened. Exactly what happened. And I tell 'em that if any of them wanna get between me and the exit, they'll be the next person to lose their face."

Noelle tried to speak but nothing came out. She tried again, and her voice was just a rasp. "Did you... Have to fight them?"

"Naw. Still alive ain't I?" Susie laughed, again without humour. "I ain't John Wick now let alone at 13. One adult with her guard down, sure, but dragon or not I was just a kid. Nah. They looked at me, looked at each other, nodded. Three of 'em went into the back to finish the job themselves. They ask more details, I tell 'em. They tell me they misjudged me. That Piper was too sick to stand up for, that anyone as hard as me deserves a place in the gang when I'm older. They give me her jacket, tell me to remember how I got it, how strong I was."

Noelle just stared at the crossed hatchets on Susie's jacket.

"Went home after that. Stayed alone. Told mom, when she got back, and... She screamed at me so damn loud."

"Why?!" Noelle finally found some of her voice to yell, incensed by genuine shock at the turn of events. Susie just smirked a little, up at her ceiling. Red and blue light played on her purple scales every time they tilted.

"She said that she'd raised me better. Raised me to be tough, to not let someone do something like that to me. That I had the knife she gave me and I shouldn't have let myself get separated from it. That it's eat or be eaten, and I'd let the world take a bite."

A pause, as Noelle considered it all. She ran a hoof over one of the padded, protective bits of the jacket.

Only sluts, whores, and junkies get raped.

"That's... So awful."

"See, moms like mine, it doesn't matter if they care," Susie said, far less bothered than Noelle was. "Maybe they do. Maybe they even love their kids. But that's not why they try to set them up, try to care for them. It's because of fear. Mom got mad at me because she wasn't worried about me, not really. She worried about her, what it meant about her. How it would reflect on her, how people would talk about her, how they'd label her as a 'bad mother' and her kid a weak little faggot that she'd raised all wrong."

Noelle's jaw tightened. She was too well aware.

"So I figure... Mom didn't help me. The club didn't help me, y'know, people like that only got loyalty for 'emselves when push comes to shove. There's only one person who can help me, and it's me. So I grabbed as much of my shit as I could fit in one bag. Sebastián died, sad and quiet and alone, and the violet terror was born, someone who'd never let the world get another taste," Susie said with another small scoff. The over-the-top title was clearly at least some degree tongue-in-cheek.

Noelle's soul twisted just a bit. At both the stark reminder of Susie's transness and not at all wanting to know her deadname. "And then you came here? On your own?"

"Yep. Hitchhiked until I found somewhere cops wouldn't be on my ass for squattin'. Found this little place and, it ain't bad. People turn a blind eye to me stealin' shit and as soon as I gotta leave I can take the truck. It's the exact kinda life mom wanted to protect me from but, I gotta say, it's workin' out pretty nice for me," Susie finally concluded her story. That same disaffected expression of hers had barely shifted the whole time.

Noelle's own expression of concern, tinted by horror and guilt, didn't move a whole lot either, staring at the jacket that she was holding against her chest. Out of comfort. The rough leather felt good. Familiar.

After a long pause she handed it back to the older monster, who pulled it back around the mannequin.

"Jacket's nice at least. Shame I can't wear it out. Someone would recognize the style or the whole damn logo and then I'd be in some real shit."

"I... I don't know if I find it 'nice' given its history," Noelle said softly. Her mind was working so hard she didn't know what to think. Susie's story was awful. Of course it didn't totally dignify everything Susie had done but it definitely added some validity to Susie seeing her as a brat. She thought she'd avoided becoming the spoilt rich kid trope, but Susie sure made it feel like she was every bit the stereotype. Just how much excuse did it allow the dragon?

Definitely nowhere near one hundred percent. But something more than zero. She couldn't put a number on that.

"So are y'happy then?" Susie asked with a snort and a wry smirk. "Happy with your little bedtime story?"

Another long pause, but Susie let this one sit. Didn't push. Then;

"Yes."

That made Susie raise a brow. "What, that cheered you up did it?" she asked sarcastically, still in relatively good humour. "Happy for some... Retrospective karma, or somethin'?"

"No! No, it... It was horrible. Awful. I'm so sorry you went through all that... But I'm glad I know you did. I... I think I understand you a little better."

Some part of Noelle's soul couldn't let it go. Couldn't give up hope that the relationship could be salvaged, maybe if she made Susie see she wasn't going to mistreat her, that she-

"What, you think you understand me now?" Susie laughed. But it was a rough and abrasive laugh, like it was moments away from dropping to a growl. It made Noelle shrink back, just a little. The good humour shattered like glass.

"No, I-"

Susie reached over and Noelle only curled up more. But instead of going for the doe, Susie went for Noelle's jacket hanging off the headboard.

"Then you should know what I think of this, right? This poser shit, this stupid fucken' expensive bullshit that wouldn't stop a skateboard stack? This trash you bought with mommy's money and not a single drop of dust?" The dragon was snarling again, and Noelle watched as her paws moved, one gripping the article firmly by the collar, the other moving to its middle, fully brandished her claws, and-

"NO!" Noelle screamed and immediately jumped fully for Susie's arm, grabbing it and pulling on it with everything she could.

She was absolutely powerless, and Susie swatted her off like a child. Noelle tried to lean in again, tried to kick the blankets off herself to get more movement, but a familiar shock backhand caught her in the mouth.

"You still think y'can talk back to me you stupid doe?! Why not, huh? Why shouldn't I shred this fucken' garbage?!" Susie barked, fully letting out the anger that Noelle's bratting had been slowly fomenting in her.

"Because it was my sister's!" Noelle yelled, absolutely undeterred by the backhand and right back on Susie's arm again, still pulling with all her strength. It took a few moments, in her panicked state, to realize that Susie wasn't budging but also wasn't at all pulling against her, and the words were lingering in an air that was silent but for her struggling and whimpering.

"... December, right?"

Noelle froze and unscrunched her face, eyes wide as she looked to Susie, still afraid but overtaken by confusion. She'd never mentioned her sister's name, especially not her full name. The dragon was still positioned to destroy her treasured jacket but paused, her expression much more sober and looking at Noelle carefully.

"... You knew her?" the doe asked, so carefully.

"Never met her, but that bitch had a reputation all the way from here to the port towns," Susie said slowly. "Took a steel bat to a whole heap'a people twice her size and then some. Got nicknamed Krampus. Being the daughter of Rudolph fucken' Holiday didn't help, she was really followin' in daddy's footsteps."

Noelle's eyes widened and her jaw slacked a bit. "My... Dad? I don't... I don't know what you're talking about...?"

"Probably a lot you don't know about your dad," Susie snorted. "Or your whole family. But Holiday and Blizzard are real well-known names even outside'a Hometown, and for more than just your mom bein' Mayor."

At that, Susie looked at the jacket again. Stared for a moment. Then finally lowered her paw and threw it back over to Noelle, who immediately gripped it protectively.

"You ain't earned that. Krampus did, though. I ain't shredding a ghost's stuff, but you'd damn well better try to live up to it if you're gonna wear it around," Susie huffed... Then her frown softened just a fraction, voice following suit. "You probably can, though. You stood up to me again... There's somethin' special in you, little doe."

There was a pause as Noelle just held the jacket, comforted by its softness, its safety, that she'd managed to convince Susie not to do another thing that would have truly broken something irreplaceable. But her mind latched onto something else.

"You keep calling me special... You said you're treating me better than the, the 'other girls' like this... And you seem to know a lot about my family... Just what do you want, Susie?" Noelle asked, not looking up from the plush leather. Adrenaline still pumped through her but having her jacket back made her feel some small measure of security.

Susie kept those toxic-yellow eyes on Noelle. It was a habit Noelle was noticing more and more, how Susie would just stare at her for long stretches, unblinking, subtly shifting over her features. Like she was watching for some kind of sign. Gauging something. A predator watching prey.

Then, a little smirk pulled at her muzzle.

"Y'know, I didn't have a plan before dinner... When the little brat town-princess asked me out, I was gonna just do what I always do."

"Which would be...?" Noelle asked.

"Which would be, dosing you up enough you wouldn't even remember me ruinin' your holes until tests'd be pointless," Susie said - almost gloated - in a broad grin, taking just a minuscule, idle puff of her joint. "Wouldn't have given you time to practice and adjust to me like I'm plannin' now, time to make sure it's just as much pleasure as pain... Would've just about torn you in half, not one enjoyable thing about it. At least, not if you weren't a masochistic freak."

Noelle gulped hard. She wanted to pretend Susie was wrong, that she didn't feel a throb of heat in her still-sore guts.

"But," Susie continued, "I changed my mind at dinner. After I saw how you handled that bitch server."

The doe monster pursed her lips. She hadn't even decided whether she liked how she'd handled that, hadn't had time to really think about it... And yet, she couldn't deny a pang of pride at Susie's praise.

"You've got some real fire in you, Jingles... Actually, not a fire. A snowstorm. A blizzard," the dragon breathed. She glanced at Noelle a moment, tongue tracing her teeth. Then one arm came down, not quite wrapping around Noelle but more just lying around her and giving the dragon the position to lean over her. Cutting off any escape, even as Noelle reflexively shirked, but with a dragon on one side and a wall on the other she could only sink into the bed slightly.

Fire burned in Susie's eyes. A sudden show of appreciation, of want, of desire.

"The way you crushed her like that? The way you pulled rank, used her family and her money against her? The way you went straight for her throat and then twisted the knife 'till she was practically on her knees, begging, asking whether she should polish your cock while she was down there?" Susie breathed out, growing genuinely and visibly excited and having to take a breath to steady herself. "That wasn't just impressive. That was. Fucking. Hot."

The fire in Susie's eyes was matched by one in her throat, smoke pouring from it, and it was too dark to be just from the joint.

Noelle remembered that smoke from earlier. When Susie had been really worked up, approaching her peak. There was no question that she meant the words.

"I've got strength, but you've got power," the dragon continued, crawling over more and truly giving the deer nowhere to run, a paw coming down to cup her cheek. She breathed the last of her drag into Noelle's face; or maybe it was just her regular smoke. "You can reach people I can't, could get me outta trouble that I can't just bite and punch my way out of. Sure, I can fuck someone up, leave 'em leaking dust - and other things - in a ditch, but you can ruin them. Leave 'em with no home to go home to and no family to turn to, without even gettin' dust on your hands, without even leavin' the office."

Even backed up like that, Noelle gulped softly and met Susie's gaze.

"So you just want to use me as a pet politician...?"

Susie grinned at the accusation, only amused by it apparently.

"Yeah... The idea of a get outta jail free card that also happens to be addicted to my fat fucking dick is a nice one," Susie teased in a playful voice, causing another flare to burn off in Noelle's stomach. "But it ain't just that," she said softer, bordering on a whisper and much more serious. "Anyone I can't reach, you can ruin. Anyone who's just outside the rules, I can remove. You cover for me, I cover for you, and we can get to places neither of us could get on our own. Fuck being some gangster and a pol-sci student trying to become a council worker or whatever. We could be something incredible. We could own this fucken' town and that would just be the absolute fucken' start of it."

Her words grew so warm and sweet. Promise laced with poison, a comforting fire that would burn you alive if the wind carried it one more inch, her eyes the colour of honey and nightshade. She sucked in another, larger drag of the joint.

Noelle just stared, too afraid to talk because she felt like she might give away just how alluring, how wonderful those words all sounded, and how much she felt some kind of perverse strength infusing her.

A pause, as Susie held it.

"We could rule the fucken' world, Holiday," she breathed out. The smoke from her pull dripped up from the corners of her mouth to bathe her scales with her words. She reached to grab Noelle's scruff then dipped her head down and caught the doe in another kiss, the other half of the dragon's drag filling Noelle's mouth immediately.

Noelle didn't fight it. She knew better by now, Susie's assaults burned into her muscle memory so quickly, and the dragon growled in satisfaction.

It didn't last long. Susie had no intention of stoking any embers when she was in such a contented mood. But she made sure to share a solid lungful with the little doe, the excess pouring out from their joined muzzles, before she pulled back and rolled onto her back again.

Noelle breathed out more quickly than last time once she saw Susie wasn't checking her. But the kiss was still long enough to get a bit of it in her system, she was sure. Instead she spent a few moments looking at Susie, turning the dragon's offer in her mind before likewise rolling onto her back.

"And what does that have to do with my family? I mean, besides the fact that my mom being mayor would probably help my own position?" Noelle eventually found her voice to ask.

"Because that's exactly what they were," Susie clarified to the ceiling. "Rudolph Blizzard was a thug like me. Smart one though. He realized he'd die in a ditch somewhere if he didn't have boardroom power to go with more classic muscle. So he snared a political up-and-comer from some rich-ass elite family, took their name. Hell, maybe he had her in a position a whole lot like this one," the monster joked, making Noelle's muzzle twist a bit. "But that's how they roll now. Covering each others' asses, covering their weaknesses. Bureaucracy when someone's out of reach of a fist, good old trusty violence when the pen runs dry."

Noelle went quiet again. She had no idea if it was true... But she had noticed more than a few peculiarities to her family, and Susie's story filled an awful lot of gaps. Her dad's occasional sternly serious moments that gave her chills. How much Comet acquiesced to him even though she was the mayor and a staunch feminist. The way she'd come home complaining that she'd finally hit her limit with someone, and Rudy would just laugh it off and assure her that he'd deal with it somehow. How much that calmed her down. His occasional long, and always vague 'business trips'.

How he avoided questions about his work. His old 'riding jacket'.

Noelle forced the thoughts out of her mind. She'd think of a way to verify that, and deal with the repercussions if it turned true. She didn't want Susie getting into her head over nothing.

"Still unsure huh?" Susie asked.

Do not lie, the dragon's words echoed in the doe's mind.

"Yes," Noelle said simply. She didn't want to lie, but she didn't want to elaborate too much either. Thankfully Susie seemed fine with this and just chuckled.

"Tell ya what," she said, before her tongue snaked out, wrapped around the last of her joint, and snapped it into her mouth, crunching it down like it was a snack.

Gross.

"I'll give you a deal, Jingles. 'cus I really do want this to be, y'know. A give n' take sorta thing," Susie hummed, considering for just a moment. But it was clear she'd come with this idea pre-cooked. "I'll give you some time, and space. I won't bother you for one week, hell, I'll even skip school so ya don't have to see me. One week, and one of two things happens: either you come pay me a visit, or I skip town."

Noelle blinked, sitting up just a bit in the bed to give an incredulous look over at Susie.

"Really?"

"Yep," Susie said simply.

Noelle had been starting to notice her tells. She couldn't stop herself from a cheeky little smirk when she did, had trouble with precise eye-contact, would fidget sucking on her teeth. She actually wasn't a very good liar at all. But there was no sign of them.

"You'd just leave?"

"I'd need to skip town anyway, if you turned me in. Mayor would hunt me down like a dog, hell, your old man'd probably jump out of his hospital bed to find me himself," she chuckled.

"And what if I... Tell mom that? What if I tell her you'll run unless we corner you?"

Susie actually laughed outright at that, a harsh rasping sound that scraped its way out of her maw. "If you wanted to do that, you wouldn't tell me first. And if you did, your old lady'd get all caught up in red tape. Rudy might get on the warpath, but not in just a week given what he's in bed for. And if you did manage to work around all that even after telling me to my face?" Susie asked, glancing down from the corner of her eye at the doe. "Well, I think I'd be too damn impressed to be all that mad about it. For a while anyway. Who knows how I'd feel after some time behind bars... Might just feel a little resentful after a couple years."

Noelle gulped, but she was quickly getting good at not letting her fear show on her face.

"'sides, I just don't think you will. I think you're a smart girl, I think you'll see the potential we have together. And I think you wanna know, if I can turn your whole damn world on its head just by fucking your throat, what it'd feel like for me to really make you mine, and blow your little back out... You won't be able to stay away, you'll drop in," Susie said, assured, in an idle voice as if she was just stating facts to herself.

Noelle pinched her lips more, annoyed at the arrogance. Mostly because the dragon's words made her breath catch.

But Susie's next words were... Different.

"Plus there's that, y'know. Elephant in the room. That little freebie I gave you."

Susie's casual expression split into a wicked grin, looking even more the predator than Noelle had yet seen her. A level of cocksure arrogance that she hadn't shown before. Enough to make the deer's fur stand on end, just on reflex, even before the blow.

"I also think that you understand that you need me too," Susie said, and her voice matched her expression. Slower, steadier. Not a single, minuscule hint of hesitation or insecurity. "You get it, right? That you'd be well and truly fucked without me?"

Noelle gulped.

Angel, why was her magic running cold?

Why did she have such a bad feeling all of a sudden?

"What do you mean?" she asked, cautiously.

Her soul hammered.

"Y'know. That little secret between you, me, and Kris. I guess it's less of an elephant and more like a, giant golden statue of a bird or somethin'."

Noelle's words and breath caught, her magic frozen in her veins. Her mind was blank, empty, wiped clean with chemical efficiency.

Susie looked over and saw the expression, but just let her grin simmer into a smirk.

"Don't worry," she assured. "I told you, it's a freebie. Even if I skip town, hell, even if you try to rat me out, nobody'll hear about that from me. I ain't a snitch. But I think you've got some honour in you Jingles. And opting not to tell anyone about that particular frozen nugget..."

i didn't i don't i didn't it wasn't me it was kris it was them they made me do it it was him he got in my way he wouldn't move he wouldn't back down i had no choice i didn't know i didn't

"I think you'll show appreciation for that. And I think you understand that you can't go back to before that. What's done is done," the dragon said off-handedly as she got up from the bed, walked to turn the TV off, and then rolled back into the bed.

Noelle got one last glimpse of that machete grin before the Christmas lights went off too.

"I've done some awful shit, Holiday. One day it'll probably catch up, and I'll probably need some help to sweep it under the rug. But now? So have you. And one day you might need something a little more off the books to wipe the record clean. Just hope ya know, if you have my back, I'll have yours too, little doe."

Noelle swallowed.

Her throat was dry, so dry.

Her mind swam.

Distantly, she could feel herself shivering.

Cold.

So, so cold.

Freezing cold.

"I don't know what you're talking about," someone said, the words falling from her own quivering lips.

"Sure," Susie snorted. "I remember that ole chestnut, yeah. Get some rest," the dragon all but commanded, pulled the covers up around herself, and then twisted herself into a comfy, snug blanket-cocoon. "Sweet dreams, Jingles."

...

Noelle laid still for a moment, but that ball of blankets was emanating an irresistible heat compared to the jagged ice in her gut and her mind, and she knew the heat would help her cram that freezing cold back into whatever cage it had momentarily escaped from. So she leaned on it. But when she did, the body within squirmed, just enough to loosen the blanket cocoon, then pulled her into it. Strong arms captured her, coiled around her body, holding her against powerful muscles blanketed by soft hide. A flat chest to push her cheek to, and a huge paw against the back of her head to hold her against it.

Somewhere she registered that the chest was wet. So was her cheek. She couldn't be sure why.

She had no intention of sleeping. But despite her mind being blank it was so, so loud, and she direly needed a temporary distraction. She found it, not only in the larger woman's chest and embrace, in the surprisingly delicate fingers running through her hair and the strong legs that wrapped around her own.

But also in her words, branded onto her brain, echoing over and over in the doe's mind. Sweet. Warm. Secure. Safe. Enough to fight that razor frost, to dig it out from where it stabbed into her soul and truly push it back down into the depths.

Again, and again, that sugary promise looped. A mantra. A testament, sweetly-sung gospel, a prayer to the Angel.

We could rule the fucken' world, Holiday.

===

At some point during the night Susie rolled over, extremely deep in her sleep and snoring up a storm, and Noelle made her escape.

Not that it was much of an escape. Her clothes had been surprisingly neatly folded over the headboard, her phone was on the table out in the open and her bag next to the stairwell exit with all of her things in it. The door was unlocked. Susie had made precisely zero attempt to keep her locked down after the initial show of the collar, if anything she'd prepared everything to make sure Noelle could leave quickly. It felt like she could have just left at any point after Susie had had her fun.

Maybe she could have. After all, she didn't even try.

When she emerged from the basement, and then from the old run-down house, she found herself only just barely ahead of the seemingly encroaching treeline, explaining some of the flora growing inside. That made sense. She often heard her mother talking about the troubles of abandoned houses and buildings in the forest south of town, the properties so cheap and undesirable that selling was out of the question and renovating was more cost than it was worth.

It was mostly still pitch black, but the grey-blue glow of the sun barely beginning to poke its head over the horizon was starting to fill the air, and Noelle dearly hoped she could get home before morning traffic started up.

The tree line was convenient for some privacy at least, letting her use one of the water bottles she'd swiped on the way out to freshen up a bit, cleaning at least some of the dried cum out of her fur. She was probably a scruffy mess, but that was definitely not the worst things could be.

She pulled her jacket on and did it up to cover her torn shirt. That didn't even register as a concern compared to her underwear situation; Susie had shredded hers and she best she could do was swipe a pair of (clearly used, gross gross gross gross) boxers from what seemed to be Susie's laundry pile. They were too big and were visible under her skirt, but better than the alternative, and there simply wasn't anything more she could do about that.

Street lights greeted her when she got to the main road, early-morning mist rolling over the town like slow-motion waves, the light liquid dancing around amber lights.

Her brain didn't know how to parse the beginning of a morning when she'd gotten so little sleep, torn between feeling like she was up too late or woken too early. But for a mercy it was empty of thoughts aside from the driving desire to get home and take a scalding shower, and she couldn't have been more thankful for that.

Noelle got home and thanked the Angel for it being without incident, then had her solid two hours of shower. Though she unsurprisingly didn't feel clean, she did actually feel better than she'd expected. She could have crawled into bed then and there, but she didn't want to destroy her sleeping pattern completely.

Besides, she had something she direly needed to do, one thought that wouldn't be pushed down into her subconscious, and was on a strict time-limit given her mother was due home either that night or the next morning.

So, Noelle raided Mayor Holiday's home office.

Thankfully she knew where her mother's keys were, and knew how to get around without evidence, old tricks Dess had taught her to try to inspire some rebellion. She was extremely thorough in noting the position of things before she touched them, systematically dealing with only one thing at a time, putting everything back exactly where she found it and not messing with something after she'd done that.

The first thing to jump out at here were some very old warrants that had been personally declined by her mother. They were curiously sparse on details. Just singular locations, filed under 'gang activity,' and declined for being a waste of money to overreach into low-probability cases. Innocuous enough reasons, but their timing was clearly suspicious.

Beyond that, it didn't seem that Comet stored many records at home... But the ones she did all followed a theme. Old legislation, mostly from when she'd first gotten into office. Unusually lax, completely out of character with her usual conservative approach. And often very specific. Shifting the restrictions on the possession of some weapons, nothing outlandish, the kind of stuff you'd expect of a rural Mayor trying to keep farmers safe and happy.

A lot of personally approved developments. Ones that, again, were a bit more adventurous than Comet usually gave easy approval for.

The discharging of Asgore Dreemurr, Kris' father, from the police force jumped out at her. No reason was given, instead citing a piece of paperwork that wasn't actually attached.

Noelle wondered if that other piece of paperwork had perhaps been mysteriously lost.

She wondered if those developments had been paid for via unusual means, or if perhaps the buildings themselves hid secrets.

She wondered if the guns that had been given loosened restrictions were, perhaps, any of the ones that her father owned and had occasionally shown her, mostly before her transition.

The doe gulped as she put back the last piece of paperwork from the work side of her mother's files. Nothing incriminating. Nothing that confirmed anything.

But that icy feeling in her gut just wouldn't leave.

The declined warrants, especially, kept returning to her mind.

The ability to simply put a stamp down, to shrug and state an investigation was going outside its scope and wasting taxpayer dollars on a lost cause. To just... Put an end to a trail with nothing more than standard bureaucratic process.

In the tiny window of her mind where Noelle accepted what had happened, that did sound potentially, incredibly, useful.

With her mind mostly occupied Noelle moved on to the more personal side of her mother's records, which she only even looked in on a whim, a compulsive desire to be thorough. It all seemed about what Noelle had expected; bank statements, tax filings, important receipts. Extremely mundane things.

But, on the verge of giving up, Noelle found one last batch of papers. Hospitalization records. Her father's.

Neither he nor Comet had specified exactly why he was in that bed. From his coughing and fragile constitution, along with his reluctance to say anything or tell anyone about developments or treatments, Noelle had assumed the worst. Cancer was always at the front of her mind.

She had assumed wrong, and several of the terms she had to look up on her phone.

Perforated lungs resulting in traumatic pneumothorax.

Hypoxia.

Multiple blood transfusions, some with accompanying complications.

With a dark and dry humour, she almost scoffed to herself when she'd spent all that time looking up terms, trying to connect dots, only to find another earlier record that spelled it out without any need for sleuthing.

Seven bullet extractions.

===

Monday passed in a daze, and Noelle was certain it wouldn't be the only day that week to do so.

Susie again hadn't lied, she was missing from class for the whole day, and Noelle didn't doubt her words that the day would turn into a week. It was an open secret that the girl was impossible to contact when she didn't want to be. Anyone else's parents would've gotten a call from Alphys or even Ms. Dreemurr, but never Susie. Now Noelle knew why.

She'd been getting closer with Kris lately, but they kept their distance for obvious reasons and she wasn't sure why. Normally Berdly would've been pestering her for help on homework, but he was missing too for even more obvious reasons no no no no nothing nothing happened there are no reasons none nothing none Even Catti seemed to be keeping to herself and Noelle didn't have the initiative to change it, wasn't even sure if she would've wanted to, given how conflicted Noelle always felt about spending time with the odd, intense cat monster.

Everything was so normal but just so... Not. Here was school marching on like nothing was wrong. The teachers gave assignments, she was expected to do them and hand them in. Information crammed into her head, a break for lunch, more information. Her head was too full, and it all just dripped out as soon as it was stuffed in, drops of water poured into an ocean of tar already so full that only the surface tension kept it from bursting out of her skull. Lost subjects, lost hours, a lost day and she was certain that, too, would be followed by more.

Before she knew it she was home again, cooking dinner in that same trance. Having to remind herself to cook for two, because-

A car in the driveway. A firmly shut door. Keys scraping in the lock.

Noelle knew it was her opportunity. Susie had underestimated her. Expected her to just fall in line, a dog who crawled back to her master even after being kicked.

But all's it would take was one conversation. One exchange. She'd be brave and show her mother the scratches and bruises, because she could simply say she was drugged, which was true. Explain that they needed to act fast. Hell, never mind process. If it was true her mother was corrupt, that she was actually connected to some criminal underworld dealings, maybe they wouldn't even need to bother with the red tape. If Susie would've been surprised to find police at her door, how much more would she be if she found "thugs" - as Susie herself had put it - waiting in a car outside her house?

"Noelle, I'm home," Comet said in her always-even voice, not so much fanfare as simply announcing her presence.

This was her chance.

All's she had to do was take it.

===

A full moon loomed overhead and Noelle couldn't help but spend a moment enraptured.

Catti had always told her that the moon represented femininity. She'd also said that the moon was a beacon, soaking and reflecting the sun at a time otherwise overrun by darkness, guiding people who needed light when there was none. These two things had, apparently, led Catti to consider the doe as 'having an aspect of shining umbral.' Which was a weird thing to say even before considering this happened before Noelle had transitioned, but it seemed weirdness was just a standard for her friends.

In that moment it made some sense, though. In her youth Rudy had always tried to get her to be more outgoing, to be more loud and strong and bright. Shown her his guns, encouraged her to maybe one day ask him to take her shooting, or even hunting.

Sun.

Son.

There were a lot of factors for her mother taking a more active role. Her dad's hospitalization and Dess going missing were certainly present, but how much did her transition weigh? Had it been, at least in part, because she had gone from the son to the daughter, solar to lunar? She'd always internalized the lessons that girls had been taught more than the ones intended for boys. Even if she didn't exactly follow those lessons - Dess was more of a role model to her than anyone and she violently eschewed them, and her mother rejected any notions of feminine submission - she still felt the pressures of them.

It didn't matter if her parents hadn't instilled those values, media was so eager to fill in for them. She'd heard the words on TV so often, but even if half the time they were uttered in irony or disdain, they were uttered none the less.

Shoulders straight, head down.

Listen, don't speak.

Good girls are seen, not heard.

The moon was like that. More subtle. More reserved, compared to the sun.

And yet, the moon played such an important role. It may not bask the world in a flood of light, but without the moon she wouldn't even be able to find her steps on the sidewalk. It offered at least enough light for guidance. Its gravity pulled the waves, kept the waters of the world flowing. Just as much a key to life as the more obvious sun.

Maybe, Noelle thought, the moon really was something to aspire to.

Because Susie was more like the sun. Bright and glaring. Loud. Dangerous. It could sear your eyes and burn your skin.

One could walk on the moon, but disintegrate millions of miles from even touching the sun's surface.

The sun's life-giving was much more obvious, but the moon was never, ever any less important.

Her daze, and her momentary effort to build up her courage, fell away to the feeling of something pushing into the small of her back. Somehow, despite being only about two fingers in width, it felt enormously heavy. Perhaps the slight metallic clinking that accompanied it added to the feeling.

"Your valuables or your life."

Noelle's soul froze. She was getting extremely well acquainted with her fight-or-flight reflex this week, and it seemed to keep opting for that third thing in 'freeze.'

For a mercy, the owner of the shrill and raspy voice seemed to understand this.

"Take your time, prey-bitch. Not too much though. That's a gun to your back. All's you have to do is drop your purse, your phone, any jewellery you're wearing, and that nice-looking jacket, and then we can both be on our way."

Noelle swallowed.

Her last week had been a haze as predicted. A whirlwind of events and non-events, of normalcy where there should have been uproar and chaos where there would never be calm ever, ever again. Everything had changed. Even in the face of the bizarrely normal school week she'd had, everything had changed, warped, mutated irreversibly into something so warped as to barely be recognizable, so much that she could hardly recall what it felt like to exist before it. She could never go back to how she was before.

She'd run the weekend's events in her mind, over and over and over. It consumed her. It engulfed her like the sun.

She'd come to many conclusions about that weekend, and what it meant to her. She still had a lot of unanswered questions, a lot of untied threads, but some things, she'd decided on.

Her teeth clenched, and her paws, tense at her sides, balled into fists.

"Do you know who I am?" she asked, her tone razor.

"Should I?" the voice asked back. It sounded like the owner was trying to come off as cocky but was more surprised than anything, that someone would speak up to them in such a situation.

"I'm Noelle Holiday. My mother is the mayor, Comet Holiday, and my father is Rudolph Holiday. I'm not some girl you can just disappear without anyone noticing."

There was a long pause, and Noelle felt the pressure of the gun in her back lighten somewhat.

"Is that so?" the person asked, sounding cautious.

"It is," Noelle insisted, summoning her courage. Her voice shook as she stared down the street, more empty than any place had ever been, no world or reality beyond the short illumination of the single street light above them. But there was - she hoped - just as much angry resolve as there was fear for her life. "You can let me go, and I'll forget this happened. I haven't seen your face. But if you so much as hurt me, they'll come for you. They're angry, y'know? Already lost one daughter. With what they'd do to you, you'll wish that you just went to jail, or got gunned down by police, or-"

Noelle squealed as she was pulled and spun by one of her antlers, almost falling one way then the other and finally steadied, barely on her feet, by metal painfully jamming its way between her lips and her teeth, rattling her skull in the process. She still hadn't fully recovered from what she was sure had been a concussion on the weekend, adding a sludgy soreness to everything. It didn't compare to the absolute racing panic that shot through her body when her mind caught up with the fact that the barrel of a gun was wedged between her teeth.

"You're a hell of a mouthy bitch, y'know that? A little brat who thinks she can get whatever she wants in this world are ya?" the figure asked in a hiss.

Noelle could make out a few details under the street-light. A large round head, like a gecko, or maybe a frog, short fur like straw both in colour and consistency. A midboss probably. Nobody she knew. A baggy jacket obscured most of his body.

She didn't get any more time to look, as he rattled both her head, using her antler, and the gun in her mouth. Every scrape of metal against her teeth felt like sparking electricity through her skull and it made her body writhe, shivering from head to toe and having to fight against her instinct to run for her life. Her tongue recoiled but only ended up pressed directly against the muzzle itself, searing the impression of where a bullet would emerge into her brain.

Angel, what was wrong with her that she could feel an ember in her abdomen.

"You really thought that was a good idea? Saying that? Thought you'd intimidate me, you dumb little princess?" the stranger asked, still holding tight onto her. Despite everything, his voice sounded panicked. "Think I won't just run with this good luck? Said it yourself, parents are desperate. Wonder how much they'll give me for your safe return after their other kid ran away from home? Enough to skip the border, that's for sure," he gloated, even as his breathing was so obviously picking up wildly.

Noelle whimpered around the cold hard steel as she tried not to give in completely, to either burst into tears or just fight what she already knew would be a pointless fight. This monster was scared and desperate, and she'd only made him more so. More liable to do something drastic. She'd fucked up badly, yet again. However much her life was warped and twisted, now, it would probably, and simply, end.

Something loudly clanged against the street light beside them. The monster's grip on her antler tightened, ensuring she didn't have any chance to run, but he painfully scraped the gun out from between her teeth to point it at the noise.

"Who the fuck is there?! Keep walking!"

The next seconds happened in an instant, yet long enough for Noelle to intricately parse every single detail. Belying its size, a figure near-silently leapt over a bush on the opposite side to them as the street light. In one smooth motion it landed, reached out, and grabbed the gun arm of her assailant. It jerked, barely, and the air thundered with a gunshot, putting a piercing ringing in Noelle's ears and setting her eyes to blurring and watering, yet she didn't, couldn't, flinch.

Jagged spears sunk into the monster's sleeve and he screamed in agony. Another gunshot, then the weapon clattered to the ground, distant and quiet compared to the two explosions of gunpowder. As soon as the gun was free, it was kicked into the bushes the figure had come from.

A hand sunk into the collar of his jacket and pulled him clear off the ground, and the knives released his arm to gnash in front of his face.

"You stupid motherfucker. You thought you could jump from a random fucken' mugger to a kidnapper? You thought you could jump straight up the ladder to the mayor's daughter?" that growl somehow twisted to form words, so full of gravel they took precious moments to even decipher. The other monster's face was splattered with his own blood-magic at every word.

There was a sickening wet crunch, then, as two foreheads met with incredible force. The grip on Noelle's antler finally slacked completely and she stumbled back from the fray, eyes wide with fear but still unable, unwilling to look away.

Susie was hunched over the monster who had assailed her, one giant paw gripped around his wrist and the other around his throat, holding him like a limp doll while he squirmed in her grip, just trying to get as far from her maw as possible to no avail. A black hoodie did nothing to hide how massive her form looked beside him. Her pupils fully contracted into invisible pin-pricks, eyes smouldering with magic and rage, hunched down into a powerful stance yet still looming over him. Drool and aether both dripped from the enormous cleavers she called teeth.

As angry as the prior words were the next were so full of fire they carried black smoke with them, pouring out of the dragon's mouth like liqueous smoke off dry ice.

"You thought you could fuck, with my bitch?"

Noelle's soul thudded in her chest.

Hers.

A whimper from the other monster. A whine. A mewling sound of submission, far more pathetic than any noise Noelle had made a week ago.

"I-I'm sorry, Asteria, I did'n-I didn't know, that, that she was-"

"Y-Y-Y-You didn't know what, fucker, that she was mine? Didn't get the memo that I'd staked my claim? She's in this town, isn't she? And whose town is this, you little tadpole fuck?!"

Talons sunk into the frog monster's wrist where Susie gripped it, and more aether dripped down the sleeve of her hoodie.

"I'm sorry, Sebastián! It won't happen ag-"

"You missed that fucking memo too?!" Susie roared, and the frog squirmed more still. "It's Susie now, not that I wanna hear my name in your filthy fucken' mouth, and you're damn fucking right it won't happen again! Noelle is my girl, MINE, you'll keep your dirty fucken' paws off her and whenever you wake up you'll tell everyone you meet to do the fucken' same, you'll let 'em know that nobody fucks with the Holiday girl, got it?!"

"I'm sorry I-"

The monster's words trailed into yet more wails as Susie released his wrist, only to start hurling savage punches directly into his face. He tried to protect himself but the way Susie shook him so effortlessly by his collar with one hand loosened it, and each blow further still, as more and more aether speckled the dragon's fist and face.

"I said, got it?!"

"Susie I didn't-"

More swings, now with almost nothing to slow their descent. More aether. More of Susie's bloody teeth glinting in the street light. The other monster's voice was getting wet, bubbly.

"GOT IT?!"

"YES!" the monster screamed.

Noelle thought the blows would stop. And they did. After one more, final, decisive crunch of Susie's fist slamming into his temple. His whole body crumpled like a deflating balloon, falling limp and silent in Susie's grip, before likewise falling into a heap on the sidewalk when the dragon released him.

...

Silence filled the air, and Noelle just kept staring. The frog monster's arms jutted from his body in such an unnatural way, not broken but fully limp in a way that wasn't possible without consciousness being robbed in such a way.

She knew she should feel disgusted. Such violence shouldn't be visited on anyone, no matter what. Justice, she'd been taught, was for judges and courts to decide, and then meted out with things designed to either rehabilitate or just isolate. Such brutality was barbaric. Uncivilized.

She knew that was how she should feel.

She knew it.

She knew to feel otherwise was simply wrong.

She knew that, truly.

A heavy paw on her arm pulled Noelle from her thoughts, looking up at the dragon that now stood over her.

Susie's pupils had widened slightly, but not by much. Her teeth, her claws had retracted but still enlarged enough for the wicked talons to press against Noelle's flesh, for the dragon's teeth to extend over the sides of her lips, her mouth over-full. Some middle-ground between monster and animal, between person and beast. The viscera that proved her brutality speckled her entire upper body, dripped from one of her extended teeth.

"You okay, Jingles?" Susie asked.

Noelle's knees almost buckled that her tone, even so full of gravel, even with that terrifying visage, was so delicate and worried. She wondered if Susie's paw on her shoulder was the only thing keeping her upright. The fact her soul slowed in its beating a little was the only reason she noticed how fast it was hammering in the first place.

She tried to make a sound, but only got a rasp. Swallowed, then tried again.

"Yeah... Yes I'm, I'm okay."

"He didn't hurt you?"

"He didn't."

That gentle demeanour cracked a little, a single hairline fracture in the form of a sharp grin over the dragon's maw.

"Feelin' a little hot there?"

The doe's eyes widened.

"Wh-, It, I-I wasn't-"

"Don't lie to me, remember?" Susie asked, taking that increasingly-familiar tone of gentle with a distant hint of threat to it. She'd calmed down more still, her teeth back to normal at least. But she didn't wait for the stammering doe to reply, instead leaning down to pick up the monster's discarded gun. She examined it for a moment, turning it around in her paw and running digits over it while Noelle tried to form a response.

But no response came, because after a pause Susie raised the gun and pushed the end of its barrel to Noelle's temple. The muzzle was still warm from being fired.

"Bet it'd be even better with me doing it, huh?"

Noelle locked up to a degree she didn't know possible, her body and breath and mind all simultaneously freezing solid, her world reduced just to her pounding soul and Susie's suddenly calm, easy smile.

The hammer clicked as it was pulled back.

"This still work for you? Or did you like it more in your mouth?"

No noise was possible. No movement. No thought.

The dragon raised a brow at the lack of response.

Her smile dropped slightly.

And the hammer fell.

The noise and vibration echoed through Noelle's skull like an empty auditorium.

Susie's raucous laughter shattered the moment.

"Fuck, the look on your face. Damn. You really are a freak. And this thing's pretty neat, haven't seen a semi-auto with a hammer block before," Susie hummed as she pulled the gun away and examined it again. She had an impressed look on her face at what it had achieved, like she'd just tested out a high quality tool instead of almost scaring the deer halfway-and-change to death.

But at that, she glanced over her shoulder, double-checked the safety, then stuffed the gun into the front of her pants.

"C'mon, though. This place is pretty empty but someone might'a heard those gunshots, so let's not sit around like idiots huh?" the dragon asked, reached down to grab Noelle by the wrist, and started walking.

Noelle followed limply, still recovering. For at least some kind of mercy Susie gave her a few minutes to recover, not even rushing her when she was falling behind a bit due to both shock and the differences in physiology.

After a block or two Susie looked back at the deer and apparently judged that both they'd made enough distance and Noelle had recovered enough. The doe was still quiet and breathing hard but no longer in that glassy dissociation. Susie stopped, turned, tugged the doe's wrist towards her. One paw reached down to scoop up the small of her back, pulling their bodies flush, while the other pulled a claw up under the doe's chin to tilt her head up, towards the dragon's easy grin.

The gun in Susie's pants jabbed against Noelle's stomach.

"So. Now that we've got some time. Can't help but notice you were wonderin' in the direction of my little den. So what brings you to this neck of the woods, little doe?"

Noelle gulped hard but, to Susie's fairly obvious surprise, she kept up eye-contact and didn't even shirk away.

Her week had passed in a daze, certainly, and she was still deep in whatever the hell Susie's stunt with the gun's safety had caused in her. But she'd still had a lot of time to think about the events, about her feelings, about her desires. Obviously. She certainly wouldn't have been in the south of town otherwise. Maybe Susie expected stammering or excuses, instead she got a relatively stony stare.

"You," Noelle admitted simply. She let it hang in the air for just a moment, just enough for Susie to show her surprise on her face, but then quickly followed it. "You said not to lie to you, Susie, and I won't. I couldn't stop thinking about last weekend."

Susie's expression had momentarily been broken by that surprise, but her grin pulled back in full form.

"Finally accepting it huh...? You have to have, right, since I don't hear squad car sirens," the dragon joked in a smoky chuckle.

But Noelle's expression still didn't budge.

"No."

"... No?" Susie asked, the confusion returned stronger.

"I didn't... I don't accept everything that happened last weekend," Noelle said as she pulled away slightly, and Susie let her go, mostly thanks to how disarmed she felt. "You hurt me, Susie. And... Some of the hurt, you're right, I liked. Some of it I didn't. I don't know where the line is. You don't either."

Susie's mouth opened, then closed again as her eyes narrowed slightly. She'd expected either reluctant acceptance, gleeful submission, or righteous anger. Or just plain damn shock from the gun thing. Not... Whatever this was.

"But I do know what I definitely liked, and that was how you made me feel grown-up. Free. Independent," Noelle said, more softly now that Susie seemed to have been pacified a bit. She swallowed softly, brown eyes locked onto the dragon standing over her. "Strong."

Susie's eyes crinkled a bit at that, and a hint of her smirk returned, if only a hint.

"You're still tryna tame me...?"

"No," Noelle said quickly, and meant it. "No, I don't want to 'fix' you. Not anymore. Maybe I want to meet you in the middle." She paused. Then a smile - one that was at once guilty, reluctant, and genuinely humoured - pulled at her muzzle. "Maybe I want you to fix me. I don't know."

Susie's smirk only widened. She stepped in again, this time her paw reaching to press, surprisingly delicately, to Noelle's cheek.

"Maybe you want me to make you worse?" she rumbled.

Noelle, still surprising the dragon, let herself lean into the paw, and her eyes close for a moment.

"Maybe I do."

Susie's tongue dragged over her teeth, and her mouth pulled further still.

"A'ight then, Jingles. Another deal for ya," Susie said, in the middle of thinking to herself, this deal clearly more spur of the moment. A pause in a breath. Then; "You stick to those hard rules I gave you last week. Remember 'em? Tell the truth, be appreciative, don't raise your voice. You do that, and I'll try to..," Susie trailed off, eyes wandering for a moment in consideration. Then, right back to the doe. "... Slow it down, just a little. Not give you too much too quick. Only hurt you the ways you want," she said that bit in a whisper, as if anyone could hear them. It made Noelle's fur stand up none the less. "Hell, if you stick to that 'don't lie' thing, and trust me that I'm usually gonna know what's good for ya, I'll even listen if you tell me I hit a hard 'no'... Or at least consider it."

As if fearing that she was sounding too 'soft,' Susie's claws trailed Noelle's cheek. Not hard, not like last week, but enough to leave red trails on the flesh under her fur.

Noelle hid a gulp. And for the first time, she actually let herself show the shivering breath that got pulled out of her.

"Deal," she breathed out, blinking as if in disbelief that she'd agreed to it. And yet, this time, it was the exact fantasy she'd imagined. The scenario she'd practiced, the words she'd rehearsed.

Susie's smirk split into her familiar wicked grin, and her second paw came down to cup Noelle's whole face in her paws. She tugged the doe's chin up - just a bit firmer than she needed to - and leaned in to stare directly down at her.

"I'm gonna make you bleed for me, little doe. I'm gonna play with you 'till I've had enough," Susie breathed out, her breath washing over the smaller girl's face.

It was still too strong, meaty and bitter and burnt. Yet, Noelle was starting to like it. Her expression stayed in its place for a moment, heavy-lidded and lips parted... Before she let out a tiny, cautious laugh.

"Fahaha... You looked in my phone, huh?"

Susie winked.

"Your taste isn't as bad as I thought. That track kinda slaps. No Protest the Hero though you fucken' poser, glad I shredded that top."

Another laugh, easier this time. Everything got easier with practice. What had been devastating a week ago was something Noelle could then, in a strange, hollow, surrendered kind of way, laugh about.

"I'd rather listen to them and become not-a-poser. Buy me a new one."

Susie snorted, shaking her head. This dumb little doe kept exceeding her expectations.

"Maybe... Back to mine?"

A swallow, and Noelle silently nodded her head.

"You know I'm not gonna be nice like this often, yeah?" Susie added. "That I'm still gonna take what I want and you can either like it or fuck off?"

A pause, then another nod.

"I know... The real you isn't 'nice.' I learned that. And, I think maybe, I like it that way. In some way. I don't know."

Susie nodded back. She didn't mind if Noelle took some time to be sure, as long as she still got to fuck the deer up in the meantime. Maybe watching a more slow sort of acceptance would be fun, too. In fact, she could easily see some perks to getting to spend more time with Noelle's conflicted, reluctant semi-rejection.

Dubcon? Is that the word? Whatever.

Then, slowly, Susie leaned in. Her lips brushed the doe's, delicate and gentle, belying the way she towered over the deer monster.

When she pulled back, Angel's tits, she was so proud to see a spark of obvious disappointment on Noelle's face.

"Don't worry. I'll give you a real one when we get back, yeah? With all the fixings," Susie said, pulling her lips over her teeth just a bit for emphasis.

Noelle's cheeks flushed that she'd been read so easily, yet again. But Susie seemed to be good at that. For all she was known as an idiot brute, she could decipher Noelle's feelings like they were plain text branded into her fur.

"Y-You'd better," she stumbled, yet still managed to honestly voice.

Susie nodded, content with it, and finally pulled back from the doe. Her paw grabbed Noelle's on the way, and when she turned, Noelle had to half-jog to keep up with the dragon's long, easy strides.

Her body wasn't used to going at that kind of pace, halfway between walk and run. It didn't suit her hooves. But she knew Susie would set the tempo. She knew she'd often go too fast, often go too far.

But she'd seen those glimpses of joy, of care. Of the dragon protecting her, trying to foster something in her. Seeing something so wonderful and precious in her that nobody else had ever seen. A kind of love that Noelle had never experienced before, that had hooked into her veins and dragged her back, that had blocked the words in her throat when she'd tried to tell her mother. That she felt she would endure anything for more of, especially with Susie's promise to try. That's all Noelle needed, just the assurance that she'd try.

With that nothing would be too much, to see greedy eyes and to feel covetous paws, to feel truly wanted and desired for the first time in her life. She'd give up everything, her dignity, her worth, her soul, if it meant Susie would truly see her as a priceless part of her hoard. If it meant even one more glimpse of that possessive dragon who would ruin someone just to make her happy.

Because it would. Noelle knew it, then. How happy it would make her. How happy it did make her.

She wondered just how giddy and blissful she'd looked when the dragon had beaten a monster within inches of his life, all for her.




I'll make you fight for me and pray I pay the bills,
I'll make you die for me and watch your body spill,
I'll make you cry for me and lie for me,
And bleed for me and die for me,
But most I'll make you right for me,
I'm sure I'm right for you.
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