Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/344544.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Choose_Not_To_Use_Archive_Warnings, Underage
  Category:
      F/M
  Fandom:
      Homestuck
  Character:
      Feferi_Peixes, The_Signless_|_The_Sufferer, Eridan_Ampora
  Additional Tags:
      Age_Difference, Sexual_Content, Unresolved_Sexual_Tension
  Stats:
      Published: 2012-02-21 Chapters: 3/3 Words: 7516
****** Doesn't Have To Be ******
by Broba
Summary
     The prompt was intriguing, and this story pretty much leapt into my
     head as soon as I read it, so I just sat down and got typing. It's
     definately one of my more sexually charged ones, and I have very
     deliberately alluded to the work of a certain author who ought to be
     pretty bloody obvious.
     Feferi encounters a mysterious, ageless being from the distant past,
     who awakes in her feelings that she wasn't ready for.
***** Chapter 1 *****
The city of Duse straddled the tip of a cape on the southern Alternian
continent, traditionally the wealth of the city had come from the shallow delta
waters which made it a natural sea-port and a meeting point between the worlds
of land and water. The light was weak and comfortable, the waters were warm and
especially briny. For this reason both the seadwellers and land dwellers had
always seen Duse as a place of good cheer and a splendid place to vacation, the
culture of the city had developed accordingly. As far as possible for an
Alternian city, it had been a place of culture and joie de vivre.

The many disasters of the current Empire had seen a downturn in the fortunes of
all Alternia, and Duse especially. Faces were downturned, eyes were closed.
Trolls went about their business quietly or not at all, and the city withered
on the vine, a husk of what it once was. Never again would Duse boast of the
vibrant music and arts it had once enjoyed- never.

Still, tradition held even in the declining times of the current empire. So it
was the the royal procession to the coast occurred as it always had done, when
the seadweller royal court came to Duse to take the waters and bask in the pale
dawn and sunsets, this was a public tradition and also a family tradition,
therefore doubly sacrosanct. The royal pavilions on the delta frontings were
the only buildings in Duse kept immaculately pristine in the condition forever,
and the royals could spend the last weeks of summer in opulent southern
surrounds blissfully unaware of the rest of the fading city.

A part of this storied tradition however, was the traditional midnight stroll
of the current empress-dauphin. Since time immemorial the young mistress of the
royal court had taken the opportunity, on the longest night of the sweep, to
secretly abscond from her quarters and spend an evening experiencing live among
the little people. It was a practise that had been instituted by an empress of
centuries past, and it was by now fully expected. To deny the young royal this
opportunity for growth and personal pleasure was unthinkable, therefore on this
one night every street in Duse was examined watchfully by Imperial Drones
stationed on rooftop positions, and every citizen knew that the slightest
infraction was likely to result in a squad of Legislacerators descending to
helpfully provide swift justice. It was the most grim, forced and stilted
evening of the sweep. Everyone hated it. And yet, the young empress-dauphin
must abscond, and must wander the streets of Duse, and must experience a taste
of Real People with Real Lives, no matter the cost. It was Tradition.

To this end, Feferi found her window unlocked and a ladder casually left askant
nearby by a "careless gardener." She also happened upon a convenient pamphlet
noting the particular cultural sights and experiences of Duse, "accidentally"
dropped near her door by a "careless servant." When she discovered a set of
travelling clothes and sturdy boots laid out on her bed by a "forgetful maid"
she almost screamed. It was just too much. She had a good mind to throw
tradition to the winds and steadfastly refuse to break out of her room and
entirely fail to have a night of frivolous delights amongst the Real Folks.
However, as much as she might have wished otherwise, tradition was Tradition
after all. Her Imperious and Terrible mother would be most upset if she didn't
at least wander around a bit and pretend to be interested in the comings and
goings of the peasants.

With a sigh she pulled her boots on and laced them up. It was really
unnecessary, she knew plenty about the lives of real people, she had even
continued lengthy conversations with several of them through Trollian. She
heaved open the heavy wooden window sash and stepped out. Naturally her every
motion was watched and recorded, but to their credit she had no idea where the
security staff were. She wandered across the manicured gardens with a jaunty
stride. She actually encountered a gardener who had been on his way somewhere
else, and had to pretend frantically not to notice her as she wandered past.
The poor Troll was shaking so hard the gravel was crunching under his feet and
his knuckled whitened around his rake.

It was all so depressing. Tradition. There was a distinct difference that she
could notice between tradition and Tradition. One was a collection of rules and
habits acquired for convenience, and the other was a set of edicts inscribed
immutably in the leaden tablets of history. She came to the edge of the
grounds, where the bushes had been carefully cultivated so as to provide an
enterprising young empress-to-be with an escape route. A very obvious gap had
been carefully trimmed, an inviting tunnel to dive through. There was nothing
else for it, the fates and spoken, so Feferi wandered out of the imperial
pavilions.

Feferi could feel the weight of expectation on her shoulders. She would ascend
the Main Way through to the thoroughfare of broken tiles, and from there to the
Gamblingant Hall where, no doubt, she would find herself unusually lucky in
games of dice with strangely well washed vagrants. She would then make her way
to the Green Boulevard, past the Ascendant Arch and observe the ancient
statuary. Everything was planned out months in advance, to provide her with the
most culturally edifying experience, all the better to bind her to the land
ridden half of her eternal kingdom. However, Feferi had made other plans.

She tossed aside the helpful pamphlet (with route marked in red) and ducked
down the alleyway between the old rendering plant and the warehousing district.
She had made a map of her own, weeks before, and memorised it well. She darted
down the Esplanade L'Fangue and under the Sybillant bridge. Next, the Street of
Bells then the Street of Cylinders, where the boilermakers' hammers rang night
and day. She passed through the warmest industrial sectors to throw off the
infra-red and passed by the tannery words to confuse the sniffers. She darted
through a warehouse full of busy cylindermakers whose clang and ruckus
dissolved her audio pattern into meaninglessness. The empress-dauphin was
expected to escape on this night, and Feferi intended to exceed those
expectations.

Unfortunately for her, Feferi's carefully plotted route took her expertly away
from the watchful glare of the Drones- she could already hear an eruption of
activity in the city centre as her ploy was discovered- but the route also took
her far away from anything interesting. She might well have bought herself a
night of freedom, but the price of freedom was boredom. She was in a wide
boulevard that may once have been opulent but was not all clapboard and empty
vacant windows. This was a street that would once have boasted the most wealthy
residents in Duse but now lay vacant, the mansions decayed and worthless. She
sighed and started walking. There was nothing behind her but expectations and
nothing in front of her but the unknown, and she knew which she preferred.

Feferi came to a halt where the street abruptly ended in a huge wooden building
of nondescript appearance. She could make out balconies and shattered
windowpanes and little else. Well, she thought to herself, this is freedom.
Enjoy it. No wonder the lower classes were always so bloody unhappy if they
lived like this all the time. She heard voices.

Feferi didn't have the sharp hearing of a land dweller but there was a definite
sound on the breeze, a murmuring. She approached the empty building out of idle
curiosity, she had never been brought up to appreciate the concept of personal
danger and so she just wandered in, pushing aside the ancient doors which had
not locked in decades at least. There was a great entry hall with twin curling
stairs upward, but the sounds came from below. She wandered closer, passing
through an archway and then a corridor until she came to an ancient kitchen and
steps leading downward into what would once have been a cellar of some kind. As
she descended she picked up a dull glow in the air. She might not have the
hearing, but her deep-sea eyes were far keener then any land dweller and could
perceive the slightest glimmer of light. She could easily pick out the edges of
a door frame lined in grey-white light. She pushed open the door and walked
into a subterranean lair, which was lit only by an ancient looking screen. On
it, some kind of film was playing, though for some reason there were no
colours, everything was in shades of black white and grey. She hadn't seen
anything quite like it before. The film depicted two trolls having some kind of
discussion, though there was no fighting or lovemaking it seemed. She watched
for a minute from the doorway and saw no killing at all, it was the strangest
film. She walked closer into the room.

This was a place clearly lived in, there were blankets and food containers, and
a crude tin bathtub filled with grimy, dusty old sopor. A pile of rags filled
one entire corner, and electrical cabling another. Someone had constructed a
ludicrously pathetic yet workable hive out of these simple things, she
concluded. Feferi wandered a little closer to regard the screen, the actors
were simply talking, their conversation was practically soporific and nothing
was happening. She couldn't understand. She turned back to the door, resolving
to put this mystery behind her.

The pile of rags in the corner shifted and moved, they were not rags but
clothes, and a troll emerged. He straightened up- and up. The largest troll she
had ever seen save for the Grand Highblood himself. The figure pressed a grimy
hand to the door and closed it, purposefully. He was dressed in velvet rags
which might once have been stylish, in a manner of speaking. His pantaloons
were far too high-waisted for current fashion and his wrists and neck were
surrounded by sprays of fading lace. He had eyes- such eyes. He stared at her
and she thought that she would die immediately.

"Who are you?" She asked breathily, even now she was more enthralled then
afraid.
"I don't have a name, it was taken from me,"
"Who can take away a name?"
"The empress can."

She swallowed and pressed a hand to her throat. He was easily twice her size,
and she understood what that meant. Trolls grew larger in time, in their
adulthood they reached such greater sizes, but the empress had long ago degreed
that trolls of adult age would leave the surface of the planet to expand the
Alternian empire outwards, there were supposed to be none left.

"Who are you?" She asked again.
"I'm no-one."

She took a step back, at last she was starting to realise that perhaps she was
not safe. She glanced to her left, had she spotted a window set high in the
wall, when she came in? Perhaps a narrow window high on the wall at ground
level, that she might be able to worm her way through. She was small enough,
surely. She took another step and turned sharply.

He was already there, in front of her, by the far wall. He hadn't moved, yet he
was suddenly there as if he always had been.

"How," she took a breath as her throat closed up, "how did you do that?"
"I walked, as anyone might. Quickly."
"If I am not back outside soon," she stated, holding her chin just so in the
way that her mother did sometimes, and trying to affect the same voice of
authority, "the Drones will tear this building down to find me."
"Outside?" He glanced to the side, indeed there was a tiny window there, "I
see. Are you certain? Are you very... certain?"
"I," she paused. She felt all of a sudden that she should not lie to this man,
"I do not think that I am."

He tilted his head this way and that way, watching her. Feferi felt the weight
of a very old intelligence weighing her up.

"I don't like to think about, out there." He gestured vaguely to the window.
"What do you mean?"
"I don't understand these times. I am not suited to them."
"How long have you been here?"
"How long have I withered? How long have I coiled in the dark and grime, and
lessened? How long have I rotted?"
"Y-yes."
"A long time," he sighed, "such a long time. Long enough, I think even I have
been forgotten. I would like to be forgotten you know. I would like to reduce
down to essence and flow into the soil, and be unremembered. I would like to
leave only ashes."

Feferi watched him, the man was certainly strange, she felt that, but at the
same time she was starting to feel something else. This being truly had no
place in the world, she could see no position in society that he would fit, and
she had been well trained in the minutiae of every social stratum. He looked,
for want of a better word, like a troll outside of time.

"What are you doing down here?" She stammered, she was morbidly curious.
"I don't live here, for this isn't living. I exist, for a time. And perhaps
this place will run to ruin and dust around me, I do not know what will happen
then. I do not understand," he paused, searching for a word, "the times. I
cannot even survive in this place for much longer. I don't... do... anything."

Feferi stamped her foot irritably, it was a petulantly childish gesture and
obviously didn't impress him. "Will you tell me who you are?"
"If I told you who I was, who I really was, then the telling would change you."
"Tell me!"
"You might regret the knowing of it."
"Why won't you just answer me plainly?"
"Because," he smiled thinly, "I'm giving you the choice I never had."
***** Chapter 2 *****
He wasn't going to hurt her, that much Feferi had decided. Or at least, not all
at once. She had also decided that it was well within his abilities do do so,
if he chose. Furthermore, she had come to the conclusion that she had to know
more about this old troll, regardless of the danger she perceived. This was a
night of learning and danger, and she had been given a dangerous opportunity to
learn.

"Please," she said breathily, "at least tell me who you are,"
"Sit."

He stated it so bluntly that Feferi found herself on the couch before she had
given it any thought. He sat down next to her; this time at least he had the
decency to move at a more normal speed.

"Will you tell me how you moved like that before? And I want the honest truth!"
"You're just a child, aren't you?"
She flushed hotly, answering him with that.
"You have been taught the hemospectrum, I assume?"
"Yes of course," she retorted, raising her chin proudly, "I know about-"
"Sh."
She went quiet.
"The lower a troll falls on the hemospectrum, the more they escape the physical
and enter the psychic realm of achievement, yes?"
"Of course."
"Here's something I bet they never told you. The spectrum is not a straight
line between two points, it is a ring that folds around to meet itself."
"What does that mean? That doesn't make any sense at all!"
"My blood was considered aberration, so low as to practically fall off the
lower end of the hemospectrum. But, another way of looking at it is, I fell so
low that I came around to the very top again. I am the very essence of
physicality."

It made a horrible kind of sense, but at the same time it went against
everything Feferi had been ingrained with. There was no connection between the
ends of the hemospectrum, there couldn't be- the very idea was grotesque and
made her feel physically unwell. He watched her as she digested this thought,
her little hands clenching and unclenching in her lap.

"I told you that knowing would change you,"
"I don't believe you!"
He surged to his feet, he was very tall, she squeaked and cringed despite
herself, "I do not require you to believe anything," he boomed, "now get out,
child, go back to your games and toys, run back to the teat of your nursing
brood!"
"Why are you shouting at me?" She was close to tears and had to fight to
control her breathing, he was terrifying when he wanted to be.
"Because I don't have the time or inclination to explain myself to silly little
girls, now get out!"

She had touched a nerve, and she had no idea how or why. She got to her feet
and shuffled to the door, but her pride drew her short. She was the empress-
dauphin, she could not be spoken to like this. At least, never before. She
opened the door and paused, summoning her resolve to look him directly in the
eye.
"I'll go now. I may come back to-morrow."
Rather then shout again he just made a vague waving motion and turned away. She
felt an odd little sense of accomplishment as she departed, hurrying away and
back into the city proper.

The security forces were out in full, floodlights blazed throughout the city.
People had been arrested in their hundreds, doors were being kicked in and
families thrown out onto the streets to be questioned. When Feferi made herself
known, she was immediately bundled away by polite but clearly panicking
Legislacerators who took her back to the imperial pavilions.

The royal court had lessened and weakened over time. Alternia had weakened. As
the empire spread, descendants of royal blood were required to hold posts in
ever further dominions, leaving fewer to maintain the imperial presence in the
home court. So it was, that on this year Feferi was the highest ranking royal
present and therefore there was no one on the planet who could technically
issue her a rebuke, the protocols would never allow the unthinkable situation
of a lesser noble telling off the empress-dauphin. The only other royal of
roughly equal stature present was Eridan, who was told by his courtiers in the
most roundabout way imaginable that it would be in the interests of the royalty
as a whole if he spoke to Feferi. The words were never said, but it was clear
that he was expected to reign her in, as though he could just snap his fingers
and leash the girl.

The thought of doing so was still intriguing him when he knocked on the door to
her rooms, he pushed it down and composed himself. Whatever else, he was
determined not to stammer, as he walked in.

"W-well well," he began, immediately cursing inwardly, "just w-what w-were you
getting up to out there tonight?"
Feferi glared, but she couldn't bring herself to be angry, not with Eridan,
"That's my business!"
"Wuh, One night, w-we just needed you to behave yourself and act normally for
wuh-one  night!"
"It's supposed to be my night! The night of the escape!"
"Yes! Exactly! And on your night, you're meant to visit the opera incognito, or
get drunk w-with lovable vagrants, or gamble aw-way a fortune and be
embarrassed the next day! It's not bloody difficult!"
She swivelled her chair around to face him, she had been brushing out her hair
at her dresser, "Eri, can I tell you a secret?"
"Of course,"
"No, I mean, you have to keep it secret after I tell you!"
He held his hand out horizontally and made a non-committal waggling motion.
"Urgh, you're the worst! Come closer, I don't want to be overheard."

Eridan stepped up to her, they hadn't whispered secrets to each other like this
since they were practically wigglers, it was strangely exciting to him seeing
her so excited, her eyes were practically shining.

"Eri," she began, "I met someone tonight!"
"Oh?"
"Oh? What do you mean, oh? Someone special!"
"W-well that's okay I suppose, having an illicit affair is sort of expected
too. But w-why not just have the drones drag them in here to have your w-way
with them? Much easier- and safer."
"I don't think it's like that Eri, it's not just..." she waggled a finger in
midair, "...that sort of a thing. I think they might be special!"

That brought a cold chill to Eridan's spine. It was practically expected that
royals of their distinction should take whatever carnal delights they pleased
from the lower classes, but to become in any way emotional over it was just
unseemly. And it cut him, he realised, it cut him to the core. He had always
been there, he had put up with no end of her petty tantrums and demands, he had
been the one to listen to her endlessly whenever she wanted to talk through
anything, but he doubted in a million years that she would describe him as,
somehow, special.

"Forget it!" He snapped, "you could have been hurt or, or anything! If you w-
want a good time then you can do so here," he wanted to add, with me, "but
that's the end of it! The night of escape is over!"
She stamped her foot, never a good sign, "Eri! I thought you of all people
would understand!"
"Understand w-what? That you're taken with some fucking peasant? This isn't a
lusus-story, you're not going to have magical adventures with your land-dw-
weller friend!"
Feferi gazed wide-eyed at him, "You're jealous!"
"W-what no!"
"Just because I actually got to go out on my own for once and you didn't!"

Eridan wanted to die. Even when she managed to perceive that he was feeling
something, she still couldn't understand what he was truly thinking about. She
never would, there was no point. He slapped a hand down on the dresser sharply,
she jumped. He had never shown any kind of real anger toward her before.

"You're staying in here w-where I can keep an eye on you," he said very
quietly, "and don't think the empress w-won't hear of this."

He stalked out rapidly, turning from her to hide the flushed colour in his
cheeks, he prayed that no tears were visible or if they were, she would
probably assume they were jealous tears because he just wanted to do things
like she did, because he was jealous of his moirail.

It was too much to bear and he went directly to his own rooms, after ordering
the drones to double the guard duty. Eridan just wanted to go to sleep and
forget all of the feelings the meeting with Feferi had brought out in him. It
was definitely unseemly for him to be this way about it, especially after
Feferi had made her feelings towards him clear and unambiguous. He was filled
up with tense energy and could not consider rest though. He just stood in front
of his dress mirror staring at himself. He obsessively combed through his hair
with his fingers and readjusted his clothing. He was perfect, every detail was
perfect. He started the routine over again; hair, buttons, belt, he adjusted
his collar. Perfect. He could see no detail of his appearance that was
unaccounted for. None of it would help, nothing would make Feferi feel any
differently. He  rubbed a hand through his perfect hair and pushed it into a
mess, before carefully fingering it back into place, rubbing down each strand
into position. Then the buttons, then the belt. Perfect.

Feferi would not be contained so easily. She was laying her plans for the next
night as soon as she was alone. She couldn't simply ignore what she had seen,
there was something different and magical out there in the old town, and she
had to know what it was. The way he had looked at her- every time she thought
back to the events of the night it was almost painful to imagine his eyes on
her. He had seen through every detail of her, he could have broken her with a
wave of his hand or crushed the life from her throat with little more then a
thought. He had stared openly at her, no one ever looked at her. She was the
empress-dauphin, inviolate. Not to be looked upon. No one saw her as anything
except the role she was born to except him, he breached her defences without a
word and took his pick of what he found in her, he could take what he wanted of
her and she was utterly naked before his merciless gaze. The metaphor was apt,
she felt like the custodian of an orchard with high walls, who one day saw that
a wild thief was walking through her neatly arranged gardens taking whatever
fruit pleased him, coming and going as he wished. She was a garden waiting to
be plundered, and her fruits called out to the hungry fingers of the thief.
Such were her thoughts as she sank into her sopor, she had never thought about
anyone or anything with such intensity before. An empress-dauphin does not
think, she reminded herself, an empress-dauphin merely commands and then
returns to her throne while the world moves as it is instructed to.

Feferi floated in her recuperacoon, under the sopor ooze she stared down at the
short length of her nude grey form. She was utterly alone, even listening
devices were forbidden in the recuperacoon to protect the sanctity of whatever
the royals might cry out in the tortured sopor-sleep. It was the only time in
her life that she was truly alone, and could be assured of privacy. These
moments before sleep were when she felt truly free, and she indulged herself in
her freedom.
"He can take what he wants," she said in a soft, uncertain voice. Hearing it
aloud, echoing in the small space, made it real, and wrong, and sent shivers
running through her. She imagined him stood next to her, commanding her to say
it. "He can take what he wants."

She closed her eyes, she could picture him easily, commanding her. Demanding of
her. A black form impossibly tall stood over her, she saw his arm raise and
make a commanding gesture, and under the slime her legs parted in response. She
opened her self to him flagrantly, and unspeakable act for the empress-dauphin
and therefore she was not the empress-dauphin, she was in those moments
something else altogether, a different and more free being.

"I am Feferi," she breathed, "do what you want to me," she rolled over in the
slime, moaning softly. She drew her knees in and her pert rump broke the
surface, "take me, it's all for you."

She didn't truly understand what she was feeling, but waves of pleasure were
racing up and down her body, a new and unfamiliar feeling. She was awakening to
something, something that could only ever be awakened by a  person who was
utterly unafraid of her, someone capable of stripping away her titles and
powers and speaking directly to her and her alone. She wanted him, she didn't
know what she would do with him if she had him but it didn't matter to her, she
would beg him to show her everything. She would throw herself at his feet and
kiss them, she would grovel before him and beg him to strip her and burn her
and use her up. Take everything, leave nothing, but let me own that nothing.

The next night came and Feferi was careful to show nothing, she put the
preceding night down to her having merely performed the Tradition to the
letter, and having done a better job then the security services were prepared
for. In fact she turned it back on them, chiding them for their uselessness,
unable to keep track of one child. It was an effective strategy because it put
everyone back on familiar footing- being harshly criticised by royalty was
something everyone who served the court could relate to, it was the proper
routine of things once again.

Her plan was simple. A simple plan might succeed, a complex one would no doubt
have been accounted for and predicted by the cunning Legislacerators. She had
no chance of escape while she was alone, because she would never truly be
alone- when there was no one directly in the room with her there would be
surveillance teams unseen. Her only hope was to get away while they thought she
was safely contained and would not try anything. She was walking along a
corridor of the ancient mansion talking endlessly to a courtier who was taking
notes on her requirements for the upcoming festivities marking the turning of
the sweep towards the end of the Sweep, two Legislacerators were in attendance
walking a respectful distance behind. When she passed by a balcony window she
simply jumped out, without even breaking her speech. It was so sudden that the
attendants took a second to register what had happened, and by then she was
already into the undergrowth toward her planned route.

They followed of course, she could hear running footsteps behind her, but there
was no shouting. No one would order her to stop, of course. No one would so
much as dream of telling her that she could not proceed, but she would find her
way politely blocked and be informed that highly pressing duties awaited her
attentions back at the imperial pavilions. Feferi fled, darting down passages
and unused boulevards, she darted across Rue Laross and vaulted the railings
leading to the Acrostic Stair darting down the ancient winding path until she
reached the old town. She was not free though, the would not be fooled by her
tricks a second time. A squad of three Legislacerators was closing in on her.

Feferi was gasping, crying with effort to take in breath, as she rounded a
corner and sped into an alleyway behind a row of eateries, she ran through
gouts of warm greasy steam from the gratings and extractors on the backs of the
buildings. They were all around her, she knew it, she just couldn't see her.
She berated herself for thinking she could outrun them. It was the creed of the
Legislacerators- We Always Get You. She span around and one of them was
approaching her through the steam, that meant for sure that the other two were
behind her, they had to be. She wanted to sob, but she resolved to show them
nothing but haughty condescension. She would make her empress proud in that way
at least. She drew herself up to her meagre height, they weren't much older
then she was, but they were trained and seasoned Legislacerators, no one
escaped them. She could not intimidate them. She couldn't, but he could.

He dropped out of the ether, it seemed, above the two behind her. He seized one
of them by the arm, lifting the troll six feet off the ground and almost
casually tossing him against a wall, shattering something vital within. The
other stabbed him with a lance, the point entering his pectoral below the
collar bone. He gripped the lance and pulled it out of him, wrenching it from
the grip of the Legislacerator and killing the troll with a strike to the
throat from a massive hand. He tossed the lance aside, and disappeared. Feferi
turned to the last remaining squad member, she was as shocked as the
Legislacerator was, they looked at each other. The troll had time to open his
mouth, when a huge form simply appeared behind him and lifted him up, one arm
wrapped tightly around the troll's neck, the other around his midriff to pin
his arms.

"Did you see my face?" He asked.
"No! No I swear!"
"Ah-h-h-h, but you might have. You might have seen just a glimpse."
The Legislacerator was nearly crying now, "I promise, I promise!"
"You are afraid now, yes?"
"Y-yes!"
"Do you know, why is life so precious?"
"I don't know! I promise!"
"Answer me!"
"I don't know, I don't know, tell me!"
"Because," he says, "it comes to an end, so soon." He twisted, sharply, and
dropped the corpse.

Feferi squeaked, her voice had dried up entirely. She wanted to say so much,
but now, standing here and facing him, it all sounded so stupid and childish.
She felt humiliated just being near him. He turned to her, stepping closer. He
was wearing a long overcloak with a hood that shadowed his face, but she could
see well enough. He was staring at her again.

"Legislacerators, they disappoint me to this day. There have been none of them
in my town for centuries, perhaps, before you brought them here."
Feferi swallowed. She was suddenly aware that he had every right to be upset
with her, and he was not afraid of killing without hesitation, "I'm sorry."
"I know."
"I wanted to see you again,"
"Evidently."
***** Chapter 3 *****
Feferi squeaked when she felt his arms around her, again he had moved without
moving, suddenly she was propelled into the air- he leapt, carrying her with
him, nimbly landing on a flat rooftop four stories up.

"Let me go!"
"If you like," the way he said it made her realise he was teasing her, she
looked down and saw her precarious position, instinctively grabbing onto him
tightly. She had the usual seadweller fear of heights, lacking the comforting
buoyancy of water all around.
"What are you going to do?"
"We need to get out of here, there will be other squads and I don't want you to
lead them any closer to my home!"

Before she had a chance to speak, or apologize, they were moving- impossibly
quickly, he ran off the edge of the roof into space, landing on a steeply
inclining tiled surface which he scaled with ease. She felt like a bundled
wiggler in the claws of a lusus, so helpless was she. He took her to the old
town, to his deserted mansion home. He entered through the back, where a storm
cellar opened into his lair.

"Sit," he said curtly again, and she sat herself on the couch. He removed his
cloak and stored it neatly in an upturned shipping carton that served as a
dresser.
"What are you going to do?" She asked, clasping her hands together.
"What do you mean to say by that?"
"Did you kill those Legislacerators to protect me, or to make sure they didn't
find out about you?"
"It makes no difference to you, surely."
"But it does make a difference!" She twisted her neck round to try and see him,
he was darting about busying himself with something she couldn't make out, "if
all you care about is being hidden, then you'll," she swallowed and cleared her
throat, "you'll kill me too."
"Ah, I see, that does make sense."

He turned and walked over to her, he was carrying two mismatched mugs which
steamed, and passed one to her. "Drink this."
"Well? I'm right! You admit it!"
"I will say this, I try my hardest never to kill children." He sipped at his
mug, staring at her enigmatically over the rim. She had the strangest feeling
that all this was slightly amusing to him. She sipped her drink, it was black
and spicy, and good.
"What is this?"
"It's not commonly made any more. It fell out of favour when fashions in
beverage turned towards lighter, sweet wines."

Her mug was chipped and old, the glaze was nearly worn away around the rim. She
had never used anything except the most pristine drinking vessels and perfect
cutlery, it was exciting in its own way. She examined the faded patina
carefully, she never got to be around things that were worn, or used, or loved.
He had kept this mug with him for a long time No doubt he had moved around a
lot, she could only imagine the adventure, but he had kept a few things with
him. She ran a thumb over a raised pattern on the side, she couldn't quite make
it out but she thought that it bore a resemblance to a trident.

"How can  you be so calm, after just killing people like that?"
"And if I had not, would they have lived forever?"
"That has nothing to do with it."
"I changed the time of their death, not the fact of it. Take some small comfort
in that; I do."

She looked down into her cup, where a mouthful of liquid remained reflecting
back at her. His words were no comfort at all to her, but he took a longer view
of everything then she did. Everything about him suggested power, and
knowledge, and she was becoming only more intoxicated to it. The fact that he
could show her a small kindness and prepare a hot drink for her even as he
casually murdered as he pleased only made him more alluring. She felt that a
great force had reached down from on high to touch her. She had never felt
flushed for anyone before, and she didn't understand these new and dangerous
feelings, but she supposed that it must be that she wanted him and hoped more
then anything for him to want her in return. More then that, she hoped he would
want her and act on that want. She came very close to blurting out everything
she had said to herself in the privacy of her recuperacoon but she dreaded
seeming like an immature child to him spreading out her feelings at his feet
like a carpet.

"If you wanted to kill me no one could stop you."
"That's true, but why do you insist on valuing your life so lightly?"
"Are you going to ask me if I know why life is so precious?" Will you hold me
down and whisper your question in my ear?
"I wouldn't expect you to have any idea at all. Children cannot see the end
coming."
"You keep calling me a child." I am so much more then that.
"Aren't you?"
"No I'm not,"
"Look back at yourself in ten sweeps' time, you might find you change your
mind."
"Now you're just patronizing me,"
"Ah, ah." He said no more, sipping his drink and making himself more
comfortable. The couch was larger then she was used to in furnishings, but he
practically dwarfed his side of it and he had to pull in his gangling limbs to
avoid bumping her.
"You're impossible!"
He looked over at her and grunted.
"Why won't you just tell me who you are? Why did you bring me here?" Why bring
me unless you plan on doing something to me!
"Because," he began, staring down into his cup and then slowly around the room,
"because, I have been her longer then I can even remember, I kept my silence
all that time until you arrived here. I thought I'd forgotten how to speak
altogether."
"Just how old are you?"
"There was a time when all over the planet, we grew to adulthood without being
made exiles into space, yes?"
"Of course."
"I can remember that time."

Feferi just stared in shock. She couldn't even put a number to how old it made
him, but he was ancient. Even by the standards of the exceptionally long-lived
highbloods. He had called himself the very essence of physicality, did that
mean he was immortal? She reached out instinctively to touch his chest, he
flinched back for a second before calming, but he did not stop her. Where the
Legislacerator lance had struck him, she could feel the slightest depression
under his clothing but there was no blood. She thought he might have been
wearing some kind of armour, but had the wound closed and healed as soon as it
was made? She looked up and met his eyes with open longing, she didn't need to
speak because he already saw through her, she knew that just formulating the
thoughts in her mind was enough to communicate to him what she felt.

If there was any reaction in him then it was too subtle a thing for her to
register, he was stony and impassive. He took her cup from her and withdrew,
replacing them wherever he had got them.

"You should go," he said.
"I'm only here because you took me here."
"Well now I'm letting you go!" He snapped sharply.
"If you make me leave I'll tell," she turned round to snarl at him over the
back of the couch, "I promise I will, I'll see to it that the city is overrun
with Legislacerators! They'll send in the drones! I swear it!"

He strode closer to her, even moving normally she found it unsettling the way
he could cover the length of a room in two paces. He cupped her chin in his
hand, tilting her head up and examining her closely. She was almost crying,
tears budded in the corners of her eyes. If she left, she knew she would never
see him again. He gently reached down and touched a teardrop, holding it up to
his lips and tasting delicately.

"I thought you might be some spoiled little high blood girl," he murmured, "but
I taste royalty... who are you?"
"I am the empress-dauphin! The future empress of Alternia and all the
provinces!"

He looked startled for once and let her go, he took a faltering step back as
though he had been physically struck.

"All this time, I hid and waited and survived, and here you are. You just...
walked into my life."
"Don't be afraid," she said, sitting up straighter as she felt a little of her
royal confidence returning, "I can make sure no one finds you,"
"Afraid? Of you?"

She didn't like the way he was looking at her so hungrily, though she also
loved every second with a hot raging burst of excitement that she felt explode
in her belly and sink down to her thighs. He closed the distance between them
without moving and seized her up, before she knew it she felt her back slam
into the far wall of the room and he was directly before her eyes. Her feet
dangled in the air, his hands clamped her arms to her sides tightly. She
couldn't move, she wouldn't move.

"The empress gave you the genetic material which makes you born to rule, she
gave you riches and power and glory," he was so close she could make out each
individual eyelash, they framed his wide pale eyes like dark ribbon, "did she
also give you her enemies? Did she give you the vengeance that has brewed in
the dark for all this time?"
"I don't-" she gulped, "please, you're frightening me," her legs kicked
uselessly.
"Your ancestor didn't only take my name away, she took my life, my love, my
skin, my blood," he was weeping openly now, hot red tears like she had never
seen, "I spent so long, so long in the mud not much more then a corpse where
they threw me. I thought that it was raining, but it was just the blood of my
friends falling on me. They threw us all in a hole in the ground, the bits of
us that were left when they were finished. I lay there crippled under a mound
of dead fools and dreamers like me, and their gore flushed over me. Can you see
it?"

She didn't know what to say, she wanted to touch his cheek or kiss his lips but
she might as well have tried to push over a mountain. He must have been talking
about events of many hundreds of sweeps past, she tried to remember her lessons
and tutors who had schooled her in history but there had been nothing to
prepare her for this.

"I didn't know," she breathed, "how could I know?"
"You couldn't!" He snarled, finally lowering her to the ground. He paced about
the room angrily, "they killed is all and stripped our names from history. No
one was permitted to know of us ever again, all I ever said and did was wiped
away like sand in the tide."
"Who are you," she asked again in wonder, "who are you really?"

He walked to the opposing wall and struck it with his hand, his fingertips
penetrated the weeping sodden plaster easily like clay, he pulled his hand
through the plaster, splintering brick beneath, and drew two large circles side
by side, then a curving line on top attached to one circle, and a curving line
below attached to the other.

"That's who I am."
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