Interlude 2: The Night is Darkest…

Archibald didn’t look up from his work when the click of the door mechanism announced someone entering his study. It was time for evening tea, but even if not, he knew the sound of the gait. Measured, precise and perfectly even. So very similar to that of her ‘father’, yet at the same time subtly different.

While his maid placed the cup and small teapot in their usual spots on the right side of his desk, his mind wrote numbers in the margin of the financial report. Another accounting error of statistically significant size, the fourth in six months from that workshop. He would have to assess whether it was a competence issue or a product of intent.

“Master, Father has completed the background check you requested.” It took extensive familiarity with both reading tones in general and hers specifically to pick up the hint of familial pride intermingled with the practiced subservience of her tone.

“Most excellent. Thank you, Aclysia, and please convey my thanks to him as well.” He turned to look at her with a small but genuine smile as he accepted the dossier she held out to him. He began opening it, but when she made no motion to leave, he looked back up at her and raised a brow.

“May I request your opinion, Master?” Archibald gave her the go ahead with a nod, then her hair and eyes began to change. Her short, white hair gained color until it was a golden blonde hue, and her eyes changed from albinistic red to emerald green.

Smiling again, a little wider this time, he answered the unspoken question, “I believe you know perfectly well both parts of my answer: that I prefer your usual appearance and that changing form enough to be anything short of lovely is beyond you.”

“Thank you, Master,” she said and bowed, holding her salver in front of her chest. She did not, however, succeed in hiding the small smile and slight blush that deviated from her diligent expression.

“You are most welcome. Do change into something more casual before you leave, though. For a trip into mundanity, your uniform will draw considerably more attention than your usual hair and eye color would.”

The brief indication of displeasure at the notion on her face was as subtle and easily missed as the hint of pride in her tone had been earlier. “Yes, Master,” she said with another bow, then left.

Archibald chuckled to himself for a moment, sipped his tea and returned his focus to the dossier. Report cards going back to middle school, summarized browsing history of the household, online aliases, entertainment and shopping preferences, a recently made Abyss Auction account, surprisingly, absence of a criminal record or employment history, and known associates. Thorough and quick work, as always.

Excessive, in the eyes of most people, but Archibald had chosen to assume a great responsibility, and the poor girl that was now his daughter had already suffered greatly and was doomed to yet more suffering he could not prevent. He would be as well prepared as possible to shield her where he could.

On that topic, he would have to have words with Wentworth. Again. The school was uniquely fit to Christie’s equally unique circumstances, and enough so to make the bullies narrowly preferable to the alternative. The lax leash on which the Witch kept her mundane chess piece Hawthornes, however, made it much more of an ordeal than it needed to be.

Which was, on balance, another reason he could not allow another unknown in the equation. She had mentioned this Newman boy yesterday, but that interaction had seemed simple. Today, however, he had defied hierarchy on her behalf, risking disciplinary action and all but guaranteeing physical and social harm for himself.

Where some might see a noble act, however, Archibald saw potential danger. In his experience, it was exceedingly rare for people, mundane or Abyssal, to take on risks or costs to themselves without expecting to gain something in return. The only thing of significance to a mundane teenage boy that she could give in return, Archibald would under no circumstances see **** from her, and the other potential angles that were revealed with his connection to the Abyss were no better.

With these thoughts circling in his head, Archbald reached the last section of the report: known associates. In it he found a familiar name he wasn’t expecting. He put down the dossier and for a long moment he looked at an old photo on the wall, once faded and since restored with magic. With a small smile, not at all unlike the one he had given Aclysia when she brought it, he reached for his tea and took another sip. Perhaps, under careful watch, he could entertain the possibility of a true act of kindness after all…

Qhila was tossing and turning sleeplessly in bed. She’d tried to solve it with her full complement of plushies, but deep down she’d known all along that they wouldn’t help. The culprit wasn’t her social instincts railing at her to participate in communal sleeping with the clan she had left behind, not tonight.

No, tonight the fault was his. His and that of another damnable instinct she was burdened with. And the bloody timing. With a frustrated huff, she got out of bed and marched off to her lab.

No sleeping draught left, but she already knew that. No ingredients to make the good one either, but maybe she could whip up something that wouldn’t come with too much in terms of aftereffects. Or work herself into enough exhaustion to just pass out when she laid down again.

That had more or less been the name of the game yesterday, even though that had mostly been from lingering effects of the Babel Incense and the Gravenap. Rifling through her stores, consulting formulas and substitution tables, her thoughts inexorably returned to the source of the problem.

Really, finding a Latebloomer that was both friendly and green enough that she could meaningfully help him and earn his gratitude was an amazing stroke of luck. But why couldn’t it have happened next bloody week instead. Or been a woman.

But she had come across him now, and had to seize the opportunity. If she waited until it started waning, he might have outgrown her usefulness or gotten picked up by a group that wouldn’t tolerate her.

Or he could have gotten killed… That shouldn’t… It was foolish of her to be bothered more by that possibility than the others. She was very much not in a position to worry about the wellbeing of others beyond how it affected hers, but… he had turned away from a chance to return to mundanity, or at least what he had believed to be such a chance, and leave the cruelty of the Abyss behind for the sake of her wellbeing.

Even though he didn’t understand the full extent of what he had chosen to live in for her sake, and even though she knew it was foolish not to, that was not something she could just ignore or discard. She couldn’t just leave him to the sharks, no matter the discomfort.

Qhila put the recipe binder down on the table with a loud *thump* and another huff of frustration. There were no options she could mix quickly that wouldn’t impair her worse tomorrow than the lack of sleep. She could, however, make a passable drowsy powder with what she had, but it came with some slow processes to wait out and wouldn’t be ready until tomorrow afternoon.

Definitely worth the effort, even if it wouldn’t help right now. Getting it to the first slow reaction where it could be left alone overnight took half an hour, and by then she was yawning enough that another attempt to sleep might succeed. And she’d calmed down a bit, which should help too.

The moment she stepped back into her nesting room, his scent hit her like a lightning bolt. Sure, she could only barely make it out consciously, even with her keen nose, but the effect it had on her traitorous body was as unsubtle as it was unmistakable.

With another huff of frustration, she gave up. Sleeping somewhere else than the bed it was, then. She marched to the bed and picked out a few of the larger plushies and a blanket that hadn’t been there to get… get bloody tainted. Then she brought it to one of the outer rooms that were there to fit more traps between the barrier entrance and her nest.

She put together an improvised sleeping place with what she had, then stood there for a moment, considering. To Hell with it, she’d go double dose on the dampening potion for the next week. She’d just have to live with the risk of the effect getting a bit unstable.

(DISCLAIMER: About halfway through the following section is a flashback of witnessing the moments immediately preceding child sexual ****. It is not described in detail, nor presented as anything short of abhorrent. Reader discretion is advised.)

Christie woke up short of breath and feeling flushed with heat. For a moment she lay still, listening quietly. The depth of silence revealed it to be late at night. That knowledge brought mixed feelings to the blind girl.

A large part of her, a powerful, primal one that lay mostly beyond the reach of her conscious self, rejoiced. Rejoiced in the freedom and the certainty that she would not be disturbed. The rest of her, suffused with the bitter fruit of reason and painful experience, was awash with dread. Dread because she knew where the temptations of fantasy would ultimately take her, and because without the risks of interruption and embarrassment, she was unable to resist its pull.

Scenes manifested in her mind, rendered first in words like bits of stories retold or passionately read aloud. Some were pulled from books, novels of romance and of… steamier things that had drawn her interest once puberty hit. Some books read before her sight faded completely, some found in braille and some from audiobooks.

Other scenes were drawn from half-spun plots, events and storylines she had woven in her head on those occasions where she managed to convince herself that even she might be able to author a book someday.

The most potent, however, were drawn from daydreams. Flights of fantasy and indulgence in wistful thinking of what might’ve one day been possible, were she not such a broken soul. With those came a change in her mental perspective. No longer did she imagine herself a listener, an audience to fragments of tales.

Now, she was part of it. Center stage in the lustful play produced by her imagination. In her mind, she was hearing the whispered declarations of adoration and desire. She was feeling hot breath, soft lips and curious fingers against her skin.

As the heat grew, and settled deep in her chest and her loins, her own fingers began retracing the tender touches she felt in her fantasy. In safe places first, but despite herself her hands gradually crept towards disaster.

Fingers brushing over a nipple, an aroused whimper, and everything started to collapse around her. While she knew, deeply and with absolute certainty, that this whimper and the other one were products of diametrically opposed emotions, the sound itself was nevertheless too similar.

Unbidden, unwanted and unavoidable, old and painful memories surged to the surface. She was 12. She lived with her third set of foster parents, and this night she shared her room with a boy her age that they also fostered.

They shared her room because his was taken by the foster parents’ adult son, who was visiting for the weekend. In the middle of the night, she was pulled from her slumber by the door closing, by a creaking floorboard and by the intuitive feeling of a presence in the room.

It took her a moment to realize that it was the adult son. A moment he had used to close the three steps to the futon where her foster brother slept. A moment of tension, where it felt as though the whole world held its breath. Then the man slipped under the boy’s covers, a surprised yelp was cut off by a muffling hand, and then the whimpers began. The adult son visited a lot more frequently after that…

As this foul memory emergened, Christie’s heated passion turned to ash and bile. She began shifting towards the edge of the bed, knowing that the feeling of filthy disgust would soon drive her to purge her stomach.

Then she stopped. As unbidden but infinitely more welcome, another memory rose from her subconscious mind. A much younger memory.

“I think this is yours.”

Kindness and concern at the forefront. Suppressed notes of exhilaration and relief from the conclusion of the ruckus, the fight he had gotten in to get her cane back. All tinged with threads of awkward uncertainty, like he wasn’t quite sure that there wasn’t a different way he was supposed to do things.

That simple sentence, that kind act and the memory of the sound of his voice banished the nausea. It succeeded where reminding herself of where and when she was had always failed. As she was freed from the influence of those putrescent memories, the few vestigial embers of passion that had not been entirely smothered flared to life once again.

The siren’s song of her fantasies returned, drawing her yet again towards the same disaster. She was no more able to resist the pull of her desires the second time. Instead, she clung to the memory of his voice, John’s voice, as she crept towards the inevitable.

And then she crept past it. Her ministrations upon herself had drawn out a lustful whimper, but with his voice held close like a shield against the wounds upon her soul, this demon of her past had not come to render her undone.

It took several minutes for this to truly sink in. Minutes where the almost-**** ministrations of her hands continued, and her mind remained awash with lewd fantasies and the memory of John’s voice. When Christie finally realized in full that, at least in this moment, she was free of this burden, her fingers slid down to her womanhood, seeking a relief she had never before been able to reach.