Chapter 5 #3
"Why do I feel funny?" I turned in the tub to look at him, water sloshing. "Daddy's hands feel really nice and my tummy is doing something and I don't understand."
Through the feelings-connection that tied us together, something big crashed into me—Daddy's wanting, bigger than mine, held back by walls he'd built out of will. He wanted things I didn't have words for, wanted to do things that Big Me would understand but Little Me could only feel the edges of.
"Daddy, why are you far away?" I reached for him with wet hands, confused why he was all the way over there when I wanted him close-close-close. "Want you closer. Want—" I didn't know what I wanted, just that the squirmy feeling would be better if Daddy would hold me. "Please?"
His hands caught my wrists gentle but firm, keeping me from climbing out of the tub toward him. His breathing had gone funny, too fast and shaky.
"Not right now, little one," he said, and his voice sounded broken at the edges. He put Stormy in the water with me, the dragon immediately getting soggy but still smiling with his button eyes. "Play with your dragon while Daddy finishes your bath."
"But—"
"Play with Stormy." This time it wasn't a suggestion, and even though Little Me didn't understand why, I knew Daddy's serious voice meant listen.
I picked up Stormy, made him swim through the bubbles, but the squirmy feeling kept happening.
Every time Daddy's hands touched me to rinse my hair, to wash my arms, sparks happened under my skin.
I wanted to climb into his lap. Wanted to press close until the squirmy feeling found what it was looking for.
Wanted wanted wanted in a way that made me feel too big for my skin.
"All done," Daddy said, quicker than usual bath time. He wrapped me in a towel before I could complain about leaving the warm water, bundled me up tight so my arms were trapped and I couldn't reach for him again.
"Why can't I hug Daddy?" I asked, frustrated and confused and still feeling funny in my tummy and lower places.
"Because Daddy needs you to be safe," he said, and something in his voice made me stop arguing. He sounded scared. Not of me but of something else, something Big that Little Me couldn't see properly.
He dressed me quickly in my softest pajamas—the ones with clouds on them—and carried me to bed even though it wasn't bedtime yet. But maybe it was bedtime? Time felt weird and slippery when I was Little.
"Story?" I asked hopefully.
"Short one," he agreed, but he sat in the chair by the bed instead of holding me, and read about the sleepy bunny who couldn't find his bedroom until he realized he'd been in it all along.
The squirmy feeling faded as he read, whatever the mark had been doing giving up and going back to confused cold. By the time the bunny found his bed, I was yawning, Stormy tucked safe under my chin.
"Sweet dreams, little one," Daddy said, pulling my blankets up to my chin.
"Daddy?" I said as he headed for the door.
"Yes?"
"Tomorrow will the funny feelings stop?"
He paused in the doorway, backlit by the nightlight's soft glow. "Yes. Daddy will make sure they stop."
I believed him because Daddy fixed everything. That was his job. And my job was just to be Little and safe inside the fence of rules he'd built around me.
"Okay," I said, already drifting. "Night night, Daddy. Night night, Stormy."
But through the feelings-connection, even mostly asleep, I felt him standing guard outside my door, fighting something I was too small to understand.
The dream started nice—Stormy and me flying through cotton candy clouds—but then the clouds turned black and started eating the light.
Stormy's button eyes fell out and became holes that went down forever, and when I looked closer, Penny was at the bottom of one, reaching up with hands that were turning into smoke.
"You let me die," she said, except her voice came from everywhere like the walls were talking. "You ate my food and let me die."
"No, no, I tried—" But my words were too small, Little Me words that couldn't explain Big Me thoughts about sacrifice and survival and impossible choices.
The dream shifted, and I was in the bad place again, but this time I was watching from outside myself.
My body moved without me in it, hands that were mine but not mine drawing symbols on the wall in something dark and wet.
When dream-me turned, her eyes were holes like Stormy's had become, and something else was looking out through them.
"Seven days," the Unnamed's voice came from my own mouth. "Then you're mine forever, and I'll use you to rot him from the inside. You'll watch from behind your own eyes while I make you hurt him. While I make you break him. While I make you—"
I woke up screaming.
Not Little screams—those were smaller, simpler, about immediate hurts. These were Big screams, full of knowing too much, understanding the weight of what was coming. My throat felt scraped raw, and the mark between my shoulders burned cold enough to make me sob.
But my thoughts were all tangled wrong. Part of me was Little Wren clutching Stormy, confused and scared and wanting Daddy.
Part of me was adult Wren, remembering my work at the Bronze Cat and the cult and the jars and Penny's warm name on cold glass.
The two parts crashed together in my head, making everything sideways and wrong, like trying to see through broken glass.
I stumbled out of bed, Stormy falling forgotten to the floor. My feet knew the way to the sitting area where Daddy kept watch—Little feet following safe patterns. But my adult mind was screaming about corruption and bonds and how we were running out of time.
He was standing by the window, shoulders rigid with the effort of staying awake, staying vigilant. When he heard me, he turned, and his face went from concerned to alarmed in a heartbeat.
"Please," and my voice came out wrong—too old, too desperate, nothing like Little Me's simple wants. "I need—the mark is pushing and I can't—I'm stuck between and everything hurts—"
I moved before he could, crossing the space with desperate need that belonged to Big Me but happened with Little Me's instinctive trust. I climbed into his lap, pressed against his chest, felt his heartbeat hammer against my palms.
"Wren—" He started, hands hovering, not sure whether to hold or push away.
"It's trying to pull me out," I said into his shirt, words tumbling over each other, adult understanding mixing with little-space confusion. "Making me remember Penny and the bottles and becoming empty and I can't—I need—please—"
For three heartbeats, we were frozen there. Me in his lap, clinging. Him rigid with the effort of not responding to his mate's desperate need. The bond between us screaming for completion, for the joining that would make us whole but would also let the mark pour through me into him.
Then adult-Wren surfaced just enough to tilt my head up, to see his storm-gray eyes gone dark with want, to press my mouth to his.
The kiss exploded through me like lightning finding ground. Every nerve ending lit up with yes and finally and more. His hands came up to grip my arms, and for a moment—just a moment—he kissed me back with all the desperate hunger he'd been containing for days.
I could taste his need, feel it through the bond like a living thing. My hands pulled at his shirt, trying to get closer, trying to find skin, trying to—
He caught my wrists. Held them still. Pulled back from the kiss even though I could feel through the bond how much it cost him, like tearing himself in half.
"No." The word came out broken but firm. "You're not fully here, and we can't—"
"Please, Daddy, please—" And there it was, the tell. Daddy. Even desperate, even half-adult, part of me was still Little. Still vulnerable. Still not capable of the kind of consent this needed.
He stood, carrying me with him, and I wrapped around him like a vine, still trying to get closer. But he was walking toward the discipline corner, and Little Me understood that even if Big Me was still trying to kiss his neck.
"No!" The protest came out young, confused. "Don't want time-out! Want Daddy!"
"You need to settle." He set me down on the cushion, gentle but firm, and when I tried to get up, he pressed a careful hand on my shoulder. "Stay."
"Daddy's being mean!" Tears came then, frustrated Little tears because I didn't understand why Daddy was putting me in the corner when all I wanted was for the hurty feelings to stop. "I didn't do anything bad!"
"You're not in trouble," he said, kneeling so we were eye level. His hand came up to wipe my tears with impossible gentleness. "But you're stuck between Big and Little, and that's not safe. Daddy needs you to be one or the other, and right now, Little is safer."
I hiccupped through my tears, confused. Big and Little? I was just me, wasn't I? Except no, there were two me's in my head, and they were fighting, making everything blurry and wrong.
"Look at me," Daddy said, and his voice had that special tone that made everything else fade out. "Just me. Not the mark, not the scary things. Just Daddy."
I looked. His eyes were the color of storms but soft, like rain that waters gardens instead of floods them. He was breathing slow and steady, and without meaning to, I started matching him. In. Out. In. Out.
"Good girl. Now, tell me about Stormy. What color are his wings?"
"S-silver," I said, the familiar question pulling me toward simpler thoughts. "With darker bits on the edges like clouds when they're thinking about raining."
"And his eyes?"
"Buttons. The gray kind from Daddy's sewing box. One's higher than the other but that makes him special, not wrong."
"That's right. Stormy's perfect just how he is." His hand moved to stroke my hair, careful and soothing. "What did you paint yesterday?"