Vivian
I didn’t understand my own feelings. I wavered between complete numbness and all-consuming overwhelm.
A switch would flip, and suddenly I was furious and miserable and terrified and desperate all at once.
I tried to be still through it. Don’t scream—I didn’t want to concern Theo or Nurghle.
Don’t have a full-blown panic attack—they fucking sucked.
I couldn’t plain old cry if I tried, those wells had run dry.
As for being desperate… I didn’t even know what I was desperate for.
The feeling was vague, but intense. A yearning deeply rooted in my core, strangling my heart and lungs.
Painful. Did I want to be held? Coddled?
Comforted? I was getting plenty of that.
When everything became too much to bear, the switch flipped back, and I was plunged into empty neutrality. I felt like a shell of my former self.
Sleep was nightmare-ridden. I kept jolting awake, feeling like I was suffocating.
Food was tasteless. I was exhausted with no motivation to bathe or leave the bed.
I finally had Theo back and I couldn’t pull myself together enough to even make eye contact with him half the time.
Part of me still wanted to yell at him. Part of me wanted to melt into him.
Mostly, I felt really fucking guilty as he waited on me hand and foot.
Shame was an ice cube running down my spine when I remembered he’d experienced so much worse. Injured worse. In more danger. Killed more people. He’d intentionally left all that violence behind in his former life, surely this should all be more traumatic for him than me.
Nope. He was so functional even when faced with the inevitability that more death would knock on our door soon. Not only functional, but willing to step right back into his role as a killer.
The front door creaked opened and I sucked in a panicked breath. My vision blurred, the immediate dose of adrenaline was paralyzing. My body couldn’t shake the memories of intruders letting themselves into my safe space.
Theo rounded the corner. “Did I scare you?”
“Everything does,” I shrugged.
“What about a secret knock so you know it’s me?” he asked, approaching the bedside.
I nodded and rapped the classic earthly knock on the cabin wall. “Will that work?”
“You may have to refresh my memory a few times, but I think I can handle it,” he replied, repeating the pattern near-correctly.
“What have you been up to?” Even speaking was exhausting as my undue panic subsided and I plunged back into numbness, but I owed him at least that much. He was trying so hard.
“Mostly gardening. I set up a picnic for you outside.”
I swallowed hard. “Outside? I can’t eat it in here?”
“You haven’t left the cabin for five days… it’s not good for you to be sitting in the dark all the time.” This wasn’t the first time Theo said as much.
He glanced at the recently boarded-up window that I’d insisted on covering with heavy blankets. It helped keep away the feeling that someone was staring at me from the tree line. The thick wooden barriers he’d installed still didn’t feel secure enough.
“I’m fine, really,” I protested quietly.
He sighed. “Up you go, Little Goddess.” Four hands gently lifted me from the bed, holding me tight as he walked us towards the door.
I didn’t have it in me to sass him, so I resigned myself to being relocated. I knew he’d love for me to pound on his shoulder and curse his name, but I just… couldn’t. Maybe if I switched back… that might feel good. Cathartic.
The daytime starlight was blinding, practically neon compared to the dim, gray, wooden cabin. I lifted a hand to my brow, shielding my eyes, and scowled. Of course, he picked a sunny—starry—day to drag me out here.
I smelled the fresh air. The soft breeze and warm daylight kissed my skin. None of it felt real.
I reclined on one side of the linen blanket, Theo across from me. “Will you eat for me, darling? Or do I need to make you do that too?” His voice had the slightest hint of teasing in it. A touch of our normalcy, instead of acting like I was too delicate to poke.
“I’ll eat,” I said, picking idly at the spread. Theo had been hard at work in the garden beds and this was the most variety I’d had available in months.
“Thank you.” The relief in his voice was tangible.
“Thanks for bearing with me. I know this funk probably isn’t what you wanted when you came back,” I muttered self-consciously. I didn’t recognize my own voice.
Had I felt more like myself, I would’ve given him absolute hell for leaving me.
That fight would’ve been full of fiery passion and the relief of a reunion.
It would’ve been feisty and rough and raw.
That could be exactly what I needed, if only I wasn’t endlessly fighting this self-protective emptiness.
When I let the feelings in, I was paralyzed.
I couldn’t allow that. Paralysis could be the difference between life and death.
“All I wanted from my return was to be with you.” He leaned back on his lower elbows and tilted his chin to the sky. “I don’t know what this journey looks like, but I want you to know I’m committed to it. I’ll do anything to help you feel safe again.”
We’d mostly avoided these topics, but I feared them less under the bright daylight. Maybe there was some rationale to dragging me outside.
“It’s frustrating, because logically I feel safe with you back. I trust you. But I can’t undo the memories of when you weren’t here. It’s like my body still thinks it’s alone and needs to be ready to shut down or fight for its life at a moment’s notice. Have you felt that way after… things?”
His deep eyes locked with mine. “No, I haven’t,” he answered honestly. “Killing has been natural to me from the beginning.”
“Sure.” I brought a sandwich to my mouth for a bite, wishing this was something he could understand so I didn’t feel so wrong. Weak. Flawed.
“That doesn’t mean you should feel that way. We’re different people, Viv. This is just… my thing.”
Nauseous guilt made me set down my food.
“Theo, I don’t want you to feel like I’m signing you up to be a hitman again.
I know you didn’t want to continue that lifestyle.
All the violence…” It was one of the many thoughts that had been torturing me.
Between the fear and emptiness, there was so much shame.
He’d tried to escape his past, and I was pulling him right back in.
“When did I ever say I disliked violence?” His brow furrowed between his horns.
“I mean—you said—” He was kidding right? That was his whole thing? His big trauma?
“I said I didn’t want to feel like a machine used to hurt innocent people.
A weapon pointed with no say in the target or cause.
” He pushed himself forward, crawling over me and knocking a bowl over on his way.
“Vivian, I have never felt more encouraged to be myself—a real living breathing person—than when I’m with you.
You aren’t using me. I’m not a weapon. I’m an executioner acting on my own free will and morals, with the most beautiful goddess by my side to tend to my battle wounds.
It’s all I could ever want. You’re all I could ever want. ”
Our faces were near touching, my eyes burrowed within the depths of his.
“I love you, Viv.”
The switch flipped. The dam holding back all my feelings crumbled. Anger. Sadness. Anxiety. Fear. Yearning. My eyes teared up from the onslaught. “You don’t wish you were in love with a woman who didn’t make you deal with all of this shit?”
His arms reached forward to cage me between them.
“A different female? Someone who may not kiss the scars covering my body and tell me I’m good?
Someone who I can’t lend my biggest skill to as an act of devotion to her?
Someone without magic, other-worldly life experiences to share, and that spunky bright attitude of yours?
Little Goddess, why would I want anyone less than you? ”
“Did you just imply killing is your love language?” I trembled between his collapsed shoulders, trying to hold it together. I didn’t know what it would look like if I let go.
“I’m pretty sure it fits into one of those categories you told me about from your planet. Wasn’t ‘favors’ one of the five?” A playful smile parted his lips.
I swallowed. “Acts of service?” My voice was trembling, fighting to stay on topic instead of sinking into the needs that thrashed below the surface.
“See.”
Too much. It was all too much. Waves of muddled emotions crashed into me like an unrelenting typhoon.
Drowning was only made more confusing as arousal began to pool between my thighs—my body remembering what it felt like to be at his mercy.
There was an appeal to letting go. A forced “override” button to reboot my system and get me back on track, even if only for a little while.
Fervid desperation made me want to be swallowed whole by him so I could think of nothing other than how our bodies combined.
If he was inside of me, there wouldn’t be any room for this darkness.
His pulse could teach mine how to beat normally again from within my core.
I could purge all my rage, fear, and sadness safely through some primal ritual of passion.
My screams had been choked in my throat since my first kill. He could draw them out.
I leaned forward to press my lips to his, but he pulled away suddenly.
“Wha—” A large palm cupped over my mouth before I could finish the question, his head cocking to the side attentively towards the woods.
I stilled. Voices.
Theo rose, standing over me. My confused yearnings only grew more complex as he peeled off his shirt and started to unzip his pants. He mouthed the word “inside” at me, a strong arm pointing commandingly at the cabin.