αντιμετωπίζω: antimetopízo
Greek
confront
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For only the third or fourth time in her life, Sanya was glad for how dark it had been, darker than any raven. The darkness had probably saved her life.
But, although she may be indebted to the dark now, she was beyond glad that there was light now in the thicket she’d been attacked in.
Interrogation was made easier when you could see the respondent’s face.
And what made it easiest was the fact that the respondent was a faerie, and thus could not lie.
“I don’t see the point of keeping your mouth shut.” Sanya said, as the faerie glared at her. She couldn’t tie him up, for she had nothing that would work as rope, but the threat of her sword (which she had, thankfully, found in the grass) and the wolf was enough to keep the faerie from bolting. “There are always ways to make people talk.”
She wished he just talked, though. Part of her wanted to hurt him, though a bigger part didn’t want to- still, surely he could understand that she might kill him? Was death truly worth whatever the reason was that he had attacked her?
“Talk.” She said for the fourth time, glancing at the wolf that lay curled up beside the faerie, his bloody jaw resting on his gut. Any moment, and Laash would rip out his entrails. If faeries had entrails, at least.
Almost as if the wolf knew that she had thought of him, there was a low sound from him, half a growl and half a whine.
Sanya had named him Laash. It meant ‘corpse’ in her mother tongue.
“About what?” The faerie sneered, one of his hands pressed tight on his bleeding neck. They were the first words he had spoken so far. “The blood on your face does not make you look intimidating, child.”
Clenching her fists, Sanya took a deep breath.
“Unless you want me to spill more of your blood, you’ll fucking tell me why you’re here and why you tried to stab me in the heart.”
He gave her a baleful look, “I do not care for your heart. Only lovers kill like that. I was aiming for your throat, to slit it open and spill forward the fountain of blood I deserve.”
Deserve?
“This is about revenge?” She had thought the woodland creatures might rise up against her, but a faerie whom she had never even met?
Was she dreaming? It seemed likely that she was- or perhaps hallucinating.
Why couldn’t she dream of or hallucinate Edmund again instead of whatever this was? Just once she wanted something to happen that she’d not abhor.
“For what? I do not know you.”
“You are not the one I seek revenge against.” He hissed, his orange skin flushing pumpkin-hued in his anger. It was not dissimilar to the colour of the sky. “Your lover is.”
She blinked, “Edmund?”
What the fuck? But her husband would never have harmed a soul- not knowingly, not unless he’d been coerced.
What if this was about something he’d done when he had been under Jadis’s spell? But- the faeries had not joined the struggle and battle against the White Witch, at least as far as she could remember. She didn’t think Ed had even known faeries existed until after his coronation.
“Your mortal spouse is not the one I speak of.” He leaned ahead from the tree he slumped against, and Laash raised his head, baring his sharp teeth. “Calm, you. I know when I am bested.”
“Then who are you talking about?” She asked impatiently. She had had sex with more than a few people, but she doubted more than two or three of them had ever even met a faerie. “Thylle in the Dancing Wood? Countess Cassia? Captain Ishaahz of Azraq? Those two maids in Galma- no, I doubt it, they’d never been to Narnia-”
“The Faerie Queen.”
The memories hit Sanya like a flood- supple green skin, floral patterns on her hips, folded wings, lips that loved to lick.
Although it had probably not been too long since then- she had almost forgotten, gladly so, about those frenetic days- she assumed it was days- that she had spent with Rhiannon.
She didn’t want to remember it. She hadn’t felt like herself in centuries- but that time, it was like she’d not known a single thing happening in her mind. She’d known nothing, absolutely nothing, but wanting the Faerie Queen.
“Killing me won’t hurt her.”
“Wouldn’t it?” His eyes gleamed, shining like topaz. “I will have killed someone she loves, and what could hurt more than that?”
Unfortunately, he had a point there.
She didn’t think that she would ever be able to forget that the Faerie Queen had practically admitted that she was in love with her- and that she had proposed marriage, and the idea of having a child together, too!
If that had been real, she supposed all this was real, too. It wasn’t a hallucination.
“I’m certain there are thousands who wish vengeance upon the Faerie Queen, and justifiably so. What’s your reason?”
“She killed my sister, Ceila.” His voice did not shake, but a shadow of sorrow came over his face. “She was an informant for her, spent years risking all a faerie could risk for our Queen. And what did her Fae Majesty do?”
Sanya felt a macabre curiosity, her mind running thousands of gruesome scenarios, and she took a step forward.
“What?”
“She tore my sister’s head off with her hands, whilst she was naked and trembling with fear, as she begged for mercy.” A muscle twitched in his cheek, and the faerie’s jaw clenched. He’d not been there, but he’d been told by those who had been. “The Faerie Queen showed her corpse no respect, either. She kicked it away into a bush as she climbed down her throne, as though it was an instrument of child’s play, and both head and body were near to rot when they were delivered to our home.”
“Then you should kill her.” Sanya would help him, if needed. An eerie calm was spreading all over her, and her blood felt like ice. She had lain with the woman who had done that- she had kissed her, and let herself be touched by her.
She felt sick, sicker even than when she ate. If someone did that to her brother, she would not rest until she had bitten and clawed their heart out.
“I do not know how to.” The Faerie Queen was more powerful than anyone living, and he was just one powerless faerie with a knife. “And death will provide rest. She does not deserve that.”
“Then torture her. Make her suffer.” She then clicked her tongue, and the wolf clambered off the faerie and to her once more. “Rip away her wings, skin her alive. Carve shapes into her skin with your knife.” In the same patterns that were tattooed onto her body, that Sanya had kissed. “But don’t let her die.”
He shook his head, and he dropped his hand down from his neck, and Sanya saw just how deep Laash had bitten.
“The Faerie Queen is not an easy being to harm.” He said, sounding almost proud of the fact. It alarmed Sanya how even the faeries that hated Rhiannon most revered her. “Conspiring to hurt her never works, and most never try it. When there were rumours that she had a son-”
Sanya stiffened.
“You have no idea how many attempted to kill him. It was very long ago, though-” He was frowning, “and I never did believe the rumour.”
“I agree.” She said, because she did. She’d never been able to imagine the Faerie Queen parenting. “I cannot see the Faerie Queen as a mother.”
“Yes. Besides, if the child did exist- I am sure he is dead by now. Someone must have got to him- good riddance.” He was smirking as he looked at the sky, and he missed the way the girl’s fists clenched. “Not Her Majesty, though. She is well-protected.”
“Yes, by fear.” She didn’t think Rhiannon had ever had anyone stay with her out of love. Jem would have, had she not given him away- but that was Jem. Too sweet and loving for his own good. Far too precious a person to be Rhiannon’s blood. “Loyalty borne of fear can end quicker than a happy moment.”
“You underestimate the fear. We faeries would rather die than have her know that we have thoughts to harm her. If she knew-” Again, his voice did not shake, but he did, so much that if his hood had been on, it would have fallen off, “it would make my sister’s death look like an enviable fate.”
“Perhaps I’ll kill her.” Even if she did look thirteen and far from desirable, there was no one else that Rhiannon would allow near her. “Maybe I should kill her.”
She had kept her locked up for a thousand years. She had taken advantage of her lust, which had been emerged from the loneliness Rhiannon herself had caused. And then she had tortured her, and sent her off to this quest that might end whatever was left of her soul and life.
She was sure there were several that were deserving to kill her- but she was on that list, too.
The faerie scoffed, “You can’t. You might harm her, but I do not think you can commit murder.”
Sanya felt her face stretch into a strange smile.
A leer.
Like Rabadash.
“You’d be surprised.”
The faerie gazed her for a moment, unable to understand what she meant.
But he was fae, and faes did not let others know when they felt witless.
He chose to speak on about his motives.
“Revenge is not all. I am good at multitasking, I am told.”
“Oh?” Perhaps he was just sadistic. “Why else?”
“To stop you from harming the Unicorn.”
Once again, Sanya was thrown.
She looked to the wolf, to hear if she’d heard right, and he looked back at with unblinking hazel eyes.
Her father had had hazel eyes, too.
But she could break down over that later.
“Hein?” How did he know!? She had no intention of hurting Ephre- she would be a friendly face, finally- but he shouldn’t know. Her quest- she had thought it was secret. And she’d not known that Ephre’s presence in Neráida was common knowledge, either. “How do you know-?”
He laughed, a dry scraping sound that made Laash let out an angered howl.
“As you said. Loyalty born of fear can only last so long. You would be surprised at how many loose lips are present in the Faerie Court.” He began to fiddle with the collar of his cloak. “None of us have ever seen the Unicorn, but she has been part of the stories and myths told to fae younglings for longer than any living faerie can remember.”
“And what are the stories told about her?” But before he could tell tales that would not be important to her quest, she added, “Stories that would explain why she’d be harmed.”
He shrugged, “Her blood provides strength and vitality, her heart can revive the dying, her hair creates potions potent enough to last millennia, and several other things. All stories, of course. She may be a creature of myth, but she’s still a horse.”
“Horses were created by a God.” Sanya reminded him- or informed, in case he didn’t know. She had forgotten how aggravating creatures who had the ability of speech were. “Don’t underestimate them.”
Her mind began to whisper her deific ancestor’s name.
Poseidon.
She wondered if Apollo had spoken to him of her. Or if he even remembered that she existed.
“Do you know where she is?”
His tangerine brows furrowed, “Who ‘she’?”
“My dead mother.” She retorted, her patience finally snapping to its end. Maybe it was because the long gash on her collarbone was beginning to feel like more than just a paper-cut. “Obviously, I mean the Unicorn. Do you know her exact location?”
“As if I’d tell you.”
She stepped even closer, now standing between his spread legs, and lifted her foot and then brought it down hard.
Right on the most sensitive part of him.
His face became the colour of rust, as shocking pain began from his member and then coursed through every cell in his body.
“Tch-ch-kha-”
Sanya pressed her foot deeper, feeling the softness being kneaded under her shoe. He wouldn’t be able to walk, if he kept being stubborn.
“Tell me.”
Gagging and choking, he nodded frantically- and she finally took her foot off him.
He took a moment to calm, and then slipped his hand inside his breeches, wincing as he felt himself, throbbing in pain instead of pleasure.
“Th-he Meadow at the end of Gaithera.”
A meadow? Like Chloris Meadow?
Or like the Meadowlands, as her children had called the afterlife?
“What’s Gaithera?”
“This.” He gestured around them, to the thicket, to the path that ran outside it, and the garden she had been stumbling through for so long. “The Garden of the Gods. That is its name.”
“How far is it? The meadow?”
“Near and far.”
She lifted her foot, and he shook his head quickly, raising the hand that wasn’t cupping himself.
“Calm, calm. I am fae, you cannot expect a true answer.”
“I’m the True Queen.” And she brought her foot down on him, crushing both cock and hand. It wasn’t just impatience anymore, but it was desperation, the desperation that had made her leave her children and brother, the desperation that had driven all her actions for the past thirteen hundred years. “The truth is what I forever expect.”
He managed to gasp out, “I won’t answer if you k-k-keep-”
But she didn’t take her foot off him, instead jerking her head at Laash, who ran forward and laid one paw over the faerie’s heart.
Good boy. Perhaps because she had killed him- her heart gave a great lurch of sorrow and guilt, nausea rising, but that was to be ignored as well- he was attuned to her wishes and commands.
“Tell me where the meadow is, tell me which part of the forest it is!”
“I will not!”
Sanya punched him, hard on the nose, and she felt the delicate cartilage break under the weight of her fist.
Grey-red blood oozed out of his nose, and he spat at her.
“Weak. You call that a punch?”
She let out a growl- and her fists shook.
“Tell me.”
He stuck his tongue out at her.
Laash moved away, slinking away to the spot he’d lay curled up in, perhaps knowing that this faerie was not for him to attack.
He was Sanya’s.
And by the Heavens, she wanted to attack. She wanted to break everything of his, as she’d had everything of hers broken. She wanted him bleeding. She wanted to hurt him.
So, she did.
And she hit him again, and again, and again, and again- she remembered how he had said good riddance about her son, about her baby, and her punches grew harder- his teeth broke, his jaw dislocated, dark bruises already coming to fruition around his eyes and cheeks- but she didn’t stop.
She dug the point of her sword into his chest, and even then she didn’t stop.
Maybe she couldn’t.
Still, he didn’t answer.
Threatening him would have been so much easier if she still had her abilities.
“Tell me,” She dropped her sword- her hands were hurting so badly, and she pressed her foot down on his member harder, “or your cock isn’t the only thing you’ll lose.”
She wasn’t his lover, but taking his heart was a foolproof way to kill.
“You are evil-” His face was covered in blood, yet his words were clear, “you are horrible- cruel, so cruel- and I should have killed you- you deserve whatever pain you have felt in your life-”
“Shut up.” Her head began to pound, like axes were being flung about inside it. What he was saying was nothing that she hadn’t already told herself, but it was different coming from someone else. Especially someone who couldn’t lie.
She’d thought these things since she was a stupid thirteen-year-old, when she hadn’t been able to realise that her then-betrothed had entered her bedchamber with the intention to rape her.
She wrapped her hand around his throat, the brown of her fingers stark against his orange skin.
And she pressed tighter.
“Tell me where the meadow is.”
He stared at her, into her eyes, and something weakened in him.
Or, perhaps he just couldn’t take it anymore.
He was crying now, the pain too much to bear, and he waved his hand in a bid for mercy.
Sanya’s fingers loosened, and he spoke hoarsely, “It is beyond the fah-faw-forest!”
He had wanted to avenge his sister, and what had he fallen into? The human in front of him was just as vile as the Faerie Queen, and she would kill him, too.
He took a deep breath, as the fatal child before him shifted and moved away from him.
“The forest is what stands between you and the meadow the Unicorn rests in. You cannot find her, unless the forest ends, and the truth is that the forest’s end can be gained only by a God.”
--
Lucy hadn’t thought that she would be able to know when they arrived, being so deep in the How- she was lying propped against the cracked Stone Table, fingering her cordial- but she had.
The How thrummed to life, and she got to her feet, fixing her cordial back at her belt, and then, her skirts whipping around her and panic brewing in her heart, she ran out of the chamber and through the rest of the How, passing others who were moving outside, too- all of them keen to find out how the raid had gone.
To find out whether they had won.
To find out if Narnia was saved.
But one look at Peter’s face as she skidded to a halt outside, and at the faces of everyone-
Lucy’s heart sank.
They had left with so many more people. The army that was returning was a fraction of what had left.
As her big brother drew closer, she called worriedly, “What happened?”
The sullen anger on Peter’s face became uglier, and he jerked his head towards Caspian, who walked beside him. The Telmarine Prince looked like he was grieving more than raging.
“Ask him.”
The despair in Caspian’s expression flickered, shock flitting through as he looked to Peter.
“Me?”
“Peter, don’t.” Susan spoke loudly from the back, standing with the others who had gone with the raid. Lucy couldn’t see Edmund- but she did not worry, not much, because if anything had happened to him, Su would not have been so collected.
But Peter was too incensed, too much in despair, to pay heed to his sister.
“Of course, you. Who else?”
“You!” Caspian would not shout, but the High King might not leave him a choice. “You could have called it off- there was still time-”
“Well, there wasn’t, because of you.” Peter bit back, turning around to face him completely. He knew that others were there, his fellow soldiers and Narnians, and his duty was to them foremost- but everything he felt seemed directed towards Caspian. “Because you were too soft to push your emotions away for a few moments-”
“You’re one to talk! You led us into that horror because you wanted to be the one to save Narnia!” They were ugly words, but the whole situation was ugly. From the raid under the midnight sky, to their return in the gloomy grey-blue dawn- it was all ugly.
“Narnia would’ve been saved, if you’d just followed the plan!” The plan they had gone over with- together- and then Caspian had let it all fall to pieces. And he had actually begun to trust, for reasons he couldn’t fathom. “If you’d kept to the plan, those soldiers might have been alive right now.”
Peter had taken them to the slaughter, Peter had been the one who’d had the idea- but he was the one responsible for the deaths?
The little Caspian who had been so in awe of the Magnificent Golden King, would’ve shrivelled in shame and misery- but it wasn’t little Caspian there, but an older one, a Caspian who would not shrink away.
“Well, if you’d stayed here like I suggested, they definitely would be!”
Peter let out a laugh, full of mockery and derision.
“Listen to you!? If your ideas were enough, then why am I- why are we-” He nodded to his sisters, on either side of him, and then let himself feel a sprinkle of worry that Edmund wasn’t there, “here? You called us, remember.”
He’d called him. He was in Narnia because of him.
And Narnia was ruined because of him, too.
Something tightened in Caspian’s face, and he clenched his jaw.
His dark eyes burned as he responded coldly, “My first mistake.”
“No-” Peter laughed that laugh again, the one that made ice crawl into Caspian’s chest- but this time it seemed to him the laugh was mixed with a sob, “your first mistake was thinking you could lead these-” his, “people.”
He wanted to scream.
“Well, you were not there to do it.” He would keep calm, he told himself, biting his lip. The tumult he felt inside, had to stay inside. Even if letting it out at Peter was justified- Caspian would not. “Need I remind you- I am not the one who abandoned Narnia.”
“You invaded Narnia!” Fuck him, fuck him, Peter ought to beat the shit out of him- and he wanted to. How dare he act like he was on a high horse? Narnia was this way because of him and his people! “You have no more right to rule it than Miraz does!”
And then Caspian began to walk away from Peter, and into the How- he did not and could not listen to more, he wanted to find a quiet place and let his emotions loose- and that might have been the end of the argument.
But Caspian’s last words had hit right at Peter’s heart, more sharply than any blade ever could, and he couldn’t let such a blow go unreturned.
And, by Aslan, Peter wanted to hurt Caspian- hurt someone as badly enough as he was hurting.
“You- him-”
The people loved him, and I’ve been told my whole life that I would be a good King like him. I’ve always looked up to my father- and I wanted to be like him.
Caspian’s family, his people, all the Telmarines- they had hurt Narnia, hurt his people- they had driven them into hiding in forests, into becoming wild beasts, and they had taken away their homes. If it hadn’t been for them, none of this horror, as he said, would be happening.
Peter did not hesitate.
“Your father-”
And then Caspian’s retreat into the How stopped, as though he had been stabbed from the back, and he began to turn.
His father? Pete- Peter had brought up his father? He had confided to him about him- only a sentence or two, but he had. The father he’d just found out had been murdered by his own brother.
He was using it against him?
“Narnia’s better off without the lot of you.”
And that was it.
Caspian let out a yell, guttural and agonised, and he swiftly pulled his sword out of his scabbard, aiming for Peter’s throat- chest- jugular- any vulnerable part of him.
But Peter was a seasoned warrior, and in the time Caspian took to bring out his sword, Rhindon had been unsheathed, as well- and there was a clang of metal as the two swords crossed, each point at the other man’s throat.
But more than the swords, their expressions- their eyes seemed to affect the other more.
Pain, anguish, anger, pure hurt- the feelings were mirrored in both.
But Peter’s blue eyes had the anger pushed to the front, his lips pressed tightly together; and Caspian’s near-black eyes had anguish, his teeth bared in a growl.
Words failed them, and so did their swords.
They could do nothing but stare, look at each other, see their emotions reflected over the other’s face.
They wanted to fight, to cross blades with each other, to slash at the other’s body- because it was the only way they could think of to relieve themselves of everything that hurt.
But they did not, because a voice- Peter didn’t realise until later that it was Edmund’s, he was drowning too deep in his anger and those dark eyes- yelled suddenly.
“Stop it!”
And then Lucy was rushing forward, past them- Caspian and Peter lowered their swords and broke their gaze, turning behind them- behind them, where Glenstorm carried Trumpkin, unmoving and unconscious, in his arms.
The centaur had barely got the dwarf down onto the ground, aided by Edmund, when Lucy descended upon them all.
Her expert hands, though little, had unstopped her cordial- and she brought it to Trumpkin’s lips, making him swallow the liquid that could save him.
No. It would save him.
Caspian finally walked away as Trumpkin’s eyes shot open, but Peter did not look at him. The anger had sagged out of him, and all he felt was the pain.
He looked at Glenstorm- the grizzled centaur was looking ahead, to Windmane, his partner- or wife?- who stood at the entrance of the How.
Glenstorm shook his head, and her face crumpled.
Their two eldest children had been at the raid.
But Glenstorm had returned alone.
The King remembered when Rydram, Orieus’s son, had died. He had died in battle, too, his first real battle. He’d been helping Peter move faster- when a spear had been shot through his chest, and he’d had been able to do nothing but watch in shock.
How many times would he cause that?
In his reflection of the old, old memory, Peter missed Nikabrik following after Caspian- and Edmund did, too, as he helped Trumpkin to his feet.
That was a pity indeed considering what would soon happen- and what might have been avoided.
If only someone had noticed. If only someone other than Nikabrik had gone to comfort Caspian.
“Wh-what are you all standing around for!?” The gruff dwarf demanded from those encircling him, just a minute or two after he’d come back to consciousness. “The Telmarines will be here soon enough. In the next day or two, at the latest.”
Lucy gave him a small smile, and the dwarf raised a feeble hand to pat her arm.
“Thank you- my dear little friend.”
Lucy’s smile grew just a little bigger.
“Trumpkin’s right.” Peter was in no frame of mind to take charge, so Edmund would. He didn’t want to- so much death, there had been so many dead- but he was King, and it was his duty. “I would’ve said they’d be here within the day, but if Miraz has any sense, he’d give his men some time to pull themselves together and prepare themselves to the fullest. They’ll be here by tomorrow noon, with all their might.”
“Not all of us can fight so soon.” Britos spoke, standing just beside Glenstorm. “Especially since sawh many of us haff- have not come back.”
There was a moment of painful silence.
“We’ll have to manage.” Susan said quietly, for what else was there to do? “They’ll pull themselves together, and so will we. The Narnians have always been a formidable force, and no number of centuries or invasions can change that.”
Edmund nodded approvingly. Susan may not be a warrior, but she was more than inspirational enough.
“Indeed, my Queen sister is right. It’s past dawn, I know, but everyone have a rest for an hour and two, and then we’re back to working and training and strategising.”
He glanced ahead, where Peter still stood, quiet and sullen. It was so strange to see him this muted.
“We’ll give Peter and Caspian till afternoon to cool off. Oh- Badger?”
The Badger had toddled forward as Lucy’d run ahead, and he had been looking down at Trumpkin with concern- but as the King addressed him, his attention shot away.
“Yes, Your Majesty?”
“We have Caspian’s Professor with us. Could you and Nikabrik see to it that he is checked over and given a cot to rest in?”
“Of course, of course. I’ll get him my broth, and he’ll be well in no time- if he is unwell.” He hoped he wasn’t. “Nika- where is he?”
Trumpkin craned his head around, attempting to sit up.
“He was just here- where’d the old toadstool run off to?”
Badger suggested, “Perhaps he has gone to offer some comfort to the young Prince. Nikabrik might be turning over a new leaf.”
And then Edmund remembered his first judgement of Nikabrik, when he’d seen him in the clearing just a few days ago.
That he hadn’t looked untrustworthy.
Perhaps having the Telmarine in their midst had finally driven Nikabrik over the murderous edge.
“Or he’s gone to offer an early grave to him.” He said, and darted forward, seizing Peter by the hand. Trumpkin got to his feet, too, unsteady and helped by Susan and Lucy. “Peter, come on-”
Peter had not been paying attention to the conversation, and he shook his head. Why had his brother already pulled out one of his swords? Sure, Rhindon was out as well, but that was because he was too drained to make the simple action of thrusting it back into his scabbard.
“No, Ed, you go in, I’ll come in later-”
“Caspian might be in danger.”
The brothers ran inside.
-
-✧･: °*✧*°:･✧-
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Edit timeeee
(She isn’t like Rabatrash.)
Remember Ceila? Chapter 30 of ‘The Heirs’?
She was that orange faerie whom Rhiannon teleported out of the bath, and then who told the Faerie Queen the news that her son had been murdered? Yes, the faerie who wanted to kill Sanya (whose name is never revealed, just to show how strayed Sanya has become from her propriety-laden Princess life, so much so that she does not even have the politeness to ask for someone’s name- which is also why no faceclaim) is her brother, and he’s just trying to avenge his sister.
But he’ll (likely) die because of this mission.
Much like how Selene died, avenging Jem.
They make me sad.
AND CASPETER ANGST AND TENSION AND EYE GAZING AND FIGHT???
I mean, just fuck already.
Let’s not even get into Sanya torturing the faerie???? Of course she snapped- he said ‘good riddance’ about her baby Jem. She was on the edge of the cliff for so long- but that pushed her off.
Okay, next chapter- it is nOt going to be good for Edmund or Sanya. It really, really will not. And it has two very long flashback sequences- neither of which, unfortunately, is an Edmanya sex or fluff scene.
Also, we’re through half the book! WOOHOO.
And, as always- I humbly and unashamedly ask you to vote on the chapters, and perhaps comment, too :)