FIC: i am doll eyes, doll mouth, doll legs (BtVS, Wishverse Willow/Cordelia, R)
TITLE: i am doll eyes, doll mouth, doll legs
RATING: R
FANDOMS: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
PAIRING: Wishverse!Willow/Wishverse!Cordelia
SUMMARY: I am the pretty thing that lives in the house.
WARNINGS: Dubcon, non-explicit dom/sub
AUTHOR’S NOTES: Written for the femslash_minis Inhuman Girls round for aaronlisa who requested the pairing with sarcasm, blood, rain, and no fluff or noncon (but with allowances for dubcon). Also, this got way darker than I had anticipated, so I hope I didn’t push things too far for you.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Title from Hole’s “Doll Parts.” Summary from the film of the same name.
It is winter and that means nothing, except the days are shorter. The nights are longer, and there is less sun; around mid-October, Sunnydale becomes more and more for the dead every day.
Cordelia understands the feeling.
For a long time, she didn’t understand why people stayed. Now she knows that, even if you leave, a piece of this place will stick inside you like a bone in your throat.
A few months after the Harvest, Cordelia broke a heel walking home. It was getting dark, and she hobbled as quickly as she could on her uneven shoes, but she fell, the asphalt scraping her knees. The blood stained the hem of her dress, but what did it matter? There was nothing beautiful left, anyway. Another Cordelia would have cared about that. All this Cordelia could think about was blood in the water, a neon light blinking in the twilight all around her-PREY PREY PREY PREY PREY.
Cordelia took off her shoes, and she ran.
The sun sank below the horizon. As if on cue, the temperature dropped ten degrees. Cordelia’s breath fogged the air; her lungs burned. Her feet bled. She was only a few blocks from home.
Cordelia heard a noise like whispers against her ear. She whipped around, looking for the source of the sound, but could see nothing but shuttered houses and circles of wan streetlight on the sidewalk.
She turned back, faced home. There was a girl standing a few yards in front of her-not a girl. Something else. The thing was wearing black and a twisted lipstick smile, and it was looking at her.
Cordelia fumbled in her purse for the cross she kept there.
Willow tssked. She walked closer, beneath one of the weak streetlights. She was pale as an underwater thing-those fish that live so deep in the ocean, so far from the sun, that they are blind and blanched, that they look like creatures from other worlds.
“Pretty girl,” she purred. “Pretty, pretty girl, all alone. Why isn’t anyone protecting you, pretty girl? People usually protect pretty things.” The Willow-thing glanced at the cross in Cordelia’s hand, but didn’t comment on it. She continued: “People take their pretty things, and they lock them in little velvet boxes. They lock them in tall towers or steel-walled bank vaults. Little pretty things shouldn’t be out alone. Someone will take them, make them not so pretty anymore.”
The Willow-thing’s face rippled, baring jagged fangs. She stepped toward Cordelia, stepped out from under the streetlight, darkness falling over her face. What little moonlight there was glinted off her sharp predator’s teeth.
Cordelia held the cross out in front of her, cutting the space between them. With her arm outstretched, Willow was inches away. She sneered at the cross.
“That isn’t very friendly, pretty girl,” she said.
“Back off,” Cordelia said. “I’m not afraid of you.”
The Willow-thing smiled. She walked forward, taking Cordelia by her outstretched arm, pressing the cross against the white skin above her corset. The cross sizzled as it burned into her undead flesh, and Willow laughed. Cordelia tried to pull away, but the Willow-thing had her in her strong grip. She knocked the cross away, her chest still glittering with embers, still smoking, and pulled Cordelia against her. Cordelia pushed against the stiff leather bodice between them, and found all her strength wasn’t enough. Willow held her tight, her lips so close that they smeared burgundy lipstick against Cordelia’s cheek.
“What will you do for me, pretty girl,” she asked, “to make me keep you pretty?”
***
It is raining, and the short hours of the winter day are gone. The moon is up already. Cordelia unlocks her window, waits. She has invited her in.
She has done a lot of things she never thought she’d do.
Survival is an admirable goal, and Cordelia Chase is a survivor.
The breeze coming through the open window, near-freezing with the rain, bites against Cordelia’s skin as she takes off her clothes. She scrubs the lipstick from her mouth and the perfume from her wrists. She runs the pads of her fingers over the bite wounds on her thighs and breasts, testing how sound the flesh is. Not very. Healing is slow.
Cordelia brushes her hair until it shines. It falls over her shoulders, veiling her face as she kneels on the floor, pressing her forehead to the carpet in supplication.
Because she is grateful. Her heart is still beating and Willow only leaves marks where clothes can cover them.
Cordelia’s eyes are closed, but she hears the monster climbing in through the window. Cordelia’s muscles go taut and she gags on her own breath. The Willow-thing crouches beside her, runs cold fingers down her naked spine, hums quietly to herself, a tune Cordelia can never recognize. The next move is sudden, but it’s not unexpected, really. Expectations have no place in her life anymore. Willow fists Cordelia’s hair, clawing right against the skull, and pulls her head up. She’s not supposed to look. She’s supposed to keep her eyes down like a good pet, but it’s not something Cordelia can ever do. She will be punished for it, she’s punished for it every time, but Cordelia cannot do this without looking, every night, into the face of the monster that is keeping her.
She is the pretty thing, but she isn’t the dead thing.
Not yet.