Fic: Tom/Minerva, "In a Dawn So Very Dark." PG13
Title: In a Dawn So Very Dark
Author: Sionnain
Pairing: Tom/Minerva
Rating: PG13
Summary:The sun and the dark meet only twice; at night, when the darkness wins, and in the morning, when the sun breaks free.
AN: Written for the lovely Kethlenda for her birthday! Thanks, as always, to my beta Jazzypom. The Goddess Athena was the one who caused the Furies to relent, but as that is Minerva's Greek counterpart, I took the liberty of borrowing the story.
The title is a line from the Nick Cave song, "There is a Kingdom."
In a Dawn So Very Dark
The starry heavens above me
The moral law within
So the world appears
--Nick Cave, There is a Kingdom
Shame whispers to her from the shadows.
For this is where it lives, ready to devour her. It speaks in blade-sharp tongues, it drips like icicles down her spine, and her eyes dilate until the light of a single candle burns like fire behind her lids.
What are you doing, wrong, this is wrong, he is not yours, can never be.
Her name has always defined her; mythical strength imbued in each syllable; Minerva. A warrior, a goddess of virtue and intellect.
In the stories, it was she who brought order to Athens, when she demanded the Furies relent and spare Orestes their cruel embrace. From blood vengeance to justice. From darkness into light.
She is a creature of the light.
The soft light of morning shines in her and falls across her face, a renewal. Each morning she feels it like the most precious of awakenings.
The afternoon, when the sun is at its height, she looks up at it and feels it kiss her, and she is forgiven. Even when the sun is wrapped in the grayest of clouds, there is still light enough to see beauty everywhere; in the graceful arch of the trees and the cool blue depths of the lake.
At nightfall, the sun tosses brilliant colors into the sky like paint, deep reds and vibrant oranges streaking across the horizon, heralding the sun's descent. Even twilight retains its own magic; the sky is a pure deep blue before the stars rise cruel and cold above.
A false light. The stars are never warm.
During the daylight, she works hard and excels in her schoolwork. She practices her spells and her charms, she reads books that stain her fingers with dust and make her sneeze. She sits with her friends, and her laughter trips into the hall.
Outside the sun praises her, surrounds her like an embrace, comforting her because it is there.
Sometimes Minerva watches the sun set from a window seat in some tower long-since unused, her legs curled up underneath her beneath the soft fabric of her school robes. When the glorious cornflower-blue sky begins to bleed black, that is when the shadows start to speak, and though she tells herself sternly No and I will not and never again...
She always ends up crashing on the rocks beneath the lure of their siren’s song, unable to resist.
Even the moon, every now and then, hides its light in the thick veil of darkness.
* * *
“You don't like me, I know,” he tells her, voice sin-dark, eyes gleaming.
His hands-he has long fingers, pale skin like snow-they are on her shoulders, sliding beneath her robes, pulling them from her trembling body. Her body comes alive for him like a night-blooming flower, as he coaxes from her what the day never will.
“I don't,” she agrees, because she does not lie to him, and she doesn't like him at all.
“You don't have to.” He leans forward and his words slide across her nape like the cool brush of silk. Her sun-warmed skin surrenders with a thousand little sighs, her body leans back against him though she wants so badly to resist.
Do you? her traitorous voice whispers, do you really?
He pulls her back against him; all lean, strong muscles behind her. Her body is turning to liquid, her skin is flushed, her muscles are languid and unresisting.
“I'm the predator,” he purrs, and his tongue darts out to trace the whorls of her ear.Want spikes through her, shimmering over skin too sensitive and needful, humming in secret places deep within her body.
“I'm not prey,” she insists, though her voice is shaking, and maybe that is what she is because whatever he does to her, she does not resist, as if he has killed her in truth.
Maybe he has.
“I suppose not,” he murmurs, and his lips are warm and soft as they trace up the column of her throat. He tastes the pulse of blood that beats, butterfly-fast, beneath her skin. “I return to you, don't I? I'm not a scavenger to bother with the dead. Once I've had them...they are dead.”
He speaks of the others, the prey he captures with his engaging smile and sycophantic banter. She is pleased that never worked on her, though she feels sorry for the ones who stare after him so longingly, wondering what it is they have done to earn his casual, murderous disdain.
His touch and his hands on her skin pull forth that heady combination of desire and dread, and her body relaxes against his as she surrenders to him.
Maybe the sun doesn't set of it's own volition, after all. Maybe it's just that the night is stronger and pulls it down to lie in darkness, and the sun can do nothing but relent.
Maybe the night speaks in tongues too alluring to resist, with fingers that know just where to touch. Perhaps the night slides behind the sun with a hissing voice and cold dark eyes intent with malignant promise, and the sun simply gives in, and...
Dies.
The only light she sees is the sharp white bursts behind her eyes, like stars in the dark.
** * *
He leaves her there, warm and flushed amidst tangled sheets. The night air swirls around her, dancing on the sprawled limbs of her body, as if celebration for her submission.
At night she is proud of the bruises he has left in the wake of his frantic passion, and she touches them with reverent fingers, liking the way the blood coils together and darkens her skin. These are his kisses, these bruises.
He stands always by the window, as if he could simply melt away with the shadows come dawn, and that is what he does, really. She is not aware of him in the daylight, will not let herself walk by him in the hallway or join him in the library to study. He does not belong in her world, not in that one, at least.
The sun and the dark meet only twice; at night, when the darkness wins, and in the morning, when the sun breaks free.
“You will never succeed, Tom,” she tells him quietly, wishing a little that things were different, for there is a mind trapped beneath all that ambition that could be the mark of a great man.
“Who shall stop me? You?”
She loves the way he speaks, even if she hates the words that fall like curses from his lips.
“If I must,” she says bravely, looking towards where he reposes near the window. She cannot see him-there is no moon. When there is, he always draws the drape to plunge the room in black.
You are all the light I can stand, Minerva.
“We will be enemies, then,” he reminds her, and it is all there in his future-death, crimson eyes, a shattered soul where nothing remains but the pulse of dark magic in rotted veins.
“I know,” she whispers, tears in her eyes; within the crystal drops she refuses to shed, there lies her future-sadness, loss, betrayal.
“You could be my queen,” he says reverently, moving back towards her, a flash of long limbs in the dark.
His fingers are cold when they touch her, and her heart feels like it is being strangled in her breast. He traces a finger down her cheekbone, as if memorizing her face. “A goddess...”
The shadows gather in his voice and spill out over her; she turns her face away but somewhere deep inside of her, where her magic lives, there is a yearning to know all that he knows, to see empires fall...
I already am a goddess. Justice.
This is not was she says to him. Instead, her arms go around him and she leans her head back, offering herself, allowing her body to speak of her secret and shameful yearning. When she sees his face at last, she thinks she sees cities falling and burning in the slick darkness of his eyes. A Firebrand, to bring destruction, nothing more.
There is beauty in fallen empires, to be sure; though it is not something she wants--should want-to understand.
In the morning, I shall be Minerva again. Tonight...
Tonight, I shall be Persephone.
~Fin
Author: Sionnain
Pairing: Tom/Minerva
Rating: PG13
Summary:The sun and the dark meet only twice; at night, when the darkness wins, and in the morning, when the sun breaks free.
AN: Written for the lovely Kethlenda for her birthday! Thanks, as always, to my beta Jazzypom. The Goddess Athena was the one who caused the Furies to relent, but as that is Minerva's Greek counterpart, I took the liberty of borrowing the story.
The title is a line from the Nick Cave song, "There is a Kingdom."
In a Dawn So Very Dark
The starry heavens above me
The moral law within
So the world appears
--Nick Cave, There is a Kingdom
Shame whispers to her from the shadows.
For this is where it lives, ready to devour her. It speaks in blade-sharp tongues, it drips like icicles down her spine, and her eyes dilate until the light of a single candle burns like fire behind her lids.
What are you doing, wrong, this is wrong, he is not yours, can never be.
Her name has always defined her; mythical strength imbued in each syllable; Minerva. A warrior, a goddess of virtue and intellect.
In the stories, it was she who brought order to Athens, when she demanded the Furies relent and spare Orestes their cruel embrace. From blood vengeance to justice. From darkness into light.
She is a creature of the light.
The soft light of morning shines in her and falls across her face, a renewal. Each morning she feels it like the most precious of awakenings.
The afternoon, when the sun is at its height, she looks up at it and feels it kiss her, and she is forgiven. Even when the sun is wrapped in the grayest of clouds, there is still light enough to see beauty everywhere; in the graceful arch of the trees and the cool blue depths of the lake.
At nightfall, the sun tosses brilliant colors into the sky like paint, deep reds and vibrant oranges streaking across the horizon, heralding the sun's descent. Even twilight retains its own magic; the sky is a pure deep blue before the stars rise cruel and cold above.
A false light. The stars are never warm.
During the daylight, she works hard and excels in her schoolwork. She practices her spells and her charms, she reads books that stain her fingers with dust and make her sneeze. She sits with her friends, and her laughter trips into the hall.
Outside the sun praises her, surrounds her like an embrace, comforting her because it is there.
Sometimes Minerva watches the sun set from a window seat in some tower long-since unused, her legs curled up underneath her beneath the soft fabric of her school robes. When the glorious cornflower-blue sky begins to bleed black, that is when the shadows start to speak, and though she tells herself sternly No and I will not and never again...
She always ends up crashing on the rocks beneath the lure of their siren’s song, unable to resist.
Even the moon, every now and then, hides its light in the thick veil of darkness.
* * *
“You don't like me, I know,” he tells her, voice sin-dark, eyes gleaming.
His hands-he has long fingers, pale skin like snow-they are on her shoulders, sliding beneath her robes, pulling them from her trembling body. Her body comes alive for him like a night-blooming flower, as he coaxes from her what the day never will.
“I don't,” she agrees, because she does not lie to him, and she doesn't like him at all.
“You don't have to.” He leans forward and his words slide across her nape like the cool brush of silk. Her sun-warmed skin surrenders with a thousand little sighs, her body leans back against him though she wants so badly to resist.
Do you? her traitorous voice whispers, do you really?
He pulls her back against him; all lean, strong muscles behind her. Her body is turning to liquid, her skin is flushed, her muscles are languid and unresisting.
“I'm the predator,” he purrs, and his tongue darts out to trace the whorls of her ear.Want spikes through her, shimmering over skin too sensitive and needful, humming in secret places deep within her body.
“I'm not prey,” she insists, though her voice is shaking, and maybe that is what she is because whatever he does to her, she does not resist, as if he has killed her in truth.
Maybe he has.
“I suppose not,” he murmurs, and his lips are warm and soft as they trace up the column of her throat. He tastes the pulse of blood that beats, butterfly-fast, beneath her skin. “I return to you, don't I? I'm not a scavenger to bother with the dead. Once I've had them...they are dead.”
He speaks of the others, the prey he captures with his engaging smile and sycophantic banter. She is pleased that never worked on her, though she feels sorry for the ones who stare after him so longingly, wondering what it is they have done to earn his casual, murderous disdain.
His touch and his hands on her skin pull forth that heady combination of desire and dread, and her body relaxes against his as she surrenders to him.
Maybe the sun doesn't set of it's own volition, after all. Maybe it's just that the night is stronger and pulls it down to lie in darkness, and the sun can do nothing but relent.
Maybe the night speaks in tongues too alluring to resist, with fingers that know just where to touch. Perhaps the night slides behind the sun with a hissing voice and cold dark eyes intent with malignant promise, and the sun simply gives in, and...
Dies.
The only light she sees is the sharp white bursts behind her eyes, like stars in the dark.
** * *
He leaves her there, warm and flushed amidst tangled sheets. The night air swirls around her, dancing on the sprawled limbs of her body, as if celebration for her submission.
At night she is proud of the bruises he has left in the wake of his frantic passion, and she touches them with reverent fingers, liking the way the blood coils together and darkens her skin. These are his kisses, these bruises.
He stands always by the window, as if he could simply melt away with the shadows come dawn, and that is what he does, really. She is not aware of him in the daylight, will not let herself walk by him in the hallway or join him in the library to study. He does not belong in her world, not in that one, at least.
The sun and the dark meet only twice; at night, when the darkness wins, and in the morning, when the sun breaks free.
“You will never succeed, Tom,” she tells him quietly, wishing a little that things were different, for there is a mind trapped beneath all that ambition that could be the mark of a great man.
“Who shall stop me? You?”
She loves the way he speaks, even if she hates the words that fall like curses from his lips.
“If I must,” she says bravely, looking towards where he reposes near the window. She cannot see him-there is no moon. When there is, he always draws the drape to plunge the room in black.
You are all the light I can stand, Minerva.
“We will be enemies, then,” he reminds her, and it is all there in his future-death, crimson eyes, a shattered soul where nothing remains but the pulse of dark magic in rotted veins.
“I know,” she whispers, tears in her eyes; within the crystal drops she refuses to shed, there lies her future-sadness, loss, betrayal.
“You could be my queen,” he says reverently, moving back towards her, a flash of long limbs in the dark.
His fingers are cold when they touch her, and her heart feels like it is being strangled in her breast. He traces a finger down her cheekbone, as if memorizing her face. “A goddess...”
The shadows gather in his voice and spill out over her; she turns her face away but somewhere deep inside of her, where her magic lives, there is a yearning to know all that he knows, to see empires fall...
I already am a goddess. Justice.
This is not was she says to him. Instead, her arms go around him and she leans her head back, offering herself, allowing her body to speak of her secret and shameful yearning. When she sees his face at last, she thinks she sees cities falling and burning in the slick darkness of his eyes. A Firebrand, to bring destruction, nothing more.
There is beauty in fallen empires, to be sure; though it is not something she wants--should want-to understand.
In the morning, I shall be Minerva again. Tonight...
Tonight, I shall be Persephone.
~Fin