Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The woods are slow traveling as they leave the manor behind them. Overnight, the air grew just barely too warm for snow, so the ground is a cold, muddy slush, and the trees crowd in wet and dark as they stumble forward without a path.

Theodora sees Borakov and Denethor suddenly stop ahead of her before she sees why. Twenty or so paces in front of them, a stark black figure stands in their way— a tall man standing with his back to them. Anxiety sears hot through her.

Strahd. 

They haven’t seen him since the attack on Vallaki nearly a week ago, when he’d appeared in the midst of the chaos and crushed his own consort’s skull in with his bare hands. But more importantly, they haven’t seen him since they consecrated the fane near the windmill, with no idea what effect that might have on him.

Ireena stops short next to her. “What’s he doing here?” She whispers. Nimalia angles herself beside them, her staff held out protectively.

Borakov grimaces. “Nothing good.”

He speaks without turning, his voice cold and clear as a church bell. “It seems a congratulations is in order.”

No one speaks, so Theodora does, trying not to sound nervous. “Whatever for?”

“I do believe it was you four who found the fane and accomplished what hundreds of your predecessors have attempted across the centuries.” At length, he turns to face them, his cape creasing in a breeze that seems to touch nothing else. There’s a smirk on his face, but it’s tight, controlled. The dark curtain of his hair falls over his shoulder, elegant as ever. 

“So a pat on the back is due. Savor it.” He gestures towards them, smile growing condescending. “There are so few victories in Barovia for those aligned against me; it is only hospitable to allow you one or two.”

Borakov and Denethor make wary eye contact, and Nim is stiff beside her. Aligned against me. If he’s acknowledging that, why is he still bothering with the faux graciousness? He dropped a ball of fire on them for merely hearing that they were toying with treason weeks ago. He is playing at something.

Strahd brings his hands together and dusts them absently. “Now, on to business, and my reason for visiting.” The red of his eyes settles on her. “Theodora, may I have a word?”

Dread consumes her in an instant. For all their private meetings— and for all that everyone knows perfectly well what he wants with her— he’s never singled her out in front of others before.

“Of course,” she manages. Borakov and Ireena simultaneously move to stare at her in alarm, and she does not look at them.

Strahd inclines his head and turns, walking further into the forest, the indication obvious. Theodora makes to follow him. Borakov suddenly catches her arm, and when she glances up, his gaze is hard. 

“No grace,” he murmurs.

It’s too late for that.  

Startled by his sudden touch, all she can do is nod. His hand drops, but the look he’s giving her does not, even as she steps away. Theodora steadies herself, and follows Strahd into the woods.

He walks far enough that no one will hear them. Unless she screams, she thinks, but even then, her friends would not find her quickly. The ambient drizzle of Barovia turns to rain, and the forest fills with the soft sound of it. Ensuring their privacy, perhaps.

She finally catches up to him— not in any sort of clearing, just a stretch of foliage like any other, barren winter brush underfoot. It’s dry here, she realizes, the rain circling them at his command.

He isn’t looking at her, chin raised, his face in profile. “The last time we spoke, I told you that I wanted you to come to me willingly.”

She swallows, her mouth dry. “Yes.”

“I must admit, I’ve been putting off a visit because I’m angry with you.”

Irrationally, she thinks of Borakov. “Because of the fane, or something else?”

“Precisely because of the fane.” His eyes cut to her, narrow. “Is there something else I should be aware of, Theodora?”

She shakes her head quickly, and after a moment, he seems to accept that. He flicks his cape, paces as he speaks. “I thought we had come to an understanding. I stopped the assault on Vallaki for you and your friends. I was late, I admit, but the attack had nothing to do with me, and I put to death the one who caused it.”

Her heart sinks guiltily into the pit of her stomach. “I know.”

His head snaps up to look at her, frame tense with leashed displeasure. “And yet—?”

“I am sorry about the fane,” she says quickly. “I don’t want to fight you, but I—I won’t stop them.”

Nimalia agrees with Theodora about Strahd, that there is perhaps no sense in overthrowing him even if they could, but she had been the one to complete the ritual. The land here speaks to her, and the fane was meant to help it. Theodora could not begrudge her that, any more than she begrudges Borakov his blind hatred, even as she fears what will come of it.

“They all have their reasons,” she adds meekly.

His expression shutters, becoming imperious. “Unfortunately, Theodora, it is an ‘unless you’re with me, you’re against me’ situation. I have to go back on my word.”

Fear like ice runs down her spine. “What do you mean?”

“I want you to run away with me.”

The bottom drops out of her stomach. Why would he phrase it like that— he couldn’t possibly know— 

“I’ll give you a few days to think about it,” he goes on, as detached and collected as if he were discussing the weather. “Five at the most. And when I say ‘run away’, I mean that in a dramatic sense; it will be a large royal wedding at the castle. Your friends will be invited.”

“Wait—” She protests in dismay. This is his proposal? The mist in the air grows thicker, surrounds him like a second cloak.

“Take some time to decide, but know that if you don’t choose correctly, the next time I come for you—” His eyes glitter dangerously, and the mist envelops him. “—I won’t be so generous.”

The wind picks up and the fog swells to swallow his figure, thunder rumbling in the distance.

“That’s it?!” Theodora cries, but he’s gone, dissipated into vapor. The rain begins dripping on her through the bare tree branches.

A shiver rapidly becomes shaking she can’t stop. Five days. She thought she’d have more time. She thought he wouldn’t be so cold to her, not again— it’s like their meeting in Vallaki never happened, like she dreamed it.

She tries to breathe, in, out, tries to blink back the tears that are collecting. This is what has come of their consecrating the fane. Five days.

Chapter Text

She should tell her friends immediately, in the woods, when she comes back alone and they look at her like she’s a ghost. She should tell them at the winery, or on the road to Krezk, before they slice their arms with a silvered knife to prove their humanity. She should tell them while Denethor conjures food for the village, or during the long trek up to the abbey. It’s tempting to relinquish the sole weight of terrible knowledge: the devil’s patience has run out. But the risk is so great that someone will ask her: what will you tell him? And she does not have an answer. 

It would be treasonous to say yes, of course; the same betrayal she’s already committed by meeting with him in Vallaki, magnified a hundred times. It’s monstrous to even toy with aligning with the creature who has hurt her friends, her family, her home as much as he has, and Nimalia might be understanding, but no one else would be. That alone should be enough. That she might not really have a choice at all should be enough.

If he makes good on his threat, well— she is not Ireena. She cannot sustain fury, or even spite. If he simply takes her, she has very few delusions of noble resistance, knows she cannot muster the will to defy him for long. It would probably make her friends ashamed of her, how easily she would either be seduced or fall to pieces. She is not the little fighter that Borakov thinks she is, even if she wants to be.

But every time she resolves to tell him no, a terrible fear seeps through, like a slow flood of black water rising up around her boots: what if it’s worth it? To say yes?

That has always been the risk. The threat lurking in everything, the prospect more frightening than his bite or her death or what he might do if she refused him. There is every chance that he will do to her what he has done to Barovia: conquer her completely, hollow her out, twist her and trap her and fill her with his evil— but it is more frightening still that he might love her. That the longing he showed her in Vallaki is real. Because she might endure anything, willingly become whatever he asks of her, to have that.

And then Borakov dies.

They force the Shadows away from him, and her vision tunnels with panic as he doesn’t react to Denethor’s healing spells, the furious, determined working of the old dragonborn. Theodora pleads with Borakov, with Nimalia, with herself, shock yielding to terror with every passing second. Ireena starts talking about burning the body, and Theodora understands, suddenly, being so angry you could hurt someone. 

“He said he wouldn’t leave me!” She shrieks, her own voice unrecognizable with grief.

They lay him out in the snow, and she cannot breathe. Borakov is dead, he has been dead for minutes and minutes, now, and she was a fucking fool for not letting the Abbot carve her face from her skull in exchange for a miracle. Strahd could have had his bride, and Borakov would be alive, and she is going to die anyway, curse or no; she is not going to survive without him.

And then his body rises from the ground, lights up in a blinding golden flare like the sun itself. She has forgotten already, how dazzling it can be. 

When it recedes enough that they can see again, blinking the brightness from their vision, Borakov stands upright before them. He holds a new hammer, burning with magic in his grip, and he is flushed and hale and very much alive. 

“Sorry,” he says.

She runs. Desperate, a sob in her lungs, she throws her arms around him like she resolved she wouldn’t and babbles something she doesn’t remember later— what happened, you were dead, we thought we lost you. He returns her embrace and smiles, warm as daylight, the edges of him still lit up with the glow of resurrection.

“I was,” he murmurs. “But I’m not leaving you.”

She loves him , she realizes, struck dumb as she clutches him, face streaked with tears. She loves this big stubborn idiot, her soft-spoken priest, her angry soldier, her captain. Another night like the balcony— Borakov’s searing, furious disappointment in her— might have been bearable before this. Everything in her despises the thought now, after she was forced to stare into the abyss of a world where she loves him and he does not exist. She cannot possibly keep her word not to lose herself for him, because she would have done it a hundred times over in that long, terrible moment where he was dead. She would still do it now. How could she leave him? He asked her to be there.

And yet—

After, inside the abbey, he says you should go work on that glove, Ted. And instead of saying fuck the glove, Borakov, you died and now you’re here and all I want to do is hold you, she says yeah, good idea. Because she just got him back, and she does not think she can bear another half-formed rejection from him now, her hands still shaking.

She thinks of softness, and closeness, and want, and the black water seeps in again, cold and dark. Love is not enough to keep it away.

She tells them about Strahd’s demand soon after, staring at Ezmerelda’s web of questions, not unlike her own. No one asks what her answer to him will be.

A bird flits across the dark sky in the distance over Krezk. Theodora notices it vaguely as she draws her last mark into the snow. The move sets Vasilka up to win again, she realizes immediately, and Vasilka seems happy, in her expressionless way, as she does indeed use her stick to make a final O shape in another square. Even playing children’s games, she’s immaculately graceful.

The bird is getting closer, a black speck with flapping wings and jerky movements. They’ve seen so few animals recently, the forests cold and still this close to the mountains. The oddness of it registers just enough that Theodora turns to look at it as Vasilka scratches out their gameboard in the snow. The bird— no, a bat?— seems to be headed in their direction.

Red flashes across her vision, and Theodora suddenly feels at ease despite the frigid weather. How silly of her— it isn’t an animal at all; it’s her dear friend, come all this way. She watches him flit across the village and disappear behind one of the homes, and a pleased little thrill lights in her chest: he’s come to see her. She should go greet him, of course.

She pauses, remembering Vasilka. Probably best not to bring her. Her friend wants her to come alone.

“Vasilka, why don’t you go back inside?” She says, sounding as casual and assured as she can manage. “I’ll be in in a minute.”

The illusion of Gertruda’s face remains unmoving, but the construct pauses, tilts her head slightly. Theodora tries not to look too eager. “I just want to check something.”

Vasilka steps closer, her long, ornate cloak dragging in the snow. A white hand reaches out and taps at the side of Theodora’s waist through the poncho— where Theodora had secured the small knife she’d given her. A thoughtful gesture, if unnecessary. But no need to explain the particulars. 

Theodora smiles encouragingly and nods. Seemingly satisfied, Vasilka steps back and draws her hood up, and her delicate steps crunch through the ice as she starts back to the Burgomaster’s hovel.

The moment she’s out of sight, Theodora hurries toward where Strahd descended. The streets are nearly empty this late in the day— the few people scattered about don’t seem to notice her slip between two homes. Beneath the eaves of the house now before her, a deep darkness looms, and within it, a set of eyes glow red.

The moment they find her, her sense of confidence drops away, ripped from her like a blanket. She startles to a halt a half-dozen paces from him.

His Charm.

He lured her here.

“Apologies for that,” he says quietly. Her vision adjusts, and the long, powerful lines of his cloak become identifiable in the shadows. He’s leaning against the wall, arms folded, the picture of ease. The excitement she’d felt is replaced by a swell of fear, the acrid memory of the last time they’d spoken. If you don’t chose correctly, the next time I come for you, I won’t be so generous. 

“Hello, Lord Strahd.”

His mouth quirks. “Please, ‘Strahd’ is fine.”

Theodora’s face heats, her cheeks stinging in the icy air. Even his consorts do not address him so informally. 

“I once again find myself apologizing,” he goes on. “I was angrier than was warranted, the last time we spoke.”

“Five days isn’t a lot of time,” she says cautiously, and he gives a dry laugh.

“Oh, I’m not giving you any more time. But still, I should have been gentler in my delivery.”

He seems in a much better mood now, inclined to be indulgent with her again. It’s a relief, but not enough of one to relax. “I appreciate the sentiment. But I don’t have an answer for you yet; I still have three days.”

He sighs. “That’s fair. I did come wondering if perhaps you’d met this hope you had at the abbey and come around. How unfortunate.”

He means her hope that he was wrong, that her friends wouldn’t leave her. He knows about Borakov dying, then. “It’s been a difficult day.”

She wishes he would come closer. Comfort her. Say something kind, this time. From the first time he sought her out, that’s what she’s wanted: not just to be told that he wants her, but to feel it. Help me, she thinks, as he watches her from the darkness, eyes like coals. Give me a reason. 

But he won’t. The apology was generous, he won’t offer anything else. Unless she asks, maybe. He’s here, now, and he wants to make amends; if she is going to change anything before five days are up, she won’t get a better opportunity than this.

“Before I give you an answer, I wanted to ask you—“  she steps towards him, and feels him shift, the intensified weight of his attention.

“I know you love Tatyana,” she whispers, “But do you love me?”

Falling snowflakes whirl and thrash silently in the air between them. There is the urge to flinch at herself, at how pathetic she sounds, but she resists. For a moment, he doesn’t move, and she wonders if he heard her.

Then he straightens, pushing away from the wall. In a few too-fluid steps she barely sees, he crosses to her. She never truly remembers how imposingly tall he is until he’s before her, over her, looming like a mountain. Her heart pounds, but this time, it is not with the urge to run.

“I have lived century upon century,” he says slowly, and raises a hand to her chin. “I have my pets, whom you have met, but my relationships with them are not love. They are merely companions I invite to join me in this long, isolated existence.”

Her head is already tipped back to look up at him, but he takes her jaw in hand and raises it further, until her neck fully extends, throat stretched bare above her collar. Heat sinks through her at the surety of his touch.

“What I feel for them is nothing but a pale shadow of the tenderness I feel for you. I want nothing more than for you to join me, and for it to be willingly, because I care so immensely about you and your happiness. Because I want this to be right. I have been so alone for so long that it is difficult to say it is love, but my feelings are profound.” 

The black of his pupils nearly swallows the crimson, gleaming and intent. “Should something happen to you now, I would devour this whole plane.”

Theodora is suddenly not breathing correctly. The words, the dark velvet of his voice, the way he bears down upon her, raised to him— it’s perfect, it’s too much, an overwhelm that steals the air from her lungs.

“Though you have proven yourself a formidable foe, both in battle—” He pauses, searching her face. “— And in the way you look at me right now.”

She blinks, finding her eyes filled with tears. If she opens her mouth, she will either laugh or cry, she thinks, but what comes out instead is,  “So I turned out to be a worthy incarnation?”

So far there are not many points in your favor, he’d sneered at the Vistani camp. It had been only weeks ago, but it feels like another life. And it may as well be. So much has led to this, so much she doesn’t remember.

“Absolutely.” He frowns at her, as if distressed she would even mention it. “And I know you are embarrassed of this—” with his free hand, he traces feather-light across her eyepatch, down her cheek. “—It’s nothing. We all have our scars. In fact, I think yours make you more worthy, because you know what it is to make a difficult choice, and to regret it. To live with that pain.”

It feels like falling, like in her dream— plummeting over the cliffside into the mist, a helpless tumble.

“I can help you, Theodora,” he murmurs, gentle as the snow. “You don’t have to bear the weight alone.”

She grasps wildly for something to hold on to. “Is it true, what you told me in Vallaki? That I could help you make Barovia better?”

The hand still on her jaw tightens, his expression wrought with an emotion she can’t identify. “I have never told you a lie.”

The descent is swift and breathless, her stomach pitching wildly. It’s terrifying, to get everything she wanted so fully. Even the answers to questions she has never asked, as if he knows the fears that shadow her: whether she is more special to him than his consorts, what he thinks of her eye and her past, whether he would defend her now. Everything.

“I want the same thing you want, I think,” she says, voice wavering, her whole heart laid raw in the snow. “I want not to be alone anymore.”

“With me, you never will be.”

It feels like a promise. More tears escape, so hot on her cheeks that they burn. What does it matter what he calls it, when this must be what being loved feels like? After a moment, he adds, softly, “And your friends can come and go from the castle as you like. You can even go and visit them.”

Her heart leaps in her chest. She tries to picture it— Nimalia coming to Ravenloft to see her, the two of them having tea or strolling the gardens. Going to see Borakov. She realizes, coldly, the problem with the image. Borakov recoiling from her.

“But I’ll be… like you?”

He brushes one of her tears away, his touch reverent. “Perhaps not right away. But I hope eventually you will join me.”

It’s more than she dared hope for. She’ll have time after the wedding, then, to make her peace with that. “That sounds nice.” 

She means visiting her friends, not vampirism, but he gives a small, fond smile. “It’s cold and dark. You need to go warm up; your lips are turning blue. I forget, sometimes, how humans are.”

His gaze lingers on her mouth. She is cold, but in this moment, she doesn’t feel it. He’s so very close to her, close enough that she could count the flecks of ice caught in his eyelashes. Close enough that she could kiss him. The thought is too tempting to move away. “Thank you for coming to see me,” she says instead. “I was feeling… confused. After our last meeting.”

“I let my emotions get the better of me. It is not often I am outwitted.”

It will happen again, she realizes unpleasantly. There are two more fanes. “But if my friends continue to fight you—”

“They won’t,” he says sharply.

“How can you be so sure?”

“I have only shown you a fraction of my power. Should they ever attempt to to hurt you, I’ll make sure they know the full brunt of it.” She starts to speak, but he anticipates her objection. “I won’t harm them. Merely a display. Once they understand what they’re up against, they’ll see how futile it is.”

She shakes her head, still in his grip. “They wouldn’t hurt me, that’s not what I’m worried about.”

“Surely if they hurt me, you would be hurt in the process.”

Because they will defend each other, if they are married. Even against her friends. The question of allegiance is enough to make her remember how dangerous this is, meeting with him in the open. Eventually, they will wonder why she didn’t come back with Vasilka. Borakov will wonder.

“I should go warm up,” she says at length. She does not want to. She wants to live inside this softness between them, the aching hope it kindles. And she can, can’t she? If she says yes?

He leans in further, close enough now that the visible puff of her breath in the cold air ghosts against his lips. “Yes,” he says. “You should go.”

The sense of darkness that radiates from him pricks at her skin. His hold on her has become a light touch— she could pull away, if she wanted. Or she could shift forward and press her mouth to his, taste his strange aura, see what he’s really offering her. Ask him for more than just the answers to her questions. He gives her so much for every step she takes towards him; he’s rewarded her tonight just as he did when she came to him in Vallaki. It feels real this time, in the stark cold, as the snow swirls down around them, clean mountain air filling her instead of rich food and candle smoke. Sharper. Clearer. Less likely to dissolve like a mirage. But every bit as heady. Surely he can hear her too-fast heartbeat betraying her want, lips hovering this close to his.

She doesn’t know how much further she’ll fall, if she kisses him now. She doesn’t know what’s waiting for her at the bottom.

Slowly, unable to shake the sense that she shouldn’t make any sudden movements, she takes his hand from her chin and grips it between hers. He lets her. He doesn’t feel chill to the touch— her fingers are as cold right now as his always are. “Goodnight, Strahd.”

She releases his hand and steps back. His eyes follow her, hunger written there so plainly that for a moment it seems as though he might follow her. But he doesn’t. Lightning flashes in the distance, and his figure dissolves again into mist.

When she arrives at the burgomaster’s hovel, the door swings open before she reaches for the handle. Borakov stands there, fully armored and staring.

He was about to come looking for her.

Wordlessly, he moves to let her into the house, and she goes to sit beside Nimalia. Her chilled extremities hurt immediately at the warmth of the little house, and her face is chapped by her tears. The heat, the cold— it’s all secondary to the way she feels underwater , drowned, floating, weightless. She could say yes to him.

“Everything okay, Ted?” Borakov asks her, and it’s heavy with suspicion. Vasilka stares at her with her illusory face. The Burgomaster and his wife are politely ignoring them, but the wife glances her way.

She does not quite meet Borakov’s searching gaze. “Of course.”

She'd still tell Borakov everything, if he wanted. But he'll have to ask for it.