Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

You can’t breathe.

Vision blurry and darting around the room; well, it’s better described as a dungeon. Two shackles hang on one wall. One lying loose, the other attached to a person-shaped blur. Dull light shines across the dungeon.

You can’t breathe.

Right, the princess. She kneels atop your chest, crushing the air from your lungs.

You can't breathe.

A voice coated in red and hatred fills your ears. It just sounds like noise to you.

You can’t breathe, your lungs wail and cry, you wish you’d just killed her before all this happened.

One clear voice echoes in your ringing ears.
“Everything goes dark, and you die”.

…You crack in two…

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“You’re on a path in the woods-.”
“Hey wait haven’t we been here before?” Someone that is you but not quite you calls into the mind you share.

“Does it matter..?” Your voice sounds pathetic even to your own judgement.
“Well yeah? If we’re here again that’s weird cause, we died?”
Some dark voice that is not you, not even partially, bristles
“What are you talking about, this hasn’t happened before”.
“If He doesn’t remember what happened, then maybe its best to keep it that way” advises part of you.

“You know I can hear you right? It’s going to be a lot harder than you think to keep secrets from me”.
You stay quiet for a moment, then speak softly. “What does it matter what He knows? She’s just going to kill us again.”

The voice unlike you goes on about second guessing and whether you can slay her while losing confidence. You tune it out.
Your body marches forward, presumably under the handle of the other you, rocks and dirt crunch beneath your talons, it’s dark in these woods, later than you usually go out.

The Other speaks again, as a small cabin comes into view. “A warning, before you go any further. She will lie, she will cheat, and she will do everything in her power to stop you from slaying her”.

“We might as well just.. pledge ourselves to her, she probably doesn’t even need to try to overpower us” you are resigned to either dying again or serving her, whichever she decides.
The other you sounds tired of your resignation already, “Can we turn down the pessimism, just a smidge?”
You’re not being a pessimist, you’re being realistic. You’re being annoying.

Dark drivel comes from the other again, you ignore it, the second you talks back, you barely register what the two are arguing over. Your body walks ahead to the cabin, you mumble something, barely thinking before it comes out of you.

“The interior of the cabin is larger and more grandiose than its humble exterior would suggest. The only furniture of note is a marble altar with a pristine blade perched on its edge. You’ll need it if you want to do this right”.

You feel small.
You are small.

The blade is a familiar if unnerving weight in your hands.
Giant doors sit before you, you tremble before opening them.

Chapter Text

The staircase before you is giant, as if tailored for someone much, much bigger than you, you shudder in the confines of your mind at the thought of her being several times your size.

You just hope pledging yourselves to her will grant you even the slightest bit of mercy.

You begin the exhausting descent down the massive stairs, each singular one being bigger than your entire body. Incense can be smelt faintly in the otherwise stale air of the spiral, it’s calming in a way.

It’s actually kind of nice.

He interrupts your thoughts, suggesting killing her would be doing her favour because the basement is stone. You disagree in your mind, or well, start to before she booms crimson words up the stairs.

“Is that a guest I hear? Don’t linger on the stairs. Come down and witness me.”

The part of you that you’ve affectionately titled hero speaks now, “You weren’t kidding when you said it was booming, she wasn’t like this last time.”

You need to get down there, she wants you to see her. You need to see her.

Hero is concerned by your attitudes shift, it hardly felt like a shift to you, just finding something that may have mattered, even slightly. The other seems annoyed with you, you don’t find any care to give to His opinion of you.

Your body scrambles down the stairs, exhausting though the effort is. When you finish the stairwell you enter a vast room, it feels like a temple. You suppose that fits her.

“The princess towers over you, almost glowing in the weak starlight, her figure framed by a stained-glass window. Her long hair billows around her, and a chain binds her wrist to the far wall” He describes her beautifully, if you didn’t know better, you’d think He actually tolerated her. You want to eat the stained glass from the window.

“The chain is nothing to her, it might as well be a toy for all the good it would do. I told you it was pointless to resist her” Your words tumble out, terrified and small.

No one gets the chance to reply before all your focus is attuned to her as she talks. “The little bird has returned to me, I wonder what he wants”

The use of he makes you cringe slightly, but you would not dare try to correct her, besides, the main decision-maker likes he/him, so it would make sense that she’d use that, it’s not like she knows how many of you there are in here.

“You’ve brought that knife again… even though you know its useless. Such charming audacity. Drop it.”

You obey, there isn’t much else you could do, it clatters against the stone. Hero and The Other did not like that, but they don’t understand. They don’t get how it feels, how small you are, how big she is, how badly she could hurt you if you don’t do as she says.

He wants you to snap out of this.

You can’t.

“Kneel.” The princess, well, goddess you suppose, commands. It runs through your body, making your knees weak and your chest hollow with fear.

You kneel. A vague pain emanates from your knees where the stone slammed into them, you barely feel it.

“That’s my good little bird… Now, why don’t we talk. The last time we met you told me I was destined to end the world. That thought wrapped itself around my heart. It has pulled at me since the moment I squeezed the life out of your broken lungs.”

You try to focus on what she’s saying, barely keeping yourself afloat in this sea of empty feeling, of being nothing.

“I could feel its fundamental truth awaken me”.

Her previously solid white eyes, not unlike your own, shift, becoming mostly black with white pupils in the centre. It’s hard to understand what she’s saying. Something about the world being due for alterations? You simply nod along, grateful you haven’t been killed yet. She calls you little bird, and your heart soars, uncomprehending of the fact that she wants you to help her seize the world.

“Well that gives away the game, doesn’t it?” Hero talks now, he sounds tired.

The Other refuses to understand, He never will get it.

“Then you shouldn’t have trusted us with her destruction. She is inevitable. Can’t you feel it?” You wish He understood. Even hero seems to get it, if only a little.

You make out something He said “You can’t win a battle you’ve already lost in your mind”.

You’d snort if you had the energy – if that’s the case the fight is well and truly over, it always was.

You pledge yourself to her.

“Your will was so easily broken, am I that magnificent?” her question does not need any answer, you both know it to be true. “All you need to do now is break my chains.”

Your questions about how you would even do that go unanswered for now.

“There’s still something in the way, a greasy film inside you, trying to conceal you from me. Is that a person? No. it used to be a person, it’s something different now. An echo.”

“Is she talking about you?” Hero asks to the only other thing inside you.

“That’s impossible,” He disputes, “She’s not supposed to be able to interact with me she—”

He’s cut off.

“You’re a small one, aren’t you?” her voice turns full of malice “A shrivelling little worm stretched beyond its limits, trying to control that which it can’t understand.”

“No no, what are you talking about I’m just—”

He’s cut off, again.

“I don’t care what you are, you’re mine.”

He screams distantly. You’re glad for your decision to be hers willingly, if that what being hers forcefully means.

“Rise, my little bird.” She commands, softer speaking than how she was with Him.

Something that sounds like both the other and the goddess at once speaks. “Without hesitation, you’re brought to your feet.”

Sure enough, you are standing.

“Break my chains.”

You question again how on earth you would do that.

The combination explains, finally.

“All you need to do is believe its been done.”

You break her chains.

“Her chains shatter, and the cuff falls from her wrist, she is loose, and the end is upon us.”

She leans down, cupping your feathered chin in her giant hand. You melt into the touch.

“What a good disciple you are. Come, it’s time for us to leave.”

You nod, flustered by the praise. She scoops you up into the palm of her hand, and carries you out of the cabin.