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Mistle is the first in a lot of ways, though not in any of the conventional ones.
See, this situation, being tired and vulnerable and surrounded by people who may keep her a certain level of safe but don’t necessarily have her interests in mind – that’s normal. The force, the coercion, the mind-numbing exhaustion of it. Waking in the night screaming, always, again and again.
But the knife – the knife is new. And how Mistle treats her, even with…everything else, that is very new.
– – – – –
Mistle, her Waxwing, doesn’t bring the knife out very often. It’s a little surprising, actually, considering the other girl’s bloodthirst the rest of the time, but then again – maybe it’s not that surprising, after all.
The thing about them is that they’re…different, with one another. The others notice, of course they do – Giselher with barely-disguised disgust; Kayleigh and Reef with something almost bordering on interest, even if it is the reluctant sort; Iskra with a fair amount of curiosity; and Asse with a sort of smugness, though Ciri doesn’t understand that at all. But the point isn’t the others’ opinions, not really.
The point is that despite her viciousness everywhere else, Mistle is…rather soft, when it comes to Ciri.
It’s…heady. And compelling. And it means, apparently, that despite how much Mistle clearly likes the knife, it only comes out rarely.
Like tonight.
Ciri doesn’t know where the fire under her skin has come from, aside from Mistle and maybe some after-effects of the fisstech. She also doesn’t know if she likes the plan forming in the back of her mind, either, but she’s ignoring that.
“You couldn’t handle the needle,” Mistle says, softly, trailing her fingertips along Ciri’s belly. The others are – asleep, Ciri thinks. Not paying any mind to them, at the least. Thank the gods. All the same, Mistle is keeping her voice soft, and the reaction Ciri has to her voice, soft and in that sort of tone….
“Mm,” she replies, because it was fairly obvious she couldn’t handle the tattooist’s needle, but she isn’t going to admit that out loud. Mistle grins.
“But you always seem to like my knife,” she murmurs, still with that grin, and Ciri’s breath hitches. Without even shifting away, Mistle produces the short blade with her other hand, spinning it between two fingers until she can hold the point of it against Ciri’s sternum, between the fingers of her other hand.
Her skill with the blade is obvious in how she holds it, how Ciri knows that she won’t be hurt by that point by accident. Even if she shivers, which she does, and Mistle giggles.
“Yeah, you like the knife,” Mistle says, still soft, and that sharp point drags down Ciri’s belly, detouring to her hip. When it stills again, Mistle looks up and around the room, then back to Ciri with a smirk. “I think we can spare a little blood tonight, mm?”
“Fuck, please.”
– – – – –
That night, and the (insane, insane) plan Ciri has, are how she ends up here.
“I won’t forget you,” she promises, again, as her lips catch the tears Mistle is pretending aren’t falling. She’s not entirely sure how they ended up entwined like this, but she’s never seen Mistle really cry, and it’s – alarming.
She needs to go, but she doesn’t want it to be like this.
“You will,” Mistle insists, but she’s not stopping Ciri’s wandering hands, and hers are wandering, too. “You will.”
“I won’t,” Ciri stresses, feeling desperate in a way she hasn’t for a long time. Her fingers trip over the belt around Mistle’s waist, the hilt of her knife lashed to her with the ends, and she grabs it. “You wouldn’t let me.”
“What – ” Mistle’s voice dies on an odd sort of squeak, incredibly out of character and – Ciri thinks it a little hysterically – rather cute. She shifts the knife where Ciri has pressed the handle of it into her palm. “...Falka.”
Ciri, she thinks, but keeps her mouth shut. That can be for after.
“I couldn’t handle the needle,” she admits, stomach squirming. “But I can handle the blade. Leave me a mark.”
Mistle blinks. Ciri swallows her heartbeat.
She’s never left a scar. She insists on it; she told Ciri once, in the dead of the night when there was no risk of the others hearing her, that she didn’t want to. That despite everything, she never wanted to leave a mark, because their lives would leave enough marks as it was.
When Mistle continues to just stare at her, saying nothing, Ciri starts to babble.
“A rose,” Ciri says. “Like yours. I wanted us to match. But the needle hurt too much, and I couldn’t stand the pain on the fisstech, and – ”
Mistle swallows, then licks her lips, holding up a hand to stop Ciri’s words. “On your thigh?” she asks.
Ciri bites back a hiss, and nods despite her trepidation.
“You – would let me.”
“Want you to.”
“...Falka, I – ”
“I won’t forget you, Waxwing, and I’m coming back. Give me a reason, and mark me yours.”
It takes a few more moments, seconds ticking past where Ciri is certain Mistle will say no, will send her on her way with nothing but the taste of tears on her lips and an almost, but then Mistle is taking a deep, shuddering breath, and nodding.
“On your back, then, Little Falcon,” she says, and her tone is deadly serious for all the playfulness those words usually carry.
Ciri ducks forward and steals one more kiss – as much as one can steal something that’s freely given, at least – and then does as she’s told. Once she’s lying down, Mistle sets the knife aside and strips Ciri’s breeches away without any fanfare. Ciri spreads her legs easily under the other girl’s gaze, and despite the tension, Mistle’s lips quirk at the sight.
Mistle hums softly. “Water. And bandages, for after. Stay right there.”
Ciri swallows again. “Mhm.”
Mistle returns quickly enough, with a pile of bandages and a little jar in one hand and a bowl of cold, clean water in the other. She straddles one of Ciri’s thighs and sets both things down at her side.
“You have to be still,” she murmurs, as she wets a rag and starts cleaning the inside of Ciri’s thigh. “If you jerk, I could slip, and a wound to your thigh – ”
Ciri stops her with a hand on her neck. Mistle glances up at her, and she looks haunted. Ciri’s heart skips.
“I know,” she says. “I trust you. I won’t jerk.”
Mistle looks away, at that, and busies herself with washing her hands, then fussing with the bandages. When she speaks again, her breathing is tight, and Ciri thinks she sees another tear tracking down her cheek.
“I’m no artist,” she says. “But I saw how the tattooist traced the shape on me, last night. It’s simple enough.”
“I want your mark. What it looks like to anyone else doesn’t matter.”
“Falka.”
Mistle turns again and surges forward, until they’re kissing again, hard and vicious, nothing like the way she usually kisses. Ciri gasps against her mouth and surrenders to it, letting Mistle press her down and make her lips swell, until the other girl has gotten her fill and pulls away gasping.
“Damn you,” she hisses. “Damn you, Falka.”
She doesn’t clarify, and Ciri knows better than to ask. Mistle sits back and grabs her knife, and Ciri bites the inside of her cheek bloody to keep her leg rigid when she feels the point ghost over the soft skin of her thigh. Her breathing is unsteady, but she can only do so much.
And considering the fact that even with her apprehension, her belly is filling with heat at the proximity, the solid threat of that sharp point not-quite-resting on her skin, well. Holding still is as good as it’s going to get. She can’t even say she’d be able to stop herself from making noise, right now, which could end badly, but she’s not stopping Mistle to look for something to gag herself with.
Mistle takes another deep breath. “Hold still,” she reminds, and then she’s leaning down, her free hand bruise-tight on Ciri’s knee, and carving into Ciri’s skin.
She doesn’t yell, but it’s a near thing. It hurts, of course it hurts; a blade always hurts, even when Mistle is being gentle with it. But even still, it’s more the shock of so much pain at once than anything else, and once she’s grit her teeth through the first sliding cut, it gets easier.
“You’re going to…you need,” she pants, after a second, focusing so hard on stillness that speaking and breathing at the same time are difficult. “Deeper than that, darling.”
Mistle hisses something through her teeth, but a shift of her hand has the blade going deeper. Still not enough to worry, but enough that the pain rushes back, and Ciri has to count her breaths out for a long moment.
Time seems to stretch and pull, flowing like quicksand and molasses both. The impossible moment is filled with other contradictions, too – Mistle’s hands, steady as a lighthouse, even as her breathing trembles and skips like the sea in a storm; the pain she’s feeling, licking like flames up her nerves with each shift of the blade, juxtaposed against the calm and contentment and genuine pleasure coming to a boil in her belly; the silence between them heavy as a burial shroud, but the lightness and freedom of knowing that by agreeing, by doing this, Mistle is letting her go.
The contrast of how they came to be together, with bruised pride and haughty contempt, and this moment, tense as an angry bull but softened by the bond they now share.
When Mistle finally finishes her carving, pulling back in a rush and with a bitten back yelp as she throws her knife away from herself, Ciri is aware of how there’s two puddles of wet beneath her hips. One is the blood.
The other, well.
“You’re insane,” Mistle says, as if she wasn’t just as caught up in that as Ciri, “ insane, Little Falcon.”
She turns and grabs a rag to wipe the blood away, then opens the jar and does something with the contents. Something cool and wet is spread over the wound – some kind of plaster, then – and once that’s just dry enough to stay over the wound on its own, she ties the bandages around Ciri’s thigh tightly.
At this point, she’s mostly numb, nerves too overloaded to feel anything else, but she hisses at the pressure. Mistle makes a wordless, soothing sound, and finishes tying off the bandage before she uses the last of the water to wash the remaining plaster from her fingertips.
“Thank you,” Ciri murmurs, and when Mistle laughs, it’s wet, but genuine.
“I love you, Little Falcon. Even if you’re mad.”
– – – – –
“I love you, Waxwing,” Ciri murmurs as dawn creeps over the hills. “I’ll come back for you.”
Mistle pulls her into a kiss.
“I know.”