ohtori | → Oh God, help his fate :: dionysus/lilith; in progress

Author:

limitbreaks
Pairing/Characters: Lilith [

dragonscaling]
Summary: Ten-gen meme!
Rating: Various, up to R for uh, certain sections.

↓ Angst

She is dying, and he kneels down beside her in the grass. The leaves from the tree above paints them in dappled light. It's a beautiful day. The sky is a robin's egg blue, streaked here and there with the softest white. Her breath rattles, and she holds her stomach, where blood streams through her fingers like warm water.

"You son of a bitch." It's the first time she has ever used profanity when referring to him, but it certainly isn't the first time she's thought about it. She coughs, inelegantly, hoarse. Licks her lips and tastes the coppery blood. "What will you achieve?"

Dionysus tilts his head. "You're a high-ranking official, dear heart. Your death will pave the road for me to take over, of course."

"They will...investigate." She would use her wand, but it lies in splinters beside her. The wedding ring on her finger glitters obscenely, as if mocking her. Shot by her husband, with her own gun. The irony is not lost on her. "You won't get away."

"Ah, but I never leave things without a plan." He brushes her hair from her face, tenderly. "You know that."

Her eyes are distant now, and have a softness he's only seen when she watches the snowfall. They begin to glaze over, fill with a sheet of ice. "Will you regret it? Or is your pleasure...your only goal, still? Do you not need me, to guide you?"

"I have never needed you." His voice is sharper than usual. "I will remarry as soon as your body is cold."

"I see..." Color shoots sparks in the back of her head. There are fireworks, she realizes. But they sound so distant and far away. She's so cold. It must be snowing again. How nice, she thinks, that she would die on such a cold day. It suits her. "But will she understand you, as I do?"

His hand is heavy, and wraps around her own. The hand with the ring. "Sleep," he says. "This world is too warm for you."

"The...world has always been too cold for any life to thrive," are her last words, and her last thoughts. And then for the first time in their marriage, she obeys him.

She sleeps.

↓ AU

↓ Crack

↓ Crossover [Revolutionary Girl Utena]

"If the egg's shell does not break, the chick will die without being born. We are the chick; the egg is the world. If the world's shell does not break, we will die without being born. Break the world's shell! For the sake of revolutionizing the world!"

The elevator opened with a creaking, mechanical groan, and the members of the Student Council filed out in a row, Dionysus first and Lilith close behind. Near the collar of Lilith's crisply pressed uniform jacket (white with black piping and silver lapels, custom-made. As all of their uniforms were.), the edge of a silver chain glittered. She took a seat across from Dionysus, rested her arms behind her head, and resisted the urge to roll her eyes when he smiled at her.

She shifted in her jacket and came up with an envelope, the rose seal broken. "A letter, from the Ends of the World. I assume you all received it?"

Kadaj, feet propped up on the table, scowled darkly and threw the crumpled letter in the center. "I got it."

Dionysus slid his letter over, his smile far too indulgent, Lilith thought, for knowing what the contents of said letter were. "He's concerned over our recent losses. Kadaj?"

"That Haruno girl got lucky. It won't be the same next time."

Dionysus' smirk grew, and unconsciously, Lilith ran her fingers over the locket. "Hope?"

There was the distinctive click of a stopwatch, and Hope glanced up, bit his lip. "She's very strong," he finally said, quietly. There was a moment where he looked ready to say something else, but he returned to recording the minutes a moment after.

Lilith waited, and was not surprised when Dionysus nodded to her. "And you, Lilith? The prince of the school, defeated by some upstart girl no one has even heard about? It sounds like a miracle to me."

Lilith's eyes darkened. "It was a fluke. As Sorel said, she has remarkable luck."

↓ First time

He expects her to be awkward. She knows he expects this, because he is a man who cannot understand the strength inherent in a woman. He is a man like her father. She hates him, and it has taken all of her power to quell this hatred for tonight, to place it in the coldest, darkest corners of her mind. It is a...trial. She grows weary, already, of her hatred of him. How they will survive for any longer is a mystery to her. And she is not fond of mysteries.

Her hands do not shake as she moves them to his shoulders, and she thinks to slap the smug look off his face, but resists. When he kisses her, she thinks to recoil, to stiffen. But she keeps her body relaxed, liquid, like water in his hands. Her tongue moves over his own, darting in his mouth like a snake's, and when he groans under her breath she feels a twist of pride. She doesn't whimper when his teeth tug at her bottom lip, but she knows he expects her to.

Dionysus and his wine-revelry are ages old, but the demon Lilith was in the gardens long before the first serpent, long before the original sin. She allowed one-hundred of her children to die every night in exchange for her freedom; she knows pleasure and pain far greater and darker than his feeble mind can ever fathom.

This kiss is only the barest taste of the poison that moves through her, a drop of water in a vast and inky black ocean.

↓ Fluff

It's cold, this evening, but warm inside this opulent house, and Dionysus is ten years old and thoroughly bored. There are women twice his age pinching his cheeks and saying he'll grow up to be a handsome young man (which is true, he knows, but even lavish praise grows tiring, when you have heard it all before). He is tracing the wood pattern along the fireplace when he catches movement in the corner of his eye, the rustle of lace and cloth. He turns, but the person is gone. There's a creak near the front door, and a sudden rush of cold air. Snowflakes flutter to the polished floors and melt instantly.

He checks to see if his mother and father are paying attention (they are not, Mr. Dupond is speaking in his cheerful, brandy-addled voice about his eldest daughter, who received her wand this Christmas.), and he grabs his coat and slips out after the unknown visitor. What he finds is a girl. She is standing in the snow, preternaturally calm. She must be cold, he thinks. Her cheeks are flushed bright pink, she has her arms wrapped around herself. Her velvet dress is wet at the bottom, marred by fallen snow. She turns when she sees him, and her mouth is set into a thin, angry line. She huffs, in the way only little girls can, and turns back around.

A moment later, he drapes his coat over her shoulders. "You'll catch cold."

She glances over her shoulder. Her dark eyes seem luminous, and young as he is, Dionysus can appreciate how fathomless they are, how lovely. "So will you."

"Ah," he counters smoothly. "But better I catch a cold than a young lady, correct?"

She sneezes. "You're rather full of it." But she pulls the coat closer to her, and says in the tone only a self-important child can use, "But yes, you are correct." A pause, and then she adds, "Thank you."

He smirks, all self-confidence and young bravado. "You're quite welcome. I don't believe we've met. I'm Dionysus Drake, of the Drake family."

She raises an eyebrow. "I'm not interested."

He scowls darkly, debates throwing a snowball at her, and decides that it's a brilliant course of action. An hour later, they are soaked to the bone, covered in snow, and he is scolded from the time they enter her home until the time he is home.

Their seventh year, he is speaking in hushed, private tones to a mousy little halfblood near the entrance to the Three Broomsticks, when a snowball flies into his head. He hears Lilith's laughter, distant, and for once his womanizing is forgotten: he chases her down the cobblestone streets and they indulge in a childhood long gone, but not quite forgotten.

↓ Humor

He bought her a kitten, for their first year anniversary. He bought it sorely because he knew she would hate it, and he is not disappointed when she just barely adjusts her expression from one of utter disgust and loathing into one of complacent neutrality.

"He's...lovely. Thank you." The kitten bats at her clothing, and she glances down at it as if she would find no greater joy in kicking him in the ribs.

"I thought you'd say that." Dionysus smiles, overly bright. This is her reward, he thinks, for humiliating him during that charity event where she refused to dance with him (which in turn, was her way of punishing him after discovering one of his mistresses.) "I hope you'll like him."

A sudden light sparks in her eyes, and she smiles. "Oh. I'm sure we'll just love each other."

She names him Acis, and trains him to tear holes into Dionysus' clothing. When he gets rid of the kitten, she pretends (quite well, he thinks), to be upset, and requests another gift. Because of her earlier disobedience, he purchases a "hunting" dog who barely does anything but roll over on cue and whine for food.

The third day of having him, she has moved to another one of the bedrooms, and instead of being greeted by his wife in the morning (or some other alternative), he is instead greeted by the useless lump of a dog.

The third gift is jewelry and a Remington 887, and she kisses him on the cheek and compliments on his impeccable taste.

↓ Hurt/Comfort

They are making marriage arrangements. Lilith's jaw is drawn tight, and her father is trying to get her to speak. Or demanding it. Dionysus watches her face when she speaks, and the hatred therein seems to choke her words, makes them catch. He and his father watch this exchange impassively. Mr. Dupond's office door is cracked open, and their voices filter in through the room. Other people are paying attention now, but his eyes are on her. He isn't concerned, really, about how things will go. She is fighting against something set in stone.

But her defiance is admirable. He dislikes Lilith, but admires her strength. She is not a weak woman, and thus will not be a weak wife.

"You did not discuss this with me." She finally says. Lilith's voice is normally calm, but here it begins to fray at the edges. Her fists are balled tight at her sides. "You made this decision--"

"For your future!" Her father interjects sharply. "You could not have possibly believed you had a choice in the matter." Lilith seems to reel backward. He can't see her face now, but she says something, poisonous and low, and the next thing he knows her father is slapping her so viciously that her head snaps backward from the force of it. His father moves in quick, long strides to the office to grab Mr. Dupond before he hits her again, but Lilith is oddly still.

She's trembling. It's fascinating; he's never seen her shake from anything but cold before. She slips out of the room quietly, and brushes past him without looking. He hesitates, turns to see his father speaking with Dupond in low, private tones, and follows after Lilith.

He finds her near a mirror, and she is gingerly inspecting the angry bruise blooming on one side of her face. Her eyes are bone-dry, and he feels something akin to pride. "I don't need you checking on me," she snaps.

"I thought I might anyway," he says, and is surprised that he means it. "You'll need to heal that." She stiffens when he taps his wand at her chin and murmurs the spell. The bruise fades. "It isn't the end of the world, you know."

She swallows, tilts her head back. "I suppose it isn't the end of yours."

↓ Smut

He thought she would be frigid, cold. She has always looked cold -- the fair, translucent skin, the blue blood flowing beneath, through a spiderweb network of thin veins. Her dark hair, her darker eyes, deep, liquid and endless. And her voice is cold, crisp as the chilliest autumn morning, like frost on a windowsill.

But her mouth is warm over him, tracing white-hot paths of fire down his neck, his chest. He jerks against his bindings (the bindings she made, the sneaky little trollop), glaring up at her, and feels a sudden twist of pleasure when she gazes down at him, low-lidded, her hair a dark halo about her head. She rises above him, her elegant hands on his strong shoulders, and looks triumphant.

He wishes, not for the first time, that she wasn't so bloody attractive. It would make his life perhaps far less exciting, but much easier.

"Release me from this immediately, Lilith." He can scarcely catch his breath. She quirks an eyebrow at him, playful, and gently walks one of her hands down, down. "This isn't funny." But his hips jerk in response when she touches him, and she smiles, knowing. He is enjoying this, her dominance, despite all his protests. Men are so weak, she thinks. So easily used. All of them, victims of their own bodies. And Dionysus is the worst.

"It isn't meant to be. If you thought I would lie beneath you like a log and let you do your business, you are sorely mistaken." Her voice is husky, it trails over him like incense and fine silk. "I believe this is meant to be a mutual arrangement. Now," and she straddles his hips, and pushes him down. "Be a good boy and stop struggling so. I'm going to give you a gift."

↑ UST

Lilith's hands are delicate, and curve over his own with a comfortable, natural ease. She has shifted so close he catches a hint of her perfume, something floral and heady.

"You aim like this..." She guides his hands, homes in on the target in front of them, and steps back. He feels vaguely disappointed. "Then pull the trigger. Careful, now." The gun fires off so loudly that it startles him, and the recoil makes him curse over the noise. Lilith chuckles, observes the target, shakes her head.

"Mm. I practically lined you up with the bullseye and you still...?"

"Now, Lilith." He frowns and hands her the gun, the mufflers. "You can't fault me for being new at this, can you? And surely, even you wouldn't be able to do much better in this weather. The fog is absolutely dreadful."

She raises an eyebrow, and quietly and methodically begins to put on her equipment. The gun is lifted with little effort, and as he watches, her eyes narrow. She aims for the target, clears her throat. "Cover your ears." Her voice has a harshness to it that he has rarely heard; it is lined with steel. He covers his ears.

The gun fires off sharply, and she lowers the weapon, before gesturing to him. He follows her gaze, and sure enough: she has hit the bullseye. She taps the bridge of his nose, and asks, "Would you like to try again?"

He swallows, hard. "Ready when you are, dearest."