If you want to see the previous chapters of this story, find them [here](https://www.reddit.com/user/katherinesummers/comments/tjf6hm/current_writing_links/)
***
He was true to his word. While Sora was finishing her breakfast, Waste – she dithered between thinking of him as Want or Waste – left her alone with her thoughts. Set, though she was, on her course of action, bands of anxiety squeezed her chest. This was a long shot. Redemption and return were possible, but only if she were dishonest about what had happened to her.
Even alone, she cringed.
No. *What she had done*. Agonised, she could not allow the betrayal of lying to herself but nor could she bare the shame of the truth. She had gone back to the incubus, had laid before him. If she could not make herself believe the lie then the crushing pressure of keeping it would eventually collapse in on itself, forcing her to admit to someone, anyone, that it had been her decision, her weakness. And if she were to tell the truth, the likelihood that she would ever be fully reintegrated into the society that had rejected her was slim to none. So she must lie. But if she lied…
And around it went. To be true to herself and others was to be at best neglected and at worst abandoned, discarded a second time. To have the slightest chance of acceptance, she would have to live with the secret of what happened beneath the thunderous sky that night in her breast like a white-hot ball of steel, searing her from the inside. She wished she could stay here, in this kitchen, forever. The sunlight dappled the solid oak table and the smell of bacon and freshly baked bread lingered in the air. The room was soothingly warm and there was a very young, very fragile part of her that wanted nothing but to sit, wrapped up in the silk sheets, and watch the sunlight dance on the surfaces. If it weren’t for the mind altering presence of the demon, this might have been one of the most beautiful and strangely nostalgic places she had ever been.
Waste returned for her. In his arms he carried a set of clothes. Modest grey linen with cream coloured leggings and underskirt, sensible buckled shoes and a patterned shawl; something her mother would easily wear. She took this from him, wondering vaguely where it had come from. With a courteous nod, he left her alone to dress and she stood there, barefoot on the flagstones, feeling awkward. Finally, she found the door to a larder and went inside, shifting a heavy box so that the door was at least partially barred. Here, she stripped down. Once again, she examined herself. No mark, no bruise, no change on her skin to indicate that she had been taken. The invisible bands around her chest fought against the hope swelling inside her. She started to believe that if she were to lie, it might be easy. They would believe her, surely. At least, it would buy her time.
She dressed. The clothes fit her well enough, but they made her feel different. Taller, somehow, more a grown woman. It wasn’t as if she had never worn a woman’s dress before. Perhaps it was the feeling of having made up her mind. She had felt so helpless when they had taken her into the forest, bound and poisoned her. It had felt as if the world had suddenly gone mad, that all notions of control and order had fled the minds of everyone around her. Now, in the cold light of day, she could take back some control, restore some sanity. Maybe, when they saw her again, they would be sheepish and embarrassed.
Served them right.
When she stepped out of the kitchen, Waste was waiting for her. He took her back to the entranceway of his home and out into the world. They found a path and began the journey. Outside the safety of the manor house, her anxiety redoubled. She ran through every scenario in her head. No one had ever returned from Waste’s embrace.
The thought stirred her to speech. “Has no one else asked to go home?” she asked.
“Yes,” he called back, his voice sweet as bird song. “The man I told you about; he begged me to let him go. I did – indeed I never held him – and he fled. I think he meant to go back to the village, but he would not let me guide him. I do not know what happened to him. As for the woman, she stayed with me a time and then went on her own way. My understanding was that she never intended to return, either to me or to the village.”
She considered his response. If reconciliation had never been attempted before, perhaps it wasn’t as impossible as it might seem.
After some time, she was broken from her thoughts when he said; “I am curious why they left you for me. My understanding is that it is considered a very serious sentence. Banishment would be preferred. Ostracization, at least, does not carry the same implication of destruction.”
His voice grew harder at the last, and Sora watched him ahead of her. She was suddenly struck by how absurd his position was. He, seemingly a fully thinking, feeling, intelligent and rational creature, was the executioner of the purity of her soul. He had killed something in her, as was planned and intended, simply the servant of their system of justice. And yet, he was loathed as something out with their world, terrifying and utterly alien to them, a monster of corruption and madness. His position was collaborative in nature, but he was relegated to the wilderness, a convenient but savage predator. This thought twisted itself around in her mind and her brain jammed like rusted machinery. How could he be ultimate enemy and symbiotic ally?
“Sora?”
“Uh…”
“Why did they leave you for me?”
“Oh!” Her eyes want down to the leave strewn path. There seemed no reason to keep it a secret. Enough people in the village would know by now. “A man, Alek, he is… *was* a friend of mine. Since we were both kids. He was helping my mother fix little things around the house. It started with the roof. Anyway, he would leave me letters when he came round and I ended up writing replies and we would exchange them.” Her voice was dull, emotionless, but inside black anger began to roil inside her, covered over by a thin veil of cold, hollow shame. “He said I was pretty, that he wanted me to be his lady and he would be my gentleman. He said he would go the proper route and have our families arrange it once he could build his own cottage by the stream, and we would be married. Until then we had to keep it secret. He… he made me feel…” She swallowed. It was as if something had come up her throat and had lodged itself there. Her eyes burned. “I *believed* him,” she finally forced out, the words coming out in a growl. The incubus said nothing, but she could feel him not looking at her, waiting.
Now that she was retelling it in order like this, she realised how predictable the ending was. She had just wanted the fairy tale. A handsome, kind, sweet young man who thought she was pretty, and was going to build them a nice cottage. She hadn’t wanted the world, hadn’t wanted wealth or power. Just…
“I loved him,” she said, and this admission was like an opening of some part of her. The hollowness in her stomach was flooded with warm, undeniably grief and she was buckled by it. Want halted, making no move to comfort or abandon her as she sunk against a tree and was overcome with sobs, one hand covering her face, the other wrapped tight around herself. She tried to speak, tried to explain that she hadn’t been perfect, but that she had tried to be good. She had worked hard at her studies and helped her mother when she could and did her best to be a good friend. She didn’t mean to do anything wrong. Just when he had invited her to come find him after dark, alone and in secret, she had childishly thought it was some grand adventure. When he had held her – the first time a man had ever held her like that – and she thought he was going to kiss her, it had been the most perfect moment. There had been fireflies. “*Fireflies*,” she choked, incensed, heart-broken. It was as if the world had come alive to sing for her.
For long minutes, her voice failed her and she grieved. Want simply guarded her, demanding nothing. He didn’t seem surprised by how rapidly her confession had broken her. He became again that beautiful statue of the gargoyle, crouched so that he was at her level as she let herself find the ground.
When the tears could no longer flow, he offered her his hand and lifted her to her feet. Led like this, she staggered without looking where he was taking her until he gently guided her forward and wrapped his arm around her. She let him pull her to the ground in front of a clear, sparkling stream. The outburst had left her raw and sensitive, and the chuckling of the water felt unnaturally loud. Gratefully, she washed her face in the clean, clear water. The icy cold shocked her back to the present. Sitting at the edge of the water, she watched as Want tore a large, broad leaf from the water bank and begin to play with it in his hands, folding it over itself.
“He had shown my letters to the Watchers,” she croaked, and she sounded dead to her ears. “He accused me of seducing him, and leading him astray. That I had come out to meet him was proof that my intentions were impure.”
The incubus bent and dipped his hand under the water. When he lifted it again, she saw that he had fashioned a vessel out of the leaf by folding it artfully.
He offered it to her. “The water’s clean.”
She drank. They sat together and watched the stream. The sun climbed.
“Do you want to keep going?” he asked.
She nodded. He looked as if he were about to say something, remaining crouched where he was for a beat too long. Then he got up and offered her his hand for a second time. She didn’t take it, getting up under her own power as if she prove to herself that she could. She meant no offense and he didn’t take any.
They continued on.
Inside that hollow feeling returned. There were no tears left, but the ache was in the form of a heavy deadness, a dull, stony grey inside her. If she was dead on the inside, she felt strangely alive on the outside. Shivering a little from an adrenaline chill, her eyes and ears were sharp, her skin tingling. Before she had been nervous about returning, turning her arguments and defence over in her mind again and again. Now she felt as if she were making her way into a dragon’s den.
As she started to recognise her surroundings, she opened herself up to the truth little by little. There would be no reconciliation, no homecoming. No one had come to her defence the first time, not her friends, not her family. By their inaction, they were complicit in her ostracization. If they could stand by and let it happen, then any pleas or rationalisation from her would fall on deaf ears and hard hearts. Not only that, but with her tears had seeped through a poisonous fury. She had done nothing to them. Alek had tricked her, lured her, duped her over for months and finally brought her out into the open where she had been assaulted by members of her community, imprisoned, interrogated, bound, poisoned and then abandoned. Violation didn’t begin to describe the brute violence that had been done to her. Betrayal only brushed the edges of her pain like a fine feather. Want hadn’t been the knife that cut her; he had been the bandage to stop the bleeding. Even after their cruelty, she had yearned to return to them like a lost lamb, like mewling little kitten. Shame blossomed, combining with the rage like blood and bile.
She stumbled and Want caught her. Finding her feet, she cleared her throat and tried to remember where she was.
Her thoughts had blinded her. They had come to the edge of the forest. The valley sloped down before her, the sun dying the long, lush grass a rich gold and it swayed like the waves of an ocean. The village clustered around itself at the base of the valley, thatched roofs and stone walls looking harmless and unassuming. As if for the first time, she noticed the wall that surrounded the place that she had once thought of as home. From this vantage point, it looked low, but she knew it was taller than she was, and on the outside was a dug canal, a moat. This place was sheltered and barred from the outside like a fort.
She looked back at Want. “Will you…?”
“I will wait for you,” he promised her. “If you do not come back by this time tomorrow, I will know that you do not want to come back with me and I will depart.”
He wouldn’t have to wait that long but she couldn’t say that aloud quite yet. Letting out a breath, Sora turned and descended the hill. She wasn’t trying overly hard to remain hidden, but nor did she draw any attention to herself. Despite her racing heart and every nerve in her body telling her to turn and flee, she walked briskly towards her goal, her eyes forward, her back straight. Cold dread coursed through her, but she didn’t veer. She just needed to hold her courage for as long as it took for her to do this one thing, and then she could collapse under the weight of all her other feelings.
Then she would be able to feel whatever she needed to, and do whatever she wanted. That thought gave her the strength to reach the wall and find the place where the stones jutted out, a little too large for their places. Below that another large brick acted as a stepping stone in the moat. Alek had directed her to this place, a secret he had shared with her like a man holding out a scrap of chicken for a pet. As she put her hand on the first stone, she was once again brought back to that night where she had climbed over from the other side to meet him. This time, she was scaling the wall to get back in.
Forgoing all stealth, she hauled herself up and threw one leg over. Someone spotted her and cried out. Her companion stepped forward, but she was already jumping down, landing lightly. She waved at the perplexed couple and gave them a small, defeated smile that did not reach her eyes.
Then she went home.
Many people noticed her, but no one stopped her. She heard gasps and whispers and they prickled the back of her neck like little spiders, but it didn’t matter. If she offended them, she would be out of their sight and minds again soon enough.
When she arrived at the cottage where she had grown up, no one was home, but the windows were open to let in the fresh, early summer air and the door was left ajar. Wherever her mother had gone, she would be back presently. Sora let herself in and found herself frozen in the little entranceway. The dim shade and the sudden touch of subtle scent made her feel so abruptly small and young. It had been perhaps two nights since she had last been here, but it felt like years. So much so that she hit with a wave of absurd nostalgia. She could already feel her absence from this place and it brought fresh tears to her eyes. No longer her home, she was now a visitor, uninvited and unannounced.
She made her way through to her bedroom and gave it a once over. Nothing had been touched. Already it felt cold, like the room of someone who had just died. Her hands passed over this or that possession, but nothing struck her as something she had to take with her. No clothes were any better than the ones she had on, and any trinket or keepsake now felt like a fake, a false replica of itself. She had taken a backpack and propped it up, open, on the bed. After several minutes, it was still empty. Finally, she rediscovered the stash of Alek’s letters to her, including the little folded paper animals he had sent her; birds mostly in painted red and blue. For some reason, the memory that he knew that she liked to watch the birds from her window in the morning opened a fresh wound in her. It was such a simple thing, and yet he did not deserve to know even that about her. Gritting her teeth, she gathered them up and sat cross legged on the bed. Methodically, systematically, she read them all, pouring over each word, searching for any kind of sincerity, wondering where they lies began, if they didn’t begin with the first mark on the first letter. Rereading them, one by one and placing them one on top of the other beside her, they gained the same unreality as everything else around her. These weren’t the real letters left for her by Alek, these were props in some saccharin melodramatic stage play. The words were so dizzying sweet, the flourishes so pretentious, the bait so obvious that it made her nauseous. She couldn’t tell if she were more angry at him for taking advantage of her hopeful naivety or at herself for being so naïve. She had been – was – smarter than this, surely?
She heard footsteps and shuffling outside and she put down the rest of the letters. Sliding off the bed, she approached the door.
“Mother?”
The noises stopped. Sora swallowed and revealed herself, hands clasped in front of her like she always did when she didn’t want to speak to her mother, but absolutely needed to. “Mum?”
“Sora,” her mother gasped, eyes wide. She was carrying a basket under her arm, but this was left at the entranceway, soon forgotten. “What are you doing here? You shouldn’t -! How?”
“I was… I was allowed to come back. But I’m not staying. I just… I just wanted to talk to you. To explain. To say goodbye.”
“To say…” Her mother mouthed her words back at her, trying to understand. “But… Tell me it isn’t true. Tell me you didn’t go to see that boy. The Watchers wouldn’t let me see you –” She had crossed the space between them and had taken Sora by the arm, leading her through to the kitchen where she could look at her in the light streaming in through the window. She scanned her face, as if she could read the whole story there, her eyes darting. “What *happened*?”
Sora took a deep breath.
For the second time, she recounted what had happened to her. She didn’t try to hide that she had, indeed, gone to find Alek, and that they had been exchanging letters for some time before that. Nor did she omit the abuse she had experienced at the Watcher’s hands. She did, however, skip past the poison and its effects, and what had happened between herself and Want; that she wanted to keep for herself. She did tell her about the manor in the woods, about the library, about the incubus letting her return and taking her to the edge of the forest. Her mother listened in astounded silence, occasionally letting her eyes become unfocused as she took in exactly what Sora was saying.
When she had finished, Sora found that she struggled to say the next part. She knew that the mother would protest, would try to talk her out of it, but there was no other way. No way that was bearable.
“Sora,” her mother said, and her voice was distant.
“Mum, I –” the words caught in her throat.
“The demon. He was kind to you? He acted as a gentleman?”
“I…” Sora frowned. “I think so.” Though she wasn’t sure if ‘gentleman’ applied, there was no denying he had been surprisingly kind and patient with her, given the circumstances.
“And you think it’s safe there?”
“I think so,” she said again.
Her mother nodded. “I think you should go stay with him. At least for a time.”
Sora’s mouth fell open. “What?”
“This place, Sora, this community. Gods forgive me, but it’s rotten. You know that. I’m sorry I never told you that earlier. You seemed to be getting along so well and we were always safe here. But you’ve been given a chance to leave and you should take it.”
“Mother…”
The older woman shook her head, her hand passing over her eyes and she seemed to age in front of Sora. For the first time, she saw her mother not as the ageless parent, but as the flawed and complex person that she must have always been. The realisation staggered her. Everything was different now.
“Sora, I’m too old now. But I always wanted better for you. So go. Get out of here while you can and find a wider, brighter world than this one. Don’t let this chance slip away.”
Now that it had been said, and not by her, suddenly she feared to commit to it. “What am I going to do? What kind of life waits for me in a place like that?”
“A better one than anything you’re ever going to find here,” her mother said, and her voice had an edge to it, something like urgency and not a little anger. “There’s something you should have,” she added, and left the kitchen. Uncertain, Sora followed her.
Seeing her mother like this, hearing her say these things, was like seeing her cry for the first time. It was intimate and uncomfortable and taboo, but also a little exciting. Parenthood, perhaps, was a necessary mask. Sora realised that all parents must be somewhat hidden from their children. Only as those children became adults did they reveal themselves in their totality, allies in family, no longer strictly parent and child. Not for the first time today, Sora felt the weight of adulthood on her shoulders.
Her mother met her in the entranceway, having retrieved Sora’s backpack. She took it, and found it was now heavy with something.
“That might give you some answers as to where you came from,” her mother said. “And that might give you a better idea of where you can go.”
For a moment, they stood face to face, mother and daughter.
“I’m sorry,” her mother said. “I wish I had more time to tell you everything.” She pulled Sora into an embrace. “This will have to be enough.”
“Mum… thank you for letting me go.”
A broken smile. “It was what I had always wanted to do.”
***
She felt his presence before she saw him again. Standing, backpack over one shoulder, she watched him as he regarded her.
“Take me back.”
He turned and went deeper into the forest and she followed him, relieved that he did not need to ask her to explain herself.
Source: reddit.com/r/eroticliterature/comments/tjf0wj/wastewant_3_monster_incubus_gentle_mdom_exile_new