finerandbonnier

[finerandbonnier]

Lessons from a Father

Leia's strong, she learnt that from her father.

[AO3]

Leia sat against the cold wall of the detention cell and recalled her father’s lessons on how to resist questioning. ‘Questioning’ was always the word they used and never torture — although both father and daughter were all too aware that was what they were really discussing. He’d taught her how to lock her secrets in a little box at the centre of herself and to surround that box with walls. Layers upon layers of walls so that even when one crumbled — and Bail had made it clear no matter how strong or brave she was some would crumble — the box remained untouched. Walls made from lies to confuse her captors, walls made from truths selected as sacrificial bait to convince them she was breaking. Walls of silence and walls of screaming. He’d taught her that to be tortured was to be under siege and that only by placing enough obstacles between her enemy and her secrets could she keep them safe.

It was a lesson she had taken to heart but had never really been certain she could put into practice successfully until Lord Vader walked into the room, IT-O droid floating menacingly behind him, and taught her she could.

#star wars #leia organa #fanfic #fic: one shot

[finerandbonnier]

worse

Despite what that tiny, treacherous part of him might hope, it will always get worse.

[AO3]

Somehow there is always a part of him that believes he’s seen the worst; that last time he reached the extent of his master’s cruelty, that the knife has cut as deep as it could go, that there are no new ways left in which he could be violated. It is a coping mechanism — a naïve, treacherous part of his mind clinging to the hope that what he has endured so far is proof that he will continue to endure. The rest of him knows better.

There is no hope. There is no limit to the depravity that will be inflicted on him and that he will have to inflict on others. There is only eternity stretching out into the distance and the certainty it will get worse. It will always get worse.

#baldur's gate 3 #astarion #cazador szarr #fanfic #fic: one shot

[finerandbonnier]

denouement

Poirot sets his little grey cells on the death of Heather Chandler.

[AO3]

“The first thing that stuck Poirot as strange about the untimely and so tragic death of Mademoiselle Chandler was the manner. To take one’s own life by poison is not unusual but to drink an entire cup of the drain cleaner — this is rare indeed! But Mademoiselle Chander was a young lady and at an age where extremities of emotion and action are to be expected, n’cest-ce pas? And so, fool that I was, I so nearly discounted it as mere tragedy, the action of a sad, young woman… until I found the second cup.

“Yes, when Poirot examined the kitchen of the house of Mademoiselle Chandler he found something carelessly discarded and then even more carelessly overlooked by the police: a second cup in the kitchen. On the face of it, this is not strange, non? A cup in the kitchen, this is where one expects to find such an object. But inside this cup was the trace of a most strange mixture — milk and orange juice. I could think of no reason for Mademoiselle Chandler to create such a concoction… except as an emetic. Perhaps then Mademoiselle Chandler after taking the fatal dose of poison came to regret her actions and in a final desperate act attempted to create a purgative that would expel the toxin from her body. Ah, but then why was the cup found — almost drained and discarded — in the kitchen when Mademoiselle Chandler had died in her bedroom almost immediately after ingesting the drain cleaner that killed her? It makes no sense. Unless, of course, there was someone, or multiple someones, also present at the time of her death.

“Then there is the suicide note itself. When first I read it there was something about the wording that struck me as unusual but at the time I could not, as you say in English, put my finger on it. It wasn’t until later, after Madame Fleming had so kindly allowed me to examine her classroom that I realised what it was: in her suicide note Mademoiselle Chandler uses the phrase ‘suicide is the natural answer to the myriad of problems life has given me’. And yet two weeks earlier on a vocabulary test in that very same classroom Mademoiselle Chandler was unable to correctly use the word ‘myriad’. Ah, ah, I see Monsieur Dean wishes to interject but please young Monsieur patience, s’il vous plait. There will be time for questions later and if you allow me to continue I may very well address the point you wish to make.

“Now, where was I? Ah oui, that trickly little word myriad. It is possible, of course, that Mademoiselle Chandler chose to use that word for précisément that reason, the word that she had stumbled over so recently — a symbol of her academic failure. Except that I found a second test. Mademoiselle Chandler did so poorly on that first vocabulary examination that Madame Fletcher required her to take remedial action, a so called ‘make-up’ test on the very Friday before her death. And so this test, it sits on Madame Fleming’s desk unmarked — since Mademoiselle Chandler’s death renders the grading of the test as unnecessary — until Poirot finds it. And so Mademoiselle Chandler would never have used the word myriad correctly in her suicide note for at the time of her death she still did not know its meaning! The suicide note found by her body could not have been penned by her hand!

“Oui mesdames et messieurs, the note therefore must have been a forgery — and a fine one indeed, for it nearly fooled Hercule Poirot himself, the handwriting is so close to Mademoiselle Chandler’s own. But who could have produced such a thing? Only someone with experience of copying the handwriting of others, of forging the hall passes, the sick notes, the permission slips. Someone who was close to Mademoiselle Chandler, but deep down despised her, for Mademoiselle Chandler was known to be cruel and vindictive. Someone who had fallen out with Mademoiselle Chandler the very night before her death and who was afraid of what reprisal she might face at school the next week? Is that not right, Mademoiselle Sawyer?!”

#poirot #hercule poirot #heathers 1989 #fanfic #fic: one shot

[finerandbonnier]

LIMERICK. ARRIVING. ON THE SCENE.

[AO3]

YOU — Compose a dumb little limerick.

In the past it is true you have been, Unreliable, drunk, and unclean, But these past days somehow, You’ve improved and are now, DETECTIVE. ARRIVING. ON THE SCENE

...

DRAMA [Trivial: Success] — I'm not sure that last line quite scans, sire. YOU — (Ignore it.)

#disco elysium

[finerandbonnier]

In the Basement of those Cabins is a Princess

100 words for each face of The Princess.

The Shifting Mound; The Princess (Again) - [AO3]

The Shifting Mound

You wait for another fragile vessel. Another piece of you.

A tiny fragment of a greater whole; brittle and empty, ready to be filled with you and fill you up in return.

Warm and fierce and trusting and scared and loving and hurt and wilful and betrayed – more variants than there are words to describe them. All fragile.

All hidden somewhere through space and time in The Long Quiet where you cannot reach them with your grasping hands, cannot pull them into yourself and consume them, subsume them.

So, you wait in the cold and the dark and the quiet.

The Princess (Again)

You’re back in the basement of the cabin. The original cabin. The ur-cabin. The cabin from which all other cabins deviate.

You’re not a god this time. Nor a beast, nor a witch, nor a wood. You’re not even a princess. You are The Princess. You are the image that word conjures in their mind absent all other adjectives or descriptors.

But perhaps you do not have to be for much longer, perhaps this time the pair of you will walk through that cabin door and shed your labels together. Not the princess. Not the hero. Just you and them.

#slay the princess #fanfic #fic: in the basement #and done!

[finerandbonnier]

Desperate Times

When facing an infestation of L.B.s one must take drastic action.

[AO3]

The rats are everywhere. The bedroom. The parlour. The pantry. Oh god, the pantry, what the little bastards have done in there to your fungal crackers defies description. The ratcatchers are no longer responding to your missives. The local tabbies cross the street when they see you approach. You are beginning to run out of options; every vermin you shoot, stab or poison is replaced with two more. They are legion and they are hungry.

There is only one thing for it – you’ll have to release the thing in the wardrobe. And pray to god it eats them and not you.

#fallen london #fanfic #fic: one shot

[finerandbonnier]

In the Basement of those Cabins is a Princess

100 words for each face of The Princess.

The Den; The Wraith - [AO3]

The Den

There was a time you thought in words and higher concepts instead of base instincts. Those days are long behind you.

Now you keep yourself low to the ground and stick to the dark corners of the basement where you are harder to see.

Now you spread your weight across the full span of your paws when you step silently across the uneven terrain.

Now you wait with attentive ears and nostrils for the first hint of them.

You do all this without conscious intent or malice, same as you will when you sink your teeth into their yielding flesh.

The Wraith

The sensation of possessing another person, trying to will the unfamiliar limbs to cooperate with you as their conscious writhes in panic against your own, is unpleasant but you comfort yourself with the knowledge it’s a thousand times worse for them. It’s nothing less than they deserve, all the physical pain, mental anguish and helplessness. If you could bear it so can they. If you can bear it so should they.

They should have just let you out.

Every shard of ice-cold pain shooting up from their shattered ankle feels like a kiss when you know they feel it too.

#fic: in the basement #slay the princess

[finerandbonnier]

Fool's Possession

[AO3]

It could be difficult to tell Michiyo’s thoughts from her own; in life they had been so close and even now, deep down, they wanted the same thing – for those who had made Michiyo’s existence so awful to suffer and die.

In contrast, the Fool’s Procession’s thoughts are easy to separate. The murderous impulse might be similar (deeper maybe, darker, built up over decades upon decades of unresolved resentment) but the suffocating feeling of glue binding mask to lip and nostril cannot be mistaken.

#paranormasight #yakko sakazaki #fic: one shot

[finerandbonnier]

but we both know it is very much poison

Sometimes if you ever want to take your lover back to see your homeland you need to repeatedly dose them with poison first.

[AO3]

Poisoning their morning tea had originally been discounted as too obvious but Minthara had learned quickly over the past few weeks that her lover was not as observant as she should be when it came to tampered foodstuffs. She’d completely missed the belladonna in the stew, then the thrum in the wine, and even the nightmare root sprinkled across the top of the biscuit Minthara handed her last night had been swallowed without pause. At this point Minthara was convinced she could hand Tav a vial of drow poison and the woman would chug it without question.

Still, at least she was building up a tolerance.

#baldur's gate 3 #minthara #minthara baenre #minthara/tav #fanfic #fic: one shot

[finerandbonnier]

In the Basement of those Cabins is a Princess

100 words for each face of The Princess.

The Apotheosis; The Eye of the Needle; The Moment of Clarity - [AO3]

The Apotheosis

It would be wrong to say that you are in a basement, for what basement could contain you.

No, you are not in the basement of a little wooden cabin. You are not at the bottom of some little wooden stairs. You are nestled in the core of the world – its earthen shell your blanket.

You are the core of this world. When you emerge, you will shatter it for it will have served its purpose: to hold you until their arrival.

You used to dream of ending the world, now it will just be collateral damage of your entrance.

The Eye of the Needle

The little coward is running – again – and it’s no fun.

You understand your purpose, the violence you were born to both deal and be dealt but they’re not playing their part. They’re fleeing when they should be fighting.

So, you pursue them. You don’t enjoy it; you get no thrill from the chase like others might but when you catch them you’ll get your fight or snap their scrawny neck. The little bastard’s quick which should prove fun. Smaller than you though. Shorter reach.

You’re so caught up in imagining the battle you don’t even notice when you step outside.

The Moment of Clarity

This could have been over a long, long time ago but you don’t begrudge them their struggle. If they must take the long route round, then so be it; you both know it won’t change the final destination, the one that was sealed in blood the moment they turned to run from you.

Besides, it’s fun to watch them change bit by bit, as each option is attempted and exhausted. Each new layer added – them shifting, you staying constant. Until they run out of options.

Until they reach down to offer up their hand and free you from this pit.

#slay the princess #fic: in the basement #fanfic

[finerandbonnier]

In the Basement of those Cabins is a Princess

100 words for each face of The Princess.

The Fury; The Burned Grey; The Drowned Grey - [AO3]

The Fury

What have they done to you? You were perfect, beautiful, terrible. You were a goddess!

That insignificant little worm. That flea. You were going to grant them the privilege of being kept at your side and this is the thanks you get?! What intolerable insolence!

Yet you remain a goddess albeit a goddess of contradiction. Terrible, beautiful and perfect. And when they arrive you will teach them what it means to anger a goddess.

You’ll still keep them by your side once you’re done with them; what few pieces of viscera left will make a lovely addition to your dress.

The Burned Grey

You stand over your murdered corpse, the knife that once plunged into a beating heart now lodged in your still breast and you remember their blood on your hands, dress, face when you wielded it. It is the greatest evidence you have of the sickness of this place. Look what it made them do to you. What it made you do to them. What it will keep making the two of you do if someone doesn’t stop it.

It needs to burn. You need to burn. They need to burn.

Then you can be together, like you’re meant to be.

The Drowned Grey

You’re a little surprised they’ve come back after last time but you suppose that whatever force keeps your bloated and rotting corpse bound in its chains and bars your restless spirit from leaving the cabin also draws them back to this place, like a migratory bird returning to an ancestral nesting ground. They’re helpless to resist it. Just like you were helpless to resist the blood that filled your lungs and the ground is unable to resist the relentless pounding rain outside. It has no where to go but down, layer upon layer, until it finally it breaks and floods.

#fic: in the basement #slay the princess

[finerandbonnier]

In the Basement of those Cabins is a Princess

100 words for each face of The Princess.

The Thorn; The Wounded Wild; The Networked Wild - [AO3]

The Thorn

You try not to think about how different your life would be, how different you would be, if you hadn’t stabbed them.

You never quite manage it.

Every time the thought drifts through your mind a vine holding you constricts, and another thorn pierces your skin. That’s the gift these loops give, they will not allow you to forget how you got here. The impact of your actions. The betrayal. The distrust. Round and round they go in an exhausting cycle. You’re not even mad anymore; you’re just tired.

Maybe this time they’ll kill you again.

Maybe you deserve it.

The Wounded Wild

When they ripped off the desperate veneer of coalescence that you had so carefully weaved, exposing the hate in both your hearts and splitting your conjoined conscious, you thought you knew how this would end: a return to the cycle of hatred and betrayal you’d been so desperate to escape.

Instead, they free your rooted, vulnerable, and exposed form. They carefully cut you down from your perch with the same blade that had pierced your heart oh so long ago, its wicked edge severing the joining where flesh and bark became one.

They hold you so tenderly in their arms.

The Networked Wild

This is good. This is right. This is how we are meant to be.

How silly that we ever thought different, thought of them as separate, as something to hate, as a wicked creature that once plunged a blade into your heart.

No.

Don’t think about before. There’s no need to ever think about before. Ignore it. Kill it. Cast it to the furthest reaches of our memory and then even further until it no longer exists as a thing that was or ever could be.

This is good. This is right. This is how we are meant to be.

#fic: in the basement #slay the princess

[finerandbonnier]

In the Basement of those Cabins is a Princess

100 words for each face of The Princess.

The Beast; The Razor's Heart - [AO3]

The Beast

There is an emptiness in you that only they can fill; a hollowness in the pit of your stomach that is shaped like them, full of bile and acid and the absence of meat. It growls, this ravenous, grasping hole inside you where you’ll keep them. It’s hungry for them. Hungry for what they’ll do for you.

They must be alive when the two of you pass that threshold so you cannot bite them. You cannot chew. You will have to swallow them whole and then bear them in your body to the door.

Thankfully, digestion is a slow process.

The Razor's Heart

You know something is different even before you move but still you swing at them. What else could you do? You are a knife. You cut. You do so expecting blade to pierce flesh as it has so many times before.

Instead, you hit something solid where there should have been something soft.

You swing again with a different blade to the same result. Over and over again. You are a knife. You cut. Except you aren’t cutting, you’re crumpling, metal bending and folding over itself until all that is left is a heap of scrap metal and a heart.

#fic: in the basement #slay the princess

[finerandbonnier]

In the Basement of those Cabins is a Princess

100 words for each face of The Princess.

The Adversary; The Nightmare; The Deconstructed Damsel - [AO3]

The Adversary

You grin as they thrust the dagger at your chest with deadly intent. This is what you live for, this dance on the thin line between death and victory where every cut and bruise and disembowelling (whether inflicted on you or by you) only makes you feel more alive.

You block the blow with your arm, the blade sinking deep enough to embed itself in bone. Still they keep pushing and you push back. This is what you live for, the two of you crashing against each other until one of you loses and is killed.

Then you begin again.

The Nightmare

It’s sort of funny when you think about it. That their original fear, the one that started all this, is unfounded: that you’re going to end the world.

You’re not.

Ending the world would be fun… for a moment. Then it would be over. Once a toy is broken you don’t get to play with it anymore and you want to play with the world. You want to poke it and watch it flinch, jump out and hear it shriek, to be the action that causes the reaction. Change and fear sound so much more fun than a simple end.

The Deconstructed Damsel

You pause briefly as you consider the question they’d asked; the one that no one had ever asked you before (not even yourself) but it only takes a moment for the answer to come to you. It’s really very simple:

You just want to make them happy.

They ask again and so you repeat yourself.

You just want to make them happy!

They keep asking, for some reason they don’t seem to like your answer but you can’t understand why not. Perhaps if you can somehow make it simpler then they’ll finally understand.

Y̵̡̯͑ó̴̰̣u̴̖͝ j̷̤̻͝ǘ̸̬̲̓ṧ̸͔t̴̢̜̏̈́ ẅ̸̳̮́ā̸̳̬͋n̶͍̈́t̸̺̗̒̀ t̶͉̘͌o̴̪̳͊̒ m̶̤͔̈́͝ǎ̴̖̐k̷̐͜ẽ̸̲ͅ ̵̦̈́̉t̷̥̉h̴̡̰͋̄ḛ̶͍̊͝m̷̢̳̏ ̷̬̐͌ẖ̴̏͝a̸̞͗͒p̸̮̅p̶̨̾̕ỹ̷!

#fic: in the basement #slay the princess

[finerandbonnier]

In the Basement of those Cabins is a Princess

100 words for each face of The Princess.

The Spectre; The Prisoner; The Prisoner's Head - [AO3]

The Spectre

Any joy you felt at the realisation your new form is no longer shackled to the basement wall fades the instant you try to leave the building and find you cannot; whatever ghostly powers you possess are impotent in the face of these four walls. You remain bound to this cabin, just in a less literal manner.

They seemed able to come and go as they pleased though. Guess you’ll just have to hitch a ride if you want to get home. After all, they owe you.

And if they don’t feel like squaring their debt, well…

…you’ll make them.

The Prisoner

You suppose you can’t hold it against them. You’ve had a lot more practice at being chained to the wall of a basement than they have so of course you’d be better at it, but you really wish they would shut up and just accept the situation for what it is.

You’re trapped here.

You’re both trapped here.

If they’d sat down, ignored the chain and handed you the knife like you’d wanted maybe you both could have escaped but they didn’t and so there’s no use dwelling on it.

There is nothing to do but sit here and wait.

The Prisoner's Head

The blade they tossed you is sharp but it was never intended to behead someone and so you must persevere through skin and muscle and vein with a methodical sawing motion. Once you hit spine your progress almost grinds to a halt as the blade scrapes against bone but eventually you find a path through the vertebrae and sever your spinal cord. Like cutting the strings on a marionette you slump to let gravity complete your work and the last thing you see is their wide, horrified eyes.

You really, really hope that they pick up what you’re putting down.

#slay the princess #fic: in the basement

[finerandbonnier]

In the Basement of those Cabins is a Princess

100 words for each face of The Princess.

The Witch; The Stranger; The Razor - [AO3]

The Witch

Pure hatred filled your heart when that wretch plunged their awful little dagger into it and so you became a creature of spite and bile and hate. A natural response to betrayal.

You would do anything to see them suffer. You would break every bone in your body, every law of nature if only it meant you could hurt them worse than they hurt you.

This isn’t about justice, this is self-protection and revenge. For each time they stabbed you, you’ll stab them ten, a hundred, a thousand times in turn.

You cannot be anything other than what you are.

The Stranger

You speak in unison but you are not united. You and you and you and you and you and you and all of you. On it goes, on to eternity. A you here and another you there and here and there until the words lose their meaning. You are all on top of one another and inside one another and you are all trying to speak and you are speaking and you are listening to yourself, but it’s not you except in all the ways that it is.

What have they done to you and you and you and you…

The Razor

It won’t be long now until they come back and you’ve been practicing. Practicing how to make your voice sugary instead of sharp, how to stand in a way that disguises the cutting edge of your bones, how to get them close enough to sweet, innocent, completely unarmed you that you can stab them again.

Stab their face and their chest and their shoulders and their back and their thighs and their hands and their throat and their talons and their stomach and everywhere else you can reach.

So many wonderful options if only you can get them close enough.

#slay the princess #fic: in the basement

[finerandbonnier]

In the Basement of those Cabins is a Princess

100 words for each face of The Princess.

The Princess; The Damsel; The Tower - [AO3]

The Princess

You couldn’t begin to hazard a guess how long you’ve been down here.

It must have been a very long time though because why else would you have forgotten so much: how you came to be chained up in this basement, what the world looks like beyond these walls, even your own name?

It can’t have been a very long time though because no one’s ever fed you and you haven’t starved to death.

Maybe it doesn’t matter.

When this basement is all you can remember is there really any difference between being trapped for a single second or eternity?

The Damsel

You’re chained to the wall again…

...but it’s not so bad because now you know a hero is coming to save you!

Your hero.

It doesn’t take long before you hear the creak of their tread on the stairs, and you smile so wide when they turn the corner to face you because now they’re here you’ll be safe.

You’re not even worried about the knife in their hand until they charge at you and when they plunge it directly into your heart, perfectly between your ribs, your only regret is that they won’t tell you what you did wrong.

The Tower

You are a Goddess borne from the faltering of a weak creature and the crushing of a windpipe by a dainty foot. Yours is an indominable will. The iron shackle around your wrist is jewellery, no more able to bind you to the wall than a gossamer thread could. That it remains attached to you is only proof that you do not wish it differently.

For now you are content to wait for them, the little bird who heralded your birth. When they arrive you’ll clip their wings, walk out that door and meet your destiny.

Worldender they’ll call you.

#slay the princess #fic: in the basement #the princess #the damsel #the tower