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jolenes-doppelganger · 2 months

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Shooting the Messenger

Reverend Mother Jessica Atreides x Fem!Harkonnen Reader

Summary: Following the Battle of Arrakeen, House Harkonnen remains decimated. With Baron Harkonnen’s corpse slowly rotting in the sand and Feyd Rautha thrown amidst a pile of burning bodies, Reader is left with no choice but to hide amidst the rubble of the city in the hope of eventually escaping before being killed. Unfortunately, the bastard child of Emmi Harkonnen finds herself cornered, incapable of escaping from the clutches of the still surviving Atreides clan. (Emmi Harkonnen is the wife of Abulurd Harkonnen, brother to the Baron Harkonnen- NO INCEST!!!!).

Warnings: Dark circumstances (war, murder, death), complimentary Stockholm/Lima syndromes dynamic, grey-morality, abuse of power (Jessica), spitting

A/N: I’ve leaned more into the circumstances of the Dune books, specifically with Alia being born before the Battle of Arrakeen. If pregnant women are your thing, good for you, but I’m not into pursuing a relationship with a woman pregnant with a psychic, talking baby that observes everything going on from inside the womb. (Authored with inspiration and council from @ilovehotactresses- Here ya go buddy). This is all worldbuilding, no sexy times, I apologize. I legit cannot comprehend this woman fucking someone just 'cause she can. More sexy times later, I promise, promise, promise!!

Word Count: 3.3k

House Harkonnen had fallen. Baron Harkonnen was dead. Feyd Rautha, his successor, laid upon a pile of Sardaukar and Harkonnen soldiers, slowly being burned by flames on the sands of the fallen city. You had lost track of Beast Rabban, your oldest half-brother. It mattered not, you hated both of your half-brothers, the dead Feyd Rautha most especially. But regardless of resentment and old wounds, you were left without protection. Finding a dark, well hidden corner of the fallen city was difficult. But you did. Panting, in between collapsing from exertion and crying out of fear, you'd found a corner. Making yourself as small as possible, you covered your ears and froze.

"Reverend Mother, you cannot go into this sector! It is not secured!" a voice echoed down the halls.

"I don't have another option. Alia has spoken to me of her. I must find this remaining vestibule of the Harkonnen throne, the one that remains, the living heir." a voice rasped.

Silence. The room fell silent, and the footsteps disappeared. It must have been an illusion of some sort, a trick of the senses. Those voices and footfalls had been near, therefore the woman who spoke should have been near.

"There you are. Rise."

A force greater than you pulled you up, causing you to put pressure on your lacerated, probably fractured leg. You cried out in pain, but you remained standing.

"Nevermind. Kneel."

You kneeled, the force of your knees on the stone caused white hot pain to flash up your body. Hands cupped your face, pushing back the veil that hid your hair.

"Ahh, so you're half-Harkonnen? The rumours are true.. You're Emmi Harkonnen's bastard, her little mistake." the woman cooed, stroking over the hair repeatedly. "Precious, so precious. You'd make a poor heir. But we have to ensure that, don't we?"

You could only wheeze, looking up at the veiled woman in spite and fear.

"Oh, if you've heard the rumors, you've most certainly heard of my rumored fathers." you managed.

Reverend Mother Jessica drew closer.

"No, I most certainly haven't."

Glaring up at her intentionally, you smirked in recognition of the advantage you had.

"I was supposedly conceived during an Imperial caucus, the product of an affair. But I've heard the whispers. I may have been the product of none other than your deceased Duke Leto."

The slap that landed across your cheeks was resonant, and humiliating. No matter how much pride one has, slaps can never be any less humiliating than nature intends them to be. Tears collect in your eyes from the force, and you're knocked backwards, or to the side, depending on the direction of the slap.

"You will not speak of such things." Mother Jessica seethed.

"It doesn't matter if I was his bastard. This was several years before he met you."

Her hands encircled your throat, and you were met with the steely blue eyes of the Reverend Mother in the flesh.

"Shut your mouth. I have one purpose for you, and if you do not fulfill it, you will find how little life has left to offer you."

"-I'm a bastard child, there was never-"

"Sleep."

Jessica could only look with a mix of relief and victory as the Harkonnen slumped forward, pushed into a dream-like state by her command of the Voice. This child was a fighter, she knew it to be true. But she hadn't slapped the young woman out of spite, or fear, rather it had been merely annoying to suggest she was the Duke's child. Jessica knew her deceased concubine well, she knew that if he had made such a mistake as sleeping with the wife of a royal Harkonnen it would have come out before his death, most certainly under the pressure of the move to Arrakis. Not to mention the child in front of her did not look like her duke. She'd know his features anywhere; they were burned into her soul.

"Pesky, belligerent. More Harkonnen than I'd like to admit." Jessica muttered to herself. "Pick her up and have her treated for her wounds. She is useful, for the time being."

The Sayyadina that surrounded her nodded, and a Fremen soldier appeared, hauling the war-worn woman up, towards a medical unit. Jessica knew that her injuries would not be attended to at all if she did not press the matter, so she ensured that the girl was brought into her chambers, that her Sayyadina would oversee the matter to fruition. In the meantime, she had the council of her child Alia to attend to.

"It is done?" the toddler asked, voice uncharacteristically adult, in a tiny little body of a girl.

"Yes, the Harkonnen bastard will be attended to." Jessica murmured.

Her daughter came forward, crawling into her mother's lap. Regardless of her mental age, the body begged for connection from her mother, the soul too.

"She is more than just a bastard, she could be very useful to Paul's cause." Alia mused, childish voice still containing a hint of a lisp.

Jessica hummed, stroking the blonde curls that were springing from her daughter's scalp.

"How do I manipulate her to our needs?"

Alia furrowed her brow, thinking carefully. It seemed the little girl blessed with such mental and psychic foresight was momentarily at a loss for words, carefully considering her next proposal.

"She is like her brother. She has wounds, desires, all of which are accessed through physicality, through sexual manipulation." the girl spoke.

Jessica looked at her daughter carefully.

"So, I bed her?"

Alia shook her head.

"Seduction comes in many ways. If it pleases you to engage with her like that..." but Alia did not finish the thought. "It is not necessary to go all the way."

Jessica hummed, returning to petting her daughters curls. Upon inspection, they were covered in dirt and sand. It was natural for the Caladan born woman to immediately think of baths, but on Arrakis no such luxury could exist. Her daughter was of the desert, conceived upon Arrakis, of this Jessica was sure. Secondly was the matter of her daughter's strange connection to the sands. Alia smelled of the desert, an eerie quality Jessica could not explain. Truth be told, the warrior-child scared her. The mere toddler, the small body that contained such irreputable wisdom and violence, it was a body that should have glowed with innocence, of mindless naivety.

"Mother, of what do you think?" Alia asked, seemingly sensing the dark, contemplative nature of her mother.

"Of matters that you need not concern yourself with, my daughter." Jessica answered curtly. "... I have but one request. Stop wielding those knives. Your mind is old, but your body is young.."

"-I will be fine." Alia shrugged, hopping off of her mother's lap, walking away.

Watching her daughter display such independence was exhaustingly emotional. Jessica felt the tell-tale sign of her eyes burning, and the willpower it took to restrain the tears that begged to fall was more exhausting than just allowing her body to release a few drops of water. Walking away, Jessica moved towards the body that lay prone some distance aways. Jessica yearned for something to care for, something that needed her, someone that would be loyal, and innocent in the nature of the world in ways that her children could not be. Jessica wanted something to call hers, and hers alone.

<------------->

Glowing light burned through the windows of the conquered city of Arrakis. Smoke wafted through the main palace, the smell tinged with burning hair and flesh. It was grotesque, the smell unforgettable. It reeked of murder, of shed blood.

"Ahh, she awakes." a voice purred, hands encircling you, a face coming into focus.

Blue eyes of the desert came into view. Tattoos, marks of prophecy; symbols your mind could not comprehend adorned her face. Hair, brown and dark, hints of grey peppered in amongst the rest of her straight hair.

"Who are you?"

The woman smiled, and her breath was unnaturally odorless. The product of fasting, you assumed.

"You may call me Lady Jessica, if that suits you." the woman murmured. "Or Reverend Mother."

Lady Jessica Atreides, mother of Paul Atreides, the Lisan al Gaib, Muad'dib of the Fremen, prophet, the mind to bridge time and space. The mother of the demon-child Alia, St. Alia of the Knife, abomination, Reverend Mother, that which should have remained unborn. You knew her well. You knew of her hell-spawn, her corruption, her disregard for higher authority. She submitted to her son, but that was an illusion, you assumed.

"No." you rasped. "No, no, no, no!"

Jessica pressed a hand over your mouth, silencing you.

"Shh," she cooed. "No fear, no cries for help. None of it will make a difference for what I have planned for you."

Since you were a child, since before you had the ability to comprehend the complexities of being a Harkonnen, of being a but a half-breed, you'd always known that it had been okay to run to your mother. Scraped knee? Mother. Your older brothers cornering you? Run to mother. Maids jeering and bothering you? Mother. Lonely, scared and wet after an acid polluted thunderstorm caught you and burned your skin red and painful? Mother. It was in these moments of foolish vulnerability that your heart would sing for that connection, that safety. It was futile. Emmi Harkonnen had died years prior.

"Hmm... Alia may have made her first mistake." Jessica mused, dissecting your fearful micro-expressions. "Or only partly right."

Jessica's hands reached up, cupping your face, brushing hair out of your eyes. Thumbs glided over your brows, analyzing your expressions carefully.

"No... You'll be much easier to crack this way..."

Hauling you up and into her arms felt deceptively easy for Jessica. Her body had hardened and grown sinewy with tough, resistant muscle the longer she remained in the desert. She drew you to her breast, resting head in the crook of her armpit. She reeked of sweetness, of sweat long dried, of the unmistakable tang of spice.

"There... Don't fight it, don't try to hide away." Jessica whispered, her breath now sickly sweet, from low-blood sugar, you guessed.

"You need to stop fasting." you murmured. "Your breath is sweet."

Jessica laughed a little, cradling you closer.

"I have complete control of my bodily functions. You need not concern yourself with the matters of my health."

Hands dragged over the cloth clothes the Sayyadina had pulled over you. Bandages covered your body in innumerable places, your leg was especially bandaged, the product of the fracture you'd sustained. Jessica continued stroking your face, pulling you closer, fingers desperately combing through your hair.

"It's been so long since someone's needed me... Even my own daughter outgrew the need for me once she was a year old..." Jessica whispered, her face showing signs of paranoia, of unmistakable jealous rage. "The Bene Gesserit have taken so much from me... My mother first, then my innocence, my connection with my Duke, my son's innocence, the life of my beloved, even my own daughter."

There was a madness in her eyes that could not be explained. She was strong, ruthless, ready to take and take and milk the desert of every last devotion to her cause, to her children that it could offer. But yet with all that work, with all that pain and suffering she'd put forth, her children grew farther apart from her. Jessica grabbed at the Harkonnen woman with desperation, pulling her in as close as their mortal forms could allow.

"No, you will be mine and you will love me."

"Let me go, I want to go home." you protested, trying to wiggle out of the woman's arms.

The madness in her eyes grew brighter, and she smiled obscenely.

"But you are home."

"I live on Giedi Prime." you whimpered.

Jessica let out a laugh so harsh it might have been mistaken for screech.

"Giedi Prime? No child. I could not send you back to your decaying father, to the dark, colorless, soulless world of Giedi Prime. You belong to me now. Arrakis will be your home. Then, one day, when the time comes, you and I will return to Caladan. We will live on the cliffs, the oceans will sing to us, the breeze... We will remember the good days, and make them ours once again..."

The woman in front of you, the woman who cradled you was haunted, deranged in ways that could not be explained. Whether she had been pushed too far by the loss of her house and her beloved Duke, or whether it had been the Fremen Spice Agony that had caused her to be so utterly consumed by her desires, by her visions of Paul and his propheted status as the Lisan al Gaib.

"I want to be close to my mother." you whispered.

This gave Jessica some pause, she stalled her frantic massage of your scalp, your neck, your face.

"I could be your mother, if you wanted." she whispered. "I could be that for you... I could be whatever you needed, just so long as you needed me."

Jessica seemed on the verge of a breakdown of some sort. Whether it would result in violence, in verbal aggression, tears, yelling or complete psychosis, she was close to cracking all the way.

"I just. Need you. To need me." Jessica whispered.

Pity. The first feeling that came over you when she said those words. The woman in front of you was fearsome, yes. But the truth was she was broken. For all the psychic enhancement and wisdom she'd maintained, she was scarred and brutalized, a thing of beauty and willpower turned feral and menacing due to the elements of the desert planet Arrakis. It was a look you'd seen in your mother, days before Feyd had murdered her. An animal cornered, and animal bearing it's teeth and striking out at anything that dared confront it. Fear. For all of Jessica's training and years of containing her fears, she had never conquered one. Jessica Atreides, Reverend Mother and widower of the Duke Atreides, daughter of the Baron Harkonnen, mother of the most fearsome leader of the advanced times was afraid of being abandoned, of no longer being needed.

"... I don't want a mother... I don't think I could bear treating another woman with the same type of affections as I gave my mother."

Jessica's face spasmed in grotesque anger and betrayal.

"But I need someone. And I don't have anyone to turn to."

She swallowed, a vein on her forehead bulging with the stress of containing her emotions.

"I am that person." she rasped, voice coming out in violent puffs of air. "No one else will put up with you, no one else will bother keeping you alive. You are stuck on Arrakis. The Harkonnen troops are dead, Grossu Rabban is dead. No one will come to save you." Jessica sneered, violently digging her hands into your hair. "The Bene Gesserit will abandon Princess Irulan here as the bride of Paul, the Emperor will retreat back to House Corrino with the Bene Gesserit. They will not bother hauling a bastard such as yourself with you."

Her words rang harsh, true. You needed the woman in front of you to survive, and you suspected that without someone to love, to love her back in the ways she needed, she too would find herself irrevocably insane.

"I know."

"Silence!"

Your mouth clamped shut, teeth clacking together aggressively. Jessica let out a low whimper, holding you close. She seemed to be muttering in a foreign language, eyes glazed from effort. It was becoming apparent that Jessica did not have control over her body as she said she did, or, more accurately, she was pushing it to limits that were unsustainable. You managed to reach for a glass of water. Jessica did not notice. Your throat begged for moisture, you needed the water as much as she did, but if she died and you didn't... No one would keep you alive.

"..." you tried to speak, but the command remained.

Bringing the cup to her lips, you managed to coax her into drinking. Jessica's hands flew to the cup, gulping down the water greedily. You suspected it was the first time she'd had water in days. Dates lay on the table. Again you were presented with the dilemma of eating it and fueling your weak body or giving it to the weakened Jessica. You brought the dates to her mouth, one by one until they were gone. She appeared to recover gradually. As her senses came to her, she called out to a Sayyadina, requesting something.

"You are wiser than I thought." Jessica murmured. "I had not realized how long I had been fasting."

The Sayyadina returned with food, hot and earthy smelling. She handed you a bowl, allowing yourself to eat without help. But as you struggled with coordinating in the awkward position, she ultimately grabbed the bowl, spoon feeding you like a child. Water was provided, and the relief it brought was indescribable. Jessica finished her own portion of food, ingesting more water. She appeared to be healthier now, more content and less capable of descending into madness.

"There. Now we are both taken care of." Jessica smiled. "You may speak now, the command only lasts for as long as I wish it to."

You looked around, seemingly looking for something to say to test your ability to speak, but found none. Jessica noticed this, humming appreciatively.

"Alright then, if I must speak first, so be it. You said that you did not need a mother. Of that I can understand, but do not necessarily agree with. Everyone needs a mother figure in their life, until middle adulthood I would imagine. You are young still, you require coaxing, teaching, nurturing."

Jessica's words were wise, of that you could not argue with.

"But you do not wish for a mother figure. I will not press the matter. I will allow you to naturally find that mother figure, but, you will receive all of your needs for companionship, for safety, for community directly through me."

Her words contradicted themselves, but dwelling on it seemed unwise. Jessica leaned forward, searching your eyes with hers in a way that seemed uncannily invasive.

"I'll find exactly how you need me." Jessica whispered. "Don't worry."

Her breath smelled of the curry she'd eaten. It was hot, no longer tinged with sweetness. And her eyes danced in ways that seemed almost provocative.

"... Oh no. I retract my earlier statement. My daughter was right." she whispered, voice a little husky, slightly hoarse.

A hand trailed down your thigh, nails snagging on the thin fabric, making contact with the skin beneath your pants.

"Desire."

The command inflamed your injury-restricted desires, white-hot lust burning through your body in maddening ways.

"Oh, I've always wanted to try that." Jessica smiled, eyes a little manic as she watched heat bloom over your cheeks. "Open your mouth."

It wasn't a direct command infused with the Voice, but in your altered state, it might as well have been.

"Accept the gift of my water." Jessica whispered, spitting into your mouth.

In any other circumstance, the act would have been seen as ridiculously demeaning, but combined with your basic knowledge of Fremen culture and the lust-addled state of your brain, it was enough to cause a slight gasp to fall from your lips. Jessica let out a soft laugh, kissing your cheek forcefully.

"Swallow."

You did as obeyed, her spit sliding down your throat. Jessica caught the motion with her lips, savoring the act.

"Again." Jessica whispered, hand holding your jaw.

Her saliva hit your tongue, and you closed your mouth. You waited for her lips to find your throat before swallowing. Jessica hummed, bringing your body closer.

"Now my water lives inside of you. You'll be mine before you know it."

Slowly, about as slowly as it took for your body to absorb the moisture she'd delivered you, your body stopped desiring. But the humiliation of the act lingered. The claim, the power she had of you, her words. That remained for much longer than you cared to admit.

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