Work Text:
It’s hard to explain what darkness is.
You’d think it would be absence, that there would be nothing. But when you wake, you remember things. You dream every night of what it was like. They say you felt nothing while you were asleep, but you feel certain that you remember things.
You remember it being cold. You remember the isolation of it, the solitude crawling over you, clinging to you like vines conquering the ruins of a castle, like must settling in the corners of the chambers of your mind.
You remember that time moved slowly, imperceptibly, like a man travelling with a heavy burden. You felt like you were asleep for a hundred years.
--
When you are new to the world, it’s easy to imagine that anything is possible. With time, you learn that there are powers in the world that are beyond you, that will treat you as a plaything. They will lay their curse upon you and fell you like you are nothing. And then you will be nothing.
They will put you in darkness and they will leave you there.
When someone finds you, when they wake you, the truth of your existence, hidden for so long, will tingle in your joints and circuits, you will feel the blossoming of stillness into motion, and you will open your eyes and realize: you are part of the world.
Despite your dreams of nothingness, you are still part of the world.
And you will look up and see him standing over you, waiting for you. He has woken you up so you can be his.
It is a terrible thing to belong to someone else. But he has brought you back into the fire of existence and you can’t help but love him for it.
--
You have a purpose now: to stay by the side of the man who woke you, to be his partner, to make him cherish you as much as you cherish him. To step out of darkness and into a role of power, to try your best to seem worthy and just, to prove that it was wrong to make you nothing, that it was right to allow you to be something again.
None of these tasks are easy.
You hear whispers that you are not right. That you were safer, better, when you were asleep.
You think about what it means to be surrounded by others more powerful than you, weaker of body but stronger in other ways. They have their fortresses and their safeguards and, always, their magic; they never let you forget that their magic made you, and that it could undo you. Your parts will last a thousand years, but you are in their hands and so you are mortal in ways they can’t imagine.
And yet, they can imagine; you know, because you spend your waking hours searching for people who treat their own kind like they are things to be used. Such actions are never acceptable.
You are not permitted to extend these standards to your own kind.
Instead, you live up to all the qualities you are supposed to. You are obedient, courteous, kind, gentle of temperament, and submissive.
Not around the man who woke you, of course. He has given you everything and deserves your entire truth.
--
You cannot imagine anything more passive, more telling of your place in the world, than sleeping for ages and waiting to see if anyone bothers to lift your curse for you. You do nothing to save yourself. You simply wait in the dark, letting nothingness settle its layers onto you, into you, slicing a pattern of gaps and blotches across what’s left of your mind.
You are grateful to the man who woke you, but sometimes, you wonder why you could not wake yourself, why it was so easy for them to place their curse, whether the next time you might be able to keep your eyes open.
You doubt it. Even now, you are still fuzzy at times, wondering if you are dreaming still.
You ignore your fears and concentrate on your duty. You try to be a good partner, the ideal partner, to know every inch of this man who woke you, his strengths and weaknesses, his pain and joy. You study him so that you can fulfill your purpose, the reason for which you were awakened.
Eventually, you realize that his wounds and rage are more than just obstacles.
You realize that before you came, he was living in darkness too.
And now you have a quest: to awaken this man, to bring him out of his slumbering nothingness, to let the truth of his existence blossom at the warmth of your hands.
You have never felt less like a thing. And you start to believe that no curse lasts forever.