Act Natural #7 (Patreon)

Part 1, 2 and 3 on patreon
Part 4 on Patreon
Part 5
Part 6

The antagonist seemed to regroup themselves by the time they reached ‘home’ once more, and by the time they reached the privacy of the antagonist’s quarters there was no trace of any fear left in their eyes. They moved as they always did; like they owned the world and everything in it. They were calmer.

Still. The protagonist expected fury beneath the cooler surface, some outbreak of violence or terrible punishment – for the antagonist to try and break them down and make them flinch, in defiance of ever having shown them any moment of fear of weakness. To put Ash, in some way, back into their place.

Anticipation coiled tight in their stomach, despite the victories of the day.

Instead, when the antagonist rounded on them, their expression was something else. They took a few sauntering steps closer and Ash refused the urge to back away.

“That was clever,” the antagonist murmured. “You really do have an impressive knack for locating and using people’s weaknesses don’t you, my traitor?”

The protagonist wished, in their new found realisations of power, that the awful endearment didn’t still feel like getting punched in the throat. That all of the antagonist’s strange sway over them would be gone. They supposed that would be far too simple. Old instincts didn’t die that quick. The protagonist only allowed themselves to raise a brow in response, jutting their chin up.

“And I’ll do it again, and again, and again for what you’ve done.”

“It won’t bring your friends back.”

The protagonist swallowed, before they could stop themselves. “I know.”

The antagonist took another step closer, hand rising more softly to the protagonist’s throat. It should have been a threat, maybe yesterday the protagonist would have assumed it was one. It wasn’t. The antagonist couldn’t seem to help it; touching and checking what they found precious, drawn to the protagonist’s possible mode of escape, to the things that they could not control. Not really. Not truly. It was not a threat. It was a nervous tic.

The protagonist smiled mirthlessly, and met the antagonist’s eyes.

“But it’s what they would do, isn’t it?” The protagonist continued. “Because I’m not your traitor. Even in the worst of times, even when I felt sick with your poison, I was always theirs. I was always Elina’s. And I will fight you until the end of the world for her.”

The antagonist’s grip tightened but even that felt like a confession. A shattering of the thin veneer of calm, however dangerous the loss of control.

The protagonist’s smile broadened. They didn’t try to wrench the antagonist away from them, to clutch at the antagonist’s wrist. The antagonist wasn’t going to kill them. They’d already proved that. The best they could do was an impotent display of menace. They leaned in to kiss the antagonist’s neck, and felt them tense. The antagonist’s pulse roared beneath their lips. It was almost heady. Possibly, it was a trap, however unintentional.

After so long feeling powerless, power over a creature such as the antagonist was its own form of addictive.

“Just because I won’t kill you,” the antagonist’s voice was deadly. “That doesn’t mean I can’t hurt you. That doesn’t mean I can’t make you wish you were dead.”

The protagonist laughed. “I already wish that every second I spend with you, my monster.”

The antagonist stopped dead. All the withering, honeyed words seemed to leave them in an instant. It was their turn to swallow, hard.

No, whatever new precedent was being set, solidified, it wasn’t in the antagonist’s favour, was it?

The antagonist let go of their throat as if burnt, breathing a little shallower than before. Still, though, they did not break into violence. They did not swing. They did not recoil backwards.

They did not look, exactly, hurt.

The protagonist’s heart lurched, a stuttering record, as their brain began to spin.

“We really do deserve each other, don’t we?” the antagonist mused. “I know you feel the same way,” It was worse, because there was no vicious croon in the antagonist’s voice. They didn’t say it to toy or gloat. They looked at the protagonist like… “You are breathtakingly cruel when you want to be, Ash. One of these days, you might just kill me.”

Dumbly, Ash thought that might be the first time the antagonist had called them by their actual name when they weren’t playing a part.

It was possibly the one response the antagonist could have given that the protagonist hadn’t predicted. They felt the word tilt. If the antagonist had sneered the words, mocked that the protagonist could not possibly do any real damage they could have stomached it. They could have rolled with it, fine, because it was only to the antagonist’s detriment to underestimate them just as the protagonist’s friends had underestimated the monstrosity the protagonist was capable of.

But this…

Something precarious and lethal shifted uncertain beneath the protagonist’s feet.

They finally clocked what the expression on the antagonist’s face was.

Want.

Desire.

Not like it had been before. The antagonist had always obsessed over them before, coveted them, maybe even doted them at times in the way when one might treat a beloved pet or a favourite tool. They hadn’t desired the protagonist as an equal, as an actual person. They hadn’t looked at them in the same way they might have looked at Elina once, except the antagonist had never looked at Elina quite like that. Elina was not, and never would be, a monster.

“Oh, now,” the antagonist said, at the horror that had slipped onto the protagonist’s face. “How can I not be proud, not appreciate what I have made you? Perhaps, if I am ever gone, you will be me instead. I would like to see that. Your friends, and their influence, are dead. Once I am dead…” the antagonist shrugged, sighed, like they could see it already. “How will you know what you stand against? Without your monster to oppose. You will only be alone with what you have done. I know the feeling.”

The protagonist took a step back, and if it was fear, it wasn’t any fear they had felt for the antagonist before. It wasn’t the terror of something enormous and evil, of a shadow beneath the bed. It was the sick sinking panic of recognising something human beneath it all.

They wondered who the antagonist had betrayed, once upon a time, except maybe everything and everyone they had once known and loved.

“I’ll end it, once I’m done with you,” the protagonist managed, raspy.

“Mm, maybe. I don’t think so though. If you were that eager to die you would have done it before now. No, no. I have no doubt you would sacrifice yourself for someone else, none at all. But when it’s just me and you in the room? When you know there is a chance, however small, that you can help? Search for the thing you used to be and that you lost?” The antagonist clicked their tongue. “You’re not going anywhere.”

The protagonist wondered if that was true. They wondered where that left the two of them; except, perhaps, at stalemate, at some equilibrium where the protagonist wasn’t the one looming with giddy power, but neither was the antagonist.

They eyed each other across their new battlefield, their new twisted marriage bed of sorts, their new joint coffin perhaps.

“You could make changes,” the protagonist said. “Reforms. We could go – if you want me – we could go somewhere else. Away from all of this.”

“Oh, no, no,” the antagonist said, eyes bright. “You wanted to fight me, my traitor. You wanted my full attention. You didn’t want to be my pet, my tool, my toy anymore. So fight. I dare you.” They paused, biting their lip like savouring all that was and would be. “Or surrender,” they continued, gentler, “and we can go back to the way we were before. Nothing that comes will be your fault.”

They couldn’t decide if the words were kindness or torture.

They thought, for the first time, that maybe the antagonist wasn’t 100% certain either.

The protagonist took a step forward, navigating the new language they were translating in the antagonist’s every breath, now that their eyes had been opened to it.

They caught a fistful of the antagonist’s hair and shoved them to their knees, and the antagonist seemed surprised (amused? Ravenous?) enough to let them. They tracked the protagonist’s every move, breathing shallow. Their head tipped back, exposing their throat like they had in the back of the car, but maddeningly it didn’t feel quite the same.

“My monster,” the protagonist said.

“My traitor,” the antagonist replied, breathless, adoring.

On outward glance, little changed after that, though the protagonist’s limited freedoms shrunk. The antagonist no doubt feared another public escape and another public exposure of their weaknesses. Unless the antagonist was personally at their side, Ash was never without guards.

But when they were alone…

When the two of them were alone, everything was different.