Okay, so this is the fourth time I've re-written this fic, and I don't know how I feel about it. So I would love to hear any kind of comments from anyone as to what they thought of the direction I've taken it in (and maybe what they had in mind/would have done?). I suspect it also still needs more of an ending.
**
CONTENT WARNINGS: Badly-negotiated consent, dehumanisation/depersonalisation, may be triggering for self-harm and depression. Dark rather than sexy.
**
He's made her two different women.
The first Constance is her, who she truly is; but when he sends for her, when she puts on her cloak and slips out into the Paris night, she sheds that woman and becomes someone else entirely.
The only person she can be in order to do what she does.
She would tell herself she only does it because he's desperate; but she doesn't, because she doesn't think of it. The first Constance is someone else, and the second doesn't think at all, only acts, is as practiced with whip and crop as the first Constance wants to be with sword and musket.
When he strips off his shirt in front of her for the first time, there are already whip scars on his back – old scars, though she knows he's not long been a soldier. Her husband is away that night, and she has no lodger, so she makes him kneel on her kitchen floor and hits him across the back with her carpet beater until he's crying and shaking, before taking him in her arms. She's never been so intimate with a man other than her husband, but he doesn't seem like a man to her now; rather like a shade, no more real than she is.
She feels nothing, which is strange, because the other Constance feels too deeply, cares too much about good men who are stupid and reckless and self-destructive, and not her concern.
But neither of them are real tonight, and he means nothing in her arms.
The second time, he asks her to tell him he's worthless, a failure, and she forgets who she is for a second; the first Constance slipping through the cracks.
"I won't," she replies shortly, dropping the riding crop on his bed as though she suddenly can't bear to hold it.
"May I ask why not?"
She sizes him up: drunk as usual, bloodshot eyes, but an authority in his voice that's new to her, as if he's used to being obeyed.
She finds she likes him even less when she's confronted with a person, with a will of his own.
"I don't like to say it because I don't believe it, monsieur."
He sighs. "You might as well, because I believe it whether you say it or not."
She slaps him, spits in his face and tells him how dare he speak to her, and feels better for it.
She goes further in the end, tells him he is nothing, that he doesn't matter, that he might as well not exist.
She would wonder if he really does; if she wanted to know, which she doesn't. She has never seen him in the light, has never known him outside of these rooms and the woman he's made her, and sleeps easier for it.
Slowly, she becomes more creative, more direct. She uses clothes pegs on him, scratches and pinches, digs her carefully-sharpened nails into the sensitive folds of his skin. There's that strange little silver trinket she has that he told her feels like scores of needles pricking him.
She ties the ropes the way he's taught her, spread-eagling him across the bed so he cannot flinch or squirm away.
Sometimes she says, "Enough," before he's done, knowing that his back and arse and legs probably can't take anything else, and even the agonising sting of the brine she dabs onto his wounds is not enough to take him to that place inside himself.
Those times, he does not cling to her afterwards but to himself, rolling up into a foetal position on the bed, as if he could revert to that primal state, before consciousness.
It's ironic, really, she would think, if she thought of it (which she does not): that what she does to him helps him keep a grip on his humanity. A kind of serenity, certainly; the last few times she's seen a peace in him that she's not sure she likes.
She dreams one night that she's drinking his darkness in, drawing it out of his throat and through his mouth, swallowing it down.
Only once does he tell her, afterwards, that they should stop. That she shouldn't be doing this, as if he had never asked her for it.
"If I didn't want to, I wouldn't," she replies coldly, though it's not a question of wanting anything, and kicks him in the stomach for his pains.
Then d'Artagnan bursts into her life without warning, unwittingly dragging the two of them out into the light; and the next time she gets his summons, she throws it on the fire before staggering outside, slumping down against the garden wall and crying until she half-fears it will drown her.
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timeasmymeasure
FILL: Constance/Athos femdom
Date: 2014-03-02 07:27 pm (UTC)**
CONTENT WARNINGS: Badly-negotiated consent, dehumanisation/depersonalisation, may be triggering for self-harm and depression. Dark rather than sexy.
**
He's made her two different women.
The first Constance is her, who she truly is; but when he sends for her, when she puts on her cloak and slips out into the Paris night, she sheds that woman and becomes someone else entirely.
The only person she can be in order to do what she does.
She would tell herself she only does it because he's desperate; but she doesn't, because she doesn't think of it. The first Constance is someone else, and the second doesn't think at all, only acts, is as practiced with whip and crop as the first Constance wants to be with sword and musket.
When he strips off his shirt in front of her for the first time, there are already whip scars on his back – old scars, though she knows he's not long been a soldier. Her husband is away that night, and she has no lodger, so she makes him kneel on her kitchen floor and hits him across the back with her carpet beater until he's crying and shaking, before taking him in her arms. She's never been so intimate with a man other than her husband, but he doesn't seem like a man to her now; rather like a shade, no more real than she is.
She feels nothing, which is strange, because the other Constance feels too deeply, cares too much about good men who are stupid and reckless and self-destructive, and not her concern.
But neither of them are real tonight, and he means nothing in her arms.
The second time, he asks her to tell him he's worthless, a failure, and she forgets who she is for a second; the first Constance slipping through the cracks.
"I won't," she replies shortly, dropping the riding crop on his bed as though she suddenly can't bear to hold it.
"May I ask why not?"
She sizes him up: drunk as usual, bloodshot eyes, but an authority in his voice that's new to her, as if he's used to being obeyed.
She finds she likes him even less when she's confronted with a person, with a will of his own.
"I don't like to say it because I don't believe it, monsieur."
He sighs. "You might as well, because I believe it whether you say it or not."
She slaps him, spits in his face and tells him how dare he speak to her, and feels better for it.
She goes further in the end, tells him he is nothing, that he doesn't matter, that he might as well not exist.
She would wonder if he really does; if she wanted to know, which she doesn't. She has never seen him in the light, has never known him outside of these rooms and the woman he's made her, and sleeps easier for it.
Slowly, she becomes more creative, more direct. She uses clothes pegs on him, scratches and pinches, digs her carefully-sharpened nails into the sensitive folds of his skin. There's that strange little silver trinket she has that he told her feels like scores of needles pricking him.
She ties the ropes the way he's taught her, spread-eagling him across the bed so he cannot flinch or squirm away.
Sometimes she says, "Enough," before he's done, knowing that his back and arse and legs probably can't take anything else, and even the agonising sting of the brine she dabs onto his wounds is not enough to take him to that place inside himself.
Those times, he does not cling to her afterwards but to himself, rolling up into a foetal position on the bed, as if he could revert to that primal state, before consciousness.
It's ironic, really, she would think, if she thought of it (which she does not): that what she does to him helps him keep a grip on his humanity. A kind of serenity, certainly; the last few times she's seen a peace in him that she's not sure she likes.
She dreams one night that she's drinking his darkness in, drawing it out of his throat and through his mouth, swallowing it down.
Only once does he tell her, afterwards, that they should stop. That she shouldn't be doing this, as if he had never asked her for it.
"If I didn't want to, I wouldn't," she replies coldly, though it's not a question of wanting anything, and kicks him in the stomach for his pains.
Then d'Artagnan bursts into her life without warning, unwittingly dragging the two of them out into the light; and the next time she gets his summons, she throws it on the fire before staggering outside, slumping down against the garden wall and crying until she half-fears it will drown her.