Scarlett was quiet for a long mont, her fingers gripping the crystal edge hard enough that her knuckles went white. "You want to know what's really fucked up? I've fed on thousands of people. Drained them, compelled them, discarded them like empty juice boxes. And I never once thought about their nas, their lives, their families."
Parker waited. He could feel the real confession coming.
"But you." Her voice cracked slightly. "I went through all trouble to know everything about you. Your favorite foods, the way you talked to yourself when you thought no one was listening, how you'd try to fix your hair even when you were bleeding. I morized you, Parker. Every detail. Your family and even ca to know who you were, and the orders left by your mother. And I told myself it was just... research. Know your prey better."
"Was it?"
"No." The word ca out like a gunshot. "It was because sowhere along the way, between the feeding and the compelling and the systematic breaking down of your defenses, I started actually seeing you. And you were..." She paused, struggling. "You were kind. Even when I was destroying you, you'd say thank you. You'd ask if I was okay when I looked tired. You'd make stupid jokes to try to make laugh."
Parker rembered those monts. They'd felt surreal at the ti—trying to humanize his captor because it was the only way to stay sane. It was just him trying to survive without making things hard for himself.
"And that scared the shit out of ," Scarlett continued. "Because monsters aren't supposed to fall in love with their victims. We're supposed to eat them and move on."
"So what does that make us now?"
Scarlett turned to face him fully, and the vulnerability in her expression was almost too much to look at. "Fucked up. Probably codependent. Definitely unhealthy."
"Sounds about right."
"But also..." She reached up to touch his face, her fingers cold against his skin. "Also the first real thing I've felt in over a century."
When he kissed her, it wasn't romantic or desperate or any of that dramatic bullshit. It was honest. Complicated. Tasted like regret and hope and the kind of love that probably shouldn't exist but did anyway.
They explored deeper into the realm, and Parker found himself relaxing in ways he didn't know were possible. The place was dangerous as hell—they'd nearly been eaten by carnivorous flowers twice, and sothing that looked like a disco ball with teeth had chased them through a maze of mirrors—but it was also... freeing.
**
"Tell sothing," Scarlett said, propping herself up on her elbow to look at him properly. "Sothing real. Sothing you've never told anyone."
Parker was quiet for a mont, considering. There were a lot of secrets he carried, a lot of darkness from his past lives that he'd never shared with anyone. But looking at her now, vulnerable and open in a way he'd never seen before, he found himself wanting to give her sothing true.
"My first kill," he said finally. "In this life, I an. It was... not what I expected."
Scarlett's eyes sharpened with interest, but not the hungry kind. The genuinely curious kind. "Tell ."
So he did.
"It was right here, actually. In this realm." Parker gestured around them at the glowing forest. "I was still just human Parker, you know? Scared, confused, had no idea what the fuck I was doing, my power, money Erebus not many made sense so much and when we ca to this realm... Ere suggested we explore—"
"Of course she did," Scarlett interrupted with a smirk. "That cat lives for chaos."
"Right? So there I was, stumbling through this magical forest like so lost tourist, when this massive wolf shows up. And I an massive—like, elephant-sized with fangs the length of my arm."
"The wolf was a fucking nightmare," Parker said, grinning at the mory. "Picture this: , scared shitless, running through a forest while this massive death machine is breathing down my neck. And Ere—that traitorous furball—is basically doing parkour through the trees yelling helpful advice like 'run faster, master!'"
Scarlett snorted. "Sounds about right for her."
Parker's voice took on that storytelling rhythm, the way people did when they were reliving sothing equal parts terrifying and embarrassing.
"So naturally, I did what any rational person would do. I ran like hell."
Scarlett grinned. "The Prince of Existence, running from a puppy."
"Hey, it was a very big puppy with murder in its eyes," Parker protested. "And Ere—that traitorous furball—she's just leaping through the trees like she's auditioning for Cirque du Soleil, yelling 'run faster, master!' Like, thanks for the fucking help!"
He could see it all again—the blur of trees, the thundering paws behind him, the absolute certainty that he was about to die in the stupidest way possible.
"I'm dodging branches, eating dirt, this thing is breathing down my neck, and then—" Parker paused for dramatic effect. "I tripped. Just straight-up face-planted into this tiny-ass hole in the ground. Like, rabbit burrow tiny."
Scarlett was trying not to laugh. "You hid in a rabbit hole?"
"I didn't hide! I fell! There's a difference!" But Parker was grinning too now, because looking back, it really was ridiculous. "And then this massive death machine just... sits down. And waits. For thirty fucking minutes. Like so toxic gar camping my respawn point."
"What did you do?"
"Well, first I had a minor existential crisis about being outsmarted by a wolf. Then Ere—who was absolutely no help, by the way—decided this was the perfect ti to negotiate better living conditions."
"She didn't."
"Oh, she did. While I'm trapped in a hole with a monster waiting to eat , she's demanding shared bed privileges and grilled chicken and at rights. The audacity of that cat is unreal."
Scarlett was laughing openly now, and the sound was so beautiful Parker almost forgot the rest of the story.
"So anyway, she finally teaches how to use her shadow manipulation—for the low price of becoming her personal servant—and I manage to sneak up on this thing through its own shadow. One Phoenix Sword to the throat, problem solved."
"That's... actually pretty badass," Scarlett said, looking impressed.
"Yeah, well, the badass part ended when the corpse fell on top of and I spent ten minutes trying to wiggle out from under a dead wolf like so kind of cosmic pancake."
The laughter that followed was warm and genuine, and Parker realized this was the first ti he'd ever told that story without feeling embarrassed about it.
Maybe because Scarlett was looking at him like he was the most interesting person in the universe instead of judging him for his less-than-heroic beginnings.
"You want to know the weirdest part?" Parker said, his voice growing quieter. "When it was over, when I'd actually killed sothing for the first ti... I felt nothing. No guilt, no horror, no big emotional mont. Just... empty. I kept waiting for the trauma to hit, you know? But it never did."
The laughter that followed felt good. Real. Not the kind of laughter that covered up pain, but the kind that acknowledged absurdity and found joy in it anyway.
"You know what I think?" Scarlett said, trailing her fingers through the thought-reflecting water. "I think you felt nothing because so part of you knew it wasn't really your first kill. Your soul rembers, even when your mind doesn't."
"Maybe." Parker watched their reflections shift and change. "Or maybe I was just broken in new and interesting ways."
"We're all broken," Scarlett said simply. "The trick is finding soone whose damage fits with yours."
They made love beside that lake, slow and careful and honest. Not the desperate fucking of earlier days, but sothing deeper. Sothing that acknowledged all the fucked-up history between them and chose to build sothing new anyway.
Afterward, as they lay tangled together watching shooting stars that might have been interdinsional garbage, Parker realized sothing that should have terrified him but didn't.
He was happy.
Not the manic happiness of power or conquest or revenge. Just... content. At peace with himself and the woman beside him and the completely insane direction his life had taken.
"This is probably a terrible idea," he said aloud.
"Definitely," Scarlett agreed, tracing patterns on his chest. "We hurt each other. Probably spectacularly."
"Most likely."
"But?"
Parker tightened his arms around her. "But I'd rather be fucked up with you than sane without you."
Scarlett was quiet for so long he thought she'd fallen asleep. Then she pressed a kiss to his collarbone and whispered, "Smooth, bastard"
And lying there under alien stars in a dinsion that existed outside normal reality, Parker finally understood what people ant when they talked about ho.
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