well behaved women

Title: Dying Light
Fandom: Hellboy II: The Golden Army
Rating: PG13/R
Pairing: Nuada/Nuala
4 – Hellboy – Nuada/Nuala – hurt/comfort (during the war)



She knew from the beginning that the war would leave a mark on him.

How could she not? He was the second piece of her own soul, and its horrors echoed through to her. For ages afterward Nuala could not walk the earth where he had battled without feeling the combat echoing through her--adrenaline a heavy pulse in her veins--as memory and experience at once.

There had been times when whispers echoed among their people. He is surely mad, someone said to her once, on the battlefield nearly a beserker. He will die if he does not learn to surrender ground. This is not a war that can be survived without compromise.

Oh how true the words would become, but back then all Nuala knew was her fear, and her desire, and she found him bloody and pale in her empty rooms, black armor only half stripped away.

"The light," he said, voice a disused rasp, and she dragged the veiling screens shut, leaving them in mellow darkness, and walked to him by memory and the guiding scent of his pain and bared skin.

"Nuada," she said. Her hand was on his skin, trailing over his shoulders, struck into silence as deep as the shard of helpless pain that spasmed beneath her breastbone was sharp.

Between them beat the dark knowledge like a black heartbeat; his pain, the scarred earth and their dying people.

"It must stop," he whispered, and that was when she heard the first edge of what might have been madness in his voice, harshly coiled beneath her surface. And she went to her knees before him, on his level, leaning into him as her touch spread through them both. He felt so cold, and whether that was actually the touch of his skin or simply a chill that lived inside him she could not have said.

"It will," she said, and it was a promise she could not have known would be kept, but swore anyway, with all the fierce will inside her. "It will." For you, for all the most selfish of reasons--my own love--if for nothing selfless and pure and far-reaching.

That was when he reached for her, shuddering under her touch as though awakening from a dream. Nuala leaned against him, skirts sliding up her thighs--his fingers were tacky with blood as they touched her skin and he recoiled as though just now realizing he still carried battlefield filth on him.

"Don't," she whispered, catching his wrists in hers, bracing her knees over his thighs and finding his mouth in the heavy dark. She could not bear it if he stopped touching her, and somewhere deep inside she thought that neither would he; if she drew away from him now, he would be left to wander the darkness alone. "Don't. I love you."

She could not say it enough; she could hardly form the words as he crushed her against him, kissing her like he wanted to consume her, as though he could drink her in through his skin if he held her close enough. It echoed between them as her hands spread against his shoulderblades and she dragged him closer to stave off the darkness just a little longer.