Monsters Should Look After Fellow Monsters

"Hey, why did you take up Anankos's deal?"

The Moon is high and they're all drunk, laying on the floor of Odin's room. Selena doesn't know who asked that question. Maybe it was her. She can't tell.

"My mother." Replies Odin. His head lays on Selena's calves, his chest raising slowly with his breath. "I thought I could face her again. I... couldn't."

Laslow nods in understanding. His hair is soft against Selena's arm. "Same. With my father, I mean." He lifts his leg to set it on top of Odin's thighs. "It hurt. It was easier to run."

Ahh, yeah, yeah. She lets out a low hum. She gets it. 

"What about you?" Laslow looks up to her. "You don't strike me as the kind to run from anything."

Which is untrue; though she'll never admit it, Selena is not nearly as brave as she likes to pretend to be. But on that specific point, he's right. She didn't come to run from her family.

"Nah." She says, and refuses to look at either of her friends. "I caught Grima's plague."

The first symptom is the heat. It pulses with Selena's heart, a furnace nestled right between her ribs spreading the warmth through her entire body.

"Selena, my dear, are you sure you don't want anything warmer?" Camilla asks for the third time, and for the third time Selena shakes her head. She hasn't known cold in months.

Then comes the coughing.

"It's a chronic thing, Lady Camilla." She blatantly lies. These had started way back in Ylisse, and what had tipped Selena that she could not stay.

The upside is that she's learned long ago to recognize the telltale tickle in her lungs announcing a particularly bad fit, meaning Selena has the time to excuse herself to flee somewhere more secluded. Coughing, after all, is something easily explained, but she doubts she would get away with any with the thick black smoke that tends to escape her mouth.

Selena thrives best in battle.

She thrives, because fighting is the one art she has honed to perfection. She thrives, because war is where she was born and war is where she was raised.

She thrives, because her skin is thrumming and her bones are shivering, and violence is as good a mean as any to let out that monstrous heat.

A sword collides with her own, intent on forcing Selena backward. She holds her ground, heart pounding, and when she exhales the air comes stale and gray.

"Loser!" She kicks her opponent in the shin. They stagger backward, panic, and slash widely with their sword. The blade catches her in the forearm, spraying blood on her foe's face.

They scream as they bring a hand to their cheek, burned by the boiling liquid.

Selena does not let that chance go. She grabs them by the collar and slams her forehead against them, knocking them out.

"Like I'd lose!" She bares her teeth in a feral grin, and her arm and head hurt, and her whole body sings, every wound like a crack in an egg, and every cell of hers is chanting let us out, let us out, let us out, break these bones and tear this skin let us burn and be molded anew,

Selena thrives on the battlefield, because all and any intrusive thought gets shoved aside in favor of delight at any wound she sustains.

It's five months into Lady Camilla's service that Selena throws up for the first time.

She hides behind the stable as she heaves. The lava sticks to her chin like boiling honey, dripping down to leave withering grass and slumps of magma behind.

Her insides feel gooey. Her flesh feel gooey. Her everything feel slimey and slippery, barely held together by this skin, and she wants it off she wants it off she wants it off

She forces herself to crawl towards a nearby lake. The water feels lukewarm against her face, which is the coldest she's felt in months.

She peers at her reflection in the water. Two eyes, one nose, one mouth. She looks human. She is human. She is human, not whatever the fuck this illness wants to make her into, she is human and nothing else.

(But oh, how wonderful it would feel, to let go. To crack her her chest open and hatch, to be herself in all her monstrous glory-)

With a hiss akin to a kettle, Selena drags her hands across her face. Fuck. Shit. Damn. She is human. Her nails dig into the skin as she tries to ground herself through pain. She is human-

Her right cheek splits under her fingers in two clean slices.

"Ah, fuck."

"What happened to you?" Lady Camilla asks, tracing a finger across her cuts. "Your face is all swollen."

"Nothing important." Replies Selena, knowing fully well that eyes are growing under those new eyelids. "I tripped down the stairs."

"Your face feels hot." Lady Camilla moves her palm to Selena's forehead, gently, so fucking gently, "I think you might have a fever."

She does not, though she supposes it is close enough. Selena's whole body is burning, and boiling, and she has flames curling and dancing inside her soul, the fire licking at her ribs, and in every spark she hears the whisper of let us out, let us out,

Gods. Fuck. Selena does not want to rest. Selena does not want gentle. She wants to bloody her knuckles on the face of another. She wants an axe in her shoulder and her foot up someone's jaw and she wants to claw claw claw at the walls claw at Camilla claw at her own belly until she opens herself up like a hunter does a doe and she can pull all her organs out with her bare hands.

When she's alone, she chews on her own hand out of frustration. The skin tastes bitter under her tongue. She yearns for blood. She yeanrs for blood and flesh and tendons and but no but please but no no no she can't she shouldn't she can't it would be bad. So Selena chews at her hand and chews at her joints and she yearns and craves and hungers to just-

rip it off.

It takes her a few seconds, to register that she'd bitten down. The shell of her thumb hangs from her mouth, like a piece of someone else's body. She looks down and her new thumb shines under the Sun with red scales and a curled claw, and it's so beautiful and herblood tastes so sweet-

Selena bites.

She bites, and bites, and tears, her index her pinkie each of her fingers, and by the time she comes back to her senses her wrists is half shredded between her teeth and a talon stands where her hand used to be.

Shit.

She's going to need gloves from now on.

Her teeth, Selena learns, are flat, and and therefore quite ineffective for tearing and cutting. Her new hand is better. The claws dig just right at the edge of her scapula, her fingers plunging into something soft and warm, and she wonders, if she angles her them right, if she could just pop out her entire spine-

"Selena...?"

She freezes.

That's Odin's voice.

She hears the door shuts, and she refuses to look back. She can't take it, the disgust he must have on his face. Footsteps come closer, and Selena curls onto herself, like a child trying to hide.

She starts when she feels a cold hand on her back.

"Feathers..." There's something hard to read in Odin's voice, halfway through awe and halfway through... something else. "Holy shit. You're growing an entire wing in there."

Ah. So that's what it is. "It itches." She informs him unhelpfully.

There is a beat. Then: "Take your claws out. I'll pull it out for you."

"What?" Selena cranes her neck back- endeavor helped by a couple extra vertebra that, thankfully, had gone unnoticed. 

Odin looks nothing but focused. Her grabs her by the wrist and pries her talon out of her flesh. "Hold still." He says, and the short sentence is so out of character from him that Selena actually complies.

She feels him slide a finger inside the feathered wound, and she's so warm and his skin is so cold she can't help but violently shiver. She hisses as she braces herself on the ground, her talon starting to dig into the stone floor.

"You okay there...?"

"Yes." She forces herself to breathe slowly, ignoring the frantic beat of free us free us free us inside her skull. "Keep going."

He nods, then adds another finger, and another, and another, until he's driving his entire hand inside of her, knuckle by knuckle, and gods Selena wants to bite something she wants to bite him.

"Ah, I got it!" Odin grabs something that makes entire body jolt, and he hisses. "I said hold still!"

"You try holding still with an entire hand up your-" but she never gets to finish that sentence, because Odin tugs and she can feel an entire limb being freed from this cage of flesh and bones and she can feel the drag of each feather across her muscles, and Selena has the air knocked right out of her lungs.

"There we go." She hears Odin. "Not gonna lie, that was kinda gross. I'm covered in blood now."

Clumsily, Selena flap her newborn wing to slap him in the face. It comes off as rather weak, but it's the thought that counts. "Oh, shut it."

He snorts. She hears footsteps again, then she sees him sit next to her. She vaguely considers covering her chest, then concludes that she is not only too tired to, but whatever the fuck just happened was intimate enough that Odin can wistand the sight of her nipples, probably. Else he'll just deal with it.

"You didn't tell us it'd gotten this bad." Odin tells her.

Selena maintains eye contact, with all four of her eyes. "You didn't ask."

"I'm asking now. Keep us in the loop about these kind of things." He reaches out to set a hand on her knee. "You know we can't-"

"I know." Selena almost spits. Can't out themselves as Ylisseans, can't rouse suspicion, can't turn into a goddamn monster in the middle of a militaristic country, she knows. "I'm trying, Odin, this is me trying. I'm slowing this thing down as much as I can, but sometimes it- I-"

Her voice cracks.

"I know." Odin says, which is a lie, but a sweet one. "But that's why we need to know how far it has encroached on you, Selena. Laslow and I need to be forewarned if we need to make up an excuse for your disparition, among other things."

He's right. Of course he's right. For all his theatrics, Odin isn't actually stupid. He's right and pragmatic and Selena is-

"I don't want to become a monster. I don't want to be alone."

-terrified.

"You won't be." Odin scoots closer to her. They're shoulder to shoulder now. "Not even turning into a seven feet-long fire-breathing lizard will let you get rid of me. If you get consumed before we find Anankos, I'm ditching Nohr to stick by your side."

That, out of everything Odin has said this evening, is what gives Selena pause.

"... Why?" It's a genuine question. "You love it here." 

Odin blinks, slowly. Then he looks away. Almost... ashamed.

"Do you remember the tale of Owain Dark?"

Selena raises an eyebrow. "Something something holy rampages after the loss of a friend, something something only stopped by a heroine he killed?" Not that Selena listened. Or cared. Owain just would not shut up about it. Absolutely. Anyways. "What does it have to do with anything? You want to emulate what your hero would do?"

Odin squirms, uncomfortable. "Some things are easier to recall with the shield of the third person. There is comfort in pretending something happened to someone else."

Wait. Wait, hold on. Selena does not like where this conversation is going. At all.

Odin looks at her, finally. "I killed my mother."

Selena's stomach sinks like a stone.

Oh.

"I'm afraid staying with you is a more selfish desire than I pretended it was." And here he is, looking at the floor again. "I am much more monstrous than you will ever be, Selena, scales and claws included. But you are one of the two people in this world who could ever come close to understanding what I went through." He squeezes her knee. "So, if you'll have me, I'm staying with you. All the way until the end."

And what is Selena to do?

She takes hold of his elbow, and pulls him into a hug.

"Selena...?"

"Shut up. Of course I'll have you." She wraps her weak wing around him. Monsters, she thinks, should look after fellow monsters. "When we die, I hope our hells will be next to each other."

"... That sounds nice," he says, and he hugs her back.

Selena's bones are growing longer than the rest of her body. The skin of her legs alone has torn thrice already, unable to keep up with the rapid growth of her skeleton. It patches itself up hastily with red scales over the exposed muscles.

It's still not enough. Her body is a cage two sizes too small for her soul. She could end it all now, she thinks, she could, and it's taking every inch of her willpower not to tear herself apart once and for all.

"This should do." Laslow puts down the needle and hands her her jacket. With her body going highwire, her clothes need constant reajustement to hide the most worrying parts of her anatomy. Selena could have done it herself, once upon a time but now her hands are too big and too sharp and the thumbs are slowly migrating to the center of her wrists. This is not ideal.

"Thanks. You're a lifesaver."

"Anything for a pretty lady." He says with a wink, which earns him a slap of her wing.

"You're the worst. Literally the worst."

He laughs, then, and he looks genuinely happy, next to the thing she has become, and so Selena can't help but ruin the mood. "Say, Laslow."

"Hm?"

"If I- break, before we get to Anankos." Hatch. Change. Burn alive to be reborn. "What will you do?"

"Well, we'll have to move fast." He rubs his chin. "Most likely, the Nohrians will panic seeing a dragon suddenly on the battlefield, so we'd have to clear the way for you to-"

"So you'd be coming with me?"

He looks at her with a puzzled expression. "Yes? I thought that was a given." And then, with an hint of self-consciousness: "if you'll have me?"

"Of course I would." She's not so stupid as to turn down allies. Nothing else. "But why? You could have a good life here. You have the actual Crown Prince eating out of your hand."

To Laslow's credit, he does not flinch. He does not advert his gaze either. He just starts wringing his hands, nervously.

"For the same reasons as Odin, I assume."

Ah.

"He told me I was one of the only people who could ever understand him."

Laslow nods.

"He told me he killed his mother."

Laslow does not move.

"You don't have to tell me, if you don't want to." Selena tells him. "But you've seen me bare wings and bare soul, so."

"It's not a pretty story."

"Do any of us have one?"

This gets him to chuckle. "True." His hands fall on his knees. His fingers drum against his legs. "Have you ever been hungry?"

They both know he is not referring to any regular hunger. "Yes."

Laslow nods, almost to himself. "My father taught me how to do it. He told me it would be okay, he wouldn't hold it against me. Meat is meat, right? The dead does not care what happens to their body."

Dread crawls up Selena's spine. Desperate as she may have been, she has never-

Ah, but then again, she was never taught how, was she? If she could, if she'd given the option-

She honestly can't say what she would have done.

"I didn't want to." Laslow's fingers are drumming faster. "I buried him. I buried him and walked away. But I came back after a few days. I was just..." He presses a palm against his stomach. "I was so hungry."

And what is Selena to do?

She reaches out, takes his hands, weaving his fingers between her clawed talons.

"We're fucked up, aren't we?"

He smiles, with that fake smile of his. "Yeah."

Because Selena has never killed a parent, has never eaten a human, but she gets it. She knows anger and hunger and the permanent smoke and no one, not a single person, could have left this future as a human being.

"For what it's worth," she says, "I'm glad you lived."

"I'm not. I still remember his taste." He squeezes her talons. "But one day I will be. I think. I hope."

"I'll hold you until you are." They are drowning, in guilt and blood and sorrow, but gods above Selena will be damned if she doesn't at least try to drag them out of it.

And she's puking magma again, hunched over in the grass, the lava glowing softly in the night.

"There, there." Odin and Laslow are both on her sides, rubbing her back between her spine spikes. "Let it all out."

Her coughing fits have been growing more violent, recently. Selena doesn't think she has much time left before her body caves in.

"One day," Odin says,  "the fire inside of you will quell, and you will be able to breathe again. I am speaking this into reality. This is a truth to happen."

Selena tries to laugh, which comes out strangely with the smoke still clogging her throat. "By then I won't be human anymore. I will never be the same again."

"To be fair," Laslow, this time, reaching out for her hand, "none of us can."

Ah... that's true. Human or not, none of them can ever go back to who they used to be. What a strange thought it is, to think that out there, there is a version of themselves who has never gone through all their trauma. A good thought. But a strange one.

"We should start preparing to leave." Laslow continues. On her left, Odin reaches for her other hand. "We're probably gonna have to do that soon."

And even now, they want to stand by her side, all the way through.

The world is a storm, a thing of violent winds and battering rain, and here they stand, bruised, scarred, but, despite everything, holding on.

Hand in unloveable hand.