The Darkness At the Heart of My Love [Lana & Zalgiman]

Content warning: Mature/darker themes, abusive relationship dynamics, discussion of suicidal ideation; read at your own risk.

---

It was in the early stages of morning when Zalgiman finally fell asleep. Curled up in front of the door to his room rather than on his bed. There's little half-moon marks on his palms, his wrists, his thighs. Some of them are deeper than others, but most of them are hardly noticeable by the time that he wakes only a few hours later thanks to the doorbell ringing. The sound isn't that unusual. Lana gets a lot of things delivered. Food, most of the things that she - and he - require for day-to-day living are delivered.

Still the sound rouses him and he unlocks the door, feeling a small well of guilt that he'd locked her out in the first place. As if she'd try to break the door open in order to get to him. She's never even come into the room while he was in it as far as he knows. She must come in when he's elsewhere though, because the stock of the snacks she gets him from Russia never run terribly low.

He wanders over to the cupboard and opens it. Zalgiman's chest tightens with a familiar ache for home at the sight of the various Russian-labeled snacks. Some things are familiar, but he finds himself amused really at others which he'd never even heard of or seen until coming here. Well, usually they amuse him. Today it's just a reminder of his harsh words to her.

Why couldn't she just leave him alone?

The cupboard closes and he closes his eyes, leaning against the bedside table as he slides to the ground again. Curling up next to the thing she'd given him to try and show that she did in fact care for him. He knows it was cruel of him to say that she didn't love him. He knew though, that he wasn't really wrong. What about him did she know really?

Nothing.

The doorbell rings three more times with him curled up there on the floor, his heart feeling trapped somewhere in his stomach. He should apologize. He should make amends. He just wants... to be alone.

He's not sure what time it is when the doorbell stops ringing, but he's growing curious as to why there's so many deliveries today. He hasn't smelled any food coming in, though he might not given how big the house is, but she hasn't come by to tell him that there's something to eat either. Which... isn't like her. He keeps half-hoping that the next time the doorbell rings she'll be at his door trying to entice him with something she knows he likes to eat. Hoping that she will, so that he can come out and they can eat together. So that he can apologize and...

She never comes.

The shadows lengthen along the floor of his room and his stomach grumbles at him in discontent. He's not used to going so long without something to eat. His body reminds him that he's not had anything all day with a mixture of sickness and gentle pangs as though to encourage him to eat something. Anything. He doesn't. There's a whole cupboard of snacks and he hasn't the wherewithal to open them. He doesn't deserve them. Doesn't deserve her kindness.

He lays on the floor in a curl around himself, and wishes that he'd never made any stupid promises.

The truth of the matter is that Lana had truly begun to believe he didn't care for any of her little gestures. By the time sunset came, she'd already done some research online (despite Chimera's recommendations), and she had studied the written material that was out there for tying knots and other items of importance. She had to be better than this specter that lingered in Zalgiman's heart that prevented him from accepting her love. She had to be perfect. She had to make him understand how deeply she felt for him, that she would turn herself into this–this woman perfect for what he needed her to be. This dark figure that would give him the punishment Chimera said he needed.

Some part of her still objected, that part of her that never wanted to hurt him. But she knew that she could lose Zalgiman forever. His sunlight would never again be on her face. Those beautiful words of love and care would never be for her ever again. She would forever be lost in the darkness again, and he'd demand to go back to Russia, and... she would carry through with what she'd told him she would do. She would die.

The last doorbell chime rings, and a moment later, she opens her bedroom door at long last. She slips out of her room and closes the door gently behind her, going downstairs to the front door. It takes her two trips to get everything; she's not able to carry everything in one go. But when she does finish, her bedroom door shuts again, and she prepares.

First, all of the equipment she'd ordered comes out of the boxes and into a large velvet bag she'd also ordered. It would make it easy for her to carry everything into Zalgiman's room. Once that was finished, she turned her attention to the outfit she'd ordered. She remembers, in a way that's bittersweet now with the memory, that he'd told her she looked amazing in her swimsuit. She remembers the way they held hands together as they walked on the beach afterwards. She remembers...

"Why couldn't it be like then?" she murmurs to herself, quietly. Why couldn't it be like when he told her he loved her and when he told her she made him happy, and that he didn't want anything to take her away? Had it been a lie then? Why? Why, why, why, why?

The box containing the dress and the accessories she'd ordered gets opened almost savagely, ripped open. She puts on the daring lace-and-latex dress. She dons the elbow-length leather gloves and the knee-high stockings. She even slips on the high heels that are higher than anything she's ever worn in her life, and despite her fear of tripping on them, she surprises herself when she manages to walk in them. She likes the sound that they make on her floor. It makes her feel... important. Powerful. No wonder why Mother owned so many of these, she thinks to herself.

Finally, she looks at herself in the mirror in her room, and she sees someone different than herself. Someone who is powerful enough to fix what's wrong. To take that block between her and Zalgiman and to destroy it utterly. Lana lifts her chin a little and smiles at the mirror.

It's time.

It's the evening now, and while she's not eaten all day, Lana doesn't feel hungry. All of her emotions roiling within her have seen to it that mortal sustenance doesn't bother her. Velvet bag in hand, she walks to Zalgiman's door, her heels clicking on the floor, and this time–she doesn't knock.

She opens the door.

"Zalgiman," she says solidly. Violet eyes looking for him.

Though he'd been half hoping, half expecting Lana all day, it's still a surprise to hear her voice. Zalgiman is in a daze, half asleep, half awake. In no parts a whole of anything. He lifts his head at the sound of her voice and blinks.

This... is not expected.

Lana looks nothing like the soft, petite, gentle woman whom he has come to know and appreciate. He'd be lying if he said she was any less beautiful, she was in fact utterly striking standing there in the doorway. She'd been wrapped about in black and there was a new hardness in her eyes that he didn't recognize.

Slowly he uncurls from the floor, unease sliding up his spine. Something about this situation has warning bells chiming in his head. This isn't like her. Is it? What does he know about Lana after all?

"Lana?"

He looks so lovely even now. Maybe lovelier still for the fact that she knows that he wants her away from him, that he is once again as out of reach as she'd believed him to be when they first began dating. He is the sun and she–she is a mere mortal on the ground. Except this time, she's built herself wings on which to fly to the sun. Lana stares at him a moment more before she has an answer for him.

"Get on your knees." She says it in a way that's not asking. It's commanding.

He doesn't understand. It doesn't make any sense. She never talks to him like this. Instinct tells him to obey, because it's what he's been taught to do, but... Almost on automatic he stops rising so that he's settled on his knees. It's not right though. This... He swallows a lump of uncertainty and can only give her confusion in his expression. "Lana... what's going on?"

It's odd. She looks at him obeying her command and it... pleases her in a way she didn't expect. The sight of him looking at her engages that darkness within her again. But his words speak to that part of her that doesn't want to hurt him. She wrestles with herself, for just a moment, before she walks forward, her steps slow like the prowling of a predator.

She reaches out and takes him by the chin, making him stare into her eyes. "I'm saving you," she begins gently. "There's someone you're still hung up on. Someone from back in Russia. Someone who you still long for and want. That is why you spurned me. Spurned me and my love even though I've done everything I could think of for my beloved sunshine. I'm removing the memory of that someone. I'm replacing it with myself."

She leans in just a little, violet eyes intense with a swirl of emotions. "You told me such beautiful things and then you hurt me. Told me I didn't love you. But I love you enough to make myself into the person you want instead. Stay." The last word is a command as she reaches back with the hand that had been on his chin into the velvet bag that she carries.

Lana produces then a small, slender collar. It more or less amounts to a black strip of leather with a metal ring hanging off of it. "Are you going to be good for me?" she asks. It's a question loaded with intensity to match what's in her violet eyes.

His silver eyes meet hers and her words make him shudder. Somehow he knows. This is his fault. Her words are only confirmation. He'd thought... that she was... No, it was him. He'd made her into someone else. Because he couldn't be good.

The sight of the collar in her hands sends waves of panic through him, but he doesn't move. Can't move. Waves of want/not want wash through him. This is all you're good for. He'd never been enough for Marsward. How could he hope to be good enough for someone like Lana?

With her hand otherwise occupied his eyes and his face drift down. He can feel tears prickling in the backs of his eyes. "All I want is to be good." He whispers the words, they're torn from deep inside him. From where he's always failed. Failed his father. Failed Marsward. Failed Lana.

Lana hears those words and... Her resolve to do what she had planned next falters. How can she hurt someone who says that to her? How could she? Her hand holding the collar trembles.

It's because tears well up in her own eyes. She drops the collar down to the floor and she (carefully, on account of the high heels) lowers herself down so that she's eye-level with Zalgiman. Her hands go to hold Zalgiman's cheeks, her fingers gently touching him.

"You are good," she says gently. "That's why I fell in love with you. You cared about me even though I was pathetic and paying you to go on dates with me. And I care about you."

She sniffles a little. "I'm sorry," she says. "I know–I know Chimera said you want and need to be hurt, but... But I can't. I can't hurt you. I love you too much. I know you don't believe me, but I do."

Her first words draw his eyes up hopefully, and she's touching him so gently. His head and heart buzz with the thought that somehow - impossibly - that she's said that he is good. After everything. The shadow-spaces of his mind whisper that she should punish him, that he deserves it. But she...

His brow furrows. "What?" The word is a croak around the emotions throttling him. "Chimera? He said... What?"

"I went to Chimera and told him what happened, because you said I don't know anything about you," Lana admits tearfully. "He told me... All of these things about you, that you're different and you need to be hurt and punished, and... I tried to learn everything, and I ordered a lot of things, because if that's important to you, then it's important to me, but..."

It takes her a moment to regain herself in a fit of sniffles. "I can't hurt you, Zal. At least not like this. If you told me you wanted it, I would, but... Using all these things I bought without you telling me that you want me to use them on you, inflicting pain onto you without you wanting it... It'd be hurting myself. I hurt at the thought of hurting you like that."

She leans in and gently rests her forehead against his. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry–about being the–" Sniffle. "The worst person."

He wraps his arms around her gently. "Oh, Lana." Zalgiman's voice is quiet and he internally struggles with the knowledge of what Chimera - Marsward - had told Lana. Shame eats away at his stomach. He wonders if Marsward was right about him. If he needed all the things that Marsward had done. If he was only good when someone was hurting him. "You're not the worst person."

He was.

With the strength in his arms he draws her in, pulling her to his heartbeat, to the warmth of his body and closing his eyes as his face falls into her soft curls. When, had her hair begun to smell like home to him? "I don't want you to hurt me. Not like this. Not like..."

Not like Marsward had done.

He finally lifts her face from the nest of his arms and looks down at her. So that he can see into her eyes which are like open doors into the very core of who she is. She's so alone. Just like him. "I want to be good for you Lana. I want to make you happy. I'm so sorry I said all those things... I just..." He brushes his fingers over her cheeks. "You love me so much that it scares me sometimes Lana. I worry that I can't live up to the person that you see when you look at me. I'm not that... I'm not that good."

Lana looks bashful and ashamed of herself when he tells her that her love for him scares her. "I'm sorry," she murmurs in that soft little way she gets when she's overwhelmed. "You're just... the only good thing that's happened to me since my parents died. You're my sunshine, just like that song. My... My only sunshine."

She sniffles again, her arms going around him and squeezing gently, affectionately, as she stares into his silver eyes. "You've always been that good to me. You could have just taken my money and never cared at all about me, but you really cared. You really, really cared."

And then, more shyly, she admits, "I didn't... mind everything I read, though. The parts that weren't about causing pain were interesting, and... umm..." Lana blushes a little. "I read something about leaving bite-marks on the neck so that your submissive has a memory that lasts for a little while..."

Her face turns hot and crimson. "I've been kind of waiting for you to tell me if it was okay to... go further, and to feel comfortable with it myself." The admission makes her want to burrow into his chest.

Zalgiman chuckles, his fingers slipping down her spine just a touch. The roughness of the lace ends quickly to smoothness of a far slicker material. "Liked that did you?" He asks, his voice lower than it normally is. There's something about it that draws the eyes to his silver gaze. Only the silver there is narrowing inexplicably, making his eyes seem far darker.

"I'd like to be yours Lana." He hesitantly reaches out and picks up the collar she'd dropped, pulling it around her body and holding it for one moment in a tight squeeze before he allows his hand to offer it back to her. "I want to be..."

His cheeks heat up like hers. "Yours. I want to be..." Enough. "If you'll have me." His eyes were open for the first time, the shields down. He didn't want her to hurt him. He just wanted - needed - a place to belong. A place that would care for him.

Lana feels a yearning within her then, to hear his words, to see how genuinely he wants it, to see how her desire has affected him. She feels his touch and it thrills her down to her core. She wants him. Wants to do everything that will make him happy. She wants to do everything in her power to see him like this, every single day–happy because she's told him he's good.

She takes the collar offered to her and leans in. But first, she allows herself something sweet. She leans in and affectionately kisses him somewhere new: on the neck, where the collar will come to rest, and only then does she slip it around his neck, fastening it in the back.

"I love you," she says, leaning back up so that her eyes are level with his. And finally, she allows herself the phrase she'd said to him at their wedding, in Savior. "My Zalgiman."

He feels his skin heat up under the touch of her soft kiss, his body responds with relaxation as her collar settles around his neck. He is hers. He belongs. Right here. With her. He looks at her earnestly, his doubts and thoughts left to lay somewhere far in the distance. He preens under her praise. Her words. She loves him. He's hers.

"I love you too Lana." He says easily, as if he's said it a thousand times. It feels right to say, good to say. Zalgiman's smile becomes a slightly wicked thing and he pulls her in for another kiss. Just a soft brush of lips against hers.

"You look amazing in that dress by the way."

Lana flushes, of course, from the compliment that he gives her, and she gives him a wanting look that suggests she might be thinking of what he's thinking. "Do you want me to keep it on?" she asks, before she indicates, with a tilt of her head to his bed, that she just might be brave enough to try more than what she'd originally came into the room to do. A gentler and more passionate intention than before.

Zalgiman's eyes flicker to his bed and his throat bobs. There's a lot in that question, and he thinks about it for a moment before he smiles at her. "For now." His cheeks are bright red, but he doesn't care. Instead he moves subtly, showing an edge of the strength that he possesses by helping her to her feet even as he rises effortlessly to his own. Then he pulls her close as he sits on the edge of the bed.

He reaches up for her, to pull her down for more gentle kisses. His arms feel empty without her in them. Zalgiman isn't sure where the night will lead them, but he knows that at least tonight. Tonight he wants her with him.

Lana's more than happy to fill that void, because in truth, she craves his touch, his arms around her, just as much as he does. She gives him so many kisses, such gentle and soft little things that make her feel a buzz of excitement and warmth through her entire body. She feels so wanted. She feels so light. And she keeps murmuring "I love you" between her kisses to him.

She's amazed by her own bravery, but it's what takes her beyond mere kisses and embraces. They do more than that. She wants to go all the way with him and she finds with him that feeling she'd been chasing. That beautiful, golden light of having her promised one, her soulmate in her arms. She understands him better now, though, better than the way than she did before.

Somewhere after it all, when she's holding him, she murmurs quietly into his ear, "I want you always. Always and forever." An echo of her wedding vow to him, in Savior. One day, it'll be a real wedding vow.

For now, she's happy to have him, for real.