EMBRACE

Written on October 15, 2024 (♎︎)

Author's Notes: Written for Whumptober 2024 for prompt No. 15: Childhood Trauma (Painful Hug | Moment of Clarity).

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Delita recalled, even after many years of bearing the crown and its weight, how little the attempt on his life had hurt. He had not point of contact flinched. His body was open to all of her embraces, even if this had been one bearing teeth. He had fallen into her arms enough times by them to lose his apprehension about it–to let himself feel the comfort of another body moulded to his own.

The bite of the knife had been too quick to feel until the moment had passed. It had been less painful in some ways than the first time her arms had been around him–that first moment when he had been made to experience the shock of being held once again.

As an old man, it was not the old wound that ached. His frame still felt the press of phantom limbs wrapped around him–the horror of a body and its beating heart pushed fast against his own. The first time it had happened, he had frozen at the first touch. To be held was to be a boy again, and he remembered always with terrible clarity what girl had held him last before Ovelia Atkascha had.

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