please don’t make any sudden moves

bucklesomeswashswan:

because that song “heathens” has such a nice dark captain swan vibe.

She could feel it ripple under her skin, the magic coursing through her. It waited only to be unleashed, pulling at its tether. 

“Easy, Swan,” his voice said the cold tip of his blade against her throat. He was an expert with such a weapon, one small flick of his wrist and she’d bleed out. 

She wondered idly who would fall first if she let go. Something flickered across his gaze like he could read the thought in her mind. He had seen it before, had watched the power spring from her and topple empires. Once he had stood in awe of it, but now it was the press of steel and that smirk he knew she hated. 

It made her want to strike him down just to knock his smug look off his face. Then again, as she leaned just a little further into sharp tip feeling a thin trickle of blood as it kissed into her skin, she wondered if she didn’t enjoy it too; the stalemate, the tension.

“What’s wrong, Captain?” she murmured seeing his hand tighten his grip. “Can’t hurt a girl?”

“You’re hardly just a girl, love,” he said moving forward and forcing her to fall back a step until she hit the wall. The feeling bringing one particular memory to mind: his hand moving hungrily over her as he pressed back into a different wall his breath hot on her neck. The hurried way they had tried to claim the other, burning wildly and consuming everything around them. The feel of him against her, the heat of his skin, the way she had struggled for breath as her fingers clawed at him.

And now he swayed a little closer and she actually hoped he might kiss her. Just one parting shot for the road. Her eyes flicked to his lips, and they both paused just short, that one heartbeat of anticipation, the torture they both loved. But the door burst open and they both jerked back as guards began to fill the room. 

They were guards of the king she’d heard had finally managed to tame the pirate before her. She knew of the rumors that he was now little more than a guard dog bent under the will of a malevolent master. Trapped. Something else they suddenly had in common. She was outnumbered and pinned to the wall, his sword like the pin to a butterfly on a board. 

“Why are you doing this?” she asked him looking over his shoulder to the others behind him. What could have made him fold to the very kingdom he so hated, the one against which he had once spoken words filled with fire to her across her pillow.

He shrugged lazily, as if nothing, not the words or those nights had been true. “You know the answer to that. There’s a reward,” he told her sounding almost bored, as if her capture wasn’t a death sentence.

She frowned, he was lying she could hear it. Hell, if he had wanted that reward there were multiple occasions he could have turned her over. Glancing at the sword in his hand she realized if he had really wanted to capture her he wouldn’t have come so unprepared. Something in his eyes seemed to beg her to understand, to put the pieces together.

She slowly lifted her hand seeing his gaze follow the motion. He opened his mouth as if to say something, perhaps a warning. But before he could, she twisted her wrist and the torches around them exploded, sparks raining over them. 

For one perfect moment they were cloaked in fire, and then the room was plunged into darkness. She ducked, throwing the sword from her, the blood left on his blade all of herself she could give him this time.

The guards scrambled in the dark, but darkness was where she thrived and she evaded them easily, tearing down the corridor. The last thing she heard as she ran was his voice, and the sound of him calling her name echoing off the stones.

She had no doubt they would cross paths again. Notorious pirate and wayward sorceress. It was like some dark fairytale, not fully written yet. She gripped the amulet in her hand, the one that would break a curse, a small trinket for the overwhelming risk entering this particular castle had been. 

And she wondered if perhaps she’d be back sooner rather than later to see if she could break whatever held him in this place. After all, she thought with a smirk as she disappeared in a cloud of smoke just beyond the outer wall, she probably owed him for tonight. Really, repaying the favor was the least she could do, and she knew how he felt about gratitude. Maybe she was more than a little tempted to find out what they might do together next if she did.