Fic - "Hoof and Lap" (Johannes Cabal Series, Horst/Ninuka)

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Title: Hoof and Lap
Fandom: Johannes Cabal - Jonathan L Howard
Characters: Horst Cabal, Orfilia Ninuka | Lady Misericorde
Relationships: Horst Cabal/Orfilia Ninuka | Lady Misericorde
Rating: Teen
Length: ~1.2k
Summary: Johannes Cabal is dead. The Ministerium Tenebrae has won. In the aftermath, two unlikely individuals bond over these facts.
Status: Complete
Notes: Creepy and wet femdom between two people who definitely have a normal relationship with Johannes. For real. I swear.

Johannes Cabal was dead.

Well and truly dead. Dead lying against his own garden gate. Dead as a doornail, dead as a fish. Dead and gone and dead just minutes before a savior came just minutes too late. Ding dong, the necromancer's dead–! and so on and so forth, with much joy, celebration, and cheap, watered down beer.

Which meant, that in the world's dire moment of unknown need, a band of secret societies lacked the keen intellect and pragmatic planning needed to fight an army of elemental evil.

Which meant, that without said keen intellect and pragmatic planning, the societies fell in one fell swoop with nary but one technical survivor. 

Which meant, that unimpeded in the Ministerium Tenebrae's gradual and surefire march towards world domination, life in the future 21st century wouldn't be all that different from today, really, except for xenophobic conspiracy theories on the world being run by blood sucking elites being entirely correct. And the mandatory ban of all religions, of course. And silver. And garlic. And silly little things like autonomy of one's dead. That too would be different. But a downtrodden populace culled like cattle to line the coffers of those wholly undeserved was very much the same, and the nuances of a hypothetical teratocracy when compared to a present day corporatocracy are not relevant to this story.

For in the weeks after the failed final hurrah of human resistance, two individuals sat within the throne room of Harslaus Castle in dead silence.

Miss Orfilia Ninuka, the Red Queen, High Lady Misericorde, Necromantrix Superior, the unchallenged Mistress of Death–! was the more notable of these. She sat on her throne like she belonged there– which she did– and looked upon her chamber with detachment only brought from a lifetime of silver spoons. Anyone foolish (or paid highly) enough to intrude would find the woman's face a practiced mask of well suppressed fury and something much muddier. 

In some ways, her operations succeeded. The world's most informed opposition towards her rule had been utterly crushed, paving easy paths in the direction of true Mirkarvian superiority. The ignorant populace of western Europe would fall and their dead would subsequently be led as fodder to conquer the rest of the continent and beyond.

But in others...

They very, very, very much did not.

One:

Daddy's urn no longer spoke to her. This made sense. She was not mad, so a not mad woman would not hear her dead father's ashes speak of glory and plans with so many loops one could've used them to knit a bonnet. A not mad woman wouldn't feel saddened by this abandonment, not the least because her and Daddy's true plan had failed.

Two: 

Johannes Cabal was dead. This was disappointing. Unfortunately, there was little she could do to change this fact in any way that mattered. Conventional necromancy, she intimately knew, had its limits, and she couldn't exactly use the tentative expert of true resurrection to bring him back when he was the one dead in the first place. Which wouldn't be a total loss, except for one, minor, infuriating detail.

Her eyes narrowed. Pale fingers tightened around the dull brown locks they were carding through. 

Three:

Johannes Cabal's idiotic brother burned all of the deceased necromancer's research in a fit of grief. And his body with it, too.

These factors made the Red Queen's life significantly more inconvenienced than it should’ve been.

Now, if the man kneeling beside her throne with a head on her lap noticed Ninuka's grip threaten an impromptu scalping, he didn't bother to wince. Horst Cabal was dead to the world in more ways than one.

She found him with the body of that Bartos woman. The one who shot him twice in the lungs, Ninuka couldn't help but recall, looking distant in the far-off way of one who had lost a final hope they didn't know they still possessed. He hadn't so much as twitched when Ninuka put a hand on his bloodstained shoulder, easily letting her guide him away from the carnage, murmuring nothing words of Mutti and Vati and Bruder . 

The Red Queen saw opportunity with a vampiric pet. The shriveled thing Orfilia called a heart remembered her Daddy's body in a burning aeroship. The resulting choice was the same, really.

She stripped him. She bathed him, clothed him, firmly shut the blinds of her chamber and left him as daylight forced him dead and servants removed all trace of humanity's final hour. She was there for him when he woke the next night, said nothing and gambled with a bared neck and open veins, trusting the thousand-yard stare of the recently broken. Her bet paid off. He fed, but only a little; letting her guide him rather than him take her, desperation for a comforting glance hammering the final nail in the coffin that was Horst Cabal's human decency. 

From then on he stayed by her side like a ghost. A viper, barely tamed, ready to strike at her or any who threatened her. Witnessing her as Misericorde, the Red Queen, Orfilia, whatever role she played. He could have walked into sunlight at any moment, yet he didn't. He could have killed her at any moment, yet he didn't. He could have done anything– leak confiscated intelligence, sabotage higher infrastructure, fight for the suppressed Mirkarvian poor– except reverse time and reclaim that which he truly wanted. To put it short, the man was listless; denial and depression incarnate, letting another take reign because inaction hurt less than action. His autoflagellantic behavior was almost cute in its misanthropy. 

Still, she could have let the ghostlike staff of Harslaus Castle deal with the remaining Cabal, but emotional attachment was her leash, its absence a whip. 

Her hand resumed its rhythmic petting. Horst moved imperceptibly, leaning into it with unaware reluctance. Not all was lost. Something like a smile blemished her cheeks.

Practice made Ninuka quite apt in the training of miserable men. 

His presence was appreciated, in a strange way. The way a problem waiting to be solved was appreciated. Of course, the only days he did anything besides mope ominously were ones where she pried nuggets of past lives out like overgrown teeth. German winters. Bonfire nights. Castle visits. Bullying attempts. Sibling rivalries. Demonic carnivals. Sideshow attractions. 

Regrets.

Many, many regrets.

To learn anything she could of Johannes Cabal's past researches, she told herself, despite the final clue being in her possession. Orfilia did not acknowledge how her heart clenched with each recollected tale. Nor how Horst looked at her as he told them; soft spoken yet piercing, as if he could sense her little weakness yet chose not to press it.

Misery, she concluded, did seem to love company.

The royal chamber stretched empty before them. Faded tapestries of fool-blinded kings and self proclaimed emperors watched sightless at the harbingers of their country's doom.

One day she would fully tame Horst Cabal. One day he would be at her beck and call. One day she would give the order to drain her dry. Then, she would rule forever, eternally youthful, eternally prime.

But now Orfilia Ninuka indulged in misery. Enjoyed, whilst denying it to herself, the company of one who had lost his reason and cowed for another.

She sighed and leaned deeply into her throne. The man cradling her right shin followed her movement, keeping her hand in his scalp just so. 

Things would change. They would certainly change, but they would change later, not now.

For now the two of them were in mourning, and none but the other would understand its significance.