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| Details |
| Author: | Luridel |
| Summary: | Mordecai has a nightmare about marrying the wrong Aspenwood twin. ~2k words. |
| Rating: | M for Mature 17+ |
Chain: Morson
Mizzy is rambling, trying to set Mordecai at ease, and Mordecai is grateful for it, even if her words slide off of him like water. His ears are ringing, and all that he can hear has become meaningless noise. He takes shallow breaths, his throat tight. She steps towards the curtain, and Mordecai clenches his hands so he doesn't reach out to her. He doesn't want her to leave him alone in this curtained-off cubicle with his father, but she needs to take her place by the altar, so he lets her go.
And then it's him and Samson Harbrooke.
("Don't fuck this up, boy.")
Mordecai's father stands by the curtain, peeking through it on occasion as he waits for their cue. Mordecai tries to calm himself down and fails, repeatedly. He's going to mess this up somehow. He'll trip on the way to the aisle, he'll say the wrong words, he'll miss his cues, anything. And his family will see, and they'll know, and they'll shame him for it later. They need this marriage. Everything needs to be perfect for the Aspenwoods.
His father grabs him by the arm and pulls, and he stumbles through the curtain in shock. He already missed a cue. It's a disheartening start to a dreaded event.
Across the aisle from him, emerging from the other curtain, is the jovial face of Lord William Aspenwood. And there, in gold and white: his bride.
Lady Cressidha Aspenwood is dressed in a long trailing white gown studded with hints of gold, tiny flecks that shimmer and catch the light. Her long blonde hair is mostly loose, falling down her back in soft waves. Her eyes flick briefly over Mordecai before settling on Mordecai's father, and she gives a polite nod to Lord Samson Harbrooke.
The ceremony is a blur. Mordecai focuses on his bride's hands, on the white-and-gold ring that fits her finger perfectly and also seems to be too small somehow, and tries to breathe. Once, he looks up at the crowd and sees his family-to-be: Lord Amadeus with Lady Gardenia and Lord Arnold, Lord Bertrand with his fiancée Lady Priscilla, a chair with a Siamese cat seated in it, Lady Aspenwood, and Lord Aspenwood. Apparently, Lady Cressidha brought her cat to her wedding.
Mordecai's chest feels hollow. He looks down at that ring again. It was larger when he picked it out, he knows that. She must have had it resized to fit her. Why would he have chosen a ring too large for his bride's finger? He doesn't remember.
His family needs this to go well.
He looks at Mizzy once, as the priest speaks, and Mizzy gives him an encouraging smile. He can't quite bring himself to smile back at her.
The Harbrookes need Lady Cressidha's dowry.
Mordecai swears his vows. He cuts Lady Cressidha a slice of some expensive cake from wherever their caterer sourced it from, and she does the same for him. It has no taste. Mizzy's husband Ben gives a speech about Lady Cressidha's work with Cobalt Company. Mizzy does not give a speech about him. Mordecai leads Lady Cressidha in the one dance he knows - they move like clockwork - and then relinquishes her to allow her to dance with her brother Lord Bertrand. He sits at a table and retreats deeper and deeper into himself as the night goes on.
The night goes on.
Lady Cressidha leads him up the stairs to a closed door. "Your belongings have been moved to the guest room," she says, indicating that door. "If you would care for some time to unpack, I shall be in my room, which is at the end of this hall, here."
Mordecai nods, wordless, and watches Lady Cressidha disappear into her own room.
He opens the door to his room - the guest room - and is surprised at how bare it looks when he turns on the lights. Empty shelves, ready to be filled with Mordecai's things, assuming he had enough things to fill them, which he does not. A dark green bedspread over the bed, which is large enough for two people to sleep without touching. He shuts the door behind him, but does not lock it, because he doesn't know if he's permitted to.
Mordecai changes quietly out of his suit and into a pair of dark gray pajamas, glancing over at the bed from time to time. He keeps expecting the bedspread to be blue, but it remains green. He leaves the room to go brush his teeth and prepare for bed in the bathroom right around the corner, which he rushes through as much as he can. There is a single toothbrush in the toothbrush holder, unused, which Mordecai thinks might be for him but doesn't want to assume, so he uses his old one.
Without turning off the lights, Mordecai climbs under the covers on his side - he has picked a side without thinking about it, it seems - and closes his eyes. The heavy weight of exhaustion crushes him down into the mattress.
There's a light knock at the door.
"Hello?" Mordecai calls, sitting up in bed.
"May I come in?" That's Lady Cressidha's voice.
"Yes, of-of course," Mordecai says without thinking. He ought to stand up to let her in, but he's wearing his pajamas now, and he's starting to feel like perhaps he's forgotten something important, and in his moment of indecision he hesitates just long enough for Lady Cressidha to let herself in.
She's still wearing the wedding dress.
"I've come to consummate our marriage," Cressidha says without any real enthusiasm. It sounds a lot like the way many of his clients have said 'I've come for my monthly check-in.'
With a start, Mordecai tries to get out of bed, but the sheets and the bedspread feel too heavy to move.
Cressidha stops at the foot of the bed and asks, "Would you care to assist me in removing this dress?"
No, most of Mordecai's instincts say most emphatically. But there's a quieter voice, a softer one, that whispers, She's asking you for help. Cressidha doesn't usually ask for things in that way unless she wants someone to feel included or she actually wants help.
"If you'd like," Mordecai says politely, and now the blankets release him. He is free to stand. Lady Cressidha turns her back to him as he approaches, and he looks at the fastenings of the dress and can immediately see why she wanted help.
The dress seems to defy the laws of science in the way it is fastened. He looks at laces and hooks and catches and fastenings and can make genuinely no sense of it all. Each time he blinks, he seems to be looking at something else.
Mordecai reaches out carefully with his fingertips to touch the back of the dress, and it feels like ice.
Something is missing.
Mordecai's hands are bare.
"Where's my ring?" he asks Lady Cressidha. "Where's my wedding ring?"
"What?" Lady Cressidha turns around to look, and Mordecai immediately pulls his hands away from her body before he can accidentally touch the front of her dress.
"I can't find my wedding ring."
"It's right there," Lady Cressidha insists.
A blink, and there's a ring on his finger. Mordecai has never seen it before in his life.
"That's not my wedding ring," Mordecai says, and a sudden surge of panic manifests into a name at last. "Where's Colson?"
Colson. The man he should have married. Cressidha's twin brother, Mordecai's true best friend, the love of his life. He remembers—he can remember—
"Who is that?"
The world lurches. Mordecai sits down on the edge of the bed.
And he's still there, in the right bedroom with the wrong Aspenwood, with Cressidha's impossible dress, expected to consummate the wrong marriage.
"You don't know Colson…?" As the words leave his mouth, the memories begin to waver in his mind. What if it was all a fantasy? A beautiful dream of everything Mordecai ever wanted, something to keep him going in the days leading up to his wedding?
"Not at all," Cressidha confirms. "Lord Mordecai, are you feeling alright?"
Mordecai's vision blurs with tears, and still, he doesn't wake up. He doesn't return to his bed at home in Stormwind with the gentle aura of Devotion and Colson's arms around him. This bedspread is still green instead of blue.
The bed sinks slightly as Cressidha sits down beside him, a handkerchief held out to him. He sees the peaceblossom embroidery and takes it from her immediately. It doesn't have the right scent, but the design is familiar. Surely he couldn't have known—he couldn't have imagined this exact handkerchief before he'd ever seen it— "Thank you," Mordecai mumbles, wiping carefully at his eyes.
"It was a long day for both of us," Cressidha says with a sigh. "You must know I will never force you into anything, Lord Mordecai. I'll cut myself out of this dress if I must, to escape it." Mordecai is startled into laughter, and Cressidha looks at him with a pleased sort of surprise. "I don't believe I've ever heard you laugh before."
Mordecai smiles weakly at her. "I'm so sorry, it's just that I… I can remember another life, one where I married Colson, your twin brother, and I'm so confused."
"My twin? How curious. I would have loved to have a twin," Cressidha says with a wistful smile. "I've always… well, regardless. You say you can remember another life? I'm not entirely certain I follow. Or perhaps I do follow, and I simply cannot understand how that could be true."
"Well…" Mordecai looks down at the handkerchief, smoothing it over his left hand to cover the wrong ring on his finger. "Either this life is real, and I've constructed a very in-depth fantasy of my dream husband and my future, or that life is real, and this is a nightmare." The third possibility he has considered, he does not speak aloud: that somehow he has moved into a universe very much like his own, but worse, and displaced this universe's Mordecai. Perhaps his Colson will wake up with the wrong Mordecai in the morning.
There's a sound of dismay from Cressidha, faint but audible, and Mordecai knows immediately that his choice of words has hurt her. "I'm sorry," Mordecai says quietly. "I meant 'nightmare' in a very literal sense. I may be asleep."
"I understand." Cressidha sighs. "I will admit, if we're being quite honest with each other, that the prospect of being your wife for the rest of my lifetime is not a particularly appealing one."
Mordecai offers her the handkerchief back. He starts in surprise as he sees his own wedding ring, the tiny azure moonstones glinting in the light, back on his finger where it should be as if he had just performed a magician's magic trick. "Do you see this?" he whispers, afraid to take his eyes off of it.
To his surprise, Cressidha says, "Oh, that's lovely," and takes the handkerchief back from him. "Did he make that? Your… Colson?"
"Yes." Mordecai sighs, relieved. "You believe me?" He looks at Cressidha with newfound hope. Cressidha has pressed the handkerchief to her chest, and it seems to be merging with the fabric somehow. He blinks and all that remains of it is the peacebloom embroidery stitched into the fabric of her wedding gown.
"I believe you," Cressidha says. She puts a finger underneath Mordecai's jaw and angles it slightly upwards, and Mordecai quickly meets her eyes. She's shorter than him, but apparently his staring was obvious. To his relief, she's smiling very faintly, and she shows no sign of leaning in to kiss him or anything horrifying like that. "Normally, I might reprimand you for staring at a lady so, but we did just get married, and I rather suspect you're more interested in the nature of the fabric rather than the woman wearing it. I enchanted it myself, of course."
Mordecai feels himself blushing. "Your handkerchief just… I'm sorry. That's… remarkable."
"I don't believe we'll be consummating this marriage tonight after all," Cressidha announces as if she has reached a foregone conclusion. She rises and steers Mordecai by the shoulders back around to his side of the bed, then folds the covers neatly back for him. "Do get some rest, Lord Mordecai. Tomorrow, I think, we shall discuss how to progress from here." She turns off the lights on her way out of the room.
Mordecai eases back under the covers and immediately that sense of heaviness returns. He fidgets with his ring, turning it around on his finger, reminding himself that it's still there. He closes his eyes, and in the darkness on the backs of his eyelids he can see the logically impossible back of Cressidha's dress, the laces twisting together and around each other like jungle vines. Like tendrils, roots burrowing deep beneath Azeroth's surface. Or perhaps they're burrowing upwards. Perhaps they've been burrowing upwards all along.