A/N – This fic has been long in the making, though I had intended it to be a quick one-shot (it was better in my head, really). It’s ended up being over a month since I started it, but I work on it erratically. At any rate, this is a scene I’ve been wanting to write for a while. It’s not only an Isaak x Dietrich fic, but it shows how Di first Radu and planted the seeds of doubt in his mind. Dietrich’s unnatural hatred for Radu is also born in this first meeting. And as a pointless fun fact, Dietrich’s view on politics and parties is rather my view on them, so I may have raved a bit.

Isaak x Dietrich with mentions of Suleyman x Radu. Rated R for violence mainly, and minor sexual abuse. It’s an IxD fic by PikaCheeka. What were you expecting?

Dietrich actually DOES have this brand on his wrist in the manga (it shows up in volume 4 or 5); I just took some liberties as to how he received it.

Dedicated to everyone I owe a fic to…who hasn’t gotten it yet. I continue to hide behind excuses of schoolwork, psychosis, and weird muses who make me write random IxD fics like this instead of requests and commissions.

The Branding

By PikaCheeka

I really rather hate them all. Parties. The Nobles. The Sycophants. I hate all of them. I don’t know why Isaak feels it is necessary to bring me to them, like some sort of trophy whore. I asked him once, and he told me that I was sixteen now and I had better start acting like an adult, and didn’t stupid kids like parties anyway? I sighed and leaned against the table, already bored after twenty minutes. He’d managed to get back into upper-class circles among Methuselah, though he has to bank heavily on his powers as a magus. His noble blood doesn’t mean a thing if he isn’t a complete Methuselah. But he’s made the best of it, becoming something neither human nor Methuselah could ever hope to attain, and now everyone accepts him out of fear and reverence. Nobody knew that he still cries at night. Nobody knew the sick, horrible things he does to make up for his own inadequacies. Nobody but me.

“Di, stop slouching.” He pinched my arm as he said it, leaning in close. I could feel him against me and I shuddered. He never failed to make me feel uncomfortable. I really wondered if he did it on purpose. I wanted to tell him to go to hell, but I managed to resist the urge. I didn’t want to have to pay for it later.

“Von Kampfer.”

Isaak flinched slightly at the voice and turned quickly, his arm immediately going around my waist, pulling me to him. I was too surprised, too morbidly curious, to argue. I wanted to know who could make even him uncomfortable. “Duke Suleyman.”

He was ancient. I knew that right away, though his body remained that of a man barely twenty-five. The older Methuselah just have this air around them. But he was also a magus, otherwise he would have acknowledged Isaak’s status as one. I glanced up at Isaak, but his face was unreadable.

“Duke of Tigris and the Deputy of the Imperial Secret Council.” He said after a long moment, and I knew it is more for my benefit than Suleyman’s.

“I didn’t know you were accepting students.” There was something in his words that made me recoil, something in the way he was looking at me. He knew I was no student. He was provoking Isaak, and I found myself gently running my hand up his back to calm him. He was always uncomfortable around awakened Methuselah, though he has learned over the years to disguise it so well he has come off as being cold and of a devil-may-care attitude. I wanted him to relax, wanted him to really not care about what he is. Because I didn’t care.

“He’s my lover.”

The words caught me off guard. Lover. Is that really what I was to him? No. You don’t rape your lover, don’t force yourself upon him when he is still a child and make him scream night after night. You don’t beat him or lie to him or… Suleyman interrupted my frenzied thoughts, suddenly touching my face. I wanted to hit him but I was paralyzed.

“You like them young and beautiful, don’t you? Like me.” He whispered calmly, and I realized he was trying to seduce me. Trying to take me for his own, like an object.

Isaak lashed out, grabbing the duke’s wrist and twisting it back, his eyes suddenly angry. “I said he was my lover. Not my favorite whore.”

There. He called me his lover again. I wasn’t ready for the rush of warmth and love I suddenly felt towards him, as he stood there calmly staring down the Methuselah who, due to his status, now had every right to kill him. Strange how one can hear a man say he loves them over and over, night after night, and not believe it until he says it before someone else as he did then.

Suleyman looked at him for a long moment before shrugging finally and jerking his hand back. “He’s only a terran, really. Why are you so defensive over him? He’ll be dead in a few decades. Ugly in a few years.”

He said nothing to that, only turned his chin up slightly. He was shuddering, biting back his rage, and I could almost smell his antagonism. But that was the end of it, finally, and they both turned at the same moment, Isaak pulling me along beside him. “I suggest you stay away from him.” He whispered to me in passing.

“I had no desire to be near him in the first place.” I snapped back. Tell me you love me. Now.

“He seems to want to be near you. Stay with me the rest of the night.” He said it all so indignantly and in such a demanding manner, I felt as if I were nine again.

“Who else do I have to talk to here? You know I hate these.”

“Yes, that’s why you’re a miserable politician.”

It didn’t take me long to understand that his bizarre affection towards me around Suleyman was only that. Only around him. It was merely his possessiveness taking over, his desire to prove that I belonged to him and him alone. Once what he saw to be the danger was passed, he promptly forgot about me. The next conversation he struck up, he didn’t even bother to introduce me. He merely gave me his look, as if to say “If you open your mouth, I’ll hit you.” And I obeyed his silent command. There was nothing I could do, really.

I was back to leaning against the wall behind him, lurking and sulking and wishing it were over, before I knew it. He didn’t even look at me, despite how often I tried to catch his attention. I didn’t understand politics. I never did and don’t care to. The entire thing was nothing but sycophancy, and I knew that Isaak was one of the worst of them with all his quiet flattery and cruel smiles. He could make anyone trust him, anyone love him, and only I knew the real Isaak. Sometimes I wished I could ruin it for him, show them all my scars, show them all what he is. Not that they’d care.

Most of the world is made up of sadists.

I waited a good half hour before finally slipping off on my own. I didn’t dare leave, but I could at least get away from everything. One of the small sitting rooms off to the side only had half a dozen people in it and I sat down, managing to avoid eye contact with anyone. Except one person, a boy even younger than me, clearly a Methuselah, who had come in immediately after me. I couldn’t help but look at him sideways. I wanted to ask why he had followed me, but he cut me off.

“These things are awful, eh?”

I took a moment to study him before responding. He was young, perhaps thirteen or fourteen, unawakened, but there was something in his eyes. Something old and horribly jaded. He had the look I should have had, but didn’t. “Who are you?” He was younger than me, and he was low-born, judging by his accent.

“Radu Barvon.” He replied unhesitantly, smiling. “I get brought to these, but I get ignored after fifteen minutes. Like you.”

“I didn’t get ignored.” I snarled.

“You don’t look like him. I’ve heard he’s a failed Methuselah. Are you…?”

I realized then that he thought I was Isaak’s son. I supposed it was easier to let him think that. Easier than the truth, which I hated to admit. “I guess I’m just a normal human.” I shrugged. I wanted him to leave. His eyes made me uncomfortable.

“I’m not a noble.” His voice dropped to a whisper as he said it. “My parents gave me away so I could live in the upper classes.”

“They sold you.” I snorted. The Methuselah made me sick.

He laughed at that. “No. I was given to someone who couldn’t have a male heir.”

I pulled my boots up onto the couch and stared at him again. His hair was a blue-black and pulled back into a short braid. “Why does being a noble matter?”

“You get ignored otherwise.”

“You’re being ignored now, so it doesn’t mean anything then, does it?”

That made him hesitate uncomfortably. “I wasn’t born a noble though. I haven’t been initiated.”

“That’s absurd. What makes you different from the rest of them?” I knew I was scaring him, hurting him, ruining his pretty little Empire, but I didn’t care. I wanted to hurt someone. “All this emphasis on bloodlines is third-world.” I didn’t add that I was proud of my own aristocracy. “It isn’t such a big deal in the human countries, but it shouldn’t matter anywhere. Ability and worth don’t lie in blood.” I cocked my head slightly and shrugged.

He said nothing, only hugged his knees like I did. He looked pensive, surprisingly, as if he were actually listening to what I was saying. And the longer I looked at him sitting there, the more I was reminded of myself, and the more I hated him.

“Dietrich.” The very sound of his voice at that moment made my blood run cold. He was deadly. How long had he been standing there, in the doorway?

“Yes?” I stood up quickly, already shaking.

“You disobeyed.” He didn’t say anything else, only closed the space between us in three strides and grabbed my wrist. Radu shifted behind me, moving out of the way, I suspected.

“I just sat down! I didn’t disobey anything.” Had he even given me any commands? I had avoided that Duke, and that was all that he had told me to do.

“Do you know who that is?” he hissed. “That’s Suleyman’s ishq-yllber.”

That took me aback. He had told me of the Methuselah way of taking a young, unawakened boy for a lover. I had even suspected it of Radu, as he was clearly of low birth and there was no other way someone like him could have managed to be there, but I had never thought of Suleyman as his master. I glanced over at him. He only looked away and I felt a twinge of guilt. He was the same as I was. Just another boy-whore, adopted, cared for, and then brutally assaulted night after night. That was the look in his eyes, the look of a child who had already seen all the pain there was to see in the world.

“I can talk to whoever I want!” I suddenly burst out, trying to pull away.

“Don’t be such an ungrateful moron, you little slut.” He had my arm twisted behind my back, forcing me down. I couldn’t fight him. The Methuselah was watching us out of the corner of his eye, barely able to mask the horror in his eyes.

“I was just talking.” Whether or not that was true didn’t matter anymore. He would believe what he wanted.

“Don’t.” He snarled, jerking my arm now. It was all I could do to bite back a scream of pain. And when I could talk again, I could hear the tears in my own voice.

“Isaak….”

“We’re going home now.” He whispered, just loudly enough that I could hear him.

I glanced up at him, afraid to see the anger in his eyes, but even more afraid to go home with him. We were still in public here. He couldn’t hurt me here, not that badly anyway. “I’m sorry.” I was ready to beg, I realized dully, and hated myself for it.

He only shrugged, his eyes unreadable, and lessened his grip. “Say goodbye to your little friend now.”

Radu was openly staring at us now, as were a few others. I barely had a chance to glance up at him, try to catch his eye, as if to apologize, before Isaak wrenched me away. I heard someone laugh, heard a too-loud comment about disobedient whores. I wanted to scream, to pull away from him and run, to tell everyone that I wasn’t his whore by any choice of mine, but it didn’t matter. I was only a terran to them, after all. I could only lower my eyes and follow Isaak out, shivering in fear and rage.

“I don’t want you talking to anyone else.” He pushed me into the car none too gently and slid in beside me. “Do you understand?”

“I think I’m old enough to be able to decide that for myself.” I wanted to shut up but I couldn’t stop myself. It was too late anyway, wasn’t it? He was going to kill me. Or do something worse.

“You were flirting with him.” He snapped back indignantly.

An argument was useless. I could never win against him, for he used force and pain when his logic failed him. I slumped against the door, as far away from him as possible, and watched nothing fly by out the window. We weren’t so far away from his manor, but the ride was long enough for the fear to really build up in me, and when he pulled into the driveway and wrenched me from the car I nearly fell I was shaking so badly.

He didn’t let go of my arm the entire way upstairs, as if he couldn’t get enough of reminding me who I belonged to. I was too scared to try and fight him any longer. He was going to rape me, torture me, maybe even kill me.

“Isaak, I’m sorry. Please.” I leaned away from him when he stopped to unlock the door to his study. What he had in there was enough to make me beg for mercy. He’d only recently learned the joys of tying me down and watching his demons, his shadows, his ugly creations, violate me. And he would sit there and laugh sickly, sometimes touching himself, but less often than I would have thought, while my own nightmares raped me.

“Why should I believe you?” he snarled.

“Because I don’t lie to you!” I snapped back without thinking.

He only grunted, knowing he couldn’t argue that, and shoved me through the door and towards his workbench in the back of the room. Stained with my blood. It wasn’t until he slapped me that I realized I was digging my heels in, crying out in panic already.

“I can always make it worse.” He whispered. “Stop your bitching, you useless slut.” He calmly rolled the sleeve of my jacket up and pushed my left arm down onto the table, the inside of my wrist up.

“Did you get some new restraints you wanted to try?” I was hysterical, gasping and laughing and absolutely terrified of him. I wished I could shut up, but I couldn’t. What had I ever done to deserve this?

He said nothing, only leaned over and snatched up a small iron rod, no larger than a pen, and looked at it for a moment. It was only then, and only for a moment, that I was able to stop gasping and yelling. I was curious despite myself, and it was only when he muttered something and it began to glow red that I understood.

He was going to brand me.

And it wasn’t going to be one quick stab. He was going to draw on me, carve into me with the iron. I was screaming before he even started, and he didn’t even seem to notice. He only made a ceremony of it, continuing to speak in some dead and gone language massaging my inner wrist with his thumb before lowering the glowing iron to my skin.

I was anticipating pain, but it was still more than I could handle. He had put his cigarillos out on my skin before, but that was nothing compared to this. He intended this to scar, to permanently burn me. He was digging this in, cutting me open and searing my inner flesh. The moment it touched my skin, I jerked back so hard the entire table shook; I felt Isaak shift his body to support mine, as I was already trying to rip free. But his grip was super-human and I could never outfight him. I had tried enough over the years, and had the scars to show for it. I could see, feel, smell, and even hear my own skin curling back, my flesh being seared.

I couldn’t tear my eyes away, despite the fact that I wanted desperately to stop the flow of tears somehow. He was drawing a pentagram, his simplistic magus-rank sign. I wasn’t worthy of his true magus sign, as I was only his slave, after all. Though I knew somehow, without him even saying a word, that one day he would carve that into me as well. I found myself leaning hard on his body, clutching his jacket with my free hand, finally burying my face in his chest and sobbing. Just like it always was. I was clinging to the very man who hurt me for comfort.

“You’ll feel it forever.” He whispered calmly, crushing me tightly against his body. He was pushing hard against my backside and I could feel how badly my screams had aroused him, but at that moment, it didn’t matter. It was only when he dug his nails into the wound, grinding his hips on mine, that I cried out. “I’m burning my possession into you. It will be black forever, and you’ll never stop feeling me.” He ignored my sobs, calmly, finally, closing the circle.

But it wasn’t over. I was an idiot to think it was. He began speaking again immediately, in the same language as before, and he placed the palm of his hand over the brand. I knew he was barely touching me, but even the nearness of his body heat was enough to make me sob. I nearly missed the sudden flare of shadow that covered our hands.

He made the mistake then of loosening his grip, and somehow I managed to wrench away, ducking under his arm and staggering back against the wall. “I hate you!” I screamed mindlessly, staring at him, at my wrist, at nothing. It was bleeding and dripping some other fluid I couldn’t identify. I suspected it was whatever ink, poison, whatever it was, that he had injected into me.

“You can never hate me.” The rage in his voice caused me to cringe and flinch away from him as he advanced.

“Why did you do that?” I was compensating for his quiet comments, still crying hysterically. I wished my entire arm had just been cut off. The pain had reached my shoulder by then. I wondered dully if he had damaged my nerves, if I’d ever be able to use my strings again. But no, he wouldn’t do that.

“To make you mine.”

Yes. He was always afraid that someday he would wake up and I wouldn’t be his any longer. “I’m not yours.” I spat. I regretted it the moment I said it, and I didn’t even have time to apologize, to cry out, before he had lunged forward and grabbed my crotch, almost lifting me off the ground in his force. Oh God please no. He was going to rape me. I had been a fool to hope otherwise.

“Your little friend at the party tonight…” he leaned against me, digging his claws into me now, his other hand around my backside. “He’s branded here.” He squeezed hard between my legs. “That’s how they mark their lovers in the Empire. If you don’t stop your infernal crying I’m going to do the same to you. Then I’ll rut in you.”

I had to close my eyes to keep them from rolling back, to keep him from seeing how terrified I was. He must have realized how hard I was, how aroused my body was by the pain he was forcing upon me. I wrapped my fingers tightly around my wrist and bit back a whimper. “No.” I finally gasped out.

I was ready for it when he hit me that second time, and though I couldn’t dodge the blow, I was able to slide to the floor and bolt for the hallway. My face burned and I knew I was bleeding from his ring, but I didn’t care. I had hoped to be slapped. It was the only way he would loosen his grip on me.

He didn’t follow me, which was somehow more frightening than having him rage and lunge at me. I knew I would pay for it later, probably in the early hours of the morning, when he would slip into my room and force himself upon me. It was safer to always expect him to come, I had learned over the years. He had crushed whatever semblance of hope I had ever had for a normal life. My life was his. I existed only for him, and whenever I allowed myself to think otherwise, he brutally reminded me. This brand was just another sign of that. Another sign that he owned me. And yet…would he have even bothered if he hadn’t cared? Was he really, honestly, afraid that he might lose me? That I might leave and forget him? He had called me his lover earlier, but only to warn Suleyman away. Everything that came out of his mouth was a lie. I could not put faith in his words. Only in his actions.

“Isaak…” The word came unbidden to my lips and I could feel his hand between my legs again. I shuddered and fought the urge to touch myself, to feed the erection that had in no way faded since I had escaped him. I instead focused on my wrist, staring at it. It was his mark, his magus sign, and it was a brand that was not a lie. He might as well have carved his name into my flesh. Was this his way of saying everything he could never bring himself to say to me? But I couldn’t hold it any longer, and all at once my hand was in my pants, stroking what he had begun. He loved me. He marked me. He loved me. I was his forever. “You already branded me down there. Inside of me. Forever. I belong only to you.” And I pressed my wrist to my lips and kissed the brand gently.