HIS, HIS, HIS

PAIRINGS: Marisa/Asriel, one-sided Mr. Coulter/Marisa

The moment he saw her, he wanted her. It was not love, which came later if indeed it came at all. He saw her, so nonchalant and yet so indescribable. Her hair, dark coiling curls falling to alabaster shoulders. Sharp, black eyes stared off into some unknown distance, long, pale legs curled under the curved iron chair. She held a golden monkey in her lap, absentmindedly stroking its light-catching fur.

He wanted her. That strange, metallic taste filled his mouth, that taste that had come since childhood whenever he wanted something so badly that his mind boiled and his daemon clenched her teeth and paced.

"Who is that?" he asked his aide, trying to sound imperial, a task that had always eluded him, while his fox daemon paced on the floor, clasping her claws together.

"That," the man replied, "is Marisa Shaw. Beautiful, isn't she? Charming too, makes you feel the apple of her eye. Making her way up in the world, though rumor has it her parents were servants and she's a lady only by the graces and bed space of Lord Boreal."

The man's eyes, as they did when gossip was mentioned, had a fervent glow to them and his magpie daemon began flapping her wings in fiendish delight.

"Though you can never listen to rumors," Edward reprimanded.

"Of course not," the man replied, slightly put out.

"Introduce me," Edward commanded.

Edward ignored the signs, of course. He was so captured by the silver sound of Marisa's voice and captivated expression on her face that he blocked out the clear clues in his path.

The way her monkey would turn from his fox, almost repulsed. The rages she would fly into, the unexplainable look in her eye of rawness and ambition. The way, when Marisa thought Edward was not looking, her eyes would glaze over and stare off to some distance he couldn't reach.

He proposed to Marisa, and fool that he later knew he was, believed it was a love match. She loved to stare at her ring; a hypnotized expression passing her eyes, a fascination, an expression anyone could tell had not a thing to do with love. Edward Coulter was not a stupid man. He pushed himself into his delusions.

Marisa is mine. Mine, mine, mine.

Those were the thoughts that Edward repeated in his mind over and over after the wedding, like a boy who cannot believe he received the toy he wanted. She was his, his, his. He wanted to show her to the world, he wanted the envy of every man.

His, his, his.

"Lord Asriel Belacqua." The man's voice was of a strange mixture of ironic boredom and formidable seriousness. Edward appraised him, as he did with every man and every woman crossing his path. He was a lord, someone worth winning the friendship of, if the man even had friends. From the look of him, this Lord Asriel was not the personable type.

Asriel was handsome. He was the sort of handsome Edward wanted to be and knew that he, short and reedy, never could be. The sort of handsome mixed with intimidation and formidability. His daemon was a beautiful, sleek, snow leopard who made Edward's fox cling closer to him in jealousy and fear.

"Edward Coulter." His voice came in a squeak. Asriel was the kind of man Edward had always avoided, the man that stared him straight in the eye and let him feel his inferiority.

"And I'm his wife, Marisa." Marisa held out her white hand, a smile touching her exquisite face. Marisa's role was to charm, to scintillate. It was what helped him in elections. Nobody could avoid loving Marisa and Edward swelled a little with the pride of it.

There was his superiority. Marisa was his, his, his and like every man, he was sure Asriel wished himself in Edward's position.

If Edward were looking, he would have seen the spark in Marisa's eye, that her smile was genuinine, the way the snow leopard growled slightly and the monkey shivered with excitement.

Edward turned his head and did not see.

Marisa was incandescent the next few months. Edward couldn't understand her. She was not the woman he knew. That strange dreaminess and the fits of ambition he tried to ignore both seemed to fade. A smile was constantly teasing her face, as though she held a secret. And though he refused to guess it, Edward was convinced she did.

"I'm going to have a child." Marisa's voice was ever silver but strangely broken. She seemed afraid of his reaction, her monkey clinging close to his mistress, his eyes full of unplaceable fear.

"But that's wonderful!" Edward turned to embrace her, the fox putting his hand on the monkey's back, her eyes wide with delight.

It was wonderful. Edward had never particularly liked children but it might be nice to have one and it wouldn't be too much effort. What were Gyptian nurses for? And besides, just to think of the publicity!

Edward pushed that thought out of his mind. This was not the time for thinking of politics. This was his wife, his own world, not the state or the church or society.

"You're really pleased?" Again there was that dull sound in her voice. He vaguely registered that the monkey still looked distressed, tearing his hair and turning from the fox.

Why wasn't she relieved he was happy?

"Of course I am, darling," Edward laughed, "Why wouldn't I be?"

Marisa seemed slightly more relaxed but the monkey had turned from the fox entirely and looked to the distance.

"Why wouldn't you be?" Marisa laughed, the sound coarse and hollow.

Edward was proud. People looked at them and spoke to them more than ever. Marisa's swelling belly, much as she complained about it, was to him just more proof that she was his, his, his. And yet again, he didn't see the worried, loving, darting glances she darted Asriel Belacqua and the way the monkey clung to the snow leopard's leg as though he would die if separated.

"It was small and weak and labor was too much," Marisa sat up in bed, explaining in a small voice, "It was a girl. She was beautiful. I named her Lyra. Lyra Coulter. She would have been lovely."

Marisa's eyes were ice, so distant, gone to a place where Edward lacked the understanding to see.

Edward grieved too, for the child's own sake, for his daughter that he never even saw.

Edward was sitting in his office when he was told. The gossipy, rumor filled aide had darted in, telling him words he couldn't quite believe and had asked to have repeated. The fox began snarling.

"The girl's alive, hidden away near Oxford. Marisa didn't want you to see her because---" The aide broke off in a mixture of drawn out pleasure in rumor and fear at his superior's reaction.

"Because what?" Edward snapped, his fox daemon holding the magpie in her claws while the aide, winced.

"Because she's not yours at all and it was plain on her face and daemon from the day she was born," the aide rushed out, the magpie clucking in delight, the fox too shocked to hold it more, "That baby girl might as well have had Lord Asriel Belacqua written on her."

Edward could have snapped a sendoff about rumor. But he could be blind no longer. He knew what was true.

Rage rushed in his ears and in a moment, he saw and knew everything, actual or anger-spun imagination.

Edward saw the passionate, hungry look on both faces during their introduction. He saw them speaking in corners, their whispers intense and heavy. Edward saw them embracing. He saw them together, her head on his powerful shoulder, daemon nestled in his, wondering what to do, how to get around the dolt of a husband. He saw Marisa, alone, learning she was pregnant and wondering how to tell the husband it might be Belacqua's. He saw Belacqua, the snake, comforting her over it. He saw their schemes and their plots. He saw the Asriel-child being handed away and Edward saw Marisa, playing so expertly the role of a grieving mother, telling him lie after lie.

And Edward knew, as well. He knew her feelings for the cold man were more than a time-passing affair. Edward knew that he had been taken in by her charm, that it had always been the status and the money. He knew she was not his, not his, not his.

Edward's hands, as soon as the aide and magpie were gone, clasped the cool metal of his gun.

"What do you want, Coulter? I expect you know." The snow leopard snarled slightly but Asriel was ever casual, leaning against the wall, as though he had been expecting Edward to come strolling in with a gun.

"It's true, then?" Edward's voice was shaking from anger and fear.

"True? Yes. Marisa bore my child, not yours, loved me, not you." Asriel said it all as though it were casual as a society introduction.

"I've come to kill you." Edward, feeling like a weak boy, drew his gun, preparing to shoot. Images flashed in his mind, illusions of the future. Once Asriel was gone, this would all be a thing of the past.

He could make Marisa his, his, his again. Edward was her husband, he had the right to her, he owned her, for God's sake! She belonged to him!

His thoughts killed him. Asriel was quicker, smarter, winning in this fight as he had with Marisa, barely needing to try.

The gun was jerked out of Edward's hand and a shot rang out.

Edward saw Asriel's sneering smirk.

He saw Marisa, dreamy-eyed at Asriel's feet, her distance and his coldness evaporated.

He saw a little girl with a mixture of their features and heard a distant cry of a child, one that could have been real and could have been a trick of his senses.

He saw everything he did not have, would not have, love, power, importance, passion, most of all, Marisa.

Not his, not his, not his.

And then Edward Coulter saw no more.