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lady-of-the-lotus · 3 years

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“Had I had eyes, what do you think would have happened when I found you in that ditch?”

“Probably killed me.”

“I would not have killed you.”

Xue Yang laughs, a short harsh bark that's nothing like his usual manic giggle. “Why should I believe you?”

XueXiao - E - AO3! - Tumblr Chapter 1 Chapter 2

Chapter 3 - Blood

They travel for three days before they hit another village.

Villages and farms, they pass, but nothing with an inn.

“They’d take us in if we only asked,” Xiao Xingchen says as they pass the village. It’s nightfall, and foggy and almost chilly. Cheerful yellow lights shine through the fog, and he hears voices and the clatter of cookery.

“I’d rather not.”

“Is this one of the villages I wiped out?”

Xue Yang tightens his grip on Jiangzai. He’s had it out of his qiankun sleeve since leaving Yi City. “I knew you were going to throw that in my face. And no. Happy now?”

Xiao Xingchen looks at the lights. One flickers, goes out, is relit, and he imagines the person behind the candle.

A living, breathing person. Someone belonging to his world. Unlike—

He can’t face that person, he suddenly realizes. Can’t knock on the door, be offered a bed, when he knows the earth should be his bed, the soil his blanket.

Warm in the earth.

He banishes that thought, but it lingers.

Xue Yang smiles at him. It’s an oddly blank smile. “Another mile, so they can’t see our fire, and I’ll make camp.” And he turns and continues walking without waiting for Xiao Xingchen to agree.

He’s been in an odd mood ever since they left the Coffin House, Xiao Xingchen thinks as Xue Yang makes camp. He doesn’t know how to handle a sullen Xue Yang. Or any part of this post-resurrection version of Xue Yang.

Chengmei had never argued with Xiao Xingchen, never offered anything more than teasing chaff. Had that all been an act to win his trust? How much of Chengmei had been real, how much a ruse? Chengmei had been unflaggingly cheerful and helpful, talking almost non-stop, doing everything he could to amuse Xingchen and A-Qing.

And he had known Xue Yang before he’d known Chengmei. Not well, but he’d interacted with him during their game of cat and mouse that ended at the Chang Manor, and this new Xue Yang is darker than that old Xue Yang, moodier, his smile less bright.

Or perhaps Xiao Xingchen can now see through his smile.

He half welcomes it in, a strange way. Xue Yang is treating him how he'd treat anyone else, without any special reverence or politeness or worship, and much as he'd prefer a cheerful Xue Yang, it feels almost good.

“I’m afraid I’m not much help,” Xiao Xingchen says as they warm themselves at the fire. Despite sitting much closer than Xue Yang is, he can still only half feel it.

Xue Yang gazes at him intently through the flames. “So you really did just get welcomed into people’s homes? I never tried that when I was—” He stops. “You could have killed them in their sleep.”

“Why would I do that?”

“I’m just saying they had no way of knowing. I guess you and that meathead priest just looked so honorable and decent they had no choice but to give you their beds.”

Xiao Xingchen rubs his hands together and breaks eye contact. Best not to respond. He’s tired, anyway, worn out from walking all day, the most he’s exerted himself since waking.

But Xue Yang won’t let the subject drop. “I thought you were joking the other night. Have you really never made camp?”

“Not never. I’m just not very good at it. After I lost my eyes, I—”

“Not lost. He took them.” Xue Yang’s eyes blaze as brightly as the fire, compelling Xiao Xingchen to look at them again. “And she let him.”

This Xingchen can’t let slide. “Don’t speak about my master like that.”

“Because you know I’m right? She should have stopped it all. If she really cared about you, she wouldn’t have let it happen. It’s all her fault—” Xue Yang's white face flushes pink, and Xiao Xingchen reaches around the fire to lay a warning hand on his bracer.

“Don’t touch me!” Xue Yang snatches his arm away. “Why the fuck did you something so stupid?”

“You were agitated—”

Xue Yang is on his feet. “I meant the eyes, you fucking idiot! You self-righteous naive fuck—” He kicks at the fire, sending a log into a tree in a shower of sparks. “This is all their fault—”

“ ‘This’?”

“Everything!”

“Had I had eyes, what do you think would have happened when I found you in that ditch?”

“Probably killed me.”

“I would not have killed you.”

Xue Yang laughs, a short harsh bark that's nothing like his usual manic giggle. “Why should I believe you?”

“Because you know me.”

“You saved Chengmei.”

“I saved someone in need.”

“None of it was real. You thought I was someone else!”

“I thought it was someone in need.” Xingchen eyes him evenly. “And I was right.”

Xue Yang’s fists are clenched. “You know what?” he snaps. “Fuck you!”

He storms off into the trees.

Xiao Xingchen turns back to the fire. He’s not sure if he’s pleased at having riled Xue Yang or upset at his reaction.

This is his way of caring—he’s genuinely upset I lost my eyes—

And then, halfheartedly: I shouldn’t care what he thinks.

But pity outweighs disgust, and he’s half numb again, anyway, his mental malaise deadening all confusion.

His fingers are stiff and clumsy the next morning. Xue Yang notices him dropping the razor he uses to shave, but doesn’t say anything, or offer to give him blood.

Or the next day, or the day after that.

In fact, he barely talks at all.

Xiao Xingchen isn’t sure what to do with the silence.

“Where are we going, anyway?” Xue Yang asks finally, the first real thing he’s said all day. They’re night-hunting, or at least trying to. Shuanghua feels strangely unresponsive in his hand. He’s not sure if it’s constantly sensing him as a fierce corpse, blanking out all external demons and ghosts, or if he has lost the right to wield it properly.

"Where are we going?” Xue Yang repeats. “Off to save the world?”

“Something like that.”

“Like you did such a great job the first time.”

Xiao Xingchen stiffens.

Xue Yang smirks, wearing a nastier grin than Xingchen remembers him having ever worn before. “What?” he sneers. “Don’t like hearing the truth?”

“I accomplished more in a single year than you did your entire life,” Xiao Xingchen says quietly.

Xue Yang laughs. Unlike his usual laugh, it’s not a pleasant sound. “You’re right. Slaughtering all those peasants certainly was an accomplishment, all right.”

A stab of anger, but it’s distant, that old malaise having him fully in its grip, and he doesn’t rise to the bait. Too long without blood or yang, but Xue Yang hasn’t offered, and Xiao Xingchen refuses to ask.

“You know what I mean,” he says instead.

Xue Yang looks disappointed at the lack of ire in his voice. “And what does saving the world entail, exactly?”

“Helping people who need it.”

“That’s it?”

“Not murdering people. Doing good where you can. If you truly meant what you said about regretting the things you’ve done, that’s still not enough. You have to perform positive actions as well, not just regret your negative ones. Like what we’re doing now—night-hunting, protecting people.”

Xue Yang doesn’t seem to hear anything after Not murdering people. “Like you’ve never killed anyone? Song Lan was ready to kill me at Chang Manor, no trial, no nothing.”

“And I saved your life, ensured you a trial."

"A trial you knew would end in their gutting me like a pig and hanging my head on Jinlintai's gate as warning. Same as you probably still think I deserve."

"If you want to stop being treated like a monster, simply stop doing monstrous things," Xiao Xingchen says, still with no emotion in your voice. "Twice I saved your life.”

“And did your saving me make the world a better place?” Xue Yang’s voice is rising now. “You hate me. You think the world is worse because I’m alive. How do you know all those people you saved didn’t make the world worse too?”

“I never said I hate you.”

Xue Yang throws his hands up dramatically. Xiao Xingchen thinks he might be doing it intentionally, turning the conversation into something out of a story, a play, something less real, something not involving them as two real people but as two fictional characters.

“ ‘I never said I hate you’!” he mimics, doing a credible imitation of Xingchen’s voice. He was always good at doing the voices for the stories he used to tell nightly. “I suppose you stab people you like, then? You stabbed Song Lan out of affection?”

Xiao Xingchen is about to respond, despite the futility of trying to argue with Xue Yang, but instead he trips over what seems to be nothing, sprawling forward in the dirt as if the earth has reached up to drag him down, claim him, Shuanghua falling from his nerveless fingers.

Xue Yang watches him struggle to his feet, but doesn’t offer his help, and Xiao Xingchen doesn’t ask.

A queasy feeling creeps over him despite his numbness.

He can’t night-hunt. Can’t atone by protecting others.

Can barely stand up.

Useless. One more dead, useless thing.

They encounter a single ghost that night. Xue Yang dispatches it on his own, then turns to grin at Xingchen.

“Guess I’m ahead of you on the saving the world front,” he sneers.

Xingchen refuses to ask for help when he has trouble lying down to sleep that night, or the next morning, when it takes him fifteen minutes to get to his feet, or all that day as he stumbles down the road in an increasingly senseless haze.

They stop at an inn that night. Xue Yang makes all the arrangements while Xiao Xingchen, half-insensible, is propped up at a table.

A familiar huff and, “Do I have to carry you?." Something slipping under his arms, movement.

Something wet in his mouth, someone holding his head up. A finger on his tongue, the taste of copper.

“…most stubborn person I’ve ever met,” Xue Yang is saying as he dabs blood on Xingchen’s tongue. “You should have seen the looks the innkeeper gave me. Like I’d drugged and kidnapped you or something…but no, you couldn’t just ask me. You think I liked traveling around with you tripping over your own feet every two seconds goggling at me like a stunned fish?”

Xiao Xingchen opens his eyes. He’s lying cradled on his back in Xue Yang’s lap on a small bed in a small room. “Where are we?”

“Tanzhou. Here, drink.” He tightens his arm around Xiao Xingchen and holds his other arm up to his mouth. “Stubborn idiot.”

But there’s no venom in his voice. Seeing Xiao Xingchen so vulnerable seems to have induced another of his swift changes of mood. Xiao Xingchen drinks, feeling warmth flow back into his limbs as he greedily sucks at Xue Yang.

“Any better?” asks Xue Yang. He slides out from under Xiao Xingchen and off the bed. “I swear, you’re the most stubborn person I know.”

Xiao Xingchen flexes his fingers. “Do you know many people?”

Xue Yang grins suddenly. It’s his first sincere smile in days. “You have a point there. I’ll be back soon.”

Xiao Xingchen sits up as Xue Yang leaves. He feels stronger than he has in days, but the blood only seems to help nourish his body, not his mind.

He’s too numb to care much about that. He takes out his flute, sits cross-legged on the bed, and begins to play, taking advantage of the nimbleness in his fingers while he can.

He plays until Xue Yang returns. “Don’t stop on my account,” Xue Yang says, seating himself on the edge of the bed. He’s holding a tanghulu and a candle. He sets the candle on the rickety little table wedged beside the bed and starts taking his shoes off. “I mean, you could use more practice, but it’s not terrible.”

Hesitantly, Xiao Xingchen lifts the flute back to his lips. Too many good memories attached to the flute to want to sully them with Xue Yang’s presence. Being taught by Baoshan Sanren, playing for A-Qing and Chengmei—

But he’s still too numb to care much. Or to even enjoy playing, really. He does it anyway, mechanically fingering the holes and producing music without soul.

Xue Yang frowns, noticing, but again doesn’t say anything.

A flicker of thought: I’d rather him yell again.

But he doesn’t care enough to rile Xue Yang, and he’s not about to ask Xue Yang to give him yang or take his yin energy.

Let Xue Yang ask him.

But Xue Yang doesn’t speak, just sits there licking the tanghulu. Slides the whole thing in his mouth, sucking the long carrot-shaped candy with more noise than he absolutely has to, making sure it's audible over the gentle sound of the flute. Slides it out of his mouth, runs his tongue along the slick red length, flicks his tongue over the tip.

Xiao Xingchen feels something stir between his legs. Xue Yang must be doing this on purpose—

A banging on the door makes them both jump. “Shut up in there! It’s the middle of the night!”

Xue Yang opens the door. He’s grinning again, a grin full of sharp teeth.

“ ‘Middle of the night’?” he says to the man in the doorway. Burly, frowning, dressed in expensive-looking robes. “It’s barely nightfall.”

“People are trying to sleep! Shut your racket!”

“ ‘Racket’?” Without any seeming movement, Xue Yang’s knife is in his hand. He taps his chin with it, eyes bright. “Step inside, and we’ll discuss it.”

The man is pushing up his sleeves. “We’ll discuss it, all right—”

Xiao Xingchen gets off the bed and lays a hand on Xue Yang’s shoulder. Xue Yang is trembling with excitement beneath his palm, an alcoholic spotting wine. “Don’t.”

“Don’t discuss things like a rational human being?”

“Don’t kill him.”

“I’d like to see him try!” snaps the man. “Little punk upstart—”

Xue Yang starts forward with a little keening sound, but Xiao Xingchen snatches him back into the room and locks the door. “Remember what I said about not murdering people?”

Xue Yang appears to be almost aroused by the near-violence, nostrils flaring, cheeks pink. “The world would be better off without him! Look at him! We’d be doing everyone a favor!”

Xiao Xingchen gives him a little push towards the bed. “Just sit there quietly and finish sucking on your candy.”

He would wince had he not been so numb. Why had he chosen that word?

Xue Yang grins, pique gone. “I’d rather be sucking on something else, if I’m being honest.”

“A first, for you.”

Xue Yang laughs. “I love when you make jokes. Now come on, aren’t you going to offer me an incentive to stay here and not slit that man from dick to throat?”

Xiao Xingchen pinches his temples. He wants to, as badly as he can want anything in his current state—Xue Yang is licking that candy again, grinning at Xiao Xingchen, and Xingchen does want to push along his improved mood—reward good behavior—

He sits on the edge of the bed. “Fine.”

“ ‘Fine’?”

“You can do what you want.”

Xue Yang’s grin turns into a frown. “That’s all you’re going to say? And I’m not getting on my knees for you.”

Xiao Xingchen rises and undresses, taking off everything but his white inner robe. Despite everything, he’s still not comfortable being fully naked in front of Xue Yang, much as he hungers for his hands on his skin, craves sensation. Xue Yang just stands there, watching him undress, but doesn’t move, a smug look on his face.

“I’m not going to beg, if that’s what you’re implying,” Xingchen says, tilting his head.

Grinning again, Xue Yang takes off his clothes, stripping naked almost defiantly. “I can’t decide if I like you like this, or if it’s just annoying.”

Xiao Xingchen lies on the bed, bending his knees slightly. I truly don’t care what you think, he wants to say, but doesn’t want Xue Yang to pick up on the lie and rub his nose in it.

Xue Yang climbs into bed, kneeling between Xingchen’s legs.

“I thought you weren’t getting on your knees,” says Xiao Xingchen.

Xue Yang rolls his eyes. “I’m leaning towards ‘annoying.’ ”

Xingchen can’t hold in a smile. Xue Yang returns it. “First time you’ve smiled in days,” he says. “Just for that, I won’t make you ask for it.” He reaches down for Xiao Xingchen’s inner robe.

“So you’re just going to go for it?”

“What else do you want?”

It’s so…transactional, but Xiao Xingchen doesn’t know how to put that into words. It’s not like he wants to be seduced, but…

He changes the subject. “You want to take my yin energy?”

“It’s not like it’s poison,” says Xue Yang. Not quite the truth, given its tainted nature, but he seems to believe it in the moment. “Everyone has both. Well, not you, unless I give it to you, but—” He peels back Xiao Xingchen’s inner robe, and Xingchen would blush if he could feel shame. “What did you mean before? What else do you want?”

“Just do it.” Suddenly he wants nothing more than to feel the embarrassment he knows he should be feeling at the sight of Xue Yang pulling his cock out from inside his clothes, closing his mouth around it, licking it. Feel more than pleasure at how his tongue glides over the head. Feel the complicated jumble of emotions he knows should be churning through him, heightening everything, turning the act into more than a physical exchange.

He comes in Xue Yang’s mouth, and suddenly he’s very aware of the candlelight gleaming off his wet cock, of Xue Yang licking his lips and looking up at him, making full eye contact—

He winces and snuffs out the candle. Moonlight illuminates Xue Yang, but at least there’s some darkness to hide—hide whatever the hell this is—

“Feel any better?” Xue Yang whispers. He’s moved up beside Xiao Xingchen, nestled between him and the wall. “Want to yell at me now or something?”

Xiao Xingchen takes a deep breath and sits up. “You almost killed that man—”

“But I didn’t!”

“And you—you—” He squeezes his eyes shut. “You said some awful things to me.”

“You mean—that was days ago.”

“You said awful things,” Xiao Xingchen repeats. His heart is beating faster at the memory. “You said—you said—”

“And you to me. We’re even.”

“We’re…” Xiao Xingchen digs his knuckles in his eyes. “How could we possibly ever—”

“Shh. You’ll bring that oaf back, and I can’t make any promises about not gutting him like a pig.”

"What is it with you and pigs?" And suddenly Xiao Xingchen is laughing. He doesn’t know why. But he is. He hates himself for laughing, and he relishes the disgust, the thousand emotions coursing through him, good and bad.

He feels something against his leg, realizes it’s Xue Yang, making no attempt to hide his arousal.

“What about you?” Xingchen moves his leg slightly against Xue Yang.

“I’m fine.”

“I could use yang energy, not just getting rid of the tainted yin…”

Xue Yang’s voice is suddenly teasing. “Ask nicely.”

“Oh, stop that already!”

Xue Yang laughs, vibrating against Xiao Xingchen’s body. “I don’t know, maybe I do like you like this, daozhang. Feisty.” He slides a hand around Xiao Xingchen, tracing the muscles of his chest. “What do you want to do?”

Xiao Xingchen blushes. He’s not sure why it’s more embarrassing to be asked what he wants than to simply have things done to him without discussion, but it is. This is how it’s supposed to be, he knows. But he still can’t bring himself to speak.

He bites his lip as Xue Yang’s hand drifts lower. He’s still sensitive, and he grabs Xue Yang’s hand before it can reach his cock. Xue Yang pulls away and begins tracing circles on his stomach, fingers soft through the silk.

“What do normal people do?” Xingchen asks.

Xue Yang laughs. He’s nuzzling Xiao Xingchen’s throat, and Xingchen, after days of numbness, enjoys the little puff of warm air on his skin. “How should I know?”

“What have you…what have you done before? With other people?”

Xue Yang’s hand stops moving. “You wouldn’t want to hear about that.”

“Because you did something terrible?”

“Am I the only one in the world who’s capable of terrible things?”

Xingchen feels a pang of pity. He savors the pity, savors the irritation at himself for feeling pity, then savors the annoyance at his own irritation, because he should feel pity, should feel mercy. “Why don’t you try the things you wanted them to have done?”

“I don’t want to stop.” The way I wanted them to stop.

Xingchen feels a chill, then turns and kisses Xue Yang softly on the lips. “How about that?” he murmurs. “Those other times I did that, did you want me to stop? That time in the stream, I…” I have no framework to work in, he wants to say. You were my first and only. You had something I needed, and I didn't care about hurting you, after everything you'd done to me. I should have known better, never should have done something like that—

“I could have stopped you if I wanted," says Xue Yang.

“I still…I still shouldn’t have—”

"I liked it. Stop talking about it." Xue Yang kisses him back, long and deep, hands tangled in Xiao Xingchen’s hair. He moves to straddle Xiao Xingchen, laying his full weight on him, gently exploring his mouth.

“You can do more if you want,” Xingchen whispers.

“You’re really after my cum, aren’t you.”

“Don’t say it like that. And no. I just feel like…well, it should be reciprocal. I don’t like the idea of you losing yang, not that I like the idea of giving you tainted yin, either—”

“I brought you back, you’re my responsibility now. Like owning a chicken.”

Xiao Xingchen laughs. “A chicken?”

“A tame dove. That better?”

“A crane, I would think.”

“A crane,” Xue Yang corrects himself. Xiao Xingchen wants to say something about how he wouldn’t trust Xue Yang to take care of any living thing but then remembers how tender he was taking care of him. Besides, he doesn’t want to hurt Xue Yang, not right now.

Selfish, most probably. Most definitely.

This is Xue Yang.

I have to do this, he reminds himself. I have no choice. My dying now would help nobody...

A flimsy excuse, and he knows it.

But perhaps he can afford to be selfish.

Just for a few minutes.

He traces the sharp ridges of Xue Yang’s collarbones, distinct in the blue moonlight. The same face that was the last thing countless people had ever seen.

The last thing Song Lan had ever seen.

“I have some oil in my sleeve,” Xue Yang says.

“Of course you do... What do you want to do?"

“I’m already in you. My blood, I mean. But I’d rather you be in me…” Xue Yang stops. “Fully, I mean, not like just now…”

“I can, if you want, but not tonight. You already took enough yin.”

“Whatever you want.” Xue Yang is stroking the skin on Xiao Xingchen’s inner thigh, hesitantly. “Can I…”

“Yes.”

Xue Yang’s finger brushes Xiao Xingchen’s entrance. “That alright?”

“It…” It feels nice, Xiao Xingchen wants to say, but is suddenly bashful. They’d done this before, but somehow this time feels different.

But Xue Yang hesitates again, as if he too feels that something has changed.

“Here.” Xiao Xingchen rolls him over on his back, looking down at him in the moonlight. Xue Yang seems more comfortable looking up at him, relaxing under him. “Better? Here…” He grips Xue Yang’s cock gently, sliding it inside him. “That feel alright? I forgot the oil—”

Xue Yang takes a deep breath. “It’s fine. You’re already kind of slippery. Must be from me earlier.”

Xiao Xingchen thinks about that for a fraction of a second. He’s been taking a sponge bath every night, ridding himself of the soft, sweet-smelling film he keeps finding on his skin, finds clinging to his razor after shaving.

What if that odd film is inside him too?

Xue Yang rocks his hips slightly, making a little keening noise, and Xiao Xingchen forgets about the film. Slowly he begins to move. It’s easier to angle himself properly when he’s on top, and this way he can lean forward and plant kisses along Xue Yang’s jaw, his throat, his collarbone, the sigil on his chest.

Xue Yang grips his arms, craning his neck, exposing it to Xingchen’s lips. He nips slightly at it, sucking bruises into his throat between the bandages covering the mostly healed bite mark on his neck, breaking the skin over his collarbone. A few red pearls of blood rise from the tiny bite marks, and he licks them without thinking—

Then jerks away. “I’m sorry! I shouldn’t have—”

Xue Yang’s eyes are closed. “Go ahead,” he murmurs.

“I should have asked first—”

Xue Yang opens his eyes. “I know you wouldn't hurt me.”

Wincing, Xiao Xingchen reaches down, touches the scar Shuanghua had left on Xue Yang’s stomach. “You’re not a jar of wine. Despite everything, you’re still a human being.”

“ ‘Despite everything.’ ” Xue Yang swallows hard, looking away. The sigil on his chest is glowing, casting an eerie light over his too-pale skin. “Just drink it.”

Xiao Xingchen is still moving, very slowly. He wants to stop, all lust gone, but is suddenly desperate for the yang energy. “Xue Yang, if I ever take too much, or hurt you, you need to tell me.”

If you die, I die, he wants to add. Just to hear the words aloud, make sure he, Xiao Xingchen, the bright moon and gentle breeze, remembers why he’s doing this.

Xue Yang twists under him. “Alright, I get it. Either fuck me, or get off.”

Xiao Xingchen stops. “Why do you have to put it like that?”

“What, are we making love? Fuck, I know that’s not how it works!” He grabs Xiao Xingchen’s shoulder, pulling him deeper onto him, and begins thrusting up into him, hard. “Don’t try to pret—”

“Stop!” Xiao Xingchen pins him back on the bed. It’s an effort, Xue Yang’s thrusting reaching the bundle of nerves deep inside him, and he suddenly craves the friction again. “Did you listen to a word I said? I—oh, just let me do this, all right?”

Xue Yang rolls his eyes, then closes them as if unwilling to look at Xiao Xingchen and bites his lip.

He draws blood.

Frowning, Xiao Xingchen leans forward to kiss Xue Yang, sucking on his lip, relishing the way the blood tingles on his tongue as Xue Yang rocks up into him.

Xue Yang reaches out, slides his fingers through his hair, and suddenly Xiao Xingchen is filled with heat, the world, already sharp, bursting into full color, and he comes again, splattering Xue Yang's stomach with blood.

He rolls over but stays locked together with Xue Yang, drawing his blood out through his lip. They remain like that, Xiao Xingchen lapping gently at the blood welling from his mouth, Xue Yang softening inside him, until Xue Yang’s breathing grows slow and steady. He feels a tendril of contentment that’s not fully his curl into him, soothing him.

“Xue Yang?” he murmurs. “Are you alright?”

He thrills at the sound of his own words. “Xue Yang? Are you alright?” He suddenly wants to have sex again, fully savor the conflicted emotions he can now fully feel—the disgust, the arousal, the pity, the mingled hatred and affection—but despite it all, he’d meant everything he had said before, and is gentle when he eases Xue Yang out of him and touches his shoulder. “Xue Yang?”

Xue Yang is asleep.

Xiao Xingchen lies there for what seems like hours, watching him sleep, that odd, almost external sense of contentment slipping away as his body absorbs Xue Yang’s blood. Again he’s struck by how young and innocent he looks despite him now being older than Xingchen, despite having the blood of countless people under his nails.

Xingchen wakes long before him the next morning. He lets him sleep.

“I took too much blood,” Xiao Xingchen says as they lie there. “You have to tell me when to stop.”

Xue Yang blinks, looking out the window. The sun is high in the sky. He sits up, lip puffy. “Why didn’t you wake me?”

“You looked like you needed the rest," he says, and Xue Yang's eyes widen. He can't remember if he ever let Xue Yang sleep in during the old days in Yi City, that this should have such an impact now. "I told you. You can’t let me take so much blood.”

“I gave it to you.”

Xiao Xingchen sighs. “We should get moving.”

Xue Yang rolls out of bed. “I’ll go downstairs, get some food. Get you some water to wash with. Be back in a second.”

He’s only been gone a few minutes when the man from the other night opens the door Xue Yang hadn’t closed fully. He eyes the tousled bed clothes of the single bed, and grins.

“I thought so,” he said, sniffing the air. “Fucking perverts.”

Xiao Xingchen gets out of bed. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave, sir.”

The words sound alien. This is the first person he’s spoken to other than Xue Yang.

It feels...wrong.

The man laughs in his face. “That all you going to say?”

“Please leave, sir. I’m not here to pick a fight.”

“But I am,” says a voice behind the man, and suddenly the man is on his knees, clutching at his ankles with an agonized cry.

Xue Yang grins, gripping a knife. “He bothering you?”

Xiao Xingchen stares open-mouthed. “What did you do?”

“Just nicked his tendons.” Xue Yang rolls the whimpering man into the room with his foot and shuts the door, then bends down and cuts out his tongue with a quick flip of his wrist. “Good thing I forgot my coin purse.”

“You—you—” Xingchen eyes Xue Yang’s victim in horror. The man is gripping his throat, choking on the blood spurting from his mouth, horrific burbling sounds coming from his throat.

“Oh, please. Killing him would improve the world.”

“Killing him?”

Xue Yang’s eyes are bright, body trembling in excitement. “I thought you wanted to make the world better?”

“Not by killing him!”

“Kind of too late. He’ll bleed out soon. I mean, I can always pin a blood-clotting talisman to him, but it will probably cause a stroke.” He produces a blank yellow talisman. “Or I can fix it so you can absorb his yin before he dies.”

“No! That’s—would that work?”

Xue Yang shrugs. “It’s worth a shot, if you don’t want to take my blood.” He touches the sigil on his chest, as if to say, We’re already bound, but..., and Xiao Xingchen has a sudden flashback to him raising his bound hands after his capture at the Chang Manor: “Don’t forget about me…”

“He wasn’t part of our ritual,” Xue Yang shrugs, “but I can fix it so you can take what he has if you don’t want mine.”

“It’s not that I don’t want your blood, it’s that—what am I saying? This man is bleeding out on our floor! Try the talisman!”

“The yin talisman?”

“The blood-clotting talisman! Quickly!”

“Alright, alright.” Grinning, Xue Yang nudges the man’s throat with his foot. “What’s your name, my fat friend?”

“We don’t have time for this!”

“I need it for the talisman!”

"You’re stalling!”

“I’m not stalling! These are my own design! I need his name.” Xue Yang crouches before the man, who’s lying on his side, blood bubbling over the floor. He pats him cheerfully on the cheek with his knife and pulls him up by his hair. “What’s your name? Wang? Liu? Chen?” He looks up at Xiao Xingchen, innocent as as lamb. “He’s not cooperating.”

“You cut out his tongue!”

“He basically asked me to.” Xue Yang is laughing. He seems more… alive than Xiao Xingchen has seen him in a while. Beautiful, in fact...

Xiao Xingchen takes a second to enjoy the half-arousing feeling of revulsion he’s inspired in himself, then shakes his head. “This is not what we discussed.”

“This is exactly what we discussed!” Little spots of color spot Xue Yang's white cheeks. “I saw his wife downstairs. She has a black eye. Looked fresh. If you had let me kill him last night, that would never have happened!"

It’s too late to save the man, blood-clotting talisman or no blood-clotting talisman.

The man looks up at Xiao Xingchen pleadingly, skin ashen, shaking.

"Who knows when killing someone is wrong? Or right? Nobody can tell, so why bother trying?”

Xiao Xingchen takes the knife from Xue Yang and slits the man’s jugular.

The man bleeds out within seconds, sprawling forward on the floor when Xue Yang releases his hair.

Xue Yang looks up at Xingchen, eyes like stars. “I forgot how beautiful you are when you kill.”

“Why—why would you think that was something appropriate to say to me right now? I—all I want to do is help people, but you—you made me kill again—”

Xue Yang looks confused. “You helped his wife. And he deserved it.”

“You’ve done far worse than what he did! Does that mean I should kill you?”

Xue Yang shrugs. “We’ve already been over this. Are we all packed? Guess we’re leaving through the window. Unless—” He hooks a finger in the neck of Xiao Xingchen’s robe, grinning. “How about it?”

Xiao Xingchen shoves him away. “What is wrong with you?!”

Xue Yang’s grin disappears. “Oh, like you don’t want to!”

“I just killed a man!”

“Exactly. Get off your high horse.”

“It was a mercy killing because of what you did—”

“I guess you’re right. Better hoof it before they notice the blood dripping through these shoddy floorboards.”

Xiao Xingchen doesn’t look at the body as they fly down from the window and head down the road.

Again.

Xue Yang has made him kill again—

He can’t risk night-hunting again, not unless he does it immediately after sex and blood-drinking. Can’t save people like he used to.

Can’t atone.

And now, not only is he useless, he’s actively harming people—

“You should have seen his wife,” Xue Yang says. “Face all puffed up like A-Qing’s when she ate that walnut. Are you angry?”

“Of course I’m angry!”

“Like, angry in a fun way?”

Xiao Xingchen laughs. He doesn’t want to laugh, but he hasn’t had a proper handle on his emotions since coming back to life. Either he’s too numb, or his feelings are too intense, or they’re not fully his own. “No.”

“You laughed.”

Xiao Xingchen gets himself under control. “What you did was wrong.”

“You should have seen the wife—”

“How do I know there even was a wife?” He regrets the words the moment they leave his mouth and the smile disappears from Xue Yang’s face. “I mean—”

“You don’t believe me.”

“I…”

“I did what you asked! I improved the world! Had I killed him last night when I wanted to, his wife would have been spared. So who was really right? Not you. And besides, he called you a pervert. What was I supposed to do?”

“You mean, he called you a pervert. By extension.”

“He called you a pervert,” Xue Yang insists.

Xiao Xingchen rubs his temples. “From now on, if you’re going to kill someone, you get my approval first.”

“Technically, you killed—fine. I’ll be quiet.” Xue Yang walks a bit faster.

He’s back to himself by evening, rattling on as if nothing had happened. Xiao Xingchen doesn’t say another word about the dead man, either. What can he say? If Xue Yang was telling the truth, man’s death had made the world a better place.

He just wishes it hadn’t been him who had delivered that final blow.

Xingchen’s fault, the whole thing. No more letting Xue Yang out of his sight. No more letting him roam around on his own.

If we’re busy having sex, he won’t be off killing people.

Xiao Xingchen has a sudden vision of them having sex in the room with that dead body, drinking from the man's throat while thrusting into Xue Yang, and is confused by the mixture of lust and disgust tingling along his spine. Not at the emotions themselves—lust and disgust have been his constant companions since waking—but at how much the thought of drinking blood from anyone other than Xue Yang repulses him.

He rubs the sigil branded into his chest.

Xue Yang must have known it would repulse him. Must have simply been testing him with the idea of blood from that man—

Xue Yang turns to wave at him to walk faster, and Xiao Xingchen gives up. No point in trying to puzzle it all out, figure out what Xue Yang did not did not know or intend or want. He’s not sure Xue Yang himself knows half the time.

Which is…exciting, if he’s being honest. It was the same way with Chengmei.

Except then there was no perverted morals or internal turmoil. Just companionship tinged with slight confusion over how attached he had gotten to Chengmei, and how quickly.

It hadn’t been romantic, he tells himself. Nothing near it. They had shared a bed, but that was all. They’d had to huddle together for warmth, so waking up with Chengmei wrapped around him was simply out of habit, even in summer. He’d fixed Chengmei’s hair every morning, and Chengmei often touched his arm and waist and knee, but that meant nothing…

Nothing.

They stop for the night in the forest. There’s a village nearby, but Xue Yang, practiced at fleeing from crime scenes, votes not to attempt it, and Xiao Xingchen has no desire to approach people, and not just because of what had happened in the inn.

Xiao Xingchen glances at his hands as they settle down. For now they’re strong enough to grip a sword, but he still wouldn’t trust himself on a night-hunt, and he’s kept Shuanghua in his qiankun pouch.

He hopes Xue Yang doesn’t suggest one. Rub in the fact that Xingchen is near useless…

It’s warm that night, but Xue Yang sleeps in his full robes, with Jiangzai drawn beside him. He’s never quite at ease while sleeping outside, Xiao Xingchen notices. Hasn’t truly been relaxed since they left the Coffin House, except when he was bent over that man.

Lips parted. Eyes sparkling—

He dwells on that thought as he stares up at the stars, glimmering brightly through the treetops against the deep purple sky. How beautiful Xue Yang looked. How animated. The bringer of so much death, yet so alive—

He rolls over and kisses Xue Yang. Enjoys the softness of his lips, the heat of his tongue, the way Xue Yang melts into him.

Enjoys feeling like an ordinary human being, not like a cultivator or a corpse.

Xue Yang often makes him feel like that, he realizes as kisses him. Like an ordinary human being with regrets and wants and conflicting thoughts and feelings. Treats him like an imperfect being, at least in this new second life. Fights with him, yells at him, throws tantrums and argues with him.

He likes it more than he should. He shouldn't relish being seen for the imperfect being that he is—should want to be held to a higher standard—

He dwells on this thought, knows the sex will be made more potent by the disgust he feels at himself, until Xue Yang's tongue and hands drive all thought from his mind.

It’s slow and lazy, with Xiao Xingchen on top. He drinks from Xue Yang’s arm as he rocks into him, letting his lip and collarbone heal. He’s careful not to take too much blood, just enough to keep him balanced the next day.

"You can take more if you want," Xue Yang whispers. "Take whatever you need..."

He falls asleep curled up beside Xue Yang, boneless and relaxed, but Xue Yang still sleeps with one hand on Jiangzai.

They travel for two weeks like that, sleeping under the stars.

Night-hunting, a few times. Or what Xue Yang refers to as night-hunting. Xingchen is of little use, even directly after sex and blood. He can take care of himself, but as far as taking on direct threats, or protecting Xue Yang—

“We’ll get you back up to full strength,” promises Xue Yang after he kills a spirit beast entirely on his own. “We’ll have you laying waste to the local demons in no time.”

Xiao Xingchen nods. He wishes he had put it another way. Laying waste. Destroying things...

He’d never balked at killing creatures that needed killing. Relished it, if anything. Shifu had spoken to him about it a few times, tried to help him reconcile his merciless half with the half that was almost too compassionate.

But now, when he was closer to fierce corpse than a living thing himself—

He wants to give life. Not take it.

But they're both happy enough, for the most part.

The first shadow is cast when they stop by a village to replenish their supplies.

“Take two eggplants,” urges the old man at the produce stall. “You boys look pale.”

“I didn’t ask you,” Xue Yang snaps. Seconds before he had been smiling, looking around for a stall that sold candy, but now his knife is out. “Just give me the fucking eggplant!”

“I beg your pardon, sir,” Xiao Xingchen says quickly, bowing. The words are heavy on his tongue. He hasn’t spoken to anyone other than Xue Yang since that terrible night in Tanzhou, and with Xue Yang there's no need to be artificially polite. He’s feeling jumpy surrounded by all these people, and his gait is unsteady, the world somewhat…not blurred, exactly, but distant. As if his knowing he does not belong where people live has created a physical barrier in the air, something preventing him from reaching out and touching the things around him. “He didn’t mean it.”

“ ‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ ” Xue Yang mimics as they walk away from the stall.

“Why was that your reaction to kindness?”

“He was just trying to make a sale.”

“He was trying to give you one for free.”

“Oh?” Xue Yang glances over his shoulder. “You wait here. I’ll go get another.”

“I’ll come with you—”

Xue Yang forcibly seats him on a broken-down fence in an alley. “You look like you’re about to pass out. Stay here.”

Xiao Xingchen tries to follow him, but it’s so hot, and his legs heavy, as if they’re not attached properly at the joints—

He glances around the alley. The crowded buildings look almost—wobbly—

He closes his left eye. There. Slightly better…

Xue Yang returns, whistling, cheerful again. “All ready,” he says. “Let’s go.”

“What’s that sound?”

Xue Yang glances over his shoulder at the commotion rising from the marketplace. “Oh, just some bandits.”

“Just some bandits?”

Xue Yang hauls him to his feet. “There’s no real government in place around here, not since the war. Just a lot of squabbling little sects. Come on. We don’t want to get caught up in this. Well, you wouldn’t, anyway.”

Xiao Xingchen takes a few steps, but the heat is making it hard to move quickly.

A man appears at the end of the alley, holding a long thin knife.

“Don’t!” says Xiao Xingchen when Xue Yang draws Jiangzai.

Huffing in annoyance, Xue Yang grabs him by the hand and flies over the rooftops. As they fly over the town they have a full view of the bandits ransacking the marketplace—

So Xue Yang had been telling the truth. A part of Xingchen had assumed Xue Yang had done something to cause the commotion.

He takes a closer look as they fly past, squinting. The old man from before lies slumped over his produce stall, blood staining the flagstones.

“Stop!” Xiao Xingchen clutches at Xue Yang’s arm. "They need help!"

“Make up your mind, dammit!” Xue Yang drops him on a roof and remains balanced on Jiangzai. “Are you telling me I can do what I need to do?”

“There has to be a sect around here somewhere, go find them, they can arrest them—”

“Yeah, good luck with that.” Xue Yang dives down into the marketplace, laughing, both of Jiangzai’s blades extended.

Xiao Xingchen drags himself to the edge of the roof. The tiles are like a griddle, and all around him is that same sweet smell from the Coffin House courtyard.

Which is quickly overwhelmed by the scent of blood, thick on the humid air. It envelopes him as Jiangzai whirls around Xue Yang, slaughtering the bandits like he’s harvesting wheat.

Xiao Xingchen watches, left eye covered. He counts eighteen bandits total, rapidly reduced to seventeen, then sixteen, then fifteen—

He wants to cry out for Xue Yang to stop, but all he can do is watch as Xue Yang slaughters them all. Not efficiently. Nowhere near efficiently.

He’s enjoying himself.

This is what he looked like as he turned the Chang Clan and Baixue Temple into slaughterhouses, Xingchen thinks as he watches Xue Yang, Jiangzai spinning so fast his one good eye can’t follow it, deftly cutting and slashing and thrusting with a brutal elegance, lopping off an arm there, a leg there. A predator playing with its food.

This is Xue Yang in his element. Xiao Xingchen can pretend he domesticated him, but he knows it’s a lie.

Xue Yang laughs as he kills the last bandit, his half-hysterical giggle floating up on the scent of blood, wrapping around Xiao Xingchen, and all Xingchen can think of is the last time he heard him laugh like that. Of Xue Yang’s manic laughter as he taunted him: “ ‘Save the world’? What a joke! You can’t even save yourself! Xiao Xingchen, you achieved nothing! A complete failure. You brought this on yourself! You deserve it!”

He drags himself forward, needing to see Xue Yang’s face, see how he had looked as he watched Xiao Xingchen kill Song Lan—

The last thing he remembers is falling off the edge of the roof.

****

Enjoy? AO3!

#xue yang #xiao xingchen #xuexiao #mdzsnet #fymdzs #fytheuntamed #theuntameddaily #lotus writes #Consume Me Slowly

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guqin-and-flute · 4 years

Note

I love the Yanli/JGY verse so so much, so in the hopes that a prompt might help there be more of it: JGY, being a very observant genius and all, figures out Something Is Up with WWX's core, and since what A-Li wants is to take care of Her People, and because what A-Li wants, JGY will make sure she gets, he and Yanli work together to deal with it?

[Ahhh thank you so much!! Well, THIS went off in a direction I didn’t expect, but thank you THANK you for the fascinating prompt! TW for: canon-typical alcohol use, mention of an injury, heavily implied offscreen self harm, but for a very specific reason? It’s not for self injury/mental health reasons]

[First post in Yaoli/Peony to Lotus!verse]

Wei Wuxian stared moodily out at the sunset drenched lake, sprawled on one of the docks with a jug of liquor cupped in his hand, listening to the cicadas drone far off in the trees, the crickets sing in the grass, the frogs croak in the reeds, the people far across the lake shout and laugh. Everything was so noisy. The clamor used to be such a comfort--and to most of him, it still was, filling him with the warmth of soup and long days in the sun. But there was a new ball of darkness that had tightened a cage around his heart. That sometimes sang in his veins. Reminded him that, in the Burial Mounds, there were only moments of silence and of screaming and that both were equally dangerous.

Reminded him of the unnatural quiet that lived at his core, now. Sometimes, the pitch of the insects would rise to such an edge that it would become too human, become something he had once heard in the darkness. Or uttered himself.

He splashed the alcohol into his mouth, reveling in the burn. At least it wasn’t night quite yet, the last vestiges of bruised purple-blue light clinging to the tops of the trees, brightened by the heavy moon. There were footsteps on the dock behind him, approaching light and even and he paused without turning. Then relaxed.

Jin Guangyao stopped next to him at the edge of the pier, clasped his hands behind his back and looked out at the moon that was held in a thousand little cups of the lily pads, tiny silver coins tucked beneath the lotuses. Wei Wuxian glanced up at him, saw the pleasant, directionless neutrality on his face and sat up with a grunt, leaning his elbows on his knees. He liked the man and his presence--had even grown quite fond of him over the many months he’d lived with them, but right now, he’d rather be alone with the frogs and his drink. He opened his mouth to greet him, but Jin Guangyao spoke first. “I was in the kitchen, just now, and,” he clucked his tongue against his teeth despairingly and turned his arm out with a grimace. “I cut myself by accident. I managed to focus some energy to keep it from bleeding too heavily but I have to admit that I don’t have the same schooling as you all do. It isn’t completely….”

Frowning, Wei Wuxian quickly got to his feet, taking the proffered arm in his hands with a sympathetic hiss between his teeth as he studied the wound. It was indeed not very deep, an irregular crescent on the side of his wrist, but his sleeve cuff had bloody blotches on it and the skin around it was stained with more blood than just this would have produced. “Yowch. Jin-xiong, we should get this cleaned. I can wake the doctor--or where’s shijie--”

“Actually, I was hoping that you could help me, Wuxian.”

It was Wei Wuxian’s turn to grimace. “I don’t know all that much about medicine, I wouldn’t leave this to me.”

Jin Guangyao’s smile managed to be at once anxious and reassuring as he looked away from his injury, finally, and up into his face. “I would think all you needed to do was channel some spiritual energy into it, right?”

The bottom dropped out of Wei Wuxian’s stomach, but he managed to hide the sudden queasiness behind a throwaway smile. “Ah, I’ve never been very good at that--Lan Zhan is much better. If only he were here, eh? Listen, I’ll go get--”

Jin Guangyao’s face fell into a gentle pleading. “Please, it’s so embarrassing; I don’t want anyone knowing I can’t handle a knife properly. We can handle this here, can’t we?”

“Look--”

Jin Guangyao sucked in a quick, protesting breath, but only gazed at him imploringly, eyes round and mouth twisted in discomfort. Wei Wuxian groaned and spun on his heel, dropping back to the dock with a thump beside his jug. “Ah, so particular. If you're so picky, you must not really be so close to dying, huh?” His insides writhed like snakes, his skin alive like a storm on the horizon. He wanted to leave. He wanted to dive into the water and let the silk of it swipe away all the restlessness. Stop forcing it, Guangyao….

For a moment, there was silence above him, then the soft rustle of clothing. Then, Jin Guangyao spoke in a voice very unlike the one he had just used, even and conversational and light. “I have not been able to verify any reports that say Baoshan Sanren's mountain is in Yiling. It's miraculous that you were able to recall so faithfully something from so young an age.”

At this, a surge of cold flooded Wei Wuxian, quickening his heart, tightening his chest and his fingers on the neck of the liquor jug as he looked up at him sharply. “Jin-xiong.”

Jin Guangyao looked down at him with a mild smile. Except Wei Wuxian hadn't had anything to say--he had just wanted him to stop. This wide eyed man was slyer than he had ever given him credit for, damn him. Did he…? Was he…? Fuck. Fuck.

“There has also never been a report of someone recovering after being tortured by Core Melting Hand,” he continued in that same friendly, casual tone and the liquor soaked stone that was Wei Wuxian’s stomach officially plummeted with a sick swoop.

Fuck.

“...Have you told Jiang Cheng?”

“About?”

Wei Wuxian curled a half-scowl and clicked his tongue against his teeth. He was unable to look him in the eye, though he kept him in the corner of his gaze. “You know what.”

“I haven't anything to tell. I'm only mentioning a few interesting details from my studies.”

“Is that so,” Wei Wuxian said, sullenly, flopping back onto his elbows, jaw cocked mulishly even as his fingers flexed and tapped the rough wood beneath him. “So why were you studying it, then?”

Jin Guangyao sighed breezily, rolling his neck once as if to loosen it. “Because you are troubled. Because A-Li worries. Because I have an eye for patterns. Because we are family.” He let that rest a moment before looking down at him once more, eyebrows slightly raised, mouth in the barest of smiles. “Are we not?”

“We are,” he grunted reluctantly. “Though now I regret letting someone so nosy under my roof.”

Jin Guangyao hummed a single, polite laugh in acknowledgement of the non-truth of the statement and allowed the silence to lie a few moments more. And while Wei Wuxian might be a habitual chatterbox, he surely wasn't going to help the conversation he desperately didn't want to have. “I’ve considered it, you know,” Jin Guangyao continued, suddenly, turning back to look out across the lake. “Telling someone. A-Li, Jiang Wanyin. But I thought it best to not...surprise you. Given the state of things.”

Wei Wuxian found his fingers wrapped around Chenqing stuck through his belt, the edge digging into his palm like the slow bite of an implacable serpent as his racing heart sped dangerously. That seeping ache spreading….“Meaning?”

“Wei Wuxian,” his tone was gentle reproval. “You cannot tell me you don't see how A-Li is affected by all this.”

With an effort, he peeled his hand away from the flute, batting down the prickling, caged anger. Cornered. Trapped. He heaved a sigh and sprawled further on the deck, propping his head up on his hand, squirming as if to get comfortable--more to allow the restless energy some outlet and trying to convince this man that this was simply...what? A misunderstanding? Not that big of a deal? Jin Guangyao was proving even now, in front of his eyes, that he was not in any way stupid. “I suppose I should be grateful that she has a husband who dotes on her so,” Wei Wuxian grumbled. “But does it have to be at my expense?”

“I don't know,” he countered lightly. “Does it?”

Wei Wuxian scoffed in exaggerated, dismissive disgust, but said nothing, his stomach roiling. As the silence lengthened, the restlessness grew, the nervous energy was crawling through his limbs like bugs. Why now? This was supposed to have lasted for years. No one else had looked that closely. No one else considered that there might be a reason beyond his own arrogance, his own blind bullheadedness that would lead him to dance with corpses and amulets that tore him up inside. Why did he need to look closer?

Of all the people to see him, why did it have to be him, why couldn’t it have been--?

He snapped off that line of thinking and leaned over, aggressively swishing his hand through the water, splashing it onto lily pads, up the struts of the dock, soaking his bracers. It was still warm from the heat of the day. “And so what are you going to do, then, Jin Guangyao? Because this feels an awful lot like a threat,” he demanded, all at once flipping over and sitting up with a scowl, staring at his calm face. “I don't appreciate being manipulated. Bad things tend to happen.”

“This also feels an awful lot like a threat.” When Jin Guangyao smiled back down at him, nothing noticeable in his face had changed and by all rights should still be classified as pleasant, dimples and all. But there was something--maybe the eyes--that all at once had a weight that was not there a moment ago. And maybe a warning. “Are we threatening each other? I wasn't under the impression that's what we were doing.”

For a moment, Wei Wuxian’s hackles fully rose, that restless darkness housed in his chest eagerly shifting to press against the back of his gaze. No one can make you do what you don't wish to, anymore. There is no one who can force you ever again. There is nothing you cannot do.

As if in response to these private thoughts, Jin Guangyao tilted his head, just so, smile still perfectly affixed, growing no wider and no sharper but now ever so slightly wrong for the length it sustained its unwavering stretch. For the briefest moment, Wei Wuxian’s fingers flexed.

But no. No.

He let out his breath, shoved that darkness back and away, roughly. This wasn't the Burial Mounds where the heat of that rage kept him alive. This wasn't the Sunshot Campaign where such darkness could be harnessed to help. This was wounding. This was danger.

Those things didn't belong in Lotus Pier.

Anger always felt better than fear, but that didn't mean that he had to choose it. Nothing made him turn into a fox gnawing off it's own leg in a trap in a panic. Maybe this was a mercy killing. Maybe this was even...a rescue. He rubbed his face with his palms, letting the tension fully seep out of him until he let himself wilt to the side and sprawl across Jin Guangyao's feet. “Jie-fuuuu. Jin-xioooong, why do you torture me with this? Can't you just leave well enough alone?”

Jin Guangyao huffed out a quiet, amused breath above him and the tension bled out of the night, leaving it cool and sticky once more. Crouching down, the edges of his robe brushing over Wei Wuxian's prostrate form, Jin Guangyao laid a hand on his shoulder. "If it was well enough, don't you think I would?"

"Ugh. You’re terrible."

“Mm,” he merely agreed, indulgently.

Wei Wuxian scoffed and closed his eyes, breathing in the wet, green scent of the lake. He did not want to do this. Not tonight and not any night. “Do we have to do this now?”

Jin Guangyao sighed. “I'm telling you this so you have time to prepare and have some control. But I am not going to keep this from A-Li and she will not keep it from Jiang Wanyin. I wanted to be…considerate.” The mildly thoughtful tone in his voice sort of seemed to imply that there were times he had not been considerate which Wei Wuxian found hard to picture.

He had never seen Jin Guangyao anything but patient and elegant, courteous and nonthreatening. Though, he corrected, thinking of that tacit warning he had just seen in his gaze, maybe that was not entirely true. Maybe this was something he could watch for. If not directed at him and his own, it might even be fun, this unassuming man that had the presence of someone you could fit into your pocket with ease. Perhaps he was a bit sharper than he seemed, in all respects. “I’m drunk. I don’t want to do it now.”

“You’re not drunk,” Jin Guangyao said, easily, a smile in his voice. “It would take something much stronger to get you drunk. Right now, you are numbing. That is well enough. For now. If not tonight, when?”

“I don’t know, I don’t plan things!”

“Perhaps you should. I think you would find the alternative quite unpleasant.” His tone was nothing but knowing sympathy, but the words were quite firm in their message.

“Fuck. Fuck fuck fuckity fuck.”

“Mm. If you say so.”

Wei Wuxian opened his eyes to glare up at him, his pale face sideways and framed by the stars winking on overhead. His expression was understanding and benevolent and there was no more hint of darkness in his eyes, this man who was outmaneuvering him with annoying deftness. “Don’t be funny. I’m suffering.”

His polite smile grew real and crinkled his eyes at the corners. “I wouldn’t dare.”

Wei Wuxian heaved a huge sigh, and then again for good measure. “I hate this,” he said, voice smaller than he had intended, staring up past his brother-in-law’s face into the vast darkness of the sky. “I hate this.” The anger and restlessness was gone, leaving his throat to swell and his eyes to prickle with helplessness and the brutal fucking unfairness of it all.

Jin Guangyao was silent for a while, eyes hooded and face still, before he fully settled himself on the dock arranging his dark purple robes just so around him, allowing his feet to still be Wei Wuxian’s cushion. “I would imagine so.”

The frogs shrilled their chorus around them as Wei Wuxian sniffed and swiped at the few tears that escaped his eyes, making a run down his cheeks for his ears as he lay, absorbing the thick night air. Jin Guangyao sat beside him, quietly, hands folded in his lap.

“Jiang Cheng is going to hate me,” Wei Wuxian said, finally, voice rough.

Jin Guangyao shook his head, slowly. “Be incensed; yes. Hurt; yes. Feel inadequate and insecure and violated; yes. But Jiang Wanyin does not hate you. Could not, for this. A-Li and I...we will help.”

“I don’t know what the hell to say.”

“I find, if you forgive my immodesty, that I can be very good with words.”

“...I think I’d like that.”

Jin Guangyao smiled. “Whatever you need, Wei Wuxian.”

After a few minutes of frog and cicada and cricket thick silence, Wei Wuxian all of a sudden looked back up at him. “Did you really slice your damn arm open just to prove a point?”

This seemed to startle a laugh out of him and he shook his sleeve back and glanced down at the wound with mild consideration, turning it this way and that. “To confirm a theory, but I suppose the spirit is the same.”

“You aren’t really bad with knives, are you?”

His eyes still on his arm, that smile grew just a bit more sharp and just a bit more knowing. “No. I’m not.”

#Me @ me always: you can have a little dark!JGY with your soft!JGY. As a treat.#my fic #wwx #jgy #my stuff #yaoli #text #ask #Hope you enjoy!#It's so much fun writing characters that look at JGY and think 'oh. tiny. how cute and polite'#while inside JGY is just like 'i am not to be fucked with :3 '#sparklespiff #peony to lotus #Also 🐝 anon I think your pier/dock setting was lurking in my brain for this so THANK YOU FOR YOUR FIC

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doctors-star · 3 years

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u want prompts? i am going to make shit up. how about trying to outrun a horse or piggy back rides for cowboys

“Well,” Finn says cheerfully, patting Johnny’s chest with the flat of his hand as though to reward him for good behaviour. “This may just be our dumbest idea yet.”

“Then we ain’t doin’ half bad,” Johnny objects, shifting Finn’s weight on his back as he carefully picks his way through the grasslands. In the half-dark of the moon and stars, the prairie is as a great aquamarine ocean of shifting blue-green grass that brushes against Finn’s dangling ankles as Johnny walks, and it has the curious edge of unfamiliarity and unreality in the night. Finn ain’t that heavy, and he knows the lands around Danser well enough not to be worried about getting lost, but it’s more than just the occasion that has him pressing hard for home - there’s a distinct undefined weird at play tonight, and he’s keen for familiar sights and sounds to ground him. Bitchin’ at Finn goes some way towards that. “If me carryin’ you through the night is our worst, we got a good ways to fall.”

“Oh, sure, and we’re gonna,” Finn says, still irrepressibly bright. “But we are tryin’ to outrun a horse, so. Although, I guess you’re outrunning the horse - I’m competing with the rider.”

Johnny considers, not for the first time, the merits of dropping Finn, and finds them barely insufficiently compelling. “You’re being the horse next time,” he grunts.

“Never fear,” Finn says smugly and ruffles Johnny’s hair now that he’s too pinned down to wriggle angrily away - Johnny does toss his head crossly, but this just makes him stumble. “Next time we have to run for it on foot in the night on account of how everything’s gone wildly tits up and Ainsel’s accidentally made off with our horses, you can stick your foot in a gopher hole and I’ll carry ya home.”

“Too kind,” Johnny grumbles absently, pausing to make use of a small rise and reacquaint himself with his surroundings. The desert falls off to the south, the trees forming a sharp dark line to the north and east, and somewhere between ‘em, Danser. And, god willing, Ainsel and Tommy with the horses, Will with his bag of bandages, and Noel with some helpful words of severe disapproval. No matter what Johnny had said about having yet further to fall - this displayed a level of ineptitude Noel was not, exactly, going to love.

“We’ll have more cover in the trees,” Finn points out rather more seriously.

Johnny makes a face. “Too dark - ain’t no sense in us both busting our ankles and falling in the creek in the dark.”

Finn pauses, like he’s weighing the truth of that against how funny he reckons it’d be, but concedes the point. “Desert’s a bit exposed, though,” he says, sounding resigned.

“Yeah,” Johnny says slowly, and not without confusion, as he continues down the rise and on through the grass. He shifts Finn on his back again - all right, maybe Finn is kinda heavy, or at least, his weight is wearing on Johnny - and there’s a rustle in the grass on the tree-side of them. Johnny doesn’t figure it’s much they gotta worry about: coney maybe, or gopher come out to ogle the humans outta their natural habitat - but Finn flinches away from it like he reckons the gophers have all gone rabid, or something. “I figured we’d keep going in the prairie grass ‘til we hit town.”

Finn fidgets awkwardly and nearly sends them both arse over elbow until Johnny works a hand free and smacks him quickly on the thigh. “I just-” he begins awkwardly, giving off the impression that it is only a great deal of effort that is keeping him from fidgeting. “I don’t much wanna be on prairie lands after dark, y’know.”

Johnny does not know. “I don’t wanna be out here either,” he says, bewildered. “That’s why we’re heading on home.”

“Oh, sure,” Finn says, like he’d kinda forgotten that they were desperadoes on the run, “but - I don’t wanna be here, specifically. Desert’d be fine.”

“‘Cept how we’d be shot for morons without any cover,” Johnny points out, not very gently. He twists his head awkwardly and manages a good squint at Finn’s cheekbone and a crick in his neck. “What’s eatin’ you, huh? You ain’t never gone off the prairie before.”

“Hayfever?” Finn tries.

“So help me God, Finn, I’ll drop you.”

Finn clings a little tighter, ankle flinching away from the floor. “Awright, jeez. It’s just-” he sighs massively, breath gusting down Johnny’s neck like the touch of a ghost and making him shiver. “I don’t wanna come across the Coyote.”

Johnny shifts Finn’s weight again and ignores the twinge in his back, pressing on along his straight line across the grasses to the faint lights of the town. “Coyotes aren’t that dangerous. Will says-”

“Not coyotes,” Finn corrects, “the Coyote. He, uh, might not want me hanging around long after dark. Not my patch,” he says, as if that’s cleared everything up.

Johnny raises an eyebrow. “You’ve got a feud with a coyote that’s landed you a curfew?”

“No-o,” Finn says carefully. “It’s not that bad. But. We might be better off in the desert.”

“Did you hear me about the gettin’ shot thing?” Johnny snaps, a bit louder than he had meant to. And then he stumbles forward a few more steps, emerging into a bizarre clearing of grass which he definitely had not seen from the little hill, or even one step before landing in it - this perfect circle of mown-short grass. Sitting in the middle of it is a coyote.

It tilts its head on one side.

Finn offers a sharp, nervous grin. “Technically,” he says to the coyote, “I am not on the prairie. So.”

The coyote does not so much as blink.

Johnny reckons he might be in over his head more than a little. “Desert, you said,” he declares firmly and begins trekking south.

Finn does not relax. There is a rustling noise behind them - quite a lot like the sound of a coyote following them through the grass. Johnny attempts to pick up the pace.

“I am sorry about this,” Finn says conversationally. “But can you go any faster.”

“Nope,” Johnny puffs. “You’re fuckin’ heavy.” He manages a slight increase in speed, which the coyote matches easily, and nearly trips over his own feet for it. This had not been so difficult when they’d started out - Finn seems to be getting heavier by the second, like every inch of him is slowly turning to lead.

It reminds him of a warm day when he wasn’t quite grown, but wasn’t a boy either - there had been an accident, and his Uncle Jack had died, and he was tall enough to be one of the men carrying the coffin. If, and only if, he could contain his excitement at being considered one of the men, said his mother, for long enough to behave decently, jeez. So he’d wrangled himself into solemn calm and taken up his place behind his father, and lifted when told to - and he remembers thinking, dang, why’d we need six men? Uncle Jack isn’t heavy at all. Until they’d started walking, and then Johnny had been glad of the others - but still, not too bad. But they’d kept walking. And kept walking. And by the time they’d reached the church his arms were shaking and his breath came fast and he couldn’t put Uncle Jack down fast enough, the corpse’s limbs all slowly petrifying and dragging them all down, inexorably, inevitably, into the dust.

Finn is heavy as a dead body on his back.

It is suddenly less difficult to push those last yards and hurl them both over the boundary, into the dirt. Finn is thrown from his back and rolls neatly; instinctively he tries to stand, and crumples into a small ball of hissed curses as his ankle makes itself known. Johnny himself manages to control his stumble to his knees and scramble backwards away from the grassland. He watches a black nose press through the leaves, white-glowing eyes the only thing visible in the shadows; after a considering sniff, all melt away. There is no sound, but he no longer feels eyes on him - and then there is a barking call far to the north, and the pound of hoofbeats drumming through the earth under his palms heading for the disruption, and then nothing.

He turns, very politely and calmly, to Finn. “What the fuck was that?”

Finn waves a hand dismissively. “You don’t want to know. But he’ll probably hold ‘em off for a while, as long as it’s fun to do it - we should keep goin’, though.”

“No no no-” Johnny says firmly, holding up one hand. “This - weird shit has gone on long enough. What in the god damn hell just happened to us?”

Finn narrows his eyes and tilts his head to squint thoughtfully at Johnny. In the darkness, sprawled out at the foot of the desert with limbs in every direction and propped up on his elbows, he nonetheless looks strangely alert - as though he might at any moment leap onto his twisted ankle and outdance the devil to keep them both safe. For all that the desert leaves them exposed, Johnny feels safer here than he did in amongst the prairie grasses, the same way a man feels safe from wolves behind a stock fence, for all that wolves can jump. This space has been demarcated, somehow, and called Finn’s, and Johnny don’t reckon anything else is going to come in and mess with that.

“Alright,” Finn says eventually, still with that considering tilt. “This town ain’t what you think it is. There are more things in heaven and earth, Johnny McPherson, than you ever dreamed of. There’s magic in these hills, in them stars above, in you - like as not - and definitely in me. Ainsel pretty much isn’t anything else. Sold his soul to them devilish fae.” Finn spreads his palms to the night and Johnny feels it pressing close like a crowd of people, wrapping him in the tangible darkness of a shroud, the cloying earth of the grave. “But this night - in this place - is mine. And nothing out here can hold me,” he says, eyes fixed on Johnny and black-dark in the moonlight, “not on my lands. No-one can touch me; nothing can stop me in any way that matters. Why should I fear the grave, Jonathan Elmer McPherson, when I’ve known it already? I felt its touch and it could not keep me. I am master of Danser Town, and I am chained to it like a dog. A dead-and-alive dog, black as shadow an’ the world beyond the end, and there ain’t none as can move you on without my say so. You, Jonathan Elmer McPherson,” Finn says, with a grin as cold as hard iron and as pointedly canine as a wolf - it sets Johnny’s teeth on edge, makes him shiver under his skin, makes the soles of his feet tingle with the urge to run like he’s being stabbed by a hundred tiny needles but he can’t move can’t run can’t look away from Finn’s terrible black eyes and shining silvered teeth - “you are my little lamb.” Finn raises an eyebrow in amusement. “And I will look after you.”

The desert is horribly silent for a moment. Johnny’s toes dig into the dirt. A breeze strokes through the hair at the back of his neck, and he shivers

“Well, you ain’t gotta pull my leg,” Johnny grouses, indignant more than cross. “I was only askin’.”

Finn snorts inelegantly and throws his head back to howl with laughter at the moon. Johnny feels around for a pebble and bounces it neatly off Finn’s drawn-up knee.

“An’ how come you know my middle name, anyhow?” he says, pushing up onto his feet to glower down at Finn as he snorts and tries to get his breath back under his control. “You been writin’ to my momma, or what?”

Finn unfurls, still wheezing slightly, and Johnny hauls him up onto his good foot. “Aw, never you change,” he tells Johnny fondly. “Anyhow, someone’s gotta know what gets written on your headstone. Gee up.”

“Oughtta leave you here,” Johnny grumbles, bracing for Finn’s weight. The man ain’t quite so heavy now - or not yet - Johnny reckons maybe he’d just needed a rest. They ought to make Danser, no trouble. “I thought I was a lamb, not a horse.”

“Nah,” Finn says with confidence. “I’m the lamb. You can be Saint John the Baptist.”

“I ain’t got the patience.”

“You out-walked a horse with marvellous patience,” Finn points out cheerfully. “And, as Saint John, you get to dunk me in a river and claim it was for the good of my soul.”

“Oh.” Johnny tilts his head and shift’s Finn’s weight on his back as they set out once more for home. “Well, when you put it like that.”

#was this what you were expecting #johnny with confidence: weird shit just doesn't happen round here. that'd be weird.#finn: 😬👍#morons all.#okay NOW i don't have any prompts in my inbox. i certainly expect this to remain ever so.#a town called danser

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inspirationdivine · 4 years

Text

Weight of the Word || Lydia and Rio

Timing: Current Parties: @3starsquinn and @inspirationdivine Summary: Lydia and Rio encounter an Aufhocker. Athena’s “Orion no!” senses are definitely tingling. Warnings: very brief abuse mention (Quinn parents)

Lydia hadn’t returned to the park since she’d come across the body with Morgan. In fact, as she stood as the entrance, she shivered as if ice was trickling down her spine. Maybe not the park, no matter how beautiful the sun was. What about a deeper thicket of trees? Where there was a smaller chance of finding a dead corpse because there was a smaller chance of finding anyone, while still getting that fresh summer air. She shoved her hand into her purse, to feel the cool reassuring ivory of her gun’s handle safely tucked in there. Not much help against a warden, but spellcasters died much the same way anyone else did. All the same, even as she walked through the forest, she could feel herself failing to relax, even in the light of nature’s beauty. When she heard some leaves rustle, she almost jumped right out of her glamour, pistol drawn in a moment. “Who’s there?”

Against his better judgement, Orion found himself floating throughout the trees still. He had tried staying away. The incident with the trolls had really done a number on him. One that he still wasn’t sure how to process. People like Winston and Ricky helped. Self defense was a good argument, and life or death made it sound even more reasonable. But he still couldn’t shake that feeling. That what if? If only he could have done something else. But it didn’t matter. The Scribe headquarters meant that a walk through the woods was unavoidable. Plus, he had spent so much of his life walking through the town that he had learned the quickest way around it was through the forest. That didn’t stop his heart from plummeting when he heard the rustling in the woods. He froze on the spot, refusing to even breathe on the off chance that he had run into any danger. He didn’t relax until he heard a woman’s voice and sighed in relief, slowly walking out from behind a tree and speaking loud enough for the woman to hear without trying to sound like he was being intimidating. Not that Rio even knew how to be intimidating. “It’s me. I mean just me. Rio. Rio is me.” Rio introduced himself, realizing that saying that it was him didn’t give much information to the lady, “Don’t worry I’m not here t-” His sentence was cut off when he finally caught side of the woman, gun drawn and pointed directly at him. The panic returned in an instant, and Rio jumped a mile into the sky, both hands raised in surrender and moments away from falling to his knees. “Don’t shoot me please! I’m just a college student. And part time pizza prep guy. And morgue assistant” All of that definitely wasn’t necessary, but he was frazzled. “Please don’t shoot!”

Lydia stared at him, and slowly lowered the pistol between them, gasping deeply like she’d forgotten to breathe when she saw him. She had, her heart had leapt into her throat. “You work with Regan?” She asked, staring at him, and while she held it pointed away from him, she didn’t put it away yet. They weren’t that far- Lydia blinked hard, pushing that thought far away from them. If she needed to, she could get into the trees, she could shoot him dead, and almost no one would hear her run away from the crime scene. Terror like that, though, it was hard to fake. Not that Regan was known for being a people person, or a good read on anything. “My apologies, I do not like to be snuck up on.”

Orion gave the woman a puzzled look. “The doctor?” He questioned here. He suddenly wondered if she was familiar with the doctor in normal, human size or pixie sized. Not that Rio doubted the doctor when she told him that she was not normally inches tall, but he did wonder how long she had been the height she currently was. Even more so, he had no idea what she had to do with the conversation. At least until he realized what he had said as he had failed to stumble through even the simplest of introductions to the stranger. “Oh! Oh. No. I mean, I know her but I don’t work with her. I uh- dead people.” He paused. Jesus Christ. Way to go, Rio. Really comforting way to correct yourself to the woman with a gun. “I mean- uh I misspoke. Sorry. I work at a funeral home. With dead people. I mean I don’t deal with dead people. But I work for Erin, who does.” He sighed, surprised that the woman hadn’t just shot him to put both of them out of their misery. “I’m sorry I just- I don’t like guns. At all. Especially when they’re pointed at me.” She must have realized through the incessant babbling that Rio clearly wasn’t threatening and lowered the gun, much to his own relief. He finally lowered his hands, placing one against his heart and using the other to prop himself a tree instead, taking deep breaths to make up for the oxygen he had lost rambling. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to sneak up on you. I heard rustling and wanted to make sure no one was hurt or something.” He tried explaining further, making sure not to take any extra steps in her direction to freak her out any further, “You’re uh- not hurt or something right?”

“Dead people?” Lydia repeated, squinting. “Right, I see. You work with Erin.” Not that Lydia knew who Erin was, but he loved to ramble, so she let him, still squeezing her palm around her pistol’s handle. “I don’t think many people like pistols pointed at them,” she agreed. “No, not currently,” Lydia replied, looking over herself to confirm indeed she wasn’t hurt, standing straight and dropping her shoulders. “I was merely frightened by you. Sorry. I think this town is getting to me.” All at once, it was as if she had jinxed it, she heard more rustling of leaves on the forest floor to her right, deeper in the forest. Lydia tensed up, until a little black dog burst out of the leaves and ran up to them with a bright wagging tail, playfully sniffling around them. “Hello little one. Is your owner nearby?” She asked softly, smiling as she crouched to pet the pup.

Orion couldn’t help but keep his eyes trained on the gun. Even though he was pretty sure that the woman had no plans to shoot him. Just the thing being on display made his heart beat slam against his chest. It wasn’t that surprising in all honesty, Rio could trace back to the root of his fear of guns. It was the same thing that caused most of his fears. The Quinn parents had really done a number, huh? He shook the thought away, trying to focus on the woman’s words even if he was still eyeing the gun. “Yeah uh- this town has that effect on people. You must be semi new then?” Maybe Rio would never get over his fears, but he had at least come to expect them in a town like this. Growing up in White Crest was trauma enough, especially growing up with supernatural knowledge. “I uh- I didn’t get your name, by the way.” He had introduced himself in a panic, waving around frantically in an attempt to not get shot. But the woman had never shared her own. He was quickly distracted, when another noise could be heard within the trees and Rio leapt inches into the other, hopping away from the rustling but turning towards it. He let out a nervous chuckle when he realized it was just a dog. One that the woman had seemed to take a quicker liking to than she had to Rio. He rubbed at the back of his neck and smiled at the puppy, expecting an owner to be following behind shortly, but Rio couldn’t hear anyone coming from the woods. And he didn’t see a collar either. Was it a stray? Suddenly, the dog leapt into the air, gaining an impressive height before landing on the woman. Rio stumbled forward as quickly as he could to help steady her if needed and make sure she wasn’t knocked down from the dog’s sudden pouncing. “Hey! Oh god are you okay?”

“Lydia,” she replied with a polite yet curt smile. One moment, the puppy had been sweet as syrup, tilting and stretching its little head with its eyes slowly drifting closed as she scratched under its jaw. Lydia shuffled slightly to make sense of it. She didn’t even notice the tiny snap of a twig under her heels. The dog leapt with a deep snarl - deeper than it had any right to be - and sank its claws into Lydia’s coat, ripping right through three thousand dollars worth of material. “Ow!” Lydia yelled, staggering against a tree. She tried to shake it off, all too aware of her wings glamoured away just beneath his claws. “Get it off me! Get it off!”

Either this dog really had some sort of vendetta against Lydia, or this was no dog at all. Orion’s brain began racing, a hundred possibilities running through his head. If this wasn’t a dog, what could it be? And why was it suddenly attacking Lydia? Moments ago, the animal had been happily accepting attention from the woman. Rio grabbed onto the dog, attempting to pull it free from Lydia, but even with Rio’s enhanced strength, he couldn’t get the grip free. More than that, this thing seemed to be getting heavier. Definitely not a dog. Which begged the question: What the heck was this thing? From the looks of it, Rio didn’t have much time to figure out. “Oh my god oh my god oh my god” Rio repeated again and again, letting go of the dog and hopping up and down and frantically thinking about what he could do. “Are you okay? What’s happening?” He needed information. That was the only thing he could do to help. He needed to help her before it was too late.

Lydia squealed in disgust as she fet something warm and wet drip down her back, black dog slobber messing up her clothes. He grabbed on and Lydia tried to yanked herself free from the dog, but it just grew even heavier as she flailed. “NO, don’t stop! Rio!” She cried, clutching the tree for support. “It’s heavy and it’s slobbering down my neck!” Lydia yelled frantically. It had been a day or two since she had eaten, she was strong, but not at her strongest. “Call animal control, or something!” She snapped, holding out her pistol for him. “Or shoot it! Just get it off me!” She could pull him close, press her lips to his and get all the strength she needed. Lydia stumbled, and snap, snap, snap went the twigs nearby. The beast on her back grew.

Understandably, Lydia was freaking out. Orion was too, and he wasn’t even the one being bogged down by some sort of evil dog with an unbreakable grip. The woman screaming his name pierced his skin and sent a shiver down his back. He had never heard his name screamed quite like that before. He had heard it in anger, but never in desperation like this was. He was needed. He had to do something. Otherwise, this woman could die. And Rio would have proven to be just as worthless as he was afraid he was. Lydia handed the gun off to him and Rio just stared at it for a long moment before giving it and gingery grabbing it from her, holding it by his index finger and thumb and keeping his arms extended as far away from himself as he could. But he knew this was useless. A gun wasn’t going to stop this thing. What would help was Rio’s brain focusing. He knew what this thing was. He knew he did. It was some kind of wolf. He had spent his entire life learning about supernatural beasts. There were clues here. He was growing. He couldn’t be torn off and… it was heavy. The puppy couldn’t have weighed more than ten pounds at the beginning. And Rio had realized while pulling that he was getting stronger. The puzzle pieces started to fit together, and Rio was starting to form an idea. “I can’t- this gun won’t do anything against it.” Rio admitted to Lydia, using his finger to click the safety on before finally stuffing it into his pocket. This gun wouldn’t hurt it, but Rio had an idea. He just hoped that he was right. “I- I have an idea. But we have to leave. Right now. I don’t-” Did this woman know about the supernatural? Would she think he was insane? “I just need you to trust me okay? I’m going to help you. I promise I’ll get this thing off of you.” He slid over to grab onto Lydia. Just as he thought, the weight of the dog was getting heavier and heavier. If they were going to make it anywhere, it needed to be now. “Follow me.” He spoke through rapid breaths, holding her up as he began walking.

Lydia almost asked, biting back a whimper as the beast snarled by her ear. It wasn’t a good idea to ask, because it would only frighten her more, so she grit her teeth together. What happens when it gets too heavy for me to carry? He didn’t even do anything useful when he took the pistol, looking at her like she’d handed him a bomb instead of a usable weapon. “Do something!” Instead, he clicked the safety and Lydia stamped her foot. “What do you mean it wouldn’t work?” In the non-panicked inch of her mind, Lydia knew. There were creatures bullets couldn’t kill. That didn’t mean she had to like it, but maybe this person knew what would kill it. She just had to… be strong, which was easier said than done when her stomach muscles were beginning to burn. She didn’t even smile as she felt his promise settle into place, and let his other words bind him too. If he failed and the wolf monster killed her, well, it’d probably kill him too, but if she could motivate him to stay, then Lydia would use everything she had. He grabbed her, and Lydia nodded, marvelling at how strong he was for such a compact body. “Lead the way, it’s not like- Ah, it’s not like I can go anywhere else!”

How much could Orion explain that Lydia would understand? Did she know about the supernatural? Or did she think he was absolutely insane? She certainly didn’t seem pleased that Rio wasn’t going to shoot the dog. He didn’t think a gun would work anyways, and chances were he would just end up shooting Lydia. That wouldn’t help the situation at all. But eventually, she decided to trust him. Or rather, she probably decided that she didn’t have any other choice. Trust may not have been a factor at all. As the two began walking, Rio pushing the two forward as quickly as he could, he finally answered her, “This isn’t… a normal dog” he began, biting his lip and trying to carefully pick his words before saying them aloud, “It can’t be killed by normal means. Which sounds crazy, I know. But it’s true. Seriously.” From the angle he was pushing, he couldn’t actually see Lydia’s face to determine whether or not she believed him. He supposed by this point it didn’t really matter if she believed him or not. Before long, the two would find out for sure whether Rio was right or not. Or the two would slip up. Crumble to the pressure, literally, and fall over. If Rio was right, he definitely didn’t want to see that. The two continued on, the weight of the dog getting heavier and heavier. He wasn’t sure one person would have been enough at this point. At least not one person with regular strength. But Rio’s strength would only take her so far.

If she hadn’t had a dog weighing on her back so heavily that Lydia was hunched over, if she wasn’t so frightened she could barely breath, Lydia might have sighed in relief. Obviously, it was no normal dog. So of course it couldn’t be just killed. All the same, Lydia clung to him as if her life depended on it, wondering if it did. If maybe the wolf would just climb off her when it got bored, instead of ripping out her throat. “I’ll have to trust you.” Each step out of the woods, it grew heavier and heavier, until she caught sight of one of its fangs from the corner of her eyes, and Lydia whimpered, It was as long as her fingers and glistened with drool If they weren’t both so strong. Lydia swallowed as they emerged from the woods, her legs trembling. “Where’re we going?”

This was getting harder. Not just because the weight of the dog was becoming more and more crushing, but because Lydia’s nails dug into Orion’s arm and he was at a really awkward angle right now. It would be his luck that he would end up dying from a cramp they caused the two to tumble over and get mauled by a supernatural dog. Plus side, Lydia was trusting Rio. Not that she had much of a choice at the moment, but hey, small victories! Now he couldn’t get her killed. She had put her faith in him. And speaking of faith, Lydia wanted to know where they were going. Rio didn’t like the answer, mostly because he hadn’t been back there since he ran away from the Quinn house. But despite his apprehension, he supposed the place may actually come in handy today. Plus, it was because of the forced attendance that he even knew there was one close by. Just over this hill and it would be at the bottom. “We’re uh- going to church.” Rio sighed. This was the worst.

“Right, great.” Lydia replied with a strain in her voice. She just needed to be a little stronger. It didn’t seem to be growing heavier or larger now that they were struggling up the pavement, but her legs were turning to jelly. Her side cramped up. She needed more strength in her than her most recent meal had left her. As Rio helped pull her over the hill, she eyed the side of his head. He didn’t feel all that artistic, but she only needed a tiny amount to take some of his life. Not a full meal, but a taste. Lydia leant into his grip, and sipped at his life force. It reinvigorated her, more powerful than she’d expected. He had a lot of life in him. With this new found strength of hers, they reached the top of the hill. “That one there?” Lydia asked, tilting her head to the church below.

Orion was exhausted. He had broken out into a sweat, supporting the weight of Lydia and the demon dog hellbent on murdering the two of them. Or at least Lydia, Rio wasn’t really sure on the specifics of whether the dog would pick him as his next meal or not. Hard to tell, honestly. The weight of the creature had been getting gradually heavier as the two had walked out of the forest and towards the road. The weight seemed to be getting heavier at a faster rate, or Rio’s body was beginning to give out on him. Rio couldn’t be sure, but he did know that the hunter strength and endurance seemed to be failing him at the moment. If he was supposed to be so advanced, while couldn’t he help carry a lady and one measly supernatural dog to a church? As if he needed anymore examples as to why this power was overrated and disappointed. He rolled his eyes at his own thoughts and kept forward, legs beginning to tremble under the pressure. But he continued. They were so. Freaking. Close. “That’s the one. We’re almost there.” Rio breathed heavily, wiping at the sweat that had pooled on his face. So gross. “Be careful going down. The last thing we want is to get eaten after coming all this way because we trip or something.” He was talking to himself more than Lydia, trying to verbally convince himself that if there was anytime to not be clumsy. This was the one. But even that thought was hard to remember when all he could think about was how tired he was.

“Saying things like that doesn’t help,” Lydia said, hot breath of the beast hissing down her neck, that was already wet with slobber and sweat. If they made it out tonight, it was her turn to drink a large vaseful of wine. If. That was a terrible thought indeed. If she needed it, she could pull more life from him to sustain her own strength, but his was still more than hers for the moment. They wouldn’t fall, they wouldn’t fall, they wo- Lydia groaned as she dropped her elbows onto the stone wall by the church, her knees ready to buckle. “Now what. Now what!” She yelled. He’d promised he’d help her, so why wasn’t he helping? Why wasn’t he doing anything?? Lydia yelled in pain as the church bells rang the hour. One, two, three… The beast on her yelped, and Lydia almost collapsed as it jumped from her back, shrinking down to the black furred pup it had been before, and ran back up the hill. Lydia’s knees buckled and she groaned as she fell to the ground, pressing her forehead against the cool wall. “How- how did you know?”

They made it to the church. Somehow, they had made it to the church. And yet… the dog hadn’t left. Orion fought back tears from escaping, not that it would have been that noticeable through the sweat. But the sniffling definitely would have been embarrassing. He needed to get inside of the church. Or he needed to throw something. He couldn’t even muster up the strength to pull his phone from his pocket and check the time. He was too tired. Too drained. The stone wall was a welcome reprieve, but it only gave them a short break. He couldn’t keep it up much longer. He couldn- His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the church bells. Holy crap. The sound was loud and echoed, every chime like a nail being jammed into Rio’s eardrum, stupid hunter hearing. But even as he winced and tried to shove his elbow against an ear to block some of it out, he was so happy to hear that noise. Rio held his breath, hoping that he hadn’t been wrong this whole time. He was beginning to doubt himself, when nothing immediately happened. But finally the animal hopped off of Lydia’s back, a tremendous weight being lifted from both of their shoulders and the dog ran back up the hill, returning to the small size it had been. Rio collapsed onto the ground, rolling over onto his back and letting the grass, cold and moist from dew, cool the back of his neck. He was almost tempted to roll up his sleeves and let the grass cool his arms. Almost. Instead, he remained motionless on the grass, his eyes closing as he finally regained some normal breathing. “I- I read about it.” Rio explained, peaking an eye open to glance at Lydia, who looked just as tired as he did. “It’s called an Aufhocker. It doesn’t like loud noises or the sun. It really doesn’t like church bells.” As if speaking the name brought back the memories, an epiphany finally hit Rio. The twigs! It had been growing in size because of the twigs. That’s how that happened. Would have been real helpful information an hour ago. “I’m uh- glad that it worked honestly. I’ve never actually been around one of those things in real life.”

Lydia panted hard, unsure if she’d ever be able to stand up again. The rock wasn’t enough to cool her, but as she lay there, effectively kneeling in front of the church, Lydia laughed. She prayed briefly, for kindness and forgiveness, and safety from whatever had just attacked her. An Aufhocker. “I’m incredibly fortunate you had read about it then.” She promised herself that she would ask Jared about them later, although perhaps without mentioning how close she’d come to her own demise. She looked sideways at the boy collapsed in the grass. “You could have left me. I am grateful that you didn’t.” Lydia spoke in short bursts, her chest aching from the exertion on her back. “You’re strong, your hearing is sensitive, you have so much… you’re warm.” She’d almost told him he had so much life in his, but that was a strange thing to say. “You aren’t… What are you?” A werewolf, perhaps? Lydia slowly twisted so she could sit leaning against the wall instead of just pressing her forehead against it. All she could think was… thank god she wasn’t wearing heels today.

Lydia didn’t seem completely opposed to the idea of the aufhocker. Whether that was because she had just witnessed the beast for herself or because she was already familiar with the supernatural, Orion couldn’t be sure. In a town like this, it seemed like it would be hard not to know about it. But that never seemed to stop the majority of its residents from living their lives in ignorant bliss. Or uh- dying in it as well. As morbid as that was to consider. “I wouldn’t have left you.” Rio sat straight up at her comment, a wave of dizziness rushing to his head that almost forced him to lie back down. But he stayed upright, his legs still displayed against the greenery of the church yard. “You were in trouble. If I left you back there-” He didn’t know how to finish the sentence. He’d be as much of a monster as that thing? Was the Aufhocker even a monster? It was certainly dangerous. His parents had been sure to drill that point home. But Rio was more interested in why it did what it did. “I couldn’t do that.” He settled on. And then practically filling in the blanks for Rio, Lydia questioned his strength. So she definitely knew something about the supernatural. “Uh-” Rio didn’t know what to say. Would she know what a hunter was? Would she be glad to hear it or displeased? “I’m a human. Mostly. I just have… some special abilities. Heightened senses and what not.” He didn’t want to come clean. To admit to something that he wasn’t. As if to drive the point home, just in case she did know what a hunter was, he clarified “I’m glad he lived through that. The dog… thing. I don’t think I could have killed it. I mean… I’m not sure they are killable. But like, also I don’t really kill things.” Rio sighed, was that obvious enough? “You uh- don’t seem all that shocked about a growing dog and a kid with super strength.” He winced at himself for labelling himself as a kid. How did he expect others to stop doing it when he was doing it himself?

Everything he said about how he couldn’t have possibly left Lydia went right out the window when he told her what he was. Or rather, when he didn’t tell her what he was. Lydia, who had barely had time to recover from the bone crushing weight of the Aufhocker, began to panic once more. Blood rushed in her ears as she tried to stand up. It was a trap All this had been a trap. To what? Get her to a more convenient hunting ground? An easier place to hide her body?? “Oh god,” Lydia whimpered as she reached for her pistol, only to remember it was in his pocket. He’d disarmed her and exhausted her with a terrifying brilliance. “No, no, please,” She whimpered, scrabbling to her feet. She wobbled as she stepped back, and stumbled into the wall. Her chin trembled, eyes springing full of tears. “I didn’t do anything. Please. I won’t - get away from me! Get away from me! HELP!”

Orion honestly had no idea what had just happened. One moment, the two were catching their breaths after escaping near certain death together. They were casually talking in what may have been the least awkward conversation Rio had ever had with a stranger. Something about the exhaustion had sapped the anxiety from him. Well, at least until Lydia had started freaking out, screaming at him and trying desperately to get away from him, leaving him lying there in the grass, completely dumbfounded. “Hey! Hey! What’s wrong?” Rio crawled up to his feet, his energy already beginning to return to him. Okay, maybe the hunter endurance hadn’t completely failed him after all. Though clearly, standing up and towering over the woman hadn’t been the right choice. Seeing the error immediately, Rio dropped back down, this time onto his knees. As he did, he felt a stabbing pain in his side, and with a sudden, fear inducing realization he realized that he had come this entire way carrying a freaking gun. He felt hot all around. He hated guns. Hated them. “I don’t know what’s going on- but I’m not going to hurt you!” He held his hands up in surrender, his palms facing towards Lydia and slinking away from her. Clearly, it was best not to move any closer to her. “I don’t- Please don’t leave me with your gun. I hate guns.” He pulled the gun from his waist, making sure to angle it away from Lydia and setting it on the grass between them, as far from himself as his arms would reach. “I also hate getting shot so uh- please don’t shoot me?” He tried for a smile, but he could feel his lips trembling. This was a gesture of good faith, yeah? Lydia wasn’t actually going to shoot him. Right?

Lydia tried to scrabble further back as he towered over, her scream turning into a squeak, her legs too weak to get up and run the way she needed. Chances were, even if she tried he’d gun her down. Whimpering at that thought, she clung to the wall, urging herself to get back up, run, do anything other than lie there and die. He dropped back down to his knees as a trick, to get her to calm down. Why?? He’d won. All he had to do was to lunge forward and snap her neck, or shoot her, or use any of the dozen knives he must have on his person to tear into her. Maybe he was one of the cruelest ones, that liked to play mind games before slowly tearing them apart. “Please, I haven’t - I don’t hurt people, please,” She flinched as he raised his hands, even if it was in surrender, and he spoke. Lydia grabbed his words and twisted them into a promise too. He wouldn’t hurt her, he said, and now he couldn’t. Maybe he didn’t know what she was. Lydia panted, sitting a little more upright. Flinching as he pulled out her pistol, Lydia watched him set it on the grass and then lean back. Her gaze darted from him to the pistol, and back to him, before Lydia lunged for the pistol, and aimed it right at him. “Don’t move. You’re a hunter!”

Maybe giving the gun back to her had been a bad idea. As far as decisions went, it hadn’t been one of Orion’s smartest choices. But when had Rio ever been applauded for making particularly intelligent choices? He swore he was the dumbest smart kid alive. “I don’t hurt people either.” Rio tried to reassure Lydia. That was why he was giving up the gun. A peace offering of sorts. Only, Lydia grabbed the gun and trained it on him. Rio felt his heartbeat jump and he kept his hands held up in surrender. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. He kept repeating the mantra to himself. Over and over hoping that he would follow his own advice. “I’m not!” Rio frantically claimed, his voice was erratic and came out scratchier than he had intended. Of course this was about being a hunter. This was the response that he expected every time someone found out. This was the response he deserved. He took a deep breath to try to gather himself before trying again, “I’m not.” Okay, that sounded a bit better, “I mean genetically yes. I guess. But I’m not like them. I don’t hunt. Anything.” He supposed he couldn’t honestly say that he hadn’t killed anything. The troll was a near constant reminder of that. “I don’t want to hurt you. Just like I didn’t want to hurt the Aufhocker.” How did people stay calm with a gun pointed at them? Rio was seconds away from hyperventilating, a minute from a full on panic attack. At that point, Lydia probably would shoot him, “Please don’t shoot me. I- I don’t want to die.” Now. Finally. He truly didn’t want to die.

Lydia’s arms trembled just from the weight of holding up her tiny pistol. All of her was exhausted. The trembling could just as much be terror. She swallowed, slowly getting to her feet. She’d need a cab to get her home, but she couldn’t call one when he was still there. Her legs wobbled. “I am not like that animal!” Lydia wanted to glance around, in case it was coming back, but wardens moved fast as lightning and carried iron in their veins. He didn’t need a weapon when he was the weapon. “I don’t want to die either! And the last thing I need is a dead hunter that other hunters want to avenge. I don’t- I don’t understand. So what, you don’t hunt, but instead you’ll tell every hunter you know about me? How is that better?” Her voice cracked, not even aware that exhaustion had her lowering the barrel. He couldn’t hurt her. He couldn’t hurt her. It wasn’t a reassuring mantra in the slightest. “Why should I believe you?”

This wasn’t going well. Orion couldn’t keep his composure for much longer. If the shaking and heavy breathing could even be considered composed. He would have a full on meltdown soon. And he didn’t think that Lydia was exactly the type to fetch his inhaler for him. Okay, well Rio had not meant to compare her to the creature before, but noted. If Lydia wasn’t human… what was she? Clearly not a werewolf, Rio would have sensed it. Unless she had some sort of magic to stop it. He wondered if Winston knew anything about that. “We don’t have to! Neither of us should die. We got away from the thing trying to kill us!” They had worked together. Gotten through the forest, and over a hill and to a church of all places. Wasn’t that like bonding? Couldn’t they be friends or something now? “I don’t think there are many hunters that would be dead set on avenging me” Rio found himself saying, then immediately cursed himself for practically giving her an excuse to shoot him. Nic probably wouldn’t be happy. Maybe Kaden and Alain. Athena would definitely lose her mind, but Athena would have no regrets about killing this woman regardless. “I don’t even talk to hunters. Not really!” That wasn’t the entire truth, but it was true enough. “I don’t like hunters. Or hunting. I want to protect the supernatural. Not hurt them. I-” He broke off into a sob. There it went. He knew he couldn’t hold the tears back forever. “I don’t know how to prove it to you. Or how to get you to believe me. But I’m telling the truth!”

He sounded so much like Lydia had moments ago, pleading for his life.The difference was that he kept putting himself down, telling her how little he was worth to others, which would only make it easier to kill him. He sobbed as she stared at him. It wasn’t pity. It certainly wasn’t empathy. It was the cold, calculating cogs of Lydia’s mind that had her slowly lowering the gun, until it wasn’t pointed at him any more. Once again, she was ready to change that at a moment’s notice. Which was a second’s length away from being ready to shoot at a moment’s notice. She had to trust the promises, and look beyond the terror of the last hour. Beat the fear, and see the opportunity here. He wasn’t valued by other hunters. He didn’t hunt. He wanted to protect. There was a treasure trove to use here, if only she could get her own heart to stop screaming. Humans like him had killed her sister, but if she could see past that…. Lydia swallowed. “You know, this really wasn’t what I was planning to do with my afternoon,” she said softly, her voice breaking around her chuckle.

Orion didn’t want to look anymore. If he was going to die, he didn’t want to see it happen. So he shut his eyes. Tried picturing better things. Like that day at the carnival, surrounded by his closest friends, hours away from holding hands with Winston. He thought about dying his hair with Blanche. Pleasant memories, even if both times had been coupled with different traumatizing events. He thought about Layla and how it had felt when the two had escaped from the vampire. Or how close he felt to Nic, despite how different the two were. How he wished he had more time to watch anime with Skye and Winston, or to help Skye figure out that being a Selkie wasn’t as bad as she thought it was. But the longer he sat there thinking about all of these things, he realized that he was still here, doing just that. He hadn’t been shot yet. He risked opening an eye, blinking through the tears and looking at Lydia. She had lowered the gun. Rio opened both eyes now, staring a bit wide-eyed at her. He hadn’t expected this. With Lydia, it seemed like he didn’t really know what to expect next. When Lydia spoke again, Rio laughed through one last sob, using his sleeves to wipe away at the tears that had been streaming down his face. “Me neither.” Rio agreed. Now he was emotionally drained along with physically drained. He fell back from the spot he had been anchored to, falling back on his beat and cradling his knees against his chest in a fetal position. His knees stung from how long he had been resting in that position, “I don’t- Neither of us wants to hurt the other. I don’t think.” At least, considering she had pulled the gun away, he hoped that she didn’t want to hurt him. “Maybe we can just call a cab. And go home?”

Lydia pulled a handkerchief from her purse, and held it out for him to wipe his face properly, if he so wanted it. Her eyes were red, her mouth full of fearful saliva, her hair messed beyond recognition and her clothes destroyed too. She sat outside a church with a gun in her hands and a hunter in front of her. It might as well have been a nightmare. A hunter that didn’t hunt, no less, that was cowardly and weak emotionally. Her lips quirked slightly, as if she was feeling self-deprecating, or self conscious. “No, I don’t want to hurt you,” Lydia agreed softly. Not for now, anyway. She sat on the wall, looking over the graveyard of the church. A dozen tombstones as old as her dotted the grounds. Lydia itched for a bath, for a hot drink, and the comfort of Remmy’s pleasant presence. Maybe she’d even make those plans to meet with Deirdre in the mirror district, and work out how to make their fairy ring debacle right again. That was one friend she couldn’t afford to lose. “I think that’s- I think that’s probably a good idea. Rio, right? Can I pay for your cab?”

There was a wave of relief as Orion realized that he wasn’t dying. Especially at a church, which was objectively the worst place that he could possibly have been killed. He took the handkerchief timidly from Lydia and patted at his cheeks softly. He didn’t know how these things worked. Was he supposed to give it back to her now? Would she ever want it back? “Thank you” He nodded. Finally, Rio risked standing again. He slowly pushed himself off the ground, climbing to his feet and testing the waters. His leg had fallen asleep, and his body ached all over from the walk, but other than that he was functional. He wobbled away from Lydia, only a few feet away, just enough to lean against a tree and shake his leg in an attempt to wake it up. “You really don’t have to do that.” Rio smiled. He almost offered that they just share one into town. But he decided that going their separate ways would probably be for the best today. “But uh- I can order a lyft or something. One for each of us.” Rio pulled his phone from his pocket. The only reason he even had the app had been because of Blanche. He used to just drive or walk anywhere he needed to go. “Do I uh- Do you want the handkerchief back?” He asked Lydia, holding it up for show.

Lydia’s eyes flickered as he thanked her. If she hadn’t known already, Lydia was certain of it now - he had never had a long conversation with a warden about hunting. She smiled, as graciously as she could manage considering both their states, accepting it completely. All the same, when he stood up, Lydia tensed, hand tightening around the handle of her gun. Trying not to look like her heart was planning its evacuation from her chest. “I’ll order my own, don’t worry about it.” She said softly, tapping away at her phone when he addressed her again. Lydia looked up, and shook her head. He really was practically a child. “Keep it,” Lydia said. Just like she would keep the three promises binding him to her close to her chest, to be saved for another time.

#wickedswriting #the working docs title for this 'soft and definitely fine'#para #chatzy #rio

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patchwork-panda · 4 years

Text

If A Moment Is All We Are (ch 11/?)

AO3 link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24121633/chapters/61459765

I thought I was going to throw up.

My nerves were already bad enough even before I got into the police car, but as I sat in the back with Kunikida, our driver rushing us towards the nearest police station, every jostle and bump in the road made the bile rise higher and higher in the back of my throat. I turned to look at Kunikida, who was sitting one seat over from me by the other window and wondered how he could look so calm.

After we had identified the corpse as Taneda Mayu, the second woman reported missing, given her clothes and whatever identifiable features remained, I’d been given all of two minutes to finish freaking out before Kunikida pushed me towards the nearest police vehicle and joined me inside. Now that Mayu had been found, the police needed to complete the autopsy and call her parents for identification; since we were still officially helping the police on this investigation, Kunikida and I would be joining them.

Normally, we wouldn’t be allowed to stick our noses this far into an official investigation but Kunikida somehow managed to convince the police that we needed to talk to Mayu’s family before they delivered the bad news. They would let us borrow an interview room for a few minutes and there, I would need to activate my Ability and see if I could use my visions to learn something—anything—that could lead us to Mayu’s killer. Hopefully, I would see something important enough that would allow us to save the others before it was too late. If Mayu’s body had already turned up, then there was a possibility that Suzuki Yoshiko, victim number one, was also dead already too and that the other missing women would follow shortly if we didn’t hurry.

But there were several problems with this plan.

I never had full control of my Ability in the past, was terrified of activating it for the past several months to a year and I hadn’t even tried using it since joining the Agency. In fact, the very last person I had been in physical contact with was Dazai, which meant nothing considering his Ability nullified mine before it could even activate.

President Fukuzawa had said I should have control of it by now and Atsushi had mentioned the side effects being less severe but since I hadn’t tried using my Ability again since joining the Agency, I still didn’t have any idea to what degree either of these statements would be true. Sure my eyes looked normal again but would that be it? Would touching the Tanedas still result in nausea, dizziness, debilitating headaches or possibly even blacking out? Or would I see things from the perspective of someone who couldn’t give me any useful information?

Or worse... would I be forced to witness yet another death?

We hit another pothole and I slapped my hand over my mouth.

From his side of the vehicle, Kunikida glanced at me.

“Carsick?”

Not trusting myself to answer, I nodded weakly.

“I see.”

He pointed out the window, at the streetlights we were passing as they flickered on one by one. The sun was starting to set.

“Try counting the lights. We can’t roll down the windows back here but this might distract you. If it makes you feel better, we’re almost there.”

In the light of the setting sun, his gray-green eyes looked softer than usual.

“You can do this, Kusunoki. I believe in you.”

Nodding again, less hesitantly this time, I returned my attention to the outside and started counting. As the sky darkened and night began to fall, I began to see my face and the inside of the car reflected more clearly on the darkened glass of the window. I could see Kunikida, sitting there by the other window in the back seat, flicking through his phone with his arm propped up against the door and his long legs crossed in front of him. He looked slightly uncomfortable because of the hard seats and the overall lack of room (he was a hundred eighty-nine centimeters tall, after all), but other than that, he seemed completely at peace. And for some reason, seeing how calm Kunikida was as he sat there made me feel calmer as well.

As the car slowed to a gradual stop in front of the police station, I realized my nausea had long since faded away.

***

Kunikida shut the door behind us as the fluorescent lights clicked on overhead.

The interview room was warm and well-lit, with a couple of leafy plants in one corner and a set of filing cabinets in another. In the center of the room was a single, simple wooden desk with two chairs on either side; two were for us, and two were for Taneda Mayu’s parents, both of whom would be coming for this interview.

The nerves that had faded away on the car ride over came back with a vengeance as I realized that while I’d seen dead bodies before, this would be the very first time I had to meet with the relatives of someone who had passed—my first time seeing such grief in person. I was about to turn to Kunikida to ask how he dealt with it when the door opened once again and an older couple walked in.

My breath stilled in my lungs as I looked upon the woman’s face, which would have been an exact copy of her daughter Mayu’s over twenty years ago. Like her daughter, she was quite tall for a Japanese woman and had large, expressive brown eyes. Her husband, a man with a head of delightfully curly black hair, stood just a little shorter than her, but he kept one hand out to hold hers as they slowly came towards the desk where Kunikida and I would be interviewing them. Both the Tanedas were kind-faced and polite and as we bowed across the room to each other, I realized that they had no idea what they were about to hear.

My stomach clenched painfully as I heard the hopefulness in Mr. Taneda’s voice.

“Detectives,” he stated, his voice quavering a little as he looked from me to Kunikida. “Thank you for your hard work. We came as soon as we could.”

Kunikida nodded.

“Of course, sir.”

He gestured to the table and all four of us sat.

As Mrs. Taneda gingerly took her seat, I saw her knobby hand grip the armrest gently and my pulse went up the moment I saw her bare hands. To steady myself, I took a deep breath in and tried to put what I hoped was a polite smile on my face. I quickly stopped when I realized it must look more like a grimace.

“We called you here because we’d like to go over some things with you once more,” Kunikida explained, his back straight and his tone professional.

Shooting me a quick, meaningful glance, he put his elbows on the table and leaned forward a little, as if asking me to copy him. When I didn’t move, however, he pulled a photograph out of one of the police folders and slid it across the table towards the Taneda’s, throwing me another look as he did so. Very slowly and very hesitantly, I also put my arms up on the table, my bare fingers slightly outstretched.

“This is a copy of one of the photos you gave the police recently, correct?” Kunikida asked.

“Yes,” Mrs. Taneda said, smiling a little as she glanced down at the picture. “This was taken a couple months ago, at a family gathering. She really loved that dress.”

“And that bracelet,” Mr. Taneda said, pointing to Mayu’s wrist in the photograph. “She insisted it was too much for us to give her something so expensive but she earned it. She did just start her new nursing job, after all.”

His fingers lingered on the photograph as he passed it back to us and I realized I had an opportunity to touch his hand.

But for some reason, I couldn’t move.

It’ll only be for a second. Maybe even less. A single brush will do it.

Mr. Taneda took his hand off the photograph and withdrew it and before I could bring myself to even try, my chance was already gone. I could feel Kunikida’s eyes on me but I wouldn’t look at him.

I felt, rather than heard, his sigh.

“Okay. I know this question has been asked before but I’d like to just confirm it,” Kunikida continued, not a trace of tension in his voice, “To our knowledge, you were the last people to see Mayu that afternoon when she went out for a tennis game?”

“That’s right,” Mrs. Taneda said. “She was supposed to meet a friend at a rec center between our house and the friend’s, but her friend said she never arrived and called us instead.”

“She didn’t have a tracking feature on her cell phone but it appears she at least got to this station,” Kunikida said, returning to the map and holding it such that all four of us could hang onto it if needed. “At least, that’s what our latest information indicates.”

He wasn’t lying; that information had literally just been handed to us as we’d walked in this room. Kunikida pointed to a spot not far from where Mayu had been reported missing. It was a train station that connected to the line that ran right by Saeki Mei’s place of work: the convenience store. I stared at it, and then looked back up at Kunikida, who was not looking at me but at the Tanedas in front of us.

I could tell he was just buying me enough time to try to attempt a touch (he knew how little time I actually needed) but try as I might, I just couldn’t bring myself to move. I could barely even breathe.

“Any idea on possible routes she might’ve taken? Stores or cafes she liked to drop by near this area?”

As the Tanedas leaned in to study the map, I saw that there were wrinkles on one corner of the map. Without thinking about it too hard, I reached forward and went to smooth it out, but out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mrs. Taneda reach out as well; it seemed she had the same idea. If I just let my hand collide with hers for a moment, I would have what I needed.

Time seemed to slow.

Our fingertips were but centimeters apart.

But at the last minute, I looked up into Mrs. Taneda’s face...

...And saw Mayu’s dead, bloated face flipping over in the river, her sunken eyes boring into mine.

“NO!!”

I pushed back away from the table, nearly knocking over the table as I fell back in my seat, the metal chair I’d just been sitting in crashing to the ground with me in it. I scrambled to my feet to see the Tanedas looking just as terrified as I had been a moment earlier. Kunikida...

I froze.

I had seen him looking angry at Dazai before but nothing prepared me for the sheer fury I saw in his eyes. I looked away and ducked for the chair.

“I’m sorry—I’m so, so sorry—” I stammered, bowing hastily as I picked it up with shaking hands.

But before I could upright the chair, Kunikida’s hand descended on my shoulder.

His hand never leaving my shoulder, I felt him pick up the chair next to me and instantly set it on the ground in one smooth motion. The legs scrunched up against the carpet just enough for me to hear it as it settled and before I could move away, his grip on my shoulder tightened considerably.

“I’m very sorry about this but could you please excuse us for a moment?”

His voice might’ve still been gentle and professional but I could tell that Kunikida was barely holding it in.

“Kusunoki?”

His glasses flashed as he turned to me.

“Can I talk to you outside for a second?”

***

The door crashed shut behind us and I winced.

“What are you doing?” Kunikida snapped. His voice echoed off the walls of the interrogation room the police officers had lent us, making me feel like I was the suspect in our kidnapping-turned-murder case.

“What the hell happened back there?!”

“I’m sorry!” I exclaimed, bowing because I had no idea what else to do. “I don’t know what came over me. I—I tried to reach out to touch Taneda-san but then she looked up and I saw Mayu and—”

“Mayu is not here,” Kunikida stated. “Her mother is. I know they look alike but you need to think about the person in front of you and the case we’re trying to solve. Don’t lose focus.”

“I... I know,” I stammered, clutching my arms to my sides.

I was shaking.

“I... I just need a minute. I haven’t used my Ability in so long and I don’t want to see another corpse—”

“You don’t want to see another corpse, huh?”

Kunikida’s voice dropped to a deadly whisper.

“Do you think any of us want to see another corpse?”

I heard the click of footsteps and looked up to see him advancing on me, a steely glint in his eye.

“Let me remind you, Kusunoki-kun,” he growled, “that Taneda Mayu is one of four—no, five—women who have gone missing within the last ten weeks. If we don��t solve this case fast, we are going to be fishing many more bodies out of Yokohama’s canals within the next several weeks, I guarantee it.”

He was right. There would be more.

And one of them would be Mei-chan...

As I thought about the girl at the convenience store with the long, black ponytail, the one who had been so nice to me that she’d cheered me up after a long hard day, Kunikida’s tall figure slowly disappeared behind a panel of rippled glass. I felt something cold on my face when I blinked and realized they were tears.

I quickly reached up to wipe them away just as I heard Kunikida’s voice again. He sounded more tired than stern.

“Get it together, Kusunoki.”

His large hands descended upon my shoulders again and I looked up through the spaces between my fingers to see him looking down at me from his considerable height.

“Listen to me. Taneda Mayu was killed very recently—within the last several days, the officer said. She was the second to go missing, which means there are still three—no, four—missing women who could still be found and saved, including your friend Mei.”

His hands were heavier than ever on my shoulders but his voice had softened a little. I put down my hands so I could better see his face.

“I know you’re scared of what you’re going to see,” Kunikida said quietly. “I am too, but I know you can do this. I brought you on this case because I know—because I have seen what you’re capable of. Stop letting your fear get the better of you and stop running away from your own Ability!”

He gritted his teeth and his grip tightened on my shoulders.

Kunikida looked like he was in pain and I was the one who had done this to him. I felt something constrict around my heart.

“Kunikida-san...?”

“When you asked me to let you join the Agency,” Kunikida whispered, his sage-colored eyes never leaving my face, “You said you wanted to help people. Is that still true or not?”

He may not have shouted but in the silence following his words, his voice echoed around the room.

“Is that still true or not?”

“It is...” I answered, my voice barely audible even to myself. “I want to save Mei-chan. I have to save her...”

“Then save her,” Kunikida said, squeezing my shoulders so tightly that they almost went numb. “Bring back the Kusunoki Kyou who ran back inside the art gallery to try to help me. Bring back the girl who tried to fight off Yasha Shirayuki with a pair of office scissors.”

His voice dropped so low I had to strain to hear it.

“Bring back the girl I vouched for when Dazai said she had potential.”

My shaking hands stilled at last.

For a moment, we just stared at each other. We were standing so close to each other that I could see my face reflected in Kunikida’s glasses. My eyes were red and I was still crying but I no longer looked scared.

Because I no longer felt scared.

Kunikida was right. I needed to stop running away. Both he and Dazai had vouched for me and I had passed the test; I was a member of the Armed Detective Agency now and I needed to start acting like one. If I didn’t stop running away now, then when would I? A year? Two years? More? If I continued to let my fears and anxieties make my decisions for me, I’d be right back where I started: hiding away in a cheap studio apartment, spending my days idling away with nothing to do but wait for my life to someday end.

This stopped now.

I let out a loud, undignified sniffle and started wiping my face again. When Kunikida let go of me and started backing away, I called out to him.

“It’s okay.”

I gave one last sniff, wiping my face with the tissue he awkwardly handed to me and blew my nose.

“How embarrassing of me...”

Kunikida was right. I was better than this. I should know that better than anyone, having risked life and limb to join the Agency, to gain control of my powers. I had to learn to face up to my fears if I was going to save Mei and the others... and if I were to become anything like Kunikida and the other detectives at the Agency.

I put away the tissue, took in a deep breath and straightened up.

Even at my full height, I was still a full head shorter than Kunikida but he was looking at me as if I stood taller than I was.

“Thank you, Kunikida-san. I’m fine now.”

I pushed past him and went to the door. When I had the thin handle of the doorknob in my grip, I turned to him and smiled. I could feel resolve burning in my chest.

“I’m going to save Mei-chan. I’m going to save all of them. And I’m going to touch as many hands as I need to do it.”

Kunikida crossed his arms over his chest.

“Good.”

***

“Sorry about that,” I said as I sat back down in my chair. “I thought I saw a uh... spider...”

“Oh, it’s okay!” Mrs. Taneda murmured, putting her hand over her mouth. “Are you alright?”

“I am,” I said hastily, hoping to move on from my stupid, made-up lie.

Even worse than the lie was the fact that Mrs. Taneda kind of reminded me of my own mother, and lying to my own mother had never been easy...

“But more importantly, we should finish up. I’m sorry we had to bring you here so abruptly, I’m sure you have things to do this evening.”

As I sat, Kunikida closed the door to the room and the puff of air lifted the map off the table and onto the floor.

“Oh!”

At once, Mrs. Taneda and I both reached for it and this time, I didn’t shy away from physical contact. A couple of fingers touched and although nothing happened at first, the moment I closed my eyes, an image washed over me...

I am in an old apartment complex. The door is open. Several people are inside the main living area. There, in the corner of the room, is a small shrine, a photo of Taneda Mayu framed in black sitting inside the wooden box. There is a bowl of incense, some oranges and a tiny teddy bear placed before the photo. These were all Mayu’s favorite things.

I smile and lay down one final item the detectives managed to recover from the killer’s home: a thin, silvery bracelet, the one Mayu had never taken off since the moment we bought it for her.

I do hope Mayu doesn’t mind that I kept it for her shrine. It was too late to bury her with it...

I clap my hands together and pray before the image, recalling my daughter’s laugh and her cheerful voice. Tears run down my face as I feel my husband walk up behind me and join me in prayer...

I heard someone clearing their throat loudly behind me and I realized it was Kunikida, I was still in the interview office and Mrs. Taneda had meekly retracted her hand. I couldn’t have been out that long but my fingers had definitely lingered long enough for the situation to get awkward. Shaking my head abruptly, I snapped back the map and rubbed my eyes.

I could feel a slight headache coming on but interestingly enough, it was nowhere near as bad as it had been the last time, when I’d seen that vision of Mrs. Yamazaki. Atsushi was right. The side effects really were becoming less severe...!

“Sorry. I think I fell asleep for a second.”

The name of the condition finally came back to me and I tried to force a laugh.

“I actually have narcolepsy...”

The Tanedas looked a little concerned so I sat back in the chair and gave the map back to Kunikida, who seemed to have understood what happened. He could tell from the look in my eyes that I’d seen something but wasn’t sure how useful it might be.

I faced Mr. Taneda and tried to think of a way to pull myself out of the vision once I was in. Kunikida making a noise definitely worked but how could I get myself out of it? I wouldn’t always be working with a partner on these assignments in the future and I had to learn how to do this on my own. Somehow, I would need to be able to move my own body or make it react while I was still occupied looking through someone else’s eyes, at another time. In a flash, it came to me.

I needed something heavy I could drop...

I put my messenger bag, the one I’d been carrying with me everywhere since starting my job at the Agency, on the corner of the table. Then, I looked around for something I could comment on, some way to get Mr. Taneda to lean forward a little more. I didn’t think reaching for a dropped item would work twice; it might look a little strange and I’d come across as even more unprofessional than before. To avoid arousing suspicion, I enlisted Kunikida’s help.

“By the way, Kunikida-san, what time is it?”

Raising one eyebrow, he lifted his watch up off the table.

“It’s six-thirty one.”

“You sure about that?”

I pointed to Mr. Taneda’s watch, a small, digital device that wrapped loosely around his wrist.

“I think yours is running a little fast. Look at Taneda-san’s watch.”

As both men leaned forward to compare, I subtly touched the tips of my fingers to Mr. Taneda’s wrist, taking care not to touch Kunikida’s (I wasn’t sure I could handle two people at once). This time, when I felt the pull, like I was circling a large drain, I was ready and I bumped into the table leg so that my bag would fall to the ground. I had two seconds before the sound of my stuff hitting the floor would wake me up...

I am walking in the streets. It’s mid-afternoon judging by where the sun is in the sky. I’m following the river where she was found…

I pass several benches, a train station, a rec center.

I’m not sure how much longer I will walk until I see it, the place where those two detectives pulled my Mayu out of the river.

How did it come to this? How did she end up so far from home? Why here?

I throw a flower into the water and watch the current take it away...

I hear the thud of my backpack hitting the floor and I pull my hands away. My head was starting to spin. Judging from Kunikida’s reaction, my actions were well-timed and I smiled softly and thanked Mr. Taneda for allowing me to check the time. As if on cue, one of the police officers we’d rode up to the station with rapped at the door and opened it. Kunikida looked to me and I met his gaze for the briefest of moments before I nodded to the officer.

“Would you like to speak to the Taneda family? We’re actually done.”

I bowed hastily to the old couple, thanked them for their time and walked out the door, Kunikida hot on my heels. I stumbled the moment I got out of the room and Kunikida grabbed onto my elbow to keep me steady.

“Thanks,” I mumbled, putting my hand over my eyes as the dizziness suddenly got worse.

“What did you see?” Kunikida whispered as we stood in the hallway, the fluorescent lights flickering slightly overhead.

“Not much,” I admitted and I relayed everything to him as best I could. Kunikida nodded and thought to himself as I tried to steady myself on my feet. Still feeling weak, I finally lifted up my head and he clapped me on the shoulder and nodded approvingly.

“We’ll have to keep investigating but I think we can call it a night for now. Nice work.”

“Thanks. Uh, Kunikida-san? Where’s the restroom?”

As soon as he pointed down the hall, I pushed past him but it was too late. I had only walked about two feet before I leaned over and puked right on the floor.

Kunikida winced.

“How about I take you home, Kusunoki-kun...?”

#bungo stray dogs #bungo stray dogs x reader #kunikida #kunikida doppo #kunikida doppo x oc #fanfiction

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theparanormalperiodical · 5 years

Text

11 Weird Events that Happened on Halloween

It’s that time of year again:

Your local Tesco’s has officially begun stocking christmas-related food items, cheap cat ears have completed their invasion of every female-directed fashion shop, and thanks to global warming the temperature has barely dropped since mid-summer.

That’s right - it’s nearly Halloween!

And we all know what Halloween means: striking moments of political change!

Oh, wait, is that one just me?

Yep, thanks to British politics, the most wonderful day of the year could potentially be tarnished by Brexit.

But it got me thinking: what other major events have happened on Halloween?

And has anything spook-tastic ever coincided with All Hallow’s Eve?

Clearly the 31st of October has an aura of frightful goings-on.

In basic terms, Halloween is believed to be the only day of the year when spirits can cross over from the afterlife and wander with the living once more.

So, could these events be a coincidence, or sparked by the spirits crossing back over into this world?

Today’s edition of the Paranormal Periodical is going to be all about every event - from the political to the paranormal - that has happened on the 31st October.

Let’s get spooky!

We start with the political side of things.

And let me tell you, there’s like, a lot of things.

So, no, Brexit will not stand alone as a political memory on the best day of the year.

In fact, it honestly seems like a large chunk of American history just decided to, like, happen, on this one day of the year.

But we start with something less spooky, more sad.

It’s the Wreck of the Monmouth.

Take yourself back to 1837.

It’s - yes, you guessed it, you understand the basic premise of this post - Halloween night. It’s also the moment from which the forced deportation of Creek Native Americans from their homeland begins, shortly following a war in 1836.

This deportation used a number of boats, including the one that titles this tale: The Monmouth.

The story goes that it crashed into another steamship, and that the sheer force of the collision sent it to the depths of the Mississippi river.

It is estimated that 400 Native Americans drowned in this collision. It has even been regarded as the worst American Steamboat accident to date.

But there seems to be more discussion surrounding this tale than simply its occurrence on All Hallows’ Eve:

It ignited a wider discussion of the portrayal of Native Americans among the population and in the press. As it was in a remote area and ceased to include white people, it was simply ignored by the press.

As I said before, American politics does seem to dabble on doing things in late October, but it really specifies a niche for itself by having yet another disaster with a ship.

Only this was to have much more global consequences.

The USS Reuben James - created to protect supply shipments during WW2 - was sunk during conflict on Halloween.

It lost two thirds of its crew, and even earnt the honour of being the first ship sunk during the conflict.

Indeed, this occurred only a month before Pearl Harbour, cementing itself as part of one of the most iconic moments in modern American history.

Happy Halloween?

But before we get tangled up in American history, how about we move to the next crazy event that coincided with the spookiest day of the year?

Well, I’m afraid that’s going to involve getting knotted up in another country’s political history to do so…

It was 1922 when Mussolini - the first European dictator to start the mid-20th century political trend - marched on Rome.

Having created a coalition government, he decided to consolidate his power by (you guessed it) this infamous march on Rome.

Bolstered by a sea of Blackshirts, his fascist supporters, his control symbolically began.

Keep your horror films, and hold onto your ghost stories: this scares the living shit out of me.

Our final event takes us back only 4 years before this march, and back across the borders to American history.

However, this does shed a more positive light on the darker moments already detailed.

It was October 1918 when the affectionately named ‘Death Spike’ of the Spanish Influenza hit the USA.

And with a death toll topping 50 million around the globe, it certainly seems to stick to the darker themes so far discussed in this episode.

(Look, I’m sorry history happened, I can’t control fascists or stop people dying.)

In October, 200,000 Americans from the Influenza died. This accounted for nearly a third of the total death toll in America for the Influenza.

The positive side to this story? It was Halloween that actually ended this month.

Yep, Halloween ended the Death Spike.

Well, phew, that’s over.

Can we finally get onto some cool, spooky yet awesome stories now?

What about some stories with less death and hatred and pure evil?

Maybe a handful of quirky coincidences to liven up the depressing stories already listed?

Nope, the next ones are just as awful.

Now we turn to the spooky shit that coincided with Halloween.

We start with possibly the most ironic death… ever.

Harry Houdini is the most famous magician - okay, fine, you can keep Merlin, whatever - that’s ever existed.

Yet it’s not actually his life that features on this list - it’s his death.

It was October 1926 when Houdini gave a lecture to McGill University students about fraudulent spiritualism.

Hahaha well this is awkward hahaha.

Basically, he invited some students to his dressing room at one of the theatres in Montreal. For some reason, one of these students decided to score several hard blows at his stomach.

One abdominal infection later, and he was dead.

And so the death train continues.

Our next stop is still as deathy, but a smidgen more spooky. And a splash more serial killer.

In 1981, a couple was murdered.

They were beaten, shot, and the house was left ransacked. The police even claimed it had the looks of an execution.

Initially it was believed to be related to drugs, but the tone of the case quickly shifted when it was discovered the murder was predicted by an prisoner.

Serial killer David Berkowitz gave an eerily accurate description of the murders mere weeks before it occurred.

Clearly, this would make him a give-away suspect in this case, but as he was in prison during the murder, this removed him from the list.

We now turn to a similarly ghastly murder.

In 1977, a baby girl went missing. She was snatched from her own cradle.

And the first terrifying detail of this case starts with her abduction - which okay, fine, that definitely counts as creepy enough but somehow it gets worse: as the doors and windows were found to be locked, it is believed the abductor was hiding in the closet.

Oh, and it only gets worse and weirder - her body was found in a fridge.

I suppose you could assume that the murderer, I don't know, panicked and hid the body in a pretty ordinary un-suspicious object.

But this is when things get interesting. Prior to this, two young girls were also abducted and lured into a fridge, confirming that a fridge is somehow a prominent prop for a serial killer who may still be lurking among us.

One of these girls died during the abduction, and it was the surviving child that claimed it was the babysitter who attempted to abduct them.

The babysitter was found to be innocent, especially considering the surviving child was so young.

We now move from deaths to a disappearance:

Even now, no less than 18 years later, information regarding Hyon Jong Song is scarce.

Following a Halloween party in 2001, Song made it home at 4am, still decked out in a traditional Halloween bunny costume, after a lift from a friend.

The last evidence we have of her is her belongings which were dropped off in her house - she had even managed to remove her eyelashes!

But this was to be the final trace of this grad student.

Our penultimate tragedy takes us to Indiana, and brings us swinging into the sixties.

During the Indiana State Fair, an ice skating exhibition was on display for hundreds of visitors.

But it was during the finale that disaster struck.

Unknown to the managers of the event, propane gas was leaking from a tank in a room nearby. You don’t need a chemistry degree to tell you this wouldn’t end well.

The fire utilised in the finale’s effects set it alight, causing an explosion that killed 74 and injured over 400.

We now turn to an occurrence that seems uncomfortably common for Halloween.

I take that back - I suppose it suits the time of year well...

In fact, I’d like to call this section:

when Halloween decorations were not Halloween decorations but were actually dead bodies.

Brace positions, everyone.

The most famous case only take us back 5 years.

In 2014, a man dragged a fake corpse out of his apartment on Halloween in front of a crowd of unsuspecting onlookers, and kicked the head across the street in a jest.

Only it wasn't a jest.

And it wasn't a fake corpse.

It was his decapitated mother. He had killed her shortly before this.

A similarly tragic event - which doesn’t sound dissimilar to any old urban legend is the death of William Anthony Odem.

The 15 year old was hoping to embellish the theme of his haunted house by staging a Gallows scene in the basement.

Unfortunately, he hung himself in the process.

In fact, hangings in particular - accidental, or not - often have ended up as decorations.

Suicide victims has often gone unnoticed during All Hallow’s Eve, disguised as the ghosts and ghoulish figures hanging on trees across streets and suburbs.

And so we arrive at our conclusion.

Depressed and scarred for life.

So much for a horror film binge and thought out costumes - these real events should scare you enough for Halloween!

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elvhenahhh · 5 years

Photo

Sketch of Zevran and my Soufei Mahariel done by the wonderful @pegaeae

He drew this eons ago, and I kept putting off posting it cuz I wanted to write a fic, but... Life kept finding a way to fuck with me.

Thanks again, Logan, and I hope y’all enjoy the fic!

-----------

To Touch (aka FUCK.png cuz that’s what I named the file as soon as I got it)

The first time Mahariel did it, Zevran was confused as to why.

It was after the debacle at Kinloch Hold. She had seen him in Fade, stretched out and being trained – being tortured – by the older, initiated Crows. She hadn't said anything then as focused as she was on rounding up the rest of their companions and getting out as quickly as possible.

Afterwards, he could feel her gaze on her, heavy from across the campfire. When he could no longer stand pretending not to notice, he finally looked up and shot a grin and cheery wave in her direction. To his surprise, she rose from her seat next to Alistair and moved to sit next to him instead. He was also next expecting to hear her next words, “Tell me about Antiva.” So he did.

As he regaled her on Antiva's treasures and beauty, he could see the lines of her shoulders start to relax and a soft smile spread across her face. It gave him some joy to be able to relieve the Warden of her burdens even for a few moments though he would admit this thought to no one. It was as he was describing living in the apartment by the leather-making district, packed in like rats with the other prospective initiates that the heaviness began to re-enter her gaze.

He flirted with her at the end as is his habit and received nothing but warmth from her end, but the heaviness didn't seem to leave her. At a loss, he ended with, “Now, if it is all the same to you, I would prefer not to speak more of Antiva. It makes me wistful and hungry for a proper meal.” She nodded absently but didn't move away from him.

Then, moving slowly enough to telegraph her movement, she laid one hand on the back of his neck, the other on his chest, and drew him to her. For a fleeting moment, he thought they were to kiss, and he licked his lips in anticipation. She gently pressed their foreheads together, noses bumping as well, and then just... stayed there. Eyes closed, breathing softly.

And Zevran... Zevran was even more tense than the day he had his first kiss. Or when he first slept with another. Or his first kill. He could feel his face flushing, and he couldn't stop flexing his hands on his own lap. What was he supposed to do now???

They held the position only for a few moments, but it felt like hours. Her thumb swept a few times across his nape. His face was so close to her hers that he could see little flecks of dust on her eyelashes. Her hand was gently flexing and relaxing, and he suddenly realized that she was getting his breath to align with hers.

Finally, she pulled away. The hand on his chest returned to her lap, but the hand on his neck moved to his cheek. She paused to look at his face, and whatever she saw there caused her to smile brilliantly and pat his cheek.

Then, she was gone. Moved off to talk to Alistair again or Sten or... whomever. Leaving Zevran with the ghost of her touch and a lot of confusion.

-------------------

It was afterwards that Zevran remembered that it was called “donking,” a term coined by Alistair, of course.

Zevran had witnessed it was after a particularly difficult battle in the Brecilian Forest involving a revenant and several annoyingly active undead. Alistair had made some depreciating quip as he was wont to do. Something about nearly dying or living to die a different day instead, etc. For a moment, all the Warden did was stare at her companion with a furrowed expression for long enough that Alistair put up his hands and chuckled awkwardly. Then, she strode forward, clasped her hand on the back of his neck, and pushed their foreheads together. From where he stood, Zevran could see Alistair's wide-eyed and cross-eyed look though the Warden had closed her eyes. He couldn't hear, but he saw her lips moving. As she spoke, Alistair's expression went rueful then smooth as he also closed his eyes. She pressed their heads together for a moment more before stepping away, nodding curtly to Zevran and the scowling Morrigan, and continuing the way through the forest.

Whatever it was, it was an act of fond companionship... he guessed?

----------------------------

The second time...

The second time was after Taliesen.

Zevran was standing over Taliesen's dead body, and... it was good. Zevran was alive, and Taliesen was dead, and the Warden was alive, and all this was good, but.

A touch to his arm finally drew his gaze away from the corpse. Mahariel's golden eyes scanned his face though she said nothing. Zevran just smiled wryly and shrugged. She exhaled, loudly, a quick puff of air through her nose, a gesture that Zevran was quickly recognizing as fond affection based on how many times she reacted the same to Alistair or to any of their companions' antics.

Keeping one hand on his arm, the other went to his neck to reel him in again, their foreheads colliding with the softest 'donk.'

This time, he closed his eyes. In the dark, his world was reduced to the hands on his body, the breath against his lips, the face so close to his own. He reached out and placed his hands on the Warden's hips, and she responded by taking a step closer, bringing her warm body all the closer to his. Fingers scritched at the base of his skull causing him to hum tunelessly.

The sound of Wynne coughing “politely” and Sten's silent but palpable judgment finally drew them apart once more. With a final pat of his cheek, Mahariel stepped and turned away to regroup with their companions. At the last moment, Zevran caught her hand, tangling their fingers together. She turned back to him, golden gaze meeting his once more. This time, she was the confused one.

He brought their joined hands to his lips and brushed a kiss across her knuckles. “Better him than you, my dear warden,” he murmured against her skin.

They had slept together a few times at this point, but neither spent the whole night in either's tent, nor had they kissed, but. It was building. Something was building between them even if Zevran wasn't exactly sure what.

Mahariel exhaled fondly again and squeezed his fingers before finally drawing and turning away.

---------------------------------------

And now.

Now it is the day after the Archdemon's defeat. Denerim is still rebuilding, but for now, it is quiet in the room they share. Zevran stretches out across the bed and is vaguely disconcerted to find himself alone. The movement of the curtains quickly draws his attention, and he can see the distorted outline of his love standing out on the balcony.

Despite the apparent sunshine, he still takes a few minutes to get fully dressed. The day he trusts the appearance of Ferelden weather is the day he eats his leather boot. He can hear faint tittering outside, no doubt his love, mocking him for his sensitivity. (“It's not that cold, Zevran.” “Says the barbaric Dalish woman who has had all her life to adjust to this horrible weather.” “Ay, come here then, you baby.” “My, what a soft body you have. “All the better to warm you with, vhenan.”)

Fully dressed, he rises and makes his way to the balcony. As expected, Soufei is there, waiting for him, elbows propped against the railing. Gone are the heavy, enigmatic gazes; now, she greets him with a smile, bright and beautiful. He reaches out to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. His fingers trail along the braid she's started weaving into her hair and gently press against the gold earring in her ear, not the prince's that he once gave her, but a new one that they chose together whose partner he now wears. (“Gold like your eyes,” he whispers. “Gold like your hair,” she replies.)

Stepping in close, he cradles her jaw with both hands. It would be so easy to lean in and kiss her as they've done before, as he's done the dozens if not hundreds of times since they've affirmed their love for each other. Already, he regrets the time lost, the time wasted pretending when they could've been kissing instead.

Indeed, he's paused for long enough that her gaze has turned into curiosity. Her head tilted slightly to one side, brow arched. She raises her hands to grasp the V of his collar, but she does nothing more than that.

Finally, he decides and uses his gentle grip to draw her closer. Forehead against forehead, noses bumping, soft breath against open lips. He doesn't look away, nor does she, too busy taking in all of her beauty. The black of her vallaslin, the flecks of deeper gold in her eyes, the flutter of her eyelashes as she blinks.

Sharing the same space, breathing the same air, reveling in the intimacy of it. Now, Zevran understands why she did it so long ago.

“I-” he hesitates. He knows what he feels, but to say it...

She smiles, granting him mercy. “I know,” she says. She understands, and this is one of the reasons why he loves her so. “Ar lath ma, vhenan. You can say it when you can.”

He swallows around the lump in his throat and nods against her.

Later in the day, there will be a celebration honoring the Hero of Ferelden.

Later, there will be boons and nobles and politics.

Later, there will be an order to rebuild and a guild to answer to.

But for now.

Holding each other close, reveling in the mere fact that they will live another day to live, to laugh, to love.

For now, this is enough.

#zevran #zevran arainai #dragon age #mahariel #zevwarden #dao #my writing #soufei mahariel

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vanithesquidwrites · 5 years

Text

Waiting for Water - 2

Crosspost to AO3 for those who prefer to read there. Warning: 10k+ words post.

Maybe it's worth a try.

Maybe it's even worth thousands.

2 - SUBMERGE

You can't say that you've ever had much issue with yourself, especially not by Rhalâim standards.

...Well, much issue with your... physical self, that is. Your vessel. Your mind was a minefield as far back as you remember, and you always knew it, if not the full extent of it. Your body, however, had been reliable. Comforting in its constancy. Jittery on dry days, deathly sick on wet ones, and tense as a bowstring on all of them, certainly — yet nevertheless always there. Supporting you through thick and thin to the best of its ability.

Your lungs had admittedly been a complete disaster, especially early on, but you hadn't much cared once Letho took you in. Your scrawny limbs had come with the height expected of Aeterna, with quick footing, agile fingers, and genuinely impressive aim. Your thin frame proved an advantage when you first walked into the Pit, and when you finally put on weight, thanks to the meat and mushrooms victory let you afford, all of it was wiry muscle, strong and lean enough to dance along and around blades.

Your body hadn't merely been your vessel. It had been your temple. The one and only roof to have never caved in nor let you down. The single home to have held strong, no matter whether it was hunger, blades, bandits, or the Rhalâta itself banging on its doors.

Yet for all of its usefulness, for all its speed and size and strength, your favorite of its features had never been any of those. No — it had been your skin.

You'd always been festooned with scars, even long before the Pit. You had chased every rat, you'd finished every fight — albeit on the floor — and you had climbed the walls in the most literal fashion, active yet weak enough to fall from every ledge and roof in the Undercity. But those scars had never been anything but an advantage, and all the more so once the Dust Pit came to add its own fair share. They were proof of a gift for enduring in spite of pain, proof of a gift for survival, in caves intimidation ruled second only to the Rhalâs. You might have carved some into your flesh yourself, had it somehow made it out of your childhood unblemished.

Through your years as a Rhalâim, on those nights wrath was not enough and memories faded away, you always found a measure of comfort in that scarred skin. Every last burn, pit and blemish was a testament to before, a world beyond the Rhalâta, resurfacing for air when the mask and the robes came off. A criss-crossing web of memories, stretching from toes to fingertips, wrapped around your bones more comfortably than silken cloth. On those nights — on nightmare nights — you would tiptoe between bedrolls, volunteer for any duty that would take you into the caves, and there, hidden in dark corners, you would take your gloves off to cradle yourself in your scars, in the little reminders of why you were there at all.

All of the others, your so-called family, had shunned the pain of life and the marks it left on their hulls. You had embraced it. Reveled in it. Relished the way each cut and bruise would sting against the Temple floors, throbbing along with your heart, a myriad small treasons you could privately indulge in. Letho's face would often fade, and wrath could sometimes abate; scars stood eternal, untouched by the Father's words. He had taken your family, taken your home, taken your memories, even taken your name, your hair, and your choice of clothes — but he could never erase the past from your skin, and every look at your bare hands, every glance of your exposed arms, kept the pain that propelled you ever onward fresh and new. Sharp. Honed and ready for battle, just like your body always was.

Throughout all of those empty years, wrath and revenge may have buoyed you, and lies and murder sheltered you, but it had been that blanket of old wounds that kept you warm at night.

And so here you fucking are, former Voice of the Father, former Champion of the Pit, petrified by the sight of soap.

You throw an angry glance at the offending object, still sitting in the mercenary's hand, on the other end of the bath.

You had been doing well, so far. Not one serious argument in three days, be it with the tavern patrons or the mercenary. One small scuffle on the first day, yes, but an hour spent chopping wood outside with the woman had calmed your nerves as efficiently as balm on a wound. From then on, nothing had gone amiss. Not even when the woman argued you should bathe before leaving. You'd carried the washtub upstairs, brought up your half of the water, offered the innkeeper to wash the linens afterwards if she would lend you a cauldron to heat water by the fire. You'd managed to undress. To sit in the water. You'd even managed to convince the mercenary that sharing the washtub would be practical, less likely to leave her with naught but cold water and you with nothing but silence to try and occupy your thoughts.

You'd much rather have slept alone, and bathed alone, and been alone — but if there is any lesson of value to take from the past few days, from the cliff and the travel and all the empty years before them, it's that you don't actually handle being alone very well.

All your small compromises with isolation had worked perfectly, too, from the forced politeness to making yourself share the bath. You hadn't slipped, not even once. Not until that damn soap, lying inconspicuous in the woman's outstretched hand, forcing you to acknowledge your skin all over again. To realize that your temple had stood on rotten foundations.

That its artificial flesh has never been yours at all.

You look down at the hands, clenching a wet rag in the lap. You look at the burns and the old scars, half-hidden under bloody grime and the wrinkles of bathwater. You try to find a truly old one, one that could precede the Rhalâta, the Dust Pit, the Father, the experiments. The time you had been daft enough to try and lift Letho's so-called kettle from the fire with your bare hands. The time you sliced your thumb open peeling potatoes with Torus, and Sha'Gun had to sew it closed herself while Letho held your arm. The time you threw Nessah's stupid old wooden bear onto the roof, and Letho wouldn't speak to you until you'd rubbed your fingers raw climbing to retrieve the damn thing.

You think, and look, and think and look some more, turning the wet limbs to and fro in the candlelight — but the years down in the Pit have made patchwork out of the skin, and nothing looks so much like an old childhood scar than scores upon scores of others.

You wish you could have fought with Brother Sorrow and survived, somehow. Or been disciplined by him at some point. Or even simply not — not done what you had. Perhaps then you would have something real to remember Letho by, rather than the tatters of a dead child's memories. But no, that would only be yet more masquerade, wouldn't it? Brother Sorrow was no more Letho than Brother Wrath was Tharaêl Narys, in the end. Just a pair of counterfeit echoes chancing to meet in the void, both pretending that they were real.

"Tharaêl?"

The name brings you back to the present, to the half-filled washtub and the mercenary you share it with. She looks even smaller, even more out of place, without her steel plate to add some bulk to her diminutive frame. Wrapped in nothing but a towel, she looks almost childlike; as if time parted ways with her when she was all of twelve winters and then chose to return only two full decades later, to carve wrinkles across her face and spatter her with the small burns you had mistaken for freckles.

She sits staring at you, black hair dripping dirty droplets, black eyes empty as ever — yet the tilt of her head manages to convey concern, somehow. The hand that had been holding the soap is folded onto her lap, the soap itself nowhere to be seen.

"I was trying not to interrupt," she says, sounding almost apologetic, "but you still haven't so much as begun to wash, and you've been staring at your hands for a good five minutes. Did I miss a sprain or bruise? Is something wrong with them?"

"...Aside from their not being real?" You stare at the mercenary woman in disbelief, uncertain whether to feel contemptuous or insulted. "What do you think?!"

"I don't know what to think, Tharaêl, which is why I'm asking you." She straightens herself a little, folding back her legs to bring her knees level with her chest then prop her arms on top of them. An innocent enough gesture, if you could not see all too well that its purpose is to create distance, to erect barriers of bone between her torso and your hands. "Whatever else they may or may not be, they are yours. This is your body. It's the same as twelve years ago, remember? That still hasn't changed."

You do remember, of course. After three days of calm and of the migraine receding, you remember perfectly well.

'The same as twelve years ago.' Comforting words, in the abstract, while stranded on snowy slopes and desperate for direction — but damning ones in retrospect, once able to think clearly. Twelve years ago means the Corpse Pit. Late enough to place arena and Rhalâta on your shoulders, while snatching home and family from underneath your feet.

To Tharaêl Narys, Letho and the Refuge.

To the man born among corpses, the Child Killer of the Dust Pit, Brother Wrath of the Rhalâta? Only anger, death, and the void.

All for nothing, twice over. No result, for no reason.

The soul is the same, the mercenary said. But in practice, what does she know? She has not studied the Rhalâs, has not read through the Father's notes. She has no idea what he did or how his experiments worked. She is self-taught, by her own words, guessing her way through your memories and the Father's soft-spoken lies. A talented Sleeper, but a Sleeper all the same.

"Can I?"

Your eyes return to the woman as her voice pushes past your thoughts, and you find her own open hands held out towards you.

"Look at them," she says, clearly mistaking your reticence for lack of comprehension. "Can I? It's fine if you don't want to, I just — I might see something you don't."

You hesitate for an instant, torn between your constant desire for more information and your increasing reluctance to being examined. You enumerate to yourself the reasons for and points against, the whies and why nots of giving the woman insight into you, be it your vessel or your mind. Still, in the end, one thing alone affects the decision you make: that the woman was as disgusted with the Father as you were.

You give her your left hand, let her splay it over her knees. She angles it this way and that to better catch the candlelight, folding the fingers one by one, comparing the pulse to her own with a thoughtful frown. She pinches the false flesh, presses into it hard, indents it with a nail to observe how quickly marks fade. How fast the blood — if it is blood — resumes it flow under the skin.

"...It certainly feels and looks just as real as my own hands to me. You even have skin spots and ridges on your nails," she mutters, eyebrows arching upwards in interest. "I honestly can't tell that anything's amiss at all."

You can hear the awe in her voice. The wonder at the Father's work.

You always were my masterpiece.

You startle and jerk the hand back at the memory of the words, water sloshing against the washtub with the force of your recoil. His masterpiece. Hah. Yeah, right. As if someone half as careful and secretive as the Father would leave anything of value to rot in the Corpse Pit! What a fucking joke. To think that you even believed him, for a short moment. Had you been that fucking desperate?

You clench the hands together against your stomach, curling inward around them. Fuck this. Fuck it all. Fuck this— this— this casing the Father had padded with you. Fuck the Father for making it. Fuck the woman for fucking admiring his fucking work. Why did you even come here? What are you doing? Did you think this... this strangeness would somehow just melt away, if you distracted yourself long enough?

"Shit. Sorry. I — I shouldn't have said that."

You uncurl the hands again, staring at the shadow of what is passing for your veins, imagining the flow of whatever serves as your blood. How had the Father even put it all together? Was it built through magic? Grown in some vat? Did he sew the parts to each other somehow, fake guts, false skin and mock-up bone, then shove your soul inside like one would stuffing in a doll? How long had you laid bare on his table, like an insect pinned under glass, a trinket for him to toy with? Did he mold your vessel, did he mold your soul, like so much clay within his hands, just like he did those past eight years? Did his fingers roam beneath your ribs like yours once did through dead bodies, bits of flesh stuck under the nails, blood slathered up to the elbows?

Do traces of him still remain hidden inside of you somewhere? Some mark within the flesh, some signature on bone?

To think you'd believed he might have whored you off to some Sublime, once. Thought that that sort of violation was the worst he'd done to you.

"...Tharaêl?"

The thought makes your head spin, and you try to shake it away like you did headaches and nightmares, but no amount of force or speed seems to dislodge it from your mind. There you had been, mocking the other Rhalâim as they covered from head to toe, playing at pretend brotherhood while smirking at them in contempt. There you had been, the one true disgusting pile of flesh all along, and yet too much of a Sleeper to even begin to notice.

"Tharaêl. Wake up. Wherever you've gone, you're not there."

...That's right, isn't it? You're not here. You've never been here. Only some puppet of the Father's, thinking itself a long-dead child. Holding onto that dead child's memories of his just-as-dead brother, as if he could even recognize whatever you had become. Why would he? You had never met. What need did Brother Sorrow have for some delusional construct? What need did dead Letho have for pretenders clinging to his memory?

The arms hang limp and the chest feels hollow, heartbeat silent, skin gone numb. Air comes in unsteadily. Vision trembles. No, not vision — shoulders. Hands on shoulders. Not the vessel's hands. Shaking? Why would—

—pain erupts on the left side of your face, and your sight violently swivels. Punch? No, too light. You catch yourself on the wet wood of the washtub's edge, blinking in confusion, and raise your left arm to block any further oncoming hits as you turn your head to locate the source of the blow.

The mercenary looks back at you, right arm extended in what you guess to have been a slap.

Time seems to stretch for a moment, with her arm still held out, your own arm still held up, and your stomach churning with the disgust of your last thoughts. But the moment passes, and so does the tension. You let your arm lower, and the woman does the same.

"Thank you for not striking back," she says with an uneasy smile, but you feel so nauseous that you can only nod in response. "Are you alright?"

You almost want to laugh at the sheer stupidity of the woman's question — and you do, for a few seconds, your shoulders quaking all over again. But then the cackles turn to gasps and the gasps themselves into coughs, and you stumble out of the washtub to vomit on the inn's floor.

"Shit," you hear the woman say amidst splashing sounds, somewhere around the edges of your blurring vision. "I'll go grab some rags. Sit down. Here," her wet footsteps approach, and you can feel her put something between your hands. "Bucket."

You nod in silent gratitude, retching into the wooden pail until the vessel can produce nothing more but dry heaves.

The taste of vomit in your throat sends your mind back to simpler times. Better times, really, in the end. Knees in the gut in the Dust Pit, old bread just a little too old, water you'd forgotten to boil. Everything had been so clear, then. No questions of who you were — of what you were — or what you would do the next day. Only the routine of survival, of blades kept sharp and chainmail mended, your stomach filled with whatever had been within reach of your hands. No Seers nor mercenary to cast every word into doubt. No Father to play with your body and mind like you were his toy, to be thoughtlessly cast aside the moment he thought you broken.

"Do you think you can keep going?"

You raise your eyes from the bucket to meet the mercenary's gaze. She kneels off to your side, wrapped in a brand new dry towel, another bucket in her arms — that one filled with vomit-soiled rags. You take a breath in, let it out, wipe your mouth with the back of a hand.

"Yeah," you answer her, pushing your own bucket aside. "Yeah, I'm fine."

"And I'm Loram Waterblade risen from the grave to save mankind," is the woman's response, and you would snap back, were it not for her apologetic smile. "But you truly do need to wash. Well, anyway, I'm already done, so I can leave if that makes you more comfo— alright," she interrupts herself as you shake your head no. "If you want me to stay, I stay. But I am staying out of the washtub and putting on a shift."

"Why? No," you mutter, head still spinning. "I can—"

"—Overestimate yourself because you don't want to seem vulnerable, and end up making everything harder to do in the process? Yes, you can definitely do that," the mercenary retorts, voice kind and mellow to the point of condescension. "Which is why I am going to go cover up some more and spare your ex-Rhalâim arse the discomfort it won't admit to."

That's not— that's not it, your mind wants to scream as she turns to fetch clothes. That's not what the problem is, damn it. How can the mercenary feel so fucking self-important as to think you give a damn?! You've seen your fair share of bodies, each one more mundane than the last. You've seen them bared to entice, bared to humiliate, eaten alive by fleshmaggots and shitting themselves in the dust. You don't care about any of them, and about hers least of all, as long as their flesh never comes into contact with yours.

The problem isn't her stupid, small, weak mess of a body. The problem is that your vessel can't be kept at a distance. The problem is that you can scrub with all the soap the world can hold, and your skin will still be a lie. The problem is that if even the woman can't bear to see it like this, then the one person to have helped, the only one to have stuck by you in over twelve fucking years, will leave you over embarrassment, of all stupid fucking things.

And once she's gone, who will stand between you and the damn window? Who will pull you back from the cliff, the next time the void comes calling?

...Why are you even thinking this? This isn't you. You don't stop and ponder help and bare skin when washing. You don't focus on dying or on whatever the future holds. You're a survivor. You focus on now.

This. Isn't. You. This is only the vessel trying to assert control, to bend your spirit to its will by drowning it in emotion. Equations and chemical imbalances, all of it. You need to be more objective, to remind yourself of the chasm between sensation and truth. Flesh does not get to dictate to the mind what it should think. Let alone false flesh. You know better than to succumb to as petty an urge as this.

You exhale at the thought and squeeze your eyes shut tight, pinching the bridge of your nose between your fingers in frustration. From the Rhalâs to numbness to disgust right back to the Rhalâs. You have no other weapon with which to fend off intrusive thoughts.

That's the whole issue, isn't it. That tearing off your mask and brand can hide the Rhalâs out of sight, but that it will never let you carve it out of your bones, scrape it from underneath your skin like dirt from under fingernails. You can escape the Rhalâta, you can call yourself Tharaêl, but you will still remain a Rhalâim no matter what you do. Because for you to be able to call this mind and memories yours, you need to accept that the Father gave you your soul and vessel — and for you to accept the Father gave you your soul and vessel, you need the Rhalâs to force pain and disgust from your mind.

There's no way out. There never was. There'd been the fall, but you've fought it back long enough to grow afraid of the idea, to want to be pulled away from windows, cliffs, and banisters. To hear the mercenary talk of long-dead souls still stuck in place.

To wonder what happens to souls, once bodies shatter on the ground.

Maybe you should pursue another sort of radical option. Shock yourself out of your feelings by flooding them with stronger ones. Drink yourself under a table, hire the nearest pair of whores, get your life's worth of revulsion done and over with in minutes. You chuckle to yourself as you try to picture the scene: Brother Wrath, pissed-out drunk, framed by the Silver Cloud's harlots in some smoky parlor. Hah. As if.

You'd given it a go, of course. Twice, when you were... what, fourteen? Fifteen? You don't even remember. Coming out of the arena, with the bitch that used to work there. You might die any day, you'd reasoned, so why not try fucking first? But sex had turned out to be just as empty as lust and love themselves. The vaunted origin of half the bullshit in the universe, not to mention most of its art, hadn't been half as good a high as cracking skulls or breaking limbs, half as calming as a blade in your hand or food in your stomach. There'd never been a third attempt, and now... the mere thought of their hands on you disgusts you on the best of days, and these days are about as far from the best as you can conceive.

Something in the line of thought brings your mind to a grinding halt, as if whatever support it had been resting had gone and caved under your weight.

You frown, perplexed, your eyes lost on the still-wet stain your vomiting left on the floor. The idea is ridiculous, yes, but it should not warrant upset. Whores are as they are, certainly, and beacons of disease besides, but nothing to trouble the mind — nothing worse than the Corpse Pit was. And as for this day being about as far from the best as you can—

A strange, distant sort of numbness spreads through your chest and head, and for a moment you think yourself back up the mountain, severed from yourself in ways you cannot articulate. But the moment melts away just like the mountain snow did, and you return to the tavern, still sat on the wet floor, your head and shoulder leaning to the side against the washtub's edge. You look about for the mercenary, and find her sat nearby, in the bedroom's one armchair. Positioned so as to be close, yet face away from the washtub.

"...If I went and knocked up some girl," you mutter through the fading daze, and the woman turns her head back at the sound of your voice. "Would the child even be mine? Can I even— would it work at all?"

The mercenary's brows furrow as her head swivels further back still, but no words come out of her mouth. Her skill for talking your ears off seems inversely proportional to your desire for answers.

"And if it does work," you go on, raising your hands to indicate your chest. "If fucked someone with this thing that was meant to be empty from the start, will whatever child I father be—"

"Tharaêl," the woman interrupts you, pivoting in her seat to come properly face to face. "Do you have some girl that you want to go and knock up?"

"I — no," you stumble over the word, taken aback by the question.

The mercenary's lips twist into a sarcastic smile.

"I figured. And do you want children?"

"No."

The question bears no thought. Absolutely not. No children. Not now, not tomorrow, not ever. Even discounting your nightmares and the issue of your anger, you would make a dreadful parent. You are not father material.

You almost choke on the sheer irony of that last thought.

"Then let it go," the mercenary says, her voice more firm than you've ever heard it. "Look, I don't know you enough to know if this is how you normally act when grieving, or if this is years of repressed feelings falling on your brain all at once. But whichever it is, if you keep trying to think through everything at the same time, it's bound to spill over like this. No thinking of the future until you've been at home for a week, alright? Especially not things you don't want to do. They don't matter right now."

But they do matter, some part of you wants to scream at the woman. You would have wanted to— to— damn it all, you don't even know what you would have wanted. To wonder, maybe. To be able to ask yourself the question without the very idea making you feel faint and nauseous.

You would have wanted to have a choice, for once. Only a choice. It would have been enough.

...Yeah. And you would have wanted Letho alive, Sha'Gun decent, and a pretty pony besides. When has what you wanted ever mattered, and why should it begin to now? The world doesn't care, and it never will. Why do you?

You know better than this, damn it, you think to yourself as you gaze into the bath's still water. To the Black Guardian with what you want; busy yourself with what you have. You have a roof over your head, you have someone watching your back, you would have food in your stomach if you hadn't been a moron, and you have a damn bath to take.

You've clawed your way out of the Corpse Pit, fought your way through the arena, with nothing but determination and the willingness to face pain. This is nothing compared. So your flesh is artificial? Boo fucking hoo. At least it's there. Every last one of the fleshmaggot sufferers lining the caves would give life and limb to be you. You have two working arms and legs, two lungs and ears and eyes, ten fingers and ten toes and ten unfractured pairs of ribs, a head mostly screwed on straight and only five broken teeth besides. You're doing great, by all standards. You hadn't even noticed the body was fake until today. Why would you break down over this?

You're no longer young, frail, and weak. You no longer cough your lungs out everytime the seasons turn. What does it matter if that's because of the Father, sheer dumb luck, or Malphas and his so-called gods playing yet one more joke on you? You are a grown man, for fuck's sake. You can fight this the same way you fought your way out of everything: by gritting your teeth, steeling yourself, and choosing to move the fuck on.

Your mind is sound, and the vessel is functional. That's all that matters in the end.

You're not your vessel, anyway.

"...Yeah," you speak up, meaning the word both for both the woman and yourself. "You're right. It doesn't matter."

The woman's smile becomes a touch more genuine, for all that it still appears nervous around the cheeks and the eyes. You sigh and turn back to the— to your hands. Clenching and unclenching them, watching the way phalanges bend, muscle tightens and relaxes, skin wrinkles over pale blue veins.

It's still the same as yesterday, you remind yourself. Still the same as twelve years ago. Not Tharaêl Narys of the sewers and the Refuge, perhaps, but still Tharaêl anyway. The Tharaêl of the Corpse Pit, the Dust Pit and the Rhalâta. You can be certain of that much. It's not a comfortable truth, let alone a comforting one, but you are quite simply going to have to fucking deal.

You could handle being thirteen and covered head to toe in blood. You can handle being twenty-four in a synthetic vessel.

"Fuck this," you proclaim to the room, hauling yourself back to your feet, taking care not to slip on the still-soggy floor. You let out a long breath, step over the edge of the washtub, and sit yourself into the water, grasping for the white reflection of what you know must be the soap. You clench it between your knees, leaving it aside a moment more, electing to begin your task with a more familiar gesture: cupping your hands to hold water, and raising them to your head to let it cascade over your scalp. There is no shorn hair to rinse off, but the motion remains soothing.

"If I can do anything to help," the mercenary says, "just ask."

"No, there's no— actually, yes," you change your mind halfway through wishing that the woman would shut up. "There is something you can do. Babble. I'm told you should manage."

"Sure," she snorts, turning back within the armchair to face the wall once more. "What do you want to hear about?"

"Anything," you answer. "Something I don't know. The more of my brain is busy keeping track of what you're saying, the less will be free to ruminate on old bullshit I can't change."

"Like a mantra," she says, and you feel surprised that she even knows the word, until it dawns on you that she spent time in the Temple as well. Diligently listening to the Seers' sermons, at that.

"Exactly like a mantra. So do your thing," you tell her. "Ramble ever on. Distract me."

"I can do that," she agrees, and you practically hear her smile.

You inhale and exhale slowly, in through the nose, out through the mouth. You let your eyes fall closed, shut them tight, concentrate on your breathing. Then you grasp for the soap, wrenching it from between your knees, and set yourself to the newly-unfamiliar task of washing.

Once upon a time, there was a castaway — a black-eyed woman from Nehrim, gone overboard while out at sea.

She'd had very little before, the mercenary says of her, and she'd had nothing afterwards, save for eerie visions and a bout of arcane fever strong enough to fall an Ogre. A passing sellsword rescued the poor woman from bandits, shared his work with her for a time, and then off to Ark she had been, in search of an explanation for her sudden arcane talents. The Order had offered some hints, but the woman had been distrustful, unwilling to tie herself to a creed she disapproved of.

And so she'd left, to remain free. For the woman was not only poor and black-eyed, but quite naïve.

Freedom did not fill her stomach, nor did it buy her Ambrosia when arcane fever came calling. She'd tried to gather some pennies, but Ambrosia was expensive — as were equipment and shelter, when one came with nothing but the clothes on their back. And soon, in a story that you know all too well, the woman had found herself stuck between the rock of the fever and the hard place of the Dust Pit.

She'd rebounded, after it all. Motivation could move mountains, more even than hunger at times. She had been so angry at the Masked Men of the Buried Temple, so disgusted by their request that she go and slaughter the lost, so desperate for a salary not filched from the hands of the poor, that she'd gone back to the Order. She'd thought to garner support there, naïve and foolish as she was. It never could have worked, of course; Enderal was no fair kingdom, and Tealor Arantheal not the wise king stories spoke of. But somehow, the woman's strange visions garnered her their attention — and a few weeks later, by the grace of the Sea, she'd found herself exalted Keeper of the First Sigil, in possession of enough goodwill and funds to buy her own house.

Then the castaway-turned-Keeper had been told the world was at risk, and sent forth on a mission as crucial as there had ever been: one meant to rid Vyn of the evil that had borne the Red Madness.

And she had told the world to wait, to come chase the Father with you.

For some fucking unfathomably stupid reason, you presume.

Reconciling the tale with your own experience proves quite daunting. Not because of lack of detail — the mercenary's prattling more than takes care of that issue — or because of the drain on your mind that the washing proves to be, but because of the insanity of the sequence of events. You walked down into the Dust Pit, found yourself looking on the fights of a competent Sinistrope, decided it was she you would try and hire into your cause. But then, some-fucking-how, you walked out of that very same Pit in the company of a Keeper. A Phasmalist Keeper at that, trailed by an ever-increasing army of dead souls, who could prophetize the future by seeing echoes of the past. Then you'd set out to take down the Father, took down the animate but soulless remains of Letho instead, and discovered yourself to be some sort of — some sort of construct. And, last but not least, you found yourself invited to come live in the aforementioned Keeper's own house.

Just like that. Wherever the woman came from, Rhalâim of eight years moving in with Keepers appeared to make sense over there. With not a single question asked, not one guarantee provided.

All because you had volunteered to go hound Rasha that morning.

You have no idea how to feel about any of it, so you decide not to. You take the woman's story as the sequence of sounds it is, file them as pure information, and store them well away in that part of your mind where you keep the Rhalâs and Tharaêl Narys. Once you are fed and rested and as safe as you can ever be, then you will dig through the story again, try to excavate motes of sense from pile upon pile of chaos. You have enough incomprehensible things on your plate for now.

Regarding the woman herself, you only feel more and more torn. You are not so proud as to think yourself above all assistance; nor are you so daft as to spend too much time hesitating. But the lack of demand for reciprocity unsettles you. No one ever gives so much of anything for nothing. No one. That the woman appears to do so means you are blind to the cost — and the last time you were so blind, you woke atop a pile of corpses.

You stare at the backside of the mercenary's head, still reclining against the back of the armchair. You tell yourself that she would not betray you in such a fashion, that the woman has spent too much effort on keeping you alive to wish any harm upon you. But then you remember Sha'Gun standing by your bed and watching, and you remind yourself even years of kindness can hide treason.

By the time you leave the washtub, clean and all too glad to be done, the water is so cold and brown it could have come from the sewers.

You can't help but imagine it to be some sort of metaphor.

It's a matter of mere minutes, albeit quite a few of them, to leave the room as you found it and prepare to leave the Tavern. You get rid of the bathwater by way of bucket and window, while the mercenary makes the bed, sweeps the floor, repacks her bags. You help each other carry washtub and buckets back down the stairs, and, as promised, spend the next hours using it to launder linens, working in companionable silence by the kitchen's fire.

You worry, for a time, that laundry will see you leave late, but the woman explains that lateness is the purpose of the task. She is not eager to see you striding a Myrad's back, she says, so you will be leaving by scrolls — scrolls whose teleport runes lead right into Ark's bustling marketplace. Better to wait for late evening and for the streets to be empty. Less people to see you, less unfamiliar noise to stress you, less chances that the bright sky overhead might trigger your migraine.

You're unsure whether to feel grateful for her concern and foresight, or disgusted all over again by how fragile she thinks you are.

Once all the laundry has been hung and sunlight has left the windows, the mercenary gives your shoulder a tap — for courage, she says — and leads you outside Frostcliff Tavern to pass you a tightly-bound scroll.

"I'll go first and wait for you there," she tells you, giving your shoulder another tap. "Take a moment, if you need to."

You don't need to take a fucking moment to use a fucking scroll, you think, but you simply nod in response. No reason to be abrasive. You've done enough of that these days, and she is attempting to aid you, however clumsy her methods. What manner of fool would you be, if after so much time spent angered by the lack of help, you pushed its belated provider away?

You take a step back as the woman unrolls her own scroll, watches it consume itself in her hands as the magic takes hold, and smiles as her shape scatters into sparks swept by the mountain winds.

"See you at home," her afterimage says, vanishing into light.

You stare at the spot of thin air where the woman was just standing, then let your gaze wander about, taking in the Tavern, the snow, the jagged teeth of the mountains encroaching on the starry sky. You don't imagine you will ever see the place again. The cold and snow may be soothing, but there is nothing for you here. Only remorse, bad memories, and a grave so unbearable to dig you wiped it from your mind.

Letho's head rolls across the tiles, as if it was a ball that had fallen from his shoulders.

You shake the image from your head, like the dozens of times you've done so in the past handful of days. You take a few steps through the snow, hearing it crunch under your feet, feeling the wind prickle your eyes. It takes but a minute for you to reach some sort of outcropping, a ledge of snow-dusted rock jutting out high over the valley. The borders of the mountain range stretch out right underneath your feet, turning first into a forest, then the Dark Valley, further south. All of it hidden by the blanket of night and a sea of fog.

The world always seems so fucking big, seen from outside of the caves. An arena so long and wide, and so littered with obstacles, that there is no hope of flushing out every hidden opponent. No ways to avoid being flanked. No solid walls to put one's back to or to barricade between. No certainty of payment and food at the end of each battle. No formal rules of engagement, no announcer to warn of fights. No arbiter to call their end. No end to the fighting at all.

And there you are, empty-handed. No weapon at your hips, no armor on your back. Not even so much as a reason to defend yourself at all.

You throw a glance at the starry sky, the peaks it frames, the woods below. You set your gaze onto the ground, breathe in and out, steel yourself. You clench your hands into fists, straighten your shoulders.

Two hundred feet, or maybe three. Not quite as high, but high enough.

Last chance to jump.

...But what is it that happens to souls, once bodies shatter on the ground?

You close your stinging eyes, let a shaky breath out, and untie your scroll with trembling hands to let the spell do its work.

Once gravity resumes its pull, leaving you stumbling to your knees on cobblestones sprinkled with dust, you feel, for an absurd moment, as if you have just walked right back into the Dust Pit's ring. The darkness, anxious dizziness, the dry dust against your bare hands, all of it feels so familiar — almost achingly so, after so many years spent kneeling and lying on Temple floors. The Dust Pit had been home, in a disturbing way. More than the Temple ever was, and in the light of retrospection, perhaps more than even the Refuge. The one place where you'd been celebrated as a godsend, rather than seen as a burden best cast aside and left to die.

For a ridiculous, irrational second, you find yourself missing Rasha. Her stilted attempts at concern each time you walked into the ring. That beaming grin across her face each time you made it out alive. The look of surprise in her eyes when you first came to claim her tax — and the fear that grew in its place, when you proved just as concerned with her welfare as she'd been with yours.

She never said a thing, of course. Dog ate dog, when coin was at stake. She'd taught you that lesson herself, each time you'd looked up from a kill to find her collecting��her bets.

Your hands clench on the cobblestones as you will the memories out.

"Well, welcome home," a voice exclaims, and raising your head brings into sight the mercenary's pale face, smiling in the flickering light of an arcanist's will-o-wisp.

She does not mention the shudders running through your breath and your hands, so you ignore the way light glints in her suddenly wet eyes, and let her weak arms fail to help you up as you haul yourself to your feet. Your gaze wanders, following the wisp as it circles to and fro, illuminating here a stall, there an old tree, elsewhere some shrubs. Garlands of colorful fanions hang over the plaza like cobwebs, stretch from stone wall to chimney to greet an occasion you can't name.

Barely two hundred feet upwards, and it's already so different. Bright garlands in place of clotheslines. Cobblestones rather than cold mud. Moonlight in place of Starling lamps. Twenty years of soul-crushing work, and not a single thing had changed — but two hundred feet up or down, and there the entire fucking world went and shifted on its axis.

You'd expected as much, of course, but seeing low expectations turn into depressing truths never became any easier.

"The house is just a few yards west," the mercenary interrupts your thoughts, as she seems wont to do. She taps your shoulder once again, with much more assurance this time, even pulling on it a little as she begins to walk. "Come on. Let's get you settled in."

You follow her out of the plaza, distractedly, passing between a pair of buildings to access a stall-lined street. High wooden walls frame it much as they would in the Undercity, but here the road is wide and dry, paved just like the plaza had been, and most importantly of all open to the skies overhead. It seems bright even in darkness — even discounting the pallid light cast by the wandering wisp — and infinitely less cluttered than the main cavern's alleyways.

Had it already been like this, when you came up back then to try and plead with those two guards?

...You don't know. You can't remember.

The woman takes a turn left down the cobbled road, her hand still held against your shoulder. Smiling all the while, she points to a narrow house nestled under a tree, framed by an old smelter and a sharpening wheel. Perhaps a weaponsmith's workshop, before the woman had bought it. Useful to keep your own swords sharp, if nothing else.

Letho's head rolls across the tiles, and you remember, vividly, why you are never going to sharpen your swords ever again.

"There we are," the woman says, happiness dripping from her voice. It mixes with your memories of blood on slate and cobblestones like oil with water, leaving you staring at a fractured image — half bloody corridor to the Room of Paintings, half quiet cobbled street at night. You tear your eyes from the sharpening wheel, willing the thought away like you did those of the Dust Pit, just as the mercenary pulls a key out the lock. You hadn't even noticed her bring it out or put it in.

"It's a bit on the small side as houses go," the woman continues, "but it's really easy to find. If you get lost wandering town, just keep an eye out for the smelter, or ask people to direct you to the old market smithy. Everybody knows where it is."

She turns back to you, smiling still, standing atop the three stone steps of the house's threshold.

"Guests first," the woman proclaims, sweeping her arms in a flourish in the direction of the door.

You cast an uncertain gaze at the door, but shrug your doubts aside. Whatever this may be, you have done, and have survived, worse. Yes, it may be a trap, or a deception of some sort, but this is not the Rhalâta or the Refuge. You can change your mind. You can leave.

Decision made, you grasp the doorknob, push the gate open, and walk in.

From the moment you step indoors, you find that a lot of things change, some of them rather brutally. Most of all your understanding of what the woman means by 'small'.

Her house being 'small' means that it could hold three families, with room enough to spare for the children of a fourth one. A floor with a wide hearth and covered in carpets. A separate chamber, if one without a door. And shelves, so many shelves, all of them stocked with a moon's worth of grain and various pickled foods. What had seemed from the outside to be a narrow abode is also a long one, and what you'd thought a mere high roof turns out to be harboring an empty mezzanine, wide enough to be its own floor. One with a proper flight of stairs rather than a simple ladder, solid floorboards and airtight walls, and even its own small window.

A second floor which is now yours, you vaguely hear the woman say; to be handled as your own house and furnished at your convenience. You wish she would pause there so you could address your returning doubts, but the words keep coming, commenting on the sight from the window and on the banister. She'd offer you the room downstairs to give you privacy, she says, but cannot afford to do so: nightmares and sleepwalking have plagued her her whole life, and make railings and heights — not to mention staircases — a poor choice of environment for her to spend nights in. You can borrow it and her bed until you buy your own, she adds, but it must be available for her when she is not working.

She says even more afterwards, speaks of where to buy clothes and furniture fit for an Aeterna, but you barely listen, still lost in the concept of having your own floor.

You even take a moment to rest your hand on the banister, purely to reassure yourself you are not hallucinating.

The woman fills you a 'small' purse of gold from a casket by the chimney, to buy your furniture and clothes and other such necessities. You start to count the coins and trade bars as soon as she has her back turned, but find yourself stopping once you reach three hundred with pennies left to spare, a sinking feeling in your gut.

Those are likely not the same coins, but you gather the amount is more than simple coincidence. Four hundred pennies, all in all. You would bet your left hand on it.

The advance you'd paid her so she'd join your crusade.

You can't make yourself ask, and so you say nothing; you merely stand, back to a wall, watching as the woman smiles and prattles about her furniture. She lights a fire with a spell and prepares each of you a 'small' dinner of a bowlful of oats, practically overflowing, topped with a boiled egg and a thick slice of salted lard. She has to ask you to sit down before you can force yourself to, joining her at the, for once, truly small table that the room is centered around. Cutlery in hand, you find yourself wishing the bowl was smaller; used as you are to the fasting that the Rhalâs demands, you're quite certain your stomach will not manage to fit it all in, even as empty as it is.

"...Alright, so I may tend to hoard and overeat a little," the woman mutters when you point it out, sounding somewhere halfway between ashamed and grudging.

You take it 'little' too must be put up for amendment.

Not that you don't understand it — not the quantity, but the drive. It took the Rhalâta to wean you off of rationing, of stockpiling all you could find and eating only that which was on the verge of spoiling. Not even the regular meals of the orphanage had managed. You had always kept stashes, hideouts, small corners you would fill to the brim with dried mushrooms and stale bread. A true sewer rat, through and through.

But the amount of stored food is not the part that unsettles you. Nor is it the pile of linens the woman threw over whatever she keeps under the stairs while you'd wandered above, unwilling to trust the reality of 'your' floor until you'd walked on it. You can guess what that must have been — either some manner of religious memorabilia, or whatever tools she plied her Phasmalist's trade with. No, the unsettling part is how prepared everything is. There are two sets of plates and bowls, two sets of silver cutlery. Two mugs, two goblets and two chairs, even as the rickety table barely fits a single person. An upper floor kept clear and clean while the lower drowns in clutter, most of it bags and crates one would expect to find in an attic.

Has the woman been expecting you would need a place to hide? Did she join you on your quest while anticipating failure?

But then why—

"—I'm glad you didn't jump," the woman suddenly tells you, cutting short both your train of thought and your attempts to dent the mountain of oats in your bowl.

I know, you think. The woman wants you on your feet, that much is glaringly obvious. She is as daft as sellswords can be while still staying out of the grave, but she does not strike you as likely to trek down mountains for fun, let alone in the company of helpless, half-blind Rhalâim. Clearly, for whatever reason, she thinks she can draw benefit from your continued existence.

"Why do you care," you ask, bristling at the thought. "You won't take the money. I've brought you nothing but corpses. What do you get from this?"

What do you get from me, you studiously leave unsaid. But even unspoken, the words still hang thick in the air.

The woman looks up from her meal to stare at you, brows furrowing in that way you know to mean puzzlement. She sits almost unnaturally still for a moment, then hastily swallows the oats she had still been chewing.

"I'm just glad you're alive is all," she says, wiping her mouth. "I wasn't going to say it, but you keep looking at everything like you're not sure if it's real. I thought you might need to be told. You didn't jump. You're here. I'm glad."

You feel your hands clench the silver fork and knife as they would your swords, and force them to relax, to put the cutlery aside. The woman, oblivious, returns to her own bowl, the question seemingly resolved to her satisfaction.

Why? Fucking why? Where is the anger, the resentment for the mess you dragged her in? The demand that you quickly find a way to provide for yourself? The reminders that this is just for now, that you must soon be gone? Where is the trap? Is there a trap, or is she truly that naïve? And if she is, then how did she carve her way through the arena? Why did her naivety somehow shield her, when yours had left you drenched in blood and murdered Letho twice?

Why is she so fucking lucky? Why are you? Why is Sister Pride to be killed, Brother Hatred to be stepped over, but Brother Wrath to be brought home and fed and given his own floor? Why couldn't it be Letho living to share a house in the sun, instead of the murdering piece of garbage you've let yourself become?

Letho's head rolls across the tiles, and you can almost imagine the mercenary's by its side, dull black eyes unseeing, sallow skin flecked with red. You stare at the too-full oat bowl, the overfilled shelves and cluttered floor, trying to will consistency into your surroundings, to derive some reason, some meaning, out of the last twenty years.

You find none whatsoever.

"I would have shot you," you state as calmly as you can make yourself. "If that woman hadn't been there, I would have shot you. I would have opened that gate with your corpse and wiped the splatter off my face."

The woman's gaze returns to yours, as unreadable as ever.

"Maybe you would have," she answers, putting her spoon down with irritating calm. "You know, everything that can happen will happen, so if you—"

"I would have shot you, damn it," you snap at her, willing her to make sense.

Your voice echoes, vague and blurry, bouncing under the high roof and the empty upper floor. You instinctively cringe back at its sound. Habit. Useless habit, now. Sound does not carry as far up here as it does in the tunnels, does not risk calling the attention of patrolling Rhalâim. Does not risk drawing the ire of the First Seer upon you.

The woman only tilts her head, crosses her arms on the table.

"You think I don't already think about this all day long? Yes, Tharaêl," she says, looking you in the eye, her expression serious yet on the verge of pitying. "You would have shot me, and on some wave of the Sea, you did. I know it, because I saw it. In perfect colorful detail. Do you know what else I saw? That on some other wave, I defended myself, and you fed the temple instead. And then on yet another wave, we struck each other at the same time, and died bleeding out on the floor while feeling extremely stupid. I presume the Father found it very funny."

You open your mouth to retort, but she forestalls you, raising a hand, refusing to let you interrupt.

"But here," the woman continues, "on the one and only wave of the Sea that matters, you didn't shoot me. I didn't burn you. We walked our way down Northwind Peak carrying each other's baggage. We shared a room, we shared a tent, we shared a bed, we shared a pile of coffins of all things, and we even shared a bath. Since in spite of it all we both seem to still be alive and in each other's company, I think we may as well admit we make a pretty decent team, and let the Sea of Eventualities handle the shoulds and woulds."

...A team.

Has the imbecile even been listening to you?

"Alright," you pretend to concede, unwilling to argue the point with a wall any further. "Let's say we're a team. What now?"

"Blazes, Tharaêl," she chortles, that moronic smile returning to her lips. "Which part of 'don't think through it all at once' is it that you don't understand?"

"What now," you yell at the infuriating mercenary, forcing yourself past your urge to cringe at the increased volume — and you can almost feel satisfaction flow through your veins as the woman's smile fades and she backs into her chair. "What's the plan, huh? What does a reformed Rhalâim do in the Upper City, exactly? I can cut throats and break fingers, but I don't figure that's what Sunchildren look for in their employees. What happens when no righteous man will hire some Pathless Aeterna with scars all over his face? Should I just sit pretty like some prized hound on your oh-so-fancy carpets, while you dump some gruel in my bowl and pat my shoulder every once in a while? What about when you go and get yourself killed playing hero for the Order? What happens then?"

The woman stares at you a while, hands nervously grasping at her elbows. Taken aback by your anger, clearly, in a way she hadn't seemed to be before.

Good. Maybe reality is finally beginning to sink into her.

"...Thanks for the vote of confidence," she quips in a deadpan voice, and you find your hands clenching all over again, nails biting into flesh, pulse echoing through your fingers. "Look, we'll figure that out when I come back. First, I have to check in with Grandmaster Arantheal as soon as I can, and—"

"You're a fucking sellsword of three moons out to fight transcendent beings," you interject, quite done with the woman's nonsense. "You think I need coddling?! Alright. Fine. Fuck you," you snarl to punctuate the idea, "but fine. But do me the fucking courtesy of not making shows of promising grand tomorrows when you don't even know if you'll survive today."

"What? No," the woman practically exclaims. "Tharaêl, no, you're taking this the wrong way, I didn't mean—"

"None of this is mine," you continue, undaunted by what would no doubt be yet another attempt to drown you in false reassurances. "Not the food, not the house, none of it. I can't count on any of it. Stop pretending I can. Just— just stop."

"Tharaêl—"

"—I said fucking stop!"

She does.

...You didn't quite expect that. You thought she would — well, do what she always does. Poke and prod. Insist on ramming herself through doors, barging into corners of your mind where she hasn't been invited. But she merely stays sat, hands resting atop each other on the very edge of the table.

"...Sorry," she mumbles, looking as downcast as you've ever seen her. "You're right."

You practically deflate as she says so, and so does your anger, letting your hands hang limp at last.

The woman sighs, seemingly as drained as you are. She looks to her left, and you follow her gaze — past the chimney and into the shelves, through the rows of fruit and herbs pickled in small glass jars. She stares at them, at the much-too-many baskets of potatoes, the pot of aging vegetables and the sacks of wheat and oats.

Her head slowly comes to hang, and you almost feel guilty.

"Look, I don't have the slightest clue how to manage any of this either," the woman finally admits, and you can hear your breath come more easily as she does, feel some of the ever-building tension leave your shoulders. "I'm making shit up as I go along. I know it. You know it. And I know you know it. I just — I want this to go right, so I'm trying my best, and—"

"—It makes you sound either delusional or blind as a cave fish," you interrupt her half-apology half-explanation. "You want to help me. I understand that. I appreciate that," you emphasize, lest you come to sound like an ingrate. "But I need to know where this field's obstacles are to maneuver around them, and I can't do that if you keep blindfolding me with pretty words."

The woman lifts her head back up to look straight into your eyes, and sighs a second time, nodding.

"This next part is all true," she says, looking much more reliable with that fake smile wiped off of her face. "You're not pressed for time. Not that much. It's like you said: there's enough food in here for weeks. And you have the purse; you can save some and find some place to hide it, if you want. Take some of both, make them last, and you can find some inn room or shack and hunker down for a while. That'll see you through if... if you can't trust me."

By the name of the Sun, finally. Finally, the girl is beginning to talk sense.

Would that it didn't take yelling at her to make her speak in plain Inâl.

"Yeah," you answer her as you ponder her words. "I can probably do that, but only once I know the place enough. You don't improvise stashes of food and money. Unless you want them to be filched by the nearest rat or lowlife."

"I don't figure you'll accept 'open an account at the bank' as good advice?"

Your brow reflexively creases as the woman smiles, but the quirk of her lips is wry and sarcastic this time. Sincere.

A joke.

"No," you say through your own small, faint shadow of a grin. "I won't."

"Well then," she continues, lying back into her seat once more. "If you're determined not to trust local establishments, a day or two should suffice for you to find some sort of backup plan. Shave, buy some clothes and a hat, and wander a little to get the lay of the land. Just... ask people if they have anything they need done for a few pennies, enough to reliably pay for a room at an inn. Carts to load or unload, floors to clean, anything. Be patient, be polite and mindful of people's faith, and you'll find some odd jobs here and there. I did."

It would be a start, part of your mind concedes. A foundation to build on.

The rest of your mind, however, is not so easy to persuade. Working out and about in Ark, provided you even manage to find some work in the first place, means being in sight of the guard. Unable to retaliate, be it against word or blade, without bringing yourself to their attention. No weapon at your hips, no armor on your back, no weapons in your hands but discipline and temperance.

You sigh, eyes lost into the thick oat sludge that still sits in your bowl.

"I can't convince you I mean any of what I say with words, can I."

You blink at the sound of the woman's voice, and let your gaze return to her. She remains sat on the other end of the small table, head tilted to the side, a pensive frown on her face.

"No," you agree. "You can't."

It doesn't particularly please you to admit it. For all that you can never attest to her true motives, the woman has, at the very least, acted loyal so far, if in sometimes perplexing ways. You don't want to compromise it any more than you did in Frostcliff Tavern or the Temple. Not while you have so little else to rely on, so few options to look into.

Not with the cliff so close and the climb so daunting.

"Alright," she answers, nodding to herself. "So I have an idea. How about this." She straightens in her seat, looking into your eyes. "Pick yourself a new name, and I can get you added to the title deed of the house."

The muscles of your back tense all over again as the enormity of the offer sinks in. No one ever gives so much of anything for nothing. No one. Not Sha'Gun, not the apothecaries, and certainly not some random mercenary from the Dust Pit.

You open your mouth to argue, to try and find the secret flaw, the hidden cost of the proposal.

"Why do you want to take my name," is what comes out instead.

You freeze at the sound of your voice, stunned by the sudden gap between your thoughts and words. How...?

"I don't want to," the woman replies to the question you hadn't meant to ask, forcing you to focus on her rather than on your racing mind. "But you're the only Tharaêl I've so much as heard of in my whole life. I've been dealing with the idiots in charge here for a while, and if there is one thing I know for sure about this city, it's that shady fuckers flock together. The Rhalâta deals in loans and in dirty money," she says, raising her left fist. "The folks at the bank, where you'd have to fill the ledgers, deal in investing and laundering," she continues, raising the other. "Tell me the twain never meet in back alleys and cushy rooms," she concludes, clapping both hands together in front of her face, "and I have sunlit fields in Thalgard to sell you. And with you saying the First Seer has ears everywhere..."

She shrugs.

It makes sense. You don't like it, but it makes sense. You've always been free with your deadname, convinced as you were it would never matter again. No doubt someone somewhere, some informant or spy, has heard of Tharaêl Narys, Voice of the Father.

"It's the middle of the night," you say. A weak retort, perhaps, but all you can manage, just as lost in the concept of having property to your name as you had been in that of owning an entire floor.

"And I'm a Keeper of the First Sigil, the Prophet of the Order," the woman shrugs. "What use is having rank, if I can't pull it on Samael Silren? Pick a name, any name, and I can promise you this. I can walk out this door and bring this house back to you, ink on paper and seal of the bank at the bottom. Right now."

You want to feel angry, somehow. To rage and rant at her as you had only mere moments ago. But the offer is more than fair, and well-trod ground besides. It isn't as if you've truly worn the name since the orphanage; only a litany of Dust Pit titles and nicknames, themselves soon discarded in favor of becoming Brother Wrath. You haven't been Tharaêl Narys in over a dozen winters. Haven't ever been him at all, really. Just a construct of the Father's, borrowing his name and memories.

You want to feel angry, but all you feel is numb.

"Letho," you murmur to the woman, hoping you will not have to explain your answer.

Not that you could, if she asked you to. There is no logic to the choice. Only the need to pull the name out of the void gnawing at you. To snatch it away from the Undercity and the Father and let it be spoken under the sun where it belongs. So what if you are not Tharaêl? Letho still existed, still deserved remembrance. And with the true Tharaêl gone, with Letho's body lost to the Father and to Wrath both, who will honor him, if not you?

You expect the woman to question, to argue, to call the choice a bad idea. But all she does is rise from the table and walk into her room without a single word. You hear her pull and rummage in her drawers for a while, even leaving something to clatter loudly on the floor; then she returns, inkwell, quill, and parchments in hand, as if nothing was amiss.

Perhaps she'd expected this choice just as much as your choice to pull back from the cliff.

"Letho it is," she says as she puts down the inkwell and quill by your hand. She unrolls the two parchments side by side on the table, and points to their bottoms, where what you guess to be her own signature lies. "Can you write 'read, agreed, and accepted' and sign these for me?"

You attempt to read the scrolls, but find the task impossible. The words are but lines of nonsense, letters refusing to coalesce into a coherent whole. Migraine? No, your head does not hurt. That... thing the Father called strangeness, perhaps? Wasn't it supposed to affect faces, not words?

Not that the words matter at all. You have no leverage with which to argue the terms of the contract.

No motivation to do so, either.

You sigh and simply sign the damn things, improvising some swirling curls to adorn Letho's name, then hold the parchments out for the woman to take. She does so with a slight frown, but does not comment, praise the Sun.

"Well, there it goes," she says, eyeing your cramped, uneven script. "These should be enough, as long as I'm the person bringing it to them." She shakes the parchments a little, takes a few seconds to blow the ink dry, then carefully rolls them back upon themselves. "We can go there together to discuss specifics when I'm ba— if I'm back. Or you can sort them out with Silren by yourself. Preferably soon. The bank is on the marketplace. Right at the opposite end of the central plaza, coming from here."

You understand the words. Intellectually, at least. You could define each and every last one of them, if asked. And yet somehow, to a degree, none of them register. As if the void had seeped out of you to sap them of their meaning, leaving only husks in its wake.

You look at the woman, for lack of better things to do, and the two of you find yourselves staring at each other, her standing, you sitting. Neither of you appearing to know how to proceed from this point.

A minute passes.

A second.

"Um," the woman eventually says, seemingly first to recover from your mutual lapse of consciousness. "Is there anything that would help right now?"

...Good question. You don't know. Probably nothing. What possibly could help, short of erasing all that happened since your tenth winter?

"Just some quiet," you try to answer the woman, more out of rote than out of any actual desire. "A lot of quiet. For quite some time."

She looks at you again, still frowning, and her mouth opens and closes in silence a few times before she shakes her head and sighs.

"Alright," she answers you. "Fine by me. The spare key is on a nail above the front window. If you need anything, anything at all, you can ask Mimi, right out the door. She's there every morning, brown hair, blue dress, you can't miss her. I'll let her know my outlander Aeterna friend could use some help with directions. She'll take a message to me in the Temple if you need. You'll have to pay, but she's reliable."

You let the words run through your head, wringing what meaning you can out of them. Keys above window. Ask the woman in blue. Outlander friend. Why not. You suppose it could make a good cover story. You certainly feel out of place enough to be an outlander, and it would serve to excuse inevitable cultural gaps.

It could work. It would work. It would provide a few tangible ways of handling your situation.

And you don't care.

Weren't you upset about this only moments ago?

You try to roll the minutes back, to retrieve the annoyance from out of your sudden numbness, or even simply remember why you had been upset at all. What words or poor turn of phrase could have possibly triggered it.

Nothing registers.

You turn your head to the mercenary, thinking to ask her, only to find that she has retreated back into the room. You can glimpse her, or at least her back, clad in the white and reds of the Order and the Guard. Changing to make her words to the Bank carry more weight, you presume.

Funny, when you think about it. Only three moons ago you would have laughed at the thought of ever associating with a Keeper. And now here you are, dining — and presumably soon living — in the abode of one you've known for but a scant few weeks, most of them spent fully unaware of the woman's rank.

"Tharaêl?"

You blink out of your thoughts to find the woman standing next to you again, looking like any other Guard if not for her black eyes and her diminutive stature. A Starling parent in her ancestry, perhaps. She raises a hand towards your arm, then seems to think better of it and lets it fall back down, letting her hands clench together over her stomach instead.

"I'm not Yesha Sha'Gun," the mercenary says, and the words clatter in the void that has been settling over you like a chime thrown into a well. "I have no idea what else I will or will not do, but I'm not going to sell you out. Not to the Rhalâta, not to the Order, not to anyone. I'm going to do my best to do right by you. Please trust in that, if nothing else."

She looks at you, steadily, clearly expecting some form of response. But what can you even say to that? 'I know' ? You don't. 'I believe you' ? You don't even know if the woman believes herself.

"I'm sure Sha'Gun thought the same thing," you answer her, numbness making a mild rebuke of what you would ordinarily voice as violent retort.

The woman's eyes lower, leaving yours to settle somewhere around your clavicle. She nods, quiet, almost somber, and leaves the tableside, grabbing her pack from a spare chair on her way to the door. She opens it and slips outside without any more words, locking the door behind her with two turns of her key in the lock.

You can hear the sound of her boots down the three steps of the threshold, faint echoes in the night, taking your name with them.

You'd only just gotten it back.

A weary sigh escapes your lips, and you push your still half-full bowl aside to lay your arms on the table, then lay your head on top of them. Finally, some calm. Some time to rest, to think without a pair of eyes hovering over your shoulder. The woman feels like nothing so much as a new Seer at times. A kinder one, perhaps, but just as omnipresent in her oversight and her disapproval.

Pushing thoughts of the woman to the side much like you did your bowl, you allow the void and its numbness to blanket you in blissful silence.

You don't know how long you've sat still, head buried in your arms, by the time the sound of paper brushing on wood catches your attention. You jerk back reflexively, head swishing to the side to locate the origin of the sound — and you find it, innocently laying on the floorboards. A letter, slipped under the door.

You stare at it like you would at a dog, half upset by its noise, half pondering its provenance. Still, in time, you manage to push yourself to rise, and cross the room at a brisk pace to pick the letter from the floor. A simple bit of clear parchment, wrapped around other ones — a small note from the bank, demanding a meeting 'within the week', and one of the two deeds the woman has asked you to sign. Now amended with a few lines specifying your ownership of 'the attic', a new seal, and what you guess to be Samael Silren's signature.

Well, there it is. You now own an entire floor.

Just like that. Because.

You keep staring at the house deed as you return to the table, uncertain how to feel about the parchment's existence. You are about to sit back down, hopefully to resume basking in the silence for quite some time, when you notice that the wrapping of the deed and note is not as clear as you had thought it to be — two lines adorn its other side, ink slightly smudged by your fingers.

Keep these safe, says the first one, written in what you guess to be the mercenary woman's hand.

Please still be home when I come back, says the second, more haphazard.

Something in that second line settles uneasily in your gut, tearing a hole there not even the void had managed to open. You try to will it closed, but only find its breadth spreading, leaking into your chest, your arms, the tips of your fingers. You can feel your anger bubble back up from the void at long last, and you kick at the chair, frustrated beyond words.

The force sends it skidding right into the table, and the rickety mess of course picks this time to tilt over, taking its contents with it in its fall. You stand and watch, silent, as the pots and pan spill over, glass jars and earthenware crashing into shards all across the floor. The sludge of the leftover oats splatters the carpet and floorboards, leaving wet, greasy stains in its wake.

Congratulations, Tharaêl, you tell yourself, instinctively sickened by the sight of the wasted food. Five minutes into your tenance, and you've already wrecked the house.

What a fine piece of work you are. Letho would be so proud.

Letho's head rolls across the tiles, and you press the heels of your hands against your eyes, rubbing as strongly as you can. The memory fades back, but the feelings remain — rage and regret in equal measure, wrath and shame and longing and wishing that for once, just fucking once, the arena would let you go.

Well. What did the woman expect? You warned her. This is what you do. You break things for stupid reasons, then you regret it afterwards. And what did you expect, anyway? You knew you should have jumped. Then neither of you would be dealing with any of this.

You sit down on on your haunches, observing the result of your latest outburst. Glass liberally dusts the oats and the lard once held by the pots, making them inedible even if you scooped them up. The pan is unsurprisingly unharmed, and one of the pots seems to have survived the fall intact, but the bowls are thoroughly shattered, as are all three of the jars. At least they were empty, you comfort yourself as you think of the pickled meat lining the shelves. Wasting the lard is bad enough.

Letting out a long, tired sigh, you set yourself to the slow task of picking up your own damn mess, fragment after fragment, one small piece at a time.

There's no saving the broken things, but you can probably wash the stains out of the carpet.

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shadowphoenixrider · 5 years

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I know I’m extremely late to the party, but I have a theory on one of the 8.3 Il’gynoth whispers:

“The golden one claims a vacant throne. The crown of light will bring only darkness.”

Putting my money on that being Calia.

Her appearance does not make her look friendly in my eyes (she’s giving me ‘Inquisitor’ vibes and that’s Not Good)

People have noted that there’s a disconnect between her and the Forsaken. Yes, they’re both undead, but one side has been reviled, hunted, forced to do some pretty dark shit to survive (no not the plague, I mean pilfering corpses of their parts to keep themselves in good repair). The other has had a pretty shit start to life, but her unlife has been...pretty peachy, all things considered. Whilst some will definitely warm to her rule, there will be others that can criticize her. ‘you don’t know what we’ve been through’.

Also potential Alliance unrest - whilst a lot of us joke about the Alliance propping up the Horde story, their citizens could see their leaders, especially Anduin, helping with Horde politics and think ‘wait, is he looking after us or them?’ With Calia going to help the Forsaken, of which there’s a still a big distrust of in the Alliance races? That’s probably not going to go down too well.

#patch 8.3 spoilers #world of warcraft #calia makes me incredibly uneasy #i mean I'm not for turning women evil at the drop of a hat #(tyrande's rage is justified you leave her the hell alone blizz)#(and don't you dare try it with talanji either!)#but i just...my gut says 'bad'#of course 90% sure I'm wrong #usually am #but guessing games are fun even if you lose!

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motleystitches · 6 years

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Guardian 鎮魂 (Chap 49) ..

...in which I translate my favorite chapter when Yunlan the badboy detective/reincarnated god(he doesn’t know yet) reveals how much he loves his fair professor/deadly soulless creature. This translation is based on how I would read it English (or close enough) so there are words that I emphasize that the Wattpad translation don’t and vice versa.

For example, there’s a phrase that translates literally to ‘brows and eyes like a painting’ which sounds very odd to me in English. Since the phrase conveys a literary descriptor of ethereal beauty, “pretty as a picture” wouldn’t do either so I’ve gone with ‘fair’ which Tolkien uses for elves quite often and occasionally for exceptional mortals. I considered “pulchritudinous” as well, but the Chinese phrase isn’t that obscure.

Zhao Yunlan was in a curious state of mind.

He did drink too much and wasn’t walking steadily but after throwing up and a nap, the effects of alcohol were fading.

It was just that Chu Chuzi said that he was drunk and disorientated, so he played along and pretended he was completely drunk, and was only half-pretending that he was dead asleep.

Shen Wei had came upstairs to pick him up but he had left the engine running to keep the air on. Zhao Yunlan felt it when he got in the car.

Shen Wei sat down and pushed him gently. “Stay awake, sleep when you’re home. You’ll catch a chill outside.”

Zhao Yunlan played dead.

He heard a sign from the man beside him. Shen Wei couldn’t wake him so he bent down to buckle the seat belt, bringing the two close enough that Zhao Yunlan could smell Shen Wei; different from the winter Wraith Slayer brought with him, he had the soapy scent of the newly washed clothes- the Wraith Slayer stripped of the guise that both men and ghosts feared was a man of incongruous clean grace. (Note: the literal translation is that the man inside is so clean and soft, but ‘soft’ hear is more like..genteel- a good feminine descriptor of comfort, which is meant to contrast against the blood and violence in being a Lord of Abominations)

Then Shen Wei took out a bottle of mineral water and poured some of it into a small cup, he swirled the cup twice in his hand until steam covered what would’ve been cold water. He moved the cup beneath Zhao Yunlan’s mouth. “At least take a sip.” (Note: TV’s “rewarming porridge scene”)

Zhao Yunlan opened his eyes slightly. In the darkness of the car the only light seemed to be from Shen Wei’s eyes, just bright enough that they were neither grim nor burning.

Zhao Yunlan’s heart thumped once, hard. He pressed close and drank the entire cupful by Shen Wei’s hand. Then Shen Wei found a blanket from beneath the seat and covered him snugly before turning up the air. Only then did he start driving.

Zhao Yunlan leaned against the seat. His eyes were closed but his mind was clear...it had been a very long time since he had been so warm in such a cold night.

In the half month since they returned from the snowy mountain, he hadn’t contacted Shen Wei.

Nevertheless, harassing him regularly and constantly noticing his likes had become Zhao Yunlan’s habit. And breaking a habit was painful. He had been living harder than usual with the excuse that it was the end of the year. But though man is a social animal, over-socialization was tiring.

It was more difficult to appear alone if there was no expectation to be dapper and polished.

There had always been men and women. When he was feeling like it, keeping a number of flirtations going gave him a sense of self-satisfaction, but ever since he cut off contact with Shen Wei, Zhao Yunlan couldn’t help but compare all others against Shen Wei with the consequence that his interest would fade because no one else had the same scholarly air so worthy of savoring, no one else had such a fair face.

Zhao Yunlan felt as if he had become a monk overnight. One day over dinner, they had invited a young model through an agency, but even she couldn’t arouse his interest- and with Da Qing as witness, for a while he had rather lewdly used that model’s swimsuit picture as his desktop.

And every time he became so drunk as to forget the day and month, he would remember the time his stomach hurt but got his way to keep Shen Wei with him at home for half the day.

They watched movies, sometimes talked, and in the middle when the movie got boring, he flipped open half-read files and resumed reading. Each to his own, neither one bothered the other, and Shen Wei would shove a pillow behind his back. (Note: the pillow scene in the car in the show has a reference!)

That had always been the life he secretly wanted-- no complaints about being terse, no nagging, no demands- today a movie, tomorrow some flowers, they didn��t bother each other, but weren’t cold and aloof...but more as if they should’ve been living together in their own kingdom all along.

Zhao Yunlan was old enough, his intellectual and emotional intelligence was evenly developed, generally speaking, and he was also self-aware, so of course he knew that when a man didn’t see the tiny waist, the long legs, and the shapely butt of another person, and instead saw the desire for a peaceful home, then it was no longer lust.

If not for this, he would’ve made a joke with the Wraith Slayer and that would’ve been the end to it.

But he didn’t want to.

Every time Zhao Yunlan remembered the snowy mountain, that poor little shack, the pair of eyes that met his in the middle of the night, he thought if things were just to “end”, he would regret it for the rest of his life.

Zhao Yunlan’s pigsty of a home wasn’t far from No. 4 Guang Ming Road so he hadn’t quite struggled through his complicated emotions before the trip ended. Shen Wei helped him all the way through the door, took off his jacket before hanging it up, moved him to the bed, then turned to the bathroom to find a wet towel.

Though Zhao Yunlan looked like he was completely wasted, Shen Wei remained extremely polite. He only carefully rubbed down Zhao Yunlan’s face, hands and feet, and didn’t veer to touch anywhere else. Shen Wei pulled the coverlet over him, put the towel aside, and tidied up out of habit, putting the trash near the door with a plan to take it out when he leaves. He also picked up the clothes thrown all over the floor and put them all in the dry-cleaning bag Zhao Yunlan had abandoned near the door. He put a note on it to remind him to get it to the cleaners the next day.

He was so detailed he took away the half-glass of water left on the bedside drawers, just so that Zhao Yunlan wouldn’t knock it over in the middle of the night.

Zhao Yunlan listened to the other man tiptoeing around room, the susurrus of him tidying up, but the problem inside his heart remain knotted and was becoming knottier.

Shen Wei cared for him, Zhao Yunlan could feel it. Throughout his life, except for his parents, everyone else wanted something from him, or relied on him, no one had ever truly cared.

....oh Da Qing didn’t count, he was a sh*tty grump fat cat.

After Shen Wei finished, he realised that Zhao Yunlan, who had peered at him before seemed to be now asleep. He wasn’t moving.

He seemed so peaceful. Shen Wei hesitated, but couldn’t bring himself to leave. He stood beside the bed and looked at Zhao Yunlan greedily.

“F-ck!” Yunlan, who was pretending to be asleep, was finding it intolerable. “Please stop staring, if you are going, just go. This is killing me.”

But the Wraith Slayer didn’t hear his thoughts and god didn’t hear his thoughts. After a few moments, like a man in a trance, Shen Wei bent down carefully, close to Zhao Yunlan, until he could feel his breath on his face.

Sheer willpower kept Zhao Yunlan motionless as a corpse. And yet he felt very clearly that this state of being wouldn’t last very long.

At this time, Shen Wei finally couldn’t bear it, his arms propped beside Yunlan, he touched Zhao Yunlan’s lips lightly, a whisper of a touch, gone as it was there. He closed his eyes, as if the short contact provided him immense succor. His flesh shuddered with thunderous heartbeat so there was a moment, Shen Wei thought he was actually human. He had stolen a kiss from his beloved under dimmed lights; joy and sweetness welled up in his heart. He wouldn’t complain if he was to die now.

Yunlan’s mind was suddenly blank.

His temper, hanging by a thread that was increasing in tension, finally snapped. Zhao Yunlan’s alcohol fueled brain thought very clearly: “Wraith Slayer? So what if he is the Wraith Slayer? What I like is mine. F*ck everything else!”

So the “dead asleep” Yunlan suddenly reached out and caught Shen Wei. Shen Wei, surprised, found himself falling. Then Yunlan turned over and was pressed half over him.

There was still alcohol in Zhao Yunlan’s breath, but his eyes were clear. He met Shen Wei’s eyes and asked softly, “What are you doing, your eminence?”

Shen Wei opened his mouth but no sound came out, too awkward too answer.

Zhao Yunlan looked at him for a moment, an indecipherable expression in his eyes, then suddenly reached up and softly squeezed Shen Wei’s chin. “I always thought your eminence a gentlemen. Who knew you kiss secretly in the middle of the night, and such an unprofessional kiss, too.”

Then Shen Wei heard his muffled laughter.

Until Zhao Yunlan kissed him, Shen Wei remained stunned. He thought he was in a ridiculous and marvelous dream. Helpless, he embraced Zhao Yunlan’s body. (note: yes, it does read ‘his body’, not just the name)

That man’s kiss was skilled, sensual and tantalizing, and minimum effort was enough was to render Wei weak and confused, utterly vanquished.

Then Zhao Yunlan lifted himself up slightly. The two were most touching noses. Shen Wei heard Yunlan say softly: “Professional standards would at least be like this.”

Wei was speechless.

Two buttons of Yunlan’s collar were undone, exposing the long graceful arc of his collarbone, sending off traces of cologne. A whiff stoppered all of Shen Wei’s words. He couldn’t tell who was the one inebriated.

Zhao Yunlan sighed and reached out to brush aside the messy fringe on Shen Wei’s forehead. “Let me ask you something. You’ve been hiding from me for a while but refused to stay hidden, was it because you knew me from a long long time ago and wronged me, or are you worried that man and ghoul do not share the same destiny?”

Shen Wei, shocked, became alert. He pushed him away and sat up. The flush on his face faded and the hands by his side tightened.

Zhao Yunlan moved sideways, half-leaned against the bed, and pulled at Shen Wei’s hand, opening up his fist a little at a time. “You always fight with yourself. If it’s the first reason, then I’m saying this now, whatever happened, there’s no debt between us. If you don’t mention it, I won’t remember. As for the second....isn’t the second reason a moot point? Even a living person will die.....maybe one day I-”

Shen Wei covered his mouth.

They looked at each other for a while but finally Shen Wei slowly shook his head.

Zhao Yunlan sighed and got out of the bed. He seemed clear-headed and articulate, so who knew his step would be so unsteady. He sat down hard on the floor. He held his head in his hands and complained. “F-ck, ten bees are buzzing in front of me.”

Shen Wei came to help him up. “I thought you aren’t drunk. Are you hurt?”

Zhao Yunlan’s was in that curious state of consciousness where he could think logically but could not walk in a straight line, otherwise he wouldn’t have had the courage to be so frank.

He shook his head, crouched down and pulled out the drawer from the bedside table, he drew out a plastic file folder from the bottom and dropped it in front of Wei. “Open it.”

Shen Wei hesitated, but he opened it and found a deed tucked inside, a single family home with a yard near Dragon City College’s college road…a substantially large investment, no wonder Zhao Yunlan seemed so poor recently.

Zhao Yunlan stopped smiling and leaned against the bedside drawer, stretching out his legs in front. He raised his head and took out a cigarette from his pocket.

He remained silent for the length of a cigarette before speaking, voice low. “I had the deed transferred before we went to the Snowy Mountain. Originally I was thinking, commute would be easy there, it’s quite a nice neighborhood, and it happens to be next to Dragon College, if you were willing to move in with me, then you wouldn’t have to drive to work. You could even get up later. Next year, I’ll try to transfer the SID over as well. The house is quite big, likely too big for two people, but then you can keep a large study. You would be able to bring students home and I could invite friends over....I thought of having a big stupid dog as well, and occasionally get it to fight with Da Qing, like a Cat vs. Dog New Years movie....”

Shen Wei’s hand couldn’t help shaking. The plastic folder rustled.

Zhao Yunlan laughed quietly. “Who knew after trip from the Great Northwest, I would discover that it’s for Your Eminence-- you can move from east to west side of the city in the blink of an eye. Why would you need to drive? To get up early? I wouldn’t have bothered had I known. Now I almost don’t have enough for New Years because of that poor little place.” (Note: ;_; )

Shen Wei lowered his head and met his eyes and only thought that man had always looked at him that way. Without the teasing, only deep affection remained, just a fleeting piece captured was enough to drown a man. (note: this is a mixed metaphor in Chinese as well)

Wei thought he was splitting in two. Half of him was so happy that he could fly, but the other half was sunk deep beneath the waters of the underworld. For a moment, he thought he was going mad.

Millenia of solitude had not driven him insane, but two sentences from that man, casually spoken, was enough to stir his emotions to a storm.

No wonder the sages say: with love the living may die and the dead can live. only when love is not enough, the living cannot be with the dead and dead cannot live.

Yet with the soul in disarray, who knew the hour or the year?

#鎮魂 #镇魂 guardian #shen wei #zhao yunlan #translation #this took about as long as writing

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kagrena · 6 years

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Bthemetz headcanons & Various Dwemer headcanons:

- bthem knows a lot about numidium through not only proximity to the project but hir own work. kagrenac and bthem worked together on a “body” that would allow hir to transcend the borders of the realm of oblivion. it was partially successful, more a construct than a body, a chasis bthem controls like one might control a toy with a joystick, not something inate, or part of oneself.

- bthem’s chasis ended up being revisited when kagrenac began to design numidium. early designs actually resemble bthem’s Actual Face a lot (this was just before their relationship drastically fell apart).

- bthem was the philosopher credited with shifting focus from “from the sacred to the profane” to “from the profane to the sacred” and caused a radical shift in not only dwemer politics but dwemer identity, from a former lorkhan-worshipping sect of disillusioned scholars and historians fixated on the corpse of a god to a group of innovators and mathematicians and scientists. hir sermons allowed the dwemer to position themselves beyond simply ‘against aldmeris’ and (ironically) drop lorkhan altogether.

- bthem however revered lorkhan passionately in life and that is about as fashionable as auriel himself (and this was so early in the merethic era most people have forgotten about lorkhan worship altogether) - so hir name didn’t automatically carry weight. it’s worth noting dwemer don’t particularly revere ancestors or view history in terms of Great Names (that is a very altmer approach), cathedrals are perhaps more like debate halls and quite often ‘scripture’ is erased and re-written from scratch, new ideas supercede old ones.

- so the discovery of bthem didn’t make kagrenac a household name - but rather kagrenac’s invesitgations onto souls, bodies, planes (metaphysics basically) did. kagrenac ended up writing a book about a lot of what she discovered while helping bthem unearth hirself.

- bthem had a unique and rather uneasy position amongst the dwemer. while bthem was acknowledged as hir own person ze lacked the formal education that had become commonplace amongst the dwemer - bthem knows very little of mathematics or engineering or oration or astronomy; ze is a philosopher and priest who had an inate knowledge of the earth bones when ze was in nirn. dwemer have a ruthless debate culture and while bthem was welcome to take part in those debates, politically ze was always disadvantaged cause of this lack of knowledge, and also because political opponents of kagrenac wanted to rip into her using bthem. bthem ended up trusting in kagrenac politically rather than following hir own ventures (bthem perhaps, mistakenly, always considered her and hirself equals as they had been when kagrenac was a visitor to hir realm).

- nevertheless kagrenac’s close colleagues - later, acolytes, followers - always treated hir with respect and bthem co-authored papers on tonal architecture and was... busy working, not simply a Prop. the fact that ze was The Bthemetz, the one who led a bunch of their people across the desert, like the fucking Plato of hir people, mattered not in some ways; most viewed hir as one of kagrenac’s closest followers.

- additionally i’ve always kind of headcanoned the dwemer having several nations (people mistakenly interpret them as clans or whatever....); bthem is not from the same nation, the same people, as the vvardenfell group, and in that way bthemetz was viewed as an outsider as well.

- i think in general bthemetz found the experience of 1st era vvardenfell dwemer society extremely alienating and odd because as advanced and technologically brilliant they were in a way they were only just scratching the surface of while bthem was alive. and while they were still an intense, privately passionate, reclusive people, the structure of society was so.... different from when bthem was alive, not a bunch of lost visionaries in the desert listening to the sounds of the earth but bustling cities with grand cathedrals and a sense of formalities and structures and identities which were still very much forging while bthem was alive. oral debate was a cornerstone of what bthem lived through but the subjects and ideas were so utterly different and alien. the godlessness of hir people i think in particular was bizarre - not something ze had thought impossible, there was an emerging strand of that while ze was alive amongst hir own faction, but still, for there to be no worshippers of lorkhan left? maddening. also deeply upsetting, because lorkhan worship so deeply entwined with her own research and philosophy, with part of why ze started those wars, ze caused so much chaos, why ze was captured and imprisoned.

- bthemetz was not part of the first council but attended larger ceremonies. so the chimer saw hir. they just thought ze was a weird centurion or atronach or something. didn’t recognise hir personhood or hir at all. this is partially why, along with the difficulty of going so far undiscovered, bthem never even considered going to nerevar’s court with information about numidium; it would be impossible to contact them discretely anyway (in a way that it was definitely possible to do with voryn).

- as a construct, bthemetz could not hear the heart even stood in front of it. had bthem still been on nirn, attuned as ze was, a shezzarine on top of that..... ze would have heard it from miles away. ze would have heard it the moment ze took hir first steps in kagrenac’s workshop. this irony upsets hir a lot.

- bthem as a character was passionate and warm, and extremely, extremely driven. ze had a natural charisma i think? enough to convince people to start a war. (hey i didn’t say ze was good.)

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chalabrun · 7 years

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saint lost, chapter 1

Title: Saint Lost Word Count: 1647 Pairing: Ravus/Noctis & one-sided Ardyn/Ravus Rating: M Warnings: None Summary: A Corpse Bride AU. In an effort to save his sister from the snares of an arranged marriage, Ravus Nox Fleuret takes it upon himself to volunteer in her stead to be wed to Chancellor Ardyn Izunia. What seems to be a steady arrangement instead devolves into a political ploy for power and for Ravus’ life to be forfeit among the dead. Yet, it is here where an unexpected ally might be his only chance for absolution.

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“Mother wouldn’t have forced this on you, Ravus.”

“Mother isn’t here, sister.”

He stands before the mirror in his own bedroom, his sister attentively adjusting the tie she’d just knotted for him, staring dispassionately at his own reflection that seemed to fog in the worn mirror that was impossibly stained with tarnish from the ages. In the dim lighting, one could almost mistake his countenance for a skull, trauma-shocked hair for one who’d died long ago—and, perhaps it was true. Oddly mismatched eyes were the only indicator of the prosthetic he wore beneath the sleeve of his suit, an abomination that had been the cause of their house’s bone-bare fortunes. His military earnings were small stipends spent heavily on Lunafreya’s well-being and the upkeep of Fenestala that had fallen on hard times since Niflheim’s conquest.

“I don’t like this arrangement, Ravus. We barely know this man you’re to be wed to. Nothing of his house, beyond his role as Chancellor—“ Lunafreya was stopped short when he shook his head, a protest still alive in those ashen blue eyes but faltered.

“This world needs you alive as Oracle, Lunafreya. You do not know this man. I… I can handle him. You need not worry for me.” She knows the reluctance in his words too well. Ardyn Izunia was dangerous, and though he’d actively proposed this marriage, it was Ravus who prevented Luna from being selected. Tenebraen princes were of less concern to a matriarchy as this, as similar-gendered marriages rarely caused scandal. In Tenebrae, this meant freedom. In this instance, he was protecting the only family he had left.

“Ravus, should you wish to back out, no one would think ill of you,” Luna placated, placing petite hands on his bicep and forearm, a wan smile ghosting on her pale features. Even if she hid it, how frail she looked, how ghostly. This long winter and the shortage of food rations addled by a charitable spirit was ruining her health.

That drove a stake of guilt in his heart. When Ardyn was near, the very foulness he exuded tainted her. This was exactly why he had to protect her from even a man who meant her ill.

“Were it only so simple...” He was stronger than Luna, if in body predominantly. He knew Luna, but she didn’t know Ardyn the way he did. This would easily finance the manor and afford them some protection, even if by but a little, and keep them afloat through privilege. Even if this emotional strain would be contentious.

There was a knock at the door, Maria announcing that their train to Gralea had arrived. Now, there was no turning back.

For the past eight years, he’d been seeing this changeless man in his dreams. Clad in black, with boyishly spiky black hair and warm ruby eyes that looked almost brown, and a face youthful and serene. These were the lucid dreams Ravus remembered, spending summery vales in sylleblossom fields with this young man and speaking for long hours. It was a strange form for the conscience to take, but doing this somehow resolved many a problem before. In a childhood before the bombs dropped.

The man sat in a tree, leg dangling over the fat, gnarled branch he perched upon while Ravus sat by the grassy embankments of the river, near a trickling run-off that fed into crystal-cool waters. Willow fronds caressed the waters, and the silence was companionable. It always was when he first came, after all. Fragrant summer airs breezed past them, the soothing chorus of fluttering leaves billowing through the willow like hair. Newly emerged from the spring.

“You’re...getting married?”

Ravus could hear Noctis shift in surprise, seemingly shocked from his repose. The Tenebraen’s eyebrows only furrowed severely, as if his expression weren’t grim enough.

“And this surprises you?” he demanded bluntly of this dream-bound man, eyes immobile from the subtle intricacies of currents in the stream. Arm propped on a raised leg, one might think Ravus a statue.

Hearing him hop from his place and leap to the ground, it was only then that Ravus inclined his head towards the other. Noctis stood several feet behind him, expression discernibly unreadable.

“No, not really. Do you want this to happen?” Ravus moved aside some, silent invitation for Noctis to sit next to him. He did, but not within terribly close proximity. This is how it always was, after all.

“It is my duty. I do not live in a world where I am free to give my heart to whomever I wish,” Ravus explained, though he fell silent for a long while.

“Eight years, it’s been,” he murmured meditatively, flexing at the scarred tissue of his ruined hand. In his dreams, he wore no encasing, no prosthetic. The former prince always wondered as to why. Why this damned thing came with him, here. His eyes shifted to Noctis. If he changed, why hadn’t this man? “Who are you, really? Are you a fabrication of my dreams as I’ve led to believe all these years?” These circumstances made him doubt everything anymore.

Noctis’ countenance turned away from the Commander, set afar on the river. “No, I’m not. I was there—when your mother died. I was the one who collected her soul.” His head bowed, a long silence spanning them.

Reaper. Ravus’ eyes widened in shock, taken aback. In the pregnant pause, his gaze became like a glare as it searched Noctis hotly for answers. “How— Why are you here, then?”

The reaper smiled mirthlessly, a wan, barely-shadow of a smile ghosting on his features. “Dreams and death are a lot more interconnected than people think. Your soul—it goes places. One’s just more permanent than the other.” Noctis knew. That wasn’t the answer Ravus sought. “I...saw something, in you. That day, just as she died. ‘m...not even sure myself. I waited, sure, but things just happened. And here we are.”

As abstract an explanation as that was, it seemed strange. Guilt, perhaps. Not an uncommon thing to take pity on the victim. Eight years had lessened the shock, the scandalized look. With his impending wedding everything else seemed so minuscule.

Marrying for love was unheard of, even in this day and age. When one was royalty, marriage was to gain peace or curry favor. Yet as he gazed upon Noctis, something stirred within Ravus. Something he hadn’t truly entertained before wiped away the fog of the past, sharpening the picture. Noctis wasn’t a dream, anymore. Someone who knew him, who hadn’t used everything he confessed against him. Eight years and changeless, it was foolish—

Ravus caught himself before such irrational thoughts ran away from him, turning his face away. This wedding was driving him mad, making him seek ridiculous things. So soon? Was he truly so weak?

“You’re doing this for your sister, aren’t you?” Ravus was broken from his rapture when Noctis spoke, fixing him with a bemused look. “You’re strong, Ravus. Stronger than you know. You’ve made it to deputy High Commander, haven’t you? He’s a man of politics. Doubt he’ll be able to do much even if he tried.”

There was a confident smile on Noctis’ face. One that made Ravus realize the depths of a terrible, deep loneliness. He frowned, but it was hardly any different than the aloof grimness Noctis was thoroughly used to. Turning away, for once, he didn’t feel the same sort of resolution that had come from their talks in the past. Like more tangles had been introduced than soothed.

“We shall see, Noctis.”

Oh, but how hollow he felt.

Ravus awoke with a stiffness permeating his body and a dull ache in his chest. Rolling his head to gaze outside the window, an endless, white-capped sea of snow and blizzards greeted his vision and suddenly the numbness at his temple had a culprit. Shifting in his seat, the Tenebraen frowned at his own stiffness, not used to sleeping in such constrained positions for as long as he had.

It was strange for Lunafreya to not have accompanied him, but he knew her duties as Oracle took precedence. As it were, the Lucian-born Nyx Ulric had been her bodyguard for the better part of two years now, and Ravus trusted him enough to not blunder like an idiot he otherwise presented himself as.

His thoughts drifted again to the boy, the reaper. What he thought had been a subconscious depository was an extant being, and the idea of being wed to malicious Izunia suddenly stood in strange contest to this. And he knew why. Ravus knew himself too well not to; lest someone exploit a weakness he wasn’t aware of.

How would this one be, exactly? When he’d been younger, some several months into their frequent talks, he remembered becoming enamored with Noctis. Nothing like a true love, for he knew better. Having someone, real or not, burden his problems without using them as a dagger against him had been a sorely wanted luxury in an empire that would’ve otherwise stabbed him in the back; a profusely lonely existence that latched on to any friendly company and clung to it. He’d learnt that long before this.

After awhile, he convinced himself of the foolishness of such a fairy tale. That Noctis wasn’t real. Nothing had ever come of those encounters but talking. Sometimes near, sometimes far apart. Always talking about the most intimate of things. And he’d grown as a consequence.

But all this dredged those old, vulnerable sentiments he’d thought been buried deep. At the time when he couldn’t afford to be weak. Not when Lunafreya needed him as a vanguard between herself and that bastard chancellor now more than ever.

No...there was no time to ruminate on past foolishness. As the jagged skyline of Gralea arose from the wintery sea like teeth, he grit his jaw resolutely. Only a few more trials and he might be rid of this insipid conundrum. The Chancellor would be amused before and after the wedding, then lose interest and allow some normalcy to return. Endowments taken, parties to attend and declare, and it’d be over. For a war-hardened commander, he’d endured far worse than this.

A feminine voice announced their arrival time, Ravus folding his hands on his lap as he waited. He devoted his thoughts to Lunafreya, idly hoping all was well with his sister.

The Castle of Colbrine had been the ancestral home of the Aldercapts since time immemorial. A magnificent Gothic structure that spoke of an old and bygone elegance, baroque interiors all colored in the white, crimson, and black standards typical of their dynasty. Since having disembarked at the station, it was in a gaudy Rolls Royce that the Tenebraen was ushered to the palace, partly annoyed at the unnecessary extravagance that felt like either patronizing or condescending and Ravus couldn’t decide on which.

He was a damned officer in the army, already. No need for the needless pomp and parade.

Arriving, he was properly searched before entry, a stinging reminder that they still bore little trust in him as an outsider, regardless of the ovations he’d received for over a decade of service. Rising through the ranks simply so he’d better protect his sister and his homeland.

A member of the royal retinue, Iedolas’ own chamberlain, led him to the immaculate Hall of Conferences. Like stepping into a page from the Altissian Renaissance, even he had to admit the heavily gilt mosaics and domed ceilings and impossibly intricate moldings were exquisite to behold, like a cathedral. Even the glass tinted the cold sunlight outside a summery cream, easing his nerves somewhat. Such sunlight always reminded him of Luna.

His hackles raised the moment Ardyn’s swarmy person entered the room, standing to attention as a bevy of guards followed suit of the man, holding the doors open wordlessly. Humming beneath his breath, a deceptive levity in that maroon frame of hair, Ravus resisted every urge to curl his lips back in a snarl at the man.

“Chancellor Izunia,” Ravus greeted as he stood to attention, inclining his head just so even as his expression remained stonily impassive. It had to, lest the man worm for fissures and snare on to them and make a noose of it.

“Isn’t this all just so exciting, Lord Ravus? Weddings are always such touching events. I never thought I’d live to see my own in this lifetime,” Ardyn rambled with a dramatically enunciated tone as he swanned about the room, admiring the various vases set on tables commemorating things Ravus was too aloof to care for. But, this was all simply a distraction. Mismatched eyes saw the doors close behind him, the airy pretense seeming to dissolve the moment they did as his raised shoulders suddenly sagged and the summery glow of the sun seemed to chill and dim. “Has Lady Lunafreya been well lately, Ravus?”

Ravus bristled, but gave no visible indication of it. “Yes, she is. May we get to the business at hand, Chancellor?” The subject he simply wanted to get over with.

Over his shoulder, molten golden eyes concealed by waves of Merlot, Ardyn flashed a wolfish smile. “Oh, Ravus, you never were a romantic, were you?” he chided with a dark laugh.

“I simply wish to know if this affair will interfere with my duties significantly or not.”

“You would be permitted leave, naturally.” Ardyn sat himself at the head of the table with a flourish, the silent command for Ravus to do the same jabbing the Commander. Ravus did so at the very opposite end, a silent defiance to him ever being Ardyn’s subordinate in this circus. Ardyn produced a shief of papers from his lapel pocket, concentrating on them first before ever giving a glance to the former prince.

“Ah yes, what I’m certain you’re anxious to hear: there will be a significant dowry endowed, however, we’ve decided it best that Tenebrae be ruled by a governor, but as Chancellor, I unfortunately will not have this title and His Radiance believes you ought have it, dear boy. All decisions will run through me, naturally, and I will have direct oversight to all of Tenebrae’s affairs. We’ll both retain our respective positions with little change in the world. Isn’t that splendid, Ravus?” the Chancellor purred smugly, raising his brows at the younger man.

Ravus found himself surprisingly taken aback, warning himself not to be lulled by it. Governor? He had to admit, the title did sound a bit strange for him to have, but...he’d be in charge of his home. He’d have greater access to be around Lunafreya, and not worry so much about going behind people’s backs to attend to her. His head bowed, even if it sounded too good to be true. “That’s...very generous, Chancellor. Might I ask of our personal lives, then?” This elicited a grin from the man.

“We’ll have a room at Fenestala, of course. None of the other rooms, but one we both might like. Unfortunately, our duties will keep us apart, but public appearances abound. We’ll make quite a smart couple. Come now, you didn’t think this would entail selling your soul to the devil, now would it~?” The curl in his voice made Ravus cringe internally, but he withheld expressions so frank.

It would still be a loveless marriage, then. It was a grateful thing his hope for true love died in him a long time ago. This was practical. This was one based in reality. “No, Chancellor. I merely worried it would hamper my obligations to the army. I would not wish for the sword of office His Radiance gifted to me to be besmirched.”

“Should we acclimate to a life of wedded bliss, I believe you should familiarize yourself with calling me by simply my name. Try it.” Ardyn waved a wrist encouragingly at him, as if prompting a hound to roll over for him.

“Ardyn,” Ravus repeated flatly, utterly deadpanned.

The man addressed brightened sarcastically, pointing to himself in shock. “Who, me?” He laughed merrily and rose from his seat, Ravus taking this as invitation to do the same and began stalking from the room in hopes of recouping from this ordeal, to mull over the elevation in office he’d be receiving shortly.

However, before he could, he exhaled sharply when he found the equally tall man too close and corralling him against a wall, backing into it until the fanciful moldings dug uncomfortably into his spine. Fixated on those eyes of liquid gold, Ardyn leaned in close and pressed his lips to Ravus’, though there was nothing tender about it. Ravus’ lips remained lifeless through it, eyes open and watching, despite the heat he felt stirring in his solar plexus. Ardyn’s hands took him by his flared hips, pressing their pelvises scandalously close together.

Not realizing his breath was hitched, Ravus exhaled when Ardyn moved away, the man smiling his Cheshire’s smile.

“Tomorrow, then. Do take care of yourself until then, dearest Ravus.”

#ravus nox fleuret #noctis lucis caelum #ardyn izunia #lunafreya nox fleuret #ravus x noctis #ravnoct #my writing #fanfic

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