Mind Master

mind master. thirty-four. he/they. guardian.

[mindxxmaster]

jetxstreamx​:

The relief that he can see in Darren’s eyes is a gratifying thing, making something soft twist in his gut. Because Darren had worried about him, even a little bit. It felt good, to know that Darren genuinely wanted to know that he was okay. He lets out a soft sigh, when Darren reaches out, so damn grateful for the contact that it almost hurts. He wants to be closer to Darren, wants to crawl under his skin and stay there forever, he wants to feel so connected that Darren can never get rid of him. But any touch that he’s allowed to have is enough, for now.

He’s thinking that, even as Darren is tugging him closer. A slight pull on his hand. And Arya follows it, because it’s impossible not to, it’s impossible to refuse. He sits as close as he can, achingly careful, not wanting to accidentally hurt Darren by getting too close or disturbing him. If he hurt Darren, it would kill him. Not just physically, either. He would do anything, he thought, to make sure that Darren was happy, that he was safe and protected from the intense, scary world that they had found themselves in. And it was a comfort, distant in his mind, that Darren wanted him to be happy as well.

“Apology not accepted,” He says, but it’s gentle, it sounds like he’s aching inside. He pulls Darren’s hand up, presses a kiss to the knuckles, holds it there. “No, I mean. I’m sorry too. I feel like –” 

He shakes his head, eyes vulnerable, shining a little bit. “I feel like I should have protected you somehow. Should have… known more, gotten everyone out of the Tower before they could get hurt.” The idea that Darren was in pain broke his heart, the idea that Darren would be in pain for weeks. Needing to be taken care of. But Arya would be there to do it, to make sure that he was okay from now on. “I just wish nothing could ever hurt you again.”

He settles comfortably against Arya, even though it’d only been a little over twenty-four hours since the last time they shared a bed together, it somehow felt like weeks. Resting his head on his shoulder, he lets his eyelids drift close for a moment, the urge to sleep again suddenly tugging at him, but the soft kiss Arya brushes against his knuckles draws him back into the land of the living. 

And a pang of guilt hits him at Arya’s own admission, because he was the last one here that needed to apologize about not protecting the other. That had been his job, after all, not Arya’s, and he failed it twice already between Clint’s and then Vic’s unwanted entrance into his apartment. But that felt like ancient history now, after everything that had happened that night and that morning even. 

“You know I’m a big tough Guardian, right?” He huffs a laugh, before turning his head to plant a kiss against his shoulder. “And I walked into that Tower yesterday knowing that there were still numerous unknowns about all of this. It’s not your fault what happened, it’s not even Hyde’s fault- even though I wish his aim sucked a little more. I made the choice to go in, and I’m sure I’ll have to make another choice sometime down the road that puts me in danger again. But that’ll be my choice.” 

“Believe it or not, I didn’t just choose this gig for the pension and the chance of getting my own action figure,” he adds with a weak smile, before glancing back up to him, taking his hand in his as he does. “I do this despite the risks involved, because I want to help people. And even though I don’t see myself staying a Guardian for much longer, there’ll still be risks in whatever I do- but none of that will be your fault, or your burden to take on.” 

[mindxxmaster]

jetxstreamx​:

It’s a concentrated effort, to keep up the lighthearted and joking mood he himself had put in place. He’d figured, after all, that Darren delt with enough of the intense emotional stuff with Dylan. A reunion of long-lost twin siblings was the kind of stuff you saw in movies, fraught and intense and so much more important than any of what Arya had to offer him. They were lingering in the honeymoon period of a probably ill-advised romance, but it wasn’t the stuff of legend, despite the way Arya felt. It felt massive in his chest, suffocatingly big, but he pushed it away in favor of a tight, yet still warm, smile.

“Drat,” he manages. “There goes my evil plan to mooch off your memory forever.” 

He can see the gratitude in Darren’s eyes, despite everything. Can see that Arya had done the right thing, staying and waiting for him to wake up, giving them the space they needed to sort things out before he came back. So his smile softens even further, and he looks at Darren with warm eyes. He lets Darren ask the question, because he can hear how genuine it is, because he’d be prodding Darren for information if their roles had been reversed here. 

“We did good,” He says, thinking about it. His side of the mission hadn’t been anywhere close to the kind of emotional messes that everyone else had seemingly gone through. “Catalyst did good, mostly, more than me, I mean. She was amazing.” 

“Jase got stuck in kind of an icy situation, for a bit, but I pulled his ass home.” He says, genuine worry about the other man creeping in. “You guys really keep me on my toes, you know?” And with a hint more vulnerability. “You scared me, with all this. Don’t do it again.” 

Even though Arya had seemed to get out of his own mission in the Tower relatively unscathed, he’s still rushed with a feeling of relief once he confirms it. Catalyst had done well, especially given the mammoth of a task she was given. Arya had always talked her up, whenever her name did fall into conversation before, and at first he thought it was just his bias, considering Catalyst was far from the much more well known types such as Dulce et Decorum or The Shadow Man. But if tonight had showed anything, it was that Catalyst was well up for the challenge of leading the Collective where White so far had fallen short. 

“I’m glad you were able to help him,” he says genuinely, extending his free hand over to Arya’s fingers and giving them a light squeeze. The contact isn’t quite enough though, not after everything the two of them had been through that night, and so he soon tugs on his hand, motioning him to sit down on the bed near him. 

“I’m sorry...”, he adds quietly after a moment. The apology is intended to be for getting injured but it feels heavier as the words slip across his tongue. He feels sorry for so much more, not only for putting Arya in the position of being his short-term caretaker, but also dragging him into everything else that he feels like he’s pulled him into these last few months. 

.

[mindxxmaster]

jetxstreamx​:

Arya had been quick to clear the space, when Darren started to wake up. Dylan wanted some time alone with her brother, and she desevred it. They deserved alone time, no observers while they aired out whatever they needed to. That wasn’t for Arya to see. If Darren wanted to talk about it later, he would listen. But in the meantime he clears out and gives them the space they need so badly. He leaves the hospital and gets himself some coffee, because god, does he need it. The caffiene helps him feel like a human being again, a little less gross and exhausted, a little more ready to face whatever else the day has in store for them. 

Then, he gets the food. He was sure that Dylan was mostly joking, when she gave him that reason to leave. But when he thinks about it, Darren could probably use something good to eat, something comforting and familiar. And Arya is proud that this tiny burst of information he’s stored away about Darren’s favourite place has come in handly. So he picks up a couple of servings of Darren’s usual order, and heads back when an appropriate amount of time has passed. 

He’s cautious, when he makes his reappearance, not wanting to interrupt anything that might be going on. But Darren is alone in the room. His sister must have just left to do something. So he slips into the room, and into cheering up my injured boyfriend mode.

“Yeah, this is what happens when you start to date a renegade.” He says, and allows himself a small smile. It’s okay to smile, now, because Darren is awake, and happy to see him. And they can talk, finally, after this long mess. There’s no big war on the horizon, no tower that they’re responsible for anymore. Just the two of them in a room, with Darren’s favourite food. “Eh, it’s kind of cute that you think they’d be able to keep me out.” 

He’s achingly careful, when he perches himself down on the edge of Darren’s bed, looking at him with the softest eyes. “So, what’s the verdict? Will you live, or do I need to practice my woeful widower look? Because you have to know that black doesn’t suit me.” 

It’s a joke, for the most part. But theres a soft vulnerability to it, as well.

He can’t help but reach out and touch Arya the moment he’s close enough, making sure to school his features so they don’t reveal the tinge of pain that shoots up his side, as he leans over to press a kiss against his cheek, before grabbing the box from his hand. When he opens it up, he smiles at the assortment of eclairs that are waiting for him to dig into. Grabbing one, he hands the box back to Arya to grab one for himself, before he settles back into the mountain of pillows behind him. 

“I’ll live,” he nods, before taking a bite. “So unfortunately you won’t be able to start collecting checks yet from the Guardian’s Widow Fund.” 

It’s easier to joke for now, on the just how bad this could have been, especially after how heavy he still felt from everything he and Dylan had gotten into. After taking another bite of his eclair, he looks over to Arya again, and squeezes his knee lightly with his free hand in thanks for everything- between him likely staying with Dylan all night, to giving him and Dylan the time they needed before reappearing. 

“How are you holding up?” He asks, genuinely wanting to hear how Arya’s half of the mission went. Given his physical lack of injuries, Darren can only guess it didn’t go nearly as bad as his half. 

“Were you able to get everyone out in your section?” 

[mindxxmaster]

daydreamxrs​:

The intricacies of dream logic are something that will never really make sense to Cas. It feels strange, to have been standing in a club in the Cancun heat a second a go, a little sweaty from the press of bodies around them. Now, he’s shivering in the fake dream-cold of Michigan, when they were last there. His clothes have changed as well, and for that he’s grateful. The warm fabric of the scarf he had spared the time to grab before he left the manor that night. He was sure that he could just manifest the cold away, that he could decide not to feel it at all. But he’s strained and straining just to make himself stay here, standing in the cold.

Standing in front of the storm, brewing on the horizon. 

It was beautiful, he supposed. Beautiful in it’s horror. The dark colours, the rain, the cosmic swirls of dust and light and power. It’s like seeing an old friend for the first time in years. But seeing that old friend in handcuffs, warring against a power that had been imposed over it, a prison sentence that kept it from doing what it was born to do. It was meant to change the world, or help him maintain the world he wanted. It was supposed to make the sun shine and the flowers grow, make his coffee stay hot, make his enemies crumble in front of his feet. It was the power to make worlds, or end them. But it didn’t have to be. It could be simple. It could be his, the kind of power that would latch on to a scared bout and protect him from the scary things in the world.

He could use that protection now. 

Because hell, he didn’t want to die surrounded by the phantom memories of his fear. He didn’t want Mind Master to die that way, either, no matter how he might have felt over the years. He oculd never actually let the man beside him fade away. It wouldn’t be right. He might never forgive Mind Master, but it was getting harder, even now, to hold on to the hate. It was like an instinct as well, a muscle memory that told him to fear Darren, to cringe away from him and all of his delicate betrayals. 

Darren starts to look at him, instead of the storm. And the suggestion starts up. He almost flinches away from that too, but none of it is negative. It’s everything he really probably believed about himself, before he meddled in the first place. He’d had his endless doubts and insecurities even back in the old days, but they had lacked the explicit confirmation that Darren gave him. They were just doubts and insecurities, before Darren made them insidious weapons, barriers inside of his own mind. 

But he’s undoing it now. 

The wind starts howling louder, the storm excitedly pounding in the distance. It was welcoming, it was reaching out to him, it wanted him to come home to it’s embrace. And Darren said it could be his again, in it’s full glory. He feels some of the confidence returning to his body, and he spares Darren a quick glance.

The confidence grows.

“You don’t have any power over me.” He realises, and its funny. Because Darren never should have been able to do this in the first place. The way Cas used to love this man had made him weaker. But he was weak in new ways now, for new people. And he could tear down the wall, if he wanted. Almost as soon as he’s said the words, accepted it as fact, he hears the barrier shatter. They get drenched in an instant, pounding rain hard enough to hurt their skin. But it feels like happy rain, like it’s washing away everything else bad about this place, about Darren being in his head. 

He prays that Cas is strong enough, now that he’s taken away the persuasions he’d put in place all those years ago. He was the one that put up the barrier, but it felt important to let Cas be the one to tear it down, letting his confidence grow back to the heights it had once reached before he had to crush them down. 

He lets out a long sigh of relief once the rain begins pelting down upon them, the storm that had once been caged now free and ready to be used however Cas pleased. Cas should be able to take down Fearmonger easily now, or anyone else for that matter who stood in his way. 

With Cas’s powers back to their original strength, there’s nothing else to do but to return them back to reality, and the nightmare that awaited them in the Tower. 

“You ready?” He asks, and once he gets confirmation, he reaches is hand out to rest on Cas’s shoulder, and pulls the two of them out of the depths of Cas’s mind. 

When he opens his eyes, the pain has returned tenfold, but he grits through it as he looks over to where Cas was. There are still a million things he wants to say to him, but with the fire growing in his lungs and the still pressing situation at hand, he simply gives his hand a small squeeze before letting it go to let him finally take down the fear manipulator that was still roaming the halls. 

[mindxxmaster]

time / location : general hospital near guardian tower, day after Tower attack, around noon

status: closed to @jetxstreamx​

When he wakes up in the hospital that morning, the early morning sunlight sending a soft haze of light through the curtains of his room, the very first thing he sees is Dylan. She was curled up in a chair by his bed, her features turned into a scowl. He thinks he’s dead at first- because, right? How else could he describe seeing Dylan, after all these years, sleeping next to him right after he took two shots in the chest. 

Sitting up gingerly he tries to get a better grip on his bearings when he realizes the second person in the room- Arya. And that’s when he realizes he’s not dead, because Arya is staring back at him, looking like he barely slept a wink all night. It’s just as he’s about to open his mouth and ask him what in the hell was going on, when suddenly Dylan stirs awake, and she takes precedent once again. 

Before he can fully register what’s going on, Arya is out of the room, and Dylan is practically on top of him, and fuck... he starts sobbing the moment she lands on top of him, even if it hurt like a bitch. She’s sobbing too, which he’s pretty sure is the first time Dylan has ever cried in front of him, but none of that mattered, not when somehow she’s alive and okay. 

The next hour passes with just them catching up with one another, with her letting him know more about the details of the night she “died” and where went after. His head is absolutely swimming with the amount of information that passes between them, but it’s a good kind of overwhelming, considering how long he didn’t have her at all. 

A couple hours later, after Arya had disappeared, quiet as a church mouse, he sees him appear in the doorway of his room again. Dylan had just left only minutes before, and so he’s alone when Arya finds him. 

“Hey,” he says quietly, a warm smile blooming across his tired features that soon spreads into a wide grin when his eyes land on the white box in his hand. “Is that what I think it is?” 

“You know you could get thrown out of here for that kind of contraband.” 

[mindxxmaster]

daydreamxrs​:

Untamed. That was a word for it. For the storm that used to rage inside Cas. Inside his head, inside his heart, inside ever atom that made up his body. It had never felt like a wild thing, to Cas. It had never felt scary, or overwhelming. The storm was his protector, the watchdog that made sure Cas wasn’t hurt. It manifested so powerfully, that day, he was sure, because it could sense the danger coming on the horizon, the threat that stood in front of him. But he could see why it would look so scary, to other people. 

And maybe it was scary, when he really didn’t know how to reign it in and put a collar on it.

Plenty of people had been terrified of him, over his life, hadn’t they? More people than he could count. Even when he wanted nothing more than to be loved, to be chrished, to be held and protected and kept away from the dangerous things in the world. 

He tracks Darren’s eyes up to Judgement Jr again, back the way he came. Tracks the thought process even as Darren is vocalising it. Rico was a prize for them, somehow. And that meant he could probably lead them to the real prize, once again. The kid exits through a door on the upper deck, and it seems far too much like he’s leading them somewhere. 

“Cool. Let’s go hunt ourselves some superpowers.” Cas agrees, trying to feel far more nonchalant than he felt. 

He grabs on to Mind Master’s wrist, drags him along in the hopes that the contact will stop any of his dream-partiers getting too annoyed and aggressive at him. Then they go, up the stairs, past the dream-Fortune. He wishes the real Fortune was here, distantly, that he could give them some good luck. But the real Fortune is doing better things, trying to stop their entire plan from falling apart. 

He pushes through the same door that Rico led them through, and lets out a huff of annoyance when they get to the other side. Its the road, where Mind Master picked him up on the way to Dr. Judgement’s house., the wide and empty space of that night. But it isn’t as quiet, isnt as still. There’s a weak storm on the horizon, banging up against some kind of invisible barrier. 

He doesn’t miss for a minute how it seemed like the two of them were operating on auto pilot when it came to one another. Both of them were focused on the goal at hand, and neither wanting to touch too closely upon the events that lead them here. He thinks briefly, of the apology he nearly asked Sebastian to extend to Cas for him, back when he thought for sure he was never going to make it out of the Tower alive.

Now didn’t quite seem the right time for such words, not when time wasn’t on either of their sides. Perhaps later, he thinks distantly, as Cas takes his wrist and leads him up onto the balcony, perhaps later they might wade into those waters and properly address what’d happened before. But first, he needed to do this for him. 

He doesn’t feel pain, not in this world, not when the source of said pain originated from his natural form, but he feels weak nonetheless, as he huffs his way up the stairs and eventually out the door Rico had disappeared behind. Rico isn’t on the other side of it, instead they’re back outside, now in Michigan instead of some club in Cancun. The rental car he’d originally came here in, back when he was last here, is idling behind him, its doors wide open. But he gives the car only a passing glance when he realizes what’s in the sky. 

It’s another storm, or the same storm rather, except this time its beating hard against an invisible barrier in the sky. Taking in a deep breath, he prays his body has the strength to power him through this before he looks over to Cas, and its then that he realizes who really should be the one between them to break down that wall. 

“You are strong,” he begins, the command in his voice revealing the persuasion at play. “You and only you, have control over the power inside you.” 

Looking up at the storm he sees it growing in intensity, as if its remembering its own strength, but it still isn’t powerful enough yet to break though its cage. 

“You are stronger than that barrier,” he continues, and he finds he’s having to speak his commands louder as a howling wind picks up around them, debris and leaves whipping wildly around them as it grows in force. The strong gale nearly knocks him off balance, but he holds steady as he looks at Cas, focusing on him and only him now, so that way he was certain his persuasions were undoing what had been done all those years ago. 

“You can do this,” he says finally, this time without the use of his power, because he wants Cas to make this last push himself, now that he’s stripped the persuasions he’d put in place before. The barrier was still standing, but Cas should be strong enough now to break it, as long as he trusted himself.