Voskar laughs, for once very sincerely. “Very well. It seems you’re already very well kept,” he says, looking past the dreamer to the man still and smiling in the bed behind him. He allows himself to be pushed back. The fact that the dreamer does not push Voskar away is not lost on him.
“I deserve my prey. I deserve it because I have it. I deserve it because I have caught it and it has become mine.” A smile to match the dreamer’s keeper. “Still, are you not my hunter? Or am I mistaken in that you are are this very moment hunting me?”
Will steps back, out of Discord’s immediate space. Some of the brazen hostility ebbs from him, disappears back into walled off composure. It’s not a pacified gesture.
“You didn’t answer the first part of the question,” he says. “Do they deserve it? Do they court it, Discord?” He tilts his head, fixes the interloper with a long look. “I hunt when it’s necessary. For sustenance. I catch a fish, and I make good use of it, that’s sustenance. And I hunt when I am called to it. Not because I think it’s fun to watch something weaker than me driven to, to flight.” There’s an edge of rebuke to his voice. Revulsion, but something else, too, something that refuses to be looked at, bows away from Will’s own awareness.
“You’re not my prey,” he answers, simply. Then frowns. A moment passes.
“You don’t seem concerned to be hunted, hunter. Do you see yourself in the middle of the food chain?”
The dreamer bares his teeth like a cornered beast. Voskar is indeed getting the sense that he doesn’t run as much as he’d like. Too much rage. Too much fascination. Voskar knows that feeling well. Perhaps this is why this dreamer compels him so.
“Hmm,” Voskar says. “Hunt so as not to be hunted, is it? Or are you like me, and simply enjoy the chase?” He gains nor gives no ground beyond what the dreamer demands, though the distance is damningly small. “My hunter. What shall I call you, then? I’ll need an alternative.”
“Enjoyment for the chase,” Will echoes. “That’s not good enough.”
Experimentally, he pushes Discord back again, just as slowly, and steps forward as he does it, to create a null sum of distance between them. He is pushing just to push, a wakening curiosity turning over at the root of his throat. His shoulders are still up, though, eyes still shining violent. Hackles trembling at half-mast - no naked show of tooth, yet, but the suggestion of it, in the angles of his body.
“Doesn’t do to leave your prey wasted and bleeding,” he says, voice harsh. “Do they deserve what they get, Discord? Do you deserve to have them?”
Will’s eyes are bright, now, but not with warmth. With something bitter. Something that wants to bite back, do harm.
“I don’t think I owe you that. Just change your articles, will you?” He leans over Discord’s shoulder, not to close the space between their faces but to position his mouth near Discord’s ear. When he speaks again, it comes in a near growl, barely there. “Just because you’ve cornered me doesn’t mean you get to keep me.”
That defiance, that is why Voskar came looking for this dreamer again. He smiles hood-eyed and lazily and watches the dreamer watch him. “Oh, yes,” he says, “when I can find something that will run from me.”
They so often do not. So many who want Discord’s favour instead, never understanding that discord favours no one for long. This is his nature. Some simply try to wait him out or ignore him, but fare no better— he will be felt. But those who try to cheat or outrun him…
“Even I have rules,” Voskar says. Leans closer to match the dreamer’s approach. Disappointingly, there’s no blood to his breath now that Voskar can smell. “But they are mine to set. As are yours. So, my hunter, what rules do you hunt by?”
“I’m not going to run from you,” Will says, quietly, “if that’s what you mean.”
He searches Discord’s face for a moment. “Learned my lesson about running from things in dreams already. At some point you have to make the decision to turn around and fight.” He tips his head just slightly, a frown creasing his brow. “You drag what ails you down with you, if necessary.”
Their faces are close, now, a breath apart. Will uncrosses his arms, spreads one hand flat on Discord’s chest and pushes him away, slowly, lightly, so that the gap between them is as Will had left it. Close enough for the space between their bodies to be uncomfortably tense, but not so close that Discord can taste him. The curl of a snarl flashes across Will’s mouth, barely a flicker of an expression, and then he’s stony-faced again.
“I don’t do it without a reason, for one,” he deadpans. “So tell me. What reasons do you have?” A beat. “And -” he shakes his head, and something wry twitches in his eyes, so slight as to be nearly imperceptible -
“It’d be a shame t’ die without even getting what I want,“ they counter, “even if death holds less sway here than ever. And the odds'f finding a willing participant are low.“ Their smile is sardonic, and almost a little teasing, in this light. No teeth, though.
“I’m about as human as you are -“ they shrug, “well, maybe a little less, I suppose. But mostly so. You could check my pulse, if you’d like.“ Alexis is equally as casual as he is, low-voiced; it feels right, in the hollows of the night, to speak in these shadows. “Abomination? I’m flattered. Usually that’s from the Church alone.“ They want to track him, to follow in his footsteps, but that would be the wrong face to wear here (again) – instead they stay stock-still, smiling. Entirely normal, if only their gaze didn’t read like a cat watching a mouse.
“It’s not something you talk about in polite company, haven’t you heard? Nothing so terrible,” they say, “as to mention those sort of tastes.
But this isn’t polite company, now, is it.“
Will hums thoughtfully. “I don’t know about that,” he says. “What is death here but performance? Just gotta find someone who’s into a little theatre.”
He tilts his head as if weighing some invisible scale. “Or... someone interested in testing how death works here from the inside out,” he suggests. “You know. As an educational endeavor.” He bites the words out at the end, a little snap of sarcasm despite himself.
He doesn’t say that he’s thought about it himself. This wasn’t what he’d envisioned, exactly, chatting up some cannibal in the red-black alleyways of Crises, but he can’t deny that part of him is curious about what it’s like to die. He’s imagined it. Has flirted with the experience. Certainly, has lived it out in dreams. But for the most part, it’s an experiment waiting to be tinkered with.
“Polite company? No,” he almost snorts. “I hope not, anyway.”
“Certainly not,” says Voskar. “Had I anticipated company I might have left you to it. But while I’m here I may as well entertain myself.”
Desirous, certainly, but Voskar only raises an eyebrow. Compelling as it might be to further fluster the dreamer, he did intend a more two-sided conversation.
“Unfortunately,” he adds, “the hunter rarely respects a boundary, else he’d have very little prey indeed. Even the hunter who hunts himself.”
Will lets out a little huff, an ambivalent sound.
“I’m not sure what I’m being accused of,” he says, somewhat flatly, “but I’m sure I don’t like it.”
He takes a step forward, into the edge of Discord’s space, his arms still twisted across his chest like a breastplate. He’s all bristle. Chin defensively lowered, shoulders up, expression a dull, hostile stare. Generally speaking, Will prefers to avoid eye contact, but he makes it now. It’s easier, somehow, to watch the shadows roil in Discord’s black gaze than it is to know where to focus on an average person’s eyes.
“A good hunter respects the rules of the hunt,” he says. The sound rolls low in his throat. “Are you a hunter, Discord?”
The last time Voskar saw this dreamer, the dreamer’s face had been smeared with blood. It’s clean, this time. But not blank, not defiant. Simpler. Open.
Fearful.
Desirous.
The hunt had been sensual; this is decidedly sexual, though not in a particularly arousing manner. The man lying beside the dreamer had appeared in the dream of the hunt as well, similarly focused, attentive in the same manner. Despite the difference in situation, not much has changed, except that in this moment the dreamer appears only to be hunted.
Interrupting would possibly be a kindness, so Voskar considers simply watching for a while. In the end, however, the prospect of observing and being ignored grates at him, so he comments anyway.
“Interesting. I was under the impression you enjoyed the chase.”
Will’s head snaps around to face the speaker. He recognizes the drawl, and sure enough, there stands Discord at the foot of the bed, with the same smirking, hollow eyes.
“You,” he says, accusingly. “Again. Did you never learn to knock before entering?”
Beside Will, Hannibal lounges in suspended motion, blinking lazily like some pantherine thing but quite still otherwise. Breath moves slow and easy through him. His eyes are focused on the spot Will was a second ago, keen but unseeing. Will glances at him, then back to Discord, and closes his eyes in an exhausted scowl. It’s the expression of someone no longer frantic but deeply annoyed.
“I...” he hesitates, “enjoy ‘the chase’ when it steers a wide berth around my family.” He fixes Discord with a reproachful look. A bit of a flush has suffused the insinuation of collarbone visible at the edge of his shirt, and the jut of his throat, bobbing once then twice as he swallows furiously. He tugs the hem of his shirt down to cover the glimpse of bare skin where the waistband of his pajamas rides down over his hips. “And my bedroom. For god’s sake.”
If there was any hazy warmth gathering between his legs, it is now thoroughly arrested. He thinks of hiking the quilt up to cover himself, although he is not strictly indecent, but remembering Hannibal next to him, he instead makes some choked noise of exasperation and extracts himself from bed. If the fading shape of arousal is visible between his thighs, Discord can -- quite frankly -- deal with it.
“What do you want from me?” he asks. He crosses his arms tight across his chest. “You’re not here just for the show, I assume.”
Jupiter tries to smile back and halfway makes it. It’s not the most convincingly chill smile she’s ever given or will ever give by any means, but she’s an anxious person and can only really muster up a look of uhhh yeah this is probably under control we’re cool we’re good.
As opposed to a look of, for example, everything’s good here, I’ve got this, don’t worry about it. Normally she tries that one. She’s just not feeling super up to it today.
“Lab rats… that’s not great.“ It’s kind of an understatement. She sips her coffee slowly, tries not to burn her tongue, and looks kind of contemplative in a way that’s mostly just cover for her zoning out a little. “Angels aren’t real, though. There’s stories about them in the tabloids a lot, but it’s usually just some random monster that has lots of feathers and eyes showing up. Banishment doesn’t actually kick people to other universes either?“ Jupiter is silent for a moment again, thinking, sort of trying to piece things together.
It doesn’t work. She’s not very good at puzzles. If this can be called anything, it’s probably a puzzle. “… I dunno.“
“Yeah. Not great,” Will repeats with a tight-lipped grimace. He doesn’t want to unduly alarm the girl, but he’s learned the hard way that sometimes it’s better not to soften things. To not assume that just because someone seems vulnerable there isn’t a hard edge to their constitution.
“That’s the other thing,” he continues. “Everyone here seems to have a different understanding of how the world works, or, ah, should be. How the universe works, even.” He gnaws his lower lip thoughtfully. “As though we’ve been plucked from different streams of reality and... thrown together.”
Will sips his drink again, lapses into silence for a moment. He wishes he knew what to say to put this kid at ease, but also sort of doubts there’s any truth he could confide that wouldn’t have the immediate opposite effect. And by the way, there are murderers running around the Ark, and they’re very friendly! No.
“It’s a lot, I know,” he says instead, gently. “At least it’s a group project, figuring all this out.” It’s an empty reassurance. He hears it, says it anyway. “I’m happy to... tell you what I know. It’s not a lot, but it’s something?” Another apologetic smile. He’s making a lot of those, lately.
Civilized at a glance. What a way to describe it. “I know places like that,” he says, thinking about Polaris Park, thinking about Jack Takano. Thinking about the Kanagawa household. Wow was that an accurate descriptor. His eyes move to examine Will more fully, now that he’s clearly planning on staying, but he doesn’t try to catch his gaze, just listens and relaxes himself.
“That sucks,” he says, tone as straight-forward as he can make it. Is this gonna be a pain-version of whip your dick out and I’ll show you mine is bigger? Nah, probably not. He doesn’t want to think about most of the worst things he could say, anyways, so he settles for, “My family’s been gone for a while, but I’m pretty much an expert on burning bridges, especially with borrowed fire.”
His lips curve, then split in a grin, and he shrugs and says, “Nothing you can do about it here and now though, right? Take what comfort you can and deal with the rest later.” It’s sounder advice than he’ll take for himself, but like most people he’s better at offering advice than following it.
“You like to talk about them? Any of them- kid, wife, dogs? I’m pretty good at listening, if you do.”
He’s not sure what prompts him to make the offer, but it’s an easy one- no expectation in his tone, no eagerness. Just an offer, no strings attached, if you want it here it is, and if you don’t then no worries.
Will feels as though he ought to have a flask to tip in commiseration. He doesn’t, though, so he just nods, snorts a little in agreement.
“Well, here’s to building new ones, then,” he says, and spares his acquaintance a wry little glance, mouth twisted into something that might pass for a tired smile at a squint. When Juno asks if he’d like to talk about his family, Will does laugh, genuinely, a surprised little noise that’s not entirely bitter.
“I mean, I don’t know, I don’t - I don’t think anyone has ever asked it that way,” he says, carefully. There’s some part of him that’s enticed by the question, leans into it. It catches Will off guard, under the ribs. “I guess I don’t, really. Feels like rubbing salt in the wound to dwell on what I lost. But. The last few... well, a long time, really. My life was a mess, just, a violent, cruel chaos. I couldn’t imagine anything else. And then, when I got out - insofar as anyone ever gets out - Molly, my wife, she was - she wasn’t that, she was so completely and fundamentally disinterested in that vicious part of my past, and that was a relief. A haven. She was safe.” He pauses, lets his eyes close. “God. Yeah. I miss her,” he says, simply. “Haven’t felt like I could really shake myself free of it all since.”
He looks up at Juno, then, an earnest question there. A slight nod of his chin to indicate, your turn.
“How about you?” he asks. “Anyone you like to talk about? Not - not family, even, necessarily. While we’re eulogizing.”
There’s a dull glint of interest in their eye, when the man mentions he’s known people a little like them; unusual, certainly. Not their kind. But something that might look the same, at a glance.
Alexis wipes a hand across their mouth, clears some of the blood away, swallows.
“My appetites run larger. But I’d hardly be permitted t’ get away with those hunts, here, so I settle.“ They’re not a threat; every part of their body language is comfortable-still, not ready to pounce, not ready to spring. It’s not the calculated I’m harmless of someone who’s planning to hurt others, scheming out every attack, thinking about how quickly they can move.
But the air still smells of the ghost of blood and saltwater. “As for that – lodging here means it’s quicker, eating rats is London tradition, and if they were diseased it’d do nothing to me. I don’t take ill from that.”
Will raises his eyebrows at the stranger impassively.
“Afraid of our good friend the enforcement protocol?” he asks, more genuine curiosity under the blunted edge than mockery. “Pretty sure only illegal murder will get you zapped, you know. Just a matter of finding a willing participant.”
He trails into silence for a moment, takes a couple pacing steps before turning thoughtfully on his toes. In the back of his mind, the Will that is cold and the Will that is reckless flip over in a tangled embrace.
“Can I ask, ah, what you are, then? If transmissible disease is no concern. I’m assuming not strictly your garden-variety typically-alive human being,” he says. His voice is low, but the tone is casual. “I wouldn’t make guesses, except that I’ve met such a - frankly, bizarre - assortment of people here that it seems more likely that you’re some kind of... abomination of the night, or, you know.”
He wipes at his face. He’s tired, he realizes. Exhausted, actually. And disillusioned. It’s making him into something bitter and barbed at the edges, appropriateness in his current company aside.
“Sorry, ‘abomination’ is probably a rude way of putting it,” he sighs. “I’m sure you’re just a, a fine and usual person who implies that they eat people when lightly questioned. I’m putting that out in the open, by the way.”
cut for... nsfw implied to almost happen? but then it doesn’t? also potentially upsetting dream switcheroo
Will’s dreams of Molly and Wally are not infrequent, but rarely restful, anxious sketches of the past and could-have-been that devolve into shaky lines and guilty shadows. His wife and son become crueler than in life, feral-eyed and lash-tongued, or else too soft, collapsing. Sometimes, they’re dead or dying or half-alive, animate but quite ashen - and always, always, a wounding reminder of the past, posted like some dark sentinel in his subconscious. He hates that he’s come to dread dreaming of them.
Tonight, though, his dreams are blessedly mundane. Moments of easy closeness string a loose narrative behind his eyes. Ice fishing with Wally, hot chocolate at the kitchen table, feeding the dogs. Although - he swears that sometimes Wally isn’t quite himself, is older, with pale eyes and long brown hair that tousles shyly around the scar across his throat. It doesn’t matter. Will looks at him sideways, in the way dreamers do, and sees his child, and so he sees Wally. They’re down by the water, breath frosting the air, and then they’re in the kitchen, all rosy fingers and damp faces in the cozy yellow glow. Will feels something like comfort in the routine of it. In these tender, breakable moments slipped between the restless nights and edgy days, he finds a self that doesn’t hurt so much. That knows how to look away.
The dream rearranges itself again, and he’s in bed with Molly, under several quilts. The dogs have stationed themselves around their feet, some on the bed and some dozing heavily on the floor. Will’s body is flush against Molly’s through the thin friction of their pajamas, but the embrace is chaste. It’s a gentle moment, Molly’s arm slung around his shoulders and her face pressed into his neck, dewy with breath. One of her ankles is hooked over his, possessively. He feels... safe. It’s a rare thing, like some fine sliver thumbed from so much freezing mud. More often, he feels on the precipice of something terrible, the muscles of his heart and diaphragm wound wrenchingly tight in his chest. A cold, sick feeling. Touch makes it even harder. Too often, Molly’s hands feel like brands on his skin, or something queasier, some slimy caress. It’s a relief just to lie here with a quiet body and mind.
Molly shifts against him, traces fingers along the back of his neck. He smiles into her hair. “Do you think we could, tonight?” she asks. Her lips move against the skin of his throat.
“Could what?”
“Don’t be coy with me, mister.” Molly’s voice is laughing. He can feel her smile curl against him.
“You’ll have to get the dogs to move first.”
Will kisses the top of her head, and then Molly is shooing the dogs with her bare feet. Her hands wander just under the hem of his shirt, cool against the heat of his stomach.
“I love you,” he murmurs.
“I love you too.” She says it with a kind of delighted mischief, like he has just revealed an especially scandalous secret. He loves her all the more for that.
Molly leans up to kiss him, softly. She opens her mouth against his, and before he can press into the kiss, she breathes:
“And I can’t wait to see what you become.”
Will stiffens. Pulls away, blinking. “What?”
Molly smiles back at him. It’s an expression quite devoid of malice, soft and kind-eyed. Reassuring, even.
“I can’t wait to see what you become when you kill again.”
But it isn’t Molly’s voice, this time. It’s Hannibal’s. And Will is recoiling, pushing himself away, but it’s too late. Hannibal is the one resting a hand on Will’s cheek, the one with a palm bracing the cusp of his hip, under his shirt - Hannibal, lying there quite passively next to him, watching with the kind of polite interest one reserves for mildly interesting anecdotes told over dinner. “Oh,” Will gasps. “Fuck you, no, fuck you.”
Hannibal slips his hands from Will’s exposed skin in a smooth, languid gesture to fold them on the bed between them. He tilts his head.
Samot scoffs, muzzle dipping down and ears flicking as though shaking off flies. “Once upon a time I could rewrite the world, and it would fold around the words under my pen. Of course there is power in names. Didn’t your shadows teach you that?”
Circles, still playful and open, mouth soft. Gentle, gentle, heedless of the man’s raised hackles. Power in words and meaning in bodies; he is still standing there, looking at Samot, parted lips and watchful eyes, he has not said no. “But you would not bind me anyway, would you. Too much commitment, as you say.”
He prances close, head tilted back to hold the man’s eyes. Muscles bunch under fur, uncoil as he rises on his hind legs, the claws on his front paws catching briefly on the collar, hot breath and wet tongue on the man’s face, bumps their foreheads together then disengages, paws back on the ground and body twisting to turn, looking back over his shoulder and grinning as he saunters away.
“Catch me, hunter.”
“My shadows,” Will says, with an impassive tilt of his head, “always have liked to keep me guessing.”
His gaze is both guarded and bright as he watches the wolf circle. “I wouldn’t bind you because - ah.” Before Will can finish his sentence, the creature is on him, all substance, warm bulk of muscle and give of fur settling against him. He staggers back slightly, half startle reflex and half from the sudden weight on his shoulders, hands jerking up to hover at the wolf’s sides as though in an aborted motion of self defense. “Because you haven’t given me a reason to -” he tries to continue, but then the wolf’s tongue is dragging across his face. Slow and hot and wet and a little rough, soft scrape of texture on his mouth and cheek. “Um,” Will gasps.
A little knock of their foreheads together, and the wolf drops back to the ground and dances away again. Will can only reel for a moment, brows folded in a plaintive, asking frown as he steps raggedly back, then back again. “Feel a little like I’m being provoked,” he huffs out, as though winded. His mouth has gone dry. His skin, flushed with some thrumming, prickling current. His heart feels choked with too much blood, a relentless surge.
“I intend to,” he breathes, quietly.
And then he’s running. Altogether despite himself. It’s an instinctive movement, something that takes him and drives him hard under its heels. Adrenaline thunders through him. He finds himself doglike, panting, and finds too that it’s not in him to feel self-conscious about it. Not right now, anyway. It feels... good. Invigorating. Powerful, even.
Will chases the wolf through the surrounding structures of the station, weaving around benches and scrubby trees and the shattered carcasses of abandoned vehicles that litter Crises. Red rain mists his face, and he blinks it out of his eyes, blinks into the steaming sun. Down the main road they go, then down narrower, capillary streets, sprinting quick and crooked between buildings. Split pavement and occasional cobblestones drum underfoot.
Finally, they turn a corner that veers into the dead end of an alleyway. Will stumbles to a walk, grins open-mouthed and predatory, breathing hard. He advances cautiously; the wolf is quick, and Will has little doubt he could slip past him, even in this cramped space. Still. It feels like a victory, registers with the same sanguinary thrill.
It occurs to him he doesn’t know quite what comes next. He could dash forward to brush his fingers against the wolf’s coat, like a surreal game of tag. He could heed what the animal part of his brain tells him and try to wrestle the wolf to the ground. But what then? Several ideas cluster at the edge of Will’s consciousness, butt against it to be heard. They’re lurid, half-imagined glimpses of sickening color. He can’t make himself hold them in focus.
“Wise? Perhaps not.” He does like to play with a catch, it’s true, especially if the catch asks nicely. “But it would be fun.” Samot paws at the ground, claws clicking on concrete, dips into a play bow, fur brushing along the ground and long legs stretched in front of him in in open invitation before he bounces back, tail swishing and ears tilted to the side.
“I could make you work for it,” he teases, needling at the sharpness he can feel in the man. It’s been some time since he’s allowed someone else’s hand on his fur, but he thinks he wouldn’t mind this man’s. “A name for a chase, wouldn’t that be fair?”
Will almost laughs, little scoff of surprise. “It’s unconventional,” he allows. “You’ve, ah, a high opinion of how badly I care to know.” His tone is wary, but there’s a catch of amusement to it, tugging at the corner of his mouth.
“This isn’t one of those fairytales where there’s power in a name, is it?” he continues, eyebrows drifting up in an exaggeration of concern. And then, recklessly: “I’m not ready for that level of commitment.” It comes out meaner in delivery than he intended. He lets the bite of it hang between them.
Will pauses for a moment, draws the point of his tongue barely to his upper lip in thought. His heart is beating light and fast in his throat, but distantly, as though behind sheets of clouded glass. He’s not entirely sure why he doesn’t step back and back again, leave this scene as a glittering mirage. But the familiarity of it has him heeling, pacing ruts. Something breathless and taunting. It presses nauseatingly under the divot of his collarbone.
Juno snorts hard, startling the pregnant mutt enough for her to back out of the dark, warm shelter of his coat, dropping one of the pieces of sausage onto the ground. She recovers quickly enough, though, and moves back in, and he rests his elbows on his knees, fingers dangling loosely, his attention somewhere halfway between the other dogs trying to decide which of them to approach and the man himself.
His own lips quirk, wearily, and he says, “No,” bluntly. “Home is shit, honestly. There’s a handful of people there I care about, and the rabbits, but overall the place is fucked, has been for longer than I’ve been alive.” What a thought- he’s never put it into words before, but it makes sense. Why, exactly, does he think that he alone can fix anything, again?
He sighs, then, and says, “But you know. You grow up in a dumpster, you’re gonna miss some things about it eventually, right? Even if you hated every second of it while you were there. You get used to things being a certain way.” He shifts, gently rests his hand on the mutt’s side. She growls, low, a threatening rumble that goes through her entire body and vibrates his hand, but the food’s still winning out, for now, and the sound subsides after a moment, though she remains stiff.
“So. Dogs, you miss, I’m guessing. I miss the rabbits. My secretary, Rita. The dust, kind of. It smells off, here, and the only place with sand has too much water.” Since they’re sharing… He doesn’t get the feeling he’s going to get a lot of pity from this guy, so much as commiseration. It makes it easier to open his mouth and let the words fall out. He likes complaining, after all, and he’s good at it, and he hasn’t bitched about things in… a while.
Will makes a face somewhere between a smile and a grimace of acknowledgment.
“Right,” he says, dipping his chin in agreement, “Home for me is not so much a dumpster as, ah -” his eyes wander as he reaches for a metaphor - ”a polluted place. Civilized at a glance but quite toxic.”
He feels a little awkward, standing here hovering over his new acquaintance, but there’s no pressing impetus to leave, so he drops a knee and settles back into a crouch. Not making any further move to interact with the dogs - they’re mostly ignoring him in the renewed presence of food, anyway - just watching. Eking out a moment of stillness in the commotion.
“Yeah. There’s other things,” Will says, gaze combing so much fur distractedly. “I had a wife, and, uh, a son.” His tone is easier than it ought to be, really. Easier than he feels. “Have, I guess, they’re not dead or anything. You know. Not to be bleak. I don’t know when or if I’ll ever see them again, though.”
He falls into silence for a moment. As though in contemplation - but no turmoil of thoughts wrestles in his head. Just the dull ache of absence, a gray hollow where warm and vital things are supposed to go. He blinks, eyes flicking to the cracked pavement underfoot in some instinctive aversion.
“Don’t know what they’ll be to me the next time I see them, either. I might have burned those bridges pretty thoroughly before I got here. Although. I wasn’t the one who started the fire.”
“‘For the sake of becoming’,” Voskar repeats. Laughter in his voice, though not his eyes. His younger self, simply Chaos those days, might have suited this dreamer better. “Yours? Or that which you brutalise? Here, I suppose, it’s the same.”
He considers leaning in again to chase that instinct the dreamer so quickly fulfilled. The taste of blood on his breath had been very appealing. But letting the dreamer keep reaching for him appeals more. Waiting to see what he becomes.
This image— it must be a memory, from the way it sits overlaying their snowy clearing, from the youth or at least innocence in this replica of the dreamer himself. In the other man’s face, intent. He watches the static dreamer in the projection in nearly the same way the dreamer in motion watches him. Perhaps he had been the brutality the dreamer cited. Perhaps there had been blood on his hands, too.
“So?” Voskar continues. “Will you make your sacrifice? Don’t allow me to ruin the moment.”
cut for gore
“Hm,” Will agrees. He knew, once, who this was for. In whose memory he acted. Now, he’s not so sure. When Discord prompts him, laughter still lingering on his breath, he pauses, tips his head in thought. Then:
“No,” Will says, smoothly. “Not this time.”
Across the room from them, his effigy animates, draws a small knife from his pocket and leans easily forward to cut Hannibal’s throat. Hannibal offers no resistance, only smiles a sharp, eager smile. Predatory. Blood sprays, then trickles, runs dark down onto his checked silk tie. All the while, he meets Will-that-isn’ts eyes. The dream quavers again.
When it reforms, the room is dim, atmospheric. Low yellow light. They’re at Hannibal’s dinner table, but it’s sparsely set, empty dishes and a handful of candles on polished silver sticks. Where the centerpiece should be, the ravenstag’s severed head, bleeding out unceremoniously onto the somber wood. There are guests at the table. Garrett Jacob Hobbs, Randall Tier. Molly. Abigail. Faceless, half-remembered ones, too, bending in the shadows. Hannibal, seated at the head of the table, smiles across its length at Will, kindly.
“Why don’t you eat, Will,” he says, his voice casual, light.
Will looks down at his plate. On it, there is half a heart, neatly cut. He frowns. Looks to Hannibal. Looks to Hannibal’s plate. The matching half rests there, pinkening the clean white porcelain.
“Go on,” Hannibal prompts, gently. Around the table, his dinner guests smile encouragingly. Their plates are conspicuously bare. They look starved.
Will’s eyes jolt from person to person, confusion flickering on his brow. He turns to Discord, who now sits adjacent to him, in a finely upholstered chair.
“No,” Will repeats. “This isn’t about anyone else.” But his voice is less sure now, harsh with something bristling, a little frantic. He hears the edge, and hates it. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Hannibal cock his head impassively.
“I disagree,” Hannibal says, his voice a cool ripple in the dark.
For just a second, candlelight flashes in his eyes. They’ve gone quite violet, a shock of venomous color against the ochre pall of the room. Will stares askance at Discord, a wild look, but before he can speak the dream is dissolving, going black at the edges. The dinner guests twist and fold, and in an instant the room collapses into itself, an opening mouth.
Will wakes up.
He’s in his bed. Damp sheets cling to his skin, a clammy, tangled embrace. He feels quite feverish as he fights his way free, kicks the mess of bedclothes to the floor and lies there in the watery half-dark, breathing heavy. A shiver runs through him, a deep, violent motion. No sense trying to go back to sleep now. He’s still for a moment before crawling to his feet to hastily pull on clothes, his skin chilly with drying sweat. As quickly, he’s out the door and into the waning night.
“So find new prey,” Samot says, and reaches over the thin distance between them, the pads of his fingers light along the line of jaw, the scratchy stubble. He is tempted, for a moment, to press down, to leave the imprint of his passage on him. Another shadow marking a claim. But there is no satisfaction in so overt a gesture, is there?
He is gentle when he nudges the man’s turned head back towards him, his touch light as leaves, but the look in his eyes is flickering flames, his slow smile a dare. “A tail is too easily caught, for a hunter such as you and what a waste that would be.”
It’s in the things he hasn’t said yet; the story Samot does not need the details to just yet. Shadows are fickle, violent; it takes heavy or beautiful things for them to linger.
There is no warmth in him to linger on the man’s skin when Samot pulls back and folds himself once again into the wolf, weaving between his legs then dancing away, playful, coy. “Why, we could hunt together, if the lack of a shadow bothers you.”
“Oh,” Will says quietly, blinking back at the boy-wolf. The way the word jars from his throat makes him realize that his breath had stuck in his chest, a burr of surprise and some many-hooked feeling that drags sharp through him. Realization hits him heavy, crumples into his ribs.
“I don’t think I can chase something before it runs,” he says, his voice half-distant, faltering, but eyes trained tightly to the man before him. Searching. His eyebrows are lowered in something like a frown. And then the man is a creature, again, the soft give of fur against Will’s legs, snaking through and away. Will doesn’t reach out to touch the ruff of his neck, although he could.
“And,” (a breath) “I don’t know if that’s wise,” Will says, as the now-wolf steps lightly away. The sound is rough, half-finished. “You seem like the sort to play with your food.”
It’s an observation, not an ultimatum. There are, of course, other observations he thinks of making, like “I have a wife and a son” or “I don’t even know your name”, but they seem foolishly rudimentary, clumsy. Parrying with a wooden blade. They ring a little hollow even to his own ear, under the confused roar of blood lurching stop-start through his head. Will closes his eyes, again, as if to be alone. The dream logic of the situation is fraying around him to reveal a worn-through glimpse of something dangerously substantial, careening uncomfortably in his chest.
“What do they call you?” he asks, after a moment, like steadying himself. He mirrors the wolf’s movement with a step backwards. Not retreating. Replying. A tug on the space between them. “No - that’s the wrong question.” There’s that vigilance again. His voice is low, weaving.
Juno snorts and says, “Not exactly,” wryly- “And I’ve been here … a month and a half now. I’ve had time for them to get used to me.” He finally digs into his pocket for some of the food he brought, roasted chunks of meat that will stain his coat pockets with their scent for days, and he holds a piece out to the nearest mutt, only to jerk his hand back when it moves in too fast. When he holds it out again, the dog takes the treat much more carefully.
He looks over the other man again. Gaunt. Perhaps not entirely physically, but he seems soul-weary, worn thin- Juno’s seen it enough to recognize it. In Hyperion City.
In the mirror.
“I was never a big… pets person,” he says, “And I sure as hell had never seen a dog before I came here. But they’re a bit like the sewer rabbits back home. A little less capable of breaking your ribs with a single kick, but… not by much.” Well, the other man’s sharing, he might as well. “So. Reminds me of home, I guess.”
He hesitates, then adds, “… Juno Steel.” He doesn’t add ‘private eye’, though he wants to. He’s starting to lose track of that, in here.
He huffs as another dog noses forward, almost pulling off looking pitiful except for her sharp, expectant eyes. She’s bone thin but her sides swell in the same way the rabbits’ do, when they’re expecting. He offers her two pieces, then lets her tuck herself under the flap of his coat, sniffing his inside pockets for the other pieces he’s secreted away.
Will lets the silence stretch between them for a moment as he watches the dogs eat, chuffing and wagging tangle of bodies twining around the stranger’s feet. It’s not uncomfortable, an easy lull.
He’d leave it there, but some impulse catches his tongue, and he asks before it occurs to him not to: “Home is good, then?” Closes his eyes in a frown an instant later, chiding himself. “Uh, sorry. Some people, they’re happier than others to find themselves here.”
His eyes are still on the dogs as he gives himself a little mental shove to elaborate. It’s an offering, of sorts. Flash of vulnerable underbelly to show he means no ill will. “I’m not so sure yet.” He nods towards the pack of strays. “Some things I miss. Some things... not so much.”
For the first time, he looks the stranger in the face, properly. Not quite the eyes - keeps his gaze hovering somewhere under the person’s lower eyelashes. He looks... tired. Yeah. That’s about right. For good measure, Will presses his mouth into a kind of half-smile. A nod of recognition.
“You’re not… being creepy.“ Jupiter shakes her head, feeling too self-conscious, trying to spread herself outwards so she can focus on other people and other things besides her own dumb vague misery and self-loathing. Spending all her time on that is bad for her, after all. Everyone says so. “I was just distracted. Sorry.“
It’s an easy sorry. She’s said ones like it a million times. Something about it feels a little awkward in this context, though?
“Um. If I have any questions… if you know how we got here, I guess? Or just whatever’s going on in general. I don’t really know anything and the stuff on the phone they gave me doesn’t make a lot of sense.“
Will smiles abashedly.
“Depends on who you ask,” he says. “I’ve heard a lot of different versions. Everyone’s got a different understanding, seems like.”
He takes a careful sip of his latte. It tastes like a bouquet of plants and spices that narrowly evade familiarity. Sweet, floral, vaguely green.
“How depressing an explanation would you like?” he asks, then, blinking, interjects - “Sorry - not to be flippant. I’ve talked to a fair number of people about it. Some people think we’re test subjects, uh, lab rats in a maze. I spoke to - apparently - an angel a while ago who thinks we’ve been transported to another universe. So. You know.”
He gestures loosely with one hand as he punctuates with another sip. He’s not entirely sure the flavor agrees with him, but the motion gives him something to fill the pause with.
“I’ve been researching, though. Looking for patterns. There are, uh, a fair number, actually.” A self-conscious breath of laughter. “Seems this whole place operates on patterns.”
