Here's my fanart and also other fanart I love. I love illustrations and I love whump and I love fluffy hair. I also write! I sometimes share that here too! You can find my longform fanfiction on A03 at onlythegood pretzels. 30+ | She/her
It was a test. To see what the druids had made of him, Shiro guessed. What kind of fighter for their empire.
Or it was for Ulas. To drag a burst of that power he hid out in the open, make him bleed enough he couldn't conceal it. Shiro didn't know what happened if they found that. The Keeper didn't say.
But Shiro knew one thing. When the druids threw the Keeper into the training ring, bloody already, he didn't think. Just moved.
I am so pleased with Clive and Dion's similar and foiled backgrounds, so I wrote more interaction between them. Posting for Whumptober 29: I hope you see the sun someday in the darkness.
Heads up: fake suicidal ideation. This story includes a possessed character asking to be killed. The creature controlling him is trying to trick other characters into killing him.
Slight canon divergence: Ultima didn't like Dion knowing his name in Twinside, and would rather he not survive.
First 5 chapters here:
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Usually Jim's the one guarding. But Jake isn't going to let anything happen to him. Just try it.
(Stumbling onto this confirms Dinah's worst hunch: something is very wrong at Cadmus. Worse once she knows Jim can't remember what happened enough to tell her).
For Whumptober day 20: That's New
I tried out a new lineart brush for this. I think I like it. Also, genomorphs are just the cutest things in YJ. He's so fierce!
Shinra gets their hands on Seth and Zack from my Best of the Killers verse. Heideggar is delighted to interrogate their long-missing weapon with an audience. Just a blurb but I like it.
Trigger warnings here: beating, blood, restraints attached to someone's body, suggestive language, noncon touching, threats, blood, implied conditioning and abuse of Seth as a child,
Try as he might, Zack couldn’t find a seam on the heavy anti-SOLDIER cuffs that he could crush apart. Double- and triple-checking didn’t change their minds, either. His thumb bled from trying. They hummed low, a promise of their neat little force-redistribution system.
He knew he should stop. Call back to his training. Find his steady calm core, like he’d done before hundreds of missions. But rage clawed under Zack’s skin now, hot and deep and uncomfortably like terror.
This was no mission. This was Shinra, and they hadn’t killed him this time. Instead, they caged him in this tiny box, harsh lights and too-flat floor. Hands shackled behind his back and tethered to the wall.
It had been one hour of absolutely nothing. Zack hadn’t bothered talking to the cameras. If they wanted to boil him, he could dish that right back. He had nothing to say to these bastards. Not anymore.
Finally, finally, the shinsteel wall ahead of him flickered transparent, green-tinted lights blaring in his face. Zack set his feet.
“I see the reports did not exaggerate.” High Commander Heideggar scowled in the broad cellblock doorway, his cragged shoulders just as dark and harsh as Zack remembered. Just his face made Zack feel like he was floating, fury pounding in his pulse.
Heideggar tilted his head, eyes flint-hard. “Former SOLDIER-1st Zachary Fair. You have many lives to answer for.”
That bastard. “Makes us both murderers then.” Zack held himself to just growling, though it was hard. Bet he knew more about those dead troopers than the fucking Commander did. But he had to be smart. He didn’t know if Aerith got away. He didn’t know where Seth was, and damn it he cared about that now.
Heideggar laughed, dark and ugly. “Never something so mundane, boy.” He yanked on a thick cable trailing from his fist. “But I’m not here for you.”
Someone grunted, hurled into the room by the Commander’s cruel strength. Zack dodged on instinct. Too fast!
But he froze when Seth slammed into the clear wall of his cage, knees-first from a failed flip. Seth landed rough, shoulder to the wall to keep from collapsing.
Zack could see him slump crooked because he could see every damn tattoo up Seth’s spine. In the harsh lab-light, Seth was sweaty and bruised, stripped down to his briefs, skin too pale even for him. His hands were chained behind him. The cable connected to two metal brackets looped into the flesh of his side. Zack’s stomach flipped, seeing the insertion points on the surgical guides between Seth’s ribs.
Seth blinked urgently, digging his toes into the tiles, but his face was too calm. And his eyes fought him, trying to dip closed. Sluggish.
The sleep cast. He was spelled.
Shit. That meant Shinra did have his insurance triggers.
“We’re going to try this again, Silver.” Heideggar strode into the room. Zack glanced at the shinsteel wall, trying to tell if he could break it. “Where did you go after Nibelheim?”
Seth grit his teeth. Zack hadn’t expected to ever feel relieved to see him angry. “G-go ahead. Keep a-asking,” he snarled, pushing off the ground.
SNAP
Zack flinched, unable to find where the awful cracking sound came from. Seth flinched, too, off balance just for a second, but visible. Heideggar used it to step forward and slam him in the jaw with the butt of his rifle.
“Tone.”
Zack lurched toward the wall automatically as Seth fell. His eyes glowed too bright and he heaved, short controlled gasps.
Heideggar reached for Seth like he wasn’t even worried. “And address.” Zack caught sight of a long, old-style whip in the commander’s hand just before it cracked against the wall of his cage. “Must I remind you of everything?”
This time Seth definitely flinched. He went the particular, breathless still Zack recognized when Heideggar snatched his hair, twisting cruelly. Breathing slow. Eyes unfocused. Seth didn’t react when Heideggar tugged at the cord in his side.
Damn it. Just like down in the lab where Zack found him. Compliant even if you hurt him. Had Heideggar found the resistance curse yet? Did he know Seth physically couldn’t struggle?
Zack strode as close to the wall as his cuffs allowed. “What, came all the way here to ignore me?” The connector on his cuffs hummed angrily and he hoped Hiediggar could hear it.
“Ha! The guest of honor is bored, Silver.” Heideggar pressed his thumb hard into one of the brackets in Seth’s side, grinning when it finally pulled a long, controlled breath out of him. Zack hated how much easier the sleep spell made it to tell Seth was hurting.
Heideggar reached down, grabbing the little finger on Seth’s left hand. “Wake up. I won’t have you dull for this.” Then, casually, he forced the digit sideways with a brutal bone-crack.
Seth gasped, eyes wide and pain-bright. He hissed, almost a keening sound, pulling his hands closer to his back. Staring up at their captor, face blank and empty except for where rage tremored in his jaw. Zack felt the chill of him aware and dangerous even along with relief that he looked conscious now.
Shit, pain could break the sleep. He’d wondered, but not enough to try. That bastard.
Heideggar didn’t seem to feel it. He tilted his head, waiting for something. But when silence stretched too long, he sighed and shook his head. “You always were behemoth-headed, Silver, but this?”
The whip cracked a third time, this time against the floor. And Zack swallowed, seeing Seth tremor, not a flinch exactly but still discernable. His expression blanked fully.
That…that was bad.
“Acknowledgement. That’s three. Already?” Heiddigarr flipped a small glinting shape in his fingers. “We better get to work.”
Zack couldn’t feel the cast, but he saw Seth stop breathing, the splinter-bolts of lightning slicing across his back. Shit, shit!
“He can’t move,” Heideggar said helpfully, like Zack had never fucking seen a stun before. Like he wasn’t watching Seth’s fingers shudder under the pain of it. “Thought your great general would save you?” When Zack glared at him, Heideggar laughed, belly-deep, and caught Seth’s neck, dragging him forward to show his face.
Seth looked very far away. The bruise coming in on his jaw was black, crowned with a bloody scrape. Zack locked eyes with him, trying to hold him here. Now. And damn if that wasn’t weird to want.
“Silver. One.”
But Zack yelped when magic whooshed behind him, slicing across his bare arms and back in screaming cuts. Aerora! Fast, suffocating chaos whipped around him, the cast lashing across the tiny space. Zack braced, ducking his face as best he could at it tore into his skin and tried to throw him.
No, he was not going to fall.
The wind-teeth gnashed him for long, bloody seconds before it cut out.
Shit. Ow, ow. Zack coughed, trying to wrestle air back into his lungs. He didn’t have armor. Not even a shirt! SHallow cuts stung in random arcs all across him, like freaking acid wounds.
“Two.”
This time Zack wasn’t surprised. He dove toward the wall as soon as the air sharpened, He could use it to shield his face and stomach! His arms would protect his back, and he just had to hope his hands would be ok.
But the twist caught his hip, his legs. Dragged him up. Off the ground.
Fucking -- !
Zack’s ankle twinged as he crashed down. The cage rattled as he ducked, hunkering down as best he could on the floor. The trapped howl of the magical storm echoed in his ears, ravenous and cruel.
Until it faded.
Zack scrambled to his feet, crouched as he whirled to find Seth. Shit.
Heideggar smiled. Seth hung in his grip, still stunned. Still watching. He probably couldn’t close his eyes. Zack’s blood boiled. “Well, that was a nice little workout,” he spat. Damn, he sounded breathless. Do better. Zack bounced on the balls of his feet, ignoring how his legs stung. “It was getting awful boring in here.”
He had to look at Heideggar for the taunt to work. He had to look away from Seth. Zack’s heart wasn’t in his chest anymore. It had plummeted to the slums three hundred feet below them.
Let the bastard try to use him as leverage.
He couldn’t tell if Seth got the ‘I’m ok’ message. What did Seth know about messages?
“How did it take you a whole year to impale him?” Heidigarr laughed at his own joke. “Three.”
Zack braced again, but this time the chamber stayed still.
CRACK.
Instead, Heideggar slammed Seth’s head into the clear wall. Seth made no sound, not even a grunt. Not even a wince. Stunned. He couldn’t. The only change was his eyes unfocused, staring through. But blood welled from his nose, beading on Zack’s cage. Reminder. He could bleed like this. Shinra’s insurance spells were to stop things he wanted.
Zack clenched his fists, but held in snarls inside.
“Understand?” Propping Seth against the pane, Heideggar pressed a small black square to behind his ear. It trilled, the sound scraping revulsion and fear in Zack’s memory. Science Department tech. Panels looped across Seth’s nape, anchoring the device, as narrow prongs extended forward. Zack could see them dig into the cartilage of his windpipe.
Seth tensed abruptly as the stun ended. Heideggar seemed to recognize it easily, tugging cruelly on the cable. This time, Zack could see Seth’s ribs move with it. A slow green blip lit the device on Seth’s neck as he whirled, placing himself squarely between Heideggar and the wall. He licked the blood off his upper lip, eyes blazing.
“As --” The light clicked red. Seth winced, head jerking to the side. He closed his eyes, breathed hard. “Yes. Sir.”
Quiet. Unnaturally level. Flat. The light flickered green.
Chills ridged up Zack’s back. Shit. Shit, the awful reporting voice. Stripped of all timbre, all edge.
“There he is. Good boy.” Heideggar grinned, stepping back, cable splayed like an awful map. He looked hungry. He looked eager. “I bet you thought he was untouchable, Fair? An asset with choices.” He laughed again, low and full. Like it was hilarious to call people things. “Watch. At attention, Silver.”
Seth waited through the rattle of the cable before moving to stand. He glanced at Zack, scanning him from head to toe. Checking. Zack hoped he looked fine and incandescently angry. Those were the two most important things for Seth to know for sure.
He shouldn’t watch. He should turn his damn back, deny Heideggar his twisted show. As if Zack hadn’t seen enough already.
But they were both bleeding. If Zack wasn’t watching, he’d brace at the wrong time, being loud when the wind cut him. Wouldn’t know when to intervene, when to distract.
He hadn’t cared about Seth’s guilt before. Now it burned. The drying blood trail at Seth’s lip looked like botched makeup, someone trying to make him look alive who only managed ghastly. Zack didn’t want him to feel in control of this. They weren’t.
Seth stood straight, fighting the pressure of his torqued shoulders. His hands flattened at the base of his spine, and Zack recognized the tremor. Not relaxed. Forced open. A show of compliance. And Seth stared through, blank and vacant.
“Hold still.” Heideggar beamed, moving slowly around Seth. He reached out, smearing blood from his nose across his cheek. Trailed his fingertips over the ends of Seth’s shorn hair. Kneaded past to reach the back of Seth’s neck, explore down his spine and his bound arms. Squeezing. Testing.
Seth didn’t move a muscle. He barely seemed to breathe.
Zack held his breath, too. He couldn’t help it. Seth was the most dangerous SOLDIER on the planet. No one could touch him unless he allowed it.
But Zack also knew the part of him thinking that was old. Old and wrong and dead. That wasn’t how Shinra worked. He knew that now.
“Now, that’s certainly something.” Heideggar rounded again, digging his palm into Seth’s chest. Sending tremors along the cable. “But even you could follow orders once, Zachary.”
Without even blinking, even pausing, he backhanded Seth so hard his head wrenched, blood flicking from his mouth. “Where did you go after burning that town, Silver.”
Seth reset his stance, straight and expressionless, like the blow never happened. His hands twitched, the broken-finger curling. “I…don’t know, sir.” Same unnatural flat tone.
CRACK.
Zack flinched violently at the sound of the whip. Wait -- !
“Delay! You liar.” Heideggar snatched Seth’s scruff, dragging with surprising strength as he slammed him down into a brutal knee-first blow. Seth arched, cry sharp and cutoff, eyes burst white.
The curse! Don’t let Heideggar find the curse!
“Hey!” Zack was on his feet before he thought anything else. Lunging two steps toward the wall.
CRACK, CRACK!
Heideggar kicked Seth’s side as he dropped him, so close to the cable the loops rattled. “And squalling.” Seth rolled, mouth open, but only gasping now. The light on his neck switched, red to green.
The last whip strick snapped against the wall of Zack’s cell.
“And lying to me.”
Magic surged in the air around Zack. Shit. He lunged for the wall as the wind picked up. Made it! He huddled down, using it to brace against the awful gusts, biting down the pain as scratches ripped open on his forearms.
Something was heavy. Hard to breathe. Ripping the air out of his reach. He coughed and gasped when finally the Aeorora faded.
“Careful.” Heideggar smiled at him, cheeks flushed. Eyes glittering dark and excited. “It gets hard for you SOLDIER to breathe quickly. Those metabolisms Hojo prattles about.”
Zack tried to ignore the shudder up his spine. He glanced past the Commander to where Seth climbed back to his feet, eyes sear-bright. He met Zack’s eyes, something exhausted and urgent tightening his face.
“Ah ah. Show him what his general is.” Heideggar caught Seth’s neck, hand faux-gentle. “Knees down. There was one more.” He pressed his palm right over Seth’s Shinra brand, smiling at Zack. Daring him to see.
Seth knelt.
Once, seeing him kneel at the Commander’s feet would have startled Zack enough to try explaining it away. Saw it wrong. Sephiroth would never. But that was before. Before Zack died bleeding out from Shinra bullets. Before he saw years of suffering recorded in proud script on Seth’s back. Before he noticed Seth only met his eyes these days when certain Zack would dislike whatever he said next.
And before Seth couldn’t resist a push without paying for it.
“Fair. Your first.” Heideggar saluted with his damn whip. “Volume.”
Seth shifted abruptly, moving between Heideggar and the window. Shit. Zack twisted his wrists in the cuffs, wishing the whirrs of them counteracting him could drown out the words. He hadn’t meant to. He’d never been any good at --
“Don’t raise your voice again.”
Heideggar crashed the rifle haft into Seth’s ribs. This time, Zack heard the brutal bone-snap, even muffled by the shinsteel. Seth rocked, knees ground into the tiles, the cable hissing its pleasure under him. But he barely made a sound. The green light blipped at his neck.
Zack’s heart pounded so hard it hurt. He couldn’t smell the room, didn’t know if Seth’s breath had blood in it now. He couldn’t know, wouldn’t know.
Damn it. Seth was faster than a fucking terpsicolt. A chump like Heideggar couldn’t land a blow if he bothered to dodge it! He didn’t…he didn’t have to just take it!
Zack let that part howl and pushed it aside. That’s what SOLDIER operative Zack Fair thought. He wasn’t fooled anymore. Not with his back aching from the cuffs, blood a red, hungry handprint on Seth’s face.
“Yes, sir.” Zack couldn’t match Seth’s creepy report voice, but he could keep his calm. He could play the Commander’s damn game. Learn how it really worked here until he knew where to destroy it.
Heideggar chuckled, rough and slow. “We’ll see. Hojo’s toys always have trouble with…followthrough.” He ruffled Seth’s hair, revoltingly casual. “I missed you, Silver.”
Seth panted carefully, testing the breath-depth his broken ribs allowed. Nausea clenched Zack’s stomach as Heideggar trailed fingers down to his jaw. “He’s beautiful, isn’t he?” Digging into the soft inner edge Seth’s jaw, Heideggar forced his head back, curving his neck into an obscene arc.
Zack glared. He couldn’t help himself. Heideggar chuckled. “What? Don’t try to tell me it never struck you, SOLDIER.” He caressed Seth’s throat with the backs of his fingers, each panted breath pressed into him. “I used to watch the ranks when he paraded, just to see you all wonder. See you want.”
His voice grated wet and breathy. Zack shuddered. The floor was hot and humming under his feet. The window’s hard square edges were too similar to the hidden pinups, the pornos, scraps from magazines hidden in so many corners of the ranks. He’d seen enough even without going looking for them.
In those, Sephiroth had been the one on his feet, tall and dangerous.
Hediggar pressed his thumb to Seth’s mouth. “What do you think, Silver? Should we show him things he’d never believe?”
Seth’s eyes flashed green, dangerous and angry. He grimaced, lips pulled back, pressing bare teeth up against Heideggar’s skin. Not quite a snarl but not quite something else. For some reason, it made Heideggar laugh, pick at the dried blood on Seth’s lips as he pulled back.
Seth waited until he was free enough to toss his head, bend forward to where he could breathe easier. “We are all acquainted with the Professor, Sir.” That same skeleton of his proper voice. “Difficult for company policy to surprise after that.”
Company policy --- ! Zack buckled down, relief sharp and tearing in his chest. Was that -- Seth was trying to make a joke. Badly. Horrifically. But he was trying. Trying to tell Zack to stay calm. Zack didn’t even know what to do. He wanted to whoop and to roar, to tear the wall down with his damn hands.
Heideggar blinked, like he didn’t expect a full-on Seth answer. Idiot. “Someone let your tongue go, Boy. And it wasn’t us.” He scowled, dark and looming. “You know perfectly well your father and I are two different elements.”
Wait -- father!?
Heideggar tossed the gun aside and unslung a long metal baton. “Time for us to teach Fair here the difference. Answer. Where were you?”
The weapon looked heavy. Mako-powered, but Zack didn’t recognize it’s make. New? Seth didn’t glance at it, and Zack couldn’t tell if he knew it. Instead, Seth stared fixedly at the floor in front of Heideggar’s boots. Proper prediction tactic. Zack focused on that and not how Heideggar smirked.
Seth shook his head. “I have no memory of it. I believe I was unconscious.”
Heideggar didn’t snap the whip, which might be good news. WIld how fast Zack completely detested that thing. But he flicked a switch on the baton, sending nasty yellow bolts of something twisting along its length. “How convenient. An answer that is no answer.”
The hair on Zack’s neck stood straight up. That wasn’t electricity. He wasn’t even sure it was elemental.
Heideggar gestured to the center of the open floor with the sparking tip. “You aren’t a negotiator, Silver. Don’t try to talk like one.”
Seth’s jaw tightened. He shuffled, springing to his feet without raising his head. Still hunched and low. Just a few hours ago, the movement’s easy strength would have set Zack shuddering. But now it was a relief, a reminder that Seth was hurt, but not badly hurt. Whiplash, that he stared at it as long as he could.
This time I've got Wonder Woman and her lasso of truth -- one of my favorite truth spells. I love the idea of it as an interrogation tool, especially when conflicting with amnesia.
And man does Jim Harper have a lot of amnesia. Being a clone of his own nephew created by the Light and all. (Young Justice Cartoon backstory for him in this universe).
Trigger warnings here: implied past threats/abuse, narrator misunderstanding trauma cues, dubious consent to interrogation, dubious consent to physical restraint, narrator dismissing harm they cause
Note on names:
Wonder Woman is like 4,000 years old. She’s used a lot of names. So when she and Dinah Lance began to work together all the time, she chose Kina, one of her other ones, so I don’t have to suffer Diana/Dinah forever XD
“Ways to find your answers faster, you said.” Guardian stood very still.
Kina sized him up more carefully, noting his stillness and the faint tension in his face. Many people were afraid of her. But they didn’t usually seek her out.
Dinah would step in. Dinah would call a halt, insist they check in on strategies and ramifications.
“Yes,” Kina answered. “If you agree to them.”
Guardian nodded, like that settled it. “The sooner the better.” He didn’t mention permission from Cadmus’ chief security officer or ask what methods Kina meant. So he was either comfortable with her reputation, or he was a blustering rookie in way over his head.
Kina let herself pause, check his stance for more tells. Dinah thought she was reckless with these things. But every step they’d taken here had been calmly and carefully stymied. Too carefully. There had to be something worth hiding.
Surely finding Zatanna merited some risks to overconfident rookies? It wasn’t like she planned to hurt him.
Guardian looked nervous, though he hid it well. Brows pulled just a little too hard to keep from furrowing. He stood at attention, but with a lightness out of step with his size. One foot braced to dodge, the other to lunge. And he didn’t meet her eyes, watching a point at the base of her chin.
Combat-ready. And not because he expected to attack. Because he didn’t trust her.
Someone with that kind of training could make his own decisions.
Kina slid her detection lantern aside and closed the container of lab detritus she’d been testing for spells. This was much more interesting. “Your choice. Close the door; you’ll want some privacy.”
Or as much as could be had somewhere like this. The lasso’s compulsion could overwhelm people, startling them with what came out of their own mouths. Especially the quieter ones.
Guardian closed the door. “I’ll tell you whatever I know. Like I told Black Canary.” He crossed to the lab table, watching her too carefully. He might not want to telegraph a trust check so obviously.
Kina laid the coils of the Lasso of Truth on the table. Its brilliant glimmer met her fingers excitedly, mirroring her anticipation. Days of just hunches made her hungry for answers. “I’ll be able to go much faster with more assurance than that.”
They would find Zatanna. She could dedicate so much more to this than she’d allowed herself yet.
Guardian nodded. Good of him not to take offense. He gently removed the little artificial imp from his shoulder. The imp’s eyes flashed as it chittered, clearly displeased.
Guardian leveled a long blank look at it until it quieted. Kina tilted her head. Communicating? She’d seen relaying thoughts in the records of those things, but not that you might speak to them on their own. Maybe she needed to have J’onn take a look. “Little imp. I’m not taking him anywhere.”
The imp rounded toward her, stomping, and Kina had the distinct sense of a glare.
“He won’t interfere.” Guardian stepped between them, heavy fist to his chest. “I’m responsible for him.”
Kina wondered again if his file lied about his strength tier. That much plate was arrogant in the extreme for someone with no meta-strength. But she wasn’t going to push on that, no matter what the pet thought. Kina was here on professional business, and underplaying strength was a basic way some poor souls tried to surprise her. She didn’t hold it against most of them.
“It’s…a spell.” Guardian approached the table, looking from her to the lasso. He stopped just short of reaching for it, tilting his head. Real curiosity gleaming through the hesitance.
What a nice surprise. Kina smiled kindly. “No. It’s a spell-form. Embodied magic material. Much rarer. Good eye, though.” She nodded at his shield. “A distant cousin of your goldsteel.”
So he knew spell-sense, too. Interesting. “Speaking of which, disarm please. Safer if you startle. Listen carefully.”
Guardian didn’t argue. Good. Kina had found over the years that worked better than someone panicking and her using the lasso to command them still. Each time she offered this trail, she had to explain it differently, right for the latest darer. Kina watched as Guardian set aside his shield, helmet, and breastplate, noting his slow care with each piece.
“My cord uncovers the truth. While held in it, you will only be able to speak accordingly. No lies. No omissions.” Kina reviewed her list. She’d spent the last few decades trying to bring her offers up to date. She dismissed the psychological pushes; she wasn’t planning to compel him to see any truths, only speak them. No need to scare him off. Same with ‘it will dispel illusions.’ No illusions here. Not important.
Ah. “It’s very old, so it does not respect any Miranda rights. No silence for an answer.”
Guardian looked even younger without his helmet. Kina appreciated the sheen of his skin and the easy, muscular ripple of his shoulders. He stopped at the table, staring at the lasso, his undersuit’s blue perfectly emphasizing his eyes and their sharp curiosity.
He didn’t look particularly afraid. Incredible how people so fresh could operate resolved already.
Well, that was as good an answer as any. Kina took her end of the lasso lightly and slid the loop toward him. “Put it where you like. It will tighten itself. Don’t fidget with it -- it feels very smooth and strong, but it will cut off circulation.” Particularly important for fingers and thumbs as attachment points.
Guardian glanced quickly from the loop to Kina’s fingers on the line to the imp and back. He took the loop gingerly, careful like someone who’d experienced attack spells. It glimmered in his hand. Each new truth it touched fulfilled its purpose, burnished it impossibly brighter.
Guardian frowned. Then, without a word, he slipped the loop over his head, settling it at the base of his neck.
Oh. Well then. The offer’s faint thrill wasn’t lost on Kina. Guardian watched her hands on the line as the lasso closed, pressed flush to the hollow of his throat. He was clearly aware of the pleasant dip of his collarbones, how they emphasized his strength, and how his turtleneck gave the golden cord a striking backdrop. Kina never tired of people’s adornments, worn or grown.
But pleasant as all that was, he’d be disappointed if he thought it would distract her. Kina had no qualms appreciating someone’s form and interrogating them. In the warrior-first days, those things were inseparable. So she didn’t tug on the line, though she considered how enjoyable it would be. “To acclimate you, we’ll start easy.” She nodded at the chair across from her. “What’s your name?”
Guardian made no move to sit. He blinked, raising a hand on reflex to hover centimeters from the lasso. Kina saw the compulsion twitch in his hand. “Guardian.” He dug his boot into the tiles. “My name is Guardian.”
A little overzealous for someone less than a year on the Second Wave, but, hey, Kina liked initiative, even in shady security officers. “You can touch it. Just don’t pull. You’ll hurt yourself if you try to remove it” Kina reminded herself to be patient. Each time she did this, at first she had to find the right words, the right questions. Truth was immutable, but didn’t have the same name for everyone. Like her.
“What is your other name?”
The lasso could deceive. Flexible and warm so people misunderstood its willingness to release without her cue. Despite herself, Kina wondered what kind of deceptive Guardian was. Did he really misunderstand what she meant?
Guardian swallowed. It would let him, if that’s what he was worried about. Some weapon it would be if it strangled someone without permission. He met her eyes for the first time as he let his thumb brush gold. It rang at the touch. “Jim Harper.”
Kina didn’t blunt her smile. His hands looked nicely strong. Graceful but solid, ready. Unusual for someone trained to avoid the inevitable callus for so long. “I’m named Kina right now.”
Oh, but wait. Guardian had dropped his eyes again, mouth open, paused between speaking and ending his answer. If he was so literal with his Masker ID, the lasso might catch him on nicknames, too. The last thing Kina wanted was every pet name a partner ever called him. “That’s enough, Jim. I’m content.”
Guardian’s posture relaxed minutely. He nodded, still pressing fingers to the collar he gave himself.
Don’t call it a collar, Kina. They weren’t playing right now, no matter what the boy thought. “Call me Kina. Can I call you Jim?”
A bit underhanded, sure, but Kina loved actually knowing people’s name preferences under the lasso. Where no one could give her false, cooler names as if that would delight or offend her more than their true ones.
Jim’s brows jumped two points higher and he shuddered. “You can call me anything you want.” Voice soft, no bravado. He paled as soon as it left his mouth.
Oh, his crush was really cute. No need to panic him more. Kina chuckled. “It’s alright! Answers can be embarrassing when we don’t control them. Not the first time, don’t worry.” She was somewhat responsible for that one. Oops. Jim Harper seemed a bit of a literalist at heart, and that made the lasso require precision. Her questions had to be honed. Sharp and hard to miss.
“You seem to be tolerating the effects. Now I’ll ask you harder questions.” Not harder because the answers were complex. Harder because, unless Kina was very mistaken, Cadmus was lying to her. Lying to Dinah. Which meant Jim would not want to answer and would have no choice. “Sit down. People sometimes stumble.”
Jim swallowed and sat. “Understood.”
Gods but he had the straight-backed at-attention look of someone who thought she was the Pope. Someone who could judge not just a body, a life, but a soul. Kina wished there were better ways to prove she wasn’t in that business than waiting for people to catch on. Especially when requisitioning his secrets.
“My colleague and I came here looking for Zatanna, a missing member of the Justice League. Has she been here?”
The lasso’s calm warmth pressed into her hand, calming the unease. Dinah was right to worry about a sorcerer vanishing without a word.
Jim paused, expression smoothing, attention inward. Kina saw the compulsion in his face this time, a slow tightening of his forehead and narrowing of his eyes. Considering.
A frown tried to climb onto her face. The truth wasn’t complicated. It wasn’t something you needed to compose.
“No.” Jim shook his head. “No sign of sorcerers.”
Vague choice of words. Kina raised an eyebrow. “Have the scientists mentioned her?”
Another pause. Jim’s eyes unfocused, shifting across the wall behind her. Kina’s fingers tingled with the lasso’s displeasure. Sometimes people thought the first brush of the compulsion was interesting, something to play with. It wasn’t. She wasn’t playing.
“Not to me.” Jim tilted his head, watching her without blinking, fingers curled on the tabletop. “Not that I’ve heard.”
Slow. Still slow. Kina had more to ask. If the security team was trying to keep them out of the lower levels. What the angry scientist was so eager to hide. But the slowness grit Kina’s teeth. Reluctance didn’t affect the lasso. Answers were like thoughts, out once you knew them.
No, what affected the lasso was outside the mind it held. Drugs could blur the ties between knowing and expressing it clearly. Spells could muddle belief, change the truth’s look and feel until it could slip by.
Kina leaned back, letting her glinting armor enter the conversation. “Are you dosed on painkillers, Jim?”
Actual alarm flickered across his face. “No. No dampeners.” Instant. No pause. So he could answer quickly. He just wasn’t. Not a good sign.
Kina frowned and shrugged. “No shame in them. The work has its costs. But this way I won’t cleanse something you need. Try not to move if you can.”
She took Jim’s wrist, fingers pressed to the pulse point under his thumb. The beat rushed startled, but he didn’t flinch or pull away. Kina patted with her thumb as she pressed her fourth spell ring to his skin. Strong as she was, she always had to soothe while she worked. Show she had no intention of breaking anything.
Jim winced, fast and brief, as Kina’s cleanse purged all fog, substance or otherwise, from his body. He shivered in controlled bursts. Experienced in spells, but not the proper hangover cures? What was this guy doing?
“One more.” Kina didn’t give him time to counterspell if he could. She pressed her palm over his, speaking the spell’s old tongue quickly. Falling blue tendrils spread from her fingers into his, full of the clear air of a high mountain with no wind and no clouds. Nullify. Clear. Empty. To clear any spells.
Jim flattened his hand urgently, a low, soft sound in his chest. Alarm or confusion, Kina wasn’t sure. She tried not to feel too satisfied. Dabblers should know she was much more experienced than they were, even with beast-slaying as her main area of expertise. She had a centuries head start. She knew how to cast a Clear and she was of the clay, the earth, where magic formed from in the first place. She didn’t have to hurt him to take away his options.
Only Jim winced, bending forward. And, quiet as a deer, he groaned.
And then Kina felt it.
Somewhere in the constellation of his parts, her Clear spell touched something that refused. Something uneven and rough, something that wouldn’t smooth off.
A spell that did not break.
Jim groaned again, hunching forward. His hand twitched upward and Kina caught his wrist before he could pull at the lasso. As soon as she touched him, Jim snapped full attention to her, eyes wide and the frightened blue of fleeing birds. Palm open, completely still.”
“So. A sorcerer’s touch on you, too.” Kina let her tone be curt. Hard. She checked the room for the echoes of spells, and found none. Not even a whisper, even knowing one was hidden on Jim and seeking it. If she hadn’t jabbed it directly, she never would have noticed. “Interesting. I’ll have to add that to your file.”
Another question to ask: collaboration or conflict? Not many sorcerers or mages were experts in concealing their work. Who buried this one?
Jim didn’t move. He watched her, joints braced but loose. Super-strength experience. Ready to move if she pulled, match her, protect his body from a grip stronger than his bones. His expression was some bright merger of expectant and wary.
No that he needed to. Kina did anything like that by accident. She let go, tapping his knuckles. Jim breathed in a shaky rush, flattening his hand to the table. Well, his ability to stay calm also far exceeded his record.
Add that to sorcery-informed. Super-strength experienced. And subtly spelled. Not traits of a simple literalist hand-fighter.
Focus. Kina would have time to strip the camouflage off that spell later if she chose. Pull off the masks he was hiding. But her friend was missing now. Kina took the lasso in both hands. “WHat do you think happened to Zatanna, Jim?”
Jim twitched, the motion dragging from his chest up into the dimly glinting cord between them. “Happened…”
The cord's pull wasn’t gentle this time, and Kina didn’t blunt it. That he stopped, words cut short, dug her fingers into the soulsteel whorls.
“I wouldn’t…know…?” Jim quivered. He shook his head, slow and uncoordinated. Kina barely heard the answer. No, she was watching sweat bead on his neck. The odd, calm, and unbearably alert expression settling into his face. Like if he breathed wrong something terrible would happen. “I don’t…understand…sor---” He cut off, groaning. “S-sorcer…”
By the Mothers. Adrenaline crackled in Kina’s core. He was struggling against the spell. Somehow, Jim Harper delayed answering long enough to try to sidestep the question. That should only be possible with training, for all it wouldn’t work.
Kina stood, catching the cord just short of taut. “You don’t need to understand to think.”
This time the lasso flashed, light and soft and unyielding. Jim bowed over the table, elbows creaking the plastic surface. His breaths still hissed slow and level, but each one broke in the middle now, ragged and shaky. The lasso shuddered and shook.
What in all the Lords?
“If --” Jim balked for another breathless rasp. He jerked his head sideways, as if to hit it on something, and then again. Watching his face collapse from calm to gouged with pain was alarming when he made no sound.
But not as alarming as the deep flare of something that reared up against the lasso’s push, stopping it short.
Jim keened. Wordless, ragged. His eyes, wide and panicked, didn’t see her at all as he twisted, clawing at his side, dragging against the lasso in his fear. He looked terrified. He looked gone.
“Stop! Whatever hurts, stop it!” Kina grabbed his shoulder, willing the command through the lasso before he could hurt himself on it. Jim’s motions cut off instantly, to her relief.
Even with the words in her mouth, the echo of power scraped in Kina’s fingertips. Elemental. Rebelling against her lasso’s hold. Too simple, too much to be a sorcerer or a mage.
Lord power. Not any of her Mothers’. Not wrath crystals, not Nabu. What!?
Jim panted. He scrambled abruptly to his feet, forcing Kina to drop back and hold the lasso at her hip so he wouldn’t snap his neck. Instead of the combat stance she expected, foolish but standard, Jim lurched toward the side table, bent as if to shield. “J-Jake, no…”
The imp, Kina realized, was bent in an attack crouch, tiny horns wreathed in white-red light. In the excitement she hadn’t felt its faint feeble mental pressure. Trying to make her stop Jim’s sounds of distress. Protect him. She’d have stopped the spell clash regardless. Not something to initiate by accident. It slipped past her.
The imp growled.
Kina planted her feet, glaring calmly back. She’d trained against every friendly telepath she ever found. And now with J’onn the Thought Talker himself. No animal was going to push her. She let it explore the hard coldness of her shields.
Until Jim stepped between them. He bent forward, hand held close to his head, but a rigid calmness in his face. Attention fixed on Kina’s grip on the cord, not her face. Shuddering.
Resisting the lasso’s requirements, somehow. Kina narrowed her eyes. “Answer.” She put a bit of pull into the command. She was in no mood to be gentle now. “Answer, and it will stop hurting you.”
Jim cringed, hand falling to press to his right side. He watched the floor, searching it for something not visible. “Cat…” he breathed finally, voice eerily calm and steady, nails dug into his own body. The gesture had gouging violence, like he wanted it to hurt. “Cats eat magic. If -- if you can’t find her…ask the Cat.”
Jim gasped as his muscles relaxed abruptly, pressure peeled back. Kina watched narrowly. The lasso relented. The truth, then, of what he thought. Grisly, odd, a riddle. Some cats were unusually complex spell users for their age. Like some humans. A defensible, if strange thing for someone to think.
But cats didn’t eat magic. Magic was Lord power. Unsplinterable. Eternal.
Speak to the Cat, he said. “Maybe I will. After I find Zatanna.” Kina closed the distance between them, testing the invisible currents in the air.
There was the cloud of Wrath that always permeated this facility from the crystals the scientists used. She felt the steady flickers of her Mothers: the Lord of Blood’s power in Jim’s strong stance, the reach of his flesh; Choice in the pause stretching too long between Kina’s last question and her next, and the imps waiting to attack her still; Thought in the lasso she built for Kina, a hot truth in her hands, at this man’s throat. She could even find traces of Nabu’s stale metallic taste. Kina never could quite escape the Lord of Order.
Nothing else. Nothing strange. None of the impossible Other power she felt before.
Jim Harper watched her hand. He straightened, shoulders tense, but didn’t pull his hand from his side. Fingers dug into the fabric hard.
Kina held out a hand. “Do you know spellwork?”
Jim shivered. “No.” He debated, his core twitching with unease, before giving her the hand from his side.
Kina took his wrist, bracing him as she slowly wound the lasso down from his elbow, crossing it at each juncture. Loose. Careful not to tighten it dangerously in case he moved. “Right. Each hold makes it reach clearer. Stronger.” Kina didn’t usually echo the lasso like this. She didn’t usually have a reason.
“Your side. Is it injured?”
Jim jolted, eyes wide. “No.” The word burst out like a bullet. He winced, startled.
“Good.” That was more like it. Kina didn’t want to hold him so long this time. More answers, less pain. She closed another loop. Jim watched and she watched him. It was frustrating he was mixed up in Lord business, Kina decided. His face was striking while wary and resolved and uncertainty softened his mouth as he stared at her teeth. Beautiful humans didn’t stay long. Under other circumstances, she would enjoy him while he was here.
“Your creature will not interfere.” The lasso rang against her fingers and Kina pressed it still. She wasn’t asking.
Jim swallowed, shifting the golden loop at his neck. Kina hoped it hadn’t bruised him when he panicked. “No, he won’t.”
“Thank you.” Kina pressed the last loop to his palm. Jim closed his fingers over it without prompting, and she slid enough back through his grip that he wouldn’t hurt himself if he pulled it.
She pushed her senses clear. Filter out the building sound, the imp’s ineffectual fury, the hazy-afterglow of the lasso savoring its new secrets. Be curious. See what is here, not what you think. As Mother Thought always reminded her.
“The Lords of Thought, Blood, and Choice sent me out many years ago, and so I’m here.” Kina stood tall, announcing the truth properly. “Who sent you here, Jim?”
She hadn’t imagined it. Kina didn’t imagine things. If she felt it, it was there.
Jim’s eyes widened, deeper and faster than just fear. Shocked. “I ---”
The jagged Other crashed against the lasso’s power. Kina’s skin tingled from fingertip to shoulder with it -- foreign, unfamiliar, unbendable.
Jim yelped, air torn out of him by the clash. He yanked on reflex, only able to raise one hand to clutch his head. He tried not to lose the staring match even then, eyes wrenched open even as his face crumpled.
Kina kept a finger on his pulse, tracking the pounding beat. A little longer. He could take a little longer. She didn’t like hurting a Lord’s puppet, but she had to know for sure.
The lasso glowed brighter, angry, clawing for the truth it felt right out of reach. As it did, Jim’s pupils lit, the black wiped too bright to gauge the color.
And the Other slammed back down so hard Kina’s grip slid on the lasso.
There! As impossible and inexplicable and inarguable as a wave crashing from the ocean. Just like the lasso. A Lord, one she didn’t recognize! Kina leaned into the lasso’s power with her own, trying to catch a piece of the unfamiliar magic.
It pushed back against her, too, like an opposing magnet.
Kina scowled, crushing harder.
But Jim howled, collapsing into her. Shit! Kina caught him, twisting him down to the tiles. Heat rushed up off him, too fast to be normal. Even before his knees touched down Jim went still and tense in her hands, flinches small and suppressed. Kina let him curl at her feet, the lasso thrumming as she held it above his wrist.
The lasso pulled. The Lord power pushed it back.
Jim howled, more sharp than loud. A sound that chilled Kina’s spine with its hoarse determination, the desperation of it. Trying. He clenched a fist on the cord even though it could break him, quivering, gasping. Not thrashing, but not answering.
Come on. Just a little more. He could take it a few more seconds. Her lasso could overcome anything for the truth. And then she’d know ---
“Kina! What are --- ? STOP!”
Dinah.
Dinah exploded into the office, a fury of clattering boots and blazing halo-hair. Barely a second and she caught Kina’s wrist in both hands, bracing Jim’s arm.
“Let. Go.” Dinah hissed. Kina had never seen her bald, furious calm from quite this close. “Until we talk, mission abort.”
Not necessary. Kina could explain. But she didn’t want to argue here for the security cameras. And she tried to be sensitive to her friends, knowing they could only ask her, not fight her. She would never know what that felt like. She tried to accommodate.
She released the lasso.
Jim gasped, confused, as it unwound itself and leapt ringing to her hand. He slumped to the ground, clutching his hand to his chest, and Kina saw just a glimpse of a red welt across his palm. That…wasn’t supposed to happen.
Dinah saw it, too. Her anger had weight and threat, the force of her clenched fists. “We’re leaving.”
“Yes.” Kina stowed the lasso. “Thank you, Guardian.”
For a moment Dinah looked like she might actually take a swing at her. Kina met her furious glare, trying to be patient. And Dinah was only a second late, catching herself, turning toward the door. “Jim?”
Jim pushed up to a crouch, blinking rapidly. Somehow he’d retrieved his imp, shuddering and reaching for its feet at his shoulder. “I’ll tell Ta --- the CSO to expect you later,” he offered, tone ragged. Sweat spiraled dark swirls through his shirt. His face and eyelashes glittered with it as he panted.
Unease woke in Kina’s palms, and she methodically shook it out. She’d been sure he could take the spell-clash, and he had, even if somewhat uncomfortable now. She would be a bit more careful next time.
“Try to be here,” Dinah muttered. “I have more questions.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Jim leaned against the wall, out of their way.
Dinah marched for the door. Kina followed, carefully matching speed. No need to frustrate her teammate more until they could compare notes.
When she glanced back, Jim hadn’t moved. Hand pressed to his side, fingers kneading the fabric. Staring at her lasso.
He saw her catch him. He didn’t flinch or blink. “I’ll find out, ma’am.” Tone calm and determined.
Kina narrowed her eyes. Too calm. Voice and breath steady now, as soon as he spoke to her. Where had all that suffering gone, now Dinah wasn’t here to be furious at her? When it had no purpose, was it…gone?
That’s how her mothers would act.
Later. She would probe that further later. She nodded to Guardian, slow and serious. He better. Or she would.
Kina followed Dinah through Cadmus’ halls. Dinah didn’t seem interested in airing her fury here, either, so Kina had a moment to mull over what she’d learned. Whatever Jim thought he found, she wouldn’t be able to trust anyway. Lords, no matter what else they were, all loved playing with their tools.
Kina’s mother had learned to play kindly. Some of the others weren’t so trustworthy.
Now there was a Lord she didn’t recognize. Since she didn’t need to worry about a scolding until they left the building, Kina reached out her mind to her closest mother: Athena, the Lord of Thought.
Mother, I need your counsel.
“What the fuck was that!?”
Ah, right. The scolding. Kina blinked back to focus, seeing the furious sharpness of Dinah’s expression. “Spellcraft.” At Dinah’s curse, Kina nodded. “And a breakthrough. Once I record our findings, I must go to Themyscara immediately.”
Didn't finish all the figures here but hey it looks cool!
The Royalists brought a crystalline net to their ambush, planning to eliminate the Warden of Light. But a net, it turns out, don't work quite as well as proper cuffs.
Dion's dragoons are angry enough (don't worry Terence is about to trounce that guy). But give it a minute and they'll have an even angrier Bahamut to contend with.
Super fun to imagine what a Dominant might look like mid-power-activation.
Seth is being VERY patient with his captors. But he hopes Zack and Aerith find him soon. If these Wutaians irritate him enough he might try to bend the iron, just to see their faces.
But he can't attack them. And he needs them not to realize that.
Seth is a time-travel Sephiroth from my fic Best of the Killers.
Starting out with the next chunk of my Horizon Rost-lives story about capture by Carja. You can't just meet a god without any preparation.
Trigger warnings for this chunk: nonconsensual touching, burns, forced to cross religious boundaries, some horror elements (Rost hates ruins), x-ray imagery. And Rost's stellar self-worth.
You can read what's happened before this on AO3 here: Sunmarked by OnlytheGoodPretzels. This is the start of Chapter 7.
Rost told himself that each step the soldier hauled him deeper into the machine track at the base of the gorge. He gasped and clung hard as chisel marks in the wall changed to ragged damage paths he didn’t recognize. Blaze on stone?
He meant to. He meant to accept the Goddess’ decree humbly, for once in his life.
But steely sheen glinted in the jagged rock ahead. Carja stone cut through by an unnatural round portal.
An Old Ones ruin.
No! No, of every tenant that’s all he had left! Panic dragged him back. Instantly everything hurt: the air, the sun, his chest. Dizzy. Awful. G-get -- ! Don’t -- !
“Fucker!” A blow caught his side, knocking him to the ground. Rost yelped, the gravel biting through the panic enough for him to curl, flattened by the slashing pain in the burns. It tried to crush him.
“Try that again and I break your fingers.”
Rost froze. The soldier snatched his arm and he didn’t flinch. He couldn’t breathe. He knew better, damn it.
He had no choice if the Goddess wanted to curse him again. He didn’t get to fight.
A red welt covered the man’s jaw as he dragged Rost up. So he struck him, though Rost couldn’t remember. He swallowed down as much sound as he could, whimpering hoarsely before he could cling to the rough armor. Some satisfaction at least. At least he hurt someone.
Ahead at the wide door, Helis laughed. “The crippled savage giving you trouble, sargeant?” His armor glinted bluish in the old-ones glow, like he was machine, too.
The soldier growled, clipping Rost’s side on the metal edge as he dragged him through the gaping metal wound in the rock. “No sir. He’s just trying to escape the Shadow’s judgement.”
The scrapper resumed its pace, its red eyes straight forward at the ruin.
Helis hummed, low and satisfied. “As all savages do. As they will fail.”
Rost was glad for the gag. The dimness blinded him for the first three steps. Thick, heavy air pressed down his throat, stagnant with water and rust. Corruption staining his tongue. Their footsteps clacked metal-edged, his feet chilled by the wet hard surface.
Rost quaked, squinting at machine-glow splatters, heart pounding. Should he look? Should he close his eyes? Did it matter what he saw in this cursed place?
A hall flickered slowly from the dark. Melted-looking stone pooled across the walls and walkway, like the earth trying to protect them from its stain. But ghostly bones defied it. An arched door passed over them, mushrooms and rock too weak to mask its shape. The soldier splashed in a shallow pool and cold shocked against Rost’s skin.
It climbed all the way to his chest. Breathing caught in it. He needed to look away, but he couldn’t stop imagining Aloy in the dark here. How could he have ever let a place like this touch her?
Rost choked.
He deserved whatever the Goddess chose for failing her like that.
They dragged him down metal-embalmed hallways. By the third one, Rost was too numb to shake, ice churning in his heart. All he could think of was his mother. He’d sworn her name at his Proving. And now, with his last curs, he’d broken every oath he gave her. Faithless.
“Welcome, Savage, to the Shadow’s sanctum.” A dark cavern opened around them, split by ancient, broken symbols lit red from the inside. Helis strode onto a raised platform draped with crimson cloth. Past him, three massive doors loomed like impossible hills, red teeth glowing around their edges.
“Here you will face his judgement. And he will learn what he requires.”
An altar. Draped in slickcloth like Burnsetter’s platform. Rost flinched. And not to the sun in a place like this. The scrapper crossed to the center door, falling into patrol pattern. The familiar track clattered on the unnatural floor.
“Hail the shadow!” The soldiers’ voices bounced metallic in the hunched dim space. They dragged him to the center of the red drape, its sharp edges like a wound in the metal. Rost collapsed instantly when his captor pushed, too weak to stop the brutal impact from the ground. The cloth gouged at his skin, knobbed and harsh from the rock beneath it.
The texture made him shudder, made him growl or sob or both. Sounds ricocheting off unnatural walls. He was the offering. They wanted him to scream. Part of him was convinced he’d feel a skinning knife next.
Across the chamber, Helis beamed up at the right lights. Rost had no choice but to watch, heart pounding in his throat. Helis biding his time could only spell worse things coming.
“Show some respect.” Rost coughed as the bruised soldier dragged him upright. The wrench of his back flickered stars over his vision.
Gloved fingers registered as separate searing lines in his shoulder. The words were a twisted mercy, something to focus on besides the metal. Besides his own cries. That…that was good. That meant he wasn’t losing his senses yet. He shuffled, trying to balance on his knees.
“Hold him.” The other soldier dropped something heavy and metal behind him on the dais. A dark bar, glinting in the edges of Rost’s peripheral vision. Chains clanked. They closed cold shackles on his wrists and pulled, forcing his arms spread. Rost moaned, pain gouging from his elbows up into his spine and out his mouth. He gasped, feeling the rod behind him rattle with his tremors.
Pinned. Open. A carcass for the knife.
They chained his ankles, locking him in place. The bar jarred heavy and cold against his feet. Something rattled at its ends, binding it to the platform. Sweat beaded unbearably heavy on his face, emphasizing each tremor of his rebelling body.
It hurt. Goddess it already hurt.
Rost felt his hips and stomach spasm, trying to buckle. He didn’t let them. He had to stay upright. If he fell, the chains pass the force right into his back, tear the burns until he couldn’t move.
His focus narrowed so tightly he didn’t notice the soldier until the grip wrenched his head back. Rost whimpered, scrabbling to push with his knees, keep his back from arching. “You aren’t worthy of this,” the soldier whispered, his breath hot and hungry. “The Shadow will know.”
Rost shuddered, the dark metal pressing in on him. The water. Stay in the water…
The stories never said what the Old Ones’ devils knew.
As the larger man held him still, the second soldier smudged Rost’s face with a dirty sleeve. Wiping away the tear tracks, roughing his cheek with harsh fabric. Rost hissed, dragging his eyes closed. His exile-mark. They were stealing it.
The metal-cold had settled in his chest, like it would never quite fade. The Goddess wouldn’t be fooled. She would know the mark was grown into him. But them stripping it away still hurt, low and heavy in his chest.
He hadn’t been bare of it in decades.
They didn’t leave him that way for long. Prying at dark ink in a bowl, the soldier traced Rost’s body, quick and rough. Placing soft dark dots up each side of his wrists, down his thighs to his knees. Fast, careless. Rost held as still as he could. He tried not to flinch.
Whatever was coming, they didn’t think they had to be precise. They didn’t think he would survive.
“None of us are worthy.” Helis stalked into the huddle, sending the soldiers flinching in the wings. He beamed down at Rost, his eyes the only bright thing in the room not drowned out in the red. “The Shadow decrees what we deserve.”
He took the dye dish from the soldier, swirling his fingers in the ink as he crouched to search Rost’s face. “Worth. Death. Truth.” He smiled redly, all harsh teeth. “Curious what He will find in you, savage?”
Rost didn’t dare blink. The air felt winter-cold as Helis pressed a trail of fingerprints up the flat of his chest, redarkened his fingers, and reached for Rost’s face. He dug each mark in carefully, a mockery of gentle, staining two dots on his jaw, two on his cheeks, two on his forehead. A column of prints.
No. No, Rost wasn’t curious. He knew what he was worth. The mark on his cheek was a warning not a spell. The press of Helis’ fingers into his hair felt obscene. Staking a claim. Trying to cover him in the marks of their hands. Rost clung to the cold pit deep in his stomach. It wouldn’t work. They could take his sigil, but the Goddess would never be fooled. She knew who his death belonged to.
He just had to survive long enough to finish the hunt. Then he could die like he should have all those winters ago.
“Speak.” Helis took the gag. Rost mourned it, a faint tremor starting in his back as soon as his tongue was free. His teeth ached in the corrupt air. Helis crushed black ink in his hand, watching without blinking. “Everything from now belongs to the Shadow alone. Tell me, or tell him.”
Last chance, he meant.
Rost choked a gnarled sound, somewhere between a laugh and a sob. As if he would give anything to a heretic of a Carja, a traitor even to their monstrous sun. Thank the Goddess he knew nothing of Aloy’s past to give to a metal devil worshiped in a dead ruin.
He meant to not answer. He meant to take the beating. What was one more? But if Rost had learned anything, it was his oaths were weak when he hated someone this much. “M-mothermake,” he spat, wrenching his eyes down to the floor, where there must be earth somewhere past the metal. The Goddess must completely surround this place. Even if he was tainted, she never would be. “I accept her will---aaaagh!”
Helis cut him off by jabbing fingers into his mouth and covering his eyes. Rost choked, biting down instinctively when he couldn’t see. But more hands caught him from behind, pressure screaming in his shoulder burns, and a cry gagged out of him.
Helis squeezed, sending tiny lighting bolts bursting through Rost’s temple bones. The panic dug deep, cracking in his chest. Rost gentled his teeth, wheezing.
“We’ll see if He likes the defiance.” Helis spoke casually, as if Rost hadn’t just bruised him. A foul, bitter smell drowned Rost’s mouth as Helis caught his tongue and slid it between his fingers, careful and slow. Thick, sticky residue clung behind each touch. “I’ve offered him few supplicants to break.”
Coating, Rost realized, horror spasming in his chest. The dye. They were blackening his mouth. It tasted like bark char, like the destroyed wreckage of villages.
He heaved when Helis finally finished, leaving space for air in his mouth. It didn’t wipe away the revolting taste. Rost tried not to retch, feeling the taint spread down from his mouth through his body. Like he’d see shadow on his skin if Helis let him see again.
“Open your eyes, savage.”
Helis pressed his fingers harder into Rost’s face. He wasn’t going to let him see. Rost opened his eyes anyway, shuddering at the pressure of his eyelids dragged against Helis’ gloves. The dark was different when he tried to see into it. Warmer. Redder. Worse.
“These we offer. Words. And flesh.” Rost yelped when sharp needle-jab pain dug into first one leg, then the other. Not seeing the strikes made them hurt intensely, though as far as he could tell they were superficial. The splinter-pulse of metal ached in his skin, each heartbeat pushing the sting stronger as the intrusion stayed in place. What…what did they put in him!?
“And, finally, Sight.” Helis shook Rost roughly, setting his back and shoulders on fire. “As you, so us. Fill the Shadows as only you can.”
He jabbed the focus.
Rost lurched, the tolerance he’d built ripped away by the dark. Lights carved into the nothing of Helis’ palm, lashing their awful grid through flesh and metal and corrupted air. Obliterating everything to ink their awful constellations. Rost couldn’t see, nothing to lose to the onslaught now. Only the bright focus-world.
And it was kill-strike red.
The focus didn’t care about edges. Doors. The bounds of the world. In it’s slicing hold, Rost saw red -- prowling, furling shapes just past the heavy doors. Massive, unfamiliar machines, outlined in sharp light. Long and serpentine, tall and hard-edged. Each step rattling the mountain.
Rost whimpered. He couldn’t help it.
Then he yelped when Helis dragged his head down. Without sight the lurch of the focus grid made him dizzy. When he forced it into clarity, Rost froze, revulsion a physical mass in his throat.
The focus grid passed through him, as it always did. His edges mattered as little to it as anything else. But now the cruel lights were different. They brightened inside his stomach, his legs, his chest. Small searing white circles hovered at the edges of his skin. The paint marks, he realized with a shudder.
In each thigh, a searing white line jutted out from his body where the brief stabbing pain hit. And these thin rods jutted straight into the focus-lines. Beneath them, a faint outline of bone flickered in the false light.
His bones.
Rost retched, gasping when it earned him another rough shake. Inside him. It could see inside him! Panic rose in cold heaves, the clammy walls suddenly all over him, trailing slick tongues down his chest. He couldn’t breathe. He tried to pull away, and he knew better -- he knew better! His back screamed and failed and it did nothing but hurt and peel laughed out of the cold around him.
The red machine-shadows turned, like they felt his weakness through the metal.
“Beautiful.” Helis flashed the focus fresh.
Rost moaned. He forced himself still. He -- he didn’t deserve to fight the Goddess’ decrees. He -- he wouldn’t. He didn’t mean to, he just…
Helis’ heavy breathing prickled on his cheek, the sweaty, terrifying smell of excitement. Rost’s eyelids stung from grating against his glove. “That is holy fear. That’s good, savage.”
Rough, hot pressure dug into the burn at the back of Rost’s neck. He flinched, a faint tremor of sound stabbing in his throat. It hurt, goddess it hurt -- hot and torn and stinging. Breath seared him and a satisfied hum dragged into his flesh.
Helis. Helis pressed his face into the wound. Inhaling the smell of Rost’s mangled skin. “Dusk to dawn, savage,” he whispered. “We return with the sun.”
Stop. Please, stop…
When he released Rost’s eyes, the dim chamber couldn’t pierce the focus glow for awful, empty heartbeats. Carja footsteps clanked heavy in the echoes and he couldn’t find them or himself. Nothing but the red outlines prowling in the mountain.
By the time Rost could watch the Scrapper, blinking tears away, he was alone.
Alone except for the Old Ones and their curses.
◄▲►
The doors screamed when the opened. Joints never meant to move again, wind already dead inside them stirred up again.
Rost tried to catch his breath. Nothing that happened to him here mattered. None of it could hurt the Nora. The devils already lost.
He wanted to close his eyes, but thinking about pulsed the bruises all up his jaw. Days of beatings every time he tried. Besides. A hunter must look his predator in the eye even when he was the one caught.
A mess of outlines and red-flash options left him blind a separate way. Too many machines moving at once, their bodies rippling with glints and glyphs. A rough roar of their parts hissing and clanking.
You run into the most surprising people sneaking around Shinra labs. Post-Nibelheim Zack is beyond furious. Day-of-Nibelheim Sephiroth is very disoriented.
Shout out to my partner for draping my hair so I could reference this one! It's for @juneofdoom's day 16 prompt: shackles.
This is an illustration from my time-travel AU Only the Best Killers. Snippet below the cut - you can read the whole thing on AO3 here.
Fic Summary:
A furious specter rips Sephiroth from Nibelheim, tortures him with visions of death -- people, the world, his own. Leaves him with a curse and a promise: that he must be the one to stop it. That someone will keep him on mission.
He'd thought to choose his own mission. For once in his life. Now? He knows now. He has no choice. Weapons don't choose.
--------------------------------------------------
Zack died. He died, and he woke up again, and someone who looks a lot like Cloud but isn't has a lot to say. And none of it sounds good.
Sephiroth stared between Zack and the sword. “I didn’t…kill you…”
Zack gnashed his teeth. Surprise? Really? Not for lack of trying! That asshole . He had the gall to sound dazed!
He was on his feet in a second, blade poised over Sephiroth’s sword arm, holding the thunder shard between them. Fury bubbled in every breath Zack took. Nibelheim was burned into him. He didn’t think he’d ever be able to smell woodsmoke without retching again.
But -- but not-Cloud said he’d sent someone to stop Sephiroth. If this was his killer, who was he killing!? If Zack swung now, would Aerith still be in danger?
Damn it all!
“Well, am I gonna put you down right here, murderer?” Zack called magic into the shard. Sephiroth wouldn’t know it was a distraction, an empty cast. “Or are you gonna explain yourself?”
It worked. Sephiroth craned his head back, eyes fixed unblinking on Zack’s raised fist. He looked even more dangerous breathing and coiled, like he might just snap the restraints if he moved. Zack’s heart pounded in his hands, aching against his paltry weapons.
He shouldn’t ask. It didn’t matter. He was going to kill him in a second. But Zack was so sick of not understanding anything. “Start talking,” he spat.
Nothing could have been more wrong than Sephiroth glancing at his face and following the order. “He meant you.” Zack had never heard his voice fray before. “The stranger sent you to control me.” His jaw set.
Tifa smackdown is one of my favorite elements of a sane Sephiroth story! She's unbelievably dangerous and vengeful. And unlike Cloud or other mako-enhanced folks, he won't expect it until she's already broken his arm.
So here's my Seth walking straight into that one!
The twist? Tifa hasn't noticed yet, but Seth can't fight back. The Lifestream cursed him and now he can't attack humans. He really should be more careful.
"Quit cowering and get my samples! Stunned, even he is no threat."
I've come home to one of my earliest whump loves! So here is my Sephiroth recaptured by Hojo after years away. He might be paralyzed right now, but the lab tech probably is onto something.
(Yes he cut his own hair, with a sword. Someone's going to force him to let them fix it sometime).
