Here's an excerpt/preview to the time-travel fix-it fic where (most) everyone lives/nobody dies, I'm currently writing. I'm trying to write it in snippets that when slappes together should form a decent-sized chapter (3000-4000 words). Hope this technique will work for me :) also this is totally not so i can give each snippet a title
So yeh Darrow's mind travels back on time into his body when he's buried post-execution, before the Sons of Ares find him. If you think it's written ambiguously, fear not, it's intentional (probably).
I'm not sure on the title yet. might change it later to something equally aesthetic lol
Dark, red dirt surrounds him, chokes him. Blind panic engulfs him, but he retains enough sense to claw his way out, breaking his nails in the process. He gasps for breaths when he breaks out, damp air filling his desperate lungs. Through the haze of pain -his neck hurts, his back bleeds, but his head, oh his head is killing him- he sees the old tunnel he's in. The old tunnel. There's a flare next to his grave. The situation, as absurd and unbelievable as it is, slowly starts to make sense.
Or is he? What if this is some elaborate ruse? What if this is a dream? Darrow doesn't remember ingesting anything suspicious -Obsidian mushrooms, Purple drugs or other weird cosmic shit- but the solar system is vast and he is a man with many enemies, and many willful friends who wouldn't hesitate to mess with him and slip something into his food and drink.
His fingers dig into the red earth. Deep breaths. Deep breaths, Darrow. Calm down and wait to see what happens.
When the tumbler comes with the men in Octobernacht masks, he stays silent, choosing caution over that weird mix of hope and dread it drudges up in him. Shut the slag up and analyze the situation, as Victra once aptly said.
Where once he would've balked at strangers helping him, this time Darrow quietly curses as they haul him by his upper arms in the tumbler. His small, broken Red body is a foreign vehicle. Seeing Harmony again, even with her half-scarred face behind the mask, makes his sword hand twitch, but unlike their first meeting he doesn't say anything.
Silence, he has learned, invited curiosity. Which led to information.
"Lazarus," Harmony says finally, after a long stare, "You're a damn mess."
Darrow takes the scarlet headband out of his pants pocket and clenches it in his fist. He looks down at it and tries to calculate how many years it has been since he last saw it. Decennia. They feel like centuries.
"Home sweet home,” she says after they pass the checkpoint. And when they pile out of the tumbler, “Now time to meet Dancer.”
Dancer is as handsome and as old as Darrow remembers him. It takes all of his control to blink away the tears, to gulp down the words stuck in his throat. If this is a joke, it has to be the cruelest of them all. He's missed his steadfast, eternally burdened friend.
"You must be wondering who we are." Dancer says.
"The Sons of Ares." Darrow answers, and is infinitely glad his voice comes out steady, if toneless. Let them think him still shaken by Eo's death, by his execution. Better than they know the truth.
Dancer studies him, "You need a patch-up. Harmony, take care of him." Then again to him, "We'll talk when you're not bleeding all over the bloodydamn floor."
He ignores all of Harmony's attempts at smalltalk, and when those fail, at provocation. He doesn't know what to think of her, the indirect cause of Fitchner's death, Adrius and Roque's betrayals. Avoidance is working well so far. And her less than gentle treatment grounds him into the present. Present. He barely smothers a snort.
The antinac and the shower make all aches recede, save for the migraine plaguing him. It feels like his head is being split open. Darrow is gripping his hair when Dancer comes in with food.
"Bet you got a lot of questions."
Darrow frowns and forces himself to think past his headache, tries to remember how past him would act. Grieving. Angry. "Do they matter? Eo is dead. I should be with her in the Vale."
Well, that might be laying it on a little thick but they'll both survive his melodrama.
It's Dancer's turn to frown, "We saved your life, Darrow. So your life is ours. No dying for the dead today. Or tomorrow. Or any day from now on. You owe us. You owe Ares. Your uncle does too and he knows this."
Darrow nods, but another lump has settled in his throat at the mention of his uncle. Uncle Narol. Long dead, shot by the Jackal. His last words resonate in Darrow's head, momentarily driving away his headache.
Dancer is studying him again. His bright eyes read him like an open book, drawing conclusions from the sorry sight he makes. Hopefully his align with what Darrow wants him to know. Then, like the first time, Dancer proposes the card game.
Darrow wins, although he's tempted to lose. Let another take his burden. Let another suffer in his place. But those are wistful musings, like how he sometimes wishes he could fly, or that he could breathe in space.
Dancer tells him about Ares, about the Conquering, about Rhea. He still uses the same damn flea metaphor as last time. Everything fits, except that this time, Darrow is an old, wartorn soul trapped in his first body.
Dancer talks about Eo, the martyr of hope, the symbol of the rebellion. Of more import in death than she ever was alive. "They call her Persephone."
"She’s not coming back,” he snaps, "So what does it matter what they call her?" Eo doesn't ever come back. But he does. Darrow, the reaper -unworthy, undeserving- does. Not for the first time, Darrow marvels at the unfairness of it all.
And then Dancer takes him to the view that had torn his world apart, once upon a time. "You tried to die before,” he says. “Do you want to do so again?”
"I want..." to go back. To stay. He wants Mustang and his children and Sevro and Victra and the life he fought so hard for. He wants Ragnar and Roque and Cassius and Quinn and Tactus. He wants to change history, wants his dead friends to meet his children. He wants to do it again, but better. Can he? Will he? There's only one way to find out. "I want a world where girls like Eo don't have to die for a dream."
It earns him a sad smile. "Justice. I feared you'd want only vengeance."
He shrugs, careful to not stray from his young, impulsive, brash self, "Whichever comes first."
Dancer shakes his head but continues to lead him towards the upper floors. Finally they reach it. He turns to him when they near a door, the door, "Don't let this break you."
And the city of Gold that sprawls before them brings him to his knees.
Darrow cries then, all his pent-up fear and guilt and anger pouringout of him. A dam with its floodgates opened. "A lie," he says brokenly, "It has to be a lie." He means his miraculous disastrous return, the lie he keeps on telling himself, but is grateful when Dancer thinks it's about the lie they've both been fed.
He watches the bright city through hazy eyes -eyes that are so lacking compared to his Gold ones- barely listening to Dancer as the latter explains.
Every Color has a purpose. Every Color props up the Golds. Red lowest of them all.
Darrow is inclined to agree. This body is... less. Nothing is as easy, nothing is as clear, nothing is as good as his Gold carved body. He feels like a wolf trapped in the skin of a rabbit.
The acrid smell of smoke fills his nostrils. Dancer has lighted one. The same bloodydamn Pixie with his gaggle of girls flies by. Darrow makes a stiffled noise. Madness. This is madness.
"What will it take to take it back?" He recites dully from memory.
Darrow stares at that smile, fatherly, but hiding a fierce beast. He thinks of what this means, a second chance,or something else. Something damning. A gift? Or a lie hiding behind the farce of one?
"Eo was right. It takes violence." He takes Eo's headband out of his pocket, lost so long ago. He feels the weight of it. Of Eo's dream. Live for more. A burden he thought shed in the years following Virginia's coronation. Now again his task is to bear it and make it come true. He looks up into Dancer's bright eyes, and realizes that it's quiet inside his head. His mind is free of any pain, and when he speaks again, it's with the clearest sight he's had since crawling out of his grave.
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