I was reminded of how my favorite depiction of Anti is a guard dog who is used to being scary but is learning not to be anymore, so enjoy that version of him.
Antisepticeye x GN!Reader, TW: knife, attempted stabbing
Words: 710
You set out the frosting, sprinkles, and cooled cupcakes on the table, making sure there’s nothing that can be accidentally torn by his claws. With a smile to yourself, you move your hair out of your face and peek out into the living room.
“Spark, I got a surprise for you in the kitchen.”
“Oooh!!”
Anti bounces up from his game onto his feet, running past you into the dining room. He’s glitching all around the table, investigating all the things you’ve set out. When he pokes one of the frosting bags, his pupils go wide with intense interest.
“What’s t’is all for?”
“Decorating cupcakes! It’s like… 3D painting that you can eat. But not yet, we gotta decorate them first.”
You hold his wrist, squeezing some frosting out onto one of his fingers, with a little on your own for yourself. He mimics you, sticking out his long tongue to lick the frosting off from a distance. His nose twitches as the sugar hits his tongue, before he sticks his whole finger in his mouth, removing it when clean.
“I like t’at, I’m gonna eat it.”
“You can eat more after you wash your hands and decorate your own cupcakes. But, you get free reign over how you decorate yours. I won’t touch them.”
“Okie!”
He glitches over to the sink, quickly washing his hands before returning. You help him pin back his hair with a headband and it’s nice seeing his whole face when he’s excited like this. While you know he enjoys playing with his hair, you know he’ll fuss if he gets frosting in it. Anti floats in the air, tongue sticking out the side of his mouth with concentration as he frosts his cupcakes green. You haven’t told him they’re chocolate cupcakes yet, wanting it to be a surprise. After introducing him to chocolate and coffee, he’s gone a bit feral over both of them since.
You focus on making your cupcakes, not really paying much mind to what Anti’s doing other than making sure he’s not just eating the frosting straight out of the bag. He hovers over your shoulder when he finishes up, watching you decorate.
“Yes, baby?”
“Just watchin’.”
He’s trying to be patient and wait for you, but when his hyperactive nature is to almost literally bounce off the walls, it’s definitely hard. He starts fiddling with your clothes, running his claws along the seams of your jacket.
“If you’re bored, you can go back to your game, sweet boy.”
“No, it’s okay. I can wait!”
Anti slowly moves to wrap himself around your torso, using his antigravity abilities to adjust himself in a way as to not obscure your ability to decorate. You pat his head as he gets settled in, fully hugging you with his whole body.
When you finish up your cupcakes, you go back over to wash your hands, before reaching up to give your clingy puppy of a demon more headpats. He purrs happily, ears wiggling as he leans into your hand. But when the doorbell rings, you’re given a second to react before Anti glitches away, going to attack whatever poor sap decided to alert you of their presence.
“Anti! No! No stabbing!”
You run to the front door in just enough time to pull Anti off the delivery man and not impale him on his favorite kitchen knife. The delivery man looks scared out of his wits, eyeing Anti who is growling over your shoulder. You sign for the package, closing the door behind you.
“Anti. We don’t just stab people because they ring the doorbell.”
He goes to snap back, but just looks tired. Anti glitches his knife from his hand, rubbing his arm.
“Sorry…”
You walk up to him, holding his face.
“You don’t have to be scary. It’s okay. Just, no stabbing people, okay? I don’t wanna get sued, or have the police show up. Although if the police show up, you have permission to scare them off.”
“...I can do t’at.”
“That’s my boy. Let’s get some cupcakes, yeah?”
In an instant his mood is reversed and he glitches away to get his cupcakes. You wonder if he was always this excitable, or if he’s only this way with you.
Knight, knight, knight- a somewhat wholesome idea popped into my mind. The da is stuck inside the mirror right? What if they gained powers that allows them to travel through dreams? In a sense they have their adventures depends on the host person/enity and they just go along with.
and okay what if dark knew what the upsidedown world is capable? And its what drives dark to never fall asleep (aside not needing one) and also why is he so hellbent chasing and taking revenge on mark so when its all over, he'll take his rest, be with the da for eternity
"Good morning, sunshine."
In which Dark and the DA interact through unconventional means.
Tw: death mention
Pages: 17 - Words: 6,500
[Requests: OPEN]
The first time, you weren’t sure what had happened. You weren’t sure if it was good or bad. You weren’t sure whether it was because of something you had done, or it was just a random event, some miracle that had gotten you out of that mirror. Hell, you weren’t sure what was actually happening. How you got to some kind of bank or museum was pushed to the back of your mind, but so too were the events occurring right in front of you. It was embarrassing that this was the happiest you had been in decades, even if it was understandable.
To hear the distant whirring of inefficient streetlights, to see something other than a boundless sky of complete blackness that wrapped around you, under, above, disappearing into the floor and reappearing from the ceiling – it was enough to push you close to tears.
But confusion overruled that, instead, making you wonder why that was all you were given, why you couldn’t smell, or feel, or even taste.
And then horror rattled your senses as you watched a body step out from where you were standing.
Your initial idea was inaccurate.
Because you did not exist here.
Because you were not standing at the edge of a row of bushes, shaded by the night and staring into the doors of a building.
Because you were not out of the mirror.
Never mind being close to tears, you felt a few stray drops link up at the base of your jawline. You were scared to wipe them away for fear of finding yourself without hands.
So, what was this? If you hadn’t suddenly escaped from the mirror without your knowledge, why could you see a pair of criminals decked out in all black somewhere that was distinctly not a similar shade of void?
You asked yourself this, knowing fully well that you couldn’t give yourself an answer, and you wouldn’t get an answer for the foreseeable future. There were, however, some things that you managed to deduce over the course of the next hour or so – an indistinguishable period only because time seemed to be ever-so-slightly off.
That was the first of your clues; over the course of the adventure that you watched play out in front of you, each move from room to room took only the flick of a wrist, while the people you were following stared at each other for minutes at a time in complete silence. It was anyone’s guess as to when the clock would leap forward or jam its own mechanisms.
The second clue required no experimentation. It was simply that they didn’t acknowledge you at all. They didn’t make any indication that they could see or hear you. You were lost to them, worse than lost, they didn’t know you were there in the first place. They just sneaked around the museum, completely unaware of the person staring them dead in the eyes.
Had this experience happened any earlier, you might have felt more than a distant sting, but, as it was, it didn’t bother you too much. You were used to being ignored, cast away, forgotten. At least this was by people that you didn’t already know, people that you hadn’t survived the worst with, people that you didn’t trust with your very life, people that you once cared about and who you once thought cared about you.
Maybe it did bother you, just a little.
The third clue came a lot later than the others, but it spearheaded the theory that you were constructing in the back of your mind. Or, rather, the theory that you had constructed because the thing that gave it away?
It was when it all ended, and you were dumped unceremoniously back in the darkness, alone and uncertain of everything. That was one of the worst parts. Having occupied that space for nearly a century, you had been so sure in your knowledge of the place. You were in a mirror – there was nothing else there but you – you were stuck there. The most comfort you could find in the situation was that it wasn’t going to change.
But then it did, and you were pushed back to square one, taking tiny steps around the void, constantly worrying that a single foot in the wrong position would send you crashing through the ground. It was torturous to have your safety ripped away from you again, but what were you supposed to expect? Fate wasn’t kind, and it treated you like its personal plaything, only the game had morphed into something a little crueler.
Your theory, as unstable and undeveloped as it was, was that it was just a dream. In your state between life and death, your oh-so-generous master Fate had designed little shows for you. Entertainment was rare in the void, so what was kinder than giving you some? Never mind the fact that it drove you insane, you should have been grateful to get a glimpse of a life you could have lived had you not gone to that forsaken party. No need for you to lament your cruel undeath. The dreams were a kindness.
You didn’t know how it happened, how you had magically appeared somewhere else, so you didn’t know how to get there again. The outside, if that was what it was, quickly became a distant memory. It was fleeting, a whisp of smoke that intertwined itself between your fingers and then disappeared. It faded, just as the adrenaline and hope did as the seconds ticked by on a clock you couldn’t see.
And then it happened again.
By the end, you were on the edge of a breakdown. The shambles of your mind repulsed each shard of itself, trying to escape from the impossibility you were trapped in. You felt each crack that spiderwebbed across the surface. You felt each tap-tap-tap of tiny splinters falling. You felt it fighting the scenarios you were forced into.
This dream had the same people, but they acted completely different. They traded out their heist gear for formalwear, but their date didn’t last long. It devolved, like the other situation had, into weirder and weirder ends. Body doubles, a proposal, a prison much like you had seen before. Neither of them seemed to notice the similarity, though, and they went along through their routes without a care in the world. It might have been cute had it not made you sick to your stomach.
Regardless, though, you were distracted in the very final moments.
You had to admit, you were interested in how this one would end. It was a 50/50 with one of the original pair holding the gun, between two men who looked the same, both promising they were the one to be trusted. You weren’t paying attention, not initially. You had been tagging along behind the two for the better part of the entire day, and, at some point, you got bored enough to find more entertainment in the scenery than in the dilemma they were facing.
You missed nature more than you missed manslaughter cases.
You didn’t know who they shot in the end, but one of the men was laying on the ground when you snapped back to the ‘present’. You supposed you were meant to feel some kind of sympathy for him, the way that he crumpled to the ground, but it was difficult to find any emotion here. Instead, you leaned against the building that the two who were left ended up at. It was another of those jumps in time, not that any time could be wasted in a dream.
Was it bad that you were apathetic to all this? You knew it wouldn’t have consequences; you would return to the void again when this was all over, alone, and easily forgetting the events of the dream – but it still felt wrong to be so nonchalant about it. If you were any other sort of person, the kind who hadn’t been left alone for a century, being dragged into another scenario might have borne excitement. Seeing people, whether or not they saw you, might have given you hope.
But you weren’t that kind of person, and you weren’t excited or hopeful. You were a ghost, sent adrift in a house too new for you, ignored by the living who now inhabited it, and why shouldn’t you have been? They had no reason to care about you, they didn’t have to acknowledge you, they weren’t—
A spark of electricity like a bullet shot through you when you noticed the man sitting at the table. Not only had he not left yet, like the person you had been following, but he was staring straight at you.
The rising of your stomach made you think you were going to throw up. The quickening of your breath made you think you were going to pass out. The widening of his eyes made you think he felt the same. Neither of you acted, not for the first moments that it took for you to assess the situation, assess him.
Dark suit, dark hair, dark eyes. The only color about him were the rings of red and blue that waved off him like watercolor paints added to a canvas. They resisted one another but equally drew closer to the man’s edges. Regardless of the fight between them, he sat perfectly still. If there hadn’t been a certain look in his eyes – the glaze of someone who was both relieved and terrified – you might have mistaken him for being calm, however, there was that glaze, and it was a combination you were knocked breathless by because it was him. You recognized him.
And a similar sense of fear and comfort fired off in the chambers of your heart, hitting the walls as though they were a batting cage.
You took the first step, physically, and metaphorically. You didn’t think you would remain upright if you didn’t latch onto the empty chair for support as you muttered, “Dark?”
Your voice was rough in your throat. It felt more like you’d spat up a coat of oil than a real word. Years of disuse, the silence of the void that bid you follow suit, years of misuse, screaming into the pitch blackness for just a chance of an echo.
Hearing your own name sent back at you had you stumbling. Suddenly encased by your lost reality, you didn’t notice Dark jolt forward in his seat, hand barely outstretched and mouth semi-parted. Neither of you knew what he intended to do, but you acted first, dropping into the chair.
“How,” came his next words, slow, quiet, gentle like he was soothing an animal or someone he found dying on the road, “how are you here?”
Only his first question, and you couldn’t answer it. Not perfectly accurately, anyway, so your rough estimates would have to do. “I don’t know, I-I followed… I followed someone here.”
His fist clenching on the table caught your eye, but you were stopped from asking about it when he tried to clarify for you, “Mark.”
A myriad of other curiosities appeared – a frigid tone, bitter but unsurprised, and the warbling of the blue and red lines around him, among others – and yet they dissipated just as fast when he met your eyes. The search for something apparently proved fruitless; he leaned back in his chair, crossed his legs, and cocked his head to one side. A silent question.
Why weren’t you angry?
Because you were completely fine upon hearing that name. In Dark’s mind, he considered it impossible that you should stay draped in the chair after the man that caused your demise was mentioned. No malice surfaced, no anger, no sadness, just a blink that was nothing more than an instinct.
Maybe it had something to do with the years you had spent alone, or maybe you never held it against him in the first place. The actor had been unstable for months leading up to your reunion. The events weren’t expected, of course, and in no way would you have chosen to go through that if you had the ability to go back – but they were what happened. Resignation softened your body language and your mind, prompting you to pay more attention to the present than the past.
Right now, Dark’s comment only served to add to your theory.
“Why does it have to be Mark?” you asked, knocking the man across from you out of his stupor. “Why can’t I have followed the other person?”
His brow furrowed, and it made you wonder how much he knew about the situation, the thought that followed being how much he would tell you.
“Because they—” Dark drew into himself as soon as the words escaped his mouth, “—are not the one dreaming.”
It was your turn to look curious. You were a person of fact by nature. Magic and demons and expansive, blank voids, they were fairytales used to scare children back into their beds at night. Simply put, they weren’t real. And the power of dreams? What stock were you supposed to put in that?
So, without another option, you said, simply, “Explain.”
And explain Dark did.
Having one third of your form come from the void had its perks, especially in describing its powers, the influence it had, what it could do. And, as you proceeded to hear, it could do a lot – more than you had ever imagined it capable of, given the absolute nothingness of it – but the thing that interested you the most was the accessibility of it.
Things like the entities, the ones that made up Dark and took over Celine’s body, were able to use the void like a hub. It allowed them to jump from place to place within seconds. Without a physical form, it would have otherwise been difficult to move around. Hell, it was difficult to move around, because getting out of the void was much harder than getting in. It required one very specific ability.
One that you did not possess.
“And you put me in there.”
“I did.”
He said this with no emotion. It wasn’t an apology, nor was it a threat; it was a simple statement of fact, an admission without the guilt. You didn’t know if he had the ability to feel it. As far as your knowledge went, the inhumane entity within Dark took away the chance of it, leaving only the reality behind, as unbelievable as it sounded.
“Did you know I wouldn’t be able to get out?” was the only thing you asked.
This time, there was a short pause before he answered. The memory unwound in his mind while he processed the question. You had asked if he knew, and he asked himself the same thing. Objectively, yes. There was no way that a human – flesh, bones, blood – would be able to leave the void, and Dark understood that. He had never believed otherwise.
And yet, there had been something else behind his actions, because it wasn’t his intention to keep you locked up inside the mirror.
Slowly, tasting the words in his mouth, he repeated, “I did.” The response felt right, he wasn’t lying, but…
You watched as Dark leaned forward in his chair, elbows on the table and head resting on his clasped hands. Everything was deliberate. His suit jacket didn’t crease if he didn’t want it to, and his tie stayed flush against his shirt where it was meant to be, but the look in his eye made you think he was anything but conscious of the present. This seemed to be affecting him more than you, and you were the one with the vitamin D deficiency.
The confirmation that yes, he knew kept repeating like a broken record in Dark’s mind. However, it wasn’t because that puzzled him. Really, it was the only thing that made sense. What actually threw him through a loop was the simple fact that it hadn’t mattered. Trapping you in the void, keeping you away from the real world, was not the logical option. If he had been looking for the best way to carry out his pledge of revenge on Mark, getting rid of Damien would have been the best option. He had the obligations of the mayor of a city, he had an awkward relationship with the actor – both too distant and not far enough – and he was so, so painfully emotional. Painfully human.
Celine hated Mark so much that she thrived on the plan’s progress. The thought of revenge nourished her and made Dark stronger. She had the determination he needed to go through with it all. She was the obvious choice to keep in that amalgamation of souls. The entity was staying, and that was that, no deliberation required.
That left just you and Damien.
Dark had seen you work, or, rather, Damien had the memories of you in the court room. To surmise, you were good, very good, and you were able to separate your emotions from the case. While the witness on the stand was hurling profanities, you made eye contact and stood your ground. If the prosecutor started floundering, you pounced on the opportunity to tear about their words. You were exact, efficient, and a force to be reckoned with.
But poor, sweet Damien? He was always at the back of Dark’s mind, his best excuse for a conscience that constantly reminded him what the moral choice was, regardless of whether he had taken the last one, or the one before that, or the one before that. He was persistent. He was a liability. It wasn’t a shock that he turned out to be the only thing stopping him from latching on to Mark in one of his dreams and killing him when he woke up.
So, the question was: why did Dark push you out and keep Damien?
As if sensing the answer was in arm’s reach, something – and he said something, but he knew what, who, it was – forced him to look up and at you.
Well, that explained it.
Dark’s inner monologue took no more than thirty seconds, even with the strange tick-tock of the clock in a dream, and you watched him and nothing but him in that time. You were still looking at him when he snapped back to the present. As though someone had snapped their fingers, you saw the calculating cold, the pressing tension, the rampant search for an answer melt away in layers to reveal the truth behind it all. As he leaned back into his seat and laid his arms out on the sides, the creases at his eyes softened and a faint smile pulled at his lips.
“The mirror was not meant to be a prison,” Dark started to explain before he was overcome with the pointless need to take a deep breath. Your expression of pure curiosity pulled at his unmoving heart, squeezing it in a grip that he didn’t describe as uncomfortable. Gently and unable to look away, he continued, “And I’m sorry that it was one. I intended it to be a sanctuary, of sorts.”
A flash of confusion darted through your eyes, and Dark rushed to continue before it could turn into suspicion. “I wanted to keep you away from Mark, away from the consequences of everything.”
It was at the end of that sentence, with perfect timing, that his neck was snapped to the side. The bones popped and the nerves twisted. He tried to play it off, but you clearly noticed. Your concern made his heart clench just as painfully as his neck, so he brought a hand up to show that he was fine.
You didn’t believe him, and he didn’t make it any more convincing when he said, “You would have died.”
You knew that; your body was dead on impact, but that wasn’t what he was talking about. Instead, because of him, your soul was alive, even if it only existed in the confines of a metaphysical world.
A question about the integrity of your survival died on your tongue as you registered the strange frown on Dark’s face. It twitched at the sides, threatening to pull further down, but he kept it as straight as he could. The same couldn’t be said about the few tears brimming in the corners of his eyes. He almost succeeded at containing his emotion until one betrayed him and slid to his jawline with a mutter of, “I had to save you.”
“Thank you.”
His breath caught in his throat at your response. For all his monologues and explanations, he hadn’t expected you to be grateful. You, of all people, thanked him, and it wasn’t a joke. He had never seen as genuine a smile on anyone’s face, him not having met more than four people notwithstanding, to the point that it almost lit up the gray of his skin to a normal tone.
And you did mean it. The man in front of you – the one currently tearing up at the mere possibility of losing you – wasn’t malicious. Being the district attorney had given you the almost magical ability to tell when someone was lying. It had served you well in court, and it served you well here. The conclusion you came to took no longer than a few seconds. Personal history did have its benefits, after all, and you had learned long ago how to not be impeded by a pretty face. From all the evidence in front of you, Dark was trustworthy.
You trusted him.
“Of course,” he replied as his hand darted to the lapel of his jacket to sturdy himself. The attention was almost too much, and he found his mouth moving before he understood what he wanted to say. “You said you followed Mark here?”
You nodded, disregarding the fact that Dark had told you that you had followed Mark, for his sake. You also didn’t mention his shaky attempt to compose himself and waited for his next words. You weren’t in any rush to speed things along; for all you knew, talking to Dark was the only thing keeping you in this dream. It surprised you that you hadn’t been dropped back into the void yet, but you didn’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth. Besides, it had its other advantages.
You hadn’t seen Dark since the first time on that fateful night, and it took everything out of you to not see him, or anyone else, again. When you were in the pitch black, you imagined that you would get attached to the first person you saw, and it was a shock to you when that wasn’t the case. The nature drew you in before Mark or his partner in crime could, but you had still tried to talk to them. During your experimentation, you had whispered in their ears, yelled at them, said all manner of things to get their attention, but none had worked, so you quickly moved on. Nothing kept you around them.
But there was something with Dark. The space around you shifted, as if the dream itself recognized the moment and gave it a wide berth. Out of respect or fear or nothing, you didn’t know, yet it was undeniable that it happened, and you were glad it did. You wanted to preserve the bubble of safety that had molded around you. There was a part of you that bargained with the dream, as inane as that sounded, to get more time with Dark. The clock worked differently here, so why couldn’t it grant you a slower pace?
Unaware of your mental bartering, Dark pushed on with his questioning. It came as a surprise to you, having not been focusing at all on the present.
“How?”
You had to take a second to remember what you were talking about, but, when it came to you, you realized you weren’t able to give him much.
“I don’t know. I’m normally stuck in the void, but lately it’s been tossing me around. I went somewhere else before, a heist of some kind. It was much more complicated than this, though.”
You hadn’t paid much attention to the paths this time. There was much less to explore, and the hope of having escaped had worn off. You were fairly certain they were the same people, too, so any contact was old news. You weren’t interested in the heist dream either, not after the sixth time you ended up outside that museum with the pair of thieves.
Despite that, Dark appeared to make up for your lack of enthusiasm; he practically lunged, one hand steadying his body on the back of the chair as he leaned forward, so much so that he was half bent over the table between you.
In a breathless voice, he asked, “Where?” It was more of a demand, really, colored so from the unfamiliar want. It took a moment for him to realize himself, and he then sat back down in the seat. One hand went to card through his hair, throwing it about haphazardly as he amended, “Where were you? I… I was there, but, evidently, we didn’t see each other.”
As you thought through your response, Dark took the time to reprimand part of his mind for his outbursts. He couldn’t afford to break down right now, there were far more important things at stake that made getting distracted too risky, no matter how much the voice in the back of his mind begged to be let loose.
Before you opened your mouth, he managed to similarly berate his general self for thinking it a semi-appealing idea.
“I was distracted,” you said, voice barely above a whisper. “It all felt so real.”
When you stared down at your hands, the outlines of your fingers shimmered, and the veins on the undersides of your wrists pulsed with white light. How were you to know you weren’t alive? Were you a fool for thinking you had escaped, for being tricked, like an owner who had thrown a ball for a dog but just held it behind their back? You went off chasing it, of course, not noticing the stranger things around you. You were too obsessed with the mundane and the possibility that you had a body when you should have known that you didn’t.
Hearing that Dark had been in the same place, maybe, at one point, right under your nose, a deep sense of regret unfurled in your stomach. You had lamented not being able to talk to anyone, but you had ignored the one chance you had at it. If you had just paid more attention, your heart wouldn’t be trying to destroy itself.
As if sensing your spiraling discomfort, the red and blue lines around Dark flared and spasmed. They whipped out at places and curled in at others, mimicking radio waves with their peaks and troughs. It brought your attention to the current moment, and you were glad it did because you became acutely aware of the expression on the face of the man opposite you.
In the midst of the cold, calculating cover he tried to pull, there was a hint of desperation peeking through the weak spots. His eyes, ever the window to the soul, were still glossy with unshed tears, and his mouth, no matter how much focus he put towards smirking, dipped for seconds at a time. You wanted nothing more than to lean forward and comfort him, but the dream was an unkind thing; your legs didn’t cooperate, you were unable to move an inch to brush the drops away.
You offered him the most you could, saying gently, “This feels different.”
“Is that a good thing?”
“I think so.”
Any reason you had in mind was wiped away when a tingling sensation danced at the tips of your fingers. It was something like a limb falling asleep, but it was spreading fast. Your heart rate sped up to a dangerous speed as it got faster and faster, turning into a wildfire that stopped you feeling anything, and it only got worse when you looked down.
Your hands had completely disappeared, the space empty where they had been before. Looking to the ground, you saw nothing but a neon white, which likewise surrounded you when you glanced around you. This hadn’t happened before, and it was terrifying you.
“It’s okay,” Dark said. Thankfully, he didn’t sound panicked – you didn’t think you could handle it if he wasn’t as calm as he was – and he even went so far as to start explaining. You had always liked knowing things. A smile snuck onto Dark’s face as he remembered the singular time that you had been forced to explore negative capability in university, which ended with you throwing the textbook out of the window. In any other situation, he might have teased you for it, but you didn’t have the time.
“The dream is ending,” he started, trying to sound confident despite the fear of not seeing you again nestling itself in his heart. “I suppose you’ve never strayed this far from the start before.”
You shook you head; at the end of the heist, before you were dumped back into the void, you had been standing just where you began, in front of the museum. Now, you didn’t know where you were, but you calmed yourself with Dark’s clarification. Well, his clarification and the pressure of his hand against your upper arm. The contact was inches away from empty air, and you feared for a moment of irrational indulgence that it would speed up and you would lose the feeling.
Your attention snapped back to Dark as he continued talking, “It works outwards. Everything will disappear eventually, but we’re on the edge. We have time.”
He refrained from telling you exactly how much time you had left here, all too aware that it would make you flounder. He had watched the environment disappear before. It wasn’t comforting and it wasn’t pretty, so he preferred staying in the darkness, where it wasn’t as obvious that everything was gradually fading away. Finding you in the daylight was a stoke of luck, a miracle. The only reason why he was out there in the first place was because…
“Mark is around here, too.”
You nodded, a simple confirmation or more complicated agreement, he wasn’t sure, but he stood from his seat, nevertheless. Your torso was gone, now, nothing but a shimmering outline that was gradually disappearing itself. You were close to completely returning to the void, and there was a part of Dark that was unimaginably frightened it would be for the last time.
Another part reminded him of what he was supposed to do, told him it would help you if he adapted to this, convinced him that it was the right thing to do. It surprised him when the resistance that normally came with that simply didn’t.
His legs moved on their own towards the parking lot, where he knew Mark still was, but your voice stopped him before he passed you.
“Come back safe, alright?”
How was he supposed to say no to you? When you were looking at him with such trust and belief, it was impossible.
He leaned down to press his lips against your forehead. Your skin was surprisingly warm, considering your situation, but that might have come from his natural coolness. Still, it was nice. A good contrast that had the back of his mind focused entirely on the feeling.
“Of course.”
The shimmering was gone, and you along with it.
Dark stepped back, registered a strange satisfaction in his heart, and took a deep breath.
The actor was dead within the hour.
It didn’t take much, surprisingly. In fact, it was quite easy. As Dark stood above Mark’s finally vacant body – returned once and for all to the state it should have been in – he found no burst of adrenaline. No anger, no sadness, no passion. Nothing but the dull hum of satisfaction, just the same as the one from when you had disappeared. It was done, and that was that.
Mark was dead. Damien and Celine were appeased.
His job was complete.
He dropped the bloody axe to the floor, the clatter and thud not reaching his ears. Someone else would bury the body. Another would open an investigation into his death. A deep cut, like one from felling a tree, wasn’t going to be described as natural. It didn’t matter, though; arresting someone who should have already been dead was as difficult as murdering one. Dark had nothing to fear.
He also had nothing to do. There were no more plans to be made, no more vengeance to be enacted, and you had told him to come back safe, right? Maybe taking a rest wasn’t such a bad idea.
The manor, Dark’s base of operations that he loathed to call his base of operations, was quiet when he arrived back. It didn’t bother him, he had never appreciated the bustle and boom of all the parties once hosted there. It had prompted one part of him to find a safe space in a spare bedroom at one end of the house, and that was exactly what he needed – somewhere to be that didn’t come with the strings of tracking down Mark.
The door creaked as he pushed it open and groaned as he closed it again. Despite the confines of a tailored suit, he didn’t stop himself from falling onto the untouched sheets of the bed. It had been so long since he had laid down; for the past century, he had either been ramrod straight or sitting in his chair, and laying sideways across a desk hadn’t done him any good.
This position was much better. Was this the kind of ‘different’ you had spoken about? He hoped so, with the relaxation that ran through him. It was enough to coax him to close his eyes and let it all go, like a siren at the edge of a boat on stormy seas.
And then came the voice of one, too.
“Good morning, sunshine.”
Slowly, Dark opened his eyes again, with the distinct feeling of trust firm in his heart. A new voice in the manor would normally be cause for concern, but he knew the voice. He knew you.
The only thing he didn’t know was what was happening.
When he knocked himself out of his sentimentality, Dark was greeted by the sight of you against the backdrop of the moonlight. He was still in that room, resting on the bed, but everything seemed altered in some way. You were the most obvious difference, and he was half sure that you were behind the softness of the scene, as if, in the time he was out, you had painted over the furniture, the walls, the light itself.
You dropped down on the edge of the bed as Dark pulled himself into a sitting position.
“I’m not,” he started, but he was forced to trail off. He didn’t know how to verbalize a single thought, and yet that wasn’t as frightening as he thought it would be. With you, he didn’t think it possible to be scared. Still, he tried again, “You’re…”
You shook your head and reached to place your hand over his. This was the first time you had made contact with him, and he quickly found he never wanted it to end.
“No, I’m not alive,” you answered his silent question, “and neither are you, by the looks of things.”
“I don’t understand.”
You didn’t expect him to. When he had sat across from you, he radiated a certain poise and manner that only came with certainty. You had seen it in witnesses, prosecutors, clients. They all acted the exact same when they were on their home turf, and when they were moved away from it.
Luckily, Dark was taking it better than they did – there was less yelling and cursing and threatening – but there was still the undercurrent of concern.
It was your turn to explain as you said, “You killed Mark. You did what you needed to do.”
“Exactly, he’s gone.”
He said it with a small smile, but his downturned eyebrows and deeper breaths betrayed the confusion.
You brought your other hand over his unattended one and collected the two into a grip. “Oh, my dear, he’s not the only one who can dream.”
Taking advantage of his lapse in troubled thoughts, you dipped your head to lightly kiss the exposed skin of his knuckles. They were weathered by time, a statue left outside too long, and you hoped to sooth some of the damage the elements had done.
“You look tired,” you muttered.
“I am.”
“Go on, then.”
You tried not to return your hands to his when you saw the flash of fear on his face as you took them away to gesture vaguely at the headrest. A trio of fresh, fluffed pillows lay there, and, although you wondered just how comfortable his suit could be, you wanted him to relax some. This wasn’t the waking world, after all.
While Dark shifted to remove his jacket, you drifted towards the fireplace along the wall opposite. The burst of flame calmed down quickly, blending into small embers behind the grate.
“From what I’ve been able to figure out, it’s a replica of the manor from its better days. I think it’s empty but sometimes I hear…”
In a case of excellent timing, the distant squeal of childish laughter came from down the hallway. It was followed by footsteps, quickening, and then sliding into another room. You never saw who exactly was out there, but based on the man staring at the door, you were safe to assume the possibilities.
“Better days,” he repeated, nodding to himself, and then looked back at you. You always were so smart.
You returned to Dark’s side after securing more logs in the hearth, though you hesitated, standing awkwardly with a hand to your chest.
No words were needed for him to realize your thought process, so he offered a hand of his own, which you took without further deliberation. It took another soft tug for you to relax against him, at which point he curled an arm around your shoulders and brought you as close as possible, but it was solely your decision to reach up and undo his tie, draping it over a post once it was fully removed.
“I can’t believe this is happening. I’ve missed you.”
“I’ve missed you, too.”
You were content to leave it at that. Hell, you had been content to stay standing beside him while he slept, but this was much better.
Dark, however, pressed a kiss to the back of your head, sighed, and mumbled, “How do I know I won’t wake up?”
You twisted in his hold to look at him. For all the love and trust his eyes held, it wasn’t enough to completely mask a genuine desperation.
“Do you want to wake up?” you asked, simply and plainly.
He responded in the same fashion. “No.”
“Then you won’t. It’s your dream, after all, and I think you deserve to rest.”
That was all it took for the fear to melt away. Dark’s eyes fell shut, and he knocked his head against yours for a moment, just to savor the feeling, before he fully leaned forward and connected your lips.
It was a tired, late-night kiss that you shared. You wouldn’t lie, you had imagined you would have one after a rough day at the office, pressing cases and pressing clients that got on your nerves, instead of finally relaxing with a man you had never thought you’d see again – but it still served the same purpose. It made your heartbeat slow and your shoulders drop. The slow dance between the two of you brought smiles to your faces, tender and loving. It was a silent agreement that this was the ending you had hoped for.
What a dream this was.
[Thank you so much for requesting, and I'm sorry for the delay! I thought that I’d be able to get more done over these past weeks, but college projects have taken up a lot of my time, unfortunately. On the other hand, if anyone wants to take about British witchcraft in the 1600s or mental health post-World War 2, hit me up, because I’m about to knock my teeth out over this :D! On a lighter note, thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed <3]
