Eternal Despair of the Spotless Mind
In which Ariel and Jim journey into the Underworld, find themselves in Asphodel Meadows, and face their first challenge.
Trigger Warnings: Anxiety/panic attack.
Prelude: Ghosts and Treasure
@thathawkinsboy
Jim led them deeper and deeper into the forest, following paths Pleiades had walked a hundred times, until they could see the burning river ahead. The blue flames cast them both in an eerie light, but Jim wasn’t focused too much on the river. He was focusing on the massive pit that sat where the burning river ended, a set of stairs clinging to the side as they sunk into the darkness.
“I don’t see any guards,” he whispered to Ariel, crouched behind a tree as he surveyed the banks of the river and the field around the Gates. He turned back to the young woman, watching her reaction carefully. This was Ariel’s show, after all; Jim was just the navigator. It was up to her whether or not they took that step out into the open and down into the Underworld. He wouldn’t stop her if she did, and wouldn’t judge her if she decided she wanted to go back home. “We should be able to make it to the Gates without any problem,” Jim told her.
Ariel clutched her Trident tight in both hands. The journey here had been easy, but something deep down in the pit of her stomach told Ariel that it wasn’t going to be like that for much longer. Staring down at the pit that had somehow formed in the earth since the last time the redhead had traveled into the woods, that feeling that there was worse to come only grew.
She took a deep breath as Jim looked back at her though, and hardened her face, determined. She was not scared. She would not allow herself to be scared. There were people who needed help, and Ariel couldn’t just sit by and do nothing. She would go into the Underworld and Jim would have her back, and whatever they faced, it would only make them stronger.
Right?
“What are we waiting for?” she asked, standing up and moving forward with determination. Her legs had begun to shake. Staying still for another moment might have made it noticeable, and then there would be no denying that Ariel was very, very nervous.
But as it was, she now stood on top of the staircase with fire in her eyes and a giant Trident in her hands. Looking into the pit made her feel sick, and she watched as a figure suddenly appeared from the darkness.
She only had time to gasp, her voice not reaching her throat for a scream, before she realized she could see through the man drifting up the stairs. A ghost. It was a ghost, a spirit, just like the many others they had seen the closer they’d gotten to the river. Laughing awkwardly at herself, Ariel cleared her throat as the spirit passed, giving it a wave before she reached back for one of Jim’s hands to pull him along.
“Come on.” She moved down the stairs with gusto, pulling Jim along and telling herself her hand only clutched his so tightly so that they wouldn’t lose one another. Soon, the darkness began to give way to tree-tops, and eventually, it seemed that the staircase had led into… another forest?
That couldn’t be right.
And yet, here they were, surrounded by trees again, different paths clearly paved in between laid out in front of them. Ariel looked between them all before she turned back to Jim, her face a question mark. “Well? Um… You’re the human GPS. Where do we go from here?”
Even if Jim hadn’t noticed the way her legs were shaking, it was impossible to miss her tight grip on his hand and the way she had reacted to the spirit. Her gasp had his hand on the hilt of the sword Annette had given him before he could properly process what had happened, and before he could ask Ariel definitively if she was still sure of their plan, she was off. And Jim could do nothing but follow her down, fingers moving between hers and thumb rubbing against her thin wrist comfortingly.
The stairs seemed to go on forever, the earthen walls lost in the darkness and the spiral straightening out until they seemed to just be heading down into nowhere. It was hard to even make out Ariel, and she was barely three steps in front of him. He couldn’t tell where they were going, and not for the first time since Flint had confronted them in that alley, Jim tried to feel out his magic. Unlike Swynlake or Enchantra, he didn’t even have his false memories to guide him down here, and it was with a growing sense of dread that he realized he couldn’t tell if his magic was working or not. There wasn’t like a glowing arrow that he could follow, or a distinct tug leading him on. No visions of the right way to go. He thought he had known what he was doing, thought that he had identified what that tug of magic felt like once Flint had told him the truth. But he didn’t know for sure, and that fact alone was terrifying.
Jim almost tugged Ariel to a stop, almost confessed that he wasn’t sure how this whole Pathfinding thing worked, almost begged her to turn back around and wait until they didn’t have to trust their lives to a magic he didn’t know how to use. But then the void above them started to lighten like the sun was starting to rise. Except there was no sun. Jim couldn’t even make out a horizon; just an endless forest that came slowly into focus the further down they went. Jim sped up a bit, now at Ariel’s side as they went down the last sets of stairs and reached the bottom. The different paths varied in style, each branching off and heading off so deep into the forest that Jim couldn’t see where they ended. One path looked almost like a shallow river, another like one of the dried salt fields from back home. There was a glass path, one made out of wildflowers, a broken brick path, and more.
Jim didn’t feel a tug towards any of them.
He looked over at Ariel’s question, and the confusion in her expression matched the confusion and doubt sitting like a rock in his stomach. Jim, however, had always found it easier to push his own fears from his mind when there was someone depending on him. It had been true with his family back home, it was true in this alternate reality with Annette and her family, and it was true with Ariel. He nodded at the younger woman, giving her a reassuring smile and a quick squeeze of their joined hands before he looked back at the paths. He took a deep breath through his nose, letting it out slow through his lips before he looked at the paths with a determined set to his jaw.
Jim didn’t have an answer. In fact, Jim said absolutely nothing, just staring at her like he wasn’t quite so sure himself. Sure, he nodded, and squeezed her hand, and looked at the paths with a sense of concentration.
But that was it.
Ariel waited, but only for the briefest of moments, before she blew out air through her lips and tugged Jim forward. “Okay, we’ll just take one. See where it goes. If it feels wrong, we’ll… go back,” she said, trying to come up with the answers herself. She chose the path of wildflowers because it felt serene. It felt calm. She thought that maybe it would be the peaceful journey.
The scent of flowers was overwhelming. It was nice, but Ariel also kind of wanted to cover her nose and mouth. Eventually, though, the woods opened up into someplace… beautiful.
The redhead looked around, taking in the meadows that crawled with flowers. Small houses dotted the landscape, every so often bordered by a tree or two that bore fruit, and a river flowed throughout the small village, off into the distance. More ghosts dwelt here, spirits flitting around from one place to the other, some even having their own conversations.
Ariel smiled, and felt herself overcome with a wave of peace. She kept walking with Jim’s hand in her own until, eventually, she dropped his grasp and held her Trident tight in both hands, sticking it up to grab some apples off a tree. As she pierced a large red fruit, she brought the weapon down and took it off, the juices dripping between her fingers.
She looked down at it, happy… but confused. Her head was growing cloudy and her brows pulled together as she looked back up at Jim.
“This… is good, right?” Ariel held the fruit out to him, hesitating with the movement at first, and tilted her head to the side. “Is this… is this what you wanted? Food?” But she had food in her bag, didn’t she? Didn’t he have food in his own? Why had she gotten down the apple, then?
She turned her head, red curls whipping as she looked around. Nothing… nothing looked familiar. Where were they? When had they gotten here?
Panic set in her chest. “Jim, where are we?” she asked, dropping the apple, hand drifting up to her mouth as she spun around once again. She had this overwhelming feeling of uncertainty, like she shouldn’t be where she was. “What are we doing here? How did we… How did we get here?”
Jim had still been staring down the different paths, trying to feel… well, anything, when Ariel had suddenly chosen for them. He stumbled after her, a little stunned from being pulled so suddenly from his almost trance. “Ariel, wait-” he urged, tugging on her hand, but she just kept going. They walked through the woods, Jim growing more and more uneasy as the smell of the crushed wildflowers under their sandals overwhelmed his senses.
And then they walked into the meadow, and Jim’s fear disappeared, washed away by a wave of contentment and ease. He caught up with Ariel, strolling easily at her side like they had done so many times back in his memories. Their fingers were tangled together, palms pressed together, and Jim’s smile grew at the thought that in a few weeks time, there’d be a ring on Ariel’s finger; cool and smooth as it would press against his fingers.
He was waving at some of the spirits they were passing when Ariel let go of his hand, and panic crashed back into him like a truck. It actually stole his breath a bit, the sudden urge to find Ariel’s hand again and run (back the way they had come, down the path made of white sand too perfect for the desert yet too cool for the beach, between the shallow river and the glass path). He spun around, his friend’s name choking him as he tried to yell out for her. He couldn’t scream, not here, but he saw Ariel a moment later, smiling happily as she pulled down the red fruit skewered on her trident and wow, wasn’t that some unintentionally and uncomfortably gory imagery? Jim was at her side in a moment, hand going to her elbow as she turned her brilliant smile on him.
As Ariel’s expression slowly fell and her panic crept back, Jim unconsciously stepped closer; his broad hand slowly curling around her arm to anchor her down. The sand path was easily forgotten - for he had never really known it, just knew the feeling of wanting to run towards it - as he gently pulled her hand away from her mouth. Her fingers were sticky from the apple’s juice, trailing down to the curve of her elbow. “We-” he started to say, before his eyebrows furrowed. How had they gotten here? He couldn’t remember; the memory held just out of reach.
He glanced up at Ariel, and suddenly he was back in that frozen arcade, comforting the panicking redhead. Jim couldn’t remember much - like where the hell they were or why, but he could remember that. They really needed to stop ending up in these kind of situations.
“We can ask someone, yeah?” he said gently, with a small nod. “We’re not alone here, we’re going to be fine. Just… stay with me, okay Ariel? We’ll figure this out. It’s going to be okay.”
Once again, Jim seemed just as confused as she was.
Wait. Once again? When had they both been confused? She could remember them both being perplexed hearing they were meant to be engaged. Wait. That wasn’t right either. She could remember them both being confused on what to do while shut in an arcade, a frozen winter storming in July right outside. Wait. No, that wasn’t it either.
What was going on?
“Okay,” she replied softly. She looked at the Trident in her hand with unease. Why did she have this? Why did she have a canteen around her? Why did she have a little knapsack attached to her waist?
None of it made any sense. She had so many questions.
She walked forward with Pleiades - no, with Jim - and they approached a translucent girl where she sat eating an apple of her own. “Hi… I-I’m sorry. I’m Ariel. This is… Jim?” The redhead looked over at him, the name not feeling right no matter how many times she corrected herself. “We’re... lost. Do you- I mean, can you tell us where we are?”
Jim, once again, followed Ariel; ignoring the odd half-feeling of not going the right way even though he was the one to suggest asking for help. The girl they approached was about their age (or somewhere in between) and blinked up at them innocently.
“You’re in the Meadow,” she answered easily, smiling at the two in that soft, kinda confused way one did when approached by total strangers. Jim resisted the urge to roll his eyes.
“Um, yes,” he said. “But which meadow?”
“The Meadow.”
Jim gave her a deadpanned look, fighting to keep his patience as well as keeping his memories together. It was getting harder and harder, and Jim had to keep glancing at Ariel from the corner of his eyes to remind himself that he wasn’t here alone. “Okay, how about this: Did you see how we got here?” ‘If you say we walked here, I’m shoving the rest of that apple up your nose.’
Thankfully, the girl nodded, taking another bite as she pointed to the woods that bordered the meadow they were in. “You came from there.”
Ariel looked between the girl and the woods a few times before her gaze landed back on Jim. “Should we go back towards the woods?” she asked, unsure of what to do next. Everything felt off, and it sat wrong in her stomach. This girl wasn’t helping and they didn’t know where they were or how they got there and, sometimes, Ariel had trouble remembering what even was real and what wasn’t.
“I think we should maybe stay here. Just- Right here. Right? Don’t you think we should stay and wait and figure this out? I’m sure if we think hard enough it’ll all begin to make sense again. We’ll remember why we came here and what we were doing and then everything will be okay.” As she rambled, her grip tightened both on Jim’s hand as well as the Trident, as though they were going to keep her anchored down somehow.
It was a little bit hard to breathe, but she tried to ignore that.
“Everything is fine. Everything is going to be fine. We’re going to get out of here and we’re going to get married…” That’s right. They were getting married. Had Attina and Alana finished working on her ceremonial robes? Were they the ones working on it?
Why were they getting married again? They just met.
Right. That was in the other life. There was another life. This wasn’t the right one.
Was it?
“That’s wrong, isn’t it?” she asked him, but then quickly shook her head. “No. That’s- It’s right. I know what’s right and what’s wrong. That’s right. This is right. We’re here for some reason so we shouldn’t leave. We’ll stay here until something jogs our memories.”
Watching Ariel talk herself out was almost therapeutic, really. At least in the sense that it was reassuring to know that at least she shared his worries. On the other hand it made his stomach twist in knots in shared anxiety. Her grip on his hand was starting to make his bones ache but he didn’t even consider letting go, because she was right, they were getting married soon. Just a few more weeks and she’d be wearing that ring that would press cool and sturdy against his skin. They’d say their vows and kiss and dance with their families and Ariel would look more beautiful than he could bear (she was getting prettier by the day, or he was starting to see it more clearly) and they’d move back to his quarters and everything would be fine.
They’d wait in the meadow and they’d be fine. She was right. This was right.
Except when she said it, Jim knew it wasn’t. He just couldn’t remember what was. “I think,” Jim started slowly, glancing at the young woman before looking at the woods. The urge to just walk in was getting stronger, like it was a path he had walked a dozen times before. Like he knew those woods. Which was particularly wild because he had never seen them before.
Meadow or woods. Stay or go.
The longer they stood in the meadow, the scent of blossoming flowers and woodsmoke from the houses flooding their lungs, the harder it was to remember. The less Jim knew.
Jim took a deep breath. Let it out slowly. Set his jaw and turned to Ariel and said with a surety that was getting stronger by the moment, “I think we need to go. Back to the woods.”
Back to the woods?
Had he really just said that? No, Ariel thought, she must have just heard him wrong… But then, why did he seem so certain as he looked between the trees and the meadow? Ariel looked between them herself, not quite knowing which of them was right.
She wanted to stay. He wanted to go.
This did not bode well for their marriage.
“I don’t know…” Ariel bit down on her lip, gnawing at the skin there until it became chapped and chipped off into her mouth. A disgusting habit, really, but she couldn’t help it. The nerves, the uncertainty, the deep-setting confusion and the feeling that nothing was right… It all weighed on her heavy until the atmosphere combined with the mixture of emotions inside of her became too much. It became harder to breathe still. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything. I don’t know anything anymore and nothing sounds right but nothing sounds wrong and I don’t want to get in trouble. I don’t want to get caught doing something I shouldn’t. I’ll be in so much trouble with the masters and with Daddy and we might not see each other again. Pleiades, what if we did something wrong? What if we’re somewhere we shouldn’t be?”
It was the first thing she’d said that felt right in the past few minutes, and that worried her more.
For the first time in what felt like ages, Jim knew what to do. At least when it came to Ariel.
His thumb found the soft skin under her lip and gently pulled her bottom lip from between her teeth; like he had done once before (like he’d done a hundred times). Jim pushed her bangs back from where they;d fallen in her eyes and his hand stayed near her temple. She’d always been more physical than him; standing close when their engagement was announced, leaning out of the window where he visited until he could feel her breath on his face, holding his hand through it all. It was a new language he had learned to speak for her since they had been engaged, since the shock and the anger wore off and he’d stopped seeing his unwanted bride and started seeing Ariel again, the girl he had known for most of his life.
(Memories. Planted falsely in his head. But here’s the thing. Plants have roots, and these had burrowed down deep. Jim would weed them out later, when they didn’t make him feel calm and strong and content. When Ariel didn’t need him to be sturdy. Later.)
“I said I’d protect you and I meant it,” he said softly, lowly. Like the meadow and the girl and the apples weren’t there and it was just the two of them alone. “We can’t fix anything standing here. We’re ready for whatever trouble we get into,” he grinned, “and between the two of us, we can make more trouble than our masters or families ever could. I know going into the woods is right, Ariel, I do. And we’ll keep moving and I’ll be right here with you, no matter what.”
Carefully, slowly, Jim leaned down (fuck, she was so small) until his forehead rested against hers, the tips of their noses a hair width apart. He didn’t close his eyes. He didn’t look away. He just cupped the side of her neck gently with the hand that wasn’t fused with hers and met her eyes steadily. “if you can’t trust anything else, trust me,” he implored quietly.
Ariel didn’t know what a panic attack was. She’d seen Ana have one - she suddenly recalled that night at prom, and the conversation with the older girl that had followed - but she’d never known how it felt. She’d thought it was breathing into a paper bag or cleaning a space until blisters formed on your fingers like what happened with her eldest sister, Attina.
Ariel had never known what a panic attack was until she found herself right on the edge of one, breath not coming quick enough and a feeling of weight crushing her from all sides. She wanted to lay down, to rock back and forth, anything.
But instead, Jim pulled her bottom lip from her teeth again (he was always doing that even though she felt like maybe he’d only ever done it once or twice before.) He made her stop doing the thing she did when she was worried, and he caressed her face, and looked into her eyes - blue meeting blue, ocean waves colliding - and suddenly the air started to come a bit easier.
He sounded so sure. So steadfast. Ariel never liked to admit that she was ever scared of anything, but she had been so scared of not knowing anything until Jim - Pleiades - looked at her the way he was right now. And then he leaned down, and his forehead was pressed against hers, and even though he didn’t close his eyes Ariel did. Ariel closed her eyes and she breathed in his scent - freshly baked dough and burnt wood- allowing it to take over the overwhelming aroma of flowers and apples. She breathed it in over and over again, with deep breaths, until her head felt clear and and she knew one thing and one thing only:
She trusted Pleiades - she trusted Jim - with her life.
“Okay,” she whispered finally, opening her eyes and pulling away to look back up at him, nodding. “Okay. Okay, I trust you. I do. We’ll go back through the woods.”
She squeezed his hand, relaxing her hold on it, and gently stroked his fingers with her thumb. Slowly, the confusion subsided. Certainty gave way to the block that had come over her memories, cloudiness dissipating. All at once, she knew what was what.
“You’re the GPS. I remember. You know the way. We’re- We’re here to stop all this, and that’s what we’re going to do. Together.”
Jim nodded, his smile growing until it was crooked and warm and it creased his cheeks. Hearing Ariel say she trusted him, seeing the panic leave her features, feeling the tension leave her shoulders, it made the world stop spinning. Everything made sense again, and the path was certain now. It was like he had walked it a million times; it was familiar and it was steady and it was electric and it zipped up his spine and sat in the soles of his feet and it was…
It was magic.
He was Magick.
Jim nodded, confident and tall and feeling a little giddy. “Right, together,” he said, still smiling. “Come on,” he urged, motioning with his head towards the woods as he turned and started to walk. He kept his stride short so Ariel wasn’t trailing after him, but walking next to him. “We’ll get back to the paths and we’ll go from there. I know what to look for now, we can figure it out.” His arm knocked gently against her shoulder. “We’ll be fine,” he reassured her again.
