Day Three, Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Creature AU of Coldflash April Week.
Barry felt himself tremble as the dragon before him began shifting. Growing smaller and smaller until a man stood where the beast had just been. Swallowing back a squeak, Barry blinked rapidly, eyes flickering all over the...very naked man’s body, before his brain registered he was staring. Bringing his hand up, he slapped it over his eyes as he felt his cheeks burn in embarrassment.
He heard the -man?dragon?beast?- let out a throaty chuckle. “Now, now, Scarlet, no need to be modest now,” the other rumbled out. It’s voice was raspy and quiet.
Barry shuddered. He knew that voice. That was Len’s voice. Moving his fingers, so that he could peek from between them, Barry squinted at the other, who was much closer then he’d been a few moment’s ago. “Len?” he asked in a quiet voice.
Len is a dragon. Barry is a sacrifice to keep the peace. Things turn out differently than expected.
(I’m taking forever with these prompts, I’m so sorry - I promise I will fill everything still sitting in my inbox ^^; also this one got away a LOT.)
The cave is dark when Barry enters: the torch flickers andfor a moment, Barry fears that it will fail him completely, but the flamesteadies as he moves away from the draft at the entrance. The darkness coilsand twists away from the light, as if it isn’t used to being penetrated. And itmight not be: Barry doubts that a lot of people would willingly descend intothe damp mouth of this cave, only to seek the certain death at the bottom ofthe pit.
He would not have come either, had it not been a simplechoice: Iris or him, and he will be damned before he lets Iris give herself upfor a meaningless sacrifice. It’s tradition, the town crier said when hedelivered the letter – tradition and chance, and no one should mess with eitherof those. Joe insisted they would sort it out, demanded that Barry, notofficially a West, should not bear the burden on the family. Iris protested aswell, but Barry would hear none of it. Tradition demanded a virgin sacrifice tothe fearsome beast sleeping at the heart of the mountain beyond the town –Barry found no word in the original legends that it had to be a woman.
It gets colder as Barry descends the uneven path, scrapinghis shoulders and hips against the sharp rocks protruding from the walls. Hehas not been underground too often: occasionally, when he was little, hisfather would send him for mushrooms that grew in long, narrow caves twistingalong the hillsides. It makes him feel uneasy now, when he was expectingoppressive, damp heat instead of his breath freezing as it leaves his body, buthe keeps making his way down, down, underneath the layers of rocks that arecrushing him just with the thought of their weight, their age, their motionlessobservation of the atrocities that go on below them.
He doesn’t know how long he’s walking, but his torch iswinking out by the time the path stops curving downward. His knees are a littleweak from the unnatural slope and from the frosty air, his hands shaking andmaking the torch’s weak light dance across the rough walls. He thinks of Iris,and how this will give her a chance at a normal life: he thinks of Joe whowon’t be losing a daughter tonight, but it still doesn’t make the fear go away.He pushes on, anyway, and finally, the narrow caves open to a greater space.
“Ugh,” Barry shudders hard as the frigid air licks at every inch of his exposedskin, bites into his wrists and knuckles and ears. “It’s freezing in here.”
He knows it’s crazy to talk to himself, right as he’s likelyabout to die: but a part of him just wants to get this over with, so if hisvoice attracts the fearsome beast, whatever it is, Barry won’t even mind.
What he does not expect is anothervoice, decidedly unlike his own, booming and crackling and loud.
“That’s because I’mcold. Come closer.”
The torch falls out of Barry’s hand and lands on a small pile of snow, but itdoesn’t matter: the entire cave is illuminated from within, pale blue lightthat makes everything too bright and too sharp. At first, Barry thinks it’ssome sort of magical crystals glowing off the walls, but then something movesand Barry gasps.
It’s not a sudden motion: it’s slow, deliberate and careful, but it’s massive, intimidating in the sheer size.It’s like seeing the heartbeat of a mountain, a great rock pulsating with life– a boulder the size of the West house moves and unfurls into a… dragon.
The beast that the villagers have been allowing to murder ayoung woman every decade for ‘protection’ is a huge reptile, with sharp,angular scales that looked dark grey at first, but now, as the dragon moves,Barry can see that they’re a heavy, deep blue. His underbelly shimmers silveryand slick, and Barry shivers again when he looks up to meet the beast’s eyes.He expects hunger – maybe rage, because face-to-face with a creature thatshould not exist, the idea that the beast truly only consumes virginal girls isnot as far-fetched as it seemed half an hour ago.
The blue orbs settle on Barry, focus, as if the dragon wassleeping and had to struggle to keep awake. They’re probably the size ofBarry’s whole skull, which is an unnerving thought, but Barry’s brain seems todo that thing where it runs off on its own, thinking about things that aren’treally important in that moment. He can’t even stop it this time: it’s not likehe’s going to have much time to think anyway, and he’d rather die whilethinking of something fun.
Like the size of dragon eyeballs. Um. Okay. Maybe somethingelse that would be fun? Anything? Barry’s brain fizzes to a frightened stopwhen the dragon slowly brings his head down and peeks at him curiously. Thehuge jaws open and Barry tries to make his dry throat work when he sees the tworows of teeth that remind him of the wooden pikes around the town. It comes toBarry how atrociously inadequate the town’s protection is: if this beastdecided to attack, nobody would stand a chance.
The teeth get closer; Barry squeezes his eyes shut, notparticularly happy about the idea of watching himself get eaten.
“Why have you come?”
Barry’s eyes snap open at the gust of frosty air – hereaches out to steady himself because his knees are all shaky and unsteady, andhis skin is likely starting to turn blue.
“I-I’m t-the s-sacrif-fice,” he manages, through chattering teeth. The dragontilts its head, and Barry would almost think it cute, like a dog trying tounderstand human speech, if only the beast wasn’t still terrifying. And so, socold: its breath is making Barry’s eyeballs hurt as it washes over him likewinter gale.
“They always send girls,” the dragon drawls – it has a strange voice, likecrackling ice and a rumbling snowstorm, slow and deliberate and… is thatamusement? No, it can’t be – a hellish creature that eats innocent people can’thave a sense of humor – can it?
Barry braces himself and decides that maybe the thing likesto converse before a meal. His heart’s hammering against his ribs, but he liftshis chin and tells himself to be brave anyway.
“The legends said you only require virgins,” he says defiantly, and has to turnhis face away from the sudden puff of frigid air that nearly makes his nosefall off. Ow. Could that have been… a chuckle? A dragon chuckle?!
“And are you?” the creature asks. Barry blinks in confusion and shivers again:the dragon retreats a few feet, as if he is aware that his proximity is makingBarry’s skin hurt. As if he cares.“I’ll let you in on a secret about the virginity – it’s nearly impossible totell with you humans, in the end.”
“Since we all taste the same?” Barry raises an eyebrow, a bit offended onbehalf of his species. Another huff of cold air later, Barry’s almost certainthat the creature is laughing. Which still comes off rather frightening, in abeast that huge.
The dragon turns away, the long spiked tail swishing behind,as if it were an upset cat.
“They never send the smart ones, do they…”
“I’m a healer,” Barry frowns. “Maybe if you didn’t murdereveryone who ever met you, we would know more about your… tastes.”
It would be a macabre thing to study, which humans wouldsatisfy the dragon’s tastes – the beast doesn’t seem to like the idea eitherbecause it whips around, its tail slamming into the nearest wall, making the wholecave shake. Barry wonders whether there’s another exit: there is no way thishuge creature could ever squeeze into the cave tunnels Barry came through.
“I don’t murder people!” the dragonroars, its voice reverberating almost as strongly as the physical blow to thestone did. “And if you were a good healer,you would realize that even if I did, eating one skinny human every ten yearswould hardly sustain someone my size.”
The dragon looks irritated, as much as a reptile can haveany expressions, and Barry is momentarily taken aback by its choice of words.It is definitely intelligent enough to talk, self-aware enough to consideritself someone, not something… and it’s also right. Eating onehuman every day would hardly beenough for this giant: so why-
“Why do you want sacrifices, then?” Barry frowns andrealizes that he’s walking closer to the dragon, hand raised as if he wereapproaching a skittish horse. A large, dangerous skittish horse. “Where are theothers if you haven’t eaten or killed them?”
It’s true that he doesn’t see any bones lying around here:which is either reassuring or terrifying, depending on whether one counts withthe dragon leaving the bones alone if it ate humans, or with the ability of thedragon’s digestive system to swallow and consume a whole person, skull and all.
The beast huffs and puffs for a while, dancing around verymuch like an upset horse – it shakes the very ground Barry’s standing on, andthe dragon’s breath coats the rocks around it with ice.
“They all run away,” the beast grumbles. It sounds sulky, and Barry shouldreally not find it endearing – but the more the creature insists it’s not akiller, the more Barry feels sympathy for it. Being stuck in a cave all alonehas to be awful; he wonders if there are no other dragons around, and quicklyberates himself for even thinking that. After all, if there were many of those,more people would know they existed, instead of taking them for old wives’tales. Not even the village elders are certain what lies below the mountains,only that it is a terrible beast that has to be fed every decade, or awfulthings happen.
But the more Barry looks at the dragon, the less he believesthat somehow, it would be responsible for droughts and pig plague. Maybe ahailstorm, if it caught a cold; the thought amuses Barry so much that hesnickers under his breath, and the sky-blue eyes turn to him in obviousirritation.
“Funny, is it? I could still crush you, even if I don’t want to eat you.”
“You won’t,” Barry smiles slowly. He doesn’t know where thecertainty comes from, but the fear in his heart is melting away. “Why has noone returned to their families, though?”
The dragon shuffles on its feet and looks away, and Barryblinks. Is an enormous reptile actually being shifty?
“Spill,” he huffs, and the dragon snaps its bright eyes to him.
“What?”
“It means ‘tell me the truth’. Come on – were you lyingabout not eating anyone ever?”
“I didn’t say ‘ever’,” the dragon grumbles. It doesn’t quite put Barry at ease,but he’s capable of smirking at the pouting, at least.
“Last chance. Tell me what’s going on or I’m leaving too.”
It’s a gamble: Barry doesn’t know if the dragon needs him, but he has a feelingit does. Need, or want, or desire, one of those has to be true, and he bets ona combination of all three. For a blood-curdling moment, he thinks it won’twork, that he will have to turn around and just walk out of here – it’sunsettling to think about all the possible reasons why nobody has returned totheir family before. Barry doesn’t think he would want to wander the worldalone, so he stays, and waits, and eventually, the dragon shakes its massivehead a little and glares at him:
“You better get away from the mountain when you do, kid. Far away, beyond the Great Lakes, at least. Otherwise the bondwon’t break.”
“The bond?” Barry repeats, curiosity piqued. “What bond?”
“The magical one that tuned in to you as soon as you entered this cave, ofcourse – do you humans not feel magic anymore?” the dragon grunts – it seemsexasperated and Barry blinks in confusion. He has heard the fairy-tales, but asa healer, who has seen how a human body looks inside, he never really believedin magic – especially not in the human ability to sense it just by being near it.
“What does the bond do?” he frowns and takes a step closer. “Are you feedingoff me?! Through the bond?”
That is, indeed, a worrisome thought: and a good enoughreason why every other ‘sacrifice’ would have left. Barry turns to the entrance– he has no intention to let himself be eaten, body, soul, magic, or whateverit is that healers can’t find and ancient magic obviously can. A spiky end of agigantic tail curls around to bar the entrance and Barry scowls at the dragonover his shoulder.
“Did you do this to the others? Refused to let them leave tofeed?”
Even so, he can hardly find it in himself to be angry withthe dragon. Feeding is survival, it’s a necessity, and if every other sacrificehas, indeed, left, then the dragon must not have fed much in the past… whoeverknows how long. Barry feels a little bad for the creature, but he still doesn’tparticularly love the idea of being fed on.
“Wait,” the dragon grumbles. Barry snorts and crosses his arms over his chest.
“Not like I have a choice, do I?”
“I don’t feed on humans – not in any sense you imagine.”
That certainly gets Barry’s attention. He quirks up aneyebrow and stares at the creature, arms dropping to his sides.
“Then what-“
“It’s your warmth. The bond latches onto blood, and lets me draw from yourwarmth. I need very little, so it doesn’t kill you – but blood means that I amlinked to your family, too. That’s why the others have left – that, and… I getsmaller when I warm up.”
Barry is now certain that the awkward curl of the scalyedges of the dragon’s mouth is a smirk. He grins back, just a little, stillconfused.
“Why would that be a problem?” he blinks. Wouldn’t it be an ideal outcome ifthe dragon got smaller so it wouldn’t be quite this scary?
“Because when I’m smaller, I can get out.”
Barry’s eyes widen at that: “You mean-“
The tail blocking his path moves out of the way, and thedragon twists awkwardly in the space that is rather tight for a beast thissize. “Yes. That’s why the others didn’t stay. If they go far enough, the bondwill weaken and eventually break. I won’t draw from you or your family, andI’ll stay right here.”
It sounds bitter, but Barry can’t blame the beast: it’sghastly to even imagine being confined to one narrow space for… who knows howlong. Well over a century, if the legends and myths are to be believed. A partof Barry wants to turn on his heel and walk away, have his own life somewherefar, far from here… but another part of him knows that he would never be ableto forget that he could have helped this creature, imprisoned in a cave justbecause- wait. Why exactly?
“Is this a curse?” Barry raises an eyebrow. “Or punishment? How did you gethere in the first place?”
The spiky tail-end flicks angrily – Barry jumps out of theway just in case it’s as dangerous as it looks. But it seems more asubconscious reaction than a deliberate effort to harm him, so he decides notto hold it against the beast.
“Fell asleep,” the dragon grumbles. “Got hurt, needed timeto heal, so I crawled here, but it was cold and healing sleep becamehibernation. I was too big to get out by the time I woke up – there was a womanin the cave, and she ran away screaming. I think I drew some warmth from herand her family, for a while, but that was when people could still feel magic,so she quickly moved away, along with all of her blood relatives.”
Barry blinks. The first healer – the one who defeated thebeast for the first time, the one who bargained the sacrifices so the townwould be protected – was actually just a woman who stumbled onto something(someone)… incredible. And all shecould do was run away.
He frowns and stares up at the dragon resolutely: “Will youhurt people if I help you get out?”
The dragon stares back, for a long while – so long thatBarry thinks the creature will lie. It will say ‘no’ and then raze the forest,kill the livestock, scare people and kidnap children for fun. And Barry will bethe one to blame for the horrors-
“No. Can’t say I’ve never hurt a human before, but certainly no worse than whathumans can do to each other. And I don’t particularly enjoy cruelty.”
The rumbling voice sounds sincere enough, even thoughBarry’s not an expert on dragon tones. But he steps forward anyway, bravery andfear and his heart in his throat. He feels like he’s doing the right thing here– but he won’t know until he actually tries.
“I have no blood relatives left,” he declares. “But if one person is enough…feel free to take whatever you need.”
…
Barry is cold when he wakes up – his fingertips are a bitblue when he brings his hand up to rub at his eyes, but he doesn’t feel like he’s freezing, which isstrange. It’s definitely not warm, and it’s far from comfortable, the unevenstone floor of the cave digging into his hip, but he doesn’t feel particularlyawful. He stretches, and then suddenly becomes aware of two things.
Well, three, really. Three people, having a hushed argumentjust a few feet from Barry’s makeshift stone bed.It says a lot about how much he probably fucked up that he’s more afraid of thetwo people he recognizes.
“Barry!” Iris cries, the first one to spot that he’s moving. “What were youthinking?! It wasn’t your decision to make, you idiot! You could have beenseriously hurt – if it had not been for Len here, you would have been!”
Wait… who? Barry’s brain is slow to catch on and he looks towards Joe (who isscowling at him in his worst ‘you did something I dislike and I’m not going totalk to you until you’re properly sorry about it’). And there, standing rightnext to Joe, is a man Barry doesn’t know. A man-
-with unnaturally bright blue eyes. Barry shivers. Heremembers those eyes, when they were enormous and set in a rather morereptilian face. But how-
“I was just telling Knight West here,” the man drawls, the rumble of asnowstorm in a great distance underneath his words, “how the beastdisintegrated the moment you helped me defeat it.”
Barry opens his mouth, and he would probably say somethingstupid if Iris wasn’t shaking him by the shoulders.
“Is it true? Leonard said it was big and black and furry- ohBarry, you could have died!”
She wraps herself around him in a bear hug and he pats heron the back awkwardly as he tries his best to look remorseful; but when hecatches the dragon’s – Leonard’s? – eyes over Iris’ shoulder, it’s impossiblenot to grin back.
Iris finally untangles her arms from Barry’s neck and turnsto face the… dragon? Newly-human dragon? Barry has so many questions it feelslike his head will burst, but this is not exactly the time and place to bringattention to the fact that the only ‘beast’ in this cave is standing about tenfeet from Iris, with a very human, very unnerving and… yes, very attractivesmile.
“You really have to stay with us until you recover – I’m sure everyone in townwould love to hear about how you freed us from those dreadful sacrifices.”
Joe doesn’t look happy about it, but Iris shoots a pointedlook his way before he can even think about saying anything. “And we have tothank you for saving Barry’s life, too – please say you’ll come? At least for afew days.”
Leonard’s smirk widens – Barry half-expects sharp, pointyteeth, but the man-dragon looks perfectly human. Barry really can’t wait for anexplanation… but right now, he’s content to watch the bright blue eyes turn toIris.
“It will be my pleasure. But I have to say, Barry was the one to save me.”
“That I’d love to hear about,” Iris chuckles and then tugs Joe towards thecave’s entrance. “Let’s talk about it over hot dinner, though – this place isfreezing!”
Barry tries to stand up, but his body feels sluggish andcold. A hand appears in his line of vision: it’s a perfectly human hand,long-fingered and fine-boned, and Barry accepts with minimal damage to his ego.After all, he did just defeat a mythical beast – if not in the way Iris and Joethink he did.
As soon as their palms meet, Barry feels a peculiarsensation spreading over his skin. It’s like he’s warming up and cooling downfrom the inside out: it’s like sipping hot tea during a long winter night, likecurling up near a fire after having been out in the snow. And at the same time,it’s cool water from a mountain stream on an uncommonly hot summer day,slipping down his throat and caressing overheated skin. It’s comfortable andexciting at the same time, and it makes Barry crave that sensation with all hisheart.
“So… Len?” he asks, voice all creaky and strange, and the man-dragon chuckles.
“I took a little too much too quickly when I heard yourfamily approach. I will return some of your warmth tonight, when your family isout of sight: you won’t have to deal with ice-cold hands until the day you die,no worries.”
Barry frowns at the suggestion: his cold hands barely evencrossed his mind, since he was too preoccupied with studying a dragon’s humanform. Is it even Len’s form, or canhe change it? Could dragons shapeshift before- so many questions, and the onlyone Barry truly wants to answer is:
“Will you stay?”
Len seems to be taken aback by Barry’s words just as much asBarry is shocked for speaking them out loud. But when the slender fingerstighten around his hand, Barry knows that he has to ask, has to know: becausedepending on this answer, his heart could be the thing imprisoned in this cavefor all eternity. It’s strange, really, to fall for a mythical beast - he usedto be so large, and now he’s barely as tall as Barry. Now, with Barry’s warmthin his heart, whatever that even means.
Len’s eyes flicker towards the entrance and Barry can readthe longing in them, the indecision. He can only imagine how it must feel forLen to know that he is so close to gaining freedom, stretching his wingswithout hurting himself on sharp rocks, flying– and yet to wonder if he could (should) give it up, simply because a humanasked.
And Barry knows that he has not asked the right questionyet.
“Will you come back, one day?” he whispers, and Len turnsback to him, bright blue refocusing solely on Barry. Maybe he should wonder ifwhat he feels is not only magical residue, a bond into which he stepped blind.And yet, all he wants is to keep that bond alive, to keep holding Len’s handsin his own cold fingers, because he would know that the warmth was keeping Lennear.
Len glances at their joined hands and chuckles, a little; Barry knows the soundwill haunt him for months, perhaps years to come.
“In the summer, maybe. When we can both bask in the sun all day.”
The mental image is ridiculous – it makes them both sound like overgrown lizards andBarry laughs, but when Len releases his hand and turns towards the entrance,Barry can’t help but wish the summer would come already.
