May 16, 2016
I changed the FC for my Destiny OC Cael Lupei and finally drew a decent portrait of them, I love my shitty psychic kid
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I changed the FC for my Destiny OC Cael Lupei and finally drew a decent portrait of them, I love my shitty psychic kid
Short ficlets in bound from destiny stuff! Using @imperialisticblue‘s Artemis in a timeline that surpasses the current destiny timeline so none of this is in the games canon, keep that in mind.
The Shadow City was quiet as it always had been. The realm Artemis created it in, the one she’s ruled the past few years, could never reach the population the Last City had reached. It’s shadow, the city, was filled with it’s own shadows, one that belonged to people Naeda once called friends during the time before Artemis had recruited her.
The darkness in the air, the starch scent of Hive magic, it weighed heavily on the memories she still had of them, causing sharp pains to accompany them. She thought of it as double edged gift from the Taken Queen to help keep her head clear and focused. On one hand, it was a strong incentive to forget about the people who want to destroy what Artemis has been working for; on the other, when the pains started, only more pain could make it go away.
Fingers dug into the back of her neck, sparks of corrupted arc energy jumping from her in frustration and pain, while she paced the throne room overlooking the city. It’s likeness to the guardian tower on Earth hadn’t helped the onslaught of memories flooding her head. Her teeth grit as a more specific memory ran through her head.
“I’m sorry, too. And remember what we’d always say when we were kids?”
Naeda had grumbled. “Don’t make me repeat it, my head’s all clouded.”
He chuckled. “‘Bond over Blood.’ No matter what we fight about, we’re always family.”
“I missed you.”
“I missed you, too.”
The last four words from her brother years before scraped against Naeda’s skull like knives, and she let out a pained yell, dropping to her knees.
“Artemis, please… Help me.” Her voice, distorted and desperate, echoed through the throne room. She wasn’t sure how long she was on the ground, but it felt like an eternity with her brothers voice echoing in her head. It had been long enough, however, for Artemis to appear behind her, the Deathsinger, Ir Korvek, beside her.
“You’ve been thinking about them again, haven’t you?” Her voice cut through the echoes. Naeda’s chest heaved with pain.
“I have.” She spoke through grit teeth. “Help me; make it go away. Make the pain stop.”
Cool fingers snaked behind the base of Naeda’s skull, Artemis hooking her fingers against the darkness that swirled in her skin.
“I don’t have very many rules for you, Naeda.” Artemis tightened her grip, locking the Awoken’s head in place. “One of which, you frequently break; do not think about them. They do not deserve your loyalty.”
Naeda’s breath drew in quicker, nearing minor hyperventilation. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry, what?” Artemis sneered, fingers digging into her skin.
“My Queen,” Naeda gasped, resisting the urge to pull Artemis’s fingers away. “I’m sorry, My Queen. It won’t happen again.”
Artemis smiled cruelly. “Be sure it doesn’t.” She looked to Ir Korvek, nodding once to the wizard. Within seconds, the Deathsingers Dirge echoed through the Shadow City, too distant to be affected by the song, but the hoarse voice carried through the alleys and buildings like a heavy reminder of the people in charge. The screams of pain that tore from Naeda’s throat from her proximity to the source drifted underneath the terrifying song, wiping away any previous thoughts of the ones she once called family and friends.
At least, for the time being.
One of the first nights Yùtù spends with Vanir after her time in the hospital is over. (Slightly NSFW, not explicit)
“Is it weird? Me having a new face?”
Yùtù gives a soft, knowing smile. Hey icy eyes are gentle as she holds a hand up to Vanir’s cheek, brushing her thumb softly over the synthetic skin. Her thumb drifts down and runs over Vanir’s lips, slowly, like a tiny explorer surveying the land. “No,” she says. Her voice is strong, warm and comforting, but quiet with the intimacy of their bedroom. “It’s you, still the same. There’s that same light in your eyes, that glow of hope, the spark of belief in everyone around you.”
Vanir’s face feels hot as her lights brighten with blush, and she glances away from Yùtù’s eyes, staring at the pillow beside her head.
Vanir places her hand on top of Yùtù’s, curling fingers around hers. “What else?” Vanir asks, unable to hide a small grin.
Yùtù makes a soft sound, a tiny sniff of amusement. “That eagerness,” she says, “it always pops up once in a while. You are cheerful, hopeful, full of life and love and bravery…”
The lights of Vanir’s mouth and eyes cast a slight illumination on heir hands as Vanir presses Yùtù’s fingers to her lips for a kiss, a warm orange glow from her blush.
“The hair will take a little getting used to,” Yùtù says, a smirk pulling at the corner of her mouth as she tucks a strand behind Vanir’s left ear.
Vanir leans down and kisses Yùtù. Her lips wrap around Yùtù’s lower lip, soft and slightly damp against her metallic mouth. Tiny sparks slip silently between their mouths, and Vanir hums as she feels the hints of Yùtù’s emotions tingling on her lips.
Yùtù gives a soft snicker of amusement as Vanir sits back slightly, her arms still supporting her as she lies on top of Yùtù. “The lips will take a little getting used to as well,” she giggles.
Vanir immediately leans in again, kissing her firm and quick. Yùtù’s shoulders shiver slightly with laughter, and Vanir feels the warm glow of her mouth against her bottom lip and she speaks. “I like them though,” she mumbles quietly between kisses.
“Mmm,” Vanir hums. She kisses Yùtù’s nose-plate, then the sharp line of her cheek, and mumbles in her ear. “They like you too,” Vanir teases. Yùtù laughs as Vanir continues kissing her, pressing her lips to the underside of her jaw and then to her throat, where she can feel the vibrations of Yùtù’s laughter directly.
“You are ridiculous sometimes, my love,” Yùtù says, one hand running gently over her hair as Vanir kisses her neck.
Vanir lifts one hand, and softly pulls at the neck of the borrowed shirt Yùtù wears – it is actually one of Anya’s, though neither Yùtù nor Anya seemed aware of that fact – so that she may kiss at Yùtù’s collar. Vanir undoes the top button of the shirt, and folds it slightly open.
“What are you doing Corbeau?” Yùtù asks as Vanir places her lips on her bare chest and kisses along the line of her shirt.
“Exploring,” Vanir mumbles, fumbling with the next button on her shirt.
Yùtù laughs. “Shouldn’t I be the one exploring?” she teases, “you are the one with the new body, after all.”
Vanir pauses, her lips on the edge of Yùtù’s bra. She didn’t often wear them – Exo don’t need the support – except when she wanted to be a little special for Vanir.
“I guess you’re right,” Vanir says, sitting back over her girlfriend and grinning mischievously. She shuffles, rolling onto her back in the bed and tugging at Yùtù to get her to lie on top of her. The covers shift with her slightly, and she shuffles them around as Yùtù slips one leg over Vanir’s hips.
Vanir pulls the covers up so they reach the middle of Yùtù’s back, though they slide down slightly as soon as she lets go of them. Yùtù smiles down at her, her hands resting on Vanir’s chest just above her hips, and Vanir can’t help her lights glowing a little brighter.
Yùtù leans down, and as she does, Vanir catches a glance down the front of the loose shirt. She feels Yùtù’s fingers at her chin, coaxing her head to look up. Vanir complies, tilting her head and looking at the ceiling.
She sighs deeply as she feels the soft cool of Yùtù’s mouth against her throat. She kisses long and slow, and Vanir almost feels like her throat is in the jaws of a hunting lioness for a moment as the sensation grows warm and spreads across her skin.
Yùtù’s kisses are like ice. Her lips are sharp and clear and almost a shock at first, then melt into homely warmth as signals tingle from her kiss. Vanir’s synthesised breath catches in her throat as Yùtù kisses her neck, as though she captured the breath in her mouth, and Vanir smiles as she feels a cool finger hook into the collar of her shirt.
Elastic stretches and Vanir doesn’t mind a bit as Yùtù pulls the edge of her shirt down with her finger and lays a gentle trail of kisses across her collarbone, pressing gentle, cool lips over the cybernetic connections and markings between sections of her skin. Yùtù tugs the stretched collar of the shirt to the side and bares Vanir’s shoulder. A signal from a kiss trips on a small conductor of her new body and sends a jolt down Vanir’s chest like ice brushed across her breast and she gasps.
Fingers shift over her body and lift the hem of her shirt to play across her hips, almost tickling, before Yùtù softly lifts her shirt up, still pressing loving kisses to Vanir’s shoulders.
Excitement gets the better of Vanir, and she shuffles up and helps pull the shirt off over her head. She and Yùtù both laugh as she brushes the mess of hair from her face, and her hands find Yùtù’s cheeks a moment later. She runs a thumb across Yùtù’s lip, and leans in for a kiss.
Vanir sniggers against Yùtù’s mouth, and Yùtù pushes her gently to lie back down. She runs her hands across the lines of Vanir’s ribs, her hands tickling ever so slightly, and straying of the small markings and cybernetics on the surface.
The grooves and gaps between segmenting plates guide Yùtù’s hands across her chest and stomach, following the same flow as her old Exo form bore, now lined with more synthetic muscle, softer and malleable between the exoskeletal layers of protection. The lines are still dark and obvious against her golden-brown plating and muscle, defined pieces and fine, minute detail of cybernetics.
Arching her arms overhead, Vanir smiles softly and watches Yùtù’s hand drifting slowly across her chest. Her hand brushes across the angular segments in the side of her torso, and Vanir tenses slightly beneath her touch, moving the muscle as a soft giggle escapes her.
Icy eyes flick up to meet Vanir’s, and it is Yùtù whose lights grow a fraction brighter. She runs her hands up, fingers dancing along Vanir’s underarms and her mouth glows with cool glacial light as she learns every inch of Vanir’s skin again.
One finger plays along the underside of her breast, following the floral pattern through her bra and then fiddling absently with the lace edge.
Vanir moves her arms down, and brushes them over Yùtù’s legs. She lifts the hem of Anya’s shirt and gently runs her hands across the smooth surface of her hip plates.
The straps of Vanir’s bra slip down over her shoulders easily, and Yùtù takes her time running her fingers across the surface of her plates and the joins of her arms. “She certainly knew what she was doing,” Yùtù says absently, tracing the complex cybernetic detailing beside her right shoulder.
Vanir made a simulated swallowing, glancing at Yùtù’s arm and the smooth silvery plating across her forearm.
“Just as beautiful as ever.” Vanir’s cheeks glow even as she clamps her eyes shut at the compliment, and she rises quickly to kiss Yùtù. Their foreheads hit rather roughly as Vanir tries to kiss her, making a metallic ‘thonk’ as they hit. Vanir gives up on the kiss and rests her forehead against Yùtù’s as they both descend into a bout of laughter.
She presses a kiss to Yùtù’s cheek and rests her chin on her shoulder as she leans forward; her hands moving to the middle of her back to slip open the clasp of her bra. She slides it down her arms, tossing it to the side of the bed before laying back, smiling up at her girlfriend.
Orange light reflects on the inside of Yùtù’s palm as she caresses Vanir’s cheek, before leaning down to press their lips together.
Vanir feels the flow through her like Light; it is sweet, both warm and cool, like the breeze on a beach and the wafting waves of a campfire. It is gentle and healing and familiar, and it makes her feel like home when Yùtù sighs and sparks a memory over their synapse.
Yùtù brushes her hair back as she rises up, and her fingers linger for a fraction of a second on the Everscar that slices through her right ear. She shifts slightly, and presses a gentle kiss to the scar. Vanir can’t really feel it – the senses there are dampened, part of the real damage from the Gorgon’s attack.
She appreciates the gesture nevertheless.
Yùtù shuffles lower and Vanir brushes a hand absently along her back as she kisses down across her shoulder and collar and down to her breasts. She hums, content as the subtle sparks of her lips journey across the plains and hills of her android body.
She kisses the smooth shape of her breast and down the angular oblique segments, tiny signals nipping through the softer synthetic muscle between plates. Her fingers trail slowly behind, lingering on her breast before tickling down over her stomach and to her hip.
Playful fingers push down the band of her pyjamas and pinch the lace lining of her panties. Yùtù pulls them down a centimetre and presses a quick, mischievous kiss to the dip beside her hipbone. Vanir gasps with the feeling as a small surge of heat rises within her.
Yùtù rises, sitting up, and pats Vanir’s side with one hand. “Roll over,” she whispers.
Vanir sidles over slightly and rolls onto her front, pushing her hips back for a moment so her bottom brushes against Yùtù’s pelvis teasingly. She shuffles until she feels comfortable, and rests her head on her hands over the soft pillow, her head turned slightly to the side so she can see Yùtù in the corner of her eye.
Her hands feel cool and sharp as she traces the tense, defined shapes of Vanir’s shoulder blades and trapezius muscle groups. The black lines and definitions between them are stressed by Vanir’s position; her raised arms making those muscles seem almost tense. Yùtù kisses them softly, and Vanir hums as she spares one quick peck for her cheek, and a slower kiss to her lips.
When she sits up over Vanir’s back, her fingers tickle down the line of Vanir’s exoskeletal spinal column, one of the few pieces completely unchanged by Naoko’s hands in the operation. It is painted with the same golden brown as her new body, so the skin matches smooth with colour, but Yùtù’s fingertips make a familiar metallic tapping as they run down the full length of her spine and send a tingling sensation all across Vanir’s body.
Vanir smiles. The purple bed sheets smell like lilac, fresh from being washed, and she closes her eyes and sighs with the warmth of Yùtù’s body against her back when she rests down on her. A button clacks quietly against her spine and Yùtù worms her fingers into Vanir’s hand.
She opens her eyes, running her thumb slowly over Yùtù’s silver fingers, and then brings them to her lips and kisses her knuckles softly. Yùtù gives a soft hum, barely audible even from right behind Vanir’s ear, then whispers to her. “You are so wonderful, Vanir.”
It is rare for Yùtù to use her name, and it tickles across Vanir’s unscarred ear, intimate and genuine; her pet names and teasing left to the side for a moment like her armour resting neatly in the corner of the room.
The pressure on Vanir’s back lightens and she closes her eyes again. Yùtù presses a kiss to the base of her neck, then to her back between her shoulders, travelling slowly further down and sending sparks of tingling sensations from each point on her spine. It feels like water inching down a slight slope, cool and gentle as the wind as she travels down the curve of her back.
Eventually, Yùtù releases Vanir’s hand as she moves down to the small of her back. Her fingers toy with the waistband on her pyjamas, tucking just under the edge.
Vanir arches slightly, almost involuntarily, in reaction to the spreading electrical impulses across her lower back. They spread through her system like bolts of static, and she arches her back, stifling a sound as the feeling spreads across her hips and below.
Her elbows support her and she tries to glance over her shoulder at Yùtù but she is out of sight.
The sounds of sheets shuffling and the feeling of excited fingers at her trousers are enough for Vanir to blush and she looks down at her pillow. Yùtù pulls the back of her pyjamas down over her bottom. Vanir hears Yùtù moving slightly, and feels the movement of her weight through the matress but feels nothing for a moment.
A kiss tingles up through Vanir and she lets out a small gasp as Yùtù kisses her butt through the fabric of her underwear. She giggles, and as Yùtù’s hands move, she lifts her hips from the bed so she can pull down her pyjamas.
Yùtù sneaks kisses along the backs of Vanir’s legs as she pulls the fabric down, marking each tiny reveal with a small spark of affection until they rest around her ankles.
Vanir kicks the pyjamas off and rolls over, sitting up to pull Yùtù close to her. She doesn’t kiss her, simply brings her into an iron embrace, her hands tightening in the fabric of her shirt as she hugs her. Yùtù’s hands are gentle and still as she holds her.
After a moment, Vanir pulls back slightly. She rests her forehead against Yùtù’s, her synthesised breathing slow and calm. “Thank you,” she whispers.
Yùtù smiles, dropping one hand to briefly squeeze Vanir’s hand. “For what?”
“For this,” Vanir mumbles. “For helping… for not… hating my new body.”
“Vanir.” Yùtù’s voice is firm, and she cups Vanir’s face in her hands, forcing her to look her in the eye. “I could never hate anything about you. Being an android is something you’ve wanted for a long time, isn’t it?”
Vanir nods.
“Then how could I possibly feel anything but love for it?” Vanir sniffs, glad for once that she cannot shed tears, and tries to pull Yùtù into another hug, but she resists, keeping their eyes locked. “Vanir,” she says, “I love you.”
“It’s just been hard, adjusting, you know?” Vanir says as the wave of overwhelming emotion begins to subside into a calm sea again. “Having a new body is…“ She cannot find the words, and glances to the side, trying to gather her thoughts and feelings about her new look.
“Does it make you happy?” Yùtù asks, her voice still firm and steady.
Vanir nods. Her word echoes in on itself with a small vocal glitch when she speaks. “Yes.”
“That’s what is important. Don’t let your worries cloud who you are – you are Vanir-3. Happy-go-lucky and full of hope.” Yùtù shifts to get more comfortable, and Vanir pulls her legs close so that they are sitting cross-legged before one another. “You’ve been through a hard time, almost dying… But you’re here now, you’re safe and you’re whole, and you’re happy.”
“Thanks to you.”
Yùtù shakes her head. “I didn’t do anyth-“
Vanir kisses her. Their heads hit together roughly but she doesn’t care. She lifts both hands and holds Yùtù’s cheeks, leaning into her as she lets memories and thoughts flow freely between their lips.
When she comes away, Vanir’s mouth feels slightly tingling from the flow of information, and Yùtù’s mouth glows with a soft, stunned icy blue.
“You make me happy.”
The heels of Lady Efrideet’s boots clicked on the walkway of the Reef’s throne room and echoed through the silence of the hollow structure. She strode forward at her leisure despite the two armed guards at her sides, her legendary spear draped lazily over one shoulder as the Queen and her entourage waited at the dais of the throne.
All around them the purple mists of the Reef glowed bright under Icarus’ stellar eye. Like an ethereal fog they rolled through the derelict city-ships of the Reef.
Queen Mara Sov sat upon her throne, her Techeuns gathered at the base of the raised dais with Petra Venj. Prince Uldren stood in the shadows to her side.
The Queen sat with her eternal poise; legs cross neat but nonchalant and leaning against one side of her throne in an almost suggestive pose. The massive carved oval throne stretched far above her, made to accommodate the hulking form of an ether-gorged Kell, and the wolf’s head design at its top still glinted in the orange light despite its worn surface.
To most, the Queen’s composure was power. The size of her throne was a symbol of her influence and absolute power over the fate of anything that dared set foot within that room. It showed her dominance as both Queen and Kell.
But as Efrideet approached the throne and its raised dais, she saw only how small it made Mara seem.
Efrideet’s final step echoed through the hollow as she came to a stop, and the base of her spear thumped like a hollow strike of thunder on the metal platform. She looked up at the Queen, her unruly hair falling to the side of her face, and gave a sly smile. “Your dais looks a little empty without the Queenbreakers at your side,” she said.
Her voice was booming in the silence, and her confidence – bordering on offensive – shone in Efrideet’s stance and every aspect of her expression.
Prince Uldren stalked forth from the shadows, hissing at her through vicious teeth. “It is customary to bow before your betters, outsider.”
Efrideet regarded Uldren slowly. She didn’t move her head from looking to the Queen, simply flicking her eyes to the side, as if he were not worth the effort of turning her chin. She let the time speak for her as she glanced him over from head to toe.
“Then by all means,” she said, her voice loud and unruly in the presence of a monarch. “Bow to me. I can wait.”
His hand tensed on the knife at his hip and he stepped forward with teeth clenched in rage. Efrideet felt the shift of the two guards behind her and their hands moved to pistols in mirror of their Prince.
She smirked, and scoffed at the Prince’s ire.
“Your insolence is not welcome here, Guardian.” He spat the word like an insult. “You will bow to the Queen of the Reef, or face-“
“The Queen-“ Mara’s voice was quiet, but demanded absolute silence from its first syllable. She let the words hang in the air like a knife to the throat, giving her entourage time to settle and listen to her. The silence commanded them not to speak. Queen Mara tilted her chin up, looking down upon all those assembled before her.
Her words were purposefully quiet, forcing the world to listen to her. It made the world serve her whims, rather than letting her voice be made to adapt for others’ needs. When she spoke, it was not her duty to be heard, but the duty of all to hear her.
After the pause that froze the world, then Queen spoke again. “-is the one to give judgement within the Reef, brother.” she said. “You will not command on my behalf.”
Prince Uldren’s face contorted, his brow wrinkling in rage as he stared at Efrideet and her callous disregard for respectful behaviours. She grinned at him, flashing white teeth and placing her free hand on her hip, tilting her pelvis forward and leaning on her spear. She almost wanted to tell him the things she had done with his Queen in the past.
“My apologies, Your Grace,” Uldren said, turning and bowing his head with subservience to his sister.
The Queen did not turn to look at her entourage when she spoke, and though her eyes were locked with Efrideet’s, her speech required not clarification. “Leave us,” she commanded.
Her coven of Techeun Witches bowed and departed, the Queensguard following warily behind. Prince Uldren begrudgingly followed after Petra Venj. Efrideet stood still, her eyes locked with the Queen’s as they each listened to the echoing departure.
As they reached the chamber’s door, the Queen spoke again.
“Petra, you will join us,” she commanded, just barely lifting her voice above conversational volume so it carried to the door.
Efrideet did not turn to look, but she could practically feel the scathing on Prince Uldren’s face as the door closed behind him.
She stood before the dais, leaning slightly on her spear and holding the Queen’s piercing gaze like a staring contest as the clack of Petra’s heels rang out in the room, slowly coming closer. Efrideet waited for Petra to move past her, standing at the base of the Queen’s stairs before she spoke.
“Mara, my dear… I hear you have a wolf problem.” Efrideet drew her shoulders back and stood tall and proud. Mara’s lips parted into a thin smile and she leaned forward in her seat ever so slightly. “I’m here to provide a solution.”
“There has been a change of plan since Skolas’ gambit at the Vault of Glass.” Petra spoke on behalf of her Queen, perching softly on the edge of the dais. “Her Majesty has changed her mind; Skolas is to be brought in alive.”
Efrideet cocked an eyebrow. “To capture the Kell of Kells… quite the task, given his resources.” She let her words hang in the silence for a moment, glancing at the tip of her spear and then back to Petra. “But it can be arranged.
“Skolas is cornered in the Ishtar Sink of Venus,” Efrideet said, taking up her spear and slinging it over her shoulder, pacing slowly as she talked. “He’s holed himself up in the Vex Citadel, with potential control over unknown Vex technology, and a Ketch to flee in an emergency. I leave anything out?” she cocked an eyebrow at Petra, who shook her head.
“Not to my knowledge.”
“Very well. Now, I will lead the capture team myself.” Efrideet lifted her chin and locked eyes with Mara, giving a sly smirk as she did.
“I’m going to want a Fallen translator on comms.” Efrideet held up her free hand as Petra opened her mouth. “Not your Variks. Loyal as he may claim to be, I don’t trust him. I’ve spoken to Cayde-6 about making our City Spymaster available.
“I am, however, going to want your ‘Dragon of the Reef’ fighting beside me.” Efrideet locked eyes with the Queen as she spoke, but Petra was the one to nod.
“I will make her available,” she said.
Efrideet bowed her head in thanks. “The rest of the ground team will consist of Lady Novella Faye – another of our Iron Lords – and a Vex expert. I want three snipers, well trained, very well equipped. They’ll run cover for my team.
“I will also need a half-dozen ships – single man jumpships will do fine – to run interference on Skiffs and Dhows to prevent reinforcements reaching Skolas or extracting him.”
“That’s a tall order,” Petra said.
“I’ve asked the same of the City. They are also contributing one battleship, strong enough to take on the Ketch in an emergency, waiting inside atmosphere.” Efrideet shifted her spear and slammed it against the metal platform she stood upon, making a resonant, powerful echo through the throne room. “These are not requests, these are the conditions.”
Petra seemed to agree, but pursed her lips at the list on her small tablet and twirled her knife in her other hand.
“You get me these things,” Efrideet said, lifting her gaze to Mara herself, “and I’ll bring you Skolas.”
prey to all the forms of life and love
title from the poetry of robert desnos
a series of dreams; cael and xione explore a beach between the garden and the deep; a first meeting beyond dreams for cael and selena — 4500 words; suicide mention and ideation tw; follows after prescience
The ocean is as black upon its surface as the depth from which Cael swam; his arms crawl him up from the shallows with black thinning green on the pale sands, with the forest looming darker than the pre-dawn sky across the beach. The ocean reaches for the forest and the forest attempts to plant its seeds ever closer to the ocean, and the graveyard of trees builds monuments to their meeting. Neither gives life to the other: only those separated from death can move between.
He has yet to test himself at the forest’s edge. Its brambles and ferns shake at his approach, and vines sprout thorns in warning. If the Garden wants to see him in a dream, he will know.
Not everyone in this dream is welcome. Ancient claws tickle the back of his legs as the water recedes.
Down the shore from the dunes and dead trees stands the boy. Cael crawls above the tide line and sits in the sand, reaching for memories of being dry, being warm. In the mornings he turns on the coiled lamps and basks in their heat until his hair is dry and his skin of Light feels alive and whole. He basks until he falls into a natural sleep that might do more to heal him than Piko ever has. Dreamless, unplanned sleep is a gift, and he lets the feeling pull steam from his hair and clothes in the cold wind, lets it sooth and compose him as Xione moves up the shore.
Cael feels strong enough in the moment to let Xione have his hand, pulling him to his feet from his damp cloak. The contact lingers, always lingers, and Cael is again the one to break free. Xione is guileless and already flushed, moving his hands to his pockets with a muttered hullo that Cael does not return.
What are they doing, he wonders. Together. To each other. Cael reaches for the calm to endure another night and feels a soft touch of cold on his face. His eyes startle open expecting Xione’s hands, expecting to jerk away—but it is only fat flakes of snow, separating from the clouds above as if dissolved and glittering in a distant light. Xione opens his hands to them and spreads his arms, his green eyes more curious than awed.
He’s been here enough times by now to know: sometimes these things happen. Soon his hands are safely returned to his pockets, and Cael moves past him down the beach.
It takes little distance to make Xione follow. Cael feels no tether as Xione describes it, but it is Cael’s dream, Cael’s shore carved between the places he visits in deepest sleep. If the future comes to pass, it will be Cael’s fault. Of that more than anything, he is certain. In quiet moments, as they simply walk without destination, Xione is all awaver with youth, his legs too long and his hands swinging on arms that will find their strength. May find their strength: Cael does not know how close his end looms. For all his scars and sometimes-terror, for all his eyes might cut behind his bangs with a knowing Cael is both hungry and alarmed to see—Xione has a rotten innocence at his core. It stinks like the carcass of a deep sea creature, soft as jelly and destroyed by the open air.
Cael takes a deep breath, and walks even with Xione’s long steps. The dream is only at its start. “I’m glad you’re here,” Xione says, the wind dragging his voice between their shoulders.
“Why?”
He nods to the forest, without quite looking at it: “This place gives me the creeps.”
“Mm,” Cael hums, watching the tide creep toward them to his right and trying to step on the white flakes before they melt against the sand. “Yet you seem composed.” His halting progress does nothing to drop him behind as Xione stops, boots scuffing sand and the strange darkening of his face behind his scars, the flush inversed.
The marks are not like the ones on Cael’s legs and chest, not silvered by their weaving in Light. For all that they twist and pale the skin, there is an ugly purpose, a changing direction and lack of connection—like strokes of a brush. One going up from the chin, pressed and dragged from the brow, slapped at an angle across his nose. The mark under his left eye seems a mistake, the way it pulls against the scar on his nose and warps the curve of his lower lid. The eye doesn’t quite close unless he squeezes it, like the rheumy third eye between Janus’ faces.
Cael’s hand lifts from his pocket, but it is a pale and shaking thing, the silver print of her burning hands on his wrists.
She didn’t hold him there. She was speaking with her hands. She did not make him stay.
When he shakes free of the thought, Xione is still staring at the ground. “What?”
“I have to,” Xione starts, lifting and pressing his hands to pull the skin of his scarred cheeks, heel of palm to his face. Cael stands steady on the snow and sand, flakes melting against his bare legs. Sometimes a memory just takes you, in this place. Sometimes the echoes really are your own. “You can’t show people when you’re scared. Then they know what scares you. Then they know how to—make it hurt.”
A flash of fire. The smell of burning flesh. Whose echo he could not say, striking the dream like a bolt of lightning. Leaving nothing but sea glass in its wake. Cael reaches between them, hesitating between temptation and the need to pull Xione’s hands from his face. “Then why tell me.”
Xione laughs between his hands, the kind of laugh that coughs spit from the back of his throat and comes out rough. “It’s you. This place—god, I can smell it. It’s like,” he meets Cael’s hand halfway, clasping their fingers and pressing palm to palm. “It’s a dream, so this is okay. I can tell. You don’t want to hurt me.”
The air is very cold. There are many things Cael cannot show him, dream or not. He wills the hand to still in Xione’s grip, wills his face as smooth and inconsequential as the falling snow. “I don’t want to do a lot of things.” When Xione drops his hand, he looks more resigned to the wound than wounded. No amount of scarring or falling hair can hide his eyes, and they are casting down, cutting toward the sea, retreating from it in some instinct.
“I still don’t know your name.”
“You still don’t,” Cael agrees, walking ahead. The thing about lightning is that it strikes upward, and there is glass beneath his feet, electric dread smelling like sacrificial death and climbing up his bones. Ozone and microwaved meat. A heart and lungs cooked by an arc blast. He knows exactly whose echo it is, and he picks up his feet and bolts from his nauseous dread.
In several meters he is snapped by his own arm, a hard grip dragging him at the elbow. He trips, and the tether drags Xione with him, snow and sand catching their fall. His limbs fight what feels like many hands, on his shoulders and his wrists. Always holding him in place, always making him stay—but that echo is a lie and Xione lets him crawl back to his feet. Xione does not hold on if Cael pulls away, like—
Like another echo they both refuse to claim. Like he knows the terror of being held down.
“Please don’t,” Xione says, gathering himself up from the sand. “Please don’t leave me—” He looks to the dark woods and that held-down animal panic is on his face, his hands snapping his arm from the shoulder. He starts and stops and begs to reach for Cael, as anguished as Selena spewing worms, as thoroughly wounded as Anya holding her own head at her hip.
It is a seething kind of concern. It is a terrible thing to look at him, and care. Cael does not want to care. He wants to swim out into the black sea and drown them both awake.
He gives Xione his hand. He leads him along the shore, ever between the forest and the sea.
-
No sun rests visible in the sky, but there is light on the shore, gold reflecting in every wet footprint they leave. Fire washes in on the tide and touches their ankles—not a description of the water, but yellow flames dancing gentle in the foam. It is not the fire that links them nor an echo of Cael’s death. It is not the paint that remade Xione’s face in someone’s intended image. It feels like Light, feels like Radiance, the only warmth in a cold place.
Xione kicks stones out of the surf with his ratty boots; stops to kneel and examine a fragile crab, yellow and translucent as a young leaf. Cael draws ahead of him and looks back over one shoulder. It is always safer to look at Xione sidelong, at an angle.
“Are you real,” he asks, one finger tracing the delicate shell, lifting away from creamy claws that aim and snap. “This feels like a real place.”
Cael turns toward him, to aim his shouldered gaze at the sea: “Everything is real. Especially what we find in dreams.”
The crab has him by the thumb, lifting from the sand by its own grip. Xione licks his sharp incisor and sets his free hand under its feet. He turns it around and around in his palm, enraptured. Reefborn, probably living in the landlocked City. He doesn’t even know what he’s holding. It digs its claws into the meat of his hand between the thumb and forefinger, and he jolts for the pain, but still sets it down gently. The tide drags in and washes it away.
“Especially dreams that hurt,” Xione sighs, standing and touching his cheeks. Cael’s hands and core heat up with a kind of pain, a pressure: he wants to kiss the scar on his chin so badly. His hands shake in the pockets of his cloak. As he nods, he lets the tide turn his feet, drops his gaze upon them. His bare legs are a silver side of Xione’s pale green coin, plum stubble growing in patches, a slight warp in the glassy everscars that cover his calves. He could cover them easily. He could avoid the lightning thrill arcing from the sand every time Xione lowers his gaze along their length.
Pain is a distraction, Calliope once said. Those who cannot live through it are to be pitied. The evidence of your own is quite beautiful. She had meant it as a compliment, but he hadn’t lived through the fire. His parents hadn’t lived through the fire. The golden light of the dream becomes yellow, sways to shadows of his own mood. He does not want to dream of her, for all that the wounds do not show.
Xione catches him at the arm, one hand gentle but insistent through the thick wool sleeve. He drops his forehead to Cael’s shoulder, and his breath is steam on the chilling air, his breath is the smallest wheeze in his throat. “You don’t look at me,” he says, “but then when you do—”
His voice cracks. Calliope didn’t know a goddamn thing about pain.
“It isn’t what you think. Never—”
Cael shivers under the weight. Xione’s hand tightens on his arm, but it isn’t—he’s always gentle. He always hesitates. “Never think I don’t want to.”
“Oh,” he sighs, “oh, god.”
“Mm.”
-
What he remembers of love is the bite of the gun to his chin and the sick dread that steadied his hand on the trigger. He remembers the certainty of love’s end, and the way fate circumvents all certainty. He remembers that love is a desperate, despairing thing. Emptiness becomes a vacuum and the feeling howls, hungers, eventually snaps his head on a bullet and tosses him in the sea.
I don’t know what it is about you, Calliope said. There’s a gravity when you pull away. And how he pulled away. How he locked the doors, how he ignored Piko’s shrieks. How gravity took him into the dark. The light is dim and heavy on the shore. The sand is black with melted earth, the sea driving foam up its width and leaving it to dry at the tide-line. It pops beneath their feet, has a very real texture under his soles.
Xione stops to gather it in his hands. It disappears between his palms; he wipes them on his ripped vest and his eyes travel along the line of foam. Travel up from Cael’s dark heels to the pale backs of his knees. “What,” Cael demands, voice even when it breaks from his throat.
“The first time, the scars—I wondered how high they went.” He shakes his hair in front of his face, chewing his split lip. “It’s stupid.”
Cael looks at the lines and shadows of his face behind his hair. It is all he will ever have to hide behind, and nothing he says—ever will say—is stupid. Nothing about him is stupid. Nothing about him is ugly. Everything about him is a gunshot to the head. I hate you, he doesn’t say. I wish I could—
He rolls and lifts the shirt up from his waist, the silvered scars reaching up along his stomach and sides. The shift of electricity in his skin distinguishes itself from the pale warp of burned flesh: hairless and glassy. They stretch and thin as his body grows, ever wider and smoother, the pores wide inverse to blue freckles. “Why do they stop at all,” Xione asks, his tone absent, his feet drawing up and even with Cael’s planted toes.
“I suppose I was already dead.”
Matter of fact: it is a matter of facts, of what Piko was given to work with on both ends of the equation. It is harder to solve with negative sums on every side. Xione splays his fingers against a silvered tangle on Cael’s abdomen; the flare of want is a rolling wave, dragging him one step back. Pull away—he must pull away.
“I’m sorry, does it hurt?”
“No.” Cael levels him with intent: “It doesn’t hurt.”
Mouth parting just-so, Xione stuffs his hands in his pockets and flushes dark green to the tips of his ears. He is all ahush, almost atremble, when he asks: “So you feel it too.”
Those who cannot live with it are to be pitied. Cael gathers every year of emptiness, every moment of solitude after he woke from the sidearm’s bite, to cool his gaze against Xione’s burned face. He turns his cheek out and aims it at the sea. “No,” he says. “I don’t feel anything.”
-
Winter in the City sweeps snow across the balcony, chills the glass that rattles in old frames, drives the mice deeper into the apartment. He gives them the mattress and sofa for their nests, sits with the heating coil to his back and writes treatise to the Deep, sleeps on his open books or in the cold curve of the empty tub. His heart beats an echo to the porcelain and tile, a silhouette reflected that does not shake and does not cry.
Ink soaks his fingers, bruises the side of his face. He is fingerprints in the dust, footprints in the squalor. Piko sits on the edge of the tub and her eye is always watching, always shining a light on his shaking fingers or catching a gleam of moisture across his eyes.
“It won’t work,” she seethes.
“I know.”
He sold the sidearm years ago.
His heart beats too fast for sleep and its echo in the tub is save him, save him, save him.
There are pages and pages under his shaking hands. The nails are pale and ringed in black. He has not slept in six days save a single death, scraped together with sea salt in his teeth and four true meals. His heart is too fast, too fast, and Piko has not left his side since reviving. “I’ll call Ikora,” she hisses from his shoulder, as the words blur together and he shakes his head. “I’ll call her.”
“I’d run. And you know how I run.”
“We don’t have the Light.”
“So don’t call.”
Pitied, he thinks. He should be pitied. He should be put in the fucking ground. The thought chases itself in circles. When he blinks the dark away, he’s written it three times without lifting the pen.
“Don’t call,” he whispers, shoving himself up from the table. Consciousness is a white flame, a searing gas trapped in his skin. He floats on it to the doors, past the rattling glass and into a layer of snow strewn with black feathers. The cold air bites back, reminds him, reminds him—she was so cold. It is the only antidote to this madness, the only physical thing to reach his burning bones.
Across the river, the white belly looms, its open hull a scab that has been closing now for years. Perhaps tonight it has the strength. Perhaps there are bargains to be made. He spurned it years ago, forsook duty and ignored its voice, but the Garden and dragons offer no aid. Their voices build and swell like the light vacuum before a faint: ItisitisKnown. OhbearerOhchildOhflame. YouwillBetrayyouwillGive.
Before the whispers, before the Deep. Slipped sideways like a knife between the voices of his past and future Queen. Cael sucks the Winter between his teeth and tastes silver. The stone in his throat is cold and silent.
“I know—I know I can ask you no favors. I am not her. I am not your Listener.”
The cold saps strength from his waning limbs, and he slips to his knees in the snow. Crows gather on the rail, shifting snow with their wings and calling their greetings to the night. He takes the feathers in his hands and squeezes the quills to his palms, pain enough to stay awake: “Take it away, hide him from me, please. I can’t do this: I’ll go mad and worms will eat the fucking world.
“Stop me,” he whispers. “Just stop me.”
The low moon is silent; he should have known.
-
“Why is it snowing?”
Cael lifts his head. Even in the dream he is hollowed cheeks and eyes, squinting to make sense of the world. His black beach is disappearing beneath a blanket of white, silver trees reaching their dead limbs against the grey sky. The teal water washes the snow from the shore, and the froth forms ice at the tide line. He feels grey and washed out in his own head; Xione is the brightest color in the space.
He looks at his bare ankles in the snow. He has stood in the same spot for long enough that his feet are buried. His heart beats too slow, and the echo in his bones is save him, save him. “Who knows why things happen in dreams,” he sighs.
“You might.”
“I might.”
Xione grinds frustration in his throat. He chuffs his hands up his arms, the jacket thin beneath his vest. Cael slides an arm from his heavy cloak and lifts it at the shoulder, opens it as he leans to the side and Xione leans to catch him. The brightest and warmest thing, pressed against his side and setting a hand firm to the small of his back. The death of him, holding him close as the suns do not rise. His sluggish heart skips a beat.
“It does snow in the Reef,” Xione says, watching the flakes merge and white out the horizon. “People don’t think it would, but I saw ice. It got very cold.”
Cael’s feet sink into the slush with renewed agony. He doesn’t know what Xione is remembering: he has no death dream to warp the space. “I grew up in the Reef.”
The death of him turns his head, squeezes him hip to hip and something turns up a corner of his mouth. He has so many teeth for a creature that has never seen the sea. “You don’t seem like...like people there.”
Her stone is so heavy; Cael lifts an arm beneath the cloak to find a grip on Xione’s shoulder. The snow is piling against his ankles, reaching up his legs and licking silver fire up his skin. He is dying. He is running out of time. “What do I seem like?”
Xione flushes and looks to their feet. He is booted to the calves, and his arm lifts along Cael’s spine, matches him shoulder for shoulder as Xione slides free of the cloak and swings him up from the snow. His grip tightens on Xione’s opposite arm and air leaves him in surprise. He is so tired. He is so tired.
His heart beats slower and slower; it is a bubble rising from the cold depths and popping on the surface, and every beat echoes love him, love him. What crime could it be, to let Xione lift him from the snow and imagine him a little warmer? He is too weak to lean, too weak to pull himself level and look his death in the eyes. He looks Xione’s in the chest, dark blood seeping from one shirt to the other. His death has a shark’s smile and a sucking chest wound, but he finds the strength to lift Cael in both arms and put a broad hand to the back of his head. Xione is the one to waver behind his scars and his bangs and lean his face to Cael’s. The moment must fulfill or break, the decision must be made, and Piko’s distant scream is a searchlight in the grey storm.
The warmest, the brightest thing. The greenest eyes, the sweetest snow-tipped lashes.
Cael has every limb free of his cloak when he rolls out of Xione’s arms and back into the snow, caught on both feet and one ink-stained hand. The cold stings to punish his refusal, and Piko’s scream is sharper, a rising register that will lift until it fades. “Please,” Xione shouts, the cloak tossed aside and both hands reaching through a thick fog.
He gathers his arms against the dying beat of his heart and walks into the sea.
-
“Are you disappointed.”
OhChild, youForget. ThereareOthersalwaysAlwaysAlways. You, you, you—
-
“You—”
Her voice is a bell, the lighthouse ringing him back to shore when he breaks the surface. Her presence is a tether for his mind, dragging him, dragging him back from the depths. The stone burns in his throat, wakes him to blue light in the main room, his back warming against the couch. His limbs shake for the feeling returned to them; his fingers shift and lift and drop a long, thin card to the floor.
Selena Valois Zavala lifts a hand to cover her gasp, and bends neat at the waist to lift the card from the dust. “The Hanged Man,” she sighs. “It is you.”
Cael drags himself up along the back of the couch, and a family of mice flees the disturbance across the floor. To her credit, the Vanguard’s daughter only wrinkles her nose and draws her foot back from their path. “Why did you—”
He blows a first breath hard into the hot dry air and lets himself fall back against the arm of the couch. The lights are lit, the balcony door is closed. Janus sits on the arm behind his head, sets one paw against his brows and the claws turn in just-so, possessive and pleased. He takes the moment to breathe and breathe.
With careful steps, Selena closes with the couch. Her hand lays over his beating heart. The implant hums like a plucked string; she is music in the hollow parts of him. She is the peace of being put in one’s place, the burden of self, the burden of will, finally laid to rest. She touches him this side of dreaming and a storm at the back of two minds finds its calm. “Your Ghost was out of Light. I was dreaming of the Garden, I—do you not remember?”
He covers her hand with his own, ink stains between fingers chapped from washing. “No.”
“You were on the edge of a gap, you were holding onto the roots of a tree. You told me to come here.”
He closes his eyes, imagines it. Avoids the glisten of her own. “I don’t remember.”
Her nails pinch the fabric of his shirt. He is a pile of bones on a hollowed out couch. He is unwashed and wretched before his queen, and he can feel it in his hands and his throat—she is trembling at the state of him. It has not pulled her away. “Well I’m glad, it doesn’t look like you get many visitors.”
He must not pull away, this time: “You’re the first.”
the sound of you and i
owen/blaine snapshot fic, owen POV; set between HoW and TTK; 2300 words; abuse tw
I have loved you and loved you, was made wretched, and you have loved my wretchedness in turn.
-
Your father is a solemn creature. His frowns are made of his entire face: they are brows shadowing his eyes and wrinkles around his mouth. There is a scar on his eyebrow he passed down to your nose, and when the weather changes his joints ache too much for violence. Your arm aches in sympathy. All of you aches in sympathy.
A mystery is most compelling. You love him like the forest loves the fire. You sit with Blaine on the back fence and stare across the water. There are lights in your home that do not go out for your eyes, even in the pitch of night. There is a pinch inside your heart, seeds waiting for the flame to break them free. You want to go home. You want to know if it feels the same, if his eyes still shade, if his joints still ache. If it feels the same to yield to his fist, full of Light and taught how to take a fall.
You imagine walking in the door like coming home late. He says, you made your mother worry and his hand squeezes your arm. He backs you into the wall until your opposite shoulder bruises against it. His breath is hot and humid on your face, no stink of alcohol. He doesn’t need it. That is the ugliest truth.
Your father is not unknowable: you have studied him for years. He doesn’t care that you came in late. He says you made her worry and what he means is: you made me hear about it.
Blaine cuffs your cheek; you do not flinch. He uses the hand to turn you by the chin, he says: “There you are.” You lift your chin from his hand but hold his eyes.
You can be the mystery, now.
-
The yard of the brownstone is small, choked with weeds. Broken furniture retires to the porch, escapes to the corners. There are entire days where you rest in the shade and Blaine builds towers of old chairs, dares Baz to climb them. There are days where you help him arrange the world, just this piece of it. He tells you to lay down in the grass, arms spread. The sun soaks you to sleep and you wake up as it sets, a table placed over you and trails of ivy that lead back to your wrists.
Blaine peels the green curtain back to set your supper within reach. Your body feels heavy and light at once: you are floating out of it in a tide of fire, but you must leave it behind.
“You’re the strangest ‘singer I ever met,” he says. Then: “Budge over.”
He settles himself at your side in the green dark. Sunset lims the edges of dark leaves. You stare at the grain on the underside of the table while he positions his head on your tingling arm. “Try this.” He reaches up, leaves it to you to lift your head and find what he offers with his hand. “Vinkovic insulted my curry, tell me that isn’t hotter than Satan’s asshole.”
“Well, now I’m definitely putting it in my mouth.”
“Fuck you.” The bite of chicken pushes at the corner of your mouth, shoved blind until you open and bite it out of his fingers. “Fuck you,” he repeats, dragging curry sauce and your own spit hard across your cheek. The spice sears across your tongue and pushes moisture out your eyes and nose, is almost too much to appreciate the texture of the garnish, the density of the meat. When you swallow, you suck the taste from your teeth.
“Fucking ow,” you breathe.
“Again, you’re a Sunsinger. Deal with the fire.”
“It isn’t fire. It’s--the sun.” Warmth, life, the slightest edge of hunger. Life is hunger, and my God, how you are hungry when he draws near. The texture of his short, coarse hair rolls along your arm as he turns his head, and you stare at the grain of wood above, light filtering through the places where the boards and polish have worn thin.
His eyes burn the side of your face: “Do I need to give you a lesson about stars, Prichard?”
“That’s rich. Me getting a lesson from you.”
“I promise, it’s going to involve my fist.”
“That was me clenching, for the foreseeable future.”
He rolls the other way. His back is against your side, only the fit and shift of his spine to the divots of your ribs to signal laughter. His breath gusts across your wrist and palm, disturbing the ivy grown between your fingers. This is the place where he found you, you imagine: this exact corner. This table broke when he tossed you upon it. As well-read as he isn’t, Blaine Hamidi knows how to advance a story. He understands motif.
The touch of his lips to your wrist fits the narrative. The numbness in your arm agrees.
-
Blaine closes the door. It seals the room with a click and you stare at it from the bed. At his back and shoulders within the frame, at the wonder of his lines in the dark. He is shadowed and organic in the lights from the city outside, and his eyes cut back over his shoulder. His eyes linger on you, in his bed, but their lingering leaves no statement to hang in the air.
He stomps across the room to close the window. The sound of the river cuts under his hands, the light slivers between the blinds. His silhouette tugs free of his shirt in several jerking movements. It used to set you on edge, the way he moves. So much urgency and anger, so much frustration venting from his entire body.
But it vents, and that is the key. When he turns his eyes on you, they are always calm. “What’re you looking at, Prichard?”
You.
The shadows sit deepest in the room’s corners, soft light slipping under the door and wreathing the window. Blaine keeps a candle burning for someone, uses it to light cigarettes in the morning and tonight, like many other nights--he walks up to the bedside table and dances his fingers in and out of the flame. Arc is his speciality, but the flame licks and weaves under his hand like a thing he controls. He appears not even to be burned, but you send Emrys across the bed to be sure. Your Ghost is never more patient than he is with Blaine, filtering Light across the burns as they cover him and push him away. “I have a Ghost of my own.”
You snort: “God bless it, honestly.”
“God bless deez nuts,” Blaine growls, dipping the bed as he climbs up and over to sit on top of you. His weight presses you down until the mattress ceases to give, and you do him the disservice of going limp. He is a pressurized cavern venting hot steam, and you are a tree too deeply rooted in yourself to respond. He grinds down with his hips, tailbone stinging your ribs. “Not moving ‘til you bless them.”
Venting, venting. The flame dances on a draft. You are so used to him by candlelight.
Close your eyes. Emrys rolls his points across the bed, is not the only thing touching your face. That is Blaine’s finger, probably middle, over the slice of scar tissue bisecting the bridge of your nose. Four walls and a window and a candle: you are shut in with him, you are trapped by more than his weight. The longer you don’t shove him off, the more he softens, until he’s laid himself over your hip and gathered at your back. His knees press your arms against your chest; his breath is humid at the back of your neck.
You are so used to—
-
“You don’t have to stay here, I have a room above the church—”
Your mother folds her hands over your own, palms flat in a prayer as she silences you. Her eyes are dark, tired. A softer version of your own. When she pulls away, she takes the glimmer chip between her fingers, a low-light flash that disappears into the pocket of her robe. She takes her flat hands and puts them to either side of your head, and you lean down for her dry kiss. “Some of us know our place,” she says, fingers curling sharp nails behind your ears.
Her pinky lingers against your mark. You close your eyes, and nausea settles just below your throat. “There hasn’t been a divorce in our family for generations.”
“Just accidents.”
“I love him.”
The way she says it squeezes your eyes tighter, your throat obstructed and every hollow part of you aching for its hollowness. “The boy—”
Her nails dig to your flesh, her hands tighten on your face: “Don’t speak of him.”
You can’t look at her. You can’t see what your eyes will look like in twenty years. “Mother, he is so good to me, he’s so—”
“Men do not stay that way. Are you any good to him?” You look down your own face at her wrists, and do not answer. “You aren’t made for other people. You or your father. Wait, stay with your girl. The right one will stay so long as you mind your work.”
The pressure in your hollow parts builds and leaks across your eyes, blurs her edges but does not soften her grip. “Mother, please.”
She gentles her hands. She smooths them over the short hair on the sides of your head, and guides you to her shoulder. “I told you not to ask.”
-
Even Baz can flick a flame up from his thumb, a Solar match struck on the inset of his finger. Sometimes the brownstone crackles with electricity, hums itself to a frenzy and the lights crescendo to a brownout. The Void users are a cluster of calm in the sea of sparks, but you haven’t yet slot him into place. He haunts the halls at night, soft footsteps overhead, doors and cabinets opening in the kitchen. When he comes through the front door, he is greeted with the fanfare of a returning soldier, all the energy of the house converging to one point. Attention draws to him as if he were the sun itself, but there is Void in his eyes and Arc between his teeth.
Emrys is none the wiser. Blaine shrugs at the asking: “Baz is Baz. You get used to it.”
It feels strange, to let a Bladedancer teach you the trick. Blaine finds you on the back porch, legs over the edge and your back to the collapsed couch. Thumb under the first joint of your finger, flick it like a lighter and reach for the sun: dip your cigarette to the single yellow flame and breathe.
Blaine takes no care of the burning cigarette when he swings himself into your lap. Blaine takes little care with anything, his rough grace saving him on the porch’s edge: ass between your knees and his feet hooked under the couch. He lays his arms over your shoulders and stares you in the face. “You didn’t help me wash up.” Is he concerned or accusing? Blank isn’t the word for it. Neutered. The motions are the same: proximity and the ability to hold your eye, but there’s a lack of heat.
“Long day,” you exhale. Smoke lifts and breaks against his face, but his gaze does not flinch. When they water, they recall the sea. If Baz is a sun, a black hole--Blaine is a storm. What his calm tonight signals, you do not ponder. You do not have the energy. You do not have the fortitude.
This boy.
This boy.
A hand on your arm distracts. You tilt the hair from your face and hold the cigarette away in your fingers. Blaine plucks the edge of your sleeve, trails his fingers down a constellation of scars on the underside of your arm. The burns cluster at your elbow, trail down to the wrist. He’s seen them. Everyone has seen them.
“Stupid game,” you offer his inspection. His eyes flick to your face, dismiss the set of your mouth and return to the work of dismantling you. Your voice dries in your throat. “You know how kids are.”
Kids. His eyes cut, and there is the heat. There is the storm. The muscles tighten in his legs, and it is only the anchor of his feet keeping him in your space. With his freed hand he takes your wrist and aims your cigarette at his opposite arm. “So do me,” he says. “You think I can’t take it?”
“I didn’t think you were dumb.”
“You do. You really do.”
The tip burns, ash dropping against the hairless side of his arm. He has his own scars, earned on and off the battlefield, but even that rough flesh skirts your eyes to the side. Nausea builds in your throat, and shame is the fire you stoke in the pits of your self. A mystery is most compelling, but the price is steep. The price is fire and char, a black mark scored to the earth, x marks the spot of a secret.
Blaine plucks the cigarette from your fingers, leaning back from your hot face and taking a long drag. “You’re so full of shit, Prichard.”
Out From the Deep
A god died that day. It was an unimpressive sight: A putrid, glutinous worm too fat to do more than scream threats at its killers. The threats turned to pleas for mercy once their intentions became clear. The cries fell on deaf ears; they had already lost one of their own to reach this end.
This Darkness would pass by their hands.
The action itself took very little effort. A single thorn straight from the gun borne out of the god’s very flesh. It was anticlimactic. The godslayers looked down at their handiwork. They did not know how to feel. Finally one, their leader, spoke up.
“We need to go. The rest is up to Anya.”
The others nodded. The leader prepared the ritual she had used to gain access to this inhospitable plane. It came to a close. Nothing happened.
“Why are we still here?”
“I have no idea. That should have worked.”
The leader considered their situation and came to a realization. It was the nature of the Depths through which they traveled. It had been easy to gain access because that was what this realm wanted. It was enticing. It pulled you into its deceptive embrace and refused to let go. It was easy to sink, but incredibly hard to swim back to the surface.
She closed her eyes and sighed. She had an idea, but she knew the others wouldn’t like it.
“I might know what to do, but you have to trust me. If this works, I don’t know how long it’ll last.”
“What are you planning?”
The leader smiled sadly at her companion. How do you tell your former lover that she’ll be losing both of the loves of her life on a single stupid expedition?
“Don’t worry about it. Like I said, you just have to trust me.”
There was still some good in the world, and she would fight her hardest for it. She reached deep within and found the spark in her heart. But instead of igniting it and bringing forth the radiance of her Light, she spent time stoking the flame. It took time and effort, but ever so slowly, the spark grew larger. Finally, she was satisfied.
She lit the flame. The fire expanded outward from her soul, through her body, and out into the Darkness. It burned brighter and hotter than she had ever experienced, but she knew it needed more. It needed to burn its way through the Deep itself to return the others back to the real world. She had the feeling her body wouldn’t be able to handle it, but it was a sacrifice she was willing to make - immolation on a grand scale.
She thought she heard voices calling out to her, but the roar of the flames drowned everything out. Eventually, the world went blank. Suspended in an absolute void of nothingness. She didn’t know how long she stayed there.
“Adeen!”
A new day had come, and the sun shone clearer.
When they get back
The light of the sun danced across the Traveller’s surface, distorted by rushing clouds like the light reflected from rippling water. It drifted like an aurora above the golden lights of the inner city, threads of green and blue-tinged light, altered by the passing storm in the west.
Distant thunder rumbled through the sky, and Rohan’s eyes were drawn for a moment to the churning clouds over the mountains. The thunder sounded like barely a grumble, like a sleeping titan. They felt a shudder run through their body as the thunder brought a memory of haunting words, a conversation with their mentor…
But soft music drifted from the Speaker’s Observatory, a warm woodwind melody, and it washed the worries from Rohan’s brow.
They stepped into the Speaker’s office, their fingernails tapping nervously on the neck of the bottle in their hands. The divining machine stood still, resting in its pit for the night, and its absence made the observatory’s size all the more apparent.
Rohan felt very small, and they walked the long way around to the silhouettes perched at the great window.
They stepped purposefully louder than usual, not wanting to sneak up on the pair as the beautiful lights drifted across the Traveller like some kind of show.
Willow was the one to look up as Rohan approached. She lifted her head from Jem’s shoulder, her hair slightly ruffled by being beneath a hood all day, and the reflected light on the Traveller made her skin shine with the setting sun. Her smile was soft and warm… motherly.
Rohan let Estë take their coat, and perched on the edge of the balcony with their friends. “Hey,” the mumbled through an uneasy smile, “sorry I’m late.”
Willow and Jem both smiled, and Rohan looked down at the bottle in their hands. “You know,” Rohan said, frowning at the bottle. “Now that I think about it, wine was not the best choice of gifts…”
Willow giggled, one hand automatically falling to her belly, and the sound set Rohan at ease. “Next time I’ll bring orange juice.”
“Don’t forget to bring extra,” Jem said, “it’ll be a bigger party when you get back.”
Rohan didn’t even bother popping the cork of the bottle. They placed it on the floor behind them, and scooched closer to Willow and Jem. Jem placed one hand over Willow’s on her belly, then lifted her hand to his lips.
The small radio beside Jem crackled, the music from it distorting a little before clearing. It was quiet, simple songs for a Sunday evening, and as Rohan leaned close to Willow’s side and wrapped their arm around their shoulders, they almost felt like they sat back in the Golden Age.
Willow took Rohan’s hand and pressed it against the mound of they belly. Willow had cast aside her robes for the evening, and the shirt she wore was thin enough for Rohan to feel the cool of her skin, and as they kept their hand there, they felt the tiny bumps of movement.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you grin like that,” Jem said, and Rohan looked up, their mouth slightly agape.
“It’s amazing,” Rohan mumbled, looking down at Willow’s belly. They rubbed their hand softly back and forth. Willow began to blush a deeper blue, and she brushed her hair behind her ear absently. “They’re amazing.
“You’ll have to introduce me when I get back,” Rohan said, squeezing Willow’s shoulder fondly. She hummed in return, resting her head on Jem’s shoulder once more.
Rohan stayed there for a time, hugging close to Willow’s side and watching the lights playing on the surface of the Traveller. The storm was brewing in the mountains, but it would not reach the City for some time yet, and even as the sun sunk down below the horizon and the City fell into twinkling lights amidst the purple of dusk.
Estë summoned Rohan’s coat, but they draped it across Willow’s shoulders like a blanket, to keep her warm.
After a time, Estë nudged Rohan’s shoulder, and they rose.
“You’re leaving?” Willow asked, looking up. Rohan could see the concern in her eyes – she knew all the details of Rohan’s mission, knew how dangerous it was, knew how long it would take, and how much she would likely be up against.
Rohan nodded. “Gotta keep the City safe if we’re bringing new life into it.”
Willow nodded softly, but the tinge of sadness was still in her eye. Rohan knelt down behind her and Jem, wrapping them both in a big hug. They turned to Jem and pressed their lips to his for a moment as they came away from the hug. “One for you,” Rohan hummed, turning then to Willow. They placed a hand on Willow’s belly and leaned down, kissing it very softly. “One in advance for you,” they whispered.
“And one for the mother to be,” Rohan smiled, cupping Willow’s face in their hands. They pressed their lips to Willow’s, kissing her slightly longer.
Then Rohan rose. They lifted a hand as Willow went to hand their coat to them, urging her to keep it. “I’ll see the three of you when I get back.” Rohan winked, then left their friends to their observatory, the bottle of wine still sitting unopened beside them.
As Rohan reached the door of the observatory, they looked back, feeling the chill run down their spine with the distant rumbling of the storm. They heard a whisper as Willow spoke to Jem.
“We’ll open the bottle when they come home, celebrate as a family.”