*Rings bell* Pyro's Hitlist propaganda, come get your Pyro's Hitlist propaganda!!! For the @vsmppolyshiptournament
CW: More gross descriptions of Czeslaw's body as a drowning victim, but not really explicitly gory
Pyro picked his way through the pale banches blocking his way, dead leaves crunching under his boots as he climbed the hillside. He would have preferred to bat back to the castle, but Abolish's ambush earlier that day had left his body heavy and his reserves drained. The long hike was supposed to offer quiet; a thin respite from all the fighting,a chance to let his thoguhts settle into something resembling calm. To anyone watching from a distance, he was simply a solitary figure lost in contemplation as he climbed.
But the chattering of two invisible spectres shredded any hope of silence.
"—I mean, just think about it! You've got two kills under your belt now. You're practically a seasoned expert."
Czeslaw's mocking drawl was a familiar companion. Pyro had scarcely gone a day without hearing it, even before the other's death. With the phantom stuck in another realm, it was at least slightly easier to ignore the needling comments about every insecurity Czeslaw could get his gnarled hands on.
"—I still can't believe I was right, you did kill someone. I mean, I actually did kind of figure that you were just like this, but I thought it was the vampirism that made you violent—"
Avid's comments on the other hand were a newer addition that they really could've done without.
His rambling words grated on Pyro's ears and their jaw tightened until his teeth ached. His claws dug into his palms until they drew pinpricks of old black blood, the sting a familiar, grounding pain.
He refused to entertain either of them. They were dead and Pyro was…well not quite alive but definitely closer to it than the phantoms trailing behind him. If nothing else, if he just ignored literally everything else, he could just suck it up and deal with it. At least until they could leave. At least until—
"I mean what would you do even if you could leave?"
"Has Shelby found out about me yet? Has Scott?"
"Could you stop talking about Goldsmith for one blasted second?"
Pyro whirled around with a snarl, chest heaving with barely contained rage. His red eyes burned holes into Avid's startled face. Heat flooded his veins, that familiar, sickening rush of control slipping through his fingers. His hands trembled at his sides, claws still wet with his own blood.
"He's not even your sire, he's mine," they bit out, trying to wrestle back some composure from the sudden outburst.
Avid floundered, an embarassed flush creeping up his translucent neck. His mouth opened and closed as he tried to form a defensive response.
"Ooh, that struck a nerve."
Czeslaw looked utterly delighted by Pyro's outburst, his milky eyes gleaming with a predatory shine, the look of something that had scented blood in the water and was already swimming closer. "Go ahead Avid, ask why he's so touchy about his precious sire."
"I—" Avid started, his expression twisting into something deeply uncomfortable. His wide eyes darted between the two of them, realizing too late that he'd stepped into something far more dangerous than he understood.
"Shut up Czeslaw," Pyro's voice dropped low, bordering on a growl. It was the warning sound before a strike, but also the sound of an animal trying to hide its wounds before they could be targeted as easy prey. They knew that look on Czeslaw's face. They'd seen it nearly everyday since childhood.
"No, no, no, he should get to hear this!" Czeslaw's grin stretched wide and mean, . He clapped a slimy hand on Avid's shoulder, the wet smack of it making Avid flinch. "We're all pals here aren't we?"
Czeslaw began to circle the pair, each squelching step deliberate and unhurried. "I mean, you gotta think about how it feels right? Goldsmith's first fledgling, in this town at least. Always thrown to the side. Useless. Second best."
His eyes narrowed as he looked right at Pyro, the unseeing gaze that somehow managed to pierce into any shields they could possibly throw up. "Not that that's anything new."
They couldn't meet his gaze, their eyes instead dropping to the ground in front of their shoes. He could feel his pulse in his throat, a dull, insistent throb as he swallowed the words that felt like glass. Something cold and hollow was settling in their chest, his fingers gone cold despite the heat still burning behind his eyes.
"Who'd want to deal with a monster like you?"
"Not me, that's for sure!" Czeslaw laughed, clapping Avid hard enough on the back to send him stumbling forward. "Not his parents, not the Capitol, not the town, not even his precious sire."
Pyro's throat tightened. The words landed like they always did, finding the soft bruised places he'd never managed to armor over. His chest constricted, a physical ache blooming behind his sternum. They thought they'd gotten used to these words by now, their bully never failing to remind them of their failures whenever the chance arose, but there was a new humiliating layer for Avid to see them like this. Czeslaw had known every deplorable part of Pyro, had dragged each one out with patient, practiced cruelty until Pyro had nothing left to hide. But Avid?
Perhaps it was naive to hope that he wouldn't see the monster Pyro truly was, the one that existed long before the red eyes and fangs.
"You try so hard to be liked," the ghost continued, stalking towards Pyro, each wet squelch of his boots making him flinch. "To be useful. To be wanted."
He stopped in front of Pyro, crouching down so they could get a good look at his face. He was close enough that Pyro could smell the river on him, that stagnant, silty stench of deep water and decay, of things rotting in the dark where no light could reach. Czeslaw's face tilted, not bothering to hide his pleasure as he drank in every reaction, every flinch and tremor.
"But no one wants a beast."
Pyro squeezed his eyes shut, a shudder wracked through him, violent and involuntary. His voice came out cracked, barely a whisper.
"Stop."
But when had that ever stopped Czeslaw?
"And then you came along!" Czeslaw straightened and turned around with a chuckle.
"M-me?" Avid squeaked, pointing at himself. His voice cracked on the single syllable. His expression was a strange mixture of confusion and growing dread.
"You." Czeslaw's grin sharpened. "When poor little Pyro here was first turned, starving, trying to reign in the beast that had always been inside him, there you were. So quick to call him all the names he was too scared to accept. Monster. Beast. Vampire."
Each word landed like a stone, each one a separate blow, and Pyro could feel himself retreating, pulling back from the surface of his own body. He could feel Avid's eyes on him, but he didn't look up. Couldn't.
"But hey, at least he could talk to his sire about you right?" He paused at Avid's confused tilt of his head, a delighted grin spreading as realization dawned. "Oh you didn't realize? They hated your guts. All of them, Owen, Pyro, your little 'sire daddy'. Said they'd rather final kill you than ever turn you. What a relief that must've been! He wasn't alone for once. Someone else was the problem"
Pyro glanced up, unsure of how Avid would react. He watched the words hit Avid, watched the flicker of hurt that crossed the hunter's face. Don't, he wanted to say. Don't let him see it. Don't give him that.
"And then you got turned."
Czeslaw's voice dripped with mock sorrow as he leaned against Pyro, the cold of his soaked clothes seeming to seep through fabric and skin alike. River wate dripped onto Pyro's shoulder, each drop a tiny, icy shock that made the muscle beneath twitch. They didn't move. Couldn't move.
"Of course it was Shelby, she was always so soft. But at least they were still going to keep you at a distance right? Just like Apo and Drift?"
"Except—no. No that's not how that went was it?" Czeslaw scratched his head in exaggerated confusion.
"Oh, that's right." He snapped his fingers as if the thought just occured to him, the sound sharp and wet. "Goldsmith actually got attached to you. Moreso than he ever did to his actual fledgling!"
Pyro made a sound. He didn't mean to. It was small and wounded and escaped from somewhere deep in his chest before he could choke it back. His claws pressed harder into his palms, reopening the half-healed wounds, even as he couldn't feel the pain past the numbness slowly crawling through his limbs, his chest, his throat.
"Poor Pyro. Always. Second. Best. When will you learn?" Czeslaw shook his head, clicking his head in disappointment. The mockery of sympathy was almost more painful than the cruelty. He leaned in close, blue lips nearly brushing Pyro's ear. The words were soft, almost intimate, and yet still devastating enough that it seemed the whole forest could hear.
"No one actually wants you."
Pyro's vision blurred at the edges. The world felt distant, muffled, like he was hearing everything from underwater. Which was fitting, maybe. Czeslaw would appreciate the irony.
"I mean you tried so hard it was really quite sad. 'Sire' this, 'sire' that, he had you running like a dog for him." Czeslaw's grin stretched impossibly wider. "So so loyal and what do you get? A consolation prize and the entire town turned against you. Any chance at living an innocent life—well as innocent as you could get after me—dead and buried."
"But Avid." Czeslaw turned, pointing at the spectre with one gnarled finger. "Scott's number one hater. Onto him from day one! Congratulations on that by the way. Maybe if more people believed you someone wouldn't be a vampire right now."
Both Avid and Pyro flinched at that. Through the haze clouding his vision, Pyro could see the way Avid's shoulders drew up in defense, the way his mouth pressed into a thin line as he restrained himself from saying something that he'd quickly regret once again. Something complicated moved behind his eyes as he glanced away.
"But even after all that," Czeslaw continued, relentless, "pushing Pyro off a tree, trying to kill them at any chance you could get—even before Pyro decided to throw his hat in with Goldsmith—positioning yourself as a problem and an annoyance at every opportunity, you were the one who Scott picked. And it wasn't even a competition!"
"No, he threw Pyro away like—" Czeslaw shrugged, the gesture almost lazy.
"Well. Like trash."
One final pat on Pyro's shoulder, cold and wet and lingering a moment too long, and Czeslaw stepped away. For a fleeting moment, they almost missed the contact, disgusting as it was.
"I- I didn't know-" Avid started, soft and halting. Something almost bordering on concern flickered in his eyes, fragile and uncertain. His gaze kept darting to Pyro and then away, as if he couldn't bear to linger on the implications. That the vampire he'd hunted, the creature he'd pushed and ostracized and tried to kill, the one who had killed him, had been drowning long before the fangs ever came in.
"No, you don't, do you? That's the problem." Pyro's voice finally surfaced from somewhere deep inside him, cracked and whispered but still simmering with a fury he used to cover the humiliation and misery threatening to swallow him whole. "But that's never stopped you before, has it?"
He watched Avid flinch again. Watched his mouth open and then close, for once without a quick retort or defensive accusation. It didn't make Pyro feel any better. If anything, the lack of fight made the ever-present ache in his chest yawn wider.
His claws dug fresh crescents into his already-healing palms as he turned around, resuming the journey back to the castle without another word. His pace quickened, just slightly, and Czeslaw's soft, knowing chuckle followed him all the way up the hill.
