dastardly-imbecile

[dastardly-imbecile]

Prom, 1968

Junior year. There was nothing dramatic, no fallout, no shouting—he thinks that that’s how Lucy would’ve liked it to go, maybe, which perhaps makes it worse—simply the fact that, halfway through the year, she stopped showing up. That was during his concert circuit, when he bought this suit, when he was going to New York and London and Chicago, playing in front of faceless crowds, and by the time he was home long enough to realize she’d stopped showing up, it was quite too late to ask. --- Prom night. Schroeder's already missing out on practicing, but the only thing that can make it worse is that Lucy is Charlie Brown's date.

---

Wordcount: ~3.4k

“For heaven’s sake,” Schroeder says, “you look fine, Charlie Brown!”

“Do I really?” he asks, tugging at the collar of his suit. Schroeder reaches over and straightens his tie, runs a hand down the front of the smooth black suit jacket to brush away any remaining motes of dust. His own clothes are perfectly pressed and perfectly straight. Bought the suit a year ago, when he went up to New York to play Beethoven’s fifth, and it still fits just fine. 

Charlie’s, on the other hand, fits like a glove on a four-fingered hand, but if he tells him that, then he’ll just work himself into another tizzy and they’ll never get to the dance. 

The other two in the room, Linus and Franklin, both sitting upon his bed with legs dangling above the ground—both fully dressed and ready half an hour ago, delayed only by the constant changing and tweaking of Charlie’s suit—lean over Schroeder’s shoulder to look. 

Linus is the one to speak. “Yeah. Don’t worry. We need to pick up the girls.” 

“Right,” Schroeder says, giving Charlie an encouraging sort of push—or, it’s supposed to be encouraging, but seems to do nothing but put him off-balance—and walks towards the door. The girls are at Linus’s, the boys at his own house, which is more than a little convoluted—he never did see why they couldn’t simply get ready in the same building—but the girls want to be picked up and to gossip in peace, or whatever it is they’re doing. 

“We’re gonna be late,” Franklin observes idly, on the speedwalk through the living room. Charlie intakes a sharp sort of breath, that that preludes the spilling of many worries, but a simple shoulder-check stifles all that in his chest. 

He doesn’t know why Charlie’s taking it all so seriously, honestly. It’s prom, just prom, pick everyone up and spin around a streamer-sprawled gymnasium for an hour or two, get a strip of photos from some janky old booth, all decked out in feather boas and cartoonish glasses. 

In all honesty, he should be practicing. He has an audition in a week, perhaps the most important of his life, for entrance into a great, glass-domed conservatory up in New York. He knows Beethoven’s Sonata No. 23 as well as he knows himself, keys falling like water under his fingertips, but he can always be better. 

Front door opens, closes with a final click. Out front, there are four cars. His own is a sleek red mustang, low to the ground, freshly-washed. The same color as the toy piano that he used to love. He quashes that niggling annoyance that says I could be doing something else. 

Senior prom. A night with the friends he’s known since he was four. This isn’t productive, but that’s okay. Sacrifices must be made for the sake of entertainment. This is good. 

“We all know the way, right?” Charlie asks, hand half-poised on his own car, which is actually his mom’s white station wagon. Three heads nod in unison. “Okay,” he says, “okay. I look good, right? The suit’s okay?”

“Yes.” 

He swallows. “Alright. Sorry. I just don’t want Lucy to…”

And then, suddenly, it’s not so good anymore. 

—

Schroeder is the first to arrive, but he lingers alone in his car, unwilling to get out until Linus’s blue Road Runner parks rather crookedly against the curb. Only then does he unfurl his legs, unstick himself from the seats. By the time that Linus is out, the other two cars rapidly approach. Down the long line of the sidewalk, the house is a mural of cream and red and green, straight siding and the crispness of new paint. Though the windows are drawn over by curtains, he can make out many shadows moving behind them.

“Do we knock?” Charlie asks, reaching up in an attempt to straighten his tie. He just re-crooks it. Schroeder suppresses a sigh. This is normal behavior for him, always worrying in that endearing way of his. He doesn’t know why it’s putting him so on edge. 

Well, he does know. 

He just doesn’t want to admit it. 

Before any of them can answer that question, the red door swings open, pushed along by Patty, who bounds out without waiting. She’s dressed in a boxy sort of green number that reaches her ankles, belted around the waist by a thick bolt of satin. 

“Heya!” She half-yells. He winces in support of Linus’s neighbors. Not far behind her—as could be expected—is Marcie, in red, a shorter, frillier sort of thing that he would not have placed her in, but which looks surprisingly cohesive. Then, Sally, in pale, blush pink, lace at the shoulders and the hem, small rhinestones sewn into the seams. Frieda, in knee-length purple, hair eschewing traditional straightening to instead continue its free bounce around the corona of her head. No doubt all the girls coordinated so they wouldn’t pick the same color of dress, same style, all different, all unique. 

He almost thinks that that is all, until the final one rounds the corner, pale hand steadying herself upon the doorway. Black hair, drawn back by a navy headband, a blue dress that cuts its way close to her chest and falls, shining sleekly, to trail on the ground, no decoration but for the shine that oscillates across each ripple under the rapid dusk. 

She doesn’t need a name. He can practically taste it anyway, thick and cloying in his mouth. 

Frieda to Franklin, who slides a violet corsage onto her wrist. Sally to Linus, neither of them quite looking at the other as they perform that respective ritual. Lucy walks towards them, and he almost, in some deep, dumb part of his psyche, expects her to keep going to come to him, but the notion shatters as soon as her steps turn fractionally. 

Turn towards Charlie. 

Schroeder helped him pick out her corsage. Thick white rose in the center of the band, surrounded by blue ribbons and dyed flowers. Lucy accepts it with a wry sort of smile, leans forwards to carefully pin a boutonniere to his lapel, some bright azure thing that’s been wrapped in dark velvet. He’s so preoccupied with watching that motion, with trying to push down the sudden queasiness in his stomach, that it takes Patty snapping her fingers in his face to remember that he has one for her too. 

Strangely, not-so-strangely, she doesn’t seem mad. 

“Sorry,” is all she tells him, as he perfunctorily snaps the rose onto her wrist. 

All of them have a match, technically, except for Marcie, but as they climb into the car, he’s fairly sure that he’s the real odd one out. As evidenced by the fact that both girls sit in the backseat together, chattering in quiet tones that he can’t quite distinguish. 

It’s going to be a long night. 

—

All through elementary school, a black-haired girl leaning against his piano, running her fingers carefully over the beveled edges. Middle school, sitting on the ground, back against one of the legs of the grand, telling him that she could feel the vibrations thrumming through her spine when he played especially loud. Smashing his Beethoven bust. Theorizing about married life. A half-hearted attempt to get him to teach her how to play, only for him to end it because he could not get the smell of her perfume out of the piano after two sessions of practice. 

He can’t pinpoint, exactly, when it changed. Freshman year, she still came over, but would sit on the far couch instead of the floor. Less talking, more of her silence, hunched and poring over homework, thumbing through dime novels. Told him that he was like her personal radio. If only they made you portable!

Sophomore year, more of the same. Less visits. Thrice a week to twice, to once. He’d slam down the end of a piece, let the notes echo out in the silence, look towards the living room expecting a radiant audience, and find nothing but the emptiness of pleather couches. 

Who’s he kidding?

It was junior year. 

He has the time to think of all this, of course, because he’s alone at the white-clothed table, nursing a glass of punch and a half-eaten cookie. Marcie and Patty are gone, poring over the food on the other side of the room, sweets and finger sandwiches and plates of withered produce. The others, as far as he can tell, are dancing. He doesn’t look for them. He doesn’t want to see. 

Absently, his fingers tap out a melody on the tablecloth. The only other person here, sitting alone, is Pigpen. He’s on the same level as Pigpen right now. That’s depressing. 

Junior year. There was nothing dramatic, no fallout, no shouting—he thinks that that’s how Lucy would’ve liked it to go, maybe, which perhaps makes it worse—simply the fact that, halfway through the year, she stopped showing up. That was during his concert circuit, when he bought this suit, when he was going to New York and London and Chicago, playing in front of faceless crowds, and by the time he was home long enough to realize she’d stopped showing up, it was quite too late to ask. 

Besides, it didn’t matter that much. The absence was a good thing. Her presence’d always been a nuisance. Always scratching at his piano, distracting him with her voice, her eyes, her…

He screws up his eyes, takes a deep breath, exhales. It’s the routine that he uses to cleanse himself of nerves before big performances, but whatever breed of anxiety is bubbling in his chest right now, it feels like they might be immune. 

Patty and Marcie weave back through the crowd, the former with a plate piled high, the latter holding the drinks. At least he’s not alone, anymore—but the prospect of sitting here and listening to other people talk feels like it might be worse. 

Maybe Patty notices this, because she hesitates, turns towards him and around a mouth full of cupcake, says, “did you wanna dance?”

He didn’t, really, but he would take any lifeline that got him out of sitting here and moping over something that he’s not supposed to grieve in the first place. “Okay,” he says, tries to push a bit more enthusiasm into it with a followup, “yeah.”

“Be back in a minute,” she tells Marcie, who nods dutifully. 

“Okay, sir.”

“Don’t call me sir,” she snaps back, feigning irritation, but the thread of fondness, of an inside joke, is unmistakable below that, and it makes his heart do another uncomfortable twist. He should get that checked out. He never should have come.

They walk onto the floor. Shove is a more appropriate word, bully through the crowd, mostly Patty elbowing other dancers until they’ve cleared out an approximate space. His hand about her waist, hers slung over her shoulders, and he knows that both of them are profoundly uncomfortable. 

When the decision to go to prom as a group was made, it was halfway clear-cut. Linus and Sally, Franklin and Frieda. Would’ve been simpler if Patty still liked Charlie, but she’d gotten over that years ago, and in any case, it was Lucy who cleared the problem up before it became a stalemate. 

Meaning, of course, she asked Charlie. 

His stomach flops once. Maybe there was something bad in the punch. 

The song, some sort of peppy pop piece of the genre that he’s never bothered to do more than skim, ends. When the first notes of something slow begin to unfurl in the air, he meets eyes with Patty, and by mutual agreement, they let go of each other immediately. 

“I should get back to Marcie,” she rushes out, and without further ado, turns to begin hitting her way back to the edge of the crowd. It closes back in around him almost as quickly, and he turns, suddenly disoriented. Tries to shove weakly at the back of someone before him, but they do not budge whatsoever, turns to find a gap, and then-

And then, there is a glimpse of blue. 

His eyes snag on it, and he takes an instinctual step towards the scrap as it vanishes around another clump of people. Weave around, follow the path it leaves. A bit of satin blue here, a flash of black hair there, until he finally breaks into the refreshment of cool air near the back of the gymnasium. 

And, before him, one of the back doors snaps closed. 

Whatever—whoever—he was chasing is outside. He half-turns, looks behind at the thinner crowd, many couples swaying back and forth under dim purple lights, until he finally makes out first the rumpled back of a wrinkled suit. Traces that to Charlie’s face, to the girl he’s holding.

Red hair. 

Oh. 

With a deep breath, he pushes the door open, and steps into the night. 

—

She sits upon the back stairs of the school, head nestled in her knees, shoes discarded like some modern Cinderella. Her skirt is hiked up, clenched in her left hand, and seems to be being used quite improperly as a tissue. He hesitates on the lip of the stairs. 

There’s still time to leave. 

To go back to the silence of the house, to the silence that’s accompanied him for a year, no girl chattering at his side, no commentary as he played, no applause when he stands and bows theatrically. 

He can’t do that. 

And, what self-respecting gentleman would leave a girl crying?

Slowly, he lowers himself onto the step, wincing as he practically feels the suit wrinkle. Don’t scuff, he needs that for next week, for the audition. 

“Lucy?” He asks. 

“Go away!” She snaps immediately, “I don’t need this right now!”

“What happened?” He asks, like he doesn’t already know. She’s silent for a long moment, but just as he begins to scoot away in fear of an impending explosion, her head turns fractionally to reveal half her face. Her eyes are red, makeup smeared, brow furrowed in a frown. 

“Do you care?”

“You’re crying.”

She lets out a husky laugh. “Don’t rub it in. Some ginger chick asked Charlie to dance. He said yes. That’s it.”

“I’m sorry,” he says. Again, there’s that peculiar feeling in his stomach, anger at Charlie, anger at himself. He wouldn’t have done that. Why does she care about someone who would?

“I don’t even care,” she spits, head rising fully, revealing the other half of her face and scrubbing one final time at her eyes, “he’s too wishy-washy! I didn’t even like him!”

A flicker of something that feels almost like hope. “Why’d you ask him, then?”

She cuts an askance look at him, mouth tightening. “Who else was I gonna ask, huh?”

Point taken. He looks down at his shoes, unsure of how to answer. 

She continues after a moment, floodgates fully opened. “I know he’s been in love with that girl. Good for him! I’m just tired of… of always being second. When is it my turn to be the first choice? When will someone pick me?”

“I never…” he starts. Before the first word even fully falls to the ground, he knows that it’s the wrong thing to say. Lucy’s head whips towards him, eyes narrowing. Before any sort of tongue-lashing comes, however, her face falls almost as quickly. 

“Yes, you did. You chose your stupid piano.”

“The- the piano?” he splutters, taken utterly back, “how did I choose-”

“You can’t date,” she lists, “because you want to be like Beethoven, a bachelor. You can’t go out, because you’re practicing. You can’t talk to me, because you have a competition in a week! I go to your house, and the door is locked and- and your parents tell me you’re playing in another country and you didn’t even, didn’t even tell me!” 

The last words come with a fresh spring of tears. He grabs at his suit, pulling out the handkerchief from within the pocket. Tries to proffer it to her, but she ignores it, instead choosing to swipe her dress over her eyes once again. 

“...I’m sorry,” he offers after a moment. Again, there is no response. 

“I didn’t even get to dance,” she says, voice muffled by the fabric, “a real dance. That’s all I wanted tonight. Augh!” Sharply, she yanks the headband out of her hair and chucks it into the ground. It bounces, rolls once, and lands—rather unsatisfyingly—at the bottom of the stairs. 

“Do you want to leave?” He asks. 

“I have to wait for that blockhead to finish.”

“I’ll take you,” he replies, and again, her head bobs up. When she considers him this time, it’s with the cunning that’s now rising to the forefront of her gaze, rising up over all that anger and distraught-ness. 

“Will Patty and Marcie..?”

“They’ll be fine,” he replies, standing, holding out a hand to help her rise as well. Her gaze flits towards the hand, then to his face, then to his hand again. 

Slowly, she smiles. “What a gentleman.”

Taking it securely in hers, she rises.

—

“This is your house,” Lucy points out, as he pulls into a stop. He nods. 

“Come on.”

After a brief hesitation, she follows him out of the car, down the walkway and into the front room. Inside, it is vast and dark and empty, and he fumbles for a minute on the walls until a flick of the switch allows light to flood in once again. 

“I haven’t been here in ages,” she observes, stepping in. He doesn’t respond instead crossing over to the piano at the side of the room, sliding open the lid and sitting down upon the seat. 

“You wanted to dance?” He asks. She nods warily. 

Slowly, he begins Beethoven’s German Dance. It’s been a long, long time since he played it last, but it’s simple, stumbling over the three flats, ¾ meter, and when he half turns, expecting to see her moving, she is-

Entirely still. 

Slowly, he peters out. Her mouth is downturned. 

“See,” she snaps, “this is what I’m talking about. You and your piano! You play this, and what am I supposed to do? Dance alone?”

He hesitates. In quick, large strides, she reaches him, grabs his upper arm and yanks him up. 

“If I’m gonna dance,” she says, placing his hand upon her waist. He brings his other one up before she has to prompt it, and she locks her arms behind his neck. 

“There’s no music.”

“Does it matter?”

“No,” he says eventually, “I guess not.”

It’s slow at first, uncertain, no beat or rhythm, but she’s certain enough that he can catch on easily. Step this way, step that, follow the tug of her body and the push of her hips, let her take charge. She closes her eyes. Rests her head, after a moment, against his chest. Makeup is still streaking down her cheeks, and her hair is tangled from the headband extraction, and she is beautiful, just as beautiful as she’s always been. 

The end of the dance has none of the awkwardness of the beginning. They come to a stop by slow, mutual agreement, feet scuffing against the hardwood in smaller and smaller arcs, until she finally looks up, hands loosening a fraction around his neck. 

“What took you so long?”

“I don’t know.” It’s the truth. 

She snorts. “You’re an idiot, Schroeder.”

“Maybe,” he replies. She tilts her head, just a fraction, lips quirking up in the beginnings of a smirk, and he cannot take it anymore, this feeling that’s been slowly bubbling up for over a decade, finally boiling, finally bursting over the edges, and he leans down, presses his lips to hers. She reciprocates immediately, tightening her grip once again, pulling him down. 

When they break, this time, it’s for good, hands falling to their sides. He’s not quite sure what to do with them—usually, he’s so sure, but now, they’re clammy and feel too large too conspicuous. 

“...I should get you home,” he says eventually. She nods slowly. 

“Yeah. What a night.”

What a night. 

—

Her house is different at night, all muted colors, hardly discernible other than as differing shades of black. Linus is home already, as evidenced by the car in the driveway. 

“Lucy,” he says, as she places a hand upon the door handle, “come by tomorrow?”

“What?” She asks. 

“Tomorrow,” he repeats, “I have an audition next week and I think I do… I practice better when you’re there.”

She breaks into a grin. “I knew you liked it. Yeah, Schroeder. I’ll be there.” 

He watches as she cracks the door open and leaves, vanishing in that small interval between the car and the porchlight, and this night wasn’t a waste, after all.

[dastardly-imbecile]

Thalassophilia

Used to be, you would put your chin on his shoulder and watch him work, whispering ideas in his ears when you wanted to be helpful, whispering other things when you were in the mood for distraction. Galatea carved in statuesque marble, naked and tangled in his sheets, coyly asking him if you were inspiring him.

Now, now you are Aphrodite wreathed in seafoam, beautiful in raw, brutal edges, nestled within the mouth of a clamshell.

---

Elliott loves you, dead at sea. Elliott loves you, somehow still alive. OR an elaborate excuse to make elliott a monsterfucker

---

Wordcount: ~6k

The ocean is poetry. Elliott’s always liked it, ever since he was young, hunched in his father’s wood-paneled office and flipping through old books. Running his fingers over those grainy images, trying to replicate the cool caress of those foam-capped waves, the frailty of life all bundled up in the crash of the surf. It’s why, when he finally set off in pursuit of this authorial lifestyle, he settled beside the sea. It’s worth the grains of sand constantly in his bamboo sheets, it’s worth the crabs that hide in his shoes, it’s worth the constant fight against lichen and mold and moss. 

There is no better feeling than to sit upon the dock as the sun crawls over the horizon, painting the sky in gauzy nectarines and pale creams, sea kissing the undersides of his bare feet. 

Well, it would be a better feeling to be able to share such nirvana with someone else, but as that’s not an option, solitude still has its own kind of beauty. 

Today, like every day, he makes his way down those rickety wooden slats, past Willy’s old shop, now quiet and dark and boarded-up, a great beast stripped down to its skeleton. He wonders if your farm looks the same way, all torn and unkempt, chipping away at the edges. He wouldn’t know. Hasn’t been back to check. 

Leah’s left a bottle of wine on his doorstep, propped up against a paper-wrapped baguette and a small coin of soft cheese. It’s her bohemian version of a mourning casserole, and he leaves them on his porch for now, continuing along in his trek down the beach. 

There, washed up upon the shore, is a plank of driftwood, and his eyes snag on the peculiarity. Most likely, it’s random, something blown into the sea by heavy winds and spat out later, but he can’t quash that niggling bit of curiosity. 

Boy’s a wanderlust, Father’d said, long ago when he was a gangly boy of sixteen and trying to write instead of participate in his class’s mandate of business and economics, no room for the artistry in such high echelons. He hadn’t meant it as a compliment, but Elliott’s taken it as one, repurposed it as one makes feathers into dreamcatchers and seaglass into necklaces, made it something entirely his own. It’s that curiosity that drives him to kneel, using a delicate hand to turn it over. 

The bottom half of the thing is encrusted with barnacles, pulsing softly, exposing their soft inner hearts to the air with each shellbeat. Above that, though, in algae-grown letters, faded gold, it reads Man O’ War. He drops the board like it’s burnt him. 

He remembers Willy on a Thursday night at the saloon, so many months ago, “an’ she fixed it right up! Just like that! My Man O’ War, in sailing shape once again!” 

So it was no coincidence after all. Figures. 

It never is. 

After a long, steadying breath, he picks the plank up again, tucking it under his arm, turns away from the croon of the ocean and towards town proper. 

Lewis is tending to his gardens when Elliot reaches him. He doesn’t announce his presence, simply stands there until the man cottons on—and then, there is a muffled yelp as Lewis stands to find him looming over him. 

“Oh! Elliott!” His eyes drop from his face down to the boat under his arm, and just like that, any pretense of cheer melts away, dripping from the last bristles of his mustache. 

“It washed up this morning,” he says in explanation, drawing it out from under his arm and presenting it to Lewis. It’s soaked his jacket, but he doesn’t particularly mind. These days, he’s not the most well-kept sort of man in any case. All those fancy suits that he’d pilfered from his father falling to tatters, hair tangled and matted in the underareas, dark circles below his eyes, salt crusted in the strangest places, like he himself is being slowly subsumed by the sea. 

Man O’ War, Lewis mouths, a stricken expression falling upon his face, so stark that it’s almost amusing. He stares at it for a long moment, before looking back up at Elliott, then down again. “What do you… ah, what should we do with it?”

“Willy would’ve liked,” he says after a long moment, “To be buried with it, I think. He loved that ship like a wife.”

There’s some thread of morbid humor to be found in that, in the irony, but Elliott can’t bear to find it. 

“Of course,” Lewis assures, “yes, he- I do believe he would have, yes. I’ll… I’ll handle it.”

“Can I come?” Elliott asks. He feels like a little boy, asking, he feels like he is back in Father’s manor, watching him bustle about and unsure how to recapture his attention, he feels like he is unmoored and drifting in that great blue eye they call the ocean. 

“Of course, of course,” Lewis assures, placing a warm, paternal hand upon his shoulder. 

—

It’s up in the mountains, past the railroad, where the dirt roads fade into tall grasses and thin, reedy trees. Far from the town’s own graveyard, down in the center of the plaza, which is a nice place all in its own right—all shaded by tall, graceful oaks, well-trimmed lawn tufting up around many polished stones—but you’d have liked it better here, both of you, he thinks. It’s here that they bury adventurers, that they bury those who died in the mines or the caverns, fighting monsters, defending the sanctity of Pelican Town. 

Though you’d died doing neither, when Lewis’d asked Marlon for permission, the old man nodded solemnly, of course, she was the bravest of us all. And Willy too, for good measure, because he’d shared drinks with the guildmembers at the saloon, and easy enough to spun a tale portraying him as the valiant captain in the midst of some goliath storm. Both of you heroes, both of you dead.  

Marlon’s there when they enter, standing over some ancient looking slab, sword pressed into the ground. He does not even open his eyes as they swish through the path. Best not to disturb his grief. 

Your grave is in a prime spot under the tallest of the trees, like some ancient king slumbering in his enchanted grove. Willy’s is further back, tucked into the crook of the mountain, where Lewis leads. Headstone carved to look somewhat like a mermaid’s figurehead—the combination of Robin and Leah’s best work; he remembers long nights watching the two of them slowly chip away at a massive block of stone—and now, he stands upon the earth, grass ticking his knees through the holes in his pants, wonders if the man dreams of krakens, down in his real grave, deep under the surface of the waves. 

“Burial is hard,” Lewis says after a moment, “but we can- we can erect it here, like a marker, see?” He maneuvers the plank of wood down onto the ground, pushes it slightly into the loamy earth, looks up at Elliott for approval. He nods blankly. “Good,” Lewis says, and then repeats, “good. This… he would’ve liked this.”

“Yes,” Elliott replies simply. Lewis cuts a glance at him from under the brim of his eyelids, shifty, gauging something. 

“The Dance of the Moonlight Jellies is coming up,” he says after a moment, “I hate to spring this on you, Elliott, but… if we should cancel it this year like we did the last, then it’s no imposition, really, I just should inform the-”

“No,” he cuts him off, “no, it’s quite alright. We can host the Dance.”

“Are you sure? I know it’s… it’s quite close to the anniversary, and if-”

“Mother Nature will happen either way,” Elliott replies, “there’s no use in staunching it. Perhaps it will help the mood.”

Lewis nods rapidly, swallowing. “Good idea, yes. I’ll… I’ll begin preparations immediately.”

“I cannot wait,” he replies, using the most emotion that he has at all thus far in this conversation, and truly, he means it. 

—

They’d canceled the Dance, yes, though that was before they’d known you were both gone. After departure to Ginger Island the day before, a kiss upon his cheek and the promise of a return, and then a storm, winds beating against the glass of his cottage, clouds burled overhead. The day of the festival itself, there was the search, setting out upon small sailboats, until chunks of wood began to wash back up upon Pelican Town shores. They’ve kept coming in the months since—half a steering wheel here, a few smoothened shards of glass there, and now, the nameplate. 

Soon, the Gem Sea will run out of pieces of ship to regurgitate onto the beach, and then it will have to start with pieces of body, and he dreads and anticipates that day in equal measure. Grotesque. Morbid. Seems that’s the only way his mind turns these days, though. 

It’s seeped into his writing. He cannot unravel sci-fi epics anymore, cannot slowly turn his way through delicate romances and sprawling fantasy worlds. All he churns out are tales of the macabre, of great monsters in the froth, of waves that stretch high as the heavens and low as the hells. They don’t sell. His editor doesn’t particularly like reading the fifth story that ends in, and then, the sea took them all. 

When he’d complained of this to Leah, she’d frowned, worrying over her bottom lip, and then tried to introduce him to wood carving—said maybe a different avenue of creativity could unclog whatever pipes were malfunctioning. He’d started to, on instinct, make a crude sort of kraken, and she’d taken the knife away from him. 

They’re not malfunctioning, is the truth. They are working exactly as intended: pumping out a thousand gallons of saline, churning the wheels of some great, rotating machine in the depths of his mind. 

Tonight, he hunches over his desk, and writes the only other thing that he can write: a letter. In a hurried script, leaving small, messy drips of ink all over the crumpled parchment. Doesn’t matter. The words have their substance and that is all he needs. 

I love you, he says, and then scratches that out, I still love you, marks it again, I will always love you, before moving onto the next. An exercise in revision, in making it perfect. He’s sent you dozens—twice a week—and this time, he mentions the boat’s nameplate, Lewis’s question about the jellies. It always was your favorite holiday. You’d told him, that day you left, that you hoped you’d make it back in time to watch. 

Carefully, he rolls it up, slots it delicately into a colored glass bottle. One of Leah’s old winebottles, in fact, from her weekly deliveries. He doesn’t drink them—instead, pours them straight into the ocean, another form of tribute. The letters are for you; the wine is for Willy. Always did love a good drink, that man. 

Then, he pads out into the surf, bare feet digging into the sand, and pushes the bottle into the waves. The sea takes it eagerly. Of course. Greedy, always greedy, always wanting. 

Though it’s spit out many other things, it’s never given back one of his bottles. He likes to imagine that’s because you’re keeping them. Tucked into the hollow of your ribcage, ensconced in bony arms, wherever you are. 

—

If he were a sappy man, he would call it love at first sight, and because he is a sappy man, that’s exactly the label that he slaps upon it. You, on your first foray into the beach, picking up a mussel and turning it about in his hands—and him, emerging from his cabin after a six-hour writing marathon. Eyes meeting, hearts sparking, falling into each other’s arms as naturally as the flower blooms. The real story is of course longer and not so much a fairytale, but at this point, his own version has become so naturalised that it is all he thinks of. 

He tries to write it down, sitting at his desk, with a ragged duck’s feather that you gave him many months ago. It starts strong, but sputters out by the time he reaches the final act. All there is left to say is that the ocean takes, and that is that. 

—-

One week until the Dance. Six days until the anniversary. He goes up to your farm for the first time since those early days in which you didn’t come back. Brings a small notepad and another quill, just in case it finally sparks some sort of inspiration, if the ghost of his muse rises from the dead. Used to be, you would put your chin on his shoulder and watch him work, whispering ideas in his ears when you wanted to be helpful, whispering other things when you were in the mood for distraction. Galatea carved in statuesque marble, naked and tangled in his sheets, coyly asking him if you were inspiring him. 

Now, now you are Aphrodite wreathed in seafoam, beautiful in raw, brutal edges, nestled within the mouth of a clamshell. 

The farm is abandoned, of course. Marnie took the animals, folded them back into her Ranch, Demetrius cleared out the cave, Lewis came by and uprooted each one of the crops once they began rotting in the earth. All a necessity, of course, but it felt a bit like many small parasitic beings consuming the remnants of some gargantuan corpse. Now, all that’s left is the overgrown grass amongst the old husks of barns and coops, the scarecrows crucified above brambly fields. 

Elliott tries to pick his way through the undergrowth, but the burrs begin to snag at his pants, and he can bear no more, so he retreats to the collapsing porch.

He’s never been quite the outdoorsy type of man, which only inspires more questions about why, exactly, he chose to live in possibly the most rudimentary part of the valley, but this is a different breed of unpleasant. Reminds him of when Leah tried to take him camping, and he could not bear his hair getting tangled in the branches, the hardness of the rocky ground beneath his back. You were so good, out here. It must be different in the sea. 

It’s the silence that chases him away, more than anything. No crashing waves. No breeze. Unsettling. 

On the way back into town, he sees the bustle of the saloon, many people slipping in and out, and thinks, why the hell not?

The first step inside, however, proves to be a mistake. He’s suddenly acutely aware of his appearance, of the fact that this has been his first time reappearing in town proper in a year—he has not attended a single one of the preceding festivals. Spent the most recent, the Luau, holed up in his cabin, blankets over his head, trying to block out the sound of forced laughter. 

“Elliot!” Gus exclaims, eyebrows making a valiant effort to reach his hairline, “it’s been a while. What do you want?”

He blinks. Can’t remember what he used to order, what his usual was. He still remembers yours—ocean sunrise, some obscenely fruity drink, bright gradient of yellow foam to deep indigo syrup pooling at the bottom of the glass, thick enough to coat the mouth and strong enough to linger. He used to tell you that things as brightly-colored as that are, by natural law, never meant to be consumed, and you’d asked, then why does it taste so good?

“Ocean sunrise,” he says. To his credit, Gus does not let even a tick of his facial expression belay any concern—instead, he turns straight to pouring and measuring out small quantities of bottled liquid. 

Elliott moves to Leah’s table, who’s been sitting there, watching him all this time. She has a nervous hand running down her braid, but that’s the only indication that she is not entirely relaxed. 

“Not a wine?” she asks. Right. That was his old poison of choice. 

“No,” he replies, “feeling… ah, nostalgic.”

She nods as if that was a profound statement. “You got my delivery?”

“Yes.” He manages to shoot her a shallow smile. “Thank you, by the way. I never do express my gratitude enough. You are… you are a good friend.”

“Anything,” she vows, moving the hand from her braid to her heart. Emily stops by their table with the violently colorful drink in hand, shoots him a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes, before whisking off to another table. He picks it up, takes a sip. 

The lighter, orange-yellow layers taste of pineapple and tropical fruits, Ginger Island. It deepens as the bottom begins to mix in; that thick, heady indigo syrup, and by the time he reaches the bottom, it is entirely bitter, thick and sharp and acidic. This is what storms must taste like, he thinks, lightning sparking on his tongue, bright ozone filling his lungs. This is what your final moments must have tasted like. A final lick of the salt around the rim, a gulp of seawater, and it’s an altogether full experience. 

He almost calls his compliments to Gus, good on distilling death at sea into a drink, but then it occurs to him that that probably wasn’t the man’s intention. 

“Written anything lately?” Leah asks, around a bite of her salad. He tilts his head, thinking. 

“Lots of horror. Not so much else.”

“Oh?” She perks up. “I like horror. It’s been too long since you’ve let me read one of your manuscripts.”

“They’re in the ocean,” he says, “but it’s hard, capturing what it feels like to die. When the ship begins to crack. I’ve never experienced it, obviously. If only I could ask…”

“Okay,” Leah says, voice dropping a few notes, “okay, Elliott, no more of that. Please.”

He flushes faintly. “My apologies. It is simply… inspiration is a fickle thing.”

“Really is,” she replies, but the tenuous sort of mood has snapped in half. He leaves not much later, passing his empty cup to Gus, taking the well-wishes of the others with a simple nod of his head. Back down to the beach, back to the waves that tear at the sand. 

Sometimes—and these are the thoughts that he voices to nobody—he wonders if you are truly dead, if you are not somehow alive. Not in the fanciful, swam your way back to dry land sort of way, but instead, it’s some amalgamation of mermaid stories, of life breathed into you, of becoming one with the sea. Harvey tells him that this is normal—I’m not technically a psychiatrist, but from what I know…—but he feels so certain, some days, that it threatens to burst through his chest. 

The only festival he’s attended this past year is the Night Market in winter. Not to peruse those exotic wares, even to take part in the free coffee. No—he made a straight beeline for the mermaid’s caravan, stepping into that thin wooden boat, shells hanging from the walls. 

He did not even wait for her, the frontwoman, skin bright and soft as white taffeta, shimmering with a faint iridescence, to begin her song. Instead, he asked, “in the sea, how do you… become a mermaid?”

She turned to her sisters or companions or whoever they were, behind her, and they all chittered for a moment in a curt language that he had no frame of reference for. Not even in all his childhood study of such languages, Ferngillian and Gotoron and all those different tongues, had he encountered something like that. 

Eventually, she turned back, said, “No, we are birthed.”

He saw that, after a moment. Eyes a touch too white, skin faintly translucent, many odd, small details that hinted at inhumanity. Only a pale imitation—or maybe humanity was a pale imitation of them—but there’s no alley of transformation there. Of course, then, he had to ask, “then, is there any way to… to evolve enough to survive the sea?”

Another round of chittering. This one sounded distinctly like laughter. 

“No,” she replied, when she finally turned back, “no, landfolk, no.”

All that to say that both alleyways of comprehension—that of Harvey’s scientific method, and the magick of the merfolk—have refuted his hypothesis, and he’s just a fool, a lovestruck idiot who has not yet moved past the first stage of grief. 

Your first kiss was upon a boat. Leah chewed him out, later, gave him a long lecture upon the implications of taking a single woman onto the water and kissing her but you’d been quite receptive at the time. Maybe that’s why it’s so hard to move on. 

When he remembers you, he remembers the seafleck salt upon your lips, remembers the damp hems of his pants and the brine in the air. You are the sea and the sea is you, undeniably intertwined, and all this was just both parts of you reconjoining at once. 

—

Willy’s birthday, 24th of Summer, comes, passes. He’s sitting on the docks, alternating between taking light sips from Leah’s most recent bottle and pouring shots out into the sea, when Linus suddenly sits himself down beside him. Next to Linus, Clint, and finally Marlon on the far side. 

“Are we interrupting?” Linus asks. Elliott shakes his head. Behind them, Willy’s shop looms, dark-windowed, beast with eyes hidden behind their lids. 

“He was a good man,” Marlon says after a moment, “took us across the sea more than once. Would’ve liked to die on the water, if you pardon me saying.”

Clint hums in agreement. “Told me to just… y’know, roll him into the surf when he keeled over. Uh, I always thought he was crazy, but…”

“And she,” Marlon adds, referring to you, “brave ‘un too. If a storm was somethin’ you could fight, she’d’ve come back no worse for wear.”

Dawn is upon them before they’re even done swapping stories, the bottle empty, all those many drops poured for Willy to drink, eventually, wherever he is. They stumble back to their respective homes, but Elliott remains on the dock. The air is charged not only from the weight of a thousand recollections, but something else, something bright and salty and there are only a few days left, now, only a few days left. 

—

A storm. Promised by the newfound height of the waves, grasping at the lip of the dock, by the pebbled clouds overhead. Elliott sits within his cabin, listening to the wind do its damn best to try and uproot the thing, and draws a monster upon the table. Today, tonight by technicality, is the anniversary, and there is none of that crushing weight he’d expected, no grief that bows his back down like a sapling. 

Leah makes it to his cabin by mid-day, when the winds are just beginning to pick up. “Hey,” she tells him, when he opens the door, “I think your house might blow down. Do you want to come back to my place?”

“No,” he replies, looking not at her but instead over her shoulders, at the ocean beyond. “No.”

“If you’re sure,” she says doubtfully. Gives him a hesitant pat on the shoulder, “just don’t blow away, ‘kay? I’ll miss you.”

“I’ll try my best.”

She leaves after only one more reproachful look over her shoulder, braid whipping about in the breeze. For lack of anything better to do, he sits himself down in front of a small mirror, and begins to work back through his hair. If he closes his eyes… well, if he closes his eyes, then it’s nowhere near the sensation of your fingers working through his hair, primarily because he needs to positively yank to untangle some of these knots, but it reminds him of that feeling, anyways. 

Often, it was the prelude to things. Him, sprawled out in bed, head upon your lap, while you worked your fingers through his scalp, scratching lightly enough to make his back arch in search of more. Then, of course, inevitably, it would turn to kissing, to the warmth of your tongue and the press of his body upon yours, hands still entangled in his hair. To him within you, suit discarded somewhere upon the floor, skin to skin in all the closest of ways. 

Outside, thunder cracks, and lightning flashes like the whip of some storm god overhead. He runs his fingers through his hair one final time, moving to the window. The waves are dark and obsidian, an infinite tar pit with many primeval beasts rotting within, mesozoic creatures under the coruscant sun, and there is something, there is a shape beneath the waves. 

He presses a palm to the window. Watches. 

It rises like a buried God, head breaking the surface, then body, torso and hips and legs until it is shedding the last of the sea, still walking steadily across the beach. 

It looks at him. 

You look at him, and he knows. 

Elliott rushes to the door and flings it open, allowing the wind to bunch and unfurl into the house, send his papers scattering, but none of that matters because it is you, you the same and different all at once. Hair plastered to your cheeks and your neck, naked, dripping. As you draw closer, more details make themselves clear, more strangeness. Your left eye is entirely gone, nothing but a gaping hole, and the skin of your right cheek has been superseded by the iridescence of scales—indeed, they run down your arms too, coil around your legs. Some of your skin is rocky, barnacled, made up of nothing but gray crag, but you are too close to turn back, and he would not turn back either way. 

Only when you are right before him do you pause. Part of your upper lip has been torn away by a predator in the depths, and the teeth it reveals are jagged, barbed. 

“You’re back,” he says. You fall forwards, into his arms, bracing yourself only once he has stumbled back under the brunt of your weight. A long moment is dedicated simply to holding you, to breathing in the briny scent of your skin, running his fingers down the slickness of the scales that line your skin. 

And then, you look up at him, singular remaining eye wide. He notices that there are small threads of gossamer substance entangled throughout your hair, and, when he looks closer, they have eyes too, many small pinpricks looking back at him. 

“Where have you been?” He asks. You tilt your head a fraction of a fraction, almost imperceptible, open your mouth to reveal those long, sharp teeth, and beyond them, a tongue that is black as coal, blending into the darkness that falls upon the back of your throat. Close it with a snap. He reaches out, uses a light finger to trace that ragged bit of flesh where your face was torn apart and you duck instinctively, shy. 

“No,” he says, “no, no,” reaching a hand beneath your chin to tilt your face back up, “you’re beautiful. Still. Did you get my letter? I’ll always love you.”

You do not blink. The pupil of that eye is slitted now, like a snake’s, a goat’s, and he could not care less. He runs his hands down your side, over the rocky bits that stick out from your waist, ducks his head so his forehead can settle against yours. 

“So much has changed,” he whispers, “I can’t write without you, you know. You’re my muse. I miss you terribly, every second, every day.”

Your hands, clawed, tighten around his side. He dips a bit lower, lips to yours, waits a fraction of a second to see if you’ll draw away—if you’re different now, if you are nothing but unfeeling sea—but no, your grip tightens once again, grabbing handfuls of his suit jacket, and you lean up. When your tongues meet, it is a bit of a shock, slippery with some bitter sort of mucous. Reminds him of Gus’s drink. Reminds him of death at sea. Reminds him that, no matter what, he still has you here and relatively whole before him, so none of that matters, and he takes it in stride, deepening the kiss. 

He cuts himself on your teeth, he’s pretty sure, because the taste of copper fills both your mouths, but that is of little matter and little consequence, simply another flavor to this kiss. Se maneuvers you slowly to the bed, wetting his sheets, tracking sand in, and has he not already established that none of this matters?

Slowly, you pull him down, dipping until your back lays flat upon the sheets, hand wandering to run up and down his back in an almost wondrous way. Maybe you are just as surprised to see him as he is for you. Maybe both of you have been lost in equal ways, land and sea, forever separated by that line in the sand. As the shock of initial embrace wears off, there comes the new realization that you are in fact naked, and you are pulling him towards you. He draws back for only a second to shuck off his suit and, with fumbling fingers, unbutton the seam of his pants, kicking them off. The area around your mouth is stained with red and black and still slick with seawater. It is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen. 

Soon, he’s unclothed as well, and hardly a moment is wasted in pulling him back. Though you are not entirely flesh anymore, the parts he is interested in are all seemingly intact. Not that he’d mind if they weren’t. He’s determined enough to find a way. He starts with first a hand, but you make a quick movement, angling your chin towards him, and so he withdraws that and thrusts in fully instead, into the smoothness of your warmth. His hand, he moves back up to your chest, rubbing in slowly-expanding circles. When he reaches the patch of scales beneath your armpit, you huff out a quiet breath, and then, as he begins to scratch along their seams, you begin to writhe, so he lingers. 

“I’ve missed you,” he whispers, and he’s said this already, but you are not here to stay, he knows. Just a slip of seafoam in the breeze, the briefness of a late-summer storm, “it’s why I stay, so I can be-” you clench, and he loses track of his words for a brief moment—“-be here, with the sea, with you. I wade, sometimes, and pretend that it is an embrace.”

Overtly wordy confession of love when you are saying nothing at all, but the tail end of his words coincides with you tensing beneath him, so perhaps it had an effect after all. He tips over the edge in unison, both of you free-falling, and you bite into his neck with those sharp teeth, hard enough that blood immediately wells up and stains the sheet. Another dimension of pleasure, in such an adrenaline-hazed state, the spike of salt at the end of a long drink. 

Coming down is an exercise in drowsiness and the slow return of pain, both in his tongue and upon his neck, both lacerated by your teeth. His hair is matted in sweat and seawater and blood, spread out across the sheets, and you take to combing through it. When your newfound claws scratch against his scalp, it makes him shiver in something approaching rapture. Eventually, though, he cannot even stand that, too far from you, and instead turns to press his face into your chest. 

He is crying, he realizes belatedly. You run a single finger down from the crown of his head to the nape of his spine, and there it lingers. 

“How can I do it?” He murmurs into your chest, breath hot against your skin, “I cannot write without you, I cannot… cannot live. I wish to throw myself from the cliffs, some days. Would we be together, then?”

Your chin scrapes across his head in a negation. Whatever you did, whatever happened to allow you survival, he supposes it’s something he—boy born with an iridium spoon in his mouth, whose half-formed childhood idea of rebellion was to run off and become a hermit—would never be able to stand. 

“How, then?” He asks. You rest your head upon his with a heavy weight, a heavy finality, and he knows you have no good answer. He rises after a long moment, an idea striking him—leans over, skin unsticking from yours, to grab a quill and one of the many papers scattered across the room. “Can you-”

You cut him off with a shake of your head, a shrug. Whether that means that you physically cannot write, do not know how to write, or any number of possibilities between those, he’s unsure, but he deflates almost as quickly. Seeing his sudden disappointment, you hesitate, before pointing towards the letter, towards the sea. 

“I should continue sending?” He asks. You nod, a small, controlled motion. “I will,” he vows immediately, “Every day, a poem, a sonnet, for you, for the sea. My… my muse, my love, my glimmering waters,” and the last bits of that devolve into nonsense as he once again buries his head against you, laps the salt from your skin. 

Sleep comes with the swiftness of a storm. The last thing he recalls is saline, a sharp hand circling the top of his head. 

—

The bed is cold when he wakes. He reaches, instinctively, for you, but his hands hit nothing but damp blankets. 

When he finally pushes himself into a sitting position, he sees many wet puddle-footsteps leading to the open door, already soaking into the hardwood floor. 

Outside, there is no difference. The sea is placid. Unfeeling. 

He smiles anyways. 

Returns into his cabin and pens with a fervor—a poem, firstly, long enough that it stretches across the length of the paper, and then a letter on the other side, rolls it up and sends it into the sea. Finishes it with his signature, and then, under that, love you always. 

—

One last thing. 

The Dance of the Moonlight Jellies comes with the last bits of dusk. More muted than usual, of course, townsfolk picking their way through the detritus of the beach, and Elliott is already upon the docks. 

Lewis sends off the lantern without much ado, no ceremony or great speech, and the jellies appear as pinpricks upon the horizon that undulate, pulsing with their own internal rhythm. 

But in the water off to the side of the dock, he notices something. Believes it to be a jelly, at first, but no, it’s glassy and hard and, when he reaches down to grab it, he finds that it is a bottle. One of Leah’s old ones, filled with silted seawater and a scrap of paper. 

He opens it carefully, heart staccato in his chest. Out comes flooding the water over his hand, and along with it, the delicate scrap. He unfolds it as slowly as his eager hands are able, cautious not to rip it. 

It’s one of his own letters. Can’t remember when he wrote it, what it was about, but there is clearly a bit of text available, framed by the ragged edges. 

In familiar black script, it reads, until next year. 

He watches the jellyfish slowly approach below, lit by some internal glow, and thinks that it cannot come soon enough.

[dastardly-imbecile]

Ad Infinitum

He should ask you. Ask you what this is, what he feels, ask you what you did to him—because it has to be you, it all traces back to you—and how to fix it. But if he does that, maybe you will deny. Or, worse, you will confirm, and you will patch him up, and then he will forget you once again. Because that’s what happened before: he’s sure of it, some reiteration of this cycle, falling down, rising up, just as his life has always been, some microcosm of the destiny of Shane, star Gridball player to alcoholic to whatever this is. --- Shane knows you. Yet, he can't remember you. You've done this all before, haven't you? OR You wipe Shane's memory and then romance him again and he's sad and confused.

---

Wordcount: ~8.7k

Shane meets you at the saloon on a rainy Wednesday night, early spring, him alone in a near-empty room. The usual suspects are there, of course, Gus and Emily and Pam, but everyone is ensconced in their own bubble of silence, nothing but the low croon of the jukebox and the occasional crack of thunder to break it. He nurses a glass of Joja Cola, half-empty, half-full. 

So when the door opens, it’s a shock—all eyes in the room turn to it, turn to the sopping figure standing under the doorway. Emily swings away from the shelves, rushing to the counter, face lighting up, and Gus asks something about a hot meal, and Pam is silent because she probably lost cognitive ability two drinks ago—a feeling not unrecognizable to Shane—but now, now he’s something akin to sober, so he’s able to gauge your presence as well. Hair plastered to your cheeks, clothes similarly clinging to your body, wearing a jangling belt filled with many tools. Unfamiliar face. He frowns. 

Surely, he’d have heard if someone new was moving in?

“Didn’t think you’d come,” Emily says, leaning over the bartop, “it’s soaking. But hey, want a drink?”

“Just a beer,” you say, and Emily obliges quickly, pouring you a full-brimmed mug. Before it’s even fully in your hands, you’re turning, turning and looking, looking straight at him. 

And, worse, taking a step forward. Another. Beer held loosely in your hands, straight beeline. The old him would’ve shuttered. Would’ve ran, maybe. 

Or, who is he kidding? The old him would be too out of order to even notice you. 

“Hi, Shane,” you say, once you’re close enough. His frown deepens. 

“How’d you know my name? Who are you?”

Something inscrutable flickers across your face, passing over those fine features as quick as a gust of wind. 

“Heard it around. I’m the farmer.”

“The… the new farmer?” He reaches back into the depths of his mind, trying to dredge up something, and eventually, there is a small pearl of memory. Yes, new farmer, he remembers something… something of the sort. Lewis, maybe? 

Probably one of those things told to him in a stupor, in one addled ear and out the other. 

“Oh,”you say, looking down at the drink in her hands, “Sorry, I know you don’t… don’t, uh, drink.” With a deft movement, you set it down upon the counter, slide it away. His grip tightens around the glass of cola. 

“What? You know I don’t drink?”

“I mean,” you gesture to his drink, “That’s nonalcoholic, right? And you know, I’ve heard…”

“You’re sure hearing a lot.”

“Yup,” you agree blithely, rocking back on your heels, then forwards again. Your eyes meet his—the yellowish light of the saloon reflects from them, lighting them up with some sort of internal glow, and the moment of eye contact triggers some bright flare of emotion in him, something he can’t name. 

Strangely off-kilter, he swallows, unsure what to do next. Tell you to go away? But no, that’s not polite, and he’s trying not to be that sort of person anymore. Had a bit of a reality check, after Jas compared him to one of the villains in her little stories. That, coupled with an attempt at sobriety, of course, with not letting the dullness of alcohol taint his every interaction.

“Hey,” you continue after a moment, “I have-” you reach down, dig around in one of the pouches strapped to her belt, pull out a large, glossy pepper, perfectly coiffed step and smooth skin. Hand it to him. He takes it automatically. 

“I love these,” he says. 

“I know,” you reply, and then say something else, something that he thinks might be your name, but he’s still staring at the pepper. Still trying not to meet your eyes. Everything feels wrong. A cottony sort of weight in his head, stomach swirling, a bit like a hangover, but worse, somehow. 

When you leave, it’s with a cheery goodbye from Emily, a call to stay safe! From Gus. He doesn’t contribute to the well-wishes. 

New farmer. 

New farmer?

“Marnie,” he starts, when gets home. She looks up from the magazine she’s reading upon the couch. 

“Hm?”

“When do hot peppers grow?”

She wrinkles her nose in thought. “I’m not a farmer, Shane.”

“But you know something, right?”

“Don’t take my word for it,” she says after a moment, “but in summer, I think.”

Summer. It’s spring. Just a glance out the window is enough to prove that: new, sparse trees, large patches of dirt where young buds have yet to push their way to the surface, petals floating freely through the air—at least on days that aren’t as torrential as this one. 

So where did you get that pepper, if you’re new?

“Why?” She asks, when he doesn’t answer. “Thinking of growing something?”

“There’s a farm. A new farm.”

“...I suppose.” The words are reluctant. He rubs at his forehead, then his eyes, trying to get past whatever it is that’s clouding up his thoughts. It’s been months since he’s drunk a drop, so why is everything so fuzzy, so odd?

“Up north, right?” He asks. Marnie stands, tossing her magazine down onto the couch. 

“Shane, maybe you should get to bed. If-”

“I haven’t been drinking,” he snaps, already aware of what she’s getting onto. It’s infuriating, all these soft looks, all this coddling, like he’s not a grown man, like he can’t be trusted to stay away from the drink one damn day. 

“I never said-”

“The farm,” he interrupts, “there’s a farmer.”

Her mouth draws tight into a long, thin line. 

“It’s late. I’m going to sleep. You should do the same.”

With no further fanfare, she turns, moves into her room and closes the door with a solid click. Alone in the living room—but, for a solid few moments, he doesn’t move, doesn’t do anything but try and capture his breath, try to reorient himself in this suddenly unfamiliar world. 

—

When he does sleep, that night, he dreams. 

Of what, he doesn’t remember, but it feels like feathers. 

—-

A week later, he gets over himself, decides to do the simple thing and make a trek up to the farm himself. Not like he has much else to do—since Jojamart shut down, he’s been out of a job. Sam found one at the museum, but he’s got even less inclination to spend his days there. At least Jojamart had AC. 

In any case, Shane does well enough, supporting himself on eggs from the chickens. It makes Marnie happy to see him continue the so-called ‘family tradition’, for another plus. 

The farm is far from the dilapidated wreck that he’d been expecting, that’d been pulled from some subterranean memory. Instead, it practically gleams in the sunlight, all smoothly-paneled slats of wood and crops in neat rows, strawberries and cauliflower and trellises of fat beans.

And, to the side, is a fenced-off area of chicken coops. He gravitates towards them almost instinctually, drawn to the sound of happy clucking and many small feet pattering on the hard-packed earth. Beyond them are pens full of floppy-eared goats and speckled cows, but his focus is all on the avian. 

They look plump, feathered, well-cared for. Can’t deny that it raises his estimation of the farmer by a bit. A white one emerges from the coop, and then a sleek duck, and then, behind that…

Another chicken. 

A blue one. 

His heart seizes in his chest, a hammer of something beating him soundly across the head, something familiar, something that looms above him and he just needs to think-

“Shane?” Someone asks from behind him, and he startles, all thought flying from his head. He whirls around, stumbling. “What’re you doing here?” You add a moment later. Before he can stop himself, he meets your eyes, and they are as bright as the sun overhead. 

“I don’t… how did you get those?” He points at the azure chicken, currently pecking happily at the ground. 

“I bought them,” you reply blankly. Slung over your arm is a basket full of crops, still stained with crumbs of dirt, a veritable cornucopia in weaving, green leaves spilling over the sides. You slowly set it down, pick up another basket that’s nestled against the wooden fence, no doubt for the eggs and milk. 

“No, but…” but how does he explain this? That those are his chickens, his breed, the one that he doesn’t sell, wouldn’t sell to anyone but his closest friends and Yoba knows there’s nobody that matches that qualification in the valley. “That’s impossible. You can’t have them.”

You raise an eyebrow. “Are you saying I stole them?”

Immediately, he walks his accusation back. “No, I mean… it’s just that those are special. I breed those.”

Something darkens your eyes, clouds drifting in front of the sun. He doesn’t like that—doesn’t like when they dull, when that spark is muted by something that almost looks like begrudging familiarity. 

“Bought ‘em from Marnie. Maybe… maybe, uh, a few eggs got mixed in?”

“Maybe,” he echoes. The word is bitter. Shouldn’t be possible, when they’re kept in different coops, and he picks them up himself every morning, but maybe, maybe, maybe. Not like there’s a better explanation. 

“So? Why’re you here?” You repeat. Nothing necessarily accusatory in your tone, no threat of calling trespass, but the named curiosity still stings, somehow. The idea that he doesn’t belong here. 

He doesn’t, does he? He’s never once stepped foot in this place. 

So why does it feel like..? 

“It’s more… more developed than I expected,” he blurts, then winces upon realization of how that could be taken as an insult. Might as well sew his shoe to his mouth if he’s gonna keep jamming his foot up there. 

“I had time.” You place a hand upon his shoulder, shifting him to the side. He’s so shocked that he allows it—lets himself be moved ungainly away from the gate, which you then unlatch, open. 

“How long, exactly, have you been here?”

Hand upon the fencepost, you half-turn towards him, brow slightly furrowed. 

“A while.”

“You told me you were the new farmer.”

“I didn’t. You must’ve assumed.” You tip a shoulder in a shrug. “New to you, probably.”

“How?”

“How what?”

“How does everyone know you? How… how do I not?” How do you make his head pound when near, what’s happening to him?

“I don’t know,” you reply. You’re lying. He can tell. Not nearly so obvious as Jas is, but there are tells, the slight clench of your upon the rough wood, those eyes darting up and then back, a moment of frailty. He should push. Dig an answer out of you. 

…But the sun is beating into his head, and the chickens are clucking, and some strange instinct is telling him not to dig any further. Not to care. 

Maybe some gaps aren’t meant to be filled. 

“Sorry,” he says, an apology for all the misstepped statements, “I’ll be… I’ll be going. See you around.”

You give him a peculiar look, accompanied with the tilt of her head, strangely owlish, some bird of prey looking down upon a shivering rabbit, eyes glinting in the moonlight. Just for a second. And then, and then you smile, and the illusion snaps. 

“Hopefully. Don’t be a stranger, Shane.”

Part of him wants to say we are strangers, but are you really?

—

The weeks buzz by, all under a haze of heady spring wind and the new gleam that life tends to acquire when you’re not blackout drunk for half of it. He goes on long walks around town with Jas, watches her run about with Vincent at the playground, actually socializes at the saloon, begins to sit with Willy and Clint, though he still has not built up the fortitude to actually contribute to their conversation yet. His birthday comes and goes. Marnie bakes him a cake, Jas tugs him around town, and that night at the saloon, someone orders him his favorite type of pizza: all meat. 

Gus tells him that it’s from an anonymous source, but he sees you slide him a few coins. Strange interaction, stranger still that you know his favored order, but it’s only a blip in many monotonous days. 

Mostly, though, he is the same presence as he’s always been: that being, under-the-radar, a man not quite worth paying attention to. Still hasn’t managed to shake that reputation. For good reason, too: he supposes that half a year of sobriety does not a town drunkard unmake. 

Some days are harder than others. Those in which Jas is at school, and Marnie is running errands, and he is alone at home with nothing to do except twiddle his thumbs and try desperately not to feel parched. He takes up walking, long strolls through the forest, following game trails and hoofprints, cursing at his jacket gets snagged in the brambles, running his hand along large, waxy leaves that smell faintly of mint and honey.

One such time, he encounters the Wizard alone in a clearing, eyes closed, hat hung neatly on a nearby tree. Seems to be in the middle of whatever arcane muddle that only he can do, and Shane doesn’t want to get caught in the middle of that and get turned into a butterfly, or whatever might happen when unwitting idiots come into contact with the ethereal, but just as he’s backing into the bushes, the Wizard’s eyes open. 

“Hello?” He asks, zeroing in on Shane—which isn’t a surprise, he doesn’t exactly fit in with the foliage, blue jacket and neon jersey—“who is it?”

“Sorry,” he apologizes, “I didn’t mean to, ah, intrude-”

“No, no,” he assures, shaking his head. He points to the hat-holding tree and mutters some quiet phrase, and the hat pops into existence on his head. “Shane, was it?”

“Yes,” he replies, trying to still his stomach at the sight of magic. They all know the Wizard, of course, recluse at the edge of town. See some of his little tricks on Spirit’s Eve and the like, those shadow-people in cages and the maze that moves on its own, but all that’s very different from this. One under the thick cloak of night, on an accursed day, dark enough that magic seems to be within touch even without his tricks, but this—this is bright spring and a movement so casual that it’s clearly habit, magic born of a man who can’t bother to walk ten paces to grab his belongings. 

“You-” the Wizard starts, then stops abruptly, cocking his head. For a long moment, he doesn’t speak at all, eyes flicking up-and-down Shane’s form. “What is…?”

He takes a halting step closer, tilts his chin up. 

“Are you sleeping with my ex-wife?”

“What?” Shane splutters, taking a large step back, “no, I- what?”

His brow furrows, then smoothens. “My apologies. It’s just that you have… hm. A trace.”

“A trace of what?” 

“Her mana signature. I cannot isolate…” He points at him, closing his eyes, and for a moment Shane is afraid that he’s going to pop him in and out of existence, but all that happens is the faint gust of the breeze across his face, so mundane that it’s probably coincidental. They’re outside, after all. Wind happens. 

“...Don’t heed me,” he says after a long moment, “you may leave, Shane.”

He does so readily, as quickly as he can. Feels a bit like a student fleeing a teacher’s classroom, shamefully dismissed. 

Accusations of sleeping around aside, by the time summer comes into full, he’s stopped taking walks in the woods. Not only for fear of encountering errant magicmen, but for the fact that these past few walks, he’s been seeing doves. Flickers of white through the leafy canopy, small pale birds settled upon the branches. They never do anything, but he doesn’t like their eyes. The way they watch him. 

Accusatory. Too intelligent for a bird, if he’s being paranoid. 

Though the eyes are large and dark and liquid, undeniably animal, somehow, they remind him of yours. 

—

He’s sitting on the docks, feet dangling inches above the water, on a night somewhere on the hotter end of spring. Crickets in the brush, chirping up a song, the breeze balmy even under the cover of nightfall. Thinking. 

Life’s not half-bad, really. He’s still the same Shane as always, underachiever, a couple dozen pounds over what would make it comfortable to go shirtless at the beach, but at least he’s not passing out every night, at least he knows that Marnie doesn’t see him as a total disgrace anymore. Really, that former part is a shame, because this night would be perfect with a cold one, but he can’t trust himself to only have a cold one and not a cold all. 

Behind, interrupting the drone of the crickets, there’s the sound of clopping hooves. They slow, then trot to a stop, and a thud as someone drops off the saddle. He doesn’t turn around. It’s obvious who it is. Only one person in the valley owns a horse. Marnie used to, but she sold them off one of those years when times were a bit harder than usual. Never really found the value in buying more of them once coffers were filled again. Shame. Jas would’ve loved them. 

“Shane?” You ask, walking onto the dock. “Didn’t expect to find you here.”

“What’re you doing here?” 

“Going back home. Straight shot north to my farm.”

“Huh,” he murmurs, unsure what else to say to that. 

Far from hopping back onto her horse and returning, you continue padding forwards, eventually crouching beside him. From his peripherals, he sees your silhouette in the dark, the fine details only barely visible at his distance, the light from Leah’s cottage giving you an outline of dull yellow light. 

“Isn’t this nostalgic?” You ask. 

“What?”

You blink, as if surprised, then screw your eyes closed, opening them a second later. Banishing a thought that he is not privy to. 

“Sorry. Only for me. I’ve had a lot of… a lot of good conversations, on this dock.”

“I’ve never seen you.”

You tilt your head, raise an eyebrow. “Have you been looking?”

He flushes, though there was nothing particularly embarrassing about either the comment or the response. 

“Guess not. I’m usually…” here, he trails off, suddenly struck by the fact that the end of that sentence is not something he should say in polite company, let alone polite company of someone he barely knows—and who he’s transgressed quite enough around, already. Strange to think that he cares about this stuff now, things are nebulous as his reputation. He almost wishes he could go back to that old him, that of barbed words and who found a perverse sort of delight in being an outcast, a pariah. There’s freedom in being outside of the box. 

Oh, well. Now, now, he’s fit himself quite neatly back into the borders of acceptable, enough that the idea of being once again an outcast is almost frightening. Sometimes, in those thirsty moments, it’s less the pragmatic that stills his hand, Harvey’s chiding words about liver damage and too young for this, but instead a strange source of emotion, of fear.

There’s someone he doesn’t want to disappoint. Jas, obviously. Marnie. The town as a whole. 

And…

And someone else. He can’t… can’t remember who. 

Someone else?

He looks up, meeting your eyes accidentally, wrenches his gaze away almost as quickly, flushing deeper. 

Something’s wrong with him. 

“...What kind of conversations?” He asks, after a moment, more to break the silence than anything. You hesitate, sucking your bottom lip into your mouth, caught in thought. 

“Just, about life.”

It’s a nonspecific answer, enough that he has the social wherewithal to know here’s where to stop pressing. Even though you’re the one who pulled up and sat next to him, even though he was here first, he feels somehow off-kilter, an intruder, unwanted. Awkward. 

“...It’s getting late,” you say, “sorry, I don’t know why I… it was nice to talk to you, Shane. Again.”

What do you mean by again? You’ve talked to him before, of course, but that doesn’t seem an adequate enough foundation to tack again onto the phrase, and he’s overthinking this, overthinking enough that his response comes stuttered out a long moment later. 

“Yeah, yeah, sure. Uh, goodnight.”

“Night,” you reply, standing smoothly, walking back to your horse. A moment later, there is once again the pounding of hooves, and he’s alone in the night, fireflies drifting lazily over the waters, pond reflecting the pale, speckled moon overhead. A nice night. Peaceful. 

Somehow, that craving for a beer has faded. 

He’s not sure why. 

—

The only reason Shane does go the Flower Dance is for Jas: she wakes him at an ungodly six AM in the morning, though the damn thing doesn’t start until nine, and then bounces off the walls for the next three hours. Marnie rouses a bit later, at eight, and with bleary eyes, braids flowers into her hair and helps her get situated into a frilly white dress. Shane pulls on a considerably more rumpled suit, endures Jas’s attempts to braid his hair, and then, they’re setting out into the cool air. 

There’s that undercurrent of heat that hints at summer’s imminent arrival, the promise of a blazing afternoon, but for now, early morning, it’s pleasantly cool. Enough that even in all three layers of his suit, he’s not yet overheating. Jas bounds ahead, and Marnie warns her not to stray too far, but of course she doesn’t listen, all the way to the enclosed area in the southern edge of the forest where all manner of things are set up. Triangular parade flags fluttering in the wind, Pierre’s booth loaded with flowers, and most dreadingly, the cleared-out dance floor. 

His usual partner is Emily, who dances like nobody is watching, which he does not mean as a compliment—but she’s probably take it as one. Swaying like tall grasses in heavy winds, all a jumble of limbs and movements that somehow manage to coalesce into something halfway-graceful. Just his luck that he, the man with two left feet, is habitually paired with the best dancer of the group. Makes him feel like even more of a schlub than usual.

Always, he wishes he could just skip the whole thing—but Emily is one of the only people in this town that he might hesitantly be able to call his friend, so sadly, the tethers of social politeness pull him back into the fray every year. His sole comfort is that Harvey always stumbles at least once per year, so he can have a partner in incompetence, but it’s not much. 

He’s hanging by the food tables as per usual, counting down the dreadful minutes to Lewis’s announcement, when you approach him. Dressed in white as per tradition, the skirt brushing your ankles, the top cut low above your chest, strapless, lacy. There’s no standardized dress code for this thing, just ‘wear white’, and all the girls take their own little liberties with that idea, but there’s something even more different about your dress. He can’t place it. 

He’s been staring. 

“...What?” He asks, after swallowing the mouthful you caught him with. You dip your head, the image of bashfulness, but your eyes remain on him—it’s a contrast against the rest of your body language. Hands tucked together before you, head tilted down, shoulders low and relaxed, but still, you make eye contact. 

“Be my partner today?”

“What?” He asks. Or, maybe not so much that full word, but instead an inarticulate exclamation of surprise that he manages to twist into something of the common lexicon. 

“My partner,” you repeat, “for the dance?”

“Why?”

You look up, dropping that timid sort of pose—didn’t fit you much, anyways—and cross your arms. “Because I need a partner and I like you, Shane.”

He opens his mouth, closes it, somewhere on the spectrum between speechless and stupefied. You take a step back, dress swishing violently at your feet. 

“Look, it’s fine if you don’t want to. I can-”

“No,” he interrupts, “no, no, I can dance. With you.”

All that tautness drops from your face, and you smile brightly at him before whisking away with a final, “see you then.”

A wave of something washes over him, so overwhelming that he must steady himself against the table. This will be the first year that he’s danced with anyone but Emily, right? 

Then why does he feel such deja vu?

He seeks her out a moment later, to tell her that he will unfortunately not be able to partner with her, but she simply laughs, patting him once on the shoulder. “So it’s becoming a pattern, Shane? Don’t worry. I prefer to dance by myself, anyways.”

“A pattern?” He asks. She cocks her head. 

“Don’t you remember?”

“No,” he says, “no, I don’t.”

She says something else, but he doesn’t hear it. From what he knows about Emily, he can approximate it to be something like, oh, let me meditate over a diamond about this, but it’s drowned out again by that wave of familiarity, of memory-not-memory. 

Eventually, when they line up for the dance, he looks at you from across the line. You smile. He doesn’t return the motion. A step forwards, a step back, raise the arms and lower. Approach you, take hands, your palms warm against his, and twirl you once. From his side, Harvey mutters a curse, almost drops Maru. He’s too concentrated on his footwork to really notice. 

It feels like muscle memory, which is surprising in and of itself. He doesn’t really have the muscle nor the memory capacity to store an entire dance, yet here it is, watching your skirt flare out, reflecting the sun. 

It feels practiced. 

It feels natural. 

—

Since the dance, he finds himself watching you. Not in a strange way, obviously, no peeping through the windows or stalking you about town, but when he sees you, he lingers. The fact that you danced with him has to mean something, the fact that you say hi, the fact that you give him a plump pepper twice a week, religiously. 

Still, he doesn’t approach. There is some strange, animal fear in the back of his mind, beyond those pedestrian things like fear of rejection or even the ropes of blindingly low self-esteem. He can’t explain it. He can’t try to explain it. Somehow, it’s a relative to familiarity, to nostalgia. 

At the saloon, you stand with Abigail and Sebastian and Sam, that group of young twenty-somethings that’s accepted you into the fold because you’re just like them, of course. And he’s past the border of thirty, washed up, not so far into sobriety that he can honestly say he’s not an alcoholic, and here is that aforementioned self-esteem. At least he’s self-aware of it now, but that doesn’t make it any easier to deal with. 

Sometimes, when you laugh uproariously at one of Sam’s jokes, or when Sebastian leans up behind you in pretense of teaching you how to play pool, or hell, even when Abigail lays her head on your lap and you braid her violet hair, something low and angry stirs in his gut. Which, you are not even together, so he knows that this too is something irrational, but there’s more to that. 

In those brief moments before his common sense regains control of the meat-sack, he feels as if you are together. 

Which is nonsense. 

Of course. 

Summer is a blur of such moments, you at the saloon, all such nights passing by. Clint works up the nerve to ask Emily out four times and chickens out without fail. Lewis bans sports in the center of town after Sam rips up a few flowerboxes and Alex throws a football through a window in the same day. Jas refuses to talk to Vincent for six days after he puts a snail in her hair. 

The day after the snail event, Shane is in her room, reading her a bedtime story. She conked out after the first place, so he takes a few moments to examine the room, making sure that she’s actually asleep. If she wakes up and he’s not there as promised via spoken contract, then she will sue him—by which he means throw a tantrum—so he remains, listening to her faint breaths and finding any entertainment that he can. 

Her dollhouse is always in some new, unique variation, so he leaves the bed, crouches to watch their little lives. There is an old man’s doll stuffed under the bed, which is probably concerning, but he’s sure that he’s built up enough goodwill to be spared if this hints towards her serial killer inclinations. Otherwise, all is as he remembers: a doll with choppy brown hair, Marnie, standing in the kitchen. Himself, a frumpy, over-stuffed one, wrapped in tattered blue fabric, sitting on the couch. And…

And another. With the same ragged, hand-cut haircut as Marnie, hair colored like… like yours. And overalls like your usual farming uniform too, he notices, sitting beside him on the couch, close together. It sends a buzz of fear up his spine, unexplainable. He leaves the room before he strictly should, confused and creeped out in equal measure. 

The next morning, before Penny arrives to pick Jas up for school, he asks her, “who’s the other doll?”

“What doll?” she asks, more preoccupied in stirring the milk of her cereal. 

“The one on the couch. Next to me.”

She blinks slowly at him, eyes large and confused. “That’s the farmer.”

“Why- why do you have a doll of her?”

“She’s nice,” she replies, “and you talk to her a lot.” 

“Do I?”

Jas wrinkles her nose at him, the ultimate form of judgement being delivered from the eyes of a child. “Yeah, Uncle Shane.”

He must sit back and digest that. Perhaps she saw them talking at the flower dance? Sees when you stop him in the middle of town, occasionally?

That doesn’t explain…

Too much to think about. He shuts the line of inquiry down. 

“...And who’s the one under the bed?”

She frowns. “Ugly and mean.”

Before he can ask more about that, Penny’s knocking on the door, and she leaps out of her seat, flying off without a word. 

Days later—she’s reestablished tentative contact with Vincent, by now—Marnie sends him on an errand to your house, delivering some gold in exchange for amaranth or whatever it was. 

The farm is in full summer flourish, round melons still glistening from the morning sprinklers, corn tall and shyly yellow, and what seems to be an inordinate amount of space dedicated to chili peppers—rows upon rows, all speckled red with the blooming vegetables. Technically fruits, as Demetrius takes great joy in informing, but whatever. 

And you, you are holding the body of a dead dove, white and round and pale. He stops in his tracks, letting out a low sound. Draws your attention, turning to regard him. 

“Oh,” you say, “hey, Shane. What is it?”

“What- what happened to… that?” He jerks his chin at the bird. You look down, as if you’d forgotten you were holding it, and then back up at him. 

“Oh. Cat got it. They come down to the farm.”

He swallows. That makes sense, right, dead bird, cat, all lines up to a neat little equation. They were always in the woods, as well, splotches of white against the trees, soft coos, fluttering to follow him as he walked.

“What’re you gonna do with it?”

You shrug. “Toss it, probably. Not much else to do? What else would I do? Bury it?” You smile wryly. It doesn’t reach your eyes. He knows your genuine grins, has experienced them more times than he can count, and this that is not. “Anyways, what’s up?”

Right. The errand. He digs the pouch of gold from his pocket, holds it out to you. Realizes only a second later, when you don’t reach for it, that your hands are full and you probably don’t want bird-germs on your coin. 

“Hey, how about you set it inside?” You ask, “stay a bit. I made pepper poppers last night, was gonna bring them to you anyways. You like those, right?”

“Love them,” he replies, throat dry. A mix of anxiety, of lingering disgust from the bird, if something else he cannot name, that nebulous feeling that always clouds his mind when he’s in your presence. Like there is something more to you, not only in the metaphysical sense, but the idea that you are a thin human puppet over the hands of something infinitely larger, and that’s a ridiculous thought. 

“Be back soon,” you reply, sidestepping him neatly to continue off to the corner of your farm. After a moment, he pushes himself forwards, climbing the stairs to the shaded porch of your farm. Though he means to enter, instead, his footsteps veer towards the right, the fenced-in side. He can’t say why—but he allows his body to take the reins, settling against the rail. It feels like the flower dance. It feels like looking into your eyes. 

Familiar. 

Like this is how it always was. 

Only when you return does he realize that he’s been here, outside, absorbing the ambiance of the farm instead of inside. You raise an eyebrow. 

“Could’ve entered. It’s hot out here.”

He tucks his chin into his chest, a faint blush already creeping into his cheeks. “Sorry. Just… it’s nice out here.”

“It is,” you agree, swinging open the door, “but come on in.”

He follows.

Inside, there is the blessed caress of AC. Something small rubs against his leg, and he looks down to see the apparent aforementioned bird-hunting cat, purring. 

“Hey, Miso,” he says, the words spilling out before he registers. Miso? It’s a small, black animal, bright eyes and twitching whiskers and, and is that its name?

When he glances at you, you look unfazed. He has to ask. 

“Is that..? Miso?”

You nod, the corner of your mouth twitching up into a smile. “Yeah. You… you remembered.”

He doesn’t, really, but for some reason, he can’t bring himself to argue. The easy explanation is that he heard the name in a drunken stupor, stowed it away but never truly categorized the memory, and though that doesn’t exactly make sense, he’s never been one to take the hard path. 

You turn to the fridge, pull from it a full plate of pepper poppers and proffer it to him. “I made them how you like them. All the works.”

He takes the plate. “How’d you know…?” At this point, he feels like a broken record. Something in your expression shutters, and you smile more. It’s a bit more genuine than that expression you gave him over the bird, but only marginally so. 

“Lucky guess.”

He drops the money on a side table, unceremonious. The jingle doesn’t even make you turn your head—you do not usher him out, he doesn’t get quite the feeling that he’s overstaying his welcome, but you’re waiting, you want him to say something. 

He wants to say something too. Maybe that’s why he obliges. 

“It’s been weeks since the dance,” he starts, “but what… did you mean what you said, then?”

Again, your face breaks into a grin, and this one, finally, is fully realized, fully present, crinkling your eyes and showing a sliver of teeth. 

“I’ve been waiting for you to ask.”

“What’s the answer, then?” He feels as awkward as he was when he was sixteen, asking some cheerleader to the school dance, and those were the days when he was in shape and confident and full of that brimming energy of youth. He can be said to be the opposite of all of that, now, and yet, something about this feels inevitable. Feels like you are destined to say-

“I like you, Shane. A lot.” You step forwards, close enough that he can smell you. Not so flowery as could be expected—you smell like work, like the sun and loam and greenery, but there is still some hint of sweetness there, something that calls to him like a memory. “And I want to be more. Yoba, that’s an awkward way to phrase it. But you get what I mean?”

“Yes,” he breathes, yes, he gets what you mean, yes, this is how it’s meant to be. 

—

Two days later, you chase him down in town and present him with a bright, jewel-toned bouquet, flowers he cannot name all crowding for space. He returns home with the intention to ask Marnie for a vase, but when he enters his room, he sees there is already one upon his windowsill, with a few inches of water still at the bottom. He cannot remember how it got there. He cannot remember what it used to hold. 

When he drops the bouquet in, though, it is perfect. It is as if he has done this whole dance before. 

—-

It is an edge on an edge on an edge. Dusk, that border between day and night, Sunday, the tipping point to another week, and the 28th, Summer sputtering out and Fall swinging by, present in the biting wind, in the leaves that crunch under your footsteps. You’re chattering about your latest adventure in the Skull Caverns, showing him a long scar that cuts across your forearm under the rolled-up sleeve of his blue jacket. 

Shane is doing the whole ritual of macho masculinity, which is to say giving you his coat and pretending he is not cold. Came naturally to him, despite the fact that he has not done anything approaching dating for a decade and change. 

Has he?

The wizard tower looms overhead. Your story reaches his end, and looking up, grasping for another topic, he says, “the Wizard asked me if I was sleeping with his ex-wife, once.”

You raise an eyebrow. Not nearly so flabbergasted by that sentence as anyone normal would be. “Well? Were you?”

He chuckles. “What do you think?”

You nudge an elbow into his side, matching his laugh, “she’s a pretty fierce woman.”

“Someone we know?”

Abruptly, your laugh sputters out. Replaced by a thoughtful, contemplative sort of expression, a shadow over your eyes, those clouds that come and go without seeming rhyme or reason. 

“...Not you, no. Not really.”

“Not really? Who is it?”

“Doesn’t matter,” you reply, cutting him off, suddenly sharp and snappish. He slows, kicking up flurries of leaves and small twigs. Curiosity piqued and anxiety harried up in equal measure. You have the unique ability to do this to him, to awaken a fear that’s lain dormant all his life. It’s frightening, to know that you can freeze his heart with a single glance, despite the fact that he cannot exactly imagine what you’d do to him. 

Arousing, too, but those are thoughts saved only for the darkest nights. 

The conversation stills for a brief second, before you jump back into action. “Speaking of the Wizard, did you hear that Caroline…” and it is lighthearted again. 

It remains that way through the rest of the walk, dipping briefly into the forest, along the well-trodden trails that he used to wander through. You’re just exiting the shade of the canopy, and he’s telling some story about that time there was a rat infestation in Elliot’s cabin, and then there is a cooing, the rustle of wings. 

Both of you freeze. 

There, on the last tree in the woods, another border, another edge, is a dove, white even in the darkness. Your hand tightens in his, fingernails digging into the side of his palm. After a moment, he tries to take a step forwards, tug you along, but you’re rooted to the ground, all those muscles built up over years of farming—and all his lack of muscles from years of abandoning Gridball—allowing you to overpower his urge. 

“What?” He asks. You don’t answer. Eyes wide, fixed on the bird, and this is the most unsettling thing of all, the fact that you aren’t constantly seeking to make contact with him, that you’re so utterly concentrated on something else. 

“What?” He repeats. Finally, you move, but not to walk forwards. Instead, you reach for your belt, pull out a dagger, hold it tight in your hands. “Woah-”

“Go away,” you say, voice high and clear, speaking not to him but to the bird, absurd as that is. Worse, it seems to listen—cocking its head, shuffling a few steps sideways upon the branch. 

“I know,” you continue, “I can’t- I’ve tried, I went back and- and all my shards, none of them did anything, I swear.” On those last words, your voice breaks a bit, shattering. Water in your eyes. Shane hovers, unsure what to do—as has been demonstrated, he can’t exactly snap you out of this, but what else do you do when your girlfriend is talking to a bird with a knife in her hand. 

It coos, a soft, mournful sort of noise. You drop the dagger. 

“I found her, I tried- but she only laughed, you know? And he won’t help either, he can’t undo what she does, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorryimsorryimsorry-” the last parts all blur into an incomprehensible mess of words, and you fall, knees hitting the ground, bringin him down with you. In the commotion, the dove flutters off, quiet and gone into the night. He pays it hardly a mind, kneeling beside you. 

“What is it?” He asks, “What was- why were you… talking?”

You do not respond, instead swallowing down the sobs. By the time you look back up at him, there’s hardly anything but a hitch in your chest, eyes still rimmed red. He opens his mouth to ask, again, what, but you lunge forwards, grabbing his face with both hands, pressing your mouth to his. Tastes like salt, from the tears, and a hint of alcohol from the saloon, and then that same ephemeral feeling that he now learns has a taste, but all that flees his brain in the ensuing seconds. 

It is nowhere near gentle. Your hands press against his face like you are trying to hold him still, trying to keep him there, teeth cutting into his bottom lip, tongue against his and all the hard parts of your belt pressing into the soft parts of his belly. Slowly, you run a hand down his cheek to cup the back of his neck, pull him closer and press yourself against him in turn. 

The intellectual part of his mind knows concern—he can still taste your tears, for Yoba’s sake—but that animal intelligence that you’re so good at coaxing out only knows the feeling of you, the warmth of your hands and your lips, the heat pooling in his stomach. The other hand, still on your face, runs into his hair, tugs with an exact, measured amount of force. Automatically, his own snap to your waist, muscle memory. Both of you know how you fit together. You have done this a thousand times before. 

He knows it. 

—-

Soon, Shane is practically a resident at your house. By winter, he is a resident, shielded from the bitterness of the outer world by your house, by you. It’s a quick transition, for hardly more than a month of dating, but it feels right. Why delay the inevitable? 

Marnie’s ranch no longer feels quite like home, anyways—nowhere does, not even you. He is floating, he is unknown, he is half a memory, the other bits of him flaking off into some nebulous Nowhere. Being with you is like a hammer with the chisel, like a river with the sun, and it is good, but there is always something strange, something that he knows he should know. 

The first time he fucks you, it is just like that frantic kiss in the forest: natural, familiar, two puzzle pieces slotting into place. He knows the draw of his thrusts, how to hold you, and you know to run your hands through his hair. You know where best to touch him, where to poke and prod and pull to elicit sounds that he’s never made before in living memory, but perhaps has in some dead recollection that’s floating out there. 

When he gets on his knees for you, you taste just like your mouth did—less of the saline of the tears, but there lingers that bitter sort of nostalgia, coating his tongue, his nose, behind his eyes when he sleeps. When you do the same for him, he wonders if you taste the same. 

He should ask you. Ask you what this is, what he feels, ask you what you did to him—because it has to be you, it all traces back to you—and how to fix it. But if he does that, maybe you will deny. Or, worse, you will confirm, and you will patch him up, and then he will forget you once again. Because that’s what happened before: he’s sure of it, some reiteration of this cycle, falling down, rising up, just as his life has always been, some microcosm of the destiny of Shane, star Gridball player to alcoholic to whatever this is. 

So, instead, he keeps silent and it is normal, somewhat, except when it’s not. On days out with Jas, when he leans against the worn playground benches and lets the wind cool that internal fever that’s always running through him, it’s good, it’s normal. The saloon, too—though you’re frequently right in the next room over, he can tear his attention away and devote himself to things so mundane as friendship and cold drinks. 

It breaks, however, on a day wherein you are not home at all, strangely enough. You’d left for Ginger Island the day before, told him you would not be back until nightfall today, given him a list of tasks like feed the animals and water Miso.

It is good, at first. Dawn is spent with the chickens, watching them cluck around his feet, leaning down to stroke over their plump, round backs. The cows nuzzle against his hands with their soft, warm noses, and the goats try to pull bites from his jacket. It is not until he’s latching the animal pens behind him that he sees it. 

There, sitting primly upon one of the arms of the scarecrows, out in the middle of the barren, frost-kissed field, is a white dove. He stops in his tracks. 

It coos at him. Beckons, nodding its beak down. He is not so fool as to consider it his imagination—so, instead, he takes a step forward. Reaches out his hand. 

In a flash, it takes to the air, but it doesn’t flutter away—instead, it lands neatly upon his hand, bowing down his arm with unexpected weight. This close, he can make out every detail in its near feathers, the glimmer of light in its round black eye, and it is on him, he knows this weight, he has felt it before. 

He has been in this farm, he has been holding- holding something, some wriggling ball of blankets, that cries and laughs and babbles, and there have been feathers, there has been the sudden hardness of a beak against his skin and the panicked flutter of wings as it tears from his arms. 

The world flickers and pops before his eyes. He shakes his arm, more violently than intended, anything to dislodge this- this thing, not a bird and not a man and something that he can’t bear to name. 

By the time he stumbles back into the house, slamming the door shut behind him, his mind is no less fogged. He doesn’t want to think of this. He wants… he wants something to cloud it all. 

Slowly, he stumbles to the kitchen, pulls from a cabinet a long bottle of home-brewed wine. Does not bother to even find a glass and instead simply tilts it back and drinks. It is the first drink that he has had in months. He finishes the bottle as the world darkens outside. The world is sufficiently blurred, but that desire for the fade of drunkenness has been replaced by the burn of shame, the need to retch. 

Your arrival is signaled by the click of the door, stepping into the room. He hardly registers it—does not react when you happen upon him, slumped over the table in the kitchen, only cooperates enough to stand and stumble when you urge him to the bed. 

“What happened?” You ask. 

“I remembered,” he replies, and you still, a peculiar expression coming over your face, deer caught in the hunter’s barrel, rabbit before the wolf. 

“Did you?”

“I knew you,” he replies, “in a past life.”

You pull the blanket over him, sitting besides him, your warmth leeching into his side. 

“Not exactly. Kinda, though.”

“Why?” He asks, words slurred, but at least he still has the mental facilities to edit the question to, “what happened? Why can’t I remember?”

“Because of me,” you reply, stroking a hand over his forehead. You let out a hollow laugh. “It’s all because of me.”

“I’m sorry,” he blurts out, before he can even take a moment to digest that, “for drinking. You helped, didn’t you? You helped me get sober?”

You nod. It’s not a very visible movement, what with him laying down, but he sees it. “Don’t be. It’s not… I didn’t get that, you know?”

When he doesn’t respond, you continue. 

“It’s not a straight path. I thought you’d be done, healed. So when it all…” you make some sort of hand gesture, one that ventures out of his field of view. He gets the gist. “It… wasn’t good. But now, now, I’ve… learned a lot.”

“Do you love me?” He asks, the question falling as easily as water down slick rocks. 

“I don’t think I did before,” you say, “but now, now, I know what it is. I do.”

“And the doves?”

“They’ll linger,” you reply, “can’t do anything about them. I’ve tried.”

He remembers your monologue in the forest. Remembers the dead bird, held tightly in your hands. Seems ‘anything’ goes in many different directions. 

“It’s not a bad thing.”

“No,” you agree, “no, it’s not.”

That weight upon him, that press of a thousand years of memories is finally abating, finally lifting. He still doesn’t remember, but he knows he doesn’t remember, and he knows what he doesn’t remember, and he is with you in the end, so does it really matter?

—

Spring is coming, and with it the thaw, finally clearing away the last crusted bits of winter upon the land. Shane is standing upon the porch, Jas perched on a rocking chair beside him, tossing out hands of birdfeed to the ground. A single white dove picks at it, cooing softly in what appears to be joy. It’s taken a liking to Jas—now, it flutters up and lands upon her shoulder, picking gently at her hair while she giggles. 

Behind him, the door opens, and you step out, coming easily around to rest your chin upon his shoulder. Jas immediately begins to babble your name, asking if she can see the goats today, and you smile, nod yes. 

“Plans for today?” He asks. 

“Goats first,” you reply, “And then Pierre’s, buy some new seeds. You?”

“Maybe I’ll take a walk,” he replies. Hasn’t done that in a while. It’s a good time to start again, especially now that he will not let the presence of half-remembered doves stop him. 

You plant a kiss upon his stubbled cheek, drawing back, and he turns to meet your eyes. Bright, warm, familiar as they always have been and always will be. 

[dastardly-imbecile]

Hi, I was wondering if you were ever going to continue Not The Dungeon or if you're done with it.

Hi! I do have vague plans to continue it, but it's one of those things that I write mostly for myself(so I continue it when inspiration for another chapter hits). There'll be more chapters, but probably not adhering to any sort of schedule.

[dastardly-imbecile]

was he talking about vanderwick? yes. am i going to choose to believe he was projecting in that moment? yes.

[dastardly-imbecile]

A Lesson in Culpability

By the time he makes it home, an hour later, it is approaching midnight. For once, the roles as he slips into bed are reversed—Caroline sleeping, him creeping like a burglar under the sheets—and he almost feels guilty until he gets a whiff of the scent on the sheets, something like mushrooms and ozone, and he remembers watching her meander off towards the fortune-teller’s tent during the fair.

If he’s some sort of sinner, then she is too, broke the inviolable contract of marriage, and Pierre has never been one for unequal bargains. — Five times it isn't Pierre's fault and one time it is. OR Pierre's life sucks and he gravitates the one thing that brings him joy: Morris OR Old Man Yaoi(sad version)

---

Wordcount: ~8.4k

The first reason it’s not Pierre’s fault is because Caroline did it first. That’s what he tells himself, anyways, the first time that he gets up in the middle of the night in the guise of ‘going to the bathroom’ and instead slumps against the cold tile and tries to scrub Morris’s face out of his mind. It’s not even bad, a stray—nay, intrusive—thought or two, because he hasn’t done anything other than argue with the man a bit. They’re enemies. 

And, in any case, back to that original reason, it’s because he knows there’s a reason Abigail doesn’t need to dye her hair anymore. He remembers those long nights of early, unhappy marriage, in which she’d take off at dusk for long walks down to the tower, not come back until dawn, slide into bed smelling of tea and smoke and fresh rain. Marnie asked him, one time, what Caroline was doing walking past her house at four AM and scaring all the cows, and he had to grit his teeth and spill out some pithy lie, and the humiliation from that is enough to pay for any errant thought ten times over. 

Sure, now, a good two decades later, they’re fine, but still, she’s racked up quite a bit of moral debt and so, in turn, he’s earned the right to think, briefly, of the man. 

He’s never stepped into a Jojamart—moral obligation, that—but Morris finds some perverse joy in invading Pierre’s corner store, strolling up to the counter and slinging a few remarks back and forth about prices and customers and sales quotas. It’s always bothered him, but it’s never bothered him, not until the recency of a few months past. Wherein even after Morris leaves, he can smell the sharp, artificial tang of his cologne, where sometimes he glances out his bedroom window and sees him trekking up to Jojamart in the morning, down back to his rented house at night, both of which occur at the ungodly hours of five AM and eleven PM respectively. 

Pierre’s always been a dedicated man—has to be, ever since he was shafted into the position of reviving a dying corner store—but even that ethic quite pales in comparison to his. It makes him disgusted and envious and curious in equal measures. 

In the morning, after another few nightly hours spent in the bathroom—not even doing much of anything with the time, simply leaning against the wall and trying to think and not think in equal measures, breathing in the only Yoba-damned bit of solitude he ever gets—he settles behind the counter once again. Caroline and her aerobics group are back in the living room, and Abigail is off doing something with her friends, and the day of drudgery is punctuated occasionally by the occasional customer. 

Usually, the most entertaining thing to happen is that new farmer coming in with four hundred melons or something of the like, but today, even that isn’t here to break up the boredom. Word is that Linus dragged them out of the mines the day before—at least, that’s what he hears from Harvey next door—so they’re probably too busy recuperating to bless his shop with the entertainment of an obscene amount of produce. Pity. 

And then, the doorbell rings, and the day brightens by a considerable amount. Elliott, the only other one in the shop, looks up, and exits immediately. Usually, he’d be angered by the loss of a customer, except he swears Elliott does nothing except stand there for four hours and meticulously read the packaging of every single item in the store, and, even then, that annoyance is immediately stifled when he realizes who it is. 

Black suit and obnoxiously long coat, obnoxiously large red tie, obnoxiously gelled hair, little glasses perched on the brim of his nose like the greedy capitalist playing at twee aristocracy that he is, Morris walks slowly down the aisle. He takes a deliberately long time, examining the new summer stock, picking up a few packets of seeds and turning them about as diligently as if he was going to plant them himself. That annoyance resparks almost immediately, like muscle memory, and far from hating the feeling, Pierre revels in it—for, before Morris, he has not felt anything as strong as this.

Well, that’s a lie. He remembers the humor of seeing a solid-gold statue of Mayor Lewis in the town square, remembers irritation when Demetrius chases him down at the saloon to ask whether a tomato is a fruit—absurd question, who’s putting that in a fruit salad?—remembers a heart-twisting sort of anguish when Caroline vanished during the Flower Dance and came back with a violet flower tucked behind her ear. 

Pierre is not some emotionless machine, far from it, it’s just that this inspires a fire in him that he hasn’t felt since he was trying to be a boxer, before he resigned himself to being a small-town shop owner for life. 

“Buying customers only,” he states, when Morris appears to be too engrossed in a packet of corn seeds to come to the counter. He snorts, plucking the packet from the container, saunters to the desk and tosses it upon it. 

“How much? Ten gold?” 

“One-fifty,” he grinds out. Morris laughs—actually has the audacity to laugh—but he digs into his pocket for a small pouch of jingling coins, carefully counts out the correct amount, piling it into a neat little pyramid upon the counter. 

“Highway robbery, Pierre! Joja’s grows faster, is pest-repellant, and we sell it for cheap. No wonder you’re bleeding customers.”

“‘Bleeding’ is a strong word,” he sniffs, “did you not see Elliott, just now?”

He barks out another laugh. “The hermit? Does he buy anything? What would he pay in, seashells?”

The worst thing about this is that Morris is right. Pierre doesn’t deign to respond, instead picking up the single packet of seeds. “Don’t suppose you’ll need a bag?”

Morris takes it straight from his hands, and fingers brushing for the faintest moment, and Pierre withdraws immediately. Still, the man doesn’t turn to leave, a part of him is horrifically happy for that, despite the fact that the only reason he’d stay is to attempt to insult him a bit more. 

Which proves true only a second later.

“From my point of view,” he says, leaning back and surveying the space dramatically, “it’s, in fact, rather empty.” 

“It’s ten AM on a tuesday,” Pierre snaps back, “not exactly the best of sample sets.”

“When are you busiest, then?” Morris asks. 

He hesitates, trying desperately to grasp at schedules, before eventually settling on, “noon. Saturday.”

“I’ll be checking, then,” Morris says, tucking the corn seeds into his pockets, and it sounds like both a threat and an invitation. To what, Pierre’s not sure, but as he turns and ambles away from the store, he makes a mental note of Saturday. 

That night, Caroline is nowhere to be found, and he only barely manages to catch Abigail on her way out of the house. 

“Where are you going?” He asks her. She fixes him with the flat stare that he’s come to expect means he’s being some form of lame. 

“Sam’s. We have band practice on Tuesdays, remember?”

Right. Jodi, as a matter of fact, complains about them quite liberally to Caroline, but it probably wouldn’t do to crush Abigail’s dreams of becoming a rockstar or whatever she plans to do with the band. 

“Do you know where your mother is?”

“Dunno,” she says, shrugging loosely, and then pausing, eyes flicking towards the ceiling. “I think Haley said something about seeing her going to the forest?”

“What’s she doing out there?” Pierre asks, though he already knows, deep in his gut. Abigail’s purple hair shines in the dark. He used to bemoan how much money it took, going to ZuZu City every few months to redye her hair, but now he almost misses those days, in which he didn’t have to know the violet came not from artificial substances, but her very own genome. 

“Dunno. I don’t like talking to Haley.” She wrinkles her nose. “Probably enjoying nature or something. Or, isn’t there a trader out there sometimes?”

He almost manages to grasp onto the idea of the trader, before remembering that they only come on Fridays and Sundays—another tidbit of knowledge from the Farmer. When he doesn’t respond, Abigail throws up a hand in a casual wave, walking towards the door. 

“Bye, Dad. I’ll be back before midnight. Maybe. I’ll crash at Sam’s if we go too late.” 

He doesn’t manage a, “bye,” until the door is already shutting softly. 

There is nothing in the fridge but leftovers, most of them not even his. A few closed containers of tea, many of Abigail’s half-finished meals, a piece of quartz for some reason. Unbidden, he bends, reaching towards the produce drawer, and from inside withdraws an ear of corn. Stands, shuts the fridge, walks woodenly towards a pot. 

He doesn’t know what he’s doing. In fact, he hates corn. 

Despite that, when it’s cooked, he brings it to the table, examines it under the light. It’s another one of that new Farmer’s crops. They brought two hundred ears, in fact, and he still remembers trying to hold in his astonished laughter as they carefully took each one individually from a backpack that looked far too small. It’s clearly high-quality, round and fat and gleaming. 

When he bites down, the kernels burst in his mouth, sweet and hot, and there’s the part of his mind that knows he detests this grain, but the rest is occupied with the question of what, exactly, Morris is planning on doing with those seeds he bought. 

He’s already been in bed for a sleepless hour by the time Caroline comes back, slipping in like she thinks he’s asleep. Abigail never did come back home—she and Sam and Sebastian are probably going to be the topic of Jodi’s complaints for the next month. Not that he begrudges her for that. They hosted Sam at their house exactly once, and he left a can of Joja Cola on Yoba’s altar. Sebastian’s marginally better, but that doesn’t mean much. 

“Where have you been?” He asks. She rolls over. 

“Oh, just around.”

“Abby said you were heading to the forest.”

She hesitates for a long moment. The silence draws out. 

“Just looking at some of the plants that grow down there,” she manages eventually, “seeing if I can bring anything back to the greenhouse. Where is Abby? Are you letting her stay out again?”

“Find anything?” He asks, not letting her change the subject. 

“No. Look, if she wants to keep living in our home, I think she should-”

“I’m tired,” he snaps, shutting her down. She quiets immediately. 

“Goodnight,” she manages eventually. 

He doesn’t respond. 

The next morning, when he makes the bed, he finds a long strand of purple hair entangled in the sheets. 

—

The second reason it’s not his fault is because Morris issued the challenge. He’s pleased, on Saturday morning, to see the shop as packed as it ever is. Harvey poring over the newly imported coffeebeans, Marnie and Lewis chatting in the corner, Elliott mouthing the words on a snack package, Leah picking through the artisan goods, and Gus being the only person to actually buy groceries. 

His heart actually jumps a bit when he spots Morris through the window, that familiar fluttery black coat. The doorbell jingles only a second later, and the man steps in. All eyes turn to him briefly, but soon, they return to their previous activities. 

Pierre feels the most satisfaction he’s perhaps ever felt, seeing the quick flicker of shock, followed by an unhappy sort of sulk, appear on Morris’s face. 

“You just going to stand there?” He asks, when he doesn’t move. Urged by the words, Morris approaches the counter, plucking a small packet of radish seeds from a shelf. 

“Color me surprised, Pierre. I might say it’s bustling in here.” 

“Empty Joja?” He asks, fake sympathy absolutely coating his voice. 

“Not quite.” Morris half-smirks, tossing the seeds down upon the counter, “can’t predict this hubbub will last long. But I might as well pitch in, eh? How much’re you upcharging for these?” 

“Twenty.”

He lets out a long, low whistle. “That’s almost reasonable. Full of surprises today.” 

Pierre grimaces. “Are you paying, or not?”

Whatever Morris is about to say next is interrupted by the ringing of the doorbell. He glances up, over his shoulder, to spot the Farmer stepping into the store. For a moment, he’s quite afraid that they’re about to unload a couple hundred pounds of produce onto his counter, but no—instead, they make a straight beeline for Lewis, pulling from their backpack a single large hot pepper. Then, to Marnie, a whole diamond. Similar stories for Gus, Leah, Elliott, Harvey—a gleaming orange, a paper-wrapped goat cheese, a perfectly-coiffed duck’s feather and, somehow even more astonishing than Marnie’s diamond, a cup of coffee. 

He’s equal parts afraid and excited when they approach him. This time, from their bag comes a book, thick and shiny in the way that new things all are. On the cover, in bold letters, it reads Price Catalogue, 5th Edition. 

“It’s… it’s perfect,” he manages, staring down at the book, at the immaculate drawings of gold coins running down its spine, “how did you know..?”

“Seemed right,” they reply, shrugging. He—and, everyone else, perhaps—waits for them to turn to Morris, offer up some perfectly-curated gift, but they do not look towards him at all. A silent moment passes, and then two, and then three, and finally, Morris slides twenty coins across the counter, snatching up the packet of Radish seeds with an uncharacteristic quickness. 

“I’ll be leaving,” he says. Gus, when he passes, offers him a slice of orange, but he ignores him completely, buffeting out the door. 

Pierre stares at the Farmer, unsure whether to address this or not, because on one hand, exclusion is exclusion, but on the other, Morris is Morris. Greedy capitalist come to ruin Pelican Town, the antithesis to this from-the-bootstraps farmer, and he’s probably threatened to buy out their farm more than once, but still, there’s that niggling urge to say, that wasn’t very kind-

And then, they upend their backpack on his counter, sending him reeling back under the force of an avalanche of radishes. 

“Harvest came in,” is the only explanation they give.

That night, while he’s cooking dinner, Abigail comes in, takes a single look at the pot, and promptly turns up her nose. 

“Radishes? Really, Dad? I don’t like those.”

“Farmer sold me three hundred today,” is his only reply, and she groans, stomping out of the room. Caroline rushes after her, no doubt to give some lecture on being picky or something like that, and he stares down at the pot. Half-truth—three-quarters truth, even, because he did in fact have to count through three hundred radishes that morning, but he also cannot help but remember Morris and seeds and the faint expression of hurt on his face, when faced with no gift. 

Something’s wrong with him. They have not done a single thing but exchange a few thinly-veiled hostilities, so why can he not stop the excitement when he strolls into the store, why can he not stop taking long strolls through the town and pausing in front of Jojamart? 

Why, when he dreams that night, does he imagine waking next not to Caroline but instead the broadness of a black-cloaked back, face obscured?

—

The third reason it’s not his fault is that he’s slightly drunk at the Stardew Valley Fair. Pelican town has long turned to fall, all its colors darkening and browning and the warmth of summer whisked away by a chill wind. Life is as normal—Abigail and Caroline are still Abigail and Caroline, people brush in and out of the store, Morris pops in semi-weekly, always buying some sort of seed and quipping something obnoxious about the price. It’s the only good measure he has of time, really, those brief moments of entertainment that somehow feel clandestine. Moreso because it seems Morris lingers longer and longer, always finding small nitpicky details to comment on, Pierre, looks like there’s a few scuffs in the wall, or oh, sold out of bouquets? Not very professional of you. 

The bouquet absence was, in fact, the Farmer’s fault. He has no earthly idea what they’d need twelve of the things for, but he has noticed that they’ve recently started wearing a rabbit’s foot clipped to their belt. In fact, most of his problems stem from them—from late nights cataloguing dozens of stacks of produce, to the occasional drinking mayonnaise incident, to this new humiliation at the fair—namely, being beaten at the grange display with a fucking display of purple shorts. 

Before them, it was ten year streak of victory with superior produce. Briefly almost broken two years ago, when Willy caught a mighty octopus, but that was also the first year to have the title of Grange Display Winner revoked after the octopus managed to suction onto Lewis’s face and required Marlon’s intervention to remove. 

This, though, this is pure humiliation and corruption and horrible and a hundred other words, and he breaks away from Caroline’s conciliatory pats to grab a bottle of saved-up wine and find an uninhabited corner to sulk in. Which turns out, unfortunately, to he behind Clint’s store, with the furnace clagging away and the horrible smell of smoke in the air and unfortunately close to Jojamart. 

He only realizes that last detail when someone claps him on the shoulder and says, in that familiar smarmy tone, “heard you lost.”

“Morris,” he groans, taking another swig from the bottle, “fuck off.”

There’s real anger in his voice—not the faux sort of annoyance that comes about in their usual day-to-day banter—and Morris must notice, because he’s quiet for a long second. 

“...Really? Got you down that bad?”

“That damn Farmer,” he curses, “it would’ve been- Marnie, or Willy, sure, I’d have congratulated them. But they won with shorts. I know they have good produce, they unload it on my counter every damn week, so…”

Another long moment of silence. Pierre turns, if only to make sure that Morris has not walked off completely- but no, he’s still here, observing him with a gaze that looks almost sympathetic. 

“If it makes you feel better, Pierre,” he says, “I just witnessed them eat six of Gus’s burgers. In a row. Seems they were gearing up for more, too, but I left because I could not bear to watch anymore.”

He laughs. It’s undignified, no doubt helped by the alcohol in his system, but he shakes his head. “Not better at all. You aren’t down there?”

“Of course not.” Morris adjusts his glasses, “it’s all so… so, ah, quaint, but not my scene, really. Besides, I doubt I’d be welcome.”

His first instinct, that politeness that’s born from years of hobnobbing with the other adults of Pelican town, the sort where you can’t afford to be anything but cordial, is to say, no, you’d be welcome, I’m sure. 

After only a moment, however, he knows that’s not the right answer whatsoever. 

“Probably not. You’re not very well-liked.”

Morris shrugs. “Ah, well. Not my intentions, here. All I’ve wanted is to outsell you, and I seem to be quite successful there.” 

“You’re a dirty liar. Show me your ledger and then I’ll believe you.”

He smirks. “Well, I’m quite a bit too successful to have a simple ledger, but would you believe I was doing paperwork, before I saw you out here?”

It’s an invitation, hidden behind those irritating words as it is. 

Pierre takes it. 

Ten minutes later, they are inside Jojamart for the first time. He doesn’t even realize the monumental nature of this step until he’s in Morris’s office. It’s surprisingly cozy, compared to the cold, white sterility of the outside shelves—carpeted, with a bookshelf pushed up against the far wall and a grand auburn-colored desk. 

“See,” Morris says, pointing to a line of numbers, and that of course triggers an argument about who’s truly winning. Pierre breaks it only by, eventually, stepping away, clutching his head. 

“Yoba, this is depressing. I know you’re the town pariah and all, Morris, but must you do paperwork on a holiday?”

“What else would I do?” He asks, sniffing haughtily. Pierre shrugs. 

“Sleep? Travel? Bus was fixed a while ago, you could go anywhere.”

“Ha! I wouldn’t trust Pam to drive a bicycle.”

“Then anything but this,” he says, “I’m- I built my store from the ground up, and I still didn’t give this stuff more time than I had to.”

“Are you saying I didn’t build this up?” Morris asks, raising a single eyebrow. He adjusts his glasses again, leaning back in his plush seat. “I wasn’t always a Joja manager, you know. Started out as a shelf-stocker, built my way up.”

“All that effort for this?” Pierre snorts. This argument, again, is taking on a different tone, one that he doesn’t entirely know how to navigate. “You’re really going to be a manager for life?”

“You’re going to be a store clerk for life?”

“A businessowner.”

“Well-” Morris straightens his bowtie, “then call me a CEO.”

Pierre collapses against the wall. Useless argument, surreal situation. Outside, the fair’s no doubt winding to a close, and he’s still here, in this argument, quibbling about who’s relatively more successful. 

“Fine, fine. Be a manager. Whatever. You can still take a day off. Walk through the forest-” his heart gives an uncomfortable palpitation at the words- “or… get drunk. Anything but this.”

Morris looks down at the bottle of wine, left upon the counter, then back at him. “Are you offering?”

“Sure,” he replies, expecting him to balk, because they have not reached this degree of closeness, but Morris picks up the bottle, takes a slow, graceful sort of drink, then proffers it to Pierre. 

“As long as you don’t charge me for that.”

Any momentary surprise is washed soon away by the alcohol and the desire to reply, and so he lets out a derisive laugh. “Rich, coming from you.”

Still looking him in the eye, he takes a drink, passes it back, and soon, the tension bleeds away, replaced by another feeling. They talk, actually talk, and Morris is insufferably smug as he tells him of a childhood in ZuZu City, working his way up the Joja ladder, but somehow, it’s all fascinating. And, on his part, he does not look to be faking the interest in his eyes when Pierre speaks of a failed boxing career, of learning how to run a general store day-by-day. 

He only realizes how much time has passed when he glances out the window and sees it’s completely dark outside, even the lights of the fair extinguished. The bottle is near-empty, between the two of them, and he jolts up, cutting Morris off mid-word. 

“I should go.”

“Oh. I suppose it is dark.”

He moves towards the door, and to his surprise, Morris comes out from around the desk, accompanying him. Upon reaching the doorway, he pauses, turning back to look at him. 

“This was… a good distraction. From all that.” 

“Rather apt metaphor for your store as a whole.”

The words have no sting to them—in fact, he chuckles. 

“Yeah. Say that until we shut Joja down.”

“Who’s we?”

No witty answer springs to mind, so he pauses for a moment, and that instant of pause turns into just…

Just staring. How many times has he thought of Morris on those late nights, how many times has he anticipated his entrance into the grocery store? His eyes are relaxed, coat slightly rumpled, glasses lower on his nose than usual. In the bright fluorescent light of Jojamart, he’s a bit washed out, yes, but there’s a certain…

“Pierre?” Morris asks, brow creasing, “perhaps you really should-”

He leans forwards and presses his lips to Morris’s, cutting off those words, and for a moment everything is stiff and horrible and he’s so acutely aware of the bad judgement on this. 

And then, the moment passes when Morris leans forwards, softening, one hand coming to rest on Pierre’s side, large and warm. This, too, bliss as it is, goes on for only a second longer, before both break away. 

“I shouldn’t have-” Morris starts, at the same time as Pierre says, “was that okay?”

Both hesitate, staring at each other once again. 

“You have a wife,” he states eventually, “a child.”

He laughs. “She cheated on me first. With the wizard, no less. Still does it.”

“What? The- I thought that was a myth!”

“No, no. He’s very real.” Pierre grimaces. “My daughter is proof.” 

“Still, it’s the principal of the thing,” he splutters, “I can’t… we just…” it’s the most loss for words that Pierre’s ever seen the man, usually so quick and tight-witted, always some retort bubbling in his puffed-up chest. 

“Was it okay?” He repeats, “with you?”

“We’re drunk, both of us. Look-”

“Was it okay?”

Morris hesitates a moment longer before, almost bashfully dipping his head. “Not bad. Still-”

Pierre leans forwards once again, all abandon flying out the window, and despite his complaints, Morris leans into it, both hands now encircling his waist. They maneuver, blindly, towards a wall, until Pierre is pressed against it, encaged by Morris’s arms. When they break, both are gasping, breaths rushing heavily through his chest. 

“If this gets out…” Morris starts. Pierre bats the idea away. 

“You’re a pariah already. I… can’t say I care about my own standing.”

“You might think different soberly,” he cautions, and Pierre shrugs. 

“Then I should take as much advantage of drunkenness as I can.”

By the time he makes it home, an hour later, it is approaching midnight. For once, the roles as he slips into bed are reversed—Caroline sleeping, him creeping like a burglar under the sheets—and he almost feels guilty until he gets a whiff of the scent on the sheets, something like mushrooms and ozone, and he remembers watching her meander off towards the fortune-teller’s tent during the fair. 

If he’s some sort of sinner, then she is too, broke the inviolable contract of marriage, and Pierre has never been one for unequal bargains. 

—

The fourth reason it’s not his fault is that it’s all too good, all too hard to stop. For once in his life, drudgery days behind the counter are bearable, for once, it doesn’t sting as much when Caroline doesn’t come home until much past midnight—sometimes because he’s not home by then, either. If Abigail notices, she doesn’t comment on it, which he’s glad for. If anyone could make him stop, it would be her—despite their lack of blood connection, he still raised her, she’s still his daughter in name if not biology—but, then again, she seems all too preoccupied with the band and her forays into the Adventurer’s Guild and, most vexingly, the Farmer. 

In any case, she’s past the age where fear of breaking up his family isn’t easily rationizable, and every day he can, Pierre closes up the shop around five, putters around for a few hours, and then makes his way to Jojamart around eight. A good time, because both Shane and Sam have left work, and the only employee left is that orange-haired girl from out of town who seems far too perpetually tired to even question his presence. 

It’s routine. Making his way into Morris’s office. Sometimes, they talk for hours about the most banal of things, and sometimes, the minute the door closes, they are upon each other, hands buried in Morris’s thickly-gelled hair, close enough that he knocks his glasses askew. 

Winter is nearly upon the valley, chipping at the last of Autumn. Trees losing their leaves in rapid succession, breeze biting at any scrap of exposed skin. It is a Friday night, last Friday of the season, directly before the Spirit’s Eve festival, that he sits in the saloon as usual. 

The most crowded night of the week usually, let alone tonight, a night that spirits—of a marvelous three meanings, that of good cheer, alcohol, and ghosts—run high. He’s partaking idly in Willy’s conversation about the best season for fishing, amused more by Clint jolting up whenever Emily nears than the conversation itself. Across the bar, there are the usual subjects—Elliott and Leah getting progressively rowdier, Marnie and Lewis pretending they aren’t infatuated with each other, Harvey ordering a mug of coffee—seriously, it’s eight PM—Shane in the corner, the younger adults playing pool in the side room. Tonight, as with many of the previous few weeks, the Farmer sits near Abigail, both of them chatting up a storm about something. 

Apparently, they’ve been helping her get in the mines—mostly to collect ‘things for the Junimos in the Community Center’, a series of words that does not make sense whatsoever. He’d be more concerned for her, but the entire town loves the Farmer, and she’s never gotten too hurt when gathering whatever it is they need, so for now, he lets it rest. 

In any case, Willy yammers on about the difficulties of catching Walleye, and then the door to the pub opens, and an unfamiliar figure steps in. 

He half-turns, then fully turns, doing a double take upon sighting that familiar black coat. What is Morris doing here?

He doesn’t even glance towards Pierre, instead striding towards the bar. Gus pauses in cleaning out a cup, watching him, and though the saloon doesn’t do anything so dramatic as fall silent, it does quiet a bit, as if in anticipation. 

“What can I get ya?” Gus asks, leaning forwards. Morris frowns. 

“Just a glass of red wine.” 

“Good choice,” Gus says, nodding, turning to grab a bottle and a glass. Just like that, the hubbub starts up again, and it’s all so startlingly normal. 

Only once he has the glass in his hands does Morris turn around, make a beeline for Pierre’s table. 

“What are you doing here?” He asks, trying not to sound accusatory. Morris shrugs, taking a delicate sip. 

“Oh, I’ve been in town… a few years. Never bothered to come. It’s rather charming.”

Pierre knows the man well, too well, if he’s being honest, but in such a new environment, he’s almost like a stranger. 

“Look, fellas,” Willy cautions, before he can respond, “I know you have your… ah, commercial disputes, but we’re all friends in ol’ Gus’s saloon, aren’t we?”

Morris brings down a hand to clap Pierre’s shoulder. It burns. Not entirely unpleasantly. 

“Oh, I can set aside a few grudges for the sake of a night. What say you, Pierre?”

He smiles up at him, and suddenly, it’s no longer strange, but instead a shared joke. 

“Of course.”

Morris slides smoothly into a seat. It is briefly tense, awkward once again, until Willy asks, “Have you ever caught a crimsonfish? Mighty strong, them creatures.”

And then Morris replies, “can’t say I’ve ever fished at all,” and it is once again some new sort of normal. 

After eleven, as one of the final stragglers, Pierre follows Morris out of the saloon and—for once—not back to Jojamart, their usual rendezvous, but to one of the rented properties that line the outskirts of Pelican town, all small and delicate and too close to the Farm for comfort. 

“Really,” Pierre asks, “why did you come?”

“Exactly what I said. Maybe I can’t sequester myself behind Joja’s walls forever.”

Pierre lets out a mock-gasp. “Really?”

He bumps his shoulder, sending him stumbling a few steps, “really. I like this town. It’ll almost be a shame when the rest of Joja moves in.”

“Keep talking. They’ve been ‘moving in’ for years.”

“Just a matter of time,” he replies, sniffing, as they walk down Morris’s front driveway. Pierre hesitates as he unlocks the door, unsure of whether to leave. The last time he had to deal with a conundrum such as this was him and Caroline’s first date, and that particular problem was rapidly solved when they noticed her mother watching them from the window. Somehow, he doubts that’s going to fix this time around. 

“We’re having such a good time,” Morris says, interrupting his internal conflict, “let’s not cut it short.”

He steps in. 

The house is just as undecorated as the exterior, spartan, only the bare necessities needed for life—and, most of those necessities look to have come out of an ‘easy install’ home kit. 

“You live like this?” He asks, wrinkling his nose. 

“Will you be missed?”

He knows what he means by that. 

“No. She’s probably not even at home, you know.”

“Then yes, I do. Some of us don’t need… kitsch to survive.”

“It’s called decor.”

“It’s called eye-searing. Please, Pierre—did you make those posters on your walls, or did Vincent?”

He laughs, not deigning to respond, still following Morris—out of the living room, into a long, bare hallway, and then a bedroom. Surprise: also clear of decor. 

“Let’s put aside a few more grudges,” he says, and it’s perhaps the worst line he’s used thus far, but Morris doesn’t seem to care—because he steps forwards, lips meeting Pierre’s, and somehow, they are upon the bed, skin meeting skin and hands under clothes and closer than he'd ever thought they’d be.

It changes, after that day, in not in a happily-ever-after, true love met sort of way—indeed, even though he knows Morris in ways that he hadn’t before, they continue as normal. Simply, now, with more meetings in the bedroom, with more late nights and early mornings and a pleasant sort of soreness that keeps him distracted when standing behind the counter. 

No, it is a change in the community, and he can’t tell exactly what. Morris has not returned to the saloon, but no longer is he the bogeyman in the night, great bad Joja salesman. It’s an unfamiliar shift, only emphasized when he sees Jas scribbling portraits of every resident in Pelican town and catches one of Morris in her stack. 

Winter comes with a sweep that catches them all. Neither him nor Caroline are really pretending at any relationship, at this point—he doesn’t know if she knows who he spends his nights with, but she doesn’t bother to inquire, and he knows who she goes with, but he can’t bring himself to care. 

“Are you and Mom okay?” Abigail asks, one early night, and he hesitates over a pot of simmering stew. He used to read parenting books, even joined the impromptu Stardew Parents Association when Abigail and Sebastian and Sam were all toddlers. Usually, those meetings devolved into either drunken gossip or some sort of tiff, but even without that, none of them really prepared him for this sort of question. 

“...No,” he replies after a long moment, “we’re not. But it’s got nothing to do with you, Abby.”

“Didn’t think so,” she says, “just wondering. No, uh, no pressure, Dad.” 

It’s surprisingly flippant, but he’s glad for that. One more load lifted off his plate, even when Abigail starts talking about the rather gorey topic of collecting fifty bat wings and he has to make a quick exodus out of the room before his stew makes a quick exodus out of him. 

“We’re almost done with the community center,” she protests at his retreating back, and he wonders how, exactly, dissecting twenty-five bats helps with that. 

—

The fifth reason it is not his fault is that it’s a goodbye, in a way, and it all starts near the end of winter, after the season crushes by at a staggeringly slow pace. He receives a letter from Lewis in the mail, customary, bearing the name of his Winter Star gift recipient. Last year, he got Alex, and he got so fed up with trying to find a gift for the boy that he asked Abigail to ask Haley what he’d like, which was returned with an apparently verbatim message of, I dunno, he likes protein, I guess. 

Eventually, he’d settled on wrapping up a carton of eggs, and Alex’d seemed overjoyed, so that was a job well done. 

This year, he expects it can’t possibly be worse, except it when he opens his letter, there on the back, it reads Morris. 

The gift itself isn’t the hard part. Abigail lets it leak that she has the Farmer, and that results in a bedroom she won’t let him nor Caroline enter that emanates quite the concerning smell. Caroline gets Shane and agonizes for days about what to get him, before eventually settling on crocheting a small chicken. 

Pierre digs through stockrooms of old seeds, gathering up many packets of corn and radish and all the other various one-offs that he’s sold Morris and still has no idea what he did with, and because a couple dozen seed packets is a horrid gift even by nostalgia-standards, also a bottle of fine wine. Farmer-provided, in fact—apparently, they have a whole winery going, and Lewis says that it’s a lot more pleasant picking up than twenty pounds of dead fish from their shipping container—and despite his distaste for them, he can’t deny that the alcohol is high-quality. 

He is ready, completely ready, for the Feast, until, two days before, there is a commotion. Abigail pauses by the shop only to yell, “Dad, we did it! Come on!” Before rushing away again.

Slowly, cautiously, he proceeds out, following the flow of the townsfolk up the hill and towards…

Towards that old, abandoned community center, which, as he crests over the hill, is… neither old nor abandoned. The planks lining its outside are burnished and bright, windows clean glass, all as if it had been built only yesterday. 

“Did you..?” He asks, turning towards Robin, the only logical explanation, but she shrugs. 

“Nope. Nice craftsmanship, though! I need to meet whoever did this.”

He surges through the crowd, into the building itself, the interior of which is in fact more impressive than the exterior. All full of furniture, bright and clean and new, a grand fireplace the centerplace of the room. He doesn’t have many memories of the center—it’s been nigh-on a decade and a half since it fell into disrepair—but even in its heyday, it looked worse than this. 

At the front of the crowd, before Lewis and Abigail, stands the Farmer, a proud look on their face. 

“This is marvelous!” Lewis exclaims, and for once, he’s right. He doesn’t know how they did this, but it is something that’s gathered the entire town in fascination. Elliott runs through the books upon a newly-built bookshelf and Clint’s exclaiming something about a boiler room and Penny comes out of a brightly-colored side room with a dazed, happy sort of look upon her face. 

“Had to fix it up,” the Farmer replies, shrugging, “couldn’t let Joja get its hands on this place.” 

The joy rapidly rising in his stomach turns to ice in a moment, falls and shatters. Joja. 

There’s one person that’s not here. 

He turns, pushing back through the crowd. Behind him, Lewis says something about a Stardew Hero Trophy, but his eyes are fixed upon the door, and as he watches- 

It opens. 

And in steps a swishing black coat, a bright red tie, round glasses, and behind those, eyes that rove around the space. 

“So this is where everyone is,” Morris says softly. 

Nobody speaks in reply. Pierre’s throat has closed up. 

“You won’t be buying it from me, Morris,” Lewis says eventually, after clearing his throat. 

“No? I can fetch a very high price.”

All those days, this half a season of goodwill, is crumbling before Pierre’s eyes, and he doesn’t know what to do. 

“It’s beautiful,” he says, “isn’t it?”

Morris meets his eyes. Smirks. “Joja craftsmanship can do it better.”

It’s the type of reply that would make him laugh, were they alone, but in this full space, it’s simply arrogant, echoing about. Morris evidently realizes that, before the smirk falls immediately. 

“You’re leaving,” someone says from the front of the room, the voice that he’s come to fear and despise and admire—somehow—in equal measure. 

The Farmer. 

They push through the crowd, past Pierre, until they and Morris are face-to-face. “Community center’s fixed. Joja’s not going anywhere. Get out of Pelican Town.”

There’s been less emotion in their voice when recounting stories of near-death on Friday night saloon meets—indeed, they’re always calm, but now, there’s venom in those words. 

“Oh, I’m sure Joja could-”

“Out,” they hiss, “or I’ll make sure the lightning hits you too, tonight.”

The statement makes no sense in the logical world, but the Farmer is anything but—from the way they say it, Pierre absolutely believes that this nebulous lightning will hit, will do anything they command it to. Morris holds up his hands in mock surrender. 

“Fine, fine. Couldn’t pay me to stay in this backwater anyways.”

He turns, leveling one final glare at the crowd, and leaves. All is still for a long moment-

-And then Pierre runs after him. Completely uncouth and the whispers start even before the door closes, but he doesn’t care because he’s actually leaving. 

Morris is already gone, far. He doesn’t run towards Jojamart, but instead towards Morris’s house, near the bus stop and the Farm. Only makes one final stop, darting into his store to grab an unwrapped box, before he’s out in the chilly air once again. 

They meet as Morris is locking the door to his flimsy little shack, carrying only a single thin suitcase. 

“Morris!” Pierre calls. He turns, raising an eyebrow, unsurprised. 

“Pierre. Seeing me off?”

“You’re actually leaving?”

He shrugs, laughing mirthlessly. “What else can I do? You heard their threat. Nothing left for me here, anyways.”

“Nothing?”

The wind rustles through his air. He’s silent for a long, frightening moment, before blowing out a breath. 

“Truth is, I was leaving anyways. Joja promoted me. Regional Overseer in ZuZu City.” 

“You weren’t.”

Another laugh. More humor in it. 

“You can read me so well. Well, yes, they did promote me, but I… I thought I might stay a bit longer.”

“You can stay,” he pleads, taking a step closer, close enough that they could link hands if wanted. “I’ll… I’ll call- I’ll get Abby to call them off. And then you can get a job-”

“I’m not wanted here,” he says firmly, taking a step forwards as well, “I never was. Pierre, I… I’m glad I met you here. But this isn’t my place.” He hesitates, before, “you know, you could accompany me to the city. If you wished.”

For a brief, glorious second, it’s tempting, the idea of running away with nothing but Morris’s company and the box in his hands, but then, real life comes crashing down. Things like your family, and your store, and the sheer fact that ZuZu City is not his place either. He tried, back when he wanted to become a boxer, lived out half a decade there, each day more stressful than the last. He’s tied as solidly to Pelican Town as Morris is not—could not imagine a day without seeing all these familiar faces and knowing, immediately, everything he dislikes about every single one of them. 

Besides, he would not have brought the present if he didn’t know that this was when they would split. 

He extends it towards Morris. “I can’t. But… I was your secret gifter. For the Feast.”

Morris laughs, and this one, finally, is the one he knows, boisterous and full. 

“What an absolute coincidence.” 

From the inner pocket of his coat, he takes out a small, paper-wrapped item, passes it to Pierre while taking his gift in turn. Damn Lewis. Must have rigged something. This is just like how he always makes sure Gus is ‘coincidentally’ his gifter for those free meals. 

“Is this it?” Pierre asks. Morris tilts his head. 

“You can walk me to the bus stop.”

“You’re taking the bus?”

“No, no. Pam, bicycle, remember? I called a car.”

He begins to walk, and Pierre falls into stride next to him, clenching the gift tightly in his hand. After a moment, Morris speaks again, answering his previous question. 

“Maybe. Pierre, I don’t know. I’m not omniscient.”

“You don’t need to be.”

“...I hope,” he murmurs, “it’s not, then. I don’t know, but perhaps.”

“Perhaps,” Pierre whispers. All too soon of a walk, and they stand there, before the old bus and the empty stretch of road. Morris leans closer, and he does as well, lips meeting. Though the world around them is cold, he is warm. 

The moment is broken by the rev of a car. Morris breaks away. Pierre’s lips follow for a moment trying to recapture that, but it’s a futile attempt. 

“Goodbye,” he says. “You’ll see me on the news one day. CEO, I’m sure.”

“And I’ll still be outselling you,” he replies. Morris laughs—he tries to commit that sound to memory—before, sliding into the backseat of the sleek black car. 

Only when it is long-gone, vanished down the darkness of the tunnel, does Pierre remember the gift still in his hand. He brings it up immediately, fumbles at the wrapping paper with numb fingers, slowly unpeeling it from whatever it is within. 

The first thing he sees is a bright blue Joja Membership Card, which he audibly laughs at, plucking it up and tucking it into his pocket. Not that he’ll ever use the thing, of course, but he’ll keep it. 

Under is a book. Quite familiar—orange, and upon the front cover, it reads Price Catalogue, 6th Edition. 

A small slip of paper upon it, in Morris’s distinctive handwriting, says, more modern than Farmer’s. May it bring you much use. 

Pierre hugs it to his chest, smiling and crying both at once, the great expanse of gray sky over his head and fleck of snow drifting down to fleck softly in his hair like the tears of many Gods overhead. 

—

One last thing. And this one, surprisingly, is his fault. 

Mid-spring, which comes with new buds and a sheen to Pelican Town that only lingers directly post-defrosting. The end of winter was, as can be predicted, quite depressing, lightened only by the fact that Lewis gave himself the Farmer as a gifter. Perhaps a smart strategy, given their penchant for producing expensive wine and many different gems, except when it came his time to open his gifts he got a pair of purple shorts and ended the entire celebration then and there. 

Still, spring is here, and things are new, relatively. Kent returned from the war, different from Pierre remembers, but it’s good to have a new face in the village, even if he sometimes can’t help but think it doesn’t come close to replacing the old face that left. Abigail left on her first trip to Skull Caverns and came back coated in monster goop and as happy as he’s ever seen her. The old Jojamart was indeed struck by lightning in the night, to the surprise of somehow nobody, and now it sits dilapidated, abandoned, and sometimes he goes and stands outside it, just to watch. 

It’s on a windy Thursday that Penny races into the store, flushed red. “I’m so sorry,” she says, “but some of the wind took Jas’s drawings and, uh, scattered them, and I was wondering if you could help..?”

“Of course,” he says, stepping out from behind the desk—he had no customers today anyways—and into the town square, where most of everybody seems to be occupied in helping with the scavenger hunt. He finds a drawing of Demetrius snagged onto a garbage can and one of Emily caught in a tree and barely manages to save a rather amusing mock-up of Shane, who’s dressed in a tutu, from the river, but it’s the last one that gives him pause. 

By fate or circumstance or magic or whatever, he spots a slip of paper blowing into the abandoned Jojamart. Faced between old building and Jas’s tantrum, he decides on old building, ducking inside under the hole in the door. 

Within, all is dark, but he manages to spot the slip of paper illuminated by a sliver of light that fights through the slats in the windows, makes his way over the rubble to grab it and quickly leave the building. 

Only once he’s out in the sun does he get a good look at it, and then, it drops his stomach to the soles of his feet. 

There, upon the paper, is a rather crude drawing of Morris. Probably, he couldn’t even recognize it as such, if not for that outlandish red bowtie, and two clumsy circles that seem to be glasses perched upon his nose. 

For a long moment, he simply stands there, staring down at the recreation, aching deep in his chest for a memory, a future that could have been. 

Later, when he returns to Penny, he hands her Demetrius and Emily and Shane, the folded-up drawing of Morris burning a hole in his pocket. Friday night, at the Saloon, he hears Shane grumbling to Emily. 

“-back’s aching because she had me searching for it all day. Don’t know why she wants his drawing so bad, anyways. Asshole’s not even here anymore. And Yoba, I’m glad for that—no more hell at work.” 

So perhaps he’ll take fault for one thing, for being the source of some of Shane’s pain and probably a small tantrum from Jas. The rest, that’s all circumstance and coincidence and the rest.

That night, he sits at his counter, all the world dark and silent around him. Pulls out, from under his desk, a book, flips through the pages that are already managing to look well-worn. 

Soon, it will be summer again, and there will be no more Morris coming in to bargain for seeds. When the Farmer somehow manages to beat him at the fair this year, he will be left to sulk alone, and Friday nights at the saloon will be uneventful and at the Feast of the Winter Star, he’ll probably get the Wizard or someone similarly horrid for his giftee. 

Bleak future ahead. For today, though, he has the drawing, the book, the gift card, a few months of memories, and the world is brighter than it was last Spring, so he cannot complain too much.

[dastardly-imbecile]

The Artist Formerly Known as Bonesaw - absolutely adore this one, such a good little study on Bonesaw, and I'm one of those people who love the S9 despite them being literally just murderhobos, so this one is just perfect.

Severed - again, S9, what more can I say? Plus I just think this is a great interpretation of Taylor, especially after such an arguably out-of-character thing to do like joining, think that the author pulled it off so well and really made me want more.

Cenotaph - I'm under the vague impression that it's no longer so well-loved in the fandom, but it's just a classic to me, one of the first I read. it's been a few years since I've reread so no idea if it holds up, but I remember especially loving its interpretation of Hookwolf.

Headspace - one of my favorite of the 'butcher' variation on Taylor fics, though this one is pretty unlike all of the others. Very big shame that it never got completed, I think it had great moments of both genuinely good storytelling and also just crack.

Journey of the Dragonfly - honestly I'm like out of words to describe besides just saying that I really jive with this version of the characters, both that and the plot itself, plus Taylor and Lung is a super odd ship that I never could have seen working except this one kinda does it somehow.

what are your guys top 5 fav wormfics of all time? with a bit of explanation if you don't mind.

doesn't need to be in any particular order, just curious what wormblrians have read and enjoyed and also maybe get some recs out of it

[dastardly-imbecile]

'she won't die, doctor. she can't.'

'i understand.'

[dastardly-imbecile]

Mechanical Butterfly (VI)

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

---

Viktor doesn't run from Singed. Silco sees the burgeoning inventor in the young girl he found, after Vander. Collaborations abound!

---

Slightly misleading title, but I've decided to stop posting this on tumblr - it's just hard to keep track of, plus Tumblr is great for one-shots and not-so-great for series, and the word limit is really getting to me as my chapters just keep getting longer (I've already had to split one chapter!)

If you enjoy this story enough, I implore you to follow it on AO3 <3

[dastardly-imbecile]

Mechanical Butterfly (V)

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 6

---

Viktor doesn't run from Singed. Silco sees the burgeoning inventor in the young girl he found, after Vander. Collaborations abound!

---

Wordcount: ~476

Five years pass, rushing like one of Zaun’s deep, underground rivers. 

Deep in the underbelly of Zaun, there is first one, and then two and then three and then dozens of figures shambling through the decrepit buildings. All emaciated, purple-veined, strange growths sprouting from their skin like tumors. Everybody knows Shimmer, near-nobody knows who made it, who sucks the life out of such victims and leaves them, floundering, alone. 

—

Jinx creates. In an old, abandoned airshaft, one of those projects meant to give air to the miners and swiftly-abandoned once those few precious strips of ore dried up, grabbing tools out of a black-metal box. A series of various inventions passing through her hands—parts of the various Zaun chemforges, and then weapons, chattering bombs and long, sleek guns. 

Sometimes, in the quieter moments, she turns about a small blue ball in her hands and looks towards a pile in the corner—a stack of failed prosthetic prototypes.

—

Viktor crafts too, expands from his small room to half of the lab—not that it matters much, anymore, since Singed hardly does any work outside of the cave—orders upon orders piling up. Frederson Chemforge, a rousing success, bringing dozens of those who’d previously brushed him off, back sniffing at his doorstep. The money is good, but the work sends him staying up late into the night, crouched over his desk. 

The leg has been bad lately, and, worse, a cough has arisen—that wet and meaty, wracking his chest and scratching at some deep internal membrane. Singed attempts medicine, most of which are thoroughly unpleasant in ingredient makeup, taste, and texture, but not much helps. 

—

Singed himself works as well, day-and-night under glowing purple plants and vines that spiderweb across the cave wall like veins. The corpses of two wolves rot in the corner, and his pale hands ghost over delicate balances of Shimmer, each injection careful down to a fraction of a fraction of the millilitre. Sometimes, he looks at the face of the man, and wonders if he would’ve done the same for his daughters. 

It will work. It has to. 

—

There are more, of course, a thousand lives winking and moving and flashing both undercity and topside. An academy student tries not to think of magic, tries to count himself lucky for escaping exile by the skin of his teeth, but sometimes he cannot help but palm the blue crystals gathering dust in his cupboard. 

A white-haired boy gathers people to his side, all under the canopy of a great, green tree. In his free time, he tracks the movements of a girl he once knew. He’ll free her soon, he swears. 

A girl sits in a deep prison cell, rubbing at a fresh tattoo, wondering when she will next see the sunlight. 

Five years pass, and much is different, but much as well stays static and similar.

[dastardly-imbecile]

Mechanical Butterfly (IV)

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

---

Viktor doesn't run from Singed. Silco sees the burgeoning inventor in the young girl he found, after Vander. Collaborations abound!

---

Wordcount: ~3900

Silco has been out far more often, recently, but Jinx doesn’t mind. He keeps the nightmares away, fractionally, his presence, but she’s found something that does exactly the same: the task that Viktor gave her. 

So refreshing! No rules, no admonishment, no telling her, Powder, stop messing around, or Powder, nobody’s ever gonna use anything you build, no, just letting her crawl into the belly of that great mechanical beast and come out victorious with its guts(soot and oil) plastered all over her. 

She loves it. 

What she doesn’t love is the late nights, when it’s too dark to build, and she has to lay awake in her bed and try not to think of the names she won’t allow herself to speak. Try not to flinch, when something explodes out there in the dark-dark night, try not to climb out of her small cot and find someone to run to. Because Sevika started locking her door, after the first time Jinx tried to find her, and normally Silco at least tucks her back in, but now he’s out quashing rebellions or whatever it was that he called it. 

What’s worse is, two days later, when she’s finished with the filter. Technically, the third time she’s done so—the first two, there were tiny, minute things to fix, sockets a millimeter out of alignment or mesh not stretched taut enough, but now it’s genuine perfection and she looks at it and there’s the sound of voices creeping in the edges of her brain, nothing to block them out anymore. 

There’s only one thing to do: which is to track down Sevika currently in the basement, punching at a sack of flour. Looking out at the room, something ugly and slippery flip-flops in her chest, because all the old couches and blankets and shelves have been removed to make room for the woman’s gym—and it’s so unfamiliar that she can hardly believe she used to share it with…

 Jinx stands at the doorway at the bottom of the stairs, waiting patiently for her to finish—which she doesn’t for a long, long time.

“Sevika,” she says eventually. The woman throws two more punches before finally turning her way, brow furrowed in a scowl. 

“What?”

“We need to go back.”

“What?”

“To Viktor’s,” she says, “I finished the assignment. He needs to give me more. And I can learn more.”

It’s a well-laid out argument, in her opinion, but Sevika’s face screws up, and she shakes her head. 

“No.”

“What? Why?”

“Silco’s paying a damn bucketload for each lesson,” she starts, counting off on her fingers, “Silco’s out, and he can’t approve this, and I’m busy.”

Jinx stares at her for a moment. “But-”

“Take it up with the boss,” she growls, “but it’s gonna be next week.”

With that, she turns back to her bag, leaving Jinx to slowly ascend back up the stairs. There aren’t many others milling about in the space, the ground floor of The Last Drop, but that just gives her more room to appreciate the changes to the room. Most of the old decorations have been taken down, ripped, or otherwise disposed of, and now it’s a vast expanse of stained wood and nothing much else. It’s good, in a way, even if it makes the space wide and darkly unfamiliar, because it means that she can look at the wall and not imagine Claggor standing there, arms crossed, or Vi leaning against one of the ratty bar tables. 

She can’t think of that. 

Upstairs, it would be quieter yet, but she likes the level it’s at down here. Just loud enough to take the edge off her thoughts. Silco has yet to reopen the bar—he has to finish whatever street business it is that he’s working on, first—but some of his group hang around. They spare her no glances, used to her presence, and she doesn’t look at them too long either, afraid that she will see one of their faces, spark a bit of familiarity, be dragged back into the shadowed corners of her mind. 

Warily, she proceeds to the door, tugging on the fringes of her hair as she does. The small braid that peers out from under the rest of the mop barely reaches her shoulder. Vi braided it for her. Abruptly, she snatches her hand away, as if burned. 

Don’t look behind you. 

She doesn’t. Stiffly, she pushes open the door. Still, nobody stops her—seems that most of the group is instead occupied in rifling through the liquor cabinet behind the bar. A spike of fury at that—they’re touching things that aren’t theirs, stealing—but then she remembers that nobody will be around to reprimand them, and her heart skips an uncomfortable, sputtering beat. 

Nobody around, because of her. 

It’s her fault. 

All her fault. 

No!

This is what she needs to go to Viktor’s for��because in those two hours, sitting and learning, it was all calm and clear and nothing but razor-sharp focus upon the gleam of metal upon her lap. 

Deep breath. 

Silco told her, weeks ago, in those early nights when she couldn’t stop crying, deep breath. Never reprimanded her for crying—so different from Mylo’s mocking tone, whenever he found her curled up under the pillows—just told her how to stop. 

She likes that. 

Deep breath, again, and she peers out onto the street. Midday outside, though Zaun sees near-none of that light, and all the neon signs are just as lit as in the dead of night. It’s quieter than usual, too—all the normal market stalls are shuttered and closed, their inhabitants fled into their teeny hidey-holes. 

“Hey,” someone says from behind her, the words slightly slurred, “hey, isn’t that the boss’s kid?”

She whirls around, sees one of the gangly figures behind the bar point at her. 

“Don’t let her leave,” another one cautions, coming around the bar, and in that brief moment that they disappear into the shadows, she sees someone else. Not Vi or Claggor or Mylo or Vander but some homunculus made from all of them, reaching and chasing and there’s smoke in the air and her hands are burnt from the heat of the bomb, and she opens the door and flees into the street. 

As she runs, her hand snakes into her pocket, reaching for the small round ball tucked securely into the depths of the fabric. The last one. 

Footsteps behind her, chasing, but she knows these streets around The Last Drop just as well as she’d know anything, and she ducks into one alley, scales a rusted ladder, jumps from one roof to another before sliding roughly back down a slanted awning, landing roughly on her feet. Her pursuers are drunk, and less agile than her, and not trying all that hard in the first place, so by the time she allows herself a moment of stillness, there’s nothing else. 

She laughs, the sound bright in the open air. Ha! Take that! She’s still got it. 

Now, slower, she progresses down the street. It strikes her that she could just go to Viktor’s herself, but though the idea is tempting on the surface level, there’s a tug in her gut that stops her from navigating to the alleyway shop. Part of it is getting in trouble, of course, but that’s not much, especially because she’s probably already going to be in trouble from fleeing. No, it’s something that almost feels like fear. 

Not of Viktor, of course, because he’s kind, and if he wasn’t then she still thinks that she could take him in a fight, but it’s the other one. The other man, thin and tall and no more physically intimidating than Viktor himself, but she does not like his lab with all the creatures in the jars, does not like his experiments. Does not like the way that Silco carries himself around him: tense, careful, and wary. Whatever sort of person incites that sort of reaction from him, she’s automatically wary of. 

Though she bemoaned Sevika’s chaperoning, the first time, now the prospect of entering that space without her tall, solid presence is more than a bit intimidating. 

So, instead, she continues to wander. This road leads to the main market street, the largest one of them, and—judging from the babble of sound already reaching her ears—one that’s at least somewhat less abandoned than the rest. She’s got no money to her name, but that’s never posed much of a problem before—Ekko was always the best at pilfering from the edges of the stalls, at not getting caught—and, if spotted, at running away swiftly. 

Ekko. Where is he? He didn’t leave her, not like the others, but he’s not where he used to live.

So maybe she can find him! Find him, and Silco will take him in too, and then he’ll ask where the others are. What happened to Benzo. What she did, the bomb and the blood and the screams, and she collapses against one of the grimy walls, clutching at her head. The world spins violently, everything flipping upside down, and she can still hear Vi—she can always hear Vi, it’s just now, she cannot suppress her—and there’s wetness on her cheeks. 

Jinx!

Jinx!

Jinx!

“Jinx?” 

A new voice. It muddles with the ones still pecking at her head, until the speaker repeats himself, “Jinx?”

Familiar. The world clears, somewhat, though it’s blurred now not by her headache but instead by tears, and she peers out from between her fingers. A man on three legs. 

Except, not three legs, she realizes, wiping the last of the tears from her eyes, but instead two and a cane. 

“Viktor?”

A simple look upwards confirms it. She knew already, from the tone of his voice and that soft accent, but this is visual confirmation. There he stands, tall and narrow-boned, cane in one hand and leather pouch in the other, packed with things she can’t see. Must’ve come from the market. He looks nervous, out of his element, and looking at him now, she can’t help but agree. 

It’s not exactly that he doesn’t belong in the undercity. He looks Zaunite, no doubt about that, clothes simple and hardy, face set hard, worn. Clear in the way he holds himself, the little mannerisms like holding the bag close, so unlike the free, loose strides of topsiders. No, it’s less that he doesn’t belong in Zaun and more that he doesn’t belong on this street, in the open, away from his lab and looking like any random citizen. 

“Why… ah, are you here?” He asks. Part of that nervousness might actually be related to her, she realizes, and suddenly she’s embarrassed to be here crying on the side of the road. She is no better than she was as Powder, crybaby and weak and runaway. “Are you alright? Lost?”

“No,” she says, “not lost.” The last part of that sentence is the need to clarify—because she’s not lost, no, but also perhaps not alright. 

“Is Sevika..?” He asks, glancing around. The street is fairly empty, and none of the few shrouded figures meandering by are glaring or grunting or cursing, so he’s able to rule that out before Jinx even has to say no.

“I wanted to see you,” she blurts, which wasn’t really the reason she ran out of the lab, but is close enough and really the only thing that’s relevant now. “I finished it.”

But she forgot to bring it! She can picture it now, in her new room on the second floor of The Last Drop, haphazard on the floor and surrounded by scattered tools. Suddenly, she shrinks a bit, afraid that he will accuse her as a liar—but instead, he simply tilts his head, the corner of his mouth quirking into a smile. 

“That was quick. I should’ve expected that, though, no?”

Unsure how to respond, she nods wordlessly. He takes a step back, gesturing loosely to the road with his cane. 

“Perhaps you should be getting back. I’m sure your…” For a long moment, he hesitates, and she opens her mouth, Dad resting on the tip of her tongue. It’s so very close, but when she imagines saying it, she imagines Vander as he once was—strong and warm and laughing—and Vander as she recalls him now—laid low, snarling, screaming—and so she can’t bring herself to spill those syllables from her mouth. 

“-I’m sure they’re worried,” Viktor eventually finishes lightly. 

“Can I walk with you?” She asks. 

“Where are you headed?”

“The Last Drop.”

A flicker of surprise in his eyes—he knows the place, of course he does—but he dips his head in a shallow nod. “It’s on the way.”

He doesn’t turn to walk until she pushes fully off the wall, following in his footsteps. As she blinks the last of the tears out of her eyes, she’s glad that he never asked why she was crying. She’s glad she doesn’t have to think about that herself. 

From her vantage point slightly behind, she notices the further unevenness to his gait, beyond even that of the normal limp, showing clear strain trying to balance both his cane and the bag of supplies.

“Do you need help?”

“Hm?”

“I can carry that,” she says, indicating the bag. Eager to be of help—maybe, then, he won’t send her away immediately, and he’ll let her come back to the lab. The instant she thinks that, however, she also remembers the darkness, the sharp smell of alcohol overlaying the faint scent of blood, and the enthusiasm dies just as quickly. 

Still, though, if only to help him. 

“It’s heavy,” he says, but she crosses her arms. 

“I’m used to heavy stuff!”

“...For a bit,” he finally says, twisting to pass the bag over to her. It’s simple leather, lifted by two straps made of the same material, and she grasps it sturdily, heaves it up to her shoulder. There’s a wary look in his eyes, that first moment, like he thinks she’ll fall—or run off with the supplies—but though it’s weighty, she stands straight and smiles and tries not to let any strain show on her face. 

They set off again, and she smiles to see that his stride has returned to normal. The bag bumps against her hip, and she tries her best not to peek, but curiosity wins out in the end—inside, instead of the food and the like she’d been expecting, it’s simply bottles of darkly-labeled chemicals, scraps of metal, and, at the top-

“You can take it,” he says, and she startles, cheeks flushing at being caught in the act. 

“What?”

“The box of tools,” he says, “I bought it for you.”

She blinks at him, uncomprehending. “I have tools.”

“They’re not very good,” he replies, tone nearly teasing. She frowns. 

“Sevika bought them for me.”

“I guessed,” he says drily, and nods again at the bag. “Go ahead. Unless you would rather wait until next week, of course.”

She would very much not rather wait until next week, confusion aside, so she reaches into the bag lightning-quick to withdraw the heavy box at the top of the stack. It’s thin, but weighty, the edges lined in dark metal. Her face splits into a smile at the sight, and all insult from his previous words is struck down upon the realization that these are indeed way better. 

“Thank you! These are…” no words to express it in her brain, so all she can do is look at Viktor and grin and hope it imparts at least a fraction of her happiness. 

“Singed bought me mine,” he says softly. Singed must refer to that man—it’s a jolt of a reminder that they are, in fact, associated. “When I began to tinker. A brilliant mind can only be enhanced by quality implements.” 

The way he parrots the last words makes it clear that it’s a quote—not direct words of his. Still, her mind snags upon that one word, brilliant, and she asks, before she can stop herself, “Am I brilliant?”

“It took me a week to configure my first filter,” he says, “granted, I assisted, but at your age, in two days? You could not be anything but.”

Nobody’s ever called her brilliant before. Impulsively, she rushes forwards, hugs Viktor. He stumbles back a single step, but skids the cane backwards, catching himself—and the other hand hesitantly settles upon her shoulder. He’s thinner than Vi ever was, bones where she had muscle, smells of metal and chemicals instead of leather and clean air. But they’re somewhere in the realm of the same age, and she clutches the box to her chest, and if she closes her eyes and turns her head it’s almost the same. 

The embrace lingers only a moment later before he extracts himself, clearing his throat awkwardly. 

“I’m… very glad you like it,” he says, “but I’m afraid this is where we part.”

Right. On one side, the path splits towards The Last Drop, and the other must no doubt eventually lead to his alleyway. 

“Thank you,” she repeats, quieter this time, sliding his bag off her shoulder and proffering it back up to him. He takes it wordlessly. 

“Next week,” he says, like a promise, and then turns down to continue stepping down the path. She likes that—a promise, because those can’t be broken.

—

So absorbed is she in the new tools, in the memories of the day, turning ‘brilliant’ around in her mind until it’s smooth as a river-worn stone, that when the door to The Last Drop opens, she startles. Sevika doesn’t know a thing about her escapade—must’ve spent the whole day sulking down in the basement—and the few subordinates that saw her escape aren’t breathing a word. Mutual silent agreement: because if they admit she ran away, then they admit they let her run away, so her little secret is tucked away just as safely as the blue gem still shimmering in her pocket. 

Despite all this, when the door below opens, there’s a spike of unfamiliar fear in her heart. It’s Silco, and she confirms that by perching at the top of the stairs, hidden by the bannister, and watching the man stroll in. These past few days, she has always greeted his return by running down, grabbing onto his coat and sticking by his side for the rest of the night, but today, something holds her where she is. 

Below, he looks around, expecting her as well—the confusion on his face is almost funny. 

At least, until he looks up the stairs, and despite her hiding spot, meets her eyes. 

Jinx! Someone says. 

It sounds like all of them. 

She flees back, back into her room, heart suddenly sparked into a quick hammer-beat, but there is nowhere to hide, no lock on the door, and what exactly is she hiding from?

Suddenly, she wishes Viktor had asked her why she was crying, because maybe then she could have told him something, and he’d have comforted her. Vi was always able to comfort her, with soft words, or failing that by gathering her into her arms and squeezing her until she started to laugh, so maybe he’d have been able to do the same, but he’s gone and Vi is Gone, capital G. 

And it’s all her fault. 

Jinx! Someone yells. 

Footsteps on the stairs. She scrambles into bed, because she’s unsure of what else to do, kicks the covers up around her feet until she’s in a half-sitting sort of position. She doesn’t like sleeping alone, doesn’t like the absence of the other kids’ breaths. Misses, even, the occasional kick in the middle of the night, sometimes—usually between Mylo and Vi—leading to a short scrap. It’s penance, sleeping in silence, and she wouldn’t even know if they were in the room because they wouldn’t be kicking or breathing, would they?

JINX! They all scream. 

The door opens. 

“Jinx,” Silco says, stepping fully into the space, “where were you?”

“Up here,” she replies. He crosses over to the bed, sits down. 

“Is everything alright?” 

“Yes,” she breathes out. 

“I apologize,” he murmurs, “for my absences. Everyone in Zaun wants a piece of the power. It’s like setting rattraps, keeping all the vermin away.”

“Oh,” she says, more a wordless sort of acknowledgement than anything. She wants, so badly, to do what she’s always been doing, these past few weeks, bury her hands in the coat and her head in his chest, let it drown out the world around. When she thinks of doing that now, however, there’s the smell of fire, Vi’s voice, her wide blue eyes aglow with flames. 

“Vander never did a good job of keeping them in line,” he says. The words coincide with a long, low scream that rings through her mind, and she flinches—lowers her head—only barely resists the urge to cover her ears. Vander. Vander. Vander. 

“So it’s that,” he whispers. The blankets bunch as he scoots closer, places a warm hand on her arm, tilts her chin up with the other. When she looks up, it’s into his eyes, one green and the other a pinprick of red. “Are you thinking of them?”

She pushes herself back, further away, panic rushing bright and hot in her veins. 

“I’m not angry, Jinx.” A pause, and when she still doesn’t answer, a peculiar sort of expression flits across his face. “Or would you prefer Powder?”

A blow so strong that it’s as if he’d cuffed her. She flinches back, and he follows, arm snaking up from her hand to the back of her neck, the other settling across her back. 

“No,” she whispers, as he gathers her into his embrace. Not like the hugs of Viktor or Vi—this one is taut and poised on the edge of comfort, and she knows that it would be good if she melted into it, but she does not. “Not Powder.”

“She’s gone,” he hums, his chest thrumming with the motion, “and so are the rest of them. They left you all on your own, did they not?”

She relaxes just a bit more, cheek pressed uncomfortably into the buttons of his coat. When she nods, she knows he can feel it, because he continues. 

“Vander was a coward and a traitor. Your sister ran to the enforcers, ran to her death, rather than stay with you. Did they help you, even before? Vander had money plenty. Did he ever find you a mentor? Someone to cultivate your gift? Or did they degrade you? Leave you behind?”

She nods. In her head, Vi is hugging her, and then she’s throwing her off onto the cold, wet ground, shouting Jinx! Silco’s grip tightens, and the image puffs away in a cloud of reddish smoke, and the voices are mercifully silent. She surrenders herself fully into the embrace, finally lets herself settle against him. This is how it is. This is how it will always be. 

“There’s only us,” he says, hand rubbing circles into her back, “they’ll always leave you, Jinx, and as the ones left behind, we must stick together.”

One final time, she nods. He doesn’t speak again—for a long moment, they remain there, suspended in the silence. 

Eventually, as all things must, they separate. He ushers her under the covers, pulls the sheets to her shoulders, departs with a quiet, “Goodnight.”

Her dreams consist not of the usual—faceless figures circling her, calling her name, flame burning bright in the background—but something new. Silco’s embrace, which morphs into that of a thinner man, the clatter of a cane, which then turns into a child’s, and when she pulls back all she can catch is a shock of white hair and crooked grin.

[dastardly-imbecile]

Mechanical Butterfly (III)

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 4

---

Viktor doesn't run from Singed. Silco sees the burgeoning inventor in the young girl he found, after Vander. Collaborations abound!

---

Wordcount: ~2100

Singed is back by the time the knock comes, which he’s thankful for. He allows Viktor to answer the door himself, absorbed in methodically sorting through the brains of an overgrown rat. 

Standing before it, in the alleyway, is the woman who’d come in Silco’s entourage the day before, and Jinx, the man himself nowhere to be found. Viktor can’t help but be glad for that—he doesn’t know how he’d possibly teach with that man peering over his shoulder at all moments. 

Then again, looking at the sharp expression on her face, she may not be much better. 

Jinx, however, is the picture-opposite to her—face bright, a smile already tugging at her lips, standing tall. A moment of hesitancy flashes over her expression, as she looks up at him, but it doesn’t quell the clear excitement thrumming through her. 

He steps back, murmuring a quiet, “come in.” 

She does so eagerly, and the woman slower, scanning around the lab, clearly looking for danger. 

“Viktor?” She asks him curtly. He nods, though surely she recognizes him from the day before. 

“And you?”

“Sevika.” The answer is sharp. Singed glances up at the name, some note of recognition in his gaze, though he soon turns back to the rodent’s cracked-open head. 

“My room,” he says to Jinx, nodding towards the open door. It’s a small place, cramped, nothing but the bed and the mass of the half-built forge in it. 

“Not so fast,” she growls, “let me check.”

She bustles off towards the room before he can tell her not to touch anything. For what’s essentially glorified babysitting duty, she seems rather serious about it all—then again, she works for Silco. There’s probably a lot of motivation to be good at her job. 

He follows, finds her poking through the space underneath his mattress. 

“I assure you,” he says, “it’s safe.” Not like he’s hiding a bomb in the room—what does she think he wants to do? Blow up a child, her, and himself?

She mutters something inarticulate, strides over to the far wall and leans against it. A vantage point to look at both the room and, in the lab beyond, Singed injecting the rat with a vial of glowing magenta. 

“You can sit,” he tells Jinx, indicating the bed. She does so, padding over to the spot with the attention of a child in a schoolroom, as if he’s some sort of actual instructor. 

On her lap, she holds a small brown bag. He nods at it. 

“What’s that?”

“Oh!” She opens it, and from inside, withdraws a handful of crude, clumsy tools—a screwdriver that’s hardly more than a rusted rod of metal taped to a block of wood, a small mallet with a chunk missing from the end. They look like something a beleaguered shopper trying to exert minimal effort would scrape up in the cheapest parts of the market, which he suspects is exactly what they are. “I brought my own tools. And Silco told me I should make something for you, so I thought-”

Here, from the bottom of the bag, she extracts something else, holds it gently pinched between two fingers and extends her hand for him to take it. He leans forwards, unsure of what it is at first glance—it is only when she drops it into his palm that he realizes. 

It’s a small butterfly. Deceptively delicately crafted—at first glance, it is nothing but a twist of wires, but as he examines it closer, he sees the shape of wings and even gossamer-thin legs. And, lining its back-

Gears. Experimentally, he prods at its wings, and they move, flapping up and down. Everything about it is so small, so carefully put together, that he could not imagine the patience it must have taken. 

“You made this?” He doesn’t bother hiding the admiration in his voice. Just the minutiae of the body and wings is enough, but to attach the mechanisms for it to move is beyond what he’d expected of her. 

She smiles wider, the last of the anxiety melting away. “Yes! Is it… do you like it?”

“I do,” he says softly. He glances at her fingers, the small hands of a child, thin and nimble, and has a sudden idea. “Come here,” he says, beckoning her forwards, towards the forge upon the ground. 

She obliges, slipping off the bed and approaching it—it’s almost as tall as her, and he’s gratified to see similar awe in her eyes. Singed’s appreciation for what he does is nothing more than the occasional comment on his talent, always said in a detached, observational sort of tone. It feels good to be recognized. 

“Inside,” he says, grabbing a flashlight off the top and shining it inside, “can you see that exposed panel?”

“Where it’s peeled back?” She asks, peering in. 

“Yes,” he says. 

Outside, there’s the clatter of a door closing. 

“Where’s he going?” Sevika asks immediately, making him turn, peer out the door. The lab is empty—Singed must have left. 

“I don’t know,” he answers semi-truthfully, “out.”

“Who’s he getting?”

“Nobody,” he says. Does she suspect an ambush? 

Her eyes dart down to regard his twisted leg, and he gets the ugly feeling that she’s currently considering how easily she could beat him in a fight—the answer is, very easily—before they flick back up and she lets out a low sigh. 

By the time he turns back to Jinx, she’s already halfway into the forge. 

“What are you doing?” He asks. Her voice, when it comes back, is muffled. 

“All you have to do is- is connect the green wires, I think, and then make sure to plug the switch in, and then I think you’re missing a part.”

“Missing?” he asks. 

“Yes, you need something to ignite the spark with, right?”

“I’d planned on installing that later,” he says, but she makes a sound of negation. 

“It’d be best here.”

He steps back, takes a moment to think on it—and, yes, it would be most convenient. For the first time, he smiles, and she extracts herself from the forge interior, blue hair a mess and a nervous cast to her mouth. 

“...Would it?” She asks, and he realizes he never responded to her last point. Suddenly, all that confidence is gone, drained out and replaced with something vulnerable. “You know best, obviously, you’re the inventor and you made this and-”

“No,” he says, cutting her off, “no, you were right.”

Still, she doesn’t move. He nods at the forge. “You were doing a good job. If you wish, you can continue with the wires.” He holds up his hand, wriggling the fingers slightly. “My hands are a bit too large.”

“Thank you,” she whispers, and for what, he’s unsure, but he nods anyways, watches as she returns to the forge. 

Must be an hour, maybe two, before Sevika steps off the wall. Currently, he’s walking Jinx through the construction of a filter, watching her fumble with the delicate meshes, but both of them pause as she approaches. 

“Time to go,” she says, huffing out a breath, “boss wants you back. Same time next week?”

The last question, she directs at Viktor, who nods. Jinx stands without complaint, dropping the filter—and he hesitates before speaking up. 

“No. Keep it.” 

Questioningly, she reaches for it. He nods. “You know what to do, no? Finish it by next time. Consider it… homework.”

The delight on her face at the prospect is both startling and slightly gratifying. He tries to smile back. 

Sevika fishes about in one of her pockets before withdrawing another brown pouch, this one jingling musically. She tosses it to Viktor, who just barely manages to catch it, the weight bowing his arm down. 

“For you and your father,” she notes, and steps out without waiting for his response, escorting Jinx with a careful hand on her shoulder. Even as they leave through the front door, he stands immobilized, carefully considering the pouch. 

Singed is not a father, not in the way that Viktor’s ever thought of him, even though he can perhaps see the logic in calling him that. But no, he had a father, one who died upon the bridge, and Singed is simply a man who fed, sheltered, clothed him, though he cannot think of an equivalent word for that at the moment. It has always felt faintly transactional in nature—always, Viktor has had a job, no matter how trivial, that he does in exchange for this bit of care. 

First, it was caring for Rio, and then it was as an errand boy and lab assistant, spending long afternoons hunting down rats in the gutters or ferrying chemicals to Singed during his experiments. Then, as he began to build, to tinker, it became creating contraptions for the lab, and now it’s this work, bringing in enough money to buy things like food while the other member of the household is off experimenting in the cave. 

Which, speaking of, he’s still not back from. Viktor leaves the bag of coins upon his desk before returning to his room, beginning the work on the nine other filters he needs to make. At least Jinx will take the load of one off of his shoulders. 

—

It is not until late night that Singed stumbles back in, closing the door with a heavy thud. Late enough that Viktor is usually asleep, but he had work to do, and besides, he tries to stay up and wait for Singed if he can. Does not want a repeat of that night of the explosion, does not want to be sleeping while the man bleeds out in the next room over. 

Tonight, he’s unharmed, though tired—he sits down at the lab table with a heavy thump, arms ridgid on the desk. Viktor approaches quietly. 

“You remember Rio,” Singed says—a rare occurrence, him starting the conversation. He nods. 

“Of course.”

“How did you do it?” He asks, swiveling around to regard him, “help her with the Shimmer. How was it done?”

“I… don’t know,” he replies, thinking once again of the giant salamander. Always affectionate, even in her last days, curling around his legs as he slept so she could share his warmth. He’d wanted to bury her, after she died, but Singed insisted on dissection—a process he was normally accustomed to, but in this case, sat out. Viktor left the cave during the process, spent those hours as she was cut to pieces sitting by the river and stretching his leg in the cool water. “Did you not find anything? In her blood?”

“No,” he says, “I’ve attempted distillation, but it is a fraught process. Little has come of it. Cannot preserve it, either—the meat spoils. Not physically, but the Shimmer inside does not take to being extended.”

He winces at the thought. Too soon, still. 

“All the ones before,” he continues, “and all the ones after, the Shimmer changes irrevocably. It is some malady that runs molecule-deep. In small doses—” now, he indicates himself—“it heals, somewhat. But what I’m working on requires too much.”

“What are you working on?” 

“A vast project,” is the answer, more crumbs of knowledge yet. The next words rest heavy on Viktor’s tongue, the words that he doesn’t dare say—that of his daughter. He knows, obviously, from seeing the room and the coffin, from doing his own bits of illicit research. Coming across the name Doctor Reveck, catching glimpses of a girl in Singed’s scratched golden locket. 

And Singed knows that he knows, because how could he not—has alluded to the matter, dancing around the topic with all the grace of a spy. 

It is part of the reason that he has never considered Singed his father, he supposes—because the spot of the child is long-filled. 

So he doesn’t say it, and instead shrugs, an uncomfortable movement with the cane. 

“I do not know how I did. Rio simply… survived.”

And how different it would’ve been, if she hadn’t.

Singed lets out a long sigh, the most emotion that he allows himself to show, before standing from the chair. “Perhaps you are uniquely brilliant. I’ll find the key. You should rest.”

Hypocritical words from the man that Viktor’s sure will stay up the rest of the night, but that’s another effect of the Shimmer. Honestly, that facet of the drug, the ability to need so little sleep, is almost as tempting as the prospect of fixing his leg. 

“The money is on the table,” he says. Singed makes no move to grab it, instead striding over to one of the long rows of jars upon the wall, selecting one with a litter of baby rabbits floating within. With his other hand, he reaches for a loaf of bread that sprouts clumps of glowing pink mushrooms. 

“Goodnight,” Viktor adds.

This, finally, garners a response. 

“Sleep well, Viktor.”

He doubts he will, thinking of Rio as he is, but the sentiment is nice.

[dastardly-imbecile]

Mechanical Butterfly (II)

Part 1 | Part 3 | Part 4

---

Viktor doesn't run from Singed. Silco sees the burgeoning inventor in the young girl he found, after Vander. Collaborations abound!

---

Wordcount: ~2072

Despite Viktor’s origins, the undercity is unfamiliar to him. Much of the childhood he can remember was spent in Singed’s old lab—as close to topside as Zaun ever got, a place where the water was mostly clear, and children of both cities gathered to play. Shame to think that those golden years of early childhood, no Piltover or Zaun, just children scampering about in the sunlight, would soon rot into rivalry. The former becoming enforcers and the latter street thugs, all those tattered remnants of childhood simplicity gone to the wind. 

Of course, he never got that experience of playing anyways—nothing about his body was quite built for scampering. No, what he remembers is the darkness of the cave, bioluminescent plants entangling along slick walls, the sound of running water always present in the darkness. 

It’s dark here, too, deeper in the undercity, but in a different, more distasteful way. No sunlight manages to reach this low, blocked by smoke or the broken spines of jagged buildings, stacked one-by-one atop each other, crowding out the space like too many rats in a box too small. He misses the cave, for the fresh air and the open space and the lack of people. 

He knows the necessity of abandoning it, though: possibly-impending war means that no borderlands are safe, and now that he’s getting actual work, it’s more convenient, and also the secret third reason that Singed always skates around: he’s working on something that even Viktor isn’t privy to, and the cave is now a secret storage for whatever that is. 

He’s curious, but he knows better than to pry. If Singed means to tell him, then he will, and if he does not, then not a force in all of Runeterra will pry it from his lips. Something to do with his daughter’s coffin, he’s sure, something to do with the large, cloth-bound thing that he dragged into the lab after the explosion. 

When the three leave, with promises of returning for the first lessons tomorrow, Singed looks at him wordlessly, waiting for his verdict. 

“That’s Silco?” is the first thing he asks. He knows the name, of course, all of Zaun is passing those five letters around from mouth-to-mouth like a pipe. The new lord of this place, the source of the flaming plume of smoke that’s been clogging the sky for the past few weeks. He knows the face too: remembers it from years ago. When he was only a few months into working with Singed, insofar as ‘working’ meant feeding Rio and lurking around the cave, the man who’d come to talk on business. And business—that leads into the last way he knows Silco. 

As the man who, directly or indirectly, almost killed the man standing before him. The explosion. The burn. Viktor remembers staying up late, working—because otherwise he would not know how to expel his nervous energy—hearing a commotion at the lip of the cave. Rushing out to see Singed limping in, skin scorched red and blistered, bleeding bright Shimmer from all orifices.

He’s healed, in the weeks since, preternaturally quickly—a process that most certainly has something to do with the Shimmer—but during bad nights, Viktor still sees it. He never screamed, through all the pain, simply collapsed upon the floor and reached for Viktor’s hand. 

So ‘that’s Silco’ is a statement woefully inadequate, filled in only by the silent language that both of them have learned to speak in. 

“He’s a powerful man,” Singed replies, rubbing absently at the right side of his face. The burnt. 

“Was I wrong to accept?”

“I can’t say.” He turns, shuffles towards one of the tables, one piled with jars of preserved creatures. Vermin, mostly—rats, insectoids, all white-eyed and suspended in greenish liquid. He does not reach for the jars, and instead, a roll of stained bandages and a pair of forceps. “The girl is an anomaly,” he adds, like an afterthought. 

Viktor steps forwards, leaning on his cane as he does. The leg is especially bad, today—has been, ever since they moved house to this new lab. Singed has offered Shimmer, or other modifications, more than once—but always, he denies. He’s seen what it does to the experiments, what it almost did to Rio, what it did to Singed after the explosion. Shimmer in the eyes, in the mouth, leaking from each pore of the skin and sparking where it touched burnt flesh.

“His daughter?”

Singed removes his mask, digs the forceps into the bandages running down his neck, slowly begins to peel. The skin underneath is pale pink and raw, bright magenta streaks running just under the skin. They pulse under the dim light. Viktor tries not to look away. 

“No,” he says, “no. Vander’s.”

“Vander? The one he killed?” 

He went to his bar, once, one of those rare moments that he wanted a break from the cave. A loud, energetic place, a crowd with strange looks for the crippled boy trying to force his way through. Never met the man himself—gave up before he was even halfway to the bar, let the chaos spit him back out. 

Singed hums in confirmation, dropping the chunk of bandage into a thin metal pail, starting work on the one below. “He’s been planning for very long. He plans something for Jinx too, I suspect.”

“Dangerous for us?”

This next bandage is a bit of a struggle—it wraps around to the back, a place that Singed can’t easily reach. “No,” he repeats, “he’s an honest man. Admirable.”

Coming from the mouth of a man who is, if not dishonest, never unwilling to bend a few morals. Viktor watches him struggle for a moment longer before stepping forwards. 

“Let me.”

With no protest, he relinquishes both the forceps and the bandages to him. It’s a ritual, at this point—the man does not ask for help, but he knows what’s good for him in the end. Without need for indication, he turns, and Viktor leans against the table so he can set his cane down and use both hands. 

With the metal implement, he slowly unpeels the bandages that cross his back and chest, discarding them to the side. Once that’s done, he unravels the new roll, begins to methodically recover the wounds. It’s all horrifically unsanitary, but the new drug running through Singed’s veins takes care of that handily. How convenient. 

“Did he not make that promise,” Viktor asks, once the final bandage is changed, “the first time?”

By which he means, of course, their original partnership—the one that ended with Singed collapsed upon the ground, waking only to tell Viktor they needed to evacuate. If that’s how this particular venture is going to end, he’d very much rather not.

“That was my own mistake. I became… greedy.”

“For?”

“You will see.” 

Singed steps away, running a thin hand over the bandages. A hint, and a reassuring one at that—not a flat denial, which he’s certainly never been afraid to give. 

You will see. 

Viktor’s looking forward to it. 

—

He misses Rio, at times, dead for about a year at this point. His introduction to Singed, the lab, and the thing that firmly enmeshed him into this place. The first success of Shimmer too: whatever dosage he gave her, it extended her lifespan by years past what it should have been. Of course, that success came with a thousand failures, rats and feral cats and fish, all of whom ended up swollen and bleeding and dying-

But it gave Singed hope for the project that he works on, the one they both pretend does not exist: whatever it is that has to do with his daughter. 

At night, he works, as per usual—on the components that make up his first true job. Different from what he’s been doing before, crafting little curiosities or machines to help Singed in the lab, but an actual commission—from the Frederson Chem-forge, one of the many he’d reached out to, and the only that’d replied. 

Singed is gone. Left at late dusk, and by all probability, will not be back until morning—off to the cave, to his secret experiments. It does not hurt to be excluded, not really, but it does concern him a bit—he’s felt nothing but a constant state of concern since the explosion, though Singed’s demeanor has returned to more-or-less normal.

He has better things to be concerned about than the scientist, though, at least right now—namely, teaching the child of the current king of Zaun. It’s the sudden realization that bowls over him, that being that he does not know how to teach, that has him frantically working so he can take his mind off of it. 

It was his parents that taught him the first basics of machinery: both were mechanics as well, working in the dark, rotating underbelly of Zaun, among the pipes and the steam and the gears that stretched tall as people. They died storming the bridge when he was young—another way he knows of Vander and Silco—but he tries to remember how they taught him nevertheless. Can’t scrounge up much of anything, besides a faint impression of a voice, the phantom feeling of hands guiding his. 

Useless. 

Singed’s never taught him anything, at least not in this realm. He’s the type of scientist that dapples in chemicals and dead things, and though they’ve combined their talents on occasion, scraping the surface of mechanical biomancy, it was always an equal partnership, not mentor-student. He’d entertained the idea of going to the academy when he was younger, in that unreal, wistful way that all childrens’ dreams are painted in. Not by enrolling, of course, they’d never let a Zaunite orphan enroll, but instead somehow sneaking in—but Singed cleared him of that idea as quickly as it came. 

“They’re small,” he remembers him saying, “small minds. I parted from Heimerdinger long ago, and there is nothing he could teach you that I could not.”

Now, though, he wishes he’d gone, if only for some idea about how it all worked. Teaching. Their refined mechanics up there in topside, all smooth and gleaming white, must be so different from the mish-mash of things he cobbles together down here. When he was younger, he used to painfully make his way to the top of Zaun, places where he could watch those sharp-clothed academy students stroll the streets, talking about things he couldn’t hear nor understand. Never worth the days of pain that the act of climbing brought his leg, but he kept doing it anyway. 

Eventually, he gives up, both on trying to fix the section of chemforge and on considering this issue. Right now, he’s attempting to connect a few infinitesimally small bits in the back, but space is cramped and his fingers are not nimble enough to both screw, hold, and leave room to see in the narrow space. He may have to take the entire thing apart to get to it, and putting it together took two weeks on its own. It’s a beautiful creation, all gleaming metal and smoothly connected joints, and if he were to take it apart and put it back together, he has the sinking feeling that it would no longer be nearly so perfect. 

Like digging up a corpse, trying to breathe life back into the skin. Couldn’t be the same ever again.

So instead, he hobbles out into the main room of the lab, and attempts to tidy up. Shove jars back into their rightful places, drop tools into drawers, clean the beakers laying around. All useless, because Singed both will not notice, and will have the lab redirtied in a day, but it brings him some measure of peace. The work goes by quickly, even with his limited movement, and by the time that night is truly upon Zaun—the streets lit by glowing signs, the only life drunkards staggering down the street—he still has not figured out a solution. 

With a sigh, he slumps down upon his bed—a sagging mattress barely held up by cinderblocks and wood planks—and wishes he had not accepted. Shouldn’t have. Hadn’t been planning to, until the girl, Jinx, started speaking—until he saw the look in her eyes, bright and eager and full of more passion for the machine than he’s seen in anything but the mirror. 

That look is the last thing that still lingers in his mind, even after all else is surrendered to unconsciousness.

[dastardly-imbecile]

Mechanical Butterfly (I)

Part 2 | Part 3

---

Again, silence, but this time because she’s thinking. Viktor watches her intently, waiting for a response, eyes a brown so light it borders on amber—both narrowed, focused. Reminds Silco of Singed, the way he decides upon a goal, does not let anything sway his course. He wonders what a child raised by that man’s particular psyche might turn out to be like. 

He wonders what a child raised by his own would. 

---

Viktor doesn't run from Singed. Silco sees the burgeoning inventor in the young girl he found, after Vander. Collaborations abound!

---

Wordcount: ~2600

When Silco makes the journey to Singed’s lab, the damp cave hiding between moss-slicked rocks, he does not expect a child to be there. The scientist makes no effort to hide the boy, but he seems to be of a shyer demeanor regardless—the first glimpse he catches of the child is a dark shape ducking behind a long line of glowing vials. 

He pays no mind to it at first—believing it another one of the strange, twisted creatures that Singed tinkers with. One of the things that, by silent mutual agreement, Silco doesn’t pry into in exchange for similar courtesy. He does not ask about the creatures in vats of formaldehyde, about the locket that the other man occasionally fiddles with, and in exchange, he brooks no inquiries about the darker sides of his own business. 

When he greets the man, however, with a quiet dip of his head, there’s the sound of a brief clattering behind him. He turns, sees a crooked wooden cane on the ground—seems it was dropped by someone—and a small, thin hand scrabbling for it. 

“Viktor,” Singed calls, voice soft but not unkind, “come out.”

The hand grabs the cane, and, with the implement’s help, a boy rises from behind the table. He has the look that all Zaunite children have—thin and hollow-cheeked despite the roundness of youth, clothes dirty and patchwork, hair unbrushed. Even the twist of his leg, foot turned inwards, is not entirely unique. Silco’s seen enough children like these, sick street rats with nothing to their name but what they can steal, that he feels less pity and more simple curiosity. 

Singed is a scientist first and chemist second, merchant far behind those two, and paternal not even upon the list. Logic suggests that the boy is yet another experiment, but the soft tone of the other man’s voice did not suggest that sort of relationship, nor the way he approaches without fear. 

The only wariness to him, in fact, is centered upon Silco. He stops a good distance away, leaning heavily upon his cane. He’d estimate his age around ten or eleven, but ages get murky once malnutrition and grime are introduced into the mix. 

“I apologize,” Singed says smoothly, “I did not know I would have a guest today. I hope his presence is not… objectionable.”

Silco cannot tell if he’s addressing him or the boy, which one of them is supposed to be the guest. Eventually, he settles upon a, “is he yours?”

Flat. Straightforward. 

“No,” is the reply, equally neutral, “not mine.” No elaboration on what, then, he is—experiment is still a possibility. Assistant, perhaps, but Singed is the type of man to work alone, and, failing that, take on a competent fellow instead of roping a child into his delicate sort of science. 

Doesn’t matter. Silco is here for one thing only—inquiries on Singed’s progress on Shimmer—and none of the man’s other affairs concern him. 

“This is a private matter,” he says, shaking any curiosity out of his mind. Singed nods in acknowledgement. 

“Go,” he says, waving the boy away with a pale hand, “feed Rio.”

The boy takes the dismissal swiftly, turning on a heel, limping away deeper into the depths of the cave. 

Finally, solitude achieved, he’s allowed to return to his business. 

In the progressing months and years, each time he visits Singed, the boy is nowhere to be found—not disposed of, though. He sees the signs. Various canes left leaning against the wall, outgrown or abandoned. Sometimes, the faint sound of uneven footsteps behind one or other of the walls. Most damning, a section of table cleared off in the corner of the lab, where a second inventor works with gears and mechanical trinkets instead of Singed’s signature chemicals. He finds a bit of interest in watching how the projects evolve, each time he drops by—simple at first, a toy boat, childrens’ trinkets, but soon they’re incomprehensible to his eyes, large sections of whirling gears and metal that seem to be only the base components of vaster things yet. 

Interesting, but he doesn’t comment on it. 

The moment of truth rapidly approaches, and that’s all he can occupy himself with, really. 

—

In the weeks after Vander’s disposal, he does not contact Singed at all. After that final culmination of his plan, everything is a jumble of grabbing all those disparate Zaunite threads and tying them into a neat little bow. Stepping into the vacuum of power as easily as plugging a leak, placating the chem-barons and the gangs and scouring the streets of dissidents. 

More pressing, somehow, is the girl. Vander’s girl. The blue-haired child, acting younger than her age of eleven, who’s done nothing but cry and attempt to cling to him, only peeled off by Sevika’s force—and who will, then, refuse to leave her alone. She’s a curiosity. An annoyance, at times, but those first nights, he watches her during the only times she’s quiet—when she’s sleeping—and tries to remember what she reminds him of. 

The boy, he realizes eventually, Singed’s boy, lab assistant, whatever he was. If he was ten, that day so many years ago, he must be nearing twenty by now. Why does she remind him of that child?

More than the physical similarities—of which there aren’t many, actually; as Vander’s daughter, this girl is far better-fed and cared for than that boy was—it’s the way she tinkers. 

He’s surprised, the first time he walks into his office and sees her taking apart his music box. It’s an old thing, a gift from some sycophant he can’t remember anymore, so the instinctive reaction is less fury at her touching his possessions than curiosity about what she’ll do with the parts. He stands there, watching her light fingers run over the fine gears, prodding and pulling, reassembling the entire thing into…

And then, she realizes his presence, startles and whirls around. There’s fear in her wide eyes, fear that he’s going to reprimand her, but it’s almost endearing, the way she clutches the box despite all that. He beckons her, stooping over slightly, doing his best to appear less intimidating than he knows he is. She takes the bait, pushes to her feet and slowly meanders closer. 

“What were you doing?” He asks, lowering his voice. 

“I… don’t know,” she murmurs, “I like crafting. I used to…”

She trails off, dangerously close to getting mired in the memories of times before, so he speaks before she can get too lost. 

“You’re good at it,” he praises, though in truth he knows next to nothing about this sort of thing. He is, to use that old phrase, a politicker first, a lord, a fighter second, and scientist far third.

Her eyes widen at the praise, looking up to him with the first sign of joy he’s seen, and it strikes him that perhaps she will be useful. Perhaps he can mold her into something that can help him as much as any army of brute fighters. 

To do that, though, she will need a mentor. A teacher. 

Perhaps it is because he’s been thinking of Singed’s boy, these past few days, but the idea strikes him and it seems almost like fate. 

—

The man has a new lab. Closer to the mainline of Zaun, though still hidden in a narrow back alleyway. Silco suspects that he still uses the one near the topside, hidden among the rocks, but this is the new location he was provided to visit, and he respects the man enough not to go snooping. 

They’ve had little contact even before he disposed of Vander—once Shimmer was finalized, there was no reason to keep going back. Singed’s enthusiasm for their partnership seemed to have waned, as well, after the accident that burnt him. 

He brings the girl himself. Vander named her Powder, but for some reason, the name doesn’t sit right on his tongue, and she flinched the first time he called her that—so, for now, she’s just the girl. Sevika lags behind them both—he technically needn’t have come; he has no doubts Sevika could do this errand adequately, but then again, this is unfamiliar territory. 

Despite all their distance, when Singed opens the door—far different from how he once looked, now completely bald, right eye clouded a murky sort of green and burnt scarring rippling down his face, the last remains of Professor Reveck cleansed by fire from his being—he nods as if he’s expected Silco all along. Which, perhaps he has. 

The new lab is larger than the old one, and already set up with tall vats that span to the ceiling, filled with glowing liquids and with misshapen things slowly spinning inside like dying tops. Jars cluttered along the shelves, bottles of miscellaneous chemicals, and—he notices—tucked into a far corner, a table cluttered with gears and tools. 

He allows himself the ghost of a smile. He guessed right. 

“I heard,” Singed says, no niceties such as inviting him to sit, offering tea. All familiar. Silco wouldn’t trust any tea the man gave him, anyways. “About your success.”

“Our success,” he says, “it was your invention, too.” Laying it on thick. 

The other man simply nods in acknowledgement. He doesn’t respond, but the unspoken question is that of, so why are you here now? 

“The boy,” he forges on, deciding there’s no use in beating around the bush—both of them appreciate directness—“Viktor, you called him? Is he still around?”

Surprisingly, when the reply comes, there’s a note of guardedness in Singed’s voice. “Viktor? Yes.” 

“Is he yours?” He asks, the repetition of a question from many years before. This time, instead of a certain no, Singed takes a long moment to think. 

“Not biologically,” he settles on, “but he has… lingered here.”

Interesting. As clear a declaration of affection that he’s given for anything outside of science, and also more clear tension to his frame than he’s seen before. The man has looked less uncomfortable elbow-deep in a bloody ribcage than he does, right now, at this line of questioning. 

Perhaps he means to strike back, because he gestures at the girl clinging to Silco’s side—currently looking around the lab in a mixture of fascination and horror—and echoes the question. “Is she yours?”

She tenses at the question, hand tightening around his coat, craning her head to look up at him. He tries not to meet her eyes—since the previous night, his praise of her inventing skills, she has upped her clinginess by a factor of ten. If he were to say no, he knows she would break. Fracture. Too many people, in her life, have left—if not all by choice. 

“Yes,” he says, and the lie comes as smoothly as all lies do, easily enough that a lesser man might think it was the truth. “Viktor is a tinkerer, is he not?” He asks, gesturing towards the corner table. 

“He possesses some talent.” Singed pauses, before continuing. “I do not mean to insult, Silco, but I would prefer he stayed with me.”

Ah. So he thinks that this is a mission for conscription—which is not actually entirely untrue. 

“I would not take him,” he says, trying to push all the reassurance he’s capable of into the words—he does not know what would happen if Singed believed himself backed into a corner, but he knows it wouldn’t be pretty—“but my… but here, I have an inventor as well. Young, but promising.”

The girl can’t suppress her smile at the promising. Singed’s eyebrow—or, perhaps it’s appropriate to say simply brow, given lack of hair—raises fractionally. “You want a tutor? Seek the academy.”

Just the mere statement is an insult, no doubt intentionally, but Silco controls himself. “As if they’d accept her, a Zaunite. Besides, is there not a reason you left?”

He doesn’t offer up a denial. 

“I would pay,” he says, the final seal upon the deal—whatever secret projects that Singed is working on on his own, he needs money, as evidenced by their previous longstanding relationship—“quite generously. You’d have protection, too. Upheaval is coming to the undercity. I could ensure you’re unaffected by the changes.”

If it was just Singed alone, he doubts that the last bit would have much appeal—the man is slippery as a greased eel—but he’s banking upon his feelings towards the boy that’s his-not-his. 

The gamble works. He knows it has, before the man even opens his mouth to acquiesce—by the loosening of his stance, the lowering of his brow. 

He turns his head fractionally, says, “Viktor!” Turns back, quietly addresses Silco again, “it’s his choice.”

“Of course.”

In the back of the lab, a door hidden in the shadows swings open, and out steps a boy. Boy nearing man, really—seems Silco’s estimate of age was correct, as he’s now a tall, thin figure suspended in the limbo between child and adulthood. Still, he’s hollow-cheeked, features angular, though he doubts Singed starves him. Seems that thinness is simply inherent to him. 

Otherwise, as he limps into the dim light, the broad strokes are the same. Still using a simple wooden cane, leg dramatically bent and braced with some sort of metal contraption. Even the expression upon his face calls back to the first time Silco saw him: wary, mouth drawn tight, curiosity hidden behind that veneer of caution. 

“Did you hear?” Singed asks. He nods, approaching ever-closer, stopping only a few feet from the group. 

“You-” he addresses Silco- “want me to teach her?” His voice is soft, faintly accented. 

“Yes,” he confirms. 

“What is your name?” He asks, and it takes a moment to realize that he’s addressing her. She shrinks back for a moment, looking up at Silco for reassurance, but he stays silent. Allow her to choose a name for herself, whether that be Powder or any other moniker. 

“Jinx,” she says, after a long moment. It startles even Silco—strange name, and the way she spits it out suggests that it’s not one she even particularly likes. Still, he doesn’t contradict her. Viktor glances back at Singed, and then again, looks down. 

“Jinx. Why do you do it?”

She’s silent for a long moment, puzzled. After a minute, he prompts her. 

“Invent. Create. Why?”

Again, silence, but this time because she’s thinking. Viktor watches her intently, waiting for a response, eyes a brown so light it borders on amber—both narrowed, focused. Reminds Silco of Singed, the way he decides upon a goal, does not let anything sway his course. He wonders what a child raised by that man’s particular psyche might turn out to be like. 

He wonders what a child raised by his own would. 

“It’s beautiful,” she decides, voice quavering with nerves, “it’s, like-” here, she falters, takes a moment to swallow before pushing on, “making life, and it can be anything you want it to be. And it can hurt, but also… beauty.”

It’s a child’s answer, all muddled and full of odd pauses, but Viktor draws back, the corner of his mouth quirking up into a smile, and Silco would wager it was the exact right answer. 

“Yes,” he says, “the machine really is beautiful.”

With the hand not currently leaning upon the cane, he reaches out. A handshake. Not meant for Silco. 

For the first time in days, Jinx willingly detaches from his side, taking a single step forward. Clasping his hand in hers, and now, independent and smiling and bright-eyed, she looks not only her age of eleven, but like a prophecy of something to come. 

They shake. 

Silco looks up, meeting Singed’s one-eyed gaze, and finds the other man is—if not smiling—satisfied as well. 

This will be a good partnership. 

[dastardly-imbecile]

Not the Dungeons Pt. 4

He has not been so content as the warden of this place to never look towards the sky, reach a hand out towards the lushness of the forest and try to snatch a leaf from the tree, a tuft of fur from a roaming wolf, hold it in his good hand and never let go. --- Interesting conversation. More interesting dreams.

---

Introspection, exploration, more introspection.

Wordcount: ~2700

Pt. 1, 2, 3

---

“We can leave,” the person upon the bed says, so delightfully naive that, for a moment, he wonders how they have survived so far. Of course, he saw—or, rather, felt—it all happening, but still, he must look down at himself and back up in disbelief. Down, at the thick wooden club sprouting from a shoulder, at the chest scarred from a thousand battles, at the beak always in this vision, crosseyed with the effort of capturing it. 

And up. Up at them, still sprawled out, leg wrapped as well as his clumsy hands were able, flickering between a thousand forms at a time. He is unsure whether they are male, female, neither, both—it’s hard to tell both from the merit of a dirt-smudged face, bulky armor, nondescript hair, and from the twist of his eyes. Unused to evaluating anything besides how many hits it would take to kill someone. Still—that doesn’t matter, not much. Same sentiment either way. Same falsehood. 

Slowly, he shakes his head, and they tilt their head, mouth—mouth, lips, not beak, so soft, so pliable—curving downwards. “You want to leave.”

Nod.

“We can leave.”

Shake of the head. A flicker of fear, deep in the eyes—he’s not sure why he registers this, and not gender. Perhaps he’s seen it so many times that picking it out has become second nature. “...We aren’t leaving?”

This one takes longer to consider. Eventually, he shakes his head again. It’s the we that’s the problem here. They can leave. He cannot. Tied to this dungeon, tied to the swollen guards, tied to the things that scream and things that crawl and things that do worse than that.  

It seems that the explorer understands as well, because finally, they say it. “I can leave?”

One final nod. To imagine it is to blaspheme in some way over the ephemeral things that rule this dungeon, but he can’t help it sometimes. Sky a shade so blue that it scorches the eyes, air clear and sharp with dew and flowers, a palace too far away and a man within that. 

…A man?

A knight. A… he stops in place, though he was not moving much in any case, and tries to think. A wall. He remembered this, he knows this, but already the memory is a tattered flock of crows soaring away, dropping a trail of feathers down upon the ground to follow. He picks one up, and then another, but by the time he reaches the third, the wind has already blown the trail all askew. 

Someone important, in any case. He cannot spare much more thought for this—there are two things that he must know, right now. You are not the dungeons. 

And, connected-

Keep the person safe. 

If he loses one, he might lose the other. At the moment it is…. Unsure why this is quite so important, but if he doesn’t remember now, then he did at one point—and, hopefully, he will again. For now, hang onto two points, and solely that. 

“Why not?” They ask, and then shake their head, forbidding his answer. “I apologize. Yes or no. Rudimer. Rudimer?”

Nod. The name hurts, burns, sparks some hidden, dried-out husk of kindling deep within his heart, but that is good. That is the same feeling he got when he studied this person, back before all this, when he knelt over their bed and counted the space between breaths. The burning, the purpose. 

“I… heard of you,” they say, “vaguely. Before I entered, people talked—whispered, more like. About the dungeons’ danger. Said it had taken you and many others. Trortur, Isayah. More, unimportant.” 

He knows them, if not by those names, then by a cobble-together of memory and personal experience. The man who inspires odd irritation in him, and who he took delight in beating down during their singular fight. The one with a mask and a hand disfigured—kindred?—who talks, in his sleep, of maps. And the rabble—the ones clothed in yellow, who follow the bodyless man, the dark-robed rats who crawl into corners with piles of books and glut themselves on blood. 

He is still thinking, recalling, when they finish their sentence in a whisper. “...Le’Garde too, I suppose.”

Blonde man—at least at first. Favorite of the priestess. Victim of the irritating one. His companion’s… whatever he is. 

Jerkily, he nods, unsure of what else to do. It’s true. The man is dead. Another life taken by the dungeons—another one in a line of deaths, one-by-one-by-one. Well- perhaps the others are not dead, including him, but he’s sure that this is worse somehow.

A moment of silence. He certainly cannot break it, not unless he wants to screech incomprehensive words to the heavens—or the hells—so it is upon the only one with a functioning tongue. “I can leave. You’re saying, yes. You… the dungeons? Are they keeping you? Rudimer?”

A part of them seems to delight in saying his name, and he cannot say that he minds completely. Perhaps it reminds them that he was human once, that he is not all hulking brute painted in scars and blood. Which is, of course, what he is, but humanity is comforting in ways that he cannot describe. 

Response—what to respond? He deliberates for a long moment, turning the question about in his mind. It is not… well, he cannot say that it is not a physical bond, because it is, in a way. He has not been so content as the warden of this place to never look towards the sky, reach a hand out towards the lushness of the forest and try to snatch a leaf from the tree, a tuft of fur from a roaming wolf, hold it in his good hand and never let go. 

Always, however, always, there is something that stills him, catches his foot before it crosses the threshold back out. Chirps and chittering behind his eyes, improbably throbbing in the wood of his arm, phantom pains from flesh that no longer exists. 

The memory of… something. Someone? The man in the palace? He is dead now, he must be dead, or he must be something worse than that, but just as he thinks this, it occurs to him that he has never lingered on his presence beyond this moment. 

For, always, he’s been simple vermin, been one of the many pests that come in and do not come out again. If he crosses paths with one of them, he will fight, as is his duty—duty from whom? From what?—but, usually, he puts little effort into seeking them out. 

But it is not impossible to find. In his mind, floating somewhat suspended in a mire of half-eaten memories, is a vague awareness of the dungeon. Crude at the best of times—he is not able to pick out a stone from thousands, to track the lumbering patrol of a single guard—but it guides him when he wanders through the labyrinth, alerts him when trouble comes. 

There are guards in the hallway outside. Above and below, for many floors. The deeper he goes, the larger they get, the darker their presence in his mind, until they’re indistinguishable from tarry feathers and subtly-shifting wings. There is nothing of note on the upper floors—a few of the quieter denizens such as the Pocketcat, casting his own sort of shadow, but outside of that, the only humans present are unremarkable and small. Even Le’Garde, infirm as he was, had a stronger presence. 

So deeper. Blackness in his mind, and the chirping grows louder, and the beaks stronger, first cartilage and now bone, scraping scraping scraping. 

So deeper. Even the crows shy away, now, and he has never attempted to extend his dominion so low—even in the days when he was not this god-touched creation, he’s sure he never ventured down here, never laid eyes on whatever rests in the depths—but he goes, keeps going, and still has not reached the edge. If he attempts to extend too high above, into the uncursed world, then he will scarcely get a touch of brightness before the crows start up a racket and begin smashing their heads upon the walls of his skull. But below, below, they are quiet—almost as if even they are afraid of drawing attention. 

So deeper. He realizes somewhere, dully, that someone is calling Rudimer, but he’s unsure if it’s happening below or above. Maybe both. Maybe neither. There are monsters down here, scuttling in the darkness, away from his reach, but he does not know them as he knows his guards, even tremulously. Other things too, things near-indescribable, darker than the Pocketcat and brighter than Le’Garde both, and if he focuses upon them for too long, then he feels them begin to focus on him—so he does not do that. 

So deeper. Finally, he feels something that is neither of those two. Small—not human, but not completely beast either. Familiar in a way that he barely remembers, in a way that floats just out of reach. It’s what he is looking for. He’s what he is looking for. 

And then, he withdraws himself from those dark places whip-fast, and the idle movements of brutes and monsters in the lighted world is almost a relief compared to whatever roams down there. 

As is the face before his, wide-eyed. In that first moment of return, confronted with the visage of a human, his mauler twitches and he half stands, but with a vicious wrench of his mind, he quells the motion completely. 

You are not the dungeons.

He is not. 

“Rudimer,” they say, and the thought resurfaces that perhaps it was them calling a name. His name. “Are you…” 

He blinks. Is he? 

Still, they have not flinched back, even with his initial early movement. Impressive, he’d say, except maybe it’s foolhardy instead. 

“The dungeons,” they repeat. He remembers the question—still unsure how to answer it though. Eventually, he settles on a tilt of his head, neither a nod nor a shake, and they sit back. 

“You do not know? Do… do this if you do not know.” They make a motion like the rolling of one’s shoulders, up-and-down, and he copies them, feeling the energy within those corded muscles, eager to bash. Not here. Not now. Soon? Perhaps. If he wishes to go down…

“The dungeons,” they say once again, “stopping you?”

He does the motion. Slowly, they nod, taking the information in. 

“How?” They look down, searching for chains, maybe for evidence of some sort of pact. He almost laughs. If it was a voluntary contract that led to this, he would have learned how to break it long ago. 

Not a question answerable by yes, no, or shoulders, but there’s another motion he can make. 

He points-

Down. 

To where all things go eventually. Always, he has been too wary of it to go fully, but he supposes that this prophecy must come true eventually as well. 

Down he goes. 

“That’s where…” they say, and then stop, shaking their head. “What’s down there?”

Roll of the shoulders again. Quite the useful motion. Struck by inspiration again, he raises his hand and points at his head, shakes it, rolls the shoulders, and points down again. I have impressions, but I do not know much. 

To their credit, they seem to get it almost immediately. “So that is what keeps you here.”

Nod. 

“We will set out tomorrow, then,” they decide, and he hesitates. Again, the most important of all those words is we—both of them? Slowly, he points at them, and then up. Out. Freedom. They asked him whether he wanted to leave, is that not an implicit indication of their own desires?

“No,” they say, “or not now, perhaps.”

He tilts his head. Inquisitive—it comes naturally. Perhaps it is the influence of the crows. 

“I came down here for Le’Garde. He is…” they hesitate, shake their head, “he is no more. He wanted to find what lays below. Thus…”

He draws back, regards them, all of them—disheveled and dirty, armor the slightest bit ill-fitting. Fought through seven levels of creatures, survived here where few do, at least in the open. 

They are not naive nor foolhardy, he realized, but insane. As all the living in here are. It should have been obvious, but he has not analyzed the mind of anybody in a long time, not unless ‘mind’ counts gray matter splattered against the wall. 

Slowly, hesitantly, unsure whether it is the right thing to do-

He nods. 

***

The last part of the day is uneventful, all things considered. Not after the mental foray into the darkness, not after the plans sketched out to travel below. Painstakingly as well—in the end, all that could really be confirmed between them was kill all monsters and keep each other alive. 

Good enough. More than anything he’s had in years. 

They sleep. He doesn’t. Not to keep guard—the monsters don’t breach this safe zone, not besides him, but because he doesn’t sleep. 

And perhaps because he likes watching. 

Force of habit. They fall asleep as they always do—slowly and with fluttering eyelids, a leisurely relaxation of their body, so out of place here. Soon, come the dreams, the faint twitching of limbs, the movement of their eyes behind the lids, flicking back and forth. He is used to it all, able to recite the steps in his own sleep, if he both slept and had a voice. 

Tonight, though, something changes. They roll over completely, unusual—they are not an animated sleeper, not usually—and then, the movement behind the eyes grows quicker, grows frantic. 

Moments later, the first sound. A cry, quiet, like a hurt creature, the noise that all things make when they die, monster or human or something else entirely. Momentarily, there is a brief flicker of excitement—is this the moment that it happens? The moment that the crows have found them? He watches, waiting for the beak, for the feathers and the transformation of limb to weapon, but it doesn’t come. 

Only more sounds. Struggling sounds, hurt sounds. Thrashing—enough to throw the thin sheet thrown across their body off, onto the ground. 

Eventually, the excitement fades, enough that he’s sure that tonight is not the night for them to become one like him. Perhaps, then, they will be able to talk, caw and croak in a language only the two of them understand, and the parts below will shake as both descend upon them, swinging and killing in tandem-

But, again, it is not the night. 

Something else… he leans closer, looms, watches. There is another feeling in his chest beside that of excitement. Should he muffle them, in case this does attract some wandering creature? Not by force, surely, that feels counterintuitive, but…

He reaches out a hand. Draws it back. Extends both, and then brings the mauler down so quickly that he scratches himself. Not that. Only one good hand anymore—remember that. 

One hand, carefully, so uncertain of the strength needed, upon their arm. That is all—he does not dare to squeeze, for fear that it will be the strength he uses to crush skulls. 

The sensation is unfamiliar. Cold metal against colder skin. He cannot remember if he’s done this before—not touch metal, but touch a person with such calculated softness. 

Perhaps he has. Not since the dungeons took him. 

The thrashing stops, but the sounds continue—quieter though, at further intervals apart. He can’t help but feel it’s because of him. Is this pride? It’s the same bubbling feeling as when he communicated his words with nothing but pointing and jerks of his head, the same feeling he got when he bashed his mauler into Trortur’s head and sent the man stumbling away. 

Must be. For however long it is, he’s content to sit there and watch, wait with a single hand upon their arm. 

All the sounds thus far have been incomprehensible, simple noises of surprise—wordless exclamations. 

Right before they awake, however—as he can feel the beginning of sunlight barely warming the dungeon stone in the highest level—there is a word. Or at least an amalgamation of letters that sounds more like a word than anything else. They jerk harder than they have since he put a hand upon their arm, and from their mouth comes an exclamation of, “Ma’habre!”

[dastardly-imbecile]

Not the Dungeon pt. 3

I've accepted i'm continuing this.

---

His gaze snaps to the person in front of him, still laid out upon the bed. For a moment, they are a thin white creature marveling over a stone cube, and then they are a dark priest trying to comprehend the speech of crows, and finally the flicker of a knight, eyes wide, forgotten words spilling frantically from his lips. 

---

Flashback episode?

Wordcount: ~2500

---

Rudimer is standing in the grand hallway of a palace. Around him, marble columns do the work of giants, holding up a ceiling splashed in vivid murals, old saints and prophets conjoining and copulating in cracked glory. 

“Rudimer!” Calls a voice from behind, jovial and perhaps touched by too much wine. Tonight is the night of his promotion, of a sort—no longer is he a mere knight, one cog in the wheel of thousands, but instead he is a Captain. 

Of the Dungeons of Fear and Hunger no less, an ominous name if he’s ever heard it. He turns, already knowing who he will see—Seril, brother, who throws a heavy arm around his shoulders. “What are you doing away from the party? We’re all celebrating you.”

“I don’t know,” he admits, placing a hand upon his brother’s. “Is it not all an elaborate excuse to drink?”

“Yes,” he admits, but surges ahead, “and that applies to you as well.”

“I cannot afford it. I’m setting out tomorrow.”

More than that, his true goal was to make it to the library. Find out what this dungeon truly is—for the sixth sense inside him, honed from years or battle, says that it is not all of what it seems. 

“We will miss both you and the stick up your arse,” Seril remarks fondly, and Rudimer musts a half-smile. 

“Me as well.”

Tomorrow, he will leave, and after that, he will see what these dungeons truly contain.

***

Rudimer is sitting in the darkness of his office, watching the snow fall in gentle flurries outside. It is a stark contrast to the rust on his blackened walls—he tried his best to clean this room out when he arrived, but he swears that every morning they have redirtied themselves. 

Briefly, he remembers chucking snowballs with Seril as young boys, or running through the wilds around the palace, all carpeted in plush white, and there is the urge to stand and take a moment in the snow—but that is quickly quashed. 

Too many things to do, too many things he cannot afford to lose. If he catches a chill, then there is little medicine to help him fight his way through, if he ruins a bit of his armor, it will not be until spring that he can request a new shipment. 

A flurry of papers on his desk. All unread, but for the letter sitting apart from the rest. Seril’s. Inquiring of his health, of the dungeon’s health, whether it has loosened him up a bit—he has half-written a dozen replies, but nothing he pens down feels right. Can he really say that when he sleeps, the space behind his eyelids feels darker than it used to? Tell him that when he ventures into the deeper cells, the prisoners press against their bars and tell him how his great-great-grandchildren will die?

That two days ago, a man crucified himself, spilled his intestines into the shape of something he does not know, but couldn’t bear to look at for too long. That priests file in with two black-robed children and come out with only one, and yet he never finds a body. 

But he cannot sit agonizing over this forever, not when there is so much to do. So, once again, he grabs a quill and a blank sheet of parchment and scrawls something out. 

All is well, Seril. Life is more difficult than anticipated, but I believe I can do something here. I miss you and the palace as well. 

After a brief hesitation, he puts the quill down. It is short, but it has to do. He has not the time for anything else. Not with a dungeonful of strangeness to manage. 

***

Rudimer is stalking through dark corridors with a sword in his hand, hunting. Lately, strange creatures have been coming up from the depths—little chittering things with many teeth and many eyes and many limbs. He doesn’t know where they come from, but he doesn’t care to find out either. 

Days ago, a request came through to transfer the mercenary captain deeper. The blonde man who does not seem to have succumbed to the quick insanity that takes most prisoners—despite the violence that Trotur seems to revel in inflicting. He could barely walk when Rudimer ushered him out of his cell, passed him to two other guards to take deep, deep down. 

Mostly because he was too scared to go himself. 

For good reason too, he’s sure, because only one of those guards returned. When he asked about the fate of the other one, all he received was a vague shrug, one scarred arm pointing towards the ground below. 

Everything goes that way eventually. There is a strange gravity inside these dungeons that pulls all things intangibly downwards instead of physically, whether that be sanity, health, or strength of mind. 

He has done his best to stay strong, but in his lowest moments—when he finally allows himself to succumb to sleep—he has been hearing the soft sounds of clicking, of pattering, of movement in the dark. Small creatures, many of them, beady little eyes blinking-blinking-blinking. 

If he looks at the walls for too long, then he can almost see them again. 

He thinks they are birds, maybe. 

***

He is walking into the center of a town he cannot imagine existing, surrounded by creatures small as children and thin as winter, watching him with wide saucer eyes. In his hands, watched ardently and eagerly, is a small gray cube, disproportionately heavy for how small it is. 

The guards are dying of starvation and suicide alike, but even then, there has not been enough supplies. He has stopped rationing food for the prisoners—but they simply grow thinner and thinner instead of dying. 

This deep, he can almost hear the cawing of crows, the flutter of a thousand wings echoing behind every step. It makes him jumpy, but he stills the hand upon his sword—he’s well aware that the only reason he is allowed down here at all is the cube in his hands, and he was lucky enough to have been able to strike a bargain furthermore. 

Two sacks of unidentifiable rations. Told to him in broken speech, barely understandable, to be food, weapons, clothes. The food, these creatures grow themselves, but the rest is what they’ve taken from the dead that decorate their village. 

Does not matter. He hands the cube to the largest, strongest monster, taking the supplies swiftly in the same breath. It takes his left hand a moment to close—recently, it has been growing numb, stiff and hard to control.

For a split second, he is on high alert, gauging whether they will turn on him after all, but none even spare him a glance anymore. All are surrounding their leader, clamoring eagerly for the cube, thin fingers reaching like a child’s for fruit upon a tree too tall. 

Quickly, he leaves, not willing to overstay his welcome. The guards he passes are near-catatonic, staring blankly into empty space. Most have grown larger in this time, despite lack of food, for it’s not the organic blossoming of muscle or fat—but instead the swelling of their limbs, strange tumorous growths sprouting from hard flesh. 

The prisoners are worse, purely because they are all too aware, and he must dodge the thin hands that snake through their bars and attempt to gouge out his eyes, try to rip the armor off his body. They speak in tongues as well, and though he can’t understand a single thing, he somehow knows that they refer to Gods and rituals and deities floating in the primordial mire beyond reality. 

As he is depositing the scant supplies earned from this foray, he catches sight of a window. Strange. Somehow, despite the presumed abundance of windows, he cannot remember the last time he saw morning light. 

For a split second, he considers going outside. Taking a walk—distancing himself from the dungeons, at least for a while. 

The notion vanishes just as quickly. Too much left in here to leave. If he walks out, he will never return—he will keep going until his legs give out, or the wolves get him, or somehow, miraculously, he makes it back to some semblance of civilization. 

He cannot go. Not until he has finished whatever job he was sent here, originally, to do. 

He cannot remember exactly what it is. 

He will remember. 

But he cannot. 

He cannot. 

He cannot. 

***

He is crouched upon his cot, knees pressed up to his chest, trying to silence the flurry inside his head. There are whispers, and there is birdsong, and there are strong beaks scraping the last of his brain from the crevices of his skull. 

When he closes his eyes, it does not help. When he drives his fingers into his skin, bites his tongue so hard that it feels like it might bleed, it does not help. He cannot remember what he has been doing. He cannot remember the last time he ate, drank, stood. 

Upon his desk, the glint of an inkwell catches his attention. There is something important there—and then, as he forces himself to rise, he finally sees the paper set neatly to the side. Seril’s. That of weeks ago, perhaps months—they wrote regularly in the beginning, he’s sure, but the spaces between have grown larger and larger. 

With dirty hands—when was the last time he washed them?—he grabs the paper, scans it fervently. Nothing important. Seril has found a nice woman, she is with child, all is well, all is fine, he is not stuck here in this cursed dungeon, he cannot fathom a single iota of his experience. 

There is a scrap of dirtied paper upon the ground, but it is the only one he can find, so it will have to do. When he grabs at the quill, his hand—so rough, so uncoordinated, it is as if he cannot move his fingers individually anymore, but the entire arm is instead an odd, stiff mass—knocks the inkwell off the desk. Now, limited to one dip of ink, but there are only a few words he needs to say. 

seril i require help these dungeons are full of crows plea

The quill runs out of ink before he finishes, but it is all the words he needed to say. 

Except, there’s something missing. It takes a long moment of staring at the paper to realize. 

It is missing a signature. 

Well. He has no ink left to write it, and besides, when he imagines penning it down, he realizes that he does not exactly remember what it looks like. What name he would use. 

He finds her lower in the dungeons, drawing out a sigil in what’s probably blood. A dark priest, skin and hair both sickly white, clad in the robes that are customary for her kind. He does not know when she entered, but somehow, he knew where to find her—the only person who could deliver his message. The only person in this entire dungeon who is any modicum of sane. 

Besides him, of course. 

She looks up at him when he approaches, lip curling in confusion. 

“...Captain?” she guesses, putting a hand into her pocket and grasping some hidden weapon inside. He smiles, to try and placate her, but it doesn’t seem to work, so instead he launches into instructions. 

She cocks her head, brow lowering. Does she not understand? They are simple words, or at least he thinks they are, but when he attempts to concentrate on what he is saying, all he hears are the guttural rumbles and screeches of something that cannot conceive human speech. 

Sharply, he shuts his mouth, and simply shoves the paper into her hand, points towards an approximation of the entrance. 

Finally, she gets it. Looks down. “...Seril?”

He opens his mouth to speak, but settles on nodding a moment later. The memory of how to mold his tongue around comprehension seems to have somewhat, somehow, escaped him. 

“Deliver this?”

Another nod. 

“I know of him,” she says shortly, and then returns to drawing out her ritual, which he takes as a confirmation of the task. 

Seril will come, he’s sure of it. He will come, and he will stand inside the dungeon and find patterns in the blood and hear the chirping of crows and neither of them will be alone anymore. 

***

He is standing behind a thick stone wall, listening to the footsteps on the other side. How he found himself here is not entirely clear in his mind, nor is the wooden apparatus where a left arm should be, nor is the strange heft of his head. 

“...happened,” comes a thread of muffled conversation, “I cannot imagine. Do you think he is dead?”

“He cannot be dead.” This voice is sharp, impassioned. Familiar?

Is it familiar?

“Of course,” comes the other, now softer, placating. 

The crows chatter and caw and talk amongst themselves. It is a long moment before they come to a conclusion. 

Forward. Bludgeon. Intruders. 

Intruders. He raises an arm and slams it against the wall, even as he remembers a single name. 

Seril. 

It must have been his own, back when names still mattered. Nothing that has use to think of now. 

He wonders, briefly, why it is only now that it’s come back to him, and it doesn’t feel exactly right as his former moniker, but then it slips away in the lieu of blood. 

***

He is all that, and he is none of that, and he is a man-no-longer that tries to catch memories in his hands like water. 

“Rudimer?” 

His gaze snaps to the person in front of him, still laid out upon the bed. For a moment, they are a thin white creature marveling over a stone cube, and then they are a dark priest trying to comprehend the speech of crows, and finally the flicker of a knight, eyes wide, forgotten words spilling frantically from his lips. 

Slowly, hesitantly, he nods. 

“What happened?” they breathe, looking at him in what he cannot tell is marvel or pity. For a moment, all that he has newly remembered attempts to push its way out of his heavy beak, but it will not be in any understandable configuration. “Do you… have you been here, all this time?”

Nod. 

“Can you leave?”

Now, he hesitates. No, logic dictates, but he has never actually tried. Still, though, he does not think he’s the sort of creature that could survive in the world, not without the dungeon’s lifeblood coursing through his veins.

At his nonanswer, there is another question.

“...Do you want to?”

His beak is dipping down, and at first it is because of the weight of gravity, but then he is lifting up, dropping again. 

Nod, one more time.

[dastardly-imbecile]

Not the Dungeon pt. 2

Didn't think I'd be making a sequel, but here we are. Part 1

---

For a moment, the tableau is all too familiar—here he is again, looming over their still body, and wondering what he is going to do with the opportunity. Nothing that he once would’ve done with a human, no imaginings of bloodied mauler and snapping beak.

---

What does this human know about him? What does he know?

Word Count: 1525

---

Safe places here are few and far between. Still, he hurries, checking only periodically that the human follows. They limp, and with each stride of his, lag further behind. It pains him to stop—screams against every instinct that’s been ground into him—but he does, nevertheless. 

Finally, he has a destination in mind. There is a small room in the third-floor basement, in which a bed and cooking fire sits. Creatures patrol the area, but the creature he guides has killed most already. Impressive, again, he has to admit. It would be easy enough to do, but then again, the dungeon has granted him far more capabilities. 

They’ve caught up now. When they look at him, their gaze is still tinged with wariness. He’s the least of anything that wanders these depths, but he supposes that they do not know that. The fact remains that the deep guard’s viscera still coats his mauler and is dried upon the rough skin of his chest. Maybe that’s enough to remind them that he is their savior. Or make them remember that he could do the same to their own soft body.  

He wouldn’t, but still. 

Perhaps he should offer them some help. It’s not a weapon of the elite guard’s that has hurt them—they wouldn’t have a leg at all, had that been so—but something makes them limp nevertheless. A lesser injury from a lesser creature, but infection can be just as deadly as iron teeth and metal bludgeons. 

Hopefully that is not the case. Wounds can be bandaged—though it’s been a long time since he’s done that as well—but the herbs and potions needed for infection are sadly lacking. He cannot remember the last time he got injured. Must’ve been before. In those times that muddle his memories. 

“Where are we going?” The human asks. They’ve drawn in close to themself, hand hovering above the sword strapped to their waist, the other clutched to their chestplate. “Who are you?”

He opens his mouth. Feels the weight of a beak, the lack of lips and teeth and tongue. Closes it again and tries to nod towards the upper floors. 

“Can you talk?”

Shake of his head. 

“But you can understand.”

Nod. It’s almost a relief to hear speech, to be able to understand it. Nothing but the company of his own thoughts, he’d started wondering if he was thinking in any sort of legible language at all. Or more a scramble or letters and images, more meaning than script. 

The hand has moved away from the sword. Maybe the knowledge that he’s not simply some base, savage beast has soothed the human. Sentience cannot be trusted either—can be trusted even less—but he’s in no mind to teach them that lesson. 

Up, again, nodding his beak towards the ceiling. Strange to think that he’d almost managed to forget its existence. Impossible, now that he has to direct its unwieldy weight. 

“My leg,” the human says plainly. “Do you have anything to heal?”

Stupid question. Unless he’s managed to shove it up into his tunic, there are no places where he could’ve hidden such a thing. He shakes his head anyway. 

“That’s… a shame.”

Something in the distance rumbles, and a corresponding twinge in his mind sounds. Not urgent yet, but this long standing still, other things have begun to sense their presence. Have sensed it long ago, and are only now trying to nudge their way into his proximity. He’s unsure of how much the creatures here are aware of his nature—do they know that he senses them? Are they aware of his sentience? But none have ever tried to attack him before. 

So he supposes that they know he’s one of them. Which makes this situation problematic. No other action, he scoops the human up, and begins to move. They’re disciplined enough not to scream, but he feels the heave of their chest as they yelp in surprise and wince in pain. It’s impossible to adjust their position with only one hand, at least not with a few unwanted piercings, so they remain clutched halfway to his chest. 

Skin on skin. So long since that skin has been alive and not the stiffness of corpses, since it’s breathed. Since he’s held it for any other reason than the stealing of a soul. 

There’s a staircase that descends from the third floor and onto the one they rush through now. He finds it in quick order, though he’s never used it before. Again, he knows. Everything, everywhere, where the dungeons end and something deeper begins. They’re edging perilously close to it, but not enough to worry. 

He was scared of it once, in those muddled places. 

Still is, maybe. 

***

And then, they are in the safe room. That twitching in his mind has retreated. Whatever it was knows they’re gone. Or maybe knows that he’s there—maybe it’s not so much that they recognize him as one of them, but that they know him as something so other that he’s insurmountable. An authority. 

The idea feels familiar as well. 

He lowers the human onto the bed as carefully as he is able. They’ve been both limp and quiet. Admirable qualities in an escape, but he knows that they’ve capable of so much more. Has watched them fell monsters with the grace of an acrobat, rummage elbow-deep in their corpses for whatever use they can scrape out. Also admirable in its own way. 

“I remember this place,” they say, pushing themself up. “I slept here.”

He knows. Watched them, wondered what they were dreaming of. He cannot articulate that, nor does he particularly want to, so he simply nods. 

“Looted it already, though.” They allow themself to fall all the way back onto the bed, a surprisingly vulnerable move—but then again, they are already prone and weak, so vulnerability is relative as far as that goes. “He’s dead…”

By he, they must surely mean the warrior dead in his cell below. No particular remorse bubbles up from his gut, so he wonders why the human seems so distraught. Was he a friend? Family? Commander? Lover?

The last one does make something surge in his chest, but he’s not sure what exactly it is. No further elaboration from the human themself, and after a moment, he realizes it is because they have fallen asleep. 

Not dead, he’s sure. He can hear their breaths. 

For a moment, the tableau is all too familiar—here he is again, looming over their still body, and wondering what he is going to do with the opportunity. Nothing that he once would’ve done with a human, no imaginings of bloodied mauler and snapping beak. 

Instead, he simply… watches. 

And then, he remembers their leg, and turns to regard it. The image of latches and buckles swims before his eyes, but the minute he lays a hand upon the warm metal, some sort of inherent memory floods back. Taking it off is easier than could be expected. 

He used to do this often. Not since he shed the need for armor, but he feels that little of anything from that past life has crossed over. 

The leg is not as bad as he could’ve feared. Simple a large gash cutting through the skin and revealing the flesh and bone within. None of the angry, inflamed signs of infection, nor creamy pus. Really, the ideal wound, and he is just reaching a hand out to it—to do what, he’s not sure—when the human awakes with a gasp and immediately rolls away. 

The sword is half-way out and by the time that they’ve facing him and doesn’t go back into the scabbard. “What..?”

He points at the leg. The wound. 

Suspicion in their eyes. Without the aid of speech, convincing them of anything different is going to be difficult. He tries to mime the wrapping of bandages, then realizes that he has nothing of the sort. 

So what would he admit if he did have the liberty of vocalization? That he’d peeled off that leg guard without any further plans than looking at their bare flesh and seeing if that inspired any bloodlust, any indication of why this human was different from all others? 

“My wound,” they say flatly, “you were trying to help?” 

He nods. 

Unexpectedly, they laugh, and slide the sword back down. “Sure. If you wanted to kill me, I’d be dead, right?”

He hesitates, unsure whether that’s a question that a nod would really help. The stillness is answer enough for them, and they relax again, clambering back into their prone position. “Well then. Do what you will. You’re not like the guards, are you?”

Shake of his head. He looks around for suitable fabric—his own garments certainly won’t do, filthy as they are—and spots an abandoned pack against the far wall. Straightening to his full height, he turns to retrieve it-

“You’re the one that went missing. That the knights tried to retrieve. Captain Rudimer?”

He freezes. That name- it strikes some chord deep within, and the blurry patches in his memory begin to clear, and the weight of his beak is suddenly heavier than ever.