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deathsplaything · 1 month

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LOCATION: The Sugar Pot TIMING: Current PARTIES: Alistair (@deathsplaything) & Rosemary (@necrosemancy) SUMMARY: Rosemary goes looking for answers that lead right to Alistair's shop.

“My name is Alistair McKenzie. I am not Aleksander Nowak.”

Rosemary was done. Capital ‘d’, Done.

She had dealt with so much bullshit in her life, but this little stunt Aleks had pulled took the cake.

Ghosting her and then pretending to be in Fiji? Having some random woman on the internet try to sell her on the idea of him having absconded to the tropics as well? It was low. Scratch that, it was lower than low. It was some middle school, adolescent bullshit. And Rosemary was not at all above being childish. She was certain somewhere beyond the veil, her mother was insisting that when others went low, she ought to go high. But at that moment, the woman decided she’s much rather descend even lower than he’d gone. She’d go as low as the depths of hell to be petty.

Burning Aleksander Nowak’s house down would have been frowned upon. Arson, in polite society, usually was. But light arson, she could get away with. So after a break in and a Taylor Swift fueled purging of every article of Aleks’ clothing from his closet, she delighted in nestling all of them neatly in the fire pit she’d purchased, dousing them with a generous dose of lighter fluid, and setting a match to every tie, shirt, and sock he owned.

Was it a bit much? Perhaps. Did she even remotely care? No. He had hurt her badly, and she’d relish every second of this petty revenge.

When it was nothing but smoldering ash, she glanced down at her watch. Four-seventeen PM. She’d kept him waiting. Good. She put the lid atop the pit and made her way to her car. As she walked, Rosemary made a mental note to buy the largest container of pink glitter she could. She’d mix the ashes of his beloved ties with the glitter, and dump it in his bed.

Twenty minutes later, she pulled up outside of the Sugar Pot. Why he’d picked a tea shop of all places as a meeting point was beyond her. Probably because he thought she wouldn’t make a scene. Rosemary laughed bitterly to herself as she walked up to the establishment. How wrong he’d be.

She let herself in, standing ramrod straight. “I deserve a hell of a lot better than what you’ve given me, you know that?”

—

The shop was closed, which meant that whatever happened, Alistair could handle it. They knew that telling this woman the truth was going to be a bad idea. From what they’d seen online, she was unhinged and simply put, a lot to handle. But they were a McKenzie. They were the middle child of seven children, they knew how to handle a lot. So as soon as the door to the shop flew open, Alistair waved their hand, and the door shut behind her, locking in place without even looking over their shoulder to look in the woman’s direction. She would expect them to look at her, but it wasn’t that easy.

“You’re right, you are owed more.” Alistair said simply, putting the last of the items back on the shelf before turning around and looking past the woman’s shoulder rather than directly at her. “My name is Alistair McKenzie. I am not Aleksander Nowak.” They waved a hand in front of their face, indicating that they could not see. “Number one difference is that I’m blind.”

They opened the back door to their shop, and gestured for her to follow. “You want answers? Good. So do I. Come with me.” They insisted, then disappeared behind the curtain and through the doorway. Connected to the back room was another door, one that Alistair didn’t yet open. Instead, they stood in the middle of their magic circle in the room full of magical items they used to cast their spells. “Like you, I am a necromancer. Like you, I once went through the steps of learning the craft.” They paused, looking through Brutus’s eyes (who had been in the back room the whole time, just in case) to look at the face of the bewildered woman.

They took a deep breath, and started to explain. “I cast a resurrection spell on myself. If you know necromancy, you know how extremely difficult that spell is to get right. A reincarnation of sorts.” They shook their head, frown deepening. “Aleksander killed me for releasing supernatural prisoners that I helped to put away.” They finally said, bunching their hands into fists. “And when all hell broke loose, those supernatural prisoners killed him.” They paused again, waiting for her to speak. When she didn’t, they continued. “When the spell began to cast, it went wrong. Instead of going into the same body, it jumped to the nearest unoccupied corpse. His. I’m sorry. He’s gone, and until I’m back in the right body, he isn’t coming back.”

The door swung shut on its own. Rosemary tried not to look impressed. She couldn’t remember him ever showing off that particular trick before. Not that he’d bother teaching her anything fun, anyhow. He turned around and stared somewhere just past her as he spoke.

She let out a noise that sounded somewhere between a wheeze and a laugh. If this was Aleksander’s attempt at humor after she’d spent days trying to make certain he wasn’t dead in a ditch somewhere, then she was glad she’d taken her petty revenge. Any lingering guilt fizzled out of existence. Claiming he was someone else entirely and then walking away expecting her to follow was the peak of either arrogance or idiocy, and Rosemary could not decide which.

She followed behind, silent as the grave. The absurdity of it all was not lost on her. The fact that he’d gone so far as to acquire a guide dog to sell this bit was excessive, but… Something she couldn’t place prickled the skin on the back of her neck, something dreadful that coiled in her chest and whispered What if he’s not lying?

Rosemary stared. If he was to be believed, Aleksander was dead. Aleksander was standing not ten feet away from her, and telling her that he was dead. It still looked like him. Same face, same hair… Different clothes. None of the hideous ties that she’d spent her afternoon torching like a jilted lover adorned him. The corner of her mouth ticked downward. Clothes were easy enough to replace. A different wardrobe proved nothing… The dog… Well he could have easily borrowed a well behaved dog… Or stolen it. She wouldn’t put it past him. But he wouldn’t have cared about what you thought enough to have bothered with a charade of this level. The thought settled on her like a piano being dropped from four stories above her.

“Prove it.” A tremor of something shook her voice- fear, sorrow, guilt… she couldn’t say. Perhaps all three. “Prove it. Prove to me that he’s… that you’re not you.”

______

Raising their brows as they were asked to prove it, Alistair moved toward the side door. “Well if being blind isn’t enough for you, I can show you the next best thing,” they decided, opening the door and ushering her in. “In that freezer is my old body.” Alistair spoke simply, arms crossed over their chest as they held the door open for the woman. “In there is what I’m attempting to get back.”

They didn’t move to opent he freezer, leaving that to the stranger if she decided to do so. “Believe me, the last thing I want is to be stuck in someone else’s body, especially the body of the man who bloody murdered me.” They rolled their eyes, then sighed. “That’s another thing you can pick up on, I’m Scottish, not American like Aleksander was.”

“Brutus,” Alistair called to the dog, who trotted up to his owner and sat at their feet, looking up expectantly. “This is Brutus, my guide dog and familiar.” They explained, doing a series of commands in Scots Gaelic that caused Brutus to stand, then walk to the corner of the room, then sit. “He doesn’t listen to just anyone. He listens to me, he listens to my magic.”

Rosemary blinked. She drifted through the door, and her eyes locked onto the freezer. Unease settled in her gut as she looked at Aleksander- Alistair’s hand on the door. He wasn’t opening it. It was as though he were asking her to simply believe him. Believe him. Trust that this was not a trick, that he was truly who he said. That all he said had come to pass had, in fact, occurred. Despite the fact that he- whoever he was or was not- had lied to her. Had had other people lie to her.

But Rosemary had never been much for blind belief, especially when it was at the request of a liar.

She brushed his hand aside and pulled the freezer door open.

She wasn’t sure what she’d expected. Maybe she thought Ashton Kutcher would pop out and scream ‘Gotcha!’ Instead of discovering she was on an episode of Punk’d, she found a corpse. A man some years older than her, utterly devoid of life and frozen solid. Rosemary looked back at the man who stood beside her. She looked down at the dog. She looked back at the man.

“What,” she breathed, “the fuck?!”

“That’s my body.” Alistair replied plainly. He knew she’d have to see it for herself.

“You’re a necromancer, tell me. What can go wrong with a spell of this magnitude, has Aleksander bothered to teach you of consequences?” Alistair took a step back toward the door, arms clasped behind their back. “In our line of work, anything is possible. Playing with death can grant you the same thing back. It can destroy your sense of self in the process as well.” Alistair frowned, remembering that feeling of his whole self being ripped from him, how horrible and lifeless it felt. How relieved they’d been when they got their feeling back.

“Like I told you, I’m sorry about your mentor.” Alistair said again, frowning. “I’m sorry that he wasn’t the person you thought he was, because he was locking up supernatural creatures for things they’d done. I was complacent in it as well. It’s how I got people to heal others. That’s why I was a part in it. Aleksander did it because he thought that the undead deserved to be held captive until they died.”

Alistair watched the woman through Brutus’s eyes, unsure of what her next move would be. “I knew you wouldn’t believe me unless you saw it for yourself.” They said at last, voice softening.

Rosemary closed the freezer door. She closed her eyes, trying to shut out the truth, but the image of the frozen body still haunted her from the dark of her mind. He wasn’t lying. This man had died. This stranger had taken Aleksander’s body.

She needed air.

The woman walked stiffly back in the direction of the door to the tea shop. She assumed Alistair was following her, not that she cared if he did or didn’t. She heard him talking, so she assumed he’d follow.

Consequences had never been much of a topic of conversation. She’d not been doing anything that could have had much damage. Puppeting dead rats and skeletal dogs wasn’t particularly dangerous, and Aleksander seemed reluctant to begin teaching her anything beyond those parlor tricks. The worst she’d ever had was a few burns or cuts from unstable magic lashing out at minor spells. Nothing permanent. Nothing like this. She answered his question with a silent jerk of her head in the negative.

Rosemary turned back to face them. She knew nothing about locking anyone up, supernatural or otherwise. It wouldn’t have surprised her, really. She’d seen him raise one man from the dead by capturing his murderer and exchanging their lives for one another. Of course she knew their magic held sway over creatures who no longer fell into the ‘living’ category. Was he keeping them for something? Why hadn’t he told her?

She was more questions than answers, and she had the startling realization that if he had been alive, Aleksander wouldn’t have told her anyway. “Son of a bitch,” she muttered to herself, hastily blinking back angry tears. Was it that he hadn’t trusted her? Hadn’t believed in her potential? Thought she was beyond teaching? What really bothered Rosemary was that there was no way to get answers to the questions that howled in her mind like a maelstrom.

“Yeah, well.” She sniffed, pulling herself together. “Seeing is believing, or whatever the hell it is people say.”

As the woman walked out, Alistair shoved their hands into their pockets and followed her out. She was in shock. She was upset. They could understand that. It was probably made infinitely worse by having to stare into the eyes of a man she was just told was dead by that man. Everything about this was complicated and they both knew it. Magic was hard enough as it was, but necromancy? Even harder.

Alistair thought about everything they’d been through to get where they were. They called themselves respectful of death when the opposite was true. They told themselves they were better than the others who practiced their magic when that wasn’t the case. They were just the same. They closed their eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath. They were playing god, and this woman lost the teacher who was the key to her future success. He couldn’t let her go.

“Listen, I know it’s a lot to take in. Do you have another teacher you can get?” Alistair asked, frown deepening. “You’re young for a necromancer, you need to keep learning. I… I can’t in good conscience let you walk away from this without a plan.” Alistair walked back over to the front door, and opened it. “Let me make you something to drink. We can talk,” they pleaded. He saw this woman’s potential, saw that she was a fiery spirit. He couldn’t let her give up, not now.

Rosemary laughed at the question. “Nope,” She said, popping the consonant for emphasis. “No, I am capital F Fucked.” She scrubbed at her face with her hands, willing herself to wake up. No one in her family would teach her, and her only option after YEARS of searching had gone and gotten himself irreparably dead. Perhaps her existence was just one large, cosmic joke. Her laugh turned into a sob, and she let out a string of frustrated swears. “God, I must seem like a psycho,” She sniffled, pulling her hair up into a ponytail to keep busy, and being sure to look anywhere but at the stranger wearing her friend’s face.

“I’ve got no plan. Maybe I’ll quit and actually go to Fiji. Change my name or something.” She meant it, too. She’d heard nothing but ‘no’ for years, and the one time she’d found someone who said ‘yes’, they went and got themselves murdered for secretly being way worse of a person than she had initially thought.

Looking wearily at the open door, she shrugged and shuffled back inside. “Please say you have something stronger than tea in here.”

Their heart went out to the woman, but knew better than to reach out and comfort. They were Aleksander in voice and body only, nothing else. “No plan,” Alistair echoed. She needed a mentor, she needed someone to show her how to be a proper necromancer lest she get herself killed in the process. For so long it has just been Aleksander that they knew in town, and now there was this woman.

“I’ll do it.” They said after a moment of only Rosemary's sobs. “I’ll teach you what I know. I’m far more experienced than he was. I can’t let you walk out of here doing something dangerous.” Alistair frowned, crossing their arms over their chest as they stared blankly forward. “What’s your name?” They finally asked, walking over to the woman and stopping in front of her.

“Start with telling me your name and I’ll teach you what I know.” They promised, expression growing sincere. “I want to help you become a practiced necromancer, I don’t want to be the only one that people rely on in town.” They cast their unseeing gaze down at the ground, then frowned. “It’d be nice to have someone that I can work with. Especially one with working eyes.”

She looked at him for a moment, and it dawned upon her that this person didn’t know her name. She’d been ranting and raving and crying, and this poor bastard didn’t have the foggiest idea of who she was. “Rosemary,” Her voice was heavy with acceptance. “My name is Rosemary Kane. You said your name was Alistair, right?”

“You don’t have to teach me because you feel obligated to,” She began. “But you’re really my last hope or I’m starting from scratch again. It took ages for me to find anyone who’d teach me and well… you know how that ended.”

“Well Rosemary,” Alistair spoke with a smile creeping across his lips. “Consider yourself in the hands of a far better necromancer.” They shoved their hands into their pants pockets and sighed. “I’m doing it because it benefits both of us. I’m not alone as the only necromancer in town, and you get a teacher who will actually teach you.”

Alistair motioned to the back room once again, Brutus waiting at the door. “That’s where I do everything. On Saturdays, you work for me here at the Sugar Pot. Think you can swing it?” Alistair’s brows rose in question, picking up Brutus’s lead once they reached their dog. “I’m sorry about your friend. I am. But I needed to cast that spell. My son…” Alistair pulled down the collar of their shirt to reveal a sigil that looked like a tattoo on their skin. Something that she would be familiar with. “He’s alive because I am. I couldn’t let myself die. He’s far too important to me.”

She ambled after Alistair as he headed toward the back room. “I might have to negotiate a shift or two with my job but I should be able to make that work….” Rosemary still hadn’t come to terms with the fact that she wasn’t simply dreaming all this. She was fairly certain she’d have a crisis over the entire matter at some point, but that was a problem for Future Rosemary.

The corner of her mouth tugged down in recognition- she knew a sigil when she saw one. She’d seen Aleksander at work. His arms and torso had been littered with the markings. She realized with a start, that the markings had died with Aleks. The souls that had been purchased more time from the necromancer had seen the sand in their hourglasses run out at the same instant that Aleks had. What was more, a child was hanging in the balance with this man. “I…” She paused. “I understand…” She thought she did, at least. She liked to imagine her father may have done the same, if her life had hung in the balance.

Rosemary knew it wasn’t true, but it was alright to dream. “When do I start?”

“Well seeing as how I don’t know what you have been taught, I suppose we should start now so I know where to start on Saturday.” Alistair responded with a raised brow. “How many resurrections have you done successfully on animals and on humans? Can you heal without things going wrong? What’s your view on death as a whole?” The questions came out rapid fire, but Alistair needed to know these things to be able to create a basis on where to start.

“You have strong emotions,” they noted with a frown. “That’s a problem when casting our form of magic.” Alistair narrowed their eyes. “The more out of control you feel, the more wrong your spell will go. Find an outlet for your negative emotions so you can go into a spell in control.” Alistair thought for a moment. “Second thing, even though we’re necromancers, we still respect the dead. That means no resurrecting corpses just for the fuck of it. No playing around with things just because it’s funny.” The narrowed their eyes. “I know your type, you make it hard for the rest of us to blend in. All I want is to blend in as much as possible, not attract unwanted attention from those who hate necromancers.”

Rosemary wasn’t typically very self conscious about her accomplishments. But she realized, as he began to list off types of spells, just how little Aleksander had managed to teach her. “None, yet.” She managed through gritted teeth. Admitting that fact was simply another suckerpunch on top of an already shit-tastic evening. “I can reanimate animal corpses practically without thinking.” Was that ability due to one too many nights alone and bored, attempting to entertain herself with dead rats dancing to nineties boy band hits? Perhaps. But this total stranger didn’t need to know that. “Rats mainly. And a skeletal dog. As for healing, I’ve been finding it… difficult, to say the least.” Her mind drifted to a woman who’d left practically meowing after one attempt.

Her view on death hadn’t been a question she had been anticipating. “It’s a friend. Its an inevitable, unavoidable friend. With a twisted sense of humor. We all end, one way or another, you may as well laugh about it. Or try and sway it to your advantage.” She said simply. “Make death your friend and get it to work for you.”

She’d never viewed having strong emotions as a flaw. Rosemary frowned. “I make it hard to blend in? Excuse me, but have you seen me?” She gestured to herself. “I don’t tend to associate death and destruction with blonde pastel pink packaging. I think I’m actually incredibly subtle.” She crossed her arms over her chest as though it were armor “and I do have respect for the dead. What part of friend didn’t you get? Skeledog is how I got good at reanimation, I’m not going to just stop bringing him back.”

Reanimation. That was child’s play for Alistair. Okay, so there was a lot that needed to be done, a lot that needed to be taught. They tried not to let their doubt show on their face. She was able to reanimate, alright. And she had healed before, that’s better than never doing it at all. “Alright, so step one is having you shadow some healing sessions. We’ll start it simple using animals to heal, and yes there will continue to be less than desirable side effects from it, but that’s how we learn. Once you get better at it, we’ll move to humans.”

Alistair raised a finger, then walked off the the back room, pulling out tomes they’d collected over the years. Some gifted from friends, some stolen from before they’d left home. They came back out with a large book on necromancers and healing. “I want you to start to read this, then come prepared to heal some animals on Saturday.” Alistair thought for a moment, then nodded. “Yes, that’s what we’ll do. Nothing better to teach than by getting into the thick of it, right?”

The older necromancer flashed a smile, trying to be encouraging. “Death is indeed just that. It’s a friend that we can manipulate to our will. Perhaps we’ll even get you started on how to defend yourself from the undead as well. That’s a useful skill that we have in our arsenal as well. The problem is sometimes they’re strong enough to overcome our domination over their actions. We’ll start low, like with some wights at the local cemetery.” They tilted their head and raised a brow in the woman’s direction. “Sound like a good starting point?”

Her mind slowly but surely began to come down from the absolute tizzy she’d found herself in. Sure Aleksander was dead. That sucked, without a doubt. But when one door got itself fucking irreparably dead, another door opened. Or however the saying went.

Rosemary took the old book from him and began to flip through the pages. Healing was probably a better starting point that resurrection, despite her eagerness to dip her toes into the big ticket magical items. “I am a hands-on learner.”

She let out a tiny sigh of relief, and said a silent prayer of thanks to whatever unhinged guardian angel had been looking out for her when this stranger had been attempting to claw his way back from the grave. Rosemary nodded in agreement, closing the book with a snap. “Sounds perfect.” This was panning out to be the beginning of a beautiful partnership.

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