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asukaskerian · 8 years ago

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Midnight on the Demon Patrol - Dave/Karkat - 30/?

Dave/Karkat urban fantasy, demon summoner/demon. (in this chapter: violence, minor character death.)

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In The Last Episode...! During a police intervention, Dave and Kankri were kidnapped by the Felt. How will our intrepid heroes get out of that one?! dun dun dunnnnn~~

Dave's cell is actually a cellar -- bare cement floor, old brick walls, a dying light bulb. They don't even bother to tie him to the surviving shelves.

He lies there on the rough floor and stares at the ceiling as the big dude paws at his bleeding thigh, wraps a quick length of bandage over the pants. It hurts but he's too exhausted to even twitch.

Neither of the thugs say a damn thing to him as they walk out and lock him in. Their footsteps echo down the corridor and then the light turns off and there's quiet.

The shoddy bandaging job is confirmation they don't care much if he dies eventually, so long as he lasts a little while longer. It's such bullshit. What'd he ever do to any of them? Apart from being a cop, but the majority of other cops in this town don't get such specialized attention.

Okay, so he has Karkat.

... Karkat must be freaking out right now. Dave sighs, blows a lock of hair out of his eyes, and heaves to roll himself off his goddamn wrists. His thigh flashes stabbing pain at him for a couple of seconds when his hips twist, slowly recedes into more normal don't-fucking-touch-it levels of ouch.

After another couple of minutes just breathing and bracing himself, he sits up, legs stretched before himself.

Jesus, his pants feel soaked. He's probably going to leave a trail.

"Hey, Kankri, you here?"

No response. He calls again, louder, though he's already feeling like he's alone in this fucking corridor. Can't hear anyone breathe, and freaking-out Kankri would breathe loud, and probably also rant in between two lungfuls.

"Kankri Vantas!"

God he wishes he knew his Name. He wishes he could use it.

Something knocks hard on the bottom wall, three times in quick succession.

"... Kanks? That you?"

"Obviously!" Kankri says, muffled, from the other side. "Now will you please -- do your knight thing -- I'm still in this thrice-damned fucking net and it hurts!"

Well.

Well. "Yeah, okay," Dave says, though he's drained, tired down to his bones of this shit, and injured, again.

He closes his eyes. Aradia hasn't answered him in a while (with all the Time-aligned guys in the Felt he's pretty sure he knows why), but there may yet be a miracle. He gathers her Name to him, his awareness of all the details of it he was granted to know, all the little edges and dark corners he glosses over in casual hurry because they both know she'll know who he means anyway.

Six minutes. Ten. He listens to his own breathing, to the sound of the dark, imagines he can hear and feel the clean, sharp early-spring breeze at the back of her Name.

Fifteen.

Hey, Dave.

Hey, Aradia. Up for some quick and dirty destruction?

I just came because of the retainer, she says, and it's not really a surprise, but it still kind of hurts. Can't help you today.

Well, in that case. Rose is going to kill him for what he's about to do. Then Karkat will raise him from the dead and kill him twice.

But maybe only after crying on him that they're glad he's alive. How do you feel about ten more years off my lifespan.

Aradia laughs a little, but more like she's sorry. Tempting, but no.

... A dead Dave? Even though that's worth less in terms of personal sacrifice--

I'd have to stay alive to enjoy it, and that's probably not going to happen.

Well, shit.

He can hear Kankri's blades scratching against the wall. Probably still trying to find a position that won't burn him. Maybe trying to make a hole through the bricks, if he's feeling proactive today.

Counting on him, and Dave is dead in the water.

Well then. See you later, he tells Aradia, and tries not to feel too bitter when she slips out of his mind with the equivalent of a whoops, my bad shrug. He didn't forget she was a demon.

He feels bitter anyway.

After all the times she tried to fuck him over and all the sides she tried to choose that weren't his, he's not feeling hopeful, but he calls on to Damara.

He folds his knee up and tightens the muscles of his thigh so the cloth of his pants pulls taut against his wound and thinks this blood is for you as pain flashes white stars under his eyelids, to make sure she at least pays attention. If she still doesn't answer he'll know she's not just busy, but he's being actively snubbed.

(Shit, it hurts. He's a bit queasy with it.)

I'm here, Damara rasps from the back of his skull.

... Great. Hi. Thanks for coming. He pauses. Is it just because of the retainer?

No, Damara says, and sounds oddly -- not creepy. Not sexual and not threatening. Casual. It is because I have a big great want I watch you die.

... Of course. Fucking awesome. Dave opens his eyes -- yep, still dark -- and glares at the door he can barely guess at. Yeah, okay, you can fuck right off then if you're going to be no help. I know I'm an awesome show but I'm not a free show, okay? Seriously, fuck off.

I did not say I don't help.

Um. Okay, he wasn't expecting that one.

I help in the ways that don't save you, there is space in my oaths for that. I help so you struggle harder, die harder.

She's -- not even purring; she sounds quiet, almost affectionate. What the shit.

... Why?

I like you, Damara says, and it sounds-feels-resonates half like Karkat's 'watching from afar, what a gorgeous disaster' type of love, and half like...

I touch myself when you die, and sad that I can't eat you. I cry three whole tears in your corpse meat, Dave Lalonde Strider. I crave to fuck you dead, but watch you dead is almost that good. So. A sneer forms on his face, not of his own devising -- a sneer that shakes a little, that still feels hopeful, hesitant like a teenager who just asked someone out on a date and is trying to pretend they don't care if they get turned down. Do you want I help. Even so.

Dave thinks this is the flip side of the one that goes 'courting your own destruction.'

Yeah, he says after a few seconds, weighing it. Damara like-likes him. He always thought she was fucking with him when she hit on him; turns out she was fucking with him and hitting on him. As long as you're aware that I can't feel it back. I don't intend to get myself destroyed.

"Yes," Damara sighs with his mouth. "Fucked up. I like that."

She crumbles the restraints at his wrists with barely a nudge.

His skin has gone old bent gears and rusted tin, paint flaking off, he knows without seeing it; he can feel the mirage flickering into almost-life, almost fooling his sense of touch. Dave rolls on his hip and drags himself toward the far wall.

"Hey, Kankri? Move back, if you can."

They crumble the bricks methodically. By the time there's a hole wide enough to get through Dave is half-blinded from the low light Kankri got to have, and Kankri hasn't managed to wriggle far enough to clear the hole.

(Shit, his gray face has some nice, dark welts. The fuzz has fallen off in places and the ... flesh? soft shell? underneath is purplish.)

Wanna break down his net, too?

Like fuck, she laughs. Kankri can die alone like dog, no one care.

Well, I care some, but okay. "Don't move, bro, coming through." Dave crawls over Kankri's wings and his flank, dragging his leg across hard shelled bumps and metal rope. How about the door frame?

She's more amenable to that. The door falls in, missing Dave's head by about two inches. It's not even a full panel, it's cheap wire fence on a frame -- insult to injury there.

There are containment patterns drawn on the floor outside with professional neatness. He smears a bloody hand across the closest curlicue.

Then he sees about carefully rusting the frame until he's left with a one-meter-long metal bar -- L-shape in cross-section, not a full, thick, easy to grasp one, but Damara can't add metal in, so he'll make do. He leans on it to stand up and limps back to Kankri, to see about forcing enough links apart that he can unravel him.

It feels like it takes hours. In the absolute, it takes almost fifteen minutes, struggling with tangled links, helping Kankri roll so he can free a caught wing blade, a twisted-aside back spine. Dave spends the time with his ears pricked toward the corridor, expecting someone to come back to check on them any second now.

Kankri spends it silent, which is really, really unnerving.

"Okay, time to go," Dave whispers, and leans down to pat his shoulder. Hair a mess, face tight in stubbornly restrained pain, he looks too much like Karkat for Dave not to.

Kankri climbs to his feet, one of his wings propping up the other one to keep the hurt finger level.

"Want some blood before we go?"

"... Yes, thank you."

He licks it off Dave's hand perfunctorily. Dave is vaguely glad when it's gross, not even a little bit sexy.

"It'll do for now. Let's go."

They go.

They don't get to go far before they have to stop and go back to try another route. The first staircase they found lands near an open living room and people are talking there, would see them limping past.

Dave does not enjoy having to go back down on his hurt leg, but the worst is by far the sharp staccato noise coming from Kankri's claws on hard floors. When they find a hallway with a carpet in the middle on their next attempt to get up a level Dave is quick to shoo him there. It's not like pressing against the wall will make it less likely for someone to notice his bright red sails, anyway.

The windows along the hallway open onto an inner courtyard, and it's so weirdly misty outside Dave can't get a good idea of the layout. Is there a gate? Front door? A street?

"Did we already pass by this piece of pottery?" Kankri whispers up to him, hunkering down in the middle of the carpet. "I seem to remember the pattern on -- but perhaps it's a set."

He's frowning, looks... really unsure, which is odd because he and Karkat are about equal in their need not to look ignorant or lost ever. Dave squints at the vase-thing.

He wants to say it's a set, because they haven't turned enough corners to have circled the whole mansion yet, but the very fact that Kankri even thought to ask makes his cop bullshit detector tingle. "Huh. Can't seer it?"

"It's a random piece of decoration," Kankri hisses back, tail flicking his annoyance. "No one here has any attachment to it, not even monetary. I can't even perceive a maid hating how difficult it must be to dust--"

"--Hey!" someone shouts from behind them.

Dave whirls around with Damara crackling through him, Damara just as startled as he is and ready to kill for it.

He feels the man's chest turn to open sores and spreading bruises under untouched cloth, he feels the ribs behind begging to be crushed to powder, the lump of meaty heart waiting to rot, and he --

And Damara flinches, and Dave loses the awareness of all that time begging to be crushed and torn and instead a great tear opens in the man's clothes, who's still fumbling for his waistband and his gun.

The gun! Dave snaps, trying to aim her at that if she won't kill. His skin flickers on and off as she snarls back, hunger for decay warring with -- oh, shit, he has no time to convince her that killing a measly Felt is not going to actually help him, and the gun is coming up --

Something flies from the open door. Something goes thunk, quiet but meaty. The gun tumbles to the carpet and a second later so does the guy, sideways, eyes still open. Dave stares at the dark, protruding thing in his neck for several seconds before he figures out it's the handle of a knife.

"The fuck are you morons doing on the third floor," Jack 'Spades' Slick rasps as he ambles out, throws Dave and Kankri a narrow side-glance, and bends over the still-shuddering corpse to pull out his knife.

Blood gushes, spreads. Damara groans with regret. Dave stares.

"--Mister Slick," Kankri says, voice just a touch shaky. "I -- I did not expect you here. Especially here. May I inquire--"

"Surprise," Slick says, stepping over the corpse, "And no you can't." And then he's in arm's reach of Dave, who blinks.

Then he's closer than that, and Dave half-passed out from leaning too hard on his leg when the thought bubbles up... Hey. Organized crime, yeah, sure. But he's actually not a Felt.

Actually kind of really not a Felt.

"... The hell are you doing here?" he stutters like an idiot, even as Spades steps in to catch Dave's wrist. Oh hell, that might be bad --

Then Slick pulls Dave's arm across his shoulders, taking half his weight. It's... What.

... Is this a rescue?

Kill him! Damara hisses. Kill him now!

"Yeah, that's actually a point in favor of talking it out," Dave mumbles as he limps automatically along, disturbed by the casual flank-to-flank contact between him and some dude who was supposed to be in a high-security prison.

Not that he doesn't remember hearing about the escape, just.

Just.

Karkat likes him, he thinks out of nowhere, a bit dazed.

"D'you get socked over the head too?" the man asks.

"The hell if I know," Dave admits, and sneaks the man a look. "... You got a gun I could borrow?"

He could also ask for the one the dead guy dropped, but. He thinks it tumbled down the nearest staircase. Can't see it.

A dry shrug. Man's got a nicely tailored suit, if scuffed to shit; someone else must buy them for him. Maybe Droog, the man is dapper. Dave respects that in a guy.

"I got knives."

"Urgh. Nah."

"Suit yourself."

Dave is not sure where Slick is taking them. Walks like he knows his way; could be bullshitting.

"You still have not said why you find yourself in this place so conveniently," Kankri says, trotting beside them as Slick takes them out of the corridor that circles the courtyard, to a staircase that goes up.

"Conveniently? Hah," he mutters, thin lips twisted in tired disgust. "Conveniently for who exactly."

"Jack," Kankri growls in a pretty good imitation of Karkat's voice. Oh god, Dave wants Karkat here. He wants him nowhere near here. He also wants to not be climbing up stairs, his leg hurts so bad and he can feel the cloth growing wetter at the knee. He tells himself it's not that he's still bleeding, that it's just cloth soaking it up and gravity.

"Stop bitching or I'm leaving you behind," Slick grumbles back, half-hearted, like he actually doesn't mind that much. It's... it's odd as hell. Dave is a bit busy with the blood loss, so he's not sure what exactly is the cause of this odd feeling of unreality, this sudden desire to laugh and lean back into a nonexistent seat and put his feet up, to maybe take a nap.

It's not so bad to be floating half out of his head like this. Means the pain when they climb stairs is farther away.

"Detective," Kankri says -- repeats, even. Oh right, that's him. "Would you please remind Latula that, while I'm sure she must be very busy, she has a job to do?"

Huh. He pokes vaguely at the back of his mind, but there's no reaction, just an odd, distracted quiet. Damara is sulking in another corner -- Slick is an unknown element, Dave might even possibly survive this! She's not enjoying it. "Haven't seen her since we got here. ... Heard her. Thing."

"Well," Kankri says, "fuck. Never mind, Detective -- Jack, where are we going? I'm positive we have seen this painting before, do you have any actual idea where we're going?"

"I fucking did, and then you started yapping," Slick grumbles back. "So, just like old times."

"Oh, my apologies--"

"You're excused. Now, you see anything that reminds you of... anything?"

"No, actually, I do not, because if you'll remember, the last time I was taller."

Uh. What? This is something Dave feels like he should get, but he... doesn't.

"And I'm pretty sure we were coming from the opposite direction, so what are you doing--"

"We were fucking not, we were on the second level and this is the fourth, shit-for-eyes--"

They both fall brusquely silent. Dave frowns, squints.

It's a corridor without any window onto any courtyard. The carpet isn't bright green around here, but red; there's little ... are those sigils threaded in as motifs? Huh, expensive...

The elevator is marked "Level Two" above the button. It's also blinking ominously.

"God, I hate her so fucking much," Slick growls under his breath as he heaves Dave higher up against his side and takes off trotting for the heavy wooden door at the end of the corridor. Dave tries to help but his toes barely touch the ground.

"I'm not going back in there!" Kankri hisses, but he glances back at the elevator door, which is rumbling, and skitters after them. His back blades are bristled all the way up and so are the quills in his hair, making the ordinarily smooth hairdo poof up. It's mildly hilarious.

"Yeah, neither am I," Slick shoots back, a hand shaking the doorknob, "because it's fucking locked. Surprise! Shit."

Dave snorts, can't help it. Slick and Kankri glare in tandem at him. He lifts a hand palm out in surrender. (Tries to. He's still holding his metal bar.) "... Closet over there?"

They'll be so lucky if Kankri alone fits, never mind all three of them, lovingly cuddling up to his pointy bits, but like. What else? The elevator is slowing down and he--

"Everybody close your eyes," Slick says grimly as he opens the closet door. "Looks like we're going back after all."

Dave stares at the cleaning stuff taking up all the space in there, and closes his eyes.

He's pretty sure he hears and feels Slick closing the closet door again before opening it and stepping through.

They don't run into any brooms.

"... Can I open my eyes now?"

"Oh, of course!" a lady’s voice says. Dave's eyes fly open.

It's very much not a closet. Looks like... maybe an office, or actually more of a parlor. All the windows are barred and hidden with heavy drapes, but the ceiling lights are on. All the better to see the truly spectacular amount of seals across every single flat surface. Safety, concealment. Consulting. Incarnating. Containment.

A lot of containment.

Snowman is standing by one of the windows, arms crossed elegantly, and for a second she smiles so sweetly at Dave that he can't help but wonder who the fuck she even is.

Then her eyes land on Slick, and narrow into watchful little scalpel-eyes.

"Spades."

"Snowman."

... Okay, they know each other -- no shit -- and really don't like each other -- and are working together anyway. That is very interesting. Dave is very interested.

Slick shrugs off his arm and Dave stumbles briefly, leans back into the heavy, ornamented wooden door they did/didn't come out of. Kankri huddles against Dave's thigh; Slick keeps ambling toward the woman, a hand in his pocket like he's fingering another knife. "I really goddamn hate it when you pull that trick door shit."

Snowman doesn't even bother uncrossing her arms, never mind moving. "You mean when I put you back on the right path when you get lost? I don't think you have any idea how many times you almost opened a door into a lounge full of people."

"Maybe it'd have been shorter if I could just stab my way through!"

There's a beat of silence. "... No. No, Slick, it wouldn't have been."

Yeah, Slick is a bicker slut, okay, Dave gets the picture; he'll bitch at Kankri, at Snowman, what a flirt, whatever. There's something to this room...

Something in this room.

He feels along the wall for the light switches, clicks one of the two off, and in the sudden dim he sees it -- something like a heat shimmer in the air and yet not, something he needs to destroy/destroy/get away from/I hate it/run!

The bar falls, dull thud on thick carpet. Kankri's hand closes on his wrist, halts him before he pitches to the side and falls. Dave closes his eyes. He can feel his pulse in his temples, too fast and dizzying. He -- wants what's in that circle, and fears it, and would burn down the world to destroy it -- to have it back, devour it back, but there's no having it back--

He swallows. Damara?

Fuck off! she snarls back, huddled at the back of his brain. He knows it's all metaphorical and yet he could swear he feels her weight, coiled heavy and tight against his skull, trying to pull it back.

The door is behind him. There is no farther back.

... Are you okay?

The hissing, poisonous offense that bubbles up at him almost physically stings. Don't ask me! Don't -- don't like me!

Oh god, he could see himself finding some pity for her, right now. Welp. "What is it?" He frowns at the patterns, trying to make sense of them. There are three containment seals in the room but only one of them gives him/her the shudders. Layer upon layer, complex, studded with symbols from at least three languages -- is that a hieroglyph? And here's another one. That funny eye with the makeup squiggles underneath.

There are folded-in corners, just like Dirk has on Kurloz's containment seal.

He doesn't remember why, he had the impression that Dirk had come up with it, but parts of this pattern look -- feel -- older.

Years older. What the fuck.

"So who's in there?" Dave asks, forcing his voice out to interrupt the bickering and managing a mellow conversational tone at the very best. Snowman still pauses to look at him, though.

"What can you feel?"

"I can feel Damara freaking the fuck out about it." He blinks, frowns some more at the circle. "... Time?"

"Mmh."

"Sweet," Dave says without thought, "I could just walk up and summon."

Kankri's hand closes like a manacle on his arm and gives a punishing yank. "No! I just -- no. Detective, I entreat you to read my lips, and understand -- no. You have not studied this demon to know what they might demand of you, you have no idea what state of mind they're in right now -- if they're locked in here and unable to rejoin the ether they must be considered intractable for some reason, and you are, might I add, exhausted and injured and bleeding out! No. It is too much of a risk and you are not taking it for a lark."

"Um," Dave says, blinking through the pain.

"I'm pretty sure he was joking," Snowman says dryly. She's not smiling at all but Dave is mildly sure she's laughing at them.

"I'm pretty sure he was, too, and yet somehow it might well happen anyway, considering the hair-raising tales Karkat shares!" Kankri harrumphs, then sits on his curled tail, crosses his arms fussily. "Never mind that walking up to a random circle and making a contract blind with an imprisoned and therefore furious demon is the most suicidal, stupid thing--"

"Seems to have worked out for Spades," Snowman says casually.

Oh. Oh!

Okay, Dave feels really slow. "Uh, when did--"

Kankri is making the clamming-down-because-ow face. Dave's hand hovers, tempted to touch him, not knowing if Kankri wants it or if it'll make it worse.

"Consider the question unasked. Actually I could have figured it out eventually just from how Slick was talking about a time you were both here. I just... Fuck, I'm woozy."

He's woozy, his hands feel cold, and his heart is beating... kind of fast, but. Kind of shallow, too, if a heart can do that. Fluttery. This is probably not good.

"You do know that Mister Slick is a Knight of Blood?"

... Since when does she call him mister anything. "--Oh. Yeah?"

"And I understand you must be very tired after today's various ordeals, so I will be walking you through--"

"You a demon?" Dave asks.

The voice sounds identical to Snowman's, no funny twist or odd accent, but the stuff she says with it... Snowman's body blinks, nonplussed, and then gives him a charming, dimpling smile. "Yes, I--"

"They grabbed me to force that yappy asshole into one of these," Slick says, voice flat and annoyed, pointing at one of the circles with his thumb, "then they were planning to slit my neck to get the other kid too, so we got the fuck out."

"You're welcome," Snowman says dryly -- this time it's her again, Dave is pretty sure.

Kankri is making a little hissing noise under his breath, but it sounds more like annoyance than pain, so probably his contract doesn't cover other people being free with the information he's supposed to keep on lockdown under his nose.

Dave drops a hand on his head to pat along the quills (he accidentally gets the edge of a horn, a bit bigger than expected. His hands are so cold.) Then he takes a step toward the heat-shimmer circle.

Where Aradia is a wheel of seasons, standing poised at early spring with the whole year ready to unfurl, and Damara a blizzard and a waiting cliff, the demon imprisoned in this circle is the sterile, inert cold of space. There's something raging underneath at the unfairness of that enforced stillness -- all that space and nothing moves. It almost stills Dave's feet, feeling it.

Don't, Damara pleads-snarls. "Don't!" Kankri accidentally echoes. Dave blinks.

"Oh, I'm not making a contract, I just. If the Felt really wants this demon contained then I feel kinda honor-bound to fuck with them to the max."

Don't free her, Damara says, but less... hatefully.

Why not?

... Because, she says, and nothing more. Dave sighs and takes another step forward.

He's not entirely sure where to splash any of his blood in a way that will be disruptive, but not result in a power rebound to his face. He feels that's kind of important. It's apparently a shitty way to die.

He also feels like if he tries to bend over he's never going to get back up. The room is slowly oscillating around him and he's pretty sure it's not Snowman's fault, or whatever Babe of Space she has sharing real brain estate.

"So. What's your Name?"

There's a brief moment of stillness, and then both Snowman and Slick laugh -- sharp, short, mocking barks -- and then glare at each other for laughing, and Kankri wails, "Did everything I say go straight through your cranium and right back out?!"

Dave tries to flap his hand at him but it unbalances him a little, so he stops.

"I mean, you don't gotta, but it'd help. Help us help you fuck them up and jet? If that's even what you want, sorry, I don't wanna assume..."

God he feels like shit. And the circled-up demon isn't even reacting; he thinks he could tell if she was.

No, Damara whispers, but oddly reluctant. Please don't. Dave.

"...Damara doesn't know if she wants you out or not. Mostly not, but. What's the story?"

Damara is bunched up small and quiet, furious and resigned, trapped by Dave and by her oaths, caught on the shards her own self makes. She wants -- something, and hates herself for wanting it. Dave is too tired to follow up on that.

"... Okay. You do you. We'll just..."

He turns to look at Slick and Snowman, just in time to see Snowman catch Slick by the tie and yank him in for a kiss. Huh. Slick goes flailing his hands like a dork, eye wide under his hat -- he's shorter than her, shit, that's cute.

Then she shoves him off and turns to look at Dave, who blinks back. Huh. Maybe he should have looked away--

Something explodes behind him. The room sways -- forward and then back, and his leg explodes into white-hot pain.

Plush carpet under his cheek. Both hands locked white-knuckled on his thigh. He can't settle down and breathe, making little high-pitched noises with each gasp. When he blinks his eyes open everything looks too dark for a too-long moment.

The line of a seal is an inch from his nose. Is he crossing it, he thinks to wonder. Huh.

Oh, Karkat is standing over him, bristled like a war. Dave closes his eyes again. It hurts.

... No. Wait. That's Kankri. One hand clenched on Dave's elbow -- tingling fingers, gonna be a bone-deep bruise -- did he yank Dave back before he could faceplant in the circle?

Dave tries to breathe a little deeper. He should look at what's going on, figure out... but it hurts and. Just. No one's attacking him right this second. He doesn't want to move.

It's not Karkat over him, ready to fight, to give him as much breathing space as he needs. It's Kankri, who needs protected. He makes himself crane his head.

New people. He sees mostly legs. White-clad slacks in the middle of a lot of darker, not-as-neatly-pressed pants.

("Permit me to offer you my condolences.")

Lip curling up, Dave rolls from his side onto his front. (The room seems to keep rolling long after he's caught himself.)

There are voices. (There have been voices for a while.) Snowman and the douchebag in white --

"And naturally you only attracted them here to restrict their movements until we could reach you," the guy is saying, voice like he's speaking through a mouthful of cream, satisfied and tasting every word.

"Naturally," Snowman says back, just as unctuous but a lot more sarcastic about it. "Though I did not expect you to take so long."

"Yes," Scratch replies pleasantly, "it seems we misplaced the room."

They stare at each other. Spades Slick has a knife in each hand and is sneering, though silent; Kankri is still puffed up, frozen.

Snowman's lips curve into the ghost of a smirk. "My mistake. I am, of course, your faithful servant."

Dave can't see their faces, everything is still that weird kind of dark you get after you press your hands on your eyeballs, but that silence -- it's pointed. Anyone with less class would be breaking out the 'yeeeah right's --

"Ah ha!" Scratch exclaims, white-gloved fists on his hips, triumphant.

The world breaks.

The world breaks, or his head, or his -- he loses Damara, finds her again, finds her anew, loses himself. He's sixteen just walked out of class and terrified, he's six and where's Bro, he's --

Something is yanking on his body. Bright flash of pain, and then darkness comes up on its heels --

No, firetruck, you pass out now, you die!

... Why is it a bad idea again...

"...tula-- I can't --"

It's good enough like this, Kankster. Dave? Dave Strider.

Dragon scales -- tarnishing under his eyes, chipped, torn out and there's raw meat and pain behind, sorry, girl, sorry.

Shit. I ain't gonna -- Damara!

There's talking in the back of his head, talking outside in the room too but it's not the same discussion and he gets lost in the middle. Muffled sounds, notions too fast to catch, to put into words. He wants to float away.

Helping you -- I refuse.

You're not helping save him, Damz, you're helping him suffer longer. Name your terms.

... When he keel over. I get first bite.

Granted.

Not a second of hesitation. He vaguely wonders what poor bastard they're haggling over.

Dave, Latula says. Dave, Damara repeats. Dave Lalonde Strider, Latula says, harder.

Knight of Time. Wake up.

He opens his eyes and finds his nose pressed to the carpet, his neck craned uncomfortably.

"M'awake," he mumbles. They can stop ringing him like a bell now. He's queasy and cold all over, pulse fluttering, shallow -- he's awake like you'd be after two sleepless nights and a coffee overdose, or on drugs, it doesn't feel right.

--Leg! Keep it inside!!

... He's inside the mystery demon's circle. He folds his leg back in, slowly; frowning, baffled. This is... this is the summoner's spot, theoretically safe but one less layer of protection between him and the still unnamed black hole of a demon...

"I -- I truly feel t-that you shouldn't -- that --"

Oh hey Kankri isn't nearby anymore, he's... where?

"Get behind me," Slick says, laconic. Why is Kankri all the way over there now, hiding behind the guy--

Staring at Dave in mute horror.

Dave is pretty sure Kankri was the one who pushed Dave's body inside the pattern in the first place. He was the only one close enough, for one thing.

When Dave finishes pushing himself up and sits -- hands planted in squelching, wet carpet -- he ends up nose to nose with Scratch.

Not Scratch.

He's crouching on the balls of his feet and it fucks with his perfect dress pants, creases his shiny shoes -- not Scratch. He's grinning -- too many teeth -- eyes too wild, too bloodshot--

Blood trails over the man's stretched lips, his teeth, bars his chin. He makes no move to wipe it off.

"Such a tangled... Fucking mess. You really are the best human."

Dave stares. For three seconds. Maybe three hours. (In the back of his mind Damara is shivering in terrified ecstasy.)

Time is wrong. Less wrong than it's been -- the summoning pattern blocks it some.

It should block everything. He still -- his mind keeps hiccuping, trying to run through thoughts he's already had -- all the hair of his body is up -- he's met this demon before. When Kurloz died and when Jane died and.

Before.

Years before.

God I'm so sorry, Latula says, very quietly, and her battered scales fall away, the protective, desperate curl of her body loosening all at once like a too-tight rope finally sawed through.

Rose, he thinks, stomach dropping with terror. Rose is safe. Rose was with him when --

Inverted herself, Mage of Void -- manipulating oblivion, everything she wasn't -- and Dave followed, and who was the demon she even wanted at that point, the demon trying to tear her out of Dave, that Mage of Void, ancient and cold like a hatchet falling down onto a neck, like a firing squad -- did it even matter? Because the second Dave added his blood and his mind to the battle--

(Class Four, there's one of each combination of class and aspect per Gate and not more, or not for long. Class Five, there's two per Gate, tops.) (What about the local. The local what?) (Dave doesn't get to know.)

Oh. Right.

He is never going to know enough of this Name to compel for jack shit -- to control, influence, keep himself safe -- his mind is just not vast enough, but he already knows too much of it; every whisper is a flare, every passing thought a 'here I am, come and get me.'

Dave opens his mouth and wants to be flippant, no big, and his "Caliborn, hey," comes out a strangled, dizzy whisper.

Out of grabbing reach inside a protective circle or not, saying that Name out loud is the stupidest shit he's ever done. It feels like he got called, a pull so strong he sways; it hurts. Something hot and wet makes its way from his nose to his lips, both nostrils; the whole parlor looks black, lightless, and then green and bright, and then dark, shadowed red once again, like a kid pressing on his eyeballs to make pretty lights.

It's not pretty. He wants to puke.

He wishes they had never chased that Rose-hunting Mage of Void away for the Lord of the Gate to notice. He -- doesn't wish, he -- Rose would have broken --

He's going to break. Caliborn is going to break him.

Not before he breaks Scratch, from the blood welling up at the corners of the body's eyes.

"My Lord," Snowman says in her low, veiled voice. "Your vessel is at its limit."

The face twists in overblown annoyance. "Useless."

"I must respectfully disagree, there are still plenty of things you need this particular tool for," she gently reminds the Lord of the Gate. "As he would tell you himself if he could."

The face scowls harder. Dave shudders. He's cold all over, deep inside, he's cold and keeps having flashes of -- my body's too big, I was just in class, last I remember I wasn't hurt like this -- weird hiccups in time, in his perception of time, and he's just so. He can't think.

It's terrifying to think that he might be losing real-time, too. He's not sure if his absences are just flashes or... more. Summoning circles are set up for Class Fours and it's not -- if Caliborn really pushes. It's not gonna hold.

"Latula," he whispers, but there's no answer.

He's alone. He can't hear Damara or Aradia either. He's alone.

He wants Karkat. His sister. His brothers. Kankri's here but Dave has to protect him, protect Spades Slick, they'll get killed --

--Slick is a Knight of Blood. He'll get sacrificed so they can get to Karkat. What kind of human even has a Blood attribute.

"The only other Blood summoner we know of at present is the Dalai Lama," Scratch says, and it would be urbane if his voice didn't come out like he spent the last hour screaming it bloody. He pulls a handkerchief out of his chest pocket with a hand that shakes and wipes delicately at his face, doesn't try to stand up yet. Dave concentrates on his own breathing. Half of the brain-shaken dizziness is gone with Caliborn's retreat into the ether but Dave's body still won't follow.

"Huh, yeah," he mutters. "That's gonna be awkward. Borrowing that guy. I mean. Security? Warrior monks?"

"We're fairly sure there are more in the world, it's merely difficult to find them amidst all the people who never do get tested and those who have too little potential to be readable. Plus some of the... Peculiarities of the Aspect, that makes other demons reluctant to, ah, snitch on them."

"Mm. I see." He doesn't see jack shit. "Hey, why are you not torturing me and-or Slick to call Karkat here, again? I mean, there's no way it wouldn't light us up like a beacon."

What if reason is their brain meats too stupid for good idea and thank you much for it, Damara mutters to him, and Dave blinks.

Oh, shit.

Nah, just fucking you.

... I fucking love you too, you jerk.

When Scratch gives him that mild blink, a last bloody tear rolls out. He wipes it off before it can reach the bottom of his cheek.

"Well, because the Lord of Time wants to ride you, of course, which should be quite enough."

For a long moment Dave can't think a single thing, not even a joke.

"... I'll die."

Scratch smiles. "Yes, that's a given. My condolences. Don't worry, though, I'm sure he'll hold back until Karkat arrives."

Oh. Fuck. Oh no. No. Dave is strong as summoners go -- comes of being born around the time the Gate decided to start expanding in the slowest localized apocalypse ever -- but Scratch is as strong as he is, or maybe even stronger, and he's healthy and well-rested, and thirty seconds of possession hurt him this much --

Dave is going to split open like an overcooked sausage if Caliborn rides him, he is going to die, his guts exploded and his soul in crushed tatters, there is no timeline in which he survives this.

"Can I decline," he mumbles, but Scratch is already standing up and utterly ignoring him, one of his goons offering the man an arm for support.

"Take Strider out of that," Scratch says to his minions without looking back. Dave's fingers spasm on the squelching carpet.

He watches two mountains walk up to the circle, and doesn't know if he should fight or not. He's going to bleed out if he does. (Caliborn will kill him if he doesn't.) He's going to die, Karkat and Kankri are going to die, Spades fucking Slick is going to die--

Lucky, Damara sighs, nestled at the bottom of the pulsing migraine blooming in his skull since the Class fucking Five said hi. Ridden to death by Master of Time itself. You will feel everything.

He trembles.

So lucky. Dave's mouth sighs.

And then a flash of red in the back of the room, as Kankri's wings snap open, huge fingers hooked on air like claws. "Is it really lucky, Damara," he says, and sounds oddly calm, oddly -- tight, intense. Shivery. The air tingles with her Name with every single word Kankri says, like they were one by one coded for her soul, targeted.

She flinches; Dave's lip curls to bare fangs he doesn't own, neck craned to glare. (The mountains pause, frowning.)

"Weren't you promised first bite," Kankri says.

"Shut up. Is right of the Lord, takes prey from weaker--"

"You will never get it. He's going to take it from you. You're going to sit and watch as they take it from you. Just like last time."

"Shut your whore mouth up!"

"And you'll like it. Just like last time. You will squirm and smile and be happy to be stolen from once again, pathetically grateful--"

Dave isn't sure what happens. A guard steps closer? Slick -- throws something. A yelp. Dave's hand is up, aimed at Kankri and he burns with the need to rot that disdainful upturned nose, to dry all those eyes, draw great rents through that ridiculous amount of fragile, veiny flight membranes--

He makes himself close his fist, but he can't put it back down, Damara's fury beating at his body from the inside like she's trying to burst out through his skin. His head hurts so bad with Damara's push of magic that the lights seem to pulse.

"What -- get Strider now!" Scratch snaps from the door. The mountains -- one holding his bleeding shoulder, one reaching for Dave/Damara with his big hand through the outer edge of the circle and how dare he interrupt now?! --

They kill him, crushing the skeleton inside him to yellowed splinters and powder, they kill him and feed.

A third man rushes them. Heart thumping with the power surge, they grin until their cheeks hurt.

The sudden absence of the man and the corpse barely registers; from one moment to the next Caliborn's hanging miasma of a presence is just gone and Dave sways, head too light with lack of pain, with quiet. Damara stiffens in shock, and then Dave is holding up his arms alone; he drops them, too heavy. God. What. Where's...?

Slick's clothes are splattered with blood. When did that happen? Kankri is sitting up on his hindquarters, staring at...

Snowman. Not Snowman. Her body is an absence, a void filled with stars; her hands are spread like an orchestra conductor; all the arrays on the floor and walls are flaring, sparking greenish-white.

"We're in the heart of Caliborn's territory," the demon says, strained but still trying to sound pleasant. "I can't hold this for very long, the ether here is all tangled up and cut off from the rest. No demon will leave if they're not inside a body in some way. And no, Jack, I can't do this all the way out."

"Motherfuck," Slick growls, and jogs to Dave. "Stand up. What's the plan? Don't you tell me a broad like you doesn't have one."

"Well." Dave feels like he saw two faraway suns blink. "Frankly? All I know is that at the moment Doctor Scratch cannot see. Caliborn is a stupid berk and should have thought that there's no way for a human to use a passive ability after having hosted him. He's made of everything Seering isn't." A pause. "So. If he cannot see. Then it's... not a fixed point?"

Slick explodes into swearing. Dave closes his eyes, tries not to swoon with the sudden spike of utterly stupid hope. They're still stuck in here and he's still useless.

"What fucking kind of pointless plan is this?! The fuck does he need to seer up if there's nothing to do?! Fuck, get me a gun, I'll shoot us a way out. Strider, up."

"Phone," Dave mumbles while making a token effort at shifting his weight. "Get a phone. Police. Hello."

"Fine," Slick says, like he's rolling his eyes. "A gun and a phone. Like they'll arrive anywhere near on time. C'mon, Snowman, chop chop."

"We've been layering concealing spells on this place for the last year," Snowman rasps after a heavy, annoyed pause. "It has no fixed physical address anymore. You want the cops to get to us how? None of their seers will see jack shit as long as the ether is so stirred up, even if I take down every other ward I've got up."

"... Make it... have an address again?"

"We'll show up in the same space as existing buildings," she replies dryly. "I'll let it go once everyone is damn well out."

"We can't go out if they're camping all around us!" Slick snarls, and reaches down with his hand extended toward Dave's arm, like he's tired of Dave taking ages to find a good way to put his weight on his hand to maybe flex a leg.

"Don't," Kankri snaps, and pads closer.

"What? Long as I don't step in myself--"

"There's nowhere you can touch he's not bleeding, and they're all Time. Physical contact will bridge it. Don't."

Eyebrows up and mouth pursed like he wants to go 'well excuuuse me', Slick steps back; Kankri steps in. Stares at Dave.

Stares maybe deeper than Dave.

"Damara Megido," he says, shaping each syllable with delicate distaste, and she hisses with Dave's mouth. "Damara the cowed," (A cliff ahead and no way to stop,) "Damara who was twisted for other ends than her own," (A blizzard of hate and ice, shredding everything in its wake,) "Damara who was fucked over."

(Twisted pleasure and debasement and hate, self-hate, the shaking, slavish smile at the hand raised to strike it, the devastating adoration of someone toward their abuser.)

"Damara the useless."

"Shut up."

Kankri considers them, his four eyes heavy-lidded with disdain, and then continues. Dave has no idea where the fuck he's going with that bout of psychological warfare. He's trying not to hope that there's someone here who has the start of a plan...

"Askani Megido."

... What?

Time brought to a standstill, the very edge of the universe, the sterile stillness outside Space, outside anything that matters. A forceful absence of Time. And something not even cold, that knows it should want. That wants mostly out of stubbornness and habit.

"Say it, Dave," Kankri tells him, voice gentling so that it sounds like... Like Karkat, when he put Dave to bed that time, when he. When Dave said his second I love you and Karkat tucked him in and said, I don't get it, but I know. Dave's throat tightens with missing him.

"Askani," he repeats. "Askani Megido."

Damara sneers, weak and tired despite all the power of that death they just took, broken and so sharp-edged that every move, every exertion is torture -- delicious torture that means she is useful, worthy.

It's killing you, Dave thinks at her.

Who cares, she whispers back, laid too bare for Dave to stand to look.

The demon Askani is filling the summoning circle edge to edge like a dead, still, depthless pond, Dave and Damara trapped on their tiny summoner's spot island and no way to cross the two inches to the outside without drowning.

"The two of you know what I am," Kankri says, almost gentle -- wise teacher to lost pupils, eyes a little distant. (Dave isn't feeling his Name, but he still remembers that part of it is an arid desert where nothing has ever lived.) "The two of you know what I could do."

"No," Damara whispers with Dave's mouth. (Askani's presence barely ripples, and not in a way Dave can read.) "Be that again -- I can't."

Kankri sits on his haunches, hands curled together on his knees, like they have all the time in the world. "Not alone, no. But don't you want it?"

She hisses quietly. Dave clenches a hand on his knee, and then pats it in some awkward attempt to comfort her. He doesn't even know how much of his body she has seeped into.

"No," she whispers.

Kankri tilts his head. A lock of black hair slides across the bridge of his nose, between his upper eyes; he waits.

Dave's body breathes out in a long, fearfully quiet shudder. "...Yes."

Kankri nods, and reaches out with both hands for Dave's face, cups it.

"Repeat after me, Detective. This is a contract with Askani Megido, Witch of Time, and Damara Megido, Witch of Time, on behalf of the one who will come after..."

Dave mumbles, eyes closed.

Two Witches of Time. Huh. Strange one of them hasn't eaten the other one already. Class Fours are territorial.

Probably because Askani was locked up in here, where the ether doesn't touch the outside and no demon can escape who isn't wearing flesh.

He thinks about Kankri in another of those circles, about Slick who never summons and still took him inside his own body. About how they would never have escaped this place if Snowman hadn't let them out, he's sure, and he still doesn't know why she's doing it, her and that star-filled demon with the gentle voice. It can't be because she loves Slick. Can't only be that. It's too big a risk, and.

He doesn't know her. Maybe there's something else. Maybe she doesn't think it is too big.

It's a standard one-off contract Kankri is walking him through -- mutual assistance, mutually assured destruction. The more complex clauses fly far over his dazed head and he still parrots them back obediently, eyes closed, listening to that voice that still sounds like Karkat, that he trusts without a second thought.

He kind of wants Latula to tell him if he should. But that flicker of thought only returns an equally flickering echo -- a dragon sprawled in a loose curl in her deepest cave, raw wounds slowly bleeding out.

"... If the two of you are ready," Kankri says, low and not smug for once, more like -- tired. Sad.

Dave blinks his eyes open, looks at him, but his face is unreadable, a quiet sort of exhaustion that Dave has never seen on Karkat. "You okay?" he asks, and Kankri gives him a mild, lying blink.

"Fine. Damara?"

(The inexorable, inescapable end of things.)

"Fine also," she says, and laughs like for the last thirty years she has been smoking tobacco filled with broken glass; it scratches Dave's throat on the way out. "Go on. Do it."

Kankri does it.

Dave sways when Damara seeps out -- like she's gliding, dripping down his spine, settling in the cradle of his hips for a brief moment and then... then he loses his balance and his hand lands palm down on the line of the protection circle he's sitting in. He blinks, flinches, tries to take his weight off it to take it back -- there's blood on it, blood and skin and life and. Probably bad?

He can feel the other demon too. The other Megido. She doesn't pounce.

Kankri's hand is on his hand, keeping it pinned.

He feels them, blizzard and waiting cliff, the sterile stillness at the edge of space, separate, and then he just knows the cold. His hands and feet are cold from blood loss; he doesn't know what's real and what's their Names. He shivers.

He feels them -- Damara more, Askani just barely at the edges -- up until he doesn't. The sudden absence of Time-echo makes him feel like his head is ringing, cavernous like an empty church. He forces open his eyes.

Kankri's eyes are glowing right through his closed eyelids, four thin slices of blood-light along long eyelashes; a web of hair-fine veins visible through the glow. Dave watches his odd, chiselled face, the inhuman distance in it, and just. Waits.

It occurs to him that he's not too sure what he's waiting for.

It wasn't a temporary contract for Askani he signed, was it. (On behalf of the one who will come after...)

All the circles flare red again; the whole room pulses with Time and with power, like he's being squeezed from every side at once with too much air for the size of the room -- and then retracts so fast he feels unbalanced. Dave flinches, squints.

Another presence rises up. Where Damara was the second before going over the edge of that cliff, this demon is what happens afterwards -- crumpled in snow, on ice, after the fall, body failing slowly, tic-toc, tic-toc, only another few breaths left before the stillness of your end will swallow you...

... And underneath the ice there's -- something, he thinks -- something like an orca or a sea serpent or maybe a goddamn kraken just about to chomp you in two. Heh. Wow. Thought the fall would kill you, or the snow, but nope, here it is to rob you of the last few seconds you thought you'd still get. Dave giggles, struck with the irony of it. "Oh my god, girl. Are you...?"

He pauses briefly to contemplate the Name again, and then pushes it out through his mouth.

"Damani. Huh. You a Megido too? What's your. Heh. Hey babe. What's your sign."

Kankri is looking at him with his brow furrowed and Dave doesn't even care, just snickers again.

Witch of Time, this unworthy one is. A pause. Hello.

"'Nother witch? Man, how come Damara isn't hissing up a storm..."

Stillness, inside and out, a feeling like a head cocked.

She is not anymore.

Dave opens his eyes, gazes at the floor, the smeared handprint across the circle, Kankri's knees.

Not hissing anymore?

Not being anymore. This unworthy one is well-fed.

"... What?"

He forces his heavy head up to stare at Kankri, who squints like he wants to flinch away, and doesn't. "Askani was bound by the circle, and Damara was bound by her contracts and by her very self. It's not..." A pause; Kankri shakes his head. "Damani is not. Bound. By any of that. Now if you could enquire what she can actually do...?"

... Damara's dead? Eaten?

Eaten by a demon who only just came into being. Whose spoken name is...

Eri-sol. Cal-loz. (Oh. That son of a bitch. Worse, that son of Caliborn.)

Dam-ani.

Is she your food or your parent?

This unworthy one knows no difference.

What? What. This makes no sense. Damara didn't want to die. Damara enjoyed her fucked-up life, messing with people, laughing at their pain. Damara loved him, or hated him, in that creepy obsessive way -- she'd just told him, she wanted to see him dead -- Latula promised her the first bite of Dave's soul, she can't suddenly be fine just. Dying? Becoming fuel. She can't do that.

"She can't do that," Dave informs the room.

Snowman -- or the demon inside Snowman -- says, almost delicately, "The two Witches were born from a demon fractured in two by Scratch and... him. See it as her two torn, suffering halves being reunited...?"

Dave stares in disbelief. "Is she that first demon who was torn? Damani."

No. This unworthy one is echoes and fragments. The closest they could get to being that again, many thanks to the Blood one, but still not that. Now if this unworthy one may dare to presume upon you, she adds with a touch of impatience, and then Dave's hands blur and shift like -- oh, clock gears. Metal skin. Brass and copper, nothing like Damara's dents and rust under flaking white paint -- bare and brilliant like they've only just been polished. Still blurry, though, maybe because she's so new.

No, wait, he's just crying. Okay, carry on.

This unworthy one needs you to fucking stand your meat costume up already.

Slowly, legs shaking with strain, his elbows caught in a mobster's hands, Dave stands up. He swoons right into Slick's chest (sorry, handsomely tailored vest) and stays there, nose mashed to a cigarette-stinking torso, dizzy and blind with blurriness and a red glow in the semi-dark. The man eventually sighs in annoyance and wrestles him to the side, pulls Dave's arm across his own shoulders.

His leg is tacky-wet and cold from hip to ankle. He would throw up if he had anything to bring up. He wants to go home, but it feels like home is a word that has lost its meaning and he can't feel what it would even be like.

Karkat would be there. And Rose, and John, and Jade. His brothers. Roxy. Jake.

Not Jane, though.

Not Damara. At this rate maybe not Latula either.

Damani's soul wraps around him like a comforter, packs the echoing absence in his skull with snowflakes that seem like they would be furry and soft to the touch, that almost don't feel cold. He could borderline forget the predator watching him think he's going to die painless just to tear into him, just because it's fucking hilarious.

She's strong, and eager -- so powerful it tingles on his skin like his flesh is not insulating enough to entirely prevent her from seeping out into the material world.

If they had a contest of wills, in the material world, inside his own body, corralled by his own contract, he would lose.

"Dunno what she'll do," he thinks to say. "So you guys should probably... hold on. If you're coming with."

Kankri's shelled hand closes around his hanging wrist; he crowds against Dave and Slick's legs. Slick is still holding him, flank to flank.

Snowman watches them with a little floating smile and makes no move to get closer.

"... Snowman? You could... probably escape before I get you into custody. Aren't you--"

"Ask your new girl if she can take me."

This unworthy one would die, and get nowhere still.

"It's fine. I've got my own way out. And Slick..."

"What," he barks, but his dark eyes are drilling holes into her face with a terrible intensity.

"Fuck right off," she says in her low, cultured voice, and she laughs. "And don't come here again. There will be no third rescue."

"... 'Tch. If I need you again, just let me fuckin' die. Get moving, copper."

... Wow, wait, why does Dave think this spell is going to take them somewhere again. Maybe it'll just crumble the house under them. Maybe--

(He thinks through the whole of Latula's Name that he knows, makes sure he has her gathered whole and entire in his skull, limp and quiet.)

Where are we going?

Nowhere, Damani says. Nowhen.

Then she takes them into oblivion.

It's... here and gone, like blinking, and then he's standing with the two of his hangers-on in the exact same place, only it's a blink where he ceased to exist in the moment his eyes were closed.

All the circles are unlit, burned out of the walls; there's soot all over red velvet, a crushed desk -- blood splatters. More blood splatters than Dave knows he's responsible for. It feels -- in this room, it feels. Like.

Not-time. Not-us. Damani sounds satisfied.

Like Space; like the no-man's-land. Like the Felt's odd cordoned-off area was erased entirely, and the ether rushed back in.

The double doors to the room are blown off their hinges. Everything is still behind, not a noise, and Dave's ears buzz with the odd, total silence of lifelessness.

"What...?"

Slick drags him through the broken doors; the carpet squelches under their feet. Dave tries to move his feet along to help, and then forgets. Snowman is stretched out on her back at the next corner, a smile still floating on her painted lips, eyes staring blankly at the lack of ceiling.

She said she had her own way out, Dave thinks dumbly. He's not sure it was that one.

"... Jack," Kankri whispers, but Slick only pauses for a few seconds of silent staring before he ruthlessly drags them past her stiletto heels.

The corridor beyond is gutted, the courtyard a pile of bricks -- some that match the mansion, some that don't, and instead of the pretentious marble fountain there's another house standing teetering in the middle that he knows wasn't there before.

"The protection wards," Kankri says, still in that hushed, tired voice. "She took them down. Or they came down with her. That's..."

He pads cautiously to the edge of the corridor, peers around the yard; Slick keeps Dave moving, looking for a staircase not filled with rubble. Dave tries to turn his head to keep track of Kankri and his head swims.

Slick is entirely, ominously silent.

Also Dave thought it looked like sunset, but. It's not. He can... he can feel it's not.

How long is a breath of thought, just a habit.

God, it's six AM. Where did the interval go. ... How did Damani do this. Absence of Time. Stepping out of Time? So weird. So...

Huh, staircase. His eyes are closed. He cracks an eye open but Slick doesn't seem to really need him to keep them moving, so.

They climb up things. Off things. Stairs and rubble and things that give a little in a way he doesn't want to think about. Things he doesn't...

Latula, honey, he thinks-feels, imagining himself burrowing against her shuddering flank. She'd be fuzzy, he thinks. Not cold. Not scaly-hard. Not her underbelly, at least, where he's... yeah, come on, girl, curl around me. Let's just... nap for a bit.

When he wakes up she's gone and Damani is gone and his skull feels too big, echoing with useless space. Damara is gone forever and Aradia -- he doesn't want to call Aradia. She wasn't here when he wanted her to be and now he doesn't know what would be worse -- if she comes to him and reminds him of being deserted in his hour of need, or doesn't come and just. Makes him more alone. As long as he doesn't call there's a chance she would come if he did ask. There's a chance. Where's Latula.

Where's Kankri. Fuck. Rose -- he needs to take care of Kankri for Rose, and for Karkat, and he doesn't know where Kankri is, and he...

Oh. Right. Eyes open; he heard that helps.

Takes him a minute or three (two minutes five seconds seven tenths of a second) to figure out he's on his back in the passenger's seat of a car, reclined down, his legs propped up on the dashboard. Slick is at the wheel, chewing on ... something. A stick. A pen maybe. Kankri...

"...Kankri?"

His head is too heavy to turn. There's got to be a backseat but he can't...

"Here, Dave."

God, he sounds so tired.

"... Where...?"

"Where we goin'? No idea. He's drivin' me." Slick points his thumb back over his shoulder.

"Oh." Dave frowns at the car ceiling. "... No precinct?"

"Har har. Good luck with that one."

"... Hosp'tal...?" He doesn't want to think too hard about why he would want a hospital. The mental fog feels blanketing and nice, he doesn't want to lose it.

"Not yet," Kankri says, absently, and Dave's seat shifts a little from his weight; when Dave rolls his eyes up he can meet Kankri's, looking down at him. His hair is such a mess and there's soot and blood streaked on his face and he looks exactly like Karkat. Maybe older. A couple years.

Dave wonders if Damara incarnate would have looked exactly like Askani.

"Did you make her want that," he asks, raspy and slow, forcing himself to articulate.

Because Damara didn't want it before. Dave knows she didn't.

Kankri doesn't pretend not to know exactly what he means. "I didn't have to," he says, but toneless, tired. "When you've been one being, it's... tempting, to go back to that. There is an echo -- a resonance. No matter how much you don't want that pull, how strongly you want to keep being you, it still exists. It won't ever," he adds, rough like a whisper, red eyes dim, "stop existing."

Dave thinks about how much Kankri and Karkat look alike. How wary Karkat was of touching him, when Kankri incarnated. How they say they haven't spent any time together, but still know things about each other. Like brothers. Like...

"Yes," Kankri says, very quietly.

"Oh." He digests that as the car rocks them over a pothole. They're so different now. They're even different classes. Damara and Askani weren't even that far apart.

"We were birthed with more care."

It's always weird talking with a Seer, when they start answering questions you didn't even ask yet, but it's convenient right now with Dave's mouth full of molasses and cement. Sort of convenient.

He makes himself say it out loud anyway. "What was he like, the one before you? Your dad."

Kankri doesn't even correct him on terminology, like it's... good enough. Right enough.

"... Laughing. Hopeful." He snorts. "I don't know where those went. Wordy. Principled. Civil and poised, like me." A pause. "Altruistic. Like him."

"Sayin' you're not that."

"Enlightened self-interest is often a close enough substitute to an outside eye, but it is, indeed, not that."

Dave vaguely wants to pat him, but his hand weighs three tons, and his shoulder doesn't bend that far back to start with.

"It is not something I consider a personal failing," Kankri says with faint surprise, and actually does pat Dave on the shoulder, gingerly, clawed fingers curled back from the palm. "Merely odd to remember. How it was, being someone else. I have a lot of memories of his life -- almost everything Karkat didn't keep, I have -- the foundations of my very soul are built on them -- but he is still... not me. Not even half of me."

Dave blinks slowly at the car ceiling. "Huh."

"Mm."

"Love of sundering," Dave mumbles, trying to gather the echoes of the word Karkat had used (live, live, live) and. Oh. That's... Parental love? I'mma cut myself in two 'cause I love what y'all will become so much I'm fine dying for it? Jesus. "Think I'd have liked to meet him," he adds, baffled, "just to figure him the fuck out."

"Arguably, you did meet him -- once removed."

Dave frowns a little. (His face hurts. What the heck even happened to his face. He doesn't remember any specific incident.) "What, because he's arguably you once removed?"

"... That too," Kankri says with a small, subdued voice, with eyes dim to the point that they look dark, and Dave finally notices that. That this... talking about his dad is -- maybe not doing great things for his state of mind. He's not sure why, but better change the topic.

"So. I get why I get to know about. Like. Where baby demons come from. Being kinda ground zero for one, uh. Happening. The conjugal bed? Um."

(He kind of wishes Damani was around to laugh at him, or just say something about how she sees it, but their contract was a one-off, not even a retainer; she's gone. He may find her again later, but she could also just never talk to him ever again.)

Kankri pinches his lips at him. "A birthing stool, more like."

"--But anyway -- hey, fuck you -- anyway I dunno why Slick gets to know?"

Slick and Kankri snort together; Kankri sneaks him a look. Dave is glad to see that Slick's eyes stay on the road.

"Haven't even been listening," he says, which is probably a lie considering how close everyone is and that there's no music or anything.

"Well, we did find out an unfortunately large amount about each other the last time we were, ah, sharing the same bout of real estate, so we still have a nondisclosure agreement set up. Which I am not set to fret about overly much, as he cares so little about everything related to demonkind he'll have aggressively forgotten it all by the time we part ways," Kankri says with a shrug.

"Damn fuckin' skippy." Slick snorts. "Ok, so, not that all that talk about families isn't quaint and all, but now what are we doing to fuck up the Felt's endgame? Apart from not letting 'em sacrifice our asses."

"You could skip town," Kankri suggests. "The Lord of the Gate can hardly follow you away from the gate. Granted you're not indispensable to his plans the way Karkat and I are, and if we try it he will send people after us, but as you are rather necessary--"

"I would rather french a clock," Slick snaps. Dave blinks up at him, tries to crane his neck. (Ow.) "... A glock. Is what I meant. Shut up." Mobster Supreme clears his throat. It's hard to say from this nostril-heavy angle but Dave thinks he looks kind of embarrassed. "It's my fucking town, like hell I'm letting them fuck it up worse."

Kankri snorts, nose in the air. "Oh, there's the Knightly suicidal stupidity. I was starting to wonder if I had miscast you somewhat."

(Dave pouts a bit, because fuck if he didn't have the same 'no, can't leave' reaction.)

"Anyway, I would rather avoid the mess that would come when we talk about the plans a dozen times with a dozen different people and everyone understands differently, and--"

"So basically you don't have a plan."

"I'm a Seer of Blood, Jack, not Time or Light or -- argh. Give me your phone number if you won't come up with us, but why you expect me to have a full, workable plan already I have not the faintest fucking notion. I'm hardly the only one involved in planning--"

They're still bickering when the car turns left and comes to a stop. Dave groans. He was just getting comfortable, the cold in his limbs less distracting, and if... if it's just a low-class demon in the road they can manage it themselves, he just wants to sleep.

Doors opening, closing -- a waft of cold air on his cheek.

"Up and at 'em, copper."

Ugh.

When he opens his eyes he's already being sat up. His head swims; he closes them straight away. Kankri is down on the concrete ground, peering at him past Slick's legs.

"So you aren't coming up, then?"

"Nah, I'll pass. My idiots are gonna start getting reckless. I'll just pop him in the elevator..."

... Not the hospital after all then. God. Dave is cold. Slick's hands feel burning-hot on his shoulders. He's too tired to shiver.

"Alright then, let me just... Dave? Dave Lalonde Strider, your permission?"

Dave groans, throat tight around his nausea. The meat of his forearm stings a little.

He cracks an eye open to see Kankri sitting on his haunches, grimacing, his belly beading red around a single, already-stained claw-tip. Did he... bleed Dave and then himself. Why.

Kankri lifts his hand, waves it in the air, and -- clanging noise, Slick snorting like he's amused, even as he pulls Dave's arm across his shoulders to lift.

Dave's head rolls back on his shoulders; his eyes crack open. Karkat is rushing down the fire escape of Dirk's building like a boulder rushing down an Indiana Jones temple corridor. Hitting each landing so hard the whole thing rattles, throwing himself around tight turns so fast his legs swing over open air, holding on with a single hand -- oh.

Still almost two floors over the ground and he throws himself off of the stairs, all his claws punching through the brick of the wall; he skids-claws his lizardly way ahead and down until his handholds break and then he just jumps to the ground, tiny wings wide open.

Slick pulls Dave up onto his feet and the little blood he has left in his veins migrates straight down with gravity.

Hands on him -- clawed and not -- frantic patting, snarling -- heh. Safe.

He's so cold. It hurts being gathered in a ball -- bruises and wounds, his thigh -- but Karkat's body is furnace-hot and his arms solid, his wings...

"... fucking go get Jane!" Karkat is snarling over his head, chin pressing into a bruise on Dave's skull and holding onto him with every single limb he has that wraps far enough around, and it's over, it's okay. It's okay.

He tries to free an arm to pat Karkat's cheek but his arm weighs a ton and Karkat's hold is unyielding and it's so much effort, and...

"I'mma pass out now," he mumbles, and then does.

And to this child of destruction, patience and foresight to guide others to build. Karkat-or-Kankri's gauntlet claws are draped with strands of shimmering silk; unbraiding, plucking strands out to braid them in elsewhere, some other way. And to this child of healing, the strength to shield from harm before harm should occur.

Unspooled together in his hands, Rose and Dave sleep.

#davekat #asuka writes #demon summoner AU #homestuck

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