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offsidekineticist · 15 days ago

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Happy Holidays, all!

I've had some inspiration lately, but my next dry spell will probably see me moving this fic to AO3. It's getting long enough that as much as I don't like the idea of putting it up there with the PWOTR tag (since it is 99% OCs and nowhere near the worldwound), putting it all on tumblr is becoming increasingly silly.

For now I want to focus on getting the next couple of chapters done, but next time I run into an issue like "ok I guess this throwaway background character is a viewpoint character now and I need some time to let that marinate," I'll probably start the move to AO3.

Speaking of which, yes, we have a new viewpoint character! Everyone say hello to Mori Strongheart!

CWs for this chapter: blood and viscera, medical procedures, negative self-talk and ableist language, dissociation, extreme loneliness, dysphoria/dysmorphia

Summary of previous chapter: Giliys's patron is forcibly and physically removed from him by an unknown force, severely injuring him. Qweck immediately sets to work healing him. Laria Longroad, having heard Giliys confess to murdering escaped slaves for his patron and knowing he is responsible for the burning of the Villegre, tries to convince her to let him die lest he give up Bellflower secrets if he's arrested. Qweck refuses, and Laria evicts her and warns her to leave town with Giliys. Qweck, unable to heal Giliys alone, enlists the aid of coworker Mori Strongheart, instructing her to darn a hole in Giliys's heart while Qweck keeps him alive with a stabilization cantrip.

Thank You, Beautiful Person!

Let it be known that darning a heart is nothing like darning a sock. You’re not going to elaborate because you’re only able to get through this by not thinking about it. You really would rather do literally anything but this, but Qweck needed your help, and right now she’s basically your only friend.

(You don’t mean to be annoying, but when you have something in your head, you kind of forget how to talk about anything else, and most folks don’t want to hear you gush about Chelaxian high opera and the subtle beauty of the Infernal language. Qweck doesn’t seem any more annoyed by your opera talk than she is by everyone else, so that makes you friends.)

So now you’re doing your best to pretend you’re someone who doesn’t get lightheaded at the sight of blood while you try to fix a serial killer’s heart.

(Ooh! Save that line! That's a good one!)

“Okay, I think it’s done,” you say, and you’re terrified that it’s not enough, but you also can’t spend another second stitching flesh that is moving and wet and gushing–

Qweck mutters her stabilization spell and nods. It’s honestly impressive that her voice hasn’t given out after all this time. This is probably the most you’ve heard her speak since you've met. “Step back!” she warns and you almost jump away, taking the magical needles with you. You look very deliberately towards the ceiling, barely able to see her hand in your peripheral vision as it glows with healing energy.

You don’t watch the wound heal, but you’re sure it’s very impressive. Qweck seems like her magic would be very impressive. You’re so nervous you think you might throw up again; you never wanted to hold anybody’s life in your hands. You don’t know if you could stand knowing you failed them.

But you have to. You hear Qweck’s voice quicken, hear her muttering grow to shouting–

“No, no, no, no! You are not leaving me to handle everything alone! You don’t get an out, asshole!”

It didn’t work.

You couldn’t do it.

You weren’t good enough.

(Of course you weren’t. You’re just useless little Mori. You don’t know how to do anything that actually matters. The only one who didn't see it was Qweck, and now she sees it, too.)

You feel sick, and you’re not sure if it’s because of the blood or the guilt or the fear that she’s going to hate you for breaking her oath.

“I’m sorry,” you say.

“Not yet you aren’t,” Qweck snarls, and you feel lightheaded because Qweck is scary even when she’s not angry, and now she’s angry at you–

“You need to go. Now,” she continues. “If this doesn’t work, tell my father that I tried. And I’m sorry.”

Before you can question what the eff she means by that, she turns to the patient and starts chanting. Her hands start glowing. Magic sparks over her body like lightning, lashing around her arms and chest and neck. Her eyes are glowing. The patient starts convulsing, and you don’t know if that’s just the magic flopping him around or if he’s alive. If he is alive you’re pretty sure he won't stay that way for long. The magic arcing from Qweck is getting stronger, reaching farther. The hair on your neck is standing on end, and you can see welts on Qweck’s skin left after each arc. You’re no mage, no healer; you don’t know what’s happening, but it looks very bad, and you should probably do something.

You just…don’t know what.

(Because you’re useless)

“Uh…Qweck? What’s happening?” you ask. She doesn’t answer–she's too focused on her task, even with her hair standing on end and her power sparking. Light is pouring out of her eyes, but also her nose, her ears, between her teeth–something inside her is glowing, and you’re no expert, but that seems very, very bad. You need to snap her out of this…somehow.

“Qweck?” you repeat.

"You...need...to...go!" she grinds out through clenched teeth, and it sounds like she's in pain, so of course you don't go. You reach towards her, into the storm of magic. You think maybe if you can pull her away from the patient, maybe if you break the connection between them, maybe it will stop? Or maybe some of the extra magic will go to you, and maybe between the two of you, you can make it stop?

(Stupid little Mori. You'll only make things worse)

It hurts, magic stinging your arm like tiny embers from a fire, and it gets worse the further you reach, but you grit your teeth and persist.

('Now isn’t the time to be soft, girl.')

The light is growing unbearably, blindingly bright, so you look away as your hand reaches Qweck’s shoulder–

There are no words. I will try to explain what you feel, but you will not understand. You are beyond words now. And when you return to yourself–when you can hear my words–you will not be able to understand. But I will try to describe it, and you will try to understand it, and we will fail together.

You are, at once, nothing and everything. You are connected to every living thing in every place and plane and planet. Words are pointless, crude attempts by toddlers to replicate the connection you feel. You feel their feelings. You think their thoughts. You are them.

You are everyone.

You are Life. All life, everywhere, all at once.

And then you are nothing. Empty. Where there once was a roaring furnace, now there is only a single spark, lost and adrift and abandoned to a prison of flesh, doomed to burn out alone in the ashes.

There is no word to describe what you are–the agony of the loss you now embody–but I will try.

You are alone.

“Mori? Mori!”

Someone is shaking the body that is called Mori. Someone is shaking your cage, and it reminds you that while you are no longer everything, neither are you nothing. You are something, locked away from everything, but still something, even if you are almost nothing. Almost nothing is still something.

“Whoa–wha’ happened?” your body slurs, because you are not your body, and it’s hard to control something that is not you.

“You didn’t listen to me is what happened!” the body that is Qweck snaps, and she is scowling at your body because she thinks it is you. “I told you to leave! You could have died!”

If you were your body, it would laugh at that. You didn’t die. You did the opposite of dying. You didn’t die so hard that there isn’t a word for what you did. You consider using your body to tell her this, but she would not get the joke.

“You still didn’ say wha’ happened.”

Qweck’s lips press together. “He needed a regenerative spell to heal. I’m not strong enough to cast such a spell, but I knew the incantation and the movements. I had hoped I would be able to control it long enough to heal him. When you touched my shoulder, I lost concentration and you absorbed the excess positive energy. You are incredibly lucky to be alive.”

You are not your body, but your body feels that you do not understand, and so it blinks in confusion. “Cast a spell...even though you can't...That sounds like a really bad idea,” it says.

“I did tell you to leave.”

“Yeah, but it sounded like you were about to do something silly. Which you were.” Your body is good at speaking. It hardly needs much input from you–just a vague idea of what you want her to understand. That's good, because you're too busy wondering why you can't just be her, and why she can't just be you.

Qweck’s body is taut and angry. You think Qweck is, too. “That’s why you were supposed to leave!”

“But my friend was in trouble!” your body whines, and now Qweck (who you think might be her body) looks confused.

“Your…friend?”

“Well…yeah. We’re friends, aren’t we?”

Qweck opens and closes her mouth a few times. “You’re not okay, are you?”

That would have crushed you only minutes ago. You used to be desperate for friendship. Now it just feels like a hollow reminder of what you’ve lost. That paltry connection through word and deed is nothing to one who has been everyone. The sting of rejection is nothing compared to that loss.

“I’m fine,” your body lies, because Qweck-who-is-a-body can’t understand that none of you are okay, and you’re the only one who knows. Before she can tell you that she knows that you’re lying, you’re interrupted by a groan next to you. There’s a body on the floor, and it is moving and groaning and sitting up.

“Ugh…what…what the fuck happened?” the body groans, looking around, and some piece of you–a piece that is both with your body but also not–remembers that this body is your patient, and that if it is moving of its own accord, that means you succeeded. Your body turns its gaze towards Qweck, and you expect to see her relieved or happy or grateful or some other positive emotion you haven’t remembered yet because you’re too lost and alone to remember what they feel like, but instead–

“I have no fucking clue!” she explodes. “You came in here and tried to get me to provoke me into killing you with a dagger of fucking healing by confessing to murdering your crops, and then a fucking rock burned its way out of your chest, and I had to spend an hour stabilizing you while Mori patched the hole in your heart. You tell me what fucking happened!”

The patient’s eyes seem to sharpen, at that. “A rock–you mean a gemstone? On a gold chain?”

“Yes, that!” her body shrieks, and its voice cracks and it is crying, and your body feels sick, and its face burns, and you think it would feel better if it wasn’t here to see this. “It burned its way out of your chest and it fucking floated in the air and then it talked! It fucking talked, Giliys! And then POOF! Gone, but not before it fucking blinded me and blew out my ears! I had to stabilize you without being able to see you or hear myself cast the spell!”

You don’t remember any of that happening. Clearly you were wrong to listen to Qweck the first time she asked you to leave. She is even less suited to aloneness than you are.

“No,” the patient–Giliys?–says softly, a faraway look in his eyes. “There’s no fucking way.” His eyebrows squeeze together, like he is trying to think, and then he snaps his finger. His body grins. “It didn’t work,” he says, and he seems like he can’t believe it. There’s a short silence, and then he laughs–just a short shocked laugh. “It’s gone–I can’t use it anymore! It’s really fucking gone!

“What’s gone?” Qweck asks.

“The hellfire–and the thing in my head that gave me the hellfire! She’s gone! No more hellfire! No more harvests! No more losing control and burning down the Villegre–she is fucking gone!” He throws his head back and laughs. “Oh, fuck. I didn’t realize–fuck. I haven’t been alone in my own head for forty fucking years. I forgot what it was like not to have her in there. Fuck, I didn’t even realize–fuck, is that why I’m so cold? Cuz I don’t have fucking hellfire in my chest anymore? Holy fucking shit. Is this what normal people feel like all the time?! Fuck, how are any of you ever fucking sad? Shit, this is incredible–” He stops suddenly and looks at Qweck with a very serious face. “I love you. Not like a girlfriend, though, that’d be weird. And not like a sister, either. Like…like that weird friend that you can’t stand but also work really well with and never actually walk away from even though you don’t do shit except bicker?”

You have so many questions. Your body turns to Qweck, and you hope for some explanation, but she just seems angry. Very angry. It makes your body feel light and shaky, like it really, really needs to run.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?!” Qweck demands.

“I’m just so happy,” he gushes, and you can see Giliys is his body even more than Qweck is, and you don’t understand how someone can revel in being more alone. “You are such a good healer, Qweck, probably the best fucking healer ever, better than…than…I don’t fucking know of any famous healers, but think of one that’s really good, and you’re better than that one.”

“Stop–just fucking stop! Read the fucking room! Mori is hurt because of the magic I did to save you.”

You don’t want them talking about your body. Thinking about your body. Looking at your body. You don’t want them to realize your body isn’t you anymore, because then they will fuss and try to fix you, and they won’t understand because people-who-are-bodies can’t understand. So your body picks up a burlap sack off the floor–one that’s crusty with dried blood, but you’re ignoring that because your body doesn’t like blood.

“Here–you said you were cold?” your body asks, its voice shaking, before throwing the sack at the still-shivering halfling. The sack swallows up Giliys’s head as it lands and completely engulfs him.

The distraction works. “Thank you, beautiful person!” Giliys calls cheerfully, seemingly unbothered by the fact he can’t see. “And I mean beautiful on the inside–I mean you’re probably beautiful on the outside, too, but I didn’t get a good look before you turned out the lights, so I mean that you’re holistically beautiful. And not in a creepy way. OH!” He struggles for a moment, rolling around trying to find his way out of the sack. He finally manages it, poking his head out, grinning wide, and he waves at you. “You’re the first person I’ve met in forty years without her in my head! Hello! Wow.” He looks over at Qweck and whispers, “is she super special, or are all people as cool as she is, and I just couldn’t tell before?”

Your body, you realize, has its own feelings. Right now it desperately wants to hide in a box under a blanket curled up in the fetal position so it can die of embarrassment. You, on the other hand–

I mean beautiful on the inside.

You were wrong, you realize. Giliys is not his body anymore than you are. He only seems that way because he has never controlled it by himself before–he has always had to fight for control, and now, without a rival, he controls his body effortlessly. But Giliys is not his body. He did not have his own body until today. This body belonged to him and someone else who was not him–he could not be his body because it was not only his. He will become his body later, but so will you, as much as you hate it. You are alike, as much as you are opposites.

Emotions seem to belong to your body except for the gnawing, aching thing that there are no words for. But looking at the body that is not Giliys and knowing that you do not see Giliys–it almost makes the loneliness ache a bit less.

“You’re upsetting her after she saved your life! Why can’t you just shut up?!” Qweck demands tearfully.

“I just–I can’t! I’m so happy! The fire is gone, and now I have a new friend, and she’s awesome and brave and powerful!”

“I-I’m actually pretty normal,” your body mumbles, deeply embarrassed. You, meanwhile, are gratified to hear him acknowledge your kinship, even if he can’t explain that kinship.

“Yeah, that’s what Thay always says, too,” his body says, “but he–OH! THAY!”

Giliys’s body springs to its feet suddenly, almost tripping on the burlap sack still wrapped around it. “I gotta go tell him–he probably thinks I’m dead–I gotta go, I gotta go, I gotta go, I gotta–”

It looks like a child declaring that he needs to pee–it's even doing the funny restless dance, though you think it’s just because Giliys's body is charged with energy and needs to do something with it.

“Then go!” Qweck snaps, wiping the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. “I need to pack because I’ve been evicted.”

Giliys’s body freezes, one foot still in the air (still in the sack), eyes wide. “Evicted? Laria evicted you? Why?”

“Irreconcilable differences,” Qweck says with a sniffle.

“Oh, well, that’s okay, you can come back to stay with me and Thay. OOOOOOH!” His body begins dancing again. “Thay is going to be so happy! he’s missed you–oh, but he’s going to be upset that you’ll see how much his hands hurt. Shit! I wasn’t supposed to tell you that. Pretend I didn’t say anything? And then pretend you don’t notice? It’s hard not to notice when he’s so cranky all the time, but you can pretend, right? You’re so good at pretending you don’t hate my guts, so you can pretend about this, right?”

Qweck just looks incredibly done with everything. She usually looks incredibly done with everything, but she also looks like she’s about to fall asleep on her feet. “I can’t–I can’t deal with this. I’m going to pack, and then I’ll go to the apartment. If you want to wait, fine. If you don’t, also fine.”

She is somewhat undermined by how she seems to stagger towards the ladder. Your body steadies her. “How about I get you home, and then I get your stuff for you?” your body offers, and you have no objections. Whether you help her or not, you are still lost.

“They live in Redroof,” Qweck says.

“Then we’d best get a move on,” your body says with a smile, as if that news changes nothing, because it doesn’t, even if your body feels a pit in its stomach. You’ve heard stories about Redroof, of course, and an hour ago those stories might have given you pause. Now, though, you know that whatever harm might befall you would only harm your body. You are not your body. You don’t want to be your body. You don’t want to have a body. You don’t want to forget what it was like to be without a body.

“Are you sure? You should probably rest,” Qweck says.

“I’m fine,” you lie, but it is only half a lie–your body is fine, and your body is all she sees.

The walk to Redroof is exhausting. Giliys pouts when you tell him he can't bring the blood-encrusted sack with him ("but I wanted to see how far I can walk in the sack!"), but his spirits are irrepressible, and soon he is, once again, chattering away. He waxes poetic about cobblestones, wondering who invented them and whether they knew they were brilliant. He points out shapes in the clouds–a linnorm kissing the hand of a cantaloupe, though he concedes that it might actually be a dragon proposing to a watermelon. He complains that Kintargo is really more pearly than silver, and that pearl doesn't get enough credit, so it's "not fucking cool" that silver gets to claim the city. He sees beauty and possibility in a world bereft of connection, and you are grateful that your body is so practiced at humoring people that you don't have to pay much attention to engage with him.

You don’t understand his joy. You understand that the creature that shared his body demanded that he do terrible things. You understand his relief that he will never have to kill again. Surely, though, this relief would be tempered by the crushing loneliness? You only knew wholeness for a moment, but this nothingness is destroying you–how much worse would it be if you hadn’t had to face this isolation in decades? Surely that's a heavy price to pay, even if it is one worth paying?

Perhaps the body is the key. You were everyone, but everyone was not forced to share your body. Becoming everyone meant escaping your cage. Perhaps being confined to a body is less tortuous than being confined to a body you must share with someone else? You can’t fathom that, though–the absence you feel is such that, even knowing what she would demand, if Giliys’s devil offered to share this prison with you, you don’t know that you would say no.

Qweck doesn’t say anything, but you can tell that she’s tuning you two out, trying to escape her body while it staggers home. She fails; she doesn't know how to be anything except a body. She leans on your body from time to time–she pretends it’s an accident, and your body always apologizes for getting in her way, because your body understands her pride.

You make it to Giliys’s apartment without incident. It looks like someone built a few cottages, and then added second floors to some of them, and then third floors, and then fourth floors, and so one, and at some point the multi-level cottages became interconnected by walkways and tunnels, andl the whole thing became so heavy that it sank to the ground, and some of the first floor cottages are now cracked and halfway buried. Giliys and Theo (and now Qweck) live on the top floor, at the top of a rickety wooden staircase that looks half-rotted, which makes you think the landlord may have decided to rent to them because smallfolk bodies are light enough not to fall through. Probably.

Giliys doesn’t seem to notice the stairs could break at any time. His body bounds up them, two at a time, barrelling through the apartment door (does it not have a lock?) shouting “Thay! Thay! Thay! You’re not gonna fucking believe this, she’s–” His voice cuts off abruptly. “Thay?”

Your body climbs the last steps and sees Giliys’s body standing still as a statue just past the doorway. Your body looks past Giliys’s into the apartment.

There’s nobody here.

#the (totally platonic!) breakup arc #oc: giliys #oc: qweck varnaj #oc: mori strongheart #pwotr pals #part 19

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