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ded-and-gonne · 2 years

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🍂 🎃 🍂 Sheehalloween 2022 🍂🎃🍂

Devil’s Night Part 3: A Green Man

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AN: I’m chopping a huge post down into manageable chunks. Hope you enjoy. Triggers: two not-brothers flirting, my sense of humor, treasure hunts, kitchens. Ded & Gonne is and will always be a gen fic.

Ded & Gonne || Devil’s Night || Start || Prev || Next

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“Is there such a thing as a sub-sub-basement?” It’s Klaus asking.

They’ve emerged from a non-descript door on an oddly ornate hallway. Lots of gilding. Crowns. Mouldings. Cherubs all over the place, a green man, and a gargoyle or two here and there. Wyrd-looking little squidgy symbols in random places, like the carpet, and light switches. A complete suit of armor. Other fancy stuff rich people would buy. For a really fancy sub-sub-basement.

Klaus asks, “Which way, Bennerino? This is your story, after all, and you get the honors of directing the particulars. You could even order me around, if that would cheer you up.”

That would definitely cheer Ben up. He needs to find a way of keeping Klaus willing to be bossed around indefinitely. Problem for another day.

Turning back to his not-brother, Klaus decides that Ben’s facial expression isn’t one to be trifled with. He can put off trifling for a while, for Ben’s sake. “Yes, dear one?” Klaus responds with fluttering lashes.

Ben swallows heavily. He wants to kill Klaus, but that would be a little too on the nose for Devil’s Night. “Shut up and tell me how the hell this Devil’s Night thing is supposed to be a story. What exactly about this thing screams story to you?” is what Ben had wanted to say. Instead, he attempts the word “story” with a question mark at the end. Unfortunately, the explosive breath required by the word “story” is not available at the time due to losing his vocal chords. So he splutters a bunch of consonants, hoping “s,ry?” is close enough for Klaus to unpack.

Klaus unpacks. “Simple, Ben. We scare the shit out of each other as many times as possible between sundown and sunrise on Halloween morning. And then we get to tell everyone a bunch of awesome stories about how scared we got. Didn’t Dad make you guys play this?”

“Nnn,” Ben rasps his answer, and attempts to sigh a sigh of forbearance. Such a martyr, that Ben. “Storytelling? I’m sorry. But storytelling wasn’t a thing at the Sparrow Academy,” he would have responded, voice thick with disdain (rather than pain). Instead, he gives up and shakes his head, no.

“Really? Dad thought it was really important for our missions and the fate of the world that we tell good stories.”

“Namae nnnsense,” Ben whispers, lip curled, without explosive letters, and eyes squinting in doubt and pain.

“Sure it does. Like, ‘It was a dark and stormy night near Boston, when a short man — about 5’2” maybe, with a mustache, and a muscular build which looked really odd on such a tiny individual. He wore black leather jeans way too tight to hold out hope of ever producing enough live swimmers to father a child one day, a lime green t-shirt, and a lime green Mohawk. A caucasian male driving a 2012 Honda Civic Hatchback — beat me up and left me for dead at mile marker 25 on the Mass Pike heading west, before the Framingham exit. The license plate was suspicious.’ There. That’s a story. A really short and helpful one.”

“Cool story, bro,” says Ben, back to his eye-rolling sarcasm. It comes out more like a tiny, “Lll rrry, ro.” Again, the explosive letters giving him trouble. The humming, nasal letters, not so much.

A sharp left and on down a dark-ish hallway leads them to what Ben is guessing was once the belowstairs area for kitchen staff. A lightswitch proves the electricity still works, shocking, and a few footsteps into the largest room gives them a clear look at their treasure. At an industrial kitchen.

The layer of dust on the kitchen floor alone is at least an inch thick. Like an actual, measurable inch. Walking through it feels like disturbing freshly fallen snow. Plus the room has that eerie quiet that hangs over everything during a snowfall. Not a soul has traversed the room in, well, as many years as it takes to gather an inch of dust. The surfaces are even worse, which, if you really think about it, is not normal. Being abnormal in the sense that it lacks logic in almost every way.

It strikes Klaus as odd that the room lacks any trace of smell. On the contrary, it is a particularly noticeable freshness after what they’ve just come through.

No scent at all. Not musty, nor antiseptic, nor lemon-scented fresh. Nor like shit water, rot, or dead things. Ben smells no scent of freshly grilled and steaming fillet mignon, left to rest in peace, while the drippings are kept at a rolling boil for the Yorkshire pudding. As if food has never been prepared in this room. Not a sign of grunge, nor of stained surfaces. The kitchen appliances, the paint, the cabinets, countertops, all of it appears a lot newer than the rest of the, well, the rest of the entire building, actually.

The cupboards are officially bare. Officially. Not a dish nor a plate, let alone grilling utensils. And certainly no booze. And you know as well as anyone else that Klaus is a pro at finding booze, so, naturally, he’s checked. Like he’s really checked very hard.

Retracing their steps, a sharp right leads them out of the belowstairs quarters. On their way back, they continue beyond their original point of entry, and past more of the wyrd finery. This end of the hall culminates in a formal dining room. Don’t picture the one where Luther and Sloane got married. It’s not that cavernous, nor as twinkly and sparkly. But it’s got something the wedding didn’t. ooooWOOOOoooo

The glass French doors into the room stand open, as if expecting guests. Klaus is struck dumb. (That’s a miracle, by the way. Never happens.) The only occupants of the entire room are one long dining table and enough chairs for a substantial family or two — well over 20 chairs, possibly 30. The opulence of that dining table and its chairs is remarkable. So is the length. “It’s long. Longer than you were picturing, isn’t it, Ben. Like, stupid long,” Klaus remarks. “Normally I’d say who has room for that? But this room has room, so I guess they got what they paid for.”

As with every other room they’ve investigated (peeked into) thus far, the dining room is thick with dust, which kicks up from the floor into swirling eddies as they enter. Even the small panes of glass in the doors are covered in a layer of silt. Not just a dusting, but a mass of it clinging to the glass as if it’s been trapped there in an oily substance.

Ben now has a greater sense of foreboding than the foreboding he’d already been having, because the room, for all its opulence, has no windows to the outside world. Possibly because it’s a sub-sub-basement, but it could be for other reasons, too.

Against the far wall stands a massive, totally unexpected, green man.

“Look!” Klaus whisper-shouts, pointing at the green man. “It’s a green man!” He approaches the huge face. A man’s face, and only his face, Klaus can see that it had been cast in some sort of metal. The pink kind that turns green with age. Copper?

Ben stands back to take in the whole of it. Oval, tapering at the top and bottom. Almost like a huge imitation of a battle shield. Definitely not pretending to be a shield for actual fighting, Ben’s thinking. Not with this kind of ornately sculpted surface. No, this is pretending to be a formal, ceremonial shield. He couldn’t even guess what the weight of this thing would be to hang. He inspects it closely. Nah, that whole thing can’t be solid copper, that’s insane. Could it?

Ben has been fascinated by something other than conflict so rarely in his life, that he doesn’t even realize he’s been sucked in. “What are you on about? What’s a green man?”

Klaus turns slowly around, with the careful excitement of a small child who is in love with a new toy, but is afraid that even though his daddy gave it to him, he is about to take it right back out of Klausie’s chubby little baby hands. “Ooh! Ooh! I know this one.” Klaus stands up straighter, and holds his hands behind his back, while trying not to bounce on his toes. He speaks as if he’s giving a report. Maybe one of those ‘stories’ he likes so much. “They are pagan protector spirits or elementals in the Celtic lands stretching all the way back to the time of the druids. oooooWOOOOooooo, spooky.” Twinkle fingers. “But yeah,” he scritches his beard. “I dunno, though, something smells fishy. Because this big guy over here is a little bit younger than he should be, if he’s a green man.” Scratching his beard, he adds, “It’s not ancient. Not even medieval.” He is correct, it’s neither ancient nor medieval.

Klaus steps in closer to check out the detailing. Leaves grow in place of hair. His eyebrows, likewise, have grown leaves. Like an elemental would do. And the mustache and beard, also leaves. Standing up straight again, Klaus returns to his oral report. “Green Men are said to watch over rivers, lakes, streams, and woodlands. Doesn’t he look like he’s surfacing through his greenery? I don’t know about you Benny Bear, but I’m curious just what kind of greenery he’s been surfacing through. Think he’s got a leaf stuck in his teeth?”

Klaus walks up to only a nose’s distance, just to see what he can see, and starts to fondle the green man.

Not quite how it sounds. He’s running his fingers over bits of it, following every swirl in the lines of the oak leaf on one of its eyebrows. Or the lips, which seem about to speak. “Mirror, mirror, on the wall…that green man sure is tall. Am I right, ben? Yeah!”

Ben agrees. Stubbornly, so he doesn’t make it too easy for Klaus to have him around. Old habits blah blah blah whatever.

Thing is, Ben has been watching Klaus stroking down the length of the nose, and onward to the- the whatever it was they were- what were they- the fingers following sinuous lines. He shakes his head free of the hot, pink cobwebs that have suddenly regrown in the corners of his brain.

Klaus isn’t so much in a stupor as he is completely engrossed in his sensory experience, following all those snaking curves and ridges. “Boop!” Klaus pokes the Green Man in the eye.

Silently swinging open, the green man is a door.

No screech, creaks nor groans, no carpet to get caught on, unless you count all the dust. He would have at least expected the door to sound like metal against wood — whatever that sounds like. Or even a “fwoosh” sound. But nothing. Dead air.

“Ben? I’ve got a feelin, man. I’m thinkin like, maybe we shouldn’t go out there, y’know? This door was, it was way too easy. Right? I mean, that, that’s like a secret door, y’know? It should be harder to open.”

Klaus is actually quite shaken by this. “I’ve seen Indiana Jones and I know what it means when something is way too easy to open. Bad things happen. Bad.”

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Ded & Gonne || Devil’s Night || Start || Prev || Next

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Images: If anyone knows to whom I should credit any of these images, please tell me. Middle green man: john-howe.com

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kettlefire · 1 month

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Not so Different. (DcxDp)

The stunned silence was louder than the rest of the gala had been. Every single pair of eyes were wide with shock, fear, and even concern. The last sound to have left the patrons was scattered gasps at the reveal.

It was meant to be simple. A new up and coming technological company had put all their savings into this. A huge gala to show of the reason the world needed their technology. Needed their help.

No one believed it. Truly, who could have? A large group of men and women dressed purely in white suits, spouting about the threats of ghosts. It was insane and impossible.

Many of the big names that attended today only came for publicity. The notoriety that came with having been there when this company crashed and burned in one night.

It's the only reason Bruce Wayne was even among the crowd. Accompanied by Oliver Queen and his own son, Dick Grayson. As much as Bruce hadn't wanted to be here, he knew his reputation was important to keep up.

That was until two agents stepped out onto a stage they had at the back of the large room. A thick curtain had kept the sight behind it completely hidden from the patrons. Until the moment was right. That was when the thick curtain had suddenly been ripped back, as a third man took a microphone and began to explain.

But his words fell on deaf ears. Especially for the three secret vigilantes in the crowd. Not a single person could tear their gaze away from the cage that now stood in full view.

It wasn't the cage that had everyone enraptured. No, it was the glowing creature curled up in the center of it. No, not a creature. It was a boy. Still baby faced and youthful. Too young to be in a cage.

A high-tech muzzle was securely wrapped tightly against the boy's mouth. His knees pulled tight to his chest, one arm wrapped around them. His other hand pressed tight against the muzzle, seeming to almost be trying to keep it in place.

The boy's toxic green eyes were wide, filled with a clear intensity of pain and terror. There were old tear stains on his cheeks, quickly being replenished with fresh tears. His messy, bright white hair fell into his face. The boy looked both like he wanted to look away, but also like he couldn't. Like he couldn't risk not seeing the threat coming.

It didn't take a genius to see the boy was in pain. Human or not, this went beyond inhumane treat. Making minds racing with thoughts of what else these people had done to the poor boy.

Bruce knew in this moment that this company had just caught the attention of Batman. Based on the look in Oliver's eyes, they also just collected the wrath of the Justice League as well. Bruce hadn't even needed to look at Dick to know he was on the same page.

It went unnoticed by any other patrons. All the focus was glued on the stage, on the lecture and caged boy. No one noticed when Bruce Wayne slipped his phone of his pocket. When he hit a singular speed dial as he turned away from the show. He brought his phone to his ear as he silently signaled his trusted allies to keep an eye on it.

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