#dlga: pt 5

[goonlalagoon]

Dust, like golden ash - pt 5|| Leagues & Legends!HDM AU

And this is the last of this I had written before I stopped posting when RtD came out...so now I actuallly do need to figure out where I was going with it!

Read on Ao3: From the start | this chapter

Read on Tumblr: part 0 | part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4 | [part 5]

Laney knows she should be talking, acting - something, anything, to get them out of the literal line of fire, but she’s frozen. Idly, she wonders if everyone who stares down the barrel of a gun as she holds it in a steady grip feels this way, or if she’s simply frozen by her brother’s long-missed presence. Rupert is the one who talks, voice even and measured and polite. She hadn’t noticed it before the mountains, but now that she knows what it is Laney can hear the calm in it. It isn’t magi, it’s simply that Rupert wants things to be fair and safe so strongly that it carries into everything he does.

They hold still while a suspicious Liam carefully relieves them of their weapons - Laney’s guns, which no-one at the Bureau was ever foolish enough to ever attempt to get her to leave in her room, and the small knife tucked into her boot. He checks Rupert over twice, apparently in disbelief that the boy isn’t carrying a single thing he could fight with.

“He’s been a prisoner for months, where do you think he’d get a weapon from?” It’s the first thing she’s said, and her voice doesn’t shake at all. Anger is helping - she can see the tightness in Rupert’s shoulders, the determinedly restrained way Seba is sitting with her tail wrapped around her forepaws, and knows all he wants is to curl up and sleep somewhere safe, to breathe deep and finally realise he’s free.

Once, Liam had known her well enough to read all of that in the set of her jaw. But that was a lifetime ago, and now concern hides in the tilt of her chin instead, protectiveness in the way her daemon curls his own tail rather than bares his teeth. She watches the little whistling bird fan its wings and wonders if here that still means that her brother is amused.

Other-Laney circles her, curious. A sand viper winds its way down her arm, and Laney’s chameleon slinks to the tip of her finger to enter a staring match. Laney wants to examine her counterpart, to find the patchwork places where they differ, but her eyes are dragged back to Liam every time she tries. It’s George who eventually breaks the silence.

“Look, lets get them sat down. This one looks like he’s about to collapse.” Rupert smiles faintly.

“It’s been…a long few months. A long, very dull few months.” He shoots Laney an amused look, a question hiding in the slight lift of one dark eyebrow. Are you okay? “Though I think boredom may now be a thing of the past.” She grins back, squaring her shoulders a little more. No, but let’s get on with it.

Bea looks from one to the other of them when they’re escorted into the bakery, Other-Laney still holding a pistol in a loose, ready grip. The baker sighs, resting floury hands on her hips.

“I don’t care what nonsense you’ve gotten into, if there’s a fight in my bakery you’re all sleeping in the barn.” Liam laughs and kisses her on the cheek. Laney tries to pretend she isn’t watching hungrily, isn’t tracing Bea’s face for lines of grief that aren’t there. The familiar mountain cat daemon pads over sedately to pace a careful circle precisely a foot away from touching around both Laney and Rupert. Laney crouches automatically to set Jabari down so the daemons can greet each other. They’ve been through this before, in the mountains. This time, Mineko’s ears flick back in surprise before she deposits a genteel lick to the very top of Jabari’s head. Laney feels rather than sees everyone but Rupert’s eyebrows rise.

 It’s a signal for everyone to relax a little. Other-Laney (reluctantly) puts her pistols away, and warm mugs are pressed into their hands. Liam lounges in a seat, watching Laney curiously while his sister (both of them) sits with a straight spine and carefully relaxed hands. Rupert loses his framework of formality as soon as he’s seated, the bakery and half the people there too familiar for his usual unconscious masks, and leans on one arm, exhausted with relief and stunned into silence. Liam breaks the silence.

“So, you reckon you come from some kind of…what, world one over?” Laney nods, and can’t help but notice that none of the half-strangers seem too surprised by this. Other-Laney notices her noticing, and grins sharply.

“We’ve seen stranger things than you can imagine.” Laney blinks slowly as she thinks about the creature of fire in Rivertown, Grey with mage fire dripping into being over his shoulders from Kin’s feathers unbidden and Rupert talking a vacant mage back into life, the daemon forms outlined in the Elsewhere fires, and grins back, not hiding any of her edges either.

“Oh, I’ve got a pretty good imagination.”

Hours later, it’s Rupert who leans forwards to nudge Laney and jerk his head at the gloom outside the window. She realises with an internal wince that she’s been gone for hours. Jack is probably quietly panicked. Thorne…Thorne will know Rupert is gone by now. She has to get back. Bea catches her eye, and nods firmly.

“Well, we haven’t covered half of anyone’s story, but it seems to me this lad needs to stay here for a bit - and you need to go find out a few things.” Liam stirs, and Bea brushes a hand over his. Other-Laney leans into his side, and he nods agreement after a moment. Laney hesitates herself.

“I’ve never done the walking between worlds intentionally. What if I can’t…” Rupert shrugs.

“You’ll find a way, Miss Jones. You always do.” She laughs, and ruffles his overgrown hair.

“Stay hydrated, alright?” He smiles softly, and she ignores George’s puzzled look.

Laney is opening a sliver of a window to check if the red squirrel she’s located is her red squirrel before she realises that there had been no sign of other-Jack in the bakery. He looks around as she enters, partway through pacing around the room, and the sheer relief on his face throws her.

“Lane! What’s going on?”

“I - Liam.” Jack flinches and freezes, staring at her wide-eyed. Her brother is a topic they carefully avoid. Laney knows one day she’ll ask him for stories, but for now the wound is too fresh. Some days she feels like she’s fitting the mourning she should have done for the months before she knew into her days. Some days it’s just the hurt that he didn’t tell her. She understands why - at least, she tries to understand - but he didn’t tell her, even a hint, and she suspects that will never quite cease to sting. Laney clears her throat. “I found Rupe, and we ended up in a different world again. A world almost exactly like ours. One where Liam -”

She wonders if she looked the way Jack does now, when she saw him in the doorway. Hope and pain, grief and guilt - no, she probably didn’t look guilty. Liam’s death was nowhere near her hands, out of her reach to affect or prevent. She had no cloak of golden luck to blame for a near miss and an unlucky ricochet. Jack slumps onto his chair, Sayda curling into his collar, both pairs of eyes fixed on Laney. They're both trembling, she realises, and ploughs on with her explanation as though it will make it any easier to deal with.

"Rupe was here, Jack." The instant anger helps; her brother alive in some neighbouring universe is one thing, Thorne laying hands on Rupert is another. "Thorne took him. He’s been in the damned basement the whole time."

“Why?”

“We’re not certain yet. Rupert reckons he got wind of the - you know.” Jack nods. He remembers Rupert talking a mage back to life as well as she does. He’d been quietly jealous, memories of too many vacant people stumbling along as he drags them by the hand out of the cells, too many ghosts who’d been beyond his help. Neither of them speaks of it aloud. In the Bureau, you only spoke aloud of things you didn’t mind people overhearing, even in a closed private room.

With a deep, shuddering breath, Jack gets to his feet. He hauls two packs from under the bed. Laney grins, swift and sharp. Who needs to speak aloud when you know the plan already?

It’s time to go consult their Sage.