#evli!harr silver

[alloveroliver]

Evil!Harr Part 1

harr anon: part 1 of some very evil!harr! its quite a doozy, so i had to split it, but harr/alice will come in the 2nd part (and guess who thoroughly enjoys the cradle gothic vibes…:D)

tw: Gore

The yawning nights never made the Magic Tower any more inviting. Loki climbs the steps with the same apprehension as always; after all, it was very hard to shake away the memories of the atrocities that had very nearly been inflicted upon him. If he listens carefully enough, he can almost hear the moans and cries of those who had been confined here, bodies prepared to undergo the gauntlets Amon Jabberwock would orchestrate.

And yet, he fears the cries he hears now may just be history repeating itself.

The marble staircase coils upward towards the private chambers of the new master, perched over an ornate writing desk like a haggard crow. Only this time, the robes have been changed from violet to black, fine silk for ragged six-string…gold eyes for red ones.

“Harr? When did you come back?”

Since the death of Amon, Harr had been swift to overthrow the Magic Tower and its brainwashed occupants. They had cowered under his superior magical abilities, the crystals holding now sway over the deflective spells and ancient incantations that forced them to their knees, burnt their hands and filled their veins with pestilence. Casting the robes of the Tower aside, Harr stood proud and furious above all, as if punch-drunk on the power he had suddenly acquired. The few that had been deemed worthy to live treated him like a god in the flesh, immediately obeyed his every whim, and allowed him to carry on with his games. For his magic was innate, beautifully so, and he was worth dying for.

Even if Loki had hated how the color of his eyes had changed.

“Loki? Ah, I’ve only been back a short time,” At the sound of his name, the elder sorcerer looks up from what appears to be numerous torn papers, detailing correspondence between members of the Red Army. Loki tries his hardest to overlook the splatters of blood and viscera on each page. He focuses on the smile he was so used to seeing, soft and reassuring, and hopes back for the days before all of this madness. “But I’m glad you’re here. I have something to show you.”

Papers flying, Loki crouches down on the other side of desk as Harr seems to reach down behind it, fiddling on with the straps on a battered leather sack. His hums a soft melody as he works, and the younger kindles faint memories in the back of his mind, when the same tune was hummed over a kitchen sink, a solo tune that soon drifted into a duet when he would come to help with dinner.

I’ve been reminiscing a lot, he thinks…and it’s with a twinge of sadness as he realizes the sorry state of affairs that have forced him to do so, if only for his own mental well-being.

But soon enough, Harr’s voice cuts into his reverie. “I’ve been thinking long and hard how to finally get through to the King of Hearts,” he hums, though there’s a distinct edge to his tone as the buckles come loose on the sack. “And I think I may have finally done it. My greatest achievement.”

The King of Hearts? “But Lancelot has always…refused your offers before.”

“Then perhaps my latest attempt has caused a…change of heart, if you will.”

No…

Harr reveals a glass tankard from the confines of his bag, sloshing around with a glossy red liquid that instantly forces the hairs on Loki’s neck to prickle. He can smell it before he sees it - spilled blood - and the sight is unfortunately not unique. He wants to vomit every time, but his throat is dry and tight, and he wants to run…but Harr is there, grinning, and Loki can only remain dumbfounded.

An adult human heart, beating wildly within a glass cage.

Loki’s slit pupils flare for a second. He looks ready to protest, jaw clenching and unclenching…but nothing leaves his lips. Perhaps he realizes what an objection means by now, and instead occupies himself by watching the disembodied organ throb in the jar. It mesmerizes him in a sickening way, how it squeezes and oozes in the red liquid, pulsing with gentle magical light.

The heart ripped from the Queen of Spades’ chest didn’t glow like this. Or the others. None of their hearts glowed at all.

Would my heart glow this way?, he thinks, only to quickly push that line of thought to the depths of his subconscious. His fingers tremble over the breastbone under his skin, where even now, he wonders if there is anything left at all.

Invisible hands pulling at the frantic muscle, ready to tear it clean from its shell…despite the heat of the room around them, Loki shivers in poorly-masked terror.

“Beautiful, no?” Harr resumes his gentle harmony, fingers curling over the remaining vessels upon the tables. “I knew Lance wouldn’t disappoint.”

Ten jars for ten men, each housing a beating heart. And Loki remembers them all too clearly. How each one faltered at the most crucial moment, letting Harr’s wicked fingers slide over their chests and drag the bleeding muscle from under the flesh, only to shove a jagged crystal into the cavity instead. They were living puppets, meat caskets for the Joker to toy with as he saw fit.

The Queen of Spades had been first, so eager to help his former friend that he hadn’t even seen it coming. But the horror on his face as Harr had stood over him, heart dripping his own blood onto the carpet, had been unforgettable. And with a single snap, the first puppet was made, jumping to his feet with vacant eyes and a luring call to draw the King into a secluded spot. Unversed in the intricacies of magic, the Black Army was swift to fall asunder.

Lancelot proved to be more difficult. He had visited Kyle that morning. Kyle had never thrown up blood before…Kyle’s eyes…had never looked so milky.

Knowing Amon’s ways, he had been privy to the darker side of magic, so when Zero had attempted to beckon him toward the training room alone, eyes vacant like those of a doll, he had already suspected foul play. But by then, he was exhausted from the years of futile conflict with the Black Army, as well as the weight of potentially retreading the footsteps of the very man who had held his father’s soul overhead. Falling to his knees with a soft smile upon his face, he had willingly surrendered his flesh to the Joker and his sickening cause.

And so, life would go on….or at least, it would seem to. Now at the helms of each side of Cradle, Harr had only to simply will his word into law. Who would go against him? Who was even left?

Loki cast a forlorn glance up the staircase towards the private quarters of his master…and the strange girl he kept caged up there.

“What do you plan to do with it, Harr?”

When the wizard turns back to his apprentice, his voice softens. “It doesn’t quite fit…does it?” he sighs. He runs his fingertips over Lancelot’s vessel, nails tapping an ancient rhythm over the glass. “Only further proof how we are not the same as the normal populace.”

Loki flinches at the use of ’we’. The dichotomy he had once fought against, being championed by his mentor, makes his gut twist uncomfortably. “Then what are you going to do?”

“There is always room for further study into the archaic world of magic,” comes the response, though there was a dangerous glint in Harr’s scarlet gaze. His mouth twists ever so slightly, the edge of a smile gracing his lips, though never enough to reach his eyes. “And I would find it most useful to expand my knowledge. The Tower may have gone far in their research…but there is always more.”

The younger wriggles a bit where he stands, pulling the hem of his jacket. “I don’t know if you should go any further, Harr. You know what…what the Tower did, do you really want to know that much?”

“You make a fair point, but this heart has such boundless energy…and I could always…consume the excess myself.”

The fear sinks deeper into Loki’s bones, his entire form only kept from shaking by every muscle locking stiff. He looks for any sign that the elder is joking, but his face is remarkably serious. “Harr…y-you can’t be serious-”

“But I very much am, Loki,” comes the cold reply, and the younger flinches at how his master’s lip curls into a sneer. Were his teeth always so sharp? “There is no need for Lancelot to entertain the masses with his magic, not when I have my rule implemented in Cradle. It would be a waste to let it simply sit here as a trophy.” And with unfamiliar malice, he suddenly grimaces. Loki’s blood freezes in his veins, and he can barely breathe “Besides, Loki Genetta, you have no right to pass judgment on me for eating the hearts of men.”

The glare was piercing. Cutting right through his soul, Loki’s legs give out beneath him. Blood-soaked memories flicker behind closed eyelids, servants in violet cloaks and a frightened madman cowering underneath his claws. It was frightening to imagine, that loss of control, the sheer desire to maim and consume…like some kind of beast. But the thrill of the hunt had pounded wild through his veins, deliciously stringing him along toward the lifeblood that he could scent in the air…feral, hot, hungry…

“You remember it, don’t you?” Harr senses the confusion in the younger’s body, how his eyes flit to the floor and his lips quivers. Moving ever closer, he wreathes himself around Loki, stroking his hair and crooning ever so sweetly into his ear. “Tell me how powerful you felt, Loki. Did it feel good to rip that man to shreds?” The contrast between face and voice was jarring, but Harr’s soothing tone still pulls tenderly upon the boy’s heartstrings. Somewhere, he hopes that his old friend is still there. “Tell me how good it felt when you cleaved that devil open. How good it felt to consume his essence.”

It was sickening to say…but Loki couldn’t deny it. The hedonistic rush of magical power as he had ripped through Amon Jabberwock with fang and claw, wild as a hellcat and with an appetite to match. Yanked by puppet strings and with Harr holding the sticks, he had lunged and clawed and bit and killed. It was sweet vengeance; surely, Harr had even told him so. Harr had promised he hadn’t been wrong, he had promised…

You were the one who told me to do it.

“It felt…amazing.”

“Then you know it’s only fair that I should also enjoy such pleasure. I gave you the opportunity, after all, and absolved your sins upon the deed’s completion.”

“So I was wrong to do it?”

“Oh, Loki…taking life is wrong, but it had to be done. Come to me.

The embrace is warm, familiar, and Loki cannot contain himself any longer. He sobs into Harr’s warm arms, clinging to the cloak that now reeks of earth and freshly-spilled blood. He lets himself be soothed, coddled, lied to under the pretense of sweet whispers of comfort. He knows there is something horribly wrong with the man he had once come to know as his carer, a friend in the darkest of times, but he is powerless to stop it. Because Harr was all he had left in this world, even though the corruption that had filled his soul was nothing like the kind, gentle human being who had swept him off the ground as a child and into a loving home.

Fingers come to rub gentle circles into the individual bumps along the younger’s spine, where the same corruption begins to take hold. Loki notices it every day, his body contorting into something more animal, more beastly by the day. First had been the teeth…then the claws…then the twisting of his spine, some days leaving him yowling like a creature on all fours. A punishment by the gods, perhaps? Or a sickness of the soul, brought by Harr as he takes the worst of the sins wrought by their terror?

All he knows is that he will follow Harr until the end, even when his body contorts and his voice leaves him, until he is nothing but a monster with a feline grin.

"Your place is here with me. Cradle is still cruel to the likes of you and me, for they don’t understand the gifts we come to bear,” A pregnant pause fills the air, only punctuated by the irregular thumps of distended hearts. Unbeknownst to the young man, Harr’s grin twists into something more sinister. “Your parents were not the only ones. And I only do my work so that no more children come to suffer as you did. I keep you and rid you of your sins, and you help me to achieve the paradise we deserve.”

When Loki looks up at him once more, tears track messy lines down his cheeks. His eyes are so lost, so full of fear and hope, clinging to whatever scrap of stability he can. Harr has Loki pinned under his claws, eager to please and fearing every detachment, lest he disappear…just like his parents had.

Twisted pleasure runs hot through Harr’s veins.

“You know how much I love you,” Harr only reaches forward to stroke his apprentice’s wild hair. He watches those mismatched eyes harden to flint, only to melt once more as his fingernails scratch into the young man’s scalp. The lies taste sweet on his tongue, almost as sweet as the look of adoration upon his charge’s face. “I don’t want the pain you felt to ever come back. I want to protect you. You know that, right?”

A soft sigh breaches those plump lips, and a barbed tongue rasps his palm in a gesture of submission.

“Do not disappoint me, Loki.”

“Not you. Never you, Harr.”