#or have i gone even more insane than i already was which i thought woul db eimpossible...........

[scottstiles]

my almost 14 year old neice told me today that people at camp "shipped her" with a friend of hers and i nearly passed away on the spot

[gothic-safari-clown]

The Mind’s Power Over the Body

Part 8: Acceptance

Story summary: They only ever had each other. It had been that way since high school, ever since Elianna transferred to dreary Arlen and took Jonathan under her wing. They go separate ways for college, and when they're reunited at Arkham Asylum professionally, Elianna comes to find that they've both changed during their time separated. Can she look past the promise of danger and stay by Jonathan's side as they slide further and further into the darkness while she grapples to come to terms with the truth about herself? Can she accept what needs to be done in order to hold onto the only person who holds any meaning in her life? This is a very self-indulgent AU that draws from several different canons of the DCU and ignoring others, starting in the Batman Begins Nolanverse. This will follow the plot of the movie, although the timeline has been very slightly tweaked.

Part One / Part Two / Part Three / Part Four / Part Five / Part Six / Part Seven

Word count: 1986

Minutes after Jonathan left, Elianna was still staring at the wall, unable to think about anything other than the sudden and jarring conversation. She couldn't help but feel astounded that she had even agreed to what he was suggesting. Why would I do that? If she hadn't accepted his proposal, would he have gone along with the plan on his own? And what would have become of had she refused?

Her clock glared at her from its place mounted on the wall, reminding her that she didn't even have the distraction of a session to rush to. Damn it. Paperwork, paperwork, paperwork...

Finally forcing herself into action, El gathered all of her files and situated herself on the floor with them, playing music on her smartphone to help her focus. She ended up with papers stacked around her as she reorganized all of her files in an attempt to occupy her mind with something—anything—else. Honestly, there hadn't been anything wrong with the previous system in the first place, and now she was just surrounded by mess as she reshuffled the notes in each folio to justify her decision.

Two hours later, her office was spotless, and she had gone through at least three new filing systems. With nothing left to do for an hour, she found herself still sitting on the floor against her desk, desperately trying to unwind her conflicting feelings over the new situation.

She knew that she should care about the moral implications of her decision, but the more she thought, the more she realized that she just...didn't. Not for lack of trying. For God's sake, Scarecrow had gotten Jonathan to kill his granny when they were teenagers, and she hadn't even questioned it. The old woman did have it coming, just like she had thought earlier that morning, but did that way of thinking make her a bad person? She had never been one for philosophy.

And now, when the opportunity presented itself to exact horrible, torturous revenge on Victor Zsasz, she had taken it without even fully thinking through the consequences. She hadn't even been able to through her confusion. If it comes down to it, which seems likely, can I take a life the way that Jonathan did? Do I even want to?

Yes. She did. Each thing that she came to realize about herself sent El spiraling into a new set of questions. When had she become this person? Had she always been like this, keeping busy to avoid confronting that reality?

She couldn't tell how much time passed as she took inventory of herself until finally, another look at the clock told Elianna that her first session began in ten minutes; today, she had been scheduled a series of low profile patients to be seen in her office. Sighing, she finally lifted herself off the floor. She would have time to re-evaluate her life later. For now, she needed to get to work.

.xXx.

"In my opinion, Mr. Zsasz is as much a danger to himself as to others, and prison is probably not the best environment for his rehabilitation," Jonathan spoke into the mounted microphone on the stand with steady resilience. It was getting difficult for him to ignore Scarecrow, who had become practically giddy from the anticipation of getting to "play" with the newest batch of the toxin. He was almost exploding, insisting that Elianna would finally give in to her dark side.

Both Jonathan and Scarecrow had known that it was there for a long time. Jonathan had had his suspicions when he had told her about Scarecrow for the first time, and she had accepted it, and they had been confirmed after Granny's "accident," when she had helped them cover it up and had stuck around to boot.

At a glance, someone less close to the situation would say it was denial (which she was good at, apparently), but she had no qualms talking about it when the topic came up; she simply didn't care about most things that she should. She had somehow managed to convince everyone else—including herself—that she did, and that was the part that mattered.

The trial ended quickly after Jonathan's testimony. Falcone had already paid off the judge to rule in favor of whatever Jonathan said, and the rest was just formality. As such, he had already filled out all of the appropriate paperwork for the admission and transferred the deranged man to his care.

Finally, it was over, and Jonathan was on his way to the parking lot to make it back to the asylum when he was stopped by the most irritatingly incorruptible person on the planet.

"Doctor Crane," Rachel Dawes's voice rang through the courthouse lobby. Unable to ignore her, Jonathan paused to look at her, barely breaking his gait, suddenly needing to focus extra hard on keeping Scarecrow under control; he hated her as much as Jonathan did, possibly more.

"Miss Dawes," he acknowledged, having nothing else to say. That was passable as polite, wasn't it?

"You think a man who butchered people for the mob and attacked an innocent woman doesn't belong in jail?" Right to the point with this one, always so straightforward. Ambitious. If she would only take advantage of the ample opportunities that the city provided, she might even be able to make something of herself. Unfortunately for her, she didn't have the drive.

We don't need her sniffing around, Jonny. Let me take care of this now.

Not a chance, keep quiet.

"I would hardly have testified to that otherwise, would I?" Politeness be damned, the insufferable woman could chalk it up to a bad day if she wanted, just as long as she didn't notice the distaste rolling off of him in waves.

"This is the third of Falcone's thugs you've had declared insane and moved to your asylum, and the fourth time you've done so for Zsasz individually." Dear Lord, was she implying that he was corrupt? In Gotham? Never. Impossible.

"It isn't my fault if our security officers have yet to discover his means of escape. As for the rest, the work offered by organized crime must have an attraction to the insane." There, a safely noncommittal answer, and one that held basis in fact too. He turned to leave, having just about reached his limit with the conversation.

"Or the corrupt," Dawes's heels clicked on the floor as she took a few steps after him before he stopped in his tracks again. So she wasn't implying anything, just outright accusing him. Jonathan ignored Scarecrow's outraged (and far from empty) threats and caught sight of Dawes's boss in his periphery. A little childish perhaps, resorting to involving her higher-ups, but at this point, he was willing to shoot himself in the foot to avoid continuing this tiresome discussion. Interrogation, more like.

"Mister Finch," the suited man looked at the sound of his name. "I think you should check with Miss Dawes here just what implications your office has authorized her to make." That captured his attention; Finch's brows raised as he aimed a pointed look in the direction of the woman in question. "If any." That should do it.

I'm gonna get our hands on that one. Pick her brain and spit in it.

There's something we can agree on.

.xXx.

As desperate as Elianna had been for any kind of distraction earlier, each of her sessions had been more boring than the last. She was still of the opinion that people with simple anxiety disorders didn't belong in an asylum; she had half a mind to sign them all out and send them back into the world. But until she learned more, she had to operate under the assumption that they had each been admitted for a worthwhile reason; but the second she was shown any sign of real-world competence, she would sign all of them out to keep them from taking up any more space. God, what's wrong with me today?

Before she could ponder on her behavior any further, a knock on her door signaled Jonathan's return, and she let him in quickly.

"So it's...you did it then?" She asked, still unsure of how to address the situation.

"He'll be transferred back in by tomorrow."

It was done. At this point, all she could do was trust in the combined efforts of Jonathan and Scarecrow to keep her safe with some...foolproof evil plan. No matter how much she tried, she hadn't been able to bring herself to feel guilty for wanting revenge; she couldn't help feeling justification in her decision, and it was clearly justified in Jonathan's as well, and really who else mattered in this scenario? Zsasz? Certainly not.

"Okay. Well, are you alright? You seem tense." Jonathan rolled his eyes to the ceiling and shook his head.

"Everything is fine, just this...tedious woman from the DA's office tried to give me some trouble, but it's taken care of. I, ah," he checked the time on the clock, "I just need to go finish some paperwork, and then we can go back home and talk about this some more."

"Sounds good. I'm almost done here myself; when I'm finished, do you want some help?" She offered, and he seemed almost grateful for it.

"If you don't mind, I wouldn't say no."

"M'kay, then I'll see you later. Oh, wait, actually," Jonathan looked at her expectantly, unsure of what exactly she was bringing to his attention. "How often would you say security looks at the footage from our offices?" Good god that made him worry. What now?

"...Can I ask why you want to know?" She looked embarrassed, and any ideas he had had of her doing something that might incriminate them went out the window. Dear God, what now?

"I...may have been sitting on the floor for a long time today." She said sheepishly, and Jonathan pinched his eyes closed briefly before casting his gaze up, fully exasperated by the fact that she had found that important enough to bring it up right then. "And I'm a little embarrassed about it." Scarecrow, on the other hand, found it hilarious whenever El caused him even the slightest bit of undue stress.

"It's fine; they really only review the footage from sessions. I doubt anyone will even know." Elianna seemed relieved and nodded, a tiny smile at the corners of her mouth. "You still sit on the floor when you're worked up?"

"It helps me think," came the defensive response, and Jonathan gave her a look that said that he would tease her about it later, and finally turned to go.

Jonathan left her office for the second time that day. Only this time, she had finally realized that her conflicted feelings from before were due entirely to outside influence. For as long as she could remember, she had found it impossible to feel truly concerned about the things that mainstream society seemed to want her to be. Why should she try to force herself into a box that she didn't fit in? She could at least try to keep her mind open to revenge.

Elianna's hesitant resignation to her anticipation for revenge began to chase away any confused reservations that she had had before and gradually replaced them with a hazy excitement bubbling under the surface.

[ii-thiscat-ii]

GUESS WHAT’S DONE GUYS.

Part two of ‘Incandescence’ ended up becoming part two and three, and this is part three. Enjoy.

Part one. Part two.

On Ao3

Time passed.

Reports were written. The operation had gone off perfectly. Most of the people from the facility were willing to testify for the promise of a lighter sentence. They were still most of them likely to be put away for a long time, gross breaches of sapient rights being only one of numerous infractions made.

Incandescence slept on a couch in the local base. She wanted to stay close to Oskar, and after a thorough medical examination showed that there was nothing wrong with her that they would be more capable of curing in a hospital than anywhere else, no one had the heart to refuse her. She shone, even through a thick layer of self-hate and a slowly failing body. She was hard not to love.

The reports were succinct and plain, doing little more than getting the facts down for now. There was still much to do, and the larger operation was not even close to finished. Over the next week, a number of similar raids were executed, narrowing down the locations of the heads of the criminal enterprise, gathering large amounts of evidence and cutting off their escape routes. It was a lot of work, but it was vastly rewarding. Opportunities like this arose maybe once a decade, and they were not about to let it go to waste.

They learned very quickly that Incandescence would rather go hungry than eat solid food, as she loathed the sensation of it. They worked around it. She did not like drinking either, but would if she had to. They also learned that the only thing she would ingest voluntarily and with enthusiasm was coffee, preferably black and very strong. She liked the effects of caffeine. After someone introduced her to it the second day after her rescue, she tried to stop sleeping as well.

“I’m not supposed to dream,” she said, voice breaking slightly, when they tried to take it away from her. “Your minds are made to be torn apart and reorganized every night, but mine’s not. It feels like I’m tied up and pulled away at the same time, and it hurts. I lose more of myself every time.”

After that, and the subsequent breakdown over the coffee maker in the cafeteria, they let her keep her broken sleep schedule. If nothing else, it really was true that she was more coherent when sleep deprived than she was in the hours right after waking up.

Every day there was a new raid, maybe two, a new infiltration mission, a new drug-production facility, person trafficking locale, or money laundering business to crash. Every day they found and took down more atrocious operations, and every day they went back to base, tired but grimly content, to find Incandescence smiling at them over another coffee cup.

And Incandescence was dying.

They never said it out loud, but she was. They all knew it. She knew it best of all, maybe.

She smiled, she spoke, she hogged the coffee machine and she remembered all their names. Full names, always, from beginning to end, no matter what they went by with friends. It took Oskar three days to understand exactly how important it had been that he asked her for her name that first time they met, and that he gave her his own.

She spoke to each of them. She remembered their names, and the names of their families and pets, and she loved to listen to them talk, about nothing and everything. And she was dying.

Every day, she had less energy than the last. Every time she slept, she was pulled under for longer. Every time her resolve broke and she spoke of her own family, her own home, instead of just listening to them endlessly speaking of theirs, her sobs were just a little more hopeless.

She tried not to, they knew. It was obvious that she wanted to avoid thinking about her family, the brothers and sisters, and the Master she spoke of with such deep, sincere love. A part of her still believed in him, and that hurt to listen to almost as much as the part that was slowly giving up.

If her master really had abandoned her, they thought but did not say aloud unless they were completely sure she could not hear them, he had a lot to answer for, demon or no.

She fell apart, piece by piece, slowly losing even the ability to stay upright without help.

The doctors could only say that it had to be a side effect of what was done to her. Her exact symptoms had most in common with severe soul damage, but even that did not fit perfectly. There was nothing they could do, and they were reasonably sure there would be nothing they could do even if they had known what the actual problem was.

That was not to say they did not try, but with a time limit of somewhere between another week and a month at the most before there was nothing left of her, and the only source of knowledge as to what had actually happened being a group of people who had no idea why it went as it did, there was very little they could even attempt to do.

So they kept her company. They let her make her coffee, they told her their stories of themselves and their loved ones, they threw themselves into their work with a vengeance, thoroughly and effectively dismantling an old and powerful criminal empire, and they wrote their reports. Short, to the point, and emotionless reports, mentioning no names save the essential ones, and no details that did not need to be there.

She snuck her way into their hearts, and then she fell apart in front of them. It hurt them, but it hurt her more, so they kept quiet, smiled when she did, offered whatever comfort they could when she needed it, and threw themselves into their work.

Then the work was over. Every raid had been completed, and only the clean-up was left. The reports now required more detail, more information, so that the evidence could be made as solid as possible, and so they wrote more detailed reports.

Eight days after Incandescence was rescued from the underground facility, almost three weeks since she was pulled down to be confined in her flesh prison, a slightly more detailed draft for a report was finalized, attached to an e-mail, and sent off for review. It was the first time Incandescence’s name had been mentioned in digital correspondence. It did not go undetected.

On its way through the tubes, the report draft went through a very simple, nonintrusive text recognition program. It was slowed down by only a fraction of a second, but the program found what it was looking for, saved a copy, and sent a ping back to its source.

The source of the small program read the saved file considerably more slowly, as there is a large difference between truly reading something and just searching through it for a specific word. It still only took him a few seconds before his variable counters associated with success and reward spiked, and he scrambled to double-check his conclusions, a process that took him approximately five minutes and involved hacking into seven cell phones and getting access to a closed-circuit military security system.

Then he took what he learned, wrapped it with a ribbon, and set off to find his dad.

---

Mizar tapped away at her computer, trying to show off her latest stick-figure animation. It was a thing she had been playing with recently, and it was just starting to look somewhat fluid.

She had actually gotten a lot better since the last time Dipper had seen, which was about three weeks ago. She was very excited to show him everything she had done since then, so he sat obediently on a chair by the kitchen table and let her show him.

This was only the second time in three weeks he had sat down and tried to focus on something else than searching through options he had already been through in a futile attempt at something he was suspecting was truly too late.

His knee bounced and his hands folded and unfolded themselves in his lap, even as he kept his eyes on the screen and his mind on complimenting Mizar on her work. He should be out there. He needed to be out there, doing… something. Three weeks was close to the limit for what was survivable if something had gone really wrong. It was how long it would take her to starve to death. He needed to be out there, but there was nothing he could do that he had not already done a hundred times. If he kept looking without rest forever, he would drive himself insane, and… at some point, he had to stop.

But the time ticked away as a physical thing in his mind, and he wanted to go out there again, to search and see if there was some trace so faint he had missed it before, that he maybe might be able to find this one time…

A break. He was taking a break. He was not giving up, he was not stopping, not just yet, he was just taking a break and refuelling a bit, so that he could have his mind with him and maybe a new perspective when he went searching again.

“Hey, you okay?” Mizar asked.

The first time he had come down and tried to focus on something else, the day before this one, he had ended up crying on her shoulder.

He shook his head to clear his mind. “I’m fine. What were you going to show me?”

She grinned and turned back to her computer. “Okay, so, this one is really cool. It took me ages to get that giant wasp animation going, uh…”

Before she could even click on the thing she was trying to show off, the screen went blank and an animated figure, more cartoonish than her stick figures could ever hope to be, appeared in the middle of it.  

Dipper was standing upright with his claws buried an inch into the table before he even had the time to register Mizar’s surprise. Behind him, the chair fell to the ground.

There was a small, yellow speech bubble on the screen.

[Dad!] it said.

[I found her!]

---

Oskar glanced at Incandescence on the couch. She was sleeping again.

All of the five other people in the room kept their voices down, trying to let her sleep even as they were wondering if they should wake her up.

She looked peaceful when she slept. She relaxed and disappeared into herself, as people were wont to. Sometimes she would twitch in her sleep like a cat, but otherwise she was entirely still, serene like a fairy tale princess.

He gritted his teeth and looked away. The serenity was temporary, he knew. She would be confused and distressed when she woke up, mind stuck in a heavy haze that muddled her mind and hindered her movement. A haze that would stay for hours before she could really smile again.

The only reason they let her sleep was that they had no reason this far to believe the amount of sleep made any difference, only that it was there, so when she did succumb to it, they tried to make sure she got as much as she could. For her body’s sake, if nothing else.

She never thanked them. They did not expect it. They did not want it, not for this.

Oskar made himself focus on the hushed conversation instead. The team was on break now, though a break from collating evidence and sorting out paperwork, not from deathly important raids or preparing for those, so the breaks were more necessary, and more frequent, than usual.

Case in point, Marilynn and Dor were both spending the break cleaning their weapons on the table.

Hell, even Oskar kind of wanted to do that, if only to get away from the endless reports, and he was hardly in a position where his gun was a large part of his life, even if he did like carrying one at all times. He did like properly organized information, really, but the sheer amount of it that was needed after a large-scale operation like this was too much even for him.

“Anyways, she said she could do all my lists for me if I’d take her situational summaries, so I got that out of the way earlier than I thought I would,” Andrea said, taking a sip of her coffee. Black, like Incandescence made it. That was usually what was in the machine these days, so they had all kind of fallen into the habit.

Oskar nodded and was just about to ask if she thought Marilynn would take his lists too if he asked, when there was a change in the air.

It felt like a ‘pop’, a small pressure change, something weird, something you noticed, but not more than that. Still, it was peculiar enough to have them all quiet for a moment and look around curiously. Dor rubbed at an ear.

Andrea gave a small, confused laugh. “What was that? Did you see-”

Darkness fell suddenly. By the time his eyes adapted to- actually, there was no change in the light, but they obviously adapted to something because it took a moment before he could see again, the ‘pop’ had turned into something very dangerously different.

The pressure change was obvious now, a tangible weight added to their limbs. Right in the middle of the group, there was another figure standing, and the sight of it sent spikes of fear through Oskar’s heart.

He had his gun ready in his hands within a moment, not raised only because he would not risk pointing it at one of his teammates on the other side. The rest of them seemed to have the same instinct, with Marilynn being the only one not with their gun at the ready, and then only because her gun was in pieces on the table.

Oskar recognized him, of course. Everyone recognized him. Most children over the age of eight knew how to recognize the Dreambender himself.

Alcor. The single most dangerous creature the world had to offer. Who had torn three buildings apart in quick succession and killed over a dozen people latest last Wednesday. Whose reaction to being shot by any of their guns would likely be the same as if they tried throwing crumpled napkins at him. Whose fingers were blackened claws, whose wings were large and moving behind him in unrest, and whose face…

His face was twisted in some emotion Oskar could not identify. It was intense, teeth half-bared, and eyes wide, flitting from one of them to another without his head moving more than a smidge.

Taking all of this in had taken Oskar maybe a second at the most.

Alcor shifted, stood back on his heels and raised his head. He was slightly less poised to attack, and Oskar felt himself react in turn, claw of fear around his heart pulling him back into a similar position, even as it lightened its grip slightly.

Gard spoke first, always conscious of his duty to the team. He tried to keep his voice steady, but the apprehension still shone through clearly. “What do you want here?”

Alcor bared his teeth further and let out a growl that was cut off so quickly Oskar suspected it was unintentional. It still sent a bolt of ice down his spine.

“I am looking for someone,” Alcor said. His voice was teeth and sharp edges, rough as desperation, deep as dreams. The sound of it made Oskar flinch even as the words chilled him to the bone.

“Looking for who? And why?”

Oskar had always admired Gard as a leader, admired the backbone it took to have his position, do what he did as effectively as he did. Now, as Alcor’s eyes narrowed, as the demon seemed to wonder if Gard was going to stand between him and whoever he was looking for, Oskar was scared he might see that steel spine snapped as a twig.

The next sound he heard was possibly even scarier. There was a table between Alcor and the couch, and until now, Incandescence had stayed out of view. Now, the sound of a blanket falling to the floor signalized her waking up.

Oskar cursed, thoroughly and creatively, in his mind. The last thing she deserved was to draw the ire of a demon. They had not been able to protect her from anything, and now they were failing to protect her from this.

He took a breath, clenched his teeth together and tightened his grasp on the gun. Slowly, dizzily, she sat up, and he barely refrained from shouting at her to stay down. Instead, he moved a couple steps toward her, futilely trying to put himself between her and the demon. He was not the only one to do so.

They stood together, rather hopelessly, staring down the undisputed champion of all demons, and Alcor…

Alcor dropped from the air, shoes making an audible ‘click’ against the floor. His eyes widened until they could see black all the way around the golden slits that were his irises. His mouth opened in astonishment, and his wings stilled behind him.

Oskar had his back to Incandescence, but the room was silent as death beside the thudding of his own heart, so he heard her voice clearly. Her broken, whispered, confused morning-voice.

“Master?”

Surprise was the next thing to send a shock through him. Before he could even think to turn to look at her, Alcor had passed him, moving past their guard as if it was nothing. The guns instinctively raised in response were less than nothing for all he reacted to them.

The table disappeared. Not thrown aside, not moved, just disappeared as if it had never been, letting the pieces of Marilynn’s gun clatter on the floor, to make room for him as he sank to his knees beside the couch.

It was a bizarre sight. Incandescence sat upright as far as she could, which was not much, staring at him with such horrifyingly empty eyes, only the faintest glimmer of hope in them. He sat sprawled on the floor, looking up at her even so, with his wings flat against the ground and his face open in disbelief, with joy and horror fighting for a place in his expression.

He reached his hands up towards his face, and she barely reacted, only blinked.

“Incandescence,” he whispered. “What have they done to you?”

“We don’t know,” someone said. Andrea, maybe. “She’s been getting worse all the time.”

“She’s starving to death in there,” he said, trailing off into a breath. It might have been a reply, it might not. He looked like he was talking to the air as much as any of them.

“…Really?” someone asked.

He turned towards them, then, for just a moment. He was doing something with his hands, gathering light between his palms. It did not seem to take up much of his focus, for he did not look at it, just at them, and at her. There were tear tracks down his face. The world’s most powerful demon sat in a heap on their break room floor, sobbing.

Oskar hoped to god that they were tears of joy. From his face, it could go either way.

“Bodies take energy from their souls,” he continued, just as absently as before. “She isn’t a soul. She can’t protect herself. She needs sustenance she can’t get, locked up there. She’s been wasting away.”

Looking at Incandescence, eyes still hazy and confused from destructive sleep, that was far too easy to believe.

Then, Alcor apparently judged the light between his palms bright enough, because he pushed it forward, phased it into her chest, and she convulsed. She drew a sudden breath and shot up so fast she almost tipped over onto her face, but in the blink of an eye he was there to catch her, and she clung to him.

Incandescence gave a loud “Hah!” and shook her head, looking more alert than they had ever seen her before. Then she looked up at Alcor, and her face was overtaken by joy.

“Master!” she said, disbelief giving way to delight almost immediately. “Master, you came for me! I almost, almost didn’t think you would.”

“Of course I came for you.” He put an arm loosely around her back. His other hand touched the side of her face, fingers through her hair and thumb running over her skin. He stared at her with desperate hope. “I’ll always come for you. Always. I’m so, so sorry I’m so late.”

Oskar glanced at Andrea by his side. She looked back and gave a small, hesitant shrug, looking just as bewildered as he felt.

On the couch, Alcor was starting to ramble.

“I looked everywhere I could think of, and then everywhere else, and I just couldn’t find you. If I’d known, if I’d had even the faintest inkling, I would’ve burst in to get you in an instant, but there was nothing, and oh god, it’s so late and you’ve been left alone for so long and I am so sorry. I thought you were dead. I was honestly starting to think there was nothing to find, and I didn’t know what to do, and I wmmph-”

Suddenly, Incandescence leaned in and pressed her lips to his, apparently on reflex and maybe to shut him up. He looked startled.

They broke apart, just a fraction, and looked at each other. She was still delirious with happiness, now with a hint of hopeful nervousness. He was surprised.

Then he leaned back in and they were kissing with a fervour that suited the aftermath of a weeks-long life-or-death situation. It was deep and urgent and blithely oblivious to the handful soldiers with guns still half-raised towards them.

“Oh, okay then,” Oskar heard Andrea mutter to herself.

He had to agree. The spectacle on the couch was unexpected to say the least. With a silent sigh, he holstered his gun. Several of his teammates followed his que, somewhat sheepishly. Pointing guns at the Dreambender was a textbook example of futility.

The two on the couch finally broke apart, falling into a tight embrace.

“Thank you,” Incandescence whispered.

“Always,” Alcor answered. “Any time you want, for the rest of forever, as long as it means I know you’re safe.”

“Does that mean I can go home?” she asked. Her face was hidden in the crook of Alcor’s neck, but Oskar could hear the happiness in that.

Alcor pushed at her, creating just enough space between them that he could look her in the eye and smile at her. “Of course. We just need to get you out of this,” he said, gesturing at her body. Then he drove a clawed hand into her chest.

Oskar felt as if the ground had disappeared from under him.

He grabbed at his gun again, and someone beside him shouted in alarm.

Incandescence fell slack into the waiting grip of Alcor’s wings. The hand that was not impaling her chest sank its claws into her head. Throughout it all, Alcor kept looking at her with what seemed so very much like love.

“What the fuck!?”

Marilynn must have put her gun back together sometime in the last minute, because she was pointing it at the demon with shaking hands.

Alcor did not pay them mind, just slowly pulled his hands back and pushed the body to fall lifelessly on the floor. It ignited as it fell, burning with a bright blue flame that touched nothing else and devoured the body unnaturally quickly.

He did not spare a glance for the burning body, his only focus being at his hands, which, oh. Of course. That made sense.

His hands were devoid of blood, but in them, something else was dripping. Something bright in a frenzy of colour, twisting over and around itself in an effort to put itself back together and expand to its true size. Something beautiful. Something incandescent.

“Oh. Sorry,” Marilynn said, lowering her gun again.

Alcor opened his hands and the light flew, bounced off two walls and skidded to a stop around where the table had been. It quickly stopped being an amorphous blob, running through a plethora of shapes involving any kinds of limbs and anatomies imaginable, mundane, unusual and bizarre, but beautiful. Always strangely beautiful. Then she settled in the shape of a sheep, four cloven hooves on the floor, two bright, intelligent eyes, and every part of her lit up from within in all the colours she should have had but had not been given in the passing weeks.

She tested her legs, tapping her hooves on the floor and giving a little jump and a kick in glee. Then she laughed, and ran in a little circle.

Her voice was nothing like it had been. It was clean and clear like glass bells, ringing through the air with an almost painful purity. It suited her.

“Better?” Alcor asked.

Incandescence laughed again. “A million times!” she said, and she grinned at him.

Oskar actually flinched. Her teeth were long and sharp as razorblades, almost a match for her master’s.

Alcor took notice as well, apparently, because he cocked his head to the side and said, “New teeth?”

She paused and ran her tongue over them. “Oh,” she said. “Yes. Hate, I think. I don’t know if I like them or not.”

“I see,” he said. Then he shrugged. “Some time back home will probably help you figure it out. Ready to go?”

“Almost,” she said. “I would just like to say goodbye to these people first.” With that, she turned towards them. “Thank you so much for rescuing me.”

“It was our genuine pleasure,” Oskar said, automatically. “I’m sorry we couldn’t do more.”

The others made noises of assent around him.

“You did enough,” Incandescence said. It was bizarre to watch her now-familiar smile on a face this inhuman. “So thank you.”

Then Alcor stood before them, a little more composed, but still with tear tracks down his face. Incandescence walked closer and he tangled a hand in her wool. “It seems I owe you one hell of a favour,” he said.

“A- ah, that’s not necessary,” Gard said.

“No?”

“We’re, uh, not supposed to deal with demons.”

“This isn’t a deal,” Alcor said. “You’ve already given me anything I could ask for. This is…” He waved it away with a hand. “Repayment. Anything you ask, no cost at all, I swear.”

They exchanged some dubious looks. Gard visibly considered his options before he spoke again.

“In that case…” he said. “The people responsible for this thing in the first place, what were you going to do to them?”

There was a long moment before Alcor answered. “…Kill them. I would paint the walls with their blood and let the feel it dry before they died. Why?”

Gard took a deep breath to compose himself. “If you want to do us a favour, then please, don’t do that.”

“Why?” Alcor asked. There was an undertone of danger to his voice.

Gard spoke quickly. “If suspects in our custody are killed by a demon, it gives the opposition a hell of a lot of leverage on us. Never mind that we lose their potential testimony, if their lawyers are good, and we know they are, that could discredit half our case. After everything we’ve done to get here, we can’t afford that. This is likely the only chance we’ll get. I’m not saying you can’t get revenge, no one is saying that, just… please. Don’t mess this up for us.”

There was another long moment, and then Alcor huffed. “I understand,” he said. “No killing and no maiming, then, but I can’t promise they’ll ever have a good night’s sleep again. If I can’t have it, Incandescence’s flockmates will want their piece. Would that be acceptable?”

Oskar risked a glance at Incandescence. She was grinning, all her sharp new teeth on display.

“That’s fine,” Gard said.

Alcor nodded. “Anything else?”

“Will we ever get to see her again?” Oskar asked.

“I can come visit!” Incandescence said. “Right?” She looked up at Alcor.

“Not alone,” he said. “I don’t think anyone will want to leave you alone again for a long time, but if you don’t mind introducing them to your flockmates, that’s fine.”

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll come visit.”

Alcor ruffled her wool and she leaned into his touch. “Home?” he asked.

“Please,” she said.

And then they were gone.

The air actually un-popped at their exit. It was almost as weird as the initial pop had been.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Marilynn said.

“Screw the coffee,” Andrea added. “Do we have whiskey?”

The table re-materialized half a foot in the air and crashed to the floor. Oskar carefully put his coffee cup down on it and went to help her find the whiskey.

They all needed it.

---

The Master’s pastures smelled like home. He still had his hand reassuringly on her wool, and it was her wool again, her legs, her skin and bones, her eyes and ears and nose.

She was different now than she had been when she was taken. Her new teeth were testament to that. The memories were there, and they were part of her as much as any other part of her, as much as the love and terror that made her up, but she was her again, so it scarcely mattered.

They were not all bad memories either. Coffee had been good. Oskar Rasmussen had been good, and his flockmates too. And the Master’s lips on her borrowed ones, impulsive as that had been, was good even filtered through the muddled senses of that body.

But now…

She dropped to the ground and rolled around in the grass. It smelled like home, home, home, and it was sweet and free and real and there.

And then the Flock was upon her, dozens and dozens of gleeful faces, pressing up to greet her, to welcome her home, to touch her just to make sure she was truly there, and the Master dropped to the ground with them and laughed and cried and laughed.

And all was good.