#quirrel kin | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

mostlydeadallday · 3 months ago

Text

Lost Kin | Chapter XLIII | To Pass The Time

Fandom: Hollow Knight Rating: Mature Characters: Hornet, Pure Vessel | Hollow Knight, Quirrel Category: Gen Content Warnings: referenced child death, panic attacks, body horror, self-harm, suicidal ideation, attempted suicide, flashbacks AO3: Lost Kin | Chapter XLIII | To Pass The Time First Chapter | Previous Chapter | Next Chapter | Chronological Notes: Hollow's control snaps. Quirrel finds a desperate solution. Art Credit: commission by @slimeshade (ko-fi/commissions)

Mind the chapter warnings, please. If you need more details to decide whether to read this one, please visit the ao3 page—I've included them in the beginning chapter notes there.

○

Dead.

Its sibling was dead.

It had not even remembered them. It had buried them, erased them, so that it would not have to—

To keep seeing those eyes, the open gaping too-still stare that they had given it, as their consciousness faded from existence. To feel the void-link go silent and slack, to feel the anger—

No. It was more than anger: no mere spark, no quick-burning thing. The last thing its sibling felt had been all-consuming fury, a flash flood of horror and betrayal and wrath lashing through them, sweeping all else away in its path.

That was a feeling it had never allowed itself, even in its weakest moments, even after it could no longer remember why.

Even after it had excised all memory of them.

Even after the numb, cold horror of that day blended into all the numb, cold days that followed.

The void was willful. The void was angry. The void would ruin it, if its control slipped for an instant, if it allowed such a thing to happen. It had not remembered how it knew that, but it did, it did.

The void would ruin it. As the void had ruined them. As it had shaped them into something impure, unfit, a wretched, terrified, desperate thing that had not even dared to lash out in their last moments.

They had held—held tight—to the hope that they could be useful, that their resolve would save them, even when every gasping plea said otherwise.

Despite all its efforts, the vessel itself was no different. It could not help but see the similarity.

Ruined. Ruined, both of them.

And all for nothing, its sibling had died for nothing, and it had stood by and watched—

Thinking itself pure. Thinking itself somehow better than they were, when it had begged, had pleaded, just as desperately as they had, the first time the goddess sunk her claws in and pierced it through to its foul, rotten core.

It sucked in a breath, as much air as it could hold, before another sob rose from deep within and seized it, shook it, mercilessly.

Its throat burned. As it had when the infection surged and poured from it, every guttering breath drowned in liquid fire. As it had when her screams ripped it in two, the pliant shadows of its form no match for her brilliant fury, soft structures of void shriveling away until she made of it something to cry her suffering, something that she could use.

The goddess—she was anger incarnate. She was fury undimmed, wrath burst aflame, all the brighter for having been smothered so long. She had learned that that was one of her best weapons against it, that her rages terrified it, and she had pushed that advantage with every endless, terrible hour. She had known how to reduce it to a cringing, cowering thing, withholding the worst of her power, withholding the pain, until the moment she could see the cracks forming. Until the moment she brought down the full force of her fury.

Fury that it shrank from, fury that it refused to counter with its own. It could not. It could not do that; it was not capable. It could not, it could never.

Beneath the façade, beyond the vast distance that it placed between itself and the world, it had been terrified. Terrified that—

That it might be as corrupted as its discarded sibling. That it might ever have the urge to lash out against its masters, that it might wish to rend and tear like a beast loosed from its leash.

This was all it remembered from them, all that it took from their example. It must never, never let itself be angry.

That feeling had been locked away from it, far too deep for its conscious mind to recognize, even after it had grown wild with grief and fear and agony. Even when it realized that it was over, that she had won, that she was right, that it had become everything it feared—even that could not make it feel this thing that it had forbidden itself. This thing that its sibling had died feeling, that had signified failure as clearly as a glyph chiseled into stone.

No good no good it was no good, it was just as flawed as they were, except that it had been compliant to the very end. Holding its hands out for the shackles, baring its neck for the blade. Deceiving even itself with its charade of purity, until it could deny its own weakness no more.

No more, no more no more—

Its lungs squeezed tight again, its throat constricting, and from its slack jaw came a long, grating keen, silent as it always was, save for the grinding of the air over its damaged, light-lanced flesh. For a wild, terrible instant, it thought that it might wish to have her back, if only it could scream again with the voice that she had forced upon it. It was not meant for that, but something in it wanted, wanted to unleash its grief upon the world, and only the Radiance had seen fit to give it what it was never meant to have.

No. No, its sister had given it far more. Far, far more—

Before she left it.

○

There was nothing he could do. There was likely nothing anyone could have done. He had pictured this clearly: Hornet’s absence stretching from minutes into hours; Hollow growing frantic, panicked, without her—

And there’d been nothing, not a single thing, he could do to prevent it.

They were choking now, nearly gagging with the force of their sobs, taking in only sharp, stabbing gasps in between. They would have to calm, eventually, he knew hysterics could not last forever—and yet he still winced every time their breath stopped, and then every time it ground to life again, another sob tearing free with a sound like it should leave a raw, bloody hole in them.

“It’s all right.” His mandibles twitched. He couldn’t stop talking; a nervous habit, one which, like the knuckle-biting, he’d identified but been unable to break. “It’s all right. It’s all right. I promise.”

If only he could ask them what they feared. If only they felt safe enough to answer. He had half an idea that they might be nearly as terrified of their own reaction as they were of what had caused it. The frantic pace of their lungs when they clawed out a moment to breathe, the frenzied fits of void in their eyes—they seemed almost manic, each painfully long minute only heaping fuel on the flames, rather than allowing them to die down.

Oh, what should he do?

“I know,” he whispered, crouching down and clenching his hands on his knees. Eye level—there was no other way he knew of to connect with them, to attempt to break them free of whatever it was that was dragging them down. “I know, it’s… it’s awful.” He swallowed, his own throat aching in sympathy. “But it’s all right. You’ll be all right.”

Should he try to calm them down? Nothing he did was working. Did they need to exhaust themselves? He thought that might take hours at this rate, if they did not faint from lack of air first. Was this likely to actually hurt them?

Crying was one thing. Outright hysteria was another. This was the latter.

He slipped his knuckle between his mandibles, clenching, twisting it. If this was anyone else, he would suggest moving—from the room, from the house entirely. Even briefly going out into the rain might shock them out of it, but they were nowhere near able to stand on their own, and he’d never be able to coax them anywhere like this. It would be the easiest solution, but even that was denied to them.

Out of the house might have helped, if they were able. Out of the kingdom would be better. If only he could take them away from here. Somewhere else. Anywhere other than this haunted ruin, where fear and guilt and shame must follow their every step. If he felt the burden of it, minor as his role had been, he could only imagine what a crushing weight it must be on their shoulders.

And yet all he could manage to do was sit and wait with them, repeating the few weak promises he felt sure he could safely make. Trying to find new ways to phrase it all, in hopes that something would sink in past the fear.

Only a short time had passed, and he was already running short.

And his promises might mean nothing at all to them. Nothing that mattered, nothing that could cut through the fear that entangled them. He did not like to accept that he was powerless, but—

Hollow choked again, shoulders hunching, and dragged their limbs inward even tighter, clutching weakly at their chest as it refused to rise. He winced, his own breath hissing. “Breathe,” he whispered. “Breathe, please. Please.”

A gasp rocked them, then another. But their claws only clenched tighter, grasping, bearing down on—

On the silk that filled their chest. That filled the wound, still open, where their shell had rotted away.

○

Its claws spasmed, their tips sinking into silk.

Silk that she had placed there, to keep it from harm. Silk that she had spun from her own close-guarded soul, that she had bound into its palm and its chest, with every squeezing, scraping breath a reminder of her claim on it.

It… kept on disappointing her. It could offer her nothing but the fractured pieces of itself, of a mind and body too broken to be useful. It was a liar. It had stolen its place in the world; it had stood by and allowed others to suffer, to die; it had damned its kin, damned the entire kingdom to a never-ending nightmare.

Whatever it was now, it could never be what she wanted.

There was nothing left for it, then. Truly nothing. It deserved—it deserved the fate its sibling had received. It deserved to die.

It did not realize its claws had shifted, from grasping emptily to bearing down on its own shell, until it felt void well, cold and sluggish, to the surface. Felt the pain, fresh and new and sharp, sharp amidst the haze. Its hand was clenched over the wound in its chest, silk sliding over silk, except for where its foreclaw had pierced the edge of the dressing, cutting through to the scarred black flesh beneath.

Could it claw the bandage free, rip its sister’s silk from its body? Did it dare?

“Stop. Please.” Quirrel, his voice barely audible beneath its hideous, scraping sobs. “Please, don’t do that.” He sounded—desperate, almost, with a waver in his throat that nearly matched its own.

Desperate? Why was he—what did it matter—

It blinked, eyelids fluttering shut twice over before it could discern the cricket’s blurry shape.

It had nearly forgotten he was there. Nearly forgotten that he existed entirely, with its world awash in pain, what was left of its mind drowning in its own misery. He stood halfway between its bed and the fireplace with his hands stretched out, as if he had lurched toward it when he noticed what it was doing. His breath was harsh, unsteady. His mandibles gaped, then clicked emptily, and he glanced again toward the door, as if he expected its sister to rush in and save him.

Afraid of it. As he very well should be.

“I—I swore I would not allow harm come to you,” he whispered, repeating his words from before. He swallowed, glanced at its hand, and spoke again, stronger this time. “Any harm.”

It shivered, caught between dread and despair like two halves of a vise, grinding tighter, crushing it. It was not beholden to obey him. He was not its wielder or master, nor had he been given any authority over it. It wanted—which did not matter, of course, nothing that it wanted mattered—to listen, to believe him. To forget what it knew: that it was alone, and that it deserved to be.

But that was the reality of it. Perhaps he did not understand the full extent of its disgrace, or the reason for its downfall. He knew of vessels, its sister had said—he should know why it was created, then, and what purpose it was meant to serve. He should know that it was damned now, just like the others.

It had damned its older sibling by its very existence. By being judged pure, when neither one of them had been.

And now it had damned a second, by failing to live up to what it was meant for. As impure as the rest of its kin, the lie of its existence unexposed until far too late.

Far, far too late.

It choked again, the scratching heave of its breath going silent for an instant. The sobs were unrelenting, inescapable—no sooner would it attempt to regain its breath than yet another would wrench loose and deny it. Would it never stop? Having let its control slip, it was helpless, swept away by the storm that raged within it.

It had allowed itself to break, given itself over to the whims of the godless dark. Its shade had always been the weakest part of it, its desires instinctual and profane: its hunger was the hunger of an open pit, its silence the rotten silence of a grave.

Its shade wanted. Wanted release. Wanted relief from the pain. Wanted to break loose from its body, to surge outward in a headlong rush, to draw and draw upon itself until it was whole again, until it was free to rejoin the shadows it was birthed from.

That desire could not be granted. If it bled out now, its shade would seep away into nothingness, into dead stillness like a lakebed drained dry. Those seals that its father had placed on its sibling’s mask now marked its own as well. To keep the Radiance from killing it, to keep its void where it belonged, wrapped round her in an eternal embrace.

It had no function, now. It was a danger to its sister, and even more so to her mortal ally.

If it was dead, it could not hurt them.

Its lifeblood was a toxin, yes, a creeping poison that would wring the warmth from his veins—but he had the sense not to touch it. As soon as it drained enough of its void to lose consciousness, he and its sister would be safe. There would be no returning, no shade to merge with its shattered shell. And there was no goddess to remake it. It would—

It would be free.

He should let. He should let it tear itself open, ruin its failing shell with its own claws. He had no cause to stop it.

But when it trembled and forced its claws deeper, curling, tearing through silk and skin alike, he stepped forward hastily, heedlessly, reaching out toward it with a frantic cry. “Please, don’t—your wound—”

A flash of terror tore through it, a bolt of electricity. please please nonono—

His mask flickered in its vision, eyeholes doubling, wrapped with the blue of a scholar’s kerchief. His hands reached for its throat, holding a blade of its father’s make. And it flinched away, cowering, back hunched, horns laid flat, with a sound coming from its throat—a long, ugly, gurgling hiss.

He froze. It froze in turn, even its convulsive sobs ceasing for the span of a moment. Its entire mask was throbbing, from the crack through its eye out to the tips of its horns. Its chest ached and stung, from its talons, from the lump of silk caught between its ribs.

This was—this was not then. Its memories were deceiving it again. This was not the Palace, and he was not that long-ago scholar with its sibling’s void drying on his hands.

This… this was its sister’s ally. This was Quirrel, who had only ever been kind to it. Quirrel, who had stroked its horns and spoken softly and told it to breathe through the pain.

Even if he had intended to end it—if he was the one who would punish it, his blade the one that would finish it—had it not just wished for the same?

Your sister has entrusted you to me.

Perhaps this was what was meant to be. Perhaps this was what its sister wanted. She should not have to strike the blow herself—she had surely seen enough of violence, living in such a world as its flaws had brought about. She, like her father, need not sully her shell with its lifeblood, need not burden herself with the thankless task of a vessel’s final death.

Was it too much to hope? That being the one to strike it down might bring her sorrow?

Leaving its fate in the hands of her ally, in hands that had proven so capable with it… that was only fitting. A scholar had disposed of its sibling. Another could dispose of it now.

It should let him. It should banish this faithless urge to punish itself, to bring about its own inevitable downfall. It should make itself submit, let go of the willful scrap of itself that still desired to fight, as it had fought against the Radiance, as it had fought against its own damnable impurity.

It should let go. Loosen its claws. Bare its throat to the blade, one last time.

Its back was still curled. Its teeth were still bristling. Like something feral. Like a beast, loosed from its leash.

Let go.

It… did not know if it could.

○

Leave.

Leave, now.

Quirrel had cultivated a careful awareness of his instincts. Refined his understanding of them, over years and decades spent alone. He had learned, early on, that the spellwork on the mask he wore would protect him from much that he encountered, though not from poor decisions made in ignorance, exhaustion, or plain stupidity.

Instincts filled the gap. They hadn’t failed him yet, if his continued existence was any measure of success.

He no longer wore the mask. His nail was out of reach. And his instincts were screaming to be anywhere but here.

It had been all he could do not to run at the sound Hollow had made. A sound he had not known they could make. Every heaving breath was threaded with that rumbling hiss, emerging from deep in their throat and buzzing in their dense, fractured chest-plates. They had curled tight on the bed, legs drawn in and horns pressing down against their back, and their open mouth was a glaring threat, each spiny tooth needle-sharp and glistening black as oil.

Those were the teeth of a deep-sea thing, teeth to sink in, to hold fast, to never let go.

And their eyes—

Their eyes were a storm. A cyclone churning through a darkened sky. Violent. Volatile. Merciless.

This—this was terror, not the wariness that they had previously regarded him with. He’d been a fool to assume otherwise.

He might also be a fool for other reasons.

His legs were shaking and his hands were shaking and his empty stomach turned over like a bad egg dropped into water. He did not move.

Hollow was equally motionless, still panting through their gaping, thorny mouth, still staring at him, wild-eyed. The expression was literal; he could see that their vision was focused on him, but only because the point of greatest turbulence was fastened in his direction, every writhing motion spiraling outward from that origin.

He had no idea what they might do. He wasn’t sure they knew either. They were enthralled, somehow, by his presence, as someone might stand petrified in front of a charging beast, unable to move even to step out of its path.

Oh, he very much did not want that. He did not want to stay here, far too close for his own safety, taking advantage of their fear to keep them distracted from something much worse.

But he did not see that he had much choice.

They had not unlatched their claws from the bandage. But they had also not tightened them further. There was already void soaking into the silk, tiny motes of it rolling up their knuckle and wicking away into the air.

They could do serious damage, if they continued. He had no doubt they knew that.

He should move. He should do the smart thing and step back, out of their reach, away from those bristling teeth.

He did not do that.

“I’m sorry.” His voice seemed thin and watery. Hardly enough to startle anyone, and yet they twitched, another rumble sputtering to life in their chest. “I-I’m sorry. I did not wish to frighten you—truly.”

No reply. No reaction. A cut-off gasp interrupted the burgeoning hiss, halfway to becoming another sob. Pity sank through his gut, alongside the nausea.

He couldn’t move. He couldn’t. Not if it kept them from tearing their chest open while he watched. Not if it kept their attention off of whatever it was that made them wish to hurt so badly.

“I will not touch you,” he said, low, fervent. “I’ll come no closer, I swear. Here—”

Quirrel bent his knees, lowering himself to the floor. Squatting on his heels, folding one leg under, then the other. Still with his hands spread, in plain view.

The stone was cold beneath him. He suppressed the urge to shiver. “I’m staying right here,” he assured them. “Right where you can see me, see?”

They could see him. Their eyes followed him down. The next hiss was quieter, and interrupted again by a silent hitch of their shoulders, their sobs not yet burned out completely.

His shell crawled, cold tingles skittering down his back. He might not have been able to rise again even if he’d wanted to. Even his composure had limits, when facing the fixed gaze of a creature who could easily tear him apart.

Not just a creature. Not a beast. This was someone who could kill him, yes, but who would almost undoubtedly regret it.

This frozen silence would not last forever—it couldn’t. They would likely slip back into their despair, into the pit where he could not reach them.

He needed something, anything, to occupy their attention. To fill time, to keep them here with him, instead of lost in their own mind. Talking had not worked. What else was there? What else did he know to do?

He had often volunteered to entertain when other wayfarers shared his fire, on clear nights when the smoke drifted clear up to join the stars, or when they huddled beneath a hanging tree or cavern roof to escape the pouring rain. Stories had not seemed to soothe Hollow, but he wished, firecely, that he could show them the way the world could fall away, the way tales and song had filled those hours until nothing else seemed to matter.

Quirrel paused, on the cusp of an idea. He could not give them that, not in full. One cricket was a poor substitute for a camp full of cheer and laughter. There was no fire, he had no cards, and they could not answer riddles.

But he could offer something else, if they would take it.

The first lines of a melody twined through his thoughts, summoned by a turn of phrase he had almost forgotten. A chorus only, though he guessed that the rest would fall into place once he began.

Part of him recognized that this was a desperate venture, grasping in the darkness when his lantern had gone out. He had no clue whether this would make a difference—but, if they reacted badly, he could always stop.

Watch them. Closely, yet not too closely, while he hummed the first bars. Their eyes followed the motion of his hand as it tapped on his knee, their gaze transfixed somewhere between fear and fascination.

Nothing else changed, for better or worse.

Desperate as this was, he might as well try.

“March no more, my weary soldier,” he began. “There is peace where once was war. Sleep in peace, my weary soldier… sleep in peace, now battle’s o’er…”

It was a lilting, far-flung melody: rousing if sung loudly, but just as suited to the quiet, gentle way he sang it now, the words growing wistful and pleading, as tender as a breeze at dusk.

“I returned to fields of glory, where flowers and green grasses grow. Where the wind still tells the story, of those brave souls long ago…”

Hollow wheezed through a long exhale, nearly drowning out his voice. Still, that was a breath, and not a sob. He would take it.

“March no more, my weary soldier… there is peace where once was war…”

He had been to kingdoms where there was magic in the music, where sung spells cast enchantments both beautiful and strange. It was a feat he’d never performed, a closely guarded secret and difficult for an outsider to learn.

“Some returned from fields of glory, to their friends who held them dear. But some fell in that hour of glory, and were left to their resting here…”

If his voice could weave a spell, he thought, let it be a spell of peace. Let it be the peace that they so desperately needed.

“March no more, my weary soldier…”

They did not stir when the first song ended. And so he sang a second, a pretty tune of longing for a lover to return, the words falling miraculously into place as he felt his way forward through the dark. And then, as he thought he saw the whirling of their void grow a fraction slower, a third: a travel ballad that guided the singer over miles of sprawling countryside, pointing back toward a half-remembered home.

There were tales woven through these songs, tales that he had never heard the whole of—battles he had not fought, people he had not met, native lands he had never known. The places named were unfamiliar, every long-lost love a stranger. Victory and defeat, grief and joy, despair and hope alike were all swept away by time, by distance, until all that remained was a core of shared memory, bright and smooth as a piece of polished stone, flashing as it passed from hand to hand.

“Keep right on to the end of the road… keep right on to the end.” He swayed gently, caught in the melody, steady gaze still meeting Hollow’s turbulent one. Trying to seem welcoming, to invite them to join him, in spirit if not in reality. “Though you’re tired and weary, still journey on, ‘til you come to your happy abode… all the love you’ve been dreaming of will be there, at the end of the road…”

He chose songs of peace, of happiness, of deep winter passing and spring dawning again. He chose songs that he’d clung to on long, dark nights, when his exhaustion threatened to pull him down like a current under the sea. When the hole in his memory seemed ready to swallow him whole, when he could not find a reason to take one more step, save for heeding the spell that drew him always on.

He felt his voice and his resolve both strengthen as he went, shored up by fond memories that did not hurt as much as they once had, and by a yearning he could not quite shake—not for the simplicity of who he’d been then, or for the knowledge that he’d lost when he stepped into the Wastes, but for something indefinable, something that never could have been, that he mourned the loss of regardless. Someone who knew who he was, and where he’d come from. Someone who knew that, one day, he’d have something to return to.

This was nothing like what he’d imagined, in the times when he’d dared to imagine such things.

But was there not significance in this all the same? In the thought that there was some use to be found, even after the end of his usefulness? Even if it had to be scraped up from the dirt, sifted through stiff fingers? Even if it was only singing, to pass the time?

He was rewarded, somewhere in the middle of the fifth ballad, by Hollow’s mouth creeping closed, hiding away the thorn-patch shadows of their teeth. He very carefully did not react to this, only a faint quiver in his voice betraying him before it steadied of its own accord. Their breathing was more regular now, less strained, though still interrupted by stray hiccups and weak heaves of their shoulders as their sobbing calmed and faded.

Much as he wanted to praise them, or even to cry a little, himself, out of relief, he did neither. He moved on into a simple love song, changing the lyrics a touch as he went—he’d rather not give the wrong impression. “The half-moon westers low, my dear, and the wind brings up the rain. And wide apart we lie, my dear, with seas between the twain…”

Their eyes were spinning far more slowly now, that wire-tight tension in their limbs relaxing bit by bit. The void had stopped dripping from their wound. Quirrel had been told that he had a pleasant voice, nothing special, nothing that should have made them seemed almost… enchanted, their gaze going lax and faraway. His voice, the music, something was pulling them free from whatever horror—real or imagined—had them in its thrall.

He hadn’t dared to hope that his desperate gambit would be this successful. He almost didn’t dare to hope now.

Until their claws unlatched from the wound in their chest, hand falling half-open on the blankets.

Quirrel nearly forgot the next verse of the hymn he was singing. Nearly faltered, nearly stopped, the very thing he should not do.

He didn’t flinch. Didn’t even drop his gaze to the void-stained bandages, or to the feeble twitching of their fingers—likely cramped from the tension in their grip. He kept his focus on their eyes, on the occasional erratic motion that still seemed half-fearful, weak, frantic jerks fading out to slow, steady whirling.

Calming, but not calm. They still wavered on the edge, unable to back away—every breath was slight and thin, threaded through the tautness of their throat. There was still a tremor in their shoulders, a tightness to their spine. They likely could not relax completely—not until their sister came home.

He could only hope that she returned before his voice gave out.

○

Taglist: @botslayer9000@moss-tombstone@slimeshade@gamergenia Send an ask or reply to this post to be added to (or removed from) the taglist!

#elletalks #lost kin fic #lost kin chapter #hollow knight #hollow knight fanfic #mywriting #hk the hollow knight #hk hornet #hk quirrel #hk

46 notes · View notes