#sequel to a couple febuwhump chapters

[sylvanfreckles]

Day 10 "I Won't Leave"

Part 10 of Deck the Hells

Fandom: Critical Role Rating: T Warnings: Being buried alive, minor self-harm

Summary: Dorian survived being buried alive, though the experience left him wounded in both body and soul. Cyrus proves remarkably capable at helping him put himself back together. (Sequel to Buried Alive and Muffled Screams from Febuwhump 2022) (Read on AO3)

...

Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Don’t panic.

The space was too tight, too small. He couldn’t move without knocking into the sides of his prison. Time stretched out endlessly in the empty darkness, with the echoed rasp of his breathing his only company.

His breathing….

Dorian sucked in a shaking breath and tried to hold it. He didn’t need to breath, not really…not in places like this. But his breath burned in his lungs, and after a few short seconds he was coughing it out to suck in another.

The air was warm and damp. Musty. It tasted of wet wool and woodsmoke, not of earth and decay.

He tried to hold his breath again. If he could just focus, could just call on the unending breath of the air genasi, he wouldn’t suffocate. But his lungs ached with the effort, and it was only a few seconds before he was panting for breath again.

Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Don’t panic.

He was dizzy, from lack of oxygen or fear he couldn’t tell. Dorian pinched himself, digging fingers into the bruises on his forearms, trying to bring his mind back into focus. A hand caught his, pulling it away, threading fingers through his.

“Hey, hey…don’t do that.”

But he needed to. If he lost focus here, he’d suffocate. He sucked in another breath and held it.

“No, come on, buddy.” There was a hand on the side of his face now. “You’re safe now, you don’t need to do that anymore.”

How could he be safe? Shut in a box, buried deep in the earth, left to be forgotten?

“Shit, his fever’s back. We got any more water?”

The hand on his face moved, and a muscular arm slipped beneath his shoulders to lever him upright. Dorian coughed again, and found himself leaning against a familiar, broad chest.

“Come on, little zephyr. You’re safe now. We’re not gonna let anything happen to you.”

The voice rumbled under his ear as a hand stroked through his hair. The present and past seemed to blur together for a moment, and he relaxed into his brother’s embrace.

“You haven’t called me that…in a long time,” Dorian rasped.

“Hey, there he is!” Cyrus chuckled and kissed the top of his head. “If I recall, you told us to stop calling you that on your sixteenth life-day, remember?”

Of course he remembered. Tall and awkward, desperate to be seen as the adult he so longed to be. He’d hated the nickname then, when he wanted his brother and the rest of his family to stop treating him like a child. Now, though…it really wasn’t bad. Not right now, anyway. “What happened?”

“You got sick,” his brother replied simply. “There was some kinda weird fungus in that crate, you must’ve breathed it in at the end. Dariax says he might be able to do something come morning, but for now we just gotta hold on.”

Dorian grunted. “Dariax?”

“He and Opal went to get more water. Well, one of them’s getting water and the other’s getting firewood, not sure who’s who.”

He shifted against his brother and tried to look around. They’d made a basic camp at the side of the road, angling the cart against a boulder so they had partial cover from the wind. “Where are we?”

Cyrus sighed, his breath ruffling the hair on Dorian’s head. “We got about two hours out from where we found you when you got sick. Hoping to make it to town, get you to an inn to get some rest, but things got a little rough.”

“Sorry.”

His brother’s arms tightened around him. “Don’t be sorry, little zephyr,” he whispered, his voice rough with emotion. “Never be sorry for something like this.”

Dorian let his head rest against his brother’s shoulder, exhausted almost beyond words. His body ached from his imprisonment, and the self-inflicted bruises on his arms, stomach, and thighs were stinging. “Thank you for coming after me,” he whispered after a few long moments. “I don’t know what I would have done…”

“I would never leave you like that,” Cyrus interrupted. His hand returned to Dorian’s hair, slowly stroking through the silken strands. “I’ll always come for you, Dorian. Always.”

“Yeah.” Dorian shifted again, and Cyrus tucked the blanket around him a little more securely.

“Cold?”

“Maybe a little.”

“We’ll get the fire stoked soon. Don’t you worry.”

He let his eyes slide closed, listening to his brother breathe. He could hear his brother’s steady heartbeat, and it slowly lulled him back to sleep.

Don’t panic.

It was dark and tight, the prickles of a thousand spiders crawling up his legs.

Don’t panic.

Voices all around him, digging, scraping, but never coming nearer.

Don’t panic.

Air was hot in his lungs, tearing through him with every breath.

Don’t—

“Dorian!”

He jerked awake, panting, Cyrus’s arms still around him. To his embarrassment, his cheeks were damp with tears, and he quickly scrubbed them away with one hand. “Sorry.”

“You’re breaking my heart, little zephyr,” Cyrus sighed, kissing the top of Dorian’s head again. “It’s okay. You’re okay. You’re safe now.”

He sniffed, curling himself tighter into the blanket. “Sorry.”

Cyrus didn’t say anything, but he moved his hand from Dorian’s hair to the back of his neck, pressing his thumb into the tense muscle there. “Hey, you wanna message your friend? Would that help?”

“Orym?” Dorian shook his head. “No, no I wouldn’t want to bother him.”

“Come on,” Cyrus coaxed. “I doubt he’d be bothered.”

Dorian sighed. Really, he’d like nothing more than to hear from Orym, or any of his friends back in Marquet, but he really didn’t want to waste the spell over something like this. “What would I even say?”

“Oh, I don’t know…’hey, friend, everything’s cool but I had a bad day, and I’d really like to hear your voice’? Something like that?”

He thought of Orym, and of all the messages his halfling friend had been sending him. His own affairs really didn’t seem as important now, with everything going on with the Hells.

“You’d want him to message you if he was feeling like this,” Cyrus added. “Wouldn’t you?”

Dorian sighed. He had to admit, Cyrus had a point. “When did you get all smart?” he teased weakly.

“Eh, I’ve been learning a thing or two from Dariax.”

That did it. Dorian burst out laughing, though he sagged against his brother as his laughter sputtered into a cough. “All right. Guess it couldn’t hurt.”

He fumbled in the pouch at his waist and pulled out the smooth, blue stone. He hesitated, then looked up at his brother’s strong profile.

Cyrus got the message and slowly extracted himself from the blankets. “I’ll be on the other side of the cart if you need me.”

“Cy…”

“I won’t leave you,” he promised, squeezing Dorian’s hand. “Just send your message.”

Dorian nodded and waited until Cyrus was out of sight. His brother could probably still hear everything, but that was okay. Not like Dorian was going to say anything embarrassing.

Probably.

He ran his thumb over the runes and watched them light up, then held the stone close to his mouth. “Hey, Orym. Everything’s okay, but I had kind of a bad day and it would be nice to hear your voice….”

[vagueandominousvibes]

Hey remember how I’m doing Febuwhump? I’ve now posted the first chapter on Ao3. All the first chapter does is establish the setting (a sort-of sequel to Silent Fog, though it can be read independently too), then I’ll build from that in February and tie the prompts together in a vaguely-coherent narrative. 

If you want to read it on Ao3, it’s here!

Since Febuwhump is a Tumblr event, I’ll be posting the chapters here as well, so for anyone who prefers reading on Tumblr, you’ll find ‘Chapter 1: The Well’ down below! 

The God in the Well

Chapter 1: The Well

“I still don’t think this is a good idea,” Blue grumbled, stepping over a rotting log and pushing a branch out of his face. Shadow and Vio were ahead of him, carrying the map and the photos from that stupid Old Norse manuscript Vio had come across in his research, which was the entire reason they were out here in Hylia-knows-where in the first place.

He paused to hold the branch out of Red’s way as Red hopped across the log and flashed him a smile. Blue’s insides warmed. It had been a few months since their Mountain Mishaps at Zelda’s family’s cabin, and they had been some of the best months Blue could remember. (Yes, that included getting to ride on the back of the ATV at one of his mums’ place of work when he was five and she did the feeding rounds. Watching the wolverines had been awesome.)

He released the branch in Green’s face.

“Hey!” Green gave him the stink eye.

Blue grinned, shrugged, and followed Red. “My point still stands,” he said as he caught up and took Red’s hand.“Do we really want to get tangled up in weird shit like this again? We don’t even know if this thing —”

“Mímir,” Vio said.

“— is still out here.”

“It’ll be fine,” Red said soothingly. “We have a map, and we know what we’re walking into.”

“We think we know what we’re walking into.”

Red squeezed his hand.

“You worry too much,” Shadow called back. “It’ll be fun!”

Blue snorted.

“You could stay back if you’d prefer to,” Zelda called from the rear.

“Oh, no, I’m coming along. But I don’t like it.”

“Duly noted,” Vio said.

———

To Blue’s surprise and disappointment, the well described in Vio’s manuscript was still very much there, spotted sunlight and everything. Some of the stones, slowly being reclaimed by the spongy moss, had fallen off, the wooden bucket looked too far gone to be of any use, and the rope had long since rotted away. Birds chirped in the branches.

“Well, well, well.” Shadow grinned. “Would you look at that.”

Vio rolled his eyes, but couldn’t hide his fondness. He put the photos away and approached the well.

“Wow, look at these!” Red tugged Blue towards a shaded patch of ghostly white mushrooms under one of the trees edging the clearing. He crouched down, already fishing in his pocket for his glasses, pen, and notebook. “They’re huge! This one’s at least twenty-five centimetres.” He leaned closer to poke the specimen with the butt of the pen. “They’re not supposed to be more than fifteen, give or take a couple.”

Blue knelt next to him. He saw nothing out of the ordinary about the cluster of mushrooms: white caps, curled in along the rim, and a gnarly white stems with rugged white socks. “What kind are they?”

“Destroying angels.”

“What?”

Red peered up over the top of his glasses. They had slipped down to the tip of his nose, and something about it — maybe the way the light caught in the lenses, or the way it made him look older and more experienced, like a golden curly-haired Indiana Jones of mycology, softer, but no less determined. He tried to picture Red in a white shirt, brown tweed waistcoat, and a tie, and yeah, okay, he would have to come up with some excuse to see that in real life.

He met Red’s gaze. Red was staring at him, a bemused smile on his face. Heat crawled into Blue’s face. He looked away. “Sorry, I got, uh …”

“It’s okay.” Red sat back on his heels and pushed the glasses up. “You seemed … distracted.” He grinned and raised an eyebrow.

Blue’s face burned. “You’re distracting.”

Red laughed. “I’ll keep that in mind.” He placed a kiss on Blue’s cheek. “I was just saying that destroying angels are one of the seven deadliest mushrooms known in our country.” He rested his head on Blue’s shoulder and sighed contentedly. “In a regular sized one, a cap is enough to kill someone, though it takes hours to actually hit. I have no idea what something this large would do.” He trailed off. “The cool thing is we don’t have specific antidotes developed for it, either. Sure, we’ve got ways of improving survivability, but that’s about it.”

“Are you bringing a sample back to uni?”

“Nope. Didn’t bring gloves.”

“Damn.”

They drifted off into silence, and for a moment, it was peaceful: just them, the spots of warm sunlight that had found his back, and the overgrown destroying angels. Scenic, really.

Then Green yelped.

Blue turned, one arm instinctively flying up to wrap around Red. Zelda had stepped between Green and Shadow, Vio was staring at Shadow, and Shadow stood in front of the well, reading from one of the photos of Vio’s manuscript. His voice filled the air, sank heavy into the moss, and descended down into the well, as if every word was inevitable. His eyes burned. Smoke spiralled from the edges of the photo. It started to crumple into ash between his fingers.

The air over the well shimmered, as if a source of immense heat had materialised down below. In the shimmer, a balding head appeared. The grey skin sagged, thin and crumpled like tissue paper, around a crooked nose. Teeth, as moss-grown as the rocks of the well, jutted out from the open mouth. The beard protruded from the chin like whiskers, and the eyebrows curled up like horns. Long white hair dripped into the well. Below the neck, there was nothing.

Red made a strangled sound and covered his mouth.

The last ashes of the photo slipped between Shadow’s fingers. The fire in him went out and his eyes rolled back.

“Shadow!” Vio dropped the other photos. Between one breath and the next, he had darted forward and caught Shadow. “Hey, Shadow?”

Shadow slumped silently against Vio’s chest.

“Come on, wake up —”

The floating head exhaled. A long deep sigh, like a cold wind in autumn, rustled the leaves. Branches creaked. The birds had gone quiet.

Blue pulled Red closer to himself.

The floating head opened its eyes. There were no pupils. No irises, either. Where its eyes should have been, were black spheres cracked by time. With each inhale, fire flared in the cracks, like embers goaded back to life. With each exhale, the fire died.

The floating head studied them. “Who,” it croaked, “disturbs Mímir’s sleep?”

———

Chapter 2 >>

[a-reader-and-a-writer]

What requests have you been working on lately? and do you have any teasers from them 🤔

Hi anon! Thanks for the ask! This is a very good question!

I actually have about 25 or so requests for either drabbles or fics right now! I have not been able to work on them as much as I would have liked over the past few weeks since I have been competing in Febuwhump. So, since I have had to post a new fic a day for that, and I have no self-control and I have made each one between 1.5k - 6k words long, I haven't had much time to work on the requests. However, the last day of Febuwhump is this coming Tuesday, so I will be able to return my focus back to them after that! My brain is a little fried from all the daily fic writing, so I might not be able to post one a day, but I am excited to work on them!

As for teasers, I don't have a ton planned out for them yet, but I can share some of the characters I have requests for so you know who I will be writing for soon: I have a couple Jason Todd, one for Dick Grayson, a sequel request for my al Ghul!reader fic I Have Missed You as well as an AU set with those characters, a TON of Vigilante which I am excited for, a tasm!Spiderman fic, and a few very angsty Stephen Holder requests. I also have requests for more chapters of One Bad Day....(Bruce Wayne x Batmom! Reader), Promises (Part 1) (Rick Flag x Reader), Just a Normal Guy (Adrian Chase x Reader), Deliriously in Love (Frank Castle x Reader), and Time to Wake Up (Bucky Barnes x Reader).

Sorry, I know this was a lot, but I wasn't sure which one or ones you would be interested in. Needless to say, I will be busy for a while 😅. However, I am always open to taking more fic requests and I am sorry but I do not always finish them in order of received. Sometimes, I just get inspired to work on a specific piece one day and I write where the muses take me! But I do try to work on the older ones first! Thank you for your interest! 🥰

[emachinescat]

By Night My Mind

A Tales of Arcadia: Wizards Fan-Fiction

by @emachinescat ​

@febuwhump​ day 19 - sleep deprivation 

Summary: Sequel to “Dying Is Easy.”  In the aftermath of the final battle against the Arcane Order, Douxie is plagued by guilt and nightmares about his part in Merlin’s death, and decides that he’s better off staying awake, which his battered and weary body does not take well.  Written for Febuwhump on Tumblr. Day 19: sleep deprivation

Characters: Douxie, Archie, Jim, Claire

Words: 4,719

TW: None

Notes: Sequel to “Dying Is Easy, Living (Without You) Is Harder,” and set in the same universe as “That I Could Fear a Door” and “Lest Back that Awful Door Should Spring.”  In this version of events, Douxie doesn’t have to leave with Nari, and is trying to adjust back to life in Arcadia after the events of “Dying Is Easy.”

Keep reading here, or on AO3!

If you enjoy, please consider liking, commenting, or re-blogging, and you can follow me for more content like this! :)

- From “Sonnet 27” by William Shakespeare

Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,

The dear repose for limbs with travel tired;

But then begins a journey in my head

To work my mind, when body’s work’s expired…

Lo! thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind,

For thee, and for myself, no quiet find.

The night after his battle with the Arcane Order, Douxie slept more soundly than he could ever remember.  His near-death experience had left him with a litany of aches, pains, cuts, bruises, a couple of fractured ribs and a lot of unanswered questions - it should have been impossible for him to survive a fall from that height; every bone in his body should have been broken, and no one knew how he was still alive - but still he slept, his final meeting with Merlin and the restored Morgana fresh on his mind and a soothing balm through the night.

The trouble came the day after, when he nodded off while curled up on his couch with The Sword in the Stone distracting him from some unpleasant thoughts and a nagging guilt that had begun to crop up, slowly but steadily, over the course of his day.  No one knew that the hokey, mostly plotless Disney movie was his favorite, and he preferred to keep it that way.  It had always amused him, Merlin as a bit of a crackpot and Arthur a poor young boy running around after a magical master who only halfway knew what he was doing at any given time - it reminded him of himself, and of home.

But he was exhausted from the muscle relaxer he’d been prescribed when Jim and Claire had practically kidnapped him and forced him to let Jim’s mom, a doctor, examine him, and he fell asleep right when Mad Madam Mim issued her challenge to Merlin and for a few wonderful moments, there was nothing, and he could rest.

He woke with a yell only minutes later (Merlin was now turning into a germ to outwit the atrocious purple dragon), fighting desperately against the effects of the muscle relaxers that were already trying to pull him under again.  He couldn’t even remember what it was that woke him, what he’d seen in his dreams, but it didn’t matter.  Whatever it was - and he had a good idea - it left him trembling, short of breath, on the verge of tears.

“Douxie?”

Archie padded into the room and hopped up on the couch beside his friend, eyes full of concern behind his glasses.

“I’m fine, Archie.  Just a nightmare.”

“I miss him, too,” the cat said solemnly, reflective gaze compassionate and sad as he observed his human friend.  “Perhaps we should talk--”

“Talking won’t bring him back,” Douxie snapped, and Archie flinched back the tiniest amount and fell silent, looking more like a chastised pet than Douxie had ever seen him.  The wizard sighed.  “I’m sorry, Archie.  I just don’t want to talk, that's all.”  He rubbed the furry head with distracted affection, then moved from the couch and pulled up a hard-backed kitchen chair, and sat in that.  

He didn’t feel like sleeping so much anymore, even if the burning of his eyes told him otherwise.  He turned off the movie - it suddenly held no appeal.  The Disney+ main screen took its place, and he clicked on something at random.  He was so caught up in his bleak mood and dark thoughts that he didn’t even realize for a solid ten minutes that he was watching Hannah Montana. 

***

Dr. Lake called him at five and asked how the muscle relaxers were treating him - “Are they keeping the pain and back spasms at bay? Are you taking them with food? Have you been able to rest?” Douxie placated her with lies on all accounts, but the truth was that he was sore even with the medicine, he hadn't taken it with food because he couldn't bring himself to eat, and every time he closed his eyes he felt the unfathomable pain of being run through all over again, or, worse, he saw Merlin kneeling over him, sacrificing his life for Douxie’s stupid mistake, and that wasn’t worth any benefits rest gave him.

***

He did finally fall asleep that night around eleven, not by choice - he’d been forced to take another muscle relaxer when the pain in his ribs and back crescendoed to nearly unbearable levels, and the drug worked quickly despite his best efforts to stay awake.

The dream was, at the beginning, not good, but not nightmare material, either.  He found he was reliving his final conversation with Merlin, in that Nowhere between life and death where his mentor had waited patiently for him to arrive before moving on at last, after 900 long years.  

At first the conversation was much the same as it had been, and Douxie found a thread of comfort in Merlin’s reassurances - I told you, my boy, I chose to die for you.  I want no part of a world without you in it.  And I am happy, reunited with my dear friend and first apprentice, ready to step into the next chapter.  

But this time, right before Merlin stepped through the door into the light, he turned and contemplated his grieving apprentice with a cold look.  “Although,” he said, accusation seeping from every word, “it is true that I wouldn’t have had to give my life for you if you hadn’t bungled things up so much in the first place.”

Douxie felt his heart stutter to a stop and he stammered, “W-what?”

“Couldn’t leave well enough alone, could you?” Merlin hissed, his eyes flashing dangerously.  “It was my fight.  And if you were going to interfere, why not cast some other spell that kept us both out of harm’s way?”

Floundering for any purchase on solid ground, Douxie finally managed, “I didn’t know how - the magic, it just responded -”

“You were always good at making excuses, Hisirdoux,” the wizard snarled.  “The faith I thought I had in your abilities was obviously misplaced.”  A terrible, eternal beat of silence.  Then - “Perhaps I should have let you die after all.  It’s no more than you deserve.”

“But Master -”

“I’m done with you.”  With a dismissive wave of his arm, Merlin stomped into the waiting light of the unknown, muttering, “Might as well enjoy your life since you ended mine to save it.”

And Douxie was left alone in the between-space, and the tower crumbled around him in time with his soul, and he let it bury him, book after book crashing on his head, and he hoped that this time, he wouldn’t wake up at all….

It’s all my fault.

He woke up crying, not screaming, and shortly after he flushed the muscle relaxers while Archie wasn’t looking (the wise familiar would most certainly have not approved), splashed his face with icy water, and grabbed his well-read copy of The Catcher in the Rye and forced his eyes across the familiar words in a vain attempt to distract him from the loathing and pain and guilt that screamed through his aching head and pounded out a tattoo of shame that persisted through the lonely, sleepless night.

***

Two days later, he returned to work, and his manager stared openly at his disheveled appearance.  Douxie had slept a grand total of four hours since he’d tossed the pills, and those had been intermittent catnaps that his body had forced him to take.  Eventually, though the thought of using his magic made his skin crawl now after what it had done to Merlin, he conjured a simple alarm clock that sensed when he fell asleep and screeched metal core at him every time it happened.

He knew he looked bad - he’d seen a glimpse of himself in the mirror before he left.  His face was thinner than usual, pinched in pain that tylenol just wasn’t cutting through - but anything else would make him fall asleep.  Although all of the bruising was centralized around his back and chest and invisible beneath his rumpled t-shirt, it looked like he’d been punched in both eyes, with the dark, puffy circles accenting each one.  He’d been too out of it to properly bother with styling his hair, or brushing it, if he were honest, and he was pretty sure he was wearing two different combat boots.  They were both black, though, so maybe no one would notice.  He didn’t have the energy to care if they did.

“Damn,” said his manager, Jeff.  “I think you came back from sick leave a little too soon, man.  You look awful.”

Douxie shrugged, not trusting himself to speak.  He’d been screaming from one emotion to the next with no warning ever since he woke up, and even though he felt rather empty at the moment, he knew it was distinctly possible that if he opened his mouth he might start crying against his will.

“I think you should go back home.  Have you seen a doctor?”

Douxie grunted in affirmation.  

“Go home until you’re feeling better, Douxie.  Seriously, man, you have to take care of yourself.”

The hollowness inside of him filled with irritation at the dismissal.  “I’m fine,” he growled sullenly.  

His manager blinked, surprised at the tone.  Douxie had always been a model employee, respectful and fun to be around.  

“You’re going to scare customers away,” Jeff insisted.  “You can’t wait tables like this - people will be afraid you’ll give them whatever plague you’ve come down with.”

With a snarl, Douxie spat, “Why can’t things just go back to normal?”  He stormed out before his bewildered manager could answer.

***

The next afternoon, someone knocked at his door.  He cast a suspicious side-eye at Archie, who sat innocently on the table, tail tucked contritely around his carefully arranged paws as he studied Merlin’s magic book, the one Douxie had refused to touch since returning home.  Archie had disappeared for a short time earlier, flapping out of the window in dragon form and saying that he was just going for a short flight to clear his head.  Now Douxie wondered if the dragon had actually gone out and told someone of his worries about his wizard familiar.  After all, Archie had been on his case constantly over the past few days, practically begging his friend to sleep, to eat, to talk, and Douxie always ignored him and had even yelled at him on a couple of occasions.  

Douxie was picking at a bowl of dragon-popped popcorn listlessly, the small desire for food that he’d felt earlier having been immediately usurped by a fresh waves of undulating guilt and devastating emptiness.  A smattering of empty cans - soda and energy drinks - lay crumpled on the coffee table around Archie, and the dregs of his latest cup of coffee were still warm.  He seriously considered just ignoring the knocking until whoever it was went away - they’d promised to give him some time to recover, after all - but then they started ringing the doorbell and his head already hurt so badly it made his stomach curdle, so he made the tremendous journey to his feet.  He swayed, his limbs like pool noodles, head swimming with dizziness at the effort to stay upright.

Each step toward the door - that incessant, too-loud doorbell was going to drive him mad! - was a hard-fought battle, and by the time his hand reached for the doorknob, he felt like he was going to be sick, and his vision was blurred, and he was having trouble remembering why he had gotten up in the first place.

Then the doorbell rang again, and a muffled voice called his name from the other side of the door, and he remembered.

It was Claire and Jim.  The moment they laid eyes on him, their expressions went from concerned to relieved to something Douxie couldn’t quite identify but that might have been a kind of shock, or even horror.

“Douxie!” Claire half-shouted, and Douxie fought the urge to cover his ears as her voice, normally pleasant and soothing, tried its hardest to split his head in two.  “What happened?”

Douxie squinted at her in confusion.  Shouldn’t she know what happened?  She had been there, for parts of it, at least.  She’d heard about the rest.  He could barely stand up straight anymore, and his eyes started closing of their own accord.  This had happened so many times before, but as soon as sleep started to stake its claim, the memories and nightmares and things that might have been memories followed, mixing up into a blur that he couldn’t navigate, and then his magic alarm clock would blare, and he would wake up, and drink another Mountain Dew or Monster or cup of coffee, and try to do something to take his mind off of sleep and pain and Merlin.  Then the whole process would start over again.

This time, it didn’t look like he would make it back to the couch before he passed out - the arduous trek to the front door had drained him, made him breathless and dizzy - and he was toppling forward, trying to force himself to wake up, battling sleep and the panic of sleep, or worse, hitting his head and being knocked out and forced to sleep.

“Whoa!”  He startled awake to a hazy reality as Jim caught his stumbling form and propped him up the best that he could given how much taller Douxie was than him.  Distantly, Douxie heard, “Claire, help me get him inside.”

And then Claire slung his other arm over her shoulder and they half-supported, half-dragged him back into his house, and though his eyes were on his couch, he realized that they were taking him past it, further into the house, in the direction of his bedroom, and he began to struggle against them.

“No, not there,” he gasped, knowing that if he had a mattress under his body and a soft pillow under his bed, there would be no way he could resist the siren call of sleep.  He’d been avoiding his bed for days now.

But they didn’t listen, and soon they helped ease him onto his bed, perpetually unmade, and he scrambled up clumsily into a facsimile of a sitting position and shook his head to clear it of the gummy cobwebs that infested it.  Archie, having followed the trio closely, literally hovering right over their shoulders, perched on Douxie’s desk and kept his lamp-lit eyes on his human, watchful and protective.  

As soon as their charge was no longer in any immediate danger of hurting himself, Jim pulled out his cell phone.  “I’m calling my mom.”

“No, no,” Douxie said, forcing his burning eyes open as far as he could and making a feeble swipe at the phone in his friend’s hand.  Jim hesitated, his thumb hovering over the send button.  

“You are obviously not feeling well,” he said.  “And you look sick.  You need to see a doctor before --”

“I’m not sick,” Douxie explained, trying to project an air of wellness that he couldn’t even muster within himself.  At their doubtful looks, he clarified, “Just a little tired.”

“You don’t look like you’ve slept in a month!” Claire exclaimed worriedly.  “We promised to give you a few days to yourself to heal and rest, not turn into one of the living dead!”

“It’s only been a few days,” Douxie assured her.  “I just need to sort some things out in my head, that’s all.  Then I’ll sleep.”  It was a lie, but he needed them to believe it, needed them to go home and go on with their lives and not sit here worrying about him - or worse, try to make him sleep.  He appreciated their concern, and was touched that he had friends who cared so much about his well-being, but they had more important things to deal with - Jim’s transition from being half-troll to enslaved hulk troll to fully human and the loss of his amulet, for starters.  And he had made this mess on his own, this was his fault, so if his punishment was to never sleep again, it should be his to bear alone.  He didn’t deserve to be worried about, he suddenly realized - that was the crux of why he wanted to be left alone so badly.

“A few days without sleep will wreck you, man,” Jim said seriously, his blue eyes offering nothing but concern.  He did pocket his phone again, though, for which Douxie heaved a sigh of relief.  “Trust me, I know.”

Douxie didn’t know the details, but he had heard stories from Claire and Toby about how Jim had, over a year ago, willingly gone into the Darklands, a hellish nightmare-scape beneath the skin of this world, and Claire had told, her own eyes haunted, of how he had come back not himself, traumatized, and how he’d barely slept nor ate and had become a shell of his former self.  

So he asked, voice far more unsure than he felt comfortable with, “How did you move on?  How did you get back to normal?”

He hated himself for sounding so weak.  He’d lived 701 years.  He’d lost people he cared about so regularly that he’d eventually tried to avoid personal connections.  Such was the curse of being a wizard, and being functionally immortal.  The world around him would turn, but he would not age - or rather, he would age slowly, at the pace of his own choosing - and people would die, wars would rise up and die down, and still he would live, watching it all, alone.  That wasn’t true.  Even if Merlin had been entombed for much of that time, he hadn’t been dead, not really.  The knowledge that he would see his mentor again had kept Douxie going during the loneliest of times, during the most devastating losses.  

And, of course, he’d had Archie, a constant companion who even now had done everything he could to help his friend, and when that hadn’t worked, when Douxie had been too stubborn to listen, he’d taken it upon himself to gather more of Douxie’s friends and staged an intervention.  If Douxie hadn’t been so exhausted and his mind hadn’t been so muddy, he might have been grateful or touched by the gesture and loyalty, but right now, he just felt irritated, like his privacy had been infringed upon.

Jim blinked.  “Well, uh,” he stammered, glancing at Claire before continuing, “it took time, first of all.  But, honestly, it was my friends.  But it took talking to someone who had gone through the same thing as me, who understood what I was going through, to first start the healing.”

Douxie shook his head.  “Everybody loses people,” he said slowly.  “But this feels different.”

“Just because everyone deals with loss doesn’t make your experiences any less important, Douxie,” Archie said sagely.  He was the only one in the room who had a true scope of all the heartbreaks Douxie had accumulated over his centuries of life in a world of short-lived mortals.

“It’s not that.” Douxie was desperate now for them to understand the truth. Then maybe they would stop being so kind to him.  Dream-Merlin had been right.  He didn’t deserve it.  “Don’t you see?  It’s my fault Merlin’s dead.  I killed him.”

Jim froze at his words, looking like he’d just been struck across the face.  For a moment, Douxie wondered why he reacted the way he did, but then remembered that Jim had been the one to hold Douxie down when Morgana was going to kill him.  He hadn’t been in his right mind, had been enslaved by the Arcane Order, but still, he had, in a small way, been the reason that Douxie had been forced into doing the switching magic that he had.  Still, Douxie could find no ill will in him against the Trollhunter.  He’d not been in control of his own mind.  Douxie had.

“I am so sorry,” Jim started, but Douxie immediately cut him off.

“It’s not your fault.  You weren’t you.  But me…”

“You have to see the truth,” Jim insisted urgently, now moving to take a seat on the bed next to his older friend.  Sure, they hadn’t known each other all that long, but going through the things they had and saving the world together tended to bring people closer together rather more quickly than usual, in his experience.  “It wasn’t your fault.  You did everything you could to save Merlin.  You took a sword in the gut for him.”  Douxie flinched internally at the reminder of the agony, the feeling of dying, the cold and the dark.  

“Yeah, Douxie,” Claire chimed in.  “You’re a hero.  You saved him.”

“If I’d had more control over that magic, if I’d channeled it a different way or done a different spell, then we might both be alive.”  He was so tired, but the conversation held him in its grip, and he couldn’t sleep anyway, he’d go back to the sword and Merlin’s death and the wizard’s tower where Merlin would tell him again that he’d failed.

“Douxie, you’re the one who’s been teaching me more magic!” Claire reminded him.  “One of the things I learned from my Shadow Staff - and that you’ve continued to show me - is that magic is emotion.  You can’t always control what magic is going to do when you are in a moment of fear or anger or desperation.  Magic reacts to your emotions.  And Jim’s right.  What you did was very brave and selfless.”

“That’s why Merlin gave his life to save you in return,” Archie added.  “That, and because he loved you, very much.”

Douxie felt the sting of hot tears carving pathways down his face and didn’t bother to wipe them off.  He felt like having a full-on temper tantrum, flopping onto his stomach and screaming and sobbing and slamming his fists into the ground and letting his magic explode out of him with all the force of the emotions and exhaustion that had built up inside.  He knew if he did that, though, he would just end up hurting someone else.

So he asked a question he was ashamed to ask, because it made it sound like he blamed Merlin instead of himself, “If he loved me, why did he leave?  Why didn’t he let me make my sacrifice?  It was like what I did didn’t matter.  I saved him because I don’t want to live without him, but that’s just what he forced me to do.”

Archie flapped off the desk and landed on the bed on the other side of his friend.  Placing a paw on Douxie’s leg, he spoke gently, as if to a lost child, “Merlin was a great wizard” -- Douxie sobbed -- “but he was also very selfish sometimes.  That comes with great power and an ego left unchecked paired with a very long life.  Merlin saved you because he couldn’t bear to think of a world without you in it.  Nor,” said the dragon, nuzzling Douxie’s elbow affectionately, “can I, for that matter.”

“But if I --”

“No buts,” said Archie.  “This was not your fault.  And I know Merlin told you the same.”

“He did,” Douxie admitted.  “But then he didn’t.  Every time I sleep, I see him, and he tells me… he tells me that I f-failed, that he’s d-dead because of me, and that I don’t deserve to live.”

“Oh, Douxie,” Claire breathed softly, sinking down into his desk chair.

“That’s not Merlin telling you that,” Jim spoke up.  Something raw lingered in his eyes.  “It’s the lies you are telling yourself.  I know because for weeks after the Darklands, I…” He cast his gaze briefly at Claire, and even in his semi-conscious state, Douxie got the feeling that he hadn’t even told his girlfriend this before.  “I had dreams every night of Claire, Toby, Blinky, Aaarrrgghh, everyone telling me I should have stayed in the Darklands.  Should have died there, because I wasn’t strong or brave enough, and I went in alone and betrayed them, and that they were better off and happier without me.  For a while, I believed them.”

Claire was crying quietly now, her hands pressed against her lips.

“But then,” Jim continued, “the more time I spent with my friends, and talked to them, I began to be able to separate their truth from my own lies.  Like I said earlier, you really need to talk to someone who gets it, you know.  And even though we’ve experienced a lot of the same things, it’s not me.”  He looked pointedly at the small black dragon who was currently in the same place he’d always been - at Douxie’s side.  

“I miss him too.”  Archie repeated his words from a few days ago.  “And I am here for you, Douxie.”  He must have seen the doubt festering in Douxie’s eyes and he reassured, “I do not blame you for what happened.  No one does.  The Merlin in your dreams is not real.  He is spitting your own self-doubts and guilt right back into your face, but deep down, you know the truth.  The real Merlin told you.  Jim and Claire told you.  And I am promising you - Merlin died because he chose to in order to save you because after all he had seen and done and all the years he’d lived, the one thing he was terrified of was having to light your funeral pyre.  And Merlin never did anything he didn’t want to do.  No one could have stopped him from making that choice.”

The words struck something deep inside of Douxie, and he felt the tiniest fraction of weight shift in his chest.  “M’be,” he slurred, so tired that his friends were all now blobs of blue, black, and purple.  A giant bruise.  He chuckled, a bit madly.  

“Okay, Douxie,” came Claire’s voice, distant and very close at the same time.  “I think you really need to lie down now.  You’ve been awake for too long.”

She and Jim helped him lie down.  Weakly, he protested, “I cn’t sleep.”

“You can,” said Jim.  “Take Archie’s words with you if you end up facing that dream-Merlin again.  Remember that we’re here for you.  None of us will leave you while you sleep, okay?”

“Yeah, we’ll be right here when you wake up, and if you have nightmares, we’ll remind you of the truth,” Claire promised.

“And I will guard you,” Archie vowed, retaking his cat form and curling up protectively over his closest friend’s heart.  “You are safe here.”

Douxie could resist the call of sleep no longer.  He closed his eyes and let it take him, and he felt the warm weight of Archie on his chest and the presence of his friends around him and the slightest of smiles curved his lips as he drifted off.

***

Thirty seconds after Douxie grew still upon the bed, his three friends let out a collective sigh of relief.  

Thirty seconds after that, Jim and Claire let out a collective yell of shock and Archie leapt to his paws, hissing and arching his back, as a giant, misty alarm clock appeared out of thin air and started screeching a terrible cacophony of wailing guitars and screaming vocals at top volume.

“What the--?” Claire shouted over the racket, slamming her hands over her ears.

“I forgot,” Archie called back, “he cast this spell to wake him up when he fell asleep.”

And yet, this time, Douxie still slept.

“Can you turn it off?” Jim yelled.

“No, only Douxie can undo the spell.”

Jim considered this for a moment and shook his head.  “Let him sleep.  He needs it.”  

And despite the loud, jarring music, he, Claire, and Archie kept their promise and stayed faithfully at their friend’s side until, four hours later, he woke up long enough to blessedly vanish the clock.

Then, like a little boy with a teddy bear, the already fading Douxie pulled a startled Archie into his arms and held him tight, curling up on his side with his furry prize.  Although uncomfortable in his new position and robbed of his draconian dignity, Archie snuggled in and purred, content to listen to the steady breathing of his deeply sleeping familiar.

[sylvanfreckles]

Just one more febuwhump to go! And it’s the doozy...the big finale, you might say. The ending. The happily-ever-after. The last chapter. No more after this. Maybe a reunion in five years. But probably not. Just cameos in other stories.

Okay, it’s a Supernatural one. I’m done teasing.

It’s also why “This is Gospel” has been stuck in my head since January.

My current writing plan is to finish Febuwhump, take a few days off, then hit some of the sequels/second chapters that have been requested (like another chapter to “Poisoned” and something with the promised Witcher Hugs from “Imprisoned”). Maybe do a couple of chapters for my other prompt fics on AO3. Then hit the ground running by the middle of the month for “Between the Dragon and His Wrath”.

And in between, finish crocheting Impaled!Castiel to go with my other Castiels.