#slash-person-i-swore-infinite-loyalty-to-out-of-bonedeep-nauseating-guilt

[cream-and-tea]

LAY ME DOWN. chapter thirteen excerpt. unedited. featuring: a spiraling pallas accidentally (and then very purposefully) listening in on judge and calliope as the two take a private moment to discuss their newly-formed plans. arguing and relationship conflict. death mention. eavesdropping with malicious intent.

[Transcript under the cut]

happy pride it’s judge and calliope time. alexa play steamroller by phoebe bridgers.

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“…not gonna be us.” The murmur drifts up, spoken with a firm certainty. Pallas, feeling distinctly gargoylelike, slides down until they can crouch by the arm the statue has cocked against its hip. Closer to the conspirators. All the better to hear you with.

“You don’t know that,” Calliope says, petulant and pouting as a child denied desert.

“I do. Come on, what is there to lose by losing us? I don’t know if you’ve noticed but we’re not exactly the most loyal knights in the kingdom. We just need this to work.” Judges voice is rawhided and definitive, as if the plan has already been carried out and the inevitable outcome insured. From here Pallas is startled to see that her hair is unbraided, so long now it falls well past the bottom of her back, lying against her shoulders like a raven-coloured cloak.

Calliope snorts, ever impetuous. “And you trust Fiver to know what he’s doing?”

“Of course I don’t, but he’s right that we’ve been hitting dead ends for years now. This might be wild enough to actually work.”

“And if it doesn’t?” Pallas wonders if anyone else notices how still Calliope goes when Judge touches them. With anyone else it would be too subtle to catch, but Calliope is so overwrought in everything he does that the quiet always overtakes her like a possession, not a natural state of being. Wet wool slung over a fire, honey-glaze smothering a cut of meat. It spreads from the point of contact (in this case Judges hands moving to rest on her hips) and swallows the rest of his body in wavering silence, eyes darting to the scars gored across one side of Judges face. Unless it’s a fight Calliope never initiates touch. If it’s a fight she always hits first.

“Then we find something else.”

“I mean if it never works, Judge,” Calliope huffs exasperatedly. “If it turns out the puzzle can’t be solved. What then?”

Trouble in paradise. It brings Pallas a gross sense of satisfaction to watch them fight, to see Calliope clumsily jab her fingers into every sore spot imaginable without even trying. Watching the spectacle he makes of himself almost makes them feel better about Agnes. Almost.

Judge laughs, and it’s not a kind sound. “You’re just saying that ‘cause you’re pissed and want to fight something. I won’t humour it. Besides, that’s not possible.”

“Why!” Pallas wonders whether the nights have been rough recently. Calliope is in a proper state, one that can only come from the wear of a particularly vile transformation.

“I don’t know Cal. Because if you open a door to get in a place you have to be able to open a door to get out of it? Because nothing else makes sense? Because I have a life, okay? I have a family, and I need to get back to them.”

“You don’t know that you do though! It’s been years! It’s the apocalypse! They could’ve left. They could be dead.”

Immediately after the words leave her mouth Pallas can see regret flood into Calliopes face. They watch with a sick, bubbling joy as her mouth opens and closes several times, obviously searching for something to say and finding nothing. Silence stretches and congeals between the two of them, a physical thing. Pallas almost feels like they could reach out and touch it, if they wanted to. The naked pain in Calliopes eyes is unmistakable even from a distance. If the words struck Judge like a physical blow her pain is reflected back onto Calliope tenfold, and Pallas watches the corners of his mouth work in a panic. They bite the inside of their cheek.

Three, two…

“I’m sorry,” Calliope blurts. Totally pathetic, but for some reason that doesn’t help Pallas feel any better. In fact how they can still predict these people is making things increasingly worse. They were supposed to be past this as well. Judge and Calliope are nothing to them now, relics of something long dead. At least they should be.

“I’m sorry,” Calliope repeats again. She drops to her knees in front of Judge, gathering her hands in theirs. Pallas suppresses the urge to vomit. “I'm sorry. That was a shit thing to say.”

Judges voice is so small and strained it’s barely audible. “…was.”

“I didn’t mean it. I didn’t.” The alien stillness shrouding Calliope is gone, instead replaced with a wild and tender desperation, every expression and movement raw as a new wound. There is nothing subtle about any of it and Pallas is safely smug that this lack of control is something they’ve been able to overcome that he never will. That is what separates the wheat from the chaff after all.

“I know Cal,” Judge sighs, not unbitterly. She detangles her non-scarred hand to comb it through Calliope's hair, and that aching stillness washes over them again. It’s the trembling quiet of a bull in a china shop, the silence of someone scared to move lest they break everything around them. Calliope lays her head down in Judges lap. Pallas has to lean closer, arms straining, to catch his next words.

“Please don't hate me forever,” she says miserably. “If you hate me forever I’ll die.”

“I do not. Hate you. Forever,” Judge sighs. “I’m just upset. There’s a difference.”