deercountry | Even the illusion of June is enough to send a stabbing pain through my chest

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Even the illusion of June is enough to send a stabbing pain through my chest

Who: Augustine the First and ____________ (This could be you!)
What: A little bit of everything, including Event threads, and who knows what else
When: Throughout June
Where: All around Trench; specific locations listed in TLs as necessary.

Content warnings for this character: Necromancer with visibility issues (still running a little bit Invisible Man) seeking CR for explicit gore/body horror as a matter-of-fact daily occurrence / being jaded AF about life in Trench and otherwise (look, man, he's older than dirt) / needs more people to be slutty at-or-with (bearing in mind he is, again, currently at-least-mostly Invisible, you/your character's kinks/mileage May Vary, player more interested in vague/FTB/finessing a scene than anything explicit). Also, his omen is his brother, and also a venomous snake, and also really chatty.

Specific warnings for this post: Nightmares featuring a lot of violence, including self-inflicted/suicide; various types of religious imagery/discussions, definitely including "taking the Lord's Name in vain"; invisible nude spying on God (might get spicy).

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

One of the benefits of undeath--double-edged as those always were--is Illarion doesn't have nightmares. He doesn't dream, either--can't even really sleep, which might have implications for how corrupted he grows over time--but at least he hasn't been having nightmares in the wake of his little adventure.

Not that he's been acting like everything is fine or back to normal, either; he still hasn't reached that equilibrium, even after weeks. Able physician as he is of others' hearts, he's (of course) refused to diagnose the cause of his own particular lassitude... But had known, on some dim level, that honoring his invitation to Augustine (and Alfred) might do him some kind of good.

Thus, he was at the Gilded Calf at the beginning of the dinner hour, a dour little patch of black-and-white amongst the understated furniture and tasteful golden idols of the Pthumerians. And thus he'd waited for all the hours it had taken Augustine and Alfred to cross from Gaze to Cassandra, patient and still as a thing dead (the waitstaff had even given up on him) until Alfred's greeting stirs him from his silent vigil. He blinks once from behind his veil; at his left hand, Iskierka looks up and carols a greeting at the approaching pair. "Not too long," the shrike replies reflexively, through his Omen--answering before either of them can clock Augustine's appearance, and take a moment's pause in so-doing.

Or not clock his appearance, in Iskierka's case. The shell of the man's clothing is there, but it's wrapped around a hollow that her poor little avian brain can make neither hide nor hair of. Illarion--in this instance unimpaired by sight--is quicker to pick up on the physical tells that there's something very wrong with the other man, something that makes sudden sense of the unwonted concern in Alfred's cheerful voice. He rises from his own seat as Augustine arrives (and stares at him, or so he inexpertly reads from the set of the human's grave ~~and beloved~~ features), expression fleetingly troubled. "I'm well, but you seem half-drowned in Hell's River."

Without even having to think about it, he's using the elven tongue they'd have shared, if the memories were real. It feels right--and more to the point, it doesn't matter one way or the other with the blood magic. (He'd hope, anyway. If he thought about it. Not everyone got a clear translation of all the languages he could speak--but this feels right to use, and so--)

"What's wrong, Ava?" The diminutive slips out before he can catch it, and by then it's too late to do anything.

I'm well, he says, but before Augustine can murmur some relevant pleasantry, before his mind can think about the way his tongue wants to curve in order to respond, there are other words making themselves known to him.

half-drowned in Hell's River and he's more right than he knows, of course he is — there's a part of Augustine that's still there, a part of him that will always be there, no matter what God or the Pthumerians may try to do, in bringing him here — this body, no matter how familiar it feels, is still wrong, still inhuman, the very blood in his veins has become something unbearably alien and bloodless, fruit and dust and mouldering books, temptation and despair and fucking glitter — his soul is his own, he thinks, on most days, but his body will always, always, always be trapped in the Hell found at the crushing bottom of the River.

(He remembers every myriadic second of the time he spent there — every moment seared into synapse, overwriting the memories stolen from him, those precious few memories he could never bear to lose, slipping through his desperate fingers — what else is Hell, but the unraveling of everything you ever were, everything you wanted to be, until you are nothing at all but the hunger that will perpetuate this curse on the next victim to come in range? What is Hell, but wondering if lost Ulysses was the one siphoning away his long-cherished memories of Ulysses?)

Alfred is wrapped tightly around his shoulders again, squeezing hard enough to bruise, but it's the serpent's tongue flickering all the way to his tympanic membrane that shocks him into movement, reflexively slapping at Alfred's already-withdrawing head.

What's wrong, Ava?

He doesn't know. He doesn't have the slightest clue why he can't focus — why everything is dragging at him — why —

"I'm —"

"Hey," he hears, the words clearly in Alfred's voice. "Can you meet me at the north balcony, ASAP? There's something I want to show you, and I'm going to need your help."

(He's shuddering, no matter how tightly he holds himself under control; there are tears burning in his eyes like acid rain, and he cannot bear the way this mask is smothering him, suddenly — he jerks it off with fumbling fingers, the zipper tearing at his skin, the injury healing almost before the dust of his blood shimmers to the surface.)

"I just don't know how long it'll be before this is over and done, and I can't begin to tell you how much you won't want to miss it."

"No," Augustine whispers into his hands, unable to feel the weight of Alfred coiled around his shoulders anymore — how can he, when he's so far away? "No, no, no, don't —"

Don't make me say this again. Don't make me see this again.

There's another soul near him — one he knows better than he should, better than he ought to be able to know — his hand shoots out (too fast) to clutch at a sleeve, a wrist, a wing, whatever might be close enough to remind him that he's here, he's now —

(There's a mirror on the far wall, in the back, near the bathrooms — a reflection shows a moderately-young man, well-muscled but slender, his sandy blond hair cut shaggy and haphazard in front of steely grey eyes watching Augustine and ignoring the shrike sitting opposite him. A woman leaving the bathroom interrupts the line of his gaze; when she finishes crossing in front of the mirror, there's nothing there but the view of the room itself.)

"I don't know," he whispers, in words too intimate to be spoken outside a bedroom, or at least in the most profound privacy — words he last spoke in this order in a bedroom, in his bedroom, tangled together in a nest that never existed. "I — help — please, Cas —"

His breath stops, in something too much like a sob, too much like a weakness, too much emotion for him to bear — too much for him to have ever shown — except the once.

It is not the first time Illarion has watched someone begin coming apart at the seams from waking nightmares. The signs--pleading conversation with something not-there, tearing at the self in a horrible spasm, grabbing at anyone or anything known to be solid--are aching-familiar, and the shrike goes still for a beat of a mortal heart as Augustine (Ava, Agushka, his dear one, still his, says memory) begins the uncontrolled slide down that slope.

And there is something clinging to the other Sleeper's back.

The shrike has not witnessed this before himself but he recognizes it on the instant. Even if he has been disconnected from the life around him, lax in all but his duties to gods and Pthumerians, this falls firmly within a Disciple's remit, this had been the talk of the Pale Sanctuary as the advent of Remina's month loomed over Trench. Augustine grabs at him outwardly, clutches feathers in a way that makes Illarion ruffle them in acted alarm, before he's reaching back and moving round the table to gather the taller man to him. Help, please.

How can he not? How can he not, even when the thing in him that craves suffering stirs to see someone hurting so openly (and whispers there is a way to kill these demons he'd enjoy very much, if he'd just take talons to it--) (no, inconceivable: he doesn't really know the man, but it would be like lifting a hand to his own family). "Shh, shh," he breathes between his fangs. "Don't weep, Ava. I'll help. Of course I'll help."

Convenient, they're in Cassandra--convenient, they're in an establishment catering to the one profession most prone to swoons, faints, and sudden violent visions sweeping them up--an establishment that's made certain conveniences available for the most prophetic of Trench's people. Illarion lifts his head, ((feeling)) for the nearest of the staff--finds one already hovering nearby, since this kind of fit really is something they see all the time. "Your ritual room?" the shrike only has to ask, and the robed woman's all too happy to escort them to a quiet little place in the back with a heavy wooden door and walls studded in Paleblood stone.

There is a fainting couch; there are cushions on the floor. It's toward the former Illarion urges Augustine, keeping at least a hand on the man all the while. Brusque as he's being, he can still project a little worried fondness as he says, "Sit."

And then, more worryingly: "Do you trust me to see what's haunting you?"

He has learned to ask--even if now may not be the time for such caution. He has learned to ask, because the Waking World is never so eager to do anything to Sleepers as to put them in each other's heads, and rip open each other's secrets--especially the ones they'd least like exposed.

He must ask, because he thinks Augustine might have asked, if he'd known what Nephele-that-isn't would have shown him--and he wishes to at least give lip service to that, even if urgency demands he not bother.

There is nothing of coordination in how Augustine moves: he is disjointed, a mechanized marionette being fed down the incinerator's chute, disarticulated and discarded and trapped in a Hell of another's making — or, worse, of his own.

There is nothing remarkable at all in how Alfred moves: he has moved Augustine's body, keeping it safe from harm, a myriad myriad times; this is no different — except, perhaps, that his serpentine body vanishes, absorbed once more into his brother's, from whence it came, as he takes over and moves smoothly (as a dancer, as a swordsman, as an elf) in tandem with Cassowary and the unnamed attendant.

Do you trust me to see what's haunting you?

"I guess I'll have to," Alfred answers — and freezes, startled by his words, startled by his brother's voice forming them (in English, a language no one from the Nine Houses has claimed to speak in thousands of years) —

And then Augustine drops, as the marionette's strings are cut, but that's fine, with those cushions on the ground; he doesn't even hit his head on anything, and only gives the slightest hiss (of pain, of irritation) as he awkwardly drags himself more fully onto his cushion.

(That reflection, outside, glances back at the table where they'd been sitting — and scowls, and walks away, out of the frame of the mirror.)

Cassowary's question echoes in the room, or in his nightmare-blinded mind — is there a difference, really? — do you trust me? — and he knows he needs to answer it, but he also keeps shaking his head, as if it's going to get rid of a fly buzzing by his ear.

He knows the words he wants to say; when he opens his mouth his voice is wrecked again, by the screams and sobs of his soul's entrapment in the River's Hell, but his words are in an ancient language gone to the birds — "Whenever I am afraid, I put my trust in thee," he croaks, reaching blindly for the one person who still hasn't lied to him, who still hasn't betrayed him, who still fucking cares what happens to him —

"I'm just leaving the library now — I'll be there in what, ten minutes? Think you can hold on that long to whatever it is?" — "I guess I'll have to," Alfred answers.

(The fact that Cas seems to know what to do is such a relief, lifting such a weight off Augustine's heart, that he could cry, again — that he is crying, again — but the dark trails of glittering seawater on his cheeks are just as invisible as Ninth House greasepaint had been — it's only when they sublimate to Omen smoke, letting Alfred reform and hover an arm's length above his fallen saint of a brother, that any of it can be seen at all — but then, the attendant shut the door from the outside, so who's to see anything that occurs in this room?)

As smoothly as Alfred's taken over for his beleaguered brother, Illarion's traded remembered-panic for the icy nervelessness of the working Unearthed soldier. He doesn't flinch or falter at the wrong voice from Ava's mouth, or at how the other Sleeper slumps bonelessly, or speaks in words that resonate of scripture. (Familiar and not-familiar--it isn't the Laments of the Saints or any cult text Illarion's ever heard of, from monolaters or pantheists or otherwise, but it has yet the same flavor of verses Augustin-that-wasn't shared with his young pledge-spouse.) He reaches for Ava's reaching, catching the hands outthrust toward him as he settles crouching across from his--from his friend, from this beleaguered flock-member who has only him.

"Let me continue worthy of it," he murmurs, of the trust that's been placed in his hands as surely as the palms resting against his.

Then, louder, more firmly--the voice of someone used to giving swift instruction even in the worst of circumstances, "Shortly, after a count of three, I'll close my eyes. Close yours with me to have me join you in your nightmare.

"One--"

(There's a little more to his briefing yet, but given the sea-salt scent of terrible grief in the air--given Augustine's tenuous contact with reality--he considers it better to hope they'll have a quiet moment on the other side of closed eyelids, before the stalking horror begins in earnest.)

"I hear you, любимый," he whispers, blindly clinging — knowing that the corollary is important —

"Two," he hears, and he knows, he knows it, he knows what he needs to do —

There's something I want to show you, and I'm going to need your help —

He's out of time, isn't he? He's been out of time for nearly ten thousand years, that's the point, that's what's going to kill him, kill both of ~~him~~ them (all three of them?) —

«Open your eyes,» Alfred says — repeats — orders — and when that doesn't work, he vanishes from the sight of any mirror in the room, diving back into his brother's soul, and forces them open, just in time for two mouths in unison to form the word

"Three —"

Augustine's eyes close again, even as his mind and heart cling madly to the sight of Cassowary's inhuman gold-pennies-on-black, hoping for (afraid, petrified, to hope for) a miracle, for that promised, hinted, merest chance of help —

"Hey," he hears, his brother's voice tinny over the phone line — and it's still strange, all these decades later, that they even have cellular signal, now, at Canaan House — stranger still whenever he considers the way fifty skeletons and five hundred souls provide so much of the energy used to power that signal, rather than the full ossuaries found in the colony-habitats of the other planets, but that isn't the point; that's not why Alfred is calling. "Can you meet me at the north balcony, ASAP? There's something I want to show you, and I'm going to need your help."

"Oh, don't tell me you've gotten stuck hanging from a rafter trying to get photos of those strange sharks, again," he objects, phone up against one ear as he leaves a weighted leather bookmark (one that lovingly preserves a truly beautiful tattoo) to keep his place in his current tome in the library, mostly so that nobody will come shelve it yet.

Alfred's laughter doesn't sound quite right — strained, somehow — but that's surely just down to discomfort over the reminder, and knowing it'll probably be at least another forty years before Augustine stops teasing him about it. "No, no, nothing like that," he promises glibly. "I just don't know how long it'll be before this is over and done, and I can't begin to tell you how much you won't want to miss it."

"Fine, fine, keep your pants on," he grumbles, starting to lope out into the hallway. "I'm just leaving the library now — I'll be there in what, ten minutes? Think you can hold on that long to whatever it is?"

There's something wrong about the silence, too — it lasts too long, and there's too harsh a breath in it — something metallic ringing, something flesh-or-fabric tearing — before Alfred's very mild "I guess I'll have to, even though I could do it in five."

"Yeah, well, that's why I keep you around, isn't it?" Augustine shoots back at him, laughing, not in any particular rush (even though he should be running like the explosion's shockwave is gaining on him, desperately hoping he might make it to safety). "Because someone's got to be willing to do something that miserable, and it isn't going to be me!"

"I — yeah... Yeah, I guess so," his baby brother murmurs, thoughtful, wry, affectionate, maybe a little distracted. "I'll see you in a bit, yeah? And —" His pause is brief; maybe just looking enough to weigh between two or three options of what to say next: please hurry, maybe, or I'm sorry, or "Love you, brother," as quick and light and easy as he's said it ten thousand times before. "One flesh, one end, yeah?"

"That's still just such a terrible turn of phrase," he objects instantly, rolling his eyes at Alfred's sigh. "Be right there," and he hangs up without telling his brother how much it means to him to have his brother, in this Resurrected World, still beside him, as they serve God together; without indulging his beloved brother's solemn delight in a silly little phrase; without demanding that he undo whatever he's already done, that he not do whatever it is he's about to do. He hangs up, and he ambles on peacefully, instead of continuing on at a dead run, and — eventually — he gets to the north balcony, overlooking the endless ocean, scoured by the constant salt-laden wind, silenced by the weight of noise from the ceaseless pounding surf far below.

Alfred is leaning forward, against the balcony, looking out over the ocean, or looking down at the rocks at the base of the cliff — very hard to say which, especially from this angle. "All right, I'm here — what did you want to show me?" Augustine calls, and Alfred starts to turn, and

N̷̲̠̦͍̪̈́͒̈́̏͘̚o̸̟͙̟̰̜͕̫͐̓͛̈́̀́͛̓̍̌̌̏̏͑͜͠͝.̷̫̞̲̥̰͎̞̮͓͈̖̭̪͇̝̎͑̃͛͊̀̎͊͌̓͐̏͒ͅ ̷̜̳̘͑̔̇̏͝ͅS̶̛͖̯̉̑͗̅̓̄̊̑̓̔̅͠ẗ̵̢̧̡̡͎̖̼̫̫̪̤̥͚́̒͝ơ̸͍͓̘͍̤̈́̋͆̌̋̈́̂́̈̆̅͊̚͘͝p̶̢̢̢͕̞̦̝̼̱̯̼̑̄̐̏̔͌̅͛̌̔͑̇̂̕͝ ̶͚̩̙͉̤̳͍͂̌̃͒͛̾͐͒͋̐͋̕̕͜͝n̶̻̯͎͙̖̗̭͇̼͎̠̝͖̼̱̟͙̾̉͗͒̿͐̌͒̀̾̉͠o̸̡̿̑̔̈̈́͊̒̽̒̏̓ẉ̸̧̱̤̙̥̗̫̯̠͍̱̙͖͈̖͛̑̌̈̈̈́̈̀,̸̫͇́̃̈̆̇͆̃͌͂̏̃̃͠ ̷̘͚̜̬̆͒̀͋̏̋̍͗̏̽̕w̵̛͉͓͕͎͉͒̈̆͑̀͆͌̄̈́̃͠ḩ̴̤͎̻̲̜̝̝̞̱͓̜͚̗͓̯̍̄͆̆̈́͐̿͌̐̽͋͠i̷̧̼͓̘̻̻͉͚͎͈͕̖̲̟̝̋̍̉̑̄̏̎͊͗̈́̊͜ḻ̴̛̱̠͎̰͍̃̈̅̌͊e̷̗͇͖͎̝̬̖̺͂̑ ̸̺̦͗͗̿͆̌̒͛͊̑̈́͘t̴̡̠͎̣͓̖̱̟̯͕̖̻͉̆͋͌̃̿̂͘h̸̳͙̋̔͜é̷̹̪͕̣̺̙͔̓̍ͅͅr̷̨̜̜͖̠̬̦̱͖̯̉̾̆̈̋̋̀̽̅̓̊͘̕͠͝ͅę̴̢̻̞̱͖̳͖͉͓͍̄̾̄̈̃̍̕̕̕͝'̶̢̣̙̹̯̮̙̫̬̼͙̥̐̂́̒̈́̆̃̈́̐͑̈̔͘͜͜͝ş̶̡͇̞͖̯̲͚̜͎͈͔̬̯̏̊ ̸̢̩̣͉̺̲͖͉̹̖̥͓̥̉̅͋͆̈́͝͝s̸͍͈͈̰̰͛́̈́̇̈̎̇̊̈́͒̋̕͝ţ̵̛͈̦̖̜̙̪̰͔̜̮̎̑̅͐̊̈́̂͂̓̃̈́͠ĩ̷̧̡̱̬͚̼͚͙̼̟̲̼̤͙͕̟ͅļ̸͍͍̝̒ͅl̵̨͉̣̟͇̟̙̟̞̻̒̑̓̿͋ ̵̼͑͆͗͛̿̓̊͂͐̊̑͐̊̀͝å̶̡̺̬̻̤͔̖̱̣̻̝̟̿̔͛͜͜ ̷̳̘̟̝͔̤͍͔̬̙͚̟͚͚̠̝͌̾̋͋͂̆̀͘͘̕͜͠͝c̵̭͙̝̩̪̰͕̦͎̹̺̟͍̳̐͋̿͂͝h̵̨͔̮͈͊͊͆͛̅̉̄͒̈́̀́̓̃̿̚͝á̵̝͖͚̥̤̬̹̫͓̻̦͇͕̳͕̪̈̉̔̈́̓̽̒̂̚ͅṉ̴̐̌͆̊̐̄͊̈́c̴̲̺̠̝͎̺̱͚͙̤̄́̏ͅe̷̢̢̝̫͉̿̂͆̈́̓̈́͌̐̕͠.̴̢̡̻̄̍̒͛͋͋̒̊ ̷͙̹̻̝̺̮̳̇̌̈́́̔̊̂̋̃̈̇͋Ỳ̸̢̪̻̰̖̝͎̪̬͎̟̪̣̱̽̌̔̆̾̔͐͋̅̕o̶̡̢̢̹̱̫̬̥͕̟̯̽͛̽̍̑͂̊̈̊̿̈͒̓̑̚͜͠͝ṵ̵͓̽̇̆̇̆̀̐̆̾̏̈͆̿̆̕͜͝ ̷̧̖̺̣̘̱̻͐́̌́̒̔̉͐͗̈̊c̶̨̧̝͚̜̱̙͇̔̇͒̽͋́̊̒̎̏̏̾͂ą̴͈̦̻̺͉̗̼͉͊̇͑̍̂́͛̄̀̓̌̊͋͛n̵̜̱̋̑̐͘ ̴̡̻͖͔̮͈̮̱̠͓̞͓̻̳̺͊̅́̇̑̓̽̓͊̈́͐̄͛̕̚s̸̲̖̥̄̄̾̀͂̀̅̏̓͗̏̐͜͠ȁ̶̹̥̲͇̗̦͍̋̈̄̐̐̅̊͒͑̀̆͘̕͜v̸̧̦͈̜̩͚͕̮̪͖̝͕͉̦̏̓̀̀̔̒̊̕͝ͅë̵̡̬͉̺͎͈́͐̂̂̄͐̋̚̚͝ͅ ̵̻͖̮͈̭̗͉̜̓̈́̅h̷̛̛̠̪̩͕͇̜͓̖̫̰̘̤̯͙͉̅̽̈̀͛̐̽́͛̓̽̓͝í̸̧̨̫̠̱̮̬͎͇͖͇͍̜͉̝̝̀̀́͋̒͌m̵̤͙͓̼͇̞̼̤͓̱̘͆̉͆̅̓̄̂̓͋͘͝ ̸͇̦̰̜̳̯̗̰̬͖͍̟̥̈͊͐̌͜͜t̶̡͚̗͇̼͍̠͚̱̳̞͖̘̟̲̗͗̒͑ͅh̵̢̡̬̟̰̼̬͙͉̗̿̍̓̓̈ḯ̴̮̩͚̪̳̱͓͍̪̟̮͇̱͔̻̑͑̿͋̊̓̈́̀̅́̐̇̀̃͠s̵͕͈͙͉̰̪̘͇̞̱̄͗͊̑͐͐͐͋̑̓̎̈́̚͘ ̵̦̗̣̳̆́ẗ̴̨͕͓̳́̆̂͐̚̕i̵̛͓̬̒m̶̨̢͕̹͎͍̟̬̤̪̙͎͙̈́͆͒̓̄̈́̆͋̄̕e̴̡̯͚͔͚̳̤̮̝̘͇͉̭̎̓̽̆̈́̒̈̌͝ͅ,̴̧͚̦̞̞͕̭͚̋̍̂ ̴̣̥̼̦͙̇̓̌̔̇͂̒̄͋̇̍͂͒̇͗͂͝c̶̛͕̗͓͇͍̲̥̟̪̗̝̩͚̯͑̌̓̿̒̿̌͆͌̆͛̕͠͝a̷̧̡̩͇͖̩̥͍̼̟̤̼̺͇͓͕̤̒͛̀͒͂͋͑́̀̉̉̕n̷̡̢͙̩͈̰̗̭̫͈̏͑͛͋̋͛́̑̀͝'̶̛̛͎͔̯͌̄̀͆͐̿͌̍̄̏̄͋̈̚͝ͅͅť̸̛̗͙̫̟̘͛̈̐̊̉̈́̍̑͗̍͑͒͠ ̸̡̘̘̮͈͔͓̺͓͂̇ẙ̵̨̧̧̱̱̺͙͖̦͍̘̊̈̈́̉̎͒͒̋̕͝o̵̢̞̯̗̯̣̼̰͑̋͋̂̊͝u̶̡̬̯̹̹̹̼̲̲̗̾͐͐͊̂̅̈́͌͘͝͠?̵̨̨̗̤̤̖͚͚̰̹̘̲̾̇͛̎̑̒̕͜

(too late)

there's a faint silver glint, tumbling from the railing to land on the ground by Alfred's feet, but the much bigger issue lies in the way the white-marble railing is so very red, just where he'd been standing — in the way his white shirt's sleeves are flapping in a wet red ombre in the sea's breeze, all seams intact and the fabric slit open with near-surgical precision — in the way Alfred's tanned skin is washed out, pale and clammy and chilled, his mouth nearly erased in the blueing light of dusk — in the way he stumbles, the way he falls, uncoordinated, legs collapsing under him as gracelessly as if his spinal cord had just been cut — in the way his heart is vibrating, more than beating, so fast and so weak — in the way he feels Alfred's energy, his life, less than halfway in the body collapsing before him (as finally, finally he breaks into a pathetic, uncoordinated shamble of a run), but rather mostly dripping in a too-long, too-wide streak down the cliff face, already almost far enough for the incoming tide to claim a taste.

"What?" he chokes out; "no!"

But it doesn't matter; he knows it doesn't, even as he pours everything in him into his brother, even as his own blood joins the stains on both of their shirts; it's too late, he's too late, he can't even stop to call God for help because stopping means that Alfred's heart will fail completely — even though already, he knows (he refuses to admit) it only is beating because he refuses to let it stop beating —

"You've," Alfred breathes, and Augustine is already shaking his head, not looking at Alfred; looking is meaningless when he's half-blinded with a dark film of red coming over his vision, ten thousand capillaries bursting in his eyes and his nose, blood smeared over his face and his sleeve and he tries to force it to fuel this desperate attempt to close these too-deep injuries, to sustain this impossibly sacred life in his arms, and he doesn't even know if he says to Alfred Keep quiet, save your strength, you need it, but Alfie's voice is picked up by the wind just barely enough to hear — "do it," and "my choice," and "one f-fl—," and he waits for the rest of the word, he fights, harder than he has ever fought in his entire centuries-long life, he fights to keep his brother alive, to keep his soul anchored, exactly where it belongs, and he

fails

and he is holding on to his brother's soul, now, with everything he has left; his vision is gone dark, lost to nightfall or ocular damage or both, he can't begin to care; there's a high keening sound riding on the wind, painful to imagine, let alone to hear, and he's pressing his fists against his mouth, heedless of the blood, and it's not muffling his screams enough to silence them — and he lets go.

It can't be like this; it can't. How could God, who raised Alfred as His second disciple, not even a minute after raising Augustine himself, possibly decide to demand his death?! There has to be another way — another way to survive the perils of distance away from God's light —

He can't see anything, collapsed sobbing across Alfred's blood-soaked corpse; he can see the blindingly-bright radiance of his brother's perfect and good soul, bathing him in a purifying light he will never deserve, and for one last, eternal, stretched-out heartbeat, he feels Alfred's firm grip wrapped around his shoulders.

One flesh, Alfred's shade insists, coaching him gently, the ineffable grace and hope in his expression unbearably clear in the silver-blue luminescence swirling under his skin; he raises his eyebrows, encouraging even now, at the absolute last.

"One end," Augustine sobs, broken and defeated, because he failed; he could not save Alfred, and now he cannot let him go, as he should —

— but then Alfred would be lost to him, forever.

Augustine lets go of himself, even as he holds on to Alfred; he doesn't care, anymore, what's going to happen — if this is going to kill him but spare Alfred, if it's going to leave them both dead, how could that matter? And Alfred's soul knows its place — just behind him, just off to the side; the right place for any cavalier, in service to his necromancer.

When he opens his eyes, the light is all wrong; it's after sunset, but a blue-white star is blazing, so very brightly, just under his skin, which is as young and wholesome as it ever is, these days — no longer showing the bloody devastation bursting forth from every cell as he recklessly overdrew, more and more —

He rises, with a criminal grace (stolen from his brother), and carefully dons his brother's belt, with its rapier and smallsword; he bends, and picks up Alfred's too-light body, and carries him inside with a blank expression and knees that don't tremble at all.

He will ask — he will beg — but he already knows the answer. (He already knew the answer the very first time he asked, almost ten thousand years ago; how many times has it replayed, now, in this endless, unbroken loop?) He will go down on his knees in front of the Emperor of the Eight Houses, covered in his brother's blood; he will beg for clemency, for grace, for a reward for the highest and most loyal service, and he will be denied all of these, as God will shrug and tell him that there is nothing he can do to give Augustine another chance to keep Alfred alive, but isn't he pleased to be the First Saint to Serve the King Undying?

Of course, my Lord, his mouth will say, and his heart won't stop screaming until it has wasted away entirely.

"Hey," he hears, his brother's voice tinny over the phone line. "Can you meet me at the north balcony, ASAP? There's something I want to show you, and I'm going to need your help."

"Three."

Illarion closes his eyes. The textured darkness around him doesn't change for it.

Then it does, and he quickly finds his hope of a quiet moment to explain thoroughly dashed.

As Augustine steps out onto the balcony for the first-and-millionth time, his shadow ramifies into a thing-with-feathers that shakes itself and blinks a hundred golden eyes at its half-hallucinatory vision of the sea. Sight, as Illarion knows it in shared dreaming, is always a shock to the system; it isn't the reawakening of his killed visual apparatus but something that piggybacks on the dreamer's mind, with all their subjective interpretations and meaning attached. The bleeding man center-vision is so bright with significance and so black with despair that looking at him's like staring into an eclipse, and thus it takes the shrike until Augustine's fallen at his brother's side to recognize Alfred.

It's far too late to intervene by then--he doesn't need to be a necromancer, borrowing from a stronger one, to know the moment Alfred breathes his last--and so he watches. The greater dispassionate whole of him doesn't even feel apologetic about watching; he needs this and will get it, some way or another, to break the nightmare and dispel its causal agent. (Worse than needing to know the nightmare itself: He needs to know the real event that generated it, the mistake that left this primal wound and the infection that festered in its wake.)

The little piece of Illarion that remembers how Ava also wept and raged for Sasha's death is nothing but apologies as he follows (pathetic cortege) Augustine-bearing-Alfred to God's presence, and does nothing at all but watch. Then--loop, repeat--does nothing at all but watch the establishing moments that bring them once again back to that blood-drenched balcony.

He does not understand all he's seen by then. He estimates his grasp on the situation somewhere around a quarter, at best. But Augustine has also not noticed the shrike following him--no surprise--through what is, presumably, the worst day of his too-long life, and it's an easy bet he will never notice (and be trapped forever) if Illarion remains a mere passive bystander.

So this time he steps past Augustine in that first shocked and staring second the man lays eyes on his brother, already reaching for the tin of Vileblood-soaked bandages he keeps in his hunter's kit--

And finds himself thrown over the balcony into the sea.

(Loop, repeat.)

"Ava. Ava, wait. Talk to me."

The look of politely curious unrecognition in Augustine's eyes hits the shrike harder than he expected. Whatever qualm it evokes he ignores, instead pulling his--friend?--into a discussion of how he got into Canaan House in the first place, as they make their way slowly to the balcony.

Alfred is dead and gone by the time they arrive. Illarion learns a very interesting lesson on certain necromantic theorems that unleash a necromancer's life in one great thanergetic burst.

(Loop, repeat.)

Even dying, Alfred's a formidable force and refuses his own rescue. Somehow, inexplicably, he can still lay hands on Illarion's out-self and it's worse than wrestling another shrike because he has no reciprocal leverage.

They both end up in the waves that time.

(Loop, repeat.)

It's fruitless, as a corpse, to try physically subduing a necromancer of the ~~Eight~~ Nine Houses. Illarion tries anyway to drag Augustine back from the sight of his dying brother.

Dissolving into a pile of feather and ash doesn't hurt as much as it should.

(Loop, repeat.)

He follows Augustine all the way to the Emperor, this time. An echo of frustration and desperation both drive him to attack the real cause of Alfred's suicide, castigating this black godling for whatever let or made him fail his First Saint and First Martyr.

Alfred's rapier is just as accurate in Augustine's hands, it turns out. A heartstrike with it should not have been fatal, with Illarion already dead, but a deathwish executed in the logic of dreams overrides his own undeath.

(Loop, repeat.)

It doesn't go any better when he leaps at the Emperor with a scaling howl and talons (and talons, and talons) spread wide, every eye and ~~eye~~ open in existential threat. At least this time the dream's setting shifts and he finds himself drowning not in the ocean but a river ever-wider than any ocean, thrown there by a furious Monarch and held down by a new-made Lyctor who (Illarion does not know this) knows much more than he should about fighting dimensional horrors.

That's new, he thinks in the last second before the great gaping mouth on the riverbed swallows him.

(Loop, repeat.)

"Oh, don't tell me you've gotten stuck hanging from a rafter trying to get photos of those strange sharks, again," Augustine is saying, for the first-or-thousandth time, and Illarion stands in the shadow of the library stacks taking silent stock of his every failure. A dozen tactics down, a gross more to try--but oh, Argonaut, he thinks, in mute prayer; his fingers close on the cloth-shrouded lump of the phial hung among his other god-symbols. Weak light leaks between them.

Grant your servant eyes unclouded by despair--

Wait.

One of the bookshelves he'd bled on--some iteration ago--is still broken in the shape of his body, traces of glittering Darkblood holding it static against resetting. Illarion stares at it, then at Augustine's retreating back.

Then he bites the heel of his hand, deep, and reaches-without-reaching to shove the reality of the dream. Golden ~~eyes~~ open on every nearby surface, demanding notice. "Ava, Augustine, see me!" the shrike commands.

The nightmare itself listens, and notices, and shifts--

Edited 2022-08-01 03:59 (UTC)

Space and time hiccup.

As Augustine steps out onto the balcony for the first-and-millionth time, his shadow ramifies into a thing-with-feathers that shakes itself and blinks a hundred golden eyes at its half-hallucinatory vision of the sea. Sight, as Illarion knows it in shared dreaming, is always a shock to the system; it isn't the reawakening of his killed visual apparatus but something that piggybacks on the dreamer's mind, with all their subjective interpretations and meaning attached. The bleeding man center-vision is so bright with significance and so black with despair that looking at him's like staring into an eclipse.

Alfred is leaning forward, against the balcony, looking out over the ocean, or looking down at the rocks at the base of the cliff — very hard to say which, especially from this angle. "All right, I'm here — what did you want to show me?" Augustine calls, and Alfred starts to turn, and

"Ava, Augustine, see me!" the shrike commands.

Time and space hiccup — (loop, repeat) — until the sun is gone, the moon is gone, the stars are gone and the sky is not a sunset but only a formless grey void shattered with the glittering sparkling nebulae of darkblood — (loop, repeat) — golden ~~eyes~~ open, are opening, have already opened on every nearby surface, demanding notice, demanding "Ava, Augustine, see me!"

Alfred starts to turn, and

(The look of politely curious unrecognition in Augustine's eyes hits the shrike harder than he expected)

Space and time hiccup in a repeating loop that says: "Ava, Augustine, see me!"

Time and space hiccup in a repeating loop that says: (too late)

The nebulae expand, overwriting the grey void of the sky, and the grey stone of the balcony, and the too-red slick streak of Alfred's vitality poured out in solemnly reverent love for God, and everything the dark and glittering blood-dust touches is frozen

(too late)

and the color is leached from it, and the dimensionality is leached from it, and it is a matte painting on a flat surface and Alfred is gone, he is already gone, he has been gone for the better part of ten thousand years and the worst part is that he was never here, this is only a nightmare —  Alfred starts to turn, and he is frozen, mid-turn, still alive, for this briefest of possible moments that lasts an eternity as Augustine turns and looks at the bloodstained soldier-disciple-shrike standing before him, behind him, beside him, right there —

"You're not supposed to be here," he says, but it's in a child's tone — confused, bewildered, unable to comprehend that which is before him and therefore on the verge of awareness that nothing actually makes sense; that the monster isn't the one he fears under the bed, even if it might still be real; that there's something else going on here other than what he thinks —

(loop, repeat: too late)

"All right, I'm here — what did you want to show me?" Augustine calls, and Alfred isn't really here; he's just a painting of a memory of a moment when Alfred was lost.

There's nothing here.

There's no here, here; there's only a moment, wherein Augustine is lost and a shrike is still bleeding.

You're not supposed to be here.

"Neither are you," the shrike replies, gently, before Augustine can turn away from him again; and before Augustine can turn back to the frozen scene, addressing the brother who isn't there, Illarion reaches to grip his shoulder with a bloodied hand.

"Ava--Agushka. Wait. Talk to me." He puts what few spare ounces of pleading he has in him in his face, his tone; it is not the best look on an animate corpse, but it is an effort to be more than he is--to be the living man who once-and-never married an Augustine that didn't exist.

"Tell me what this nightmare is about, dear one. So we can find a way out of it together."

Space and time hiccup.

There are fragmentary moments, here, but they're all happening everywhere, all at once:

There's a young man — only a few centuries old, if that, showing astonished surprise as a stranger reaches for him, covered in blood. "Wait, what — bloody hell, mate, you look wrecked, let me fix that for you," he says, and reaches for that bloody hand to mend it, the look on his face the simple combination of compassionate concern and concentration.

Hiccup:

There's an ancient elf, teal feathers and silver hair, pacing toward the (painted designation of a) railing, to look out over the (vaguely-signified) sea. Agushka, he hears, and glances over; his expression does not change otherwise, remaining as fixed, as graven, as a tomb effigy's. Those ice-pale eyes warm, momentarily, in recognition, in pleasure —

Hiccup:

Ten thousand years of grief have worn away a human into a cipher, a hollowness, little more than a structure to hang the day's mask upon, and this moment is the moment when that seed germinated. His grey eyes are bottomless pits of despair, turning to fix on the shrike, as the only thing present to have more than two dimensions anymore, the thing most present, most dimensional —

Hiccup:

Augustine sits on the pavement in a broken-down heap, looking at the place where some smear of pigment is meant to indicate Alfred. He holds no weapon. He takes no action.

And then he speaks:

"If I had only had five more minutes..." He sounds wistful, mournful, forlorn, exhausted, all at once. "Why didn't he let me save him?"

He lets a younger Augustine take his bleeding hand, smiling reflexively in the face of that gentle earnestness.

He returns his Deathless Lord's look with another smile, a subtle half of a thing, the silent language of spouses long-married.

To smile in the face of that pyre-ash stare, that utter devastation that blighted a myriad from its inception, would be to mock at the funeral of all a man's hopes. He does not smile; he moves impulsively to embrace that hollow shell in three dimensions and four, folding him in a cocoon of feather and chitin and eye.

And,

(he is already shattered across an extra dimension of space; what's three more of time?)

He is still not smiling as he seats himself beside Augustine without ceremony, flat on the ground as humans do so he can lean a shoulder against his friend's shoulder. "He thought he was saving you, didn't he?"

It's a guess, impulsive as the embrace that didn't-happen-and-is-now-happening. It's a guess, but put together from all the pieces arrayed before him, capped with the strong impression he's already got of Alfred: A man so sweetly devoted to his brother he would do anything, ask anyone, to brighten Augustine's life.

"The math didn't add up," the old man says with the young man's voice, slumping exhaustedly into a beloved's trustworthy embrace, fingers pulling the memory or idea of a cigarette out of a dream's pocket and lighting it with all the solemnity of ritual of every forgotten prayer dropped at the wayside of time's passage.

Coils of smoke rise around them and linger in the air, like incense, like a funeral pyre, like a comfort, like a vice. He draws in the air in front of him, smoke and glowing ember painting a hint of the mind-bogglingly complex necromantic theorems that were all meant to balance down to a simple trade: a death for a life everlasting. They linger in the air, drifting and reshaping themselves as he speaks, until every line equates to one concept only:

Death.

"We knew there had to be another way," he continues, voice racing along as frantic as a surfer on the leading edge of a tsunami. "It took him so little effort to keep us as we were — without aging — to heal even the worst of wounds, or bring us back from things that should have, that did, kill us, time and again — it had been centuries of that! But we needed to be able to travel further — beyond the system — and we couldn't, not as we were. But there had to have been something that would have worked, that wouldn't have had this as the cost —"

He cuts himself off, sharp as a knife, sharp as the void of space curtailing the passage of sound waves. He takes a drag on his cigarette; when he speaks again, his voice is as anciently preserved as one smoked for ten thousand years ought to be. (Far more than it is, in his daily life.)

"He killed all of them, like this, by proving it worked, you know. If I'd let him die — if I'd said the cost was too great, if I'd said it didn't work — none of the others would have been lost, the way they were. He was the first. I was the first. And I was too selfish to let him die forever, to let him leave me — and so I lost him anyway, and have spent every day since then wishing I'd had five minutes to stop him, to keep him alive, so that we could have kept trying."

It is the Emperor--Illarion knows--that Ava speaks of when he says it took him so little effort to keep us as we were. It is a human man incongruous beneath a mantle of immortal godhood who brought them back from things that should have, that did, kill us, time and again-- And yet the shrike cannot but imagine his own unprepossessing, beloved Prince--who'd never wanted Royalty to descend upon him, nor the signifier of Preservation--who'd saved his people again, and again, and again, even when they'd begun to wonder (with all the world) if it would have been better to let them die--

It is Evdokim, Dusya, Illarion thinks of as he considers those smoke-scrawled theorems. (They are all-but-meaningless to his rational mind, written in a foreign hand and tongue he scarce recognizes; intuition understands them immediately, for hadn't he also paid into that equation--immortal life for death, death to save a race from extinction, and death, death, death left in the shrikes' wake.) It is Dusya he thinks of--guiltily, forlornly--as Ava speaks of a love that cannot release the beloved. and all the awful consequences that flow from it.

Death, the smoke spells, and Illarion looks beyond it, to the impressionistic desaturated suggestion of the death that began this--Alik's death, worn down to a splash of scarlet beneath sunset. "We hold it sacred," he murmurs, "that no one's full-culpable for what she didn't have knowledge to predict. Could never have known would follow, no matter how long she studied.

"Did you know then, Ava?" You catches in the lazy drifting strands of spilled Darkblood and velleity ripples into the brief image of Augustine-then: Bright, vigorous, unburdened. Gone again in a gust of smoke. "Could either of you know? Or," the shrike's grip on his friend tightens, "do you place the weight of the man's years on the boys who hadn't lived them?"

From another, the questions might be rhetorical; they might be meant to offer a plausible excuse to a suffering soul--a momentary refuge from despair and self-flensing despite, to think I couldn't have known. From Illarion, they come with a Warlord's sharp interest in what is true--and a Warlord's withheld judgment, no matter how ugly that truth might be.

Mere reassurance isn't going to fix the problem they're in. As much treat a festering wound, a rotted limb, with a kiss and glib words.

It would be an insult, a betrayal, to come this far and give so little.

He (Augustine, Augustin, Ava) collapses in on himself in the wake of the question, crushed under the weight of it — how dare someone so trusted by him betray him with such a question as this? — until there is no more bright-eyed (spiritual-)youth, no more beloved Deathless, only the palimpsest-cipher ash-cast of a deathless human, looking up to meet his ~~eyes~~ without a lick of fear or sensibility either one.

His eyes are very, very grey, as empty of color as they are of lived-in life, as he laughs without any humour at all. "Of course I knew," he says, so lightly, because of course this topic is so painful that every single one of his defenses rises up again, no matter how many times he might try to lower them himself; no matter how many times someone else might find a path past them, for that matter. "Do you think we hadn't all discussed it, time and time again, for years? The advisability of one pair or another taking a trial run of it, maybe under Teacher's watchful eye, the better to clean up the inevitable mess we were bound to make of it?"

He scoffs, and looks away, at the lingering carmine smear amongst the grey matte of their environment. (There are tears on his cheeks; he ignores them.)

"Al—he knew, too. And Cris — they'd made some sort of pact, apparently; I think she'd been planning to go first — and he figured, better someone potentially lose a brother than a lover, if it turned out he was wrong, they were wrong, and it was just a final death waiting for him."

(The backdrop behind him is flickering a little, dim and slow, morphing between not-quite-glimpsed settings of Somewhere Else — where there is, maybe, something else yet to be gleaned from this horror, still.)

"I think it was worse, of course," he continues, voice drained even of its façade of levity, thinned and paled by ten thousand years' experience with this endlessly-terrible moment. "If I'd just let him die — Teacher still might have been able to bring him back, again; even if he hadn't been, we would have found each other again, before all that long, in the River — like poor Samael and Anastasia must've done."

His gaze flickers, too, to the observer (friend, ~~husband,~~ Disciple, shrike) beside him, against him —

"He was right twice, of course; losing a lover is worse, really."

But did you know, Illarion wants to press, even as his first thrust crumples Augustine on himself and leaves the Lyctor hollow and cinereous as the stolen eyes in his native face. Did you know, Agushka, that it could never end gladly? Or did someone hide that from you?

It's special pleading--he doesn't truly know enough, not enough to judge and not enough to absolve Augustine or Alfred of full culpability for what they'd done. Something in the memory itself suggests that Augustine didn't truly hoard all the blame for himself (or Alfred); that perhaps the black god who'd told him kindly, pitilessly, that it was too late could have done more. Could have rendered all the tragedy entirely unnecessary, and relieved his Saints of choices they were not ready to make.

Either way, it's a step backward, not forward, that he's made his friend withdraw from him. The shrike turns his head aside from Augustine's look, veiling his eyes and shuttering his ~~eyes~~ not to avoid seeing but to protect the other man in the flux of his grief. The scenery's changing, he notes as he listens; lets a little part of him wonder what that portends while the rest of him listens--picks up the pieces of the tragedy around them.

"I think," he murmurs, "he knew you too well, Ava. That you couldn't let him die; that you both acted out of great love, and great fear."

He looks sidelong at his friend, returning the glance without risking eye-lock. The tears catch his attention, and it is an old pattern in him that moves his hand to wipe them away.

"Who else did you fear for so?"

He's a gist, an intuition now, of where the nightmare wants to go. Perhaps he can nudge it that way--perhaps the demon will be waiting for them there.

Who did he fear for? Who did he lose?

"Why, all of them," he answers, (young and) surprised, eyes heedlessly widening — and they're sitting on a bench in a small kitchen in a large building, with only a very small square patch of sunlight tracing its faded arc across the floor before them. There are ghosts in that room, grey flickering smudges of people moving too quickly, like stop-motion film — preparing food, eating it together, cleaning up, fighting, making up (right on the table before them, for about as long as it takes Ava's heart to sound out one quickened beat) — two adults, two children — no, teens, or a young adult, perhaps?

And then Ava is not leaning into his side at all; he's standing at the sink, idly listening to the radio playing something meant to be musical to a human's ear — with even humans in argument over whether or not it missed that mark — as he washes up dishes from both breakfast and the night before, it seems.

There's a distant sound like thunder, sudden and sharp and rumbling, carrying on a bit too long (far too long) for the lack of electrical bite in the air and the square of sunlight on the floor, but all he does is frown, a little, and shake his head, and continue cleaning up.

(There is a ghost beside the shrike, still sitting on the bench, the observer rather than the observed; he would moan, if he could be heard, or go running through the door, fruitless as it would be; she's already dead, after all. She died first, in the first cluster, as the building started to collapse.)

The rest of the scene plays out anyway: the Important News Bulletin that Interrupts Your Regularly-Scheduled Broadcast; the color draining from his face; the way he bolts from his home, dragging the focus (and the observers) with him, to the collapsed rubble that used to be a three-quarters-finished mixed-use building, in this crowded-up city on this wide-open, empty planet — meant to hold dozens of families, already inhabited by twenty — and her, his wife, one of the engineers responsible for the construction and its safety.

The building is rubble; whatever strain caused its destruction would have had to have been caught months ago, at minimum, to be properly corrected; he isn't thinking about that, wouldn't care if he was, he's too busy racing into a building that's gone from three dimensions to very-nearly-two, digging through debris for the fading life signs he can still sense.

It's astonishing, the feats a human body can be capable of, when it heals all its injuries instantaneously; when mere animal strength can be reinforced as easily as a thought, with extra muscle tissue or with a suddenly-present shaft of bone to serve as additional leverage. He removes entire walls that have fallen and trapped people, leaving them to suffocate, bones shattered, breathing in nothing but dust and smoke and their own blood, and he pulls them from the wreckage and shoves them towards safety, bones set and mended, organs quivering in astonished wholeness, even as he wraps a hand around an extended wrist to yank them free —

He's looking for his wife, of course, but she's already dead; in the end, he only finds her because he knows her so well, down to blood and bone. There's nothing beautiful left in the burned corpse he sits beside, shocky and still in his grief, ignoring the danger still evident to any mere human present —

But then, this is still only his nightmare; the danger here has nothing at all to do with a building that collapsed thousands of years ago.

(Already, the air is filling with foreshadowed echoes from hours later, days later, the moment when their daughter, screaming at him, decides it's her father's fault that her mother is dead — and how could he convince her otherwise, when he agrees with her conclusion?)

All of them.

It is a familiar answer for an elf who grew attached to mortals, or a shrike to the short-lived. Everyone who wasn't one of your own kind would wither and fade within short decades of meeting them, then go the way of all Yav into death and decay. Even immortality wasn't a guarantee one's flock would always be there--war, disease, starvation, and accident always awaited. In a way, it was easier-and-harder to lose an elven peer to violence or corruption, or a mortal one to the ravages of age, for so went all the world. But to lose someone already so painfully short-lived to something one should have foreseen, something one had the power to prevent, if she'd only acted soon enough, or realized--

Once, a dear human friend of his had died in Shroudwood--snatched by some huge pillar-touched beast while traveling through an area the shrikes had known was safe. Worse, she'd been there under his aegis, using his maps, and it had protected her not at all. Illarion hadn't been a direct witness--odds were he would not have survived it--but he had heard, after. The horror that impels a young (bright, optimistic, determined) Augustine out the door and keeps him digging in the rubble until there's nothing more to surface--the horror that fuels a genuine miracle for a half-dozen families, but not the grieving Saint who enacts it--that is familiar from the inside. The lurking suggestion around the nightmare's edge, the pending second shift to a memory of deserved excoriation--that is familiar from the inside.

You are so much more than we are! You walk the border between life and death, Creation and Hell, and hold Hell's powers in your hands! You have lived centuries and seen so much more to life--and you couldn't save her?

He had had a Prince older than human civilization to bring his crushed heart to for mending and instruction; he'd had a Priest (and lover) with her own myriad behind her to shrive him of his guilt, deserved and undeserved. The hurt had still remained, and the lesson with it, until all such hurts lost their bite in death--but it had not festered. It had been expertly cleaned.

Had anyone done that for you, Ava? In Alik's case it seemed not--they were all too young and raw, all caught up in the cascade the First Martyr unleashed, and who then could rightly apportion blame or relieve it when all of them--those others--were suffering?

Memory moves the shrike again from where he's ankle-deep in rubble to lay a paternal hand on the younger Augustine's head; it's like stroking smoke. The older version, witness instead of witnessed, seems far more insubstantial and yet is solid beneath Illarion's palm when he shifts to rest it on his friend's back.

"She was the second?" The dispassionate Disciple-soldier he is, and, "I am sorry," the friend-~~husband-~~brother he strives to be.

"Yes," he answers blankly, staring down at a face he kissed that morning, skin blackened and peeled, lips pulled back in a grimace, split open, weeping interstitial fluid that boiled off in the heat. There were photographs, on the wall in the apartment where he'd been cleaning up the dishes; there had been those ghostly-flicker memories, even right against the table — cooked through like this, no resemblance is left behind.

(In the wake of this devastation, with so much dust and death and chemical residue in the air, it doesn't really smell like a barbecue; at least they are spared that horror.)

“This was my wife,” says the ghostly-substantial man under his hand, staring down at his solidly-insubstantial self, staring down at the death of his happiness. “My first wife — I could have — I should have told her to stay home, we’d been talking of having a third child — I wanted to ask her to stay home, that day, I remember. Our son — my eldest — he’s gone, was — was gone to the Cohort, and our daughter was going to be at Melia’s sister’s after school that day, so we could have had the flat to ourselves all day, if she’d just stayed home —“

The building still would have collapsed; her grief would have been laced with self-excoriation every bit as sharp as his, if she had been the only one of her team to survive, especially for such a reason as playing hooky; she was already mortal, already bound to die after mere decades with him, and who is to say that such a grief would not have hastened her demise regardless? Who could say that her grief would not have ulcerated and multiplied into the sort of malignancy that destroyed the heart and the mind and the will to live?

But it didn’t matter, because she was dead before the noise reached him; no matter how quickly he might move, even in his future when his red, human blood is replaced by glittering, incomprehensible darkblood, he cannot move — could never move — quickly enough to reverse the course of time, to have been already in the room when the collapse began, or to have padded it and everyone in it through some absurd construct of human flesh, warped and spun from his own body or theirs, that she and everyone else in the building might not have died — for how could she survive her grief, if anyone died in the collapse of the building whose safety she was meant to ensure, and she was not already in that number?

”What kind of Saint are you even supposed to be, Da–— Augustine — if you can’t work a proper miracle and bring her back, anyway?!”

(The noise leaks in from his memory of the hours yet to come, clear enough to be heard aloud in a young woman’s voice, thick with grief and a rage searching for a target; the flinch, the sob, is tangible, under the shrike’s hand.)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Even the illusion of June is enough to send a stabbing pain through my chest

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cw: nightmare violence, including self-sacrifice (ongoing for thread)

cw: even more nightmare violence, death, suicide/suicidality, groundhog day futility

cw: all that and a bag of chips painted by Salvador Dali

cws will continue until morale, or the grim darkness of the future, improves

cw: hiccups

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