deercountry | 13 . autumn catch-all

[ The clinical, assessing interest fades back to a warmer, scrunch-browed fascination. John gestures for him to come closer; he sits up properly, even drunk as he is. Illarion can kneel before him as a supplicant, or settle awkward onto the couch at his side. He'll take either. ]

I can see it. [ He traces his tongue against the edges of his teeth, sucks a slow breath, considering. ] Alright, then. Let's give it a try.

Edited 2022-10-06 15:16 (UTC)

[Creature of ritual and hierarchy that he is, Illarion chooses to kneel. He's not John's equal to sit alongside him companionably.

John's not his Prince, either, nor Patron, nor fixed star nor even a god he venerates; the King Undying hasn't earned it. Kneeling to him's done in the same spirit that the shrike offers little gifts around the fern--reverence to the god the flawed man could someday become.]

As you will. [The words are so quiet the unearthly echo is nearly gone from them.]

[ It helps. In this moment, to have someone on their knees, soul entrusted to his hands— it's close enough to being God, and not just the guy Pyrrha's been grilling between cocktails. The thrill of discovery and the comfort of control press him onward.

John leans forward and touches fingertips to Illarion's brow, along the upper seam of the veil he wears. He smooths the pads of his fingers there, a caress that is nearly paternal.

Then he takes the shrike's soul and twists it neatly into place. ]

[Click.

It's like a dislocation being reduced. Like a fracture being set. Like an avulsed eye or loop of gut tucked back into its proper place. It is like all those things, the shock of sudden completion where there'd been a breach.

It is like none of those things, because the body he's returned to isn't whole; it is dead and trapped in the act of dying. Nerves report a shimmering cascade of alarm a half-decade out of date--a hideous pain between his ribs and his heart's stopped--his breathing's arrested--his brain's failing--everything is black and he is alone in the dirt and his blood and he is afraid and it hurts it hurts it hurts,

He's on his feet in a clonic jerk so abrupt it batters his narrow chest against John's knees. Run, says years-old stale adrenaline and he staggers back, graceless and uncoordinated for the few steps it takes to crash into some unseen piece of furniture. It hangs up his in-self like a snare; the movement required to step out around it suddenly an insoluble puzzle. He wavers and twitches a few pathetic seconds between dimensions before giving up, collapsing to his knees with a gods-awful noise in his throat. Like an animal slaughtered in an amphitheater--like a rabbit dying down the throat of a well, the sound gutters into a low and terrible keening as panic gives way to the other emotions of the night.

Terror, guilt, grief, shame, pride, delight, frustration, fury. What has he done? What's he agreed to?]

Wh--what did you--

[Somewhere else in the house there's an echoing crash and scream, quickly silenced.]

Edited (bonus meta) 2022-10-15 14:09 (UTC)

[ This goes fascinatingly sideways.

John is drunk and slow, and so he hardly registers what's happened until Illarion has bolted to his feet and backwards. The coffee table hitches awkwardly and scrapes the floor. The sound Illarion makes is the sound of something dying messily, all pure animal panic, and John is on his feet with his hands splayed out before him like easy, easy before he knows what to say. ]

It's alright. [ It isn't, plainly, but still he takes the low and coaxing tone. He moves closer, lowers himself to crouch beside the huddled shrike on his floor. ] Just a bit of a shock, just everything settling... let it settle.

[ He reaches out, slow and telegraphed, and touches the hunched curve of a shoulder. The bird could tear his throat out in reflexive fear and John wouldn't hold it against him. His expression is knotted in concern and fascination. ]

[Illarion tries to tear John's throat out--black gods and white know he tries, talons flexed inward at the unwelcome touch. All he manages is an uncoordinated lurch, hung up on a body that's grown monstrous beyond its own remembering. Falling! his inner ear reports with a horrifying immediacy and the aborted lunge turns to desperate scrabbling to brace himself on something, anything. John's the closest handhold; the shrike sinks his talons into the other man's upper arms to arrest himself.]

Alright! [His voice fractures with incredulity on the word.] Godspit! Noth--nothing's alright, fuck me in hell! I'm dead, I am dead, o Lord, but I cannot die--can't finish dying--

[The awful unfairness of that washes over him as a tidal surge of grief. He keens again, a child's disconsolate wail, and slumps to rest his head against John's chest. Wailing gives way to dry and tearless sobbing and seconds after to a muffled, miserable murmur,]

Kill me--please--kill me, make it stop, it hurts, it hurts, to feel so much--please, stop it, please--

[ The greater monstrous shape of Illarion catches at his arms and grips down to the bone, paring flesh like ripe fruit. Darkblood opens in a wet, starry gleam. John doesn't flinch; he has gone quiet, nearly corpse-still. The pads of his fingers clench for a moment against the shrike's slim shoulder, then the tension releases and his touch remains.

The bird makes another hideous noise and presses close as a frightened child. John curls in over him, reflexive, his palms skimming up the anguished curve of the elf's back. ]

It's all catching up to you. [ Hard to say whether he sounds horrified or marveling, stunned by the gravity of it. His voice has dropped low nearly to reverence. ] I can feel it. [ Every cell that doesn't die, every impulse that doesn't fire, like a single breath held forever: he examines this like a landscape, spread out for him like art. He's never really looked close, before. It's been years since he paid such attention to the intricacies of a corpse.

God smooths his hand down over Illarion's hitching back as though comforting a child. ]

Bear with me. Let it pass.

[Kindly Prince, his Empire calls him; and in this eternal stretched-out moment of his death there is no greater kindness Illarion can imagine than to be held. Held by someone he'd hurt, whose bones notch beneath his spasming grip; held by someone whose blood thickens the air with the scent of book-dust and parchment.

It smells like Dusya's feathers. It smells like home and Court and flock and family, and the emotions conjured by those memories are real as when he'd first felt them--as when his own kindly Prince had held him so, and smoothed his feathers, and muttered words of reassurance as he gently unpicked the knots pillar corruption left in him.

The comparison is awful. It is apt.

It shatters Illarion like dropped glass.

He gives up speaking, he gives up and sags wholly into ~~his~~ God's embrace. He sobs openly, tearless and wretched and totally consumed by pain. Bear with me, ~~his~~ God says, and he doesn't have it in him to form words; to say, Lord, I can't; I've forgotten how; to do anything but be held and comforted and endure with dumb animal trust.

Eventually, the pain begins to become familiar. Eventually, the awful overstimulation grows adapted to itself. Eventually, it does begin to pass--and still Illarion weeps, low and injured.

(Dusya would have put him back to rights without pain.)]

[ It had been a nice evening, once.

Even with the little mishap by the hot springs. Even with the way nine in ten kids at Paul's party were glaring daggers at John for having the temerity to respond to the invitation (as Augustine himself had insisted he do). The drinks downstairs, the conversation, that had been good — a sort of found-family vibe, however fragile, that made Augustine think that maybe his goal of creating a space of safety for an isolated shrike wasn't just a pointless dream.

Then things abruptly got bad, and on the way between there and here, they've gotten a lot worse; it's something of a miracle, really, that he doesn't drop Iskierka-or-whoever-she-became, when the strength in his upper arms is sapped by the sensation of talons shredding and flensing muscle from bone.

But it's just sensation, not fact; he's fought on before, with injuries more real than this, and it's partly to make a statement of how furious (and frightened) he is, and partly because his hands are full, but Augustine kicks the door open without pausing so much as a beat, and stalks in with his arms full of an eleven-foot-long miserable dinosaur who used to be an eight-inch mothbird, with every emotion the shrike is feeling singing in his own nerves —

(— with a lot more knowledge about the Raising of the Unearthed in his memories than John has ever thought to ask him about, no less, and plenty of opportunities to look sidelong at the way the shrike's soul is a misfit in his own body, to come up with his own ideas about how best to blend the two theories, for that matter —) ]

What. Did. You. Do.

[ It's not a nice way to interrupt the evening of two people who've gone off to, in theory, have some sort of kinky sexual interlude. On the other hand: what John has done, no matter what he thinks he's done, is also — quite plainly — not nice. ]

[ The door comes open with a crash, and John jolts at that like a man snapping awake. He tightens— reflexively, defensively, as though offended to be interrupted— around the shrike in his arms, and never mind the hideous things this does to the inner layers of muscle where Illarion has sunk his talons.

Augustine is in the doorway, tall and alight with horror and fury. John curls his fingers into the delicate feathers at the nape of the shrike's neck, and it's not wholly clear which of them he is trying to ground. ]

Testing a theory. [ His jaw is set; he's digging in his heels, for all that the ache of unhappiness shows in the lines around his eyes. ] Easy. We're riding it out.

[ He unwinds his hold, carefully, from the elf tucked against him. Enough to let him go free, should he turn to Augustine. It still sets his blood shimmering in the air like glittering dust. ]

[The presence of both Bondmate and Omen coming (being carried) to his rescue are lost on Illarion, so far is he down the sinkhole of his own misery--until the door bangs open. All his feathers go on end, every ~~eye~~ widening; he tries to struggle to his feet at the urging of renewed sympathetic demand. No luck--his talons are bound and there's too damned much of him to move quickly when everything, everything is in ringing vibration between death-pain and numbness. A futile, fitful squirm in John's arms is as far as he gets before recognizing Ava, Ava and the shrike's own soul in his friend's arms, though she is grown strange to him.

~~His~~ God explains the situation. God eases up his hold, and obligingly, Illarion sits back and focuses all his shattered attention on removing his wounding talons from God's too-violable flesh. It is much harder than it should be.]

I asked, Ava, [he adds, in an undertone, lest for any reason his own willingness to participate was in question. Which, it reasonably may be--] St. Sacrifice and stars attending, I asked--

[And he buries his face in his stained hands, trembling miserably with swallowed sobs.]

[ For a moment, it looks as though Augustine is going to throw his massed load of dinosaur at John.

For a moment, he looks as if he is about to draw his swords — as if the lack of their hilts at his hips is the only reason he hasn't done so already — for all that it's unclear, as he looks back and forth between them, who would get a blade held at his throat — but then, the whole point is that he has two of them, isn't it? No reason he couldn't threaten them both, for the injuries they've done each other —

For a moment, he looks as if he's about to sink to his knees, in tears, because of course another thing he cares about has been destroyed ~~at God's altar~~ — but he doesn't.

He doesn't do any of these.

Instead, the battered Omen is tucked against the shrike's side, and Augustine turns a too-bright-eyed glare up toward John. ]

Don't do anything, [ he warns, voice just as sharp as at his entrance — and just as low as Cassowary's low and desperate moan. ] Don't say anything — don't even lo—

Close your eyes.

[ That's a little sharper, a little more sudden, just like the way he launches to his feet again, and with a quiet sigh the seams at his shoulder give way, threads snapping as he yanks his sleeve down — off, entirely — and with the speed granted him by his eldritch blood, he's already standing behind John and tying his sleeve around God's eyes in a none-too-gentle, all-too-effective blindfold.

(He doesn't bother waiting to see if John's eyes are fully shut before the cloth covers them.) ]

I'm here, [ he says — but those aren't the words he says; he doesn't care if John hears him speak a language never heard in the Nine Houses or their enemies, right now, either — but then, he might be a little drunk still, himself; hard to tell how much alcohol might yet remain, unburned despite the shocks to his system. He wraps the rest of his ruined shirt around Cassowary's head, not entirely unlike hooding a bird of prey — albeit, those usually have fewer ~~eyes~~ remaining yet uncovered. ] I'm here, Cas. You aren't alone — shhhh, tch-tch — let me clean that up for you, and we'll get you back to your nest, hmm?

[ He committed half a millennium's worth of treason because of the unavailability of God's blood, once.

He consigns the glitter-dark stains on the shrike's talons and hands and sleeves to dust, and ash, and nothing but component atoms, without sparing even a second's thought; he presses both hands, firm and gentle, to what are almost definitely the shrike's covered shoulders, gripping as deliberately and delicately as holding a newborn child. ]

[ There is a lot going on here. The dino's new, for one, and John could say something about how this house collects dinosaurs— present company all included, ha ha— but he can't get anything out around the way Augustine looks at him, around the cracked-open flush of misery on his face.

His Saint moves too fast, and it's hard to track if that's drunkenness or someone bending the rules around him. Hard to track anything except the push and prod of Augustine's fingers at the back of his head, catching through his hair. John makes a sound of complaint low in his throat, but Augustine doesn't yield— and so he goes, for once, obediently still.

His hands flex around the slim lines of the shrike in his arms. He closes his eyes.

He still feels it, when Augustine wipes his blood to nothing. God's breath catches in a stunned and ugly hitch. This ritual isn't one he knows; he has lost the both of them to it, and sits still as stone to mourn the distance. ]

[Where time had stretched into the eternities while John had held him and he died anew, it compresses now to the adrenalized tempo of Augustine's overflowing heart. Everything is happening all at once--Darkblood-fast--and a whole Bond's worth of emotions crushes him against the unyielding anvil of his own. Where the Saint's fury and pity and horror and sorrow end and the shrike's own begin is impossible to untangle, currents braiding into a sucking gyre that drags Illarion from sobbing to silence to terrible trembling awareness of misery patent in the air.

Misery from three people, not two.]

Wait.

[It's hardly more than a whisper but the echoes of a far larger space amplify it. The Omen crushed against his side finally stirs, tipping her head back and opening her killing jaws to take one of Augustine's bare wrists in them. Only the merest intimation of teeth touch his skin, as only the illusion of hot breath ruffles the tiny hairs on it; she is only an emphasis, not a threat.

There's something they still need to do.

It had been such a nice night. Everything had almost ended well.

Illarion closes all his eyes and reaches to push the hooding shirt back. Back, and partway out, to free his face. He reaches, blind, across the gap between himself and God; finding the angle of John's jaw, the curve of his neck, he rests his hands there with exhausted heaviness.]

Lord, [he begins, and stops again. He does not know where to go from there. Lord, I'm sorry, except he can feel the whole weight of Duty's rebuke on him now, searing as a brand: He cannot treat himself as nothing, in the walls of this house.] Lord-- [I forgive you, except he can't lie to himself any longer, and won't, to someone he needs so much to trust him.

This isn't working, vassal to liege. It isn't who they are.] John. Vanya.

Be patient. [With yourself. With me. With the awful unsolvable situation. He doesn't have it in him to lay those premises out. He leans in instead, pressing a cool dry kiss as benediction to John's forehead.

That, to the notion he's been lost or broken beyond repair.]

[ Wait, his ~~sometime~~ brother says, and Augustine —

— waits, wrist marked by the indentation of teeth that could just as easily rend and maim as hold.

He is angry; furious; heartbroken; he wants to cry, to sob, to rage and give vent to his temper in a way he hasn't in centuries, in millennia, and he waits anyway, because out of everything Illarion is suffering it's such a small thing to give, to wait, no matter how stupid it is, no matter how hard it is to smother the half-born noise of protest that rises in his throat when his shirt is escaped —

He still isn't expecting this.

At first he fears forgiveness; he fears apology — two things the shrike shouldn't, certainly not right now, if ever — he isn't expecting the taste of jealousy on his tongue, at Vanya.

He isn't expecting the sharp sting of rebuke, hidden around the edges of the vast space occupied by a creature that was never human, and only passingly humanoid; but how does it not make sense, in some way, given that humankind has always assumed the "fourth dimension" to be time, that he knows somehow the rebuke to him exists in the memory of words spoken by someone he never truly met, no matter how well he has learned Dusya's mind through his words?

He waits, ashamed, as Illarion offers John an olive branch that he himself did not, could not — and he raises no objection, as a shadow of his soul peels away in a long coil, drifting like smoke across the room to rest in a curve embracing John's shoulders. ]

[ The bird smooths untrembling hands at the crook of his neck and shoulder, caressing him like self-comfort. John is blind except in all the ways that matter: he keeps his eyes shut beneath the binding and watches the cool stillness in every finger, the cellular silence. It's still beautiful.

Vanya. His lips part with a caught breath, and he leans into the press of the kiss like a man swaying drunk. In silence he reels with a sweet, confused anguish. Augustine hates this, and he can feel that bitterness just beyond reach, as counterpoint to the thing in his own chest. John is choked silent: for once in his life, he keeps his eyes shut and does not break the moment.

When they leave, he reaches up to gather Alfred close against him, and stays like that— blindly cradling yet another ghost— for a long moment. ]

13 . autumn catch-all

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cw: described graphic injury, panic attack

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cw: suicidality/deathwish

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