deercountry | change the odds

Entry tags:

change the odds

Who: Lucius and YOU(?)
What: arriving back after a month in the ocean, being paranoid about the new holiday monsters, zombie sinkholes, winter mourning
When: December
Where: the shore, around Trench

Content Warnings: Zombies in prompt 3, mental illness and child endangerment in prompt 4

1. grand re-arrival

He remembers his human form quickly this time. Which turns out to be a good thing, as an arm is much more useful for banging against cracks in the ice than a tentacle. And he very much needs to get out. To the air, of course. To someplace warmer - even as a Coldblood, he's apparently not immune to the chill of the ocean in winter. And to get away from the something he's sure is following him.

His frustration heats the water around him and helps weaken the ice enough for his fist to break through. As soon as the hole is large enough, he scrambles up through, heedless of how the sharp edges of the ice cut him. Once he hits the ice, he rolls away from the opening. He certainly doesn't want to stay where the ice is weak.

He lies on his back for a moment, catching his breath. His thoughts are a jumble. They move slowly, as if still trapped under the ice. He does feel warmer now, though. But he should still find clothes before anything else.

If he's not found by another Sleeper first, he can be found later at the boardwalk dressed in the standard arrival robe with an extra blanket wrapped around him like a cloak. Emrys, his gyrfalcon Omen, sits on his shoulder as he slowly sips on his soup.

2. you'd better watch out

Lucius has a paranoid streak at the best of times, and with 1. having Dorothea as his patron and 2. evil versions of storybook characters on the loose, as the month goes on he kicks into high gear.

In the house, he sets simple traps. A lot of them. There are spikes in the fireplace, in case some man in red gets any ideas about coming down it. There are tripwires about half a foot above the floor at every door. The windowsills have razor blades hammered into them, ready to cut the hands of anyone who tries to climb in.

He doesn't stop with just the house, though. Oh no. He sets up bear traps in the graveyard. These, at least, aren't particularly hidden, since their intended targets are simply whatever lumbering undead might turn up. But then, the snow might hide them anyway. He hangs nets ready to fall on anyone who disturbs a tripwire in areas of Trenchwood. It's only the weather that stops him from building pit traps - impractical with the snow and too much work to dig through the frozen ground besides.

Some days, Lucius will stick around for a while in a hiding spot to see if anything gets caught. Other days, he sets things and leaves. But he does check on all the spots every day, or at least every other day (depending on weather). So if you're caught with your leg in a bear trap, you probably won't have to wait too long for someone to find you.

3. [crying about important Vinland Saga imagery 10 hours unskippable] (cw: zombies)

He's heard of the aurora, from those who have been farther north, but never seen it before now. It's stunning. Lucius has the presence of mind to step towards the side of the street instead of stopping in the middle, but he's still caught staring up at the sky. Until the ice and snow beneath him rumbles and cracks open. He tries to leap clear of the growing chasm, but can't get firm enough footing, and the attempt simply sends him falling backwards into the depths.

It's not the first time he's been in a mysterious Trench sinkhole. But last time he did it on purpose and went prepared. It's only luck, Lucius thinks, that made this a soft landing without any immediate booby traps.

"Emrys?" His omen manifests, a cloud of smoke settling into a falcon on his shoulder. Emrys blinks his glowing eyes and looks down.

Not a lucky landing at all. Or, well, maybe lucky for Lucius, just not the corpses of previous victims he's landed on.

He doesn't need to tell Emrys to get help, the Omen launches himself immediately off the boy's shoulder and out of the chasm, to look for the nearest person above with a rope. Lucius, after some concentration, summons a flame to hold in his hand. A blood magic torch to examine his surroundings with. Did anyone else fall down with him?

It is at this point that one of the corpses at the bottom of the pile begins to move.

4. winter mourning (cw: mental illness, child endangerment)

The boy - Askeladd (Lucius?) - is crouched next the bellows in a simple smithy. The smith himself works over the coals stoked by the air, swords lining the wall behind them. The boy, all of 10 or 11, is, honestly, filthy - dressed in worn hand-me-downs covered in ash and dirt, his chin-length blond hair unkempt. There's no front wall to the building, which makes it easy to see why the boy has paused in his work, looking out at the dirt road with distress.

There's a woman walking down the center of the road, singing, holding a thin blanket above her like a veil. She must have been beautiful once. Now, her fine features and pale hair are covered in dirt like the boy's, her face grown gaunt around her large blue eyes. People pause in the middle of their work to turn and stare at her.

Askeladd leaps up. "Mothe-" And he stops, at the entrance to the smithy, seeing exactly who his mother has now run towards. A finely dressed man, by medieval standards, his clothes impeccably trimmed and his cloak held in place by a gold pin. She falls to her knees, reaching up adoringly to touch the man's cloak. Askeladd is horrified. Or maybe terrified.

The man, looking down at the woman in contempt, draws his sword.

The boy springs into action, turning back into the smithy and grabbing a sword from the rack, running out just in time to block the downward swing. He's never held a sword before, but you wouldn't know it from the way he moves. He's all of eleven, and underfed, but his chores have built up enough muscle, and he moves quickly. A rain of blows from Askeladd (all easily blocked) push the man back a few steps.

It's not enough, of course. With a good twist of his sword, the man disarms the boy before kicking him to the ground. He points his sword directly at the boy's face. Askeladd, winded but defiant, glares up at him. It's a meeting of similarly-shaped eyes, under nearly identical eyebrows.

The man's expression remains cold. "Are you hers?" The woman in question is now cowering at the side of the road with her hands over her head. But she's unharmed. The boy offers no response. "...Are you mine?"

The boy's glare is unchanged, but this time he replies. "...Yes."

They remain in their positions for a few moments, as the man turns more considering. He sheathes his sword and turns to continue on his way. "You will live in my house from now on. You have potential."

As he starts to get up, Askeladd watches his father's back. He's still clearly angry, but there's another expression joining that on his face. Calculating.

At the side of the road, the Lucius (Askeladd?) of Trench watches, his arms crossed. He's clearly the same boy, and just as clearly a year or two older, closer to a teen than a child. He's not paying attention to his slightly younger self, or to his father. He's simply looking at his mother, huddled on the road.

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Maul watched the scene play out before him and there was an uncomfortable echo that stretched back through the years to his own life. He'd been even younger than the boy in the memory when Sidious had begun to notice him and for much the same reasons. He'd had potential, that most cursed of all words when it came to the wicked of the world.

He turned to the present-day Lucius. "That man was your sire?" The wording is deliberate. There was a very big difference between a father, someone who actually cared about their child and sought to love them, and someone who was little more than a sperm donor when it came brining new life into the world. Maul wasn't an idiot and it was clear the relationship between all involved in the memory. But still he needed the confirmation before he said anything more.

He's aware of the interloper, of course. Hard not to be - Maul's coloring stands out anywhere, but especially here. Dusty beige, brown, and green are the overall rule of the day.

It had to happen eventually. Askel-Lucius had slipped into others' memories last year. Someone finding their way to his own was inevitable. Still, it's aggravating to have this memory be the one trotted out for display. And aggravating for the intruder to be Maul, a man Lucius hasn't quite gotten a handle on yet. An angry fool on the network, but not a fool in a fight. A shame that it's not Alice, she would have been the best option in a bad situation.

When Maul makes his presence thoroughly known by speaking, Lucius turns towards him with as casual a shrug one can give with arms still crossed. "Yeah." His tone is neutral, offhand.

Maul paused for a long while, to the point where it started to make the situation actually uncomfortable. Finally, he spoke up, the words carefully stripped of any emotion they might have had. "I sometimes wonder if there are any actual good fathers in all the various universes or if everyone grows up under the reign of terrible ones." It was no secret in Trench that Maul's adoptive father was a monster, especially after his memories had been broadcast throughout the network during summer.

"That took courage to defend your mother that way. A man like that could have just as easily pierced your heart as been impressed with what you did," Maul said as his eyes turned towards Lucius' mother. This time his voice held a bit more warmth to it. He was a bit impressed himself. He knew at that age he still would have unhesitatingly done the same thing to defend his own mother from Sidious. There was a reason the old bastard had never let him get anywhere near Dathomir and that was because of Maul's love for his mother, something he clung to despite all of Sidious' attempts to make him discard it.

Oh boy, these winter things again. Alice watches, with interest. She can understand wanting people and claiming them, but she at least considers herself to be charming about it. This is whatshisstupid name Vessalius all over again. She flumps down atop a water barrel or whatever else is there.

"I have never met a father who wasn't a big waste of breathing. If I'd known mine I bet he would have been just awful."

Break misses Lucius's grand rescue of himself from the ice on account of certain loved ones of his are not allowing him near it. Not when the threat of drowning has become one of the biggest terrors of his new life, and ending up trapped in such a way would no doubt trigger a horribly violent darkblood reaction of some sort if Break even made it out at all. In all honesty, they are right and Break knows it and doesn't want to get too close to the ice either. He sulks about it all the same, because anxiety is massively inconvenient and he will never forgive himself if he misses one of his people over it.

Baltus gives him an out by reminding him that he is very good at soup, and also possesses a magic teapot. So it is that Lucius might eventually realize that the particular blend of spices in the otherwise plain, soothing broth he's drinking is extremely reminiscent of the soup bases that are used in his own household, where Break has decided feral gremlin people from future universes who eat things that come in cans don't understand anything and it's his personal duty to ensure they have enough garlic and ginger in their lives. Despite this implication of Break's presence nearby, however, it's his omen who spots Lucius first. Out on patrol for anyone who looks like they might need a weirdo with a magic teapot in their lives, the noodle dog passes by initially. Then he does a double take, scrabbles around to reorient his very large self, and heads straight to the boy and his falcon with his ears and tail both perked high in greeting.

Lucius! You have already returned!

The good news is that Fitz isn't caught with his leg in a bear trap. The bad news is he's still caught in a trap, period, and the net that has ensnared him knocked his knife loose from his belt, sending it, and his omni, toppling down an embankment and into the snow. And with the wind howling and fresh snowfall blanketing the entire area, it's no easy task trying to track either of them down.

Particularly when he isn't able to do the tracking himself.

"Any luck?" He sends the thought out to Nighteyes via the Wit bond that they share, but he's been stuck under this net and hunkered down beneath his coat in the cold for quite some time, and so who knows if he says the words aloud. Maybe he looks like he's talking to himself, and perhaps he would be, if it weren't for the large grey wolf and an equally large stag milling around in the snow nearby, both evidently looking for something in the snow around them.

The wolf grumble-growls his irritation. No. Next time you tumble into a snare like a hapless rabbit, keep hold of your knife. The stag omen the pair share snorts. Fitz glowers and sinks further down into his coat.

"You may have to come chew through the fibres," he admits grudgingly.

Yes, says Nighteyes, I probably will. You would break your jaw before your dull cow's teeth did any good.

"I'll remember that the next time you've a snout covered in porcupine quills," Fitz counters gruffly.

So that's what is happening, more or less. One man stuck in a net in the snow, potentially talking to himself while a wolf and a stag play 'find the needle in the haystack'.

Normally Echo hasn't been one to check for new arrivals. She has very little optimism that anyone she knows is coming, much less anyone she cares about. Plus Oz would likely make his way to the house sooner or later and she's very convinced she could sense if Noise had finally joined her from the ocean. But she's been finding it very difficult to focus lately, and as such is taking a walk because something tells her this is a logical solution. Not that anything really makes sense right now. So going down to the beach is as good as plan as any!

As much as she knows she should be frustrated by this fact, she really can't determine what it is she's supposed to do when she sees a humanoid arrival on or near the beach, struggling from the cold and their battle with the ice and the ocean. She just finds herself strolling the shoreline, feeling as though something is supposed to be done but who really knows what.

Echo finally pauses as she sees a familiar figure farther out on the ice, apparently trying to make it to shore but not succeeding yet. Strange, she thinks. Walking out across the frozen ocean to figure out why she's confused seems to be a perfectly good solution. Luckily, her physical skills come very naturally to her and she can still manage to get away from thin ice before plunging into the frigid water herself.

As she finally approaches him, Echo has to stare for a few seconds before she can speak.

"Oh, Lucius. Odd."

Lucius chooses not to move, even as the pause drags on. If Maul expects him to break and fill the silence, to offer up some further explanation or context, well, it won't happen. Instead Lucius observes the scene as it continues, face schooled into impassivity. The Askeladd of the memory has made his way over to his mother. He wraps the sheet back around her, murmuring something soothing as he does so. She unfolds slowly and gets to her feet. Even as Maul breaks the silence, the Lucius of Trench simply watches. (Though he takes note of what that comment about fathers implies about Maul's own history.)

It's the mention of courage that finally snaps his eyes back to Maul. Courage? No, it just took anger. Frustration. Funny that someone should see bravery there, when all it really was was recognition that a change had to be made.

"Someone had to do something," he says, slowly. "And I was there."

"That is more than most would do. Apathy is far easier an emotion to take hold of than the determination to do something," Maul said with the world-weary cynical air he'd developed after witnessing a lifetime of people's worst moments instead of their best ones.

As he kept watching Lucius' mother in the memory, he realized there was something not quite right about the way she responded to the outside world around her, even the stimulation of her son's presence beside her. He'd not taken note of it at first considering the much more dramatic spectacle of Lucius fighting his sire but now he realized something. "Is she touched in the mind?" He asked. There was no judgment in his tone, again just a seeking a confirmation of facts.

He can't argue with that. What was much of his life before this incident, if not apathy?

He bristles at the comment about his mother, but soon takes a breath and reigns it in. It does not, surprisingly, seem like Maul means it as an insult. (And even if he did, you must control your anger rather than letting others control you with it.) "She is...ill."

In more than one sense.

There are many ways someone could take this memory, many of them ones Lucius would have to take action against. This reaction, though, is completely Alice. He can't help but give a short burst of laughter.

"If he turns up, I'm a much better swordsman now."

What's a little patricide between ~~friends~~ allies?

Lucius had spotted Baltus before the omen spotted him, and opened his mouth to call out. But no sound emerged. Maybe it's a lingering effect of being in the winter sea, like how slowly he's moving is. (That has to be it.) The soup should help stop it, particularly with the entirely correct amount of ginger it has.

It's quite a show, watching a creature as large and noodley as Baltus suddenly have to turn around on an icy boardwalk. Lucius smiles before he takes another sip of soup.

"Baltus," he manages to croak out this time. He wants to ask...he wants to ask how long was it, but it seems his voice is already at its limit. He coughs, then takes a gulp of soup.

He knows that figure. He knows she lives in the house, that she comes from the same world as the others. He should call out, but he can't connect her to a name until she's already here, speaking.

"Echo."

It doesn't occur to him that she might be uncomfortable with his current lack of clothes.

Honestly she's not too bothered by him not being dressed. She was the personal servant to a very disturbed adult man so things that would bother most people don't really get to her in the same way. Besides, she's pretty sure she remembers being in a similar situation at...some point. It involved sea life. Hm. Still, something's telling her this is normal.

Now that they've recognized each other, she's also realizing that finding the right words for the situation is really difficult. Something is wrong, and there's something she should be saying, but neither is coming to her.

"You are...lying on ice."

Yep, that's all she's got.

Lucius, himself, is pretty sure something is wrong. He thinks...he thinks Echo doesn't talk like this? But then, how does she talk? He can't seem to put it together.

He sits up. That's easy and straightforward, at least.

"Not a good place to be." That, also, is easy to figure out. He starts to stand up, wobbling on his now-human legs.

He watched Lucius' anger at what Maul had said and wondered if he'd given into it. He was almost disappointed when he didn't. "Ah. That makes sense." Small wonder this boy was so independent and full of self-control. With no father and a mother he could not rely on, he must have learned to take care of himself from his early years.

Maul could respect that. Sidious may have trained him but he didn't do much in the way of actually raising Maul, teaching him much beyond survival and the skills he'd need as a Sith. It had been up to Maul to see himself through day-to-day life, relying on no one but himself.

That makes sense. Taken far from her home, kept under lock and key, used and used until she was discarded - who wouldn't be ill, after that? Who wouldn't dream of something impossible, just to have something at all? In front of them, Askeladd-Lucius pauses to say a few words to the smith before leading his mother around the building and out of sight.

Lucius-Askeladd isn't going to follow. He knows what happens next, and he's not interested in continuing to re-live his own life, which was only two years ago besides. There's no reminder he needs to take from this. It's just another intrusion courtesy of Trench.

He glances over his shoulder, down the road his father had arrived on. "That's probably the best way to get out."

He turns and starts walking, not checking to see if Maul will follow.

Echo finds herself moving forward on impulse, but as soon as she questions why she's doing so, she stops.

"No. So you shouldn't be here. But is walking...working?"

It's not so much the confusion in general that gets her speech completely off this time, but a memory that's trying to come back to her as she talks about this. Someone who wasn't able to walk, but who was very heavy. Didn't she have to move him somehow...?

Walking is not, in fact, working. Although he manages to stand, his foot slips the instant he tries to move it, sending him down to his knees. Hmm. This is still going to be rather difficult.

"No." He needs...he needs to gather strength. "Not yet."

Maul noticed Lucius didn't follow his memory wherever it was going. Apparently, whatever had happened after this wasn't very interesting or important. Maul thought of following himself out of idle curiosity but he wasn't sure if the memory landscape would even let him do so.

Instead, he followed Lucius down the road. He'd seen all that he needed to and was certain that the Winter Mourning Stag would appear soon enough to take them back to Trench.

There's nothing, in Lucius's opinion, particularly interesting or important along the road either. The cluster of houses gives way to wheat fields, which at this point in autumn are home to sheep and cows grazing on the stubble left after the harvest. But the vista fades at the edges, like someone drew it there and then tried to rub it out.

The only significant thing about this road is that he's never been very far down it. Thus, something will have to give as they approach the limits of his memory.

And indeed, the white Winter Mourning Stag soon emerges from one of the hazier patches of scenery, leading them both to wake up.

"You should balance on something."

Having that come to her pretty easily seems reassuring, although the lack of the actual solution is still a problem. She glances around, seeing only ice and the raging ocean. Echo crosses her arms and thinks for a few moments, trying to force her brain into proper working condition. Suddenly her eyes get wider.

"I can stand. I can..." She moves her arms awkwardly for a few moments, trying to remember what exactly it was she needed to do. "...hold...you."

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change the odds

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2, somewhere in the Trenchwood!!

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wrap?

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