My blind optimism to blame

[reddosmod]

APRIL 2022 EVENT

IMAGE DESCRIPTORS IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE
Prompt One
[Image One: A large green butterfly.]
[Image Two: A woman staring in a daze at light orbs floating around her face.]

Prompt Two
[Image One: A volcano with meteors falling down around it.]
[Image Two: A ball of quivering light hovering in the dark with woman standing in front.]

Prompt Three
[Image One: A woman staring at a mirror-like humanoid being staring back at her.]
[Image Two: A woman in a field of grass with humanoid-shaped flower sculptures nearby.]

[NAVIGATION]

Prompt 1 • Prompt 2 • Prompt 3 • Plotting • Newsletter

[JUMP TO COMMENTS]

MIGRATION OF MOONLIT BUTTERFLIES

WHEN: April
WHERE: Everywhere outside
CONTENT WARNINGS: Hopelessness/corruption, heavy themes of mental trauma/health, killing of gentle creatures.

---

Excerpt from BEASTS OF DEER COUNTRY Chapter 12: Migrations:

"One of the most beautiful natural phenomena of Deer Country is the migration of the mysterious Moonlit Butterflies. These giant creatures are most often the size of a house, with exceptional wingspans. Fear not: they are not violent creatures. Most will fly well above the city of Trench, leaving trails of glittering orbs of light that fall all throughout the city. However, it is common for some Moonlit Butterflies to land and rest throughout Trench. Despite their massive size, these creatures appear to weigh very little, able to rest harmlessly on homes, lampposts, and the like. Don't be surprised to find some scattered throughout your neighborhood.

They have a gentle aura about them and are most famous for their behemoth wings which glow a radiant green. They are aptly named due to their ability to store immense power from the moon during April and are seen as distant children of Argonaut. Being near them will enchant the air with the scent of amber and fresh linen, and you may hear a soothing song emit from these beasts.

Despite their rare and incredible beauty, it is wise to not linger in their presence no matter how captivating they are...And they are captivating. Many residents of Trench have been known to stop and stare, enthralled by the wings or the orbs of light that are shed by the butterflies. Those who have been staring for too long will have an unnatural glowing green glaze over their eyes, obscuring their pupil and gaze. This is known as the Moonlit Drain.

These butterflies do not gather all of their energy from moonlight...but they gather it from hopeful beings as well. It is why they gather among populations of sentient beings. They soak up all hope in the area and the longer you stand in their presence, the more hopeless you may become. Standing in the presence of a Moonlit Butterfly has driven people to rapid, severe corruption in under ten minutes. It is best to avoid these butterflies no matter how mesmerizing they may be to look at.

The little orbs of light are actual manifestation of everyone's hope. Touching them may restore hope and they can be gathered into jars for future treatments of corruption. They do not "go bad" as they are the essence of emotion. One way to restore hope to a corrupt or beast-ridden soul is to slay one of the Moonlit Butterflies. They are incredibly easy to kill as they are naturally delicate and non-hostile.

Be warned: the one who slays a Moonlit Butterfly will be consumed with instantaneous corruption and possibly even beasthood. But once the butterfly has been slain, anyone in the surrounding area besides the killer will have corruption alleviated. Killing a Moonlit Butterfly has been known to fill people with incredible grief and guilt. Few have survived."

WONDERKIND

WHEN: April
WHERE: Everywhere outside
CONTENT WARNINGS: Possible spoilers per canon, time/vortex style presence, variety of possible monsters.

---

Excerpt from an essay titled "The Wonderkind Pthumerian" from the book The Curious Nature of the Weakest Pthumerian: Argonaut and Misconceptions:

"Most of the other Patron Pthumerians are known for exceptional strength and durability during trying times. It is only Argonaut in which people think of weakness. They believe the Patron to be a fickle, tiny thing with little worth, but there is a unique and powerful quality to Argonaut that should not be overlooked.

This is the phenomenon known as Wonderkind. It has only been known to happen once every few years and only ever during April, but those who have seen it would testify to the hidden strengths of our explorer Patron. There is much to be said about curiosity and resilience, after all. Argonaut has wandered through the lives of many without most ever realizing it. He has likely seen into your own life, curious about the odd Sleepers that show up on the shores of this world.

Wonderkind appears as a meteor shower, but these are no meteors. Balls of flaming light will fall from the sky, silent, beautiful, striking, and somewhat ominous and terrifying. They rain upon Trench in intervals throughout April. They do not crash into the city so much as glide throughout. These balls of light are shimmering orbs that have split open time and space itself into unraveling cocoons, exposing portals into worlds foreign to this one.

These portals cannot be entered for they are not portals out of this world...But portals into this world. Sleepers have claimed to find beloved items and pull them out of these portals. Some may find old pets that come out to greet them. It can be a lucky and cherished event for many. Tragically, these portals do not seem to be able to bring in sentient beings applicable characters, but you may be able to talk briefly to a loved one who isn't yet in this world.

But that's not all that can crawl through these portals...Monsters from other worlds have been known to flock to these portals and make their way through. Monsters from your worlds or other worlds slip in to wreak havoc on the streets of Trench. It is during this time that it is of the utmost importance that our Hunters take up arms and protect the vulnerable. If you recognize the monsters or disasters from your world entering ours, then please, make sure to caution those against it.

The portals close after a few hours and cannot be manually closed by anyone. Nothing can be sent into portals, but one can stand by a portal and guard it for potential dangers. Portals from your world may reappear several times throughout the month, so don't let your guard down for even a moment, and always expect the worst even when hoping for the best."

Quick Facts:

1. Respect the setting. Do not bring in monsters that would be capable of destroying the world/city/etc.

2. Things like unique plants/items can be gained through these portals.

3. You do not need to engage with portals from your own canon. You can invent new worlds, engage with other canons, or alternate universes. It's up to you.

FROM WITHIN AND WITHOUT

WHEN: April
WHERE: Everywhere
CONTENT WARNINGS: Instant beasthood, corruption of soul, draining of soul, replication of soul, mistreatment of sex workers/night walkers.

---

An excerpt from a journal kept by a Night Walker named Charlotte Finch. Finch was known for being one of the first established Night Walkers and was known for her advocacy on the front of Night Walker work and its relationship to beasthood. This journal is kept in the Archives. It contains content pertinent to Beasthood yet, unfortunately, due to ongoing biases against Night Walkers, this journal is kept in the autobiography section rather than the section for beasthood. Good luck finding it.

"the job of the Night Walker is, of course, undervalued by this world. we do our best to soothe the troubled souls of this place and yet they continue to doubt our worth. what must we do to convince them? must we wield blades to show them how we fight? must we shed blood to prove our dedication? must we pick up books to show our intelligence? nei, we not do that. we sleep beside our worn hunters and rest heads upon the chests of scholars and hold the tired hands of architects. we guide the way to light in a way disciples could never.

all us are valuable, it be true, but why must the night walker be left to the wayside? why must our duties be written off? why must it be that it always a night walkers blood in the streets that leaves no tears to be shed? nei, nei, it is hatred of those who understand the soul and body have a close connection.

you know what i believe? these souls of ours change the landscape of our bodies. you cannot have one without the other. when the soul is corrupt, it only be natural that the body corrupts, turning rigid and hideous and monsterous and beastly. aye yes i have seen it myself, though none of the others believe except for other night walkers.

you see, there is a shape that comes to us in the Long Night of april, a shape much like our own. looking like a person ought to look but with no face and no features, like a mirror glimmering in the shape of you. they look like us, and they will mimic us. these odd mirror beings is the shape of our soul, you see, and once it finds you, it will copy you, and you will be driven mad! mad! how does this thing move as you move? how does it replicate what you replicate?

aye, it is your soul, my friend. your soul in a shape you can see. or something like it, may not soul be in your lexicon. it is you, as you are it. it is the Tether between you and beasthood, see what i say. the Tether will begin to soak into you if you let it, if you let it consume you, and it will consume you rapidly. people have been known to be ravaged by the Tether and turn into beasts within seconds, AYE yes, seconds, not minutes, into a vicious beast. the Tether wins.

But you need not let it be a victor, my friend. you see, we proved it, we did, us night walkers, we proved to lay with the Tether is to soothe the Tether. Allow yourself the kindness of another soul, another companion. touch and feel and express companionship. holding the hand of your lover or your friend or your brother or sister will cause the Tethers to weaken before ye very eyes! i do swear it, my friend, i should not lie on a subject i hold so dear.

you see, when we hold one another dear, when we cherish one anothr truly and wholly, we abate the darkness in our souls. listen to your companions, my sweet friends, and let your souls heal, and you can stop the Tether from consuming. you see, you see. surely you see. this is what it looks like. the Tether is always with us, but only in April under this moon can we see it always and will it be vicious and invasive. do not allow it.

do not allow it."

Quick Facts:

1. Tethers will take the exact body shape/size of you and mimic your moves. They may follow you around for several hours/days. Once they decide to "consume" you, it will be quick. It will essentially look like your body is turning metallic and then you become a beast.

While Charlotte states it happens in a matter of seconds, this can happen in several hours/days as well. Depends on the character and their general resolve.

2. People can be pulled back from this through emotional support whether verbally or physically and general acts of kindness. It's the sincerity that matters here. You do not need to be familiar with the person to help them.

3. Everyone can see each other's Tethers so you can determine how severe someone's Tether has become. The more severe the Tether, the more silvery the impacted person will look.

4. Tethers cannot be destroyed with weaponry/attacks. Trying will only hurt the person they are mimicking. You could actually kill someone by trying to "kill" their Tether. The tether will vanish with those who died but reappear once they have reincarnated.

CODING

Comments

[hearthebell]

[L doesn't speak, can't speak for the shoot of sickening pain in his arm. If he'd tried, there would be a quaver in his voice at least, perhaps even a whimper. He swallows, and breathes, everything in his chest shuddering as a fresh, chilled sheen of sweat blooms from his pores.

There's a hand at his neck, and is it really such a surprise? His pain comes back to Paul, after all, and not even Lycka is protecting him anymore, her dark glowering smoke grown beyond sympathy and into rage.

A strange numb peace settles in, the kind that only blankets the doomed as a final comfort. But nothing pierces through his throat; instead, Paul's forehead presses against his, and the blanket falls away and sucks all the air from his lungs, and no amount of shaky, gulping breaths can restore it.

So he doesn't try. The panic unique to the paranoid and mistrustful wrings through his ribs, but he's able to register what Paul is asking of him.

He's not sorry; he'd do it again. But Paul is telling him, in no uncertain terms, what he needs, and what has to happen for him to be safe, so close that their minds are nearly touching.

It's been so long since he felt like they were of one mind.]

I'm not supposed to let anything happen to you, either. That's why I took it. As long as you understand that... I understand what you need, and why.

[terriblepurpose]

[There are so many new ways to be opened up that Paul keeps discovering here. Lazarus asks him for his understanding between ataxic breaths, and it slits Paul sternum to navel in hideous comprehension. Because of course he does; because of course it's more important that Paul understand what this was for than that Lazarus survives it.

(They have so much in common that way.)

If Lazarus doubts that Paul recognizes the concessions he's made, the extent of his sacrifices, there's only one person Paul can hold accountable for that. How can he be anything but profoundly, terribly affected by the depths of unearned devotion proclaimed in every dead cell smear and puddle?]

I understand. I never doubted you. Not once.

[He pours all the truth he can dredge out of himself into the unadorned statement. Lazarus didn't ask him for a speech, and they don't have time for one even if he did.]

I'm sorry.

[He means that too, as he lifts his head and glances at the doorway behind him, another question scrawled across his face in muted appeal.

(Will Lazarus understand this? Does Paul?)]

[necrolord]

[ In the doorway, God taps his foot and checks his nonexistent watch.

He had steadied Paul in the kitchen, when the boy first crumpled in on himself. He had drawn a worn black blanket around those thin shoulders while Paul huddled senseless with— pain? grief? disorientation? He cannot comprehend it, which is new and frankly fascinating. Whatever is happening before him is part of a closed system, and he hasn't found a way in. Not yet.

He hangs back and watches, all the same, as Paul crouches beside the long skinny flinch of Lazarus. He sees the movement in Paul's shoulders when he leans in, when he smooths a hand across the nape of a dying man's neck. He knows what he'll see on Paul's face in the moment before the boy turns, beseeching.

It's more like home than anything has been. There is something steadying about being able to answer a prayer.

God claps his hands together like a man pleased to be taken off the bench, a shock of noise in the ruined room, and he steps forward. ]

Well. [ Lazarus knows this tone: soft over something hard. ] This is a bit of a mess.

[ He takes no pleasure in the miserable, dying curl of this young man with his sad little fork tourniquet. The stink of blood is an embarrassment to everyone present. He's the adult wading into a kid's tantrum to dispense band-aids and time-outs; it'd be beneath him.

But he does hold Lazarus's dark eyes over Paul's shoulder. He pays no mind to Lycka; he steps past her as though she isn't there. ]

Not sure about your choice of location. It was a bit of a hike.

[ It put Paul to some inconvenience, he doesn't say, because the boy in question is still on his knees. Paul still looks as though he might tighten down to some singularity or he might shake apart. ]

[hearthebell]

[This whole time, L has not noticed the Emperor here. Perhaps he should have known that he would be coming, since Paul came to save him, and there's only so much a Paleblood without rapid healing abilities can do in a situation like this. He droops against Paul, wondering if it would be better to ask before lying down, or just keep on drooping until he makes it there, anyway.

He assumes that Paul is saying he's sorry because Paul understands he's at the limit of his strength, that it's too late and L will have to be reborn before he makes good on his promise of an apology for stealing the book.

When Paul turns his head toward the doorway, L's forehead drops against his shoulder. For a moment he's pressed inside a black and warm cocoon that shrouds his eyes, though they remain half-open, and the pain begins to recede and become a memory that belongs to a distant, closed chapter.

Not yet, announces a fleshy thunderclap, a haughty voice using different words but ultimately saying the same, smug thing. The darkness ebbs away, and though he'd thought he was past fear (past-tense), the flare and flicker of it lights up his limbs. Uncoordinated as they are, they make an earnest effort to get away, and if he can break away from Paul with the sudden rallying explosion of motion, he'll do what he can to keep the couch between them (while conveniently using it for support he can't remain upright without, just now.)]

You brought him here...

[It's more of a numb, hollow realization than a venomous accusation. Paul would have done what he thought was best, meaning no harm, but L's "choice of location" has always been his armor. The secret and anonymity and constant changing between abandoned and condemned properties is a punishing grind and highly inconvenient, but he persists with it because he earnestly believes it protects him from situations like this.

Paul believes he's brought a medic to one wounded. L knows he's brought a monster instead, one who is relishing holding his life in his hands with the knowledge that it can be relinquished or refused at his whim.

Lycka remains where she is as the Emperor passes, a hulking dark shape who resembles a storm cloud more than a gentle and protective orca matriarch. Her sleeper is dying and she blames him; with his survival as a priority, she recognizes the best shot he has. With his survival as a priority, she would rather see him humbled than watch him choose pride over life.

A bit of a mess, indeed.]

[terriblepurpose]

[Lazarus rests his head against Paul's shoulder, and despite everything, including the way it makes his own head swim, he is still apparently enough of a child to think that things will be all right. He still mistakes his wishful thinking for what is, mistakes exhaustion for acceptance, mistakes the coincidental alignment of events for a sign he has control.

What is a teacher for, if not correcting such errors? When Lazarus struggles against him like an insect realizing its entanglement in a web, Paul lets him go in a shock of dissonance as much as spiking pain, but whose fault is it, still, that Paul keeps mistaking the nature of things at hand?

(That's funny. He thinks about saying it. Maybe he will.)

He's on his knees in a dark place soaked in blood. His hands are full of it (it's funny; it's funny), and all he hears is a whirlpool, a ravenous spiral of a throat, and he understands the sound is his rampant heartbeat in his ringing ears.

He looks up at Lazarus from the floor. He draws himself up in a column, into the empty blue eye of a storm, and he opens his mouth.]

Stop.

[It lashes out of him like a snapping chain, a Voice that is like and unlike the Voice his mother taught him, a Voice he's only spoken in once before, to her, buried under burning sands. It is not the Voice of obedience. It is the Voice of the imperative - and it falls apart in his throat like wet ash, the last trailing critical note broken by a sucking hitch of breath.]

Stop.

[He can't look at him anymore, not after that, a thing that closes around him like a swallow. He looks at his hands, and can't look at them either, but there's nowhere else he can look. He can't be here. He can't think, except of blood on sand and of how things always happen the same way, and his hands are always reddened to the wrists, streaked up to the elbows.]

I can't let you die.

[He says, in an empty kind of despair, shucked and raw. The question that follows comes in the same tone, but it's as if he's asking it of someone, or something, else - or of himself, or of all of them, or of nothing. He flexes his hands. He observes the differences between them.]

Are you punishing me?

[hearthebell]

[It's not funny.

None of it is; if it's a joke, it's a cruel and humiliating one, and L is betrayed, and angry, and bleeding out as he runs on fumes alone. Even his omen is forsaking what truly matters, here, and the sting of it eclipses what screams in the severed stump in front of his makeshift tourniquet.

Even alone, even if he can't maintain it for a full minute before he inevitably slides to the floor, he'll stand in service of what truly matters. He can be the only one, just like last time, when everyone betrayed him through treachery or stupidity and let a mass murderer win.

I'm right. What matters is I'm right... I wasn't wrong, I'm right I'm right...

The giddy singsong pinging through his brain is shattered into pieces by a voice he can't name, but knows in every fiber of himself. Clinging to the armrest with his remaining, bloody hand, he slips down beside the couch before he thought he'd have to, hollow eyes staring, his own voice stolen by the commanding power in Paul's.

It's not that the Voice sounds like a Shinigami. It's more of a feeling, the pierce of being seen by yellow eyes and marked. And who is he to stand against a god of death? He's the one who tried, and fell; that's his legacy, that will always be his legacy.

The effect lingers even after the sound has crumbled and dropped away. Paul sounds like a scared boy again, baldly telling the room what he can't lose and plaintively asking if he's being punished.

L shakes his head, which lolls sideways against the couch's armrest. He'd never, not intentionally. Even punishing Paul accidentally is still a kind of power he's convinced he can't possess, even at his strongest and sharpest when Paul still believed he could learn something of value from him.

He doesn't know how to be beloved, watching with the bewildered anxiousness of a draft horse who has broken a leg and suddenly become a burden and a liability. Is guilt the punishment that Paul perceives? Or the pain that he should have swallowed with drugs that could blot it out for them both?]

[necrolord]

[ Lazarus attempts to scrabble away like a wounded and cornered animal. It is honestly embarrassing for everyone present. Well; Paul is having a bit too much of a moment to be embarrassed, so God is embarrassed on his behalf. Paul holds himself as though everything around him is made of fragile glass.

And then he speaks.

It shows in John's eyes, for a moment: he knows this trainwreck. He recognizes the timbre, the split-second resonance through Lazarus's answering stillness. To him it plays out not only as sound to air, but in a cascade like dominoes falling. Motion is arrested by processes too neat to be organic; Lazarus goes still in a way living things can never go still without divine command.

He has heard this Voice. It makes perfect, terrible sense that Paul would exert that will here and now, with the hitch of a sob in his chest. That understanding slots into place somewhere deep. He will examine it, wearily, later.

God steps forward. His hand touches Paul's shoulder, in the same way he had steadied the boy when he crumpled in the kitchen, face scrunched in pain and confusion and soap suds still at his wrists. He has that look now, to his Teacher. God sees no difference. ]

I can take it from here.

[terriblepurpose]

[When Teacher puts his hand on Paul's shoulder, his breath doesn't hitch. It implodes, a sucking vacuum collapse that forces his spine straight and ribs wide as he tears at the air like there's not nearly enough of it. It clarifies, scours. It focuses him back down to a single fixed point in space and time, the one his mind keeps trying to wrest him away from.

He's nowhere but here, all control slipped from his grasp like water, his wrist an abbreviated blunt ring of agony, weaving to and from consciousness like a punch-drunk pit fighter, exhausted and undone. He's so tired of always having to be the one who thinks about what happens next, who traces actions and their consequences in spiraling outward echoes. Lazarus, so clever, couldn't see past the end of his rightness to its inevitable outcome, reliant on the mercy of a man who has no reason to give him any.

Except one, and in the pit of this vulnerability, there's nothing gentle or sentimental about that understanding. It's a welling tide, an inexorable pressure that bears down on hairline fractures and wrenches them open. If he looks up, his eyes bruised and ruined with reprieve, he thinks something in him will shatter like so much sun-slicked ice.

Paul's empty left hand rises, barely tremulous, and curls loosely over Teacher's as he turns his still-hanging head, his temple grazing the worn sleeve of Teacher's shirt. He takes another breath, quieter and unforced. He nods, mutely, then lets gravity grip his hand to pull it away.]

Thank you.

[Words as soft and drifting as smoke, but meant, genuine, unmitigated. He's grateful like a surrender.]

[necrolord]

[ Paul crumples. He crumples upwards, into straightness and stillness, but John recognizes this for what it is. The boy touches fingers to the back of his plain brown palm as though reaching for an anchor, then falls away again as though succumbing to the current.

The room is quiet but for Lazarus's ragged breathing. It is dark but for the thalergy-dense and still-cooling blood on the floorboards. For all that he has spent his days in Trench healing the sick, this is something different: there is a feeling to this moment like a shift of gravity, a purity of motion, a divine certainty. When he steps past Paul, it is as God going to bestow a miracle.

The boy before him is a miserable curl of blood and desperation. He is all undirected agony; he is a fight-or-flight mess. It is nothing like he'd been on the beach before the battle, drunk and careless on his coming death. It reminds him more of a bad dream.

He offers his hand out, steady in the space between them. His eyes are implacably dark, the central rings the same white as bone or scouring ash. On the beach, he had made this offer with a slouch and a smile; here it recalls the half-real press of a plastic water bottle between hands. It awaits the indignity of a choice.

Just balancing the scales, really. ]

[hearthebell]

[A different current laps and rushes at the edge of the tatty, ragged couch. It's one L knows; he's felt it before, seen the world growing dimmer and narrower, keenly aware of how a heart beats wrong and then doesn't at all.

That day on the beach, he was different. He hadn't yet lost the first community he'd found and belonged to; he hadn't yet lost Paul. Comparing death and vicarious death is something he can do now; he knows, without contest, which one is worse.

The impulse to fight or flee looks messy and humiliating, but at its core, doesn't it mean that one wants to live? Paul needs to see that he's trying; Paul needs to see that he's not being punished.

It's why, when the Emperor's lightless eyes meet his drifting and unsteady gaze, L puts aside the sting of mutilated pride and attempts, honestly, to reach for his offered hand. If that had gone as intended, the bloody tourniqueted stump would have found its way into the warm, steady palm; instead there's the feeble tink of a fork against wooden floorboards.

He couldn't lift his arm, not even a few inches from the ground. His shivering exhaustion is apparent with every shredded breath; there's no comfort in any of it, except that there's no way Paul can see it as a refusal.]

[necrolord]

[ It's a choice, if a bad one. To live will mean submission; to die will mean flipping off the still and stricken boy watching at his side.

Lazarus chooses submission, or tries to. God will remember that.

The sad little fork tourniquet goes trembling to the ground, and God knows the hazy-eyed look of a body without much time left. This does not worry him. A slow death has very little power when he's in the room.

In acknowledgement of the effort, he reaches out. He touches plain and gentle fingers to the ragged edges of that bloody wrist, and when he pulls his hand outward from that stump, the flesh follows like molded clay. He draws out bone, first, which forms a wet red lattice of phalanges. He webs these with blood vessels, clothes them with tendons, strokes his thumb over the forming lines of metacarpals like a parent comforting a child. He turns Lazarus's half-formed hand in his and traces a thumb along the naked swell of palmar muscle as though admiring his own handiwork.

He isn't so petty as to make it agony. He isn't so gentle as to make it painless. It hurts in the way punishment should, all sting and shudder and wrenching vulnerability. All the while, he does the necessary work: flooding the system with fresh blood, strengthening the flagging heartbeat, wiping clean the clutter of that frantic endorphin high.

It will feel as it did on the beach. It's a phoenix-fire rebirth, a blaze of invisible scouring light, and it is over in an instant. Lazarus is left still bloodsoaked but whole, with his hand in God's hand. God is still looking at those pale and restored fingertips as he says, mildly: ]

I appreciate dedication to the bit, but I don't think the four days are meant to be cumulative.

[ Or: consider dying less often. ]

[hearthebell]

[Sometimes, the choices are a rock and a hard place. Sometimes it's about getting what you can out of a stone. Sometimes it's about knowing that one will be entombed, but at least getting to choose where and how.

It's something. And when there's nothing else, that becomes everything.

Not flipping off Paul, in this case, has become everything. The cold and dark that frame such a small universe make it seem as though it will be easy to dissociate for the duration of what that costs, but he learns, extremely quickly, that disconnecting from his body is just not possible when he is regrowing a hand.

He's seen cadavers. He's seen corpses in every state and stage of decay, every horrible thing that can be done to a human body in the name of cruelty or passion or calculated criminal necessity. It still doesn't prepare him for the surreality of The Emperor creating life from nothing, pulling something neat and gathered from void and entropy, and manages it with an obscene sort of tenderness that is both violating and strangely, sickeningly paternal.

Kira couldn't do that; a true god could, and as The Emperor steadies and strengthens his heartbeat and flushes him with new blood, it feels like a different kind of death.

For Paul; it's for Paul. And that's bearable, until his improving mental clarity kicks him in earnest, and he's reminded that he is also supposed to be grateful, and sorry.

It's a long, untenable and utterly exhausting list. Though he's freshly mended of wounds, The Emperor slyly salts him anyway. The bit, as though to suggest that this Lazarus is inauthentic, not actually having earned the miracle.

That's fine; it's true. What's not fine is the notion that the Messiah is, in fact, authentic, with the grace to perform the miracle for the unworthy.

Healthier than he's been in weeks, L is in fact not fine. His voice is careful; he speaks with measured intention, peering intently at The Emperor's face while he is still inspecting his work in his warm, skilled hand. Eye contact, after all, can make even the most improbable statement seem more sincere.

Paul hadn't asked for sincerity; not really. The point of asking someone to lick a boot is not for them to learn to love the taste of leather.]

I apologize for stealing from you.

[Done. The bare minimum, but exactly what was asked for, in a tone that is neither gentle or petty. Because he's not sorry; he is glad for what he has memorized cover-to-cover. He would do it again; he will, or something like it, just with a recalibrated strategy when he can once more call himself "fine."]

[terriblepurpose]

[It all comes in a flood.

Paul witnesses the miracle from within and without, the reconstitution of what was lost the dim mirror of its destruction, and citric acid blossoms like fission through the tender cavities of his skull. The greyed world cuts into vivid relief, contrasts picked out so sharply they punch through his pupils into the soft tissue of the nerves behind them, bright illusory flashes shivering electric into his visual perception.

His eyes surge with saltwater as he takes a stunned, punched in gasp of a breath, and in the stead of thought-obliterating agony there is left the space for guilt to unfurl in dark, dripping fronds as he watches the performance that plays out before him. There's an intimacy to it that he almost can't stand to see, but this is the script he asked to be read. He has to see it through.

The nod he gives Lazarus after is small, the barest tilt, eyes dark and sunken in the slicking of moisture he hasn't raised hands to wipe away yet. It's enough for him, gratitude squirming in murky blue-green depths.

(And how can he be grateful to both of them? To the man who set the trap, and the man who fell into it? How long can he sustain the contradiction, and in what way will it collapse? He can't think of that, not yet, not here.)

Now all that remains is to see if God accepts this act of contrition in the spirit it was given.]

[necrolord]

[ Paul makes a sound. John does not turn to him, occupied as he is with the scrawny thief before him, but he notes it. Paul is the real center of this orbit; his presence is the gravity which keeps the pair of them in tune. Lazarus would try his damndest to dash himself against the Emperor's mercy until he finds it end, otherwise.

So it's the bare minimum, sure, but even this scant and stilted apology expresses more sense than he'd expect without Paul beside them. He is under no illusion that it's anything other than a show. They're all in agreement, here. This messy deal is done. ]

Don't do it again and we'll be golden.

[ He pats Lazarus on the now-restored hand, like a little there there, and releases him. God, job done and ultimatum pleasantly made, shifts back to let the space stand between Lazarus and Paul. ]

[hearthebell]

[The space that the Emperor leaves behind once he's parted with a touch of mock-comfort might as well be a gulf. If he'd set it up that way, intentionally, it would have been a masterstroke on the necromancer's part, standing aside as if to say see how badly you've chosen to hurt him?

There's something else there, too. A moon keeping tides on course, the gravity to rein in what the Emperor rightly marks as a tendency for L to smudge out the line he toes as he courts danger.]

Take him home,

[He says to the Emperor in a voice like string, then, with more volume and certainty,]

You need to take him home.

[Before Paul falls to pieces, before L has to look him in the eyes. Never has an order sounded so much like a plea coming from the detective.]

[terriblepurpose]

[This is how the world of kings works. This is what Paul has tried to explain to Lazarus in circuitous loops and extended analogy; this is what holds the door shut against chaos. Everything and everyone in their place, and sometimes, that means putting people back into theirs.

It's done. A numb resolution that settles in the gouged path of disaster, muddied but still waters. (Don't do it again, as if they all don't know that he will, but they can pretend a while longer; he has time, and whatever he can make out of that time.) Paul presses up to his feet in a slow, puppet-string rise, shaking his hands at the wrists like he can flick dried blood from them like water, and he doesn't flinch from take him home beyond the flutter of lowered lashes over his averted eyes.]

You'll go somewhere safe. [Contained, pressurized, a bubble of atmosphere plunged into deep water and buckling under it.] Tell me. Then we'll go.

[As if he can transmute the order (plea) to one given to him, spin the current that's dragging them towards dim future echoes of this conversation in another direction by word alone.]

[hearthebell]

[The last thing on L's mind is moving. He could, and may, sit here all night in his own blood in a state of shock that may no longer be physically dangerous, but consumes him all the same. No one would be the wiser, if the Emperor just takes Paul home.

Of course it won't be so simple and swift a departure, because Paul has an order-plea of his own. It's unexpected though perhaps it shouldn't be; they are not strangers or enemies in spite of the gulf. They're only here at all because both of them cared a little too much; it stands to reason that Paul would care, now.

So, he tells him, nodding with such overapplied energy that his teeth rattle.]

I will... of course. I'll do it.

[It's not a lie if the intention is there. It's not a lie if he perhaps can't; this was a safe place by his standards, after all, until it wasn't.

Hopefully it's enough. His eyes flick meaningfully back to the Emperor. Please, go. Now.]

[necrolord]

[ Brutal to watch, honestly. Lazarus says Take him home without a scrap of remaining protest that God can, and should, and will. Lazarus says it to God and not to Paul. Lazarus has given up protesting at God's house being Paul's home. They are all, with finality, on the same page.

Lazarus is pleading; Paul is hollowed-out; there's no need to drag this out further, not when it'd be a hell of a messy dead horse. Diminishing returns for everybody present. Better to let them end on a note to think about.

Better to end on Lazarus's concession and God's mercy.

He touches a hand to Paul's shoulder, again. Barely-there, steadying, a warm press which lifts away as he turns. Something gentle is back in his tone. ]

Let's give him his space.

[terriblepurpose]

[Paul leans into the fleeting touch of God's steadying hand blank-faced and mute. He turns to trail behind him with downcast eyes that do not flit back to Lazarus, because Paul knows his mythology, and to look back at the ghost in the mouth of the Underworld is to both be lost, consumed by an all-too-human flaw.

They are an interminable distance from the iron tang of clinging air when Paul stops, boots crunching on loose, broken stone with the suddenness of it. He closes his hands into fists that barely tremble, tipping his head back to stare blindly into the starred sky.

To not look back is to leave something else behind. Dimly, through a caul, Paul grasps its shape.

(Sharkskin fingers tearing at his face with Paul's hands around its neck, its voice his own voice in his head, its eyes not unshaded blue or burning yellow or ash grey, not empty white, not depthless black -)

When he looks away from the vast unreachable expanse above, there is only a breath where it shows, a ruination of despair bleeding into numb resolution, and that would be bad enough. What's worse, what he knows, is the slivers of desperation long past hope shot through his green eyes like dark veins of infection.

He does not fall to his knees in repentance or prayer or apology. He doesn't make a sound, traitor tongue stitched to the roof of his mouth, as he falls back into step after the future guiding him home.]