[Despite having agreed on a bond with Augustine with the very practical surface reasoning of--literally--not knowing his own dead heart well enough to avoid corruption, Illarion's not yet made much use of that ostensible purpose for letting someone else monitor his buried emotions.
Point of fact, he has done exactly the opposite of using the bond for its intended purpose, despite having been alerted quite early this Blood Moon that something had cracked, shattered, boiled over inside of him:
(He knew. He was corrupt enough to know.)
He pled that he had the situation well-in-hand; he was using his usual methods to manage corruption and he was as fine as he ever was. If it took him much more meditation and incense and tea than usual to manage--well, that was to be expected in this season of the year, wasn't it? He'd muddle through.
Except he had not muddled through, and nothing he did or consumed diminished his corruption for long. It was a true wonder, in fact--or an advantage of Discipleship--that he had not gone full to Beasthood in Riteoir's hellish little pocket world.
And still stubbornly--miserably, mulishly--he had been refusing further help (because it would require talking about the unhealed wound that made every little broken-off pocket of Trench a nightmare revisited; because it would require resources taken from the far-more-vulnerable living) up until today (when? time's become a friable, knotted thing), up until he'd become completely unintelligible on the network from pillar-taint and enough people remarked.
You could go to the Sanctuary, one--more?--had suggested. You could strip your soul naked in front of strangers and wither beneath their abstract compassion, a pitiable object and not a loved flock-member, no, thank you, but no-- But at least if the advice wasn't helpful it was a trigger to get him finally, reluctantly shambling in the right direction.
Along the bond that tugged in his chest, at his heart, with the pulse of another's legible emotions. Back to the one person who both felt like home and like someone with shoulders broad enough to bear the notion Illarion hadn't been rescued quite fast enough from Nephele-that-wasn't; that all the effort expended on him had not completely saved him from that private hell.
He follows the bond, Iskierka flying ahead of him like a--ha!--omen of a storm; he is, by the time he's evaded another godspitting set of Riteoir's black hands and made it to the house, in enough of a state to go directly outward around wall and window and wall and closed door to drop in on Augustine unannounced. Drop, literally, into an uncomfortable huddle before the door--because he is a mess, has been a mess, with out-eyes shot black over the gold with Darkblood and his plumage a sickening unnatural dawn-pink worse than his native fuligin, talons and feathers and worse poking in haphazardly from out in enough profusion to make him look half-Beast.]
Ava, [he says, voice small and warped and uncertain,] Alik?
...Help. [Pathetic. But at least it's going to get him somewhere.
[ The first response to his abrupt intrusion is, of course, a scream.
The surprise is likely that it is a scream of delight, rather than shock or fear or horror; not to mention, perhaps, that the throat from which it issues is not, and never has been, humanoid — no matter how many people may have wandered through Augustine's room, this half-year.
The second surprise may have something to do with how the delighted screamer dive-bombs into the mess of feathery Corruption that used to be a shrike, but then — small children are always delighted by the appearance of their parents, even if the children in question are dragons, are they not? The unbridled, unconcerned affection as the little flier tries to burrow under those straying feathers, chittering and vocalizing and screeching, has to be worth something more than an injured eardrum, surely? ]
"Cas?"
[ To say Augustine is unsurprised by all of this would be a lie; he stands in the doorway, a small dish of raw, cubed (crab)meat balanced in one hand, looking perplexed, and maybe a little concerned — but is it his heart or liver or spleen displaying that, rather than his facial expression? How easy is it to tell which form of vision is involved in this perception? ]
"Petrie, off," [ he commands abruptly, with chirps and clicks of tongue and fingers to reinforce the direction; their reborn dragon-child lets out a sound remarkably similar to a raspberry before, quite begrudgingly, returning to the perch his other parent points at.
Even then, it takes a moment before Augustine says anything else; he's looking, assessing, a calm exterior over palpable concern, because — of course — it's the bond that gives away his emotions, no matter how well he masks them; the same bond that allows him to monitor Illarion's in turn. ]
"Are you comfortable on the floor, like that? Or do you think we can get you up on the bed?"
«Oh, Cas, you're leaking everywhere,» [ interjects Alfred, plainly dismayed, coiling himself around whichever dimensions he can reach — and setting off Petrie's irritable chattering again, in an obvious why does HE get to cuddle?! way. ]
Not because it's unexpected--this is how the screamer always greets him, after all--but because he is, as Alik will observe, leaking. Patterns of eyes wind themselves into the grain of the floorboards; knots flower to uncanny golden insectile stares. Unnatural colors coruscate around the shrike's unstable form as he tries not to move--something he ordinarily need make no effort to do, but becomes so much harder as blood corruption spills to pillar corruption spills to twisted impossible limbs and tumorous overgrowth. He tries so hard not to move, not to touch the dear little dragonling burrowing under his hideous feathers, not to spread what's gone wrong with him-- And it is, thank stars and Saints and Rod in Prav, not necessary for him to hold out long because Ava is there, Ava's called Petrie back before the worst can happen, Ava's a calm anchor through their bond and taking the situation apart in a way Illarion cannot grasp.
(The weather is terrible beneath the shrouding fog of the shrike's dead heart; fury and misery surge and recede in waves, around the fixed and jagged panic of an animal caught in a trap. Leg-gnawing panic, self-mutilating panic. If he could feel it in more than jags and bursts, he'd have run, run anywhere, blind and witless until something ate him.
Instead, he's run here.)]
Will ruin your bed. Nothing to show for it, [he complains, grasping and failing at his usual black humor.
Even as he's pulling himself to shaking talons, trailing corruption behind him for the short distance to the bed, he tries to keep up the line of chatter--to pretend at a normal that's infinitely out of reach.] Surely--could do better. For that--than me.
Sorry, Alik--sorry (sorry, I'm sorry), [he adds, as the Omen festoons him and he collapses again--ungainly as the new-risen--across the bed. His arms, and arms, and clawed vestigial arms come up to cover his head; he gives a noise that's like a sigh formed in the lungs of Hell, the throat of a Resurrection Beast.] Was this, or. Or the sword.
Still an option. Say the word; I'll go-- [He gestures toward the window--it's not a long enough fall to put him out his misery, but the idea's there. (Doesn't feel like the right idea even if it's a "cure" he's availed--will avail--himself of before. He had a half-dozen chances before coming here; didn't take them.)
Iskierka, agitated but entirely herself still, darts to join Petrie on the perch. She bullies herself up against him, feathers on end, and begins preening him with the ruthless zealotry of a mother presenting her offspring to a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, if he'd just do something about his wretched hair scales--]
Edited 2022-09-29 05:32 (UTC)
cw: mold, desecration of fine silk, hypocrisy, etc
[ Ava doesn’t have time to fuss over Petrie like normal; the change to his parquet’s pattern is sign enough of that — Iskierka gets the quickest of (true, genuine) smiles, as he settles the dish of meat just before the perch, closer to her than to him. ] “Don’t let him eat that too quickly,” [ he murmurs, and turns his attention back once again to the shrike of the hour, or what’s left of him: shadows and feathers and too many angles and dimensions, twisting over and around and through each other as he pours himself into a bed that should have been an onto —
Ah well.
Never mind that even Alik is here-and-there-and-gone-again, so far as Ava’s poor eyes can see.
Never mind that the fine silk-and-linen sheets are withering and staining away, like stop-motion time-lapse photography of a black-mold devastation.
Never mind that this is the month of Never Mind, that knowledge is supposed to be the root of all wisdom, that Ava’s Omni rests cheerful and dark on his desk across the room, next to a pot of cooling tea and a familiar silver dish serving as an ash tray, for that matter. None of it actually matters at the moment, as Alik makes eye contact with his brother, interrupting Ava’s perusal.
He lights something — not a cigarette, for once, for all that it’s the same general size and shape; a stick of incense, this time, one it only takes him a moment to fish out of the familiar-looking bag slung over the back of the desk chair. Ashes to ashes; it can sit in the dish with all the others, just as easily, as the scent of new smoke begins to permeate the air, cutting through the corrosive funk of rotting feathers. ]
“Has it come to this, then, братишка?” [ The question is gentle, as is the brief almost-touch of piezoelectric aura against fourth-dimensional (broken) feathers. He does not ask how have you let yourself come to this point; he knows too well the way the shrike's perception of his own heart is no better or worse than his visual acuity in the absence of Iskierka's assistance. ]
«Don't be stupid.» [ In a surprise turn of events, it's Alik who sounds fierce and furious and impatient, his mind more a snarl than a hiss. Even Ava pauses, the silver-sharp flicker of his surprise cutting through the tangle of Corruption blooming in the dead heart before him. ] «How is wandering off to kill yourself going to help? That's not going to do anything to keep it from happening again!»
[ The hypocrisy, too, is thick enough in the room to cut with a knife, suddenly — prominent enough to be the fifth party present in a room that is not, after everything else, all that big — especially not with the unpleasantness staining the floor and sheets. Ava's expression is so incredulous that, eventually, Alik gives the impression of blushing, even as he remains coiled stubbornly close. ]
"Well. We won't, as it happens, be having that as anything before an actual last resort, I think," [ is all Ava says, once the seconds have stretched on long enough. He claps his hands together once, as if that's actually decided anything, and ... stretches one hand over to the end of the bed, where he catches the edge of a buttery-yellow blanket — tremendously soft, vaguely reminiscent of buckskin, with a pattern of dark brown moths printed along the border — and, giving it a practiced twitch, flips it to cover the confusing mess of once-and-future-person in his bed. ]
"Let's start there, for the moment," [ he says, calm and confident in the face of the pitiable, horrible monster ruining his favorite sheets. ] "Would you like some tea, as well? Or would you rather have me find somewhere to shove one of those frozen popsicles?"
[There's the incense. There's the worry and the endearment--each of them a drop of soothing oil on troubled waters, insufficient to quiet the furor by themselves but adding up to something when put all together. There's--
Alik being furious, voice sharp as his bite, over Illarion's volunteered direct solution, and that's both a surprise and not. Trust one who had turned to suicide and seen what came of it (a myriad of what came of it) to have strong opinions on someone else thinking it any kind of answer to a problem, however temporary the death.]
Seems not, [he rasps in answer to Ava's question.] Bad habit--from when I didn't h̶a̴v̸e̵ ̸t̴h̵e̸ ̷h̸e̵l̸p̶,̸ [in answer to Alik's, even if it didn't need one. One of his too-many hands finds the Omen's scaly length for an apologetic pat, then simply--rests there for the comfort of it.
He remembers the blanket that's abruptly drawn over him; Ava had used it on John enough Illarion'd gotten familiar with its properties. A detached part of him wonders what it might turn him into, if he stays long enough under it, even as he pulls himself entirely beneath it like a hatchling beneath her mother's wings.
It is very comfortable there. The bond grows measurably quieter once his last appendage is tucked beneath it, though corruption still roils like a foul taste in the back of his mind, on the back of both their tongues. Muffled, he says,] Already a̸̭̥͚͙̪̓̑ṣ̷̡̱̾̏̉k̸̰͈̬̫̐ḛ̵͌d̷̼͔͍͈̃̀͆̾ me and I said tea.
[Pause.] Maybe. Did we. Did we already have it?
[Time isn't keeping its proper dimension for him, either, as a last insult.]
[ Ava sighs, and reaches up to pinch at the bridge of his nose, at the shrike's confession — and then stops himself, frowning briefly at his hand, and the ash-blackened stain on his fingertips from contact with that mold-patterned Corruption.
(Yuck.)
He reaches, instead, for a handkerch— no, better make it a disposable tissue, come to think of it; better, this way, to daintily (fussily) wipe his hands clean of it, to let the black-stain spread through the white papercloth, rather than his normal neat trick of dissolving all the chemical bonds in a substance in order to get it to turn to dust and then stop existing entirely. He doesn't trust corruption, and its traces and aftereffects, to know how to go away, like that — and would much rather not end up breathing in corruption-spores, come bedtime.
(Double yuck, really.)
But there's another question being asked, even as he reaches for the cupboard and its rapid-boil kettle and complement of teas — not that he particularly likes the way the strongest anti-corruption blend tastes, really, but after dealing with John in July he's certainly grown used to it — and he shakes his head, offering a sad smile to the bed and its contents. ]
"No, Пташка, we haven't had the tea, yet. I'm only just making it now." [ Said softly, soothingly —
But there are other things he can do, in the minute it takes the kettle's contents to reach a boil, and while the tea steeps in the pot, waiting to be poured out into cups. He finds a sock in need of darning, and insistently pulls it over Alik's head, only barely leaving enough space for him to flick his tongue out when he desires. He finds a blindfold — genuinely, purpose-built, albeit more commonly used in sexual situations — and shoves it into his pocket, because there's not a snowball's chance in Hell that he's going to manage to blindfold Petrie — he'll have to go in his crate-cage-sleeping-chamber, which used to be half of Ava's closet. (Clear proof that he has always loved being a father: giving up half his closet without even a hint of prevarication or objection, in order to provide a safe space for his dragon-child.) The still-mostly-full dish of meat leads the way, accompanied by a few dismayed squawks, and Iskierka is offered her choice of whether or not she's going to keep her role as Oversight Committee of Eating — and then the closet door is shut, to keep draconic eyes away from Illarion.
Because yes: Ava knows that name. (Augustine knows that name.) He has read the diaries kept by Preservation, and he has recognized the story of Domnika's murder of her grandchild, and he knows the names that Preservation has given to son and grandson alike. He also knows why it is that shrikes keep their names hidden away so carefully, and he knows that this really isn't the time for him to start using it — not without warning, at least!
He pours the tea; he brings the mugs to the bed; he sets them down on his bedside table, ties the blindfold around his own eyes, and settles in against the headboard, in the narrow triangle of yet-unclaimed bed. ]
"I think it's time to talk, dear one," [ he murmurs, soft and gentle as a poet's version of a summer rain — the version that isn't a tempestuous thunderstorm, that is. He can still perceive the shrike, even with his eyes closed beneath a blindfold — he is a Lyctor, after all! — and so he reaches out and rests his own hand in a calm and steady grip, through the blanket, of what is probably a knee. (Possibly a shoulder.) ] "For one thing, I'm going to assume that you aren't delighted by your current predicament, hmm?"
[ As for Alik — he's a snake, not a cat; he isn't purring. But he would be, if he were, as he stays right where he is, getting petted. ]
Oh. [Oh, they hadn't had tea yet; oh, he's come undone from time again. There is something mournful in the sound, and something resigned, for all it echoes as badly as any of the shrike's utterances. He curls further in on himself under the blanket, as if he could become small enough to vanish with enough rearrangement of his far-too-many limbs. Not that he should--he will be/has been(?) rebuked for saying it--and not that he could, but there's some small additional comfort to be wrapped in his own feathers. To feel that, contrary to what his head's saying, his body hasn't all dissolved away into meaninglessness.
The acute disconnection's made all the worse by being half-or-more realized and unable to ((feel)) much of anything but in kaleidoscopic, disorienting snatches (half the dissolving, thread-fine mycelia ruining Augustine's bedsheets were his, once)--and so he cannot make sense of where it is Ava goes, and what he does, around making tea.
But Iskierka sees, and Iskierka may not know what she's witnessing--the precise ritual of hooding and veiling that the Saint creates anew to reassure his flock-brother that those he loves are safe--yet she's quick to relay it all faithfully even as she removes with Petrie to the closet. (She can feed him there and still be an eye for her Sleeper, peering around door and wall.) Illarion absorbs it through her eyes, finding the sock Alik's wearing with his searching fingers as secondary confirmation--and makes a low noise from somewhere deep in his lungs. Oh, again oh, that this friend-and-brother he has found could look after him in such careful detail.
The feeling of abject misery and isolation radiating from beneath the blanket steadily lessens. By the time Ava's back beside him again it is a freshening squall where it had been a hurricane, kicking up spray and disarranging the waves but not threatening to swamp anyone. He curls toward the indentation the other man makes on the bed without disturbing that steadying hand (resting at a misbegotten joint that, anatomically, is probably a shoulder).]
Talk about? This? S' cock of a situation to be in. "̷N̸o̷t̵ ̶d̷e̵l̵i̶g̷h̷t̸e̵d̸"̴-- [He laughs. It's a bad sound. It would hurt if he had working nerves.] Very diplomatic. Lets, letting me demur. Keep t̶h̵e̴ ̵d̶i̶g̷n̴i̴t̷y̷ I don't have.
Did you remember that? The, the hooding. Do I teach you--him--m̴̟͋y̴͉̅ ̵̫̈́D̶͓͠e̸̩͐a̸̔ͅt̵͙̍ḫ̷͒ľ̴̞è̷̖ś̶͈s̷̗̅ ̴͇͘l̵̰̽o̵̫̚r̵̝͛d̸̮́. Him.
All of it, really — the terrible laughter, the inhuman warping of his voice that is for no reason so simple as because he is not human — even the reminder, of who he never was, what he never was (beloved) — all of it hurts, but Ava doesn't flinch, even with the dusty trickle of blood clouding up his ear. ]
"It would be much easier if I could simply say 'yes', I suppose," [ he says after a moment, dissolving the blood into dust much finer than glitter, as if that would keep it from behaving the same way. ] "Here, bring out a hand so I can hand you this mug, my dear murderbird — yes, that's it — now drink up, because I think the easiest way to explain this, and several other things as well, is if I read you something."
[ He waits for a firm grip on the mug before he twists around, concentrating as he stares at his palm, until it seems to fill with the onyx of liquid Darkblood — solidifying into the curved onyx form of his Omni, and no matter how simple the party trick of summoning it back from wherever the hell Alik has most recently smuggled it.
He sets it in his lap, the better to take a sip of his own tea without ever pulling his other hand away from whatevermonstrously-angled joint that might be; he sighs, as he pulls up the relevant passage of the first of the diaries he's been reading, bookmarked for just such an occasion as this, because there's no way nothing changes after this; he clears his throat, and it sounds like grief being swallowed.
He reads conversationally, and it's easy — astonishingly, appallingly easy — to hear another, lost voice, overlaid atop his, speaking the same meaning in a language that Ava has never had the opportunity to learn, even in memories of a life that never existed.
He reads, and he rubs the shrike's back, or arm, or otherlimb — whatever it is — through the buttery-yellow blanket that insists, wrapped close, that Illarion is safe, even as Ava's words — Dusya's words — shatter him anew. ]
Every death I cannot prevent — every death I have already failed to prevent — every death that comes to our people, now and in the future, from the choice I made, and the choices we continue to make every day — weighs on my heart and soul twice as heavily as I am lifted up by news of each new birth borne of our beloved mothers. We did not know the cost, yet we chose to pay it anyway; the curse upon us is in the way that cost will also be paid — must also be paid — by our beloved, miraculous children, and their children, and their children's children, from now until the end of time.
All these things I write — our victories and our failures; our blessings and our curses; those rituals that Preserve us, and all known instances that have hastened our corruption and death — not to excuse my choices, both in the beginning and in allowing my people to keep me as their Prince, but to explain.
There will come a day when I, too, will be reduced to nothing more than ash and dust and a forgotten Name; not even my power, with that of my full Court behind me, will preserve me forever, and it is nothing but a fool's dream to hope otherwise. My people die; it is a blessing and a curse, to live so quickly, and I will never turn my back on my people and their need; I am one of them, and so the day will come when I die. (Know, my darlings Eska and Larka, if somehow I have kept you alive long enough that you read this, that I rejoice to know I am not alone; that I am not the only undying shrike; that I will know that freedom, however distant may be that day!)
I write, because I will die someday, and if I do not write our history — in its fullest, most terrible truth — our children's children's children's children (in whichever generation this becomes true) will lose this knowledge, and become no more than the merchants of Death we are already whispered to be.
If I do not Preserve us... who will?
[ He reads, and he rubs the shrike's back, or arm, or otherlimb — whatever it is — through the buttery-yellow blanket that insists, wrapped close, that Illarion is safe; and even as Ava's words — Dusya's words — shatter him anew, they rebuild him, with the memory of sitting at the right hand of the Prince of Preservation, being held and cherished and soothed — and put back to rights, until he could almost believe he was not only well, not only free from this Corruption, borne of Trench, born of the Pillars — but he could believe, if only he wanted to let himself believe, that he was what he'd been before he was a shrike — the iron elf who first met General Evdokim, who made his trembling pledge of good faith before he'd learned how many other ways the world was full of those who had none. ]
[Obediently--reluctantly--Illarion thrusts out a hand to take the mug and draw it back beneath the blanket it. He needed it--needs it, will need it?--to shed the corruption but it requires moving (even if only a little) from beneath the sheltering blanket--might even require sitting up enough to drink.
And, stars and Saints, he does not want to.
Does not want to--a felt and deeply surprising notion, that; so novel in the sludgy morass left of his distress that he's lost a moment in contemplating it. He thus misses the first few words of Ava's reading--
(misses also how some not-so-connected part of his horrific, malformed anatomy solves the problem of sitting up for tea on its own--a welter of tentacles slithering into the mug from a pseudomouth to drink the liquid like roots)
--and then fails to recognize them for another few moments, for he had never read his Prince's private writings as such... But the too-familiar cadence, the choice of words, the worries over his people's still-uncertain survival...
The love-names--
There is a long silence, as only the dead can be silent, as Augustine reads. Then, the shape beneath the blanket utters a small, choked noise--a small choked noise that is strangely normal, just as that shape has itself become small and strangely normal.
No larger and no more limbed than a human, with nothing extending kata-ana into Riverspace for Lyctoral senses to catch on or a Lyctoral Omen to twine around, Illarion lies beneath Bausphomette's gift and weeps. He--and his heart--are no less dead than he had been, but even without corruption there are griefs--and reliefs--so transcendent they can pierce the fog of undeath.]
Why? [he asks, at length. Not how, for even in his current state, he can guess--the Omnis are an absolute horror for operational security, he'd determined long ago.
But why? He doesn't begrudge Ava this--might be too stunned to be begrudging--but also cannot believe it mere curiosity that sent the Saint of Patience looking for those words.
[ The display of his Omni is dark again, and he sets it down beside the curve of his hip, between them – between hip and blanket, or between Lyctor and Shrike, or really both. This leaves him both hands free, both arms free, and so it no longer merely Alik wrapped around his limbs (and limbs) but Ava as well, keeping the birdrito well-wrapped indeed. ]
My brother was without his flock, [ he says gently, as if simply enough were a phrase that could think it applied to a situation such as this! ] We're not much of one, and I know my nesting instincts are just appalling to you, and frankly always have been – but I found myself remembering enough to know where to look, to learn more.
[ He sighs, after a moment, and leans his head against that soft and buttery blanket, and the limb beneath he isn't even pretending to try to identify just now. ]
What can I say? I've found that I quite enjoy the notion of a leader more interested in sustaining his compassion, and knowledge of the mistakes he and his people have made, for future wisdom and peace, than in sustaining the mythology he's inventing to cover up his mistakes so no one will discover them.
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Shortly after Illarion's PSA goes up -- 17th-ish
Point of fact, he has done exactly the opposite of using the bond for its intended purpose, despite having been alerted quite early this Blood Moon that something had cracked, shattered, boiled over inside of him:
(He knew. He was corrupt enough to know.)
He pled that he had the situation well-in-hand; he was using his usual methods to manage corruption and he was as fine as he ever was. If it took him much more meditation and incense and tea than usual to manage--well, that was to be expected in this season of the year, wasn't it? He'd muddle through.
Except he had not muddled through, and nothing he did or consumed diminished his corruption for long. It was a true wonder, in fact--or an advantage of Discipleship--that he had not gone full to Beasthood in Riteoir's hellish little pocket world.
And still stubbornly--miserably, mulishly--he had been refusing further help (because it would require talking about the unhealed wound that made every little broken-off pocket of Trench a nightmare revisited; because it would require resources taken from the far-more-vulnerable living) up until today (when? time's become a friable, knotted thing), up until he'd become completely unintelligible on the network from pillar-taint and enough people remarked.
You could go to the Sanctuary, one--more?--had suggested. You could strip your soul naked in front of strangers and wither beneath their abstract compassion, a pitiable object and not a loved flock-member, no, thank you, but no-- But at least if the advice wasn't helpful it was a trigger to get him finally, reluctantly shambling in the right direction.
Along the bond that tugged in his chest, at his heart, with the pulse of another's legible emotions. Back to the one person who both felt like home and like someone with shoulders broad enough to bear the notion Illarion hadn't been rescued quite fast enough from Nephele-that-wasn't; that all the effort expended on him had not completely saved him from that private hell.
He follows the bond, Iskierka flying ahead of him like a--ha!--omen of a storm; he is, by the time he's evaded another godspitting set of Riteoir's black hands and made it to the house, in enough of a state to go directly outward around wall and window and wall and closed door to drop in on Augustine unannounced. Drop, literally, into an uncomfortable huddle before the door--because he is a mess, has been a mess, with out-eyes shot black over the gold with Darkblood and his plumage a sickening unnatural dawn-pink worse than his native fuligin, talons and feathers and worse poking in haphazardly from out in enough profusion to make him look half-Beast.]
Ava, [he says, voice small and warped and uncertain,] Alik?
...Help. [Pathetic. But at least it's going to get him somewhere.
He hopes. Argonaut's children are good at that.]
no subject
The surprise is likely that it is a scream of delight, rather than shock or fear or horror; not to mention, perhaps, that the throat from which it issues is not, and never has been, humanoid — no matter how many people may have wandered through Augustine's room, this half-year.
The second surprise may have something to do with how the delighted screamer dive-bombs into the mess of feathery Corruption that used to be a shrike, but then — small children are always delighted by the appearance of their parents, even if the children in question are dragons, are they not? The unbridled, unconcerned affection as the little flier tries to burrow under those straying feathers, chittering and vocalizing and screeching, has to be worth something more than an injured eardrum, surely? ]
"Cas?"
[ To say Augustine is unsurprised by all of this would be a lie; he stands in the doorway, a small dish of raw, cubed (crab)meat balanced in one hand, looking perplexed, and maybe a little concerned — but is it his heart or liver or spleen displaying that, rather than his facial expression? How easy is it to tell which form of vision is involved in this perception? ]
"Petrie, off," [ he commands abruptly, with chirps and clicks of tongue and fingers to reinforce the direction; their reborn dragon-child lets out a sound remarkably similar to a raspberry before, quite begrudgingly, returning to the perch his other parent points at.
Even then, it takes a moment before Augustine says anything else; he's looking, assessing, a calm exterior over palpable concern, because — of course — it's the bond that gives away his emotions, no matter how well he masks them; the same bond that allows him to monitor Illarion's in turn. ]
"Are you comfortable on the floor, like that? Or do you think we can get you up on the bed?"
«Oh, Cas, you're leaking everywhere,» [ interjects Alfred, plainly dismayed, coiling himself around whichever dimensions he can reach — and setting off Petrie's irritable chattering again, in an obvious why does HE get to cuddle?! way. ]
cw: veiled suicidality, reality leak
Not because it's unexpected--this is how the screamer always greets him, after all--but because he is, as Alik will observe, leaking. Patterns of eyes wind themselves into the grain of the floorboards; knots flower to uncanny golden insectile stares. Unnatural colors coruscate around the shrike's unstable form as he tries not to move--something he ordinarily need make no effort to do, but becomes so much harder as blood corruption spills to pillar corruption spills to twisted impossible limbs and tumorous overgrowth. He tries so hard not to move, not to touch the dear little dragonling burrowing under his hideous feathers, not to spread what's gone wrong with him-- And it is, thank stars and Saints and Rod in Prav, not necessary for him to hold out long because Ava is there, Ava's called Petrie back before the worst can happen, Ava's a calm anchor through their bond and taking the situation apart in a way Illarion cannot grasp.
(The weather is terrible beneath the shrouding fog of the shrike's dead heart; fury and misery surge and recede in waves, around the fixed and jagged panic of an animal caught in a trap. Leg-gnawing panic, self-mutilating panic. If he could feel it in more than jags and bursts, he'd have run, run anywhere, blind and witless until something ate him.
Instead, he's run here.)]
Will ruin your bed. Nothing to show for it, [he complains, grasping and failing at his usual black humor.
Even as he's pulling himself to shaking talons, trailing corruption behind him for the short distance to the bed, he tries to keep up the line of chatter--to pretend at a normal that's infinitely out of reach.] Surely--could do better. For that--than me.
Sorry, Alik--sorry (sorry, I'm sorry), [he adds, as the Omen festoons him and he collapses again--ungainly as the new-risen--across the bed. His arms, and arms, and clawed vestigial arms come up to cover his head; he gives a noise that's like a sigh formed in the lungs of Hell, the throat of a Resurrection Beast.] Was this, or. Or the sword.
Still an option. Say the word; I'll go-- [He gestures toward the window--it's not a long enough fall to put him out his misery, but the idea's there. (Doesn't feel like the right idea even if it's a "cure" he's availed--will avail--himself of before. He had a half-dozen chances before coming here; didn't take them.)
Iskierka, agitated but entirely herself still, darts to join Petrie on the perch. She bullies herself up against him, feathers on end, and begins preening him with the ruthless zealotry of a mother presenting her offspring to a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, if he'd just do something about his wretched
hairscales--]cw: mold, desecration of fine silk, hypocrisy, etc
Ah well.
Never mind that even Alik is here-and-there-and-gone-again, so far as Ava’s poor eyes can see.
Never mind that the fine silk-and-linen sheets are withering and staining away, like stop-motion time-lapse photography of a black-mold devastation.
Never mind that this is the month of Never Mind, that knowledge is supposed to be the root of all wisdom, that Ava’s Omni rests cheerful and dark on his desk across the room, next to a pot of cooling tea and a familiar silver dish serving as an ash tray, for that matter. None of it actually matters at the moment, as Alik makes eye contact with his brother, interrupting Ava’s perusal.
He lights something — not a cigarette, for once, for all that it’s the same general size and shape; a stick of incense, this time, one it only takes him a moment to fish out of the familiar-looking bag slung over the back of the desk chair. Ashes to ashes; it can sit in the dish with all the others, just as easily, as the scent of new smoke begins to permeate the air, cutting through the corrosive funk of rotting feathers. ]
“Has it come to this, then, братишка?” [ The question is gentle, as is the brief almost-touch of piezoelectric aura against fourth-dimensional (broken) feathers. He does not ask how have you let yourself come to this point; he knows too well the way the shrike's perception of his own heart is no better or worse than his visual acuity in the absence of Iskierka's assistance. ]
«Don't be stupid.» [ In a surprise turn of events, it's Alik who sounds fierce and furious and impatient, his mind more a snarl than a hiss. Even Ava pauses, the silver-sharp flicker of his surprise cutting through the tangle of Corruption blooming in the dead heart before him. ] «How is wandering off to kill yourself going to help? That's not going to do anything to keep it from happening again!»
[ The hypocrisy, too, is thick enough in the room to cut with a knife, suddenly — prominent enough to be the fifth party present in a room that is not, after everything else, all that big — especially not with the unpleasantness staining the floor and sheets. Ava's expression is so incredulous that, eventually, Alik gives the impression of blushing, even as he remains coiled stubbornly close. ]
"Well. We won't, as it happens, be having that as anything before an actual last resort, I think," [ is all Ava says, once the seconds have stretched on long enough. He claps his hands together once, as if that's actually decided anything, and ... stretches one hand over to the end of the bed, where he catches the edge of a buttery-yellow blanket — tremendously soft, vaguely reminiscent of buckskin, with a pattern of dark brown moths printed along the border — and, giving it a practiced twitch, flips it to cover the confusing mess of once-and-future-person in his bed. ]
"Let's start there, for the moment," [ he says, calm and confident in the face of the pitiable, horrible monster ruining his favorite sheets. ] "Would you like some tea, as well? Or would you rather have me find somewhere to shove one of those frozen popsicles?"
cw: we're still talkin about that suicide
Alik being furious, voice sharp as his bite, over Illarion's volunteered direct solution, and that's both a surprise and not. Trust one who had turned to suicide and seen what came of it (a myriad of what came of it) to have strong opinions on someone else thinking it any kind of answer to a problem, however temporary the death.]
Seems not, [he rasps in answer to Ava's question.] Bad habit--from when I didn't h̶a̴v̸e̵ ̸t̴h̵e̸ ̷h̸e̵l̸p̶,̸ [in answer to Alik's, even if it didn't need one. One of his too-many hands finds the Omen's scaly length for an apologetic pat, then simply--rests there for the comfort of it.
He remembers the blanket that's abruptly drawn over him; Ava had used it on John enough Illarion'd gotten familiar with its properties. A detached part of him wonders what it might turn him into, if he stays long enough under it, even as he pulls himself entirely beneath it like a hatchling beneath her mother's wings.
It is very comfortable there. The bond grows measurably quieter once his last appendage is tucked beneath it, though corruption still roils like a foul taste in the back of his mind, on the back of both their tongues. Muffled, he says,] Already a̸̭̥͚͙̪̓̑ṣ̷̡̱̾̏̉k̸̰͈̬̫̐ḛ̵͌d̷̼͔͍͈̃̀͆̾ me and I said tea.
[Pause.] Maybe. Did we. Did we already have it?
[Time isn't keeping its proper dimension for him, either, as a last insult.]
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(Yuck.)
He reaches, instead, for a handkerch— no, better make it a disposable tissue, come to think of it; better, this way, to daintily (fussily) wipe his hands clean of it, to let the black-stain spread through the white papercloth, rather than his normal neat trick of dissolving all the chemical bonds in a substance in order to get it to turn to dust and then stop existing entirely. He doesn't trust corruption, and its traces and aftereffects, to know how to go away, like that — and would much rather not end up breathing in corruption-spores, come bedtime.
(Double yuck, really.)
But there's another question being asked, even as he reaches for the cupboard and its rapid-boil kettle and complement of teas — not that he particularly likes the way the strongest anti-corruption blend tastes, really, but after dealing with John in July he's certainly grown used to it — and he shakes his head, offering a sad smile to the bed and its contents. ]
"No, Пташка, we haven't had the tea, yet. I'm only just making it now." [ Said softly, soothingly —
But there are other things he can do, in the minute it takes the kettle's contents to reach a boil, and while the tea steeps in the pot, waiting to be poured out into cups. He finds a sock in need of darning, and insistently pulls it over Alik's head, only barely leaving enough space for him to flick his tongue out when he desires. He finds a blindfold — genuinely, purpose-built, albeit more commonly used in sexual situations — and shoves it into his pocket, because there's not a snowball's chance in Hell that he's going to manage to blindfold Petrie — he'll have to go in his crate-cage-sleeping-chamber, which used to be half of Ava's closet. (Clear proof that he has always loved being a father: giving up half his closet without even a hint of prevarication or objection, in order to provide a safe space for his dragon-child.) The still-mostly-full dish of meat leads the way, accompanied by a few dismayed squawks, and Iskierka is offered her choice of whether or not she's going to keep her role as Oversight Committee of Eating — and then the closet door is shut, to keep draconic eyes away from Illarion.
Because yes: Ava knows that name. (Augustine knows that name.) He has read the diaries kept by Preservation, and he has recognized the story of Domnika's murder of her grandchild, and he knows the names that Preservation has given to son and grandson alike. He also knows why it is that shrikes keep their names hidden away so carefully, and he knows that this really isn't the time for him to start using it — not without warning, at least!
He pours the tea; he brings the mugs to the bed; he sets them down on his bedside table, ties the blindfold around his own eyes, and settles in against the headboard, in the narrow triangle of yet-unclaimed bed. ]
"I think it's time to talk, dear one," [ he murmurs, soft and gentle as a poet's version of a summer rain — the version that isn't a tempestuous thunderstorm, that is. He can still perceive the shrike, even with his eyes closed beneath a blindfold — he is a Lyctor, after all! — and so he reaches out and rests his own hand in a calm and steady grip, through the blanket, of what is probably a knee. (Possibly a shoulder.) ] "For one thing, I'm going to assume that you aren't delighted by your current predicament, hmm?"
[ As for Alik — he's a snake, not a cat; he isn't purring. But he would be, if he were, as he stays right where he is, getting petted. ]
no subject
The acute disconnection's made all the worse by being half-or-more realized and unable to ((feel)) much of anything but in kaleidoscopic, disorienting snatches (half the dissolving, thread-fine mycelia ruining Augustine's bedsheets were his, once)--and so he cannot make sense of where it is Ava goes, and what he does, around making tea.
But Iskierka sees, and Iskierka may not know what she's witnessing--the precise ritual of hooding and veiling that the Saint creates anew to reassure his flock-brother that those he loves are safe--yet she's quick to relay it all faithfully even as she removes with Petrie to the closet. (She can feed him there and still be an eye for her Sleeper, peering around door and wall.) Illarion absorbs it through her eyes, finding the sock Alik's wearing with his searching fingers as secondary confirmation--and makes a low noise from somewhere deep in his lungs. Oh, again oh, that this friend-and-brother he has found could look after him in such careful detail.
The feeling of abject misery and isolation radiating from beneath the blanket steadily lessens. By the time Ava's back beside him again it is a freshening squall where it had been a hurricane, kicking up spray and disarranging the waves but not threatening to swamp anyone. He curls toward the indentation the other man makes on the bed without disturbing that steadying hand (resting at a misbegotten joint that, anatomically, is probably a shoulder).]
Talk about? This? S' cock of a situation to be in. "̷N̸o̷t̵ ̶d̷e̵l̵i̶g̷h̷t̸e̵d̸"̴-- [He laughs. It's a bad sound. It would hurt if he had working nerves.] Very diplomatic. Lets, letting me demur. Keep t̶h̵e̴ ̵d̶i̶g̷n̴i̴t̷y̷ I don't have.
Did you remember that? The, the hooding. Do I teach you--him--m̴̟͋y̴͉̅ ̵̫̈́D̶͓͠e̸̩͐a̸̔ͅt̵͙̍ḫ̷͒ľ̴̞è̷̖ś̶͈s̷̗̅ ̴͇͘l̵̰̽o̵̫̚r̵̝͛d̸̮́. Him.
no subject
All of it, really — the terrible laughter, the inhuman warping of his voice that is for no reason so simple as because he is not human — even the reminder, of who he never was, what he never was
(beloved)— all of it hurts, but Ava doesn't flinch, even with the dusty trickle of blood clouding up his ear. ]"It would be much easier if I could simply say 'yes', I suppose," [ he says after a moment, dissolving the blood into dust much finer than glitter
, as if that would keep it from behaving the same way. ] "Here, bring out a hand so I can hand you this mug, my dear murderbird — yes, that's it — now drink up, because I think the easiest way to explain this, and several other things as well, is if I read you something."[ He waits for a firm grip on the mug before he twists around, concentrating as he stares at his palm, until it seems to fill with the onyx of liquid Darkblood — solidifying into the curved onyx form of his Omni, and no matter how simple the party trick of summoning it back from wherever the hell Alik has most recently smuggled it.
He sets it in his lap, the better to take a sip of his own tea without ever pulling his other hand away from whatever
monstrously-angled joint that might be; he sighs, as he pulls up the relevant passage of the first of the diaries he's been reading, bookmarked for just such an occasion as this, because there's no way nothing changes after this; he clears his throat, and it sounds like grief being swallowed.He reads conversationally, and it's easy — astonishingly, appallingly easy — to hear another, lost voice, overlaid atop his, speaking the same meaning in a language that Ava has never had the opportunity to learn, even in memories of a life that never existed.
He reads, and he rubs the shrike's back, or arm, or otherlimb — whatever it is — through the buttery-yellow blanket that insists, wrapped close, that Illarion is safe, even as Ava's words — Dusya's words — shatter him anew. ]
[ He reads, and he rubs the shrike's back, or arm, or otherlimb — whatever it is — through the buttery-yellow blanket that insists, wrapped close, that Illarion is safe; and even as Ava's words — Dusya's words — shatter him anew, they rebuild him, with the memory of sitting at the right hand of the Prince of Preservation, being held and cherished and soothed — and put back to rights, until he could almost believe he was not only well, not only free from this Corruption, borne of Trench, born of the Pillars — but he could believe, if only he wanted to let himself believe, that he was what he'd been before he was a shrike — the iron elf who first met General Evdokim, who made his trembling pledge of good faith before he'd learned how many other ways the world was full of those who had none. ]
no subject
And, stars and Saints, he does not want to.
Does not want to--a felt and deeply surprising notion, that; so novel in the sludgy morass left of his distress that he's lost a moment in contemplating it. He thus misses the first few words of Ava's reading--
(misses also how some not-so-connected part of his horrific, malformed anatomy solves the problem of sitting up for tea on its own--a welter of tentacles slithering into the mug from a pseudomouth to drink the liquid like roots)
--and then fails to recognize them for another few moments, for he had never read his Prince's private writings as such... But the too-familiar cadence, the choice of words, the worries over his people's still-uncertain survival...
The love-names--
There is a long silence, as only the dead can be silent, as Augustine reads. Then, the shape beneath the blanket utters a small, choked noise--a small choked noise that is strangely normal, just as that shape has itself become small and strangely normal.
No larger and no more limbed than a human, with nothing extending kata-ana into Riverspace for Lyctoral senses to catch on or a Lyctoral Omen to twine around, Illarion lies beneath Bausphomette's gift and weeps. He--and his heart--are no less dead than he had been, but even without corruption there are griefs--and reliefs--so transcendent they can pierce the fog of undeath.]
Why? [he asks, at length. Not how, for even in his current state, he can guess--the Omnis are an absolute horror for operational security, he'd determined long ago.
But why? He doesn't begrudge Ava this--might be too stunned to be begrudging--but also cannot believe it mere curiosity that sent the Saint of Patience looking for those words.
Or made him use them to such brilliant effect.]
no subject
limbs) but Ava as well, keeping the birdrito well-wrapped indeed. ]My brother was without his flock, [ he says gently, as if simply enough were a phrase that could think it applied to a situation such as this! ] We're not much of one, and I know my nesting instincts are just appalling to you, and frankly always have been – but I found myself remembering enough to know where to look, to learn more.
[ He sighs, after a moment, and leans his head against that soft and buttery blanket, and the limb beneath he isn't even pretending to try to identify just now. ]
What can I say? I've found that I quite enjoy the notion of a leader more interested in sustaining his compassion, and knowledge of the mistakes he and his people have made, for future wisdom and peace, than in sustaining the mythology he's inventing to cover up his mistakes so no one will discover them.
[ Is that a dig at someone else in this house?
Nah, couldn't be. ]
I'm sorry I never got to meet him, really.