Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Newark, NJ

October 1996

There was no night in a trainyard. Even now, long after the fading October dusk had left the surrounding district cloaked in chilly darkness, the yard was alive with movement, the sound of idling diesel engines, the shouts of railies and the din of trains being switched and joined and sent out on their way into the night. Tall sodium lamps cast overlapping pools of sickly-looking yellowish light down on the yard, with dappled areas of shadow between them.

If you knew what you were doing, Jeff thought smugly, you could live in those shadows. He darted across an area where a broken light left a larger than usual shadow, ducked under a stationary hopper car and flattened himself to the ground, waiting. His pack jostled, dug against the pistol he’d wedged into his belt against the small of his back, and he took a moment to make sure the weapon was secure.

Satisfied that nobody had spotted him, Jeff rolled out from under the car and darted to the next pool of shadow. The line he wanted was toward the far edge of the yard, and if he’d timed it right he’d have just enough time to get settled in before the train was in motion.

New York was too hot for him right now — ironic, given the cold wind in the fall air. He’d head south, maybe hop off in Philly or maybe keep going until he hit somewhere warm to spend the winter. Jeff felt a flash of satisfaction as he saw an empty boxcar standing in the line of cars he was headed for. Perfect.

He checked one more time for observers before he broke from the shadows and darted to the car in question, slinging his pack up into the darkened interior and hoisting himself up after. None too soon, either; he could feel the vibration of the engine ramping up through his palms as they met the floor of the boxcar.

Jeff crouched in the doorway, intending to wedge it open with something before getting settled in, but it was already jammed with a scrap of twisted iron.

“Car’s taken.” The voice came out of the deep shadow at the front of the car, a quiet bass note that seemed to set off the rumbled rattle of the car slowly picking up speed.

Jeff smiled flatly. He’d heard that before. And sure, he could hop down and have time to grab the next one easily enough. But in his experience anyone who insisted on not sharing a car usually had other things they didn’t want to share. Things it was worth persuading them to share.

He slid a hand under his jacket and wrapped his fingers around the butt of the loaded revolver there. “No worries,” He said in his best friendly tone, edging further into the car. “I don’t take up much space, you won’t even know I’m —”

Something loomed up out of the darkness. Jeff’s eyes hadn’t fully adjusted from the dim light of the yard to the blackness of the boxcar’s interior, and so it would be hard later for him to give many details of what he’d seen. But it was incredibly broad and impossibly tall, the outline of it shaggy, and the eyes . . .

“Fuck.” Jeff yanked the pistol out of his waistband and held it out in a shaky hand. The thing’s eyes caught the light and they shone like the eyes of a cat or a raccoon, like nothing remotely human.

“I said, car’s taken.” the thing rumbled, deep and dangerous, and were those teeth that had just caught the light from the passing lamps?

Jeff’s finger tightened on the trigger, just shy of enough pressure to fire off a shot, and that was when the thing slammed into him and he found himself thrown backwards out of the open door of the boxcar. The gun went flying into the darkness, and he hit the ground hard, flat on his back. Jeff saw stars as the wind was driven out of his lungs and the back of his head smacked the gravel of the siding.

By the time he’d recovered himself enough to sit up, the train was up to speed and away, and he scrambled under the nearest car and lay there, panting, staring up at the rusting undercarriage of the train.

Maybe he’d hitchhike south instead.

***

Barclay sighed as the train rolled out of the yard and picked up speed, night scenery outside the boxcar door gradually becoming an unreadable blur of darkness with only the occasional splash of light.

Great. Awesome way to handle that, Barclay. He ran his hands wearily over his face. Just what he needed, another fuckin’ opportunity for a headline to crop up in his wake. “Bigfoot Kicked Me Off A Train!”: Local Man Attacked by Boxcar-riding Cryptid.

He snorted. Okay, that one would actually be pretty good.

Assuming the guy wasn’t, you know. Dead.

Fuck.

Well, Barclay wasn’t the one who’d pulled a gun, so he couldn’t be exactly blamed for panicking. Speaking of which —

Barclay peered into the darkness, scanning the shadows until he found the weapon lying by the wall, rattling against the metal side and floor of the boxcar. The guy’s pack was still off to one side, too. Barclay crouched down to gingerly pick up the gun with the tips of his claws and then flung it out of the open door with all his might. Hopefully it’d fall somewhere nobody would ever find it, but even if it didn’t it was better out there than in here with him. Barclay didn’t like guns. Guns had a bad habit of going the fuck off.

He’d been luckier than he had a right to be that the guy hadn’t pulled the trigger before Barclay’d hit him. Luckier still that he’d listened to his paranoia this time and refused to just let the guy share the car. Probably would’ve ended up pulling the gun on Barclay while he was asleep or after he’d let his guard down, and then where would he be?

Barclay sighed and grabbed the discarded backpack, carrying it over to the spot in the front corner of the boxcar that he’d staked out earlier that evening. The whole car rocked and jolted as he did so, the racket of the rails and rushing wind echoing in the empty space. He hunkered down against the wall, feeling the cold of the metal seep into his back even through the thick fur.

Riding in his Sylph form ran him the risk of getting spotted, he knew that. But it was cold out there for October, and he’d figured once it was dark and the train was in motion nobody would be any wiser. He hadn’t counted on company, and when the guy had showed up . . . well.

Last time Barclay’d agreed to share a car with someone else, the two of them had jumped him when he hadn’t expected it and he’d gotten his ass kicked before he could decide if it was worth breaking cover. Not that it would necessarily have helped; he was bigger in Sylph form, and stronger, but he was still a pretty shitty fighter no matter what size he was. Either way, he hadn't had the chance to fight back before he’d lost a good sleeping bag and his wallet and no small measure of his dignity. So he’d learned his lesson about that, and judging by the way the night was going for him so far he’d been right.

He kind of hated how often he ended up being right about people.

Oh, well. Barclay reached into his own pack and pulled out the flashlight, switching it on so he’d have more to rely on than his own vision. He was decent at seeing in the dark, but that didn’t mean he liked it all that much. He unrolled the poncho he’d had stuffed in his pack as well and pulled it over his head. It helped cut the chill a little bit more, though he still wasn’t what he’d call warm.

The new pack had the same kind of stuff Barclay himself carried. Lighter, knife, some bandaids and a plastic bottle of — Barclay uncapped it and sniffed cautiously — yeah, that was vodka. A folded-up rain poncho and a space blanket. A change of clothes that wouldn’t fit Barclay. A couple pairs of wool socks that would, at least when he had his glamour on. Score. No money or anything like that; the guy had probably been carrying that on his person, at least if he wasn’t an idiot. There was more ammunition for the gun in the pack, too.

Barclay checked the other guy’s bag for damage, debated the size and stability of it for a minute, and then chucked it (still with the ammunition and the too-small clothes in it) into the far corner. Maybe the next guy to ride this car would get some use out of it.

Barclay sighed and went about the task of adding the new stuff to his own pack, leaving out the space blanket for now. Would’ve been nice if the guy’d had some food in there, at least some granola bars or something, but you couldn’t have everything. He slipped his hand into the inner zip pocket of his pack and got his bracelet out, tying it on without needing to look at what he was doing.

The glamour settled on him like the pressure in deep water, like the weight of a heavy blanket without any of the warmth to go with it. He felt his shoulders draw in, felt the breaths in his chest grow shallower by the simple fact that there were smaller lungs to draw them. He was still a big guy when he was glamoured, well over six feet and barrel-chested, but nowhere near the size of the form he’d been born to. The October chill was more pronounced without fur to keep him insulated, and reached under the edge of his poncho to pull the hood of his battered sweatshirt up over his head.

Maybe he was warmer in the other shape, but after that encounter it didn’t feel safe to be in it. That was probably ridiculous, considering he was going sixty miles an hour through the dark in the middle of fucking nowhere and it would be hours before the train slowed enough for anyone else to hop it. Facts didn’t change how he felt, though, and right now how he felt was better off not being Bigfoot for a little while.

He pulled his boots off and swapped his old pair of socks for one of the new ones, enjoying the small luxury of clean, warm socks before he pulled the boots back on and laced them up. Then he shook out the space blanket and wrapped it somewhat awkwardly around his shoulders — it’d clearly been made for smaller people than Barclay, but it did help him warm up.

Dinner was tuna and peanut butter crackers, washed down with water from his canteen. He thought about cracking into the vodka but decided against it; no sense going through it faster than he had to. He’d need it more when he hit a bad stretch — and he'd probably hit one soon if the shit luck he’d been having lately kept up.

Barclay sighed and shifted around in his corner, trying to get more comfortable. It wasn’t just the guys who had jumped him on the hi-line, although that’d sucked. Or the cold rain that had been pelting down when he’d finally made it to New York. It was that after everything — after hitching and freighthopping and walking across the whole fucking country — the gate hadn’t even fucking been there any more. The shuttered subway station where he’d expected to find it, the one where he’d stepped through into the new world years before, was nothing but cracked tile and mouldering concrete. A literal dead end.

Barclay reached under the layers of his clothes and hooked his fingers in the worn leather thong around his neck, pulling out the crystal shard that hung at the end and cupping it between his hands. The light that had once been a warm, steady beacon was now dimmed and flickering, like the guttering flame of a spent candle was caught deep in the facets of the translucent orange stone.

He was running out of time. The bad spells were getting worse, coming on faster and lasting longer. Sometimes they came as stretches when mustering the energy to do anything felt impossible, when all he wanted was to find somewhere to curl up and rest. More often lately they were the opposite, though. Bursts of frenetic energy, thoughts that raced and fits of irritation that spiked into rage. Split-second decisions that seemed to bolt out of nowhere and make themselves without any consideration of the consequences.

Split-second decisions like throwing somebody off a moving fucking train.

Barclay wasn’t sure what it would look like if he went full feral. He’d only seen a feral Sylph in person once, at a distance, and that hadn’t been one of his own species. He didn’t know if his teeth would get sharper, his claws more jagged, if his eyes wouldn’t just reflect but would glow with starved, terrible light.

All he knew was that it wouldn’t be good, and that once he turned there’d never be any coming back.

Barclay’d never really been religious, even as a kid, and it had been years since he’d stuck to any ceremonies or devotions. All the same, he closed his hands around the crystal shard and curled himself around it, like he could will an extra measure of energy out of it without depleting what little was left.

Please let this work. Please don’t let this be another dead end.

Please, Sylvain. If it’s in West Virginia, please let me find it.

Nothing answered, not that he was surprised. God, if She even existed, didn't have any reason to talk to someone like Barclay.

The weak energy of the crystal seeped through his palms and into his blood, left him feeling less sharp around the edges than he'd been earlier. Wasn't really enough any more than a can of tuna and some crackers was a meal, but it'd get him through the night.

Barclay sighed and slipped the crystal back under his clothes so that it nestled between his shirt and undershirt. He wasn’t actually sure that keeping it away from direct contact with his skin was doing anything to conserve its power; for all he knew it was just filtering away into the atmosphere regardless of what he did or didn’t do. Maybe he was letting it go to waste while he eked out the time between uses. In moments of especially bad impulse control he thought about risking it, wearing it against his skin all the time even if that meant he burned it out and went feral faster. So far he’d been able to keep himself from pulling that trigger.

He didn’t want to think about what he was going to do if he’d fucked up this decision, if the whispered scraps of information he’d been able to scrape up in New York City had been wrong and the gate wasn’t in West Virginia. Or if the gate couldn’t actually solve his problem, if there wasn’t a way to restore the crystal’s faltering supply of energy. He didn’t have a plan for those eventualities.

Barclay switched off the flashlight and stowed it back in his pack, checking to make sure all the closures were secured before he stretched out on the boxcar floor with the pack for a pillow. He pulled the thin, crinkling plastic of the space blanket close around his body and closed his eyes. With any luck, he’d be able to catch a few hours and be awake again before the train slowed enough to be accessible to anyone else who wanted to try and rob him.

The boxcar pitched and rocked like a ship on an uneasy ocean, and the noise was loud enough it should’ve kept him awake — but he was tired, and he’d learned to sleep when his body would let him, even in uncomfortable places. This one at least had the advantage of a secure roof over his head.

He tucked the wrist where he wore his bracelet between his arm and his body, as protected as he could make it, trying not to think about all the what ifs that followed on from where his current half-baked plan — hop a train and get to West Virginia — ran out. Fuck it, West Virginia had woods. Worst came to worst he’d run out into them, go feral somewhere far away from people and hope that if someone killed him or worse that he’d be too far gone to know about it.

As thoughts to fall asleep on went, they weren’t especially comforting ones. But all the same, the movement of the car and the heaviness in his limbs did their work, and he slipped into dreamlessness as the train rattled southward through the dark.

Chapter Text

People loved to talk about small towns. How comforting they were, how safe, how wholesome. How the power of knowing your neighbors built bonds between people that led them to help each other no matter the cost or inconvenience. Nobody ever seemed to mention the downsides of those close-knit bonds: how anybody new was automatically noticed, fixed in the center of everyone’s attention and judged meticulously on how they differed from the familiar.

Barclay hated small towns.

He didn’t like being the center of attention, never had. He especially didn’t like being the center of attention when that attention was predominantly judgmental. He knew what he looked like — big enough to be intimidating, unkempt and unwashed despite his best efforts at keeping himself groomed, and keeping a white-knuckle grip on a pack that definitely didn’t belong to a day hiker. He couldn’t exactly blame people for not trusting him at first glance. He just wished that after the first glance they’d stop staring and let him get on with the business of getting through town.

The problem was that West Virginia was nothing but small towns, and so every stop since he’d gotten off the freight train in Charleston he’d had to deal with the inevitable eyes on the back of his neck and the thinly-veiled questions about how long he’d be around.

Mostly his path through West Virginia followed the same pattern; he’d make his way into a town, spend a day eavesdropping on the locals and searching for information, and then he’d move on before he wore out his welcome. He’d managed to catch the occasional ride from one town to another, usually in the back of a battered pickup. Mostly, though, it was a lot of walking, a lot of searching, a lot of being stared at and followed and hovered over while he was trying to eat or pick up supplies or search the newspaper for clues.

It was fucking exhausting. Barclay did his best to grit his teeth and keep his head down, avoiding the impulse to snap I know you don’t want me here, leave me alone. Sometimes he wondered if the people staring him down had ever bothered to think about what kind of circumstances somebody’d have to be in to end up sitting in their small-town diners with only enough cash for toast and coffee. But they didn’t, of course. They’d been born to belonging in their safe, small enclaves and they’d never had to worry about leaving if they didn’t want to.

“Get you anything else?” The kid working this particular small-town diner couldn’t have been much more than twenty, rail-thin and freckled.

Barclay hesitated. The guy he'd been keeping an eye on had just walked out, leaving the newspaper Barclay had been waiting to snag on his table when he did. It'd be hard to read if the kid kept hovering waiting for Barclay to pay up, though, and maybe the sign behind the counter said Hot Coffee - refills always FREE, but Barclay was on his third refill already. He did a little split-second mental math.

"Uh, yeah. Gimme a special with eggs over easy?” He had the money, he could afford it. Sort of.

Yeah. It’d be fine. Besides, once he’d let himself entertain the idea of bacon his stomach had pretty much taken over the decisionmaking.

“Sure thing.” The kid scribbled the order on his little pad, topped off Barclay’s coffee, and drifted off in the direction of the kitchen. Barclay waited for a second before he grabbed the newspaper and brought it back to his table, spreading it out and starting with the front page.

It was a small paper, a weekly edition like most of the ones he’d run into so far along the way. The election took up most of the front page, with local high school football and weather and the other mundanities of life in this little village taking up a lot of the rest of it. Barclay read every article anyway, looking for any kind of clues.

The kid circled back after a while with a plate heaped with eggs and bacon and hashbrowns, and Barclay did his best to keep his expression neutral until the kid was gone. It took an effort, though, and the minute he had the table to himself again he started bolting down hashbrowns like he’d been starving for days.

Which, well. It wasn’t that bad. He was doing fine. A hot meal was just a nice change from the usual stuff he’d been getting by on lately, was all. The food here was actually good, too, which was a pleasant surprise given the coffee tasted like someone’d burned mud and then watered it down with vinegar. He’d been drinking it anyway because he’d paid for it and because the caffeine would help carry him on to the next stop, wherever that ended up being.

Speaking of — Barclay slid the paper back over and finished going through it, looking for anything that might be something. Mysterious noises in the woods or weird animals or hell, even disappearances would’ve been a good start.

There was a short piece on page five about some people running across a “white, bear-like creature” in Boone county the previous year. That might be something, although the context of the article was that nobody had seen the thing since the incident and the authorities were closing the investigation.

Barclay grimaced. The thing had supposedly attacked a car. A lie to excuse careless driving? An albino bear that’d gotten too aggressive, too used to humans? A newly arrived sylph who’d been caught out in their true form, maybe panicking at being cornered?

Or someone like him, someone who’d come to West Virginia to look for the gate because they could feel themselves losing it a little at a time, someone who hadn’t found anything to stop the slide into feral and who was lost out there now, out of their wits, a monster without . . .

Barclay shook himself all over like a dog and ran his hands over his face, forcing himself to take a breath. Fuck. Fuck. No. That train of thought wasn’t going to do him any good. He didn’t have any way to know if the thing in Boone county was a sylph or something else, short of going there and looking. He couldn’t let himself just decide that the worst case scenario was the truth. And hell, a lead that said the trail was already cold was still better than no lead at all, which was what he’d had so far.

He reached over and rummaged in his pack, pulling out the map of the state that he’d picked up in Charleston and spreading it next to the newspaper. Boone county was far south and west of where he was now, closer to Kentucky than Virginia. Back the way he’d come. Fuck. Of course it was.

Barclay fought the urge to bang his forehead on the table. He’d known this wasn’t going to be simple. Nothing in his whole stupid life lately was simple, so this was just . . . he sighed. This was just one more thing.

Okay. He pushed the map away and turned his attention back to the newspaper and the rest of his (he shot a glance at the clock above the door) lunch. There wasn’t much left of actual news, just comics and classified ads. Missing pets, tractor for rent, LIKE NEW mobile home for sale. Local businesses offering two- and three-line summaries of their services. He took a grimacing drink of coffee and skimmed those quickly. Nothing interesting to anybody who wasn’t from around here.

Barclay folded the paper and tossed it onto the empty table behind his. He’d demolished most of his food already and made quick work of what was left, mopping up the remnants of egg yolk with the crust of his toast and draining his coffee cup. No sense wasting any more time than he had to; he had a long way to backtrack.

He dug into the pocket of his jeans and laid the money to cover his check on the table, trying not to give in to the impulse to scold himself for spending it. Yeah, it wasn’t like he was exactly flush, but fuck it, he had to eat, right? He picked up his map and shook it before folding it back up and putting it away, checking all the closures on his bag when he did. Never hurt to make sure everything was secured.

“Headin’ out?” The kid asked unnecessarily from behind the counter, and when Barclay nodded he smiled. “Y’all take care.”

“Sure,” Barclay grunted, shouldering his backpack. He’d heard that a lot, drifting his way through these tiny nowhere towns; Y’all take care. He couldn’t help wondering what the alternative was supposed to be.

He made his way to the diner door and took a deep breath. There was a knot of exhausted dread in his guts at the idea of having to go back the way he’d come, pass through all those same small towns a second time and get those same stares from those same people with an extra layer of What, you’re back again? on top. Not to mention all the time and money and energy he’d wasted getting this far. Suppose he got to Boone county and there was nothing there to find? Was he just going to waste more of his limited resources chasing this miniscule lead?

The dented cowbell above the door clanked as the door swung open and an older guy stepped through, giving a puzzled look at the big, scruffy guy standing in his way. Barclay mumbled a halfhearted apology and stepped aside, banging into the dusty gum dispenser and the little literature rack that sat in the entry of the restaurant.

The guy brushed past him with a parting curious glance and Barclay grimaced at himself. Yeah, nice one. Standing around in doorways getting bogged down in his own thoughts was a real great way to keep from drawing attention to himself. He crouched down to pick up a couple of trifold brochures that’d been jostled out of the literature rack, went to tuck them into the spot they’d fallen out of — and stared up at his own silhouette and the bold-printed words I FOUND BIGFOOT.

Oh, shit. Shitshitshit. He reached up and snatched the offending paper, fingers tightened convulsively around it as he shot a glance over his shoulder at the guy who’d walked past him and the kid waiting tables. They didn’t look his way; why would they? I FOUND BIGFOOT.

Barclay gritted his teeth. He was being ridiculous. It was a flyer. He was — he snuck a glance down at his wrist — yeah, he was wearing his glamour. This was a coincidence and he needed to calm the fuck down before he did something that would actually get their attention. He forced himself to stand up, forced himself to walk calmly to the door and pull it open and step out onto the street. Nobody followed him.

Okay. Not being followed was a good sign. He glanced around the sleepy, deserted small-town main street. Nobody staring was also a good sign. Barclay took a couple of deep breaths and looked down at the crumpled paper in his hand, unfolding it to get a better look at what had spooked him.

The flyer was kind of a slapdash affair, not like the glossy trifolds for far-off tourist attractions that it had been tucked between. It had been printed in black on neon green printer paper, inexpertly cut to half-size. The center image was a Bigfoot silhouette, and Barclay winced. He was pretty sure it was never going to stop feeling wrong to see a clumsy human attempt at depicting his own species. He didn’t like contemplating the fact that a whole lot of aliens had an idea, however vague, of what he’d look like without his glamour on; it felt dangerous, too much like exposure, and the fact that so many of the pictures people tried to draw of his species were just terrible was just insult added to injury.

This one wasn’t the worst attempt; at least the proportions of the limbs and body were close enough to accurate that it didn’t give him the creeps. The silhouette was framed by words in all capital letters: I FOUND BIGFOOT above, AT THE CRYPTONOMICA below. A final smaller line of text added IN KEPLER, WEST VIRGINIA towards the bottom.

Barclay rubbed the back of his neck and flipped the flyer over, scanning the text explaining what the hell the Cryptonomica was and what it had to do with hi — with Bigfoot. There wasn’t much, but what was there promised that years of unexplained phenomena had occurred in Kepler.

Barclay frowned, thinking hard. Kepler was small, a town he probably wouldn’t have been able to pick out on a map if he hadn’t spent so much recent time poring over the back roads and small settlements of West Virginia. It was on the eastern edge of the state, deep in the Radio Quiet Zone. If you were looking for a door to another world that somehow hadn’t drawn very much attention . . .

It wasn’t much. Maybe it wasn’t anything. But it was at least a good a lead as the thing in Boone county, and Kepler was a hell of a lot closer than Boone county was.

Barclay rolled his shoulders, adjusted his pack, shoved the flyer in his pocket, and started walking.

Chapter Text

Kepler was, as Barclay’d assumed from its dot on the map, a small town nestled at the foot of the mountains on the banks of the Greenbrier River. It reminded Barclay a lot of the older tourist towns back in the PNW, actually; a little more eclectic and respectable than the farm and mine towns he’d been moving through lately, but too quiet and shabby to still be a hopping tourist destination. True to what he’d expected, the people in town fixed him with those same old curious and guarded stares, although at least they were a little less open about it than a lot of the people he’d passed by lately. Maybe some of them thought he was an early arriving ski bum.

There was a little roofed kiosk in a pocket park on the main street that sheltered a map of town framed by small ads for local businesses. The Chamber of Commerce Welcomes You to Scenic Kepler, WV, the woodburned sign above the map claimed. Barclay studied it for a bit. It had the usual assortment of small-town stores — a quilt shop, a video rental, a single grocery store on Main Street — and a handful of others that clearly catered more to tourists, selling skis or bait. A lot of water parks out on the far edge of town, and of course the ski resort high on the slope above. And sure enough, there was the Cryptonomica, just off the main drag by the river.

Barclay ducked his head as he made his way in that direction, conscious as always of how he stuck out. The older guy sweeping the sidewalk outside the grocery stopped what he was doing and eyed Barclay as he passed by on the opposite side of the street, and Barclay tightened his grip on his pack.

He wondered what the years of unexplained phenomena the Cryptonomica flyer had mentioned entailed. He’d spent some time in the library in Charleston, trying to get a feel for what kind of weird stuff West Virginia was known for. “White things” like whatever had cropped up in Boone County seemed to be relatively common. So were sightings of the so-called Mothman. A handful of weird lights and eerie not-quite dogs in the backwoods had peppered the accounts, too. And, of course, Bigfoot sightings. Barclay had laughed bitterly when he’d gotten to that one. Of course there were Bigfoot sightings. There were always fucking Bigfoot sightings. He should know; he’d been some of them back in the woods of Washington and Oregon where he’d eventually sort-of settled. But there was no way one person — not even Barclay, who admittedly maybe had a little too much of a tendency to drop his glamour when a situation made him panic — could possibly account for the sheer number of times human beings “saw Bigfoot” in this huge, empty country.

Sometimes he wondered if there were other sylphs out there. Well, no, that wasn’t accurate — he knew there were other sylphs out there on Earth. People who’d been forced through the gate into exile on a hostile planet full of aliens who wanted to cage, study, or kill them. People who’d lost everything. People who were almost certainly feral now, or dead if they’d gotten lucky.

What Barclay wondered was if there was anybody out there like him. Anyone who’d managed to keep hold of their personality after they’d crossed the threshold. If any of those cryptid sightings were really people who’d know him for what he was, assuming they somehow managed to find each other in the impossibly huge alien wilderness where they were stranded.

He shook his head roughly. He didn’t like wondering about it. Wondering about it made him feel lonely.

Lonelier.

Barclay sighed and shifted his pack on his shoulders. Whatever. Right now he had bigger problems, like finding some way to keep the crystal around his neck from failing any more than it already had. Getting it back up to the full power it’d possessed when he’d crossed over from Sylvain would be even better, but he’d settle for keeping things stable at this point. The only plan he had for doing that — and honestly, plan was a generous term for it — started with finding the gate.

The land around Kepler was mostly forest service property. If there’d been a lot of weird things going on in town, maybe that meant the gate was somewhere in the forest. Barclay could deal with that; he’d spent about as much of his time on Earth in the woods as he had among humans, he knew how to track things and how to find his way. If he could just get an idea of where to start . . .

The Cryptonomica was tucked between the road and the river, a wide, ramshackle-looking two story building painted in dusty black and chipping, faded purple. The business’s name was painted in white letters over the front door, large enough to be seen easily from the road. The place didn’t look very much like the rest of Kepler, West Virginia. It looked like the kind of place designed to separate tourists from their cash in exchange for tacky t-shirts and garish keychains.

Barclay crossed the empty parking lot, boots crunching on the dusty gravel. There was an unlit neon OPEN sign in the front window, and Barclay sighed. Of course it’d be too easy for him to be able to just walk into a goddamned business in the middle of a weekday. Of course.

He stepped up onto the creaky front porch and frowned at the drawn-down blinds that backed the windows, barring any view into the place. The list of hours posted near the neon sign said that the Cryptonomica was open seven days a week, 9-6. Except today, apparently. Barclay ran a hand through his hair, scanning the front of the building. There was a sheet of yellow lined paper taped up inside the window of the front door, and he leaned forward and read it with a mounting sense of frustration:

Cryptonomica CLOSED until MONDAY, NOV 4.

Barclay groaned and ran his hands over his face, read the note a second time just in case he’d missed anything, and then threw his head back and just . . .

“FUCK!”

It seemed like the only logical response.

He paced the length of the creaking wooden porch, muttering curses under his breath, anger surging through his chest and making his limbs feel jittery and tense. This whole thing, this entire fucking journey from the minute he’d left Washington, had been nothing but frustration and exhaustion and bad luck and dead ends and if he could just catch a single fucking break —

He balled his fist up and slammed it into the closed door of the Cryptonomica. He regretted it as soon as he did it. Pain lanced up his arm and he cursed, shaking his hand out and stepping back, momentarily jolted out of his spiral of frustration. Oh great. Breaking his goddamned knuckles was really going to improve the situation. Great plan, Barclay. Nice going.

He didn’t think his hand was broken, at least. More than he could say for the front door of the Cryptonomica which . . . yeah, the doorjamb near the lock was definitely not cracked like that when he’d arrived. Shit.

Barclay spun on his heel and slumped down onto the porch steps, putting his head in his hands. Fuck. Okay. Okay, he had to just . . . He could figure this out. He could make this work. This was a setback but he could salvage it. He could just . . . he’d camp out for the weekend. He could spare the time, right? It’d be okay. It wasn’t like the crystal was gonna run out tomorrow. He’d just wait and try looking around on his own until he got a chance to get inside the Cryptonomica and see what was in there, and if that didn’t help then . . . then there had to be a next step, he just had to figure out what it was.

He could finish breaking into the Cryptonomica, some hazy corner of his brain supplied, and he almost laughed. Sure, yeah, breaking into a business in broad daylight was a great plan, no drawbacks there. Although hell, if it was closed for the next few days maybe that meant he could come back at night?

No. Stupid. That kind of thing was too much risk, the kind of behavior that would get him —

Tires crunched on gravel. Something in his gut went cold, and he sneaked a glance without raising his head from his hands.

A white sedan with Pocahontas County Sheriff on the side in green and gold had pulled up in front of the Cryptonomica and parked. Barclay froze, barely even breathing, his brain flatlining into a constant droning shitshitshitshitshitshitshit as the door of the car opened and a guy in uniform got out.

“Afternoon.” The guy was smaller than Barclay; most people were. He didn’t move like it, though. He had that small-town cop walk, the stride of someone who knew he was in charge.

Barclay really tried his best not to physically cringe. “Uh. Hi, there, officer. Deputy?” He corrected awkwardly, his head still in his hands.

“Sheriff, actually.” The guy pushed his hat back with a thumb. He looked like the absolute picture of a small town cop — hat, badge, slight paunch under the dull khaki uniform shirt. All he needed was mirrored glasses to really complete the image.

“Shit. Right, sorry. Sheriff.” Barclay lowered his hands very slowly, keeping them away from his pockets. He wasn’t sure if he should get up or not. He really wasn’t sure of much at this point; the constant background noise of shitshitshitshitshit was making it pretty difficult to decide on a next move. “What can I, uh. Do for you?”

“Well, now.” The name badge on his shirt said Sheriff Owens. That made him pretty much the boss around here, right? Barclay wished he remembered more about how human law enforcement worked. “I guess that depends on what you’re up to, Mister . . .?”

“Oh. Barclay.” Shit, should he have used a different name? Fuck it, wasn’t like he had an ID for any name at all at the moment. Probably didn’t matter. “Just, you know. Um. Taking a little, you know. Breather. Kind of been a long day. Long couple of days. Sir.”

“Sure.” Sheriff Owens didn’t sound especially sure. “Whyn’t you go on ahead and stand up for me, Barclay.”

He sure had dropped that Mister fast, Barclay noticed. He got up slowly, trying to appear as non-threatening as he could. Absolutely nothing suspicious or dangerous to see here, no sirree. Just your average big, scruffy transient hanging around a closed business with a broken door. Totally normal.

Shitshitshitshitshit . . .

Sheriff Owens eyed him up and down for a long moment. Barclay was honestly kind of surprised he didn’t let out one of those low will-ya-look-at-that whistles people sometimes used; it would’ve matched his expression nicely. “Haven’t been in Kepler long, have you?”

“Me? No. Just got here today, actually.” Barclay tried for a disarming smile. It felt a lot like a grimace.

“Uh huh. And what brings you to our little town?” Sheriff Owens wasn’t smiling. He was mercifully not looking too closely at the Cryptonomica’s damaged entrance, but unfortunately that was because he was looking at Barclay like Barclay was a beetle Owens had just scraped off the bottom of his shoe.

“Er.” Don’t say cryptids, whatever the fuck you do, do not say cryptids. “Skiing?”

He had not meant to make that sound like a question. Fuck.

“You don’t say.” Owens’ face went harder around the edges. “Well I hate to break it to you, but you’re about a month early for ski season in these parts.”

“Yeah.” Shitshitshitshitshit. “Well, ah, you know. Sort of thought I’d see the sights first, find a place to stay, place to work, all that good stuff.” That was convincing, right, as lies went?

“Sure.” Owens eyed Barclay, eyed the pack he was carrying, and folded his arms. “I’ll be real frank with you, Barclay. We’re past the days when there was much use around here for a ski bum.”

Barclay took a deep breath. On the one hand, that kind of sounded like Owens had bought his bullshit. On the other hand, he didn’t think he liked where this was going. “I mean —”

Owens cut him off. “Kepler’s a nice town, Barclay. People around here don’t like trouble.”

Barclay gritted his teeth, trying to keep his temper cool. “And I look like trouble to enough people that they called you, I’m guessing.”

Owens tilted his head slowly to one side. “Let’s just say you’d be better off trying your luck in Snowshoe. As for this place,” He jutted his chin at the Cryptonomica with a scornful look, “Well, you didn’t miss out on much.”

Barclay closed his eyes for a second, wrestling down the corner of his brain that was currently suggesting he just take a swing right at Sheriff Owens’ stupid respectable face. He didn’t like hitting people, he didn’t like fights, but he definitely wanted to make an exception right now. “Just to be clear,” He said carefully, “This is a get out of my town or else conversation, right?”

Sheriff Owens smiled flatly. It wasn’t a very nice expression. “This is a that patrol car can take you to the town limits, or it can take you to the station on a vagrancy charge conversation. Your choice, of course.”

“Of course.” God he hated being so right about people all the time. But on the other hand, if he cooperated there was an outside chance Owens wouldn’t get any closer to the building, and that meant he might not notice enough to turn that vagrancy charge into a burglary charge, so . . .

Barclay sighed and spread his hands in a gesture that probably looked just as defeated as it felt. “Okay. I get it. I’ll get out of your town.”

“Good choice.” Owens strode across the gravel and popped open the back door of the cruiser.

Barclay shrugged off his pack and tossed it into the backseat of the car, folding himself awkwardly in after it. His heart gave a brief, abortive kind of lurch as the door closed, reacting to being shut into a small space with no exits, but Barclay was more than reasonably certain that he could smash out a window and make a break for it if Owens changed his mind about their destination. Wouldn’t be the first time he’d escaped a moving car that way.

He hunched his shoulders and stared at the scuffed toes of his boots as Owens slid into the driver’s seat and pulled the car back out onto the main road through town. If the Sheriff noticed that Barclay hadn’t buckled his seat belt, he apparently didn’t give a shit.

Okay, so. Kepler had a history of vaguely-defined unexplained phenomena, a closed cryptid museum that might or might not have any answers inside it, and an asshole for a sheriff. Wasn’t doing a lot to improve Barclay’s opinion of small towns, all told. The one saving grace Kepler had as far as he was concerned was that, being a small town, this incredibly humiliating ride to the outskirts didn’t take very much time.

Sheriff Owens pulled over on the shoulder next to the fading Welcome to Kepler, WV sign and opened the cruiser door. Barclay climbed out, narrowly avoiding smacking his head on the car door frame as he did, and grabbed his bag before Owens could decide to confiscate it just to screw with him.

The sheriff watched him shrug the pack back onto his shoulders, and then he nodded and got back into the car. Barclay watched with dull, weary resentment as Owens rolled the window down and actually tipped his stupid hat.

“Y’all take care now,” He said, and then the cruiser pulled back onto the road and was gone, heading back into town.

Barclay flipped him off as he departed, not really caring if he saw the gesture or not. Fuck him and fuck his nice town.

Okay. So, on balance, that could have gone a lot worse. Barclay sighed and turned a slow circle, looking over his surroundings. The hills sloped up on either side of the road, thickly forested with evergreens and bright-orange splashes of fall foliage. It honestly was beautiful country. Reminded him a lot of the forests where he’d been spending most of the past ten years, actually. Different trees, sure, and the air didn’t have quite the ever-present touch of cool moisture that the Pacific forests did. But it felt . . .

Well. Like home was overstating it by a lot. Barclay hadn’t felt really at home anywhere in a very long time. But it felt familiar. Safer than the high, wide-open places he’d crossed by train. A hell of a lot safer than New York City. He snorted in dry amusement. Probably safer than Kepler, too, if you counted asshole authority figures and staring small-town busybodies as things you needed to be safe from.

Was the gate out there in those woods somewhere? He still didn’t know. Maybe.

But absent any other plan, some time out in the woods with nobody staring at him sounded pretty good right now. The river cut along the road on one side, so Barclay shrugged and stepped off the pavement in the other direction. Before long, he’d slipped quietly through the brush at the edge of the forest and vanished into the trees.

Fuck it. Time to be Bigfoot for a little while.

Chapter Text

Barclay spent most of that day just roaming the woods around Kepler, getting a feel for the land and breathing deep and trying to let go of the knot of worry that had made a permanent nest behind his breastbone lately. The forest (the Monongahela, however it was you were supposed to pronounce that) was frankly pretty damned near perfect as far as he could tell; lush and quiet and alive, thick enough to be easy to get lost in but not so overgrown that passing through became a chore. He didn’t recognize all the birdsong he heard, but he knew enough of it to feel like he was on familiar ground, and as the day wore on he found himself relaxing a little bit at a time.

October was really too late in the year to be camping for an extended period of time, but Barclay’d had a lot of experience at pushing the boundaries of “acceptable times of year to be living out-of-doors”. He knew how to make a decent shelter, keep a fire going, the basics of survival on few resources. Maybe it wasn’t the most comfortable way to live, and maybe it wouldn’t be sustainable for the long term, but in the short term it felt good to be off the road and away from people. Things were simpler in the woods. Nobody in the woods expected him to have an ID or wanted to know how long he’d be in town. Nobody was around to see it if he decided to stop pretending to be human for a while.

At least, theoretically nobody was around; at this time of year it was unlikely he’d run across campers or hikers, especially if he stayed away from the roads and trails. It was probably hunting season, though, so he figured he needed to err on the side of caution during the day. No telling how much respect West Virginians had for the laws about hunting on forest service land, but if past experience in other places was anything to go by, there were usually at least a handful of assholes who didn’t see why those rules needed to apply to them.

And getting shot because some dumb asshole thought he was a bear would just about be par for the course with his fucking luck lately.

Barclay found a place to set up camp as the afternoon drew on towards evening; a rock outcropping too shallow to really be called a cave, but with enough of an overhang that it’d offer him some shelter if it rained or snowed. He shrugged out of his pack and stowed it at the back of the overhang, tucked in the cleft of the rocks.

He found some evergreen boughs that were low-hanging enough for him to break down easily, and busied himself for a bit with making a decent lean-to shelter to cover the overhang. With a well enough camoflaged place to sleep he could probably afford to go without the glamour overnight and keep himself warmer that way. It’d be less conspicuous than having a fire going, and the last thing he wanted was for some forest ranger to come by and chase him out because he’d built a fire somewhere without a pit or permit. He stepped back a few yards and nodded in satisfaction at how hard it was to spot the shelter without knowing it was there. Practice made perfect, he guessed.

Just a couple of days, really. He could swing that. He didn’t have all the tools he would’ve liked — a sleeping bag and some cooking utensils would’ve been pretty great, just for starters — but he’d slept rough without that stuff before. He could handle it.

It was starting to get chilly in the shadows between the trees; it’d probably get colder once it got really and truly dark. Barclay crouched down and slid his pack out of the shelter, pulled his sweatshirt and poncho on over the layers he was already wearing. It helped; he might not even need to risk taking his bracelet off tonight. Maybe he’d give it a little bit of time first, make sure nobody found him and bothered him between now and tomorrow night.

There wasn’t a lot of food left in the pack, but he could stretch it until Monday with a little effort. October wasn’t the best time for foraging, though usually there was something if he looked hard enough. The eastern forests had nuts, right, and maybe persimmons?

Whatever. He’d figure it out. For the time being he laid out a decent supper out of what he had on hand. He’d need to figure out water, too, without anything to boil it in. Barclay shook his canteen, weighing the options. Tomorrow morning he’d find a campground or cabin, somewhere with an outside spigot. Last thing he needed was to end up dehydrated.

It was dark by the time he finished eating. The moon was up already, casting long, thin ribbons of silvery light through the trees. It was kind of nice. He was pretty sure he could see a lot better in the dark than humans could, but the dark was still the dark. He wasn’t scared of it, exactly; it was just that there was still a not-insignificant corner of his brain that expected predators to be moving in the places he couldn’t see.

Speaking of — Barclay gathered up his trash and bundled his remaining food into one of the plastic grocery bags he kept jammed in the bottom of his pack. Even if he was built like a big furry tank in his sylph form, with claws that could rival a black bear’s, he didn’t have any desire to find out how a fight between him and a bear would shake out.

At least they didn’t have cougars out here, he thought wryly, as he staked out a decent cache tree a few dozen feet from the spot where he planned to sleep. Barclay tugged his bracelet off and took a deep, deep breath, savoring how much different he felt as the glamour dropped away. He was instantly warmer, for one thing, the thick fur offering insulation that jeans and layers of shirts just couldn’t match. And while logically he’d tested it and knew that his senses were equally sharp in either form, they still felt somehow sharper and righter when he was like this.

He shook himself, stretched, and took a running leap that sent him scrambling easily up the tree to the crook of a high branch. He should really tie the cache out so a bear couldn’t climb up after it, but he didn’t have the rope for it and right now he cared more about keeping a bear out of his bed than he did keeping the food inaccessible. Odds were good all the bears were already gone to sleep for the winter, anyway. Lucky bastards.

He made sure everything was relatively secure and then took a minute to just enjoy being high up. Barclay had always liked climbing, even when he was a kid. His mother’d had to scold him off the roof of the house more than once. Being up in a tree felt safe. He could see what was coming, get a good moonlit view of the forest around him. An owl called out somewhere off to his right, and he saw the slight flash of silver on the shallow stream he’d crossed just before he’d found the campsite.

But he couldn’t sleep in a tree — he’d tried before with frankly embarrassing results — so he eventually resigned himself to that fact and clambered back down to ground level. He stretched his arms above his head, rolled his shoulders and his neck until it cracked, and weighed his options for a little bit. Eventually he decided fuck it; he’d rather be warm and he’d done a good job of hiding his sleeping spot. He could afford to stay this way tonight, put his glamour back on in the morning. What was the worst thing that could happen? Somebody’d come across him and either think he was a bear they’d spooked out of hibernation, or he’d rack up yet another Bigfoot sighting on his long list of them.

Or, you know. Somebody’d shoot him, but no sense dwelling on that one.

Barclay crouched down and slid himself into the shelter he’d made, carefully tucking his bracelet into a safe pocket in his pack before shifting around until he got comfortable. The space was narrow and snug, smelled like fur and dirt and the sharp tang of pine resin. Bears really did have the right fuckin’ idea, Barclay thought dozily, drifting off.

He wasn’t sure how much later it was when he woke up, just that it was still dark in the shelter. The sounds in the forest around him were still night sounds, the sigh of wind and the slow creak of branches. He needed to pee.

Barclay poked his head out of the shelter cautiously, scenting the air and listening hard, peering into the moonlit woods around him. Didn’t seem like there was anybody human out there; he was probably safe.

He crawled out of the shelter and stumbled away from the clearing where he was camping, found a place to relieve himself and was just turning to head back to bed when something in the trees caught his attention.

Lights. A pair of them, orbs of whitish light shining through the forest off to his left. Barclay tensed, watching them closely. They were high up, too steady to be fireflies and too white to be fires, and they were moving. Barclay would’ve guessed headlights except that he was in the middle of the goddamned woods, and besides that they were moving too subtly out-of-sync to belong to a single vehicle.

“What the fuck?” Barclay whispered, narrowing his eyes and straining to see if he could pick out any other details. His first thought had been humans, hunters or campers, someone getting too close to be safe, but this . . . this didn’t feel like that. The lights didn’t move right to be lanterns or flashlights and besides, the sound was wrong. Humans were noisy even when they wanted to be quiet, and while there was some kind of noise at the edge of his awareness, it —

It didn’t sound human.

Barclay’s blood ran cold and the fur along his spine stood up. He shifted his weight, squaring his shoulders, poised on the knife-edge between fight and flight. He couldn’t tell how far away the lights actually were, he realized suddenly. He’d assumed they were far off because of their size, but now . . .

“Oh, fuck,” He whispered hoarsely, suddenly and brutally aware that those lights were very very close, moving rapidly into the clearing where he was standing. They were . . . they were just lights, hovering in the air at roughly Barclay’s head height, blinding white and casting deep ribbons of black shadow across the clearing.

Barclay stumbled backwards a couple of steps as the lights kept getting closer. Something was very, very wrong here. Nothing was moving the lights or holding them up, and the movements were viscerally wrong; the lights shuddered and bobbed, the shadows slithering and undulating without any apparent connection to how the lights moved. They weren’t shadows, they were limbs. And those weren’t lights, they were —

Eyes.

Barclay did the only thing that made any sense; he turned around and ran like his life depended on it. Trees loomed up around him and brush snatched at his ankles, but he’d been running in the woods long enough to know how to avoid them, and Barclay was fast, fast enough to outrun anything human and a lot of things that weren’t.

Not this, though. It was as if whatever the lights were had been waiting for him to run, and the minute he did he heard the sound of its movements ramp up to a roaring crescendo, branches snapping and brush crashing as it bore down on him from behind.

Barclay’s heart hammered. This was a nightmare, this couldn’t be happening, nothing on this planet was anything like the thing that was following him, nothing on Earth had shadow tentacles instead of a body or eyes so blinding bright that they burned. The lights threw wild, terrible shadows across the woods in front of him, and Barclay almost had to squeeze his eyes shut against the glare, except doing that was a one-way-ticket to running headlong into a tree.

It was gaining, despite Barclay’s speed and his knack for moving through the woods. He could hear it now, making an awful, unearthly noise behind him, and Barclay thought briefly and wildly about climbing a tree — could the thing climb after him? Fuck, could it fly? — and that was when the thing hit him.

Barclay slammed to the ground under the force of the impact, wind forced out of his lungs in a sharp, painful rush. He didn’t have time to get up before the thing hit him again, smashing into him and raking him with one of those black, awful limbs. Barclay felt the sick sensation of his skin tearing, pain worse than anything he’d ever felt lancing through his arm and shoulder and back. He screamed, or maybe he howled, he couldn’t be sure; there was a noise in his ears like the roar of engines and the squealing of brakes, a thousand highways running over him all at once.

Barclay kicked out desperately, scrabbling in the dirt with the arm he could still get to move, somehow pulled himself out from under the thing and bolted away on — well, not on all fours, but on his best approximation of it, terror singing through his body and making his heart hammer. He had to run he had to get away he had to gogogogogo even if he had no idea where he was going or what the fuck this thing was, this nightmare monster he was running away from, this demon that smelled like hot asphalt and burning rubber, what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck . . .

The thing hit him again. This time he managed somehow to twist as he fell so that he landed on his back, clawing out and up at it desperately despite the blinding white light that kept him from seeing what he was fighting. What he was trying to fight: the thing was huge and terrible and the pain was as blinding as the light was as dizzying as the noise was as awful as the shadows —

It tore at him, raking deep furrows down his arm and chest, the stench of his own blood now mixing with the hot, awful road-smell of the monster, and even when his own claws found some purchase in what might be the thing’s body he couldn’t see to tell if he did it any harm.

This was how he was going to die. The thought came at him with a dull, sudden certainty, like the answer to a riddle that he’d been subconsciously working on for ages. He wasn’t going to die robbed in an alley or starved in the woods or pinned to a table, he was going to die right here, pulled apart by whatever the fuck this was, and nobody was ever going to know or care.

Barclay’s heart dropped and he went cold all over, although maybe that was the blood that he could feel himself losing. He kicked out at the thing again, terror making the world go slow and thick around him, the thought half-formed in his back brain, No, please, I don’t want to —

He felt his foot connect with something solid, felt it give way, and some part of his brain not totally paralyzed by terror supplied that if he didn’t want to die here then it was up to him to do something about that, because there was nobody else to give a fuck. He kicked the thing again, struck out with the claws on his working hand, even tried to bite it although his teeth closed on nothing when he did. The thing didn't move, just held him pinned under that awful, impossible blackness, lashing him with its shadow limbs.

This wasn’t going to work. He wasn’t going to win. He’d never been more than a half-assed excuse for a fighter and this thing, whatever it was, had strength he couldn’t possibly match. He still kept hitting it, trying to wrench himself free, but each blow had less strength in it than the last.

He didn’t want to die like this he didn’t want to die he didn’t . . .

There was so much blood, everything hurt, it wouldn’t stop hitting him, the stench of the thing and the glare of the lights were so overpowering it felt like they were inside his head, and the noise was — the noise was —

Something like a thunderclap. The thing shuddered above him, jerked sideways, roared like a freight train. Barclay tried to roll himself out from under it but his legs were pinned under its tendrils, or maybe he just didn’t have the strength to move himself. There was so much blood, he was cold all over and everything was coming in sharp, stuttering flashes like a jammed reel of film. The thing wavered, retreated, or maybe Barclay’s vision was just receding; he wasn’t sure which.

He didn’t want to die here.

Barclay made a tremendous effort, managed to heave himself over so he was on the side with a working arm, tried to drag himself away from the monster even as the effort stole the strength from his legs and the breath from his lungs.

He managed a few agonizing inches before his strength gave out and his legs stopped obeying his orders to push him. Barclay squeezed his eyes shut, breath coming in sharp, shallow gasps. The pain was everywhere, the noise was still howling, the thing was going to hit him again and he was just going to have to lie here and let it happen because he was out of options.

He was going to die here whether he wanted to or not.

The thought tore a sob out of his throat, harsh and bloody, and he dropped his forehead to the dirt.

He hoped the next time it hit him would be the last, that it would at least be quick.

He was still hoping that when he lost consciousness completely.

Chapter Text

Something was lifting him. It jostled him and it hurt and he couldn’t

He didn’t

There was so much noise and all he wanted was to crawl back into the tight, quiet space he’d made against the stone and close his eyes and hide but the hurt was so big and so bright it kept pulling him back out into the noise and the lights and the rough arms dragging him, lifting him, shaking him until his teeth rattled and it hurt it hurt it hurt

Claws, shadows, lights, trees, gunshots, had somebody shot him? Where was he where was he where was he where

Goddamnit Thacker can you make this fuckin’ thing go any faster or not

If you want me to wrap it around a tree I

The train car rattled beneath him, cold metal panels that jarred his whole body as they moved, there were two of them and they maybe weren’t bigger than him but they were sure as hell meaner and he

No

No that had happened already

was still happening was going to happen again?

bleedin’ all over the goddamned place

can’t be much longer, I’m

Everything hurt.

He was so cold.

He didn’t want to die like this.

Something was clattering, a rhythmic rattle he couldn’t quite place. Mother must be weaving, though the shuttle sounded off-balance like she wasn’t quite concentrating on the work.

No, that was wrong, that had been a long time ago.

— sus Christ Madeline what

Musta caught ‘em just through the gate

Barclay wanted to get up, to climb down from the loft and see what was bothering her, if he could help or at least keep her company. He always felt safe when she let him sit next to her, tucked against her side while her hands flew across the warp yarn.

God it had been such a long time since he’d felt safe.

Had he killed that guy? The one he’d kicked off the train, was that guy fucking dead?

in the Springs

he’s torn the fuck open, we can’t

won’t survive it anyway if we

There were hands on him, too many hands, the thing had so many fucking limbs how could it be real? They were lifting him again and it fucking hurt and he wanted to hide, he wanted this whole thing to be a dream, he wanted to live it hurt it hurt it hurt it

take it easy we’re

don’t

safe

Barclay wasn’t safe. He hadn’t been since he’d stepped through the gate, not really, and he tried to say as much but he didn’t have the strength for it. He didn’t have the breath.

He didn’t have the breath. Everything was dark and the edges of the world were closing in and he was

he couldn’t

breathe . . .

downstairs?

just for the time being

Barclay hurt.

He hurt and he could hardly move and he didn’t know where he was.

At least the noise was gone.

At least the thing was gone.

He shouldn’t stay here, wherever here was. He shouldn’t stay where someone could find him. But moving took effort he didn’t have, strength he didn’t have, and he was so tired and he hurt and he was just

He just

runnin’ pretty hot?

We all do, but this . . .

The wasteland was hot. He hadn’t realized it would be so hot.

He should’ve brought more water.

The sun hammered down, his neck burned, his throat felt full of sand.

He wasn’t lost. He could make this work. He just had to keep moving.

He couldn’t stop. He couldn’t stay. He had to keep moving.

He just had to keep moving.

Definitely a fever, I

run its course

The thing had so many limbs it had so many eyes and they burned they burned they burned he was going to die he had to do something it had him pinned it was holding him down by the shoulders it was going to it was going to

Jesus, he’s fucking STRONG, I can’t —

ripped out his stitches

burning up

He didn’t want to die he didn’t want to die he was on fire and he was trapped and he had to get out if he could just get up he could run and if he could run he’d be

he’d be

he hurt he

he wasn’t safe he

have to keep him still or

easy, easy, you’re okay, you’re

Barclay drifted.

The world was a forest without any edges and he was the only thing in it.

He’d been looking for something.

Someone.

Something.

He’d taken something, or someone had taken it from him. Something was missing but it wasn’t in the forest.

The forest had no edges. He could walk for a thousand years and he’d never find anything or see anyone. He’d never be able to leave. He’d made a mistake.

He’d made a terrible mistake.

gone back down, that’s

sit with him a while?

Barclay couldn’t make himself get up. He’d had a terrible dream, though now he couldn’t remember the details. He’d pulled too many blankets over himself and the weight of them was getting uncomfortable, but he was just so tired. He’d get up in a few more minutes. He’d climb down from the loft any minute now and make sure his mother was okay.

He couldn’t hear her weaving anymore.

been awake much

I expect he’ll come around soon.

He was thirsty.

At first it was just a vague awareness, but gradually it grew into something more like an actual, concrete thought. He was thirsty.

And he hurt all over.

And he felt weak as a kitten.

Barclay groaned and stirred, not quite up to opening his eyes just yet. God, what had fucking happened? He felt like he’d been hit by a . . .

Oh.

Oh shit.

He went cold all over as the memory of eyes and shadows and hurt and noise flooded back at him. He’d been in the woods, trapped under that . . . whatever that thing had been, and then he’d been —

Barclay sucked in a deep breath and snapped his eyes open, not yet focusing on anything. What the fuck had happened?

How was he not dead?

And where the hell was he?

Barclay took a shaky breath and took stock. He was thirsty and weak as a kitten and he hurt all over, although it was a dull, pervasive hurt and not the sharp, tearing, awful pain of the thing hitting him. He seemed to be lying on his back in a very dim room. His chest and shoulder ached when he breathed in, and his arms . . .

Barclay’s heart ramped up to a wild, terrified hammer in his chest. His right arm was strapped to his body, immobilized against his chest by layers of bandages, and his left . . .

Fuck. Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck his left arm was tied down, someone had tied him to a table or something, oh God he wasn’t wearing his bracelet he wasn’t wearing his glamour someone had tied him to a bed and he wasn’t wearing his glamour and he had to get out of here NOW NOWNOWNOWNOWNOW

“Easy.” The voice came from the space off to his left, a mellow baritone voice that he didn’t recognize.

It didn’t do anything to calm him down. Barclay yanked feebly on the binding holding his left wrist, tossing his head wildly to the side to try and see where he was, find an exit, make some kind of plan to get himself out of this before he got hurt.

Hurt more.

The room was small and dim, a single lamp on a bedside table, an indistinct figure in a chair between Barclay and the door. Sheets, blanket, no window, the smell of disinfectant and illness, a regular door he could probably break down if he could just get to it.

“Easy,” the figure said again, leaning forward, and Barclay’s mind flooded with the worst kind of nightmare possibilities, scalpels and heart monitors and cages . . .

The figure put a hand on Barclay’s unbandaged shoulder. The touch was gentle, feather-light, but he tried to shake it off anyway. No no no, this couldn’t be happening.

The hand went away, although the figure was still leaning towards him. “You’re okay,” the voice said again. “You’re safe.”

Barclay shook his head, although something about the words caught and snagged at the edge of his terrified awareness. “Listen,” he said, in a harsh, shaky voice, “I’m not — please, just let me — don’t —”

Shit, he couldn’t even get a sentence strung together. He was too far deep into panicking.

The speaker spread their hands. “You’re safe. You’ve been badly injured and we’ve been taking care of you,” they said calmly, “Nobody is going to hurt you.”

Barclay didn’t really believe that, but he tried to take a deep breath anyway, tried to corral his heart and brain into working in tandem enough that he could make some sort of plan and . . .

Wait.

Barclay took a shaking breath and stared at the indistinct, backlit figure in the chair. “Say that again?” he croaked.

The speaker sounded like they might have been smiling. “Nobody is going to hurt you.”

Sylvan.

That was Sylvan.

The gears in Barclay’s brain hadn’t been working very well to begin with, but now they ground to a total halt. He hadn’t heard anyone else speak it in over a decade but he knew his mother tongue when he heard it spoken. Except how . . .

“Where . . . where the hell am I?” Barclay managed finally, still struggling to understand what all of this meant.

The figure turned and touched a switch on the bedside lamp, raising the brightness until Barclay could see them, and Barclay . . . Barclay just stared.

The speaker was a squat, stocky figure with broad shoulders and a barrel chest, dressed in khakis and a mossy green sweater. His skin was covered in velvety brown fur, his hair a mass of dark black curls with a pair of short, sharp black horns protruding from it. Wide-set, liquid brown eyes watched Barclay solemnly from behind a pair of gold wire-framed glasses, perched on a nose that was more bovine than humanoid.

“You’re safe.” The bison sylph in front of him said gently, speaking in English now.

“You’re at Amnesty Lodge.”

Chapter Text

Barclay swallowed hard. He knew he was staring, and maybe that wasn’t making the best impression on the stranger, but he couldn’t help it. He hadn’t seen another sylph in . . . God, eleven years? Twelve? He’d lost count exactly. Not since that first week he’d spent in New York City, and even then he’d only seen them from across a crowded subway platform, they hadn’t actually spoken. Somehow in all his desperate half-cocked planning to find the gate he’d never anticipated actually . . .

Fuck.

“I don’t understand.” Barclay said, his voice still harsh and scratchy. He’d kill for a drink right now, but the thought of asking for one was its own special kind of intimidating. Nothing about this situation made any sense.

“I can’t say I’m surprised,” The bison sylph said kindly. “You’ve been through quite a lot.” His voice had a cadence Barclay couldn’t quite place; maybe a shade of Sylvan in the way he rolled his vowels, but a lilting, clipped kind of rhythm that was more like . . . Barclay didn’t know. German, maybe? Except that made even less sense than anything else did right now.

He’d never thought too hard about what it would mean if he met someone else like him. Surviving on Earth without losing yourself was impossible for anyone who didn’t have a crystal like his, and that meant . . .

That meant a lot of things.

The other man leaned over to the side table and picked up an empty glass and a carafe of clear liquid, pouring some out as he spoke. “I’m sorry your first night on Earth had to end the way it did,” He said, setting the carafe aside and leaning forward with the glass held lightly in one hand, not offered yet but still within Barclay’s reach.

What would’ve been Barclay’s reach. Barclay ran his tongue over his bottom lip and tried not to give in to the impulse to reach for it anyway. Not that he didn’t want it — assuming it was just water, at least — but he couldn’t afford to look as desperate as reaching for it with a bound hand would make him look. Not when he still didn’t know if this place was a prison, and Barclay didn’t know what else it could be.

Well, he did. He just wasn’t going to let himself think too hard yet about the other, better possibilities. He was hurt and restrained and disoriented and essentially naked, he couldn’t afford to let himself get comfortable. He took a shaky breath. “What was that thing?” He said, trying for the question that seemed most likely to get an honest answer.

“Ah.” The bison’s eyebrows went up and he looked . . . almost embarrassed. “We call them ‘abominations’. An inelegant word for a badly understood phenomenon, I’m afraid. They’re . . . not of this world. Nor of your — excuse me. Of Sylvain. You just had the misfortune to encounter one before we could find it and kill it.”

Barclay grimaced, remembering burning eyes and too many limbs and shadows and the smell. How were you supposed to kill something like that? With what weapons?

“My friends dispatched it while it was distracted,” The other man was saying, “And then they brought you back here so that I could care for your injuries. You’ve been unconscious for quite some time.”

Barclay felt a cold flicker of fear at that — how long was quite some time? Where was here? Where was his pack — fuck, forget the pack, where was his glamour?

“Damn it,” The bison said abruptly, setting the glass of liquid aside and leaning forward, reaching with both hands in Barclay’s direction.

Barclay really tried not to go tense; he was too hurt and too weak to be sure how well he succeeded. Probably not all that well, given that the other man made a gentling noise and slowed his movements as he finished taking hold of Barclay’s left wrist.

“Forgive me, I forgot about this,” He said quietly, fingers working gently to untie the knotted gauze holding Barclay’s arm to the bed. “You were delirious with fever and I was afraid you would tear open your stitches. I didn’t intend for you to wake up still restrained.”

Barclay held very still until the knots came loose and the other man let go of him; then he pulled his wrist up to his chest to touch the layers of bandages there, flexing his fingers as he did. “It’s fine,” He lied. “I’ve woken up in weirder situations.”

The bison snorted and leaned back, retrieving the glass from the side table. “I can’t say that’s much of a relief to hear, honestly. Here, let me help you.”

“Oh, uh.” Barclay did some split-second mental math and reached for the glass, pushing himself awkwardly into something like a sitting position. “You don’t need to do that. I got it.” Maybe it was drugged or whatever, but he’d take his chances.

The bison handed the drink over without protest, and Barclay shakily lifted the glass to his lips. The first sip definitely tasted like just regular, unadulterated water, and although he’d planned to only drink a little he’d drained the glass almost before he realized he was doing it. The effort left him feeling breathless, and he hated how vulnerable that felt.

“Thanks,” He said sheepishly, handing the glass back to the other man, who took it and set it aside.

“Of course.” He settled back in his chair, shifting his broad shoulders. “My name is Cyrus,” he said. “I suppose I should have said that earlier. And yours?”

“Barclay.” He was too tired to keep track of a fake right now, and it probably didn’t matter. Hopefully didn’t matter.

“Barclay. Well, as I said, you’re at Amnesty Lodge. I imagine you have some questions for me, now that you’re awake.”

“. . . yeah.” Barclay reached up to run his free hand over his face. God. Okay. He wasn’t restrained, although the fact was that he didn’t really feel sure he could successfully get out of bed or out of this room even if he wasn’t tied down anymore. Just sitting up had been an effort. So this maybe wasn’t a prison, or at least wasn’t the kind of prison that would keep him physically tied down, but he was still stuck here.

And here was . . . somewhere. Amnesty Lodge. The guy said the name like Barclay was supposed to know what that meant.

Of course, he’d also apologized for Barclay having a shitty first night on Earth so he’d maybe mistaken Barclay for somebody else. Someone who was supposed to be here. Presumably an exile, Barclay thought with bitter amusement, because obviously the other sylph — Cyrus — wouldn’t expect anyone in their right mind to ever come through the gate without being forced through.

“Did they. Um. Find a bracelet?” That felt like a stupid question, given everything, but it also felt like the closest thing he had to a safe, neutral one that wouldn’t give away how little he knew about what was going on.

Cyrus sighed, his expression growing grave. “No, I’m afraid not. But at least that answers one of the questions I had for you. I was worried they’d sent you through without any disguise, for some godawful reason.”

Barclay grimaced. “No, I had one. I guess it’s probably still in the woods somewhere.” Probably still in his pack hidden in his camp, now that he thought about it. So that was great — and not something this stranger needed to know, given he thought Barclay had apparently just arrived.

The other sylph made a discontented noise. “I’ll ask Madeline and Thacker to look near where they found you. We have the resources to make you another if they can’t find it.”

“. . . thanks.” Barclay took a deep breath, though doing so made his ribs and shoulder ache. “Sorry. This is all, uh. Kind of a lot.”

“I understand.” Cyrus took a handkerchief from his pocket, pulled his glasses off and polished them. “None of this should have happened. I had thought we’d reached an understanding with Vi— ah. With the Sylvan authorities. They shouldn’t be sending anyone through without our knowledge, and certainly not right at the full moon. They put you in terrible danger, more so than an exile usually faces, and it’s unconscionable. I will be having words with them about it, I assure you.”

“What?” Barclay’s chest clenched. Shit, no, he definitely didn't want that. “You can — I mean, you’re allowed to —” He broke off and shook his head, trying to get his panic back under control.

“Ah.” Cyrus settled the glasses back on his nose. “I have a . . . special arrangement. It’s complicated. I’ll explain it to you some other time.”

Barclay knew that probably meant never, but whatever. He didn’t actually care, as long as Cyrus didn’t intend to follow through on talking to the Sylvan city guard about him. “You don’t have to, um. ‘Have words with them’, or whatever. It’s not . . . I mean, I’m alive, and I’m here, and I’d rather not have it cause any trouble. More trouble. It’s fine.”

Cyrus tilted his head slightly, watching Barclay with an unreadable expression. “You don’t have to be afraid,” He said gently. “Everyone here is an exile, like you, and I’m sure whatever stories you’ve heard about life on this side were almost certainly not true. Earth is . . . difficult, even for those who didn’t have such a violent introduction to it. But you’re not alone, and nobody here will shame you or hold whatever you’ve done against you. You’re safe here.”

“Sure.” Barclay grimaced as the word came out unintentionally. He must be worn more thin than he’d realized, if his usually careful guard on his tongue was slipping like that. But then, he’d been mauled almost to death and now he was stuck in maybe-not-a-prison with an impossible Earth-dwelling sylph keeping watch on him, so maybe he could be forgiven for being a little worn thin.

Cyrus snorted quietly. “I don’t blame you for your skepticism,” he said. “I’m sure whatever you’ve been through in the past few weeks was not especially pleasant, even before the near-death experience.”

“Yeah, you could say that.” Barclay lay back — sitting up was getting to be too much effort. “Uh. Thanks, by the way. For saving my life.”

Cyrus’s laugh was mellow and pleasant. “Think nothing of it. It’s really Madeline and Thacker you should be thanking — you’ll have a chance to meet them later. They were the ones who killed the thing and rescued you, all I did was the patching up.”

“You’re a healer?” Barclay frowned. Healers were respected on Sylvain, a class held in high enough esteem that they didn’t have to fear exile as a punishment for their transgressions. Barclay’d never heard of one being forced through the gate, although maybe things had changed in all the years he’d been gone.

“Mostly taught on this side of the gate, yes,” Cyrus said. “And that is a very long story for another time.”

Barclay really didn’t know what to do with that information, just nodded numbly and stared at the ceiling. Cheap acoustic tiles stared back at him, corners lost in shadows. God, what had he wandered into?

Cyrus cleared his throat. “I’ve been giving you medication for the pain,” he said, “I can give you another dose now, if you need it.”

Barclay shook his head quickly. It didn’t hurt that bad, and the thought of someone coming at him with a needle, even if that someone was another sylph, was . . . yeah, no. That was bad. “I’m okay. Really.”

What he wanted was a chance to try and get his thoughts in order without having to navigate conversation at the same time, but it wasn’t like there was a good way to say that out loud without sounding like an asshole. This was . . . this was not how he’d anticipated it would go, on the rare occasions he’d let himself imagine finding someone else on Earth. He hadn’t thought his primary reaction, besides confusion, would be distrust and something that felt an awful lot like fear.

He’d thought he’d be a lot happier.

“Sorry,” He mumbled, realizing that the moment was stretching into a silence that was almost certainly awkward. “I’m just not . . . exactly. Used to being around people.”

Yeah, good job there, Barclay. Nothing about that was going to cause awkward questions.

“It’s all right, you needn’t apologize. You’ve been through a lot, and you’re still recovering.” Cyrus pushed himself to his feet. “I’ll let you get some rest. If you need help, one of us is always nearby. All you have to do is call.”

“I’ll do that.” The lie felt obvious to Barclay, but Cyrus didn’t call him out on it, just inclined his big shaggy head.

“Then I’ll see you later. It’s a pleasure to have met you, even under these circumstances.”

“Yeah. Thanks.” Barclay watched as the other sylph retreated, closing the door behind him. He didn't hear it lock, so that was something.

He took a deep, shaky breath and blew it out, staring hard at the ceiling.

Okay.

Okay.

So here was what he knew: Cyrus and at least two other people knew about Sylvain, knew about the gate, knew about exiles and had some kind of communication about them with the authorities on Sylvain. They also apparently had some kind of side business in monster hunting, but frankly that entire subject was way too much for Barclay to try and attack right now. Right now he had to figure out how screwed he was.

Cyrus could come and go through the gate to Sylvain, was comfortable enough in this place to go without a glamour. Was he some kind of secret policeman, able to go home often enough to stay sane but voluntarily posted on Earth to help exiles when they arrived? That didn’t make sense, didn’t fit with anything Barclay knew about how Sylvain did things, but maybe he’d just never understood as much as he thought he did. Maybe there’d always been someone on this side to shepherd people through.

Except that sounded crazy as soon as he had the thought. No. Sylvain didn’t give a shit about what happened to exiles once they were on Earth. So this place — this Amnesty Lodge — this had to be something different. Something set up by exiles themselves, maybe. Somewhere for people to land when they came through the gate with nothing.

There hadn’t been anything like that in New York, right? There hadn’t — he couldn’t have just missed something like that, right?

No. No way. Barclay shook his head. He couldn’t deal with the thought of that being true. This had to be something that had started after he’d arrived. Maybe since the gate had moved somewhere quieter it had been easier for people to stay and make some kind of place for themselves. Somewhere safe.

Except how could they do that? What would keep them sane? Had they all managed to get their hands on crystals, or . . .

Something dangerously like hope spiked in his chest. Did they have some other way of sustaining themselves?

No. Stupid. Barclay clenched his jaw and took a deep breath through his nose, holding it until his chest twinged. He wasn’t going to let himself build up some wild, baseless fantasy on nothing. All he really knew was that there was one other sylph who’d managed to keep from going feral, and that one other sylph talked about other exiles being safe on earth. That could just as easily be a delusion or a lie as it could the truth. He had no proof of any other sylphs being here. He didn’t even have any proof of any other people being here.

All he actually knew was that there was someone else — one person — who’d managed to stay on Earth without becoming a monster. Sure, that person seemed kind and hadn’t let him bleed to death, but that didn’t tell Barclay anything about the rest of what was going on here.

Right now he didn’t have a lot of options for finding out more, either. He was stuck in a small room with a shitload of bandages holding him together. He felt just about strong enough to briefly sit up by himself, which meant he was in no position to either sneak or fight his way out. And he didn’t have his glamour which meant that even if he did get out of this room, out of this building, he’d be a walking, injured target when he did.

So for now, here was probably the safest option. If Cyrus didn’t follow through on the offer of another charm, Barclay would have to figure something out — but that was a problem for a future version of Barclay, one who presumably would feel up to standing under his own power.

Barclay closed his eyes. Right now there wasn’t a lot he could do, except sleep and rebuild his strength. Maybe next time he talked with Cyrus he’d be a little more mentally together, could start asking some useful questions and figure out if he could actually trust the other sylph.

God, it would be nice if he could. If this was actually somewhere safe, somewhere he could get some help, somewhere he could stop for a while and figure out his crystal situation and just rest for a little bit . . .

He really wasn’t going to let himself think about that. That was the kind of hope that would kill you if you lost it.

Except somehow, he just couldn’t find the discipline to stop thinking about it before he fell asleep again.

Chapter Text

He’d been running for so long that he was gasping, breath raw in his throat as he stumbled through the trees, but Barclay didn’t dare stop. Something had been chasing him for miles, for days, and he was so tired but if he stopped it was going to catch him and if that happened . . .

He didn’t have time to think about that, because a sound like a thousand thunderclaps tore the darkened air and something slammed into his shoulder and chest, sent him sprawling to the ground. The pain was immediate and blinding, stole the last scrap of air from his lungs and left him scrabbling in the dirt. Blood streaked his hands and seeped into the ground.

There were footsteps drawing near, landing far too loud, and Barclay shuddered as he looked up into the blinding white light that had flooded the clearing.

He couldn’t really see the person standing above him, just the blurry black outline of a human-proportioned figure with a shotgun clutched in its hands. Barclay struggled to his knees, pressing a futile hand to his chest, trying to push away the pain and the blood. His other arm throbbed, torn and bloodied at his side.

“Listen, this is — this is just a misunderstanding, okay, please just . . . please put the gun down, I’m not going to hurt you.” Barclay cringed. Something was wrong; the words were words when he thought them, when he formed his mouth and throat around them, but what came out was rough, garbled snarling sounds.

Animal sounds.

The — Human? Sylph? — raised the gun, sighting along it as Barclay held his hand out in a scared, desperate gesture.

“Please just listen to me . . .”

The buckshot ripped through his palm and arm, slammed into his chest, left a line of blossoming white agony in its wake, and Barclay jerked awake with a strangled cry. His back and shoulder and chest were throbbing, steady jolts of pain that squeezed his lungs. It took him a second to remember where he was and what had happened, and he cast a panicky look around the room, trying to shake off the specter of the dream.

“Easy, big guy.” He didn’t recognize the voice, or the figure who got up from the bedside chair. It was a young woman, tall and angular and olive-skinned, with cropped black hair and a wild constellation of freckles from her hairline down to the collar of her faded flannel shirt. “Just a nightmare, you’re okay.”

Her hand landed on his bandaged chest, very lightly, and Barclay reacted without thinking. His uninjured hand shot out and locked around her wrist. “Don’t —”

“Shit.” Her eyes widened and she held her other hand up in a conciliatory gesture. “Alright, take it easy.”

Barclay swallowed the knot of terror in his throat and immediately let go, yanking his hand back like she’d burned him. Fuck. He hadn’t meant to do that.

“Sorry,” He rasped, turning his gaze away towards the opposite edge of the room like that could disguise the residual fear and naked chagrin on his face. Nice one, Barclay, way to come across like a totally normal person.

“My fault.” She shrugged easily, pushing her fingers through the short, wild brush of her hair. “Goddamned stupid thing for me to do when you just woke up screamin’.”

Barclay’s jaw clenched, and he balled his fingers in a loose fist. Everything still hurt. “I still shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry.”

The woman waved a hand, dismissing the topic, and turned to rummage in the nightstand drawer. “Doc said y’might wake up hard if the pain meds wore off. Hang on, he left some for you. Mike had to drag his ass up to bed, he’s been sleepin’ in this chair for a week.”

She tossed her head with a satisfied noise and turned with a pill bottle held in one hand. “I’m Madeline. We met already, only I doubt you’ll remember much about it.”

Barclay’s brow furrowed. Right. The other sylph — Cyrus — had mentioned that name. “You’re the one who killed that thing.”

She let out a snort of laughter and uncapped the bottle in her hand. “Sure am. Madeline Cobb, monster slayer, that’s me.” Her expression softened as she shook a couple of capsules out into her palm and held them out. “Sorry I didn’t get to it fast enough to keep you from gettin’ torn up, though.”

Barclay wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that. He eyed the pills in her hand with a wary expression. On the one hand, this place was still more questions than answers, and taking unmarked pills from strangers wasn’t a strategy that had ever worked out well. On the other hand, he hurt, a lot, and the pain made it hard to think, and he was going to need to think clearly if he was going to deal with this whole situation.

Madeline Cobb’s expression quirked in a wry, sympathetic kind of smile. “Honey, if I wanted to take you out I had a lot better chances to do it than waiting to poison you when you were conscious.”

Barclay winced. Shit, was he that obvious? “Sorry.” He reached out to take the pills from her hand, suddenly keenly aware that he wasn’t wearing his glamour. Her hand looked awfully small compared to his own.

“For what, havin’ a head on your shoulders?” Madeline poured a cup of water as Barclay popped the pills into his mouth, holding it out for him. “Listen, I get it. New world, new folks, and you goddamned near got killed by a big nasty shadow monster right on the heels of what probably wasn’t a great couple weeks back home. I’d be backed into a corner cussin’ a blue streak and ready to deck anybody got too close if I was you.”

Barclay swallowed the pills and drained the water glass, trying to formulate some kind of response that was more articulate than a stumbling apology or a statement of the obvious. God, had he always been this bad at talking to people?

“Give me a little while,” He said finally, holding the empty glass out to her. “It could still happen.”

“That’s the spirit.” She took the glass and set it back on the side table, stashed the pills back in the drawer. “It’s Barclay, right?”

“Yeah.” He watched her as she sat back down, shifting his shoulders uncomfortably, wondering how long it’d take for the pain medication (or whatever he’d just swallowed) to take effect. “I’ve been here a week?”

“‘Bout that, yeah,” She replied. “Doc wasn’t too sure you were gonna pull through at first. You were in pretty bad shape.”

He grimaced at the rush of memory, shadows and burning eyes and the searing smell of hot rubber, and the awful chaos of half-memories, half-dreams that had followed. “Yeah. I guess I’m lucky that thing didn’t kill me.” Abomination, Cyrus had said, like it was any kind of real answer about what that thing had been. Monster wasn’t really much better, but it at least seemed a little less like a euphemism. Madeline seemed like the sort of person who didn't use a lot of euphemisms.

“Damn lucky,” Madeline agreed, rubbing absently at her forearm. There was a swath of bandage peeking out under the cuff of her shirt, but Barclay didn’t mention it. “Would’ve been luckier if you’d made it here without runnin’ into it first, of course, but that ain’t on you. Anyway,” She waved a hand abruptly, like she’d been on the edge of saying too much, “You hungry? Mike’s probably got supper just about ready, I can bring y’all something to eat.”

Barclay took a deep breath as a knot of worry suddenly snarled itself around his ribs. Shit. If he’d been here a week and unconscious for almost all of it, that meant he’d been running mostly on energy from the crystal this whole time. He’d had it on when he’d taken his glamour off — of course he did, he never took it off, ever. A week using up its faltering power without any food to back it up, a week his body had spent drawing on the crystal’s reserves to keep him alive in the face of his injuries, a week . . .

Oh, god, how much had he burned through?

How much did he have left?

Madeline made a concerned noise and leaned forward in her chair. “Y’okay? Pills should kick in pretty soon, here.”

Barclay swallowed hard and untangled his fingers from the bedspread. Okay. He couldn’t flip out about this in front of her, or anybody else. He’d have to worry about it some other time when he wasn’t being watched (Assuming there is some time you’re not being watched, his brain supplied, and boy, wasn’t that a helpful thought for someone who was trying not to panic). “I’ll be okay,” He lied a little shakily. “Food . . . food sounds really good right now.”

Madeline smiled. She had a nice smile, one that crinkled the corners of her brown eyes. “Figured. I’ll fix you a plate and bring it down. Think you’ll be okay in the meantime?”

“Yeah.” He took a shaky breath. The very edges of the pain were starting to dull, which hopefully meant the medication really was just painkillers. It would be nice if he didn’t have to cope with everything hurting for a little while. “I’ll be just fine.”

She nodded and got up, slipped out of the room and closed the door behind her. Like Cyrus, she didn’t seem to bother locking it behind her.

Barclay let his head drop back against the pillows and stared hard at the ceiling tiles, trying to think through his problems and not lose himself to panic.

He’d been living off nothing but the crystal for a week. That was bad. It wasn’t right next to his skin — he’d checked before he’d taken off his glamour — and that was something, but he had no way of knowing how much energy he might’ve used up. Wouldn’t really have known how to judge even if he could see the crystal right now, and he couldn’t. He wouldn’t be able to until he got some way to switch back to his glamoured form.

No way to know how long that would be; Cyrus had said these people had the ability to make him a new charm, but Barclay was no artificer. That process might take weeks, for all he knew. Assuming the other sylph had even been telling the truth.

He squeezed his eyes shut. Fuck. Okay. So what was the next step?

Figure out what this place was. Figure out what was keeping Cyrus alive and lucid, whether that was a crystal or some other source of Sylvain's light. Figure out if whatever it was could be shared. Barring that, find the gate and . . .

And what? Hope it would magically recharge his crystal? It had never been a good plan, and now that he knew the gate was being watched on this side it had suddenly become a worse one, but maybe it was still better than nothing.

The hurt was starting to ebb out of his chest and back as the medicine did its job. Barclay tried moving his bandaged and sling-bound right arm experimentally, but the shock of sudden pain it sent racing through his shoulder and side made him regret that decision. Okay, then, he was going to be stuck one-handed for a while. Both his legs felt okay, though, and he gingerly shifted around until he was properly sitting up. He felt kind of dizzy, but not as weak as he’d felt the first time he’d woken up. He might even be able to keep his feet under him if he decided to stand. He probably wouldn’t be able to run any time soon, but hopefully he wouldn’t need to.

Barclay cocked his head, listening hard, trying to see if he could pick out anything to tell him more about his surroundings. The room was windowless, no hum of air conditioning or buzz of fluorescents. Everything sounded closed-in and muffled, like he was either in the very center of a building or maybe underground. The floor was swept concrete, though someone had tossed a couple of braided rag rugs on it. That was . . . kind of comforting, actually, and so was the fact that the blanket covering him was an actual patchwork quilt. They just didn’t feel like the kind of thing someone would put in a prison.

Okay. He took a deep breath and shifted so he was sitting on the edge of the bed, feet brushing the floor. Next step was to see if the door really was unlocked, if he could open it from this side. That’d help him know if he was a guest, like Cyrus and Madeline had implied, or a prisoner.

Standing up was . . . a lot more challenging than he had thought it would be, but he managed it eventually, leaning against the bed for a second while his head cleared. The ceiling was low, and in his sylph form Barclay’s head practically brushed the aged acoustic tiles above him. He thought he might be in a basement; it’d explain the muffled sounds as well.

Crossing the room was a shaky, uncertain task; his balance was off with his arm pinned to his side, and now that the pain was manageable he was more aware of how weak and shaky he felt. He had to check where he put every footstep.

He was about halfway to the door when the handle turned and Madeline Cobb shouldered it open, balancing a wooden tray on her free arm. Her eyebrows went up when she spotted him, and Barclay’s heart sank, but she just looked him over for a second before she shook her head.

“You look like you’re gonna fall down, big fella, and I’m not gonna promise I’ll be able to catch you when you do.” She stepped into the room and crossed to put the tray on the bedside table, but not before she pulled the door wide open and left it that way. Barclay saw a glimpse of the room beyond — a large, open space with haphazard furniture and a similarly low ceiling to the one he was in.

He grimaced and turned carefully, fumbling for a lie. “Yeah. I was, uh . . .”

Madeline waved a hand, pulling the cover off the tray. “Don’t bother, I get it. You gotta know what you’ve gotten yourself into. Maybe it’d be a better plan to get some food in your system before you try goin’ much further, though, huh?”

Barclay hesitated. The tray held two bowls of gently steaming soup, thick slices of brown bread, and what looked like some kind of fruit cobbler, and Barclay was suddenly extremely aware of just how long he’d gone without an actual meal. He was honestly surprised his stomach didn’t audibly growl. “. . . probably wouldn’t hurt,” He admitted, taking a shuffling step back towards the bed.

Madeline eyed him for a second and then moved to his left side and extended an elbow, offering her support but not actually touching him. “Mike’s venison stew never hurt anybody yet,” She said lightly.

He debated with himself for a second before taking her elbow in his good hand. Couldn’t hurt to let people think he needed more help than he did, right? That was just good strategy.

She helped him back to the bed and waited until he was settled before she set him up with the tray balanced across his lap and then took her seat in the bedside chair, reaching for her own bowl. Barclay watched her take a bite, trying not to seem like he was doing so — although with how frankly Madeline talked about the suspicious behavior she’d caught him in already, maybe he didn’t need to bother hiding it.

He reached for the spoon and picked it up carefully; someone had given him what looked like a smallish serving spoon instead of regular-sized cutlery that would’ve been comically small in his too-large hand, but it was still a little off from the right size to be comfortable. Not for the first time in the past hour, Barclay wished for his bracelet. It would have been so much easier and safer to disappear into a smaller version of himself for a while.

Still, the stew smelled amazing, and he let himself ignore his more pressing concerns for a moment so he could concentrate on eating. And it was . . . Barclay closed his eyes and tilted his head back as the flavors hit his tongue.

It was so fucking good. Maybe it was the week of unconsciousness, maybe he was too used to living off granola and bad diner food, maybe Mike (whoever that was) was a damn good cook. Maybe it was some combination of all those things, but god, this was probably the best meal he’d had in years. The stew was rich and savory, the bread soft and still slightly warm, and Barclay ate wolfishly for a few minutes before he remembered he was dining in someone else’s company for once.

Great. Cool. Another good impression in a long series of them. He took a deep breath and looked up sheepishly at Madeline, who was enjoying her own meal in silence and watching him while she did.

“Sorry,” He mumbled. “Uh. Just, y’know. Been a week.”

Madeline grinned and gestured with her spoon. “Sure, I get it. I know this won’t keep you goin’ one hundred percent, but it’ll help a little. Once the Doc wakes up we’ll see about gettin’ you some of the other kinda meal, okay?”

Barclay’s heart gave an abrupt, lurching kind of twist. That . . . it couldn’t be that easy, could it? Was she really going to just . . .

And then something else about her words caught his attention and left him cursing himself for an oblivious fool. He hadn’t thought about it before this moment, too distracted by pain and panic, too lulled by Cyrus’s appearance and Madeline’s nonchalance in the face of what Barclay looked like without his glamour on.

Barclay set the spoon down gingerly and cocked his head. Listening for a heartbeat, feeling for the indefinable sense of familiarity that came from Sylvan magic. Scenting the air in the room, testing its temperature. He already knew what his senses were going to tell him, even if he wasn’t sure what it meant.

Madeline Cobb wasn’t wearing a glamour.

Madeline Cobb was human.

Chapter Text

Okay.

Okay.

He was sitting in bed, injured, unarmed, totally un-glamored, and a human being who (however jokingly) called herself a monster slayer was sitting between him and the exit, calmly spooning up the last of her supper.

Barclay took a deep breath and focused on wrestling down the instinctive urge to bolt that had boiled up in his chest the moment the penny had dropped. Okay. Madeline Cobb had already made a point of the fact that she could’ve killed him while he was unconscious, and she hadn’t. Hell she’d saved him from the thing that’d been trying to kill him. So whatever she might be after, whatever reason she had for being here, it probably didn’t involve putting a bullet in his head.

She was still way too goddamned nonchalant about sitting in a room with Bigfoot. Barclay had been spotted without his glamour more often than he’d like to admit in the past decade-and-change, even though he’d tried to be careful. He knew how humans reacted to seeing the form he’d been born in, and it wasn’t this. They screamed or they bolted or they stared, they tried to trap him or shoot him or . . . well, the point was, they didn’t pause halfway through a dish of peach cobbler and smile mischievously like they’d just let him in on the good kind of secret.

“Y’all look like you got something on your mind.” She said, popping a spoonful of dessert into her mouth.

Shit. Barclay ducked his head and picked up his own spoon again, mostly just for the sake of having something to do besides stare at her like an idiot. Okay. How did you go about asking somebody what their deal was without coming off as a socially stunted alien who didn’t know how to talk to people?

“I’m, uh. A little surprised, I guess? You don’t seem very thrown off by the . . . you know. Bigfoot. Thing.”

Nailed it.

“Mmmhmm.” Madeline smirked around her spoon, though she did take it out of her mouth before speaking. “And I imagine you were expectin’ the first human you ran into to act like we do in your monster stories back on Sylvain. That about right?”

“Uh.” Well. Yeah, Barclay supposed he had expected that, all those years ago when he’d come through the gate, so she wasn’t exactly wrong. That by now he was just expecting humans to act that way based on experience instead of children’s stories seemed both like an impolite thing to say and like something that would open him up to way too many questions. “Something like that, yeah.”

Madeline snorted. “Well, for one, I was pretty hard to catch off guard before the gate to another world dropped itself in my hometown. For another,” she grinned and made a gesture with her spoon that somehow took in Barclay and the rest of the world in a single eloquent swoop. “I seen a lot stranger things than you by now, Mister Barclay. You just ain’t that scary, no offense meant.”

“None taken.” If anything, the words made something inside his chest relax, just a tiny bit. God, what a novelty, someone who didn’t think dangerous when they looked at him. Possibly he shouldn’t let that be a comforting thought, given that the alternative to Madeline Cobb seeing him as a threat was her seeing him as something she could easily take down, but what the hell. Given the state he was in, she probably could. He’d just have to hope she wasn’t going to change her mind about deciding to.

“Anyways,” she continued airily, “I wouldn’t still be workin’ for Amnesty Lodge if I wasn’t used to getting Sylvan folks settled in.”

So Cyrus really wasn’t the only one. Barclay hesitated for a second, spoon poised halfway to his mouth, not sure if he wanted to know the answer to his next question or not. “Are there other sylphs still here?” Are they still themselves?

Something in Madeline’s expression softened a little bit. “Oh, sure,” she said. “You’ll get a chance to meet ‘em before long. Some folks move on once they’re used to Earth, but a lot of ‘em have stayed here with us.”

Barclay couldn’t decide on a name for the feeling that news sent surging through him. Relief, maybe, or hope, except it was tinged with too much worry and suspicion and fear to really be a strictly positive emotion. He wasn’t even going to try and pick apart the million implications of some folks move on.

“That’s . . . good.” He said finally, wincing a little bit at how stupid he sounded.

Madeline seemed to take pity on him. “Doc said you lost your bracelet in the woods somewhere,” she said, mercifully changing the subject. “What’s it look like?”

“Oh. Uh,” Barclay gestured at his empty wrist. “It’s woven, made out of hemp. There’s a little bit of polished wood knotted into it.” He swallowed a wave of vague guilt; there wasn’t much chance she’d find it no matter how detailed his description, given that it was still tucked inside his abandoned pack in his hidden campsite.

Madeline made a thoughtful noise. “Well, me and Arlo didn’t spot it yet, but I’ll drag him out there with me tomorrow afternoon and do another sweep. If anybody’s gonna find it, it’ll probably be him.”

Barclay grimaced. “Is that . . . safe? I mean, if there’s things like that thing that hit me out there?” Jesus, that was the last thing he needed on his conscience, someone getting killed on a fruitless search for his stupid glamour.

“Nah.” Madeline set her empty dessert dish on the bedside table and stretched her arms above her head in a long, satisfied motion. “We’ve got about six, seven weeks now before the next Abomination comes through. Nasty bastards’re like clockwork.”

“Oh.” Well, that just raised a whole lot more questions, didn’t it?

She waved a hand. “Probably oughtta save any more on that subject for the Doc, though. He’ll wanna give you the whole crash course.” Barclay nodded. So either that was above Madeline’s pay grade, or his. He wasn’t going to push it right now either way.

“Speaking of, I’d be surprised if Doc Cyrus ain’t awake by now.” Madeline got to her feet and crossed the room to a dinged-up chest of drawers standing in the corner near the door.

“Here,” She said, yanking a drawer open. “Don’t know how much you care about the clothes situation, but this oughtta fit you if you want it.” She pulled a folded garment out of the drawer and plopped it on the top of the dresser. “No reason for anybody from town to be nosin’ around at this time of night, but I’ll go upstairs and make sure the coast’s clear, and send the Doc down to help you up the stairs.” She paused and glanced at him over her shoulder. “Unless you changed your mind about gettin’ a look at what’s outside this room.”

Barclay took a deep breath. The sudden burst of activity was a little intimidating, but he could deal. “No, that . . . that sounds good. Thanks.”

“Sure.” Madeline collected the empty dishes from their shared supper and gave him a quick, brilliant grin. “See ya around, Bigfoot.”

With that she breezed out of the room, leaving the door open behind her, and Barclay blew out a breath and lay back against the pillows for a second to collect his thoughts.

God. Other people. Other sylphs. He didn’t know if he was ready to deal with that concept.

He scrubbed his good hand roughly over his face and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. Okay, actually, trying to collect his thoughts was a bad idea, because the more collected they got the more anxious they became. If he spent any real time dwelling on the notion he was going to panic and do something stupid. He had to just deal with it a minute at a time, keep himself moving and cope with what happened as it came.

He felt a lot steadier on his feet with a meal under his belt, and crossing the room didn’t feel so precarious. He picked up the garment Madeline had left on the dresser and shook it out. It was a terrycloth robe, simple and clean, broad enough in the shoulders that it didn’t seem like he’d ruin it if he tried putting it on.

Barclay grinned wryly. Sylvain had looser nudity taboos than Earth, and between that and the difficulty of finding clothes for his sylph size he didn’t usually bother covering up when he wasn’t glamoured. He had no way of knowing what the rules of this place were, though, and it seemed like it might be polite to at least try?

Wrangling himself into the garment one-armed was actually a lot more work than he’d thought it would be, but he managed it with some cursing and grousing. It was too short in the arms and was probably supposed to fall further than just above his knees, but it counted as covered up so he’d take what he could get. He shifted his shoulders and took a deep breath, regrouping.

Okay. Madeline had seemed to take it as read that he’d end up poking around outside this room, and she’d left the door open. He was going to treat that like permission.

The door opened onto a large, low-ceilinged room with a kitchenette along one wall. It was definitely a basement, given the windows were narrow and set high against the ceiling; no light filtered through them, so Barclay supposed that meant night had fallen.

He made a cautious circuit of the place, moving slowly and off-balance still even if he felt stronger after having eaten something. The room didn’t have much to tell him; a couple of well-used couches, a long wooden table with mismatched chairs around it and a foosball table in one corner that was missing a couple of handles. There was a flight of wooden steps leading up, probably opening directly outdoors based on where the windows were, and the door at the top of it opened as Barclay was examining the kitchenette and wondering if it’d look bad to get caught looking through the cupboards.

“You’re looking better,” the voice was Cyrus’s, but the figure that came down the stairs was human-seeming. Unlike Barclay, the other man wasn’t any smaller when he was glamoured, still a tall and barrel-chested figure with shoulders that strained his flannel shirt. His short fur and the bovine cast to his features was gone, though, replaced by bronzed skin and a broad but human-appearing nose.

Barclay shrugged his good shoulder. “I’m feeling better.” He said. “Still a little shaky, but better.”

“Good.” Cyrus stopped at the bottom of the stairs and rocked on his heels, looking up thoughtfully at Barclay. “Madeline tells me you’ve had some of Mike’s excellent cooking, so I imagine that helped, yes?”

“Yeah. Thanks.” Barclay tried not to fidget or act like he’d been caught doing something wrong. They wouldn’t have left the door unlocked if he wasn’t supposed to be able to leave the room.

“Excellent. And the pain, it feels manageable?” Cyrus peered at him over the tops of his gold spectacles.

“Yeah. Madeline gave me something for it.” Barclay flexed his right arm experimentally. There was a twinge of breakthrough pain, but nothing he couldn’t push past.

“Mmm. Well, you should let me know if you need more.” Cyrus stepped aside and gestured at the stairs. “If you feel able to come with me, I’ll show you where you can recharge. You must be feeling spread very thin by now.”

“God, you have no idea.” The truth slipped out before Barclay could stop himself, and the other sylph gave him a sympathetic look. Barclay squirmed a little, disguising it by stepping forward and onto the stairs. Cyrus nodded and stepped up to his side, clearly prepared to catch him if he stumbled. Barclay took a deep breath and gripped the handrail with his free hand, taking the steps one cautious foot at a time.

“We put you in the springs when Madeline and Thacker first brought you in,” Cyrus said mildly, still keeping pace at Barclay’s right elbow. “A calculated risk, given your injuries, but I didn’t like your chances of surviving without it.”

The springs. Barclay nodded numbly, too focused on trying not to fall to really press for any answers at the moment. God, it was only a flight of stairs, but it might as well have been a goddamned mountain for the effort it was taking to climb.

Cyrus peered at him thoughtfully. “We might have waited a few more days for this,” He said, “Or used another method to hold you over. But Madeline said you seemed eager to be out of the recovery room.”

“It’s fine.” Barclay said quietly, focusing on his feet. He could do this. He’d pushed through injury and exhaustion plenty of times before. “And she wasn’t wrong.”

“Mm. I imagine you’re more than sick of being in holding, after the proceedings on the other side of the gate.” Cyrus replied as they finally reached the door at the top of the stairs.

Barclay hid a grimace as he reached for the doorknob and turned it, pushing the door open on a chill, dark night.

They were in the woods; he could hear and smell the trees all around, looming up in a comforting crowd above the building at his back. A few stars glittered coldly in the dark sky high above. The building was large, built of logs, and patches of warm yellow light spilled out from the windows in the wall behind him. Barclay could just catch muffled voices through one, too far off to be more than a suggestion of other people’s presence.

Cyrus stepped out through the door and shut it behind himself, reaching towards Barclay’s elbow but stopping short of touching him. “May I?”

“Oh. Uh. Sure.” Barclay took a deep breath, savored the smell of the clear air and the thought, however unrealistic, that if he needed to get away he knew where the woods were now.

Cyrus took his elbow and guided him along the edge of the building, towards what he thought was probably the back given the way the forest grew closer as they went. The path under their feet was lined with wooden planks, grey with age and worn smooth with the passage of many feet. They took a left around the building and then turned away from it, heading into the woods, following the boardwalk towards a cluster of trees with a wooden privacy fence woven between the trunks.

Barclay caught the scent of sulfur at the same time he noticed the thin cloud of steam rising into the air above the fence — and sure enough, as they rounded the corner of the fence a hot springs came into view, a large rocky pool surrounded on all sides by a low wooden deck of the same weathered wood that made up the path they’d followed from the building.

Cyrus took a deep breath and let it out with a huffing sound that was almost a snort. “Here we are,” He said, smiling warmly up at Barclay. "The secret to our success."

He let go of Barclay's elbow, reached up and unclipped a small gold pin from his collar, shaking his shaggy curls as the glamour fell away. "I imagine you've been wondering how we keep mind and body together here, without the light of Sylvain to sustain us," he said.

Barclay nodded, the only response he could muster past his own racing thoughts, his exhaustion, and the dangerous groundswell of hope in his chest.

Cyrus gestured with one hand, using the other to once again take Barclay by the elbow. "Earth is not like Sylvain, that much is true," he said, "But neither is it what the old stories say, a dead world without a heart. There is power at its core, my friend, and there are many places where it rises to the surface. This is one."

Barclay shook his head, just barely. "I don't get it," he said quietly as Cyrus guided him forward a few paces towards the steps down into the water. It couldn't be this simple, this obvious. No way.

Cyrus smiled. "The Earth gives her power to the water," he said, pausing at the top of the stone steps. A shimmer of heat rose from the surface, and steam wafted around them. "Try it and see for yourself.”

Barclay took a deep breath. This was stupid, some part of him insisted. It couldn't be like this, it couldn't be easy. People didn’t just hand you the answer to a problem that had followed you for years.

But hell, he was just too tired to argue right now. He moved carefully forward and stepped down onto the first step.

The water swirled around his ankles in warm, gentle current, and for a second Barclay felt ludicrous. He felt like what he was, a lost, injured fool standing half-naked in the company of a stranger, someone who had stumbled into —

Barclay staggered, and Cyrus caught him with a strong grip and a comforting sound. "I know," the other sylph said.

Barclay shook his head. He somehow doubted very much that Cyrus did know, but he wasn’t going to say that. He wasn’t going to say anything.

The energy that washed up into him through the current wasn’t Sylvain’s. It felt different in an indescribable way, somehow more electric than the feeling he was used to, but it was still recognizable — warm and living and safe as it passed through him. Barclay drew in a sharp breath and fought the sudden urge to dive into the pool, to submerge himself robe, bandages, and all.

Cyrus seemed to notice, because he put a hand on Barclay’s shoulder. “Go ahead and sit down,” He said gently. “Just try and keep the bandages dry, yes?”

Barclay nodded numbly and shrugged out of the robe, leaving it in a heap on the boardwalk as he stepped carefully down into the water and settled himself on the step. The water was invitingly warm compared to the chill of the night, and it would’ve been comforting even by itself. Barclay took a deep, shaky breath and leaned forward, resting his free elbow on his knees and closing his eyes.

Energy flowed around him and into him, flooded into all the empty places inside him. It was so much, as much as he could possibly ever want or need, and he could feel his system drawing it in hungrily, rapidly, like a dry sponge thrust into a bucket.

God. How long had it been since he’d been able to take as much as he wanted, since he hadn’t had to worry about rationing out his energy supply in fractions just large enough to keep him from going feral?

He couldn’t . . . actually remember the answer to that question. Back on Sylvain, maybe, but even then there had always been someone standing by, watching him like a hawk to make sure he didn’t take more than his share, and now he couldn’t really say if that share had been enough or if he’d just gotten used to making do —

Barclay shook himself all over, shoving that train of thought away into the back of his mind where it couldn’t spoil this. The unimaginable luxury of it, the way it washed away the constant ache of worry and the hollow, bone-deep hunger he’d been living with for so long. He felt . . . he felt like he could breathe.

Cyrus was talking, he realized, and he pulled his attention back up out of the well of pure, glorious satisfaction it had tumbled into. Not all the way back up, though, because he was relatively sure he was going to have to be bodily dragged out of this hot spring for that to happen.

“— not common knowledge there, of course.” The other sylph settled himself onto the boardwalk at Barclay’s side, drawing one knee up to his barrel chest and shaking his curly head. “You can imagine it would take some of the sting out of the threat of exile if people knew they wouldn’t be starved into madness by staying on this side of the gate.”

A sound that wasn’t quite a laugh caught in Barclay’s throat. “How’d you find this place?” He asked, surprised at how shaky his voice sounded.

Cyrus shrugged. “Humans have always believed such springs carry healing qualities. They’re simply not as adapted as we are to needing a direct source of nourishment from their planet, and so they’ve never questioned why their ancestors formed those beliefs. Only a sylph would know to look for something that only a sylph depends on.”

“So there’s others? Other places like this?” Barclay’s heart clenched. He’d traveled right past so many signs for hot springs, but he’d just never thought . . .

“Scattered throughout this world.” Cyrus said placidly. “In time, when you’ve recovered and adjusted to life on Earth, we can help direct you to them, if you’ve a mind to travel. But that’s for the future.”

Barclay squeezed his eyes shut and dropped his head. God. Just . . . god.

He couldn’t think about this. Couldn’t dwell on what he’d overlooked, gone without, starved without, couldn’t even begin to sketch out the shape of anything as complicated as a future. It was all too much, way too much, and the sudden flood of having replacing the constant ache of needing was enough to have knocked any semblance of his equilibrium right out of commission.

Shit, was he crying? Great. Barclay put his hand over his face and took another shaky breath. He didn’t want to have any of the conversations that was likely to provoke. Didn’t want to come up with a convincing tissue of lies that would keep Cyrus from questioning his assumptions about how and when Barclay had come here. Didn’t want to think about what might happen if he did anything as audacious as telling the truth.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d told anybody the truth (and boy, didn’t that reflect well on him). He’d lied his way across the country for a decade, he’d lied his way into this. Suppose the truth snatched it away as suddenly and simply as it had been given, and he was back to . . . to before, to starving in train cars and shivering under bridges and waiting to become something awful, something that would do more damage than just lying ever could?

Cyrus made a comforting noise and rested a warm, broad hand on Barclay’s back. “It’s all right,” He said gently. “You are going to be okay.”

Which was a lie, but Barclay didn’t have it in him to argue right now. He just took a deep breath and sank a little lower into the water, into the warm flood of safety and comfort and enough.

He was going to have to get up, eventually. He knew that. He was going to have to figure out what to do about what he’d gotten himself into. He was going to have to come up with a plan.

Just . . . not right now.

Not yet.

Chapter Text

Barclay wasn’t sure how long he sat in the springs outside of Amnesty Lodge, soaking up the energy of the Earth that swirled through the water around him. Cyrus seemed content to sit quietly at his side for most of it, keeping his hand steady on Barclay’s shoulder.

Barclay normally would’ve shrugged off the touch or pulled away from it, unnerved by someone getting that close behind him. There was a tiny sliver of his consciousness that still insisted he should, but he ignored it. Cyrus might be a stranger, but he hadn’t been anything but kind so far and Barclay somehow couldn’t fathom anything really bad happening to him while he was surrounded by the warm, living current of the springs. That was probably stupid, the hot springs wasn’t magic, but still — he was going to let himself ignore the constant chirp of paranoia in his back-brain for the time being. It felt . . . nice, having someone’s hand on his shoulder. Maybe safe was an overstatement, but it was comforting, especially combined with the hot water and the cool, clear air of the night.

Eventually, after a long, long stretch of companionable silence, Cyrus huffed out a breath and shifted so that his bare, hoofed feet were dangling in the water next to Barclay.

“I was very young when I came to this planet.” He said quietly, craning his neck to watch the stars glittering above them. “Not a child, you understand, but not too far removed from childhood. This was a very long time ago, and it was still permitted for sylphs to pass between Sylvain and Earth then, as long as you were careful and had what the council saw as a good enough reason. It wasn’t particularly difficult to get permission, if one had a well-connected family like I did.”

Barclay hid a flat, humorless smile by bending his head to gaze into the water. Well-connected, now there was a Sylvan euphemism he hadn’t heard used in a while. It meant politically influential, sure, but also rich and noble, insulated from the worst of the Quell’s effects on the planet, exempt from the most stringent laws simply by virtue of not having to think about them. The kind of people who hadn’t spent much time in Barclay’s neighborhood.

Cyrus didn’t seem to notice the expression. “I crossed over with my mother’s blessing and my father’s guidestone. I intended to make a map of the Earth, you see, because nobody had ever done it. This was . . .” He fell silent for a long moment, maybe trying to do the math, and finally shook his head. “Close to two hundred years ago, as they reckon years here.”

Barclay couldn’t quite hide his sharp inhale at the words. Jesus, two hundred years? He’d been here twelve and almost starved to death, almost lost himself to the loneliness and the alienness of it all. “How’d you survive?” He lifted his head and studied the other sylph’s profile, noticing for the first time the grey flecked in his curly hair and his dark fur. “Why are you still here?”

Cyrus chuckled quietly. “I changed.” He said softly — Barclay wasn’t sure in answer to which question. “I came here to map a world full of monsters and found . . . only people. Strange ones, yes, but not so strange I couldn’t understand them. And the more I traveled, the less strange they seemed. The gate was on another continent in those days, far from here, and I traveled the length and breadth of it making my maps and learning all I could. I saw things I never could have imagined on Sylvain.”

“But you could’ve gone home.” Barclay felt stupid saying it; stupid and petty and suddenly, briefly, furiously jealous.

Cyrus nodded. “I did. More than once. Once I even stayed long enough that I found the gate’s location on Earth had changed while I was visiting. But I could never stay away for long.” He sighed and rubbed his face. “Sylvain changed, too. Every time I crossed over I found a world grown smaller and more scared, a council less likely to listen when I tried to make them see that most humans were not the monstrous enemy we had all been raised to fear. Eventually it became clear to me that if I returned to Sylvain again I might not be allowed to leave — and by then I’d long since ceased to be a cartographer. I’d learned so much on Earth, studied their medicine and art and philosophy, and to lose all of that, all of this . . .” He waved a hand vaguely, stirring little scraps of the steam rising from the water’s surface, and fell silent for a long time.

Barclay stared down into the current, trying to rein in his emotions. It was stupid to envy Cyrus, stupider to be angry at him, but the thought that anyone’s experience on Earth would be positive enough to make them want to stay here once they’d seen it, the thought of voluntarily leaving the Light behind not once but multiple times, the thought that Cyrus had been given the luxury of making that choice over and over . . . it was alien. More alien than any of the thousand bizarrely un-sylvan thought processes he’d learned to expect from humankind.

“Why are you telling me this?” He finally asked in a quiet voice.

Cyrus huffed, smiling thinly, and finally turned his gaze back down from the light of the stars above them. “I suppose because it’s only fair you know,” he said. “When I say that Earth can be a home for people like us, I am speaking from long experience. We’re hidden away, here at the Lodge, and we keep the gate to Sylvain hidden away for the good of both worlds. But there are not so many monsters here as you were raised to believe, my friend, and you do not have to fear this world as much as you have been told to.”

Barclay wasn’t sure what to call the sound that escaped him at that — something between a laugh and a snort of disbelief, bitter and sharp and stilted. “No offense,” he said quietly, pressing his palm to the bandages swathing his shoulder and chest, thinking about the thing that had almost killed him, thinking about the times he’d been robbed or shoved around or taken advantage of once people figured out he wasn’t as dangerous as he looked, thinking about the boss who’d “forgotten” to pay him at the end of a month and the sheriff who’d hustled him into a cruiser and dumped him on the outskirts of the nice little town of Kepler, West Virginia. “But I think I’m gonna have to see that for myself.”

“Of course,” Cyrus said amiably, either ignorant of the emotions roiling in Barclay’s chest or choosing not to remark on them.

Barclay took a shaky breath, suddenly aware that even with the warm electric power of the Earth filling his system, he was still exhausted. “If it’s all the same to you, I think I could use some sleep.” He said.

Cyrus nodded, clapped him gently on the shoulder, and climbed to his feet. “Here.” He crossed to a rack of towels and pulled a couple down, draping them over his arm before coming back to Barclay’s side and offering him a hand up. “I’d like to change your bandages before you rest, but it should only take a moment.”

Barclay nodded tiredly, too focused on getting to his feet without stumbling to bother with a reply. Stepping out of the water, away from the safety and the warmth and the enough, was one of the hardest things he’d ever done. A corner of his brain was shrieking at him the whole time — what if it goes away, what if this is the last chance, what if you never feel this good again, what if you ruin it, what if what if what if — and eventually it was only the fact that Cyrus was looking at him with a knowing, slightly pitying expression that made him move.

Barclay shook most of the water out of his fur, awkwardly toweled off the rest, and ended up so tired from just that simple action that he didn’t even bother trying to take over when Cyrus draped the borrowed robe over his shoulders and took his elbow to lead him away from the springs.

He hesitated for a second when he realized they were heading in a different direction, towards the main building instead of the side door that led to the basement, and Cyrus made a calming noise.

“We’ve got a room prepared for you upstairs,” he explained. “Don’t worry, everyone else is either asleep or in the common room by now. You needn’t navigate any conversations tonight.”

Oh, thank God. Honestly Barclay would’ve been happy never navigating a conversation again at this rate, but he’d take what he could get.

Cyrus led him into the Lodge, down a hallway with knotted-pine walls lined with photographs — forest scenes, wildlife, black-and-white group photos of humans in antique clothing clustered in front of what Barclay assumed was the Lodge building, smiling brightly at the camera.

They stopped outside the door of a room Barclay assumed was Cyrus’s, given that the other sylph briefly disappeared inside and reemerged with a large black leather doctor’s bag in his hand. Then they continued on along the hallway a ways before Cyrus pushed open a door on the left.

The room inside was bigger than the one downstairs, a bright, clean space with a king-sized bed, a dresser, a desk and chair made of knotted pine that matched the walls. Cyrus gestured Barclay inside. “Go ahead and sit down.”

Barclay shrugged the robe off while he pondered whether the desk chair would hold him in this shape, deciding after a second to sit on the edge of the bed. Better safe than sorry, and destroying the furniture in a hotel room he couldn’t possibly afford to stay in under ordinary circumstances felt like a bad way to repay the help these people had given him.

Cyrus disappeared into the adjoining bathroom for a moment, washed his hands and re-emerged to begin pulling supplies from his black bag. Barclay did his best not to fidget as the other sylph cut away the bandages swathing his arm, chest, and shoulder, quietly narrating his actions as he did. “Let me know if there’s any discomfort, all right?”

“Sure,” Barclay said, too tired to make it sound convincing. He studied the pattern in the braided rug by the side of the bed, a larger and less-worn sibling to the one on the floor in the recovery room downstairs. Someone had made those one careful, practiced knot at a time, worked in a pattern of reds and blues and blacks. It made him miss the sensation of his bracelet under his thumb, the familiar knots and ridges of the hemp.

Cyrus made a satisfied noise as the last of the dressing came away and he carefully guided Barclay’s right arm away from his chest to rest at his side. The movement made his shoulder twinge, and he steeled himself before glancing at the damages.

There were ugly, jagged gashes running from his shoulder down across his chest nearly to his sternum, and another set marring his bicep. A single long gash ran from his elbow to his wrist, and if he’d been wearing his glamour when the thing had hit him it probably would’ve been torn off based on the angle of the wound. He didn’t try to get a look at his back, but he imagined it probably looked about as bad as the front. Someone — Barclay assumed Cyrus — had trimmed the fur short around the injuries, cleaned him up and closed the wounds with neat, careful stitches, but they still made him feel sick. He averted his gaze again before he could start thinking too hard about how they’d happened or what they might have looked like before he’d been sewn up.

Cyrus clearly didn’t have the same qualms, and he examined everything closely before giving a satisfied nod. “The infection has cleared nicely,” He announced, reaching for a roll of fresh gauze. “And now that you’ve eaten and had a chance to fill up, you should start healing more like a sylph should.”

Barclay nodded, tensing a little bit as his injuries pulled when Cyrus picked up his wrist. He’d been a fast healer when he was younger, he remembered. It hadn’t occurred to him that was something that had changed because of his exile. “Could you . . .” he frowned. “Is it okay if you leave my arm loose this time? It’s hard to balance with it wrapped down.” Hard to do everything else, too, hard to run or defend himself or fight, but he didn’t say that part out loud.

Cyrus tutted thoughtfully, but he nodded. “If you promise not to overuse it and ruin my needlework, yes?”

“Yeah, okay. Deal.” Barclay didn’t know what would count as overuse to Cyrus, though he suspected much of anything would qualify. Didn’t matter; what mattered was that having both hands free made him automatically feel a little bit safer, fractionally more in control of the weird, uncontrollable circumstances life had recently tumbled him into.

The other sylph finished bandaging Barclay's wounds and put his supplies away, sweeping up the discarded bandages as well while he was at it. Then he produced a pill bottle and held it out. "Two of these every twelve hours for the pain. Take them with water, and tell me if they don't do enough to help."

Barclay nodded numbly, took the bottle and slipped it into the pocket of the borrowed robe in his lap. The exhaustion was creeping over him in earnest now that he was sitting down, and Cyrus could obviously tell.

He patted Barclay gently on his undamaged shoulder and picked up his bag. “Get some rest, my friend.”

“Yeah.” Barclay scraped together an expression he hoped looked like a smile. “Thanks.”

“Of course.” Cyrus nodded and left the room, pulling the door closed behind him, and Barclay let out a long, long sigh. God, what a day. What a month.

What a decade, for that matter.

He took a look around the room. Closet, bathroom, desk, dresser, all neat and well-maintained. The windows were covered with heavy curtains, shielding the room from anyone looking in, and the windows themselves were large enough that he could fit through one if he had to. The door had a lock on the inside, and one of those little placards showing the route to take in case of fire. There was even a peephole.

But it didn’t really feel like a hotel room. Someone had filled a carafe of water and left it with a glass on the nightstand. Someone had laid extra pillows on the stuffed armchair in the corner, pulled back the covers of the bed. The light was a little too warm, the carpet a little too handmade, to really fit the bare and anonymous profile of a room meant for a temporary stay.

But then again, he thought wryly as he reluctantly pushed himself to his feet, it wasn’t like he’d ever been in a nice hotel before. Maybe there were a lot of places like this, where the rooms didn’t feel shabby and spare. This place probably didn’t even have bedbugs.

Barclay snorted at that sad excuse for a joke as he draped the robe over the back of the desk chair and locked the door. He wasn’t actually sure he was supposed to do that, but it made him feel better and he knew he’d sleep better with the knowledge that nobody could just barge in, so. They could tell him tomorrow if there was an issue.

He flicked the lights off, used the bathroom and avoided looking too hard at himself in the mirror while he washed his hands. He didn’t need to see his face to know how tired he looked, how wrung-out and ragged even after soaking in the springs.

Sleep would help. He all but fell into bed — and oh, man, it was a really nice bed, soft sheets and a decent mattress that didn’t sag under his weight, enough room to stretch out even in the shape he was wearing, a cool, clean pillow under his head. Jesus, he could get used to this.

He probably shouldn’t, but he could.

Barclay’s eyes dropped close and he fumbled for the covers, pulling them up and over himself with his good arm and ignoring the twinges of discomfort under his bandages. Sleep was absolutely the only thing on his mind, and before long even that dropped away, and he just slept.