Work Text:
when you call to me asleep
up the ragged cliffs I scramble
(a single thread hangs limply down
and I breathe not now, not now.)
✬✧✬
Apples is trying pronouns.
This is the stupidest thing you’ve ever heard of.
Apples has been trying many new things like this lately, ever since it started sleeping with the humans. Frankly it’s demeaning to the whole lot of you. Sleeping with humans! You try to complain about this to Wines and it calls you a hypocrite. There are a few things wrong about that, of course. First off, you are not sleeping with Emil, a phrase implying a certain tenderness that is entirely absent from your activities. Second, Emil is hardly human at this point. Pelegin eyes and your blood running through his veins; no, you would never lower yourself to liaison with something so simple as to be called human, would never lower yourself to be with something so defined.
Defined and limited, humans are. Like the pronouns they use. Emil is somewhat better than most, having at least chosen it himself—it puts him on the same level as Apples, stupid but not dull—but for the most part they are defined at their start and stick to it. Limiting, stifling. Curators have no use for pronouns and none of you have ever—
Ah.
Well. That’s not quite true, though, is it?
✬✧✬
Incidentally, Emil was the first Seeker you really spoke to at length and thus the first that you had an opportunity to ask about why, exactly, he referred to your loverfriendvictimdearestdead the way that he did.
He’d answered, with a little uncertainty, that he didn’t actually know. It just felt right to refer that way. To say Mr Eaten and Drowned Man and he. He’d thought it was just him, at first, and Mr Eaten changed pronouns to suit the Seeker, but he’d spoken to others and they all referred to him the same way too.
“Humans, you know, we don’t really like using the pronouns you use,” he said.
“We don’t use pronouns,” you informed him.
“Not in your language maybe, but like it or not you’re usin’ ‘em in English. It. It’s—dehumanizing. You don’t call a person an it.” Emil shrugged, careless and unconcerned, and wrapped himself up in the silk sheets of your bed. You are not in the bed. He insists upon sticking around, has from the first night that he stayed over, but you will not stoop to his level and give him what he wants here. He can steal your bed; you will go out to hunt instead. “Maybe he spent so much time in the minds of humans that he wanted to feel a little more real the way we do.”
✬✧✬
and i find you all unwoven
trying desperately to sew;
i know the kindest thing
is to leave you alone
✬✧✬
You want—
No no no—you want nothing. You are above such things, you do not want—you do not want the thing you’ve created to feel more real, to feel safe around you the way it once did. You do not want impossible things. You pride yourself in not wanting impossible things. Everything you want you will take, and you cannot take the ability to make Candles-or-Eaten feel real again. You no longer want to go through the Avid Horizon to stretch your wings. Of course you don’t, for you no longer have the ability to do that. You have barred yourself from the heavens. This is fine this is fine thisisfinethisisfine--
But you know it doesn’t.
Some days are better than others. Some days it comes to meals with you, or with the humans, and lets you and Apples examine it and check the healing seams (almost invisible now) and the growth of the fur (it’s taken well, you can’t help but feel prideful, growing in white the way you were hoping it would—it has taken to Candles almost perfectly, your intent and it’s acceptance putting it together—it is him, it is his). Some days it wanders the settlement, sometimes with you, sometimes with Emil or another Seeker, sometimes alone—examines the humans’ work, collects supplies. Some days it even ventures into the workshop that you have dusted off for it, melting down scraps of wax and carving and shaping and molding the results. It hasn’t done anything near as ambitious as its old projects yet, but it has made a little storm dragon candle, and one shaped like a spire, and one that smells like the zee. It carries lumps of wax around with it and chips and shapes it with its claws as it goes about its day, on good days.
Some days are not like that.
You have been attacked several times, similar to when it first woke up—a blind rage, flying at you, forgetting the circumstances, forgetting that it is Candles again (is it though?). These have been rather more successful than the first and you have gouges in your arms to prove it. It is apologetic, afterwards. Once upon a time it would have fussed over your every scratch. Now it apologizes for forgetting and goes about its business.
You are not forgiven—you know that. You know that. You don’t want to be forgiven. You do not want impossible things, after all.
(if you wanted impossible things perhaps you would want it to feel alive again—to feel happy within its own skin—to forgi—to lo—
no
better not.)
✬✧✬
You do not know what Candles wants.
You’re pretty sure it’s not you, though.
✧✬✧
I’ve run out of words, my song
Just let me die—me die—
✧✬✧
Not even Emil understands, really, when it comes down to it.
He almost does. Better than most, really, being both a Seeker and having undergone shapeling-changes himself. But Emil’s shapeling has made him more himself. Yours has merely recreated a body long dead, long forgotten, long abandoned. Yours has shoved you back into your skin when you are unsure if any skin can be yours anymore.
You’re unsure yet still if this skin is yours. Sometimes you regress. You do not recognize the world around you. You wake as furious and confused as the first time. You have nearly gouged Veils’s eyes out several times. Once upon a time you fussed over Veils when it was injured—you cannot bring yourself to do that these days, for perhaps obvious reasons, but that doesn’t mean that you intended to harm it. It would be unsporting, ungraceful, ungrateful, even if half of you howls for it and claws at your ribcage, begging to be let out, to exact a reckoning.
You go for a walk instead.
✧✬✧
The Indominable Academic is holding a court just outside the doors, bent over some newly uncovered relic with some of her students. You flit over, curiously. Your counterparts have no interest in the history that they lived through, but you missed these cities just as the mortals did; you have just as much curiosity as to what they were like.
The students are wary of you, as everyone is and as the mortals are wary of all of you, but they shuffle a little, make space for you. The Academic looks up through her monocle. “Ah! M—” She hesitates. “It’s you! Here, look at this—do you happen to recognize this symbol?”
You don’t, but you recognize a few of the others as bastardizations of Second City glyphs, which you point out. The Academic and a few of her students chitter in excitement; evidently they can use what you have shown them to decode the rest. One of the students takes the artifact and flitters off, most of the others following, carrying it back to the base of operations for the academics. The Academic with a capital A remains, though, and looks up at you curiously. “You don’t…come out that often,” she says, a little warily. But it’s a strange kind of wary. She is not scared of you; she’s just unsure if you will appreciate small talk.
You don’t know if you appreciate small talk but you find that you appreciate that, for whatever reason, this mortal is not scared of you. Perhaps it is due to her…liaisons with Apples, a state of affairs that you could’ve happily gone your entire life without knowing about. “No,” you agree, trying not to wince at the unfamiliar sound of your own voice in a real space, absent of a dream-echo. “I…the world has changed a great deal. As have I.”
“S’changed for all of us.” The Academic shrugs and begins to wander idly, glancing over her shoulder to see if you will follow. You do.
“I am not often yet well enough,” you murmur.
“Is the shapeling not taking?” She tilts her head a little as the two of you approach the food supplies, and she starts rifling through the stores.
“Not as well as the Vake perhaps hoped.”
She does wince a little when you call it the Vake—the mortals do not easily forget that it hunted them. You do not either. “You still, er….” She pauses, pulling out a small pouch of dried mushrooms and tearing it open. “You’re still…” A frown as she tries to figure out how to say it. She offers you a dried mushroom. You take it. “Oh, hell and damnation. You still hate it?”
You hesitate. “I—forget. And even when I do not forget, it is…difficult.” You look down at the tiny mushroom in your claws. “It took so much from me,” you say softly, twirling it by the stem. “I—I do not know if giving it back is enough.”
The Academic is silent for a minute, eating her own mushroom thoughtfully. She finally clears her throat a little. “I—know it’s not exactly the same thing,” she says, “but. I do…get it. You’re—not the only one who’s had to…balance that, I guess. Revenge or the return of what was lost.”
You furrow your brow. “Explain.”
She shakes her head. “Story’s—too long, really, and I don’t want to relive it, but—one of your companions, Cups, took someone very precious from me.” She pulls out another mushroom and examines it like it perhaps holds the secrets of the Neath. “And then, to save itself when I came after it—” So that is where Cups lost half its looks, then. This mortal. There’s something like pride and something like envy in your chest; she should have been one of your Seekers, why did you not see this one? “It offered back what it took. But I couldn’t—I couldn’t have both. You didn’t even get a choice so it’s not the same, but….” She sighs. “I. You’re not alone.”
You think about that long after you and the Academic have parted ways. The nameless city for a nameless being perhaps does not have a motto, but if it did, it would be obvious. There is no other choice; everything about this place, from its retrieval of you to the way that everyone from your former companions to a bunch of mortals with no stake in the matter pitched in, the communal food supplies and the mirror network and the hunting group out in the marshes that skirts around Veils warily, your former Seekers and its former pursuant—it all says different things, but all those different things say the same thing, in the end.
You are not alone.
You look at the mushroom in your hand, that you still have not let go of, and wonder that your claws hadn’t been quite so firmly attached earlier.
✬✧✬
I’ll darn you back together
When you think that you’re bereft
And you’ll wail, you’ll scream, but I’ll never stop
Cause it’s all that I have left.
✬✧✬
It turns out that pronouns are not the only thing that the humans have planted in Apples.
“You’re WHAT,” Spices shrieks, reaching a full register higher than even it usually achieves. It seems unusually distressed over this; you’re not entirely certain why.
“Expecting,” says Apples as if this should have been obvious the first time. “It may prove interesting.”
Fires yanks at its ear. That’s a new habit. You haven’t seen it do that before. “We cannot provide for a child!”
“I expect it to be multiples,” Apples provides.
“Children!”
“Are you having any cravings yet?” Cups is already flitting around Apples. “Do you require anything? Fires is being ridiculous. I will felicitate you. What do you need?” You roll your eyes slightly. It’s always been the most ridiculous about the whole process—
Movement in the corner of your eye, and you abruptly remember. Cups has not always been the most ridiculous. You turn just in time to see grey-white robes disappear around a corner.
You leave the others to argue and Spices to do whatever a Spices does and follow.
You find it—him—it—Candles, you find Candles in the workshop, standing uncertainly among vats of wax. There’s a little ball of red being chipped away at by a devilbone claw. “…I am here,” you announce, not uncertain—you are never uncertain. You are simply cautious that Candles may not want you here.
It hums a little, turning the wax over in its claws. You find yourself rather at a loss as to what to say now, now that you have not been rejected outright. So, how about that baby? just seems trite. This is the first child since its return. It’s missed a great many, mostly from Apples, a few from Cups, once or twice from the others. You haven’t borne any yourself, not since—since—
Candles was always the most excited of you over a child. Unable to have any of its own, eager to help, providing for cravings, volunteering to watch whoevers spawn it was for days on end, protecting and hiding. You had always privately thought that it was a better parent than most Curators, and that it was rather cosmic in a way that it was a runt, unable to provide an outlet in most circumstances. But your circumstances were never most circumstances. Children, regardless of parentage, were raised communally. There was no way to properly socialize them otherwise. They come back to visit on occasion, those that the humans call wings of thunder bats. Some others look different, and the humans call them different things. Those ones do not tend to return. They are the result of Apples’s experiments, spawn of monsters and consumption, and they are not intelligent in the way they ought be.
And then there was the whole mess at Whitsun but the less said about eggs, the better.
Regardless—Candles loved them. All of them. And it loved your spawn most of all, in an almost imperceptible way. The actions were the same, but you could tell. It wanted—it wanted—
Candles is not like you. It always did want impossible things, and this was the most impossible of all, wasn’t it? Even if not for its nature in the way, it isn’t in the way of curators to do things like humans, to be together and raise together. The communal nature was itself a step closer to it than your species in general would tolerate, but a requirement of circumstance.
It always did want to be more human, didn’t it? Be closer to them. Its love of the Second City, even as they locked it away with the rest of you. Its predilection for pronouns. Its affection for the children, familial desire, its—
Its desire to be with you, and your chest feels hollow with the weight of all you’ve done, and you say nothing more and just watch it scrape at the wax.
You are both silent for—a time. It’s difficult to tell how long when each second passes in no time at all and yet stretches for years as you stare at it, at the healing seams, not disappearing as rapidly as they should. Did you perform inadequately? Or is it rejecting this new form? Is it doing this on purpose? Is it rejecting you?
You do not know what to say. You aren’t sure if there is anything you can say. You can hear the fabric of your robes shift and drag against the floor as you approach it and move your hand around its, around the wax. “May I?” you ask, in your native tongue, gentler than most of you can manage in human language. You feel rather like you are trying to soothe one of the children. But Candles gives you the wax, and you turn it over in your hands.
It’s rudimentary, since it was simply chipped at by claws, and claws that haven’t taken, at that. But there is a shape there, a forming apple, a blocky stem, and you find yourself—smiling, slightly. Fond. You take its hand, place the wax fruit back in its palm—and notice that its claws look exactly like your own. Attached, not merely placed. No longer the creamy color of devilbone but the chalky grey you are accustomed to.
You hold onto its hand for what you realize too late is an unconscionably long time, simply looking at the beds where its claws meet its fingertips. Candles says nothing. You say nothing, because trying to justify this would just make it more awkward. You do not let go of its hand, or look up at it.
It is taking. Slowly, but it is taking. Candles is not rejecting this form; it is merely having difficulty. Something like relief is swelling in you. You can handle this. Your own claw traces over a nailbed and Candles makes a soft chirp.
“Apples will—require more help than usual,” you murmur haltingly. “With such limited resources, to provide for the spawn. I am—“ You clear your throat slightly. “I am certain that it will greatly appreciate having you back, at such a time. As do….” The words are difficult now. It was easier to say them when Candles was a disoriented newly-woken thing in a bed. You are prideful. You do not want things impossible things. You did not want impossible things. To have Candles back was impossible. Both these things are true. “As do I,” you finally say, without looking it in the eye.
“Veils?”
You glance up. Its eyes are still blue. This is a new development. But they are no longer stone sapphires. They glimmer at you, dark pupils and a thin slice of sclera, a round ring of deep ocean. You will incorporate something, or it will incorporate you; sometimes, this leaves marks.
Candles looks for a moment like it’s unsure what to say, then finally, “I…missed. A great deal.”
“This is—new to all of us.” You tuck your thumb into its palm, brushing gently against the thin fur there. “You are no less equipped to deal with the current situation than any of the rest of us are. And—you were always the best of us, when it came to dealing with the humans.”
Its voice is almost teasing. “Are you saying that you want me around? I thought you didn’t want things.”
It is true but—it is Candles. Candles has always been an exception. An exception to your principles. An exception to the laws of reality and red science. An exception to the unspoken code that you would not do irreparable harm to one another. Not the last exception to that. No one else has been successful, but you never fully recovered as a group from the Second City, did you? It was always different, after.
It will not be the same now. Could never be, of course, but even so you can admit this one thing. “In every moment that I had capacity to do so, I wanted you.”
It is not forgiveness, for you do not want impossible things. But on occasion, you have gotten them all the same, and Candles’s hand on your face feels quite similar.
✬✧✬
the kindest thing
is to never leave you alone.