Work Text:
Tee was watching him with beady black eyes as he paced, back and forth, slowly wearing a groove into the oaken floor.
"What?" he snapped, hands clasped just below the small of his back. "I'm just—impatient. All right? It's not that I think anything's going to go wrong. I trust her. She'll be fine. I'm just—impatient."
Tee's head tilted critically to the side. He drummed small, clawed fingers on the wooden table.
"Don't pretend like you're not worried, too," Rythian admonished. "You wanted to stay."
A furious and emphatic shake of the head.
"Ugh, fine, you didn't want to stay. But I did. And I would have." He paced over to the window and looked out. He couldn't see Blackrock Hold from the Crooked Caber—only the nearest lit beacon—but he looked anyway, in hope of seeing Zoey come skipping over the hill. "I would have," he repeated softly.
Heavy footsteps thudded upon the stairs, and Ravs emerged, ruddy-cheeked and bearing three full pewter mugs.
"Still no sign of your girl?" he inquired.
"None yet," Rythian answered, slipping back over to the bar on feet that seemed reluctant to touch ground. "And she's not—my girl. Just . . . we just live together."
"Mm," said Ravs, and took a long pull off of his mug. Rythian glanced over his shoulder at the window, drumming his fingers on the bar.
"Gonna give yourself a crick in the neck, you keep doing that."
"What? Oh. Right."
Teep sidled up next to Rythian and hooked a mug on one of his fingers, slowly pulling it down the bar to an easier-to-access position.
"Sure we should be letting the dinosaur drink? It never ends well."
"Hm? No, it's fine, it should be fine. You'll be all right, won't you, Tee?"
The dinosaur did not reply, having drained the entire mug in a single gulp. He quickly became engaged in testing the flexibility of his spine. Rythian sighed and leaned his elbows on the bar.
"Have a drink," Ravs suggested. "Fresh-squeezed definitely-not-squid-juice. It'll take the edge off of the waiting, if nothing else."
Dutifully, Rythian took a sip of the proffered drink, which he immediately set back on the bar and forgot about as, once again, he looked back over his shoulder at the window.
"What's taking so long?" he wondered under his breath, his brows drawn tight together.
"Well, it's not like defusing a nuke is an easy business," Ravs pointed out. "Wouldn't want her rushing it."
At the corner table, Tee had placed down his lever and was flipping it back and forth with reckless abandon. Rythian cocked his head at the drunk dinosaur.
"You should go play with him. He hasn't gotten a chance to play in a while."
"Why don't you play?"
"Ohoh, ooohhh no. No no. I don't play the lever-game. It's not . . . something. . . ." He trailed off, glancing over his shoulder again.
"No wonder you're awful at it. That game takes focus. Which you have none of."
"Hm? What was that?"
"Exactly."
Rythian sighed again, running a hand back through his hair.
"I'm just worried about her. It's not that I don't trust her—I do trust her, with all my heart—but I don't trust Lalna, and what if he's, you know, made the nuke . . . weird, or something, and it doesn't defuse like a regular one? Or what if one of the wires is frayed? It's just—science, it's so unreliable. . . ."
"Rythian."
"And what if she's color-blind? I actually—I have no idea if she's color-blind, she could be—"
"Rythian."
"What?"
"Shut up and drink."
He sighed, rubbing his face with both palms. "Right. You're right. I'm overreacting."
"That's an understatement," Ravs pointed out.
Rythian managed a faint smile. "Overreacting and understating. Maybe I should swap?"
"I think probably you should just react and state," the bartender suggested, "but that's none of my business." And he took a long pull off his drink.
His head was halfway turned back towards the window before he caught himself, and studiously turned his attention back to the bar. The drink didn't seem particularly appealing at the moment, but he took a swallow of it anyway, wincing as it burned against the back of his throat.
"Sure you don't want to play lever-game? Tee's racking up a high score."
"If I can trust you to stay over here and drink like a human instead of owling your head round," Ravs returned.
He laughed, although it was more of a sharp exhalation through his nose than any actual vocalization. "I promise I'll be good and dri—"
The explosion hit him in the back like a freight train, throwing him clear over the bar and through the back wall. The flash blinded him, the heat singed his cape, the earth-shattering boom burst both his eardrums in one fell swoop. He tumbled, rolled; things were falling on and around and over him, the sky blended with the earth in a swirl of red and black and red again. He couldn't breathe, couldn't move; darkness was closing over his vision and everything was spinning, spinning. . . .
He wasn't sure how much later it was that he regained his faculties; he found himself lying on his back, staring up at a sky filled with smoke and fire, burned and bruised and scratched. Amidst a deafened ringing and a rain of burning shrapnel, Rythian somehow managed to pull himself upright, his balance shot completely to hell, blood dribbling down the sides of his face.
Over the hill, a pillar of glowing smoke rose up and up into the heavens, laced with fire and lightning. Rythian gaped at it, numb all over, trembling and dizzy.
When reality finally made its way into his consciousness, he screamed, able to hear the sound only through the resonance of his own bones, and lurched towards the site of the explosion. He tripped over his own feet and scrambled back up again, stumbling over the ruins of the Caber, unable to feel the fire that lapped against his skin. Something caught hold of his arm and he tried to shake it off—he had to get to Zoey, he had to get to Zoey, she needed him, she needed him—but the grip was strong and claw-ended, and even when Rythian lashed out at Tee, the dinosaur would not let him go.
She could be hurt! he screamed, his voice scratching raw at the inside of his throat. Let me go, let me go! She needs me!
Tee would not let go. Furious, tears of desperation drawing dark tracks through the dust on his cheeks, Rythian summoned his will and flung himself temporarily out of reality, entrusting his being to the Void ring, only to appear again just out of arm's reach.
The dizziness and nausea hit him like a punch to the gut, and he doubled over, retching. His cloak was on fire, so he tore it off as he staggered back to his feet. He had to get to Zoey. He had to find her.
She had to be all right.
Tee's clawed fingers clamped down on his elbows again, and Rythian thrashed, screaming, until he had breathed out all his fire and was left with only dread, only grief.
He sank to his knees, sobbing, locked in a dreadful silence only he could hear.
I trusted you, he accused, while his heart tore itself to shreds. I trusted you.
Eventually, Tee let go of him, and Rythian filled his fists with dirt, wanting nothing more than to bury himself amongst the ruins of everything he'd loved.
"Awfully lonely up on this hill, isn't it?"
Rythian did not so much as turn his head, remaining statue-still where he sat, elbows resting on his knees. Nilesy dropped down beside him with a soft grunt.
"I know you've fixed your ears, so I know you can hear me."
Rythian spared him the briefest of glances before returning to his silent contemplation of the smoking crater below.
"Brought you a fish sandwich," Nilesy offered. "Hot off the grill."
"Not hungry," Rythian informed him.
Nilesy sighed. There was a sound of quiet munching. "You know," he continued, mumbling around a bite of sandwich, "even if your magic rock-thing is keeping you alive, you can still eat. Taste's good for you."
"Don't care."
"I mean, it's not the best sandwich I've ever had, don't want to lie, it's a bit plain—"
"What do you want, Nilesy." It wasn't a question, just a flat and tired statement.
"I . . . wanted to bring you a sandwich?" Nilesy guessed. "We're all a bit . . . worried about you. And Ravs could use your help, you know, rebuilding the Caber."
"Don't see what help I'd be," Rythian spat, his voice as bitter as coffee grounds.
"Well, you're certainly not helping anyone by sitting up here brooding."
"Fuck off, Nilesy."
Nilesy drew back slightly. "What—I—wow, rude much." He got to his feet and brushed himself off. "Fine, I'll just . . . go, then. Have fun being—being useless. You useless . . . useless-person!"
Fading footsteps, and then Rythian was alone again.
He could feel the rage inside of himself—or rather, he could feel its presence, somewhere behind a thick iron dam of numbness, building and growing, patient and persistent. Someday it would break through and flood him with its ruination, but for now, it was something distant, something he could see but not feel, like a storm on the horizon. Someday, Lalna would pay for this, and Rythian's vengeance would be such that it would be spoken of in legends, in hushed tones and vague phrases.
But for now—there was nothing. It was a nothing that was heavy and complete, a lead blanket draped over his shoulders to protect him from the fallout of his grief.
He wished, not for the first time, that the explosion had killed him.
Dry and aching eyes scanned over the rubble of Blackrock for the millionth time, picking over the same old details, soaking in every ragged edge and fractured plane. Deep down were the cracked and shattered screens, wires mangled but not sparking; above were fragments of wall, toppled tower and fallen floor. It was a miracle there was anything left, beyond a smoking crater—although it was mostly that. He assumed the forcefield had not completely dissipated before the bomb went off, damping the explosion.
But not enough, and not from the right things. His fists clenched slowly, but with steadily building pressure, until his nails were biting into the skin so hard it felt it should be bleeding. Fragments of rock and wire and blasted stone, shattered gems glittering against the hillside—but the nexus of the explosion was utterly vaporized, nothing left but fused stone still smoking and glowing with a deep inner heat.
He would have liked to have, at least, something to bury.
He wondered, idly, how much of her he had breathed.
Enough to mean anything? Enough to mourn? Enough to bury?
And his gaze caught against a silken swirl of ginger hair floating in the cold and quiet sea.
His motion began with a quiet vwip and continued in leaping fits and starts as he jolted across the landscape, hardly pausing to return to reality before he was vanishing again, covering nearly half a mile of ragged terrain in less than a minute. His nerves were on fire with the sting and strain of magic by the time he arrived at her side, and perhaps it had burned away the numbness, somehow, because the leaden blanket of unfeeling did not protect him when the iron dam burst.
Zoey was floating face-down in the water, her skin burned and blistered, blue with chill.
Well, some of Zoey.
He must have fallen, dropped to his knees, because suddenly there was icy water all around him, prickling against his skin and sinking into his bones, but it was nothing compared to the nuclear winter in his heart.
Rythian cradled the torn, limbless torso against his chest, pressing the ruined face to his shoulder, and cried in icy silence while he suffocated under the weight of his grief.
No.
The thought shivered through his bones, a tectonic shift in the mass of him.
No.
Gleaming purple eyes spilled their light onto ash-choked water, red-rimmed but diamond-hard with determination.
No.
He pushed against the earth until it moved away from him, shoved down hard on the entire planet until it had shifted to lay beneath his feet. He cradled her in his arms, and she was heavy with ruined possibility.
No.
Rythian took a step, and then another, turning the world beneath his feet inch by painful inch.
And he began looking for the rest of the pieces.
The look on Lalna's face made Rythian want to scrape the scientist's skin off against hot asphalt.
"What the fuck?" Lalna demanded, staring down at the nearly-complete body on the table.
"Your handiwork," Rythian replied coolly. "I thought you'd want to see the fruits of your labor."
"Jesus Christ, Rythian, I—"
"Shut up."
"Look, I'm sorry, I never meant to hurt anybody!"
"Then why did you put a bomb under my castle?" he retorted, rounding on Lalna. "I don't give a damn if you're sorry or not. You killed her."
"No, no I never set the thing off—!"
Rythian settled against his own skeleton, and his voice went icy.
"I don't care. I didn't bring you here for apologies. You're going to build her an arm. And if you refuse, I'm going to grind you into powder, starting from the soles of your feet."
"Jeez, dramatic much—"
"I can start now."
"Look, why does she need an arm? She's dead, Rythian. Look, I know it's awful, and I really am sorry, but I don't see that any of this is going to do any good."
"I can do one leg at a time. Would you prefer I start on the right, or the left?"
Lalna seemed to be sweating slightly, but a spark suddenly caught behind his eyes.
"Rythian, you're not—you're not planning on bringing her back, are you?"
He ground his teeth. "What I am planning is none of your goddamn business. You will build her an arm or I will kill you. End of discussion."
It was the pity in Lalna's voice, more than anything, that set Rythian's blood boiling.
"Look, I know you're upset—and you have every right to be—but this just isn't—look, Rythian, it isn't going to work. You can't do it."
"You are no one to tell me what I can and cannot do," he snapped.
"No, I mean, it's literally not possible. It's just . . . not how the world works."
"Then I will change how it works!" he snarled, magic crackling off his skin in violet sparks. "I will tear this world apart, brick by brick, and rip the life out of the burning heart of it, but I will bring her back!"
Lalna took a half-step back, his brow furrowed.
"You've gone mad," he pointed out.
"I wonder why that is," Rythian hissed. "Build an arm, or I will kill you. Answer. Now."
"Alright, fine, yeah, I'll build it. Bloody mad bastard," he added under his breath.
"Good." Rythian crossed to Lalna in two quick steps, standing so close that his breath ruffled the fringe on Lalna's forehead. "And if Zoey hears a word of this, if so much as a shadow of a doubt crosses her mind, I will come for you. Breathe a single word of this, and it will be the last breath you ever take."
"Wow, dramatic much."
Rythian's hand closed around Lalna's throat, muscles tight as piano wires.
"But not before I have burned everything you love. And when you beg me on your knees to bring them back—Nano, and Xephos, and Honeydew, and as many others as it takes for you to understand—" his grip tightened, while Lalna began digging his fingernails into Rythian's hand— "and I will tell you, Lalna: it's not possible."
Weakly, the scientist nodded, beginning to go blue in the face. Rythian let go, and Lalna stumbled back, coughing.
"Bloody mad bastard—!" he choked.
"Mad, perhaps," Rythian conceded. "Bloody, not yet, although very soon if you don't get out of my sight."
Lalna departed without a further word, although Rythian could hear him muttering under his breath as he left. Almost a full minute passed in silence, and then Rythian sagged against himself, slipping to the floor, nearly boneless.
"Let it work," he prayed under his breath, "please, let it work."
And the thought, unspoken, that would haunt him in every darkness afterward:
And please, dear God, never let her know that it had to.