Work Text:
By all rights, Skull should have been asleep a long time ago. In just a few hours they would all be setting out on another one of their quests to prove themselves as the strongest Flame users, and with the twisted luck of their group, the only guarantee was that he would need to be as alert as possible just to survive. And yet…
It hadn’t been his intention to leave the villa, nor was his position on the frosted ground a particularly comfortable one, but he just couldn’t shake the feeling that something different was in the air. Nothing more than an itch on the back of his neck and the slightest tang that clung stubbornly to his tongue, but it was enough to be aggravating.
So here he was.
The ‘Immortal Stuntman’ was a figure steeped in mystery and a touch of black magic. Every performance had a twist, be it major or minor, towards the occult to the point that it was readily assumed that the man behind it all simply had to be preternatural. ‘The man hated by the Grim Reaper himself’… the story practically sold itself. And it did. Ever since Skull had first started to spice up his shows (a small pentagram here, some runic configurations there and a chalice of something thick and gloopy that made the stuntman shudder every time he smelt even a whiff of cherries forever after) his ticket sales had gone through the roof. He had even managed to scrounge up his own little cult of loyal fans.
Heh. Cult.
None the less, no one had ever even considered the fact that Skull simply… didn’t care about it all.
Sure, a good ghost story was a great way to get the adrenaline pumping and an Ouija board was the perfect opportunity to prank some of his more superstitious techs, but that’s all they ever were. Stories and pranks. Never something real.
He’d heard a story once, somewhere in Ireland. A hushed warning that, if you ever stepped foot in a perfect circle of mushrooms (a fairy ring the locals called it) you would eternally be at the mercy of the fae folk. Rare was the traveller who managed to both enter, then leave, these circles in one piece, or so the legend was told…
Huffing out a quiet laugh, Skull reached forward to gently pet the cap of the nearest fungus and in doing so he caught sight of the time, his watches’ face perfectly illuminated by the full moon.
31st October. 2:59am.
Silently he considered if it was even worth sleeping at this point. He had gone longer than this on tour and he’d undoubtably be groggy in the morning if he had to wake up after only 3 hours. On the other hand, Harry would probably notice if he pushed himself. The little Sky had already proven how little he enjoyed seeing the rest of them tired.
A bearable team or a happy Sky…
It was as he pondered this that, unnoticed, another minute ticked by.
31st October. 3am.
In the space between one blink and the next, the little clearing around the Cloud was flooded with mist so thick that he couldn’t even see the trees a foot in front of him. At the same time, a searing sea of ice flooded through Skull’s veins.
He couldn’t move.
The branches groaned ominously above his head and Skull tried to flinch away, only to be held captive by his traitorous body. But then he felt it.
Someone else was here.
Dancing just out of sight in the corner of his eye, the stuntman could have sworn that there was a flash of red and green. He forced himself to breathe.
‘Viper, I know I should be sleeping, but this isn’t funny.’
For a while, there was no answer. And then…
‘Not quite darling.’
All at once Skull’s vision was filled with umber hair and virescent eyes as a young woman brushed past the mushrooms keeping the Cloud captive in order to kneel before him. The blinding flash of colour stood in sharp contrast with the corpse white of the spectre’s skin and, for a moment, he forgot how to breathe.
Was this his punishment for his derision of the myths? If Dying Will Flames existed, was it really too much of a stretch to believe that some legends could be true? Would hubris now kill him where countless injuries could not?
Skull shuddered. No story that he’d heard ever had humans coming out safely from an encounter with a fae. Their only tolerance was said to be for children and, while he may face the world with a mask of juvenile cheer, the stuntman was far from a child.
For a terrifying second, the silence held. And then…
‘No need to look so scared. I won’t hurt you.’
The bell like laughter of the figure was enough to melt the ice beneath his skin, but Skull didn’t move. He wasn’t going to take any chances. Not here.
‘Who are you?’
The words were barely above a whisper and not what he had wanted to ask, but Skull felt like asking what the lady was would be a step too far. Thankfully, this only seemed to make her laugh harder.
‘You can call me an… interested party.’
Well, that cleared up everything.
‘Interested in what?’
‘Something very. Very. Important.’
With every word, the woman drifted closer and Skull tried to inch away only for his back to hit an unseen barrier.
‘Then I don’t see why you’re talking to me. I’m not important.’
And oh, didn’t those words ring true. Skull… Gabriel, had never been important. Not important enough for his father to stay. Not important enough for his Mama to live. Not important enough for his foster father to just stop hitting him…
‘Now, now. We both know that’s a lie.”
The woman’s hand brushed against his cheek, the glacial feel of it snapping him out of his memories while immediately plunging him into a set of more recent ones.
Glistening, green eyes gazing up at him from under a floppy fringe. Too thing arms wrapping around his neck and the whispered words, “I thought you’d never wake up.”
Watching a faint trail of berry juice dribble out of a beaming smile meant only for him as he lazily juggled apples one Saturday morning.
Waking, trembling from a nightmare of too heavy hands and too little air only to be greeted by a gentle look and the warm weight of tiny body curling into his own.
The bond, normally a soft fuzz in the back of his mind, bristled into barbed wire and the edges of his vision flashed violet as the figure’s intensions became clear.
‘You won’t touch him.’
His snarled words echoed in the air around them and purple sparks started to burn away the surrounding mist. For all of this however, the woman only raised one perfectly sculpted brow.
‘And if I do?’
All fear forgotten, consumed in the new, incandescent rage Skull lunged forward. Tackling the woman to the forest floor, ignoring the deathly chill as their bodies crushed mushrooms into grass.
‘Then I will tear your throat out with my teeth and leave your entrails for the rats.’
Fully unleashed now, Skulls Flames tore through the air around him, hissing and spluttering like an affronted cat. Without the background of the mist, the woman was beginning to look more and more translucent, but the stuntman ignored it, only tightening his grip in case she tried to escape.
For what seemed like an eternity, the woman simply stared up at her captor as Skull glowered back. Neither of them dared to move.
And then she smiled.
‘Good.’
As quickly as she had come, the woman vanished and Skull found himself alone in a field of blooming white flowers. Lilies. For a while he lingered, filling his lungs with the scent of death, but the snarling beast in the back of his head would never let him remain. Yanking himself to his feet, Skull all but sprinted back to the villa and to the child who would not be leaving his arms for the foreseeable future, gun toting Italians be damned.
It was only as his hand reached out to push past the front door that he caught sight of his watch, perfectly illuminated by the porch light.
October 31st. 4am.