Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The dead of winter arrived like a forlorn past lover, entirely unwanted and far too clingy. That was the mask's opinion at least. The doctor didn’t seem to prefer any season as she never left the damn house, much to the mask’s annoyance. It was a frozen wasteland out here. He arrived at the doctor's house in the afternoon, the dead woods around him silent. He marched up to the door to admonish the doctor for living so far out of the path of civilization, knocking on the door. Impatient, he leaned up to the door to check for movement, only to find nothing. His face briefly flashed a frown, knowing somewhere someone might have just witnessed a painting move. Stepping away from the door, he started thinking of ways to break in.

On a quick survey of the house, he managed to find his ungracious host face down in the snow. For the first time in years, he paused, uncertain of what he was truly witnessing. The doctor was breathing, chest sluggishly rising and falling. The doctor’s coat had been ripped clean off, no tatters of dead skin remained, exposing her body to the cruel elements outside. There was a train of footsteps in a winding path, staggered and it looked like she fell down at one point, possibly indicating that she was inebriated. Strange, he didn't think the doctor was one to partake in that sort of thing. 

Some snow had already started piling up on her, and snapping the mask back out of his thoughts. He staggered for a moment, dreading her skin being deathly cold upon contact.

The mask grabbed her, dragging her up wordlessly and carrying her to the door that he was definitely going to break.

The door ended up being unlocked. Now at rest on the doctor's couch he wrapped her in a blanket he found upstairs. The doctor seemed mildly lucid, responding to his actions, but she struggled to stand without wobbling.

“...You have some explaining to do,” he muttered to himself.

The mask could hear her grumble slightly before she turned on her side and curled in on herself, resting her head on his lap. She was snuggling up to the mask, and normally he’d be delighted, but the doctor was frozen to the touch, so he felt more ambivalent towards the gesture. He thought about how soon the nerves of his host would give out. He resigned to resting here until the sun set.

Throughout that time, the doctor occasionally started muttering something but it was slurred and the doctor was soft spoken, so it was incomprehensible to the mask. The mask paid it no mind as the room wavered in and out of silence, until her voice wavered. His head snapped up, shifting to look down at her. Her body heaved slightly, hands clenched in front of her face. He was stunned once again. 

The mask had been held in the foundation for 200 years, and before that he was trapped in a crypt, far from anyone, even those off the beaten path, all methods of escape far from his range of influence. No one came close enough to be lured in, and he was surrounded by nothing but silence. He didn’t really know how long he was in there, but his rough estimate placed it at somewhere around the 100 year mark. It effectively knocked him out of the loop for 300 years. The would fell into a far more serene rhythm in his absence. It gave him 300 years to do nothing but think, running through an infinite stream of consciousness, with more than enough time to stew in his fluctuating emotions. The mask considered himself unflappable in the long past, now believing that the intense solitude could have possibly changed him, waiting out a violent storm to find it still raining.

Fresh out of the highest position of power he would ever find himself in, the old lord scrambled to find other methods of reigning control over large populations so that he could keep a semblance of his old life and pride intact. He loved power, he was made for it, and would do anything to exert it over anyone he could trample on. Crushing people beneath his feet like they were nothing but scrambling ants was one of his greatest pleasures. 

Unfortunately, there were always people he couldn’t control, very few and far between, but it pissed him off to no end. It was more than a grave insult, it was a stain on the back of his mind, a needle in his ego, pressing and painful. A thorn that needed to be removed through any means necessary. The one person that didn’t fall for his infinite charm always put a wrench in his plans, forever agonizing him, shaking his immutable power and striking him as a human and not a lord. He could command an army, sway a nation or leverage the whole world to put the offender 12 feet under but he couldn’t help but fight harder to impose his rule on her. After the hundreds of years the mask knew the doctor, much to his disappointment, he still couldn’t invade her mind. He could push the thought back yet it wormed back to the forefront of his mind.

So here he was, sitting on the couch with a crying doctor in his lap and a world of questions. The doctor started moving, struggling to push herself up wandering off. The mask got  up to drag her back before she managed to fall flat on her face. 

He didn’t know why she was drunk in the first place. It was bizarre. The doctor was a shut-in and spent their time working. Her fridge didn’t even have any food in it, and even more damning, it wasn’t even cold. The only alcohol the mask was aware she had was disinfectant, part of their expansive collection of medical equipment. It was possible that she consumed that, far more likely than her keeping wine around. And another thing, there’s no way the doctor would think that it was a good idea to consume so much alcohol, let alone take shots of isopropyl alcohol. He would have to wait for her to recover.

The evening progressed to a dull night, soundless as ever and mindlessly still. The doctor had a habit of attracting death, even when she wasn’t seeking it herself. The mask ran his hand over her skull, without the hood it was clear how it jutted out of her skin. He expected a clean break in the skin, intentional. The skin was rough around the edge, like a knife through paper. He thought about the veins he could see on her coat and where it might be now. The doctor was still cold. The mask shifted to lean back and wait out the night.

The morning didn’t bring better news. The doctor was sick but still cold up and barely lucid. The mask's nerves were admittedly already slightly fried by now, so he couldn’t feel anything but extreme temperatures. She was still cold. The annoyance bubbled up again like an unwanted guest. Feigning care, he lifted her head up, pushing her shoulder to him so he could look at her face. She stared back. True introspection…

Tired, bone tired, the doctor slumped like a broken puppet. Life passed her by without ever touching her, frozen in time. Bound to an eternal task, a moving goalpost and unending obsession. Vaguely aware of what she was looking at, piercing through a splitting headache. Gazing into the void. The endless eyes, likely to have seen everything there is to see, recall the past like a perfect record. Forever in place, the shining depth of history looks back. They wouldn’t know of the doctor rotting underneath the skin.

They met back up again only recently. They just happened to be moved to the same site, and in another bizarre case of luck, the security failed. Although it would be generous to say they enjoyed their first meeting again. The mask was still bitter with resentment. He went and sought out the doctor, hearing about her through a chain of various minds that she was here. He grabbed some scrambling, pathetic low life in an orange jumpsuit and walked on over.

The night passed slowly, the mask was deep in thought and the doctor continued staring at him. The cold light of the moon made her feel like she was freezing outside all over again.

Chapter Text

The bright snow outside lit up the day, pouring light into the doctor's opening eyes. She woke up tangled in a blanket, the mask nowhere to be seen. Her body was sore, and she still had a headache. Staring at the wall was possibly the least painful course of action she could take right now, and maybe hope for the pain to stop later.

The mask took it upon himself to rummage through her house to find any offending alcohol and get rid of it like it killed his wife. His hatred was personal, years of sipping on wine he didn’t like to appear refined. He opened the cupboards to find a bunch of pots, pans, a kettle, several wooden cutting boards, a knife rack, scissors and seven glass bottles in the lower cabinets. Normal enough. The fridge contained a box of paperclips. Why.

The doctor’s strange collection habits aside, the mask found nothing of use. He took a moment to sit on her bedroom floor, vaguely thinking about whether the curtains were the doctor’s favorite color or if they were on sale. 

Red curtains didn’t fit with the rest of the room. Reflection, he needed to find true reflection.

They were both cheap, one of the things they could easily agree on was that sales were necessary to confirm a purchase. Neither of them could come by any consistent flow of money right now, but the mentality has been present far in the past. Even when the mask could swipe the position of an emperor, he sought to cut his expenses. One might think it was in direct opposition to his self-importance, but he was enough of a snob to create a certain intelligence around being dirt cheap.

The blanket he wrapped around the doctor was special because he stole it from someone he didn’t like, making it all the more pleasing to see around the doctor. He rolled her over onto her back, hovering over her.

“Are you…,” The doctor flipped around to sit up,”...going to say anything?”

The mask shuffled back, resting his hands on his knees, “Hmm, what exactly do I have to say?”

“...What?”

“You should be talking.” The doctor had a lot to answer for.

The doctor stared at him for a minute, “About…? Don’t be so vague, I don’t have time for this.”

“Oh? No time?” He frowned, very briefly, “Maybe you’ve wasted enough of it.” The mask felt his fingers twitch. He tilted his head, mocking.

“Leave me alone.”

The doctor rolled over, pulling the blanket over her head. He wouldn’t push.

Don’t you have a lot to answer for? That’s what he said, to no response. He was high on a kind of ecstasy of premeditated violence. The heat of the living, flowing in waves to warm the cold, dead hands of the one and only dear parasite. I love you like the black hole loves light.

You make me visible.

You make me miss a fire I never possessed.

Radiant is the victor, the consumer, may his head be replaced with a violent light that guides the lesser to him like a moth. The violence of reason, reasonless atrocity. Bring home the guiding star so it may devour our will again.

The house was cold.