Gǽst

[pendraeg]

Who: Uther and Chase (what, again?)
What: Monster plot!
When: Night
Where: The castle yard
Rating: C for creepy, possibly actually scary
Status: Private, complete (!)

Comments

[chaseandoldlace]

Chase's irrational terror took form as the shadow did. He knew dark magic, knew what it felt like; knew what it meant to, as he dubbed it to Nico 'pull an over-sized splinter out of your soul.'

Most of the time, the splinter didn't take the form of your younger self though. Really, the child could have been either of them: small, lithe, blond, but the eyes were wrong in that even on his worst days, Chase couldn't remember looking at the world so devoid of...

'Life?' It was more than that, the wrongness went deeper. It was malignant, it sought to destroy.

'How do you know that?' He didn't, but he shifted grip on the wrench anyway. Uther was hurt, the closer Chase got he realized that, and from their positions it almost seemed as though the child had appeared out of nowhere and pushed Uther into the mud. A schoolyard bully picking on someone well over their own size.

"Need a hand?" There was something in Chase that didn't even want to address what he was seeing, as though by that grace alone it would simply vanish.

It didn't. Instead, a smile split the pale young face and the child laughed, the sound not coming from the tiny mouth but a way off, belling distantly over the desolate grounds.

[pendraeg]

The pain in his ankle settled into the not unfamiliar sensation of a torn ligament. Uther could not withdraw his gaze from that of the apparition, but he extended his hand into the air, and when Chase reached down, Uther clasped onto his friend's arm so together, they hauled him onto his good foot.

"Can't stand on your own feet, Uther?" the child asked. "Can you do naught on your own? Are you thieving someone else's strength again?"

[chaseandoldlace]

It was a subtle movement, but in pulling Uther up, Chase shifted so he was between himself and the miniature reject from The Shining. As close as he was now, the thing's malice was potent, so potent it didn't even occur to Chase to refer to the boy as him. Nothing human made his skin crawl the way it did as it was at that moment.

"If anyone was theived of anything, tyke, I was just robbed of a perfectly good evening. Now why don't you just crawl back to hell where you belong before I send you there with my footprint on your ass." His bearing showed it was no idle threat: he'd read the Wilder's Abstract, he knew how to handle pint-sized demons.

[pendraeg]

The child ignored Chase, and somehow, without moving, he was able to stare at Uther again. "You think to hide in his shadow. To be absolutely still. To be quiet as a mouse."

Uther stiffened at the words.

"But I can see you. I can see you there."

[chaseandoldlace]

It was an honest toss-up as to which angered Chase more: being ignored, or seeing someone he considered a friend, a brother be bullied and frightened. The murmur of white noise in the back of his mind spiked to a crackle he could almost hear the way you hear grinding teeth, a vibration as deep as bone.

'Stay hidden, girl. Don't know what we're dealing with here.'

"Hey, small and creepy, how about a little respect for your elders?" Chase moved slightly again, even though he knew it was useless. 'God I miss Nico...' "I don't think you really want to know what happens when Papa gets angry..." Chase bared the hand that bore the decoder ring for The Abstract, the only magical thing he owned, praying that whatever the hell the thing was, it sensed what a powerful gift it was: proof of a contract with Gods.

[pendraeg]

"But don't you know?" The boy turned and positioned himself so that, if one were solid and the other shadow, it was he who cast it. He did not look up at Chase, but he spoke into the air between them. "I am Uther. And Uther's an old man. And you're just a boy. You think you have seen much, been much. Uther's done so many things. And it all began here, with me."

[chaseandoldlace]

For the first time, he looked to Uther for some kind of confirmation, wondering for a mad moment if they were literally dealing with two young kings. Instinct and experience told him no, but maybe, in a different timeline, some sort of demon or dark magic hadn't gotten to Uther as a young boy, and that's what they were looking at now.

Chase was the first person to admit that there was nothing inherently good about the type of magic Nico practiced, no, it gained it's power from the agony of the user. The one (and only) time he used the Staff of One he understood. Dark magic drew on the ability of the caster to endure their most awful memories and if they did, the spell worked. If they faltered once, flinched once, the spell failed.

'But from the looks of things, Uther hasn't been putting his fingers in anyone's dark, magical cookie jars...'

"Kids are all cruel." Chase argued, still trying to puzzle things out on his own. "All that matters is that they recognize it, and I think he has." And Chase smiled, because if his still-bruised lip was proof of anything, it was that. "So if that's all you've got to torment him with, think you just brought a knife to a gun fight, kiddo."

[pendraeg]

It was as though while his doppelganger spoke, Uther was paralysed. He could only--or he wanted only to--stand half-lame on the spongy grass, awaiting what was to come as though he had no choice, anticipating the inevitable. Just as he had that night all those years ago, when it really had begun with this small, guileless version of himself.

"Cruel?" he scoffed. "You were not formed enough to be cruel, were you? To be cruel, you must be capable of action. No, no, cruelty is a by-product, and far in both our futures. Cruelty happens because of us. But long before we could create it, we allowed it to happen. We allowed the most of harms to those who least deserved it. But we didn't even hear the screams."

He moved suddenly to look directly at Chase for the first time. "Did you?"

[chaseandoldlace]

Chase thought of all the cruelty he 'let happen' -- they'd sat out most of the Civil War, only getting involved when Xavin had been taken to The Cube, but in California alone there had been countless riots, oppression, and he wasn't a child then. He thought of all of the young girls and boys his parents had murdered, twenty five years worth of blood on his hands because he never bothered to care about what exactly those 'charity meetings' were all about. Apathy was it's own cruelty, but for the sake of his own peace of mind he couldn't dwell on it. Didn't let himself. None of them did.

'But I'm innocent, I know I am' He'd told The Gibbhorim, when he was willing to give up his own life to bring Gert back.

"I did. Uther, listen, that thing is screwing with your head, you can't let it..." His voice trailed off, at the sudden realization that the primary difference was that Uther could never believe in his own innocence, that once, maybe lost in that maze of a memory, he had been guiltless, because all children were. It was the adults around them that messed things up. "You can't blame yourself for things you didn't understand at the time. I won't..." Chase swallowed hard, his mind racing. "Isn't that what you just tried to tell me?"

He turned back to the boy, the manifestation of all of Uther's guilt, it seemed. "And even if you can, I won't. I made that mistake once. Not making it again. Not with you."

But Chase was frightened now too, because there was such a raw truth to it. It was so easy to blame yourself for things...things he could never control. Like Alex betraying them, like Gert, like Victor's mother getting killed...

[pendraeg]

He hadn't heard the screams. He had never heard the screams. Only the screaming silence, that seemed to consume all the air in a room, a hole where a person should have been and where the least Uther hadn't done was to attend. And in the future past? He had tried to find the sound in the cries of anonymous others.

Now, it seemed, his ghost, too, was silent. It was his turn to speak, now he must explain.

"It was my task to protect him. My only task. All I ever was was my brothers' brother." It was all mixed up together, his guilt over Aurelius, which had been recent to him, and his deeper memory of what had befallen Constance, which this child-form evoked. "And I could not do that one thing. I let them slay my brother. I did nothing to stop it."

The other Uther's expression turned sly. "Not only fratricide by neglect. Others, too, who deserve your protection, you betray and fail. You survive them all while they fall, one by one. Casualties in the great king's rise. They were your dearest, and they became carcasses you step on, so many bones tossed to the great hall floor of your contentment."

[chaseandoldlace]

'The future is a threat, not a promise.' As often as Chase had heard Gert's dying word's replay in his mind, never had they made his blood run so cold, because in Uther's case, it was true. He'd always wondered if Gert had really disliked that glimpse into her future so much, however brief it was. There was no question with the other blond, though, he'd lived it already, and the look on his face--pain and horror and defeat--told him he was reliving it again.

And what could Chase do, really, to fight a future that had already happened?

'What I always do.' After all, he'd helped fight Vic's future just as viciously. And he didn't even trust the guy at the time.

"Listen up, Casper, I've had just about enough of you messing with my friend's head here. So quit it before you see what a medieval ass-whooping really is."

A hand came down hard on Uther's shoulder, squeezing, forcing his attention from the past to the present. "Uther, I know what that's like, I know what it's like to fail the one person you promised yourself you never would, but sometimes things happen and you can't change them. I don't know, maybe they have to happen, but right here, now, none of that matters. You broke my lip a few weeks ago trying to prove that the life you have here and your past have to be separate things. So practice what you preach. Put that thing where it belongs." Chase glanced back once at the ghostly boy, gaze as stony as it was when he faced Gert's parents in 1907. "If you can't do it for yourself, do it for Elionwy and Gwydion and Arthur. Prove to them that the past only rules you if you let it."

[pendraeg]

"It was terrible," the shade said to Chase. "And you are right. How could it be his fault? He was just a boy, watching while his elders perpetrated an unspeakable brutality. Helpless, he hid behind the screen. He kept absolutely still. He was quiet as a mouse. Just as Constans asked. And Uther watched through the space in the hinge as they butchered him."

The waxen expression suddenly became mutable, suddenly the face of a child transfixed with horror.

"They immobilised him with magic so that he couldn't struggle and couldn't scream. They sawed off his head with a dirk. It took a long time, but eventually he died. The assassins left. No one came for Uther until the morning. He was still there, cowering behind the screen, wondering why he never tried to run away or to try to create a commotion to draw the palace guards, wondering how he could have stayed so quiet and still and done nothing that entire time. He wonders it still. But you know what it is like, don't you, Chase? To watch through a screen as adults do unspeakable things, and to realise you have done nothing the entire time? And to wonder, even after you have done something?"

[chaseandoldlace]

Chase drew himself up, even as the spectre's words rang true. With everything he'd seen, it wasn't hard to imagine the scene as it was described. And deeper, far deeper in Chase's memories were other moments where he'd hidden away and watched something terrible unfold.

He remembered Uncle Hunter, the night he died. The night Chase ran him over. There was something different about that argument the man had with his parents, something wrong and he hadn't seen him walk in front of the van, he'd just been there and Chase kept driving, even as the blood pooled in the driveway.

And when he came home, the body was gone and no one talked about it. They all went to bed as though nothing unusual had transpired that night at all.

Perhaps he should have known then, that parents who don't think twice about hiding a body were up to something, but in his fear he enforced a sort of apathy. He didn't know. And he didn't want to know.

Until that night in the library when the truth was staring at him in the form of a dead girl on the pale, ivory carpet. The day the truth stared back at all of them.

With a shiver, Chase shook the memories off, but it was too obvious for the boy not to notice.

"I don't wonder about anything. I atoned for my parent's sins. My debt is paid. "

A lie, but he'd done well convincing himself of it lately. His debt was more...in the process really; the amount of damage his parent had done to the West Coast seemed endless sometimes.

[pendraeg]

The boy shook his head. "It doesn't matter what he tells himself or others. He was eleven years old; of course he couldn't have done anything. He was trapped. The moment he drew attention to himself he would have been killed. But what matters is what he feels, inside. And inside, he is guilty. An eleven year old doesn't see an eleven year old as a helpless child, especially not an eleven year old who is a prince. It doesn't matter what he does, be it good or good enough to atone for anything. All his life, all he will ever do is reenact what happened. Every repetition will compound the one before. Until all he can do is to become that child again. To become me again."

He put his hand on Chase's, and it was as though Uther was not there. "I'm a mirror, but I only reflect what's inside of him. It's a funhouse in there."

[chaseandoldlace]

The touch was like chill mist--the feel of it leaving Chase's hands instantly clammy. He pulled away as much out of nerves as embarrassment that the little ethereal punk was getting to him that badly.

Unable to stay hidden any longer, Old Lace paced out from the side of the stable, heavy body crouched low to the ground, long, broad tail swaying in a not at all vague, predatory manner.

"I don't care if it's Disneyland in there, the park's about to close." He turned to the older Uther, suddenly very acutely afraid of what could happen if his friend actually started to believe what his ghostly doppelganger was saying. His voice was twinged with real fear.

"Uther, goddamnit listen to me." In a rare moment of softness, Chase turned to face the young king squarely, trusting Old Lace to guard him while his back was turned--he put a hand firmly on the back of the other blond's neck and brought their foreheads gently together, as though somehow the contact would help him get through.

"I can't imagine what it was like. I can pretend to, but I've never had that kind of responsibility, to be in line to a kingdom and to watch all that happen. They called us Runaways for a reason, you know. We ran away. When the world went mad we ran and we never looked back. You're a king. I get that now. And if you need a champion just say so--I mean, I'm the last guy you want as a knight in shining armor...I'm crap at the whole princess rescuing thing...but if it means proving you gotta beat this thing, I'll do it." With a long, warm breath, Chase closed his eyes and pulled his head away. "Lace, look after Uther."

The raptor hesitated, head tilting worriedly. Chase smiled rakishly. "Come on noble steed, we have to protect His Majesty."

With a bobbing sort of nod, Old Lace moved swiftly between the two blonds, providing a strong neck for Uther to balance against on his bad leg. Chase took a few falsely confident steps forward.

"Okay, I'm not entirely sure how this is supposed to work in your time, but all the movies I've seen say that the king usually has a champion who fights for him. That's me. So the mind games are over as of now." Though it was far too short, Chase raised the wrench in his free hand like a sword. "Engarde, bitch."

[pendraeg]

Uther saw himself surge forward, a malignant, inhuman figure with hate and xenophobia hardened across its features. The wrench moved through the air, and then through the face, like it was made of something soft and doughy...

...like it was warm wax melting around the wrench, around Chase's hand, his wrist, and his arm...

For a moment, Uther was looking at his own body, at eleven, only his face was glossy and molten and had enveloped a part of Chase, and Uther felt sick to his stomach.

And then--and then the thing changed.