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

[pendraeg]

And now, Uther's memories. And now, Uther's dreams. The things he had tried so hard to deny had ever been real enough to have been things he had actually seen, things he had actually heard, and smelled, and felt, and done. Burning flesh is sweet, like pork, or mutton. Wool is acrid, and becomes indiscernible from human hair. Wood, straw, kindling, those are also the smell of the fire in the hall at night, keeping the beasts at bay. Over it all, bitter, stinging, sharp, the taste of char, ashes that cling to eyelashes and settle underneath the tongue, in the back of the throat...

What you never see in a painting of a martyr is what remains when the pyre is burnt out, what must be cut down, brittle and collapsing, to be buried, how soot covers everything, and after rain, is slick and gritty underfoot. How the water becomes undrinkable, and you have to send men out with barrels, wagonloads of water passing wagonloads of bodies on the rutted road.

The axe is quick; people scream when they are on fire.

People try to get away. They writhe and struggle and sometimes an arm gets free, and sometimes the fire is slow. An ordinary person might be suffocated by the smoke and lose consciousness long before the worst of it. A witch magics that first death away only to succumb to the flames.

Uther hated that he knew all of this. Uther hated that he had watched all of this.

He hated that he had made it happen.

He shook his head, a small movement in a body he otherwise couldn't control. His eyes were wide, his pupils so large as to almost swallow the blue. "Chase--"

"His Majesty has given the order!" The witchfinder lowered his arm, and Uther knew the wood was soaked in tallow, and would go up in an instant. The air would move as the heat bloomed, pulling the flames high and hot.

And Uther didn't know whether he was supposed to endure this, whether this was his punishment, or if he was meant to try to stop it.

[chaseandoldlace]

"Nico!"

The smell was the first thing that hit him, before it even occurred to him whether it was real or not. It was real enough.

He sprinted to the pyre, climbing through--into-- the flames tearing at the binding rope that for some reason didn't burn away like Chase believed it should have. Though he knew he shouldn't have been able to hear anything over Nico's screaming, there was a scuffle in the yard where Uther and the child-monster-man stood.

"He is lost, Majesty, if he wishes to burn with her let him, there is nothing to be done. They chose their fate!"

The world through the flames was choked with light and heat. Chase hadn't ever thought about what it would look like to see the world burn-- is this what it would have been like if their parents had succeeded, if they'd all toed the line?

"They captured us after you left, why did you leave?" Nico asked.

"I didn't mean to, Nico I'm so, so sorry. I'll get you out it's okay." Nevermind that they shouldn't be able to talk, shouldn't be able to breathe as Chase watched his own fingers turn into candles. Nico ropes still refused to burn.

"I don't blame you for running away, We were terrible leaders, ever since we lost Gert..."

"No you weren't! You just never believed in yourself...the way I did. I should have told you when I had the chance. You were never a bad leader Nico. And I would never run away." Chase cursed the uselessness of scorched skin.

"You're never around anymore." Nico countered.

"Someone needs to provide for us, you can't waste all your magic on taking care of us. Dammit what's wrong with this rope?!"

"What rope?" Nico asked, earnestly curious, voice lilting slightly. "You're on fire,"

Suddenly Nico was gone and Chase's hands were bound to the pyre. Nico stood next to Uther, head turning to glare at him. Over the flames, words reached his ears, directed at Uther. The man who had lit the pyre was gone.

"What have you done?"

[pendraeg]

Uther was afraid. Uther had always been afraid. He was young, and he had the strength, and the energy, and distractions and plans with which to pretend he wasn't, but the years would wear on him. Unaddressed, fear would grow, and become everything.

Uther suddenly felt...old.

Uther the old king knew that he had made this happen, perhaps not directly, but by the sum of his entire life, by each thing he had ever done, each decision more in his control and each less forgivable. All right, he had hid while his brother was butchered. Fine. He'd been drunk, stupefied, when the assassin had come for Aurelius. It was his need, his idea, that had killed Igraine, and, so much worse than salt on the wound, Gorlois.

The slaughter that followed, that was all him. His hatred, his self-loathing. His uncontrollable, grieving rage, this mania that nothing would assuage. And having started the vendetta, and the war, his fear. He'd created the world in which nothing he cherished was safe.

Given a new chance, how could it go any differently?

"I let it happen. I made this happen. I'm a monster. I never learned. Get him out of there; I see the point."

He wondered what it felt like, to burn. He'd seen it often enough, but this detail, he did not know.

"Chase Stein, come down." He spoke with the voice and the authority and the weariness of all his years of unwanted rule. "That isn't for you."

He was dressed in the heavy mail in which he had cowered even within the walls of his stronghold. He reached for his chain of office, and unclasped it, and all the weight fell away. Unburdened, he stepped up to the pyre in his tunic, bare-headed.

"Once is a mistake," he said. "Once is human, and it's terrible and real and it happened, and you can't go back and change it."

He reached into the fire and clasped Chase's hand, as brothers but also as an adult takes responsibility for a youth and all his future--"Do not do it again. Do not keep doing it. Do not let it rule you."--and he pulled, swinging his young friend from the flames and levering himself up to face his fears.

[chaseandoldlace]

Under Uther's power alone the ropes gave way and Chase found himself outside the flames: hale hearty and whole again.

"Uther, no!"

But he wasn't alone. Nico was there, holding him as he burned. The form changed a thousand times, blinking through different faces... young, old, men, women, children, finally settling back on it's first form, the child version of Uther himself. The boy clung to Uther as the fire raged over them both.

Old Lace, who had not known what to do, slowly sniffed her way closer and closer to the pyre as the flames eased away, sinking into the ground; pulled back to hell itself until Uther alone stood under the first stars of evening.

Cast out of the illusion the dark that enveloped them was shockingly peaceful. Whatever malice the spirit brought with it had vanished with the flames, and perhaps in it they'd both been forged anew.

Chase took two cautious steps toward Uther before concern won out and he embraced him, relief and gratitude flooding through him in waves.

"You didn't need to do that you idiot."

[pendraeg]

His heart pounded like it had pumped a lifetime's worth of blood. His throat was raw like he had cried every one of the cries he himself had caused. His face was streaked with tears.

His eyes stung, and he didn't know if it was salt or the memory of smoke, or the afterimage as the searing illusion faded and left only Aternaville, left only this gift. A sort of afterlife.

The night seemed brighter now.

Uther allowed Chase to embrace him, half needing the support to hold him upright. After a time, he grasped Chase by the shoulders so that he could look at him.

"I did. But you--" Uther suddenly realised he was livid. "Don't ever put yourself in that kind of danger for me again."

And what he meant was: It isn't worth it. My wrongs are irreparable, the debt too great. What he meant was: Let me serve as a lesson, and learn to be better, with all the freedom that not yet having lived so long, and made so many choices, gives you. What he meant was: Let me, let the parent, pay penance for my own sins, and you yours.

He scowled. "It is not your place."

[chaseandoldlace]

Not for the first time, Chase heard what Uther meant, not just what he said. It was an odd feeling, like being tamed from some previously feral state where words and meaning interacted very differently than they normally would.

Also not for the first time Chase realized how old Uther was and it almost frightened him... but no, that wasn't it... it wasn't the decades locked in his eyes as they gazed steadfastly at each other, it was the intent of that age, what it meant....

'My parents wanted to burn the world to protect me from it, but Uther burned himself he took responsibility.' The realization hit Chase like a fist to the gut. Here was the first....person Chase had ever known... a father, a king an adult to own up to his sins, to refuse to let his sins be visited on another.

Somewhere, deep, deep inside him, something that had broken the night he watched his parents murder an innocent girl fused messily back together. There were pieces missing, gaps that still needed to be filled but the structure was standing again.

"I'm sorry..." Chase's head fell against Uther's shoulder. He could feel Old Lace move close to comfort him, soothing concern flooding enough of his mind to form words. "No one around me ever wanted to take responsibility for anything. Even the so called 'heroes' who found us after we had to kill our parents they didn't... stick around to clean up they didn't even look for us after we ran away." Chase was babbling but the words wouldn't stop. They'd been a long time coming. "I was the oldest I had to take responsibility, we all had to make it right it was the only way. No one else would. We were kids, goddamnit we were children we didn't know any better, I'm so sorry...." Chase clutched Uther desperately, for the first time validated in a belief he'd held so tightly to but never dared voice aloud, save for once.

'But I'm innocent, I know I am.'

[pendraeg]

"Yes," Uther said at last. He let Chase's words settle, let them take their time. "Stay that way. Within reason."

A half-smile worked its way across his face.

Then, when time had passed he shifted, abashed with himself. "I do appreciate your help. That...thing..."

He shuddered, disturbed by that emptiness in his own eyes. The spite.

[chaseandoldlace]

The irony of it was that Chase had never really believed he had a childhood, and therefore could never have been a child until that moment. Suddenly he remembered his first night at the castle, and telling Uther that his new-found youth was a chance to do things differently.

He hadn't realized that might apply to him one day as well, let alone because of Uther. Again there was the sense that this place, Aternaville had been waiting for him; that the universe put him and Old Lace in that stable for a reason.

For a moment there was an up-surge of that old cynicism that wanted to tell Uther it was too late-- he wasn't a child anymore he could never return to that comparatively blissful ignorance but he could, one day trust again, if enough proof was there that it was deserved.

"Yeah... no problem..." A shiver ran through Chase that wasn't entirely him. Old Lace stamped taloned feet into the dirt and craned her long next beckoning back towards the castle. "How about we take some of this wood in and get your ankle looked at?" Nico and Karolina were usually the ones to play nurse, but Chase had picked up enough to handle a bum ankle. Reaching down he threw a sort of harness blanket over Old Lace's back, usually used for the horses to help carry firewood and loaded it up.

The lights inside the castle told them that Arthur and Merlin were likely preparing dinner and looking after the twins, so if they went in through the side door they could get to the hearthside without drawing much attention. The light of the fire and gone down enough to need a bit of rebuilding.

Moving so he had an arm around Uther's shoulder to brace him up, the two hobbled back to the welcoming warmth and light of home.