Dæmonverse AAU (11-12/16)
Title: Principles of Growth
Author: dominus_trinus
Rating: R
Characters/Pairings: Chase, House/Wilson (established).
Genre: Alternate alternate universe, à la Pullman's His Dark Materials.
Summary: Secrets and stories shared among heretics.
Notes: My sincere thanks to ruby_took for various R & D conversations and assuring me this story wasn't too bizarre to post, and to bluerosefairy for the truly excellent beta.
From Death she Casts her Spell
He’s eighteen years old, and his mother is dead.
His mother is dead, and he’s numb. He can’t feel this, doesn’t dare, because if he starts crying he will never, never stop.
He’ll never see her smile again or hear her laugh; they’ll never have another magic lesson. There’s no hope anymore that someday, somehow she’ll get well and be the strong, fierce woman who let him hear the music in the stars.
He clutches Kylie to his heart, doesn’t care that she’s heavy or getting dusty paw-prints on his stupid suit because this funeral isn’t what Mum would’ve wanted anyway; this is just his father putting on a show for all the people at his bloody precious job.
“Devoted wife, loving mother, pillar of the community,” phrase after phrase that doesn’t mean anything-what did this priest know about his mother? Not a damn thing-and nor did his father.
And the final insult: the funeral program, the obituary, the priest all call her ‘Anne,’ the way his father did; and he’d bet just about anything that false, demeaning name is going on the gravestone, too.
Everybody sits there dutifully mourning a pretty picture of a woman who never existed, and it makes him want to scream because none of it is about his mother, who deserves so much more respect than this. Let Rowan have a service as shallow as he is, but for his mother-
At least her clan knows and will observe the proper rites. They’re not here in totality, of course, but he knows better than to think that the birds he saw circling overhead on the way here-owls, ravens, falcons, more species than he can name-are actually birds.
It’s a good thing people have a tendency not to look up, and that the dæmons aren’t flocked together but taking the ritual in shifts.
His father finishes the eulogy and walks down the aisle to the end of the pew he’s sitting in. “Robert? Would you like to say something?”
There’s nothing he wants to say that he can say, so he bites his tongue to stop himself from telling Rowan to go to hell (there’s a place for blasphemy and this definitely isn’t it) and shakes his head. He’s had enough.
Rowan steps aside to let Kylie past him, but when Robert tries to follow there’s suddenly a solicitous hand on his shoulder, grasping arms-he wrenches himself free and wheels to face his father. “Don’t. You. Dare. Touch. Me,” and Kylie underscores the steel-edged words with a snarl. From her place in his pocket, Rowan’s rat dæmon squeaks, apparently surprised.
“Robert, it’s perfectly understandable that you’re upset-”
“Upset!” That’s the best he can come up with? ‘Upset?’ He laughs, and it’s a hard, bitter sound, the laugh of Artemis about to avenge herself on Niobe.
He’s forgotten his power, forgotten the peril, forgotten everything but the knowledge that this man is responsible for his pain. This man ground his mother’s soul into the dust and he will have justice.
“Don’t tell me how I feel.” His voice is controlled but he’s breathing hard, nearly shaking with rage. “You lost the right to tell me anything and be listened to years ago-”
“Robert-”
He will not be interrupted. “The alcohol didn’t put her in that casket. You did. Every time you denied her name, denied what she was and locked her up, you killed her just a little more. She tried to be what you wanted and you didn’t care how much it hurt! You were never there; she was just a pretty toy you could keep in a box and take out when you pleased-”
“Now that’s e-”
“Shut up!” And possibly because no one tells Rowan that, because he’s so completely unused to hearing it, he does. “She was too good to give you what you deserved; she could have killed you with less effort than it took to breathe, or let her sisters do it, and she wouldn’t! She protected you, you ungrateful, ignorant-” He breaks off: there simply aren’t curses foul enough.
And in the instant’s silence there is terrible grief, there is hot-bright rage; but beneath those two is Power, rocking against the cage of his control, shaking his body, howling to be let out to destroy.
Justice.
He doesn’t have his mother’s qualms.
And she’s not here to tell him ‘no’ anymore.
He leans close and lowers his voice, cold certainty tempering words into a blade. “But the power you were scared of in her is still alive in me, and unlike her, I don’t love you enough not to use it.”
He abandons control, lets all his carefully cultivated barriers drop, and his power bursts gleefully free, throwing Rowan against the nearest wall of the church like a rag doll.
For exactly three seconds he is proud, fierce, invulnerable.
Then reality crashes down and reminds him what he’s done. Where he is. How many shock-pale faces and wide eyes have taken all this in.
What the penalty is for witchcraft.
His father sits up, his expression a mask of absolute terror. Their eyes lock, and Rowan’s lips move silently-‘Andromeda,’ finally; he can’t deny it now-though whether it’s realization or acknowledgement or curse he can’t guess.
He should be proud his father sees his mother in him.
But all he can feel as he runs from the stone-silent church, Kylie at his heels, is heart-freezing dread.
Crucible
“You are incredibly lucky they let you live,” House says flatly. “Dramatically visible magic in the middle of a church? How they didn’t slap you with a heresy charge-”
“In that one case,” he says ruefully, “I owed everything to my father’s political clout. He was a doctor first, but he’d made some powerful friends in the Church.”
House nods. “And keeping the family line intact would have been more important to him than spiritual integrity. Let me guess: he spun the whole thing so it demonized your mother and left you free to recant your sins?”
“Yeah. There was a priest at the house immediately after the funeral, and if he thought Mum regularly had Satan in for tea, I knew better than to disagree with him.” He laughs humorlessly. “I must have spent two hours recanting whatever he could come up with-it would almost have been funny, except I expected him to sentence me to death at any moment.”
“And when he was satisfied, you were shipped off to seminary as extra insurance?” House asks.
“It wasn’t the priest’s idea,” he says. “Church law was satisfied after a few hundred repetitions of ‘abiuro’; Dad just wanted me out of the house so I wouldn’t kill him. Seminary training was a convenient excuse.”
Minerva snarls-he’s heard it before, but never as an expression of indignation on his behalf. “Right,” House sneers. “Because of course the church was the safest place to put a child who could magically blow things up, what with all those supportive, understanding people.” He meets Chase’s gaze. “No wonder I can’t provoke you. A couple of years surrounded by homicidal zealots…”
“In that case,” he says with a nod, “the ‘emotional choke collar’ comparison fit. It was either train myself not to react too strongly to anything, or be in constant fear for my life.”
“But you were there for several years…” Wilson says.
He nods. “I didn’t really have any place else to go or any plans for my life, and as long as I could play the part, it didn’t matter whether I believed what they told us at Mass. I tried to lean towards the Marian devotions a bit; she was the closest to a goddess I was going to find in there and I wanted something familiar; but I didn’t dare do anything more subversive than that.”
There had been a certain satisfaction, though, in chanting the Salve Regina and knowing the Mother he was praying to wasn't the one the priest had in mind.
“So what changed?” House asks. “The ‘head down, mouth shut’ mentality would’ve been hard to shake.”
He cards his fingers through Kylie’s fur as he thinks, tries to find some way to put this that won’t set off the PTSD House must have. “They-started the cutting. And they made everyone watch a demonstration.”
Minerva utters a series of raspy chirps and presses herself closer to House, as though she wants to burrow into his chest. House’s face is impassive, but it’s lost all color and there’s something wild in his eyes that Chase doesn’t want to understand.
“That was the closest I came to losing control in that place,” he says quietly. “The only reason I didn’t was I was too busy being sick to be angry. And the things they said…”
“That it was for the person’s own good,” House breaks in, voice dead flat. “That it was ‘just a little cut’, better than he des-”
“Don’t!” He reaches out without thinking, clasps House’s shoulder because surely any anchor at all is preferable to that nightmare. Wilson takes House’s hand and holds it tightly, his thumb stroking the knuckles.
“I’m sorry,” Chase says. “I didn’t mean-”
House’s gaze refocuses. “Wasn’t your fault,” he says after a moment. “You weren’t trying to set me off, and anyway, it’s not like it takes that much.”
He isn’t shrugging Chase’s hand off, but it’s not his place to touch House at this point. Chase lets go. “Any rate,” he says, deciding to go on as though the flashback hadn’t happened, “that was the end of that. It was one thing when they were just going on about salvation and all the rest of it, but when they started with… I couldn’t be even a passive part of an institution that thought that was all right.” A shrug. “I knew Dad had wanted me to be a doctor, and he’d fix it so I could be-he was always good at getting what he wanted. I called him the next day, and the rest is on my CV.”
Wilson shakes his head. “And you kept all this bottled up for-eight years? Ten? How could you have…?”
“It was healthier than death,” he says wryly. “And easier, just to bury my witch half as much as possible.”
“We’d never forget it,” Kylie says, “but we wouldn’t think about it much. We’re never going to fit well anywhere, but-”
“You fit fine,” Minerva interrupts. “If we didn’t think you belonged where you are, we’d have fired you years ago.” She cocks her head, rolls one shoulder in what’s almost a shrug. “Everybody has some kind of weirdness. Oxymoronically enough, it’s normal.”
“Right,” he says sardonically. “Normal.”
“Eh. Normal for you, anyway,” House says. “You’re sane, you’re healthy, you function.” A teasing note creeps into his tone. “And you can make things explode.”
He laughs despite himself, because for all that uncontrolled power’s been a threat to his safety for years, of course House would think it’s brilliant.
Let’s not even think about what he’d do if he could blow things up, Kylie says, sending him an image of most of the hospital in smoking shambles and Foreman standing in the rubble, yelling through a megaphone for order while his snake dæmon hisses in rage.
It’s probably a fair guess. Couple his power with a temper like House’s, and he’d give the office…a week, tops.
“Do I detect a note of jealousy?” Wilson asks House.
“Maybe just a little one,” House admits. “I can think of a lot of people deserving of a metaphysical kick in the ass.”
“Three seconds of satisfaction weren’t worth it, House,” Chase says.
“Your voice says no; that reminiscent little grin you’re failing to squash says yes.”
“All right, so they were three really good seconds, but I could have done without the hours of terror and three years in seminary afterwards.”
“Point,” House concedes, and looks down at his watch. “Three hours plus five minutes. And…zip.”
Why is it impossible for House to process that he doesn’t know everything about how his powers work? “Three hours was the most I could do ten years ago,” he says. “Maybe it’s that your case is different, maybe magical power increases with age-I don’t know. But…”
He leaves the question silent. House understands.
“I’m not always going to let you,” he says. “I get…the ‘why’ here, but I can’t do that. To either one of us.”
“I don’t mind-”
House sighs. “You’re going to make me go into it, aren’t you? Bottom line, I need to control this thing, and you are not a substitute for medication.” He pauses. “You can tell when the meds aren’t working.”
Statement of fact. He nods.
“I’ll let you then, and other than that…” He falls silent, and Minerva adds, “We’ll see.”
Well, it’s better than ‘no,’ Kylie says.
He knows better than to push: it was a small miracle for House to accept this much.
And maybe…over time…he might accept more.
Continue...
Author's Notes:
Artemis and Apollo took vengeance on Niobe because she had scorned their mother, Leto. Various versions of the myth here.
"Abiuro" is Latin for 'I recant.' Salve Regina is Latin for "Hail, Holy Queen," and is the title of a traditional Marian anthem.
Author: dominus_trinus
Rating: R
Characters/Pairings: Chase, House/Wilson (established).
Genre: Alternate alternate universe, à la Pullman's His Dark Materials.
Summary: Secrets and stories shared among heretics.
Notes: My sincere thanks to ruby_took for various R & D conversations and assuring me this story wasn't too bizarre to post, and to bluerosefairy for the truly excellent beta.
From Death she Casts her Spell
He’s eighteen years old, and his mother is dead.
His mother is dead, and he’s numb. He can’t feel this, doesn’t dare, because if he starts crying he will never, never stop.
He’ll never see her smile again or hear her laugh; they’ll never have another magic lesson. There’s no hope anymore that someday, somehow she’ll get well and be the strong, fierce woman who let him hear the music in the stars.
He clutches Kylie to his heart, doesn’t care that she’s heavy or getting dusty paw-prints on his stupid suit because this funeral isn’t what Mum would’ve wanted anyway; this is just his father putting on a show for all the people at his bloody precious job.
“Devoted wife, loving mother, pillar of the community,” phrase after phrase that doesn’t mean anything-what did this priest know about his mother? Not a damn thing-and nor did his father.
And the final insult: the funeral program, the obituary, the priest all call her ‘Anne,’ the way his father did; and he’d bet just about anything that false, demeaning name is going on the gravestone, too.
Everybody sits there dutifully mourning a pretty picture of a woman who never existed, and it makes him want to scream because none of it is about his mother, who deserves so much more respect than this. Let Rowan have a service as shallow as he is, but for his mother-
At least her clan knows and will observe the proper rites. They’re not here in totality, of course, but he knows better than to think that the birds he saw circling overhead on the way here-owls, ravens, falcons, more species than he can name-are actually birds.
It’s a good thing people have a tendency not to look up, and that the dæmons aren’t flocked together but taking the ritual in shifts.
His father finishes the eulogy and walks down the aisle to the end of the pew he’s sitting in. “Robert? Would you like to say something?”
There’s nothing he wants to say that he can say, so he bites his tongue to stop himself from telling Rowan to go to hell (there’s a place for blasphemy and this definitely isn’t it) and shakes his head. He’s had enough.
Rowan steps aside to let Kylie past him, but when Robert tries to follow there’s suddenly a solicitous hand on his shoulder, grasping arms-he wrenches himself free and wheels to face his father. “Don’t. You. Dare. Touch. Me,” and Kylie underscores the steel-edged words with a snarl. From her place in his pocket, Rowan’s rat dæmon squeaks, apparently surprised.
“Robert, it’s perfectly understandable that you’re upset-”
“Upset!” That’s the best he can come up with? ‘Upset?’ He laughs, and it’s a hard, bitter sound, the laugh of Artemis about to avenge herself on Niobe.
He’s forgotten his power, forgotten the peril, forgotten everything but the knowledge that this man is responsible for his pain. This man ground his mother’s soul into the dust and he will have justice.
“Don’t tell me how I feel.” His voice is controlled but he’s breathing hard, nearly shaking with rage. “You lost the right to tell me anything and be listened to years ago-”
“Robert-”
He will not be interrupted. “The alcohol didn’t put her in that casket. You did. Every time you denied her name, denied what she was and locked her up, you killed her just a little more. She tried to be what you wanted and you didn’t care how much it hurt! You were never there; she was just a pretty toy you could keep in a box and take out when you pleased-”
“Now that’s e-”
“Shut up!” And possibly because no one tells Rowan that, because he’s so completely unused to hearing it, he does. “She was too good to give you what you deserved; she could have killed you with less effort than it took to breathe, or let her sisters do it, and she wouldn’t! She protected you, you ungrateful, ignorant-” He breaks off: there simply aren’t curses foul enough.
And in the instant’s silence there is terrible grief, there is hot-bright rage; but beneath those two is Power, rocking against the cage of his control, shaking his body, howling to be let out to destroy.
Justice.
He doesn’t have his mother’s qualms.
And she’s not here to tell him ‘no’ anymore.
He leans close and lowers his voice, cold certainty tempering words into a blade. “But the power you were scared of in her is still alive in me, and unlike her, I don’t love you enough not to use it.”
He abandons control, lets all his carefully cultivated barriers drop, and his power bursts gleefully free, throwing Rowan against the nearest wall of the church like a rag doll.
For exactly three seconds he is proud, fierce, invulnerable.
Then reality crashes down and reminds him what he’s done. Where he is. How many shock-pale faces and wide eyes have taken all this in.
What the penalty is for witchcraft.
His father sits up, his expression a mask of absolute terror. Their eyes lock, and Rowan’s lips move silently-‘Andromeda,’ finally; he can’t deny it now-though whether it’s realization or acknowledgement or curse he can’t guess.
He should be proud his father sees his mother in him.
But all he can feel as he runs from the stone-silent church, Kylie at his heels, is heart-freezing dread.
Crucible
“You are incredibly lucky they let you live,” House says flatly. “Dramatically visible magic in the middle of a church? How they didn’t slap you with a heresy charge-”
“In that one case,” he says ruefully, “I owed everything to my father’s political clout. He was a doctor first, but he’d made some powerful friends in the Church.”
House nods. “And keeping the family line intact would have been more important to him than spiritual integrity. Let me guess: he spun the whole thing so it demonized your mother and left you free to recant your sins?”
“Yeah. There was a priest at the house immediately after the funeral, and if he thought Mum regularly had Satan in for tea, I knew better than to disagree with him.” He laughs humorlessly. “I must have spent two hours recanting whatever he could come up with-it would almost have been funny, except I expected him to sentence me to death at any moment.”
“And when he was satisfied, you were shipped off to seminary as extra insurance?” House asks.
“It wasn’t the priest’s idea,” he says. “Church law was satisfied after a few hundred repetitions of ‘abiuro’; Dad just wanted me out of the house so I wouldn’t kill him. Seminary training was a convenient excuse.”
Minerva snarls-he’s heard it before, but never as an expression of indignation on his behalf. “Right,” House sneers. “Because of course the church was the safest place to put a child who could magically blow things up, what with all those supportive, understanding people.” He meets Chase’s gaze. “No wonder I can’t provoke you. A couple of years surrounded by homicidal zealots…”
“In that case,” he says with a nod, “the ‘emotional choke collar’ comparison fit. It was either train myself not to react too strongly to anything, or be in constant fear for my life.”
“But you were there for several years…” Wilson says.
He nods. “I didn’t really have any place else to go or any plans for my life, and as long as I could play the part, it didn’t matter whether I believed what they told us at Mass. I tried to lean towards the Marian devotions a bit; she was the closest to a goddess I was going to find in there and I wanted something familiar; but I didn’t dare do anything more subversive than that.”
There had been a certain satisfaction, though, in chanting the Salve Regina and knowing the Mother he was praying to wasn't the one the priest had in mind.
“So what changed?” House asks. “The ‘head down, mouth shut’ mentality would’ve been hard to shake.”
He cards his fingers through Kylie’s fur as he thinks, tries to find some way to put this that won’t set off the PTSD House must have. “They-started the cutting. And they made everyone watch a demonstration.”
Minerva utters a series of raspy chirps and presses herself closer to House, as though she wants to burrow into his chest. House’s face is impassive, but it’s lost all color and there’s something wild in his eyes that Chase doesn’t want to understand.
“That was the closest I came to losing control in that place,” he says quietly. “The only reason I didn’t was I was too busy being sick to be angry. And the things they said…”
“That it was for the person’s own good,” House breaks in, voice dead flat. “That it was ‘just a little cut’, better than he des-”
“Don’t!” He reaches out without thinking, clasps House’s shoulder because surely any anchor at all is preferable to that nightmare. Wilson takes House’s hand and holds it tightly, his thumb stroking the knuckles.
“I’m sorry,” Chase says. “I didn’t mean-”
House’s gaze refocuses. “Wasn’t your fault,” he says after a moment. “You weren’t trying to set me off, and anyway, it’s not like it takes that much.”
He isn’t shrugging Chase’s hand off, but it’s not his place to touch House at this point. Chase lets go. “Any rate,” he says, deciding to go on as though the flashback hadn’t happened, “that was the end of that. It was one thing when they were just going on about salvation and all the rest of it, but when they started with… I couldn’t be even a passive part of an institution that thought that was all right.” A shrug. “I knew Dad had wanted me to be a doctor, and he’d fix it so I could be-he was always good at getting what he wanted. I called him the next day, and the rest is on my CV.”
Wilson shakes his head. “And you kept all this bottled up for-eight years? Ten? How could you have…?”
“It was healthier than death,” he says wryly. “And easier, just to bury my witch half as much as possible.”
“We’d never forget it,” Kylie says, “but we wouldn’t think about it much. We’re never going to fit well anywhere, but-”
“You fit fine,” Minerva interrupts. “If we didn’t think you belonged where you are, we’d have fired you years ago.” She cocks her head, rolls one shoulder in what’s almost a shrug. “Everybody has some kind of weirdness. Oxymoronically enough, it’s normal.”
“Right,” he says sardonically. “Normal.”
“Eh. Normal for you, anyway,” House says. “You’re sane, you’re healthy, you function.” A teasing note creeps into his tone. “And you can make things explode.”
He laughs despite himself, because for all that uncontrolled power’s been a threat to his safety for years, of course House would think it’s brilliant.
Let’s not even think about what he’d do if he could blow things up, Kylie says, sending him an image of most of the hospital in smoking shambles and Foreman standing in the rubble, yelling through a megaphone for order while his snake dæmon hisses in rage.
It’s probably a fair guess. Couple his power with a temper like House’s, and he’d give the office…a week, tops.
“Do I detect a note of jealousy?” Wilson asks House.
“Maybe just a little one,” House admits. “I can think of a lot of people deserving of a metaphysical kick in the ass.”
“Three seconds of satisfaction weren’t worth it, House,” Chase says.
“Your voice says no; that reminiscent little grin you’re failing to squash says yes.”
“All right, so they were three really good seconds, but I could have done without the hours of terror and three years in seminary afterwards.”
“Point,” House concedes, and looks down at his watch. “Three hours plus five minutes. And…zip.”
Why is it impossible for House to process that he doesn’t know everything about how his powers work? “Three hours was the most I could do ten years ago,” he says. “Maybe it’s that your case is different, maybe magical power increases with age-I don’t know. But…”
He leaves the question silent. House understands.
“I’m not always going to let you,” he says. “I get…the ‘why’ here, but I can’t do that. To either one of us.”
“I don’t mind-”
House sighs. “You’re going to make me go into it, aren’t you? Bottom line, I need to control this thing, and you are not a substitute for medication.” He pauses. “You can tell when the meds aren’t working.”
Statement of fact. He nods.
“I’ll let you then, and other than that…” He falls silent, and Minerva adds, “We’ll see.”
Well, it’s better than ‘no,’ Kylie says.
He knows better than to push: it was a small miracle for House to accept this much.
And maybe…over time…he might accept more.
Continue...
Author's Notes:
Artemis and Apollo took vengeance on Niobe because she had scorned their mother, Leto. Various versions of the myth here.
"Abiuro" is Latin for 'I recant.' Salve Regina is Latin for "Hail, Holy Queen," and is the title of a traditional Marian anthem.