the changeling, the knight

how long have you been sober?

i heard the first 90 days are the toughest.

i know it doesn't add up, but i get something from holding onto this.

we're going the wrong way!

oh please, [ NAME ], could you not patronize me?

hey, can you keep it down please?

you know i hate it when you don't take the things i say seriously.

come on sweetheart, i just had a rough day today.

you're drunk, what a surprise!

that's not it, it never is!

you've been saying that for years!

everything looks okay after ten beers.

i could use a little help.

that's a real low blow.

don't you know how tough this is for me?

at least one of us is having a good time.

reminds me of some creepy cult.

this is a valuable, rare, and sought-after collection.

i'd like to have a bath in peace.

the devil himself would struggle with you.

this place is crazy enough without your two cents.

what's all the noise about?

[ NAME ], help! what should i do?!

stop, it's too late!

i'm sure there's nothing to worry about.

there was nothing you could do.

what's happened has happened.

do you trust your head, or your heart?

my advice, for what it's worth, is... to thine own self be true.

i'm not supposed to interfere.

what do you want me to do, [ NAME ]?!

calm down, genius, i already tried making a call.

hey, [ NAME ], how are you doing?

i don't remember being in any crash.

you're probably in mild shock.

i'm fine, thanks for asking.

think of it as a character building exercise.

teamwork at its finest.

i've got no signal either, must be a dead spot.

– and we've already concluded this conversation.

no need for a vote, decision's been made.

we really don't have time to be arguing.

try to be civil, it costs nothing.

try sticking up for yourself sometime.

i'm not wasting another breath on you.

the last thing we need is you causing trouble.

you wanna come along and wait with me?

i still think the smart move is to stick together.

how'd we end up back here?

there's a rational explanation for what's happening.

i'm doing my best to understand this, just like you.

we're trapped in a nightmare.

we have to get outta here right fucking now.

this isn't helping us find help!

there's nowhere else we can go except into that damn town.

i'm not sure this is such a great idea.

we're really going to get into this now?

i need to know 100% that i can rely on you.

we standing here all night or are we going inside?

life moves on, but we don't all go with it.

there's a phone, but it's been dead for years.

anything you can do would be greatly appreciated.

i saw someone in the woods.

nobody would be out here at this ungodly hour.

okay, very good, i'm freaked. who's there?

[ NAME ]? where are you? this isn't funny!

what is your name, sir?

what treachery is this now, [ NAME ]?

[ NAME ], come back here!

how can you not have seen that?!

"stressed", my ass!

you got a better idea?

i'm just gonna say it ... this is exactly what goes down in horror movies.

what the hell do we do now?

i'll deal with this, you stay right here.

who are you? what are you doing here?

what the hell are you? what do you want?!

a black tongue full of riddles, i'll have none of it.

fix your gaze elsewhere!

i am very far from okay ... i'm terrified and confused.

you're blowing this out of proportion, [ NAME ].

fuck that, i'm going another way.

don't you watch horror movies? you never, ever split up.

those movies are dumb.

can we just take a breath and think about what our next move is?

it's not safe for you to be hanging out here on your own.

thanks for coming after me.

the hell are you doing with a gun?

what we don't need is to get someone killed.

make sure the damn thing stays in your pants.

that "terrifying creature" was, in, fact, a cat.

there must be a radio or a working phone inside.

gimme that, i'll smash the window.

if you're feeling under pressure, let someone else do it.

even if you make it, there's no way i'm following.

i might've made a bad call here.

woah, you can't be doing that!

tell me that didn't just happen.

get away or they'll find me!

let's not hang around here, it's time to go.

seriously? you're going in there?

i don't like the idea of being out here on my own.

i'll be as fast as i can, okay?

[ NAME ], the door won't open.

woah, hey, take it easy.

can you stop reacting to every setback like a child?

we'll find a way out of here. we have to.

i appreciate you checking in with me.

who would want land in this godforsaken town?

tell me that didn't just happen.

who would say such a thing?

you look freaked, what's up?

you saw something else, right?

we're really screwed up, here.

can you tell me what you're upset about?

what's going on with you?

i'm going to help you out here if i can, but i need to know your name.

you cannot talk of our secret.

we have an understanding, do we not?

what more proof is needed that the devil walks among us?

the devil is here in this very room.

what the hell was that shit? was that for real?

like i say, i have no good explanation.

when you first told me, i thought you were messing with me.

let's try to force the handle.

still think splitting up was the right move?

personally, i think we're in deep shit here.

maybe the answer lies down the one path we haven't taken yet.

this is fucking crazy, we have no clue what we're getting ourselves into.

[ NAME ], you need to see this.

we were never meant to make it out of here.

i can't see for shit.

you keep saying you're in charge, so... you first.

we can't stay here.

you ever have any family here?

it's already been a hell of a night, but i'm sure we'll pull through.

you don't know that it's safe.

let us pray in silence.

i've done no wrong!

i do not deserve death, i beg you!

who are you ? and how come you look just like [ NAME ]?

the devil is in the wind, seeking to help his own.

[ NAME ], let us conclude our business here swiftly.

[ LOCATION ] is already lost, shrouded in evil!

the devil takes many forms, you know that better than any!

while [ NAME ] still draws breath, [ LOCATION ] is beyond salvation.

i don't know how to tell you what i just saw.

give me a moment, will you? i've just gone through something pretty rough.

what the hell is that?!

don't leave me behind!

i'm coming back for you, [ NAME ]! hold on!

reach out and grab my hand!

that was really quite close.

not that there's anything particularly wrong with death.

that gun might prove to be a lifesaver. or the precise opposite.

this must be very confusing for you right now.

i dare say we'll find out, hmm?

what in the name of holy fuck was that?

it was like something from a nightmare, did you see how it looked?

whatever that thing was, it's gone now.

thank god we're okay.

you are going to tell me right now what happened.

let's ... stay away from that.

i'm all for putting as much distance between us and that hideous thing as possible.

can't a guy get some peace around here?

i don't think there is another way.

[ LOCATION ] isn't a place i want to revisit.

i'm taking this to protect you.

why can't you leave me alone?

it could be leading us into danger, even a trap!

stay close ... who knows what's up ahead.

what did they do to deserve that?

"...what? counts for - doesn't count for anything. i won't be here for it."

a deep breath.

maia settles for something only slightly better.

"good for answer. what however it is."

worst case scenario, they're a thing of some kind. which everyone's been before. that's fine. they've always been a thing, at least. they've never had a flocking, schooling sort of brain. not even for the sake of being famous, or better at all than anyone else. but nobody wants to be nobody.

they remember one dead. a grainy photo on their phone and candy red giallo blood. the taste of something sour in their throat. there's been others, they know that. seen it, felt it. but nothing as visceral, as wrong. first is the worst.

The Custodian caught the slip.

Not because the name meant anything to him.

Because it meant something to Maia.

The smallest shifts often carried the greatest weight. A trembling hand. A glance held half a second too long. A name escaping before permission had been granted.

Poor prince.

The title lingered in the air between them.

He did not ask who it belonged to.

The question would have been unnecessary.

His eyes lowered briefly to the lantern at his side. The flame behind the glass moved with strange sluggishness, as though it were burning through memory rather than oil.

"No," he said quietly.

"He would not."

The words emerged before thought seemed to touch them.

Simple.

Certain.

The old building settled around them with a groan.

Dust drifted through the lantern light.

"You are mistaken about one thing."

His gaze lifted again.

"There are people who become nobody."

The statement carried no cruelty.

Only fact.

"I have met them."

A pause.

"They are not the forgotten."

His voice softened.

"They are the ones who convinced themselves nothing mattered."

The room seemed smaller suddenly.

Not physically.

As though the walls had leaned closer to listen.

"The ones who abandoned every attachment. Every obligation. Every grief. Every love."

His eyes rested upon Maia.

"They wished to become untouchable."

The lantern flickered.

"They succeeded."

A silence followed.

Heavy.

Ancient.

"And in doing so, they erased themselves far more thoroughly than death ever could."

His attention drifted toward the fogged window.

For a moment he looked impossibly old.

Not elderly.

Weathered.

Like a door that had stood through too many winters.

Then Maia's words returned to him.

You are who you know.

You are what you make.

You are what you fail to save.

Something in his expression shifted.

Almost imperceptibly.

"Perhaps."

The answer came slowly.

As though he were examining the thought from several angles before accepting it.

"I think people leave impressions upon one another."

The lantern's glow stretched their shadows across the floor.

"A fingerprint pressed into wet clay."

His gaze settled on Maia once more.

"Some remain long after the hand is gone."

The silence that followed felt less hostile now.

Less investigative.

"That prince."

He spoke the title carefully.

Without claiming ownership of it.

"Whether he is dead, missing, transformed, or merely distant..."

A faint pause.

"...the fact that you remember him means he is still changing the shape of the world."

The words lingered.

Warm in a way The Custodian rarely allowed himself to be.

"Most people imagine remembrance is a gift we give the dead."

His eyes drifted toward the darkness beyond the room.

"I suspect it is often the reverse."

The lantern crackled softly.

And for the first time since the conversation began, The Custodian offered Maia something resembling a smile.

Small.

Melancholy.

Almost invisible.

"If he is fortunate, he will never be nobody."

His gaze returned to them.

as quick as the smile appears, it wavers. "it's like almost awful. wouldn't wish what happened, but... he wasn't dragged in as visceral. blood. so much blood. but he's the most free now. out in the air. not in some cold padded hospital or dark water. his pain is done and over with. exceedingly gruesome. but much worse things to be. much worse in all memory."

a pause.

*reads smudge on hand*

"Keep doors and blinds closed after dark*

( @changedbysong - for zane)

"I'm not," Zane says, brows knitted together in indignation as he continues his animated pacing across the only patch of floor clear enough to do so.

"That's not what I'm trying to do here, you just don't see the vision."

they're a little too fast to take the papers, flipping through with nimble fingers.

"it's been an, a memorial. im and not knocking out down a tombstone for-" metaphorically, of course. it'd been finishing what they started with tristan. the ideas they'd made together, one of the only friendships that'd ever been real. the last refrains of him that weren't slumped, bleeding out, over a kitchen table in arkansas.

maybe he would've wanted that. he'd always been a film buff, maybe he'd be flattered from... wherever you go. the cosmos.

that's where they should be. not here, not anywhere. their hand scrunched one of the pages in their grip, and it takes them a moment to clear the burning taste of iron from their mouth.

"i didn't know any of it," they mumble. "the kelpie just grew its own teeth... i only got halfway through when i changed. and but what, a deus ex machina? music doesn't won't plot as much, even - that in concept albums. mine own is all anthology."

tidal. flotsam and jetsam, something tossed by the water and buried in sand and clay. living in someone else's shadow.

The Custodian's gaze settled upon the fluttering hands.

The nervous movement.

The agitation.

Not because it interested him.

Because it contradicted the words.

The lantern remained still at his side.

"If that were true," he said quietly. "You would not be defending yourself."

The observation arrived gently.

No sharper than falling dust.

His eyes lifted again.

Not to challenge.

To witness.

"You speak of the dead as though they are incapable of distinction. As though memory dissolves into a single colour when enough years have passed."

A faint shake of his head.

"I have found the opposite."

The old building creaked around them.

Somewhere above, a pipe knocked once.

"I remember thousands."

His voice had become strangely distant.

"The forgotten. The abandoned. The unnamed. The people who believed history would swallow them whole."

His eyes narrowed slightly.

"And yet."

A pause.

"I do not confuse them."

The words lingered between them.

"One woman spent her final days writing letters she knew nobody would receive. One man crossed an ocean to apologize for something he had done as a child. Another stood in a doorway for three days because he was afraid of what waited beyond it."

The lantern's glow trembled across the floor.

"They are all dead."

A beat.

"They are also all themselves."

The Custodian studied Maia's expression.

The line of their mouth.

The tension in their shoulders.

The way their hands betrayed what their voice would not.

"You fear becoming indistinct because you believe indistinction is a form of death."

His tone remained calm.

"But what troubles you is not that you might become everyone."

For the first time, there was something almost sympathetic in his eyes.

Something old.

Something tired.

"It is that you might become no one."

The silence that followed felt deeper than the room itself.

Then, after a moment.

"You speak of voice. Purpose. Power."

The lantern cast long shadows across the walls.

"Good."

A slight inclination of his head.

"Keep them."

The words surprised even the silence.

"Most things spend their lives surrendering those pieces of themselves."

His gaze drifted briefly toward the fogged window.

Toward whatever waited beyond it.

"I have never found identity in certainty."

His eyes returned to Maia.

"Only persistence."

A pause.

"People are not themselves because they possess a perfect definition."

The lantern flickered.

"They are themselves because they continue answering when the world asks who they are."

His expression softened by the smallest degree.

"And despite everything that has happened to you."

His eyes settled upon the changeling.

maia settles for something only slightly better.

"good for answer. what however it is."

worst case scenario, they're a thing of some kind. which everyone's been before. that's fine. they've always been a thing, at least. they've never had a flocking, schooling sort of brain. not even for the sake of being famous, or better at all than anyone else. but nobody wants to be nobody.

they remember one dead. a grainy photo on their phone and candy red giallo blood. the taste of something sour in their throat. there's been others, they know that. seen it, felt it. but nothing as visceral, as wrong. first is the worst.

The Custodian listened without interruption.

Not politely.

Carefully.

As though Maia's fractured cadence were not broken language at all, but something translated poorly from a dialect older than speech itself. His attention never wavered from them, even when the sentences twisted inward and doubled back against themselves.

The lantern gave another faint pulse.

Beyond the windows, fog dragged itself across the glass in slow pale streaks.

"You speak about identity as though it is a filing system," he said at last. "An arrangement of labels meant to prevent collapse. This belongs here. That belongs there. A method of separating one soul from another so the structure remains comprehensible."

His gaze lowered briefly toward the warped floorboards beneath their feet.

"A very human invention."

Then his eyes returned to Maia.

"And a fragile one."

The room settled into silence again, save for the distant hum somewhere inside the walls. Electrical perhaps. Or breathing. In places like this the distinction often deteriorated.

"I have watched people carry names like shields," he continued. "Titles. Family lines. Occupations. Diagnoses. Faiths. They nail them to themselves desperately, believing the correct arrangement of words will keep them singular."

A pause.

"It rarely survives suffering."

The lantern's light shifted softly across his face, sharpening the hollows beneath his eyes.

"You understand this already, I think. Better than most."

There was no accusation in the statement. No pity either.

Only recognition.

"When something is forced to become many things at once, the borders weaken. The self stops behaving like a nation with fixed boundaries." His voice lowered slightly. "It becomes tidal instead."

For the first time since entering the room, The Custodian tilted his head in return, mirroring Maia's earlier motion with unsettling precision.

"And yet."

A faint creak echoed overhead.

"You are still attempting to preserve distinction."

His eyes settled on them with quiet intensity.

tidal. flotsam and jetsam, something tossed by the water and buried in sand and clay. living in someone else's shadow.

"yeah? you're real good at it," suzie replies with an impressed grin, "nothin' wrong with watchin' videos; you still learned somethin' and can do it well."

"tons! it's been harder to than i and thought. mostly of because the balance, and not - tossing my back out. had to do that lots of other exercise."

maybe some ham-fisted metaphor about the innate rage and stupidity of life at large.

or aliens. or zombies. or alien zombies.

"one of the - well, gabe, actually, clubs - wrote a short story one time about a fast food chain poisoning a town that to get people addicted to their food. probably not that, but - parallels, something." it wasn't great, but he'd drawn a sick ground meat monster design out of it.

he also considers their other suggestion for a moment. there are a few sketchy ass restaurants here. the notion of fast-food secretly poisoning people is fucked up. But also kinda funny. He chuckles lowly under his breath.

‎ ❝ actually ... i got a friend who thinks his town's being poisoned. or gassed. or brainwashed. or whatever crazy conspiracy he's obsessed with. ❞

while still driving, dude casually reaches across them toward the glove department. his hands rummages around blindly for a few seconds before eventually emerging with a suspicious looking pipe & a lighter. notably, he removes both hands from the steering wheel to deal with this.

‎ ❝ maybe that's just a thing restaurants are doing now. ❞ click. the lighter sparks. he leans down to heat the pipe. his car rolls cleanly through a red light and he doesn't react whatsoever. thankfully, no one else happens to be crossing through the intersection at the same time.

‎ ❝ poisoning people to get them addicted to the garbage they try to pass as food. ❞ smoke curls from his mouth as he speaks. ❝ seems to be having adverse effects. shit, i'd probably be hysterical too if all i ate were mcnuggets. ❞

the distress turns to brief panic as their hand shoots out to steady the wheel while he's let go of it. they can't help but contemplate going through all this, just to die to a semi or something. terrifying AND anticlimactic.

don't think about final destination. or duel. maybe maximum overdrive because at least that's funny.

they can't exactly dive out of the car. they try to keep the holy shit we're going to die quiver out of their voice.