eris

The shore presses against his charred skin, slowly healing with ocean water seeping from each of the fast healing cuts as he crawls from the hurricane he'd made. But the burns remain open. Blistering.

Half of him is gone. His wings are gone, they'd have pulled him up by now if they were still there. What's left of them has him crying out into the night as he realizes... They are. They're gone. His only vice and his only proof of some kind of virtue. Gone. Gone, gone.

Gone.

What happened to them?

His hands pathetically, slowly, reach to the stumps that are left, doubtfully checking if it's real, or some kind of sick lie. His hands have nothing else to hold but the burn marks from the Fall; his claw—muddy from dragging himself from the lake—hooks into the closest wound and he flinches, spine contorting as he roars with tinted saliva stringing from his sharp maw.

He can't help but continue to roar.

The sound takes the life from the land around him. Rot buries deep under the mud and water half of him lays in, reaching like veins in a blue blooded corpse in all directions. Tears run down his face like the rain, and it all blends; like the tempest itself is trying to hide him.

There's nothing but sparks around him—cleavers of pain, the static rain that's stabbing his senses and his wounds, and he crawls—or tries to—one talon digging into the grassy mud bed over the other as he drags himself further from the river.

These questions are without spotlight, just whispers behind his consciousness: Where is he going? Meant to go? Did he fight hard enough to escape, and is this the reward?

Who is who? Who took his wings? Who made sure he reached land alive? Who made him? Who is he? Where is he? What place is this? Why is the air so heavy? So, so heavy...

The winds carry off his strength and what room he has left in his mind to manage his panic.

His body is feeling the cold more intimately again, numbing slow.

Numbing, numbing, till there's silence.

Everything is quiet now.

Much too quiet.

Gone.

♡

"Put me down." He snapped and growled. Tried to, and wouldn't admit that struggling out of her arms was actually making him struggle. It's the ale. The broken arm, makes it awkward. He's… also in shock. "Put me down, woman, I'll gut you with my hands—"

Never in another hundred million years would he admit his voice wavered when her arms tightened around him as she walked, shifting him to avoid the edge of a seat and a patron.

"Floor's wet, Sire, so I wouldn't dream of it." He can hear her smiling through her mask, he swears it. "Safer up here than slipping down there."

Jack shoved her away from him after she hoisted him on the bar top. He all but scrambled back from her and nearly tipped backwards as she stumbled back, a little afraid of her next move and the strength she'd put behind it. Jack looks his knight up and down, trying to analyze her audacity. Her black armor seeming darker than reasonable in the shadows and candle light of the tavern where it's fastened over her casual wear. He'd no idea why she'd insisted on keeping the half set of garb on when he'd requested a low profile, but now he guesses she was hoping for a scene to happen and to be recognized.

Let it be known the 4th Prince was saved by his knight he'd tried to share a drink with—his brothers are going to have a ball. Not like this was the first time, and that fact pissed him off more. It would have been fine, if not for a slight of chance. Now, his first mistake was letting her drink something as strong as what he liked.

But he couldn't have stopped her from having a bit of fun with spirits… he's seen nothing but tension follow her after the latest council meeting with the Witch. Warnings were given, hopes of peace snuffed, and her mind has been lost to thoughts of the farms of her friends and family on the outskirts of the city going up in flames. He'd overheard her crying in the morning, and demanded reason; she's his knight for gods' sakes, she shouldn't cry. It… makes him uncomfortable.

She'd been ordered to go along then after. Jack just wanted to be nice, didn't he. Well he can go fuck himself next time and tell her to shut up instead. He can hear her now, using the invitation to drink as justification for her humbling actions in the morning, and wants to kick her this second.

Jack swears [Y/N] doesn't care about her pay that's dusted off of the King's coin purse, that she prefers sapping the life out of him one grievance at a time. He flinches as she grabs a rag from the barkeep that's bent and laughing a little too much for someone who could be easily hanged, walks over to the mess, gets on her knees and begins wiping up the spill haphazardly. Jack doesn't like the fact he can imagine which tune she's humming as she does.

Jack doesn't know what to say, all he looks forward to is hunting down the one who'd started a brawl—tried to—and tried including him. He'd have fought regardless of his broken arm—his splint, an original design he'd tested on his more than willing knight when she thought wrestling with a stubborn heifer caught in a fence was a reasonable idea (he knows she just wanted to impress him. It was impressive how hard he laughed) was paying off beautifully. Jack would loved to make an example of his capability.

But nooo, the most lightweight Dame, [Y/N] of Blu, bastard daughter of the king's executioner and the 4th prince's personal servant and guard, had to step up and swing when he'd been shoved—tripped!—and put the prick on his ass, screaming, making him drop his mug. Jack isn't a little prince, he's a grown fucking man and he'd gladly kill and bury the body himself.

But something got twisted in her mind alongside the sweet grass she braided on the farm she grew up on. He didn't know—well. Yes, he did—whether he likes it or not. He just won't admit or hint to anything. Not like a lack of a sentence is proof of itself, he's hung other failures for doing more and less. The memory of her lifting-rather-tossing the bastard like a sack of rice by the collar of his shirt into a support beam replays in his head, and he debates on if the heat he feels is from embarrassment, or some kind of reaction from the ale that's making his clothes too tight. Mentally checking for symptoms of any poison, he finds none, but maybe an aphrodisiac…

Someone whistled, and he snapped out of his blind stupor when he realized she'd taken off her helmet, setting it down by her knees gingerly, wavering where she knelt. Jack glared at her smiling face, he knew it; As [Y/N] looks up at him with smudged black-gray pigment around her dark eyes and her face flushed from the one drink and the chafing metal on her skin, he resents her. Jack resents [Y/N]'s cropped hair that's longer and even curlier now from the sweat, and he resents her pretty scars and her even prettier sun scorched skin and the dusting of moles and freckles that decorate all over it-

"You're not hurt, are you Sire?" She called to him, and the tavern has gone quieter for however long, and now quieter again. This isn't the damn theatre. Jack wonders how she'd look in a play if he sold her to a traveling act, and tells himself he didn't care. He'd throw something at her on stage if she'd even tried to get by.

"What do you think?" He glowered.

She tilts her head, her eyes blinking at two different rates, looking dumber and duller than a bag of bricks, and he wonders why he hasn't dissected her yet, imagining her body placed on his examination and surgical table. Naked, perhaps dead or sedated, watching him with wide eyes as he tells her she deserves a lesser mercy than he's giving her-

… Is the aphrodisiac getting stronger-

"I think you took a nasty spall- fall," Good gods, Jack thought. "N' I think you need to rest 'fore we can walk y'home." She hiccups and nearly topples over from the force of it. Jack deadpans, defeated, and evaluating the fact the King approved her for the umpteenth time that month.

>> CW: DD:DNE - Toby thinks of you dead and likes it, completely inaccurate psychosis episode, blood, SH, suggestive, thoughts of killing and death, Toby's really really weird, disturbing imagery with no context.

Toby's eyes burn from the obsessive gaze he holds with the paint. His neck hurts from straining to look up at the canvas. He figured out at least an hour ago that when his gaze moves, so much as shifts, the painting follows suit, melting downward to meet his eyes with it's textured own. And the more he stares at the texture, the more it moves around, twists, and hurts his head. So, it's a staring competition as his cuticles unravel from him tugging loose hangnails between his teeth. He's bleeding from his bit lip too, blood trickling down to his neck, and he likes because it feels real.

Textured brushstrokes start to come to life and he's afraid of them infesting the place—twisting little maggots of browns, blues, grays and peach eat the face of the timeless bloke unlucky enough to be preserved before him. If they get out, if they crawl into the eyes and ears of you, or the other paintings, or him, get worse…

Toby wonders what they feel like, twisting as they look for orifices to eventually wiggling their way into; his ear canals and nostrils and eyes and hand-made incisions, and make home. It would be horrific to watch, and if he could feel the pain of it he would very much want it to happen to him, rather than you. But he just watched for now.

Suddenly he's thinking of your face, and the face of the patriarch peels open in a way that makes his poor, starving stomach lurch with bile like the open sea in a storm. Now, it's you.

You would call him a fucking freak then go on with your day if you saw him there, and run if you knew what he was thinking; A dog being taunted with a squirrel outside the window, but this window is to Hell and the squirrels are skin-walkers. Sirens, maybe. He wants to look away now and let the walls close in on him like a cage, like barbed wire fence collapsing, like a iron maiden or someone touching him when they weren't allowed to.

The blood on his face is starting to move around, too.

Toby huffed, bringing a hand up and didn't break gaze while smearing the blood off his chin and neck—he was relieved when they didn't immediately start moving up or on his hand. But then they did and he huffed again, trying to be tough in front of the maggots, telling them and himself they wouldn't win—but it was more of a whimper.

Oh, but then his mind is back to you as he stares at the shuddering painting, as it's always where his mind goes eventually… left in a hurry this morning, reddening face and downcast, bleary eyes, looking for something to settle down your mind. You both had fought this morning, and you'd obviously won, so he just wound up pushing your buttons with infuriating accuracy.

Fuck you.

Toby decides after some time watching these things and feeling them on him that he would much rather enjoy seeing you all maggot-brained and rotted instead of him. He wants to kill you sometimes. Maybe if he kissed you on the mouth, you would be infested too.

But he doesn't want you dead dead if he survived this. Just catatonic, maybe.

Now he's picturing you dead, and the room feels a little smaller when his gaze slips down from "your" torn face. The painting doesn't have your scars. Shame, they're his favorite part on you. One of them.

No new ideas besides the ideas you give him follow after that. He wishes you were here.

Now he's sad.

Then you're in front of him. Your mouth is moving and he clearly hears you, shouting worried insults into his face as you fall to the ruined carpet of the mansion hall—but there's disconnect. He doesn't process what's coming out of your mouth, only that he thinks it's pretty when he looks up from staring drunk at your chest.

His chin is grabbed suddenly. His head is forced to the left, and then the right, and you're just trying to make his brain melt. He could swear it, be damned if he's wrong.

"Toby? Toby." Your voice is far away. "What happened. What did you do? Did you—" His mouth is forced open with your hand on his forehead and you look inside to check for feathers or the fur of rats and he nearly faints.

He tries in the moment—really tries, and not in a mocking way either because he really does sometimes care about your fun facts, and really did sometimes find them fun—to come down with the memory of your tidbits of who the hell the guy in the brassy frame in front of him is, because it's the painting's normal face now, not your dead one, because you're right here.

Some proud fucker with too many badges in too many colors, and a single gaudy shoulder pad that made him look like the nutcracker from that Barbie movie.

General, Captain, Sargent, Cleopatra, Donkey Kong, whatever the fuck, he doesn't know. He doesn't care, actually, because you're trying to shake him back into focus and drag him to the parlor.

You're really hot when you're talking. Shoving him down, trying to get him to listen.

Leaning back to pop your back with a groan. Complaining.

Crying, too. Turning away from him when you start because you don't want him to see.

Glaring at him over your shoulder while you collect your first aid kit.

Scoffing and rolling your eyes at him when he tells you in a mumble why he was bleeding.

Pissed off at him, forcing him to sit still and give you his hand so you could take care of him, laying it in your lap and yelling about how stupid he is when you take one look at the bloody mess and waste half a water bottle trying to wash it away.