Shades of Magic

literature family ♥︎ alucard emery for @nikov

“You missed me,” said Alucard. It was not a question, but there was a confession in it, because everything about Alucard—the tension in his back, the ways his hips pressed into Rhy’s, the race of his heart and the tremor in his voice—said that the missing had been mutual.

*”Get This Party Started” begins playing loudly overhead*

kell maresh - shades of magic

read in 2019: a darker shade of magic by v.e. schwab 

Finished commission for @writedreamlie.

Athos is criminally underrepresented in the fandom, thank you!

-

The new skin feels good. Athos rolls his neck from side to side, experimenting with the shift of new muscle and a lower center of gravity. He dislikes shapechanging ordinarily; he’s fought too hard for his own body. But for this form he can make an exception.

He smiles at himself in the mirror; the right-hand Holland grins back.

A second Holland - identical save for the mark drawn in blood on his forehead and the shadowed tension in his stance - does not lift his eyes as he folds Athos’s discarded jacket neatly. Athos makes a moue of displeasure and fiddles with his cravat, then edges his chin up, studying the long shifting line of the throat.

“I look well, don’t I?” he demands. “Fitting for your name day party?”

“My lord,” demurs Holland.

Athos lifts his eyes to an imaginary heaven. Behind them, a third Holland lounges in Astrid’s favorite chair; he catches Athos’s eye and laughs, canines showing.

“Always the life of the party, our Holl.” The words come in Holland’s deep voice, but a hint of Astrid’s metallic edge lingers. It’s only there because she wants it to be; she’s always been the better mimic. “We’ll just have to make up for that. What are you going to wear, Ath?”

“I don’t know. White isn’t his color. Black isn’t mine.”

Astrid rolls Holland’s eyes; Holland stays silent. Athos is still grimacing experimentally at the mirror: pulling his hair back behind his head with one hand, then shaking it loose again; baring his teeth, then snapping them. One could tear out a man’s throat with these teeth, this jaw. Astrid’s right. Just because Holland never indulges doesn’t mean he can’t.

Appalling woman thank you.

Warnings for torture and implied body horror.

-

They will not want him after this.

The hallway is an abattoir. Holland drags himself through, one eye gone, head down, almost sobbing with pain. Gunpowder streaks and blood smear the walls. He should be able to smell the residue from the firefight. Nothing processes. The node is screaming in his ears.

“Take the eye,” the commandant had ordered. “Military-grade tech there. Don’t fuck it up. The rest of the hardware too. The jaw, the trigger fingers, the skin implants. As much as you can without killing him.”

“Without killing him?”

“He killed my brother.” For the first time their face is human with grief and rage. “On Dane’s orders. He smiled. I want him conscious and alive for at least a day after this.”

I had no choice, Holland remembers thinking. This node here at the base of my skull, the one with his brand, the one plugged into each and every nerve; I had no choice. I smile when he tells me to. No more.

Then the drill had started to whir. Drills. Someone forced a rubber gag into his mouth to stop him biting off his tongue. He loses track, after.

The node now is shrilling to the edge of madness. Useless now, nothing from it but raw feedback. Half his balance is gone without it. Not that it matters. He cannot walk. Can barely crawl. He doesn’t know where he’s crawling to.

The Danes are pirates, raiders. Wolves that rule the stars and the ‘Net alike. They have no use for a broken tool. They will kill him. Or throw him out as trash.

Free. Unwanted. An end to the pain. Unwanted.

Copper and saliva in his mouth; sobbing as he hauls his ribs and legs through a field of corpses. His fingers hit something. He searches, gropes tentatively; slowly realizes it’s a boot. Not dead, not twisted and mangled, but upright. Disconcertingly clean in the midst of all this carnage.

The whirring of the node in his ears - whining, nauseously insistent - stills to the hum of utter peace.

“Pet. Oh, pet.”

He looks up.

White and chrome and leather and steel, gleaming; long fingers cradling a gun that’s as deadly beautiful as grief; eyes and pale mouth like that of the gasoline saints that nestle in every ‘runner’s cabin. Impossible through the daze to tell if it’s Athos or Astrid. He can’t smell. He can barely hear.

He doesn’t realize he’s started to whimper - fearful animal sounds that edge each breath with pain or dumb adoration or both, both, always both - as cold fingers trace the hinge of what had been his jaw, tilt his face up to the light.

“Shhh, shhh.” No pity or revulsion at all in that face: only an endless calm like snow. Inhuman. Safe. “We can rebuild you.”

“Don’t…” He mumbled, stumbling over a tongue that feels dry, too big to fit inside his mouth. His chest burned where he traded his life for Rhy’s. The symbol may one day become second nature but for now he felt every moment of the responsibility. He had to live, so that Rhy could live. Kell had made a sacrifice… or forced Rhy to make one. Right now it doesn’t matter, because the result is the same.

He didn’t want to think about that. There was another strange pain in his back, just below his right shoulder blade, but when he tried to understand it his mind skipped away. He tried to move but chains rattle, and his wrists and ankles are kept still. 

“Sssshhh,” The voice from before continued, a little clearer now. “You must be thirsty. Drink.” A cup of water was tipped to his mouth, and Kell didn’t have the energy to fight this small piece of mercy. He drank, the water cool and clear on a throat that is so raw it burns.

Why is his throat so raw?  Oh, right, the screaming.

“Thank you,” Kell said hoarsely.

“Our first lesson.” The moment of mercy is gone. The cup, still half-full, is pulled away from him. “How to address me properly.”

“N-no, I’m still thirsty,” Kell said, and his voice cracked. His mind was coming back to him. He remembered now, remembered lying there struggling against the chains as Holland took the stone from his hand, the black stone transferring as though it had found someone more worthy to carry it. He knows-

Kell’s eyes flew open, and he winced against a bright white light and a lance of pain through his head. “The stone! Where is the stone?”

“Sssshhh. Don’t ask questions like that.” He knew that voice. It was a voice he’d been hearing for most of a decade now, passionless and sharp as a knife. His heart dropped down somewhere near his toes.

Anoshe was a word for strangers in the street, and lovers between meetings, for parents and children, friends and family. It softened the blow of leaving. Eased the strain of parting. A careful nod to the certainty of today, the mystery of tomorrow. When a friend left, with little chance of seeing home, they said anoshe. When a loved one was dying, they said anoshe. When corpses were burned, bodies given back to the earth and souls to the stream, those left grieving said anoshe.

“Oh yes, your relationship with Miss Bard is positively ordinary.“ "Be quiet.” “Crossing worlds, killing royals, saving cities. The marks of every good courtship.”

“Whatever I am, let it be enough.”