#baritz

“Hello, sirs! I’m glad I caught you both! I, um, I just wanted to request,” he twiddles his thumbs, feeling suddenly anxious, “i-if it’s not too much to ask, I mean…”

He has Kravitz’s attention too, now, and both reapers wait patiently as he takes a deep breath and finishes the thought. “I’d like to meet the, um. The person you turn into? When you possess each other?”

“Oh, Baritz?” Barry looks over at Kravitz. “I don’t… see why not?”

Kravitz takes a few moments longer to think about it, but he nods. “Certainly we can.”

They both stand up. Barry doesn’t drop the illusion that gives him the appearance of skin, and Kravitz doesn’t revert to skeletal form either, which makes the next part look terribly strange. Barry turns away from Kravitz and gives Angus a wink before tilting back in a sort of trust fall. Instead of catching him, Kravitz just lets him phase right through his body.

And then their forms darken and warp together, melding into a singular form that flickers and sputters with the unsteady energy of magic that is trying to combine. Baritz forms down on one knee, facing the ground. Angus can’t see his face under the hood, but he watches one of Baritz’s hands on the floor, struggling momentarily to reconstruct fake skin over the bones.

Then, Baritz rises, his shadowed face sporting a wide grin. He absolutely towers over Angus, who takes a nervous step back, though he’s smiling back. “Hello! I heard from ourselves that you wanted to meet me,” Baritz says, then furrows his brow. “That makes sense, right?”

“I think so,” Angus says. “Um, hello, sir! I’m Angus…” he falters, predicting the response to that. But before Baritz can say he already knows, Angus continues, “I-I just wanted to say, thanks for also helping save the world? You’re really cool!”

“Aw, that’s my line, mister world’s-greatest-detective!”

Angus’ nervous smile breaks into a grin. “Thanks! I also wanted to meet you because you’re kind of like a mystery!” He pauses to look at the exaggerated facial features glowing from the shadow of Baritz’s hood. “How does your face work?”

Baritz laughs and then reaches down, and Angus suddenly finds himself being lifted up. Then he’s set down, and realizes he’s sitting on Baritz’s lower pair of arms, crossed beneath him and raised up so he’s nearly eye-level with the fusion.

Baritz says, “S’just an illusory shadow! You can touch my face if you want. Or, I mean, you can try!”

Even though he’s pretty sure of what to expect, Angus still reaches out with one hand. He goes for Baritz’s forehead, because that seems like the least intrusive part of his face to bother. The glowing eyes on the surface of the shadow shimmer and warp around his wrist. Angus’ hand meets bone, coming to rest on an impossibly large human skull. “Wow.”

“Weird, right?” Baritz grins as Angus withdraws his hand, returning his eyes to their normal shape. “What else d’you wanna know?”

Angus is more than ready with another question. “Now that you’re fused, does Kravitz understand the phone?”

“You know what a phone is?” Baritz says, and continues without waiting for a response, “Hey, that’s a good question.”

Suddenly his arms shift under Angus, but his upper hands are already at the boy’s sides, preventing him from falling. Baritz isn’t even looking at what he’s doing, distractedly moving towards the couch as he transfers Angus to sit atop one of his upper biceps.

Angus clenches the fabric of the sleeve under him with both hands. Baritz freezes, and the hand of the arm Angus is sitting on curls inwards to grip Angus’ shoulder. “Sorry! Sorry. Didn’t mean to, uh--forgot I’m that tall.”

“Th-that’s okay, sir,” says Angus, shifting one of his hands to place it over top of the one on his shoulder. “I still want to know if you can understand the phone.”

Baritz glances at him. “You want down first?”

“I’m good,” Angus decides. He wants to see Baritz’s interactions with the phone up close.

“Okay,” Baritz shrugs slightly, but Angus feels a hand rest on his back--must be from the arm below him. The fusion slowly sits down on the couch and picks up the phone.

“Let’s see.” He flips it open and starts navigating the interface, pressing the buttons with one left hand, since both his right ones are occupied holding Angus firmly in place. “Well, this is easier than I--than Kravitz thought.” As he clicks the button to open a game full of colorful, weird-shaped blocks, he turns to Angus with a goofy-exasperated look. Angus laughs.

“Well, that solves that! Let’s see if Kravitz retains it outside of fusion, eh?” Baritz says, and Angus feels a weird buzzing not unlike a static shock.

“Um!” Angus says urgently, clutching the fabric harder. “Are you going t-WHOA!”

Baritz seems to realize mid-unfusing that he’s still holding up a child, and Angus gets yanked down, towards Baritz’ lap--or where it was a moment ago--and then the huge hands around him are gone, and he’s sitting on the couch with two human-sized pairs of arms embracing him.

He looks up and realizes that it’s Barry and Kravitz, sitting on either side of him, hugging him from both sides with tightly shut eyes like they’re bracing for an explosion. Dazed, Angus says, “Welcome back, sirs.”

Kravitz and Barry both blink, coming back to themselves, and relax their grips. “Oh my god, Angus, I’m so sorry--”

“M-Me too, jeez, bud, that was--”

“No,” he answers himself decisively. He’s alone. But that doesn’t make sense, because Barry didn’t escape, and Kravitz didn’t leave, he’s sure. So then…

He looks down at his hands. His viewpoint is too far from the ground, but he’s not floating. And his hands are… there are four of them. Okay.

“Ohh,” he says faintly, “Oh, the possession did work, I think? This doesn’t make any sense!” He begins to pace back and forth, agitated. He’s Barry, but he’s not. He’s Kravitz, but he’s not. Barry possessed Kravitz, or tried to, and then this happened. Whatever this is. Whatever he is.

“I’m both of us,” he says quietly to a dumpster, and it’s the first thing he’s said that feels right. But as soon as he voices the thought, everything feels terribly wrong.

He leaves the alley, keeping just enough presence of mind to cast Disguise Self. It hides his lower pair of arms and creates an opaque shadow in his hood, hiding his skull face. He gets some weird looks, but at least he looks like a suspicious goliath instead of a weird monster.

“The Raven Queen could fix this,” he mumbles to himself, arms crossed and back hunched as though trying to reattain a normal human height. “But then--no, I-I’d die. Or Barry would? But Barry’s a part of whatever I… we… are, right now, so that’s a big part of me that’d get killed.

“Seems bad to get so attached to my own existence w-when I shouldn’t exist,” he adds with a grim hint of a laugh. His pace speeds up, and people jump out of his way even as he does his best to maneuver around everyone he overtakes on the sidewalk.

He catches sight of a cafe across the street and decides to duck in. Good place to think, maybe.

He says, “I’d like to order a coffee,” and the barista says, “What kind,” and the next three minutes are an excruciatingly awkward standoff where he politely asks about every item on the menu before settling on a small black coffee.

“And what’s your name?” asks the barista with a pained smile, as though she expects him to struggle with this too.

Terrified of taking any longer than he already has, he lets the first sounds on his mind tumble out of his mouth. “Bar… itz.”

She puts a marker to the cup. “B-A-R-I-T...S?”

“Uh, Z.”

“Okay,” she says sweetly. “I’ll call your name when it’s ready, Baritz.”

“Thank you,” he says, extremely glad for the illusory shadow hiding his face. He squeezes himself into a seat in the corner, ignoring the many glances from other patrons in favor of staring down at the center of the square table he’s sitting at.

His lower pair of hands, still invisible, grip the edge of the table. He drums his fingers against the underside of the table and plants his upper hands on the sides of his face, elbows on the table. The wavy patterns in the wood take all his focus, as the least difficult thing to think about at the moment.

“Some upsides,” he whispers, carefully quiet enough to keep anyone else from overhearing, “This is… groundbreaking magic, absolutely unheard of. Could be revolutionary. An interplanar mashup of undead arcana--who could have guessed it would mix so perfectly into… well, me?”

He blinks and turns his gaze to the window. “Interplanar…?”

Something about the word hurts his head. Something he doesn’t want to think about, something he shouldn’t know. His hands clasp together and shake.

“Black coffee for Baritz,” says a voice that’s too nearby to still be behind the counter. He looks up the see the barista setting the cup directly down on his table. “You just seem like you’re having a… day. And it’s not too busy right now, so I figured I’d just make this easier for you.”

“Th-Thanks--Thank you,” he says unsteadily as she returns to the counter. He stares at the cup. Black coffee… he doesn’t want this. He doesn’t even like this.

He doesn’t like any of this. He shouldn’t be one person. He shouldn’t even… they shouldn’t…

“What if I succeeded?” The cup dents in his grip. “What would you do?”

As he stares at the cup, waiting for an answer he doesn’t have, the conversations of other patrons slowly filter into his hearing.

“That’s illegal, dude.”

“Seats are so easy to get, though.”

“That’s not the only--how are you even gonna get there?”

“What? There’s a train line that runs right through there. It’s a big station.”

“Yeah, and all the tickets are gonna be overpriced, with crowded trains. Tons of people go to Goldcliff, and they don’t exactly draw the most savory crowd…”

Baritz frowns. “Goldcliff…?”

Coffee leaks onto his hand from the top of the crushed cup, and the lid pops off the top. He can tell that the liquid is hot, but it doesn’t actually hurt his semi-corporeal hand.

He wipes it all up using napkins from the table’s dispenser, and then quickly stands up and walks out the door, dropping the still-mostly-full coffee cup and wad of wet napkins in the trash on his way out.

Goldcliff. He walks briskly down the street, paying slightly less attention to the people he’s nearly barrelling over. He shouldn’t go to Goldcliff. Barry had meant to go there, there’s something there, someone--no, no, no, he shouldn’t think about it, he can’t think about it.

His legs take him all the way out to the edge of town as his thoughts conflict with one another. He can’t go there; he doesn’t even know if his magic will work like normal, and trying to teleport would be dangerous. And he just--he shouldn’t. No matter how much he wants to know, how much he feels like the answers to all of his questions are just on the tip of his--

“I don’t want to fight!” he shouts into the open air. His disguise dissipates with it. He’s already walked far past the edge of town, beyond where anyone will notice him.

“Please,” he says, and knocks his head against a tree. Then he sits down against the trunk, lower arms crossed and upper hands clasped together. “Let’s just--I don’t want this any more than you.”

He shakes his head and stares at the sky. “How are we gonna get out of this one?” The clouds just drift lazily. He sighs. He has to stop being, so that Barry and Kravitz can keep going.

But what are they even going to do? The same thing as always? The same stupid, silly game. They both know it, and they both keep playing.

“It’s nothing against you personally,” he says. “I know you know that. I… I can’t apologize.” He leans back against the tree. “I have to do this, you know? It’s everything to me. I don’t think you’d understand.”

He closes his eyes. “Or maybe I do.”

Something feels nauseating, and he just shuts his eyes tighter. It feels like his heart dropping through his stomach, leaving an empty space in his chest, hollow and painful. He feels like so much less, now. Small, but not so small that the hole in his chest completely disappears.

His hands--just two-- drag their fingers through the grass and dirt. He opens his eyes.

Next to him, draped in a familiar bright red, a figure sits just shy of leaning on his shoulder, hands covering his face. Kravitz blanks. “Barry…?”

Barry lowers his hands, trembling. There are tears in his eyes when he turns to face Kravitz. “W-Well, that was…”

“Yeah.”

“F-Forget about everything I--We thought a-about,” Barry says, “T-Towards the end, th-there. Just s-some nonsense anxiety. D-Don’t worry about it.”

“I don’t have any bounties recently sighted near Goldcliff,” Kravitz shrugs. “Just get out of here before it’s been too long to justify not getting out my scythe.”

“R-Right, yeah,” Barry says quickly. He stands up and reaches behind his shoulder, snapping his fingers. A portal manifests behind him and he hesitates briefly. Then he gives Kravitz a tiny smile and says, “W-Well, nice to meet us.”