#fable tag

This would typically make Sola irritable, yet since it's Farah, it just makes her shrug. “Well, it’s true. You protect me, and then what? You die. I protect you, and then what? I die. That’s just how it is here. It’s basically like those old western movies, except it’s not like that at all. It’s worse cause we’ve got computers and shit.” 

It takes Fable a moment to catch his meaning. “Wh- oh. Oh,” they can’t quite hide the slight flush that creeps into their face at this suggestion. “Do you really- there’s no music.”

But even as they say that, one of the mirrors behind him catches their eye. It’s reflecting Eilyf, or at least it should be, but instead of showing his back, the reflection is facing them. With a familiar roguish wink, the reflection pulls out a violin and begins to play. Music fills the room, echoing as though not from a single mirror-bound violinist, but from the walls themselves. Eilyf startles, and spins to see the reflection playing with his typical grace and energy. He laughs, then whirls back to Fable, extending a hand. “May I have this dance?”

It’s impossible to resist. Fable steps onto the floor and takes his hand, gasping as they feel the air in the room shift, as though they’ve stepped through an invisible barrier. Then they look at Eilyf, and gasp again.

His clothes have transformed into a full-on suit, complete with a long coat and thigh-high boots. The green and gold coloring perfect matches his fair skin and red-gold curls, and he looks… well, gorgeous.

“Eil,” Fable starts, intending to point out his new outfit, but they trail off when they find him staring at them, eyes wide and soft, color in his cheeks. They look down at themself and find that their clothes have changed as well, into a floor-length slinky black dress, sleeveless with a high collar. Silver beaded stars glimmer around the collar, and a long slit runs down one side, revealing their combat boots still in place. Their tattoos are in full view, the numbers running up and down their arms standing out, black against pale skin. “Oh.”

“You, um,” Eilyf won’t stop staring at them, taking in everything from their dress to their hair, which feels cleaner and fluffier than it has in years, the shaved side neatly buzzed and the long side falling in gentle blue waves nearly to their shoulder. “You look-”

His eyes drop, and Fable suddenly feels ridiculously self-conscious. Then he smirks. “Is that a knife strapped to your thigh or are you just happy to see me?”

Fable grins, feeling the familiar weight of the sheathes on either side. “It’s two knives.”

“Even better,” matching their grin, Eilyf pulls them closer. “Shall we?”

And they do. The song is energetic and upbeat, and their steps match its pace. Fable hasn’t really danced before, but they get the hang of it quickly, used to the idea of complicated footwork and grace from years of knife fighting. They still trip up a few times, but Eilyf doesn’t comment on it.

As they dance, they catch glimpses of the reflections in the mirror, each of them different. In one, Fable dances, surrounded by iridescent black and white tentacles that it takes them a moment to realize are attached to them. In that one, Eilyf seems faded, his colors muted, his eyes glazed. In another, the two of them twirl by a lakeside at sunset. In another, Eilyf’s face drips with blood, his head gouged open. In yet another, Fable stands alone, the ballroom cracked and ruined around them, something dark and crawling emerging from the cracks. Fable tears their eyes away and decides to focus instead on the dancing.

They twirl around the ballroom, their boots tapping on the tile floor, the light catching in the stars on Fable’s dress and the gold buttons on Eilyf’s coat. Fable spins out, letting their dress flare around them as they spin and spin and spin. And then they twirl back, stumbling, dizzy, into Eilyf’s arms. They trip as they reach him, and he catches them expertly in a dip. “Alright?” He asks. They nod, breathless. He grins, but then his hold on them slips and they fall.

“Oh, you bastard,” Fable groans from the floor. Eilyf laughs and flops down on his back next to them. “I swear I didn’t do that on purpose.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Fable snorts, but there’s no malice behind it. The two of them lie there, on the floor of a ballroom that shouldn’t exist, in a hotel that shouldn’t exist, in comfortable silence born from the two of them being thrown together in this place, this time.

“Thank you,” Fable says after a while. “For this. This was- Thank you.”

“Of course,” Eilyf says simply, and if Fable hat met his eyes in that moment, they would have seen a sorrow so impossible to fathom, it would have scared them.