#high stakes

You do not feel your body very much, at the moment, which may be a mercy; there is a certain stiffness and pull to the areas where your flesh meets metal, plate armor melted to your dream body, and you aren't certain you would like to feel that in full.

You cannot bring yourself to move. You walked here, you recall; one foot after another, slowly, until you couldn't anymore, and then you fell. Not on your face, at least; that would've been dreadful.

The air carries the scent of burning, and the smell that comes just before rain does.

You breathe.

It is, unfortunately, all you can do at the moment.

Eventually, you will wake up. This is a dream; this experience is temporary; you can simply wait it out. You hope so, at least.

Something tells you it may not be that easy. You feel... stuck, in a way you try not to think about much the same as a grievously injured person may refuse to look at their wound — which is a funny comparison, considering that in this dream you are a grievously injured person, and presently you would not be able to look at your wounds even if you wanted to.

You likely won’t be stranded long, either way.

You are searched for. Your recollection of what had happened there, in the mind of a long-dead god, is hazy, but this you know: if you are absent from your body, they will look for you.

They will always look for you.

You let your head fall to the side and rest in your heavy numbness, watching the blurred outlines of grasses sway in the Parabolan light.

You feel them before you see them. There is a gravity to Jyoti’s presence in Parabola; a barely perceivable quality which instantly makes them into a center, a focal point.

It is to do with the way they traverse the dreamscape, you think. Bringing the path to their feet rather than their feet to the path, folding Parabola to take them where they need to go.

A controlled, unrelenting will. You do not know if they realize how beautifully terrifying they are.

You’d call for them, if you could muster the breath and voice to do it with. But the warped breastplate is crushing you still, so you simply lie there, a snake in the grass, waiting for them to stumble upon you.

The Beholder alerts them to you, you imagine, though you cannot hear the conversation. All you hear is the rustle of skirts in grass, and then a figure shadows you from the cosmogone sun.

They kneel by your side. Right about then, you manage a deep enough inhale to offer them a word.

“Darling.”

You can’t quite school your expression into a smile, but for Jyoti, you had long learned to smile with your voice.

They remain silent; you feel them set their cane aside, lean closer to you. A familiar warm hand cradles your face, brushes blood-crusted hair away from your eyes and mouth; then they are even closer, pressing a kiss to your forehead.

You feel utterly numb, and at the same time as though you may cry, as they withdraw.

“I’m here,” they tell you; quietly, firmly. “You’ll be alright.”

Something inside you relaxes. You know they would never promise what they cannot deliver upon; if they tell you with certainty that you can be fixed, it is so.

“Alright,” you respond in a creak of a whisper.

Their hands move over your form, tracing the seams of your injuries. Your body responds with a dull ache; you breathe through it and stay still (not that you’d be able to move much), and let them learn the state of you.

Scales glimmer in your peripheral vision as the Beholder travels down Jyoti’s arm, its small head pointed intently at you.

The dream you first landed in had dressed you in full plate armor and put a sword and shield in your hands. Then, it put you against a fire-breathing dragon.

Whatever were you supposed to do against a fire-breathing dragon?

You held out as long as you could. You dodged, you hid, you ran, sacrificing your body to small scrapes and burns to avoid annihilation. You knew it to be a dream; even so, you had no desire to burn to death — even temporarily.

You were so, so scared.

There was an opening, eventually. A treeline into which the beast did not follow you. The roar and glow of its fires growing more distant as you fled, and then —

Oh, then there was rain.

It washed the soot and sweat off your face, slicked your hair to your scalp, rinsed your armor clean. It left you blind, unable to see through a veil of cold water pouring unceasingly over your eyes; you could see only a grey haze and flashes of light, bright, searing —

You whine as the memory resurfaces. Or maybe Jyoti’s touch found a place on your body that can still feel pain in full; it’s hard to say.

Even with water in your eyes, you could just about make his form out against the swirling clouds; a great shadow haloed by lightning, heralded by rolling thunder.

He was —

You were —

It was bright. And it was as though your heart had stopped, and as though suddenly you had thirty of them, each beating in a different rhythm; you felt your limbs more viscerally than you’d felt anything ever before, and then you could not feel your body at all.

And then, belated, came the pain.

You could not put words to it, at the time. You were small and scared, wishing desperately to be elsewhere, or at the very least for a stronger weapon to defend yourself with — and then you were a butterfly pinned, a fly pulled apart, a raindrop shattering against a window. There was no language in you, or much anything else; your surface had cracked, your contents spilled out.

A bolt of lightning had passed through you. Your mind would piece that together later, playing puzzle with your own scattered recollection. The heat of it had melted and warped your armor, joined it with your skin and caused it to ripple oddly. A terrible, stiff weight; you felt much like a living statue once you’d stumbled back into Parabola at large, your right hand fused into a death grip on the handle of a sword you’d dragged behind you ever since.

You walked, and walked, and walked —

You become aware, all of a sudden, of a new pain near your jaw; a sharper trobbing, a pulsing sting.

The Fingerking had sunk its fangs into the soft lower part of your cheek, injecting its venom. That would account for the sudden surge of recollection — a small mystery solved — and would suggest…

Thoughts flood into your mind before you can muster a please, don’t.

You will not remember most of it, afterwards. It feverishly speaks to you, in images and sensations and feelings, of a brother; of wing and scale, of hatching, of slithering and of storms and of —

You do not know how long this goes on before its fangs are removed from you. You hear Jyoti’s voice, unusually stern — addressing you? Have you done something wrong? —

Their hand on your face again. You attempt to ask whether something’s amiss, but your mind seems even more detached from your body in the aftermath of Fingerking venom; the words do not form.

You can only lie there and feel the gentle warmth of your lover, their arm moving to gently support you behind the shoulders as they pull, expertly, on some unseen string rooted firmly within you, and Parabola bends itself to their will.

You are impossibly heavy. Suddenly, to them, you are light. You are lifted with ease, cradled against their chest, same way as they’d carried you to bed many times before. Vertigo strikes at you violently, but stronger yet is the relief: they are close, you are off the ground, they will carry you home.

“I’ll take you to a safe place,“ they tell you quietly. “It will be dark.“

And then the world folds around you. It is so much stranger to be in the center of it; much like the feeling of trying to escape something in a dream yet remaining in place no matter how much you run.

You rest your head on your lover’s shoulder as they walk — lightning flashing behind your eyelids and thunder rolling in your ears, the Beholder coiling restlessly somewhere nearby, —and let whatever happens happen.

The darkness they warn of is instant and absolute. One moment, cosmogone light filters through your eyelids; the next, it is gone. It happens as you blink, and in the aftermath of the light behind your eyes you think it to be temporary; but then it persists and persists, no difference between closing your eyes and keeping them open.

You know, intellectually, that Storm’s touch had not blinded you. You know this must be the safe place Jyoti had mentioned; and of course they’d find safety in darkness, sight never being an issue in the first place and few things being willing to follow them here.

Some mindless animal part of you is still scared. It makes you cling closer, as much as you can with your steel-welded physique; you resent the gauntlets on your hands for not letting you hold onto Jyoti proper.

They adjust their grip on you. A hand in your hair. That’s somewhat better.

But then they stop, and you feel yourself being set down, and panic sets in anew: you cannot imagine being left alone like this, unable to move, unable to know where they are. In the grass, at least you had the sky for company.

“Please,“ you manage, “please, don’t let go — “

This startles them for a moment, you think; there’s a hitch in their movements, a split-second freeze.

“I won’t,“ they respond then, grave and intense, quicker than an answer would usually come; it’s as if they are upset by the mere idea that you think they would do this.

You are in far too much pain and far too afraid to feel guilty. All that comes is relief.

“Thank you,“ you breathe. “Thank you, darling.“

The surface you now recline upon is… ground, you think. Grass, or moss, or something similar, covers it; but you don’t have time to fully process the texture that brushes against your cheek, because in the next moment Jyoti seems to think better of it, and in another folding of space there is now fabric beneath you, a blanket maybe, and your head is supported on a small dense pillow.

True to their word, Jyoti has not let go. Their hand rests on the side of your neck, where you can feel it.

For a few beats, they are silent. You wait patiently, finding comfort in their pulse next to yours.

“I’ll remove the armor,“ they say finally. “It will hurt. There isn’t a painless way to do it, but it has to be done.“

You exhale and attempt a smile nothing and no one can see.

“That sounds about right.“

Their thumb brushes the side of your jaw.

“You can cry if you need to. I’ll hold you.“

“That’s alright; I’m quite experienced with pain.“

Your hands, ruined digging through dream-dirt, have made you quite familiar. You aren’t quite certain if the worst of your spasms can measure up to the feeling of your living flesh being pried apart, but you suppose you are about to find out.

If anyone must pry you apart, you’d much rather it be Jyoti.

You tell them as much, wrapping your words in a hoarse laugh, punctuating with a kiss to the palm of their hand. You are quite grateful for the numbness, now; it stops you from shaking.

“You don’t have to do that,“ they tell you, quietly, gravely. “You can be scared. “

The laugh that comes out of you now is much more choked than the first one.

“Oh, darling, I am,“ you tell them. “But it’s nothing new, and you are here with me. I’d rather laugh than cry.“

You almost believe your own lie, just then.

“Come now, let’s get this sorted,“ you say softly. “We haven’t got all day.“

A short moment of silence. In the impenetrable darkness, you hear and feel them shift, and then they are close, kissing your forehead just like when they first found you.

“We have as much time as we need,“ they say. “But I’ll try to be quick. Best to do it efficiently.“

Their left hand warm and gentle on your neck, their right comes to rest on your chest, on the warped steel, drifts toward a crack between the plates and then pushes in.

It feels like nothing, at first. There is a pang of numb surprise at how little resilience the steel offers, some wonder at how you can feel it, feel the metal part and give way to their hand as — as your own flesh often has. The bawdy comparison nearly makes you giggle; and then hot pain pulses as Jyoti’s fingers hit what you can only assume is the place where steel meets skin, pressing on the seared meeting point between yourself and the armor.

You grit your teeth.

They gently hook their fingers underneath the metal, and pull.

You have always thought yourself a master of silent distress. You had long learned to quietly breathe through pain, to cry unheard; to maintain your dignity, the illusion of resilience, even as you crumbled apart.

When the armor first begins to separate from you, you meet the sensation with a long ragged inhale; not a sob, not quite. Then there is no room in your lungs for more air and you must exhale, which you do quickly, and then inhale again, but drawing air through clenched teeth no longer suffices to carry you through what you feel, and a strange animal groan escapes you. Your own voice seems to you pleading, but you don’t quite know what for.

Certainly you do not want Jyoti to stop. Not now, with cold air washing over parts of you that had long been covered; with pain so searing that it feels burning and freezing at once; with armor plates half-peeled off you like a hangnail. The thought of a pause is terrifying; against all odds you find your mind begging for more, more pain, because pain is progress, progress brings you closer to being done.

In the end, you do cry. There is nothing you can do to stop tears from welling up in your eyes, hot as your blood welling up in the empty spaces where armor once was; they stream down your temples, past your ears, soaking into your already-damp hair.

You do not sob. The spasming motion required for that would be too taxing, too painful. You simply whine, low, angry, as your lover works on unmaking you; wordless save for their name when the pain spikes, wrung from your lungs with the last of your air.

They pull apart your breastplate as if it is made of paper, then work outwards, freeing your limbs. Underneath you find yourself wearing unfamiliar clothes, tailored, you assume, by the dream that had trapped you; burned through and fused with the rest of you where your body and armor were joined.

By the time they are done, the entirety of you aches; your breaths are hoarse and ragged, your limbs twitching uncontrollably with too much pain to process.

You had stopped crying. You can only guess the extent of your injury — the darkness mercifully hides it from you — but even so, even in the agony of it, you would not go back to the horrid heavy numbness.

Your eyes are closed, and there is no lightning behind them.

Your head is gently tilted up, supported in their hand; the rim of a cup presses to your lips. Unthinkingly, obediently, you drink; all it is is cold water, and it’s wonderfully delicious to you.

Once you had drank, Jyoti sets the cup away, and you are cradled against their chest again ever so gently. They hold you as tight as they can, avoiding the parts of you they had torn open.

You tuck your head under their chin and allow yourself a single hushed whimper.

They stroke your hair. You feel their lips on the top of your head, on your temple, on your jaw.

You are reminded, strangely, of your first night in their home. You were not lovers, then, far from it; but they had taken you in when you could not bear to go home, and held you close as you trembled in the aftermath of a terrible decision you’d almost put into action.

A warm body next to yours: that’s all that stood between you and the abyss. You clung to them desperately. You did, after all, want to live.

Cantigaster venom, you think, would’ve hurt worse than this. Probably. You will never find out for certain.

A warm body next to yours is all that stands between you and the lonely darkness, now, and you are safe in the knowledge they would never let you go.

Eventually, they lower you back down onto the blanket; they hover next to you, their mouth over your ear, and tell you in a whisper:

“Breathe. Think about me.”

You have a ready quip about how you can be safely assumed to be thinking about them at all times, really; you do not have a chance to get it out before their lips cover yours, and your other thoughts are lost in the warmth of them.

They lean closer, bring their arms around you and lift — and as your back leaves the ground, there is the slightest pull of resistance as something is left behind: your aches, your stiffness, your… wounds. As you are brought into their embrace once more, you are whole.

You gasp with the relief of it. It is done in mere seconds, under cover of darkness where you have no chance to observe the process; Parabola being a place of perception, perhaps that is necessary for it to work.

“Better?” Jyoti asks quietly.

You nod, momentarily overwhelmed, forgetting for a moment that they cannot see. In lieu of a response, you simply hold onto their arm, savoring the sensation of your hands being yours again, mangled as they may be in their natural state.

“…Drakona?”

Finally, you realize.

“Yes. Yes, darling. Jyoti. My dear. Thank you.”

You feel them exhale, quietly relieved.

“Good.”

Then, they lean down to kiss you.

You both mean it to be brief, you believe; then, as it often happens, you lose to your urges, and it is not. Within seconds you are upon them, clinging, kissing, able, at last, to get your hands on their face and on their shoulders and on their buttons; and they respond with much the same.

Deep down, you are weary from the fear and pain you had endured; but you are desperate to feel anything that isn’t that, to replace the memory of burning agony with something softer. You would be craving Jyoti even if they were not here, in this state — and they very much are.

It would be quite a relief to be freed from those tatters you are still wearing.

You brush against the Beholder’s scales somewhere around their collar; it helpfully slithers away, allowing you to undo their jacket. You do so, slide your arms underneath, bundle yourself close to them; they draw you further in without breaking the kiss. It isn’t long before your back is on the ground again, Jyoti on top of you, and all you can hear and feel is them; exactly what you want, in this moment.

The darkness, at this point, has become decidedly not frightening to you.

“Jyoti,” you whisper between kisses; somewhat of a feat, to manage enough air to speak, “Jyoti, where are we?”

They pause right where they were, under your jaw, inches away from your skin.

You wait out the silence.

“In my reflection,” they answer at last. “I found it years ago. It’s kept me safe. It will keep you safe, too.”

You let out a small surprised laugh, despite yourself.

“…A reflection can be a place?”

“It can be anything.” They press a kiss to your neck. “A person.” Another. “An object.” Another. “Sometimes, a space.”

“Interesting.” It is. You hadn’t quite considered this possibility. You can feel the vibration of your own voice against their lips at the base of your throat. “…And you are on good terms with yours, I take it.”

They hum affirmatively against your skin.

“I can always find my way to it. And Glasswork is easier here.”

“…Show me?”

That gives them pause, again. They consider.

“…How?”

You huff out a smile, let some more gentle playfulness slip into your voice as you answer:

“Show me what you can do. With me.”

You can feel their breath hitch as they realize what you are asking for.

“Are you… sure?”

Their voice is deeply hesitant.

“Yes. Darling, I’ve had an awfully boring… however long I’ve been in the storm, and then in the grass.”

“Two days.”

Good God. That is a disaster for later.

“Well, I’ve had an awfully boring two days, and I don’t feel like reckoning with the aftermath of them just yet.”

They think. It’s a longer pause than before.

“That’s… reasonable,” they say at last. “I can. If you truly want it.”

A thrill of excitement stirs within you.

“Yes,” you whisper.

“…Alright.”