tell me we’re dead and I’ll love you even more;
She is not dead, should not be here.
But she is not alive, either – instead, she is in the queer realm betwixt the two.
She sleeps, see – but she does more than that. In sleep – in dreams – she is a queen, she is a goddess.
In dreams, she makes the birds.
In dreams, there is Corsair, a purple so dark it’s almost black.
In dreams, there is Iris, rainbow-sheened, wings as large as she is.
In dreams the birds do not fall sick. She does not watch them lose their language. Nothing is lost. In dreams they are a family and they build castles.
But every night is a reset – when she opens her eyes the dream-life is gone, and when she goes back to sleep she must rebuild it.
She would sleep forever if she could, but her body does not allow it, her eyes snap open with annoying regularity. She makes no place for herself in the world. She doesn’t want this world. She wants the world without shadows, the one she built, the one where Corsair and Iris are alive.
Tonight is different, though.
Tonight there are no birds. No castles. No rainbow daughters. Tonight there is a space, dark, endless, timeless, and she listens for the demon she once knew.
She tries to steer herself back. She should be able to control this. She is the dream-manipulator, the queen, this is her realm, invaded.
And there is a presence.
It feels live in a way that is different, electric. She is uneasy. She tries to wake up, but cannot.
“Hello?” she calls out, her voice echoing in the hallways of the dead.
heartworm
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(he can appear as C now OR they can talk first, your call <33)
It's in the nature of the beast to do as it will.
He tries not to move while the ‘doctor’ makes meticulous incisions across his throat and torso, but he lifts his head up slightly to watch; each new gushing wound is large enough to slip a hand or finger inside, he doesn’t even flinch when the white suited gentleman makes a fist and punches his hand through a slit in his lower abdomen. Grunts, yes, but the pain doesn’t become unbearable until the doctor starts feeling around and forcibly tries to pry out his spleen; he hisses, voiceless, and violently struggles against his binds. His hands bound above his head and his feet held tightly together by thick leather straps, it isn’t long before he gives up the fight. “Save your strength,” the doctor chuckles. “You’re going to need it.”
Grunting in response, he lies his head back on the pillow and tries to focus on the lightbulb swaying lazily above them. It burns—it burns, it feels like his whole body has been lit on fire, and while tears leak from the corners of his eyes, he doesn’t dare move. It’s only the beginning, after all. He’s only taking him apart.
It’s when he starts putting him back together that things really start to hurt.
Something hits the floor with a plop, but he pays it no mind.
Instead, he focuses on the lightbulb swaying lazily above them.
And so the hours creep right on by.
Kept alive by the grace of magic alone, he feels nothing when his captor flips him off the table and into a puddle of his own blood; the doctor grabs him by his hair with one hand and lifts him slightly off the floor, reaches in to his hollowed sternum and from the top begins pulling back his ribs. He pops them off clean from his spine and it’s the last thing Tarnished remembers, really, before everything falls out of focus—literally; the room around him appears to drop into oblivion, the ‘doctor’ vanishes and the floor gives way. He is certain he is falling, too. Falling into nothing, the way he always wanted to.
Dying at last, perhaps.
He hopes, he prays, but death never comes; instead, there is light, and a woman and her perfect little world that she crafts so wonderfully it makes him sick. He presses against the veil, watches her create her lover and their child again and again; he cannot help hating her, cannot help wanting to destroy all that she seems to have. He presses harder against the veil until one night it gives, until one night he breaks free and slips into her haven long before she has time to rebuild.
Tarnished arrives in the shape of her purple lover, smiling—sickly sweet; she should know, but she doesn’t, she won’t realize it until it’s too late. “Hello,” he answers in Corsair’s voice, reaching out to touch her muzzle gently. But that’s the only gentleness she will know from him. She merely endures the things he does to her in the dark in the name of ‘love’ and he keeps up the guise by whispering sweet nothings in her ear—but leaves her bruised and bloody for the dawn to find. He finds his escape, then; it comes in the form of bright white light and that’s when he realizes he’s home. This is it.
This is the sunrise.
TARNISHED
Vanquish x Nocturnal
equus mutatio, immortality, disease manipulation, trait immunity
tell me we’re dead and I’ll love you even more;
For a moment there are warning bells.
There is a noise – loud, too loud, a sound of cracking
(bones)
off in the distance. Somewhere there is laughter and it’s a sound she knows, it’s a sound lurking in the very marrow of her. Fear collides with air in her lungs and she doesn’t – can’t – breathe. She tries to take the dream back form whatever – whomever – holds the reins but she is not strong enough, she is kept here.
The déjà vu of it is terrible, she waits for the voice, for it to condemn her to pick who will die next.
Waits to be made executioner again.
(She has never hurt a soul.)
(She has killed a legion, her creations tearing each other to pieces.)
The bells fade.
The world shifts.
The void and vacuum of space is gone, replaced now by a land. A barren one, nothing but dirt, and far too many shadows.
But it’s okay. She’s worked with this before.
Let there be light, she whispers, and from the sky pours a beam of light so dazzling she gasps, draws back.
The light recedes, and in its place is a man, a deep and rich purple, the color of royalty.
Hello, he says, and she smiles. She reaches out.
The bells chime.
He tells her he loves her.
He tells her he loves her as he destroys her and she wants to believe it, because she is a stupid girl who has never been loved, who lives in dreams and nowhere else.
He tells her she’s beautiful as he strips skin from her and she wants to believe it, because she has always wanted to be beautiful.
He tells her this is what she deserves and she believes it, because she is the one who sent horses to their deaths, who once created birds and panthers but could not save them.
The bells chime.
What’s left of her wakes, aching, in a cold sweat. What’s left of her is bruised and sick and alone.
What’s left of him grows in her stomach, magic.
(She doesn’t realize it for the months. She tries to forget what was done. What was said. But her stomach grows and she cannot deny it.)
What was made between them is born at the witching hour, two daughters. One is a pale lavender, like him, but diluted.
One is white and shines rainbow in the light and looks like a dream come alive and when Heartworm looks at her she thinks she might go mad.
HEARTWORM
this is confusing af but ta dah, they are born. only a season late.
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