"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
I’ll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies tell you my sins so you can sharpen your knife
The last thing he remembers is becoming a monster.
He had fallen on that sword, had all but begged them to blame him, and they had, turning on him. He could have fought back – a monster would have fought, would have torn their flesh, ripped wings from sockets – but he did not. He went to this fantastical death willingly enough, as he had many times before, in many worlds, all these worlds where he had drowned and burned and fought great beasts.
He isn’t aware of the time passing. He isn’t aware of the world shifting, and going quiet.
He wakes, alone.
This is not a surprise. Alone is a default state, for Sleaze. He is a man much too frail and odd, and has never been a good fit for friendship. He’s loved, and wanted to love, but they had gone and he had let them, had not fought as he should, because deep down he felt they had wanted to leave, that it was better for them to leave. It was too unkind to ask them to stay, to watch his mind fall piece by piece, to watch him partake in the slow and laborious task of separating fantasy from reality.
He wakes, alone, and the first thing he realizes is that his wings are gone. He pictures them, and for a moment they flutter in his vision, and he feels the weight of them against his shoulders, but when he cranes his neck they are gone again. He is used to this, his meager powers have changed often as he dips and dives into other worlds, but he feels himself missing those wings in a way he had not missed the other changes.
He feels something else, too, something ancient and odd in his veins that had not been there before. He wonders if it’s an illness.
He stands, and moves. He does not know how much time has passed, but as he walks, he is aware of silence. He is used to passing by strangers, to the low murmur of others’ conversations, but there is nothing, and his footsteps are too-loud in this unnatural quiet.
It comes to him, then, so glaringly obvious that he laughs, a dry, harsh noise that sends a whirl of starlings from the nearby brush.
It’s another world. Another test. He has once again been called, once again imprisoned in a strange reality where he must play by their odd rules.
And so he will. He will obey their whims, will do whatever needs doing, so that he might be sent home again, wherever that may be.
She recognizes him.
Perhaps even more than that, she knows him.
And what a strange thing it is to feel that knowing pulsate in the marrow of her bones in a world that has gone so terribly awry. (So much has changed, you see, since the darkness lifted. She had been a thing meant for being seen in the darkness—see the way she glows, see how the galaxies spiral—but perhaps had not been meant to see in the light.
But this is a familiar thing in a world full of strange things, this figure.
Even if, at first, she cannot quite remember how she knows him.
(The heart knows, of course. The heart cannot forget the thing that grew it, that fed it, that birthed it.)
It has been so long. Wars have been waged, kingdoms have fallen. And yet, they remain.
She is quiet in her approach, remembering how the darkness had turned them both briefly electric. How many years have passed since then? She has lost count or, perhaps, she never kept count in the first place.
“You,” she says, whisper-soft, tilting her fine head. And maybe the strangest thing is this: she smiles. “I know you.”
She does not call him father, she does not call him mother, though he is both. Instead, she calls him: “Sleaze.”
I’ll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies tell you my sins so you can sharpen your knife
Stitched, he had thought at the time, when he first laid eyes on her, the impossible thing that had grown inside him. Both of us, sewn together.
How in love he had been. With her, with Isakov, with the world. How odd it had been to see what things could be like when they worked out.
He sees her and for a moment it floods back, the peace of their small family, her first wobbling steps, the impossible milk that flowed for her and only her. He’d always wondered what she had become, what she might look like full-grown, and here she is, beautiful, and Isakov haunts the structure of her, and the ache he feels is wonderful and terrible both.
He makes a noise, a sob knotting in his throat, and he takes a step before her, and she flickers in his vision and the realization strikes him, as fast and deadly as a viper’s strike.
Of course it isn’t her. Whatever faerie or demon is pulling the strings of this barren land, this other world has dipped into his memories and hand-picked the things most beloved to come and test him.
“Sigrid,” he croaks.
He stares at her, taking in her, all the while wondering, what will I have to do to her?
She could touch him, she thinks, simply reach out and press her mouth flush against that dark shoulder. She could breathe into him the way he’d breathed into her, once.
But, though he had birthed her, nurtured her, though she’d know his heartbeat before she knew anyone else’s, there is a divide between them. She knows him, but they could be strangers.
He breathes her name the same way he had all those years ago. Both of them had, Sleaze and Isakov, the two things she loved most in the world. Her name, the first tangible thing they had given her. And she smiles and tilts her head and reaches toward him without touching him.
There is something wrong. She can feel it in the way he hesitates. This is not a happy reunion, though it should be. Though she should curl her neck around his and hold him hard and fast. I am you, she wants to say, you are me. Mother, father, all of that and more.
“Are you all right?” she asks and then, finally, touches him. Just barely. Just enough. “I’ve missed you, Sleaze,” she tells him and takes a small, shuffling (cautious?) step closer to him. “Where have you been?”
I’ll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies tell you my sins so you can sharpen your knife
He feels frail before her, breakable. He is used to so many kinds of torture. He has fought so many monsters - battles he has mostly lost, for he never considered himself a fighter, but he’s here, isn’t he? - has done so many awful things, yet this is a new torture brewed.
She is closer then she is touching him, and he is so frail, he half expects to crumble at this. Expects cracks to radiate from the spot where her muzzle lays, for his body to shatter or turn to dust. That would have been the easy way out, he supposes. Instead, he lasts, though his breath is ragged, his heart racing.
Are you all right, she asks, and he doesn’t know what to say because he is certainly miles from all right but he cannot articulate to her the exact severity of it. Where have you been? she says.
He speaks and he tries to answer these questions.
“I keep being taken,” he says, voice hoarse, a shade above a whisper, “I keep changing. Everything keeps changing.”
It’s nonsense. It’s what’s happening.
“I was taken, now,” he says, almost to himself, “and put here. But I don’t know why. No one’s told me why. Usually there’s a messenger.”
Is that right? Sometimes he’s just changed - a toy, a plaything - and somewhere new. To point him in any direction is a kindness. At least then he knows which way to start walking.
“Why are you here?” he says, then. He doesn’t mean to sound accusing. He doesn’t even think he’ll get an answer, but maybe this will speed things along, this daughter-mirage will tell him what he must do now.
It should stop there. He cannot dwell on her or he will be lost.
But she touched him, and he didn’t shatter.
“Sigrid.”
He says her name again because it tastes as sweet as it ever has. He says her name because he is still too scared to touch her.
“I’m very lost,” he admits, “and I don’t think they’ll let me know.”
