Sam Wilson (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sizeofyourbaggage) wrote2015-09-21 03:24 pm
sizeofyourbaggage) wrote2015-09-21 03:24 pm
post-games sad end au drabble
“You’re a Libra, aren’t you?”
Sam raises his eyebrows at Jane. “I’m not gonna ask how you know that, but yeah, I am. Why?”
She grins at him, amused and a little secretive, and doesn’t answer what he doesn’t ask. Instead, she nods at his upper arm. “So who’s the Capricorn for?”
The smile on Sam’s face fades a little as he automatically follows her gaze, staring at the stars tattooed there. “You know what a moirail is?”
He looks back up at her in time to see her brows furrow as she considers that.
“No,” she admits eventually.
“Me neither, not really,” he admits back, quirking a little grin at her. “I probably couldn’t really get it and he already had one, anyway, but sometimes I wish I could’ve been his.”
She raises her eyebrows skeptically at him. “Anyone ever tell you that you sound a little crazy?”
Sam laughs. “I fly on metal wings and talk to birds, Doctor Foster.”
His laughter seems to put her at ease, and she smiles. “So I’m guessing that’s a yes. Not like I can judge, I’m dating a Norse god.” She pauses for a moment, then asks, “He have anything to do with why you’re suddenly so interested in space that you hunted down Thor’s girlfriend?”
“I didn’t hunt down Thor’s girlfriend. I hunted down the world’s foremost expert on interplanetary travel.”
She gives him a little smile for that, but just waits, eyebrows raised, until he sighs.
“Yeah. He’s got something to do with that.” He curls his hand around his bicep, thumb stroking over the ink. “I made him a lot of promises that I probably shouldn’t have, everything we were going through-” I got your back, I’ll stop you before you hurt anyone else, I’ll remember you like this, I’m here, always, I’m here. I won’t forget you. “-Should’ve known better, but he makes that hard to remember. And if I have to spend the rest of my life hunting through the stars to find him, then that’s what I’m gonna do.”
He swallows, pushing the heel of his hand his hand against his eye as he takes a few deep breaths, making a face at himself. It’s not like he doesn’t know that talking about Kurloz gets him worked up the same way it did when he first started talking about Riley after losing him, but he still doesn’t like the reminder.
“Thought maybe you’d understand that.”
When he looks back up at her, her eyes are a little glassy, and it’s obvious that she does understand. If anyone knew what it was like to be trapped somewhere without the alien you’d gotten way too fucking attached to and being prepared to spend the rest of your life searching for, he’d figured it be her.
“Okay, bird guy. Let’s find your weird alien moirail before you start crying all over my lab equipment.”
no subject
He made it a sweep, two years, something what don't exist yet, before he crumpled. He followed the rules. He resisted going out to free Mituna, to hide Kankri, to warn Porrim, and stop Meulin. He culled and culled and culled and found himself surprised just how much he used to do it. He got a twitch back in his fingers, a taste for the blood. It didn't take long. That was the worst. He couldn't think about Sam then for the guilt.
He can't speak, everything physical remaining samelike when they got ripped back, but he makes himself more fearsome by speaking only through the voodoo, moving his mouth as the words echo into minds, the fear compelling and crushing in equal measure. He remembers the way his brother felt under the first and only bit of voodoo he got to use then.
He follows the rules as best he can, even where he can't. But he gets to his hive, knowing this is the time where he sees his lusus again, finally, and culls the old goat himself. He waits on the shore, cloak shielding his eyes as he waits through the daytime. But Da shows and he can't find the anger that should've been. His heart breaks. He ain't sure if Da remembers or not as he swims closer, not sure even what he'd prefer, but he can't cull him, he misses him too much. He misses everyone.
He misses Sam.
There's no choice. He ain't got no choice. If he don't follow the rules then Sam don't exist. If he doesn't do this all right, the timeline is doomed. I'M SORRY, I'M SO MOTHERFUCKING SORRY, DA, I'M SORRY, he croons through fear, and he braces to hurt, clubs up. The old goat headbutts him. His club falls and he clings to the fur, lifted up off the ground upon that great muzzle. He climbs aboard and is taken far from the shore, finally out into the sea.
The current Grand Highblood, former preacher of the travelling carnival, will do just as well as he's done. The timeline is doomed. The Reformer decides he must learn to accept that. He has to find a way to move on, like what his brother would do. No matter how it hurt, there had to be away.
Drowning still terrifies. But all the same, he's learned to hold his breath longer, a great capacity for it under water by being indigo, but he's still lucky for five or ten. Sometimes the old goat has to take off and he's left floating, just praying he'll come back. There were close calls, but miraculously, he did. He travels with his Da for some time, that is until he comes upon a ship at sea. There's psionics, hissing, day-glow and revving chainsaw. There's three of the four pausing when he removes his hood. He warns them in sure time of the dangers of association with him, how he's doomed the timeline. They all look at Kankri and each other, a mutant and pack of rebels, and laugh. He stays with them after that and eventually the Dolorosa manages to trust him. He remembers District five.
He stays with them until they're dragged away. The Grand Highblood ain't so passionate as he. He ain't filled with fury enough to wipe the cult clean. He sees him, the faithful with no paint, painted once more, and the old man thinks he can turn him in a new direction. He is not kind. Trolls ain't know how. He feels the sting whips, the agony of torture (You do it, or we'll do it to you. He liked that about trolls, you knew to expect the cruellest thing.), the ache of loss, and would likely have his tongue pulled out to take up the holy silence had he not lost it already. The voodoo is weak compared to his own and it can' crush him. Not like the loss. Not like the Messiahs turning away from him. Not like those stars he stares up at, wondering if he can hurry the Minstrel's rise. He hears whispers of the cult, not yet culled, and he snorts because he knows the Highblood will never manage. Even he let things slip through and he had rage on his side. He accepts his punishment with grace-- and escapes the next bi-lunar perigee.
It's then that things change. He notices things, through the sweeps. He notices that the universe echoes. It moves like ripples in the water. He comes across trolls all in metal prosthesis, like Jet and Albert used to be. He meets a young troll girl with violence in her eyes and no name. There's a yellow blood with a seadwellers accent dreaming of stars-- Pasha.
He finds the Neophyte in a few sweeps and it breaks his heart. He warns her too, but the Neophyte ain't for superstition. Things come apart that season, when Dualscar fails to die, the Marquise fails to evade arrest, the Neophyte is never hanged. History shifts and warps. He watches the Neophyte meet an equally cruel end among a camp of sufferists.
He meets a troll. He's a psionic, rustblood, and when his power lights him up, it forms clear maroon wings connected by his arms and back. He can talk to beasts what's all aviary like him. Brother was all motherfucking military until he stumbled up upon sufferism. He talks to people, shows them things as shouldn't be and what ought be in place. Lost his moirail some sweeps ago and bailed for a camp like the one they both ran from as the Neophyte perished. He's got a bright smile, even with all the weight of the world. He's a defiance of trolls, all too motherfucking kind. The universe echoes. Alternia chews him up and spits him out like it does of any troll with a fuckin heart.
He can't stop watching the skies. He can't see himself up in them but he see someone else, flying up over. He's been cracked a long time. It's amazing how much more he can go.
The universe echoes. The voodoo echoes. The echoes. It goes and goes and...
He blinks and the limeblood genocide occurs without his order. He blinks and it's District three. He blinks and the Summoner-- There's someone standing up for war and they stand alo-- He's ripping off wings-- he can't scream, he can't scream, he can't scream--
PLEASE, he begs at the feet of the Demoness. Surely all is doomed already, surely he can be free. There is no sympathy in her shell. She has lived too long, she is older than him, and he cannot fathom what he has. She raises her wands and--
He's seventeen. Years. Not sweeps. His eyes are the blank white of a ghosts. There is no time here. Time is a game that can be put on a shelf, so says the girl with the Demoness's horns but a bright smile in place of deadness. He's surprised to be here. He feared only the chosen could be here, to which she gives a bright "Nope!" Of course, only dreamers can visit here before death, but she ain't know how a dreamer is made. He runs into his Alternate, the first of them all after her. He can feel now the ties there and he knows what they mean. He learns from that, seeking out the Maid of Death again to ask:
"Time ain't mean for shit. But what of space?" She smiles at him.
If there was time, it would take an eternity. It feels so. He knows he is stagnating, freezing over, but soon that will change. If there was time, it would be a blink. He's got voodoo stronger than his alternate by now. He reaches the edge where the bubbles float and the void waits. He reaches. He reaches...
Sam falls asleep. He sees him, in the sky above. The universe echoes. He brings his voodoo out to pull wings out from his back, left behind from a past life and never used, little indigo insect wings. He bursts up into the sky, where Sam searches the constellation of Capricorn.
He grins. "You're motherfucking being one of them Pyropes' lot ain't you? Libra?"