breakaleginhalf | dataBURST: IC Inbox

He's actually surprised, by how strong that flash of fear is from Artemis - not just by how fast it comes on, but the sheer depth of it, and that actually makes him look up. His expression is surprised for a brief moment, before it shifts (pitying, maybe? Confused?) and he looks away again.

At least now he's taking his ear buds out.

"It wasn't your fault. The memory or what..." His ears flick back a bit under his Mask. "What happened in it."

"What-"

His voice sounds awful, alien to his own ears, as the placating tone leaves it completely flat. The fear isn't leaving, though it's changing shape; now he knows that Gil's seen something he shouldn't have, though the words don't really narrow it down. There are a million little moments from his childhood, each leading up to the big one, that had and hadn't been his fault.

"-What happened in it."

...oh okay, this runs deep.

Gil's sitting upright now, closing his laptop. "You were being tortured," he says. His tone is flat, almost like he's trying to keep Artemis calm. Not like he's trying to his own emotions at all, with how sharp his eyes are (ears perked under the Mask towards Artemis), watching for a stronger reaction. "By... I dunno, your dad? He looked like you but older. It was the... fourth time, it felt like."

When Gil moves, Artemis doesn't take a step back. But he tenses and looks behind himself, because he wants to. He wants to leave, right now, and pretend this whole conversation isn't fucking happening.

"-My dad. Yeah." The title burns, but at least it means he's still got some control over how to spin the situation. "But that was a long time ago. And you've got it all mixed up, anyway."

"Well, unless you plan on clarifying for me, I'm not gonna ask." There's a sense of finality to his tone there: he's burning with curiosity, but with this sort of reaction he's clearly stumbled across some sort of trigger that he has no ~~current~~ intent to make worse. "That's your business. So. You can unclench if you want."

He slides his laptop onto the table and stands up. "I can clean it up, anyhow. I made the mess, so. Room-mate etiquette dictates that's the fair thing to do." That's more of a subtle jab at the still-lingering clothes around the apartment, more than anything else.

There's a part of Artemis that wants to clarify the whole thing, and see if Gil still thinks it wasn't at least partially his own fault. This is the closest he's ever come to actually talking about what happened. If he'd realized what was happening sooner, or made a cleaner escape...

But the moment passes, and with it there's mostly a sense of relief so profound he's a bit dizzy with it. Irritation follows on its heels at the jab, but that's good. He can deal with irritation a lot better than he can deal with fear, and he's already making put-upon face in Gil's direction and setting himself to picking up leaves before Gil can get to it.

"Don't put yourself out, or anything."

Gil follows him, and his ears flick back a little. "Okay, yeah, I'm being a shithead, but I got scratched too, so maybe don't..."

And whatever the rest of Gil has to say is, it's gone when Artemis gets scratched on a thorn stuck through one leaf and is hit with an onslaught of blinding, all-consuming, exhausting pain.

All there is, is pain. Dimly, Gil's aware of other things: the eyes of his Keeper watching him, and the Hero staring blankly down at him (and Artemis will register the other Changeling more clearly, a moderately handsome man - no, a chiselled bronze statue streaked with elegant silver filigree like lightning scars - with an ethereal air of seduction and sensuality) even as he's pulling the tip of a scimitar blade with a gleaming, wicked edge out from under Gil's sternum, and there's a faint pop somewhere in his body as the socket readjusts, but the sharp lance of pain it sets off vanishes instantly into the haze of the rest of it.

There's blood, too. Lots of it. Leaking from more wounds than he's even aware of, oozing down his body and making mats in his fur, changing it all from an inky black-brown to an ugly, scabbish maroon. He can feel his fur sticking to the rock--? Maybe it's a tree, or just a crucifix-- he's propped up against, weakly cementing him in place.

Breathing is difficult. That's not a surprise - his throat is raw from screaming, and every wet gasp he heaves to try and break through his dizziness bubbles through the slits across his voice box.

By all rights, he should be dead. From how most of his limbs are hanging by a thread, cracked bones, punctured lungs, slit throat, massive blood loss. But despite it all, despite the abject agony, he can't fall unconscious. He's Not Allowed. All he can do is lie limp against his seat, dragging those gasping, leaking breaths into his body.

The Hero steps back with a dancer's grace, and the sword disappears, changes with an audible snicker-snack into a wooden dagger with a razor's bloodstained edge, and sheathes it. And a hand, impossibly large, cups the flaming red hair, curling around to cup his chin with such intense fondness that the Hero-- Ni-- (Nick, please please Nick please)-- the Hero visibly melts into it, lifting his own hand to grip it and kiss its palm, as its owner walks out of the shadows.

(And even Artemis can't make it out. Something about it just slides off his mind, like it's being actively forgotten even as Gil makes direct eye contact with it.)

That's enough. With all the softness he'd shown the Hero a moment ago (and Nick is still burying his face in the oversized palm, but now his shoulders are shaking), there's no kindness or mercy in that voice, that goes straight to Gil's hindbrain through the pain dulling his senses. I trust you've learned your lesson now.

The hand releases the Hero, revealing his tear-streaked face for a moment before it goes blank and glassy-eyed again, and moves to do the same to Gil - only it buries in his bloodied mane, and he gags as the action jerks his head back, makes the slits ooze anew as something tendonous snaps inside him.

Do not ruin the show again.

The Director releases, and it's like a spell releasing - Gil crumples to the ground completely, every inch of him suddenly screaming and his voice trying to join in but he chokes on the wounds, retching for air that won't come as blood dribbles out of his slack mouth.

(Out of the corner of his eye, Artemis will see Nick hesitate, reach for that dagger, but one fresh touch from the Director has him turn slack too, and follow after it like a dog on a leash.)

Gil doesn't know how long he stays lying there for. Maybe it's seconds, maybe it's hours. The pain doesn't measure it. Not until something changes: the shadows shift, and someone who looks every inch the wrinkled, terrible fairy-tale witch steps into the light, holding an utterly beautiful flower between their hands. Gil doesn't move. Can't. Doesn't react. As the Crone steps closer. Kneels before him. Holds the flower under his snout.

(They're crying. A thin piece of fabric covers their own mouth and nose but it's completely soaked with tears.)

Gil hasn't got any energy left to breathe, but the odour seems to get inside his nose and cling. It burns. It tickles. It doesn't feel like anything. It doesn't hurt.

A hand strokes his ear as the poison blissfully ends him.

Artemis comes out of the memory on his knees, leaf grasped so tight that it's pushing through the soft meat of his palm, and he can't remember getting there. He can't feel it, either, above the floaty shock of second-hand panic. He's shaking, he thinks, and he can't find it in himself to stand again.

"You-" He looks up at his roommate and there are tears in his eyes, though they aren't falling yet. His roommate who looks perfectly human to his eyes, scared but not dead. He should be dead - not in the way that Artemis himself should be dead, but actually, no-way-to-survive-that dead. Gil's words from the party, the ones about beautiful men, come back in a rush. "-You died. How...?"

Gil can only watch as Artemis freezes, falls to his knees, starts shaking, and a wave of cold, paralyzing guilt wracks him. Shit shit shit, what did he see??

"...I got better." That's all he can think to say, as he steps towards Artemis, closing the distance slowly and carefully - he smells blood, he can see Artemis's white-knuckled grip, and Gil kneels in front of him to take that hand in both of his. The husky voice probably makes a lot more sense, all of a sudden, but his calloused hands are warm and gentle as he goes to gently unfold Artemis's fingers.

His hand doesn't want to unclench. Artemis wants it to; he knows, but doesn't feel, that it hurts. His body's checked out, though, not responding to his increasingly desperate commands for it to relax, get himself out of this situation and far enough away that he can go back to pretending everything's fine again.

"You got better?" He can hear the hysteria in his own voice and he hates it. "You were ... something else and then you were bleeding out, what the fuck. Gil, what the fuck?"

Gil can feel the edges of dissociation for himself, too: the familiar dark edges of tunnel vision threatening to creep in on him, the unpleasant faint thump of his heartbeat in his ears getting louder.

He doesn't even know what Artemis saw, just that he saw him in first person being killed. He didn't expect someone knowing that would make him feel like this.

(He feels really bad for how he reacted to Thorne telling him, now.)

Focus. Ground himself. Artemis is still injured, bordering hysterical, and his hand is still clenched shut. He's gentle, still, but firm as he starts digging his own fingers in to work Artemis's open. It'll be hard for the younger man to deny his strength, but focusing on doing it carefully is helping keep Gil present.

"I... yeah. Kind of. I didn't die there, not... fully." Not ever. "Whatever you saw, probably wasn't the first time. And I'm still something else, you just can't see it."

Artemis' eyes are moving quick around the room, not necessarily seeing any one thing, but they lock back onto Gil at that. The surprise is enough that his hand finally gives up the fight and releases to reveal the thorn's been driven into the meat of his palm. He can't see any hint of... whatever it was he saw, with Gil, but a few things are trying to realign in his head. The way Gil's reach seemed a little too long, sometimes, the noises in the party stairwell and occasionally the smell Artemis couldn't quite place. He can't quite put those things together just then, though they keep flashing in his mind.

He still can't see it.

"I think maybe it was the first time like that," he says, faintly, as his other hand makes a tentative reach for the scar around Gil's neck to try and confirm something about this entire mess was real. "You ruined something. A really fucked-up play."

Gil's body goes still, at Artemis's words, and even his hands freeze. It's not until the thin fingers brush through fur that Gil starts, a sharp flinch and a tightening in his expression as he holds back a growl - but then he tilts his chin up, for Artemis. An invitation.

The thick keloid scar under Artemis's touch is warm, thick and raised and surprisingly supple, as it circles around Gil's entire neck - but more than anything, it's clearly an old scar. The human won't feel, or see, the fur surrounding it, but it means that up close he can see the uneven, ugly puncture wounds surrounding the scar from the needle, and how parts of where the thread's horrible tension has left erratic dips and lumps across the raised tissue. There's a far more professional scar beneath it, a slick razor's slice across the whole front of his neck with strict and even rows of suture points, old as well but markedly more reduced; it barely rises above skin level at all.

None of Gil's scars are as bad as that first one: even the matching keloid ones ensnaring other limbs like ugly jewelry are neater, newer, less deforming of the skin around it.

Gil's head is still tilted back slightly, as he gently removes the thorn. "Torture for torture, then," he muses quietly. "The Director didn't like that I went off-script. Tried something risky, to see if it would help us. And." He pulls out the thorn, and rubs a thumb gently across the puncture hole, smearing the blood across Artemis's palm as he tries, fails, to clean it up a little. "It didn't."

Artemis draws back his hand at the flinch, afraid of crossing a boundary and afraid of getting too close to what's still an unknown quantity. Fear can't keep him in place for long: he accepts the invitation almost as soon as it's offered, resting his thumb over Gil's adam's apple and letting the rest of his hand half-circle Gil's neck. He can see the second that he hadn't noticed before, and the stray thought that someone got better at stitching crosses his mind even as his stomach rolls.

By contrast Artemis' hands that had once been ground down and broken are perfectly smooth, as if nothing had ever happened to them except the thorn Gil pulls free. There aren't even calluses as his fingertips pass over Gil's scar. Sick curiosity satisfied, he withdraws.

"At least we're even." The hysteria's still there, but it's sunk below a surface of nothingness in his voice. "Why, though? What was that place?"

Artemis will also feel the gentle bob of Gil's adam's apple as he swallows from the light pressure.

When Artemis releases him, Gil releases the blond in turn, wiping his hands distractedly on his singlet as he rises and goes to the bathroom. He's only gone for a moment, coming back with a roll of toilet paper and a box of bandaids, and he drops onto the floor next to Artemis again and starts cleaning his bloodied hand properly.

It's only then that Gil actually answers. "Arcadia." No hiding behind fairy tales and metaphor this time. "Seven of us were kidnapped by a fairy who wanted to watch us perform. The more he made us act, the more we turned into our Roles. And when you're magically forced to do it, it's hard to say no."

He's not going to get all the blood off with just dry paper towel, but he gets enough clean that he's satisfied to rip open a bandaid. "Sometimes one of us managed it. As far as I'm aware, no one else got punished like that."

By the time he's returned, Artemis has shifted to fully sitting with one of his knees drawn up to prop his chin on. He's staring at his own hand bloody and looking a little lost because he's not even sure if Gil's coming back. Which outcome he's hoping for, he doesn't know.

He doesn't look up when Gil settles, though, just lets his hand be taken and tended to without comment as he listens. Only with the explanation do his eyes flick up again, because something's slotted into place.

"You're a changeling." It's a little too sure to be a question. He'd been told there were others, but he hadn't put the pieces together about Gil being one until just now. "You really managed to escape after... all that?"

...well Coda had mentioned they were telling people things, in a way. He's not surprised at all that one of said people is Artemis, now.

"...yeah." When the bandaid's on, he stands up fully and takes a few steps back, so he can just... let his back thump against the wall and slide down it, his tail twitching out of the way as he settles on the floor. "I had to. Otherwise there wouldn't have been anything left of me to escape with."

He sighs, a long nasal exhale, before he pulls his Svelte tablet out to fiddle with. "When a... a Lord takes a human, they don't... stay human. Parts of them get replaced by Arcadia - magic, energy." He swallows thickly. "Body parts, sometimes. In every sense of the word, we change. And there's no changing back. We're not fully human anymore, no matter how we look. Or how you see us."

"Is there a difference?" Artemis doesn't like the idea of being unable to trust his eyes. He's staring now, trying to make out anything of the non-human in Gil, but in the end he only sees a guy. A guy with a lot of scars, but still fundamentally human. Like he had with Coda, he still feels the need to argue in defense of Gil's humanity, unable to accept a change out of someone's own control, but this time he keeps his mouth shut on the subject.

The parallels are feeling a little too heavy with someone potentially understanding his secret rubbing raw at his nerves.

"Isn't the way people see you the way you look?"

"Coda still looks human-shaped," he says. He's not gonna pretend it's not obvious they both know Artemis's source. "That's not universal, they're actually pretty lucky. Most of us didn't get that. Bugsy's like. A bug. Shinobu's... just gonna be even more hot, actually, but I'm..." His voice suddenly turns breezy and relaxed, albeit patently faked: "I'm like halfway between Frankenstein and a werewolf. So."

And he drops the voice, sounding normal and tired again as he looks down at his tablet. "There's a way to let you see it, but there are... costs, kind of. Nothing major, not if you're just like. Sensible. But I can show you."

He'd been denied a list before, so he listens to that catalogue of names with as sharp an ear as possible. Four, then, and Bugsy being one of them at least explained a few things that had happened the other day.

As much as any of this explained anything. In the back of his mind there's a part of him that still thinks magic and fairies and people who don't look like themselves because of magic spells is fucking inane. It's gibbering along while he tries to take this all in, so he closes his eyes to try and get a handle on himself -

-but he just sees something from the memory again, overlaid and entwined with the beating he'd taken.

He opens them, and looks at Gil. Or at what he thinks is Gil.

Fuck.

"-Do you want to?"

"I mean." His ears flick a little, as he looks up at Artemis. Even sitting, with most of Gil's height in his torso, Artemis's head is still higher than his. "I kind of owe you an explanation. And that's the only way I can really think that you'll, like. Actually believe it."

He puts his tablet away. "I know how stupid it all sounds. Dying but not being dead, all the scars and the... the weird shit." He gives a mild huff. "Frankly I wouldn't believe it either, if it hadn't happened to me."

"I've had some time to get used to the idea, but you're right. This is all batshit insane." And he wants an explanation, even if he's not really certain why Gil thinks he owes one. Gil got the worst day of his life; as far as Artemis is concerned, it's an even trade.

He's not going to tell Gil that, though.

"What does it cost?"

"A drop of blood and a promise you can't refuse. And that's not, like- I'm holding you to that and expect you to, if you don't fulfill it magic karma's gonna get your ass."

He leans back and rests his head against the wall; the cool plaster on the backs of his ears is nice. "I'll need to go and get something for it first, though. So we can do this in like, an hour."

"Magic... karma." Unlike the regular kind, which Artemis thinks is probably biting him in the ass for keeping giant secrets right now. "What kind of promise?"

"My discretion." He stares evenly back at Artemis, not giving anything away.

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CW torture, trauma, body horror

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