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infinitethree · 8 days

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Lee awkwardly sits at one end of the large, round table in the dead center of the room. The five people who have kept a frankly absurd secret from everyone else are crowded on the other end.

“So let me summarize this,” he says, hands pressed together in front of his mouth. “The Swords and Shields were never Aster’s idea, but Daz’s. Daz is actually kind of an asshole–”

Aster opens his mouth, but Lee shoots him a glare that makes him shut it and slide down in his seat.

“--which functionally means that Aster was right to be worried about him at the start. Aleph and Khons got roped into…this, for reasons I still don’t really get. And Raine just– was traumatized and triggered by me being near Dee and Theo, and him trying to protect me from them made him an ideal candidate for the secret cabal at the core of not just the Swords and Shields, but the safety of the entire server.”

Daz studies him for a long moment, and then nods.

Closing his eyes and taking a long, deep breath, Lee lets that soak in for a long moment.

His initial vibe that Aster and Daz would be close had been something that never seemed to fully manifest. It’s been a nagging worry, because Aster’s awkward standoffishness had made Lee sure that he was just wrong about that.

And if he was wrong about that, then what else might he be wrong about? Did it misinterpret the vibes, or were the vibes simply giving him wrong clues?

But he had been right, and more right than he could have fathomed.

In a way, he feels humbled by the revelation of such a massive secret. The five of them have done…Prime only knew how much work behind the scenes, making sure the server remained safe.

Hell– he knows Aster treasures his friendship with Theo. From the way he’s watching Lee, with fear and guilt and tensed like he’s expecting some sort of punishment…this has been a heavy burden for him to bear.

At the same time, though? He feels so very, very small.

What makes him so special? What makes so many people take up his banner, when he already has so many others who are dedicated to helping him?

Aster alone is so much more than he needs. Hell– his family is overprotective as it is!

…In their own, weird way.

But having four more secret Asters, one of whom is actually some sort of freaky expert actor, all entirely devoted to the cause of him?

He doesn’t understand.

At the same time, though…it’s not just him they’re helping. Even if the core of their goal is to make sure he never gets hurt, they do that by maintaining the peace of the sever.

Not through force, but through defusing situations and putting out fires that might otherwise get out of hand.

Ultimately, then, he can’t be mad. A part of him can’t help but be a little hurt that it’s been a secret for so long, but…really, it’s not that awful of a thing.

Lee isn’t a stranger to the idea of operational security. The more people who know, the less effectively they can do their work.

“Okay,” he finally says, opening his eyes.

He straightens up in his stool– chosen so that he doesn’t have to bother with his wings and one of the regular chairs– and studies them.

“I’m a little hurt that you all lied to me. But it was for a good cause…and, really, it was for everyone.”

Daz smiles at him, full of so much relief and warmth that he finds himself smiling back. The others are smiling too, clearly glad that he’s not too pissed off about their…everything.

He continues, “But there’s a reason you told me this now, right?”

A jarringly serious expression falls over Daz’s face. “Have you heard about the entity that’s been talking to a few people? Your dad and Theo definitely heard them.”

Lee nods, grimacing. The two of them had been…upset, to put it mildly.

Taking a deep breath, Daz says, “Their name is the Scribe, and we made some deals with them. Multiple deals, actually.”

“For what?” “To keep our secrecy, and…a few other things. The Observers like me, apparently,” Daz tells him.

From his expression, he’s not happy about that fact.

Lee presses, “Things like…?” “When one of us gets a question, the others can hear if they’re nearby. We also can tell when we’re being watched.”

A shudder goes down Lee’s spine. That’s definitely useful to have.

“And we’re being watched right now,” Aster says, brow subtly creased.

Well, shit! That’s not something he really wants to have happen.

With a sigh, Daz continues, “And…if you’re nearby, and get a question, we can hear it too.”

It sounds a hell of a lot like the Council gets special treatment. But Daz had said deal, meaning a price was paid.

He looks at the evident ringleader and asks, “What did you give up for that?”

A laugh, tired and slightly bitter escapes Daz. “We’re required to answer. I…had to do something that I can’t really explain.”

Quietly, Raine rests his hand on Daz’s shoulder. It’s subtly leaned into, like he needs the support.

“And because the Scribe is talking to others, you’re worried?” “Mhm. The Observers are getting more active, too– and thus more dangerous.”

For a moment, Daz seems to hesitate. Then he takes another deep breath and tells him, “And the Scribe told me to make things interesting. If I didn’t, they’d find someone else to entertain them. This…is something that always would have happened. I really would have rather it waited until you were older, but–”

“But your hand was forced,” Lee supplies. Daz nods in agreement.

That’s definitely not a scenario that Lee is interested in happening. This Scribe entity is clearly powerful, and might even be the source of the Observers.

Or…at least, linked to them.

Raine finally speaks up again, but he’s not looking at Lee. He’s looking at Daz, looking worried. “I think you need to explain what actually happened, how you got here.”

Oh? There’s a secret to Daz’s past?

Actually, that makes perfect sense. You don’t just become like this overnight.

Another bitter laugh escapes Daz. “Fuck…yeah. With everything that’s gonna– there’s no point in hiding it from you.”

Lee watches him withdraw a butterfly knife. It had been a gift from Theo, made by Dee; the shimmering, rainbow-tinted knife is something Daz uses on occasion for various tasks. He always unfolds it carefully, cautiously, evidently unused to properly wielding it–

The other four scoot their chairs away from him a little, and Daz begins spinning the knife. It dances over his fingers like a magic trick; like it was always meant to be there.

“I willingly joined hands with my Dream in Pogtopia. I swore to do anything for him, if he helped reclaim L’manburg from Schlatt,” Daz begins.

So all the horrible shit he went through was because of that deal? Fuck, no wonder he’s so messed up about being a good, useful person.

Voice almost hypnotic, Daz continues, “The price that Dream asked was to be my mentor. Unbeknownst to me, I had the rare, precious spark that would allow me to become an admin. He was terrified of being alone, abandoned by others who weren’t trapped in the prison he’d made for himself. I was what he had prayed and longed for; a true companion, someone who was capable of standing at his side. Not as his student, but as his equal.”

Lee swallows. He’s not an idiot; he can hear the resentment and bitterness lurking underneath those words.

He also remembers what Daz was like, when he first got here. That’s not something you do to someone you care about.

“When he told me what I was, what I could become…it was everything I had ever dreamed of. Wilbur had nearly killed me, taken one of Tubbo’s lives, and left the server with a real bang. L’manburg was exploded mere moments after he left with Techno. I had nothing but Tubbo, and Dream had saved me. He rescued me from my final death, and he bared his throat to beg for the chance to teach me.” Daz takes another deep breath.

“So I accepted. And…it was good. For a long time, it was nearly perfect. I hid that I could be an admin, but the two of us were able to do our work, do our training, far from the rest of the server. You should look at the coords.”

Curious, Lee does as he was asked.

Holy fucking shit, they’re so far out. It’d take days to get back to the central area from the overworld.

“What the fuck,” he breathes, and Daz grins at him. “I knew this area, so I figured I might as well make use of it.”

“But what about San? You can’t get this far without them knowing–” “I have my ways,” Daz tells him, eyes sparkling a little. “They’re a little weird, though. I’ll explain it later– this’ll be a rabbit hole, otherwise.”

Huffing a bit about not getting the answer right away, Lee settles back in his seat to listen to the story.

Daz’s knife– Bismuth, if he remembers correctly, named for an oddly-shaped stone that has a similarly rainbow tint– is still dancing flawlessly across his hands. Actually, it’s turning into tricks.

He might be showing off a little. Lee isn’t sure if that’s a vibe or just a hunch, though.

“So we were pretty safe from being found out. And in our base, I was able to learn quickly, easily, and without fear of someone seeing something they shouldn’t. I grew quickly, because I wanted to be worth the effort.” Brow furrowing, Daz emphasizes, “I wanted, desperately, to be good enough to stand at his side. He’d become…” the words falter for a moment, and the knife suddenly slips from Daz’s hands.

Idly, he brings his nicked finger to his mouth for a moment before he says, softly, “He was my brother.”

This is clearly, blatantly, something that was deeply traumatic for Daz. It was so horrible that he buried everything about who he really was, only letting it out in places that are in his complete control.

“What happened?”

The question makes Daz’s eyes flick down to the knife. “...Eret and Connor were killed for the third time in a surprise attack. In hindsight, I think it was Karl, but I’m not sure. Tensions that had been rising between us and New L’manburg–”

“So you weren’t close with Tubbo?” “Ah. No…no, Tubbo was my best friend. I would have died for him. But he was president; Quackity was. We never had a war, never had any reason to justify expelling the existing chain of command. Schlatt and Wilbur were banned, and Quackity was the VP. So, he got a promotion,” Daz clarified.

That’s a surprise. A memory wiggles at the back of his mind, and then suddenly pops out. “Wait, didn’t you say he tried to kill you–?”

“Yep. Using Eret and Connor as an excuse to act and information about their deaths as bait, they lured me out. I got trapped in a one-block cage while Quackity, Niki, and Fundy rained poison and instant health pots down on me. Fun fact– splash pots soak into fabric if you use enough of them. Especially gags.”

Prime, that’s terrifying. “And– that’s just torture. Why would they do that?”

Daz sighs. “Nobody knew admins were tied to the server. Nobody but me, Dream, Sapnap, and George. And…George had left. It caused some problems. Quackity assumed that if he could kill Dream and kill me, then he’d be able to take over the server.”

Ah. That…tracks, upsettingly enough.

Despite others’ best efforts to shield in, he’s not unaware of the way things went for the timeline that they can never touch. The base timeline, the blueprint.

Power and greed are good motivators, and Quackities often chase them to a horrifying extent.

“Dream got me out, but it was close. The magic…would have been lethal. He spent all night with me cradled in his arms, watching my code in the hope that if things got worse, he could fix it.”

Lee frowns. “So…you were still on good terms, then.” “Mhm. And then he wanted to kill everyone. I refused to let him touch Tubbo, and…and, well. He always did have terrible taste.”

Before he can ask what that means, Daz explains, “He chose blackstone bricks for the floor of our base. The base he left less and less; the base that held the only person who understood him. It wasn’t until I came here that I even considered it could be a problem.”

“But– wouldn’t he have noticed the server getting quieter?” “Our servers weren’t sapient; no barrier between admins and whatever information they wanted. He was always so fucking stupid about using those skills, though. Always wanted to believe the best in others. And in the end, the sudden stress of nearly losing me made him snap. He took the project we’d been working on, retrofitted loyalty into it, and shoved it in my code.”

Daz’s voice is uncomfortably calm as he says, “Every order felt like my soul was being atomized. I knew it would kill me, eventually. And…after he made me kill Tubbo, I stopped resisting that idea.”

His breath escapes in a horrified rush.

Gods, he can’t even imagine. He knows Tommys– knows that, at their core, a single shining truth remains crystal clear.

Tommys are loyal. They are loyal to the death.

“I frayed at his already waning sanity, forcing him to layer order after order on. Meanwhile, I had disabled all the alarms and laid a breadcrumb trail right to our door.”

His heart aches at the idea that someone he cares about was ever so low. “You wanted them to kill you, and the enchantment was a backup plan.”

Daz smiles a little sadly. “Yeah. I decided I would choose death over defeat. I made sure that no matter what, he would be left exactly as he always feared; alone, broken, and rotting in the ruins of his self-made prison.”

Suddenly, Daz’s tone shifts. “But then the T3 showed up. I was given a sudden, expected chance; I could walk away. It would be even worse than dying, to him. If I was dead, he would kill himself quicker. But…if I was alive, somewhere, with some small chance I might go back…?” An expectedly cruel smile twists across the usually-bubbly man’s lips.

“He would cling onto that hope. He would suffer in agony, in the vain hope that I might one day return to him.”

A shiver goes down his spine, and Daz’s expression shifts to a less distressing one.

Well! That was– that was pretty fucked up. Lee knows, and this time is aware it’s a vibe, that Daz hasn’t been honest in his therapy.

Great. Awesome. Someone who desperately needs actual therapy is instead the only person able to lie well enough to fool not just San but the entire server.

Daz takes the knife and puts it back into his inventory. “So, yeah. I was trained to be an admin, and that’s gonna be useful.”

He doesn’t follow. “Useful for…?”

“I asked Lucid to train me, too.”

Lee stands up, protesting, “Daz, you don’t need to–”

Calmly, Daz interrupts, “I do, though. It gives me the chance not just to monitor Lucid more closely, but to have access to a mod console. With a console, I can teach you better. I don’t want to be a full admin. The idea is kinda of my worst nightmare, actually! But a mod…a mod, I can handle. I’ve done it before, I can do it again.”

Goddamnit. He hates that it makes sense. “But you’re going to be actively triggering yourself constantly. I don’t like that.”

“Tough fucking luck. Life is cruel and unfair, and like or not, I’m going to make sure you never have to learn that lesson the hard way,” Daz tells him.

When he stands up, his posture is one that echoes people that Lee knows all too well.

Technoes, Dreams, Wilburs, even the few Schlatts that he’s seen.

Instinctively, Lee understands that Daz will not budge on this. No matter what Lee says or does, he’s made up his mind.

And, at his core, he still ultimately a Tommy. The other truth of Tommys is that are stupidly, infuriatingly, breathtakingly stubborn.

If a Tommy digs his heels in, it will take an unfathomable amount of force to drag him away.

He sighs, scrubbing a hand through his hair. At his back, he can feel his wings fluttering anxiously.

Lee hates the idea of Daz living and breathing his trauma like he’s planned on doing. At the same time, though, he knows that it will be useful.

Fucking hell. This isn’t really what he thought Aster might be bringing him to face.

As he thinks that, he sees that same man stand hesitantly, awkwardly, just a step away from him. His hands hover and his muted emotions clearly convey that he desperately wants to hug him.

With a soft huff, he steps forward and hugs one of his closest companions.

Aster sighs in relief, wrapping his arms around him.

Something deep inside of him hums in satisfaction. Aster is one of his people, someone he trusts and treasures. He would do horrible, ugly things to keep this person safe– things that sometimes appear in his nightmares, things he doesn’t want to think about in the light of day.

“I know it’s…kind of a lot. And maybe worse because we’re not alone,” Daz tells him. He does sound apologetic, but is probably so for the wrong reasons.

“I told you he wouldn’t hate you,” Raine says, with a soft thump that indicates he lightly smacked his friend in some way. “Paranoid dumbass.”

Scoffing, Daz retorts, “Fuck you, you’re not the one who had to reveal you’re actually kind of a monster to the supernatural embodiment of sunshine and rainbows–”

Lee breaks from the hug to point at Daz, who seems surprised. “You’re not a monster.”

Daz blinks at him, seeming to consider something. Raine hisses, “Don’t you dare, save your weirder shit for another time!”

The Tommy snorts, and states, “Yeah, that’s probably better. But let’s say I disagree, and leave it at that.”

Eyes narrowing, Lee leans his weight across the table. He warns, “I’m going to fix you, so fucking help me.”

After a moment of surprise, Daz grins and leans forward as well. “Good luck, kid. My issues have issues. I’ve got a whole fucking magazine subscription kit in here.” “Good! Fine! If all of you think I’m so damn special, then I’ll make sure you’re getting your stupid money’s worth!”

Daz’s expression suddenly turns dark. “Don’t talk like that. You–”

Oh, wonderful job! Bravissimo; bravissimo! I was so fucking right to make you–

All of the Council members straighten up, but none become more severe than Daz. “Achilles, this is the Scribe.”

The unexpected, disembodied, and clearly powerful voice laughs, Hah, yeah, that’s definitely me, I'm the Scribe. They coo, Aww, you look so mad! And here I was, thinking you were up to snuff.

Shoulders thrown back, Daz states calmly, “He is. In fact…” a slow smile spreads, like cracks across thin ice.

“In fact,” Daz repeats, “He’s so good, so worthy, that I think we should hold a vote.”

His eyes flick to the others. “All those in favor of making Lee an official member of the Council?”

Oh you clever little shit. I hate you so much right now, the Scribe says. Contrary to their words, though, they sound delighted.

The others nod their approval, and Daz’s smile grows. “And, Lee, do you accept this position?”

Clearly, there’s something more going on than is immediately obvious. This group, and especially Daz, are smart.

If they’re pushing for this, there’s a reason.

“Yeah,” he says, and can’t help but feel a little sting of pride when all of them perk up a little.

Daz claps his hands. “Excellent. With Lee’s induction into the Council, that makes this official business.” His hands spread wide, Daz laughs as he says, “Which means our audience needs to leave.”

#chronotag #long post #poisonousachilles #dazzlingvoid #shiningaster #rainestorm #goldenkhons #darkaleph #runstheshow #and here's the other part! smiles #3.4k and written literally right after I posted the last bit #whatever storm is coming through is DOING THINGS to my brain #good things obviously #...probably

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