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fellpyrean · 1 year

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Claps hands alright we’re doing this! So I started listening to magnus archives a few months ago and it really did things to my writing ideas, so now I’m gonna round some up and post ‘em.

I forget where/when I first saw a moth!jon but u know. He’s cute. So here is some moth!jon AU! Corruption Jon :Dc and archivist Sasha! ~1800 words.

Since he is a corruption avatar in this, there is (as expected) some possibly gross bug imagery, but not a lot of holes. And no worms! :D

______________

The flat is quiet.

Quieter than Sasha expected, and much neater too than she expected when they connected this one to "Filth." The lights are off and there's a faint dusty, sweet scent in the air as she cracks open the door, torch slicing through the dark.

It catches on motes of dust. She thinks she hears movement, a susurrus of rustling like fabric faint in the depths of the place but little else. She pushes the door further, feels it catch on the ragged old rug on the floor and watches moths flutter up, batter against her torch in little puffs of dust before they flutter away.

Part of her worries as she steps inside, as she closes the door behind herself - leaving just a crack in case she needs to get out fast.

This is too quiet for something of the powers. The flat should be more of a wreck, more… more miserably bloodstained, more disgusting and unnerving, but it looks, honestly, just a bit messy, a bit moth-eaten. The couch sags a bit wrong, but hell, she can't pretend she's never had one like it. There are shelves of books, their edges chewed and pages no doubt holey, there's even a mug left forgotten on the kitchen counter. It's all dim; lit only by what spills around heavy curtain edges and her own torch as she steps further in and - and hears that rustling again from the end of the hallway and heads straight for it.

More moths flutter up at her steps, and she is wary, she is. But the things just… flutter uselessly at her hands, their wings shedding dust and their fat abdomens plump and full, but hardly a threat before they fly - further inside.

Towards that faint rustling noise, towards the door at the end of the dim-lit hall that is just open enough to allow the frantic moths to flit inside. Writhing and wriggling at the crack between door and jamb just a moment before they vanish inside, but the movement… it makes Sasha swallow.

Something about the way the bulbous little things squirm before they pop through sets her stomach on edge. Too many of them; more than she thought, all struggling to squeeze into that door.

The crack writhes by the time she reaches it.

She can swear she hears them whine and click and screech in tiny voices above the din of their frantically fluttering wings.

She uses her torch to push the door open. Fast, loosing a cloud of moths from the stuffed crack that fall and flutter and scatter into the dim room before her.

The rustling has not gone quiet. Neither has the soft, whining song of flapping wings and voices she cannot place as she raises her torch high, fumbling for her pepper spray in her other hand. More of a comfort to herself than any real belief it would accomplish anything against something abnormal, but the room doesn’t… change. Nothing leaps out of the dim shadows, nothing comes ravening towards her with a horrid, dripping maw.

It’s a bedroom. The bed is really as far as the light peeking around the curtains lights, in thin, dusty stripes across worn rugs and a small pile of abandoned clothes.

“A-Ah.”

Sasha whips her torch towards the voice, and stills.

There is… there is something like a man there. Tucked in the corner, with all the moths frantically fluttering, scuttling towards it. She watches, stomach queasy, as the moths drill between the heavy folds of the blanket? The wrap? It has folded around itself. It reaches a hand out to a particularly fat straggler and cradles it in its palms like a treasure, bringing it up slowly, carefully, and opens thin, paled lips and lets the thing crawl straight into its mouth as Sasha gags.

It is almost worse then when it looks up.

Long, straggling hair that was probably rather nice once. Now it is loose and lank, black shot with grey and dust that hangs over… over his shoulders, over the thing he has cocooned himself within. His eyes are dark. Too dark.

There are no whites, she realizes, and cannot help but feel her fingers twinge around the pepper spray.

But he isn’t attacking. He is just looking at her, head cocked like a curious animal as the moths burrow back into the shelter he offers.

She can work with this. She sucks in a breath, wills her stomach to settle as she tells it it could really be so, so much worse, and points the torch further towards the floor. Good manners. Going out on a limb that he’s probably not too fond of bright light.

“Hello,” she says. The strange man stares at her. Hard enough she swears she can feel the tracks his eyes leave on her skin, but she only makes herself stand taller. He seems to like that. He laughs. Not maliciously.

It’s soft. Like cotton, like it’s been a long while since he’s used his voice, and the rasp sticks to it as he speaks and Sasha tries not to linger on where exactly that moth went.

“Hello, Archivist. Doing house calls?”

He’s smiling. And that’s what gets her.

His voice is soft and smooth like old silk and his smile stiff like he’s unused to using it, but something about him feels familiar. It’s there, just at the corner of her mind, and she knows she’s frowning deeply as she casts a line and tries to hook just why she feels like she knows this strange man, but then he laughs again and stands.

He rustles as he does. That… that thing wrapped around him doesn’t move the way it should, not like cloth, but she can’t immediately place that, either. Not until he walks a little closer and her torch light catches on it and it… shimmers.

Like moth wings. And Sasha sucks in a breath.

She can see it now. The patterns in the dusty brown, the oranges that circle white to make massive, partly hidden eyespots. The thick, dark veins supporting the overall structure, and she can’t help herself from blurting out, “Can you fly with those?”

The man shudders, that smile hung unmoving on his face as he brings a hand to his mouth and coughs against the static.

“Not well,” he answers into his hand, his too-dark eyes sparkling. He lets his hand drop back into the too-layered folds of his wings and shuffles a little closer; his wingtips drag across the floor, like a blanket wrapped around a child too small for it, and she can see now where his long, untied hair turns into something shorter. A ruff of fur at the back of his neck, across the back of his shoulders.

(Can see the moths wriggling down into the fur, settling there, an army of tiny, coal-black eyes staring out at her, glinting green when her torch light catches them.)

And then he stands still, that faint smile on his face, his dark eyes half-lidded in an expression she cannot place, and waits as that soft, soft distant song hums in the room.

Sasha exhales. This is more than she dared hope for. He’s talking. He’s non-aggressive.

“I,” she begins, wetting her tongue before plunging back into her words. “I was wondering if I could ask you some questions. About the ‘Filth.’ About you.”

He watches, and she feels emboldened.

(Her phone begins to ring as she steps closer to him, and she ignores it. It’s Elias. She knows.)

“We don’t have answers. And if you could tell me, tell us what you know? About… about what’s happening.”

Her phone stops ringing. It starts again. The man smiles wider and reaches out. Sasha can see that his hands are… strange. Plated like chitin, and the desire to grab his hand and investigate each delicately plated joint wars deeply with the uneasy reminder that there are probably moths crawling beneath, of statements that were far, far more explicit about what ‘Filth’ did to a person than this man showed.

His hand waves in front of her face for a moment and she starts, coming back to herself, as her phone angrily rings again.

“Your phone?” the man asks, and Sasha doesn’t hesitate for a moment to shut the thing off.

(Elias. All three calls. If he doesn’t want her here, then she’s not leaving.)

“Well Archivist,” and she knows she is not missing the strange bitterness that clings to that word this time, knows there is something she is missing about him, “If you have that many questions, we should probably get a little more comfortable. I have a feeling that once I let you start, you’ll keep me well after dusk.”

And isn’t it bizarre? As he brushes past Sasha - both carefully and clearly telegraphing his movements so she only feels the barest touch of his wings as he heads back out into the hallway - she realizes she doesn’t feel afraid of this one. A little disgusted if she thinks about him too hard, yes, but there’s been no threat. No… no menace, no winding, evasive non-answers, just. Incredibly human remarks. It almost circles right back around from comforting to even worse than something as alien as the thing with the door. Michael.

But as the rustling moves away from her down the hallway, she can’t help but flash her torch around the bedroom. One last bit of nosiness.

An old, worn bed, rather like the couch. Shelves with books so moth-eaten they’ve gone to pieces. An open closet, filled with over-large sweaters and… She blinks. And oddly proper button ups, slacks.

And then… and then she turns her torch in one last semi-circle and catches upon a strange shine beneath the lumpy pillows.

Like polaroids.

The itch that there’s something she should know only grows when she spots them; growing from a thing at the edge of her thoughts to an all consuming need that drives her in fast steps across the dusty rug before she even catches herself. She fishes the pictures out with deft fingers and - and she thinks her heart stops in her chest.

She knows the people in the picture.

That long, dark hair shot with grey is distinctive - even set on a much more vibrant, lively face, and above a painfully crisp button up. He’s wearing glasses in the picture, and. A name tag.

She can’t read the name, but she’d recognize that emblem anywhere. Not that she needs to.

Because beside the stuffy librarian like man, his eyes green instead of black, stands… Tim. Tim, his shirt as loud as ever, his smile boisterous, and an arm slung affectionately around the man who couldn’t possibly be any more his opposite. And the same horrible name tag pinned to a pineapple-strewn lapel.

The man worked at the Magnus Institute.

He worked with Tim.

She knows his name now.

Jonathan Sims.

#tma #tma fanfic #moth jon #crowswritings #hides chatter in the tags #my tentative ideas for this were that it's actually a time travel AU #as well as (gasp) jon/tim #bc like i mean who is to say the time travel is actually time travel?#you may as well have been shoved thru the crack to another world entirely where the time flows differently #and in this world jon and tim were originally a lot closer #jon sims #sasha james #i remembered i needed to tag them anyway so just picture tim doing his best to flirt with this oblivious stick in the mud #and catching feelings along the way but the guy is just Oblivious #and then one day he vanishes bc future/alt world jon comes along and p much instantly gets eaten by another Fear #(i imagine corruption as the antithesis to the lonely thanks to my partner so he did feed himself to it in desperation tbh)#when he woke up in a world and more or less panicked not wanting the same thing to happen as before and was so so desperate not to be Alone #jazzhands #he didn't consider that this world was actually different in some ways and legit just thought it was time travel #so when he saw the pictures of him and tim he was deeply confused and panicked and guilty #ok final jazzhands #this is a short drabble #the full idea would be much more than a short drabble and i am not strong enough to do a 50k jon/tim AU #love to spin it around in my head tho

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silverskye13 · 28 days

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Helsknight showing up bloody at Welsknight’s base please I need suffering 🙏

There was something to be said about the stupid things he was willing to do in the name of self preservation. Damn his fears, and the unfairness of the universe, and the uncertainty of living [and dying] and everything else. The unknown had always been his greatest weakness, his greatest betrayer. Pity it was also one of the few inescapable things about living in general.

To say Helsknight stepped into Hermitcraft would be a terrible injustice of what stepping normally, let alone gracefully, looked like. What he actually did was stagger and drag himself into Hermitcraft on unsteady and shaking limbs. There were holes in him. He hadn't really taken inventory of them yet. Admitting he had a wound [or several] was enough. The minute he admitted the wounds were bad, in certain terms his mind could comprehend, was the minute shock would steal his senses. He was on Hermitcraft for the specific reason of dodging death, and it seemed to him shock, on any level, meant dying. If he wanted to die and roll the dice of respawn, he would have died in hels, in the alley he'd been jumped in, where he could at least take comfort in familiar cobblestones and the knowledge he'd dragged all his attackers down with him. But he didn't want to die, so he was here.

It was dark. He was inside a building. He was bleeding. Wels was nearby. Those were the only things he needed to know for certain. Helsknight looked around, trying to ignore the sluggish tilt his vision offered when he moved too quickly. The double vision of trying to parse memories of a place that weren't his battled with his wounded animal double vision and together they made him feel nauseous, more so than his wounding already did. Helsknight balled a fist against his sternum, like he could hold himself together that way, and concentrated very hard on walking and nothing else.

Helsknight didn't like being this close to Wels. Not while he was this injured. He could feel the awareness of his other half like a spider on his skin. There was a reflex-like urge to shout and try to shake it off, the instinct-like certainty that if it rested on him long enough it would find a reason to bite him. And he knew, in the way only experience could teach, that if he could feel Wels, Wels could feel him. Helsknight had the sensation of walking a tightrope: his body insisted speed was the only thing that could save him, while his mind insisted he must stay unnoticed. He must balance necessity with making his thoughts and emotions small, and it was hard work to do when he was losing blood.

Helsknight blinked slowly, tiredly. He picked a direction and walked, a hand pressed to the wall, keeping himself upright. Wels's potion room was nearby, a borrowed half-memory informed him, he just had to get there. He searched his drifting thoughts for a poem to repeat in his head, to keep fear and uncertainty from rising. His heartbeat was quickening, a symptom of something; panic, or fear, or blood loss, or all three combined. He was fixing one of those things. He needed to carefully manage the other two, before Wels felt them. The only poem he could think of was in Middle English, and mostly gibberish to him, which told him it came from Wels's memories somewhere.

Why have ye no routhe on my child?

Have routhe on me ful of mourning;

Tak doun o rode my derworth child,

Or prik me o rode with my derling!

[Rhyming child with child was a lazy, but this was written back when one could convincingly spell "down" as "doun" so he supposed he shouldn't be overly critical. The real trick was figuring out if "derling" was supposed to mean "darling", or some other archaic word lost to time. He could only figure out so much from context clues. "Mourning" apparently transcended centuries, and that seemed fitting. Everyone knew mourning, in some form or another.]

An ache opened up beneath his clenched fist, or it had always been there, and his body was only just now reinforcing the fact that it was important. It felt like the mother of all cramps in his muscles, and he stubbornly pretended that's what it was. He needed more potassium in his diet or something, and the gods would forgive him the smear he left on the wall when he leaned on it, waiting on the intensity of his pain to ebb. The doorway he was walking towards seemed close, but also very, very far. Closing distance with it was going a lot slower than he thought it would, and it was only one short hallway. He was glad he'd decided to do this, instead of his other half-considered option of attempting to walk across hels to the Colosseum. He wouldn't have made it.

Dread pooled in his stomach. Dread, and other more physical things, like blood, probably, but he pretended the dread bit was more important. He could feel Wels pricking on his skin again, an insistent spider twitching at a breath on his web. Helsknight breathed out the steadiest breath he could manage.

More pine ne may me ben y-don

Than lete me live in sorwe and shame;

As love me bindëth to my sone,

So let us deyen bothe y-same.

[Sorwe. What medieval idiot thought "sorrow" was spelled like "sorwe"? Maybe it had something to do with inflection. Poetry was half words, half rhythm. Maybe "sorwe" was supposed to indicate they wanted the reader to pronounce "sorrow" as a single syllable, so it sounded more like "sore". That's also probably why "bothe y-same" was sitting there like word vomit. They meant "both the same", but wanted it read without a pause between the first two words. It was really the method for the madness that mattered with poetry.]

Helsknight blinked. He was in the potion room. He couldn't fully remember the walk down the hallway, but that didn't matter. What mattered was there should be health potions in here somewhere, his salvation. Relief edged his vision in stars, and he once again felt Wels's attention cant in his direction, confused and curious. Wels didn't associate feelings of relief with Helsknight. It wasn't an emotion they felt in each other's presence, and it was far too strong to be muffled by the distance to hels.

[He knows I'm here.]

Helsknight opened a chest and rifled through it. His vision was protesting. Stars and tilting that would turn to spinning soon made a clutter of his eyes. It got hard to distinguish the colors of the stoppered bottles. He picked up one that felt overly warm to his cold and shaking fingers. He was pretty sure it was a health potion. It felt too hot, but he reminded himself he was cold from losing blood, so it should feel hot. Hesitantly removed his fist from where it was balled in front of his sternum, and let his eyes unfocus when he grasped the bottle's stopper. His hands were so unsteady, it took a couple tries just to grab it, and when he pulled on the cork, his fingers slipped off weakly. He tried again, eyes closed with concentration, pouring every ounce of his strength into the act of pulling a stopper out of a bottle, only for his hand to slip right off again.

Frustrated, nearing desperate, he looked down at himself for a clean place to wipe his hand on his tunic. It was a mistake. He knew it as soon as he did it. His eyes were inexorably drawn from the fabric to the poke-holes in it, to the wine-dark stain that flowed down his front and still dripped tak-tak-tak slow and inexorable onto the floor. It was a woeful amount of blood. He was honestly surprised he wasn't dead yet. Chalk it up to fortitude, and ignorance, and size. He had more blood to lose than some people did.

Helsknight's world suddenly gave an awful twist, vertigo and the crescendoing, cramping agony of his wounds, only staved off by how his now shattered ignorance, kicking him off his feet just as surely as a horse could. He slumped against the wall, and then to the floor, and the awful jarring of it hurt him worse. Half a dozen other wounds on him aired their grievances, and the big one near his sternum pushed blood onto his fist when he clutched it. Helsknight sat pinned, unable to breathe for many long seconds, feeling a bit like he'd been struck by lightning. The pain was blinding and numbing and overwhelming all at once.

Why-- have no-- have ye no-- something something...

[Words. Breathe. Think of words.]

[Gods... But it hurts......]

Why have ye no routhe on my child?

Have routhe on me ful of mourning;

[And what the hels did "routhe" mean, anyway? He knew the word "route". He knew the name "Ruth". Neither of them fit, unless his bloodless brain was missing something. There was a chance "routhe" was supposed to be read like "bothe", as a double word slurred together, but that still left "routhe the" which made less sense in context than "routhe" did.]

Right. He was supposed to be doing something other than bleeding to death on the floor. Helsknight blinked, looked down at his hand and realized the health potion he'd grabbed was gone. He must have dropped it when he slumped over. Looking around, he spotted it just to the side of his left boot, unbroken, thankfully, but it might as well be a lifetime away for all the good it did him. Helsknight knew without a shadow of a doubt he couldn't reach it. The idea of tensing his muscles and dragging himself forward to reach was exhausting, and he hurt so much he knew the movement would feel like tearing himself in half, and there were just some things a mind couldn't power through. Helsknight laughed dismally and let his head fall onto his chest. Both motions were white hot agonies, but all his pains were starting to blur together into a smear of overwhelming sensation that took thought away. It occurred to him he was breathing too fast, like he'd run too far too fast, and his fluttering heartbeat agreed.

[... It hurts...]

[Gods and saints it hurts.]

[I'm dying.]

A feeling he could only describe as doom fell on his shoulders, a cold grasp of fear that wrapped stony hands around his heart and squeezed. He'd heard of this. Never felt it himself. The utter sureness that if he didn't do something now, he would die. All the unconscious bits in his body in charge of keeping him working all unanimously agreeing they needed divine intervention, preferably right now, before they started shutting down. It wasn't something he often had occasion to feel, though he had heard people tell of it after particularly grizzly matches and bloody tournaments. Death was normally too quick in the Colosseum, or else he'd won his match, and even if he was falling to pieces there was a health potion too close to hand to let him dwell on his harms. This was so terribly different. Death stalked toward him unhurried and unbothered, waiting on him to finish drowning in blood. He might panic, if he wasn't already so cold and scared.

"Ah. This makes some sense, anyway."

Helsknight, who had stopped seeing the world in front of himself without really closing his eyes, refocused his vision on the open doorway. Wels stood there, an angel of death in azure and silver, his sword in his hand. His eyes were the ruthless blue of hels freezing over and lifeless corpses, and Helsknight thought there was no one else in the world he would rather not watch him die. But the universe hated him, so here Wels was, just as surely as if he was fated.

"I didn't think all that fear could possibly be for me."

Helsknight tried to reply, but all he managed was a dying-animal noise that strangled itself out when he tried to breathe a little steadier. He tried again, and this time managed a very weak, but vaguely defiant, "Fuck off."

"Rude," Wels said chastisingly. A glow of something like smug satisfaction prickled Helsknight's skin. The feeling came from Wels. "Especially given I'm the only person who can save you."

Helsknight chuckled, and then stopped when his body seized painfully around the motion. "We both know you don't want to save me."

"No," Wels admitted. "But I don't want to do a lot of unpleasant things I agree to do anyway."

"How... charitable."

"It is a virtue."

"Sure."

Wels didn't move. Well, he did move, but only to sheath his sword. He crossed his arms and leaned against the door frame, the image of patience, as though they had all the time in the world.

[Hungry spider. Waiting on a web for something to struggle.]

"If you're waiting on me to beg," Helsknight informed him through staggering breaths, "I won't."

"Too prideful?"

Helsknight searched himself momentarily for pride, and came up short. Pride would've dictated he die in the alley, instead of here where Wels could lord it over him. This was something different than pride.

"No."

"Then why not?" Wels asked, raising an eyebrow. "It's easy. Just say, 'Welsknight, please give me a health potion'. Or if you're feeling monosyllabic, just 'please' will work."

Helsknight managed a smirk. "Why not help me out of the kindness of your heart?"

"I don't have any kindness for people like you."

[People like you. What a loaded phrase.]

Have ye no routhe on my child?

There was an entire philosophical debate that could happen in the phrase 'people like you' that Helsknight had neither the time or the energy to bother with. Besides, it was all words Wels knew. Wels pretended to be a chivalric knight. Chivalric knights helped the weak. Chivalric knights saved the defenseless. Helsknight, for all the grievances of his existence, was both right now. Then again, the chivalric knights were also supposed to make war against their enemies mercilessly, so he supposed Wels would be in his rights, as a chivalric knight, to walk away and let him die slowly and painfully on the ground.

As if sensing his thoughts, and likely because he could actually sense his thoughts a bit, Wels said, "You are always going on about how I need to be a better knight. There's something ironic here. No matter what I decide, I think you'll owe me an apology regardless."

The feeling of doom, of bone-deep, agonizing dying mantled over Helsknight again and Wels stopped existing to him. His sense of urgency, of desperation to live clawed its way up his throat. He tried to move his arm, his leg. He got his fingers to twitch. He tried to lean forward, to drag himself with willpower alone towards that stupid potion just out of reach. The potion he wasn't even strong enough to open. His vision collapsed in quickly, and he only knew he'd cried out because he was breathless. But he hadn't moved, besides managing to lull his head forward onto his chest again. Cold fear crawled around in his empty guts, a relentless, caged animal that refused to stop squirming.

[I'm dying.]

[Breathe.]

[I'm dying.]

A shadow fell over him, a presence freighted with hate, and deserving, and dissonant guilt. Wels had come forward, only to stop short when Helsknight's terror swept over him like a wave, and he stood baffled by it, and guilty for it. The fool knight probably thought Helsknight was scared of him. If only. Helsknight thought he would prefer that. At least then he could manage to die gracefully. Wels's fortitude bricked itself up against him then, a bitter soul trying to will itself to be cold and cruel, and Helsknight was thankful for it. It staved off his fear, if only a little.

"What did you do to bring this on, anyway?" Wels asked breathlessly, trying to recover his resolve. Looking for a reason to hate him.

"I was... walking home."

"That's it?" He sounded so skeptical, it was almost funny.

"I committed the terrible sin..." Helsknight laughed out a breath, "... of being fearless when I should have been cautious."

"Hubris."

"Habit."

"Yeah right."

"If I got stabbed like this every day, I wouldn't have come crawling here."

Wels glowered, parsing this statement for truth. Helsknight might have mustered some hate in him for it, if he wasn't so scared. His vision had taken on a permanent blur, and he was getting cold. He hadn't gone numb yet, which was something he found profoundly cruel. He wanted to be numb. To stop hurting. To stop fearing.

[Breathe.]

Why have ye no routhe on my child?

Have routhe on me ful of mourning;

Tak doun o rode my derworth child,

Or prik me o rode with my derling!

[Derworth... "Dearworth", probably. Beloved. So "derling" was probably "dearling", which turned into "darling". Middle English was strange. Just slightly to the left of normal. He didn't think "tak" was a word anymore, except where it existed as pieces of words. "Tak" to "take", to take hold, maintain, maybe. "Tak" to "tack" like a nail. "Prik" also, like "pricking" flesh, like a point digging.]

"Hold down the road, my dearworth child," Helsknight muttered. "Or pick me a road with my darling."

"What?"

"Stupid poem."

"How much blood have you lost?"

Helsknight laughed, and his whole body flinched, and for a moment he couldn't breathe because his pain was so alive and electric it almost stopped being pain. The concern from Wels was laughable. He wished Wels would make up his mind about whether or not he cared. Then he could get on with dying, and the terror would stop, and the universe would take him or it wouldn't, and if it didn't, he would respawn and sleep for a week. He felt Wels's hand on his wrist, which was its own kind of hilarious.

"Trying to figure out how many heartbeats I have left?" Helsknight asked.

It would be nice to know. If Wels figured it out, he hoped he would share the information. Then Helsknight could keep count.

"Your heart's too fast."

"That happens."

Wels stood up and paced, all nervous energy, back and forth across the room.

"You don't deserve my help," Wels told him scathingly, angry for how conflicted he felt. "You don't. You've been nothing but cruel ever since we met."

More pine ne may me ben y-don

Than lete me live in sorwe and shame;

["Pine", like pining. Or pain. More pain? Punishment maybe. "Don" to done. Something like: More pain to me could not be done than to let me live in sorrow and shame.]

Helsknight decided whoever wrote this poem had never been stabbed. He'd felt both sorrow and shame, and neither of them packed quite this amount of punch, in his opinion.

"It probably goes against my tenets anyway," Wels continued, still pacing. "And yours too. Aren't you the one who follows some crazy death god?"

"... Saint... of Blood and Steel."

"He probably thinks dying in a puddle on my floor is glorious."

"... they."

As love me bindëth to my sone,

So let us deyen bothe y-same.

[Maybe he was just getting better at this, or maybe this part was just easy. "As love I'm bound to my son, so let us die, both the same." It didn't flow very neatly when it was simpler. Maybe Middle English wasn't that stupid.]

"I can't help but think you did this on purpose to... I don't know. Test me somehow. Prove you're better. Weak again, Welsknight! For helping your enemy when you should have let him die, or speed him along. Don't you know knights are supposed to be cruel?"

Helsknight tried to call up his own tenets, or Wels's tenets, or anything to do with knights and their duties. He got a little lost on his way, his thoughts meandering and dying, and gasping back to life again when they remembered they were supposed to be searching for something. Something he was scared of. Dying. A wave of fear crashing over him that made Wels flinch, and bid Helsknight keep breathing, because any agony was worth not confronting that one, great, crippling unknown.

"What would you do in my place?" Wels asked him suddenly. "Answer me that, perfect knight. What would you do if the person you hated most showed up one day bleeding on your floor?"

That... was an excellent question. Helsknight searched briefly for the answer, and found it wasn't very hard to find.

"I would help."

"You're lying," Wels said guardedly.

"I... can't lie."

"Then you're dodging the truth. What would you do?"

"I would heal you if I could. Or I would kill you if I couldn't." With strength he didn't know he even still had, Helsknight leaned his head back against the wall. It was easier to breathe that way. To talk.

"Why?"

"No creature is deserving of dishonor or pain."

"That's not a tenet."

"It's not a chivalric tenet." Helsknight shrugged one shoulder weakly. "Chivalry states you can hang my guts from the ceiling if I'm your enemy."

"It does not."

"It might as well."

Wels didn't seem to have a ready reply for that.

"What is routhe?"

Wels blinked down at him, guarded and confused. "Routhe?"

"Routhe." Helsknight repeated, as though it were helpful. "Middle English."

"As in?"

"Poetry."

"Use it in a sentence."

"Why have ye no routhe on my child?"

"Ruth." Wels said, a bit too quickly, like he'd known what Helsknight was asking and was trying to avoid the answer. "We don't use it as ruth anymore. It shows up in rue, like regret, or sorrow. And... ruthless."

"Merciless."

"Yes."

Why have you no mercy on my child?

"Why are you asking about Middle English while you're bleeding to death on my floor?"

Helsknight let out a breath. It hurt, but everything did. "Stupid poem."

"Can I hear it?"

"I'm busy bleeding to death on your floor."

"Tell me and I'll heal you."

There it was again, asking for an excuse. That was Wels's real cowardice, his failing as a knight. He was scared of making decisions. Scared of dealing with the consequences of his actions. Paralyzed by indecision. He wanted to hate Helsknight because it was justified. He wanted to watch him suffer, because hatred allows suffering. He didn't want to label himself cruel, nor be accused of weakness, or softheartedness, if he showed mercy. And he didn't want to pick up his sword and kill, if it meant killing someone defenseless. He wanted Helsknight to give him a reason to act, so he could blame it on him later if it turned out wrong. Given it would likely be Helsknight rubbing his nose in it later if it was wrong, he couldn't really blame him for that.

Helsknight closed his eyes and counted his heartbeats, and pretended he wasn't scared.

"Do what you will."

An hour long minute ticked by. Helsknight felt the time moving like it was physical, like he was falling through it and he couldn't catch himself, and he was nearing his limits. He thought the only thing stopping him from begging for it all to stop was the crushing weight of his fatigue, the exponential strength it took to take his next breath, and that stupid poem, skipping in a circle in his head. It kept his thoughts away from his fear, from bearing the weight of the unknown that came next. It was still there, a nameless, formless anxiety that formed the undercurrent of his thoughts. But he didn't have to think about it when he was busy being annoyed about a poem stuck in his head.

Wels moved. He stooped to pick up the potion Helsknight had dropped and unstoppered it deftly. He was surprisingly gentle as he helped him drink, aware that every movement could cause pain. Helsknight could feel Wels's caution in the air like wings, like a bird hovering before it lands. The first potion wasn't enough to heal him completely, so he got a second from his chests and helped him with that as well, one hand hovering over Helsknight's wounds, waiting on the skin to knit back together. Helsknight got to his feet, shaky, and feeling like he'd been wrung dry of all vitality. There was no pain to speak of, but he was thirsty, and hungry, and exhausted.

"You should rest before you go anywhere," Wels said, words of pragmatic care that sounded stilted coming from him. "I can get you some water."

"I'll be fine," Helsknight told him, allowing himself some hesitant pride now that the smothering pain was gone. Even exhausted, he could think so much more clearly now -- think at all, really. And he thought the longer he stayed here, the higher the chance Wels would come to regret his decision to heal him. They were not made to like each other. They didn't even respect each other as enemies. And Helsknight knew if they fought now, he would lose, and he might lose very badly, if Wels decided to leave him to bleed out again. It was something Wels had never done before, but if he could convince himself Helsknight deserved it, he would.

"Do what you will, then," Wels said, bitterness creeping into his tone. He probably thought he was being coy and ironic. Helsknight mostly thought it was annoying.

"The poem isn't mine," Helsknight said. "It's one you've read before. Middle English. Why have ye no routhe on my child. I don't know the title. It might just be the first line. I think it's a lament."

"... I see."

"Next time you find yourself bleeding out on someone's floor," Helsknight snorted, "Pick something stupid like that. It makes things... manageable."

"Right... manageable."

Helsknight gave a helpless sort of shrug, as though what he'd just said were perfectly normal.

Wels mustered an enviable facsimile of concern when he said, "I've never felt terror like that before."

Helsknight felt his already parched mouth somehow go drier. The sympathy he felt rolling off of Welsknight was sickening. Literally. He could feel himself becoming nauseous.

"What are you so scared of?"

Shame, red hot and searing, clawed at the inside of Helsknight's ribs. He wished so badly he could hide it. Distract himself from it. At least turn it into anger. But he was tired, and he didn't know how to bring his emotions back to heel, and Welsknight was already giving him an open, piteous look like maybe they'd stumbled onto something significant. He could feel hope there, like maybe there was a reason they hated each other like they did, and if Wels could figure out where that fear came from, they could find common ground -- or at least the leverage Wels needed to make Helsknight relent.

"I don't need your pity, white knight," Helsknight snarled. "Go sate your savior complex somewhere else."

Wels scowled. A cold wall of loathing, resigned and inevitable, closed itself around anything else he could possibly feel.

[As it should be.]

Hours later, home and safe, Helsknight cracked open his journal and wrote:

Why have you no mercy on my child?

Have mercy on me, so full of mourning;

Take down the road my dearworth child,

O give me a road with my darling!

More pain to me could not be done

Than to let me live in sorrow and shame

As with love I am bound to my son,

So let us die then, both the same.

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