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rosesisupposes · 6 years

Text

Destined, part 24

aka Trumpets Sound

Character Tags: Virgil/Anixety ; Patton/Creativity ; Patton/Morality ; Logan/Logic ; Remy/Sleep ; Dante/Deceit

Chapter Pairings: Prinxiety

Chapter Warnings: Death threats, Arguing, Raging Against The Machine

Reader Tags: @residentanchor @royally-anxious @bewarethegrammarpolice @nightmarebeforevirgil @jemthebookworm @arandompasserby @sparkly-rainbow-salt

Summary: After centuries of acting as an oracle to heroes, quest-seekers, and villains alike, Virgil just wants to live as a normal, modern human. For someone who can see infinite probabilities, you’d think he’d know better.

<<Chapter 23 | Masterlist | Chapter 25>>

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The days after their second encounter with the sorcerer had been… odd. Virgil felt as if he was floating, suddenly detached from all the nervous energy that had plagued his life since that first collision on the sidewalk. He smiled at every customer in the bakafé, helped decorate pastries with Joan and Talyn, and spent every evening on his couch or Roman’s, curled up with his boyfriend as they watched shows and movies together. Well, they mostly watched. They’d had to replay a couple of episodes due to getting distracted.

The only mar on the golden haze of post-Dante life was the possibility of punishment from the Sages. Virgil had gone against so much of the Law, he’d completely obliterated the bounds of what they’d even known to make rules against. But Sages’ idea of time, especially from within the ether, was approximate at best. When Virgil had attempted to explain it to Patton and Logan, the latter had nodded gravely and said “Wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey.” Virgil was still very confused by this, but Roman had simply laughed at his confusion and told him the explanation was on their watch list.

For the first time in his life, though, someone else was more nervous than Virgil. Roman had become prone to bouts of pacing back and forth and as he tried to brainstorm ways for his rescuer and boyfriend to evade judgment and punishment altogether. After Dante’s defeat, though, Virgil’s fear of the Law of Sages had evaporated, and with it, all of his inclination to flee the consequences. He did not want to die, nor did he want to be forced to leave Roman’s side after all they’d survived together. But he did want to look his brethren in the face and ask them why .

The waiting was the hard part, not knowing when, if ever, the Sages would summon him. It might take them months or even years to notice the disturbance and find the right alignment to pull him into the ether. They might miss it entirely and his judgment wouldn’t come until he’d lived his entire lifetime out as Virgil and returned to the ether naturally. All he knew was that he wanted to spend as much time with his friends and Roman as he could until he was pulled away.

Currently, he was reclining while half on top of his gorgeous boyfriend watching Parks and Recreation. He loved listening to the man’s musical laugh, feeling his chest dance up and down, even if it moved his head quite a lot as a result. He looked up at Roman’s bright hazel eyes, deliciously soft auburn hair, and cheeks that were slightly flushed from merriment. The wave of affection he felt looking at him was intoxicating like nothing he’d ever experienced, not in all his years. As the episode ended, he sat up and paused it. Roman looked over quizzically, still smiling. Virgil smiled back. “I want to keep watching, I just got distracted by you, Ro. I hope you know just how amazing you are. You’re all things bright and delightful and beautiful, and I just… there’s no reason to wait to say it. Roman Augustus, I-”

A sudden burst of white light filled the room. Winds whipped past Roman’s face as tendrils of pearly magic surrounded the violet-haired man sitting half-in, half-out of his lap. He reached for his hand, panicking, but his grasp met with nothingness. The light faded as suddenly as it had appeared. Virgil was gone.

One moment he was on a couch, the next he was toppling to his knees in the middle of a white room, or was it an empty plane? There was a distinct sense of walls and roof and benches, but without limitations or physical boundaries. Virgil stuck out like a bear in a puddle, all purple and black in a space that was perfectly sterile and bare.

Not to mention, he was the only being in the space with a physical manifestation.

Ranks of Sages stared down at him, some with slight features and humanoid shapes on their glowing forms, some nothing more than amorphous nimbuses of light. One light shown a little brighter than the rest, the mark of a Sage who had spent eons in the ether. Yet she retained a clearly human and female form, enough for Virgil to recognize her. It was Cassandra, the fabled Seer cursed to be disbelieved in her accurate predictions. After her despicable treatment at the hands of the humans in her one lifetime on earth, she had retreated her to make sure there was always an experienced Sage able to observe from afar.

Time had not sweetened her mood towards the denizens of Earth, however. “Sage, you have disobeyed us,” she threw the words like spears as she advanced towards Virgil. “You have turned our Law upon its head, made a mockery of our ways. And for what?”

Well, that’s how it’s going to be, I guess, Virgil thought. It’s not like he could lie to a room of omniscient beings. “To save my friends. To prevent a sorcerer from attempting to enslave humanity.”

“You flout the tenets of our brethren for humans. You risk eternity for a blink in time?” Cassandra’s voice was all icy distaste, as if Virgil’s actions were a cowpat he’d caused her to step in.

“For all of humanity and the remaining magic folk, Elder Cassandra. The possibilities were clear - the sorcerer’s intent was the dramatically alter the world as a whole, and enslave or kill all who interfered.”

“Oh, well, if only we’d realized the world might change, then the utter disregard of the entirety of our existence would be perfectly satisfactory,” Cassandra said scathingly. “My fellow Elders, I hardly think a full trial and deliberation is necessary. Surely we can all see that there was a reason that this Sage remained in the world when his brethren all returned here, to our true home. He is a traitor to our order and our Law, and only severance and cessation can answer such crimes.”

Virgil shivered and looked down. How casually and easily she advocated for a permanent death sentence.

“Cassandra, surely you of all people would agree that in this case of all cases we must follow the full procedure of trial. It wouldn’t do to disregard part of the Law, even if we did all agree that this young one’s broken all of it. Which I do not, I might add.” Another form piped up from the benches to Virgil’s right. As he made eye contact, the form of an old Welsh woman smiled toothily back at him. “Hello, dearie. It’s ‘Virgil’ at the moment, hm?” He nodded silently. “Very good. The name I went by was Agnes, Agnes Nutter. And I want to hear the boy speak for himself,” she shot back at the tower of glowing fury that was Cassandra.

Other forms murmured and nodded along with Agnes’ statement. Virgil felt the knot in his stomach ease slightly. Cassandra would not determine his fate alone. That was some comfort, at least.

Another voice, this one vaguely male but otherwise nondescript, spoke. “I hereby call this Trial of Sages to order. The Sage currently known as Virgil is charged with open defiance of the Law. He will be given a chance to defend his actions and take questions from the Elders. The Elders will then deliberate and pick a suitable sentence. Virgil, you may begin.”

Virgil stood and walked to the center of the room, or perhaps he walked just a few steps forward in the empty space. A podium that wasn’t quite physical but that still had a solid presence appeared under his hands. He was glad there was no moisture here, or his palms would definitely be sweating with nerves.

“Esteemed Sages, Reverent Elders. I am before you today not because I have directly and deliberately gone against our Law, but because I have caused a situation that is not addressed in our code. For those who did not See the particulars, I learned, in the heat of the moment, that not only could I See a wide-open, unlimited future by reading my own destiny, I could physically change the present by enacting change in the past.”

The murmurs among the crowds became a rumble. Clearly, the information had not been widely spread. Seeing Cassandra’s glare from where she’d resumed her seat at the center of the crowd, Virgil suspected he knew why.

“At first this change seemed to only apply to objects - if someone had made a choice regarding an inanimate thing, I could shift that choice so that the same materials had been made in another way, or into another thing. The essence remained the same - I did not create or destroy any matter. But despite not being sure it would work, I attempted to do the same with a living thing - a magical being. A sorcerer. One who I had divined for in a previous life. One who had made many choices that lead to the several repeat encounters I experienced in these last few weeks of human time. Despite having been told my whole existence that altering time was impossible, I was able to channel the ether and the potential energy of unchosen possibilities to send him back to a crux within his own life. He disappeared from the timeline I was in, then, and I can only assume this means he chose differently.”

He paused as the murmurs grew louder. He couldn’t really understand them, given there there were at least fifty voices speaking at once, but he caught snippets.

“...highly unorthodox…”

“absolutely unheard of…”

“...the implications!”

“...surely a fluke…”

“...what else don’t we know?”

One form stood. It was particularly amorphous and featureless, and had a voice that could only be described as ‘blue,’ but couldn’t be pinned to any existing conception of gender. “We speak for everyone when we say - how could this be possible? How could one lone Sage spontaneously acquire an ability that none of us knew about? And if he did not spontaneously acquire this, how long have we all been capable of such a thing?”

Agnes continued as the first form sat, or lowered itself, again. “And indeed, if we have had this ability, how could we all have been blind to it? Is Virgil here the first to even attempt such a thing? He and his cohort from Delphi have been in existence for three and a half millennia. Surely there has been at least one other Sage who has made a similar attempt.”

Cassandra stood. “Elders, these questions are meaningless. Even if such an ability were widespread among our brethren, to use it would still be in defiance of our Law. This renegade, who has already rejected his brethren through his reckless manifestation, only proves that any of our order who attempt such drastic actions deserve none of our powers nor responsibilities. He is a threat to our way of existence, and should be dealt with as such.”

“Cassy, if I didn’t know better, I’d say you did know about this,” Virgil interrupted. “You seem remarkably unshaken about a revelation that has every other Sage here in a tizzy. I’m sure that the great and wise Cassandra would never deliberately conceal such information from her brethren, though, so I must be mistaken in noting your odd reaction.”

The ancient seer glared at him. The same weird boldness he’d had facing down Dante was fizzing in his veins. His heart was beating at a familiarly high rate, but instead of his usual flight or freeze, his body and mind had apparently agreed on fight. There was no deliberation in his words - they just poured out in a raging river of consciousness as he puzzled through the ancient being’s reaction.

“Really, it seems inconceivable that the oldest Sage, the only one who’s been continuously in the ether for hundreds of centuries straight, would have found out about such a dramatic revelation in Sagedom and not have shared it. Unless, maybe, you had a reason not to want us all to know. A grudge, perhaps. A resentment of all earthly creatures? Is that too harsh? I’m gonna say no, it’s not - it’s accurate. You don’t want Sages to be able to change things, because with change comes the chance for improvement. And if we could improve things, we could help humanity. We could give them chances to make better choices. But if the goodness in humanity is just a choice away, then your assumptions have been wrong, all this time.”

If Cassandra had been manifested, she would have been turning white. As it was, her form was almost vibrating with anger, and she was tensed to advance towards Virgil. He kept going, relentless. “It turns out neither magical nor nonmagical mortals are inherently wicked, as you’ve told us all since your last cessation. They just have the potential to be so.

“If they’re not guaranteed bad, then it was just those human who chose to hurt you, and if we can change their choices, then there’s a chance that your pain could have been avoided entirely. And that possibility just terrifies you, doesn’t it-”

Somewhere as he’d been speaking, Cassandra had come up directly in front of him, which he became instantly aware of as her very solid hand connected with his right cheek.

“Don’t you ever presume to know how I feel, boy. You speak of things you cannot ever understand.” Her voice was tight with fury.

Virgil’s face stung, but so did his conscience. He’d gone too far. Cassandra had endured some of the absolute worst treatment at the hands of humanity that anyone could be subjected to. He couldn’t pass judgment on how she coped. That wasn’t what any of this was about.

“I… you’re right, Cassandra. My words were uncalled for. I apologize.”

The prophetess returned his look and nodded grudgingly, then turned on her heel and returned to her spot among the rest of the Sages.

“Brethren,” Virgil spoke, his voice ringing in the endless space and bouncing off the suggestion of walls, “my real question is this: regardless of if there was one of us who knew of this ability, why didn’t we all know? Why is it so rare that any of us has actually tried to use this power? We have all seen terrible choices and terrible futures, and many of us have had to watch as those choices were made and those futures became the present. Why did I only every try to do something about it now? Why have we all spent so long as observers without ever trying to act?”

There were one or two whispers, but the crowd of Sages had largely gone silent. Was it guilt? Confusion? Contemplation? Probably a bit of all three.

“Our Law served a very needed purpose when we first made it. We wanted to correct the mistakes we made at Delphi. Over and over again, we had been too much part of the narrative. We and our prophecies were too often the crux of the future. So we learned, and adapted. We said we would remain on the sidelines - looking only, telling only. Embracing the vagueness to avoid deliberately misleading any Seekers. Pre-empting any prejudice against Seekers by instituting one invocation for all. All our intentions were good.” Virgil took a deep breath. He couldn’t remember a single time in his existence where he’d spoken so much while so many beings watched. Granted, not all of them had eyes, but if they did, every pair would have been glued to him.

“But as we all know, intentions aren’t enough. By being so adamant that we should not interfere, we were preventing ourselves from knowing if we could. It turns out that we have the power to enact change, to give second and third chances, to alter the present by influencing the past. I’ve done so, now. I don’t know that everything affected by that change is better now that it was before, but I do know that it removed a threat to humanity on the large and small scales, and I believe it was the right choice. I accept that I went against the intent of our Law. But I ask what we hope to accomplish with any of this?” He looked around at the ranks of glowing forms. All was silence, except for his voice and its echo in the endless space of the ether. “Because for centuries upon centuries, I’ve been telling destinies and then just...watching them happen. Favorable or unfortunate, good or evil, it’s all been effectively the same. Yes, I’ve been troubled when I’ve encountered a Seeker with particularly harmful intent. The heirs of kingdoms who planned vast crusades, the knights hoping to slay peaceful dragons, the ambitious and the dastardly, all of them. I was troubled by their plans. Maybe even concerned. But what did I do differently? Nothing. I followed our Law. I did my job, and let them go on their ways. We aren’t amoral beings, nor are we apathetic. If we know this, and still force ourselves to treat good and evil, justice and cruelty, benevolence and tyranny, all equally - what is our purpose?”

The emptiness stretched on and on as the last echoes of Virgil’s voice faded. The air was thick with his question and all the uncertainty it had brought to light. Glowing forms turned and exchanged glances, but no one seemed prepared to speak. Long moments passed without a sound.

It was Cassandra who finally broke the silence. “Our purpose is to be receptacles of knowledge of the future. We are not actors. Where we went wrong was manifestation. We are best here, in the ether, guiding indirectly. Here, we are able to approach and divine only for those we choose. Here, there is no risk of aiding those who wish ill on the world. Here, there is no risk of humans. ”

“But then why the ability to manifest in the first place?” That was Agnes. “Why these abilities, if we weren’t meant to use them?”

“Why aren’t we heroes?” Virgil heard himself say. “We could avert tragedies, wars, anything that came about from a choice. Why aren’t we more?”

“Because if we were more, we would never be enough.” A quiet voice sounded from the back of the crowd. A being entirely made of light was speaking. Its voice felt fragile, crackling and rustling like an ancient manuscript. “I apologize for not speaking up to support you sooner, Cassandra.”

The being floated above of out of the cluster of Sages, gently landing near Virgil as an identical podium appeared before it. “I am the only other left who made that decision, and I should not have left you alone before our brethren, Cass. I also knew of the ability that this young Sage has revealed. We discovered the power by accident long ago, before Delphi. It was spoiled through arrogance and foolhardiness. At first we used it well, so we thought, and righted wrongs. But it could be used easily for ill, too. And though we are not human, we are just as susceptible to the throes of emotions. One of our number wanted to become an Enforcer, fixing every possible problem. We urged him not to, but were ignored. He drove himself almost to madness, convinced of his own righteousness. He turned against us all. He was the first to discover the powers of severance and cessation - which is why only Cassandra and I remain today. He turned those powers against every other Sage then in existence. We were able to catch him unawares, and meted his own judgment upon him. And we swore to never again let ourselves, or any of the new Sages we created, fall into such temptation. That is why we hid this knowledge. That is why Cassandra feels so strongly about non-intervention.”

“So you were justified. Great. Doesn’t change the fact that the rest of us are moral beings who’ve spent eternity forced to act as if we weren’t,” Virgil said. History was great and all that, but they weren’t off the hook of his opinion. “The one thing we have all embraced since Delphi was the necessity of choice. Yet you refused to honor that for us, your brethren. If this is what it means to follow the Sage’s Law, I’d like to remove myself from the equation.”

“These revelations do not alter your actions, traitor,” Cassandra hissed. “You were ignorant of these externalities and still deliberately flouted our established customs.”

“And he will still receive a judgment, Cassandra,” Agnes interrupted. “In accordance with the Law, we will still confer. But you cannot decree unilaterally that this new information changes nothing. And Virgil is allowed to make his wishes known.”

“You are right, of course, Agnes,” Cassandra said sourly. “So, trai- Virgil ,” she amended at Agnes’ glare. “What punishment do you request for your actions?”

Virgil paused. He hadn’t known he’d be given a choice. He’d never been present for a trial before.

“What I want? What I want is to have the Law be changed. For us as a whole to rethink our role. I want us to feel able to act when our morals compel us to do so, and to know how to balance our ability to act with our justification to do so. I want us to be better.”

“What you ask for is for chaos, a complete abandonment of our ancient order,” Cassandra said coldly.

Virgil looked away from her, towards the rest of the crowd. “We’re immortal, it won’t kill you all to think about it, will it?” He scanned the faces. Trying to read reactions when so many had only a haze of color instead of features was an impossible task. But nevertheless, his suggestion felt hopeless.

He sighed. “I guess that’s it, then. I no longer believe in the Law, and I wish to no longer be bound to its forced amorality. But our Elder is right - I don’t want to be an Enforcer, either. And I don’t want to have to constantly be balancing those extremes. I guess that means I request severance. Have the ether release me, and let me live on as a human, as a mortal. All I request is that I not lose my memory of the life I’ve lived so far in this form.”

Cassandra pursed her lips. Agnes smiled warmly. The elder being seemed to nod.

“Is there anything else you wish to add in your defense?” the agéd being asked.

“No… I think that’s it,” Virgil half-whispered. After speaking so much and so forcefully, he felt the hot energy that had pulsed through his veins cooling and congealing, leaving him drained.

“Then, brethren, please join me in the secondary plane for judgment.”

The gathered forms began to fade into more incorporeal forms.

“Wait!”

author’s note: Speaking of Doctor Who influences, whoops, who left this rose on a beach?

Agnes Nutter belongs to the late great Sir Pterry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman from their excellent, wonderful, hilarious novel Good Omens. I hope Neil doesn’t mind me borrowing her.

Also, WOW, you know that thing when characters just grab the tiller and go on a wildly different tack than you’d originally planned? That happened so hard I think I went straight into a jibe. Here’s hoping I don’t get hit in the head by the boom. (Am I taking the nautical metaphor too far? I probably am. Welp, that sure took the wind out of my sails)

#destined #Roses Writes Fanfic #my smol future-seeing baby #dsdkfjgkjdf #ehehehehe #virgil sanders #roman sanders #sanders sides fanfic #sanders sides fanfiction #we're SO close to the end now

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