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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Stuck in the middle of a forest made of
Flesh and bones and they're all scared of
A lost little boy who has lost his heart
Fear's not enough, they have to
Tear him apart
—-------
There are two things Daniel Fenton knows that his family knows as well:
He’s adopted.
He can’t remember anything else before that.
‘Adoption’ is a loose term, implying that they went through the official legal processes and troubles of adopting a child into their home willingly, and with the full intention of doing so going into it. That is not what happened. What happened is that Jasmine Fenton found a half-dead child, in strange clothing, in the middle of the woods at her Aunt Alicia’s cabin, and then she went and got her parents.
What happened is that a twelve year old Danny woke up in the same cabin, wearing clothes much too big on him that didn’t belong to him, and with very little memory of before that moment. He wakes up like a spring being set loose, sitting up so fast he scares the daylights out of Jasmine Fenton sitting next to him. He wakes up, reaching for his sleeve for something that isn’t there, and when it isn’t his mind stutters, like he’s tripped at the top of a steep hill.
When they ask him for his name, he tells them, clearing muddled thoughts from his mind; Danny. He’s twelve.
(He thinks that’s his name, at least. It sounds right; it feels right. If he thinks really hard about it, he thinks he can remember someone calling him that, utter adoration in their voice. So it must be his name.)
The Jasmine girl convinces her parents to take him home with them, and they give him the spare guest room upstairs. He has nothing to fill it with.
It’s… a strange experience, to go to a ‘new’ home when he doesn’t even remember his old one.
The official adoption process… happens. He can’t say it’s easy, or difficult. He’s oblivious for the most of it, Jasmine intends on helping him settle in and Danny can’t say he enjoys the smothering. He learns that he is stubbornly self-independent, that’s one new thing he knows about himself.
His adoption papers say ‘Daniel J. Fenton’. Danny remembers staring at the name ‘Daniel’ for a long, long moment, something curdling sour in his sternum. His name is Danny, that he knows. But it’s not Daniel. But he doesn’t know any other way of saying it, so he keeps his complaints to himself.
(Jack Fenton boisterously claps his hand on Danny’s shoulder and jerks him around, grinning wide as he welcomes him into the Fenton Family. Danny’s mind blanches at the touch on his shoulder, an instinct snapping like the maw of a snake, telling him to cut off the man’s fingers for daring to touch him.)
(He keeps the thought to himself, tension rising up his shoulders the longer Jack Fenton’s heavy hand stays on him.)
They found Danny in the summer. It’s a perfect coincidence, Maddie Fenton says before she goes back into her lab with Jack Fenton. She says it’s enough time to allow Danny to adjust; that they’ll enroll him into the school year in the fall. Then she stuffs a canister of ectoplasm onto the top shelf, and disappears like the ghosts she studies back down the stairs.
(There’s something eerily familiar about the ectoplasm sitting in the fridge, something unsettlingly so. Danny knows what that stuff is, but he doesn’t know where. When the house is empty, he takes a can from the fridge and inspects it.)
Jazz wants him to leave the house. Danny doesn’t want to step foot outside of the FentonWorks building until he has something that quells the feeling of vulnerability he gets whenever he does. He tried to once, and he felt exposed. Unsafe.
He turned back around and went inside.
—-------
Where do we go
When the river's running slow
Where do we run
When the cats kill one by one
—------
One day, when the house is empty — or, as empty as it can be; the Fenton parents down in the lab, and jazz out with friends. Danny is making a sandwich, and he caves into the urge to flip the knife in his hands between his fingers. A childish impulse, but one he falls for nonetheless. It comes to him easily, like second nature, in fact. The slip of the blade between his fingers is seamless, flowing with an ease like water running down the wall.
He’s almost startled by it; his body holds memories that his mind does not. Muscles that know which way to move and twist, limbs that know how to hold and how to throw. He continues twirling it, fascinated, as if he were a scientist discovering a new species of animal.
It’s not for a handful of minutes when a new thought hits him; an impulsive thought that pops in the back of his mind like a firecracker; Danny moves without thinking.
He turns, and throws the knife. The pull of his shoulder, the flick of his elbow, is familiar like a hug. He knows when to let go, and the blade flies through the air in impressive speed, embedding itself into the wall with a hearty, loud thunk. Sinking into the drywall like butter.
Danny stares at it in shock, he feels relieved — about what? — before he feels the guilt. He scrambles across the kitchen to pull it out, heart racing in his chest at being caught, and prays no one notices the hole it left behind.
(He runs up the stairs before anyone can find him, food forgotten, and hides the knife beneath his mattress like a guilty murder weapon.)
After that, he leaves the house more. It’s more out of fear of being caught than the desire to leave. But Danny is quickly learning that among all things, he is someone who was dangerous, before he lost his memory. Even with his mind in fractures, he is still dangerous.
He’s not sure how to feel about that — he thinks he should be scared. He feels a little proud, instead.
—------
Hazel beneath our claws
While we wait for cerulean to cry
Unsettled ticks run through time
Enough for the hunt to go awry
—-----
There’s another thing he learns about himself. That he knows about since he woke up. He knows that he left someone behind. He doesn’t know who, but he knows they must have been close; he’s always looking down and finding himself surprised when the only shadow he sees is his own.
He thinks that he must have sung to them a lot; he finds himself humming familiar melodies when he’s lost in thought. Lullabies lingering at the tip of his tongue, an instinct to turn and sing them to someone beside him. He can’t remember the lyrics, but his mouth does, it tries to get him to say them when he’s not thinking. He can’t.
Danny’s found himself humming under his breath more times than he can count, trying to recall whatever it is his mind is trying to claw forward.
(“That’s a pretty song, Danny.” Jazz tells him at breakfast one day, Danny screws his mouth shut. He hadn’t realized he was humming. “What is it?”)
(Something mean and possessive rears its head on instinct, uncoiling like a snake from its ball. His shoulders hunch defensively, he bites his cheek to prevent himself from baring his teeth. He doesn’t know what song it is, but it’s not for her. “I don’t know.”)
He misses his person. Dearly. He knows, the longer he is without them, that they must have been close. Otherwise, he wouldn’t feel like he’s missing a chunk from himself. He wouldn’t be turning to someone who's not there; reaching for a hand that’s missing, birdsong on his tongue, a story to tell.
A dream haunts him one night. Warm and familiar, he’s holding onto someone smaller than him, they’re tucked into his side like a puzzle piece. He’s humming one of his songs that is always playing in the back of his mind, an unfinished tale of a harpy and a hare. Danny can’t remember their face, not all of it. He remembers green eyes, hair dark like his own, skin brown like his.
He loves them more than anything else in the world, a fact he knows down to his soul. He loves them so much it fills his heart with sunlight. Danny squeezes them tight, nuzzling into their hair; he makes them laugh. Then, he proudly boasts something. That when he takes something of their father’s, that his person — a sibling? That feels right — will be… the word fades from Danny’s mind before he can make sense of it.
His person hugs him tight, his… brother? And their mother — a woman whose face he can’t remember either, but who he loves like a limb nonetheless — appears, smiling. Her hands reach for them both, voice calling them, ‘her sons’. There’s ticking in the distance, it sounds like the fastening of chains.
Danny wakes up cold, tears streaming down his face. The details of the dream already fading from his mind like the cold pull of a corpse.
—-------
Harpy hare
Where have you buried all your children?
Tell me so I say
—-------
When school starts that Fall, Danny joins the sixth grade class, and quickly learns more things about himself. One of those things being that he’s smarter than the rest of his grade, whatever education he had before, it was better than the one he’s getting now.
Everyone knows he’s adopted right off the bat. He tells them when the teacher forces himself to introduce himself, but it’s not like they needed him to tell them for them to know; he never existed in their little world before now, and the Fentons are pale as they come. Danny is not.
He befriends Sam Manson and Tucker Foley; they ask him about the scars fading up and down his arms, they ask him about the scar carved diagonal across his face.
Danny, as politely as he can, tells them he doesn’t remember. He thought kindness would come second nature to him, his dream burned into his mind where he hugged his brother so sweetly. Apparently, his sweetness is only second nature to people he considers his own.
(It becomes even more apparent when Dash Baxter tries to bully him later that day, and Danny ruffles like an eagle threatened. His mind whispers, hissy and agitated, sinking like a shadow at his shoulder, several different ways Danny could kill him for talking to him like that, and fifteen more ways he could cripple him.)
(Danny ignores those thoughts, up until Dash Baxter tries to grab him. Then he breaks his nose on the wood of his desk. It’s easy how quickly the rest of his grade sinks him down to the status of social pariah.)
(At least Sam and Tucker still talk to him after that. When Danny goes to the principal’s office later, he wisely doesn’t mention the worse things he could’ve done than break Dash Baxter’s nose.)
—--------------
It clicks and it clatters in corners and borders
And they will never
Hear me here listen to croons and a calling
I'll tell them all the
Story, the sun, and the swallow, her sorrow
Singing me the tale of the Harpy and the Hare
—-------
More dreams come, of course they do. Each one halfway to forgotten whenever he wakes up, ticking faint in his ears. He is many different ages. He is young, shorter than a table. He is older, holding onto his little brother. He is singing in almost every single one. He is singing to his brother.
Danny can barely remember the lyrics, he’s begun leaving a journal by his bedside so that it’s the first thing he can write down when he wakes up. He’s a storyteller, he learns. He feels like a historian, trying to piece together a culture long dead and forgotten.
His most vivid dream-like memory is not a happy one, and for once he’s almost relieved he barely recalls it. He is somewhere that isn’t home, but his mother and brother are there. He is dressed in black, blades keen in his hands.
They are atop a moving train. They are fleeing something. His brother is struggling to keep up, he is small, and young. It’s beautifully sunny, they are somewhere green and lovely.
It is a fast dream.
His brother stumbles on something, and Danny, fast as a whip, snatches him by the back of his shirt and hoists him up to his feet before he can fall. “Watch your feet, habibi.” He murmurs low, a hand on his back. It’s hard to hear, there is wind in their ears.
His brother, face obscured in all but his eyes, which are green as emeralds, nods.
The dream blurs, but Danny falls behind. His foot catches on air — impossible, it should’ve been, at least. He never trips. — and he lands against the roof with a thud and a grunt. His mother and brother stop, and turn for him.
The train hits a turn before Danny can get up, and he shouldn’t have, something pulls on him, he swears, but he slips. He can’t find the purchase to pull himself up, cold fear hits him as his nails scrape against the metal.
His mother and brother’s horrified faces are the last thing he sees before he disappears off the side of the train.
(The ticking is at its loudest when he wakes up, pounding against his inner skull. He only manages to write down ‘train fall’ in his journal, before he’s flipping over to press his head into his pillow to get the pain to stop.)
—---
She can't keep them all safe
They will die and be afraid
Mother, tell me so I say
(Mother, tell me so I say)
—-------
When Danny is fourteen he is still humming songs he can’t remember, his mind still in a broken puzzle. But his room is now decorated with stars and plants in every corner. He has a guitar he keeps in the corner of his room, and he plays the lullabies in his head on the strings over and over again.
The ectoplasm in the fridge still unsettles him, still reminds him of a past he can’t recall. The knife beneath his mattress has returned to the kitchen — he doesn’t need it. He found a box in the attic last year, it had his name on it, and inside he found familiar, strange clothes, and more weapons than he thought was possible to carry on one person.
(Even without knowing that the Fentons prefer guns to blades, Danny knows, instinctively, that they were his weapons. He was — was? Is — a dangerous person. He takes the box down to his room to sort through. The weapons all fit into his callused hands almost perfectly — the grooves worn to fit his palm. They’re just a little small.)
(He tentatively takes a small blade with him to school one day, and feels much more comfortable with it sheathed beneath his shirt. He’s kept it on him ever since, like he’s reunited a lost limb to himself.)
Danny doesn’t have a name for his person, his little brother, nor does he have a name for his beloved mother. He’s haunted by dreams every few weeks, many of them repeating. He’s ingrained the words he can remember to memory, and the ones he doesn’t, he writes down in his journal. His little brother; Danny calls him a bird, he can’t figure out what kind. His little bird of some kind; when Danny takes something from their father — what, he can’t remember what — then his little brother will be a little bird.
(He doesn’t have a name for his brother, yet, but he’s calling his birdie in his head. It’s better than nothing.)
—------
Seeker, do you ever come to wonder
If what you're looking for is within where you hold
Will you leave a trail for them to follow a path
You'll soon forget
Home
—---------
When he’s fourteen, Danny dies. It does nothing to fix his fractured memories, much to his consternation. It just confirms something he already knows; that he was someone dangerous, and that he still is.
When the shock of death has worn off, Danny inspects his ghost in the metal reflection of the closest table. It’s blurry, hard to see, but shock green eyes pierce back at him, green like the portal. Lazarus, Danny’s mind whispers, and he blinks rapidly.
‘Lazarus,’ he mouths to himself. It’s familiar. Sam shows him with her phone what he looks like, joking that he looks like an assassin. Danny doesn’t think she’s that too far off.
He doesn’t tell her that. He tucks the thought away with the rest of his secrets, and fiddles with the hood gathering at his neck, attached to a cape with torn edges swinging down to his ankles. He pulls it over his shock white hair. It shadows over his face impossibly so, until all you can see are his green-green eyes peering out like a wolf hiding in the brush.
He ends up calling himself Phantom.
(Maybe now he can start putting lyrics to his lullabies; his memories may not have returned, locked away with the sound of a clock, but the dead can talk. One of them may just have answers.)
----------
Home is where we are
Home is where you are
Home is where I am
-----------------
Dedicated to @gascansposts for being the one who introduced me to the band Yaelokre, and thus being the whole reason I was inspired to write this in the first place >:] Those lyrics at the line breaks are all from their album Hayfields.
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