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Been sitting on this one a while because I'm thinking of writing more, but I feel I need something fun and distracting to post today.
Havenverse Random Prompt Generator
William Cross / Duke Crocker / terror
Duke blinked, saw a familiar face hovering above him, limned in an also-familiar, if currently un-place-able, sickly greenish hue, and flinched. What an appalling sight to wake up to...
He might have mumbled that aloud, because the face tipped on one side and gave him a look filled with rebuke.
"What are you doing here?" Duke had definitely framed that aloud. His head felt muggy and his voice came out an almost unintelligible groan. His tongue felt like it had never been used before. He was lying on twigs that seemed to prick straight through his clothes, and ashes and who-knew-what underneath those, and there was a lazy drizzle against his skin that felt like slime. Beyond the branches of the trees up above, the sky was the same sick green. It was dingy and the air was clogged with drifting mist.
"I'm pretty sure I'm far more supposed to be here than you are," William responded, and the glint and the humour in his grin seemed less than Duke remembered, and Duke did not remember the man who had been so arrogant and glib about Haven's misery looking so worn and lined. "Although--" he provided almost a companionable nudge of his elbow, and something close to a wink twitched his tired face "--I do remember overhearing Wuornos make a few comments about you belonging in jail. You and your old law-breaking ways," William chided.
Wuornos... "Where's Nathan?" Duke managed to sit up, although his head was spinning unpleasantly, and nausea hit, making it known that his stomach preferred to be flat on the ground. "Where's Audrey?"
"Further from here than you could ever imagine, so you'll hope if you love them at all," William said wryly. "Lucky them." He grabbed Duke's hand and heaved him the rest of the way up as he climbed upright from his knees himself. He didn't let go of Duke's hand once he'd got him on his feet, feeling and patting his arm as though in some spirit of experiment, brow furrowing. "...Now, how did you end up here?"
"I--" Duke distinctly remembered being dead. He should not particularly have ended up anywhere. He tried to think past the thudding in his head, and past tired-worn-William's squinting interest, which was weirding him out. "Audrey was... in the armoury tower. I sent Nathan... Nathan went after her. Whatever they did up there, it worked. The aether started to leave Haven..."
Oh.
Duke, at least in his best guess, was formed of aether now. It wasn't that he didn't believe in ghosts, though he wasn't too sure about the kind Seth gibbered excitably about, but he didn't think real spirits operated like he'd been doing. If he'd been sucked in and squeezed through a supernatural dimension-straddling aether-sucking building, ripped out of one reality and spat into the next, it would explain how horrible he felt. Dwight had clung to the remnant power that animated the form of his daughter, keeping it alive and shaped and there, but Nathan and Audrey had been busy. Duke had not been able to ask them to provide the same service for himself.
He already felt lousy, but a worse feeling started to gather like a ball of cold dread in what had been his stomach. In what--well, he didn't feel at all transparent now, he felt and looked as real and alive as William, who was hanging onto him, and he was speaking words with his own lips again. It should be an improvement...
"Wait. Where are we?" he asked the other man. "Nathan met you in the void, but he told us he sent you home with his ring. You can't still be in--"
"Bingo." William mimed shooting with his forefinger. He plucked at the familiar ring, making it dance for a moment on Nathan's chain around his neck. "I tried to go home. Guess what? It doesn't exist anymore. More of the same, more of... this." He spread his hands around him, at the... Duke looked around at dead trees and dead ground and greenish fog and a toxic looking sky. "So here I am, right back where I started, because at least it's less depressing here. I'm guessing that unless Croatoan did this somehow in the time he's been back, they did it to themselves. All those taboos that led them to throw the book at me and Mara, and it looks like someone else was being naughty with the aether after all. I'm almost offended."
"The void..." Duke looked around again. He'd seen this, he remembered, in that creepy vision. But he'd seen it in Haven. That... hadn't happened, had it? He'd come back to prevent that happening, he'd freaking died, let Nathan kill him, and fuck knew what doing that had done to Nathan, let alone himself... This couldn't have happened to their world anyway? "I need to get home, William. You... okay, you weren't on our side before, but Nathan said you helped him. So you can help me, right? There are still thinnies out from here to other worlds, or... or something. The ring just shows the way back to your world. Doesn't mean you can't get anywhere else?"
"Uh." William pulled a face. "I'd apologise, but I'm kind of self-serving and I can't say I'd hate the company. Love the guys -- gotta love ‘em, they're made of me, after all -- but the guys really aren't much for conversation. You, though, do seem to have a bit of a... I'd say an aether problem, but I think it's more of a total-lack-of-a-real-body problem that the aether is actually compensating for. I'm not too sure you'd even count as alive in your own world. Plus... you think I wouldn't go back there if I could?" He spread his hands to encompass the crappy landscape and pouted sourly. "Not that I'm not looking, and I'll keep looking, because I do not intend to spend eternity here, either."
No way. He was not stuck here. Him and William and this world full of nothing? "You've got to be kidding me. I need to get back to Nathan and Audrey!"
William grinned. It had a helplessness about it as well as the annoying mirth, though that didn't make the mirth much less annoying. "You're kind of dead, Duke. It's an issue. There's probably a body somewhere in your own world that your friends are mourning."
Duke leaned against a tree as William finally let go. He almost thought he felt something shift between their skin's contact as William's touch retreated. He rubbed his arm and stared at William suspiciously. He'd been used by Croatoan, used like fuck, no-one could even imagine the kind of screwed-up nightmare that crap was, and he remembered it all to boot... And now... "You. You can manipulate aether." No need to wait for an answer. "I don't want you doing anything to me, okay? Just to be absolutely fucking clear on that. Do not touch me."
William smiled a positively nasty smile. "I might be able to help you. Lots of aether lying around here in the void. Could bolster you up a bit, you do seem a touch thin."
Duke wrapped his arms around himself and tried to rid himself of the feeling William was looking at him like a starving man at a banquet. If his body wasn't real, should it feel this cold? Or was aether just mimicking exactly the conditions of having a body and being alive? Like, for a completely random example, his nausea at the thought of not actually being alive. Croatoan had fucked him over, Nathan had killed him, and now he was stuck on an alien world with a grinning alien bastard he wouldn't trust as far as he could throw. Throwing William might give him a welcome bit of a morale-boost, though.
"Can you walk?" William asked. "I'll show you to my camp. All the home comforts away from home. Okay, I lie. But I can usually manage to get a fire going. If there's one thing we have around here, it's a lot of dead wood."
He extended a hand, but Duke clamped his fingers under his arms and shook his head, remembering Mara's hands on him, and that William could do the same things Mara could. "You walk, I'll follow."
William shrugged and turned his back, started to walk away. Duke watched his thin shoulders and lazy gait. Even if it was tired and with a new hitch in it, it was still lazy, and somehow mocking. William turned and shot a look of question back over his shoulder, before beckoning with his hand.
Duke supposed he didn't really have a choice. He shouldn't even be alive -- still here, scratch that. His body wasn't even his body. If he was dead, the universe could at least have the grace to let him be dead on his own world. If he was something else... He had the horrible feeling that William was going to be terrifically interested in what he was now.
He sighed and made himself move onward despite all of that -- little else presenting itself to do but the stay here.
He tried to plant his feet without stumbling from the shaking of his legs as he took his first steps in a new world.
Havenverse Random Prompt Generator
William Cross / Duke Crocker / terror
Duke blinked, saw a familiar face hovering above him, limned in an also-familiar, if currently un-place-able, sickly greenish hue, and flinched. What an appalling sight to wake up to...
He might have mumbled that aloud, because the face tipped on one side and gave him a look filled with rebuke.
"What are you doing here?" Duke had definitely framed that aloud. His head felt muggy and his voice came out an almost unintelligible groan. His tongue felt like it had never been used before. He was lying on twigs that seemed to prick straight through his clothes, and ashes and who-knew-what underneath those, and there was a lazy drizzle against his skin that felt like slime. Beyond the branches of the trees up above, the sky was the same sick green. It was dingy and the air was clogged with drifting mist.
"I'm pretty sure I'm far more supposed to be here than you are," William responded, and the glint and the humour in his grin seemed less than Duke remembered, and Duke did not remember the man who had been so arrogant and glib about Haven's misery looking so worn and lined. "Although--" he provided almost a companionable nudge of his elbow, and something close to a wink twitched his tired face "--I do remember overhearing Wuornos make a few comments about you belonging in jail. You and your old law-breaking ways," William chided.
Wuornos... "Where's Nathan?" Duke managed to sit up, although his head was spinning unpleasantly, and nausea hit, making it known that his stomach preferred to be flat on the ground. "Where's Audrey?"
"Further from here than you could ever imagine, so you'll hope if you love them at all," William said wryly. "Lucky them." He grabbed Duke's hand and heaved him the rest of the way up as he climbed upright from his knees himself. He didn't let go of Duke's hand once he'd got him on his feet, feeling and patting his arm as though in some spirit of experiment, brow furrowing. "...Now, how did you end up here?"
"I--" Duke distinctly remembered being dead. He should not particularly have ended up anywhere. He tried to think past the thudding in his head, and past tired-worn-William's squinting interest, which was weirding him out. "Audrey was... in the armoury tower. I sent Nathan... Nathan went after her. Whatever they did up there, it worked. The aether started to leave Haven..."
Oh.
Duke, at least in his best guess, was formed of aether now. It wasn't that he didn't believe in ghosts, though he wasn't too sure about the kind Seth gibbered excitably about, but he didn't think real spirits operated like he'd been doing. If he'd been sucked in and squeezed through a supernatural dimension-straddling aether-sucking building, ripped out of one reality and spat into the next, it would explain how horrible he felt. Dwight had clung to the remnant power that animated the form of his daughter, keeping it alive and shaped and there, but Nathan and Audrey had been busy. Duke had not been able to ask them to provide the same service for himself.
He already felt lousy, but a worse feeling started to gather like a ball of cold dread in what had been his stomach. In what--well, he didn't feel at all transparent now, he felt and looked as real and alive as William, who was hanging onto him, and he was speaking words with his own lips again. It should be an improvement...
"Wait. Where are we?" he asked the other man. "Nathan met you in the void, but he told us he sent you home with his ring. You can't still be in--"
"Bingo." William mimed shooting with his forefinger. He plucked at the familiar ring, making it dance for a moment on Nathan's chain around his neck. "I tried to go home. Guess what? It doesn't exist anymore. More of the same, more of... this." He spread his hands around him, at the... Duke looked around at dead trees and dead ground and greenish fog and a toxic looking sky. "So here I am, right back where I started, because at least it's less depressing here. I'm guessing that unless Croatoan did this somehow in the time he's been back, they did it to themselves. All those taboos that led them to throw the book at me and Mara, and it looks like someone else was being naughty with the aether after all. I'm almost offended."
"The void..." Duke looked around again. He'd seen this, he remembered, in that creepy vision. But he'd seen it in Haven. That... hadn't happened, had it? He'd come back to prevent that happening, he'd freaking died, let Nathan kill him, and fuck knew what doing that had done to Nathan, let alone himself... This couldn't have happened to their world anyway? "I need to get home, William. You... okay, you weren't on our side before, but Nathan said you helped him. So you can help me, right? There are still thinnies out from here to other worlds, or... or something. The ring just shows the way back to your world. Doesn't mean you can't get anywhere else?"
"Uh." William pulled a face. "I'd apologise, but I'm kind of self-serving and I can't say I'd hate the company. Love the guys -- gotta love ‘em, they're made of me, after all -- but the guys really aren't much for conversation. You, though, do seem to have a bit of a... I'd say an aether problem, but I think it's more of a total-lack-of-a-real-body problem that the aether is actually compensating for. I'm not too sure you'd even count as alive in your own world. Plus... you think I wouldn't go back there if I could?" He spread his hands to encompass the crappy landscape and pouted sourly. "Not that I'm not looking, and I'll keep looking, because I do not intend to spend eternity here, either."
No way. He was not stuck here. Him and William and this world full of nothing? "You've got to be kidding me. I need to get back to Nathan and Audrey!"
William grinned. It had a helplessness about it as well as the annoying mirth, though that didn't make the mirth much less annoying. "You're kind of dead, Duke. It's an issue. There's probably a body somewhere in your own world that your friends are mourning."
Duke leaned against a tree as William finally let go. He almost thought he felt something shift between their skin's contact as William's touch retreated. He rubbed his arm and stared at William suspiciously. He'd been used by Croatoan, used like fuck, no-one could even imagine the kind of screwed-up nightmare that crap was, and he remembered it all to boot... And now... "You. You can manipulate aether." No need to wait for an answer. "I don't want you doing anything to me, okay? Just to be absolutely fucking clear on that. Do not touch me."
William smiled a positively nasty smile. "I might be able to help you. Lots of aether lying around here in the void. Could bolster you up a bit, you do seem a touch thin."
Duke wrapped his arms around himself and tried to rid himself of the feeling William was looking at him like a starving man at a banquet. If his body wasn't real, should it feel this cold? Or was aether just mimicking exactly the conditions of having a body and being alive? Like, for a completely random example, his nausea at the thought of not actually being alive. Croatoan had fucked him over, Nathan had killed him, and now he was stuck on an alien world with a grinning alien bastard he wouldn't trust as far as he could throw. Throwing William might give him a welcome bit of a morale-boost, though.
"Can you walk?" William asked. "I'll show you to my camp. All the home comforts away from home. Okay, I lie. But I can usually manage to get a fire going. If there's one thing we have around here, it's a lot of dead wood."
He extended a hand, but Duke clamped his fingers under his arms and shook his head, remembering Mara's hands on him, and that William could do the same things Mara could. "You walk, I'll follow."
William shrugged and turned his back, started to walk away. Duke watched his thin shoulders and lazy gait. Even if it was tired and with a new hitch in it, it was still lazy, and somehow mocking. William turned and shot a look of question back over his shoulder, before beckoning with his hand.
Duke supposed he didn't really have a choice. He shouldn't even be alive -- still here, scratch that. His body wasn't even his body. If he was dead, the universe could at least have the grace to let him be dead on his own world. If he was something else... He had the horrible feeling that William was going to be terrifically interested in what he was now.
He sighed and made himself move onward despite all of that -- little else presenting itself to do but the stay here.
He tried to plant his feet without stumbling from the shaking of his legs as he took his first steps in a new world.
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