it was all so strange and so surreal

[more_magic]

“I just want to know if Jodie Foster is here,” said Alex, and Darlington didn’t bother trying to suppress the flicker of irritation that bubbled up within him. They’d seen wonders tonight; the Arcadian peace of that vast forest, the glories of a Parrish painting come to life, reckless sacreligious hedonism in a flower-filled cathedral. And yet all she wanted was to celebrity-watch. Typical.

The fireflies lighting the room swarmed around them, the green-gold flash of their light almost pulsing with the beat of his heart. “For all you know,” he said, the words coming out thick and sluggish. His head reeled; he blinked hard, once, twice. “For all you know, that was Jodie Foster.” The room shimmered, the air suddenly heavy and cloying. They should keep going, finish their journey down; do the job they’d been set to at the start of the night. Before he could say anything, do anything, chivvy Alex along and out of the suffocation of the fifth level of Manuscript’s tomb, Lan Caihe turned back to face them, that enigmatic smile still on her face and the vast mirror of power churning behind her.

Descend.

He shouldn’t have heard her, not from this distance, but the word was as loud as if she’d been standing by his side.

Descend.

It passed through him like a shudder, and the world gave way along with it. He fell--he descended--landing on his feet in the middle of a cavern, the walls slick with moisture and the scent of tilled soil in the air. Someone was humming, something was humming, the sound reverberating straight to the center of him like it was the only thing that mattered. Darlington looked around for the source, his head taking an age to turn from one side to the other, until--

The mirror, that vault of power. It was here, bolted to the wall of the cave, the magic contained within swirling in eddies and whorls for a moment before slowly parting. Something was wrong here, gravely wrong, and he had to look away. But why would he? He’d wanted these glimpses of the uncanny, chased them and dreamed them and craved them, driven by his need to know everything he could about a world he’d only ever been given small tastes of. He could drink his fill now, granted this glorious opportunity by a goddess in celadon robes, and so he stared as the mist parted and the mirror cleared.

It was the room he’d just left, the banquet table still laden, the guests still crowded around the feast now rotted and spoiled, flies swarming around the goblets and maggots squirming in the cheese; everyone there aged and frail, using the last of their strength to lift a cup to their lips or bite into the desiccated husk of what might once have been a peach. Above them all stood Caihe, still youthful, lit by fire and glowing with power, her face changing with every breath: high priestess, hermit, hierophant, king and empress and fool. Darlington stared, shaking, at the face of his grandfather until the next exhalation whisked the sight away. His upper lip was wet; he lifted fingers to his face and saw them come away bloody.

“Darlington?” Someone was saying his name, a voice he knew, one he’d thought of as a broken woodwind when in fact it was the richest tone he’d ever heard, a symphony contained in the three syllables of his name. No, not his name. Not his name, any more than Alex was hers; they’d both christened themselves something new. He looked away from the crimson smear on his fingertips and back to the mirror. Like Caihe, she was unchanged, that Queen Mab crown still on her head and starlight still spangling her skin, her dress a dark flow of fabric along the lines of her body--but no, now she was Mab, a true Queen of the Night, beautiful and breathtaking, the points of a wheel or a crown seeming to turn behind her. Her mouth was lush and red, constellations he didn’t recognize reflected in the pooling blackness of her eyes, so much power coursing through her that it ought to be terrifying.

“What are you?” he heard himself ask, his voice soft with awe. No answer came, but that didn’t matter; he knelt anyway, putting himself at her feet and in her hands. He could see himself in the mirror, not as he was but as he wished to be: a knight with sword in hand, his fealty pledged to the creature before him if only she would choose to accept it. There was an ache in his chest from the wanting of it, another sword plunged into his back, piercing his heart; he felt the tears spill down his cheeks, mingling with the blood, the taste of copper and salt in his mouth.

“An acolyte at heart,” said Caihe, and Darlington knew she spoke truth. Choose me, he thought, he begged, staring up at Alex. She was not what she had seemed, nothing like what he’d assumed her to be, this girl who’d done nothing to earn the gift she’d been granted. She was his queen, and he would serve her until the end of his days, if only she would…

“Darlington,” she said again, one slim hand reaching for him, fingertips brushing the side of his face, cupping his chin. He closed his eyes, and dared to hope.

Comments

[takecourage]

"So you fucking should be," says Alex, but she's mild enough, watching him blush as she takes a bite of her toast. It's difficult to be upset with him when she's not really surprised. Of course he thinks that about her. Why wouldn't he?

"Dawes put me in there. Well, she couldn't get me in there on her own. Centurion had to assist."

[more_magic]

Mild as it is, her rebuke still stings enough--and is deserved enough, not that he'll admit it--that Darlington bristles just the faintest bit before settling again, listening to her explanation as he sips his coffee. If anything, the added details only make him more confused.

"I'm sorry, you had Centurion and Pammie assisting you with...whatever this was?" He hadn't had much interaction with the officer assigned as their Centurion, but everything he thought he knew about Pamela Dawes suggested she'd stay away from whatever compelled Alex to climb into the crucible and...what? He hadn't the slightest idea. "Alex, what happened?"

He says what happened?, but a moment later he realizes what he'd really meant to ask was where was I?

[takecourage]

Leaving the crucible uncovered, Alex comes back to the bed, sitting down. She finishes her toast and picks up her coffee, curling around the mug with her knees drawn up. A ghost of a smile tugs at her mouth when he uses the petname; she wonders if he has any idea just how much Dawes loves him. Is in love with him. It's probably just another question it wouldn't occur to him to ask.

"I got the shit kicked out of me," she says, answering the question he asks, not the one that's suddenly in his eyes. "We needed to fix it."

[more_magic]

Darlington manages to look away from the crucible when Alex comes to sit on the bed again, though there's no more understanding in the depths of his blue eyes now than there had been when that blanket had fallen to the ground. Less, maybe, when the explanation he'd asked of her only results in another baffling scrap of information that seems to conceal far more than it could ever reveal.

What had happened between the madness of Halloween and that liminal midwinter space Alex had come from? He wonders if he's somehow to blame; not the capable Virgil he trained so hard to become, no credit to Lethe despite the fact he'd tried to do the best he could with the Dante he'd been given. It could all be Alex's doing, though he tries to push aside that same uncharitable impulse from before--Standards for candidates have been relaxed, et al--that suggests this is the more likely explanation. She'd been harmed, somehow; badly enough that Dawes and Centurion had needed to invoke the power of the crucible, perform a reversion, something he'd only read about and had never seen. Whatever she might have done, it couldn't have warranted a result, a reaction, like that. Darlington watches Alex curl up on the bed, her shoulders hunched over the coffee mug in her hands, and feels more lost for words than he ever expected.

"Who did that to you?"

[takecourage]

"A girl died. A town girl. I got...wrapped up in it." She sips her coffee, avoiding looking him straight in the eye for this part. "Her name was Tara. I was...in her apartment, looking around for clues and her ex-boyfriend got hold of me. Couple of broken ribs, fractured cheekbone. I'm pretty sure I had all kinds of internal bleeding." She shrugs, glancing up at him, guarded and wary. "It was portal magic. He shouldn't have been able to get to me."

[more_magic]

"Portal magic," he repeats. "Scroll and Key?" He thinks of the failed portal opening he and Alex had witnessed only a few weeks ago; rumors of waning magic, uncomfortable expressions from the assembled Locksmiths, that pervading smell of goulash and the more intangible stench of shame. When they'd canceled their first ritual, Darlington had tried to do the diligent thing, consulting the library and making enquiries before he dragged Alex thoughtlessly into something she wasn't prepared for.

I should have done more, he thinks, still looking at Alex even as her own focus stays fixed on the mug in her hands. His eyes stray up to the curve of her cheek, knowing he'll find it unmarred but somehow fearing he'll see the sudden blossom of a bruise instead. How did I not do more?

"And someone, this Tara, she died because of..." For a moment, he can't bring himself to say it. This was everything Lethe was designed to prevent, and somehow they'd failed. "Something went wrong. With a ritual, someone going off-course with a rite and not telling us. Something."

[takecourage]

"That's what we thought. It had the stink of the Houses all over it, but..." She shrugs. "I kept coming up empty on evidence. So, well..." She winces before she tells him the next part, anticipating his reaction. "I asked Bertram Boyce North for help."

[more_magic]

So much had happened in the last several hours that he almost fails to recognize the name, merely registering it as something familiar but difficult to place after everything he's already been through. But he knows it; he can't not, after a lifetime in New Haven, three years at Lethe, a few fleeting glimpses of dark hair and a blood-spattered chest the few times the Bridegroom had been drawn to one ritual or another. Not to mention the entry he himself made in the Albemarle Book only a short time ago, the first step in untangling the knot of a theory only just taking shape in the back of his mind.

He knows the name Bertram Boyce North. Of course he does, and it's for that reason Darlington's gaze sharpens as the realization sinks in.

"You did what?"

[takecourage]

"I asked the Bridegroom for help finding her beyond the Veil," she says, and she refuses to feel ashamed about that choice, no matter how he's looking at right then. "We'd run out of options, and he was always there anyway, so...Yeah. I asked him for his help." She looks up at him, the tilt of her chin almost defiant, daring him to give her shit about it.

[more_magic]

He stares right back at her for one moment and then another, his disbelief warring with the defiant set of Alex's gaze. "For Christ's sake, Alex," he mutters, looking away at last, pinching the bridge of his nose and huffing out another sharp and almost exasperated breath.

He'd told her the rules, likened it to riding the subway--and they had subways in Los Angeles, he knew they did, even if hardly anyone in that sun-drenched and benighted town used them--and she'd discarded them anyway, formed a connection and brought herself into danger. Maybe all of Lethe, too. He had no way of knowing, short of dragging yet more scraps of information out of her bit by torturous bit.

None of them had known what they were doing, it seemed, bringing Galaxy Stern in as Dante.

"And please, tell me, did this truly remarkable plan of yours work?"

[takecourage]

Draining the last of her coffee, she leans to set the mug down on the floor next to the bed, wrapping her arms around her knees. It's on the tip of her tongue - you weren't there. What else was I supposed to fucking do? but she swallows it back down, bitter as it is.

"I don't know," she says. "I'd just passed the effluvia over to him when..." She gestures to her ribs. "Guess I'll never know now."

[more_magic]

He's still angry, so much so it almost shocks him--he wants to protect her; he wants to lecture her; he wants to get drunk with her and have another china-smashing tantrum, this time for himself--but then she folds back in on herself, that thin hand ghosting over the line of her ribs, and all Darlington can feel for her is regret.

"I guess you won't," he says, suddenly weary and confused, his headache pounding in his temple once more. "That wasn't...I imagine you thought you were doing the right thing, but--" He cuts himself off, breathing out another sigh. "Never mind."

[takecourage]

"Never mind," echoes Alex, studying his face for a moment before she looks away. "It was all such a fucking mess, Darlington. Dawes and I...we didn't know what else we were supposed to do."

[more_magic]

There's something searching in her eyes, almost lost, and it brings up another wave of questions he doesn't entirely know how to phrase. She's mentioned Dawes, mentioned North, even brought up Centurion--but there's one name still missing from this story. He doesn't know how to say it, except to be forthright.

"Aside from asking me, you mean?"

[takecourage]

She wanted to avoid this, and couldn't - it was inevitable that they were going to have to get to this part eventually. The truth, or some of it, anyway.

"You weren't there," She says.

[more_magic]

He'd expected that answer, as much as hearing it still fills him with surprise. If he'd been there, he would have found a way to stop her: from forging a connection with one of New Haven's most infamous Grays, from throwing herself headlong and alone into a murder investigation, from coming to harm and crawling broken and bloody into the Golden Bowl. Maybe not all of it, maybe not everything, but at least some part of it.

And even if he couldn't, at least he might have shared the burden.

"Where," he says, stopping when he hears the rasp in his voice that sounds almost too much like someone on the verge of tears. He swallows. "Where was I?"

[takecourage]

"Not there," says Alex, fiddling with her hair, refusing to make eye contact with him, then, no matter how sad he sounds. "Sandlow said you were in Spain. Looking at Ley lines or some shit."

[more_magic]

She can't even look at him when she says it. Somehow in the next month or so, he packs up and leaves, abandoning Lethe and Black Elm and everything familiar to go chasing ley lines in Spain, and it's Sandow who breaks the news. He doesn't even tell her himself, and he can't think of a reason why; especially not after how she's seemed to him over the last few hours.

Her happiness, her ease with him, hadn't seemed like a lie, and that's what he chooses to cling to in the absence of everything else.

"I have to think," he says, and his voice is so, so careful. "That after this, I'm on the next flight home."

[takecourage]

"I hope so," she says, with a little smile. She's glad that she's folded up at the foot of the bed. He's not sure that she could stand being close enough to touch him. "We needed you around, Virgil."

[more_magic]

"It seems you did," he says, trying to match her smile with one of his own. It feels as though something heavy has shifted, settling over them like a haze; one of their own making, rather than Manuscript's. "You'll have me now, though, Dante. For whatever else Darrow brings us."

There's not much else to say after that, and Darlington finishes his coffee and his share of the toast, setting both the empty mug and plate on the bedside table once he's done.