dreams, dreams and dreams.
Oct. 23rd, 2015 09:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yukie(author’s note: this isn’t exactly canonical as such; this is more of a character piece, with me getting a feel for cassian and letting him talk to people.)
Cassian's dreams tended toward “vague as fuck” or “vivid miserable flashback”, so when he started to dream about following a big scruffy skinny black tomcat through an empty city, he kept following the cat even through dawning lucidity just for the sake of it being something new.
It wasn't a blur, and it wasn't charred ruins and the scent of something beyond ordinary death.
It was rainy foggy streets, the scent of wet asphalt, and a twinge in his left knee.
“Waow,” demanded the cat. He had a funny rough kind of voice, like he'd been yowling his little head off on a fence all night. “Wwwuuu...aow?”
“I'm coming,” Cassian griped.
“WAOW.” The cat shook water off his feet, and stared at Cassian.
“Okay, I--”
“WAOW!”
“I'm coming! You--”
“WAOW. WAOW. WAOW. WAOW. WAOW. WAOW.”
“Holy fuck, OKAY! You have four legs, you little shit. I only have two. Give an old guy a break.”
“Waow.” The cat gave him a smuggish slow blink and then bounced off into the drizzly rain, tail an inverted J, the tiny bell on his collar jingling.
“Little shit,” Cassian sighed again, and followed.
Down the road, out of town, out beyond the usual boundaries of the cities of his dreams.
***
General Cassian Gaius Chere Cole was a hero, and he looked to Vicky like a lot of heroes tended to: very tired.
His hair was sort of silvery-gold; his eyes were sort of violetty-blue. He was tall and broad-shouldered and he had that kind of luminous nimbus that healers and paladins tended to emit in dreams. He had faint frown-lines at the corners of his eyes, and faint creases in his brow.
When he looked at her, she saluted.
She noted him noting her: short, stocky, curvy, dark-haired, magenta-eyed. Probably emitting a funny shadowy feeling to his third eye, or something. He was wary but not on the verge of being nasty.
“You're youma?” he guessed. And then, “No, not exactly.” He was observant; her eyes weren't quite right. Mana's Thorn wasn't as prominent in her as in fullblooded youma, and he knew that, and he saw it.
“Yes. I'm fae and youma and human,” Vicky said. “Sir.”
He smiled and it was equal parts proud and morose. “Sir, she says. I guess my reputation precedes me.”
“Sort of? Not badly.”
“What do they say about me where you're from, kid?”
Vicky smiled back at him, and his smile got a bit less sad.
“That you're very brave,” she told him, “and that you saved a lot of people, and you had to make a lot of horrible decisions because you were fighting in a horrible war.”
Cassian blinked. “That's pretty damn middle-of-the-road. Usually I'm either the hero or the goat,” he said. “Not the...heroic...goat? Goat-hero?”
Vicky closed her eyes and thought back to history lessons. “At the battlefront in Thamasa,” she quoted, “General Cassian Gaius Chere Cole, then a Lieutenant, was obligated to take command of the sixth battalion upon the death of its original commander, Colonel Karitas Vaughan. As the Vectoran army was readying an Ultima chain-cast through their spell-focus, General Cole made the difficult choice to interrupt the seventh caster in the chain, which caused a thaumaturgical backlash as predicted. This resulted in the death of the entire Vectoran regiment. Two other Vectoran squadrons approximately one mile west were also killed instantly, as they had linked their spellwork to the Thamasan troupe via ley foci. The upheaval unfortunately caused vast damage to the bedrock of Thamasa, and a series of earthquakes struck the town. General Cole evacuated the remaining civilians, and a corps of Vectoran loyalists who were caught in the recoil.”
Cassian was silent a while. Then he said, “That's remarkably honest. I think I'd like whatever book that is. Every other book either hates me or tries to pretend there was never any blood on my hands. I'm the saint, or I'm the butcher. I'm more inclined to agree with the latter, these days.”
“War is awful,” Vicky said.
“Tell me about it.” Cassian chuckled. Then, “You came here like you were looking for me. I don't usually have dreams like this. I'm guessing this is important.”
“Yes, sir. I was kind of looking?”
“I'll hear you out. I got led here, after all. You don't feel like a Vectoran's kid out to rightfully kick my ass, or one of the weird death harlequin bastard's projected ghosts. ...You'd think that death would be the end of him, but I'm starting to realize death isnt't he end of much.”
Vicky got slight cold chills. “Death is kind of a...thing that...yeah.”
Cassian shuddered as he also felt the cold-mouse-feet chill brought on my synchronicity walk up his back. “That's uncanny. ...Keep going.”
Vicky breathed in deeply, exhaled slowly. “It's about Thanatos.”
Cassian went very still, looked around, looked back at Vicky. “Warn me before you bust that out, kiddo. That guy has a habit of happening suddenly when you so much as think sideways about him. I wouldn't be surprised to be could in spite of the paling, and being asleep.”
Vicky burst into nervous giggles. “Sir, this is really freaking me out.”
Cassian chuckled in turn. “Oh, fuck. Okay. What happened? What weird news hast thou, shorty?”
“Thanatos woke up, and he's projecting through the paling in the...'sub-basement' level of the Dreaming World, and there are a handful of asses who're letting him speak through them. The paling works on a geis, sir—a kind of binding promise on a deep level.”
“I've heard about geasa.”
“The geis on Thanatos was 'as long as you do no harm, you may act freely'. He's not intending harm, so he can get around the paling.”
Cassian blanched, went silent again, and started pacing.
“Shit,” he mumbled. “Shit, shit, shit. It figures. It figures that everything we had to do was for nothing. It figures that everyone that died because of me died for nothing. I should have realized.”
Vicky took a step forward, then another, then started following Cassian. “It wasn't for nothing.”
He didn't seem not notice she was following him in circles. “I can't even say Chrystalis was too soft. I can't even say that. Everyone who ever said that was only half-right. She did everything she could. You can't kill a god, you can't make death die...”
“She wanted him to be asleep. We don't now what woke him up,” Vicky said. “He was supposed to sleep and heal.”
Cassian paused and blinked. “...Holy shit. I should've...that makes sense. That makes total fucking—wait, kid, how long were you following me in a circle?”
“A minute or so?”
Cassian stopped. “You have short legs. Should have told me to slow down.”
“I can speedwalk.”
“Even so.” Cassian coughed lightly. “Sorry. So. Just to clarify...Thanatos was supposed to...sleep things off...but some jackass woke him up and now he's trying to...fix things?”
“Yes, sir.”
“So what part of fixing things has anything to do with me? He's been lurking around the edges of my dreams a lot; I'd know his aura anywhere. I thought I was imagining him,. But thanks to you I know I'm not...what do I have to do with his plan to fix things?”
“I don't know. All I know is that everyone he's bothering has a link to him somehow. Mine's this.” Vicky indicated the white streak in her bangs. “Near-death experience and he patted my head while I was under. Also, being fae or youma means we're got a geis link to him—in exchange for longevity we killed our ability to lie and gave it to him.”
Cassian now wore a queasy smile. “...Let me guess, kid. My link to him is being a mass-murderer.”
“...Death on a big scale does...give you a connection to him,” Vicky said, and flailed as Cassian started to laugh humourlessly. “That doesn't mean you're a murderer, sir! And if you are, so is everyone else in any war anywhere ever! War is like that! Everyone who gets involved in a war wakes someone else die!”
“Not on my scale, shorty!” Cassian sat down, laughing harder. “Holy shit. I'm being fanboyed by a death-god for having killed enough people that I impressed him! That's just fucking spiffy.”
“At least you feel something about what you did!” Vicky gesticulated furiously. “Do you have any idea how many people don't feel anything?”
She...was echoing Thanatos, there. Do you have any notion, bird, of how many mortals kill without care? Of how many feel absolutely nothing?
She shook off the spooky feeling and continued. “You were there when it happened. You're not one of the rear-echelon motherfuckers who sends thousands to the grave with a signature.”
“Oh, and I'm sure that counts for so much.”
“It DOES!” Vicky hopped an octave and Cassian startled.
“It does?” he echoed.
“It does,” Vicky said, making sure to not squeak like an outraged owl this time. “It does a lot.”
“You sound very sure of that.”
Vicky steeled herself for the admission and powered forward: “I am because I was told that's the case.”
“By...” Cassian appeared to lose nouns a moment, and his eyes went very wide. “By...you're kidding me. Holy shit. He's been—how long? Shit, you poor kid.”
“I'm okay. I'm – okay, to you I'm a kid, twenty-two is completely a kid to you, but I've had training, and he isn't being nasty.”
“What kind of training could prepare you for that guy?”
“It's hard to explain?”
Cassian laughed again, but it was less miserable. “Okay. So...it's...the death god told you that I'm not a mass-murdering bloodthirsty fuck.”
“More or less. Everybody involved in a war knows they're signing up to maybe die. And you would have preferred to not make so many people die.” Vicky wondered how to explain the rest, and then thought 'feck this' and leapt in with both feet once more. “He kind of likes you.”
Cassian fell over.
Vicky yelped and dove to help him up. “Sir, are you okay?”
“I just had a revelation,” Cassian said loudly, lying on his back on the violet-orange dream-grass. “My brain hurts now. Give me a second, kid, I am fine. I think my mind has detonated! But I am fine.”
“Vicky.”
“What—oh. Sorry. Rude of me.”
“I didn't mention it sooner, that's not you being rude. That's me being rude.”
Cassian stared up at the vividly-coloured stars overhead. None of the constellations were placed quite right here since the open fields of the Dreaming were a mish-mash of everybody's dreaming memories of stars in different places. That explained, too, the three moons. (One was pink.)
“The Reaper, whose ass I helped kick, likes me,” Cassian said.
“Yes, sir,” said Vicky.
“He doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense, does he?”
“No, sir.”
“And you're sure he's not gunning for me because he thinks I'm trying to take his job?”
“General,” Vicky said, “are you okay?”
Cassian looked at her a while, and sighed. “I'm not. ...I'm not sure if I'm dreaming you or not, or where you came from. I could have made you up, though I doubt it, and if I haven't, you're not going to write a tell-all tabloid article about the Hero of the Web's big fat neuroses.”
Vicky realized she was sort of eroding the armour on his heart just by standing there. That'd happened with Xav, too. She wasn't trying to do it—it was just kind of a thing.
Aldur's gift, and Noctua's.
Xav had been upset. Cassian seemed relieved, almost.
He said, “I'm really not okay.”
“Have you told anybody else?”
“Don't wanna.” Cassian grinned impishly and then sighed again. “I have no right to complain. I'm a hero. I got a bridge named after me. I got schools named after me. I got a limited-edition soda-flavour named after me. Everyone else's been through all kinds of shit above and beyond me—you probably know what happened to my wife, and you probably also know how people still treat her. No one's naming bridges or sodas after her, and they should. She's...I don't have words for what she's been for me, what she's done for me… You know what happened to my parents. I'm just the asshole who ran in playing soldier, pulled a trigger, and now he can't even put on his big-boy pants to deal with the consequences.”
Vicky found a small greeny-gold flower in the grass, and another and another. She started braiding the stems. Cassian wanted to talk; he trusted her, or at least figured this was a conversation that wouldn't have horrible consequences.
She'd make sure it wouldn't.
“I don't think that's what you are, sir,” she told him.
Cassian opened one eye to look at her. “You only know me from books. I don't know how much you can know about who I am.”
“I can make educated guesses.”
“Maybe.”
“You can keep talking with me.”
“You're a kid; I shouldn't unload this on you.”
“I'm a Bastion Mediator. This is part of my job.”
“You got tiny little shoulders for to be dumping this on.”
“I'm sturdy.” Vicky finished the flower crown; it was tiny, so she balanced it atop Cassian's left knee.
“You're not asking me why I'm not talking to my wife, or a doctor in my hometown.”
“Those'd be silly questions. You already sort of explained to me why.”
“I did?” A pause, and then, “I did when I was kvetching, didn't I.”
“Enough for me to guess.”
Cassian sprawled a little bit more, though he was careful to keep balancing the flower-circle on his knee, funnily enough. “You won't be offended if I don't do any more expository kvetching?”
“Nope. After all, we only just met now, and I am, to you, a kid.”
“Also, you blew my mind a lot.”
“That, too.” Vicky started another flower-circle. “Did you want me to head out so you can rest, sir? I can do that. I can put up a temporary ward so nobody bugs you. Kind of a 'this field segment has a general snoozing, pester him not lets the gnats eat you' sign or something?”
“Nah,” Cassian said. “I think I've done enough lurking like a loner. This is practice for dealing with other people again. If I can talk to a fae-kid, I should be able to talk to people I actually know.”
“Sometimes it's way harder to talk to people you know, though.” Vicky finished the second flower-wreath and put it on the grass above Cassian's head. “I don't know why that's a thing? ...Well, I know some of why it can be a thing. Not wanting to let people down, worrying about what they might think, worrying that you'll make them worry about you, not wanting to dump all your problems on their heads like it was thirty gallons of doom in a five-gallon bucket...”
Cassian chuckled. “That was a great simile.” He looked up at the flower wreath. “What's all this horticulture about?”
“I dunno. I'm fidgety.” Vicky grinned. “I'm not bored. Just fidgety.”
“So's my son. ...There's another person I don't see near enough. My wife, my kids...”
“You can fix that.”
“Will they want me to?”
“I think so.”
A tiny jingle interrupted Cassian's reply; he sat up and looked in the direction of the sound. Vicky followed suit, and then went very still.
“Oh,” she said, lapsing into formal Hierachoral at the sight of the familiar lanky black feline with the tufty radar ears and the long skinny tail. “Hello.”
Cassian looked at the cat and looked at Vicky. “What did you just say to that cat?”
“I said hello,” Vicky replied. “Very politely.”
Cassian stared very hard at the cat, who was calmly washing between his left front toes. After a moment, he said, “Why do I get the feeling that cat is not normal?”
“He isn't normal. At all.”
“Okay, so I haven't lost my touch. How not-normal are we talking?”
“Very.” Vicky stood, and took three steps, getting between Thanatos-the-bratty-cat and Cassian.
Thanatos flattened his ears a little and thumped his tail on the grass.
“No,” Vicky said in Hierachoral again. “Not right now. This is not the time.”
Thanatos flattened entirely, hunching into pounce preparation position. He stared at Cassian with dilated pupils, tail lashing furiously. Cassian stilled, one hand half-raised.
“No,” Vicky said again.
Thanatos ignored her and leapt. Cassian backpedalled away as Thanatos snagged the wrath on the grass and then tore off into the distance, jingling as he went.
Silence followed.
Cassian stood.
“What in the underworld's fucking bathroom was that about?” he said.
“I don't know!” Vicky sang, flinging out her arms and staring up at the sky. “I don't fucking know and I never fucking know. Thanatos is being a cat at us! Because he can. He makes even less sense than a regular cat.”
Cassian spluttered, then chuckled. “Holy shit. I should have figured... And you say you deal with him semi-regularly?”
“On and off!” Vicky spun in a circle for no good reason, just for want of something to do, and kept singing. “He never makes any sense! He is plumbing new levels of failure to make sense! He's MADE of cats. He is the god of death, hidden things, occult magecraft, and being made of cats who don't make sense at all!”
“...Your head hurts as much as mine, doesn't it,” Cassian asked.
“YES.”
“Okay. I...I feel less stupid now.”
Vicky blinked. “Why did you feel stupid, sir?”
“Because I have no idea what I'm doing.” Cassian shrugged, grinning broadly now. The absurdity of the situation had struck them both as hilarious at this point. “I followed a death-cat here without knowing who he even was, I met you, talked way too much at you, and got my damn flower-crown stolen by the Reaper. I'm very likely cracking up, but it's not as bad as I thought it would be.”
“If you were cracking up, sir, I'd feel it and I could try to help.”
“That's...nice to know.” Cassian snerked. “I cannot even right now, though. To quote my son, I cannot even. Did the Reaper set this up just to mess with me? Because it worked, if he did! But...what was the point? He never doesn't have a point to what he does, even if it's a point that makes no sense.”
“A point in every direction,” Vicky said, quoting Master Thaeron, “is the same as no point at all.”
“That's...yes. That.” Cassian snorted. “That's the nature of so many of his plots… I don't know if this particular scheme of his succeeded or failed or what. He used to be a lot more open about that. If it went well, he was smug. If it didn't, he straight-up punched your webglider and you panicked and ejected and watched him kick the crap out of the remains until it blew up.”
Vicky touched Cassian's hand lightly. “That had to be one of the worst experiences to ever have.”
“It kicked so many rocks, kid.”
“I believe you.”
Cassian breathed in deeply, held his breath, and then exhaled slowly. “...That...helps to hear. Part of me's always half-certain people won't.”
“You don't seem to be a dishonest person.”
“You say that even after all I've told you. You're a weird kid, Vicky.”
“Not talking about things isn't the same as totally lying, sir.”
“It feels like it is.”
“Because you're honest.”
“I don't feel honest.”
“What d'you think would help you feel more honest?”
Cassian chuckled. “Getting my spine on and talking with Shana. Talking with the counsellors at Pax Novum Institute. I don't know when that's going to happen, though.”
“Would it work if you set an absolute date for it? Like, if it was a scheduled absolute order type thing?”
“Maybe.” Cassian looked pensive. “Might be worth a shot—holy fucking shit!”
Before Vicky could ask what'd startled him he darted forward and picked her up, pulling her out of the way of the returning, aimlessly-speeding Thanatos cat. He still had the wreath in his teeth, though now it was slightly worse for wear.
“Shiva's tits,” Cassian grumped. “What the fuck is he doing?”
“Eating the flower wreath where we can see him doing it?” Vicky guessed.
“My kingdom and country for a fucking squirt bottle.” Cassian set Vicky down.
Thanatos hissed at him; Cassian, unimpressed, made a shooing gesture as though Thanatos were a normal cat. He then realized what he'd done and looked lost.
“I give the fuck up,” he said. “Can I wake up now?”
“I can help with that,” Vicky said.
“Waaaaowwrr!” Thanatos whined around a mouthful of foliage.
“I don't care, Host-of-Many,” Vicky said. “You're weirding him out. If you want him to stay then stop weirding him out.”
“Does he always have to try and get the last word in?” Cassian inquired as Thanatos-the-cat bottlebrushed his tail, did a feline display of I-am-enormous, and spat at Vicky like an annoyed kitten.
“Yes,” Vicky said. “ALL THE DAMN TIME.” She moved her foot as Thanatos swiped half-assedly at her bootlace. “Anyway. I can help you wake. Have you got enough sleep, do you think?”
“Fucked if I know,” Cassian said. “I feel better, at any rate.”
“That's good,” Vicky said, ignoring Thanatos as he plowed into her ankle and started to attack it dramatically.
“He's not gonna hurt you when I'm gone, is he?” Cassian asked, eyes narrowed, now in soldier-and-dad mode. “He better not.”
“He can't, sir,” Vicky said. She paused as Thanatos made a melodramatic snorty snarling noise, then went on. “I'm fine. I'm glad you're feeling better. This was probably necessary on some weird level. A lot of metaphysics are crashing around as of late, so...”
“Metaphysics can learn to drive better.” Cassian watched Thanatos flail at the grass and at his own tail, closed his eyes, and shook his head. “This is only gonna get weirder. Can you wake me up, kid? Vicky, I mean.”
Vicky nodded and raised one hand, palm out.
“Be well,” she said in Hierachoral. “Be well and be rested. May the moon's path guide you on until morning, and may you wake on good earth, beneath the mother-tree, in the embrace of the sun.”
Cassian's eyes fluttered shut; he shimmered and vanished.
Thanatos pounced on the place where he'd stood, and Vicky sighed.
“Why do you do these things,” she said.
Thanatos ate a flower, then changed his mind and spat it out.
Necessity, he said, trying to look dignified as he did this.
“Which one?”
Mine. ...You're remarkably perceptive, you know. You grasped immediately what I feel toward the good general. There is such a thing as being overly clever, bird. You understand the root of things far too well… Were we truly at war, I'd be forced to attend to such a potential obstacle. He washed his claws nonchalantly.
“I'm sure you would. You are very scary.”
Thanatos paused with the pink-mauve tip of his tongue sticking out, looking affronted.
You're mocking me.
“No, I'm being sarcastic because you're overacting and I hate when you try to backhandedly scare me.”
Same difference. Thanatos sprawled out and sulked.
“Not in my opinion.”
I am a god. You are a young and ridiculous fluffy bird. What is your opinion to a god?
“You ate a flower crown. I saw you eat a flower crown just now.”
So?
“I should tell Thorne.”
You wouldn't dare. Thanatos hissed at her, pearly fangs gleaming in the light of three varicoloured moons overhead. I should forbid it. You're so disrespectful.
Vicky rolled her eyes. “Fine. I won't tell her. She's probably already seen you do it.”
Cassian's dreams tended toward “vague as fuck” or “vivid miserable flashback”, so when he started to dream about following a big scruffy skinny black tomcat through an empty city, he kept following the cat even through dawning lucidity just for the sake of it being something new.
It wasn't a blur, and it wasn't charred ruins and the scent of something beyond ordinary death.
It was rainy foggy streets, the scent of wet asphalt, and a twinge in his left knee.
“Waow,” demanded the cat. He had a funny rough kind of voice, like he'd been yowling his little head off on a fence all night. “Wwwuuu...aow?”
“I'm coming,” Cassian griped.
“WAOW.” The cat shook water off his feet, and stared at Cassian.
“Okay, I--”
“WAOW!”
“I'm coming! You--”
“WAOW. WAOW. WAOW. WAOW. WAOW. WAOW.”
“Holy fuck, OKAY! You have four legs, you little shit. I only have two. Give an old guy a break.”
“Waow.” The cat gave him a smuggish slow blink and then bounced off into the drizzly rain, tail an inverted J, the tiny bell on his collar jingling.
“Little shit,” Cassian sighed again, and followed.
Down the road, out of town, out beyond the usual boundaries of the cities of his dreams.
***
General Cassian Gaius Chere Cole was a hero, and he looked to Vicky like a lot of heroes tended to: very tired.
His hair was sort of silvery-gold; his eyes were sort of violetty-blue. He was tall and broad-shouldered and he had that kind of luminous nimbus that healers and paladins tended to emit in dreams. He had faint frown-lines at the corners of his eyes, and faint creases in his brow.
When he looked at her, she saluted.
She noted him noting her: short, stocky, curvy, dark-haired, magenta-eyed. Probably emitting a funny shadowy feeling to his third eye, or something. He was wary but not on the verge of being nasty.
“You're youma?” he guessed. And then, “No, not exactly.” He was observant; her eyes weren't quite right. Mana's Thorn wasn't as prominent in her as in fullblooded youma, and he knew that, and he saw it.
“Yes. I'm fae and youma and human,” Vicky said. “Sir.”
He smiled and it was equal parts proud and morose. “Sir, she says. I guess my reputation precedes me.”
“Sort of? Not badly.”
“What do they say about me where you're from, kid?”
Vicky smiled back at him, and his smile got a bit less sad.
“That you're very brave,” she told him, “and that you saved a lot of people, and you had to make a lot of horrible decisions because you were fighting in a horrible war.”
Cassian blinked. “That's pretty damn middle-of-the-road. Usually I'm either the hero or the goat,” he said. “Not the...heroic...goat? Goat-hero?”
Vicky closed her eyes and thought back to history lessons. “At the battlefront in Thamasa,” she quoted, “General Cassian Gaius Chere Cole, then a Lieutenant, was obligated to take command of the sixth battalion upon the death of its original commander, Colonel Karitas Vaughan. As the Vectoran army was readying an Ultima chain-cast through their spell-focus, General Cole made the difficult choice to interrupt the seventh caster in the chain, which caused a thaumaturgical backlash as predicted. This resulted in the death of the entire Vectoran regiment. Two other Vectoran squadrons approximately one mile west were also killed instantly, as they had linked their spellwork to the Thamasan troupe via ley foci. The upheaval unfortunately caused vast damage to the bedrock of Thamasa, and a series of earthquakes struck the town. General Cole evacuated the remaining civilians, and a corps of Vectoran loyalists who were caught in the recoil.”
Cassian was silent a while. Then he said, “That's remarkably honest. I think I'd like whatever book that is. Every other book either hates me or tries to pretend there was never any blood on my hands. I'm the saint, or I'm the butcher. I'm more inclined to agree with the latter, these days.”
“War is awful,” Vicky said.
“Tell me about it.” Cassian chuckled. Then, “You came here like you were looking for me. I don't usually have dreams like this. I'm guessing this is important.”
“Yes, sir. I was kind of looking?”
“I'll hear you out. I got led here, after all. You don't feel like a Vectoran's kid out to rightfully kick my ass, or one of the weird death harlequin bastard's projected ghosts. ...You'd think that death would be the end of him, but I'm starting to realize death isnt't he end of much.”
Vicky got slight cold chills. “Death is kind of a...thing that...yeah.”
Cassian shuddered as he also felt the cold-mouse-feet chill brought on my synchronicity walk up his back. “That's uncanny. ...Keep going.”
Vicky breathed in deeply, exhaled slowly. “It's about Thanatos.”
Cassian went very still, looked around, looked back at Vicky. “Warn me before you bust that out, kiddo. That guy has a habit of happening suddenly when you so much as think sideways about him. I wouldn't be surprised to be could in spite of the paling, and being asleep.”
Vicky burst into nervous giggles. “Sir, this is really freaking me out.”
Cassian chuckled in turn. “Oh, fuck. Okay. What happened? What weird news hast thou, shorty?”
“Thanatos woke up, and he's projecting through the paling in the...'sub-basement' level of the Dreaming World, and there are a handful of asses who're letting him speak through them. The paling works on a geis, sir—a kind of binding promise on a deep level.”
“I've heard about geasa.”
“The geis on Thanatos was 'as long as you do no harm, you may act freely'. He's not intending harm, so he can get around the paling.”
Cassian blanched, went silent again, and started pacing.
“Shit,” he mumbled. “Shit, shit, shit. It figures. It figures that everything we had to do was for nothing. It figures that everyone that died because of me died for nothing. I should have realized.”
Vicky took a step forward, then another, then started following Cassian. “It wasn't for nothing.”
He didn't seem not notice she was following him in circles. “I can't even say Chrystalis was too soft. I can't even say that. Everyone who ever said that was only half-right. She did everything she could. You can't kill a god, you can't make death die...”
“She wanted him to be asleep. We don't now what woke him up,” Vicky said. “He was supposed to sleep and heal.”
Cassian paused and blinked. “...Holy shit. I should've...that makes sense. That makes total fucking—wait, kid, how long were you following me in a circle?”
“A minute or so?”
Cassian stopped. “You have short legs. Should have told me to slow down.”
“I can speedwalk.”
“Even so.” Cassian coughed lightly. “Sorry. So. Just to clarify...Thanatos was supposed to...sleep things off...but some jackass woke him up and now he's trying to...fix things?”
“Yes, sir.”
“So what part of fixing things has anything to do with me? He's been lurking around the edges of my dreams a lot; I'd know his aura anywhere. I thought I was imagining him,. But thanks to you I know I'm not...what do I have to do with his plan to fix things?”
“I don't know. All I know is that everyone he's bothering has a link to him somehow. Mine's this.” Vicky indicated the white streak in her bangs. “Near-death experience and he patted my head while I was under. Also, being fae or youma means we're got a geis link to him—in exchange for longevity we killed our ability to lie and gave it to him.”
Cassian now wore a queasy smile. “...Let me guess, kid. My link to him is being a mass-murderer.”
“...Death on a big scale does...give you a connection to him,” Vicky said, and flailed as Cassian started to laugh humourlessly. “That doesn't mean you're a murderer, sir! And if you are, so is everyone else in any war anywhere ever! War is like that! Everyone who gets involved in a war wakes someone else die!”
“Not on my scale, shorty!” Cassian sat down, laughing harder. “Holy shit. I'm being fanboyed by a death-god for having killed enough people that I impressed him! That's just fucking spiffy.”
“At least you feel something about what you did!” Vicky gesticulated furiously. “Do you have any idea how many people don't feel anything?”
She...was echoing Thanatos, there. Do you have any notion, bird, of how many mortals kill without care? Of how many feel absolutely nothing?
She shook off the spooky feeling and continued. “You were there when it happened. You're not one of the rear-echelon motherfuckers who sends thousands to the grave with a signature.”
“Oh, and I'm sure that counts for so much.”
“It DOES!” Vicky hopped an octave and Cassian startled.
“It does?” he echoed.
“It does,” Vicky said, making sure to not squeak like an outraged owl this time. “It does a lot.”
“You sound very sure of that.”
Vicky steeled herself for the admission and powered forward: “I am because I was told that's the case.”
“By...” Cassian appeared to lose nouns a moment, and his eyes went very wide. “By...you're kidding me. Holy shit. He's been—how long? Shit, you poor kid.”
“I'm okay. I'm – okay, to you I'm a kid, twenty-two is completely a kid to you, but I've had training, and he isn't being nasty.”
“What kind of training could prepare you for that guy?”
“It's hard to explain?”
Cassian laughed again, but it was less miserable. “Okay. So...it's...the death god told you that I'm not a mass-murdering bloodthirsty fuck.”
“More or less. Everybody involved in a war knows they're signing up to maybe die. And you would have preferred to not make so many people die.” Vicky wondered how to explain the rest, and then thought 'feck this' and leapt in with both feet once more. “He kind of likes you.”
Cassian fell over.
Vicky yelped and dove to help him up. “Sir, are you okay?”
“I just had a revelation,” Cassian said loudly, lying on his back on the violet-orange dream-grass. “My brain hurts now. Give me a second, kid, I am fine. I think my mind has detonated! But I am fine.”
“Vicky.”
“What—oh. Sorry. Rude of me.”
“I didn't mention it sooner, that's not you being rude. That's me being rude.”
Cassian stared up at the vividly-coloured stars overhead. None of the constellations were placed quite right here since the open fields of the Dreaming were a mish-mash of everybody's dreaming memories of stars in different places. That explained, too, the three moons. (One was pink.)
“The Reaper, whose ass I helped kick, likes me,” Cassian said.
“Yes, sir,” said Vicky.
“He doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense, does he?”
“No, sir.”
“And you're sure he's not gunning for me because he thinks I'm trying to take his job?”
“General,” Vicky said, “are you okay?”
Cassian looked at her a while, and sighed. “I'm not. ...I'm not sure if I'm dreaming you or not, or where you came from. I could have made you up, though I doubt it, and if I haven't, you're not going to write a tell-all tabloid article about the Hero of the Web's big fat neuroses.”
Vicky realized she was sort of eroding the armour on his heart just by standing there. That'd happened with Xav, too. She wasn't trying to do it—it was just kind of a thing.
Aldur's gift, and Noctua's.
Xav had been upset. Cassian seemed relieved, almost.
He said, “I'm really not okay.”
“Have you told anybody else?”
“Don't wanna.” Cassian grinned impishly and then sighed again. “I have no right to complain. I'm a hero. I got a bridge named after me. I got schools named after me. I got a limited-edition soda-flavour named after me. Everyone else's been through all kinds of shit above and beyond me—you probably know what happened to my wife, and you probably also know how people still treat her. No one's naming bridges or sodas after her, and they should. She's...I don't have words for what she's been for me, what she's done for me… You know what happened to my parents. I'm just the asshole who ran in playing soldier, pulled a trigger, and now he can't even put on his big-boy pants to deal with the consequences.”
Vicky found a small greeny-gold flower in the grass, and another and another. She started braiding the stems. Cassian wanted to talk; he trusted her, or at least figured this was a conversation that wouldn't have horrible consequences.
She'd make sure it wouldn't.
“I don't think that's what you are, sir,” she told him.
Cassian opened one eye to look at her. “You only know me from books. I don't know how much you can know about who I am.”
“I can make educated guesses.”
“Maybe.”
“You can keep talking with me.”
“You're a kid; I shouldn't unload this on you.”
“I'm a Bastion Mediator. This is part of my job.”
“You got tiny little shoulders for to be dumping this on.”
“I'm sturdy.” Vicky finished the flower crown; it was tiny, so she balanced it atop Cassian's left knee.
“You're not asking me why I'm not talking to my wife, or a doctor in my hometown.”
“Those'd be silly questions. You already sort of explained to me why.”
“I did?” A pause, and then, “I did when I was kvetching, didn't I.”
“Enough for me to guess.”
Cassian sprawled a little bit more, though he was careful to keep balancing the flower-circle on his knee, funnily enough. “You won't be offended if I don't do any more expository kvetching?”
“Nope. After all, we only just met now, and I am, to you, a kid.”
“Also, you blew my mind a lot.”
“That, too.” Vicky started another flower-circle. “Did you want me to head out so you can rest, sir? I can do that. I can put up a temporary ward so nobody bugs you. Kind of a 'this field segment has a general snoozing, pester him not lets the gnats eat you' sign or something?”
“Nah,” Cassian said. “I think I've done enough lurking like a loner. This is practice for dealing with other people again. If I can talk to a fae-kid, I should be able to talk to people I actually know.”
“Sometimes it's way harder to talk to people you know, though.” Vicky finished the second flower-wreath and put it on the grass above Cassian's head. “I don't know why that's a thing? ...Well, I know some of why it can be a thing. Not wanting to let people down, worrying about what they might think, worrying that you'll make them worry about you, not wanting to dump all your problems on their heads like it was thirty gallons of doom in a five-gallon bucket...”
Cassian chuckled. “That was a great simile.” He looked up at the flower wreath. “What's all this horticulture about?”
“I dunno. I'm fidgety.” Vicky grinned. “I'm not bored. Just fidgety.”
“So's my son. ...There's another person I don't see near enough. My wife, my kids...”
“You can fix that.”
“Will they want me to?”
“I think so.”
A tiny jingle interrupted Cassian's reply; he sat up and looked in the direction of the sound. Vicky followed suit, and then went very still.
“Oh,” she said, lapsing into formal Hierachoral at the sight of the familiar lanky black feline with the tufty radar ears and the long skinny tail. “Hello.”
Cassian looked at the cat and looked at Vicky. “What did you just say to that cat?”
“I said hello,” Vicky replied. “Very politely.”
Cassian stared very hard at the cat, who was calmly washing between his left front toes. After a moment, he said, “Why do I get the feeling that cat is not normal?”
“He isn't normal. At all.”
“Okay, so I haven't lost my touch. How not-normal are we talking?”
“Very.” Vicky stood, and took three steps, getting between Thanatos-the-bratty-cat and Cassian.
Thanatos flattened his ears a little and thumped his tail on the grass.
“No,” Vicky said in Hierachoral again. “Not right now. This is not the time.”
Thanatos flattened entirely, hunching into pounce preparation position. He stared at Cassian with dilated pupils, tail lashing furiously. Cassian stilled, one hand half-raised.
“No,” Vicky said again.
Thanatos ignored her and leapt. Cassian backpedalled away as Thanatos snagged the wrath on the grass and then tore off into the distance, jingling as he went.
Silence followed.
Cassian stood.
“What in the underworld's fucking bathroom was that about?” he said.
“I don't know!” Vicky sang, flinging out her arms and staring up at the sky. “I don't fucking know and I never fucking know. Thanatos is being a cat at us! Because he can. He makes even less sense than a regular cat.”
Cassian spluttered, then chuckled. “Holy shit. I should have figured... And you say you deal with him semi-regularly?”
“On and off!” Vicky spun in a circle for no good reason, just for want of something to do, and kept singing. “He never makes any sense! He is plumbing new levels of failure to make sense! He's MADE of cats. He is the god of death, hidden things, occult magecraft, and being made of cats who don't make sense at all!”
“...Your head hurts as much as mine, doesn't it,” Cassian asked.
“YES.”
“Okay. I...I feel less stupid now.”
Vicky blinked. “Why did you feel stupid, sir?”
“Because I have no idea what I'm doing.” Cassian shrugged, grinning broadly now. The absurdity of the situation had struck them both as hilarious at this point. “I followed a death-cat here without knowing who he even was, I met you, talked way too much at you, and got my damn flower-crown stolen by the Reaper. I'm very likely cracking up, but it's not as bad as I thought it would be.”
“If you were cracking up, sir, I'd feel it and I could try to help.”
“That's...nice to know.” Cassian snerked. “I cannot even right now, though. To quote my son, I cannot even. Did the Reaper set this up just to mess with me? Because it worked, if he did! But...what was the point? He never doesn't have a point to what he does, even if it's a point that makes no sense.”
“A point in every direction,” Vicky said, quoting Master Thaeron, “is the same as no point at all.”
“That's...yes. That.” Cassian snorted. “That's the nature of so many of his plots… I don't know if this particular scheme of his succeeded or failed or what. He used to be a lot more open about that. If it went well, he was smug. If it didn't, he straight-up punched your webglider and you panicked and ejected and watched him kick the crap out of the remains until it blew up.”
Vicky touched Cassian's hand lightly. “That had to be one of the worst experiences to ever have.”
“It kicked so many rocks, kid.”
“I believe you.”
Cassian breathed in deeply, held his breath, and then exhaled slowly. “...That...helps to hear. Part of me's always half-certain people won't.”
“You don't seem to be a dishonest person.”
“You say that even after all I've told you. You're a weird kid, Vicky.”
“Not talking about things isn't the same as totally lying, sir.”
“It feels like it is.”
“Because you're honest.”
“I don't feel honest.”
“What d'you think would help you feel more honest?”
Cassian chuckled. “Getting my spine on and talking with Shana. Talking with the counsellors at Pax Novum Institute. I don't know when that's going to happen, though.”
“Would it work if you set an absolute date for it? Like, if it was a scheduled absolute order type thing?”
“Maybe.” Cassian looked pensive. “Might be worth a shot—holy fucking shit!”
Before Vicky could ask what'd startled him he darted forward and picked her up, pulling her out of the way of the returning, aimlessly-speeding Thanatos cat. He still had the wreath in his teeth, though now it was slightly worse for wear.
“Shiva's tits,” Cassian grumped. “What the fuck is he doing?”
“Eating the flower wreath where we can see him doing it?” Vicky guessed.
“My kingdom and country for a fucking squirt bottle.” Cassian set Vicky down.
Thanatos hissed at him; Cassian, unimpressed, made a shooing gesture as though Thanatos were a normal cat. He then realized what he'd done and looked lost.
“I give the fuck up,” he said. “Can I wake up now?”
“I can help with that,” Vicky said.
“Waaaaowwrr!” Thanatos whined around a mouthful of foliage.
“I don't care, Host-of-Many,” Vicky said. “You're weirding him out. If you want him to stay then stop weirding him out.”
“Does he always have to try and get the last word in?” Cassian inquired as Thanatos-the-cat bottlebrushed his tail, did a feline display of I-am-enormous, and spat at Vicky like an annoyed kitten.
“Yes,” Vicky said. “ALL THE DAMN TIME.” She moved her foot as Thanatos swiped half-assedly at her bootlace. “Anyway. I can help you wake. Have you got enough sleep, do you think?”
“Fucked if I know,” Cassian said. “I feel better, at any rate.”
“That's good,” Vicky said, ignoring Thanatos as he plowed into her ankle and started to attack it dramatically.
“He's not gonna hurt you when I'm gone, is he?” Cassian asked, eyes narrowed, now in soldier-and-dad mode. “He better not.”
“He can't, sir,” Vicky said. She paused as Thanatos made a melodramatic snorty snarling noise, then went on. “I'm fine. I'm glad you're feeling better. This was probably necessary on some weird level. A lot of metaphysics are crashing around as of late, so...”
“Metaphysics can learn to drive better.” Cassian watched Thanatos flail at the grass and at his own tail, closed his eyes, and shook his head. “This is only gonna get weirder. Can you wake me up, kid? Vicky, I mean.”
Vicky nodded and raised one hand, palm out.
“Be well,” she said in Hierachoral. “Be well and be rested. May the moon's path guide you on until morning, and may you wake on good earth, beneath the mother-tree, in the embrace of the sun.”
Cassian's eyes fluttered shut; he shimmered and vanished.
Thanatos pounced on the place where he'd stood, and Vicky sighed.
“Why do you do these things,” she said.
Thanatos ate a flower, then changed his mind and spat it out.
Necessity, he said, trying to look dignified as he did this.
“Which one?”
Mine. ...You're remarkably perceptive, you know. You grasped immediately what I feel toward the good general. There is such a thing as being overly clever, bird. You understand the root of things far too well… Were we truly at war, I'd be forced to attend to such a potential obstacle. He washed his claws nonchalantly.
“I'm sure you would. You are very scary.”
Thanatos paused with the pink-mauve tip of his tongue sticking out, looking affronted.
You're mocking me.
“No, I'm being sarcastic because you're overacting and I hate when you try to backhandedly scare me.”
Same difference. Thanatos sprawled out and sulked.
“Not in my opinion.”
I am a god. You are a young and ridiculous fluffy bird. What is your opinion to a god?
“You ate a flower crown. I saw you eat a flower crown just now.”
So?
“I should tell Thorne.”
You wouldn't dare. Thanatos hissed at her, pearly fangs gleaming in the light of three varicoloured moons overhead. I should forbid it. You're so disrespectful.
Vicky rolled her eyes. “Fine. I won't tell her. She's probably already seen you do it.”
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Date: 2015-10-24 11:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-25 11:32 pm (UTC)♥ I am so glad you like my stuff.
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Date: 2015-10-27 04:16 am (UTC)Vicky's a sweetheart.
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Date: 2015-10-27 02:26 pm (UTC)He's meant to be a veteran soldier--excellent field medic type who got thrust into a commanding role that he's more than competent in but that he's constantly nervous about because his decisions can possibly make a lot of people die. i kind of based him somewhat off romeo dallaire--someone who saw a lot of horrible things and wants to prevent them from happening again. though, unlike romeo dallaire, cassian's not entirely sure how to go about that, as such.