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The Curse
He’s a spark of creation in the darkness. A bright light in the shifting, swirling cosmos that smolders fires and lifts gardens from the depths. A world solidifies beneath your feet. It soars upwards, twisting loud, sparking physicality, and great walls ascend above your head until they knit into a solid room.
You have memories of him, suddenly, as a childhood friend and a first lover. Which doesn’t strike far from the truth but somehow doesn’t quite hit the target.
You sway in the newfound quarters. Your vision blurs and you feel something take hold of your skin. It spins like ink in water down the back of your neck; cloudy pigments flowing over your shoulderblades and down your limbs with an ethereal mark of something, something.
You collapse backwards onto a soft bed. It hums with the energy that radiates off your body, blooms with your unconsciousness.
The last thing your eyes see before heavy lids overwhelm them is the sliver of an open window.
You wake up an indefinite time later to Jake’s lips on yours. He’s warm, and dressed in a ridiculous, flowing tunic. The room is glowing. He has you scooped in his arms like a child.
“Jake,” you say softly. He looks older than you remember. Can you trust what you remember? You get the feeling you’ve been asleep for years.
“Your Highness,” he says and, oh yes, that’s right, you’re a prince. You’re a prince. Are you really a prince?
“What’s going on,” you manage to mumble out.
“You just had a bit of a lie-down,” he says, brightly, with a chuckle to himself. “Don’t spare nary a thought to it.”
The Labyrinth
More walls. It’s always walls with you, isn’t it? High, pale ones devoid of decoration. A single entrance far out of reach. You have chains around your hands. Thick, bronze links bolting you to your ever-present walls. You sit in a cotton wrap atop a pile of bones. At the tip of your vision, you feel the heavy fringe of a gilded crown of leaves.
A Beast is sleeping nearby.
There is a boy in front of you that your mind tells you you’ve never seen before, but every inch of your body from your nose to your fingertips tells you that you most certainly have.
“I’m here to rescue you,” he says.
You stare at him. He seems putt off by your contemplation.
“Well?” he questions, a bit expectantly. You’ve heard stories of heroes. You suppose they’ve earned their right to act expectant.
“This is a labyrinth,” you say, because that’s apparently something you know. “There’s no way out.”
“I’m smarter than I look,” he replies.
“Smart enough to bring bolt cutters?”
Somewhere in your pseudo-greco-roman-tinted brain you come to the conclusion that bolt cutters have not yet been invented. The man before you must come to the same conclusion, because he suddenly looks perplexed. The earth rumbles beneath you.
“Well?” you parrot back at him.
“Shush. I’m thinking.”
“So you liked me better when I was asleep, then?”
He stills. You lock eyes with him, apparently asking each other the same question: when were you asleep?
There’s a great tremor in the ground. The wall behind you vibrates. Your hero puffs his cheeks in frustration.
“Well?” you say again. Why are you questioning him? He’s your hero. You have a strong, sudden desire to simply melt into his arms and not worry about such nonsense, Strider. Hmph.
He’s tugging at the chains. Desperate, their rattle echoes across the encasement. You gaze up at the flat blue sky above when you hear the Beast rousing. The earthquake grows.
“This is not,” your hero spits, “how this was supposed to go.”
You’re not helping him. From above, the walls crumble. Chips and then boulders tumble from them.
“We’re going to die,” you tell him.
Then everything goes black.
The Shallows
You’re being chased. There are no walls—why would there be walls? Just sharks, and cold crashes of waves reverberated from the shoreline, and an increasingly shallow depth to swim.
You choke when you realize you’re underwater. It’s a spluttering mess of bubbles and panicked limbs. You realize your legs have gone numb and with the news of this increasingly present horror you sink like a rock to the grainy, shell-sharp sand beneath you.
Sharks, your mind screams at you. There are sharks. Your hands scramble for purchase on the embankment. The world is a blur of blue-green around you and a wash of undertow in your ears. You let out a muted cry that floats aimlessly up in a stream of bubbles.
The fact that you’re not drowning is only passively registered next to the fact that you’ve somehow been connected to a thick, trashing, gold-scaled tail.
“What the fuck,” you say, watching the words rise to the surface in a pocket of oxygen.
The world stirs beneath you.
A part of you aligns it with an earthquake, and subsequently, danger. Just like before, you try to warn yourself, but before any meaning can be derived from your conclusion the supposed earthquake morphs into a checkered pattern of rising sand. You lie helplessly in the bank as a graph of lines rises from the depths, ensnaring you. For a second you think it’s a mouth of some ground-dwelling creature. Instead, you find yourself trapped in a net.
Upwards, upwards, away from sharks and into the scorching hold of the surface you are heaved upwards. When you break the waterline, tangled in rough cords and breathing heavy, someone gasps.
Is it that surprising? You think to yourself. Before being unceremoniously dumped onto the salt-licked floorboards of a small fishing ship.
“By jove and all things seabound,” a voice says. He sounds a bit flustered, hands tearing into your bindings. A gull picks at your hair.
“Jake,” you call out. You’re cold and wet and a rope wrapped tightly around your forearm is starting to burn. You can still feel the sharks nearby. Your tail flaps wildly, seemingly on its own instinct to swim. That would have been real useful about two minutes ago.
“Easy, easy,” the fisherman says.
“Jake,” you call again. He has a knife out now but you know not to be afraid of him. “What’s going on.”
“Easy, you’re alright there, you’re alright, you’re beautiful.” He looks as lost as you as he cuts the net, eyes wide and almost brimming with tears. “The stars as my witness you’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
You’re not feeling too hot at the moment, but when he cuts the top half of you free from the net you start to breathe a little easier. You gaze up at him from where you're sprawled haphazard and prone on the deck, and note the way the sun halos his face as he works.
“I’m sorry,” he tells you. And you nod. Your tail stills as he moves to work on the rope lashed around it.
“You’re hurt,” he goes on. And sure enough when you look down there’s a rather hefty gash scrawled across your tail. “Did I—“
“Sharks,” you say.
“Ah,” he replies.
“I can’t go back in the water,” you say, gazing at the diluted pink pooling around you. “Not like this.”
He looks to your face. Clearly overwhelmed.
“I’ll take care of you, then. Just for a bit. This is my fault, after all,” he says. "I do hate to be such a villain."
You shake your head. “No, no,” you mutter. “I think you’re the hero?”
The Cave
The chains are back. You recognize them from before, if a bit thinner this time. You can’t see where they lead but you can’t be faulted for getting distracted by the room you find yourself in. It’s a glow of gold reflecting the light from torches liberally littering a tall cavern. Great hills of coin only broken up by the occasional artifact or brightly hued jewel.
You also take note of the fact that you’re naked. And terrified. The coins beneath your skin slide across you with a metallic chill as you shift in your chains. A few of them send a sprawling, expensive avalanche tumbling down the mound you’ve found yourself in.
“Jake,” you call out, almost on instinct.
“Dirk?” A distant response. It’s quiet but unmistakably frantic.
“Jake,” you yell, a smile of relief breaking across your features, “I’m here, I’m here. I need help.”
“I’m coming!” he says. It’s close, but still quiet. A harsh whisper. You realize he’s trying to keep his voice hushed. You lower yours in turn.
“Jake,” you say. “I love you. I’m sorry, I—“
There’s a backstory there somewhere. Washing over the back of your mind. Some hard-hearted prince mistakenly casting aside his commoner lover. Some great royal treasury catching the eye of the local dragon. But none of that seems to matter because he’s there now, your truest love, clutching onto your cheeks and pressing his lips to yours. You think you’re going to cry.
“I love you too,” he says. He has bolt cutters. You don’t even care that those haven’t been invented yet.
You’re free in a matter of seven very tense minutes. The second you have the reign to, you lift your arms over his shoulders and kiss him again.
“We need to get out of here without waking the dragon,” he tells you when you break apart.
“We can do it,” you whisper. “I believe in us.”
The Curse, Redux
You think this might be his favorite, because you’re here again. For a brief moment, you feel like you might have been here several dozen times before.
It’s always the same. A great tower. An open window. A soft bed. You feel the curse trickle down the back of your neck before you sense it take hold of your body. You theorize it might be coming from your brain. Some thick poison that seeks only to numb.
You let out a pained cry when the unconsciousness finally seizes its grip on your reality. A blur of black around your vision. The seductive lull of a nice sleep. You don’t have to be scared in this one. Not after the first few moments. You think he likes that about it.
You stumble forward instead of backwards. Your body feels impossibly heavy. A weighted scrape of boots towards the only shaft of light in the room.
You give in to sleep at the windowsill. Eyes gazing out over a green bloom, a hand extended enough to catch a waft of a breeze. It seeps into your bones, but for a second you feel free.
When he kisses you awake you’re leaned against a wall instead of the bed. You look up at him thankfully, cheeks rosy and sleepy smile broad, but it’s clear he senses something is off too. There’s a sharpness to his eyes. Something that looks older. Tired. The window looms over his shoulder and your eyes drag to it. He frowns.
“Jake,” you say.
“Dirk,” he replies, his eyes fog glossy. “…Your highness.”
“Jake,” you say again, pulling him closer. “What’s going on?”
The Alley
You’ve never worn a suit before.
It’s a silly thought considering you’re wearing a finely pressed white button-down tucked into slate colored slacks. You feel comfortable enough. The tailored jacket is slung over your shoulder. The top two buttons of your shirt are undone. Comfortable. The kind of comfortable that doesn’t come with wearing a suit for the first time.
You’re leaned against the doorway of a side-entrance to an illicit bar you know he favors. Illicit is a bit redundant, you remind yourself. It’s prohibition. All bars are illicit. But something about this one rings particularly unfooting. Anxiety peppers your thoughts but you keep your posture casual. A shoulder to the wall, a slight smile.
When he catches your eye you swear his pupils dilate.
“Crocker’s pissed,” you tell him when he approaches you. You don’t know why you know Crocker’s pissed but something deep in your chest tells you that’s the definitely the case.
He shakes his head at you. “Didn’t know you were a dog for Crocker now,” he replies, all sly grins and coy head dips. You frown at him.
“Don’t I have the right to tell you when you’re stepping into other people’s business?” you say. “Someone’s gotta look out for your foolish ass.”
You’re trying to glare but he’s got a hand on your waist suddenly and, oh, that’s his mouth close to your ear.
Breathing warm. Suppressing a slight chuckle.
“You looks handsome tonight,” he tells you.
“I’d sure be a lot more than handsome to you if you could just tell me what you did to piss off a mob boss,” you spit back.
“You know what I think there, bold fella?” he says. “I think we should take this outside.”
Has his voice always been so gruff?
You silently curse yourself for being like butter in his hands. When did you get to be such a floozie? You’re here for information, dammit, and you can’t be distracted by such blatant propositions.
“Alright, yeah,” you agree. His hand tightens on your waist. You realize you might be slipping into something intoxicating, something powerful, something vaguely alcoholic. “But then we’re definitely gonna have a chat after, you hear me?”
The City
You’ve got a laptop under your hand and the world racing past the cracked left lens of your glasses. Men, men like sharks, trailing your every move. You’re a rebel in over his head. A vigilante finally facing the other end of merciless justice. You deserve this. Probably.
One of the men grabs your T-shirt collar and throws you into the nearest alley. Onlookers glance your direction but move forward with their lives. These shakedowns were common on the streets. You were not going to be saved.
“Fuck,” you hiss as hands grip your shoulders. You’re shoved against a gritty wall covered in graffiti. Your laptop clatters to the floor and shatters. Your toes scrape an out-of-reach floor and you kick up your legs in an attempt to free yourself. They collide against a dark shirt with a metallic echo.
Androids. Untraceable assassins. You are so fucked.
“Fuck off!” you scream, pounding a few more kicks into the uncaring torso just for good measure. You’re only crushed against the wall harder in response.
“You had a job to do.” A computerized voice resounds from somewhere within the android’s body, but his mouth does not move. Its LED eyes glow red. “You failed. You are failing.”
“Tell your boss I can’t do jack shit now with a busted laptop,” you say. You’re pissed off, for more reasons than the fact that you were currently about to get murdered in an alleyway. There’s also something else there. A deep pain in your gut. Guilt, like you’re missing something important. The big picture.
“You have forgotten your purpose for working with our organization,” the android continues. It releases a hand from your shoulder, only to take a suffocating grasp on your neck. “You have forgotten—“
A loud clang rings out across the alley and you find yourself hurtled to your left. You land brutally on the shattered remnants of your laptop, body dazed and head definitely taking an impact. You groan. That’s probably a concussion right there.
More loud bangs ricochet across the walls. Endless echoes of steel against steel confusing your already blurred mind. You manage to tilt your head to the side, just in time to see a boy in street clothes finish caving in an android in with a heavy-looking pipe.
“You’re gonna regret that,” you say, slurred.
The boy looks up.
“Am I? Cause it looks like I just about saved your life there, pal.”
“There’s more,” you mutter. “There’s always more. Crocker doesn’t like to lose her ranks.”
“Then we’ll have to get you somewhere safe, wont we?” He says it so matter-of-fact it sends a grimace to your face. He’s looking over your body. Checking the gash on your head. Helping you sit up.
“I didn’t ask to be rescued,” you say.
He huffs, as if accosted. “Well I didn’t ask to get into a scuffle today. Sometimes things just have a way of happening, now don’t they?”
“You think you’ve got it all figured out,” you say. “You’re not some kind of—I don’t know—Hero, or whatever.”
“Sure I am,” he says. There’s a rumble in the earth. Or maybe that’s just your concussion.
You manage to stand. It’s shaky but you stand. “Thanks, then, I guess,” you say. You lean down to pick up the remains of your laptop. Hoist it back under your arm. “But for the record I had that coming. If they go after you too now it’s not my problem.”
“You can’t just—“ He’s angry now. “Now wait just a goshdarn minute. You’re not supposed to—Get back here.”
A tremor shakes the earth and suddenly—in the length of a startled blink—a great fissure opens up in the earth in front of you. You stumble backwards, panicked, and drop your laptop into the impromptu abyss. When you look back at the boy he’s standing there, lost and wide-eyed.
“What…” he says. “Why wouldn’t you—I can save you. I can save you, Dirk.”
“No thanks,” you say. You’d like to be out of town within the hour. Out of the country within the week.
He grits his teeth. The earth is shaking and it’s definitely not your concussion. “What’s all this new-wave malarkey,” he says. “Just because I got a little fancy with your character backstory doesn’t mean you can just—Waltz out of the damn story. These things have rules, arcs—“
You have no fucking clue what he’s talking about. But your injury must catch up with you, because everything suddenly cuts to black.
The Woods
You’re lost. Lost, lost, and you can’t remember your backstory. Maybe that’s for the best, you tell yourself. It sure would be a shitshow if you were, say, untrusting of strangers and dangerously self-preserving or something. That could ruin a whole story. A whole romance. That would mean you wouldn’t want to go with the handsome stranger offering you a ride on his stallion. He’s got a hunting dog with him. And roguish scars on his cheek. He looks like he’s got a good backstory. You’d like to learn it.
“We’ll make it out together,” he’s telling you. But he frowns when you nod blindly.
The Curse, Redux, Redux
It’s a strange feeling, finding coherence right on the cusp of your slipping consciousness. The world feels sharper. The colors brighter. It’s pretty, charming, even, but you don’t focus on any of it.
You sit your ass right down on the floor. Feel the cold stone against your ankles. Give yourself to sleep.
When he kisses you awake you’re on the floor. You frown at him, and he frowns back, and he looks more awake now too. More awake than he ever did. Was he asleep before? Is he asleep still?
“We need to get out of here, Jake,” you say. It sounds weirdly present. Not cut from a world-lacing script. Alive.
“I already killed the dragon,” Jake says.
“We need to get out of here, Jake,” you repeat. His eyes are growing sharper, deeper, no gloss, no fog. But in their change you notice the world yet again crashing around you. With shakes and fissures and angry earth. You wonder if it hurts him. To know his favorite has failed.
When the world goes black, you think of dragons.
The Cave, Redux
“We need to talk,” you say. You’re crosslegged on a mountain of gold and he’s caught off guard.
Apparently you were not the only one surprised to find your chains longer than expected.
“Dirk, love,” he whispers loud, clambering up a gilded hillside that disintegrates into a fountain of coins the second he attempts to find solid purchase upon it. “I’m coming. I’m going to get you out of here.”
“Y’see, you say that,” you call down to him. You shift a little on your peak of a throne and a small avalanche of gold collides with his body further down the slope.
“I know you’re mad at me,” he says. Are you mad at him? Oh yeah, you dumped him or something in this story, right? You have no idea how deep Jake is in his own ass at the moment but for some ungodly reason you’re feeling pretty damn awake. “But that doesn’t matter now—I’m here to rescue you.”
You grimace. “Okay. Step one. No more rescues. I’m feeling pretty damn uncomfortable as it is, English, considering you’ve got me ass-naked on a pile of cold metal in some metaphorical punishment for my possessive yet isolative personality, which is—by the way—dully noted and can be discussed at a further time—“
Jake pales. “Dirk, Dirk, love, keep your voice down—“
“But you see, Mr. Hero, I’m here for a fucking reason. Believe it or not. And that reason does not, in fact, include playing obligatory distressed damsel to all your deepest power fantasies under the covert drug of subconscious desire—“
“Dirk, please, be quiet—“
“And I’m not above admitting that! Which goes against the definition of subconscious but whatever. It feels good, English. It feels so fuckin’ good to sit back and be saved. To fall into your arms. To just fucking melt in them, and not worry about anything—“
“Dirk,” Jake hisses. “You’re going to get us killed!”
“Because I love you,” you say. “I love you. I love being your romantic interest. I would even say I sort of love the fact that you’re fantasizing about me naked right now. You’re such a fuckin’ charmer, English. An imaginative, batshit charmer that doesn’t need to slip into what I can only hypothesize are small, hoped-up pocket universes to be loved by me. You know that, right?”
“Dirk,” Jake says, so deadly fucking serious in his delusion. “You’re talking nonsense! You’re going to wake the goddamn dragon and then both of us are doomed—do you understand me? There’s a dragon! A Dragon!”
“Jake,” you call. “I’m in charge now.”
He blinks up at you.
“…What?”
“Wow,” you say. “You’re deeper under than I thought.”
“Dirk, what are you saying—“
“I’m in charge,” you repeat. “Which is what I should have done from the fucking start instead of playing comatose house with you for an indecipherable amount of possibly nonexistent time. I’m in charge, Jake. Because things are always better when I’m in charge.”
Something snaps in Jake, and you realize dully it might be the threads knitting together the reality around you. Distantly, you feel a deep rumbling and hear the sound of coins rattling off into a fissure.
“No you’re not…” he says, fists clenched. “You’re not!”
“Surely you noticed you didn’t choose your story this time,” you reply.
His eyes go wide. His posture rigid. He looks from you to the world and then to his own hands, frantic and lost. “You’re going to wake the dragon,” he says, final and desperate, and all you can do is laugh.
“Jake,” you sigh, and it’s filled with something that smells so suspiciously like pity that you hate yourself. Hate being a condescending villain. “I can pull some heartstrings and get whatever the hell I want. I am, undoubtedly, in charge,” you say. “And if I say dragon. You can have your fucking dragon.”
He’s upset, and the echo of the world tearing apart accosts both of you as you allow a rush of molten blood to course through your veins. It burns like power, deep and flickering in your soul and the next thing you know you’re towering above him. Hot breath brushing back his hair. Deep claws sinking into your surrounding horde. Golden eyes alight with more than anger.
“Oh fuck,” he says.
When the world falls to black, you decide you might need a drink.
The Alley, Redux
You slip into a bar seat, right next to him, and he looks instantly annoyed.
“A bit forward today, aren’t we?” he notes, taking a sip of whiskey. He smells singed. Maybe it’s just the cigarette tray beside him. Maybe he had a bad run-in with one of his numerous lovers.
You put an arm around your favorite mafia playboy and give him a wide smile.
“I’m gonna need you to get us out of here,” you tell him. “Now.”
“No can do, kid,” he tells you back. “I’ve got a meeting with my favorite glass of alcohol and it’d be a right shame to call in sick.”
He’s delightfully good at keeping character, really.
“C’mon,” you chide him. Your hand finds his thigh. “Five minutes in the alley. For me?”
He seems unsure. There’s a spark in his eyes. A hint of understanding that’s desperate to sink deeper. You smile wider at him, assuring, and he must sense something’s terribly, terribly off because he stumbles back from his chair and almost trips over the step up to the bar.
“I’m, uh,” he says. “Horribly busy tonight, pal. Maybe I can catch up with you at your apartment later?”
The look you give him is so bored it creates a rumble in the universe all its own. He drags himself away from you and the bar and his drink and his cigarette you’re not even sure he knows how to smoke. Stutters a goodbye. Walks out the alley door.
You take a sip of his abandoned whiskey while a half-dozen guns cock in the distance. A megaphone yells Freeze! This is the police! and you hear Jake cuss you out again as the speakeasy walls crumble around you.
Jake has never been a fan of surprises.
The Shallows, Redux
When he sees your face—a horrid, teeth-lined expanse of a maw dotted with milky-white eyes—he shoves you right off the side of the goddamn boat.
The Curse, Redux, Redux, Redux
You’re here again.
“Fuck,” you say because you did not intend to be here again. The curse drips down your neck, threatening.
“It’s okay, Dirk,” Jake says. He’s sitting on the bed looking distraught and guilty and anywhere but your direction. “Just go to sleep. You can go to sleep. Things’ll be better, don’t you remember? We were having fun. We were happy.”
It’s a stream of murmurs you can barely make out over the din of more pressing problems. Your vision is blurring and you’re fighting against the ties he has wrapped around you. Some of them go both directions. You tug blindly for them.
“It’s okay,” he says. “It’s okay, right?”
The world collapses before he even has a chance to kiss you.
The Checkerboard
He’s in shackles.
“Oh,” he says when he realizes he’s in shackles. He looks up at you. “Hi.”
You’re sprawled atop a rather garish throne of reds and purples and deep maroon. The collar of your doublet extends upwards in a halo of a heart. Your shorts are poofy to a dangerously asshole-ish level.
“Hello,” you say. You look beyond where he’s standing at an elevated podium. Towards a ruined battlefield of checkered black and white, sprinkled with an overgrowth of green. You sigh. “Welcome.”
"This is new." Jake forces a smile. “Then we are, uh.”
“Alice and Wonderland. Yeah.”
“Right. And that means—“
“Queen of Hearts, obviously. Trial. Decapitation.”
“So I will… Wake up?”
“How the fuck should I know.”
“I assumed that’s why you brought me here!”
You scoff. “I brought you here to think this situation through without the threat of my near-constant infatuation for you getting in the way."
“Well that’s hardly my fault! You’re the one that dived yourself in here with me!” Jake huffs.
Your hands grip the hilt of the sword you came into existence holding. Its blade glints in the unblocked sun. “Well I had to do something, didn’t I?” you demand. “I’m always the one who has to fuckin’ do something when you go off into your fantasies.”
He furrows his brow and focuses his attention on the shackles. You can tell he’s trying to hope himself out of the situation, and you laugh at his effort.
“That’s not going to work,” you say.
“And why the fresh heck not?” he replies.
“Because you need a foothold on creativity to hope-up your whimsical little universes,” you say. “And Alice and Wonderland references are imagination bedrock.”
He contemplates this for a second.
“Ah.”
“Yeah.”
“So…”
“Do you plead guilty?” you ask, stepping up from your throne to loom above him at full height. You hold your sword out at him. Polished and sharp. Deadly.
“Whoa,” he says. He tilts himself away from it. “Whoa there. Wait, wait! You can’t just decapitate me!”
“Sure I can,” you say. “For the express abuse of universe-altering powers for personal enjoyment and chronic escapism. Which I can’t say is a crime listed in any Earthly lawbook, but I personally feels falls under some sort of universal morality spectrum ruleset regardless.”
Jake slumps. “…So that’s it then?”
You nod.
“You’re just going to off me?” he says. “And that’ll solve everything?”
“Hypothetically,” you reply. “It’ll destroy this plane of existence, at the very least. Which solves the problem of the fact that I inescapably placed us in the one universe where imagination is dead.”
“And?” Jake questions.
“And I theorize that the pseudo-death will function on the same machinations of average dreamscapes, jumpstarting you awake in reality. Our reality.”
“And if it doesn’t?” Jakes asks.
“Then I failed.” You frown. “This universe will crumble. And we'll try again, yet again.”
“I fail to see how this solves any problem!” Jake cries out. And a flame licks up somewhere in your chest, your heart. Something painful. “You’re mad, Strider!”
You don’t really know how to respond to that.
“Do you realize,” you say, deathly low, “that you are just a bubble of white light on Earth C?”
“What?”
“Impenetrable, inaccessible. Do you know that you—we thought you were going to come out of it. We waited six months—“
Jake stares at you.
“I had to do something,” you say, throat closing with emotions you can’t afford to have right now. Not in the current universe. It’s off-script. Wrong. “I have to do something. We got in an argument. A terrible, horrible argument and—six months—I finally had to come get you, Jake. I used the heartsplinter, but I would have done anything. I couldn’t—this is—this is all my fault.” You heave a choked breath. “Oh god. I have to get you out of here. This is all my fault.”
Jake only stares. That’s all he ever does when you confess things to him. When you’re low you hurl every pitiful word that’s ever crossed your mind and he just looks at you, blank and a little wistful. You feel your lip curl upwards in disgust.
“We got in an argument,” Jake parrots, slowly. “…That’s right.”
“Yeah,” you say. “You’re stuck here because you tried to escape me. And then I steamrolled into your fantasies just to seal the deal that I’m completely fucking suffocating.” Your mind is racing a million miles per hour. Embarrassed and ashamed and greatly regretting taking away Jake’s ability to shift the universe and so repeatedly put you out of your misery.
“You were here before, though,” Jake states. You freeze as his voice slices through your frenetic thoughts. “I hoped you up. You were flatter though. More of a stand-in. I was… I was happy when you showed up. The real you. You make for an enigmatic if slightly unpredictable love interest, Strider.”
He laughs. You don’t.
“Oh cheer up,” he says. “We’ll think our way out of this. You’re the thinking kind. You didn’t invade anything. I’m flattered you tried to rescue me.”
“You telling me that I was always here, even before I was here, in some sick layered nightmare of there being Dirks in your subconscious all the way down, is not making me feel better.”
“Dirk,” Jake smiles, in some sort of childish warning.
“Jake,” you say. “You’re stuck here because of me.”
It hits you like it never has before. Guilt. Fear. Anger over the mistakes you never meant to repeat. It all rises like bile in your throat and you start to choke violently. Your hands clutch at the ache in your stomach. Jake’s face falls, and he starts to step from his podium to rush towards you.
“Dirk,” he yells out to you, but stops short when you lift your sword at him. You bare your teeth, urging him to stay right where he is. “Dirk, love. You’re not well.”
Maybe you are a little crazy. You can’t tell where the world’s influence ends and your own innate instability begins.
“This is all my fault,” you say, voice hushed. The world spins.
Jake looks worried. He’s worried because of you. It's always you. “No, it isn’t! It’s mine! Can’t you see I’m the one who’s been wallowing away in his fantasies?”
“You just wanted to save me,” you say. “Over and over again—I made you feel that powerless.”
“Dirk,” he says. He sounds angry. Angry at you?
“And I just made it worse—” Maybe Wonderland wasn’t the best idea. You can’t see a thing your eyes are so blurred by your own mental processing. “You can’t fucking get rid of me—”
He’s charging towards you. What happened to your sword? You need your sword. He needs to stay away from you. You’re dangerous, hostile, all-encompassing. Jake’s screaming something. Your knees buckle and you stumble to the ground in front of your stupid throne. Why wasn’t your vision coming back? You felt like you were back in the shallows; no air was reaching your lungs, no feelings to your legs.
“Dirk,” Jake gasps. You look blindly towards him, watching his face come to focus in an impressionist painting of browns and greens and a few bright pink teardrops. Did that make sense? That didn’t feel like it should make sense.
You feel a scraping somewhere deep in your gut and realize he has his hands gripped around something. It’s all you can do to watch him pull with all his strength at the sword imbedded in your torso.
Wait.
He’s still screaming. The sword clatters to the checkered ground with a splatter of rainbow blood against an already wartorn battlefield. You look back down to see a wound gaping neons and pastels and everything in between. You furrow your brow at the hole. “What—“
“Dirk,” Jake cries out in a tone that would say you dolt if it wasn’t so overpowered by I’m fucking terrified. His hands come up to stifle the bleeding and you watch, paralyzed, as your body gushes a rainbow mess over his skin. Blue getting under his fingernails and orange spilling over his wrists. The colors seem to hum at the contact. You swear his cuffs vanish beneath the slick.
Suddenly, the force of a great ocean rocks through your body and it takes everything in you to remain upright as a tidal of saltwater pours out of the widening hole. It leaves a foreign taste on your tongue and several silvery fish flopping on the tiled floor.
“What…” you repeat, as hundreds of gold coins push their way through your ribs.
Jake’s not trying to stop the bleeding anymore. Instead he has you crushed against him, arms cradling your head as you cough cigarette smoke and feel forest leaves settle loosely by your knees.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers to you. Eyes rimmed with tears and face coated in snot. And an epiphany hits you, so suddenly and easily you wonder why it couldn’t have come to you before you made the world’s worst attempt at seppuku. Jake’s shackles are gone. His skin glows where your rainbow slurry smudges against him. The world shakes beneath you and you watch the battlefield crumble into an unseen abyss. The debris spirals upwards.
“Your powers,” you say with what breath you have left. “How did you—” But no, it’s not him. It’s you. It’s you. Maybe it’s always been you. You realize, in the fading light of your consciousness, that the only reason he is currently buzzing with power is because of the mess you’re spilling onto him. An oilspill of energy. Like some sort of hope… fountain?
A creative wellspring. A consolidation of inspiration. Something something hope powers.
A muse?
The last thought hits you with the tiniest of laughs, and you let the curse take you.
The Unknown
Everything goes white.
And stays white. An endless expanse of white with no ceilings or walls or really anything that even resembles a sky. Just white.
Jake is curled around you. You look at him, expression probing for answers to questions you can’t quite bring yourself to ask.
“Hi,” you say. “Where are we?”
“Someplace to think,” he says. He has his forehead pressed to your shoulder. “I think I’ve had my fair share of adventures for the moment. I just want… quiet.”
“I’m sorry,” you say.
“It was certainly one way to get us out of there,” he replies. He sighs against the fabric of your plain white T-shirt.
“I didn’t mean to—I don’t know what happened.”
“Some would probably say panic attack,” Jake murmurs.
“And the, uh, rainbow—”
“Well you’re not flesh and blood.” Jake sounds so tired. “You’re using the heartsplinter, correct?”
You nod.
“So I’ve got a lot of… daydreams. About you. Fantasies. Delusions. Whatever terminology you will. You’re always the centerpiece. Or at the very least the inspiration. They’re… comforting.”
“Comforting?”
“Yes,” Jake says. “I find the thought of you comforting.”
“Oh,” is all you can say in turn.
“Mhmm,” he hums. It reverberates down your arm. “I want to be next to you. I feel stronger next to you. When we fought? I didn’t slip into what I can only fathom as a hope-coma because I wanted to escape you. I just wanted—I wanted you to be happy. And I wanted to protect you. And most of all I wanted to be near you. But I didn’t want to think about all the nasty hangups keeping a relationship entailed so I… I lost myself.” You bring up a hand to press against his. Light and cautious. “And you rescued me.”
Well. You wouldn’t take it that far.
“I think we should…” you start. “I think we should go home now.”
His eyes squeeze shut. He curls tighter around you, warm and alive.
“I do hate to be a further bother,” he says. “But I just need. A few minutes.”
You give him those and then some. When he’s ready, the two of you blink from his smooth white reality with grace.