Supernatural AU for Roland

[foundafamily]

[The little hamlet along the forest hasn't had a good time. Surrounded by magical creatures on all sides, they've decided to get a little... proactive in dealing with their problem. When night falls, hunters armed with crossbows and improvised weapons--hoes, shovels, and long hunting knives--come out to patrol.

This time, one of them's squaring off with one of the local werewolves. At this full moon, Firo's completely in wolf form, nearly indistinguishable from an actual wolf when he's not speaking.

The crossbow's been knocked aside, its string broken. The two circle each other, and then the wolf leaps for the hunter's leg to sink his teeth into it.

He's going to make sure that this hunter realizes it's best to leave the business.]

Comments

[foundafamily]

Leave my head or leave this place? ...Don't answer that--I'm not gonna get a straight answer outta you ever, am I?

[Whatever. Firo has bigger problems--and so does Roland, because to Firo they're somewhat in this together. He gives his body a shake and darts forward, expecting to have to fight the pull--

--the pull that is no longer there. Firo crashes through the underbrush and nearly loses his footing on the other side.]

Roland? You there?

[ka_sera_sera]

[He can't even tell where the boy is like this. He pulls himself a little further back into Firo's mind, curious, just in time to hear that name. He shudders as he hears it, and gods only know what Firo's mind will make of that particular sensation.]

You mean me when you use that name? Why?

[foundafamily]

[It's uncomfortable, feeling someone else shiver in you, and Firo shuffles his paws on the forest floor to try to get rid of the sensation. Experimentally, he bounds forward a few more steps.]

It's yours, isn't it? It was with... well, everything else you just put in my head. You don't like it? I could make up a name for you, but it's pretty inconvenient not having anything to call you.

[ka_sera_sera]

[His surprise is probably clear. It's all in that feeling, the one that says if he had eyes he'd be widening them. If he had a face he'd stare.]

Call me?

[There's a memory now, one it does not occur to the shadow to keep hidden. A quick flipping through all the nights over all the years and all the mortals who'd never looked at him, or seen. They only try to speak to him when he's killing them. No point to it then.]

[This is contrary to everything he was expecting. The werewolf must be confused, and tone the shadow's thought is flavored with says as much.]

Why would you need to call one such as me for anything?

[foundafamily]

[Well, that's... weird. Firo's no stranger to death, but it's no comfortable feeling to have the guy in your head envision past murders.

Firo shakes himself off, as if he could shed the memory like droplets of water.]

Why the hell not? It makes it easier when we're talking like this. And what if I need to get your attention, huh?

[The voice is still there, so Firo starts into an easy jog. He doesn't want to lose his hitchhiker, but they do have places to go.]

[ka_sera_sera]

You already have it. What else is there to focus on?

[Then he realizes the boy is moving. The shadow knows, of course, where he must be headed. What he doesn't know is why that destination makes him feel so unsettled, all a sudden.]

...Headed back to your pack, are you?

[foundafamily]

[Firo's tone is completely surprised. Why is this even a question? Roland doesn't even sound excited about meeting his pack, which is absurd.]

Yeah. Why, you didn't wanna come?

[ka_sera_sera]

I-

[Suddenly, his reasoning occurs to him. He has little choice but think it - out loud, as it were - when it does.]

This is your family, not mine. I had my chance. You're a better man than I, returning to them. Best if you could do it without telling them what you've seen. I wonder, in here, if I could show your mind how to forget.

[foundafamily]

Hey, watch it! Don't get any funny ideas in there.

[Just the thought of what he's seen in the rose makes him want to sweat. But the rest of the memories are his and he doesn't need anybody's stick paws all over them.]

I wouldn't say I'm better. What else am I gonna go, huh?

[ka_sera_sera]

You could go back. But if you couldn't remember how, wouldn't that be safer? Better for everyone involved? You, your pack most of all.

[And because, speaking with his own thoughts as he is, it is nearly impossible to lie:]

And the rose. Safer for it, too. If you'd let me try, there's a lot we could avoid before it bites me in the ass.

[foundafamily]

[If it were just about him, Firo'd immediately call bullshit. At the mention of his pack, though, he feels a twinge of anxiety.]

What would happen to my pack if I remember?

[ka_sera_sera]

You might lead one of them back there. Or mention it to one who goes back to find it on their own. There's a reason I've been killing anyone who comes too close to finding it, you know.

[foundafamily]

[Firo snorts as he continues to lope along.]

What's that reason, huh? And don't you pretend for a second that it's for any of us.

[It must be selfish, Firo assumes, though he's not sure why even this weird shadow thing would want to keep the rose to himself. ]

[ka_sera_sera]

[If he had shoulders, he'd shrug. At this juncture it's possible Firo's own shoulders might tickle - or whatever the equivalent feeling is when someone else inside is trying vaguely to move them, more out of impulse than actual attempt at control.]

You all benefit, don't you? Given that, do my reasons really matter?

You saw me. You know what I am, more completely than anyone living. You know what my- my family. My family-that-was. What they suffered. What risk would you take, Firo Prochainezo, to save them from that? From this?

[At that last word, the shadows around them spread. They race in front of him, slide up the trees and, with the cover of the branches, make a strong attempt at blocking out the sky.]

[foundafamily]

So if I remember, all that could happen to my family?

[Can he trust this guy? As far as Firo knows, Roland hasn't yet lied to him, and Roland has helped him out a couple times in their short acquaintanceship. That doesn't mean that he wouldn't turn on Firo in an instant, but Firo does have to take it into consideration. Plus, what would Roland gain from lying to Firo on this?

Near as he can tell, the price is worth averting the risk of potentially hurting his family so badly.

Firo stops, raising his face to the shadows above him.]

All right. So what do you need to do?

[ka_sera_sera]

I don't know.

[There might be a scrunched up feeling in Firo's head, a feeling like some nonexistent face furrowing up in annoyed wrinkles.]

This'd be easier if I had a body. I know how men do it.

Because I was taught, I suppose.

[He can't help but remember that last part, the reminder that he knows the things he knows about humans because he was once as alive as the rest of them. Whatever's left of him curls away from the reminder, away from the thought, settles itself instead in a different part of Firo's brain.]

Maybe if you- If you think of what you saw. When you looked in.

[He doesn't like the idea but - as with everything else Firo is hearing from him - he can not even consider whether to share it. He is thought, right now. What he thinks is, more or less, what Firo hears.]

Then mayhap I'd see where the memories sit in you. Track them down.

[There is little he wants less than to be forced to look at his own - that other man's past. At Roland's life. The squirming dread lies heavy and obvious in every second of his thought. But he would have suggested it, maybe, even if he'd had a choice. The fact that it might work, regardless of the rest of the shadow's feelings on the matter, make it worth suggesting.]

[foundafamily]

[Firo tucks his tail against his leg as he feels something shifting around inside of him, like a tickle in his skull. He wishes this weirdo would quit it, but he's just going to look silly if he focuses on something so minor right now.

He finds that he's suddenly scared of what this memory stuff is going to be like, if the mere existence of the shadow is so uncomfortable. Is it going to kill him? That part isn't as scary as the fear that his pack would think he's just run off. And what if the memory stuff just turns out to be weird? What if it turns its light on some dark corners of his mind?

Damn it, why does stuff like this happen to him?

But there's no way to stop agonizing over it except to get it over with.

The blood and the man's body slumped against the wall. The frenetic yips and cackles of one of the men those kids grew up to be--and the kids themselves running around.

It doesn't take much effort for Firo to bring the memories to mind, though they're not his. He tries to go about recalling the images methodically, but it's all too easy for his brain to jump from memory to memory. He sees Roland's childhood friends and thinks of his own--the Gandors and Claire playing stickball again. That time they went looking for Claire and found him on top of a crumbling warehouse, something no normal human should've ever been able to reach...

He pulls himself back to 'Steven', and there's Maiza pouring himself a drink, smiling.]

[ka_sera_sera]

[The shadow would approve of the 'just get it over with' spirit if he were in a position to do so. As it is he might just be giving Firo another one of those odd feelings, the emotional - and perhaps physical - impression of a man pressing himself close against a wall in hopes that he will not be seen. He can almost see where the memories are coming from for something approaching a second, but they're so quick and he cannot prevent the urge to distance himself, and quickly, before anything inside might touch him.]

[His first thought is a distraction, and due to his current nature his first thought is, of course, what comes out. The feeling of curiosity in it is genuine; the desperation sitting behind that is genuine too, but not particularly relevant here.]

That man. He's your father? Or- I don't know if turned werewolves have that kind of arrangement amongst themselves.

I never asked.

[The tone of that last thought feels somewhere between bemused and ironic. Between the killing and, in that other man Roland's life, the slaying, when would he have? The question's never, in maybe hundreds of years, occurred to him to ask.]

[foundafamily]

No, he's...

[How does he define it? They don't have set roles like father or brother. They are what they are.]

He's famiky. Like all of us in the pack.

...Weren't you gonna do something to me?

[ka_sera_sera]

[That question feels, to him, like being taken to task for woolgathering. And there is yet one holdover from the man he once was, even though he does not know it; the knowledge that he should be the one who says things like that, not hears them. Chastened, ashamed of his own cowardly procrastination, he reaches for one of the memories blindly, pulls at it, meaning to cut it out at the root-]

[He reached for the memory of Rolad's father, found his mother instead. He found the shock, found the overwhelming horror, found her hands still holding that gift, and how badly stained it is, now-]

[He comes back to himself huddled in a distant corner of the boy's mind. It is Roland who could have chosen, perhaps, whether to say what he says next. The shadow, in his current form, has no such choice.]

Please, please no more. No more of this.

[foundafamily]

[She's important; Firo can tell that immediately both from the associations that follow the memory and the near immediate pleading that follows it.

They need to regroup--something about this is going wrong.]

This isn't working, okay? We need to stop.

[He growls, low in his throat, and tries to hop to another memory to get them out of this. He sees a woman, hand to her mouth as she shakes with wracking coughs. No. He tries to avoid that too, only to find himself once again thinking of the image of Roland's memory: the bloodied woman--

No. He digs in his heels and tries to think of nothing at all: empty skies, the new moon, and howling wind.]

[ka_sera_sera]

[The shadow joins him without taking a second to deliberate. The empty sky, the moon shining down, the trees catching that light and holding it, laying down paths of shadow, roads of dark. The wind moaning through it all, through the forest and over to the village of humans and far away. The things he knows. The cold and the bright moon and the dark. One thing glowing bright in that darkness, a thing in the shape of a rose- but he turns away from that. Sets his thoughts on following the path of some remembered wind. By the time he finishes, he's calm enough to think.]

This is hard. You have memories closer to mine - to Roland's - than I thought.

Those were yours, weren't they? I can't tell. I'd rather not- I can't get too close, can't look at them to tell.

[foundafamily]

[Firo finds that he's disappointed when the world of his imagination encircles them. He had wanted to get out of that particular mire of memories--badly--but he'd also been so hopeful that home would finally be nearby.

He sighs and lets his head dip towards the ground for just a second. He's tired of this.]

The ones that weren't yours were mine.

What're we gonna do now? If you can't look at those, how're you gonna get rid of 'em?

[ka_sera_sera]

I-

[For a moment, two moments, no thought comes. He doesn't know. He wants to suggest they try again, but can not make himself even think the words. Not and mean them.]

If you start to tell your family anything I think is dangerous, I'll stop your voice. Once I figure how. Might have to practice it first. That sound acceptable?

[foundafamily]

You're sure you can do that?

[He sighs and wishes he weren't about to say what he feels he has to say.]

Could you test it out?