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 Posted: Mon Apr 17, 2017 1:43 pm
Elsa had never been to this warehouse before. He knew that. It was not somewhere he drained, it was not on his usual track.
And yet.
And yet he felt like he knew it like the back of his hand, like he was comfortable and easy reclining in a chair towards the back - theoretically security but really, who would break into an old warehouse holding nothing but some company or other’s shipments of...something. He really didn’t know; he just knew the management company for the warehouse paid his paycheck and that was what mattered.
Destiny City was a dangerous place, sure, and anything could happen, but he felt pretty damn secure. (He had a taser and a heavy flashlight and what more could he need, really, at worse there were sometimes miscreants.)
He heard footsteps, and the loud thunk of a lock breaking, and he sighed to himself and stood up, tromping as loudly as he could to the door because he wanted to give whatever idiot kid was there a chance to realize there was actually someone else in there, turn, and run.
He clicked on the flashlight and swung it up, pointing it at the hanging-open doors.
“Alright,” he said, in a voice that was definitely not Levi’s and that shook him, for a moment, the harsh realization that even though this all felt like his memory it wasn’t, but it didn’t pull him out, “come on out, there’s nothing here you want and if you wanna graffiti up the outside I don’t give a s**t, but if you come in here it’s my problem.”
“Is that so?” The voice sounded young, polite, male; he swung his flashlight in the direction it seemed to come from, and it fell on a young man in a crisp-looking uniform, faintly military but somehow not properly identifiable. Elsa couldn’t see a weapon, but he still knew, deep down, exactly what this was. This was an officer of the Negaverse, and this security guard - this poor idiot, the one whose memory Elsa was drowning in - was in more danger than he could possibly even comprehend. Elsa wanted to scream, to warn him but -- but it was too late, he was bringing up his taser like it would do anything at all.
“Yeah, it is.” He said. “I don’t know what kinda weird ren faire s**t you wandered away from, but you’re gonna want to head back there or I’ll have to subdue you and call the cops -- hey, what the hell?”
The officer had started laughing, a sinister sound, and Elsa swore he did scream, he had to have, because it was all horrible and awful and no no no----
“That’s adorable. Subdue me.” The officer mocked.
And then he vanished, and the security guard whirled around, searching, but it was too late, far too late.
Elsa felt a hand sink into his back, fingers wrapping around his -- the guard’s ---- his starseed. It was a cold, terribly intimate violation, and he screamed again, and so did the person whose memory he was riding --
And then he felt a horrible moment of pure agony as his starseed was ripped out, and then he felt nothing at all.
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Posted: Mon Apr 17, 2017 2:07 pm
Elsa woke, staggered, knew for a moment that he was still on that warehouse roof (on his knees, somehow, at the wraith’s feet, when had he collapsed-----?) but it was only for a moment because the dripping, oozing oil was still in him, flowing through him, and there was a ball of it and it exploded and spikes drove through him and he was drowning, drowning in oil and horror, and it sucked him back down and he saw.
He was, at least, not drowning anymore.
He saw a girl with white hair - familiar, almost? Perhaps? But perhaps he just thought so because he desperately wanted her to be, because he was thinking of that terrible cut-off message from Mintaka and he wanted nothing more than he wanted for her to be okay, wherever she was, whatever was pulling her down.
Her box was closed and somehow, deep down, he knew that was good, that it needed to stay closed, that if she opened it everything would be all wrong and awful and everything, somehow, would end and maybe that was catastrophizing but --
Her hand moved on the lid and Elsa lurched to his feet.
“Wait!” He said, pleaded really, holding out a hand, trying to stay her. “Wait, don’t open that, you can’t,” whatever came out of it would be terrible and awful and he didn’t want to see it, he didn’t want to know it.
She regarded him blankly, unfazed, and continued to pull the lid back.
“Please,” he begged, but deep down he knew it was utterly hopeless. Just like everything he did, just like everything he tried. He was doomed to fail from the start and that was it, that was all, he would fail every time.
The box opened, and dark, clinging oil poured from it, and it formed into the shape of a person -- familiar maybe, but it wasn’t just one person, it was many. Charlie, Lavender, Mintaka, Umber, his parents, cops he’d known and people he’d worked with -- and all of them spoke in one voice, one clamoring reminder.
”You’re nothing, Levi. You want to fix the world, but you’ll never fix yourself. You’re too afraid, no matter how much you pretend not to be. All that righteous anger, just a shield to protect a scared little child from the world.”
Elsa stumbled back.
No, no, how could it -- how could they -- how could this box know, know the fear he kept close to his heart, know how weak and false his defenses really were -- know what a failure he was, beneath it all?
It vanished, but he doubled over again, curling up like he was wounded. He could feel it bleeding out into the world, could feel with certainty, somehow, that everyone knew, everyone had seen, everyone was intimately and utterly aware of what an absolute, abject failure he was. That everyone had heard the box give the lie to every justification he made to himself and to everyone around him.
He let out a tiny, broken sob, and let the madness drown him.
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