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{ by the pricking of my thumbs
WHO: Vanessa Ives (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
matermali) & Peter Graham (possessum)
WHAT: Some unholy bonding.
WHERE: Peter's apartment.
WHEN: Shortly after the week trapped in the mall.
WARNINGS: Demons, arachnids, probably death talk. More TBA because they are not OK.
matermali) & Peter Graham (possessum)
WHAT: Some unholy bonding.
WHERE: Peter's apartment.
WHEN: Shortly after the week trapped in the mall.
WARNINGS: Demons, arachnids, probably death talk. More TBA because they are not OK.
[ She has been getting somewhat lax since escaping the mall, going so far as to keep the same bed for a few nights in a row for her emotional exhaustion, but Vanessa has yet to allow herself to completely settle anywhere. The moment she does, that's when she'll be weak enough for them to strike again. Vanessa invites them to approach her, but not on their terms. Never again. She wishes to look her enemy in the eye and see their fear when she casts them out from creation.
Even now, after being trapped twice already, she is shy of approaching buildings that she hasn't already been in. This is a building she's been in, though not since her arrival, and she chooses a different floor now. Vanessa is one to follow instinct, no matter how often it has led her to further danger. Could she be so lucky as to find one of Satan's pets now? Something here does not feel...right. She's run into strange creatures that have set off an alarm in her when coming and going before, but something here is strangely familiar.
Her boots track silently and slowly, with ears as sharp as her shoulders tense. There's someone staying on this floor. Footsteps slow and the rattling in her bones grows louder, as if shaking the bars of a cage in the hopes that someone else might hear.
Who else is listening?
The door she has stopped at is nothing special. It's identical to the others, or it should be, but when she looks to the doorknob, it appears red hot as if fresh from a fire. The scent of rotting blood assaults her, and when she turns to lean close, she could swear she hears a sharp twang! as when a string has been snapped too taut against another.
The sound of a thump causes her to jerk back, and then it's silent and there's no smell at all. It's the same nothingness that the City has always offered. Breath held to utter silence, one hand settles over the doorknob that is perfectly cool to the touch, but she doesn't turn it.
Something within is scratching out of her bones and through her skin to will her to turn the handle, and it's something she knows she should resist...but has she ever been able to for very long? ]
no subject
But then one night, something calls him to scratch up through that graveyard soil and out again, pulling himself, piece by piece.
It isn't on a level Peter himself is especially aware of. It happens almost gently, a subtle thing. As naturally as breathing. He isn't asleep, because he rarely sleeps at night anymore, but he isn't something that could be considered awake, either. He haunts the living room of this apartment, every light out except for a dim lamp in the far corner of the room. The mattress he'd long-ago drug here from a bedroom is more of a nest than a bed, a tangle of sheets and clothing (and somewhere inside the mattress itself, oblivious to him, small things tucked away — an assortment of magpie items he has no memory of collecting. A button, a shard of glass, a strip of cloth, a twine of wire. These treasures are important to someone, but it isn't him.)
His head is turned to face the door, and he stares as though in a dream. The warm pupils of the boy's eyes swell and darken, blowing out into inky black pools.
There is something coming, and it's nothing that Peter can understand. But the strange ancient lost thing trapped within him feels it. Feels her.
No knock comes, and no one calls out. But he knows there is something there (and isn't it Peter's worst nightmare? That a thing comes creeping for him in the night? Even in his own household, he learned to lock his bedroom, learned that nowhere was safe. Not at night. Not with his mother moving in her sleep, slow and shuffling.)
But for the moment, any fear or horror in the boy is muffled by the Other, by other sensations. Curiosity, confusion. And perhaps most of all, a longing, a yearning. To be seen. (To be held?) To be... found.
He's moving to the door, as silent as a spectre, long body graceful the way it usually isn't. He comes to a halt in front of it, staring, and his head tilts just a little too far to the side, more birdlike than person. He reaches to unlock and open the barrier between himself and this thing that has come to him, slowly peeling the door opened.
There he stands, gazing down with his head still tilted, with eyes too dark, and belonging to something else. The injuries to Peter's face are nearly almost healed, bruises finally fading, nose no longer swollen. There's still a bandaged splint against it, but it could come off any day now; Peter simply hasn't cared to remove it.
He stares, wide eyes opening wider still, like two mouths yawning open for the thing that has come crawling, not shirking from it. He has opened the door to it. ]
cw; arachnids
The worn bag drops soundlessly by her feet, or maybe only nothing else can break through the noise of rushing water where the door hinges ought to creak. Deafened by the violence of it, Vanessa can’t even hear her own breaths when they shudder from the chill, but still she steps forward.
I know you.
It’s creeping just beneath her flesh, now, the rippling in her blood. Unseen by the naked eye, tiny claws poke and pinch ceaselessly until it can crawl free—so it can invite in the miasma that carries a memory of home.
Her lips are pressed tight, and with eyes wide in near a glare, she closes in on the figure looming just beyond the door. She isn’t looking at the boy. All she can see is the dark pit where he lives. There, she’ll close in, and as she reaches the jagged edge of the abyss, the thrashing in the air falls gentler. It's a deceptive softness, like the feathered touch of fingertips along his temple.
The ancient pull guides the scorpion as though on invitation, and it’s with an old sort of familiarity that it skitters from her outstretched hand to circle his ear, where it burrows through skull and mind. It doesn’t greet yet, but it listens and watches, and to whom? She can see the boy clearly now, and his face is too bruised to have known recent love. Is he ever going to mend?
Peter. It’s spat with such venom by a woman without a face, and Vanessa brushes her aside. Not you.
The air has hushed, embraced in the eye of the storm. ]
[ Peter. ] Peter.
[ Compelled beyond her knowing, Vanessa leans close for pale eyes to gaze into black, and with a palm cradling the boy's cheek, she whispers through the scorpion's sting. ]
[ Wake up. ] Wake up.
no subject
It knows him. Sees him. The ancient thing within the boy feels something just as ancient — no, even more so — opening her own eyes, crackling, skittering, hard-shelled and with too many legs, and perhaps the great demon king Paimon (a being of impossible knowledge, a cacophony of secrets) would ordinarily be able to recognise this entity before him, or at least to put form and meaning to its essence. Not now. Not when he has been maimed and mutilated, wings torn to leave him flightless. Forced in and out of human hosts the way a thing like him was never meant to be, and now here in this place, padded down by layers and layers of an endless fog. That blinding golden light of him is subdued, dulled, flickers from so deep within the surface of human skin. He is lost. No one can see him.
But someone has, now.
Peter's slender neck curves, tilts further, a sensation that transcends human description rippling through the demon. It can only be known as a hunger, curious and wide and yearning — not to consume this entity before him, but to invite it inwards, as much as she invites him. Something clicks against the shell of his ear and his tongue brushes the roof of his mouth, gives a soft cluck; he feels it infiltrate him and he welcomes it, her, not understanding but not afraid. He would stand there for endless time, staring, and scratching too — claws raking against the underside of human skin, bubbling hot within human mind. Peter can disappear forever. Perhaps he has always been meant to.
Someone calls his name. 'Peter.' There is a white hand against his cheek, and a tenderness that subdues everything else, the things about her that hurt, and when the dark eyes widen again, it's with a swell of tears. She finds him through the Other, and he shudders with a soft gasp, staring downwards. His heart pounds, hurts. All of it is so human, and the fog of himself clears, even if only enough that he remembers his own name, again.
He might be afraid, soon. In mere moments — but for now, for this moment, someone has found him, and all of it is overwhelming and wanted, and a quiet tear leaks out against the stranger's palm. (Is she a stranger? Has he known her, once? Perhaps for always?) ]
You're here, [ he breathes, not knowing why, or why he feels so comforted by the notion. ]
no subject
The vulnerability was palpable when first she heard him plead for comfort, it had pulled her close, but now it draws her in to choose between hope and caution. Someone else has noticed the slip in the wardrobe door. Where are you? She’s here, but she is too late; someone found him first. She knows them; she's known them. Not here in the city, but a time before where the faceless woman should be forgotten.
This is an old wound.
With a slow grace, Vanessa moves to gently cradle his face with both hands now, looking up at him with a special care. She looks until no trace of shadow is left, at least not visibly. It’s still there, it is never gone. Only hidden. There is a cold sweat at the nape of her neck, wondering how, how this is so familiar and yet if asked she can’t say as to why. Such things are known in the bones before they can be welcomed into the mind. Some part of her knows what this is, it’s what drew her to the door. Yet, as Vanessa takes just a moment to glance over the old bruises, to then again find his gaze and see the bewilderment vying for hope, how can she not also see the loneliest boy in the world? ]
Yes.
[ The ghost from the graveyard. The spectre who's been waiting. So many lonely creatures stand here in the emptiest cage, and yet one of them does still remember the presence of intimacy—not that of Sweetheart, but Friend. Mother. Those memories have never left her vision no matter how dark the night has become. ]
You are not alone.
[ Gently, so light that it could be a breeze, her thumb brushes beneath an eye that’s just as sadly stunning now as it was moments ago. She can see the beauty in both sets of eyes, and that is what worries her. She's here because she was meant to be.
He has never known peace. She can't bring him that. All she has is kinship, but that is where she becomes most dangerous. ]
There is nothing here that can harm you.
no subject
He'd grown around that, like a tree's roots rerouting themselves around a rock lodged in the ground. Children learn how; time passes by, and everyone becomes who they are because of what they know. Peter had become numb, become nothing, and it was always to survive, wasn't it? Perhaps in some ways he hadn't fully known what he was missing in his life. But here, now, with a pair of hands cupping his face (with this pair of hands cupping his face), and this voice telling him that he is not alone.... for the first time ever, Peter feels safe. Feels held. For the first time, he understands everything that's been missing from him (and does it come from his own feeling, or the thing inside of him? Could anyone know? Does it matter? Not at first. Not now.) He shudders in the woman's hands, eyelids fluttering for a moment, wet and cold and comforted by her. She says there is nothing here that can harm you and he believes it. He believes it the way he never, ever has before. He is safe.
He's heard these words before. These, and those. It's there somewhere in the boy's memory, even if it takes him a few strange, long moments to find again. (A phantom voice, rasping, beautiful, horrible. He was afraid of that voice and what it spoke of, as much as he was drawn to it, and then— he wanted to disappear inside of it, curl up safe and coated in the darkness of her. She said she wouldn't allow anything here to harm him. She told him he was real.
She told him that he was not alone.
And he fell into sleep, lulled by her voice. 'Let all be well, be well.' A ghost, a phantom, whatever she may be, she was his for that moment. Or he was hers. He woke the next day alone in the morning and with such ache in his chest, a hollowed-out feeling of loss. Only now does he feel that it's been filled again. Because... she is here. Her, his ghost—)
—The spell falters, a little, in his own shock of that recognition. Peter startles, gives another soft gasp, eyes opening again. Finally now, his fear comes through, and he flinches quietly, though doesn't pull away from the woman. ]
It's you. [ Seeing her again, but differently now. More clearly. ] I talked to you. You— .....you're real?
[ And then that fear in him nudges harder, closer towards panic, upset. Peter tenses, eyes widening, unsure. His words don't come out sharply, not as a challenge, but soft and quaking, uncertain. Why is she here? How is she here? Who— is she? She's exactly how he could've pictured her when he heard her voice, oh yes it's the same, beautiful and horrible, dressed like someone from long ago, like a spectre, hair so dark and skin so pale and eyes so— striking, the colour of ice. He's frozen in the face of them. ]
What do you want...? [ With me, he doesn't say, but feels. Like a small animal of prey in the face of something with sharp, curving teeth. ]
no subject
Slowly, as deliberately as one moves to keep from startling a small animal, Vanessa lowers her hands to rest at her sides, presenting as innocuously as one can with eyes as searching as hers. The movement reminds her of an empty hand. That’s right, she should be holding a bag, but it yet remains in the doorway while she keeps a sharp ear for any near or distant sounds. Not just outside; she listens for anything, or anyone, in here. She listens to the vibrations that surround him and to the shiver in his voice. He’s so ancient for one so young. ]
To help.
[ It’s a murmur as soft as when she had lulled him to sleep, and with no less confidence. She has no idea yet how she can help him, but that has never stopped her from moving forward, and here she still stands. As for those she wanted to help…
Well, none of them were quite like him. ]
no subject
Peter stares down at her, hardly breathing.
'To help'
He believes her, just as he had when he'd first spoken to her on the network. Somehow, he knows that he does. And so, after a few long moments of dazed silence...... the boy nods. Head tips forwards, but not just with mindless obedience. No, it's... willing. Even if some of this is on a level greater than himself, Peter Graham is willing to open his door to this woman. He already had— but to widen it, to not only meet her at the threshold but to invite this ghost to step across it.
Eyes still wide, still wet, he nods again, and slowly steps backwards, freeing the space into his apartment. ]
If you want to come in... it's okay.