World On Fire
Maybe his sleep didn’t come as easily now as it had- well, never.
But it always was harder now. Much harder.
Maybe his nightmares were as awful as they always had been, always are, and always will be.
Always worse every night. Maybe.
But that they got worse on a steady incline was one of the things he was sure of.
Maybe.
Maybe visions of pain and agony and the Chaos- ridden and the Alkahest a beat from his heart and of a horror- struck, disgusted, Call were some of the usual, reliable scenes he could count on for the darkness to provide him in the hours of agony known by most people as ‘sleep.’
Maybe it was just ‘sleep.’ And dreams.
Nightmares.
But maybe what he was seeing now was different.
Maybe it was ‘real.’
More ‘real’ than usual.
Whatever ‘usual’ was.
He didn’t know.
Because when the darkness cleared from his usual visions of scarlet agony, the world was changed.
Crisper, somehow. Cleaner. High- definition flat screen compared to a gigantic chunky ‘80’s television with a accompanying VCR and cassette player.
Living in reality and its hard, bright light that washes everything out, to his night visions of flashing, blurring, icy red scenes of demons and mortality. Pain and blows. Faster than he could blink. Awful nightmares of bruises and politics. People who don’t care, who just want to use him for their own ends. Their own gain. Weeping blood and terrible rage.
Nightmares of Call bleeding.
Sometimes it was just a scrape. From something they were doing in lessons.
Sometimes it was a mortal blow to the heart.
Sometimes Joseph or the Assembly did the deed.
Sometimes Call stabbed himself. Using Miri. Peace.
Sometimes Aaron wrenched the blade from Call’s own slight grip, not caring if he was irrevocably shattering so many fragile bones.
Sometimes Aaron slowly, agonizingly, dissolved his counterweight with chaos.
Sometimes Aaron forced Call on the ground and cut his heart out with a thousand painful slices. It always felt like Aaron was cutting his own heart out.
But he did it anyway.
Always Call died in a thousand ways, gasping and choking, blood draining out of his mouth and every pore in his body, in Aaron’s arms.
Always, Aaron could not save him.
And it was always, somehow, his fault. That, he knew. But not somehow. It was.
Of hazy infant recollections of his parents fighting. Somehow he remembered. The nightmares remembered. Remembered his father, even though he was a toddler shoved in the ancient bassinet in the corner of the filthy trailer, hitting his mother. Her screams and cries. Bruises.
Of his father, Aaron would realize when he was a few years older, (like five or six), getting into a drunken rage, and strangling her. To death. Aaron saw him do it. Saw her face turn blue. Remembered wondering when she would stand up again. Come play with him. Shield him from his father. She never did. Trying not to cry when he realized this. Have to be quiet and out of sight. So he won’t notice Aaron there, still in the corner, yet. His ruddy cheeks blazing against his blond hair and green eyes. He doesn’t. Yet.
A few hours later, when he appears to be more sober, he does. But not in the worst way. No more physical pain for Aaron from his father than what his father has already caused. Aaron’s father realizes what he did. He decides to run.
They didn’t own a car. Not enough money.
Steal a car. Hotwire it.
His father tried to make it an ‘educational’ moment. Trying to insanely ‘bond’ with his two year old son. So he taught Aaron to hotwire the neighbor down the street’s dilapidated Town Car. His father’s thirty minute equivalent of eighteen years of Boy Scouts and soccer teams.
Also trying to escape the law. That was even more of a priority to his father than making up what few moments he might have left with Aaron. His life before his son’s. That’s what was really important, after killing his girlfriend.
Aaron didn’t think that his parents ever even got married.
They succeeded in hotwiring the car. Not in escaping the law. So his father got locked away for life. And Aaron got shipped off to the foster homes. Orphanage. They don’t like to use that word. How about ‘place of waiting’ for your ‘forever home,’ Aaron? Be more cheerful. Smile a little more. Your new home is waiting. The words don’t matter. It’s just places they take him in for a week, a month, six months, a year, for the money they get from the government. Aaron knows he won’t get adopted. What few prospective parents come in don’t even consider him. Aaron knows why. There’s a darkness in him. One they pick up on. One the other kids notice. One that he was determined not to let bleed through at the Magisterium. One he think he did let slip through, all the times Aaron used chaos. Chaos wants to devour. It would devour him, if he let it.
One he thinks might be seeded by watching his father kill his mother. One that was watered by the night. Whispering that the dark was his true self.
Sometimes they would whisper it down his neck.
Other times they would scream it into his ears.
But those were, compared to this world, blurred and indistinct. Twisted memories of hazy recollections. This was crystal- clear. Which was unfortunate. It is much easier to ignore blood on the floor when the floor in question is already a mess. Aaron learned that personally, watching his parents hit each other.
Crystal- clear, high-definition vision of Call standing about three feet away. His overgrown, messy, raven-feather hair. Sharp, hungry face. Cheekbones as high as the stars. Distinct, beautiful, horribly hollow, Constantine- gray eyes that were still undeniably Call. The only mar on his face were the gigantic, void-colored bags sitting under his long lashes.
And awful fear, terror, and exhaustion in his eyes and brows. Pain in a curve of a lip. But even as he could see that Call was doing the same, Aaron stared hungrily into his face.
Damn. He was good looking.
Wait.
Stop.
Joseph has somehow taken Call, and Aaron, too, and he knows, can feel somehow that he’s stuck here, trapped, to this terrible merging of nightmares and ‘reality,’ and that’s what he’s thinking about?
Oh, well…
Aaron tried to pinch himself. Epic fail. Though that wasn’t entirely his fault, because somehow, Joseph had immobilized him. He appeared to have done the same thing to Call, too. No wonder, really. Because if he could, Aaron would’ve tackled him. No matter the cost to his own soul, he would’ve killed Joseph if he could. Rid the world of the monster that had created all the other monsters. That had- to Call...
And he bet Joseph knew that, too. So, still holding the Alkahest to Aaron’s heart like a dagger to his throat, he must have done something, because Call somehow was pushed back deeper into the mist surrounding the real-nightmare, about thirty feet, in about a second.
Right before he had went sliding back, Aaron was sure, for a split second, that there had been a tear gleaming on Call’s cheek. Maybe.
Call never cried. Not once. Aaron had never seen or heard him do it, even as an Iron Year missing his father, or a Bronze Year in the wake of a murder. And yes, Aaron knew that things did happen without him knowing about it… But Call did not cry. It might’ve been because in a ghost world, a different place, he had killed so many people and seen so many dead, and that now he was, even after nearly five years of friendship and having friends other than his father, still a bit of a prideful something, but- crying? That just wasn’t Call.
But Aaron was absolutely sure he just had. Which was almost even worse. Because you could always rely on Call to at least not show it on the outside. To make a joke at the most insensitive time. And that might seem really callous (bad pun) to somebody who didn’t know him, but it seemed to be his way of being strong. Aaron had depended on that strength so many times. Moral strength- to build Aaron up. Counterweights and best friends. And willpower- to do what was right. Not become Constantine. Not fall back on the easy path. Or maybe he just had a sense of dark humor that mainly popped up at the worst of times. A definite cynicism. Though it had come in handy once or twice.
Ahead.
Not that Aaron would ever admit that to Call.
If they even all got out of this.
Joseph made what sounded disturbingly like a cackle. And he ‘wanted’ Call to become the Evil Overlord in charge? Yeah, no way. Joseph was plenty evil on his own without Constantine helping. “Have you changed your mind yet? Master?” he asked Call. “Maybe we could do a trade. Your TRUE enemy for Death’s enemy. You.”
Was Joseph trying to suggest a hostage swap? Call for Aaron? Aaron’s head was spinning. Were you really a hostage if you turned yourself over? Because of what Aaron could see of Call’s face from thirty feet away, he
was
definitely
considering
it.
No. He couldn’t.
And Aaron tried to shout those very words out to Call- but he forgot that Joseph had silenced both of them. No talking.
It was wrong.
Doing it, he would destroy the entire world.
For Aaron.
Aaron didn’t deserve that.
Definitely not.
Not with the world at risk.
And Aaron always hated being forced to take charity.
The Rajavis, with the political power they earn by housing Aaron,
or
even Mr. Hunt, who seemed to do it because he was (mostly; he still seemed a bit bitter about Call’s mother, and the Assembly, for good reason. Even though Aaron knew that most of his ‘bitterness’ had been a front to stay away from the Magisterium) nice, and because Call wanted to do it and Alastair didn’t seem to want to drive another spike in between him and his son when there were so many permanent ones already,
he didn’t like it.
Appreciated their hospitality, of course.
Needed it.
Would be on the streets without it.
But he wouldn’t have to be incumbent on somebody else, another mouth to feed, if his own parents hadn’t-
If his own parents had been actual
parents.
Not a girl who didn’t finish high school and ran away with an alcoholic that sunk into debt with some DC gang or something, and strangled her to death.
And was subsequently locked up for life.
Those weren’t parents.
But he was their child.
So what did that make Aaron?
Someone dependent on other people's’ kindness.
And he hated that.
It wasn’t pride, not really.
Not like Call’s willingness to manage every problem by himself, not let anyone in.
He knew he needed help, and was thankful to the people who helped him.
Aaron was just-
Mad at his own parents, his own father for killing his mother-
And leaving him alone.
So he hated the idea of Callum sacrificing himself for Aaron.
He tried yelling again.
But of course it didn’t work.
Besides, Call was so stubborn that he probably wouldn’t listen anyway.
Even if Aaron yelled it into his ears.
Once he had made this decision, he wouldn’t budge.
Actually, yelling it into his ears that he shouldn’t would probably harden that stupid idiot’s resolve anyway.
In the corner of his eye, Aaron noticed that the Alkahest moved even closer to his heart.
Half a centimeter, maybe.
Maybe more.
And Call dissolved into darkness.
Aaron might’ve, too.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
What could have been an eternity or a second passed in the dark.
It cleared for a moment.
Aaron was lying on- a table? He saw a rocky cavern wall for a split second- then Joseph entered all of his vision and held out, in the palm of his bare hand what appeared to be a one ounce bar of copper. “I am going to hurt you,” he promised. Was the copper bar Alkahest related? “And I am going to show your pain to Constantine tonight. I am going to let him know how much he has hurt you. And we will do it again tomorrow. And the next day. And the day after that. Until the day Constantine embraces his true nature.” He grinned happily. “And then I will let you go.”
He pressed the bar to Aaron’s left arm.
The copper was agony.
Pain he had never
nobody had ever
experienced before.
He screamed and screamed silently as Joseph slowly rubbed it, up and down, a masseuse of pain, up and down,
up and down,
up and down,
up and down,
leaving pitch-black, bubbling burns in its wake.
Call.
Call
Call
Call
Call
Call
IdothisforCallcallcallscreamingcallcallcallMustlethimliveifcallcallcallcallagonyscreamingpleasenoCall.
White-hot, blinding pain.
And the darkness closed in again.