Chapter 20
The amount of people Harry recognizes in the crowd filing into the theater shouldn’t shock him, and yet he still finds it startling. No suit or dress in this audience was bought off the rack, each specially tailored to their doomed wearer. That thought is hypocritical; Harry is no exception to this rule, though his clothing is left loose on a frame that’s not yet recovered from six months of starvation and an admittedly inconsistent meal schedule since. It is not, however, enough space that the leather he wears beneath it doesn’t constantly rub against it in a way that makes his back subconsciously stiffen. He's not sure how Peter’s been doing this 24/7 for so long.
Peter. He subconsciously crosses his legs at the thought, a thought he’d like to avoid right now. He’d welcome avoiding the thought forever if it weren’t for the fact he thinks he’d be half a person without him.
As if summoned, Harry spots a flash of a familiar suit jacket with frayed threading. Peter looks around with startled eyes and tightly shut lips, utterly out of his element amongst the upper crust. Dread washes over him like an icy blanket, freezing him in place, a cold not just rooted in the end of their last interaction. His presence makes the plan a whole lot more complicated.
Unaware of the walking wrench in an otherwise functional engine he’s become, Peter approaches him eagerly, footsteps so light and careless it feels almost like an insult. “Hi, Harry,” His voice is softer than Harry’s used to, right hand immediately drifting to his waist, the anger drifting away at the touch no matter how hard Harry tries to cling to it. His head tilts up to look Harry in the eyes, a sudden small frown appearing on his face. “Your scars are all faint.”
Harry tries to summon some frustration, some anger, but finds his chest empty of it, left hollow. In its place, warmth spreads into the empty cavity, almost suffocating in its intensity and utterly unwanted. “Concealer. Can’t be walking around with awful zombie skin.”
“It’s not awful!” Peter sounds as offended as he’d sound if someone insulted Aunt May. He reaches for Harry’s cheek, something that takes all of Harry’s will to pull away from. “I can barely see your scars.”
It’s not fair. It’s not fair that letting Peter take what he wanted from Harry that night has affected Harry so much and seemingly just left Peter more confident in his pursuit. It was supposed to leave Harry more in control of their increasingly turbulent relationship, put him at least in the passenger seat rather than secure him more deeply in the backseat as Peter took further control over a bumpy off-road drive Harry didn’t know the destination to. And yet, it feels like at some point Harry got caught enough in the passion that Peter simply reached into Harry’s chest and plucked out his heart without Harry noticing so it could sit on his mantle like a trophy. “Why do you want to see them?” He can’t manage to use a harsh tone.
Despite that, Peter’s expression is overwhelmed by a guilt he can’t place. It’s something separate from the normal, desperately apologetic sort of guilt he wore the first time he laid eyes on the scars, it’s something far more deeply buried and repressed. It’s not a plea for forgiveness, it’s something shameful. “I just don’t like it when you need to hide your face. There’s nothing wrong with it, after all.” There’s something dishonest to that statement.
He tried to touch them, his mind whispers for no identifiable reason. “How’d you get in here?” He waves one arm towards the theater's crowded entrance, almost hitting an older woman in the process.
Peter rifles through his pockets before extracting a rather crumpled ticket. “It came in the mail. The note said MJ had sent it.” He lowers his voice. “With the weirdness, I wanted to make sure she’d be okay if something happened.”
MJ sent it. Right. “Didn’t think you might be getting lured here?”
Peter frowns, eyebrows knitting together. “Sure I did. But I’m not gonna just leave her in the thick of it! Besides, you’re here too.”
He feels himself go slack. “I am.”
Peter looks up at him, but Harry can spot the way his eyes focus on the space between his own. “I wish you’d just let me be the only one who has to put themself in danger.” It comes out a solemn but soft whisper.
He’s already in danger. “I wish you’d trust me.”
Peter jumps back like he’s been shocked, eyes wide and unexpectedly startled. “I do trust you!” He sounds genuinely hurt. “But I love you more. That's why I know it’s more important to protect you.”
“Don’t.” He hisses, finally finding his anger again. “Don’t say those words to me when you keep breaking my trust. Don't say that to me when you’re still with another man.”
He catches a glimpse of Peter’s somehow genuinely perplexed face before he walks away, pressing his eyes tightly shut and holding his back straight to let himself retain some shred of dignity in the face of the first trickle of the consequences to letting himself be made into a side chick once again. He keeps his head facing straight ahead as he enters the theater and finds his seat. The space appears completely normal, so utterly generic that it leaves him with an irritating lack of something to focus on.
There’s something in his ribcage that’s trying to claw its way out. It’s tearing painfully at its cage, desperate to rip free so it can take Harry by the strings and yank him back to Peter. Harry is in no place to be demanding things; he should kiss Peter’s damn boots for having any place for him in his heart. He should cherish any affection there is for him. Or really, perhaps he’s just a desperate mess. Perhaps he needs to secure his grip on his feelings.
He can’t avoid the glimpse of Peter he catches through the corner of his eyes when the other man enters the room. Peter looks lost, confused, the faintest flickers of guilt on the edge of his expression. In the same moment Harry fixes his gaze straight ahead and sets his jaw, pangs of yearning and sadistic joy go to war in his chest, the collateral damage to his insides treading into the boundaries of physical pain.
He can’t stand this. The unpredictable puppet strings of his own feelings for Peter threaten to do more damage to him more than whatever it is Peter’s so afraid of. Damage that the chemicals coursing through his blood or whatever it is his father did to him couldn’t repair.
The curtains rise after a moment, providing an escape to an internal war that threatens to bisect him but in the same movement nearly blinding him.
Yellow. The whole stage is overwhelmed by yellow. A yellow carpet covers the middle of the stage, the wood of the table and chairs set up in one corner is painted a bright, lively yellow, the backdrop yellow, and every piece of costuming yellow. He finds himself recoiling at the sight, blinking away the shock of light, the angling of stage light perfect to create a blinding beam in the center of the room.
MJ stands center stage, the yellow of her dress shining the brightest of anything on the set, her eyes finding him in the crowd for a moment. Then they harden, confidence in her deliberate movements as words flow into the air.
The first lines have the snake hidden under his shirt coiling tighter around him, heads perched on his shoulder, its movements treading the line between skittish and protective as its dry scales drag against his fragile skin.
And similarly, the words of the play are tugging at something inside him, the pulsing currents of his blood through his veins gradually burning hotter and hotter, but no matter how intense the heat grows inside each one of his arteries, no matter how swiftly his blood surges through each vessel, it’s never painful. But consciously, he knows it should be. The burning is unbearable, reaching boiling temperatures and then continuing to rise until it feels it could melt through his veins. His heart has sat unbeating in his chest for months; it still sits motionless, and yet his blood pounds like he’s run a marathon. It almost feels like it wants to escape him, like it’s magnetically attracted to the events on stage, willing to burst out of the confines of his skin to jet out towards the stage. The actors on stage speak of Carcosa, Yhtill, the King in Yellow and his blood sings. His body knows this all too well. The blood in his veins has been touched by the power that wrote the words these people speak.
Despite the burning in his veins disrupting him from an ability to focus, he processes the plot of the play like he’s merely remembering something he read dozens of times before. The memory of this has been engraved into his mind like an instinct, something with him since before he was born. If the Guide is to be believed, that might even be the case. Yhtill. A place long ago destroyed. Cassilda. MJ’s role. It’s queen. Yhtill will be destroyed by Hastur, the souls of its inhabitants consumed into Carcosa. Cassilda seeks to delay its fated destruction—foolish, something sewn into the fabric of his soul whispers. The Stranger—the Pallid Mask, his eager blood supplies as a name—promises to assist her. On his invitation, the citizens of Yhtill attend a masquerade that will end with their souls absorbed into Hastur’s domain of Carcosa, with the exception of Cassilda, who looks away and unwittingly dooms herself to quasi immortality when half of her people’s souls are absorbed into her instead of Carcosa.
Much to his horror, as he looks across an audience composed of the city’s wealthy, his instincts—his blood—celebrate the long past destruction and eagerly anticipate the similar events that will occur here if he chose not to intervene. This play is inscribed into his very brain, it would be rather easy to simply take Quentin’s place as the Stranger, knock him out, throw his unconscious body into the back of the room to see his soul absorbed, steal the favor of Hastur like he was born to do…
Repulsion with his own thoughts fills him. He is here to help the people around him. He is not here for destruction. It’s his choice. For once in his life, things are his choice. He is not to be puppeted around by desires to please his father or gain the affection of Peter, nor is he simply going to be yanked around by his own destructive instincts, no matter how intricately woven into his mind they might be.
He strengthens the fortifications of his will and waits for the approaching end of the first act. As the last several lines of the act are spoken, the warmth is suddenly sucked out of the theater seat’s armrests. Golden threads grow like sprouts from soil out of polished wood, coiling around his wrists and binding his arms to the arm rests in a band of thickly interwoven strands. Harry’s eyes sweep around the audience in broad arcs. Despite the bands of shiny gold thread binding dozens, maybe a few hundred wrists down to arm rests, nobody appears alarmed, every last person's eyes fixed straight forward as if the play is the most gripping thing they’ve ever witnessed.
He wrenches his wrists around in their bindings until his forearms lay flat down against the wood, then contorts his fingers to press them into the trigger of his gauntlets. Silver blades stained with a distinct rusty color rip through the fabric of his suit jacket and the threads like they are nothing different from each other. He stands, the other lavishly dressed individuals around him not so much as tilting their heads in acknowledgment of his movement, eyes with yellow eating away at the edge of their irises still fixed on the stage as he makes a mad dash for the staircase along the edges of the theater. He finds himself hesitating as he reaches one of the landings, twisting until he can see Peter, just as hypnotized as those who surround him with just as much yellow clawing at the outsides of his blue eyes.
Fuck his heart. Teeth clenched, he runs down the row in which Peter is sat, severing the threads that bind him. Peter jolts when his wrists are freed, glancing around in confusion. “What’s—“
Harry cuts him off. “Get out of here.”
The yellow in Peter’s eyes recedes as they go wide in dismay. “But—Aren’t you going to try and free these people? You can cut them, shouldn’t we try and get people out?”
He exhales through his teeth. “I am. I’m just going for the source. Please just get out of here.” He takes Peter’s face with one hand, shocked by the warmth of Peter’s skin on his hands as he forces him to look him in the eyes. “Come on. You should understand wanting to keep the people you love safe.” It’s a guilt trip. He knows it, but he just needs to know Peter is out of here, not about to get himself killed meddling in things he wouldn’t understand because Harry just wasn’t able to trust him.
Peter’s expression softens for just a moment, raising his hopes that just once Peter will listen to him. It takes just as long for him to crush them. “No. I’m supposed to protect people. That’s my job. I wish you’d just let me do it…” The way his eyes drift up to avoid actually looking at Harry feels like a punch in the gut. Peter’s gaze steels. “I’m not leaving. We can help these people.”
Sure, get yourself killed, see if I care. Harry reaches, pulling the knife strapped to his thigh beneath the suit pants. “You can help them.” He pulls it against his upper arm, drawing enough blood to coat it, and forces it into Peter’s hand like a fork into the hand of a toddler, trying to meet eyes that refuse to look at his own before he turns and makes his sprint into the hallway.
Stiff clothing is ripped free with no consideration to how intact it remains, thrown to the side like he’s uncaging a dove. He only completely stops to toss his shoes and rapidly lace up his pair of mud stained pointe shoes before continuing his sprint. Recalling MJ’s instructions, he finds Quentin’s office within that odd nook, storming in like he’s performing a swat.
He slides to a stop once he’s within the office, slowly looking up at the two figures standing on either sides of Quentin’s desk. On first glance, the odd creatures appear to be life sized porcelain dolls dressed in yellow formalwear and masquerade masks. That is, until the moment his eyes drift further upward and take in the sight of the golden strings that the ceramic figures are suspended from.
The one on the left lurches forward, sharpened fingers raised to strike. A pain like nails being hammered into his skull freezes him in place before he can jump out of the way, his instincts rebelling against him. Why is he resisting his nature? His birthright to this power? Why is he resisting power? Control? His body briefly defys his conscious commands, only regaining clarity when dagger-sharp ceramic claws rake across his chest, blood splattering across the wall. The snake hisses at the puppets, tightening around him and bringing him back to lucidity enough to bring out his sword and draw it against his stomach, once again coating his blade in the blood that had suddenly become so wrathful in this place.
He’s able to sidestep the follow-up swing, turning on one pointed foot and severing several of the strings with his bloody blade, leaving half the body of the puppet swinging limply as its remaining leg and arm desperately scramble for some balance. He spins himself again, slamming a straight leg into its back and flinging it against the wall, watching half of it’s doll-like unpainted face shatter before he severs the remaining threads.
The remaining puppet grabs him by the collar, throwing him to the ground and driving a hard foot into his chest, a distinct cracking emanating from his torso as ribs shatter. Claws rake across his face and belly, blood burning his skin as it flows downward. The puppet grabs his head firmly, fingers digging into his jaw, and slams his head into the firm boards of the flooring, his vision blurring more and more with each consecutive slam. Breathing growing gradually more labored, Harry drives both his knees into the puppet with as much force as his body can muster, feeling a perverse joy with the sound of porcelain fragments falling to the ground and a black liquid uncannily similar to the substance he often finds tangled with his blood dripping down onto the floorboards alongside his own gore.
He flings the puppet off him, using his sword as a cane as he rises onto legs that feel about as firm as molasses. The puppet rises with far greater ease, only taking a moment to recover before it rushes at him once again. He waits patiently on bent knees, seizing the thing by the head as it digs its claws into his upper arms and tugging it downward, threads pulled onto his blade in the process, leaving the puppet limp, collapsed onto the ground.
Briefly clutching at his undeniably broken ribs, the sword becomes a walking stick once again as he hobbles over to the bookshelf where an undeniable power emanates from a book bound in golden leather. He grasps it in his free hand, dragging it alongside him as he pulls himself down the hall.
The sight when he reenters the theater freezes him in his tracks. Though the play stubbornly treks onward, the occurrence that attracts his eyes most is occupying the seating area of the audience. Black suits and colorful dresses are slowly shimmering into a vibrant yellow, limbs turning to fine ceramic. The intensity of the transformation is most prominent in the front rows, where several individuals are slumped over, entirely turned to porcelain puppets, strings suspending them to the ceiling. Many patches of the inner rows are newly empty, gold threads fallen to the ground from where Peter had freed those they held prisoner. Peter has donned the suit—it’s likely he’s worn it underneath his clothing the whole time—and become a blur of red and blue amongst a sea of yellow, ducking through tangled puppet limbs and swinging his way out of reach of shining claws. He clutches the bloodstained knife in one hand, making quick jabs at strings left unguarded when he’s given the chance but his strikes lack the confident arcs of someone adapted to the weapon necessary to fell the puppets quickly enough. Not that knocking out more puppets would do much to help Peter, what with the way each time a ceramic body crashes to the ground a flash of gold is yanked violently from an already transformed person and the newly formed puppet is hoisted onto their feet.
His impulses scream to run to Peter, to protect him, but he shakes his urges off. He has an obligation to the plan he and MJ agreed upon. He has an obligation to her, the civilian, over the person who had every chance to leave and chose not to take them. Peter put himself in that position. Harry put MJ in this position. His responsibility is to her first.
A surge of adrenaline strengthens his legs as he moves to the edge of the stage, his crouched form tucked just behind the curtain, flipping to the back of the yellow book. He looks up, finding MJ’s eyes, and waits for her cue. As the lines of the play flow from MJ’s lips with ease, her expressions and movements practiced as the begins to subtly move backwards to where a set of prop tables and chairs is set up.
She breaks out of her performance only to duck down and grab the wooden leg of one chair in both, raising it and bringing it down in one rapid motion onto Quentin’s head, pieces of chair shattering into every direction. The man crumples completely, shocking Harry with the reality that he’d go down so easily, not having the slightest failsafe to retaliation.
The entire first row of entirely transformed puppets sits up in a flash of gold and one fluid motion, half approaching MJ where she stands alone onstage and the remaining half joining the onslaught on Peter. She holds her remaining quarter of the chair like a baseball bat, eyes firey. “Do it!” She shouts to him.
He looks down upon the circle printed onto the last page of the book, raising his sword against himself and watching as blots of blood slowly fill the circle, crimson spilling out from the confines of the printed area. Christ, he hopes that’s not important. With the circle filled, he raises the sword and plunges it straight through the leather cover and impales the layers of pages.
A commotion immediately begins in the crowd, dozens of newly freed people fleeing the scene through the very few doors. Lifting himself to his feet on the sword, his stomach sinks at the sight of scattered individuals who aren’t moving from their seats. Failure. They hadn’t even come close to saving everybody.
He swallows the sickness in his throat. If he hadn’t gone for the book, many more would have died. He did all he could. Better than choosing who’d live and die with his own blades and risking it all happening over again.
A loud crash snaps him back to reality. A rain of ceramic shards cascades over the stage as MJ bashes a puppet’s face in with her piece of chair, continuing to swing at the other puppets who surround her. He lifts the sword, charging forward to begin severing the strings as MJ beats any puppet she can reach to fragments, reeling from the damage enough that he can sever strings with ease, leaving them collapsed.
He forces his eyes not to drift to where he knows Peter fights alone, instead looking at where MJ is staring at one of her hands. “Are you alright?”
Her head snaps up. “I’m fine.” She says firmly, almost reassuring herself.
He can’t prevent himself from stealing a glance over to the side of the theater where Peter fights. “Thank you so much for your help. Get out of here, I’ll go get him.”
Her lips purse. “I’ll wait at the door. Not leaving until I know you’re both okay.”
“I understand. Won’t be long.” He turns, listening to her heels click as she ducks backstage, then taking a leap off the stage and landing in the gap between the front row and stage.
Peter’s suit is torn in places, his movements slow with exhaustion as he does his damnedest to fight off the veritable hoard that surrounds him. His jumps are slower, swings less steady. But there’s time, Harry just needs to run a bit faster—
Peter dodges the claws of one puppet, but in the process steps directly into a particularly forceful swing of another, the unnaturally sharp talons tearing through his face like it’s butter, sending a spray of blood staining the perfectly white surface of the porcelain army that surrounds him and fragments of skull falling to the round as the most terrible scream he’s ever heard freezes Harry where he stands, forced to watch and wait as his body refuses to move, locking him in place to witness the violence.
Peter stumbles, clutching at his torn open face as blood fills his eyes, a dark and bloody gash occupying the space his nose and upper lip once did. The swarm takes advantage, the shattered, sharp stump of one’s forearm jammed deep into Peter’s gut, the blood curdling screams continuing as blood pools around the stump and the broken forearm is pulled up, up, intestines spilling out through the hole created and falling into a bloody mess at Peter's feet, up, up and ribs shattering, snapping out of place and folding out like spider legs as blood gushes like a waterfall. And it doesn’t stop, ripping up through his throat and jaw and exiting through his forehead, spraying the surroundings, spraying Harry, in blood and bone and a gray matter that he feels sick thinking about.
Peter’s gutted body flops lifeless to the ground like a discarded toy, but there’s still screaming. It takes a moment to realize that’s him, his own desperate shouts of Peter’s name that won’t fall on any ears but Harry’s. The puppets turn towards him, completely uncaring of the life they just took, body mutilated and desecrated and discarded. Agony bursts in his ribcage like it was his own chest that was burst open, because the half of his heart that kept beating is gone now. Peter is dead. Peter is dead, his killers don’t even have the capacity to care about it.
He doesn’t remember cutting the puppets away, he just knows the feelings that he could have stopped it, could have saved it, could have shielded him with his own replaceable body if he’d been just a bit faster, sprinted a little quicker, not frozen, he could have thrown himself in the way. If he’d not taken so long, he could have fought them off with Peter.
Before he can begin to comprehend what’s happening, he’s surrounded by a sea of fallen ceramic puppets, the feeling in his chest too intense, the ache unbearable. Peter’s split open face is clutched in his hands, but he doesn’t remember going to him. He can feel the warmth of the body heat that’s slowly fading, the warmth of the blood that’s pooling beneath his body. His heart aches unbearably, his chest feels so dense with grief there’s pain in his ribs, so much, so much it’s going to burst out of him, needs to relieve the pressure—
He bashes off the clawed hand of a puppet, scratching desperately at his own chest, the feeling of the physical pain that comes with the razor sharp blades digging through rotting flesh and broken ribs, tearing and it’s relief, it’s relief from the increasing pressure of his heart breaking. Pain relieves the pressure. He needs to break open himself to get this feeling out of him.
He claws, claws, claws himself open until he’s staring at his own crimson stained ribs. Break. The pain, the pressure is too intense. The ceramic shatters as he tries to break the bone but it won’t give way. He lifts himself, gritting his teeth as he grasps the hilt of his sword, bringing the pommel into his exposed ribs.
Crack. Crack. Crack.
He reaches into his bleeding chest, past the ripped strands of flesh that dangle over the hole in his chest like lichen, grasping the fleshy source of his agony and pulling, gritting his teeth against pain, listening to the tearing and squelching as he finally rips out his heart, gore coating his hand as he wrenches the organ from his chest. The physical pain is unbearable, enough to make bile rise in his throat, but then, then he just… disconnects.
He simply disconnects. He looks down at the organ he just ripped from his chest and it’s just shapes, blocks of color connected together. Just a combination of shades of red that had once sat uselessly in his chest. He doesn’t feel any of it, physical or otherwise. He’s not in his body. Holding the bloody organ in his hands, he stares down at the body. Peter’s dead body. It’s just shapes. The streaks of exposed muscle, the places where his ribs stick out from the bloody muscle… it’s just shapes.
He doesn’t feel anything anymore. It’s a relief.