Big Bang: Parks and Recreation (Part 5)
Title: Parks and Recreation
Author: vinvy
Band(s): My Chemical Romance with a side of Panic! at the Disco
Pairing(s): slight Frank/Gerard
Word Count: 34,152 (total)
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: violence, profanity, angst, slightly ridiculous magic tricks, shoddy Gaelic translations, dream sequences, and faeries
Part Four
It feels like drifting. Aware to unaware. “Let’s go home ‘cause medical attention would be a good idea” to “let’s stick around here ‘cause the tiredness is bone-deep”. From hurting to not. It’s so pleasant, not hurting. There’s a word for hurting but why isn’t there a word for the feeling of not-hurting? There really should be one. Maybe he’ll make one up.
He moves his left arm a little and that breaks up the not-hurting. He’d better not do that again.
Through the slide he hears the ground hum up at him for a few minutes and go quiet. He hums back. Then there’s a bump and shuffle, far away, dragging zombie feet, he imagines. It doesn’t scare him too much- zombies are kind of cool. He’s already puked once tonight but he’s about to do it again.
“Oh, shit.”
Shush. It’s late and good little boys are tucked in and asleep. Gerard’s good. He needs to go to sleep.
“Is that him? Shit is right- hang on, Mikey, I gotta put the phone down-”
“He’s bleeding. I don’t do human blood, dude. There’s iron in it-”
“Mikey, Mikey, hang on. Yeah, we found him, now wait- Bob, quit being a baby. Wrap him in a jacket or something. You’re smarter than your species label- Still there, Mikey? Yeah, it’s him. Get a first aid kit or call an ambulance or something. He’s not doing too well. Yes, he’s alive. Still bleeding actively and everything.”
It’s hard for Gerard to speak up with his stomach climbing up his throat. He feels bad for whoever’s bleeding. Something big- Bob’s hand- lands on his shoulder. A strangled yelp works it’s way out of his mouth on the heels of a bubble of bile. That’s right, he’s the one who’s injured.
“Sorry, Gerard. You know there’s an arrow in your back, right?”
Gerard puts forth the monumental effort required to lift his head over the edge of the slide and spit the sour stomach acid onto the wood chips. “It’s a fashion statement. You thought I got shot, didn’t you? Asshole.”
“Is that all? Your brother can deal with it then.”
Getting a response knocks Bob out of his hesitance. Gerard can tell he tries like hell to avoid tweaking the arrow too much, not that it does any good. Bob gets points for effort until he gets tired of apologizing when Gerard whimpers and tells him to suck it up. Apparently trolls are immune to pain. Gerard resents Bob for that vehemently from within his jacket-cocoon.
Bob picks him up at an awkward angle to keep from breaking the arrow or shoving it in deeper. Gerard can tell when his blood gets on Bob’s skin. When it happens Bob hisses out some colorful adjective attached to the word “shit”. He tries to keep count. Bob is moving him around, though, and screwing with his equilibrium. Now he’s very confident that puking is in his future.
“Drive slowly,” Bob instructs, “he’s kind of green and I just had the upholstery done.”
So they’re in a car. That, or a couchmobile. Gerard saw one of those on the news once, in one of those fluffy human-interest stories. He always wondered what it’d be like to ride on one. He imagines it’s kind of like how this feels- supported and held upright by something absurdly warm and comfortable. Of course, couchmobiles aren’t trolls in the back seats of sedans but that’s beside the point. Bob does such a good job of keeping Gerard from getting jarred around on the short drive that Gerard passes out gratefully.
~~
He wakes up later, smelling home all around him, to Mikey’s most indignant voice. “You just told me “no”.”
“Come on, he’s sick, dude.”
“The poisons used by those guards are serious, Ray. I need to see if he can at least hold himself upright or walk. From there I can figure out what he needs.”
“I’m not invisible,” Bob’s voice rumbles under Gerard’s cheek.
Gerard can hear Mikey’s irritation and he doesn’t understand it. “Then what are you waiting for? He’s awake. Stand him up.”
Gerard turns his face into the wall of muscle that’s kept him from dying so far tonight, pleading for mercy with his mind. Bob isn’t a mind reader and Mikey is a merciless little fucker masquerading as a holistic healer. Bob gingerly sets Gerard on his feet. The muscles in his back and legs tremble even though the troll is still supporting most of his weight. Gerard flails for Mikey and latches onto his arm, too. He can almost feel stable like this-
Mikey shoos Bob away, sneering like he’s a begging pet. He stumbles under Gerard but keeps him up.
“Mikes,” Gerard mumbles, meaning to be scolding and sounding weak. His brother’s hands are cool and white. Too pale. “Inhumanly pale,” he slurs.
He looks up from those long fingers to catch a loud “Oh fuck” radiating from the black eyes behind Mikey’s glasses. The dragonfly wings snap tight against his back like he can retract the last five seconds and write them over again. Never has the silence between them been so loud.
Gerard wants to say something snarky about Mikey being caught out of the house without his glamour. He wants a witticism that’ll make Mikey Way feel three inches tall because he’s been lying for his whole life. Something that’s perfect and will cut to the bone of the matter.
Instead, his legs give out entirely and he vomits onto Mikey’s shirt as he drags him down to the beige carpeting. His stomach cramps, wringing itself out, and his head pounds. He blacks out to the sound of his changeling brother snapping orders at Ray.
~~
He comes to again in small increments. It starts with noticing his position- flat on his stomach, a familiar, cushy towel under his chest. His shirt is lost to the house, he supposes. Mikey’s there. He has one hand in Gerard’s hair, making knots in it, and he’s saying something. His tone is soothing.
That makes Gerard mad. The only tone this kid should be using is a beseeching, humble one while he begs for forgiveness and explains why in the fuck-
The arrowhead jerks inside of his shoulder, stabbing deeper before ripping backwards and out. Somehow that’s even worse than having the arrow stuck in the muscle. Gerard’s back runs hot and wet. Tears slip down his face out of reflex. Pressure on the deep puncture draws a whine from him like a wounded cat.
“Chew on these, swallow them if you feel like it.” Mikey’s fingers push sharp-scented things between Gerard’s teeth then make him close his mouth them. “You can use the fiber, I’m sure.”
Hahaha. Not funny, Mikes. You’re in deep shit with me.
Whatever plants he’s got under his tongue are overwhelmingly sour. The taste turns to heat that numbs his mouth and opens his sinuses. It prickles the backs of his eyes in a kinder way than the pain does. The numb creeps down his jaw, through his shoulders- thank God- all the way down to his toes. He drifts away again.
~~
Everything in his room has a distinct smell that is loud and refuses to be ignored, even by a dying man. Pencil shavings on the desk from last week. Unwashed, sweaty collared shirts. The collection of herbs that Mikey keeps is olfactory hell incarnate. Burnt coffee in the bottoms of mugs on the windowsill. They’re vying for his attention mercilessly, at all times. They never stop begging to be noticed and seen.
~~
Whenever his brother catches him awake- and probably when he’s asleep, too- Mikey makes Gerard choke down some tonic or bitter, leafy thing in the name of his health. He triple-checks Gerard’s temperature in the hope that it’s gone down. He gets fresh ice for the swollen, angry arrow wound.
Gerard throws the ice across the room with his good arm and spits out the thermometer before its alarm goes off. He doesn’t mean to throw up what he’s fed but that’s what he does and it just happens to suit his agenda of furious sickbed-defiance nicely. Mikey bears all of this in silence that Gerard can’t read. He doesn’t want to read Mikey anways.
… His brother. Can he even call him that anymore?
He is so pissed off that he can’t articulate it. He wants to shake the kid and question him. If he’s a changeling, where’s Gerard’s real brother? What if there is no “other Mikey”? Why didn’t Mikey tell him he was a Faerie earlier? Why even bother in the first place? What was so great about spending 17 years pretending to be a human? In anti-utopian Bellevile with Gerard’s sorry ass as a big brother no less? Why?
He shudders and dry heaves. Being alone and angry sucks. Dying of poisoning while alone and angry is worse.
~~
The sleep he gets isn’t restful. He has nightmares about James and about Frank. The ones with James wake him up screaming in remembered agony. The ones with Frank pull him awake carefully, drawing it out, making him cry. Frank’s probably dead and now Gerard is going to die, too. He’s heard Mikey muttering to himself when he thinks Gerard is asleep and Mikey doesn’t think the situation is looking up. Mikey’s scared. Gerard is sick and bitter and satisfied that Mikey is afraid.
Satisfaction shouldn’t feel guilty. It shouldn’t make his eyeballs burn like this and roast in their own jelly.
His fever makes people from grade school show up and tease him all over again. Fly away if you don’t like it, Peter Pan.
Brendon sits on his desk with purple hair and one of Mikey’s scarves, taking notes and doodling bubble cartoons about his Faerie crush. Rats skitter along the floorboards, their tails scratching while they slide over the carpeting. Brendon isn’t so irritating, even with his unending chatter in gibberish. The rats, though, they keep him awake the most.
~~
Lucidity is overrated, he decides when Mikey is at school.
Gerard’s crawling out of his skin with fever and shakes and he doesn’t want to die in the basement. He drags on a sweatshirt and coat over his bandages and then the only folded pair of jeans in his dresser drawer. From his little window, it looks like a nice enough October afternoon. He’s not too sure what day it is but he thinks it might just be Halloween.
Who could imagine his luck?
The breeze at the park tastes cleaner than anything and it feels sublime against his face. The perpetual-sunburn sensation that came along with this fever got old on day one. Leaves tumble and scatter across the playground to get caught up on the slide and jungle gym. In a nearby neighborhood there’s at least one fireplace burning- he can smell the drying, dying wood.
Gerard plants himself under the blackthorn tree with the heart carved into it. Sunlight filters through the spidery branches and orange leaves. It’s the cool kind of sunlight that tricks you into thinking it doesn’t burn. He digs his bare toes in under the pile of leaves at its roots then into the soil. Damp and chilly, it’s comforting. Starting on the burial process early. Going home.
He watches through bleary eyes as woman with dark hair comes up to him and sits down. It’s like she appears out of a mirage- she’s probably a hallucination. She’s got to be a hallucination. Only Elena’s eyes are allowed to match his like that and only she is able to get away with those gaudy strings of beads.
She smoothes out her long skirt and tucks a dark curl behind her ear. “Hello.”
“Hi,” he replies shakily, “you aren’t Elena.”
A small pout comes over her face. “No, I’m not. I thought you’d find this more approachable, though.”
He shrugs. “Next time remember that she’s a lot older.”
“Humans and your aging,” she sighs, sad beyond what her face can contain, “you always confuse us.”
“Who are you?”
She flushes a light lavender. “One name for me is Ametrine. I’m the queen of the Seelie Court.”
“Are you going to try to kill me, too?” He’s not going to beat around the bush. This woman- this queen made of porcelain and a picture from his grandmother’s college days- will not waste the rest of his life with formalities.
“I applaud the boy’s valiant efforts at keeping you alive but it’s not doing any good. It’s a shame- I’d always hoped for my son to be better with herb lore than that. ... Now, why would I kill you? It doesn’t suit my interests.”
“Oh fuck your interests,” he groans. His head is throbbing. Faerie games make him miserable.
The well-bred lilt to her voice makes what she says next laughable: “Yes, fuck my interests,” she hums, “indeed.” She pauses to pluck a dandelion, which irritates Gerard- they aren’t her weeds to pluck. They’re his. No one can touch his plants.
“I’m sure no one has bothered to ask you what your interests are, Gerard. You’re stuck with the lot you’ve drawn, I’m afraid, but if you could have anything to go with it, what would it be?” She’s holding him in a mothering way. Having her hand on his head makes the headache ease up and the shivers quit racking him quite so much.
“This is hypothetical right, since I’m gonna die?” He wiggles his toes in the earth.
She doesn’t say anything at all.
He imagines the tree roots underneath him and how they feel about all of this and, for the most part, they’re glad he’s there, like the shape with the missing piece in that children’s book. He doesn’t remember it too well- did it ever actually find the missing piece? Or is he making it up to make himself feel better?
The trees’ opinion is clear if drawn out.
The goblin didn’t make for the nicest company, even though he did do his job. The poor, poor goblin who’s not going to be around any more. They miss him for his faults and his responsibility. They can’t have him back and their displeasure ripples a low bass note, resonating. They need resolution, closure, even more so than Gerard does. They’re older and more fragile and not having closure might break them like he never thought he could be broken. Then they might break others and that’s where things get dangerous, so very dangerous with no one to guide them.
Now that Gerard’s here, the trees don’t plan on letting him go. He can stay with them and watch them, make sure they keep in their place and that no one- Fae or human- hurts them. Keep them from being massacred again. Stop humans from burning them with their iron bars and poisoning them.
They’ll put down seeds in his wounds and sickness and grow them over like gashes in bark over centuries. They can keep him well if he keeps them. Symbiosis. Sheep and shepherd. Treefolk and treeherd. My blood their sap and their roots my veins. This is what we are and I am. Not separate or whole-
Gerard’s eyes snap open. The low rustling that’s easy to mistake for voices fades out again. His ears and cheeks burn and he remembers that he’s not well. The trees are talking to him. It’s all because he’s got some kind of toxin or disease on a rampage through his brain. None of this is real. His whole life could be a feverdream and he will never know any better.
So he goes with that the trees are saying, with that deep and angry note that he can feel against the soles of his feet.
What’s the harm?
“Revenge.”
A small smile comes over the Faerie woman’s lips. “I can do that.”
She sings Gerard to sleep.
Back to the Masterpost
Author: vinvy
Band(s): My Chemical Romance with a side of Panic! at the Disco
Pairing(s): slight Frank/Gerard
Word Count: 34,152 (total)
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: violence, profanity, angst, slightly ridiculous magic tricks, shoddy Gaelic translations, dream sequences, and faeries
Part Four
It feels like drifting. Aware to unaware. “Let’s go home ‘cause medical attention would be a good idea” to “let’s stick around here ‘cause the tiredness is bone-deep”. From hurting to not. It’s so pleasant, not hurting. There’s a word for hurting but why isn’t there a word for the feeling of not-hurting? There really should be one. Maybe he’ll make one up.
He moves his left arm a little and that breaks up the not-hurting. He’d better not do that again.
Through the slide he hears the ground hum up at him for a few minutes and go quiet. He hums back. Then there’s a bump and shuffle, far away, dragging zombie feet, he imagines. It doesn’t scare him too much- zombies are kind of cool. He’s already puked once tonight but he’s about to do it again.
“Oh, shit.”
Shush. It’s late and good little boys are tucked in and asleep. Gerard’s good. He needs to go to sleep.
“Is that him? Shit is right- hang on, Mikey, I gotta put the phone down-”
“He’s bleeding. I don’t do human blood, dude. There’s iron in it-”
“Mikey, Mikey, hang on. Yeah, we found him, now wait- Bob, quit being a baby. Wrap him in a jacket or something. You’re smarter than your species label- Still there, Mikey? Yeah, it’s him. Get a first aid kit or call an ambulance or something. He’s not doing too well. Yes, he’s alive. Still bleeding actively and everything.”
It’s hard for Gerard to speak up with his stomach climbing up his throat. He feels bad for whoever’s bleeding. Something big- Bob’s hand- lands on his shoulder. A strangled yelp works it’s way out of his mouth on the heels of a bubble of bile. That’s right, he’s the one who’s injured.
“Sorry, Gerard. You know there’s an arrow in your back, right?”
Gerard puts forth the monumental effort required to lift his head over the edge of the slide and spit the sour stomach acid onto the wood chips. “It’s a fashion statement. You thought I got shot, didn’t you? Asshole.”
“Is that all? Your brother can deal with it then.”
Getting a response knocks Bob out of his hesitance. Gerard can tell he tries like hell to avoid tweaking the arrow too much, not that it does any good. Bob gets points for effort until he gets tired of apologizing when Gerard whimpers and tells him to suck it up. Apparently trolls are immune to pain. Gerard resents Bob for that vehemently from within his jacket-cocoon.
Bob picks him up at an awkward angle to keep from breaking the arrow or shoving it in deeper. Gerard can tell when his blood gets on Bob’s skin. When it happens Bob hisses out some colorful adjective attached to the word “shit”. He tries to keep count. Bob is moving him around, though, and screwing with his equilibrium. Now he’s very confident that puking is in his future.
“Drive slowly,” Bob instructs, “he’s kind of green and I just had the upholstery done.”
So they’re in a car. That, or a couchmobile. Gerard saw one of those on the news once, in one of those fluffy human-interest stories. He always wondered what it’d be like to ride on one. He imagines it’s kind of like how this feels- supported and held upright by something absurdly warm and comfortable. Of course, couchmobiles aren’t trolls in the back seats of sedans but that’s beside the point. Bob does such a good job of keeping Gerard from getting jarred around on the short drive that Gerard passes out gratefully.
~~
He wakes up later, smelling home all around him, to Mikey’s most indignant voice. “You just told me “no”.”
“Come on, he’s sick, dude.”
“The poisons used by those guards are serious, Ray. I need to see if he can at least hold himself upright or walk. From there I can figure out what he needs.”
“I’m not invisible,” Bob’s voice rumbles under Gerard’s cheek.
Gerard can hear Mikey’s irritation and he doesn’t understand it. “Then what are you waiting for? He’s awake. Stand him up.”
Gerard turns his face into the wall of muscle that’s kept him from dying so far tonight, pleading for mercy with his mind. Bob isn’t a mind reader and Mikey is a merciless little fucker masquerading as a holistic healer. Bob gingerly sets Gerard on his feet. The muscles in his back and legs tremble even though the troll is still supporting most of his weight. Gerard flails for Mikey and latches onto his arm, too. He can almost feel stable like this-
Mikey shoos Bob away, sneering like he’s a begging pet. He stumbles under Gerard but keeps him up.
“Mikes,” Gerard mumbles, meaning to be scolding and sounding weak. His brother’s hands are cool and white. Too pale. “Inhumanly pale,” he slurs.
He looks up from those long fingers to catch a loud “Oh fuck” radiating from the black eyes behind Mikey’s glasses. The dragonfly wings snap tight against his back like he can retract the last five seconds and write them over again. Never has the silence between them been so loud.
Gerard wants to say something snarky about Mikey being caught out of the house without his glamour. He wants a witticism that’ll make Mikey Way feel three inches tall because he’s been lying for his whole life. Something that’s perfect and will cut to the bone of the matter.
Instead, his legs give out entirely and he vomits onto Mikey’s shirt as he drags him down to the beige carpeting. His stomach cramps, wringing itself out, and his head pounds. He blacks out to the sound of his changeling brother snapping orders at Ray.
~~
He comes to again in small increments. It starts with noticing his position- flat on his stomach, a familiar, cushy towel under his chest. His shirt is lost to the house, he supposes. Mikey’s there. He has one hand in Gerard’s hair, making knots in it, and he’s saying something. His tone is soothing.
That makes Gerard mad. The only tone this kid should be using is a beseeching, humble one while he begs for forgiveness and explains why in the fuck-
The arrowhead jerks inside of his shoulder, stabbing deeper before ripping backwards and out. Somehow that’s even worse than having the arrow stuck in the muscle. Gerard’s back runs hot and wet. Tears slip down his face out of reflex. Pressure on the deep puncture draws a whine from him like a wounded cat.
“Chew on these, swallow them if you feel like it.” Mikey’s fingers push sharp-scented things between Gerard’s teeth then make him close his mouth them. “You can use the fiber, I’m sure.”
Hahaha. Not funny, Mikes. You’re in deep shit with me.
Whatever plants he’s got under his tongue are overwhelmingly sour. The taste turns to heat that numbs his mouth and opens his sinuses. It prickles the backs of his eyes in a kinder way than the pain does. The numb creeps down his jaw, through his shoulders- thank God- all the way down to his toes. He drifts away again.
~~
Everything in his room has a distinct smell that is loud and refuses to be ignored, even by a dying man. Pencil shavings on the desk from last week. Unwashed, sweaty collared shirts. The collection of herbs that Mikey keeps is olfactory hell incarnate. Burnt coffee in the bottoms of mugs on the windowsill. They’re vying for his attention mercilessly, at all times. They never stop begging to be noticed and seen.
~~
Whenever his brother catches him awake- and probably when he’s asleep, too- Mikey makes Gerard choke down some tonic or bitter, leafy thing in the name of his health. He triple-checks Gerard’s temperature in the hope that it’s gone down. He gets fresh ice for the swollen, angry arrow wound.
Gerard throws the ice across the room with his good arm and spits out the thermometer before its alarm goes off. He doesn’t mean to throw up what he’s fed but that’s what he does and it just happens to suit his agenda of furious sickbed-defiance nicely. Mikey bears all of this in silence that Gerard can’t read. He doesn’t want to read Mikey anways.
… His brother. Can he even call him that anymore?
He is so pissed off that he can’t articulate it. He wants to shake the kid and question him. If he’s a changeling, where’s Gerard’s real brother? What if there is no “other Mikey”? Why didn’t Mikey tell him he was a Faerie earlier? Why even bother in the first place? What was so great about spending 17 years pretending to be a human? In anti-utopian Bellevile with Gerard’s sorry ass as a big brother no less? Why?
He shudders and dry heaves. Being alone and angry sucks. Dying of poisoning while alone and angry is worse.
~~
The sleep he gets isn’t restful. He has nightmares about James and about Frank. The ones with James wake him up screaming in remembered agony. The ones with Frank pull him awake carefully, drawing it out, making him cry. Frank’s probably dead and now Gerard is going to die, too. He’s heard Mikey muttering to himself when he thinks Gerard is asleep and Mikey doesn’t think the situation is looking up. Mikey’s scared. Gerard is sick and bitter and satisfied that Mikey is afraid.
Satisfaction shouldn’t feel guilty. It shouldn’t make his eyeballs burn like this and roast in their own jelly.
His fever makes people from grade school show up and tease him all over again. Fly away if you don’t like it, Peter Pan.
Brendon sits on his desk with purple hair and one of Mikey’s scarves, taking notes and doodling bubble cartoons about his Faerie crush. Rats skitter along the floorboards, their tails scratching while they slide over the carpeting. Brendon isn’t so irritating, even with his unending chatter in gibberish. The rats, though, they keep him awake the most.
~~
Lucidity is overrated, he decides when Mikey is at school.
Gerard’s crawling out of his skin with fever and shakes and he doesn’t want to die in the basement. He drags on a sweatshirt and coat over his bandages and then the only folded pair of jeans in his dresser drawer. From his little window, it looks like a nice enough October afternoon. He’s not too sure what day it is but he thinks it might just be Halloween.
Who could imagine his luck?
The breeze at the park tastes cleaner than anything and it feels sublime against his face. The perpetual-sunburn sensation that came along with this fever got old on day one. Leaves tumble and scatter across the playground to get caught up on the slide and jungle gym. In a nearby neighborhood there’s at least one fireplace burning- he can smell the drying, dying wood.
Gerard plants himself under the blackthorn tree with the heart carved into it. Sunlight filters through the spidery branches and orange leaves. It’s the cool kind of sunlight that tricks you into thinking it doesn’t burn. He digs his bare toes in under the pile of leaves at its roots then into the soil. Damp and chilly, it’s comforting. Starting on the burial process early. Going home.
He watches through bleary eyes as woman with dark hair comes up to him and sits down. It’s like she appears out of a mirage- she’s probably a hallucination. She’s got to be a hallucination. Only Elena’s eyes are allowed to match his like that and only she is able to get away with those gaudy strings of beads.
She smoothes out her long skirt and tucks a dark curl behind her ear. “Hello.”
“Hi,” he replies shakily, “you aren’t Elena.”
A small pout comes over her face. “No, I’m not. I thought you’d find this more approachable, though.”
He shrugs. “Next time remember that she’s a lot older.”
“Humans and your aging,” she sighs, sad beyond what her face can contain, “you always confuse us.”
“Who are you?”
She flushes a light lavender. “One name for me is Ametrine. I’m the queen of the Seelie Court.”
“Are you going to try to kill me, too?” He’s not going to beat around the bush. This woman- this queen made of porcelain and a picture from his grandmother’s college days- will not waste the rest of his life with formalities.
“I applaud the boy’s valiant efforts at keeping you alive but it’s not doing any good. It’s a shame- I’d always hoped for my son to be better with herb lore than that. ... Now, why would I kill you? It doesn’t suit my interests.”
“Oh fuck your interests,” he groans. His head is throbbing. Faerie games make him miserable.
The well-bred lilt to her voice makes what she says next laughable: “Yes, fuck my interests,” she hums, “indeed.” She pauses to pluck a dandelion, which irritates Gerard- they aren’t her weeds to pluck. They’re his. No one can touch his plants.
“I’m sure no one has bothered to ask you what your interests are, Gerard. You’re stuck with the lot you’ve drawn, I’m afraid, but if you could have anything to go with it, what would it be?” She’s holding him in a mothering way. Having her hand on his head makes the headache ease up and the shivers quit racking him quite so much.
“This is hypothetical right, since I’m gonna die?” He wiggles his toes in the earth.
She doesn’t say anything at all.
He imagines the tree roots underneath him and how they feel about all of this and, for the most part, they’re glad he’s there, like the shape with the missing piece in that children’s book. He doesn’t remember it too well- did it ever actually find the missing piece? Or is he making it up to make himself feel better?
The trees’ opinion is clear if drawn out.
The goblin didn’t make for the nicest company, even though he did do his job. The poor, poor goblin who’s not going to be around any more. They miss him for his faults and his responsibility. They can’t have him back and their displeasure ripples a low bass note, resonating. They need resolution, closure, even more so than Gerard does. They’re older and more fragile and not having closure might break them like he never thought he could be broken. Then they might break others and that’s where things get dangerous, so very dangerous with no one to guide them.
Now that Gerard’s here, the trees don’t plan on letting him go. He can stay with them and watch them, make sure they keep in their place and that no one- Fae or human- hurts them. Keep them from being massacred again. Stop humans from burning them with their iron bars and poisoning them.
They’ll put down seeds in his wounds and sickness and grow them over like gashes in bark over centuries. They can keep him well if he keeps them. Symbiosis. Sheep and shepherd. Treefolk and treeherd. My blood their sap and their roots my veins. This is what we are and I am. Not separate or whole-
Gerard’s eyes snap open. The low rustling that’s easy to mistake for voices fades out again. His ears and cheeks burn and he remembers that he’s not well. The trees are talking to him. It’s all because he’s got some kind of toxin or disease on a rampage through his brain. None of this is real. His whole life could be a feverdream and he will never know any better.
So he goes with that the trees are saying, with that deep and angry note that he can feel against the soles of his feet.
What’s the harm?
“Revenge.”
A small smile comes over the Faerie woman’s lips. “I can do that.”
She sings Gerard to sleep.
Back to the Masterpost