house upon the green / tw, day 5

Lucius drops the dead weight as soon they get to the watch tower, muscles groaning, slumping a little against the door. 

The bandages around his chest have finally come loose after three days of wear, and Lu lifts his shirt to pull on a tattered end.

He pauses.

The blood's dried gray. 

Streaks of dirt, salt from the bay, and the texture of blood, only the colour is drained from it.

He holds up the hem of his shirt between his teeth, yanks the bandages slack with his freed hand, and stares at the fissure where a wound should be. Blotches of stone instead of skin. Like blight on a leaf. He touches the edge of where the sword entered. It's cold. His fingertips are bloodstained.

Lu lets his shirt drop. He turns towards the sleeping knight, kneels back down. 

There's the blue of his arm, the veins splitting down to his wrist. He picks up his hand, still bound in leather, to examine it, thumb running along the bones going up his knuckles.

He feels very real. Lucius is thinking about the pools. When he raised his sword to his wrist.

And would it still grow back. If it was cut off now. His voice is tepid as he says this.

But there's a very loud cracking noise that shakes the room. It makes Lu look up, letting go of the knight, sound of stone wailing as it splits in half. Tick’s holding the chalice of water, he stands in front of another frozen statue, the curtain drawn back. 

He glances over his shoulder, their eyes meet, and then they both look at the body thudding onto the floor.

It's withered. It's blackened. It's dead.

Preserved in the stone, the skin is stretched across its bones, shrunken, person-shaped.

A very strange tomb.

Tick has this look in his eye.

There's a body in the doorway, there's a body at his feet. He holds out the chalice with the rest of the water, and Lucius doesn't take it, doesn't move, only stares at him blankly.

“You first.”

The pike is leaned against the wall. Lu lets out a short laugh, expression settling into something unbending a second later.

“No.”

He takes a backwards step towards the pike when Tick only inches closer, tensing. “You drink it.”

"Why not."

Tick gets a little closer. He steps over the corpse on the ground. He holds the chalice out in both hands, very non threatening.

"I made it." He says. Like his feelings are hurt. "It'll make you feel better."

Step again.

"It's good." He tries.

The statue-no-longer-a-statue probably enjoyed it. The husk on the floor probably did too. The flowers in the chalice do help make it look a little more appetizing, slowly gently wilting as they float on the surface.

Again, "I made it for you."

The not-status shifts, and all it takes is Lu switching his attention over to the actual threat in the room, only for a second. Tick gulps the cure into his mouth and lunges.

Both hands free now, there’s no way Lu wins.

They collide inelegantly. Tick grabs the side of Lu’s jaw, stumbles back with him a step, smashes their faces together and then opens his mouth to force the liquid over. He slaps a hand over Lu’s mouth and doesn’t get off of him, trying so very hard to ignore the punch to his ribs.

Another noise.

The not-statue is awake.

Tick freezes. He’s crouched over Lu. Hand over his face. He’s surprised the other boy didn’t bite straight through his lip once he realized what was happening.

The victory is very short lived.

He gets flipped. Kneed in the stomach. And as Tick lies there, successful but groaning, he sees Lu go for the pike again, ”Don’t-“

They took the sword from him. It’s over there with the bags, looking very inconspicuous against the wall despite sliding through Lu’s chest just days ago.

He says don’t, not to defend the stowaway with them, not even to try and protect him. He says don’t, as in don’t damage him, it hasn’t even been an hour yet, Tick needs to see what happens to him. And what happens to Lu.

There's a quality to the two boys that is more foreign to the knight than he first thought.

They're rough in tongue and with each other, stilted half sentences tumble from their lips as they scuffle, there's no need to speak an idea to its breadth, perhaps they're beyond that.

It could also just be the way of this strange enemy. Their words flow oddly, their tongues stilted, vowels cut off sharply in their mouths. It's different from the flowing speech of the knight's people and yet, he finds that he can understand them perfectly.

"Don't-"

Atlas watches impassively as one goes for the pike resting against the wall near him. His arms are constricted, bound to his chest in a way that still leaves his legs entirely free. It will be difficult to stand like this though, his centre of balance will be thrown off and there will be no way to correct himself from falling.

The steel of the pike's end shines as it flips past his head.

If it was going for him, he might have done something to dodge it. After all these years spent in silence, he's more fluent in body language than anything else, he knew it wasn't meant for him.

His captor's conversation ends in an odd sort of stalemate. The knight's gaze travels down to the floor, to the stone chalice laying on its side, a small puddle spilled over the lip of it.

He stares at it for a long moment. There's a strange, festering feeling in the pit of his stomach. It's been such a long time since he was able to experience any sensation for longer than a fleeting moment that he doesn't quite know what to call it.

Dread.

Longing.

Perhaps both.

"Atlas."

The knight looks up, brow furrowing slightly. He does not recall giving them his name.

"Rise ser knight."

He presses his back to the door's frame and uses the pressure to push himself up to his feet. He heard the command, yet Atlas is certain that neither of them spoke. Still, his body obeyed it. Atlas bites the inside of his cheek, gaze steadfast and focused on the boys in front of him.

"Protect the kingdom."

Neither of them react to the words, though they ring out clear as day, as if spoken from a space just behind the knight.

"Kill them, Atlas."

He does not yet know if they mean him harm, but there are too many things that the knight doesn't know anymore. He's aware that time has passed since the curse took him but it's still unclear just how much.

"Protect the kingdom," she demands.

And what if there is no kingdom left to protect?

No answer.

The knight bows slowly, eyes flicking to his sword where it leans against the wall. Unbidden, a memory rises, his palm itches, remembering the weight and the heft of the blade in his hand. He straightens in silence, gaze fixed on the two of them once again.

Atlas smiles, soft, and just a little bit sad.

"I will do no harm here," he tells them all.