Chapter 23
Previously: Obsidian: Crystal Heart – Chapter 22
Her voice is too weak, she can’t call for Dandelion, but she knows where their tiniest puppy hid. Darcy is so grateful that Quincy can still hear her, can let John know. John would be so worried for their puppies if he couldn’t find all of them. But it was the best Darcy could do to keep them safe, let them out so they could run. She knows there was nothing accidental about Gregory pulling the rat cage down. That cage is taller than she is. It’s heavy. No, he did that to provoke her, punish her. She couldn’t let him hurt any more of her friends!
But… she couldn’t fight him. She was ready to let her drac snap at him. To not be the obedient wifey any longer. But she didn’t run at him, she ran right into those bottomless eyes of his, right into that crystalline cavern he can trap her in and the cold was eating her alive. So cold, the familiar mask not even there, no, just a cover of crystals growing over her entire body, leeching her dry, making her drac so small, so weak. She couldn’t fight it. She couldn’t fight him. She felt so helpless all of a sudden. Tumbling from the heights of her anger into a pit of weakness.
She thinks her puppies huddling around her saved her. Their fur keeping her warm where her own couldn’t even do that anymore. She can’t remember ever feeling so cold, not even from before she woke up as a dhampir. She read about freezing to death, and that’s what it felt like. But Gregory left before she was dead, and then her men and dear Arthur were there.
She’s still so weak, still cold, her fingers and toes still tingle and it’s so hard to move. But she doesn’t have to. Her sang du coeur is carrying her, her borne is protecting their puppies, and Arthur-dear is helping, too. Maybe its okay to rest a bit. She just doesn’t want to be alone. Please, not alone.
She doesn’t have to be. Quincy is so caring, of course he promises they’ll all sit with her at the bed, so it’s okay to just doze the second he puts her under the blankets.
~
“Alright, what’s going on?” Arthur says and hears the hard, tense edge in his voice as he looks from John to Quincy. They’re piled up on Darcy’s bed, and she seems a little better, but what the hell is wrong with her that his magic can’t fix? It has to be magical, there’s no other explanation, but he can’t smell anything. And if this is a magical attack of some kind, and it leaves Darcy in this state, why would no one tell him about it? He’s the healer and the mage in this house.
~
He shouldn’t, he fucking shouldn’t, but John has said too many times that he’s at the end of his rope and then not had a big enough explosion, no, enough is fucking enough! “What’s going on? Your fucking best friend remembering that Darcy exists! That’s what’s going on! Somebody got back into his daily morning rape! Thought we got past that when he switched to Quincy! Clearly no fucking luck there!”
Yes, Darcy is weakly pawing at him to stop, he fucking won’t! Gregory went too far. Too fucking far this time. He didn’t just hurt one of his dracs, no, he went after both of them, and yes, there’s Quincy with the backup!
“Hush, Cycy, I know you want to protect Arthur. Hush, I know you are scared he’ll leave if you are mean to Gregory, but John is right, enough is enough. Remember, a husband only gets your obedience if he does his responsibilities. Gregory is no proper husband of yours.”
John grunts his approval of that and is just about to go on exploding when Quincy shudders and in a much lower voice, (that’s a downright whimper!) admits that he’s scared. Gregory did this to him, too, not the rape, he didn’t let him, but this weakness.
Okay, fuck it, fuck everything, over his dead body does Gregory ever get close to his dracs again. He killed for them before, he will again, and this time he just might worry about enjoying it!
~
Arthur’s stomach does a flop as the emotion in his chest gels into a cold, heavy clump of… dread, he thinks.
It’s odd. It’s like he’s a little outside of himself, observing as one part of his mind flinches away from the thought of rape, and another builds up for shocked denial that Gregory would ever do a thing like that, but the worst is the third that surfaces like a terrible whale in a story from some invisible, murky depths, and it is so quiet and so certain and it says: “I knew it.” It says: “It’s true, after all,” and, the part that slips out out loud, with a shudder and a hunch of his shoulders, in a whisper, the realisation that: “This is my fault.”
~
Bloody come again? Quincy tries his hardest not to stare at Arthur, especially not with John’s thunderstorm clearly being more than willing to send lightning any which way. No, gentle now. “Honey, blaming yourself for somebody else’s fuck ups isn’t healthy. And, not to go close to the border of my promise to you to behave with what I say, but I rather doubt you really knew what he got up to with Darcy. You don’t want to know a thing about that specific topic.”
~
Arthur shakes his head, and wraps his arms around his knees. He feels cold, and, oh, maybe that’s shock settling in. That might explain why he rambles even though he knows perfectly well that John and Quincy are missing the context of what he’s talking about, and he should tell them: “He wouldn’t. He wasn’t always very sensible, but he wouldn’t do that. And he couldn’t do whatever… It’s magical, there’s no reason he should be able to do…” He flaps his fingers towards Darcy. “Not unless he’s not… Not unless it’s my fault.”
~
Really now? Maybe Quincy should tut at himself here, but, oh, his stray sense is tingling badly, and that’s a much more pleasant sensation than the fear of Gregory stealing his emotions and strength, so here he goes, as he always does, he supposes. Scooting over and putting an arm around Arthur’s shoulders, he hums softly, gives John a look to stow it, and pulls his healer skills out.
“Now, I understand it can be painful to learn that somebody we care for is capable of terrible things, but they don’t come out of nowhere. Not always very sensible, can you tell us more?”
~
Quincy’s hug feels nice, though Arthur’s pretty sure he doesn’t deserve it. “Mouthing off to the wrong people. Nicking things when it wasn’t safe. Never thinking ahead.” No, he really didn’t, did he? Arthur always had to do that for them. He feels a sting of tears.
That’s a long way from deliberately hurting someone. Being awkward and clumsy… Wait.
Arthur sniffs, and blinks, confused.
He’s the one who’s awkward and clumsy. Not Gregory.
Except just now he was remembering how Gregory would try and make him feel better, and… and wasn’t that good at it.
Not like Quincy is.
It makes everything feel swirly, like he’s standing on quicksand.
“Um,” he makes, blinks some more. It fails to solidify anything. “But… but anyway… I’m the one who brought him back. He wouldn’t… The real him wouldn’t. And couldn’t, this other thing, so it’s my fault.”
~
“Later, honey. We’re not done talking about Gregory here. So he kept getting you in trouble, and then was no good at making you feel better? What else?”
Yes, yes, he’s a cheater and Quincy feels zero remorse at the moment. And there’s more, that’s a little thought from Darcy, who really is looking far too worried, so Quincy shoos at John to wrap his arms around her, channel some of that thunderstorm away from destruction for the moment. “And tell me why you were angry with him when Darcy met you.”
~
“He…” Arthur wants to say Gregory didn’t do that, but… but he really can’t, so he’s left with: “Well, he didn’t mean to. And, um… I was?”
It’s all such a tumble, and feels like so long ago, and… oh. Right.
He sniffles, and he’s not feeling as cold anymore, which is maybe good, but in exchange he’s now feeling all fragile. Like he’s going to fly apart into all sorts of messy pieces.
And cry.
Which is maybe okay? It’s Quincy, he’s cried on him before, and that didn’t lead to anything bad?
He lets himself lean a little against him, because maybe he doesn’t deserve it, but it feels so nice.
And Quincy is his friend. So surely it’s okay.
And all of that is just distracting himself from the memory of…
“That wasn’t him. That already wasn’t him. And… and he made a joke about it, and I thought it was just him being stupid, but… but what if it wasn’t?”
What if it was the demon, parading around in front of his eyes, making fun of him?
Why had he forgotten about that?
Why had he stopped thinking about that?
Because he didn’t want it to be true. Because he’d hoped, and then… and then so many other things happened, and somehow… somehow, he’d just stopped thinking about it.
And Darcy has gotten hurt because of it.
He buries his face in his arms, because it all hurts, like before, except more and different, and he doesn’t… he doesn’t know what to do.
~
Okay, now it feels less like cheating and more like the only way to have any idea what Arthur is talking about. Not that even with thought-reading support, Quincy can puzzle everything together here. Just that Arthur clearly is talking himself into being at fault for every bit of shit Gregory ever did.
Demon. Well, yes, Gregory never was shy about bragging about that. But excuse Quincy for being sceptical. Must be his social instincts.
Still, Arthur is a quivering piece of glass ready to shatter, so Quincy is going to do this gently, ever so gently, and never Darcy think he isn’t spotting that hand of hers fighting to manage to get over to them. So first, he lifts Darcy’s hand and puts it on Arthur’s leg so she can support him, too, then he puts a kiss on top of Arthur’s hair. “If his behaviour had completely shifted, you wouldn’t even dare hope, you wouldn’t have worried. Honey, I know it hurts, and it’s okay to hurt, and it’s okay to just let yourself deal with the emotions, let me deal with them. You don’t have to do anything right now. You aren’t alone. I’m here for you. We’re all here for you. For each other. If you want us to.”
~
Now Arthur really does start to cry a little, because he can feel Darcy’s hand, even after he made such bad things happen to her, and Quincy’s words are so gentle, and they mean so much, which is why he cuddles more into him to admit: “I don’t want to be alone. I hate being alone. It’s why… it’s why I did it,” he whispers. “I… Gregory died. In… back in August. There was an accident.” He shudders. “And he died. And I didn’t know what to do, and I was all alone, and my father had these books…”
~
Ho boy, fine, John can see the pain there, and Darcy is too weak to fully move, so okay, he can stow his grumbles for a moment and back his bro up. It’s not the kid’s fault that he hung around Gregory. Pulling Darcy up in his hug, John moves her right next to Arthur so she can lean on him… or flop across his lap, typical his wolf-girl. At least that way, he has space to sit a bit off but still put a hand on Arthur’s shoulder and nod at him. “We’re listening.”
~
Nobody’s mad. That sticks with Arthur.
Well, not mad yet.
“I know it was wrong,” he says. “I knew it was wrong when I was doing it. My father doesn’t do good things. He doesn’t have nice spell books. But… but I just couldn’t bear being all alone.
So I got the books and I did a ritual,” he admits, ashamed, rubs his wrists. “And of course I messed it up. I was really bad at it.” He needs them to understand that. “I was really bad at magic, I never got anything right, never got anything to work. And I had to kill a cat, and I was really bad at that, too, and… and I’m really sorry for it.” If Darcy’s going to decide whether to be mad at him, she deserves to know that he did that, because he’s pretty sure she’ll be mad at him for that.
“But I did it, and everything went wrong, and there was like a… a portal or something, and a thing came through, and then another thing came through, and I could feel it. It was really big and really hungry and… and I’m pretty sure it was a demon, that’s the only way I know how to call it.
“And then I passed out because there was a fire and I thought I’d get eaten, but then I woke up and Gregory was fine.”
He dares to lift his head, blink at them through sticky lashes. “Like, alive, and not hurt, and… and better than before. Healthier. No scars. Like he’s now.
“And he said the demon was dead and he only got some pieces, just a few, for his powers, and also the cat- that’s the cat he turns into- and… And I was so worried about whether it’s really him, or whether it’s the demon, and then I stopped, I stopped worrying because of everything else, and because I didn’t want it to be true, and now it turns out it was the demon all along, and… and so, you see, it’s all my fault.”
~
Where the hell does Quincy even start in on this? Ah, apparently by enabling Darcy, because she’s still only down to stubborn wiggling rather than moving, but that’s an easy enablement. Gently, he takes one of Arthur’s wrists and puts them in front of Darcy’s face so she can kiss the scars better. “I hope you didn’t put any of the ointment I gave you for those on there or Darcy is going to pull a face, honey. Also, she wants you to know that being alone is mean.”
Aw, look at their grump nodding along and trying for his nice voice. “Keep helping in the animal hospital or she might pout. You got to balance it back to fair. And I can tell that without hearing her thoughts. Also, I was pretty much dead when you found me. So, eh, you brought one arse and one good man back. I’d call that even.”
If that wasn’t so very sweet, Quincy would be tempted to haze John, because he can see how actually flustered the hunk is at having dared to call himself a good man. That keeper can do anything if he gets to protect somebody with it. Hm, maybe that could work as a strategy for Darcy? He’ll have to remember that later. Fixing Arthur first.
“Honey, he bragged about being a demon to me.” Uh huh, that’s an affirmative grunt from John, not just him, and a weak nod from Darcy, too. Maybe they need to all compare notes, the arse might have been playing a game. “But I still don’t believe that the smartest guy in the house would have been easily fooled. You couldn’t know. That demon clearly, even with the things he pulled, seemed enough like your old Gregory for you to stop questioning. So maybe you had a hand in it, but that’s different from being at fault.”
~
He’s forgotten about the ointment again, but then, the scars weren’t itching. And now Darcy is… kissing them? Even though they mean he killed the cat?
Nobody’s mad?
“I… I want to help. I want to heal people. And not just stand there and watch them die.” That drives tears back into his eyes, but it doesn’t feel as bad as usual, because… because he really isn’t alone. He told them what he did and instead of holding him accountable, everyone is… making excuses for him?
“But if I hadn’t brought him back, none of it would’ve happened. You wouldn’t have gotten hurt,” he says to Darcy.
~
Well well well, his fallen angel can have a sharp tactical sense about social things if she just forgets that they are social!
With a soft chuckle and running a hand through her hair, but leaving his other arm around Arthur for more comforting, Quincy asks, still gently: “And would she be here, surrounded by people she loves if you hadn’t done it? Or would she still be in her room?”
~
Arthur looks down at Darcy, because… “Uh…” It was Gregory who broke into her room. “Is that… is that worth it?”
~
And there goes that tactical sense Quincy just lauded her for down the drain. So his stroking turns to a slight smack as he tuts at her. “Cycy, worrying that it only will be if Arthur doesn’t decide he needs to leave and take Gregory’s side because he sees him as his responsibility because you’ve supposedly been a bad wife is about the most idiotic thing I’ve heard you think in a while.”
Good, that’s a growl and grunt of backup from John, and the way Darcy twitches Quincy suspects John was evil and ran his fingers softly over her leg as disincentive. Soft touch, always the best instant negative feedback for their fallen angel.
Looking back up at Arthur with a headshake, he corrects what she said, because that’s his right as part of the husband duo here.
“What she meant to say is that she loves you very much and that love is worth any pain.”
~
Now he’s blushing, of course. “Um, I’m glad, then. And,” wait, “of course I’m not taking his side! He’s a demon! He hurt you! …He is my responsibility, though,” he concedes. “…Except… what do I do?” He shivers. If Gregory is really a demon…
“What kind of powers does he have that he didn’t say? What did he do that made you like this?” he asks Darcy, eyes wide.
If Gregory can do that to a dhampir, to their best fighter…
~
With a sigh, Quincy listens to Darcy’s thoughts and yes, this is all too familiar. “He makes you angry. He makes you helpless. It sounds like, more often, he made her feel helpless, useless at being a good wife, not even being a good whore. He made me angry. Forcing care that I neither need or want. Trying to force himself on me, too. This time, he made her angry by hurting her night friends. But… it’s the same thing in the end. Those hungry eyes of his. She calls them empty. There’s a smell that isn’t a smell. And those purple lights that came off her when she turned hellbeast. I’ve, no, both of us, have seen them in the reflection of his black eyes when he stares at you and presses a mask on her face and rips the soul out of you until your entire body is ice and porcelain covered and it’s impossible to move.”
Yes, he’s shuddering, he really, really didn’t want to remember that night up on the roof when his triumph turned to horror.
Luckily, his darling knows full well that Quincy hates few things more than seeming weak. Luckily, his darling will admit to most anything to protect them. “I… my temper. Every time he is around. It’s so fucking hard not to want to punch him. It was so fucking hard not to give up sometimes, too. Feeling like there’s nothing I can do to keep my girl safe.”
~
Nothing like what Quincy and Darcy describe has ever happened to Arthur. And he thinks he’d remember that.
He frowns as he thinks about what they’re saying.
“When you got the blood bond and we tried to look up stuff about demons, it was all ‘bringing out the worst in you’,” he remembers, looks at Darcy. “Could it mean… the worst emotions? Like… Gregory is an anger demon, isn’t he?”
~
Back to petting her, well, scratching her hair, Quincy listens, then answers for all of them: “How would we know what kind of demon he is? But I’ve wondered a few times why I tended to explode so easily around him. It’s not like me. John’s temper, Darcy’s idiotic insistence to be obedient even when abused. I’m tempted to call that their worst sides, John’s less than Darcy’s, but I’m biassed. Oh, and to add, Darcy could sometimes hear thoughts in that lousy excuse of a blood bond before she closed her heart as she should have much earlier. Thoughts about him buying her something so she behaves. And apparently, she could even see him cheating on her. Not that that was a hard guess.”
Oh, that growl on John is endearing, but a bit of an aside.
~
“…He did all that?” Arthur looks down at Darcy, still half-way cuddled against him. “I’m sorry I didn’t notice…” He feels like a very bad friend now.
~
“How could you?”
Sure, John would prefer to leave the talking to Quincy, but as long as he doesn’t talk too touchy-feely, nobody should question him, and hey, it’s not his feelings. Also, got to be the better man and try to cheer Arthur up despite feeling a bit weird about it.
“Darcy not only wants to protect you from having to know the, uh, the stuff you are uncomfortable with, she also clearly has that dolt thought stuck in her head that you’d tell her it’s her fault or something and stick with Gregory.”
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“I won’t!” Arthur tells her. “I promise I won’t! Even if… even if he wasn’t a demon, and just Gregory, if… if he does awful things like that to someone, I don’t want to be friends with him! Never!”
Which… is a thought that hurts. In many ways, it’s easier to believe that Gregory is a demon, and that that’s why he’s done these awful things to Darcy, and to Quincy, too, than it would be if he really was just Gregory and Arthur was just… totally wrong about what kind of person he was, fundamentally.
~