an infinity of time to abuse

dorian

He'll wrap you in his arms
Tell you that you've been a good boy

The wind howled like a living thing, but Dorian stood unmoved.

Perched near the cliff’s edge, where violet stone jutted jagged from the earth like the bones of something ancient and unsleeping, he looked out over the churning sea. Below, the waves clawed against the rock in a fury that would have swallowed any other man, but not him. Not here. The storm twisted above Starfall’s jagged peaks like a crown of chaos, its thunder distant, its threat familiar.

He had called them to him—Vox  and Pierce  —and now he stood in the shadow of the crater that had birthed an empire, the birthplace of their Family, the wound in Caido that never quite closed.

"I’ve spoken with the Tidebreaker," he said at last, voice smooth as the obsidian lining the caves beneath them. There was no drama, no flourish. Only information, delivered like scripture. "Dahlia has been captured in Torchline. She’s been pricked by a rose."

A pause. Deliberate. Not for effect—Dorian never wasted anything on theatrics that didn’t serve a purpose—but to let the meaning settle. To let them understand what that meant. "She’s been cured." The word felt sour in his mouth, though he said it with a kind of terrible grace. "But because of the barrier in place. I cannot reach her. Vox, you could, but.." To what end?

He turned, the wind catching the edge of his coat and whipping it like a banner in a storm. His hands remained clasped behind his back, the picture of composure. A monarch on the edge of a collapsing throne, and yet not a line of his poise broke.

"In exchange for her freedom," he continued, "Hadama offered terms." Another pause. Shorter. Sharper. "He asked that we leave."  His eyes flicked between them now—one pale and empty as starlight, the other dark with shadows and steel. 
"It is going on three years since we first arrived here, and I am sure you both will agree things have taken much longer than they normally do."  No emotion stirred in Dorian’s own expression. There was no fury. No grief. Only control, as measured and absolute as ever.

"I agreed."

He'll rekindle all the dreams
It took you a lifetime to destroy

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

The static came first as it always did. A shiver in the air, a smear across colour and sound, like a screen flickering just before the signal dies. Then came the scent of ozone and long-forgotten radio tunes, the feeling of fingers brushing your thoughts. And finally—Vox.

He unfolded lazily from a warp in the atmosphere, limbs draping like streamers unravelled in a storm, his form pulsing gently with neon whites and sickly glows. He didn't hover so much as permeate, drifting like a sigh toward the edge where Dorian stood, his static hum softened by the storm. "Aw," came his voice at last, drawn out with aching disappointment. "But I like it here."

He coiled, looping loosely around a stretch of violet stone, a frond of signal-thread catching on a jagged edge as though reluctant to leave it. "The clouds scream like they’re trying to harmonize with me. The wind here tells stories about people it used to know. And the people…"

A thousand eyes blinked and unblinked, casting memories across the cliffside. A face glimpsed in a market. A girl with ink on her hands. A boy who didn't run. A flicker of Noe. Of others whose names he hadn’t learned, but whose laughs he'd tried to imitate when he couldn't sleep. "I like them most of all," he said simply, a ripple of melancholy warping his outline. "They’re so messy. So warm. They fall in love with the wrong things and throw parties with teeth. They dream too loudly. I want to wrap them all up in tin foil and keep them safe forever. Or eat them. I haven’t decided."

He drifted closer to Dorian now, but did not stand. Vox did not stand. He swayed, suspended, his form a knot of longing wrapped in static silk. He wasn't saying no, ,of course, because you never say no when the tide pulls you. You just...whisper to it, please don’t go too fast. "I will miss it. I will miss them."

vox

Pierce

He’s never missed a summoning before – never with Dorian at least. So when he hears the call, feels it stirring on Starfall, the brawler finds himself arriving swiftly without a moment of hesitation. Whatever he was doing before could wait.

What he doesn’t expect is to arrive without their Reaper, without the blade. Because he’d heard Vox’s broadcast, had learned that she’d been taken from them, but surely that never actually lasted when it came to them. It never had before.

But Dorian stands in all of his seriousness, poised and prepared to offer what information was necessary. Nothing more, nothing less, just as it always had been. But as he speaks, Pierce’s face is mostly unreadable, calm and calculating and focused until he tells them she’d been cured and how he’s incapable of getting to her. This is when his composure breaks, nose wrinkling, frowning sharply, arms with corded muscle folding across his chest. He stays in line, because he always does, but the wind picks up the curls that frame his face as he puffs out a sigh as Vox goes on his monologue.

And not that he really wants to fully agree with Vox each and every time, he does find himself leaning toward it. “It has taken awhile. The lessons we teach ‘em don’t stick.” Comes the admission, sour on his tongue, bitter in the panes of the frown on his face. “Do we have time to say goodbye to the Friends we did make?” Dahlia’s return was everything in comparison to the friends they had made along the way, but that didn’t mean that he wouldn’t miss a few of the people he’d encountered here in their time.

He, too, doesn’t say no. Acceptance, even if he hates the idea of giving in to them. But for Dahlia, Pierce finds that he'd do anything for her, too. And if this is what it took? Then so be it.

dorian

He'll wrap you in his arms
Tell you that you've been a good boy

Dorian listened in silence, his posture unchanging as Vox's filaments caught the wind and Pierce’s frown settled like a bruise. The storm roared below, as it always did, but it may as well have been birdsong for all the attention he paid it.

When they had finished—when Vox’s melancholy coiled like fog around the stones and Pierce’s voice faded into the churn of waves—he turned his head slightly. Not a dramatic gesture, but the kind of subtle pivot that reoriented the world around him. "Two days," he said to Pierce, his voice smooth as ever. "They will bring her to the coast."

He allowed the silence to settle again before continuing. "If there are any among your Friends"—the word was used without inflection, as if it were no different than blade, or debt, or pawn—"who wish to come with us, they will be permitted." No warmth touched the words. There was no invitation, no nostalgia, no mourning of what was being lost. Only logistics. Only control.

Then he turned back toward the ocean, letting the wind buffet his coat, letting the storm call to something deeper and older within him than even Vox could reach. His hands folded behind his back once more, and he said nothing else.

~FIN

He'll rekindle all the dreams
It took you a lifetime to destroy

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!