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Takes place after Destiny City Bootanical Garden on October 25th, but before Ballroom and Balcony on October 28th.
Stepping out of the park restroom mirrors was always awkward because there was only so much Sinope could tell about who was in the room he was entering before he entered it. Fortunately, not too many people lingered in such places after dark and he found it relatively convenient for escaping his sentence of house arrest. He had a rendezvous he refused to be late for.
The aroma of the toilets that welcomed him was as putrid as usual, so he made sure to wash up at the sinks with extra soap before drying his hands and slipping out into the cool, outdoor air. It irked him to realize he cared what Elex thought about how he smelled. It wasn't as if he intended to get as physically close as he did last time they'd met. This time, he just wanted to talk. That was all.
He wandered about the park a bit as he attempted to locate the now-familiar chaotic energy signature. As he did so, Sinope considered what he wanted to discuss and what Elex would allow them to. He considered what the captain would have to say about Mirrorspace when he saw the place and what he would be able to derive from his visit there. Would Remarque have approved? Probably not. But royal or not, Remarque wasn't the boss of him.
Remarque didn't trust the Negaverse, but Sinope hadn't given them much thought until now. Hearing Elex speak about a general force-feeding him a starseed – did they do that with all their agents? What other sorts of trials did they put them through and how many were against their will? How had Elex even found himself among the Negaverse's numbers in the first place? Had they made him dependent on them like drug sellers created drug addicts?
It was all territory that warned Sinope to stay away with vivid neon signs exhibiting large, capital letters. What was he doing? He told himself he had kissed Elex out of desperation; to prevent the officer from drowning him again with that horrible, burning liquid in his lungs. That may have been true the first time. But what about the second? What had been that sensation that wrung his stomach when Elex suggested Sinope might only have been toying with him? Distress? Pity?
He'd had a week to try to place the feelings, but to no avail. They were completely alien to him and he didn't dare try to confide in anyone else about them. Instead, he'd earned strange looks from his mother when she caught him watching romance comedies and even suffered a 'talk' from his father after a book about reactions of the human body had been found in his bag with a certain section marked for reading.
Sinope shuddered at the memory. Maybe he'd be better off just focusing on what to discuss with Elex rather than sensations and emotions. The Negaverse agent didn't need to know what he'd felt and maybe it had just been a one-time thing in the heat of the moment. If it didn't happen again, there would have been no reason to examine it further.
The week away left Elex to lead his unwanted youma companion on more benign escapades — the occasional shopping trip, more meetings with his brother (who much preferred Tuesday and Thursday lunches), and investigations of certain other Very Important Persons. Elex found thankfulness in the youma's lack of intelligence; Barbary boasted no great forethought and simply followed along per Schörl's command. The information gathered was then relayed to the general with damnable accuracy, and she would cast appropriate admonishments upon him for wasting the precious three hours he had per glamour. It was, he found, a repetitive and undeniably reliable cycle.
Elex guarded his thoughts carefully as he crossed the soccer field, one hand in his jeans pocket while the other held fast to an REI travel umbrella. The smooth gusts of autumn weather carried with it a sheet of rain and a weight to the air. Elex breathed with some difficulty; between the barometric pressure and the struggles of an imperfect glamour, heavy physical exercise was out of the question. Thus, when he approached the end of the field, he did so in purposeful strides.
He spotted a door opening in a distant building, one ramshackle from years of deferred maintenance. The familiar pitfalls of public funding took no pity on the place, and an incomplete paintjob covered most of the yellowed-white walls with a filmy beige. Remnants of drink splatters, vomit stains, dropped ice cream, spat gum, and other natural human disasters accumulated over its sides. And while he would not have scoffed at such a locale in his more human years, he never would have approached the area in such a self-assured manner. Even without smoke blustering at his back, Elex knew no great fears welling in his chest. Even as he looked to the Mirror Senshi who stepped out from one of the metal doors, he expected no trouble of his companion.
"Sinope," he called across the rain. He greeted Sinope not in the stark pinstripe and aubergine of his Negaverse uniform, but in a monochrome plaid duffel coat and an open grey henley. Beneath laid a burnt orange tank top to spot color and discourage too much overt attention. Distressed ankle boots guarded his feet from the ever-present mud. "Was this your first choice?" As he caught up, he motioned in a thin sweep of the outlying area.
The fog cast down from the cool autumn rains muted the brilliant reds and dripping golds that clung to surrounding branches. Elex paused a moment to consider it — he knew at once that, when the rains cleared, the mottled colors of leaves would speak lurid across the scene. Already it smelled fresh, loamy, with a faint hint of bathroom disinfectant clinging to the bathroom's entrance. "This is where you do your mirrorwalking?" Bright eyes found Sinope, expectant.
You've had a week, Sinope. How do you intend to greet me now?
Sinope knew Elex was nearby and he was fairly certain the captain wasn't going to attack him, but he couldn't help starting at the sound of his voice slicing through the soft patter of the rain with his name. He whipped around, horrified as his heart rate doubled. Would he never get used to this kid? "Elex!" he cried, plastering an ear-to-ear grin on his face to leave no room for insecurity or doubt. "Is that really you?"
The redhead wasn't all that hung up on appearances, but he appreciated the sight of his peer in more casual clothing than his usual garb. Even so, a series of alarms were set off in his head, each triggering a new inquiry of suspicion. Why is he wearing his glamour? Why is he dressed like that? What's he up to? "Wow, I didn't even know you owned a pair of jeans. Or a tank," he marveled. "Uh, why'd you come like that, though? Isn't it wasting the limited time you have disguised?" Sneering, he added, "It's not like I've never seen you with your pipes, and I doubt we'll run into anyone else." He hoped not, at least.
When asked about his choice, his smile faltered and he scratched the back of his neck. "Not exactly. It's just a familiar place that's convenient for me when I need to leave the house. There's a better entrance to our destination a block or two from here. It's in an alley, so we shouldn't be too conspicuous, especially with the rain for cover. I doubt many people are going to be out." Sinope considered Elex's respiratory condition. "Er...do captains have the same boosts to their physical abilities that senshi do? Or does your glamour hinder that?" It didn't seem to change his ability to breathe any better than when he was producing smoke, but Sinope wouldn't pretend to understand how that worked.
He wasn't comfortable with the eagerness of those gleaming orbs on him. His chest was clenching painfully again and his stomach muscles tightened as if to compete. Perhaps he was doing this to learn just as much about himself as he hoped to learn about Elex. "I guess...if you want to get there faster, I can try to carry you."
Elex snorted, glanced toward the ground before his gaze crawled up to Sinope. "This wasn't a formal affair. It isn't like meeting my brother for tea. But if you want to be scandalized…" He leaned in closer, voice no higher than a whisper. "Sometimes I shop at Old Navy."
Elex laced unmarred fingers together before him; he took in Sinope's own posture before explaining himself. "It's prudent to lay low." He licked his lips, chose his words carefully. His pacing returned, if milder than their last meeting. "The Negaverse and the Dark Mirror share animosities. My own general would sooner see you dead, for example. There's a competition for resources. For corruptible senshi. For energy. If I came here as a captain, how would that look to my peers?" He looked to Sinope for recognition. "We won't have a lot of time, but we won't share suspicion either. Auric energy reaches far – farther than sight.
"You threatened my brother before. Draining him inside of a mirror, wasn't it? You can play it off like that. Your Court doesn't have to kill."
Sinope's next question gave him pause. He shifted his attentions downward, toward the muck between their feet – the bleak stretch of reality anchored between them. When he looked back at Sinope, his too-dry hair hung partially over one eye. He pulled the wefts aside. He felt, distantly, like standing over a chasm – a chasm where water rushed inevitably to fill its interstices. And Elex could only weight at its height, perpetually frozen by trembling legs and weak conscience. He wondered, then, if he would face that fate eternally. The captain who never could.
So Elex broke the silence. He shifted closer to Sinope, offered his umbrella to the other boy as the pair shared it. Rainfall flecked and cracked against the umbrella with no signs of ceasing. "Do you trust me?" The words felt too loud over their percussive backdrop.
Expelling air sharply through his nose in amusement, the senshi caged his soundless laughter behind clenched teeth as he bared them at the ground. His ears caught fire, burning at Elex's proximity when he moved in to be heard. Since when did you have a sense of humor? Did you just never see fit to show me? What changed? Flashes of their last encounter came to mind. He flushed and chose not to dwell on it. Turning on the charm like a pro. So many ways to destroy me. And I, defenseless and weaponless, with no experience playing at this game - what chance do I have?
He watched Elex begin to pace with his umbrella, tempted to grab and hold him to stay him. His hands twitched, but he dared not. “So you’re saying you came here like that to avoid detection? Hmm...I mean, if you came here to confront me, they might just think we were fighting like we have the last few times we met. And it’s not like they’ll be able to trace your energy signature once we go into Mirrorspace. But alright, you know best. I don’t know what your general’s like or how strict your organization is, so do as you see fit.”
Casting the disguised half-youma a dubious look at being reminded his court didn’t have to kill, he asked, “The Negaverse does? Require you to kill, I mean?” Then what the hell were you doing letting me live those two times?! I don’t get you!
When Elex came closer, Sinope - much to his vexation - shivered slightly, and it wasn’t because of the rain. He wished at that moment for the book detailing what, exactly, had caused said shiver so he could reason out logically what was happening to him, but he wished in vain. He could only pray the other teen hadn’t noticed. “...People usually ask that when they want someone to do something,” he murmured, hazel eyes searching shining jet black ones. “What would you have me do, Yorke?”
Elex closed his eyes slowly. "Right." Listen to you, so full of doubt. So convinced that I should've shown up as a captain. It's easier to dehumanize me that way, isn't it? Or you're looking for a third brush with death. How disappointed you must've been to see the whites of my eyes. It's so dreary to know that your tomorrows are assured around me. When he looked to Sinope again, his thoughts were gathered to the corners of his eyes -- the corners of his mouth. They lingered at the edges of his field of vision, ever conflating purpose with accident. Washing away his bitter-laid plans.
He breathed a sigh into the wet air, surprised at its lack of visual weight. No steam rose from his breath, not yet. "Yes, Sinope," he answered as he looked far past his friend. Distantly, the leaves marveled in their marbling colors. He felt so distant this way. Adrift. "There are always starseeds to capture. Supplements to energy. The methamphetamine we all need to fight through the pain. They're easiest taken from civilians. Those are the least missed. The Negaverse preferse senshi starseeds for their potency -- knights just the same. But, knights hold the greater weight for their corruption potential."
He paused, snorted. "We shouldn't talk about this here. It doesn't matter -- not right now." All these things into position.
To talk of it is to confront it. But you know firsthand what I've done with these fingers. I've always earned my murderer's marks. So many agents have lost themselves in it -- those moral tribulations. The quandary of murder, of human consumption. We're all made to face it. But I won't meet that meek stalemate. I know what it is that I've done. I know what it means to hush someone in a way you've never known. Elex silenced a laugh on his breath.
That must be the origin of those foreign lines. Those half-measures.
Returning to the moment, Elex lifted his right hand. In it sat the bumberchute, still pelted by the rain. "Hold my umbrella," he half-requested, half-expected. Is that what I am now? A monster, a symbol? A creature carrying a surname? An amorphous identity? How much you've changed in how little time. Should I be impressed with you, my dear senshi?
Don’t close your eyes like that, you a**, he thought frantically, mentally measuring the length of Elex’s lashes. You don’t know what I want to do when you’re not looking. On second thought, keep them closed. I don’t need you staring at me that way, either. Sinope wanted to look away himself, but his gaze weighed heavy, anchoring him with interest.
“What pain?” he wanted to know, his tone more gentle and tinged with concern than he’d intended. “I mean...are you physically hurting?” Does eating starseeds stop that? ...Would it do the same to me if I ate one? More questions bubbled up again, but the captain insisted they stop discussing the topic for the time being. Sinope obliged. It would be nice to get out of the rain first.
Wordlessly, curiously, the senshi did as he was bid. That couldn’t have been the only reason he’d wanted to know if he’d trusted him. “What are you doing?” he asked as casually as he could manage.
It's only ever a tightness. Like your skin closing down on your bones with too much pressure. There's a tightness in my chest, like the glamour's holding back these bitter parts of me now. And there's a numbness in my back where Schörl cut my skin for each pipe. Would you qualify these things as pain? I don't think you would. Not a physical pain.
"I'm not in pain." Elex waited only so long as Sinope needed to acquire the umbrella. Rain drew down heavy around them, casting their mists up onto his jeans and wetting them down with time. "Hold still."
Elex stretched his arms to hike his sleeves back an inch. He reached with thin hands toward Sinope's neck, a slow process conscious of revolt, and wrapped fingers about the once-throttled throat. While he crossed his thumbs over Sinope's adam's apple, he applied no pressure. "You asked if I still have my captain's power. I don't." His hands slipped from throat to shoulders, where he squeezed with meager strength. Constrained as he was, he could manage little more than liberal pressure on a super senshi's bones. One hand then slipped from shoulder while the other retreated to chest, with fingertips cutting just beneath the fox brooch. He applied enough pressure to communicate his point.
"Nothing." Elex's remaining hand fell from Sinope and he reached for the umbrella. "I can't even drain your energy." His fingers remained empty, perhaps pleasantly so, of the perpetual bounty asked of him by the Negaverse. Normal nails with natural french tips looked back at him when he examined the whole skin of his hand. Satisfied, he stepped away.
"Show me the alley." Elex started back toward the long stretch of field, his free hand held outward as if balancing a platter. He waited but a handful of seconds for Sinope to accept the silent invitation.
He wouldn’t imagined he could have obeyed an order like ‘hold still’ with the threat of hands on his throat regardless of their strength. Still, he managed. Somehow he managed and he blamed it on being too afraid to move again. That, and maybe a smidge of curiosity.
You had to do that to demonstrate your point? he pondered, his pulse tripling speed as his shoulders were squeezed. Do you really have to keep touching me? Pressing on me? Or are you just having your own bit of fun? Sinope was not enjoying the results of the contact. His body was doing things against his will and that needed to stop. At last, Elex drew away and the senshi exhaled a breath he hadn’t noticed he’d been holding captive.
“Ha! Liar,” Sinope laughed as he handed back their barrier against the rain. “You drain my energy just by being around. It’s exhausting.” Rolling his eyes at the demand, he watched Elex’s back retreat a few steps before trundling along in pursuit. Once he spotted the outstretched palm, it took him a few moments for him to register that the agent was no longer doing so in order to regard his borrowed skin.
...Am I supposed to take that? he wondered, puzzled by the gesture. Did he...was he serious about before? Elex had spoken about not having dated before and Sinope had offered him an opportunity, but as far as he knew, they had never definitively confirmed anything. Perhaps Elex hadn’t felt he needed to, but Sinope was too particular about details to let such things go on assumptions alone. He had to be certain.
His hand fell atop the upturned palm and clasped it with a meaningful compression as he fell into step alongside his peer. Hesitation bound his tongue a moment longer. “Elex...are we...you know,” he tried, reddening viciously as he stared ahead while he walked. “Are we dating, now?” Is that what we’re calling this absurd blend of urges, pain, kisses, threats, suspicions, and banter?
“Or were you still not sure? Because if not, I totally get it. You said yourself; you’ve never dated before, and I definitely haven’t, so if you’re nervous or anything, we don’t have to. Or you could just take some time to think about it.” There went his motor mouth again. He lifted his free hand to tug down his hood over his face.
"Do I?" The snide comment piqued curiosity. So I'm exhausting to you. Is that a real complaint? Or are you just sounding off? My brother used to do the same when Mother would tie his tie for him. He missed it dearly when she stopped. "Maybe I should leave. What good are you if you pass out?" He questioned as he regarded Sinope.
His hand accepted, Elex allowed his hand to drop to a more amenable position. Sinope's hand felt warm in a manner unusual to the incognito captain. His glamour so often played with his sense of temperature, and the fact of it tripped him every time. It's like losing yourself enough to be free. Untethered. But… I still feel so constrained. Like my body's pressing out of itself. Railing against this second skin. He couldn't feel the pipes in my back before; there can't be anything there now.
Elex let the question blend into the autumnal silence. He considered it, savored it against the backdrop of percussive rain. "Are we?" The question was lost to the heavy air. He felt so atmospheric -- so ephemeral with little more than a second skin binding him together. Little more than a hand to tether him to the earth, lest he billow out of himself like smoke. Like a drop of ink in a tidepool. The feeling left him light, but restless. Tuned, but tense. Lilting, but livewired.
To feel like I'm not me at all, but to be completely myself -- it's almost painful.
"I don't know what to call it," he admitted at last. He gripped his umbrella white-knuckle tight against the sudden gust. "'Dating' always implied courtship. Songs and dances and flowers and theaters and dinners. Sweet nothings. Familial appeasement. All these imperfect white lies and improper second faces to woo an audience you never asked for. But there are no families to court, no ballrooms to take us. I hardly last the time for a movie like this. No, dating isn't the right word. I don't know of a word that fits. Maybe it doesn't need one." I'd call it revenge.
Elex cast another glance at Sinope, taking in the shrouded hood. He almost smiled. Instead, he stifled it against teeth. "I wanted to ask about what happened in August. The mirrors -- they were sucking everyone in. Placing knights alongside Negaverse agents and vice versa. Then we were dropped into…" He sucked in a breath as he searched for the words, "an extradimensional space. Somewhere I've never seen before. Wraiths attacked us -- like the one you carry. I saw White Moon senshi and knights and Negaverse senshi and agents, but never a single Dark Mirror. Was it your court's doing?"
”...” Sinope arched both brows at Elex’s comment and the question that followed. Haha...so much for a sense of humor. You’re more sensitive than I thought. “I meant it in a good way,” he amended carefully, embarrassed at his own efforts to try to comfort the raven-haired boy. “Leaving me breathless without even using that smoke of yours. It...somehow it makes me happy, though.” His fingers fiddled with one of the ears on his hood.
Upon hearing that the disguised officer didn’t know what to call it, either, the senshi laughed. The way they were now, he could forget that he was part of the Dark Mirror Court and Elex was a captain in the Negaverse. That concept brought its own bitterness, though. Elex Yorke would likely have never found a reason to spend time so casually with Jack Burnett. Unlike Rowan and Trey from the botanical gardens, Jack was a nobody. Even the memory of their first meeting, when Elex had been the one to approach Jack, hadn’t been deemed important enough to the younger Yorke to retain.
It didn’t matter, though. That reasoning made no difference to Sinope’s heedless emotions. They still jerked him about like logic had no business holding any sway over him. He still couldn’t help finding joy in the fact that he was in Elex’s presence now, regardless of the reason, and it wouldn’t be weighed down by any amount of practicality. His rational mind was terrified to recognize this; he knew what came up also came down and while feelings like these brought elation without compare, they also crashed and burned like nothing else. But it was too late. He was too high up now among the clouds to see or concern himself with how far he had to fall.
There was a certain spring in his step that reflected this and only when Elex turned to look at him did the redhead become aware of how stupid a grin had hijacked his face. He said it doesn’t need one, he told himself. That means you may as well be nothing. Stop being such a ******** idiot. But his cheek muscles refused to give. He’s right, though, the tainted thoughts pushed back. Why does it need to be called something? What does it matter if it feels like this? I don’t think I’ve ever felt anything close.
Why? What is it?
No.
Not that. Anything but that.
“August?” he repeated, hating the way he could hear that vacuous smile in his voice. “Oh, yeah. I think I heard about that.” It had been a miserable time for both of them, it sounded like. His court and the others who had been trapped by the mirrors as well. Conjuring up the memories of that awful span of time did nothing to dent his spirits, however. He was just happy to have something he knew of to talk to Elex about without worrying that he would upset or bore him.
“From what you’re saying, I can see how it’d be easy to suspect that,” Sinope agreed, “but we were having our own troubles. The reason why there were no Dark Mirror Senshi when you guys got sucked in was because they had already trapped us some days before. I don’t know why Mirrorspace suddenly started capturing all of you guys, too, but I can only guess it might have had something to do with the crazy, possessed queen we ended up having to deal with. I think she or Mirrorspace or both were after the energy of world we came from, which meant starting with the residents of Destiny City.”
His smile had finally faded and his face muscles could relax. He hadn’t fancied the thought of Elex having been stuck in a room with a potentially dangerous stranger and no ideas as to what might have been going on as his energy had slowly been stolen from him. Wait, what? What do I care what happened to him? He can take care of himself; it was probably whomever he was stuck with who was worse off, Sinope reckoned. And it’s not like he doesn’t going around stealing other people’s energy, too, so what’s wrong with him tasting a little of his own medicine?
“So...who were you stuck with?” he blurted before scrambling to conceal the tracks regarding his line of thought. “Uh...the wraiths didn’t give you too much trouble, did they? Were they bigger than the ones we have, or the same size?”
Elex smirked to himself. "I'm not very good at making jokes." His family often confirmed so; his time in the Negaverse did nothing to foster a sense of humor, either. His primary example was through his general, who weaponized hers to deadly efficiency. Perhaps, in that way, he and Sinope held far less compatibility.
Elex noted the grin, though he chose not to comment on it. Instead, he focused his attentions on hiking through the thin wilderness that bordered park and sidewalk. Slipping into the short stretch of woods warranted a watch for uncertain footing -- for snakes and potholes and bones left behind by bitter enemies. He wondered, briefly, if Sinope had ever killed before. If he dumped a body in these woods, if he helped someone do the same. Perhaps only the Negaverse retained reason for murder. Perhaps the rest of the factions only retaliated.
I'm barely learning what I am, he realized with a hard swallow. Nothing is harder than confronting what you never wanted to be. And yet you're so happy holding hands with someone who killed and ate people. What are your morals, Sinope, that condone this? I know you think -- even if it's in your own juvenile way. Why would you want to be dear to a monster?
Elex stepped out onto the sidewalk with Sinope, and the woods held back his thoughts in their brambles. he was grateful for it, if still troubled.
His voice dropped low to accommodate their lack of private surroundings. "Who's they? What queen?" His sharpness turned back to the topic at hand. "What relation would she have to your Mirrorspace? And how can a place have the sentience to attack someone?" What was Mirrorspace? And if the Dark Mirror Court's absence precipitated this attack, then were the senshi acting as the force holding back that dimension's devouring antics? The explanation proved perplexing. Elex's jaw tightened, if barely, before he sighed through his nose. "Will you tell me what happened to your Court?" So much felt absent -- meager.
And then Sinope sped on about Elex's own encounters in the mirror. Elex strangled his immediate urge to redirect Sinope back to the topic at hand -- back to this queen and her relation to Mirrorspace. "Take me to the mirror first. Then I'll tell you the rest."
It was awkward for Sinope, holding someone’s hand, but he supposed it was more manageable than if he’d tried to carry Elex on his back or in his arms. He wasn’t sure he could have handled that much physical contact just then. The senshi found himself unusually attentive to the other’s every shift in focus; to every action and behavior, both conscious and unconscious. He knew he was probably going to overanalyze things as he sometimes tended to do when studying people, but with his inexplicable attachment to the young officer, it was bound to be several times worse.
Oh well, he sighed mentally, pondering the brief undulation of his companion’s throat. What was he going to do? Make a bigger fool of himself? As if that’s possible.
“...Something the matter?” he prodded delicately. As soon as he spoke the words, however, he considered all the things he could imagine it might have been. That, in turn, recalled to mind the two young men from the gardens that they had fought spiders alongside. He never had found out why Elex had been so keen on joining the pair for the event. As Jack, it would have been unthinkable to ask. As Sinope, however, he believed his confidence and position sufficient enough to inquire into it.
He aimed his grin at the pavement as it greeted them. “Wouldn’t have anything to do with those guys at the gardens, would it?”
He’s asking for too much information, a voice at the back of his mind warned. You remember how Acubens, Remarque, Leto, and the others were extremely wary about revealing too much about our court to Altea. You hadn’t thought it was a bad idea then because your mirrorwraith had deemed her another being of Mirrorspace. But that didn’t prevent her from trying to kill you all in the end, did it?
He swept his concerns aside with a broom of trust - a broom that didn’t see much use. If Elex wanted to kill me, he could have already done it several times over. Besides, he’s the one entrusting himself to me right now in this form of his. He’s allowing me to walk him straight into the domain of my court; a place where he’s only had bad experiences so far. He’s had this much faith in me until now, so why shouldn’t I have some in him? Anyway, if there was one thing he was useful for, it was talking.
“By ‘they’, I mean the mirrors,” Sinope explained. “The mirrors called to us all over Destiny City. One by one, we were all summoned to the same room in Mirrorspace and we couldn’t get out. Don’t ask me why or how the place has sentience; it just seems to. I think it’s more than just a place. I’ve heard from others of our court that…” He paused, abandoning the train of thought that lead to starseeds. That wasn’t what Elex had inquired about. “...It’s got a connection to each of us Dark Mirror Senshi.” Shrugging, he theorized, “I’m thinking it has a mutualistic relationship with us - we give it energy through the mirrorwraiths, which I think are a part of it, and it returns that energy through the power it gives us to power up and use magic. Remarque says it’s more effective than trying to draw power from dead or dying worlds.” He sighed and continued.
“Um, the room that we were all summoned to suddenly began to collapse in on us; we’re not sure why. That was when a hand pulled us through another mirror and into this castle covered in crystals. A woman who called herself Queen Altea resided there along with her crystal servants. She seemed nice enough at first and we were living on her hospitality for a week and a half while she claimed to be searching for a way to get us back home.” He chuckled wryly. “The older, more experienced senshi didn’t trust her from the start and I thought they might have been overreacting a bit. But I didn’t want to touch the crystals she gave us as food any more than they did. Nearly starved myself to death, but after we started becoming crystallized ourselves, I figured if I was going to die one way or another, might as well not let it be through starvation.”
Glancing back at his peer, he hazarded, “Maybe while we were in the castle, she was using the mirrors to seek out the world we had come from to draw energy from it and that’s how you guys got sucked in. I’m still not sure how much was her and how much was Mirrorspace, but we met the queen’s old fiance imprisoned in a cell and he seemed to think the queen wasn’t who she said she was anymore. He said she had been possessed by a Chaos Seed that had fed on her grief when her world had been destroyed by a plague. She used the power the seed gave her to recreate her world, but she needed more energy to sustain it, so she harvested it from other worlds to maintain her illusion. It’s similar to how we gather energy for Mirrorspace in exchange for power, but on a different level, I think. We just power up as senshi. She was trying to power a whole world.”
By that time, the teens had reached the alleyway in which Sinope knew a full-length was concealed. The mirror itself was about five feet tall and two feet wide; much easier for them both to step through than the ones in the park’s restrooms. However, the filth, grime, and evidence of rats surrounding it caused the senshi to wince.
“Sorry about the state of the place,” he apologized, simultaneously wondering why he felt so inclined. “The dirtier it is, the more people avoid it and the less likely the mirror is to be discovered or moved.” As he picked his way through the trash and debris, kicking aside what he could to make way for the Yorke boy, he asked, “Do you always feel like you have to hold something hostage to get what you want?” The offer to tell Sinope the rest if he took Elex to the mirror first reminded the senshi of when he’d been told to bring back information from the party in exchange for what the captain had known. “You could have just asked if we could go to the mirror first or told me you didn’t want to talk about what happened. You didn’t have to make it into a business deal.”
So you were there. You watched me. But who watched you? "I wasn't aware you went to the gardens. No, it has nothing to do with them." Why bring them up now? Jealousy doesn't suit you, Sinope.
Elex walked in silence while Sinope expounded upon the Dark Mirror's absence. He spun tales of distant queens, of worlds far beyond theirs. Of court treachery, of gothic love stories. He spoke of a fatalistic world wherein the queen met her final death — if she could still be called as much by the fiancé. A bizarre tale, certainly — one peppered with minutiae to confirm its reliability. Sinope kept no great hold over his struggles with sustenance in the strange castle. He nursed a healthy suspicion of the crystals therein. But he found no great reason to suspect the queen, strangely enough. For one so hesitant around even him, Elex thought it uncharacteristic. Perhaps this Altea taught him a measure of reservation.
'Never attempt to win by force what can be won by deception'. She tried, even if she fell short.
It isn't surprising. A ruler once-failed keeps trying to resurrect her dead land. To pull prosperity's corpse from the ground. She weighed her deceptions poorly. Pity for her.
"So you led it to us." Elex paused, searching the silence surrounding them. "And the rest of her tale unfolds as dire circumstances. How Faustian." He chuckled at the irony. "So ends her reign. So begins an interregnum." So comes an unnerving parallel between the Mirror and the Negaverse. We feed an engine much the same — one that runs on souls as well as energy. It draws on that sea of power and we on it. And to what end? To warp ourselves into willing monsters. To make Leucites, and Chrysocollas, and Umbers and Schörls and Arsenopyrites. We carve holes in ourselves and fill it up with chaos. And you feed your Mirrorspace for the power you hold in the same way. How much of you went missing, Sinope? How much of you is Mirror? "What do you think should be done with that time? Who would vie for its consumptive power?"
Elex let slip his hand from Sinope's upon reaching the alleyway, where grim and grime and garbage met them in full fragrant force. His step tapered off while Sinope ran ahead, and Elex laced fingers behind his back. The lack of pipes to obstruct him was of note, and his arms felt too close together. "What happened to you afterward? How did you leave?"
She was trying to power a planet, while you try to power yourselves. How long until your goals are the same? Until your Court wants its own space beyond the Mirror? Is Mirrorspace enough? As your court expands, will energy be enough? The questions simmered at the back of his mind while he watched Sinope work out a path. He wondered, briefly, if courtesy enamored the boy more than talk of extraordinary powers. Perhaps that was the great divide between common and noble. How ridiculous.
He shook his head at the apology, dismissing it with the wave of a hand. His steps came slow, precise in dodging what detritus still lay under foot. He paused, however, when Sinope aimed his own jab at the incognito captain, and his face lit with a rare smile. It was short-lived, fading out not long after its birth, but his eyes trained on Sinope with certain interest. How about that. You're not dead between the ears after all. Elex could dispense a straight answer for that. "… Yes." The confirmation sounded too direct to him. "The Negaverse is full of cutthroats, crooked morals and criminal culture. Business deals are how you navigate the waters without losing face. Or threats, but…" He shifted his gaze to the grimy mirror. "I'm not much of one."
He paused, then added, "I said I'd tell you who I was with. Anakeion was her name, a squire of Castor. She was all distractions and bristling energy. I could've drained her; she wouldn't have noticed.
"I don't know about the wraiths. They moved too quickly -- in shadowy packs."
”Yeah...after the last big event held at those gardens last year, I figured I’d keep an eye on the ongoings of the latest one just in case. I was surprised to see you there, but you and your group looked like you were able to handle yourselves. And you know me; I don’t like involving myself in stuff like that if I can help it. Too much trouble, not enough merit.” He waved a hand dismissively. “I did happen to notice a bit of hand-holding then, but I couldn’t tell if it was just to keep you close for safety or for more intimate reasons.” Beaming slyly at the captain, he inquired in a silk-smooth manner, “What were you doing with him, Elex?”
Sinope tugged down his hood to scratch his head. It was getting kind of warm with it on. “Led it? I guess you can say that - if you count living here as ‘leading’. It’s not like we told it where we came from or even knew what it was doing. And I’m just hazarding a guess. For all I know, it - or ‘she’, I don’t know - could have just sought out the closest world or the highest concentration of powered beings or something.” He cast the other teen a peculiar smile. “If you’re talking about the power that consumed Altea, I think the lot of us learned it’s best to leave it alone unless we want to end up like her. We only take as much energy as we need so we don’t have to drain people to death.” He stretched his neck, rotating it and rolling his shoulders before answering the additional questions.
“When the queen - Altea - found us talking to her prisoner, she tried to convince us not to listen to him, but the fact that she had hidden his existence from us was enough to breed suspicion. Then she turned on us and tried to lock us in with him. The guy - Taran - told us how we could leave, but he didn’t have the strength to escape with us, so we had to leave him. We had no idea how many years he’d suffered there, but he seemed about ready to die once he made sure we knew what he did about what she was and how to defeat her.” He performed a series of few more vague gestures as recounted what happened after. “Slipped out through a secret tunnel in the wall. Went to the library where she must have been looking for something because there were pages and books everywhere. The stuff wasn’t written in English, but somehow we could read it. It was basically a journal detailing Altea’s descent into madness.”
Sinope took out one of his mirror shards and held it up for Elex to see. “The wraiths that we summon using these - evidently, they were living beings, too. You know how the Negaverse corrupts people into youma? I think Mirrorspace corrupts people into mirrorwraiths. Altea had turned people from the worlds she had conquered into these things to gather energy to sustain her fantasy.” Pocketing the shard, he continued.
“After that, it was just a matter of finding her in her room and throwing everything we had at her. The Chaos Seed gave her enough power to withstand us for a while, but eventually we beat her. Then she and her illusionary world faded away and there was a Golden Mirror that appeared. When we stepped through, we found ourselves in this weird pocket-dimension that looked almost like real space. The ‘stars’ of this space were really mirror shards, though. We call it the Mirrorscape now.”
Shrugging, he said, “I didn’t stick around to find out much more about it, though. After a week and a half being held captive with nothing to eat but crystals, I just wanted to go home. Going back through the Golden Mirror again returned us to Mirrorspace and from there we could finally mirrorwalk back to Destiny City.”
He nodded toward the mirror. “You ready to go in?” The senshi held out his gloved hand. “It’s going to be like jumping into a pool, so you’re going to need to hold your breath when we go through. And you can’t let go of me until we’re in completely. Otherwise you might get trapped again.”
Was that...a smile? And not the one that had given Sinope the creeps before. Why had he been so eager to banish it again? For a moment, he had almost looked…
Like I can talk, he realized. Didn’t I use deals like those to try to justify accepting help from others? Isn’t that how I kept them at a distance, keeping score and making sure I repaid debts so no one could confuse them for favors? That’s how I kept them from being personal; from allowing people to think we were friends. So why am I calling Elex out on it now? The senshi’s lips were a thin, hard line as he stared unseeingly into the mirror. Do I want him to rely on me? Do I want to rely on him? To call him a friend?
“‘Not a threat’ my a**!” he laughed, the sound full and well-practiced. “Maybe not right at this second, but a threat from you would carry enough weight with me.” His manner mellowed and he resumed a mild smile. “But this isn’t the Negaverse and I’m not an officer. Nor am I one of your well-bred peers whom you need to retain a reputation with. So, if you think you can afford to, take out that stick up your butt and relax a little.”
Without waiting any longer, he reached out to curl his fingers around Elex’s slender ones and faced toward the mirror. “I take it you didn’t drain her then,” he uttered, his gaze shifting to appraise the young man out the corner of his eye. His unspoken question lingered between them, but instead of voicing it, he said, “Don’t forget to hold your breath,” and took a step into the reflective glass that rippled upon contact.
Sinope gave a torrent of information, and the lot of it burned in his mind while Elex took the proffered hand. A short jaunt led them to the mirror, which bent under the force of Sinope's will and rippled its inflective welcome around them. Elex felt the reflection pool its cool water around his skin, lift his hair, and suspend his clothes away from his body. The first step brought him to a familiar embrace --
Another world. He felt it at once: smoke stilting upward like coral, and the pair meandering through its vast planes of emptiness as fish in the sea. He felt hunted in a way, surrounded by the same nothing that mocked him so mercilessly before. And to have trusted his fate so wholly to Sinope, to return to a realm that would sooner see him dead — the dread allayed by sudden action now welled up around him. The lot of it chafed him, towed him under to a realm thick with nervous bile. His breath railed furiously against his chest, asking for an out. A single respiration to sink him into the mirror's endless grasp — his grip grew white over Sinope's black glove.
But they were not long for transit, and soon Elex knew ground beneath his feet. His heart, fear-stricken and wanting, struck against his avian ribcage. He heard his blood beating through his ears. He looked about himself, at the stark cavern of nothing, the vast halls of empty. This was no place. This wasn't like any city he knew. This wasn't like the Negaverse's endless caverns of desiccated dreams.
Mirrorspace felt cold and alien.
He did not forego Sinope's hand, instead allowing his eyes to rove the vast, impersonal space. "That…" He paused, sighed sharply. The sound of his nerves echoed through the place, like his every vulnerability hung from the mocking walls. "I'm sorry." He brought a hand over his mouth, concealing a smile better left to darkness. "I wasn't expecting that." But who can predict the strength of fear's grip? We can't know ourselves any better until we shudder and writhe in fear's grip. I shouldn't be so childish about it. I'm a captain of the Negaverse. Or does that position mean nothing to me?
He walked a couple paces within Sinope's tether as he tested his legs. The muscles felt sore, cramped from undue time spent clenched. His ankles popped with each step. "You were watching, weren't you? When I was with the brothers? Then you should know Rowan pulled me away when he saw the spiders. Or does jealousy have your ear today?" He looked to the senshi, expectant, and wholly unwilling to look at anything but the lone figure in that space. Its nothingness haunted him. Its emptiness harrowed him.
Its foreignness left him cowed.
So the things that come from here were human too. Maybe from a different world. A different plane entirely. But they've had no hand in making these wraiths? Do they not come from people put through the mirror? His threat to Erol — would he be one of these creatures by the end of it? Elex clenched his jaw; the question was better left unsaid. The Negaverse's brutality knew no equal. Even if wraiths arose from the people trapped in mirrors, the senshi themselves could never directly cause such a transformation. They couldn't wrench starseeds, and likely never drained someone to death. They lacked lethal weapons. They lacked forceful magic that he'd seen. And the lot of their kind hid away for the better part of the war — ever dreaming, ever teeming, ever scheming.
"It's here that I felt it most," he ventured. Elex forced himself to look up toward the smoky emptiness where a ceiling would linger. He could only guess how far the walls extended — if they ever ended. "My ineptitude. As a captain, as a Negaverse officer. Here, I could do nothing. The Negaverse eroded so much of me to make me what I am — and here, all those changes were insignificant. I hated that feeling."
The Dark Mirror Senshi continued to keep a close eye on Elex as they stepped through, but it was the increased grip on his hand that spoke the loudest volumes. He wondered if the other’s shortness of breath made it more difficult for him to sustain it through the journey, brief as it was. Panic’s pressure likely only compounded that hardship and Sinope gave his peer a tug in order to pull them through quicker.
He had expected the glamoured captain to release his grasp as soon as they entered Mirrorspace, but his hold was not relinquished. Sinope studied the young man beside him with a look of carefully-measured curiosity, but his chest clenched in concern. “What are you sorry for?” he asked once he was apologized to, a somewhat forced grin springing to his face. “Mirrorwalking definitely takes some getting used to. Maybe we should rest a minute.” His eyes shifted to the ever-changing backdrop of appearing and disappearing doors and passageways in order to spare Elex the intensity of his gaze.
“Welcome to Mirrorspace, where almost nothing stays the same.” With his free hand, he gestured to a pair of towering double doors against a far wall - the only doors that stayed consistent. “That leads to the Throne Room. And that,” he stated, indicating a massive, gold-framed mirror off to the side, “is the golden mirror I mentioned that appeared only recently. It’s the one that leads to the Mirrorscape, but I haven’t tried going in since it appeared.”
The popping of joints caused Sinope to inwardly cringe as Elex experimented with walking. As much as he savored basking in the attention of his companion’s direct gaze, he was all too aware of his discomfort. The scout snapped his fingers. A plain wooden stool about half his height suddenly materialized before him. He frowned at it. “I was going for a couch,” he muttered under his breath before attempting another snap. It was instantly followed by the appearance of a reasonably plush armchair. “Close enough.” He gave a little bow to Elex with a playful wink, sweeping his unoccupied arm toward the chair in a soundless offer.
“I asked what you were doing with him, not what he was doing with you,” the redhead clarified, his smile painted with his amusement. “So the one holding your hand was Rowan and he has at least one brother among your group.” He chortled and leaned on the back of the armchair, beaming at Elex. “Jealousy? Who said anything about jealousy? Why, do I have reason to be?”
The Senshi of Slyness reached out to play with a few strands of the other teen’s dark locks over the top of the chair’s back. “I had assumed you were assigned to observe him for some Negaverse duty or other. He is pretty good-looking, though, isn’t he? That Rowan.” With a few peals of soft laughter, he began to speculate. “I imagine the one in bright green wasn’t a relation, but they didn’t seem like they were dating, either. And if the other one was his brother, I wonder if he’s single.”
Allowing the term to linger on the air, Sinope became more adventurous in his exploration of Elex’s scalp. He removed a glove and gently wove a few digits through the soft, thick tresses of darkness. Simultaneously, he continued to absorb the reverberations of the other teen’s voice, processing each word and digesting their meanings. His sight unfocused and when he spoke again, it was as if from somewhere far away.
“You hated it? So not anymore?” he questioned. “Why? For the same reason you didn’t feel the need to drain that squire?”
Elex struggled with banishing his dazed expression. He knew only memory of hours spent in a room, searching fruitlessly for an exit, while Anakeion prattled on about her limitless inhibitions. Here, a catalogue of furniture -- ancient and modern -- flickered and started through the corners of the room. Snapshots of life, first too acute or too angled, then drawing into focus in a digital distortion. Doors flashed in a blink, gone as soon as they came. Hallways drew themselves out before becoming walls. Sinope explained a throne room, he gestured to a golden mirror, but Elex could not yet find his voice. Coiled as it was against the back of his throat, he could no further dislodge it.
Falling into expectation's step provided a familiarity for him, so Elex took the proffered seat. It felt as expected -- firm, overstuffed with material, and rough in its threadwork. An ancient habit surfaced when thin nails plucked ceaselessly at the riveting decorating its fore. The action to sit back against the chair was a conscious one, a deliberate one, and the pressure against untouched skin felt entirely foreign. Fingers entwined in his hair, chasing his pulse, and Elex closed his eyes.
So you have sway over this place. Does it yield to you like youma? Or are your thoughts just expressions to it? But even youma aren't perfect servants -- they've often betrayed us.
Us? Who is us?
"Do you have reason to be?" People think of jealousy as a sign of commitment. They crave the thought that their lover would kill for them. Die for them. Fight for them. But how much is jealousy worth? It's all just blood breaking on the rocks. "You paid attention to it, Sinope. Asked about it. Doesn't it get under your skin? That he was the one holding my hand, and not you?" He couldn't look to Sinope; his gaze instead found the golden mirror, brilliant and looming, that showed him their faces.
Elex drew a steady breath, the tightness in his chest unabated. Glamour-skin constricted him so. "I've been watching him for a while. I drained him once. I knew him from before." Elex paused, chewed his lip. "I wanted to see how he reacted to it. His truth. Destiny City is built on lies -- on science over mass hysteria. The rash of comas are medically explained away, with the public placated on paltry explanations. They close newspapers with the thought that it couldn't happen to them, and move on with their lives. So when I drained Rowan, and I recognized him, that became an opportunity. How much would he lie to himself about what happened? How much would he lie to me? And what would it take to pry out the truth? How much would I have to play the north star?" He sighed, his breath catching.
Fingers pressed to sternum, rubbing slow circles through the material. He smirked, snorted. Is everything a grand plan to you, Sinope? "The squire threatened to break my ribs. Knights deliver on those threats.
"And what I mentioned before -- I wasn't talking about now."
The other glove slid off and Sinope stuck both in a pocket. He couldn’t say why he did so, exactly, other than perhaps restlessness...and impulse. With his hands free to feel directly, he placed them atop of Elex’s head before languidly feeling his way down each side of the other male’s temples. Continuing the steady journey downward, the senshi brushed his ears as he perused his cheeks, lingering along his jawline and indulging in the contours of his neck before finally coming to rest, one hand each on either of the other male’s shoulders.
His touch was light at first, gradually increasing with more applied pressure through his thumbs and fingertips. The teen had often given his mom and occasionally his dad massages along their backs and shoulders, and over the years through trial and error, he had developed a sort of sense for how to provide a decent-enough experience. He knew how to ease knots of tension, but also that it varied between people what spots were more tender and which felt better with more force. Sinope took the initiative to navigate the unknown territory of his peer’s shoulders and back, testing each centimeter with deliberate care. It gave him something else to do other than think and he bent his head to concentrate on the top of Elex’s head rather than any of the surrounding mirrors covering the ever-shifting walls.
He contemplated adhering to the ruse that he may have found Rowan attractive; that it may have been Elex who he was jealous of for holding Rowan’s hand rather than the reverse. A few seconds of pondering concluded that such an attempt would have been futile. However much Elex may have suspected or known, Sinope didn’t consider himself accustomed enough to the matters of romance to convincingly persuade him or anyone else that he felt things which, in reality, he did not.
Furthermore, he had promised Elex he wouldn’t toy with him. He had given his word and was bound by it. The sailor scout closed his own eyes and sighed. He leaned over to press his lips to the top of the other boy’s crown, remaining to inhale his fragrance.
“Heh...cut me some slack, will ya?” he pleaded quietly against the forest of raven hair, his request spoken through a fond smile laced with pain. “I’m trying not to be unreasonable, here, but you’re just calling me out like it’s nothing.” Rearranging his arms, he draped them loosely across the front of the glamoured officer’s chest. “You held my hand earlier too, didn’t you? I should be content with that. I’m just not…” He compressed his lungs in a deep exhale. “...not used to wanting to be close to someone, so I’m trying to teach myself what moderation in this context. It’s taking time and more self-discipline than I’m used to requiring, so please go easy on me.” I don’t want to be greedy and crave more of you when I don’t know what I have right now, if that’s even anything. Stop enticing me while I’m trying to ignore this. I need it to pass.
He buried his face deeper in that thicket of ebony locks, planting a couple more silent, soft kisses where he thought they might not have been detected as he marinated in the music that was Elex’s soothing tenor. So, you enjoy gauging other’s reactions, too, the redhead thought. Testing him, guiding him… Isn’t that toying with him? Is that why you were avoiding my question; because you didn’t want to admit to the nature of your behavior? “Well, I can definitely relate to wanting to learn more about people - especially regarding how much they’re willing to try to fool themselves and others in denial of the truth.”
The super senshi raised his head from its perch atop Elex’s so he could examine its individual strands. “Oh, is that all?” Sinope murmured. “I can’t guess what she might have been able to do with you forcing a column of smoke down her throat like you did to me, but heck if I know what squires or knights or whatever are capable of.” He finally withdrew his arms from about the captain’s shoulders and chest, circling around to the front of the armchair.
Sinope bent forward, placing a hand on each arm of the plush piece of furniture so he could hover over its occupant and inflict upon him the full effect of his obnoxious, boyish, lopsided grin. “Okay, then. Past threats of broken ribs aside, what feeling are you getting from being here right this second?”
Elex eased into the touch, his breath rising and falling with the ministrations across his features. Fingers trailed gooseflesh in their wake -- a gift of connection too long missed. He shut eyes, leaned into hands that expressed their wordless adoration over weary shoulders. Lips touched his scalp in a manner unspoken -- a sea of heat rolling out from Sinope's steady breaths. Elex reveled in the quietude imparted, in his placid grounding.
Arms fell over his chest and Elex tensed perceptibly, holding the tautness of muscle for a moment, until fleeting anxiety dispersed to the chaotic world. And why should I fear it, being an officer myself? I don't have a traitor's heart. Nevertheless, his lips pursed to a thin line.
"Go easy on you," he echoed, his voice distant in its softness. Like I still hold your throat in my hands. "Why?" What will that do for you, Sinope? What will that do for me?
You still think of people as playthings. Elex rested in the easy safety of grasp, of a stable chair in a flickering realm. Wefts of hair swung lazily with Sinope's passing breath. Like they're petri dish projects for your entertainment. Do you have a goal? Do you know what you prod, Spectator? Even me, even now, you ply for your scientific results. You never thought of others in the way you think of yourself. They're objects to you. Simpletons. Irritants. Interests. Joys. Playthings. But they're never people. Yet you chose someone who isn't a person by law. Who isn't human. Who isn't bound by human empathy.
Pity for you.
Sinope relented, withdrawing touch and grounding by imparting his mocking tones. His jeers, his jabs. The very ilk for which Elex first saw fit to destroy him. Even now, his inhumanity rankled at the implied cowardice. But Elex held fast to his tongue, his thought, his proper posture. Hands slid from their place on the couch to interlace over his stomach, and in turn, Sinope claimed the arms to hem in his too-human guest. His stupid smile belied his interest in contempt as much as his enjoyment of such manipulative action. He asked for Elex's feelings, caged him, and expected an answer.
So Elex stood in the short space given, with his fingers tucked under Sinope's jaw. A light touch urged the boy to tilt his head with Elex's rise. He searched Sinope's eyes for hesitation, fear, excitement, resentment, surprise. And when he spoke again, he spoke not in the latent sharpness that he learned over the short months, but with a knowing cadence borrowed from an older soul. '"There is something to be learned from a rainstorm. When meeting with a sudden shower, you try not to get wet and run quickly along the road. But doing such things as passing under the eaves of houses, you still get wet. When you are resolved from the beginning, you will not be perplexed, though you will still get the same soaking. This understanding extends to everything.'
"Let me show you the storm." His hands slid back and interlaced over Sinope's nape, gating his retreat. With a tilt of his head, Elex pressed his wordless afterthoughts to Sinope's lips in a slow, deliberate breath.
