Quote:
Occurs February 5th. Recalculated to February 19th.
”- Aaaaand here we are! Home sweet home. Familiar, isn’t it?”
The bleakness of the whitish-gray, shifting room welcomed them, reflecting the nature of the captive’s situation as certainly as the gleaming mirrors adorning the walls.
Sweat-slicked hands gripped the thick rope so hard that the taught fibers cut into his palm, but he spared no strength in tightening his prisoner’s bonds. The usual black gloves had been abandoned specifically for that purpose. Dazed though Faustite might have been, Sinope wasn’t about to risk the release of hands that could pluck a soul from a chest as easily as as an apple from a tree. Besides, he had no way of telling when the captain would fully return to his senses and he had planned this event too long not to take every precaution against its failure.
When he was satisfied with the restraint of Faustite’s wrists and arms, he subjected his peer’s bicep to his bruising hold as he yanked him forward. “Well, familiar-ish. Naturally, things are always changing around here. But don’t worry! I’m going to show you something interesting today. Step lively; we wouldn’t want to waste any precious time.” Not that the other teenager was in any mental state to take a single step even if he’d wanted to, unable to intentionally coordinate his movements. The sailor scout didn’t seem to notice, however, and dragged his companion along with the strength proportional to his rank.
There was an inflection to Sinope’s voice that had never before been present and was somehow off. He appeared positively giddy with excitement as he led his visitor to Mirrorspace through the Common Room and right up to a pair of double doors. The yawning, twin doors extended the height of the featureless wall from floor to ceiling. The super senshi shouldered these open without much ceremony; a tribute to his eagerness of revealing the surprises beyond.
“This is the Throne Room!” he announced with gusto, removing his hand from Faustite in order to throw his arms up in glee. “I never really bothered with it before, but just recently I realized the loads of fun it could be!”
The titular piece of furniture from which the room derived its name could be found directly across from them against the wall. Beside it was a large piece of glass that might have been a mirror except for the fact that its reflective surface was completely black. In close proximity to both the throne and the Black Mirror was a pale, glistening crystal mounted atop a pedestal. Long tendrils of red-black energy reached out from the crystal to a few of the myriad mirrors lining the walls like the collective scales of some colossal dragon.
As Sinope wheeled around to return his attention to the Negaverse officer, he had no fear of Faustite prematurely recognizing just who lay trapped within two of those glass prisons. Elon and Erol Yorke, each in their own respective mirrors, were cloaked in smoke, of all things, and wouldn’t have been easily identifiable even if one did know what they were looking at.
“Now, Elex,” he crooned, his damp, rope-burned hand moving up to caress the side of the captain’s face. “Be a good boy and don’t make me ask twice.” The smile on his face feigned serenity and compassion, but orbs of malice hung lidded above it with the intensity of eclipsed suns. When he spoke again, each word was slow and deliberate as if he were trying to teach an animal English. “Why did you kill Todd and Ffion Burnett?”
The question floated dreamily on his tenuous consciousness. Faustite's gaze followed the milky sound through the milky room to find a grinning mouth and grinning eyes, too-wide and too-wise to his lies. But all his where and why and when coalesced behind the impassable barrier that was his mouth — the stony passage too heavy for nerves to lift, too locked for minds to manipulate. He stared back for several long seconds as he tried to wrench the words from his tongue.
But none came. Even as his throat moved sluggishly to answer, his best efforts procured a cross of grunt and moan. Bonds remained untouched, remained anchored in Sinope's grip, remained an extraordinary impediment to returning Sinope's visceral question.
But they stood in Mirrorspace. They stood in Mirrorspace, where no outlets remained for those like him. Even if he managed to overcome Sinope, the great, blank walls of the place constricted him into its too-thin throat. They stood in Mirrorspace, where sameness was a concept too foreign to the whole of this strange, unliving space. He would die here unless one of their ilk released him. Unless Schörl's summons could reach through this otherworldly place and wrench him back into grounds familiar. And what was there to do but accept it? He could only accept his own fatal folly alongside Sinope's wretched, nearsighted goals and resign himself to a bad death. As an agent, he was warned of it. As an agent, Mirrorspace promised it.
Again he closed his eyes to the spellbound state, reaching through the bleary annals of his mind for all the cognates to the Citadel. Gathered were the stretching walls that bore down on their subjects. Recalled were the iridescent crystals that peered their unblinking gaze into every agent's business. But as he tried to scrape the floors together or recall the geometry of the space, all of his careful collections scattered like broken leaves. Each attempt collapsed, impotent.
You'd best kill me when you're through, Sinope. Preparing for the worst, he swallowed stiffly against his spit.
The hollow of his open palm was placed atop coal-black locks, patting them down and then disheveling them as questing fingers threaded through. Though the action might have been intended as some mocking parody of comfort toward the captain, the slight shaking of his otherwise brisk, jerky hands suggested it to be of an actual benefit to their owner. Whether a behavior performed to calm nerves of anxiety, enthusiasm, or both, however, was less clear.
“Oh, you poor thing. Cat got your tongue?” For a moment, there was such a quality in his voice that, despite the derisive words, some real measure of pity and concern might have been thought to have made themselves known. “Well, that’s okay. It’s the thought that counts.” It seemed a testament to the instability and inconsistency of Sinope’s mindset for him to confusedly tangle his own jeers and taunts with genuine sincerity. His true emotions became no more discernable as several took disorderly turns graffiting their vivid, clashing presence across his features, speech, and behavior whether he wanted them to or not. Sinope seemed to be nearly as much at their mercy as Faustite was. Still, he carried on as if nothing could have been more natural.
“Speaking of thoughts...You know how I always repay my debts, right?” He didn’t stop to see if his words were being listened to. He pressed on relentlessly, both in word and step. “After my parents were gone, I realized what a burden they had been to me. I mean, there I was, warning myself against having attachments to people, and all the while, I was blind to the two biggest attachments I’d possessed since birth, right under my nose!” The sailor scout swat his head to emphasize his realization before prattling on. “Ha! If I’d realized it sooner, I’m sure I would have been at a loss of what to do. Even staying away from them for months hadn’t banished the longing for them that plagued me day after day. But you! Oh, yooou... “
It was then that he finally twisted around to bestow Faustite with a manic grin, all teeth and admiration and malice and gratitude and pain. “You resolved my problem for me before I even recognized it for what it was! Sure, it took me a little while to understand, as it would for any creature born and raised in captivity to suddenly have its chains shattered. But once I did, how - how could I possibly thank you enough?”
Though there was no need to keep a hold on his captive, for he knew he had no place to run or teleport to, the super senshi couldn’t seem to keep from touching him for more than a few seconds at a time. That touch varied from rough and chafing to gentle and delicate, alternating with little or no warning according to Sinope’s fickle state of mind. Sometimes it was a vice grip on Faustite’s hair or jaw or shoulder, while at other times it was nothing more than the barest brush of fingers against his neck for the sensation of his pulse, over his nostrils to feel for his breath, or across his eyelids for the flutter of their lashes. The sailor scout seemed to require constant reassurance that his prisoner was not a figment of his imagination nor that he had disappeared into thin air.
“I racked my brains for weeks trying to come up with something. Because, you know, I can’t just let a debt go unpaid and nothing I could imagine seemed worthy of the great service you had done me. Nothing could possibly seem to convey the depths of my gratitude...but at last, I thought I could settle on something that might have come close.”
The rope clung to the captain as if with the sole intention of intimately impressing its marks upon his pale skin through his uniform. As if jealous of it, Sinope endeavored to clutch even harder, this time grabbing around the back of Faustite’s neck to yank him forward and further into the Throne Room. With the incapacitated boy in tow, he strolled past each mirror slowly enough that he could inspect their smokey surfaces until at last halting between a pair he had previously visited.
“Ah! Here we are.” With a brief exclamation of elation, the hand on the nape of Faustite’s neck opened with the abruptness of a child dropping a toy in favor of a new one. He sauntered right up to the glass of the twin prisons and simultaneously dipped an arm in each one. When he drew them back out, each hand grasped the collar of an unconscious man - one young and in the prime of life, one middle-aged with a beer belly - and hauled both forward onto the bare, unforgiving floor. Once the two were completely free of containment, Sinope dragged them toward the Negaverse officer like sandbags. He smiled down at each of them with the pride of a triumphant hunter exhibiting his long-sought, hard-earned prizes.
“It’s a pity it couldn’t have been your mother here.” The redhead bent his head for a moment, his voice touched with actual sorrow. For what reason, exactly, was anyone’s guess; Elex’s loss, the disruption of his plans, or otherwise. “But since she seemed to have already removed herself from your life and the goal was to be rid of all familial attachments, I figured we had better include your brother.” Fingers possessing power beyond their natural capabilities lifted Erol a little higher for a better examination of the eldest Yorke son.
“Now I can’t possibly know what kind of bond you still have with these people, if any. But even if they mean nothing to you anymore, this act seemed to be the nearest I could get to fully returning the huge favor I owe you.” Elon’s limp body collapsed in a heap of limbs as Sinope dropped him. Stepping in front of Faustite, he propped Erol upright as best he could, perching the older youth’s precariously-balanced torso atop the stack of his legs and slipping behind him. From there, Sinope placed a palm on either side of Erol’s face to keep his head from lolling to one side or another.
The super peered out from behind the Yorke heir’s head to refocus on Faustite. “So I know his being unconscious kind of hinders things a little. And I know you can’t move much and your speech is probably still limited. But if you want to send any final thoughts his way to get some closure, now would probably be the time.”
The floor dragged along his shoulder. Blacks dragged crass against the backs of Sinope's heels. On he spoke, he touched, he mingled. Commingled. Maligned. Faustite's mind played frivolous with the bending lines of their space. When would all the world coalesce into a static space? Would it? Can it? Should it?
The questions meant nothing. Noise. An infrasound hum to the throb of his skull. Faustite shuddered out another groan, smeared clear on the glass-tile-smoke floor.
Sinope kept talking. He spoke smoke for all Faustite could muster between the heavy lines. Sonance bleated against his ears, a pounding march, a relentless set of demands on his sluggish mind. Pieces and parts floated together by whim more than his comprehension could abide, and another word lost to his laconic muscles was pasted across the floor. When would they end? The rope drag bit and fussed him, and Sinope's ever-roaming hands fettered what thought he could muster. Smoke and speech and on and on and on.
Ostentatiousness bloomed out of Sinope's mouth like birds of paradise. In his bleary, beleaguered state he could nary count the colors in his birdsong drivel. The elation in his tone spoke enough for what was said, what was planned. Weariness still anchored Faustite's thoughts to a murky, irredeemable darkness; his vision swam through the senshi's blatant presentations, but no part of him could comprehend. Sights rolled off his shoulders and caught in the ropes at his back. Words even failed to form at the back of his mind; all sense slipped through his reason. He tasted blood on his tongue foremost, and latched to that single awareness. If he could taste pain, he could force himself through these meaningless words.
Black eyes fast-twitched to movement and he watched smoke produce thought, feeling, memory. Faustite tried to speak and produced nary a whistling wheeze that clouded the Mirror floor. Questions roiled and seethed and he seized on their vehemence to propel himself to no success. The binds on his wrists and his mind proved insurmountable, even for him.
Even for him. Even for them. No words came on another labored breath when his father's straight lines slackened. The geometric mess wound his wistful, addled mind further.
Indeed, the talk was more for Sinope than Faustite. He knew this, but he continued to chatter addressing him as though for the captain’s benefit; spouting line after line as if for some grand play. The show had to go on regardless of audience participation if it was to reach its long-awaited conclusion.
It was entirely possible that his intended audience would have no recollection of the painstakingly planned and performed show once all was said and done. In all likelihood, Faustite might not even have been able to grasp what was happening right in front of him at that very moment. But he was there and he was conscious - if barely - and that was all Sinope really needed to convince himself his efforts were not in vain. The captain still moved and saw and, the senshi assumed, felt. He didn’t speak, but perhaps that was just as well. Farewells had a way of prolonging partings.
I didn’t speak to my parents before they died, either. I had no say, nor could I do anything to slow or stop their deaths. I might have done as you did and killed your family before presenting you with the news...but how would I have known if this favor would mean to you what yours meant to me? Hazel eyes cut to the quiet breath condensing against the smooth, featureless floor. As it is, this is the only way I can convey my thanks. And still with you here, I can’t tell. I can’t tell if it’s enough.
After a minute or so, Sinope shrugged. A quick but firm, practiced rotation of wrists preceded a sharp, resounding crack that bounded off the Throne Room walls and the multitude of mirrors that lined it. The merciless palms fell away from Erol’s lifeless flesh and the oldest Yorke boy’s face slammed onto the ground as the redhead stepped over the still-warm body.
I guess, then, I’ll have to go above and beyond. To make sure it’s enough.
He didn’t even bother to wait for Faustite to react when he came around to Elon. Lifting the older, heavier man into position, the same brief, efficient series of motions put an end to Elex’s and Erol’s father before his body joined his sons’.
Sinope take the time to think about what he’d done. Not really. These weren’t lives. These weren’t people. They were nothing more than dummies; props on his carefully-constructed stage. For all his scheming, he had known that when it came down to actually carrying out his designs, he couldn’t afford to dwell on them.
The teenager simply had to act - act with the same thoughtlessness he had when he’d had when he’d attempted to use basic senshi magic on an unknown half-youma captain. The same recklessness when he’d jabbed and taunted that very same officer who had nearly killed him prior. The foolishness with which he’d spontaneously kissed him. The stupidity of ignoring his instincts for self-preservation. It only took a second. In this case, two. And once those moments in time were up, there was no taking them back. So guilt, if any arose, was pointless.
With the gesture of dusting off his hands, he focused instead on who he considered the benefactor of his labors. His mask of solemnity brightened. “Well...that was easier than expected. Almost a little too simple, especially compared to the masterpiece you made of my - of Todd’s face.” A wild cackle snapped the air. “Or the wonder of his wife’s charred insides and pierced chest. I don’t quite have the flair you do.” There was a fondness in his look, tone, and manner when he knelt beside Faustite, fixing him upright so he could cup the young man’s jaw in his palms. “But what do you think? Would you say I’ve paid my debt to you sufficiently?”
The senshi delicately swept aside the raven bangs that spilled across his captive’s pallid countenance and emphasized their contrast. He pulled that face right up to his own, peering into the pools of pitch as if he could read Faustite’s thoughts in his image reflected there.
Movement stymied, swamped in its hows, the tictoc of muscle twitch muttering blithely as time passed. Monotone monochrome monosyllabics formed before him, caricatures of the awareness he felt, of the scene before him.
He thought it was a scene. But certainty departed with its flock, circling overhead and scattering ever further when he tried to call it back. He found no sense in how the lines intersected. In how colors and lights touched one another. Mired in consternation, every chance taken to comprehend pulled him deeper. Snaked its insidious arms about his waist and towed him under.
Faustite managed a twitch of fingers, a brief struggle of lips. A voice breath escaped him but nothing more. His gaze followed the figures, belied only by the way his lids twitched seamlessly over ink. What he saw was wrong -- the thought of it struck him as urgently wrong. But struggle as he did to sleuth the answer, to pare away all the colors and shines and lines and movements that muddled comprehension. That drowned it in a sea of lurid nonsense. But in all the ways he stared and twitched and tried and thought and searched, he found nothing. A blank, incomprehensible ocean. An impassable flock of birds.
But he continued to speak, to hold Faustite's face close, and the monolith looming before the captain received just as much dull unawareness. Blinking slowly, he struggled to pull shapes together, but the scattered at his first touch. The caricatures fell abandoned, and he found nothing in the black backdrop that defended them.
Sea salt. Moondust. Copper. Copper like his copper; the metal that claimed his senshi uniform. Why did Faustite smell of it, too? That commonality warmed him for reasons he could not fathom. Rage? Affection? Lust? Pervading his flaring nostrils, the captain’s dominating scents bled into the void of Mirrorspace’s misty atmosphere with little else to mask them aside from Sinope’s own. And near as he was, Sinope could not escape them. He inhaled the olfactory memories like a drug, closing his eyes to watch the scenes dance on the back of his lids.
The danger came alive gain; the kind that had somehow been transformed into something seductive when prior, he had found it nothing but repelling. It flared in recollections like the inexplicable urge to press his lips to the other teen’s for the first time. But there was also the fear; the unfamiliar sub-species of fear he hadn’t been able to rid himself of since he recognized the beginning symptoms of compassion felt for one individual in particular. It wouldn’t abandon him, so he had attempted to abandon it - along with his once-constant companions of reason, logic, and practicality. And now where did he stand?
When the curtain of his thoughts were drawn, he made out the blurred features of Faustite’s countenance, too close for his vision to focus on. He breathed out gradually in a low, reverberating hum of contemplation, as if his captive’s slow blinks were all the answer to his question that he required.
I have to make sure it’s enough, he thought again. Here I am thanking him for severing the bonds I’d been blind to. But this gratitude...isn’t it proof of a bond in itself? Browns, greens, and blues of his irises could only reflect and absorb the blackness of Faustite’s own, tainting their hues. No...once he leaves here, my debt to him will have been settled and we can cut ties. But I have to make sure that once we part ways this time, I owe him nothing else. That I don’t want to owe him anything else.
I have to make sure.
Taking his hands but not his eyes off the officer, he fumbled and felt for the knot of the vividly-colored sash at his waist. Since his unexpected and unwilling promotion, the strip of cloth had been purple with a teal stripe - much more distinctive than the plain teal of his basic senshi days.
“You’re right. It’s not enough.” As a lonesome child performed around the desired response of an imagined companion, so too did Sinope decide Faustite’s unspoken words. Purple and teal were folded, slathered, and fastened over the endless pits of pitch with great care and haste. Once the super senshi was fully satisfied with the obstruction of his prisoner’s vision, he rose from his kneel and lifted the captain to suspend his limp body from a height closer to the redhead’s own, his hold on the other’s upper arm once more fit to bruise through cloth.
“When we came here before, Elex, I told you about the Mirrorscape, but I never got to take you there,” Sinope all but sang, his soft tones intense with anticipation of what was to come. “I have my own private floating island there, now. I thought of how you might enjoy a romantic getaway under the glitter of the thousands of mirror shards posing as stars.” The more he talked, the hotter and heavier his breath perched on Faustite’s ear and neck. A keen pressure on his shoulder combined with the instruction from the grip on his arm commanded the captain forward as the sailor scout carried them both swiftly toward the looming, gold-framed mirror back in the Common Room.
“Aren’t I considerate? I brought a bunch of stuff in advance to ensure a good time, so you wouldn’t have to worry about a thing. Think of all the fun we’ll have!” In the midst of his excitable rambling, Sinope stopped them just outside the entrance to the Mirrorscape. For the first time since their entering Mirrorspace, his wavering, insubstantial moods condensed into a glare of unadulterated hate for everything he’d lost since the two had first met. Whether he blamed the captain for his losses or himself didn’t seem to matter. They had both suffered and would both continue to suffer at Sinope’s whim. Not that Faustite had a chance to interpret that look through his makeshift blindfold.
In a few seconds, the scathing expression had cooled and peeled away like sunburned skin to once more expose the raw wretchedness of Sinope’s mad depravity. “I guess a perk of being a super senshi is that I have the power to bring a guest in with me, but we can only stay for a day.” With the doting gaze bestowed on favored toys, he beamed broadly at the half-youma. “So we’ll just have to make the most of it. Won’t we?”
It was with tragic helplessness that the surrounding host of looking glasses witnessed the gold-framed giant devour the pair of boys then, rendering the Common Room mute at the abrupt shock of their departure.
Strickenized
