- (set after devils be and strength of will for clarity)
“Do you want to live?” He says, the first time they meet in the Ivory Hall.
Thorne looks at him and does not know how to answer. Yes. No. I am existing, but that’s not enough. Thorne looks at him and does not know what to say.
The second time they meet, the Other appears in the door of the alcove long after everyone else has left once more, a soft lullaby of sound in the depths of his throat. His hands are restless. Thorne can tell because it is his habit. It is his body, his traits, down to the curve of his mouth and the scar that ruts against his neck, the ink that traces his heaving chest. It is his, it is his.
“Hello,” the other Thorne drawls, a soft purr of sound. “Bad time?”
Bad time? Bad time? Thorne snarls at him in response. Go away, he thinks, but the words do not come to his throat. No closer. He steps back, stumbles. His movement is clumsy. Melany would be angry at him. She would throw him to her dogs. He backpedals past the glass divider and his double follows him, laughing, a sound that is destructive and cruel.
“Bad time, indeed,” he laughs, as though to answer his own question.
With one easy step he is up onto the raised platform that the divider rests on. The sound of his boots echo and scuff off of the concrete. The water continues to drip around them, but the plants have gone silent, silent. They do not want to be seen. Do not want to be heard. There is a monster lurking in this room. They do not want to be heard.
“Why are you here?” Thorne asks, and his voice comes out vibrant and burning, broken and afraid. He is breathing hard again. The door is too far for him to run to. There are no windows here that open into an escape. The plants turn the room a deep shade of emerald and blue. Fairy lights ghost and dance in the air. But even they seem to shudder in the doubles presence.
Here in the darkness, there is nothing and no one but them.
“Why?” The double drawls. He teases the word through his mouth like pulling teeth. He draws a breath and cocks his head to the side. Animal. It is Thorne but turned to the wrong angle. It is Thorne but – it is Thorne.
“To finish our conversation of course. Do you want to live?”
“Why do you care?” The words come out a bite, a snapping of teeth and a lurching, desperate snare of sound.
“Because it matters,” The double says with a smile, “It matters to me.”
He touches the bruises at his neck. His eyes find Thorne and he is wicked and sure of himself. A body possessed. Something unbroken. Better than him. A thought slides like a knife beneath his skin, deep into the marrow of his bone.
Maybe it is better this way.
“I don’t have to answer to you,” Thorne responds. His voice is molten. It is more alive than it has been in the last three months. Threat rolls against his back, the hollow of his teeth and the ache in his jaw. And oh – it isn’t something he has felt in a long while. Something that Melany had beaten out of him, because sooner or later the fear dilutes. Everything fades.
You run away from yourself. You run away.
The doubles expression drops. His smile fades.
“Then,” he says softly, cruelly, “What do you want, Thorne? What do you need?”
To be free, Thorne thinks, helplessly. To go home. To sleep and know I can. To dream and know it won’t be her at the bottom, waiting.
But Thorne doesn’t say any of this. He doesn’t give in. His heart jackrabbits against his chest, a hummingbird pulse fluttering against his neck. His mouth sets into a terrible, cold line. And it is the expression of someone shutting down. Someone going away. Someone running. Someone running away.
He recoils the moment his double lunges at him and the room atrophies into chaos. There is a sound of shattering pots, water surging across the floor. Flesh and bone connect in a hideous rapture of sound. Thorne’s head hits the cold stone and stars burst to life in his eyes. Above him is the image reflected of himself. The scent of dirt cloys the air, plants spilling to the ground. The scent of metal burns in his mouth, ferrous, like an ancient copper penny. Like blood.
“Don’t,” he gasps out. “Don’t – “
“Fight back,” his twin responds, and there is a sickening crack as his head slams to one side, the ghosting, hot-white pain of knuckles seared into his cheek, the corner of his bruising eye, his nose.
Thorne looks up and the ceiling above him flickers. Black and hungry. Alive with the light of stars and galaxies, thousands of light years away. He wants to go away. He wants to –
Another sharp resonance of pain. Thorne blinks and his twin is looking down at him, eyes violent and alive beneath the mask.
“Fight back,” he says again, softer now. “Tell me that you want to live.”
And does he – does he?
Existing isn’t enough.
His twin blinks, and his hand slips against Thornes bruising cheek, his fearful eyes. He leans in close and Thorne recoils on instinct, his head slamming against the floor. Something wet slips against his skull.
His twins mouth parts, red, red, red.
“Fight back like he did. Fight back like your teacher. I’m here because of him. You should have seen the way he breaks. It’s beautiful. Maybe next I’ll mark up that redhead.”
Thorne feels like his whole world twists beneath those words. Shatters open into something new. A warm hot core flares inside of him. His heart beats a summer-warm song into his skin.
Thorne does not recognize himself in the destruction that follows. It is nothing but a brawl, a bruising cacophony of fist and cheek and bone and flesh, blood scattering to the floor and pots breaking, plants crashing down. His double is stronger though, stronger by will, like a comet trail blazing into the night. He is angry and fervent and alive. He is everything that Thorne should be but isn’t.
Purpose runs through him like a current. Thorne does not yell when he is thrown through the glass divider, the fall shattering him apart with a thousand warning bells of pain. His double picks him from the ground with ruthless efficiency. His back screams in atrophy as he is forced back and back and back, until he hits a wall, until they are breathing together in a different sort of atrophy.
“Answer me,” his double says, and it is a snarl, a crushing demand, his nails snaring the tight scars along Thorne’s arms, dragging across them ruthlessly, hungrily.
And it is panic, raw and open like a wound, that makes Thorne shout back at him.
“Yes,” he snaps and shouts and howls into the empty space, his voice rising higher than it has in months – years – “Yes!”
His double rears back, cruelly amused. His eyes burn brighter, as though he has been brought awake. His body – Thorne’s body – shudders, as though violence brings the monster in it closer to the surface.
“Why?” It is not a question so much as a demand. He asks it in a voice that does not belong to Thorne’s body. He asks it, and Thorne crushes his fingers into the soft flesh of his doubles shoulder, heartbeat surging into his throat.
Why? Why?
Because of Aleksy. Because of the teacher, who had done something – who had been hurt because of this. Because of him. Because of his cat, his life before, whatever was left of it in his mind. Because of Leila, Chel, Shun, Jeremiah. Shiloh. The people here trying to do something, anything. The people here who had been hurt because of him.
“Because I care about them,” Thorne snarls out. And it the first thing he has said that hasn’t been beneath the heel of Melany’s boot. “Because you hurt them wearing my face.”
“Can you forgive me?”
Thorne exhales sharply. The answer is like acid on his tongue.
“No.”
Laughter cuts through the air. His double is nothing but flashing teeth and wild eyes, every part of him an inverted reflection at the wrong angle. A monster wearing his skin. Get out, get out, get out.
The other Thorne leans in, too close, his breath brushing sharp against the corner of his jawline. Burning a path of fire up to his ear.
“Good,” he purrs, snarls, right into the shell of Thorne’s ear.
Thorne watches, mesmerized, angry and hot and burning, as his double leans back. He does not step away, does not seem to dare to. They are stars in collision, but this galaxy between this is nothing but heat and danger, a hot coil of clashing creatures and gnashing teeth. Violence ran through them, a current connected, charged and volatile.
“Let’s play a game,” Thorne’s double says. He is positively radiant, a cruel flame burning hotter and hotter into the night. A comet trail going higher, searching out a new system to crash into. To destroy.
“And if I refuse?”
The smile turns wicked.
“You don’t.”
The double reaches up, and Thorne watches, mesmerized once more, as the mask comes undone from his face, the final piece of his puzzle that separates them in their entirety from one another. For his part, he does not recoil when the warmth of it is pressed to his face, the rabbit mask gleaming gold and blue and black, singing its lullaby tune. The golden droplets wink in the half-light.
There is a promise in the gesture, and Thorne thinks that it cannot be anything good. This isn’t a gift. It is not, it is not. Thorne thinks about rebuking it. His body aches for it, for a familiar violence that doesn’t hinge on words.
But he stays frozen instead, watching through the slit gouges in the mask as his double laughs and leans close, head cocked to one side in one fluent motion.
“Why?” Thorne breathes. Anger digs into him. An old, familiar hunger in his bones. The answer hangs like a noose in the air between them. It could slip onto either one of their throats. They both knew the ghosting feel of Melany’s hands on it, pulling tighter with every misstep.
And this – this has to be a misstep.
But his double only laughs again, a smile cutting into his face. He rakes his teeth over Thorne’s jaw. He whispers his game into the shell of his ear.
“Because I want to be the one to do it, to destroy you,” he says easily, “And I want you to watch. When I take everything from you, I want you to watch. Death is boring, easy. So keep fighting back. Don’t let this game grow sour.”
“And you really think your mistress would approve?”
“Mother, mother, forgive me,” the double responds, “I’ll gladly take her punishment, if it comes to that. And don’t forget, she is your mistress too.”
With ease, his twin digs a cruel set of fingers into Thorne’s chin and pulls his head down so that he can kiss the unmasked crown of hair above the golden rim.
“Keep fighting back,” he says, and Thorne lashes out but the double darts away, spinning as he laughs, his cloak coming undone and falling from his shoulders. The tattoos gleam against his skin, somehow more wicked in the light. In his dark and hungry form.
“Why do you care?”
The double cocks his head to one side. His eyes are gleaming. Bestial. Inhuman. Still wearing his skin.
“Because I’m going to take everything from you tonight,” he says, cruelly, mercilessly, “And when I do, you will know that you did everything you could to stop me. And it still was not enough.”
“You’re wrong,” Thorne breathes, snarls, snaps. His hands curl into painful, aching fists, but his body atrophies, and a small part of him curls inward. Whispers, it’s true, it’s true, it’s true.
“Am I?”
The double spreads his arms wide. A silhouette of black against a broken scene. His smile is nothing but teeth, but a snare of violence wearing his skin.
“ Then come and prove me wrong.”
The double steps back, laughing, but Thorne is suddenly lunging. The sound is a ricochet. They slam against each other again, two bodies in atrophy, struggling against one another. But Thorne is spitfire and ashes and waking up, waking up. <******** you," he spits, hot, "******** you."
His arms seize on his twins shoulders and he forces him back into the door.
The mask - the mask he claws from his face like it is something vile. Something edged in acid. No, he thinks, brittle and cruel and unrelenting, not this way.
And it shatters to the ground between their feet, the musical notes of the ears suddenly screaming.
Thorne looks at it and back to his twin. Their breath stings the air, a heavy sound that fills the room to its edges.
"No," he says and suddenly his voice is gentle. Suddenly, it is a different sort of strength in the air. "I will win this my way."
I will not let you survive.
