Archive of Our Own ^beta

Lucanis used to watch the stars as a child. He was taught the constellations as an emergency navigation trick, had it hammered into him with clawing, desperate nails that dug into his shoulder–the crow perched, watching his performance. (He'd always known this was her way of caring, to erase her own faults in them, to make them safer. That he could love, and did, but the nails dug deeper, punctured holes in him that he didn't know how to fill.)

He was taught the constellations to navigate, but he made his own stories about them, created sweeping epics of heroes and villains and monsters, like the books he was not supposed to have and read under the covers at night, but Caterina turned a blind eye when he did well at his lessons.

Lucanis and Illario (who couldn't really afford to be caught, but came anyway, to keep him company, to drink up the stories) would climb onto the roof at night, lie back and look at the stars together. When he had downtime on a job, he kept up that tradition. It was bad for assassins to have habits, hobbies, but Lucanis allowed himself this one.

It's not the same, looking up in the Ossuary. He tried it, at first–to see the black water as the blanket of night, the quiet glow and swift movements of predator fish as stars.

But it is not the same. The night sky is infinite, freeing, its sweeping stories the only time the crow got to truly fly.

The ocean is not like that. It has a weight to it, full of strange things that had their own eyes and stories, ignorant of what tragic tales the people enacted above their heads.

Or of what went on, below.

*

They left him to stew, at first. Lucanis should have had training to resist such tricks, but he hadn't realised, before, how much of himself he had wedded to the stars. He spent hours staring at the wall of his cell, trying to avoid aching for a familiar twinkling darkness above, clenching and unclenching a fist.

He'd made a weakness, Caterina would say. But how could anyone expect the sky to be stolen from them?

He rehearsed defensive retorts as though he would get to hear her scolding him.

Hope is a dangerous weapon to wield against oneself, but it's the only blade Lucanis has left. As long as he feels its bite, he can survive.

After all, he still has a job to do. He feels that's one of the gaps that Caterina left in him, places where humanity could pour out and a crow could roost instead–the job possesses him, something visceral and clinging.

*

Lucanis regrets the metaphor, later.

*

Burning, tearing. Something shredding him, screeching–no, he screeches, he screams–something screeches, screams, mingling. There are spaces in him, gaps; it prizes them open; he makes keening noises, seeking shelter—no, not he—

Reality burns too fierce and too bright, the world is wrong and it won't go away, won't shift and bend. Lucanis grasps for something formless, night sky and stars ever distant, and something reaches for it eagerly, yes, yes!

Lucanis cannot offer what he cannot see. Something howls, snarls. Burning, tearing, and it doesn't stop–being prized open. He will crack apart. It doesn't stop. It never stops.

He wishes he would bleed. If he bled, it would end, colour and warmth leech away. Death can be a comfort; he knows.

Something else reaches for it too, but it doesn't know how to bleed. The warmth, the colour, the life tears it open and it hides away, deeper.

Lucanis will crack apart, but no blood will pour out, running away to freedom. Echoes will be left, shards of self, screaming and sensing the echoes bouncing back, as he is emptied.

Something will nest there, in a shell he left, trying to be safe, screaming for eternity in a mortal vessel.

They have nowhere else to go.

*

They have nowhere else to go. New wounds are opened up, and something settles in them. The lack of echo of unreality is blocked by the physicality of being.

It still burns. Lucanis doesn't think it will ever stop.

But into the something there, in those spaces, he asks, Who are you?

Hissing, discomfort. Thoughts, formless, he senses it knows; through it's essence, he sees the presence of the thoughts, the tiniest zap, but enough to sting like lightning magic.

At first, no answer. Lucanis tries to make the wall of his cell resemble the darkness of night.

Then, sensed more than spoken, something answers: Spite.

*

Burns, burns. Reality burns Spite, and Spite burns him; Lucanis would be angry, would fight, if he couldn't also sense that Spite only holds itself together through that suffering, something to form a core of self around, reality still too strange and terrifying.

Lucanis is held together by threads, too. The contract. He is just a crow, claws shredded him long ago, and he will keep going, because he can't die, and it's all he has left.

They want to test him. It’s laughable, really. Lucanis does laugh the first time, blood in his mouth, choking on it, not sure if it’s his or not, not really caring. They want to see the Demon of Vyrantium perform—they want a puppet.

You think you can use me? he thinks; or Lucanis thinks, but there is also an echo, the essence of something just behind: You think we can be used?

Spite burns with reality, but he also burns it back, a rejection of substance and natural laws. (Lucanis has always been unnatural.) He can bend reality, not quite break it, but other things shatter beneath them.

It’s laughable. Lucanis was already a tool to be used. And now what can they do with him, breaking up and open from the inside? If they wanted a real demon, they would have been better off with just his blood. Now he’s simply a monster, and as all the stories say—it’s only a matter of time before a monster turns on you.