ORIGIN

The Mother towered over him, her silver cap blooming outwards like its own canopy, sheltering him in the dark. He'd left his herbs with Dove and reluctantly trotted off towards the shadow of the mushroom, frantic to try and find a way to fix her. Painkillers were only good for so much, and if he kept giving them, she'd get so embroiled in the high she'd reach his stage, where the need itched under his skin, release from the pounding in his skull and the empty hole at the back of his head. Barnett grimaced, reaching up a hand to scratch at his face idly, tail twitching as he sat back on his haunches, scarred back leaning up against the All Mother's stalk.

His paws tingled from his near-constant use of their fire over the past few days - first in the tunnel, leaving the hair up to his elbows burnt and flaking off, then to keep the healing brew warm for Dovefeather. He turned them over, slow, analyzing the damage - pawpads with surface burns, but nothing that couldn't be healed by time. He just had to keep them clean, like Diot had shown him, like he'd told Bee. Barnett's eyes clenched shut, head shaking, a harsh breath blowing through his nose. "Stupid. Should've kept them closer," the scribe mumbled, slowly raising to three legs, circling the base of the Mother for a sign, for guidance, something to let him know how to handle everything that had happened.

He couldn't let whoever had almost killed Dove get away with it, so they were his top priority. Seek, maybe let Booker out to soften them up, destroy. Easy. Louie was harder. Booker wouldn't forgive him if he hurt the fox, for whatever reason the little weakling had cooked up, so he couldn't kill him - incapacitate, maybe. Or you could let me talk to hi- "Yeah, that went so well last time, Booker," Barnett ground out. The tiny blip of anger faded as quickly as it appeared. Two more on the list - Magdalena next. The dog was dangerous, no matter what Booker thought. She didn't care about them, it was easy to see. Booker had been blinded by his childhood memories, that much was clear. She was just another obstacle. One, two, three. Easy.

The yawning cavern at the back of their mind, opening into the abyss, slowly draining away his energy, making him fall further into the dark, making Booker flicker and go fuzzy around the edges, like he was being pulled away... well.

Barnett had no idea what to do about that.

So he sat, and thought, and stared at black

and green

and silver

until they melted into murky grey.

He'd leaned back up against the sturdy strength of the Mother's stalk, chin dropping to his chest, one paw digging into his working eye, the other tapping on the opal spikes that burst forth from the left socket rhythmically, one finger at a time. Barnett ground his teeth, stuck standing inside their shared mind, watching Booker pace by the twisting black hole that stretched the back wall, illuminated by the flame-filled core. The scribe was doing nothing but fading, inch by inch. His tail had been engulfed halfway, and his feet seemed to be melting into the floor, drips of flesh and fur dropping to the black gemstone floor.

There were little stick-figures painted along the walls, all facing towards the void, like they knew something was missing too. A few even Barn could recognize - a Diot, gem studding his forehead. Bee, perched on one of his shoulders, chest proudly puffed out. Dovefeather, though her feather was scratched out. Louie, glass prickling his feet as he walked, teeth bared at his own tail. Clover pranced through the forest with her children. Khloros walked with his head held high, Bones by his side, as if the two were linked. The dog was the only one that still moved, the others frozen - he would turn his head, stare straight at Booker, and smile. And then he would fade, for a while.

But he always came back.

There were two scratched out in fits of rage. Magdalena and Makyna were blobs of black ash. There had been a final figure, bigger than the others, but it had been swallowed by the void.

And there stood Booker, eyes locked on his alter in a sort of resigned way. Barnett was caught between the need to pull him back from the emptiness and the need to push him into it.

The heavy thud of footsteps broke him out of the daze, brown eye shooting open to focus on what was approaching, backing up and away from the Mother, needlepoint teeth bared in preparation. If it was Louie, come back for more, the fox would get a nasty surprise. If it was anyone else, well - he had a reason to live now. Dove needed his help, and Bee needed to be found.

He'd never had a purpose before.

So Barnett hissed at the sight of an absolutely massive predator walking straight towards the All Mother. The spores in his fur ached to be awakened, and he almost called on the surge of magic that made itself known when - the beast whimpered, staring at him with one gigantic pink eye. It took a step back, trembling, paw wrapped around a glowing shard as if to ground it.

Pink.

That was... important. Barnett's eye narrowed, fur still on end, prepared to dart to safety, lame leg be damned. Someone they knew had pink eyes, didn't they? Someone big, with claws and sharp teeth and the fang drove through his back leg, ripping muscle and fur away, pink bled into red, the pain as his good eye popped free from its socket, falling, falling, falling, screaming at his brother for daring to die and the numbat shrieked, tripping over himself to back up, get as much distance as possible between himself and the spectre.

Because there was no way that his exceedingly dead brother was standing in front of him, looking lost and sad.

Booker stared, grimacing, shaking his head. Barnett hissed out a breath, then another, until he could sit back on his haunches, a harsh bark of laughter escaping him. "Wow, we must be really gone if I'm seeing ghosts. Or I'm dead. Which wouldn't be terribly surprising, at this point."

The hallucination was still staring at him, almost grimacing, as if this whole little incident was hurting it just as much as it hurt the scribe. Barnett stared at it, wishing it would at least shimmer around the edges, stop breathing, do something to show how very much not-real it was, because Booker was beginning to fade faster, like he could feel it coming and wanted to escape. The dragon - because really, what the hell else could it be - whimpered again, sitting back, still staring at him, and Barn finally snapped out a "What? Why're you here now? Did Louie knock something else loose?"

And then the thing was rumbling, lowering itself to the ground, head hitting the earth just inches in front of the numbat's body, and he flinched back, ready to snap again, when a tiny, almost silent thought, completely alien, filtered through his mind. Who...? Booker jumped, eye slamming shut, focusing inwards, staring as the sound echoed through the black hole. Who...? Who? Who? Barnett wrenched back into control, staring open-mouthed at the beast, panting, bile burning his throat. "How the fuck...? Uh. I'm. Barnett? But most folks call me Barn - oh, and Booker, I guess," he tacked on, beginning to panic at just how fast the outline of the scribe was blurring, mental figure almost half-gone.

The beast stared, pinned him with one pink eye, a mirror-image of the numbat's own gaze, and Barn sighed as the gaze switched to a sort of gentleness, like Clover had carried. "Okay then. Guess the brain-talking proves my point about the being dead thing, which is... not cool, but I kinda expected it." He pointedly did not think about his brother dying, in pain and screaming, never getting to say goodbye. Whatever this thing was, it wasn't his brother. He just had to remember that, and the panic attack making his vision blur would recede.

"So, I guess that pain I felt was you losing your eye," he finally murmured, peering at the makeshift bandage fashioned around it. It would make sense for his mind to make something up like that - even he wasn't too brutal to leave the wound open and bloody, accusing. "Also, I'd like to point out that it feels really weird to be talking to a dead guy." Although considering just how many drugs he'd had in his system, including the blood loss and the stress, maybe it wasn't so much weird as expected.

Lost in thought, it took Barnett a moment to realize the dragon was going through some sort of thought process, eyes widening and then closing again. The numbat took the opportunity to edge back just a bit, enough to no longer feel every breath the ghost-hallucination-thing took. Still, he couldn't stop himself from leaning forward enough to place a paw on its snout, feeling salt bite at his good eye when it felt plush beneath his paw pad, alive.

He couldn't be alive. That was impossible. Complete impossible, because his brother had fallen to Raheerah like so many others. He was nothing more than a gem somewhere. He would have known if the most important person in his life, the other part of his soul had been alive all this time. There was a pull at his core, to check, to look through flesh and muscle to blood, see if it ran of lay dormant, prove once and for all that this was real - but he couldn't. It would be... too much. Not after everything.

He couldn't have failed at this, too.

No. Booker's head jerked up to stare at the dragon, paw retracting back as quickly as it had landed, jolting back as if burned. Alive... Brother. The numbat's eye widened, breath constricting in his lungs, shadows at the edges of his vision growing. No, no, no, no, "no, no, this is not happening, because you're dead and I would've known, you're not here!" The scribe was pushed down, Barnett stepping back, terrified adrenaline rushing through his veins. "You're not real!"

The void in their mind was shrinking at the edges, revealing angry red flesh in place of cold black opal, raw and bleeding sluggishly, the drips swallowed up by the twisting emptiness. The drawings were twitching, as if trying to escape, and Booker kept melting drop by drop, half his face gone by now, the black opal spikes staring back at Barnett accusingly.

He had to stop this before they both disappeared.

But before he could take the coward's way out and bolt, a mimic of Louie that he couldn't quite justify, the dragon was turning away, curling in on itself and opening its mouth, lined with sharp, glittering teeth, in a mute roar, as if it had been stabbed. And All Mother damn him if he couldn't leave a creature in pain, even if it could kill him in one blow. The fox was proof enough of that.

Slowly, Barnett crept back towards the dragon, hesitating, closing his eye before reaching out to touch plush fur again, gripping the strands and climbing up to perch on one of its shoulders, trembling. He hunched over, gaze opening only enough to peer at the beast's face. "U-uh... don't eat me for this, but are you okay? You kinda just. Collapsed a little, there." And if half the words were stuttered or squeaked, well, he was inches from the maw of a gigantic meat-eater. Sue him.

This needed to be done.

Or all that would be left of Booker would be a cluster of opal, glittering in the light of the flames. Mocking him.

"Baratheon Speech"

It threatened to destroy him. He could feel it searing, his fur was being burned away as he tried to bring he and his bonded back together. Inwards, he could feel the memories along with the bond threatening to break him. It wanted to beat him down. If he was not ready... it would be the end. It would kill him, destroy him. The pain would end but so would he, so would his brother. He did not want that... he wanted to live. He had too much in the caves to care for. He would not be beaten. He was a dragon! He...

Was Baratheon.

The bond snapped back into place, the searing pain ended as everything came flooding back. The pressure that had been in his head reached a climax then ceased. He could sort everything out. It all made sense now. Booker, his brother. He had ran away from his problems, ran and tried to fight them away but it hadn't worked. He'd nearly killed himself and lost his memory. Booker had been left alone, he'd failed his duty.

He would not fail again. His brother would never be left alone, no matter what happened. No matter who came between them. He was a Guardian and he would protect the one he loved. Nothing else in this world mattered, not his own stupid emotions... Not anything.

He was a Dragon and he lived and breathed for his Rider.

Outwardly he had convulsed violently in those first moments, his mouth beginning to froth and his blue tongue lolling out of his mouth. He had even stopped breathing for a few seconds. However, when the bond was fixed everything began flooding back and those emotions as he finally realized himself within his mind should have been clear.

After a few heartbeats his eye popped open and he really saw the world for the first time. He wasn't repressed behind a wall, he was truly seeing as Baratheon after months of having himself locked away. There, he could see his brother and despite the froth at his mouth and despite the feeling of great tiredness throughout his entire body, he smiled. His brother... After so long... Tears began to pool at his eye. Brother... I'm so sorry... A sound, much like a purr rumbled out of his chest. He was so happy... But oh, was he so tired.