ORIGIN - But No One Came

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Belladonna was a glutton, drunk off of her recent victory. She'd subjugated that stupid cub to the abyss, won over him till he was a crying worm, made him fall to his doom after nothing more than a pretty mirage...and though she'd had her skin torn, that was fine. It was clover who'd suffered while Belladonna enjoyed the show, and when she'd healed and healed and healed, there were no scars to show for it. Belladonna could care less.

This time, as she walked through the forest, there was someone specific she was hunting now. She could taste his pain from this far away, and the shadows that swirled around her whispered the awful horrible things that had happened to him. She could hear it, hear his suffering, his broken mind, and the beautiful, wondrous opening there in his soul to rend and tear and shatter him. She could feel the need to break him in her mind, her blood, her dna, her genome; ever fiber of her needed to make him like her.

And the best part, the wonderful part, was that him and Clover had met before. And she knew exactly who to use to break him with.

She envisioned his son in her mind, this small, cute little tamarin, and started to create the image of him in her mind, and demanded it come into being. She could envision his wide, innocent eyes, his incredibly small hands, his gem over his forehead, but the image was hazy - she hadn't seen him in a while. Bringing him into being was similarly hazy, like his edges were ill defined, and she smeared it away. It wasn't enough.

"......."

Belladonna closed her eye, delving deep into Clover's memory of the little family she'd entertained with her cutesy, stupid piece of shit story. She could've made that one so great; had the dragon rip them apart and devour some of the family, had the witch pick the leftovers and serve them for her dinner, but no, she had to make it 'light'. Ugghhh.

But she went to Clover down in her prison in the raging sea, and rattled the bars, smiling. Clover was down for the count, unconscious, and she knew she was glad of that after what her precious cub Vicktor had done to her. Poor, unfortunate soul. She plucked the memory from her and savored it, ripping it apart for the piece she needed, the perfect image of the little child Diot staring up at Clover in pure wonder.

She used that to form the image absolutely perfectly, ever hair in its place, every habit of his she'd seen perfectly in place. Now she just had to give him his voice.

"......."

She looked at the adorable, slightly glowing image of the pure, wonderful Diot, and she had to reach for the memory again of Diot's voice. It was difficult though, because she didn't remember him saying much before Clover started her story. She tried forming one for him, but she bungled the spell, and when Diot opened his little mouth, horrible screeching hurt her ears, and she took a step back, her ears flattened against her head.

She tried again, and what poured from his mouth then was awful hissing dark filth, and she cut off the spell then, deciding she just needed to take a pause and carefully look at the memory. The victim she would soon hunt deserved something perfect and genuine, otherwise it would fall flat, and he would see through her ruse.

I will get this right, no matter how many tries it takes, she thought darkly.

"......."

The little image of Diot looked up to her now, and Belladonna reached deeper into the memory towards the very beginning, when the small one spoke in their small, wonder-filled voice to his father. Diot smiled up at her with a tentative smile, glowing very slightly - but that was fine, that was part of her plan, and it was almost unnoticeable in the white of the snow.

"So what am I supposed to do?" Diot asked her, and she derived a sick sort of pleasure from this, like playing with a doll and making them hold a conversation for her. "What do you want, Master?"

"I want you to say hello to your father, my sweetling," She said, tilting her head. Everything about him was perfect, from his habits, his expression, to his voice. He was ready. She would follow him silently in the snow, watch him as he went to see his father, and make him say horrible things that would make his father cry. "And we'll go from there."

"Alright!" He said brightly, smiling at her, and he ran away, calling out to his father. Belladonna smiled and walked behind at a leisurely pace, sure to keep out of sight to anyone who would encounter little Diot.

"Speech"

@Booker

Booker hummed, back against the trunk of one of Eridanus' many trees, shaded by its leaves. His paws were a mess of scars, but they were beautiful, in a way - at least to him. Thick cords of pale tissue cut through the pads, twisted up and under his wrists, coiled into ornate swirls near his elbows. Fire, embedded in skin with artistic sweeps, the ever-present itch of anger ready to burst from within, score new marks on top of old. An ever-growing canvas.

He supposed, in the back of his mind, that it was only beautiful because it was by choice.

The hole in his leg, filled by stringy muscle and broken shards of bone, covered over by stretched-thin skin and thatches of mushrooms, was anything but pretty. It was ugly, an itching, painful reminder of failure, one that Barnett snarled at, that made him pace at their side of the bond, fists aching to tear it in two.

There was a second puncture, overlapping the first, but it was shallow and pink. Vicktor. He didn't mind it as much. It was a lesson, more than a reminder. Eventually, everyone went sour - all of them, all of them had the potential to be so brutally powerful. It confused him why they all didn't just... take it. Grab at the chance to devour, destroy. Why some jumped at the opportunity, and why some defended themselves with remembrances of their own suffering, as if it made what they did right.

Made to destroy all of the caves. Seems so... fake, now.

All these excuses.

But he was growing maudlin in his boredom, Booker supposed, ears flicking up at a distant shout. It came closer, clearer, peaked over the nigh constant buzz in his ears, so long ago dented from his brother's roar. "Over here, kiddo!" The scribe rose to all fours, shaking off the dirt clinging to his limbs, and trotted towards the call.

@Belladonna

Belladonna was hiding behind a snow-covered tree, and she was hidden with her manipulation of the light. Just being near Booker now was intoxicating in itself - she didn't even have to do anything to him, just looking at him was enough to taste that sweet, sweet taste she craved. She wanted more, though, nothing was ever enough with her. She needed him broken completely so she could carry his tiny little half-dead corpse to her den to enjoy fully. She wanted him so broken he wouldn't even move, and she could just drink deep of his pain. He still had things he cared about though....and she would simply take that from him.

The image of Diot ran up to his father and grinned up at him. "Hi Dad!" He said. "I've been looking for you for a while, and I don't know about you, but I'm hungry, so-" He pulled out a nice, juicy looking bug, still wriggling in his little hand. "So I went looking for some. Do you want it?"

"Speech"

The snow reached up to his haunches, mauled paws disappearing under pristine white with every step, and for a moment Booker allowed himself to relax, drop the ever-present anxiety-fueled guard that cloaked him so fully. It was a choking, smothering thing, leaking down his throat and settling in his lungs, and to shed it mirrored the first hit of one of his son's concoctions - a full-body change. The world swam, for a moment, before the numbat corrected himself, stopped listening to one side, grinned as Diot ran up to him, rattling off immediately.

He looked... smaller. Younger. Almost ethereal. Whatever the scribe had taken must have melded with the hallucinations that shadowed him, made Diot's image revert to old memories. Or, at least, that's what Booker could depend on, so as to bat back the tendrils of the panic attack building behind his eyes. "Aw, well, thank ya, son. I must not've heard ya earlier," he murmured, brow furrowing. He hadn't been asleep, so how could...? Well. It could be chalked up to the ringing in his ears.

No need to worry.

With a tiny smile, he sat back on his haunches, reaching out to take the offered meal... and felt nothing. His fingers seemed to waver through it. Eye widening, the numbat's hackles seemed to raise in an instant, jolting to his feet and grimacing. "Diot, drop that right now. I don't know where you got it from, but it's bad news," Barnett snapped out, moving closer to the tamarin, enough to make a grab for his wrist to shake the insect from his grip.

For a moment, there was a flicker.

And then his hand closed on empty air.

A choked whine of confusion crept from Barnett's throat, and his arm dropped, staring shakily at Diot's form. "What..?"

@Belladonna

Diot flinched and looked shocked for a second as Booker tried to grab him uselessly, then a flash of very adult-looking sadness moved across his childish face. He wiped it clear with a deep breath, then looked straight at Booker.

"Dad. I don't know how long this period of clarity will last for you, but I'm going to try again. You keep....making things up. You don't see what's there. You talk to yourself. You forget things. I-important things." Diot looked at his hands, at the dropped bug, and grimaced.

"Dad, I-I'm dead," He said quietly, looking at him with big, sad eyes. "So is Bara. You buried me, a-and Bara never came back. I'm lying under that grave, but you can't see me, a-and I don't know why."

He reached out for Booker now, but his hand passed straight through him, and Diot shivered. "Dad, please, snap out of it! I tried to help, but it- it's so hard." He sniffled, his hands wiping at his face. He looked so small now, small and defeated. "I just want to sleep."

Belladonna was very proud of this.

"Speech"

@Booker

Barnett's eye twitched at the flinch, unconsciously taking a step back. The words dripped from Diot's lips like oil, thick and shimmery, slippery in his ears, the buzzing only growing. "I'm not - no, I'm not making things up," the scribe defended, scruff rising, the flames swirling in the core of his mind flaring in defensive confusion. "I-I don't talk to myself!" The words sounded weak, shriveled, even to his own ears.

But what followed the boy's grimace hit him like a punch in the gut, a phantom pain that crept through his skin and dug into meat, rose acid into the back of his throat. "No. No, you are not dead, you can't be, w-what..." A shaky hand rose to rub at his good eye, and Barnett hissed, focused on the bond at the back of his mind. It was glowing, soft, and he almost relaxed.

Until it began to crumble.

"No! You're not dead, you're right here, I can fucking see you!" Panic seeped into his tone, teeth biting at the end of every word. His breath came in short pants, but even that came to a strangled halt when Diot reached out, hand seeming to melt through the numbat's chest, phase right back out. "No, that... that can't be right..."

Memories tickled at his vision, waited for him to flinch back again before they flooded his focus. Pain, radiating from the bond, a break as far from clean as one could get. Baratheon, dying, never getting a chance to say goodbye before the warm chain shattered. The pathway in his mind gave an eerily similar creaking groan, twisting in on itself, collapsing, shuddering with every new blow. He remembered it.

And oh, he remembered honing in on Diot, on the way his blood pulsed through his veins, how it traveled to his heart - and Mother, maybe that was when... that had to be it. He could imagine it, even if the memory was blocked. Could feel his hands clench into fists, strangle the pump until it stood still, until the life drained from his own son, until he released the spell, until the corpse fell to the ground and he grinned, victorious, high on the power.

Instead of a piece of grassy shell laid at the base of a stone in offering, there was a hole, and then a mound, but it didn't keep in the scent of rot, no, that lingered like a mark. He could almost feel the blood on his hands now, tacky and slick at once, copper in his mouth. "I... no. I didn't. I'm not a monster!" It came out a shriek, feral, like the growl of a caged-in dog.

But it was all so clear, now, and the off-kilter nature of it all made him wince, stumble back further, away from the thing because it was not his son could not be his son. Everything he'd done, everyone he'd met. It was all too perfect. Baratheon, hidden out somehow for months, without them ever crossing paths, healthy and alive. Bones, forgiving him so completely for being bonded to a murderer. Louie.

God, Louie. How could he have believed that? Was he really so far gone that he'd imagined his kidnapper falling in love with him?

This was all so, so fucked.

"Prove it. Prove that any of what you're saying is real."

It came out as more of a plea than a command.

The image of Diot's eyes widened, tears at his eyes, looking at Booker is disbelief. He skittered away two steps, his hands over his ears, at Booker's scream, and he was starting to cry. "P-prove it? How? I'm dead!"

While she was watching this, Belladonna was salivating in her hiding spot. The taste of his pain was unique, deep, aged, dark, swirling, like this sickening perfect ambrosia that she'd never tasted before. It was madness, pure, unfiltered madness, and she held the hammer to perfectly shatter the glass he was standing on before he was dropped into this delicious mess, never to return.

She called on Clover's magic while she slept, banishing her shadows temporarily, prepared to break him fully. It was hard to use the light, and her mind swam when she wrapped herself in it, her vision blacking out, and she wobbled on her feet for a second; but with Clover out for the count, she shook it off and got used to the light that made her uncomfortable in the very depths of her, and she opened her pretty golden eye with no shadows left around her at all.

She walked out of her hiding place as if she was rounding a corner, her head a little low, crunching leaves. She looked at her image of Diot standing there and Booker too, and snapped to attention. "O-Oh!" She said in Clover's sweet voice, frowning slightly. "Booker, it's been a long time! Are you- are you okay?"

"......."

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