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I'm doing it again.
And - I wrote fanfiction? NOT FOR BJT OMG.
Title: Mostly Dead
Fandom: The Lies of Locke Lamora
Warnings: language - lots of language, and quite a bit of blood.
Summary: Locke does a lot of bleeding, Jean makes an attempt at optimism.
Notes: Spoilery for the end of the first book.
“So fucking stupid.”
Jean sighed, rolled his eyes, and muttered, “Yes, I’m inclined to agree.”
Locke tried to roll over, eyes half-glazed. “Fucking stupid. Should have left me there. Dying anyway.”
Jean shook his head stubbornly. “Don’t be an asshole, Locke Lamora. You’re not going anywhere. What happened to the motherfucking Thorn of Camorr?” There was no response from his friend. Jean forced a spoonful of tea into his mouth. There was a moment before Locke rolled over feebly, vomited the tea and everything else he’d taken in, and spat up more blood. Then he flopped back onto his back wearily, his left arm cradled to his chest. He took a weak, shuddering breath and let it out in another weak, coughing, sob.
With another heavy sigh, Jean softened his voice. “Easy, Locke. You’re going to be all right, okay? Fuck the Gray King, fuck Camorr. Keep that blood inside where it belongs, got it?” The rough edge in his voice was too close to the surface. “You’ll be all right,” he said roughly. “Just you wait, Ibelius’ll be coming back with another poultice. The next one you’ll be able to complain about it.”
Locke opened one black eye slowly and stared at Jean. He coughed, briefly, spat out another bit of blood, and said in his nasal, broken-nosed voice, “Liar.”
Jean’s jaw tightened. “Shut up.”
Locke laughed, a mad, rasping sound not unlike the way he had laughed at the end with the Grey King. “Oh gods,” he whispered hoarsely. “Just…had to keep him there…until you showed up…oh gods…Jean, did I tell you? I sunk the ship… told them the fortune was on the shit barges, sunk the ship for me…”
“Shh,” said Jean, “You can tell me later, okay? Drink this.” He tried to force more tea into his supine friend’s mouth, but Locke turned his head away.
“Sunk it…for Calo and Galdo…and Bug…gods-fucking hell, it hurts – sunk it for them, for a death offering…didn’t want to forget…”
Jean took the moment of Locke’s mouth being open to spoon some tea into it. Locke choked and swallowed, then gagged and spat the tea back on the deck weakly. Locke shook his head. “I’m fucked, Jean,” he said, his voice stronger.
Jean shook his head. “Not if I can help it,” he said stubbornly. “Not if I can help it, you motherfucking bastard.”
Locke’s smile was exhausted. “I’ll miss you too.” His eyes drifted closed. Panicked, Jean bent his head to listen to the erratic heartbeat of his small friend, and was relieved to hear it, still there, pounding away, miraculously.
“Ibelius!” he roared, standing up and looking at Locke’s blood on his hands. The bastard thinks he can take all my friends from me. He’s not getting Locke Lamora. “Get over here and do something!”
He looked down at Locke, his skin like marble, bruised and bloody, his nose bent out of place. Jean bent and jerked it back into place, standing back to look at his friend, arm wrapped in three places, blood already oozing through two bandages.
“Ibelius!” Gods damn you, Locke, hold on.
Title: Darkling
Fandom: Nightlife/Moonshine/Madhouse
Warnings: language, again
Summary: Sometimes love is more bitter than the lack of it.
Notes: Spoilery for the end of the first book, a bit of the second.
Oh, God, but it’s bitter sometimes.
Since last year, I wake up in the middle of the night sometimes, just listening to my own breathing, to be sure that it’s me lying here, looking at my thoughts to be sure that they are mine. Darkling is like a stain on everything, even without the mirrors. Niko pretends he forgets, but sometimes when I slump into the kitchen, he’ll look up from where he’s sautéing vegetables or whatever healthy shit he’s having for breakfast, and meet my eyes for just a minute. Neither of us mentions it, but I know he’s checking my eyes for any hint of silver. It’s as much a reminder as the white line across my stomach where I died, hardly a year ago.
I’ve never asked Niko if he dreams about that. He wouldn’t answer it anyway, just give me a look and tell me to get my ass in gear and start actually running.
Yeah, Niko can feed me as much bullshit as he likes about it not being me but I know better. It wasn’t ‘Darkling and me’, it was me. It’s hard to recover from that kind of knowledge of what I can do to the only person who really matters. The fact that I shot Niko isn’t going away any time soon.
I went through a week or two when I was around twelve and I started thinking, really thinking, what would happen if there wasn’t a Niko, if it was just me. I think I scared Niko with that morbid line of thinking. I know I scared myself. The more years go by, the more sure I am that without Niko I would be mad, stark, fucking, mad. There’s no way I could live with what I am. I probably wouldn’t even be here still if it weren’t for him. It’s not a pretty thing, suicide, but especially with what happened with Darkling…
It’s corny as shit, I know that, but Niko is kind of like my Jesus, in a way. Saving my soul or whatever. He keeps me from diving headlong into hell on a daily basis, I know that. He’s never asked me for anything. Oh sure, you can argue that he runs my ass into the ground every morning and kicks me across the room on a daily basis in sparring practice; or that he’ll nag at me like my mother to keep my gun clean or get enough sleep (but not too much, mind you), but the truth is he’d do anything for me.
After that week I spent drowning myself in images of a world without Niko, he told me that if he ever caught me thinking about such ridiculous things again, he’d feed me nothing but salad for a week. So I tried a new tack, about two years later. I thought about what would have happened if I’d never come back from my first wild ride into hell.
I pictured a life with a pretty wife – no, a gorgeous wife who kickboxed in her spare time – except that maybe, if it weren’t for me, Niko wouldn’t be running, wouldn’t need to carry a sword all the time. If it weren’t for me, I convinced myself, Niko would be free to live one of those “normal” lives, like the soaps I’d watch on our apartment TV sometimes. He could have a career. A life outside a kid brother who was more than a little bit of a pain in the ass.
I made the stupid mistake of going and telling Niko that he should go and make a life for himself, that I’d be fine and dandy without him. His eyes got all cold and he just looked at me for the longest time.
“You want me to go away,
Blithely unaware, stupid little kid me blazed right on through, tears in my eyes at my grand sacrifice, sure that I was doing the right thing, the good thing, letting my brother go. I might have mentioned the gorgeous kickboxing wife somewhere in there, too. That got the first bad word I’d ever heard from him. While I was still stupefied over that, he got me in a headlock.
“I’m not going anywhere, little brother,” He said ferociously. “Got that? I don’t need anything but you. That’s family. And if you think I’m going to let you wander around
Then he made me run a lap around
I didn’t bring up Nik going anywhere again. That didn’t mean I stopped thinking about it, but I definitely didn’t mention it to my big brother.
See, now, especially after last spring, I know what would have happened if I’d never come out of Tumulus. I know because it’s come close enough to happening often enough that I know.
If I hadn’t come back, Niko would have sat there, week after week after week, just waiting. Waiting to be sure that I wasn’t coming back. Waiting, just in case I did, because Niko could not leave his little brother Cal alone. I’m quite certain that if I hadn’t come back, Niko would still be there, sitting cross-legged on the grass, waiting as immovable as a stone.
I don’t want that kind of control over someone’s life. I don’t want to be able to know that no matter how fucked up I get, no matter what I do, Niko’s going to be there and defending me. I don’t want him giving up everything for me. That’s just a good way for him to die, and then we’ll both be totally screwed. I can’t live without Nik, and Nik won’t live without me. I wish I at least had something to offer him.
Because I don’t, I bitch about cleaning my gun, give him nicknames like Cyrano, poke fun at him, refuse to get up earlier than nine o’ clock. Maybe it doesn’t make sense, but hey – I tried to kill him, he nearly killed me. Without Niko, I’d be lost, or dead, or worse.
So yeah, it’s bitter sometimes, knowing I’ll never be able to have what he has with Promise, knowing that I have to keep George at a distance because there’s no other way to keep her safe. But it’s more bitter knowing that Nik would throw away everything he has for me. The little he’s gained – if I needed him, it could all go to hell.
People say that they’d give their life for their relatives. Some of them even mean it. But Niko…Niko might actually have the chance to prove how much he means it.
And that’s what frightens me. Because if I wake up one morning and Niko’s dead because of me –
Darkling won’t be anything to what I’ll be.
