shrike

thcscus (blujamas)

Chapter 3: dragging along (following your form)

Chapter Text

“Funny thing.” Sapnap’s voice was as biting and cold as snow beginning to fall around them. “I don’t remember the universe telling me?shit.”

The stranger, who was a dream, who was a boy that was almost blurry around his edges—as if he would vanish if George looked away—lowered his palms of surrender. George found it didn’t make much of a difference; hands up or hands down or hands tied behind his back, the dream would find a way to be a frightening thing.

There was no doubt about it.

This was a god.

The dream-god’s eyes found George’s, green as the spring this frozen wasteland had not tasted in centuries. “Come now,” he said, almost exasperated, like he was getting bored waiting for them to get to the point he’d already concluded for himself. “There’s no need for hostility, right?”

George didn’t know why he was addressing that to?him, as if George was in any way the biggest threat here. As if he was a danger to be examined and neutralized, something to look out for. He found he liked it, just a little bit.

“I don’t know,” George said honestly, earning a confused glance from Sapnap. “I guess that’s up to you. Dream, was it?”

Dream smiled. “Sure. Let’s go with that. Let’s go with?Dream.”

Sapnap, still standing between George and Dream, reached for his sword again. “Look,” he said, “l(fā)eading us on a wild chase around this cold as shit forest didn’t exactly make a good first impression.”

“But it was?funny,” Dream said in defense.

“It was definitely not,” Sapnap replied.

“Well.” They both turned to George, who shrugged at the sudden scrutiny. “It was a bit funny.”

Sapnap glared, utterly betrayed, while Dream threw his head back in laughter, shoulders shaking with the force of his own glee. George watched him a heavy feeling in his gut. It wasn’t as simple as wariness or curiosity.?Dream, he named him, and George supposed it was only fitting. It had been a long time since George slept soundly enough to dream—dreams and nightmares both were a distant memory from his younger days, when his mind still had room for imagined goodness and awfulness. And then he’d lived long enough to outgrow imagination. All the good, and the bad, he?lived?them. What use were dreams, then? What use were nightmares?

But even after all these years, he still remembered—not what he dreamt about when he was a young and stupid child, but how they?felt. It was like moving through water, every movement impossibly slow, every gesture warped and just a little bit… wrong. That was it. Dreams, and Dream, felt strangely?wrong, but in a way that George couldn’t name. It was a wrongness only observed through hindsight, a wrongness only known by those awake, but George—

A thought formed in his head, too selfish to be given voice.

He looked at Sapnap, the snowflakes melting against his cheeks as he crossed his arms in annoyance.

“It’s your call,” George said, because he didn’t trust himself to make it.

Dream had stopped laughing, but traces of his joy lingered in the corners of his mouth. “It’s simple, really. You don’t kill me, and you earn yourself a new friend.”

“Friendship?”?Sapnap scoffed, as if it was the most absurd thing. “Is that what you’re offering?”

“You’re making me sound like some street merchant hawking his wares,” Dream said. “But, yes, I suppose that is what is on the table here.”

“You?have?to know how questionable that is, right? You show up in the middle of some random forest, talking about the universe and some other nonsense, and you expect us to just, what, befriend you for it?”

“It does sound a bit like a surefire way to get smothered in our sleep,” George agreed.

Dream made a sound of protest. “If I wanted to kill you, I’d be more creative than that.”

“Good to know,” George said wryly.

Sapnap ran his fingers through his hair in frustration. “Okay, this is going nowhere.” He grabbed George by the arm and began hauling him away. “We’re leaving. Goodbye, creepy stranger! Thanks for wasting our time.”

But even as they walked away from the clearing, George could hear the steady footsteps following. He glanced back and saw Dream a few paces behind, smiling politely and tilting his head to the side as if asking,?“Yes? What’s got you so curious?”?When George turned around, he found Sapnap staring straight ahead, his brows drawn together, his jaw clenched tight. His hand was still around George’s arm, as if he’d forgotten it was there, or as if he didn’t trust George enough to let go.

George shrugged Sapnap’s hand off him.?I can take care of myself,?he wanted to say, but instead he drew his cloak over himself, letting it swallow him whole. They continued walking, neither of them willing to acknowledge the extra set of footsteps shuffling behind them, even if it made George’s skin crawl to turn his back on something like that. It must grate on Sapnap, too, but he’d already made up his mind to ignore Dream and leave; if there was anything stronger than his instinct for self-preservation, it was his pride. He wouldn’t be turning around if his life depended on it.

“So,” said Dream from behind them, “l(fā)ovely weather we have tonight, huh?”

And Sapnap surprised George by stopping in his tracks and saying, “I’m just going to kill him,” before unsheathing his sword and making a wild dash back towards Dream.

“Sapnap,?wait—” George whirled around just in time to see Sapnap swing at Dream. Dream ducked, and the sword passed harmlessly over him. Sapnap swung again, this time aiming straight for Dream’s legs, but Dream merely jumped, reaching for the branch above their heads, and in one smooth motion, hauled himself into the trees. He crouched on the branch, his smile turning sharp and taunting as he looked down at Sapnap and George below him.

“Come on, war god,” he said. “Is that the best you can do?”

“How do you know who I am?” Sapnap shouted up at him. “And don’t say some cryptic shit like the universe whispered it into your ear or something.”

Dream pouted mockingly. “I can’t help it if I’m the universe’s favorite, can I?”

“Oh, for the love of?fuck,” Sapnap spat, and flung his sword, point-first, towards the boy in the tree.

Dream jumped back, finding another branch behind him. He landed on it gracefully, like he was sure nothing on this earth would ever let him fall. George couldn’t help but be transfixed by his easy movement, the sheer confidence and arrogance in it. It was a hubris reserved for young gods, those that could still claim invincibility and mean every word. He’d seen it, sometimes, in the way Sapnap fought, but even Sapnap made mistakes. There was no mistake in Dream. George thought maybe there was a little bit more god in Dream than the rest of them.

Dream caught George’s stare, and waved.

“What do you want?” George asked with resignation; it felt like the only thing he?could?ask.

“I told you,” Dream said. “I want to be friends.”

“But?why?”

Dream shrugged. “Just to see what it’s like.”

Sapnap and George exchanged incredulous glances. Dream noticed the look between them and sighed, settling down on the branch until his legs were dangling over the edge. He looked almost sheepish, like a boy caught in the orchard with stolen apples stuffed down his pockets.

“I heard stories about you,” he said, “and I thought maybe it would be fun to tag along. Heard you won a war. I could help you win the next one.”

“Not interested,” Sapnap said immediately, crossing his arms as he glared up at the other god. “Offer denied. You can go fuck off now.”

“I could help you,” Dream repeated, and it felt more like a threat than a bargain.

“Look,” Sapnap said, running a hand down his face in frustration. “We don’t fucking know you, and we don’t want to know you. Whatever game you think this is, we don’t want to play.” He moved to grab his fallen sword from the ground, brushing snow from its polished blade before returning it to its sheath. When he returned to George’s side, his face was clouded with an emotion George could feel forming inside his own chest.?Hesitation. There was something in this dead forest that did not want them to leave. “George?”

George blinked, suddenly very aware of the snow falling slowly between the bare branches. There was that odd feeling again, like he was wandering the world half-asleep, and no step was his own. He looked up at Dream, who was still staring down at them, waiting for something, green eyes bright against the silver moonlight.

“You,” George said quietly, “are not used to being denied, are you?”

For a moment, George thought he saw Dream’s ever-present smile slip, just a bit. And then the moment passed, and George dismissed it as a trick of the light.

“What have you got to lose by keeping me around?” Dream asked, sounding so earnest George almost pitied him for it.

But then Sapnap’s hand was on his shoulder again, gentle this time, not a vice but a reminder.

“Let’s go,” Sapnap said, shaking off whatever it was that tried to keep them here.

George nodded. He raised a hand towards the boy in the trees, a careless farewell, before turning away.

He almost expected to hear that third set of footsteps again, but instead there was silence.

“That was… weird.” George glanced at Sapnap as they trudged through the snow. The war god’s face was impassive, more serious than George had ever known it to be. It was like looking at a stranger again. “That was?weird, right? I wasn’t imagining things?”

“No,” Sapnap said slowly, the first word he’d bothered to grit out since they left the forest in the horizon behind them. He was not one for pensive quiet—or any sort of quiet, really. Whatever that was, with the green-eyed god, had rattled him down to his bones, enough to chase him into the most terrifying place of all: his own mind. George would have never let him live it down, if only he didn’t feel that exact same fear, breathing down his neck. “No, you weren’t imagining things. That was fucked up. Something was—Something was?wrong.”

“Did you…” George almost swallowed down the question, but then he saw the desperate hope in Sapnap’s eyes, as if he was waiting and begging for George to say it first, just so he wouldn’t have to. “Did you almost want to give him everything he asked for?”

Sapnap sighed, and George pretended not to hear the relief in his exhale. “Yeah,” he said. “Almost.”

“Who was that?”

They were the only two souls for miles; the snow was their only company bitter and cold and inanimate. But when Sapnap spoke again, it was in a whisper, as if something here might sell their secrets to the highest bidder.

“I don’t know.” Sapnap tipped his head back, his dark eyes scanning the sky for the constellations that had been his guide all night. But the sun was rising somewhere in the east, washing out the stars until the only ones left were those that burned brightest, alone in their brilliance. In the light of dawn, the war god almost looked sad. “Whoever it was, I fucking hope I never see him again for the rest of my life.”

They find a town by noon.

It was small, fledgling, with flimsy fences demarcating half a hundred houses at most. The locals said it used to only be a trading post, until someone had the idea to build an inn, and then a tavern, and then a church.

“A tavern before a church?” Sapnap asked with a wry grin. “Sounds about right.”

The snow was coming down in earnest now, piling against wooden doors and on the packed-dirt trail that served as the town’s main road. Parents were hurrying their children inside, and what few storefronts there were were being boarded up by frantic hands. With their heads ducked against the wind, George and Sapnap made their way through the town, intending to leave it behind as they’d left most towns behind. There were few places that welcomed strangers, fewer still that didn’t balk at their weapons. This was not a place meant for staying.

But then the wind blew stronger, almost knocking George off his feet. Sapnap managed to grab him by the front of his cloak just in time, hauling him towards the closest awning of what looked to be the town hall. They caught their breaths for a moment, watching the snowfall turn violent. George could barely see two feet in front of him, just a feeble suggestion of distant buildings in a world turned white.

“It’s a blizzard,” Sapnap shouted over the howling winds. “We have to find somewhere to sit this out.”

George gestured to the town hall behind them. “What about this?”

“Are you kidding? It looks like it’s made out of driftwood. Might as well just be a coffin.”

“This whole town’s made of driftwood!”

“There has to be somewhere that won’t collapse on us. Something built to survive—”

And then they heard it. Somehow, above all else, they heard it.

“Oh,” said Sapnap. “You can’t be serious.”

George laughed. “It seems the universe heard you, Sapnap.”

In the distance, church bells were ringing.

They found the church in the heart of the town, the only thing made of mortar and marble instead of wood and rusted nails. Sapnap could say what he wanted about mortals and their misguided faith, but there was something to be said about how—for better or for worse—this town with its slipshod houses and rickety fences believed in something enough to build it to be permanent. The snowstorm could bury the rest of them alive, but their belltower would keep ringing. How devoted they were, and how George pitied them for it. How George envied.

Two gods stumbled into the church, and George thought it sounded like a joke, or the beginning of a tragedy. Either one, he wasn’t laughing.

He shrugged off his heavy cloak and tossed it over the back of the nearest pew. Sapnap followed suit before rolling his shoulders back, sighing at the satisfying?pop?of his bones settling in place.

“Gods, how long have we been walking?” Sapnap asked, jumping over the pew to drape himself over it, boots kicked up against the back of the next bench.

Ignoring his question, George began wandering between the aisles, keeping his eyes on the stained-glass windows that ran the length of the church. They told some sort of story George couldn’t follow—some other god’s life and miseries, memorialized but rendered unrecognizable by time and fickle memory. Beyond the multicolored panes, the storm raged on.

“How long do you think this town will survive?” George asked. His voice bounced off the high ceilings, echoing loudly over the empty church.

“Hard to say,” Sapnap said from his seat. “It could collapse in a week, or it could be an empire if it’s stubborn enough.”

“Are those the only choices?” George stopped at a window and saw himself in the scarlet-stained reflection, his mouth twisted with bitterness. “To be forgotten, or to be great?”

“Yes,” Sapnap said simply.

George whirled around, only to find Sapnap exactly where he’d left him, still sprawled across the pew. But he was looking at George.

“Do you really think that?” George said. “That you have to be great, or nothing?”

Sapnap shrugged. “I mean, that’s what we’re doing, aren’t we? We’re being great.”

“Until I go,” George whispered, the church walls carrying his confession to Sapnap. “Until I sleep again. And then I’ll be forgotten. Is that it?”

Sapnap stared unblinking at George for a long moment, his expression unreadable. And then he said, “Are you planning on going soon?”

The truth caught in George’s throat.

Sapnap watched him struggle with it, something like disappointment flashing in his eyes. “You’ve never grown roots of your own, have you?”

The smoke of a burning forest, clinging to George wherever we went. “Can you blame me?” he croaked.

“I’m not blaming you,” Sapnap said, and George thought maybe he meant it. “I’m not some starry-eyed idiot, George. I know this won’t last.” He swung his feet back on the ground, his boots thudding dully against the marble floor. He stood and made his way over to George, so they were standing shoulder-to-shoulder in front of the windows. They watched the snow pound against the stained glass, and it was the closest they would ever come to a shared worship. “You’ll go your way, and I’ll go mine, and maybe, if we’re lucky, we’ll see each other once or twice before some random fuck gets a lucky hit on us and the curtains fall. Maybe even by then, you’ll already have a name for mourning.”

“I can’t believe you remember that conversation. I didn’t even think you were taking me seriously then.”

Sapnap scoffed, but didn’t retaliate.

“You know,” George said softly, “I don’t think I’d mind you leaving, but I also don’t think I’d mind knowing you for the rest of my life.”

“That’s a long time.”

“A lot of time to rethink what is undoubtedly a stupid decision.”

“No,” Sapnap said, grinning sideways at George. “Too late. You’re stuck with me.”

“Unfortunate,” George said, but he was smiling back.

They stayed by the window until the storm passed. They made their plans, not really knowing if either of them had any intention of keeping it. They’d head west, maybe, George suggested. Or east, or wherever it was that seemed most promising. He was tired of the cold. He missed the forests.

“I’m not sure I’m meant to be here,” George said, as the last of the snowflakes settled on the ground outside.

“In this church or in the north?”

“Both, I guess.” He cast his gaze around the marble hall, feeling something inside him crumble and give way at the silent altar, the empty pews. There was a pathetic-looking bouquet of flowers, already wilted, sitting at the foot of a statue in the corner. An offering to the god this place was built for, maybe. Perhaps even a prayer against the storm that went unanswered. George wanted to believe there were kind gods out there, but this church’s patron was not one of them. “There’s nothing for me here.”

“Okay,” Sapnap said easily. “Then let’s find something for you.”

As Sapnap went to collect their cloaks, George found himself wandering towards those flowers. They were barely more than twigs, really, with a few young buds only half-sprouted. George passed his fingers over them, watching them slowly unfurl into white petals. They would still rot, in the end, but at least they’d be beautiful for a few days more. George considered it his one good act of the decade.

“George?” Sapnap called from down the aisle.

“On my way.” As George turned to go, the sun outside broke free from the clouds, igniting everything with daylight. It burst through the stained glass, and for a moment, the world was alight with color. A flash of green slanted over George’s eyes, drawing his attention to the windows that told the story of some nameless god. But now, in the fresh light, he found it was not nameless at all. On the window, drawn in broken glass, was the boy he’d met just the night before, his green eyes burning through George.

And in his cupped palms, he offered a spider.

It took them three years to find him again.

It was an accident, really. A coincidence. And, as many things in George’s life did, it started in a forest.

It was not a dead forest, with its trees half-buried in snow. It was?alive, and it called to George like a light in the dark. After years of crowded port cities, sleepy towns, and camps of soldiers that looked at him and Sapnap as if they were the last lifeboats on a sinking ship, it was a relief to walk under the foliage, hearing nothing but the distant rumble of a river, and birdsong, and Sapnap’s incessant nagging.

“—lost,” he said, continuing a rant that George hadn’t realized he’d started. “We’re?lost, and you’re too stubborn to admit it. I told you, I?told you, we took a wrong turn at that outpost a few miles back, but did you listen? ‘Trust me, Sapnap,’”—and here he took on a laughably inaccurate imitation of George’s voice—“’I know what I’m doing, I can feel the plants underground.’ Well, maybe your plants are wrong and stupid, have you ever considered that, George?”

“You weren’t complaining when those plants kept you from dehydrating in that desert.”

“The desert?you?got us lost in!”

George passed under a branch, ignoring Sapnap’s yelp of pain as that same branch whipped back and connected with his forehead.

“You?fucker,” Sapnap yelled after him. “I should have let you die in that sandstorm.”

It was a familiar thing, a reliable thing. Over the years, George had come to tolerate it and—though he’d never say it out loud, even under whatever threat Sapnap could spend all his creativity concocting—he’d even come to enjoy it. It was a simple, petty truth: it was fun, annoying Sapnap, and it made George laugh. What other reason did he need to do it?

Still ignoring Sapnap’s shouting, George made his way through the forest, breathing in the cool air. He let his fingers trail over the trees as he went, finding comfort in the way the rough bark scraped against his skin. This, too, was a familiar thing. George wondered at what point he’d begun to think of Sapnap and the forests with the same affection.

He found the river easily enough. It was a stiller and smaller than George expected, but he didn’t mind. When he walked to the edge, shook off his boots and sunk his feet into the water, it was still as cold as he wanted it to be. He let himself sigh and lay back against the grass of the riverbank, thinking one word, over and over, like a prayer.?Home, home, home.

His eyes open, he saw Sapnap standing over him.

“If you wanted to find a forest,” Sapnap said, “you could have just told me.”

“We could build a house here, you know,” George said quietly, watching Sapnap’s face carefully. “Just somewhere to put our things in. Somewhere to return to. We could call it a shed, if that makes it less sentimental for you.”

He thought Sapnap would laugh at him, and George would have accepted it. But Sapnap’s brows only furrowed as he contemplated George’s words.

“It would be good, having somewhere to put all my weapons,” Sapnap said.

“Of course that would be your first thought.”

“And what do you mean by that, George?”

“Nothing. Just that I know you well.”

And Sapnap rolled his eyes, and laughed, just as George knew he would.

“Move over,” Sapnap said, kicking his own boots off.

“There’s enough riverbank for the both of us, Sapnap.”

“I don’t care. Move over.”

George scoffed, but rolled aside to give Sapnap his room. Sapnap sat down on the bank, plunging his feet into the water with George’s.

“Gods,”?he sighed. “That’s nice.”

“You ever think it’s weird?” George asked idly, crossing his arms below his head to serve as a pillow. “We say ‘gods’ when we curse as if that isn’t what we are. It’d be like if mortals went around saying?‘humans’?every time they knock something over.”

“You say very useless things sometimes, George.”

“It was just an observation.” George closed his eyes, letting the quiet crashing of the river wash over him like a lullaby. It was almost enough to rock him to sleep, if it weren’t for Sapnap’s steady breathing, right beside him. There was something worth staying awake for now, George reminded himself. Someone worth keeping his eyes open.

“Hey,” Sapnap said quietly.

“Yes, Sapnap?”

“Do you remember that night in the north, with the forest? When we met that god that was just creepily familiar—like maybe you’d seen his face in a nightmare you can only vaguely remember, or something.”

“And you lost your shit on him, and you said you never wanted to see him again,” George finished. “Yes, I remember.”

“Okay, good,” said Sapnap, “because I’m pretty sure that’s him across the river.”

George’s eyes snapped open, and he hauled himself up to stare at the man standing on the opposite bank.

“Dream?”?George said incredulously, and the other god had the audacity to wave.

He looked just as George remembered him, his golden hair windswept and his grin mischievous. In George’s memory, he was always in the snow, a splash of violent color against the white landscape. It was strange now, watching him move between trees, their foliage the same color as his eyes,?alive, in George’s domain. George felt his chest lurch, everything in him protesting at Dream’s casual reappearance. He had the urge to grab Sapnap by the shoulders and run.

But he couldn’t bring himself to move at all.

“Fancy meeting you here,” Dream called. “Must be fate.”

“Must be,” Sapnap said, his words laced with mockery. “How’d you find us, Dream?”

“It’s a small world.”

“No, it’s not.”

“For us, it is,” Dream said, striding across the river. When George and Sapnap recoiled defensively, he paused, right there in the middle of the river with the water coming up to his knees. It could have knocked him over. It?should?have knocked him over. But he stayed where he was, looking beseechingly across the river at George and Sapnap, and George felt that tug again, starting deep within his chest. It was—It was like something had reached in for his heart, and?pulled,?without mercy. “Hear me out. Can you give me that?”

To his own surprise, George said, “Fine.”

Sapnap glanced at him with a look that asked him if he knew what he was doing. George’s shrug replied he did not.

“I think,” Dream said slowly, “it would be fun, wouldn’t it? You think you two have seen the world, but you don’t even know the half of it. I can show you, if you’d let me. So, let me.” He spread his arms wide, as if presenting the whole world to them.?Look at all I can give you. Let me give it to you. “Please.”

George would turn that moment over and over and over again in the long years that followed: how Dream had said that final word, and how it had sealed their fates; how George had heard Sapnap’s sharp intake of breath, as if he’d been struck, and how George had felt the same; how he suddenly realized how little he truly knew, how he suddenly remembered how small he’d felt standing under the stained glass window of an empty church; how easy it was for everything else to fall away, distrust turning into a fierce loyalty as he remembered Sapnap’s words, from half a ?hundred years ago, whispering back to him like a late echo,?you have a thing for lonely little animals; how Dream, in that moment, with his knees in the water and his face seemingly unguarded, seemed like the loneliest of them all. George would try, desperately, to make the moment make sense, to reconcile the chaos in his head with what he said next.

“Go on,” George said.

Dream tilted his head to the side as he considered George. “We gods have to stick together, don’t you think so? I meant what I said. I’d help you win a war, if that’s what it will take.”

“Are you really that desperate?” Sapnap snapped, but his voice had lost its edge. He sounded dull. He sounded lost. He sounded like someone George didn’t know.

The water rushed in. “Maybe,” Dream said, with a shrug that tried to be nonchalant. “Or I’m just bored—take your pick. But it’ll be worth it. I can prove it.”

And in the end, it was George who threw the doors open for him. It was George who let him in.

It was George who fucked it all up.

“You have six days,” George said.

Dream began to smile.

【所有內(nèi)容版權(quán)均歸原作者所有，圖片來源于網(wǎng)絡(luò)，侵刪，up只是搬運】

原文地址：https://archiveofourown.org/works/32138716/chapters/79625629