[fic wip] in the spirit reverse au
Apr. 22nd, 2023 02:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hexmixso then i thought "well, what would get him to trust/help karl?" and then thought "if he didn't recognize it was karl," which meant kid!karl, which meant i was then seriously thinking about a reverse au for my own fic. self-indulgent, as i said.
anyway here's what i have of that c:
There was a man he saw sometimes. Karl could tell he wasn’t from the village by how he dressed, by how he spoke; a language Karl didn’t know that was all short blunt sounds stressed with a growing desperation Karl could tell the man was trying to hide from him.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Karl tried telling him once. The man had been examining the lock of Karl’s cell, expression serious. Grim. “Mother will hurt you if she finds you here.”
The man had looked up at him when Karl spoke, but it was clear he could understand Karl no better than Karl could understand him. He’d said something, low and soft, maybe a reassurance, but he’d disappeared soon after. There and gone like Karl had merely dreamed him.
But he came back. Each time he left he came back. Sometimes, if Karl was in Mother’s lab, in one of the cells, he’d try to find a way to get Karl out, to break the lock.
If Karl was on one of the tables, he’d wake up from whatever Mother had been doing to him to find the man frantic, face gone pale, voice harsh, like he was spinning some curse, something dangerous. His hands were cold when they’d touch Karl’s skin. They’d be shaking. But they never hurt him. The man only ever seemed to be trying to help.
“If you can leave,” Karl had told him, “you should go. You can get help.”
It was a vague idea, help. Help for him? She made him call her Mother but–
He couldn’t remember anything before her. She’d told him he was special. He was going to be made into something special.
He didn’t believe her, but what was there for help? Who could stop her?
The man tried speaking to him in Romanian too, but Karl only knew a handful of words he’d picked up from the villagers Mother had brought into the lab. Please and it hurts and stop and don’t. The man didn’t say any of those words, so Karl could only shake his head, I don’t understand.
The man was gone more often than he was present, but he was there now, his back to Karl, the bars of Karl’s cell between them.
Karl knew that Mother was standing on the other side of the man because he could sense her.
The man was angry, so angry he was practically spitting. His hands were fisted at his sides and he was speaking slow, careful Romanian.
“Miranda,” he said, naming her.
His voice when he spoke to Karl was nothing like this. He sounded like he was trying to kill her with his words. When he spoke to Karl it was–
Mother was laughing, and then, so sudden Karl wasn’t sure what exactly had happened, the man’s head separated from his body.
Both dropped, the head with a thud, the body collapsing back against the bars and sliding down to rest against the floor, half propped against the bars still, the man’s blood splattering Karl’s face, his front, and he turned instinctively, heart pounding, hands covering his face, it couldn’t be, he couldn’t be–
“Get up,” Mother said, and he knew those words too. He obeyed her, because he knew what would happen if he didn’t, but he was struggling to breathe, was trying not to look at the man and wanting to look to make sure, it had to be a mistake, it had to.
But the man was dead, and Mother made him step over his body once she’d unlocked his cell and told him, “Move.” Made him get up on the table, muttering to herself and not sparing the man a second glance.
Karl was crying, he realized belatedly. He hated her seeing him cry but he couldn’t help it. The man had never once hurt him. The man had been kind, and he’d almost forgotten what that was.
Sometimes the villagers were kind to him, the ones Mother or one of the Lords would bring to the lab and lock in the cells. Mostly they were scared. More and more, they were only scared, their throats, their voices, nothing big enough for anything other than their fear.
The man had been different. He’d looked different, and sounded different, and Karl had started pretending that when the man spoke to him what he was saying was It’s alright and I’m going to get you out of here and You’ll be safe soon she won’t be able to hurt you anymore I won’t let her–
Because he couldn’t stop crying Mother had to drug him, the needle slipping into his arm a quick prick and then his vision was blurring even beyond his tears. He wanted to remember the man’s face, he thought desperately, he wanted to remember at least that–
He woke up in the cell again, feeling no different than he had before, even though the drugs always left him feeling terrible, like he didn’t have control over himself anymore, like he was a distant viewer watching his own body struggle to move itself around in his place. A wind up tin soldier, tottering around.
Karl didn’t feel like that now though. He felt clear, and he stood with no problem, his hands wrapping around the chill of the bars of his cell.
Mother must have had one of the others clean up, because the man’s body was gone, his blood was gone. Nothing was left to show that he’d ever been there at all.
Karl sniffed, pulled his hands back to hug himself, not knowing what to do with the ache he felt in his chest, behind his eyes. He didn’t even know the man’s name.
But then, he hadn’t even known his own name, until she’d told him–
A clatter, and he jerked, spinning towards the sound but it was beyond the view from his cell. He could only withdraw into the dark of it, keeping his eyes fixed in the direction the sound had come from.
After a while he heard a voice, one he recognized.
He went still. He didn’t like what it meant that he knew the voice, that the voice was speaking at all–
The man came into view, looking none the worse for wear, looking as he always did. He spoke a greeting and offered a tired-looking smile.
“You’re alive,” Karl said. He’d seen others come back too, but they never looked the same. The man looked exactly the same. Karl moved closer to the bars. The man was speaking to him, gesturing out back the way he had come. Karl could only shake his head. “She’ll know it if I leave and she’ll–” his voice stuttered, and he hugged himself tighter. “She’ll h-hurt you again if she. If she finds you.”
Maybe he was dreaming up the man after all. Maybe it was a hallucination, or a side effect of the drugs.
But there was something he’d been thinking before, and even if it was just a dream, he wanted to know. He wanted the man to know.
“My name is Karl,” he said, freeing a hand to point to himself. “What’s your name?”
The man looked confused for only a second before he repeated, “Carl?”
“Karl,” Karl nodded, still pointing at himself. Then, pointing to the man, “What’s your name?”
The man caught on quickly enough, and a smile curved his mouth when he said, “Ethan.”
“Ethan,” Karl repeated it, felt the sound of it. It felt important to know.
The man said something else, and started to turn, and Karl felt a sudden spike of panic, felt like if he let the man go he would wake up to find that what had been the dream was just this, that he was hurting still from whatever Mother had done, that the man really had been killed, his body and blood still–
Karl shot his hand out through the bars, grabbing onto the sleeve of the man’s coat. “Please,” he said in Romanian, and then, “Don’t.”
The man–Ethan–stopped immediately, turning back to him and taking Karl’s hand in his own. His voice was doing the low, soft thing it did when he–Karl imagined–was trying to be comforting.
Ethan’s eyes were brown, Karl noted. He stared at his face, trying to remember exactly what he looked like for later, just in case…
In case he woke up to find this was a dream.
Ethan was speaking to him still, in Romanian now, and had covered Karl’s hand with both of his own. He was just as cold as Karl was.
Karl focused on the sound of his voice, on his serious expression, and thought that he didn’t want to wake up. He didn’t hurt now, like this, and his hand was warming, slowly, and Ethan had tried to protect him, he was sure of it. He’d known Mother’s name so he’d probably known what she could do, and he’d still stood between her and Karl like a shield.
He didn’t realize he was crying until he felt Ethan’s hand on his cheek, a thumb brushing at tear streaks.
“She killed you,” he told him, hiccuping out the last word. He felt weak, crying like this, like little more than a baby, when he hadn’t even known Ethan’s name, when he hadn’t even known him.
But no one had ever tried to stop Mother before. No one had ever tried to stop Miranda before.
And Ethan had done it for him.
Ethan was trying to shush him, had pressed himself up against the bars so he could reach through to Karl, trying to calm him, but Karl had already hushed himself, and shook his head when Ethan said his name.
He could go along with Ethan, with whatever he wanted to do to get Karl out. If they got far enough, Ethan could go for help, or could just get out, go somewhere safe. When Mother came for Karl he knew what he’d do to distract her so that Ethan could get away.
“I’m fine,” he said, and smiled to show it.
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Date: 2024-11-17 02:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-11-18 12:36 am (UTC)