bakerstreet | don't open your eyes you won't like what you see

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[warning] trigger warning

don't open your eyes you won't like what you see

The Market

This meme is about body modification/horror and slavery. It contains POTENTIAL TRIGGERS. Do not click through if you don't want to read that!

Ah, a new customer! Welcome, welcome to the Market!

Not much of a name? Why, what do you mean? It's quite concise and descriptive, I assure you, for this is a place for buying-- and buying the finest specimens of, hm, indentured servitude, I assure you, that you might find anywhere in the multiverse. Yes, yes, I've heard the nicknames before, but I assure you, this is the Market and so it shall remain for as long as those of discerning tastes and, ahem, if I dare say, deep pocketbooks, require what we have to offer.

For here we can offer you whatever it is that you wish, whatever you can dream of, anything. For a price, of course, but you wouldn't be here if you weren't able to pay....

Ah, yes, I beg your pardon for today's delay. Some bleeding-heart so-called "rights group" caused a fuss, tried to release an entire pen full of stock, but not to worry, they've been, ah. Dealt with. Allowed inside, you might say, hah?

Well, then, as I was saying. The Market contains all manner of slaves for purchase, whatever your individual needs might be. Let's see what might interest you, shall we?

We'll begin with our most popular selection, the animal types. There's all manner of variety here, though, don't mistake me-- anything from intelligent beasts (with or without full awareness, that's up to you, no additional charge) to the mostly-humanoid with some altered features. See, here, these dogs make excellent guards, quick and clever as any human. Or these over here, with just that feline cast to their features, plus the ears? Quite popular and decorative.

Is that not interesting enough for you? We do have all manner of exotic types, I assure, not simply the standard breeds. Should your fancy turn to dragons or unicorns or griffins, we can certainly accommodate that. Perhaps a centaur? Quite useful, though they can be so difficult to feed...

Ah! Yes, you've noticed our more mechanical selection! Again, there's a range here, depending on your needs-- some have been fitted with cybernetic augmentation, additional strength or enhanced senses, and so forth. Or if you prefer, we have these full-cyborg models, quite useful for labor, they keep going until they run out of fuel. Oh, yes, they have full human intelligence, soul transfered over, not my specialty but I'm sure the handlers could explain to your satisfaction.

These? Oh, yes, the sculpted group is the most varied, and popular with collectors. You see, we add alterations without losing that base humanoid appearance. Improved, certainly, but usually not too exotic (unless that's to your taste, of course, of course!). They could be taller, smaller, thinner, plumper-- or we could add features, perhaps? Devil horns, maybe, or additional eyes or limbs? This lovely model was based on the standard "fairy" type (the wings, I'm afraid, do incur an additional surcharge) while over here, this one was given increased musculature and a bit of facial sculpting for attractiveness. Bound for the gladiator arena I'm certain, that one.

If your taste runs to the more decorative, however, this section is the banks of what we call "statuary", slaves molded into certain pleasing shapes. And textures, yes, see this one still feels like flesh (go on, touch!) but here we have glass, or marble. Oh, of course we provide you with keywords to allow movement when you wish, to reshape them or, well, whatever strikes your fancy.

And here we have the blanks, ready and waiting to be sculpted to your exact specifications while you watch! Anything, anything you'd like, no request too strange, and oh, well...

A bit closer, closer, a word in your ear-- should you like a bit of sculpting yourself while you're here? Some changes, improvements, we can certainly--

What? Certainly not, why would we then try to sell you? What an utterly ridiculous idea, ridiculous, I say! We'd never treat a paying customer in such a manner!

Ah, but it seems the auction is about to begin. You wouldn't want to be late! Simply let me know if you need any further assistance, and we thank you for patronizing the Market....

HOW IT WORKS:
♦ As the name implies, it's a slave market...but with a twist. Your character could be shopping at the market or a slave (choose from one of the bolded types or pick your own!), whether in the pens, up for auction, or just purchased. Body horror? Power games? Commiserating with your fellow slaves? Arriving as a buyer and finding yourself up for auction? Whatever strikes your fancy.
♦ Leave a comment with your character's name and fandom in the subject, and please fill out this form to help others tagging in know what you're interested in playing:

This meme is open to smut and non-smut options, as well as other potentially triggering material, so please be sure to state what you want!
♦ Have fun, and be sure to respect others' comfort zones!

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A very personal suggestion, a question far too personal, and there's a startled blink of genuine astonishment, flitting briefly across his face. But Zexion composes himself quickly, finger finding momentary rest between closed lips, as if to still himself from saying anything impulsive, anything too instinctive without thought.

It's rare that any simple inhabitant of a small world should consider the deeper, wider things...like freedom, or identity, as anything more than a trite and passing cliché of human values. Both are elements stripped down or flogged to silent, in a market like this, and so they are also taboo subjects, for the time being.

Which to a heretic, of course, also makes them inherently irresistible.

"I have been freed to define myself, I suppose, yes." He nods carefully, a deep blue eye shifting and daring to make direct contact with Gustave, at long last. The moment would be electric with intimacy, he suspect, had he only the heart to forge a proper bond. "More than I would have been otherwise."

And that's an honesty the schemer would rarely voice, the doubt that creeps in near the end of that statement as his gaze slides sideways again, evasive, brows knitting in a bothered way.

Did he hold more power of self as a Nobody, than the youngest and cherished apprentice of a Master who would have coddled and steered and held him so rigidly in the light? Surely, surely that was true...

"...maybe." (Or was it?)

Edited 2012-11-20 07:33 (UTC)

He can sense something just a little bit... off about the moment, but he does have a heart and he can forge bonds and he is not expecting the way Zexion looks at him, like he's actually seeing him for the first time, instead of just looking past him. More than intimate, for him, it's gratifying. He doesn't fight for people's attention or respect, not usually, has been taught that the great majority of people's respect isn't worth having. But praise? Praise came sparingly from a drunken, broken father and even more sparingly from a strict, exacting one. And, no, Zexion didn't say anything, but he can recognize that look, anyway, surprised and thoughtful, the look that says so, you are worth something after all.

And yet, even as something in him flushes and preens, he still catches that eye-slide sideways, the doubt, and his brow furrows in puzzlement, in response,

"You make it sound as though you had a choice in your name. If that's so, surely a name you choose for yourself has more power than a name chosen by others, at the very least, which implies more agency," what that says about him, given that he has kept his own, when he could have changed it, he's not sure.

Perhaps it's the last shrine he has to his mother. He can't imagine being anyone else other than who she shaped him to be.

His lips purse, inclining his head slightly as if to agree totally with Gustave's heady statement, yes... yes, it would imply more power and more agency, wouldn't it?

If Zexion had been a name chosen entirely on his own. If he had been wholly responsible for the clever naming schema among his fellowship, and if it there hadn't been a silent understanding in the acceptance of that new name. An 'X' as a placeholder, a reminder that they were both changed and lacking, and that their discipleship had been passed formally from Sage to Superior.

So he doesn't quite know how to respond to that. Zexion had been liberated from all the confining, boyish feelings of Ienzo, on one hand. His heart with all its fear, its attachments, its futile nonsense which didn't align to reason- his colleague often called them stronger for doing without. And yet? Surely it wasn't that he resented the means of its loss, without a heart to resent properly. Surely he was suffering from a few of his own delusions.

"Any names may hold and amass power, if that is what they are bidden to do." He shrugs simply, with a finality that tugs on closing the subject.

It seemed safest to redirect the subject wholly away from himself. He pulled up a fresh quill from his set of three in the well- no magic in the pen nor the ink, all commonplace instruments of this world.

"Let's begin then." He clears his throat and looks to his settled she-dusk, most definitively female by her features- while his own preferences might sway to the more androgynous, the client (boastfully masculine) had expressly commissioned something frail and voluminous and pretty- seemed the sort that might easily offend at being presented with anything less than all the trappings of the most decidedly opposite sex. He decided on whatever fleeting fancy struck him that he would test Gustave's imagination too, in the process. Especially if it would all the more whet an obvious appetite for one of his own. "What proportions do you suppose are becoming of a woman, Gustave?"

"As can the lack of them," he starts, but he can tell Zexion wants to change the subject, and here he has them talking as though they know one another. He doesn't want to disrupt that, so he lets it go, turning his attention to the dusk.

The question, however, makes him flush, slightly,

"I..." he stammers and stalls out, momentarily. It isn't that he's not attracted to women, he most certainly is, it's just that, when he thinks of the most beautiful woman he can think of, there's only one person who comes to mind, and he certainly doesn't want this plaything to end up looking like her. He has made sure that the very few women he has had any kind of sexual contact with have been nothing like her, voluptuous carnival girls, or hearty country girls, or overly prim and skinny city girls, but never, never the kind of willowy, porcelain beauty he remembers from his childhood.

It takes him a moment, then, to come up with an answer,

"That's difficult... there are so many different types of beauty..." he studies the head for a long moment, "You've given her fuller cheeks and lips, she should probably have a fuller body to go along with it, I'd think, or she'd look out of balance?" there's a light question mark to it, a flush sort of half rising in his cheeks. Talking about someone this way, even someone theoretical is a little unnerving, to him. "I don't... really know what normal people like," he adds, a moment later.

"Oh?" Zexion seems to be taking far more lively interest in coloring the cheeks of his guest-designer than worrying about where to inscribe flushed skin on his current work. He smirks wickedly at the stammering pause, as if collecting petty revenge for the commentary that caught him so off guard. Here is the chance to put desire into description- and for all their bragging, a fair sum of men cannot fathom tailoring the things they lust for down to exquisite detail without realizing the scandal in their own hearts.

That is the cruel pleasure of this otherwise dull and drudging affair of positioning long term scouts.

"Are you a man of discerning tastes for the atypical then, Gustave?" There's a deliberate slyness in his teasing, which holds only briefly before easing into something more relaxed. He doesn't want to lose his company to embarrassment, after all, and so he concedes on an earlier point. "But that is true- beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and so we should have a broad spectrum of options, if people were only so open-minded."

His pen flourishes cleanly across the page, scrawling out a very predictable Venus, so well rehearsed that he can speak words entirely apart from the ones he writes down at the same time.

"As it is, most people do have a preferential 'type', and I was lucky enough to spy a few of my client's previous bids-" He swaps to narrating aloud, whimsical as his hand flies faster yet. "Full figured indeed then, but prettily compressed, with narrow fittings like an hourglass, as she tries so very hard to please the eye with a body set in fashion."

The extremes of corsetry on the whole seem a bit disgusting to Zexion, and so are the lily-slipped customs of other worlds, but each confining, masochistic regime to their own. While men at this flesh-carnival ogle women with bulging lifted bosoms, he might be taken to daydreaming of gilded eyes and dusky skin, hair too pale to pass for anything but ancient or moontouched. The schemer sets his pen down before any of those absent longings find presence in this ordinary beauty. He is very relieved for those preferences to remain secret.

"I might favor something more original, an exotic, but I find most 'normal people' (unless they are collectors) are very simple when it comes to their private possessions- browsing the wilds as they please on the street, but when it comes to what they'd bring home, it swings right back to comfortable conventionality."

"They are more interesting, and therefore hold more of my interest as they are, than as you are making them," he admits, after a moment of consideration. He doesn't often speak this plainly, or delve this deeply. He is, oddly, unafraid of having his "preferences" drawn out into the light like this, however. He is very much aware of most of the scandal in his heart, already, not that he sees it at such, personally.

Regardless, he feels like he owes Zexion more than that answer, more than a sidestep of his question, in return, lest he be a rude guest,

"To be honest," he says, after a moment of reflection, "I think if I were choosing for myself, I would want the option to continue to choose. If I wanted a static companion, I'm sure I could find one, without wasting the time of an artist, or binding a creature into servitude. But the idea of being able to experiment..." the tone colors decidedly soft, fascinated. It's not overtly sexual, but it's close enough, give the subject matter.

It's you I'm fascinated with. You, and your raw material, not this fake perfection...

"I have very little taste or need for 'comfortable conventionality'" his voice returned to a more normal tone, almost dismissive, "Very little about the rest of my life is comfortable, or conventional. I would hardly seek that in a companion."

There's something about Gustave which provokes a smile, slightly tense, perhaps at that timbre of awe, which reminds him of the more starkly awed moments of his youth. He does not speak the word like a scientist, with clinical and grating volatility, like Vexen on the edge of a breakthrough, but with a rounded, hushed warmth that is an evocative sign of dreamers and tinkers. Architects, like Ansem, building toward a vision. Like Ienzo had been once, swept up in the search of another wondering, fanatical seeker. He can't imagine, in sharpness of hindsight, that Xehanort had not think of him with the same sharpness of calculation running through his own mind now, with regards to Gustave's avid enthusiasm.

"These are byproducts of experimentation," Zexion chooses to warn him now, after the slightest moment of hesitation, and with the quiet discretion of one divulging his secrets like a cautionary tale. "Of how far the heart might be stretched, before it becomes something monstrous."

(Oddly, he also can't help but remember the face of a malformed man in a belltower, who wanted nothing more than to walk among a world which would not scorn him. He wonders where the gypsies of that world took their painted wagons, presuming they too had not plummeted into fire and shadows. They would enjoy a heart flung so wide toward the outcast as this man.)

"Most of the buyers here would not suffer to endure the transitions between forms." Looking back to his half-finished girl with face set, he considered the difficulties of making them do what Gustave desired. An illusion that he could make permanent and leave alone for a reconnaissance period needed to be static- he could not breathe full life into a nobody, not even if he worked on a whole chapter for a fortnight, a whole novel of backstory. If he could accomplish that to any great success, surely he would effort to restore them all. It was only by the shallow desires of rich curio collectors that this charade passed so elegantly. "Even if their masters could command word as I do, they would dictate such crude description, and be rather disappointed, I think, with the simplicity of their own ideals."

"You need to be very precise with dusks," he explains, pen picking up pace again, "they do not understand selfhood as anything more than that which they lack. Nor are they too capable of reading a man's momentary whims- obedient, yes, but not terribly imaginative."

He was curious now though, attention piqued, for what manner of dark and wild imagination this eager dabbler in oddities possessed. Zexion cleared his throat and rubbed absently at the smear of ink on his hand, allowing an offhand proposition to dangle precariously between then, as his eyes slide sideways toward Gustave once more, and his voice slows deliberately.

"However, if you are seeking company more enigmatic, and capable of intelligent mercuriality, then you need look no further..."

He was an illusionist, after all. And no stranger to experiments. He had no plans for lodging in this world, but it would certainly lend to the illusion of residency. Never Was held few charms in its eternal evenings, and Lexaeus was away on a long assignment...

"Let me finish with this trifle." One rich man's uninteresting plaything aside, and we'll take measure of your tastes.

"A... by product of..." he trails off, speaking more to himself than Zexion. He should be warned off, should take it as a cautionary tale, but the words strike something in him, a chord of music that trembles through his soul. ... how far... before it becomes something monstrous...

Yes.

For a moment, Zexion talks and Gustave is miles away, caught in a spiral of thoughts that race so hard that he can't grasp one, feeling the thrum of a string somewhere inside him, something that he cannot put a name to.

The proposition startles him out of his reverie, unsure if he heard properly, surprise written clear across his face, an open book. Surprise, but also acceptance, intrigue. His face flushes further, but he doesn't look away. Surely, he cannot be offering what he thinks he is, and yet...

And yet he doesn't move, knows he should leave and doesn't, knows he is courting the very thing he was playing at being older to avoid. But here, watching scholar's hands move over the page, knowing that, in a moment, those words would become reality, right in front of his eyes...

If Zexion is listening for it, there is a tiny, tiny catch of breath in his guest.

There are times when the keenness of his sensitivities can catch the swilling of a racing tremor, where for all his own dearth of one, he can sense the agitated flutter of another closeby heart in yearning. His nostrils flare, sensing a stirred up momentum that should be undetectable, yet he knows it even before Gustave takes the slightest gasp.

Zexion lets the sound sweep his attention sweep right back over, looking him up and down. He will make fair game of this, he decides then, and buy himself privacy of workspace and time for Gustave to collect himself into something respectable and certain.

"You look feverish, even under all your stage makeup." He chuckles, pressing a hand to his mouth with a chuckle of amusement, and producing a silver coin from between his fingers.

"Here," He slides it gently to the edge of the desk then opens his palm in offering, indicating for Gustave to take it up like a token of good faith. "I have work to do. Take the air and visit with the other snake oil vendors, buy a Moleskine and a new pen; take supper alone, and think about the evening. Ready it as you will."

His tone is smoothed and just as suggestively commanding as it was when he was commanding the dusks to take and swallow and become his words. There is nothing to indicate that he is any less than entirely serious- generous, even, a most unusual generosity of whim. It's as though he should wish to prove the title of Cloaked Schemer misappropriated here.

"Consider well your interests, arts which lie beyond the laws of light, and that the cost that may be greater than you might imagine." That is fairer warning by far than the one he had been given, years ago. Even if this is only a one-night dalliance, human bodies are not meant to explore the ins and outs of nobodies too intimately- and Zexion has honestly never tried it before, to know of potential complications. Only that he's left minds too eager in their preference for illusion over reality in madness, before, and the potential is ripening for that here.

"Then return to me, Gustave, if it is your intention to pursue an aberrant experiment."

Zexion might as well have just wound puppet's strings around Gustave, for the effect his words have on him. He is slow to move, slow to take the coin, but it is less hesitation, and more as though he is caught in a dream.

"You would have me write you?" it is both disbelieving and confirmation seeking, as his fingers close around the coin, as though he cannot believe that the present underneath the tree is actually real, is actually for him. He will go, and eat, and think, but in his heart, he has already decided.

And shaping, dark and strange, in his mind, is the beginnings already of what he would ask for. He is unsure if it is even possible, or if he can give proper words to it. He is a creator of machines and of songs, not poetry, but he can try. That it is dark bothers him not at all. He is used to the things in his head, now, has come to terms with them, long ago. But that it might become reality...

That frightens him, just a bit.

Just enough to be interesting.

"You are the first to pose real challenge to my craft here, Gustave." Zexion sniffs in a mild laugh, as if he might have taken mild offense at his own limitations, rather than the challenger. His smile wears a cunning edge- he was always risen to a good exercise, one that is fair and tests his mettle as an illusionist.

Gustave doesn't show an understanding the principles behind the art, beyond what tricks he's been shown and the patter presented, of course. Let him think, because it adds to the allure, that the sum of his powers lie only in the written-down words and the magic preserved for publication in his Lexicon, and not in those churning just below the edge of his active consciousness, waiting to be unleashed. Let him believe that the editing of his dusks' appearances are real and fixed and horrific, and not a mere illusion.

Allowing him that belief will only serve make the active fluidity of form, the mirage that shimmers and shifts on command, all the more fantastic. And he will master his new pen with greater diligence.

"Mutable fantasy intrigues me." He shrugs, tapping a thumb against his chin in thought. This is a different turn than he ever expected, but Xigbar had been urging him to take a jaunt down a spontaneous path lately, hadn't he? Lest he become too rigid, like the other Academic, or too vacant, like the Superior? He should keep fresh pace with the passions of peculiar hearts, lest he forget the shape of his own. "Let me see what the wilds of your imagination can produce in an hour or so of daydreaming, and we will retire to satisfy your interests in recreational practice. Write down whatever pleases and excites you, and I will effort to indulge your composition and more besides."

"But men who work in quicksilver lead short and maddened lives, as you must know, thus I will offer you company for only an evening- So go," Zexion makes gentle shooing gestures, voice lowered, lest his dusks beneath the table also take it as an order to wriggle off. "leave me to finish my duller commissions, with something to look forward to."

He nods, and goes, without another word.

After all, he has much to do, and think about.

He surprises himself less by buying the pen and the notebook, and more by the strange desire to run away from this. No, he does not know what is going on beyond what he has seen, but he has glimpsed the edges of it, will not be surprised in the least when he discovers that the strange young man he's been talking to turns out to not be human at all. Things that other people would be disgusted and discomforted by simply make him draw forward, interested, but this, something about this makes him want to run.

And that, more than anything else, is what convinces him to return.

He has washed his face, when he comes back, his own illusions dispelled with water and a bit of soap, though he's still wrapped in the cloak. He doesn't seem any more composed than he was before, but then, artists are not known for their composure, and though his inventor nature has caused him to understand and appreciate science and testing (and more testing, and more testing) he is an artist at heart.

He holds a small notebook as though he is unsure of it, and he feels strangely nervous, not at what is about to happen, but that he is having his first, stumbling steps at something, judged by a master. He is not good at the written word. The notebook is more a jumble of impressions than anything that resembles either poetry or prose. His hand is neat, but that is the only thing that is.

He has written something grand, and vast, all the same. The notebook isn't full of physical descriptors of some great and terrible beast, so much as it is full of shadows. Amorphous things, crawling out from under a child's bed to drag the lister down into darkness. The impression of teeth and hunger. Eyes glowing in the darkness and the vast depth of space, when you lie on your back and look at the stars and feel like you could slip off the edge of the world and fall into eternity.

There are snippets of music, written in the margins, where words failed him, as beautiful as they are discordant, haunting and jarring, bits of things that have never made it into full songs, just flitted through his dreams and lingered when he woke. The book is the stuff of nightmares, every word dredged up from some primal fear of the dark and the unknown and the unknowable. And yet... and yet...

tremulous and tender

That is not all that is there.

Not a word in the notebook is fear. It is fascination, desire, helplessness, recognition, discovery, delight.

He holds his heart in his hands, and waits, until Zexion finishes whatever he is doing, and beckons him closer, waiting for it to be judged.

His arrival could not have been more ideally timed. True to his word, the mysterious word-sculptor is putting finishing touches on the final set of edits- small adjustments to her features, tiny quirks of behavior, instructions for behavior, the barest touches of personality, but not too much personality, that she should become a burden on her soon-to-be master. Zexion looks her over with the occasional scrutiny, blowing ink dry on the page with rounded lips, but it is clear from one glance at his impassive eyes that he is certainly no Pygmalion for her.

(Any other man could be, easily. The dusk is a finished figure now, standing beside the table as an unabashed but docile nude who would not seem out of place in a renaissance gallery. He'd taken the advice and scripted her with a fuller body, hair flowing prettily in curled ringlets over her shoulders, not fully covering the swell of her breasts. Her nipples stand rosy and erect, and the ends sways as she shifts her weight from one curved hip to the next, as if uncertain how to carry herself, or dancing vacantly long after a passage of music has ended. Her eyes seem more lively now, lashes longer and curled.)

Gustave, on the other hand-

"So you have returned." His attention is quick to lift to his new patron or protege (he has not yet decided which), but Zexion does not sound surprised, as though he expected his own offer too tempting to turn away from. He nods in acknowledgement of the extended notebook, and puts out his hand to take it. "...and you've done as I've asked?"

He is eager to see what this wild and youthful imagination, unusually freed from a fear of the abyss is capable of producing, and what he had dared to put down on paper in his own words.

With the other hand he presses the last packet of folded paper into the false lady's clutches, eyes not even sliding to address her. He merely murmurs a lazy aside, a simple order: "Take and eat."

And then he smirks, staring harder with anticipation at Gustave while he coaxes the moleskine from his hand, watching for his eyes to move curiously toward the dusk. It pushes the thick square of folded parchment past those plump lips and then presses two fingers back farther into her mouth, with no ruminating chew before the swallow, simply packing the wad of folded script down deep, far past where a gag reflex ought to kick in, and far wider than a mouth with a jaw ought to stretch comfortably.

Zexion finally glances back over his shoulder, just to assure himself that her hand emerges glistening with credible saliva, and that her lips close back into a thick and neatly pursed bow. She flutters her lashes, and at last comes to life, moving at first toward Zexion as if to embrace him. He takes her by the shoulders and steers her around, with a final whisper at her ear, so that she might saunter demurely toward the tentflaps, where she'll face one last round of the buyer's appraisal.

Satisfied, he drops his eyes to Gustave's careful penmanship.

"Now let's have a look..."

He stares at the creation for a moment, half because she is beautiful, for all her beauty is overly normal, and naked, and half because he remembers what she looked like when she was just a head, eyes widening slightly. A blush creeps over his face a moment later, and he averts his eyes from her, almost primly. Considering what he holds in his hands, it's a bit of an odd place to split hairs, but, well, it just doesn't feel right, staring at her nakedness.

"I have," he answers, as curiously formal back as Zexion is being with him. His voice doesn't betray his nervousness, but the stiffness of his spine does. He hands over the book, though, and his eyes flicker nervously to the Dusk. It is, perhaps, the greatest indicator of said nervousness, however, that they linger for only a moment before they shift back to the notebook in Zexion's hand. He is fascinated by the inhumaness of the Dusk, even more so now that it is in human shape, but his work stands in judgement, and that is far more important than any other curiosity.

He follows Gustave's gaze, drinking deep of his anticipation before even daring to turn open the covers in his hand, stroking his thumb absently along the small notebook's spine while his eyes flit down, making sense of the neat lettering in clumsy form. It never lacks expressiveness, however, and that is what entices him to keep reading.

Zexion can tell these are the efforts of a dream so desperate to be heard correctly when it breaks off into a mothertongue- a different sort of composition altogether. There is also some relief that not so very long ago at all, Demyx taught him the basics of reading music. He can make just enough sense of the scattered note fragments to know that they would not be pretty phrases, the sorts of eerie sounds that would raise hairs at the nape of his neck.

It is an intimate look without ever becoming obscene, almost too intimate to be devouring as they stand here on the fringes of a fleshmarket, ready to close down business for the evening. He tries to distance himself from these grasping ideas, but Gustave's pages draw him in spellbound as only his own liking for ink and paper can.

These read more like teasing glimpses of nightmares rather than daydreams, and worse, they are not so very alien at all. In fact, it is not so far a cry from those haunting thoughts which have pulled him up from sleep, sheets soaked through in sweat and twisted limbs around his pillows, writhing anxious against the mattress in a time not long before he lost his heart.

And it is perhaps most impressive in that familiarity, in the tingle of sureness that he has known feelings like these before, the echo of a memory that stirs awake when he inhales, and expels on his breath in a little ghost of a name, forming on his lips in longing. Ienzo.

He is too well acquainted with what it's like, to freefall into a spiraling oblivion.

"You are quite an impressionist." That is the only open commentary Zexion shares, seeming pensive and lacking in dismay. He shuts his eyes and shuts the book between his palms, resisting the urge to touch and trace at his lips in front of company.

Here is a desire brimming potent and fearless enough to find the door of this world, the door to darkness, if Gustave only knew to search for it. But could this man, fated to wander into his company, like Xehanort, muster enough enigmatic presence to throw it wide when found? It merited further investigation.

"Come." Handing the moleskine back, he tucks his own grimoire into his arms and snuffs the hanging lantern overhead. "Show me to some private place, and you shall have everything here."

There are many ways he might accomplish this, but one stands out as the easiest. It is no great feat, to mirror a shadow, nor to make a heart behave like one exposed to the curling licks and softer suckles and gnawing teeth of primal darkness.

He doesn't know whether he feels slighted, that Zexion doesn't seem particularly impressed, or if the reaction is more than he was expecting. There's acceptance there, at least, if not praise, and he supposes, all things considered, that's better than he was hoping for. That he has struck some kind of chord with the other is reasonably obvious, but he's not sure exactly what.

He pauses a moment, thinking, when Zexion mentions going somewhere private. He has a room in an inn in the nearby town, and surely if Zexion has the ability to actually grant him what's in that notebook, he has the ability to make sure no one hears and interrupts them, even in a more crowded locale. But perhaps this is something better suited to the outdoors, the things that he has written, surrounded by the real darkness as well as the illusory. His brow furrows a bit in thought, and, eventually, he decides to ask his companion,

"Which do you think is better suited? Indoors or out?" there is darkness in every place, after all.

And then, and only then, knowing where he will go for either option, does he allow himself to actually realize what this means. That he is getting what's in that book, if Zexion even truly understood it, that the things he has written in it are about to become reality, or near enough to it.

Something in him, something in the air, vibrates like a neatly struck tuning fork.

"I will follow your lead." Which is to submit a degree of trust he typically does not take with strangers, but the schemer's mind is already stewing with preoccupation, turning over memorized movements of the neoshadows, their twitching crawl and fluid bending, and wondering how to best translate the thick seduction-scent of darkness.

It is strange and almost irresistible in a mere wisp, a wafting mix of indiscernible odors- bittersweet nectar, heavy musk or ancient incense which creeps up upon the senses as it unfurls. It only ever shows itself to be foul and noxious once it is too late, when it is thick and smothering and thoroughly welcomed, swilling on the breath and filling the gasping cavity of lungs, already so close to the heart. But one who has no sensitivity for it may be surrounded by darkness, and his nose would never be aware.

From the looks of his notebook, Gustave may be differently inclined, he might have trained his ear to know the sound of darkness instead. For him it might be more of a sirens' song, something their own resident musician has stopped dead in his tracks in front of gaping portals, straining to hear, while Zexion covered mouth and nose and hurried him along.

This time he's urging his newfound companion toward the edge of the abyss, wherever they might find it. Preferably somewhere with very limited risk of disruption, if Gustave is to enjoy himself properly, and Zexion won't be accused of torturing some poor soul by ignorant passing parties, and forced to flee.

"Take us somewhere far from the eyes of this common crowd." He slides into step behind Gustave's shoulder, raising his hood to once again cloa his eyes. It's very tempting to set a hand at the small of his back. On his own list of well known personal vulnerabilities, being touched where the spine curves naturally, the arrogance of that possessive-paternal gesture, is the simplest means of becoming someone unsettling. "If you truly do prefer your monsters under the bed, proper accommodations would of course be ideal."

"Normally, I think I would prefer a bed, and the comfort of walls... but I don't think it's that sort of night," it's the first time in a long while he's wished for one of the travelling caravan carts or cars of the carnival. He's fallen asleep to the sway of the cart on the tracks of a train and a bumpy rural road alike, but it's not what he'd ever call comfortable. Still, it would be private, and small, someplace to hide, draped in the trappings of the macabre he found interesting, a little hidey hole for a little mouse and it's collection. He never let anyone see inside there.

He'd bring Zexion in in a heartbeat.

But he's run away from his wagons for the evening, and knows better than to go back there with company, particularly of this sort. Better to head to one of the sites he knows nearby, but still plenty far enough away from his own little caravan.

Zexion might hesitate to touch him, but Gustave doesn't do the same, nor anymore. He is still nervous about this, still disbelieving, still off-balance, but that doesn't stop him from also being a strange sort of bold, either. He twines his bare fingers through Zexion's gloved ones, and tugs him forward, into the treeline and the dark.

The sun hasn't quite finished setting, though soon it will be too dark to easily navigate. For now, though, he knows where he is going, through the trees, searching for paths and landmarks he knows to be in this area. He's not the best tracker, but they have settled for a week in this area before, and he knows it better than some.

The fading sunset and linked, scholar's fingers, give the whole thing a strange air of boyishness, as though they are about to simply go exploring.

In a way, that's precisely what they're doing.

"As you say, and if you wish it." It is a night to pretend to he is more than nobody, to clasp hands with another dark-seeker and perhaps bear witness to yet another falling star. Sometimes, he suspects that's all these outworld missions really are anymore: Case studies of those eccentric and engaging characters, those singular individuals who stand at the brink of nightfall and welcome it forward with open arms. Its a curiously human quality which invites its own destruction, and very often births the first purebred heartless that will lead likeminded others in its wake.

For the Organization, it means more discarded hollows to fill their ranks. It is practically a law of nature, though firm-handed mandates set down by the guardians of old are all but universal in these realms, and they try vigorously to suppress it, to cull the darkness, to light their lanterns and invent stories to warn their children. As a result, a vast majority of people, generations upon generations have forgotten how to foster an appreciation for the darkness, and so it hungers. Thus the cycle continues, with some of those who dare to watch for a trickle of inertia lucky enough to find one another along the way.

And that is the satisfaction of locating a companion like Gustave. While some would be more wary of taking a twilight sojourn through the woods, Zexion has no complaint. There is an eerie peace to the shadowplay of a colored sky between trees, to the snap and rustle of leaves underfoot, and to curiously following the whims of a quickening heart.

Even the two remaining dusks seem to find enthusiasm for this jaunt, wiggling in horizontal corkcrew at heel, sometimes darting forward through the trees like fleeting pale wisps and then floating back to circle them, as if they were a pair of excitable pets out for a foxhunt.

"What first drew you to the denizens of darkness?" he finally asks as they walk, because that's something he cannot consult those freeverse pages to find. "You don't find many who will not turn and run from it."

He speaks vaguely of his own youth, where he hadn't quested very much after thrills and dangers- not specifically in an of themselves. He had grown up too early, some said, reserved and cautious. He had known sooner than most children should that security was an illusion, that a promised lifetime of unconditional love was the most unfortunate of lies, and that even the coziest of homes could be made suddenly unsafe by an overturned lamps.

As a result of that, perhaps, as a boy he had itched for answers and remained wide awake and keen, wherever mysteries lay untouched. He had fear, in fact significantly more fear than present company, and his fascination with stories were only ever appealing because they told that dragons might be slain, and nightmares overcome. The darkness was wild and unknown with no hope of being tamed...but then a new thinker emerged from out of the blue and changed everything, daring to grasp at a vision that it could be understood.

The boy had only ever loved once, and Zexion knew better.

Edited 2012-11-29 03:36 (UTC)

"First drew?" he shakes his head slightly, laughing a bit, as they walk, as he tugs Zexion along behind him, pausing every now and again to study where they are, for a moment, before continuing onward, "You say that as though I can remember a time I wasn't. The music's always been there. I just couldn't always give it voice," he actually pauses a moment, to turn and look at Zexion for a moment,

"What need would I ever have had to run from it? There are things to be afraid of in the darkness, but there are also things to be afraid of in the light. And the worst things don't care where you are," he turns back to the path ahead, "I've always liked it better. Always felt more alive at night, on the edges, in the shadows. People who say that's bad are just scared, without reason, or fear, with reason, their own shadows. There's nothing to run from," he adds, a moment later, with a small shrug.

"You sound just like someone I know." Zexion sighs distantly, or inwardly absorbed, its difficult to draw a distinction. He's slipped Gustave's smaller, slipper notebook between the covers of his much larger Lexicon, and it has all but disappeared from sight while the content spills out shape on the fringes of his mind, at an unseen drawing table.

"There are some things better avoided, I'd say, but generally you are right. The light holds plenty of dangers in full view, and yet too many rely entirely on what can be seen."

What if the trees are now bowing slightly out of shape, if the leaves filter out more than they ought to, and if the path is wholly lost, along with all sense of direction? If, after a brief spill of vertigo when a root catches their toes, they are only going around in circles?

The dusks wind around the trees trunks and let their limbs billow aimlessly, falling behind to change uniform once more, this time with no edible instructions. That would be labyrinthine preludes to this game enough, would it not?

"Common people are easy fooled by simple fascades; they hold far too much faith in their eyes." It makes the job of an illusionist simple, and sometimes rather dull. Expanding the palate is what delights him, these days, tapping into the sensual memory associations of fragrance and taste, a world where hearts ache with nostalgia for the slightest hint of a father's pipe smoke, of cedar chests and tenderly pressed violets, of skin and sweet womanly perfumes, or the comfort-smell of fresh loaves cooling on the bakery sill at dawn. He teaches himself to learn the textures, a full textile catalog of fur and buckskin, silks and thick brocades, velvet and wool knits, while he's running his fingers along bland, smooth surfaces.

"But close them by choice, once in a while, and you learn all the other layers of richness the light-blinded have been missing."

He feels it, more than sees it, the rational part of his mind focused heavily on the chore of reading the path markers, a thing that is becoming harder and harder to do, with the waning light. The shadows raise prickles along his back and make him shiver, long before he finally looks from the path and sees what's been happening.

He pulls to a halt, breath catching, fingers still twined with Zexion's.

"I can't find my way to the clearing by sound," he points out, not really in argument to Zexion's words, with a little laugh, but he turns, instead, and tugs him close by the hand, "Then again, being lost in the woods is rather poetic, don't you think?" he slides fingers into Zexion's hair, probably knocks back his hood, though he doesn't specifically try to, and tips into him for a kiss.

If he's already starting, after all, there's little reason not to show his appreciation.

The kiss is gentle, and soft, and hums with the same kind of energy that went into his little book, relatively chaste, but almost bruisingly intimate, like he's savoring Zexion's mouth the way some people savor wine. Or music.

When he pulls back from the kiss, he says nothing, merely turns and heads deeper into the woods, fingers of the one hand still pulling Zexion along with him. He doesn't know where he's going, anymore, but he's not sure it matters. Now, he pays more attention to the shadows starting to curl around them, to the barely there whisper of the Dusks through the trees, mistaken easily for wind, if he didn't know better.

Zexion smirks back at this protest; lost in the woods was precisely the atmosphere he's been slowly attempting at weaving in, but the laugh tells that Gustave is aware of it- aware, and still sporting in approval.

It's a fleeting assurance that this is still a game, for Gustave to understand his influence and enjoy it all the same. Play in any proper sense is something he's done so very infrequently, even as a child, for lack of true peers or toys to position as puppets. So he put his imagination to work on people, with mindgames too mature and far too subtle-handed for his age. It might have be mistaken for malicious manipulations rather than mischievous boredom, if anyone had really known about the engineered conflicts among his fellow apprentices, outbursts and interpersonal tensions carefully set up like dominoes for Ansem's dismay and his own amusement at the suppertable. If he were to evaluate it honestly now, Ienzo had been a royal brat of a ward, pulling on puppetstrings with questions, a tilt of the chin, with swaying bangs and wide-eyed looks.

When Xemnas had pronounced him Schemer, the others had indubitably agreed; Zexion realized in faint surprise they must have once pitied his absence of playmates, and understood at least some of his complex social games.

But among strangers, he's never sure- which is why he'd given Gustave so much time to think about inviting himself back, a chance to turn away. So he raises his eyebrows, as if playing innocuous to the laugh of accusation, when he's pulled up close.

There's a fumbling start on his end, a clumsy hesitation to respond, as if it's his instinct to pretend like he's never been kissed before, or that it's not at all what he expected. Gustave's gentleness is a winning move, though, and soon he's tipping his nose in the opposite direction, shutting his eyes to receive the foreign warmth smoothing against his mouth...it's strange, this lopsided intimacy, and always uncomfortable, worse when it leaves his body trembling on edge with sensitivity, but lacking in the deeper resonance.

Someday, I'd like to kiss with a heart inside of me he wastes time deciding, and soon (too soon) it's gone away and Zexion is sliding his tongue along the inside of his lips in contemplation, certain that he wants at least another try at that. Latching tightly to Gustave's leading fingers, and finally to the edge of his cloak when his hand slips, clutching at fabric, he efforts at shifting in closer, the sound of their breathing the only human sound in the vicinity.

Gnarled bark of the surrounding old trees snarl into natural shapes, barely recognizable as grotesque faces, but with a stroke of enhancement, the suggestion of watchers in the wood are there. His dusks understand hide and seek games, but sometimes they hide too well, so Zexion calls for them in a strange, fuzzed whisper that sounds like a language of white noise- they peer through the branches to assure they're still around also.

"How much do you know," he riddles in an undertone, leaning in close enough to hover his lips behind Gustave's ear, "about shadows as their own living entities?"

The only games truly worth playing, in his opinion, are the ones that skirt perilously close to reality, perhaps even tip over the line, just a touch, certainly blend things in shades of grey. He wouldn't like many of the kind Zexion plays-- the kind you play wholly in reality, other people the chesspieces on the board-- but he doesn't mind wagering life, or sanity, or something equally precious, on one, if it's the right sort.

He moves more slowly through the woods now, still trying to pick the correct path, because it's more fun that way, even though he knows it's a fool's errand. It lets Zexion follow close behind him, as well, without worrying about tripping over him. He's close enough to feel Gustave's shiver, soft and sweet, when his lips brush against the air near his ear,

"Impossible," he says, in answer, and while it's a firm one, something breathless in his tone begs to be proven wrong.

"Forbidden" Zexion corrects with a wag of his head, barely above a whisper with the ends of his bangs brushing soft at Gustave's neck.

"Oh yes," He sighs, purrs in a knowing way that's agonized with a theatrical empathy, at the very least warming the air between them, finding a hypnotic rhythm between syllables. He is no man of music, but the lyrical quality of words has never been lost to Zexion... longer, selective silence only means he'd had more time to practice, in mind, the way that they ought to be caressed on the tongue. His hand lets go of the cloak, but only for a moment, only long enough to wrap around Gustave's arm.

"Certainly nothing they would ever want to think possible, but there are so very many things which should not exist, yet do." Secrets, secrets best divulged in dark woods amid the shivers of longing and illusion, where they might later be denied. "I am proof, just as the dusks and their counterparts."

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Oh... Gustave apparently has *issues* I have never realized he had. (I love it when that happens)

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Oh... Gustave apparently has issues I have never realized he had. (I love it when that happens)