D&D | Masks cracking in dark spaces

[ephitomis]

Title: Masks cracking in dark spaces
Fandom: Original/D&D
Notes: Written for the prompts "Spirito, Sabbia e Vento" Esploratori del Polyverso
Wordcount: 4303
Summary: Daemon!AU for my D&D Campaign. In this universe, Aka isn't alone. It doesn't make it better.

There is a universe where Aka waits alone in the dark for days, where the dark and the silence gnaws at them and hollows their bones. A universe where Aka cries and cries, but still waits because it’s what they promised, because they had to and then, when no one came, they crawled out of the dark alone, motivated by hunger and despair.

In this universe, however, Aka isn’t alone, they’ve never been alone their whole life, but it doesn’t make it better.

There’s two of them waiting, trying to tell themselves that it’s the right thing to do. Their mother would never leave them, they know, and so Aka holds Kue close and closes their eyes and waits.

Kue changes rapidly, but always big creatures to keep Aka warm and when Aka crawls out of the dark, this time it’s on top of Kue.

“What will we do?” Aka asks, holding onto Kue for dear life and wondering how to survive on his own. 

“We survive,” Kue resplies, “we don’t show weakness. We save Iri and Nie. We follow the rules like we said we would. Always follow the rules.”

Aka nods, covering his face for a moment on Kue’s fur. The truth is that Kue has always been the better part of Aka, who is always too scared to do what they should.

Kue is right: they need to survive, they need to save Iri and Nie, they need to be better than what they’ve been. Aka needs to be better.

The first rule has always been that no one should know what they are and so Aka knows, in that precise moment, that they will never be Aka again. 

Aka changes, morphs, and when he opens his eyes he’s Kairen. He’s not a child and he will never be again. He’s never been a child, maybe, and that makes him ready to face whatever happens from now on.

He gathers courage from his memories, copies the movement that this body has done so many times before, gathers his posture and his facial expression and the way he holds himself high. This Kairen is also a little different from the one that came before, he’s lighter, he makes more jokes, he makes himself loved and hated at the same time, because he needs allies.

Kue changes as well, and so Kairen looks down and where there was a dog now stands a Marmoset, light and quick on his feet, ready to help him. Kairen straightens up, smiles at the monkey and lets her climb on his shoulder.

Aka is weak and a coward, but Kairen is anything but, and that’s what they need to be.

“Well, are you ready, Kimue?” he asks, and the monkey chirps on his shoulder. There’s none of the sadness from before, none of the doubts.

They’ll survive and save Iri, one way or another, that’s all they know.

Entering a clan is more or less an accident. They’ve always known that they would have needed allies to survive Babelon, and so they’ve made themselves as charming as they could, but they take no pleasure in betraying their trust.

It’s inevitable, but it doesn’t feel good all the same.

Kairen tries to stay as away as possible from anyone, and even when he has to be charming, Kimue is usually sitting distant from other daemons. It’s a dance to make sure they still trust him enough, but won’t be as hurt from his inevitable betrayal.

It’s not a dance that Kairen knows how to dance well.

It’s obvious in the way that Rohagar’s daemon Elga, a big tiger, always tries to play with Kimue like they’re friends, or in the way that Yu’rg, Alavarra’s King of Saxony, always flies to be next to Kimue when he’s not lounging on Elga’s shoulders.

They consider them one of the clan and that grants them special treatment. 

It’s what they need, of course, and they try to be as useful as possible in normal clan-related activities, but they always expect something more.

“This clan is the only family I’ve ever known,” Alavarra says, sometimes, when she’s drunk too much. Rohagar always cheers to that, happy in a way that makes Kairen uncomfortable.

Maybe this is the problem, he thinks. Kairen has a family, one he has loved and still loves as fiercely as he can. One he still holds in his heart and clings to. There’s not a space there for another family.

The clan wants to take a place that’s been occupied for too long, and that will never be vacant if they have something to say about it.

“We should leave,” Kairen says one night in their room, when the mask slips and Aka tries to swim to the surface. Kairen hasn’t been built to feel guilt, but Aka is made of softer material.

They’re alone, and for a moment Kairen’s hair becomes white, and his eyes gloss over with grey. Kimue’s fur changes, just slightly, and his snout becomes more pronounced, like it’s trying to transform.

“We never promised anything more of what we’re giving them,” Kimue says, and that moment of weakness is gone, swept under the rug. 

“But they still want more,” Kairen tries, and his voice wavers enough that he has to admit that maybe he’s not Kairen anymore. So Aka closes their eyes and breathes for the first time in years. Kairen doesn’t care, but Aka can’t help but feel the pain of losing people they care about.

If the clan really considers them part of their family, how much will their betrayal hurt them? Don’t they know this kind of hurt all too well?

“That’s their problem, isn’t it?” Kimue asks, putting a little paw on Aka’s face. Aka looks at her, at the part of their soul that they want to be, and wonders how she can come from them. “We aren’t doing anything wrong, Kairen.”

She uses that name as a memento, as a way to make Aka remember who they’re supposed to be. So Aka exhales and changes, feels himself grow back into the pants and shirt, and Kairen comes back slowly.

“Yeah, it’s their fault,” he repeats, petting Nimue’s fur. “They should know better than to expose their weakness so openly.”

It doesn’t feel good saying it, but nothing in Kairen’s life has felt good in a long time. What’s another thing to add to the list?

There’s a freedom that comes from being in the tempest that no one else seems to feel. Kairen understands why people are scared of the outside, but at the same time he likes their missions on the surface more every time they go.

There are dangers, true, but there’s also endless possibilities.

Kairen (Aka) has never been particularly talented in anything. Iri had their magic, but Aka was always behind, watching Iri. He’s grown in the years, he makes a half decent thief now, but he’s not special, he knows that very well, and his abilities aren’t growing fast enough.

There’s no way for him to get strong enough to face against Aqqan-ra, but when he’s in the tempest, with the sand of the desert under his feet and the wind roaring around him he can forget that.

It’s why sometimes he takes jobs that require him to go on his own. The others aren’t always happy, but they let him do it without too much fuss.

He wonders what would have happened if they had been there, if someone else had touched the sword first. But he’s alone, Kimue follows right behind him, but he touches the sword and then there’s nothing else.

There’s only darkness around him, and he tries calling out to Kimue, but he can’t. For the first time in his entire life, Kairen is alone, no presence at his side, nothing to anchor him to this world. He looks at his hands, and they realize that they aren’t even Kairen anymore, Aka stands in his place, in all his weaknesses and insecurities.

And then someone speaks and their life changes forever.

“I don’t like it,” Kimue says, looking at the sword. She’s angry at him, he can feel it, and it’s a strange sensation. They’re one and the same, after all, and yet he can feel her disapproval as sharply as if he was feeling it himself.

Maybe he is.

Still, he made a decision, and the first time he feels the magic run through his veins, he knows it was the only decision he could make.

She doesn’t feel it, whatever connection he has to the sword, she’s not part of it. He doesn’t know if it’s normal, if daemons are always cut off from the magic, and he can’t really ask anyone.

“This is what we were missing,” he says, looking at her intently. “Don’t you realize? With this we can actually help Iri and Nie. With this, we’ll be strong enough.”

“But what’s the price?” she asks, touching the sword with her paw.

It’s a fair question, but also a useless one. “Family is the only thing that matters,” Kairen says, looking at her. “It’s the second rule, isn’t it?”

There’s a reason, after all, if he decided to take Kairen’s form, that many years ago. He needed a reminder of his family, of what they meant for him, and what he’ll give for them.

Kairen goes back to the clan and tells them that he’s keeping the sword. It’s not how it works, he knows, but it’s his. They tell him he can’t, that it’s not how it works in this clan (in this family) and he tells them that it’s how it works for him.

Rohagar advances on him, Elga roaring towards Kimue, and Kairen stands his ground.

“I found this sword, and I want to keep it. This clan’s rules don’t work for me anymore. Do you really want to keep me by force?” he asks, looking her right in the eyes.

She’s hurt, he sees it. He’s good at reading people, it comes with the territory when you always have to be able to impersonate someone. 

There’s a part of him that wants to apologize, but he was always as clear as he could have. They decided to treat him as something he didn’t want to be. 

Still, he knows that in a way he took advantage of them and for that he’s sorry. They were what he needed to survive in this city, but now he’s ready to do it on his own.

Rohagar looks ready to punch him, and he readies himself while Kimue bears her teeth towards Elga. They’re no match for them, of course, and for a moment Kairen feels the magic react. It would be easy, he thinks, but he can’t.

There would be too many questions, too much to explain.

Before Rohagar can do anything, however, Alavarra intervenes. She puts a hand on Rohagar’s chest, and puts herself between her and Kairen.

“I think you’re making a mistake,” she says, and her eyes are like ice. Most people think that Rohagar is the most dangerous one of the two, but that’s because they don’t know Alavarra enough. “But if this is what you want, we don’t want to force anyone. This family is open to all, but evidently it’s not a fit for you. Go, take your damn sword, but never come back.”

Yu’rg looks at them from Alavarra’s shoulders and not even Kairen can tell what he’s feeling. Still, he nods and walks away.

He also takes his suit with him, but well they never said he couldn’t.

After that, the only thing he focuses on is finding more magical items. His connection with the sword grows and with it also his magical abilities, but it’s not fast enough. Now that he has a way, now that he knows what he has to do, he can’t just wait for it.

So he goes to the surface alone when he can, and he goes inside every shop trying to find something. 

Kimue still doesn’t like the sword, but she knows what they have to do, and so she doesn’t complain too much. She still says that it feels strange, like there’s a barrier between them when Kairen does magic, but they still don’t know if it’s because of the sword or if it’s normal.

They already know that they’re on this road alone, and at this point he thinks it’s better. He doesn’t want to let down other people if he can help it and no one will ever be more important than Iri.

It’s better if they’re alone. 

And then he meets the others.

They were serious when they said that they didn’t want to be in a team with anyone else. They tried, and they knew that it would never end in anything but hurt. And yet, here they are again, inside a little shop with two people and their daemons, ready to do it all again.

It’s just for this one mission, they promise themselves, while Kimue watches the other two daemons interact. 

She keeps herself apart, while Kairen smiles and jokes and makes himself the butt of the joke. He makes himself available, while Kimue stays back and watches. It confounds people, they know, and it’s why they do it.

Rosi and Amelia are watching him, aggravated by another one of his jokes, while their daemons (an onyx and a snake) watch from the sideline. They’re close, and Amelia’s snake slithers on top of Rosi’s onyx and they’re circling each other, trying to get to know each other.

They look at Kimue like they don’t understand why she refuses to join. 

It’s better this way, they know. They’ll understand what’s going on with these kids and then they’ll never see them again, so it’s better if they keep their distance.

They really don’t know how it happens. One moment they’re ready to walk away, the next they’re making a clan together. To make things worse, someone else has joined them, a paladin with his bear daemon.

It’s all spiralling out of control, and it feels like they’re getting swept up. 

“We promised we would never do this again,” Kimue says, late at night. She’s picking at her fur nervously. It’s strange seeing her so conflicted. She’s usually the sternier of the two, ruthless to compensate for his weakness, but this is getting under her skin too.

They don’t know what’s different this time, why it’s harder than usual, but it feels different.

“We didn’t mean to,” Kairen says, looking at the pages he transcribed, another lie that will make them hate him. Another betrayal that he can’t help.

“I don’t think it makes it better,” she tells him, and then she changes. Kairen looks up and for the first time in a long time, he sees Kue’s preferred form, the one that Kue always used to transform to when they were home: a black dog peers at him.

“We don’t have another choice,” Kairen reminds him, and he’s tempted to change as well, but the idea of being Aka scares him. He needs to be strong, and Aka was always anything but. “We need to do this for Iri and anything else… anything else won’t matter.”

The wind howls in his ears, and he wonders why he can’t hear anything else. 

“Which one are you?” his mother asks, wearing the same face he has been wearing for years and so he allows himself to change.

He can’t bear to be Aka, not here in front of everyone, but where Kairen stood, now stands Akairi. It should be enough, she hasn’t shown this face to anyone in years, but her mother knew her. Knew all of her personalities, all of her forms.

And yet her mother looks at her and she doesn’t recognize her.

It makes her think that maybe she’s even more far gone than she thought. Maybe there’s really nothing left of her and it’s all lost in the lies that she has told over the years.

So she stands there, most of her secrets laid bare for anyone to see, while her mother disappears in her arms.

She was already dead, she knows, but it still feels like she killed her.

Akairi doesn’t look at her daemon, but she knows that he’s at her side as Kue.

They don’t look at anyone else.

“Don’t you have anything else to do?” The Pearl asks, while their fox daemon lounges on the sheet. Kimue’s near them in a request of comfort that’s so out of character for anyone that really knows them.

It’s probably why they’re asking it from someone that doesn’t know them. Yet again, who really knows them? Nowadays they’re not sure they even know themselves.

“Careful, someone more insecure could even think that you don’t enjoy my company,” he jokes, smiling at them.

They smile back, amused. “Of course not, but I’ve worked all night, and I’m going to sleep. Decide what you want to do.”

He almost laughs. There are so many things he wants to do, That has never been the problem: wanting things is what he’s good at, it’s obtaining them that eludes him.

Still, he’s so tired and he doesn’t want to feel like this anymore. The Pearl doesn’t really expect anything from him, probably doesn’t even like him very much, and it’s what he needs.

They won’t care when Kairen disappears, when he finally finds a way to get to Iri or dies trying. It’s probably why he comes back here, times and times again. He doesn’t have to think about all the hurt he’s going to cause while he’s here, so he closes his eyes and says: “Can I stay here, then?”

“Sure. I’m sleeping, though,” they say and at the same time their daemon moves their tail, touching Kimue lightly. She almost wants to reach towards the fox, he can feel it, touch their fur, play with it, but she stills and accepts the touch that’s been given with grace.

Kairen smiles and relaxes on the chair he’s in.

“That’s perfect.”

He gets his memory back, they all do, and he can’t help but wonder, lost in the uncertainness of it all. Which of his memories are real? He met the ghost of his mother, and she looked exactly like he remembered, but was it real? The tempest is unpredictable and uncontrollable and maybe it just gave him what he expected.

They think about it constantly and Kimue paces their room like it’s a cage. The thing is: they still remember the dark, the space where they hid for days, starving and unsure. Is that real? Did they hide in there after they took away their memories? Or is that fake too, something their  mind made up to explain all the sadness and the wide empty void in their soul?

They think about it constantly, so much so that sometimes they stare in a trance. Sometimes Kairen feels like he’s the only one.

He brought it up once, with Rosi, trying to see what she would think, if she spent all her time thinking, obsessing like he does. It’s unsurprising to know that she doesn’t.

Even with the knowledge that she has a family, somewhere, alive and willing to talk to her, she clings to what she has found here in Babelon and Kairen… he doesn’t understand that.

Family always comes first, is what his mother used to say, stern but still gentle, and these are the words that Kairen has lived by his entire life.

Only, did she really? At this point, how can he trust anything he remembers? It feels like a real memory, but they all did at one point.

Still, in his life Kairen has always considered family, his blood, the only one that would ever understand him, more important than anything else, and it’s baffling to see people so different than him.

Rosi and Tank have their own family in Babelon, and there’s no blood connecting them, and still they call them their family, and act like a family. Amelia, from the little Kairen has gathered, despises her own family.

He doesn’t understand.

To this day his inability to save Iri (Nyx, his mind suggests to him) haunts him like a waking nightmare. He thinks of Iri alone, hurt, left behind and he wants to scream.

He turns into Akairi more, nowadays, because the anger is impossible to control. It consumes every part of his day, and she makes it a little better, knows how to wield it to act, while Kairen just lingers in it.

Kimue is uncontrollable. It’s a problem, more than they let on with the others. She changes within one second and another, first a Marmoset, then a dog, then a cat, then an ermine, and then a bird. In the darkness of their room, she’s a flurry of animal noises and fury.

Agony rips through her and she’s not equipped to handle it, so she tries to push it out the only way she knows how: by changing.

It doesn’t help, nothing ever does.

So Kairen holds her, and she blends back into Kimue and stays. “This doesn’t change anything,” he reminds her, “our objective is still the same. And we never… we never planned on actually making it back alive, didn’t we. So we save Iri and then… well, then it’s not a problem anymore.”

She puts her paws in his hair, holding. “But what if dad is alive? Should we try and help him? What if we’re wrong and he didn’t…”

“You saw him in that vision,” Kairen reminds her, gentle but hurting. “And even then, how can we be sure that it was true? That anything was true? Maybe they died a long time ago, maybe that’s why she didn’t recognize us. But Iri, Nyx, she’s real and still alive.”

“So we save her,” Kimue finishes.

“So we save her,” Kairen confirms, holding her close.

He can’t think like the others, of family that doesn’t come from blood and loyalty that it’s not to Iri. 

He won’t have to soon enough anyway.

“Do you think they’ll miss us?” Kimue asks him, while they’re walking back towards their new temporary home. It’s bigger, and the idea of leaving something like that empty sits wrong with him, still he knows that he can’t keep it for himself for much longer but he still doesn’t know how to convince the Centaurs to give it to the kids.

Maybe he can leave it as a request in his will?

“I don’t know,” he replies, honestly. “Sometimes I think they will, but I try not to think about it too much. We screwed up here.”

It’s true. It would be more of a comfort if he could say that the others wouldn’t even notice his disappearance, but he knows it’s not true.

Rosie and Tank, he thinks, would be okay: they have their families, and Kairen is nothing but an annoying disturbance in their daily lives. He worries more about Amelia, but he hopes that this little show they’re planning might help grow her confidence and her career.

He still needs to find Dumber, so that the kids at the orphanage are all safe and then he can find them work somewhere, maybe with the Centaurs, or as underlings in their clan - he’s sure Tank would take good care of them.

Still, after all is said and done, they’ll have Iri. If everything goes according to plan, Iri will be safe and happy to be saved. The others will take care of her, he’s sure.

“We won’t leave any loose ends,” Kimue says, climbing into his shoulder and putting her tail around his neck. Her fur tickles his neck, and it’s comforting and familiar.

They never had any misconception about where they’re headed to. When he took up that sword, when he made that pact, he knew even back then that there would never be a happy ending at the end of his road.

One doesn’t bring down the most powerful organization in the world and think he’ll live to see another day, but if he can kill them all even just a second before they kill him in return? Then that’s okay.

“Yeah. We’ll make sure everyone is all right.”