Chapter Text
He hadn’t been to Violence since… since his last fateful meeting with the Machine.
The graveyard surrounding the gates stinks of rust and blood.
Honestly, it would be preferable to leave this wretched place exactly as it is. No one had asked him to come here. It would be easy enough to turn around and walk all the way back to Wrath.
But he came here intending to cross it, and so he shall.
The labyrinth is as uncanny as he remembers, eerily silent and deceptively empty. As Hell’s warden, he would have just teleported past this place and into the Layer proper. He supposes it's only fitting that he walks it now.
Every hall is identical to the last. Even with his innate sense of direction, he catches himself doubting the way. How was a human ever supposed to navigate this place?
Between one stairway and the next, the back of his neck prickles.
Something is watching him.
He draws a sword, turning a slow circle with it held out defensively. Nothing stares back at him.
He has no choice but to press onward, but the feeling does not fade.
The halls are empty.
The rooms are empty.
The staircases are empty.
He’s almost to the ruined center of the maze when he hears the tell-tale scrape of stone against stone.
He whips around, sword raised, and meets sightless carved eyes.
The Mannequin stands frozen in the center of the room, body hunched over and head tilted too far to one side. A statue, if he didn’t know better. It fits this place, bone white except where blood stains its many (many, many) hands.
He lowers his weapon to a defensive horizontal.
The silence is deafening.
“I have no quarrel with you. Leave me be, and I shall do the same.”
It does not respond. It does not even twitch. But he of all people knows this demon’s tricks. And where there is one, there are many.
…in truth, he doesn't want to fight it. Whatever struggle it could offer would be an annoyance at best and a pity at worst. And, admittedly, he’s grown softer in recent times. He does not want to take any more lives unless he must.
His sword lowers a fraction more.
“…I will not hesitate to cut you down. Do not force my hand.”
It remains exactly as it is.
He backs out of the room.
The Mannequin does not follow, but he constantly feels eyes on his back. Every time he stops to look, there is nothing there. Still, he follows the winding path deeper and deeper.
The ruins left in the wake of that abomination’s rampage make things difficult. He has to backtrack multiple times due to rubble-filled doorways or collapsed halls. Again and again he comes back to the central room, both because of his own retreats and because of the looping nature of this place.
Several times, he thinks he hears the skittering of too-many limbs behind him, but it is gone when he stops to listen.
On his sixth return to the damned lobby (or was it the seventh?), he finds the demon waiting for him.
For the third time, he raises his blade.
“Cease this. I have told you my intentions. Now leave me be.”
Its head tilts, moving in jerky, fragmented motions that set his teeth on edge. A mockery of the human form, white as snow and stained by violence.
It drops onto all fours, faster than a creature of its size should be able to move. A predator’s crouch.
Lightless and hollow he may be, but he will not be trifled with. He bares his teeth and readies himself—
—for an attack that doesn’t come. It stays low, folded over itself like a spider on limbs that bend unnaturally, but it does not launch itself at him as expected. It just… sits there.
He’s getting tired of these games.
“Your death would bring me no joy. Be gone from me.”
It doesn’t move, surprising no one. He prepares to be on his way once again when it crackles to life.
Slowly, in a motion easily tracked, it puts a single hand forward. Its joints snap and pop like burning wood and the stone of its flesh scrapes against itself. It inches forward just like that, one ungodly hand behind another, crawling over the uneven flooring like an insect.
He plants his feet as it approaches, but it never increases its speed and it never leaps upon him, things he knows it to be more than capable of.
Unnecessary bloodshed already coats his hands. He is disturbed by how easily he considers worsening the stain. But stars, how this thing tests his resolve. An unholy creation, moving in ways against nature and unyielding in the face of his warnings. On and on it creeps, slowly but steadily covering the distance between them.
He backs away, slowly circling the room as it follows. Eventually, he’s put a fallen pillar between them. It climbs over the snow-white marble as easily as walking, and he grits his teeth when it crests the obstacle.
“Enough!”
It freezes, hovering in place on the column with one hand on the ground. Its expressionless eyes bore into him, and he makes a wide half-circle gesture with his sword.
“I have given you every chance to leave. I have not come here to do you harm, and still you press me! This is your final warning! Come any closer and I will strike you down!”
It stares. And stares. And stares.
For a moment, he fully considers killing it and returning to Heresy, just to be done with this horrible dance. He despises this creature, with its empty eyes and unflinching expression, a testament to the horror of this place, hands as drenched in blood as his own—
It lowers its head and pulls back. It sits back on its haunches, ‘knees’ drawn to its chest and arms crossed around its… well, the limbs that would be legs. Everything about it is still disgustingly wrong in every way, but it’s somewhat less threatening when it’s curled in on itself like this.
He sucks in a breath and realizes his heart is racing.
“I have no business with your kind. What do you want?”
His voice comes out strained, touched by the desperation he hadn’t noticed till now. Why, why does this place make him so uneasy? Why does this creature vex him so? Why is there no fucking way out?
He draws several harsh, shaking breaths, trying to reclaim some control over himself.
Slowly, even more so than last time, it unfolds and puts its hands out. He watches, frustrated and no calmer as it crawls down from the pillar.
It doesn’t approach though, still on all fours with its side toward him, curling away and into itself. Like a scared animal, he thinks in bewilderment. Surely it doesn’t fear him if it keeps challenging him like this. Surely. Surely.
He watches in dumb silence as it sticks a back leg out. When he doesn’t react, it puts more weight onto it and then brings the rest of its body forward… creeping ever closer while radiating caution.
He admits he has absolutely no idea what is happening.
It inches forward using the same method every time, steadily gaining ground despite its fearful body language. At this point, he just wants all of this confusion and nervousness to stop, so he doesn’t move. His sword stays out, his feet stay firm, and he steels himself for whatever happens when it closes the distance.
It's close enough to touch his shadow when it pauses.
If he swung now, he could decapitate it.
Would he be fast enough if it attacked?
Quietly, desperately, he breathes out, “What do you want?”
Slowly, so fucking slowly, just like everything else, it cranes its head up. Its neck stretches, millimeter by damnable millimeter until it’s just this side of unsettlingly long, and presses its cheek to his clenched knuckles.
Something in him deflates.
It stares, so close to his blade and fleshy neck extended, so painfully vulnerable if he chose to hurt it.
He doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t expect it to truly be peaceful, but this is not the behavior of something wishing him harm. This is an animal, a fearful and lonely animal seeking contact with the first soul it’s probably seen in ages.
Weren’t they human once? Before Hell twisted them, isn’t that what they were?
He thinks of the Virtues, desperate to reclaim their humanity. He thinks of the machines, kind in their own strange ways. He thinks of how painful it was to be touched after so long without.
He hesitates, then moves his open hand to cup the top, er, chin, uh— the part of their head closest to him.
It makes a sigh like wind through skeletal trees.
“Is this… is this it? What you were after?”
As always, it does not answer, but it does push up into his palm. He brushes his thumb over its stony skin and it leans into the touch.
The rest of his apprehension begins to thaw.
He moves his blade away and lets his arm hang limply at his side. The tip of his sword quietly scratches at the marble floor. The sound is swallowed up in that of his gauntleted thumb moving back and forth over their cheek.
“Alright. We can do this for a little while.”
It hums, the sound rattling like pebbles in its hollow chest. Somehow, his hands don’t look quite as stained against their pale face.