"Blue" [FIC] Dragonquest VIII (Marcello/Eight)
Title: Blue Author/Artist: volte_face Rating: PG-13 Warnings: vague references to torture Word count: 1313 Summary: In which children go missing, Marcello and Eight set out on a mission to rescue them, and everything goes according to plan, except for the things that completely don't. A/N: This is a rewrite of the much longer story (it actually had real dialog!) I had to abandon for this challenge, as that one showed no signs of ending any time soon. Prompt: Dragon Quest VIII, Marcello/Eight: using one person against another - "He knows little about the young man, save that Angelo values him. That is quite enough."
Refuse finds a way to Pickham, and Marcello was no longer one to defy the tides. There was a perverse sort of pleasure, abandoning himself to the streets. At least here, nobody would look at him for more than a moment—particularly Templars, who often had their own desire to remain unrecognized in this city of ill-repute. With his unkempt hair, mess of a beard, gaunt face, and look of utter defeat, he didn’t recognize his own reflection in the broken glass of the pawnmaster’s shop.
The boy had found him, though. Or maybe it was the mouse; Marcello still wasn’t certain which one had seen him first. The boy had definitely seen him, though, and he stood there for a moment, expression simple and open like a child’s, and Marcello wanted to hurt him. Strangely enough, it was the yellow coat he hated, not the memory of the boy’s skill with the spear. It was as far removed from the Templar’s blues as Angelo’s reds, and the unwelcome reminder set Marcello’s teeth on edge.
The boy left without saying anything, and that should have been the end of it, except that the boy returned the next day with a rapier of modest quality and tales of some wild beastie that had been stealing children. And while he was of a mind to viciously reject the boy just to see the hurt in his eyes, he was also tired of stale bread, sour beer, and the pore-deep scent of rotting garbage.
He said yes, and rationalized it as a sort of madness caused by too much inaction. And who knew, perhaps he’d find some way to hurt Angelo through the boy. Hope tended to spring eternal, even for vindictive former Templars with a tendency to self-destruct.
It was surprisingly pleasant, alternating fighting with the mundanities of life. He woke to the sound of crackling bacon and the boy singing a song whose lyrics tended to literally be “Something something something giant shoe, something something, to the something moon.” The days were spent patrolling the woods where the children had, and continued to, disappear from. They fought whatever packs of beasts the boy didn’t insist on scaring away, and Marcello spent the evenings teaching the mouse new tricks and fruitlessly prying the boy for potential weaknesses.
Marcello saw his opening one day while holding a volpone by the scruff of its neck in an attempt to gain a better rapier. Out of deference to the boy’s preferences, he was trying to convince the fox that it really was much better to lose one’s sword than one’s life, but the fox wasn’t having much of it. The boy was finding the entire thing absolutely hilarious, and when Marcello turned to give him a sharp remark, the honest affection in the boy’s dark eyes made him pause.
“Oh,” he thought, and almost lost his grip on the fox.
Marcello practiced with his new rapier that night while the boy sharpened the edge of his boomerang. He noticed how the boy’s eyes lingered on the way the firelight played across his bare arms, and hid his darkly satisfied smile with a turn, allowing the boy to admire the perfect line of his back. He stretched luxuriously before settling by the boy.
“I think I fancy you,” Marcello said, and tested the boy’s lips softly, shyly. The boy’s brilliant smile tasted like triumph, and Marcello deepened the kiss, mentally going through his list of ways to effectively and thoroughly break a heart.
Another child was stolen from the village. Marcello considered it a bit of luck, since it would be easier to track the beast, but something made him push harder at the boy that night, and the boy pushed back even harder. He woke the next morning with the yellow coat clutched tightly in his sleep-curled hand. The boy looked handsome in his Templar-blue shirt that morning, and Marcello frowned as he realized he couldn’t remember which one of them had been upset the previous night. His disquiet remained until the wrinkles fell from the yellow coat and he put the night from his mind.
They found the beast in a nicely warm, dry cave where, instead of a battle, they received tea and cakes from a very hospitable, if dim-witted, Dumbqueen. She was very pleased to have them as guests, as pleased as she had been to help those sweet young men in the blue uniforms retrieve their lost children from that wicked village.
He should have ended it at that point, but he had neither destroyed the boy nor saved the children, and it ate at him to leave both unresolved, even as he moved closer and closer to facing his past. Perhaps the southern Templars wouldn’t recognize him, out of context with his closely cropped hair and beard, out of uniform. Perhaps.
And perhaps he didn’t regret his past, nor the actions he took against others, nor did he feel guilt about what he had done, but perhaps he felt guilt that he wasn’t the sort of man who would feel guilt for those things. And he would think more on this, except that the boy was mouthing the most remarkable things against his neck, and it was much easier to pull the boy close and drown out all thought.
Maybe it would be more satisfying to show this to Angelo. Rather than simply breaking the boy, leaving him a wreck on the wastrel’s doorstep, he could demonstrate his mastery of the boy, show how easily he stole him from Angelo. He closed his eyes and imagined the look on Angelo’s face, seeing them together. Perhaps the boy would make that delicious, needy whine and Angelo’s head would explode.
But the gates of the southern abbey were ahead of them, and the boy was pulling a ring and a red uniform from his pack, and he was out of time.
It was almost fun, pretending to be one of the disgraceful, effete, soliciting priests with a prospective missionary. It was fun, until they managed a private audience with the bishop, and the boy quietly closed and barred the door behind them. He pressed a small, familiar case of sharp, silvered tools into Marcello’s hands, and Marcello let his voice drop into his normal range and informed the bishop exactly what he was going to do until the bishop told them where the children were. The boy watched everything with his childlike eyes, and never flinched.
Marcello discovered the children's location, but the boy freed them, as the blood on Marcello’s cuffs would probably frighten them. Marcello went to the room hidden deep beneath the abbey and winced as he crossed the summoning circle to the child sitting primly chained to the chair. Through the child, great sage Eagus apologized for his weakness, for indulging in this taste of life long enough to be bound.
Marcello broke his bonds, dashed the circle, as Eagus passed a message of thanks from Regnar’s heir. The sage shrugged helplessly when asked what was meant by that, and then he was gone, and the child’s body slumped to the ground, asleep. Marcello tried to lift him, but his hands were shaking and stained and he didn’t have the strength.
The boy took Marcello’s hands, wiped them clean on his sleeve. He lifted the child from the floor, and Marcello wondered how long he had been standing there.
“I don’t love you,” Marcello said, thumb rubbing lightly against a blood stain on the boy’s yellow sleeve. “I never did. It wasn’t about you, it was about—“
“Angelo, I know,” the boy said, and Marcello wondered if his childlike eyes had always been so unreadable. “But I needed you to come with me, so....”
The world was quiet, soft-edged, gray, and Marcello felt nothing, absolutely nothing, as he followed the boy out of the abbey.