Loki did a terrible slash upon the internet. (lie_smith) wrote in crownplazaic, @ 2021-01-07 12:48:00 |
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Entry tags: | !log/thread, killian jones, loki laufeyson, stanley uris |
Who: Stanley Uris, Killian Jones, Loki Laufeyson
What: Curse Breaking.
Where: The Woods
When: After New years
Status: Complete
Warnings: A stabbing? It’s not bad.
When it came to picking a location for being run through with a sword, well, Killian sort of had to think about that one for a moment. The hotel, the indoors, seemed to be a bad choice all around - he didn’t want to draw attention to what was going on. As it was, very few people even knew about the Dark One’s curse at all - he wished to keep it that way. The boat dock was his favorite place outside, but if this didn’t work he wouldn’t want to associate the best place by the water with anything traumatic. So the forest it was, all those rich earthen hues and a sky the shade of blue and white - it was a bit cold, snow blanketing everything, but it actually was sort of picturesque with beams of light streaking through the boughs of the trees; in winter, fog made everything look sepia and there were icicles adorning fallen tree trunks, and crystals growing on whatever twig or blade of grass they could claim. Best of all, it was far enough from the hotel. With him, he brought Stanley and Excalibur - Stanley for the support and the other sword because honestly, if this didn’t work he just wanted to end it entirely. He knew it would work with Excalibur, so he’d consider it a backup, even if that was the least desirable option. But the hotel operated in mysterious ways, killing its occupants and then resurrecting them - he wasn’t afraid of death, maybe then he’d actually get to sleep a little while someone with the power to bring people back from the dead was recruited (he knew Sabrina could do it, at any rate). In his leather coat and dark denim, Killian breathed out a puff of frosty air. “Well, alright - got your bottle, then?” he asked Loki, since one of the stipulations of doing this at all was that the trickster got to keep the Darkness, ready to be unleashed upon someone or something else. Killian didn’t care what - he’d gladly let Loki have the curse-in-a-bottle if it meant it was out of him personally. Well someone had to keep the bottle, didn’t they? It wasn’t as if Loki could just let the curse wander off into someone else immediately. And letting Killian hold onto it would be a little bit like letting an alcoholic hang on to their whiskey after the fact. Dangerous. Though, admittedly, Loki just wanted it (along with an unnamed favor to be called upon later) and so would have it. “I do,” he agreed, looking unbothered by the cloud of icy air in front of him when he spoke, mostly because he was focused on the pirate and the darkness there - and, a little way off, his nervous looking boyfriend. Moral support, Loki supposed. “So how does this work?” Stanley asked, looking put together with a proper jacket and a knitted scarf ‘round his neck. He kept pushing his glasses up his nose though, a sure sign of feeling slightly nervous -- even if he was sure that things would end up fine. Loki unearthed the bottle in one hand and then Gram in the other. The truth sword wasn’t overly large, though it wasn’t quite as small as Laeveteinn, either. “Just a little prick,” Loki said with a half smile, even though he was probably the only one to think anything funny right now. Was that scarf handmade by Stanley? It was quite nice, and Killian took hold of it at one end, feeling the material between his fingers, all that soft yarn. Perhaps it was a nervous gesture of his own, though he wasn’t so concerned about himself - he didn’t want to worry Stan, didn’t want to keep going on acting like he could handle this when he knew he couldn’t. Especially not when he was deteriorating everyday, slipping further and further into Darkness, little by little - if he didn’t do this now, there was a good possibility he wouldn’t ever. A part of him wondered what it would be like, in the aftermath. If he’d be the same Killian, if there would still be love there - he hadn’t been in possession of all this magic for very long, mere months as opposed to Rumple’s years under the curse, but he felt as if it was a part of the Killian that Stan had fallen for. “Aye, just a little prick,” he agreed, and it wouldn’t kill him but it would certainly hurt a hell of a lot. He had Excalibur at his belt, sheathed, but he took it out and offered it to Stan. “If it doesn’t work I want you to use this,” he insisted. Loki wasn’t an overly empathetic soul, but he wasn’t without his sympathies either and so made a bit of a show of making sure his bottle was intact, that the stopper on the top was easy to remove. Mostly he was just doing his best to ignore the display of emotions going on over there. It felt a little dramatic though. LIke maybe something they might have managed doing before Loki had shown up. “It’s going to work though,” Stanley murmured, even though he took the sword. He was sure he looked wrong with it - this great sword, fancy hilt and all and he was standing there looking very much like a Jewish accountant who’d never held a sword before. Maybe he ought to learn? After all this. A new hobby or something. So long as it wasn’t easily correlated with this moment. He didn’t think he’d need to use the sword today. And it was for the best because if it came to it -- well. He’d do it if he had to, obviously Stan was willing to do what needed to be done even at personal risk. But he didn’t want to. “I love you,” he said, quiet, hands on the sword, but leaning in to take a kiss. “Just go with it, and it’ll be fine.” That’s what Loki had said anyway. “I love you too,” Killian responded right away, returning the kiss - warmth between their noses for a precious second - before adding another. The sword did look a little amusing being held by Stan (like it was a bomb meant to go off), but after this, he’d be glad to teach his favorite person how to duel with a blade. No better person to learn from than Captain Hook, if he did say so himself. But for now, he’d go with it. This. Whatever it was. “Alright, ready now,” he assured Loki, turning toward him. He didn’t want displays of affection to last forever, he just needed a moment to pass the sword over and steel himself for this. Not like it was everyday he worked out a deal to be sliced open with something sharp to remove a dark corruption, a curse as old as time itself. He wondered what it would have been like back in Storybrooke. He thought of how angry he was at Emma, and didn’t know how he’d get out of this. Perhaps he never would. Perhaps, now, he could never go back. Well. There was no reason to give warning, was there? The Dark One magic would surely try protecting itself if it knew exactly what was coming -- starting over was something of a hardship for a curse, Loki knew. Which was why when Killian said he was ready, Loki didn’t even respond in kind. He simply teleported behind him, struck out with Gram -- the sword was practically thrumming in his hands now, like it knew how much there was to take. This was a heroes sword, but it suited Loki just fine. Maybe a little prick was something of an understatement. There were plenty of shadow figures surrounding them - ones only Killian could see, and even if they protested, they couldn’t do anything. It was too quick, too much like firing a bullet from a gun - or jamming a blade into the back of him, anyway. Besides, he was the one in control. Or he had been. And when Loki struck him with the sword, a few things began to happen. Tendrils of darkness crept along, pulled, summoned, forced to twist and turn in a dance toward where they were sucked up into, which was the bottle - Nimue first, then the rest of them in a domino effect, creating something of a windstorm in the area, a tornado of onyx. The second thing was the sound Killian made, obviously in pain, but there were no words to describe that pain - it was a sudden thunderclap, vision tilted off its axis, a charcoal fire that had been built at the site of the wound. He tried to push it away to some other place in the depths of his mind to make these moments bearable but he couldn’t. As soon as Loki’s sword disappeared within flesh, Excalibur began to disintegrate - starting at the tip, moving down to the hilt and to the handle, where it eventually just disappeared entirely. Poof. When it did, Killian’s appearance changed too. The shadows beneath his eyes were gone, the mad look in them fading to more of their natural forget-me-not blue. And he just - hell. Sinking to his knees, he let out another cry of pain and was glad they had decided to do this outside. What was it about curses, where all of them had such dramatic flair? Loki stood in the middle of that whirlwind of darkness, stormy enough to knock most mortals down (and so, it was good he wasn’t strictly mortal), bottle held between two deft fingers. It was harder than it looked, not wavering or losing grip, but Loki had no interest in letting a curse like this take him. And so, when it all ended up in that tiny bottle, he put the cork stopper back in it and then magicked it sealed before slipping it into one of the many pockets of his very favorite green jacket. All said and done, he barely looked wind swept. Killian, on the other hand, seemed to be taking it a bit hard. Maybe even harder than the time he’d stabbed Thor through. Still, he had no doubt that by the end of the night they too could be sharing a beer for all their troubles. For now, however, he simply stood back. No use in bringing moral support if you weren’t going to use it, right? The sword had disappeared and Stan was glad for it, seeing as he probably would have dropped Excalibur the second that Killian had been stabbed through, but for the fact that he’d promised not to. But once it was free, he stepped closer, the wind ruining his hair, dislodging his glasses. It didn’t matter though, because he was more focused on Killian than anything else. It was strange how someone could look simultaneously better at worse. He dropped to his knees, ignoring the dirt and the cold of it all. There was no blood. He had his hands out, one already tight on Killian’s shoulder. Asking if it worked or if he was okay both seemed stupid so he opted to do what he’d normally do: set his jaw and offer support while saying nothing at all. Yet. Killian really didn’t know how to answer any questions, really - he supposed it worked and, yes, he supposed he was alright. Despite having just been stabbed, he definitely looked better - not so disheveled and broken, but more how he appeared before he had been cursed at all. The Dark One’s curse was very old, the Darkness itself dating back to the days of the creation of the Holy Grail - made sense that it wouldn’t exactly be like dusting dirt off one’s shoulder. He felt a little dizzy but hadn’t bled all over the place, which was surprising - he slid his arms around Stan, careful with the hook and hugging him on the cold ground and finding warmth and the solid thrum of his lover’s pulse; in a minute, Killian would stand. “Well, that was a delight,” he said, and even his voice had changed a little too - not like he was going through puberty again, it was the same timbre but it was a lot smoother. As the Dark One he had this odd lilt to it, singsong, almost - similar to Rumple’s cadences. “Could go for a drink though. A hot toddy. It’s fucking freezing out here.” Loki, seemingly satisfied with the work he (or, more accurately, his sword) had done, and the reward he’d make from it, chuckled low at the comment before he put away Gram -- one minute there, the next gone as if he could call it to his person without actually having to hold it. “I’m going to cut and run,” he decided, no longer feeling particularly necessary and not overly wanting to watch people cuddle. He had his own person for that, if he felt so inclined. “Text me if you need something more.” And then he was gone in a blink. No bedside manner at all, apparently, since he didn’t offer to let them hitch a ride back to the warmth of the hotel. Stan was fine with it though, only pressed his nose against the curve of Killian’s neck until he was ready to stand. Then he would lean back a little to give Killian more of an assessing look over. “No stab wound at all. How does that work?” Not that he was complaining, far from it. “Do you feel…uh. Better?” A drink would definitely be in their future. Killian just barely had a chance to thank Loki before he poofed away - one thing the Captain would miss was doing that, he had to admit - but he’d catch up with the trickster later. Hopefully not while he was cuddling his person, he’d hate to interrupt. But aye, right now he just wanted to cling to Stanley and wasn’t at all embarrassed about it. He stood, fingers curled around the bottom of Stanley’s shirt, holding onto him - felt almost odd to take a breath, and another, and it was completely and utterly normal. The crackle of magic had disappeared from his veins, he no longer tasted it on the air either - best part about it was that he didn’t see any shadowy figures in his peripherals, the presence of the former Dark Ones no longer goading him with their velvety whispers and false promises. “I do feel better,” he said, and he meant that. “Different. But back to myself.” The curse wasn’t gone, just bottled. Away from his soul, his heart, where it couldn’t blacken either of those things anymore. “I’m...so bloody relieved.” “You sound different,” Stanley noted, tracing his fingers across Killian’s jawline and then swiped a thumb under his eye, like he was seeing if it was just a trick of light that there weren’t any dark smudges there now. It wasn’t though. “Like yourself, though.” It was hard to explain, but Stan didn’t really think he had to. He let out a little laugh though, something that was more stressed than it was actually amused. “That sword of his -- I don’t know what I was expecting.” He’d sort of assumed there’d be blood. He was very glad there wasn’t. Certainly no need to explain - Killian understood. He hadn’t been cursed for very long but he’d simultaneously reveled in and hated every second of it. A strange contradiction, yes, but he had a feeling that would wear off eventually - all he truly wanted was this right here, what was in front of him. He knew that, deep down. “Well, most people think of blood when swords are involved,” he grinned cheekily, his hand coming up to frame Stanley’s cheek, and Killian pressed their foreheads together for a moment - a romantic gesture, even the ancient Egyptians thought so. “Glad it didn’t end up that way. Is it - this is...” He exhaled slowly, frozen breath in a white cloudy puff. “I just wanted to be with you. All the magic, all the power - none of it was as good as this.” Oh. Well. Stanley had suspected that to be the case but guessing at it and hearing it completely was something else and his expression crumbled, just a little, like the force of the truth and the romance behind it was enough to get him near tears. “Here I am,” he said, thumbs scraping against Killian’s stubble before pulling him in for a kiss. Did this count as a first, again? “You have me.” And he would, for as long as he liked. It felt tacky to thank Kilian for making the choice he did, but he was going to do it anyway. Later. Tonight. When they were curled around each other and Killian actually did some real sleeping for once. It felt like the first kiss - so good, and right, and the way it got Killian’s heart racing was right also. “You have me too,” he promised, and he knew he would have gotten to this point eventually - that was why he’d given Stanley the silver ring that had shown up beneath the tree for him, to unwrap on Christmas morning. Once it had been Liam’s ring and though it appeared to be simple, it represented a promise - a promise that his brother once made, that he’d come back, that he’d find his way home somehow. It was a promise that Killian had wanted to make now too, and it seemed like he found his way after all. He wasn’t home in the way he knew it, back in Storybrooke, but that hadn’t really been home in any sense of the word. This place, with all its quirks, it was where he wanted to build a new home and so he would. “Come on, let’s go inside,” he said, but gave Stan another kiss before he really got moving. Stanley had known that they’d get to this point. He’d had a good feeling and those sorts of things and when he had a good feeling, pretty much everything worked out. But Richie had been right -- he did tend to worry to an excessive degree even when he didn’t have to and sometimes that soured things. Still. Everything felt hopeful now, and Stan fiddled with his triple stacked rings, each one an important part of him, before reaching for Killian’s hand. It was going to be a good year. |