Playing With Fire

[madimpossibledreamer]

I was going to have Lorraine act a bit like the Filth-zombies and yell out some of the more sensical phrases, but as usual things went differently in writing than in planning. Desmond’s mostly tried to take them on from a distance (or takes them out fast) so doesn’t get to hear them mumbling about groceries.
I chose a slightly-reference surname because canonically Carter doesn’t have one.

Main Points: Assassin's Creed/The Secret World
Summary: The confrontation with the Witch.
Word Count: 2375
Rating: Teen 

         If you get technical about it, Desmond has faced Lorraine before, but he doesn’t think for a second she was really trying. Okay, yeah, she’d been strong, with only Alice able to keep her under control, but that had been a version of her that wasn’t fully aware of what was going on. Reacting with rage, not intelligently plotting their deaths. He can almost guarantee, given the pictures they’d been shown, that’s not going to be the same this time. She’d been happy about having...he doesn’t know how to put it. Maybe a witness? Someone to actually acknowledge what she’d been through and how fucked up it all was. The second he’d come here, though, it felt malevolent. Partly the Park, of course, but it feels a little bit like she’s controlling this part of it. Maybe Chad had done that too. If he had, though, he wasn’t nearly as good with it, though.
         The walls and ceiling start bleeding. Funny thing, though—it kind of stings, like a mild acid, when it touches their skin, but disappears after a few seconds, leaving only a sticky residue that doesn’t feel like congealed blood. Maybe like the stickiness of maple syrup? It still looks and smells like blood until it hits their skin, though. The only light comes from an orange dancing over the blackened walls that suggests a house fire. He can hear the burning and crackling and cracking that makes it pretty clear where the damage in the sugary ‘floorboards’ had come from. Alice is seconds away from a growl as she has to pick her way over them even more carefully than the rest of them.
         They check every room, carefully, and other than more mirrors (actual mirrors, this time, not just weird cardboard cutouts acting like mirrors) and doors occasionally swinging shut and trapping them in the room until they break the door down, they don’t see anything. The mirrors still aren’t acting like normal mirrors, either, depicting versions of them with red or yellow eyes, staring balefully out and not mirroring motions, but other than a feeling of dread, they don’t do anything. Touching one doesn’t even send them into a mirror dimension on top of the one they’re already in. The house in general is a lot smaller than Desmond had expected, though. No warping. It might even be the same size that it looks from the outside. Which is a thought that Desmond catches himself having and realizes that that’s...usually the default.
         “Coward won’t even show herself,” Alice snarls, letting her frustration get the better of her as they don’t find anything in the basement, either. She kicks at the floor (luckily with her actually shoe-protected foot).
         The door swings shut, again, and Desmond sighs, annoyed at the prospect of having to break it down (which is getting a little harder on his arms the longer they go on) but then hears Carter gasp.
         He turns to see her frozen in Lorraine’s arms, thanks to the ice pick dripping what could be Filth held to her throat. She doesn’t have her hair up this time. It falls around her shoulders, moving. Either there’s an unseen wind, or it’s alive. The makeup looks like a part of her face, now, rather than just applied. In general it looks like she’d been trying to keep up appearances. Probably trying not to draw the attention of the Sheriff again. This version of her has stopped trying—but, conversely, she looks a lot more alive. The black oily dress falling around her wriggles sometimes, too, and—it looks like she’s wearing pure Filth. That...isn’t good. “You should know better than to conjure by name, dear.” The walls start to leak Filth too.
         “Let Carter Waite go!” Alice charges her and one of the walls grows a tentacle that whips out to snag her ankle and smack her against the wall. She shakes her head, dazed and angry. They’re already reaching out to grab his wrists and ankles, too.
         “I don’t think I will. Little brats deserve a spanking.” She holds a hand to Carter’s neck, Filth shimmering like an oil slick gathering above her palm, and then shoves it into Carter’s neck. She whimpers, eyes rolling up into her head as she goes limp, and her veins and a little of the skin in the area turns black.
         “She didn’t do anything to you!” Desmond yells, trying desperately to reach for the Calculations—maybe a teleport would work, although the Filth is starting to pool at their feet, too—all he needs to do is get in reach. Nothing. It’s harder, because he hasn’t practiced it, but maybe a fire ball, or conjuring those swords to throw, or a lightning bolt. Anything.
         And she just turns, and okay, that pretty much confirms his John-Filth connection guess, because her eyes look like black holes, too, only there’s no stars behind hers. “Life isn’t fair,” she replies simply. Hollowly. No pain, no malice, just a void. She drops Carter, who falls to the floor. The Filth is over the teenager’s face now. Lorraine’s hand holding the ice pick comes up again as she starts stalking toward Desmond again, as he starts to get pulled back toward the wall. Teleporting to an Anima well probably won’t work; they probably don’t even exist in this world, but the Calculations are feeling a little out of reach, like being exposed to this much Filth is interfering.
         And then she starts shaking her head, dropping the ice pick into the pool, too. Hands coming to her ears, like she’s trying to make a sound go away. The tentacles holding him in place are suddenly starting to fall slack. Desmond’s not even surprised when it sounds like a radio upstairs (that hadn’t been there before, but if she could manipulate this world, it wouldn’t be too shocking if others could, too) flicks to life, familiar static coming on.

This close, a pistol’s probably better, but you got one in your bag already, and you know how to use it. Don’t say I never get you anything, Chuck.

         “It’s not even my birthday.” His arm’s glowing again, now the only light in the room. The exposure to the Filth had been blocking the Calculations, but now it’s like it isn’t even there, lapping around his waist. The distinction feels a lot like the difference between wielding the Apple and having it used against him. John gave it the orders to stand down and stop interfering, probably. With a thought, the pistol’s in his hand. He pumps as many shots as he can straight into Lorraine’s head.
         She shrieks, glancing up at him with a broken skull—and yeah, her hair looks like it’s Filth, too, flying all around her face like snakes. “That’s not nice,” she hisses, voice distorted (partly because part of her jaw is missing, though even as he watches Filth knits itself together to form skin, or some broken copy of skin).
         “I never said I was,” he responds quietly. It sucks, having to do this, but he’s not about to let them all die, either. “Alice, burn it down.”
         She’s still dazed and a little disoriented, but her little arsonist heart lights up, gleeful, at the prospect. So does her breath. The flames had been audible the entire time they’d been in here, but now they’re visible too, spreading faster than he’d expect unless they’d added some kind of accelerant or something. The Filth curls away. Desmond doesn’t think for a second that it’s permanent, but it’s good to know that fire is a temporary deterrent for the stuff. Lorraine stops trying to stab anyone, curling in on herself like that’s causing her physical pain, and apparently the smell of the smoke starting to curl around them is enough to wake Carter up. A woman upstairs starts screaming distantly. An echo from the past.
         It physically pains him to reenact a hate crime just to end this. Part of him is flashing back to being Ratonhnhaké:ton watching his village burn. Watching his mother die. But he’d been pretty sure there was a connection—Lorraine herself had mentioned seeing Carrie Killian as a kindred spirit. And if he’d given her a chance to regain control over the Filth, he’s not sure that John could wrestle back control, given that he’s pretty sure John isn’t even here and proximity probably has some effect on the amount of control they have. If he’s in pain, though, he’s still alive, and it’s not like either of the women are really here to kill.
         Just to be sure, he forces through some of the golden light of the Calculations into the flames. The crackling dies down instantly, though the flames are still dancing over the walls, heavier and heavier. The screaming cuts out instantly, leaving behind only an eerie silence.
         “Carter, explode it. I’ll protect us,” he tells her, another plan forming in his mind, and she nods shakily. Her neck looks back to normal, other than a huge bruise.
         The instant she’s done and the ceiling begins to crumble and drop molten bits of what is probably still candy on their heads, he reaches out and teleports them all outside.
         Carter starts coughing, but she looks happy. Alice is very content to just sit there and watch the flames. Lorraine, though, is just sitting on her hands and knees staring in disbelief at the grass of the invisible road beneath her.
         “Why?” she asks simply.
         “Neither of you deserved that. A house is just a house, but a life can’t be replaced so easily.” It had been a dangerous gamble, and even now it might backfire, but at least her control of the area out here isn’t as strong as inside the House.
         She sits back and laughs, equal parts hysteria and relief. “A chance to choose a different fate. What an honor.” She cranes her neck up to stare up at him as he walks over to her, making no move to get up—and then further bares her throat.
         “You’re sure.” It is a choice—if a pretty final one. He wants to honor it.
         “I’m not here,” she reminds him. “The Bogeyman is fond of his simulacra, fashioned in the image of another.”
         That...explains Chad, too, actually. Probably a lot of the guests and carnie-zombies. Even if they didn’t die here, that doesn’t mean they’re free of this. Which makes it all the more important that they bring this to an end.
         Stabbing her in the throat is really easy, now that she’s not resisting. She goes with a smile on her face. This time he’s kind of expecting to talk to her, though.
         He definitely wasn’t expecting her to appear as a Council agent in the full uniform. Even the blue hat. She laughs at his surprise. “I was wondering whether I should even show myself, but you’ve earned some answers. What I have to give. In my mind, in my dreams, I kept returning to this place. Because part of me was still here, enslaved to Winter. You’ve severed that connection.”
         He also wasn’t expecting her to be the most coherent she’s ever been. “What about Chad?”
         She grimaces. “Steve died in prison two years ago, but part of him has been haunting this place, too. Norma’s probably the one who handled the connection the best—even her children didn’t escape unscathed. Wasted away to some disease, or moved far away enough it couldn’t touch them. She was a witness to his murders.”
         That...sucks, but at least they might manage to make sure that the influence doesn’t spread, and that no one else will suffer. But it also leaves one question. “How are you fine, then?” Because she is. He can feel it.
         “Fine is relative. But as to why I’m alive—you know why, intimately. I don’t know what they were looking for, what they still want from me. I still don’t even know who killed my son, no matter how many times he asked. But he came to see me with a bee in a jar to ask about Callum—and a girl named Emma.” She’s…
         “One last thing—a warning. This is just a taste of what’s to come. Stop it. I don’t like Solomon Island—hell, I’m not even too fond of most of the people here, but it was my home, and like you said, they don’t deserve this either.” And then she just...teleports out of the conversation, t-posing. Traveling to Agartha.
         And when he comes back, the body of Witch-Lorraine is laid out on one of the park benches, throat and dress bloody. But they’re back in the daytime version of the Park, and he can see the mouth of the Witch, the entrance to the House of Horrors, gleaming from across the Park. One left. The heart of this Park of terrors.
         “Um, Desmond? You think you could help clear the zombies out of the gym showers at the Academy after all this? The blood was bad enough but now I feel really gross.” Given that was his first reaction to Dream-Filth, he gets the impulse, but.
         “I can do you one better. I don’t think we have to fight anyone or anything if we borrow the Council shower.” Besides, he’s curious if they’ll even have a clue Lorraine told him. Probably not, but still. Just one more group to keep an eye on, unfortunately. She lights up. Alice is pouting a little and he’s half guessing it’s because she can’t watch the flames anymore. “And I’m not sure it’ll be with the Hidden Blade yet, but after we’re all rested and ready I’ll see if I can’t teach you some other moves, too.” He then has to remind her not to break or bruise his ribs, but at least she’s cheered up a bit, too. They both did really well, under the circumstances. He’d wonder about John’s agenda, too, but while he’s pretty sure the...guy? Entity? Whatever he is now, he has one, but Desmond’s pretty sure that’s not why he’d stepped in. Just didn’t want his new favorite source of entertainment to bite the dust too soon.