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honestly, the heidsiek is a little too much for him. he can see why zeke likes it, though, or why aeris has it in his collection, which means that in the end, he really doesn't mind it. it's rich enough to remind him to drink carefully, even though he's prone to taking a little too long of a sip as zeke talks. [break][break]

he listens as he always does — attentively, greedily, committing every detail to memory. everything will melt together into the body of a great, many-headed beast: every story he devours adds flesh to its bones, breathes life into its scales, rendering it in the rich, wine-dark colours of a storm. in the frame of his mind, the hydra calls itself by three names, but it has yellow eyes and speaks to him with a siren's voice.[break][break]

today, it is a lesson in anatomy. the handler network, zeke explains, is like a spider's web. maddox thinks of veins and arteries and steady, beating heart at the centre of it all. zeke talks about controllers and safe zones; maddox thinks of skeletons and bones, of the arc of ribcage and spine.[break][break]

did you have any questions?[break][break]

glass clinks against teeth; he's thinking — where do i fit in all of this? [break][break]

initiation and apprenticeship sound like... he doesn't know what they sound like, actually. not for something like this. they sound like something nebulous and fragile. they sound like something a little too heavy for him to hold. a little like religion, he supposes, and he's standing at an altar, except he's not sure which one he is — whether he has the knife in his hand, whether he's the one with the knife against his sternum, whether he's just waiting for something warm in his belly.[break][break]

maddox ruchbah is familiar with the dead and the dying and the suffocating silence of a grave; he's not quite sure what to do with something like this — something that lives, despite it all.[break][break]

something that — if he's not careful — can still bleed.[break][break]

"er, just one." he grins. it's an honest kind of smile, not a hungry one: he always smiles with his head tilted a little to the right, one side of his mouth pulled a little higher than the other, flashing straight white teeth; always smiles with his eyes. [break][break]

"it's not really important, so y'know." a vague wave of the hand. you don't have to answer. "do i get to meet your other apprentice— uh, apprentices?"[break][break]

a small pause. "wait, have i already met them?"[break][break]

oops. that was two questions.

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"oh!" he blinks; straightens a little, not quite alarmed, but saying nevertheless, "yeah, i figured, wouldn't want to—" cause trouble, or put them in danger, or something of the like dances on the tip of his tongue. he ends up trailing off anyway, carried away by the bartender's smile and the rest of the answer.[break][break]

to tell the truth, the fact that zeke answers surprises him. it shouldn't — he did say he'd try — but it does, and maddox imagines that it will continue to do so for a while. [break][break]

( there was a little pop-up bookstore back in eclipse, back when he still visited regularly. they'd wrap the books in patterned papers to hide their titles and give only a hint of whatever stories were told, little one-line riddles handwritten on the front. it became a little game he played: the freckled shopkeep with hazel eyes liked mysteries and always wrapped their books neatly; the shopkeep with a septum piercing and canary-yellow hair always folded down the corners twice, because they liked older history books and were afraid of them getting damaged. )[break][break]

his habits haven't really changed over the years. they've only shifted, adapted to new environments and new callings, new faces and names. which is to say that he plays the same game now: zeke tells him a story, and maddox pulls meaning from everything around and within it at the same time.[break][break]

zeke tells him a story, and naturally, maddox considers the storyteller instead.[break][break]

he takes his glass — huh. when did he finish it? just now? ah well. — and joins zeke at the sink. he's light on his feet; the flighty, anxious-to-please mannerisms of the teenager who had first discovered the bar have long since given way to something not too unlike a swordsman's easy, practiced grace.[break][break]

"—and the one who always gets the sazerac and sits... there?" at some point, there's a small nod at another corner; he's picked up on the pattern. he doesn't remember all their names ( though he will now ) but really, what's a name when you're here?[break][break]

out of habit, he's automatically moving to clean up. there isn't much left to do — it's just their two glasses by now — which means, more so than ever, his mind has time to wander. [break][break]

"is it always the same?" [break][break]

this time, with a small, curious nod towards the door; towards whatever else the night may hold. he means: the initiation. he's wondering, now, picturing the faces that the names of zeke's apprentices have conjured to mind — had they stood where he stands now? had they been tense? excited? [break][break]

had they been scared?

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francessca. hector. blanco. more names that make a home for themselves in his memory. he knows that the names can't be quite what they are; they must be mired in code and half-spoken secrets, and he's familiar with the practice.[break][break]

it's all very hydra, when he thinks about it. or, at least, it's all he's ever known, so he takes it in stride readily. maddox has never known the names of his ancestors, only the stars they later took on. he won't get one when he dies, he knows. these days, there's not enough room in the sky for another grave.[break][break]

he ends up humming a little to himself, absent-minded, lost in thought as he moves from washing up the glasses to drying them, to wiping down the countertop. as zeke talks, maddox's mind glides from thought, to imagination, to memory.[break][break]

( he's never had an initiation. not a hydra one, anyway. but he gets what zeke means, about the strange, crooked way that death and protection are intertwined.[break][break]

go into the woods, aeris had said, and look the monster in the eye. that's how you learn. [break][break]


and he had learned, then: you don't go to places like these to eat, but to be eaten; to be devoured whole, and remade anew. )[break][break]

maddox bears the marks of the stars along the arc of almost every major artery in his body. some part of his death has already been laid claim to by something far larger than himself, as befitting the boy who has always longed for sun, storm, and sea.[break][break]

"what was it like for you?" [break][break]

the question slips out before he can catch it. he says it unfalteringly, unafraid, only curious; it's followed by the crook of a sheepish smile — maybe that's too personal. [break][break]

he adds, a little quickly, like he's offering them both an out: "er— was i supposed to bring a change of clothes for the 'something different'?"

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alright, so he loses the vest. between that and exiting the bar, there's a dozen more tiny little actions that never do fit within the margins of a neatly contained story: he folds it and puts it in the bag he keeps in a corner of the back room, because he doesn't want to get blood on it, and he knows he'll be back for it tomorrow. when he places the glasses back onto the shelf, he always leaves them a little closer to the edge and close to each other, so whoever starts the next shift need only reach out and scarcely stretch to easily grab two of them at once. he double-checks that the backbar has been re-organised, and scribbles down a little note for inventory purposes that he sticks to a corner of it, as a reminder for next time. the rest of the heidsiek goes elsewhere, though; that one was a gift.[break][break]

it's all in the details, you see.[break][break]

so, he notices the thumb against ring, and the slant of a grimace, and the way zeke's gaze slips sideways. he busies himself with other things in the meantime, patiently awaiting a story.[break][break]

he considers the way shadow slips like liquid as they step out of the antique shop, parting beneath moonlight. he considers the way the warm evening breeze feels a little like a caress and tastes a little like autumn. he considers zeke's smile first, in the reflection of the glass of the shop's window, before even the buildings fall away, and then he's watching properly, clearly, carelessly indulgent.[break][break]

for a moment, he can't tell if zeke is speaking in metaphors. two people died that day, he says, and maddox thinks about the day maddox yeong died, fourteen and wanting nothing more than a name, a lamb who walked itself between the jaws of a wolf.[break][break]

he wants to ask: what part of you did you have to kill?[break][break]

does it still have a name? does it still come back?[break][break]

how do i kill a ghost?[break][break]

he says, instead, "huh. that makes sense." then, like an afterthought: "you look... happy."[break][break]

it is only an observation; warm, sincere, curious. perhaps a better word for it could be nostalgic. fond. wistful, even. all of those are rare elements for the stories that maddox is raised on — even now, several years into being a part of hydra, he feels like he's digging through a cemetery to write ellis gian the happy stories that he's promised.[break][break]

after all, home is the first grave. he can't remember what he had felt at the time. cold, probably. maybe a little scared. something must have gone wrong, though, something not quite left behind, improperly buried, because he's been hearing the name maddox yeong on the tongue of a wolf more and more lately, and he doesn't hate how it sounds.[break][break]

he'd like to hear more, he thinks. he thinks about saying, did you find what you were looking for? because exchanges, prices, and leaving things behind, always speak to an end, to something being received. he thinks about saying, what did you get in return? but that one is a silly question, because the answer, naturally, is hydra. what else is there, when you become a witch of hydra?[break][break]

"what happened to the other person?"[break][break]

it's always about dead things, isn't it?

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maybe happy wasn't the right word. maddox likes to think that most of the time, he's not half bad at reading people. but at the same time, it's a skill honed at the hand of an interrogator — he's more familiar with the shape of sharper, uglier emotions. or, he notes, the way an expression can close ever so subtly, a door drawn shut so only a sliver of light escapes from it.[break][break]

i killed him, zeke says, and maddox blinks and says, "huh." he doesn't sound surprised. a life for a life. the story shifts; a blank page, a quill raised and expectant, dripping ink like a leaking wound.[break][break]

it's a warm june evening and maddox asks about history and becoming, and he listens to a story about violence, that started in a voice as warm as blood.[break][break]

no, he's not surprised. it's the story he's written up in his head already, anyway. but it feels odd to hear it like this, because it's the way zeke says it — the expression shuttered, the words almost clipped, the crash of encroaching waves filling the silence.[break][break]

he starts to say, "sorry—", because he can't help but feel like he's accidentally stumbled upon something he shouldn't have, but here, zeke starts talking again, and he aborts the word so quickly he almost bites his tongue.[break][break]

the story has shifted again. the quill presses down, waiting.[break][break]

maddox says, a little dryly, a little absently, "i didn't imagine many were anyway, after..."[break][break]

a small shrug and a wave; he dismisses his own words. there's a nod in zeke's direction instead, apologising for any interruption, saying, i'm listening.

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it's difficult to tell a story when you're in it. he's learned this before — from zeke, really, though it had never been a lesson spoken out loud, never in words like that. nothing maddox has learned has been delivered to him plainly. there is always something to be translated, always something lost in translation: between old generation to new generation, between elementalist to enchanter, between storyteller and storybound.[break][break]

he keeps walking. zeke doesn't slow, so neither does he. so, as they begin to round the bend towards siren's cove, maddox watches the way the stars glitter on an ink-dark ocean, and tries his best to imagine the picture of lives conjured up from within dead histories.[break][break]

"in the 70s, hydra was..."[break][break]

aeris has told him stories of that time. or rather, it is almost all his father tells him, sometimes, when he gets in a rare, melancholy moods; when he says the name ruchbah a little like a curse and a little like a prayer, and maddox doesn't know what to do with the weight of a word that won't fit under his skin.[break][break]

maddox's imagination of the time is simply that: imagination. he sees only the evidence that remains — aeris keeps an old hermetic portal in the attic at the forge for 'emergency reasons'. whether it's well-maintained or not is not part of the question, because when asked, aeris laughs and says he would rather be ripped apart by a faulty spell than be captured by the wolves.[break][break]

it's a different story from what zeke is telling him, though. the ruchbah story runs parallel to that of hydra's; runs through, runs under it ( 'knee of the heavens, you know?' ). they had been created by hydra, and they were little else without it. they've never had to worry about breaking in, so to speak, only to prove their worth to stay.[break][break]

he sidesteps a small tide pool. his gaze drifts, from the glint of the water back to zeke's smile.[break][break]

"well," he says, and the grin he offers in return is a little cheeky, a little tentative. he echoes zeke's words. "'better late than never', right?"

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there it is again — the shake of the head, the glint of a golden eye, a flicker of something almost frustrated. the reason for maddox's silence ( rare, for the chatty, excitable enchanter that most know him as ) is simple, in the end. he's simply fascinated by this, because he has never seen zeke so affected by anything before, least of all the very words that leave his mouth.[break][break]

"—becoming a witch of hydra, it's not something you can earn."[break][break]

maddox considers it. [break][break]

"makes sense. it's more like... a gift, yeah?"[break][break]

you don't earn the right to be chosen by the gods. there is nothing earned, in having nothing, in the circumstances of your birth. you have to want nothing, have nothing. but the gift is given nevertheless, and now you have a life that isn't quite yours, because that's what happens when someone hands you a life and says, this is how it is now.[break][break]

( "—there is no before." )[break][break]

he's still staring, still fascinated, still utterly enthralled by story and storyteller alike. then he catches himself as they come to a halt, and all at once he takes in the world around them: the way the sand bows slightly under his weight, the crash of waves against shore, the radiant illumination of the moon and stars far above, drowning out the darkness.[break][break]

"of course." the words come to him easily; maddox ruchbah had been born with the prelude to his death on the tip of his tongue. [break][break]

"what do you want me to do?"