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for the last two or so years, serafim's been busy. he's had to be, of course — he's stolen a name and swallowed the sea, and he hears the roar of it every time he returns home, an ocean crashing against unfamiliar manor walls. he's exhausted, naturally. how much sleep can you get when you're pretending to be two people at once?[break][break]

but at the same time, he's never been more alive. he remembers his first hunt — balanced atop frothing waves in a tiny little rowboat, watching the ocean rise and part like the maw of a great beast, knowing, without the sliver of a doubt, that a single twitch of the daemon curled beneath the water's surface would render him and the boat little more than blood and driftwood. he remembers the exhilaration, felt something like a dam between his ribs unlock, a pulling as sure as a river running to the sea. understood, in that brief instant, the impulse that sea had borne towards land since the beginning of tides — to rush, to possess. had been, in that brief, weightless moment, anything but serafim.[break][break]

the ocean, he remembers selwyn telling him, as serafim sketches out the boundaries of a new nautical map, doesn't really care about what it feeds, or the dead it washes away, when it crashes against the rocks of a village. its sole concern is its own power.[break][break]

but where power is something solid and tangible for the other witch, it's all smoke and mirrors for serafim. the selwyn that serafim was — is — familiar with is a creature delimited by aelmor's borders, sustained by the west salem sea. that selwyn, serafim can imitate, like the rough bristled brushstrokes of a painter's base layers: the streak of light outlining the slant of a sharp jaw, the unyielding angle of proud shoulders. in the rare instances that someone calls for selwyn, serafim crafts a stage and fashions himself the protagonist of a play. dim lighting, a practiced posture, information gleaned from years of working for the man and digging curiously into the manor's contents, all tied off with the neat knot of selwyn's characteristic reticence. selwyn's death leaves a vacuum in the heart of aelmor; how long till someone notices?[break][break]

this letter, though, is something different. dmitri? selwyn's journals don't mention a dmitri, but perhaps this is enough secret that the former captain had taken to his watery grave. as for serafim, the only dmitri he knows is the sybarite — a coven leader now, he remembers. surely not?[break][break]

go. axius is sprawled across the bannisters, scarlet eyes blinking down at serafim at different, disorienting times. you wanted to play this game, no?[break][break]

the lighthouse is not unfamiliar to him, but the figure standing at its base is an imprecise smudge of shadow. it makes him uneasy. serafim forgoes the cane for this meeting — when he walks, it is selwyn's rolling, sailors' gait. when he talks, drawing nearer, it is in selwyn's voice, the plain, unadorned rasp of a man who knows exactly who he is. "right, so what's this about?"[break][break]

there is no such thing as true darkness under an open night sky, serafim knows, but gods this lighthouse is a ghastly place to meet. he's also squinting into the darkness, trying to decipher the angles of a face, eyes, the darkened shape atop a shoulder. who?

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he knows his mistake as soon as he hears that voice. as his gaze follows dark wings that sweep towards the sky, his blood turns to ice — perhaps quite literally, because suddenly his breath is curling white clouds into the air, a panicked flare at sea.[break][break]

mockingly, within his own head: 'oh, a letter from a dmitri? must be some random dmitri from the middle of fuck-all nowhere, right?' good job, sef, absolutely legendary.[break][break]

he thinks he hears axius laughing at him; the same, ocean-roar of a laugh he had heard when stuck twenty feet below the ocean's surface, shrapnel driven through flesh and bone alike. the same laugh that says, goading, well? what are you going to do?[break][break]

he's always known he'd have to give up the game somehow. some last, final curtain call — maybe he'd have taken selwyn's name and transformed it into something else by then, maybe left some mark upon salem before he went back to being the vestigial reminder of a family's transgressions, went back to being -strix, a name truncated, playing pretend with personhood.[break][break]

is he shaking? he's pretty sure selwyn was never the type to shake, but good gods it's so very cold, and he's thinking of a time when selwyn had dragged the crew on a hunt in the dead of winter, when serafim had inhaled air so frigid it cut at the insides of his throat, rendered him hoarse even as he called out directions, never looking away from their quarry. [break][break]

he's anything but a hunter now, though. he's tipping his head back to meet dmitri's gaze, feeling the freezing air against an exposed throat like the threat of a beheading that would be his own fault entirely. [break][break]

"hopefully not—" and this is in serafim's voice, now, its edges rounded and subdued; when he takes the smallest of steps back, he's favouring his bad leg again. in the moonlight, his eyes are pale, a far cry from selwyn's, dark as midnight waters. he offers the name, honorifics and all, like an apology. "— high priest wisbane—"[break][break]

a little more uncertainly, because he's starting to lose feeling in his fingers, "— ...sir?"

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he's going to freeze to death here, some sort of accidental mishap where his old boss forgets his strength all while calling serafim by the wrong name. it shouldn't sting, but the unexpected nature of the entire situation has turned him brittle, and he thinks, ouch.[break][break]

then, the fraction of a second later: oh, get over yourself, sef. if he weren't so cold, he might even dare to laugh. as it is, he doesn't even offer a correction for his name; his attention flicks towards the familiar that descends like a bolt of darkened lightning, and the only thing that keeps him from flinching at the movement is axius's voice in the back of his mind, the serpent's scarlet eyes flaring open in a fury directed at his own witch. hold.[break][break]

he thinks he might be successful, even if only because he's moved to stick his hands under his arms now, shoulders creeping up despite himself. you look miserable.[break][break]

you don't sound like you're about to help me out here, so i'll continue looking miserable, thank you very much.[break][break]

out loud, he sounds steadier than he looks, which startles even himself, to be perfectly honest. but serafim's no stranger to his place in this world, isn't in the habit of lying to himself about his own strength, or lack thereof. he's been a human in a witch's world for more years than he has not — like some curious, moon-hungry creature caught in the throes of a tidal waves, drawn in by an inexonerable gravity; silhouetted against the sky, but never touching.[break][break]

"he's actually..." correction: serafim starts off steady enough, but the genuine disappointment he hears traps his tongue mid-thought. had they been allies? friends? there's a familiar guilt that rises in his lungs now, one that rises always when the nights grow too long and his thoughts begin to wander, why did i survive, instead of selwyn?[break][break]

he tries again. "he's actually—— how do i put this— he's already dead, so you won't have to do that." it sounds like it might've been a joke, delivered in one of serafim's typical, light-hearted ways, but his expression is humorless, almost contrite. he is sincere when he voices the first apology of what he assumes will be many to come, saying, "i'm sorry."

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you killed selwyn hale?[break][break]

now that's something that also gives him pause, and for a moment, he looks about as incredulous as dmitri. how on earth would he have done that? it's one thing for serafim to ( barely ) hold his own against whatever situation selwyn had tossed him into, be it choosing sides in a mutiny or into a little rowboat in daemon-infested waters, and another to straight up kill selwyn hale. nevermind that the thought has never crossed serafim's mind — selwyn was arguably the worst boss he's had, but serafim's never really...[break][break]

[break]

the glance serafim offers maggie is grateful, albeit brief. he's always liked the crow — always found it puzzling how startling how different his interactions were between witch and familiar, how different the two seemed. though, he supposes that now he has axius, he understands the situation a little better.[break][break]

then, a small breath, to steel himself. this is only marginally less terrifying than his first day on the job — it's a little like being thrust onto stage for a performance unrehearsed, except the jeering audience is throwing daggers instead of tomatoes.[break][break]

"i didn't kill him," he clarifies quickly, and it almost feels like a weight off his chest, to speak it into the air — because he hadn't. he'd even tried, uselessly, to help, and gotten impaled for his efforts. [break][break]

"it was another of his hunts—" a small, sideways nod as if to say, you know how he was, because there's clearly history between the two, "—an old daemon he's tried hunting before, but it attacked during a storm."[break][break]

his thoughts are disarrayed, tangled like old fishing hooks. he's always been organised, never struggled with keeping a story straight, but maybe it's the cold, or the crackle of the ocean that snags at the memory of a ship cleaved in two, but he's struggling to figure out what he ought to offer.[break][break]

for two years, serafim's been chipping away at a corner of a tapestry he's never been able to fully see, playing at a dead man walking because he's been certain that selwyn's tale never fully ended there, at sea. first talos, then dmitri, though— perhaps he should keep talking, or his own story may end before the night is over.[break][break]

"the daemons wrecked the entire thing— he went down with the ship," serafim ends up saying, which is a pretty way of glossing over the glimpses of brutal combat underwater, the way the water had clouded with scarlet ribbons. instead, he focuses on dmitri's expression, watching with equal parts curiosity and wariness. he has so many questions; he knows it is not his place to ask.

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it's times like these where serafim wonders if he sees too much, if he invents sights that are not there. the way dmitri's gaze darts to the sea, the flicker of something unreadable and blue, the chirp of the crow that sounds something like a laugh; the curl of a smile, illuminated by pale light. [break][break]

serafim watches, waiting, and allows himself to think briefly: he has a nice smile. [break][break]

somewhere along the line, he's actually stopped shaking. he doesn't actually hate the cold — he can't feel his leg like this, can't feel the familiar, mangled pain of the scars left by the shipwreck, the only evidence that anything's happened at all; the only evidence that whatever crawled out of the ocean was himself. like this, he can pretend to be selwyn hale, who has never afforded a wound the satisfaction of leaving a mark, who has never flinched in the face of fear.[break][break]

"so tell me," dmitri begins, and serafim does not move.[break][break]

see, every story begins one of two ways: someone goes on a journey, or a stranger comes into town. this one is the latter, because despite serafim's restless wanderings, he has never truly known how to leave aelmor behind.[break][break]

so, the stranger.[break][break]

the stranger waltzes into town and plunges a hand into its heart, then digs deeper. he rearranges it at his leisure, but he has a careful, surgical hand; he makes a road out of a crooked spine and gardens of a twisted tongue, crafts a world around him in the way only the powerful can. what's that saying — big fish, little pond? [break][break]

the funny thing is that it works, you know? aelmor is too stubborn, too old to change entirely, but it can change, folding like a knee bent to a king. less people go missing; less bodies wash up on the shore; the waves around the lighthouse begin to calm. [break][break]

it's bad for business, the stranger had said, casual like he'd done nothing more than hold a door open. all this stuff about monsters.[break][break]

serafim had blinked and asked, the daemons?[break][break]

and the stranger had laughed, then, like it was the funniest joke he's heard in a while.[break][break]

so, that's the way it goes. serafim's story begins like this: a stranger comes into town. maybe it's a horror story, depending on who you are, so maybe it goes like this: a monster comes into the house.[break][break]

then, the stranger goes on a journey — what happens to the town?[break][break]

[break]

serafim smiles — wan, polite, bordering on uncertain. "i'm bad at letting go," he says, a part-confession. he's tempted to say, i've always wanted to be someone else. [break][break]

instead, he continues, more marginally more seriously, "he's already done so much that to let it all go seemed unwise, at the time. so i've—" a shrug, here, and even unconsciously, this is selwyn's shrug — the tilt of the head, the lift of the left shoulder, the small twist of the hand, fingers curling upwards. "—been trying to keep some semblance of order where i can."[break][break]

then, the crux of the matter, calmly, plainly spoken. "he's someone. i'm not."

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dmitri doesn't seem particularly satisfied by serafim's answer, and truth be told, it doesn't surprise him in the least. his boss — former boss — has always been hard to read, nearly impossible to please.[break][break]

a little bit like ice, serafim thinks, which is apt. he's sailed enough in colder waters to be familiar with the way its surface throws your reflection back at you in odd, distorted ways: a fragment of fear, of want, of weakness, each sliver of something growing smaller and smaller until they mean nothing and everything all at once.[break][break]

he watches dmitri confer with maggie. he hears axius stir again, impatient.[break][break]

what do you want?[break][break]

sorry?[break][break]

what do you want to become, serafim strix? you are always too ready to break yourself in half. when do you build something new?[break][break]

he wants to become someone who doesn't bare his throat so readily, he thinks. he wants to become someone whose eyes do not soften to doe eyes when trouble first rears its head, anticipating a strike; he wants to become someone who smiles with teeth and bite and does not flinch at their own reflection. he wants—[break][break]

then it is only a matter of time.[break][break]

the thawing cold draws him back fully. he's been watching the little discussion, of course, a wan, patient smile resting on his features like he's waiting for a command, but he's still surprised by the change in tone.[break][break]

he can't help it — he does laugh at dmitri's confusion, and his smile is warm, genuine as maggie flies over. "did you actually get the postcards? it's good to see you too, maggie."[break][break]

not that he had truly expected his postcards to be read in the first place. the first two had vaguely addressed dmitri; the rest, naturally, had all been to maggie. his gaze follows the crow briefly as she ducks towards the trees, before the orange glow of the cigarette catches his eye instead. he blinks, no longer sure what to expect.[break][break]

"sure." really, it was more of a command than a request, but serafim's answer was never in question.[break][break]

the first step is still blissfully numb from the fading cold. the second sends a small twinge up his knee, the faintest hint of his limp finally resurfacing, and he thinks, this is going to hurt later. he keeps up anyway.

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part of him wishes dmitri had kept the spell up; it gives him something fresh to focus on, instead of aggravating old wounds. but serafim's always been the sentimental sort — he is always looking back before he moves forward, dissecting the past and picking at fish bones, hoping it will tell him how to move forward, always playing at the illusion of progress.[break][break]

which is to say that this, too, is almost familiar: that he's half a step behind when he follows ( though last time it had been two ) and he's watching dmitri watch the skies ( though last time he had always been scanning for threats that could kill him ). which is to say, that serafim strix is a creature of contradictions, an artist consumed by his creation.[break][break]

still. what is not familiar, however, is the deal.[break][break]

not that serafim's never made a bargain before. he just knows that he always tends to come out on the losing side, or, at least, he's always had to be creative in his reinventions of how he defines something to be worthwhile.[break][break]

you ever take a boat, sail it into the middle of the ocean, where it's just you, the sea, and the great, blue sky? it becomes an exercise of imagination then, because neither sea nor sky will offer you any guidance, and you're daemon food if you sit around waiting for the stars. you've got to pick a direction and just start moving, because no one's about to throw you a line. [break][break]

it always feels a little bit like that with dmitri, now that he thinks about it. like this, now, being put on the spot, being asked what he wants.[break][break]

whether serafim can do the task or not hardly strikes him as an issue. he's been signing selwyn's papers long before the other man was dead — why does he always end up working for people who don't like paperwork?[break][break]

as if on instinct, he opens his mouth to answer. blinks. catches himself. he's almost agreed way too easily, which means there is something he wants out of this, even if he can't quite place it.[break][break]

it's always bad news, when you want something from the devil. but that's the way of the game, isn't it? everyone always wants something from the devil; no one actually wins.[break][break]

what can he ask for, anyway? he throws the net out wide; it offers him lofty illusions. power is out of question — he's a terrible excuse for a witch, and dmitri is an equally terrible teacher. the truth, any truth, is too valuable to be offered for something just like this. besides, he wouldn't know what to ask.[break][break]

instead, he asks, not quite expecting any clarification, "just moving some things around— that's all?"[break][break]

he almost sounds... disappointed. it's hearing his voice that the answer arrives to him, clear as day, and he can feel axius's rumbling amusement, like the crash of waves against shore.[break][break]

serafim says, "sure, i'll do it — just send me a letter some time."[break][break]

he means, maybe i'll be something by then. he means, i want in on this game you play. [break][break]

he means, i've always had a taste for trouble, why stop now?