chef_chocobro | MHA #18; Saturday Evening [10/07].

Even though it seemed like this week had provided copious examples of attempts to the contrary, it turned out that Ignis actually couldn't spend all his spare time with Liliana and would, in fact, spend time with other people, too. Well, with the other person he spent all of his spare time with. He certainly wouldn't want to overstay his welcome, and they were both clearly the sort of people who had lives beyond the blissful bubble of each other's company that they'd come to discover and had other things to do that day...

...Well, it seemed Liliana did, anyway. Ignis...had a make-up training session to attend to to appease his roommate, after which there was to be take-out because he was quite frankly a little exhausted and wanted to unwind a little with food made by someone else for a change and a glass of wine. And to at least make a marginal attempt to distract himself from wanting to be somewhere else and in different company again already.

No offense, of course, to Gladio.

"So," said Gladio from the couch, no doubt already leaving dusting of rice from his take-out container around where he sat, "what should I put on? Cooking shows to make you mad, or sports shows to make me mad?"

Okay, he took that back. Some offense to Gladio, after all.

[[ for those who know who they are and with some helpful little morsels of OCD like the rice Iggy'll find in the couch cushions later; CW for someone almost fucking dying ]]

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"The contract..." she whispered, in long shaky breaths. "I think that the magic...and the Chain Veil...maybe because I was killing him...I don't know. But they all started bleeding out as we fought. I think. I'm not really sure?" She huffed a soft laugh that was mostly a painful wheeze. "I was kind of killing him at the time. And he was trying to make conversation...it was a lot."

"Rest," Stark said softly. "Just rest."

That was the best thing to do. It might be the only thing to do. As far as he could tell she was very close to crossing over already.

He laid a very gentle hand on her forehead, tugging his mask free with the other. The light normally kept contained by the metal spilled forth, bathing Liliana in a warm golden light. A light meant to feel soothing. A light meant to help.

For a moment, Liliana let herself get lulled by the warmth, by the light. It felt...soft. Like her mother's hands on her face, that year she had the fever and everything had hurt, except her mother's hands.

And then she felt it. The cold. The bone-chilling cold. The hallmark of the Void. It was reaching for her, from behind the light. This wasn't healing.

This was death.

She was on the precipice of the Void and Stark had come to knock her through it. Her body seized and she tried to look to Ignis, to Gladio, to let them know what was happening, but she was so cold, so slow already--

But she wasn't alone.

Stark was merely there to hold open a door that had opened on its own!

"It's all right," he said quietly. "I'm here to help."

This felt off, somehow, but he wasn't sure why. Something about it wasn't right but she needed help and this why was Stark existed. To help like this.

"The Void will have you, Lili. Its hunger will never die. It will have us both."

The Void wasn't just waiting for her. It was trying to pull her in. Deep within it, black on black, claws of darkness were reaching for her finally making good on a promise made two hundred years ago.

Lilana looked up at Ignis, eyes wide with fear, mouthing the words help me.

And, of course, Ignis couldn't see it. He couldn't see anything, but the things he could feel right now, from Liliana's body in his arms and Stark's proximity and the slight, subtle warmth coming off of him, a sharp contrast to Liliana's deathly chill. "What's happening?" he asked desperately, not even knowing where to throw his focus to find Gladio.

But Gladio could see, but that didn't mean he understood and he shook his head. "I don't know," he admitted, "but it doesn't look great."

"Gladio!" That was not what Ignis wanted to hear. "Do something!"

But he didn't know if he should; he didn't know if he could. He didn't understand what he was witnessing, but he did decide, right then and there, that he was going to watch very closely, for some sort of brink, some moment where he could be sure that not intervening would be worse than if he did...

Liliana let go of Ignis' hand, trying to push herself up, trying to scuttle away, all thoughts of pride lost in the haze of fear and survival instinct.

[continued from here]

Everything about this was wrong.

Stark gasped again and fell backward, mask clattering to the ground beside him.

"I...I didn't..."

Which was when Liliana lunged for him, more a collapsing flail than a proper attack, latching onto his arm and yanking with what little black mana she had remaining. But not his body, but at his glow.

And then began harvesting his lifeforce for her own. The scars on her body began glowing a brilliant purple, but do not bleed.

Edited 2023-10-08 03:51 (UTC)

This was even more wrong and this hurt and Stark could barely manage a scream as he tried to push Liliana away.

What was happening?

And if Gladio was waiting for a good moment to intervene, well, this was all definitely it.

First and foremost: "Iggy! Give her space, let her go!"

Even if she was already lunging away, Ignis would have liked to have said that such a directive was unnecessary, but that would be false, because when Liliana started to push herself away, his first instinct was to reach for her and pull her back in what would feel like a terrible mirror of actions taken that morning, which seemed, by now, like it had been ages ago.

But he did move, crawling backward from all of it, and it was a good thing, too, because now Gladio could focus his attention on pulling Stark away from Liliana, and holding Liliana back away from Stark, with a very helpful bellow of "Break it up, you two!"

He was getting this distinct feeling that help had gone right out the door a while ago.

Liliana howled as Gladio dragged her backwards, still trying to clutch at Stark. "You tried to kill me!" she screeched. "You were pushing me into the Void! Your help nearly killed me!"

On the plus side, she looked much better. Still absolutely awful, but no longer literally dying.

Stark was flailing desperately for his mask.

"I didn't push and I wasn't trying to kill you," he managed to gasp out. "You were already going!"

"I was getting dragged through!" Liliana gasped out, still flailing in Gladio's grasp. It was something between fury and a sob. "I c-could feel it reaching for my throat. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't speak."

"You tried to what?" asked Ignis, who knew very well that he had not misheard, but there was some small portion of him that really, really wished he had.

Gladio, meanwhile, while keeping himself firmly between Stark and Liliana, reached down to pick up Stark's mask and hand it to him with one hand while the other still held Liliana at bay. He was carefully observing them both to look beyond the initial shock and confusion and rage bouncing between them.

"Stark," he said, "I think you should go."

And, after a moment, turned him toward the door to usher him toward it. "Come on."

Stark snatched the mask out of Gladio's hand and held it against his face.

"What did she do?" he asked. "It hurts."

Everything hurt right now. His head, his heart, his body. His shoulders sagged as he shuffled toward the door.

MHA #18; Saturday Evening [10/07].

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