Sick Dreams
By Kay
Disclaimer: I would never presume to claim ownership to such delightful characters such as Aloysius Pendergast or D'Agosta or Diogenes. For the record, though? Would so buy them in a second. (Sans clothing, as is cheaper, considering Pendergast's tastes.)
Author's Notes: Takes place after Brimstone and before Dance of Death, during the time which Diogenes had an ill Pendergast under his wing. Slightly inaccurate, as I believe it later says he wakes to find his brother gone, but we can ignore the tiny details. I wrote it a long time ago, after all, before Dance of Death. Fixed it a bit to incorporate a vague sense of things learned during The Book of the Dead. I hope it's somewhat fun to read, even with the incoherent dream-speak aside.
Thanks to everyone for reading. :) It makes my day!
Pendergast is immersed in sick dreams.
He knows he's dreaming. Recognizes the murky, trapped quality of a fever-induced madness; it tucks away his breath, burns up in his lungs and throat. It feels like drowning and Pendergast remembers, vaguely, how sluggish the world's pace had been when he was six and had his head pushed into the bayou's river mouth by Jon Balanche and local schoolboys. They must have laughed at him, but all Pendergast could hear his fingernails scrambling against rocks on the bottom—he'd open his eyes, cringing at the sting, but all he saw was darkness. It had felt like hours. Years, even. Just his heart bleeding sounds through his ears and the scratching, frantic scratching, like Incitatus on the polished wood floor of his bedroom.
That's what this reminds Pendergast of; it's the inability to inhale, the arrested thoughts, the half-formed delusions that make him believe for an instant that he is back there, on his knees by the riverbank, Jon Balanche's tiny fingers fisted in his hair. The memory wavers and fades, replaced by distracting heat and light and ride it out, simply open your mouth and intake air, a melded mess of sensation and hallucination. Incitatus, at the foot of his bed, those clever eyes dulled. Pendergast had been too barren to cry, too hollowed, for nearly a week. He sees the little white mouse now, spinning in his lap and doing tricks. His mother laughing, soft-spoken French affections spilling out of her pearl-pink lips. Jon Balanche grinning with a mouth full of rot and reaching out to take Pendergast's left eye as a gift for his brother.
Pendergast's breath hitches. He jerks away, wakes to a bright window, and falls back under again. Unbearable. Suffocating. His brother, staring at him from over the breakfast table, taking orange juice and dropping it to the floor. Incitatus is broken again.
He's not well, Pendergast realizes. He knows he's... knows, he knows—
'Were they sugarplums?' his mother asks, straightening his collar. In the shadows of his bedroom, Pendergast can pretend half her face isn't slick with black soot and scar tissue. Paris is burning. 'Incitatus is broken again.' If he closes his eyes, it's not real. Sometimes Pendergast has the feeling he's reaching out with clawed fingers, but then he feels clean and cool sheets under his hands, wadded up in his fists, and the images trickle off like sweat. A bright room and his brother. His mother's cool hand on his forehead.
Sometimes the years had been—oh, but it was always bearable, never a burden, his family name. Weight enough, yes, but not a burden. Hadn't it been? 'Were they sugarplums? Darling?' The family crest swaying above his head like an executioner, looming, swelling up until it becomes the moon above the bayou, the ever-seeping bayou that crept upon on the land and swallowed it whole. Half their land must be in swamps by now. Or burnt, like the... there had been a bridge. Maybe. Pendergast balances on the railing as if he's been there from birth, but the waters keep eagerly meeting his feet, and soon he's under the lagoon again with Jon Balanche's fingers in his hair. One nail, snapped against the rocks. Blood in the bayou.
'Simply open your mouth and intake air,' says Jon Balanche.
Steps that lead to nowhere. He can't stop falling down them.
He hadn't hated the boys. They were children. He understood—his pale eyes, his white-blonde hair, the solemn fortress in his face—they were afraid of him. His rich family, his name, his eccentric relatives and the graveyard that spread out behind their house like a sweeping trail of a bride's wedding veil. Married; he remembers the ceremony, how his wife's listless smile already seemed dead, and it hadn't been so far away that her body followed suit. 'Incitatus is broken again.' At the foot of his bed, in that terribly far away country and the hunt, blackness he couldn't get out from under his fingernails no matter how many rivers they scrambled in, just maroon crusts like bleeding moons. He hadn't hated Jon Balanche (or his brother), but Pendergast had went to see the queer old man because the world, when it slows, is a terrifying place. He taught him how to disappear inside himself, how to disappear from the world, take control.
Stairs, leading into the coagulated shadows. He has so much to atone for. What has he done?
His mother, holding his head under the water. She looks like Pendergast; if he smiles or purses his lips, sometimes she comes back to life in his reflection. She'd been a beautiful woman. A lover of flowers, even if not always his father—he feels buried now, her hands working steadily in the damp soil of New Orleans, saving her children and snipping their buds before they could bloom and eventually die. Viola, too, with dust on her knees and the Mediterranean sea in her eyes, enough like her that it stops something in Pendergast's chest briefly—but still so wrong, fractured. Dark hair instead of blonde.
He dreams he calls her name, but when she turns to smile, Naples burns with Paris and Incitatus' red eyes gleam out of her face.
It's just as well. She's too warm, too close; he can't touch it. Pendergast remembers Duchamp and glass paperweights, how heavy an arm could be across your shoulders. How it felt like the man could simply reach inside his chest and pluck out his heart. People get close, too far inside, and Pendergast wouldn't be able to stand it, all his insecurities and minute eccentricies and selfish, twisted longings displayed for everyone to squeeze. Steps falling into black. He's afraid he'll be as mad as his family, his brother. He's afraid people will die for him if they know him enough, and even when they don't. He's afraid they'll forgive him most of all, though.
'Were they sugarplums? Darling? Surely not that sweet.'
Oh, but Pendergast rots every day.
Incitatus in the palm of little Corrie's hand and then they're gone, safe and far away, tiny creatures playing with giants. Vincent takes their place, a flash of black and a roguish grin, the faint scent of cigars—Pendergast hands him his mother's favorite purple columbines, for resolve, and then is alarmed when he crumples at the lieutenant's feet. 'Incitatus is broken again,' he gasps, clutching Vincent's ring finger where the blood runs claret and cold, still wet from the river. 'I don't know what to do. I'm not what you—'
And Pendergast bottles it up, keeps all his truths close enough to hurt, so he bites his lip before Vincent's name passes through it. He doesn't talk about the school boys and the bullying, how his knees and fingertips stung for days. Incitatus, flayed open, the little heart hanging out by a thread from Pendergast's favorite shirt. His mother, her gardens. His guilt. The barren, stricken husk of his family home. The names are tucked away, sewn up in the blackest, warmest, deepest trench of Pendergast's soul, because they're too important. Corrie's purple hair, a shaky grasp in the dark. A young woman who is so very old, so very vulnerable, that he could not have possibly done anything but keep her. Vincent. A steady presence at his side, unconditional trust, the solid confirmation of his humanity. A good man.
Pendergast has known so few good men. Loved even less.
'Were they sugarplums? Darling? Surely not that sweet.'
Steps into the night, a stairwell to hell. Doorways. Screams. He looks at bodies sometimes, really looks and finds himself looking back. They were already dead since that day. You can't turn back to the past.
Oh, how he wants to. Oh, how he could touch it, that tentative strain of moments, the petulant pout of Diogenes, and love it. On the stairwell, Incitatus hanging from his heart, Aloysius of the River leans forward and kisses his brother's fractures.
'Were they sugarplums? Darling? Surely not that sweet.'
'Sweeter.'
Pendergast knows he's dreaming. Sick dreams, fever dreams. Not enough air, not enough coherency to find it. Follows the china cup pattern, a thin blue line that quivers against his ankle, ignoring the Cheshire Cat. Tries to find the sky; where up has placed itself. His brother. His brother will be—he should keep his eyes on Incitatus, he will—
But for now, sleep. Drench in dreams. Men lined up at the gate, blindfolded, and his uncle with three smiles, two of them red and gaping on his neck. Columbines, purple and brave. Vincent's arm around his shoulders, the scent of cheap cigars, and someone digging up his heart. A bright room with a window facing the sun, crisp and clean sheets, Pendergast heaving for air like he's so thirsty for it he'd kill men. Maybe has. The stairwell drops like a curtain, but he can feel it all around him, hovering. It waits. For him to trip? To descend?
Pendergast opens his eyes.
And against his forehead, cool like the river, is a hand shaped like his mother's.
The End