A/N: Based off a couple ideas that Mod Z and I tossed around.
When Torako showed up in dark colors and a neckerchief around the bottom of her face, Bentley took one look at the hurling stick clutched in her right hand and said, "No, you're not coming."
Torako set her fists on her hips and leaned forward. She couldn't say that she hadn't half-expected Bentley to be a butt about this. "What? Why not?"
"I told you before, it's because you could get hurt!" Bentley tugged the mask up onto his forehead. The ancient thing was actually made of something like black walnut or whatever and apparently had been taken from Alcor's hoard of crap.
"What, and you couldn't be? You're literally going after cultists! Who are killing people! And who found the information for you, huh? Newsflash, it was me!" Torako took two steps towards Bentley and tipped her head over his. She saw the annoyance flash across his face the moment she asserted the difference in height.
"This really isn't the time," Alcor said, waving one gloved hand between their faces. Without even looking at it properly, Torako smacked it out of the way.
"Listen to the all-knowing being, Tora," Bentley said, pushing his finger into her collarbone. "Let it go."
"Don't get all condescending with me, Benny-boy," Torako said, a snarl tugging at her nose. She flicked him on the nose, and he recoiled. The moment later, he'd shoved a palm into her shoulder, rocking her back onto her heels.
"Guys!" Alcor pushed his way between them right as Torako was about to flick Bentley on the nose again, and she ended up nicking Alcor's ear. He growled and pushed them both away so that they were right up against each of the walls in the short hallway.
"Why—she's the one not listening!" Bentley protested. The mask had slid down so that it was covering one eye, and he looked like such a doofus that Torako couldn't help but laugh. Bentley pointed at her, irritation written on what she could see of his face. "See? She's not taking it seriously!"
"Oh, I'm taking it seriously," Torako said, tapping the heel of her hurling stick against the wall. "I'm taking it seriously that if you weren't such a stubborn ass, we'd be gone and saving people already and I could watch your back and you'd have somebody out there who actually knows how to check people."
"Would you two shut up?" Alcor snarled, and Torako could feel the wall behind her quiver despite the fact he hadn't actually raised his voice. Her teeth clacked together, and she chewed the inside of her mouth.
The apartment was silent. The only light on was the one overhead and in the kitchen, where Torako had been starting a cup of something they called chai in these parts that smelled a lot like masala tea. She could still smell traces of cardamom, cinnamon, and ginger, but that was disregarded the longer Alcor went without speaking.
"Thank you," Alcor said. He closed his eyes and floated an extra decimeter off the ground. He exhaled through his mouth, and Torako could see the glowing golden smoke that drifted out, swirling in the air for maybe a few heartbeats before fading into nothing.
She made eye contact with Bentley and raised an eyebrow. He stared stonily back, arms crossed as much as he could cross them with Alcor's hand fisted in the front of his hoodie.
The fist at her own shoulder tightened, and Alcor's eyes opened wide. His mouth flew open, teeth bared so wide she could actually see both sets, and Torako found herself pushing back against the wallboard because something in her recognized this being as death.
"Dipper!" Bentley hissed. "Dipper, stop, you're scaring us!"
Alcor responded to the odd mishmash of syllables Bentley had said quicker than Torako would have imagined. Alcor blinked twice, then relaxed his jaw (which had been open too wide, too grotesquely to be human and Torako found herself looking at the demon more carefully just in case he was hiding something else) and closed his eyes. He inhaled deep and exhaled slow, the air around them loosening. Torako felt a weight slide off her shoulders and tried not to go down with it. From the looks of it, Bentley wasn't faring much better; his hands, raised in the air, were shaking.
"Sorry," Alcor said. The fist in her jacket loosened until it was just fingertips touching the dark gray material. "Sorry. I. Bentley, you're not going to like this, but I think Torako needs to come with us."
If her knees didn't feel so much like rice cooked with too much water, Torako would have danced around, whooping. Instead, she settled for sticking her tongue out at Bentley and tightening her grip on her hockey stick.
"Wha—you can't be serious! It's dangerous out there; what happened to you promising to watch my back?" Bentley set his hands on his hips and pushed against Alcor's hand.
"I would, I will!" Alcor said, wings tucked in tight against his spine. Torako watched them, saw how stiff they were, remembered how they bristled and rose over half a year ago in the giant hall where they'd first met. "But sometimes I can't always, and sometimes I see too late!"
Bentley growled, raised a hand to push the mask back and slid the hood off his head. "Well then, all the more reason for Torako not to come! She won't be safe!"
"Excuse me I am an athlete who has literally been in fistfights on the field, I can handle a little hustle and bustle." Torako rose up on the balls of her feet and bent her knees just slightly. They were feeling better, and she swung the hurling stick to rest on her shoulders.
"These aren't players, these are people willing to commit murder!"
"I've been around those people before, Bentley, if you somehow can't remember what happened in January!"
"Well, a hurling stick won't help!"
"I can fix that," Alcor said, swiveling his head to look at Torako. A chill went down her spine, and he paused. When he smiled, Torako could tell he meant to be reassuring, but it felt a little stiff. "Relax, I'm not going to do anything like rearrange your internal organs or encourage your body's hormones to work on overdrive. No. I can give you a weapon, that's all."
Still holding Bentley back, Alcor held out his hand, palm up. He furrowed his eyebrows, and a moment later there was an old bat in his hands, in a style that had been outdated for centuries. It gleamed glittery pink, the handle wrapped in some dark, thick material; the length up until the handle was wrapped in rusted barbed wire, and nails had been welded at irregular intervals so that the points were out. They too shone bright pink, and when Torako set aside her hurling stick and accepted it, the bat was heavier than she expected it to be.
"…This could really hurt people," she murmured. When she looked closer, there was rust brown between the nails, wedged into nooks and crannies. The barbed wire was almost a lost cause; more brown than silver, Torako realized that it wasn't rust she saw, but dried blood.
"Yes, it could," Alcor murmured. She looked up at him, and instead of the glee she was expecting (Demons are unparalleled compared to any race when it comes to the active enjoyment of bloodshed and chaos, and have a different set of morals and compulsions than most sentient species), she saw somberness in his eyes.
"Dipper, stop."
Torako raised the bat with one hand, set her fingertips gingerly between nails and barbs to rest on the somewhat tacky surface of the bat. If she concentrated she could just barely feel the thrum of enchantments underneath for a second before they faded away.
"Dipper, don't—don't bring her into this!"
She looked over at Bentley, anger and fear on his face. He was clutching at Alcor's wrist, jaw clenched. Alcor was looking at her though, the same expression she'd seen on the team keeper's face after they'd let another ball into the net. The same determination was there as well.
"I have to," Alcor said. He shifted his gaze to the bat, his face smoothing into something unreadable, before he turned to Bentley. "I have to keep you safe."
"I don't understand!" Bentley burst out, shoving Alcor's hand down. He stepped into Alcor's personal space, hands spread. "I don't understand! This is—you told me, this is an Alcor and Mizar thing, that we shouldn't bring other people into it if we can't avoid it!"
"We can't avoid it," Alcor murmured. His wings nestled further in.
Torako looked down at the bat, bright pink and rust brown, and wondered what it would look like red. She realized that if she were to go, she'd see it red. She'd smell blood, the way she had in January, but she'd be the one spilling it.
"And why not? We haven't even tried!"
Was she really ready for something like that? Torako rotated the bat in her hand. Light shimmied down the head of the bat, caught on the tiny glitter stars sprinkled under the topmost glaze. She didn't know that she was ready for that.
"Because if we try something awful will happen!" Alcor raised his voice at last. Torako returned her attention to her friend and his overprotective demon godfather or whatever it was he was called.
Bentley scoffed. "What, I'll get a scratch? I'll die?"
"Worse!" Alcor cried, reaching out and grabbing Bentley's shoulder. His wings started to billow out, and Torako stepped forward. She reached out her free hand.
"How could it be worse?" Bentley snarled. "I'd rather die than lead Torako to her own death!"
"Will you see no reason? Won't you—just believe me! Torako will be fine, everything will turn out better if she's there!"
"No, I won't! Torako's my best friend, I'm not going to bring her somewhere unless you actually explain it!"
Alcor snarled and stamped his foot on thin air. "Fine. Fine. I'll do what you want—but the only way you'll actually understand is if I show you, so here you go."
She'd almost put her hand on Alcor's wing when he flung his other hand towards her and slid it roughly up her cheek, talons just sharp enough to scrape the skin but not enough to break through it. Torako opened her mouth to yelp, but the world fell away and suddenly they were not in the hallway any longer.
Torako nearly dropped the bat in surprise. They were standing in a dimly lit room, the edges of it hazy like the sea on a hot summer's day. Movement caught her eye, and Torako focused on the figures milling about, drawing on the floor with something thick and viscous and she couldn't smell it but she knew it was—
"Oh my stars," she whispered, and tried to move forward. She got two steps before she realized that she was stepping through things, as though she weren't there. Torako stopped, watched the people paint the ground with thick brushes dripping blood. Off to the side, there was a pile of bodies: children and adults, sentients and non, piled one on top of another as if their lives didn't matter as individuals.
She whirled around, opened her mouth, but Bentley got there first.
"What the hell?" Bentley stepped in front of Alcor, voice like it was floating directly into her mind without passing through her ears. He tried to grab Alcor's shoulder, but his hand went through the suit. If Torako focused, she could see through both of them. When she looked down and did the same, she could see through herself.
"You wanted to understand," Alcor said, looking straight ahead. It was less solid too, more abstract than concrete. "So I'm showing you why."
"But why Tora—"
Torako said, "Bentley, the protecting rod-and-line is getting old."
He turned to face her. "But—"
She held up her left hand. "We're friends, you said that. Do you really think that I'm going to let you go do stupid stuff without being physically incapable?"
His face fell. "I—Torako, I don't…"
"I've already done it once," Torako said, and being unable to hear what was actually going on let her focus on him. If she had a physical body, she'd feel the lump in her throat more acutely. "And I'm not fucking doing that again. Not if you're going to come back like that. Never."
When she flicked her gaze up to Alcor, he'd pressed his lips together, expression otherwise stony. He didn't meet her eyes, only continued to watch the scene.
Bentley didn't say anything, mouth open and eyes vacillating between stubborn and comprehending. She shook her head and turned around, knowing that Bentley needed time to digest the information in order to actually change his mind.
The cultists—because that's what they were, these people who piled the bodies up in the middle of the floor, one child's pigtails running into a juvenile cervitaur's limp tail, which had been plaited and adorned with bright strings of yarn—the cultists were circling, clasping each other's hands. They raised their heads to the ceiling, and Torako watched their lips move, soundless.
Smoke had just started to pour out of the ground, swirling around the bodies and beginning to coalesce, when the first sigil was thrown; the wooden sphere bounced once, twice and then exploded into a sunburst of light. Torako raised her eyebrow and asked, "Delayed activation? Isn't that really tricky and mostly theoretical?"
Behind her, Bentley coughed. "I—I might have been working on that sort of thing this summer…"
Bentley in the vision ran forward, lit only just in the shadows—it was as though he was a shadow himself, and his image rippled every now and then like leaves swaying in a slight breeze.
"…I might have been working on something like that too…"
Torako raised her eyebrows and turned her head to face Bentley. "Where the hell was I when you did this?"
"Training camp for school," Bentley said. He shrugged and looked off to the side so that the mask was in the way of most of his face. "You weren't around, and I knew the area was dangerous, so I asked Di—Alcor, and he explained."
Torako took a step towards him and opened her mouth—to ask why he never told her, to ask why he never invited her to help—but Alcor's voice cut through the void like the candles cut the darkness.
"Watch."
She hesitated, then turned around. If their clothes were real, she could have heard Bentley shift behind her, but there was only the silence.
To her utter lack of amazement, she saw herself throw her body into the fray, clobbering a cultist over the head with her hurling stick.
"What are you doing—she was left behind, wasn't she?" Bentley protested.
Before Alcor could speak, Torako said, "Well, I knew where you were going, duh. I would have come to help you because you're being stupid about this whole thing."
"I wasn't being dumb, I was—"
"Watch."
Torako snapped her jaw shut from where she'd been ready to cut Bentley off his podium and focused on the scene unfolding. She—the other she, that is—ducked under the swipe of a knife and spun her foot around, the heel driving through the cultist's shin. The cultist staggered, dropping the knife as their shoulders hunched and their hands clutched the leg. They were wearing tight pants, so she could see the unnatural angle a handlength below their knee.
Bentley inhaled behind her, and she found other-him standing stock-still. Other-him took a step forward, towards other-her, and she could see how his arms went rigid and his knees locked. And then she saw the cultist other-Bentley had downed rise and go to stab Bentley. Another one was just moments behind the other, hands wreathed in flickering light—first gold, then green, then aqua and then gold again, as though he couldn't decide—jabbing up from the ground, hands formed into spears, and Torako found herself screaming even though other-Bentley couldn't hear her.
She didn't see quite how it happened, but a wave of darkness, inky shadow that glistened in the candlelight but seemed to eat it at the same time, swept over the two cultists and other-Bentley. Behind her, Bentley made a strangled noise, somewhere between a gurgle and a whine, and she whirled away to look at him because she knew that noise.
"Bentley?" She asked. His face was drawn, the lips parted in a grimace that was more fear than anything, eyebrows drawn together at an upwards slant. His fingers clenched and loosened, and it seemed as though he couldn't look away.
"You wouldn't," he whispered. "You—I trust you, you wouldn't."
Alcor was silent, but it seemed as though he were searching for words in it. He didn't appear to be finding them, Torako thought. She took another step forward. "Bentley? Ben?"
"Dipper, you wouldn't, right?" Bentley had turned to face Alcor, his hands hovering at Alcor's shoulder. They still fisted and relaxed, fisted and relaxed over the immaterial fabric of Alcor's tailcoat.
Alcor didn't turn to face him. He just stared ahead, face stony aside from the way his mouth quivered and stilled in cycles. "You mean everything to me, Bentley," he said at last. "More than anything else in the universe."
Bentley took a step back, and Torako was close enough to reach out and touch him. "Dipper?"
Finally, Alcor shifted his head, and Torako realized that the stoniness wasn't that at all; it was self-loathing cast in a mold of guilt and determination. "More than anything. I would save you any way I could."
"Even that?" Bentley croaked, and he embraced himself.
"If it was the only way I could save you…" Alcor murmured. He looked away again, over their heads and at the scene unfolding behind them. "I'm sorry."
"What…what was that?" Torako asked, even though she had an awful inkling of what it could be. Alcor looked at her, shook his head twice, and then looked away.
Bentley looked as though he were barely breathing. His eyes were wide, and he swayed back, but didn't step. He opened his mouth, closed it, and then gritted his teeth.
"Then if Torako comes," he asked, audibly pushing the words out, "if Torako comes, this won't happen?"
"No," Alcor said. "Not in any of the futures I looked at."
Bentley stepped forwards. "And Torako? Is she hurt?"
"No," Alcor said again, but Torako wondered how much of the expressionlessness was masking a lie.
Bentley breathed in and out. He raised one hand to cover his heart, then the other, and he closed his eyes. It took him countless breaths to compose himself as the scene of the room dimmed and darkened and the brightest things there were Alcor's golden eyes, glinting in an unknown light.
"Okay," Bentley said. She could barely see him at that point. When she looked down at herself, Torako couldn't even see her own hands.
"I'm sorry," Alcor said, and they were back in the hallway, the bat heavy in her sweaty hands and Bentley's shoulders heavy with fear and Alcor's eyes heavy with self-loathing.
This time, when Torako slammed her weapon into the side of the first cultist's head, the nails drove past skin and muscle and bone and blood sprayed out into the air. She smelled iron, felt something warm hit her face and drip down the side of her cheek into her neckerchief. Torako gritted her teeth and followed through the blow so that the cultist drops, sliding off the nails and barbed wire and leaving them dripping red.
This time, Bentley didn't take his eyes off his adversaries as he ducked blows and smacked tags on their clothes, scribbling activation line after activation line with a speed that Torako had never known was even possible. Clothing burned, material sizzled, and Bentley stomped down on the wrist of the one with the knife, the snapping barely audible over the growls of the two demons duking it out in the center of the circle.
This time, Alcor swallowed the demon whole, back turned to Bentley as he ripped its soul from its body and crammed it down his mouth. He shuddered, turned to them with too-bright eyes and a wicked grin, and asked them if they'd like to go home.
This time, they left behind bodies and blood and screams of agony, Bentley's hands carefully still and Torako's shaking as they accepted Alcor's clawed hands, blood and black ooze smearing over their skin.
When they got back, Torako threw up in the kitchen sink. Bentley made it as far as the toilet. And Alcor floated somewhere between them, licking the blood off his claws with half-lidded eyes until the brightness faded from him and he collapsed on the couch, face in his licked-clean hands and claws digging into his hair.
Torako slid down the cabinet under the sink, smelling cinnamon and blood and ginger and bile all at once, and whispered, "Fuck, we're a mess."
Aside from the news of a slaughtered cult, things were quiet on the information front when Bentley sat down at the table between Alcor and Torako that Saturday morning and said, "I need your help."
Alcor looked up from his folded hands, from where he'd been meditating or whatever. Torako stared blearily over her cup of coffee; a morning person she was not.
"Whuh?" she asked, dragging her head up to stare at him so that her eyeballs weren't straining so hard.
Bentley laid his hands out flat on the table. Then he wove them together. He met their eyes for only fractions of moments at a time. "I. I don't. I don't—Alcor, you would do it if you had to. Even if I wouldn't want you to."
Alcor shifted in his chair and skimmed his dull claw over the lacquered surface of the table. Torako looked away after a few moments and took another sip of her coffee.
"Yeah," Bentley breathed, and he crossed his arms and leaned on them. "I don't think you want me to hate you, though."
Alcor shook his head. Torako swallowed the coffee and resisted the urge to kick him for looking so despondent. He hadn't even stolen her breakfast at all this week, despite having made it an irritating habit ever since moving in. It was getting on her nerves.
"I don't want to either," Bentley said. He looked down at the table, and it began to tremble in regular intervals as he kicked it. "So I was thinking…you know, I was looking it up, and I talked with Dad and a lot with Ms. Hyendei—the school psychiatrist—and everything, and there's something called…exposure therapy?"
Torako yawned in the back of her throat, but leaned forward over her mug. "Isn't that, like, when you're super scared of something but you expose yourself little by little to the thing you're afraid of so that you're not afraid of it anymore?"
Bentley nodded. "Yeah. Like, Ms. Hendei gave me some ground rules for actually doing it, so I've got a guide and so basically it comes down to this: if Alcor has to…well, has to eat me again, he will, and I don't want to be as scared. I don't want to hate him, but if he did it now…"
"You would despise me," Alcor murmured into the silence. "You would curse me, you would never want to see me again, you would live in fear for the rest of your life."
Torako narrowed her eyes at the words unsaid drifting in the air. She tapped her finger against the tabletop, tried to figure out what they were.
Bentley nodded once, stopped kicking the table. "Probably," he muttered.
Alcor looked up from the table. "Do you really want to do this?" He leaned forward on his forearms, hands stretched out in front of him.
Bentley let out a shaky burst of laughter and let his head fall to the table. "No. I don't. But we need to do this, don't we?"
The silence was thick with thought. Torako closed her eyes and wrapped her hands around the coffee mug. It was still warm.
"What can we do to help?" Torako asked, sliding her eyes open just enough to look down at the coffee mug. "Like, this is a pretty big deal, I get that. How can we help make it better?"
"What do you mean?"
She looked up at Bentley, glanced at Alcor. "I mean, I saw you after that shit went down. You were not in a good place for ages; revisiting it is going to hurt you. How can we help keep the trauma down? Like, do you want a cup of tea or hot cocoa waiting for you after you do this thing? Pillow forts? Cuddle times? Do I need to get a queen bed for one of the rooms so that we all can cram ourselves on it?"
"I—I'm not sure I'd be invited to the—" Alcor started, holding a hand up.
"Depends on how I'm feeling, but I still love you you idiot," Bentley said. He refocused his attention on Torako. "Those…those seem like good ideas. Cocoa and cuddles. Maybe listening to me. Or maybe just sitting together. And Torako, quit paying for things, you already bought the full bed in my room."
Torako waved her hand in the air. "Nonsense, we can put that in the extra third room for Mr-I-don't-need-to-actually-sleep-or-eat-even-though-I-enjoy-them-and-waste-food. I have money. We can do this."
"At least let me pay for half of it," Bentley moaned, sliding half onto the table.
"If we're talking about beds, I'm sure I can scrounge one up somewhere," Alcor said. He was grinning. "If not one in my stash, I might be able to wrangle a deal…"
"Bad idea," Torako said. She pulled her tablet out of her pocket and started tapping the screen. Beds, beds, beds…she should have a coupon left from the last order she'd made.
"Some of it?" Bentley asked.
"What's wrong with a free bed?"
"You'd get it through a deal, and no Bentley. Hmm, their kings are on sale, and my coupon on top of it is basically the price of a queen set…yeah, let's get a king."
"A king won't fit in my room!" Bentley yelped.
"Would you let me fix that? Well, would you give me something great in return for adding onto that space?"
Torako pushed her left hand against Alcor's face, both too tired to be afraid of him and too used to his darkish shenanigans to care. She selected the two king bed sets with the highest ratings and appraised them. "Shh. Bentley, you're right—I have the master suite. Let's change rooms. You can have the bigger room with the bigger bed, and I'll take your room."
"You want us to move everything?"
Alcor licked her palm, but she grabbed his forked tongue and smiled at him. Bentley made a gurgling noise. "Hey, I'll give you ownership of my first-ever hurling stick, in my closet at home, if you switch everything around before the bed comes."
His eyes lit up, sharpened. She let his tongue go so that he could speak and wiped it off on her sweatpants. "That thing? Oh dear, I think that'd be cheating me out of—"
Bentley said, high-pitched, "Uh, are you sure this is such a good idea?"
Torako ignored him, toggled between the two beds before finally picking the one with the solid wood bedframe Humming, she selected the customization too to get a longer bed, and then pressed her thumb to the payment security code before setting the tablet aside. "Ah, I should be more specific. My first-ever hurling stick, the one that I won two child-championships with, signed by my most favorite hurling player ever, in exchange for the timely and neat moving of my belongings into Bentley's room, and his into mine. No items should be hidden or go missing during the exchange. I believe this is a fair deal, don't you? A beloved object infused with such memory is enough for that. I think I'm being rather generous, actually."
Alcor narrowed his eyes at her, but his mouth spread in a wide grin. "You sure about that?"
"Torako you're making a deal with a literal demon."
"Of course I do!" Torako said back to Alcor. She leaned across the table, half-rising from her chair so that she was just high enough to tilt her head down at the demon. She grinned back and rapped her knuckles on the table. "What, you scared of dealing with me? Can't say I blame you."
Alcor tipped his head back and cackled like static and fizzing candy; Torako felt a chill run down her neck, felt her muscles tense, but stayed where she was. He rocked back forward and stuck his face level with hers. "Gotta say kid, you're adorable! Man, what are they teaching you in that weird human school? How to get yourself killed?"
"Nah," Torako drawled, and she shifted a few degrees higher, standing fully on the ground. "I just figured, yanno, you like Bentley and all, right? So yeah I still might find myself screaming in eternal agony, but I have more chances to scrape by than most!"
Bentley muttered something across the table, but Torako was focused on Alcor, his shark grin and the way it stretched further than was humanly possible. She might have just gotten herself in a bit further than she should have, Torako thought, but she stood firm.
"Eh, you're right," Alcor did that weird up and down thing with his shoulders and he floated just a mite higher. Sticking out a hand, he said, "Tell you what, I'll do you a favor this time! I'll nab the stick myself and rearrange everything when you need it; just picture that stick niiiiice and cleeaaaar."
"Only the one I picture," Torako said, and she lifted her hand to take his. They smirked at one another, and the moment her hand grasped his, her thumb pressing down near his wrist, flames flared out from their fingers, seeping through the cracks and licking at the air.
"Of course," Alcor drawled, head tilting slow enough to unsettle Torako. She tightened her hand around his, told herself that she wasn't letting go. Bentley trusted Alcor enough not to actually separate them, Bentley trusted Alcor, she wouldn't lose anything vital out of this and Alcor seemed to like her well enough. Hopefully.
Alcor released her hand, and she was just barely aware of the dull clawtips
"You guys are so stupidly dramatic," Bentley said, and Torako looked in his direction. His chin was on the table, hands dangling somewhere under it and shoulders collapsed. "We don't need to get a king sized bed. We don't need Dipper to rearrange our rooms for us, we can do that ourselves—"
"Moving is a demon in and of itself," Torako hissed, and she wrapped her hands around the coffee to keep the adrenaline from shaking them too noticeably.
"—but…thank you," Bentley said, lifting his head off the table and looking at the both of them. "Thank you so. So much."
Torako unwrapped her hands from the coffee mug again and ruffled Bentley's hair. "Hey, that's what family's for, isn't it?"
"Always," Alcor said, a high-pitched thrum only barely noticeable when he spoke. He leaned across the table with her, careful in how he set his hands down on the table, flat for Bentley to see, a decimeter or so away from Bentley's chin.
Bentley smiled, small and watery, and pulled his hands out from under the table to wrap his fingers around theirs. "Thank you."
Bentley started with imagining the situation; he sat somewhere and closed his eyes, eyebrows furrowed. At first, he only made it a few seconds before he started trembling, and maybe a bit beyond that before his eyes snapped open and he clenched his fingers around his legs, panting. Torako was always there by his side, Alcor just a bit further off. She'd lost track of how many times they'd fallen asleep on the couch, Alcor perched above them. But then Bentley started lasting longer against his fear, started acting calmer and calmer until he'd reached the point where he wasn't shaking and he didn't need to cling to one of them for hours on end. He began to look only uncomfortable at worst when he closed his eyes, displeased at best.
They'd agreed at the start that the first session in which Bentley physically faced his fear should be held, at the earliest, the weekend of or after the bed came, for optimal snuggling. That way, Torako thought, there would be more than enough room for the two of them if they got too hot and had to get some space. They also wouldn't be lying on top of each other so much.
Two and a half weeks after she ordered the bed, it came. It was Thursday. Alcor shuffled the rooms around as promised, and Torako didn't know if any of it had actually gone missing. She stared up at the ceiling that night and could feel how much smaller the room was, how the ceiling looked empty without Bentley's vintage glowing stars, and she brought the comforter up to her neck and didn't sleep.
"I want you to be there," Bentley had said, way at the beginning. "Not in the middle of it, just…where I can see you. I need to see you."
So Torako did her thing and straddled one of the dining room chairs, peering over the back of the couch to where Bentley and Alcor were standing, facing one another. Bentley's hands were rubbing against the sides of his pants, and it didn't look as though he'd slept well the past nights. Alcor wasn't wearing his customary dress shirt and coat thing; instead, he looked fairly ridiculous in a rainbow sweater with some Transcendence-Age English stitched onto it.
"Are you sure?" Alcor murmured, and Torako could barely hear him despite the quiet. On the stovetop behind her, there was a large pitcher of hot coca hovering over the cooking coil, set to warm. Two mugs were ready to be poured into, a collection of tiny marshmallow stars clustered at the bottom of each.
Bentley nodded. He rubbed his left arm, already swaddled in a too-large hoodie that made Torako want to pick him up and spin him around. "I. Yes. This has to be done. I can do this."
Alcor closed his eyes, then stopped floating and settled down onto the ground, his weird old shoes hardly making a sound against the laminate flooring. Torako shifted on the chair and folded her arms across the back of it. She wondered if she should have sat in it the right way around, just so that she could intervene if necessary.
The demon glanced at her so quick she would have missed it if she weren't paying enough attention; before she could make eye contact, he averted his gaze back to Bentley and held out one hand. "Just tell me when to start."
Bentley laughed, and his foot started tapping against the ground. He cast his gaze all around the room, unable to stare at one thing for very long. "Okay. I will."
The silence lasted a handful of seconds before Alcor smiled, shoulders relaxing. "Remember what I told you; they're a part of me. I control them; they don't do anything without my say so, and I would never use them on you if there were another way."
"Fuck it if that analogy wasn't creepy though," Torako called out from her perch. She grinned at the glare she received.
"It was accurate!" Alcor protested. "Bentley appreciated it!"
"You never really change, do you, Dipper?" With another laugh, Bentley shook his head. He wasn't quite as tense as before, however, and Torako grinned a little wider at it.
Bentley took in a deep breath and let it out, not quite to steady but better than shaking. "Okay. Let's do this."
Alcor closed his eyes again, then opened them, an expression that Torako wanted to call fear on his face; but the emotion didn't quite fit. "I'm pulling one out. One small one out. It will stay in my hand, and I won't move"
"Sounds good," Bentley said, knuckles turning pale but not white. Torako leaned forward, set her chin in her hands, and waited.
What Alcor pulled out of thin air was unremarkable. It was small and thin, somehow tangible but not quite interacting with the world right, as though it were a puzzle piece trying to fit into a hole that was only slightly different from its own shape. It glinted in the light from the kitchen and living room, but there was something in the way that the highlights moved that seemed to Torako as if the shadow tendril was picking up on more than just the physical realm.
She shifted her gaze to Bentley, saw him leaning back just a bit, hand shaking once more. His Adam's apple bobbed, his lips pressed together and his eyebrows furrowed his forehead. Bentley inhaled through his nose, rocked forward and then back.
"If you can't, it's fine," Alcor murmured, standing still. Torako had the sneaking suspicion that if a tornado ripped through, not even his clothes would have budged. "You're in control. You can tell me to push it back and I'll do it."
Bentley jerked his head from side to side. He unwrapped first one finger, then another, and they trembled in the air before the others followed, slow and stiff the way Torako felt after practice in the morning.
He rocked forward, then back, and finally took a step towards Alcor.
"Don't push yourself," Alcor said. "Touching can come later. You're just looking. You're just looking."
Bentley's lips were parted now, teeth set in a grimace, and Torako could hear the breath whistling between his molars. He shook his head again and slowly outstretched his arm, but the way he did it made Torako think of pushing through the overwhelming ache in her arms in the last minutes of the game when she just wanted to drop and sit in silence.
"I have to," he gritted out, high pitched and strained. "I have to do this. I have to. We—We have to make it okay."
"It is your call," Alcor said, but he was frowning now. Honestly, Torako was starting to agree with him, seeing warning signs in how Bentley shook all over.
Bentley's hand hovered before Alcor's, fingers maybe a decimeter away from the tendril slowly moving in the middle of Alcor's outstretched palm. His arm visibly shook in the air, and Torako started to place her weight on her feet, focused solely on Bentley. This needed to be over thirty seconds ago.
"Please. Don't hurt yourself," Alcor said. His tone was low and even, but he didn't move a thing other than his lips. "It's okay to get used to seeing it first. You've come so far, you've done so well. It's okay to rest and take it at your own pace."
Bentley let out a high pitched whine, fingers trembling so much they blurred at the edges, and he was a still, quivering mess for a moment. Then the moment passed and he yanked himself back, tripping over his feet and falling backwards into the armchair. Torako vaulted to her feet, sending the chair to spin and hover over the floor, bouncing with the force of her dash to Bentley. She was there in just a few steps and had crouched down before him, tapping her fingers on the couch.
"Hey, can I touch you?"
Bentley, hands on his face, nodded. She raised her hands to set them on his knee, to tell him that she was there and she could get the hot cocoa for him if he preferred, that she could carry him to his bed if he'd like, when he launched himself at her and shoved his face in her shoulder so hard it almost hurt. But she rolled with the motion and stroked his back, his arms tight around her. He started breathing fast and hard and wet, tears soaking through her jacket and through her shirt to touch the skin beneath.
"You're safe," she murmured. When she glanced up, Alcor was no longer in the room. As she pressed her nose into Bentley's hair, Torako wondered.
It had been so small, but Bentley was still terrified shitless. He was shaking, on the verge of retching from crying so hard even though he hadn't come close to it four weeks ago with the cultists, even though he hadn't done anything like it during the first phase and she'd thought that was bad.
Torako wondered what that said about the shadow that had curled and undulated in Alcor's palm. She wondered what her inability to understand how it could be so frightening said about her.
And then she pushed those thoughts to the side for a moment and focused on Bentley wrapped around her, quivering and warm and afraid.
The next morning, Torako came back from her mandatory Sunday Teammate Run and immediately dumped super-charged-coffee into the caffienator plugged into the apartment system. She had homework to do, and by Old Man Kanaloa she wasn't going to stay awake this early on her own.
"Is he asleep?" Alcor asked, and thankfully she'd still been alert enough to hear him pop onto the physical realm. Torako turned her back on the caffienator, snapping her fingers to turn it on, and rested her elbows on the countertop. Her jogging sweats were starting to disengage the temperature regulation charms stitched into the hems, and she bounced on her feet to get rid of the buzzing feeling.
"He's asleep, yeah," Torako said. "I saw you come in and eat the nightmare, though; he did pretty well after that."
"You did?" Alcor said, but he showed no sign of actual surprise. She rolled her eyes and then shot him an unimpressed look. In his favor, he grinned and looked to the side. "Okay yeah, you did."
Torako chuckled and tapped the counter edge. She looked at Alcor, dressed all sharp and oldstyle again, and pursed her lips. She ran her tongue over her teeth, rolled her question over in her mouth and wondered how he'd react if he heard her question.
"Spit it out, I know you want to ask something." Alcor sat on the air above the table, hefting his cane up in one hand and pushing it back wherever it came from.
"Okay," she said. "So that weird tentacle thing—it's supposed to be your teeth or whatever creepy analogy, right? And Bentley's super scared for reasons obvious to him."
"Yes, that's right. Why are you rehashing this all?"
"Your words are weird. What the hell does rehashing mean?" Alcor opened his mouth to answer, but she waved him off. "Anyways. The point is this: do you think you could, I dunno, let me see for myself?"
Alcor was silent, mouth still open. After a few moments, he closed it, then opened it again. "You want me to eat you?"
He sounded a bit hysteric, and Torako lifted her hands, waving them from side to side. "Of course not, no no no! Fuck that! No, I just…you know the tendril thing you pulled out yesterday—could you pull it out again, put it in reach?"
"Why."
"Because I want to understand more," Torako said.
His eyes widened a touch more than was supposed to be possible. "You are not made to handle that," he said. "No human is. Not for long. Your psyches break under the pressure of it."
"I know that," She said. The caffienator let out a pulse of magic behind her to say her drink was ready, and she snapped her fingers twice to turn it to its thermos mode. "But Bentley looks like he's going through hell again, and the least I could do is make an effort to actually understand what he's up against."
Torako crossed her arms and stared Alcor right in the eye. The longer she stared, the more she wanted to look away, but Torako pressed her lips together and kept staring.
Alcor was the first to look away.
"All right," he said, and nudged a chair out from the table with his foot. "Just…sit down first, okay?"
"Sure." Torako pulled a mug out of the cabinet and pushed the caffienator up into the air just enough to fit the mug underneath it. It settled over the mug, and she tapped it twice with her fingernail to fill her cup. "Once I get my coffee."
"Eh, I'm not so sure that's—okay, your life, you live it."
Torako looked back at him and huffed. She sat into the chair and leaned across the table, sliding her tank top strap back onto her shoulder. "Okay then, it can wait. It shouldn't take too long, right?"
Alcor's lips thinned. "Hopefully," he said. "Just—tell me when you're ready."
Grinning Torako ran a hand through her sweat-damp hair and wiggled the fingers in his face. "Let's do this thing, Starchild."
Face screwed up in dislike, he leaned back from her hand. "All right, as you wish. If Bentley tries to kill me, I expect you to act as a body shield if you're not too catatonic."
"Hah hah, funny," Torako drawled, letting her hand drop to the table as a shadowy tendril eased up from the surface just a bit from her arm. She raised her eyebrow, stared at it. Really, the most uncomfortable then she'd noticed was still the odd highlights where there should be none. She raised her eyes to Alcor.
"It's really not all that intimidating, is it?" She asked. "Looks funny, sure, but I don't get the hysteria. Like, there's got to be something more."
Alcor stared back at her, eyes unfathomable. He then closed him and said, "Okay. You want me to show you?"
"A taste!" Torako warned. "A taste, not fully eating me or whatever because dude that's freaky and I think I'd rip you apart from the inside out."
With a bark of laughter, Alcor leaned back on thin air. "All right then, you asked for it."
Torako watched as it coiled around her arm, thickening and expanding over the surface of the table underneath her skin. It really wasn't that bad—sure it felt weird and a bit wrong, but it was cool against her warm skin, and she didn't get how Bentley'd be so freaked out over touching it. There had to be something more. Something—
Her arm slipped into the puddle a little, tiny feelers drawing her in, and Torako's heart stopped before she even started comprehending the sudden rush of fear. Her breath quickened, her eyes widened, and her mouth dropped open as the sweat started pouring down her face again but this was wrong, this wasn't right, this wasn't running on a cool morning in the fall this was death this was hopelessness this was pain and fear and oh stars she was going to die she was going to die she was going to die this was the end, she could feel it looming over her like a beast even though it was there, just barely drawing her arm in, slowly slowly slowly like it had all the time in the world and—
The tendril pulled away and Torako became aware that someone was emitting a high-pitched whine and no, that was her, she was keening and shaking and staring down at her arm in the bright kitchen light. It looked just like it had before, no marks but it felt so foreign, so off and she didn't like it she was scared she. She.
She took a deep a breath as she could but the hyperventilating spoiled her attempt and she devolved into frantic gasps. Torako reached up her hand to wipe the sweat off her forehead and found tears and sweat mixing on the side of her face, and shit it was bad it was bad if she was crying shit she was crying and dammit all!
Alcor slid his hands around hers and moved into her line of sight. The sight of him didn't make sense through the haze of tears and pain, like he wasn't real even though she could feel his skin against her fingers. "Torako. Torako. You're not in there. You're okay. You're in the real world, you'll be fine."
The breath shuddered out of her, taking her chest and shaking it as though she weren't the one in control. She wasn't. She scrunched her eyes shut, clenched her jaw, and pushed noise through the back of her throat.
"I know you're frustrated, Torako, I know you're scared, but that's not going to happen, not unless it absolutely has to and you will not die." The hands shook hers. "Come on, pull out of it—here."
He drew her hands forward gently, and how the fuck was a demon gentle, and set her knuckles against his chest. "Breathe with me."
He inhaled deep, chest expanding under the backs of her fingers, and then exhaled slowly through his mouth in a low whistle of air. It took seconds before he inhaled again, and he repeated it, over and over until Torako found that it was the only thing in the world, that she was mimicking him and that she could actually think again.
It was working, though, so she didn't pull away. She closed her eyes and breathed. In with Alcor's breath, out with the fall of his chest. She spread her fingers out and he let go of her hands so that she could place her hands above where the lungs should be, and she focused on the way his jacket pulled tighter and then looser.
The moment stretched on into a week, a year, an age, until Alcor murmured, "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have—"
"Don't," she muttered. "I asked you to. This is on me."
Alcor sighed underneath her fingers, and she felt herself copy it a millisecond after him. "I'm the near-omniscient being here, I should have known better."
Torako chuckled. Her legs felt dead underneath her, and her arms were starting to feel sore. "No pain no gain, man."
He huffed, but the retort he gave sounded flat. "Of course you'd say that. Are you going to have your coffee? It might help."
Torako thought about it. She envisioned herself picking the mug up, tilting the drink back, just warm enough. She imagined it sliding down her throat, the delightful bitterness spreading over her tongue and decided that no, this was not what would help.
She looked up at Alcor, and raised her arms. "Up. I want Bentley."
He blinked down at her. "What?"
If she could have, she'd have kicked her legs. "Carry me like one of your adorable Princess Mizars, all arms under the knees and hands around the shoulders like those weird cartoons you insist on watching sometimes."
"Your voice is still shaking," he pointed out but moved over her nevertheless, sliding his arms around her.
"I already know that, idiot." She poked her finger at his forehead but ended up jabbing his eyebrow. He looked at her, unimpressed, and then hefted her off the ground, spinning in a circle as he did so.
"Oh, what glorious day," he said in monotone. "Hooray. Finally reunited with the love of my life. Joy."
"You're a dork," Torako said, and she flicked him in the nose. She was more or less on target this time, even if she did feel like she wanted to hurl down his shirt.
"I can still throw you over my shoulder," Alcor hissed, taking actual steps out of the kitchen and towards the biggest bedroom.
"But Alcor!" She said, not quite as melodramatic as she'd like. Torako hooked her arm around the back of his neck and batted her eyelashes at him. "My darling, my love, do we not share a sanctimonious bond, unseverable for the rest of our lives? As I love you, do you not love me and wish to care for me in return?"
He laughed and nudged Bentley's door open with his foot, lunging across the threshold and dipping Torako down so that her hair was nearly brushing the floor. He lowered his face centimeters from hers and murmured, "Of course, my sweet Camellia! For you are as the stars are to the night sky of my pitiful existence, as the sun is to the barren landscape of my soul!"
"…what are you doing." Bentley muttered from the bed. They both looked at him, and Torako noted that he was still swaddled in blankets. "Why are you acting out something horribly similar to Twin Souls. You. You weren't like this when I left you alone. What happened."
Alcor slowly straightened. He fidgeted underneath her, and she studied his suddenly guilty face. He opened his mouth to speak.
Torako said, "So I wanted to better understand how painful your experiences were and decided to pressure Alcor into showing me his gross-analogy fangs, and decided to touch them, and experienced the inevitability of death for the first time, the end. We're better now."
Bentley's face scrunched up. He stared at them. "What."
"No repeats!" Torako sang, and she patted Alcor twice on the shoulder. "Onwards, my valiant knight! To the bed!"
Alcor, unfortunately, didn't huff or pout or play along, and she frowned as he set her carefully on the bed. "I'm sorry," he said, and he turned to leave.
"I…Dipper, it's…you didn't do it on purpose, right?"
Alcor did the shrugging thing. Torako groaned. "No, he didn't, he's being a buttmunch—I asked him to, and he didn't do anything I didn't want him to."
Bentley stared at Alcor, who was starting to edge out of the room again. He wriggled his arms out of the covers and held them out. "You. Moping person. Get in here."
Torako raised an eyebrow at Bentley. "Like…cuddles? With a demon?"
"You were just getting all cozy with him," Bentley muttered, rolling his eyes. He waved his arms up and down and demanded, "Come on, you'll feel better. We're all good with it. Torako definitely is. I'm certainly okay."
"But…I just…I literally just traumatized your friend." Alcor's wings fidgeted behind his back. "Literally made her cry."
Torako thought about literally sleeping with a demon, then tilted her head to the side. "Literally made me cry. So come make it better. I want to sleep that off, and you know what—you can have the coffee out there later for eating any nightmare I get."
Alcor floated forward, then stopped. Want and guilt quarreled with each other on his face. "I."
Bentley groaned and disentangled himself from the covers. He yanked them back and crawled over to the end of the bed, sliding off and snagging Alcor's jacket in a few sleep-smoothed movements. "Quit being stupid."
Torako snuggled into the warm spot Bentley had just left behind and patted the bed beside her. "C'mon, I wanna sleep."
Alcor let himself be dragged forward and over the surface of the bed. Bentley pulled off his shoes and dumped them on the mess of blankets, and Torako decided that she wasn't sleeping with those things bouncing around so she chucked them over by Bentley's desk in the corner. Bentley pushed down on Alcor so that he was sitting on the bed, and then laid down himself. Torako pulled the covers up and nudged Alcor in the shoulder until he too was laying down, and then promptly curled up with her back to him.
Bentley yawned and snapped the lights off, the door swinging closed on its ancient mechanical track. "Nap time," he mumbled.
Torako hummed agreement, already feeling exhaustion numbing her senses. She snuggled into Alcor's side. "So warm," she mumbled.
She hardly heard Bentley's murmur of agreement before she drifted off, heat at her back and limbs like lead. If there was any point anything that caused her to tense, any hint of that ominous weight she'd felt earlier, it left as soon as it came.
When she woke up around four in the afternoon, Alcor spooning her back and face nuzzled into her hair and Bentley, having moved at some point, curled around her knees with his nose pressing into her shoulder, she thought that maybe this wasn't so bad.