To Baby: Don't you get any ideas, mister — Mommy and Daddy don't need that. Go a full term — I hear it's positively trendy.
Ben didn't know what to do. It was Bridget lying there in front of him, crying. He had seen her cry only a very few times, but it had been nothing like this. She never cried vocally — you would never hear her cry, only see the crystalline beads roll down her cheeks to meet their end on her sleeve or on her lips and tongue when she thought nobody was looking.
Now, however, the raven-haired Hunter was sobbing on the frigid stone slab that reminded Ben so much of a mortuary that his stomach turned. Her eyelids were closed, concealing the shimmering brown irises from view, but tears were still leaking out from under them and running down the side of her face. They pooled on the stone beneath her as she gave another strangled cry, suddenly sounding like a small wounded animal. Ben was suddenly aware of just how little Bridget was. She seemed shorter than ever and was shrunken back into the rock as she whimpered and cried. Another cry tore through her and into Ben. It ripped through him so violently that he felt it just as well as if he had been an empath.
There were strands of black hair plastered to Bridget's forehead through sweat —the rest of it was splayed in a lank mess behind and above her head. Her eyes were swollen and rimmed with red, making it almost seem as if the patented, refulgent Bridget glint had gone out. The Hunter was lying there slightly propped up on her trembling arms, her nightgown sodden and see-through. It was plastered to her legs and back with the fluid that had announced her waters finally breaking. "There's… there's something wrong," she managed to bite out. Smears of pink were bleeding through the fibres of the cotton gown, worrying Ben about where exactly the blood was coming from. But Bridget was staring at him, willing him to understand what she was saying, and he had no time to dwell on the subject. "There's something wrong with… with the baby. I know it. I can feel it."
"No, no there's not," Ben croaked out, surprised to find actual words tumbling from his larynx, which felt like it had had concrete poured down it, sealing it indefinitely.
"Benny, d-darling, you… you are not the m-mother of this thing. Forgive me for tell—" she broke off and swallowed, screwing her eyes closed against pain and gripping the edge of the unrelentingly algid stone until the contraction had passed. "—telling you that you don't have a clue, okay?"
Ben chewed on his bottom lip, tears forming in his own eyes that he swiped away with a trembling back hand whilst brushing hair back from Bridget's forehead with the other. He hated being here; he didn't know what to say. There was nothing he could think of to assuage her of her assumption about her baby's health because it would be transparent — she would only call him on. He didn't think that he could pull off that big a lie with much conviction at all, especially not to someone as important to him as Bridget. He turned his damp but angry hazel eyes onto Clea, who was lounging unconcernedly against the wall of the chamber, a rictus splitting her face with the malignant thoughts of impending power and glory she was about to receive from the child. She wasn't even looking at Bridget, just grinning off into the distance and Ben's glare was lost on her.
A demonic midwife had been called for the occasion, and the ennui that her whole body language conveyed made Ben ball his fists and grind his teeth. How dare she not care what this was putting Bridget through? He sighed, realising that he wouldn't get any information out of Clea because she didn't know any information — she was only a spectator. She had perhaps even less of a clue about what was going on than he did, which was basically nothing, he bitterly reminded himself. Unable to accept that for Bridget or himself, he decided it was high time to at least try and remedy that.
"Well?" the witch demanded in the end, turning on the midwife for answers. "Is there something wrong?"
"I don't talk to witches," she snapped back, turning her eyes back to the tiny head that was emerging.
"You'll talk to this one," Ben snarled, conjuring a fireball in his palm. He levelled his arm threateningly as if to throw it, but was suddenly hit with an intense, sharp pain in his head that had appeared as suddenly as a thunderclap. His free hand shot to his temple then felt its way to the back of his skull. He was bleeding again, and, as he looked at the red smears on his fingertips, the fireball guttered as if in a high wind and went out. Coils of smoke were emanating from his now-empty hand. He looked at the vacant palm in mild confusion before the midwife looked him up and down contemptuously, smirked, and went back to Bridget.
Clea cocked a disdainful eyebrow and said tiredly, "Sit down." The demoness threw a low-voltage energy ball at the witch. It hit Ben in the chest and knocked him off his feet to slam into the ground.
"I'd rather stand," Ben replied stonily, having laid there for a while. He slowly rose again, spitting sand out of his mouth. Grains of it had become lodged between his gums and his upper lip which he dragged out with his finger. The digit came back with a little blood on it and he wrinkled his nose, wiping it on his jeans before using the slab to pull himself back up. His arm muscles were shaking, he noted, and his legs weren't doing so well either, but he hoped the demons didn't notice. All he could think was that he was all that was standing in between them and Bridget, and if he looked weak then there would be nothing he could do to help her. He began stroking her hand again, watching her face.
"Some more pushes," the demonic midwife purred in sugary, almost encouraging voice, her eyes alight with the history-defining moment she was a direct part of. She would be guaranteed power for bringing the ruler of the entire Underworld into being. She was sure of it. As the Source's nurse, how could she not?
"I can't!" Bridget wailed. The room was starting to fade around her, spinning a little. She felt drained. Well and truly drained of everything just like clothes with their dye washed out and left, sopping wet, on a counter. She felt lifeless and exhausted, and she could feel something warm spreading between her legs that could in no way be her lost amniotic fluid. That had turned cold and slippery long ago in the chilly air. She didn't want to know what it was, but she highly suspected blood. She knew there must be a lot of it, because the tang of it had penetrated the air. Was her baby bleeding? Was she a bad mother already? It never occurred to her that it might be her that was bleeding. At least, not until Ben gave a muffled gasp and looked away too quickly, hoping that she hadn't seen his reaction. She knew then that it was her blood, which calmed her slightly. She'd bled before. As long as the baby was going to come out of it okay, she would be okay.
"PUSH!" the midwife yelled, slamming a hand on the slick stone. She was damned if the weaknesses of a mortal were going to delay the deliverance of her Lord any longer. She'd apparently given up on gentle cajoling, Ben thought, hating her all the more.
Bridget was shaking her head wordlessly, tears streaming down her face. Her nose had started running but she couldn't raise the energy to wipe at it with her hand, and let the salty liquid gather with the odd stray tear in her philtrum until she could feel it dribbling onto her cracked lips, stinging.
"Come on, you can do it. Do you want some tiny child to beat you?" Ben asked, his voice thick with tears he was trying desperately not to spill. "Do you think I'd ever let you live it down?"
Bridget's speech was ragged from her torn throat and choked with sobs and she barely managed to gasp out, "It hurts…" There was a tremor in there that Ben had never heard before. It was mixed with gasps of pain as well and intermittently interrupted by a hiccough or a sniff.
"I know, but you're nearly done. I can see the head. A… wait, what? A blond head?" Ben suddenly added in surprise, then frowned and cocked his own head to one side, contemplating what he was seeing with a small laugh of disbelief. He shook his head a little. Genes, huh?
"Blond!" Bridget said, actually managing to sit up for a few agonising seconds. "How…? Chris and I…" She sank back down onto the slab, wishing she had never attempted to sit up.
"Is this the part where you reveal the baby isn't Chris's?" Ben teased lightly, smiling for the first time since he'd entered the room.
"Yes. I w-was screwing th-the gardener in the potting shed," Bridget said, a breathy laugh escaping more down her nose than through her mouth.
"The Manor doesn't have a potting shed," Ben reminded her, a silent tear making its bid for freedom down his face.
"Yeah, y-you see, that's why you-you've not been getting a-a-any," Bridget replied, her teeth chattering a little, punctuating her deteriorating speech with clicks like knitting needles. There was a small silence in which Ben stroked the back of her hand and let another fat, glittering tear fall to land on his shoe. Bridget suddenly sat bolt upright and clung hard to the edge of the stone table, splintering three of her nails down to the quick. Beads of blood began to gather at the end of each finger, dropping to the floor and bursting in tiny crimson splashes which stained staining the sand. She flopped back down backwards with her eyes closed. She was crying some more and Ben moved back forward, having been sent reeling backwards with the force she had pushed his hand away. "Do you really m-mean it? Blond?"
Ben was trying desperately to think of more badinage to distract Bridget with, but there was too much buzzing through his brain, his synapses firing all cylinders. "Well, uh… Leo's blond, and, and so's Wyatt, so you can blame Chris for that," Ben said, biting his own bottom lip as Bridget's became tinted with a shade of violet that made his heart beat in his throat.
"Heh. Well, he's gotta help raise a b-bimbo anyway. Chris… where… where, where…?" her voice began to trail off and her eyes looked seemingly through Ben.
The witch panicked momentarily at the vacancy he saw in her expression. "Where is he? I don't know…" he said quickly, filling in the gap with words, both asking Bridget's question and answering it at the same time. He should keep talking, even though he felt guilty admitting that it made him feel better to talk. It made him feel better just to hear his own voice in a way that was inexplicable to him. It felt like he was only talking to reassure himself and not Bridget. His own selfishness cut him deeply. "So, are you still with me? 'cause, you know, if you're not, I'm not left in the best of company."
There was a triumphant cry from the midwife and she picked up an athame. She wiped it absently on her apron and left it in her lap, glinting. She then picked up the baby tenderly, reverently, before wrapping it in a towel to dry it and gently wiping away mucus and blood from the child's face before transferring it to one arm. She reached down with the other. Ben thought that she was going to cut the cord, but she had just reached for a blanket and not the dagger. The snaking umbilical cord lay limply in front of her. She didn't cut it, just looked back at the baby's face and wrapped it in the blanket, daubing at it with the towel before discarding it and shifting the child so she could rub its back in circles, gradually getting harder and harder.
"Bridget?" Ben asked desperately, moving towards his friend, searching her face with widened eyes. Oh, God. Was she—?
Bridget's breathing had become metallic, as if the blood was seeping its way into her lungs as well. "Boy or girl?" she murmured through cracked and blueing lips, her voice like a tinny breath of wind. Blood that was in no way from her ruined fingertips was now starting to ooze and trickle off the edge of the slab, stealing little bits of Bridget's life away with it like harvester ants carrying those huge leaves. The sand was sucking her lifeblood into itself greedily, turning it nearly black and sodden.
"Well?" Ben asked. "Is it a boy or a girl?"
The midwife was frowning over the baby, doing something with its nose and mouth and alternately slapping the soles of its feet, first left, then right, the smacks getting sharper and sharper the more she had to do it.
Bridget suddenly whimpered, her eyes half opening as her hands reached for her deflated abdomen. "It hurts. Again…"
"Again?" Ben asked, twisting and weaving his fingers together worriedly. His throat was dry and his eyes were darting to and fro, trying to asses the situation. "Is she having twins?"
"No, her placenta is detaching," the midwife said absently, frown lines contorting her face. She was barely concentrating on Ben's words, more intent on carefully putting a finger into the baby's mouth and down the back of its throat. It came out thick with congealed blood and other sticky substances that she wiped away on her apron, giving two more short breaths into the baby's mouth and nose.
"Her what?"
"Placenta!" the midwife snapped, using the corner of the towel to wipe at the baby's nose, capturing her bottom lip between her teeth.
Ben suddenly felt a chill that had nothing to do with the cold air in the room. He looked at the baby and realised that it was a blue-purple, the same tint as Bridget's lips. It wasn't crying, either. Babies always cried when they came out, did they not? Anxiety bunched in his stomach, fluttering away like a thousand butterflies as he realised what an ersatz he was; he had no idea what to do and was a poor, poor substitute for any kind of doctor, or even Chris. Chris could have brought comfort to Bridget. Chris would be doing something right now and not just standing idly by whilst Bridget could very well be dying…
"Boy?" Bridget asked, shivering.
"Hm? Oh, yeah. Yup," Ben said, not looking at the baby. He hated lying to her, but it was better than her asking constantly after the baby's sex and worrying about it when she clearly should be worrying about herself and the danger she was in.
"G-good. Didn't really want a girl."
"Yeah, I know," Ben told her, stroking her dark hair away from her forehead, all the way from the roots down to the split ends splayed across the gritty slab.
"I m-mean, you take what you get, but b-bitchy. Girls get bitchy…" Bridget murmured, her eyes going unfocussed again. She smiled through Ben's face again, apparently staring at the ceiling which was lost in the gloom even through Ben's skull.
"Yeah, you would know, right?" Ben asked, eliciting an even wider grin and a snort of laughter from Bridget. Ben worried that she might be getting slightly delirious, chewing on his bottom lip some more and continuing to mechanically stroke her hair.
"I a-am the Qu-queen Bitch, huh?" she asked, her laugh turning into a desperate cough, a shaky pant.
"You sure are. But in the best way ever," Ben said, tears falling from his cheeks and exploding on the stone slab. One went astray and exploded on Bridget's forehead.
"What's this? Ben cr-crying?" Bridget asked, her eyes beginning to glaze and shutter. "Stop the pr-presses. I thought you…" Her eyelashes fluttered and her eyelids twitched, about to close.
Ben took her hand in his. It was freezing, like gripping white marble between his fingers. He blew on it, trying to warm it with his breath. "Thought I was a what?"
"A big, big, big, BIG strong man," Bridget said, exploding into a weak giggle that blew her lips out like a raspberry and threw forth a little spittle that hung at the corner of her mouth. Okay, definitely entering delirium, Ben thought, as she pulled her hand from his and used it to wipe ineffectually at her face, smearing day-old makeup and the cavern's grime around her soaked features.
Ben took a deep breath in, but it was shuddering as it entered his lungs. Her lips were fully blue now, smeared lip gloss outlining them in pink, and her face had become grey, the colour of the slab on which she lay. Her skin had taken on a ghostly air, practically transparent. Ben thought he could almost see her skull poking through the thin flesh that was stretched too tightly over the bones. Bridget was dying. He knew that, and yet he was standing here, stroking her hair, not knowing what to do. He couldn't even help her — he didn't know how. This was brave Bridget. Temerarious Bridget whose policy it was to smash into danger head-on, Bridget who was truculent towards demons but scarily soft when you knew her, the Bridget that had held stupid grudges at him that had been, at best, ephemeral, Bridget who had come out of much worse scrapes than just giving birth, and yet there she was. Lying there trembling with her carotidartery fluttering uselessly, the blood it was supposed to be pumping up leaking away downwards. It was trickling and dripping and tearing away everything that was Bridget from the world with every tiny splash.
"I don't h-have a name," Bridget mumbled, contorting her features into a frown. "A name for a boy…"
"Ben," Ben said, jesting with her still even as he sniffed and cried.
"I-i-if you think I'm going to be name-naming this thing after you, you don't know me at… at all. You don't know me at all…"
"Worth a shot, right?" Ben said with a shrug.
"Heh. Yeah. I guess so… Well, I sup-suppose that i-it has caused me a lot of gr-grief over the past seven months. Not as l-long as you've been doing so, by the way, but still long enough. Kind of f-fitting, to name him af-after you, after everything…"
Ben laughed despite himself, his face crinkling and forcing tears to run thicker and faster in odder directions. "You really must think I don't know you at all, huh?"
"Oops. You got me. No Bens. I w-was thinking Archimedes. Something hard to spell, you know? But, then again, I want s-something it takes people a long time to work out how to pronounce, j-just to be awkward. Archimedes. You know? Like the talking owl? I liked him…"
"Talking owl?"
"S-sword in the Stone," Bridget said, screwing up her face as her placenta finally came free from her body, dragging with it the rest of the baby's umbilical cord and a whole tide of blood, which engulfed the table with a wash of deep red. "I like Di-disney. Snow White was a ho. I m-mean, seven tiny little m-men? All who c-could fit und-under her dress?" She snorted. "Come on…"
Ben laughed again, the tears rolling down his face leaving sticky trails. He took hold of Bridget's hand and, pressing it between his palms, he could feel the weak beat in her thumb that signified her life. Not knowing what else to do he gripped a little tighter, willing it to stay there.
The midwife raised her athame at last and neatly severed the cord on its serrated edge with almost no resistance at all. The blade must have been wickedly sharp to have cut so neatly and so quickly. She carried the infant off a little way.
"I pushed my baby out; do I at least get to s-see it?" Bridget asked suddenly, trying to see the child but being hit with such a wave of dizziness that she slammed back down onto her back.
"They're busy with him," Ben said quickly. "You know, keeping him warm and cleaning him and — and stuff. You know, probably. Maternity's not my forte."
"What is, though?" Bridget asked with surprising clarity, coughing smothering her laugh until it was dead. Ben gripped her hand tighter, unfledged naivety thinking that the propinquity of them would anchor Bridget down, keep her with him, with Chris. He wasn't sure he could handle losing another friend and Chris… It would kill him. Bridget sniffled a little on the slab.
"Yeah, yeah, I know," Ben said tolerantly, looking down at her. She was paler than ever, dark rings accentuated under her eyes by her pallor and the distinct lack of colour anywhere else, other than those livid purple circles and the frostiness of her lips.
"Ben? Do something f-for me?"
"Anything."
"D-don't pr-pretend to yourself that y-you're invincible. You're just as vulnerable a-as the rest of the world, and l-let me tell you, it's a sh-shock when you discover that."
"What, you think you're dying?" Ben said, trying to laugh it off, stroking her hand harder, forcing her to stay with him. "Bridget Vance? Dying?" Ben scoffed, actually squeezing further tears from his eyes in doing so, but forcing out a hollow laugh anyway. "Don't be stupid. Somebody'd have to drop a house on you to kill you, and unless I'm very much mistaken, I don't see one. The props department wouldn't pay out, I guess. Tight-fisted bastards, huh?"
"So why are y-you crying if y-you think I'm going to m-m-make it?" Her teeth were chattering again, her whole head seeming to vibrate with the movement, down to the quivering of her eyelashes.
"Got something in my eye, haven't I?" Ben said roughly, picking up Bridget's hand. It was odd, he thought, all of the fists this hand had made, all of the things, people, demons it had punched, and yet the fingers seemed too small and spindly — delicate, even — for that kind of job when they were gripped within his own, seeping iciness into his palms.
"Oh. Yeah…" There was another deathly pause, in which Ben saw the baby's chest rise as the midwife blew into its nose and fall again as she moved away. He looked away. It was dead; the midwife was just scrambling desperately to resurrect it because it was supposed to be the new Source, and because she didn't want to face the wrath of Clea.
After everything that they had been through to protect it, after everything they had been through rescuing Bridget and making sure she was safe, after just all the ups and the downs and trauma that it had caused, it was dead. The supposedly all-powerful evil being had succumbed to a mortal weakness of stillbirth. Overcome by the urge to lash out at anything and everything, Ben kicked the support of the stone slab, cursing as pain shot up his foot. Everything that had happened had been centred on Bridget and her baby, but now it was dead. How was that fair? How was that fucking fair that everything that they had worked for had been taken from Bridget and Chris? They were supposed to have a baby at the end of it. Everything they had gone through would be worth it because of that tiny life that was going to be theirs, but it was dead. Dead before it had even left the womb.
"Calm down," Bridget said, reaching for his hand again. He had wrenched it away when he had started cussing and pacing, anger regurgitating up inside him.
Ben looked back over at her and immediately swallowed his rage, hating himself for being so selfish and letting it consume him when Bridget needed him. He took her hand back in his again and smiled at her. "Sorry. Just been a long day."
"You think it's b-been a long day?" Bridget asked, trying to laugh but only rasping. "Hello? Been giving b-birth all day?"
"Heh. Yeah, you win." He rolled his eyes. "Not by much, though," he added as an afterthought. "I don't want to be too much of a loser."
"T-too l-late," Bridget breathed, just as Ben said the same thing, anticipating her words.
"Ben?" Bridget said, turning to him. "I'm cold, Ben."
"Well, they don't have any heating under here, do they? Too big a bunch tightwads to pay the gas bills." Loser. All you know how to do properly is make a joke of things, he thought bitterly. He couldn't help Bridget properly; all he could do was crack stupid jokes at her as if they were going to help.
"'S'not that type of c-cold," Bridget said, her eyes closing a little until she was just peering out under her lashes. "Ben?"
"Yeah?"
She raised her trembling hand and pressed a piece of folded paper into Ben's palm. "Give this to Chris for me, will you?" Chris's name was written on the outside in shaky writing. Tear splodges dotted the page and Ben folded his fingers over it and shoved it deep inside his back pocket.
"Yeah. Of course."
"Wrote it while you were p-pissing about trying to s-save me," Bridget said with a slight smile. "Just in case, you know?" She shivered. "I can't feel my legs…" She couldn't. The blood and fluid there was no longer feeling sticky and tepid to her flesh. She could no longer feel the cold, tacky nightgown plastered to her thighs and calves. Tingling numbness was all that was left. She closed her eyes once more, willing that numbness to travel the rest of the way upwards. She had always been fighting. Fighting, fighting, fighting. And now she was tired and just wanted to sleep. Just sleep, just for a while… Could anyone begrudge her that?
"I know. Stay with me for a while, though, yeah?" He was begging and he knew it. Bridget had to stay with him. There was nothing else that could happen. She was going to get better. Dammit, she was.
"So… Th-this is what dying feels like, huh?" Bridget asked, in what would have been a conversational tone if her voice was not rattling in her throat.
"Bridget—"
"Denial. River in... in E-Egypt and all of that, Ben," she sadly, smiling at him even as more tears fell. "I'm dying, and that is that. I always th-thought that it would be s-so easy to be br-brave, you know? I stare death d-down every day, but now…" She was coughing again and making snuffling noises so that Ben was again reminded of a small wounded animal that was mewling and mewling as the darkness closed in. Her coughing fit subsided until she was crying silently again, sniffling. "Ben… Tell me I'm pretty."
Ben could almost feel his heart shatter and break, fragments falling to the floor with his tears. He smiled tightly and looked at her, with her fanned and slightly matted hair and smudged dark spots on her ashen cheeks and chin, her littleness more obvious than ever. He sniffed, making sure not to stumble over the words so he that sounded as sincere as he felt when he said, "Bridget, you're pretty."
"How pretty?"
"If you weren't dying and would I not face pain of death from Chris, I would take you in a manly fashion."
"'cause I'm pretty?"
"Because you're beautiful," Ben told her, and finally he let his mask slip, letting go of a small sob, wiping his noise gently on the back of his hand where it joined his wrist. He ran a hand over his eyes, spreading salty tears across his vision and then, when he looked down, the world had dissolved into a teary haze. He could hear the breath leaving Bridget's body rather than see it, and he could even hear that she didn't take another one. He could hear his heart thumping and blood roaring in his ears, and as the tears momentarily cleared as they fell, he could see her eyes were closed and that she was still.
His knees suddenly quit on him without leaving so much as a resignation note, buckling underneath him. He shuffled closer to the stone table and Bridget, where he gently continued stroking her hand. He pursed his lips, determined that nothing would pass them, but then the second sob exploded from them with all the force of a bomb. He rested his forehead on her hand, his back shaking and his gut wrenching with sob after sob and wave after wave of bitter tears that ran in rivulets down the cold skin of the back of her hand, pooling where the bones jutted out and then gathering so much that they spilled over to the stone.
"I'm sorry," Ben whispered, looking up at her face. "I am so, so sorry…" His voice broke again just as Bridget began to disappear, breaking apart and becoming translucent, then transparent, and then fading away. The last thing to go was her features, but they too succumbed in the end until Ben was left with the impression of bubbles in champagne after they had burst before that was spirited away too by a sudden breath of warm and strangely soothing air in the cold and stale chamber.
She was gone. It settled upon him like lead weights, or, more accurately, like the pressure of being underwater. It was crushing his lungs, making it near impossible to breathe and for a second, he didn't care if he never took another breath in his life. Everything seemed to be blurred and distorted, sounds and sights alike. The dull beat in his ears as his throat clenched accentuated that feeling of being trapped beneath the surface of some large, deep and very dark body of water.
Bridget was gone. Just as plain and as simple as that. Denial, though — bittersweet denial — had reared its deceitfully beautiful and helpful head and was working its web over him, trying to convince him in its sapid way that this was not happening — that Bridget was not gone. It stopped him fully processing the situation and all he could do was search the now-clean stone slab with his eyes, back and forth, as if Bridget was going to appear back on it again.
There was suddenly a howl from across the room which made the witch look up, startled, his heart thumping wildly. In the midwife's hands was the blanket and towel she had been using on the baby, but the baby itself had gone. The midwife frantically picked apart the swaddles around what had been the infant, but was met with just scorched cotton and dark grey ash, which began to tumble out of the sides of the blankets as the midwife fumbled with them. Some fluttered to the floor akin to a grey mist falling through the cavern, other pieces landed in large chunks on the floor and exploded to mingle with the sand.
"No… I-I'm sorry, there was n-nothing I could do; you've got to understand that, please…" The midwife was trembling, pleading with Clea. She was still cradling the ash-filled blanket as if it were a live baby but the more she shook the more ash spilled out of the edges.
"You, you STUPID—" Clea broke off and gave another scream of rage, lashing out and slashing four sickly green lines across the midwife's cheek with her nails. Demonic blood began to ooze down the demoness's chin as the midwife stumbled and fell, the last of the ash scattering across the floor as she put her hand to her cheek, blood running through her fingers. The games master threw an energy ball at her, vanquishing her in conflagration.
Ben swallowed, pushing away both his grief and his denial, both of them too disabling for the situation. He found himself back on his feet, not sure whether he was shaking with exhaustion, anguish or odium towards Clea. He decided he didn't care, as long as it let him kill her.
The games master just sneered at him, looking him up and down, then raised a hand to throw an energy ball at him. Ben thrust out his hand as if he were releasing a bowling ball and threw a fireball at her. It hit her in the chest and threw her into the wall, sending her energy ball smashing into the ceiling where it cracked the rock and brought down a shower of dust and small debris.
"You are so going to pay for that," Clea threatened, summoning another energy ball into her palm and throwing it at the witch. Ben was about to conjure a fireball in retaliation when there was a loud crash. The door was blasted out of its frame, followed quickly by a flying body. The body cracked its head on the centre slab and laid still. The energy ball then redirected itself back at Clea when it had been just centimetres from Ben, lifting her from the ground and across the room.
Chris was standing in the doorway with his arms folded, leaning against the doorpost. "Should have really let me get to my friends when I asked," he said conversationally, shrugging. The witch-whitelighter looked around the room, his eyes falling on the empty slab and then on Ben.
His friend's eyes were red and his face was streaked with tear marks. Chris could feel his heart skipping a beat as his throat constricted and the gravity of what must have happened here settled on him. He blinked, mouthing wordlessly at Ben, not knowing how to pose his question.
"She's gone," Ben said unnecessarily, his voice small. "She's gone, Chris…"
Chris blinked and took a step backwards, frowning and shaking his head a little. He gave a small laugh of disbelief. "What do you mean?" Ben just looked at him, unable to say anything more. Chris swallowed, gripping the doorframe until his knuckles turned white. He was dimly aware of the noise of things rushing around him as his knees buckled, but the doorframe saved him from falling until he could command his legs again. "The baby?" he all but whispered, already terrified of the answer.
Ben shook his head, words failing him utterly. He had no idea how he was supposed to tell Chris that he had just lost Bridget and his kid, but, although he knew that the simple gesture of shaking his head was not the kind of answer Chris deserved, it was all he could give. He couldn't think of any words that would make his best friend feel better — nothing that wasn't clichéd or would bring an iota of comfort.
"Right…" Chris said weakly, his eyes falling, unseeing, to the floor. His features hardened, his knuckles tightened further and he looked up with his jaw set and his eyes blazing. "Right," he said, his tone unnerving Ben. "So, what are you demons out to do? Destroy every single thing that makes my life good? Is that it?"
Corr — he had been the flying body — only groaned and began to stir, rubbing the back of his head. Clea just sat up and smirked at him, unaffected by the iciness in his voice and eyes.
"Well? TELL ME!" Chris demanded, throwing out his arm and sending Corr catapulting through the air. "I want to know."
Clea rolled her eyes heavily. "Oh, please," she drawled tiredly. "You humans are just so pathetic…"
"Pathetic?" Ben croaked out, nearly all of the intended outrage lost. "I'll tell you what's pathetic. You are. Hiding behind this stupid game of yours, letting other demons do the work so you're not in the firing line, probably gathering up their powers as they're killed. You're the pathetic ones — pathetic, parasitic, cowardly bottom-feeders who don't deserve to be alive."
"So," Clea said, flicking up her eyebrows and smirking. "Kill me."
Chris immediately created an invisible telekinetic sphere in his palm, concentrating on it until he began to shake, and unleashed it at the demoness. It hit her in waves, the first slamming her into the wall near the ceiling. The successors ploughed through her, cracking bones and rupturing organs as it went. Finally, she dropped to the floor taking gasping breaths and wincing, which rapidly stopped until she was smiling.
"Oh, ouch. The pain you big bad witches dish out…" She revelled in Chris's glare. "Surprise," she told them in a singsong voice, wiping a hand over herself for the sheer effect of the flourish then getting back to her feet. "You may call me pathetic for hiding out and collecting powers, but it means that you. Can't. Beat me. I'm too strong for you."
"Can't beat us," Corr added, standing up and interlacing his fingers with Clea's, gently bringing them to his lips and looking her in her eyes, kissing them. "Us one…"
"Witches, zero," Clea finished tauntingly, casually throwing an energy ball at Chris. It caught the witch-whitelighter in the shoulder and knocked him backwards onto the floor.
Ben formed a fireball, the anger and hurt he was feeling enough to mask the pain in his head and egg the flaming ball onwards. It hit Corr instead of Clea, but it at least tore the games masters apart and flung Corr backwards.
"Don't call the score yet," he said dangerously. He tried to form another fireball in his hand, but he could feel all of his energy draining away into the centre of his upturned palm. He closed his eyes and quickly regained his focus. All he had to do was bring the memory of Bridget just fading into nothingness into his mind and his eyes snapped open, the wavering fireball flaring brighter. Before he could throw it, however, Clea threw an energy ball at him that blasted him to the floor near Chris and extinguished the result of his effort which had taxed him beyond all belief. She could see it in his expression, his eyes…
"Don't call the score yet," Clea mimicked snidely as Corr climbed back to his feet. "Now, you're both going to be good little witches. You're going to go in front of our cameras, and you're going to make every demon want to jump on the Witch Wars bandwagon. Understand me?"
"Or they could not."
The four in the room turned to look at the source of the voice. Paige had orbed in with Phoebe in tow on the other side of the cavern. Immediately the two witches launched potions at the games masters. They exploded on the demons' chests, puffs of coloured smoke whose pathetic wisps drifted harmlessly up to the ceiling.
A comical caesura fell across the cavern. Paige and Phoebe still had their arms half-raised, obviously been under the impression that their potions were going to do something to the games masters. The games masters were looking down at their chests in amusement until Clea looked up with a single quirked eyebrow at the two Charmed Ones whilst Ben and Chris looked on, mainly in embarrassment at the nugatory potions.
"Um… We're here to save you?" Paige said weakly, not wanting to spoil their effort completely.
"Ah," Chris said.
"Of course," Ben added, just as Paige redirected an energy ball into the wall. Phoebe wasn't quite quick enough to dodge hers. When Ben looked, he wondered if her delay was due to the fact she had been expecting her levitation power to kick in. Whatever the reason, Phoebe went down. Hard. Ben wasn't sure if she was dazed or unconscious, but she was bleeding a little.
Paige dodged an energy ball and redirected another one, orbs sparkling all around her. "You know, if you'd like to give me a hand, I'll always totally support you when you ask for your allowance to be raised," the youngest Charmed One squeaked a little desperately, throwing one of Clea's energy balls back into the demon.
Okay, so maybe they'd needed Piper more than she had first calculated, but it was not the kind of need that was going to make her put her sister and unborn nephew in danger. She did notice, though, that the odds like grim as the energy balls that she was redirecting repeatedly missed her attackers. She had no time to aim; she barely had time to gesture at the onslaught.
Chris came out of his torpor long enough to throw the barrage of crackling weapons away from his aunt. He then turned his eyes on the two demons, which both had new energy balls alight in their palms already, unfazed by the loss of their previous weapons. "Enough, dammit! Enough!" the witch-whitelighter yelled suddenly, telekinetically hurling their energy balls into the wall and adding to the scorch marks the miniature battle had already left scarring the stone. "You, stop it," Chris said to Clea and Corr, before turning to his aunt. "And Paige, take Phoebe and go home to Leo. She's going to need her head looked at."
"What, and leave you here? No way! Amongst other reasons, your mother would murder me."
"There's something I think I need to do," Chris said quietly. "Take Phoebe home. I'll be fine."
"We'll be fine," Ben added, stepping next to Chris. "Just trust us, okay?"
The Charmed One's eyes narrowed, the stubborn streak that had come to her hand-in-hand with her powers from her bloodline kicking in. She pressed her lips into a thin line and stared Chris down, her eyes boring into him. "Chris, I said that you're coming with me. I won't leave you here. Any of you. You're all coming home and we're going to look in the Book of Shadows and we're going to—" She broke off, her eyes widening slightly as she took in the expression on Chris's face for the first time. Her memory flashed back to finding Nixa dead under the dining room table… "Speaking of all of you…" Her throat dried out, leaving what felt akin to cracked, sun-baked mud in its wake as pieces of an awful puzzle clicked into place. "Where's… where's Bridget?"
Learning to Tango
Leo could feel sweat running down his back but he ignored it as insignificant. He was breathing heavily; ragged gasps of air entering and exiting his lungs as he prowled with burning eyes through another dark passageway. He felt his way along the damp and sometimes slimy stone with hands that had bled and scabbed over more times than his self-healing power could keep up with. Not that there was much magical energy left for that in the first place.
Keep going. Keep walking onwards otherwise you won't find the demons that are going to kill your son…
The voice he was hearing was driving him forwards, making sure that the ache in his head and legs, the growling in his stomach and the sandpaper dryness of his throat paled in comparison to the desire to protect Wyatt. His face and arms were peppered with bright red scratches, and his clothes bore black smudges and tears that made them fit only for the rubbish.
Light began to appear in front of him in beams that widened pari passu with his advancing footsteps until the flickering torchlight was being thrown across his face, making his eye sockets look hollow.
Yes, that's them. Those are the demons that are going to turn your son against you… Kill them. Save Wyatt.
Leo's face immediately twisted into a mask of hate as he clenched his teeth so hard that his jaw cracked before thrusting himself forward into the cavern. The conversation stopped as he stepped into the half-light and all attention fell to the crackling bolts of blue electricity surging through his fingers and leaping from the tips of his digits with loud cracks and sparks.
"You think you can kill my son? Huh? Is that it?" He got no reply, so he thrust out a hand and sent a stream of lightning bolts at one of the crimson-robed demons, vanquishing him into a pile of ash. "SPEAK TO ME!" Leo yelled, raising his other hand and adding to the crackling line streaking from his fist, sweeping the power across the room and cutting through the demons like a hot knife through butter. They all screamed and burst into flames, reduced to piles of sparking, popping ash on the floor. When the screams died down, Leo let his hands drop to his sides. He exhaled shakily and swallowed, eyeing his handiwork before balling his fists to douse the sparks then staggering across the cavern on protesting legs to the corridor beyond.
Gideon was peering across a desk with steepled fingers touching his upper lip and resting just below his nose with interest at his acquaintance, who was slumped, apparently sleeping, in the chair. The headmaster had an ankle resting on one knee and seemed to be contemplating his companion, head slightly tilted.
Suddenly the other occupant of the chamber woke with a start, startling Gideon more than he would like to admit. His associate's face split into a grin as he sat up straighter in the chair. "Another bunch of opposition down," he said, unable to withhold a satisfied chuckle. "I must say, you Elders are holding back on us with that lightning power of yours."
Gideon shifted uncomfortably, giving a non-committal shrug. "For use in extreme circumstances only, you understand."
The grey-haired partner waved it away. "Of course, if that's what you guys like to think."
"It's the truth," Gideon replied icily, his eyes boring into his consort, almost daring him to say otherwise. "Tell me what happened."
"Well, you know, he's a little unstable for an Elder. Just the tiniest little inkling in his head that someone is after his child and, boom, he's on the warpath. You might want to look more carefully at your screening process before you let guys like him loose in the heavens."
"So he's killed another faction?"
"Left them as a pile of ash on the floor," the comrade replied, steepling his own fingers and smiling.
Gideon, who could not tell if he was being mocked or not, scowled, pushing himself up off the chair and pacing around the room, his robes whooshing after him, mimicking his movements like an afterthought. "How far do you think he'll go?"
"Well, that's a good question. I think he could wipe out the Underworld. Probably get himself destroyed in the process, but…"
Gideon's mouth twisted in thought. He needed to get rid of large numbers of the Underworld. Suspicions he had and suspicions he had stolen from the work of the two brats in the Manor's attic had fuelled his worries. If demons kidnapped Wyatt and protected him while he grew up in their image, there was nothing Gideon could do about the impending tyrant other than stand around and watch him destroy the world. He needed certain factions, certain groups, eliminated. Having demons killed was not something he was inclined to be dilatory about — it worked better for him that way. Dead demons equalled more security for his and the Elders' future. It also secured some kind of future for the evil being in front of him, which was the only reason that they were cooperating — they had a somewhat mutual goal.
It was regrettable having to use Leo has a pawn in all of this, but it was far better that demons heard of a rampaging father slaughtering any danger to his son rather than a demon sitting as high in the hierarchy as his cohort did killing them, which would arouse suspicions in them. Also, it would be better if they saw the attacks as nothing to do with the world of the Elders, rather a tiny splinter from the mass doing it. The Titans were still raw in his mind — anything that could be done to prevent anything else supremely evil getting angry and formulating plans against the heavens worked in his favour as well. So Leo was needed. He also needed to be manipulated which was, again, regrettable, but more importantly justifiable — the Greater Good would prevail.
The Greater Good, however, was an argument that was getting weaker and weaker inside his captious mind. Everything he said, ordered, did was processed by his mind; as much as he protested to himself and to anyone who would listen that his actions were for the good of the world, his mind always flagged up objections. Like killing something as innocent as a child. Like infuriating the Charmed Ones and having them come after him in their grief. Doubts big and small, likely and unlikely, flitted through his consciousness like ghosts, visiting only briefly to cause chaos — upend furniture and the like — before disappearing again and leaving him more confused than ever before. "Leo has done enough for us," he finally said slowly. "For now at least. Break whatever holds you have on him, allow him to rest. He could always be used… later."
If his collaborator noticed the faltering of his sentence he did nothing to show it, save for turning his eyes on Gideon almost expectantly. Gideon went back into a thought train, weighing out actions and consequences. He might have one more use for Leo yet. There was still the matter of the Source, due two months from now, and the matter of the future witches who knew too much. Dare he request that Leo be used to rid him of their interference?
"I may," Gideon said, stressing the 'may' as to lessen the blow of his volte-face away from the Elders and towards the distinctly more disturbing path of malfeasance, "have one last use for him yet."
Learning to Tango
Paige didn't know why she'd asked the question when the answer was both simultaneously obvious and horrifying to her. She felt her eyes fill with hot tears before disbelief could set in. It tried to settle over her, but what she was seeing in her nephew's eyes made it impossible not to believe Bridget's fate. She was dead.
"Chris, I…" she trailed off, exhaling softly. When someone was taken from you violently and suddenly, there were no words to express it. No words that could bring comfort when you felt like your heart had been replaced by a black hole. When her parents had died, she had actually screamed when someone told her that they were sorry. She had screamed and pummelled them with her fists before running off in tears.
It had been the twenty-eighth time someone had tried to use those two words to bring comfort to her.
So she was not going to apologise. It did not matter that they were the only words beating their away around her skull; she was not going to utter them because she knew firsthand of the hollow emptiness of the words and how she had hated them just as Chris would hate them now.
"Are you all going to break down and cry your little mortal hearts out?" Clea asked mockingly, making crying motions with her fists. "Oh, such a loss… how awful."
Ben's fists balled at his sides, the nails digging into his palms. He wanted her dead. He wanted her killed and suffering, being devoured by the Beast in the Wasteland. He wanted to tear her head off and play hockey with it. One of his nails punctured the skin on his palm, but he didn't care. He couldn't even describe the hate he was feeling for the sneering, mocking demoness. The nearest he could come up with was an all-consuming void; his only goal was to make sure she suffered pain. He caught sight of something glinting at her waist and realised that it was one of the 'WW' daggers. Ben swallowed hard to force his anger away so that he could focus on it to drag the steel blade into a magnetic pull. Clea noticed it shifting too late, and before she had time to even cry out, it was plunged into her heart. Still not content, the witch twisted the blade through a full three-hundred and sixty degrees turn before she burst into a pillar of flames, her skeleton clearly showing as her skin and organs were incinerated before they, too, succumbed to the fire and fell to the floor in a mist of grey ash.
Worryingly and without any encouragement from Ben, the knife flew into the witch's hand. Ben instinctively curled his hand around the cold metal hilt. Lightning bolts surged up from the dagger and into his wrist and he was suddenly infused with such a rush of power that he staggered backwards, barely able to hold the athame as his various injuries sealed themselves over.
"NO!" Corr yelled, dropping to sand beside the remains of his slain love. He looked up, eyes burning, and threw an energy ball at Ben. The witch raised a hand and met it with one of his own. The two obliterated one another in a ring of fire over the table that had held Bridget.
Ben looked down at the dagger in his hand. The blade was now dull. He tossed it at Chris, who snatched it deftly out of the air and examined it, regarding it oddly before looking up and throwing it as hard as he could at Corr. The athame flipped over and over through the air, on a mission. Corr saw it coming and thrust his arms out wide, bearing his chest for the blade, no longer in possession of any will to be alive.
No sympathy registered on Chris's face, only satisfaction, as the blade plunged past flesh and ribs and through the demon's heart, killing him in the same manner Clea had been vanquished. The athame returned to Chris's palm. The steel was a swirling mass of dark colours until it relinquished the powers held within into Chris, whereupon the blade dulled again. Chris dropped it to the floor, now useless.
"Chris, you shouldn't have those powers," Paige said, shaking her head. "Please. They're not meant for you, Chris and if you insist on keeping them, something is going to go wrong. Please, look, just come home with us and we'll sort this out. You've killed the demons that did this; you've killed the demons that were playing for Wyatt, what more do you want?"
"I want to send a message to any and every demon in the Underworld. I want them all dead. I want every sick thing that watched this show for entertainment burning in the Wasteland for what they've helped to do. You don't understand Paige, you just don't. So, please. Take Phoebe home let Le— Dad deal with her. We'll be fine."
There was such pain and anger and conviction in his eyes that was punctuating his words that Paige bit her bottom lip and nodded slowly, swallowing hard. "Give them hell," she said quietly as they shimmered away, Chris's eyes staying on her until the last second, silently thanking her as he dematerialised.
Paige took a deep breath in and let it out a little shakily through her mouth and walked across the room, past the smouldering mounds that had been the games masters then around the central slab. Chris's dropped athame was lying in the sand and she stared at it for a while, gnawing gently on her bottom lip as she contemplated. She was frowning a little and she gazed down at the dagger, folding her arms and leaning back against the slab, before swiftly bending down and coiling her hand around the hilt lest she hesitate further and straightening up. She strode quickly back across the cavern to take her and Phoebe home.
Learning to Tango
Shimmering was a lot different than Chris had anticipated. Not that he had particularly spent hours debating on what shimmering would feel like — Gods, he would love the luxury of enough time to sit and do that — but he still had some vague idea in his head that it would be nasty. Cold and clinical, the direct opposite to his orbing power, which encased you in bright lights and whisked you off to your vacation lulled within the swaddling of incandescent orbs almost like a large security blanket. Orbing had actually felt like that for him since a very young age, and so he imagined shimmering would be on the other end of the scale to orbing — like an icy breath of wind spurring you forth — but it wasn't. Shimmering was like stepping through a pleasantly warm shower of rain — the good kind. The fat kind that made a nice noise on your umbrella (if you had one, which Chris hadn't for many years) rather than the kind that hovered in the air like mist. As he emerged out of it feeling better than he had started out, he sighed slightly. Everything about evil was so alluring; he realised that now more than ever. The powers, the influence… and, right now, he'd give anything for the demonic lack of compassion and emotions that usually came with these powers, just to deaden the pain.
Now, more than ever, he could see what it was that had ensnared his brother. He could feel Wyatt's point of view, and it worried him to find it so… so enticing. Evil was addictive. It captured you like some kind of voluble plant and he knew that, but it did not sit well with him the way it was tugging at him, subtly seducing him, the second he stepped out of the shimmer. He wanted to go again but at the same time he hated it, so he fought it. But he also saw how hard it would be for one to fight it. One that was tired of fighting, one that was used to having great power, one that thought that, hey, what's a little more power if it can get you what you want and help you achieve vengeance? He had suddenly found an entirely new level of clarity on Wyatt, and he didn't know if he liked it or not.
He looked across at Ben, who had just shimmered in to his left. Behind him, the continual blaring of the Witch Wars music was practically deafening. He grimaced a little, squinting through the beams of the projector that was throwing the image onto the white screen.
The entire bar had gone silent, drinks half-raised towards now-gaping mouths. One demon dropped three darts before he could throw them. A demoness playing pool was startled enough by their appearance to tear the green cloth and shoot the cue ball right off the table. Somewhere, a glass was dropped, the crash of shattering carrying on the silence.
"So, you want to play a game, huh?" Ben asked menacingly, summoning an energy ball into his palm.
"Come play ours. It's called 'Seek and Destroy'," Chris said, readying an energy ball of his own just as chairs began to scrape back all over the room as the first sounds of running feet hit their ears. Ben and Chris looked at each other, grinned, and unleashed their weapons into the room.
Demons were incinerated left, right and centre as they ran and dodged and weaved away, furiously trying to cram into the small doorway that counted as an exit. They cowered behind overturned tables, which were blasted into woodchips. Demons were going up in flames with shrieks and flares under the onslaught. Furniture was wrecked and tossed into the walls and the bar, which was peppered with scorch marks.
The bartender went up in smoke as the bottles on the optics behind him were blown up with some strangely-large explosions. The pool table was overturned and an energy ball smacked right into the bull's-eye on the darts board, cracking it in two and knocking it to the floor. Weapons streaked out of the room and through the doors, catching demons fleeing on foot in the backs and vanquishing them as they ran.
Some transported themselves away, eager, apparently, to live as energy balls were sent flying through the air, killing their comrades and shattering glass, snapping wood, sparking off metal and giving life to small, flickering fires. Not a single demon was courageous enough to retaliate as explosions rocked the joint until the place was littered with smouldering piles of grainy ash and was lit solely by young, greedy crackling fires that were consuming falling liquids with odd-coloured flares and the splinters that half of the furniture and been reduced to.
"Looks like your show has just been cancelled," Chris growled, spinning and throwing an energy ball at the screen behind him as Ben took out the projector in front of them in a shower of sparks and a colossal crash as it fell to the ground.
"How do you feel?" Ben asked, slowly working out a kink in his neck.
"Like too many of them got away," Chris snarled and, off Ben's smirk of agreement, shimmered out of the ruins with his best friend.
Learning to Tango
I get the feeling that, when I wake up tomorrow and check my inbox, I'm going to be assaulted by numerous blunt implements for this chapter. Uh-oh. I guess I'm going to be doing a little bit of laying low…
Oh! And the flashback. Yes, we'll see the second part of the flashback, but not in this chapter in the next one, and not from Bridget's point of view. I tried cramming it into this one, but it was akin to ramming a square block into the round hole.
Thank you all so much for reviewing and, I know you're tired of hearing me say that I'm sorry for the wait, but I am. This took more time that I could have anticipated and, at only nearly eighteen pages, was shorter somehow too. The moral of this? Life's crazy.
Altaira: - Heh. Google is a friend to us all when it comes to researching plots and stuff. It was a little ridiculous on the update time, but life's been hectic bordering on manic recently. Thank you very much for your review and, in regards to the flashback, see above.
ACharmedJedi: - HEH! The Half Blood Prince! Wow, that was so long ago… I feel really bad now. Oops. Yeah… I hear giving birth hurts a lot. Thank you for your review.
Whisper17: - HA! No. No, no birth for me. I'm a wimp. Really, I am. And, aw. Thanks so much. I liked your review. Ben and Chris and the flashback will be appearing shortly, methinks. Well not shortly. School starts September 5th (ARGH. ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH) so it might be a little weird for a while. However, I get more writing done at school. I get caught up with deadlines, and I write fic in boring classes… But yeah. Innyhoo, I think I should say thank you.
Pixie Wildfire: - HEH: Glare :
Chattypandagurl: - Can you even BUY Spaghetti-Os anymore? Hm… I want some. Yes, I was very excited. Very excited. I didn't sleep. I don't not sleep much anymore. I'm getting OOOOOOOOOLD. Anyway, thanks for reviewing. I'm going to go and put a ski mask on and raid my local supermarket's canned food aisle. I will find Spaghetti-Os…
ilovedrew88: - Well, soon… Yeah. Well, hey. I did try. I guess you're gonna be one of the ones plotting to stone me to death, huh? Uh-oh. I'll hide. Later. After bedtime… Yay. Sleep. Thanks for reviewing.
Aldrea7: - Yes, yes you do. Go get some Methylphenidate right now. I'll be waiting. In the meantime, thanks for reviewing.
Stony Angel: - Well, I did say it would be sad… Heh. I know you did just great with the classes, honey, so that's not so bad. And we've found Leo! Yay! I'll see you tomorrow, hope your ankle gets better.
Well, that is that for another chapter. Thank you for your reviews, I think this is the most I've got in a while. I'm happy. And school starts soon. Uh-oh. But, well, I get more done in school time usually, because I get caught up in the deadlines and I write in the dull classes, so… Fingers crossed I get my lazy ass up and finish this fic before 2006, huh?
Thank you all,
Twisted Flame
"A child of five would understand this! Someone fetch me a child of five!" — Groucho Marx.