I encourage reviews of any type.
Hmm, let's see what all our immortal friends are getting into, shall we?
Harry Potter and the Breath of Life
"Why bother saving the weak? They could not get themselves out of trouble because they were weak and as soon as you leave, they will be screaming for help again. Why bother educating the stupid? The knowledge you give them will never hold and you are wasting your time trying. Why bother protecting the reckless? They will never thank you for your sacrifice and as soon as another danger arrives, guess where they will be. Why bother being their hero at all? You can not save them, you can not protect them and they will not learn. Just go home." - The Weaver
It took Harry only one or two seconds for him to realize that someone had tampered with reality and that someone was still meddling.
"My train is waiting, he says..." he murmured out loud with a vague sense of dry humour colouring the words. The train had no choice but to wait as it was just as trapped as everyone else on the platform. Everyone but him.
Wading through the crowd was like walking through a wax museum, complete with still life sized figures of students and the occasional professor. There was no wind, no sound, absolutely no movement at all from Hagrid's opened mouth all the way down to the newspaper on the ground that had been caught mid-flutter. He tried not to touch anyone, in an irrational fear that they would simply shatter, but a morbid sense of curiousity sent him straight into a Ravenclaw's back with no effect. A Hufflepuff Prefect was reaching for the hand of a younger student but no matter how hard Harry pushed and pulled and huffed and puffed, neither budged. A Slytherin who had stuck out her foot in preparation for tripping a Gryffindor who not only remained oblivious but was also unable to fall into the juvenile trap, already caught in another.
Harry squeezed past the Weasely twins who wore identical expressions of cruel mischief and boarded the train. He paused, fidgeting. He was on the train now...and everything remained eerily silent.
--Do you have to find us a compartment or something?--
Maybe... He shrugged and kept moving, looking into every small room he passed. Full....someone I don't know....smells funny...window seat taken....no windows... And then there was one that boasted a Hermione Granger, a Draco Malfoy and it's very own Harry Potter. All stuck in what seemed to be a lively conversation.
Hey, look! Harry thought inwardly as he stared at the trio, feeling his weird-shit-o-meter finally break from the strain. I have a pod person.
--And you are strangely calm about that--
You know what? I don't think I give a damn anymore.
Hermione was the "same" as always: both recognizable and vastly different. She was laughing at something, hand over her mouth like she was in danger of spitting her teeth out but her other hand was awkwardly placed behind her back...was she scratching her ass? Deciding that he really didn't want to know (and it was awkward standing there in the perfect position to find out without her knowing. Not that he wanted to, but since he could...) he shifted attention to Malfoy. The blond had a smirk on that told everyone that he was amused, with a small bandage on his middle finger and a wariness in his eyes Harry didn't like the look of. He was no longer missing limbs but Harry had to wonder how Pomfrey reattached them. A potion?
And then there was his clone.
Who had moved.
"Took you long enough. I should kick your arse for making me sit here this long."
Harry just stared at his doppelgaenger, putting two and two together. "I didn't spend the last few days in the Hospital Wing, did I?"
"Hmm..." the "other" Harry smiled widely. "You're not to bad on the uptake Mr. Potter. Not bad at all. I must admit," he stretched, putting his hands as far up as he could reach. "I probably bombed your midterm but given how busy you were, you'd have failed anyway." His hands dropped only to start strumming on an invisible instrument. "I'd say you owe me but it isn't as though you actually asked me to do anything...ah well." His eyebrows furrowed. "Next time, I guess."
"Who the fuck are you?" Immediately after the words left his mouth, Harry winced. There went his pureblood protocol yet again. He had stomped on it before and now he could almost hear it whistling off a cliff. It was if there was something about the Incarnates that kept uncapping the vitriol.
His twin didn't seem to mind, hopping to his feet and dancing this bizarre little jig reminiscent of someone who had fire ants in their trousers as Harry's eyebrows crept up to his hairline. Each word was punctuated by pointing in a random direction while dancing, "I! AM! THE! FUCKINGLY! AWESOME! TYR!" After the performance, one would expect fireworks. Instead, the self proclaimed Tyr blinked slowly, closing his eyes and then opening eye sockets filled with a dark nothing, and struck a pose. "Pretty cool, huh?"
Harry could feel his body trying to flinch back in horror but his mind was rationalizing that Tyr was simply too lame to be afraid of. With or without eyes. "That was..." he cast his mind about for a diplomatic way to say 'You fail at life.' "That was different."
"Pah!" Tyr made a shooing motion. "I'll work on it."
There was an awkward (at least from Harry's point of view) silence.
"So...you're an Incarnate?" He tried.
"Youngest one!" Tyr chirped, strumming what might or might not have been an impressive solo on an air guitar. "Which means that aside from no one taking me seriously, I also get stuck with the lamest errand runs."
He jumped on the opening. "Like impersonating me?"
Tyr gave him a...look that was hard to interpret. "Like the standard clean up when something goes out of line. We may be immortal but perfect we ain't! I think this is the first time a challenge affected mortals..." he said nothing for a few seconds before returning to the subject, seemingly forgetting that "affected" was a euphemism for "killed." "Let's just say that you got a free reset. It still happened but no one remembers it in a way that incriminates us...Except you, duh. Aren't you a lucky bastard?"
Harry felt the scowl forming. "Its as if you all are just popping out of the woodwork..." Truth. Desire. Death. Life. Who else? How many more? And more importantly, what did they want? He had a hard enough time dealing with just Thana and a bizarre case of mild schizophrenia. "I don't feel very lucky."
"No one does!" Came the disturbingly happy reply. "Until they wake up one day and go 'Holy Shit I'm still alive!' Everyone has to have moments like that sometime in their existence or they're missing out!" Tyr sighed wistfully. "Sounds like fun..., you know, the whole It's the end of the world as we know it! thing." The still disguised Incarnate paused to catch his breath. "Anyway, just sit where I was sitting and I can get this show on the road. You were relating a potions-blah-blah mishap, by the way."
Gingerly, Harry sat where directed. Tyr was a chatter box Incarnate...and that almost seemed like an oxymoron. It was almost as if he liked hearing the sound of his own voice...or was just that naturally hyped up. It made Harry wonder what he stood for...He looked across the tiny space in between the seats towards his friends and frowned at the poorly concealed unease in Malfoy's face, and a slight nervousness in Hermione's. Either Tyr did something while masquerading as him or...
"They don't remember, do they?" he tried asking, but the talkative Incarnate was just that: talkative but not stupid. He was gone. "Figures," he grumbled instead.
The sound of static filled the air from a non-existent speaker system. "Tsk, tsk, Mr. Potter! You'll just have to figure it out! And we have blast off in 3....2....1-!"
"Longbottom is a health hazard, I swear he is," Harry continued after an odd beat of silence. "Who adds porcupine quills before the nettles? I've lost count of how many cauldrons he's destroyed."
Malfoy's smirk widened by a smidgen. "I've lost count of how many points he's lost so far."
"Alright, alright," Hermione berated half-heartedly as she pulled open a book and placed it in front of her face. "That is my House you two are making fun of. I'm sure the Hufflepuffs are just as amusing."
"Ah, Hufflepuffs. Like that one who fell down the stairs and had his parents withdraw him," The blond glanced at Harry thoughtfully. "...Now, what was his name?"
"Finch-Fletchley?" Harry offered in a strange tone, making Hermione give him a sharp look over her reading. He was acting a bit off...
"That's the one! They're all a bunch of twits."
"Draco!"
"What? The duffers are not of your House, problem solved." The girl continued to glare until Malfoy looked away guiltily. "Right, Wizard's Chess then." He cleared his throat the way his father did sometimes when conversation began to sidetrack into waters he didn't think it prudent to explore. "Which side, Potter?"
The green eyed boy palmed a piece from the set, looking it over as the game was set up. "We're still on for Christmas, right?"
"Of course, I'll have Father owl you a portkey on the Eve." With a small jolt, the train began to slowly crawl forward. "You better get me something good." He was immediately beaned over the head with a hardcover copy of Basic Hexes and Curses.
"Can you be anymore selfish!?"
And Harry laughed. It left him red in the face, clutching an aching stomach, needing to go to the bathroom and convincing his friends that he had gone a bit nutters by the time he was finished. He laughed to spite Fate (Yeah? Well, fuck you too!), loud enough for a certain someone to hear (or so he irrationally hoped), long enough to spite himself (who needs air?) and hard enough to declare to the universe that he was Harry Potter and he wasn't dead yet.
"Roll call," Tyr droned and proceeded to bypass several hundred ordinances and policies by simply ticking off 'Arthur - Truth' and then ticking off the categories that came after wards. Even though his conscious was berating him in the Weaver's voice about corruption, instability and fuck all he couldn't really find it in him to care. So, one or two Incarnates might be a bit different or changing in appearance (the exact reason why this duty had been created in the first place about a millenia ago but of course, only after Osiris did anyone take it seriously)? 1) It made things a little less predicatble and 2) Fate was a meddling bitch who could use a swat on the rear.
Tyr prided himself on his impeccable sense of deduction. After all, who had died and made her boss?
"Is that a clipboard?"
The young Incarnate glanced up with a scowl as the last box in the "Truth" row was filled in. "It's not easy writing on paper without a table," he said by way of explanation only to have Truth chortle for some unknown reason.
"Forgive me, in truth, I simply noticed that you did this last decade," the man paused to smile indulgently as he shifted around, no doubt as a result of his arse going numb again. Tyr made a silent vow to introduce Truth to the concept of whoopie cushions and beanie bags. "The schedule clearly says that it's Hel's turn."
"I know," he whined, sticking his pencil behind an ear. "But she doesn't want to be the one to bother Master so I get to fucking do it. It's not like I can say no...." he ended in a self deprecating grumble. To make a long story short, Famine Incarnate had a crush on Plague Incarnate who, in turn, made Famine Incarnate into something of an errand boy. It was absolutely hilarious...when it wasn't fucking pathetic. Nearly everyone had been quick to assure him that the feeling will simply fade after a while but until then...he was stuck. "Alright..." he glanced down at the survey paper again. "Are you sure you are not despairing, angsting, harming yourself or others in misguided attempts to recover humanity, or entertaining thoughts of dying?"
Truth looked amused. "I do not believe so as I have not bothered to get a Chosen yet."
"Good," was all he had to say to that, checking off the final box. Did they have to mimic bureaucracy? Really? "Catch ya later." A short Jump later and he was strolling through a realm densely populated by humongous statues that shared a common theme. There was a perfectly balanced see-saw about fifty feet tall, for example. A circular tube filled up to the half way point with a clear liquid had a limited array of modern technology attached to it: a pump for raising or lowering the level on one side only. A fulcrum with a slowly swinging pole perched on it, never dipping far enough in any one direction to fall off. Water jugs on a pole, draped on a wedge in such a way that neither spilled the other...another see saw...An old fashioned and perfectly even scale shining golden as by far the tallest object, with unbalanced arrays littering the base like scattered toys.
It seemed Justice had just the slightest obsession with symbolism. Now if only he could find the woman in question...
"Thy return from Avalon was most swift." Tyr had a heart attack but being who he was, there was only a brief stab of pain and the sensation that his heart was going to beat out of his chest, before it washed away to the sound of Famine cackling over his little "joke." He prompty began to hum a nameless blue grass tune in his head as payback. "I trust my brother is well?"
"Fucking hell, Morg, there's no reason why you can't just waltz over there and find out yourself," he pointed out with a jab of his pencil and watched her face become slightly troubled.
"He is uncomfortable in my presence."
Tyr couldn't help raising an eyebrow. "You don't say..." he quipped. The issue of Morgan being a power hungry maniac who ended up destroying the kingdom she wanted aside (Truth was a forgiving bloke. He'd probably forgotten all about that already) there still was the small detail that hung over her head. "He probably still can't believe he fucked his sister," he chirped helpfully. "It's been a thousand plus years...pretty sure its not you." He didn't need to see her eyes to know that she was almost willing her gaze to burn a hole though his skull. The woman was practically vibrating with anger but with Famine cheering him on, he twisted the knife a little, waggling his eyebrows, "Thousand years to get lonely, if you know what I mean."
Now this, Tyr thought as he watched Justice visibly restrain herself from attempting to kill him. This is what it feels like to be immortal. Staring an angry woman in the face and knowing that you'll live to see another day....
Famine's wheezing cackle approved. We sHouLd boRRoW a liTtEe soMetHIng Of DeSirE's. BoTh NEed tO liGHteN uP.
The tree up her ass is stubborn, I doubt lover-bro can remove it. Truth's new nickname almost sent Famine into a fit. Giving himself a pat on the back, he pondered what high blood pressure would do to an Incarnate until Justice went still.
"Get out."
"Nuh uh!" He held up his clipboard. "It's that time of decade again!"
She snatched it from him, board, paper and pencil, and furiously ticked off the "Justice" categories. Once finished, she handed the items back and then booted him out before he even had the chance to thank her for doing that part of his work for him. Ah well, he'd be sure to mention that the next time he saw her. His next stop was...he took a glance at the paper. Gao Wenzhong, the home of Empathy Incarnate Kuan Yin.
It was a unique Realm, really, mostly because it was the only one to actually look like a home. The entire thing had been shaped to look, feel and even smell like her old mortal hangout: a Chinese palace straight out of the Qing Dynasty. It was here, she had said once, that she had raised four children and lost two others. It was her Realm, her husband beyond long gone, and she really couldn't fathom living anywhere else. Tyr figured that she just lacked a healthy sense of imagination.
"Emp, you in here?" He banged on the front door a few times until it opened for Yin's hand to snake out and get a firm grip on his ear. "Ow!"
"You do know," she started quietly, pulling sharply with a sardonic smirk on her face. "That I could feel you make Justice angry? I have half a mind to march you right back over there to apologize." With her other hand she took his pencil and began marking off the boxes. "But the other half is telling me that it won't do any good." One last twist and he was free.
"So mean..." He glanced over the paper and Jumped away. Gilgamesh was next and then after him he would have to track down Ewah....which wasn't necessary as he appeared right in front of the next two targets as well as his Master herself. He only hesitated for about a second, after all, it wasn't as if Master knew, after all. "This is lucky!"
"Survey says!" Master chuckled knowingly, waving him over. "I could have sworn you did this already..."
"Yeah, yeah...." He handed it over to Gil, and idly watched the man fill it out while rocking on his heels. He was tempted to start playing something but none of them would be very appreciative of the "noise." Blasphemy.
"Now, what do you think Weaver is doing right about now?" Master wondered out loud and he put a little extra effort into appearing like he wasn't paying attention. Let's see, we have the gates of Sumeria a little further back with the Hanging Gardens to his left...he angled his head so it looked as if he was looking at the purple sky. It shouldn't be too hard to not look interested, right?
"Trying to find the perfect dagger," Ewah winked and briefly pointed a finger at her. "For your back, as usual." Tyr kept his eyes firmly on the clipboard changing hands as Gil coughed and Master cracked her neck nonchalantly. She thinks its only Fate.
WhO wILL HavE tHe lASt laUGH? Roared through his head before it dissolved into high pitched giggling. WE WILL!
"That might be interesting." She was the last to take the clipboard, refusing the pencil as she simply burned in her answers with a finger. The casual display of power, of a focus stong enough to limit an external application of a whole tenth of the universe to just burning paper, from anyone else would have been intimidation. Thanatos was just like that, never really thinking her actions through. Well, that wasn't true anymore was it? "So Tyr, tell me, how was Potter?"
"Irritated," he allowed and accepted the board back. "But free of the Mirror! And...on his way home, I guess..."
It was a subtle thing, only really visible in how her eyes seemed to show a little relief, but her face seemed to lighten. "Time flies...gotta go!" She made as if to flicker away, but paused long enough for her eyes to harden. "And tell Adi 'hi' for me, will you?"
Ewah began to laugh hysterically as soon as she was gone, tears streaming from his eyes like some cartoon. "Oh! The poor thing has no idea where her enemies lie!"
Gil shrugged his shoulders. "She knows far more than she lets on. It simply isn't a threat yet."
"It won't do her any good to ignore it," Tyr had to say, feeling something remarkably like guilt. He had once believed that emotion to be the first to go. It sure would explain some things about the actions of the Incarnates. "It will be a threat."
"Well!" Insanity pouted as his fun was cut short. "Say what you will about her knowledge, she isn't omniscient. None are perfect and all that," he waved it off. "Hadn't you best be off, Tyr?"
He took the hint for what it was and Jumped away. Eros and Adi was next...he looked up as soon as the Realm came into view. Or rather...didn't seeing as how the whole thing was occupied by a dense and shifting black mist. It was navigation time. He managed to take a step before the Mists spat out another visitor. Literally. A darkly robed figure was sent pinwheeling into the ground where it lay for a moment before a pale hand was raised.
"Not a word." It declared in an irritated tenor, face still firmly implanted in the ground.
Famine was no good.
"Not a word." Tyr agreed solemnly, feeling his lips twitch. "Need a hand up, Tom?"
"No." In order to prove it, the stoic boy pushed himself off the ground, growling. "Why isn't this working?"
"It'll take at least half a century before you can do it properly." Tyr offered, and watched Tom's head snap towards him with an almost scary gleam in his eyes. At first, he was worried that the boy would go on another rant about being top of the class in his school or something and demand why he couldn't get the hang of it sooner. But then...
"That's right..." the boy said slowly, absently straightening his robes as he faded in and out of sight. "I have time, don't I?"
Famine Incarnate shrugged, seeing an oppurtunity to ditch his chore. "Well, if you're going to be practicing, check the remainder on that list so at least you'll have an excuse to be popping in and out of people's homes, yeah?"
Tom took the clipboard, and with some reluctance grasped the pencil in his long, tapering fingers and held it as if the thing was contagious. "Can I at least use a quill?"
"Whatever," he rolled his eyes. A writing tool was a writing tool, no? "Fate wants it when you're done. Cheerio!" He Jumped back home, conjured his guitar mid-step and let his fingers fly. This was the life.
Until it ends.
If no one noticed, Truth and Justice are the half-siblings King Arthur and Morgan Le Fay respectively. I apologize for the Tyr centeredness...next will be back to Harry.
