47. Fury
"You're… You're new."
"Fuck off."
"Congratulations, I suppose… You found me. I'm sure Pearly will be pleased."
"So it's true, then. You're alive."
"Are you shocked? You were the one hanging up the posters."
The boy wasn't too elaborate in his reply, but his eyes did hastily traverse him from top to bottom. "It's different to see you in the flesh."
"Fair enough."
An unsteady frown, the hint of a grimace.
What lay beyond the fence was a hallway of brick and salt and ice. Flapping laundry, rigid in frost. Metallic stairs. Pipes. Ropes. Nets. And a thin young man with a knife in his hand.
I exist again…
The boy's nose wrinkled like the snout of a wolf, as he examined the road he had ahead. The blade in his hands, foggy and grey in the poor streetlight, what little peeked into the alley from the avenue.
He wandered from side to side like a caged animal. Glancing behind him. Glancing ahead, across the fence.
I exist again. For better and for worse.
The glow of New York, the curtains of Beverly's tent, a lighthouse at Peter Lake's back.
Athansor hadn't been able to help him when he wielded a weapon. He had to throw away the knife, toss out the bloody blade that had claimed the life of a former comrade.
And…?
And…
Where was Athansor? Was he now traversing through the roads Beverly wandered through…?
Feel me as I feel you.
A squeaky floorboard. A piano room.
The light that entered the alley, barely. A spotlight of ashy electricity.
Feel me.
He took a step closer to the fence. The boy's grip tightened on the pocket knife.
Peter's initial nervousness now became violently replaced with the desire to laugh, to laugh hysterically, and he felt ashamed of his own arrogance, despite his current state.
We did fool them, alright.
Such simple machines, the living.
"I thought I was wanted alive," he remarked to the wolf boy behind the fence.
"That doesn't mean I won't hurt you."
"I'm not the one you should fear."
"Uh-huh." The young man flinched. He kept pacing. Meandering the length of the black metal doors, back and forth. Taking in the smell of the evening. Peter Lake could hear the sea from this spot. It was… soothing, somehow. "Where have you been hiding all this time?"
He'd been behind the curtains of a tent. Singing underwater.
Peter Lake shrugged. "Here. New York. Where else?"
"Pearly did say you were slippery."
The boy winced. He began running the tip of his knife along the bars of the fence, much to Peter's displeasure.
Petes.
And his golden gaze glinted in defiance.
Pete.
Was that Beverly? Beverly, there, winking at him?
Feel me as I feel you.
"Well, what are you doing?" Peter asked.
"Nothing… Thinking."
"Thinking about what?"
The boy made a face. Something flickered along his brow. The blade clacked along the metal. Little notes in a crooked song.
Peter's arms were riddled with goosebumps. It was becoming harder to breathe.
It was all orders.
"Well, you set out to find me and now you have," Peter Lake muttered. "So… Why do you barricade yourself from me?"
"It was you who set out to chase me."
"Hm. I see the confusion."
"You're still eager to die, then?"
"The excitement's run dry, I fear."
"Then," the wolf boy stopped pacing and stared at him and the golds at Peter's back bled into his gaze, "why?"
Yes. Good question. Why? It wasn't pleasant, to be here again. This fence. This noise.
It was all orders.
Was it all due to his faith that Beverly was guiding him now? Was it the drag of this miracle, this that had replaced his beating heart?
Had it been a result of the thrilling terror he'd felt after being reflected in the eyes of a living being for the first time in over a year? The promises that implied?
I'm going to find my light.
Had it been this fence? The memories it carried?
I'm going home with you.
He felt the water of New York. The tears and perspiration and feverish clammy corners of the City of Justice, cold in the breeze, the night, the years.
Suspended, floating in an ocean of dark stars. Yet still solid, in the world, pulseless limbs treading solid, wet concrete. Beverly's light shone in his eyes and kept him awake.
He had never quite realized how similar his death was to the life he'd been ripped from.
He'd been killed and birthed by the sea. He'd been dead for decades. And a red-haired pianist had rekindled his desire to stay, to stay.
And… why be here now, then?
You're my life. You're everything.
Such… strange machines. Human beings. Alive, dead. All of them.
"Why?" the wolf boy repeated. "Why aren't you running away now?"
"Ehm, I- Well, do you want me to?"
"What is wrong with you?" the wolf boy spat.
Had Peter Lake forgotten the language of life? Had one year been enough to forget how to speak among the living? He certainly remembered the panic. The drumming in his body. The feeling…
Beat, little heart.
In life, he'd been mechanical. He'd seduced machines into submission with only his fingers.
He could still speak this language. The stars were waiting for him to continue his lines… This stage, half-light, half-dark… Beverly in the audience…
Dance with me.
"Well… I'll go, then," he replied to the wolf boy, turning.
"No. No, no, you stay, now!"
"You lost me the moment you went behind that fence. That was your mistake."
The fence clattered, then. Iron screeching, booming down the hallway of brick and ice.
Peter froze in place, peeked a glance back, looked, stared.
The wolf boy was trying to unlock the metal doors, to no avail. The thick grey teeth clenched between his lips, his nose wrinkly with effort. His nails scratching uselessly at the black bars.
Petes.
"Stop that."
Pete.
"Stop," Peter growled.
The boy's gaze steadied his own, his frown persisting.
Peter.
"Why did you chase me?"
"Why did you run?"
My name is Peter.
Then, a new theory, as sudden as a gust of wind, and Peter Lake raised his eyebrows in realization, and the wolf boy actually seemed to be unnerved by the sudden shift in his facial expression.
"Was… Was that your plan?" Peter Lake laughed, then, surrendering to the madness. "To tell on me?"
"Let's see how much you laugh when Mr. Soames comes after you himself."
"So, you'll tell Pearly that you've seen me. That I got away one more time. He'll be very upset, I imagine."
The young man smirked. "You know everything, huh?"
"I know him."
"He won't do anything to me."
"Give it time," Peter murmured, a bit too darkly for his taste.
I don't know it all. I do know you, though.
"Mr. Soames is good on his word. Unlike you."
"We've only just met, how could you be so sure?"
"I've heard of you. All about you."
"Well, damn, I didn't know Pearly missed me so much."
But the wolf boy had other intentions. "I've heard about your lady, as well."
Where's your girlfriend?
Peter stared now, solemn. Searching for the light, a grey pebble on a puddle of mud, somewhere in the boy's eyes. Wherever she was. Everywhere. Unseen, unspoken.
The redhead. The sick one.
This part, he'd predicted. This attempt to hurt him. He knew better than to grieve, and yet…
I wish you were here, Beverly. And only here.
Yet…
"Yes." The wolf-nosed boy nodded with increasing confidence. A juvenile cruelty darkened his gaze. "Mr. Soames told me all about her, too."
Peter's chest sank. A bag of silver. The smell of salt. A miracle, waiting, weighing him down, keeping him from joining her in his entirety…
Is your doubt always this heavy?
"Her red hair. Her uppity little family."
This life. This death.
Such similar machines, really…
"Her condition. Her whole ordeal, basically. I- How old was she?"
Peter flinched. Answered: "Twenty-one."
The boy couldn't have been older than she'd been, and yet his expression betrayed nothing but petulant indifference. "What a shame. I'm sure she was a lovely girl."
"She was."
She is. She's here now.
Beverly was at his back, as well as before him. Wherever the light bounced and dimmed and bled out into darkness.
But she wasn't, either. Despite his awareness of her…
He missed her, she missed him. That couldn't be denied. They were traveling together in the same vessel of death, but she was above the water, and he was underneath…
Peter couldn't speak. The dark bars of the fence winked at him from underneath the boy's filthy fingers. His downcast face, his yellow eyes steadying his own. A little smirk. A knife dancing slowly, slowly, in the half-light.
When he took in a new breath, the city dug into his lungs in pin-like shards of gelid air.
You're still the same hideous boy with violence in his eyes.
No…
To trust. To linger. To not run away.
To hear the music and follow it…
To stay in a city full of beasts just to give her a friend, a lover, a person to give her miracle to. His decision to stay had saved him, even when his life had been ultimately taken away.
When we return to the city, stay with me.
He replied to the boy, finally. "You have no idea what you've gotten yourself into."
"I'm plenty aware of it."
"An orphan, are you? Plucked off the street? Alone, and miserable, and hungry for purpose…"
It now made way more sense, why Pearly targeted people like these. Why demons bred on loneliness and anger. Why he'd resented Peter so much in the moment he found love in Beverly or the Penns.
People with no possible starfolk watching over them, when their time to sink inevitably came. And the darker the sky grew above their heads, the slimmer their possibilities to fly became.
For what good was a miracle, rotting in bodies so filthy with hatred? Who would ever wish to receive such a spoiled gift?
You're still the same hideous boy with violence in his eyes.
The mere realization made Peter want to gag.
"Oh yes," he muttered, swallowing, grimacing. "I know you. I've known you before, I'll know you again. And you know nothing."
The wolf boy was unfazed. The arrogance in his gaze only thickened. "I won't run like you have. I won't be so foolish as to bite the hand that feeds me."
Peter's face suddenly ached. He hadn't frowned in a year. He hadn't felt fury since the day he died.
"Pearly Soames's fucking hand," he growled, "will offer you nothing but poison."
And what fury he felt now… Fury at Pearly. At what he'd done to him, what he'd done to Beverly, what he'd done to hundreds of others, including this young man behind the fence. The root-like scars on his face and his throat.
The cruelty of this city that he was still tethered to, from beyond the grave.
Beverly's murder, her isolation from her family. Cecil's vulnerability and seemingly-endless optimism. Isaac Penn's eyes the last time he spoke to him…
The fence. The reminder of it.
It was all orders.
Beverly was in his lungs, at his back, icy and scared and fluttering like a bird.
I feel you. I'm sorry, love. I'm sorry.
He couldn't unsteady her with wandering regrets. He couldn't weigh any more than he already did… He couldn't… He couldn't…
Is this the fear she'd felt, upon returning to the city with him? How she'd faltered as she reached the ground and he'd helped her carry on.
I still remember life.
They'd been dead for a very short time…
I still remember fury.
"He will blacken your blood until you run on nothing but oil. He's the worst person in this city and he feeds you."
And the boy did recoil slightly at this response, but it wasn't enough to deter him. He licked his lips and continued his little game. "As far as I know, you betrayed the only people who ever understood you."
"Last I saw these people, they killed my wife, beat me to a pulp and threw me off the Brooklyn Bridge."
"And whose fault was that?"
"Pearly Soames's. No one else's."
The wolf boy clenched his jaw, shaking his head. "You have no idea how badly you hurt him-"
Peter grabbed the fence, then.
Petes.
Grabbed it, hard and swift, in a move that even he deemed surprising. Another piece the City of Justice was entrusting to him.
Pete.
The screech of metal boomed down the hallway-like alley, and Peter Lake trembled, and his breath fogged the distance between himself and the wolf boy, and the golden square of lamplight at his back framed the pieces uncloaked by shadow.
Petes. Pete.
The end of a tunnel. His road to the light.
Peter.
He was furious, but his voice was shaking and his eyes burned.
"Hurt him…?"
The boy's knife was now raised to Peter's shoulder. But the bony hands shook visibly, and the golden eyes flickered.
He was young, yet older than Peter had been, when he'd been tucked under Pearly's wing…
"You think I… hurt Pearly!?"
Peter had been this boy once…
"Why else do you think he wants you alive?"
"Ali-! He killed me!"
Beverly had described the taste of the galaxy they were needled into as that of rust and decay. Peter tasted it now. New York, shaking under his feet. The ocean embracing the shore.
"Whatever he hurts will never be equal to the pain he subjected me to. Let alone the pain he subjected Beverly to."
The wolf boy muttered. "Bever-"
"Don't say her name."
A light washed over the bony, dark features. And the wolf boy's eyes opened like plates. And he was silent.
"You and your magpie friends will never have the right to say her name. You didn't know her. You didn't even stick around to watch her succumb to the death you served her. Goddamn cowards, the lot of you…"
She was at his back, ablaze. Golden and glowing.
In his eyes, too. In the pupils opening like a telescope and showing the depths of a hidden light, buried in the sky. Her presence, secret, a light they shared.
And she was reflected on the eyes of the boy, whose fingers curled ever-tighter around the knife.
"But I saw. And I felt. I felt everything. I held her in my arms as she burned and as she froze. I didn't let her go until morning came a- and- and she was taken away…"
Why were there tears on his face? Why did he hurt so deeply? Why did he still mourn her when he and she still existed to one another?
Their death, shared. Her light in his eyes… Her…
But he couldn't see her… He couldn't hear her speak back… Maybe it had taken him this long to realize how miserable that was.
This death, this life. He and she were apart, either way. Even in the same city, shining from the same star, they were ripped away from each other…
"She was gentle… She was good… And you murdered her! Her eyes were open the night she died! She wasn't done, she was far from being done, she was twenty-one!"
And… the wolf boy.
Speaking.
Replying.
"What are you?"
His arrogant voice now fused into a silent terror. Golden eyes, open wide. Mouth warped, revealing grey teeth. A hand, holding a knife, shaking.
Peter Lake stared at him.
The wolf boy repeated the question: "What the hell are you?"
The black metal was cold and sharp under Peter's fingers. The warmth of her light was fading away, threads being pulled away from a tapestry. Loose ends. Undone. So easily removed. The way he'd been so easily murdered. The way she'd… also… been so easy to kill…
Petes.
Peter Lake released the fence. Stepped away from it. The wolf boy wouldn't stop looking at him.
Pete.
He did reply. Barely. Hardly.
"I'm Peter Lake…"
His heartless chest heaved. His hands shook. He smelled the salt of the sea and he craved John's presence, his chats, his advice…
"I'm an orphan, and a bastard, and a former magpie under Pearly's name… I was the son of thieves. I was put on a stolen vessel. And I floated to life…"
Beverly. Beverly, I need you here. I need you…
"On December 1916, I met a woman with fire in her chest. We fell in love… A week later, she was murdered… I didn't put up a fight when your friends came for me next. Friends, once mine, now yours…"
Cecil. Cecil. He needed to find Cecil.
Then, darkly. Horribly... "What do you think I am, little magpie?"
He left, first slowly, later quickly. And he felt so ashamed when he burst into the light.
And Beverly, in his lungs, in his eyes, quiet. Waiting.
I need you here, with me, in the flesh. I need… I need…
He still had tears in his eyes. Why?
Why…?
Please…
What more could he fear? He was already dead.
Author's Note: To anyone who is here today, thank you for reading.
... Okay so. I hope this plan I have works out well. In terms of how Peter acts as a ghost with the people he is chosen to help.
I did say that Peter was done being self-conscious, and he is, but I also think that, when it comes to Pearly's men, he wouldn't offer help in the traditional sense. In the way he offered help to Cecil, or Beverly. Because these men still owe him a great deal for all the trauma they put him through. In here, I make sure to point out that Peter is far from ready to forgive these people - including the ones who are "new," like the wolf-boy.
I will most likely feature this boy again. Make him a recurring character, at least make Peter's presence impactful to him, specifically. I don't know what to name him... So for now, he's a wolf-boy. The perfect target for Pearly. Hence why Peter grows so furious in this chapter.
I have known fury, too. I know it often. A white-hot, quiet fury, is how I tend to express mine. I felt it this weekend again, cause, in the same way that Peter isn't fully free of pain, I'm not, either.
And in the same way that Peter didn't even consider mourning the life he'd lost, when he was killed, cause he was busy mourning Beverly, I feel like he also needed to lash out at the men who traumatized him. Men he now bravely wishes to help. And he will, just not in the way I originally imagined.
When you write from a character's POV, you are sometimes surprised by how they fight against your plans. I didn't initially consider for Peter's way of helping the magpies to be frightening to the magpies... but when writing this all down, it just happened. My Peter got angry. Enraged, in fact. Because I made Peter be reminded of the fence, of his last days alive, of the fact that the wolf-boy is just another continuation of Pearly's influence on the world... Culminating on the wolf-boy implying that it was Peter who hurt Pearly. The final straw. And Peter goes off.
As for what made the boy so scared that he now asks Peter "what are you?", I did sketch out some stuff before concluding this chapter.
Let's just say... Peter Lake would never be dressed in white, or in color to begin with. He is dark, and heavy, and this can make him both heartbreaking and scary.
"Winter's Tale" does introduce us to him in two ways, after all: one, in 2014, gazing up at a painted sky (contrasting with the end of the film, where he sees Beverly's star in the sky and smiles and is able to go to her - this is beautiful parallelism btw), and the other, in the chronological sense, running away from Pearly's mob, killing a man, and then finding Athansor.
To put it briefly: Peter isn't harmless. He can defend himself, he can fight, he can get angry - and he can be scary, if he needs to be. The reason why Pearly's men were able to kill him so easily is because he didn't bother to put up a fight to defend himself in the first place. He only fought back against them when they threatened Athansor, and he literally handed their as**s way back to them in a couple seconds. Peter is perfectly capable of putting up a fight and winning.
I already gave you a peek of his anger when he speaks with Pearly at the Brooklyn Bridge at the end of "A Star in the Lake." The hints it contains, too. That Peter isn't invulnerable to being cruel or vengeful, he is just a good man, he chooses to be better than what Pearly wishes he'd be. And despite his anger, he still refrains from physically hurting anyone - and the one person he did kill, in the story, I make him be so haunted by it that it literally has chased him for all my chapters of my fanfiction duology, up to this one. Like... this motif isn't going away yet. Sorry XD
Oh, speaking of Pearly. Yes, it's shown in the film, Pearly did care about Peter - he feels betrayed by him. Part of the reason why Pearly is dead-set on harming Peter is because he seems embarrassed by the fact that he loved Peter, that he considered him a surrogate son, that he trusted him.
Hence why the wolf-boy correctly suggests that Peter did hurt Pearly by betraying him... but Peter's pain is far, far worse. And given that I'm in Peter's POV, of course Peter would get enraged by this suggestion. Because, regardless of Pearly's own pain, Pearly traumatized Peter. So bad that now, even in death, with Beverly always around him, Peter isn't healed from all this. And he can still feel angry - like how Beverly, too, feels angry as a spirit.
Perhaps I let them both come to terms with this in the next chapter... Though it may be too early to make Beverly come out of the light, so far. I'll see what I can do.
Oh, one more thing. Unrelated (but also, related), but I also think it helped that I've watched a couple episodes of the new Colin Farrell show, Sugar. I'll be honest, it's not really my cup of tea so far, 3 episodes in and I still feel like nothing is happening, plus (surprisingly) I don't even care about Colin's character that much (so far I recognize that he's quirky and suspiciously-nice, which may be the point, but in terms of actually being invested in this guy's life or investigation, I'm honestly indifferent thus far) which disappoints me a bit - the big reason why I love him as an actor is his versatility in creating empathy in the characters he portrays: whether good or bad, you do tend to see a character Colin plays as tangible, as a human being, and that makes you care about them, cause you recognize the humanity they embody. If you listen to his interviews he is almost-always so emotionally-linked in the fictional people he's tasked to play, regardless of the genre or the context he always webs himself into these characters, and that's really cool.
Okay, despite my thoughts on the show itself, it did show me something that helped me envision Peter's fury in this chapter. It reminded me that Colin Farrell is perfectly capable of flipping from vulnerability to intimidation in a second - he can be scary. There is a scene in the end of Episode 2 (I still don't understand the importance of the subplot this scene concludes, btw, but still, I won't spoil the context) where Colin's character confronts someone he's never met before - at first he sounds desperate, wounded, cause he's in what we assume is a raw emotional state, but when the stranger replies with hostility, Colin grabs him and pins him against the wall in a fit of rage. He releases the guy soon enough and doesn't do anything else but he does break a frame. So. Yup.
By the way, his character keeps narrating throughout the series that he "dislikes harming people", but... this moment, along with other similar instances I've seen so far, makes me very suspicious of him. And it also reminded me that Colin is very strong - he's built thickly, he's broad-shouldered, he can be imposing. He is equally convincing in his vulnerability and in his dominance, it only depends on what he wishes to convey in a performance, and in what instances (example: in Banshees of Inisherin his character feels tiny cause his character is extremely weak, emotionally and physically, but when you see him in Fright Night he adopts a completely different posture, he's the one in power in that movie and he knows it, which causes him to feel physically imposing).
So. Peter, being Colin, can be scary like this as well. Minus him actually grabbing the wolf-boy and pining him against a wall. That's a bit much XD
Anyhoo. I'll be back with new chapters soon, I promise you won't have to wait as long for the next 2 chapters, I have them planned out already :3 Thank you, as always, for being here. Here's your hug *hug* and I'll see you again later. Have a good day.
(PS: Yes, Peter did say "wife." In a blink-and-miss-it sentence, but he did say it. I wanted to sneak that in eventually, I'm cheesy like that :3)