One Last Touch

[Zip]

9th Cylus 718

“Why can’t we just knock the bar down again?” Robin asked, kneeling, with his hands behind his head, besides his only sometimes present commander. She was regrettably in a similar position.

Robin had already asked that 5 times in the last 10 bits. He annoyed her on a good day; this was most definitely not a good day, and his inane questions were pushing way past the threshold of mild infuriation.

It was more than enough that bandits hit Nalod’s and took everyone there hostage the ONE time she had to go to the tavern for an exchange.

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe something to the song of ‘Dear Zipper, It has come to my attention that you and your pet Defier employed the use of magic straight into a crowd. Please don’t do that again. I strongly advise you to choose the battles of your craft carefully in the future. This is not Etzos. There will be consequences. Signed, someone with a stick up his arse who happens to be the administrator.’”

“Sorry, didn’t think the plan was to spend the whole trial listening to some idiots try and keep us locked up” she couldn’t see him, but she knew he was rolling his eyes.

Such a child. One of the great mysteries in life was how Robin Stark, manchild extraordinaire, managed to raise a sister and live to the ripe old age of 27.

But amazingly, she agreed with him. The hostage takers should have been dead bits ago if it were up to them. 12 men, from her last count, armed with swords and knives and bows and all the things she could warp with a quick touch, and all they could do was squat down and wait for help that couldn’t come quickly enough.

Because they weren’t the only hostages.

Because should she act, collateral damage would be inevitable. And her spells were precise next to the trigger-happy elemental juggernaut squatting next to her. She cared little for the other hostages, but the people would be very, very interested in the fact that some mage from the main city came down, killed half the bar she was trying to save, and burned down the most reputable tavern by the docks.

She had been both a soldier and a Black Guard, and she knew the damn difference between both: soldiers fought a war, guards keep the peace.

And there was no peace with the people against you.

And this would lose the peace if it unravelled the way her instincts wanted. It would be an image disaster, and a very strong message to her superiors back in Etzos that something had gone wrong, that she couldn’t be trusted. Every endeavour she would undertake in the future would be smeared with the unstated but ever-felt failure at Foster’s.

She didn’t care what people thought of her as a person, but nobody -no fuckin’ body- would ever fuckin’ dare look at her and deny her ability, her confidence, her dedication to her job.

“Stark,” Zipper said very, very slowly, as if talking to a slow child. “I need you to keep your cock in.”

[Robin Stark]

Robin could hear them crying on the second and third floors. The wind carried their voices, shrill with panic, praying to the immortals they’d vowed to ignore. Someone moved, the wood creaked under their feet, they were running now, yelling and there was the clank of heavy metal and -- ,“We just lost one of the hostages,” he sighed casually, a child bored in class. “Guess we’ve got a couple of heroes up there.”

“Idiots,” he heard Zipper whisper under her breath. “Fuckin’ idiots.” The emotion in her voice could only mean one thing: their deaths somehow impacted her.

That asshole could only get sentimental for herself.

Well, at least some of the hostages weren’t just waiting to die.

Or worse. Hoping someone was going to come save them.

“So we can’t use magic because of the rules,” the last word sounded like ‘ew’. “And we’re supposed to save them, how exactly? Where’s your knight-in-shining-armor? Isn’t this the kind of stuff he gets hard after?”

She shrugged. She clearly trusted him fine enough in an open bout, but not in a hostage situation.

“Right,” Robin made a face like diarrhea. There wasn’t a person he wanted less to listen to than Miss Glow-Hands. “What do we need to --,” a sigh, because it wasn’t ever about what they needed to do. There wasn’t a together with them. “What am I still doing here. This obviously requires a bit more precision than I care to practice.”

Zipper blinked. It occurred to him that he had never seen her blink before. Made sense: she was practically a crocodile in predatory instinct and hunting demeanour. “We can wait, true, or we can find our own precision.”

He breathed out his response, hot air and a desperate dream to see her drowned in lava. “The fire is still burning in the hearth,” he nodded, still kneeling, hands still on his head, “I might be able to convince it to go after the bandits while somehow maintaining the structural integrity of the…,” he sighed; he didn’t even believe he’d convince the fire to stick to flesh. Skin just didn’t burn as well as wood.

“You don’t even sound like you’ll believe it’ll work.” she said.

“It won’t,” he said, “I’ve had to keep the flames in check twice since we’ve been here already. It won’t listen to me once I’ve given it the ether to start eating the floors and walls.”

“If we can gather them into a single spot,” Zipper said. “Or isolate them into small groups, I can pick them off one by one.”

“I could ask the wind to knock some back to our floor,” he chewed his lip, thoughtfully. “What do we do when they start to get suspicious. Or are we hoping they’ll all be dead before they get the chance to think?”

“That’s… well, it’s barely a plan.”

“It isn’t like we have trials to plan this one out. I don’t wanna wait till the local guard shows up -”

“There is no local guard. Just soldiers. Soldiers fit for war and not for the nuances of this-”

“So then who the fuck are these idiots planning to negotiate with?”

“Remind me to find out once we get out of this”

The fire sparked, greedily spreading out its flames over the fat oak logs. It hissed, desperate for ether, desperate for a reason to stretch out into the bar. It smelled the liquor behind the shelves, trapped in dirty bottles and corked into barrels. It was thirsty and wanted to explode-

[Robin Stark]

“I can literally sense you reaching out to disobey, numbnuts.”

“I’m not. The fire reached out to me and I wasn’t going to --,”

“Oi! Shut your mouth before I waste both of ya love birds!”

“Immortals, fuck, why does everyone think we’re in love -”

“We don’t want any trouble,” Zipper said, her voice an octave higher than normal. She was blinking, and her body language went small and meek. “Me and my husband here. W-we work here. We don’t want no trouble. I-” She looked at Robin. “I run the accounts is all.”

“Didn’t ask, did I?” One of the masked men laughed, turning to his fatter comrade-in-arms, “Dickie, I didn’t ask, did I?”
“You didn’t, Rog.

“That’s right, I didn’t. So keep you mouths shut unless you want to lose ‘em!”

“I think you didn’t hear-” A lifetime of belligerence clearly didn’t lend naturally to playing the victim. “I run the accounts.”

“She’s telling you she knows where the money is you --,”

“I know what she said! I did, didn’t I, Dickie?”

“Yeah, yeah. You did, Rog.”

The thinner masked man, Rog, apparently, pointed an arrow at Zipper. “Don’t start crying ‘bout your wife, now,” Robin managed not to roll his eyes, “She’s just gunna show us where the money is.”

“Don’t rape her. Please.” Robin said in a dull, unconcerned tone.

Zipper threw him a brief look that screamed absolute murder. This was hilarious. He wondered how quickly she would tear them apart if they actually went for it.

“Just cos you asked so nicely,” Dickie said. “Yeah, actually. Marriage’s a thing, yeah. We be bandits, but we ain’t savages.”

Robin sagged in disappointment. The bandits clearly took it to be relief.

“Come along now,” Dickie said. “We ain’t got all day.”

“Ain’t that true, Dickie.” Rog said.

“Only two of you?” Zipper said. “Begging your pardon, but there just isn’t enough.”

“We’re strong. We’ll carry loads.”

“No denying that, but it’s lots. It’s lots, and lots, and lots.” Zipper had clearly given up trying to reason with them and just went back to repeating it until they got it.

Amazingly, it worked. Three more join them as they went down to the basement.

As Zipper was escorted away, she exchanged 3 looks with 3 people in a vain attempt at conveying information.

A reassuring one at the bartender.

A ‘go with it’ one at the actual lady who did the accounts

And one at Robin not to fuck it all up while she was gone.

[Robin Stark]

Robin wanted so badly to fuck it all up.

The fire burped and crackle in the fireplace. It split wood into charcoal, hissing, demanding more and more. Something in his chest lurched,
catching the end of his throat dry. Red bloomed from the blackened wood, licking at the edges of its brick-and-stone prison. The flames danced and promised, burning bright and alive and --

"Ain't no accounts down in the basement, no sir. Your poor missus won't --,"

"She isn't mine," Robin managed to thread together different tones into 'ugh' and convey an entire spectrum of dissatisfaction and offense into three different words. He pressed against his fingers into his temples, his nails, embedded with grey and black stones, threatened to cut into his skin. "She's going to kill all of them. Obviously," he huffed, annoyed, turning back to the fire, bits and pieces of his ether spilling into the fire, causing it to edge higher and hotter and --

"What? You, you coward! She'll die!" The man hiding behind the bar said.

"And?"

"She's a girl -- she can't defend herself and --,"

Robin laughed. The whole of the shack vibrated in his sound, dark and angry and condescending. Soot cascaded from the rafters and the whole of the hostages hiding behind the bar hushed into a sudden quiet. "What? Are you stupid? She's literally -- and I actually mean it -- going to strip the flesh off those idiots and then stuff them down your," someone was crying, a desperate sound caught in between loud sighs and --, "Throats or string you up by their intestines because even if we save you from today's danger you'll just end up in some other pit or at the wrong end of some dagger or you'll trip and land on a broken bottle and bleed out. You think she can't defend herself? Gods."

Another scuffle sounded on the second floor and a scream and the subsequent stillness of death. Another hero. Another fool.

A pop of confidence. A promise of primrose and tulip, sunrise colors swelling with a righteous sureness.

"You can't control yourself."

The fire bubbled with a pattern of heat, wave after wave spelling something out in warmth and the beginnings of a smile.

"Zipper said no."

The flames danced with bravado. They touched the stone roof of the chimney, scoring the red brick with black and char. A crack. A log split into two.

"Don't try me. I already said no."

A hiss of white steam threatened the edges of the fireplace, and still, it persisted. Tendrils of delicate white and blue reached out, close to the chairs and tables made from wood. The floor panels creaked and quivered, and Robin was almost sure he'd heard it cry in pain. He was sweating, he realized, the air around him dryer than he remembered.

"Fine. But the stairs first," he whispered, his magic swelling into the air, a wind kicking up dust between the cracks and dents. It swirled,
crisp and cutting. A gust stumbled into the fireplace and the red and yellow and orange exploded in anger and freedom. It sparked over two chairs,
falling into the staircase, desperately, hungrily, eating into each step with a vicious sense of destruction. Smoke traveled up and up and up and suddenly there was screaming but Robin already knew they wouldn't be coming down the same way they went up.

And he laughed when he heard a feet stir behind him --
-- his hands grabbed the bar table
-- smoke and cider sprouted from his fingers
-- black flowered, staining the wood
-- they screamed
-- they begged
-- he smiled

Gods, he hated them all. Pathetic things, fragile and static. He was losing respect for magicians and he then realized he'd long lost it for ordinary humans. They would burn and their bones would split and their pain would feed his child. The flames screamed in delight.

[Zip]

The flames screamed and screamed and scream their destruction to the world until there was nothing left to enable them anymore.

The bar, the dream liquor, the wood, Dickie and Rog, the accounts woman and the owner, all the nameless bandits with their stupid, stupid forgettable faces, the very fabric of the whole set up that was but another lie of Emea - all scoured away to leave nothing but white, white, white.

Just Zipper and Robin now.

Standing in a blank void with no one but each other.

Robin stared at her for a long time with the look of someone patiently waiting for an explanation. Zipper, on the other hand, did her very best to look everywhere else but at him. Then patience died and the stare turned into a glare and that glare turned into a violent grab that found her face and dragged her face within inches of his.

An eerily familiar position - but that’s how they did it, didn’t they? Violent, direct, too-close-for-comfort in all types of interactions. The little charade above with the bar and the bandits and people they were meant to save but killed - just an approximation of something that didn’t happen as it did, but could have all the same if they were put into that situation.

They knew each other well enough to play that role.

“Hey.” His voice was neutral, tender almost, and she didn’t know what to do. She could deal with shouting, she could deal with screaming, she could deal with any bit of vitriol big and small, physical or verbal he could toss her way. But kindness… but these soft moments where he wasn’t him and she couldn’t bring herself to be her…

What was she supposed to do with those?

There was nothing more sickening, helpless, depraved, and disarming as a tiny slice of kindness.

“Hey.” It was all she could say back. Her face was still in his hand but the grip was no longer a grip. Again: tender. Again: why? Again: how did anyone ease themselves into the arms of another and not wonder what went wrong?

“What went wrong?” he asked. He genuinely didn’t know. It would have been endearing if it wasn’t so completely stupid. “What happened to us?”

She had an answer.

She had lots of very pointed and very specific answers actually.

Instead she gently shook her face out of his hand, turned around, and said, “I don’t know.”

[Zip]

And “I don’t know.” opened up a floodgate both of them would rather relish than the awkward silence.

“Fuck you.” Could have been him, could have been her. Didn’t really matter, did it?

“Fuck me? Fuck you, you whiny, loathsome sack of flaming garbage.” That was definitely her. He was the Defier, but she had the fire, the raw, searing venom that could match the the various forms of heat he wielded with so much ease. “Fuck you so hard, you stupid, stupid-”

“You already did.”

It was hard to tell what was happening now. She might have turned around and took a step forward. He might have done the same in the dreadshine of the white room. They might have met in the room screaming into each other’s faces.

“I fuckin’ hate you.” again: her. Had to be her. “I should have killed you on the day we met.” She could picture it as clear as day: He was the stronger breed of mage, mayhaps, but she had the skill, the finesse, the experience to use her gifts better than him. He indulged in arcane masturbation with his precious imaginary elements and fought like someone half his age and of the other gender. She could have killed him if not for Torvyn; her Corrosion bolt would have carved a sleek path through his stone wall, a second one would have found his chest.

He shrugged, and she knew the power he had over her then: when he gave her anger, she responded with anger. When he denied her even that, she-

Fuck him.

Fuck him so hard and so much.

She tried everything to hurt him right up to stealing his connection to the earth and sliding a stone dagger across his throat and it still didn’t feel like it was enough - he took Finn’s future away from him. Gave him soul poison that fed him voices into his head.

Raped it into him.

And nothing she could do to him would ever undo that little fact no matter how hard she tried.

[Zip]

Back to the dream then. Back in time a little bit more.

“Hey.” Robin squatted at the edge of the carnage, staring unblinking at the burnt wreck formerly known as Nalod’s dockside pub.

“Hey.”

“You’re not mad?” he said. He was clearly bracing himself for some kind of verbal retaliation and when none came instantly, he must have thought her ill. She didn’t respond. She just squatted next to him, staring blankly at his handiwork.

“Hey, Zip. You’re not-”

“I’m not.”

“Are you-”

“I’m not sick. Just tired, okay?”

“Bit of a mess, eh?”

“Bit of a mess, yeah.”

She shrugged. It was both a familiar and unfamiliar feeling, but she shrugged. She couldn’t tell why she didn’t feel mad or why she something so big didn’t matter, but it was calming for once. Peaceful. The clarity of a mind untouched by consequence or driven by that desperate drive for self-actualization, to find a smatter of matter in a universe that thrived on contradiction.

Robin made life simpler for a time. Robin lived in a world with four best friends and everything else was just… else.

She turned to the side and pecked the man who hadn’t yet raped her brother on the cheek. It was fast, the slightest brush of lips on skin, and when he didn’t object, her lips found his and she broke it even before it registered for either of them, her hand moving towards his shirt-

But he was gone.

Like everything he touched, he was gone.

[Khymarah]

Your Review Is Complete!

“What would an ocean be without a monster lurking in the dark?
It would be like sleep without dreams.”

So, have you ever watched the TV show Lucifer? I don’t know why but Zip reminds me of Maziken! Haha some of the comments in this. Doesn’t Stark know she’s a seal not a crocodile? Omg Dickie and Rog hahahahaha. Oh and then shit got dark n real. Dude...that got me right here. <3 Killer read.

Zipper

Points

XP:
15/15 | These points cannot be used for magic.

Renown: n/a

Loot

n/a

Injuries + Overstepping

n/a

Knowledge

Skill Knowledge:
Not requested
Other Knowledge:[/b
n/a]

If you've got a question or concern or if I've missed anything, don't hesitate to PM me!