Archive of Our Own ^beta

It hurt. 

Ridgedog’s laughter was echoing somewhere in the background, artificially amplified by the deafening rush of blood in his ears and god almighty fuck it hurt - 

Xephos was sure he was dead. Things just didn’t hurt this much without being lethal - fuck it all he’d burned to death and it’d hurt less than this. It felt like he could feel each and every atom in his body and they were all being torn asunder. He left like a nuclear reaction made manifest, made man. A vessel being filled and filled and filled with white hot electricity, unable to overflow, unable to break. 

And then it didn’t. Something settled, or maybe something in his mind had crumbled because it didn’t hurt. The lack of pain hit like a shot of morphine to his heart and he swayed were he stood - 

He opened his eyes. He wasn’t standing. 

He uncurled from the hunched position he’d twisted himself into, observing the ground far below with a twisted sort of calm. It wasn’t anti-gravity, but an odd sort of lightness, like the power in his veins was stronger than that. He looked to the sky - sun just starting to set, the first stars and brightest planets beginning to dot the horizon. He didn’t have to stay. Ridgedog would have let him leave, in that moment he knew it more than anything. Ridgedog would have let him keep his powers and leave, let the world rot from the inside out because of that stupid bomb, because it would have been funny. 

He shook his head, hardly noticing the way he shed specks of raw energy like falling snow. He needed to set this to rights. 

It was - it was only - it was hard to care.

Ridgedog zipped over, shooting a cruel smirk his way. “How’s it going, spaceman? Liking the temporary godhood?” Xephos tilted his head in acknowledgement, missing the almost uncomfortable way Ridge watched his now placid expression.  “A little odd.” His voice felt hollow in his ears, pale and empty. “I’m not sure I much care for it, to be honest.” The energy, radiation, power in his veins sang softly, sweetly.

He didn’t like the tune.

Xephos couldn’t help his quiet, wheezing laughter. Oh gods his friends were hilarious. This game was perfect - honest to goodness. A tear beaded up in his eyes, setting off another, stronger round of giggles. That leaping possession gubbins had been a great addition to the story, he needed to write that plot-point down in case he wanted a repeat. The soft pad of leather shoes on cobblestones drew him out of his giggle fit but couldn’t wipe the grin from his face. 

“Magistrex! Friend - how was the game?” Magistrex let out a huff if laughter, shaking off the lingering aesthetics of his false death, like time rewound. It was a little bit upsetting that he was too powerful to full immerse into the game, but it was nice not to have to revive him each time. 

“Messy, Xephos, in a very fun way! I think you might have hit gold with the Fang gu idea - I’ve never seen more hysteria - and, well - you know me and my games.” The other man’s image shivered a bit, taking on that inhuman touch he tended to hide. Xephos hadn’t bothered in who knows how long - a little twist here and there stopped anyone from noticing anyway. It was nice to breathe - he didn’t know how Magistrex dealt with it. He sent Xephos a bit of an odd sideways look before pulling this silk handerchief from his pocket. 

“Friend?” The cool silk square was pushed into his hands. 

“You’re still crying, Xephos.”

He jolted, feeling his face flush. “Goodness, how embarrassing. I apologise for the display.” Magistrex just waved him off, looking out to the guillotine and the sobbing dead surrounding it. Xephos hadn’t yet reset the playing field, too enraptured by the success of his story. He dabbled the tears from his eyes, but they just kept welling up. How peculiar.

“Ah, it's like that a bit at the start. Nothing to worry about, you’ll be right.” clapping once, before turning again to Xephos. He opened his mouth but seemed to think better of it, shaking his head with a smile. “Too early to ask about that, I feel.” Xephos didn’t know what he was talking about. It prickled a bit, the same way as his tears, as the bodies on the ground, as the moment when his friends remembered their prior lives but before he wiped their memory of the game. The same way it did when he started to wonder just when he’d been able to do all of this without his lab. 

“Another round, friend?”

“Ah yeah, I could go another. Don’t make me a bloody outsider this time, I’m sick of dying on night two because I’m too suspicious.”

“A minion then?” 

“Ah shite, fine. I’ll make it work.”