[PRP] soldier's orders (thorne & jeremiah)

[azuredreams]

Thorne.

Algie's voice echoed in his mind. Jeremiah had asked him who it had been, who had been the one to be his patron, and there had been an odd relief in him that it had been Thorne and not someone else. Jeremiah trusted Thorne because he understood.

Still-

He knew that his fetch had dealt with Thorne, had dealt with most people in his life, and he was checking in with them to see what had happened (if anything because some had not noticed at all) but also because ...

No, he was not allowed to think about that at all.

Jeremiah was still learning the limits of his new power, of the abilities he now had. So with only a thought and picture in his mind of the outside of Coalsmoke he appeared outside of it and headed in. It was the same knock as usual, though at least this time he was not hear to heckle Chris and Thorne about having the police called on them.

elkbones

 

[moonjavas]

Thorne was laying on his couch, wings folded over his head and casting a nice shady spot for him to doze in without getting light in his eyes when Jeremiah appeared and entered Coalsmoke. His eyes peeled open, irritated at someone interrupting his cat-nap, but upon seeing the other, he froze before deliberately righting himself, wings crisply folded up against the juncture of his shoulders.

"I really hope you are not here to burn another scorch mark into my floorboards," Thorne said idly. He wasn't sure why Jeremiah would appear here - thought it ironic that both Algie and him had become nobles at the same time but not much more. Algie was outside of his hands now.

"But then, I'm sure that wasn't you at all, so I'd like to think I'm safe." Thorne stood up, gestured. The great antlers dispersed, and his wings folded away into shadow.

He paused and then said, deliberately, "Do you want a drink? I have a bottle of whiskey worth a small fortune I've never opened and it's collecting dust."

azuredreams

 

[azuredreams]

"You're aware you don't need to disperse that if you're more comfortable with it, don't you?" Jeremiah gestured towards the antlers and the wings that melted away into shadows.

Still-

"I won't turn down a drink all things considered." His shoulders rolled, Jeremiah's eyes glinting with a glow briefly before they were their normal strange blue-green shade. "If you want, I can get the scorch mark fixed. Though considering the wreckage that he left me to deal with ..."

It clearly was a small thing, something paltry and easily fixed until like the emotional turmoil that had been caused.

elkbones

 

[moonjavas]

"Are you sure?" Thorne remarked, looking over at Jeremiah. "I know it wasn't the way I looked last time you were - here." He made a vague gesture with his hand that suggested he didn't know the half of what had happened with the older man, fidgety and disquieted by the plague in his head.

He pulled a bottle from the liquor cabinet he kept and offered Jeremiah a tumbler, placing it down in between them at the counter once it was open.

"No, it's fine," Thorne remarked. "I'm sure you have more than enough things to fix in your life, if you're like me now." His eyes flicked over Jeremiah. "There's a lot to catch up on, I imagine. And the wreckage you left..."

His eyes chilled, his mouth a thin line.

"I'm sure that will be a struggle you'll live with for awhile."

He thought of Aleksy, and the thought made him cold and baleful. He thought of the way he'd sounded, and he said, "I am sorry for the trouble I caused though. With your husband."

azuredreams

 

[azuredreams]

"Thorne." Jeremiah simply stared. "I have never said something I do not mean. If you are more comfortable, be who you are. I've no desire for anyone to hold a mask with me- that includes if this form is uncomfortable for you and the other is not." What was not comfortable was having to state such. He was not quite certain what the fetch had done but Thorne should have known better.

Jeremiah never said or did things without meaning them.

"I would say I am fortunate in that he did not cause much in the way of wreckage but that's a lie." He watched the young man shift and move, the way that he carried himself. The dark tones that were there- Jeremiah recognized them, knew they were there in himself as well. "He simply made up for it in the limited wreckage he did and what it was-" His smile was bitter, his eyes hard. "I am glad that I strangled him to death and burned him until there was nothing left."

It was not enough in the end, not for what he had done to Aleksy, but it was a start. Struggling with it did not even begin to cover it.

"Why say you are sorry? I was gone long before you took Algie and while I was back before he returned ..." Jeremiah lifted his shoulders and shrugged once more. The worst thing was that he had been made leery of his husband's touch, of not wanting to be imposed upon and put to sleep, but that faded with the knowledge it was truly Alg. "I understand it. Our reasons were the same, my husband and I. We sought it at different points but they were the same." For each other, to be stronger. "Better you than someone else. You, at least, understand Algie."

Thorne, and Mare by proxy, were far kinder than others would have been. Algie had come back stronger and whole and not darkened but brightened. Jeremiah? No, he had been consumed by the fires of Ezra's household and born of them.

elkbones

 

[moonjavas]

"If you're sure," Thorne said, self-conscious, and his wings unfurled once more, the starry antlers glittering into place. He rubbed a hand over his face and looked back at Jeremiah, his eyes bright as galaxies. "I'm sorry, it's just. I can hardly reconcile that I am accepted as myself on a good day, let alone this. Old habits die hard."

He shook his head, eyes lowering. "Aleksy called me while I was away," he said. "I didn't know at the time, but I knew something had to be wrong. That I wasn't there..." He closed his eyes and sighed. "I was not there." It felt like a criminal act to him, something that still sunk its claws deep into his heart and core and ripped him to shreds.

He looked up at Jeremiah, leaning on the counter. "It won't be enough," he said, as though understanding Jeremiah's thoughts. "He'll haunt you in everything he did. Just as Corr did, continues to do. He is a part of me, even in death."

His eyes flicked down again. He took a sip of the bitter drink and sighed out, a sharp exhale, animal in its approach.

"Because I - " Thorne struggled for the words to speak with, "Because I was as much as selfish as I was anything else. The Court is a divide. Melany is still the most powerful noble in place there, and I knew nothing I could strive for within could be done on my own." He twisted the tumbler in his hands. "I wanted to help Algernon as much as I wanted help myself, and I did not think of the consequences, or what they might mean to you."

He shrugged, helplessly, and looked at the older man. "And I did not exactly go easy on him. Mare is a headache for anyone with half a brain."

azuredreams

 

[azuredreams]

Jeremiah made a gesture for Thorne to pour the drinks if they were going to continue on about this because there needed to be drinks. "You've had enough conversations with me to know better with me, Thorne." He sighed. "Noble of the Court I may be, but that aspect is something that hasn't changed." No, it was something that had been strengthened.

In this case by literal fire.

For once the older man looked away, not quite sure he was really- "I've known Aleksy for years," he said quietly, "and he means a great deal to me. That thing abused the relationship, took advantage of things that no one else but I can do with Aleksy and-" Jeremiah realized the drinks had been poured and grabbed his glass, threw it back and poured another which also disappeared. The burn did not help, it was nothing like the fire he had felt.

"Lisichya," his Russian is flawless and that somehow says something, "has been hurt and I can do nothing about it because some thing that wore my face and acted like me-" Jeremiah stopped then and laughed. It was bitter, it was hurt. "You understand, there's no need to go on."

He watched Thorne still, letting out a breath. "Thankfully, while you did not think of those things, Algie did on some level. Your desires and his came to a point where they intersected, even if they were something selfish, you were still helping him. He did nothing that he knew I couldn't handle and I," he smiled again, something sharp and dark, "never said you went easy on him."

Jeremiah fingered the tumblr, tapping the rim of it. "The Court is meant to be Noeh's but Melany usurped it." He sighed. "And the damn thing that wore my face escorted her back to it."

word count: 908

e1kbones