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You are so loud.
Despite the pain that cut through him, Gideon heard Frosts voice, low and smooth in his head. That sound flowed over the pain for a second like a gust of cool air, gone again just as quickly as it came.
Gideon shuffled up a little on the bed, the neat room a merciful retreat from the noise and post-fight energy of the others down in the big main room of Twig’s inn. The movement dragged a curse out of him as his muscles screamed at him to stay still but he had a job to do before he could indulge in sleep.
“Shut up, Frost.” Gideon grumbled. “Stay outta my damn head.”
I would if I could. You keep flaring up like a bonfire. It’s…uncomfortable. The cool voice came again.
The words washed through the pain for a second and Gideon took advantage. He blew out a steaming breath, then another, faded embers drifting up and away into the air.
With another long exhale, he pressed his flaming fingers over the wound in his side, shuddering while his crimson flesh hissed and blackened, wound cauterised, bleeding finally stopped.
He panted and let his head drop back onto headboard, the flames under his hand sputtering and dying out. He was too hot even for his Genasi blood. Sweat drenched him and he wondered if the Fae blade had been coated with a poison of some sort. That’d be just his luck.
“Fuck.” He murmured, the curse slurred over the iron tang of his own blood in the back of his throat, the scent of it mingling with that sickly sweet smell of his burnt flesh that was so horribly familiar, echoing up from the past unbidden. “Fuck.”
There was silence in his neat little room, just the sound of his breath and the pounding of the blood in his ears. He couldn’t bring himself to clean up. All his remaining energy was gone, and sleep was blurring his vision, the edges of the room drifting into blackness.
Why do you keep doing this to yourself? This time Frost’s voice in Gideons mind was unusually gentle.
Gideon should have known this was coming at some point, but he had thought he’d done a better job of hiding just how much these latest scraps had cost him. He hated burdening his friends. He was supposed to be the strong one. The one that doesn’t struggle to recover. Physical pain was supposed to be something he dished out, not something he bowed under.
Even still, he knew Frost was right. He didn’t need to do this this way. He could have asked Gricko to see to this wound, but that would have meant gentle and efficient hands on him, magic binding his skin together cleanly and neatly like the injury had never been there.
If Gideon was honest, he wanted the scars. He wanted the proof of his freedom on his skin. Every time he fought now, every time he got hurt in the process, it was a choice he had made. No one made choices for him. Not anymore. Not ever again.
Frowning, Gideon tried to put up his clumsily constructed mental walls to keep Frost from the memories he kept so tightly guarded, but he was exhausted and hurt and their foundations crumbled under the weight of his fatigue.
-*-*-*-
“Get up, Burn-out.” The kick in the ribs was sharp and shocking. It stole the breath from Gideon’s lungs and he curled up, choking on the fetid air of the cell as he tried to catch his breath.
“I said get up.” Another kick and a yank on one of the chains that connected him to the huge iron ring set into the wall a few feet from the charred wooden platform of his bed.
Dazed and clutching his screaming ribs, Gideon forced his body to move. If he didn’t move now, it would only get worse.
The captain grunted. “It’s been a year, Genasi, you’d think you would’ve caught on by now.”
What he had started thinking of as ‘his’ chains were released from the wall and pulled taught by the two tall guards that eyed him warily. The hobgoblin captain sneered at him as he shuffled out of the open cell towards the engine room, the guards jabbing him with their sharp prods.
The hulking metal engine seemed to buzz as Gideon approached. In any other situation, he would have been happy the machine was responding to him, but he knew what came next.
The guard captain gestured and Gideons chains were secured to the rings in the ceiling. The train hummed apologetically to life under his bare feet, sensing his presence as the manacles around his wrists began to glow and tighten.
Gideon braced himself as the magitech expanded out from the glowing metal, bladed tendrils crawling out, digging into his flesh and seeking out the burning core of him.
The pain never stopped. It never became bearable. It was a constant sick twist of pressure inside that threatened to shatter his bones and split his flesh.
He bit down on a scream. He wouldn’t give them the satisfaction.
“We’re going to Skullport to meet Captain Sharbols train. I want us there first.” The guard captain said as he came to stand in front of Gideon and used the hooked blade he carried to pull Gideon’s head down to his level. “You hear me? First into station. If you embarrass me…” He left the threat hanging in the air and Gideon didn’t bother looking up.
The guards left as the train started to move, gathering speed while the engine pulled and pulled at the energy that was Gideon’s core.
-*-*-*-
“They’re a great investment if you can break and contain them.”
The captain’s nasally voice cut through the hum of the engine, striking a discordant note. Gideon’s concentration slipped for a moment, fire flaring up through his chains before he got it under control.
“Really? They seem like more trouble than they’re worth. Especially the initial capture costs.” A second voice sniffed, sounding like the captain’s but higher, shriller. “And the upkeep is expensive, I’ve heard. Guards, food, discipline…”
“Worth it, though. You can’t beat them in terms of longevity. And the trains prefer them. The imps just don’t last, and then the engine starts to mope when they die. Even if you invest in a quality farm, you end up spending more in the long run.” Out of the corner of his eye, Gideon caught the guard captain sneering at him. “This one took two years to fully break in. Had it for six. Even with constant use, they can last a good thirty or forty years before they’re drained. If your clan doesn’t travel too much, could be twice that long.”
Feet appeared in Gideon’s line of sight, and someone tugged at his chains viciously, pain lancing through his arms.
“Did you hear what happened with Tazhoth’s clan last year?” The second voice asked. “Theirs went insane and ripped the engine apart. They had to put the whole train down.”
“Yes, well. That’s why she asked me to join her clan for the new train. She got a bad one, clearly. Should have gone to Yona with us in the first place.”
The second voice tutted. “That’s the other hassle. Replacements.”
“That’s why you leave at least some breeding stock intact when you go to get them. That’s really the...”
The feet disappeared from Gideons vision, and the voices drifted away with them. The engine thrummed at him as the hobgoblins passed out of the car.
Gideon lifted his head and straightened up. He didn’t relax, could never relax, but the strange communion he’d developed with the train gave him a measure of comfort.
“Alright then, cantankerous old bastard. Back to work,” he murmured, taking a deep breath and closing his eyes.
-*-*-*-
Gideon greeted the new guard captain with gruff courtesy, and he had received a more friendly response than he was expecting. It had taken him aback as the captain smiled and addressed him as an engineer rather than a slave.
Later that week there had been a visit in his cell and a meal - an actual real meal rather than just the subsistence rations - had been brought to him. His chains had been let down from the rings on the wall, and the captain had sat on a small chair and watched him eat, talking about how he saw the future of the engine, the train, the magitech and how he valued Gideon’s ‘contribution’, and lamented his situation.
It was the first gesture of kindness he’d experienced in six years and Gideon was, to his own disgust, obscenely grateful. As they talked, the air in his cell had become warm and his body loose and relaxed, eyes heavy.
It was only when he awoke blinking in a brightly lit, white walled room that he realised he’d been drugged. This room was nothing like any other place Gideon had been on the train. Sterile and tiled from floor to ceiling, clean metal fixtures and tables laid with bottles and blades glinting in the stark light.
The air was dry and biting cold on his stripped naked body.
“Wha-…” he started, and almost instantly his tongue became a leaden weight behind his teeth. He tried again but nothing came out.
Adrenaline surged through him and woke him all the way up. He tried to move, pulling hard against his restraints, but his arms were tethered to sturdy rings by his chains, his legs spread wide and held there by the runes set into the floor of white room.
Gideon clumsily reached for the fire inside him. He would have shouted a curse if he could as he searched frantically down into his core and tried to pull the flame to the surface. But there was nothing. Just dull embers glowing lazily under the weight of the drugs and magic of the shackles.
“You know it won’t work. You’ve tried before. Many times, I’ve been told.” The captain’s voice came from somewhere behind Gideon, but where in his cell that voice had been warm, now it was as cold as the strange room around them.
Boots clicked on the tiles of the floor and the captain appeared in Gideon’s line of sight. “The chains really are very well designed. A real feat of engineering.”
He smiled brightly, rolling his uniform sleeves up and stepped back to pull a long apron from a hook.
“When we stumbled over your kind all those decades ago, we had no idea how to control you. We lost four raiding parties before we made the first restraints.” He moved over to the slim table against one wall and picked up an evil looking syringe and a glass phial. “Dissection was obviously necessary, but even after we had the shackles, we wasted so many of you.”
The captain turned back to face him and sighed. “So our research stopped in its tracks.” He smiled, proud of his little pun. “We controlled you and the train tech was able to use you…” He shrugged and spread his hands. “That said, everything can be improved on.”
Gideon flinched back as far as he could as the captain moved into his space, unable to look away. “I’m sure you understand that if we’re going to make any new progress, we really do need to know how you work. Inside and out.”
-*-*-*-
Gideon lay face down on his cell bed while his chains were secured again, careful not to move at all as the guards left the cell, leaving him alone with the captain.
“Such lovely skin. Even like this. Especially like this.” The captain murmured with that now familiar blood-drunk, slurred intimacy in his voice that always sent a curl of revulsion through Gideon.
The heavy point of the captain’s favourite blade dragged along Gideons back. The long, bone deep incisions running the length of his spine throbbed savagely, sharp bright spikes of pain lighting up his nerves as the blade caught on the raw edges.
Gideon didn’t even have it in him to flinch anymore tonight.
The captain’s face appeared as he crouched in front of Gideon, spattered with blood, sharp teeth glinting inside a lazy, intoxicated smile. “You’ve been so helpful tonight. I think we’re really making some progress,” the captain said, free hand running over Gideon’s hair in the petting motion that had become so familiar. Even after a year of these nights, it always made his stomach twist.
Gideon wanted so desperately to get away from every single touch, but his chains held firm. Even with the work he’d been doing with the engine, his control over the magitech still wasn’t good enough to free himself when the captain came to call.
The sharp crack of the captain slapping his knee startled a noise out of Gideon that he bit down on hard before it could become a cry. He’d done enough of that. The captain had wanted to hear Gideon tonight. He’d gotten his wish as the captain always did.
“Time for bed, I think. I’ll send the healer along soon. We need you up and running again tomorrow.” the Captain said, stretching as he stood and moving out through the cell door, guards closing it behind him.
Gideon listened to the footsteps as they echoed dully away on the metal floor of the prison carriage. The wounds on his back ached in that soul-deep way they always did. He lay there, trying to breathe through it, waiting for clink-clink of the old druid’s medicine case that would come to take the evidence of this night away.
At least this time he hadn’t been left to bleed out slowly for days until he could feel death reaching for him, or had his wounds made toxic so that his body fought itself in a fevered delirium while the captain observed.
He hadn’t been forced to beg for an end to the night, bruised and bloodied, knees pressed into the rusted metal floor while the captain gripped Gideon’s hair in his clawed hand.
If Gideon has still believed in the Gods, he would have thanked them that the captain hadn’t been in a vindictive mood tonight.
It didn’t take long for the healer to arrive and start his work. Gideon was disgusted by how grateful he felt for that as the healing words washed over him, knitting his flesh back together, cleaning blood from his skin and hair.
The druid left with barely a glance at him.
Gideon curled into himself on the bed, naked and frozen, blessedly whole and pain free once again, breath slowing as he closed his eyes against the darkness.
-*-*-*-
The train was still. The engine - his engine - was dead. The old machine, tired of its servitude, had sacrificed itself to stop out here in the middle of nowhere and give Gideon his chance at freedom.
It had taken three years of slow, careful work between them to make the chains and shackles a part of him completely, finally under his control. In the end, when the final spark of magic passed through them both, it felt like an apology from the machine for the pain it was forced to put him through.
Walking away from the engine room and heading up the train, he could feel the chains flexing and stretching out in the hot air from the fire spreading out over his skin. They moved to wrap around him, glowing orange, an extension of what was left of the engine and Gideon’s rage and grief and pain.
The control room was ahead.
The door was flimsy under the weight of Gideon’s big hands as he shoved it hard. A young guard was thrown back across the room as it burst inward and came to rest on top of the controls briefly before scrambling back against the far wall.
“Please! I just work here!” The guard cried, hands outstretched to ward off danger.
Gideon cast his golden eyes over the control room. “Where is he?” he asked quietly.
The guard looked frantic as flames started to climb the walls. “He’s…he’s with the others up-train. Please…please don-…” The words were cut off, one of the chains whipping out, punching a hole through the chest of the cowering guard as Gideon turned to leave the room.
Outside, there was the sound of screaming. This time, they weren’t Gideon’s screams, and that was as it should be.
The fire spread out from Gideon. He could feel it at the edge of his mind, running along the underside of the train, creeping in through open windows and vents to feed on whatever it found in the rooms there. It ate through the train walls and doors and danced into the corridors, herding hobgoblins as it went.
Figures moved around Gideon as he walked through the train, but he brushed them all aside. His chains reached out on their own as he passed and plucked the little creatures up, tearing into them, tossing their broken and burnt bodies away.
By the time he made it through to the long guard carriage, there was blood all around him. It dripped from Gideon’s chains where they twitched restlessly in the air beside him. It covered his hands and arms, dried to rust brown on his skin.
Breathing out bright embers, Gideon watched as the remaining guards stood defiantly side by side, barricading the last half of the room, a last stand of sorts to protect their captain.
They died screaming, just as the others had. Gideon stepped over their corpses; his eyes fixed on the very last of the train’s occupants.
The captain stood in the wreckage of the guard room, eyes darting around looking for help or escape or a miracle.
“I…” The captain tried, eyes wide with fear, voice cracked and lacking its usual confidence. “We can…You-…”
Gideon kept moving, his steps steady and deliberate as he closed the gap between them.
The captain backed against the furthest wall and the feel of it at his back seemed to pull up a last reserve of defiance and spite.
He spat a curse in goblinspeak. “Worthless ash-blood! You’ll be hunted for the rest of your wretched li-…”
Gideon crossed the remaining space between them in two long strides.
His hand went round the captain’s throat easily, like it was always meant to be there, squeezing the grey flesh between his fingers. The flames from his hand crawled over the Hobgoblins skin as he squirmed, claws dragging deep into Gideons arms.
He watched goblinflesh char and blacken through the heat haze and he was suddenly completely exhausted. Too tired to care about this vicious little creature struggling for its life under the heat of his hand. Too tired even for the drawn-out retribution he’d planned during the endless nights under the hands of this monster.
He just wanted this to be over.
And then, it was.
The body in his hand was limp and when he prized his fingers open it dropped like a rag doll, a twisted broken thing at his feet.
There was no sound now except Gideon’s own breath and the steady ‘tap-hiss, tap-hiss, tap-hiss’ of blood falling from his fingers to sizzle on the scorched plating under his flaming feet.
He didn’t look back as he staggered to the open carriage door and half stepped, half fell out of the train into the green-grey haze of the swamp.
-*-*-*-
Gideon…You need to wake up now.
There was something cool on his brow and Gideon pressed into it before he was fully awake. It was blissful. A wash of blue green in a world of red.
Gideon…
A slow movement next to him brought him all the way to consciousness and he pulled away quickly, shuffling back as he looked around him.
“Wha-…?” he mumbled over a sleep dulled tongue. He blew out a breath when he saw Frost sitting by the bed. “Gods dammit, Frost.”
“You’re running a fever,” Frost murmured as he pulled his hand back.
Gideon made a face. “I’m literally made of fire, Frosty.”
Frost gave him a look and rolled his eyes. “You’re still running a fever. I’m going to get Gricko,” he said and started to stand.
Gideon jerked forward and caught Frost’s arm. Pain shot through his still healing wound and he hissed. “No need. It ain’t a fever. I always run hot after a fight. Takes a good long while for everything to settle.”
“Hmm,” Frost said. “Interesting.”
A snort of a laugh escaped Gideon as he settled back a little more comfortable now Frost had sat back down. “You think so.”
“I just assumed you could turn it on and off. Like Gricko’s wild forms or Kremy’s dark shape,” Frost said.
“Maybe that’s how it’s supposed to work.” Gideon gestured vaguely at the world. “Doesn’t work that way for me.”
Frost nodded and crossed his arms, brow creased and golden eyes watching Gideon.
Gideon felt the weight of the gaze, not expectant, just watching. He sighed as the silence stretched out to more than he could stand.
“How much did you see?”
“Of your nightmares?” Frost asked. “More than you would have liked me to, I’m sure.”
“Memories,” Gideon said, shrugging off an echo of the dark that lingered. “Nightmares are made up stuff.”
“Yes,” Frost said simply. There was another pause and he took a careful breath. “I didn’t mean to-…”
Gideon waved it away. “Not your fault. Didn’t realise how loud I was for you.” He paused and gave his friend a quizzical look. “Are we all that loud?”
“Just you.” A smile quirked a corner of Frost’s mouth. “And, surprisingly, Hootsie.”
“Huh. What’s she got to be so loud about?” Gideon asked, curious despite himself.
“Small rodents and insects, mostly.”
Gideon huffed a tired laugh and went on. “I’d have thought Twigsy or Gricko. Or Torbek. That guy has to be loud as hell.”
“It’s not that they’re not loud so much as I have to try to hear them. I have to try not to hear you.” Frost said in his usual frank way. “It’s effortless with you.”
“I’m effortless?” Gideon asked. Frost blinked and looked away as if he realised that might have too much honesty. Gideon smiled at Frost’s discomfort. It was always fun to ruffle his friend’s fur. “I don’t think anyone’s ever called me that before. ‘Nightmare fire demon’… ‘Oh god please stop burning down my business’… ‘Hey you, that’s my girlfriend’. Never ‘effortless’.”
“Yes well. We need to work on your mental defences so I or anyone else can’t go where you don’t want us, accidentally or otherwise,” Frost said, eyes finding Gideons again.
Looking away, Gideon shifted on the bed, wincing at the pain his side. “You’ve seen it now.” He said, gesturing to his scars. “Not really anything left for you to stumble over accidentally.”
He could feel Frosts gaze on him silently for a few long moments. “Does Kremy know?”
“Course he knows,” Gideon said matter-of-factly. “Maybe not about all of them, but he knows the why.”
Gideon saw Frost duck his head a touch, a little pre-emptive acknowledgement of the territory they were about the walk together.
“You know you didn’t deserve any of what happened to you, don’t you?”
“I know,” Gideon said too fast, voice hot in his own ears and his vision tinting red at the edges until he got the flare of temper under control. “I know that. Doesn’t change nothing.”
Frost frowned. “And you still scar yourself,” he said, gesturing to the wound still raw on Gideon’s side.
Gideon covered the injury with his hand. “We all cope in our own ways. How’s that endless repression of emotion workin’ out for you?” he said sharply and regretted it immediately as a hurt look crossed his friends face. “Sorry. That wasn’t fair. I just…it’s not like talkin’ about this kinda shit comes easy, man.”
Nodding, Frost just waited.
“I need them,” Gideon murmured after a minute. “They’re how I know I’m free and making my own choices. I get hurt cos of my own damn self, not because someone else decided to hurt me and I can’t fight back.” He paused and then continued, “and no one can take them away if I don’t say so.”
Gideon saw the weight of that land with Frost. He watched as it got examined in the academic way that his friend looked at everything, saw it get pulled in and put away safely like the part of Gideon that he’d shared with Frost was a precious thing.
In a way it was a relief to finally let his guard down and let someone in right to the root, to see everything.
Gideon loved his life, loved his friends, loved their adventures and even loved all the scrapes they got into, but everything they saw of him wasn’t everything there was to see.
Even Kremy, his oldest friend and deepest connection, knew all the facts, but he’d lived a relatively charmed life in comparison to Gideon, so while he could and did sympathise deeply, Kremy couldn’t feel it. Not in the same way Frost could.
Gideon had heard snippets of Frost’s story during his unguarded moments. They were alike in a lot of ways that people should never be alike. Both had been taken by strangers. Taken from warmth and comfort and home and forced into a life they never asked to be a part of.
Gideon had lost ten years to the train, but he’d been almost full grown when he was captured by the raiding party. He’d fought and lost and had been taken, but at least he got to fight. From what little Gideon did know, Frost had been a child when he was torn from his parents and placed in the monastery and that was much, much worse.
In the silence, Frost made an unguarded sound, quietly pained.
I should let you rest. The words pressed into his mind, gently pushing aside Gideon’s imagined image of a child-Frost, alone in a cold room of his own.
Gideon took a deep mental breath for the first time in what felt like weeks and as his thoughts cleared, he felt Frost pulling away. He grabbed his friend’s hand without thinking.
“Don’t. Stay for a lil’ while? Just ‘til I cool off.” he asked quietly. “I could use the company. Take my mind off it.” He didn’t know if he meant the injury or the memories, but it didn’t matter really. The pain was almost the same.
Frost paused for a long moment and searched Gideons face before he nodded. “Okay.”
Gideon smiled tiredly and tugged his friend down onto the bed, shuffling over to make room and leaning back against the headboard as Frost settled next to him, a line of cool softness down his arm where they pressed together.
“Now, I do believe you were insultin’ my brain?” he said, letting his head rest back as he watched Frost’s profile in the flickering firelight.
Frost rolled his eyes and gave Gideon a look that was simultaneously exasperated and grateful at the change of subject.
“Your defences are terrible,” Frost said and spoke over Gideon’s protests, ever the intellectual as he talked into the space between them, his low voice swirling through Gideon’s head until it drowned out the ever-present rattle of carriage wheels on track.
-*-*-*-
When Gideon woke in the early hours, he was blissfully cool again. He blinked tired eyes into the soft, dying firelight and was relieved to feel the banked fire deep inside, calm and steady.
Turning on his good side, he saw Frost still next to him, the familiar strangeness of his friend’s feline features softened in sleep, long body curled tightly in on himself, arms wrapped around his middle.
Looking Frost over, Gideon saw the slightly raised fur along his limbs and realised his friend must be cold now that Gideons inner fire and the fire in the hearth had both dimmed.
Slowly so as not to wake him, Gideon slid a hand down the length of Frosts arm and wrapped his fingers around his friend’s forearm. He let a little warmth pass through them, sending a heat haze up and through the fur there and on over Frosts clothes, warming them gently.
In his slumber Frost made a soft, grateful noise, pressing his knees into Gideons thighs and curling his fingers around Gideons forearm, the tips of his claws pressing lightly into the softer skin there in acknowledgment.
Gideon smiled at the sensation and closed his eyes again as sleep swept back in to claim him, blissfully warm and gentle and quiet.
-*-*-*-