pennysheets | A Smarter Plan - for @verynormalturnipseller

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chase collins,
psl

A Smarter Plan - for @verynormalturnipseller

More power wasn't the answer. He realized this after he got the power from his father and the ressurrection still failed. It was something he wasn't doing right.

Chase didn't stalk the Ipswitch boys to try and take their power. He stalked them until he found their semi-secret little spell chamber, broke through their pathetic wards, and read all their books and records. He needed a proper spell for this. He just didn't know what it was.

He didn't get the spell from their books, but he did get a lead. Darklings, the spirits he summoned, could be made tangible and permanent, he learned. It had been done exactly three times in the boys' family records: once in medieval Europe in the 1400s, once in New England before the civil war, and once in fucking... San Francisco, almost a decade ago. There wasn't much to go on, but he thought he could probably use the same kind of magic to sniff out a former spirit in a crowd if he had to.

So he books himself plane tickets to California, hires himself a car once he gets there, and starts driving, with a little locator spider sitting on the dash, scurrying left and right as it seeks similar summoning magic to itself, acting like a compass. Wherever this former darkling is, Chase is going to find him.

And then-- he's not sure yet. Maybe dissect him.

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Ning is watching bison. The sun's going and he'll get chased off soon, but he spends any day he can get away with in Golden Gate Park, and the big, shaggy creatures and their vast serenity are one of his favorite parts. So long as he hasn't been actively hassled away for being obviously homeless--which he is, even if that's the least of his problems--he'll stay here, or in the rose garden or the woody areas. He likes quiet, and brightness, and for things to be pretty. That's about all he has left to like.

There's a typically San Franciscan fog creeping in, quickening the hazy sunset. It'll probably start raining soon. Usually does. He doesn't feel the cold, so he doesn't budge.

The spider leads him in circles, enough that he's starting to think he's not got the spell's parameters right, but then he finds himself at the entrance to a park. A very big park. What a darkling would be doing here, he has no idea, but the magic in the spider is very insistent this time.

So he parks the car and climbs out, looking around. He has no desire to pay any entrance fees, so he just flicks himself into ghost form and drifts invisibly through the gates, in search of the source of the darkling magic. The spider gets levitated over his palm, and he goes slowly, to feel for the direction of the magic rather than having to watch it.

He sees the bison before the person. Jesus Christ, those are big.

Ning is, begrudgingly, aware of the world around him. He can ignore the weather all he wants, but at a certain point, that attracts attention. It's getting to the point in the day where he needs to decide what he's doing tonight, finding somewhere quiet outside, finding a chair at a library until it closes, just wandering...? It's easier for him than living people like him, but he still doesn't like attracting trouble.

It's going to be dark and damp. He can find a comfortable corner in the trees and avoid notice, probably. He takes one last look at the bison, smiling because they're cute and he's a simple soul, really, and then sighs as he turns to go. His hair's starting to hold onto droplets from the fog. He pulls his hood up, because that's what a real person would do.

The movement catches Chase's attention, and the spider floating in the air in front of him is straining in that hooded figures direction. Is that his darkling?

He lets the ghostliness melt away, forming up into a solid person again, and lets the spider turn to ash in the humid air. "You," he says, eyes fully black still, ready to pull in power if he needs it. It might be familiar to Wen Ning, it's the sign of any witch with their magic active.

Ning's gotten pretty good at avoiding trouble. There are various techniques, depending on the audience, from playing into the stereotype of the sloppy, goofy college student he once was to acting like a lost tourist without much English, but it all comes down to instinct. And instinct says get the fuck out of here. He spins on a heel and bolts.

Unfortunately he's nowhere near cover. It's all lakes and fields around here, no woods or gardens. But he's still quick, and if he's lucky that rain will start in earnest. Yup. The plan is run.

Of course he'd bolt. Of course he did. Chase takes off after him. "Stop!" he shouts ahead of him, then realizes he's being stupid, just running after someone when he has other options. He stops, then just disappears again, zooming forward as if part of the heavy mist to try and get into the former darkling's path and cut him off, reforming ahead of him.

He didn't really have a lot of hope this would work, but he's still too stubborn to just give up. He's fast, and, well, alright, this is still not a great place for an escape. He's still got fields to run around on. But. Fucked if he's going to just stop running!

He... did not account for mud.

His strongest emotion as he skids straight into Chase instead of ducking around him is embarrassment. He used to get regular participation ribbons at every track meet! Sometimes a third place if someone better was out sick! But he hasn't tried to run all out in a while.

So. Crash.

That wasn't really what Chase had been expecting. He can't go insubstantial in time, and they both go down in a tangle of limbs, Chase yelping in surprise. He sounds a lot less intimidating when he's landing on his ass in the damp grass, at least. He sounds like a teenaged kid.

Ning's never been prone to physical violence. He was an unnaturally peaceful toddler. But no one is such a saint as to not feel a moment's satisfaction in knocking down a scary, magical threat and hearing it react like a startled puppy.

He rolls to disentangle himself immediately, though, because it's a very abstract satisfaction. He doesn't really think he's going to get away, but he's not going to stay on the ground and make it easier!

"Wait!"

Chase rolls onto one elbow, and lashes out with magic rather than a hand, though the hand goes up as if to grab, as well. The power will latch onto anything it can catch: foot, elbow, whatever. It's like strings, threads of magic, trying to trap and hold.

He wasn't even all the way up when he gets yanked back down, and it's all he can do to catch himself on one hand and knee rather than wind up face down. He tends to ignore physical discomfort if at all possible, but he still feels it. He does his best to glare at Chase--his best is not very good--but there's apparently nothing else he can do.

Yeah, the glare isn't stopping Chase. Chase isn't easily intimidated. (Flustered, yes; intimidated, no.)

The magic stays in place, this time. Chase isn't risking him getting away again. "You. You're the darkling," he says, trying to get his breath. "Aren't you."

That's not the word he knows, but it's not hard to pick out context clues here. "Probably," he says sullenly, voice a little... rusty. Not hoarse. It's not like he gets sick. But he tries not to talk if he can avoid it, and sometimes he goes days, weeks in silent invisibility.

"Where's the witch who made you?" Chase demands, picking himself up, but still keeping one hand extended and clenched to control the magic. The book hadn't given a name, just the location and general date range, and it's entirely possible that some witch might come running to try and rescue their pet project.

Or friend, or family member. The amount of time and power it must have taken wouldn't be done just for fun. He would, honestly, be surprised if the witch was still a alive... but it's possible.

Some of the fight visibly goes out of him when the subject is introduced. His eyes fall to the muddy grass. His shoulders set and he just shakes his head. He's not talking about that with a stranger. What's he going to do, kill him again?

Probably not alive, then, given that look. Well, it's what he'd half-expected. "I need to know how he did it," Chase says tightly, still holding him caught by the ankle. "Do you know?"

He might not. Whoever it was might not have bothered to tell him-- might not have lived long enough to tell him, even. But it's a start.

Ning pulls away from his hand testily but doesn't try to run again. "No. I never understood that stuff." He has a faint accent and a low, soft voice. Could be any quiet college student. "Can I go now?"

It was his sister that tried to turn their friend's strangeness into something she could make sense of. He liked the idea of magic that was only itself and never got terribly interested in her theories.

"Of course not!" Chase snaps, fingers tightening on the magic holding Ning in place. "I need to know how he did it, and you're my only lead. No one else has done what he did in two hundred years!"

"Good." He's not mad. He couldn't be mad. Not at them. But this is not a pleasant way to exist, and he wouldn't see the exhausting, static loneliness inflicted on anybody else. "Leave it alone."

"I can't. I need to know how it was done. I have to. I can't--" He cuts himself off, expression pained, then firms it up into determination. "Come on. Where are you staying? We can get your things. I'll bring you back there when I've figured you out." Provided figuring him out doesn't kill him. He hopes it won't. It would be like destroying a work of art.

He'll do it if he has to, but he hopes it doesn't have to.

Ning eyes him for a long, judgmental moment. Running isn't going to get him out of this, fine. Cooperating for at least a little while is probably necessary. But he doesn't have to be pleasant about it. He's being kidnapped. Sort of. Corpse-napped. "These are my things." He shrugs the shoulder his backpack dangles off of.

Chase frowns, looks him over, then frowns some more. "Why is that all you have?" Surely whoever brought him back would have ensured that he was taken care of. Able to go back to the life he lost. Wouldn't that have been the point?

"I don't need a tent, and carrying one cues people to chase you off." It might be nice to have one, sometimes, but he feels faintly guilty whenever he considers it. Real people who sleep and get sick from exposure need them more.

"I mean, you're homeless? With no stuff? And no people?" Chase clarifies, sounding incredulous and, maybe, a little offended. This person is a miracle. A once in a century work of magic and will. And he's just living like a bum?

The judgement that he's learned to ignore suddenly feels a little more personal from someone who at least thinks they know something about him. "My people are gone. Leave your ghosts where they belong." The dignity of a decent rest, and life for the living.

It'd probably be even worse that the judgement comes not for Wen Ning himself, but for whoever brought him back without providing for him. That's just wrong.

"I can't," he says tightly. His parents won't end up like this, because they're rich. "But at least I can make sure you aren't out in the damn rain. Come on."

And he doesn't even take a step, he just turns them both into mist-ghosts with no more warning than that, melding with the rain before coalescing into cold and speed, as he whisks them to his hotel room.

It's not instantaneous, there's the feel of travel, that they're flying somewhere very quickly and weightlessly, until they're seeping through an open window and into a very expensive-looking hotel room.

Ning backs hurriedly into a corner, drawing his arms up around his chest and trying not to whinge. He never had a sense for this magic stuff. It makes him disoriented at best, scared and hunted when he's not at his best. He felt a bit kidnapped before. Now he feels a lot kidnapped. He goes as far as to pull his hood back down over his face, a gesture he knows is childish but makes him feel a bit better.

Chase lets him. He can't get out the door before Chase can grab him again, and he's aware, distantly, that he's probably not going about this the right way. He does take a minute, himself, to put his face in his hands and scrub, half to try and focus, half to get the rest of the mud off from their fall.

Mud. There's mud all over his clothes. And the darkling's.

He rouses himself to get to his suitcase. "You're about the same height as me... these should fit okay," he says, holding out fresh jeans and a shirt. "They're clean. And dry. You can change in the bathroom, it's right there."

He doesn't have enough principles to refuse. He's cold and wet and it's this guy's fault. Well. His fault that it's as bad as it is. It's a rainy night. He was going to end up this way anyhow.

He snatches the clothes like Chase has a poisonous snake on hand to strike at him and bolts for the bathroom. He doesn't have any hope of escaping. Hotel bathrooms don't have that kind of windows. But he needs the space and the quiet to collect himself or he's...

Well, he probably won't do anything. He never does. It'll still feel better.

Chase lets him do that, too. He strips his own muddy clothes off, bundling them into the hotel laundry bag, and gets changed, too, trying to decide whether to just leave them and fly home tonight without them, or actually send them down to laundry and leave in the morning. Maybe it'll depend on the darkling.

Who is still in the bathroom. He sits on the end of the bed, tapping his fingers on his knee restlessly. He needs to talk to him. Maybe not apologize, but-- explain. He can explain. Get the guy's name. Surely he has one.

Eventually he has to return to reality. The bathroom is as much prison as sanctuary. He can't get out of this unless he faces it. But if he weren't a coward, none of them would have to be here, so...

He twists up his wet hair sticks a hotel-complimentary plastic comb through to keep it in a messy bun, because as sour as he's feeling toward his kidnapper, he is not going to go about dripping, and it takes hair like his a long time to dry. His borrowed clothes don't come with a hood to hide inside. He stares himself down in the mirror, wishing he knew how to look mean, and finally emerges, eyes on the floor. He's more sulky and uncooperative than defiant, but he's trying.

Chase looks him over when he finally does come out, eying the clothes. Chase is broader than Wen Ning, but not by a lot. He looks better, cleaned up and out of the shrouding hoodie.

"What's your name?" he asks. Please have a name. If the darkling resurrection process erases memories he's going to have a problem.

He's already missing the hoodie. He wiped down his backpack and left it on the counter by the sink to dry, so he doesn't even have anything to cling to. "Nick." He hasn't had a lot of use for his English name in years, but it lends him a little distance, a piece of himself he can refuse without too much of a logistical challenge. "I can't tell you anything. I never understood how any of it worked." He was just willing to accept magic.

"Maybe, maybe not. But you had to have seen some of it. And I can study you, try to map out the magic myself," Chase says. Then, a pause, and, "I'm Chase. I just ascended in July." If the darkling even knows what that is... maybe he was the younger brother of a witch. Only one in a generation can have the Power, is what his father and those idiot kids' books seemed to say, and it's not like a brother would hide something like that.

Would they? Chase wouldn't have, if he had one, he's pretty sure.

The word isn't familiar, but the weight he puts on it is. Chase is fairly new to his magic, then. He's not sure what that means for his dead captive. Being studied certainly doesn't sound like a good time. Is it better or worse to be studied by an amateur? "What does that mean? Mapping magic." If he's going to get disassembled in the process--

He actually can't decide if that makes him want to fight more or less.

"I don't know yet. Probably just trying to see what magic there is on you. In you." He makes a helpless little noise, putting his head into his hands a moment. "I've tried summoning darklings. Spirits like you. But I can't make them last. If I can just figure out how you're still here--" He can fix it.

He hopes he doesn't need their actual bodies. Maybe Nick's witch put him into a new body. A dead one? A braindead one? Displaced a spirit to take theirs? He doesn't know. He needs to find out.

"What do you remember about the witch who brought you back?"

A small, bitter sound with not much in common with a laugh slips out. What does he remember about the lodestar of his life and death? He's torn between clamming up and babbling, because he's kept a lot repressed the last few years. It might feel good to say some of it. "I remember as much as anybody. What do you want to know?"

So his memory from being alive was intact. That wasn't necessarily going to be the case, but it's a relief that it is. "Who was he? To you?" Chase starts with. "Why did he bring you back?"

Ying-ge is a raw wound, and the probing does nothing to endear the witch to him. But maybe he can make the necessary point again. "He thought this was better than me being dead. It's not. Whoever it is, let them go."

Chase grits his teeth, then spits out, "It's my parents. Okay? They're dead and I have to fix it." Because it's his fault. All his fault. He has to make it right, even if it kills him instead, because it's his fault. "And you still didn't answer my question."

Edited (actual icon choice) 2024-09-19 03:22 (UTC)

He softens, but he doesn't budge. There are only so many ways to say stop, though, and he's already tired of repeating himself. "We grew up together. Not related, but same apartment building, my grandmother went to the same church as his... family." Both their home lives were a bit complicated, strengthening the bond between the misfit children. "Same class as my older sister. She's the one who could keep up with him. I just tagged along." There's already a faint rasp in his voice. This is more than he's spoken in... years, maybe.

"He must have cared about you a lot to bring you back," Chase says, almost a protest. "That's a lot of magic. A lot of power." A lot of years off of his own life. Unless he found a work-around for that too, somehow.

But even if he had, no one would go through that just to say they could. Even Chase isn't that arrogant, and he knows what he is.

While he suspects his sister and the challenge of it all were bigger factors, he can't pretend not to have been extremely aware of that fact in the years since. "Another reason I'd rather he hadn't done it." Without paying that toll, would Ying-ge have been better protected?

"How much longer did he live? After he finished the spell?" Chase asks, but only after a pause, and actually weighing whether he needs to know.

He does need to know. He's okay with dying in this, he's kind of half planning on it, but knowing for sure would be better than just thinking about it. And he might as well get the worst of the questions about this guy's past out of the way first.

"It wasn't why he died." He suspects now that Ying-ge was in much deeper than he understood, maybe even than his sister ever knew. "But he wasn't as strong after that. It didn't help, at least."

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A Smarter Plan - for @verynormalturnipseller

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