Snippets

AN: This is an AU where Benehin and the Slorns succeeded in trapping Nico under the Shaper Mountain. I don't know if it's possible at all; I personally think that the chances of it are infinitesimally small. But I had the idea and I couldn't get it out of my head, and I guess I just wanted to play around with it.

They all said Eli Monpress was the greatest thief to have existed, perhaps since the beginning of time, since the birth of the gods, but she knew that it wasn't true.

Nico sat in the dark, waiting. Josef was coming today.

Over time – she didn't know how long; it was always difficult to tell time in the dark – she had gotten used to the oppressive air of the mountain, the evasiveness of light, the scattered remains of what could have been memories for her, had her mind not failed to reach that far back.

It was ironic in a way. The Shaper Mountain, she was told, had once been her home. Now it was her home again, though really she'd opt for the word prison. And though she lived in it, saw the crumbling rooms, the rotting stairways, the furnishing that was so lifeless without spirits in it, no memory stirred in her mind. She might as well have been imprisoned elsewhere.

She supposed it was better this way. If she remembered, it would hurt more.

Nico tried to breathe, but the air was as heavy as it was thin; nothing fresh in this abode of hers. No, the fresh air and the cool breeze were out there cowering away from the mountain. She'd never breathe good air again.

She sat up from the lump of rock she'd been sitting on. Josef was coming today. At least she thought it was today; time was so had to keep track of, especially with the pangs of hunger gnawing at every waking moment. Maybe it would be tomorrow or the next day. It was all the same to her. Might as well be today. She walked down what must have been a hallway before, seeking the part of the mountain that was easiest to access from the outside. She wouldn't be able to escape the barrier but Josef could come in. They had a meeting spot prearranged.

She was so hungry, but she wasn't so weak, so lonely yet that she'd forget herself. Her will clamped down on the hunger, storing it away in its own jail, in a part of her mind mightier than the Shaper Mountain.

Technically Josef Liechten wasn't allowed to visit her. Nobody was. But the League had sense enough to know that she was more tractable if once in a while she got what she wanted, and nobody would miss a bad bounty hunter anyway, so they turned a blind eye to those rare times that Josef defied them. Eli came once in a while too, but Nico supposed he was busier, with that million gold standard bounty of his. He visited less often, but it was okay.

The room she prepared was small and low, but it was near a cavity in the wall of the mountain where Josef would still have access to healthy atmosphere (and quick escape should he need it). She sat waiting. For an hour. Or a year, she didn't know.

When he came, she forgot the dark, the hunger, the presence of death and decay, and it was like she could have been the Shepherdess with all the joy and power that pooled in her.

"I'm sorry I couldn't come sooner," was his immediate statement, but she only shook her head. He was here now. They only had so much time before he'd need to leave again, and none of it should be wasted on regret and apologies.

She smiled, the muscles on her cheeks thin and rickety. "Sit down, and you can tell me about everything."

And he did. They sat, for hours, enclosed in comfortable dimness, as he related the adventures he and Eli undertook – heists so dangerous he thought he'd lose some limbs, and others that were so easy Eli should not have been given credit for stealing, but rather, receiving an almost free giveaway. Josef was less involved and interested in Spirit politics; the red-haired Rector was somewhere up and about, occasionally pestering Eli with that dog of hers; Alric crossed paths with him once, but they didn't talk about Nico. The Lord of Storms? He had no idea. He didn't think much about them. He thought about... well, it didn't matter.

Nico giggled. "You haven't changed."

"Why would I?" Josef shrugged.

She lifted her hand, as if to stroke his cheek, but she didn't touch him. Already he was paler than when he came; there was a greenish palour to his skin that foretold the effects of staying with her. He noticed, and gave her a small smile.

"This place is getting worse, isn't it?" she whispered. "Each time you visit, your stay is getting shorter."

He snorted. "You know I would stay longer if you don't kick me out."

"You know that I kick you out, because you'd die if I don't."

"You don't know that!"

"I don't want to try!"

They elapsed into a heated silence, blanketed in unspoken words too frail and too dangerous to say. Nico ached, wanting to eat away the distance between them.

"Maybe it's better if you forget," she said softly after a while. He just snorted again, but he didn't deny what they both knew. That she was poison. That really, no matter how many things Eli stole, he would never be the thief that demons were, never steal life and past and future, never steal the very essence of all things.

"I will never forget," he said. And he reached out to touch her cheek, and immediately the cuff at his wrist decomposed into grimy threads that fell about their feet. She looked away.

When he left, she memorized the way his shoulders were outlined by the graying light outside the cavern, the way the Heart was slung across his back, the stubborn set of his shoulders. She ingrained it in her mind. Then she waited.