[Mage] Wulf

[frothy-bunny.livejournal.com]

 Posted for Adam as he has no LJ, some of you may have already seen it  :~)

Pilgrim’s Process

Strawberries. That’s the first thing he’s aware. The taste of strawberries on his lips. Her lips. The taste of her strawberry lipgloss on his lips. Then laughing, scrabbling, a playful chattering somewhere just out of hearing…

He opens his eyes, the taste of her lips still on his. She’s smiling at him. She looks familiar, but then, she should do being that she’s dancing very slowly with him, arms hooked around him, her lipgloss on his lips. But no, there’s something more familiar about her.

He takes a step back, and is stopped by other people. He looks around, it’s a nightclub. Not the usual kind of nightclub he goes to – his old haunt – the 80’s night at the Student Union at his university… But it’s now, present day, and he’s…

“Wulf?”

“Yes Candi?” He says, the words forming without thinking. Candi, of course, that’s why she looks familiar. And why her dress is that short…

“Are you paying attention darling?”

“Yes.” No.

“So what did I ask you to get me from the bar?”

Wulf has no idea. He’s not concentrating, he’s trying to figure out what’s going on. This is all wrong. Alice Cooper’s Poison has left his system now and Nena is approaching a little toy shop. He shouldn’t be kissing her. The music is all wrong and still that damn chattering on some audio channel that he can’t quite make out. 

“Wulf!”

He turns – she’s impatient. She’s not longer Candi. She’s… she has long dark hair, perfect features, a black dress so simple it must be extortionately expensive. She looks familiar.

“Yes?” he says eventually.

She doesn’t reply.

Wulf looks around. The nightclub is as he remembers it – a dark, sweaty dive, his feet sticky underneath. Over there is the group of people in their forties and fifties, people who went dancing to this sort of music first time around. Over there the goths and the alternatives. The tall girl in the green jumpsuit and her short friend with the pink hair catch his eye. Is it the difference between them that does it, or the fact they’re handcuffed together by some of Anne Summers’ finest pink, fluffy stock? He doesn’t get a time to work it out before the rowdy posy of drunken chavs, dressed in Burberry and FCUK take the empty dancefloor and block his line of sight.

“What do you want?” he asks the woman in front of him.

She tilts her head at him and smiles by way of reply.

Wulf turns around, looking for something that makes sense. Nothing does.

“I’m leaving.”

She frowns at him as he turns and leaves. Wulf pushes his way through the mass of people on the edge of the dancefloor and moves to the double doors that lead outside. 

The doors open before he gets there as two bouncers interpose themselves between Wulf and the exit. There’s something wrong yet familiar about them. The bouncers aren’t the usual potbellied football hooligan types – these are toned, fit and wearing buzzcuts. Wulf looks them up and down – the yellow t-shirts bear the Union logo, but their trousers… are military fatigues…and the straps across their chests are suggestive of … M 16s…

Wulf hurries, hurries, super scurries and crosses the dancefloor once again, ready to battle with the crowds waiting at the bar, blocking his way to the back stairs and up, but the way is barred once more, and this time he knows, senses, that they have soulstones embedded in the backs of their necks.

He turns back to the beautiful girl he saw before. She’s standing in the middle of the dancefloor now… the club having grown infinitely since turning his back on her. She’s in the middle and there’s plenty of space all around her, as the clubbers back off and form a circle.

“What do you want from me?”

And suddenly it’s not the president on the line. It’s her. In the music, the speakers, beaming the words directly into his mind.

We don’t want you to leave us Wulf. You’ll be happy with us. We’ll be happy together.

And Wulf is in the middle with her. Looking at her. Staring at her.

“And what about my friends? My cabal?”

Don’t worry about them, Wulf. You’ll be happy with us, and that’s all that matters, isn’t it?

“Us?” Wulf’s eyes dart about the place, a sudden sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach.

Yes Wulf. Us. Me and my sister… My sister and I…

Wulf can suddenly tell the voices in his head apart. And understands why the woman in front of him does not speak.

“Mute…”

She smiles at him and then looks off to one side as the other Mute enters Wulf’s field of vision.

“No…”

Join us Wulf. We’ll make you happy. Happy and rich. Together we’ll do the things you only dream of.

The smiles turn sinister.

And we know what you dream of…

They assail him with images of violence, of sex, of women he has used and thrown away, of pre-dawn escapes and broken hearts. He winces at the mental assault and still that damn chattering continues. He drops to one knee and clutches his head in his hands.

“Make it stop! Make it stop!”

Then Join Us.

“No. I will not worship your demon!” He spits the words out, the mental assault continuing.

Then our Master will destroy you… and all you love…

Wulf stands, his body wracked with pain. 

“I will not bow before a demon…”

Come Forth Our Master! They scream inside his head. Come Forth Demon! Come Forth Lucifer! Come Bearer of the Morning Light!

The silence is immediate. Deafening. Disconcerting. Wulf is immediately free of the mental assault. The twins look past him at some point behind him. He turns, slowly, fearfully, afraid of what he will see.

It’s not what he expects.

Demons don’t wear Mary-Janes. Nor knee high socks. Nor sensible pleated skirts that reach the knees… nor in fact the sensible Catholic Schoolgirl outfit that confronted him. And while demons were famous for having horns, none of them wore their hair braided up.

“Hello Wulf” the schoolgirl said.

“Hello Dawnbringer,” Wulf replied.

“You’re a meanie. You’re a bad man. You treat other people like they’re something to use and throw away. You suck them dry and spit them out. You break them like something that doesn’t matter. You’re a meanie.”

“Look Dawnie, I didn’t mean…”

“That’s beside the point, Wulf… or maybe it is the point. You did it anyway.”

“Dawnie, give me another chance…I can…”

“Another chance Wulf?” She cuts him off mid-sentence again. “I can arrange that.”

She reaches behind her back and pulls out the largest revolver Wulf has ever seen, adopts a shooter’s stance and calmly points it at his chest.

“What will you do this time?”

She cocks the gun and the chattering in his head reaches a crescendo.

Wulf looks at her, then the nightclub as a whole. The Mute twins are behind him, equidistantly spaced around an imaginary circle with Dawnbringer. The four soldier-bouncers are on either side of him.

“What will you do Mister Wulf?” Dawnbringer pulls the trigger, denying him a response. 

Time slows. Wulf watches the reaction take place, the bullet being expelled from the barrel of the gun by a chemical reaction. He sees the shockwave caused by the accelerating projectile. He sees the bullet flying towards him, as if flying through treacle. And he knows what to do.

“Zabimaru! Howl!” Wulf loses himself in the moment, howling the last word out. The girl in the green jumpsuit and her girlfriend jump out of the audience towards him, flicking each other up into the air, the handcuffs stretching and becoming just lengths of chain tying them together and defining the parabola of their movement.

The girls reach him as he holds out his left hand…the instant they touch him, Wulf knows that he is unstoppable. A transmutation occurs as he closes his hand – flesh turning to steel and he passes the blade that is Zabimaru across this body, the wicked metal fins whistling. He lets go briefly, turning the sword through ninety degrees so the flat of it presses against his back. In an instant, his right catches hold of the largest of the fins as the sword emerges from behind him. With a move tempered in desperation he uncrosses his arms, letting the momentum of his left extending drive his right and bringing the right up as he lets go of the blade again.

Then time returns and there is a spark as the bullet is impossibly cut in half by the improbably playful Zabimaru. Wulf catches the sword by the hilt as gravity brings it down, his body instantly shifting into an impractical swordfighting pose – left hand out, as if pushing an impossible door, right leg sweeping back as his arm makes a triangle with the floor.

Dawnie sneers at him as Mute and her twin sister thump to the floor, both killed by the same bullet.

That brief moment is all he gets before the Soldiers are on him, jumping out of the audience like canary shirted ninja. Wulf cuts them down one at a time, a blur of steel that he knows he can only achieve with Zabimaru in his hands.

Dawnbringer embodies her name as she becomes engulfed in incandescent flames. She throws a bolt of fire at Wulf, which he bats away with his sword.

“Stop it Dawnie…”

She throws another firebolt at him. And another. Wulf takes a step forward with each deflection, quickly crossing the ground between them until he stands within striking distance of her.

“I’m sorry Dawnie…”

His voice is quiet, but strong.

“I’m sorry I didn’t pay attention. I’m sorry I said the wrong thing. I’m sorry I hurt you. I’m sorry Dawnbringer.”

Wulf drops the sword.

“I’m sorry.”

He opens his arms to embrace the burning Dawnbringer.

“I’m sorry.”

She moves to him, holding him. The fire burns, but doesn’t hurt. It engulfs him and as it burns him to his core, she says, “Maybe I’m not the one you need to apologise to…”

And then it all goes dark…

… and Scott and Ramona walk towards the door to nowhere in the middle of the television.

Wulf blinks and rubs the sleep from his eyes. He rises from the couch where he has ostensibly fallen asleep and uses an oversized remote to turn the home cinema system off. He picks an empty Domino’s pizza box up off the floor and pads into the kitchen.

From the fridge, Wulf takes a carton of orange juice and drinks half of it down, cold against his teeth.

He wipes his mouth with his arm and says to no one in particular: “My shrink is going to have a field day with me…”

And somewhere…on an audio channel he can’t quite hear…a monkey laughs…