Arc F1.10 | Chapter 11: Too Much Imagination

“Does it really not bother you?” Baylor asked in a rare moment of speaking Baalphorian while Westrial was lingering nearby. While the girl glanced over to where he and Darrian were standing, surrounded by various amounts of gore and viscera, she said nothing about being excluded, and really, Baylor wasn’t even sure why he was excluding her.

Wanting to have a single person who had no knowledge of how his mind worked? Not wanting to burden the teenager with the reality of what he was? Avoiding the risk that she might not like him anymore?

All three things, perhaps; mostly, the last. Baylor didn’t want to have to deal with whatever the fuck his black knot was liable to do, were Westrial to reject his friendship after learning what sorts of things went on inside his head. They weren’t things he was ashamed of—Emilia in particular had always been very firm in her descriptions of him as perfect, regardless of his inclinations and kinks. At the same time, it was impossible not to logically know they were strange and something of a nuisance—his desire to kill was the primary reason being with Emilia was so impossible, after all.

Darrian’s fingers brushed over his cheek, running down along his jaw. The sensation sent a shiver through him, delicate and caring as it was. Darrian’s hands were also covered in blood, and in a way, it felt like the other boy was marking him—as what, Baylor had no idea. It didn’t matter: the movement, the marking, felt like something important and irrevocable.

“No, it doesn’t,” Darrian replied, and Baylor thought it said a lot about his friend that he didn’t need to clarify what the fuck he was asking. Maybe it was because they were surrounded by death, his joy and background arousal clear through his vitals. Maybe it was that Darrian seemed to just get him, easy as that, as though they had been best friends forever—and that’s what Darrian was, wasn’t it? His best friend, at least to him.

Hopefully, Darrian holding Levi as his best friend—even if neither ever used such terms—wouldn’t cause his black knot to lay jealousy and hatred over his distant cousin?

Softly, the taller boy tilted Baylor’s head up; then, Darrian was leaning in to press a lingering kiss to his forehead, and Baylor knew those lips would come away bloody, and that just… it made his heart clench. Without thought, his arms wrapped themselves around Darrian, pulling them closer, closer. A quiet hum escaped Darrian—something warm and content and so entirely unafraid, and it occurred to Baylor that he wasn’t sure Darrian had ever been afraid of him.

“I’ve been a little wary of you at times,” Darrian admitted when Baylor asked about it, shifting into Lüshanian as Westrial bullied her way into their hug. Diligently, Darrian pressed a kiss to her forehead as well, and something about the way he smiled at her was different from the way Darrian smiled at him.

Once more, Baylor poked at Halen, demanding that he look at the differences in Darrian’s vitals and see if anything shifted in Darrian’s vitals when looking at him or if he was imagining things. It was annoying, but somehow he and Halen had ended up working together—something it seemed they’d be doing for a while, especially with how weird Janie was being. As far as he knew, he and his brothers were the only people outside of Halen’s group who knew what was happening with Janie—at least, who fully knew. Despite how much Emilia seemed to chronically forget that the three of them weren’t really friends with most of their friend group—they tolerated them for her, they were nice to them for her—almost everyone else knew they weren’t friends.

The three of them liked Simeon—who could not—and regardless of anything with Emilia, they would protect the other boy as needed, help him out whenever necessary.

He and Darrian were now friends—best friends—which effectively meant he was stuck with the three of them forever and ever now.

Generally, the three of them were friendly enough with Levi, and to a lesser extent, Samina, and if Emilia vanished into the wind, they would probably still hang out with their distant cousins—probably not as much, but it wasn’t the same apathetic regard they had for everyone else.

They were all connected, but it was a vague connection. They all existed, and their lives were entwined, but… but Baylor felt like a change was coming. There was something in the air—hidden within the situation—that was drawing them together in a way that seemed impossible to break.

It was the kids and teenagers they were picking up, he thought. It seemed a bit counterintuitive, but there was something within the eyes of a child that always seemed to call to most black knots—there was a reason the clones were such good guardians to baby clones, allowed to raise them when many civilians thought baby clones would be better served being raised by normal people. Beside the fact that normal people would never be able to handle young clones, guardian clones usually loved their charges. It wasn’t an always thing, but it was common enough.

Loren loved them, despite their own vague regard for him. At the same time, Baylor had no doubt that he would love any child he was left responsible for. Maybe they would be baby clones, one day—although, with his inclinations, he doubted he’d ever be allowed to raise and mould such young minds. More likely, they would be the children of his friends—of Emilia and Simeon and Darrian, perhaps of his Baxter cousins.

The children and teenagers their group was gathering… Baylor had no doubt Emilia would love them. Somehow, that felt like enough to love them as well, and maybe things wouldn’t go the way he was thinking they would, but he could see it—could see a world where a handful of their friends adored those children, and children were often the way people found their lives entwined, forever. Once that happened… Baylor had a feeling he was going to be stuck with not just the kids but with a number of his childhood friends as well. It wouldn’t matter if something happened to Emilia—which, fuck that thought—they would be stuck together, stuck caring for one another, until the end of time.

In the background, Darrian was explaining a bit of his personality to Westrial, a bubble of privacy wrapped around them while the rest of their group cleaned up the few stragglers and Curtisal worked to get through the security system that one of Fräthk’s people had activated shortly before someone—probably Westrial—blew their head up. Brain matter everywhere. Very cool. Halen had shared some of his opinions on her abilities with him, and fuck was it going to be a problem if the girl had an illegal irregular deviation. That sort of shit would be tested for during a D-Levels test—was one of the few things tested for during post-natal genetic tests.

In other words, if the girl went back to Baalphoria with them, she might be killed simply for existing. This obviously wasn’t going to be happening, but it made everything soooo much messier. Halen had suggested Dion—where the Blood Rain General could effectively claim the girl has his and have her excluded from similar, Dionese laws—or perhaps Crishar—where Prince Meridian might be able to protect her.

“We’ll keep her safe,” Halen had assured him, and it was such a strange thing to trust Halen in this; yet, Baylor did.

If Halen said he would make sure Westrial was protected for an irregular deviation she had no choice in having and had shown no inclination towards using for anything but defence of herself and her allies—and even that, just barely—Baylor knew the other boy was telling the truth. At the same time, it was hilarious that this conversation had been followed up by Halen creating a group relay with him and his brothers, all so he could share what was happening with Janie.

The fact that they didn’t like Janie enough to try and defend her, and instead, could look at all of Halen’s data with cold, logical eyes, all while Baylor was low-key panicking about what would happen to Westrial was funny—tragic, in a way, but funny.

The general consensus between all of them was that while Janie’s vitals could simply be off because no one could ever truly predict how their body and mind would behave within the context of any situation—even one they’d been in before—combined with everything else…

“Personally, I’d just kill her,” Baylor had stated. Taelor had shot him down, stating that unless they were absolutely sure that Janie was a liability, Emilia would be upset if they killed her. While he had tried to argue back that Emilia would also be upset if Janie killed someone doing fuck knew what, his older brother had shot him down again. Oddly, it had felt as though Halen were almost inclined to side with him in the question of what should we do with Janie?

Baylor wasn’t sure he liked being so cordial with Halen much.

Regardless, the rest of Halen’s group were also in agreement that Janie was, more likely than not, both faking her breakdown and completely untrustworthy. Miles was also horrified, having now read over a collection of incident reports from Leerin about various times Janie had fucked off during emergencies.

The girl was playing with fire—that was how Baylor saw it. Had Janie vanished during some incident that resulted in someone dying? Emilia being hurt? Emilia being sad because someone else was hurt?

Had Janie really been stupid enough to think she would survive something like that? Did she really think that, if she was fucking around now and someone got hurt that she wouldn’t suffer the consequences?

“I don’t care either,” Westrial said, slanting herself further into Baylor’s space—and seriously, what had she and Darrian been talking about!?

Dutifully, [[Blissful Silence]] replayed the conversation for him, and while Darrian had definitely been light in his explanations that Baylor enjoyed killing and was turned on by the violence and gore, he had explained enough for Westrial to get it.

[Darrian:I thought she should know, and that you should know she doesn’t care.]

[Baylie:and if she did care?]

[Darrian:I made an educated guess that she wouldn’t. I’ve been watching her throughout our travels, and she has never flinched away from you or the violence.]

Baylor wasn’t sure he entirely agreed with Darrian’s assessment of why he was so sure Westrial wouldn’t care about his inclinations—the girl might have started using her irregular deviations a bit during this last battle, but it was clear she didn’t like using it much which definitely implied that she had some view or another about violence—but the other boy was right: he did appreciate knowing that she didn’t seem to care.

“I’ll never hurt you or anyone important to you,” he whispered, tugging the girl close to him. “You’ll be protected, no matter what horrors exist within you.”

Between him and Darrian, Westrial tensed, only relaxing when Darrian soothed her and promised that no one else could hear them and that only one other person who was monitoring the battle had been able to guess at what sort of abilities she had. Technically, BJ also knew that something strange had been happening, but he had allowed Halen to brush the strangeness aside.

For as much as Halen could be an ass—a stupid, perfect ass—the guy understood that people with irregular deviations were often maligned for no good reason. In no world would Halen ever risk Westrial’s safety—not that this meant a lot when they had no idea how much the OIC had already seen of their thoughts.

Usually, the OIC took a similar stance of not wanting people to be criminalized simply because of something within their genetics. If they used those irregular deviations for crimes? Sure, then the OIC would slap monitors on them, watching for them on security footage and alerting law enforcement so they could be taken into custody. When it came to lavender codes, there was a special unit that monitored them when they were young, while functions that didn’t rely on the OIC were placed into their Censors to keep them under control, and it was no wonder so many had those Censors removed, illegal models installed before they went to work for some criminal organization or another.

Dyads had their containment laws.

People like Westrial were killed at birth, once again by that special unit.

It was funny how the entire continent saw The Black Knot as the monsters, when really, there were people far more cold-hearted out there. Having just been thinking about children and how easy they were to care for, Baylor tried to imagine it—tried to imagine slitting the throat of a newborn, all because they had a dangerous power tucked away inside them.

Over the grinding of machinery and Curtisal calling that he’d managed to get the security system down, Baylor turned out of the grasp of Westrial and added stomach bile—the only thing in his stomach—to the contents of the ground.

“Fuck, Baylie! Are you okay?” Darrian was calling, Halen immediately there as well, poking around and asking what was wrong.

“Huh…” Halen replied as Baylor was brushing aside Darrian and Westrial’s concern—not to mention the messages from his brothers, asking what was wrong. For Halen, Baylor had decided to send him his exact thoughts—he was now actively contributing to Halen’s development of the stalking function because why the fuck not? Also, it meant he got to harass Halen a bit with his deranged thoughts, which was a plus—not that the guy actually seemed to have much of a reaction to his thoughts on murder and violence and sex.

“Huh what?” Baylor asked, accepting water from BJ, who had descended from his hiding spot now that virtually everyone was dead, Bireth and Taelor heading back after snuffing out one last runaway.

“That’s just… such a reaction? It’s… not weird, but even if I think about killing a baby… like, I don’t feel good, but I’m not gonna be sick either? I wonder if it's because your imagination is so intense? I’m so curious as to what other reactions you can get from your body just through your imagination. Some reactions are normal—most people can imagine something arousing and feel the physiological effects, right? But other things, like heartbreak or disgust are much harder to imagine—there’s some theory on the last one that suggests it's because we don’t experience disgust often, and if we do, its inadvertently normalized. Like… we’re both surrounded by the scent of death and sweat and whatnot, but most people can’t imagine that at all, and I don’t think any of us up here are that put off by any of this? A bit, but definitely not enough—and really, it's not like most of us have experienced this amount of gore before, so that’s actually a little weird? I know Polianna mentioned that she had killed before, so that explains some of her lack of concern for killing people actively attacking her group, but some of this is… odd, I guess? Rafe not caring makes sense—fuck, even Simeon not caring makes sense. Darrian and Leerin just sort of not caring about killing or the gore? Codeth realizing killing doesn’t bother him much? It’s weird, and I feel like there has to be something in the way we all grew up, right? Like—”

On and on Halen babbled, and Baylor didn’t reply—didn’t tell the other boy to shut up—as he rinsed his mouth and spit the water over the ground before taking another long swig. Halen’s voice lingered there, so much passion filling it, and it was impossible not to think of his own passion for myths and Emilia’s passion for everything.

The three of them really were quite similar, weren’t they? Fuck was that annoying.