Using thepromptfoundry’s Ominous October list. I actually wrote this yesterday, on time, but then forgot to post it.
My own OC Ira Carpenter again, tangling with his other, more eldritch half. It’s like those two-headed monsters where the heads just keep bickering and arguing.
I’ve been trying to work out this thing about how Ira works for a while. I think this is finally starting to get there. Thank you to krakaheimr who provided the insight!
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In the mirror, Ira’s reflection paces. It has the quality of a caged tiger.
He’s the cage. He can feel it butting up against his bars, testing. He shuffles to the side a little, a bit less directly in front of it.
This doesn’t affect his reflection, which glowers at him. “You’re being a coward.”
He is, yeah. But, “Do you want to end up like Zion?” he asks it. It may be his reflection, but it’s his, not Zion’s.
It snorts and swats that idea out of the air. “We won’t end up like Zion,” it scoffs. “Why do you keep worrying at that? Look at what he is. He’s nothing like us.”
Ira can feel its frustration, its disregard for that idea. He shakes his head at it, because it doesn’t understand anything. “What he is,” Ira points at his reflection’s face,”is something too far away from humanity to care about the harm he does. What the people around him suffer, what he does to them doesn’t touch him. He isn’t one of us, so far as he’s concerned.”
It’s circling around to the side of the mirror, threatening to get out of Ira’s sight. He doesn’t like that. It shouldn’t be able to get out, it’s only a mirror, but it feels risky. Ira circles the other way to keep it in sight. “Does that sound like anybody else you know?” he asks it pointedly.
It stops circling and turns back to face him, shaking a finger at him. Of course it knows he’s talking about it; they’re the same person, after all. “That, right there. You know damn well that humanity doesn’t have a uniquely privileged way of approaching the universe, just because you go around bonding with—”
“I’m human!” he yells over it.
“And I’m not!” it shouts back. “Which means we’re not!”
They glare at each other for a moment.
“Just because we’re not human doesn’t mean we’ll end up like him,” it repeats, quiet and intense.
“Maybe we aren’t,” Ira agrees, low and warning. It snorts, because there’s no ‘maybe’ about that. He ignores it and plunges on. “But the people I care about the most are. And if I can’t trust you to understand them well enough to keep from hurting them, then you are staying right where you fucking are.”
It growls and slaps at its reflection—him. He gasps and flinches with the shock of the blow—sees it brace under its own hit, because still, they’re both him—and jerks up to sitting in bed as the gate dissipates back into his flesh.
At his side, Warren rolls over to face him and strokes at his thigh, still asleep really. “Nightmare, love?”
“Ungh,” Ira confirms, rubbing at his face. He lets Warren pull him into the warm, firm arms of one of those people he loves too much to uncage himself.
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