~ Tнє Pαяα∂σχ Hσυѕє ~ now back to regularly scheduled chaos

Zuko’s moment of hesitation cost him. He barely had time to react or move back from his handspring as the mace came down, inches from bashing his head in. He was lucky it caught his back instead, though luck wasn’t what he would have called it. He couldn’t hide the scream this time, the way it shuddered through him as his body gave in, falling to the ground with barely enough time for him to slam his hands out to catch himself. He was breathing hard, trying to figure out what had happened. Something had broken. He wasn’t sure he could feel his legs. He wasn’t sure he could stand… he cursed under his breath, eyes narrowed as he shot a burst of flame at the Inquisitor. It went wide, but given the fact that the creature didn’t react… it wasn’t even facing him. It wasn’t turning towards him… its mace was on the ground, which meant… satisfaction flickered through Zuko as he lifted his body up weakly on one arm, the other hand aimed carefully. There was one big spike protruding from the creature’s back. Zuko couldn’t say for certain if attacking it would do anything, but… it was his one shot. He breathed out, then let loose a stream of fire, directed directly at the larger spike.

Zuko flinched at the sound, but he didn’t stop his attack until the fire flickered out on its own. He had never run out of fire before, but keeping such a long flame burning for an extended period of time took concentration and skill. Concentration that Zuko just didn’t have anymore. He felt his arm give out, the breath forced from his lungs as he collapsed the rest of the way. He couldn’t fight anymore… he knew where his limits were, and though he had pushed past them before, this felt different. He blinked, trying to force himself to a seated position. It was like his legs wouldn’t respond… why wouldn’t his legs move? Panic built in his throat, only quelled by Sal’s sudden presence next to him. He was in danger… he needed to get Sal out of danger, didn’t he? Another glance at the creature told him all he needed to know. The Inquisitor was dying. As long as it didn’t get another strike in… they’d be okay.
“Hey,” Zuko managed, voice hoarse as he tried to shift his body to get a better look at Sal. He didn’t have time to take stock of all his injuries… he could do that when he woke up, couldn’t he? Maybe Iroh would be able to help when he blinked back. Or something. Zuko had yet to die in the House. It hadn’t even occurred to him that it might happen to him now. This had started out as a nice room.
“Sorry about your prosthetic,” he whispered, staring up at Sal. There was something about seeing his expression… it felt warm and comforting while at the same time making Zuko’s blood run cold. He was fairly certain he had never seen anyone look so scared.

Zuko let out a soft breath, gaze flickering towards his hand, now clasped in Sal’s. He wasn’t sure when that had happened, but he found he didn’t want to pull away. He couldn’t complain about an excuse to be a little bit closer to Sal. Everything else felt fuzzy anyway, like Sal was the only real, solid thing left in the world. He had been gravely injured before. He remembered flickering in and out of consciousness as his uncle carried him somewhere safe to have his eye looked at. This felt different. At least then he’d been aware of the pain, but this… he couldn’t tell what was pain and what was numbness. If he had known about shock, he would have just assumed he was in shock. He was fairly certain that it would go away eventually… he had won, hadn’t he?
“Yeah?” Zuko managed, gold meeting blue as he tried to hold onto Sal’s gaze. He kept himself focused on Sal’s left eye, paying it more attention now that he knew it was the one Sal could see out of. No point in making eye contact if it was with the eye that couldn’t see anything, after all. “Well… I guess I did it for a selfish reason.” He coughed, wincing as the movement shuddered through his body, putting pressure on his still-injured chest. “I’ve never uh… made friends easily. Didn’t want to lose the one I have for sure.” He tried to force a smile, but it came across as more of a grimace. “You… are you okay? It didn’t… it didn’t get you or anything? I was uh… it scared me. When you threw the prosthetic.”

“I don’t know why you’re sorry,” Zuko wheezed, face contracting with the pain of forcing the words out. His grip tightened on Sal’s hand as though it was the one lifeline he had. The only thing connecting him to a world he didn’t want to leave. He had things he wanted to do… he had only just started being friends with Sal, he wanted to follow that into some sort of future. He wanted to live and go home. He wanted to find the Avatar and regain his honor…
“I mean… it’s not like it’s your fault the House is a… jerk.” He could have chosen a stronger word to use, but if there was any chance the House was going to let him survive this, he had a feeling that being at least a little bit respectful was the best option. He didn’t know when it had dawned on him that he was dying, but he couldn’t get the idea out of his head now. “Maybe… maybe next time, if you practice… we can fight side by side.”

“You say that with a lot of confidence for someone who wasn’t there at all,” Nico replied mildly. He would hear Kelsier out, though. He wasn’t entirely certain it mattered what Kelsier said – he would blame himself for the action he took in that room, even if there was no successful way out. The House had created a situation where there was no way for the blinkers to win. By definition, didn’t that mean that it won? It wasn’t as though anyone had been able to outsmart it or defeat it. Myrnin had fallen prey to the House more than anyone else in the room, though Nico had been long dead by the time Myrnin had blinked in. Still, Myrnin had killed more people in that room than anyone else had. Myrnin had killed people who didn’t deserve it, just because he had wanted to spare them the pain of killing for the first time themselves. Every single person in that room had failed in one way or another. Nico wanted to believe that Noctin was the closest to winning. He had been the first to try to convince Nico that there was another way. He had been the one who believed there was a way around it. Had there been others who believed the same thing? Nico pushed the thought away. It had been a long time ago. Most of the people who had been in that room were long gone. They had either died or stopped blinking, or both. The House had changed so much since then…
“I don’t think there’s always a way to win,” he admitted, searching Kelsier’s eyes. “Honestly, I think believing that there always is might be more harmful than it is hopeful. If you believe that there’s always a way to win, and then you’re put in an impossible situation, then whose fault is it when you fail to find the loophole? Who do you end up blaming? The House didn’t let us win in that room.”
Nico wanted to be open to the possibility that they could win against the House. He had fought impossible battles before. He had won impossible battles before. The thing was… he didn’t want to fight the House. He didn’t want to bring the House to its knees or rip it apart piece by piece. He just… wanted to keep seeing the people he cared about. And he wanted to stop watching them be hurt. With the way the House was now, he didn’t believe he could have both at once.
“How do we win, Dad?” Nico asked after a long breath, letting his hand fall back to his side as the butterfly carefully flitted away. Its wings were more colorful on the inside. That seemed… important, somehow, though Nico couldn’t quite place why. “How do we win against an enemy that traps us in cages that are engineered to be impenetrable?”

“Not new,” Zuko replied after a moment, grateful that the other blinker hadn’t said anything about the flames. He was fairly certain most of the people he knew would have made a somewhat sarcastic comment about him trying to burn the House down or something. While he was almost certain there were people who had tried to burn the House down on purpose before, Zuko had never thought that was a very good idea. That said, he didn’t control the fact that the House tended to blink him in when he was in the middle of training. Maybe that was because he spent the vast majority of time training, or maybe it was just because the House was an asshole, but he found it dreadfully inconvenient. And he hated the fact that he had almost set the House on fire accidentally more times than he wanted to count.
“I take it that uh… you’re not new, either?” he asked, though he had a feeling that the question didn’t matter much. Mordecai wouldn’t have offered to try to explain the House if he was new, would he? Although it was possible that he was newer…
“I’m Zuko,” he said suddenly, hoping that was a more comfortable (and relevant) subject matter. “What’s… your name?” It seemed neither of them were good with new people. In a way, that made it better. In many other ways, it made this whole encounter so much worse. Zuko wasn’t sure he could rely on Mordcecai to carry a conversation, but he didn’t want to make an enemy by being incapable of doing so himself.

Would it really have killed the House to give them one nice room? One room that didn’t turn on them before it was over? The room they had been in before had been fun, until it had thrown a map of Zuko’s childhood home at his feet. The room after had never been particularly fun, but it had shown him how Sal reacted in an emergency situation. It had proven to him that Sal was, above all else, a good person. Not the kind of person Zuko deserved as a friend, since he’d dishonored himself, but one that he felt lucky to have. When had they become friends? It was hard to tell, given they had only met each other four times before. Living through a crisis with someone was something that formed bonds quickly. And Sal had done everything in his power to save the younger version of Zuko, at great threat to himself… there was no question about what kind of a person Sal was.
“I… promise,” he repeated, hoping that was enough. He wanted to prove that he was worthy of Sal’s friendship. He wanted to prove that he could be worth caring about. He wanted to win back his honor so he could deserve whatever it was blooming between them both. “I promise.” His thoughts were growing muddy and clouded, his eys unable to focus, only to stare blankly at the ceiling.
“Fisher, I…” he heaved in a final, painful gasp before his grip on Sal’s fingers loosened and his chest stopped it’s jerky, uneven rising and falling. It was over.

Vincent | Lodge | @/clo and mint



Vincent trudged through the snow after the vampire, resisting the urge to complain about the cold weather. He kept his eyes forward for most of the walk, then hurried up and made his way through the door and into the lodge's warmth once they were close enough.

He made the executive decision to shut the door, after seeing as Myrnin wasn’t going to, then sat himself down in one of the couches. “Myrnin,” he said with a dramatic sigh, covering his eyes with his hands as he tilted his head back, “make me something warm to drink.”

Kelsier | Power Swap Room | strider

Kelsier inclined his head a little, acknowledging that. It wasn’t his room to speak of. He understood that, though he wasn’t going to stop.
The thing was, he had been in rooms that sounded a lot like it. Maybe he didn’t know what it, specifically, had been like. But the House had put him in impossible situations before, and it had taken pleasure in pulling him apart, mentally and physically. He thought he knew enough.
He’d have liked to hear about it, though. He wanted to know every injustice that had happened inside these walls. He wanted to write each one in the books, into the walls, on the doors. It wasn’t justice, and it wasn’t vengeance, but remembrance was a start. It was the only place you could start.
He hesitated, letting Nico’s words wash over him. He couldn’t deny it. He wasn’t going to try to.
“Maybe,” he admitted. “Maybe…I don’t know.”
He thought for a long moment. He didn’t accept problems with no solutions. He just didn’t. If he started to, then what was he looking at, back in his own world? But he knew Nico was right, too. His own reasoning, that the House was responsible for these things…he did know that there wasn’t always a way to win.
“The battle,” he said finally, his eyes moving back to Nico’s, holding them. “The battle. Not the war.”
He breathed out, a quiet sigh that disturbed the butterflies hovering near him, sending them spiraling away. “In that room…no. It didn’t let you win. It didn’t let anyone win. But a loss isn’t the same as losing. And here you are, still. When I say the House didn’t win, I don’t mean it’s never won. I mean that you’re not beaten.”
He knew Nico didn’t want to destroy this place. Kelsier…what did Kelsier want? He wanted to destroy it, but he didn’t want to lose what he’d found here. Who he’d found here.
It didn’t matter, anyway. He would keep his promise, even if Nico was the only person who could have gotten it from him.
He smiled, the expression learned and genuine at once. Where some of his smiles seemed childish, this one seemed older, worn and bright.
“But you already know how,” he whispered. “Don’t you? Think about it. So your cage wasn’t intentional. Mine was. It doesn’t matter, though, does it? So what if it’s impenetrable, now?”
He rested his hand against the grass, knuckles first, a butterfly flitting past his ear without landing.
“You survive. You don’t close your eyes, except to rest. You don’t accept that you’ve lost, even when you have. You stay alive. And then, one day, when the cage has rotted to nothing, you walk free again. Whether you believed you would or not.”

Sal Fisher | Sleepover Room | strider

Sal didn’t blinked back to his own world. Nothing changed, in fact, as he blinked quietly out, and into a different room.
Except things did change. He wasn’t wearing the clothes he had been, anymore. His black sweater and ripped red jeans were gone, replaced by soft gray sweatpants and a short sleeved teal shirt, depicting a winged black kitten, the words CAT DRAGON proudly proclaiming what it was, in case the artwork failed.
His hair was down, revealing how waving it really was hung at his shoulders. His prosthetic was back, too, as though it had never broken at all.
It took him a long moment to realize something had changed. His hands moved, touching the prosthetic, but the relief there was pale and insubstantial, and he let his hands fall.
The ground was soft.
He looked up slowly, blinking warily at the new room. He didn’t care. He didn’t want to be there, not without…
His eyes landed on Zuko, and he froze.

Zuko had approached the sleeping bags, frowning a little as he tried to figure out what they were for. They were similar (ish) to the mats he had seen people lay on when they went camping, but they seemed… unnecessary in a room like this that was so covered in blankets and pillows. Perhaps people in other worlds were used to a different level of comfort than he was? He had to admit that the clothes the House had put him in were far more comfortable than anything he had ever worn before, even the fine silks he could wear in the Fire Nation. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to go back to wearing the worn-out clothes and bulky armor without thinking about how soft the clothing here was. He was beginning to understand why he had seen so many people dressed similarly by choice.
It took Zuko a moment to realize he wasn’t alone. He turned to inspect the rest of the room, faltering just a bit as he realized who the other blinker was. He hadn’t seen him since… he hesitated, searching Sal’s eye for some sign that he was okay.
“Hey,” he managed after a moment, his lips tilting up into a hesitant smile. “Are you… alright?”

Zuko’s face reddened just a little as he realized what the House had done. How long had Sal been given to recover from the fact that Zuko had died in front of him? Had he even blinked back to his world? Zuko searched for any trace of blood on the other boy, but he couldn’t find anything. That didn’t mean anything, though. The House could easily clean blood off if it chose to. He wished he knew how to make the situation better. He wished he had magic words to say to relieve what he was sure was an immense amount of fear. He didn’t know if his death had hurt Sal, but he was fairly confident it had scared him.
“Right. Uh… sometimes the House brings people back. Sometimes it doesn’t. I’ve never… actually died here before. Until last time.”

Zuko wasn’t used to being friends with people. He had people he liked, sure, and there were some people who made him feel more comfortable than others in the House, but… he had never really experienced friendship in the same way Azula seemed to. He didn’t know how fast you were supposed to go, or how much you should feel for one person after only meeting them a handful of times. He couldn’t forget the fear he had felt when the creature had pulled Sal towards it, nor the panic that had gripped his heart when Sal had tried to get the thing’s attention.
“Yeah,” he said after a moment, shifting a little awkwardly. “I mean… I’m glad, too. And I’m glad that you’re not… either.”

Zuko had never had a real crush before. He didn’t know what they felt like, so he was having a hard time identifying whether what he felt for Sal was normal or not. For now, he was just going to assume it was normal. It was easier than letting his thoughts wander somewhere he wasn’t sure he wanted to go just yet. All he knew was that he was glad that Sal wasn’t dead, and he didn’t actually mind all that much that he had died to ensure that. Maybe he would have minded more if he hadn’t been brought back, but… as it was, he wouldn’t change what had happened. Although he wished he could have kept Sal a little bit safer. Maybe they shouldn’t have gone in that room… though Zuko wouldn’t trade a moment of teaching Sal how to fight.
“Right. Uh… I mean, yeah. Of course. I… really liked teaching you how to use the dao blades, it… would have been weird to just let you die. Besides, the thing would have come after me if it had killed you first anyway.”