[ Mako chokes out again, flinches a bit when Wu's hands land on his shoulders, but—
A dream.
Of course.
Mako tries not to let those words get to him, wills away the swoop of nerves and guilt and anger in his belly, even as they cut right to the heart of him, to the thing he has been running from and working toward his entire life. (He has to make something of himself, after all, can't be the failure everyone expects him to be. He can't let that be his legacy.)
Mako has always been able to pull his own anger up around himself like a shield and he does the same now, shifting up straighter, squaring his shoulders. He wants to whirl into movement, wants to shove him up against the wall and watch him burn but he knows from what Raleigh said that violence probably wouldn't work, knows also that this is a chance to find him and find out why he did what he did. Use your head, Mako. He can't waste this. He won't. ]
You heard right. You gonna tell me why you're out for so much blood?
[Lucifer cocks his head at Mako, like he's a confusing alien creature.
Like he makes little sense.]
Does it really matter to you, why I do what I do?
[After all, he's teeming with energy. With the desire to fight him, to punish or harm him. Chuck had it, Raleigh had it — it stands to reason this one will be some of the same.]
[ Mako is a livewire, tense and strung and taught.
It matters more than he wants to let on, really. It matters because Mako needs to know why, needs to know how to stop it from happening again. Needs something to give to himself and to Wu, a concrete way to avoid anything like this happening again. When he was a scrawny street kid with nothing but his bending, Mako learned quickly the value of information like that, how much of an upper hand if could give you when you had nothing else.
He is a detective, after all. Motive is half the battle.
But he keeps his tone a little light, or tries to; it's hard when he's staring at the man who snapped Wu's wrist like a twig and blew the life out of him. Mako's anger is a simmering thing, but he keeps it banked. ]
Seems to me like it was random. Wu was in the wrong place in the wrong time. But you have to have bigger goals than that. You wouldn't have asked him what he could give you, otherwise.
[Unperturbed, 'Sam' tucks his hands into his pockets, not moving from his closeness to Mako. Like they're just two friends having a talk in Mako's home. There are a lot of reasons Lucifer could give him. He could say it was to hurt someone he's teaching a lesson. He could say it's because he has little value in human life, and it could have happened over just about anything. He could have killed him out of boredom, if if not for needing to rip Sam's spirit down.
He clicks his tongue as he thinks, but then says, very plainly:]
... Because he was nice, and helpful, and sickeningly harmless.
[He smiles, lighthearted and easygoing and 'Sam Winchester'.]
It made me want to smash him under my thumb and smear him across the pavement.
[ It's those words and that smile together that really does it.
Mako is used to monsters.
Mako grew up surrounded by monsters in the shapes of people, distrusting every outstretched hand while trying to take what it offered. He knows very well that people don't do things without reason, even when their reasoning is twisted. People are selfish, and people are trying to achieve their goals, and so there's always a reason. When you know the reason, what they're after, you can work back from there. It was something of a comfort in a world not designed for two orphaned kids to learn how to read motive and logic, apply it to senseless chaos. It gave Mako a sense of control over the many, many things that were not in his small hands.
That is not a reason.
Or, more accurately, it's not a reason Mako understands.
The dream shifts around them. The house falls away, or melts in the way that dream-things do: under their feet instead of wood is a dirty mat over tile, and swinging over their heads is an electric light. Mako is smaller than he should be, or Lucifer is taller than he was before, because Mako's arms are skinny and unscarred, the arms of a weedy teenager.
He sucks in a breath and shifts back into a familiar stance, one hand extended in front of himself, the other pointing behind.
Electricity crackles at his fingertips, snapping along skin. ]
Okay.
[ One word, heavy. It drops, bitten-off, between them, and somewhere a man's voice bursts into cold laughter. ]
And what do you have against nice people? Every one of them make you want to do that? That why you took out Orpheus, too?
[Lucifer looks around, none too concerned. Dreams tended to shift, after all. Frankly, Mako is just one more in a slew of dreams where the person dreaming? Is a real piece of work. Raleigh and Chuck's weren't much better.
At the question, Lucifer gives a shrug, too noncommittal for the topic at hand.
He doesn't seem too concerned about the electricity sparking from Mako's hands. Not in some dream.]
Don't bother trying to kill me here; this isn't real, boy.
[But as Lucifer — Sam — looks at Mako, he does finally offer:]
I killed them to hurt someone particular. Someone who wouldn't be able to bear knowing it's their fault. It was... a punishment, for not listening to me. What is a more effective way of teaching a lesson?
[ Something familiar and terrible prickles along his skin at the word 'boy.' He hears it half in the voice of Zolt, sneering and overconfident, patronizing as ever, and grits his teeth against the familiar surge of anger. Can't be angry when you're channeling electricity. Can't be anything: you have be in balance. ]
It's Mako.
[ But that's less important than the rest of the words, because the rest of those words make it sound like he wasn't trying to hurt Wu like that. Like Wu was collateral damage (an idea that lurches sickly through Mako, pools darkly in his belly and stays there) in the quest to teach someone else an awful lesson.
He wants to release those sparks, but this is a dream, and as much as he doesn't want to admit it, this guy is right.
Slowly, he lets the sparks go, his arms dropping to his sides, his mind reeling. He has to ask the right questions, has to get out of this what he can and wrench some control of this situation back. ]
Why would it be their fault? You did the killing.
sometimes i wonder if i should cw for toxic abusive relationships i s2g
[He says it with the usual flippancy he offers human beings, of course.
Lucifer just looks pleasantly on at Mako wrestling with the lightning, with his emotions.
Not bad. This one has a little control, compared to the meatheads from the other dreams.]
Because he'll believe it's his fault either way.
It doesn't matter whether it truly is or not if he believes it, does it?
[He, of course, has little interest in expanding on that. He'd rather make life harder for Sam like he had before, in their world, before the Winchester had ever said 'yes' to him. The more his vessel saw the pain and weariness that came from being him, the more he would come back to his way of things.
That's all.]
I did want to let you know — I can see your friends looking for me.
I won't mind killing them, too, if they don't cool their heels.
[ The word is careful, bitten-off and sharp, and falls like a glass thing between them as the ground shifts again, melting into a familiar ring like a boxing ring without the ropes, surrounded on all sides by water. They're on opposite sides, a metaphor pulled easily from Mako's subconscious. He is himself again, wearing a red helmet and a scowl. ]
That why you're really here? To warn me? Or are you just here to feel strong about killing someone who couldn't defend himself?
Please. I'm hardly unfair, believe it or not. Whether someone is a great and noble warrior or a pathetic, shaky false king, I'll be more than happy to kill people equally.
But I figured I would let you know that I'd be more than happy to maim your little boyfriend again, and all those sleuthing friends of yours, if you want to play stupid games and get stupid prizes.
[He's very polite, giving a head's up like this. Be thankful! He's gentlemanly!]
[ Gentlemanly indeed. Mako's mouth twists, crowded with other things he wants to say, but there's nothing else that will help him here: no question that will make Wu's death make sense. The crowd around them is chanting, a garbled mess of noise that fractures into nonsense by the time it reaches them.
Up in that darkness, sparks flare, and the arena top opens up above them, pelting them with rain. Mako takes a step forward. ]
Who are you trying to hurt? With all this?
[ It's a desperate question, and one he doesn't expect an answer to, and Mako's going to wake up soon. He doesn't know that, but he's a light sleeper, always has been: any noise will send him straight into alertness, and in his bed Fritter is crying, snuffling around. In the dream thunder fills the air. ]
[Lucifer holds up a hand, and an invisible umbrella seems to form over him.
He doesn't particularly mind rain, but you know. Would hate to get his clothes wet.]
If I told you, it'd spoil the fun, wouldn't it?
... At the end of the day, they'll be defeated and alone, and that's where I need them. [He sighs, looking sadly to the ground. A hand moves over his heart; Sam's heart. Lucifer's heart, now, whether Sam likes it or not.] It hurts me to do it, believe it or not... but sometimes we have to do the difficult things no one else will, to help someone see reason.
[ Mako doesn't think any of this is particularly fun or any kind of reasonable way to teach someone a lesson, but obviously nothing about Sam is reasonable. ]
If it hurts you to do something— [ More thunder claps, and the rain picks up, pelting sideways. Mako dreams of rain sometimes, unending and cold, winding its way under his thin skin and dousing his flames. ] —maybe it's because you shouldn't be doing it!
[ He says, as Fritter shoves her nose into his ear and lets out a hard sniffle. More thunder claps overhead, and the arena starts to fracture under them, rumbling ominously. Mako steadies himself, glaring through the pelting rain, and shouts over the thunder: ]
[Glancing around at the thunder and pelting rain, Lucifer just smiles like the bastard he is.]
Even when I leave, Mako, I'll still be in your head. And his.
In one way or another.
[He turns back, suddenly, to Wu's form — but Lucifer is gone from the dream now. Much like a magician's sheet crumples to the earth without the performer beneath, the corpse falls, gracelessly, across the fracturing earth; soon it will be eaten up by the widening cracks that grow beneath it.]
[ Mako watches, half-frozen for a moment as Wu's form crumbles like it did out there in the forest, the life gone from thin limbs.
Not again.
Lightning fractures the sky, and Mako bolts for the crack with a hand outstretched, knowing with the certainty of the dreamer that it's too late but also that he has to catch Wu anyway.
He wakes up with hard yell of Wu's name on his lips, alone. ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
[ Mako chokes out again, flinches a bit when Wu's hands land on his shoulders, but—
A dream.
Of course.
Mako tries not to let those words get to him, wills away the swoop of nerves and guilt and anger in his belly, even as they cut right to the heart of him, to the thing he has been running from and working toward his entire life. (He has to make something of himself, after all, can't be the failure everyone expects him to be. He can't let that be his legacy.)
Mako has always been able to pull his own anger up around himself like a shield and he does the same now, shifting up straighter, squaring his shoulders. He wants to whirl into movement, wants to shove him up against the wall and watch him burn but he knows from what Raleigh said that violence probably wouldn't work, knows also that this is a chance to find him and find out why he did what he did. Use your head, Mako. He can't waste this. He won't. ]
You heard right. You gonna tell me why you're out for so much blood?
no subject
Like he makes little sense.]
Does it really matter to you, why I do what I do?
[After all, he's teeming with energy. With the desire to fight him, to punish or harm him. Chuck had it, Raleigh had it — it stands to reason this one will be some of the same.]
no subject
[ Mako is a livewire, tense and strung and taught.
It matters more than he wants to let on, really. It matters because Mako needs to know why, needs to know how to stop it from happening again. Needs something to give to himself and to Wu, a concrete way to avoid anything like this happening again. When he was a scrawny street kid with nothing but his bending, Mako learned quickly the value of information like that, how much of an upper hand if could give you when you had nothing else.
He is a detective, after all. Motive is half the battle.
But he keeps his tone a little light, or tries to; it's hard when he's staring at the man who snapped Wu's wrist like a twig and blew the life out of him. Mako's anger is a simmering thing, but he keeps it banked. ]
Seems to me like it was random. Wu was in the wrong place in the wrong time. But you have to have bigger goals than that. You wouldn't have asked him what he could give you, otherwise.
no subject
He clicks his tongue as he thinks, but then says, very plainly:]
... Because he was nice, and helpful, and sickeningly harmless.
[He smiles, lighthearted and easygoing and 'Sam Winchester'.]
It made me want to smash him under my thumb and smear him across the pavement.
And when I finally did, it felt great.
no subject
Mako is used to monsters.
Mako grew up surrounded by monsters in the shapes of people, distrusting every outstretched hand while trying to take what it offered. He knows very well that people don't do things without reason, even when their reasoning is twisted. People are selfish, and people are trying to achieve their goals, and so there's always a reason. When you know the reason, what they're after, you can work back from there. It was something of a comfort in a world not designed for two orphaned kids to learn how to read motive and logic, apply it to senseless chaos. It gave Mako a sense of control over the many, many things that were not in his small hands.
That is not a reason.
Or, more accurately, it's not a reason Mako understands.
The dream shifts around them. The house falls away, or melts in the way that dream-things do: under their feet instead of wood is a dirty mat over tile, and swinging over their heads is an electric light. Mako is smaller than he should be, or Lucifer is taller than he was before, because Mako's arms are skinny and unscarred, the arms of a weedy teenager.
He sucks in a breath and shifts back into a familiar stance, one hand extended in front of himself, the other pointing behind.
Electricity crackles at his fingertips, snapping along skin. ]
Okay.
[ One word, heavy. It drops, bitten-off, between them, and somewhere a man's voice bursts into cold laughter. ]
And what do you have against nice people? Every one of them make you want to do that? That why you took out Orpheus, too?
no subject
At the question, Lucifer gives a shrug, too noncommittal for the topic at hand.
He doesn't seem too concerned about the electricity sparking from Mako's hands. Not in some dream.]
Don't bother trying to kill me here; this isn't real, boy.
[But as Lucifer — Sam — looks at Mako, he does finally offer:]
I killed them to hurt someone particular. Someone who wouldn't be able to bear knowing it's their fault. It was... a punishment, for not listening to me. What is a more effective way of teaching a lesson?
no subject
It's Mako.
[ But that's less important than the rest of the words, because the rest of those words make it sound like he wasn't trying to hurt Wu like that. Like Wu was collateral damage (an idea that lurches sickly through Mako, pools darkly in his belly and stays there) in the quest to teach someone else an awful lesson.
He wants to release those sparks, but this is a dream, and as much as he doesn't want to admit it, this guy is right.
Slowly, he lets the sparks go, his arms dropping to his sides, his mind reeling. He has to ask the right questions, has to get out of this what he can and wrench some control of this situation back. ]
Why would it be their fault? You did the killing.
sometimes i wonder if i should cw for toxic abusive relationships i s2g
[He says it with the usual flippancy he offers human beings, of course.
Lucifer just looks pleasantly on at Mako wrestling with the lightning, with his emotions.
Not bad. This one has a little control, compared to the meatheads from the other dreams.]
Because he'll believe it's his fault either way.
It doesn't matter whether it truly is or not if he believes it, does it?
[He, of course, has little interest in expanding on that. He'd rather make life harder for Sam like he had before, in their world, before the Winchester had ever said 'yes' to him. The more his vessel saw the pain and weariness that came from being him, the more he would come back to his way of things.
That's all.]
I did want to let you know — I can see your friends looking for me.
I won't mind killing them, too, if they don't cool their heels.
4REAL, he is so rude to poor sammy
[ The word is careful, bitten-off and sharp, and falls like a glass thing between them as the ground shifts again, melting into a familiar ring like a boxing ring without the ropes, surrounded on all sides by water. They're on opposite sides, a metaphor pulled easily from Mako's subconscious. He is himself again, wearing a red helmet and a scowl. ]
That why you're really here? To warn me? Or are you just here to feel strong about killing someone who couldn't defend himself?
no subject
Please. I'm hardly unfair, believe it or not. Whether someone is a great and noble warrior or a pathetic, shaky false king, I'll be more than happy to kill people equally.
But I figured I would let you know that I'd be more than happy to maim your little boyfriend again, and all those sleuthing friends of yours, if you want to play stupid games and get stupid prizes.
[He's very polite, giving a head's up like this. Be thankful! He's gentlemanly!]
no subject
[ Gentlemanly indeed. Mako's mouth twists, crowded with other things he wants to say, but there's nothing else that will help him here: no question that will make Wu's death make sense. The crowd around them is chanting, a garbled mess of noise that fractures into nonsense by the time it reaches them.
Up in that darkness, sparks flare, and the arena top opens up above them, pelting them with rain. Mako takes a step forward. ]
Who are you trying to hurt? With all this?
[ It's a desperate question, and one he doesn't expect an answer to, and Mako's going to wake up soon. He doesn't know that, but he's a light sleeper, always has been: any noise will send him straight into alertness, and in his bed Fritter is crying, snuffling around. In the dream thunder fills the air. ]
no subject
He doesn't particularly mind rain, but you know. Would hate to get his clothes wet.]
If I told you, it'd spoil the fun, wouldn't it?
... At the end of the day, they'll be defeated and alone, and that's where I need them. [He sighs, looking sadly to the ground. A hand moves over his heart; Sam's heart. Lucifer's heart, now, whether Sam likes it or not.] It hurts me to do it, believe it or not... but sometimes we have to do the difficult things no one else will, to help someone see reason.
no subject
[ Mako doesn't think any of this is particularly fun or any kind of reasonable way to teach someone a lesson, but obviously nothing about Sam is reasonable. ]
If it hurts you to do something— [ More thunder claps, and the rain picks up, pelting sideways. Mako dreams of rain sometimes, unending and cold, winding its way under his thin skin and dousing his flames. ] —maybe it's because you shouldn't be doing it!
[ He says, as Fritter shoves her nose into his ear and lets out a hard sniffle. More thunder claps overhead, and the arena starts to fracture under them, rumbling ominously. Mako steadies himself, glaring through the pelting rain, and shouts over the thunder: ]
Stay out of my head!
no subject
[Glancing around at the thunder and pelting rain, Lucifer just smiles like the bastard he is.]
Even when I leave, Mako, I'll still be in your head. And his.
In one way or another.
[He turns back, suddenly, to Wu's form — but Lucifer is gone from the dream now. Much like a magician's sheet crumples to the earth without the performer beneath, the corpse falls, gracelessly, across the fracturing earth; soon it will be eaten up by the widening cracks that grow beneath it.]
no subject
Not again.
Lightning fractures the sky, and Mako bolts for the crack with a hand outstretched, knowing with the certainty of the dreamer that it's too late but also that he has to catch Wu anyway.
He wakes up with hard yell of Wu's name on his lips, alone. ]