City of Darkness, Tuesday Morning
Jun. 22nd, 2007 11:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dark_slippy_thingThey were inside, now, in the Princess' bedroom. Valentine had taken himself a seat on the floor, and Helena was sitting on the bed, musing to herself.
"Well, if it was me," she wondered aloud, and I wanted to hide something, like a MirrorMask or something... I'd hide it in my bedroom."
"It's not here," Valentine protested. "We've looked all over the place."
He was sick of looking for the stupid mask. But at this point, he figured somewhat that he at least owed this much to the girl.
"Well, that's what I'd do." She stood on her bed and peered through two eyeholes carved into her mirror for a moment, watching what was going on in the other room from there. She was there for a few moments, before she looked at Valentine with what he was pretty certain was a frown on her face. "It's all falling apart. It's all her fault. That girl. Let me see her note again."
"She found the MirrorMask." Valentine reached over and handed her the letter. "That's how she got out of here. It's the only way out."
"We looked everywhere," Helena grumped. "We looked all over the place. We could keep looking until the end of the world."
Oh yes, excellent choice of words, Helena.
There was a knock on the bedroom door, and Valentine managed to dive behind the bed just as a little porcupine creature wandered in with a tray of food. Which, of course, got Valentine's attention, and he had to steal a peek for a moment before ducking back down again.
"Message from her majesty," the little thing announced. "'Hem. Affairs of state mean she'd very busy, and you'll be eating in your room tonight."
"Mama is too kind," Helena said in a monotone that gave Valentine a chill. "Please thank her majesty for me."
Valentine was peeking again. It was only for a moment, but there was food and it was just pleading to be inspected. He ducked down again and proceeded to fantasize about eating said food.
"Rrriiiight," the critter glanced at where Valentine had been peeking up from a moment before, then shrugged. "Well, bon appetite."
"You are too kind," Helena said, that puppet-smile on her lips as the thing shuffled out again.
Well, now that that nuisance was gone, Valentine had a date with a dinner plate, didn't he? He wiggled his fingers appreciatively at the platter, then dug in. Real food, at long last! He shoved a cherry into his mouth and gnawed on it blissfully.
"We've wasted so many opportunities," she continued as he hate. "We don't even have the Really Useful Book." Except that they did. Valentine held a finger in the air, reached into a pocket and flung her the book. She caught it, of course. "There's only one page left. What if it's the wrong page?"
Valentine shrugged. Food. He was not talkative with food about, thank you.
Helena opened the book and read aloud.
"Remember what your mother told you..."
Valentine spat out a pit and decided to throw in his two cents.
"Mind said, it's a dog-eat-dog world, son, you get them before they get you, eat your greens, please don't do that, don't embarrass me in front of the neighbours, I think it would be best for everyone if you leave home and please never come back again."
Helena stared at him in shock as he continued.
"She wasn't even my mum, either. She bought me from a man."
....
Oh, look, there's still food!
"I miss my mum," Helena said. "She'd always have advice. it's like when you'd lose something, she'd say... 'Don't give up. Most of the time it's staring you right in the face.'" She looked up at her reflection in the mirror that had eyeholes. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
What? Huh? Oh, he was being spoken to! But-- eating!
"Absolutely," he decided, thinking that winging an answer would be better than nothing at all. "If we put little wheels on the bottoms of our shoes, we can jut roll around..."
"No, silly. Where's the best place to hide a mirror?"
Valentine tore his attention away from his food long enough to watch Helena mash her face into the mirror, mesh with it, and then pull backward with a mask on her face.
A MirrorMask.
"We've got to find a window," Helena insisted, stepping off of her bed and putting the mask into a bag.
...
"Before or after dinner...?"
"Valentine!"
~~~
They darted out the front door and went barreling down the steps, passing the strange little porcupine on their way. Poor little thing waved after them in protest, but they were long gone, headed into the woods.
"Run! Keep running! Towards the fog!" Valentine figured that making certain that they were reminded that they should keep moving was a good idea. "Toward the fog! The fog's okay! Stay on the path! Go on, run! Don't let anything distract you--FOOD!"
He pointed toward a plant that was growing and instantly darted off of the pathway.
"Valentine, we have to keep going. There's honestly no time!"
"You're absolutely right! ... Right."
This thing was HUGE. All big and round and just about the same size as he was, and it would do adequately for a decent meal at long last. He got to work prying the peel from the fruit of the thing, ignoring Helena's protests. And really, it didn't take him long to peel all of the rind away, leaving a fruit behind that ... well... There was falseness in advertising, really. All the while, Helena was having some conversation with another random crazy lady about the 'Future Fruit,' whatever it was.
He took a bite out of the two-bite fruit and mused on the flavour for a moment.
"Not bad," he decided. "Rather yummy actually. Why do they call it a future fruit?"
"Because that's where you go when you eat it, my love!"
Creepy old lady...
Wait. Things were wiggling around him. That wasn't a good-- WHOA. He was in his tower? And he had the MirrorMask in his hand...
"There's only one way out," he insisted, "And I'm taking it! Goodbye!" And the mask was pressed to his face and he threw her out of the way and looked out the window and then things were... different. His face was all wrong, and he was in a bright alleyway, and he didn't know which way was up. He juggled. Maybe people would pay him? Wait, no, that police officer didn't like him there. That was no good. Only now he wasn't in the alleyway, he was in a restaurant, and he was dressed to the nines-- but there were trays in his hands, and people everywhere, wanting this and that and calling orders and can-I-have-the-bill and oh it'll come out it's just food and help, fire, volcanoes, and he had to get out of there so he pushed into the kitchen and everything fell to the floor and his hands went to his face and--
"That's not my future, that's not my future, that's not my future-- NO I DON'T WANNA BE A WAITER!!!"
For miles around, birds flew away.
~~~
Once again, they were on the run through the forest.
"So this MirrorMask... there must be a way to use it to get us out of here," Valentine asked around ragged breaths.
"I think we have to find a window. If I can see her I bet I can get to her," Helena replied.
"We won't find any windows here in the forest!"
"I have to see what she's doing!"
"We know what she's doing," he protested loudly. "Whether she means to or not, she's destroying the world!"
"And snogging boys and eating chips and smoking and everything," Helena complained, ever the master of keeping her priorities straight.
They pushed their way out of the forest, and Helena went for a tumble, tripping over the ragged hem of the dress that she had been put into while she was trapped in that dismal palace. "Why do people wear these stupid dresses," she hissed as she tore the bottom off of the thing.
And then, out of nowhere, the blackness swooped in around them, reaching black fingers every which way, and Helena and Valentine could do nothing but stare as the whole mess of it formed itself into the shape of a face-- the face of the Dark Queen, all huge and looming and so very, very terrifying.
"I should have known you'd be involved in this, Valentine," she said, looking at him like a chicken might regard a worm.
"Ah--" Valentine attempted to protest, but Helena leaped in to speak instead.
"Listen to me," she yelled up at the giant flying head with tentacles, "Your daughter is trying to destroy everything! I need to find a window and get back there! Please, let us go!"
"You are my daughter," the floaty thing insisted. Valentine found that possibly a smidgen creepy.
"You know that's not true," Helena insisted.
"I'm a reasonable woman," the giant head mused. "You come back with me. I'll execute Valentine... humanely." Oh, yes, that made everything better. "And we'll say no more about it."
"She's not a pet," Helena yelled. "She's not even a child any more! You have to let her grow up!"
"You mean..." the .. head... thing tilted her... head in consideration. "Let her choose her own clothes, her own food? Make her own mistakes? Love her, but don't try to possess her?"
"Yes," the girl agreed. "That's exactly what I mean!"
"Absolutely out of the question!" The Queen's floating head self took a deep breath and opened her mouth, exhaling tendrils of black tar toward them both. And, wonderful timing as always, the ground began to shake.
"I don't need this," Valentine cringed. "I'm a very important man!"
"If we can't get away from her, you're a very dead man," Helena hissed.
Point. He didn't much like that. But-- getting away! He knew how to accomplish that!
"Light."
"What?"
"That thing you have that makes light," like the one that Donatello had rigged up for them all-- she had harassed that sphinx with one when they had met. "Where is it?"
She pulled out the flashlight from her back and Valentine snatched it from her. "And the mask. Give me the MirrorMask."
She just stared at him. He supposed he deserved it, this ill-timed display of mistrust, but now really wasn't a good place for it at all.
"For God's sake," he yelled, momentarily oblivious of the irony of saying such a phrase to the girl who had created his entire world. "I know what I'm doing!"
She finally handed the mask over, and Valentine shone the light onto it, sending a brilliant beam of light reflecting into the sky.
Nothing happened.
"I thought it would be here by now," he said, panicked. "That was always our signal!"
"Didn't you say you'd had a fight?" Ah, Helena. Fantastic observation, yes.
"Only a difference of opinion. And I was completely in the right!"
"Sometimes you have to say sorry," Helena hissed at him.
Valentine was absolutely flabbergasted at the suggestion.
"I never say that--" the flashlight strayed from the mask as he protested, and the shadows moved in closer. Dangerously close. Terrifyingly close. And there was no way out. "All right, I'll say it!"
And a pause. A deep breath. A lurch in his gut.
"I'M SORRY!"
And, just like that, so very easily as saying the one word that Valentines never say, came his tower, huge and descending from the sky as though from a great leap.
"It's a real tower! You really did have a tower!" Had he ever given Helena cause not to believe?
"Well, I am a very important man."
His tower landed and waited just long enough for them to run inside before it took off again, leaving the shadows snapping uselessly in its wake.
~~~
Valentine gaped out the window at the world passing by below. His tower had saved the both of them, juggler and artist alike, but with what he was looking at now, he was suddenly not entirely certain it would make much of a difference in the end. His breath caught in his throat and he had to remind himself to exhale as the girl looked through the other window at whatever other world rested on the opposite side for her eyes only.
"Look!"
It was the most vocalization that Valentine could muster as he watched the ground crumple up below like paper being wadded to be tossed into a wastebasket.
His world, being wadded up and thrown into a wastebasket. Like trash.
"There's only one way out," the girl said, partly to Valentine, partly to herself. "The windows, the ones I drew! They're doors between our world and her world, and she's destroying them!"
He closed his fingers around the charm that was in his hands, staring at Helena without a word.
'Your world and my world,' he thought, everything around him slowing down and making sense for barely a heartbeat, but didn't dare speak aloud. 'The real world and your dream.'
The charm felt cool and heavy in his sweating, shaking hands, and he thought back to the vision he had of this very moment after he had eaten that fruit in the woods. He could just do that-- what the vision said. And instead of waiting tables, he could find his way back to Fandom and keep his promise, freakish face or not, and--
"Valentine, give me the MirrorMask," her tone was urgent as she held her hand toward him, barely glancing his way before looking back through the window into that other world, a world that he was holding the key to...
'I could do it.' He could just keep the mask and say those same words and put it on and be out of here and be alive and safe and somewhere else entirely. 'There's only one way out of here, and I'm--'
"For Heaven's sake!" Her strained exclamation snapped him out of his thoughts of escape, and he hurried over to hand her the mask, burying his hopes of escape with that one simple motion.
He owed it to her.
Somewhere in a world that Valentine couldn't see, a sheet of paper with a chicken-legged tower drawn sketchily onto it in black ink was folded in over itself. The world itself seemed to bend and fold and close itself around them.
"What's happening?!"
It went dark.
There was no light, nothing of any substance, really. Just an echo of Helena's voice, murmuring quietly into his mind from right beside him, a million miles away in every direction.
"There's no more windows left... It's over. She won."
He felt Helena's presence leave-- slip away to somewhere else. He couldn't follow. Not this time.
For the first time in his life, Valentine didn't feel proud. He didn't feel important.
Wherever he was, whatever was left of him here in this darkness... it made him feel small and alone.
And helpless.
(NFB! NFI! Credit to Gaiman and McKean for-- yeah, you know by now. I'm done. And just in the nick of time, too. I'll be busy working and packing this weekend, and then I'm flying off for Vacation until July 12th. Valentine will be trapped in limbo until then! And now I'm gonna COLLAPSE bye!)
"Well, if it was me," she wondered aloud, and I wanted to hide something, like a MirrorMask or something... I'd hide it in my bedroom."
"It's not here," Valentine protested. "We've looked all over the place."
He was sick of looking for the stupid mask. But at this point, he figured somewhat that he at least owed this much to the girl.
"Well, that's what I'd do." She stood on her bed and peered through two eyeholes carved into her mirror for a moment, watching what was going on in the other room from there. She was there for a few moments, before she looked at Valentine with what he was pretty certain was a frown on her face. "It's all falling apart. It's all her fault. That girl. Let me see her note again."
"She found the MirrorMask." Valentine reached over and handed her the letter. "That's how she got out of here. It's the only way out."
"We looked everywhere," Helena grumped. "We looked all over the place. We could keep looking until the end of the world."
Oh yes, excellent choice of words, Helena.
There was a knock on the bedroom door, and Valentine managed to dive behind the bed just as a little porcupine creature wandered in with a tray of food. Which, of course, got Valentine's attention, and he had to steal a peek for a moment before ducking back down again.
"Message from her majesty," the little thing announced. "'Hem. Affairs of state mean she'd very busy, and you'll be eating in your room tonight."
"Mama is too kind," Helena said in a monotone that gave Valentine a chill. "Please thank her majesty for me."
Valentine was peeking again. It was only for a moment, but there was food and it was just pleading to be inspected. He ducked down again and proceeded to fantasize about eating said food.
"Rrriiiight," the critter glanced at where Valentine had been peeking up from a moment before, then shrugged. "Well, bon appetite."
"You are too kind," Helena said, that puppet-smile on her lips as the thing shuffled out again.
Well, now that that nuisance was gone, Valentine had a date with a dinner plate, didn't he? He wiggled his fingers appreciatively at the platter, then dug in. Real food, at long last! He shoved a cherry into his mouth and gnawed on it blissfully.
"We've wasted so many opportunities," she continued as he hate. "We don't even have the Really Useful Book." Except that they did. Valentine held a finger in the air, reached into a pocket and flung her the book. She caught it, of course. "There's only one page left. What if it's the wrong page?"
Valentine shrugged. Food. He was not talkative with food about, thank you.
Helena opened the book and read aloud.
"Remember what your mother told you..."
Valentine spat out a pit and decided to throw in his two cents.
"Mind said, it's a dog-eat-dog world, son, you get them before they get you, eat your greens, please don't do that, don't embarrass me in front of the neighbours, I think it would be best for everyone if you leave home and please never come back again."
Helena stared at him in shock as he continued.
"She wasn't even my mum, either. She bought me from a man."
....
Oh, look, there's still food!
"I miss my mum," Helena said. "She'd always have advice. it's like when you'd lose something, she'd say... 'Don't give up. Most of the time it's staring you right in the face.'" She looked up at her reflection in the mirror that had eyeholes. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
What? Huh? Oh, he was being spoken to! But-- eating!
"Absolutely," he decided, thinking that winging an answer would be better than nothing at all. "If we put little wheels on the bottoms of our shoes, we can jut roll around..."
"No, silly. Where's the best place to hide a mirror?"
Valentine tore his attention away from his food long enough to watch Helena mash her face into the mirror, mesh with it, and then pull backward with a mask on her face.
A MirrorMask.
"We've got to find a window," Helena insisted, stepping off of her bed and putting the mask into a bag.
...
"Before or after dinner...?"
"Valentine!"
~~~
They darted out the front door and went barreling down the steps, passing the strange little porcupine on their way. Poor little thing waved after them in protest, but they were long gone, headed into the woods.
"Run! Keep running! Towards the fog!" Valentine figured that making certain that they were reminded that they should keep moving was a good idea. "Toward the fog! The fog's okay! Stay on the path! Go on, run! Don't let anything distract you--FOOD!"
He pointed toward a plant that was growing and instantly darted off of the pathway.
"Valentine, we have to keep going. There's honestly no time!"
"You're absolutely right! ... Right."
This thing was HUGE. All big and round and just about the same size as he was, and it would do adequately for a decent meal at long last. He got to work prying the peel from the fruit of the thing, ignoring Helena's protests. And really, it didn't take him long to peel all of the rind away, leaving a fruit behind that ... well... There was falseness in advertising, really. All the while, Helena was having some conversation with another random crazy lady about the 'Future Fruit,' whatever it was.
He took a bite out of the two-bite fruit and mused on the flavour for a moment.
"Not bad," he decided. "Rather yummy actually. Why do they call it a future fruit?"
"Because that's where you go when you eat it, my love!"
Creepy old lady...
Wait. Things were wiggling around him. That wasn't a good-- WHOA. He was in his tower? And he had the MirrorMask in his hand...
"There's only one way out," he insisted, "And I'm taking it! Goodbye!" And the mask was pressed to his face and he threw her out of the way and looked out the window and then things were... different. His face was all wrong, and he was in a bright alleyway, and he didn't know which way was up. He juggled. Maybe people would pay him? Wait, no, that police officer didn't like him there. That was no good. Only now he wasn't in the alleyway, he was in a restaurant, and he was dressed to the nines-- but there were trays in his hands, and people everywhere, wanting this and that and calling orders and can-I-have-the-bill and oh it'll come out it's just food and help, fire, volcanoes, and he had to get out of there so he pushed into the kitchen and everything fell to the floor and his hands went to his face and--
"That's not my future, that's not my future, that's not my future-- NO I DON'T WANNA BE A WAITER!!!"
For miles around, birds flew away.
~~~
Once again, they were on the run through the forest.
"So this MirrorMask... there must be a way to use it to get us out of here," Valentine asked around ragged breaths.
"I think we have to find a window. If I can see her I bet I can get to her," Helena replied.
"We won't find any windows here in the forest!"
"I have to see what she's doing!"
"We know what she's doing," he protested loudly. "Whether she means to or not, she's destroying the world!"
"And snogging boys and eating chips and smoking and everything," Helena complained, ever the master of keeping her priorities straight.
They pushed their way out of the forest, and Helena went for a tumble, tripping over the ragged hem of the dress that she had been put into while she was trapped in that dismal palace. "Why do people wear these stupid dresses," she hissed as she tore the bottom off of the thing.
And then, out of nowhere, the blackness swooped in around them, reaching black fingers every which way, and Helena and Valentine could do nothing but stare as the whole mess of it formed itself into the shape of a face-- the face of the Dark Queen, all huge and looming and so very, very terrifying.
"I should have known you'd be involved in this, Valentine," she said, looking at him like a chicken might regard a worm.
"Ah--" Valentine attempted to protest, but Helena leaped in to speak instead.
"Listen to me," she yelled up at the giant flying head with tentacles, "Your daughter is trying to destroy everything! I need to find a window and get back there! Please, let us go!"
"You are my daughter," the floaty thing insisted. Valentine found that possibly a smidgen creepy.
"You know that's not true," Helena insisted.
"I'm a reasonable woman," the giant head mused. "You come back with me. I'll execute Valentine... humanely." Oh, yes, that made everything better. "And we'll say no more about it."
"She's not a pet," Helena yelled. "She's not even a child any more! You have to let her grow up!"
"You mean..." the .. head... thing tilted her... head in consideration. "Let her choose her own clothes, her own food? Make her own mistakes? Love her, but don't try to possess her?"
"Yes," the girl agreed. "That's exactly what I mean!"
"Absolutely out of the question!" The Queen's floating head self took a deep breath and opened her mouth, exhaling tendrils of black tar toward them both. And, wonderful timing as always, the ground began to shake.
"I don't need this," Valentine cringed. "I'm a very important man!"
"If we can't get away from her, you're a very dead man," Helena hissed.
Point. He didn't much like that. But-- getting away! He knew how to accomplish that!
"Light."
"What?"
"That thing you have that makes light," like the one that Donatello had rigged up for them all-- she had harassed that sphinx with one when they had met. "Where is it?"
She pulled out the flashlight from her back and Valentine snatched it from her. "And the mask. Give me the MirrorMask."
She just stared at him. He supposed he deserved it, this ill-timed display of mistrust, but now really wasn't a good place for it at all.
"For God's sake," he yelled, momentarily oblivious of the irony of saying such a phrase to the girl who had created his entire world. "I know what I'm doing!"
She finally handed the mask over, and Valentine shone the light onto it, sending a brilliant beam of light reflecting into the sky.
Nothing happened.
"I thought it would be here by now," he said, panicked. "That was always our signal!"
"Didn't you say you'd had a fight?" Ah, Helena. Fantastic observation, yes.
"Only a difference of opinion. And I was completely in the right!"
"Sometimes you have to say sorry," Helena hissed at him.
Valentine was absolutely flabbergasted at the suggestion.
"I never say that--" the flashlight strayed from the mask as he protested, and the shadows moved in closer. Dangerously close. Terrifyingly close. And there was no way out. "All right, I'll say it!"
And a pause. A deep breath. A lurch in his gut.
"I'M SORRY!"
And, just like that, so very easily as saying the one word that Valentines never say, came his tower, huge and descending from the sky as though from a great leap.
"It's a real tower! You really did have a tower!" Had he ever given Helena cause not to believe?
"Well, I am a very important man."
His tower landed and waited just long enough for them to run inside before it took off again, leaving the shadows snapping uselessly in its wake.
~~~
Valentine gaped out the window at the world passing by below. His tower had saved the both of them, juggler and artist alike, but with what he was looking at now, he was suddenly not entirely certain it would make much of a difference in the end. His breath caught in his throat and he had to remind himself to exhale as the girl looked through the other window at whatever other world rested on the opposite side for her eyes only.
"Look!"
It was the most vocalization that Valentine could muster as he watched the ground crumple up below like paper being wadded to be tossed into a wastebasket.
His world, being wadded up and thrown into a wastebasket. Like trash.
"There's only one way out," the girl said, partly to Valentine, partly to herself. "The windows, the ones I drew! They're doors between our world and her world, and she's destroying them!"
He closed his fingers around the charm that was in his hands, staring at Helena without a word.
'Your world and my world,' he thought, everything around him slowing down and making sense for barely a heartbeat, but didn't dare speak aloud. 'The real world and your dream.'
The charm felt cool and heavy in his sweating, shaking hands, and he thought back to the vision he had of this very moment after he had eaten that fruit in the woods. He could just do that-- what the vision said. And instead of waiting tables, he could find his way back to Fandom and keep his promise, freakish face or not, and--
"Valentine, give me the MirrorMask," her tone was urgent as she held her hand toward him, barely glancing his way before looking back through the window into that other world, a world that he was holding the key to...
'I could do it.' He could just keep the mask and say those same words and put it on and be out of here and be alive and safe and somewhere else entirely. 'There's only one way out of here, and I'm--'
"For Heaven's sake!" Her strained exclamation snapped him out of his thoughts of escape, and he hurried over to hand her the mask, burying his hopes of escape with that one simple motion.
He owed it to her.
Somewhere in a world that Valentine couldn't see, a sheet of paper with a chicken-legged tower drawn sketchily onto it in black ink was folded in over itself. The world itself seemed to bend and fold and close itself around them.
"What's happening?!"
It went dark.
There was no light, nothing of any substance, really. Just an echo of Helena's voice, murmuring quietly into his mind from right beside him, a million miles away in every direction.
"There's no more windows left... It's over. She won."
He felt Helena's presence leave-- slip away to somewhere else. He couldn't follow. Not this time.
For the first time in his life, Valentine didn't feel proud. He didn't feel important.
Wherever he was, whatever was left of him here in this darkness... it made him feel small and alone.
And helpless.
(NFB! NFI! Credit to Gaiman and McKean for-- yeah, you know by now. I'm done. And just in the nick of time, too. I'll be busy working and packing this weekend, and then I'm flying off for Vacation until July 12th. Valentine will be trapped in limbo until then! And now I'm gonna COLLAPSE bye!)
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Date: 2007-06-23 09:18 pm (UTC)