The Two that Lurk Pv Kaegen Deathmote Closed

"As lost as Alice, as mad as the Hatter."

Selim watched as the Dhampir spokes, saying that striking back was indeed a possibility, then spoke of himself trying to fight the world, or, many of himselves. Selim's tired brain could barely grasp that part of the mini-speech, but he didn't voice that fact. Afterwards... something odd happened that the logical part of his mind filed away as another hallucination. The rest of his brain decided to accept that it was real, it was rather hard to ignore the gooseflesh that rose as the other boy's aura seemed to flare and fill the whole room with a sense of imminent danger. Apparently, the dread that crawled through Selim's organs from the dhampir's action was a show of why the sallow boy had survived for so long.

He jerked back, involentarily biting his tongue and filling his mouth with the coppery tang of blood he was all too familiar with. Aku's mouth snapped shut at the suddenness of it all, jerking back on the appendage he was perched on. Selim's amber eyes were wide as he stared at the red-ringed pupils that shone unnaturally in the twisting shadows around him.

This boy that had claimed them could kill him, easily, could likely off them in an instant, and he counted himself lucky that those weren't the upperclassmen's intentions.

Just as Selim began to feel something crawling up his throat, choaking him as if thousands of millipedes had broken free from his organs in a desperate attempt to escape the smothering aura bearing down on them... it was gone, and Selim remembered to breathe.

His weakened heart was beating rapidly, and Selim felt light-headed as he leaned against the wall panting, waiting for his world to stop spinning. His narrowed, predatory eyes rose up and he scanned his reality. The Lies had become agitated in the burst of pure, unhindered wrath. The room was squirming with thousands of bugs he could only just see under the writhing shadows that were curling up his legs. He felt like the millipedes from before were crawling up his thin skin and into his body once again, making him shudder with disgust and the urge to vomit.

Letting out a sharp hiss of carbon dioxide that had been trapped inside his lungs moments ago, Selim took in the oxygen of the stale air around him. Swallowing the blood from his injured tongue, he absently mused that he had almost bitten the organ off, which probably wouldn't've been good. Idly, he hoped that Deathmote wouldn't be triggered by the accidental injury; Aku mentally responded that because they were so pale, there was probably not much blood to devour in the first place. Likely they were also iron-deficient. Selim shot the puppet an unimpressed look before turning his attention back to his older counterpart, who had begun to speak once more.

The raven wasn't sure if he should take the upperclassmen's words about their injuries being linked metaphorically or literally, he filed that idea away to the back of his labyrinth of a mindscape (which was steadily getting more and more twisted these days). Instead of wording his confusion, he nodded.

His yellow orbs watched as the dhampir plopped to the floor, and he slowly sat down in front of him, only to blankly stare at the older boy when he, quite vaguely, asked what he knew.

For a while, Selim just eyed him in mild confusion, and Aku sighed.

"We know a lot of things, so you'll have to specify or we'll be here long enough for the professors to assume hags ate us and hold a funeral..."

There was safety, in knowing that his castle could affect this thing. There was comfort in knowing that a knife could sink in to someone's skin, and there was comfort in knowing that his weapons of fear could have a substantial effect. It was the same thing, to Kaegen. His aura of fear was something that he just naturally utilized as a tool, just like he did with most things he found. Tea and mushroom, for instance.

He had felt, tangibly, this puppet-corpse's hate, to an extent that it had caused him to be slightly uneasy. If no reaction had been shown, the Dhampir probably would have reacted much differently. He ruminated on the type of being most likely to be immune to his castle of avarice. Person, type C, if he remembered correctly. The Briar-type. Would this boy even fit into his categories?

Kaegen squinted at the corpse-puppet, but tabled his question, at present, because he had to address the one given him by his new hand.

"No, I don't think I should. I don't know what you might know, so how would I know the relevant questions to ask? You have cards in your hand, and are asking me to guess at which ones hold the most value. I don't know that, you know that. So, tell me what you know. What you think I should know."

Kaegen was a fool, by most accounts. He was absolutely off his rocker, and what he did was largely utter nonesense. But in his own backwards, tangled way, the boy was very clever. And he had already decided that asking a question without really having a specific one was only helpful if he knew what he wanted to know. He would let tea, and then mushroom, decide what to tell him. With mushroom fresh in his mind, his eyes moved over to the hand puppet, although the ravenclaw's head refused to move, sitting stone still, like some grotesque cthonic art someone had left in the dungeons to gather dust.

"You too.'

Pulling out a dirty notebook with the word eris scrawled across the cover, from inside his robe, Kaegen flipped it open, retrieved a quill, and prepared to take notes, already beginning a few scribblings. This was tea and mushroom's chance to talk, not his. He could ask questions after he knew what he should ask about. Not before.

"As lost as Alice, as mad as the Hatter."

A Warning: Mildly disturbing topics ahead.

Upon hearing the dhampir's reasoning, he hummed, dredging up what relevant things he could from his shrouded bank of knowledge. It was harder than it likely should've been to do so, but he shrugged it off. It was of no concern, he found some ok tidbits to share with his new 'owner'.

"I have the knowledge a second-year student should know about magic and the such, though I rarely use spells because my wand is... finicky." He spoke the last bit with a mildly resentful tone, ignoring the pain shooting from his tongue as he spoke. "So largely I use physical means to obtain what magic is supposed to. I can use multiple weapons, though favour knives and needles to get what I want done when fighting against enemies."

Idly he twirled his steel 'chopsticks' through his bony fingers, mind drifting off for a moment, before continuing. "I know how to end a person in many different ways. I have ended someone before. Ironically I killed one of my peers who was planning to join my dorm this year... though I admit the action wasn't entirely conscious. Shadows are rather hard to keep contained when they wish to manifest." Briefly the pale boy stared at his hands, yes growing a tad duller as the memory shrouded the present for a few seconds. He snapped out of it soon enough.

"I know how to torment someone. Know how to make them hurt the most if I want them to." His cold amber gaze drifted to his upperclassmen, something detached in them as he spoke, "It's interesting, I suppose. Watching how they react to such simple injuries."

Then he blinked, gaze shifting as the shadows around him seemed to squirm more violently, churning like a lake bed upset by a stone dropping into it. "I myself know what torment feels like." He spoke after a long pause, revelling that part of his backstory verbally to someone in Hogwarts for the second time since he arrived.

'It's interesting', the sallow boy mused, ' I haven't seen that Gryffindor the Fox claimed since that day...'

He supposed the boy likely didn't care enough to act on his knowledge.

He watched the shadows with a detached yellow gaze, Aku silent from where he perched on the second year's wrist. "I know stealth, I know how to strike from the shadows. I know hand-to-hand combat if I'm ever disarmed." He paused after listing his relevant abilities, before branching off on a different topic.

"I know monsters enjoy lurking the dungeons like you do. I know the effects hags have on my peers." Idly he began to stroke the puppet on his hand, its mouth loosely hung open, not feeling the touch as it was just a voice. "I know adults can't be trusted. The act has been proven many times to me, no point in hoping otherwise." His gaze narrowed, a faint flicker of the burning rage he contained escaping the cage Selim had shoved.

"I know how cruel reality is, how heartless life is. I know what it's like to be forgotten, what it's like to be treated less than human." He spat some blood out onto the floor, it had been building up from his wound. Steadily, he wiped residual red from around his chapped lips.

"I know what it's like for your mind to betray you. I experience it on a daily basis. I know what it's like for sleep to torment you with memories you wish would disappear. I know what it's like to fear sleep itself and the horrors it brings to those with damaged minds."

He shifted, looking away from the shadows and back to the boy across from him with a notebook in hand, "I know the pain of betrayal, I know the pain of guilt and what it's like to discard it in favour of immorality."

A breath, a sharp sigh as he tried to regulate the emotions what he was saying was bringing up. "I know constant paranoia, fear that something will attack you from the shadows. I know what it's like to be a target, what it's like to be constantly hunted by those who wish you harm. I know what it's like to want to put yourself into eternal rest... "

A pause, he wanted to tie this up, to finish his dramatic monologue of harsh truths. So, he did, with the last of his mental energy."I know death, suffering, and the cruelty of life. Truly, besides the knowledge pounded into me by those around me, that is all I know."

His thought process was escaping him, the effort of dredging up all the knowledge he was spewing causing a feeling of intense pressure that pounded his skull. He went silent, staring blankly at the floor as he was dragged back into the depths of his own mind. After a while, the puppet shrouding his left hand spoke up, the now-mute boy's subconscious relaying what the voice was whispering into his ear.

"I know what he knows. I am a part of him, I was born from his mind and given this physical form so his grip on reality would tighten. What I know best, though, is how to control another, and how to drive someone to the brink of insanity with just words. Along with that, I retain the knowledge Tea has of biology. I'm born of his cruelty and curiosity." The puppet's mouth shifted with each word, its ghastly grin almost seeming to grow in the dimness of the dungeon. Briefly, he looked over to the seemingly lifeless boy beside him, chuckling, "Don't mind him, He needs to... recharge, I suppose. His mental state leaves a tad more to be desired."

That seemed to be all that the duo wanted to say at that moment. The boy connected to the hand puppet seemed almost catatonic as his frayed mind tried to pull itself back together. The puppet, on the other hand, seemed as alive as usual, perfectly content, and present, unlike Selim.

The rabbit's head shifted as it seemed to observe the dhampir before them, button eyes seeming to glint with an analytical light, as if watching a mouse being dissected in front of him.

They waited as the shadows curled and twisted with life, their distorted view of the world around them bringing the dungeon to life in their eyes.

An interesting reality separate from most who dwelt in that cursed school.

Kaegen had a fairly solid grasp of something that really only existed in the abstract. It wasn't too terribly hard to arrive at the same conclusions that he did, or to somehow use roundabout thinking to understand how he may have come to his conclusions, but the conclusion jumping itself was fairly unique. He knew that realities existed, separate from his own, because he saw it around himself. He could see the other students move on past as if they didn't notice him, as if they couldn't feel his fear. He could see them laugh and joke and talk about things that he didn't know about, he could tell that these busy little people had lives, and that they were nothing at all like his own.

So how did one explain something like that? How did one process the fact that other people had complex emotions and feelings and hopes that simply didn't correlate with anything one knew about their own life? Well, one would simply compartmentalize. Organize, sort, rearrange, decide. Kaegen's approach to life was undisputedly to correct one, for no other reason than it made sense to him at the time. The fact that they didn't make those same conclusions could only mean they had different datasets, a different universe. And many universes overlapped, cross sectioned, rammed into each other at times. That was relationships. Relationships were more easily formed when realities were similar, when the borders were closer together.

Perhaps oddly, from the other boy's perspective, or perhaps expected, the one thing Kaegen did choose to mention was the little comment about knowing death. Actually knowing it. The rest of it was just reiterating what Kaegen could have guessed. He knew that the puppet could kill, and he knew that the other puppet could as well. What he did not know was that they were one and the same, although different. He would have to remember that one, he would have to write it down to make sure he didn't forget.

"You know them?"

It was a prompt, one that was expressed in monotone, with just barely enough inflection to contextualize that it was, in fact, a question, and not a statement. Kaegen evidently noticed that tea looked decidedly deceased, and so turned to mushroom for clarification. One spidery hand vanishing into his robe, only to cram his mouth full of a red powdery substance, almost angrily doing so, as if he didn't really think it was the right thing to do, but had no choice. The blood smell had slowly gotten to him, the corpse-puppet's blood smelled shockingly normal. But he refused to give that away as a weakness, refused to expose something that had already been exploited. No, he was no fool, not even around someone he had forged an alliance with.

"When was the last time you spoke to them. Spoke to death"

His eyes were focussed on mushroom as his hand darted for his leather book, doubtlessly one of his most prized possessions. It was organized, in some weird way, with labelled bookmarks and tags that would seem superfluous to the one who had written it. It was designed to be a guidebook, almost certainly. Some ribbon scraps with writing that would say "start" and "glossary" in smudged ink, legible if aku's eyes were sharp enough.

"Although... don't you need to recharge as well?"

An afterthought, a realization, the start of a new theory.

"As lost as Alice, as mad as the Hatter."

The rabbit chuckled, "You take things quite literally, don't you? Though, I suppose the questions can still be answered. Yes, we know death, we've had brushes with it occasionally." the puppet cocked his head once more, "As for talking to death? Well, I suppose that would be when he was six." Aku glanced over at the mildly brain-dead Selim, getting no confirmation.

The rabbit then looked back up upon hearing a more direct question. "I run on his subconscious at this point, he instinctively allows me to speak through the rabbit after spending so much time doing so." The rabbit seemed to think for a moment, "To clarify, I'm just a voice he hears, but he's given me physical form using this puppet... it helped clear his mind up."

He observed Kaegen for a few moments "To put it simply, I rarely need to recharge because I don't have a physical brain that grows tired."

The emotionless button eyes of the rabbit hand puppet bored into Kaegen, unseeing yet seeming so intense. He was curious about the red powder, though had quickly ruled it as something dhampirs need to quell urges for blood. Understandable, this school wasn't so unprofessional as to let dhampirs run around drinking blood like this was a sequel to some vampire soap opera.

"If we want this to work well, don't you suppose you should tell us what you know... or is that not necessary?"

That made sense, yes. Which meant that mushroom didn't fit standard classifications, at least they wouldn't, if Kaegen employed standard taxonomy in order to file away his encounters. No, the sapient figures that flickered in and out of Kaegen's reality had their own classifications, their own way of being distinguished from each other. It helped him focus, helped him calm himself with the knowledge that he knew how to hurt them, knew how to cause pain, knew how to kill.

"So, you don't know where he lives, then. Was a bit much to hope for."

Kaegen paused for a moment, closing his eyes for what seemed like an awful long second before opening them again. The red rings had begun to glow again, glow with an old hate, a hate that served as a banner for his internal energies and will power to rally under. It was one of the few things he desired beyond survival. And even that, if he was being honest, which he seldom was, was also about survival.

"I'm going to kill it, someday. Death. No one has tried, I've checked."

the light faded, as he regained composure, retaining the strength of the tentative locks whose task it was to ensure his castle remain hidden.

"...Fools."

He didn't begrudge mushroom the question. This was his appendage now, it would only make sense that it knew some of what he did. Kaegen began to scratch in the stone in front of them, drawing four large spheres, touching, just a little bit, with the exception of the fourth, which encompassed the other three entirely

"Here are the realities of sentience. The first is the reality of blinding light, the reality that houses the people. We can touch them, but they need to try rather hard to cross over and touch us. Not so much to worry about, at least, if they're truly from here. The sorts of people consist of rabbits leeches and briars. Of these, they are all dangerous but the only ones who will truly go out of their way to pose a threat are the briars. They protect the leeches, and the rabbits too, at least whichever are clever enough to hide under their shield. You'll see them at the calamities. Always standing up, always fighting back, always having a friend that wouldn't reciprocate. Leeches should not be killed in the presence of a briar, rabbits can be killed whenever, briars must be overcome."

Kaegen began to cough, trying obviously to quiet his rasping throat. He didn't like to talk, it hurt, he didn't have to do it often, which only made the issue worse. It could probably be cured, by magic, but he wasn't willing to go into the infirmary. Only bad memories there. Bad memories and the ever present potential for death. Neither of which were concepts he wished to entertain.

"The second is the reality belonging to the outsiders. The greys. They are not fully blind but they do not live in the dark. You'll notice them standing alone, usually trying to reach the light, to have friends, to be a part of a world they can only dream of. The only exception here are the stars. They shine brightly, and seem like they should live in the light, but they do not. They are outgoing, and have energy, but they do not seem to attract people, they do not truly live in the light. Just close. Wisps can be killed easily, corpses need not be killed. Something inside them has already gone out, they've lost hope. Stars should be avoided, or traps can be used. They tend to be more formidable than briars, and their words can sting."

In a panicy move, one of Kaegen's hands darted inside of his robe to pull out a waterskin, which he drunk one large swallow of before stashing it again, more calmly this time.

"You two live among monsters, in darkness. You're pools. Direct confrontation and battle would end you. That's why you use blades, you'd prefer to kill in..."

Kaegen paused, taking a deep breath. He was not comfortable, but then again, he never was. It wasn't as bad as last year, when his whole front had been a mass of bruises.

"You need surprise, is what I'm saying just-"

Kaegen took another deep breath, this time through his nose, smelling the air around him, trying to detect something, anything that would tip him off, let him know that there was someone else present.

"-Give me a moment."

His voice was noticeably hoarser, more coarse and strained. The boy sounded just as he looked. Like a wreck, a moving skeleteon, an emaciated pile of sinew and hate. He certainly did not look like any boy on the little high school pamphlets that muggles were so fond of, nothing like the happy faces in the great hall above them. He had never lived that life, never seen the light, never felt it. Only thought he had, for brief instances, just before it was snatched away yet again.

"...While I pause. Did death say anything to him?"

"As lost as Alice, as mad as the Hatter."

The rabbit cocked its head at the words the dhampir spoke, the conviction in his voice about slaying death itself. It didn't comment on the impossibility of that statement, the paradox of 'killing' death. Instead, the puppet merely observed the glowing red rings boring into his lifeless gaze.

Aku responded, maybe with a hidden humour, maybe with sarcasm, or perhaps with a voice of belief, it was hard to tell. "I wish you luck in that daunting endeavour."

When the eldritch boy across from them began speaking again, answering the question the creepy talking bunny had asked about, Selim began to slowly come to again. The second-year's eyes slowly refocused, the light in them dull with exhaustion and dancing with images born of a strained mind.

They both listened as the dhampir spoke, trying to understand what the upperclassmen was talking about, though finding it difficult to comprehend because of the nicknames or titles the boy had bestowed upon the subjects he was speaking of.

At the coughing, Selim began to move, bringing back out the tea set and making some of the peppermint tea up. The minty aroma danced about the stale air, Selim swallowed the blood coagulating in his mouth.

He was feeling the urge, the one that haunted him since his capture when he was six, the urge to scratch at his skin he always felt so uncomfortable in. He wanted to scratch it until it bled, until it grounded him with pain, until it tore off so it wouldn't feel so tight.

He knew it was a bad idea, but it was making him nauseated to resist the urge, it was slowly awakening the sense of panic he kept at bay. His fingers twitched erattically as he poured the dhampir some tea.

Pools. Surprise attacks. Killing.

Some words got through the haze of his mind, but his attention was being drawn away by that cursed itch that permitted his whole body.

He tried to pour his own tea until a question directed at him caused his edgy form to jump. the tea clattered to the floor, chipping. The handle broke and hot tea splashed across his uncovered hand.

He pulled back with a hiss, then slowly relaxed the stinging pain distracting him from how constraining his skin felt, how it felt like spidery fingers were gliding across his skin despite no one being near enough to him to do so.

He almost broke down into silent crying as bile had begun to climb up his throat. He took a breath, slowly let it out, scalded his hand resting on his lap. Opening his eyes, he gingerly picked up the teapot, then looked at Deathmote with eyes strained with a silent scream of agony he was trying to restrain.

He tried to hold the memories at bay by answering the question with halted words. "Not physically, but during my darkest hour where I wished to simply disappear, for suffering to end, I could feel its intent to keep me alive. As if it had whispered that this torment would haunt me for the rest of my days."

'Mushroom' jerked with the restrained motions of the hand inside. The burn was fading to a dull throb, the urge to scratch slowly resurfacing. He clenched his hands into a fist after handing the dhampir the tea he had poured after he added honey to it. A quiet mutter of explanation edited his mouth.

"Here, it'll help your throat more then plain water will.."

His fingers twitched, he wanted to draw his own blood, but he forced himself to still the aborted movement toward his own neck. Letting out another breath, he closed his eyes to listen to the words of his new 'owner' once more.

'Tea' wasn't one to tempt fate. Making yourself bleed whilst sitting across from a being that craved blood was tempting fate.

Though he was starting to physically feel pain build up from his actions, it wasn't a good kind though.

'Mushroom' watched on, eyeing the boy he was attached to. The rabbit remained silent though, not feeling the urge to explain the 12-year-old's actions at that moment.

This thing, this boy like thing sitting across from him, his new appendage, his arm, his hand, his tool. Something was obviously wrong with it. It jittered, shook, plainly felt fear. The wish of luck was something taken at face value, because there wasn't any reason for it not to be. It made sense, to wish someone luck, because there wasn't exactly a lot else that could be done or said. It did, however, imply that mushroom either had the ability to give luck, or that mushroom had some desire to simply be polite. And if it was the latter, then why? To appease Kaegen?

"Why did you choose to wish me luck? Is that something you're capable of wishing for, while honestly expecting a response to that wish from whatever god happens to be near?"

Tea was being made, by tea. Or at least the ravenclaw was fairly certain that it was tea in control of the tea's production. The way the hands shook, no, that didn't seem to be mushroom. Mushroom was far more grounded, solid, malicious, even. If the puppet had it's own form, who knows how powerful it could become. It was food for thought, although they were technically the same entity. That complicated things.

But the more he studied the eyes directly in front of him, the twitches, the jump and subsequent tea spilling everywhere. Some splashed on the ravenclaw as well, but the boiling droplets didn't find their way onto the rice paper thin skin. And his robe didn't much mind. But he was starting to think that maybe all of this wasn't due to fear at all. Maybe, all of this was due to a sickness, some kind of plague. There was fear, sure, but was there enough to warrant all of this? Was there really?

He met the strained eyes of his new appendage, and didn't know what to say. Something inside of him wanted to help ease something. Ease the pain, maybe, ease the fear or the sickness. Kaegen's mind was deeply, deeply scarred. It was twisted and hurt and his heart had been abused far more than a child's heart ever should have. But he had never been a cruel child. He had never been inherently malicious, it was all trained, hammered, forced into him. At Kaegen's core, he just wanted to nap in a tree, he wanted to smile at little creatures and have some friends. One, at least.

And here at last was something that allowed that little bit of good to come up for air, to try and be heard, to exist, even. But he didn't know what to do with it. So he just sat there, staring blankly, thinking deeply, trying to puzzle out emotions that resisted understanding. A blank, dead, lost stare that oozed nothing at all. And it hurt, somehow. It hurt that he hadn't done anything, and it hurt as he listened to the tale of death.

"Death seldom seems to take those who wish to be taken. They're a contrarion, like that. You have to force them to show up, force them to maintain the nature of everything, force them to pretend that they don't exist, that they're just a fairy tale, a man made personification of a naturally occurring phenomenon related to the cessation of an organism's ability to maintain itself"

There was finally some emotion there, as though he found the idea of thinking that not only stupid, but reprehensible, vile. This was augmented by the wince that twisted his face as his throat twinged in pain. He had been talking a lot, for the first time in a very, very long while. And he could feel it.

The twitching thing, the sick thing, passed him a cup of tea with the reassurance that it would help. He wanted to drink it, he did. But old habits died hard. Old habits were nearly impossible to break. Why would he hesitate to drink something given to him by his own hand?

"Can you promise on your name? This will be neutral, or positive?"

He stared so hard that his eyes began to faintly glow, stared as deep into the other boy's eyes as he dared to stare, trying to find hope, hope for the existence of trust, hope for the ability to be able to let down his guard, even a little. Hope for the existence of something shared. Hope that tea wasn't about to twitch it's last, and fall over dead in front of him.

"As lost as Alice, as mad as the Hatter."

The rabbit chuckled at the probing question of the dhampir, "Ah, no, that's not the reason. You could say it's a force of habit. Our Clan made sure we knew our etiquette. So I merely wished you luck out of impulsive politeness."

Aku dipped his head as if to lightly apologise for the action. Perhaps he should've accounted for the apparent personality traits of the being across from him.

They both listened to the tirade about Death the tall boy spoke in response to Selim's halting words that were strained by his internal torment. Neither had much to comment about it, merely contemplating them quietly instead.

As for the question the Ravenclaw posed to Selim about the tea, the thin Second year had found he was having troubles forming the words needed to speak. So, he merely nodded at the inquiry about the tea being safe. Then, Selim paused, as if thinking on something, and hesitantly unfurled his shaking hands from where he had tucked them against his chest in an effort to keep them still.

He grabbed the teacup, slowly bringing it to his lips as it trembled precariously in his grasp. He took a sip ignoring how the scalding liquid coated his tongue. It didn't pour back out of his mouth, and when he placed it back down the tea level had visibly lowered.

The boy swallowed harshly after his display he intended to show that the tea was, indeed, not poisoned. Actions did speak louder than words, did thy not?

Sure there was still a possibility that he was immune to the theoretical poison he placed in the drink, but there wasn't much else the snake-like boy could do to prove it wasn't poisoned.

He opened his mouth, speaking in a quiet, restrained tone as he tried to ignore the burning sensation that had infiltrated his whole body, and how his bitten tongue now throbbed as the attempted healing of the wound was ruined by hot tea. Hopefully, no blood got in the drink itself.

His eyes watered slightly in pain, and he pulled his legs up to his chest, burying his face in his dirtied sweatpants. He croaked out a few words relating to his action of drinking the tea.

"A bit hot... might want to let it... cool down." He said in a wavering voice.

then he fell silent, form occasionally jerking as it felt like his skin was growing tighter and tighter. Restraining him, trapping him. His fingers jerked, but he forced himself to keep them firmly wrapped around his legs. Aku now awkwardly peeking out from above his knees (The arm connected to the rabbit thrown atop the boy's downturned head), spoke again.

"You'll have to take us on our word about the drink not being poisoned. Though you could also mind the fact that you saw us pouring the tea and making it for you, and the fact that we... well I guess just Tea, were drinking the beverage before." The puppet shrugged. Neither of the duo really knew of the dhampir's internal struggles about simply trusting them. Though, if they did it was perfectly understandable to them both, they also had trust issues since they were three.

"You don't have to drink it if you don't want to. It was just an offer on Tea's part." Aku consoled, wholly uncaring whether or not the dhampir did something as simple as drinking the tea Selim made.

There were odd parallels between this moment and the moment Selim had when he first met Jack and offered him cider. The Fox had also refused, speculating about it being drugged or poisoned. In the end, after Selim's apparent uncaring about whether or not the redhead drank it, he did accept the offer.

A simple sign of trust, a component in the beginning of the end of the two Slytherin's relationships. Truly times were less complicated back then. Just a contract made, and a superficial bond formed that would inevitably break in the coming months.

Snakes don't really live in groups, now do they?

The sentiment was the same here. Neither of the one person that was Selim Faust, cared in the dhampir accepted their superficial offer. Neither of them went through the same thing one Kaegen Deathmote did. They had dealt with different struggles, coped differently, lived differently. So their sufferings were, obviously, not the same.

Similarities did not a doppelganger make.

They both fell silent. One straining against internalized trauma, one basically vibing on the prementioned's hand, mildly disgruntled about the erratic movements of their distraught vessel.

They waited, at least in part, for the dhampir's unimportant choice.

A light dip of the head probably would have gone unnoticed. But the niceties of the world of light were often lost on the little dhampir, who responded with a little jerk.

"A head does not bow to a head unless they are scared, or weak, or think themselves more cunning."

After a brief pause, which was used to consider the possibilites that he had just laid before himself, a fourth option struck the ravenclaw.

"...or is this something else from your old clan"

His question seemed unimportant, however, as he saw his new hand obviously be in pain? Sadness? Obviously not wanting to speak, but nodding a yes that it was safe. That was all Kaegen had needed. He was a being of technicality, of loopholes and diverging realities. If he was not told something was safe, then it might not be safe, and there wouldn't truly have been a lie to be seen. But confirmation of it's safety would consist of placing one's name on the line. One's honor. Of course, there was no way for tea to have known that, and no way for Kaegen to know that tea didn't know. So there he sat, confused expression beginning to form as tea's face was buried. The pang was back. The little voice that wanted to do something.

But this time he did act. This time he did do something. It wasn't a lot, honestly in the grand scheme of things it wasn't much at all. He nodded to mushroom, nearly beginning to muse over the differences of a nod and a bow before taking the tea, and downing the hot liquid in a single gulp. The sensation was alarming, yet soothing, and he almost felt as though it had burned something, although he wasn't sure, because adrenaline had begun to pump through his body. He was scared, or perhaps terrified would be a word best suited to his plan. But, he thought to himself. Why would I be scared of my own hand?

So he crept around until he was not sitting across from tea, but rather, next to him. About a foot and a half away, which was the closest he was really willing to get to anyone at all. Stopping there, he took a deep breath as though about to go for a long swim, and mimicked tea's position, face buried in his dirty robes. He couldn't see. He didn't know what was immediately around him. He had blinded himself and could feel his heart beating faster and faster. The back of his neck was entirely exposed, exposed in the worst way, and yet he remained still.

The tea, in the end, had proved less important to the boy than he had first thought. The act of drinking having taken less bravado than previously imagined. Something as simple as a glass of tea had been raised, in Kaegen's mind, to a position of utmost importance and had then been nearly completely dropped in favor of something else. Connection. A feeble attempt at something he felt like should happen for reasons he would never have been able to name.