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"'s alright, Ix. I think." He turned to Derik. "It is alright, isn't it? she couldn't have known."

"A bad idea it is, we can it."

"Well, time for a change of plan," Richard said looking in the direction of the sound system. "If treats are out, why not trying tricks?"

Ix finally managed to snatch up the pieces of the mask and repair them with her wand, quickly shoving it back onto her very red face. "Charlotte—my partner—she wanted to come a-and she thought this would be a good costume for me—I didn't realize, I, I—" She realized she was starting to hyperventilate and forced herself to take several deep breaths. "I'm sorry."

Derik shook his head as though unsure if he were seeing clearly. Alas, his vision was not the problem. A bit of his right brain had been kicking him for the last few minutes, and he finally understood why. He knew this person. They just hadn't met in person before. She was shy, or so he'd been led to believe.

A random stranger turning up in a Phantom mask? Fine. The universe hated him. Hilarious.

Someone he knew and aspired to mentor, turning up in a Phantom mask, and seeing him like this? He wasn't sure if he felt more betrayed or more ashamed.

He tried vainly to sit up straighter and school his affect to respectability, but he couldn't quite keep a petulant note of accusation from his voice: "Ix? What are you doing here?" He wondered if another drink would be entirely out of the question.

(( Re. bromance, because I forgot to respond to that earlier and I don't want to leave Thoth out entirely while these two have a moment: There are probably as many definitions of bromance as the number of people you ask, but I think it's any platonic yet very close relationship between two guys? It might apply more to comedy situations where the relationship is teased as being not platonic, like JD and Turk on Scrubs, or Shawn and Gus on Psych, but I dunno.

(( Any way you slice it, I'm digging the idea of Derik and Agent!Thoth bonding and being friends. The parallels between them are weird, unexpected, and cool. I hope it survives sobriety. {= ) ))

Ix laughed nervously, feeling sweat drip down inside her mask, tickling her cheek. Her face twitched, and she delicately reached inside with a finger to scratch at the irritation, only to yelp when the motion proved enough to dislodge the sticking charm she'd used to hold it in place; the mask fell to the ground and cracked in two.

She looked up at everyone else and blanched, one hand scrabbling for the pieces while the other came up to cover her face. "I, um, um, that's, um, FicPsych, yes, that makes sense, that, um—"

((Who says the lightness is allowed to last? :D))

"Like, massive sugar high," Dax said, grimacing. "Who knew sugar was literally addictive to changelings?"

"This was in FicPsych," he said. "Did I not mention that?" He looked at Jenni. "You lot still take in canons for healing, don't you?"

"Of course." She gave a little huff of wry humor. "When anyone bothers to bring them in."

(( Now don't you feel silly? {; ) Nah, it probably wasn't very clear. But it's okay, this is a nice little light interlude from all the serious.

(( Short post because I'm on my phone. ))

Tom looked at Ix. "Come to think of it, good question. How DID a canon get in?"

She couldn't shake the feeling that Derik was mad at her. He just seemed so... different from the person who had been so kind to her over messages.

It didn't exactly help her nerves when the soundtrack thundered ominously at the worst possible time. She just hoped nobody had noticed her jump.

"How—" she began, then cleared her throat when her voice was barely above a hoarse whisper. "How did a canon get in HQ?"

Derik grinned. It was always a disturbing expression on his face at the best of times, distorted as his mouth was on one side, and his tear-damp, splotchy cheeks and bloodshot eyes didn't help. Nor did the fact that what he felt wasn't happiness, but a fatalistic sense of irony. "I was just about to finish the story of my recruitment," he said. "I was going to skip a certain part, but now I simply can't."

He cleared his throat, which was starting to feel a little dry with all this talking, and began. "Jenni tells me I lay in a catatonic state for roughly a month after she brought me back here, willing myself to die. You see I didn't manage it, even though I didn't have quite the best of care. Headquarters was in the midst of a quarantine thanks to an epidemic of macroviruses, and FicPsych's resources were stretched thin. They had to consolidate their patients in order to protect them. Am I telling it true?" he asked, checking with the nurse.

She nodded, keeping a wary eye on him and Ix. "True. And my bosses still wouldn't let me near you most of the time." She would always resent that, even if there were good reasons for it.

"So it was," Derik went on, "that I was finally roused thanks to the intervention of my erstwhile roommate. The first thing I remember clearly is looking up into the yellow eyes of a man in a full black mask. My ontological progenitor—and yours for the night," he added to Ix, grinning some more. "Erik. The Phantom of the Opera!"

The Halloween soundtrack obligingly filled the pregnant pause with a roll of thunder and some eerie organ music.

Gall flinched and looked around in irritation and real unease. "Jeez, every time!"

Jenni just facepalmed.

"Oh, he had words for me!" Derik chuckled. "Called me 'impostor', accused me of trying to usurp his identity despite not knowing pain as he did. Hah! That made me angry. I felt something for the first time in weeks, and it was anger. I set him straight, and I invited him to kill me as he'd threatened to do. We understood each other then, a pair of scarred, broken souls, alike but unlike, and the bastard let me live. He left, but not before telling me I had a chance to make a new life for myself, and that I'd be a fool not to take it. If you've never heard his voice, you don't know what it's like, but you can't shut it out. It invades you, it gets its hooks in your brain. That voice haunts me. Sometimes it sounds a lot like my own. One more form of torment I can't seem to escape." He glanced at Ix then, but just as quickly looked away again.

(( A pause for reactions, if you've got 'em. ))

"It can't be that terrible," Richard said. "I mean, going to a Halloween party and being unable of eating candies? That would be ridiculious. I'm sure it will be fine."

She didn't like the man's laughter at all, but who was she to disobey a direct order like that?

"Hear what?" she asked, eyes flickering to the other people in the group.

"'Allo Ix! Welcome. No need to be shy." He sipped his Coke. "Or feel free. Everyone else is."

((I know. It's just a humorous set of occurences.

Is that what a bromance is? I was never sure...))

He took in the cape, the rose, the white half-mask on the wrong side. For a moment, his frazzled limbic system tried to react in every conceivable way at once, and he sat still with his face contorting in a muddle of expressions. Then he gave in to the absurdity of his existence and laughed. It went on for a while, strident and hair-raising, and abruptly trailed off into a rich chuckle. "Oh, this is perfect! An admirer of Himself! Come on, then, you'll want to hear this, too." He waved her into the circle.

"Wow. Your timing sucks," Gall observed with something like admiration.

(( Agent Ix, I'm so sorry that we're so mean.

(( Re. "get a room," Gall's just bitter because the attractive guys are paying more attention to each other than to her. I think what's really happening sounds something like this. And it's a beautiful thing. I've never written a bromance before. ˆ_ˆ ))

Well, for a certain definition of wandered; she was skirting the outside edge of the group, hoping to stay out of everyone's way, but she froze, ears pricked when she heard Derik mention losing an eye twice.

"That may be an interesting story. I would listen, if you wish to tell."

Tom looked at Derik curiously. "Actually, that sounds really interesting."

((...Why do other people's characters eventually suggest that at least one of my characters get a room with another guy? It's happened twice in the past month... XD))

"It's funny," she said. "Usually I'm the one having that effect on people. But I could never draw Derik out like this, either. I think it's the similar betrayal and bereavement... and drink."

"I can hear you, you know," said Derik, looking at her from under his brows. "I'm drunk, not deaf."

She jumped. "Er. Sorry."

He rolled his eyes and turned back to Thoth. "There's more, if you want to know. Less awful—almost funny, really. D'you want to know how I lost my eye twice in one day?"

"He's usually a lot... colder. Very distant. Not so much right now. Maybe it's the alcohol."

Thoth nodded at Derik. "I am glad that I could assist. Thank you for telling me your tale."

"Those are good words... very good words. Thank you, Thoth."

Gall grumbled something that sounded suspiciously like "get a room," though not so loud that she thought anyone would notice. She thought about taking off in Alex's wake, but didn't. She was learning things. Uncomfortable, mushy things, but things might be worth knowing anyway.

Jenni wanted to say something to Alex, but what was she going to say? It was all right? It wasn't. She decided to catch up with him another time and make sure he was okay. For now, she did her best to pretend she wasn't quietly weeping, and tilted her head inquisitively at Tom.

(( Poor Alex. ∗pats kid∗ It's not your fault writers are all a bunch of sadists. ))

Alex looked like he wanted to sink through the floor and disappear. "Derik, I'm so sorry. I wouldn't have—he gestured at his costume, his face red. "If I'd known, and I... oh, god."

Zeke, his eyes whirling violet, dug his claws into Alex's shoulder, making small chirps of distress.

"I'm just gonna..." Alex gestured awkwardly away from the group before shuffling off.

((That seems like a good place for him to bail—especially because I don't want him running into someone else before it's time.))

"I am sorry for your loss. I do not know your pain. I cannot. But I can remember your story. We can learn from it. And the dead can be remembered. We cannot do more. We should not do less."

Tom looked at them. He scratched his head. "You know, I've never really seen Thoth like this..."

"Oh, all right." With a sigh of capitulation, Derik sank down onto the seat again. He glanced at Alex, but since he'd gone off in conversation with Tom, there wasn't much point in saying anything to him. It was fine. Fine. He took off his green domino mask and rubbed his face, particularly the scarred right side. With the mask off, it was easier to distinguish the blind milky-blue eye from the functioning hazel one, slightly bloodshot. "My tale, my tale," he muttered to himself. "Does it start at the beginning, or the end? There are things I remember that never happened, but they did; things that weren't true, but are. Jenni—" he turned toward her "—how should I start it?"

"You could start when we met, I think," she said, drifting closer. Having been there, she had never heard him speak fully of his recruitment, and she was curious to hear his account.

He nodded. "Yes. Yes, that's fine." He looked up, not at anyone in particular, but into the distance of remembrance. "It was the Hatching. Alanna and I were on the hot sands with Yunith and my Skepnadth, watching over the eggs. It was a proud clutch! But they always were—with such parents, how could they be anything but? What a pair! Yunith, living statue of pure gold; Skepnadth, night-black marbled with bronze. Which he shouldn't have been." Derik's brow creased. "There are five colors, not... but..." He shook his head. "But there we were. There was a queen egg, even though all the Weyrs had a full complement, and a particularly large one at that. At the time my only concern was finding a match for her, but Alanna had everything well in hand—she usually did." His mouth twisted with bitterness. "I remember holding her that day... tall, beautiful, proud. Her hand on my shoulder." He reached up to touch the spot. "She was mine. I loved her. Nothing else mattered." He lapsed into silence.

"That was when I saw you," Jenni put in. "I was there in the viewing gallery with Agents Supernumerary and Ilraen. Oh, I was so angry!"

"Yes, and you made a commotion. I remember that. Everyone looked, and I saw three harpers I didn't know, but I thought nothing of it. I thought nothing much of anything. The four new candidates had come up to us, bowing quite prettily to the sires of the clutch, and Alanna kept the girls near us, near the queen egg. These four had been Searched at the last moment by Yunith herself, a thing unprecedented in the history of Pern. Travelers from another world—but it wasn't the first time we'd had such."

Jenni explained, "It was a crossover with Harry Potter. He's talking about Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Ginny; they'd transported themselves over in a magical accident. Sirius Black and an OC called Roma Lupin were already there. Sirius got there after falling through the Veil. I still have no idea how Roma was supposed to have arrived. They'd both Impressed somehow, even though Sirius at least must have been too old." She shook her head, still irritated by the idiocy of that fic.

"The four newcomers shortly did, too," Derik went on. "That's too much to tell, but suffice to say I now know it was utter nonsense, every moment of it. I mean," he chuckled, "honestly, the rattlesnake-hide bronze. We don't have rattlesnakes on Pern! And there I stood, smiling like an idiot, at least until the gold egg hatched out a little green-gold sport from one end. That was a shocker even then. But Alanna felt she might clutch like a gold, so we decided to train her up as a junior queen, and all was well again. The egg hatched a proper gold from the other half—I say proper, though she wasn't really. Shards, looking back on it I feel like such a benighted fool." He leaned back and sank down in the chair, looking away. "I had two eyes then—how could I not have seen it was all wrong? I was a harper, I knew all the teaching ballads, I—"

"Derik, hush," Jenni said gently. "You were never at fault. That was why I had to get you out of there."

He thought a moment, then picked up the narrative again. "Before the Hatching Feast, Skepnadth and I decided to look in on Yunith, make sure she'd eaten and was resting well. A queen doesn't leave her clutch when it's near to hatching, so she fasts until it's over," he explained. "She had returned to her weyr, and Skepnadth went up ahead of me. He told me two strangers was there, bothering her. I came up the stairs in a hurry, and there was this woman." He indicated Jenni. "Something was odd about her, but neither of us could place it. We went down to the Bowl to avoid disturbing the dragons any further, and she opened my eyes. She reminded me of everything I should have known, but couldn't think of for the fog in my head. She told me what was really happening. Mary Sues—a blight on the universe worse than Thread. Eaters of living ideas, was that what you said?"

Jenni nodded. "Leaving behind only the shiny dead bits to decorate themselves."

"I was one of those," Derik said. "An ornament. An affectation. Not even my name and face were my own!" He leveled a resentful look at Jenni. "You didn't care about me for myself—you cared about him."

She flushed guiltily. "To begin with, maybe. But it was a dragonman I had to win over, not a Phantom. Erik would have been easier to convince."

"I'm not him. I'm not, I'm not."

"I know, hon. We all know."

"Well, mostly," Gall said dubiously. She'd never heard the whole story, either, so she'd hung around to listen.

Jenni shot her a repressive look.

"You haven't seen what I've seen," the Viking protested, but she shut up again.

"The point is," Derik cut back in, raising his voice somewhat more than necessary, "my whole life was a lie, and my only choices were to stay an ignorant thrall and die, or to give up everything I thought I knew and live to find some other purpose for myself and my dragon. I chose the latter, because it was my duty to Pern. Because a dragonman must fly when Threads are in the sky. So I said I would help save Pern from Alanna and the rest." His tone was agitated, self-mocking. "So that's what I set out to do. I went to the Hatching Feast, like I was supposed to. I sat beside her, and I watched, and I waited. The plan was—ah, it went so wrong." He hunched forward, covering his face with both hands. "It never should have come to dragons fighting dragons, but Alanna—Yunith—they went wild. I tried to stop it, we both did." His shoulders shuddered. "He was so brave. My fine bronze. And she killed him. Yunith, his mate, attacked him like a wild feline.

"Ilraen—Ilraen had become a gold dragon himself to keep the Weyr under control, that was the plan, but he couldn't control the morph quickly enough. You can't have a dragon without a rider, it's not possible. He tried to save Skepnadth, but by the time he killed Yunith and the rest of the Sues were under control, it was too late. At least... at least I got to say good-bye before he went between."

(( Stopping there, though it's not quite the end of the story of how Derik became Derik, because good lord that's a long post already, it's taken all day because I actually had work to do at work today (go figure), and I don't have much more time before I have to leave for home. And, well, Derik needs a minute, too.

(( I hope it makes sense, but not so much sense that nobody feels like asking questions about the weirder bits. {= ) ))

"So, um, funny story? There's no processed sugar where I come from? So whenever I eat candy, I get... really weird. Just as a head's-up."

"It is not much stranger than anything else the multiverse has come up with."

"After you, then?" he asked.

In response to Anne's explanation of Henry's speech patterns, he said "That would explain why Henry sounds like several hundred years of intense linguistic blending, at least by my world's standards as I know them."

"Safer holiday too, without inspiration from a centuries or millenia old one, and no greater than usual opportunity for baleful rituals for wannabe Voldemort or actual monsters, humans or not."

"Well, we could always try minor pranks on other people to live the 'trick' part, since the treats are all around," Richard said, waving an arm in the direction of the buffets. "Just remember. Dibs on the caramel and red berries ones. Oh, and the ones with dark chocolate."