ricochetlove | Open post

The cells beneath the Silvermane Guard headquarters really could use some updating, Sampo thinks as he waits in one of them.

He'd been dragged in here on some minor, petty charges that he's about ninety-nine percent sure he'll be able to wriggle his way out of, and even if he can't? He'll be able to flirt his way out of, once Dunn's not on guard duty anymore. Dunn is an unfortunate brick wall of solid heterosexuality that seems to be laser-focused on a certain Landau sibling-- granted, Sampo can't fault him too much for that, considering his own proclivities, but still. It's a deep annoyance that his attempts at flirting his way out of jail are met with a human brick wall of obliviousness.

Ugh. He isn't even good for getting information out of, because he's just as close-lipped about that as he is about a certain captain of the guard. What did Sampo do to deserve conditions like this?

He has no idea of what's going on a few floors above him, in the office of a certain intelligence officer.

"And that's the situation as it stands," Pela says, handing the briefing file over to Gepard. "I've already taken the liberty of finding a partner for you, and the assignment has been approved by the Supreme Guardian. Let's go meet with him."

Surely she means another member of the guard or another intelligence officer, right?

[This actually isn't the worst position he's been in, believe it or not. Nor the most embarrassing situation he's been in, though that might be hard to believe. The door is...

...and Gepard tries to glance past Sampo, while not making it obvious that he's trying to glance past Sampo...

...still shut. He can't tell if it's locked or not. He thought it was locked. He hoped it was still locked.

And, well, Sampo actually isn't the worst person to catch him doing anything. That honor would probably go to Pela, who was not only one of his colleagues, but also someone who dealt with his sisters a lot, and showed up fairly often with reports. The perfect mix of danger, disgrace, and also never letting him live down. Sampo, meanwhile, is a criminal. Him catching him doing something out of the norm is, well.

It's in Sampo's wheelhouse of things he deals with. Probably. Less social repercussions. Less collateral damage.

And they're in his office, so it's not as if he was caught out in the open. As long as that door was locked, they'd be fine. And, worst case, he does have a large desk Sampo could hide under.

But all of this is avoiding the real problem of Sampo being in his office. It isn't the fact that Sampo broke in, though that is a problem, probably. It isn't the fact that there's classified materials in various places, nor the fact that there's probably a warrant out for Sampo, or if there isn't a warrant currently there'd be one out eventually.

No, it's the fact that-]

I can explain.

[-he's sitting behind his desk, head tilted back, pants undone, cock in his hand, obviously a bit...sweaty and bothered, and Gepard Landau has no idea how long Sampo had been there because, well.]

Wait, why am I offering to explain. I should be arresting you? [It's a question, not a statement. His voice rose up a bit. Give him a moment. Maybe two?]

[Becoming an Emanator of an Aeon is a great honor, everyone always said. To be graced with the power and regard of a near-godlike being is a privilege, a benediction given as a reward for exemplifying the virtues of your given Path. Those sainted few, gifted with power and longevity, uplifted towards divinity, beloved vanguards of their Aeon.]

[What a load of shit.]

[Sampo is an Emanator of Aha-- the Joyseeker, the Laughter, the Elated One, whatever other euphemism people wanted to use for them to avoid attracting their notice. And you know what? It's a rough fucking gig. Maybe it's different for other Aeons, maybe Qlipoth or Xipe or one of the others are great bosses, but nobody ever told Sampo that being bestowed with divinity would come with so much baggage. And the best part is that he never asked to be given this power, he was just minding his own Aeons-damned business one day and found himself pinned underneath the immense, mercurial gaze of a laughing god. When an Aeon turns their eye to you, you don't get to say no.]

[So, yeah, no one ever tells you about how being an Emanator means that you're at the beck and call of some Aeon's capricious whims, or how they can just make your body do things regardless of whether you want to or not, pushing your own mind and will out of the way as easily as you might put a child in time-out. No one tells you about the stupid fucking dietary restrictions. That was a fun one to figure out! Congratulations, you're in possession of cosmic power and a manager from hell, and as an added bonus, all your meals have to be people-flavored from now on. Hope you like an all-liquid diet! Solid food now makes you hork your guts out and even anything liquid is pretty iffy. That cup of coffee every morning that you drink just to have even the slightest feeling of normalcy is a roll of the dice and half the time, you lose.]

[Is it any wonder why Sampo packed his bags and fled? Ran as far as he could get, to some little iceball planet in the ass-end of the galaxy that no one ever goes to? An Emanator, on the run from his own Aeon. Desperate to find any little corner of the galaxy that's outside of his Aeon's sight.]

[So far, he's been lucky. He hasn't felt the tug of his Aeon on his brain, demanding his return. He hasn't felt their fingers pulling his strings, pushing him down small in his own body to make way for their own will. Maybe, if he stays here long enough and keeps his head down, the Laughter will forget about him and turn their attention to some other poor bastard.]

[The dietary thing is still a little bit of a problem, though. Sampo tries to get around it as much as possible-- sometimes he's able to sneak into the hospital's blood bank in the Overworld and get his fix there. Sometimes Natasha can hook him up, in exchange for intel or medical supplies or some other thing that she needs. Sometimes, when things are really desperate, he has to hunt, and those are the worst nights. When he's hungry, skirting the knife edge of starvation, bad enough that his ability to function normally is taking a hit but not so far gone that he can't control himself. That's when he hits the streets with knock-out gas to find some poor unfortunate soul for dinner.]

[He doesn't kill them. He never kills them. He just... takes an unscheduled blood donation when they're out cold, then leaves them somewhere relatively warm with an aching neck and no memory of what happened. It's not great, sure, but it's better than savaging someone, right? No one really gets hurt.]

[Sampo is certain that the Silvermane guard have caught on to the fact that there's somebody knocking people out and leaving them woozy and confused, but he can't be sure how much else they know-- if they picked up on the blood loss, if they think he's a mugger who's just really bad at his job, or, who knows, some kind of pervert that gets off on knocking people out. But his goal is to just avoid ever having to find out what they think by never getting caught! Great plan. Sure to go smoothly.]

Edited 2024-03-24 23:23 (UTC)

[Gepard Landau did not want to attend the party. He really didn't. He tried very hard to come up with excuses- no, not excuses, reasons to not go. Good reasons. Good, solid reasons that would convince even the likes of his father. His return to the front lines got delayed. Not for long, only a day or two, and there was absolutely nothing that Gepard could do about that, so he...didn't bother attempting to do anything at all.

Serval had offered to let him hide out in her workshop, and Gepard had been tempted because they both hated the parties, but he pointed out that their parents would come after them regardless of what he did, and he'd be hiding on the front lines in a few days (and his sister made a face, clearly not liking it) which meant that their mother and father would just be seething impotently at a distance, wanting a heir, but unable to do anything about it. It was easier for the both of them this way - and Serval didn't like this either, and it was obvious, but she agreed. Reluctantly. Not exactly fine with this.

So, Gepard went to the manor home and had a not-entirely-unpleasant conversation with his mother, and hurried up to his childhood bedroom- not that he stayed there anymore, but it was easier to wear something thick on the streets and change into a dress uniform at the manor. And as he stared at the medals (he'd acquired them in the same way windows acquired a lining of frost) Gepard asked himself what it was he was doing and decided that what he was doing was making things easier for his sisters by having one of them discharge an obligation, and having the one who discharged the obligation being the guy who was away from Belobog for months on end. And that's all.

He fixed his hair. Then, Gepard looked in a mirror and immediately felt like a toy soldier marching on, someone pretending to be something that he's not. He tried fixing his hair and decided that it made him worse. He felt like a puppet danging from strings, dancing to someone else's whims. He looked like a boy, who thought he was a man. It was the dress uniform. Probably. Or maybe he was just anxious. (Don't ask him what he was anxious about...probably the pressure to give his family an heir, because one of them had to, and it was either going to be him or Lynx, maybe.)

There was music downstairs. Something light. Pastoral, badly fitting for the sort of planet which Belobog was, and Gepard missed being with his men.

But.

He has a duty. Or. Something. Or something. And so Gepard squares his shoulders, and unsquares his shoulders, and looks in the mirror, and adjusts his uniform one last time, resquares his shoulders, and then he descends somewhat fashionably late. Not too much, but a little. Politely late.

...and is almost immediately forced to meet someone-or-another, some girl with impeccable breeding and a long lineage, one who is dedicated to the path of the Architects, but that's fine, Gepard Landau definitely knows how to be professionally polite.]

[So, in hindsight, Sampo probably should've gotten on a different boat.]

[But when you're a pirate trying to outrun the long arm of the law and avoid being hanged for a little bit of stealing from the Crown, you can't really be picky about these things! How was he supposed to know that the weather was going to turn so quickly? And that this particular ship wasn't at all prepared to endure such difficult seas? It's a mistake that anyone could've made if they were in the kind of hurry that he was.]

[When he's thrown from the deck towards the tumultuous, wine-dark water, all he can think of is that drowning is probably better than hanging.]

[The water is icy cold and everything is black as pitch except for brief, stark flashes of illumination from lightning; the waves are so fierce and tall that Sampo doesn't stand a chance against them, there's no use even fighting it. The ocean crashes down on him with the kind of weight that makes his bones creak from the pressure, forcing him down under the water while he tries to claw his way back to the surface. His lungs burn from the salt and from the fact that he's only ever able to get a few short, awful gasps of air before he's back underwater again.]

[He stands corrected-- drowning is worse than hanging.]

[Eventually, from exhaustion and confusion and probably a little bit of hypothermia, Sampo loses the fight to get back to the surface. Darkness crowds the edges of his vision, different from the darkness of the storm-- more than just an absence of light. His heart hammers, lungs ache, and he doesn't know which way he would even swim to try to continue this futile attempt to save himself. The surface might as well be a mile away.]

[He sinks, and loses consciousness.]

[Sometimes, a guy just... gets tired of his current line of work. Sometimes he wants something new, to start over somewhere that no one knows him and his past decisions won't follow him.]

[Belobog was the perfect city for that, really. It's one of those northern cities that are kind of small as far as cities go, but all the more charming for it-- or maybe that's just Sampo. Maybe he just likes cities that are frozen for half the year and have a weird number of cultural dishes that involve rye and mayonnaise.]

[Regardless, Sampo left his life of overt white-collar fraud behind for snowier pastures and a little shop that sells flowers. Sure, maybe he'd originally opened it to launder his ill-gotten gains, but, like most of Belobog, he found that he... really kind of liked it. His customers are odd but nice, and the low-stakes world of flower arranging is surprisingly relaxing. Putting bouquets together is almost meditative. People come into his shop looking for something beautiful and leave it happily carrying off something colorful.]

[He does still trade in crypto, but that's legal! There's nothing to feel bad about.]

[And, bonus, a few doors down, there's a tattoo shop that has the cutest guy working there. A real tall, blond glass of water. Sometimes, Sampo stops in front of the window just to look in and watch him work, see his serious, stern expression as he tattoos something beautiful on a lucky customer. If Sampo weren't terrified of needles, he might have considered getting one just to have an excuse to flirt with him.]

[Instead, he watches him sometimes from the window and sells his flowers and sometimes hangs out with his doctor friend. Lives a quiet life.]

[Let it never be said that Sampo isn't a busy man!]

[Being a Fool is a full-time job on its own, what with all of the political upheavals and general tomfoolery that he has to get up to, and then there was that whole thing with the Trailblazer and the Astral Express that Sampo obviously had to tag along for. A man gets a little caught up in his work sometimes, and sometimes that means that he's away from home for a while. An extended business trip! That's basically what this has been, just an extended business trip away from his pretty little iceball of a planet.]

[But now Sampo's done with his business and gets to go back home. Back to Belobog, back to his Winterland, back to the planet that he'd worked so hard to secure a better future for. Back to the city that has Gepard Landau in it. Since Sampo's been off-world, Gepard must have been so bored and lonely! There's been no one for him to chase after, no blue-haired scoundrel running petty scams and fleecing relics. But now that Sampo's back, they'll be able to pick right back up with their games of cat-and-mouse.]

[Or they would, if the person who had chased Sampo through the streets for his old arrest warrants wasn't very much not Gepard Landau. And when Sampo had asked him where the good Captain was, he'd gotten an answer that he very much didn't like.]

[Sampo had smoke-bombed the not-Captain Landau into unconsciousness and ended the chase. If it isn't Gepard, it's just not worth the trouble.]

[But if Gepard isn't Captain Landau anymore, where is he?]

for def - Like 007 but without the Bond girl

case in point. re: I run fast when given a direction

For snowshield - the kiss of the Nosferampo