2.9 Do No Harm

There is a small gap in Junpei's memory.

He was going to right what had gone wrong. An innocent woman was dying in front of him. He wanted to fix it, change it. Put things back the way they were supposed to be. She was a person, but she was also a structure, a pattern, something manipulable. Now she's not on the floor anymore. She's standing upright. She's helping him to keep his balance. Her eyes stare right into his, and when she blinks, it's as if in slow motion.

"You saved me," Meela is telling Junpei, though they are still captives, facing unknown fates. He hears her voice from what seems like far away. "Thank you."

"It worked," Junpei says needlessly. He healed her. And that's good. He's disoriented, now, weakened but unharmed. He's found some place inside himself that's uncharacteristically calm, and it's hard to break free. He can't be sure if his voice is normal or a faint whisper. "Everything will be alright. I promise."

 Meela's expression doesn't change often, so Junpei senses rather than sees the relief flooding through her. "I'll get us out of here," he says. "I can walk through walls."

A smile finally flickers across her face, for second. "You are full of surprises."

"Patterns," Junpei says, for reasons he cannot discern. "I saw the structure of your genetic code and rebuilt from there. The patterns are gone now. Washed away like lines of chalk."

Meela moves to shush him, or kiss him, or some other such charity, but Junpei manages to grab her hand and stop her. He doesn't want to be touched or kissed. The thought of it is bringing back a horrible memory involving Finley. "Thank you for not killing me," he says. 

Winona catches Junpei when he loses consciousness and falls. Meela isn't fast enough. For all their speed, a vampire's mental reaction time is well within human range.

"I'd say this kid is more trouble than he's worth, if I didn't see what he did a minute ago." Winona grunts, gingerly lowering Junpei to the floor.

"Healing me took a lot out of him."

Winona's upper lip curls back. "You think?"

"He is already dreaming again," Meela informs her. She knows it's a little wrong, but she's peering into those dreams. "I should really try to fix this for him."

"What?"

"Oh. This may take some explaining. You see, he has extra memories in his head, thanks to one of us..."

"Put him down!" Rain commands sharply.

Ripley opens his mouth to say that may not be a good idea, then shuts it without saying a word. Johann walked in dragging Faraday by the tail, and Faraday's body is twisted in ways it shouldn't be; dropping him without care might do more damage.

Johann laughs at them, and releases his captive. Faraday falls to the floor, a puddle of limbs.

 "He said my soul is damaged. May I borrow yours?"

"Riko?" Chet calls for her friend, but not too loudly. This museum has the hushed aura of a library, and she knows the rules about libraries. "Riko, I know you're in here somewhere..."

"Kill me, Doctor Kyel." Johann's smile is empty. His vicious onslaught stopped just as suddenly as it began, leaving Ripley seriously hurt, but alive. For the moment. "I can't kill myself. I've tried."

"I'm a healer," Ripley says. Too much of his insides are spilling onto the carpet. There's no way to summon enough concentration to put himself back together. He trembles involuntarily, but keeps his voice even. "Primum non nocere."

"I am more harm alive!" 

"I can't... decide that."

"I can!"

Ripley will not look at him.

"You only want me alive so you can study me!" Johann accuses.

"Jo... we want to help you..."

Alexandria Archer's father taught her not to go anywhere strange without a sturdy pair of shoes. He's not impressed to see her completely barefoot today.

"Shoes get between me and the Earth," she tells him.

"Help would be appreciated," Parsley growls, as she lifts a heavy stone into a slot in the wall.

"I checked for traps, I did my job already," her brother justifies his unhelpfulness.

Her daughter and husband continue their shoe argument.

The stone key works its ancient magic on the wall. Parsley doesn't have the mind for spellcrafting, but she does find magic fascinating.

"I'm surprised the others aren't with you," Alex says. "How is Johann?"

"He's the reason they're staying behind," her father answers. "We can't leave him alone, as unstable as he is. And we're going right back to the safehouse, as soon as we're done here. We just couldn't turn this job down."

Suddenly!

Loki cries out for Rain, and vanishes.

Parsley is startled. "Where? What?!"

"I think Rain must have summoned him!" Alex chuckles.

"Well we need him here." Parsley glowers. She assumes it was another of Rain's accidents. Mages in training are always having accidents. "That girl. I swear."

Indeed, Rain's call draws Loki directly to them. He has no control over the matter.

When he appears, seemingly out of thin air, Johann is crouched on a desk, holding one of the kitchen knives. 



The knife is clean. Yet the stench of blood is thick in the air.

"Loki," Rain calls out to him. Disoriented. "Thank goodness you're here..."

There's nothing to be done for her. 

Ripley and Faraday aren't looking too good either.

"It's eating me alive." Johann is saying. "From the inside." 

Johann attacks first. Loki responds with a warding spell, essentially turning Johann's one giant lightning bolt into a bunch of smaller charges that fizzle out in the air between them.

Before Loki can do anything more complex, Faraday grabs his ankle. "Don't! You'll become infected yourself!" 

They were expecting Loki to return. 

They weren't expecting his reappearance to coincide with ear-piercing SCREAMING.

From Faraday, no less. The least likely of them to be screaming.

 His spine does not bend that way...!

Not knowing what else to do, Loki grabbed Faraday and got them out of that house, away from Johann's homicidal rampage. He completely disregarded Faraday's injuries in the process, but at least they escaped. They aren't dead. Which is more than can be said for Rain and Ripley...

Silent, Loki plops down on the ground, holding Faraday by the shoulders until he shuts up. And even after he shuts up, and the other three start asking questions all at once, Loki continues to be silent, stare into space and cling to the only person he managed to save.

Leaving Faraday to inform them of how Johann flipped out, killed Rain and Ripley, and now the psychotic teenager could be doing who knows what. 

He should be in shock, Junpei thinks, but then again he doesn't know much about the physiology of werweolves.

Junpei already knows the rest of this story. Johann doesn't stay in the house. He runs off. Supernatural Control catches him before these people can.

"Get me to a doctor." Tears are beginning to stream down Faraday's face. Loki interprets them as tears of physical pain, or fear or permanent damage. The way he almost paused when said 'doctor', though, causes Junpei to think they are tears of grief.

"Finley!" Junpei begins to cry, too. He isn't sure why he called his sister's name. Does he want her help? Is he imagining she's been hurt? The line between nightmare and reality has blurred.

 And again, Junpei's dream tries to assault him.

"Maybe Rain wasn't real, right?" Loki's eyes are white, burning spheres. "Say it! She's not real! None of this is real!"

Junpei manages to keep Loki's arm from crushing his throat against the wall. "You cared about her. You spent a lot of time together, trying to perfect the teleportation ability you both have from the same source. The last thing she ever did was pull you to her. You don't know how to cope with her death. So this simulation of you is taking the only way out it sees... by attacking me..."

"Wish me out of existence," Loki pleads. "Make it stop."

The last time Loki attacked him, there was trouble in the real world. 

 "I don't know how to wake up. Is Finley alright?"

Junpei is punched in the stomach so hard, it sends both of them above ground.

At least, that's dream-logic.

Junpei is dazed for a moment after it happens, finds he can't breathe. Nothing hurts. It's just the shock; suddenly nothing works. He can't breathe. He can't talk. Then it's over, all at once, like it never happened.

Junpei magics up a protective barrier, forcing Loki away from him. "Okay then," he announces. "My nightmare, my rules."

"I am you. I can change your rules."

Junpei falls through the grass. He falls through a wall. He falls through an ocean. He falls through sand, packed like rock. He falls through a windshield. Through glass that tears him to pieces. He falls forever. He falls through a river. Lily pads slip through his fingers then vanish overhead as Junpei continues to fall down, down.

He falls, in the real world, for the half-second until Winona catches him.

"Go back home, Sarah!" Junpei's head makes a CRACK sound when it hits the stone floor, and then Loki's hands are around his throat, crushing. "Play with your toys!"

Chet and Junpei can see the ceiling, its odd-shaped indentions and words printed in a fading elvish script.

"I found you," Chet says. "What is this place?"

Riko is perched on the banister, balancing on his toes, chin resting on his knuckles. "It was a bigger structure, once. The Egyptians found it alone in the sand, weathered but impressive, and they called it a temple to false gods. It was in a good spot on the river, so they stayed. More people arrived, over time. A city sprung up. The temple was repurposed. It became a fortress, and they fought over it. They damaged it, they rebuilt it. They covered the original ceilings and walls and floors. They replaced the old mosaics they didn't understand with art of their own design. When they made what they called peace, and history called murder, they decided it was a temple yet again. But a time came when their descendants said, you are worshiping false gods, and it fell into disrepair and disrespect. Then much later someone said, this building, battered and rebuilt so many times, with only scraps of the original structure peeking through, is a symbol of the indomitable human spirit, and they made it a museum. But this was no human temple."

"I guess you came up here for the view," Chet answers.

Riko finally climbs down. "I was trying to save someone," he says to her. "I'm being punished for that."

Junpei kicks and scratches at Loki, but it's no use, he's pinned firmly, and his only weapon is defiance.

"Say it!" Loki demands. "Say it's a lie! All of it! Just a dream!"

It's not, Junpei thinks at him. Too much has happened in the real world to point to their being some link between his nightmares and reality. The real you is sick and you have to be stopped.

"I'm not sick. The universe is sick. You can't even IMAGINE the suffering I have been forced to comprehend. We are one story, Junpei Archer. Forever on repeat. An unresolved cycle. We never learn anything!"

There's something there Junpei can't grasp. Something desperate and horrible. This Loki is a construct of Junpei's mind, and it wants the dreams to stop because it doesn't want to relive these bad memories... but it's based on the real Loki, who also does not want to keep reliving things... and something else. Something else keeps tugging at his subconscious. What motivates Loki, exactly? Did Chet even know?

"GET! OFF! OF! ME!"

Thwack!

It was supposed to be a baseball bat. And it was supposed to take Loki's teeth out. Golf club and enemy status: stunned is, sadly, as close as Junpei can get his dream to cooperate with him.

Finley is there suddenly, or she's always been there, but her words are drowned out by Kitsune's unearthly shrieking. It's just one long screech, no pause, no gasp for air. She, too, somewhere, lives a nightmare. She will scream and scream and never stop until the spell is broken.

One voice cuts through the others. Meela appears in Junpei's dream, hand outstretched, calling his name. He doesn't know what to make of this. He mistakes her for something he's conjured, like the golf club.

"I'm not," she answers his unasked questions. Because they are in his mind, technically no question is unasked. Everything he thinks, she knows.

He walks over to her. "Why?..."

She takes his hand. "Don't worry."

But the sequence continues, even as Meela tries to collapse it.

"Say something!" Finley yells at Loki. "Right now or I'll shove you off this fucking building!"

Loki doesn't answer, or fight back.

He looks sad. Resigned, to whatever Finley intends to do.

Nothing could have made Finley angrier. Frustrated, she makes some kind of noise Junpei can't define. A howl, a scream, a wail.

Junpei wonders where he is supposed to be, in this scenario.

The question suddenly seems very important.

I'm dead in this vision, he realizes.

Meela yanks him away before Finley's rage-filled spell can be completed.

Meela has pulled Junpei up from the floor. He wakes up to the sensation of Meela's lips touching his. The cold metal in her piercings pressed against his skin. 

 

Awkwardly, and for the second time, Junpei holds Meela away. "We need to get out of here..."

"Yes. Sorry."

"What did you do? You were in my dream..."

"It... it was causing you pain. I wanted to make it stop. I know you don't think you were mesmerized, but, now you can be certain. I took the dreams away from you, you won't have them anymore. And you'll know what feelings are your own and what feelings were Chet's."

Junpei frowns at her, not saying anything.

 

"I've never seen someone's subconscious so angry with them," Meela says sheepishly. "I only wanted to help you, Junpei, please don't be mad."

Before Junpei can think of a response, Finley decides it's time for a telepath conference. And, though the vampires are also psychic, they aren't invited. "I hate to interrupt, but the clock's ticking and you know they intend to kill us, right?"

"I'm a little sketchy on the details...."

"We're hostages. Their demands aren't met, we die one by one."

"And you're remarkably calm..."

"Sorry. I didn't expect to barge in on your first kiss."





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Etc.: Primum non nocere is translated "first, do no harm." Most versions of the Hippocratic Oath do not include the phrase to the letter, but all include it in spirit.

Junpei didn't understand the reference to Sarah, so don't worry if you didn't either. Loki is recalling the plot of a film, in which Jareth the Goblin King tells Sarah to go home, play with her toys, and forget about this important quest she's on.