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trensu · 6 months

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Some more of stasis in darkness. you have no idea how many times i've written this scene. i discarded three or four different versions of it before i came up with this one. i feel like this version worked best for the characters. or at least i hope they feel in character.

It was the ninth night.

Steve took his usual spot before the shrine. He greeted his god as he had before but decided tonight was going to be a quiet night. He didn’t have much to say so he’d simply let his faith burn bright in his silent vigil.

Hours passed, and again the strange man didn’t show up as he had been the nights prior. This time, Steve didn’t bother putting it off. He decided to do a perimeter check. As he stood, however, a cacophony of squeaks and beating wings filled the air.

A massive colony of bats burst into the clearing. They moved shockingly fast as they neared Steve and the shrine. Steve ducked his head under his arms but let the bats come. He ignored the little Robin in his head yelling about rabies. He couldn’t risk hurting one of his god’s favored creatures.

There were so many of them, more than Steve had ever seen in his life. They flew round and round dropping altitude until they coalesced at the foot of the shrine. The din stopped as abruptly as it had started. When Steve could no longer hear a single squeak or feel wings zipping overhead, he lowered his arms. Cautiously, he lifted his head, eyes drawn immediately to the shrine to check for any damage.

Not a single bat remained. Instead, the strange man sat, cross legged, at the statue’s feet. He wore a dark cloak comprised of deep navies, bruising purples, and an inky black. Each color slowly, gracefully shifted and melted one into another, again and again before Steve’s eyes. Flecks of light littered it in familiar formations. The clasp that secured it around the man was a bright silvery white. It was shaped exactly the same as the waning moon above.

“Ta-da!” the man said, fluttering his hands in a showman’s gesture.

Steve took in the man's appearance. The ratty travel clothes, the cloak of constellations and its clasp…Steve leapt back in shock. Everything suddenly clicked into place very quickly to paint a very unflattering picture of himself. He whirled around. He couldn't face the shrine.

"Shit," Steve's voice was loud with a stunned sort of panic as he remembered the events of the past week. He paced anxiously. "Shit, shit. It was y–the whole time, you were–FUCK. How did I miss–and even if you weren't you, you were still a traveler in the night and I treated you like–I'm a fucking idiot. I'm the stupidest man alive, how–"

"Probably from getting dropped on the head so much, huh?" the man asked with that same annoyingly self-satisfied voice he'd been using every night. The annoying stranger with his annoying questions and his stupid smug tone.

Mindlessly, Steve turned on his heel to glare at the man. He jabbed an accusatory finger in his direction, frustration flaring.

"Oh, you can fuck right off, man," Steve replied reflexively. "I am having a crisis!"

A split second later, he felt his stomach drop to his feet. This wasn't just a stranger talking. He backpedaled hard.

"Oh, ohhhh no, I didn't mean that, Lord, I-I wasn't thinking."

The man exploded into raucous laughter. It shook his whole body until he doubled over from the strength of it. He continued to laugh when he toppled off the side of his perch and landed with a thunk on the ground. The man sat up, wheezing and wiping at his face, mirth clearly keeping him in a choke-hold.

"Oh, far be it for me to interrupt your crisis," the Lord of Night forced out amidst the laughter. He flapped a hand at him. "Please, continue."

The god attempted to regain composure but all that did was turn his full bellied guffaws into snorting giggles. Steve waited, his anxiety fading in the face of the god’s genuine good humor. It took another couple of minutes before the god calmed enough to pop back to his feet and climb back onto the plinth. The man made himself comfortable at the foot of his own statue as he had before.

"So how goes the crisis?" he asked mischievously.

"On hold," Steve said evenly, fighting back the start of a smile. The man said nothing but still radiated amusement. Steve crossed his arms over his chest. "Are you really the Lord of Night?"

"The one and only!"

“And you’ve been here the whole time?”

“Yep!”

“So why didn’t you say anything? I mean, I talked to you every night! I don’t get it.” Steve paused as a thought occurred to him. “Was this a test?”

“Uh…yes? Yes.”

Steve narrowed his eyes. The god shifted in his seated position. It reminded Steve of the time Dustin shattered a jar of his most expensive hair product and tried to hide it. Dustin had squirmed guiltily under Steve’s expectant gaze until he confessed to his dastardly crime. Apparently, the method worked on gods as well.

“Okay, it started more as an attempt to get you to leave me alone,” the Lord of Night admitted.

“Oh.” It came out blankly, which Steve was grateful for, because he felt like he’d been kicked in the chest by a mule. “You don’t want me.”

Steve wasn't sure why he was surprised. This was a classic Steve problem. He tamped down the old familiar sting of rejection. Steve knew going in that this had been a possibility. It was a god’s right to reject an offering.

“I never wanted any holy warriors,” the Lord of Night corrected. “Hence the attempt to make you leave.”

Steve supposed that lessened the blow a little. It was an impersonal rejection. That was better, right?

"If you didn't want me as your holy warrior you could've just said," Steve said ruefully.

“You seemed pretty determined to come back, though.”

“Only because I thought you’d want to, like, use me for something. If you’d asked me to, I would’ve stopped bothering you. I could’ve gotten someone else who could worship you better,” Steve said, trying to keep his voice light and unaffected.

"Yeah, I really don’t think you could have,” the Lord of Night said in a strained tone.

“No, I mean it,” Steve insisted. “I told you, Robin and Dustin wanted to come along. They would make sure you’re not alone again. You would like them. They pick up on stuff faster than me. They’d be good worshipers.”

“That’s not what I meant. Your worship was, uh, it was…no, nevermind, forget that. The thing is, the more you came back the more I…”

The Lord of Night trailed off. He tugged his dark starry cloak around him tighter. When he spoke again, he seemed to have switched tracks entirely.

"Look, I don't know exactly how the holy warrior thing works, but you guys do quests for your gods, right?"

"Well, yeah, that's the whole point. We're your boots on the ground. We do acts in your service to spread your faith. Like priests but less boring."

The god snorted which made Steve grin.

"Priests are so boring," the Lord of Night agreed.

Things went quiet again. The cloak of constellations made it hard to see his god, but Steve got the impression that the Lord of Night was fidgeting. Steve remembered the conversation from a few nights before, about nervousness and not knowing what to do. Steve fell back on his social graces, his good old Harrington charm, and carefully picked something that would encourage the god to speak.

"I can't believe I didn’t see it,” Steve said, with a self-deprecating shake of his head. “Like, I know I'm not the smartest guy around but I didn't think I was that slow."

"Don't worry about it,” the god replied instantly, breaking out of his internal reverie. “That's not on you. I didn't want you to notice, so you didn't."

"Oh."

"Yep. And, it's not like I have a face to remember, so, y'know. You're good."

"I guess that does make me feel bet–wait. What do you mean you don’t have a face?” Steve squinted at the Lord of Night.

“Well, I don’t know if you’ve heard, but I lost my name,” the Lord of Night said with a hint of irony. “No name, no face.”

“But I saw it,” Steve insisted.

“Did you?” the Lord of Night asked, amused. He slid off the plinth and walked up to Steve until he was only three feet away. The god lowered his hood without any flourish. “What do I look like?”

Steve squinted at him studiously. The god was pale as moonlight and had hair as dark as the night itself; as for the rest of him…it was the strangest thing. Steve knew there was a pair of eyes under a brow. There was a nose above a mouth. He knew the right features were in the right places. However, he couldn’t tell if the eyes were dark or pale. He couldn’t say whether the nose was large or small. The mouth could be thin or it could be full.

“I don’t know,” Steve relented. The Lord of Night nodded.

“Yeah, me neither.”

“Is…is that the quest? To find your name?” Steve asked, dread pooling in his belly. That quest would involve a lot of reading and…he didn’t even know. Language things? General research, for sure. None of which Steve was particularly good at.

“That’s a bit presumptuous of you,” the Lord of Night smirked. He didn't give Steve a chance to apologize. “But yeah, there’s something important that needs to be done. I’m not strong enough to do it myself and I’m running out of time to do it.”

“I can do it,” Steve responded. “I’ll do it for you, my Lord.”

“You don’t even know what the quest is,” the god said wistfully.

“But I know you wouldn’t ask me to do anything cruel or unfair.”

“You’re unbelievable,” the Lord of Night muttered under his breath. Steve didn’t think he was supposed to hear that so he kept quiet. In a louder voice, the god resumed. “Okay, are you sure you wanna do this? Be a holy warrior? Because you could be literally anything else. You told me you liked cooking during one of your prayer sessions. You could open up a restaurant! Restaurant owners don’t usually die in the line of duty or whatever.”

Steve resisted the urge to roll his eyes. This is what Steve trained for, what he was good at, and he wanted to put those skills to use.

“You said you needed help to do something important. I want to be the one that helps you. I want to be your warrior. I can do it, I know I can. I won’t let you down.” Steve bit his lip uncertainly as a thought struck him. "If you don't think I'm worthy–"

“It’s not about worthiness!" The god cut in. "Do you know what it would mean to be my holy warrior? The weight of the night sky, with all the stars and the moon, will be on your shoulders for as long as you walk the land. I don’t know much about holy warriors but I remember this: there’s no take-backs. You can’t just quit and go off to become something else later.”

“Yes, I know. We covered this in lectures at school. It wasn’t all swordplay," Steve said impatiently. "I did think about it once I finished training and I decided if I could find a god to pledge myself to, I didn't want to be anything else. Then I found you."

“...Okay. If you're sure, then okay,” the Lord of Night said decisively. “So what do I have to do? How do I make you mine?”

“Um, I think it’s different from god to god?” Steve stuttered, heart thumping at the god’s words. “But I guess we can do our own thing? I’m pretty sure it’s the intent that matters most.”

"I can work with that." The Lord of Night gestured downward. "Kneel, kneel. I have an idea of what to say.

"Should I close my eyes or something?" Steve asked once he’d gotten to his knees.

"Nah, this is good," Lord Night said.

The god squared his shoulders and straightened his spine. Then, something miraculous happened. The Lord of Night spoke his name aloud.

“Steve Harrington.”

It was the first time his god ever said his name; it was stunning in a way Steve couldn’t begin to comprehend. A bolt of lightning down his spine. A roaring forge in his chest. A whirlwind in his lungs. It felt like all of that simultaneously, yet nothing like that at all. How could pitiful human speech hope to encompass the intensity of a god’s undivided attention; his god’s specific acknowledgement of a primitive life such as his?

Tears sprang unbidden in Steve’s eyes. He became aware how lowly and frail his own body was, and how utterly insignificant his existence was in the vastness of the stars in the sky. He curled forward, hiding his face and making himself as small as he could. He could not bear his god seeing his mortal failings and imperfections. It would invite an exquisite, holy agony Steve surely wouldn’t survive.

“Oh,” the Lord of Night breathed. “I forgot how that could feel to a human. I’ll try not to do it again.”

“No,” the word tore out of Steve’s throat without any conscious thought. “No, please. Please, my Lord.”

Steve didn’t even know what he was begging for because the singular attention of a god was agony but the thought of his god leaving him filled him with terror. He shattered, left with no purchase save his god’s words. Then there were arms around him, pulling him close, and enveloping him in constellations. Steve’s vision blurred. Great, heaving sobs overcame him as though ripped from his very soul. The Lord of Night murmured comfortingly.

“Alright, there we go,” he said softly. “I’m here, Steve. I see you in the night, every night. The stars shine for you, Steve. The moon turns its face for you. I’m with you, Steve.”

The words crashed into him with the unrelenting force of ocean waves. They swept his footing from underneath him and sent him spinning endlessly, endlessly. They lifted him upwards and sent him plummeting down until he was deep below the surface where the currents finally slowed. Surrounded by eternally burning stars, he was left weightless and suspended in an unearthly calm. The words rang in his skull with the surety and strength only a celestial being could claim.

Somewhere between an eternity and no time at all, Steve came back to himself feeling overexerted, though he hadn’t moved from where he knelt. Steve’s heart and soul had been scraped out of his chest, put between a pestle and mortar before getting unceremoniously dumped back in his weak flesh, but in a weirdly good way. His sobs subsided. His breathing came in and out slowly.

Eventually the cloak of constellations released him as well. He blinked his eyes open gradually to see his god kneeling before him at arm's length, palms resting on Steve's shoulders. Steve felt a stab of shame at having brought his god down low to a mortal's level.

“Sorry. I’m sorry,” Steve croaked. “Do you still–? Can I still be–?”

“No, yeah,” the Lord of Night said straight away. “That was on me. Not your fault at all. I’m out of practice interacting with mortals."

The god’s words lost the gravitas from before in a way that would've been jarring if it weren't such a relief. He finally broke his hold on Steve. He got to his feet, somewhat gracelessly.

"Let’s try that again?” the Lord of Night asked.

Steve cleared his throat. He straightened up where he knelt and kept himself still. He nodded to show he was ready.

“Steve Harrington,” the god said. This time hearing his name on his god’s lips was exhilarating but at a level a human could bear. “Do you swear to spread my values in the minds and hearts of mortals, through action and word?”

“I swear.”

“Then will you, Steve Harrington, do me the honor of being my sword and shield? Will you carry my crest through all your agonies and all your joys?”

“Yes.”

For a breathless moment, their words hung in the air, resonating through the night with finality. The Lord of Night reached out and gently traced something on Steve's forehead. Steve assumed it was his god's sigil, though neither Robin or Dustin could find any images of it so he couldn't be sure. It felt like an incomplete circle with a squiggle running through it. The god stepped back to observe him when he was done.

The stillness that followed, ironically, rattled Steve’s bones with relief and joy that it was done. His god had accepted him. Then the Lord of Night shuffled his feet in an awkward, shy manner.

“Cool,” said the Lord of Night.

The heaviness and tension brought down by the gravity of their oath ruptured with that single world, and Steve could do nothing but dissolve in helpless, giddy giggles.

#trensu tells stories #stasis in darkness #stranger things #steddie #steve harrington #you know what #i'm actually pretty proud of how this scene worked out #there were parts of the other versions that i really really liked but they ultimately didn't fit the tone of the story #but i'm glad i ended up with this version #and that this scene is done #because the next scene is one i've been churning in my brain for ages but i couldn't start it without establishing how this one would go

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