blueheronteanook | fist in the air (and head in the sand)

Title: fist in the air (and her head in the sand
Rating: Teen
Major Warnings: None apply
Genre: Daemon AU, character study
Summary: When Lucy is under siege, Martinus stands with her, transforming into something that bristles as much as she cannot and raising all the points she keeps in her head. Strangers mutter about how often Martinus spends as a roaring lion or prickly hedgehog in public, but they don't see the way he spills over Lucy's lap as a prize bunny or prances to experimental music as a goat when alone.

Written withdrowninstylisticaudacity.

Lucy and her daemon have always had each other's back, through battles large and small, even when no one else does. Especially when no one else does.

When Lucy is under siege, Martinus stands with her, transforming into something that bristles as much as she cannot and raising all the points she keeps in her head. Strangers mutter about how often Martinus spends as a roaring lion or prickly hedgehog in public, but they don't see the way he spills over Lucy's lap as a prize bunny or prances to experimental music as a goat when alone.

At Awakening, their mandate is simple: look into the mystery of the Carmine Beast’s death, but don’t try too hard to solve it. Martinus takes the form of a cold-blooded Komodo dragon, staring out of the circle and tracking the movements of all their suspects. Relations with their patrons start out a little frostier than they might have otherwise, with such obvious evidence of distrust. It’s hard to deny what a human’s soul shows so plainly. It’s much less clear for Others, whose souls might not take standard animal form, or might not be visible at all.

From a distance, John and his German Shepherd daemon Spot appear normal. That is, until Lucy addresses a question to Spot, waiting expectantly for an answer, and never gets a response. Spot is mute. Instead, she and John pass intent through body language and simple familiarity, so fluently that they seem more like one mind across two bodies than man and daemon.

As odd as this is, it’s not nearly the strangest person-to-daemon relationship Lucy comes across.

On their first day of training, Martinus asks Guilherme where his daemon is, and Guilherme only laughs. He conjures up a bevy of animals out of glamour, and then scatters them to the wind, telling Martinus to focus on more important matters. His task, Guilherme tells him, is to observe Lucy’s form as she spars. Lucy gets used to the sound of her soul urging her onwards, listing what she did wrong in each fight and how to eliminate mistakes to continue.

Then John dies, sacrificing himself with one last fight. Charles takes the throne, the Undercity bleeds out around them, and Musser lays his claim on Kennet. Lucy has to stretch far beyond being just a figurehead. She is pulled into so many different fights that she barely has time to breathe between each one. Surrounded by enemies on all sides, with Avery off in Thunder Bay and Verona in Kennet Below, Lucy increasingly has no one to rely on but herself.

For the first time, Martinus jumps into the fray with her, taking the form of a large, sharp-fanged dog. He isn’t the type of dog John would’ve been, taking on Spot’s form. Martinus is an akita, with fox-like curved ears and puffy tail. His teeth sink down on the Family Man's arm, and the momentary contact with a human is agonizing for both him and Lucy. But it gives her the opening she needs to defeat the Family Man.

Martinus stays an akita for the rest of the month as he and Lucy defend Kennet. And then the next month, through the fights with Musser's and Charles' forces. They call out commands and enemy movements, true partners in the fight, urging each other ever onwards. Martinus experiments with erupting out of glamour clouds and wrestling with an opponent’s daemon to gain Lucy an advantage. When necessary, he attacks humans and Others directly. The pain of a daemon and human making violent contact never goes away, but Lucy gets better at withstanding it.

Jasmine notices, of course. A streak of connection blocker-induced misses means she can’t do anything about it directly, but her daemon Pertinax stays at home grooming Martinus and helping Lucy, trying to tell them that they are loved. As a nurse, she knows what kinds of trauma can cause premature settling — but while fourteen is on the earlier side, it is on the believable side of precocious, too.

Jasmine’s worst fears are confirmed much, much later. After the attack, after becoming Aware, when meeting the Kennet Others — it’s all a blur, up until the moment the Dog Tags walk in. They make a rowdy crowd, a group of mixed human and canine forms, their daemons silent and half-formed in a way that daemons shouldn’t be. With Lucy in a camouflage jacket and Martinus in a dog form that hasn’t changed in months, the pair blend right into the pack.

Jasmine and the other parents issue their ultimatum. Lucy fights against it. Lucy fights, and there is no stopping her.

Kennet goes to war against Charles. Lucy wins. Lucy loses. Lucy wins. Lucy wins. Lucy wins. Through it all, Martinus is at her side, weaving in with Lucy’s foxes so seamlessly that they appear as one mind across four bodies. By the end, she and Martinus barely need to speak to each other, passing intent through body language and simple familiarity. The ground shines red with Charles’ blood.

Jasmine takes Lucy and Martinus home, but something is still wrong. Lucy doesn’t want to rest, and Martinus startles too easily to let Pertinax get close enough to groom him.

Finally, Jasmine addresses the akita in the room, and asks Martinus whether he wants to stay a dog forever. He gets defensive, curling up that foxlike tail of his, but otherwise stays as silent as the day they sealed Charles away. Lucy has to intercede on his behalf, arguing that it doesn’t matter what any of them want: Martinus has settled or will settle and that will be the end of it, her soul taking its final form for the future. For all Lucy knows, it has happened already, that herald of childhood’s end, and she is an adult in every way that matters.

It takes Grandfather to break up the fight, saying that he knows what a settled soul looks like, and Martinus isn’t it. He knows what a Dog Tag’s daemon looks like, too, which Martinus isn’t either, but is getting too close to for Grandfather’s liking. Jasmine and Lucy negotiate a truce, that they won’t call Martinus settled for a few years yet, until he has an opportunity to change and doesn’t. If that truly is Martinus’s end state, Jasmine won’t complain, but she wants him to have room to try.

Several weeks later, Lucy picks up John’s guitar again.

She tunes it, listening carefully, lost in thought. Playing a major chord, a simple progression, a song she vaguely remembers. When she misses a note, a wet nose presses into her arm, or a fluffy side curls up around her. She doesn’t notice when it changes–but when she reaches out to pet him, after a third or fourth song, Martinus isn’t a dog. He is a billy goat, horns longer than she has ever seen them, but as familiar as the back of her hand.

Lucy and her daemon have always had each other's back, through battles large and small, even when no one else does. But maybe now they will have each other through peacetime as well.