(no subject)

[ahousedivided]

Who: America & Amirrorca, Daryl & mirror!Daryl
Where: out in the woods
When: Oct 31 during the Halloween event
Rating: horrible. R I guess.
Summary: Basically the mirrors are assholes who both want to fuck Daryl up, so why not pit him against a super powered psycho who despises his very being?
The Story:

For some ungodly reason, America actually likes that squinty-eyed trash heap. It's not totally incomprehensible; Daryl not only tolerates America's company but seems to enjoy it, and he's strangely compatible with the blonde boy who personifies his country. It's just that Amirrorca refuses to understand it. Outright denies that there is any possible reason America could possibly be better off with this irate beast.

What d'ya even see in him? the Mirror spits (or as close as you can get when you're a disembodied presence in someone's head).

America says that he sees potential, and he sees a good man, and that it's really nice to have Southerners who don't hate him to hang out with, and how good Daryl's been to him, and it was at this point that America' voice was drowned out by a deafening white noise as Amirroca starts to see red. Arguing would be futile. It's a good thing that America can't read his thoughts even though they share the same body because he's imagining taking his nail-studded bat and driving it right into Daryl's face. Maybe afterwards he'd let that shitty little raptor that likes to use America as a chewtoy lick the blood off right before the Mirror wrings its neck like a chicken.

In the midst of his fury he grabs control away from America, refusing to relinquish it not matter how loudly America protests and attempts to yank him back into passiveness.

Let's go for a walk. Just you and me, he thinks. He can still feel America gripping tightly, holding on so hard that the Mirror thinks he's going to give them both a migraine, but he's stopped trying to yank him out of control.

In all honesty his plan was just to go into the forest and punch some trees until he felt better. Maybe build a little fort for his dear Alfie to appease him. They could camp out there and stare at the stars, far away from every other person in the mansion. Just them. Like it was meant to be.

The plan is suddenly revised when he spots the object of his hatred treading around some piss-poor excuse of a campsite. Something presses at him and he can feel America's dread, and though his counterpart doesn't say anything, he knows it's a demand (or plea) to leave his friend alone.

The blond's body stands at the edge of the forest rigid and eyes seething with hatred. With only the slightest jolt his demeanor suddenly melts into something anxious. The tenseness hasn't left his shoulders, but now he stands rooted in place trying to smile.

"Um, I didn't know you were out here," he stammers. Sweat clings to his forehead. "I just figured..."

His posture suddenly stiffens and glare returns. "It was supposed to be just us out here."

Comments

[unsleeved]

Daryl knows that America will feel everything he does to his Mirror. He knows that by refusing to punk out here he's just gonna add more problems to America's already wrecked body, more gashes, more bruises, more shit that the poor kid really doesn't need. He knows, but in his mind all of that is preferable to his fucking lunatic Mirror roaming the grounds and getting into god only knows what, going after everything and everyone the kid gives a shit about.

It ain't right, and it's gotta stop. He's gotta stop it.

Somehow by the grace of god or the fact that his own mirror seems content to watch for the moment, Daryl manages to evade that fist... But he can't quite wriggle his way out of being grabbed and is subsequently kneed in the gut hard enough that he sees stars. Coughing, he tips forward, head bowed just slightly as he catches his breath and tries to will himself not to throw up, before using the position to jerk his head back with the hopes of catching the Mirror under the chin or in the nose or somewhere. Guy's face is hard as a rock, he knows, but if he's lucky it'll be enough to stun him into letting go of his shirt.

Best get somethin' to hit him with, his Mirror quips, the mental equivalent of loudly chewing potato chips in Daryl's ear. You ain't lookin' so hot.

[rockflagandeagle]

If the Mirror had any sense he'd actually think ahead to how this will affect America, but no. He is more or less incapable of that. Every America has a nasty penchant for jumping the gun. Shoot now, ask questions later. It's a very good thing that Amirrorca prefers blunt instruments to firearms, otherwise Daryl might be facing the literal version of that philosophy right now.

Then again, "good thing" is relative. It's not so good for Daryl that Amirrorca likes his brawls up close and personal so he can feel bodies snapping under his hands, hear the bones cracking and reddened stains on his clothes. All that coughing and wheezing only widens his grin, even as Daryl's head smacks painfully against his nose hard enough that blood begins to trickle out. He barely acknowledges it. Adrenaline surges through his veins like electricity and his heart pounds so loudly that he can barely hear anything else, can't feel anything but the occasional flashes of euphoria and anger for every blow exchanged.

As his other fist lashes out at Daryl's clavicle, a distant, foggy memory of a battle rises up and itches in his mind like an old wound. He can't tell if it's his memory or America's or, somehow, one that belongs to both of them. Doesn't particularly care either, but Amirrorca's concentration does falter slightly and glare at nothing in particular, wondering why he suddenly thought of it and what reminded him. He hopes it doesn't happen again.

Shaking his head, he succumbs again to the blood rushing to his head and power urging his muscles forward. Much to his annoyance he realizes his grip has loosened on Daryl and he tries again to grab hold of him.

Goddamn I hate thinking, he thinks.

He does not realize the contradiction.

[unsleeved]

As much as Daryl can take a beating and come out of it still standing just by sheer force of stubborn will, yes, being shot multiple times in his face isn't really something he'd be able to walk away from.

Small blessing, really, not that it's mattering much right now. That blow to the Mirror's face serves to make Daryl's head spin more, and much to his aggravation, doesn't do much else. Not at first, anyway, and in those horrible few moments that Amirrorca is lost in his own head thinking about god only knows what with his fist still curled impossibly in Daryl's collar, it's all he can do to stay upright. And that's not even considering the way that fist to his collarbone knocks the wind right out of him. He's distantly aware of the fact that he's very, very lucky it hadn't caught him in the throat... Not that it makes it hurt less.

Eventually, though, he finds his moment and brings his elbow up and then down onto Amirrorca's wrist with a grunt, wrenching himself free and shoving the Mirror away with all of the strength he can muster. It's not a whole hell of a lot, truth be told, and his muscles strain to do even that much, but it's enough that he's able to put some distance between the two of them and stagger backwards toward his ruined campsite. He needs to think, needs to find a way to end this... But nothing's coming to him besides his own Mirror's comments, none of which he feels particularly compelled to respond to one way or another, and unlike the last time they'd traded blows, he's well aware that this isn't going to end with the two of them agreeing to disagree with putting their fists through each other's faces...

And it's at this point, while he's trying to work out what his next move should be, that his Mirror seizes control again, forcing his body into a more aggressive stance:

"That-- That the best you got, you fuckin' pussy? No wonder your boy don't think much of you." If it sounds a little breathless, a little wheezy, well... "Fuckin' little bitch. Come on, asshole!"

...Alright, so driving this body around hurts like a mother fucker. Whatever. It's temporary, is what he keeps telling himself. Just a little longer, so he can leave something for the Real Deal to remember him by. He's banking on his fellow Mirror not realizing there's been a switch, or just not caring, here.

[rockflagandeagle]

It doesn't really matter which Daryl he's attacking; in the end, it's going to hurt the one that matters. He wants to leave the body mangled and maimed worse than America's, too broken to move or speak.

If he stopped to consider it (which he won't), Amirrorca wouldn't understand exactly why he wants to inflict this much pain on a man who's done nothing but get in a stupid fight with the Mirror and befriend America. Jealousy alone doesn't explain it. There is an ugliness inside him (inside both Americas) that bubbles like a tar pit, scalding and trapping anything that dares wander too close before dragging it down and keeping its bones in a macabre collection. Daryl, he would say, has wandered too close.

He would add too that this is the right thing to do. Some warped sense of justice has convinced him that these are all necessary evils that will keep America safe from real or imagined sources of suffering. Driving Daryl away will be for everyone's best interest in the end.

That isn't to say he can't enjoy these 'necessary evils.' Daryl's taunts only add fuel to the fire. His grin sharpens. Blue eyes that had once been so vibrant now look like they belong in the hollow skull of some nightmarish beast.

"That's all ya got?" he drawls. "Too bad your daddy hated ya too much to teach ya how to pick a proper fight."

Even if he'd missed the opportunity to hurt Daryl the last time he was Realside, Amirrorca still remembers that one comment. Daddy issues. Something else he and Alfie could bond over. Like they fucking need anything else to draw them closer.

His fist clenches as though preparing for a punch, but instead his leg lashes out, aiming for a kick in Daryl's ribs. He hopes they snap apart and puncture a fucking lung. Amirrorca immediately follows up by grabbing the hair on top of Daryl's head, yanking him close enough to his face that he can see America's features warped by fury and a sickening excitement.

"Y'know what'd be pathetic? If ya thought any of this made a difference. 'Cause it won't. He's got no one but me, always. Your life is just a fleeting little spec in his endless life. A fun way to waste time while he waits for a better life and you go back to your hellhole apocalypse."

All the harsh words taste like a lie, one that the Mirror is eager to believe. It's more for his benefit than Daryl's that he says it. He knows how much hurt America goes through when he loses a human friend. Somewhere in their shared memories, clouded by time and youth, is a blue flower and a nice little boy with freckles. It never fails to elicit twinges of fondness and sorrow even in Amirrorca.

[unsleeved]

The Mirror snorts.

"I'm a Mirror, asshole, we don't got daddys."

While it's completely accurate... We're not gonna touch how shitty Mirror!Daryl is at trash-talking; one of the hazards of being the mostly-opposite of a person who can make the viewership cream their pants with how badass his mean face is is being completely inept with such important life skills. Sucks to be you, m!Daryl. Your life is lame.

Lame, and also painful in this particular moment. He isn't quite fast enough to avoid the kick or the hair-grabbing, and the result is that when Amirrorca pulls his face in he's hacking away, gasping for a breath that's as painful as it sounds. In retrospect, this might not have been such a good idea.

"Fuck-- Fuck you. You ain't even real-" It comes out a bit breathlessly, but it doesn't negate the truth, as he's sure his fellow Mirror understands. "-guess that means he's fucked, huh?"

Aaand it's at about this point that the Mirror decides he's done driving this particular car off a cliff, he's just gonna be going now--

Except that he can't. Because somehow, some way that he can't even comprehend, his Real's blocking him. "Son of a bitch-!"

Lord have mercy... He is so boned.

[ahousedivided]

"I'm as real as any of them," he says with the feverish devotion of a religious zealot. "You just don't know the first thing about us."

It's hard to tell what's worse, his chaotic rage or this new coldness spoken in harsh whispers and accented with a small smile, like he knows some vast secret to the universe no one else has discovered. It widens back into its usual bared-teeth grin as the fist comes down on Daryl's head again, shoving the man to the ground. Amirrorca immediately crawls on top of him to pin his arms down with his knees. His hand raises for a finishing blow, aiming to shatter Daryl's eye socket and render him blind.

The fist freezes in the air and his expression suddenly goes blank.

Somewhere between lobbing insults and fists, America had stirred in the back of their shared headspace. It seemed like time didn't exist in here. Seconds felt like hours. Minutes that had once marched in time fell out of sync like startled infantry until everything became abuzz with chaos. Or maybe he was just imagining it all. All his thoughts were too clouded to comprehend anything except that he had been asleep, warm and comfortable in a bed, and he had felt very at peace. At the cusp of wakefulness, the comfort started to ebb away like a flood receding to reveal the sludge and destruction underneath. America wasn't sure how fast it happened, but at the cusp of wakefulness a thought managed to pierce the fog: there is something wrong. His limbs (does he have limbs? That's a strange question to have, he thinks) move sluggishly to pull the covers away and fumble through the dark. It feels like years before his hand finds a knob and he walks over the edge of the world.

He must still be waking up, he thinks, because he can't blink. His arm is moving on its own and he can't feel his body. There's a lot of motion, a lot of flashing colors that make him nauseous.

The Mirror pauses only briefly in his assault when he realizes that America somehow woke up even though he sedated him with enough ether to kill a horse, but I guess that's what you get when you're resorting to fantasy anesthetics that only exist in tenuous fabric of America's mind. It's a miracle this elaborate, nonsensical ploy worked in the first place.

Go back to sleep, the Mirror says gently. America doesn't feel like sleeping anymore. Who can sleep when they're living in a nightmare.

Amirrorca isn't just pushed aside, he's slammed into the back of America's mind. It feels like the mental equivalent to being thrown into a brick wall. He thinks that America's taken control to save his friend. He's wrong.

From Daryl's perspective it would only be a few strained seconds that that balled fist hangs in the air poised to strike. There's a twitch under the eye, the first movement in an otherwise expressionless face, and America's back in his body. He feels the pain and the Southerner's blood wrapped around his knuckles and the battered body writhing under him. Suddenly the blankness shatters into a look of terror and frenzy. His hands fly to Daryl's throat, thumbs pressed at the arteries and enough pressure that the threat of snapping his neck is real.

America smells smoke and tastes gunpowder smells the blood seeping into his soil and his legs tremble because he'd been running, that's right he remembers now, they'd stuffed him in that uniform even though he pleaded the officers not to, just please put him in the medical core because when he goes out there with his gun he can feel the contempt rolling off his people and it's making him sick, and it's different than all the wars past he never felt so guilty and worthless when he took down the English or Canadians, and when he knows he's struck target that it feels like he's killed part of himself and please stop yelling him for double-loading his rifle he knows he's aiming too high, but no one listens so he's shamed into silence thinking that there is something wrong with him, other countries have had civil wars, so he lies to himself by telling himself that he can handle it, he can handle another bloodbath. He'd been stumbling over the corpses of his blue boys as they urged him forward through the Sharpsburg hills to finish off those Rebs and he felt like he was going to burst out of his skin but he listened because the soldier beside him was a handsome friend with crooked teeth and big doe eyes and really she wasn't fooling anyone that she was a boy but no one cared, and suddenly he's on top of one of his boys in grey and he realizes that it's someone he knew, he was from South Carolina and he had dimples when he smiled (even though his smiles were harder to come by when he was so far from home) and there's relief on the boy's face when he realizes it's Alfred, his dear friend who would take him prisoner and save his life, but America is moving too fast and he breaks his friend's neck with the ease of snapping a twig. It's only in the second after that the sounds of battle get drowned out and all he can hear is the ringing in his ears, he sees the friend whose name he's suddenly forgotten, the dead boy's gaze frozen in confusion because hadn't Alfred come to save him? But then he feels a bullet slide through the back of his head and out the front of his skull like a lead worm, and only the blood dribbling down into his eyes slows him as he wheels around to face an unfamiliar face, horrified either by the friendly fire or the realization that he's out here with something not human, and then America screams something feral and piercing, and maybe the man wonders why the hell this blue-clad soldier is doing a Rebel Yell when his head is suddenly ripped clean off and there is that instant that America had seen before, back when he went to visit France during his own revolution, where the severed head is still functioning and looks confused and scared and sad. Then everyone on every side is running, though America can't tell if they're still in formation or if he's the one who incited the panic or who's winning, he just starts killing everything in sight because that's what he was told to do.

The sudden memory shakes him violently. America looks straight into Daryl's eyes but he's looking past him, through him, into some unforeseen horror. His heart is pounding and his fingers press hard enough into the Southerner's throat that they might leave bruises.

He hears his name. The Mirror had whispered it uncertainly. Suddenly he's back in reality, still sweating and shaking, but now he's looking down again at a friend whose blood is literally on his hands. His gaze suddenly fixes on Daryl and he's staring down with a whole new type of terror, eyes welling up with tears, trembling hands slowly easing off his neck. The country stumbles off and away until his back hits a tree, clutching his head like he's trying to keep something inside. He feels like he's unraveling. Looks it too. Tears are streaming down his bloody cheeks. A sob immediately burns away into noises that sound like they're coming from a dying animal, the whimpers and panting of a panicked, suffering creature praying for escape or quick end. Gazing unfocused at the ground, he slides down the tree until he's crouched into a protective ball.

His thoughts aren't coherent. It's a bombardment of disgust and anger and sorrow. A loose string of sentences is shot at his Mirror, Why did you do this to me I don't want to do this again please I want to die stop it please stop until Amirrorca falls quiet. He cowers in the back, attempting apologies and comfort until he realizes nothing is getting through and so he just trembles alone and silent in the dark. Later, he promises himself, promises Alfred, later he'll help put them back together. But even he knows it's not true. There isn't anything to help them.

America forgets about Daryl and his Mirror. The only change in his posture is to move his hands away from his head to hug his arms tight against his stomach. He scratches at them compulsively, or tries to. He's chewed his nails so blunt that they start to break and bleed, leaving long smears up and down his arms. He doesn't notice.

[unsleeved]

That blow to the head dazes him, his back hitting the ground knocks the wind out of him entirely, and when he sees the fist raised again, he's painfully, horrifyingly aware that he's well and truly screwed. Sure, he won't have to live with the pulp Amirrorca is about to turn his face into, but he'll have to feel it until his Real takes over, and that's just a touch further than he'd really wanted to go so far as his own well being is concerned; it's not until he's flinching, bracing himself for the blow, that he understands the massive fucking bad idea this whole brawl had been.

But the blow never comes. In its place is that blank stare, that face he'd seen before the guy'd crumpled earlier, the one that- in a disgusting way- lets the Mirror hope for the best. If this asshole's fighting the psycho, maybe there's a chance-- But then those hands are reaching for his throat, closing around his windpipe so tight and so fast that he can't even make a sound let alone jerk his head away. Fingers dig in deep to the sides of his neck, thumbs pressing so hard he isn't sure if the goal is to choke him or to squeeze his head right off his shoulders, and he has to fight the urge to thrash for worry of his neck up and snapping on him.

Oblivious to (and completely uncaring of) America's inner turmoil, the Mirror's number one concern has become 'I'm about to get choked out by pyschopath junior'. He tries again to get his Real to swap places- because although the safety of the physical body is what really matters, he's just cowardly enough to prefer waiting out the end somewhere in limbo, in a place where he can't feel those fingers pressing bruises into his throat as his vision starts to swim... But despite his panic and his flailing both physically and the mental thrashing he's doing against his Real's barrier, nothing changes; he'd deny it until the end of his not-days, but in those last few moments before the hands finally pull away, he's terrified.

They both are.

But eventually that presses eases, the weight that'd been bearing down on their chest lightens and then disappears altogether as the kid shrinks away, colliding with that tree and melting into what amounts to the fetal position at the base; everything's spotty, patches of dark and light making everything look like it's wearing a rorschach test, but he'd made out the tears well enough, and while he can feel the Real Daryl stirring just out of reach, all he can think is serves you right. He coughs, once, then again before rolling over onto his side and wheezing into the dirt and ash from the fire, and it isn't long before he's managed to shove himself up into an unsteady half-crouch. He has to stop to breathe- a luxury he's finding he appreciates a hell of a lot more now.

Limbs heavy and head still spinning, it takes him a good minute to force himself all the way up, and it's not until after he's staggered over to a tree- one that's far enough away from the still-catatonic America that he feels as safe as he's gonna get- and rests for a while that the Mirror manages to begin his trek back up to the Mansion. Everything's sore, there's blood (probably his but you can never really be sure...) covering his face and neck and dripping into his shirt, and for the life of him he just cannot force his Real to come out from wherever it is he's hiding. "Pussy," he growls, though for all he knows he could just be talking to himself. Real's checked out, or at least as far as he knows... Christ, what a shit show...

With one final cough- and without sparing the wreck of a kid even a glance, though he does spit off to the side, a mixture of blood and dust and whatever else- he moves to start for the clinic.