A Fortified Locke

The shift was always a bit jarring. He’d been making the mental jump since his youth but it still didn’t desensitize him from the startling effect. It was like someone poured water with a splash over his face to wake him. It was as if he was being sucked out of a bad dream, sweat-soaked and panting. That’s what his home world was though, wasn’t it?

A bad dream.

He much preferred this one to that. Why couldn’t he have been born here first? He felt like a fraud, like he climbed into this skin and zipped himself up. Though, who he was on the inside here felt so much more real.

Reality. The precarious concept made him scoff as he rubbed at his eyelids, causing little black and white circles to dance around the corners of his vision. His body ached.

That’s right, he trained yesterday. Efren handed his ass to him on the mat. More sparring would undoubtedly be on today’s agenda. So far off from the careless indulgence that he spent his nights partaking in home. Wine and fruit and girls and–

A pit in his stomach formed. He was lucky a hangover didn’t carry across timelines. His body was unscathed by the after effects in this realm, but this twist of his gut was caused by something far more sinister.

Guilt.

Airianah. He wanted so badly to be able to commit to her, yet he held back from even making his feelings known. His mind was whirling with these repetitive thoughts that often consumed him. He was a prisoner to what ifs and if onlys.

His leg entered into his training leathers with little grace. He leaned back onto the wooden nightstand to keep from stumbling.

How badly he wished he had been born here first, he thought again. He could be with Airianah without feeling untrue. He would laugh with his best friend Efren without it being laced with an immeasurable depth of unwarranted sadness. He could be who he was, all of the time, without the cost of a double life.

He didn’t have to put on a mask here like he did home. Aside from the necessary secrets and deflections to protect him, he felt like the core of who he was could show itself and not be scorned here. He could be himself. It was just his body, that wasn’t. It looked mostly the same, but it was so so so terribly different. Foreign and stolen…it’d never quite feel right. Like an implant. A single unpicked weed in an otherwise pristine garden.

He laced up his boots and ran his hand through his dark hair with a sigh. It wasn’t as nearly as fiery red as it was in his home world. There was a tint in the sun, but it was drained of most of its color, turning a muddy brownish red instead. He got up to make his way toward the door, when it hit him.

A hot, inescapable warming sensation in the back of his neck. The pressure crept to his head and there was nothing he could do to stop it. From the atlas all the way down to his sacrum, one shooting zip of heat crawled along each vertebrae of his spine and vined its way back up. He slammed into the dresser, both hands turning white from the intensity of his grip.

The two knocks sounded in his head, seeking permission to enter. So far away, but right there.

He groaned, slightly, before looking inward. He went to a primal place buried deep within himself to ebb away the pain.

He thought of Airianah’s smile when it reached her eyes. A playful punch from Efren when teasing him about his grades. Cassandra’s sarcastic remark in class, making the professor’s eyes widen. Grounding himself through the pain, he managed to visualize opening the gates to his mind, allowing the knocking person to gain access to communicate.

I’m here.

Good. His father’s voice sounded. A world away but still loud and clear. I never got the chance to catch you last night.

Right. The party. The ones that always seemed to be going on at their esteemed estate. Locke thought about the end of the night, but it was a bit of a blur. Where would he wake up when he shifted back home? Between the realm hopping and alcohol partaking, he hardly had the mental stability to remember a thing. He was always sifting through one endless patch of fog.

I wanted to remind you to get close to that Depthora girl today. Sit by her in alchemy and see if you can’t get her to reveal more about her family tree. She could be rooted to the Cavanare’s and the answer to–

His father stopped himself.

Secrets. So many secrets.

Out of his service, above his pay grade. None of his business. Locke was just the body to throw into the mix. He was the pawn to advance his father’s stance on some illusionary leadership board. Whatever self serving agenda his father had, he was blissfully unaware.

A lot of my questions. His father improvised.

Locke wasn’t surprised by his tight lips. He mostly just wanted him to get the hell out of his head.

Will do. Anything else?

The mental bridge was getting a lot harder to hold open. He wasn’t nearly as strong in this world. He looked at himself in the mirror hanging above the dresser. The sweat dripped down his forehead, a vein in it protruding. His face reddened, his teeth gritting together. It was as if his father was pausing deliberately. Locke had told him how painful this method of communication was for him. Back home it was second nature, seamless and easy, but between worlds?

That’s all. Find something, son. Anything. Don’t shift back empty-handed today.

There was an unspoken threat in his words before the bridge collapsed, nearly knocking Locke off of his feet.

Locke threw his mental walls back up and bolted them a thousand times over. His father didn’t care how excruciating it was for him. His father had done it often, with a notepad in his hand, just to test the waters—even when Locke was just a boy in this world, his little body frail, but still unyielding.

You’ll get used to it, his father had assured. Let’s go again. The more we practice, the more you’ll build tolerance. You’ll have to. More glossed-over threats.

It’s been years and it’s hardly gotten any more manageable. He said he’d look into it, but Locke knew his father had prioritized more pressing matters. Everything for research. Anything it took to progress his studies.

Physically Locke was panting, but mentally he pictured two middle fingers going up at the steel doors covered in ice. He braced himself for the last shock against his spine. Imaginary cold, scathing his skin, sealing the pathways between consciousness stretching across astral planes. He clutched the wood of the dresser so forcefully that a piece of it snapped off, leading his knee to slam into the ground.

Shit.

A groan escaped from him. He opened his hand, the splintered wood stabbing into it, blending the palm lines together with blood. He sat back and picked each one out, barely wincing as he did. The power he just utilized would take some of the strongest among him on campus a day or two to recoup from, and the splintered hand a week–but he knew he’d be healed and composed by the time he made it to the dining hall for breakfast.

He had Fae blood in him. One hundred percent of his lineage purely and deliberately, and sometimes forcefully, calculated to maintain the powerful heritage coursing through his veins. He might only have a diluted kernel of his magic in this world, but it was enough. His ears weren’t pointed, his eyes weren’t as bright of hazel, and his hair leeched of its usual strong color–but he was still Fae.

It was hard to be proud of it when he didn’t agree with so much of their values and history, but Gods in times like this, did it help.

He stood up and swiftly kicked the pile of wood shards under the dresser. He patted his hands on his leathers.

His door bursted open and hit the wall with a thud. Only one person would dare enter his room like that here.

“Cassandra,” he sighed and looked at her. “Whatever do I owe the pleasure?”

Nearly a foot shorter than him and she still managed to look down at him with a mean gaze, unwavering.

She blew her bright blonde, nearly silver hair, from her face. “You’ve missed half of breakfast. Airianah sent me to get you. You know I’m her little sister, not her dog, but I figured you two would dillydally and make it late for first block–” She paused, her eyes narrowing. “What in the hell happened to your dresser? It looks like you took a massive bite out of it.”

Locked was finishing stuffing his pack with books and a pair of clothes for after training. It wouldn’t be until evening that he returned back to his room.

“Oh.” He zipped up his bag and slung it over his shoulder. “The wood has been slowly eroding since I got here. I think there might be termites or something.”

It didn’t feel unnatural to lie. It was a habitual pattern now, stitched into his nervous system like a hand instinctually knows to retract from a roaring fire. It had to be or else his otherworldly identity might be compromised.

It still sucked to have to do it.

The dirty act was slithering all around his sly skin all of the time, whispering and cackling, and leaving little ink patches of liar liar liar all across his body that only he could see when he was finally alone enough to think about what he’d done during the day.

Add it to the neverending, evergrowing list of secrets.

“Oh that’s…disgusting? Anyway, let’s go, I’ll not have you scarf down your breakfast and throw up at sparring.”

“Making fun of me for my tummy troubles, are you?”

“Tummy troubles. What are you five?”

She lifted the heavy pack and threw it into Locke’s gut. He caved in with a wince, but a grin slid onto his face as he quickly gained his breath.

He trailed after her, wishing that he had more than this brief walk to prepare himself for the day.

He inhaled. He visualized talking to his friends. Laughing without feeling bad for it. Feeling like he won’t get snatched out of his own skin for his darkened soul to be laid out bare.

He exhaled. He damned his father’s expectations that weighed on him, forcing him to be at his disposal, stripping him of agency.

His breath was the same. Across worlds, between realities, in both bodies—his breath was the one constant concept. In through his nose, out through his mouth. Those simple mechanics felt familiar and safe. In the chaos of it all, that’s what he could lean into.

He clutched onto this coping mechanism as he stepped into comms thinking one last affirmation to himself.

Please, for the love of the Gods, don’t let them see right through me.