[Calixtus Ferox]

There was Cal's reason, which he directed at Atlas, and there were his emotions, which were caught early in the pull Jasper always exerted, like gravity. The largest, nearest star. It struck Cal that that might be why they were called stars. Famous people, at any rate, pull--but no, this was something else. It was just that he felt so much better next to Jasper. Despite everything. Even because of the quirk-eyebrowed look he'd taken at Cal's clothing. He noticed he had forgotten socks and his shoes didn't match. Oh well.

Atlas, in a further orbit, seemed less well. His face, while he spoke, stretched toward Halloween ghoulishness, like those open-mouthed masks. Tugged down by fatigue and fear. IIt was difficult not to draw a causal link between the orbit and the emotion but Cal told himself no that wasn't the meaning at all.

His rational mind kept bobbing along, listening to what Atlas had to say, while the undertow played around his legs, puzzling him with its slippery shifts. From thoughts of weakness and strength to thoughts of nearness and distance and value. Everything, like light on water. The light on water was reason, and it played more quickly than the murky lower parts. It was more comfortable to focus on that. But he did shift so his shoulder touched Jasper's. He was leaning on his hands, which were crimped around the edge of the coffee table, and he had his feet crossed, and now his shoulder was touching Jasper's. He felt safe.

The dilabo, now. He clicked along behind Atlas's explanation. Usually dilabos consumed their victims immediately, he knew that. It was what had given him so much trouble in his research, because there were no cases to go on, but since the death of the host typically began the dilabo's lifespan... he thought quickly, frustrated with the gaps in his knowledge. Spots of shade. Light between leaves.

And then Atlas wound up. “So.....and now you’re here. Help.”

Cal blinked at him, fingers curling against the table's edge where they rested. Help. What a pure, blank statement from Atlas.

How odd. Like a sudden, single cloud, both clarifying and casting shade.

Okay.

He shook his head slightly. "Yeah," he said. "No, okay. Let me think. This could be..." He ran a hand through his hair, though the shift in weight made the coffee table creak and he quickly settled back. "It does make some sense. And it isn't necessarily bad. Identity is not a fixed thing, like a limb, it's not as important--I mean obviously it is but the general principle--what I mean is this could be good. For your sanity, for your physical health, for what we want to do--" He'd thought too rapidly and overshot, they didn't know what stretches of shadowed water he'd left behind. Okay, begin again. Atlas was staring. "What I mean to say is there are ways you can cope with the melding. It's when you were losing yourself, it's the lack of control--if you can use the dilabo lucidly there are spells which apply, protective spells. Any bond of this sort, if it's properly controlled, is inherently protective--of course the most famous case is the Potters but the general theory is the point. There are some potions we could use, some way to cordon off that section of your mind--I mean to say, it was really lucid? You could control it. That's the important thing. What did you do exactly?" He looked from Atlas to Jasper, his neck swiveling as quickly as Rudolph's had twenty minutes ago.

[Jasper Christie]

Help? Were things really, in Atlas' mind, so bad that they required a blank plea for help to Cal? Maybe the experience of the dilabo was even worse than he'd imagined, because this wasn't what he thought Atlas' reaction would be to the other man. Five minutes ago he'd been protesting any sort of outside intervention. Cal's shoulder knocked against his, bumping the shock out of him. He felt unusually hot through the layers of their clothes, the warmth of sleep not yet faded.

Cal at least seemed ready to help, setting off on a monologue so detailed that Jasper would have suspected he'd prepared it, if he'd been using that particular, peculiarly unfamiliar tone he had for lectures. Jasper watched Atlas' face instead of Cal's, hoping to see some calming in his expression, especially when the outlook seemed positive. Then Cal cited the Potters. Because it had gone so brilliantly for them. He had a lot to say, and when there was a pause it took Jasper a moment to realize he'd asked a question. Atlas didn't seem especially forthcoming with an answer, still digesting the offered information. Or still doubtful that they were going to be able to fix this; his face was bleakly expressionless.

"We've been doing occlumency training for the past couple of weeks, which you know. Some advanced stuff about partitioning. The initial goal was to cut the dilabo off over time, so we thought maybe shutting off Atlas' magic temporarily could be the last step in starving it out. If that was even possible, we had no idea."

When he said that he realized how bloody stupid this plan had been. It had seemed clever at the time, but they'd taken too many risks. Should have at least gotten someone who was a competent legilimens to work on it instead of Jasper, tramping around in Atlas' head like a seasick rhino. He ran a hand through his hair; it was starting to get a little flat from all the attention directed toward it recently.

"So we did the shut down, I took on the security spells for SHOP for a few hours, then we started it up again maybe two hours ago? Everything seemed normal, I was watching telly-- incidentally there's more than one Grace film-- and Atlas went to sleep. And then the dilabo thing started.

"I'm obviously not the best legilimens for this kind of thing, but it seems like our experiment changed the way it's integrating with his memories. D'you have any idea if Shallah could see back-- that we know more now? If that's a possibility, tell me what potions we need and I'll start them now."

[Atlas Caedmon]

He waited for Cal to respond and while he waited he watched. Coming out of the cocoon he’d formed with his arms and up-drawn knees and tucked head to observe the two of them, sitting next to each other on the coffee table. When their shoulders touched, coming together hard enough that Jasper jarred to the side with a budding smile on his face rather than a frown of annoyance, Atlas thought that he should probably look away. That any moment Cal would look up and notice and draw away as if he’d been shocked somehow, or there would be a comment concerning that fact of his sexual preferences, a way to head off anything Atlas might have had to say. When he looked up though, it wasn’t to admonish Atlas for behavior, it was to do what he had asked. To help.

And instead of looking away Atlas kept watching, while Cal leaned away again, still touching but no longer pushing Jasper off to one side like a child trying to claim all of the space to himself. It was comforting, that touch, not revolting or uncomfortable. What he had seen as clinical in the two of them seated next to each other, starring him down like the doctors in Mungos, morphed into a more proper form. One more easily interpreted as two people who were concerned for his well being. It relaxed him more than anything else had that evening.

The feeling didn’t last as long as he would have wanted. As Cal spoke in a way now familiar to Atlas. About how this could be a good thing, maybe the best possible outcome they could have hoped for. Which caused a sour swirl of feeling down in Atlas’ gut, the same that had appeared when Jasper had made the same suggestion. It felt like being told that everything happened for a reason when your mother dropped a doll house on your hamster. It wasn’t true and no amount of promises for a new hamster made it so. They couldn’t promise him a new brain were there an incident there.

Any bond of this sort, if its properly controlled, is inherently protective. Of all the things that Cal said, that was what Atlas attached himself too. Muddling, calculating, determining the truth to it and finding that it held up. Tipping the feather on the scale properly. Cal had a point, as Jasper had hoped and Atlas had asked. Though, like most of the ones made by the other man, it was abstract, difficult to grasp, but not impossible. It was also brilliantly different. Not many would have the gaul to state that a brain parasite could be the same as a protective spell imbued with pure life energy. Cal could make the leap though and better than that, he could deliver upon it with enough assistance.

He came back from rumination for long enough to catch the end of what Jasper said. Cal’s mouth was halfway open to answer him, the two of them looking at one another, Cal’s fingers on the table top, twitched in his friends direction. Having had enough of being passive, in the situation and other wise Atlas roused himself and answered.

“Obviously we can’t really know what Shallah might sense and what she doesn’t. There just isn’t enough research on Veela in general....” Here he glanced over at Cal, smiling as best he could and finding that it was exhausting, but from the expression on both of their faces he could tell that Cal had known when he’d meant. The cases they’d read on veelas had been hopelessly unscientific, its writers obviously suffering from the charm they glossed over in their writing. “Isn’t very good... at all. Dangerous as assumptions are, it seems to us that the veela isn’t aware of the connection. Deacon is the danger as the creature is a combination of my magic and his.” Embarassing, leaving Atlas with a deep seated feeling of having been violated. Making him feel like a mother to a deformed and demonic child. “I only saw Deacon but....I could try again.” Said sheepishly. “Determine if they know more...but its doubtful. From what Cal had said. Calixtus had said.”

Feeling weary from talking he leaned back, settling down into a half lying position. Glancing nervously at Cal. "If you're saying we could swap this to look at it in the same category as protective magics we can create a secure link? Stop thinking of the dilabo as a parasite and more an extension of myself? Forgive me if I sound glib Calixtus, but, we both know that what it would really like to do is find me and eat me." A detail he wasn't sure Jasper was aware of, the end goal of dilabos and like creatures. "You don't think heightened interaction would aid it in that goal?"

[Calixtus Ferox]

"No. The opposite, in fact." Cal raised one hand in his pedagogical gesture. He felt more confident and more at ease talking about this than almost anything else. This, the moment when the floodgates of a new realization opened and rushed out, carrying the easy play of his thoughts along with them. His dammed mental energy released now that he had some new information, a breakthrough. Those were almost always good. Because problems only existed in relation to those who tried to solve them, and fresh perspective almost always gave leverage.

"As it is, it's been trying to kill you from afar--I mean, not that the creature itself tries... it's a complicated case. But its energy has been pulling at yours. Jasper's legilimency exercises didn't help, because they allowed it to keep pulling. But when you cut off your magic--brilliant idea, by the way." He exchanged a quick look with Jasper, close enough that he could smell his breath, then looked back at Atlas. "When you shut off your magic you changed the...not the direction of the pull, obviously. But the balance, the..." He lifted his other hand and moved them like a scale. "The arrangement. As it were. So the pull it's still exerting on you has shifted. Not sapping your mental energy, engaging your magical energy. It's almost like an immune response, I would guess." Cal had a lot of experience trying to metaphorise magic into something he could understand.

"Anyway, your magic's trying to protect you now. I won't say you can reassimilate the dilabo, because you can't, and it's still driven to consume you. It's just that now it's consuming a... a renewable resource. One you can use, one you can consciously channel. Manageable."

Pause. Atlas was looking at him strangely, at him or perhaps at Jasper--no, at him. Atlas looked softer and more human than he could recall. Maybe it was just that Cal loved being listened to. Maybe it was something about his eyes.

Maybe it was that he was listening, rather than judging by some remote and arbitrary standard. So often when Cal looked at Atlas he wasn't quite there. He supposed that could easily be said of himself too. Drugs. Sh-t. Anyway.

"That was, really, a brilliant idea. I mean, this is only a step, it's not... it's not a cure, and we have to be certain Deacon can't tell what you're doing, and, Atlas, you'll have to work at your control. There are potions that can safeguard... help... I can use the powdered lethifold. But from what I've read he should not share the link. That's only between the host and the dilabo." Cal breathed out and let his shoulders, which had been squared against the explanatory gale he'd created, droop into comfort once more, beside Jasper.

"So. This is good. Comparatively."

[Jasper Christie]

Atlas seemed to finally be coming round from the stupor he'd woken in, much to Jasper's relief. He'd been worried that there were other effects at work, possibly damage from his own botched legilimency efforts, when Atlas had been so slow to act like himself. Not that he was entirely himself even now; he was still slumped somewhat miserably into the depths of the sofa.

“I only saw Deacon but....I could try again. Determine if they know more...but its doubtful. From what Cal had said. Calixtus had said.”

Strange that he still thought it necessary to be so formal, considering all the bizarre incarnations of the relationship he had with Cal. Jasper had thought, and perhaps it had been true at certain points, that Atlas used Cal's full name just because it was a little embarrassing and Cal clearly didn't prefer it. Now it had become habit, or tradition, something of the sort. Or Atlas just didn't want to use the nickname because it might suggest that he actually liked Cal. Anyhow, what he'd said about assumptions was painfully accurate. They knew so little about what they were dealing with. Jasper, without the hours the other two spent in the lab, felt he was particularly in the dark.

"Forgive me if I sound glib Calixtus, but, we both know that what it would really like to do is find me and eat me."

Maybe even more in the dark than he'd imagined. He tried not to let it show, but he hadn't heard anything about the dilabo wanting to eat Atlas in particular. His understanding had been of a more universally bloodthirsty creature. Not necessarily a more comforting notion, but there were a lot of people in London. Cal had known though, because he took the comment in stride, his voice dropping down into the register he preferred for explaining physics to Jasper when they worked on metallurgy spells for the shop together.

"As it is, it's been trying to kill you from afar--I mean, not that the creature itself tries... it's a complicated case.... Jasper's legilimency exercises didn't help, because they allowed it to keep pulling. But when you cut off your magic--brilliant idea, by the way."

He ducked his head toward Jasper, bringing their faces slightly closer for a moment, before continuing, hands moving like his explanation was an orchestra to be conducted. Atlas was watching closely, waiting for the big reveal at the end of the magic trick. He didn't seem comforted, exactly, but at least Cal's explanation was giving him something to focus on.

"That was, really, a brilliant idea." Jasper smiled sideways. Later he'd have to remember to thank Cal properly, because it was nice to hear that he hadn't made an awful mistake. Now didn't seem like the time though, with Atlas waiting miserably to hear whether or not his brain was in working order. Jasper knew his friend hated seeing hints of their relationship anyhow; he'd spare him the discomfort. "I mean, this is only a step, it's not... it's not a cure, and we have to be certain Deacon can't tell what you're doing, and, Atlas, you'll have to work at your control...So. This is good. Comparatively."

The qualifier didn't help, really, but Cal's prognosis was fairly positive. Hopefully Atlas saw that too. Jasper wanted to get to work right away, but he wasn't sure if Atlas would feel the same. Though he'd been asleep for several hours while Jasper was awake with Grace, he looked exhausted. Cal, done with his explanation, was also drooping slightly.

"That's good." Rather lamely. Jasper was still on Atlas' previous comment about the dilabo. "Right, Cal you can do the potions in my workshop maybe? Better not to be in the lab if we're not letting Bailey in on this right now. I'll help out however I can with the occlumency. Atlas d'you want to sleep for a while or something before we get started? I can do you a quick charm, it might be better to start fresh after a nap.

"Also I'm sorry to ask mate, but, find you and eat you? Did you not think this might be pertinent information for me?"

[Atlas Caedmon]

So. This is good. Comparatively. Cal finished off with a final flourish of his hand, the cut off the point in the lecture where he was now prepared to take questions. Atlas wasn’t sure he’d been paying enough careful attention in order to ask the proper ones. Control at least was easy enough, Atlas had been exercising tight control for years, over a decade. That news eased the budding pain or over taxed nerves in his back and sides. It was learnable, something that anyone could do and Atlas could do, it was one more thing to place emphasis on. He’d have to lay off his Shirley Investigations for a bit, maybe even the Maid in Taiwan, he’d need more mental energy to devote to the new task.

What he did wonder though was how this was going to work on his dealings with Cal in the lab. He’d said the dilabo was more tied to his magical energies than his physical or mental, did that mean he’d be more free to conduct more of the work load in the lab or less? Was this just another step in slowly but surely leaving him useless to them, useless save for being a window into a terrorist den. No doubt a rare skill, and one that Atlas should have been proud of. An ultimate contribution, but still, it seemed so passive. So weak and feeble to just be able to skulk around in the dark and report back about what kind of tea the irishman was drinking or what small animal the veela was torturing that day. What person.

That’s good. He rolled his eyes at that, looking over at Jasper as if he were his mother. Trying to make something good out of bad news. It wasn’t Jasper’s modus operati and it didn’t suit him overly well. But he was trying, more so than Atlas might have hoped and so he let the comment go without commentary. Atlas, Made eye contact to show Jasper that he was listening. Atlas d'you want to sleep for a while or something before we get started? I can do you a quick charm, it might be better to start fresh after a nap. He was shaking his head before he was really aware of it. Blood had rushed to his face making him feel hot, finally as the last of the coolness from the water from Jasper’s failed wake up attempt faded away.
Atlas started to protest when Jasper’s face turned. Flipping and twisting in slightly unfamiliar places, unfamiliar that was if Atlas wasn’t introducing him to a new weapon or a new plant. It made his stiff upper British lip all but disappear, leaving Atlas to wonder what on earth he might have inadvertently said to cause such a reaction.

Also I'm sorry to ask mate, but, find you and eat you? Did you not think this might be pertinent information for me?

“No.” Not the correct thing to say, now Jasper’s bottom lip was rapidly vanishing as well, being sucked back into his face. Atlas glanced over at Cal, throwing him a look to ask for help but the other man was concentrating on Jasper’s face. This couldn’t be something Cal hadn’t seemed, it was Atlas understanding that his ability to annoy Jasper was nearly as well practiced as Atlas’.

“I didn’t."

"It's what dilabo's do. Typically the host dies upon the creation of the creature. In cases where that doesn't happen the creature is drawn back to its originator. It's instinct is to finish what...well, who it started."

"I had thought that...” Not that Jasper had knew, because really how could he. Maybe that Calixtus had told him but even that seemed incorrect. “It didn’t seem as if it was something that would be of benefit for you to know.” Still wrong. “The mental side affects are the more pressing, the magical ones. I. It wasn’t something that I was hiding from you, Jas.”

He didn’t know if that was good enough, supposed he would if Jasper started to shout. “Don’t want to sleep. What assurances do we have that I don’t nod off and end up right back with that sociopath? I can learn to control it but not all in one bloody night.” To both of them. “Which is the problem, in the long term you’ve presented a solution...an opportunity. But how do we stop it from happening right now tonight? I mean...how long should I be spending as it, or getting back out again or?” He’d begun to speak faster, a carry over from nervous exhaustion. Stopping he tried to slow down, to calm down. He wasn’t sure at how well it worked. “Does this leave me more crippled to you than it did before, Calixtus? What kind of work load do you think I can do? What do the potions do, whats the cost of using them? I can see the merits in this, believe me I can, but it was bloody scary.”