Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The announcer’s voice boomed through the theatre, electrifying the crowd with anticipation.

“Ladies and gentlemen. Welcome! Prepare yourselves for a night of wonder, as we present… the incomparable, the extraordinary… Artful!!”

The stage blazed with luminous light as the once-stationary drapes swirled open, uncovering a figure drawn in monochrome; the finer lines disoriented in the wavering ambience. The silence was suddenly shattered as the crowd erupted in wild applause, swept up in the grandeur of the performer’s entrance.

Artful didn’t move at first. He stood perfectly still beneath the shining light, every breath timed, rehearsed over hundreds of hours. The air quivered, alive with voices.

He raised his head gradually, smoothly. The gleam of his half-mask caught the light, scattering it across the room in fractured shards. A thousand reflections stared back at him from the blank walls and the eyes of the audience. All bright, all hungry. He smiled.

“Thank you,” 

He said softly, though the word was swallowed by the roar.

The spotlight followed as he stepped forward, polished shoes mimicking his reflection against the blackened stage. A hush began to fall. It was always like this. The shift from chaos to reverence, from noise to silence. As if every soul in the room held its breath for him. He lived for that silence.

The magician opened his arms, a slow, deliberate flourish. The beacons dimmed on cue, turning the room into a pulse of shadow and a dull silver.

His reflection on the polished stage floor flickered, tainted. Like a broken projection, replaced by smudges of colour, a watercolour of motion and mystery. 

Lights flared, flashing and blinding. Then, everything was routine again.     

When the light steadied, Artful stood centre stage, a bouquet of blood-red roses in his hand as if they had bloomed from the air itself. One of Artful’s realistic props he was proud of. Bowing yet again, then tossing the ornament into the sea of people.

Applause. Laughter. A whistle from somewhere near the front row.

Artful drew in a careful breath and forced another smile. Beneath the half-mask, his eye gleamed uncertainly at the applause of the audience. The show must go on.

“Now, dear audience, cheer for an encore!”

Artful’s smile twitched slightly at the silence that treated him. The crowd continued to oddly stare at the overly patched wall behind him, seemingly not focusing on the magician’s request.

Silently cursing himself, Artful frantically thought up an idea.

“Okay… how about this—I’ll perform a magic trick for the audience.”

He suggested smoothly, not letting the annoyance touch his tone.

A few hesitant claps answered. Artful swore he could hear mutterings behind his back.

He loathed that feeling. 

Je vais montrer à ces imbéciles de quoi un vrai magicien est capable…

(I’ll show those fools what a real magician can do...)

Gritting his teeth, Artful reached for one of his reliable props. A simple misdirection. He swept his hand dramatically and pulled a tea set seemingly out of thin air. Gaining a few impressed murmurs from his viewers.

 He held his other hand in the air, announcing nothing that might hide props, to the untrained eye. Then, a wand seemingly warped into existence, landing right in his palm.

He held the wand up, the crowd ooo’d and ahhh’d, gasping in appreciation. 

The wand gleamed in the light, a sliver of gold caught between his fingers. Artful twirled it once, the movement drawing another soft ripple of admiration from the crowd.

Good. That was better. They were watching again.

“Now,” he purred, voice smooth as glass, “for something a little… extraordinary.”

He tapped the delicate rim of the teacup with the wand. A faint hum answered, the air trembling in response. The fragile porcelain rattled faintly in the air. 

The audience gasped as steam began to rise; first thin and silvery, then darker. Black as ink.

Artful’s smile widened, though his fingers had gone cold. That wasn’t supposed to happen…

The cup trembled again. The black mist spilled over the edge, curling down like smoke from an unseen fire. The crowd murmured, unsure whether to be amazed or afraid. 

He tried to lift the cup, but it burned his hand.

For a moment, the stage was utterly silent. 

The performer froze in a tableau of perfection and ridgedness. Then the teacup shattered. Black, choking smoke gushed out. A shrill crack rebounded across the theatre, sending shards that stung Artful. Though none had touched him.

None of this was supposed to happen…

For a heartbeat, the crowd rigidified, astonished with such a sudden, alluring performance. The audience, filled with half-hearted cheers and complimentable nothings. But Artful also heard the silent dissatisfaction hidden in the crowd.

“That magician is no good!”

Artful snapped out of it.

“The show must go on,”

He muttered, barely audible over the overwhelming hum in his mind.

The wand trembled faintly in his hand, though the rest of him remained unnaturally still. The smoke had already faded, just like the laughter. Leaving only a strange tang in the air. Metallic, electric.

Artful’s eye flicked toward the audience, gauging their reaction. He couldn’t tell if they were astonished or… disturbed.

No one moved.

A single cough echoed in the vast theatre, and then came a small, trembling voice. A child’s.

“Mama… I don’t like it.”

That fragile sentence splintered the silence.

Somewhere in the third row, a woman’s sharp tone rose, slicing through the air like a knife.

“You’ve scared my child, you fraud!”

Artful blinked once, unsure if he’d heard correctly.

The woman stood up now, face flushed, clutching her sobbing child. Her voice carried with a venomous authority only the self-righteous could muster.

“You call that nasty trick entertainment? You should be ashamed of yourself!”

A few heads turned, others murmured. Artful lifted a trembling hand in a placating gesture.

“Madam, I assure you, it was merely—”

Something wet and slippery struck his shoulder. He froze, staring down. A banana peel clung to the fabric of his sleeve. 

Then came another. And another.

Within moments, the stage was littered with banana peels. Crumpled paper, even a half-eaten apple bouncing off his well-polished shoe.

The spotlight shivered, its edges fraying like torn fabric as Artful forced another smile. Hiding the grimace that was slowly approaching on his face.  The light seemed to want to run from him.

Laughter rippled through the audience. 

Uneasy at first, hesitant even. Like the crack of glass before it shatters. Then it swelled, sharper, and crueller. Feeding on itself.

It echoed in waves, a mind-numbing rhythm of jeers and amusement that slithered through the theatre’s air, bouncing off the velvet walls and dying only to rise again.

The hum in the walls wouldn’t stop. It buzzed in his teeth, in his skull, as if the theatre itself were whispering his panic back at him.

Louder.

Artful stood rigid.

Beneath the mask, his breath came short and quick.

A trapped sound between gasps and disbelief.

His fingers twitched at his side, nails biting into his palm.

He could hear it.

Every laugh, high, hollow, and piercing. 

Devouring the silence he’d once worshipped. 

The silence that had belonged to him.

He had built his name from that stillness, shaped it into something beautiful, something new.

Now it mocked him.

That laughter…

The same he thought he’d left behind in forgotten, humiliating years came crawling back, gnawing through his composure.

The sharp echoes pierced his thoughts, shredding his defences until all that was left was the raw sound of failure.

He whispered under his breath, voice trembling, syllables crumbling apart.

“Le… le spectacle doit continuer…”
(T-the… show must go on…)

But his hand shook too violently to hold the wand straight. It quivered like his nerves.

The laughter didn’t stop.

It grew.

It warped, their voices bending, melting into something no longer human. Mockery turned monstrous.

You’ve failed.

You are a fraud.

You are nothing.

The words dug in, over and over, until thought itself became silent.

Artful’s chest constricted, his heartbeat thrumming in his skull. His eye twitched, his jaw locked, his breath broke.

Stop it.

Stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it—

Stop laughing.

The stage lights flickered, buzzing with static.

Stop laughing!

The curtains moved before the air did. The light tilted sideways, dragging the world with it.

The air grew heavy, electric. One by one, the bulbs overhead sputtered out—

—Pop. Pop. Pop.

Each burst drizzled faint sparks that disassembled into dying fireflies. 

Artful staggered backwards, clutching at his hat, his chest heaving.

He hadn’t done anything. He hadn’t—

This wasn’t part of the trick.

The stage warped around him, light bending, the colour bleeding from the world. 

Then. 

Rage. 

Pure, unrelentless hate. 

Props ascended from the floor like marionettes on invisible strings, throbbing the ground beneath them. 

The laughter finally cut off, swallowed by a blood-lust rush of smoke.

Then came the screaming.

The front rows bolted first, chairs clattering as smoke disembodied from the stage floor, deep red and pulsing like a heartbeat.

Artful stumbled forward, tightening his grip on the wand shakingly. Swinging in a jagged sweep through the heavy environment in a cruel arc. 

The wand cracked in his grip, leaking threads of gold that hissed through the air. The people fell by the dozens.  

He saw faces twisting, mouths gaping, eyes stretched, and then nothing but red. 

The stench of blood flooded his senses. Engulfing him in his own twisted world. 

He remembered the looks on the people's faces as he ripped the life out of their eyes. The grotesque look of the organs bleeding out of the discarded carcasses. 

Pulps of tissue and muscle were forced, widening and tearing by the second, skin hardening, revealing disordered rows of fleshy cords and flaps. 

He was startled when he realised the exhilaration of the massacre and the squelch of blood brought satisfaction.

He shouldn’t think that…

Then, something shook Artful out of his trance.

A single figure stood frozen near the stage, a young fan clutching a hand-painted sign, the words barely recognisable now through the haze:

We <3 Artful.

They reached out, eyes glimmering with tears and fear.

“—P-please stop.”

But. He didn’t stop. He couldn’t.

To him, this was just another hater. A person who had caused his downfall. A person he hated. Hated them.

He killed this one slow…

. . .

When Artful pried open his eyes, he scanned the emptiness of the theatre.

No sound. 

No movement.

Only the inaudible whisper of settling ash. 

The seats were caked with blood and the pungent body parts of former citizens, the curtains reduced to sherds, the air oversaturated with blood and smoke.

It would be unbelievable that there was once a crowd. 

Not screaming, not crying, not-

…

He staggered forward, dazed, his shoes crunching on glass.

On the edge of the stage, something glimmered weakly.

Roses.

Real roses.

The same roses he had thrown into the crowd earlier.

“Mais… c’étaient des faux. Juste des accessoires…”

(But..they were fake. Just props…)

Impossibly intact, petals still vibrant, dew-fresh.

He reached down, touched one gingerly.

The stem pulsed once, warm against his glove.

A drop of scarlet welled at his fingertip. 

Hot, stenching, Blood.

Artful jerked his hand back. Staring in horror as the roses shuddered, their petals curling slightly, as if breathing.

The lights above the ruined theatre flickered once more. He didn’t wait to see if they stayed that way.

He turned and ran.

Through the curtains, past the broken props, past the bodies and through the backstage corridor that smelled of smoke and shattered memory.

Outside, the night stabbed into him with cold rain. It pattered against the alley walls, hammering against his figure. All quiet. 

He looked down at his wand. Shrivelled gold threads leaking from it like dying light.

Somewhere deep inside the theatre, applause echoed faintly.

Distorted. Endless. Reminding him of his former glory.

Artful took a step back, then another. His breath caught, gulping in the air that suddenly was in short supply.

Then, he vanished into the dark.

Chapter Text

Bleak, cold, and frustrated.

He had been on the run for days.

The rain never really stops leaving a perpetual presence in the atmosphere, the air smells like dust and mud, and broken down signs flutter in the wind like scattered applause.

Artful has been scavenging for food and water. Although he had no idea how to survive without a home, he had common sense.

The water had been running out along with the last food resources he managed to gather.

Leaving the temporary camp he had made in the few days, Artful pressed himself against the walls, hoping to fend off some rain.

He passes alleyways where posters still cling to the walls.

His face, half torn away by the weather. Some read “MISSING,” others “MURDERER,” Artful hates this one with great passion: “FRAUD.”

The ink has bled in the rain, making his name a dark smear. One in his past life he would walk right past.

He keeps his hat low. The mask still hides half his face, though the strap is fraying. Sometimes he thinks about taking it off.

But then, who was he without the mask?

He felt something inside him breaking, losing its shape. Melting in a small puddle of what once used to be order. A slow deliquescence of whatever rules he used to live by.

He could feel the stagnation creeping into him. Slow, heavy stillness that made it harder to remember what he used to care about.

The city around him was hollowed out, a skeleton of its former self.

Broken streetlights flickered with a dull, electric pulse, casting long, thin shadows across cracked pavement. Rain pooled in the potholes, reflecting jagged neon signs long dead.

Artful ducked beneath a collapsed storefront awning, the boards slick with mold and grime.

The air smelled of rust and wet cement, with a hint of rot drifting from the gutter. He knelt by a puddle, cupping the water in his hands.

Disgusting. Absolutely disgusting.

Throwing the murky infested water behind him, Artful scanned for more potential meals.

Around him, the remains of the city offered scraps for survival.

A torn cardboard box contained soggy bread crusts, another held empty cans, coated with dried beans.

Artful rifled through it. Dust choked him. He spat. Again, careful to avoid the sharp edges. He ate sparingly, tasting dust and disappointment along with the meager sustenance.

Nothing but crusts…

He chewed. Not tasting anything.

The rain had dulled to a drizzle now, steady and thin. Like the world was too tired to pour.

Every sound was drowned in the rain.

The hollow banging of droplets lets on a metal roof.

A clatter behind a dumpster.

Nothing.

He froze. Rain masked the sound, but not his heartbeats.

Artful stayed still for several eternities.

His gaze sweeping the empty street.

Shadows shifted with the wind, pooling in corners, stretching long across the cracked pavement.

He eyed the dumpster cautiously scanning.

Just rain. Just the rain.

He moved again, slower this time, every trembling step deliberate.

A flicker of shadow loomed out of the side of a bin.

He blinked, and it was gone.

Artful pressed his gloved hand against his mask.

“Pas encore.” he muttered.
(Not again.)

“Arrête ça. Arrête ça tout de suite.”
(Stop that. Stop that right now.)

The city answered only with silence.

No. Not silence.

Something softer. Faint whispering through the wires above, a sound almost like laughter.

He turned sharply, but there was no one there.

Only the endless maze of wet concrete and the hum of the broken streetlights.

He gathered what little remained in his pockets. A rusted spoon, a half-eaten crust, the scattered remains of his last meal.

The thing looked pitiful now, nothing but pieces of slightly moldy bread, dull and unappetizing. Still, he tucked it carefully inside his coat.

Another gust of wind dragged rain through the alley.

He pulled his coat tighter, muttering under his breath,

“The show must go on.”

But the words didn’t sound like courage anymore. They sounded like habit.

. . .

The rain had driven him into the husk of an old building.

Maybe a station. Maybe a theatre.

It was hard to tell anymore.

Water leaked through the ceiling, running down cracked tiles like veins.

Every footstep echoed too long and loud. Every echo rebounding off the walls.

Artful pushed deeper inside, brushing aside a hanging poster.

His own face smiled back at him. Warped by mildew and time.

The Magnificent Artful!

It proclaimed, the letters curling into decay. He tore it down.

He heard the constant rebounding sounds of the water. Eventually blending into the background.

He took another breath, quivering silently.

He was not quite sure why in that moment. Perhaps because of some ancient instinct.

He backed away. Pressing his body against the walls. Scanning the world around him once again.

Something caught his eye.

In the puddle by the door, distorted by ripples, a shape lingered. Tall, angular and unmoving. The outline of a figure that didn’t belong.

Artful stepped forward slowly, pulse hammering in his throat. The puddle wobbled as if reacting to his fear.

He looked away, hoping it was just his mind.

The figure was gone.

Artful rubbed his eyes.

“Juste la pluie.”
(Just the rain.)

He whispered again, though his voice trembled in a way he didn’t like.

How did he end up here? Perhaps….

An aggressive rustle tumbled, hooking Artful. A cat with neat, sleek fur creeped out behind a trash can, then focusing on him. The hazel hue in the silhouette was slowly blossoming delicate sunrays.

There.

The skin on Artful’s face expanded, grew with a needy passion. His eyes targeted, locked onto the cat,
“Si je devais…”
(If I were to…)

He muttered under his breath, his stomach retracted from hunger.

The cat was still standing there, sharing looks at him and padding every flap of fur with a calm stroke of its tongue.

Artful couldn’t imagine the scenery if he did… The cat, but the hunger clawed at his thoughts, he barely opened his eyes.

He gripped on his wand, spine quivering violently at the thought of it.

A hit, the cat limped towards the higher section of the concrete, and another. The cat wailed, bawling out, darting back into the garbage cans.

Artful cursed himself, following the sounds of the clattering.

There was an opening, a direct hit to silence the noise, the cat’s hind legs barely rebounded from the plastic lid it scrambled off.
Hit.

His hesitation was over. The parts were battered, but the meat was still intact. He nudged the limb, winding the “face” of the cat facing the ground. Artful, proud and

hesitantly, pocketed his wand.

He had found meat. Actual meat.

….

Artful picked the pitiful morsels of flesh off the cat. He was not sure how to eat one and whether or not to gut it.

He summoned his wand, holding it in his fingers. If he could use it to slash through the air like a knife…

Could he use it to gut the carcass?

Although Artful didn’t want to remember how he found that out. It was the only option that was not going to put his life in mortal risk.

“Il suffit de l'envoler…”
(Just wing it…)

He muttered.

He loped off the head, the tail, and the feet, saving them for later. Or until he could bring himself to eat the brain.

He cut the delicate skin on the abdomen, slicing half of the body open.

As the guts spilled out, Artful swallowed the forcing of another pulp of hard, semi-regretful saliva.

The fingers started prying open the muscle, expanding the rubber like flesh on his fingertips.

He stared at what remained.

The warmth had already left it, but heat still curled faintly from the cut.

The smell was metallic, sharp, and wrong.

Artful swallowed, though there was nothing to swallow.

He hadn’t meant to do it..

No—that was a lie..

He had.

Every motion had been chosen, every strike intentional.

He’d thought of the bones, the muscle, the way it would break. He’d known. And yet his hands had moved anyway.

A shiver ran through him.

Not from cold, but from the quiet recognition of something final.

He wiped the wand clean on his sleeve. The blood smeared instead of disappearing, leaving a dark streak across the fabric.

It looked like another poster headline.

Another accusation.

“Murderer.”

He let out a broken laugh, short and hollow. “No, no, just—just a survivor,” he muttered.

But the word didn’t sound right in his mouth anymore.

The building creaked as the wind shifted outside. Water dripped steadily through the holes in the ceiling. Each drop hit the floor with an almost deliberate rhythm.

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

He dragged what he could of the carcass toward a corner where broken tiles piled into a shallow pit.

The wand trembled in his grasp as he whispered the faintest spark from it.

Not magic. Just habit now.

The tiny flame hissed against the wet floor, guttering but alive.

The meat sizzled. The smell was worse.

He turned away, squeezing his eyes shut, listening to the hiss, the crack, the faint echo of another sound.

A footstep.

His breath hitched. He looked back, eyes scanning the dark hall.

Nothing but water and shadow.

Another drop fell from the ceiling, hitting the puddle by the door.

The reflection rippled.

This time, the shape did not vanish.

Tall. Still. Watching.

Artful’s pulse stumbled into chaos.

He blinked, but the figure stayed.

“Qui est là?”
(Who’s there?)

No answer. Just that faint hum from the broken wires above. The same almost-sound from before.

He backed away slowly, his hand tightening around the wand. The flame flickered, then died, leaving only the echo of his own ragged breathing.

When he looked back at the puddle, the figure was gone.

But the water still moved, rippling outward, as if something had stepped through.

. . .

Artful lingered beside the cooked carcass, the metallic scent clinging stubbornly to his gloves.

The rain outside had softened to a thin hiss against the broken windows, a sound that filled the room with a strange, uneasy quiet.

For a long moment, he just stood there, listening to it.

His heartbeat slowed.

Not by much.

He wiped his hands on his coat, though the stains felt deeper than the fabric.

The roof felt too low now, too oppressing, as if the walls themselves judged what he’d done.

A kind of stillness settled over him.

A heavy pause in the rhythm of who he used to be.

He swallowed hard.

He needed air.

He stepped over the remains of the cat, over the puddles of rainwater slicking the floor.

Anything to get away from the smell, the silence, the gravity of the moment.

Pushing open the door, he let the night spill in around him.

The sharp night air greeted Artful’s face as he stepped out from the shelter.

The evening was still young, the sky still holding onto its last scraps of light. Night sounds rose with the moon’s slow climb, the city shifting into its darker self.

He exhaled a few breathless gulps of air, each one blooming into a faint cloud before dissolving.

Lowering himself onto the wet concrete, Artful looked up at the early night sky, searching for some version of redemption.

But the stars looked like tiny fragments of ice sparkling in distant blackness. Pretty to look at, but useless.

He hugged his legs to his chest, caught between staying and running.

But the urban city offered some kind of comfort for him. Showing him he was not the only one broken because of society.

Artful breathed out the air he didn’t know he held in. The night seemed to wrap its veil around him, softening his edges. The city too, in its own raw way.

He couldn’t cry, even if he wanted to. He couldn’t laugh. He just felt a sad emptiness that he couldn’t express no matter how hard he tried to get it out.

He just lies staring up at the skies.