Matthias Helvar

[standard voice mail message that comes with the phone]

It's late, and Matthias has had a few drinks. Not enough to make him drunk, but enough to distract him from his thoughts. They're always worse at night, everything is unless he's in bed with Dutch. Those nights he can usually sleep through until morning. He considers sending her a message on his phone to see if she's awake, but for now he walks. This sometimes works, too.

Matthias realizes maybe he wasn't wandering as aimlessly as he convinced himself he was when he ends up outside of Chelsea Cloisters. He turns a wide circle outside, considers sending Marcus a message, too. Except that he's here already, and maybe Marcus can't sleep, either, and maybe he wants to get a drink.

He'll just knock on Marcus' door very lightly, and if he doesn't answer he'll continue on his way.

Matthias was trying to keep his nerves from getting the best of him. He'd never been casual about sex, or about anything, really, and while he had been trying to loosen up he still struggled with it. Darrow had made him change in so many significant ways that he was far from the stoic soldier he once was. He just hoped that he was still honorable in the ways that mattered.

But the complexities of sex and relationships were still a bit of a mystery to him. All his life he imagined himself married to a good Fjerdan woman. He would be an officer in the drüskelle, protecting his country and serving Djel while his wife cared for their children when he was gone. He hadn't let his imagination wander much further than that, until he met Nina. That fantasy had been ripped away when he was thrown into Hellgate, and again when he was brought here.

And then he met Dutch. She'd turned his life upside down from the moment he'd arrived. She was his first kiss, his first everything, and he loved her fiercely. Which is why old Matthias would probably be wondering what in Djel's name he was doing calling his friend over to see if he wanted to have sex. But he couldn't stop thinking about what Dutch said, that she was done living up to other people's standards, done being what other people wanted her to be.

Matthias was no longer drüskelle and had no desire to be. He would never be an officer, and he'd never have that fictional wife and children. He loved when Matthew was with them, his heart still ached from the loss of him in their lives. So if Marcus wanted...something, and Dutch wanted it too, then what was stopping them?

Yet he was still nervous anyway. He didn't want to damage his friendship with Marcus if he was wrong, and most importantly he didn't want to jeopardize what he had with Dutch if it didn't work out. So maybe he was pacing...a little. Wandering around his apartment, poking at things while he waited for Marcus to get there.

"Did you know that most species of lilies are odorless?" he said to Dutch from the kitchen, looking at one of the arrangements he'd brought home from work. His apartment always had flowers in it from the leftovers they couldn't sell, sometimes Dutchs' was, too, when she wanted them.

It's almost unbearable being alone in his apartment tonight. Dutch's plea for space seems to be holding strong, and Matthias can't think of anywhere else to go. He has friends, but it's late and he doesn't want to drop in on them feeling like this. He would make for poor company right now. So he walks, far from the bed he shared with Matthew, far from the suffocatingly small walls of his bedroom. The air is crisp, those last vestiges of winter holding on, and the stars are visible in the clear night sky. It's a beautiful night, but all it does is bring in a feeling of homesickness into the mix.

Matthias is a mess.

When his feet carry him along a familiar street and he sees the Crow Club up ahead, he pauses. Matthias doesn't often drink, and when he does he rarely even allows himself enough to really feel it. That vice was pounded out of him by the drüskelle, along with just about every other one. But he's changed here. He isn't drüskelle any more, he doesn't have to live by their rules.

Matthias pushes the door open and walks over to the bar before he can change his mind. Maybe a few drinks will give him some respite from the ever-present ache in his chest. At the very least, it will keep him from his bed.

[cont. from here]

There is a fleeting moment of uneasiness, one that Matthias has hoped will cease to exist completely in time, but it's gone the moment Matthew speaks. He feels Matthew's voice like an intimate whisper, reverberating softly. He wishes he could respond in kind, if only so he could use his mouth in other ways.

"Let them look," he purrs, mouthing along Matthew's neck, his hand smoothing over Matthew's stomach. "They're just jealous, they wish they could be me right now."

Matthias parents would have been disappointed with him if they knew what he was doing. But his parents had passed on a long time ago, and he'd already done enough improper things that what was one more? And besides, who would have been his chaperone all those months ago? The demjin, Jesper? Matthias' chest aches a moment at the thought of him.

What he had done was gone out and bought the largest bed he could find. It was the size of the Kings bed from Kagura, though the frame was far less ornate. He didn't care about that part, he cared about the part where all of them would fit. When it was the three of them, no matter if it was his apartment, Dutch's, or Matthew's, they could not all easily fit on the bed together. Kagura had spoiled them. Matthias couldn't afford Kagura every weekend, and it wouldn't be around forever, so here he was putting the sheets and blankets on his new bed that he hoped would not remain only his for very long.

Earlier, Matthias had invited Dutch and Matthew over without mentioning the bed. For now he sits down in the living room with Trass to wait.

Though Matthias has been told people can come to Darrow from all different times in their own lives, and experienced it with Kaz, Inej, and Jesper having come from his future back home, like much of what he's seen here it's still a concept that seems beyond understanding. With four members of the crew here in Darrow it wouldn't be a shock to one day come upon Nina or Wylan. But there is one person he hadn't expected to ever see again, in this life or the one back home.

Yet here is he, approaching Matthias with a wide smile. Jarl Brum. The closest thing Matthias has had to a father since his own was killed in a Grisha raid. Jarl Brum, the commanding officer of the drüskelle. He's in full drüskelle attire, impeccable uniform, neatly trimmed beard.

Unconsciously Matthias finds himself standing at attention, spine straightening, giving his mentor a soldier's welcome.

"Matthias! Just the man I was looking for!" Brum greets him like they've only been apart for hours, not a year and more.

"Brum. I thought you were dead," Matthias says, dumbfounded. He feels a tinge of self-consciousness at his own meager beard, but Brum doesn't comment on it.

"It takes more than a sinking ship to kill a man like me, Matthias," Brum says. "Come now, there's much to do. I learned of the Grisha who betrayed you, who got you thrown into Hellgate. What did I tell you, son, they're all liars. Deceivers."

Matthias listens numbly as Brum leads him toward an unfamiliar building, disparaging Grisha, Nina, Darrow's allowance of magic users. Matthias wants to argue, knowing he's wrong, but then he sees a dozen or more drüskelle ahead of them and knows he can't do this alone. He'll have to warn the authorities of the city, they'll need to know. Brum can't do here what he did back in Fjerda.

For now Matthias plays along, though he's chilled instead of warmed by someone he cared about for so long. Brum saved him as a child, but now he just feels dangerous. "When did you all get here?" Matthias asks.

"For days. We have a uniform for you, come inside, let's see if it fits. Afterward I have a surprise," Brum says, ushering Matthias into a dorm-style room. It looks just like his room back in Fjerda, the blank walls and neatly made bed. A minimalist lifestyle without any material pleasures. As if in a dream Matthias puts the uniform on. He looks at himself in the bathroom mirror, hands itching for a razor to shave off his beard. He hasn't made officer status yet, he doesn't deserve it.

The next thing he knows he's being fetched by Lars. Lars, who he hasn't seen in so long. Brum leads him behind the building into a walled-in area, and Matthias is so distracted by how otherworldly this feels that he doesn't realize at first what he's seeing. Four pyres erected next to each other, with four people tied to them, legs and arms bound, mouths gagged. Matthew. Agatha. Kell. Rapunzel.

"No," Matthias says, staring in horror, and before he can even manage to move forward two sets of arms hold him back. He struggles against them, but it's like he's a hundred pound weakling and he can barely move in their hold. "Brum, no. You don't understand. You can't do this. They won't hurt anyone! Brum!"

"Gag him," Brum snaps, and Matthias feels a cloth yanked into his mouth, tied tightly in the back.

"It's you who doesn't understand, Matthias," Brum says, his voice as steely as his eyes. "You've gone soft. These people have weakened you. You will watch them burn, and then you'll remember the man you were. You'll remember our god, and our mission to keep good people, natural people safe." As he says this, two of the drüskelle soldiers come forward with torches, lighting the pyres. Matthias screams and struggles, but can't get free.

The pyres go up in a blaze of fire, and they all scream, trying to get free. Their faces are twisted in pain. Matthias can already smell their burning flesh. He feels something break inside him and he bucks against the soldiers holding him. The gag is yanked from Matthias' mouth and his voice is hoarse with his own screams of protest, still struggling to break free and reach the pyres. "We don't burn them anymore!" he snarls, driven to his knees for all his struggling. "Stop this! I'll do anything! Stop this!"


[find Matthias at the end of his hallucination. pups will basically find him screaming and flipping out and appearing to be held back, though no one is actually there. setting of your choice to make things easy]

Matthias' 'talk' with Krem hadn't gone as planned, and he had a slight limp and a bump on the back of his head to show for it. Worse was how twisted up he felt inside over the whole situation. Everything he'd been raised to believe was crumbling beneath his feet. He was plagued by Brum's voice, a constant reminder of his training and faith in the back of his mind. But there was also Nina's, and the ones he'd met here, who were present and very real. He didn't know what to trust, but he did know he couldn't leave Agatha in that place no matter what she was.

Was he drüskelle, or just a giant hypocrite? And was it better to be wrong?

He just felt lost, out of his depth, and there was no one here who would understand. He missed his brothers with an ache that bled into the physical.

When he finally made it back to Candlewood he got into the elevator, too sore for the stairs. Without thinking, he pressed the button for floor seven, only realizing what he'd done when he saw the higher number upon the doors. He paused, but the elevator door slid closed behind him, so he continued to apartment #7B and knocked.