Hivemind: Ripley and Mishka

PART ONE: RIPLEY

It took Joan a couple days to figure out how this worked.

When her body was awake, she could see and feel what Diva saw and felt through her body, but couldn't control it. She spent every waking moment fighting to regain control of her limbs. It never worked, but Joan would be goddamned if she was just going to lie down and let this bitch beat her without a fight.

It was the principle of the thing.

When her body was asleep, it was... different. Dimmer, and black. It felt like being inside a dream, only she was aware. She stood in the ashes of the Temple of Io. She could smell the dying fire and the hot dirt, the black and gold sandstone. She sat down, cross-legged, and waited.

She could do nothing else.

She was in the hands of the gods, now.

~

"Hey," Mikhail Haeth said behind her. "Cut that out."

She spun around, falling on her back in shock in the sand.

Haeth stood a few steps away. He looked different, here; his eyes were hazel, and there was a scar across his eyebrow and jaw, a nick taken out of his ear. He looked flawlessly fine. There wasn't even a speck of dust on his boots.

His left hand was clenched tight, though, fingernails biting into his palm. The only sign of how tense he was.

She got up and brushed the ash off herself. She’d been in this dreaming state once before, and she'd never seen anymore. Huh. Was he some kind of figment? An illusion created by the hivemind? Be pretty fucking weird for someone to pick Mikhail Haeth, of all people, to torment her with. If Diva was gonna make an illusion for her to talk to, why not one of the Graverunners? Why not Amari?”

“How are you here?" Joan asked.

“Dreamstate,” Haeth said briefly. “Already found a few others. One of my house-servants is here. Hey, fucking cut out the fighting, seriously.”

Of course. Haeth was a host, too. She breathed out. God, they were so fucked.

“Fuck off, traitor,” Ripley said.

Haeth's eyes are bloodshot. "You’re just exhausting yourself. Gradually ease off it so that she thinks she's broken you. Lull her into a false sense of security. Then when it’s important, when they’re fighting her using your body, rebel then. Catch her off-guard. If you can get control for a few seconds, you can help them during the fight.”

Ripley eyed him. Huh. That was a pretty good plan. Fuck if she was gonna **say** so, though.

She wet her lips. "So, uh. When you’re awake—you can see what’s going on, too? You can see what she’s doing with your body.”

Haeth didn’t say anything. He just sat down.

“She ain’t been doing much with me yet,” Ripley said. “You? You—you kill anybody?”

“No. She dropped a fireball on some of your Runners. The elf, y’know, the one with the long hair, he went down, but he didn’t look dead. After that… She had me infected a few. Samantha—a servant at my estate. She killed Elizabeth. She tried to get Nixie and,” and then Mishka stopped, and said, “She tried to get Nixie, but Nixie teleported away in time.” He held his wrist with one hand and sank his fingernails into it. There were already small crescent-shaped marks there, some a little bloody. Joan wondered if they could hurt themselves in this realm. “She hasn’t done anything with you?”

Ripley swallowed. Diva had killed a few people. She seemed like she was waiting for something. “No. Who did she had you infect? Besides them?”

Haeth was completely silent, staring dead into space.

“City’s fucked,” he said after a while.

“Haeth. Who?”

“Lots of people, okay? Lots. A lot of them important,” Haeth said. “She's been using me to get the important ones, the people that are hard to get to. The fuck do you want me to say, Ripley? None of your—fucking Runners. Not your son. Not your sweetheart. But yes. Lots of important people. People I was working on. Renar Basha—she tried to get him, but someone must’ve warned him. He was prepared for me, fought me off.”

“Goro ain’t my son,” Joan muttered. Remembering Haeth’s propensity for poisoning people’s kids.

“Oh, fuck off, both of you,” Haeth said. “You think I’m blind. Hey, Ripley, here’s a list of things I’ve figured out after watching you for two years. ‘Joan Ripley’ only appears about fifteen years ago; there’s no record of you before that, so I’m guessing it’s a fake name. I have no fucking idea who you are, what you're doing, or where you came from, but you’re not a worshiper of Helm. Other facts: Your favorite color appears to red. You enjoy drinking. You’re gathering power—you take any recruit the Runners bring you. Frederick hates you, but can’t legally kill you yet. And for whatever reason, you and Goro Flatflower insist you hate each other, but he still goes to your office late at night to talk to you about matters you won’t discuss with anyone else, and you *appear* to have willed the Guild to him. That’s all. That’s all I’ve got. I have no idea what to do with any of this information, and so far none of it is useful.”

“Really?” Pleased. “Huh.” She did a good job of hiding her tracks.

“I give,” Haeth said. “You are a fucking brick wall.”

“Why are you trying to be friends with me?" Ripley said. "What for?"

“Maybe I just wanted someone on my goddamn side for once, alright?”

She crouched down next to him. “You’re a lot easier to talk to when you’re pissed off.” Less bullshit.

“Fuck you,” Haeth said, and then vanished. Huh. Apparently he could do that even inside here.

~

Goro came into Diva's shop to talk to Diva.

God, she was so fucking proud of that little motherfucker.

He looked… bad. Shadows under his bloodshot eyes, like he hadn’t been sleeping. His face looked yellow, and he kept digging his hands into his pockets, like a new nervous tic.

There were still so many things Joan wanted to say. To Goro. To Amari. To the rest of the Runners.

She thought about the temple ashes, the heat on her skin that morning. The smell of ash and burnt hair and charred flesh. The cold steel sword in her hand as she walked through the wreckage, looking for her sisters, her brothers. Looking for someone, anyone, she could hit. Hot coals burning through her shoes, leaving burn scars on her feet, even now, seventeen years later.

*I’ve done some stupid shit, too,* she would say. *It’s okay. You’re okay.*

 She remembered the way Goro looked when he asked her to kill him: shaking in that chair, waiting for the executioner’s axe. Saying: *I think it’s best if you get it over with.*

 Saying: *If you don’t kill me now, I’m gonna kill you some day.*

 Saying: *Your move, lady.*

 He looked even worse, now. Like he was waiting for someone, anyone, to come kill him so he could just get it over with. But he was still on his feet, still walking, and Joan—

God. She was so fucking proud of that scheming son of a bitch.

~

At night, when she went into the hivemind dreamstate, she reached for her goddess, Iomedae, the way she always did at times like this. Blindly, like a child feeling upwards for her mother’s hand.

But Io wasn’t there.

Her god lay beyond reach. Joan eased her breathing and repeated her prayer in her head: *I am the fury and vengeance of Iomedae. I am her sword and her shield.* It was true, even here. Even if she was locked in the dark for now, light still existed somewhere. She just had to find it.

Io loved her, and Joan would always find her way back home.

Joan walked into the desert and left the burnt temple behind her. Her feet trailed gray footprints behind her, leaving ashes in her wake. Joan had always been good at burning things.

She felt, blindly, for the presence of another mind.

There were other presences here. Most were dim, but Haeth’s presence stood out strong and clear. It felt sharp, dangerous, and frantic.

She headed that direction. Towards Haeth.

~

~
PART TWO: MISHKA

~

Mishka spent the first few hours thinking of every single thing he could do to stop Diva, which was nothing.

He wanted to scream. It felt like being in a small, tight, confined space, like being strapped to a coffin. And the longer he was here, the more the actual horror of his situation set in. There was nothing he could do. He just had to sit here. Letting it torture him.

Was he really just supposed to—just sit here? Mishka couldn’t do that. Mishka would rather do anything else. Mishka would rather be flayed alive, because at least then he could fight and scream.

Panic set in early.

He'd dominated people before with his magic. Forcing pirates to fight the captain of their own ship. Forcing victims to fight their loved ones. He’d thought he was so fucking clever. Enjoyed watching them panic.

God, he was going to vomit.

Once he got himself out of this, he needed a contingency plan for mind control. Maybe a magic item. Something that would kill him if he was ever under someone else’s control for more than a week.

He always figured karma would catch up to him eventually, but honestly this seemed a little extreme.

As soon as he got himself out—(he wasn’t going to get out, he was going to spend the rest of his life wishing he could die)—as soon as he got himself out, he was going to track down every single person he controlled and personally send them an apology note, and maybe even some chocolates.

(He wasn’t going to get out. Who was going to come get him? Hansel? Mishka wasn’t thinking about Hansel.)

*You’re going to be okay,* Han had said. *I promise. Don’t be afraid.*

He wished he could obey. He wished it were that easy.

Husband. Hansel called him husband. He didn’t want to hear that; it was fucking torture, hearing that word, like a starving man having a scrap of food dangled over his head. He wasn’t allowed to have it. He’d fucked this up beyond repair. He’d done it on purpose, hoping it’d save him, hoping it’d save both of them, and look where it had gotten him. Why fucking taunt him with words like “husband”? No. He wasn’t thinking about that.

But--

Fuck. *Husband*, Hansel had said. Mishka wanted that so badly it hurt.

~

When Mishka was asleep, he was at the center of a storm. The world kept shifting around him; he couldn’t get a grip. Thinking too many things at once. Sometimes the landscape looked like his estate; sometimes it was his cabin on the ship; sometimes it was a dragon’s hoard; sometimes it was his sister’s room in Alabaster; sometimes it was a raging ocean and he stood on a piece of driftwood. It flickered too rapidly for him to grasp onto.

Then someone kicked him in the ribs.

"Hey," Ripley said. "Cut that out." And the landscape shifted, sharpening into something clearer. She was exerting her willpower over the landscape, holding it in place for him.

Mishka rolled over and stared at her, dead-eyed.

"I can feel you thinking," Ripley said. "You're trying to think of every single way they could kill Diva. You realize she can probably read your mind, right? Stop helping her figure shit out."

"I can't help it," Mishka said through gritted teeth.

"Think about something else."

"What else?" *At least you get to die in thirty or forty years*, he thought. Unless this thing could keep them alive longer. God, fuck, shit, fuck, fuck, fuck. He couldn't take an eternity of this. He couldn't take it right now, unable to move, unable to breathe, unable to even twitch.

The landscape shifted again, but less rapidly now. They were in a field, now. Mishka focused on breathing, counting seven seconds inhaling, seven counts exhaling. That helped.

Ripley sat down beside him. She was dressed in a set of perfectly polished armor, carrying a sword across her back. "Have you talked to anybody else here?" Ripley said.

"Not really. They're hard to get to. Hard to find." Ripley was much clearer. She was a shining beacon where she walked, like a smoldering coal in the dark.

"Mm," Ripley said. "Well. Wanna help me find some people?"

"No." Mishka lurched upright. "Don't--"

Ripley looked surprised, but stopped. "What?"

"Don't--" Mishka forced the words out. "Go. Don't go. Stay... here. You--you made the world stop shifting."

Joan eyed him. But she shrugged, and she sat down, and she stayed with him silently until his body woke up again, and then he vanished.

~

She visited him again the next time their bodies slept, when they were in the dreamscape alone together again.

And the time after that.

And the time after that.

~

He figured out that he could conjure anything in the dreamscape if he summoned it with his mind. He was pretty good at conjuring stuff, making it appear in front of them. And once Mishka summoned something, Ripley could grasp onto it, make it real, and make it stay. She was good at that. Mishka was good at being creative. Ripley was good at being steady.

He summoned a deck of playing cards, and they played Dead Man’s Ante together. The problem was, this was a dreamscape, and they could just change what the cards were whenever they wanted by imagining they had a better hand.

Mishka was a respectable man; he cheated the normal way, by hiding cards up his sleeves.

Ripley just gave herself the best hand possible every time.

She slapped down her hand. “Five aces,” she announced.

“There aren’t five aces,” Mishka said. “One of those is something you made up. You can’t do that.”

“Just did,” Ripley said.

“It’s against the rules.”

“I make the rules.”

“Ripley, you are so full of shit.”

~

They started talking, sometimes. It was mostly random bullshit.

“You know what I do when I’m upset?” Ripley said. “I pretend I’m a rock.”

“Joan, I want you to know you are *rapidly* growing on me, but it’s probably because you’re literally the only person here right now.”

~

When Ripley was gone, Diva showed Mishka... things.

Sometimes, when Diva was bored and had nothing else to do, she’d entertain herself by torturing him. She could lock him inside his own head and show him visions so clear he thought they were real. She once spent an entire day catching Hansel, then cutting pieces off him while he begged to die, and it took Mishka two days to realize it had been a false vision.

She seemed to delight in his emotions. They were so clear and sharp, so fresh and new.

Ripley wasn’t as fun, it seemed. “Does Diva ever show you things?” Mishka asked, carefully, over cards one night.

“What kinds of things?” Ripley said.

“I don’t know. Does she ever lock you inside your own body and show you… visions? Pretend they’re real?”

“No,” Ripley said. “She seems pretty bored with me. Bitched about me giving her a headache. Why? What’s she doing to you?”

Mishka’s throat felt tight, even though his body wasn’t real in the dreamscape. He set his cards aside. “Joan. Don’t—”

Joan raised her eyebrows, as if to say: *Careful what you tell me to do, Haeth.*

 “Don’t,” Mishka said, “give her a… headache. Don’t… fight her all the time.”

Ripley laughed. “What’s she gonna do to me, Haeth? How could she possibly make this worse?”

Apparently nothing. Apparently Diva was spending all her time torturing Mishka, because his emotions were more fun, easier to provoke. Ripley had no fucking clue.

“Because if you piss her off enough, she’ll kill you,” Mishka said. “She will turn your sword on yourself, then dump your body somewhere no one can ever find it, so that no one can ever bring you back.” And Mishka would be alone again. He'd tried finding other people, but they couldn't handle the chaos around him. Couldn't calm it down the way Ripley did. Mishka was isolated without her. “Look, I told you already. Cut it out. Taper it off. Fake like she’s broken you. Act numb. Be quiet. Fight back when it matters, all at once, and catch her off-guard.”

Ripley eyed him. Then, finally, she nodded grudgingly. “That’s smart,” she finally said. She didn’t say she’d do it. But she said: *That’s smart.*

 It was enough, for now. She seemed to stop fighting after that.

~

Sometimes Ripley wasn’t there when he slept, or she was only there for a short time. They only met up when their sleep schedules overlapped. And it seemed like it was getting... rarer, for some reason.

There were other people here, but their minds were much weaker than Ripley’s. One of them was a quiet woman with long blond hair who only sat, staring blankly into space like there was nothing left of her. But there were new people, too. Warmaster Basil was trapped here, and Mishka caught a glimpse of a him a couple times. Mishka avoided Basil.

So mostly, Mishka stayed alone.

When he was alone, he tried to think about safe things.

He forced himself to stop thinking of ways to defeat Diva. Ripley was right. If Diva could read their thoughts, that would only help her. So instead, he thought about Hansel, because that was easy to obsess about, and it figured it would annoy the piss out of Diva.

Hansel had this tendency to pretend everything was fine when it... wasn't. Locked down like nothing was wrong, too busy taking care of other people to take care of himself.

Mishka wanted to take this problem from him. Wanted to step out of this and fight Diva himself. It would be easier if Hansel was the one captured, because Hansel would be able to handle this. Fuck, Hansel might even enjoy the break. That would be easier. He didn't want to be another child for Hansel to protect.

He wanted to give Hansel that. He wanted to just… to just make it easy for a while. To take Hansel aside somewhere quiet, where there was no one that needed him, no more messy children for Hansel to adopt, to take Hansel to his estate—or maybe somewhere else, somewhere better—where the world was simple and people did as Hansel told. No more evil fucking Mishka or impulsive fucking Jonn.

When he looked up from the ground, he saw Ripley’s boots in front of his face. She was here. And she was staring down at him, mouth open.

"What?" Mishka bit out.

She cleared her throat and took several steps back. “Nothin’. Just, uh. Noticed we were asleep at the same time, for once. Came to see how you were holdin’ up.”

A strained silence. Mishka sat up and dusted himself off. He made the world look like his library, and once he had it formed, Ripley waved her hand and helped hold it in place, so that it was easy for him to relax.

"Hey," Ripley said. "You know, uh. You know I can... sort've... hear your thoughts, right? Not much, but a little. It's mostly feelings."

"I am aware."

"So you and Hansel, uh—you’re talking again, huh?"

"What the fuck do you think he's been doing at my estate? Did you assume I was slowly flaying him?"

"Didn't seem like my business, honestly," Ripley said. “You do you.”

"I don’t want to talk about it,” Mishka said.

“Haeth, I never thought I’d hear you say those words.”

He snorted. The corner of his mouth twitched against his will. He would not let her see him laughing at her joke.

Her eyes shifted over to him, then away. "Look," she said, in a more serious voice. "This is deeply uncomfortable for both of us. I’m trying to… keep out of your head, Haeth. I really am. I'm not trying to spy or push your boundaries.” She sat down beside him. They didn’t play cards this time. They just sat back to back in his library. Mishka closed his eyes and rested, propped against her back.

The problem was, it was impossible to shield his mind. It was impossible to ignore what Ripley was thinking. She was repeating the same words over and over: *I am the fury and vengeance of Iomedae. I am her sword and her sheild.*

"Iomedae, huh," he said, to fill the silence.

"Yup. Iomedae. You guess that one, before? You figure that one out before we got bodysnatched?"

"It was on the list of possibilities. Moradin, I thought, maybe. I mean, Moradin’s a dwarf god, of course, but otherwise it suited you. Or... Correllon would make sense, too. Or Tyr." There were a lot of gods Ripley could've worshipped. "Iomedae seemed like the most obvious choice, but I thought all her paladins were killed.”

"Mm," Ripley said. "Spose so. Big fire.”

"Temple burned down," Mishka said. "No survivors." He remembered, sharply, the burned-out husk of a place he originally found her in. Ah. That made sense, now.

Ripley shrugged and didn't say anything else.

"So," Mishka guessed, because it seemed obvious now. "Someone in the Church of Helm burned down your temple, and now your'e going to kill him."

"Something like that, sure."

"You know, sometimes you can solve problems without stabbing them. There are other solutions," Mishka said.

"Yeah?" Ripley said. "Like poisoning people and extorting their loved ones, huh? Or paying to have me ambushed so you could step in and rescue me that one time?”

Mishka remembered that one. That was the time she punched him. “Look, woman, I’ve got a lot of schemes. Some of them backfire.”

She shifted a little to get more comfortable. Mishka resisted the urge to grab her wrist and keep her with him. It seemed like the overlap between their sleep schedules was getting—shorter. He saw her less, these days. And one day, he knew in his gut, she was going to disappear. The Graverunners were going to rescue her first. Or they wouldn’t rescue him at all. Or she’d get killed. Or she’d die of old age long before him, much longer before him, and Mishka wouldn’t have anyone safe to talk to anymore.

She’d started smiling at his jokes, sometimes. Mishka swallowed a lump in his throat.

Mishka kept his voice level and calm. "You know, I really did look around. You have no background before age twenty-six or so. Joan Ripley didn't exist until roughly fifteen, maybe seventeen years ago. Tell me about your sordid past. C’mon.”

“Oh, it ain’t interesting. Whored around. Drank too much. Stole shit.”

“What’s with the fake name, then?”

"I was Joanne when I was a kid," Joan said. "I shortened it. I like ‘Joan’ better.”

"And where did your fake last name come from?”

“Didn’t have a last name when I was a kid,” Joan said. “Picked one myself. Thought it sounded badass.”

"Mm. Well. You're not wrong."

It would be fine. Mishka would think of something. Eventually. Joan had enough willpower to grab control for a moment, before; she’d taken control long enough to grab ahold of Goro’s arm and give him a message. Maybe Mishka could learn to do that. If he could get control for just a few seconds, when Diva had a knife or sharp object in her hand, he could drive it into his throat.

*I’m going to get that thing out of you,* Hansel had said.

(*~~Husband~~*~~, Hansel had said.~~)

Hansel didn’t understand. Diva would kill Hansel, rip him apart in an instant; she’d make Mishka do it. Or, worse, she’d infect Hansel the same way. God, he had actually thought he could be happy with Hansel for a while. He thought they had another couple years left. If Mishka was dead—if Mishka was dead, if Mishka could grab control long enough to cut his own throat, then maybe Hansel would just run, maybe Hansel would adopt Nixie and they’d go to Calimshan where Diva couldn’t reach.

And for once in his fucking life, Hansel would be safe from Mishka, because Mishka would be dead.

~

~

PART THREE: JOAN

~

She didn’t see Mishka for a long time after that. She used to look forward to the times her body was asleep, because it meant listening to Mishka’s snarky remarks, and that was better than overwhelming silence. He'd started telling her pirate stories.

But a funny thing happened after that. She didn’t see Mishka for a long time, but other people started appearing more often. At first Joan figured it was a coincidence, but after a few days, a pattern emerged. It seemed like Diva was making almost all of her hosts go to sleep all at the same time… including Joan…

But not Mishka.

Mishka, Diva kept alone.

Keeping him on an opposite sleeping schedule from everyone else.

~

Joan didn’t see Haeth for a week straight.

When she finally found him again, he was curled, small and broken, in the middle of an empty gray space. There was no chaos this time, no shifting landscape around him. Just flatness. His hands were clasped over his ears and his eyes were shut. What the fuck did Diva do to him?

Joan kicked him. “Hey. Haeth.” He didn’t twitch, even with a boot print on his fine clothing.

A lump formed in her throat.

She crouched next to him. Rested her hand on his shoulder. “… Mishka?”

He flinched away from the touch. He stared up at her. He sat up and didn’t say anything for a long time. His skin was whitish-gray-yellow.

“Joan?” he finally said.

“What?”

“If they get you out. And not me.”

“Yeah?”

“Kill me.”

Joan didn’t say anything.

“For fuck’s sake,” Mishka said. “Just… say yes. Even if it’s a lie. I need something. I need this to be over. I can’t—I can’t do this, god, what if she—what if she takes my body somewhere, somewhere you can’t find it, what if she keeps me forever—don’t let her teleport me away, don’t let her take me, don’t let it keep me, god, fuck. Just—fucking sink your sword into my gut, I don’t care. And tell Hansel…” And then he stopped dead. Just stared, dead-eyed.

She sat down. “Tell him what?” This, at least, she could do.

“I don’t fucking know,” Mishka said. “I’ve thought of a million things to say and all of them are fucking worthless. I’ve already said enough. Nothing. Tell him nothing.” Then, deflecting: “If I get out and not you, is there anything I ought to tell anyone?”

“Yeah. Tell Goro he’s a nerd.”

Mishka choked out a laugh.

“Amari knows I love her,” Joan said. “The other Runners… they know how to survive. They’ve gotten their own things. I wish I could’ve gotten closer to some of them. I’m just so fucking bad at that shit.” Maybe Mishka would be better. Maybe he could help her. He was good at this political shit.

There was a longer silence this time. Mishka shut his eyes again.

“Tell Hansel—” he said.

And then Diva noticed they were alone in the dreamscape together and woke Joan’s body up, and Joan was dragged back into the waking world, locked inside again.

That was the last time Joan ever saw him.