#sealseam
Heartstar 2
I guess this is a multipiece lmao
Taglist:@newbornwhumperfly
“Afternoon, Gumi,” Heartstar said tiredly, entering her room. Their childhood friend (their first true victim) looked up at them, and her eyes all but physically glowed with how she lit up, affectionate and fawning, almost as though they had been the center crux of her whole entire life ever since one stupid, meaningless fight and one stupid, irreversible mistake.
No. Not irreversible. Greensilver was smart and Heartstar was determined. They would return her agency to her, to all Heartstar’s victims. To everyone they’d ever taken under their spell, after their powers had grown too immense to take back.
“Kit, hi!“ Gumi said, smiling with a slight loll to her head that was so common amongst their thralls.
“Hey, Gumdrop.” She giggled at the old nickname, kicking her legs as they sat down beside her. “How’re you feeling?”
“Fine. I was thinking of redying my hair again—would you like that?”
“If you think you’d enjoy it, then I don’t doubt it’ll be great,” Heartstar, choosing their phrasing carefully. Gumi took the most initiative out of any of their thralls, probably due to their relative youth when they’d ensnared her, but she still wouldn’t actually act without their approval. That said, if they were too approving, she would bend over backwards and even hurt herself attempting to maintain whatever status quo they’d unthinkingly established.
“What color are you thinking this time?”
She giggled again, swaying sideways so she bumped, then leaned, into their side. “What do youwant?”
Kit gave her a small, probably still-sad smile and looked out over the room. It was a small apartment that was part of their “facility.” It had a bedroom, bathroom, and the kitchenette in the main space, but was functionally similar to an assisted living facility or nursing home. Gumi could functionally live mostly on her own, but she (like all of them) got twitchy and even destructive if she went too long without seeing them, and wasn’t fit for mainline society, anymore.
It was a beautiful set of rooms, truth be told. Kit loved beautiful things, and tried not to let their guilt prevent them from enjoying their love of architecture and comfort.
But still. It hurt to know that their old friend really couldn’t leave, gilded as her cage might be.
“That’s a hard decision. You know I think your hair looks beautiful, no matter what you do with it.”
They wished releasing people was as easy as enthralling them. That the powers that they could summon to the fore to ensnare could be summoned again to banish their previous intentions.
Something something broken glass. An action, once taken, has been made.
Gumi leaned in and tried to kiss them, and they ducked so her lips landed on their cheek, and she giggled and leaned, almost drunkenly, against their shoulder. “You’re so broad, you know? Big handsome strong. Pretty.” Her fingers trailed through their hair and they patted her on the back twice, nudging her off.
“Thank you. You’re also pretty. Very small, though, I bet I could pick you up one-handed. Gumi, will you do some things that you like, and tell me about them next time I visit?”
“Of course, Kit! Anything for you! What things do you want me to do?”
“Anything that makes you happy, Gumi, but you have to choose them. I won’t choose them for you.”
“But what if I choose wrong?” she asked, her face the portrait of open dismay. They kissed her forehead, cupped her cheek.
“You won’t, Gumdrop. As long as you pick the things, and they make you happy, I’ll be happy to hear you tell me about them, okay? I have to keep this visit short, I’ve got important work I need to settle. I’ll be back though.”
“Okay!” she said brightly, satisfied again. She was simple, now, far too simple for someone who had once, even in the early years of her adulthood, been shrewd. “Come back soon!”
Kit smiled, and promised, “I will.”
Kit turned from her, and Heartstar walked out of the door. “Greensilver, is the new thrall set up for testing? I want to try something different this time, to see if it’ll snap him out of it.”
“He’s up and ready to go, boss. Need me to prep anything?”
Heartstar sighed. “Just the usual.”
“It will be much worse if the heroes get hold of you”, the villain said softly. “You have to learn to use your healing powers on yourself. If you can’t block your pain signals, you won’t survive an interrogation.” Their gloved hand moved to their sidekick’s next unbroken finger and began to apply pressure. “So try again. Three, two, one-”
In truth, this had always been an inevitablility.
“You’re awake,” the hero said, with something of a soft tone, something of a pitying one. Sealseam looked up at them, feeling the ache underneath his eyes, the tired stress in both hollows of his jaw.
Heartstar was different, here, than they were in a fight. Their color palate stayed much the same, a dusty gold that didn’t shimmer unless it caught the sun, deep browns that matched their eyes and night-dark blues for accents. Their long, dirty-gold hair was down, free hanging, and with their cape exchanged for a floor-trailing shawl they looked like some mix between a Lord of the Rings character and some Catholic saint immortalized in stain glass. They lacked the stony pragmatism they showed on the street. The ice cold, statuesque tension in their jaw and eyes and mathematical deeds.
“I’m awake,” Sealseam agreed, keeping his tone dead, already trying to squirrel himself away in that distant place within his mind, the one where all sensations were muted and the pain didn’t beat as hard, the one his boss, Heartstar’s nemesis, had helped him build.
“How’s your head?” Heartstar asked, extending their hand—the very hand Sealseam had witnessed weilding a lance the last time he’d been conscious—to gently caress the side of his skull. Sealseam bore it. Didn’t flinch away. He knew there was worse to come.
He didn’t answer.
“We know your identity,” Heartstar stated, though it didn’t feel quite as much like a threat as it should have. “Mine has always been public, as I never bothered with masks,” they continued, with something of a self-depricating chuckle. “We haven’t made yours known, though. My team is the only group that knows you’re here, aside from Splitter.” Even just hearing his boss’s villain title was enough to make him flinch. Heartstar paused at that, then sat in the modest chair next to the bed Sealseam was strapped to. It seemed too small for them, like their aura took up more space than the chair could possibly hope to support.
“We need a little information from you, alright?” Sealseam braced. Here it comes. He’d prepared for it, at least. Splitter had trained him for this, broken his bones, he’d reset them and healed them over and over, he’d be able to take it, he could withstand it all. “I promise you won’t be hurt, and if you speak willing my team has the kind of sway necessary to grant you amnesty. Will you?”
Sealseam grit his teeth, worked his jaw, then forced himself to spit on Heartstar’s stupid, golden robes. They blinked, not seeming at all angered or put off, just a little surprised, then huffed out a sigh through their nose. Like they’d expected this, but were disappointed anyway.
“You know,” they said, taking a tissue from the side table and cleaning the spit, “my face has always been public, but my main power has never been disclosed. Can you guess as to what it is?”
Sealseam felt cold dread pooling in his gut, the momentary rush from spitting now chilled down to his bones. He knew Heartstar had super strength, a certain degree of invulnerability or at least toughness that let them withstand things that would break a normal human, and could fly for short distances. Common side-powers that many of the supernatural had. But Sealseam had not ever caught even a whiff of what Heartstar’s true power could be.
“Something so evil-sounding your reputation would never recover from it, if word got out?”
Heartstar laughed, though it was a pained sound. “You’re not far off, actually.”
Thoughts of electrocution, burning, suffocation, bleeding, all forms of torment ricocheted through Sealseam’s head. He could heal himself, he could withstand it, he’d practiced, Splitter had taught him.
“Meanwhile your powers are so naturally suited for healing, yet you’re a villain’s doctor.” They sounded… almost sad.
“Looks like we’ve both made our choices,” Sealseam grit, wishing he sounded more defiant than he felt.
“I suppose we have.” It was coming, it was coming, he could heal himself but in the meantime it was going to hurt. “Hey,” Heartstar said, tone so achingly gentle it made his breath catch, “look at me.”
Gentle fingers tilted his chin, and he found his eyes drawn to their face without really thinking. His eyes met their brown ones, and
The whole
World
Tilted.
Sealseam blinked, breath caught in his chest, and then he let out a deep sigh, smiling. Oh. Oh! Heartstar, they—! Oh, they were, well they were everything! Why had he ever opposed them? Now he could see, now he understood much better, Heartstar was the greatest person in all this universe. In all the multiverse! Heartstar was better than anyone, better than Sealseam’s own life, better than a god! They were the only thing that mattered, the only thing that had ever mattered, every single event in history had just been a cosmic foundation building up to the exact events it would take to create Heartstar.
They pressed their lips to Sealseam’s forehead, and even Atlas shuddered.
“Heartstar,” he breathed, the restraints on his wrists catching him, preventing him from reaching out and touching Heartstar, his everything, his compass’s point.
“There you go,” Heartstar said, and they were sad, intolerably sad, staring at him with such exquisite sadness Sealseam would kill himself if it meant ridding them of the thing that would bother them so. “Will you please answer my questions now?”
“Of course!” Sealseam said urgently. He’d been such a foolish waste of breath, before, to deny them anything. “Anything, anything you want, my very life, I’d give it, if it was for you.”
“Thank you, but not that, please,” they said, the skin around their eyes tightening even further. “Just the information; I want you alive and unharmed, okay? I don’t want bad things to happen to you.”
Sealseam nodded, agreeing practically before the words were out of their mouth. Anything they wanted, he would do. This was beyond love, this was beyond even devotion, Sealseam knew from now on every breath of the rest of his life would only be taken if it was in service to Heartstar.
“Aw, shit, you had to enthrall him?” Heartstar’s own sidekick, Greensilver, said as she entered the room, notebook in hand.
“Unfortunately,” Heartstar said, “Let’s just get the information and add him with the rest, alright?”
“You’re the boss,” she said casually, shrugging and adjusting her oval glasses.
“Yes,” Heartstar said heavily, “I know.”
@haro-whumps, i am already in love with heartstar (what a badass name!!) i really felt their struggle and anguish with their “villainous” power and their struggle to do the right thing here - obviously mind-control is more ethical than torture to get information but I still felt how much they struggled with this.
they just seem like a conflicted, gentle person and I feel for them honestly (cause I sense that they live in a world where people are separated into Good and Bad categories of powers and I am here for it)
I need to know everything about heartstar’s hopefully extremely angsty backstory immediately
and also!!! poor stoic sealseam…his bracing for torture, his own determination to do his mentor proud…and all to fail so immediately cause he could never win here. agh, thats incredible, we love a dutiful servant!
please add me to the taglist!!
