Chapter Text
It was late evening, late enough most of the candles had already gone out and the master tent was plunged in shadow. The kin had retreated into their realm, and without the chatter and fire-cracking the campsite was now eerily silent—as if a thick mist had descended upon it, muffling all sound and filling the empty spaces with unease. Even Brumm’s playing seemed quieter, somehow; it echoed strangely in the small antechamber.
He liked practicing at night. Hardly anyone would bother him, and more importantly, hardly anyone was there to hear his unpolished music. As a rule, he didn’t mind playing in front of people—it would’ve been hard working in a circus troupe, otherwise—but these lone evenings were his private time, fleeting moments of calmness in the ever-bustling Troupe life. He cherished them, and the rest of the band generally respected his need for solitude.
There were exceptions, however—few and far between, but still. Unforseen, rarely; more often a time, unplanned but expected to happen at some point, the way snow is due to fall in winter but with no clear idea as to the precise timing. Everyday reality of the circus might have been an endless cycle, but as with any great show, it ought to leave some space for a serendipitous flourish.
Tonight was one such case. Grimm swept into the antechamber like a moth trapped in a curtain, all billowing cloak and fidgety limbs, his eyes dark. Brumm only looked up briefly. He was used to it by now; the master had his moments, where he would thrash about the tent like a restless animal too big for its cage, bursting into places only to pace around and then leave in an instant without so much as a word. It happened rarely, but often enough to notice a pattern.
Grimm crossed the room in three long strides, the slipstream of his movement wafting past Brumm, and came into a stop before one of the cluttered racks filling the tight space. Its shelves were heavy from the amount of junk stacked on them: souvenirs and trinkets, feathers and chipped-off rocks and strings of beads and dead flowers, all mementos from the Troupe’s many journeys. He stood there, hunched, for a long moment, and gave no reaction even when the music eventually died down.
Brumm put down his accordion and gingerly stepped closer.
“Master?”
Grimm did not turn to him, still staring at the clutter. With one spidery hand he reached for a blue geode, propped against a music box and glimmering in the candlelight, and gently stroked it with a claw.
“Why did you join the troupe, my friend?” he asked quietly. “Why are you at my side?”
“Because you’re Master,” Brumm said without thinking. Truth. By the way his eyes flickered, not the answer Grimm was seeking. “And because it makes me… happy. The music, mrm. Our journeys.”
Grimm’s hand moved from the geode to the music box, then past it to a twine of ribbons in the colours of sunlight and sky, worn at some performance too long ago to remember it clearly. Finally, he turned and looked at Brumm with eyes again dark and unreadable.
“And if I told you I was afraid?” This low, his voice was less of a whisper and more a breathy hiss, like accordion bellows folded without pressing the keys. “What would you say? Would you still follow me?”
This was not the oddest question the master had ever asked him, nor the most privy confession, but something about Grimm’s expression and his overall posture made it feel this much more profound. He looked scared and defeated. Fear was radiating off of him like heat from a bonfire, and Brumm could not tell the cause of it but he knew enough about being afraid to realise that was currently of secondary importance. A writhing creature, fear was, with narrow teeth and sticky tendrils, and when it spilled over, it covered much more than only its source. It soiled and transformed everything it touched into itself.
A strange look, for the Nightmare’s vessel. One not many were privy to. Brumm took a step closer and did not quite reach for Grimm, but the offer was there—the potential energy of a gesture, would he be willing to lean into it.
“I’d say, mrmm… Everyone is afraid sometimes. Don’t we dance with nightmares, our kin? We burn our fear up and let it cleanse us.”
“One who fears nightmares dances not with them, but for them.”
“Still, I’d follow, whatever the dance.” Another truth uttered without thinking. Grimm’s focus sharpened at the words, a strange spark lighting up deep in his eyes, and Brumm grew self-conscious. “…As we all would, mrm. Master.”
The near-imperceptible squint was the only giveaway of Grimm’s smile, but he caught it nonetheless. He knew his master well. All the minute expressions and subtle gestures, changes in his posture, were the language of performance: cues where to repeat and where to end the song, alter the tempo, change the pitch. Brumm rarely thought of it as anything more than utilitarian, but at times like these, in a dim room filled with silence and shadows, it felt startlingly intimate.
“Play something for me, friend,” Grimm sighed softly. Brumm felt it on his face, the warmth and the scent of ash, and he realised he would only need to move his hand by an inch and it’d be touching the edge of his master’s cloak. He instinctively took a half-step back, and these dark eyes fixed on him squinted deeper. “Please.”
He nodded, a little too quickly. He could still feel the stare as he turned to pick up the accordion, as if Grimm were trying to bore past his shell and into his mind, and momentary dread—a different sort of dread, fizzy and electrifying—overcame him at the thought of what he might potentially find there. Brumm might know his master well, but oh, his master knew him in return, he could peer through him as effortlessly as light through a windowpane. It was terrifying, sometimes. Other times, it felt like comfort; like being safe, and home, and understood.
They settled on the floor, in a nest of pillows and old blankets squeezed in a corner between all that furniture. Grimm sat motionless, strung up like a chord, and slowly closed his eyes as the music filled the chamber.
Meagre respite, perhaps. Fright was a tenacious foe, and not easy to chase away. Brumm had never asked where his master’s fears lay; he had his guesses, of course, and knew Grimm would confide in him when their weight on his shoulders became too much, but he’d never asked. He wasn’t sure Grimm would even be able to explain them to him. That wide gulf between natures, godly terror trapped in a mortal’s frame—a fire, perhaps, like in the Ritual, something thrashing and burning and clawing to break free. Was that the god’s fear, or the vessel’s? Brumm knew the master wasn’t afraid of the necessity of rebirth. Quite the contrary; he awaited it with thrill, and loved the Child, loved it so deeply it was easy to forget he was in fact watching his own death grow and thrive before him. That desire to burn—was it too the god’s, or the vessel’s? Where did one end and the other even began? Grimm had a strange way of explaining it, but Brumm thought he understood; he was and wasn’t the god in the same way the Child was and wasn’t him. Two shapes forged from the same alloy. Two flames, burning separately, birthed by the same fire.
Still, it must have given him some measure of respite, because after a time Grimm eventually lay down and relaxed a little, curling up among the pillows. Brumm played until his breathing evened and restless fingers, fiddling with the edge of a blanket, finally stilled. Rarely would he see the master this vulnerable—stripped of his flamboyance and theatrical flair, reduced to little more than a dim ember of his usual fire. He was still gorgeous (Grimm was always gorgeous, however ardently Brumm fought with himself not to consciously admit this) and full of grace, but in a slightly different way; a little softer, a little less like a predator ready to strike.
Softer, yes—his features were soft in the dim candleglow, smoothed out by the splotches of light and shadow flickering across his face. Brumm caught himself staring only when the master’s eyelids wrinkled and then cracked ajar. He stood up quickly, gathering up his accordion, and started retreating towards the exit.
“When you leave, my friend,” Grimm muttered, his gaze bleary and only half-lucid, “do not put out the flame.”