Page 199 of Victorious

So up they went.

Eli stopped in the center of the roof, hands at his sides as his head tipped back. He frowned. Victor followed his gaze. And smirked. It was fucking overcast. Not even low clouds that banked the city light, but a flat, uninspired gray. Starless. Dull.

Victor began to chuckle. Not at the sky so much as Eli’s obvious displeasure. The fact it wasn’t giving him this last reward, the fact he’d expected it to in the first place, the fact he would probably take it as a sign of disapproval from the Almighty he was always putting so much stock in, made the laughter bubble out of Victor.

Here they were, trying to control the laws of life and death, bend the rules of animation, but they couldn’t do a fucking thing about the weather.

Victor half expected Eli to call the whole thing off right there, delay it to a more auspicious day, but then he heard Eli laughing, too. A soft rumble that took over his full chest. Bent him double.

Victor felt his chest uncoil.

Of all the moments in his life, this might be the one he’d choose to live inside. He and Eli, laughing beneath a starless, ordinary sky. The scales, yet to tip, the lines, not yet crossed, the energy around them electric with potential.

IINOW. THEN.

“WHAT’S it like?” asked Mitch as he and June approached the open doors.

She cocked a brow at him, so he clarified, “Serena’s power.”

“Hard to explain,” she said, loading a gun, and handing it to Mitch. He hated weapons, the lifeless weight of them, how easily they ended things. But he also knew he would use it in a heartbeat, if it meant saving Syd.

“It’s like … a bad trip.”

“I’ve never done drugs,” he said, which usually garnered surprise, given his appearance. But June of all people seemed to understand the difference between how people looked and who they were, because she just bobbed her head—which wasn’t hers, Mitch reminded himself, but some innocent human’s. One who was probably going to end up dead.

“Well,” she added, “it’s not the fun kind anyway.”

They reached the doors.

“You ready?” she asked.

He wasn’t. But it didn’t matter. He tightened his grip on the gun until his fingers ached, remembering what Victor had said about pain, how it could disrupt the dream.

Of course, you had to realize you were dreaming first.

“Bottoms up,” said June, shoving him forward, through the open doors.

As Mitch crossed the threshold, he braced for the world to drop away, for the surreal sensation of falling out of waking, into dream. But his boot landed on the floor.

June looked at him and shrugged.

“When is a doorway not a doorway?” she mused.

“I don’t know,” he said, taking another step. “I guess when—”

He never got the chance to finish. The words started in his head, but by the time they left his mouth, he was already tipping forward and—

The axe whistled as it fell.

Mitch hoisted the handle back onto his shoulder and set another log, breath fogging in the cold. The sun was just starting to go down over the trees. He turned to look back at the cabin, windows glowing warmly. From here, he could see Syd, sitting at the kitchen table, her head bent over a book.

The sight filled him with a quiet happiness.

We could stay here, he thought.

I would stay here.

He turned back to the woodpile and brought the axe down a second time. Or at least, that’s what he meant to do, but as his fingers tightened, the axe let out a BANG.