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vanchininiFandom: Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Cat Noir
Relationships: Luka Couffaine/Félix Fathom
Characters: Félix Fathom, Luka Couffaine
Summary: With Argos' track record of double-crossing and deception, his new job as a defender of Paris warranted an approach that wouldn't put him in any superhero's general vicinity. At least, not visibly.
He assists at a distance. Doesn't communicate unless it's necessary. Doesn't share 'hoorah's or fist bumps at the end of a battle. His non-sentient constructs were his only company.
And Viperion. By chance, there was also Viperion.
It was a delight of its own, sometimes, to wait in the wings and map out the course of battle.
The unlucky woman was an event planner who took comfort in fantasies of fate, but there was only so much her cards could provide. She reeked of deep, blackened roots of stress. Warm and damp with blood, sweat and tears. The ideal soil for Chrysalis' seeds. It took little for La Prophétess to spring up in full bloom.
She sped forward, toes grazing the hot roads, carrying her straight to Argos. Her eyes were set on him. Her body braced—
—to phase through him like a bullet through smoke, and slide down beside Vesperia.
La Prophétess continued her calculated rampage, and Argos moved on, separated from the action by an entire dimension.
In a limbo, overlaying the noon-bright streets, was an inverted city. A blank blueprint of Paris; a canvas for strokes of colors shaped like living beings. It wasn't so much a world of 'emotion' as it was a world comprised of human experience, each one with its own unique composition. He saw the vibrant smears of Miss Hound’s shock and fear; Vesperia’s fire-licked fist lancing through the air; the golden spikes of Monkey King’s adrenaline. He was walking through Pollock’s rendition of an impasse.
This was the best time. Argos pivoted to take a good look at the roads and buildings, and found it. A colorful wisp snaking around the central fountain and diving into the thick of battle. Viperion.
Argos traced him like the tail of a lone comet. He was one step behind, weaving, sliding, leaping over La Prophétess' flying cards. One hit, and she would know him ten minutes in advance, rendering his power useless.
A traffic sign was thrown, and somewhere between Viperion turning to meet it and ducking below its sharp edge, Argos noticed a flicker. A trick of the light. One second Viperion was a well of cold adrenaline, methane ice under a falling, lit match, then the next, he was frozen all over, numb to the bone. Argos was watching a recording reconstructed with two ribbons of two different films. On the surface, he ran his destined path, beating down minutes-old, mayfly worlds that would forever be lost in time. But Viperion always remembered.
La Prophétess was overwhelming Ladybug's curated group of heroes. Argos knew when Viperion rounded a street, and a flash of teal peaked over. He could feel his exhaustion. He wasn't going to allow Chrysalis take advantage of it.
Argos closed his eyes, and opened them to a bright, sunlit room. The evacuated cubicle served as his headquarters, three streets away from the Akuma attack. He walked himself to a window, plucked a pearlescent plume from his fan, then propelled it with a sharp swing. It danced on the wind, its barbules shifting as it traveled. Its descent finished by landing on, and promptly disappearing into, Viperion's bracelet.
Argos laid his body down before the link was established. Foreign exhaustion weighed heavy on his shoulders. Shocks of pain bloomed in several spots on his upper body, muscle strain squeezing his back and biceps. When he blinked his eyes open, he was an indigo, starlit spectre in an alley, and behind him, a beacon dredged up against the wall, was Viperion.
He sat as loosely as a piece of abandoned apparel, and waited for his arrival. His form was a marvel of greens that idly snaked off him like ribbons in water. Argos' fan swept over him, dousing him in a wave of marine blues, blowing the tension off his shoulders.
"Be not afraid," he announced himself. His spectre sauntered in, coat tails swaying around his ankles.
Viperion chuckled. "Of you? Never."
Argos would never know his name. That piece of information was stored in sections of the brain he didn't have access to. However, he knew the rest of him by heart. He was familiar, and easy to work with. His frustration was a firm, powerful rope tying Argos to his heart.
Until he's pulling off something like— like reaching out his arm to pass it through Argos' intangible form.
"Hey, angel," he said as a way of greeting. They've already established that 'How are you?' or 'What's up?' were redundant.
"Hello," Argos responded tensely, instinctively brushing himself off. It was eerie how keenly he felt him. Argos' spectre could only be detected by scattered, unexplained physiological responses. He was a cognitive ghost— and an auditory hallucination. The only reason Viperion could hear his voice was because he plugged their empathic link into his sense of hearing.
"I'd say a little prayer, but I don't have your way with words," he teased. Argos rolled his eyes.
"I thought you said you reject religion," he told him conversationally while assessing the fuchsia sparks on his body. At least nothing seemed broken.
"I believe in the power of love and a soldering iron. And guardian angels that give me small, cute companions," Viperion explained with a grin in his voice, as if Argos counted as both.
Argos swept the thought aside. It might've lingered if he didn't believe a possible concussion was to blame for Viperion's straightforwardness. "Flattery will get you nowhere. What do you need?"
"A shock," Viperion said immediately, "to keep her disoriented. If she can't think, she can't see our next move."
"A flash bomb?"
"More or less. Can it be fuzzy? Maybe a chinchilla. A chinchilla could fix me."
"You're not getting a chinchilla," Argos deadpanned. "I'm not a pet shelter."
"No, you're a sight for sore eyes."
"You can't even see me," Argos said matter-of-factly. He pinched the bridge of his nose. "We can make a compromise on the Senti. Cross the bridge when we get to it."
"Fuzzy, then?"
"We'll see."
Their fingers weren't actually touching, but Argos could still feel a sliver of warmth taking the shape of Viperion's hand. An impression taking hold of an impression. He wrapped his own frost-bitten fingers around Viperion's wide palm. It was a simple union, a contract between him and his donor. It wasn't supposed to make the ground tremble. Argos and Viperion made contact seconds before the Akuma sent out a shock wave powerful enough to make their forms falter. They rippled like a pebble had been dropped into the lake of Argos' realm.
They shook, and when structures shake, something is bound to move and dislodge itself from its place. Wires could snap, columns could tumble, and the architecture of Argos' cognitive blockades could slip. When it was over, he stumbled back, and shoved his palms into the pits where his eyes would've been. His physical body was stable. To him, an earthquake would've been an echo if he wasn't elbow-deep in Viperion's senses.
"Talk to me," he demanded. "How is your body?"
At worst, he could've struck the back of his head against the wall and gained another concussion after the traffic sign he definitely didn't avoid in one of his last runs.
But when Argos looked to Viperion, hoping to discern the cause of his silence, he froze.
Viperion stared. At him. He could see him. His stare caught him like the first rays of the waking, morning sun. He was awed, his light form shimmering with bright hues.
Argos recoiled. "Stop that."
A lopsided smile slid up his lips. "I might have to give religion a second shot." Even his voice sounded clearer, as if one of Argos' brain cells spoke on its own. His spectre stood up, separated from his body, too aware of its presence and form, and approached Argos'. He didn't touch him, but he did circle him in serpentine swirls.
"Cathedrals, mosaics, sculptures, songs," Viperion solidified, his legs drawing him back to appraise Argos in his entirety. "You name it. I'm all yours."
"You'd be banished on day one," Argos retorted, waving his hand through him like trying to shoo smoke away.
A second tremble. They rippled, and Viperion reached for him, only for Argos to stop him in his tracks.
"The Senti. You're going to need a Senti immediately."
Viperion nodded, "What do you need?"
"Come here," Argos gestured. "Your original tether faded, so we'll have to work with what you have."
He came. Even in his realm, he manifested those five centimeters over the top of Argos' head. Argos slipped his arm under Viperion's left, wrapped it around his back, then hooked his fingers on his right shoulder. They were embraced, close enough for his mouth to brush over his earlobe, and although they were incorporeal, they were too used to the flesh. Goosebumps skittered over his spine, but he was too close to Viperion to know where they started.
"I'm warning you," was murmured against his cheek, "I never learned how to tango."
Argos chuckled. "That makes the two of us."
Then, he tugged Viperion down, dipping him like they were dancing.
"So, we're halfway there."
It was a more hands-on approach, a lot more dramatic than his usual method, but it excited him. He saw the shifting, colorful auroras on Viperion's form twining together like muscle fibers. It was the wonder of keen intuition. A whirlpool of past experiences sharpened with reason, then processed into wisdom. He was still young, and a little frayed, but beautifully so. A fine tapestry of compassion and resilience.
Argos knew now. The goosebumps might've been his, after all.
"Do you usually do it like this?" Viperion asked with a quiet, nervous laugh.
Argos laughed along, and it sounded a touch more menacing than it was supposed to be. "No," he said, then added, "this might tickle."
In a slow, surgical cut, he dipped his hand into the center of Viperion's chest, between several streams of auroras, in the place where his real sternum was, and searched. Some people perceive emotion to be in the chest area, even if the heart had little to do with emotion itself. In his case, perception mattered more than scientific accuracy.
The well of emotion pulsed against his palm. Argos looked to Viperion's face. He looked like he'd been holding his breath.
"Relax, and don't close yourself off," he said clinically. Then, with a little more sympathy, "I won't hurt you."
Viperion's torso inched upwards, bending outwards and enveloping Argos's wrist in a slow inhale. Then, it descended, releasing tension. He was calm and motionless. Argos dug through an assortment of feelings, each one dancing fluidly around his fingers like schools of fish in a clear lake. Contentment, sympathy and satisfaction; too fragile, easily crushed in Argos' grip. Dejection, heartbreak, anxiety; promising, but too distant. All required a trigger, a memory to pull it up to the surface. He could save it as a last resort.
A little closer to the surface, a more recent development, was a much flightier sample. Electric static grazed his fingertips, a warning before a powerful magnetic pulse pushed his hand out.
Argos' mouth fell into a frown. "You're keeping me away," he warned.
"You're the one who's sticking your hand inside my proverbial cookie jar," Viperion defended calmly, still limp in his hold.
"I sensed something powerful. We can make use of it."
"I don't think you should."
Rumbles shook him. They yelped in unison. Argos pressed Viperion close as he stumbled, and nearly lost his footing.
When it stopped, he could feel a spark of pain on the side of his head. Viperion's body must've toppled over. Fortunately, it didn't feel like it was bleeding. He could walk it off with a bruise. (It was still too close of a shave, he thought. For all he could do with the heart, there was little Argos could do to protect the body in its most vulnerable state.)
"We lost too much time for me to find another host," he said gently. They were working with a powerful, but fragile source. It required an approach Argos was still refining.
But, he was working with Viperion. He wasn't going to look like a stunted idiot in front of Viperion.
"I'll be careful," he promised. "I'm not taking this lightly."
Viperion looked away from him, a thoughtful hum relaxing his form. He took Argos' hand, and led it back to his sternum.
Argos waited for the mysterious feeling to swim by, and when it slid up against his palm, he grabbed it, and tugged. With a final strain of his hand, a long ribbon of light was pulled out in a shimmering arc above their heads. He stared up at it, his mouth open in awe. He could feel an old greed hiss from his resting body, a sudden want to grab the wonder by its end, twist it in a spool around his fingers and slip it into his pocket. A diamond for him to keep.
He released Viperion. Before it could float away, he twisted the opalescent ribbon around his two fingers like he wanted, slid it off into his palm, then crushed and stretched. The extract of emotion was now a ready-made material, some of the most powerful he had ever felt.
"Bless your heart, Viperion," he whispered, then quickly got to work.
To say he was improvising was an understatement. Argos had never worked with this feeling before. It was flexible, but slippery. It stuck to the shape Argos sculpted until it didn't. It was frustrating.
"That's a funny-looking chinchilla," Viperion commented over his shoulder. Argos groaned.
"It won't be a chinchilla."
"But, it can be."
"If you’re so insistent," Argos said, raising his hands, "why don’t you build a magical construct yourself?"
Viperion went silent. He shifted, scales sliding across Argos’ sides as his arms moved to the front. Argos was paralyzed. He'd been enveloped, Viperion's front against his back and his head resting on his shoulder. Viperion gently tugged the fan out of his grip, sliding an inch of the first feather out with his thumb like a knife.
Argos resigned himself to watching. His eyes followed Viperion’s fingers as he scooped up the abstract form with his free hand and slid the fan across, confidently smoothing its shape. He didn’t ask Argos to warn him when to stop. There was no need to.
His hands caged the amorphous shape. When it tried to slip through his fingers, he scooped it back up. When it morphed, he followed its will, carving around its new form. Whatever it was, Viperion knew his way around it. His patience sculpted the feeling into a more solid, angular form of corners and sharp sides. Only then did he draw the fan down in smooth, caring motions, sanding it down.
Argos hadn't even noticed he leaned back into him while he watched. Viperion exhaled, his torso bumping against Argos' back, then handed him the fan back. Argos snapped back into focus. He quickly swiped the fan back, then pushed himself forward to crack some space open between them.
"That’s about as much as I can do on a time limit," Viperion said, guiltily, for some reason. "I can’t make it breathe. Would you do the honors?"
Argos proudly straightened up and got to work. He’d been itching to do something himself.
He took a handful of instincts, then wrapped them up in a flexible form held together with a dash of reasoning. A pinch of problem-solving never hurt. That was why he loved the Corvus the most. The Corvus was the pinnacle of a simple, efficient mind. When he was confident in the firmness of the creature's neural framework, the last step was to slide it in, and give it a light shock.
Suddenly, it lived. It breathed. A flighty, energetic Senti unlike anything he’d built so far sprung up in his hands, pouring warm, bright energy into his heart. He could hear the loss of Viperion’s breath at its birth.
Argos showed it off with a proud tilt of his chin. It wasn't a Corvus. The Senti looked more like a large breed of parrot, but it was divine, nonetheless. Viperion gingerly pulled it into his arms. Its tail was as long as his forearm, swaying and shimmering with opulent opal colors.
"Hello, beautiful," he whispered lovingly, gifting his new Senti abundant scratches under its beak. His wide palm caressed the side of its head, and when he looked into its small, beady eyes, his gaze so soft and so affectionate, Argos almost thought he could name that feeling, let it finally leap off the tip of his tongue and take flight—
But the parrot screamed first.
It almost sounded like a coherent word up until Viperion scrambled to press its beak between his thumb and index.
"If that doesn't give her a shock, I don't know what will," he said lackadaisically, as if his form wasn't exuding the same amount of anxiety as a frightened puppy.
"Right." Argos cleared his throat. "Let it take care of you."
"Yeah." Viperion nodded, smoothly stepping backwards. "Yeah, thanks."
The connection had to be cut, otherwise they'd both die of the sheer awkwardness clogging the space between them. They just started to feel the weight of their actions. They made a Senti out of a mysterious feeling that Argos couldn't pinpoint on the emotional spectrum, and Viperion trusted him with it. Immensely. Hopefully, they won't talk about it.
Clueless as to what to say next, Argos performed an awkward salute.
Reciprocating his ignorance, Viperion laughed and saluted back.
His form dispersed into iridescent streams of light, cascading from the realm and into the material plane. Argos impulsively stretched his hand out to grab at the auroras, but then withdrew. How embarassing. He wiped his hand off his leg, as if he'd been stained, but Viperion's light didn't leave him.
Argos looked at his hand, and saw teal on his fingertips. It was spreading. He was changing colors, painted with patterns akin to coral. His body was azurite.
He sighed, too weary to fight back. His invisible saunter carried on with Viperion's lingering thoughts on his heels, a cloak of northern lights staying true to the vast, polar night.