A soporific for the restless (Don't rest your head/Worm)

[Stalks-in-Sorrow]

Of all the things that Amy had seen in her life surrounded by capes, a man loosely tied to himself with nothing but string and staples was above and beyond bizarre. He just appeared there with a hospital bed besides him and what looked to be a horribly deformed corpse, not a person, on top, writhing in pain.

"Hey, Panacea right? Got a bit of a problem I could use some help with, can you heal my buddy over here?" His face was young, however she could not focus on the minute details and intricacies of it. It felt handsome yet empty at the same time. Bits and pieces of his flesh and blood would detach for a moment before the staples and strings tensed up and brought themselves together. At most she could gather that he was tall, skinny and had hair down to the middle of his chest. An instinctual primal part of her told her to get away, he felt wrong, off in an alien sense.

"VICKY! STAY AWAY, GET OUT OF HERE!" She tripped out of her bed and onto her back.

"It won't work she can't hear us here, no one can. Look, I'll pay, run around like your dog for a month or whatever, I just need you to toss him back together. Something fucked with his body, I barely got away." His unfocused flesh twist and turned as he approached. She hyperventilated and her power became more active the closer the man came to her. "Ah, no touching eh? Um, can you calm down miss?" He stopped approaching Amy looked around, at him, at the bed and to the window. The outside seemed dark, worse than usual, in fact it seemed unnaturally so. Her thoughts could not keep with the development, hear dearest Vicky would've known what to do and how to help, that much was certain. She slowly got up on her feet with her back against the wall. "You can't really leave this place if you're thinking about it." The man slowly went over to his friend that kept shivering, Amy couldn't see what was wrong with the man save for his constant shivering and the occasional growl.

"Who are you?" In the absence of reasonable question, she asked one of the bigger questions. The anxiety in her voice was clear. She delayed, hoping that Victoria would come soon and accidentally stumble upon her.

"I am, uh, hm, never actually thought about an alias." He slapped his face which caused his face to slide open for a moment and splash blood all around. "Patchwork?" It fit him, an apt descriptor of his unstable existence.

"Well, Patchwork..." She did not hold her contempt as she uttered name. "You should be on your way. It was a bad idea to come here. You don't want my sister to find you here with the body." She tried to threaten him, but something about his very existence tugged at her.

"Hah, funny. She can't, no one can really, well, save for the thing hunting me." The body at his side groaned. She was truly unsure whether or not he was alive. "Just help him and send us on our way unless you want something bad to come after you. Wait, that sounded like a threat, shit, didn't mean it. I'll come back with money or whatever" It did sound like a threat, one she did not appreciate. "What do you say you go over to my buddy over there while we circle around. I don't get closer to you and you feel safe or whatever." He began doing as he said he would along the right side of the room, without seeing a way out she followed suit as she stepped on her bed and next to the corpse. She kept her eyes focused on Patchwork as she slid her arm over the corpslike man.

While she could not see him outside of glances, she could feel him. Corpselike was underselling it as his body just worked wrong, each breath he took was pointless, his metabolism was strangely quick and almost still in others. The physical form did not have many changes save for a growth in his gut that was clearly foreign. The growth in question was a conscious fungal organism that she did not understand. She knew what the man wanted gone, to purge the parasite.

"You okay in there? Can you get rid of it?" Her thoughts were interrupted by the other intruder. She cursed the man, but decided to clean up the body as quickly as she could. The strange additions piqued her interest, a strange part of her wanted to prod some more and to see it's... She shook those thoughts away. The man quickly stabilised and his behaviour normalised, as he began breathing his coughs and groans brought her relief.

"He'll be fine." She thought about giving him a rash or a bad stomach for a while, but decided against it as his companion might visit her again in retaliation. His friend rushed over to him.

"Thanks." He simply disappeared as he grasped him.

The aura of unease that held her at the edge released it's hold of her. The men were gone, and so was the unnatural darkness.

"VICKY!" She screamed and heard a comforting stampede coming towards her door.

-

Amy trailed off staring into the distance. The weeklong investigation into whoever, or whatever attacked her was fruitless. Her mom managed to pressure the director pulling some strings and got Watchdog on the case, they concluded that there was no danger from the third party, whoever they might've been. Worse yet, Cincinnati confirmed the sightings of Patchwork, albeit they had their own codename for him. 'He is harmless.' Piggy said while dismissing their worries as childish, it didn't help that there were a few skirmishes between the ABB and E88 recently. Vicky did go on a rant, but it did Another drag of her cigarette proved fruitless as it ran dry. The workday was over, but neither Vicky nor her mother would come for her for another half an hour. The cold grey sky over the bay seemed to mock with the occasional raindrop her as she avoided people.

Sounds of, not footsteps, but something similar on the metal stairs above her woke her. She turned her head up, what looked to be a man in a worn and cheap suit was coming out, out of the railing. She cursed her luck with only the crazies coming her way this week. Her knees snapped as she stood up, as did her lower spine. She held in a cough less Vicky hear it and make some more grandma puns. The man had left the portal? She was unsure what it was, but he clumsily manifested his entire body. She got her hand on the phone and set the number on quick dial for Vicky.

"Identify yourself." She tried yelling, but it just made her sound annoyed rather than threatening. She was annoyed as well. She noticed a sudden lack of noise from their surroundings.

"Uh, debt repayment?" The voice was unfortunately familiar to her. She pressed the phone, only it didn't work. She pressed the call button at least a dozen times within a second and it did not go through. "Look, same rules as before, no killing me okay?" She began going down the stairs, the emergency door she had left open was at the top, next to him.

"LEAVE ME ALONE." She muttered an illegible curse and cursed her situation. She noticed him climbing down the side of the stairs.

"Can you just listen to me?" His face was visible this time around, long, pale and eyes with dark eyebags underneath. There was a long fresh scar on his right cheek that went all the way to his ear. A stark contrast to Vicky in almost every way. His face was mere inches away from hers. She instinctively touched his skin and just made him freeze, which accidentally made him fall. She heard an unpleasant crack once he met the ground.

"Shit shit shit shit..." She quietly repeated and rushed down the stairs even faster. She then saw him, his head twisted backwards with bits of his neck sticking out as bone punctured his skin. Her stomach dropped, she did not mean to do it, to kill the guy, not entirely. She approached his body, hoping it wasn't a corpse. She touched him, he was alive and painfully normal.

"Can you fix that? Barely got myself together again." She screamed and fell on her ass, much to the man's amusement.

"Asshole, you deserve it." He did, he was still stalking her.

"Look, I just want to repay you. Then I'll get out of your skin." She wanted to punch him, maybe give him permanent rash over all the worst places if he was anything like Carlos. Make it genetic. The idea felt overly aggressive. As did some of the the others. She came closer and touched a bit of exposed skin above his ankle. He wore cheap faux leather shoes that only looked fancy from the distance.

He kept lying there on the floor as while she fixed most of him, she did not fix the connection between the arms and legs.

"Seriously?" He asked.

"Who are you?"

"Ah, look, names are bad news you know?" She did, it did not change that he was breaking one rule too many.

"Where do you come from? What city are you from." She got out her phone as she interrogated him.

"No city, I roam around. Bad idea to stick to a place with... enemies all around." It was a lie, a bad one, bad enough for her to easily catch on.

"Creatures right? Some kind of a biotinker." There weren't many out there, she knew that much, and what she saw made her think of Bonesaw. Not that she had ever had first hand experience with the Slaughterhouse member.

"Oh, God no. They're kind of like dogs and stuff. Only hunting me. Yeah..." She checked the phone, mother was coming in fifteen minutes.

"You're fucking lying, I know it, you know it and birds shitting in that tree know it." He quieted down and closed his eyes

"Okay, so, I'm like a beacon for demonic beings in between the worlds, make sense? No? Good. I just want to repay this and be done with it." The words that came out of his mouth were beyond delusional.

'Fucking nutter.' She almost said it and held back. The man was probably going to be tick if she didn't fulfil his request. "What did you have in mind?"

"Money, well, not really money. Silver. It's not illegal or anything. I got the receipts." He cracked his neck back and forth. "Hey, can you fix up my arms and legs this is pretty uncomfortable."

"You're staying like that until I'm sure you won't pull anything." She kept her distance and took out another cigarette.

"Second-hand smoke kills, you know? It's far worse than the shit you take in directly, you take in eleven times the carcinogens with the fumes than with the puffs." She felt the desire to puff it and blow it in his face. The tip lit up, she took a puff and exhaled in his direction. Real ma... Yeah, we're around the same age right? She took another look at his face, he looked to be twenty with rough lines along his eyes and mouth.

"I'm fifteen you creep." Now she wanted to extinguish it against his face.

"Sixteen, nice too meet you." She instinctively touched his his ankle, stress, a lot of it. The body, it wasn't fully grown. His fingers and spine had some more expanding to do. He was telling the truth. After a few more moments she noticed the injuries, tiny ones that were fully healed. His heart in particular was like that of a middle aged man. His brain was odd, it showed signs of severe insomnia, it was only the brain however. "Hey can you read my thoughts with that?" She fixed up his limbs and backed away.

"No." She backed away and sat down on third stair from top. He quickly turned around opened his bag. He took out a small leather courier bag. It looked well made. He tossed it on the ground in front of her and it made a loud clinging sound. "What's that?"

"Two kilogrammes of silver." She stared at him, silver was kind of pricy? She wasn't sure, it wasn't close to gold, she knew that much.

"How much is that in dollars?" She lazily poked the bag with her leg.

"Dunno, two grand?" She stared at him, the cigarette almost fell out of her mouth.

"Two thousand dollars?" That was a lot, more than the Wards made in a few months. This guy just, brought it within a week.

"Too little? I know capes charge a bunch." Too little, she didn't charge, that was her whole thing. "Give me a week, we ca-"

"Two thousand is fine!" She quickly blurted out. It made him jump and her cigarette got ruined on the damp floor.

"Okay, cool, thanks." He yawned and something felt off about his eyes, as if they lost a hue in the blink of an eye.

"You okay?" She accidentally said in her brief moment of weakness.

"Just, a bit tired. It's fine, haven't slept for two days. It's nothing." She remembered his brain, it was probably literal. Then she saw it, a crack in the wall. It was as if time eroded the side of the hospital into sand. There was that sense of wrongness that came with it. A sound came from the hole, it was a quiet low pitched squeal of a beast from times immemorial.

"Uh, Panacea?" He turned as he said it before standing up quickly and grabbing the courier's bag. "Fuck, with me quickly!" He grabbed her hand and dragged her into the parking lot of the hospital. The terror he felt was greater than what she experienced which caused her to panic alongside him. Just about ever fibre of his being was pumping adrenaline.

"Hey, Panacea, can you do me a solid?" Something inside his flesh changed, it loosened, holes began appearing around his joints while sinews were the only things that kept his flesh together. "Remember how cut up I was last night? Try doing that to me, create cuts alongside my whole body."

"Are you insane?" The flesh beneath his skin began to squirm.

"Hey, unless you're confident that your healing or whatever the fuck that is can bring down a Knight of Errors, I would suggest that you listened to me." She felt it, him, talking to her through skin, their contact a pact. The wounds inside him yearned to be expanded, to be set free, they needed a push. A glance behind only caused her to almost puke while they were running. Her power kicked into the third gear, his skin tore itself open while arteries and veins barely kept themselves together. The patchwork look from before was seeming a result of a weird reshaping process where his sinews and bones acted like needle and thread. The process was painful to him, but also pleasurable. Her power almost worked instinctively alongside his. Every sinew was reinforced with the help of a strange matter that formed in between his wounds. While good, she made it better, stronger and more efficient. It was like a high to her, one that she hadn't felt in a while. That was until the man simply pushed her to the side as the beast drew in nearer.

Then she saw it, a deep green centaur with the upper body of a burnt corpse and the lower torso of a goat. It held a long wooden spear in its hands that seemed to shift every so often. Her companion, now covered in cuts and blood, sent a swiping motion at the beast. He didn't hurt it from what she briefly saw. He just splattered his blood all over it. It was not until she got a closer look in that his blood created wounds on the beast that quickly opened and began to fester. The beast slashed at Patchwork and seemingly cut into his arm, that however, was a mistake as the spear began to rot once it became embedded in his flesh. Patchwork then proceeded to place his other hand into the torso of the beast and the human torso quickly fell off in a gruesome display of gore as whatever remained of it's organs fell out. The man stared at the beast for a while as his blood slowly dissolved what remained of it's body.

Amy felt the horror from before dissipate. The less of the thing existed, the less influence it had on her.

"Holy fuck, that was cool, I wasn't sure if that was going to work." The man was now gasping with blood slowing it's flow out of his body. She touched his hand, the wounds were beyond unnatural now and his sleep deprivation had gotten much worse. It was like he was about to fall over at any moment.

"You weren't sure? We could've died!" She backed away. His flesh was returning to normal, his face was obfuscated however. A side effect of his power if she had to guess.

"We lived, hey, uh, could you maybe reverse that? Like make me normal again. If it worked before it should work again?"

"Will you die if I don't?"

"Nah, it'll just make my life easier for a while." She shook her head.

"Then no, you should go. My sister will be here soon. I won't mention you if you get lost now." He seemed to have something to say, but stopped himself and quickly went over to a sewer grate.

"Hey, Ames... What's with the dead, whatever that is supposed to be?" She turned around, the world had returned to normal at the worst time. An unwilling groan left her tongue as she couldn't wait for another lecture from mother dearest.