Chapter Text
There was lot to keep track of. The sundered houses. All the big and small schemes. House Royce for both bitterness and love. Tachonis for rage and hatred
The mask. The powers.
The problem was, spinning his web, bigger and bigger he started to lose sight of the small things. Small but important things. He felt the connections, but didn't see. He tied two strands together connecting people that must meet, but losing sight of who the people were.
Just trusting the plan. His plan.
It would have been easier if he had kept Azune with him. He would see and remember.
(But Azune needed to be with the guard. His positioning is essential.)
Only now in the last minutes of his life could Thjazi see it all. His work finished.
He saw his full web. How he'd placed it.
And who he'd forgot to keep track of in the shuffle.
His brother.
Right at the centre. Tangled in the middle of all of it.
He felt panic when he realised. Surely he was wrong. He had never wrapped a single strand on Hal. He had always been so careful to avoid it.
But that didn't matter. He may not have pulled Hal directly, but that didn't mean Hal had been spared from his control. He just manipulated the people around him to get the outcomes he desired.
And now the patterns he had always carefully woven to avoid Hal made a circle. A perfect intricate loop. As Thjazi pulled, it drew in more and more until it tightened right around his brother like it had been the intention in the first place.
And worse, Thjazi couldn't fix this. Not now. This was the centre of his web. If he tried to pull Hal from it everything else would collapse. For all its complexities, a spider web was such a simple thing to break. That's why a spider needed to be clever. Camouflage, invisible thread, location.
Thjazi was used to his webs undiscovered. When the Stranger started breaking little sections Thjazi was perplexed on how he had even seen them.
He hadn't known why. Not even when they met in Hal's home and Thjazi's threads wound around him as well, stopping the damage and gaining a new piece on his board.
Now he understood. The Mask’s intention wasn't to work against him back then. It probably wasn't even aware who the threads belonged to until they met. He had just seen how close the web was to Hal and had been trying to untangle him.
An altruistic Stranger, but Hal had a tendency to turn people on their heads.
Thjazi stood before the crowd, his eyes followed all the glittering strands that only he could see the meaning of. All of them converge on this moment. On Hal.
It pulled taut. A spider silk collar formed around his neck.
Dead centre of the web.
And Thjazi could break the web right now. There was still time. He couldn't fix it, but he could stop it. Just a word, just a gesture. One broken strand and everything else would fall in on itself.
Instead he asked Hal what he was doing for lunch after this.
The funeral was going to be where all his threads finally converge after all.
That they had a moment to speak one last time tripped him up. There wasn't supposed to be instructions, but Thjazi took the opportunity. He wound his threads around Hal tighter. On purpose now. If his brother was a part of this then he would give him all the advantages he could. Bolaire would protect him. Murray would see the big picture. Azune would see everything else.
Azune would see the strands and follow them. And he would watch Hal for him. And watch his web.
He would have made a fearsome spider if Thjazi had allowed it.
But he needed his eyes.
“Tell Thimble not to be afraid.”
In his panic he thought of Thimble. What his death would do to her.
Must do to her.
“Tell Thimble I–”
Hal’s lies were works of art, but he would tell Thimble the truth. When Hal delivered truths they were far more devastating, and the only thing Thjazi could leave Thimble with was a desolate heart.
She was too important to be lost in the fog.
Hal would rally her into something more fitting.