Just letting yourself become Potentate (Elden Ring/Fight Club)

[FireWalkWithMe99]

Chapter 1


The faucet groaned like a dying cat. Water sputtered out, brown for a second, then clear, then brown again. Jack leaned over the sink, watching the swirl of rust and soap spiral down the drain like it might offer something resembling answers.


Trembling hands. They hadn't stopped shaking for hours.


He'd been in three cities in five days and couldn't remember how he'd gotten to any of them. Blood was under his fingernails, and a call from a number he didn't recognize along with a text that said: "You looked great last night."


I am Jack's complete lack of sleep. He mentally said the term over and over it scratched like a repeating record. It had to be.. he couldn't at least, not willingly. One hour a night for... how long now? It is nothing.


In the cracked motel mirror, Tyler sat on the toilet lid behind him, grinning like a fox in a church.


"You're catching on," Tyler said. "You're almost there."


Don't respond. Don't acknowledge. Don't feed it. Jack reached for the little travel-sized soap, dropped it, picked it up, and scrubbed at his palms like they'd done something he couldn't forgive. Whose blood? His? Someone else's?


"You remember the first time you blacked out?" Tyler asked, leaning forward. "Woke up in a rental car with glass in your teeth? That was cute. Now you're making full speeches, giving orders. You're going to meetings, Jack. You're building empires." His persona's voice sounded almost proud.


Jack looked up. The mirror showed only himself.


But Tyler was there. Jack could feel him behind his eyes, under his skin, in the twitch of his fingers. "You're not real," Jack muttered, then caught himself talking to empty air. "Just something I made up to..."


"—say the things you're too scared to say," Tyler finished, his voice now behind Jack's ear. Too close. "What does that make you, then?"


The mirror shook, flickering like a light in and out.


Just for a moment, barely anything really..— but the motel bathroom was gone as soon as he thought the words, replaced by something else for not even a second. A stone archway. Leaves that shone brighter than any luminescent light.


He blinked again.


The room was back. But not quite right.


The grout between the tiles was now carved with runes. The water dripping from the faucet no longer rippled it pulsed, like blood. The mirror was warping inward, pulling his reflection with it like glass turned to syrup.


I am Jack's mounting panic. "What—" he staggered back. "What is this?"


Tyler stood now, arms open. "The next step."


The walls trembled. The mirror cracked down the center, then again. Something beyond it shimmered green hills, pure blue water, wind, and then silence.


"You've been trying to wake up," Tyler whispered. "Here it is."


The mirror shattered.

---

Consciousness returned from the inky blackness in fragments.


Dirt beneath fingers. Strangely familiar scents carried by brisk winds. Throbbing within the walls of his fucked to hell skull.


Jack's eyelids felt impossibly heavy. When he finally forced them open, the sky above was wrong—too clear, far too blue for the city grim, clouds that seemed to have a strange hue to them.


He must've blacked out again, but this was different, far different from anywhere he recalled being as himself or with Tyler.


He tried to sit up. His body responded sluggishly, like he was underwater. Everything hurt his mouth, tasting a familiar copper, causing him to smile despite himself. Pain meant... something.


"Ya hit yer head pretty bad when ya fell, did n'tcha?" The unknown voice was small and high-pitched, with a strange accent Jack couldn't place certainly wasn't Tyler Durden. He turned toward the voice and—


A shape stood beside him. Small. Round. Brown. He closed his eyes again and began to blink rapidly. It was indeed a small round shape, A... pot? No a Jar... A ceramic jar but it had Arms and Legs made of something strange like tree branches of black licorice... He had to be having a farther break. He accepted he was him, but he this couldn't come from his mind.


Jack scrambled backward, his heart hammering so hard he thought it might crack through his ribs. "What the fuu-"


"Careful there!" the jar-thing said, taking a little hop backward. "Ya might hurt yerself more. That was quite a tumble ya took!


He pressed his back against something solid, A rock? and tried to breathe. Around him, he now saw other jars of various sizes moving about a small village built into a hillside. Some carried small tools. Others tended to plants. All impossibly, horribly alive.


"Oh! Yer awake proper now!" The jar-monstrosity bobbed excitedly. "That's good! Ya weren't movin' for so long, I thought maybe ya were dead. But dead folk don't usually fall from the sky, do they?"


"I'm finally completely gone," Jack whispered. "This is it."


The jar tilted its body, somehow conveying confusion despite having no face. "Gone? But ya just got here! I'm Jar-Bairn! What do they call ya, sky-faller?"


This wasn't real. This couldn't be real. He'd had hallucinations before, sure. He'd created an entire person who wasn't there. But this...


"I'm having a psychotic break," he muttered, pressing the heels of his hands against his eyes. "Tyler? Tyler, is this you?"


"Tyler? Is that yer friend?" Jar-Bairn asked. "No other sky-fallers here, just you. And yer..."


"Jack," he finally said, the name feeling strange on his tongue. "My name is Jack."


"Jack!" Jar-Bairn bounced slightly. "That's a funny name! Not like any I've heard before." The little jar came closer, studying him. "Yer different. Not like Cuz. Maybe Uncle Alexander will know you."


Jack closed his eyes, for reality to reassert itself. When he opened them again, unfortunately, Jar-Bairn still stood there, waiting expectantly.


"This isn't..." Jack swallowed hard. "Where am I? What is this place?"


"Yer in Jarburg!" Jar-Bairn rocked back and forth. "Home of the living jars! Say, one of yer hands feels real special. Like a Potentate's hand!"


Jack looked down. Both his hands seemed normal to him... though was he simply seeing what he or Tyler wanted him to see?


A familiar laugh bubbled up from somewhere deep inside him, Tyler.


Jack flexed his fingers, watching his skin shift with the movement. The sensation was like home a warmth that traveled from his knuckles up through his wrist. That same electric anticipation he'd felt before throwing a punch at Lou's basement fight club. That split-second awareness before impact when it all slowed and the world narrowed to nothing but fist meeting flesh. The sweet spot between fear and control.


How much of that nostalgia was even his own?


"What's a Potentate?"


"A Potentate is..." Jar-Bairn seemed to struggle for words. "Well, they look after jars! Lead them. Protect us. The last one just up and left though"


Jack stood shakily, needing to move. I am Jacks delusion, I am Jacks Delusion. "This isn't real," he muttered. "I'm still in that hotel bathroom. I've lost my mind. I'm—"


"Don't worry about yer mind. Folks lose all sorts of things around here," Jar-Bairn spun forward alongside him, voice oddly cheerful. "But we usually find 'em again! If not, we can always ask Cuz—he finds lots of strange things!"


Jack barely registered the words, his focus scattered. Grass felt too real for a hallucination, the wind too crisp. Jar-Bairn said, following alongside him. "Ya feel the ground under yer feet, don'tcha? Feel the wet ground below?"


Jack stopped at a small puddle formed from recent rain. He stared down at his reflection, expecting to see his own face looking back.


Instead, Tyler Durden smiled up at him, his eyes wild face bloodied. "The things you own end up owning you," Tyler's voice echoed in his mind. "But here... here we own nothing at all. Beautiful, isn't it?"


He jerked back from the puddle, the earlier tension in his chest returning. When he looked again, only his ownfrightened face stared back but was that a flicker of Tyler's smile at the corners of his mouth? He shouldn't think about it I am Jack..., I am Jack...


"Ya alright?" Jar-Bairn asked, concerned. "Ya look like ya seen a poacher!"


"I'm fine, just... in my head"


"Well, that's where most thoughts live!" Jar-Bairn replied brightly, rocking back and forth. "Warriors live inside jars, and thoughts live inside heads! But sometimes the thoughts get too big for the head, just like warriors can get too big for their jars."


Jack blinked, certain he'd misheard. "Warriors in jars? What do you mean warriors live inside jars?"


Jar-Bairn tilted again. "That's what we are! Jars with warriors inside! Well, I don't have a warrior yet. I'm too small. But the big jars do! That's why we're so strong." Jack stared at the small ceramic creature, trying to process what it was saying. Living pottery was strange enough, but pottery filled with... people? He decided it must be some kind of childish metaphor he didn't understand. If this was a product of his own mind he didn't know he had it in him.


"C'mon," Jar-Bairn continued, apparently satisfied with Jack's response.


"Let's get ya somewhere to rest. Yer head'll feel better after some quiet."


As he followed the little jar deeper into the village, Jack couldn't help but linger on the words.


Just like warriors can get too big for their jars. The words echoed uncomfortably in his mind, reminding him of someone else who had grown too big to contain.

---

A.N. Well, never thought I'd come up with a crossover this bizarre until it hit me while watching some infamous Fight Club clips during a break from another story. The parallel between the conflict of psyches The Narrotor/Tyler Durden, go through and multiple Elden Ring characters (you can probably guess at least a few, Three of them start with the letter M and another two with the letter R and several others besides the obvious) seemed too perfect to ignore.

What really cemented this idea was the DLC revelations about living jars, shamans, and Potentates - that process of breaking someone down in the darkest ways until they're "reborn" overlap decently with Fight Club's themes. Before even considering the amount of characters that have multiple parts to them in the Elden Ring setting, both those we meet as npcs and those talked about in lore.

This crossover lets me explore some genuinely disturbing psychological territory of Elden Ring, and Fight Club. While using Jarburg as a space for slice-of-life and even comedic moments to balance the darkness. I'm expanding beyond just Jar-Bairn, giving voices to more jars in town while diving deep into Potentate lore from both the Jarburg questlines and the DLC.

Worth noting the story starts out near the middle of the tarnished(cuz's) journey after he beat Renalla. Now I only mention that cause this gives a general idea of where certain quest npcs would be (such as Blaidd and Alexander)

I know this crossover is out there, but I hope you'll give it a fair shot!

Character/source material note: The narrator is never given a name in the movie or fight club book I did debate on giving him the name Edward (after the actor that played him but I decided on picking Jack given "I am Jack" is a big part of both source materials and I am basing some things off the book even if its moreso following the movie). In all likelihood, the Narrator's true name is probably Tyler, but given I plan on both parts of him existing in this setting, I felt it best to have a separate name for each.
I plan for this story to be rather short (13 chapters) partly to challenge myself to actually write a full, cohesive story and finish and partly because, given its focus on The Jar lore/Jarburg, and the Narrator/Tyler Durden psyche, I feel it'd be better as a shorter story. Not to mention, I have far too many Long fic WIPs.