encomiium

[encomiium]

That Fucking Hoodie 17 Jun 2025 Tommy

“Let me see,” Tommy cooed, tapping the back of his gloved hand against Clay’s, which held a square of gauze against his shoulder. 

Clay huffed with all the threat and menace of a toddler, but didn’t resist much more than that, peeling the dressing away to reveal a light smear of blood over a nearly perfect impression of human teeth wrapped around his deltoid. 

Tommy winced and hissed dramatically before dabbing at the wound--wounds?--with an alcohol-soaked swab. Clay smirked at his little show, barely flinching at the sting. 

“I can’t believe she bit me,” he murmured, almost to himself, like he still hadn’t quite accepted how unhinged and ill-mannered most of the human race could be, despite the overwhelming majority of their workplace patrons. It was sweet. 

“I can’t believe you didn’t scream,” Tommy answered, shaking his head, “she broke skin and I didn’t even hear you.” 

Tommy had been in the middle of coaching Zhang’s sutures when Dana leaned into their room with a hand on the doorframe, practically glowing. “You’re gonna wanna see this,” she laughed before pulling herself back into the hall. Tommy took in a full breath at the sound of her voice, her laughter pulling him back from the meditative calm and quiet of his med student’s repetitive work. Zhang was talented, efficient, never one he had to worry much about. He freed his hands from the pockets of his hoodie and pulled the sleeves up around his forearms, more a way of bringing himself back into his body than a bid to cool down. It was one of his favorites, actually: a sharp, crisp black thing that fit perfectly; a purple, Northwestern “N” embroidered on the chest with a matching, thick, purple lining that peeked out by the neck. Usually he wouldn’t wear it to the ER, but Autumn was starting to get a little bitey and he’d been planning on a day of surgical SCUT when he was unceremoniously scooped to cover the pit. He prayed to whatever Saint was listening to spare this hoodie while his usual hospital-issue number was in the wash. 

Tommy took one more quick look at the sutures and nodded, “Great. Not too tight, yeah? Be back to check on you both in a little bit.” He offered a parting grin before walking out and finding Dana standing outside a room two doors over, beaming like it was Christmas morning. 

When Tommy looked inside, he saw a derelict woman on a gurney, recently unconscious, two large orderlies standing nearby, looking a bit shell-shocked, and Clay in the corner, his nose wrinkled in a silent grimace as he peeled his hand away from his shoulder, the glove coming away dotted red with blood. 

Tommy bristled and brushed past Dana into the room. Before he had said a word, Clay looked up--as if feeling the tide of his concern precede him--and instantly brought his hand back down on his shoulder, tucking it behind him as if he could hide it. 

“I’m fine,” he said, quickly, his jaw set in that infuriatingly stubborn way he had when there was even a single threat that someone might want to take care of him.

“What happened?” Tommy simmered, ignoring Clay’s guarding and reaching for his bleeding shoulder. He knew it wasn’t incredibly serious, but it didn’t stop the heat creeping up the back of his neck. 

“Homeless lady bit Bennett,” Jones cut in, breathless and nearly laughing. 

“She bit you?!” Tommy repeated, more for himself than anyone else. 

“Had to sedate her to get her off,” Martinez added, actually laughing.

“I’m fine,” Clay tried again, turning away from Tommy and reaching for a package of pre-cut gauze on a nearby counter. Tommy let Clay think he was getting off easy and turned to Dana. 

She nodded. “North Two is open,” she sang before disappearing into the hall to have the room prepped.

Clay tilted his head back with a beleaguered sigh, facing his cruel creator for putting him in a residency program with someone just as--if not more--stubborn than he was. 

--

“I don’t think you need stitches,” Tommy mused once he’d gotten Clay’s shoulder clean of any remaining blood. The woman bit a barbed circle around a cluster of freckles Tommy had noticed--at some point prior to this--formed the Lyra constellation perfectly on Clay’s shoulder. Except now, Vega had been replaced by the woman’s canine. Tommy swallowed and buried whatever blistering emotion flared up at that, at the maiming of a landmark Tommy had treasured. By someone who wasn’t--

“Like I said, I’m fine,” Clay grumbled, moving as if he was going to sit up from the bed, as if he thought Thomas was some kind of amateur. 

“Unfortunately, you’ll live,” Tommy announced, gravely, the joke of it like a cold compress to the bitter and scorching. Clay snorted at that and Tommy grinned, “--but only after you’ve had a round of antibiotics.” 

Clay nodded, “So, write me a prescription, Doc.” 

Tommy pulled his lips tight, taking in a breath as he re-dressed the wound with clean gauze and medical tape, to give it space to breathe and to spare Clay the drama of having to rip a bandaid off every time he cleaned it. Clay only looked up from watching Tommy’s work when he began removing his gloves, his silence beginning to ring through the room.

“What?” Clay challenged, his brows coming down in a hard line over his eyes. 

“I would send you home with oral antibiotics if the person who bit you had even the suggestion of a dental hygiene routine,” Tommy shared, finally, tucking his hands into his hoodie pockets with a shrug. 

“No,” Clay protested.

“I could smell her from the door,” Tommy stated, matter-of-factly and not trying to sound disparaging, though probably sounding it anyway and not quite caring. He wasn’t incredibly concerned about the feelings of a woman who bit his best friend. 

“Tommy, it’s not that serious,” Clay dismissed, shaking his head and trying to stand from the bed. 

Tommy stood and put a halting hand on Clay’s shoulder. Clay fought against him, barely, just pressed a bit of his strength into Tommy’s hand. Tommy knew Clay could overpower him in a heartbeat--the threat and truth of it buzzed through his palm--but Clay allowed Tommy to push him back against the bed, whether from knowing Tommy was right or from generally allowing Tommy his way. Both were equally possible, but Tommy liked to think it was the former. He tried to hide his smug grin, but he knew his victory was written all over his face when Clay rolled his eyes and stared at the wall. To anyone else, Clay’s face would have come across as a scowl, furious and wartorn, but Tommy knew Clay’s pouts just as intimately as he knew his laughter, as intimately as he knew the constellations peppered across his body. 

“I’ll put the order in for your IV right now. Should be about six hours’ wait. That’s okay, right?” Tommy quipped, sickeningly sweet and trying to soothe. 

Clay’s pout didn’t budge. “‘M not letting one of the infants stick me.” 

Tommy gasped, teasing, “Doctor Bennett, this is a teaching hospital.” 

Tommy shouldn’t have been so shaken when Clay softened at that. So like him, generous enough to consider offering his body to teach. He looked a little guilty, his jaw clamped shut and his pout gently falling into a frown. Something tender washed through Tommy and he traced a little arc on Clay’s shoulder before finally pulling his hand back and stuffing it into his hoodie pocket, clearing his throat when he realized how long he’d left his hand there. 

“I wouldn’t let them near you, you know that,” Tommy said, the softness of it surprising even to him. 

Clay finally looked at him with that look Tommy still wasn’t used to after years of friendship. Like he was looking inside him, studying, unflinching, like he could see into the parts of Tommy even Tommy didn’t want to know. Tommy grinned back, bluffing, baiting Clay into believing that whatever was on the surface was the sum and whole of Thomas Whelan Noah. 

He turned to walk out before it became too much. “Just be glad I’m not making you change into a gown,” he called over his shoulder. 

“In your dreams, Noah,” Clay chirped back and Tommy cackled as he turned into the hallway. 

--

Fifteen minutes and one (exemplary, textbook, maybe even Annals of Emergency Medicine-worthy) needle poke later, Tommy taped Clay’s IV down to his arm and started pushing saline through the line. 

Tommy looked up when Clay huffed and caught him in a full-body shiver. 

“What’s wrong?” he asked, frozen. 

“Nothing,” Clay shrugged, but he shivered again through an inhale, “Saline flush always feels like a bucket of ice-fuckin’-water.” Tommy thought back to Clay’s extended stay a year ago and realized he’d never seen this part of Clay’s care, had no idea Clay reacted to saline like this. 

“Shit, I’m sorry, you should have told me to warm it,” Tommy frowned. He carefully placed the rest of the saline down on the bed next to Clay and unzipped his hoodie. 

“Well, if you’re not gonna give me the five-star treatment--” Clay stopped mid-jab while Tommy tossed his hoodie off his shoulders and pulled his arms out. “Wait, Tommy, don’t--” 

Tommy ignored Clay’s objections to drape his hoodie over his shoulders like a blanket. He pulled the ribbed hem as far as it would go which, on Clay, was just about a quarter of the way down his thighs. 

“I’ll get you a proper blanket in a second,” Tommy promised before he picked the saline up and started pushing the rest of the syringe, repeating, “Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry,” while Clay tensed and tried in vain to control his shiver. 

Once it was over, Tommy started the antibiotic drip, settling on a quick three-hour dosage, knowing Clay would probably be fine with prophylactic oral antibiotics for the next couple of days after an aggressive IV treatment. 

Clay finally exhaled, the cold dissipating in his body, “Y’know, I got a doctor at home who coulda’ monitored me so I didn’t have to be chained to this thing for three hours,” glaring at his infusion stand like it kicked his puppy. (Or like it kicked him, who looked very much like an angry puppy while wrapped up in Tommy’s hoodie). 

Tommy grinned, ignoring the glee that zipped through him when Clay called his house, ‘home,’ “I think that handsome doctor would approve of my treatment plan.” 

“I didn’t say handsome,” Clay deadpanned. 

“Lucky guess,” Tommy preened with a tilt of his head. 

Clay scoffed and pulled himself up and away from leaning back in the bed. 

“Where do you think you’re going?” Tommy panicked, something hot and scared burning through him as he stepped forward with the full intention of wrestling Clay back to reclining again. 

“To work,” Clay answered simply, a bit short, “It’s a bite, Tommy, I’m not fuckin’ dyin’.” 

Tommy stopped, then, knowing Clay was right. He hadn’t realized he’d been smothering until Clay course-corrected for him, taking him out and away from where he’d been for the past hour: back beside Clay’s hospital bed while he was covered in scrapes and bruises, a hole in his side where Tommy had gone in with a knife. He stepped back, the heat of his embarrassment clawing up his throat and sliding towards his ears. 

“Sorry,” was all he knew how to say. Then, “You’re right, I’m sorry.” He stepped back, his hands going for his hoodie pockets before he realized it was still draped over Clay’s shoulders. He rubbed his hands together near his hips before reaching out to take it back and out of Clay’s way, but Clay leaned back, dodging Tommy’s grasp. 

“No, I’m keeping this, for all the shit you put me through tonight,” he snarked and Tommy clocked the tiniest quirk at the corner of Clay’s lips. Just as quick as the suffocating mortification came, it went, as if beckoned and dismissed on Clay’s whim. Tommy smiled back, silken, and nodded, his hands returning to their wringing near his hips. 

Clay stood and shifted the hoodie from his chest to his back, slipping his free arm through the sleeve and draping the other side over his shoulder, leaving his IV-laden arm peeking through the middle and able to pull the stand around with him as he left the room. Tommy nearly reached out to help around the trickier part, but thought better of it, not wanting to annoy any more than he already had. 

He followed Clay out, feeling some old and familiar truth slot back into place in his chest where it always sat, comfortable and pragmatic. They barely made it out of the hallway when Doctor Devon caught them and directed Clay to catch up on charts in the lounge--away from patients--for the rest of his drip, citing his stand as a tripping hazard. Tommy winced and refused to look at Clay, his eyes trained on the floor, even when he felt Clay’s gaze on him, through him. Despite his short reprieve, the clawing embarrassment inched up the back of his neck again, this time burrowing into his temples, sharp and deep enough to make him wrench his eyes closed and pinch the bridge of his nose. Too cowardly to face the mess he’d made, Tommy slipped around Doctor Devon and went for the front desk hoping there was something amongst the onslaught of charts worthy of his penance. 

--

Over the next few hours of puke, piss, and blood, Tommy’s mind kept wandering back to Clay, questioning whether he’d overstepped or overreacted. He hadn’t meant to steal the last few hours of Clay’s shift away from him. He tried to convince himself he really was just applying the standard of care, but with every moment spent circling the same drain, he doubted, deeper and deeper, until that old and familiar truth started to feel jagged and sharp, cutting into the other truths he kept in tight order about his ribs. 

He fucked up. Clay was pissed. He fucked up.

When it was time to finally free Clay, Tommy rallied the courage to at least finish what he started, preparing his apologies and taking a deep, painful breath into his chest before pushing into the Doctor’s lounge. 

Which he found unceremoniously empty, his hoodie draped across one of the chairs at the center table. 

Tommy’s heart sank, deflating at the silence of the room. A fight would have been better. He stepped back into the hallway and called out to Dana, “Did Bennett leave?”

Dana leaned over the desk to get a clearer look at him, “About twenty minutes ago. Devon sent him home.” 

Tommy had one good guess which home Clay decided that meant tonight.

“Did he get--”

“Yeah, Devon wrote it.” 

Tommy nodded and pushed back into the lounge, letting his arms swing back, loose and heavy before he brought his hands up to the back of his neck and linked his fingers just below his hairline. He squeezed, tilting his head back to the ceiling, chasing the place between warmth and pain. When he found it, he held himself there until he stretched far enough for his shoulder to pop. The rush of relief bubbled through him and he dropped his hands, his head finally light enough to grab that fucking hoodie off the chair and throw it on. It felt--wrong. Somehow. Dirty, like his aggregated fuck ups had woven itself into the fabric and made it feel soiled. He’d have stuffed the damn thing in his backpack if he thought he could brave the chill all the way home.

So, he pulled the sleeves up around his forearms, grabbed his backpack from the empty locker he sometimes co-opted as his own when he was too lazy to bring his stuff up to the surgical locker room, and pushed out towards the pit. 

He found Doctor Devon flipping through charts at a workstation as he slung his backpack over his shoulder, his nail scratching over the mesh in rough strokes. She looked up from her work as Thomas approached. She had that same, weird sense about her that Clay did, so attuned to the swarm that it seemed almost magical. 

“Headed home?” she asked, so Tommy wouldn’t have to speak first. Kind of her. 

“If you don’t need me for anything else,” he offered, though more as a way of bearing his throat than as an actual offer. 

“Oh, I could always figure out a use for you, Doctor Noah,” she considered, playfully mulling the thought before sighing, “But you’re already half an hour past your shift, so you should probably get home.” 

“Thanks,” he said, offering a friendly smile as he turned for the ambulance bay. “And thank you for-- y’know,” he tried, but his brain was already in his bed, mourning the emptiness of it and cringing at the entitlement of that in rapid, repetitive cycles. He wasn’t eloquent enough to bullshit his way around talking about the thing that was sharp and poking in his chest. 

“Yeah, about that,” she smiled, but that was sharp, too, “IV Antibiotics--walk me through that choice.” 

Thomas stopped, his shoulders dropping away from their comfy spot near his ears. He wiped a hand down his face and wondered, briefly, if she was asking to teach him or if she was asking because she had a soft spot for Clay. Probably both. A little pang of jealousy skittered through him, unwarranted, emboldened by his exhaustion, but he wasn’t about to blow off an attending. 

“The woman who bit Doctor Bennett--”

“Mhm,” Devon encouraged, turning her body to face him fully.

“She didn’t come across as having a very clean mouth,” Tommy concluded, which was as delicate a statement as he could muster.

Devon didn’t speak for a solid few seconds. 

And then, “I have no idea what that means,” she laughed. It wasn’t mocking or unkind, it was a sweet sound, like she was inviting Tommy to share in the humor of the ridiculousness of what he’d just said. It worked, a little bit, Tommy at least cracked a smile and huffed a bit at his shoes. 

“As in, she hadn’t touched a toothbrush in at least a year,” he ventured, less dying to get out of this conversation and more accepting her invitation to connect, to toss away ego and just talk. 

“Ah,” she said, finally, nodding. Tommy’s lip disappeared behind his teeth, the sharpness of it soothing, watching her through his lashes as he waited for the lecture, for her to suck in a breath and bestow some sagely comment about over-treating, to rightfully scold him about his clouded judgment and remind him of why doctors don’t treat family, to tell him the fuck off for pushing himself on Clay again.

But she didn’t. “Didn’t know that,” she said, a final dismissive thought. 

“Clay didn’t mention it?” Tommy pressed, knocked a bit off-balance by her reaction and now worried about a whole new fucking thing.

“I didn’t ask,” she shrugged, turning back to her busy work, “I probably would have made the same call if I saw that.” 

“Really?” Tommy asked, sounding all of seven years-old and shrinking even further. 

“Yeah,” she conceded, before turning to Tommy with that sharp grin, “But it’s good you were worried about it.” 

Tommy really laughed then, shaking his head and shoving his hands into his hoodie pockets. Inside, his fingers bumped up against something hard and sharp. When he pulled it out, he found a small square of paper he didn’t recognize, folded in on itself a few times. 

“Go get some sleep, Noah,” Devon called out as she picked up a chart and walked off. 

“Thank you, Doctor Devon,” Tommy answered, not looking up from the piece of paper he started to unfold. He walked towards the exit as he worked at it, a biting gust of autumn wind sweeping through him just before he’d managed to get the paper fully undone. He quickly zipped his hoodie up to the top, pulling the hood over his head and the sleeves down over his hands as much as possible--absently noted the smell of hay and cedar--before straightening the paper completely and turning it right-side-up. He lifted the note into the light pouring out from the ED and into the bay.

Didn’t want you walking home without this, even if I still think I deserve to hold it hostage.  Don’t buy food, making dinner.  See you soon. 

Tommy tried, very hard, to wipe the stupid, dopey grin off his face during the entire train ride home, but every time he rubbed the paper between his fingers, hidden deep in the pocket he found it in, it just made him smile harder. 

[encomiium]

Five Times the Heavens Touched the Earth August 26, 2024 Robin

i. 

It was warmer right there than anywhere else. 

Matthew just knew it. 

“I don’t feel anything,” Mark pouted. He began walking away towards the little wooden duck Matthew had forced him to abandon, but Matthew scooped him by the waist and pulled him back to face the little beam of light filtering in perfect parallel lines through the canopy of a peach tree. 

“Just focus--put your hand out--there. Feel that? It’s warm.” Matthew said, soft, like it was a secret. 

Mark rolled his eyes so far back, Matthew was sure he might see his brain. “A’course it’s gonna be warm, it’s sunshine and you’re in the shade.” Mark pushed Matthew’s arm away from his stomach--which gave way without much resistance--before huffing back to his precious duck. 

But Matthew knew this wasn’t an ordinary warmth. He didn’t know how he knew, he just did. Even as the thought crossed his mind that he might pull his hand back to his body, just to show the universe he could, he found that he simply couldn’t. Or that he really did not want to. 

He didn’t blame Mark for not feeling it--Mark was born in Colorado, where the warmth seemed endless and fruitful. Matthew didn’t remember much of traveling from New York, but he remembered flashes of scary and cold: howling, screaming winds and biting, suffocating snowfall. But the flashes always ended with the memory of Mama sitting him in her lap and wrapping her arms tight around his body, squeezing him until he couldn’t breathe except to laugh. 

This one little ray of sunshine felt just like that. Like nothing could ever touch him, not the scary or the cold.

“And what are you doing?” came Mama’s voice from above him. Matthew didn’t look up. This wasn’t like tracking mud into the house or snickering during an Our Father: he knew he had nothing to be ashamed of under this one little piece of sunshine. 

“It’s warm right here, Mama,” he said quietly, even quieter than he did to Mark. A lot of people were starting to know his secret, and he was beginning to get a bit jealous of that. He felt Mama walk up close to him and squat down to see what he was seeing. This was good, Matthew thought, maybe the sunshine was only special right where he was standing. Luke gurgled next to him, all fat, pink cheeks and bundled into Mama's side, squeezed tight enough not to breathe except to laugh. 

She put her hand out next to Matthew’s--into the beam of sunlight--and hummed and still, in all of Matthew’s seven years of life, he’d not yet heard a prettier sound. 

“What does it feel like?” she asked.

“Warm,” Matthew mumbled, turning his hand over lazily in the yellow light. He still hadn’t looked up from the light. It felt like, if he did, it might run away. 

“And what else?” Mama asked, turning her fingers into a cup, like she might be able to catch whatever it was Matthew was feeling. 

“Safe,” he breathed, like a prayer. 

Mama hummed again and the song was different. Older. As if she saw fit to sing to him the way she sang to his Pa. They stayed like that for a moment longer before Mama took her hand away from the sunlight and placed it in Matthew’s copper curls, cradling the back of his head like an egg cracked far before it reached the stovetop. 

“Don’t you forget this feeling, you hear me?”

That made Matthew look at her, finally, and her face looked sad and happy all at once. It was serious, like she often was, but there was a very gentle softness too, maybe a bit like the way she looked when the chapel got its stained glass windows.

“That’s the Light of God and you found it,” she whispered, like it was a secret, and that’s how Matthew knew she was telling the truth. She scratched his scalp with her nails before taking her hand back to cradle Luke as she stood up with a groan. “Shoulda’ named you John,” she laughed. It sounded like she’d said it before. He watched her walk toward their pink home just outside their grove of peach trees. Mark lifted his little wooden duck to her as she crossed the threshold of the white picket fence. 

When Matthew looked back at his little Light of God, it had disappeared, his hand left in the chilly shadow of a cloud rolling lazily overhead. 

He turned and ran after her, suddenly not wanting to be alone.

ii. 

His father might have been too proud to collect a debt, too holy to demand from a man with a pocket watch worth more than their entire farm, but Matthew, all of sixteen and filled with righteous indignation, simply, was not. He had already watched his father hang his head and turn from his pride to sell half a damn acre just to keep their home standing; Matthew was not about to allow a vulture to scavenge from his family--still living--without paying his father what he was owed. 

He had a gold tooth for God’s sake. 

He made his mother cry.

So Matthew saddled Oatmeal before the sun came up and prayed she was strong enough for the trip. The prayers were ultimately unnecessary as, every evening, when he settled down to make camp, she huffed restlessly, goading Matthew to keep on galloping under the light of the moon. He had always thought she had enough space on the farm to keep her happy, but something under her skin itched to be everywhere and nowhere in the world all at once. The thought danced across his mind, once, while he stared at the stars, that he might know the feeling.

As they approached Dodge City, Kansas--a shithole newly founded by gunfighters and brothel keepers--the afternoon sun beating down on the tinderbox town, a brawl between two unbelievably large men rolled across their path. It was impressive, actually: they didn’t stop fighting for the whole stretch of the street. 

Ma would’ve reached into Matthew’s ribs and pinched the grin right off his face if she saw him. 

Matthew found a place to stable Oatmeal and fished around the back pocket of his red dirt-stained slacks for the business card that had been carelessly left on the dining room table. H.L. Slate, Dodge City, Kansas. Not very specific. There were two-dozen buildings lined up in two suffocating rows along Main Street, any one of which could have housed the round, greedy bastard who owed his father money. Matthew fidgeted with the card--which was made with a much finer, heavier paper than he’d ever felt in his life--and clicked his tongue as he realized--

He didn’t have a fucking clue what he was doing. 

“Hey, sugar,” a sweet voice sang from the door to one of the buildings. 

Matthew turned and lost every thought. A woman leaned against a door frame, a lace fan beating rhythmically against her dovewing skin, flesh pouring over the edge of her bodice. Her brown hair fell in ringlets around her shoulders and her deep, purple skirt was hiked up all the way to her thigh. Matthew’s mouth went dry and his ears went red. He was very thankful they were hidden under his hat.

He remembered, suddenly, that he had a hat. 

Quickly, he cleared his throat and tipped the edge of it to her (which he’d been taught was the right thing to do when in the presence of a lady). “Afternoon, ma’am,” he said, his voice coming out much deeper than he’d intended. 

She giggled, but it didn’t sound at all like the giggles the girls at the church made when he looked over to their pew. 

“You’re cute,” she sighed, looking him over like she’d already figured out everything about him. “C’mon over here outta’ the sun, baby. You’ll stroke if you stand out there all day.” 

Matthew glanced past her shoulder into the shadow of the parlor behind her. It was quiet and yawned at him with warning. A thrill ran up his spine, his scalp tingled, and he took the steps into the brothel. 

--

Matthew was actually surprised not to see a whole herd of two-backed devils right in the front door. Instead, a man snoozed at an old piano in the corner and a couple of women in various stages of undress played cards at a table. They only glanced as he passed. He made a very concerted effort not to stare, but to tip his hat respectfully.

Belle rolled half-lidded eyes and handed the card back to Matthew from behind the bar. “And what business would a kid like you be havin’ lookin’ for a man like that?” she asked as she uncapped a bottle with some device hidden at the waist of her bodice. Matthew nearly forgot his own name at the sight, much less the purpose of his journey. 

“I-- uh--” he tried, the devil tugging at his belt loops all the while. Belle giggled and Matthew cleared his throat, “He owes my family money.”

Belle placed a dark, fizzing drink in front of him. His eyes went wide and his mother began screeching a thousand Bible verses about drunkenness in his head. 

“What is it?” he asked, trying his best not to sound like a scared child.

“Sarsaparilla,” Belle grinned, “Good for some energy.” 

Matthew sniffed the drink. It was spicy and sweet and like nothing he’d ever smelled before. He glanced back up at Belle and she winked. He trusted her, for no reason other than it felt right. He sipped and it was the best damn thing he’d maybe ever tasted. It was nearly like candy, but a bit more grown up. It had an edge to it he enjoyed, a sharpness that felt dangerous, even softened by the sugars. He took in as many gulps as he could manage before the burn of it hurt too badly. He stopped with a groan, sated and excited. 

“Where’re you from, kiddo?” Belle asked, leaning over the counter.

“Colorado,” Matthew replied, his lip twisting around the Sarsaparilla clinging to his teeth, “My name’s Matthew,” he added. Being called a kid poked something a bit sensitive in his chest.

“Where are your folks, Matthew?” Belle continued, not missing a beat. 

“Home,” he said, his eyes trained on the drink. He could tell where she was going and felt like, very soon, this conversation might not be of great help to him.

“Where you’re not,” she teased. 

“Nope,” Matthew shot back, shoving the card back in his pocket. “Do you know where Slate is or not?” he snapped. 

“Not likin’ your tone,” Belle replied flatly in kind.

Matthew pinkened. There was something embarrassingly familiar about the way he’d just acted. He’d seen it all his life. Never from Pa, but from other men around the parish, sure. He never liked seeing it from them. “I apologize. I do,” he acquiesced, his fingers interlocked gently around his half-empty mug.

She studied him for a moment before sighing, “If Slate owes your family money, you oughta’ get in line. He owes half the damn town money.” 

Matthew tilted his head, “What do you mean?”

“He built half the businesses on Main Street. He’s got no problem shakin’ people down for their rent, but, hell, he ain’t paid me for my services in, what, three, four months?”

“Why hasn’t anyone done anything?” Matthew asked.

She looked almost surprised by his question, her tongue caught in her mouth in a way Matthew hadn’t learned yet. “I guess people are afraid. He’s a powerful man.” 

--

The saloon four buildings down shook with loud voices and pounding wood from halfway down the street. Matthew pressed himself against the back door, peering over his shoulder into one of the only open windows. As Belle promised, Slate sat at a round table near the bar, surrounded by men half his size, but twice as scary-looking. A few drank and yelled, a few carefully tended to their firearms. He took in a single, resolute breath before climbing onto the barrel next to him. 

Once he stood and stilled his shaking legs searching for balance, he stared above him, wiped his sweaty hands a few times on the backs of his thighs, hopped up, and grabbed hold of the edge of the second-floor deck. The barrel beneath him clattered away and he pulled himself up with a grunt, wrapping his arms around the bars of the safety railing. He carefully slid himself over the railing and pressed himself against the facade of the building. He went from window to window, surveying each of the rooms inside. 

In one, ladies’ dresses lined the walls and a bed was covered in pink silk. 

In the next, wooden boxes covered in cobwebs and linen sheets.

In the last, a large mahogany desk and a safe. 

Matthew slid his fingers into the small, open space where the window had been left cracked open. Belle was right; people are afraid of a powerful man, so what does a powerful man have to be afraid of? He pushed the window open and ducked into Slate’s office. On the walls were framed drawings of buildings and businesses; corked bottles were clustered in neat groups in various corners of the room. 

Matthew stared at the safe for a moment before thinking much better of it. He didn’t know what the hell he’d do with one of those, much less how to open the damn thing. Instead, he moved for the mahogany desk and began opening drawers. The drawers were mostly filled with documents and ledgers, completely uninteresting. He carefully rifled through the piles, hoping to maybe find the deed to his father’s land. When nothing jumped out at him, he moved to the next drawer. 

Muffled voices. Matthew froze. The voices creeped closer and Matthew’s stomach bottomed. They were going to find him, elbow-deep in Slate’s personal effects. His heart thundering in his ears, his entire body alight with panic, he grit his teeth and yanked open one more drawer. 

His bones quivered under his sweat-slick skin as he stared at stacks of greenbacks and a number of velvet pouches, bulging with the weight of what he could only guess was an amount of coins he’d never dreamed of. 

One of the voices slurred from the other side of the door, “--That’s because of’n the interest. Makes more money on top of the old money, sees?”

Matthew shoved anything he could grab into the pockets of his slacks before ducking behind a bookshelf sitting to the side of Slate’s desk, which was only deep enough to barely obscure his body from the opening door. He couldn’t think, couldn't breathe, couldn’t move, his hands still stuffed inside his pockets with no time to pull them out. He listened to the man’s heavy footfall as he stomped across the room to one of the collections of bottles on the other side of the large desk. Years seemed to pass as sweat poured down Matthew’s face, his chest aching with complaint and a desire to take a full breath--any breath. Time passed in hummingbird heartbeats, his face hot with dread. Finally, glass clinked as the man made his choice from the bottles and he stomped back towards the door. 

Matthew waited in horrible agony, his lungs screaming for air, every muscle drawn so tight he thought they might snap. His finger spasmed under the stress.

A clinking of coins. 

The footsteps stopped. Matthew felt the man leering, gazing at the mahogany desk, the only thing between him and the barrel of a revolver he heard the man pluck from its holster. Panic, horrible panic, bolt for the window or surrender and hope for mercy. The floorboard creaked. The man was sneaking towards him. And then--

Warm. Safe. 

“Oi, lookee, a five-cent piece! There’sn yer interest!” another voice called from outside the room. 

Silence. A gamble between three mortal souls, only two of whom were aware they were ever playing a game. 

“Give it here,” followed by heavy stomping and a slamming door. 

A breath ripped out of Matthew and he gasped, as if he needed to draw it right back in. He crawled for the window, his legs cramped and hot from the strain. He made sure to leave it only slightly ajar, just as he’d found it.

--

Matthew dropped two of the velvet bags on the bar as he stared at Belle, still in shock of what he’d done. Broken one of the commandments; nearly shot in the face. His anxieties came in that order. 

Belle opened one of the bags and gasped. She stared back at him and, for just a moment, there was no divide of age or upbringing between them; they were completely the same--perplexed by how Matthew had pulled it off.

Then, she choked, “Oh, Matthew--”

“Is that enough?” he blurted.

There was a new color of astonishment in her eyes, quite a bit different than before, then, “I-- Yes. Yes, more than--”

“Good. I have to go.” Matthew turned and walked out the door, though it felt like he wasn’t doing much of anything, like his body was moving in spite of him, not because of him. 

--

When he arrived home, Matthew learned that a half-acre of land sold for $10. Pa accepted that Mr. Slate had just been feeling charitable and apologetic when giving them nearly $30 in total. He added interest, Matthew insisted. 

Ma never really looked at him the same. It wasn’t a bad look, like Matthew thought it would be. She still ran him out of the house, beating him with a rag and screaming at him for taking off without warning, but that day and every day after, Ma looked at him like her baby with a handful of sunshine had become a man all at once. 

--

When he returned to Dodge City a half-decade later with a small crew of men behind him, he walked into the brothel with a dusting of stubble on his jaw and a sly grin. The building was inexplicably brighter, like it had finally gotten the chance to breathe. Belle, still there behind the bar, wore her hair up in intricate twists and a chain of pearls around her neck. She smiled. 

“Well, if it isn’t my little Robin Hood.”

iii. 

Blood poured out of the wound in his chest. 

Chest? Shoulder, maybe?

It felt good, almost, like a warm blanket protecting him from the chill.

“Robin, hold on, you’re gonna’ be alright,” Amos called out, but his voice echoed like it was coming from half a desert away. 

The grass below smelled sweet and metallic, like sarsaparilla and pennies.

He felt a heavy pressure on his chest. Amos pressed wet rags to his skin with the full weight of his body behind him. Robin stared at the stars above them, not wondering much of anything. He thought he’d have more questions when he died, more fears of judgment for all his sins, but all he felt was warm and safe. 

Robin had only felt warm and safe since the moment the bullet ripped through him.

Everyone panicked and held their breaths, but Robin didn’t. Robin just kept staring up. 

“Matthew, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” someone sobbed. 

Robin’s eyes slowly drifted over to Little John, weeping at his other shoulder. He gripped Robin’s sleeve, the same way he used to when he was too scared to go to the bathroom alone at night. 

Robin’s body shook with all the work Amos did on him, but as he took his slow, methodical breaths, Robin commanded his arm to bend at the elbow, then commanded his fingers to curl around John’s wrist. Robin couldn’t feel any of it anymore, but the way John opened his eyes to meet Robin’s gaze let him know that he’d done what he needed.

He felt the need to blink. Slowly. 

Then, he shook his head, only twice before it became nauseating. 

He’d never accept an apology. Not for this. Even if his body hadn’t moved on its own, Robin would have chosen to push John out of a bullet’s path a thousand times over. 

John didn’t need to cry. 

Robin wished he could tell him so. 

All it was, within arm’s reach, was warm and safe; right there, right there in the infinite spaces between the stars. All any of them had to do was reach out for it.

They all stared down at Robin when they should have been looking up. He wished he could tell them to reach. Because he couldn’t, not then. But they could. 

All they had to do was reach. 

iv. 

Robin never saw the stars in the same way after that. 

Sort of like the stars had stopped being babies and became men, all at once. 

Years later, Robin lay in grass hundreds of miles away, his body propped up against a large, red, rock formation, smoke drifting languidly from the cigarette hanging between his lips, his fingers interlocked and lying lazily in his lap. The moon had already fallen far beneath the horizon and the fire had long reduced itself to glittering embers, leaving him and his men accompanied only by the light of the stars. 

He stared up at the sky, incomprehensibly vast and littered with twinkling lights, wondering, again, of nothing in particular. His men lay among their bags and blankets, some snoring happily while tangled up in the arms of another, others curled up, like they were shielding the very core of themselves from the dangers of the night. Little John had tried valiantly to stay awake, eager to relieve Robin of watch duty, but even he eventually slumped against a log. 

Only Robin was left awake, subsumed by an eternal moment of quiet, of peace, of family. 

Then, out of nowhere, warm and safe again. 

Robin sighed deeper into the rock, the littlest grin playing on his lips. His gaze remained on the whole of the stars; he’d been playing this game for a long time by then and he knew better than to try and find the singular star responsible. It felt less like one star, anyway--one beam of light--and more the whole of the heavens. 

“Howdy,” he breathed, and it felt right. 

He paused for a moment, waiting for the feeling to pass, but it didn’t, so he continued. 

“The padre from yesterday promised he’d pray for me. ‘S that why you’re around?” he asked, not really expecting an answer. He didn’t add that the priest had caught him dropping a tattered, canvas bag of cash into the donation box. Seemed boastful, if not repetitive, as whomever he was talking to probably knew full-well what he was doing then, and every moment before then. 

“I don’t really know what to say,” he laughed. He waited again for the warm and safe to drift away. Surely they had better things to do than to be here, out in the middle of New Mexico, visiting a man wanted by the federal government for robbing a governor. Among others. Many others. 

“While you’re here, I guess--” he swallowed, then took a drag from his cigarette. The tobacco settled in a peaceful haze over all his senses, gently smothering the embarrassment and doubt that he was just talking to himself. “I mean,” he struggled through a held breath, clinging to the delightful fog for as long as he could, before exhaling long and slow, “I dunno’, seems like people usually find this an occasion for asking for things. I try not to ask for too much, y’know. There’re a lot more people with a lot bigger problems than I got.” 

And he really believed that, deeply and intimately. It’s why he did what he did--why they all followed his lead.

“But I guess I’ll ask anyway,” he mumbled. He hesitated, for a moment, not to contemplate what he was going to ask--that, he was sure of--but to reflect on whether he had any position to be asking at all. A felon who hadn’t been to church in years, absconded with his youngest brother to terrorize those with means. Robin was a taker and some part of him felt it was wrong to ask for anything when you’re a taker. 

But he’d already said he’d do it, so he continued. 

“Could you just--watch over my guys? Make sure they’re okay? Me, I’ll be alright. Whatever happens, I’ll be okay, but. Them--all they’ve ever been guilty of is believing in me, right? Everything we’ve ever done--it’s my fault, not theirs. It just don’t seem right, anyway, it don’t feel like their sins. Feels like mine. And I’ll take that, I will. So. Please. Don’t worry about me no more, just be with them. And when it comes time to answer for it all, I’ll do it.”

Robin paused, almost expecting an answer for all his bleeding heart, but none came. 

“Anyway, thank you. For everything. I feel bad asking for anything else, but. If you could do this one thing, it’d mean the world to me.” 

The warm and safe lingered until an errant breeze, strong enough to push Robin’s hat askew, cut through him. When the air stilled, the feeling was gone, and the loss of it felt deeper and more devastating than a bullet to the shoulder.

His hands trembled in his lap, aching to reach out, and secretly--selfishly--he regretted giving that feeling away. 

v. 

It wasn’t supposed to go this way. 

Robin refused to let out even a whimper when they pressed the red-hot brand to his ribs. He clenched every muscle, his chest becoming an iron tomb for the sounds of agony screaming for release. When they finally pulled the brand away, his skin continued to smoke and sizzle and his legs gave out with a rush. The two deputies who’d given him a pretty little beating in his cell held him up by his arms and he let them, like a child throwing a tantrum, consumed by pain and rage and reduced to dead-weight. He let the breath free from his throat, gasping as he tossed his head back and grinned. The cuts on his lips reopened and the blood on his teeth glinted pretty and scarlet in the sun. 

“Aw, c’mon, don’t stop. I was so close,” he begged between breaths, making sure to make full and direct eye-contact with the Sheriff while he said it. 

The Sherrif’s face twisted with revulsion, “You’re goddamned sick, McCree. The devil will be glad to have you back.” 

Robin laughed and the sound of it was hollow. If only the Sheriff knew how right he was. 

Robin found his footing and he waited for the deputies to haul him back to the jail. He couldn’t wait for the looks on their faces when they saw the empty cells, the rest of his crew made into shadows at the edge of the Colorado River. They should know better than to take their hands off their keys, especially while delivering a beating which the Robin McCree was only barely fighting against. 

They managed to get him with a brand. It was about time for it. Two decades of living just outside the law’s grasp was altogether pretty damned impressive. He’d have Amos dress it and bandage it when they busted him from his cell. 

But he wasn’t taken to his cell. 

Instead, they dragged him to a large wooden platform fitted with a tall arm, the end of which was adorned with a noose hanging nonchalantly in the afternoon sun. 

Immediately, Robin began to thrash, but the deputies held him firm. The one on his right jabbed an elbow into Robin’s cauterized wound, sending a paralyzing jolt of pain ricocheting through his body. 

The Sheriff, who had climbed the gallows and stood at the front of it, began to call out to a sparse, gathering crowd. They murmured amongst themselves, eyes darting between the Sheriff and Robin being dragged up the steps. 

“Matthew “Robin” McCree, you have been found guilty of innumerous counts of Murder in the First Degree, Murder in the Second Degree, Felony Robbery, Felony Theft, Felony Burglary, Felony Aggravated Assault--”

Robin again tried to yank himself free from the deputies’ grasps while they pulled him just behind the noose. He shouted, “I haven’t been given a trial!”

The crowd’s voices picked up a bit in surprise, but the Sheriff continued, “For your crimes, you have been sentenced to death by hanging.”

“I haven’t had a trial!” he cried out. He dug his heels into the wood below, bucking like a sick horse, and the deputy elbowed him in the ribs again. This time, Robin heard a crack. This time, Robin allowed himself to groan from the pain. 

“Do you have any last words?”

Just like that, the world went silent. 

It wasn’t supposed to go this way. 

A ringing--either from the pain or the panic--rose up in Robin’s ears. 

Robin realized, first, that this was completely different from the last time. As he stared through the loop of the noose into oblivion, he realized that every single face, every pair of staring, accusatory eyes, boring holes straight through his chest, were strange to him. Not a single tear, not a single sympathetic glance or even a sigh to hint to him that he might be missed from this world. 

He realized, next, that this was it. This was the end. He barely noticed when the deputies dragged him to the center of the trap door. He stood at the edge of eternity and his stomach bottomed, like he was teetering at the cliffs-edge of the Nevada Canyon. He knew he was about to fall, but this pit had no bottom, no end. He was about to become nothing. No worries, no hopes, no dreams, no thoughts--nothing.

The Sheriff slipped the noose over Robin’s head, tightened it, and the Deputies finally released his arms. His handcuffed wrists fell limp behind him. 

He realized, last, that he was terrified. 

More terrified than he’d ever been in his life. He was going to die alone. In Dodge fucking City of all goddamned places. 

He thought he felt his lashes burning, but, even standing on the edge of eternity, he couldn’t find it in himself to allow them to see him cry. Not here. 

Will it hurt?

Who was going to take care of John?

There’s still so much work left. 

God, what will his mother think?

The fear shredded him from the inside. He trembled as seconds stretched into forever, the gnarled fibers from the noose pricking tiny irritations into the soft skin at his collarbone. His family will never know he was gone. They would never know to mourn him, to remember him. He felt, for the first time in his life, what it meant to be completely alone, in total separation; and he was going to die that way, a felon of the worst degree, who barely made a dent in the face of this ugly world before he was snuffed from it.

His breath shook and his lip wobbled. 

This was scary.

He wanted his friends. 

He wanted his mom. 

But Robin was going to face the darkness of the void, of unending nothingness--was going to suffer the agony of death--alone. 

Then:

“You’re not alone,” he heard, in a voice so beautiful he had to close his eyes, hoping that voice alone might replace the whole of the world. 

The tears finally fell when his lashes fluttered against his cheeks. He sighed. He sighed because the thought of it, the mere suggestion, delusional or not, spread through him like cigarette smoke, like sunshine piercing through peach trees, like warm and safe. 

“It’s going to be okay.” 

Robin thought he might smile. In his last moments on the earth, he believed, with everything inside him, that this voice was telling the truth, that he really wasn’t alone. All at once, the fear subsided, the pain ebbed away, and all that was left was peace. Warm and safe.

Then, the floor dropped away from under him, his heart rushed into his throat, and the sound of eternity echoed with a sickening crack. 

[encomiium]

Far Away from the Marked Trail 19 May 2024 George

“What do you think?”

George kept his head bowed, waiting for Theodore to answer Hennessy. He picked at one of his knuckles which had split open on the last hunt. The skin had already healed to perfection, but he wondered, absently, if he could make himself bleed again. He felt a light brush on his hip and he looked up to find Theodore at his side, his eyes big and worried. George quickly hid his hands behind his back and turned forward to face their maker. He trained his eyes on Hennessy’s feet and swallowed, his face hot and a thrill of fear running through his gut.

He panicked, his hands trembling at the small of his back. He hadn’t been listening. They never spoke to him, never asked him questions. “I-- I don’t--” he tried. 

“Come here, George.” Hennessy cooed. George chanced a glance to Hennessy’s face before quickly averting his eyes. He looked--so different. Warm and calm. It was scary. 

George stepped forward into the mouth of the cave, where the grass disappeared and turned to stone. The chill hit him immediately and Hennessy caught him up in his shiver. It felt almost tender. It felt like a few of the nights they had spent between hunts, resting in beds belonging to families snuffed off this earth and drained dry, George tucked into his neck and Theodore under his arm. He felt safe. Like whatever sin he had committed to deserve this afterlife might be washed clean if he believed in the fantasy hard enough. 

“What do you think of the cave?” Hennessy asked again, patient and soft. He rubbed a hand along George’s back. Usually it made George sick, but this--maybe it was time, maybe it was the trick of desperately needing to belong, but it felt kind of nice. 

Worry fluttered about the space between his head and his heart. His body sank into Hennessy’s touch but his mind ached with the sense that something wasn’t right.

“It’s--nice?” George tried with the tiniest laugh, glancing up at Hennessy again, desperately hoping that was the correct answer. 

“Good,” Hennessy breathed with a grin, staring into the vast darkness ahead. 

Then, Hennessy’s voice changed. 

“Stay.” 

The command ricocheted through George’s body, bouncing in every direction like a bullet careening off his bones. It lodged itself in the center of his heart, the fragments of it slicing into his lungs with every breath he took. 

“What?” he whispered, terrified. 

Instantly, Hennessy uncurled from around George. He stepped back towards the forest and the cold swallowed George whole. George tried to follow, but as Hennessy joined Theodore near the trees, George’s body refused to cross the line of grass that marked the edge of the cave. He whimpered, staring down at his feet, begging his body to move, to flinch, anything, but nothing he did could overcome Hennessy’s command. Stay. 

“Why? Please,” he begged. He tried reaching out into the moonlight, but not even his fingers would cross beyond the shadow at the threshold. 

Hennessy and Theodore began to turn back to the world in unison and George called out, desperate, “What did I do wrong?!” Theodore paused and George leapt on the opportunity, this little window of mercy, “I won’t do it again, whatever it is, I swear. Please!” 

Theodore, who had always had more freedom than George, the favorite, the beloved, reached for Hennessy’s sleeve. They shared a conversation George could not hear, not past the howling in his ears. Finally, Hennessy turned and sighed, all of his warmth gone and replaced by the exasperation of the terrible inconvenience of his very emotional fledglings. When he spoke to George, George could tell he did it for Theodore. Not for George. 

“Frankly, George, I don’t need you for this next part.” 

George’s heart sank. 

Theodore turned away. 

“I-- I’ll go, I’ll leave, I’ll go far away and you’ll never see me again,” George bargained. 

Hennessy only laughed. “Oh, George. You know, that’s why you’re staying here. You have no vision! They are building my city just northeast of here. It will be beautiful, but you—“ Hennessy paused to shrug, “You really have no use there. You would never survive on your own and I really don’t like other people touching my things.” He stepped forward and stood just where the moonlight ended, just out of George’s reach.

George stood there, stunned, wondering if he was capable of having nightmares.

“Why not just kill me?” George asked, practically pleaded, his eyes filling with scarlet tears. 

“Oh,” Hennessy cooed, reaching into the shadow and cupping George’s face. George wanted to pull away, but his body, again, refused, so well-attuned and trained to Hennessy’s whim. “And waste such a pretty face? I could never.” Hennessy grinned, vile and poisonous, before finally turning away. 

“Wait, please!” George shouted after them, “Theodore-- Teddy, please!” 

But Theodore had already disappeared into the trees, unwilling to take any further part in it. 

As the forest overtook Hennessy, the bond between maker and fledgling glowed one last time and George heard Hennessy’s voice in his head. 

Disobey me and I will enjoy making the rest of your immortal eternity a living nightmare.  

ii. 

Drip.

George flinched and whimpered, the cold air of his gasp felt like shards of glass on his raw throat. He spent hours shouting after them, pleading, begging over the bond for them to come back, but with the loss of their scent came the loss of their line of communication and, suddenly, for the first time in years, he was completely and utterly alone. 

He curled up as close to the mouth of the cave as he could, pressing his feet against the ground as if he could force his back through the stone surrounding him. He needed to be as close to the moonlight as he possibly could, as close to the sounds of crickets dancing and owls singing. The cave yawned backwards into the earth, a wide, gaping mouth that seemed to swallow all light. Even if he focused, his predatory night vision still could not see clearly into the pure, black abyss. It dripped and curdled, it felt damp and stale all at once. It seemed eager to digest him--the cave and everything inside it.

No soul for miles, no one to scream to, no one to comfort the terror of the unknown in the deep, despairing darkness just a breath away. 

He shivered, once, before he gripped his hair and sobbed. 

When the sun came, George tried and failed to fall into its light. 

When the moon came, George tried and failed to bolt into the trees. 

When that all seemed pointless, he settled into his spot in the corner of the mouth of the cave, wrapped his arms around his knees, and waited, trembling. Every time the cave gurgled, he curled deeper into himself, hoping, eventually, he would either stop being afraid or he’d crush himself out of existence. 

Pretty soon, the hunger came. 

Like spears plunging through his stomach with every twitch and breath, it grew and grew until his body began consuming itself. Suns and moons passed effortlessly while he drifted in and out of reality. Eventually, he was too weak to curl around himself anymore. Instead, he sat with his arms limp, head lolled to the side towards freedom so fucking close, towards deer turning their heads at him, almost pitifully, as if they considered sacrificing themselves so he might have something to eat. His tongue felt like sandpaper in his throat. He couldn’t feel his legs. 

He coughed once, twice, his breaths becoming shallow and labored. He thought, finally. Fucking finally. 

When he opened his eyes again, he was still just as hungry, but the breathing was easier. Until it wasn’t again, a few suns later. 

This happened in a vicious cycle, over and over, until fear no longer existed, nor did misery or sadness. 

Only hunger. 

Some suns later, George heard a thud echo from the bowels of the stone. Then a voice, crying out in pain. He whipped his head toward the noise, his body suddenly silent with the thrill of it. No more spears in his stomach, no more sandpapered throat, only two, glowing eyes peering into the mouth of the feast. When the scent of blood brushed against his nose, a snarl ripped its way out of him and he skittered away from the light, descending into the darkness without a second thought. 

Once he gorged himself on the life of a man who had fallen too deep into another opening in the earth, far away from the larger mouth George was left at, he realized he was lost. 

He wouldn’t see the outside again for almost two centuries.

iii. 

Time is marked in voices echoing among the many twists and turns; it is marked in drips and gurgles. His home burrows far, far into the planet. Gifts and offerings come and go. Stupid, daring children, the unlucky wanderer seeking shelter from a storm, all moments that satiate his stomach’s greed. 

Others are dumped there. Same as him.

But these are his caves. His. He is just as happy drinking rotten, dead blood as he is drinking fresh, living blood. It all fills the void. It all makes him stronger. 

Full and content from a meal snatched from one of the many tempting waterfalls spattered throughout his caves, he pulls himself through a tiny opening, only big enough for his emaciated body, into a large, sweeping cavern lit up in brilliant blues and purples. He curls up into himself, nuzzles the stone with a little sigh. The lights, though soft and fluffy and satisfying to bite, are not food, but they make him happy like food does, so that is where he chooses to sleep. 

iv. 

Pain--pain different than hunger. 

The scent of my blood. Unfamiliar. Putrid. 

Rage, hissing, clawing at both the spear in my shoulder. It pins me to the stone. Rage, hissing, clawing at the food standing above me. A taste. A taste, a taste, a taste. 

The food turns his head and the other food speaks to him. 

The other food bends down low and extends a hand. An offering, a taste. Ripping skin and muscle, stretching and biting at the scent, so sweet, like sugar. 

The food above bears down. Shrieking, the spear is buried deeper. The food above yells, the food beside yells back. It’s loud. It--hurts. Get away-- run away, thrash, flail--

Warm. 

Soft. 

Opening eyes, a hand on a—my—face. 

Silence. 

Death? 

No, silence. 

The other food guides the spear from my shoulder. It does not hurt. It is just. Silent. His mouth makes noises. Don’t understand. His mouth makes noises for many, many drips and gurgles. It’s nice. “George,” he says. Over and over. The food waves and stands. Walks. 

Not allowed to leave. Follow as far as I can. 

Reaching, just before the moonlight. Don’t go? 

Don’t go. 

v. 

Will reached out for him. He growled, a warning. Not because he would do anything. He didn’t know why he growled, actually. He glanced at Will and frowned. He couldn’t remember how to say he was sorry. 

“It’s okay,” Will whispered, his eyes crystal clear, like water, in the blue and purple lights of his nest. “Let me see, George.” 

He growled again, this time showing more of his teeth. Partly because he didn’t want Will to see, partly because using that name with that voice was unfair.

Will--stubborn and mean--reached into the cage of his arms, wrapped tight around the wounds oozing from his chest. George was powerless against him, so he could do nothing but pout and whine, allowing Will to pry him open and reveal the large chunks of missing flesh. The other dead-blood had shredded Will’s sweater when he ripped into George’s chest. He was very, very sad at the loss and turned away from Will into the stone wall. He couldn’t remember how to say he was sorry. 

Will sat back. George could hear his breath catch when his back hit the wall. It was a bad sound, but George didn’t turn around. 

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Will scolded. 

George squeezed himself tight, tucking himself deeper into the wall. He knew that. He ruined Will’s sweater. He wrapped the tattered corpse of it tighter around his body, tried to salvage its remains and scent. Drip. His blood clung to his elbows and fell to the stone below. 

But he would have done it again and again and again and again. 

“It wouldn’t have lived if it bit me,” Will tried. His voice sounded tight.

George growled, this time a real warning. He would never let anything touch Will, not ever, not ever. The thought of it made his body hot again. Will speaking nonsense made him angry--usually it didn’t, usually Will’s nonsense made him happier than all the food and lights in the whole world--but this nonsense wasn’t fun. This nonsense was not acceptable. Will should know by now. Will should have learned by now. He is the only heartbeat who has ever mattered and nothing should ever, ever touch him. 

“I don’t know what I would do if I lost you.” 

Will sniffed. 

George turned, perplexed. 

Will slid a sleeve across his cheek and George felt like an explosion. 

He twisted, with no time to flinch at the squelch from his slowly-healing wounds. He touched as much of Will as he could, his hands fluttering over his arms and chest, begging him not to cry. He held his face and wiped the wetness from his cheeks, smearing his blood across his freckles like stars. He tried to wipe that too and huffed when he made more of a mess. 

Will’s laughter sounded like crickets dancing, like owls singing, and George couldn’t help but smile. The feeling was becoming more and more familiar, like home. 

Will grabbed George’s arm and he pulled him down to sit next to him. George went willingly. Powerless. Will dropped his head onto his shoulder and wrapped his arm around George’s and mumbled a thank you that sounded too sad to be a real thank you. 

They sat in silence, save for the soothing trickle of the creek which ran through his nest. There was a drip, somewhere, which announced that it would soon be time for George to take Will to that creek and clean him up before sending him back home. But he didn’t move. Not just yet. Because Will didn’t want to lose George. 

And for one moment, one breath, the feeling of that was greater than the hunger ever was.

[encomiium]

Ten Things You Bring Into a Courtroom 21 April 2024 Lee

i.

Small, round hands reaching up towards a gray sun a million miles away. The shape of someone he loves. He stretches so far he feels like he might tear in two. He whines with the effort, strangled and pathetic. A million tiny pins dance inside his nose. Something feels so empty, so desperate: a hole in his chest that will always be a part of him. 

He just wants to be warm.

The someone turns away, long, pin-straight hair whipping around her body like smoke. 

It smells like laundry that never quite dried.

ii. 

“A game?” Lee asked, grinning. 

“Mhm!” Doctor Peter said, taking the blood-pressure cuff off of Lee’s arm. He wrapped his hands around Lee’s waist and helped him off the table and back to the ground. “Remember when we talked about how your sickness made you very, very special?”

Lee thought for a second before nodding, “Like a superhero.”

“That’s right!” Doctor Peter exclaimed. Lee stood a little taller. He liked being right.

Another doctor Lee had never seen before stepped into the room. He looked very serious, though he tried to smile politely. Lee gave a big smile and a wave back. 

“This is Mister Joel, he has a superpower, too.”

Lee’s eyes went wide. He’d never met a real-life superhero. His tummy turned, kind of like in the sickness way, but not really. It felt a little better than that, like on playground days when he rocked too hard on the spring-horse. 

“Mister Joel is pretty cool. He can make his body glow like a flashlight!” Doctor Peter smiled at Mister Joel, but the smile felt a little funny. Mister Joel’s mouth twisted like he’d eaten a lemon.

“Woah,” Lee marveled. A real-life superhero. 

“I know, so cool,” Doctor Peter drawled and Mister Joel looked down at the ground. Lee felt bad. Mister Joel’s face didn’t look like he thought he was so cool. 

“So, Lee, all you have to do is--”

“I bet you’re never afraid of the dark!” Lee blurted out. Mister Joel looked up from his shoes, right at Lee, and Lee balled his fists up with excitement, “I wish I had that superpower!” 

Mister Joel smiled a little and that smile was real. Lee beamed back. He liked making people feel better, too. 

Doctor Peter crouched down and put a warm hand on Lee’s back. Lee turned to watch him, his attention captured entirely and suddenly by the comforting touch. Everything from his mind vanished and he realized how cold the medicine room was. He just wanted to be warm. 

“That’s what’s so special about you, Lee,” Doctor Peter whispered, like it was just their little secret, “You can have that superpower. And that’s the game! Just go over to Mister Joel and give him a nice, firm handshake, like we practiced. And then we’ll turn off the lights and see what happens, okay?” 

Lee nodded, but he didn’t move right away. Doctor Peter had to give him a little shove to make him walk back into the cold.  

iii.

Once, while Lee was walking to the game room, he saw a doctor moving a large silver table with a lump of blankets on top down the hall. A splotchy green arm fell off the side right as they passed. It had a small, round hand. 

Lee startled and grabbed Doctor Peter’s leg. Doctor Peter only broke his stride to replace Lee’s grip with his hand and forced them to keep walking. “That’s why you’re so special, Lee. No one else has made it through the sickness, yet, but you did,” he cooed, but not like he was talking to a child, like he was talking about his favorite toy.

The wind bellowed through the hole in Lee’s chest. 

iv. 

Lee’s throat hurt from wailing, but it felt better than the hole in his chest. He sat on the floor of the large, white room and let the devastation rip through him. It had been hours of this and it wouldn’t stop and it felt like it might have always been this. He didn’t know how it could be anything else. He thought that if he stopped crying, the roaring would come back, and he didn’t want that. 

“Oh, honey, I know--” Doctor Jenny reached out and Lee panicked, backing away from her. He just wanted to be warm, but he didn’t want her to touch him. He didn’t want anyone to touch him ever again.

Doctor Jenny sighed, but didn't try to close the space between them. At least Lee stopped crying. Instead, he was on high-alert. He hiccupped, but he watched her closely, ready to bolt if she so much as flinched. 

“Kiddo, I don’t--”

“No!” he shouted. The defiance felt good. 

“Lee--”

“No!” he screamed, his voice croaking and his gasping breaths uncontrolled and manic. 

“Lee!” she barked, warning, but not unkind. Doctor Jenny had never been unkind. Lee liked her a lot, actually, and the seriousness of her voice made him shrink. The defiance didn’t feel good anymore. He tucked himself behind his knees, sniffling into the cotton of his long pants. He felt so tired, like he’d been running for days and days and days and her yelling reminded him how to stop. 

The room was silent between them for a few moments. Lee could feel Doctor Jenny watching him, but he kept his eyes trained on his toes, watching her knees just outside his field of vision. If she moved towards him again, he would see. 

“I know that was scary for you,” she whispered. When she spoke, Lee could hear the soft echo of her voice in the speaker behind the large mirror to his right. If he focused hard enough, he thought he could feel the other eyes watching them closely from behind the mirror, dissecting his every move, noting every twitch and sob. 

When Lee didn’t respond, Doctor Jenny kept going. Her voice was so soft, but he was so mad. He was so, so mad he wanted her to know how mad he was. 

She said, “But it won’t always be like that. You’re going to get better and better at controlling it.” 

Something sharp twisted in Lee’s chest and he squeezed himself tighter. He tucked his face behind his legs--he didn’t care about watching her anymore, he just wanted the roaring to stop. His entire body seized up with the memory, as if he was trying to put the flames out again. 

It wasn’t fair. A stranger snuck up behind Lee and grabbed the back of his neck. Instantly, every cell in his body sparkled to flame, engulfing him in a horrible, roaring blaze. It didn’t hurt physically, his new superpowers wouldn’t let it. But he could feel his eyes. On fire. His tongue. His bones. He couldn’t hear himself screaming, not when his eardrums had ignited and thundered inside his head. Two minutes. For two minutes, he burned. 

“I’m sorry it was so scary,” she tried again. Lee glanced up, because it sounded like this would be the sort of time she might try to touch him again and he didn’t want that. But she didn’t. Which made Lee relax just the tiniest bit. 

“They didn’t play by the rules,” Lee tried between gasps for breath. He didn’t not want to talk to her--he wanted to be understood, more than anything. 

“The rules have to change,” she explained, very simply. “You’re getting older. It’s important that you keep learning, so the games have to get harder.” 

That made sense, but Lee still didn’t like it. He shrank back behind his knees, his head twisted towards the wall so he didn’t have to look at Doctor Jenny. She got up to leave soon after, promising to get him his dinner, but he stayed where he sat, hiccupping every so often. The tears had dried, but the hole in his chest still hurt enough to make the pins in his nose start dancing again. He started tapping on his knees--one, two, three, four, all the way to six--the amount of “older” needed for the game to get harder. 

v. 

“Wow, that looks great, Cassie!” Lee smiled. 

Cassie looked up with a huge grin, showcasing countless rows of razor-sharp teeth. She lunged off the side of her chair, tossed her crayons onto the table, scattering them all over her drawing of a rainbow, and tried to wrap her arms around Lee’s waist. Lee’s heart leaped into his throat and he quickly moved away, which made her stop. She flashed big, watery eyes at him--all-black, with no whites at the sides--and his stomach fell. 

“I’m sorry, Cassie, you have to warn me!” he pleaded with her. He hated seeing her sad. Thinking quickly, he ran over to the corner where Judah stacked blocks with his long, thin tail, to a sloppily discarded fuzzy pink blanket. When Lee came close, Judah smiled. 

“Hi, Judah, I’m gonna borrow this, ‘kay?” he kind-of-but-not-really asked. Judah nodded ferociously, hoping to tempt Lee to play with his agreeableness, but Lee walked away soon after, leaving Judah pouting. Lee draped the blanket over his shoulders and let it fall to his feet, covering his arms like a wizard’s robe that had been cut in half. He waddled back over to Cassie, kicking the fabric out in front of him so he wouldn’t trip. 

When he finally reached her, he put his arms out wide with a grand, victorious huff. She fell into his warm, fuzzy chest and he squeezed her tight, grinning as he rested his cheek atop the blanket covering her head. They rocked like that for a bit. Cassie had a hole in her chest, too. Lee liked to fill it as much as he could--as much as he could before the panic started again. 

“Lee,” a voice from the door commanded. Lee turned and Doctor Peter stood there, impatient. Lee looked at the clock and shrank a little. He shrugged out of the blanket-hug and went immediately for the door, shoving his hands into his pockets. 

“Sorry, Doctor Peter,” he mumbled. Doctor Peter didn’t say anything and started walking. Lee followed quietly, obediently, two steps behind the doctor, his fist balled up in his pocket. The door to the playroom closed with a loud slice of metal slotting into place and they started down the long, clean hallway together. 

His heart started to race. This might be his only chance. He didn’t even know if he would still be there. He very often wasn’t. Lee knew Doctor Peter was already kinda mad at him, so he tried to soften him. Just a little bit. 

“I think I figured out how to keep the new superpowers quiet,” Lee baited, watching Doctor Peter carefully. 

“We’ll see today,” Doctor Peter said, quite coldly and disinterested. Lee knew that tone of voice. It was disappointed. It sounded like Doctor Peter was giving up on him. Like pin-straight hair like smoke and not-dry laundry. 

“Really, I can do it,” Lee tried, this time trying to cover the sharp pain in his chest coming from Doctor Peter’s rejection. 

“Show me,” Doctor Peter warned, “Don’t just say it. Show me.” 

The terror of being taken away again crept up on Lee so quickly he almost lost track of where they were walking. Lee was only barely tall enough to rise up on his toes and strain to peek into the window of the room they were approaching. In it, he saw a flash of pale white skin, nearly the same color as the scrubs all the children wore. None of the other children were that color; Lee would know, he knew all the children. 

The fear of Doctor Peter’s disappointment and the anxiety of being caught rose up in his mouth like vomit. His body lit up like it was on fire, his muscles nearly cramping from the panic. So quickly, even as his fingers trembled, he grabbed at the little handle in the slot of the door where the guards brought food, and pulled it open. He yanked his fist out of his pants to shove what he’d hidden in his pocket into the opening. He slid the panel shut as quickly and quietly as he could before taking a few long strides to catch up with Doctor Peter, trying hard not to miss a beat. His heart pounded in his ears and he glanced at the window, though he couldn’t see any movement. 

“The power you’re copying today is pretty intense. I hope you can make good on your word.” Doctor Peter said suddenly. 

Lee looked up with wide eyes and finally exhaled. He didn’t even know he had been holding his breath. “I can,” he tried to say as calmly as possible. He glanced behind him at the window one more time and saw only a fraction of a hairless head standing near the door of the room before he turned the corner. He swallowed, chewing his lip on the rest of their walk to the training room. 

The beanie baby he’d hidden in the fluffy blanket during afternoon play the day before had not been moved. He always complimented Cassie--like he complimented everyone--and Cassie always wanted a hug after, so none of the Doctors asked him about it. The cameras in the playroom couldn’t see him putting the hidden toy in his pocket from under the blanket and, if he’d thought about it right, his body blocked his arm moving from the camera in the hallway. If nothing else, it looked like a kid taking a curious peek in another kid’s room before following the Doctor again. Lee was always getting up on his toes to look into windows on his walks. This was nothing new.

If they did find out what he did, he never got into trouble for it. 

And even if it felt like he was being electrocuted, over and over, for two-and-a-half minutes, he was able to keep the lightning superpower contained in his body. He tried what he’d been practicing: he locked up every muscle in his body, even held his breath for as long as he could, which was easier than he thought it would be. He ended up losing a wiggly tooth from clenching his teeth so hard, but he kept it all inside. He didn’t even scream. Doctor Peter nodded at him.

And a kid who was always alone had a new lobster friend. 

It was a pretty good day.

vi. 

“What happens to the person who loses the game?” Lee asked, never taking his eyes off the boy at the other end of the room. His body was coiled tight, his hands shaking from the electricity coursing through him, though the rest of him was still. He’d copied this power enough times by then that he could remain relatively relaxed and focused through the buzzing. Nothing new about it. 

What was new was the boy at the other end of the room. Lee recognized him--or at least the top of his head. He didn’t understand why the first time they were meeting was like this, not in the playroom like everyone else. He didn’t like it. 

“You only have two minutes and forty-five seconds before you lose your powers, Lee,” Doctor Peter warned.

The other boy turned his head to the Doctor, catching that little bit of information. He looked like a snake when he did that, quick and hungry and cold. 

“What happens?!” Lee repeated, a little louder. The boy snapped back to watch Lee.

“No dinner,” Doctor Peter said simply. Lee couldn’t tell if he’d just decided that or if he’d known that all along.

“What?!” Lee asked in disbelief. He turned his body to Doctor Peter slightly, though he left himself some safety to bolt if the other boy decided to lunge. He didn’t know what kind of power the boy had. Lee didn’t want to be touched. “That’s not fair!”

“Two minutes and thirty seconds,” Doctor Peter sighed. 

Lee immediately dropped to the ground and crossed his arms. He didn’t know what else to do. He felt so helpless and angry. 

“Lee,” Doctor Peter sounded tired. 

“No,” Lee stated, resolute. The hairless boy tilted his head. 

“Lee, get up,” Doctor Peter said, a little more aggravated. 

“I said. No,” Lee grit out, glaring back. He’d spent hours that day copying powers and letting Doctor Peter poke and prod him with needles. He was at his wit’s end and he was tired and hungry and, worse, he couldn’t imagine how tired and hungry the hairless boy must have been. 

“Lee! Get up!” Doctor Peter yelled, finally pushing himself off the wall to walk towards Lee. 

“No!” Lee yelled just as loud, staring right up at Doctor Peter, the electricity sitting deep in his gut turning into rage, “It’s not fair! I’m not playing a game if someone has to go to bed hungry! That’s not right! I said no!” 

The hairless boy took a step forward and Lee felt instantly washed over with silence. Relief. The buzzing stopped. Doctor Peter stopped his advance and watched, bringing the stopwatch back up in front of him. Lee backed away by instinct, a thrill of fear coursing through him, but as he pulled himself back, the buzzing returned, his hands started shaking. Lee quickly pulled himself to his feet, watching the boy in quiet wonder. The boy watched him back in silent calculation. Lee stepped forward and the buzzing stopped and he breathed. He took another step, reaching his hand out, testing more. The boy’s face changed, his lip curling and his eyes going wild with confusion. The boy’s head dropped, like a tiger readying itself to pounce, and the buzzing in Lee’s body returned. 

“Wait,” Lee begged softly, taking a few more steps forward. Every few steps, he would cross an invisible threshold and the buzzing would stop. He’d have a beautiful moment of silence. But every few steps, all the same, the threshold would shrink closer and closer to the boy in front of him. Lee kept chasing it, chasing the quiet, the peace until his hand nearly brushed the boy’s shoulder. When Lee came back to himself, he realized he had nearly forced the boy into a far corner. The boy was breathing short, shallow breaths and his fingers trembled as he gripped the wall behind him. Lee pulled his hand back immediately, holding it against his chest. He never wanted to scare him. He didn’t mean it. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, turning to present his shoulder, “Here. You tag me. I don’t wanna win.” 

“Fucking damn it, Lee,” Doctor Peter groaned. He waved his hand and went for the door. Suddenly, two big guardsmen entered the room behind him and the hairless boy grabbed his head and fell to the ground. Lee thought his expressionless face might have looked--a little afraid. 

Without thinking, Lee stepped forward in front of the boy. “Stop it!” Lee shouted. The buzzing returned and so did the rage. The guards continued to advance, unphased by the threats of a child. White-hot, blinding anger seared across Lee’s vision. He was so tired, he was so, so tired of everyone being so afraid. He always did what he was told, he always obeyed and said sorry, he gave what he could spare and still. Still they could be so mean. Exhausted and cornered, Lee screamed out and a bolt of lightning shredded out from his body and careened into an opposite corner of the room. The sound of it tore through the air with a horrible pop. 

He felt a sharp poke in his neck and blackness started to creep into the corners of his vision. Large hands grabbed at his arms and yanked, nearly pulling them out of the sockets. They lifted him into the air, even as he tried to thrash. “No!” he protested weakly, but his body went limp and he was carried out into darkness in seconds. 

He wasn’t let into the playroom for a week. Instead, he was forced to train for hours until he was vomiting, but flawless. He received many lectures from Doctor Jenny on the importance of maintaining control. 

But he knew he didn’t lose control. Not of the powers.

He’d have to work on that.

vii. 

“You don’t like to talk, huh?” Lee asked. 

The hairless boy didn’t say anything, only watched Lee from behind his knees. 

“Doctor Jenny said we might make a good team one day,” Lee offered, continuing to ferry items over from various corners of the playroom. He’d already put a coloring book and a box of markers in front of the boy, but he didn’t seem interested. Then Lee tried a book-book with a stuffed bunny on the cover, but he didn’t want that either, so Lee started gathering scattered Legos into a plastic bin to bring over next. 

“Maybe it’s because I talk a lot and you don’t talk at all.” He looked up with a smile, but the boy just kept glaring out of the corner of his eye. Lee shrugged. He understood. Lots of kids were shy during their first couple of days. Though, if he really thought about it, the boy had been there for a while, at least from the first time Lee saw him. Maybe he’d met other kids. Maybe they didn’t make a good first impression. He started walking over with the bin of Legos. 

“I’m sorry about the other time I saw you,” Lee started, setting the bin down and sitting across from him. He picked up a few pieces and started joining them. “I wasn’t very nice.”

The boy didn’t speak or move, just watched Lee’s hands fish around for more of the right pieces to join. 

Lee had an idea.

“Doctor Peter was really pinching my nerves.” Lee glanced up. The boy didn’t react. Lee kept building more. “Yeah, I was getting really red with anger.” Lee looked up again, eyes a little bigger and more expectant, but the boy didn’t budge. He was looking at the box of Legos. Lee frowned. He was running out of ideas. 

Then, “I was getting almost as red as a lobster.”

The boy looked up.

It took everything inside Lee not to leap up with joy, and yet, he couldn’t keep it inside. He started cackling uncontrollably, grabbing the collar of his shirt to pull up over his face to hide. He leaned back, enjoying the thrill of being understood in his deepest, darkest secret, but he composed himself as quickly as he could, even if his mouth was still pinched, trying to hide his smile and conceal the lingering giggles. He tried to focus on building, but nothing seemed as important as their secret. 

After a moment, and once the laughter died (though the smile didn’t), the boy reached into the bin and pulled out a single piece, slow and unsure. 

Lee whispered his name to the boy, loving the feeling that they had things that were just for themselves, something that brought them together. 

The boy grabbed another piece. They stayed separate, one in each hand. His eyes changed, then. He didn’t look so much like a snake then. He looked much, much more like a kid. The boy breathed and it had almost no sound, but Lee understood him with perfect clarity. 

Lee decided Jesse would be his friend and the hole in his chest filled the tiniest bit. 

viii. 

Lee couldn’t get out of bed without being dragged out after seeing Jesse in the tube the first time. And even then, he refused to react, to play games, or talk with the other children. He couldn’t understand why they would do this. He couldn’t forgive them for it. 

“If you keep this up, they’ll kill you.” 

Lee blinked at Doctor Jesse.

“If you’re mad, figure out how to make it work for you, or you die.”

So he did.

ix.

Sixty new mutations in one month. That was the deal.  They only took him into the city on weekdays--and not even every weekday--which meant he really only had twenty days, which meant he needed to copy three every day he was out. Some days he was able to copy four or five, but that only made up for the deficit left on other days. Over two years of training, he’d gotten very good at holding and storing the mutations; the needles and blood-draws didn’t bother him at all anymore. He was even able to test some of the powers in secret and inform the doctors what he was storing. No, the keeping wasn’t hard, it was the finding. Finding any mutant was difficult enough without Lee touching every stranger on the street; finding sixty completely unique mutants was nearly impossible in such a short time.

But sixty was the deal and sixty he provided.

Once the last vial of blood had been drawn, Lee looked up at Doctor Peter expectantly. Looking up made his lashes feel even heavier, but he didn’t care. He wanted his prize for winning. 

Lee didn’t speak out of turn as often anymore, but Doctor Peter addressed him after a few seconds of feeling Lee stare him down, “What?”

“I got sixty-two,” Lee replied. There wasn’t any new genetic information in that vial. At least Lee didn’t think so. Because his mutation only lasted four minutes at a time, any time he copied a power, he had to sprint for the van waiting for him to get his blood drawn. When they returned to the lab, they always drew one last vial as a control group. The boring blood. He felt a cough nearing, but he stifled it. He didn’t want Doctor Peter to have any excuses. 

“And?” Doctor Peter asked, not turning from organizing the vials of Lee’s blood. 

“You promised.” Lee stifled a pout. He wasn’t a child anymore. He was eight years old. He wasn’t going to whine. 

“Did I?” Doctor Peter tossed over his shoulder. He went back to clinking the tiny glasses around. 

“You agreed,” Lee corrected. He thought that sounded a little more mature.

“Mm,” Doctor Peter mused. He turned around finally and his face was—different. It reminded Lee of what he used to look like, years ago. Softer. “Okay, go head to the playroom. I’ll bring him in.” 

Lee couldn’t stop his eyes from getting big. He rolled his sleeve down and hurried off the chair, but stopped at the door before turning around and hurrying to Doctor Peter. He puffed up his chest and extended his hand. He saw the men in suits do this. He felt a little silly, but it seemed like the right thing to do. Doctor Peter’s face changed and he took Lee’s hand. 

Lee shook Doctor Peter’s hand with one, mature shake. “Thank you, sir,” he said, trying desperately not to sound so excited, before hurrying back out the door.

Lee burst into the playroom, which he knew would be empty at this time of day. The others were probably having dinner or evening lessons, so Lee took the opportunity to gather all of the books and activities and new toys Jesse hadn’t seen yet. When new things came in, Lee tried hard not to touch them. Mostly to save the newness for the younger kids, but also so that he could experience the newness with Jesse. He didn’t want to do them and then pretend he’d never done them before. That would be dishonest. He laid all the new items out in the corner they usually sat in, chose a beanbag for himself, draped the fuzzy pink blanket over his body, and waited, butterflies in his stomach and a grin unmoving from his face.

...

When Lee opened his eyes again, Jesse was sitting on the ground next to him, resting his chin on one knee and leafing through one of the books. Something hot and bright scurried through Lee’s body and he shot forward, tackling Jesse to the ground. 

Jesse seemed smaller in his arms, somehow, but Lee didn’t mind. 

“Jesse! Why didn’t you wake me up?!” He nosed into Jesse’s cheek, which felt cold and soft. 

Jesse made a tiny sound that Lee learned to mean “I don’t want to bother you” and “I’m sorry” all at once before balling his fists up in Lee’s shirt. 

“I’m sorry I fell asleep, but don’t do that!” Lee scolded. He didn’t wait for Jesse to answer before he untangled himself from the blanket he wrapped them up in when he leaped from the beanbag. He gently righted Jesse next to him. “What are you reading? Is it good?” 

Jesse made an unsure sound, then, quietly, “It’s okay.” 

Lee squeezed up next to Jesse, “Okay! I’ll read it with you. You turn the page whenever you’re ready.” 

Jesse hid his hands between his legs. “We don’t have to,” he mumbled. 

“Do you want to?” Lee asked, leaning forward and turning his head so he could look at Jesse. “And don’t say no because you think that’s what I want! Tell me what you reeeeeally want!” 

Jesse looked away, then looked back at Lee. He twisted his mouth and looked away again, his breaths going shallow. Lee waited for him. He was always happy waiting for Jesse, especially if they got to do what Jesse really wanted to do. He really liked when Jesse got to do what he wanted. Jesse never got that. 

“I want you to pick,” Jesse admitted.

“Okay!” Lee said, looking around at their treasure trove of new toys. Jesse relaxed deeply when Lee accepted his answer, finally allowing his weight to fall onto Lee. Lee reached for a puzzle book and a box of crayons and put it in front of them. He hadn't tried it yet and he knew Jesse would like the puppies on the cover. He handed the crayons to Jesse and wiggled deeper into the blanket. He could do the activities anytime. He liked watching Jesse do them.

As Jesse took on each puzzle, one by one, methodical and clean, Lee sank deeper into Jesse’s shoulder, his exhaustion returning with a vengeance. The flipping of the pages was soothing. He yawned twice in the span of one maze and it was getting harder and harder to keep his eyes open. 

“We don’t have to play,” Jesse finally whispered. He sounded sad. 

Lee sat up instantly, blinking hard, “No, I’m sorry!” Jesse dropped the crayon and reached for Lee’s arm under the blanket. He pulled and Lee went willingly, falling back onto Jesse’s shoulder. He breathed in deep and sighed. 

“Why are you so tired?” Jesse asked. 

“Just training,” Lee mumbled. He felt more comfortable there in the crook of Jesse’s neck than he did on the beanbag, even. 

“No lies,” Jesse mumbled, his hand weaving under the blanket to hold Lee’s hand.

Lee went a little pink before closing his eyes. It burned, but in a really nice way. “Harder training than ever before,” he amended. He didn’t want Jesse to know. He didn’t know why he thought it should stay a secret, but it felt better than Jesse feeling bad for how hard Lee had to work. “Let me borrow your stars,” Lee asked. 

Jesse squeezed Lee’s hand with the effort it took, but soon enough, it was beautifully quiet. No whirring of the AC, no echo of the speaker behind the mirrored glass, nothing but Jesse’s heartbeat right under his ear. With each th-thump, a new star emerged behind his eyes, a collection of teal and orange and red and green. Lee practically purred, nosing in deeper and letting the universe pour out from his body onto Jesse. Jesse let out the tiniest noise on the tail of an exhale, almost like a whimper. Lee scooted in closer, replying with a noise of his own to let him know it was okay. It was warm, right there, and the hole in his chest felt full again. 

They both sank a bit deeper into each other, a maze left unfinished at their feet. 

x. 

Lee fell to his knees and a howl of unimaginable pain tore its way out of him. 

It was gone. All of it. Leveled. 

It’d only been two weeks. He found a phaser to pay for a vial of blood. He had planned with such precision, down to the last detail, from the attic of an abandoned building. And it was gone, only the footprint of the foundation remaining. 

They knew. What would hurt him the worst. They might not ever find him, he might run until the sun burns out. He was smart enough to do it, too. But they knew. What would hurt. What would punish him the most. And it did. 

And Lee was. Empty. For the first time in years, the wind bellowed through the hole in his chest. They didn’t even leave so much as a fucking piece of paper. 

Jesse was gone. Dead, maybe. It felt like it. Like laundry that never quite dried. 

If he had known, he never would have left. If he had known, he would have ripped Jesse from his tube. If he had known, if he had known, if he had known. 

But he didn’t know. 

Then Jesse was gone. 

And the universe with it. 

[encomiium]

Two Conversations in and Around the City 23 December 2023 A Duet About Trust and Healing

i.

Going home had never felt this lonely before. 

Before, going home after work felt like triumph, like crossing the finish line after a marathon. Every muscle would sparkle with the blissful, bubbling seafoam of being consumed. He used to be able to fall into his bed, moan into his pillows as the sun came over the horizon, and sigh over the delicious silence of his own space. 

Now, Lear sat in a fucking pew, beneath an effigy of a murdered demigod, because going back to a silent home was just not an option. But walking back into the parish house felt just as much like not-an-option. The compromise seemed to be, logically, if he couldn’t stand to be alone, to keep company with the figure of a corpse hanging above an altar. 

As Lear stared up at Christ’s somber face, his body buzzed traitorously, the feel-good chemicals ravaging every inch. It was--nice. But it didn’t feel good, not like it used to. Still, it made his brain quiet, at least, his eyelids heavy. He did not bother to pull the collar of his shirt closed when he slumped down into the chair to stare up at the statue under the long, repetitive gothic arches. It was cool--not cold--in the spring; the cool--not cold--air felt good on the wounds along his neck and shoulder and that’s all that really mattered.

The pew behind him creaked. Lear had sat there, silently in a trance, unburdened from the loudness of the shoreline crashing in his ears, trying to convince himself the heaviness in his body felt good, and he hadn’t noticed anyone approaching. He thought he should panic, startle, but he didn’t. Instead, he stared ahead and whoever sat behind him leaned forward and rested his arms on the back of Lear’s pew. Lear didn’t even have enough energy to glance to the side to get a look at whoever it was, but out of the corner of his eye, he saw soft blonde curls.

“Are you okay?” the boy asked. He didn’t have the voice of a boy, but his presence felt boyish and distantly familiar. 

Lear didn’t answer. He mostly lacked the energy or interest, but part of him hoped if he didn’t engage, the boy would just go away. 

“You’re bleeding,” the boy whispered. 

Lear felt him reach out and he moved away. “Leave it.”

The boy withdrew his hand and it disappeared behind the back of the pew. A shadow felt heavier somewhere in the corner, but Lear didn’t pay it much notice. Shadows in churches.

Lear finally glanced over, hoping to watch the boy leave, but the boy stayed, watching, his blue eyes startlingly clear in the darkness. He had to have been practically off his own seat leaning so far forward to try to talk to Lear. 

“My name is Abraham,” he said. Lear finally recognized his voice, his halo of gold curls. He’d only seen it in the miasma of his delirium, the shouting, the panic, but he remembered thinking he was beautiful and warm.

Lear didn’t answer, a muscle in his jaw jumping from the force of clamping his teeth shut even tighter. 

“I like coming here, too. When I just need quiet time to think.” Abraham flinched. “I guess I’m not really helping with that.”

Lear huffed and Abraham smiled and scooted a little closer. 

“Why don’t you want to go to bed?” Abraham asked, quiet and sincere. He was so honest, Lear could feel it, that same warm feeling he felt that night in the club. It was purely instinctive, as if his soul was fighting through the weighted blanket of his body to scream out that this boy was safe, home, protect, accompany, revere. Millions of years of genetic code written into his body wanted to take this boy into his arms and swear fealty. 

He felt the same way about the boy in the grave, from the very first moment he had told him he was beautiful. It was honesty. Real honesty. 

Overwhelmed, defeated, Lear finally whispered, “I don’t know.” 

“That’s okay,” Abraham said. He reached out again to put his hand on his shoulder and Lear didn’t move this time. The shadow in the corner relaxed and Lear’s lashes began to burn. 

Abraham hadn’t carried him, but he had stayed near Lear’s head the entire journey to the church. Lear couldn’t make out what his companion said between the ringing in his ears and the howling, frothing pain that shot through his body from two little pinpricks in his neck, but he remembered Abraham’s voice, clear as a bell, just once. I know it hurts. It’s going to be okay.

“How did you know?” Lear asked, his breath catching in his chest.

Abraham didn’t need an explanation. “I saw it. In a vision.” He sounded sad and Lear’s brows knit even further. He finally turned away from Christ to look at His prophet.

“But--why? I don’t--” I’m nothing, Lear wanted to say, but couldn’t. Because he knew Arlo would be upset. Because he’d learned, in two short seasons, it wasn’t true.

“Because you needed help,” Abraham answered so simply it felt like devastation, like God leveling Gomorrah with only a whisper. His thumb swept peaceful, gentle arcs over the little stars embedded in Lear’s shoulder.

Lear tried to clamp his jaw shut once more, tried to keep it all in and protect it from the stone walls and the rectory, but Abraham breathed. He breathed just in the right way and stone walls became a rocky shore and a prophet became a prince. Once the transfiguration occurred, Lear could keep no secrets.

“I don’t want to go to the house because I don’t want to see the venom in Alioth’s arm,” Lear admitted. Saying it felt like tossing a boulder off his chest and he finally took in a belly full of air, even if the exhale came out broken and guilty. He was crying then, the salt forming little crystals on his cheeks. “And I can’t go home, so I just--” Lear’s lip wobbled, “He wasn’t supposed to take it. No one was. It was supposed to be for me. I wish--I wish you’d just left me there. I wish you’d just left me there.”

Lear leaned forward onto his knees. He hadn’t meant to move out of Abraham’s reach, but all the better. He buried his head in a cage of his arms, his fingers digging into his cropped hair, his profuse shame finally piercing through the armor of his numbness in a thicket of ugly, vengeful red blossoms. It felt like a boy getting into a car at the coast and driving away. It felt like all the animals in the forest turning away from him when he wanted to play. It felt like spears thrust through the bars of a cage, like his horn through a fleshy stomach.

But just as the squelching in his ears became too loud, warmth surrounded him and the noise vanished. Abraham moved quickly from the pew behind to drape his body over Lear’s hunched back in a tight embrace. He let Lear cry just like that for a little while before finally speaking.

“You would have been missed too badly,” Abraham said. Beside Gomorrah, Sodom fell to the earth in pillars of salt. He pulled away and rubbed little circles over Lear’s back. More complex than circles. Symbols. Lear didn’t recognize them, but something in his soul sang for them. “And Alioth is going to be okay. He was never going to let you suffer.”

Lear sat up finally, the cool air rushing to his reddened face. He ran the back of his wrist under his nose and shook his head, sniffling, “I didn’t deserve to be helped.” He cast his eyes down, the garden of his shame turning into a mass of thorns beneath the tremble of his confession, “I let him poison me.” Lear’s throat closed, choking on the words, “I didn’t deserve--” 

“Don’t--” Abraham interrupted, gentle, but firm, “No one needs to deserve help. Ever.”

Lear didn’t look up. Instead, he stared down at the woven fabric of the thin seat cushion below them. His jaw trembled, but he nodded, though he wasn’t sure he really believed him. 

Abraham lowered his voice, like he was telling a schoolyard secret, “Bronn is probably going to make miso for breakfast. He always does that when he’s worried.” Abraham had the decency to look a little ashamed, but his eyes sparkled with excitement.

Lear’s laugh was wet and pathetic when it bubbled up. He ran the back of his wrist under his nose again. The thought of them worrying--caring. His lashes burned anew.

“Do you want to go to bed now?” Abraham asked, his hand warm against the small of Lear’s back.

Lear worried his lip. He was still scared, still ashamed, guilty. He glanced down to Abraham’s hand resting on his knee to find the spot on his wrist that shimmered pale white all the way around. He’d seen the scar on the night he was rescued. He remembered thinking, Another caged bird. Lear looked up to Abraham’s eyes, bright and hopeful. And he thought, maybe, just one more time, he could be strong enough to hope a home could last. 

--

ii.

Cool air bit into Buck’s cheeks when he pushed the door open to the roof. He had sprinted up the stairs, some six or seven flights, but barely lost a breath. When John had woken him in Monty’s spare bed, worried that something was wrong, Buck didn’t waste time changing, just followed him into the night in long flannel pants and nothing else, unquestioning, with singular purpose. 

John had looked panicked, searching up and down the street until he paused and stared out into the night, farther than Buck could see. He was beautiful like that, hunting. If he didn't respect John's work so deeply, Buck would have stolen a kiss. Instead, John turned, pretty eyes as deep as molasses staring up at Buck, scared. Buck understood the look immediately, even if John was too polite to say.

“Go. Call out to me. I’ll hear you.” John disappeared and a moment later, Buck felt his own name pet his cheek and he stared into the same spot in the night John had locked onto just moments before. 

John was right to leave. It took Buck a little while to get to the roof and by that time, they had already devolved into shouting. The sound of the metal bar clanging against the door made the two of them look up. 

Cary narrowed his eyes and hissed at John, “You brought your fucking dog?!”

Buck ignored the slight and crossed the short distance across the roof to crouch down beside him. Cary sat in a mess of his own feathers, his back curled over one of his wings tucked up into his chest, like he was protecting it from John. Buck had never seen his wings before--he’d never seen any of their wings before--but he was surprised to see they weren’t white like snow. They were always white like snow in the pictures on Cyrus’s phone. 

“I thought you were being attacked!” John defended, reaching out for Cary. Gravel skittered under Cary’s foot as he kicked himself away, baring his teeth in a snarl. 

“I’m. Fine,” he growled, gathering his other wing under his arm and away from John’s touch. He realized, instantly, he had only moved closer to Buck and he squeezed his wings tighter to his body. Buck caught him flinching, some sharp pain moving up his back, making his eyes clench tight and his breath stop in his chest. 

When he froze, Buck finally had a moment to really look over his injuries. He was missing a lot of feathers, and the ones still clinging to him laid askew in all different directions. He spotted hard, grotesque ivory peeking out between the soft downing and Buck couldn’t stop himself from wincing sympathetically. Cary caught him at a glance. 

“You see?!” Cary accused, his glare sweeping from Buck to John, “So just-- go the fuck away and mind your fucking business!” 

John opened his mouth to argue, but Buck interrupted. “You must be in so much pain,” he said quietly, reaching out.

Cary kicked himself away again. “Fuck you!” he spat. “I don’t need your help!” He dropped his wings to twist down onto his hands and push himself up, “No, you know what, fuck this, if you won’t leave me the fuck alone--” He tried to stand, but his legs crumpled under him and Buck quickly followed to catch him. 

“Get off me!” Cary ground out through gritted teeth, fighting to push away from Buck’s chest. Buck held him loosely. Cary wouldn’t have had to try too hard to break free, but he lacked even the strength to pry himself from the loose cage of Buck’s arms. “I don’t need your help!” he yelled again, but it sounded more like a sob.

“We’re not helping you,” Buck said, soft and kind, as if to a pup. Cary struggled, but less than before, so Buck slowly lowered him to the ground. John followed, his hands out as if to cradle Cary’s wings as they fell. “We’re not helping you,” he repeated, the cage of his arms closing a little tighter around Cary’s waist. He moved his hand up Cary’s back and pressed him down further into his chest, until, finally, after pushing away even as they sat, he could no longer resist the warmth of Buck’s skin and he stopped struggling. Cary’s fists shook under his body and he groaned, but he stopped struggling. 

Buck stared at John and without prompting, John bit into his lip and pressed his fingers into Cary’s wings. Cary reacted immediately, gasping, his body pressing up into Buck’s. Cary’s fists splayed out over Buck’s chest as he whined, his insults and coarse tongue turning into whimpers and sobs. 

John stopped when he found something. Cary stiffened and made a noise as if begging him not to.

“God, I’m sorry,” John mumbled. Silence.

John yanked. 

Something snapped.

Cary screamed something strangled and horrible.

But Buck only held him tighter.

[encomiium]

A Rabbit 27 November 2023 Buck

i. 

“I would like to request a personal leave.” 

Director Pine did not look up from his papers. He continued to slowly run the backs of his fingers over the stubble at his jawline. The sound of it was pleasant, rhythmic; it was coarse, but familiar. “It doesn’t sound like you’re requesting anything,” he sighed, tossing his papers aside to lean back in his large leather chair. He slipped his reading glasses from his nose, one of the arms pinched between his fingers as he rubbed a knuckle over one eye. His heart was beating faster than normal: he was exhausted and Buck regretted the bad timing. 

Buck ducked his head and shrugged, his mouth twisting when he didn’t have anything to say. He wasn’t asking for anything. They could try, but no one could really keep him there. They all knew that. Still, Buck liked these people. He didn’t want to be disrespectful. 

“How long?” the Director asked.

"Five days,” Buck said, his gaze flicking up to meet the Director’s eyes before he looked away again to a plaque on a wall that he couldn’t read, “Maybe a week?”

The Director nodded, considering, “Christmas?” he asked. It was clearly a trap, but not one the Director attempted to hide. His eyes challenged him, daring him to lie. So Buck didn’t. 

“No,” he admitted, “Pack stuff.”

The Director was very good with his face, not a single emotion betrayed him, but Buck could scent the tiniest shifts in his pheromones. No sweat, no jaw clenches. Even if the Director took his time, Buck could tell he trusted him, so Buck offered a bit of trust in return. 

“I wouldn’t go if it weren’t important,” he tried. His chest tightened. Fear ran through him for the briefest moment. The back of his neck prickled, as if teeth had slowly closed around it.

“I know you wouldn’t, Buck,” the Director acquiesced, stretching his neck, “I appreciate you at least telling me this time.” 

Buck ducked his head again, flinching at the memory of how he ran off after a mission when he’d caught Texas’s scent on the wind. He glanced up, trying to gauge how sorry he had to be, but the Director was smiling, if not a little sad. He wasn’t angry. 

So Buck breathed, nodded, and returned the smile, “Thank you, sir.”

--

ii.

Buck left one of his SHIELD-issued hoodies on Cyrus’s bed. 

He said he was going to visit Texas. 

He had never lied to Cyrus and this was not a lie. It was as much not a lie as saying that the nothing he talked to was a spirit that humans couldn’t see. It didn’t feel good. But it was the right thing to do.

He hoped Cyrus would use it. 

--

iii.

It took two days to travel to Texas’s farm.

Twice, he hesitated, stopping mid-run to lay down and think. Well, not so much think, as feel. Texas had a pack now, a family, a mate, a pup. Twice, Buck waited to see if the tugging on his heart might snap, might lead him away from the path that jeopardized everything Texas had fought for. His breath fogged in the moonlight, snow drifted peacefully down, and the forest was quiet in his presence. All life halted around him, holding their breath in the presence of a predator. 

And still, he ended up at Texas’s door. He couldn’t make this choice for Texas. He couldn’t take that away from him.

Sam’s voice was loud from inside the house. Buck waited outside with Otis, wearing SHIELD fatigues he left in their home. He watched Otis drag a stick through the snow, creating little pictures in the powder as they both pretended not to know that Texas and Sam were arguing. 

“Papa Sam doesn’t understand,” Otis said suddenly, his raven hair hanging over his face as he stared down at his drawing of a tree, his cheek resting on one of his knees. 

“What do you mean?” Buck asked.

Otis lifted his stick and tapped it on Buck’s hand, over the long white lines forever etched into his skin. He then lifted his face, the gnarled scar over his eye that had scarred it shut crinkled when he furrowed his brow. His gaze was so unbelievably and tragically wise for his years.

“He doesn’t understand what it’s like,” Otis whispered, a secret the three of them shared. 

“He’s worried,” Buck said just as quietly. The voices inside weren’t so audible anymore, reduced to murmurs muffled by skin. 

“I am, too,” Otis replied, looking down to dot little circles all over the tree in the snow. A Christmas tree.

Buck's heart clenched and he abandoned the thought. 

“But I know Dad has to. He just. He has to,” Otis mumbled, nodding to himself. 

Buck moved closer and wrapped an arm around the pup with a heavy sigh. Neither of them needed the warmth. And yet, they both desperately needed it.

--

iv.

Buck didn’t tell John. 

He didn’t want a parting to be the last thing John remembered of him, if it went badly.

He wanted John to remember how deeply he was wanted, how desperately he was loved.

--

v.

Buck and Texas barely crossed into the pack’s territory before the smell of mold filled Buck’s nostrils and his bond bubbled to life, like hot tar oozing just beneath his skin.

“So quiet.” 

Buck hadn’t heard his voice in almost two years and yet it felt like it had always been there, waiting to be just close enough. Buck stopped in a small clearing, the forest dense save for a space just large enough for him to stand comfortably. In that clearing, the grass refused to grow and snow refused to stick. Texas paused at the edge of it, his ears pinned back to his head, but no more. A good and proud alpha, he would not submit to the painful memory of it. It was smart, at least, if nothing else. Any scent of Texas would be mistaken as the ghost of his entrails still clinging to the unhealed Earth. 

Buck’s ears moved wildly about his head as he listened for the thundering of paws he knew was already heading for them. Texas turned and ran a bit further into the darkness. Buck was too big to hide, but Texas? He may as well be the shadows. He’d practiced long enough. 

Even cut-off from the pack, unable to hear their thoughts clearly, Buck could feel the echoes of a conversation skittering around him, like roaches under foliage. 

“I’ve heard you calling for me, wanting for me.” His voice was louder now. He was coming. Buck widened his stance and lowered his head, his eyes glaring unflinchingly into the treeline.

“Oh, my love, if I had known you were coming back to me so needy, I would have brought you a rabbit.” 

Buck snarled, his temper slipping. His mate prodded at a raw nerve with a sick chuckle, he always knew how to make Buck feel small, how to make his thoughts seem stupid and his needs irrelevant. But Buck knew better now. He closed his lips over his teeth, the snarl settling into a growl rumbling deep in his chest. He calmed himself with a breath. He would not be controlled. Not anymore.

The growls and snarls came first. Then glowing eyes began to emerge from the darkness, then sharp fangs glinting with drool in the moonlight, then sharp-angled, misshapen things. A group of six began to circle Buck, one’s teeth chattering behind foam. They were grotesquely thin, their ribs jutting out beyond their narrow shoulders under raw, furless skin. Their backs arched, like they were shying away from their own hunger, each vertebrae protruding along their spines. Buck recoiled. He did not recognize any of these wolves by sight or scent. He hoped the last few good wolves of the pack had finally split off, because what was left had been ravaged by sickness and famine under a greedy, selfish alpha. 

Buck and Texas were badly outnumbered, even skeletal as the others were. He could see it in their eyes, the craving, the watering maws; what they lacked in size they made up for in starvation. His mate had learned his lesson. He would need a small army to contain Buck.

Without warning, the wind changed and the smell of mold became unbearable. Buck spun around and the circle of wolves around him lunged and snapped at his movement.

“Lucky pup,” his mate sneered.

From the trees, attempting to take him from downwind, Dakota finally emerged. He was rail-thin and bizarrely older, much older than he should have been if only two years had passed. In a moment of weakness, Buck’s guard fell as he marveled. He tilted his head. 

Dakota looked--small. So much smaller than Buck remembered. 

Dakota’s eyes narrowed as he felt the thought float across Buck’s mind. He lowered his head and snarled and Buck quickly matched him, every muscle and sinew coiling, ready, and then--

Silence.

Eerie, strangled silence. 

“Tantrum over, Buck? Finally coming home?” a voice came from the trees and Buck’s blood ran cold. 

Slate stepped out from behind Dakota. His bare feet crunched along the cold branches and dead leaves below. He stood with his hands behind his back, his long human frame pale in the moonlight. He refused to afford Buck the esteem of coming as a wolf, as if he knew Buck would never touch him, even in his most vulnerable state. “Come now, let’s let it all rest, hm?” he shrugged, going so far as to flash a smile at Buck. Not a single one of them budged.

Slate looked horrifically healthy by comparison to the others, his chin tilted proudly to the moon as he stared at Buck, who towered over him at least two-fold in this form. He was at-ease, relaxed. Their prized alpha, the most powerful wolf for miles. He smelled of rot and gore and something unnaturally sweet, like antifreeze: he truly did not expect a fight. 

And that mistake would cost him his life. 

A streak of gray sprinted out from the shadows, ivory flashed around pale skin, and chaos erupted.

--

vi.

Slate shifted just as Texas closed his teeth around his neck and they disappeared behind trees in a tangle of fur and a chorus of snarls. 

“Dead! He’s supposed to be--!” 

The scent of blood blossomed and the circle of starved wolves bolted into action. Two of the six sprinted after the two alphas. Another two dove forward and snapped their jaws around Buck’s back paws before he could evade, one’s teeth slicing deep behind his Achilles tendon and yanking, sending white-hot pain up his leg and into his spine. He freed one of his legs and stomped--hard--and felt the sickening crack of the wolf’s skull beneath his paw. One.

Another attempted to leap for his neck while Buck spun, snapping his jaws at the wolf thrashing its head wildly around his tendon. The last managed to sink its teeth and claws into Buck’s shoulder, its weight dragging it down and slicing into Buck’s muscle. 

Dakota continued to circle, calculating.

Just as Buck snarled and turned his head to rid himself of the wolf at his shoulder, the wolf still on the ground attempted one more snap at his neck and Buck caught it by the lower jaw. He whipped his head to the side and the squelch of flesh tearing nearly drowned out the wolf’s horrid scream. Blood sprayed over Buck’s face and the wolf’s weight was almost instantly relieved from its jaw as it bounced to the forest floor. It tried to squirm, but was dead in seconds. Two.

Just as Buck dropped the dismembered jaw, the wolf behind him finally twisted hard enough to tear through his tendon. The snap reverberated through his body and the sharp pain forced a yelp from his chest. He stumbled, giving the wolf enough time to lunge for his other leg. The one at his shoulder bit again and again and again, drawing more blood and mangling the flesh.

With a snarl and a heave powered purely by adrenaline, Buck charged towards a nearby tree, white-hot pain shooting through his leg with each step, dragging the wolf behind with him. He threw his shoulder into the trunk, forcing his entire weight onto the wolf hanging there. Something cracked and the wolf squealed an agonized yelp before flopping down to the roots below. It convulsed, its limbs flailing wildly and its eyes wild with confusion. Buck rushed to its throat, his jaws easily large enough to encircle the wolf’s entire neck, and bit down to end its suffering. Three.

Something excruciating tore into Buck’s side and the smell of mold permeated the scent of blood. Dakota sank his teeth into Buck’s ribs and tore, sending dark blood in whetted spatters across the dead forest floor. Buck shook him off with a snarl before twisting and grabbing the last wolf by the loose skin at its shoulder blades. The pain of it made the wolf cry out and snap wildly, finally releasing Buck’s leg.

Buck turned and hurled it into Dakota. The two wolves made contact with a heavy thud, their limbs scattering dead leaves as they tumbled. The smaller wolf scrambled to its feet first and cowered when it looked up at Buck, as if only then realizing Buck’s size. It turned and took off into the night, its tail between its legs. Four. 

Dakota pulled himself up after a moment, his gaze hateful and unflinching. “So this is what it is, Buck? After everything I gave you?” 

Buck limped and circled as Dakota began to move, his head low, teeth bared. He refused a response and instead growled. And for a moment--just a moment--he smelled a campfire. 

“Fine. I hope he’s worth dying for.” 

Dakota lunged and Buck matched him, the two snapping and snarling at each other wildly, looking for purchase in a blindingly-fast succession of gnashing teeth. It was horrible and instinctual, no deliberation, no strategy, just pure, unadulterated bloodlust. Dakota pulled and ripped at Buck’s leg; Buck tore a bit of flesh from Dakota’s back. It was chaos until the two shrank back from each other in calculated harmony, sharing one last long look punctuated by deep, ravenous growls of animals fighting for their lives.

Dakota sprung forward again, but ducked under Buck’s jaws to sink his teeth into Buck’s chest. Buck bit down on Dakota’s ear and Dakota ripped himself away to fall onto his back, losing his ear in the process, his lips pulled back across his teeth in a desperate grimace. Buck could see it in Dakota’s eyes--the moment of realization that he was dead the instant he ended up on his back. He snarled and kicked in despair, his back claws slicing deep into Buck’s stomach before Buck slammed a heavy paw down onto his mate’s chest and clamped his jaws around his exposed throat. 

Dakota tried once to thrash, but only impaled himself further onto Buck’s sharp teeth. He whined.

“Buck, please, wait--”

Buck snapped his teeth shut and the resistance made his skull ring. 

The forest fell silent with a nauseating crunch. 

--

vii.

When Buck drew back from Dakota’s lifeless body, the act of rising caused his vision to swim and his stomach to lurch. He felt something soft along his shoulder, holding him up, the smell of his favorite napping place. Texas ran his nose along Buck’s neck, helping him find his balance. 

He blinked hard, past the stars and the creeping darkness--you hear things as a pup. Losing a mate feels like losing your heart. Everything becomes empty, hollow. Your body stops feeling like your own. That deep, beautiful connection flies off to the stars along with the fallen and you are left with a world suddenly silent after a lifetime filled with the voice of a love that can’t be described with mere words. 

But when Buck’s vision returned, when the sickness passed, even with every corner of his body throbbing with sharp, dripping pain, all he felt was himself. Finally. After years of emptiness, of torture, fear; after years of feeling like he’d never know the kind of love the stories talked about, he felt whole. Something in his chest swelled, something that had been taken from him, and he suddenly couldn’t breathe with it. It took up too much space, made his breaths shallow and quick. It smothered him, this wholeness, and he was impossibly, irrevocably happy. 

Texas craned his head to press tiny licks to Buck’s cheek, whining softly, spurred to worry with Buck’s hyperventilating. His tail swished against Buck’s thigh and Buck finally turned and pushed his nose into Texas’s neck, running his face over Texas’s head. It was over. It was over and they were okay, Texas was okay, they were okay. Texas gave a happy little huff before stepping back. 

With the space between them, Buck checked Texas over. His fur was matted with blood and Buck could not exactly tell how much of it was his own, save for a long, obvious gash in his thigh. Texas didn’t give him much time to study, however, as he began to walk back in the direction of his farm, favoring the right side of his body. 

Buck watched him and for the first time, felt the winter chill. Something thick dripped from his stomach. He did not move to follow.

Texas turned back with a soft yip. When Buck still did not move, Texas spun around and gently nipped at Buck’s tail to tug, but before Buck could pull away, Texas straightened, dropped Buck’s tail, and jerked his head around, his ears up, listening to something Buck could not hear. Texas turned a moment later, whining a little more incessantly, desperately, and Buck only stepped close enough to press his nose to Texas’s neck and push him towards his pack. His mate was calling him home, and Buck wanted him to go. 

Buck turned and began to limp in the opposite direction, towards his own home, towards the Christmas trees and pudding and hugs and campfires. Texas barked, once, whining, pleading, demanding. And Buck turned only enough for their eyes to meet, for them to share a silent conversation, even without a pack bond to pass thoughts through. 

Buck is bleeding very badly.

Buck would be difficult to carry, even for a completely healthy wolf.

Texas is bleeding very badly.

Texas is in no condition to carry Buck. 

Buck made this trip once before, he can make it again. 

So, in exchange for their freedom, Buck took one last choice from Texas. He turned and began limping through the trees. After a long moment, he finally heard the rustle of Texas starting off for home. 

--

viii.

But he knew. Buck might not have been very smart when it came to books and art and history and math, but he knew his body and he knew that the way he was bleeding wasn’t right to survive this trip. Not this time. 

Still, he tried. 

To keep going.

Every step felt like the last, like his leg might give out from under him, like his stomach might rip through the seams, but with every step he promised, just one more, because he could, because he was free.

The forest was alive with sounds, even in the early hours of the morning, even in the dead of winter. Mice scurried, a squirrel moved about its tree, even an owl turned to hoot at him as he passed.

His paws stumbled and he crashed into the snow. He sighed into the softness of it before forcing himself to stand and keep walking, leaving a trail of rubies behind him. 

Some time later, after the moon had lazed her way across the sky just a bit, his body shifted by instinct. Smaller, he would not need as much blood, it thought. 

He kept a hand to his stomach and he kept walking. Blood dripped from his elbow from the butchered wound at his shoulder; the scarlet from the bite on his chest oozed and mixed with the wine red falling from his abdomen, he couldn’t feel his foot anymore. And still he walked.

He walked until he was uncertain of if he could really even see anymore.

But he was whole.

He shivered from the cold and dropped to his knees.

He got up again, took a few more steps, and then fell. 

He did not get up a third time.

He rolled, instead, his hand laying loosely on his stomach. He stared up at the stars, so beautiful and bright so far from the city. He focused on his breathing. But he was tempted.

He was tempted to pray.

He thought--this is divinity. The little flecks of light in deepest black--the most beautiful eyes he’d ever seen. 

He began to whisper, his voice even and calm, so at peace, so whole.

“I’m going to hunt you a rabbit.”

He laughed between breaths, crinkles deepening beside his eyes, because imagining it was the purest joy. It made something inside him leap into his throat, a pure, childish thing he thought had died a long time ago. A thing that belonged to an angel now. 

“Rabbits are best for courting,” he swallowed, tasting metal, “Because they’re so small, you have to get really close to eat it together.”

He closed his eyes, unable to fight the heaviness of it anymore. “It’s romantic.”

He sighed. His bed of snow was suddenly very warm. He smiled at his dream.

“I’m going to hunt you a rabbit."

[encomiium]

It Takes and it Takes and it Takes 8 August 2023 Roman

i.

The shade slapped his hand again.

“That is not how it is supposed to be worn,” she stated plainly, though her voice betrayed her annoyance at having to tell him a third time. Roman frowned, but let his himation go, exposing his chest and a fair amount of the rest of his torso. 

He felt his cheeks go hot. “I don’t really--"

She stopped him, whirling around as she gathered the remainder of the fabric into her arms. “And how will you secure it? You have one pauldron and I will not pierce my fabric with a fastener.” She was sure to remind him that the fabric she had draped over him was her own creation, hand-woven, perfect as it was. Even in the dimness of his too-big bedroom, Roman could see how the fabric in her arms deceived the eye, seeming black as night until the torchlight danced upon it and revealed a deep, rich violet. 

“We could tie it in a--”

She put her hand up, her pretty, long nose whipping towards the ground as she huffed a frustrated sigh. The fabric gathered lovingly in her arms, like a newborn being rocked to sleep, shimmered even as she stood still. She almost seemed to tuck it further into her chest, protecting it from his affront.

“I would ask you not to insult me with such a request,” she said, not looking up. She gave a half-hearted little bow, as was required for all servants in the House, before turning for the door. 

Roman flinched at the formality. His stomach churned, like trying to lie to a room full of people who knew the truth. It was a sickness he’d grown familiar with in his time at the House. He clenched and unclenched his fists, rolling his shoulders and trying to convince himself he didn’t look ridiculous. A lamb in wolves’ clothing.

It was all. A fucking lot. 

“Thank you, Arachne,” he called out just before she was gone. He stared down at his exposed chest, chewing on his lip and wondering, genuinely, if it might be more modest to just remain nude.

Arachne stopped at the door. When he didn’t hear the heavy wood creaking at her exit, Roman looked up.

She was staring at him. Her mouth was still tight and guarded, though her dark brown eyes glistened with her surprise and confusion.

“Hypnos told me your name,” he said quietly, his chest a little sore because she was looking at him--truly looking at him. He wanted to reach out for her, to jog the long distance between them in his too-fucking-big room and grab her arms and make her stay just like that, looking at him. No one fucking. Looked at him. Anymore. 

But he didn’t. Because that wasn’t what princes do.

“Because you asked?” her voice cracked. Roman thought--maybe this was the first time anyone was looking at her, too.

He nodded and she sighed, her nose pointing to the ground again. He thought he saw her chin tremble, but she turned for the door again and began to push. She paused, however, before turning her head back to him just a bit. 

“You should not be ashamed of my design. Your body is… adequate to wear it.” 

She paused again. And Roman didn’t silence the quiet bubble of laughter that floated through him. Although he couldn’t see it, he imagined she was smiling too. 

Arachne nodded once before pushing her way out and allowing the large, heavy door to shut behind her. 

--

ii.

The shades turned away when Roman walked down the hall. 

He had tried, many times since he had arrived, to rip the laurels from his hair, as if the absence of a crown could disguise him. But it grew back every time, the fronds tickling his scalp and giggling into his temples as they re-wove themselves about his head. He felt Persephone in the way the amethyst leaves hung about his skin, peppering tiny kisses to his brow just like she did when she found him at the lake. 

Roman would still get a little sick when he thought about it too hard. When she was near, she was intoxicating, trance-like in the way she gave her love so freely. When they were apart, Roman agonized over how stupid and embarrassing it was that he believed every word she said, every brush of her fingers and well-placed kiss, without question. She made him feel safe and loved and seen the same way his mother did, the same way--

He had never had extended family. His mother was alone, his father was alone, all he had was them. And then all he had was her. And then he wasn’t alive and he watched a decade take its toll. He watched his mother love a memory. A memory of a very average man, who went to school and then to work, who had average aspirations and average secrets.

And then, almost all at once, he was dressed in wolves’ silk, and the wolves--wanted him. He had a father who would never raise a fist against him, a grandmother who kicked her legs over the side of a dock and sincerely listened to him struggle to put words together about his life, and a grandfather who was King of fucking Hell. 

He spent days--or what felt like days, he couldn’t tell--isolated in the bedroom that had been prepared for him the day he was born. He would lie awake, thinking about it all. He didn’t feel like himself, suddenly waited on, hand and foot, without ever doing anything to deserve it. He had only known a life where the world had to be bloody for him to earn his peace; his hands needed to tremble before he could rest. But, occasionally, he would catch himself standing a little taller when shades slipped into his chambers to deliver meals he did not want; a lick of warmth from one of the many candles dotted around his room would fill him with a sensation that can only be described as power. His body knew this is where it was always meant to be, seated to the right of his father, his bloodright, but his mind was still mortal and suspicious, still addicted to making himself small, to pouring every bit of his anguish into a punching bag. He couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, just laid in his bed going slowly insane as he grappled with the reality of his situation. So he hid in his room. And sometimes, when it became too much, he closed his eyes and called for—

But finally, driven by hunger and exhaustion, he left his room, still wearing the clothes he had died in. The first time. A white t-shirt he had worn to spar with his students, stained with scarlet falling from the shoulders to the navel, a pair of plain gray sweatpants with elastic at the ankles and a hole in one knee. 

The kitchen, at least, was a short walk away from his room. 

It was there he slowly met other inhabitants. First, Arachne, who sat neatly on a stool at a kitchen island by the chef and his stoves, embroidering something. She barely looked up from her needlework and said, “I figured you would get hungry eventually.” The chef huffed and passed her a gold coin. She slipped it into her plain creme peplos. “We wondered if you were the type of demigod who still gets hungry.” She immediately pulled him to his room to dress him. “Properly,” she’d called it. It was the last time he ever saw his blood-stained t-shirt and gray sweatpants. 

He had been too embarrassed to leave for food again once she’d dressed him. 

When the pain of hunger was great enough to overcome the embarrassment of his wardrobe, he left for the kitchen again, doing his best to ignore the shades who averted their eyes. There, he met Hypnos, who was at first asleep by his sandwich. Roman tried to be quiet and remain unnoticed as he reached for an unattended apple, but the chef clanged his spatula against the cast-iron and jolted the poor godling awake. “Oh, young prince!” Hypnos almost sang. He spoke for ages and ages, most of which Roman did not understand. 

Although he was—a little funny, Hypnos reminded Roman most of the world above. He reminded him of the students in his class when they finally broke open and dared to show the world they were kids. 

Other shades tried to convince Roman that they could bring his food to his room, but he very gently and apologetically refused. Roman grew comfortable taking his short journeys. The kitchen was different from the rest of the House, as if the food gave permission for everyone to act normally around each other; he took pleasure in the small victory of leaving his room for something he felt mattered. Most would hurry out at the sight of him, but a few would stay and share their meal with him. 

Once he had gotten used to the normalcy of the kitchen, Roman became a little more brave, venturing out to see more and more of the House, bit by bit. Venturing out to find--

He hadn’t seen him once since he’d gone down there. The part of him addicted to making himself feel small wasn’t surprised. The part of him that knew he was home wondered why his best friend was not in it. 

That evening--or morning, or--fuck he couldn’t tell--he took the short walk to the kitchen, a bit emboldened by his little talk with Arachne. He was tired. A lot. Apparently, he was the type of demigod who needed food and sleep. But his too-big room also had a too-big bed and as addicted as he was to making himself feel small, the loneliness made it hard to rest. Still, the chef made an incredible soup--giouvarlakia, he tried to teach Roman to say--which usually helped his mind settle down a bit. Roman walked a bit taller when he could smell the savory chicken and lemon down the hall. He clenched his jaw, though his body felt warm and light. He gave himself permission to feel a little excited for a warm meal and to maybe listen to more of Hypnos’s stories. 

But he froze when he turned the corner.

The kitchen was empty and silent, no chef moving gracefully along his preparations, no other shades or godlings conversing. Only a frighteningly huge, muscled figure standing over a scroll, an untouched plate of baklava sitting on the kitchen island beside him. He seemed coiled over the scroll, like a rattlesnake ready to strike. His scars shimmered, just like the luxurious violet in his regalia, and his eyes glowed a terrifying, bloody scarlet as he looked through his brow to identify who had just interrupted him.

His eyes met Roman’s and, instantly, everything about him changed. His shoulders fell and his eyes softened. He stood straight to look at Roman fully. He was bigger like this, but so much gentler. This, somehow, made him even scarier. 

“Romulus,” Hades breathed, like he was wounded.

“Sorry,” was all Roman could think to say before he took a step back, “I’ll come back.”

“Are you hungry?” Hades asked, rounding the island with a step forward, matching Roman’s. 

“No, I’m okay,” he lied, his heart quickening in his chest.

Hades drew his hand away from the onyx marble island. Instead, his hands met in front of his navel, his fingers clenching around each other like he’d captured a secret and wouldn’t dare let it out. The heavy, golden adornments around his wrists flickered under the candlelight. The softness had flown from his eyes and he guarded himself, a line creasing between his brows as he frowned and glanced to the wall next to Roman and then back to Roman.

“I haven’t seen you since--” he tried. Roman could see him struggling, as if every word was a desperate gasp from a drowning man. 

“That’s my fault,” Roman admitted, trying to end this conversation and mask his desperate need to fucking escape with a shallow laugh. 

Hades, as if he could read Roman as simply as one of his scrolls, took the opportunity to look him over. He had Roman in a checkmate; Roman was not the type to walk away from authority without a dismissal and Hades knew it. Hades nodded, his stony gaze appraising and satisfied, as if pleased that Roman had been dressed correctly. His eyes hesitated over Roman’s pauldron: a single hound’s skull, a smaller, humbler version of his father’s. 

“I had ordered the shades to bring you your meals,” Hades said as he turned to the ovens behind him, wordlessly sealing Roman to this interaction. Hades, King of the Underworld, a master of fucking torture. 

Before Roman could apologize--again--Hades continued, pulling a bowl out from a warmer, “They informed me you prefer to retrieve them yourself.” He stood behind his scroll and placed the bowl across the kitchen island before plucking a spoon from a drawer and placing it neatly to the right. With a final clench of his jaw, he cast his eyes down to his scroll and waited for Roman to take his seat. 

Roman did, quietly, though he did not pick up the spoon. There was that sick feeling again, the parts of him battling, a puzzle piece that had jumped out of his place and feared he would never find his way back to it. 

“I did not mean to ambush you,” Hades said, when Roman didn’t eat.

“I wasn’t thinking that,” Roman lied. He was.

“You were,” Hades said simply, his mouth quirking up just a bit when he glanced over at Roman. He returned to his scroll, though it did not seem like he was reading. 

“Did you ambush me?” Roman asked, his cheeks hot and his stomach churning. A lamb sitting with a wolf. 

Hades sighed, “No.” He finally rolled the scroll up and leaned back against one of the counters behind him where the chef would slice olives and coat phyllo in butter. “I think better in here sometimes. The chef thought you would be in soon for dinner. I was--going to bring my food to my chambers, so I was not-- But. I got caught up.”

Silence fell on them again. Roman stared at the soup and Hades stared somewhere far away, the muscles in his jaw jumping every once in a while. Roman did not think he was lying, but it was hard to accept the truth. 

“Would you… Would you feel better if I--” Hades started before growing frustrated, huffing sharply, and grabbing his plate. He took the baklava and bit down and Roman knew what was being asked of him. He picked up his spoon, took a bit of broth into it, and brought it to his mouth. It was mild and perfectly thickened, silky on his tongue. When he swallowed, it warmed every corner of his body. 

They stayed like that for a little while, every shared bite easing the tension in each of their shoulders, like prisoners at mealtime forced to co-exist and trusting, little by little, the other wouldn’t try to attack while they were vulnerable. By the time Roman was ready to cut into one of the meatballs, he realized his fist had relaxed in his lap, his knuckles were no longer white.

“I wasn’t avoiding you,” he finally offered, a tiny truth. 

“It is alright if you were,” Hades said quickly.

“I wasn’t avoiding you, specifically,” Roman amended.

Hades made a sound, encouraging Roman as he chewed on his pastry.

“I was avoiding-- all of it,” Roman tried, cutting into the meatball with the sharp edge of his spoon.

“It is a-fucking-lot, huh?” Hades said, with a cheekful of baklava. 

Immediately, the puzzle piece found its place again. The muscles in Roman’s back uncoiled and the breath broke out of him as he dropped his spoon, which clattered on the table. “Oh my GOD it is a-FUCKING. LOT!” Like a thorn removed after days of bothering, the relief of blood freely flowing felt like a miracle. 

When Hades laughed, it was a deep and almost sad sound. Like he was never allowed to do so. When he looked at Roman, he really, really looked at him. “‘Atta boy,” he chuckled.

“Thank you,” Roman breathed, like he’d just sprinted to the first sanctuary he’d seen in weeks, “Thank you for fucking saying that. I feel like I’m out of my fucking mind, I don’t know how any of this happened and why any of it is happening to me, I just--” He brought a hand up to rub deep into his eyes and groan. He needed to see a fucking therapist. 

“What do you mean you do not know why it is happening to you?” Hades asked, not angry, though it sounded a bit like it. 

Roman’s shoulder jumped as he clenched his fist in his lap, “No, I mean, I know why me,” he paused, not exactly knowing what to call the woman at the lake, Her Highness, The Queen, fucking--Grandma. He settled with, “She explained. Y'know.”

As if he could hear the words unspoken, Hades shifted, placed his emptied plate down behind him, and crossed his huge arms in front of his chest, “Do you know how easy it is to make Olympian demigods?”

Roman’s fist slowly unfurled and he listened, watching carefully. 

“I am sure you can imagine. And unless the offspring is cursed by the Fates with a destiny fit for an Epic Poem-- Many of them appear and die as simple mortals. They come here as shades, wasted, just like all the others. A select few earn their immortality, their place on Olympus, but the others are ignored, if not scorned as nuisances.

“I--was not meant to sire any offspring. Death does not give life. Death takes. Zagreus is--” Hades stopped to clear his throat. “An anomaly. A--” he drowned again, every word a gasp, “We would not have Zagreus without my queen and every blessing she brings to this godforsaken place.

“We had never imagined Zagreus could--He is Death just as much as I. He takes. 

“And yet, you.” 

Roman felt sick again. He looked anywhere else he could, a stack of plates, an empty sink, as he chewed on the inside of his cheek and tried desperately not to reach down and find comfort in being small.

He tried to listen. The King was speaking and his voice was cracking and home was calling out to him.

“From the moment you were born, we held our breaths until you were ours. We watched you defy your body, over and over again. Your body, which craved its place here, refused to heal, constantly sick. We watched you float down the river countless times, defying still, surviving, until you made a choice.”

Roman felt a sharp, stabbing pain in his chest, the heaviness of being tired, of keeping himself awake so he could make himself small. Memories flashed in his mind, the trills of the monitors hooked up to his useless fucking body, the constant scent of alcohol on every table and cabinet, the saline in his mouth. Calling Atropos to him, after sitting with his mother for hours before she finally allowed herself to go home. Staring down at his chest. Wondering if what Persephone said could possibly be true.

“I’m tired,” he said.

“I know.” Atropos whispered.

“Give me your scissors.” 

Mortified, Roman quickly slid his hand across his eye before the tear could fall.

“You might not feel like it, Romulus--” Hades put a hand on his head and it was only then that Roman realized Hades had closed the distance between them. He ran his thumb over the pale white scar on Roman’s forehead, creeping into his hairline, “But in doing what you did, you made the choice to survive. You fought for this. You chose to come home.

“And we are-- I am-- I feel--” Hades drowned. 

Roman leaned his forehead into Hades’s broad chest and Hades didn’t need to drown anymore. 

--

iii.

Roman wished he had gone to bed after that. He was fucking exhausted enough. Hades had closed his arms around his head and it felt like it all might be quiet enough for just a moment, but just as quickly, he stepped back, quickly grabbed another baklava from the refrigerator, and gathered up his scroll. “Finish your dinner,” he had said, sounding so much like a father as he walked out, “And when you’re ready, come find me again.”

But he was tired. And he was making a choice. 

At that moment, he didn’t feel so much like he needed to be small. 

He didn’t care that the shades wouldn’t look at him. He was focused, and he barely noticed as Hypnos called out to him when he passed by, “Roman, hey, Roman! Hey, Roman! Roman! Hey! Roman!”

He waved as he walked on, finally, and Hypnos grinned before settling back into his chair, satisfied. 

He walked for what felt like hours, in circles for some time. He wished he had taken more time to figure out the layout of the House instead of fucking wallowing. Instead, he was left peeking into rooms upon rooms, gazing upon luxurious pieces of art he’d seen three times in his quest and cursed already. He had thought his searching was over when he found a room that smelled so unbelievably familiar, like tobacco and black pepper, but it was empty and dark and seemed like it hadn’t been lived in in quite some time. 

Finally, after walking through the garden--his grandmother’s garden--he found a gate that led to Tartarus. Past beautifully gnarled pomegranate trees and hedges dotted with the same purple leaves that adorned his temples, Tartarus burned in brilliant, haunting evergreen flames. He hesitated at the threshold for just a moment. Knowing it was fucking dumb to go out there without having the slightest clue how to navigate the broiling emerald green fire or the labyrinth within. After a moment’s consideration, a quickflash of rage burned through his chest and he took a step outside the gate to the gravel road.

In an instant, his elbow was caught up in a strong and violent hand. 

“Thaaaat’s not a very smart--Rome?!”

Roman whipped around to find bright blue eyes wild with disbelief staring down at him, golden hair streaked with reflections of the flickering green flames just outside the gate.  

“What the fuck are you thinking?!” Richard growled through gritted teeth. His grip changed instantly, no longer snatching up a would-be escaped House Shade, but rather, tucking Roman’s arm almost into his waist, drawing him close and away from Tartarus. 

Roman yanked his arm back, “I was looking for you,” he jabbed, suddenly pretty fucking sure he didn’t want what he wanted before. 

“In fucking Tartarus?! Do you have any idea--” Richard dug his palms into his eyes, having only the absolute audacity to be short with Roman.

“Fuck this,” Roman mumbled as he brushed past Richard, knowing for absolute certain he was not about to suffer a lecture from Richard of all people.

“Rome--” Richard sighed, trying to grab at his hand. 

Roman turned, wrenching himself out of Richard’s grasp. “Why haven’t you come to see me?!” he yelled. It broke out of him, sharp and painful in his throat. He hadn’t realized how close that was to the surface. 

Richard stared, stunned, like he’d just been slapped. 

“I’ve been here for god knows how long and you are fucking--AWOL.” As usual, he wanted to add, but he was able to control himself at least that much, even as the sickness returned and his nose started to burn.

Richard reached a hand behind him, his nails digging into his hair, “I’ve been working, Rome,” he tried, glancing away. A muscle jumped in his jaw.

The piece of him addicted to making him feel small lit up again. Soothing and comforting, like a blanket from his childhood. Richard would never care about him like Roman wanted him to. It was never going to be like that for them. He has better things to do, more important, more everything.

“Okay,” Roman surrendered, flat and cold, and he took a few more steps to the House. 

Then--something howled inside him. A wolf who would not be disrespected in his own home.

“No, you know what--” Rome spun around and was a little shocked to see Richard still standing there, watching him, not gone to the wind and shadows to whatever fucking work he had to do. “I have been in that House, alone, not knowing what to do, where to go, being dressed up like Malibu fucking Barbie, and the one person I needed was nowhere to be found. I called for you! Several times! I put my little fucking hands together and hoped and wished on a fucking star with all my little fucking might and nothing! And you should feel fucking bad about that!”

“Of course I feel bad--” Richard started, but the quickflash of rage in Roman’s chest had turned into a wildfire and he wasn’t ready to stop.

“Then why didn’t you come?!”

“Because you didn’t even fucking tell me you were leaving!” Richard snapped, something cracking in his chest. Roman flinched, the wildfire in his chest burning out with one quick cut. 

They stood there, breathing for a moment. Then—

“After the lake, you fucking ghosted me. You would barely speak to me, you snapped at me constantly, I tried to get you to rest and you fucking refused because you didn’t want to be anywhere fucking near me--didn’t want me touching you in the Styx--and I get it! Seph gave you the whole picture, you finally got how badly I fucked up, you didn’t want anything to do with me!” 

Roman blinked, stunned. Richard ran a hand over his mouth and threw the other up in defeat. “You know, honestly? I thought after we sat on the dock and talked and—all of that—I thought we were okay and on the same page, but—then you’re fucking gone for days and when I do find you fucking off somewhere in the city, you can’t even look at me!” 

Roman opened his mouth to stop him, but Richard cut through, “Which I get, Romulus, I fucking understand. I really do. I know how badly I fucked you over and it was about fucking time you saw it, too. But then I couldn’t--” and his voice broke. Something shattered. “I couldn’t feel you. Anymore. Anywhere. I had to go to your room, and your bed was empty, and your mother was crying, and you left and you didn’t tell me. You didn’t—“ Richard took in a breath and it shook.

“Richard,” Roman whispered, unsure and apologetic. Richard sucked on his teeth and shook his head before turning for the gate. Roman tried to reach, but he was already too far. 

“Richard, don’t, I’m sorry—“

“Don’t want you to be sorry,” Richard called out over his shoulder, unsettlingly unphased, like nothing happened. He was terrifyingly good at that, shaking off the wounds and walking on.

“What do you want, then?” Roman yelled after him, the guilt shifting back into familiar anger, filling his throat with stones.

Richard stopped and tilted his head to the sky, drawing in a breath that seemed to take years. He turned, not enough to face Roman, but enough for Roman to see the green flickers of Tartarus burning dance off the straight slope of his nose. “I don’t know. I’m not sure it matters.” He stared at the obsidian stones crunching under his boots. “But I don’t want you to say it just because you don’t want me to leave.”

Roman flinched. Richard could be cruel, but never like this. That was low. Even for him. Roman could tell Richard knew it, too, by the way his nose wrinkled and the lines by his mouth deepened. 

“That didn’t come out right,” he offered, a shallow gesture, nearly a slap to the face.

Roman scoffed, his mouth hanging open in utter fucking disbelief. Only Richard could make him feel horribly guilty and unbelievably angry in three fucking seconds. It was a neat little party trick. “You’ve got some fucking nerve,” he hissed, though his mouth still curled with the hurt. He had wounded Richard when he left. He knew that now, though he hadn’t thought Richard even noticed he was gone. And with each silent moment, it became easier to imagine what Richard had to go through to get to this point, what shattered pieces he had to pick up when Roman made his choice, regardless of how he never intended to make Richard bear the burden of all of that alone. 

But Richard just shrugged, his eyes looking nowhere again. 

“Because I have no one, right? Because I’m so fucking weak and stupid that I’d choose you instead of being alone,” Roman spat, taking a step towards Richard, his fists trembling with the exertion, aching for blood. 

“That’s not what I meant,” Richard huffed, his eyes screwed shut with frustration.

“You think so little of yourself that now I’m the idiot if I do anything other than hate you.” He took another step, this time, less angry. It was heavier, darker, a wound that had never been acknowledged between either of them. 

When Richard stayed another second longer, Roman saw it for what it was: Richard’s own addiction to feeling small. The anger turned to something sadder. “It’s this fucking—feedback loop of self-hatred and distrust,” Roman breathed, though it sounded like a sob. 

“And I’m fucking tired of it,” he sighed. “I don’t think—“ Roman paused, steeling himself to cut himself open, “I used to think it was. But it isn’t. It isn’t a weakness to need someone to care about you.”

Roman bled and Richard worried his lip with his teeth. 

“You don’t believe I’d ever actually forgive you,” Roman said.  Richard turned his neck, slowly, as if he could alleviate whatever he felt if he stretched the muscles far enough. 

Roman stepped forward again, nearly close enough, “And I didn’t think you’d care where I went.” Richard turned finally to look at Roman, his lips parted and his brows knit tight in betrayal. 

Roman persisted, glancing away so he didn’t have to see the hurt in Richard’s eyes, “So I don’t trust you and you don’t trust me, but our lives are so deeply intertwined. In ways we didn’t choose, like—threads and fucking royal orders. 

“But we’re connected in ways we did choose, too.”

Flashes ricocheted between them. Slim Jim’s held up to a gnarled fangs or cut-open lips. A little stuffed dog clipped to a backpack. Sleeping curled around an arm while an engine idled beneath them. A brick wall and a textbook in arm. Golden hair held back while he retched. Fingers gentle on an open wound. Whispered gossip and loud laughter over bottles. A gunshot. A needle. 

Roman reached out for Richard’s hand. It was warm and rough and large and felt somehow different than it had back on earth. “So I am trying to apologize because I mean it. Because—Because if you take away all the mistakes you think you made, if you forget, just for a fucking second, all of the things you crucify yourself daily for—and if you try to trust that I want you around because of you, not because I have no one else; then you could believe that you didn’t deserve what I put you through. So let me. Okay?”

Roman waited for a moment, watching Richard, even as Richard tried to stare at nothing, hesitating to see if the shards might have cut too deep.  

But Richard breathed and it caught in his throat and the sounds of shards dropping to the stones below rang out in Roman’s ear. 

Roman reached up, slid his hand through Richard’s hair, and brought his head down into his neck, his other arm reaching around him to squeeze him close. He pressed his forehead to Richard’s temple, the same way he used to back before they’d fucked up so badly, before they’d grown apart countless times, when they thought maybe they could just keep driving to a better life. 

“I’m sorry,” Roman whispered, just for Richard, the words crawling out, frightened, from under his heart, “I’m sorry I did that to you.” Richard took another shaky breath into Roman’s shoulder before he finally relented and wrapped his arms around Roman’s waist. “It’s not because I blamed you or thought you fucked me over. I didn’t want--I didn’t want you to have to keep pulling me out of the river. I was moody because I was fucking exhausted and I know that’s lame, but. I thought I was helping--I didn’t want to be a chore.”

Richard didn’t say anything, but squeezed Roman. A warning, a scream in opposition. 

“I know,” Roman said, drawing in a sharp breath to abate the burning at his lashes, “And then I just wanted to go home. That’s all. I just--” he breathed again, “I’m sorry I made you feel that way.”

Richard squeezed him again, this time like he needed it. “Me, too.”

Roman knew that was Richard’s best. And that’s all Roman ever wanted from him. They stood like that for a long while, until their breaths matched and it felt safe enough to lay down their weapons and accept it all for what it was. Fucked up. Messy. But theirs. 

Richard’s voice was muffled as he burrowed a little deeper into his shoulder, sniffling to clear his nose. “And y’know my life up there is so fucked up right now--”

“Oh, I know it is--”

“Literally so fucked up so, like, I really was kinda busy--”

“Oh, no, yeah, it is definitely really fucked up--”

They both started laughing, and Roman squeezed a little tighter, his hand beginning to tremble in Richard’s hair. Richard stood finally and tilted his head down at Roman.

“What is it, Romulus? Did you really try to walk through Tartarus just to yell at me?” he asked with that hound’s smile, his eyes a little shiny, his arms warm where they rested on his hips. Richard reached up to move a piece of Roman’s hair, which had come out of its place from behind his laurels, before lacing his fingers at the small of Roman’s back. 

“Yes,” Roman lied at first, smiling softly, crooked and happy, then, “No.”

“What is it?” Richard asked again, this time a little more serious.

“I need--” Rome glanced away, trying to find the puzzle piece that fit, “I wanted-- Will you just. Please. My room is so fucking big and quiet and I can’t sleep. I thought. You could--”

Richard’s slow, malicious fucking grin would have made Hades so proud. An evil the likes of which this world has never known. The Hound knew exactly how to bite to make it hurt. 

“No, never mind, can’t do this,” Roman tried to wriggle away, but Richard kept him in the cage of his arms. 

“The Prince? Asking me?? To his bed??” Richard crooned.

“This was a fucking mistake--” Roman couldn’t stop the bubbling laughter, even as he pushed against Richard’s chest to be let go. 

“Think of the scandal!” Richard tilted his chin to the sky of Cthionic stars, a never-ending night, and groaned a devilish and dramatic noise of indignation.

“If you’re going to be like this--” he teased, slipping out from under Richard’s arms and starting towards the house. But with such grace and ease it stole Roman’s breath away, Richard scooped him up from the garden path to carry him towards the House. He held Roman with unflinching surety, cradling him to his chest and tucking him under his chin.

Roman knew Richard had never held him like this before, but something about it felt like a memory, like it had been this way since the beginning.

They shared a quiet and unsure little laugh before Richard grinned, toothy and final on the matter. 

And when Richard looked down at him—really looked at him—with that sly, knowing grin, Roman felt, for the first time, like he really was home. 

[encomiium]

moodboards | the house of hades

[encomiium]

[encomiium]

[encomiium]

Love Song for Two Vampires, Dante Émile

[encomiium]

Better Hands 3 August 2022 Galahad

When the others joked about drunkenness, the concept seemed so bizarrely abstract that Galahad could only vaguely comprehend how they could ever manage to do all the nasty, vile things they claimed to do while intoxicated. He would listen to their stories in stunned awe, laughing at their escapades, but never truly understanding. Now, as the ground rolled beneath his feet and the trees at his side swayed in every direction, the young knight could absolutely imagine how one might wake in a pigsty after a night with a few barrels. Honestly, it didn’t seem so bad, then. Sounded cozy.

He flung out his arms and watched the loose dirt below, desperate not to lose what little balance he had retained after a number of bottles had been flung at him, the amount of which would heretofore remain a mystery to his hazy memory. Falling through a tavern roof like Bedivere was one thing; falling off the side of the mountain would not be soon forgiven. 

The others had gone to sleep a little while ago, but Galahad was not ready to surrender this glorious warmth to the night. He felt free and light, for the first time in his life, maybe. He knew he was happy. He wanted for nothing. But the heaviness of the promise of his birth, the promise of his destiny, had weighed on him since even before he was old enough to fully comprehend any of it. His tiny body had gotten used to the load, but as he napped in the Siege Perilous, he napped under the burden of the hopes of the Kingdom. For a child to sleep with the fate of the throne on his shoulders, he needed to be strong from the very beginning. 

But, on that night, his cheeks felt warm enough to cut through the promise of winter just a few weeks ahead, his chest felt open and honest and he felt, for even just a moment, that he was just a drunk boy, clinging to the bark of an Aspen tree, trembling against the clifftop breeze, just trying to gain his footing. 

The sheer drop of the cliff just a few steps before him made his gut lurch, so he averted his gaze to the skies, swallowing sickness and trying to focus on the stars. 

His breath caught in his chest. 

The wine had seeped into his very soft, very young brain and he had a singular, invincible thought. Quickly, he spun around and half-jogged away from the cliff, back to the crackling fire of the campsite. He bumped his shoulder on a tree that leapt into his path. With wrinkled brows and a curled lip, he gave it a well-deserved crude gesture--which he immediately apologized for--before breaking into the clearing. Bathed in the warm amber glow of the fire, he snuck around the infirmary of wine-soaked knights strewn about. Most had the good sense to make it to their tents. Others, like Bors and Lionel, snored loudly in the detritus, toasty and content near the fire. Dagonet had fallen over from the stump he’d made a home of, still curled around a large green bottle of his own. 

Tip-toeing over them, Galahad crossed through the camp before peeking his head into one of the tents. Quietly--as a mouse, he thought to himself--he slipped in and kneeled at the curled outline of a sleeping body, nestled under a layer of furs. 

With a playful grin, he slid his hand over the King’s mouth, which woke him almost immediately. Arthur made a smothered sound of alarm and the furs moved sharply as he grabbed for Excalibur at his side. Confident he would not be harmed, Galahad put a finger to his lips, signaling for quiet. Arthur’s panicked gaze found the soft brown impishness in Galahad’s and he relaxed, rolling his eyes back with some impatience. The young knight snickered mockingly and took his hand back. 

“Gal, I could have killed you!” Arthur hissed. Galahad hushed him with a smile before teasing the covers off Arthur’s shoulders. 

“Come,” he whispered, before ducking out of the tent. 

He shivered when the crisp breeze greeted him upon his exit, a devastating contrast to the warmth and comfort of Arthur’s quarters. 

“It’s freezing,” Arthur scolded as he followed, chiding the wind with a testy frown. He shivered.

“Quiet!” Galahad hushed before reaching down for Arthur’s hand to pull him through the trees. He did not have the wits to know it, and if he did, he would never acknowledge it, but he very selfishly wanted to keep this a secret, to not wake the others. He wanted Arthur to himself, just for a bit. It was his night, anyway, he deserved a wish granted. 

“Where are we going?” Arthur sounded less annoyed now and more placative, like he was speaking to a child. Galahad didn’t care for that tone. Not in the slightest. 

“It’s a surprise,” he whispered. He was fairly confident he had cast away most of the fog of spirits, but he stumbled once and Arthur caught him. He’d almost forgotten they were holding hands. He smiled, a warmth in his belly welling up, before leading on. 

Arthur chuckled. “You’re in no condition to--”

“If you can’t be quiet, you won’t get to see the surprise.”

“I don’t answer to drunks!”

Galahad only had enough time to shoot a look back at his King before pulling him out from the trees to a large rock sitting on the edge of the cliffside. He started to climb and Arthur put a steadying hand on the small of his back, watching as tiny pebbles fell from their shoes to the steep drop below. Once he had climbed up, he held a hand out for Arthur. Arthur eyed him with an amused grin. 

Galahad laughed, “Come now, I would never let harm fall upon my King.” Arthur shook his head before taking Galahad’s hand. With more ease than he expected, Galahad pulled Arthur up. Arthur seemed to share his surprise for a brief moment before Galahad led him to the edge and helped him sit down. 

Before them, an endless night sky dripped inky darkness across all of Briton. Grasshoppers sizzled and something else chirped as the stars danced in quiet regard over their small world. The clouds had been swept away by the hand of God and the heavens opened up, just for them. 

Arthur sighed, “It’s beautiful, but--”

“Just wait!” Galahad bubbled, scooting closer to his King, enticed by his ever-burning warmth. 

Arthur was patient for a moment, before cutting through the sounds of the night once more. “What exactly am I waiting for?” he asked.

“You’ll see,” Galahad assured. 

They waited a bit longer, Galahad’s eyes darting from star to star, almost trembling with excitement. Arthur watched him and something soft lingered in his eyes.

“Happy birthday,” he whispered.

Galahad snorted. “It’s probably not my birthday anymore.”

“I don’t think I was able to wish it properly, so I’ll say it now.”

“And I’ll thank you, then.” Galahad finally took his eyes off the sky to look over at Arthur, who quickly turned his gaze to the disguised horizon, “Consider this your present to me.”

“Was I supposed to get you one?” Arthur grinned.

“I think you’ve given me more than enough,” Galahad confessed. It was easy enough. Truth was like honey on his wine-warm tongue. It was sweet to give. 

Arthur made a noise of agreement, though it didn’t sound like he believed himself. 

Nothing happened in the night still, but the expectation had worn down into something heavier, a comfort long missed, or a comfort that had transformed into something new, something Galahad didn’t have a name for. Not yet. Not for centuries to come. 

“Twenty years old,” Arthur sang, “I can’t decide if that means you’re not a babe anymore.”

Galahad bumped his shoulder against Arthur’s, “You’re not much older!” he protested. It was true. The Once and Future King had ascended at just fifteen years old. Galahad was already five when it happened. He still remembered the day his mother told him the Prince had pulled the sword from the stone, he still remembered the glow in her cheeks, knowing Briton would be safe and that her son would have a place. 

Arthur leaned back on his elbows, groaning as he did, “A decade is a whole life!” 

“Well, for you, sure,” Galahad reclined next to Arthur, “But what a life it’s been.”

Arthur made another noise in agreement. His gaze went somewhere far off, back to his home, back to his bed in Camelot, where a faithful and strong wife waited.

“You’ll have your life,” Arthur nodded before looking over with a mischievous little grin, “And a wife to share it with soon.” 

Galahad bristled. 

There were a myriad of words he’d like to champion in that moment. A muscle jumped in his jaw, clamping down on all the honeyed truths the wine tried to vomit forth from his mouth. He settled on bringing his hand up to the starlight, where scars and calluses glowed a sickly pale color. 

“Not with hands like these!” he boasted, “A knight’s hands.” It was childish, a poor excuse, but all he could mount in defense against the acrid sloshing in his stomach, the ache of jealousy.

Arthur brought his own hand up in comparison. It was larger, by far, made to hold the holy blade, or perhaps formed by it. He seemed like he might say something in refute, something about his own Queen and how she worshiped his worn, rough hands, but he didn’t. Instead, he tilted his head. 

“Merlin once told me that, one day, in our very kingdom, Kings and Knights would have hands softer than lambskin,” he laughed, “I think that’s sort of lovely. They will be so much better off.”

Galahad stared at the deep grooves and rugged texture of his King’s hand and something inside him leapt. 

He cleared his throat and imagined the Queen’s hand settling slowly into Arthur’s palm. He imagined her hands were soft, untouched by war or suffering, like the feathers of a dove. He imagined how lovely it must feel, to be able to reach out and know that peace and comfort was only an arm’s length away.

“Those hands will not be better,” he mumbled. 

The sounds of the forest overtook them once more and the stars seemed to laugh at him. He tore his gaze away when Arthur brought his hand back down to his side. Instead, he picked a lonely stone tossed off to the side of their sitting place and gave it his attention. He started to worry he’d imagined the thing he’d brought Arthur out for in the first place. He supposed he imagined a lot of things. Galahad the Pure did not harbor much guilt for anything, but for the things he imagined, he reserved a deep, envious pit in his stomach. 

“Oh,” Arthur breathed, and he sat up.

Galahad glanced up and finally. Finally. 

The sky lit up in little bursts. Flashes of fire began to rain down from the stars, slowly at first, then in a great chorus of shooting lights. A shower of radiant blazes dashed across the blackness of the night before them. 

Galahad at first wanted to look over and gloat, but when he saw Arthur and the reflection of those sparkling hailstorms in his impossibly blue eyes, the words were stolen from his lips. His King began to smile a kind of smile Galahad could not recall from his past, but would remember for the rest of his life. Arthur’s breathy laugh was like warm, fresh linen, like the tinkling of pearls in Lady Nimue’s hair. It was like home. Arthur stared at the Storm of Stars above them and, for a moment, Galahad wished he could pluck one from the sky and swallow it, if just to make Arthur look at him like that. Just once. 

Galahad kept that memory sharper than any other. When he lay dying, fatally pierced on a battlefield without the prophesied grail in his hand, without fulfilling the duty of his destiny, it was the Storm of Stars he thought of. It was Arthur’s smile. This memory, this small treasure, kept his heart beating long enough for Merlin to write a curse to observe eternity into his bones, into his very soul. This memory kept him warm in his loneliest years, whether set out upon the sea or hidden in some rocky craig. Even after a young prince with the same curse written into his bones--a haunting reminder of the King he once lost--came into his keeping, this memory allowed him to remain soft and patient, meticulous and kind. 

For all the legends of Galahad being the best of them, without sin, it was Arthur who made him that way, just by gazing upon the stars.

[encomiium]

Doors 3 May 2022 Kit

i.

To Kit, the worst part about getting punched was never the initial shock of pain or the bruises that followed. He knew how to tough those out and focus on the next move. It was never broken bones or bleeding noses. To Kit, the worst part about getting punched was losing breath. 

Kit had always had a very rational, very sound fear of drowning. He would venture an educated guess that it started when he was left outside of a firehouse in the rain as a newborn, exposed and trapped in a slowly flooding bassinet as he screamed for help and coughed against the droplets filling his tiny pink mouth. Just the idea of the deep ocean or the vast vacuum of space, places where he could never hope to take in even a moment of a breath, left him feeling nauseous and dizzy. The reason he lasted the longest in the pool during the water treading portion of training wasn’t because he had the most resolve or because he was exceptionally dedicated to becoming a field agent; he relaxed into an hour and a half of fight or flight. Ben had to push him halfway to the edge of the pool before he even realized he had been called back to line up. 

Agent Hughes said he would never make a good fighter because he protected his stomach too diligently, leaving his face completely open. It was a raw, instinctual habit he could never quite break, no matter how hard Hughes pushed him. The first time he’d gotten the wind knocked out of him, he was ten-years-old going into year eleven. It was rash, childhood malevolence, a swift jab from a boy in his year, three times his size, just to watch him crumple. He never expected it would feel like that, like every molecule of air had been violently sucked out of his body. He fell to the floor and, instead of gripping the agonizing heat emanating from his stomach, he clawed at his throat, desperately trying to draw in even a single gasp. It felt like years before he finally could, like the sun rose and set millions of times over before he found the strength to release his clenched gut and breathe. He hugged himself on the floor as tears fell in hot, terrified rivers, coughing and gagging and sobbing at the relief. 

Kit couldn’t bear to feel like that ever again. 

So when he spotted another fist coming at his side, he brought his elbows down quickly and flexed every muscle in his body, hoping it would protect his diaphragm. Too quickly, another fist rained down on his brow with a crack and another spattering of blood whipped against the concrete floor, just like Agent Hughes warned, countless times.

Kit staggered back, the blood hot and stinging as it flowed from his forehead into his eye. Everything was blood. For hours, now. Mostly not his until just recently. He tasted it with every breath, sharp and metallic, as it coated his teeth and poured from his nose. He was in a bad way, and he knew that, but there were always more to help, more patients to tend to. 

And, selfishly, he considered this one patient especially important.  

He spat as he collected himself and promised the ringing in his ears he’d get back to it later. After finding his feet again--and taking a fraction of a second to congratulate himself for not going down after a hit like that--he raised his fists up to his temples again. He tracked the man in front of him with one good eye, the hot pride of a good soldier coursing through his body and filling him with the adrenaline to keep going. The man, large and imposing in a nondescript black shirt and leather jacket, tipped his head to the side with a revolting pop before shaking his shoulders out. Kit would be damned if a literal comic book villain was going to stand in the way of him getting where he needed to go.

“Didn’t your father ever teach you to pick your fights, boy?” he taunted.

Kit grinned, “No, but the nuns did.” 

The man rushed him and Kit leaped up to the ceiling to grab an exposed pipe. With nearly effortless speed, he wrapped his legs around the man’s head and twisted his entire body, cantilevering the man’s own weight against him until he crashed down to the concrete with a sickening snap. Kit landed on his feet above him, taking a moment to look down at the destruction he’d caused. The man was out cold, possibly dead. He almost got lost in it, his hand already reaching for the small med-pack strapped to his thigh. He didn’t see any blood, but--

Voices started to echo from down the dimly lit hall. 

No time. Kit bent down to the man--whom he chose to believe would survive--and swiped his key-card from his belt before scrambling to Mack’s limp body he had hidden behind a few wooden crates. With a great heave that called attention to all of the welts on his body slowly swelling under his armor, he dragged Mack to the large metal door formerly protected by the hulking leather jacket man. He swiped the man’s card quickly and dragged Mack through with a pained groan. 

Kit cleared Mack’s feet through the door just as more men rushed into the large, open warehouse space, shouting in a language he was too exhausted to recognize. 

Untrue, it was Lithuanian. 

“Bollocks, bollocks, bollocks,” he hissed, over and over as he yanked the protective plastic case off the keypad on the inside of the door. The voices grew nearer and he began to lose track of the wires he was working on. Frustrated, he wiped the blood from his eye and squinted before pulling a scalpel from his med-pack and stabbing it through the green circuit board. Tiny sparks flew out of it before the metal door slammed shut, sealing two very lost SHIELD agents inside. 

The voices on the other side of the door shouted and Kit could hear them trying multiple cards against a now defunct locking system. 

You’d think big bads would invest in a security system a little more advanced, but Kit had learned from a very young age you don’t look God in the mouth when he blesses you, so he made a quick mental note to light a candle when they got home before returning to Mack. 

He knelt down to him with a little laugh before pressing his fingers to Mack’s neck. “See? Told you I had it handled,” he whispered, relieved to feel a very strong, defiant heartbeat beneath Mack’s skin. Granted, he had no room to be smug when the entire facility was littered with bodies Mack had dropped with his bare hands and a loose piece of rebar, but Kit was content to claim one of them for himself. 

Kit took half a second to note how peaceful Mack looked in that moment, even covered in his own collection of scrapes and bruises. He clicked his tongue, shaking his head at how incredibly handsome this boy was and how absolutely moronic it was to be admiring that in a time like this. 

“Okay,” he sighed, before forcing himself back up. Kit languished a bit in the popping joints and aching muscles before stiffly approaching one of the many routers scattered amongst the mess of wires and LED lights twinkling in the server room--the right server room, if Kit hadn’t gone panic-blind and forgotten the blueprint he had committed to memory. After studying one he deemed fit enough, he popped the lid open to expose the blinking lights and wiring inside. He reached into his back pocket for the satellite phone they had long since lost connection to and slid the back panel off it as well. With a few good minutes of fiddling, moving wires around and crudely soldering things together with the pellets of a shotgun shell he’d picked up off the ground and medical tape, he was able to get a dial tone. 

“Kitty?!”

Kit practically wept at the sound of Jake’s voice, “Oh, thank God.”

“Are they alright?” Kit heard Ben, just a bit away from the receiver. 

“Where are you?!” Jake barked. It sounded like they were already on the move. 

“We’re still here,” Kit said quickly, “This line isn’t secure, so listen. We made it to the east server room. There’s a flood drain in here that I am praying we can fit through. If we can, we’ll be headed into the underground transport tunnels to the southeast opening.”

“Copy,” Jake replied and the line went dead. 

The silence was deafening for a moment before Mackenzie shot up and gasped, fists already clenched and poised for war. Little shit scared the ever-living soul out of Kit, who grabbed the red and white cross on his chest with a yelp.

When he finally convinced himself he wasn’t going into cardiac arrest, he rushed over and knelt down again, pulling the glove off his hand with his teeth before running his fingers through Mack’s hair to check the long gash at his hairline. “We’re okay, we’re safe for now.” Kit had remembered the nylon material their tactical gear was made of could be incredibly grating to Mack’s senses. 

“What happened?” Mack choked, trying to regain his breath.

“Oh, you would have loved it, I grabbed control of a gigantic machine gun and just went to town on a bunch of Lithuanians. Rambo-style,” Kit cooed, satisfied that the last packet of clotting powder had worked as well as he had designed it to. 

“You’re bleeding,” Mack said, obviously not in the mood for very good jokes. He reached out for Kit’s face and Kit flinched back instinctively, which he immediately felt incredibly ashamed of. He just--he wasn’t ready. He felt like everything, all of what balanced so delicately between them--if anything was in the balance at all--did so on the precipice of what it would be like the first time Mack felt his face and knew what he looked like. It was vain and childish and he knew that, but, instead, Kit knit his fingers with Mack’s and squeezed his hand. 

“It’s alright, I’m fine,” he said with a smile, “Can you walk?”

Mack nodded before even checking himself, but Kit really, really needed Mack’s stubbornness to work for them right now. He helped Mack to his feet before scanning the floor of the room. For a moment, he was terrified he’d picked the wrong room and had cornered them in a closet-sized slaughterhouse, but his steel-trap mind was not to be trifled with and, sure enough, under a tangle of wires, was a drainage grate only about as wide as Mack’s shoulders. 

He struggled to lift the heavy metal away from the floor and Mack had to bend down to help him. When they finally slid it away, Kit stood up, desperate for a breath of air before exhaling hard. Kit settled, clenching his jaw and steeling himself against what he knew was the sound of moving water of an unknown depth down there. He was grateful Mack did not comment on his thundering heartbeat; if he could hear it in his ears, he was certain Mack could, too. 

“Alright,” he finally said, after a long, meditative beat, about the length of a Hail Mary, “After you, Agent Mackenzie.” 

ii.

Kit had made a habit of passing by Mackenzie’s room when he had the chance, especially throughout the night. When they were together, Mack slept without issue, but Kit knew he struggled to sleep on his own. He had begun to suspect it wasn’t even entirely due to his blindness; Mackenzie never really knew when he needed to stop fighting. 

Slowly, Kit leaned his body against Mack’s door until his ear was pressed to the cold wood. It nearly felt like laying in bed, his tired body succumbing to any sort of support it was offered. He listened for a bit, waiting for the sound of movement or a muffled radio, but found it incredibly silent save for the echo of the air conditioning whirring throughout the building. With a bit of effort, he finally pushed himself away from the door before continuing on to his own room a bit down the hall. 

They’d been moved to the same floor, which was a healthy step towards possibly being allowed to stay in the same quarters officially, though he understood that would be a long, long way off. Still, neither of them could be bothered with those regulations and no one really seemed to pay them any mind anyway. The only complaints came when either of them were needed and someone would have to check both rooms. 

As he rounded the corner, Kit began to pull his scrub cap off when he paused for a brief moment and watched Mackenzie come down the hall in the opposite direction, a hand cradling his ribs. He was wearing the standard-issue navy blue SHIELD gym shirt and heather grey joggers and he looked like he would be content to sleep for weeks. 

At the same moment, Mackenzie’s head tilted up as he listened and his hand fell away from his side. Kit loved the way Mackenzie tracked sounds with quick flickers of movement, he looked vaguely animalistic in that way. After a moment, a tiny, excited smile played at the corners of his mouth. Kit would never know how in the world Mackenzie did that, much less how he could ever matter so much to be worthy of attention that fine, that definitive. 

They met in front of Kit’s door and he reached out a hand for Mackenzie to take, a regular comfort and anchor between them, “Did you hurt your ribs?” Kit asked, practically requesting permission for a full physical exam in the middle of the hallway. 

“No, Doctor,” Mackenzie teased, his voice tired and gravely and just the right tone to send a shiver up Kit’s spine, “You should see the other guy.”

“No, thank you,” Kit laughed, “So everything went well today, then? You’re getting back much later than I thought.” 

“I was waiting for you,” Mackenzie answered simply. Kit’s cheeks warmed. He still wasn’t used to how plain and innocent Mack was with his affection. As much as he withheld, Mack was acutely unaware of just how easily his love flowed, or how sensitive Kit was to it. “How was surgery?” he asked. 

“Went well,” Kit sighed, as he watched Mack inch a bit closer, “All successes, minimal complications. Just, very long.”

“Mhm,” Mack agreed. Kit didn’t doubt Mack was listening, he was just distracted. Mack moved even closer, until Kit could feel the warmth of his chest through his scrubs, the softness of the hair on Mack’s arms against his. “Missed you today, though,” Mack said, only barely above a whisper. 

“I missed you, too,” Kit breathed, his hand moving up Mackenzie’s arm to his wrist, to his impossibly firm forearm, to his ever-surprisingly large bicep, an invitation. Mackenzie gratefully accepted, leaning forward to press his lips to Kit’s. It was chaste at first, perhaps a bit investigative. They stayed that way for a few luxurious seconds and Kit enjoyed the feeling of being wanted. Cared for. Missed. This is what the poets ached for, he thought, the simple joy of being known. 

But then Mack tilted his face and parted Kit’s lips and Kit gasped, the poets banished from his mind in favor of a blinding, hot, white light. Mack stole his breath and he thought, for just a moment, that drowning may be everything he’s ever wanted. His fingers curled in Mack’s shirt as he brought their bodies together. Mack’s hand wandered before Kit’s breath was taken a second time and he poured every need into a whine, “Mackenzie.”

Mack pushed even further into Kit’s lips before slamming a hand against the door and desperately feeling around for the handle. Before Kit could stop to help him, they tumbled into the room together with a few hushed giggles and strangled cries. 

iii.

Kit had never known anger like this. It was not in his nature to hold rage so deep in his bones, so hot and feral he nearly felt dead with it, as if he had no way of knowing this feeling in life. He had never been so betrayed, so hurt and disgusted and abandoned. Abandoned. Again. 

And yet, it wasn’t right. 

He raced past agents and hallways, sprinting through the gigantic base until he slammed his body against the doors to the hanger. 

He could not let this be the way it ends, he had to say good-bye. If he wasn’t going to wait for Mack to stay for him, he had to at least say good-bye. 

The quinjet engines roared with deafening noise and he panted for breath as he watched the airship’s ramp seal up tight. In the last moments, he watched wavy raven hair and a flash of scarlet glass disappear behind smoky black metal. 

He stood there, gasping for breath beneath the jet, as he watched it take off through the open roof. He saw the pilots glance at him with unreadable faces and realized, with a sharp pang of guilt, Mackenzie would never be able to look down and see that he had tried.

As the roof began to slowly close, little droplets of rain began to sprinkle through the opening. They stung, like shards of ice, and Kit stood there until the sound of the engines faded and he convinced himself he would not drown in the rain, but that the water may fill up the aching, desolate emptiness that was left behind. 

[encomiium]

We Could Have Gone to Coldstone 13 April 2022 Kit

One of the most widely pervasive misconceptions in the west is that, among surveyed individuals (which people say as if to appear more qualified to speak on the matter), the most commonly reported fear is public speaking. The truth is that there is a noticeable lack of peer-reviewed science to substantiate this claim. A simple google search would show you countless listicles and pie charts generated from numbers pulled either from thin air or a questionable “survey” done in 1998. 

So, no, Kit did not necessarily believe in that little “fun fact” which, for all intents and purposes, had become somewhat of a cultural myth, but he knew that, on that morning, standing in front of the Board, the trembling in his fingers was not from malnourished weakness. 

Honestly, Kit wasn’t even all that bothered by public speaking. He was by no means an exceptionally charismatic personality, though he was aware that he had a certain charm about him that endeared him to people listening.  But this did not feel like a harmless presentation of his research or a mundane, weekly status update. This felt like a trial. It was clinical and impersonal: he felt less like a human and more like a piece of machinery being assessed for retirement and upgrade. There was a hunger in their eyes. They wondered if they could do with a younger, less damaged model. 

You would think, after healing a tennis ball-sized hole in his gut, Kit would be used to the feeling of emptiness in his stomach, but the scar-tissue helped him feel more and more normal every day. He could go a full day now without feeling incomplete. Yet, standing in front of a large screen split into a grid of nine bureaucrats staring down at him, he couldn’t help the sinking feeling, like he’d been scooped hollow all over again. 

It could have been much worse. At Ben’s hearing, he testified that he was confident Ben had changed the size of the projectile just before it hit him. All of the icicles around him were deterrent-sized. Scary and lethal, but aimed at nothing in particular. They were warnings. The one that hit him--a freak accident he maintains to this day--was much, much smaller by comparison. Ben wouldn’t comment on that. He didn’t say much, actually, which is its own tragedy. 

“Doctor Saint Vincent,” one man coughed up, like the exertion of speaking was too much on his hefty body. He recognized that man. He had poked holes in Kit’s testimony. If he could adjust the size of the icicle, he could have changed its trajectory. Your testimony suggests he intended to hit you, if anything. Kit nearly got court martialed on the stand when he grabbed his tie clip--a sensible SHIELD logo--and whipped it at the man, as hard as he could, splitting a few stitches in the process. It bounced off the bald man’s head with a metallic twang and the room erupted in gasps and whispers as the judge called for peace. Kit’s face was hot, his breath like glass in his still-weak lungs. The judge began to reprimand him, but years’ worth of rage began pouring out of him as his voice cracked. 

The projectile--Kit was careful to call it that, to distance it from Ben’s mutation--was traveling at twice that speed, in a much more stressful environment. Tell me again how easy it was to change its trajectory, Lieutenant Carrol. 

Besides smashing Jacob’s laptop, it was one of the very few times Kit could admit to himself that his ex had changed him. 

“It seems that your first week back to work in the labs has been--” the man--Lieutenant Travis Carrol--paused, grunting as he flipped through the paperwork in front of him. His camera pointed up at him in an incredibly unflattering angle, “Well, it seems everything is quite normal.” His voice indicated no ill-will or disappointment, but Kit liked to imagine this man harbored some sort of grudge. 

“Yes, sir,” Kit answered as sincerely as he could. He could feel Jacob standing next to him, smothering a grin. The two of them were leaders on their base, seasoned officers and top-choices as heirs to directorial positions, and it still felt like they were children called into the principal's office. 

“I did have a question in regards to your… medical device,” the Lieutenant finally added. 

Ah, there’s the grudge. 

“I understand you have been cleared by other medical staff for certain tasks such as lifting weights and standing for prolonged periods of time,” the Lieutenant began with a certain arrogance about his tone, like he knew he had played this game of circumstantial chess exactly the right way. 

Kit cleared his throat, “That is correct, sir.” He had a small out-of-body experience when he realized he was standing in the belly of a top-secret international defense initiative hundreds of yards underground in their most secure meeting room, assessing his physical condition like he was some sort of stock room associate. 

“And you plan to return to your surgical rotation next week?” the Lieutenant continued. Kit couldn’t help a tiny smirk. He’d finally remembered what this guy looked like to him. 

“Yes, sir,” Kit confirmed. One of the other Board members--Doctor Priya Tiwari--hummed contentedly, though the tight line of her lips betrayed her annoyance. He was glad to know someone understood that getting Kit back on staff was a win for The Farm, not something to be questioned ad nauseum. 

“To my understanding, Doctor Saint Vincent,” Jabba the Hutt gloated, leaning back in his chair, his fingers stitched together on his rotund belly, “Your nasogastric tube is an exposed, direct line to your stomach. Wouldn’t that jeopardize the sterile field? How do you plan to combat exposing your patients to the harmful gut bacteria you may be producing while in surgery?”

Kit blinked. 

Jake actually could not stifle his snickering this time. He would have been fine, had Doctor Tiwari not rolled her eyes, tossed her hands up in defeat, and mumbled some kind of Hindi profanity. He quickly ducked his head and covered his mouth as Kit screwed his eyes shut, willing the stupidity of that question to roll off his body and summoning what little patience he had left. 

Kit cleared his throat and felt his NG tube shift. He moved his hands from the small of his back and reached behind his ear to pull out the port resting at his shoulder. As he looked back up at the screens, he loosely resembled a Kindergarten teacher. “It’s actually not open at all times. If you look here,” he pointed at the pink and blue caps at the end of his tube, “It’s closed when I’m not hooked up to my IV. My-- uh-- ‘gut bacteria’ are no more ‘exposed’ than if I were to do surgery with an open mouth, which, typically, would be covered with a mask anyway.” 

He tucked his tube back into his collar, glancing at Jake for some moral support. Jake, god bless him, swayed in his spot to relieve his giggles. 

“But, I appreciate your concern for medical safety, Lieutenant,” Kit placated, attempting to rally even a shred of respect for the man, “Luckily, the tube is easily removable and I, as a medical professional, can re-install it. Should I feel any particular surgery requires extra caution, I do plan to remove the tube.”

Kit paused, scanning the faces on the screen, before adding quickly, “I don’t anticipate that happening, though.” 

--

“Congratulations, doctor. You’re officially out of time-out,” Jake grinned, walking Kit down the frigid hallway. 

Kit snickered and pulled his lab coat tighter around his body before nudging Jake with his elbow, “Lieutenant Carrol hates my guts. All 75% of what’s left.” 

Jake tossed his head back and cackled, “He’s like a Scooby-Doo villain, right?!”

Kit snorted, “Oh, my god he actually is.”

“I heard it in your voice. ‘I don’t anticipate that happening, though, you fat fuck.’” Jake sneered before pressing the button for the elevator upstairs. 

Kit rolled his eyes, “I’m not an animal, Jacob, I would never.”

Jake shook his head, “God, you’re so posh, it’s disgusting. I would never,” he sang, as if Kit were Mum Lizzie speaking to the press, “I’ll credit you with this, though. All that huffin’ and puffin’ goes out the window when it’s time to fling tie clips, innit? I know that now.”

Kit laughed, even as he dropped his gaze to his shoes. He felt a little guilty, but, admittedly, it was nice to pretend that he didn’t do that because he was pleading for their best friend’s life. It was nice to pretend nothing had fallen apart. 

Finally, the elevator doors opened and Jake walked through first. Kit took a step to join him, but Jake held out a hand with a guilty smile, stopping him outside the doors. 

“What are you doing?” Kit asked, his brows knit.

“Don’t hate me for this, Kitty,” Jake laughed, pulling a manila folder out of thin fucking air. Seriously, Kit hadn’t seen it once the entire time they were together. 

“No, Jake--”

“Doctor Reed called out sick and--”

“Jake, we were going to go to Coldstone! You promised!”

“You can’t even eat anything there!”

“I can have a bite or two of yours!” Kit was about two seconds away from stomping his foot. Even if he couldn’t eat anything there, Kit really, really liked the smell of a clean Coldstone.

The elevator started to close and Jake stopped it with his elbow, “I know, I know, I’m the worst and I’m sorry. But you’ve got full privileges back and you’re the only one qualified to run all these tests! I didn’t want you to have to come all the way back downstairs when you’re already here.”

Kit huffed and pouted, really laying it on thick. He knew full-well that Jake was right and he was in no position to refuse work, but he still felt the entire force of this gut-wrenching disappointment and wanted Jake to know every second of it. After a few seconds of unrelenting sulking, he snatched the folder from Jake’s hand and wrapped his arms around it, glaring at him. 

“Thank you, Kitty, I love you!” Jake called out as the elevator doors started to close, “I’ll take you to Coldstone another time, I promise!” 

Kit turned when the elevator hummed back into operation, practically stomping his way to the containment units, “Love me my ass. Power-mad fiend.” he grumbled, before swiping his access card against the key fob and finding a strange satisfaction in watching the door to one of the highest level restriction zones open to him once again without a fight. The devil works hard, but Deputy Director Jacob Pine works harder. 

--

Two hours later, Kit had finally reached his last patient. Most of the residents on this level were what the public might classify as “cryptids.” Kit liked to call them guests. 

While Kit was more than capable of treating most living organisms after an hour or two with established research material, the guests were simply not his area of expertise. He cared deeply for their well-being, but could not provide the care they deserved. During his recovery time, he finally managed to write up his proposal to hire staff specifically designated to researching and studying this growing population. He had hoped to start “interviews” (government-sanctioned kidnapping) next week, but not soon enough, as his stomach gave a protesting grumble. He would probably need to hang two bags of nutritional liquid after this.

He was proud to say only one of the patients on this level was kept there against her will, if she had any discernible will. When he had climbed the ranks to co-chairing the Medical and Research division, this portion of it was an ethical mess. Fixing it all--especially alone--was one of the most difficult challenges in his new position. The Chief of M&R was a nice woman, but quite old and very ready to retire so, when Kit suddenly found himself with a promotion and plenty of free time in an unexpectedly half-empty barracks room, he took this floor on as a personal project. It took a few months, but, by the end, only the Hagraven remained as a red-level threat. He was grateful he only needed to perform some routine maintenance on her pod monitoring system. 

He did not like how she tracked him through the large glass window. 

After her, the floor consisted of a few injured residents who were kept indefinitely until they were evaluated for safe release. Kit had to review quite a few charts, but he remembered a fair number of these patients, some of which he was in the field to witness firsthand. 

He took great care to bandage the bleeding leaf of a large potted flower composed of a currently unidentified flesh, recalling how it wailed like a baby when he and the rest of the team had first discovered it. They didn’t find the young man they had initially been dispatched to retrieve, the son of a respected surgeon who played God in her attic and desecrated the corpses of her family to, according to reports, successfully revive her son, dead three-days-long already. Instead, they found Kevin. Unlike many members of the team, Kit was enamored with Kevin immediately. 

Kevin could not be called a voluntary resident, as it did not show any signs of complex communication skills, but researchers have noticed that, minutes after an evaluation to be rehomed in a more suitable environment, Kevin would spontaneously develop a new injury, much like the broken leaf Kit took precious time to dote on.

Once Kit finished, Kevin gave a happy little coo at its new bandaging before returning to its rhythmic and soothing swaying in its pot, content with its few minutes of undivided attention. 

At the end of the hall lived their singular verifiably voluntary resident. Kit had barely gotten to the keypad at the entry to her pod before a robotic female voice rang out through the speaker to the hallway, “Kitty,” it said simply, and Kit smiled. 

“Hello, my darling,” Kit called out as he stepped into the pod. Inside, a 400 gallon, L-shaped aquarium took up nearly the entire room and hummed with life, bathing the space in blue light. Corals and lava rocks of all shapes and sizes decorated the tank floor, as well as a few wooden puzzles and toys left quite neatly in choice nooks and crannies. Kit sat at a chair positioned near the tank and gazed at one corner, where a long, coiling tentacle reached out for a keypad positioned near the front of the glass from a hiding place amongst the coral. It writhed along the keys, but made no effort to push any of the buttons. 

Kit frowned, “What’s the matter, Miss Christine?” She had named herself after Christine Daae from her favorite musical. 

The tentacle twirled for a moment before another appeared and they worked swiftly along the keys. The siri-voice spoke up in the speakers, “I am quite vexed with you, Christopher.”

Kit grabbed his heart with a pained laugh, “Oh, not my christening name, Christine!”

“Do not patronize!” she scolded, “You have not visited!” 

“Christine, darling, come on out, I promise I have a good excuse,” he smiled, standing to approach the glass.

Her tentacles drifted from the keys in a moment of thought, the ends twisting and twirling in graceful curls before finding their way back down to the keys, “Alright, but this is not because you are clearly flirting with me.” 

Kit giggled before bending down to watch as a common octopus, small even by her species’s standards, emerged from a tiny crevice in the coral. She pulled herself to the glass, her suckers moving in tiny arches as she inched closer to take a look at one of her favorite doctors. She trained her eye on his face, studying him for a moment before stretching one tentacle down to the keypad. 

“What is that? Are those frogs?” she asked in quick succession. A few tentacles already began to peek their way out of the water in anticipation, waiting for Kit to allow her a little feel. 

“Yes, those are frogs on the bandage, very good! It’s a feeding tube,” he said tilting his head with apology, “which is why you can’t touch it, I’m afraid.” 

“You are hurt.” she concluded, her eyes shifting from Kit’s face to his stomach. Her maroon body shivered with a wave of gray. 

“I was, I’m alright now,” he smiled, noticing her tentacles still inching their way to the top of the tank, looping over the edge of the glass. There was some silence as Christine hovered above the keypad, waiting.

“Would you like to feel the scar?” he offered, straightening his body so she could get a better look at his abdomen. Kit had never discouraged Christine’s curiosity and, in fact, felt an innocent kinship with her for it. He did not want to assume her capability of comprehension; a completely sentient octopus will always surprise you.

“I thought it may be rude to ask,” she typed, before making her way to the top of the tank. Kit rolled his sleeve up before dipping his hand into the warm water for her to climb onto. If he were being honest, he enjoyed her texture. There was something acutely satisfying about her squishy, slimy body in direct juxtaposition to the strength and surety of her suckers. He untucked his shirt from his dress pants and pulled it up, exposing the red, puckered scar just above and to the right of his belly button. She reached out a single tentacle and he shuddered when her suckers met the skin there. It turns out, her texture was much nicer in his hand than on his body. 

She pulled away from his stomach once she was satisfied, curling up easily in his hand before he dipped her back into the salty water. He walked over to the sink nearby as she floated gently back down to her keypad and sat silently for a while. Kit gave her some time as he washed his hands. Christine was much more fond of dedicating her intellect to reading fantasies and romances or playing Candy Crush on the iPad at the other end of her tank. She did just enough math to please the researchers before asking them to bring her another puzzle or toy. It wasn’t often she was confronted with anything as anatomical as this. 

“Do not laugh at my question,” she finally said.

“I would never,” he chirped as he dried his hands and tucked his shirt back into place.

“Did you do the surgery on yourself?” she asked.

Kit smiled.

Her tentacles worked furiously as another gray wave washed over her body, “You said you would not!”

“I’m not!” he protested, returning to his seat, “No, I did not do the surgery on myself. It’s usually not advisable to do that.” 

She nodded a little octopus nod. “The craftsmanship is questionable,” she declared. 

“Christine!” Kit gasped, scandalized, “That’s very rude!”

“I did not say it was unattractive!” Two of her tentacles undulated against the glass and Kit could have sworn it looked like laughter. “You have a very nice body! I just know your work would have been better.” 

“Oh, now look who's flirting as an apology,” he teased. He briefly made note of how absolutely pathetic it was that it worked before shrugging, “If I’m alive, then all’s fine.”

Christine paused again, her tentacles twitching over the keys. Kit sat back in the chair and finally felt the weight of his exhaustion. He would build up his stamina again, he knew that. But in the quiet of the pod, with an octopus’s gaze trained on him, he suddenly felt incredibly vulnerable. It was that feeling of being scooped hollow again, but now he felt it in his chest, gaping and empty, like a bed that suddenly became too big, or an empty dresser he had to toss photos into to keep from staring at them.

“You’re quite withholding today,” he baited, desperate to fill the silence. 

Christine hesitated again before typing, “I am afraid I will make you sad if I ask my question,” she said. She was very still for the first time during Kit’s visit, her body resembled a rock as it rested on the keypad. 

Kit watched her carefully. The hollow feeling started to spread and his friendly grin began to fade. He looked tired for the first time that day. He was smart enough to know what she wanted to say--or at least know what she was thinking about. He swallowed. Hard. 

“That’s alright, darling. You don’t have to be afraid of what I think,” he tried to force a smile, but he knew she could sense the insincerity. 

“I was only wondering,” she said slowly, “Did Mackenzie come when it happened?” 

Kit clenched his jaw. 

Hearing his name for the first time in months--the word “sting” is not adequate enough to describe the physical sensation. And to hear it said by a voice so robotic and cold--his stomach tightened like he’d been punched and all too quickly, he felt sick. He fought the feeling, not wanting to re-install his NG tube today, not wanting to afford that man the satisfaction of his pure, visceral aching, not wanting to run to the sink and retch in front of Christine. 

“I did make you sad,” she typed, her tentacles curling in under her head. Kit almost imagined the unchanging speaker voice had come down to a whisper. 

“Um,” he stalled, his voice trembling as he gathered his thoughts and cast his eyes to the ceiling. He felt it, the hot, burning need to cry, to weep, to scream, but he breathed his way through it, as he had been breathing his way through three years alone. “I really wish I could tell you this all ended like one of your novels,” he finally said, when the blurriness faded from his eyes and he could confidently tilt his chin back down to face her. 

“But the world out there, it’s hard. We make hard decisions that we think are best for the people we--” he swallowed, “We love. Yeah? And not everyone can have a happy ending. Sometimes, the happiest endings are the ones where we do the most hurtful thing because we know it will keep the people we care about safe. Does that make sense?” he asked gently, hoping he wasn’t being too vague with her. It was difficult, feeling like he couldn’t even be completely honest with an octopus.

“It does,” she said, the little tips of her tentacles peeking out from under her body, “I am very sorry.”

Kit smiled and shook his head, finally reaching for the folder that detailed her tests for the day. With a final breath, he exhaled the want and with it went the vacant feeling at his elbow he felt at odd times of the day, the ghost of a familiar laugh that haunted his silent moments, and the memory of begging for a name while he lay bleeding on a stretcher, a name that tasted like blood and bliss and shame.

“It’s alright, my darling. Let’s get started, shall we?”

[encomiium]

I Should Tell You 16 March 2022 Quintus

The air in Aya’s house had been like molasses since Fér had begun sprinkling dove gray feathers over the hardwood floor, soft and speckled and collected whenever Quintus got the chance. Aya cried, Raúl still burst into tears when he caught the different smell on his cousin’s shoulders in a hug. 

But Levi. 

He and Marlon were barely speaking and, surprisingly, it was the quietest Marlon had been his entire life. Quintus was almost hoping he might cause some sort of commotion to be taken care of; at least that would mean things weren’t falling apart. 

On a cool fall night, Quintus sat alone on the porch swing outside, sipping a glass of coquito when Levi shrugged out of the house in a jacket too big for his shoulders. Right on time. 

“Hey, Levi,” Quin chirped. Levi clicked his tongue, doing little to hide his annoyance. Quin smothered a grin, swirling his drink. Levi gave him a cordial little nod and tried to continue down the stairs when Quin leaned forward. 

“Goin’ out?” he asked, resting his elbows on his knees. 

Levi stopped halfway down the steps. Quintus could almost see his thoughts, the way he tilted his head to the stars and considered being disrespectful before slowly turning his body. Aya trained him well.

“I’ll be back in a few hours,” he said with a half-hearted look over his shoulder. 

“Can we talk?”

Levi rolled his eyes and searched for some excuse that wasn’t a blatant fuck you, I wish you’d never showed up, but Quin was already making space on the porch swing. With a haggard sigh, Levi stomped back up the steps and dropped his body into the swing, not once meeting Quin’s eyes. He would never say anything rude to someone his father kept around, but he was going to make it perfectly clear he wasn’t thrilled to be in Quin’s company. He stared out into the night, his lips drawn in a tight line. Quin wondered what he was thinking about, if his mind wasn’t awash with the fog of his anger. 

For all the credit it’s worth, Quin admired the way Levi kept his fury belted down tight. He was a warrior in his own right, stronger than any of them. 

Quin looked out into the night, looking for whatever Levi had trained his eyes on. “Did you know you’re his first child?” 

Levi finally looked at him, his brows knit tight and his lip curled. He was his father’s child, if nothing else was sure. A Venator was not afraid to let you know they thought you were stupid. 

Quin snickered, shaking his head, “You’re a smart kid, Levi. I know you’ve pieced together what your father has chosen to share and what your bird-brained boyfriend has blurted out—” 

Levi bristled and Quin interrupted with a little smile, “Sorry, sorry, I do love him, I promise.” Levi settled back, still looking out at the night, but his lips loosened a bit, his teeth worrying the inside of his cheek. 

“And I know you know Fér has been on this earth for a very, very long time. I’m not exactly comfortable telling you details even he hasn’t fully unpacked yet, but I think. I think it is so important for you to know that you are his first and only child.”

Levi’s eyes flickered over to Quin for a moment before going back to watching the night move silently before them. 

Quin sighed, “He had a habit of passing on to the next life early. He was restless and I— I take responsibility for that.”

He shifted in his seat, staring down at the tiny flecks of cinnamon floating around the cream in his glass. 

“Levi, you would hate me if you could have seen what I put him through. He carried the guilt of—”

Quintus tasted blood. 

“Of what happened—through so many lives.”

Levi shifted in his too-big jacket and Quin cleared his throat. “Anyway, he never saw his children. Not once. He never survived to see them. 

“They were well taken care of. I—I probably did much more than I was allowed to. For them. And— And please don’t think there was some inordinate amount of them. Most of his lives, he did not have children. But for the very, very select few where he expected, he was taken away. Those were very. Very hard to watch. He was so excited to live those lives. I don’t—”

Quintus cleared his throat again. He didn’t know how to finish that thought. He didn’t know how to express to Levi that it was his fault those children would never know their father. It was his fault Férnando never knew them. He didn’t know how to justify deserving this life with Fér, after causing all of that suffering. 

“I was terrified. Watching this life. Because I turned away for one moment and the next, you were in his arms and you— you broke my heart. I was that at any moment he would be taken and you would be another orphan I would sprinkle blessings over that would never make up for the loss of a father. 

“But you weren’t. You kept on growing. And he kept on living. And soon, I was called away to Marlon, and then Posey.”

Quin paused, tearing his eyes away from his glass to glance up at Levi. He was watching Quin talk now, settled into his too-big jacket and leaning against the corner of the porch swing. Quin pushed himself back into the cushions, relaxing into Levi’s attention. 

“I missed so much of your life,” he sighed, watching Levi finally look away and shake his head. So many words hung on those lips, a jaded apathy coloring his eyes. Quin ran his hand through his hair, wet with the condensation from his glass as he tried to shake the ache of Levi’s anger from his bones. 

“Do you remember swinging in the park?” he said finally on the tail of a groan. 

“You were only as tall as my knee and you bounced off walls and rode a tiny purple dragon and said you were sorry and meant it. I had come to check in on Fér—I did that as often as I could—and he was swinging you in the park. He looked half-dead already, and this thrill of fear ran through me until I realized he was exhausted from the joy of you. He loved you so much. And needed you to take a nap. So badly. So he took you to a park. 

“And you loved the swings. ‘Daddy, daddy push me!’ You would beg and beg until Fér made a big show of groaning and slinking over to the swings, but really. He adored how much you needed him. How you trusted him and felt his love when he did things for you. 

“He swung you so high. You really thought you could touch the clouds. And then you tried. 

“At the highest point, with no warning, you launched off the swing set.”

Quin thought he might have heard Levi breathe, the tiniest of laughs. 

Riding the high of what he’d convinced himself was a laugh, Quin kept on with a smile, “I didn’t even think. In the moment you realized you could not fly and you were going to fall, I caught you. I don’t even know how I got there. But suddenly you were in my chest and Fér was staring at me like I had two heads.”

Levi actually laughed then, his lips betraying the smallest of smiles. 

“I mean, imagine, I have done things I’m not proud of. Interacting with him over his lifetimes. They’ve never been pretty. And right then, I was some random weirdo holding his one and only son. A stranger. So immediately I held you out as far away as I could from my body, like you were poison. ‘I’m so sorry! Here you go!’ I practically shoved you into his arms.

“I think I got about half of that out before he was speaking over me. It was something explicit in Spanish and a bunch of ‘thank yous’ but. I was gone really quickly. I didn’t. I didn’t want to sour that moment.”

Quin smiled, his eyes sparkling with the memory of it.

“Because in the split second before I held you out to your father, you looked up at me and you had these big, brown eyes and I loved you. So much. And I didn’t want anything to touch that memory, not even Fér.”

“I didn’t know that was you,” Levi finally said, so quiet Quintus almost believed he’d imagined it. Something electric ran through his body, something sharp and bright that caused his nose to burn. The thought that Levi remembered, there was no euphoria that could compare.

Before Quintus could consider it, the words poured from his mouth, wanting so badly to let Levi in, to give him a portion of the love that has existed just for him for centuries, “I had already made up my mind that I would not marry if I could not marry him. My father was funny, he would have this look—it was like shock and incredulity all in one and he would shrug. He said that if I still felt that way once the pressure of an empire was on my shoulders, then I would be fit to change the world. 

“We would whisper about what our son would be like. We didn’t even care how he would come to be ours, he just would. And I would go on and on and on about how he would be tall and smart and strong, and handsome, the best of both of us. And he would get so quiet, and smile—God I wished so badly I could hear his thoughts—and he said just one thing: ‘and kind.’ 

“That’s all he wanted of you. If you were nothing else and only kind, he would have thought you perfect. 

“And yet, here you are, perfect and so much more.”

Levi finally met his gaze and he looked—hurt. The night had plucked the anger from his brows and all of that darkness he kept bottled up could only be smothered by his hand running rigid over his eyes.

“What I’m trying to say, I think is. I know your dad would run a dagger through my heart to save you and he wouldn’t think twice about it. And I want you to know, I would bare my chest and let him. I know you don’t know me, and it’s okay if you don’t trust me or don’t really understand who I am or why I’m here—I just. Needed you to know I’ve loved you from the moment you came into this world. I’ve loved you since Rome, Levi. Every part of you. 

“And for as strong as that love is, as deeply as I feel that, your father feels it tenfold. Please never doubt that. I know it seems like everything is moving on without you right now—I know that feeling very well.”

He laughed and when he looked at Levi, he saw the same brown eyes that stared up at him from his chest after falling from the heavens. 

“But the truth is,” he sighed, “I’ve just been trying to run and catch up with you.”

[encomiium]

Does God Hear the Prayers of Angels? 27 November 2021 Quintus

“Hypocrite!” Ilai howled, wrenching his body as powerfully as he could, though he could not free himself from Quintus’s unrelenting grip. Even as he ground his body against the earth, the archangel above him barely moved, easily overpowering him with a single hand.

“Ilai,” Quintus continued, unflinching and calm, holding the angel’s wrists firmly at the small of his back, “For your sins against mankind, for the cruelty you have freely dispensed, for the blood that has been shed in pursuit of your selfish, unsanctioned whims, and for the atrocities you have enacted on mortal women, especially, you have been judged and cast out, so sayeth the Lord.”

With a snarl, Quintus bent down to Ilai’s ear, his mouth filling with soil as he struggled against Quintus’s grip. “I will enjoy watching you burn,” the archangel whispered, only loud enough for the fallen and his corpses to hear. 

Ilai cried out as the tips of his white wings sparked to flame. Quintus couldn’t imagine the pain of it, the agony of losing one’s grace. 

He knew, intimately, only scum like this deserved a fate so nasty. 

“And what of you, archangel on high?!” Ilai sobbed, gnashing his teeth as he struggled for breath past the inferno raging across his body. 

Quintus had seen the mangled remains of Ilai’s silent conquests, heard the wails and prayers he could not answer all at once. The sudden accusation nearly made him laugh. 

“We are all well-aware of your unnatural desires, holy one,” Ilai spat, his writhing agony shifting to something abyssal, a hatred that only bubbles up from the deepest pits of the unspeakable void. The bemused grin faded from Quintus’s lips. For all the ways he had become an invaluable tool in the army’s arsenal, he was still mortal In The Beginning; after all this time, that sort of hatred still chilled him to the soul. 

“What was his name?” Ilai grunted, his pearly feathers catching flame faster and faster, “Antonius? And yet you are not judged. You are favored.”

“Keep his name out of your filthy mouth,” Quintus growled.

“Antonius--No, something different now,” Ilai almost sang, delirious with pain.

Quintus knew, beyond all things, what he desired from Antonius was not the same as what Ilai took from women. He watched, protected, in as pure a way as any being could. He was afforded certain graces. Michael and Gabriel took Quintus’s affections as the sort of habit an infant might have. Quintus can’t help it, they thought. His little human quirks--empathy, grace, rage, love--were what made him unique and usable, so they allowed certain things. They knew his heart. Quintus knew his own heart. 

And yet, he could not help himself. He bore down on Ilai’s body, snapping both of his wrists with such calculated ease. “Stop,” he ordered.

Ilai barely noticed, driven mad as black tears rolled down his cheeks and dripped into the upturned soil beneath them. His halo began to crumble. 

“Ah! No! Hector, this time, ah?” Ilai laughed, watching the ash above his head sprinkle down.

Quintus’s lips curled, his eyes trained on the trail of fire blazing across Ilai’s back, willing it to burn faster.

“You know why he never remembers you, don’t you?!” Ilai tried to turn his head to watch the fruit of his words. He longed to see the look on the Immovable Quintus Aurelius’s face.

“Shut up,” Quintus hissed.

“You’re a coward. Not a single thing in this universe respects a coward.”

“You’re wrong--”

“You won’t go and take what you want. You mewl about, asking for permission, hoping any one of them will accept you into their little club, grant you a single fucking crumb, but I will not. Not anymore. I want. I take.

“Perhaps I will take him next.”

Quintus’s grip loosened when he reached for his sword.

Too fast, Ilai twisted out of Quintus’s hands and shoved a single, disintegrating dagger into Quintus’s belly. As Quintus fell to a knee, Ilai flapped what was left of his blackened wings and disappeared, leaving Quintus groaning in a flurry of Ilai’s ash. The dagger crumbled in his hands and a blotch of scarlet blood pooled inside his armor. Any human weapon might skirt off his skin with ease, but even a dilapidated blade from the hip of an angel would leave a wound. 

No time, Quintus pressed a hand to the squelching hole in his belly and searched the field for any sign of Ilai, but he was long gone. Ilai’s words rang in his head, images of tanned flesh strewn over a wooden floor, dark eyes rolled into the back of a skull, a single, last breath, flashed in his mind, over and over, like a priest reciting his rosary. Like the breath of God over Gomorrah, a chill ran through his skin. He struggled to regain his breath, beads of cold, horrified sweat dripped from his hairline and down his neck. He rose to his feet and struggled for balance before flapping his wings.

He landed on a wet cobblestone alley in a storm of golden feathers. His armor had disappeared, leaving him in a long cotton shirt that did little to hide the still-open wound in his stomach. He wobbled, bracing himself on a wooden doorframe, before pulling a coat from the air to wrap around his trembling body. Still keeping a firm grip on his belly, he stumbled out of the alley, stepping over a damp copy of the New York Tribune announcing Millard Fillmore’s swearing-in ceremony to a busy Wall Street. 

People brushed past him, turning only to note his messy hair and wild, searching eyes, before giving him a wide breadth of space. To them, he looked like one of those shifty types from the Lower East side. Many of them clutched their belongings much more closely.

Quintus’s vision began to swim. The warm spot on his stomach grew larger by the moment and his head began to feel light. The visions were relentless--a father plunging his knife into his son on an altar, the discolored birthmark on Antonius’s back split open and screaming. Gripping his coat so tightly it nearly tore, it only took him a moment to scan the crowd of people before he saw him, his body nearly glowing in the throng of the crowd. 

“Antonius!” he shouted. The cool white sun overhead became orange and dark; the cement sidewalk became dirt and grass. Before he could shake his mind free, for just a moment, tailored petticoats became golden shoulders and New York became Rome. Many people turned their heads, shocked at the sudden sound of a voice, including him--Hector, this life--and the woman he was with.

Quintus rushed past the suddenly frozen mass of people until he finally stood with Antonius and he realized, in a moment of dizzy clarity, it was the first time they had stood next to each other so closely since the cliffs. He also noticed, with a soft edge of fondness, that Antonius was wearing the most ridiculous hat. 

Until now, Quintus was careful to watch from afar. To be content with his contentment. If Antonius was happy, Quintus would be alright, he would keep his promise. 

But he could not afford to be a coward, not when he could see blackened feathers scattered about a naked corpse he would know from touch, from smell alone.

Antonius pushed the woman behind him. Shielding her with his body. He was frightened.

Quintus flinched. “No, please, Antonius, listen to me--”

“You have me confused with someone else.” Antonius said plainly, his body coiled like it used to when someone raised their voice at his Prince. 

“Please, stop. I need you to remember. Just this once, I need you to remember,” Quintus begged, wrenching his eyes closed to stop the visions from criss-crossing through his mind. Parted lips dripping with blood, a lamb with wide, hopeful eyes being led to slaughter.

“Darling?” the woman squeaked.

“No!” Quintus bellowed. Immediately, Antonius grabbed Quintus’s wrist with one hand and gripped his cane tighter with the other. Quintus let him hold him. He stared at Antonius’s fist around his arm in a bit of stunned wonder. He had forgotten how strong he was. How warm.

“I don’t know what kind of god damned game you’re playing here, but--”

“It’s not a game. My name is Quintus. You know me,” he pleaded. His voice was soft, gentle. He tried to guide Antonius back to him.

And yet, Antonius’s eyes remained hard. He barked, this time with a bit of venom, “Back away. Now!”

“You’re in danger. I can help you. Antonius--”

Antonius shoved him. Hard. Quintus landed on the sidewalk, the impact of it making his teeth rattle. “That is not my name. You have me confused. Get some god damned help.” Antonius turned, placing a gentle, shaking hand on the woman’s back. 

“Hector!” Quintus shouted after him. He scrambled to his feet, his coat falling open. He placed a bloodied hand on the brick wall of the pharmacy beside them. He could not stop. He could not let Antonius’s blood stain the earth again, not when it would be his fault, a coward’s fault. The visions flashed: tall grass dripping with ichor, a man alone in a house on a cliffside.

Hector stopped, frozen for just a moment. He began to walk again shortly after, deciding it better to leave a crazed man where he is. Quintus pressed on, “Okay, alright, Hector, then! I’m sorry. I’m sorry, but please. I am begging you. I promised I would let you go and I will always only want your happiness. But--But I am not--happy. I miss you. Every breath I take misses you, every thought I have misses you. I cannot--I cannot take this any longer, please. 

“Just look at me!”

Hundreds of years of small shatterings, little cracks everywhere, led to this moment. Gripping the brick wall until it cut into his fingers, Quintus begged. In front of all of fucking Wall Street, under the gaze of legions of angels who watched in silent judgment, he begged. Every yearning word that had accumulated inside him from eons of living, watching from the outside of Hector’s lives, poured forth from the brokenness he had cultivated, like a garden of hemlock and sweet peas. 

Hector turned and, for a moment, Quintus hoped. But even as his mouth was drawn into a tight, refined line, his eyes betrayed a curt, utter hatred. Quintus had never seen Antonius look at him that way. What was left in his garden wilted at the sight of it.

“I will say this once more and be done with it. I have never seen you before in my life. I have never uttered the name ‘Quintus’ before this moment. I will call the authorities if you continue to threaten me and my wife, are we understood?” Hector’s voice shook with the quietness of his sincerity. 

Quintus opened his mouth once more, daring. He refused to stop. Hate him forever, he could survive that. He has before. But with the name of “coward” ringing in his ears, he would do anything to make a single difference in a single one of Hector’s lives. He loved him. He loved him, he loved him, he loved him. 

Quintus took in a short breath, ready to beg once more, before a hand clapped over his mouth and an arm wrapped around his waist. 

“Oh, dear, my sincerest apologies, signore!” Dante nearly began to bow as he started to pull Quintus away, “My brother he is--ah, not well, you see. I am so sorry if he caused you any harm.” 

Quintus began to wiggle. Maybe Dante could help, maybe Dante would help him--

Dante jabbed him in the side. Hard.

Quintus looked back to Hector, who only nodded and seemed to ease up a little, with Quintus restrained. He took one last look over the archangel and his face betrayed his disgust. “Get him to a hospital,” Hector dismissed, glancing down to the wound on Quintus’s belly, before turning one last time and guiding his wife away. 

“Certo, signore!” Dante called back, still wrestling to get Quintus’s gigantic body away from the massive crowd of onlookers his outburst had drawn, “Grazie for your kindness!” 

Testing, Dante dropped his hand from Quintus’s mouth and Quintus searched within him for something inside him willing to fight. He had promised, lifetimes ago, between whispered giggles in a tent, that he would do anything for Antonius, endure any hardship, forsake any selfishness, defy any god, if only for the chance to gaze upon him. 

And yet Hector had not even dreamt of him.

He drew his lips tight, decided on which oath he would break and which he would keep, before finally casting his gaze down and following where Dante led him.

He prayed, as he turned. Adonai, please. Keep him safe. 

Having finally corralled a hysterical archangel, Dante pressed his fingers into the center of Quintus’s shoulders. Instantly, he felt his wings draw up tight to his body; the binding rune stung under Dante’s touch. Quintus possessed no strength to fight back. He could only replay the sight of Hector, scanning him over, regarding him with such clear revulsion. His chest clenched and tears sprang to his eyes. He did believe once, genuinely, that his love had become stale and trite, that he had grown out of Antonius. Delusions. Hopes, maybe.

Yet, he could still hear the sound of his laughter, especially the laugh that came when he pinned him by the hips and dug his fingers into his ribs. He could feel the secretive glances they shared during council meetings, how they danced over his body and excited him in a way mortal words could not describe. He remembered tears and strong arms, fights and whispered apologies. He could recall, with perfect accuracy, the oaths they swore to each other, and only to each other. I promise to love you, and only you, until the sun burns out of existence and the moon crumbles and we are recalled to the next world.

“What the FUCK were you thinking, do you want to get your pretty little wings clipped?!” Dante hissed, guiding him into yet another alley where he might be able to fly them both somewhere Quintus could lay down and heal properly. 

“Thank you,” Quintus whispered, hollow and compulsory. He leaned on Dante, exhausted and defeated, as the visions became something new: black seas, completely still, rotting grape vines, and Antonius, disgusted by his very presence, over and over, like a priest reciting his rosary.

[encomiium]

Six Months After (Five Lessons You Learn While You’re Healing) 17 October 2021 Jake, in words he wishes he could speak to the past.

5. Your selfishness is the best thing that will ever happen to you.

You don’t believe Kirk can carry your grief. You don’t think he’s strong enough. You ran through Paris--the same streets below you right now--and shielded him from gunfire and debris. You’ve carried him home when he was too drunk to remember his own name. You watched him drill holes into his head and pour the blood into warped ceramic mugs and wonky clay creatures until the swelling in his brain subsided and he cracked his first genuine smile in years. 

For all the time you’ve been together, you imagined yourself to be his big, strong savior--the man who would never fail him, never fail anyone, in fact. And when you did--when you failed everyone--you couldn’t imagine he could ever shoulder the incomprehensible loss you felt. The loss of yourself, your entire meaning. Kirk was softness and joy and comfort: all the things you didn’t deserve when you let the world fall apart. 

But when you stopped at that door, when you reached for his hand and begged him not to let you go alone, you saved your own life that day. I promise you that. 

Kirk Flagg is the strongest man you have and will ever know and he is better at your job than you ever were. Not only will he bear the burden of your failure, your shame, but he will bear you. You will be so bloody intolerable for months. You won’t speak a word for weeks, will spend most of that time losing weight so fast it’s terrifying. You are going to put him through hell and he’ll take it--most of the time, smiling.

You--we--don’t deserve him. Never have. I know you know that. And you’ll hate yourself for what you will do to him. You’ll wish every day that he’ll leave so you can disappear in peace. But he won’t. He’ll stay in that annoyingly bright, fresh apartment, he’ll cook and pray to God you eat, and he’ll love every shattered piece that’s left of you.

And yet, the first time you hear him laugh--really laugh--it will be the first time you think anything could ever go back to the way it was. Dragging him to your crucifixion, forcing him to watch you rot, is a sin you will never receive penance for, but you need him. You need him in a sick, twisted way. And you’re sorry you do. 

You will devote the rest of your life to him. And rightly so. He is the only reason you are alive. 

4. The floor-to-ceiling doors to the balcony don’t offer much privacy.

He will hear you cry. It’s easy to think the world disappears when you’re high above the ground, sitting in a chair that’s so comfortable you have to laugh. You won’t think it’s fair you get to cry in a chair that seems like it was specially designed to hug your body as you sob. You will forget, for a few hours, the wall you’ve made up in your mind behind you, closing you off from everything but the Parisian skyline and a grey-blue sky, is actually just glass and intricate metalwork. 

You won’t care much about that, though. 

A few weeks in, when the world starts to come back to you, when you start to remember that every other human has moved on while you feel like your gut has turned to stone and you’re sinking down into an endless ocean, you’ll hear him cry. 

It’s the first time you’ve heard him cry. 

He’s speaking on the phone maybe, he thinks you can’t hear while you’re sitting out there in your disgusting sweat-stained clothes with the pile of cigarettes in the ashtray. But he’s sobbing, as quietly as he can. You will hear your name a few times and the sounds of him sniffling. You will briefly consider stepping off that balcony, finally. You’ve been thinking about it for a few weeks. That moment will be the strongest time you get that urge. 

You will start leaving the apartment for hours at a time after that. Most of the time you walk to a little grassy spot next to the Seine. It smells horrible, but you’ll only notice around month four. 

This is a good thing. You will realize later he needed you to go away as much as you did.

3. That bluebird is absolutely bullying you.

There will be this bluebird that shows up every morning at 7am sharp and it will be your nemesis. At first, you’ll think he’s kind of cute. You will feed him and it will be a good thing that you’re taking care of something other than yourself. 

And then you’ll notice there’s something a little off about this fucking bird. You sort of think the look it gives you is a little funny. It has these eyes that are so unlike any bird you’ve ever seen. Its gaze doesn’t flitter about, random and unfocused. It stares at you. 

You start imagining what sorts of thoughts those unflinching eyes might be hiding. “Look at this pathetic worm, ah?” 

It’s alright that you imagine the bird is French. 

“Aren’t you ashamed? Take a shower, sac à merde. Feed me bread and take a shower.” 

He’s right. Go take a shower. 

2. It will feel wrong that you don’t feel wrong.

When you were sixteen, you gave your life to an organization because you believed you could do the right thing. You never imagined your life would be anything more than struggling to find a safe place to sleep. You went from shooting cans off fence-posts like some kind of showpony to get a decent meal to joining an elite team of highly-trained individuals because you wanted to help the world. 

And you did. You saved lives, you stopped terror. You were smart, a natural leader, you climbed the ranks with almost no effort, because your desires were always pure and you knew that with every confidence. You did the right thing. Even if that meant breaking rules. You protected the people you loved, even with your badge on the line. 

And it still wasn’t enough. 

When you found Greg--when fucking Grim found Greg--something broke inside of you. And that’s okay. It wasn’t often you lost a recruit, but Greg in particular was difficult. His death was personal and messy. You liked that kid, as much as you tried to remain unbiased. He reminded you so much of yourself when you were younger. Feisty, full of life and a passion for helping people. He was relentlessly selfless. Like you were. 

When his lifeless corpse was pulled from the belly of your compound, a dead soldier turned into some science experiment, a tender, precious thing inside you shattered. 

It didn’t matter how badly you wanted to do the right thing, how intensely you pursued justice, compassion, fairness, evil wormed its way into a safe haven you were responsible for. His blood, his suffering, his pain, stained your hands a deep crimson you could never wash away. 

You spent three days without sleep, just trying to remember if you could ever hear him scream. 

You fell for the lie of Grim’s imprisonment. You didn’t know how you couldn’t have seen it, this fucking doctor who swore it was safer for Grim to be in the pods than anywhere else. Three times you tried to have an evaluation done for his release. Three times it was rejected. You only learned he lost a fucking arm when you found it sewn on to your dead rookie. 

You would have been fine if you’d failed in a way that got you killed in action. People would have mourned you, some may even never be the same, but at least it would be honorable. No, you failed in a way that caused suffering beyond words. These people--these kids--trusted you and you couldn’t protect them. Under your supervision, your leadership, you allowed a madman to torture two humans. You failed in a way that you will never truly heal from.

But, eventually, you will wake up and it won’t be the first thing you think of in the morning. Soon after, you’ll realize you’ve gone the entire day without the image of Greg in Grim’s arms flashing behind your eyes. You will go an entire week without re-analyzing how you overlooked an entire laboratory under the Christmas trees you grew personally. 

You will wrap Kirk in your arms and have to wipe your eyes quickly because you suddenly remember how much you love his smell. You will tell him you love him more than you monologue internally about how much you hate yourself, because, in that stage of healing, the thought of losing him and losing the love you both had lifetimes ago, seems to be the biggest tragedy looming.

You will dare to kiss him. Slowly. Inching towards his lips as if you might poison him with the deep, sincere sadness you’ve cut your teeth on. You will feel sick when his taste fills you with warmth you forgot existed, when you gather him into your arms with such surety, he whines. You have forgotten what it is to be loved, you want, more than anything, to remember. To make him remember. 

You will hate yourself when you wake up next to him and smile. It will fade from your face and you’ll wonder, desperately, where all the grief went. You will think that if you’re happy, then you are disrespecting the legacy of blood and agony you’ve left behind. And it won’t be that you have forgotten your failure. It won’t be that you are suddenly completely fine and would love to go about your business selling daisies and saving fucking kittens.

But scar tissue exists for a reason. The pain lessons, but the wound still exists. You just can’t keep bleeding out. You can’t. As much as you want to or believe you deserve to. You don’t think you’re capable or deserving of it, but so many people need you to stay alive.

Which brings us to your last lesson:

1. You have so much more work to do.

Stanley still reaches out after all these months, every Wednesday and Saturday, like clockwork. Kirk says he and Elyse are still together and both of them are holding down their mentors’ empires. He’s so impressive--they both are. When you’re boarding the plane to Chicago, you think of them and what you’ll say. Whether you would return to SHIELD when Stanley inevitably asks. You don’t know, but you’re holding four bottles of Gatorade in different colors because Kirk couldn’t decide which flavor he wanted and that makes you inexplicably happy. 

Ben has never been a man of many words, but Kirk admits that he panicked and burned a letter from Ben a few months back. In that letter, Ben had written many words, surprisingly, all of which were “colorful,” as Kirk lovingly describes. “He said he chose to write a letter to show you he found our address and would find you, too, if you tried to disappear,” Kirk had said, going noticeably pale. Kirk didn’t want you to find that letter, or any trace of it, and feel worse than you already did. You miss your best friend. You want to know what he said in the letter, but you want to hear him say it to your face.

Even if you don’t know if you could ever be fit to lead again, you find yourself thinking about Pine Farm. The first time you think about Agent Jasper is when you hope he took over as Director when you resigned. It’s partially a selfish wish, it would be such a dream to watch THE Agent Jasper lead an entire SHIELD base, just like he did in his lifetime. You imagine Stanley taking care of all the tech and Everett knowing exactly what to do, like he always did. You have a selfish little desire for everyone to be in the compound again, enjoying the Keurig and donuts, and then you recoil and remember Greg struggling to survive just a few meters below. Healing is like that. It will never be entirely okay. But, in a very quiet place, you want to be the person who makes sure nothing like that ever happens again. 

You have already arranged a meeting with Denny to brief on Greg’s status and what has happened since he settled on Caine’s property. It’s highly unethical and wildly illegal given that you’re not an official agent anymore, but you’re not so certain you care. Checking on him, making sure he’s doing alright and has everything he could ever need or want, making sure that damned hound is doing alright, means more to you than regulations now.

You don’t know what you’re going to say to Sammy. You’ve thought about it, over and over. You’re glad you told him you were leaving, you’re glad you didn’t let him believe that you would just abandon him, but you still feel guilty for going away at all. He needed you. You will realize that when the fog of war lifts and the bodies stop looking like bodies and start looking like gardens beginning to bloom. “I’m sorry,” is a good place to start, you think, and you will go from there. You never thought you would be interested in having a son, but. 

And then there’s the ring. 

You bought it the day after Kirk hugged you, sometime during month three, when the sun shined brighter than usual and the breeze felt good on your skin, and he promised he still loved you. You knew love existed in no purer form than in Kirk Flagg and that you were fucking braindead for not asking him to marry you sooner. You have waited three months to give him that ring--you could never bring yourself to do it in Paris, in the catacomb you both called a home for half a year. The bones of your grief were scattered over the light wooden floors and turkish rug; there wasn’t space for you to get down on one knee. 

As the plane takes off and Kirk is queuing up a Netflix original he somehow produced from Paris--because he’s a superhuman and the love of your life--you dream about the community center. You remember welcoming people in as Stanley’s voice buzzed in your ear, detailing the layout of rooms and where intel suggested Hydra was keeping dozens of files secretly hidden away. You remember the absolute mess of a man who rushed in 20 minutes after people had started throwing their very first pots and you remember your heart leaping into your throat and your cheeks going hot. Stanley had to buzz in to check on you, because your heart rate and blood pressure sky-rocketed at the sight of the man you were now going to try to marry.

You think that room is the place you want to start the next part of your life.