empty thrones (ch2)

[lunecat16]

Title: empty thrones
Rating: Mature
Major Warnings: Body horror, graphic violence, familial abuse, other warnings included in fic
Summary: Reid Musser survives the Carmine Contest, against all odds, though continuing to live comes with its own hard choices to make, about his family, his friends, and how to move forward.

September 6th.

Reid woke up to the smell of fresh food, strong enough to reach past the faint scent of blood and disinfectant that usually permeated his senses. He sat up in bed, collecting himself from dazed half-consciousness. He lifted up a hand, looking down at the wraps as he reached out towards his nightstand. They looked fresh, staining aside. He gave his bedsheets a momentary glance–also fresh, as if they’d been changed while he was asleep.

Raymond had sent him an email summarizing the Others looking after him. One of the two was a weak Bedside Visitor, a ‘guardian angel’. Transient and immaterial, it acted when the charges it latched onto were absent or asleep, only truly existing in those moments. Cleaning, preparing food, and apparently changing a sleeping patient’s bandages without waking them up were among the tasks it could perform, as long as its charge wasn’t aware of it.

There was always a catch, of course, but not one Reid had to worry about. Innocent charges usually went to great lengths to catch the Visitor in the act, and once they did it would reveal itself for an instant before leaving forever, taking a good amount of the witness’s Self with it and leaving them in a constant state of loss and longing. A rather nasty thing, but useful if one simply let it be, and Reid had the knowledge to do so.

His face felt as if it was burning. Reid felt around for his pillbox, for something to alleviate that feeling. He froze, remembering that he no longer had the implement, then searched for the other important thing on the nightstand instead. His hand settled on his phone, and he brought it towards him, checking the time.

Four in the afternoon. He had been asleep for eight hours, which was an improvement. Over the past couple of days his sleep had been erratic; he would close his eyes without knowing whether he would wake up in three hours or eighteen. He would stay awake long enough to eat, let Raymond’s other aide attend to his wounds, or to check his phone for any messages he may have missed. Before long the pain would make it difficult to concentrate, so he would lay down and close his eyes, going back to sleep without knowing when he’d wake.

Reid pressed his finger against his phone’s lock screen a few times, attempting to swipe it open. He bristled with frustration as the touch screen refused to recognize his bandaged hand and complete the swipe, but it worked on the fourth attempt.

No new messages. The most recent email in his inbox was a school announcement from Raymond, promising to keep families updated on the situation in Ontario.

Reid placed the phone back on his nightstand and focused his gaze onto the plate of food left for him. He stood up slowly, using the nightstand as a support, and took careful steps towards the armchairs a short distance across from him.

His condition had improved from when he regained consciousness–once he’d actually eaten something and gotten fluids into his system, standing up was no longer a monumental challenge. Amazing, what attending to mundane needs could do, and Reid was a little embarrassed he’d almost forgotten that himself. When he traveled, he made a point of keeping his physical condition in as good a shape as possible. A healthy body led to a healthy mind, after all. If he was in a hostile area and he couldn’t attend to his needs, he was at least aware of the weaknesses he needed to make up for.

No amount of balanced nutrition could fix the pain that shot through his nerves, or the gainsaying, but it helped him regain blood, and with blood came restored Self and strength. He could hold himself up now, even if he couldn’t draw on his Abyss-touched nature in its full capacity.

The food on the table looked plain, but edible. There was a soft porridge, pale and faintly colored purple from crushed berries, if the sweet smell was any indication. On the side was a yogurt and a glass of water. All foods that he could swallow easily without irritating his throat further.

Reid dropped into the armchair, falling into it more than really sitting. He lifted his hand up to the back of his head, finding where the Other had finished wrapping his facial bandages. He tugged at it and the end came loose. He held onto that end as he slowly unwrapped the rest.

Sharp jolts of pain came and went as the bandages peeled off of him, replaced by a constant, irritated prickling as bare flesh was exposed to air. He caught lengths of bloodstained dressing in his other hand as it began to fall away from him. When he was done he put the pile of bloody bandages on the table, as far away from the tray of food as he could manage.

He could finally eat now. He lifted a spoonful of porridge to his mouth and opened it, and he could feel cuts stretch open as his jaws and cheek moved. As he chewed on the crushed berry pieces, tatters of loose flesh pushed against each other, and he tilted his head slightly to one side to prevent food from getting into the gashes in his cheek that cut through to his jaw. He swallowed, feeling the food slide down the ragged and raw parts of his throat.

He didn’t need to chew food as soft as this–it hurt no matter how slowly or quickly he went–but it made his throat hurt slightly less in return.

And so it went, one spoonful of bland, soft food for invalids at a time. He got halfway through the bowl of porridge before deciding he needed to rest his throat, and sunk further into his chair. He felt uncomfortable. The air in his room felt like a cold chill on his flesh. Even if ‘cold’ was a dull sensation to him, it was difficult to ignore. He took a sip of water to wash down the rest of the food, and then tried the yogurt for a change of pace. It didn’t taste much different, but neither food really tasted like anything, and he was fairly certain that wasn’t because he’d lost his sense of taste.

He only got a couple of spoonfuls through before deciding the cold, lump-like texture of the yogurt sticking in his throat was enough. He put down the spoon, stared at the tray of half-eaten food for a good few minutes, and sighed.

He hadn’t eaten enough, but he just didn’t want to. Not when the mere experience of eating was so unpleasant. He knew he could force himself to finish, like he’d forced so many terrible meals down his throat in the Dark Summer Court, the Underside of Paris, and subpar restaurants, but the drive wasn’t there.

Reid stood up, his body trembling slightly from the exertion. He made his way to the bathroom door and knocked thrice, checking to make sure Amine wasn’t using the room.

No response.

He opened the bathroom door and took careful steps towards the sink, making sure he didn’t stumble and fall onto the tile floor. That would be a humiliation he couldn’t bear, and he’d been humiliated in plenty of ways already. He grabbed a bottle of toothpaste and a toothbrush from the shelf on his side of the room on the way, along with a roll of gauze. The shelf was crowded now, with packs of bandages, disinfectants, and other medicines pushing up against his hair products and shaving cream.

Reid stopped in front of the sink.

He looked up, and into the mirror.

—

September 7th.

 

Dear Reid,

I heard a little of what happened at the end of summer. I’m sorry for your loss and your injury, and I wish you a swift recovery. The Knightons were friends of your father, so it’s likely I’ll be attending the funeral service. I hope you’ll be well enough to attend–there is much I’d like to say that can’t be said nearly as well in an email. : )

There is one matter of importance, however. When you last visited, you aided my family in dealing with the Barrows practitioner. As I understood, you won his implement in the resulting conflict, and we were assured he wouldn’t be a problem afterwards. That proved to be true, but recently he’s come into much more power than he should have, and he’s become a problem again. I would rather not stress you, but as the holder of his implement, I was wondering if anything had happened to it. Just trying to narrow down possibilities.

If you could reply swiftly, it would be appreciated, both to clear up this matter and because I’d want to hear from you, family business or not. It would ease a lot of my worries.

Best Wishes,

Kaye Knighton

Reid stared down at the email. He was slumped in his armchair, with one of his books beside him. He’d intended to do something productive before he tried to drown out his pain with more sleep.

Now this message from Kaye was here. She would be at the funeral.

She would see him.

The mental static, that constant undercurrent of pain and dark feelings, rose up in the back of his mind. He stayed like that for a minute, looking down at Kaye’s message, with barely any thoughts he could bring himself to conjure up.

He stood, feeling a small wave of stabbing pain as he moved more quickly than his body would have liked. He put his phone down onto the side table with a forceful gesture, refusing to glance at it even when he heard a loud clattering sound.

He needed to focus on something else. Anything else.

His eye roved around the room, avoiding the side table, because his phone was on it and the book he’d been looking at wasn’t very engaging anyway. He walked over to his shelves, scanning the book titles, his collection of items, his pictures and trinkets.

He brushed a tiny layer of dust off one picture frame of him during his trip to Japan. It was a group photo with the practitioners he’d stayed with. It was a more casual occasion, but they still stood tall and proud. He stood among them, smiling with a clean, clear face, and wearing a black blazer with the family symbol emblazoned in gold.

He had almost forgotten what his nose looked like. Or that he had dimples–Kaye said she liked them, liked his smile.

…This wasn’t helping.

Reid pushed the picture frame face-down, and looked through the books instead. None of the titles he saw caught his interest. Half of them he’d already read multiple times, and kept as a reference for projects he was working on. The other half were things he hadn’t read through entirely or nearly as often, but they were still there for the same reason. He was a student, but he was expected to be available whenever the family needed him to look into something. Even his special project at the school was something he’d been working on for the family’s sake.

Had he ever read something for himself?

He already knew the answer to that question.

A dull, rising noise of conversation from outside diverted his attention. His eye flicked over to the door. He couldn’t make out the voices, but people were approaching. His heartbeat sped up as he imagined a knock at the door, or a voice calling for him.

He didn’t want anyone to see him like this, hunched over and shuffling around like a wretch. His phone was lying halfway off the side table, his hair hadn’t been washed, he was barely able to put a coherent series of thoughts together, if that door opened–

The mental static grew louder.

He waited, frozen, as the people outside reached his door.

Then they passed it by, the noise of conversation fading as they walked down the senior wing. His heartbeat slowed down, but he didn’t feel any better as he turned back to his bookshelf.

He didn’t want to look at any of these books. It felt strange, to not have a goal to guide his choices. He didn’t like reading, or the practice, or anything on its own merits. He liked being able to help the family through his efforts, he liked that sense of accomplishment and fulfillment.

He couldn’t do that now. His father’s orders weren’t around to guide him. Now he had to do something for himself.

He didn’t know how to even start. He wasn’t even sure there was much of a Self there to do things for.

He continued scanning the shelves, and stopped over one particular book. It was a catalog of historic events in the Canadian and Northern US region, painstakingly gathered by practitioners who compiled the information and shared it with close allies, or those willing to pay a high enough price.

His family had received the book a couple decades ago in a non-aggression pact with one of the authors’ families. A few years later, they broke the pact through a loophole and took everything that family had anyway.

Most of the things on his shelves had stories like that.

He took a few deep breaths to clear his thoughts. He’d hoped the sharp pangs he felt from his ragged throat and broken chest would center him, but it didn’t help–dulled them, maybe, by the fact that he was always in pain.

If he didn’t have a goal to work towards, maybe he could make a goal of his own. He pulled the history book off of the shelf.

Montana and Newfoundland. With luck, the disastrous Judge appointments he used to argue his case were the sort of event the authors would have learned of and written down.

He didn’t feel any less upset, and the darker feelings at the back of his mind remained, but this would be a productive distraction.

He sat back down on the armchair, and began to read.

—

The gunshot echoed through the small room, leaving Reid’s ears ringing. The Allemand thrall went limp, his head jerking backwards from the force of the bullet. Bloody and broken hands fell to the ground first, followed by the rest of his body. His mouth hung open, slack-jawed.

Eve’s body was off to the side. Her face was a mess of gore, with what little skin was left drenched in blood. He could see the lacerations, the cuts from sharp glass, that ripped her open.

He heard a squelching, spurting noise and turned to see the bullet wound in the thrall’s head open up. Blood poured from the opening, and that blood formed arms. Hands pierced through at the center, out of which more arms emerged. Fractal, practically infinite.

He was trapped in the room like the witch hunter had been, and he couldn’t get out. And the horror continued to pour out, unfolding and unfolding–

—

Reid woke up, stifling a groan as his senses returned to him. He looked down at the open history book in his lap, squinting to read the page number as his eye adjusted to the lack of light in his room.

He was on page six.

He’d fallen asleep for God knows how many hours–enough for it to be nighttime, at the very least–and he’d only gotten through six pages.

His neck and back were stiff from falling asleep while sitting up. Even worse, his eye felt dry. His torn eyelid meant that some of his eye was exposed to the air even when he slept. It wasn’t all of his eye, nothing as bad as that, but he still had to deal with the irritated, faintly stinging feeling. He had eyedrops and a sleeping mask to alleviate the issue, but the mask required him to know he was going to sleep first.

He stood up, expecting a wave of pain to hit him and slow him down.

Instead he stood without trouble, the pain present and severe, but disconnected. It was a buzzing awareness in his nerves and thoughts that took up his attention, but his body could move past it, along with most of his mind.

Reid stopped, processing what he was feeling. He was going to get eyedrops, but he could put that aside for now. He walked over to his desk, took out a piece of paper and a pen, and sketched a quick elemental rune for Light.

“Spirits, if you’re listening to my Word, let this rune glow once,” Reid whispered, finishing the diagram.

The diagram lit up, glowing brighter and brighter until he had to shield his eye to keep it from getting hurt, and then quickly dimmed, leaving behind the elemental rune in pieces, having been thoroughly burnt through. He felt a tiny bit winded, like he had just climbed up a hill and needed to catch his breath for a few moments.

He wasn’t gainsaid anymore. He could practice.

And yet, it didn’t leave him feeling happy. Maybe relieved that merely existing wouldn’t be such a chore anymore, but his spirits hadn’t been lifted. He felt the same way he’d felt ever since he woke up days ago–hollow, with a swirl of darker feelings pressing in, threatening to burst.

…He needed to get those eyedrops.

—

September 8th.

The morning light was just starting to shine through the curtains, vague and dim. A cloudy day, and unlikely to get much brighter. Or maybe it was earlier in the morning than he thought. Reid didn’t bother to check, and instead turned back in his seat, shifting his focus to what was in front of him.

A small framed painting sat on his desk next to some papers, chalk, and a stone tablet. He’d gotten two items off of his shelves and placed them off to the side, for later. The first was a tanto with an engraving of birds in flight on its blade and a sleek ivory hilt. The second was a marble statuette of a sun, with the sun partially carved open to reveal a sleeping child.

Reid picked up the framed painting and turned it over in his hands. It was a self-portrait of him on his eighteenth birthday, his visage bright and without flaw. He was sitting up with immaculate posture, wearing a suit much like what his father might have worn. He wore a stern, confident look on his face.

His complete face.

This self-portrait was just a barometer for practice. The canvas and frame had been enchanted through ritual to reflect the quality of his Self, becoming more pristine and detailed as the Self grew stronger. He was meant to refresh it every few months to check his strength and well-being. It was an idealized image, never a reflection of reality even before all of this, but still–

Still Reid found his bandaged finger tracing over his portrait’s lustrous brown hair, styled in perfect waves. Tracing along his unmarred cheek, holding his finger there for a moment before letting it slowly drop.

He stared at his past self for a while longer before setting the painting down on the desk.

Better to get this over with sooner than later.

Reid unwrapped the bandages on one of his hands. The injuries there were…‘better’ wouldn’t be the right word for it. They were healing, but they were healing crooked and healing slowly, with angry dark edges that made them look fresher than they were.

He squeezed a deeper cut on the side of his palm, opening up a wound that looked like it had only recently closed. Dark red blood coalesced into droplets that then fell onto the portrait’s face, one after the other.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

His mind went to the shallow pool of blood covering the Kennet Arena as he watched the drops land. They spread out, dyeing the portrait a deep red. He watched his two amber eyes disappear, then his waves of brown hair, then the wood panel wall that made up the background of the portrait. The whole canvas looked soaked with blood in the end. Reid felt lightheaded, and when he looked down at his hands, he saw they were trembling.

After a few moments the blood began to retreat from the canvas, and Reid could see the outline of a new image forming, his former visage destroyed.

Gone forever.

Reid turned the portrait away from him and grabbed the stone tablet, scratching out a simple water diagram in chalk. He watched as drops of water gradually formed on the stone tablet. The diagram was drawing from his Self and the ambient water spirits, and while he could speed up the process, that would just hurt his recovering Self.

He debated whether to put any music on while he was working, but decided to leave things quiet. Music was associated with memories, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about attaching songs he liked to this one. He wasn’t sure he wanted to think about other memories either. He was trying not to think, for the most part. He’d been forced to do too much of that over the past few days. Stewing in thought without taking action was unhealthy for a Muss–

For anyone. It was bad for anyone. Probably.

He ended up humming a scratchy, broken little tune anyway, even though it hurt his throat. Something he’d heard Polly sing.

When the water formed a sizable little puddle he dipped a piece of paper in, and watched the water crawl up. He withdrew it before over half the paper could get damp, and then wiped the stone tablet clean with his arm. He didn’t care if chalk got on his bandages–they were already starting to stain with blood, so he’d need to change them soon anyway.

He let the paper dry on the desk under the lamp light. It dried out quickly, as water spirits eagerly left the paper to return to their natural places in the world, uninfluenced by the practice. The water left something behind, however. Faint, dark, watercolor stains spread from the edges of the damp half, and that whole portion of the paper looked more worn.

An Abyss-tainted practitioner would have an Abyss-tainted practice. Some scourges were able to hold the Abyss inside of them and still practice without issue, so he’d had a bit of hope.

A hollow ache gathered up in Reid’s chest. He tried to ignore it. He could double-check, see if maybe there was some mistake, but–

Better to move onto something else. Better not to think about it.

He picked up the Slumbering Sun idol with both hands and brought it closer to himself. It was a power source linked to the divine, with a fairly deep well to draw on. He could use the idol to supplement his practice if he needed a pure, untainted working. There were rituals to tie divine wells to tokens and charms, he just had to push past the pain and noise in his head and remember just where this idol came from, and…

Where did it come from? Italy, maybe? No, the champion of the pagan god hadn’t worked with a solar deity. Definitely not Paris. He’d gone to Germany to stop a practitioner from building enough of a case and claim to alter history in a way that would have affected a family ancestor, the Alps for–He couldn’t remember. His memory was a blur, and that blur was tangled up in pain and emotion–discomfort, anger, some sick, stark feeling that might have been guilt.

What kind of sad excuse for a practitioner was he if he didn’t even know where his trophies came from? Even for the things he stole from others–at least then he’d have that knowledge. But this was just irresponsible. Pathetic.

Just another sign of how none of this was his. Not even the gifts or things he’d won in a fair contest.

He couldn’t use this. It didn’t feel right.

As he pushed the idol back in its far corner on the desk his arm brushed against the framed self-portrait. The frustration and anger simmering in him gave way to a defeated kind of emptiness.

He turned the frame around.

The painting looked half-finished. The background was a blank white canvas with a scratchy, black pattern streaking over it, looking reminiscent of a decayed wall. The frame of the figure in the portrait was the same, as well as the pose, but the details of the suit were indistinct, dark and blending together.

Uneven streaks of deep red oil paint covered the portrait’s head. His expression, his facial features, and even the general shape of his face had been wiped away.

The hollow ache in his chest grew, and he took a deep, ragged breath, fighting off the lump rising in his throat.

He placed the picture frame back on his desk face-down.

—

“It’s still bleeding…”

The homunculus frowned as she finished peeling the bandages off of his face. Reid looked down at the wraps gathered in her hands to see what she was talking about. From what he could see, the gauze was stained with Abyssal black and a darker, bloody red in equal measure.

His nurse disposed of the stained bandages, placing them into the washroom trash bin.

“And you hardly ate your lunch,” she added, concern just as apparent as disapproval in her voice. There was a distant, almost fuzzy electric twang to the way she spoke.

Reid didn’t respond. He turned his head to look outside the washroom and at the sad excuse for a meal sitting on his table. It was the same bland foods he’d been given for the past few days. This time the yogurt was key lime-flavored; he supposed that was the staff’s idea of an exciting change of pace.

He looked back upon hearing the sound of running water. The nurse had gotten a washcloth and was holding it under the sink, letting it get thoroughly wet. She squeezed some of the excess water out, and brought the cloth towards his face. He leaned forward, pushing a stray hair or two out of the way so it wouldn’t get caught on the washcloth.

She cleaned the excess blood and fluids off of his wounds, and while it hurt, it felt as if it could have easily hurt more. Her hands were dextrous, and her touch was as gentle as it could be, in these circumstances.

Given her background, it made sense she’d be competent. She was a former Alchemist’s servant, made to care for her practitioner in his old age. When the man died, the Other was stuck in his workshop with rapidly dwindling supplies for her maintenance, so she got desperate. She had access to a computer, and in the technologically illiterate but oddly intuitive way some Others operated in, she decided to find help by uploading herself to the Digital Aether.

The procedure ended up working, in a fashion. She found technomancers, and they pointed her to practitioners eager for an obedient servant who could help to treat maladies beyond the purview of Innocents. All she asked for were resources to maintain the grotesque mass of visceral flesh, steel, and wires her true form had become–transcendence had its price, after all.

Thankfully, he didn’t have to see her true form. When she manifested from the Digital Aether she appeared as a woman with stark white skin, her entire circulatory system pushed up against it as a map of blue and red veins. She would have reminded him of Lauren, but the veins broke through her skin at places, revealing that they were actually wires rather than flesh and blood. Plus, she wasn’t bald, and her proportions were off from a human’s–her mouth was too wide, and her eyes were too large.

Still, the resemblance irritated him. In general, the Other irritated him.

She continued to work, and Reid remained still, not flinching once as the cloth touched raw chunks of flesh, and as water from the cloth trickled through openings on the bridge of his nose. His gaze wandered, falling on the door to Amine’s room. He couldn’t remember seeing that door open since he got back to school, or even hearing Amine knock and ask to enter.

The nurse’s hand stopped, holding flesh under his mess of a right eye open. She took tweezers from her supplies with her other hand and reached out with them, grabbing onto something and pulling it out. Reid’s eye followed the tweezers the best it could, and he could make out what looked like a jagged piece of glass beneath all the blood the object was covered in.

“I thought the hospital cleaned the glass out,” Reid muttered, speaking up for the first time that day.

“They probably tried their best, but glass has a way of sticking around for a long time. The taint doesn’t help either,” she replied, disposing of the shard and washing the tweezers clean.

“Oh.”

After she finished examining and cleaning up his face she’d apply a minor alchemical ointment before giving him new bandages. The ointment was mildly regenerative, barely any better than something he could find over the counter at a pharmacy, but it was safer than risking a maladaptive healing, like flesh closing up his mouth or growing over his remaining eye.

That was how her visits had gone ever since he woke up. First she cleaned his whole body, but he had healed, and when his gainsaying ended he was fully capable of caring for his body on his own. His face was another matter. A horrific injury Innocents had seen and the spirits had cemented, only to be worsened in the Abyss?

He was starting to wonder if it could ever heal.

“You bring my food to me sometimes,” Reid spoke up, breaking the silence.

“Sometimes, yes.”

“Have you run into the other students?”

“Yes, I’ve passed by a few of them,” she answered, dampening a new, clean washcloth.

“Did they ask about me?”

“No. They seemed busy with their own things.”

Reid took a deep breath as the noise in the back of his mind swelled, and with it came restless urges to scream or lash out or do something other than just sit where he was.

He remained silent and still as the nurse continued tending to him, one small portion of his face at a time.

—

He rode fast through the eternal night, not daring to allow his steed to slow down. The monstrous glamoured beast, not quite a horse but not quite any other animal either, breathed hard and heavy, its foamy spittle tinged with blood.

They had to get out of this forest, with its skeletal black trees that extended for miles, covering the sky even though they had no leaves. In between the trees was shadow, and in the shadow were wolves, prowling and baring fangs.

The fae steed stumbled, tripping over jagged and broken concrete, and Reid fell with it. The wolves closed in, the Ephemeral Alpha standing above all of them, among the Ephemeral deer’s forest of skeletal antlers.

—

Reid stared down the clothes in his drawer. All folded and organized immaculately, without a blemish or wrinkle in sight. A loose shirt, or no shirt at all, and shorts or boxers had been perfectly fine the past few days, when he was gainsaid and barely able to walk, let alone leave his room.

That wouldn’t do anymore–both the low dress standards, and staying here.

He put on a black polo shirt and slacks. Sliding the clothes over his stained, bandaged body almost felt dirty, and he couldn’t get the idea that he was tainting the clothes through mere touch out of his mind. Maybe the whole drawer would end up like that eventually. Tainted, in a way no mundane means could fix.

Except that was silly. Probably.

He tightened the belt around his slacks, felt the slacks hang loose, and then tightened it further, a couple of holes past where he’d normally leave it. He frowned and looked down at his waist. He knew that he’d probably lost weight, given how little real food he’d eaten since he woke up, and all the effort his body expended to heal, but it still felt disappointing to see proof of that. He was proud of his physique–he’d been training to build up strength, maybe to shed his teenage lankiness and grow into a man’s figure.

Something more like his father’s, and a good number of the prior patriarchs whose portraits lined the family manor. Something more Musser.

He shook his head, trying to snap himself out of the train of thought. Molding himself into a copy of his father and his fathers before him was–it couldn’t be good, probably, but they were still fit and healthy. He needed to try and get back to that.

Reid looked down at his bandaged arm and considered wearing a blazer on top of the polo. It would be a little awkward for summertime wear, but better a little awkwardness than to expose the extent of his injuries. He passed over his black blazer–too redundant. White was too formal, and the navy blazer had the Musser family crest emblazoned on its collar in gold. Not something he wanted to wear when his current feelings about his family were such a mess. He settled on a plain, dark brown blazer.

He started to look on top of his dresser for his badge, which would give him an extra air of authority–

He didn’t have the badge anymore. Right.

Reid pushed past the uncomfortable, empty feeling that swept over him and moved forward. He checked his face in the mirror to make sure the bandages weren’t slipping. They weren’t. He turned around, took a couple steps forward, and then turned back to the mirror. Just to check again.

It didn’t feel like the bandages concealed enough of his face. They did, objectively, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that maybe a bloodstain would reveal too much about his injuries, or from a different angle others could see more of his face around his eye.

…He needed to stop worrying. No worrying, no thinking, only doing.

He turned around and left the mirror before he was tempted to check his face for the third time.

The door felt heavier somehow, and he let it open slowly, as if just normally opening it and stepping outside would disturb some delicate part of the process.

He expected to see activity from students in the west wing, either from younger students seeking out professors or the other seniors lounging about or studying. Instead, he was met with a dark hall, closed doors, and the quiet pounding of rain on the school building. He focused on one of the windows.

It was nighttime. That couldn’t be right. He’d fallen asleep after the nurse left, he’d woken up later to the sound of rain outside, and the clock on his phone read as nine–

Nine PM, not AM, he was now quickly realizing.

That was discouraging, especially when he spent so much time trying to look presentable.

However, as Reid looked down the hall, he could see a faint glimmer of light by the study nook. He took a couple of steps forward and the glimmer clarified into candlelight on the table. A familiar face sat at the table, absorbed in reading through a heavy tome.

As he approached, Amine lowered the book and stared at him, his expression betraying only the slightest hint of surprise. “Reid?”

“‘Evening, Amine,” Reid said, nodding.

“I’m surprised you’re up and walking,” Amine said, with a perfectly neutral tone of voice. That was one thing Reid liked about his suitemate–he was straightforward, preferring to get to the point as soon as possible.

“A setback like this can’t keep me down forever.” Reid felt like his past self would have laughed, to punctuate his reply with good humor, but he couldn’t summon any of that good humor now. “Besides, I needed the fresh air.”

Amine stared at him, only giving a slow nod in reply. They were suitemates, not friends, so it was only natural the conversation would die down like this, without anything necessary to say.

Only natural, but Reid still had questions. “Were you gone the past few days?”

“Yes,” Amine said. “I had to perform a ritual, so I spent the past couple of weeks in one of the workshops.”

“Oh, of course. Alright.” Reid nodded hastily, his gaze falling downwards as he felt blood rush to his face. Of course it was something as simple as that. Amine hadn’t left the school, he hadn’t deliberately swapped his schedule around to avoid even looking at him. Just terrible timing.

It was nice to have that confirmation anyway. No room for uncertainties.

Another long, uncomfortable pause settled over the two of them. He was done, technically. No more questions to ask, and no real reason to stay out after dark when he could go back to his room and rest until morning.

But he didn’t want to go back to his room–that would be a loss, and a loss was unacceptable.

“Since you’re here, I’d like to ask–”

Rather than just lowering the tome, Amine placed it flat on the table and stared directly at him. “If it’s about healing, I can’t offer that right now. The price is high, and with the current situation, I have to save my months of goodwill for emergencies.”

Amine’s reply sounded tired, almost rehearsed, as if this was an answer he’d given too many times already. Still, Reid couldn’t help but feel angry–angry that Amine thought he’d ask, and angry that the answer was such a complete refusal.

“That’s–No, I wasn’t going to ask about that,” he said, shaking his head. “I was going to ask if I could take a seat and do some studying of my own.”

“...Oh.” Amine replied, eyes widening, as if a misunderstanding of his own had been cleared up. “As long as you don’t interrupt my work, then it’s fine.”

With that, Amine lowered his gaze. Reid could swear he looked marginally more relaxed, but it was difficult to tell–Amine seemed to have a focused, tense look to him at all times, regardless of what might have been on his mind.

Still, he would take reading with a stressed and high-strung suitemate over reading with no one around at all.

—

September 9th.

Voices drifted through the veil of unconsciousness, the kind that were dimly heard and even more dimly understood.

“Hey, Reid. Reid?"

“Think he’s alive?”

“Probably? Fuck, I don’t know.”

“‘Probably’?”

“It’s Reid, the guy’s–”

At the third utterance of his name Reid’s eye snapped open. Tanner and Chase, the source of the two voices, startled at the sudden motion.

“Oh, uh, hey,” Chase said, his mouth attempting to form a smile. He was holding a tray of breakfast foods with both hands–actual, real foods like eggs and muffins. “Did we wake you up?”

“Yes, you did,” Reid replied.

The two augurs shared faintly anxious glances.

“It’s fine,” Reid said, trying to force their attention back on him. “What time is it?”

He wasn’t sure how much the quick addition to his reply helped their mood. Tanner still looked uncomfortable as he glanced down at his watch. “Around seven,” Tanner said, re-adjusting his grip on the coffee-filled mugs he held as he talked. “Did you pass out last night or something?”

He let out a small laugh, but Reid could hear a hint of nervousness in his voice. Hearing the time, at least, helped clear up his current circumstances. He was still sitting at the study nook, feeling like barely any time had passed between last night and the current moment. The last thing he remembered was finishing a rather dry and tedious account of a disturbance at Lake Huron and closing his eyes.

Had he really been that tired? He couldn’t tell, of course, but in retrospect he probably should have stopped the instant reading started to feel like a slog. Instead he let his peers see him like this–weak, pitiable.

This wouldn’t do. He had to regain some control.

“I fell asleep,” Reid explained, giving his correction a firm emphasis. “I was tired of staying holed up in my room, so I went outside for a change of scenery.”

“Just resting your eyes, then?” Tanner raised an eyebrow, amused.

“Precisely.”

Reid’s confidence was somewhat restored when he didn’t see Chase or Tanner object to his narrative, even if it was a shitty improvised one.

“Fuck, I wish I could do that,” Chase sighed. “Wye’s been working us to the bone, metaphorically.”

“It’s not that bad,” Tanner said. “They’re quick jobs, and they’ve slowed down since the initial freakout.”

“Not that bad for you, maybe. You’re not farseeing and frying your eyes with the Sight.”

“I could complain too, but I’d rather spend my half hour before work enjoying breakfast.”

“Good point,” Chase said, some of the disgruntled tension in his expression fading away.

“Speaking of, Reid, I heard the apple cinnamon muffins have been great the past week.” Tanner placed one of his mugs down on the tray of food, causing Chase to stiffen up to balance the drink, and picked up one of the muffins, still covered by the brown paper liner. “Want one?”

“God, yes,” Reid replied with exaggerated, good-humored desperation, though a small part of him hoped neither of the others noticed his gaze wandering to the food tray during the conversation.

Tanner, rather than handing the food over to him like Reid expected, tossed the thing instead. Reid leaned back, trying not to look too surprised, and raised a hand to catch it, only to slightly misjudge just how far away it was. The muffin hit his hand quicker than expected, and he had to fumble to keep from dropping the thing in his lap.

Tanner visibly winced, hopefully out of embarrassment for his actions. “Right, forgot about depth perception for a moment…”

“At least I know my reflexes are still sharp, or sharp enough,” Reid said, setting the muffin down on the table. He looked up at Tanner, making eye contact with the other man. “Don’t do that again.”

Thankfully, Tanner seemed too busy taking the blame for that incident to notice the fact that Reid did fumble, and his reflexes weren’t sharp enough for his liking.

“Wasn’t that all you got?” Chase asked, giving Tanner a concerned look.

“Yeah, but I’m not really hungry.” Tanner shrugged, and then picked his coffee mug off of the tray, holding it up and waving it slightly. “This is all the breakfast I need.”

Chase looked like he wanted to say something, but held his tongue, instead shaking his head at his coworker with a disapproving expression on his face. Tanner turned back to look at Reid. “I’ve seen that wiry Other walk into your room with some really miserable-looking stuff. It made me wonder how you were doing.”

“You could have come by and asked.”

Reid tried to keep his tone of voice light, but some bitterness slipped through anyway, and Tanner’s smile faltered.

“Yeah, but I’ve been busy with work,” Tanner admitted. “I didn’t think you’d appreciate that sort of thing anyway.”

“Same here,” Chase added.

They’d paused before they replied. It was the sort of gap in conversation–that little break in the rhythm–that most people wouldn’t pick up on, but Reid noticed.

He could have brought up how Tanner just said work wasn’t all that bad, but Reid held his tongue. Besides, they were correct, technically. He was never the sort of person who’d want to be seen while he was weak. He still wasn’t, and he could hardly stand how vulnerable this conversation made him feel despite his best efforts.

So he would continue being the confident, composed person they expected.

“Ha, I understand,” he said, conjuring up a hoarse laugh. “It’s better that you were busy; my gainsaying wasn’t lifted until recently.”

“Ouch,” Chase whispered, visibly wincing. He and Tanner both looked uncomfortable, but Tanner, at least, didn’t have as visceral of a reaction.

Instead, he just glanced down at his watch. It was a subtler, casual action, but Reid could see it for what it really was–avoidance.

Tanner looked back up, adjusting his grip on the coffee mugs. “At least that ordeal’s over. Chase and I should get going though; only so much time before work, after all.”

“Naturally. Good luck,” Reid settled on.

The two augurs said their thanks and departed. He hadn’t remarked on how there was plenty of room at the study nook or in the tea nook across the hall, and plenty of time for them to sit down, talk, and catch up. Why would he? He shouldn’t have been bothered by their choices. Awkwardness aside, their distance was normal. He wasn’t that close to either of the augurs.

He stared down at the muffin, which he held grasped in both hands. Eating it didn’t seem like such an exciting prospect anymore, no matter how much of a welcome change in routine it would be.

—

The library looked empty as Reid stepped in, which was odd for the afternoon hours. He’d barely seen other students either, only a couple of younger ones who slowed down and stared when they saw him, and scurried away when he looked back. While it wasn’t a good sign for the school, Reid was grateful for the deficit of prying eyes.

He could hear the low whispering of the librarian Animus somewhere deeper in the room, as she presumably advised or aided someone he couldn’t see at the moment. He took that opportunity to start searching the library shelves without her–the Animus was useful, but she tended to waste time explaining particular stories, or by going off on tangents about other books.

The section on the history of Practice was small, and understandably so. One could talk about the greater picture, but practitioners were isolationist by nature, which meant that individual events might only be known to a single group or town at a time, and they rarely collaborated to actually corroborate accounts and put together a unified narrative. Cases like the droll history book Reid was currently looking through were the best things got most of the time.

Of course, there were always exceptions. The Oni Wars, for one, had been a unique case where practitioners were so interested in the event that information ended up getting out one way or another, despite the best efforts of rival groups and families. With that information came scattered, out-of-context details of Eastern practice and its history, which was what he was looking for.

He needed to distract himself after the disaster of a conversation he’d had earlier. The North American history book wasn’t turning up anything useful so far, and he didn’t want to fall asleep while reading it and waste more time. He needed something to motivate him, and help him move forward and past his miserable purgatory.

He spotted movement from a corner of the library. He could have sworn that he heard someone whisper his name as well–like a faint tug on his connection, urging him to look in a certain direction. He followed that urge, and turned his head to the source.

Eloise and Ulysse were sitting at a study table, with Ulysse’s hand lowering now that he’d caught his attention. They were both smiling, though Ulysse’s smile faltered when he made eye contact with him. Eloise, as expected, remained polite as she raised her hand in his direction.

The sentiment was obvious, even without words. A simple greeting, probably wishing him well before they went about whatever they were doing here–probably some kind of scandalous public display of affection before the Animus made her way over to this part of the library and stopped them. Ulysse liked that sort of thing, and Reid half-wondered if Eloise was weaving connections to keep the Animus away for a little while longer.

Reid’s gaze fell on the familiar, centipede-shaped tattoo on Eloise’s hand. Of course Schartzmugel was there. He was her familiar. Reid could remember telling Eloise that the Perversion was a fine thing, but it couldn’t match having two powerful familiars, like Blackhorne and Drowne.

Two Others that weren’t even real familiars. Schartzmugel was the sort of familiar he considered taking once, in case Eloise ever became an enemy.

He would have taken him from her, and then she’d have nothing, and he would have nothing too, because in the end, all he would have done was just…taken something else, without it actually being his.

If he lost three familiars, or four, or five, would he feel worse than he did now? Or would it be that exact same feeling of feeling hollow and lost?

Reid saw worry work its way into Ulysse’s brow, and realized that he’d been staring at Eloise’s tattoo for a little too long.

Humiliating.

He gave the two an overdue nod of acknowledgement, and raised his hand at them in turn, before quickly returning to the shelves and out of their sight.

He wasn’t able to find anything like the sort of history book he was looking for, even after searching the section three times over.

—

Reid was in the Factory again. He was standing on a rusty grate platform, with a deformed iron railing separating him from a smoke-filled sea of molten metal below. There was one way out, and that way was blocked by Abyssal wretches. The pack of former humans shambled forward, with the heads of wolves and wearing soldier’s uniforms.

One lunged, holding a rusty iron shard that resembled a knife. He reached for his knife belt to guard against the attack.

He didn’t have a knife belt.

The wretch scraped the shard down his face, jabbing it into his right eye. Reid held back a scream and tugged at the chains on his hand. A stream of Abyss-stained chains erupted from the floor, piercing through the wretch’s body.

He thrust out the chains again and again, running them through the soldiers, blocking gunfire or tossed weapons. Their blood covered the platform, covered him, covered everything.

At some point there were no more soldiers. Reid’s gaze fell downward, looking through the grating and down at the molten metal sea below him. In the middle of that sea he could glimpse the outline of a red throne.

—

September 10th.

The nurse homunculus stood in front of him, wearing a disappointed look on her pasty, uncanny face.

“Reid, is that your lunch?” She asked.

Reid sat at the tea nook with a bowl of hot soup in front of him, and a glass of water to his side.

“Yes, it is.”

“That’s not the lunch you’re supposed to be having.”

“But it’s the lunch I ordered, and I’ll be having it all the same,” Reid said, staring directly at the Other.

He considered his choice to order a bowl of turtle soup from the kitchen to be well thought-out and superior to other options. If he was going to recover properly he needed meat–protein, actual real food. The muffin from yesterday didn’t taste bad, but it hurt when the crumbs got into his wounds, so he picked a lunch that would be soft. More significantly, he didn’t have to hide in his room just to eat the meal without being seen. The mere act of eating wasn’t something he could do in polite company anymore, but with this…at least it was quick to re-adjust his bandages if he heard someone walking by.

The silver lining to half of the Blue Heron students leaving was that not many students passed by the senior hall, and not very often.

The nurse frowned. “I’m meant to care for your injuries and wellbeing until the thirteenth. I’m bound to these terms, which include specifications about your diet, and you should be bound by your desire to improve your condition.”

Reid let out a ragged sigh. “Do you really think my condition will improve by eating porridge?”

“The less you irritate the wounds around your jaw and neck, the less likely they’ll worsen or get infected,” the Other stated in a clipped, clinical tone of voice, like it was something she’d rehearsed. Reid couldn’t help but notice that she’d left out the idea of recovery, nevermind the fact that she didn’t fully answer his question.

“Which is why I ordered another soft food,” Reid said, irritation creeping into his voice. “I’m not a fool, and I’d hope you aren’t one either. You don’t seem like the type to blindly follow orders, from what I read. Re-negotiate the contract, if you have to.”

The Other crossed her arms. “Are you that unable to put up with following the nurse’s orders for another three days?”

Reid glared at her. “Unable? No. But I am unwilling to eat miserable food when it won’t improve anything, and there are better options.”

They stared each other down, Reid’s eye surrounded by torn eyelids looking into the homunculus’s wide and glassy eyes. After a few moments, or maybe longer than that, she relented, her posture deflating with an expression of defeat.

“Alright,” she said, irritation creeping into her voice. “I’ll speak with Mr. Sunshine. It shouldn’t take long.”

With that, true to her word, she left for his office. It was just around the corner, so it wasn’t that much of a departure, though Reid didn’t know how long it would take for her to actually be able to talk to Raymond. The man seemed to be buried alive in his work, and that was on top of the gainsaying he was enduring.

He hoped the contract could change. He was tired of dealing with this Other, this…Fuck, he couldn’t remember her name. She was competent at what she’d been created for, and was knowledgeable enough that he could trust her to do her job well, especially on top of Raymond’s recommendation.

However, she was made in a visceral context, and dealt with visceral ideas. He doubted she would understand why he wanted to move away from the meals she brought to him. It sent a message when he tried to have a normal, independent routine, but still needed ‘sick food’ delivered by a nurse. It said he wasn’t really better, and the spirits received that message just as much as the other students.

She was also fussy, made to technically be in charge of the people she was caring for. The only ones in charge of him, until very recently, were his family. If they told him to go along with a doctor’s orders, then he’d eagerly follow and take that precedent into future cases.

He had no precedent here. No family. No obvious and easy courses of action. All he knew was that he didn’t like being bossed around, especially by a mere hired hand.

He lifted a spoonful of the turtle soup to his mouth while waiting for the nurse to return. The food was still hot, and if he weren’t Abyss-hardened he might have waited a few more minutes for the liquid to cool down. As it was, he ignored the dim scalding feeling. The savory, rich taste of the thick broth, heightened with a note of spiciness, invigorated his taste buds.

No amount of good taste could make him ignore the pain, however. It was less about how hot the soup was, and more about the broth touching places where his lips had been slashed open, or sliding down his throat. It stung, filling him with the urge to tear up or choke the first time he felt it, which he managed to resist.

Fuck. Just when he thought that maybe he’d have something good for once. Maybe he should have asked the staff not to include spices, but he wanted the same soup he’d had on one of his trips to the UK.

At least it was still a good meal if he tried to ignore the mind-numbing agony. He scarfed down about half the bowl before hearing the door to Raymond’s office open. Reid promptly took a sip of water to wash down the spices and dabbed at his lips with a napkin before re-adjusting his bandages.

Zed walked out, looking mildly annoyed as he stared down at his phone. He didn’t even seem to notice Reid as he headed back into his room and shut the door behind him.

The nurse returned barely a minute after.

“He’s agreed to a change in contract.” The Other said. “I’m no longer obligated to serve you food, though I can still give advice.”

Reid let out a scratchy, mildly annoyed noise, narrowing his eye at the Other. “Fine.”

“He also wanted to ask if you received the contact information.”

“Contact information?” Reid asked, quickly becoming alert.

“He said he sent an email to you two days ago, containing contact information you asked him to find.”

“Oh.” Reid’s eye widened. “Yes, I’ve received it.”

“Good. I’ll let him know.”

He risked the gainsaying that might come if connection issues prevented the message from going through. He hadn’t been looking at his phone for the past few days, ever since he received Kaye’s message. He hadn’t wanted to look at his inbox and see her words, and be reminded that he should have replied by now.

How did he even put that reply to words? How to even start admitting that he’d lost everything?

He could kick himself right now. Maybe if he’d focused on coming up with a proper reply, then he would have actually seen Raymond’s email on the day it arrived. Now the past couple of days felt like a waste.

He could have had closure by now. He could have had information about Lauren he wasn’t oathbound to keep secret, information he could share with others. A real goal.

“Is everything alright, Reid?” He heard the nurse ask, breaking his train of thought. She was just around the corner from Raymond’s office, but seemed to be looking at him with concern.

“...It’s not your concern.” He answered, because every other answer he was comfortable giving would have been a lie otherwise.

—

Reid’s hand was trembling as he raised his phone to his ear. He focused, stilling the limb. The ringtone was slightly delayed in starting up. A casual ward, maybe? Or just the service–the Blue Heron Institute had superior connection quality thanks to Raymond, but that didn’t rule out the Snyders living somewhere remote.

The phone rang once. Then twice.

At the third ring he couldn’t help but grip the phone a little more tightly, because the last thing he wanted to do was leave a voicemail, but the ringtone was cut off early.

“Hello, this is Neil Snyder speaking.”

His mouth felt dry. He parted his lips, but no words came out.

“Who is this?” The voice, clearly an older man’s, sounded agitated.

“This is…Reid Musser, of House Musser. Hello, Neil.”

God, his voice sounded awful. How was it that he was only a little hoarse when having an inane discussion with Tanner and Chase, while now he felt like he hadn’t spoken in days? He didn’t want to think of how much worse he sounded over the phone.

“Musser–” Neil’s voice sounded frightened. “How did you get a hold of this number? What do you want?”

“I asked another practitioner for your contact information. I just–just want to ask about a family member.” His words came out stilted, hesitant.

“We have no business with your family, and you’ve had no business with ours as far as I’m aware. Why call us now?” Neil was angry and defensive now, but Reid could still hear the undercurrents of fear. He was intimidated. He was right to be, with the Mussers.

“It's about Lauren Snyder.” Reid said, after taking more than a few seconds to think of how to respond.

Just weeks ago he would have sounded much more confident in this sort of call. People respected the Musser name, and they feared it. With the right phrases, the right self-assuredness, he could twist that fear into groveling desperation as practitioners begged to stay in the family’s favor. The battle was won before the first sentence in those conversations.

Now he had to give up that advantage, and hope that Neil Snyder would trust him to be calling in good faith.

The line was quiet. Reid could hear heavy breathing on the other end, and then muffled shifting, as if Neil was moving elsewhere.

“How did you find that name?” The voice on the other line hissed. Quiet, like he didn’t want others in the household to hear him.

Reid could press on with the questions while Neil was on the back foot. When people were panicked they tended to let the information they considered less important slip, and sometimes that tangential information was all he needed.

He didn’t. He wasn’t a Musser anymore. He didn’t want to be a Musser to Lauren’s family.

“The Carmine seat in Ontario was contested recently. My family watched her enter the site of the contest. She didn’t come out.”

Another pause, long enough to make Reid aware that he’d been standing stock still near his desk, barely moving. He was beyond discomfort at that sort of thing now, but he shifted his stance anyway. Something to feel a little more human.

“She’s dead, then?” Neil’s voice finally returned, barely above a whisper.

“Yes. My condolences.”

“No condolences are needed. It’s good she’s left this world. Our goddess must be relieved.” Neil replied quickly, almost in a hurry to correct any assumptions Reid might have had.

Relieved?

He would try and assume anything but the worst. If her family cared for her, maybe they were happy she wasn’t suffering.

Reid told himself that, but he felt himself growing tense anyway, and the mental static at the back of his mind clouding his thoughts. “Was she your daughter? A sister?”

“Daughter. But it doesn’t matter. She stopped being a member of the Snyder family a long time ago.”

“When something terrible happened to her?”

The words slipped out of his mouth before he could stop them. Words to challenge Neil, with a bit of menace lying underneath.

“Reid Musser, why are you calling? We banished her, we had no responsibility or involvement in the incident leading to her exile. Are you looking to ‘investigate’ our family?”

Reid was familiar with these questions, and Neil’s sentiment. He knew the bitter, angry tone in the man’s voice, as he both tried to save himself and snap back at the apparent threat. He couldn’t remember the last time he really listened, though, or the last time that the words fazed him. It didn’t matter what people said–the Musser family would go after them regardless, because that was their Right.

This time, he listened. It made sense that Neil would want to deny any form of involvement with the demonic, because far too many practitioners were eager to pursue and snuff out even the weakest links to them. It made sense that Lauren might not be able to stay a part of the family if they wanted to work with her goddess. A part of him wanted to reply immediately, tell the man that he had no ill intent and correct the misunderstanding.

The other part of him didn’t care about how much sense Neil’s words made.

That part, the urging and instincts from the Abyss-touched parts of himself, the anger that crowded out any other feeling, won out.

“You banished her.” He repeated Neil’s words, barely able to keep his tone level.

“Of course we did. None of us wanted to, but she couldn’t stay in the household with–”

He gave up on keeping his tone level. “She was going through–through all of that, and you banished her?!”

There was silence on the other end.

His free hand was clenched into a fist, and he clenched it even tighter, feeling his nails dig into his palm.

The jabbing pain didn’t help. It just joined the miasma of pain he felt on a constant basis.

“...If this is all you wanted to call about, we can end this here. I’ll let the others know of the news. Thank you for telling us about Lauren’s passing.”

“I–” Reid stumbled, trying to think of a response, some more decent words to keep the man on the line.

Neil seemed to take the silence as a cue to hang up.

Fine then. No decent words.

“Fuck you,” he hissed, barely resisting slamming his phone down on the desk.

So much for closure. So much for a grateful family who would tell him everything about Lauren, so he could speak about her without breaking oaths.

So much for trying to do things differently than how Reid Musser would have.

He wanted to wring Neil's neck, he wanted to track the man down and show him what really happened to people who upset the Mussers, he wanted to–

He took a deep, ragged breath, stifling the lump rising in his throat and making him choke up.

He didn’t want to feel like this anymore.

—

A girl with short, ruddy brown hair sat across from him. She looked like some of the female students he’d pass in the hall at his boarding school. Her face was lively, healthy, not hers, but somehow he knew who this was supposed to be.

“Did the other boy really deserve a beating like that?” She asked. She looked concerned, unhappy.

“Of course. He had the gall to disrespect my family, my father. I had to teach him a lesson.” Reid said, with the voice he had as a child.

“And that means almost killing him?”

 

 

Reid scoffed, and shook his head. “It was his fault for using air spirits to evade us–those things are notoriously unreliable. I heard he might even be able to use his arm when he comes back.”

The girl was still frowning. “Chasing him until he fell is one thing, but I heard you didn’t stop after that. All of this, just for…”

Reid shifted his position, leaning forward. His feet touched the ground, the soles of his shoes soaking in the thin pool of blood that covered the floor, though he resisted actually getting up.

“Why do you care about him so much? His family isn’t important, he’s not much–he’s only here because he’s one of those pity students.”

His voice grew hoarser as he spoke, a rasp with the same cadence of a rusty knife scraping over a hard surface.

“‘Pity students’?”

“Yeah. Those students who they say have ‘potential’ or ‘accomplished things’ even though they don’t have reputable backgrounds? When the school’s just picking a couple sorry-looking applications because they feel sorry for them?”

He was precocious back then, much farther along than his peers by virtue of his dedication to his studies, but even he couldn’t avoid the occasional childish mistake in his sentences.

More importantly, the girl looked upset now, not concerned.

“I’m one of those ‘pity’ students, Reid,” Lauren whispered. No anger, not really. Just the same disappointed voice she used when decrying the state of the Carmine Contest.

—

September 11th.

Reid’s alarm woke him up early. He needed to set alarms now, to keep better track of time instead of falling asleep at irregular hours for irregular amounts of time. It wasn’t as if he minded waking up anymore. He only vaguely remembered his dreams, but they didn’t give him good impressions. His sleep stopped feeling restful a short while ago, once his gainsaying ran out and his body felt marginally more functional.

Unpleasant sleep gave way to unpleasant awakenings.

He checked his phone, and saw no new messages of importance, and no texts from his classmates. He still had to reply to Kaye.

He didn’t reply to Kaye, and instead went to get up.

The Visitor changed his bandages overnight, as usual. The nurse would arrive in the afternoon for a check-up. She’d stop bringing that slop, at least. He could get his own meals now, like a proper human being.

The thought, and the faint relief that came with it, was enough to make him sick.

Was this progress now? To celebrate his first steps, using basic runes, eating normal meals, all like he was an infant?

He wasn’t allowed to learn more about Lauren, or have a history book that gave him any useful leads, or have any items in his room that he could rightfully and comfortably claim as his, but he was allowed to have his ribs hurt slightly less today.

The funeral was in three days, and this was all he could muster.

The mental static at the back of his head grew, until he could barely hear his own thoughts.

—

He sat at one of the chairs of the study nook, his one eye staring blearily at the pages of his history book. The words on the page blurred together and he could barely make them out, but he didn’t care. He wasn’t looking at the book to read its contents. He doubted the book would have anything useful for him at this rate, and he wasn’t looking forward to confirming his suspicions.

The book was only here to make him look busy, to keep anyone who walked by from disturbing him and give him a reason to ignore anyone who tried. Not that he actually needed it–there were barely any students around, and it wasn’t as if anyone was actually interested in speaking to him. He made connections with others because they saw value in being his ally, and he saw a benefit to associating with them.

He didn’t have any value now. There was no reason to pretend at friendship or acquaintanceship. That was how this world worked, in the end, no matter how much the Blue Heron Institute tried to push past that paradigm.

His eye felt dry again. He’d have to put eyedrops in soon. He’d have to keep doing that for the rest of his life. He’d have to change bandages for the rest of his life, he’d have to deal with the Abyss-staining for the rest of his life, he’d have to feel that constant stabbing, burning agony for the rest of his life–

And then there was the funeral, the occasion he wanted to think about the least. He bent an ancient, fundamental establishment’s rules just so he could live another day, but he was starting to wonder if his family would cut his painful, empty life short once they saw what had become of him.

On second thought, no. Death would be kind, by the Musser standard.

Death might even be kinder than the hollow, miserable, lost feeling that weighed on him now.

As his mind remained mired in thoughts of the future and the present, Reid barely noticed the sensation of someone tapping his shoulder. The tap turned into a light shake, as that someone lay their hand on his shoulder shortly after.

His body tensed up the instant he realized what was happening, and his head quickly turned to look at the intruder. It was one of the senior students, tall and attractive, with long, styled dark brown hair and a bit of makeup. Her outfit looked rough, but in a very calculated way–her loose red shirt looked tailored and like something she’d just thrown on at the same time.

“Hey, Reid. You look like shit,” Hadley said, smiling at him.

“I’m aware. Hello, Hadley,” Reid said, not bothering to dress up the deadpan tone in his voice.

“Wow, you sound like shit, too. I heard you were moping around outside of your room, but I didn’t think it would be this bad.” Hadley sounded faintly amused. She lifted her hand off his shoulder, and walked towards the chair across from him. Instead of sitting down, she placed her hand on the top of the chair, leaning against it.

Casual, confident, and powerful. Reid sighed–he really wasn’t in the mood for power plays.

“Are you here to do anything besides waste my time and attempt to mock me?”

“Yeah, actually. I’m going out to dinner with Tanner and Chase, as a kind of last hurrah before the school completely falls apart. You’re coming with.”

Reid took a second to process what she was saying, and outright closed his book, giving her his full attention now. She didn’t look like she was messing around, and her statement couldn’t be interpreted in any other way, unless she wanted to lie.

“What?” he asked, incredulous. “Where are you going, exactly?”

“That one nice restaurant down by Timmins. The one with the seafood.”

“Do I look like I can go out in front of Innocents, Hadley?”

Hadley rolled her eyes. “Come on, you have glamour. You should, anyway.”

“Yes, but–”

“Just use that! You don’t want to gainsay me by not coming, do you?”

Reid wanted to say that covering up his face with any sort of glamour was just asking for it to break at the most dramatic and least convenient moment. He wanted to say that his Self might not be strong enough to deal with being changed for too long. He didn’t want to go out to dinner, or be around the others, especially after the awkward conversation he’d had with the two augurs before.

But maybe, just maybe, this could be his last try–his last attempt at getting back a semblance of the life he used to have, without it being slapped down or ruined.

“...Fine. Let me know when you’re heading out.”

Comments

[sunlit_skycat]

I like how much you're showing that Reid's wounds have left him with persistent issues, and it extends across both mundane things like eating and to social perception.

Red throne in the dream. Could be said to be an empty throne, eh?

Funny how we both independently decided that Nina does not approve of PDAs in the library.