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yellowocaballero · 4 years

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Continuation of Human Relations (Oh My God, They Were Roommates)

This is a 16k story that’s a bit too short for AO3 but a bit too long for Tumblr that acts as a continuation of my Archivist!Sasha and Immortal!Jon fic Human Relations. I recommend that you read that before this. This story takes place between S2 and S3, and is about Sasha and Georgie’s roommate adventures. I’m uncertain if I’ll continue this and post it on AO3, post it on AO3 as it is, or what, but for the time being I’ll at least post it here.

Serious content warnings for discussion of abusive friendships, gaslighting, discussion of 19th century racism, implied transphobia, and discussion of police brutality. Nothing more serious than what we saw in Human Relations, but it does have a much more explicit investigation of Jon and Elias’ relationship. Rest under the cut. Happy Birthday, @magickko.

EDIT: HAHA READMORE DIDN’T WORK, YIKES.

Sasha dreams, every night.

Nightmares, mostly. Statements given and Statements stolen run endlessly through her head in a scrolling loop, crying out for mercy, as its figures cry and scream. Sasha looks at them through a camera, pushing the button and clicking the shutter again and again and again, searching for that perfect shot frozen in time.

A woman, trapped under a thousand pounds of dirt and crumpling metal. Snap. A woman, chewing keycaps, eyes riveted on a flickering screen. Snap. A woman, lost in her fiance’s grave, pleading for someone to find her. Snap.

A man, eating canned peaches, alone. Snap. A man, swinging an axe with a frantic strength born of terror. Snap. A man, and the look in his eyes, betrayed. Snap. A man, gunshot wound leaking blood out of his chest, eyes rolling in the fluorescent lights. Snap.

When Sasha wakes up she is always surprised to find herself in a guest room, always out of place and out of time as she stares up at an unfamiliar ceiling. Maybe the worst part is those two seconds after waking, where she doesn’t know where she is, adrift in time and space. Then she remembers, and she’s faced with the situation all over again.

Namely, the fact that she was couch surfing in the Grim Reaper’s guest bedroom.

Sasha dreams, every night.

Namely, the fact that she was couch surfing in the Grim Reaper’s guest bedroom.

Georgie Barker wasn’t a mystery, and she’d be the first to tell you.

Of course you’re welcome to stay as long as you need, honey! I always love having Jonah owe me a favor. Don’t worry about the cops and the law, nobody will ever find you here. Seriously, the entire department’s in my pocket. It’s no hassle having you here, it’s a big flat! It’s been years since I’ve had a roommate, this’ll be fun!

The one thing she hadn’t understood was Sasha begging her not to let Jon in to see her. He knows exactly where you are, Georgie pointed out. He knows you’re not actually a murderer, Georgie said. He might be able to help explain some of what’s going on, Georgie hinted. Jon would respect my wishes, but if Jonah really wants him to talk to you, he’ll definitely do it...

“Please,” Sasha had croaked, the uncomfortable morning after she had stumbled into Georgie’s flat. The Admiral wove around her legs, purring up a storm, and Georgie was munching on avocado toast and sipping pomegranate juice. “I just - I just need some space.”

“Why?” Georgie asked obliviously. That was something that Sasha was rapidly learning about Georgie - she didn’t hold back with impolite questions, or her opinion. She seemed to be regarding Sasha’s life as her own personal Youtuber Drama, which Sasha really didn’t know how she felt about. Her life wasn’t a spectacle, but she guessed even the warfare and tragedy of ants were of obscure and strange interest to humanity. “He’s feeling, like, totally bad about framing you for murder. I can tell he super wants to apologize to you about everything.”

Martin’s words echoed through her mind, from what felt like a decade ago: Jon had ruined Martin’s life, but to him it was as simple as a momentary inconvenience. “I don’t want his apology,” Sasha croaked. “I want not to be on the run from the police. I want to go back to my flat. Unless he’s going to make me human again I don’t want any stupid apologies. They’re useless.”

“Hm. Well, you’re free to stay here as long as you need to, of course.” Georgie sipped at her tea. They were sitting around the breakfast table, Sasha desolately shoving eggs into her mouth as Georgie drank her tea that Sasha was reasonably sure was spiked with brandy. Rich people were literally never sober. “It’ll be so much fun, like a sleepover. We can do each other’s nails and talk about boys!”

“My boyfriend thought I was a monster for the past month and now thinks I’m a murderer,” Sasha said flatly.

“Oh, I see.” Georgie tapped her lips thoughtfully. “We have to get you laid, huh?”

“I am literally on the run from the cops.”

“That’s very sexy to some people,” Georgie assured her.

After that, Georgie waved goodbye and swanned out of the house, either going to her studio to work on her podcast or doing some work for her real estate empire or writing a best-selling book or schmoozing with celebrities or attending parties at exclusive nightclubs or working part-time as a bartender just for gossip or devouring souls. Just from Sasha’s one day at Georgie’s flat, she knew that she did all of these things and then some. It was a stunning contrast to Jon’s laziness, or Elias (Jonah’s) single-mindedness.

Maybe you lost the energy to be so productive after your two hundredth year. Sasha didn’t fucking know. Hopefully she would never know. Or maybe Jon just appeared to be lazy, and every moment that he was complaining about being bored he was secretly manipulating world leaders. Maybe Jonah’s dedication to spreadsheets and dress code was a front, and he was secretly pulling the puppet strings of her entire life…

In the empty spaces of Georgie’s spacious flat, it was easy to be paranoid. Sasha lay on her luxurious couch, hands folded across her chest like a corpse, trying not to think of anything, thinking of everything. Thinking of Tim: of his smile, of his scowl, of his cold looks given to someone he had thought was a stranger. Thinking of Martin: his warm smile, his sharp looks.

She struggled to think of other friends, other family members who gave her comfort, but drew up a blank. Her parent’s faces were blurred after ten years of no contact, not so much forgotten as repressed, and her baby siblings were likely unrecognizable to her now. Almost as unrecognizable as she was to them, probably. Tim, her boyfriend who hated her, and Martin, her subordinate who she had almost never had a conversation with that wasn’t about work or Jon...that was it. All the friends she had in the world. She was sleeping in the guest room of a podcast host/Grim Reaper whom she had met once, and that was all she had.

Loneliness was Sasha’s constant companion. In a crowd, in her family, in the world - no matter how many people she had been surrounded by, she had always been alone. She had never had anybody in the world to rely on besides herself, and for the first time in a long time she was achingly aware of it. Nobody who loved her was going to help her. She was alone now.

After an hour of lying on the couch and crying, Sasha desolately watched Netflix cooking shows on Georgie’s gigantic flat-screen TV, trying very hard to think of absolutely nothing at all. She only moved to pet Georgie’s silky long-haired cat whose name she had already forgotten, and even he left quickly once she lost the energy to give him attention.

That was how Georgie found Sasha when she came home: lying on the couch, still dressed in borrowed silk pyjamas, watching idiots on television fuck up cakes. Georgie’s arms were laden with shopping bags, with names of exclusive London boutiques sprawled along the side, her deep black pits of eyes hidden by designer sunglasses. She burst through the door happily, her cat running up to her and winding through her laps as he purred, and easily kicked off her red pumps. She stopped in the doorway of the living room, looking strangely excited.

“Sorry I’m back to late! Utterly bogged up at work, there was a plane crash and I was processing corpses for hours. I had to do some serious retail therapy just to deal with the tedium - darling, have you moved?”

Sasha grunted.

“You look like Mikey Crew threw you off the Shard,” Georgie said sympathetically. “Utterly disastrous. Don’t worry, Aunt Georgie’s here to make you feel better.” She lifted her bag triumphantly. “I bought you new outfits!”

Sasha eyed her warily.

“You get no say in this,” Georgie said kindly. “Chop chop, we’re doing face masks too.”

That’s how, somehow, Sasha found herself playing an unwilling dress-up doll for the Grim Reaper. Georgie had taken Sasha’s casual mention that she had no clothing besides her work pantsuit to heart, and had hit up her favorite boutiques for ‘cute outfits that accentuated her figure and made her eyes pop!’. Or something. Sasha wasn’t much one for fashion.

As it turned out, Georgie Barker had a walk-in closet. Because of course she did.

The looks ranged from Sasha’s usual, as Georgie put it, ‘sexy librarian’ look, to ballgowns, to tennis outfits, to moddish, to vintage, to wintery. It was February, the seasons lingering in British chill, and according to Georgie the perfect solution to this was a mink coat that was probably worth a month’s rent on her flat.

Strangely, all of the outfits fit perfectly - and Sasha knew that her measurements were difficult to find. Georgie took it in stride, clapping enthusiastically each time and suggesting accessories and how to mix and match the outfits.

She would have thought that she was too dead inside to actually enjoy it, but so far as distractions went it actually worked pretty well. Georgie chatted about everything but their actual problems, and Sasha had absolutely no input or choice in what Georgie decided to dress her in, and by the time they had transitioned from nail painting to watching Legally Blonde and eating ice cream from the carton Sasha was actually feeling a little relaxed.

“The musical’s better,” Georgie informed Sasha imperiously as Sasha dug around in her carton for chunks of cookie dough. Georgie was clutching a glass of wine in one hand, while Sasha was contenting herself with ice cream. Best not to drink when she was this sad. “Reese is such a doll, though. Allergic to shellfish, poor dear, but I told her not to let Leo pick the restaurant.”

“What I’m wondering,” Sasha said carefully, teeth cracking into the frozen chunk of cookie dough, “is that half the time when I see you, you’re dressed like a 2008 goth in jeans and t-shirts.”

“Oh, honey,” Georgie said pityingly, patting her hand. “I used to spend two hours getting dressed each morning. I’m never doing that to myself again. You, however, clearly have never had nice clothing in your life. It’s written all over your face. People’ll walk all over you if you always look like you’re straight from a charity shop. We gotta buy you some self-confidence.”

“Thanks. I think.” On screen, Elle flourished and achieved her dreams. Sasha tried not to feel jealous. “It’s not really as if I had a lot of girly sleepovers as a kid…”

“Word,” Georgie said sympathetically. She patted Sasha’s hand again. “Jon was the same way, you know. I can’t count the number of times I’ve had to renovate that boy’s wardrobe. He has no idea how to dress to impress.”

“Do we have to talk about Jon right now,” Sasha groused. “He’s the last person I want to think about.”

“He means well,” Georgie soothed, as Elle Woods proudly proclaimed on television how she, yes, she, was a strong independent woman - who didn’t need a man! “It’s not his fault he’s stupid. He’s just so helpless on his own, you know, he needs girls like you and me to make sure he’s not wasting a decade fixating on obscure Bolivian religious practices or whatever.”

“Helpless? He’s a two hundred year old man.” Sasha spitefully grabbed the bottle of wine from the coffee table, pouring it into a spare glass and drinking it quickly. It probably cost thousands of pounds, but it just tasted like wine to her. “It’s not my job to make sure his little feelings aren’t hurt.”

“Of course not,” Georgie said, but Sasha had the sense she was being calmed instead of listened to. “But Jon’s...you know.”

“I don’t, actually.”

Georgie made an interpretive hand gesture. Sasha stared at her blankly.

“...I still don’t.”

Georgie sighed. “He’s delicate. Jonah babies him, honestly.” She patted Sasha’s hand for the third time, making her skin crawl. “Don’t worry, I won’t let him see you until you’re ready to forgive him. Every woman has the right to some time to herself after a guy fucks her over. You two’ll patch things up, right as rain.”

There was nothing Sasha wanted to say to that, nothing she wanted to think about, and she kept drinking her wine and watching the movie, out of lack of any other options.

That night, she drunkenly tipped into bed, so blasted that she slid immediately into sleep and did not dream. It was the first relief she’d had in what felt like a very long time.

It wasn’t Sasha’s job to fix Jonathan Sims.

It really, really wasn’t. It wasn’t her job to make him feel better, or forgive him, or save him from himself. If Martin wanted to waste his time and energy doing that, then god fucking speed, but Sasha had other priorities. She had been profoundly fucked over and had her trust abused by three different men lately, and she wasn’t going to be the one to patch things up.

Two of them she had no desire to patch things up with at all. Two of them she’d be perfectly happy if she never saw again. The last one...Sasha didn’t know what she felt. But that was nothing new.

That being said, as Sasha chewed her way through hangover medication and an acai bowl the next morning, Georgie’s inane chattering about tricking some celebrity or another into taking her to Hungary for authentic Hungarian food didn’t register nearly as loudly in Sasha’s mind as her words about Jonah and Jon.

Jonah babies Jon. That was what she had said. It...it was accurate, right? It had to be. Georgie had known Jonah and Jon for a hundred years, and Sasha had barely heard one authentic conversation between them. She’d known them for a year, and known Jonah’s true nature for maybe a few days. There was no way Sasha understood their relationship better than Georgie did. It just didn’t make sense.

Finally, she put her spoon down, cutting Georgie off in the middle of her ramble about the majesty of Hungarian food made by genuine Hungarian grandma hands. “What did you mean, ‘Jonah babies Jon’?”

Georgie blinked at her, clearly barely remembering the conversation, before recognition dawned. Then she shrugged, sipping her protein smoothie. Which may or may not be spiked. It seemed as if her solution to hangovers was to just not stop being drunk. “Oh, you know how those two are. Jon swans around the world doing whatever he wants, Jonah holds the fort down at home. That’s why Jon’s fun, you know.” She sighed nostalgically. “Romantic cruises to the Bahamas for two months, we tear up the Bahaman government and start a minor military coup, then we take a tour of the beaches. You haven’t lived until you’ve dug your toes into Bahaman sand.”

That was something Georgie said frequently: you haven’t lived until you’ve done X, Y, or Z. It seemed as if Georgie was very intent on living, and very intent on defining it in discretionary ways. To Sasha, living was simply the act of not being dead, but Georgie was almost fanatical about experiencing life.

“If he’s so much fun, then why did you break up?” Sasha asked, before she realized what she said. “I mean, it’s really none of my business, feel free not to answer that -”

But Georgie just laughed lightly. “That’s just how Jon and I work. We spend a few weeks together in bliss, and then we go our separate ways for six months or a year or whatever. Work’s always taking us different places, and seeing each other all day would make us hate each other. Some people work best when they’re not in each other’s pocket.” She took a long drag of the smoothie before speaking again. “Besides, he’ll always be second in my life to having fun. And I’ll always be second in his life to Jonah. It’s just how we work. It works for us!”

It seemed to. Last Sasha checked, Georgie and Jon seemed to be very amicable despite being exes. Lackadaisical, on-and-off, passionate yet going years without seeing each other - it was a relationship uniquely in the providence of workaholic immortals.

It wasn’t until Georgie had already waved goodbye, making Sasha promise not to spend all day on the couch again, that she realized that Georgie hadn’t quite answered her question.

An image flashed through Sasha’s mind - Jon’s face, as he dared to disagree with Jonah, and was utterly ground into the dust for it.

There was something more to this. Something that wasn’t obvious on the surface, something that was so well hidden maybe nobody even knew it was going on. Or maybe it was deeper than that, more insidious: maybe whatever was going on was so well-known and pervasive that it simply wasn’t spoken about. Not polite, not the kind of thing you say about your friends, not normal. Not in polite company. Not vocalized. Utterly taken for granted.

Sasha walked into the guest room, pulling out her phone from her bag and staring at its blank screen. Holding her breath, she hesitantly turned it on, staring at it blankly as it slowly booted up.

She shouldn’t be turning it on. She was perfectly aware of how, given a warrant, the police could track cell phone location, texts sent and received, everything. She could do it herself. The crushing weight of surveillance, the fear of being found and seen and rooted out, settled over her shoulders like an old, familiar friend. A comforting blanket to wrap herself up in at night: where, even if the fear was terrible and awful, at least it was familiar.

You could get used to anything, Sasha thought. Any behavior, any fears, any horrors or tragedies - anything could become normal, given enough time. A year. A hundred years. After two hundred years, maybe you wouldn’t even recognize it as happening at all.

Like a flood, the text messages poured in. Notifications chimed in a cacophony, as text after text after text popped up on her phone. Missed calls. Emails popped up, notifications from the doorbell camera, reminders from her fucking Duolingo...

Dizzily, Sasha scrolled through the texts. Lots from Tim, as expected, and a few from Martin, as expected. Some texts from her mother, which - which wasn’t expected. At all. Sasha hadn’t even known that she knew her number.

Sasha’s brain stuttered over the Spanish, having been years since she spoke it. Her brain also stuttered over the gratuitous misgendering, which was also blissfully novel yet just as uncomfortable and upsetting as ever. Translated, it was a slightly accusatory question about why the police had been calling them about her whereabouts. What had she done? Had she gotten in trouble?

No matter what you did, the text read, God will forgive you. Just call them back.

Sasha stared at the texts, brain buzzing. She felt sick. Forgive her? They’d forgive her? They thought she’d done it? They thought she was capable of -

Horribly, awfully, tears pricked at her eyes. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe you never really grew accustomed to pain, even if it was felt a thousand times. Maybe some pain you never acclimated to, never scarred over or calloused. Maybe sometimes the more you were hurt, the worse it hurt. The pain her parents gave her - how they cut off contact, the misgendering, the coldness - hurt just as badly at thirty six as it had at twenty six, at twenty, at fifteen, at nine. It had always hurt.

So stupid. Sasha deleted the text messages. She didn’t have time for this. She wasn’t a child. She was thirty six goddamn years old, that was way too old to still care about your parents. To still need them.

She clicked on Martin’s texts next. The first one had a timestamp before the murder, the rest afterwards.

Martin: where are you?? I found Tim (he tried to kill me w/an axe but we’re ok now) and were trying to get out of here. I explained everything to him. We’ll meet you in the archives.

Martin: Police are looking for you. I know you didn’t do it so call me back. Tim’s worried. Jon doesn’t seem that worried...

Martin: Shouldn’t text you anymore. Please be safe & careful.

Jesus. Jesus, she had been terrible to Martin. She was a rotten friend. Sasha hiccuped, rubbing at her eyes. She needed to get him a gift basket. Five. He was a freak, but he was her freak. Maybe.

Finally, almost holding her breath, she pressed on Tim’s messages. There were a lot of them - more than was safe, Sasha distantly registered. The first five were from the same time Martin had sent the second text. She guessed it was right after the police finished talking to them. He had called her slightly before - likely when they found the body - but there were also two texts from two am last night.

Tim: pick up your phone

Tim: pick up your phone are you okay im so sorry

Tim: baby please please pick up

Tim: we need to talk & im sorry & i hope ur safe

Tim: dont text me back

Then two texts from two am:

Tim: to warn you im drunk but im sorry (AND DRUNK) but in my defense im a shitty boyfriend. If you want to break up its fine but id like to make it work but i get if you cant because cops i guess. Bitch tonner wont stop bothering me make her stoppp

Tim: I love you and I wish that was enough.

Sasha rubbed at her eyes, exhausted. She wished it was enough too. She knew it wasn’t. Strongly, like burning, Sasha wished so desperately that she had never met Jonathan Sims. Maybe, in that world, things were okay. She and Tim were happy.

She scrolled through the rest of the notifications. Strangely, she even had two texts from Melanie.

Melanie: Hey, I heard what’s going on. I know you couldn’t have done it. A LOT of cops are bothering me - Hussein and Tonner have called like five times. I think you know them? For legal purposes I’ll say that you should turn yourself in or whatever.

Melanie: oh and Martin said to tell you that Mr. Bouchard’s been asking me a lot of questions about what im doing and my job situation - dunno y tho

That….probably wasn’t good.

No texts from Jon. She wouldn’t know what to do if he had. She doubted he knew her number, or how to work a phone. The last thing she could deal with emotionally right now was an apology. She didn’t know what to do about Tonner or Hussein or Melanie. Those were all problems she couldn’t fix right now.

Really, there was only one problem she could fix right now. She walked over to the door to the balcony, carefully stepping out onto the 20th story balcony. She carefully ejected her SIM card, snapped it in half, looked underneath her to make sure there were no passerby in the exclusive London neighborhood, and forced her fingers to release from the phone so she could watch it fall twenty stories onto the concrete.

She imagined a smash, a crack, but it didn’t make any sound at all. Sasha forced herself to step back inside, leaving the past behind her.

There was a lot Sasha had to force herself to do that day. Georgie owned a few laptops, but she hadn’t given Sasha permission to use any of them yet, and she didn’t want to intrude. Despite Sasha’s own...reservations about her personality, she really was being incredibly kind by letting her stay and trying to cheer her up. She did, however, have a great deal of antique books, and Sasha eagerly cracked open the first edition copies of fiction novels from the 19th century. Was that a first edition Pride & Prejudice? Oh, score!

She wasn’t hungry, but she forced herself to eat. Food tasted like ash in her mouth, but that always happened whenever she was upset. She forced herself to take a shower, impossibly intimidated by Georgie’s small army of hair care and hygiene products, and even cautiously let herself take a bubble bath with a bath bomb. It was...weirdly luxurious, but maybe not surprisingly. Georgie’s bathroom was like the Queen’s, and you could practically swim in the bathtub. It was intimidating and weird and uncomfortable, but Sasha forced herself to appreciate it. How many people got to take a shower in a stall with five different showerheads?

Halfway through the day the housekeeper came in, terrifying Sasha deeply, and she retreated to her guest bedroom to let the woman work. She inspected her newly painted toenails glumly, halfway through Pride & Prejudice, forcing herself not to think about how Jon could have been a background character in the novel. Wasn’t he in his twenties in this time period? Wasn’t that when he and Jonah Magnus had -

Sasha drank more wine, and put on another cooking program. She hadn’t watched telly all day, so technically she could tell Georgie that. Besides, it wasn’t as if there was anything productive to do. No work, which sucked when she was a workaholic. No computer to waste time on. No friends she could talk to without the police investigating her. She couldn’t go outside, again due to the aforementioned cop situation. Her life was her work, and her bosses had just framed her for murder.

Somewhat buzzed, Sasha stole several pieces of intricate stationary and wrote down everything Leitner had told her before he was murdered. It wasn’t nearly as much as she wanted, yet far more than she knew what to do with. Halfway through her notes deteriorated into a bizarre sort of mind map, lists of cases connected together and obscure monsters and figures pointing to each other. Salasea and his endless array of dangerous trinkets, mysterious yet lonely ship captains, Michael and his gently twisting deceit, Gerry Keay and his bizarre heroism, Leitner and his ruinous imprints, Agnes and her desolate fate, and the oft-mentioned yet barely understood man, whose name was whispered by shadowy figures entrenched in the supernatural world, Jonathan Sims…

Did he know? How often his shadow stained her statements? Did he care? Did he know how thoroughly he had ruined her life?

She scoured her memory for hints, writing down everything she could remember of his cameos in random statements. Of Leitner’s testimony, the immortal figure who so easily attained what Leitner and Mary Keay had spent their entire lives grasping for. Was there a hint to his true nature, his true allegiance?

In the corners of the cute stationary, Sasha doodled a small eye. She stared at it, and couldn’t help but fight the notion that it was staring back.

She scratched it out, feeling paranoid, not feeling paranoid enough.

A few hours later, Georgie came home, and Sasha fought the pathetically hopeful trepidation. When she heard the front door rattle she left her room, intending on welcoming Georgie back and proving that she hadn’t been watching telly all day, but she stopped short in the hallway when she heard the loud sound of voices. Specifically, the loud sound of Georgie’s still slightly unfamiliar voice, and the quieter tones of a voice that was far too familiar to her.

“ - if you’ll just let me talk to her, she’ll understand.”

“And she said that she’s not seeing you,” Georgie said firmly. Sasha held her breath, pressing herself up against the hallway wall. Next to her was a doorway that led to the living room, that led to a foyer. If she craned her head she could just barely see Georgie standing in the foyer, arguing with a figure holding a leather briefcase that made Sasha’s heart leap into her throat. “You really did screw her over, you know.”

“I know,” Jonathan Sims whined. “I want to apologize. It’s not my fault. Jonah got pushy again, you know how he is.”

“Ugh, tell me about it.” Georgie scoffed. “Did something happen between you two? Sasha was asking all sorts of weird questions.”

“Just Jonah being his usual insufferable self,” Jon said, so carelessly and casually that if Sasha hadn’t known better she would have believed him. “It probably alarmed her, seeing how that man really is. I’m sure she’s feeling very overwhelmed right now.”

“She really is, the poor dear,” Georgie said sympathetically. Sasha’s hands clenched into fists. “But you aren’t getting past this foyer, honey. I’m sure she’ll want to be friends again once Jonah gets the cops off her case.”

“Martin’s giving me a hard time,” Jon sulked. “Says this is all my fault that the dreadful little wolf girl is sniffing around. It’s not my fault. If my Archivist just let me explain, she’d see that it’s not my fault.”

“That Blackwood boy’s always giving you a hard time,” Georgie sniffed. “I don’t know why you’re so obsessed with him. He’s overly moralistic and doesn’t know how to have fun. You spend too much time with him.”

“Don’t tell me you’re jealous, Georgina Barker,” Jon teased. He stepped forward a little closer, and although Sasah couldn’t see his face she had the feeling he was smiling. “It’s a bad look on you.”

“Idiot,” Georgie said fondly, “everything’s a good look on me.” She stretched up on her tip-toes to kiss him on the cheek. “Ditch him and come party with me, darling, I’ll show you a wonderful time. Maybe after all of this nonsense blows over.”

“Judging from what I can make out of Jonah’s monologuing, we ought to get our parties in while we still can,” Jon said glumly. He opened his briefcase, passing a manila folder to Georgie. “Give her these. She’ll be getting hungry. Tell her that the top one is from work, and the second is from me.” He hesitated for a second. “You really think she’ll forgive me?”

“If it’s not your fault, then why do you need to be forgiven?”

Jon was silent for a long minute. Finally, he said, “I’ll talk to you later, Georgie. Love you.”

“Love you too,” Georgie said easily, casually, as if she had said it a thousand times, a million times. “Take care of yourself.”

She stood in the foyer after he left, arms folded, one delicately manicured finger tapping against her arm. She eventually turned around, poking her head into the living room.

“You can come out, darling, I don’t bite.”

Sasha guiltily stepped into the living room, crossing her arms defensively. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop.”

But Georgie just rolled her eyes. “Please. My best friends are Jonathan Sims and Jonah Magnus.” She looked thoughtful for a second. “Well. My oldest friends. Anyway, if you’re in the same house as one of those Beholding types you aren’t getting a private conversation. I’m super used to it.” She held out the manila folder, and Sasha cautiously stepped forward and took it from her.

“Beholding types?”

“Oh, you know, you and your lot,” Georgie said dismissively. “Can’t do anything about that annoying little megalomania the Eye gives you. Have fun with lunch, I have to freshen up. It takes ages to get the scent of Jon’s musty old books off me.”

But Sasha was already tuning her out, because in the manilla envelope there were two Statements. They thrummed under her fingers, charged with energy and power and fear, and Sasha could feel herself gripping them. The first one was a classic Magnus Institute Statement, just like she would have read at work, but the second was what looked like a photocopy of a piece of paper. Judging from the ornate script, it was old, and when Sasha’s eyes wandered to the date her eyes widened. July 21st, 1823.

She looked up, already frantically searching for a tape recorder, and immediately saw one sitting on the coffee table. She didn’t think twice about it, already sitting on the plush white couch and setting the papers out. Which one first - oh man, they were both so exciting - her fingers drifted to the one Jon gave her, and she picked it up. That one, then.

Sasha James pressed play on the tape deck, feeling a familiar thrill go through her at the gentle whirring. She cleared her throat.

“Statement of Sasha James, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, regarding a letter sent by Barnabas Bennet to Jonah Magnus. Statement begins.”

And, as Sasha’s blood ran cold, she began to read.

My dearest Jonah,

I hope you are well. It was an absolute pleasure to vacation at your estate this summer. I’ve never had such interesting conversations with a like-minded individual, and since returning to my own estate I have been sorely missing your company. You have introduced a great deal of brightness and acute interest to my life, and without you the luminescence of Heaven does not thrill me. How I wish you were around to thrill me again!

Do not concern yourself - I have maintained my studies. The library you loaned me is of great interest, and I have been spending many a quiet night bent over one of your occult tomes. I have never felt so enlightened. A world is opening up before us, Jonah, one of richness and wonder, and for the first time in many years I find myself excited to rise each morning. I thank our Heavenly Father each day that I was so fortunate as to cross your path. You must remind me to discuss with you the report by Smirke in detail - fascinating! Theoretical, of course, all theoretical - but the concept of classifying the devils that so bewitch man into fourteen unique taxonomies fascinates me. We must discuss it.

Jonah, I trust that this letter reaches you in private, and that you shall not betray my confidence by discussing it with anyone. I have a private grievance I wish to address with you. It is regarding your boy, the one kept so close in your confidence and trust.

I would never hasten to question any of your decisions, for I trust they are made with great deliberation and forethought. But I must question why you keep that boy so close to you. His air is strange and fey. While summering at your estate, I would frequently see him awake at late hours, pouring over some tome or report or another (I would swear that he reads better than I!). I know he’s somewhat of a project of yours, bringing him into Christianity and your charity, which will surely be rewarded etc etc, but I cannot shake my strange trepidation.

If I were to be quite honest, my fear of him.

He always asks questions. Disturbing and distressing questions. And when I deign to answer them, he acts as if he truly understands. Moreover, that he understands more than me - that he possesses some secret knowledge that only he has obtained. I catch him listening at doorways and around corners frequently, and no matter how many times I box him about the ears for it he will not cease. You encourage it, allowing this behavior. Even after I reported to you the pagan rituals which I am confident he is performing, you brush me off. You two are strangely close. I’m simply concerned for you, Jonah. Please heed my advice: that boy is trouble. I fear that he will bring you into trouble also. Do not allow this paganism to steer you away from the light of our heavenly Father. I understand that the occult is of great interest to all of us, discovering the secrets of the world and its many mysteries, but it is only an academic interest. I would never go so far as to partake of these devilish rituals myself, and you ought to dissuade yourself of such a notion also. Do not allow that John to lead you astray.

I wish you most well. I am encountering some trouble of my own - debts and such - but do not concern yourself with them. The situation is well-handled. I hope to write to you again soon.

Yours, faithfully,

Barnabas

...supplemental.

Jon. Why did you show me this?

Is this your definition of vulnerability? Of honesty? What, are you trying to justify your decisions to me? I get it, it’s disgusting. These people were disgusting to you. I can’t know how you feel, but I think I - my parents -

What I mean is, I can’t understand. I can’t imagine how hard this must have been. I understand how Jonah was the only one to… ‘get’ you or whatever. How he was the only person to see how brilliant you are, how much you have to give.

But, Jon - I don’t think Jonah thought any better of you than Barnabas did. He was just better at hiding it. I don’t know, I didn’t know him and I still don’t know him - but you get that the way he talked to you back then wasn’t right, right? You get that it was fucked up, right?

I don’t know. I don’t think you get that. I don’t think anybody does. Georgie’s too close to it, too used to you and Jonah’s ‘quirks’ or whatever. I...don’t know anything Martin thinks, but I feel as if you’d be pretty invested in keeping this from him. But I’m close enough to you to see it, and I’m far enough away from this that I understand. Something’s really fucked up about this situation. I’m worried I’m the only person who sees it. I hate being that person, the person who Sees it all, who knows it all, but is powerless to do anything about it. You understand, right? You understand how much this is hurting me?

I’m not sure you do. If you’re showing me this, trying to show me how hard you had it, how misunderstood you were, just so I forgive you...I don’t. And it’s manipulative, so cut it out. I’m not sure if you’re consciously doing that, I really don’t think you’re emotionally intelligent enough.

But you aren’t dumb, Jon. I know it’s a defence mechanism or whatever to pretend that you are, to act childish, but you aren’t.

Ugh, listen to me. I sound like Martin. Disgusting. I don’t give a shit about this, I’m not your therapist. But you keep on making your problems my problems, and I’m not tolerating that. We’ll talk when I’m not fucking wanted for murder for something you were complicit in.

Get your act together. I don’t forgive you. Statement fucking ends.

As if Sasha’s life wasn’t hard enough, Georgie wanted to go dancing.

“I am literally wanted by the police.”

“The nightclub’s so dark, nobody’ll even see your face,” Georgie promised.

“Shouldn’t I be spending my time working on my conspiracy theory board?”

“Honey, no offence, that thing is so tacky.”

“I hate clubbing.”

“You’ll like the way I do it!”

“I really don’t want to -”

“Tough nuts.”

So, of course, that’s how Sasha ended up shoved into a tight dress, heels, and makeup, pushed into a taxi, and quickly deposited in front of a warehouse looking building. There was a long line out the door, of women with straightened hair dressed somehow identically, yet way worse, than Sasha, all looking very cold. Georgie looped her arm through Sasha’s, white teeth flashing as she grinned widely, and escorted them both straight through the doors and past security.

She, it seemed, was a known quantity. Sasha, who had spent the last year working in a mill to feed evil psychic vampires and the ten years before that locked in academia, which was basically the same thing, was not a known quantity to any nightclub. She had not been clubbing since uni, which was approximately five lifetimes ago.

“I’m still not sure this is a good idea,” Sasha said into Georgie’s ear as they transitioned from the furiously cold February air into the swelteringly hot club. It was dim and smoky, the noise overwhelmingly grating at her ears. After so long in a quiet office, in a silent flat, she could barely handle it.

Georgie said something to her.

“What?” Sasha yelled. “Georgie, I don’t want to be here!”

Georgie frowned at her, and unlinked their arms so she could reach up on her tiptoes and clasp Sasha on the shoulders. “You have been accused of murder! You just split with your boyfriend because of clown trauma! You haven’t had fun in years! You deserve this, queen!”

You know...maybe she did.

Georgie pressed a drink into her hands, mysteriously procured from somewhere, and without thinking too hard about it Sasha downed it in one gulp. Georgie whooped, clapping her on the back, and directed her towards the bar. She flashed her platinum credit card at the bartender, and suddenly Sasha was MVP of the night.

You know, Sasha thought dizzily as she was given a toxic blue drink and pushed onto the dance floor, maybe she did deserve this. Didn’t she deserve to have fun? After the way things ended with Tim, couldn’t she just act like a normal girl and go clubbing with her friends to dance away the pain? She was almost forty, way too old for this, but maybe she could forget for a little bit. She had never had the opportunity as a teenager, not even as a young adult. Couldn’t she do this, before she died?

Maybe women closer to forty than thirty dealt with this with - with book clubs, with sisterhood, whatever. Maybe women closer to forty than thirty were married, had kids of their own. But Sasha was just Sasha, stuck in a literal dead-end job, going nowhere good, and this was all she would ever have.

Maybe Georgie was right. Why not live, before she died? Everybody on earth died - everybody, that is, except for a small group of people who were willing to sell their soul for the privilege. At least maybe this way she could have whatever joy she could fit into her life before all opportunity was lost, and she was lost.

A man sidled up to her, asking for a dance, and she evaded him. But then there was another one, and another one, and Sasha found herself fleeing back to the bar and ordering another drink. Too soon. Way too soon. She found herself digging in her borrowed purse, searching for her phone, wanting to call Tim or talk to him or ask him if they really were broken up so she could have rebound sex with random dudes in bars, but the purse was empty of both a phone and a wallet. That’s right - she had destroyed it. Because the cops were after her.

Next to her, out of the corner of her eye, a man sat down at a barstool. He said something to the bartender and leaned towards her, mouth spilling something obscured by the crush and heat and sound of the club. He seemed to be asking if he could buy her a drink. Sasha shook her head dizzily, confused and lost. Then he leaned in closer, and Sasha could smell the alcohol on his breath.

“Are you sure? I’d like to dance with you!”

Sasha shook her head no again, frantically.

“Aw, come on -”

Then, as if by magic, Georgie was at her elbow. Unintimidating, not more than one hundred and seventy centimeters, with teased hair and sharp black lipstick and eyeliner, she raised an eyebrow at the guy. But there must have been something in her eyes, or a lack of something, because the guy rapidly slipped off the barstool and melted into the crowd, leaving the drink the bartender slid onto the counter behind.

As if she had planned it, Georgie easily stole the drink and knocked it back. She tugged Sasha down, yelling into her ear. “Come with me, darling, let’s check out where the real party is.”

Without taking no for an answer, Georgie grabbed Sasha’s hand and tugged her through the outskirts of the crowd, ducking and weaving between small clusters of people and women dancing the night away. Sasha’s vision swam, details and faces lost in the endless ripple of flashing lights and sound, until all she felt was Georgie’s cool hand in hers, and it wasn’t until they emerged from the choppy sea of people into a small hallway off the main room that she felt like she could breathe. Sasha’s head swam with movement and smoke, and she was barely cognizant that they were in a hallway for a bathroom or something.

But Georgie walked confidently past the bathrooms, into what appeared to be a storage closet. She confidently opened it, halting at the door frame to glance backwards at Sasha. A smile quirked at her bow lips.

“You coming?”

Sasha, slightly intoxicated though she was, couldn’t fight the skepticism. “This is where the real party is? A supply closet?”

“Oh, my dear Archivist,” Georgie said, smirking slightly. “The world is full of far more delights than you could understand. Follow me, and stay close.”

Then Georgie stepped forward, disappearing into the closet, and as little as Sasha wanted to step inside more dubiously supernatural hallways she wanted to be left alone in this club even less, and she ducked after Georgie into the unknown.

The unknown, as it turned out, was another club.

Or, more accurately, a pub. It was a nice pub too, all smoky yellow lights and burnished wood booths. The booths were upholstered in soft and cushy looking brown leather, and the sound where nowhere above a quiet murmur. It didn’t seem to be abandoned, the shadows at some booths deeper than others, but for the life of her Sasha couldn’t puzzle out the faces or figures of anybody at these shadowy corners. There was a single bartender, wiping a grimy glass over and over. He nodded at Georgie when he walked in, and Sasha was forced to wonder how many dubiously physical supernatural bars and hang-outs existed in random back rooms of mundane stores. Were these things just everywhere? Or were there only a few, and so long as you had the right key any door could be an entrance? It was just Sasha’s intuition, but she felt as if it was the latter.

What would, could Georgie open up for her? What power, what majesty? What world of power and control could Jon give her, that Jon was trying to hard to give her that she kept refusing? Nobody was telling her the cost. Nobody was letting her make a decision. She was being swept up in the wake of giants, and Sasha was just trying to keep her head above water.

Georgie was still walking confidently down the aisles, and Sasha stumbled trying to keep up. Finally, she came to a stop in a back corner, utterly secluded with a booth that stretched the entire corner, large enough for seven or more people. Georgie turned to Sasha, smiling broadly, and Sasha tried not to feel intimidated.

“Honey, these are my friends. Girls, this is my new roommate, Sasha James!”

With a flourish, she made a little tah-dah motion, and the smoky yellow lamp above the table flickered on.

The table was crowded with women, or women appearing people. Absolutely none of them were familiar. No - in the corner, there was one person who was familiar. Michael, blonde hair hurting her eyes in curly ringlets, hands in his coat pockets. He smiled crookedly at her, jarring her adrift.

“Uh,” Sasha said, confused. Who were these people? “Hello?”

A short East Asian woman in a white tank top and black jeans scowled from where she was slouching in her seat. “One of those Beholding patsies? Please, Georgie, they’re so insufferable.”

“I like this one,” Georgie said cheerfully. She slid into an empty seat, and Sasha cautiously sat next to her. “Play nice, everyone.”

“You’re such a grouch, Jude,” a woman said, leaning forward and looking interestedly at Sasha. Her eyes were dark and big, her head cocked, giving her an almost insectoid air. “It’s a pleasure to meet you in person finally, Archivist. I’ve heard so much about you. You’re really making waves in our little community.”

“Patsy Archivist,” a tall and burly white woman with cascading brown hair said shortly, taking long gulps of a pint. “What’s impressive about that?”

“I’m impressed with anyone who puts up with Sims and Magnus long enough,” the insectish woman said. “No offence, Georgie.”

“Oh, they’re insufferable,” Georgie said cheerfully. “Have you heard how those two like to socialize? They go to galas. With those awful little Fairchilds and Lukases and whatever. It’s just tragic.”

“Word,” the insect woman said, raising her glass. The rim seemed to be coated in cobwebs, making Sasha feel vaguely ill. “Much rather have a pint at a nice little pub with friends. But we haven’t introduced ourselves, have we? My name’s Annabelle Cane. I’m sure you’ve heard of me in all those little stories you like.”

Anabelle Cane. Sasha swallowed. “Yeah, I’ve heard.”

“A proxy Archivist she may be,” Michael said serenely, “but perhaps our most successful yet. She’s already coming along so much further than Gertrude ever did.” He winked bizarrely at Sasha. “Michael, but you already know that. They and them, if you please.”

Oh. Sasha blinked at them. “Thanks for...saving my life back there. And Tim’s and Martin’s.”

“My pleasure,” Michael said affably. “You’re the most fun I’ve had in awhile. Always nice to have the Eye owe me a favor.”

“They’re just mad they didn’t get to kill Gertrude,” the brunette said evenly. “Julia Montauk. You should know me too, I think. Is it true you killed someone?”

“I definitely didn’t,” Sasha said heatedly. “It was a set-up.”

“Relax, we’re all killers here,” the woman in a tank top said. She scowled at Sasha. “Jude Perry. What the fuck do those old money ponces think they’re doing, installing another patsy Archivist this late in the game? I would have thought that they learned their lesson after that bitch Gertrude.”

“Archivists are quite slow learners,” a woman piped up. She sat in the corner, strangely oddly. Her skin was shiny and strange in the dim light, almost plasticish, and her dark eyes hadn’t moved from Sasha’s face since she walked in. “Nikola. A pleasure, Archivist.”

“Are you guys all…” Sasha trailed off uncomfortably. “You know?”

“Serial killers?” Julia Mauntauk asked flatly.

“Inhuman monstrosities of plastic and flesh?” Nikola inquired.

“Daughters of fear entities that control our every action?” Annabelle said.

“Embodiments of unknown concepts made sentient, forced into a shape that cannot suit them, locked in flesh and fractal prisons, always screaming in endless turmoil, unable to understand the horrors of the concepts of ourselves, always searching for the sweet release of death that can never quite be obtained, because that which does not live can never die?” Michael said serenely.

“Assholes?” Jude Perry said flatly.

��The sexiest Avatars around?” Georgie asked.

How did Sasha’s life devolve to this point.

“...yeah,” Sasha said. “Hey, where can I get more drinks?”

Unsurprisingly enough, the drinks came very fast. Service was excellent when you hung out with eldritch women, Sasha supposed.

The conversion flew thick and fast after that. In Sasha’s experience, joining a new group of established friends meant being ignored for favor of pre-existing dynamics. It was always uncomfortable, and no small part of why she just didn’t join new groups. Tim had never had that problem - he had a loud and persistent personality, the kind that made you pay attention to him. He dominated any room he entered, by force if necessary. It always seemed exhausting to Sasha, but Tim didn’t really seem to have anymore real friends than she did lately. His personality was like an ocean, overwhelming and everywhere, but when his mood turned sour it was just as intense. Gulfs of pleasure, intense pain - it seemed exhausting, to feel so deeply. God knows Sasha didn’t.

But today, in this group, she seemed to be novel. Maybe new fear avatars were a rare enough thing, or at least ones with Georgie’s seal of approval. They aimed a barrage of questions at her, and Sasha did her best to keep up with each one.

How did Sasha know Georgie? Mostly through a mutual enemy. Oh, fuckin’ Sims, right - you guys friends? No, I hate him. You guys fucking? Ew. Right, right, Sims is a giant prude - actually I heard that he doesn’t really - no, Jon decided a while back he doesn’t do that, and we all respect his decision - ew, though, nobody wants to imagine that. So why are you two friends? We’re roommates, mostly, I’m kinda on the run from the cops. Who’d you kill? Nobody. Who’d that old fucker Bouchard kill? Jurgen Leitner, mostly.

“Cheers to that!” Julia said abruptly, raising her glass. “Hate that fucker.”

“Good riddance to bad rubbish,” Annabelle said, downing her own drink and what seemed like an improbable quantity of spiders. She leaned over the table to where Sasha had hastily been stuffed in, beetle-black eyes gleaming. “But really. What are you doing here?”

“As I said,” Sasha said uncomfortably, “I got framed for murder -”

But Annabelle just waved her hand. “No, no, we know that. I’m asking what are you doing here? With people like us, in a place like us? You’re just a sexy librarian. Your highest goal in life was owning your own cottage house one day. How’d you get wrapped up in the tangled web of our world?”

Sasha’s mouth ran dry, her head spinning in a way that didn’t really seem to have anything to do with the alcohol. How had she ended up like this? Who was to blame?”

“Jonathan Sims,” Sasha said dizzily. “He -”

“Didn’t know you Beholding types were in the process of lying to yourselves,” Annabelle said, casually yet brutally. “No, really.”

Sasha opened her mouth, then closed it. Finally, she said, “I guess I just asked all the wrong questions.”

It was a pretty way of dressing up the real answer: that Sasha didn’t know.

Maybe her thoughts were obvious, because Georgie cooed sympathetically and slung an arm around her shoulders. “Cheer up, honey, it’s not so bad. Not everything happens for a reason. Sometimes it’s just your own rotten luck.”

“Speak for yourself,” Jude called, lifting her glass. “I love my fucking life. It’s hookers, coke, and blow from here to Scotland. The life of a woman with power’s a thousand times better than the life of a woman without, James.”

“What is with you people and hedonism,” Sasha muttered.

“Why not?” Nikola asked, tilting her head strangely. “Life’s so short when it’s this long. It’s just bread and circuses, Archivist. We all need...entertainment.”

“Humans are always trying to make sense of it all,” Michael said arily. They were digging their fingers into the table, scoring long grooves in it. “When you know there’s no meaning, no purpose, then everything else just...falls away.”

Sasha didn’t know if she believed that, but she bit her tongue. Instead, she said, “What about those Avatars like Magnus or Raynor? They seem really...driven.”

Georgie giggled, light and airy, and leaned in. “That’s because they don’t know.”

She shouldn’t even ask. She shouldn’t - “Know what?”

Georgie smiled, sharp and wicked. “That there’s no point.”

And that was all she would say on that for the night: conversation after that devolved into parties, restaurants, drugs, and conquests. Maybe the women were right, in their own clearly demented way: that without death there was no meaning, when when there was no meaning only pleasure held any significance. If there was no afterlife, no reward or punishment - which Sasha didn’t believe, but they seemed to - then there was no reason not to do what you wanted. To have fun. To take revenge.

If all Georgie wanted was to have fun, and if all Jon wanted was revenge, then what did Jonah Magnus want? Sasha didn’t know. She had the feeling that if she didn’t figure it out, she wasn’t going to live much longer.

Why had Jonah Magnus done this to her? What was the point of framing her for murder? She couldn’t do her job like this. What’s the point?

Half-drunk, head spinning, she found herself vocalizing this. Somehow, Annabelle Cane had ended up sitting next to her, letting spiders run along her slightly too long and too jointed fingers. Annabelle Cane just smiled at her, jaw slightly slacking open to expose teeth.

“Maybe it’s just to fuck with you,” Annabelle posited. “Why not? Do you think he has another reason?”

“I don’t know,” Sasha groaned. “I don’t know anything. Everything’s confusing and terrible. I could never understand those psychopaths.”

“You won’t make it very far in this line of work if you never ask why,” Annabelle scolded. She paused a second, spider running thoughtfully across her eyeball. “But too many questions damns you just as effectively, I suppose. Hm. Jonah’s quite good, isn’t he.”

“Why me,” Sasha groaned. “Everyone’s trying to keep shit from me, it fuckin’ - it fuckin’ sucks, man. It sucks. Nobody would tell me what’s going on, but I don’t think anybody knows what’s going on. Not even Jonah, or Jon, or - or anyone. Nobody but me.”

Annabelle blinked at her, somewhat curiously, before leaning in. Her perfume lingered in the air, a heavy rosy scent. “Do you know something that Jonah doesn’t?”

“Yeah,” Sasha slurred, world fading in and out. “Jonah doesn’t know that Jon -”

Then the world faded into black, and Sasha fell asleep.

If she had felt too old for this at the nightclub, she definitely felt too old for this hangover. Sasha spent twenty minutes crouched over a toilet bowl, reluctantly shoved the Eggs Benedict in her mouth that Georgie insisted was a hangover cure, somehow, and refused the Bloody Mary that Georgie also insisted was a hangover cure that her Mum used to feed her. The thought of Georgie’s Mum filled Sasha with a deep fear, incapable of imagining somebody who was both likely born in the 1800s and who had raised a hellion like Georgie.

When Sasha mumbled this to Georgie, she didn’t look offended. She just smiled, strangely fond. “Oh, none of this is my Mum’s fault. She was a darling, her and my Da. My childhood was positively idyllic. All things considered, you know.”

Yes, Sasha thought, struggling to imagine 1910s London in her mind, idyllic. She took another look at Georgie, squinting slightly as her head throbbed. She definitely seemed younger physically than Jon, but Jon had a particular way of carrying age about him that had nothing to do with his appearance. “When did you stop aging?”

“I forget, honestly,” Georgie said airly, sipping her own bloody mary. For some reason, Sasha didn’t believe her. “It always takes a while to notice, you know. I suppose, logically, it would be about when I died the first time.”

That, more than anything, alarmed Sasha. “I thought you couldn’t die.”

“Not permanently,” Georgie said, as if this was somehow obvious. “Eat your eggs, they’ll get cold.” Sasha frantically shoved eggs in her mouth, desperate for the story. But Georgie just sighed and propped her chin on her hand, eyes distant. “You know how it is. Small town girl, grew up in North Birmingham, Alabama - back when it was just a tiny little thing, you know. I wanted to be a star. I always did. Scared of dyin’ in the dirt. If I was gonna die young, I wanted to do it where everybody knew my name. So long as they remember you, it’s no kind of death at all, really.” She sighed, lost in memory. “I could sing so good...so I went to Harlem, ‘cause all my friends and I always had dreams of going to Harlem and making it big singing in the jazz clubs. They didn’t get so far, staying at home with their babies, but I did. Wasn’t really made for babies and such, I think.” Something strange emerged in her words, the last vestiges of a Southern accent. “I was pretty, and I could sing, and I took to the spotlight like a duck to water. It was tough, but man - if it ain’t tough, it ain’t worth it. I worked so hard. Like I was working myself to death, almost.”

She trailed off, birds softly trilling outside, and Sasha was silent.

Quietly, Georgie began speaking again. “Got into some trouble. You know how it is. I spent dozens of years wondering if it was my fault, if there was something I coulda done differently, zig instead of zag...but now, I don’t think so. Just my own rotten luck, you know. Put my trust in the wrong people. Had the wrong sentence whispered into my ear.” She shrugged listlessly. “Couldn’t handle the truth. Just another girl who couldn’t handle the limelight, that was what they said. But I was set up to fail. All those jazz clubs were ganger run, you couldn’t avoid it. Every girl in that golden age fell prey to those men, same as I did. I just wanted to feel again. Tried everything once, just to feel something.” She sighed, taking another drink. “Got shot. Got back up. I remember it, clear as day. Must have been 1923. I scrubbed the blood out of my show dress and went back on stage that night, cuz you can’t get a rep as a flake. They said, that day...that day was my best performance.”

She trailed off, Sasha finally alert. She wanted more details, almost desperately, but she kept her mouth shut. She didn’t want to risk putting the whammy on her host, even if she wasn’t sure that she could. If Georgie was being purposefully vague...well, Sasha wasn’t entitled to her pain.

Instead, she said, “I bet you were good.”

Georgie smiled at her wanly, eyes far away. “I was the best.”

They sat in silence for a little while, eating their food, Sasha’s head ringing and mind buzzing. What about this picture was she not understanding? What was so important that she was missing?

Finally, Sasha carefully floated, “I bet you must have met Jon soon after.”

Georgie looked up from her bloody mary, surprised. “Oh, yes. Just a few months after. He must have caught the word on the wind, you know, of that singing girl who got back up after getting shot in the lungs.” She sighed, propping her chin on her hand again. “Saw him in the front row of my club. He was so handsome, and so finely dressed. But there had been something strange in his eyes, you know? Like little marbles, reflecting the lamps. He caught up to me afterwards, and I figured he was just another fan to squeeze dry, but he told me in his funny little accent I’d never heard before that he could help me.” She swallowed, looking away. “That he could help me understand what was happening to me. Why I was having those strange dreams, seeing those strange tendrils. I guess he was right. After I met him, I understood it all. Things moved fast after that.” She smiled weakly at Sasha. “I suppose you know the rest.”

She really didn’t, but Sasha understood the dismissal for what it was. “Yeah. Thanks for telling me all of that.”

“It’s no secret,” Georgie said dismissively. She smiled cunningly. “A hundred years later almost exactly, and what I did to those gangsters was still my finest work. They say that if you pass by an old building on St. Nicholas Avenue, you can still hear the screams. Anyway, I have a meeting with my land development company in an hour, must run, ta!”

On that distressing note Georgie swanned out the door, and Sasha was left alone with nothing but a stack of conspiracy theories, an opulent flat, and bad memories.

Time seemed to move quickly, yet sluggishly, after that. After another day of writing down literally every Statement she could remember off the top of her head and trying to fit them into the weird and seemingly kind of arbitrary categories that Leitner had given her, she had hit a roadblock. She couldn’t remember any more Statements, she didn’t have access to them, and the ones she did remember she either already sorted or couldn’t dredge up enough memory of them to sort them in a satisfactory way. Either that, or the Statement itself was just incomprehensible - Sasha still didn’t know what the fuck was going on with Tessa’s problem. She tended to have a better memory of the ones that seemingly mentioned the Avatars in the background, just because it had been so startling to actually meet them - and a few even mentioned Jon, usually in context of Salasea or any Eye Statement.

When Georgie came home that night, they watched another movie and they both studiously avoided mentioning anything supernatural. Best not to take work home with you, even if Sasha had never quite been good at that.

The next day Sasha did what she should have done in the first place, and hacked into the Magnus Institute server.

It was seriously, comically easy. Sasha had installed a backdoor connection to the desktop of her work computer from her laptop ages ago, and all she had to do was borrow one of Georgie’s laptops and redownload the program. With an easy virtual desktop she was already in. It was somehow satisfying to see all of her work programs pop up on the borrowed laptop, and it was almost a relief to access the Archive drive that connected all of their computers. More importantly, where they all put their research follow-ups and the spreadsheet that documented the debunked, uncertain, and verified statements. It had gotten to the point where if the statement refused to record on the computer they automatically put it on verified, but what Sasha really wanted from that spreadsheet was the one sentence description they had all put for each Statement.

From there, it was much easier. Sasha, sick of the disorganized conspiracy theorist aesthetic, made her own spreadsheet and began categorizing the verified Statements that way. Much more reliable than working from memory.

If only she could actually access the Statements...Sasha’s life would be so much easier if everything could be digitized. The debunked ones were typed up, filed, and recorded, but the verified ones only existed on paper. Couldn’t be typed up, couldn’t be recorded. It was so stupid.

Sasha checked the clock. Eleven am on a Wednesday. They were definitely all still working. Maybe…

It was an invasion of privacy. Did she actually care about that? No. Was she worried about apparently being locked into an employment contract with an...entity of some sort that preyed on invasions of privacy? No, although she felt like she should. Was she concerned that Jon and Jonah were trying to turn into her a conduit of this entity’s power into the world, probably gradually turning her, if not evil, at least into a giant dick? Somewhat.

Words echoed through her mind, and Sasha’s fingers halted over the keyboard. Her powers manifesting differently than Jon’s...her unique skill with hacking…

Well, that was just kind of offensive. Sasha had worked hard for her skills. They weren’t given to her by Jon’s weird god. Also - seriously, a god? It was just a malevolent eldritch entity living in a separate dimension that encroached tendrils into Sasha’s life. There was nothing divine about it. That was just offensive. Sasha was a good feminist, transgender Catholic on the run from the law and didn’t worship false idols.

It was only then that Sasha noticed a folder on the drive that she hadn’t created. It was labelled ‘For the Archivist’. Despite herself, she clicked on it.

It held a few pdfs. Sasha clicked on one curiously, and saw that they were photocopies of statements. No - of Statements. She was already recognizing this one as one of those spider ones. She quickly printed them all out, conscientious of how easily supernatural files corrupted, and quickly exited the drive and the virtual desktop.

It wasn’t until Sasha was already in the kitchen and pulling down a bottle of Jack that she realized what she was doing. She sighed, replaced it, and fetched herself some sparkling water instead. She drank it slowly as she returned to her laptop and logged remotely into the police database, which she already had a backdoor into.

It occurred to Sasha, perhaps belatedly, that if the police found her laptop and the incredible variety of highly illegal programs meant explicitly for accessing secure servers she was probably triple going to jail. This time, for something she had actually did.

All of the hacking had never felt illegal. It had just felt...well, fun and necessary. It had never been about whether or not she should, it had been about if she could.

Was that how it had started for Jon? Collecting household secrets because he had to, so secure the money and influence he desperately needed, because he could, because it was fun?

Whatever. Sasha shook herself. She could have her moral crisis after she was no longer on the run from the cops for murder. This wasn’t the time to be squeamish about something that wasn’t hurting anybody. She knew, as Jon probably did, that just because something was illegal didn’t make it wrong.

It was easy to log onto the police database and check out her own open case. She frequently checked out open homicide cases for fun, but it somehow hit a little different when it was her they were talking about. Incident, Senior Citizen, Offence: First Degree Murder, Location of Arrest: N/A, yeah, yeah, yeah…

One victim, a John Doe. Foul play was suspected...yes that’d be the gunshot wound. No witnesses. Reporting officer’s narrative...Elias Bouchard and Jonathan Sims the Fifth had walked into Head Archivist Sasha James’ office to discuss work with her when they found the body. Both were shocked and called the police...gun found at the scene had her fingerprints and the ballistics matched...suspect still at large. Friends and family had been contacted, everyone denied knowledge of where she was. Suspect had a noted history of mental illness...great…

The officers dispatched had been Alice Tonner and Basira Hussein. Sasha found that strange: Basira had history with one of the witnesses and the suspect, wouldn’t it be unprofessional to send her out?

There couldn’t be that many sectioned officers, Sasha reasoned. Even if the incident hadn’t officially been sectioned, because the police report still existed, as a general rule if something happened at the Magnus Institute it was sectioned until proven otherwise. Even if the murder itself was seemingly mundane.

Out of curiosity, she searched up Detective Tonner’s records. Been on the force for a long time, worked her way up the ranks. Very, very few cases and incident reports for a detective who had been on the force as long as she had. Sectioned, obviously, but even Basira had more official cases than she did. When Sasha clicked on the incident reports, they were extremely spotty and strange. Obvious details were omitted or censored.

Something cold began to creep down Sasha’s spine. She found the arrest records of the latest four people with official records of Detective Tonner arresting them.

Almost all of them had entered custody with bruises, cuts, and in one case a broken limb. They all had records down as ‘resisting arrest’. Sasha felt sick.

There was one case that stopped strangely short. A clear perp, a rapist but one with little evidence, who Tonner had quickly caught. That was where the case ended: the report that Tonner had found his hiding spot, but no arrest, no trial, no prison sentence. When Sasha investigated the perp, she found that he had unceremoniously vanished shortly after Tonner had reported that she had found his hiding spot. A month later, a death certificate had been filed.

Sasha stared at the death certificate, nauseated. This was who she was dealing with. A vigilante, some batshit pig who had obviously decided that the law was best taken into her own hands. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy, but...if anybody looked at Sasha’s case on paper, they’d say the same thing.

And that was just the cases on record. It was the only obvious instance Sasha could see of Tonner having offed someone just because she felt like it, but cops were good at covering shit like that up. How many other arrest records had fallen in the cracks? How many other dead perps that nobody gave a shit about? How many sectioned cases?

God, Sasha was fucked.

She begged off hanging out with Georgie that night, instead staying in bed with the covers pulled tight over her head as if that could ever protect her. Why was Jonah doing this to her? What did he have to gain? If he wanted her to die a mysterious death in the bottom of a ditch, why wasn’t he man enough to do it himself?

Tonner was going to murder her, Sasha thought hysterically, and she was going to pat herself on the back for keeping another monster off the streets.

And Jon knew. The fucking hypocrite. He wasn’t going to help her. Nobody was. But, god, she was so alone…

The next morning, as if she knew, Georgie slipped Sasha a burner phone over the breakfast table as they both robotically ate quiches.

“It should be untraceable, but just know that anybody you call you’re putting at serious risk,” Georgie warned, before her expression softened. “This’ll all be over soon, honey. I promise.”

“Did Jonah tell you that?” Sasha asked bitterly.

“Nah. I just know those two.” Georgie delicately ate a forkful of quiche. “They get bored of terrorizing humans pretty quickly. Now, Michael’s a different story. They’ll terrorize someone for decades. I’ve seen them do it!”

“Great,” Sasha said.

It seemed to be at this point that Georgie realized she was actually making Sasha feel much worse, because a slightly panicked expression crossed her face and she quickly reached out to pat Sasha on the hand. “But I’m sure they won’t do that to you,” Georgie said quickly. “They love you! Jon especially. Jonah’s just on another of his little power trips right now, he’ll get over it. And Jon, like, feels really bad about this whole thing. He’s been super annoying about it, actually -”

“See,” Sasha said, standing up to clear away her dishes, “I would rather handle an enemy who obviously wants to kill me than a friend whose good side I always have to be careful to stay on, who I can’t afford to ever make mad. I guess that’s the only difference left between me and you people.”

She angrily put her dishes in the sink, where the housekeeper would do them, and stalked to what was rapidly becoming her room, slamming the door.

Flopping down on the bed, she stared at the burner phone. Tim wouldn’t be at work yet. They could talk. They could -

Do what? Get back together? Split up? Could he explain, beg for her forgiveness? Did she have to apologize too? Sasha didn’t understand.

That was rare for her. She understood a lot of things, or at least she thought she did. Maybe she had been lying to herself, about everything: that her and Tim were a good idea, that Martin was sketchy, that Jon was evil, that Jon was kind, that Georgie just wanted to help her, that there was nothing that Jonah Magnus would do to her, that she was safe and human and a good person.

God, her capacity for self-delusion was ridiculous. But maybe people needed a little bit of self-delusion to survive. Nobody could live in complete honesty, in full sight of their flaws and shortcomings. You could burn away, living like that.

No. No time or space for fear. Sasha wasn’t afraid of anything. If she kept telling herself that, maybe it would be true. She desperately punched in a number that she didn’t remember memorizing, holding the phone desperately to her ear, her one connection to humanity.

It rung, and rung, and one, and Sasha’s heart thumped in her chest.

Finally, the ringing stopped, and a slightly sleepy voice punctuated the dead air. “Hello?”

“Tim, it’s me,” Sasha burst out, everything she wanted to say to him rushing through her throat and choking her, and she burst into tears.

Distantly, through the sound of her crying, she could hear Tim on the other side losing his shit, and eventually wrangling himself to calmness.

It was almost funny, how they could work each other up like that. Eventually, by the time Sasha had managed to wrangle her own crying, Tim had calmed himself down enough that he was able to clumsily try to cheer her up.

“We’re all fine. Everyone’s perfectly safe. Martin’s gotten, uh, even more annoying since you left, and we’ve technically hired Melanie, which is - not good but it’s funny? Are you still crying? Please don’t still be crying.”

“I’m fine,” Sasha hiccuped. She rubbed at her red eyes. God, she’d missed him. “Tim, what happened?”

The line was silent for a while. Finally, he said, “Is this line secure?”

“Uh - probably? I mean -” Sasha quickly checked herself. She didn’t want to mention Georgie. The less he knew the better. “ - it’s a burner, if that’s what you’re asking, and I’m not the one who bought it.”

“Where are you living?” Tim asked harshly. “Are you homeless? You have to come stay with me, I can -”

“You mean the first place Tonner will look?” Sasha shot back. “No. I’m safe, I’m dry, things are fine. That’s all you need to know.” She softened her voice. “I promise, if it was safe I’d tell you more. I want to see you again. Tim, I - I’m really sorry.”

Tim laughed hoarsely, without humor. “Shouldn’t it be me saying that? I’m the one who thought you were a monster.”

“...yeah, that one’s on you.” Sasha sighed miserably, lying down on her bed, wishing Tim was next to her. “I am, though. A monster, I mean. Tim, I - I’m definitely not entirely human anymore.”

“God, Sash, that’s the least of our problems right now,” Tim said, laughing slightly again. “Can you just tell me what happened? I know you didn’t fucking do it. That dick Bouchard keeps playing dumb and his shitlead lackey keeps on avoiding the Archives. I bet Sims killed that old man, right? He totally did. Martin keeps on saying that his precious Jon wouldn’t let you take the fall for something he did, but I’m not so sure.”

“I...it’s more complicated than that.”

Sasha explained in short order. For once, Tim was totally silent the entire time, letting Sasha dispassionately recite the entire sad story. She finished it at Michael helping her escape, not detailing where she had been dropped off.

Finally, after a long silence, Tim said, “So this is my fault.”

“No, it’s not,” Sasha said harshly. “You were manipulated, same as I was.”

“I’m the idiot who -”

“Yes, you were being an idiot. You should have talked to me, talked to anyone. You should have done anything other than your homicidal partner in crime. You definitely shouldn’t have been buying a fucking black market gun when I know for a fact you have no idea how to shoot. But you tried playing hero and you played straight into Magnus’ hands. You fucked up. Okay? Now let’s try to do better.”

More silence, until Tim sighed. “Can’t believe the Douche’s Jonah Magnus. Explains why Sims is always playing lackey for him. Can’t wait to spill to Martin how his boyfriend framed his boss for murder.”

Sasha chewed her lip, uncertain. She hadn’t shared the details of Jonah and Jon’s conversation too closely - it had seemed private. “See, I’m not sure this is...entirely Jon’s fault.”

Tim groaned. “Not you too! Why is everyone but me and Melanie a fucking Sims apologist?”

“Jon and Jonah are...they’re weird, okay?” Sasha moved to chewing her hair, uncertain of how to describe it. If it should even be described. It seemed so private, so unsuitable to name...but maybe everybody thinking that was how these things stayed perpetuated for so long. “I think Jonah’s kind of, you know, abusive?”

The line went silent again.

“Wow,” Tim said finally, “Martin’s going to be so disappointed his boyfriend’s taken.”

“They’re just friends! I think. I’m like, ninety percent sure. But you didn’t hear them, Tim. They’re really...it’s messed up. Trust me.”

“Jesus, Sash, why are you defending someone who fucked all of us over like this? Sims is a big boy, he’s responsible for his own shitty decisions and the shitty company he keeps.” Tim snorted. “I’ve heard them talk, anyway. If anything, Magnus is the one always giving into Sims and his little tantrums. Jesus, I just want to throttle the both of them.”

“Maybe you need to get over your anger issues and focus on actually solving the problem for once,” Sasha snapped. “Nobody has time for your revenge fantasy, Tim! We need to fix all of this.”

“Which one is it, Sash?” Tim asked coldly. “Was I manipulated, or was it my anger issues and hero complex? Are you going to decide if this is my fault or not?”

Sasha’s heart stuttered in her chest. She didn’t know how to explain to him what she knew - that it was everything, that it was all of the above, that he was manipulated through his anger issues and hero complex, that Tim had been pushed in a direction but he had taken the steps all by himself. But she couldn’t blame him entirely, because Sasha had been manipulated the same way, and so had Jon and Martin and Georgie, and if she started thinking like that then she would have to start hating the whole damn world.

“Tim, are we going to stay together?” Sasha whispered, broken-hearted. “Can we even still be together? I love you. I want you here with me. But there’s so much ugliness that’s growing between us. I don’t know if this can be fixed.”

A long silence again. Sasha wanted to be there with him, to read his face, to see what he was thinking. She had always understood him so well, or at least she thought that he did.

“I love you too,” Tim said finally. “I want to fix this too. I - I don’t know, Sasha. I love you. The thought of you alone, in danger, and not even knowing where you are, is fucking me up. It’s like Danny all over again, Sasha, I can’t handle this. Can we have this conversation again when I know you’re safe?”

“Okay,” Sasha said, and she knew that this was probably the best both of them could do right now. “Are we staying together?”

“...I don’t know.”

“...are we breaking up?”

“...still don’t know.”

“Okay,” Sasha repeated again, and sighed. “I won’t call you from this phone twice. I’m doing the best I can here. I’m safe, I think. Things will be okay, Tim.”

“Sash,” Tim said, “I don’t remember the last time things were okay.”

And neither did she, and they both knew it, and she hung up on him without saying anything further. She lay on the bed, listening faintly to the sound of the housekeeper vacuuming, staring up at the fan as it beat in a steady rhythm on the ceiling.

Was Tim right? Was she reading too much into Jon and Jonah? It wasn’t her job to fix Jon, to puzzle out his weird psychology. Maybe he was just an asshole without a spine,and there wasn’t anything more to that.

No. Sasha didn’t believe that. This was a puzzle that she hadn’t solved yet, and she had the feeling that at the heart of this puzzle was the key to finally keeping herself and Tim safe. She couldn’t abide a mystery, couldn’t trick herself into thinking that the truth wasn’t important. The truth was all Sasha had. She couldn’t close her eyes to it, that awful and ugly reality.

Tim...he had been such a bad idea. But he had always been her favorite one: the way he could always cheer her up, his bright and bold smile, his courage and heart and sensitivity and vulnerability. He had loved her, truly and wholly, for who she was. He knew the ugly corners of her and loved them as much as he loved her best attributes.

Was that still true? Was Sasha turning into a person that Tim just couldn’t love? Was Tim turning into someone that Sasha couldn’t love?

People changed. Sometimes they changed apart. And for some strange reason, Sasha just couldn’t bear the thought of that.

Lying on the bed of a grim reaper, crying like a broken-hearted teenager, Sasha didn’t notice that the housekeeper’s vacuum had stopped running. She didn’t notice the knock on the door, or the creak of the door opening, or the gentle rise and fall of voices. She only heard it when there was a soft knock at her own door, and she was forced to roll off the bed to open her bedroom door.

Standing in front of her, looking nervous, was the housekeeper. Standing behind her was Jonathan Sims.

He looked pretty bad, Sasha noted clinically. Eye bags, even more pronounced than usual, stood starkly under his eyes, and his hair wasn’t as cropped short and styled as it usually was. It had grown out a little, making Jon look more like a tired modern guy walking the streets of London than a centuries old immortal psychic vampire. He was still dressed in a suit, as he always was, but the suit jacket was off and his dress shirt was rolled up to the elbow.

He stared at Sasha, probably registering every minute change in her appearance as she did his, before glancing down at the housekeeper. “You’re excused for the day. Thank you for your time.”

He passed her something - probably neatly folded bills - and nodded at her as she shakily nodded back and escaped the flat as quickly as possible. Jon stepped backwards in the hallway, gesturing for her to come out, and walked back into the living room. Because Sasha was just slightly too prideful to barricade herself in the bedroom, and partly because she wasn’t sure that Jon wouldn’t break into a woman’s bedroom, she stepped out into the grandiose yet cluttered living room with him. He stood in the center, hands in his pockets, looking over the flat with a clinical eye.

“Georgie’s sense of interior decoration is as immaculate as ever,” Jon noted clinically. “She used to spend months getting every house we ever lived in just right. Said it was her job as lady of the household. She had never been a lady of any household, of course, not in the way that Jonah and I had once known - but her fun’s important to her, and it doesn’t hurt anybody important.” He sniffed slightly. “You coming to stay here was for the best after all. She’s been lonely, I think.”

“I’m staying here because I’m homeless,” Sasha said flatly. For the first time, she noticed a small manila envelope under his arm, tucked slightly into his back pocket. “Because of you.”

“I’ve kept your flat for you,” Jon said eagerly, stepping forward, and letting his cold mask fall. In him now was something eager, something almost pleading. Sasha forced herself not to step away. “All of your possessions are intact, and I can get your bank accounts unfrozen easily enough. Once all of this blows over, your life can be right back to normal.”

“Wow,” Sasha drawled, crossing her arms, “how kind. Were you so busy being this nice to me that you forgot that Georgie barred you from this flat because I don’t want to fucking look at you?”

“She’ll get over it,” Jon said dismissively. “She’s been wanting us to make up, anyhow.” He stepped closer again, fluorescent green eyes fixed on her large and warm brown ones, and Sasha fought the tingle crawling up her spine. “Sasha, I really am sorry. Jonah was out of line in what he did. But - but you know, he really does know best. Even if it doesn’t seem so. What we’re doing now, it’s for the best for your development. I promise this will all blow over soon, and things will be better. For all of us.”

“For a subject of a truth god,” Sasha said, voice dripping sarcasm, “you have a unique ability to lie to yourself.”

Jon puffed up, scowling down at her. “That’s ridiculous. I -”

“Does Jonah Magnus respect you?” Sasha pressed.

Jon...hesitated, and they both saw it. Jon frantically tried to cover, quickly saying, “Of course he does. I’m his partner, and we’ve been partners for two hundred years. There’s nobody on earth he respects more than me. There’s nobody he respects but me.”

“Then why does he talk to you like you’re an idiot?”

“He talks to everyone like that.”

“Because he doesn’t respect anyone but you. You just said that. But if he respects you, then wouldn’t he talk to you differently?”

There it is - Jon’s shoulders hunched slightly, unconsciously on the defensive. “Does he give you equal input on decisions?”

“I always give my -”

“Does he listen to them?”

Jon was silent. Finally, slowly, he said, “Jonah was right. He said you’d get like this.”

Fuck. Sasha’s heart sank, even as her jaw dropped in incredulity. She had lost him. “You must be kidding.”

“He said you’d get jealous.” Jon crossed his arms, turning slightly away from her, but what he clearly meant to be a closed-off stance just seemed defensive. “He said that you’d get upset that I’m more loyal to him than to you. What we’re doing now is for your own good, Miss James. You’ll see one day that this - this unpleasantness is helping you grow.”

Unpleasantness? Unpleasantness?! Putting her life at risk was an inconvenience? “I’ll see, huh?” Sasha said bitterly. “Just like you saw? Just like how you changed your mind from this being cruel and traumatic to it being a momentary unpleasantness?” She barked a short laugh, not very humorous at all. “I was there. He called you stupid, he said that you couldn’t trust anybody but him, and he called you an idiot. Are those the words of someone who respects you? Of someone who even likes you?”

Jon stiffened, mouth tightening, and he broke eye contact and looked away. “Don’t concern yourself with the private business between Jonah and I.”

“When you’re having the conversation over a cooling corpse that you framed me for then you’re making it my business, you absolute shitheel!” Sasha yelled, finally losing her temper. “Your bullshit is ruining my life! Your complete inability to stand up to that sack of shit is ruining my life!”

“Shut up!” Jon yelled, seemingly having taken her losing her temper as permission to lose his. Distantly, Sasha was aware of his stupid this must have looked: two fully grown adults, yelling in a living room like children. “You’re a spoiled child who doesn’t know anything! All I’ve ever done is try to help you, and you spit in my face! You’re no better than Martin!”

Abruptly, strangely, Jon stopped short. He seemed almost embarrassed, almost in pain.

And just like that, Sasha knew. “He’s not letting you see Martin, is he.”

For just a split second, Jon’s expression crumpled, but he forced it back into his haughty mask. “I decided that it was best I didn’t waste my time with manipulative traitors.”

“Was that your idea?” Sasha asked flatly, abruptly extremely tired. “Or was it Jonah’s?”

Jon was silent. They both knew the answer.

“If you walked up to Jonah now and told him that you wanted to start dating Martin, do you think that you’d leave that conversation still wanting to do it? Or would you somehow decide, all by yourself, that you’ll end up doing what Jonah wants anyway?”

Jon didn’t say anything.

A strange mix of emotions swirled in Sasha’s stomach. Anger and disgust mixed with pity and sadness. What had Jon been like, before he met Jonah Magnus? Had he been a good person?

But maybe that wasn’t so important. Maybe the question that had to be asked was - what kind of person would Jonathan Sims be without Jonah Magnus in his life?

All at once, the fight seemed to go out of Jon. His shoulders sagged, and he abruptly deflated. He looked down at the ground, ashamed and aware of it. He had always been aware of it. He had just been lying to himself. Maybe it was impossible to live without it.

“I don’t know what to do without him,” Jon said quietly. “I’ve never - I need him.”

“You don’t,” Sasha said, abruptly exhausted. “You want to help me, Jon? You want to protect me and Martin? You can’t do that while staying friends with Jonah Magnus. You have to choose. So long as you stay close to him, you are going to stay within his complete control. That’s what he does. He controls everybody and everything. And you’re letting him. You’re justifying it. You’re doing his work for him. Everybody around him is - even Georgie. There are two people in your life who are trying to get you away from him, and he’s trying to convince you to cut them out of your life. You think that’s a coincidence?”

Jon opened his mouth, then closed it. Weakly, he said, “You’re wrong.”

“I need your help, Jon,” Sasha whispered, and to her shame found her voice cracking. “I need someone on my side. I can do it alone, but - but I’m scared. And I don’t want to. I need help. I’m scared.”

But she knew, even as she said it, that Jon was scared too. He couldn’t reach out a hand to her - not now, not here. Jon had carried around his fear for hundreds of years, pushing it down and pretending it wasn’t there, and it informed everything he’d ever done. Scrambling for power, exerting that power, desperately dominating even as he was dominated - it stemmed from that fear, all of it. And Jonah Magnus kept those flames fanned, because a Jon who was afraid was a Jon who could be controlled.

A Sasha who was afraid, who was isolated, who was trapped, was one who could be controlled.

The realization was dizzying. Somehow, the thought that kept running through her mind was - who’d do that? Who was such a terrible person that they’d go through all that trouble, all of that plotting, just to make someone suffer? Not because they disliked them, not in revenge, not because of any human emotion - but just because it was convenient? Useful?

Because you could?

So this was what power did to a person, Sasha realized. So this was what power and immortality and money and supernatural gifts did to you. It made you someone who Sasha could never hope to understand, whose depths of depravity she could never truly rationalize. To Sasha, who prided herself on knowing people and being able to understand them and their motives - it was almost a relief, almost a blessing, that she couldn’t possibly understand the motives of Jonah Magnus at all.

Jon stared at her, fluorescent green eyes wide, and for just a minute she could see the fear that she knew was there written all over his face. For just a minute, Sasha and Jon were scared together, both trapped in tumultuous waters that they couldn’t control. For the first time Sasha empathized with Jon.

Jonah Magnus was somebody that Sasha could never understand. But Jon was, and for the first time Sasha knew what Martin meant when he said that he felt as if Jon had been a good person, a long time ago.

You can’t understand someone and hate them. Not really. You could be angry, upset, betrayed...but if you really understood someone, backwards and forwards, true hate was difficult to find.

“I have to go,” Jon said, almost dizzily. He shoved the manila folder at her, both of them having forgotten that it was even there in the first place. He glanced at it, frightened and guilty. “Be - be careful when meeting Jude Perry. Don’t take her at her word. I have to go.”

He fled, as if the hounds of hell themselves were snapping at his heels, and Sasha was left standing in an opulent hallway, clutching a manila folder as if it was a time bomb, completely certain that it was meant to hurt her and cause her pain and damage her, completely certain that she was going to read it anyway.

Like Jon - what choice did she have?

But as she stumbled back to her room, as she sat down on the comfortable chair and thumbed on the tape recorder that sat at the desk, the words of Jonathan Sims ran through her mind. His warning. A clumsy attempt at protection. At the very least, a signifier of desire.

Sasha knew, as she sometimes knew things, that Jon had started out somebody who deeply desired to protect others like him. To take revenge, to grab power, yes, but also to spread that precious knowledge and resources around. He had never stopped thinking of himself as one of those vulnerable people, people who society had stepped on and ground into the dirt. Deep down he had just wanted things to be fair, wanted some justice in the world. Jon, at one point, had only wanted to help.

Maybe she wasn’t so alone after all.

“Statement of Sasha James, Head Archivist…”

#my writing #YES I KNOW THIS IS TOO LONG FOR A TUMBLR POST BUT CONSIDER: ITS NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR AO3 AND MY STANDARDS ARE INSANE #jonathan sims #georgie barker #sasha james #archivist!sasha #human relations #tma #the magnus archives #tma fanfic #jonmartin #jason's tims age

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unpeumacabre · 4 years

Text

my kingdom for a horse: chapter 7

the year is 1601, a messenger has been sent to dongnae, and he has not returned. lord cho-hak-ju advises the joseon king to send crown prince lee chang to dongnae to investigate, but the plot he unravels there threatens the safety of the entire kingdom, and the stability of the dynasty.

a rewriting of kingdom, and lee chang finds love.

Rating: Mature

Relationships: Lee Chang/Yeong-shin

Read on AO3 (bc tumblr might mess up the formatting + more extensive author’s notes on the story)

Count: 8k

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“I recognise you,” came a voice from behind him, and he turned abruptly, his hand flying immediately to the knife hidden in his sleeve.

A man stood before him, clad in purple silk, rich and superfluous. An official’s hat shaded his face, but it did little to hide the gleeful smirk twisting his aristocratic mouth, and the fineness of his handsome features which somehow held both arrogance and cunning.

He could feel the tip of a blade pressing into the small of his back. Even if he were to draw his knife, it would not be in time to counter a fatal blow struck to his spine. The knowledge froze him in place.

“Three years ago,” the man said again, his voice sinuous and smooth. “You were one of the tiger-hunters, were you not? One of Ahn Hyeon’s fighting dogs. I am surprised to see you still alive, after the furore of the last battle.”

“What do you want,” he said, and his voice was rusty from disuse. It had been days since he had last spoken.

The stranger laughed, then, and the movement jabbed the tip of the blade further into his back. It was almost enough to draw blood, for his clothes were thin and weathered, and they offered little protection.

“What I want?” the man mused. “Ah, but it would not do to speak so openly. Shall we find somewhere quieter, with fewer prying eyes and ears?”

“I have no choice, do I?” he said bitterly.

“Oh, but of course you do,” the stranger taunted. “You can choose not to speak with me, of course – it is completely and utterly your choice. But then…” Here the man drew out the words, savouring the hold he had over his audience. “ Then you would not learn of the interesting news I have received in recent days. News of a little boy with a missing nose, who was picked up two days ago by the magistrate of Gongju for petty theft. Would you so easily miss this chance for news of your brother, Park Yeong-shin?”

Yeong-shin found he had no choice. He led the way to a quiet alcove he has often retreated to whenever he ate his meals, for it was unknown to many and easy to guard.

When they reached the alcove, the stranger sighed, and returned his sword to its sheath. It was a mark of his confidence in his abilities – and his blatant arrogance – that he failed to keep his weapon trained on Yeong-shin. It was a mistake many had made, and paid for, in the past.

It was only the knowledge the man held over his head, that stayed Yeong-shin’s own weapon.

“Now, where to start?” the man said slowly, pretending to stroke his short beard. “I have searched long and hard for you, as one of the last remaining chakho, and so you will excuse me if I seem a little – overexcited, at having finally found my man.”

“Tell me of the boy,” Yeong-shin said roughly. His nails dug so deep into his palm they drew blood.

“Yes, the boy,” the man murmured, that cold grin back on his face. “Of unknown birth, of unknown age, of unknown name – his only distinguishing characteristic being the lack of a nose. He is known to have made a living begging on the streets of Gongju and its surrounding townships – and petty thievery, as we now know. An offence punishable by death, for he was caught stealing a jade hairpin from no less that the wife of the magistrate herself. I seem to recall,” and now the man dropped his voice and stepped closer to Yeong-shin, “that you had a brother, did you not? Three years ago, during the war. A fine young boy he was – it was a terrible tragedy when the plague took his parents, and his nose. Such a shame.”

“Spare me your false pity,” Yeong-shin growled. “My brother died long ago.”

“But his body was never found, was it not?” the man said. There is a palpable silence.

“What do you want from me,” Yeong-shin said at last. “If it is money, I have none.”

“I do not need what paltry coin you have,” the stranger said dismissively. “I merely need your skills. There is a man who will start out to Dongnae in three days. You are to make sure he dies.”

“What man?” Yeong-shin asked.

“The Crown Prince, Lee Chang,” the man replied, and Yeong-shin felt his blood turn to ice.

“He will be guarded by many capable men. Surely you cannot expect me to be able to overcome them when they outnumber me – no matter my skills,” Yeong-shin said furiously. “It is impossible.”

“Trust me when I say that it will not be difficult to kill the prince,” the man said softly. “Circumstances will arise in which he will be left vulnerable – or he will die. Your job is to make sure he does die. Leave no one else alive.”

“What circumstances?”

“You will find out soon enough,” was the infuriating answer. “The prince will be travelling from Hanyang to Dongnae along the Namhan and Nakdong Rivers. Find him before he reaches Dongnae, and make sure he does not live.”

“Why would I risk my life to complete this mission when the boy may not even be my brother?” Yeong-shin said flatly.

“He may not be your brother, but he may be,” the man said, with another vulgar smile. “Are you willing to take that chance?”

He made a sudden movement, and pulled a musket out of his clothes. The gun was a terribly familiar weight in Yeong-shin’s hands as he caught it.

It was as if he had known that Yeong-shin would be unable to refuse.

Yeong-shin stared down at the barrel of the gun. He remembered Yeong-ryu’s face, and Yeong-ryu’s smile. His fingers tightened around the wood.

“Trust me, you’ll need that gun,” were the man’s parting words to him. “Remember, before Dongnae, Lee Chang must die.”

***

“Before Dongnae, Lee Chang must die,” ends Beom-il, and the smile that snakes across his face is triumphant.

Mu-yeong utters a roar of fury, and instantly he is at Yeong-shin’s side, his blade a hairsbreadth away from Yeong-shin’s throat. The sword trembles in his hand from the strength of his anger.

“Is – is what he says true?” Mu-yeong shouts, and it is a marvel that, even now, Mu-yeong – good, kind, strong Mu-yeong, who despite his wariness and cynicism has always treasured his brothers-in-arms – even now, Mu-yeong is giving him the benefit of the doubt.

Lee Chang feels the phantom touch of cold fingers creeping up his arm. He does not know what to feel.

He looks at Yeong-shin. Really looks at him, for what must be the first time, and there are things he sees, that he had not before noticed. How his eyes are shadowed with desperation, and how he carries the weight of death upon his shoulders – not the death of nameless, faceless soldiers and beasts, as Lee Chang had once thought, but possibly the death of a loved one. The death of someone who had mattered to him. The weight of loss. Lee Chang does not know how he had not seen it before.

If Yeong-shin were to betray them, he thinks, first Lee Chang would kill Beom-il. Yes, there would be enough time for him to reach Beom-il and slit his throat, with Yeong-shin kept at bay by Mu-yeong. Enough time for him to hurl Beom-il’s body at the monster-which-once-was-his-father. And then… and then he would…

Something chokes his throat at the thought of killing Yeong-shin, and he knows that Mu-yeong will have to be the one to deliver the killing blow.

“Is it true,” he says, at last, echoing Mu-yeong’s words. At the sound of his voice, Yeong-shin’s head jerks, and he meets Lee Chang’s gaze with his shuttered, hooded eyes – so familiar, and yet so foreign at the same time. The room is silent, and even Beom-il does not move, his eyes darting gleefully between the two of them.

Lee Chang searches the look in his eyes, and for the first time, he doubts his trust in Yeong-shin.

Then Beom-il decides to break the silence.

“Kill him,” he hisses, thrusting himself forward, uncaring of the blood drawn from the sword at his throat as he leans his weight towards Yeong-shin. “Remember your brother! I have hidden him away, and without me, it will be impossible to find him.”

Yeong-shin is silent, ignoring Beom-il’s words, and holding his gaze with Lee Chang.

“Remember, this man’s father killed your family – with a useless war,” Beom-il continues, pressing forward more, the spittle flying into Yeong-shin’s face, and a mad gleam alight in his eyes. “Your family need not have died, but they did, and all for what? For the pride of a monarch who cares not for his subjects. Will you let this same man’s son live when it is your people who have paid the price?!”

“He will not be the same king,” Yeong-shin says, and his voice is so quiet that, at first, Lee Chang thinks he has misheard.

“What?” Beom-il says, in disbelief. His expression mirrors that of everyone else’s in the room.

“He is not his father,” Yeong-shin says again, very softly, and tears his gaze from Lee Chang’s. Now he stares into Beom-il’s eyes, and the look in his own eyes is a familiar one.

“This man, I would serve with my life,” are his final words, and with a quick flick of his wrist, he tears open a gaping wound at Beom-il’s throat.

A terrible gurgling sound emits from Beom-il’s mouth, and his hands fly to the open gash, which now spills blood like a fountain. The redness of his blood stains the floor a deep, dark brown, and he collapses to the floor as his knees give way from the pain. He looks curiously diminished, a foul loathsome worm crawling on the ground, where he belongs.

“You – what - ” Mu-yeong splutters, having lost the power of speech in his shock. “But Beom-il - ”

“He was not my master, and he never was,” Yeong-shin answers quietly. His eyes are cast downwards, and the arm which had dealt the fatal blow hangs limply by his side.

Lee Chang lifts his hand to wipe the sweat from his brow, and he finds that he is shaking. He clenches his fingers into a fist to stop the movement.

“What shall we do with him?” Yeong-shin asks, turning to Lee Chang. Something unfathomable passes across his face, lightning quick, as he sees Lee Chang. Lee Chang realises dimly that he must make quite the picture, staring at his one hand lifted and his fingernails digging into his palm.

It takes him a minute to recover his composure sufficiently to answer.

“Throw him to the monster,” he finally replies, and he lifts his eyes to meet Yeong-shin’s steady gaze. “The blow is a fatal one, and he will soon die even with medical help. He is of no use to us anymore. And,” he savours the words, “it would please me if his death were to involve as much suffering and agony as possible.”

“And what shall we do with His Majesty?” Mu-yeong asks, blinking rapidly, and looking agitatedly back and forth between Yeong-shin and Lee Chang. “What can we do?”

“I will kill him myself,” Lee Chang says, and the words surprise even him.

Survive, his father had said, but now Lee Chang understands the hidden layer to those words. Survive, at all costs, with no qualms. His father is dead, now, and nothing will bring him back. He must be killed for the safety of his companions, and for the safety of the people.

“But not now,” he amends. “We must have proof of the Haewon Cho clan’s misdeeds regarding these monsters – and no proof will be stronger than the king himself. We must find a way to restrain him, and keep him in my quarters until tomorrow, when we may present him to the officials. There is no time to waste, for the queen may already have given birth.”

Yeong-shin nods, and volunteers to look for rope with which to bind the former king. Lee Chang walks up to Beom-il, who is gasping and cursing with pain – with what remains of his vocal cords – and rolling around on the ground, clutching in vain at his throat as if to stem the flow of blood. Already his face is pale with blood loss, and his lips are blue, but still he tries desperately to crawl towards the doorway to make his escape.

Lee Chang supposes he can admire his drive to live, if anything. Lesser men would have given into death already by this time. But his unwilling admiration does not erase his hatred for the man – how can it?

Lee Chang steps close to Beom-il’s face, but does not touch him. He does not want to dirty his boots.

“I have seen things you cannot even imagine,” he whispers, and Beom-il turns enraged eyes upon him, his once-handsome face now a paltry semblance of its former self, distorted as it is by his hatred and agony.

“I have taken more lives than you can even count,” he continues. “Lives which were first taken by you and your father, lives wasted and spent as mindless creatures bent on human flesh. The Haewon Cho clan wishes to ascend to the throne? Ha!” He barks out a single peal of laughter, then abruptly sobers. He leans down, closer to Beom-il’s face, and the man cannot move, not when he is struggling on the last embers of his strength.

“I carry within me the blood of the House of Yi,” he whispers, “and I will not let you fell us at our roots.”

With that, he straightens, and with a mighty kick, propels Beom-il towards the monster-that-was-king. The creature falls upon the fresh blood with frightful gusto, and the sounds of bones breaking, teeth gnashing and Beom-il’s agonising screams causes all of them to turn away in disgust.

They maintain silence for a while, until Beom-il’s death rattles fade away, and they are left only with the sounds of the monster feasting on the bodies. Yeong-shin grimaces and looks at Mu-yeong. While the latter’s face plainly reads his unwillingness to ally himself with a man who had supposedly been working behind their backs for the enemy, he accedes to Yeong-shin’s stare with an explosive sigh.

They approach the monster with blades drawn and, in Yeong-shin’s case, ropes at the ready. Lee Chang steps backwards and checks the doors, just to make sure that their battle has not attracted any unwanted attention from the palace guards – which it has not. He nods his approval to them, and they begin the arduous process of tying the king down and restraining him.

It is not without a few quiet scuffles and a few near misses, but at last, the monster-that-was-king is restrained with a cloth bag over its head and his limbs tied firmly with the rope. It struggles furiously, and they have to put another bag over its head as it begins to chew through the rough hemp of the first. Thankfully, Yeong-shin’s knots hold, and the monster does not escape its bindings, despite its inhuman strength.

Lee Chang finds his feet leading him to the side of the monster. Almost unconsciously, his knees buckle, and he falls to a kneeling position before the monster-that-once-was-his-father.

“Father,” he whispers, and he looks with pity at the blood-spattered robes of the king. He remembers, now, how his father had told him that the state of his garb was to always be neat and proper, as befitted the heir to the throne. Lee Chang does not remember a single instant in which his father had had a single hair out of place, or a mis-chosen piece of attire clothing his body. His father had always been regal, and graceful, and stern.

It is a disservice, he thinks angrily, that his father is reduced to the figure he makes now. It is a disservice, and a grave insult, and he will make them pay.

Beside the monster lies the maid who had been thrown callously to feed it. Her eyes lie open, staring and stark in their gaze of terror, and her face, which might once have been pretty, is barely recognisable, devoid of flesh as her lower jaw is.

Lee Chang reaches over, and passes his hand over her eyes, so that she may be at peace.

As he stands, he turns to Yeong-shin, who is standing behind him and watching his every movement. Even as their eyes lock, Yeong-shin makes no movement to look away.

“How do I know I can trust you,” Lee Chang asks, his voice rough, and although he had not meant it to be so, the words come out with a jagged edge.

Yeong-shin’s throat works as he swallows, the only outwardly sign of his agitation, for otherwise, his face is calm, and his body is still.

“Because you’re alive,” he says at last. “If I had wanted to kill you, you would be dead by now. How many times could I have put a knife or a bullet in your back?”

“You said you would serve me with your life,” Lee Chang says steadily.

“Yes,” Yeong-shin answers, and the word is infused with such intensity that Lee Chang feels himself shudder. He hesitates.

“Your Highness - ” Mu-yeong says despairingly from behind him, as if he already knows Lee Chang’s decision. As if he had already guessed, from the moment Lee Chang had first spoken.

“I said I trusted you with my life,” Lee Chang says decisively, and for the first time, he touches Yeong-shin. He lifts his arm and grasps tightly onto Yeong-shin’s shoulder, and he does not miss how the gesture makes Yeong-shin’s body jerk violently. A dull, ugly flush spreads across his neck, barely visible if it were not for their close proximity, and Lee Chang finds that he likes the idea that he is the only one to see it. The only one to see Yeong-shin flustered so.

“My answer has not changed,” Lee Chang whispers. “I still trust you with my life.”

Yeong-shin does not answer, but for the first time, his gaze is clear as he meets Lee Chang’s eyes.

***

It is the next morning that things fall to pieces.

They had brought the monster to Lee Chang’s private quarters, somehow managing to sneak it past the negligent guards on duty, and hid it in a cupboard by the fire. The heat kept it docile, and the shade gave it shelter behind which it could slumber. Seo-bi treats their wounds with a silence that is more telling that any sharp words could be, and they discuss their plans quietly.

The king must be revealed to the people as a monster made by the Haewon Cho clan, Lee Chang had said unfalteringly. We must do so tomorrow, with haste – hopefully, before the queen gives birth.

It is an uncommonly-long labour, Mu-yeong had said quietly. I do not know what she is plotting, but it cannot be good.

We have no choice, Lee Chang had decided. We cannot control what she does, only what we do. We must reveal the king tomorrow morning.

But in the morning, Lee Chang wakes not to the crowing of the cockerels, but to Mu-yeong bursting into his quarters with tears streaming down his face. Lee Chang knows the urgency of his visit from the very fact that he had dared to intrude into Lee Chang’s bedroom without prior notice, for it is the first time that he has taken so rude a liberty.

“My wife, my wife - ” Mu-yeong blubbers, panting and heaving, as if he had just run many miles. “She is gone! GONE!!”

“Mu-yeong,” Lee Chang says sternly. “Be calm! Tell me what has happened.”

The man attempts to take a few deep breaths to recover his strength, but it is not long before great heaving sobs take over his body again and send him into a shuddering fit. Yeong-shin bursts into the room, his musket drawn, already fully clothed. Seo-bi peers in cautiously from behind him, and sighs in relief when she sees that there is no danger. Mu-yeong is still crying, so distraught that he cannot speak.

Lee Chang backhands him without hesitation. The blow is hard, but with some small measure of leniency, and it propels Mu-yeong backwards. The force of the blow makes him stumble, and he has to throw out his hand to steady himself against the wall.

“Pull yourself together, Mu-yeong!” Lee Chang roars. “What has happened to your wife?”

The blow has sobered Mu-yeong, although tears still leak silently from the corners of his eyes. Yeong-shin and Seo-bi enter the room proper, and shut the door behind them.

“Last night – I went to Naesonjae – I had a message that my wife was in the midst of labour,” he blabbers. “That she had been since the morning, and that it was a difficult birth – a dangerous one – and I was needed. I rode to her home to find her, but she was gone when I reached her. Not dead, but missing. And then,” he pauses for breath, “and then, her father told me that she has been taken to the Queen’s palace in Naesonjae.”

“The Queen?” Lee Chang says slowly. The pieces began to click together in his mind.

“She was one of many,” Mu-yeong cries. “Her father told me that there have been many husband-less, parent-less women taken to the Queen’s palace in the last month, all with child. She was the only one taken who still had a family. She is alone, and she is scared, and I am not there by her side – Your Highness, I - ”

“Naesonjae,” Seo-bi says suddenly, and there is a growing light in her eyes. “I remember Naesonjae.”

“How?” Lee Chang asks.

“It was… weeks ago,” she says slowly. “I only remember the incident because it was so odd… Master, I mean Physician Lee, asked me to obtain sappanwood from our supplier for reasons he could not tell me. Although we use it frequently, the quantity he asked for was unusually large, and so I had some difficulty obtaining it. When he passed it to one of the delivery boys, I overheard that it must be delivered to Naesonjae and only into the hands of the queen’s head lady-in-waiting, and so I wondered… I wondered why the queen would need such a large quantity of sappanwood.”

“Sappanwood?” Lee Chang presses. “What ailments is it meant to heal?”

“Among others, it is used to remove blood clots after a miscarriage or birth, or to alleviate symptoms related to improper or lack of postpartum care,” Seo-bi answers, and she lifts troubled eyes to meet Lee Chang’s gaze. “It cannot be fed to pregnant women.”

“She is not pregnant, then,” Lee Chang says, and he feels his heart thump faster in his chest. A growing sense of foreboding makes him grip the edge of his table to steady himself. “But how? I saw here just yesterday, and the day before, and she was still as round as ever – rounder, if it were possible! It is impossible that she is without child.”

“If we had more time,” Seo-bi says, “We could have found a way to let me check her medical signs, to see if she really is with child - ”

“But we have no time!” Mu-yeong finishes her sentence, his entire body beginning to tremble violently again as the terrible truth begins to sink into all of them. “MY WIFE IS IN DANGER!” he roars, and leaps to his feet.

Lee Chang follows his movement, and so do the others. “To Naesonjae, then,” he commands, “and quickly!”

***

“What is Your Highness doing here?”

The Head of the Royal Commandery Min Chi-rok can barely contain his shock as he is met by Lee Chang and his companions at the gate of Naesonjae. It is equally surprising to Lee Chang, for the man has never been an inch below unflappable, and to see him so discombobulated is a sight indeed. But these are trivial matters compared to the matter at hand.

“Your Highness!” Commander Min exclaims. “You – you are a wanted man now! What are you doing here in Naesonjae?!”

“Wanted?” Lee Chang says in disbelief. “For what crime?”

“For the murder of Lord Cho and his son Beom-il,” Commander Min answers soberly. “The Queen herself has put a bounty on your head.”

He puts his hand to his sword, although the movement is reluctant, and he does not draw the weapon. Perhaps it is the crazed look in Mu-yeong’s eye, perhaps it is whatever semblance of loyalty he still bears to Lee Chang, perhaps it is his own sense of justice that stays his hand, but no matter the reason, still he makes no move to arrest Lee Chang, and for that, Lee Chang knows he will be a valuable ally.

“I did kill Cho Beom-il,” Lee Chang answers fiercely, “but only in self-defence. And, I swear to you – I did not touch a single hair on Cho Hak-ju’s head. It must be one of the Queen’s plots to denounce and dethrone me.”

Commander Min nods and retracts his hand, some of the relief passing lightning-quick across his face before he schools his expression back to its normal, blank mask. “The Haewon Cho clan and their plots have previously been subtle, but it seems that they have decided that now is the time to make more overt gestures,” he says sternly, “especially now that the new Crown Prince has been born.”

“He has been born?” Lee Chang asks, feeling his breath stutter to a halt. That must mean that Mu-yeong’s wife –

Mu-yeong comes to the same conclusion as he does, at the exact same time, and with a thunderous cry of rage, he barrels past Commander Min and his gathered men, and charges into the palace.

“Your Highness!” Commander Min shouts. “Your guard - ”

“There is something terrible afoot here,” Lee Chang cuts in, and passes a quick glance over his assembled men, before returning his eyes to the commander. “Something you have apparently caught wind of, yourself. We do not have any substantial proof, but we believe the Queen has been capturing and killing young pregnant women from Naesonjae if they fail to deliver her a son – who she planned to use as her own heir.”

From the way Commander Min’s face darkens, it is evident that he had guessed at only some parts of Lee Chang’s theory. Whatever had set him on this scent, however, must have strongly correlated with Lee Chang’s words, because he does not question the accusations and instead turns to his men, standing at high alert behind him.

“Search the Queen’s palace,” he orders. “Leave no corner untouched, and let no one escape.”

The men salute, and spread out to begin their search. Lee Chang and Yeong-shin follow closely behind them.

The Queen’s maids and ladies-in-waiting flood out from the palace rooms, screaming and crying and holding their skirts aloft. One of them darts out from a room, clothes askew, and accompanied by a eunuch with his shirt half-off. Lee Chang casts them a look of disgust, before they are swiftly apprehended by the commander’s men and brought to the main courtyard.

All of a sudden, there is a sharp, piercing scream from a room nearby, a scream that had sounded as if it had come from the last desperate breaths of a woman in peril. Lee Chang exchanges a quick glance with Yeong-shin, and the man nods. They sprint to the source of the scream.

In the room they find Mu-yeong, bleeding from a fresh wound in his shoulder, but with his sword very satisfactorily buried in the abdomen of a man with dark clothing and a piece of fabric obscuring his features. Mu-yeong’s wife lies in the corner of the room, too limp to move, racking sobs leaking from her mouth and making her entire body shudder with the strength of her emotion. There is a bloody trail leaking out from between her legs.

Lee Chang grips Mu-yeong by the shoulder. His guard’s eyes are glassy with fear and shock, as he turns.

“Your wife needs you,” Lee Chang whispers, and it takes a moment, but finally, the fog drops from Mu-yeong’s eyes.

He falls to the ground next to his wife and cradles her in his arms, rocking her back and forth as he whispers sweet nothings into her ear. Slowly, under his care, she comes back to herself, and her cries become softer, more kitten-like, less violent.

“We must get her to Seo-bi,” Yeong-shin says quietly. “She is bleeding to death.”

Lee Chang nods. “I will bring them both to the entrance of the palace,” he says. “Leave the assassin – he is dead.”

When they return to the entrance, Seo-bi is waiting there, somehow having procured medical supplies, which lie neatly on a blanket laid on the ground next to her. Her eyes widen as she sees Mu-yeong’s wife, and she hurries over to lay her on the ground.

Assured that both Mu-yeong and his wife are in capable hands, Lee Chang turns his attention back to the crowd of the Queen’s servants, who have all been rounded up and corralled in the front courtyard of the Queen’s palace by Commander Min’s men. They are all unarmed, eunuchs and maids and ladies-in-waiting who have never before wielded a weapon, and it shows. Both men and women grovel for their lives before him.

Except for one of them, who holds herself high with an almost-regal posture. Her silver hair and robes make her out as the head lady-in-waiting. This, then, Lee Chang thinks, is the woman who knows the most, and also the woman who will say the least – at least, without the threat of torture.

Lee Chang is tired of violence. If he can, he will avoid the shedding of more blood. It is enough that they have all suffered so.

“Silence!” he commands, and his voice rings out throughout the courtyard. Instantly, all of the captured people fall to their knees – if they weren’t already on the ground – and quiet descends over the group. Lee Chang hears the echo of his own voice, and its power surprises even him.

“We have come here,” he says, quieter this time, but no less fierce, “because your mistress the Queen is guilty of treason. She is guilty of plotting against the throne of Joseon for her own ends, guilty of murdering her own father, and most importantly – guilty of slaughtering thousands of innocent peasants across our land who have done nothing to deserve the gruesome death they have met.”

He stalks the rows of people, scanning them, looking for the weak link. There is no time to lose, and he must strike soon, if not now.

“I know many of you here are innocent,” he continues, and this time his voice is easier, more patient, almost benevolent. There is no artificiality in his gentleness, however, for every word he says, he believes in. “Many of you do not know that your mistress is capable of such crimes.”

“But some of you,” he says, and he stops next to a girl who is quivering and shrinking into herself to avoid proximity to him, “Some of you – you know what the Queen is capable of. Have known all along. But of course, you did not mean to help her in her crimes. You could not have done anything else.”

He looks down at the girl, whose hands are now grasped together in a tight fist, her nails drawing blood from her palm. He feels his heart clench painfully at the sight.

“If you confess,” he says, now very softly and kindly, “you will not be blamed. You will not be held accountable for her crimes. You will be free to go.”

“Ah Ra!” comes a shriek from the front, and Lee Chang’s head whips up to see the head lady-in-waiting, her eyes lit with a fearsome light, and her gaze trained on the girl at his feet. “Remember who your mistress is! Remember who you serve!”

“YOUR TRUE MASTER STANDS BEFORE YOU!” thunders Lee Chang. “WILL YOU SERVE A TREASONOUS QUEEN, OR WILL YOU SERVE A MAN WHO WILL INHERIT THE THRONE? It is your choice,” and he turns to face the girl again, who is now sobbing openly, her face buried in her hands. “I know you are not guilty. But if you do not confess your mistress’ crimes, more blood will be shed by her hand, and the river water will run foul with corpses.

“Please,” he says, and his voice breaks on the last word.

A beat, and then the girl’s voice comes, scratchy and rasping from her tears.

“Her Majesty was taking women from the village,” she whispers, keeping her eyes resolutely downwards. There is another ferocious screech from the head lady-in-waiting, the sound of a scuffle as she attempts to throw herself towards the girl but is quickly restrained by one of the men. Lee Chang does not turn his head to look, for he gives his sole attention to the girl at his feet.

“Young women who were with child but without family or a husband,” she mumbles. “They have been giving birth these past few weeks. But as soon as they delivered, they were killed. For their children were all daughters. It was only today…” she stumbles, and seems to find it difficult to continue, but Lee Chang waits patiently for her to find her tongue again.

“Today,” she murmurs, “today there was a son. And so Her Majesty took the son, and left the mother to die.” A great hiccoughing sob racks her body, and she begins to shake again. “I do not know why she wants the baby,” she cries. “Does she not have her own child? I swear, that is all I know! Please have mercy, Your Highness!”

“You have done the right thing,” Lee Chang says, and he grants her a smile when she lifts her head to gaze at him in shock. “I meant what I said. You are innocent of crime, and you are free to go. But,” and now he raises his voice and his head to look around at the other occupants of the yard – and now his voice is stern and full of barely-restrained fury – “anyone in this courtyard who is guilty of taking the lives of those women – or who consciously aided the Queen in the taking of those lives – you will be subject to investigation and the appropriate punishment.”

He looks at Commander Min, and the man answers with a nod. His men spring into action and being rounding up the occupants of the courtyard and taking them away.

The commander comes to his side. “Your Highness,” he says, his face a grim mask, at the news they have learned of the queen’s plans. He does not ask the question which is plain in his eyes.

Lee Chang exhales forcefully. “We must act quickly,” he says quietly. “Chances are that news of Naesonjae’s sacking has already reached the queen’s ears – we do not know what drastic actions she will resort to when she realises her plans have been thwarted.”

Commander Min nods. “And Lord Cho - ” he asks hesitantly. “His death…”

“How did he die?” Lee Chang questions in return. The commander’s unflappable expression does not change, but a thread of uneasiness steals across his features.

“He was said to have had a heart attack last night when visiting the queen,” Commander Min answers. “But I heard that Her Majesty did not summon a doctor to check that the body was dead, and it was cremated quietly without ceremony this morning.”

She has made a tactical error in getting rid of her father, Lee Chang thinks to himself. The queen does not have the loyalties or allies that her father had, and now that the man is gone, the flighty ministers and officials who had previously allied themselves with him will be vying for power amongst themselves. As a woman, and a young woman at that, she naturally commands little respect from her father’s cronies, even though she now holds control over the highest seat in the land.

Fools, all of them, Lee Chang thinks furiously. It would not do to underestimate any of the members of the Haewon Cho clan, that nest of vipers, no matter how young and inexperienced they may seem. For the Queen may not have her father’s political acumen, nor his powerful connections, but she does have his ruthlessness and scheming wit. And that is not to be looked down on.

“We must hurry back to the palace, and seize the throne from her,” Lee Chang says decisively. He turns back to the commander, whose eyes are now as round as dinnerplates at his words, his mouth gaping slightly open in shock.

“You have heard of the plague that is sweeping the south and turning its people into monsters who crave human flesh?” Lee Chang asks him. He immediately snaps his mouth shut, and nods.

“The Haewon Cho clan is responsible for this infection, and therefore, all the deaths that have resulted from it. They have even dared to turn the King into a monster,” Lee Chang says, his tone hard. “I managed to visit the King’s palace under cover of the dark a few days ago, and found my father no longer living, and now one of these unholy creatures. We have him in my private quarters, and he will serve as proof of the Haewon Cho clan’s vile misdeeds.”

With every word he speaks, the shock and anger thrum deeper through his every vein, and he can see these emotions reflected in Commander Min’s gaze as well. As Lee Chang finishes his explanation, the commander’s jaw tightens, and a renewed steeliness comes to his eyes.

“Then we must reveal the truth to the ministers, and depose the queen,” he says crisply. Lee Chang nods. “Your men will support you?” he asks.

“To the very end,” Commander Min answers, and no more words are needed.

He summons those of his men who are unoccupied with the Naesonjae prisoners, and they mount their horses, waiting for the signal to leave. Lee Chang mounts his own steed, but pauses at the sight of Mu-yeong, still crouched over his wife, her hand clutched tightly in his, and his head bowed over her chest, such that his expression cannot be seen. Her complexion is deathly pale, but her chest is rising and falling with greater vigour than before. Thankfully, however, from the sureness of Seo-bi’s hands as she dresses her patient’s wounds, and the calmness and placidity of her actions, Lee Chang is confident that she is in no more danger.

At the sound of the horses moving and the men shouting out commands with increased volume, Mu-yeong looks up, his face haggard with fear and anxiety. He sees Lee Chang already mounted, and blanches.

When he makes to stumble to his feet, Lee Chang urges his horse closer to the pallet on which Mu-yeong’s wife is lying, and places a hand on Mu-yeong’s shoulder. It is the second time that he has touched Mu-yeong, in his life, and he knows it will not be the last, for Mu-yeong is now as dear a figure to him as a good friend, an uncle, a brother.

The touch seems to soothe Mu-yeong somewhat, although he initially flinches back in surprise that Lee Chang has chosen to touch him again. When he has recovered his composure, he looks up at Lee Chang with uncomprehending eyes.

“Stay,” Lee Chang says, and his voice is unbearably gentle, even to his own ears.

“But, Your Highness,” Mu-yeong says, the volume of his voice rising in confusion. “You will be in danger. It is my duty to protect you. I will come with you,” and he begins to walk off in the direction of his horse. Lee Chang tightens his grip on the guard’s soldier so that he may not move.

“No, Mu-yeong,” Lee Chang says, and when Mu-yeong turns to face him again, Lee Chang grants him a wan smile. “You have done enough. It is enough to know that you and your wife will be safe. And while you have your duty to me, you have your duty to your dear wife as well, do you not?”

“But - ”

“Rest assured,” Lee Chang cuts in, “I will personally bear your son back to you, safe and sound. But your son needs his mother, and you must make sure that he has a mother to come back to.”

Mu-yeong stares at him blankly for a few more moments, before he abruptly casts his head away and stares at the ground. His shoulders begin to shake.

“Thank you,” Mu-yeong rasps, almost inaudibly, the words scraping over his tear-roughened throat. “Thank you, Your Highness.”

***

The bells of Bosingak ring triumphantly as Lee Chang and his men ride back to Hanyang, but they leave a sour taste in his mouth.

He remembers only two occasions on which they had rung so joyfully and with so rich a timbre and cadence. The first had been his birth, and the noise had irritated his infant ears, had made him cry and bawl with dissatisfaction, as he had been taken from the warm embrace of his mother, and into the callus-worn hands of the midwife.

The second time, he had been in the palace, and his master Ahn Hyeon had returned covered in blood. The war with the Japanese had been ended, but the lives of too many Joseon men had been sacrificed for it to be their victory.

And now, the third time. For the birth of the false prince, and for the culmination of a traitor’s schemes.

The guard attempts to stop him at the gate, but he merely urges his horse forward, and he, Commander Min and their men charge through the streets. People scatter before them, and behind them there are faint shouts and the blowing of horns as the alarm is sounded.

“Seize the prince!” shrieks a voice from up on the barracks. “Seize the traitor!”

The commander’s men fend off attacks from beside them, as the guards at the gate surge forward and attempt to cripple their horses – to little avail, for there are no more elite swordsmen than the soldiers of the Royal Commandery. The attackers are batted off as flies to the horses’ flanks, and it is not long before they reach the gates of Changdeokgung.

More men bar their way, and this time they cannot bulldoze their way through on horseback. Lee Chang looks at the commander, and he nods. The moment the two of them descend from their horses, Commander Min’s men immediately form a circle around them, guarding them from attack behind.

“I must speak to the queen, and the ministers,” Lee Chang says clearly. “I have evidence that the queen has been involved in a plot against the nation, and against the throne.” He pauses, and when there is no response from the guards – other than to cross their swords in front of the gate – he sighs.

“Do you not have relatives in the south?” he asks, softer this time, watching their faces. “Have you not heard of the terrible plague that is ravaging settlements, towns, cities? The plague that is turning your friends and family into monsters?”

He sees that they have faltered in their fierceness at his words, and he presses his advantage.

“The queen is the cause of the plague,” he says lowly. “She has unleashed the disease in the south so she may take command of the throne. Will you rest well knowing that such a woman will have control of the land? I do not wish to hurt you,” he adds, seeing one of the guards’ hands lower infinitesimally, “but I am willing to, if you will not let me pass.”

There is a single, loaded pause. The guards exchange wary glances and shift uneasily on their feet - then slowly, unwillingly, they lower their swords, and step aside with short bows. Lee Chang nods his thanks to the both of them, and pushes the door open.

They find the front courtyard relatively deserted, with most of the guards having been out on morning patrol in the city, or guarding the gate. Lee Chang turns to Yeong-shin, who has been a quiet but steady shadow at his side.

“You know what to do,” he says quietly, and Yeong-shin nods.

A month ago you said the crowds were dangerous, and you refused to leave my side, Lee Chang thinks. A month ago you would not have trusted me to defend myself. No sound comes from his mouth, but he thinks Yeong-shin hears the words he does not say, for there is a minute softening of the lines around his eyes as he looks at Lee Chang.

Be careful, Lee Chang says in his mind, and Yeong-shin nods again, sharp and short. He turns on his heel and hurries in the opposite direction.

They make a quick stop at the royal stables to hand their horses over to the gawking stable boys, and there is no other time to lose. It is the time when an assembly will have been called, Lee Chang knows, to introduce the new prince to the ministers, and for the ministers to have their audience with the queen. It is the perfect opportunity to reveal the truth to all of them, and see what the queen has left to say in her defence.

The doors to the audience chamber make a mighty satisfying boom as he throws them open, and strides into the chamber with Commander Min and his men at his back. He ignores the shocked gasps and murmurings of the ministers, gathered in rows by the side of the main walkway. His eyes are fixed solely on the figure seated on the throne, a squirming bundle in her arms, and a look of fury on her beautiful face.

“What is the meaning of this?” roars one of the officials, standing at the head of the rows of ministers. His voice is familiar – he is one of the men who had constantly curried favour and licked the heels of the Haewon Cho clan; a weasel of a man who had taken every opportunity to undermine whatever little authority Lee Chang had had under his father’s rule. And now he seems to have become the self-appointed leader of the remnants of Cho Hak-ju’s former allies.

“Guards! Seize this murderer!” squeals another of the ministers, also a former associate of Cho Hak-ju’s. “He is a traitor to the throne! Guards!” He looks around and wrings his hand ineffectively as it appears that everyone is ignoring his orders, too intent on the spectacle playing out in front of them.

Lee Chang comes to a stop in front of the throne, and he does not bow. Instead, he lifts his chin high, and looks down his nose at her. He knows she has always hated this look of his, and he savours the way it makes her face harden, flint-like, in its abject rage.

“That baby is not yours,” he says quietly, but his voice echoes, full and rich, throughout the chamber. “And neither is that throne.”

“You!” she spits, then visibly reigns back her anger. She clutches the baby tighter to her chest, as if it will somehow protect her from his words. “How dare you speak to your mother the queen in such a manner?”

“You are not my mother,” he answers calmly. Then he turns and faces the assembled ministers.

“I bring to you news of a conspiracy that has been planned and executed by the Haewon Cho clan, to claim control over the throne,” he says, and immediately the assembled officials break into a renewed multitude of whispers and confused murmurs. He merely waits for them to quiet, for he knows he will regain their attention soon.

When silence once again reigns over the chamber, he continues.

“Four days ago, when I attempted to visit my father in his chambers – where I heard he was resting, and recovering from smallpox – I laid before him the news I had gathered in the south. All of you have heard of the terrible disease ravaging the south, I am sure, and I had found evidence that the seed of this epidemic had been planted by someone.

“I found the man who had been spreading the disease, and he was a man you will know – Physician Lee Seung-hui, a man who aided our army in the war against the Japanese three years ago.” There is a collective intake of breath at the news, but Lee Chang forges on. “I found that he had been forced to spread the disease by someone, but he would not confess who. I brought him back to Hanyang to find the truth from him, but he disappeared from my custody two days ago.

“Two days ago,” Lee Chang repeats, emphasising the words. “Two days ago, I visited my father again, secretly this time, for somehow I had been barred from visiting my own father on his sickbed – by none other than the honourable queen herself. And I found that he had been consumed by the plague – the same plague that is turning both peasants and nobles in the south alike into inhuman creatures that lust after human flesh.”

One of the ministers swoons and falls over in a dead faint.

Very slowly, Lee Chang turns and looks straight at the queen. “Today I have returned from Naesonjae,” he says, and his voice is hard as he watches her eyes widen. “And I - and Commander Min of the Royal Commandery - have found evidence of something far more treasonous – yes, far more treasonous than a plot to systematically introduce a fatal disease into a population of Joseon’s own people!”

The queen utters a scornful laugh, and tosses her head to the side. She paints a pretty picture, dainty and beautiful in her youth and vigour, and tragic in her role as the innocent accused, although Lee Chang knows that she is anything but.

“Do you have evidence?” she asks dismissively. “Do you have proof that these are nothing more than false accusations to detract from your crimes as the slaughterer of my father and my brother? I do not understand,” and now she looks contemptuously at the officials and men at her feet, “why none of you are moving to capture this murderer and traitor to the throne!”

“Oh, but I do have proof,” Lee Chang says softly, and steps aside.

The girl from Naesonjae stumbles forwards, kept firmly in her place by an unyielding hand placed tightly on her forearm by Commander Min. She tells her story with many stops and stumbles and false starts, but it is enough. Lee Chang senses the tide of sentiment in the room begin to turn, previously resolutely against him, and now in his favour.

Somehow the queen manages to keep her composure through the story, and when the girl is finished, she merely sniffs disdainfully, and looks down at the girl with eyes that could burn ice. The poor maid quails and shrinks into herself.

“Lies,” she says icily. But she clutches the prince tighter to herself, and the slip betrays her.

“You need more proof?” Lee Chang says. He can hear Yeong-shin’s footsteps, measured and calm, as he makes his way into the chamber. Lee Chang gestures for him to come forward, without turning to look.

As Yeong-shin moves forward, the ministers gasp in horror and shy away from the centre of the walkway. When Yeong-shin reaches Lee Chang’s side, he sets down his burden, and with a theatrical flourish, whips the bag off the former king’s head.

#upm works #upm #changshin #kingdom #kingdom fanfiction #kingdom netflix #lee chang #yeong shin #beom il #seo bi #mu yeong #lee chang x yeong shin #changshin fanfiction

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whentommymetalfie · 6 years

Text

To live a life -chapter six

A/N: Penultimate chapter people! The mood is: puddle in bucket. I really hope you’ll like it!

Chapter summary: Alfie tries to fix things, and goes out to search for Tommy.

Pairing: Tommy/Alfie

Warnings: Discussions of brain injury, self harm, blood

Chapter also on AO3 but tumblr is Like That, so I’ll reblog this with a link in a little bit.

Alfie paces. Up and down the corridor, through the kitchen, out in the hallway. Stands in the doorway waiting. Restless.

Maybe if Charlie hadn’t been asleep upstairs, he would’ve gone out there immediately to start searching. But knowing that he can’t leave him alone puts him in a state of anxious waiting instead.

One hour. He’ll give it one hour.

It’s been a long time since Tommy stormed off like this, but he always comes back. He just needs some space -Alfie tries to tell himself that. Any second now he’ll come back. Alfie won’t even scold him for getting himself soaked and ice cold, just apologize for everything. Wrap him up in a blanket in front of the fireplace- Tell him how much he loves him and-

A clash of thunder outside makes him flinch involuntarily, eyes snapping to the clock. Not even half an hour has passed since he checked that first time.

A branch slaps against the windowpane as a gust of wind tangles into the leaves. The heavy rainfall hammers against the roof. Absolutely fucking awful weather. And Tommy is out somewhere in the middle that.

Because this isn’t like those other times.

This isn’t London or Birmingham, where the promise of a warm pub to drown one’s sorrows in lies just around the corner. Or a sheltered place to chain smoke cigarette’s is right near-by.

There is nowhere to go. Nothing but endless hills shrouded in rain and darkness…

Suddenly, the front door slams open, and his heart leaps in his chest. Making his way out into the hallway, Alfie already has a fully formed apology on his tongue, so he falters when it’s John standing there, with two unfortunate pheasants hanging from his hand.

“Oh, it’s you,” he says dumbly, stopping on the threshold and feeling his heart sink again.

“What a warm welcome,” John chuckles, wiping his muddy boots on the carpet in a vain attempt to get them clean enough for traversing the floors.

“Well you did just fucking barge in without knocking, didn’t you?”

“I did knock. You just didn’t hear it. And I told you I’d come by with these. Talked about it yesterday…” John gives up on the boots and pulls them off instead. “I’m sort of regretting getting out in this weather, though. Fucking… pouring down now.” The pheasants knock into Alfie’s arm as John holds them out for him to take. “Fucks sake, mate, cheer up, I’ll leave in a bit-“

“No, no it’s just… I thought you were Tommy,” Alfie mutters and accepts the birds, eyes still scanning the rain shrouded landscape outside.

“You let him out in this weather?” A crease appears between John’s eyebrows and Alfie, much to his annoyance, feels his cheeks burn. He turns and walks into the kitchen in an attempt to hide this.

“Wouldn’t exactly put it like that,” he grunts, lugging the birds up onto the counter. “Making it sound like he’s some housecat I’m in charge of. We had a bit of a domestic. Nothing more. Just a little fight.”

“And you just let him storm off?” The accusation is clear in John’s voice now.

“Let him and let him… He usually does whatever the fuck he wants, doesn’t he?” Alfie mutters and tugs at his beard, pacing the kitchen floor again. “For fucks sake, sounding like Arthur, there. You’re usually slightly less… insanely overprotective.”

“Yeah, well, Tommy doesn’t usually have a cracked skull,” John counters, crossing his arms over his chest. “Were you planning on looking for him?”

“I’ve got a son sleeping upstairs so I’m really fucking sorry I haven’t gotten that far yet,” Alfie snaps. Then he runs a hand over his mouth, adding as an afterthought, “He’ll come back. Always does, see. He just needs some time to calm down.” “Yeah, that sounds like bullshit to me.”

Alfie ignores him in favour of staring out the window again. The barrel collecting rainwater by the shed has tipped over, and is now rolling over the lawn. Should’ve put a rock or something at the bottom of that, shouldn’t he? It comes to a halt by the wall bordering the field, where the backyard ends.

“How long has he been gone?”

“Would you fucking ease up with the bloody questions.” Alfie scowls at John over his shoulder, turning to face him and mirroring his standoffish pose, arms folded over his chest. Reluctantly, he glances at the clock. Fuck.

“Little over an hour.” But that’s a fucking lie, innit? Must be closer to two. Maybe more…

The creases on John’s forehead deepens, and his eyes turn dark.

“Yeah, he’s not coming back, then,” he states. “People aren’t out in weather like this for over a fucking hour if they just need some time to calm down. Something must’ve happened.”

They’ve got a vase on the table, full of forget-me-nots. Charlie’s picked them for Tommy. It’s one moment, one impulse away from being thrown across the room. But Alfie settles for just gripping his own arms a little tighter.

“Really?” he spits. “Well I’m glad you’ve got everything so fucking figured out. Maybe you could just go ahead and tell me what to do, eh? Why don’t you just go ahead and tell me all about what my husband is thinking and feeling? Since you’re apparently the fucking expert.”

John clenches his hand into a fist and takes a step closer, but right then a clash of thunder outside makes them both jump. Somehow, it breaks the tension, and Alfie feels his shoulders sag, the anger draining as quickly as it came.

“I need to go look for him.”

“I’ll come with you,” John offers, already moving towards the hallway, but Alfie snags his wrist.

“Someone needs to stay here with Charlie.”

John turns around, looking quite offended, “So I’m on fucking babysitting duty all of a sudden.”

He jumps out of the way before Alfie can smack him over the shoulder.

“Fucks sake, you’ve got three kids. And he’s asleep. Think you can handle it.”

John doesn’t look pleased.

“You got a plan or something? How’re you supposed to find him? Not like in Small Heath where you could just go to the Garrison.”

“I’ll figure something out,” Alfie grunts, leaving the kitchen. Not that he’s got any intention of figuring anything out at all. No, his only plan is to get out of the house. Out of the house, find Tommy- His entire body is crawling with restless energy that finally finds an outlet, and he ignores John calling his name as he pulls on his coat.

The rainfall outside feels more like standing under someone pouring out buckets of icy water, and the wind nearly knocks him back in through the front door as he opens it.

Alfie finds himself standing on the road outside their gates, looking both ways and wondering what the fuck to do now. Where to even fucking start. He settles for the direction leading towards the stables. Warm. Safe.

The walk is a fucking miserable affair in more ways than one. He’s soaked through within minutes, the coat weighing heavily on his shoulders, and he can’t even hear himself think. The wind fucking blows straight through his head, leaving his brain feeling utterly empty. But none of that, none of that actually matters. The guilt is worse. The worry. If he just finds Tommy, nothing else will matter.

Every now and then he calls out for him, struggling to make himself heard through the wind. And the wind is the only one who answers, each time.

It’s worse when he reaches the open fields. The raindrops seem heavier, the wind stronger. Alfie finds himself stopping then, gazing out over the vast landscape. It’s like searching for a needle in a fucking haystack. He should’ve taken the car. Driven straight to the stables and searched through them. Formed a fucking plan. Walking at this pace it’ll take him upwards of an hour just to get there and then what? Of course he should’ve taken the fucking car. But his brain has decided to stop working completely . Because all he can think of is Tommy being out somewhere in this weather, hurt and alone. And how those awful words will be ringing in his head as he stumbles through the darkness. You’re so fucking useless… God, how could he say that?

What if something’s happened? What if those were the very last words he’ll ever-

A sudden wave of nausea comes over him and he has to brace himself against the fence bordering one of the fields. He shakes his head, as if he’ll be able to physical rid himself of the thoughts. They’re no fucking use. He’ll find Tommy. Of course he will.

But this isn’t working. He needs to go back. Fetch the car.

The walk back somehow feels even longer and he’s painfully aware that it must’ve taken him over an hour, this idiotic detour. And every passing minute feels like grains of sand in an hour glass, pouring down, running out-

Alfie throws the door open and begins fumbling through the hallway closet in search of the starting handle, struggling to get his stiff hands to cooperate.

“Now are you gonna listen?” John is standing in the doorway. Alfie only grunts in response. Where is the handle? And why the fuck do they not keep it in a more reasonable place? “For fuck’s sake, call Arthur. Get someone to help you.”

“Just here to get the fucking car.”

Having finally found the handle, Alfie is already on his way out the door again when John grabs his arm.

“Alright that’s enough. You’re clearly not fucking thinking here, so I’ll do it for you,” he says firmly. “Call Arthur. Or I’ll do it the second you walk out that door and he’ll come after you like a rabid dog. Because if something’s actually happened, you’ll regret not doing everything you could to fix it.”

Alfie fixes his gaze of John. It’s a rare moment of complete sincerity. Of course John’s decided to become all mature and logical all of a sudden… And he’s right. Fucking hell he’s right.

“That’s a conversation I look forward to.” Alfie digs his fingers into his eye sockets. “Bloody hell, if anyone’s gonna come up with a way to physically strangle someone through the phone, Arthur would be the one.”

Another clash of thunder seems like a sign from above that putting off this call won’t make anything easier, and he leaves John standing in the hallway and goes to have his head bitten off.

Several signals go through, but when someone picks up, at least it’s Arthur’s gruff voice on the other end, and Alfie isn’t forced to go through the procedure of explaining the whole situation to Linda.

“Yeah?”

Alfie clears his throat.

“Sorry to bother you with, yeah, whatever task you’re up to at this hour.” The sudden nervousness makes him ramble. “It’s just- yeah, me and Tommy, right? We had a bit of… bit of a domestic. And he’s been out for an alarmingly long walk. Considering he can’t really walk that far yet- and the weather-“

“What did you do?” Arthur asks bluntly and Alfie scratches the back of his neck.

“Fucks sake, mate, don’t you and Linda ever have disagreements? It was-“ Nothing. He’s about to say nothing. But he can’t bring himself to lie, and he heaves a sigh. “Alright, I said some pretty shitty things. And he- fuck, could you just come along and help me look for him?”

For quite a while, there’s silence on the line.

Alfie is just about to ask if Arthur has gone mute when a reply comes.

“He’s here.”

He’s here.Tommy is-

And just like that, Alfie can breathe again. He sinks down onto the chair next to the phone, the relief washing all the strength from his muscles.

Thank God.

“He’s there?” he croaks out, his voice blocked by an unexpected lump in his throat.

“Found him wandering along the road on my way home from the shop,” Arthur mutters. “All… lost and confused. He’s sleeping on the sofa right now.”

Closing his eyes, Alfie fills his lungs over and over again, the relieved laugh impossible to hold back. He doesn’t even think to ask why the fuck Arthur didn’t call him… Because Tommy is okay, he’s safe, and soon, Alfie will have him back in his arms and everything will be alright…

“I’ll come and get him.” The silence following the statement makes him antsy. “Arthur, you fucking died or something over there?”

“I think he should stay here for now.”

Alfie has already stood up.

“I’m coming to get him,” he says. “I’ll be there in fifteen. Twenty. Something like that, just need to get the car going.”

“Solomons I fucking swear-“

Alfie hangs up.

“He’s with Arthur,” he tells John, who’s stood in the doorway to the kitchen, clearly listening in on the call. “Could you stay here? Just while I go and pick him up?” It’s one of those orders formulated as a question, and Alfie is already on his way to the hallway, barely listening to John’s muttered answer. Though he quickly changes his course to the bedroom instead, just to get out of the soaked clothes. Because all he can think of is wanting to give Tommy a warm, dry hug when he gets there.

“I’ll be breaking into your liquor cabinet. And eating your food.” John tells him as he passes the kitchen again. Alfie allows himself a dry chuckle. “Wouldn’t expect anything less.”

He’s outside Arthur and Linda’s home in less than fifteen minutes from the moment he hung up the phone. The drive on the muddy road isn’t an easy one, and he shudders again at the mere thought of Tommy being anywhere near these roads.

The door opens, and he just gets a glimpse of Arthur’s frowning face before being delivered a hard punch square in the shoulder, which causes him to stumble backwards.

“Alright, fucking hell, calm down,” Alfie grunts, barely keeping himself from falling down the steps. Arthur refrains from throwing another punch, but is firmly planted on the threshold, blocking the doorway. Alfie regains his bearings and raises both eyebrows. “You gonna let me come inside?”

“I don’t think so,” Arthur grits out. “I told you over the fucking phone. Think it’d be better for him to stay here.”

Alfie squares his jaw and bores eyes into Arthur’s

“I don’t want to get violent here, but I will if that‘s what it takes…”

They stare each other down in a moment that reminds Alfie of those first few years, when they had everything from mild dislike to outright hostility between them.

Finally, Arthur backs down, allowing him to step inside.

“Boots off. Linda will be pissed.”

“Where’s Tommy?”

“Told you on the phone, he’s asleep,” Arthur grunts over his shoulder, leading the way through the house. He pauses outside the dimly lit living room and nods towards the sofa. A small figure covered with several blankets is huddled up in the corner, and all that’s visible is a mop of dark curls. It makes Alfie’s heart swell with relief none the less.

“Is he okay?” he whispers.

Arthur’s face is still set in stone, and it takes a moment before he answers.

“Yeah, yeah, sure, he’s alright. Not hurt, if that’s what you mean. Not badly at least. His feet are a bit worse for wear.” Alfie opens his mouth, but Arthur beats him to it. “He wasn’t wearing any fucking shoes. And it looks like he’s been crawling through a fucking bush. His arms are all scratched up.” The accusation is clear in his voice, but it softens as he adds: “But he was mostly just cold. Tired. Really fucking confused.”

Alfie nods. Furrows his brow

“Said you found him on the side of the road? Which road? Why-”

Arthur -the fucking bastard- has the gall to grab him by the arm and drag him away to the kitchen.

“Sit.”

Alfie crosses his arms over his chest, but when Arthur pulls out a chair and knits his eyebrows together in a stern look, he gives up. Can’t be fucking bothered. So he finds himself seated by the kitchen table with a glass of whiskey while Arthur observes him darkly, pouring himself a glass too.

“Did he tell you what happened?” Alfie asks finally. Shrugging, Arthur leans back in his chair and juts his chin out.

“So, there’s something to tell, is there?”

Fucking hell, it’s been a too long day for this bullshit.

Alfie rubs his temples. “We just had a fucking fight. Don’t you and Linda have those?”

“Sure. But they don’t usually end with one of us storming off to wander aimlessly down a road in pouring rain.”

A jab of pain shoots through Alfie’s skull and he stands up. Fuck it.

“This is fucking ridiculous. I’m taking him home now.”

The chair scrapes against the floor as Arthur stands up, hands slamming down onto the tabletop.

“Solomons, you take one step towards that room and I swear I’ll fucking shoot you in the face,” he snaps, eyes oddly wide now. Wide, bordering on maniacal. The look of someone who’s just found his little brother in the middle of a storm, lost and alone. Had to see to injured feet and scratched arms. And now he’s staring at the man responsible for it.

Slumping back in his seat, Alfie folds his arms over his chest and waits for Arthur to say his piece.

Arthur sits back down with a huff.

“I need to know that he’ll be safe if he comes home with you,” he says, sounding completely and utterly serious. And yeah, that hurts a bit, doesn’t it? Alfie can’t deny it. He sighs, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

“Thought we’d gotten past this point.”

“So did I.”

Alfie looks into those eyes again.

He wonders if Arthur could tell that Tommy had been crying. If he was still crying when he found him…

But something tells him that Arthur would’ve aimed that punch at his face instead, then.

He would’ve deserved it.

There’s a long stretch of silence. The rainfall outside is still just as steady, and the wind howls against the windowpane. Alfie looks out into the darkness again.

Then, Arthur finally speaks up, his voice is softer now. Tired.

“It’s just… I’ve never seen him like that. And he didn’t want me to take him home. You… get how that looks, right?”

Tommy didn’t want to come home. He-

“I might’ve… calmed down a bit,” Arthur goes on. “Over the years. But fuck, mate, It was fucking awful. Had half a mind to drive to your house and- yeah, not shoot you maybe, but at least give you… a very stern talking to.”

Alfie lets out a snort. “Getting soft in old age, are you, Arthur?”

Arthur’s mouth draws into a tight line under the moustache.

“I get that it was a fight,” he says. “And that it’s never just one person’s fault and all that shit. But you should��ve seen him.” He shakes his head. “Was like talking to a scared kid. Barely knew where he was. And it was just dumb fucking luck that I found him. If I hadn’t been working late… ”

For once, Alfie doesn’t know what to say. Arthur sighs, swirling the whiskey in his glass, before downing it all in one gulp. “Fuck it. Go and see if you can wake him up. But be careful. He’s not… all there in the head it seems.”

Alfie empties his own glass in the same fashion, before getting to his feet.

The huddled figure on the sofa hasn’t moved, and he seats himself by Tommy’s feet, reaching out to run a hand over his calf. Tommy stirs uneasily under the blankets, the arm covering his face falling away to reveal a pair of bleary eyes. He blinks, looking around the room as he tries to orient himself. When he sees Alfie, he sits up, pulling his legs out of reach. His own clothes have been replaced by something from Arthur’s closet, and the garment dwarfs him.

For a long moment, they both just sit there: Alfie watching Tommy, Tommy looking down at his hands. The hug that Alfie wanted to pull him into remains as only a thought, because Tommy is shrinking away almost warily from him. Alfie sighs.

“Want to go home, love?”

Tommy glances up at him.

“Do you want me to come home?” There’s no venom behind the words, just heartbreaking insecurity

Alfie reaches out then, but Tommy shies away from the touch and he lets the hand fall.

“Of course.”

Tommy doesn’t say anything, but he swings his legs over the edge of the sofa, and that will have to be enough for now.

Arthur insists that Tommy keep one of the blankets for the ride home, fussing over him all the way to the door, where Alfie is handed a pile of sopping wet clothing.

Tommy stands by his side, quiet and closed off, looking down at his bare feet, and the bandages covering them. He tries to refuse when Arthur wants him to borrow a pair of his wellies, but apparently doesn’t have the energy to put up much of a fight and just steps into the large boots. Alfie can’t help smiling faintly at the sight of Tommy wrapped in a blanket and with too large boots going up to his knees.

Tommy mumbles something about going to the car, and Arthur pats his back awkwardly.

Then it’s just the two of them again. Alfie heaves a sigh. Here goes nothing…

“Thanks. For… All of it.”

Arthur rubs the heel of his hand into his eye socket. “Yeah, yeah. It’s all fine. Just… try to keep him at home. And be patient. Fuck, I know that you are. Never would’ve held up for this long otherwise.” He studies the rainwater dripping from the clothes onto the floor for a moment before adding, “And if you need help, with Charlie or, I don’t know… that big fucking dog. Or the garden- whatever. Just pick up the fucking phone alright?”

There are things Alfie would like to say to Arthur. A lot of them.

But he just nods instead, before going out in the rain.

The ride home is quiet. Tommy pulls the blanket tightly around his shoulder and leans against the car door, eyes fastened on the raindrops trailing down the windowpane. Alfie leaves him be, focusing his attention on the road ahead. Trying to ignore the chafing feeling of having broken something not just in Tommy, but between them.

And he doesn’t know how to fix it.

Still sat on his post in the kitchen when they enter, John looks quite comfortable, feet propped up on a chair and with Cyril’s head resting on his lap. Tommy slinks past him, disappearing towards the staircase. Alfie begins hanging the wet clothes over various chairs.

“He okay?” John wonders, stretching his arms and yawning.

“Sure,” Alfie mutters. “Sure, he’s fine. Just been a long fucking day. Go home to your kids now. I appreciate the help and all that.”

John gets out of the chair, gives Cyril a final pat on the head and disappears out the door, squeezing Alfie’s shoulder just in passing.

Tommy is already in bed when Alfie enters the bedroom. The blanket is in his lap now, being picked at by restless fingers. Alfie seats himself opposite him on the bed.

“I forgot,” Tommy finally whispers, fingers burying themselves deep in the blanket.

Alfie resists the urge to just vomit up the long and intricate apology he’s been repeating in his head the past hours, instead giving Tommy time to find the words.

“That’s- I forgot that you weren’t home. I didn’t mean for it to happen. It’s like parts of my head just stop working.” Tommy picks at the threads in the blanket. Swallows. “I’m sorry.”

“No, no sweetheart, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled at you,” Alfie says and takes the hand to stop Tommy from creating a hole in the fabric with his fidgeting. “And fuck, all those things I said, there’s no excuse for shit like that. I-“

“Stop.” Tommy glances up at him. “You don’t- I know that it’s hard for you. That I’m… fucking hopeless right now.”

God, Alfie hates himself for putting those words in his mouth. But he also knows no apologies will pluck them out of there. The only thing that will is more time. More reassurance. He holds on tightly to his hands.

“Been a while since you stormed off on me like that,” he says instead. Tommy bites the inside of his cheek, a nervous habit he falls into for want of other options. “Want to tell me what happened there?” he coaxes. “Arthur told me you were in a bit of a state when he found you.”

“I couldn’t… I couldn’t remember the way back,” Tommy says quietly. “I didn’t mean to cause all this trouble. I just needed some air and- and then I suddenly couldn’t remember where I was.”

He pulls his hands out of Alfie’s grasp to begin fidgeting with the blanket again.

“If you don’t want to- if you can’t do this anymore, I understand.”

“What do you mean?”

“I understand if you want to leave. If you want me to leave.”

The words hit him like a punch in the gut, and Alfie sits there speechless. Then he reaches out for Tommy, wants to hold him, pull him close and ask for forgiveness- try to fix this. But Tommy stands up and backs away. Creates distance. Puts up walls.

“What if this is it?” he says, voice shaking. “What if I don’t get any better and- and you waste the rest of your life on me?”

“Tommy-“

“You’re right, I’m hopeless-,” Tommy’s nails rake down his wrists. “This this is all hopeless.” The shirt rides up over his arm, showing off a myriad of red marks. His voice has gone so quiet that he seems to be talking to no one but himself, “You’ll see that soon enough. And you’ll stop loving me and- and I’ll have to watch it happen and- I’d rather just, just not be here-“

Tommy stares down at his hands as the nails tear at his forearms. Watches the droplets of blood that pool around one of the deeper scratches. They trail down the pale skin, leaving a crimson path as it disappears underneath the sleeve.

Alfie stands up, grabs Tommy’s wrists, keeping him from further injuring himself. “Now, you listen to me, Thomas Shelby,” he says. “I loved you every single fucking second you laid in that hospital bed. When you didn’t even fucking recognize me. When you couldn’t talk.” He cradles Tommy’s face between his hands, thumbs brushing along the cheekbones. “And I wake up every single fucking morning, and I’m so grateful that you’re still here. That I’ll get to love you every day for the rest of my life. Nothing will ever change that.”

Tommy meets his gaze, eyes wide and full of pain. Voice barely above a whisper when he speaks: “What if it doesn’t get better?”

“Then we’ll… take it from there. Figure something out. We’ll figure all of it out.”

As always when Tommy finally reaches a breaking point, it begins as just a small crack. And then it spreads. Starting around his eyes as he squeezes them shut, continuing to the eyebrows that knit together. Then his face just falls and tears begin seeping down his cheeks as the first sob wracks his frame.

Alfie pulls him close, and Tommy finally allows himself to be held, burying his face in the fabric of his shirt.

They’re long overdue, the tears. And they come like a flood. All the months of pain just pour out in an incoherent stream of sobs and muffled cries.

Seating himself on the bed with Tommy on his lap, Alfie wipes away the tears, mutters soothing nonsense. Holds him close. All those things he’s learned over the years. Things that usually help.

He kisses his forehead, keeping his lips there as he whispers: “I can’t promise that… you’ll be able to read again. That your memory won’t be patchy anymore. Fuck, I wish I could. But I can promise that no matter what, it’ll be okay.”

Tommy shakes his head again, the sobs drowning out any words he might’ve wanted to say. Right then, there’s so much utter hopelessness in his eyes that Alfie can’t fucking bear it. He strokes his hair, fingers gently tracing the long scar alongside his skull. His hands may be good for many things, but they can’t do anything to fix whatever has broken inside Tommy’s head.

So he just holds him.

Until the door creaks open.

“Why is papa crying?” a quiet little voice comes from the doorway. Charlie is standing there with Horse clasped in his arms.

“It’s okay Charlie, go back to bed.” Tommy quickly wipes the tears away with the back of his hand as he slips down from Alfie’s lap. But his shoulders still shake as he tries to choke back the sobs. Charlie frowns and rubs his eyes.

“Not if you’re sad.”

Tommy opens his mouth, desperately searching for something to say, but then seems to deflate completely, sagging against Alfie’s side and burying his face in his chest again. Alfie rubs his shoulders soothingly. He considers his options for a moment before reaching out for Charlie.

“Come here, love.”

Charlie toddles over to them, crawling up onto his lap with some help.

“Is papa’s head making him sad?” Charlie pets Tommy gently, the tiny fingers combing through his hair.

Tommy looks up again, wipes more tears away as he tries to give Charlie a reassuring smile, “A little. But it’s okay. Nothing to worry about.”

“I kiss it better.” Charlie leans forward and presses a kiss onto Tommy’s forehead with a loud smack for extra effect. “Is it better now?”

Tommy lets out a soft laugh. And something glints in his eyes. Something that breaks through the hopelessness. “Yeah, it’s a little better.”

“I’ll kiss it lots,” Charlie promises. “And it’ll get better really quick.”

Tommy cradles the back of his head and returns the favour. Charlie in turn wraps his arms around his neck and hugs him tightly, giggling as Alfie lifts them both up onto his lap. And when he hugs them tightly and Tommy buries his face in the crook of his neck, he actually believes his own words, at least for a moment.

It’ll be okay.

They’ll figure it out.

...

“Daddy!”

Alfie awakes from the sensation of someone very small climbing on top of him, and opens his eyes to find himself staring up at Charlie, who’s very comfortably seated himself on his stomach with Horse in his arms.

“Morning, love.” Alfie glances around the room, blearily trying to get his eyes to focus. “Awake already, are you?”

“Yes! Me and papa are a lot awake,” Charlie tells him and nods. Alfie has indeed noticed that Tommy is missing from his spot next to him, and he wonders if he’s already shut himself in the drawing room again-

But he doesn’t have to wonder for long, because Tommy comes into the bedroom, still wearing that old flannel shirt he always sleeps in. With the addition of Alfie’s sweater, which is bunched up around his wrists to allow him to hold the tray. Yeah, despite the dark circles under his eyes, and the red lines marring his hands, it makes for quite a sight…

“Charlie, thought we’d agreed to let daddy wake up on his own,” Tommy chides gently, setting the tray down on the nightstand before seating himself on the bed and lifting Charlie from Alfie’s stomach and into his own lap.

“It’s awake time now!” Charlie exclaims. Tommy pulls the sweater sleeves down over his hands, leaning down to press a kiss onto the top of his head. “We made food!” Charlie points to the tray, on which Alfie now discovers a bread basket and a jar of marmalade together with the teacups and pot.

“You’ve been baking, have you love?”

“Cones,” Charlie confirms, nodding proudly, adding after a moment of hesitation. “Papa helped too.”

“Just a tiny bit,” Tommy says, smiling down at Charlie and stroking his cheek. “You did all the important stuff.”

Forgoing a dumb joke about whether the kitchen is still standing or not, Alfie finds himself with a lump in his throat and suspiciously blurry eyes. Tommy’s gaze is soft when it meet his.

“So, after nearly ten years, some of my good sides are finally beginning to rub off on you, love? What have I done to deserve this sort of treatment, eh?”

“You haven’t tasted them yet,” Tommy whispers in his ear as he leans over to grab the basket, quietly so Charlie won’t hear. “Might regret that reaction:”

They could be burnt and taste like sand for all Alfie cares. But they don’t. The taste is not entirely unrelated to the situation, sitting in bed with Tommy next to him, patiently helping Charlie eat his scone without making too much of a mess. And Cyril snoozing peacefully at their feet.

“So, what’s on the agenda for today then?” Alfie wonders when breakfast is over and done with, and Charlie has crawled over to the foot of the bed to pay Cyril some attention. Most likely to feed him a scone, too. “Must be something I can do to repay being spoiled like this?” He quirks an eyebrow at Tommy, which is gains him two raised ones in return.

“Well, Charlie and I figured since we’re all a bit tired,” Tommy yawns, curling up against his side. “And there wasn’t much sleep last night, we’d just stay in bed today.” He reaches for the storybook on the tray, before settling his head comfortably on Alfie’s shoulder. “And first we’d like you to read to us.”

“Read all day!” Charlie squeals with delight and dives in under the covers at the foot of the bed. Alfie watches fondly as the small figure travels upwards until it eventually emerges by the pillows. He runs a hand through the mop of hazel curls on his head.

Charlie makes himself comfortable between them and looks up at Alfie. Sinking a little deeper into the pillows, Tommy gives him a similarly expectant look. Alfie adjusts the glasses to the bridge of his nose.

“What story should we read then?”

“Little white horse!” Charlie decides and starts flipping the pages to find the story. Alfie helps him before one of them meet with a very wrinkled fate.

“We read that just yesterday, didn’t we?” Alfie of course flips to the right page never the less.

“It’s the goodest one,” Charlie says. “Papa also thinks so. Right?”

“It is the goodest one,” Tommy agrees buries his nose in Charlie’s hair, making him giggle.

The sound fills Alfie with warmth all the way from the pit of his stomach to his chest.

“How come this surpasses all the others then?” he wonders. “It’s full of riveting tales this, innit? And still that’s the favourite.”

“It has horses, Alfie.” Tommy glances up at him, and Charlie nods eagerly. Alfie squeezes them both a little tighter against his side.

“Fine then,” he chuckles. “Anything for you, love.”

Right then, the events of the night seem like nothing but a bad dream.

The rainfall outside has lost all the threatening ambience, and now it just feels like a comforting hum as it patters against the windowpane. And the wind has calmed to a soft breeze. Tommy is safe in his arms, his forehead finally free from both pain and worry lines. A few of the scratch marks are visible where his knuckles peak out from under the too long sweater. But he smiles when Charlie takes a fistful of the sweater into his hand, burying his face in the soft fabric. A real, bright smile that washes the weariness from his eyes. Alfie smiles too, presses a light kiss onto his forehead, and then begins to read.

....

A/N: I couldn’t help it! I just had to add some fluff to this one. So despite having a distinct feeling I should cut it, I’ve kept in this self indulgent last bit. I hope it was a bit soothing. And I hope you enjoyed the chapter over all!

#alfie x tommy #Alfie/Tommy #Tommy Shelby #Alfie Solomons #peaky blinders fanfiction #wtma au #Peaky Blinders

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