Chapter Text
Brand is fifteen when he beats up Geoffrey Saint Talbot.
Maybe, he thinks later as he rinses off bloody knuckles over the Tower’s pink marble hand basin, he can count that as one godsdamn good thing to come out of the never-ending succession of horrors that has befallen him and his scion for the last six weeks. One silver fucking lining in the sea of absolute shit that their lives have become.
It happens just a week shy of his sixteenth birthday. Three weeks before Rune’s. They have been living at the Pac Bell for well over a month now, and, for Rune’s sake, Brand is trying very hard to pretend that he doesn’t hate every single inch of the place – but he does. He hates the building itself, in all its gray, impersonal bulk and its weird gothic, concrete Art Deco vibe. He hates the creepy gargoyles on top – who the fuck wants massive stone monsters guarding their windows? – the labyrinthic corridors, and the ten thousand people who seem to be streaming in and out all day and all night long, like the place is a fucking mall. He still hasn’t figured out if the Bell is supposed to be an office building, a hotel or a top-secret government facility.
He also hates the apartment the Tower put them in. It’s too damn big and empty, rooms upon rooms of elegant nothingness, bare walls and sleek, understated designer furniture. He supposes that it was meant to give them space and privacy – Brand is definitely thankful not to have been made to share quarters with anyone belonging to the Dagger Throne, especially not the Tower’s godsdamn pervert of a son – but this tasteful yet soulless flat where they are constantly on their own just serves to remind him of everything he’s lost. Not just the big, important things – his family, his home, his life – but all the little stuff he never thought he’d miss as well, the things he never even realized he had before they were gone. His customized hi-fi stereo and CDs. His favorite t-shirts and belt buckles. His old books on the shelf, mostly gifts from Luce and Geri. The Trainspotting poster on his bedroom wall. The collection of lucky rocks he pretended he’d picked for his natural sciences classes. The awful orange curtains they never got around to changing. The small, old-fashioned combo TV unit covered in random stickers. The wooden desk in which Rune had carved their names inside a little sun and where he'd drawn a misshapen penguin in permanent marker. All the tiny, unimportant, inconsequential, beloved details that made the world around him his.
He can’t complain about any of that, obviously, because that would be fucking childish, not to mention ungrateful, and even if Brand doesn’t much like the Tower, he knows that he is being pretty damn generous with them. He just doesn’t know why, since the man isn’t exactly the warm and caring type, and every other person they know who doesn’t currently lie dead in the ground seems to have gone mysteriously AWOL. That sets him on edge – which he hates as well.
But more than anything else, Brand hates the bathroom. It’s not that it’s not a nice bathroom – it is, like everything else in this godsdamn place. Everything is made of solid, pale pink marble, except the green and gold walls. The weird color association should really be tacky but it’s not – it’s retro-chic. The island bathtub is gigantic, almost like a little pool. No, the bathroom itself is fine, it’s just… Well, he has grown a little suspicious of the amount of time Rune has been spending in there.
At first, when Rune started with the baths, Brand was relieved. During those first few days at the hospital and just after they moved in, he pretended not to notice how skittish the other boy was being about taking his clothes off, even when it was just the two of them – even when Rune was alone and he preferred to sit in the shower with his nightgown. Brand thought of him in his dumb golden speedo just a few months ago, practically naked in front of twenty people and not even blinking – that was weird, right?
It’s not weird you stupid asshole, he chided himself. What the fuck did you expect?
What did Brand expect? He honestly can’t say. He was not exactly handed a godsdamn manual about how to handle – this.
You can’t even say it in your head, you coward. How the hell can you hope to help if you can’t even think the word?
Rape – he doesn’t know how to handle Rune’s rape, or the other things they put him through on That Night and that made him look like roadkill when Brand finally came to. The things that almost made him bleed through the scratchy gray blanket he was wrapped in as Brand ran barefoot through the streets, trying to get him to safety. He doesn’t really know how to handle the rest of it, either – all those deaths, those staggering losses, the abandonment, the constant, looming threat, the fact that they now depend on a virtual stranger for every fucking thing, the complete and utter feeling of estrangement from it all – but there is a part of him that still finds all of that easier to assimilate and to face. He can relate to this disorientation, to this pain, because he feels them as well. He is almost confident that he can be Rune’s rock, his defender, his family, his everything, until such time that they have managed to rebuild themselves.
But what happened to Rune in the carriage house, the things it did to him then and what it does to him still, the way it has changed how everyone looks at and talks to him… Brand cannot shoulder this burden for or even with him. He can only sit by and try to guess where the deepest wounds are. He can only be very, very careful where he lets himself touch his scion’s body and, more importantly, his heart.
So, yeah, when Rune decided he wanted to take baths, Brand thought it was a step in the right direction, the sign that he could at least stand the sight of his own body. He was always vaguely aware of the metaphorical significance of the ritual, the… purification and whatnot. That made sense to him, in a dark but ultimately harmless sort of way. But then, Rune started spending an awful lot of time in the bathroom. He started bathing every day, sometimes for hours, and came out red and smooth as a lobster, as though he’d tried to scrub off something particularly nasty. As though he hoped that if he stayed underwater long enough, he would eventually just – dissolve.
After four weeks of this little routine, Rune doesn’t even smell like himself anymore. He no longer smells like anything at all.
Then, there are the fucking pills in the cabinet above the sink. As far as Brand can tell – and since he counts them every other day, he can tell pretty fucking far – Rune has shown no interest in taking them. He had a couple of meetings with a Dagger Throne physician who prescribed him painkillers and antidepressants, but he balked at the suggestion that he should see a shrink.
“I’m not crazy,” he muttered, crossing his arms over his chest. “And talking about what happened is not going to help. I don’t want to think about it, okay? I don’t want to think about any of it, ever again.”
Brand tried to push a little at first, to tell him that shrinks weren’t just for crazy people, but also for hurt people, but then, the doctor said that he should go probably go to therapy as well, so he stopped trusting her altogether. He’s not fucking crazy.
And so, here he is now, on week six after the end of the world, trying to pretend that the universe hasn’t completely gone to shit. Trying to pretend that he doesn’t hate the Pac Bell and the foreign silence of the flat, and the bathroom, and the pills, and the nightmares and sleepwalking, and the way Rune looks out the window for hours, as if he still expected a friendly face to finally show up, fourteen floors below.
He tries to find comfort in the little things, still, to hang on to the unexpected moments that seem to bring Rune some measure of joy or peace (that’s why he can’t really tell him to stop taking those damn baths, can he?) Three weeks ago, Eve Saint Nicholas briefly visited them. Brand was pretty surprised – he likes Eve, but she is his teacher, not his friend. He wonders now if there is some kind of Companion solidarity at work here. He wonders if Mayan asked her to check on them, so that he wouldn’t have to. In any case, Eve brought oranges that the Crusader Throne apparently imports from this little Turkish orchard, and they were so amazing that Rune ate two of them in a single sitting – not exactly an incredible feat for a teenage boy, but he has been so difficult with food, these days, that Brand nearly shed tears of joy and thankfulness.
“I could get you more,” Eve told Brand. “But they are hard to come by – apparently they only have a dozen trees of this variety.”
“Couldn’t you sow the seeds and grow your own trees?” he asked curiously.
“I hear they are really hard to grow and would die outside of their natural habitat,” Eve answered with a shrug. “But maybe that’s a myth.” She smiled and it was nice to behold. Mayan isn’t really the smiling kind. “Maybe you guys could try harvesting a couple of seeds and planting them?”
“Yeah,” Brand said slowly. “Maybe we could.”
Maybe we could, he thinks now, looking at the little sprouts lying at the bottom of his cotton-filled Tupperware. Just after Eve’s departure, he looked up how to germinate orange seeds on the study’s computer. It looked easy enough – all it required was wet cotton, a little darkness and some patience. And now, less than three weeks later, he has three thin, green stems with incredibly tiny leaves sprouting out of their little beige shells. Now, he and Rune can plant them and, if it all goes according to plan, they’ll eventually have a tree and will always be able to enjoy the oranges that Rune likes. Then – he will never starve himself again. Right?
Right. Of course, it would be a more viable plan if fucking orange trees didn’t take at least seven years to reach maturity. Regardless, Brand will work with what he has. A project is a good thing to have to weather difficult times, and taking care of something or someone else is sometimes easier than taking care of yourself (Macha told him that and he supposes it makes sense.) Brand can’t really get them a pet, although he’d like to have a cat, because last time Rune had a goldfish, it didn’t end well. A houseplant might be a good start, though.
When he enters their bedroom – technically, it’s Rune’s, but they have been sharing it since they moved in, in case the nightmares grow too big and too bad – Rune is sitting by the window, looking out. That’s pretty much all he does when he’s not locked up in the bathroom or asleep in their bed. Brand doesn’t sigh. Instead, he says, trying to sound enthusiastic, “Hey, do you want to see something cool?”
“Hm?” The other boy mutters, not looking back at him.
He is huddled on the large windowsill, wearing a long-sleeved black shirt and jeans, even though it must be thirty degrees outside. He hasn’t had a trim in months either, so his normally wavy hair has begun to curl wildly around his slightly emaciated face. Sometimes, Brand thinks that it’s a little like living with a feral child from the nineteenth century, some aloof, barely articulate creature teetering on the edge of humanity.
“You know the Turkish oranges that Eve brought us a couple of weeks ago?” Brand continues, trying not to be disheartened by his scion’s unresponsiveness. “The ones you really liked?”
Rune finally turns to him. He blinks large, bleary eyes at his Companion, as though the question was excruciatingly difficult. “Yeah?” He says slowly, uncertainly.
“I took some seeds out and germinated them in wet cotton,” Brand tells him, more eagerly than he meant to. He doesn’t want to make it weird. “They produced those tiny sprouts. It’s kind of cute. We could plant them now, if you want, see if they become actual orange trees?”
There. That’s not a strange proposal – Rune used to like picking flowers and spending time in the conservatory. There’s no reason why he would not like having a houseplant. Rune sighs, though, as if the prospect was exhausting. “I’m really tired,” he answers, turning away. “Maybe tomorrow.”
He hasn’t even glanced at Brand’s Tupperware.
That’s okay, he reasons, trying to quench his disappointment. Trying not to let anger, or despair or exhaustion bleed into their bond. Tomorrow is fine as well. You shouldn’t rush him.
“Right,” he says, stepping out of the room and into the kitchen to put the box back onto the countertop. “I think I’m going to go to the gym, then. I haven’t had time to train today. Will you…” he hesitates, wandering back to the bedroom. Will you what? Will you still be awake when I get back? Will you sit all night here, looking at nothing at all? He swallows. “Will you be alright?”
An expected, somewhat reassuring spike of irritation, followed by a more worrisome surge of uncertainty. Sometimes, Brand wishes they didn’t have such a clear path into each other’s heart. It would make it easier not to hover all the time, not to be so overbearing. He could just take Rune at face value, trust that he knows what he wants and needs, like a godsdamn adult. They are not adults, though, are they? They are just children forced to play the part, and they have no idea what the hell they’re doing.
“Sure,” Rune replies, offering a weak smile. An apology of sorts. “I’ll go take a bath.”
For fuck’s sake, Brand thinks, staring at the ceiling.
But Rune does feel tired and not particularly despondent – well, no more than usual – so Brand imagines that he can let it go. “Okay. I’ll be back by 10:30.”
Rune nods vaguely as he retreats. Brand isn’t even sure he heard him.
Space, he reminds himself. Give him space, but never be out of reach if he needs you.
And Rune does need him, especially at night. Especially when the nightmares come. Brand sighs as he gathers his sportswear and leaves their apartment. The underground gym in the Pac Bell is gigantic. It has a dojo, literally hundreds of machines, a weight room and a fucking Olympic pool, complete with a hammam. Brand supposes that Mayan’s teams must be made to train there daily, but after sundown there are just a handful of people down here. Maybe that’s why he likes it – it’s peaceful.
Maybe it’s just like the bathroom for Rune, he thinks as he changes into his trunks. A place of comfort.
There is only one other person in the pool when he comes in – a brown-haired girl in a dark blue swimsuit. It takes him a few seconds to recognize her with her hair braided and her goggles.
Amelia. The Tower’s daughter.
He briefly considers leaving; neither of them is very good at small talk and this could be awkward. After a few moments of hesitation, though, he decides to go through with it. She’s nice enough, unlike her brother, and she probably won’t want to talk any more than he does.
“Hey,” he greets gruffly as he descends into the water.
Amelia lifts her goggles and graces him with a wary look. “Hey,” she replies in a similar tone.
She doesn’t much look like her father. Her face is plain and severe, devoid of the noble Mediterranean elegance that characterizes the Tower and his son. He wonders if she looks like her mother instead, and what happened to the woman. She doesn’t live here, in any case. Amelia is a little odd, although extremely clever, apparently, or so says Rune who was a couple grades below her at Magnus, but weirdly blunt, unpolished. She’s a loner, too, he doesn’t think he has ever seen her hanging out with anyone. Her unforthcomingness is actually one the things Brand likes best about her. He almost feels like the chatty one in her presence.
“I didn’t know you liked to swim,” he tells her.
“Why would you know about it?” she asks, frowning. “You never asked, and you never saw me here before.”
Brand blinks. So much for his attempts at small talk. “Huh. Yeah. I guess I wouldn’t.” He tries on an awkward smile. “Sorry, I guess I was just looking for an ice-breaker.”
“Oh,” she says, blinking back. “Phatic communication. I get it.”
If you say so, Brand thinks, putting his own goggles on.
“Right. I’ll get to it, then.”
They swim in companionable silence for a good fifteen minutes before Brand takes a break. Amelia is still going, and he watches her, impressed by her stamina.
“You’re a pretty damn good swimmer,” he tells her when she finally stops as well.
“Thanks,” she replies, sounding a bit taken aback, but not in a bad way. “I swim every night.” She glances at him solemnly. “Now, you know.”
He snorts. “Yeah, now I know.” He scratches the back of his head. “Is it to avoid other people?”
“Yes,” she says immediately.
“I see. Sorry I intruded.”
She shrugs. “That’s okay. I don’t mind you. Most people are a lot more tiring to deal with.”
“I’ll be sure to tell Rune. He thinks I’m exhausting.”
Amelia shakes her head. “I hope he doesn’t have to deal with Dalton anymore, then. He is exhausting.”
“Yeah, he fucking is,” Brand mutters. Then, realizing he may be overstepping, he adds, “shit, sorry. I know he’s your brother.”
Amelia shrugs as she hoists herself out of the pool. “You don’t choose your family.”
“I guess not,” he answers, and the old, grainy images of two foreign yet familiar faces dance before his eyes for a split second.
“I know you never knew your parents,” she says suddenly, with her characteristic brusqueness. “But it’s not all that great, believe me. And neither are siblings.” She grabs her towel on the bench. “I’m sorry that Dalton was such and asshole to you and Rune. It’s nothing you did. He’s always like that.” She ties the towel around her bust. “And I’m sorry about my father. Like, in general.”
Brand grins a little. “Where’s your mother?” He asks on impulse. Although he knows it’s prying, he’s taking a leaf from her book and just speaking his mind.
“Gone,” she replies dully. “Years ago. She basically ran away one day. She couldn’t take it, I think.”
“The Tower?” Brand says, a little subdued. He guesses being married to that guy would make anyone want to bolt. No wonder he doesn’t have any spouse left.
“And Dalton.” She pauses. “And me.” She gives him a tight little smile. “Each of us defective in our own way. That’s a lot to live with.”
You’re not defective, he wants to say, but just as he opens his mouth, a sharp pain pierces through his stomach. For an instant, he thinks it might be some sort of cramp, but it’s not – the pain is not his at all. Rune.
“Are you okay?” Amelia asks, frowning. “You look kind of pale. Paler than usual, I mean.”
“I – I gotta go,” he stammers. “I gotta check on Rune.”
He jumps out of the pool and runs for the changing rooms without turning back. The sharp pang of pain he’s just felt doesn’t seem to be physical. It doesn’t feel like Rune is injured or in danger – it’s not them, come back to take him when Brand was looking away – but rather like he’s experiencing acute emotional distress.
Shit, Brand thinks frantically, throwing on his clothes although he’s still dripping wet. I should not have left him alone. I could tell he wasn’t doing well, tonight.
How long has Rune been alone in his room? Forty, maybe forty-five minutes? What is the worst that could happen in forty-five fucking minutes?
Anything. Anything could have happened. Maybe Dalton stopped by, the fucker. Maybe he fell asleep and had a nightmare. Maybe he just –
Brand makes it back upstairs in under four minutes but when he bursts in, he is welcome by a quiet, empty flat. “Rune?” he calls out, trying not to sound too panicked. “Are you there?”
No answer comes. He turns on all the lights and runs from room to room – why the fuck do they have so many stupid rooms? – encountering nothing and no one. Even the bathroom is open and vacant, the tub dry. The place is undisturbed. No signs of forced entry, struggle, or any other potentially suspicious thing. Nothing, except that Rune is not here.
Fuck, Brand thinks. In his haste, he hasn’t even thought to check. Rune has not stepped foot outside for weeks and it didn’t even cross his mind that he might have simply… gone out. Heart pounding in his chest, he takes a deep breath and grabs the net between them, sending the tendrils of his consciousness along its wires. Immediately, he gets a response – Rune is not in their apartment. He is not even in the Pac Bell. He’s keeping his side of the bond tightly shut, making it difficult for Brand to pinpoint his exact location, but he is not very far, less than a mile away. The good news is that if Rune is in full control of their bond, it means that he is not hurt or in immediate danger. He is trying to keep Brand at bay.
You son of a bitch, Brand fulminates and, suddenly, he is brought back to a different night, not so long ago – just a few short months back, really, although it feels like a different life altogether. The night Rune sneaked out of his room to meet up with Geoffrey in that seedy motel so that they could have sex in peace. Brand stood in his empty room then, too, seething and helpless, unable to decide if he wanted to hug or throttle him when he came back.
Is that where you are now? He wonders as he looks out at the fireworks exploding outside. Tonight is the mid-summer festival, the beginning of harvest season. Did you go out to find him?
It’s not the same as it was three months ago, though. Back then, it had been a stupid, selfish little escapade. Now, it’s a reckless, incredibly dangerous and potentially disastrous idea. Rune is vulnerable out there – he has enemies lurking in the shadows and no one left to protect him, except for the Tower and, clearly, he is not micromanaging his ward’s every move. That’s supposed to be Brand’s job.
Calm down, he berates himself. Calm down. Just – start with searching the park. Maybe he just needed a little fresh air.
There’s a large park on one side the Bell with a small woodsy area, and a piazza on the other. If Rune got out this way, it means he is in the streets of New Atlantis, now, alone in the Financial District, and while it’s not the most dangerous area of the city, anything could have happened out there. If he’s in the park, though…
He is not in the park. Brand walks the paths briskly, peering into the shadows, examining the bushes, but he already knows it’s a fool’s errand. All he sees in the dusky light are fireflies swarming around short trees, bats stirring on lampposts, and a couple of Mayan’s men patrolling the grounds. He recognizes one of them.
“Hi, er, Vince, right?” He calls out to one of them.
Vince looks scary, tall and broad with a bald head and a nasty scar, but he is actually quite nice. He has a gentle voice and kind eyes. “Yes,” he replies. “Good evening, Brandon. Was there anything you needed?”
“You haven’t seen Rune, have you?” he asks.
“No,” the man replies. “Would you like me to call it in?”
“Call it in?” Brand repeats. He doesn’t know what that means and he’s not sure he wants everyone to know he’s lost his godsdamn scion. He doesn’t want Mayan to know. He must already think Brand is a fucking loser, a poor excuse for a Companion, he really doesn’t want to give him any additional reason to be disappointed in him.
Why do you even care what he thinks of you? He tells himself. He’s not your family.
But Brand does. Mayan is his teacher and, while they rarely see eye to eye, he has done more for Rune and him than anyone else in the world these past couple of months.
“Just a second.” Vince takes out his walkie and turns it on. “Murray? It’s Vince, do you copy?”
Immediately, a distant voice sputters out of the small machine. “I copy. Anything you need? Over.”
“Do you have eyes on Lord Saint John?” Vince asks casually. “Over.”
“What do you mean ‘eyes’?” Brand mutters, frowning.
“Which one? Over.”
“The little one, over.”
The little one? Brand thinks with an unexpected spark of glee. He can’t fucking wait to tell Rune that. You have to find him first.
“Yes,” the voice crackles again. “He went out at 9:02 and walked down to the Bowers. Stayed for about four minutes. Ran back. He passed the front door three minutes ago.”
“He’s back in the Bell?” Brand says loudly. Jut as he speaks the words, he knows they are true. Rune is back. He’s upstairs right now. “And – wait, did you have him followed?”
Vince watches him calmly. “Lord Tower has taken you in to protect you, Brandon. He is merely fulfilling his promise to Rune.” He leans forward a little and adds, quietly, “And he has eyes everywhere.”
A shiver courses through Brand. “Okay. Uh, thanks?” Well. At least Rune was never in any real danger, was he?
Vince nods and offers him a benevolent smile. “Anytime.”
Brand runs back into the building and takes the elevator up to the fourteenth floor. He can feel Rune close by, now, and as relief floods his body, his anger boils up. Vince said he’d gone to the Bowers – that can only mean that he was meeting his school friends and perhaps his fucking boyfriend, who like to squat the place after dark. That means that once again, and despite everything that happened, he still sneaked out without leaving so much as a damn Post-it note.
You complete asshole, Brand seethes as he enters. You stupid idiot.
“Rune?” he calls briskly as he walks in.
He has done everything he could to be kind and understanding and patient, although all of these things run contrary to his nature – now is time for a little tough love. He’s going to give his scion a piece of his fucking mind. A soft gasp and thud come from the bathroom. Of fucking course that’s where Rune would be. He walks down the hall and stops in the doorway, arms crossed. Rune is standing over the washbasin, looking pale and wary. He catches his eyes in the mirror.
“Where were you?” Brand snarls, trying to keep his voice low. A few weeks ago, he wouldn’t have bothered with asking. He would have torn right into Rune. Now, he tries to be a little more delicate – it’s not about him being mad because the other boy sneaked out without telling him (it’s not about him being jealous), it’s about Rune’s fucking safety. “I came up twenty minutes ago and you weren’t here,” Brand continues. Rune blinks haggardly at him, as though he didn’t really understand where he was going with this. “You weren’t inside this fucking building at all.” His voice hits an uncomfortably high note. He clenches his fists, trying to contain the fear-anger-hurt. “I went looking for you and you weren’t there.”
He sounds whiny and despondent rather than righteously furious, but, strangely, that seems to get a reaction out of Rune. A surge of horror-guilt-sorrow rushes up Brand’s spine, so dark and powerful that he almost staggers back.
“I… I’m sorry,” Rune says tonelessly, his big, haunted eyes looking back at him with such immense pain that it takes his Companion’s breath away. “I’m so sorry.”
He sounds like he means it, too. Just like that, Brand’s fury abates, giving way to exhaustion and grief of his own. Why can’t I find a way to make you better? Why can’t I fix this? Someone tell me how to fix it.
That’s when he sees the pills. The three small bottles which have been gathering dust in the medicine cabinet are now out on the sink. One of them looks half empty, a few colorful pills scattered on the side. Brand’s blood rushes to his ears like a deafening clap of thunder. He lays a hand on the door frame to steady himself.
“What are you doing?” he asks, although he can’t quite hear the sound of his own voice over the crazed pounding of his heart.
Rune averts his gaze and stares at the tablets for a few long seconds. “It’s…” he stammers. “Hum… I was going to… take one of those. The Xanax. To… try. I knocked it over.”
Brand yanks at their bond, not even trying to pretend that he’s not – are you telling me the truth? Rune’s feedback is frazzled and dark, but it doesn’t feel like he’s lying. It doesn’t feel like he took all these pills, like he was actually about to –
Don’t think it. If you’re thinking it, you’re making it a possibility. You’re putting it out there.
Rune is still looking at him, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, and Brand is suddenly struck by how thin he has become, how fragile he looks, like a baby bird fallen from the nest. Unbidden, his fingers brush against a memory – the ghost of broken bones and thick, sticky blood, the itchiness of an old blanket. A wave of black despair, of absolute exhaustion washes over him – is it his own? Is it Rune’s? Does it matter, at this point? He closes his eyes, willing himself not to cry.
Don’t break now. Don’t break now.
He takes a long, shaky breath before he says, as evenly as he can, “Can we go to bed?” He looks up, and he knows this is no longer a scolding, or even a request. It’s a plea. Don’t break now. “Please, Rune?”
Rune swallows. “Yeah,” he answers softly. “Let’s go to bed.”
And they do. They just – go to bed. They change into their pajamas without exchanging another word and slip into the bed they have taken to sharing. Brand’s legitimate anger has all but evaporated when he wraps his arms around Rune, pressing his face into the nape of his neck. He still feels light and small beneath his hands, almost immaterial.
I can feel you slipping away, he thinks helplessly, holding on to the other boy like a lifebuoy. I can feel you slowly bleeding out, more bits and pieces of your soul melting into the ether with every passing day. Dissolving into your fucking baths. Eroded by every damned look you get, every whisper behind your back. Gone with the wind. What did you leave behind today, when you went to the fucking Bowers? What small part of you that you will never get back?
Surprisingly, Rune falls asleep almost immediately. Brand doesn’t. He lies there, petrified and seething, brushing over his scion’s mind over and over to make sure that he’s simply asleep, that it’s not the pills pulling him down into unconsciousness, monitoring his emotions so closely that it’s like holding onto his heart with both hands. Ruminating his revenge. After an hour or so, he convinces himself that Rune is alright – physically, at least – and he slowly slides out of bed and back into the bathroom. He opens the cabinet and unscrews the lid of each of the three pill bottles, then pours their contents down the toilet and flushes them. He then puts them back on the shelf.
There. One potential threat removed.
He knows this is more symbolic than anything. If Rune wants to – hurt himself, he’ll find another way to do it. But, just maybe, removing that particular temptation will be enough for the time being. Now… Now, he’s got to deal with the next threat. He doesn’t have to ask, because thanks to Mayan’s goons, Brand already knows where Rune has been tonight, and he’s fairly sure he knows who he was with. He can’t tell exactly what caused the sharp jab of pain that he felt earlier, or that devastated look on Rune’s face – but he can venture a fucking guess.
You don’t get to do that to him, he thinks fiercely as he puts his clothes back on. You don’t get to hurt him even more than you already have, you bastard.
He glances at Rune on his way out. The other boy is still sound asleep. Brand will keep a metaphorical eye on him and if he wakes up, he will come running back. He scribbles a note that he tapes on the door, just in case – he is not going to emulate Rune’s carelessness – puts on his shoes and, as quietly as he can, he slips out of their apartment.
It’s only 11:30pm and the Bell is still bustling with people. Brand takes the stairs rather the elevator – maybe that’s how the Tower’s men tracked Rune before. Maybe they will find them no matter what; the place is riddled with video-surveillance equipment and probably tons of spells one will inadvertently trigger when stepping on the wrong tile or something. It doesn’t matter to him, anyway: let them follow him if they want, they’re not going to stop him from doing his job. They’re not going to prevent him from protecting Rune. Brand reaches the entrance hall, crosses it and goes through the revolving doors without looking over his shoulder. Fuck them all.
The Bowers are only twenty minutes away on foot, but he hasn’t walked that far in six weeks, and it suddenly feels like trekking to another country. Just like Rune, Brand has remained inside the relative safety of the Pac Bell, never really venturing farther than the park and the gym since they moved in. Lughnasadh celebrations are still going strong, bonfires, parades and fireworks all around him, thousands of people dancing and cheering in the streets. Brand used to really enjoy the mid-summer festival. Despite the potential danger that such unruly crowds presented, he always felt swept along by the collective enthusiasm. Festivals were full of life and possibility and faith in what was to come. Now, he feels nothing but resentment and wariness as he walks down New World Street, the long lane the leads to the Bowers.
It's just before midnight when he finally makes it there. There’s a spell to get in, but Brand never needed to cheat – he climbs the ancient tree growing on the other side of the wall and jumps into to park. For a moment, he sees nothing at all. Rune’s friends always liked to break in after dark and congregate around beers and joints to talk about their stupid lives and get sloshed, so Brand just assumed that it was the reason why his scion had come here. None of Rune’s friends has visited him at the Pac Bell since That Night. As far as Brand knows, they haven’t called or written either, but he could be wrong. Maybe someone sent word that they were having a party. Maybe Rune didn’t find them; maybe that’s why he felt so awful, just a couple of hours ago.
But as he slowly walks further into the park, Brand sees the remains of freshly extinguished fires and cigarette butts. A few stray cans litter the lawn (of course, no one would even think of picking up after themselves. They have people for that) and thin tendrils of smoke are still rising here and there.
They were here, Brand realizes. They must have left less than an hour ago.
Then Rune definitely saw them. He must have talked to them. What the fuck happened?
Did they ask you to join them here, and you realized you couldn’t take it? Did someone say something bad?
Brand clenches his fists. He understands that it’s not easy for other teens to deal with what happened to them, either. He understands everyone is at a loss when in their presence. Macha has been a little awkward around him too, for the past few weeks. Shit, Mayan has been awkward, which makes him wince just thinking about it. But they are here, at least. They fucking try. Where are all of Rune’s little scion friends? Where is his fucking boyfriend? Brand might have never been fond of Geoffrey, he might never have felt like he was anywhere near good enough, but at least he never seemed cruel or dismissive. He seemed to like Rune.
Perhaps it’s the very thought of the boy that summons him, or perhaps it’s just dumb luck, but just as Brand thinks about Geoffrey Saint Talbot’s stupid face, he appears before him. Brand blinks, almost surprised by the coincidence. Geoffrey is standing less than twenty yards away, at the foot of an old oak tree. He appears to be alone. In the half light, he looks perfectly normal, well dressed and rested, his stupid glasses on his stupid nose, his hair neatly combed, his dress shirt carefully pressed.
Rune’s thin, sallow face, his unkempt mane and hollow eyes flash before Brand’s eyes. Anger suddenly rises from his stomach to his chest, bubbling up his throat to the surface of his mind. What right does fucking Geoffrey have to look so fine? So undisturbed? So like his fucking self?
“Hey!” He says loudly, startling the other boy.
Geoffrey turns to him, gaping. For a second, he looks at Brand blankly, as though he couldn’t for the life of him place that strange guy coming his way. Then, he pales a little. Even in the dim light, Brand can tell.
“Brand?” he says a little uncertainly.
The last time they saw each other was just about two months ago. Brand wonders if it also feels like decades to Geoffrey or if time has just continued to flow normally for the other boy. If seeing Rune tonight was just like coming back from holidays abroad and being reunited with your boyfriend.
“What happened?” Brand asks briskly.
What did you do? He wants to snarl, but he wants to give him the benefit of the doubt. Rune will not like him yelling at Geoffrey for “no reason” any better now than he did before.
The boy looks at him silently for a few seconds, looking stunned and maybe a little worried. Then, his face takes on the familiar, haughty expression that he always assumes when he thinks that Brand is out of line. “Did he send you to threaten me?” he sneers. “Is that what this is?”
A spike of dread stabs into Brand’s spine, its cold venom slowly spreading through his veins. “Why would I need to threaten you?” he asks darkly, narrowing his eyes.
Geoffrey looks a little uneasy again. “Look, I didn’t do anything, okay? I don’t know what Rune told you, but–”
“What the fuck did you say to him?” Brand demands, feeling increasingly like this is much worse than he’d anticipated.
What did you say to him that made him run back home and try to take enough sleeping pills that he would never wake up?
“Nothing!” Geoffrey protests, talking a step back. “I didn’t even talk to him! Nobody did!”
Brand doesn’t move right away. For a few long seconds, he merely stands there, looking up at Geoffrey uncomprehendingly. And then – then, he finally gets it. Then, he can see the whole thing unfolding right before his eyes as if he’d been here himself. Rune, walking up to his friends – airheaded but kind-hearted Misha, serious and fair Samira, asshole-ish but irreverent Michael – to Geoffrey, having mustered the unbelievable courage to get dressed and get out, to walk the streets alone and to face this uncaring, ungrateful mob of cruel children whom he believed were on his side. Rune, trying to smile at them, to talk to them, and getting nothing but empty stares and heavy silence in return.
Rune, alone in the dark, without even Brand by his side, having to face the inescapable truth of his situation – he is no longer one of them.
“Nobody talked to him?” Brand repeats quietly.
“No,” Geoffrey confirms as though it somehow exonerated him of any wrongdoing. “Then he just turned and bolted. It was really embarrassing for everyone. You shouldn’t have let him do that.”
“I shouldn’t have let him?” Brand says, because it seems like he can’t do anything but parrot Geoffrey’s words back to him. “I shouldn’t have?”
The other boy flinches. “What I mean is, he should have been more careful. I–”
“What you mean, you miserable bastard,” Brand grits, “is that Rune came all the way here to see you, and you couldn’t even say hello? You let him stand there, all alone, everyone ignoring him, until he just ran away?”
Geoffrey has the good grace to look a little sheepish. “It wasn’t just me,” he mumbles. “You know how it is. You know how it works.”
Do I? Brand wonders. He doesn’t feel like he did before, but now, he is definitely getting the gist of things. He knew, theoretically, that other courts, other scions were snubbing them. But part of him had not truly understood what that meant. Part of him couldn’t quite believe that the people Rune had welcomed into his home, laughed with, confided in, slept with would really turn their backs on him if he had the balls to show up. Apparently, part of Rune hadn’t quite believed it either.
“How could you fucking do that to him?” Brand rasps, tears of rage prickling his eyes. “You were supposed to care about him! You’re supposed to be his boyfriend!”
Geoffrey scoffs. “He can’t possibly think that we’re still an item now, can he?”
It’s a little funny, in hindsight, that this is what really makes Brand lose it. He has spent the last five months wishing Geoffrey gone, hoping that Rune would just dump his sorry ass, being childishly resentful of the very fact that they were in a relationship to begin with – and yet now, hearing this inconsequential, unworthy boy laughing at the very notion that what they shared mattered at all, dismissing the mere possibility that he could still want to be involved with Rune after what happened to him, as though he’d done something terrible and deserved to be shunned, as though he were nothing but damaged goods, nothing but a stain on his good name… that’s the last straw. That’s the point of no return.
Brand leaps forward and swings so hard at Geoffrey that his glasses fly off his face and disappear into the night. The boy yelps in surprise, cupping his face with both hands, eyes wide with shock. For all his wariness around Brand, he never really thought that he would actually hit him, did he? None of them ever believes that something bad can happen to them. They think they’re above it all, that they’re protected.
Rune thought that too, he almost tells Geoffrey. And so did I. Look at us now. We’re all just one step away from the damn precipice. It could have been you – it could have been any one of you.
He doesn’t say that. Instead, he grabs Geoffrey by the front of his shirt, and he punches him in the nose, then in the stomach. The boy whimpers and keels over as a flow of bright red blood spurts out of his nose. Brand fucking hopes he broke it.
Shards of bones rolling under his fingers, just beneath the skin, gashes so deep that he can see exposed muscle and tendons.
“You fucking, two-faced rat!” he rages.
“Don’t!” Geoffrey gasps, raising his arms above his face as Brand’s knee connects with his ribs – he doesn’t even try to fight back. He probably can’t. Brand bets that even if he has a sigil on him, he’s only carrying stupid, useless spells to make his teeth whiter or to remember the capital cities of every country in the world. Maybe he ought to be taught a godsdamn lesson in how to be more careful too. Maybe Brand can show him how devastatingly easy it is to reduce someone to nothing at all. “Stop!”
“Stop it!” a strident voice screams behind him. “Stop hurting him!”
It’s a girl running towards them. Brand thinks he recognizes her as one of Geoffrey’s upperclassmen friends – the curvy redhead who’s always making eyes at him.
“What the hell?” she shrieks. “Are you crazy?!”
“Back off!” Brand barks at her. “Or you’re next.”
She gasps. “You wouldn’t dare! I’m a scion!” she takes a step back, nonetheless. “I’m a woman!” she adds, outraged. “You would not hit a woman, right?”
Brand thinks of Macha sending him flying across the tatami and of Eve, parrying his blows with a single hand. He laughs. “I have zero fucking problem with the idea, my lady.”
He relinquishes his hold on Geoffrey’s shirt, dropping him onto the ground. He is about to hit him again, or her, if she tries to intervene, when he catches sight of his own hand in the light of a streetlamp. Geoffrey’s blood shines like a fresh coat of paint on his fingers. And, suddenly –
Dried blood under his fingernails – his hands, misshapen, birdlike talons dripping with gore
The smell of charred meat and iron
Distant screams and pleas, sobs echoing in a dark corner
Soft hands on his face, light as butterflies brushing against his eyelids – “You can go ahead. It’s all fine. It’s just you and me. Just you and me.”
Blinding light, the heart-wrenching song of stars, sundust peppering his face
Brand rears back, head spinning, legs suddenly wobbly. He takes two steps back.
What the fuck was that? He thinks frantically, shaking his head to clear it. The images and sensations felt so eerily real just a second ago, but they are dissipating quickly now, melting into the night like shreds of very old dreams, like the echoes of someone else’s memories. He looks down at his hands again – they look fine, perfectly normal aside from the faint traces of blood on his knuckles. Suddenly, a rush of disgust and shame shoots through him – what the hell is he doing?
“Don’t hurt him anymore,” the girl – her name is Lydia he belatedly remembers – all but pleads. “Please.”
Please stop. Please don’t.
Geoffrey doesn’t say anything. Maybe, deep down, he knows he deserves this, too. He’s curled up on the ground, one hand against his bloody mouth and nose, the other pressed against his side, panting heavily. Brand blinks down at him. He’s hurt, but not badly hurt – a busted nose, a split lip, some bad bruises, maybe a black eye. Nothing broken or crushed. Nothing that will stay with him past a week or two. Still, Brand can’t help feeling a little bad. A little.
“Whatever,” he snarls, taking another step back. “Just – stay the fuck away from him.”
And because he doesn’t want to look down at the other boy’s bloodied mouth, or at the horrified expression on the girl’s pretty face, he whirls around and heads back to the tree without sparing them another glance.
I did what I had to do, he thinks as he climbs over the wall and jumps back into the street. I did it to protect Rune.
He brushes against the fine wires of the net – Rune is still sound asleep; that’s one good thing, at least. Thank the gods for small fucking favors. He keeps his head down on the way back, walking quickly through the thinning crowd. He meets none of Rune’s other classmates, but he knows they must be close by. He’s fairly certain news of what he just did will spread like wildfire – there’s a risk that it will further ruin Rune’s reputation, but maybe it will send a message instead: don’t fuck with him. Of course, there’s always the possibility that Geoffrey won’t say anything. Not out of loyalty, he’s been pretty fucking clear where his lay, but out of embarrassment. He’s just had the shit kicked out of him by a boy several years his junior who can’t even wield magic, after all. Maybe his new girlfriend will keep her mouth shut as well, if she knows what’s good for him.
When Brand reaches the Pac Bell, he feels a little calmer, already. The last echoes of the strange images which briefly plagued his mind have faded away. He made the right call – he gained a clearer understanding of what happened to Rune earlier tonight and he finally gave Geoffrey a piece of his mind. He knows he hasn’t solved the core problem, but he can work his way up to that. Rune’s friends have let him down – that was to be expected. Brand can help him find better, more important, more meaningful things. He has nearly managed to convince himself that things are going to be okay when he enters the lobby.
That’s when he spots Mayan. Spot is a bizarrely accurate word for it – despite his hulking frame, the man always seems to appear out of nowhere, as though perpetually camouflaged, undistinguishable from the background. He is now standing in the entrance hall just three feet away from Brand, his formidable arms crossed over his chest, towering over him like a godsdamn lighthouse. He looks pretty mad.
“Where the hell were you?” he demands in a low voice as Brand struggles not to jump out of his skin.
So your men didn’t manage to follow me, huh? He can’t help but think with a spark of pride.
“I went to the Bowers,” he replies sincerely. He has no reason to lie.
“And why the fuck did you do that?” Mayan asks through gritted teeth. “What on Earth was so important that you’d go out on your own in the middle of the night?”
I can take care of myself, Brand wants to shoot back, but at that very moment, it occurs to him that the last time he walked the streets of New Atlantis alone at night, he was knocked unconscious somewhere along the way, dragged into the carriage house, and he just lay there uselessly while his family was murdered, his home burnt down, and Rune tortured within an inch of his life. Just because Brand himself ended up inexplicably unhurt doesn’t mean that his carelessness didn’t have very real, very dark consequences for everyone else. He wanted to berate Rune for his earlier recklessness, but he’s just as bad, isn’t he?
“Sorry,” Brand mumbles, looking at his feet, in a clumsy, frustrating replay of the scene which unfolded between his scion and him just a couple of hours ago.
“Sorry?” Mayan repeats. “Will sorry be enough if your enemies come after you when you’re vulnerable? Will–” he cuts himself off, staring at Brand’s hands. His dark eyes flicker and his breath catches audibly in his throat. “Brand,” he says, very carefully, “whose blood is that?” Brand blinks at him. Mayan’s voice drops low. “Tell me – whose blood is it?”
Maybe it’s the uncharacteristically soft tone. Maybe it’s the straightforwardness of the question. In any case, Brand can’t help but blurt out the truth. “Geoffrey Saint Talbot’s.”
There is a short pause before Mayan says, deliberately, “You attacked the heir to the Temperance Galleys?”
Brand swallows. “I… I guess.”
His instructor goes quiet for another second. He doesn’t ask why, or if Brand is out of his fucking mind – he probably knows, anyway – instead he looks at the boy’s hands, a troubled expression stealing over his sharp features, and then, he takes a deep breath. “How badly did you hurt him?”
“Not very badly,” Brand mutters. “Black eye, bloody nose, that sort of stuff.”
“That’s it?”
He nods. “That’s it.”
Another pause, then Mayan sighs. “Did he deserve it?”
Brand thinks of the expression on Rune’s face when he caught him in the bathroom two hours ago. He thinks of the searing pain in his gut earlier tonight. He thinks of the sneer curling Geoffrey’s lip when he said, “he can’t possibly think we’re still an item.” He nods again. “Yeah. He did.”
Mayan briefly pinches the bridge of his nose, the way he sometimes does when he wants to get angry but is trying not to. It happens a lot when he’s around Brand, but he has seen him do it a couple of times around the Tower, too. The man briefly closes his eyes and straightens up. If Brand didn’t know him as well as he does, he would almost say that he looked a little worried. Unexpectedly, a recent memory resurfaces – Mayan, sitting beside him in the hospital, talking in his low, husky voice, spouting mindless reassurances as he pries bloody scalpels out of Brand’s clenched fists.
You can let go, now, he’s safe, you’re safe, I’m here with you, you can let go, I won’t let them hurt you anymore, you can let go.
Did this really happen or is it just a trick Brand’s mind is playing on him now, desperate for something he can never have again?
“Just… don’t fucking do that again,” Mayan tells him tiredly. “This is not a game, Brand. This is the real world and you and Rune are more exposed than ever before. Don’t let yourself be dragged into petty squabbles and run the risk of failing him when he most needs you.” Again, he doesn’t say. Brand hears it loud and clear. “Protect, defend, honor.”
“Protect, defend, honor,” Brand repeats sheepishly. These are the words Companions are supposed to live by. Every one of Mayan’s students has heard them again and again. Still, they manage to slip his mind.
Mayan nods gravely. “Go to bed.”
And for once, Brand just obeys. He takes the elevator back to his apartment, lets himself in quietly and washes his hands in the bathroom sink. There isn’t much blood left, he notices, Geoffrey didn’t even bleed all that much. What Brand did to him is no worse than he would have gotten in a bar brawl, if he were the type to brawl. Or go to bars. He bets Michael brawls. Brand knows, deep down, that he should feel bad for what happened – he just doesn’t. He feels strangely calm, actually, appeased.
He quickly changes back into his pajamas and tiptoes into his bedroom. Rune is still sleeping, in the exact same position Brand left him in. He slips back into bed and embraces the other boy from behind, settling once more against his back. He smells his hair – the faint scent of smoke from the fireworks and the sweet, spicy smell of his skin tickle Brand’s nostrils.
We’ll be okay, he thinks at the sleeping boy. I’m not going to let anyone harm you again. I know you’re hurting, and I’m not sure how I can make it better, but I’m going to fucking try. I’ll die trying if it comes to that.
And then, he sleeps.
Brand is fifteen when he beats up Geoffrey Saint Talbot. He never tells Rune about what he did – not because he’s ashamed but because he doesn’t want to burden him further. The blood that Brand washed off his hands never needs to touch him at all. Instead of confessing or yelling at him the next morning, he brings out his little orange shoots again and they plant them together. It may not be much, but it’s something. It’s trying.
“You defended my honor,” Rune tells him, grinning, when he discovers the truth anyway twenty years later, because fucking Geoffrey couldn’t help but blab.
Yeah, I did, Brand thinks, even as he huffs and rolls his eyes. And I will again. I’ll die trying if it comes to that.