Archive of Our Own

“There is no home for you to return to,” the mask in the mirror says, and that’s where you feel the cracks start to grow.

You want to punch the mirror. Your fist itches, like there are little maggots crawling under the skin, through the veins and tendons stretched across your tiny, brittle bones. You want to reach into the glass and pull out the solemn mask, smash its face against your knee. A scream begs to rip out of your throat. You don’t belong here. You need to go home— how dare it claim you don’t have a home?

Your fists stay clenched by your side, swallowed up by the ceremonial robes you woke up in. The dark fabric and gold trimming reminds you of the generic stock-image of a fancy cult leader. The only thing left to complete the picture is something’s blood. Crowley stands at your side— do the people here bleed red?

Your voice stays trapped in your throat as Crowley drags you into an old, rotting excuse of a dorm. You miss your room, and your bed, and your cat curling up on your stomach and keeping you warm.

You find some moth-chewed blankets in a creaky closet. You curl up on a beaten mattress and try to fall asleep. You fail. 

Your heart continues to pound in your ribcage, like it’s banging a fist on a locked door, begging to be let out. It isn’t safe here, you aren’t safe here. You can’t sleep, not until you’re home.

You wonder if your bed is empty tonight, if your parents are worried because they can’t find you.

You wonder if your cat is looking for you, sitting at the door to wait for you to walk through and pull it into your bed.

Your heart pounds faster, until your ribs ache. You won’t be able to sleep tonight.

The little tanuki-cat-thing, Grim, he calls himself, finds his way into the beaten cabin.

You’re tired. You don’t want to deal with him right now, but the fires in his ears are warm, and you are so cold.

He says he wants to learn magic here. You used to want to learn magic, as a small child. Grim is barely the length of your leg, though it’s hard to tell his exact size as he floats around like a hummingbird. How old is Grim, anyway? You don’t remember the last time you were that excited to learn.

You resolve to help him, as best you can. It will give you something to do, outside of looking for a way home. You’ve always been better at helping others, anyway.

There are ghosts haunting the dorm. You suppose it’s fitting, having them as roommates. You don’t quite belong to this world either.

Drifting through, not all there.

They laugh and offer to let you be one of them forever. Before you command Grim into chasing them off, it almost seems like a good idea.

You clean the sprawling campus grounds, because that’s what Crowley says you have to do. You memorize the routes between important locations— the cafeteria, the infirmary, and the library especially— and take note of all the little nooks and crannies you can wedge your body into if you need to.

You don’t feel safe here. Your hairs stand on end and you have nothing to protect you from these teenagers who can wield flames and tidal waves with a flick of the hand.

Your hands itch around your mop. You finish cleaning the hall you’re working on, as Grim half-heartedly dusts the high corners you can’t reach. Beyond the window, you watch as kids soar through the sky above the track, carried by brooms and willpower. Most of them look bored, or nervous, and a few excited. 

You remember the faces of your classmates. Remember goofing off in the lab, messing around after the worksheets were done and turned in. Your lungs remember laughing so hard they felt empty.

You feel empty.

You turn away, and get started on the next hallway.

The statues of the Great Seven— they remind you of something. You’re sure of that.

You know these faces. You recognize them, and feel that knowledge so deeply in your gut that it burns.

Then the kid, Ace Trappola, starts insulting you and Grim, and the maggots begin to crawl again. They burrow deeper into your fists, and your hands tremble around your broom.

Then Grim conjures fire, and Ace wind, and the whole world lights up in flame.

You were unable to stop it. You share in Grim and Ace’s punishment.

You deserve it. It’s your punishment for being useless.

Ace doesn’t show up to help clean windows. You’re close to shattering one of them just to get Crowley to pay attention. You’re closer to just getting off your ass and cleaning all hundred yourself. 

Then they get Ace, and Grim fucks off, because of course he does.

Then Deuce Spade appears, and everything comes crashing down. Literally.

The maggots burrow into your aching eyes, curling up in the bags underneath.

Ace and Deuce and Grim are all assholes. They’re all so stupid.

You don’t know what this world’s culture has against teamwork, what kind of bias they have against being anything other than independent, but none of these dickheads can get their heads out of their asses long enough to see this isn’t working.

And maybe they can get expelled. Maybe Grim can go back to wandering, maybe Ace and Deuce have homes to go back to, but you don’t.

You need to go home.

You need this school, the library and the mirror and whatever resources you can possibly find, to go home.

If you get expelled, you’ll have no means or food or shelter. You could die.

And you can’t die before you get home. You need to see your family and friends again. You need to let them know you’re okay.

It’s been two days already. They probably have organized some search parties back on Earth, have probably tried to figure out if you ran away or were kidnapped. They probably can’t sleep either.

You can’t get expelled. You need to go home.

And those three idiots won’t stop talking.

Your throat burns and burns with fire and you scream.

You get the magic stone. Your throat and lungs are sore from barking orders. 

You get promoted to prefect, of the stupid, aptly-named Ramshackle Dormitory.

Crowley goes on some inane ramble about you being a beast tamer. You’re not really sure if he’s serious or not. 

It’s a nice thought, though— having a skill in this world. Having a purpose.

Crowley gives you a camera. You wish you had a picture of your family. You close your eyes, and try to keep their image in your mind. You won’t allow yourself to forget what you’re here to do: to go home. You need to go home. You don’t belong here.

You watch Crowley’s masked face, and look for any sign that he’s closer to sending you back. If he’s any closer to understanding how badly you need to go back.

The mask is elaborate and unreadable.

The maggots want to strangle him. You agree with them, but keep your hands firmly at your side.

Grim keeps causing trouble, and you keep indebting yourself to Ace and Deuce to catch him.

You’re tired of it. Didn’t Grim say he wanted to study here? You want to punch him in his soft belly, make him open his eyes to the fact that you’re not gonna be here forever to keep him in check.

You’re going to go home soon, after all. You are. You can’t keep your family and friends and world waiting for that long, it’s already been too long. 

How long does it take for a missing person to be declared dead, again?

Ace appears at your doorstep with a gaudy metal collar clasped around his throat.

You don’t let him sleep in your bed—you have a hard enough time sleeping as it is— but you lend him a decently thick blanket and a spot on the couch.

He complains, and you roll your eyes. You stick around just long enough to make sure he can lay down without pressing the metal into the flesh of his neck, and he doesn’t comment on it.

Deuce appears in a similar fashion. He and Ace bicker like a pair of children, or an old married couple. They fit next to each other in a way only denizens of the same universe possibly could. You can’t imagine either of them getting along with someone any less confrontational than themselves. You can’t imagine either of them fitting next to a pushover like you, who goes along with whatever anybody else needs because it’s so much easier than fighting it. Because you need people to not hate you in order to stay here safely, in order to have any chance of going home.

You want your friends back. You hope they’re okay, even if you’ve gone missing. You hope they don’t miss you too much.

Trey Clover and Cater Diamond are civil, if not entirely nice. You can tell both of them are a little mean, a little selfish, just like the rest of this world. You’re pretty sure it’s just part of the culture. Trey barely hides his distaste of the Ramshackle Dorm, and Cater tricks you into painting the roses for him.

But they smile, and do not hurt you, and so you think of them as your friends here. Just like Grim and Ace and Deuce. People who will not hurt you.

Not like your friends at home. Not people you can bare your heart to with jokes and know they won’t take advantage. Not people you trust. Not people you love, never love, you can’t allow yourself to love here. Not in this world, where trust and love and friendships are embarrassing weaknesses to be exploited instead of ideals to strive for.

But even then. Even then, you can’t stop yourself from worrying about the bags under their eyes or the silent expressions they don when they don’t notice you watching.

You’ve never been good at not getting attached. But it’s alright, because you can hide it. But it’s alright, because they’ll never know. They’ll never return your feelings anyway, even if only platonic, because people don’t care for each other like that in this world. People of this world wouldn’t care for an outsider like you. 

But it’s alright.

As every day at Night Raven College passes, you can’t help but find at least one of your friends there either a little more insufferable or a little more adorable. They’re like cats, you think, little bastards that are a pain to take care of, but inexplicably lovable nonetheless.

Case in point: Deuce Spade and the fact he doesn’t know how eggs work. This absolute dumbass. Buffoon. How has he survived this long?

You don’t laugh, or give any indication you find it endearing. But it’s a challenge not to let an amused grin spread across your face as you explain the birds and the bees of chickens to an increasingly horrified Deuce.

He’s in a state of shock the whole walk back to the school store. He doesn’t even notice as you grab extra disinfectant and bandages to wrap his bloodied knuckles until you’re already cleaning his scrapes.

You wrack your brain for a sufficiently Night-Raven-College-esque explanation, and settle on, “You won’t be able to help with the tart if your hands are bleeding all over the place.”

He blinks, and says, “Oh.”

Neither of you say anything else until you’re back in the Heartslabyul kitchen, and then there’s too much work to talk about the bandages anyway.

Making the chestnut tart is nice. You have no magic to help, and the comments of others won’t let you forget it, but you enjoy the clean, methodical motions of shelling the nuts and slowly filling the basket with them. It quiets the maggots in your skin, it quiets your brain, it fills your brain with soft fluffy clouds that wrap around your distant thoughts and feelings and make everything a little less sharp. You don’t need to figure anything out, you don’t need to take control of the situation—this is Trey’s kitchen, and Ace’s tart, and you are only there as support and nothing more.

It feels good to be reduced to a single gear in a larger machine. There’s a softer pressure that way, less eyes on you, less thinking that needs to be done. At the same time, the work keeps your focus on your hands and keeps you from ruminating too deeply on your thoughts. 

It’s the closest thing to peace you’ve felt here.

It’s not your tart. It’s Ace’s, and Trey and Deuce’s, to a degree. You don’t have much of a stake in any of this.

That doesn’t stop your blood from rushing with anger and squirming beings and the urge to break Riddle Rosehearts’ bones when he orders it be thrown out over a stupid rule nobody else knew.

You’re glad Ace is less controlled than you are, and less angry. You’re glad Ace punches him and stops there.

No lasting damage. Not like you want, not like you need, but it’s good enough.

Riddle overblots. You trap a hysterical laugh behind your teeth, because how stupid is this world? How fantastical could this possibly get? He comes complete with a glowing eye and a costume change, elaborate and delicate and terrifying and a cosplayer’s best nightmare.

All for a small child just trying to work through his trauma. 

“I am right! The rules are law!” Riddle asserts violently, the monster behind him tearing up his perfectly cultivated garden, “I need to be right!”

You know. 

“Otherwise, what was it all for?!” Riddle demands, and you don’t know. You don’t know what ‘purpose’ looks like right now. Not for him, and not for you. 

For him, it’s his rules. For you, it’s your home.

But his rules don’t work anymore, not to the extreme extent he wants them to. His rules inspire exhaustion and fear and pain in himself and those around him. But it gives him something to live for, doesn’t it?

And your home—it’s already been weeks since you’ve seen it. Even if you were sent back at this very moment, nothing would ever be the same. You’d be the strange missing person who couldn’t explain where they went or how they got back without a trace left behind. Your house would become the hotspot for journalists and police for days, weeks. And you still haven’t made any progress towards it. You don’t know if there’s even a way back at all.

But it gives you something to live for, doesn’t it?

Long after Riddle is defeated and comes down, after he and Heartslabyul make amends, after you’re lying in Ramshackle’s bed with Grim snoring beside you, you can still hear him crying. The sound echoes in the cavern of your skull, keeping you far from slumber.

Tears had poured down his face, his breath coming out in uneven, imperfect sobs that shook his tiny body from its core outwards. It looked embarrassing and painful. It looked relieving.

You can’t remember the last time you cried. You haven’t felt safe enough to let tears come—not around anyone here. But if Riddle, headwarden of Heartslabyul could, why shouldn’t you?

You sit up, and let your memories of the past few weeks flood to the forefront. All the stress, the anxiety, the pain, and hot stinging of tears burn against the back of your eyes. A bit of wetness starts to well up at your waterline.

But you don’t cry. Do you even remember how to?

The unbirthday party after the overblot is… nice. The weather is pleasant, the pastries are sweet, and the drinks are cool. Grim, Ace, and Deuce are free to run around without you worrying about them, like puppies at a dog park.

Riddle offers you a slice of strawberry tart. It’s lovely. He smiles, and so do you.

“Are you enjoying the party?” he asks, quiet and unsure, after a moment. You can hear Ace yelling at Deuce a couple yards away, punctuated by Grim’s rambunctious laughter.

“Yeah,” you say, and the wrinkles between his tense eyebrows ease. You feel yourself relax as well, “It’s pretty peaceful.”

For once, for now, it isn’t a lie.

You’re starting to forget what your home looked like.

You try to hum the song your mother would listen to in the mornings—how did the melody go again? Was the beat faster, slower? You try to push a few notes through your underused vocal cords, but it all sounds wrong, sounds alien.

You try to remember your father’s hand along your fist, adjusting your stance into something stronger, something more stable. Keep your hands up, guard the face, never block your own vision. It’s a dangerous world and you need to know how to protect yourself—but oh how you wish to go back to that dangerous, violent world. You remember his hands were always warm against yours, and there’s nothing but cold in the absence.

You scramble desperately for voices, faces, names of the people who were once the pillars of your life. The friends you’d joke with between classes, the teachers who penned in smiley-faces next to bonus questions you answered correctly, and all the colors and sounds start to turn fuzzy until you aren’t sure whether they were ever clear in the first place.

Did you really come from a world called Earth? Do you actually have a home to return to? There’s no proof, no evidence contradicting the Mirror’s declaration— you have no power, no magic, no home—so did it ever exist, or is it just fantasy? ‘I think therefore I am’—but it’s hard to think now. It hurts to think.

It hurts.

People are getting hurt at Night Raven College. Something maybe having to do with some upcoming sports tournament. Accidents targeting star players across just about every dorm. You wouldn’t care, except Crowley implies that your food will be cut off if you don’t. You can’t starve to death, or you won’t be able to go home. 

Besides, Grim wants to play in the Spelldrive tournament. And the desires of the denizens of this world matter more than those of an outsider. 

You accept the task of finding out whoever is causing the accidents, as if refusing was ever an option. As if resting was ever an option.

Trey gets hurt, because Riddle was targeted. 

Grim gives Trey a can of tuna, a get-well-soon present. Does that mean you should be allowed to worry about him openly, too?

You shouldn’t care about them, you can’t care about the people here, not that deeply, but. But.

But you itch and itch to rip apart the one who hurt them and the maggots scream for blood. You tell yourself it’s just another intrusive, meaningless thought. That it doesn’t matter, or say anything about how irrationally attached you may have gotten. 

You don’t notice how Grim floats a little farther away while your expression darkens. You miss how Ace and Deuce walk a little closer to each other.

Riddle and Cater offer to join the investigation. Cater has already started looking into possible targets, and Riddle is a dangerous combination of clever and vengeful for Trey.

Cater laughs as he proclaims he wants to avenge his housemate, like it’s obviously a matter of house loyalty instead of personal camaraderie. 

“We’re all house-buds here. Count us in!” Ace says, as if Ramshackle is part of Heartslabyul, as if you’re a part of them.

You shouldn’t feel warm at his declaration. You should push down the feeling and reject it, as you always do.

You can’t help the smile that creeps into your eyes. For just a little while, it wouldn’t hurt to pretend you’re one of them, would it?

Jade and Floyd Leech are mirror images of each other, complimentary facets carved from the same gem.

They tower over you, and their slate-and-gold eyes bore into you like they want to pull out your entire being and snack on the bits they find interesting.

Jade’s eyes are sharp and focused, turning his complete focus to each of your companions in turn and then yourself. He’s polished and poised to strike.

Floyd’s eyes droop at the edges like he’s ready to roll over and take a nap. His words drawl like the slow movement of tides, threatening like a child playing with knives.

Two sides of the same spectrum. The foils of each other’s gems. 

You run alongside your companions to flee the twins. If left alone, though, you think you’d be able to stare into those eyes unflinchingly for hours, categorizing and comparing their traits.

Do your eyes look more like Jade’s, or like Floyd’s? At first impression, do you look put together and sharp, or relaxed and lackadaisical? Do you leave an impression at all?

You don’t know what to make of Jack Howl. He seems like his soul was cut from stone, unwavering and strong and pure. 

He insists that he doesn’t need warning or protection. Claims he’ll compete honestly, and you can’t help but believe what he’s saying is the truth.

That doesn’t stop you from being mildly annoyed at his refusing to help at all.

There is a boy with oil-black horns and firefly-green eyes in the field outside your dorms.

Speaking cryptically and vaguely rudely seems to be the norm here. You allow him to speak as such, and are too tired to return the favor.

He disappears in a small smattering of sparkles, and you don’t have the chance to say goodbye. When did you ever have the chance to say goodbye?

Kalim Al-Asim and Jamil Viper are oddities.

Kalim is bouncy and happy and all the things a Night Raven College student shouldn’t be. 

Jamil is polite and helpful, answering your questions without asking for compensation.

You know there has to be more to the pair. There has to be something lurking underneath their surface of kind words and beautiful jewelry.

But despite Jamil insisting on hiding his signature spell, his mention of signature spells prompts you and Grim to put the pieces together.

It’s so obvious in hindsight, that of course it was Ruggie. How couldn’t you have figured it out before?

Maybe it’s because thinking still hurts.

Maybe it’d be better if you could just focus on your tasks instead of wallowing in your memories of home. All this time, what has ‘home’ done but distract you from the present?

But you can’t forget home. You can’t, or else you might forget that you need to go back.

You push those thoughts, those memories to the back as your classmates (companions? friends?) go to track down the culprit.

Ruggie Bucchi’s grin is wide as he dodges the magic Ace and Deuce throw at him. He jumps and spins on light feet, like this is a choreographed dance, like he’s playing a game. 

Even from your distance, you don’t miss the far-away look in his eyes. Like his gaze is not on any of them, but on pursuers from years past.

You’ve read about the Afterglow Savanna, in your library quests looking for a way home. You know what happens to most hyenas. You can make a good guess about what’s happened to Ruggie.

You cut off your own train of thought, focusing in on the one-two, one-two of your feet running underneath you. Your job is to catch him, stop him, maybe punch him for hurting Trey. Not to sympathize with him.

He laughs and laughs, and it’s something that’s a little too perfectly exhilarated to be anything but rehearsed. 

Jack seems genuinely upset Leona would try to gain an unfair advantage, not because he’s hurting people, but because it ruins the integrity of the sport. You suppose this is as close as you’re gonna get to finding a morally upstanding citizen here.

You laugh under your breath, and ignore Jack’s eyebrows furrowing. You think the way his ears stand at attention is cute, though. It reminds you of a dog in your neighborhood.

Then Riddle and Cater join back up with you, and a plan begins to hatch.

Then Jack tries to leave, clearly out of his depth with this many people.

“I’m going to be the one to settle this,” Jack claims, like he can actually follow through.

Lone wolf, much?

The maggots squirm, just a little, just enough that you feel okay letting yourself speak a bit.

“Do you really think that you can accomplish anything by yourself?” you don’t care how your voice sounds. Don’t care that it’s flat enough to make Grim wince, “You haven’t done a damn thing, so why should we trust you with this?”

“What did you say?” he steps closer, and you tilt your head up to meet his eyes, but move no further. It’s hard to feel scared of him when surrounded by Heartslabyul.

“You’re selfish, and stupid, and arrogant,” you lay out the facts bluntly, because you have no need for frills right now. You don’t need Jack Howl to like you, and you won’t get him to like you by being a kind pushover anyway, “You act like you can get Leona to quit his bullshit on your own, when we all know you can’t. Do you really want to stop him, or is it more important that you avoid the painful embarrassment of admitting you could use help?”

Jack’s eyes are pinprick-tiny, framed by furious eyebrows. His teeth look sharp enough to tear through your vocal chords. 

Riddle and Cater shift in your peripheral vision. Have they ever seen you like this, when you stop trying to force the fire in your blood to still?

“If you don’t want to help: fine. I can’t and won’t force you. You aren’t my responsibility. But then stay out of our damn way while we clean up Savanaclaw’s mess like we’ve been intending to do since day one,” you blink, slowly, daring him to act in the moment your vision is blinded. He doesn’t move, “Or you can join us. You’re strong and honest, and we have a common goal. I’m not asking you to be my friend, I’m asking you to cooperate.”

You don’t need Jack Howl to like you. But you feel pride, just a little, when he agrees to hear out the plan anyway.

Riddle threatens all of the freshmen with decapitation—er, magic sealing— as they part ways.

“Man,” Jack whispers to Ace, “I really thought your housewardens were pushovers—are they meant to be that scary?”

“Dunno, dude,” Ace shudders quietly, “But I’ve seen both of their bad sides before, and trust me. You do not want to be there.”

You turn to them, and they both freeze. You beam, “Let’s all get well-rested, alright? We have a big day tomorrow!”

You giggle to yourself at the looks on their faces.

Leona gives up, as soon as his first plan doesn’t work. 

Your guts are too empty and too full, burning veins and freezing organs, anger squirms and burrows and pulses with raging life too painfully contained in your body. How dare he. How dare he give up?

You don’t care, in that moment, that you shouldn’t root for him. You don’t care that it’s good he’s already decided to stop, it’s your job to stop him.

You hate him. You hate that he has the ability to give up, to put his hands up and lie down. You hate that he complains about all he doesn’t have while surrounded by wealth and familiar faces and home.

You hate him as he holds Ruggie’s decomposing arm in his hand, mocking the boy who crawled from the bottom to be here, who gave his time and his magic to Leona, who laughed and laughed as he ran from you.

Ruggie isn’t laughing anymore. 

Then Leona overblots and you’re only glad you have the opportunity to watch your friends beat the shit out of him.

Some time during the fight, Leona’s hand brushes over your torso. You couldn’t give a clear answer, if asked, why you were so close to the epicenter of the storm when you’re arguably the weakest one there, but you know why. 

It seems so nice, in abstract theory, to just fade into sand.

In practice, though, it’s much less pretty. You flinch away before he can really hold onto you, but the damage was done. Your side blooms with lancing pain, sand wedging into your open wound and stinging like glass-shard splinters.

Ace jumps in front of you, blasting Leona away with a burst of wind before turning back to you. If you squint through the sandstorm, you can almost convince yourself he looks worried.

You quip a line from some movie you can’t quite remember anymore through grit and dust, and his face wrinkles in confusion.

Your friends would’ve laughed.

The cold of loneliness curls tighter around your gut, and the burning agony of your bleeding, sand-caked side only barely distracts from it.

Ace and Deuce and Grim drag you to Riddle after you refuse to go to the infirmary.

You do not flinch as Riddle and Trey wash out your gaping wound. The bleeding is slow and watery now, and you think it might have to do with magic, because you’re pretty sure that's not how torso wounds should be.

Riddle waves his pen and your side begins to weave itself together. He rubs a medical salve over it, and you stop feeling anything on the skin it touches. You resist the urge to drink the rest of the salve, lying exposed on the table beside the Heartlabyul housewarden, just to see if it would numb the pain that’s housed itself in the bottom of your stomach.

You don’t, of course. But you don’t miss the looks they give you as you eye the medicine either.

Two conflicting desires wrestle and tear at each other in your head, in your heart. They grapple and toss each other around without mercy or consideration of the collateral damage that is the rest of your mind and body, like two massive kaiju on the silver screen wrecking through a city without caring for the civilians they crush. And you can feel them growing bigger, their attacks more violent, destroying you from the inside and leaving you void of anything other than them.

One of those desires is this:

You want to go home—you’ve wanted to go home since you woke up, since you were dropped in this strange land with no reason or way back. You want to see your parents and let them know you’re alive, want to walk the aisles of the grocery store you know by heart, want to sit in a car and watch as you roll down streets and buildings that are as constant as they are comforting.

You want to prevent your parents from having to bury their child. You want to prevent your friends from avoiding hangouts for fear of feeling your absence like a gaping hole. You want to prevent your memory, your disappearance, from tainting their lives in grief and the fear of what might’ve happened to you.

You cannot allow yourself to die, because then you’ll never get home, never see your family again. Never smile with your friends, never lie in your bed, never curl up with your cat. You cannot die.

The other desire is this:

You want to die. You’ve wanted that for a long time, longer than you’ve been in Night Raven College for. The desire ebbs and flows and, looking back, has been there since childhood. Because living hurts, existing hurts, breathing and eating and working and walking leaves you exhausted and sore, and wouldn’t it be easier if you could just close your eyes and never open them again? 

But, once again, you cannot allow yourself to die. Your family would weep over your casket. Your classmates wouldn’t be able to graduate without thinking of the seat you should’ve filled, the diploma that should’ve had your name printed on it. Your parents would be reduced to being the parents of the child who committed suicide, they must’ve been such awful guardians to drive their own kid to that decision, and you can’t do that to them. The guilt of even thinking of attempting to do so is heavier than the daily aches of existence.

At the heart of both desires is this:

You want to rest. One way or another, you are tired, in a bone-deep, hollowed out fashion that a night’s rest cannot fix. You are spent, wrung out, and pressured for more. You aren’t allowed to stop, aren’t allowed to relax, you need to keep working for your food and your place here and your chance at home.

You cannot die, you know that, on a logical level. Can’t let all the work you’ve put into just being here go to waste. But sometimes, you forget. Forget that you’re supposed to stay alive, for everyone else’s sake. And you don’t move out of the way quick enough.

The Spelldrive disk does nothing more than knock you out. You wake up in the infirmary without anything larger than a mild concussion and a bruise on your forehead. You, very carefully, do not feel disappointed.

Leona’s adorable little nephew—Cheka, with the sunrise-red hair and wide brown eyes—skips in before anyone can ask why you didn’t move. In the combined light of royalty, in the beams of Cheka’s sunshine smile bouncing against the glow of Leona’s moon-chilled eyes, who would remember the shadowy little outsider? You’re fine just blending into the furniture, watching silently. This isn’t your story, anyway. This isn’t your world.

Some time after the tournament, you find yourself in the gardens again, singing a little song under your breath. Grim is off with Trey, offering manual labor in exchange for a fancy tuna feast. The gardens are warm and bright.

Leona’s tail is sprawled onto the path. 

A thought pops into your head, and you know it’s a horribly stupid one. But hey, you deserve a little revenge too, don’t you?

You hum a little louder as you stroll peacefully along, and are completely and totally surprised when you feel your foot step down on someone’s tail.

“Whoopsie,” you do not laugh as he jolts out of his skin.

“I’m going to knock out all of your fucking teeth,” he growls as soon as he realizes it’s you.

“As long as you pay the dental bills, that’s fine with me!”

The growl in his throat crosses into a low roar. He’s standing at full height now, and from here you can still see the bits of grass stuck in his hair, like your kindergarten classmates after rolling down a hill on a field day. A powerful hand snaps out to grip the collar of your shirt, holding you still and prone. His hands are warm.

“You’re acting real fucking smug for a herbivore without a damn ounce of magic,” his teeth are sharp, inches away from your face, “What, now that your little tea-partying pals have beaten me out of an overblot, you think you can trample all over my tail?”

You hum in thought. Is that what this is? 

“No,” you decide, “this is just my little form of revenge.”

“For what?” he snarls, “I didn’t do shit to you or your dorm.”

“‘My dorm’ is just Grim and I,” you shrug around the hand at your neck, “But also your whole ‘injure the best parts of the sportsy student body’ made Crowley get on my ass about trying to track down and stop the culprit, which, la-dee-da, was you. Or, your plan, at least. Therefore, get fucked.”

He chuckles, low and deep, and his eyes are furious, “You really must’ve lost your sense of fear since you last stepped on my tail. Maybe I can beat it back into you.”

He’s wrong. In truth, you’re terrified. You’ve been terrified since you woke up in that coffin with Grim prying off the lid. You’re drowning in a fathomless ocean of foreign cultures, abilities, dangers that you have no frame of reference for. The undercurrent of fear runs as surely through your veins as blood does. You woke up already strapped into the seat of a roller-coaster with nobody else in sight, helpless to do anything but pray that you don’t get thrown off through every stomach-churning drop and loop that the track forces you through. 

So maybe this drop is a little taller than some other ones. So maybe Leona is a little more likely to hurt you than other students.

So what?

“Once again, you’re free to, as long as you pay the medical bills afterwards.”

“You’re really damn infuriating, you know that?”

“What’re you gonna do about it? Kill me?”

“Keep testing me, and I will. ”

Maybe the only way to stop the roller-coaster is to just get thrown off.

“Go ahead, then,” you tilt your chin up: not in challenge, but in offering of your throat, “I won’t stop you. Kill me, Leona.”

His claws hesitate at your collar, just barely touching the air surrounding your neck, “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Loooots of stuff,” you rock back on your heels, “But at least I’m not a hypocritical coward.”

You are.

He growls, “The fuck did you say?”

You shake in what might be terror or laughter or sleep deprivation. You aren’t sure either way, “You know, ever since I heard about your whole throne situation,” you ignore the snarl on his fangs, “I’ve been meaning to ask—and stop me if voicing this thought will get me jailed for verbal treason against the king or whatever—but are you really willing to do whatever it takes to reach your goals?”

Flashing green eyes glare you down. You can’t tell the difference between them and the leaves above your head and the grass beneath your feet. He gives you no answer: he doesn’t need to. Isn’t his answer obviously ‘yes’? He overblotted over it, he hurt Ruggie over it, he did so much dirty work just to give his dorm an edge in school games. For his pride, for his self.

“Why don’t you just kill Farena and Cheka, then?”

Time stops. Leona’s eyes are blown wide. The garden has fallen silent, like the soil and flowers and trees are holding their breath. You can’t read his expression—is it anger? Confusion? Fear? 

All at once, time snaps into motion, and Leona throws you to the ground. You squeeze your eyes shut and wait for him to pounce, to tear out your vocal cords and shut you up forever— sorry mom, sorry dad, sorry everyone I’m not strong enough to live for you—but the moment never comes.

You open your eyes. Leona is towering over you like an elephant towers over a mouse. His chest is heaving. Against the backlight of the greenhouse sun, he looks radiant and deranged like the wild forest itself. 

There’s still grass tangled in his wood-brown hair.

And you, like the hypocrite you are, say, “If you want something that badly, it’s best to use the most obvious solution, isn’t it?”

The breeze rustles the leaves above you. The loose ones fall.

“I,” he declares, to you, to the garden, to himself, “am not a murderer.”

He leaves, and does not look back.

And you, like the coward you are, do not follow him.

Exams come not long after the tournament. You need to study thrice as hard as your peers to pass—you didn’t grow up with their alchemy and history. Common sense and intuition weren’t instilled in you, not this world’s version of it, anyway.

Grim passes, and so do Ace and Deuce. And so many others.

You and Jack follow as sea anemones sprout on their heads and drag them to the Octavinelle mirror.

You and Jack fall back into your dorm after Azul Ashengrotto and the Leech twins all but force you out.

On the way back, all you can think of is the childlike glee on Jack’s face when he found that the Octavinelle dorm was underwater. It’s nice that someone here can still be impressed by the fantastical aspects you take for granted now. It's nice that someone here can show happiness that naturally.

You’re glad Jack is there when Crowley hangs threats of starvation over your head. The headmage all but forces you to accept the task of doing what Crowley is too lazy to do. Grim isn’t there anymore, and neither is anyone from Heartslabyul, and you don’t know if you could take being around the headmage alone.

Something would break, you’re sure of it.

And you can’t allow yourself to shatter. You don’t think you’d be able to pick up your pieces, if you did.

Jack doesn’t comment much on how the headmage threatened to take your food away. But he gives you part of his sandwich later, over lunch.

“What did he mean when he said he was trying to find you a way home?” Jack asks, and you keep forgetting these people don’t know you’re an outsider on such a deep level, “Can’t you just use the mirror?”

You hum, catching a laugh in the hollow of your throat. 

“Isn’t it obvious?” you ask instead, “I’m not from here. Not at all.”

He frowns and says nothing else. You eat the sandwich and refuse to meet his eyes.

You aren’t sure exactly when it happened, but at some point (maybe when Leona almost turned you to sand, maybe when Crowley decided you’d be the one to track down a student who was hurting some of the most powerful classmates you had, maybe when Riddle overblotted, maybe when the monster in the cave charged at you, maybe when you came here) the maggots changed.

There were still those that squirmed through your veins and across your tendons, making your skin itch and tremble with the urge to throttle something, break someone, of course there were. But some had grown, evolved. And now there were wasps buzzing through your guts, stingers poking and prodding at your lungs and stomach and heart, making you lurch with nausea.

Azul pushes a contract towards you, and Grim pleads at your side. Jack stands behind you, hands lifted ever so slightly like he wants to grab the quill out of your hand and stop this.

But you’ve already lost your home, your people, your world. Would it really make that big of a difference if you lost your dorm too?

Azul’s smile is sharp as you sign your name, the name which no longer seems to fit. It is not as sharp as the wasps that sting your insides and tell you this isn’t a mistake you’ve made, it’s simply what has to be done. It’s for Grim and Ace and Deuce, and Crowley’s promise of home and food. It’s easiest.

It’s exhausting. But you can’t let yourself rest, the wasps won’t let you. They buzz and the rapid movement of their wings pump air through your tight lungs and keep you awake. 

You have work to do.

Jack leads you to the Savanaclaw dorms to sleep. Leona agrees to let you board there, helping Ruggie with chores and such.

You’re not sure why, exactly, Ruggie decided to speak up to convince Leona to let you stay. He cited his injury, his willingness to let others take care of chores in his stead. At the same time, you see his eyes follow the thinning lines of your limbs. 

You don’t doubt your ability to make the contract work out. Maybe it’s just overconfidence, but everything else has worked out so far, so why wouldn’t this? Heartslabyul could find room if you couldn’t do it, you’re sure.

Even so—it’s nice, here. After the whole semi-hazing with the fighting and early-morning Spelldrive practices, it’s a little fun to see the beastmen in what you can only describe as their natural habitat. 

And here we see a wild Leona Kingscholar in a deep slumber, oblivious to the world revolving around him. He currently lies on a sunny rock—is he a lion or a lizard?—though he may rise soon to move to a shaded area, as the sun is beginning to beam down in full force.

And if you direct your attention this way, you’ll catch sight of the elusive Ruggie Bucchi with his prime catch of the day: a discount bag of assorted donuts—wait watch out one’s falling from the top! Oh, he caught it, nice reflexes. 

Now, if you watch this path very closely, we should be just on time to see the ever-punctual—

“What are you doing?”

“Jack Howl!”

“That,” his eyebrows furrow, “is my name, yeah.”

“You scared me!” you put a dramatic hand over your heart, already slowing to a steady beat, “I thought you’d be coming down the trail, not sneaking up from behind me!”

“I finished my run half an hour ago,” his face furrows, crinkling up like a dry, cheap paper towel from your school’s bathrooms. Your old school, that is, not Night Raven College. Not here.

“Oh,” you pull out your phone, the one Cater got you at a discount. You ignore the messages and notifications— the idea of interacting with more people, even virtually, makes the wasps sting at your guts even more. You check the time, “So you did.”

He crosses his arms, “The pressure of Azul’s deal better not be getting to you.”

You shake your head, smile, bright and fake like a fluorescent light, “Not at all! Just thinking through getting that picture from the museum.”

He doesn’t press further as you change the topic to something a little easier. You think that might be his form of kindness. Because you wouldn’t be able to explain how time seems to escape you now, slip through your fingers like the sand you were almost turned into. Like memories and faces and feelings.

But you know this much about time: you don’t have a lot of it before Azul takes your dorm and your opportunity to release the sea-anemone-contractors. So, you decide to get started. It’s a nice distraction from yourself, if nothing else.

“What if the potion stops working when we’re underwater?” you ask, tracing your fingers along the glass curves of the bottle, “What if I drown?”

Jack just shakes his head, “If it’s Azul’s own creation, there’s no way it’d be anything less than perfect. He’s a crafty bastard, but he’s not a murderer.”

You hum an acknowledgement, and step through the portal before Jack can see the disappointment on your face.

Jade and Floyd circle around you with ribbon-long tails and lines of razor fangs. You’re trapped underwater and will lose the closest thing you have to home here if you can’t get past these merciless creatures in their natural habitat. 

And, for some reason, you can’t bring yourself to feel fear. You look upon the jaws of knives that could tear through your flesh, the slate-gray bodies that cut through the water and threaten to squeeze the life out of you, and all you feel is detached awe. Like watching an orca or a dolphin through the shield of aquarium glass.

Is it because you trust Octavinelle to not actually kill you? Is it because you wouldn’t care if they did?

It doesn’t matter.

When you don’t try to dodge every attack that happens to come your way, you hope they chalk it up to you having a slow reaction time.

You form a plan to steal the contracts from the vault and destroy them. You need Leona and Ruggie for it.

You know Leona could simply kick you out if he wanted to—but he wants to destroy Azul’s contracts too, else he wouldn’t have helped this much in the first place.

He just needs an excuse, needs you to make a show of forcing his hand.

So you sing your heart out with Grim while you dance outside Leona’s bedroom. Ruggie looks vaguely horrified, but too amused to actually stop it.

You switch songs mid-line, repeat the same lyrics over and over, fudge your way through melodies you don’t remember all the words to. Grim joins in, not knowing a single word.

Your lungs ache, but it’s been so long since you’ve heard these songs, even if they’re only renditions in your voice instead of the originals.

Singing them makes them feel a little more real. Like they aren’t just figments off your imagination, like someone else, someone in the world you once belonged to, made them. A connection to your world.

You sing louder, and Leona groans into his pillow, loud enough to be heard outside his door.

Azul overblots. Of course he does. Why wouldn’t he?

Jade and Floyd don’t look right with worry on their faces, even if they replace their wide eyes and trembling lips with their signature grins as soon as they notice your gaze on them. And even then—Jade’s smirk is a little too thin, and Floyd’s hands won’t stop fidgeting. 

You keep forgetting that, by your world’s age standards, these are still children. Fantasy anime logic be damned, these hyper-competent mythical creatures are still children.

Azul explodes in ink and writhing limbs, grappling and reaching for power, for untouchability, for worth.

A tentacle happens to land near you, stilling as Azul focuses his attention on the twin morays swimming loops in front of him.

You lay a hand on it. The flesh is cold beneath your palm. Azul’s head whips around, wild eyes locking onto you.

Leona and Jack drag you out of his reach before leaping into the fray, fangs bared.

But Azul’s gaze lingers on you a moment longer, though he makes no move to attack you. 

His eyes look confused and scared and longing.

When was the last time someone has touched him, outside of a handshake or attack?

You don’t miss how Azul tracks your hands as you hang the picture back up. You don’t miss how his lips thin into a grim line. You don’t miss how his hand comes up to his tiny stomach and pushes a little, testing the give of his thin layer of fat and squishy organs.

“If you get rid of all your pictures, even the ones you don’t like,” you say to him, “how will your family remember you when you’re gone?”

He pauses a millisecond too long, “That’s unlikely. I don’t plan on dying anytime soon, and they have plenty to remember me by.”

“Like what?”

“I— my accomplishments. The Mostro Lounge,” his voice raises, gets smoother, like he’s reassuring himself, “My magic and my entrepreneurship. I’m far from forgettable.”

You shake your head. Your eyes meet his, and Azul tenses under the pressure of the sea, “Those won’t matter to your family or friends when you disappear. They’ll want to remember your face, not your deeds.”

His eyes narrow, and he takes a small step back, “And what would you know?”

You’d know too much. You feel the absence of your family and friends and acquaintances and enemies and world in the hollows of your body, vast and cold like the dark of space where starlight doesn’t reach. The only things left from your old life, old self, are fuzzy imprints of faces in your retinas and little voices distorted from remembrance and re-remembrance until you aren’t sure if you’re recalling the actual people or your brain’s interpretation of them. 

You laugh, and it comes out a little more broken than you expected. You don’t remember what your laugh used to sound like anymore.

You aren’t familiar with the face that stares back from the dusty mirror in your dorm room. Its eyes look too empty to be yours. Too worn and beaten to be your face.

You move your hand, and it moves its hand too. You turn your head this way and that, and the lines of its visage follow suit. You clench your eyes shut, and it must be watching you from beyond the glass. Its eyes are dark and pathetic, you want to gouge them out.

It doesn’t look like your face anymore. It can’t be your face.

Will your family recognize you when you go home? Will you recognize them?

“Care for a drink?” Azul smiles, already with a tray of elaborate glasses balanced delicately on his hand, “They’re on the house, tonight.”

“Ooh, gimme the blue one!” Grim is already bouncing in the air.

“Dude, there are like four blue ones,” Ace swats at him, “Yo, Azul! Just give us the most expensive ones!”

Azul’s smile strains. Ace laughs.

“I’m just glad we’re not serving anymore,” Deuce sinks into the plush chair, “My feet hurt just being here.”

“Yes, well,” Azul’s eyes crinkle as he places a fancy drink in front of each of you, “I’m sure we could change that, if you’d like.”

“No, thank you, Azul,” you say, pulling your drink closer to yourself, “and thank you for inviting us.”

“Why, of course!” the customer-service face comes back, full force, “It’s an honor to have you all for the Mostro Lounge’s exclusive reopening celebration.”

“Heyyyy, Azuuuul,” Floyd flops across the back of the chair, “I’m tiiired! I’m gonna get a drink for myself, ‘kay?”

“Are the rest of our guests served, Floyd?” Azul’s free hand flexes at his side.

“Not to worry,” Jade appears, “The Savanaclaw and Heartslabyul tables have been given their complimentary drinks. Everything is ready.”

Aaand there’s the catch, in the fangs of the Octavinelle leaders’ smiles, and in the “Perfect,” Azul croons as he strides back into the kitchen, presumably to set down the remaining drinks before he does whatever galaxy-brain fuckery he has planned for the night.

“Well, that can’t be good,” Ace declares eloquently, before taking a sip through the swirly straw of his drink. He chokes, “Holy shit, that’s sour!”

“It has a lemon slice on top,” you point out, “and it’s obviously not just lemon water.”

“Jeez, don’t be such a baby over a fancy drink,” Deuce says, then spits out his first sip, “Bitter! Why is it so bitter?!”

“You were saying?” Ace’s face is a hilarious split between a vindictive grin and a pained grimace.

“Shut up, Ace.”

“Well, my drink tastes fine!” Grim proclaims.

“You eat rocks, dude, I don’t trust your judgment.”

You crane your head around to survey the room. Everyone else seems to be satisfied with their selections. Ruggie is absolutely demolishing a foot-tall chocolatey parfait, and both Leona and Jack look content with the comparatively modest refreshments in front of them. Riddle is methodically sipping from a strawberry shake, chatting with Trey, who has a pitch-black cold brew sitting in front of him. At the same table, Cater is angling his extravagant fruit parfait under the Lounge’s lights to snap a few dozen Magicam-worthy pics. As soon as he sits back at the table, he swaps his drink for Trey’s.

You cautiously drink your own. It’s bitter and sweet, the cool coffee concoction going down easily with the smooth addition of sweet cream. Did he use special coffee beans for this? It tastes leagues above the stuff you can find in the school cafeteria, when you need something extra to get you through a day you didn’t sleep enough for.

“Bet you’re too much of a wimp to finish your fancy-shmancy baby drink,” Ace is taunting Deuce now.

“As if! I could finish mine ages before you,” Deuce fumes.

Their eyes stay locked a second longer, before they start chugging their drinks as fast as they can without gagging—which doesn’t seem to be very fast, as they both have to slam their drinks down every couple seconds to cough, diving back in as soon as they see the other still going at it.

The lights cut out, and they both cough up the last vestiges of their drinks.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” the dramatic bastard appears under a spotlight, at the same spot he was in when greeting his sea-anemone’d victims just a few days ago, “and allow me to formally thank you again for gracing my humble Lounge with your honored presences.”

He bows, and ignores the silent reception, “Now, in lieu of our previous contract system, we’ve decided to implement a points system—everyone’s drinks tonight count towards it, but keep in mind any drink beyond the first we’ve already generously provided you with will be at full price. Please, feel free to ask me about it later this evening and I will graciously elaborate on our new system! But for now, nevermind all that.”

He snaps his fingers, the crisp sound cutting through the air, and Jade produces a single, black folder. It’s embellished with amethyst lines that remind you of Azul’s overblot tentacles. 

“Now, I’m sure you were all… encouraged … to attend for a very particular offer we advertised,” Azul continues, “A single, reasonable wish, at no cost to you! Anything, from a steady supply of discounted food, to year-long study guides, to potions that would allow you to strengthen your magic or breathe underwater or concentrate for longer periods of time. This level of benevolence is truly comparable to that of the great Sea Witch, no?”

“But, of course, we’re unable to grant these wishes without something in return, else we may risk accumulating blot without a proper contract,” Jade’s face stays ice-frozen in a perfectly cold smirk as he pulls out the contents of the folder: a single golden contract, “So we decided to craft our own little loophole. Instead of requiring any of you to give us your magic or abilities, we’ll simply take our so-called ‘payment’ in the form of offering a single job to one of you.”

Azul’s footsteps echo around the hall as he walks up to—you. Of course. He grins down at you, “I’d like to formally and publicly offer you a prestigious and exclusive position at the Mostro Lounge. In light of recent events, we’ve decided it would be immensely helpful for our humble business to employ a public relations specialist. After careful consideration, we concluded that your proven skills in networking and persuasion make you a perfect fit. It wouldn’t be taxing work on you at all—just go about your daily life, while letting people know about the Mostro Lounge’s deals and events as they are implemented over time. And, should the need arise, we’d be sure to inform you of any extra duties.”

You blink once, twice. All eyes are on you. Your hands are cold around your glass.

“Needless to say, you will be handsomely compensated for your time—in salary and in employee discounts,” Azul receives the contract from Jade, laying it in front of you. The yellow of it reminds you of ducklings or crayon-scribbled suns or the beaten raincoat you’ve had since middle school, “And everyone in this room, including yourself, will receive a wish as soon as you sign your name.”

Your name didn’t fit anymore.

But, after a moment of thought, it makes sense why Octavinelle would single you out. They don’t realize how useless you are, do they? From their perspective, you’ve helped mitigate three separate overblots, formed alliances with both Heartslabyul and Savanaclaw, worked directly under the headmage, gotten even the notoriously lazy Leona to participate in one of your schemes… so on and so forth, you guess. All without magic. All relying on your ability to make the dumbasses of Night Raven College to get their heads out of their asses, or something. Herding cats, the professional.

Maybe they just want you in their servitude to try and find out how you do it. They’ll discard you as soon as they realize it’s just pure luck and bullshittery.

The yellow of the contract reminds you of the wasps. They buzz in the expanse behind your ribs, and there are more larvae and maggots in your veins than there is blood. They now gnaw on your stomach, your lungs, your heart. The ache isn’t something that eases anymore.

You pick up the contract and start skimming the words. Jack groans. Grim peeks over your shoulder.

“Uh, you sure you wanna do this?” Ace loudly whispers, “Like, I appreciate you un-anemone-ing us, but like, I can live without you anemone-ing yourself.”

“Yeah, you don’t have to sign it for us,” Deuce fidgets.

“Oi, crab, mackerel,” Floyd pops up from behind them, prompting them to jump, “Hush hush, let the grown-ups talk.”

You flip to the next page. It’s a long contract. And the ‘reading’ is mostly just for show: you forget what you’ve been reading as soon as you’re halfway through the page. You don’t feel like re-reading.

“Alright,” Riddle stands up, “enough of this. I came to make sure nothing unsavory took place, and I won’t stand by and watch someone sign themselves away for others’ wishes.”

“Yeah, the vibes are seriously out of whack here,” Cater chuckles nervously.

“I get what you mean,” Trey crosses his arms, like he’s uncomfortable, like he’s trying to keep warm, “But it’s not our decision to make.”

“Indeed,” Jade’s smirk carries into his voice, “while you may reap the benefits of this particular contract, you are not involved in the signing of it. I kindly request you do not coerce a potential employee into turning down a job offer.”

You can’t tell if you hear distant thunder, or the low, subconscious growls of the Savanaclaw table.

You look up, “I would get a wish, too?”

Azul looks delighted, like a boulder looks delighted when it sees a small child waiting beneath its tumbling path, “Certainly.”

You put the contract back on the table. You interlock your hands and they do not shake, “What do you have to offer?”

Grim grips onto your shoulder. He’s warm. 

“Anything your heart desires,” Azul returns smoothly. He doesn’t know what you want, does he?

You don’t know what you want, do you?

What are you supposed to ask him to do, send you home when even the Dark Mirror can’t? Ask him to find your family? Ask him to kill you?

The thought makes your blood laugh.

You shrug, and he pauses, “Eh, I’ve never been that great at articulating what I want. Uh… oh, I know! Hey, Jade, can you do your funky little talky thingy?”

“...” his perfectly composed grin slips, just a second, into something unsure, “You… want me to use Shock the Heart on you?”

“Thaaat’s the bitch,” you give two thumbs up.

“What are you doing?” Ace demands, “You’re not supposed to be the one who makes dumb decisions!”

This has been a long time coming, hasn’t it?

“I mean,” you shrug again, dragging Grim along with your shoulders, “it sounds cathartic.”

“Cathartic?” Deuce hisses. 

“Mm,” you smile, “Well, every other housewarden here has had their own fun mental breakdown where they scream out everything that’s been eating at them, why can’t I? I can’t overblot because no magic, so I won’t even put anyone at risk of death.”

Leona’s fangs glint from across the room. You smile harder.

“So, like,” you turn back to Jade, “I can’t promise I’ll actually sign that contract, but if you happen to catch anything I say that you can actually help with, lemme know!”

Unease is drawn into his narrowed, scalpel-sharp eyes. It looks wrong. It looks hilarious.

Jade turns to Azul. Azul nods. Floyd fidgets behind you.

Jade meets your eyes, and looks like he wants to ask if you’re sure. Instead, he says, “Make and hold eye contact with me, or it won’t work.”

You nod, and let your eyes stare into his. Unblinking, like you’re waiting for someone to take a picture.

“Shock the Heart,” and the world narrows into just slate and gold eyes, “What do you desire?”

Your mouth opens—

The wasps and maggots and blood screams—

Your bones are fire and your muscles are ice—

You’re drowning and your lungs are full of lives so deeply alien to you—

The roller-coaster has carried you above the clouds, and you can’t even see the bottom of this hill—

It hurts to think—

“I want to stop existing,” and the roller-coaster drops, “I don’t want to die, necessarily, but I don’t want to live, either.”

Your leg bounces underneath the table. Slate and gold eyes have not moved from your eyes, but you can’t meet them anymore. You drop your head and stare into your drink—the ice is small, melting into the rest of the glass, “It just hurts to be alive. I can’t feel emotions as clearly anymore—I’m not heartless, I feel them! But they’re all fuzzy like I’m looking at them through a pane of fogged up glass. I flip back and forth between anger and sadness and humor and numbness so damn quickly and I’m tired. But I need to keep working—the headmage keeps giving me problems to fix for him and implying he’ll stop paying for my food if I don’t comply. Just breathing and eating is exhausting but I can’t stop. Because I need to stay alive, you know? Because I need to find a way home, I need to make sure my family and friends are okay. I need to let them know I’m okay, or else what? For all they know, I’m dead or worse. How long has it been since I appeared here? Months? Maybe my family’s already had a funeral for my absent body. Maybe everyone I know has already finished working through their grief for me.”

Your lungs are empty. You draw a big, shuddering breath, and cannot stop yourself from continuing, “I haven’t made any progress towards finding a way home, still. I keep searching the library for any sign of what might be a way to my world, but there’s nothing. And Crowley keeps saying he’s searching too, but it’s obvious he isn’t and hasn’t made any progress, but I can’t not believe him, because if he isn’t, what am I supposed to do? If the literal headmage can’t or won’t send me back, how am I supposed to do anything?”

Grim wraps around your shoulders, pressing his weight against your back. He’s warm, so warm. Your voice pitches high, “And everything here—it’s terrifying! I’m not used to magic, still, and the traditions and popular culture of everything here is so different from what I grew up with, like I was dropped into some fantasy nightmare world and some asshole forgot to give me the option to wake up and go back to reality. But literal children can summon natural disasters and fire and any of you could whip out a fancy pen and dismember me on the spot and I’d be helpless to stop it! And that makes it so easy to just try and hop over the edge whenever an episode hits, because anything can kill me. Speaking of which: sorry, Leona.”

“Huh?” his grass-tree-forest-clover eyes are unreadable.

“I totally tried to get you to kill me,” and is Shock the Heart even working anymore? Or are you just rambling now? “Figured you’d would be affected by it the least, since you’re a prince and all and could absolutely sweep a murder charge under the rug. Especially for some magicless commoner without family or legal records beyond a student ID. Not just you, though, so don’t feel too singled out.”

“You didn’t dodge,” Floyd says from behind you, and you almost forgot he was there. His voice sounds too quiet. Is it angry? “I was moving slowly so you’d just get a little scared, Little Shrimpy. And you didn’t dodge.”

“And honestly? I was working on those urges, before I got dropped here,” you ignore him. You can’t handle responding to anyone right now, “I was doing better! Nothing really initially set them off, I just started to numb when I was… I dunno, eight? Seven? Maybe earlier, it’s hard to remember. Pathetic, isn’t it? No single severe traumatic event, I just can’t feel happiness like I should. I’m just… defective. But I was working on it, on rewiring my own thoughts so living didn’t take as much energy, so I could get over fatigue a little quicker. Working on appreciating my family, my friends, my life and support system so I could function. So I can’t die, because I need to get back home to them. Or else, what was it all for?”

You look up, to your side, when you hear stuttered breathing. Ace and Deuce’s faces—you look back down, “I miss them. I’m starting to forget them. Their faces, their voices, their hobbies and personalities. They’re fading. And who am I, if not my parents’ child? Who am I, framed in anything other than my own world? I don’t belong here and it shows, and I don’t know if I’d belong there anymore either. I can barely recognize myself now.”

“And, God, I don’t know if I could handle going home and leaving this place behind forever, anymore,” your hands squeeze together, your nails dig into your own flesh, “I get attached too quickly. I love too deeply. And, honestly? Everyone here—I love. I’ve seen good and bad from all of you, and there’s a lot of each, and I can’t help feeling affection. It’s stupid. I know it’s stupid, and I don’t expect any of you to return it, but I do, and I’d miss you if I went home, too.”

“I can’t die, because I know you’d all be affected by it too, and I need to go home. And I don’t want to live, because it hurts too much. I don’t know how much longer I can take it,” you turn unsteady eyes back up to Azul, “So, I keep fantasizing about not existing at all. No body or memories left behind to hurt anyone, and I don’t have to go on living. It’s the best possible option for someone like me, who doesn’t deserve to live or die.”

And just like that, the wires are cut. The world rushes back into your peripheral vision, a freight train crashing into your skull. Blood rushes back into all of your limbs, boiling in your veins, and the room is closing in on you. The air in your throat suffocates you.

God, what have you done?

Azul’s face is twisted into ugly wrinkles—

Jade’s hand is clasped over his mouth—

Floyd’s hands dig into and tear the cushioning of the seat—

Good going, idiot. You couldn’t have just wished for something like study guides or extra food. You just had to be a little attention whore and make everyone around you uncomfortable. They don’t deserve to have all your problems dumped on them. What were you thinking?

You’ve never seen Cater with a face that blank—

Trey is halfway out of his seat like he wants to reach to you—

Riddle’s face is white-rose pale—

They’ll never want to be around you again. Not now that they know how attached you are, how dependent. Just being in the same room as you will make them uneasy. You were lucky enough to get them to tolerate you in the first place, and now you ruined it.

Fangs peek through Jack’s ajar lips—

You can barely see Ruggie’s ears pressed deeply into wild hair—

Leona’s face is the same as that day in the garden—

Worthless, unlovable, weak, idiotic, trash.

You refuse to even look at Grim and Ace and Deuce.

“Oh, ahaha, uh,” you stumble out of your seat. Grim falls off of you. You feel empty and cold where his absence lies. You force out another fragmented laugh, fragmented smile, “Sorry for killing the mood, uh, I don’t think I’m gonna sign that contract just yet, but, uh, study guides would be nice, for my wish? Yeah, uh, sorry again, I think I’m gonna head back to Ramshackle a little early, thanks for inviting me, haha, sorry.”

Your mouth clams up. Your eyes are burning hot, but you can’t cry on top of everything else. You all but run out of the room.

You don’t hear anyone’s footsteps following you.

Is this relief you feel? Is it disappointment, resignation? Do you feel anything at all?

You hear your name being called, over and over like a beating heart, like your rapidly beating heart out of sync with your too-quick breaths.

You hear it in the voice of you parents, your sibling, your classmates and teachers and Grim—

“Grim?” your words are raspy, “Wha—”

“What’s wrong—no, everything’s wrong, gah—” your vision is blurry, all you see are smears of black night and blue moon.

“Grim,” sandpaper tears through your vocal cords, “Ca-an’t breathe.”

“Huh?! Were you cursed or poisoned or something—no, no, not this too!”

“N-ot poi—” you cough, and it wracks through your body, “Not poison, panic. Can’t—Grim, count.”

“Count?”

“Count to four, then—” you gasp, “Four, seven, eight.”

“What are you talking abo—”

“Please.”

Is his breath coming quick, too? You can’t tell, you can’t hear, then, “One, t–two, three, four.”

You force an inhale.

His voice trembles as he counts to seven, and you struggle to hold the oxygen in your lungs.

Eight, and you blow it out of your mouth, stifling a gasping round of coughs.

He repeats it dutifully. Four, seven, eight. Inhale, hold, exhale, repeat.

You can hear the wind brushing over the overgrown grass of Ramshackle’s field.

“—five, six, seven.”

You can make out the three-pronged tail flicking back and forth anxiously.

“—eight. One, two—”

The scent of rotting leaves and fresh soil permeates the air.

“—three, four.”

The derelict boards of the dorm’s outer walls press into your back, where you’re pressed into a tight ball. Your legs are cramping up.

“—four, five, six, seven, eight.”

You can taste the bittersweet coffee on the back of your tongue.

“Grim,” you breathe, “You can stop now. Thank you.”

You can see his face now. He looks scared.

He floats. No footsteps. Did he follow you all the way here?

“What was that?” his voice is small.

You smile, “Panic attack. Hasn’t happened in a while, but… well. It’s—it’s nothing life-threatening, don’t worry.”

“How long is ‘a while’?” Grim’s eyes are wide, like the ocean, and just as water-glazed, “Did I miss this, too?”

“Hey, hey,” you try to ease him, “None of this is really your fault, it’s just how I am.”

“Don’t you dare try to comfort me right now,” Grim demands. His eyes are bright and blue like fire and tears, “Not when…”

“It’s okay, Grim.”

“No, it isn’t!” he screams, “Stupid, stupid human! When you’re tired, complain! When you’re frustrated, shout! When you’re sad, cry! You’re the Great Grim’s henchman, remember? It’s a great mage’s job to look after his underlings, so… so complain, and shout, and cry, and look after yourself instead of everyone else.”

“If I did that,” you weakly argue, “I’d do nothing but cry.”

“Then do it,” he floats in front of you, holds your face up with kitten paws and forces you to meet his eyes. They’re flame and sapphire and bluebell and sky.

What do your eyes look like, to him?

“Okay,” you say.

And you pull the little magical creature, the little catlike asshole, the first person you’ve met in this world, to your chest and curl around him like a baby’s hand curls around their mother’s finger. His heartbeat presses against yours and he is warm.

His tiny arms stretch to hug as much of your torso as he can manage. You feel wet spots where his eyes lay.

A choked, heaving sob wrenches out of your lungs, and you shatter.

“I don’t see—oh! Deuce, over here!” Ace’s voice sounds a million miles away, from where you’re drifting on the shallow shore between wakefulness and sleep. Your eyes stay glued shut by dried tears.

“Did you find them?”

“Shh, keep your voice down! I think they’re both asleep.”

“I’m not,” Grim’s hushed growl vibrates against your body, his head still tucked beneath your chin. The fires from his ears tickle your tear-streaked cheeks.

Cotton puffs grow in your head as soft waves pull you back into sleep.

The tide recedes, and you feel two pairs of hands unsurely grappling with your limbs, like they’re trying to figure out how to best hold you.

“Grab the legs, I’ll get the arms—no, not like that!”

“What, do you want me to lose my grip?”

“Oi, keep it down, idiots!”

“You’re the loudest one here, Grim!”

The laugh doesn’t reach your lungs. They’ll always argue, through hell or high water, won’t they?

Water drags you back into the sea of sleep. Ebb tide, and you’re being held bridal-style and carefully carried into your dorm room.

“See? I told you I could carry someone all by myself, Ace.”

“Shut up, Deuce,” a huff, “Oi, Grim, where are the extra blankets? I ain’t leaving like this.”

“You can’t sleep on the bed, dumb human. Ramshackle members only!”

“I know already! I’ll do the floor, or something.”

Drift, sleep, wake.

Grim’s blue flames are the only sources of light, casting fluttering shadows around the room. He’s curled on your chest, only separated by the well-worn blanket pulled up to your chin. You turn your head, and Ace and Deuce are on a battered rug, a pile of thin blankets surrounding them. There’s only one still covering them, and they both have a death-grip on it like they’re still fighting over it in sleep.

You see red rims around their eyes. You can’t convince yourself it’s just a trick of the light.

Your head falls back against your pillow with a soft thump. It feels a little thicker than usual—did someone seriously fluff it before putting you to bed?

You breathe a silent laugh, and a tag on the blanket flutters next to your face. They put the blanket on backwards.

Idiots. Stupid, half-witted little idiots.

Grim shifts on your chest. Ace tugs the blanket closer, and Deuce shifts with it, pressing their backs together.

It’s peaceful.

You feel…

Safe.

Smoke digs into your nostrils and yanks you out of an empty bed.

You trip over yourself into the kitchen, freezing at the sight of Deuce holding a pan of ashes high over his head, like they’ll get unburnt if he keeps them far enough away from fire. Ace has his magic pen poised over a seared, waterlogged stove. His sleeves and hair are dripping with water. Grim also seems to have been caught in the crossfire—crosswater?—trying to shake off the wet in his fur by literally shaking, spraying more water around the room.

“Dude, cut it out!” Ace hisses.

Deuce looks like he wants to use the pan to smack him over the head, “It was your bright idea to summon gallons of water to put out one little fire!”

“Little?! That thing was—Grim, seriously, quit it!”

“No! A human like you wouldn’t understand the feeling of water in your fur—I want it out!” he shakes some more.

“Get a towel or something, then!”

“ You get a towel.”

“Fine!” he turns, and yelps when he sees you there.

The room is dead-silent. You raise an eyebrow, “Good morning.”

“Um,” Ace’s eyes are wide. 

Deuce slowly lowers the pan from above his head. There are remnants of egg yolk still visible amongst the black char, “Breakfast?”

A laugh bursts out of your throat. They all jump.

“Jesus Christ!” you cackle harder at the confusion on their faces, “All of you are so fucking dumb!”

You empty your chest in laughter, in sunshine and in the smoke of burnt eggs and the dust of old dorms.

You grab both Heartslabyul boys by the arms and drag them into a hug. It’s far from the most foolish thing you’ve done in the past twenty-four hours, so why not?

You can feel their heartbeats against you. Deuce’s hand trembles around the pan handle. The other, hesitantly, comes to rest on your back. And Ace, not one to be outdone, wraps his arm around you too. His sleeve is still wet. Grim comes to sit on top of your head, getting your hair damp.

“All of you,” you whisper, “are so dumb.”

You aren’t magically healed overnight. No switch is flipped, no missing jigsaw piece is found. The world isn’t wiped clean and made to be easier, nicer. You don’t stop falling into episodes of numbness, of anger, of pain.

What happens is this:

Ace and Deuce walk a little closer to you. Grim has taken to resting on your head, or on your shoulders, letting you run your fingers through his soft fur.

They’ve started to take notice of how your hands shake or your eyes unfocus. One of them, usually Ace, will make a ruckus while the other walks you to one of the many hidden nooks of the school, away from piercing noises and prying eyes. Both Ace and Deuce know the four-seven-eight breathing count, now.

Cater makes social media posts calling out for information on a magicless world called Earth. Some people comment that he’s making it up for attention. He blocks them. Others link books or peer-reviewed articles on the theory of interdimensional travel. He saves and shares them.

Riddle and Trey host unbirthday parties more often. They do not acknowledge any passing comments on how some of the more common foods have changed to be heartier or more easily stored. They do not talk about how some of the ‘leftovers’ seem to go missing from the Heartslabyul kitchens.

Jack stays close to you, ears alert and eyes narrowed, when he catches other students with their hands a little too close to their magic pens. He steps in front of you, like a wall, like armor, when their voices raise over a perceived slight. 

Ruggie ‘accidentally’ slips the wrong ingredient into his cauldron, causing an explosion that interrupts the teacher berating you for using the wrong measurements and creating a potion of the wrong color.

Leona drags you into the quiet shade of the gardens and forces you to ‘shut up and go to sleep’ when your words against students twice your size grow a little too challenging, too abrasive.

Jade and Floyd invite you back to Octavinelle, for a private consultation with their headwarden. They walk on either side of you, like bodyguards escorting royalty.

Azul rips up the contract he offered in front of your eyes. He says it won’t be necessary anymore. He offers a new one, a short one, wherein you are required to come back to the Mostro Lounge once every two weeks to give reports on what you see happening around campus. In return, he will aid in the search of a pathway home. He mentions, offhandedly, that since you will technically be an employee, you will still receive a salary and discounts.

You sign it, and your name doesn’t feel as foreign in your hand.

And you are not home yet. You are not dead yet.

But if you look closely, in the mirror of your dorm room, you think the bags under your eyes are getting a little smaller. You feel less squirming, nauseous pain in the lines of your body and the bottoms of your guts.

This world is not your own. You’re not supposed to be here, you don’t belong here.

But the students at Night Raven College—they don’t care about what they’re supposed to have, where they’re supposed to be.

And by the look of your uniform, by the location of your bed, by the rosters with your name, you are a Night Raven College student, aren’t you?

You’ll go home someday. You’ll die someday.

But for now, for here, you allow the scent of this sun and the presence of these people to wrap softly around your heart and hold you steady.