Webby

“Hmm. I’ll take that.”

Her tone softened just a touch, enough for him to notice. “Rough night?”

He stared at the paused stream, the frozen image of the symposium crowd. “Something like that. Everyone’s there. Thought I’d call a friend.”

“And ended up calling someone better?” she teased.

“Yeah,” he said, a half-smile ghosting over his lips. “Guess that’s one mistake I’ll take credit for.”

“So,” she added, playful again, “You planning to keep me on the line, or was this just an accident waiting to happen?”

He smiled, leaning further back into his chair. “If it’s an accident, it’s my favorite one tonight.”

“Flatterer.”

“Only when it works.”

“...You should come by tomorrow,” Kira said finally. “You sound like you need someone to roll their eyes at you in person.”

He chuckled, the tension easing from his shoulders. “Careful. I might just take you up on that.”

“Good,” she replied, and he could hear the smile in her voice.

Ilias spun slightly in his chair, eyes drifting back to the paused symposium stream glowing on his laptop.

He gestured vaguely at the screen even though she couldn’t see it. “Kira, I need to talk about it. That presentation! I mean — what was that?” He huffed. “I tuned in expecting academic jargon and polite clapping, and instead I feel like I need to rethink my life choices.”

A faint rustle sounded on her end.

Kira hummed. “It was definitely intense.”

“Intense?” he echoed. “Trust me, not a soul in that room was nodding along. The second he walked onstage the entire room just—” he snapped his fingers, searching for the right word. “—he set the room on fire.”

Kira let out a small hum.

Ilias kept going, words speeding up now that he’d started. “Kira, I forgot how to sit normally. I swear I stopped breathing. It wasn’t even anything he said yet, he just stood there and I felt like I witnessed a religious event.”

A faint laugh slipped from her end of the line.

“I’m serious,” he continued. “I tuned in late and thought my stream froze because nobody was moving. But no, it was just a thousand academics collectively having an existential crisis.”

He shook his head, smiling despite himself. “And then he starts talking and casually rearranges reality? No foreplay, no warning—rawdogged my fucking brains out until it turned to sludge and then walked right off.”

Another faint rustle came through the line. Fabric shifting. Someone moving nearby.

Kira hummed again. “Mm.”

Short. Neutral.

He blinked.

“…You didn’t hate it, did you?” he asked, half-teasing.

“No,” she said quickly. “Not at all.”

A beat.

“It was… a lot to take in.”

Careful wording. Measured.

Ilias’ gaze drifted away from the screen as realization slowly clicked into place. The softened tone. The clipped replies. The background movement she wasn’t acknowledging.

He rubbed the back of his neck, voice easing without making a show of it. “Yeah… fair. Probably not ideal bedtime conversation material.”

Kira let out a quiet breath — almost relief. “Probably not.”

He gave a small huff of laughter. “Imagine having to present after that. I’d fake my own disappearance.”

A sudden voice burst loudly through the receiver—

“YOU GUYS CAN TALK ABOUT IT YOU KNOW!”

Ilias jerked the phone slightly away from his ear. “…There it is.”

“I’m serious!” you insisted from somewhere nearby, voice confident in the way people sound when they absolutely are not fine. “I am completely capable of handling a normal academic discussion!”

A pause.

Then, muttered closer to the phone, “I’m not spiraling.”

Kira sighed softly. “You are literally pacing.”

“I am walking thoughtfully!”

He smiled, gentling his tone. “Alright, alright. Let’s save this conversation for another time.”

“So,” she said after a moment, her playful edge returning like she was deliberately steering them somewhere lighter, “tomorrow. You actually coming by, or was that just smooth recovery after dialing the wrong person?”

Ilias let out a quiet breath, staring at the ceiling.

He smiled faintly. “I think I’ll sit this one out.”

A small pause followed. “Symposium energy feels… intense enough from a distance,” he added lightly. “Besides, tomorrow’s kind of their battlefield. I’d just be extra background noise.”

“You? Background noise?” she teased gently.

“Self awareness. Tragic, I know. I’m showing remarkable personal growth.”

A soft laugh escaped her.

“I’ll send moral support remotely,” he continued. “And judgmental commentary afterward. That’s my specialty.”

“Cowardice.” she said, but there was warmth in it.

“Strategic retreat.” he corrected.

Another quiet settled between them, easier now.

“…Get some sleep, Ilias,” she said more softly. “You sound like you need it.”

“Only if you promise the same.”

A small beat passed.

“We’ll try,” she said.

He smiled faintly. “Alright. Good luck tomorrow.”

“…Thanks,” she replied, quieter than before.

Neither of them hung up.

Finally, he said, almost absently, “Hey, Kira?”

“Mm?”

“…Glad I called the wrong number.”

Her laugh came soft through the receiver. “Yeah,” she said. “I’m glad you called the wrong number too.”

The line clicked a moment later.

Kira lowered the phone slowly, the faint echo of his voice lingering a second longer than it should have. For a moment she just sat there on the edge of the bed, staring at the dark screen, the quiet settling back into the room like something returning to its rightful place.

Then—

Footsteps.

Back and forth.

Back and forth.

She lifted her gaze.

You were pacing across the room for what had to be the hundredth time, laptop clutched in one hand, the other moving restlessly as if arguing with invisible critics. Slides reflected faintly across your face each time you turned toward the desk lamp — graphs, equations, highlighted phrases flashing and disappearing with every pass.

“…and if I restructure the third section, then the transition into the model works, but then the conclusion feels premature,” you muttered, barely breathing between thoughts. “Unless I move the comparative framework earlier, but then it sounds like I’m responding to him, which I’m not— I wasn’t— I mean, technically—”

You stopped abruptly, staring at the screen.

Every line looked like something waiting to be dismantled.

You stared at the slide longer than you meant to, the cursor blinking patiently beside the final equation. Yesterday the structure had felt inevitable. A chain of reasoning so tight you could walk from premise to conclusion without once doubting the ground beneath your feet.

Now it felt like scaffolding.

Your fingers hovered over the trackpad.

You didn’t change anything. Couldn’t, without scrapping the entire premise.

Behind you, the mattress creaked softly as Kira shifted, the quiet movement of someone who had been watching you pace long enough to recognize the pattern.

“…You know,” she said after a moment, voice mild, “most people who aren’t spiraling don’t pace holes into carpets.”

“I’m not pacing,” you replied automatically.

“You’ve done twelve laps.”

You huffed under your breath, the faintest hint of a smile tugging at the corner of your mouth before it faded again.

Your attention drifted back to the laptop screen.

The model stared back at you in clean diagrams and confident arrows, the same way it had the first time you’d built it — elegant, self-contained, persuasive in its simplicity.

Except now you knew where the fault line ran.

It was impossible to unsee.

Finally, you said, almost too quietly—

“…Did it sound stupid?”

Kira blinked.

“What?”

“The model.” Your voice stayed level, but something about the way you were staring at the screen gave the question weight. “Before yesterday. When you heard it the first time.”

She looked at you like the question itself offended her.

“No.”

You nodded once, though you hadn’t really expected any other answer.

“He dismantled half the premise in forty minutes,” you said.

The words came out flatter than you intended, drained of the disbelief that had followed you all evening.

“Half the room looked like someone pulled the floor out from under them.”

You could still see it clearly, the way the audience had gone still, the way people stopped shifting in their seats, stopped whispering, stopped pretending they already understood where the argument was going.

Kira studied you carefully.

“You mean he challenged it.”

A quiet laugh slipped out of you, sharp and brief.

“That’s a generous word.”

Your hand tightened slightly on the edge of the laptop.

“He walked in,” you continued, slower now, trying to articulate something that still felt half like a dream, “took the framework everyone’s been building toward for the last five years…”

You gestured vaguely toward the screen.

“…rotated it ninety degrees, and suddenly half the assumptions don’t hold anymore.”

The room felt smaller saying it out loud.

“And tomorrow,” you added, “I’m supposed to stand in front of the same people and explain a model built on those assumptions.”

Silence settled between you.

The desk lamp hummed faintly.

Kira tilted her head.

“…Is that what you’re actually upset about?”

You frowned.

“What?”

“The thesis.”

“Yes,” you said immediately.

But Kira didn’t respond.

She just waited.

And after a moment, the certainty in your voice faltered slightly under the weight of her gaze.

You looked away first.

“…He knew what he was doing,” you muttered.

Her eyebrows lifted.

“Oh?”

Your jaw tightened.

“He didn’t just challenge it,” you said. “He walked me straight toward the conclusion, waited until I followed the logic far enough, and then showed me the part that collapses.”

You closed the laptop with a soft, final click.

The sudden absence of light from the screen left the room feeling dimmer.

“So what was the point?” you said, frustration slipping through now. “Why even help me work through it if the end result was just proving the entire thing unstable?”

The words hung in the air.

Kira watched you carefully, her expression thoughtful rather than sympathetic.

“You think he did that on purpose?”

You let out a breath that sounded almost like a laugh.

“What else would you call it?”

Your shoulders rose and fell once.

“For a few hours yesterday I thought I had something,” you admitted. “Something solid. Something that actually held together.”

Your gaze flicked briefly toward the dark laptop screen.

“And then he just…”

Your hand moved faintly, knocking over an invisible stack of cards.

“…pulled the rug out from underneath.”

The room fell quiet again.

Kira didn’t answer immediately.

When she did, her voice was softer.

“…You’re assuming he was trying to break it.”

You scoffed.

“He did break it.”

“That’s not what I said.”

You looked at her.

Kira rested her chin on her palm again, studying you with the calm patience of someone who had already decided you were being dramatic.

“You said he walked you through the logic first,” she pointed out.

You hesitated.

“…Yes.”

“And you followed it.”

Another pause.

“Yes.”

She shrugged slightly.

“Sounds less like sabotage and more like a conversation.”

You stared at her.

“A conversation that destroyed my thesis.”

“Or one that showed you where it wasn’t finished.”

You opened your mouth to argue.

Nothing came out.

Kira watched the realization move slowly across your face.

“You wrote that model months ago,” she continued gently. “Of course someone was eventually going to push on it.”

She gestured toward the laptop.

“The question isn’t whether he broke something.”

Her eyes met yours.

“It’s whether you’re brave enough to present it anyway.”

The room went very still after that.

You looked down at the closed laptop, fingers resting lightly on the lid as if it might still pulse with the ideas trapped inside it.

Tomorrow was going to arrive whether you were ready or not.

DAY – 2

The morning sessions begin on time.

That, more than anything else, sets the tone.

The symposium hall fills slowly with people arriving in measured waves, neither rushed nor idle, programs already folded, bags placed beneath chairs. There’s no uncertainty in their movements, no visible searching. Everyone seems to know where they belong, or at least how to look like they do.

You take a seat midway down the hall, far enough from the front to avoid attention, close enough that you won’t miss anything important. The chair is comfortable in the utilitarian way of institutional furniture, designed to be sat in for hours without complaint.

The first speaker is good. You recognize that almost at once. The slides are clear, the pacing deliberate. The argument unfolds in careful increments, each premise placed so gently it barely feels like a claim at all. There is nothing to trip over, nothing to resist. The language is familiar: robust framework, within existing constraints, as supported by prior literature. You’ve heard these phrases before, in papers and lectures and review panels. They slot neatly into place, doing their work without drawing attention to themselves.

You take notes anyway, even when you don’t need them. Your pen moves automatically, capturing turns of phrase, references you already know, transitions you could map blindfolded. It isn’t about learning. It’s about staying present.

Anaxagoras’ presentation rearranges itself behind your thoughts, and the line you were writing suddenly looks… wrong. Incorrect, and terribly insufficient. 

Applause.

The second speaker builds directly on the first. Different data set, similar posture. There’s a nod toward novelty early on… a reframing, a minor, albeit illogical shift in emphasis, but it resolves quickly. You can feel the moment where the argument might have stretched further, and then doesn’t. The speaker chooses coherence instead. 

Questions are invited. Hands go up in an orderly fashion. The questions themselves are precise, courteous, phrased almost as affirmations. One senior academic offers a “comment” that is longer than the question itself, gently redirecting the discussion toward familiar ground. The speaker accepts it gratefully.

Applause again.

Between sessions, people stand, turn, lean toward one another in clusters that form and dissolve without friction. You pass close enough to catch fragments: a conference three years ago, a revised chapter, a forthcoming volume everyone already seems to have read.

Senior scholars move through the space without effort. They don’t look for paths; paths open for them. Others adjust instinctively, stepping aside mid-sentence, angling bodies to make room. It makes you realise something. Authority here is not asserted here, it’s assumed.

You note it all with a detached attentiveness that surprises you. 

The third talk begins before the energy has time to fully reset. This one is sharper, more ambitious in scope, and you feel the room lean in by a fraction. The speaker is careful, though. Claims are hedged just enough to remain defensible. Where the argument edges toward uncertainty, it’s quickly scaffolded with citations, softened with acknowledgments of limitation.

You jot down a sentence in the margin of your notes without quite meaning to.

Applause.

By now, the rhythm is unmistakable.

There is an internal grammar to the Grove, a way of speaking that signals belonging as clearly as any credential. Arguments are rewarded for clarity, for restraint, for aligning themselves with the structures already in place. 

Yesterday, you believed you understood where your own work fit inside that grammar.

This morning you are no longer sure the sentence you planned to speak even parses.

By late morning, a panel session gathers three speakers with overlapping themes. Each is given the same amount of time, but not all are careful to respect it. Their disagreements are framed as refinements, extensions, friendly clarifications. No one undermines the foundation. When a younger scholar ventures—an implication that presses a little too hard, the response is kind, even encouraging, but it redirects gently, smoothing the edge until it fits.

The applause that follows is warmest when equilibrium is restored.

You lean back slightly in your chair, pen hovering over the page. You feel calm. Calm in the way that comes from knowing how to operate inside a system.

Competence, you think, is not the same as permission.

At some point, you stop writing altogether and simply watch. The way speakers stand behind the podium, hands resting at nearly identical heights. The way slides favor clean visuals over density. The way the audience hums softly with approval when a conclusion lands exactly where it should.

The Grove runs smoothly. Efficient. Self-sustaining.

You are small inside it, yes—but not lost. You can see the contours now. Where it opens. Where it closes. That awareness feels earned, and it brings with it an unexpected steadiness.

When the morning session finally adjourns for lunch, the room exhales as one. Conversations resume mid-thought, as though they’ve only been paused rather than interrupted. You gather your things without urgency, sliding your notebook into your bag, folding the program along its original crease.

As you stand, you glance once at your name printed there, later in the day, in the same font as everyone else’s. For now, you are an observer. A participant in waiting.

And as you follow the stream of scholars toward the exit, one thought surfaces, insistent:

This place rewards polish.

What it does with something unfinished remains to be seen.

By midday, the rhythm of the Grove had settled.

You move with the crowd toward the common hall, lanyard swinging lightly against your chest. The morning has done its work. Everyone knows where they stand, at least provisionally.

You realize, absently, that you haven’t seen him.

Not properly. Not the way you’d expect someone so central to be visible.

You hear his name, though. It surfaces in conversation with casual frequency, spoken without urgency. Someone mentions a comment he made during an earlier session, another references his position on a panel scheduled later in the week. A junior scholar repeats a phrase—as Anaxagoras has argued—with the reverence of citation rather than recollection.

He exists here as a point of reference.

You glance instinctively toward the front of the hall, the places where attention usually pools. There are senior academics clustered near the long tables, speaking in low voices, their body language relaxed in a way that suggests ownership rather than entitlement. When one of them laughs, the sound carries. Others angle toward it without thinking.

Anaxagoras is not among them.

Instead, people step aside when Hyacine passes, defer questions for later, mention that he’s “between meetings” or “caught up with the committee.” It’s said without frustration, without surprise. His absence feels… structured.

You register it the same way you register everything else today: as information.

The Grove accommodates this kind of distance easily. Power doesn’t need to be visible to be felt. It circulates through schedules and footnotes, through recommendations already given and expectations already set. You’ve watched it operate all morning after all.

Someone near you asks if you’re attending the afternoon session. You nod. They wish you luck, as if luck has ever been a part of the equation. Another voice chimes in—something about how selective the program was this year, how carefully curated. There’s admiration in it, but also reassurance. The system works. It always has.

You hear his name again, followed by an easy assurance: He’s aware of it. Of you, presumably. Of the work. It’s impossible to tell. The pronoun does all the work on its own.

No one looks at you when they say it.

There’s no edge to the realization, no flare of disappointment. Whatever this day is building toward, it feels larger than any single interaction. Larger than presence or absence. The Grove doesn’t revolve around individuals, no matter how influential they are. It absorbs them, integrates them, turns them into reference points.

As you rejoin the flow of bodies moving toward the cafeteria, it occurs to you, without drama, without bitterness, that being recommended doesn’t mean being accompanied.

The thought settles as you square your shoulders and keep walking, one name among many, carried forward by a system that ticks steadily on, blind to the hands that wound it.

For a few steps, nothing changes.

The corridor carries on around you, voices low and even, conversation slipping easily from one cluster to the next. 

You keep pace with it, one step after another, the rhythm familiar now. Predictable in a way that feels almost deliberate.

The Grove does not resist. It receives, and in receiving, it arranges.

You think of the panel again. The way each argument bent, just slightly, at the edges. Not enough to lose its shape. Just enough to rest comfortably beside the others. Even disagreement was guided, softened, returned.

Nothing was allowed to remain unresolved.

Your hand shifts lightly against the strap of your bag.

Unfinished, you’d thought.

Ahead, the entrance to the common hall opens wider, the sound of cutlery and conversation spilling into the corridor. The crowd gathers there, slows, reforms without effort. You follow, then pause without quite meaning to, the motion breaking just enough for the space to move around you.

No one notices, but they don’t need to.

A system like this doesn’t require attention to continue functioning, it only requires coherence.

You glance, briefly, at the people nearest you. The way they speak. The ease with which they fold one another’s thoughts into their own, carrying them forward without disruption. Nothing is dropped. Nothing left hanging.

It should feel reassuring. Instead, something in you hesitates, faint but persistent, like a line drawn just slightly off where it should be. You don’t know when it started, only that it’s there now, threading quietly beneath everything else.

You think of your notes—the language you used, the way each point aligned cleanly with the next. It had felt right at the time. It still does. And yet…

You inhale, slow and measured.

If it could be arranged like that, if it could be placed, examined, adjusted without shifting beneath the process, then it would have settled by now. It would have held.

Your gaze lowers, unfocused. But every time you’ve tried to isolate it—a memory, a pattern, a decision—it hasn’t stayed still. Not in the way the rest of this does. Not in the way it’s expected to. It doesn’t return unchanged.

The thought arrives quietly at first, almost unobtrusive, and then all at once it isn’t, because nothing here accounts for that. Not the panels, not the questions, not the careful way everything is broken down and rebuilt without loss. That assumption sits beneath all of it—that what is taken apart can be put back together again, that understanding does not alter the thing being understood.

Your fingers tighten slightly.

But that isn’t what you’ve been seeing. Not even close.

You straighten, almost without noticing. It isn’t that your work resists completion. It’s that it doesn’t survive being handled that way at all.

The realization settles with a strange, steady clarity. You were trying to make it legible here, that’s all—trying to bring it into alignment with something that depends on stability, on separability, on the quiet assurance that whatever is examined will remain intact.

Your gaze lifts, briefly, to the room ahead—to the movement, the ease, the way everything continues. It works because it can, because nothing in it changes when it’s taken apart.

Yours does.

A small breath leaves you. You don’t move for a moment longer, then, without urgency, you step forward again, letting the crowd take you in.

Nothing outward has changed. Not the room, not the rhythm, not the system you’ve spent the morning learning to navigate. 

But for the first time, the thought of standing up later does not feel like entering the Grove.

It feels like interrupting it.

The corridor opens into a quieter wing, the noise of the common hall fading behind you as the flow of people thins and redirects. Signs are placed at intervals along the walls—session titles, room numbers, arrows that guide without needing to be read twice. You follow them without hesitation, the path already half-mapped from the program folded in your bag.

The room is smaller than the main hall. Not intimate, exactly, but contained. Rows of chairs arranged in clean lines, a podium set just off-center, a projection screen already lowered. A technician stands near the console, speaking in low tones to one of the earlier presenters, adjusting something on the laptop with practiced efficiency.

You step inside, pausing only long enough to confirm the session number against the printed sheet posted by the door. Your name sits where you expect it to, unremarkable in its placement, identical in font and size to the others. No distinction. No emphasis.

It feels appropriate.

You take a seat near the side, not too far forward, placing your bag beneath the chair with a small, deliberate motion. Around you, people settle in with the same quiet assurance you’ve seen all morning—papers unfolded, devices opened, brief exchanges that taper off as the session prepares to begin.

At the front, the current speaker adjusts the microphone, tapping it once, lightly. The sound carries just enough to confirm it’s working. A slide flickers into place behind them—clean, minimal, already formatted to expectation.

You watch.

Not the content, not at first, but the structure of it. The way the speaker begins with a framing statement, broad enough to hold, narrow enough to guide. The way each point follows with measured clarity, each transition smoothing the edge of the last before moving forward. There’s a rhythm to it—predictable in its progression, reliable in its resolution.

When uncertainty appears, it doesn’t linger. It’s acknowledged, contained, redirected. A limitation noted, a boundary drawn, the argument closed neatly around it.

Questions, when they come, follow the same pattern. Precise, courteous, shaped to invite clarification rather than disruption. Even the challenges resolve quickly, guided back toward agreement with a kind of practiced ease.

You recognize it now without effort.

Not just structure.

Constraint.

The system doesn’t resist deviation. It absorbs it, adjusts it, returns it in a form that can be held without strain.

Another speaker takes the podium. Similar cadence. Different data, the same underlying movement. You don’t need to follow every detail to see where it will land.

It always lands.

Your hand rests lightly against the edge of your notebook, but you don’t open it. There’s nothing left to adjust there that belongs to this space.

Nothing in your posture changes. Your notes remain closed. Your expression, if anyone were looking, would offer nothing to read.

At the front, the current speaker concludes, the final slide summarizing their argument in clean, concise terms. The moderator thanks them, voice warm, measured, already moving the session forward.

The final speaker concludes without strain, their last point settling neatly into place. Applause follows; measured, consistent, already thinning at the edges as the session draws itself closed.

Then Cerces rises.

The shift is immediate, though nothing about it is abrupt. Attention gathers rather than turns, drawn toward her with the same inevitability that has governed the morning. She steps to the podium as though it has been waiting for her, the previous presence dissolving without resistance.

“Thank you,” she says, her voice clear, carrying without effort, each word placed with deliberate care. “We’ve spent the morning tracing the limits of what can be established, supported, and sustained within our current frameworks.”

She pauses.

Her gaze lowers briefly to the program in her hand, though it’s difficult to tell whether she’s reading or simply marking the transition.

“This afternoon, we extend that work. Not by reinforcing what has already proven stable,” she adds, “but by examining what has yet to resolve.”

The distinction lands without emphasis.

“Student presentations,” she says, and this time the phrase is precise, contained, placed carefully within the structure she’s just outlined.

Her eyes lift.

They move across the room once, measured, unhurried. 

Until, briefly, they rest on you.

It isn’t recognition in any conventional sense. There is no warmth in it, no visible curiosity.

Only a kind of exacting attention. As though noting position. She looks back to the program.

You step off the aisle before the path can fully close around you, moving toward the narrow partition at the side of the stage. Up close, it’s less a barrier than a suggestion, just enough to separate what happens before from what is meant to be seen.

The technician is already there.

He glances up as you approach, recognition immediate, his hand moving toward the console without pause. Cables are arranged neatly across the table, the session laptop open, cursor blinking on a blank input screen.

“Slides?” he asks, already half-turned.

You shake your head once. “No slides.”

There’s a flicker of confusion—brief, almost imperceptible before he nods and adjusts something on the board.

“Alright. Mic, then.”

He steps closer, efficient, clipping the microphone just below your collar. The wire settles lightly against your skin, cool for a second before you stop noticing it. He leans back, listening through his headset, one hand raised slightly.

“Give me a word.”

You glance past him, through the narrow gap in the partition. The current speaker is finishing, voice even, contained, their final sentence already resolving itself into something that will hold.

You turn back.

“Good afternoon.”

Your voice carries cleanly. The technician watches the levels, makes a small adjustment, then nods once.

“You’re set.”

He moves away immediately, attention already elsewhere, the space returning to its quiet, functional stillness.

You remain where you are.

From here, the room is framed differently. The audience sits in alignment, their attention fixed forward, unaware of the small calibrations happening just out of view. The session continues without interruption, seamless, self-sustaining.

A step behind you shifts the air, light, unguarded.

“You don’t look nervous.”

The voice carries a hint of brightness, almost conversational, as though the observation has just occurred to her and she’s decided to say it out loud.

You turn.

Hyacine stands just at the edge of the partition, hands loosely clasped behind her back, leaning forward a fraction as if she’s stepped in mid-thought rather than with any particular intention. There’s an easy energy to her, something uncontained in the way she holds herself, her smile quick to appear and quicker still to soften.

“I mean that as a compliment,” she adds, the smile widening briefly. “Most people do. At this point, I mean.”

You hold her gaze for a moment.

There’s nothing complicated in it. No weight. Just a kind of open curiosity, the sort that doesn’t expect anything in return.

“I’m not,” you say.

The answer comes simply.

“Oh,” she says, eyebrows lifting just slightly, like that wasn’t quite the response she’d anticipated. “Well—that’s good. That’s very good.”

She nods once, as if confirming it for herself.

“Still,” she continues after a beat, tilting her head a little, “if you are, later, or suddenly, or halfway through—” she gestures vaguely, as though the specifics don’t matter “—it’s normal. Everyone does something strange at least once. They recover.”

There’s a small, almost apologetic laugh in it, like she’s aware that isn’t the most reassuring phrasing, but offering it anyway.

You feel your expression soften, just slightly.

“Thank you,” you say, and you mean it.

She brightens at that, the response landing more easily than whatever she’d been preparing to say next.

Her gaze drifts past you then, not with intent, just following movement on the stage as the current speaker begins to wrap up. Applause flickers faintly at the edges, not yet fully formed.

“Oh,” she adds, almost as an afterthought, turning back, “and—don’t worry about matching them exactly.” She gestures lightly toward the room. “They’ll follow. Or they won’t. Either way, it’s not—” she pauses, searching briefly for the right word, then settles on something simpler “—it’s not as rigid as it looks.”

The statement is offered with an easy confidence, unburdened by the need to prove it.

You nod once.

“I know.”

There’s no edge to it. No correction. Just agreement.

She studies you for half a second—not deeply, not analytically, just long enough to register that you mean it—and then smiles again, softer this time.

“Good,” she says.

On the other side of the partition, the speaker finishes. Applause rises—measured, already settling as the moderator steps forward again.

Hyacine straightens, the shift in the room pulling her attention back with it.

“Well,” she says, stepping aside with a small, almost exaggerated gesture to clear your path, “that’s your cue, then.”

There’s something lightly encouraging in it, uncomplicated.

You incline your head.

“Thank you.”

“Anytime,” she replies, already half-turned away, as though the interaction has fulfilled its purpose the moment it’s been offered.

She slips back into the room without ceremony, her presence dissolving into the broader movement of the space as easily as it appeared. 

By the time Hyacine disappeared through the curtains and the murmur of the symposium swallowed the sound of her footsteps, you had almost succeeded in convincing yourself that the conversation no longer mattered.

Almost.

The trouble with humiliation, you discovered, was that it rarely survived scrutiny and yet remained stubbornly present regardless. Every objection you raised against your own reaction was entirely reasonable. Professor Anaxagoras was occupied. The symposium schedule had been relentless from the moment the keynote concluded. Delegating a message to an assistant was neither unusual nor discourteous. There existed a dozen perfectly rational explanations for his absence, and you had spent the better part of an hour constructing every one of them with the same careful precision you ordinarily reserved for proofs.

Unfortunately, reason possessed remarkably little authority over disappointment.

The realization irritated you far more than the disappointment itself.

By any sensible standard, nothing had happened. An assistant had offered encouragement before a presentation. That was all. To interpret the exchange as rejection required a degree of self-importance you found faintly embarrassing. You knew that. You knew it with the same certainty you knew the mathematics folded neatly inside the folder beneath your arm. Yet every attempt to dismiss the feeling seemed only to sharpen it into something quieter and more persistent.

He couldn't even come himself.

The thought surfaced again, unwelcome in its familiarity.

Petty.

Unfair.

Persistent.

You closed your eyes for the briefest moment, exhaling slowly through your nose until the tightness behind your ribs loosened by a fraction. This was absurd. Whatever existed between you and Professor Anaxagoras — intellectual rivalry, reluctant mentorship, mutual curiosity, or merely an unfortunate habit of unsettling one another had no bearing whatsoever on the paper you were about to present. The work had existed before yesterday's lecture. Before this symposium.

It deserved better than to become collateral in an argument that neither of you had been willing to finish.

Beyond the curtain came the muffled cadence of Cerces' voice, warm and measured even through layers of heavy fabric. Another presentation was drawing to its conclusion. Polite applause followed, swelling briefly before dissolving into the familiar murmur of shifting chairs and quiet conversation. Someone crossed the stage on the opposite side of the partition, their footsteps fading into the wings before a stagehand offered a whispered instruction that you couldn't quite make out.

You adjusted the folder beneath your arm more out of habit than necessity. The pages inside were immaculate, every equation where it belonged, every transition rehearsed until it no longer required conscious thought. You had rewritten portions of the introduction well past midnight, not because the theory itself had changed but because the language had. Sometime between leaving yesterday's lecture and arriving this morning, your need to answer Anaxagoras had quietly dissolved. In its place remained something colder.

You no longer wished to refute his conclusion.

You wished to ask a different question.

A stagehand caught your eye from the edge of the curtain and gave a small nod.

Two minutes.

You returned it automatically.

The applause beyond the curtain rose once more before gradually settling into silence. Cerces began speaking again, her voice clearer now that the hall itself had grown still.

"...our final presentation before the afternoon recess."

Your pulse quickened—not dramatically, but with the steady insistence of a body recognizing the threshold before the mind chose to acknowledge it.

You rolled your shoulders once, smoothing an invisible crease from the sleeve of your jacket. The movement felt oddly grounding, something ordinary amidst the relentless abstraction of the past twenty-four hours.

Whatever happened after you stepped onto that stage would belong to the symposium.

Everything before it belonged only to you.

Cerces spoke your name.

You drew a single measured breath, then stepped through the curtain.

The applause met you as you stepped into the light, polite in the way symposium applause always was—measured, restrained, already fading before you reached the lectern. You scarcely heard it. The hall seemed larger from the stage than it ever had from the audience, the rows of seats rising in neat semicircles until they disappeared beneath the gallery, each occupied by scholars whose names had appeared in journals you had cited long before imagining you might someday present before them.

You placed your folder upon the lectern with deliberate care. The leather was cool beneath your fingertips. Beside it sat a glass of water someone had thoughtfully prepared between presentations, untouched except for the condensation gathering around its base. You resisted the impulse to reach for it. Your hands had nowhere useful to be except where they already rested.

The applause dissolved.

Silence followed.

The kind cultivated over decades within lecture halls and conference rooms, where every person present understood that the first sentence often determined whether the next forty minutes would be endured politely or remembered long afterwards.

You looked up.

It was impossible to distinguish individual faces beyond the first few rows. The auditorium lights obscured them just enough that the audience became less a collection of people than a single attentive presence. Here and there, a notebook opened. Someone adjusted a pair of glasses. A laptop screen dimmed before disappearing altogether.

Hyacine sat where she always seemed to, somewhere close enough to offer reassurance without drawing attention to herself. When your eyes passed briefly over her, she smiled—not brightly, not encouragingly, but with the quiet confidence of someone who had already decided you belonged here.

Beyond her—

No.

You stopped yourself before your gaze could travel any farther.

It didn't matter where he was standing, nor did it matter whether he was watching.

It didn't matter whether he'd chosen, once again, to remain nothing more than a distant silhouette at the edge of your vision.

The paper existed independently of him.

It always had.

You had simply forgotten.

Kira had claimed a seat in the very first row long before the hall had begun to fill, positioned directly in your line of sight as though daring the universe to make her miss a single second of this moment. She sat perched on the edge of her chair, hands clasped together beneath her chin, practically vibrating with excitement.

The instant your gaze swept across the audience and found her, her face lit up. She offered an enthusiastic wave before catching herself, lowering her hand only slightly as if remembering this was a formal symposium and not a celebration she had personally organized. The effort lasted all of three seconds. Her smile remained impossibly wide, pride shining openly in her eyes.

Among the gathered academics, researchers, and guests, Kira looked entirely unconcerned with maintaining a scholarly image. To her, the most important person in the room was already standing on the stage.

When the nervousness threatened to creep in, it was difficult not to notice the way she nodded at you from her seat, a silent You've got this!

That was all you needed.

You reached for the first page of your notes, then paused.

No.

Closing the folder again, you left it where it was.

The introduction had long since ceased to require paper.

You already knew the first sentence.

More importantly, you knew why it had to be the first sentence.

Taking a slow breath, you let your gaze settle—not on any individual, but somewhere above the audience, where every listener might imagine themselves being addressed.

"When we ask what it means to remain the same person over time," you began, your voice carrying evenly through the hall, "we rarely notice that the question has already chosen its answer."

A few heads lifted.

Good.

"The history of identity has been written largely as a history of persistence. We ask what survives change, what remains untouched by experience, what property endures while every observable characteristic gradually transforms around it. Whether that enduring property is called a soul, a pattern, or an informational state matters surprisingly little."

You turned, picking up a piece of chalk.

"In every case..."

The first word appeared upon the board in crisp white letters.

IDENTITY

"...identity is treated as something that exists before the question is asked."

You set the chalk down.

"I should like to suggest another possibility."

The hall became so quiet that the faint scrape of your sleeve against the lectern seemed momentarily audible.

"Perhaps the difficulty does not lie in our answers."

A measured pause.

"Perhaps..."

Your eyes drifted, almost absentmindedly, toward the single word behind you.

"...it lies in the question itself."

"For the better part of two millennia," you said, "our discussions of identity have begun from a remarkably consistent premise. Change is regarded as the phenomenon requiring explanation; identity is treated as the constant against which that change is measured. Whether one attributes that constancy to an immortal soul, to continuity of consciousness, or more recently to the persistence of informational structure, the underlying architecture of the problem has remained largely unchanged."

As you spoke, you moved away from the lectern, not with the restless pacing of someone attempting to command attention, but with the measured confidence of someone tracing the outline of an idea already complete in their own mind. The stage offered more space than you needed. You occupied only a small corner of it.

"In each case," you continued, "identity is understood as something that exists independently of transformation. Transformation may obscure it, enrich it, even threaten it—but identity itself remains the object whose persistence we seek to explain."

You turned, taking up a piece of chalk once more.

Beneath IDENTITY, you drew a horizontal line.

Below it, carefully, you wrote:

Persistence through change

The chalk clicked softly against the tray as you set it aside.

"This formulation has proved extraordinarily productive," you admitted. "It has given us theological models, legal models, psychological models, and increasingly sophisticated computational models. I do not intend to dismiss any of them. Each succeeds in describing an important aspect of human continuity."

Several members of the audience nodded almost unconsciously. A philosopher in the second row uncapped his pen. Somewhere farther back, the faint tapping of keys resumed before stopping just as abruptly.

You noticed these things only in passing. Years spent in lecture halls had taught you that attention possessed a rhythm of its own. It shifted almost imperceptibly through a room, gathering around an argument when it sensed that argument was going somewhere unexpected.

"The difficulty," you said, "is not that these models are incorrect."

You paused.

"It is that they all begin from the same ontological commitment."

There it was.

A handful of brows furrowed.

Good.

"The assumption is rarely stated explicitly, perhaps because it appears so self-evident that stating it feels unnecessary."

You looked toward the board.

"It is simply this."

Picking up the chalk again, you wrote another phrase beneath the first.

Identity is a state.

You stepped back.

"If identity is a state, then every meaningful question follows naturally. Which state? How is it preserved? Can it be copied? Can it be damaged? Can it be restored? Entire research programmes have emerged from those questions, and with good reason."

The room remained still.

"No one asks whether the premise itself is true."

You let the silence answer for you.

"Suppose, for a moment, that it is not."

The sentence was delivered without emphasis. You might have been suggesting an alternative proof to a familiar theorem.

"Suppose identity is not something that exists at a particular instant."

You folded your hands loosely before you.

"Suppose it is not a substance."

Another beat.

"Nor a configuration."

You looked across the audience, allowing your gaze to settle nowhere in particular.

"Suppose identity is not something that is..."

"...but something that occurs."

You saw it first in the front rows. Pens that had been moving continuously slowed. One attendee leaned back instead of forward, as though creating enough distance to see the argument in its entirety. Cerces, seated at the centre of the panel, had ceased annotating the programme some moments ago. Her attention rested fully upon you now, her expression unreadable save for the slight narrowing of her eyes that always accompanied genuine curiosity. You continued before anyone had time to settle on an objection.

"The distinction appears semantic."

A faint smile.

"It is not."

"If identity is a state, then it may reasonably be described by examining the present."

You lifted one hand, sketching the thought in the air as though arranging invisible pieces.

"A sufficiently complete description of the current system ought, at least in principle, to tell us everything there is to know about the identity of that system."

You let that remain.

No one objected.

"Conversely..."

You allowed the word to hang for the briefest moment.

"If identity is an occurrence..."

"...then no description of the present, however complete, can ever be sufficient."

A murmur, barely audible, rippled through the middle rows.

"Because occurrences are not defined by where they are observed."

Your gaze drifted to the single word on the board.

"They are defined by how they come to be."

The words settled over the auditorium with a stillness that was neither agreement nor dissent. It was the peculiar silence reserved for lecture halls, where conclusions were rarely accepted as they were spoken, but carried forward, examined from unexpected angles, and quietly measured against years of accumulated certainty. Here and there, pens resumed their movement across paper with renewed purpose. Elsewhere they remained suspended above untouched notebooks, their owners apparently content to postpone recording the argument until they understood the shape it intended to take.

There was little value in advancing before the previous thought had been given room to settle.

Returning to the lectern, you reached almost absently for the glass of water that had remained untouched since the beginning of the lecture. The condensation had gathered into a pale ring upon the polished wood, cool against your fingertips as you lifted it. You drank only enough to ease the dryness in your throat before setting it down with the same quiet precision.

Cerces remained motionless, her itinerary abandoned entirely now. One hand rested lightly against her chin, her expression composed save for the slight narrowing of her eyes that invariably accompanied genuine intellectual curiosity. Aglaea sat with the same immaculate posture she had maintained throughout the morning, revealing nothing of her thoughts beyond the unwavering steadiness of her attention.

Your gaze continued almost without intention.

Near the back of the auditorium, where the final row dissolved into the stone colonnade, Professor Anaxagoras stood with one shoulder resting lightly against the pillar behind him. He had not taken a seat. His expression, as always, yielded almost nothing.

You looked away before your thoughts could.

The chalk felt reassuringly familiar between your fingers as you turned back towards the board. There was a certain comfort in ideas. They possessed the decency to proceed from their assumptions without concealment.

"If the present is insufficient," you said, drawing a single line beneath the last sentence already written upon the slate, "then the difficulty lies not with observation, but with the object we have chosen to observe."

You wrote only one symbol.

H

Nothing more.

Unlike the notation that had preceded it, this one seemed almost conspicuously incomplete. A few members of the audience frowned, perhaps expecting an equation to follow. None appeared.

"I shall call this history."

You stepped away from the board before anyone had time to mistake the symbol for something more technical than you intended.

"I do not use the word in its ordinary sense. I do not mean biography, chronology, or memory. Those are all attempts to preserve the past. They tell us what happened."

Your gaze moved slowly across the room.

"I am interested in something rather different."

The chalk rested loosely between your fingers.

"I am interested in what each event leaves behind."

The distinction was subtle enough that several listeners hesitated before writing it down.

"When we speak of experience, we often imagine that it accumulates. One event follows another until, after enough years have passed, we possess what we call a life. It is an appealing image because it treats experience as though it were something that could simply be added together."

You shook your head almost imperceptibly.

"I do not believe experience accumulates."

The sentence arrived without emphasis.

"I believe it transforms."

No one interrupted.

"The difference matters."

You took a slow step away from the board, your voice remaining measured, almost conversational.

"A joyful childhood and a difficult childhood are not simply two different collections of memories. They produce two different ways of encountering the same world. The event itself eventually belongs to the past. The person to whom the next event occurs does not."

"In other words, experience does not merely enlarge the self."

Your hand rose briefly, not to illustrate, but almost to weigh the words as they were spoken.

"It changes the conditions under which every future experience will be understood."

It was no longer the silence of listeners waiting politely for a conclusion. It possessed the slower quality of collective thought, as though the room itself had begun turning the idea over before deciding whether to accept it.

You could see it happening in small, almost involuntary gestures. A philosopher in the second row lowered his pen without seeming to notice. Someone farther back, who had typed steadily since the lecture began, closed the lid of his laptop altogether. Cerces had not moved, though the thoughtful crease between her brows had deepened almost imperceptibly.

You continued before anyone could mistake reflection for agreement.

"If that is true, then identity cannot be something that merely survives transformation."

Your eyes returned briefly to the word written alone at the top of the board.

"It must also be something that is continually produced by it."

For the first time since beginning the lecture, you allowed the possibility to stand on its own, resisting the temptation to defend it immediately. A proposition offered too quickly with its proof often sounded like advocacy. Left alone for a moment, it acquired the far quieter authority of a question whose answer had not yet been decided.

The proposition remained suspended between you and the audience for several moments, not because it demanded theatrical effect, but because there was no advantage in supplying the conclusion before the premise had been allowed to establish itself. Years spent moving through lecture halls had taught you that understanding possessed its own pace. An argument advanced too quickly ceased to persuade, not because it lacked coherence, but because it denied its listeners the opportunity to arrive alongside it.

"The distinction," you continued at last, "may appear slight."

Your fingers turned the piece of chalk almost absently before setting it back upon the tray.

"I do not believe it is."

"If history merely explained how a present state had come into existence, we would have gained very little. We would possess a more satisfying narrative, certainly, but identity itself would remain exactly where we first assumed it to be—in the present, waiting to be described."

You paused only long enough to let the implication emerge.

"I am suggesting something stronger."

There was no movement across the auditorium beyond the occasional quiet scratch of a pen.

"— Because history does not simply lead to identity."

You looked once more towards the audience.

"It constitutes it."

The sentence settled into the room without resistance. It was not yet controversial. It was still close enough to familiar ways of thinking that most listeners could accommodate it without disturbing their existing assumptions.

You suspected that would not remain true for very long.

"When we speak of transformation," you continued, "we often imagine a subject upon which transformation acts. There is a person; something happens to that person; afterwards, the person possesses one additional experience."

The rhythm of your speech remained measured, almost conversational.

"It is an intuitively appealing picture."

Your gaze drifted briefly towards the board before returning again.

"It is also a remarkably static one."

The chalk traced a slow line beneath the notation already written there.

"It assumes that transformation is external to identity. That experiences accumulate around a self whose continuity has, in some sense, already been secured."

You shook your head almost imperceptibly.

"I believe the relationship is the reverse."

Silence returned—not uncertain this time, but attentive.

"The significance of an experience does not lie solely in the fact that it occurred."

Your hand came to rest lightly against the edge of the lectern.

"It lies in the fact that, having occurred, every subsequent experience is encountered by someone who has already been altered by it."

The observation was almost painfully ordinary.

Perhaps that was why it carried so much force.

"It follows that no experience remains isolated."

You allowed your eyes to move slowly across the hall.

"Each transformation quietly alters the conditions under which the next transformation will be understood. What follows is therefore never experienced by the same person who would have encountered it before."

Only now did you turn once more towards the board.

"The history of a person is not a sequence of events attached to an otherwise complete identity."

The chalk rested once again between your fingers.

"It is the continuous alteration of the very perspective through which every subsequent event acquires its meaning."

You allowed the silence to settle before turning once more towards the board. Until now, the symbols you had written had served only as placeholders, reminders that the language of philosophy would eventually have to submit itself to the discipline of formal description. There was little value in introducing mathematics before the idea it represented had become intelligible.

The chalk rested lightly between your fingers.

"If we wished to express this formally," you said, "we might begin with the simplest possible description."

Beneath the existing notation, you wrote,

Sₜ

"A state."

You did not elaborate immediately.

"A description of a system at a particular moment. Nothing more, and nothing less."

A second symbol appeared beside it.

Hₜ

"And what I have called its history."

You stepped back, allowing both symbols to remain visible.

"If identity were adequately described by the present, then we should expect it to depend only upon the current state."

With a few deliberate strokes, you completed the expression.

Identity = F(Sₜ)

"There would be nothing particularly controversial about such a model. Whatever a person is, we would expect to find it here."

The chalk tapped lightly against Sₜ.

"If our description became sufficiently complete, then identity itself ought eventually to reveal itself as one more property of the present."

You allowed the proposition to stand exactly as those in the audience would already have recognised it.

"I do not believe that is what we observe."

Returning to the board, you drew a single line through the expression—not dramatically, merely enough to indicate that it had become insufficient.

"Because the present never arrives alone."

The sentence was almost conversational.

"It arrives having been shaped by every transformation that preceded it."

You rewrote the expression beneath the first.

Identity = F(Hₜ)

The equations remained upon the board.

You regarded them for a moment before setting the chalk lightly against the tray.

"A theory," you said, "earns its place not because it introduces unfamiliar language, but because it explains something that older language cannot. If this revision is meaningful, then it should change more than our vocabulary. It should change the conclusions we are prepared to draw."

Taking up the chalk once more, you cleared a space beneath the existing notation.

"There is a familiar thought experiment that has appeared in one form or another throughout philosophy of mind. Imagine two systems whose present states are perfectly identical."

You wrote,

Sa = Sb

"They possess the same memories, the same dispositions, the same measurable characteristics. However carefully we examine them, every observation yields the same result. By every criterion available to the present, they are indistinguishable."

The chalk moved again.

Ia = Ib

"If identity depends entirely upon the present state, this conclusion follows without difficulty. There is no property by which the two systems may be distinguished, and so there is no reason to regard them as different individuals. The model is internally consistent."

You stepped back, allowing the equations to remain visible.

"It is also incomplete."

Returning to the board, you added a third expression beneath the first.

Ha ≠ Hb 

"The two systems may occupy the same state while possessing fundamentally different histories. One arrives there through a continuous sequence of lived transformations. The other arrives there through replication. Their present condition may be identical, but the processes that produced that condition are not."

You let your gaze travel slowly across the auditorium before writing the final line.

Ia ≠ Ib

"The conclusion changes immediately. Not because we have discovered a new property hidden somewhere within the present, but because we are no longer asking the present to answer a question it cannot answer."

The room remained remarkably still. Several audience members had stopped taking notes altogether, their attention fixed instead upon the progression of equations accumulating across the board.

"The distinction is not between two observable states," you continued. "It is between two histories. The present tells us what a system is. History tells us how that system became capable of being what it is. If identity is constituted by that history, then identical outcomes need not imply identical identities."

You rested the chalk against the tray once more.

"This is precisely where the state-based model reaches its limit. It can establish that two systems are indistinguishable in the present, but it possesses no language for distinguishing between identical outcomes produced by different transformations. Once identity is understood as history-dependent, that distinction is no longer invisible. It becomes the very thing the theory is intended to describe."

"Put more simply," you said, "none of us would mistake our present selves for the people we were ten years ago. We think differently, value different things, and understand the world in different ways. Yet we do not conclude that we have become someone else. We recognise a continuity, not because some unchanging state has survived untouched, but because every version of ourselves arose from the one before it."

You let the equations remain on the board a while longer before turning back to the audience.

"The distinction has another consequence."

Your voice remained measured.

"We often speak of memory as though it were the foundation of identity. It is not difficult to understand why. Our memories provide the most immediate evidence that our past belongs to us."

You folded your hands loosely before you.

"But memory is not history."

A few pens resumed their movement.

"It is a record of transformation, and like every record, it is incomplete. It fades. It distorts. It reconstructs itself each time it is recalled."

You glanced briefly towards the equations.

"Consider a patient who has lost years of autobiographical memory. We do not conclude that a new person has appeared simply because recollection has been interrupted. The individual continues to reason, to respond, and to encounter the world as someone whose past has already shaped them, even if they can no longer describe that past."

You paused just long enough for the implication to settle.

"The transformation remains, even when the memory does not."

The room had grown noticeably quieter.

"This is because history does not reside in recollection. It resides in the system that recollection has already changed."

You began walking slowly across the stage.

"The same principle governs experiences far more ordinary than neurological injury."

Your gaze drifted over the audience.

"Consider the person you were ten years ago."

No one moved.

"The disappointments that seemed insurmountable then, the friendships you believed permanent, the ambitions you carried without question—many of them have changed. Some have disappeared entirely."

Your expression remained thoughtful rather than nostalgic.

"You do not merely possess memories of those experiences. You have been altered by them. The person who encounters the world today does so through dispositions, expectations, and habits that those experiences helped produce."

You rested one hand lightly against the lectern.

"This is why experience cannot be understood as something that accumulates beside identity, like pages added to a completed manuscript."

A faint smile touched your expression.

"It rewrites the manuscript as it is being written."

Several members of the audience looked up from their notebooks.

"A first failure does not simply become another memory. It changes how later risks are judged. Grief alters the meaning of future attachments. Love changes the standards by which affection is recognised. Every significant transformation quietly reshapes the perspective through which subsequent experiences will be interpreted."

You allowed your gaze to settle briefly on the word IDENTITY still written across the top of the board.

"The event itself passes."

Your voice remained calm.

"The transformation it leaves behind does not."

"The difficulty, of course," you said, taking up the chalk once more, "is that intuition alone is an unsatisfactory foundation for a theory. If history truly constitutes identity, then we must be able to describe what we mean by history with greater precision."

Beneath the existing equations, you wrote,

Hₜ = {T₁, T₂, ..., Tₙ}

The notation occupied only a small corner of the slate, though several members of the audience immediately began copying it into their notebooks.

"I do not use history to mean a chronology of events," you said. "Chronology merely tells us what happened. Two people may witness the same event, at the same time, and emerge from it fundamentally differently."

You drew a line through the word events in your notes at the edge of the board before writing another beside it.

Transformations

"History, in the sense I intend, is a sequence of transformations. Each T represents not an occurrence in the world, but the change that occurrence produces within the system itself."

You stepped back from the board.

"This distinction is essential. Events belong to the world. Transformations belong to the individual."

A thoughtful murmur passed through the auditorium.

"The same bereavement may leave one person withdrawn and another resolute. The same success may foster confidence in one individual and complacency in another. If we define history only by external events, those lives become indistinguishable. Plainly, they are not."

The chalk moved again.

Sₜ₊₁ = T(Sₜ)

"A present state does not simply succeed the one before it," you continued. "It is produced from it. Every transformation acts upon an already transformed individual. There is no neutral observer waiting beneath experience. Each new state inherits every alteration that preceded it."

Without hurrying, you added a second expression.

Hₜ₊₁ = Hₜ ∪ {Tₜ₊₁}

"This follows naturally."

You rested the chalk lightly against the board.

"History is not replaced from one moment to the next. It grows—not by accumulating events, but by accumulating transformations. Each new transformation becomes part of the process from which every future state will emerge."

You looked once more across the hall.

"Notice what has disappeared from the model."

Your hand gestured briefly towards the equations.

"There is no privileged moment at which identity resides."

The room remained silent.

"It is distributed across the entire history of transformation."

You allowed the implication to linger.

"To ask where identity is located is therefore to ask the wrong question."

Your gaze settled once more on the notation covering the board.

"The better question is this."

"How did this system become capable of being what it is?"

No one wrote immediately.

For the first time since the lecture had begun, the equations no longer resembled abstract notation. They had become a language for describing something every person in the room had experienced, yet few had ever attempted to formalise.

You remained beside the board, allowing the notation to occupy the audience's attention a little longer.

"Any model," you said at last, "must ultimately be judged by what it allows us to explain. A change in notation, however elegant, is of little consequence unless it reveals distinctions that were previously invisible."

Your hand rested lightly against the edge of the lectern.

"If identity is constituted by history rather than state, then there are phenomena that should cease to appear paradoxical."

You looked briefly towards the equations before continuing.

"Consider, for example, why two people may respond so differently to the same experience."

The question was simple enough that several listeners looked up almost immediately.

"We often attribute such differences to personality, as though personality itself required no explanation. But personality is not an independent variable. It is already the consequence of prior transformations."

You moved slowly across the stage.

"The same criticism may leave one individual discouraged and another determined. The same success may inspire confidence in one person and complacency in another. The event itself is identical. What differs is the history through which that event is interpreted."

A philosopher in the second row nodded almost absently, his pen moving again across the margin of an already crowded page.

"The implication extends well beyond psychology."

You turned back towards the board.

"If two systems occupy the same present state, we are often tempted to conclude that they possess the same identity. That conclusion follows naturally from a state-based model."

Your fingers closed once more around the chalk, though you did not yet write.

"My claim is that such a conclusion is unwarranted."

You allowed the sentence to stand without immediate defence.

"Because identity is not determined by where a system happens to be."

Your gaze moved across the audience.

"It is determined by the transformations that made that state possible."

You turned back towards the board.

"Every theory," you said, "inherits not only its strengths, but also the limitations of the assumptions from which it begins."

The chalk traced a single line beneath the equations before coming to rest.

"If identity is treated as a property of the present, then the present must bear the entire burden of explanation."

You paused only long enough to ensure the implication had settled.

"Everything that makes a person who they are must be recoverable from a sufficiently complete description of the system as it exists now."

No one interrupted.

"It is an attractive proposition."

You glanced briefly towards the notation already covering the board.

"It is also an extraordinarily demanding one."

A faint murmur passed through the middle rows.

"To sustain it, one must believe that history leaves no residue beyond the present state. That every transformation can be understood entirely through its outcome."

You shook your head almost imperceptibly.

"I do not believe this is what we observe."

Moving back to the board, you wrote only two expressions.

S₀ → S₁

Beneath it,

S₀′ → S₁

The arrows stood parallel, converging upon the same destination.

"You need not concern yourselves with the notation," you said. "It expresses only a simple possibility."

The chalk rested beneath the second line.

"Two different beginnings."

You traced the arrows lightly.

"One identical present."

Your gaze lifted from the board.

"If the present alone determines identity, then these histories become indistinguishable the moment they converge."

The room remained silent.

"My claim is that they do not."

You stepped back.

"The transformations that produced the present are not erased simply because they arrive at the same destination. They continue to constrain every transformation that follows."

A philosopher in the front rows frowned thoughtfully, his eyes moving repeatedly between the two lines on the board.

"The consequence is subtle."

You folded your hands loosely before you.

"It means that convergence of state is not convergence of identity."

For the first time since introducing the equations, you allowed yourself a faint smile.

"And it is precisely here that the prevailing models begin to struggle."

"There is, of course, an immediate objection."

The remark drew several heads up from their notebooks.

"It would be unfair to suggest that contemporary theories of identity have ignored history altogether. Quite the contrary. Some of the most sophisticated models developed over the past decade have attempted to incorporate it."

You turned back towards the board.

"Perhaps the most ambitious among them is Professor Anaxagoras's formulation of soul-state continuity."

There was no discernible change in your tone.

It was simply the next idea in the sequence.

A few members of the audience glanced instinctively towards the back of the auditorium.

You did not.

"His work represents a considerable advance over earlier theories by recognising that identity cannot be reduced to static physical structure alone. Instead, it seeks to describe the evolution of the soul as a continuous informational process."

The chalk rested between your fingers.

"It is an elegant model."

You wrote a single expression beneath your own.

I = G(Sₜ, Ψₜ)

"Here, identity is determined not only by the observable state of the system, but by the evolving state of what Professor Anaxagoras terms the soul."

You stepped back.

"The addition is significant."

There was no trace of irony in your voice.

"It resolves difficulties that earlier state-based models could not."

Several members of the audience nodded. Cerces' attention remained fixed upon the board.

"The question before us, however, is not whether the model is internally consistent."

You looked slowly across the room.

"It is."

Your gaze settled briefly upon the equation.

"The question is whether it has abandoned the original assumption..."

The chalk lifted once more.

"...or merely concealed it."

Silence settled across the auditorium.

You drew a single line beneath Anaxagoras's expression.

"Notice what still determines identity."

The tip of the chalk came to rest beneath the symbols.

"A present condition."

You moved it first beneath Sₜ 

"Whether that condition is physical..."

Then beneath Ψₜ.

"...or spiritual..."

Finally you underlined the entire right-hand side.

"...it remains a description of the system as it exists now."

You set the chalk down.

"The mathematics has grown more sophisticated."

Your voice remained calm.

"The ontology has not."

No one wrote.

"It still asks the present to account for itself."

You turned back towards your own formulation, still written above.

I = F(Hₜ)

"My disagreement, therefore, is not with Professor Anaxagoras's mathematics."

A brief pause.

"It is with the question his mathematics has been asked to answer."

The words hung in the hall with a stillness that felt qualitatively different from the silences that had preceded them.

Somewhere near the front, a pen stopped moving.

Cerces no longer looked at the board.

She was looking towards the back of the auditorium.

You did not follow her gaze.

At length, you set the chalk down.

"I have not attempted to prove that identity is history."

A few heads lifted.

"I have argued something more modest."

You rested your hands lightly against the lectern.

"That if identity is treated exclusively as a present state, there are distinctions we are unable to explain. We mistake identical outcomes for identical individuals. We mistake memory for transformation. We mistake continuity for persistence."

Your gaze drifted across the auditorium.

"A history-dependent model does not eliminate every difficulty. No serious theory ever does. But it allows us to ask questions that the state-based model cannot."

You turned once more towards the board.

The equations remained exactly as you had left them.

"When we ask what it means to remain the same person," you said quietly, "we usually imagine that identity is something carried through change."

Your fingers rested lightly upon the edge of the lectern.

"I have suggested the opposite."

The room remained utterly still.

"That change is not what identity survives."

Your eyes lifted from the board to the audience.

"It is what identity is made of."

No one reached for a pen.

No one shifted in their seat.

The silence possessed an unusual quality now. It was no longer the attentive quiet that accompanies a lecture, nor the expectant pause before questions begin. It was the silence of an audience discovering that a familiar question had quietly become a different one.

You inclined your head, almost imperceptibly.

"Thank you."

For a heartbeat, nothing happened.

Then, somewhere near the centre of the auditorium, a single pair of hands came together.

Another followed.

The applause spread gradually rather than explosively, gathering through the hall in uneven waves as people rose less from excitement than from respect for the argument they had just witnessed. Around the panel, notebooks remained open, margins crowded with hurried annotations and unfinished questions. Cerces had not yet moved. One hand still rested against her chin, her expression composed, though the thoughtful crease between her brows had deepened.

Only then did your eyes travel, almost despite yourself, towards the back of the hall.

Professor Anaxagoras still stood where he had been throughout the lecture.

He had not applauded.

Nor had he looked away.

For the first time that afternoon, his expression betrayed the smallest departure from its habitual composure—not disagreement, nor approval, but the unmistakable recognition of someone who had just encountered an idea capable of changing the course of his own work.

You held his gaze only for a moment before the applause reclaimed the room.

The symposium, at least, was over.

The conversation had only just begun.

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Something felt.. off?

Just earlier that day, you had been talking and reconciling with Cassandra over your lack of a bond and now you were hanging out and watching movies with your friends.

She kept checking over you, making sure you were warm with the balcony door open, and sharing her share of the popcorn if you wanted it.

Your texts with Dick earlier still haunted your mind, it felt like.. maybe you were rushing things, forgiving and forgetting, everyone always says that it what you should do to be the bigger person.

Never had you subscribed to the idea of being that, considering that you never expected to make up with your family. You were happy with Alfred, Isla and Oliver, plus Duke was kind too, it was a plan of yours, move on.

They left you behind, so you wouldn't wait for them, why are you entertaining forgiveness in the first place? Was there anything to forgive? They ignored you, but was that enough to hold a grudge?

Were you being unreasonable after all? Was it such a bad thing for them to worry about you? To care? It wasn't a crime but you're treating them like it was treason..

Your own brain spiraled, the movie became noise and the projection blurred, the scene between the main character and the romantic interest distorted. It took only a couple of seconds for Cass to notice, it only took one more for your friends to as well.

"Hey- what's wrong?" Isla placed down her bowl of popcorn on the side table, walking behind the couch to hug you from behind, arms draped over your shoulders and brushing your collarbone.

Oliver turned on the lights and shut off the movie, not talking, just moving away Cassandra— as she let him— and sitting by your side.

"Was it the movie? I know the couple dancing in the rain was cliche but Jesus.." he joked, voice quivering as his hand hovered over your own before settling over it, the soft pressure of his hand on yours.

Shaking your head you sniffled, "I don't.. I don't know how to say it!" Isla cradled you a little bit closer to her chest while Oliver nodded silently.

"Then don't! It's okay, uh.." he glanced over at Cassandra before leaning into your side, in a hushed tone he said— "do you want her to go?"

You shook your head back and forth carefully, not wanting to hurt Isla who was right behind you by knocking into her. "Don't want her to know me like this.."

Even if you didn't see it, he offered a smile before standing up, hand sliding off of yours and into the air while he walked over to Cass and quietly spoke to her. You don't know what was said but she just walked up to you, hugged you and then left with her phone in hand.

Just before walking out the door, she looked at Oliver, "Please take care of them." She said, then leaving out the door, it clicked shut and you sobbed, soon followed by guilt.

You were plaguing them, Isla and Oliver, they'd been taking care of you for the past week. All you've done is stained their belongings with your tears like you deserved to do so.

"Fuck.. I can't- I'm sorry" you heaved, chest rising as high as your neck before deflating, your hands reached up to hold Isla's forearms, "I think I'm making a mistake-"

"Mistake? What do you mean?" Oliver said, placing a glass of water on the table and sitting beside you.

"I-" you tried to speak, but your throat choked up, whenever you tried to get a word out you wailed, if you took a breath your throat let out gravely rumble. "I don't- know what.. how do I-"

"We don't need answers, it's fine.." he said, hugging into you gently, you let your hands drop from Isla to your legs, nails dug into the flesh of your thighs while sobbing.

That night, neither Isla, nor Oliver got any answers as to why you had cried twice in one day.

Only thing you remember was them clearly looking at each other over your head, only seeing Oliver and curved brows with a pained look in his eyes, while Isla held you a little closer.

─── ´ˎ˗

Cassandra walked into the manor, shrugging off her jacket and handing it to Alfred as he greeted her, "Master Cassandra, the family is already in the dining room, please do head forward."

She nodded, walking over to the dining room with her phone in her pocket, the second the light from the chandelier hit her so did Stephanie as she grabbed her arms.

"Cass! You never answered my text, what happened!?" She shouted, hands gripping her shoulders while Cass smiled.

"Everything's fine." Leaving out the part where you had two breakdowns and choked over your own tears.

Damian frowned from his seat, "Fine? What's fine." He questioned accusingly, fork stabbing into his vegetarian sides, Bruce from the head of the table raised his brow with the same questioning look as usual.

Cassandra lead Steph to her seat before taking her own, and picking up her fork and knife, Tim being the only person who wasn't occupied with what she was taking about, and continued to eat.

She cleared her throat after taking a bite, "I saw them, they're doing well.." she didn't need to say a name, there's only one person she could have been talking about.

Bruce's hand clenched around his drink, and Damian had slammed his fork down, it clattered against his plate. "Cain, I expected this from Thomas, but you're just-"

"Just what Damian? Say it, I dare you!" Steph spoke up, not letting him say anything cruel about Cass that anyone would regret.

"And why am I catching strays??" Duke said, bits of his food stained his sweater as it fell off his spook in his surprise, still levitating close to his mouth.

Damian snarled, "They disregarded everything we have been working for! We are busy, they do nothing all day, and yet they're upset, it's a tantrum and you both are indulging them!"

"You're literally throwing a Tantrum right now!" Steph retorted with her fist raised, shaking it in his direction with her now extended pointer finger.

"It is not a tantrum, it is a reasonable response when you're all making excuses!"

Bruce stood, his chair skidded back against the carpet, his presence accentuated by the shadow castes by his character from the hanging lights. "Everyone, stop shouting."

His voice broiled over the typical tone he used for family disputes, it seemed like there was more emotion behind it than usual.

Tim looked up from his plate, fork prodding at his food, gulping at the heavy atmosphere. Vision blurring with dark spots peppered over his plate, frantically trying to blink them away, Bruce looked over the table all the meanwhile.

"All of you need to stop." He said, the reverb in his voice heavily affecting the atmosphere of the table. Duke leaned in his seat, back pressed tightly against it, sucking in his lips with his eyes narrowed, not used to family fighting time really..

Bruce sighed, raising his hand to pinch the bridge of his nose, "I don't understand what is going on here, but you are all old enough to tell me I stress of arguing with each other."

"I mean, Damian's twelve-"

"Stop speaking Brown!"

"Both of you, stop it!" He shouted, palm slamming against the rim of his chair, "Damian, explain now."

Damian sat straighter in his chair as the attention drew to him, "Father, it's come to my attention that both Cain and Thomas are traitors."

"Traitors is a bit harsh kid-" Duke was cut off with the single steak knife suddenly thrust into the wood of the table. It splintered under the pressure, the stab mark shot outward like it was an explosion, Duke quickly raised his forearms to block an splinters.

"DAMIAN." Bruce shouted, looking at him with a glare filled with disapproval, then to Duke, "Don't interrupt, continue Damian."

Damian glared at Duke before looking at his father, "Like I said, they are traitors. They've been seeing that person-"

Cassandra said something under her breath, quiet but still coherent enough to be heard. It was your name, and it threw Damian way off the edge of whatever cliff of patience was left.

"CAIN." He threw his throwing starts at her, to which she swiftly jumped out of her chair, easily avoiding them, at this point Bruce gave up even trying to diffuse the situation, not carrying how much mahogany was destroyed in the process.

"Stop it Damian!" Steph shouted, running over to take Cassandra's side more metaphorically and literally. "But also, you seriously should explain!" Her voiced whispered over to Cass.

She didn't reply, but did nod as she pushed her chair back up from off the ground. Tucking it into the table with a few stars were caught, she plucked them out and threw them back at Damian.

"I went to see them, to reconcile, Duke has too, that's all." Bruce narrowed his brows and sighed, his head slumped forward as his eyes met the ground and shut tightly.

"Damian.. there is nothing wrong with that."

"But father-!" Bruce's hand raised, palm faced towards Damian that left no room for arguing, even if there was— he wouldn't be there for it, the tight leather of his shoes tapped against the carpet and walked out, Alfred following behind him.

The others stayed silent, Damian was seething. Fist clenched, feet pressed to the ground like they were trying to destroy the earth itself, Cass and Stephanie left quickly, arms intertwined with one another while they escaped to Cassandra's room.

And Duke just picked up his plate and slowly backed away, not wasting any food, just running away to somewhere else in the house before Damian decided to create a tornado and suck him into it as well.

Because of you, his father yelled at him.

Because of you, he was a damn fool in the eyes of his father.

Even if he wasn't, he was.

─── ´ˎ˗

[ME]: cant make it, im sorry

GRAYSON: no worries!!

GRAYSON: just, text me when you can!

GRAYSON: please?

[ME]: okay

You sighed and placed down your phone, curled up on Isla's pull out bed with the blankets wrapped tightly around you.

You've never felt so exhausted, emotionally and physically.

─── ´ˎ˗

He pumped his fist, "yes!" He cheered, it wasn't a no, and you didn't just say 'k' that's gotta mean something right?

Or maybe he was overreacting and being too optimistic, either way it didn't matter, not when in five minutes after putting down his phone, he'd get a rather agitated text from Damian.

All Dick was doing was stretching, planning to patrol as Nightwing that evening before a meeting with the Titans, so when he was doing calve stretches in his doorway, and the incessant ringing of his phone?

It seemed the night wouldn't go so smooth.

He sighed and walked over to where his phone was discarded, picking it up and answering after a single glance at the contact name, "Little D! What's up?"

"What is up? What's up is that-" And Dick sat down on his bed, knowing that tone meant that a rant was incoming, and that he'd be there for a minute. He listened as Damian's voice rattled through the phone, going on a tangent of how the family was traitors or something, and how you were somehow to blame.

"Little D calm down! I'm only getting bits and pieces here, give me a little context!" He said.

"I am giving you context Grayson. Pay attention more." Damian replied, clearly agitated from being interrupted.

Dick cleared his throat, "Alright! I'm sorry, please recap it for me, alright? Swear I'll follow this time."

From across the phone, he heard an exasperated sigh, followed by Damian then continuing his tangent from earlier but just a touch slower, by the end of it, Dick finally had a clear-ish picture.

You made up and Duke and Cass— which he had known, Damian found out and had a quote, 'small dispute' which was likely incorrect and heavily downplayed by the kid.

"Alright.. but Damian is it such a bad thing for them to make up? I mean, family right?" He said, foot tapping against the ground.

"Of course it's bad! Thomas and Cain are conversing with the fool who incited trouble!" Dick winced at the loud noise and sighed into the speaker.

"Okay Little D! Got you, calm down! Look, I'll stop by tomorrow so just relax, we can talk then, I got patrol soon anyways." From his phone the boy grumbled before hanging up with Dick took as agreement, he shrugged back his shoulders and stretched before dressing in his costume.

Setting off in the night.

─── ´ˎ˗

Damian scowled, putting his phone down before headed to the Batcave, readying his sword he bent his legs before shoot off the momentum from them, attacking the target and stabbing it, he was so much more irritable than usual lately.

And it's all your fault, you were the only variable that could have caused such a change, and you need to take responsibility.

You wouldn't understand it, you weren't allowed to upend everyone's lives because of your tantrum! Damian didn't find that fair in the least.

You decided not to pick up the mantle, you chose to stay pathetic, never would you in your life understand what he and the others have been through. Late nights sacrificing your time and energy to help people who would never be able to thank you with your name.

Losing people, losing yourself.

He thought you were selfish.

─── ´ˎ˗

Oliver's eyes kept glancing to the door of Isla's room, shut tightly as her mom cooked nearby in the kitchen. At the table, he and Isla sat face to face, picking at the skin underneath his nails while Isla's beaded bracelets clacked against the surface.

Her mom stirred the pot of curry that she was preparing , the steam creating condensation on the back wall. Isla looked at Oliver, her face was tense, jaw tightened so much that it tugged at her neck, veins briefly showing.

Glancing at her mom, she suddenly stood up and gestured for Oli to followed, walking out onto the balcony, behind her Oliver closed the sliding door and leaned against the railing while Isla sat on the cold garden chair on it.

".. I don't like this Oli—"

"Isla, we shouldn't interfere, this is their life and their family, whatever they want to do they should do."

"Their family hardly pays attention to them! They've had an easier time sneaking us into their damn house than getting their family to come to one parents day! Year of watching them become so used to it they stopped caring!"

"Isla, they aren't you, they don't run off of anger."

"I don't run on anger!" She shouted, hand harshly grabbing at the small outside table with old ash stains from cigarettes. "Even if I did, I always have a good reason!"

Oliver watched the uneven legs wobble with the weight of her hand, sighing with exhaustion. "Isla, we love them— they've call us their family more than once, I know why you're like this way but it's not-" his hand brushed through his hair.

"If they want to fix their relationships with them, we cant stop them and even if we could, I don't think we should!"

Her hand clenched into a fist and banged against the table, "I know! But if- they trust them, and suddenly their family turns their backs on them- they don't deserve that!"

"Isla.. they aren't, I'm sorry okay but they aren't your dad." He said, taking a seat on the floor of the balcony, leaning his back against the door, "Just because you aren't close anymore doesn't mean they have to draw that same boundary."

"Easy for you to say Oli, your dads not a fucking criminal!" She shouted, suddenly punching at the railing as it rattled, "he didn't run off to metropolis and get himself arrested!"

He winced at her shout, it happened years ago, her dad and mom divorced for unknown reasons when you three were around ten, she didn't think much of it. Her parents still loved her and while she cried you two were stuck to her side so she wasn't alone.

She visited him biweekly in metropolis, everything was normal, but even if things were okay for a time, they didn't stay that way.

It was two years after the divorce when she found out he had been arrested on the week when she didn't visit, forced to serve three years in prison for fraud and theft. It shook her world, not because he committed a crime, but because she never thought her dad could be a person who would lie.

Straight to her face when she'd make bracelets for him, rainbow, sunset, she'd present them and he'd accept it like they mattered the most in the world. But then he got arrested, he didn't even have to, he had a stable job, he managed to afford a nice place for him and her, the only motivation— greed.

The things she'd spend nights making for him, that she thought he treasured above all else, turned out to be nothing compared to the value of money.

He got out a year early thanks to good behavior, had parole and chose to live close to the outskirts of metropolis to avoid the looks he'd get from people. His visitation rights were reconstructed after Isla turned fifteen, she'd barely seen him before that, only agreeing to see him besides he was still her dad.

It's only once a month, and she can refuse anytime. What did this have to do with you and Oliver though?

You didn't tell them about your family until they asked, which was only around the time you were all thirteen. About how your family treated you, it didn't help when Damian came later and acted like you were less than him, even going out of his way to insult you constantly.

It was something the more privileged classmates of yours would joke about, until Isla shut them up. Obviously as people grew they began to mind their own business, but after he own betrayal with her family.

And only really having her mom, you and Oli? Her defensiveness went up tenfold, she was friendly with basically everyone, but when it came to your family, she despised them.

One of the reasons she constantly praised Red Hood was because of how he dealt with the people he deemed bad, those corrupt, he didn't hold back using his fists and she didn't either.

Of course, she didn't know the darker details of his work because the media was often covered up, but irregardless. Oliver and you knew all of this, she held it for the past two years to her chest.

Watching you suffer? They didn't just stick by your side because they were good friends, it was because Isla understood it, and Oliver saw it before, neither wanted you to be alone like you've been for a long time.

He stood up, hugging Isla tightly at her side while she still gripped the rail, "I don't want them to forgive people who don't deserve it."

"But Isla, I mean.. you've seen Duke right? You're overprotective, and it's sweet, I'm sure they appreciate it but wouldn't it be easier for both of us to try help them mend the problem?"

She groaned and threw her head back, "I don't want them to get sucked into the problem that's all—" The sliding door swished open.

"Love you too Isla" you said, smiling as you shut the door behind you, walking over to sit on the ground by Isla's leg.

Oliver couldn’t help the muted chortle he hid behind his hand, "How long have you been listening?"

"Not long, just since the overprotective part.." you replied, hugging Isla's leg as her hand let go of the railing to rub you on the head while the other hugged Oliver back.

You kept talking, leaning against the cold leg of her chair.

"Y'know I'm grateful, and I think.." you sighed, "It may or may not make sense but I'm gonna try and explain it."

"Go ahead" Oliver said, smiling down at you two.

Your head nodded forward, "right.. I think, I'm just really stressed out with everyone, part of me thinks I'm overreacting and should get over myself, the other part never wants to forgive them."

Isla wanted to argue, but she didn't.

"Like, it's been less than a week right? But so much has happened, the thing I'm scared of the most is that I fight them so much on this that they give up eventually, I don't want people to give up on me, it's not a nice feeling, ever." You sniffled, the cold air entering your sinuses.

"I don't even think I'd cry if they gave up on me, I'd expect it to be honest, think I'm just scared. Like how you're scared of the dark or something even if you know nothing's there, I'm not equipped for all this.." your words ended with a long exhale.

Suddenly you felt weight beside you on the ground, looking to your side you see Oliver and Isla sitting down, Isla grabbed your hand and held it, "y'know… I hate your family, but I love you more so, if you ever wanted to.." she glanced at Oli, "we'd help you if you wanted it fix things, like he said."

You looked up at her and smirked softly, "Says the person who threatened Duke ten times last time we hung out!"

"Oh please!"

"They aren't wrong Isla-"

"Oli' you're supposed to be on my side!"

The three of you laughed together, sitting outside and sticking to each others warmth until Isla's mom came out to get you three for dinner, she was nice enough to let Oli stay until tomorrow.

You three clambered inside, the four bowls filled with the piping hot curry placed nicely on the table with fragrant basmati and chutney to share. You've eaten over so much that her mom knew just how you three liked your meals, you sat down, using an old stool as the fourth chair because there were only three for the set, and enjoyed the dinner together.

The warmth of the food trailed down your throat and into your stomach, your chest warmed with the steam as Isla laughed at Oliver who just told a joke, her mom chatting with you three about things like school.

As the moon reached higher in the sky, you ignored how it rose with time, and paid attention to the moment. You had time to make a choice, and it wouldn't be alone, you smiled and looked around the members of the table, the tepidity of the bowl in your hand made your palm red.

It was warm, comforting, and it was all you currently wanted.

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

wrote this chapter quicker than I thought I’d have, it’s a lot of other characters rather than reader since I feel like they need a break until I think about how I write their character thanks to some input I’ve gotten.

giving Isla a little bit of backstory since I’ve already mentioned a little about her, it’s really just to give a little insight into why she is protective, next chapter with have reader back.

I don’t like this that much, it was written rather quickly but, I just want to say I’m very sorry for it.

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

T A G L I S T

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-> thank you to everyone supporting this series 🩶

♫ NOTES: Taglist is closed.

Cold hands pressed into your arm, shaking you awake, fingers sinking into your skin. A recognizable voice rung in your tired ears, only just now becoming aware to the world.

Your eyes wrinkled, shut tightly from how bright everything suddenly was, trying to peer open. Suddenly the light disappeared, replaced by Oliver's frantic silhouette, "Wake up!"

"Oli..?" Your voice scratched out, groggy from sleep, "The hell is going on, something tells me it's too early for this..” but your words seemingly went unnoticed.

"Okay, don't panic!" He said, clearly in a state of panic, his silhouette dancing across the room with his hands shaking, stuck in a position where they looked like they were supposed to hold something but ended up cramping.

Clearing your throat quickly, you coughed out the next few words in an attempt to calm him down or at least get answers, "Oli, you're panicking."

His hands gripped your shoulders gently, still trembling. "Cassandra is outside right now! " he chuckled nervously as he glanced out the crack in the doorway.

It was inevitable for you to wake up instantly, you rapidly sat up, forcing your senses to arise to attention, eyes wincing at the bright light with specks of dust flying through it. The blanket which fell heavy on your lap, and the sounds of voices in the kitchen area.

You stood up without wasting a second, holding onto Oliver while standing on your wobbly legs until they became stable seconds later. Ignoring whatever nervous mumbles he had, you quickly rushed out the door and winced at the even brighter light from the sun.

Burning, the way it hit the countertop and semi-blinded you, "Shit-" you stumbled forward, catching yourself on the edge of it. Off to the side by the balcony door, Cassandra gave Isla a certain look, the kind that says ‘really?’ without any words.

Isla glanced from you, to Cassandra, back and forth, sucking in her cheeks and biting them with her lips puckered as if she had sour candy on her tongue. "So that.. is actually a clone I created of them, and I stand by my word that they aren't here!"

You looked over at them, particularly at Cassandra who analyzed everything as usual, her voice was calm, or rather monotone really as she greeted you. "Hello, clone?" Her chest huffed out a little bit of laughter, the soft fabric of her shirt flowing as she moved.

"You can laugh-? Stupid question, of course you can, sorry; but what are you doing here?" You asked, brows furrowed heavily with the corners of your mouth dragged down, she adjusted her posture, as collected as ever.

"You never replied to my text last night, so I came to see you." She said, pointing at her phone which stuck out from under a magazine on the table. It was ridiculous to you.

"Now you see, usually people would kind of, just wait? But I see your point." No actually, you didn't. God forbid you needed a day or two, this family is exhausting for people who hardly acknowledged you.

She soughed, "can we speak alone?" her eyes sharply looked at Isla, then to Oliver who stood behind you in the doorway of your mutual friends room, the soft light of her curtains swayed behind him.

Isla shook her head at you, grimace serpentined with frustration and worry; not wanting you to handle this alone, but you shrugged back your arms, the feeling of your clothes pressed against your skin, "Yeah, sure, Isla, mind waiting with Oli?"

“Ughh.. fine!”, standing up with loose limbs, she sauntered over to Oliver, pushing him frailly into her room before tilting back her head to toss you another concerned look.

Her brow raised, questioning you once more wordlessly, 'are you sure?' was the message it conveyed, and you, in response, bobbed your head assuredly, at the confirmation, she walked in and shut her door.

You walked towards Cassandra, taking the place where Isla previously sat, her warmth still radiating off the wooden rim where she held it with one hand. Taking the chance to brush your hand against the miscellaneous sugar and salt packets on the surface of the table.

"So, what is it? No offense Cain but I don't see why we need to talk, I don't owe you anything, and you don't owe me anything." Words hit her like douse of cold water, but no tell showed itself on her face.

Her nails curled into the back of her hand on her lap beneath the table, "Stephanie, she feels.." she wasn't good with feelings, you saw it, it's why you never pushed her when you first met.

"I know, Stephanie feels bad— guilty maybe, but unless she talks to me herself that's not your message to deliver." You weren't mad, there wasn't enough expectations in the first place to be upset about, honestly?

Cassandra frowned, "She wants to, but she hesitates."

"So?" Her eyes shot to you, a bit surprised by your words, quickly you backtracked. "I mean, I'm sorry, didn't mean that in a bad way, but I don't know what to do about that?"

Truthfully, Cassandra knew what she wanted to ask of you wouldn't work, that you wouldn't just forgive Stephanie because she asked, it didn't work like that. It was something she learned after being around others more and more, they aren't people in a fight, actions are predictable, someone's feelings aren't.

You watched as she internally pondered what to do, partially feeling bad, and another part of you couldn't give a care in the world. Your hand tapped idly against the edge of the table while you waited for her to talk.

But after minutes of absolutely excruciating minutes of silence, watching her shift in her seat which was so foreign to you since she never fidgeted, maybe you needed to speak for this to be over quicker. It felt like those times you're meeting with someone one on one when you're twelve, and they wait for you to talk but you just don't know what to say.

Clearing your throat you leaned back against the chair, "Cassandra, I'm not mad y'know, just want everyone to leave me alone, it wasn't a problem until everyone decided it was and even then that wasn't my fault." You straighten up to match her posture, "I've seen a lot in that manor, and I've seen a lot of people come but the only person to go besides Jason which he really had no control over was myself. Difference being not a single person cared, and I'll let you in on a secret, after years I didn't either, not to sound dramatic." Though you knew you did.

Your body was tense, waiting for a reply that didn't come, you decided to just keep talking until something you said spurred her next words.

"I 'disappeared' for a day, not even that, and everyone blamed me the second I got back. I stood in that cave because for some reason Bruce can't bother to have a regular conversation outside of it, everything needs to be tied back to vigilantism. Normal families just talk in the living room, or the dining room if things are really serious, trust me I know."

You took breath, "Oliver has had plenty of family talks and I've just been there sitting awkwardly.. if this happened earlier, like when I was younger I definitely would've agreed to making up instantly because I'd be so desperate for family" you began to ramble a bit, it was stupid but she didn’t interrupt.

"But we aren't family, I accepted that a while ago. Tim even said it himself, which was insane because he is arguably one of the most stable out of all of you! No offense-"

"None taken.." she said, your eyes enlarged just about before grinning, you angled your body to hers, moving closer making chest touching your wrist which still held the table.

Cassandra noted as the small grin across your lips formed, "Finally, you said something! Look, I'm willing to compromise here regarding this entire situation.”

"Compromise? You're strange, and sound a lot like Tim sometimes." She observed how your eyes widened, brows sprung up with disbelief. You coughed, trying to hide your laughter which was an amusing sight to Cassandra as she waited.

“Me and Tim alike, hm?? Don't know what to make of that but thanks, anyways back to compromise." The sureness of it all and the way the conversation kept moving like a tipsy ride made the tenseness in the air loosen.

"What do you want?" You charitably, perhaps pulling out the therapist card was a little bit of a low blow but there was one thing you should've clarified that night.

Bruce wasn't the only one who needed therapy.

Cassandra spoke warily, every word felt like it had a million more behind it. "I'm.. unsure, is that a bad thing?"

You leaned towards her side of the table, not intrusive but just sharing, "No, I'm unsure too, I don't know whether to forgive you guys or not, I want to, but I don't think I should yet, and it's fine, yeah?"

Slowly, she shook her head forward, hand resting on the table, the faint dig of her nails visible on the back of it. "For what it's worth, I think you're apart of the family, you always have been." She added, gently, testing if that was the correct thing to say.

You chuckled and leaned back in the chair, shaking your head softly then looking to the right, focusing on the outside of Isla's balcony. "You don't have to lie Cain.”

"I'm not." She said with the same tone she used during missions, one that means no questions asked, "If.. we were ever to lose all of our memories, and everyone reunited without you, I'd feel like someone's missing, I'd know it."

Her head looked downward to her thighs as she continued, "It sounds like excuses, even if it is I mean it.. when we met, you were nice, I needed that."

"…" you stayed quiet, processing her words, quite metaphorical for her. After long moments of silent, Cassandra slowly looked back up, suddenly flinching at the sight.

Your face vacant with muscles relaxed, only to be ruined by tears following down the slope of your cheeks and onto the table.

Cassandra stood up, her chair clattering behind her as it screeched across the floor. Swiftly joining your side with a tight feeling of guilt in her chest close to where her heart was located, "I'm sorry- I didn't mean to.."

"No, you're all good- I'm just, hearing that from someone who's.." you sniffled and inclined, trailing your hands over your face, picking up your tears at the same time. "Duke is great, but he's new, it's easier for him to accept me but- from someone whose been around for years, that's.. I don't know, I'm not in the right headspace right now!" Your attempt at a chuckle coming out tearfully as a wail, hands grabbing at your shirt while you grounded yourself with deep breaths.

She scanned over you, seeing you talk like this was normal, something everyday. Clutching at your chest while hardly even sobbing, as if your feelings were stuck in your chest and you couldn't get them out. Her hand reached down to yours, and held it, her thumb rubbing over the padding of your palm.

You set your teary eyes on her hovering figure and instinctively held back, your fingers curling around her hand, cautiously as to not hold her too hardly, and without wasting time she hugged you to her chest. "I'm sorry, I'm your older sister.. have been, and will be always."

'Dammit..' this was too much for whatever time it was, 'stupid, sister, whatever..' you thought, somewhat in denial for how much had happened in less than an hour.

You chortled, "Sister hm..? Sounds weird to say, but thanks Cain.." nuzzling your head into her shirt, whatever leftovers of your tears being absorbed by it.

"Cass." She corrected feebly, scared to ask that of you.

But the familiarity didn’t scare you, "… Cass, thanks.. uh, hey you do know this doesn’t mean we’re entirely alright, to be clear?” You said, she looked down at you with a soft look in her eyes.

The soft yet playful curl of her lips with the laugh that slipped through the slip between them lightened the air, “I know, but thank you for the chance.”

Right, the chance. It was so easy to somewhat mend things with Cassandra, but that’s only since she never really did you wrong, not the way the others did.

Will it be harder to accept the others? Are you capable of doing so?

─── ´ˎ˗

From her room, Isla watched with soft eyes through the crack in her doorway, beside her was Oliver watching the scene with you two.

Isla smiled lovingly at the sight, "I'm happy for them.." she said to Oli while nudging him with her elbow.

Oliver needed to bury his head in a pillow to hide his tears of happiness since he had a tendency to cry loudly.

And yet from across the city, in a whole other area, someone did not share this sentiment.

─── ´ˎ˗

Stephanie waited by her phone for an update from Cass, trilling through her lips whilst her arm aimlessly dangled off the side of her bed. By the morning, the first thing that happened when she woke up was seeing a message from Cass about how she was going to talk to you.

No clue how she even had your address, and now all she could do was wait for her to reply. Uncertainty stirred in her chest as she waited, the sound of a grandfather clock in the hallway ticked slowly.

Then of course, someone had to interrupt.

"The heck—??" She said, sitting up quickly and looking towards the very loud noise, only to see Damian standing there, looking even more agitated than usual. Stephanie reeled back quickly.

".. so, how are you doing? Wanna tell me why you’re in my room-" evidently not as he interrupted.

"Where is Cain." The end of his words growling with a snarl as he expected an answer. How did this kid know Cassandra went off to see you? Probably Tim, or maybe he just has a sixth sense like Bruce does for these things.

She smiled, eyes squinting at the little kid in front of her, "No clue! Y'know who knows though? Tim, probably, you should ask him! Actually wait, no, BARBARA, she definitely knows!"

"And why would Gordon definitely know." His eyes narrowed, why was this kid so suspicious of everyone today?

Stephanie huffed, "Because us girls stick together? Duh?" Damian grumbled under his breath, repeating it quietly in a mocking tone of voice before walking over to sit down beside her.

His foot tapped impatiently, but Steph really had no idea what she was supposed to say. She hardly even knew how to answer Cass’s text, let alone the little demon of the manor.

She prayed to no one in particular for a sign, for someone to just come in and intervene, it'd had been how long since she last texted Cass again? Her mind filled the silence, zoning out with only Damian to bring her back into awareness with his classic 'tt's.

'Cass… I swear you better not take too long!!'

─── ´ˎ˗

Away from Gotham, in Bludhaven, Dick sat with his phone in his hand, thankful that he had gotten your number from Barbara. Though it's worth noting that she did say 'don't mess this up' so that was most definitely, totally reassuring.

He never knew you two were close, he didn't know a lot about you other than the little things. Like how when you were younger he'd notice when you got a little trim on your hair, or wearing something new he didn't recognize.

He thought that was enough, that it was a sign that he cared because he noticed, yet to you that wasn't good enough. He wasn't annoyed, or angry at you, no matter what anyone would have believed.

More like he was disappointed he wasn't who you needed him to be, he knew how standoffish Bruce could be, it was one of his many flaws. So he tried to step up in some aspects, but even then, after he ran off to Bludhaven and after some certain events he wasn't there for Bruce, Tim was.

Tim was that stability that he never was, part of him was too envious of his younger brother for being what he wasn't. Dick wasn't a perfect man, but he tried being a good brother, seems he failed at more than that.

The way you looked that night, you reminded him so much of himself when his parents had died. He was depressed, but thanks to his surroundings he managed to get past it, yet what about you?

Your mom was gone, and no one was there for you.

And to think he lost your number on top of everything, the one thing you ever gave him because that's the only thing he had accepted from you. Not the hangout sessions, not the questions you had for him, but your number because he thought it was substantial, your needs above your wants despite knowing how important both are.

His thumbs hesitated, flared beside the outline of his phone with your contact on his screen, your name wasn't even changed because he preferred to use nicknames that you didn’t have, he didn't even have a picture of you to change the plain, empty icon. Eventually he pressed onward, the sound of the keys popping into words from the speakers, ‘just keep it simple’ he thought, but what would be enough?

[ME]: wanna go out for lunch? I wanna talk, think that's okay?

He didn't expect such a quick response.

[NEW NUMBER]: k, where and when? My friends r coming too btw, idc if you say no to that, its my condition

[ME]: no trouble!! they can obviously come! I was thinking maybe a trip to the park, ?? Whenever is fine!

He hissed as his canine tooth pierced into the bottom of his lip, was that too enthusiastic? Did he sound too fake? Why did you want your friends around, did you not trust him?

[NEW NUMBER]: k, weekend works, Saturday or Sunday just txt me which park,

[NEW NUMBER]: oh btw Cass and duke might come

Dick blinked at the screen a couple of times, you made up with Duke and Cass already? And when did you start calling her by her nickname and not Cain, he didn't think much of it until now because he believed it was one of your quirks like how Damian calls people by their last names.

Did you call them by their first names because you didn't think of them closely enough to call them otherwise?

[ME]: awesome!! Sunday it is! Got some work on Saturday !

[NEW NUMBER:] okay, anyways, ttyl? Bye

[ME]: sure! bye!!

'That was so dry..' he winced at his own thoughts, perhaps you usually just talked like that? But your words from that night echoed in his head, proving him wrong.

"I’m not mad, just sick of your shit" you had said with such hatred in your voice. "I was here with you from the start, but it didn’t mean anything" but it did matter. He mourned Jason with you didn't he? There was a time when he couldn't face anyone yes, but that- there's no way you meant it.

Before he knew it, there were tears he couldn't stop, ripping down the skin of his face and staining it wetly. He's such a fuck up, too much so, he'll make it up to you, promise, and if he doesn’t?

He just hopes he can.

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

A/N: That’s chapter five. I do have an order of characters I want to fix their relationship with reader, the current being Duke then Cassandra, but can you guess who’s next?

This is really repetitive, and badly written, so I’m sorry for that. I think Cass and Duke were the easiest to fix things with because of how little of a part they played, they definitely played a part but it wasn’t as big as the rest.

Reader is a self-aware to a degree, that might not sit with some people and it’s okay, I apologise. Them calling Cass sister is going to be a plot point later, that’s why it was mentioned, usually it wouldn’t have been otherwise.. as for why I made Dick a bit self-deprecating, it’s mainly because he genuinely believed he was a good brother, so unlike the others who were aware of their mistakes, he wasn’t.

There’s a part of me that wants to make reader more immature, since they’re only 17 but what does everyone else think?

I want to once again say thank you to everyone who’s following this series and supporting it, also to announce for those who missed it, we now have as series masterlist so if you’d like then take a look.

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

T A G L I S T

@maradcrs @pennyisangstyhelp-blog @eveeevelyn @yoruuuen @artsukin @mariana11zx2 @princesslang @princesscosmo @sarah-luz @izukusbiggestfan @itsangelic @pearlyribbons @sunnyboysignal @j-kianab @alephless @dxbriaskibdio @uivira @iamthegreatergood @red-hood132 @junevtv @kohaiyuki @ninininini08 @mewmew222 @rxi-pop @analogicthought @stormnightingale @yoyogirl67 @the-midnight-king-of-poets @roxanne-likes-randomly @anidiots @v10l3tst4tqc @losingmybrain @dreamndestiny @cookiepersona @batt-z @marzi-pan-dulce @kekeanna266 @rho-229 @corach4n @rad4bean @husbandofmihawk @herdarlin @notxxvidya @leahgokam @thypplover @oscarquokka @1chaerry @leilakeila @fire126

-> thank you to the amazing people who support this badly written work. I appreciate you all.

♫ NOTE: taglist is closed

“I’m sure this idea didn’t even come from that pretty head of yours,” he taunts, a change of tactic. You don’t care. 

So what that it was Childe’s teasing remark of why not let the regrator take care of this - he knows how to talk his way out of everything that gave you the idea to let Pantalone do the heavy lifting this time. As long as the idea is good, it only matters who acts it out. Besides he’s right - Pantalone and his silver tongue are remarkable allies, terrifying enemies. If he can handle PR nightmares in front of the Tsaritsa and the other harbingers, why not the people of Snezhnaya too, for once?

“But it’s these pretty lips asking you the questions, so if you’d be so kind to answer,” you lean closer, the notepad and pen in your hands little more than props, “What do you think of Dottore’s human-to-animal soul transfer experiment?”

He gives you a scolding, displeased look.

“My dear colleague,” his voice sounds as saccharine as his smile looks, “I’m sure you’re familiar enough with my manner of speech to write the statement without my direct input.”

“Well, my dear colleague,” you emphasize, watching closely the way his gaze hardens. They think they can do anything but god forbid you imply you’re no more than a fellow fatui. In a private setting, of course. “While that might be true, I’m not familiar with your thoughts on this issue and therefore the statement would lack authenticity. Trust is easy to lose, the people would feel something is amiss and the whole issue would turn into a fiasco.”

“Sounds to me like the organisation should find a better person for the job then,” another pleasant grin.

“Or you could answer the question,” you don’t - you won’t - lose patience. Although maybe you could offer him something in return, even if at the moment you don’t have much.

For now, you settle for slowly dragging your foot up the inner seam of his pants. This time, he keeps his expression neutral. He even leans into the touch. His voice sounds less on edge while he gives you absolutely nothing and yet something. Question after question you get answers the Rooster could never imagine for all his years as the mayor. That is to say, the general public will eat it up. 

His fingers wrap around your ankle just as you reach his knee. “I believe that’s all you need?”

“Well, I guess,” you mumble, looking at the few notes you did indeed take. Still, a shame the game has to end.

“Good,” he hums, a little too happy. You narrow your eyes at him. He returns it with a gaze so wicked the hair at the back of your neck stands up. “Because I suggest we should also interview the doctor responsible for the situation.”

Now that’s interesting. Although- “We?”

“Of course,” Pantalone smirks. He snuffs out the cigarette and lets go of your ankle as he stands up and motions for you to follow him. “I reckon our dear doctor will be rather cooperative if we join forces. Especially since he gave both of us quite the headache.”

Was it his best idea to stalk around outside your school the next day, waiting for the opportunity to catch you doing whatever and confront you? Well if you asked Damian he’d say yes, of course!

On the other hand, if you were a normal person you’d say no, what the hell compelled someone to do such a thing. 

It’s pretty obvious who.

─── ´ˎ˗

“Remember, if Isla clenches her fist it means she is probably about to hit you, and just be nice and polite and I’m sure Oli will like you too, okay?” You said, coaching Duke after school before your friends came out, making sure it didn’t do anything to warrant a punch to the nose. 

This did not encourage him anymore, Duke even just breathing around Isla made him a target, you told him that Oliver and you would make sure she didn’t hit him, so that was.. vaguely reassuring. 

Neither of you noticed the figure perched up on the nearby ledge of the entrance, listening to your every word with a worsening glare aimed at you both. ‘Thomas, that traitor..’ he thought to himself, hand clenched on the edge to prevent a fall.

Soon your two friends joined you and Duke, ‘one glaring at Duke like he owed them some kind of favor, and the other shaking in his boots like a coward’ is how Damian’s thought train basically went. 

“Hey, I’m Duke” he greeted with a hand out, the shyer one of the two shook his hand, responding in kind.

“I’m Oliver, it's nice to meet you properly- Isla, no!” He said, grabbing her clenched fist while looking at Duke with an apologetic smile, not missing the nervousness in his eyes. 

Isla shook him off, glaring at Duke through the narrow slits of her eyes, “I want it to be known-” she began, “- that I don’t like you, and I probably never will, just get that straight."

Duke gulped at the threat, which was funny because Isla chose to fully deck herself out in rainbow beaded bracelets and charm necklaces. Rattling around like an instrument, surely if she shook her fist you'd hear the little jingles from her handmade jewelry.

"Noted.." he said, voice tinged with uncertainty as he took a step back from the duo, closer to you, "Am I safe yet?"

Your face tensed as you considered it, "Uh, if we go out for food and you pay I think we'll be good."

'Ah, a bribery I see..' Duke thought, nodding as he touched his wallet through his right pocket, "I can do that!"

From above them Damian scrunched up his face, "tt.. coward" he whisper under his breath, watching your little group walk towards the bus stop— the bus of all methods of transportation, are you serious?

You four pushed your way onto the bus, squishing through the crowd to whatever free seats were available, to your dismay there was only two with an empty status, so Isla and Duke bit the bullet and sat on the ground.

She didn't mind, neither did he, what he did mind was the elbow being jabbed in his side. You and Oliver laughed as they pushed one each other back and forth, slowly Duke became more comfortable with pushing back after you and Oli encouraged them.

You cackled behind your hand, entire body shaking with laughter, it was after that single moment when your body angled itself against the window to keep still when you took view of a very, very familiar vehicle.

One of the many vehicles that came courtesy of Wayne Manor, you flipped back around to the others eyes wide with suspicion, hastily you whispered to them.

"Guys, don't panic but I think someone from the manor is following us.." Duke's brows raised immediately, perching on his knee to glance out of the window.

"That.. definitely looks like something a Wayne would drive" he said, observing the car that drove closely by the bus, "a certain one at that."

"You know who it is?" You questioned, leaning over his shoulder while simultaneously using his back as a shield, out of fear Oli had entirely hunched over in his seat clutching his head.

Duke hummed in thought before nodding, "Yesterday, Damian saw me when I got back to the manor, maybe he got suspicious?"

"Dammit, I always hated that one.." you snared, it was a lie actually, found him annoying— most definitely, but you never hated him. Yet.

Isla clambered over you three, looking out of the window, her earlier playfulness evaporating instantly. "If that's someone from your family I'm gonna burn down the manor, Damian you said?"

"Isla, I love you and what you're willingly to do for us, but tone it down, I like you outside of prison bars." You said, still watching out the side of the bus at the sleek car which likely cost more than your tuition.

Part of you already somewhat knew that if someone was in the car, then they probably spotted you and the others watching them. But that didn't mean you couldn't act oblivious.

You grabbed Duke and Oliver's shoulders, pulling them back with Isla slumping into the ground off their backs. "Okay, here's the plan—" everyone began to listen intently, "—we do nothing." Isla's protest began very quickly, you shushed her, pointed finger shushed against her lips, "LISTEN, I mean we act entirely normal, like annoyingly so, he's obviously spying for something to let's make it so he doesn't find it."

"You really just prefer to be petty, don't you?" Oliver said, giving you a not-so-disapproving look, small tilt of his lips meaning he was definitely going on with your little scheme.

"Is this normal?" Duke asked, looking at the evil grins you three gave each other, Isla turned to him with her finger pointed at his face, "If you go along with this, we'll be alright, and I will stop trying to hit you."

"Done." He said, no hesitation, you giggled to yourself, the thought of a hero— the signal— being wary of Isla, was hysterical.

Soon after the bus came to a stop, you four waited for the crowd to start moving before heading out with them. No, you weren't provoking Damian, he was the one choosing to subject himself to your antics without thinking clearly.

"Where's he?" Isla whispered as you four walked down the street, your steps out of sync, Oliver the slowest with hesitation.

Duke clicked his tongue, the best at seeming natural apart from yourself. "Knowing Damian, he's pretty good at being sneaky—" leaving out the part where it's because he was born and raised an assassin "—we just have to stick to the plan."

"The plan being hardly a plan at all" you corrected, "all we do is act all cool, like we usually are!" Isla chuckled under her breath, hand grabbing onto the side of your bag.

"Like we usually are?" Her tone was amused and partly sarcastic, playful as her steps fell into sync with your own.

"I'd say we're pretty cool, right Oli?" you turned part way to him, he nodded, still a bit tense but there's no reality where he'd back out.

"Hey, what about me?" Duke asked, walking up to you and Isla with his mouth down turned at the corners in a frown, borderline pouting.

You couldn't help but laughing, surprised you still had any laughter left after how much you'd been giggling that afternoon. "Yes yes, you're obviously included too now Duke, welcome to the group."

Isla pinched the skin of your arm with a frown, head faced away from Duke, frowning very clearly to you, you patted her shoulder and kept walking, Oliver catching up to you three as you started talking.

Your words were easing into the air, not forced, even Duke mixed in perfectly well with your banter despite this being the first time he was apart of your group.

─── ´ˎ˗

Meanwhile, Damian was feeling his patience ticking down like a bomb as he watched you four walk down into a greasy Batburger, taking up one of the booths beside the window and picking up the germy menus.

He winced at the look, watching you and your friends so happily peruse through the diseased filled pages, scowling as he continued to observe.

"What are they doing.." he snarled, soon you left the table after a short game of rock-paper-scissors, you being the one who loss.

From where he peered around into the window, Damian observed a few things, one of your friends looked like a scared wet-cat half the time, and the other— a random girl he'd seen around school, was much more bright and lively, reminding him of Stephanie. Duke seemed to banter with her despite acting like he was scared of her earlier, and it made him even more confused.

You came back to the table quickly, holding a long receipt that he couldn't read from the distance. "Spending fathers money on such.." he was unable to even think of a word for the gross food you were going to consume.

Sliding next to the girl, you started talking with the group, and it annoyed him— how much you were having fun. Laughing so hard your fist had to hit the table repeatedly, legs kicking into each other from below as you four bantered. Damian zeroed in on you specifically, he watched everyone the same, you weren't special.

But when he saw you well, you were always so.. 'chill' as Dick would've said, back when he first arrived at the manor and he threatened you, you quite literally just said "welcome" with a sword to your throat.

That's when Bruce stepped in and scolded him for doing so while you walked away to some part of the house, later he found out that you weren't that much more than but a footnote in the family tree. So he didn't bother with you.

Until you decided to lash out at everyone that night. It was the most emotion he'd seen out of you in all the time he'd known you, which was only a year or so, give or take.

Watching you laughing with your friends and Duke like a bunch of children— it was too foreign. That's when his pocket buzzed, quickly taking out his phone from it he looked at the alert from Tim, a simple 'ready for patrol tonight?'

He scoffed, it was insulting, he was always ready. And that's exactly what he sent before going back to his stalking, or rather recon of you and Duke with these strangers.

After ten minutes your group had gotten up and came back to the table with two trays full of food, a couple of bat burgers, some jokerized fries, all the things Damian sworn against since the day he was born. The way your face crinkled as you took a bite, you… irked him for a reason he couldn't place.

Thirty minutes later he watched you and the rest walk out to the bus stop and decide that he wasn't going to get you doing anything today, whatever that anything was.

So he got back into the sleek black car which was definitely garnering a few looks because who drives this kind of car near Batburger of all places. Tapping the back of the drivers seat, he said "manor" before brooding out the window.

─── ´ˎ˗

Duke glanced around the parking lot, not a single sign of Damian present, "Think he's gone yet?" He asked, looking at you three, Isla looked around, not seeing any sign of him.

"Maybe?" She turned to you, "Did we succeed or what?" Isla joked, tugging at your ear playfully while Oli sipped on his drink.

You smiled, "I think we won for today?"

They cheered, Isla squealed and hugged you tightly, Oliver whooped and jumped into the air with a hand in the air before stomping back down onto the gravel, Duke chuckling at the enthusiasm. He looked up at the sky, clouds slowly disappearing against the soft blue, a sign that it was going to get dark. Nudging your arm he tilted his head, pointing at the bus.

"We should get going?" You questioned, in response he nodded. Isla frowned, bottom lip pushing out the front of her lip in a pout.

"It's only four though?"

"Four thirty" Oliver corrected.

"Right, four thirty, why are we leaving?" You took a look at Duke and sighed, you had to come up with an excuse quickly because you were not explaining that your friends favorite heroes were the family they hated. Also it wasn't your secret to spill.

You cleared your throat, "Well you see, unlike my dinners, the rest of the family usually eats together. And sometimes Alfred serves it early so, Duke's gotta go otherwise someone will ask questions."

"Oh…" Isla replied, fists clenching as Duke began to back away, her anger broiling up again. "I see, you better be going then… Duke." The way she said his name sent a shiver down his spine, he looked at you quickly.

"Are you-" he was cut off.

"I'm staying with Isla." You said, no hesitation with your arm looping around her own, stepping back a little to stand beside Oli.

"Gotcha, I'll see you uh.." he was going to say tomorrow but; well it was Friday. He fumbled over his thoughts, "next week?" His words filled with uncertainty.

Part of you felt bad, so you pitied him. "Yeah, probably, I'll text you if we have plans to hangout though." As awkward as he was, you all actually had fun from what you saw, Isla pulled at your arm, shaking her head like Duke couldn't see her. Mouthing an over exaggerated 'no' to you.

But Duke smiled, brightly so. "For real? I'm holding you to that!" He said before running off while waving with his hand behind his back, "see you guys later!"

Your mouth curved up, 'I knew he was cool' you thought, before turning to Isla and Oliver. "Hope you don't mind, but he seems cool right? Better than stalker Damian."

Isla still frowned but Oli smiled, "True, Isla don't act like you having fun" he said, messing up her hair as she flung her arm around to get him to stop.

"I guess! I still don't like him a hundred percent alright? But if you invite him, I will try my best to be fine with it!" She declared, hand raised high into the air, the blue sky gradient with the colorful beads of her bracelets. "Anyways, let's go to my place!"

Her hands grabbed your and Oli's hand, pulling you both along, running across the streets of Gotham and down to a different bus route that headed to her place.

And you chuckled a little with every step, Oliver smiling shyly at the passersby who watched with amusement at the three teens running freely around the city.

─── ´ˎ˗

"Damian? Why're you sulking more than usual?" Steph asked, poking fun at him and his solemn while her legs laid off the side of the couch.

He grimaced, "what are you doing here. You don't even reside here." Steph chuckled, sitting up, using her legs to pull herself forward to sit of the arm rest of the sofa.

"I live here half the time Damian, I live here." She deadpanned.

"You can't live somewhere half the time.. you either do or don't!" He refuted, clearly irritated, any other day he'd just walk away while grumbling. But something made him much more irritable, and Steph immediately tied it to you.

"This wouldn't be about that night right?" Steph asked, hesitant because she did not feel like fighting Damian today, it was too early, and she was not in the mood.

Safe to say she didn't get an answer, he just growled at her— mentally she giggled, thinking he was acting like Titus— then headed to his room, bag heavy on his back. She watched him disappear, nail tracing against the stitching of the leather sofa.

Huffing out a breath, she flopped back down onto the cushions, groaning. Her phone buzzed against the table, she turned her head lazily to it, hand reaching up and slapping the screen to turn it on. Picking it up, she unlocked it and raised her brows. Just a single message from Cass, about you.

CASSANDRA: I texted them.

She shot up, eyes shot out of her sockets with absolute disbelief.

[ME]: WGAT. WHAT

[ME]: SAY YOUR KIDDING

CASSANDRA: I'm not?

[ME]: WHY DID U DO THAT, Cass, I love u, but WHY

CASSANDRA: Last night, you texted me that you felt bad.

CASSANDRA: So I reached out, they haven't replied yet [STICKER]

[ME]: U can't brush this off with a cute sticker Cass

CASSANDRA: Dick does it whenever Bruce texts??

[ME]: I CANT RIGHT NOW, BYE

CASSANDRA: OK, coming over tonight anyways

[ME]: SHUSHHHH

Yeah, sure. She was venting to Cass about feeling bad for how she ignored you, and she may have brought up wanting to fix things but that didn't mean she wanted it to happen!

It was just one of those things that you say you'd do but never actually follow through, Stephanie did not realize how bad that sounded at the time.

Cassandra did, and she acted, no time to backtrack because that’s neither how she was raised nor trained.

─── ´ˎ˗

"Oh shit..?" You said, hand clutched in your phone as you sat by Isla on her bed while Oliver sat nearby on her beanbag. She looked at you with worry.

"What? Did something happen?" Her words caught Oli's attention, both now turned entirely to you, waiting for an answer.

You grimaced at your phone before turning the screen to them, "Cain texted me-" "CASSANDRA?? THAT CAIN?" Isla screamed, grabbing your phone to read the message.

CAIN: I took your number from Steph's phone.

CAIN: I'd appreciate it if we could talk, me, you and Steph, reply when you see this please.

"How formal.." Oliver whispered, hand raised to his chin, bottom lip resting on his pointer finger. "I mean.. are you going to..?" He asked carefully, looking at you while you looked like you just ate the sourest lemon.

"Ugh.. I probably should, but I don't feel like it." You wallowed in the avoidance of it all, so badly you wanted to just step away from everything.

Part of you was convinced you had that right, the right to walk away from the people who didn't care. To Damian whose first words to you were threats and degrading comments about your self worth. To Dick who acted around you more than he did with the press, or how he would ask you three questions like clockwork before ditching. To Stephanie, who gave up trying to connect with you, and Cassandra who didn't try in the first place.

To Tim, who never even considered you someone to listen to despite being the one who’s always supposed to hear everything, the informant second to Barbara who couldn’t hear you. To Jason, who wasn't the same person he was before, who you tried to understand but purposely kept confusing you. And to Bruce, the man who took you in because he had to, who never wanted to be anything more than the man who provided yet never cared.

But then, there was the part of you that resented that logic. To be like them, and walk away without even trying to fix it, you hated it, you thought you deserved better— and you did. Not to apologize to keep the peace after breaking it, but the idea of even being remotely similar was grimacing.

You were always one who could compartmentalize what other people couldn't, to put the pieces together that the other threw away, and kept them safe for the day they might ask for them back.

When you were a kid, before Isla and Oliver. That loneliness, watching things that you hoped the others would be interested in even if you hated watching, from horror to romances, documentaries to sitcoms. Hoping they'd walk by and at least take two seconds to pay attention, not even to you, just to see if they would.

When you spoke about your day, when you kept quiet, no matter what you did, no one questioned, no one asked, no one cared. It was so embarrassing how hard you used to try, thinking about it made you tear up.

And before you realized, your sides were squished by two bodies, Oliver on your right, Isla on your left, hugging you tightly while your salty tears dripped down the curves of your cheeks, some leading to your lips, making you taste it, and the rest staining Isla's freshly cleaned blanket. "Fuck" your voice croaked.

Your friends knew not to ask, or pressure, because this has happened before. Times when your emotions came back to you, not because you lost them, never. You felt happy, angry, everything but never could you burst out into tears by choice, that mental reset of crying until you suffocated.

When your cries tightened your throat, and your face turned red, those times became rare, and when they hit? Fingers twitched and tensed, shoulders stretching forward and backward, ear ringing.

You wailed loudly, leaning into Isla, sobbing into her shoulder. Senses picking up what was happening around you— Isla's room door opening, Oliver trying to explaining you were not hurt, leaving and shutting the door behind himself while Isla rubbed your back gently, her bracelets rolling over your skin satisfyingly.

Time wasn't a concern, at some point he came back with a cold glass of water, just waiting patiently by your side, hand on yours to comfort you silently. After you managed to calm down, breaths still shaky, you sat up.

Back aching from having been hunched over, you looked at Oliver who pressed the glass against your cheek. The coldness was refreshing from how warm your skin was, you took it from him, relishing in the condensation around the surface. You drunk it slowly, still hiccuping over your breaths, Isla left the room and later came back with a brand new fluffy blanket, from the laundry room, warm still from being dried. She draped it over you, rubbing your shoulder and hugging you, Oliver quickly scrolled through his laptop and put on your favorite movie.

If asked, you couldn't answer whether or not anyone even spoke after that or if you three just relaxed into the quiet. Nothing but the sound of your favorite script, the rattling of Isla's window and the faint buzzing of her space heater in the living room.

That night, you stopped thinking, and simply rested in the presence of people who cared. You'd decide what to do when you were in the right space to do so.

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

Another chapter finished, released this a bit earlier than intended so I apologise for any mistakes. I had a bit more I wanted to write, but I figured if I did then it’d be put out much later which I wouldn’t want after how much I made you all wait before.

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

T A G L I S T

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His palm turns up with another graceful swipe of his hand, the blue is so bright it’d catch your attention even if you weren’t so fixated on each movement. It’s hypnotic, so bright and vivid compared to the back of his hands. There’s something about that clash that only makes you want to be touched by Dottore more.

You follow him and his explanations dutifully, responding to questions and inquiries he has, although you cannot testify if your answers are any good. If nothing else, however, he smirks under the beak of his mask, and it’s not the wicked sneer he often chastises his assistants with. So maybe you’re good. You’re safe. 

That is, until Dottore, for reasons unknown - well, known, but your mind blanks out - leads you further into the lab, towards the skeleton hung like a marionette, standing in the corner. Real bone, naturally, because he insisted on having the real stuff if there was any need for anatomy practice. 

He slides behind the skeleton and you’d swear his eyes met yours as he places his fingers against the rib cage. Slowly but with precision and purpose, as if he was about to play a piano. You swallow heavily. 

You respond on autopilot. Only the occasional, noticeable headache-like discomfort makes you aware his questions are getting more complex. Yet, your eyes barely stay focused on his face as they should. At least in the brief flashes you see his toothy grin remains unthreatening. 

Who designed these gloves? With what purpose but driving you mad? Each flex of his fingers is smooth, they wrap around the digits perfectly. It’s definitely only your fantasy, your sick fixation, but you’d swear you can see a hint of his tendons flexing, shifting, under the protective barrier he wears.

The flashes of bright blue under the shadow of black as he moves his hands is perhaps even worse. It throws you off whenever you try to speak. Or is it the way his hand climbs higher over the bones? 

“What do you make of all this?” he asks, amused - yet expectant. Definitely a passion project, then, or something related to his personal agenda at least. “What is the research goal?”

Right. Right, he never told you. It wasn’t in any of the abstracts, summaries, and whatnot that you’ve seen, or maybe you just haven’t been paying attention. Could you make a mistake like that?

“Considering the recent observations and influx of animal subjects,” you hum, the strain on your mind as you try to piece fragments of information together is enough to blissfully sap processing power away from your sight, “And the behavior of the eagle that got loose… I’d assume it’s the swapping of consciousness between specimens.”

“Very well,” he acknowledges in return. Why is he giving you a personal presentation about this? It’s not new, he does this for the few assistants he chooses for experiments that require special treatment, yet… “Furthermore-”

…yet it doesn’t matter.

His hand reaches the throat of the skeleton. His fingers bend and tense unnaturally. There’s no flesh on the structure. No blood running in its equally non-existent veins. So why? Why does it seem like the doctor is trying to choke the skeleton?

The placement is too precise. His other hand is already motioning in the air, drawing lines, making gestures. Something about the nervous system. He’s so animated while he speaks comfortably. Why not use both hands? Why is his other arm not resting folded at his lower back? 

Curse your vivid imagination for summoning ghostly touches of the same hand pinning the skeleton in place. The smooth material of the glove, cold as everything in here is, icy against the heated skin of your throat. You can imagine the pressure of his fingertips, digging gently into your skin as you try to take a deeper breath to reel yourself in.

He’s watching you. 

The realization startles you so much that you flinch. Dottore’s expression doesn’t falter, he just asks another question. And you answer again. The hand at the skeletal throat tightens. So much so that you forget how to breathe. There’s a peek of skin between the glove and his sleeve, as if on purpose. The tendons, the muscles, at his wrist tense. There’s no way for you to feel it, but your imagination doesn’t care for reality.

‎needy!zandik who constantly lashes out and snaps at everyone from how frustrated he his.

‎

‎needy!zandik who often excuses himself during class to relieve himself in the wash room, using his other hand to cover his mouth to hide his pathetic whimpers that escaped from his lips.

‎

‎needy!zandik who can't help but stare at you in between classes, the tent in his pants growing the longer his eyes lingered on you.

‎

‎needy!zandik who paired up with you for an analysis project which led to him having to stay overnight at your dorm multiple times a week to work on said project

‎

‎needy!zandik who can't help but critique every outcome you came too and deem them all incorrect due to ‘lack or evidence’ or some other bullshit excuse.

‎

‎all though you had to admit, he was kinda cute with that unexplained red flush across his cheeks as he explained how you were ‘wrong’ when he wasn't even doing shit.

‎

‎needy!zandik who starts bitching about how you can't do anything right and are a useless disadvantage to him, his voice was getting shaker by the moment as the red tint on his face increased the longer he scolded you.

‎

‎you where not oblivious so the fact that he was obviously frustrated and not taken care of. it was cute how he was trying to stay together but ⚊ god, was he insufferable and annoying.

‎

‎needy!zandik who make the fatal mistake of getting all up in your face and calling you a ‘good for nothing pretty faced whore. ’ that was your last straw for his pentup bullshit.

‎

‎needy!zandik who froze mid sentence when he felt a hard grip on his belt earning a small pathetic moan from him that you probably would have missed if you weren't so close it him

‎

‎‘is this the reason why you've been so bitchy towards me zandik huh? ’

‎

‎you didn't even give him a chance to respond before you pushed him on to your bed undoing his belt and taking his pants & boxers off with your teeth.

‎

‎‘w-w-wait-!’

‎

‎needy!zandik who was a sobbing whimpering mess under you. he lost track of time and how long you had been riding him for, an hour? two hours? fuck he didn't know.

‎

‎needy!zandik who lost count of how many times he came in your sweet tight pussy that was so desperately clenching around him.

‎

‎needy!zandik who kept on turning his head away from you due to how embarrassing he felt, you didn't like how he was turning away from you. you wanted him to see how you were fucking him into your soaked sheets.

‎

‎‘ zandik stop turning your head away from me. look at me when at me when I fuck you’

‎

‎needy!zandik who slowly turned his head back towards you tears streaming down his red cheeks from how rough you were being with him:(

‎

‎‘ aww your such a good boy for me zandik ♡’

‎

‎that was all it took for him to arch his back and loudly moan you name as he came in your warm cunt.

‎

‎needy!zandik who ended up taping out with his eyes rolling back into his skull.

‎

‎needy!zandik who woke up with his head resting in your lap as you ran your fingers through his hair. when he looked down he had on one of your robes, a red one with fur accents at that.

‎

‎it was now raining, the sound of the rain hitting the glass made him feel calmer.

‎

‎‘I guess your up sleepyhead, you've been out for 2 hours...well, at least you won't be so insufferable now’ you said teasingly. his cheeks flushed with embarrassment as he remembered the events from a couple of hours ago.

‎

You turn slowly. If the segment thinks he’ll intimidate you, he’s wrong. Although you’ve never met Zandik at this stage of his life, you don’t doubt his ability to capture himself perfectly. You can recognize the parts of Zandik that haven’t changed since his thirties in the man in front of you, in their raw and fresh form. 

“If he can be saved, there’s no need for him to die yet,” you bite back. The mask obscures his eyes, but you feel their glare burning on your skin.

“The time’s running out,” he hisses, “The human body only has so much time before it starts degrading at an irreversible rate. The subject’s already-”

“He’s you,” you remind him none too gently. 

“-the subject’s already decaying,” he pushes on. You wonder, if your position was only slightly different, whether he’d resort to more drastic measures of getting what he wants than trying to argue with you. “The elixir must be completed and he’s a crucial piece of the experiment.”

You wonder how the intended recipient of the elixir feels about this. You wonder who’s talking to him and what is he being told - there’s no doubt in your mind the segments split into more fronts, chased away from Zandik like crows from a carcass. 

“It’s not gonna be long now anyway,” a voice almost identical, although without the impatient edge joins the conversation. The older segment, Zandik in his forties, deceptively softer looking in his wool turtleneck, smirks and steps closer. “Who knows if he’s gonna last until the end of the day. Or the next minute. There’s enough infighting between the harbingers as is.”

And yet he doesn’t back off either. He remains half-obscured behind the younger segment, the beak of his mask tilted towards you, observing. Seems that for all the time they spend in the regrator’s company, they have yet to learn anything about diplomacy.

“It must be shocking to see one of us lying on his deathbed,” yet another voice, significantly older, “Although one would think with eternal life, the particular sentimentality surrounding death wanes.”

From the corner of your eye you see the most crow-like figure yet enter and remain standing in the shadows by the wall. 

“I’d argue it puts even more importance on remembrance and appreciation,” you grit your teeth. 

“Not when time is of essence,” the youngest segment in the room takes his turn again, “This experiment must progress immediately. Perhaps it’ll shine some light on why the elixir wouldn’t work-”

“I don’t care about your elixir,” you interrupt, “And seeing as Zandik himself didn’t exactly invite you to do as you wish - in fact, if I recall correctly-”

“That old fool is decaying as we speak,” the segment growls again, “There’s a limit to the computing powers of the human mind after a certain age.”

“You are that old fool,” you remind him.

“And yet, I am present enough to see what’s the most rational path to take and it’s not preserving a living corpse in a time-sensitive experiment,” he insists. Despite, or perhaps because of, your close proximity he doesn’t lean any closer. “Perhaps his body was simply too old for the elixir to take. Either way, whatever you’re doing is pointless.”

“I’m not trying to buy him time for the elixir to work,” you correct the segment, “As you said, there are limitations to the human mind. And it’s not made to work for centuries.”

It’s a warning too. Zandik’s plans were always ambitious, if slightly insane in their grandeur. The Ninth must be insane too if this is the alliance - if the man stuck forever in his thirties - he chose.

“We can only see about that,” the older segment chimes in, “Naturally the experiment may end in a failure, but there’s no need to meet misfortune halfway.”

The segment remaining in the shadows only nods his head. You thought at least that one might be a little sympathetic to Zandik’s plight - and perhaps he is. It’s only that Zandik’s always been a man of efficiency, though the tooth of time has gnawned on some of his edges. 

Silence stretches and you enter a stare off. Briefly you wonder if you’ll have to protect Zandik’s unconscious body against them, but they show no signs of aggression - if aggravation. Mostly on the youngest segment’s part. Murderous intent rolls off of him thick as the snowstorms wrecking the capital. 

That afternoon, before he arrives, you’re dreaming about the Korolevskiy Troupe’s performances.

It comes to you suddenly, with no respect for the lateness of the hour. You see softest seats, gilded balconies, candlelight trembling on painted ceilings. You see the Snow Maiden stepping into spring, doomed and radiant with a loving warmth that will destroy her. 

When you were younger, Feofan promised you that one day he would take you to the theater, wearing velvet. You would sit in a box like aristocrats and watch the Snow Maiden melt away from her burning love. Afterwards, you would eat honey cakes until you were sick, and for one night, your body would be ordinary. A body that could sit upright without pain, laugh without coughing, and graciously walk down a staircase with one hand on the rail.

It was a ridiculous dream. Bright, theatrical, vulgar with hope, but you have treasured it more than all the sensible things people offered you.

You are still watching the imaginary play when the door opens.

Feofan enters without his usual pause. He doesn’t give himself that small moment in the corridor to become composed, and that somewhat alarms you. Snow clings to his coat and melts in dark flecks across the wool. His hat is in his hand, his hair is wind-tossed, and his cheeks are flushed from the cold, but there is no life in the colour. His mouth is set in a line so tight it looks painful. His eyes are fixed on you with such fierce intensity that for a moment you feel sixteen again, feverish in a leaking room, listening to him swear that he will become rich enough to buy winter itself and melt it inside a chimney so you can breathe normally.

He crosses the room in three strides. 

"I’ve found someone," he says. His gloved hands close around yours. The leather is cold, and beneath it, his fingers tremble. 

"Another one?" you ask, and your voice is hardly a sound. It comes out dry and faint, like dry leaves crushed in an old book. You want to tell him that it is enough, and he has done more than any brother should’ve been asked to, and that he doesn’t need to keep dragging strangers to your bed as if presenting tribute to some wasting goddess. 

You want to set him free of yourself, and because you love him, you know he would never forgive you for it.

“He can help.” The words come out raw, scraped from some deep place inside him. He’s already bargaining with fate, your clever brother, and you love him so fiercely in that moment that dismissing him becomes impossible. “Trust me, please. Just this once more. He has access to technologies beyond ordinary medicine. He has agreed to examine you.”

"Agreed," you repeat, rolling the word in your mouth. "What a gracious man."

Your brother doesn’t smile, and that frightens you once more. Feofan has always hated showing fear, but he has never been able to hide desperation from you. It shines through him now, raw and indecent. You see it in the terrible hope he is trying to dress as certainty. 

Because hope, in a dying room, is the cruelest guest.

Your brother steps aside, still silent, and the man behind him enters the lamplight.

He is not old, although something about him refuses youth. His face has the preserved quality of a thing kept away from weather and human tenderness, completely devoid of any wrinkles. The hair falling around it is pale blue, the colour of the sky in that cold hour before dawn. His eyes are red, deep, so terribly clever. They squint a bit when they fall upon you. 

Then you see the cloak and suddenly, the room seems to contract around the man himself. The fire gives a nervous crackle. Even the snow outside appears to fall more carefully.

A Harbinger.

You turn your eyes to Feofan, sweat welling up on your hairline, but his face has become unreadable. He stands very straight beside your bed, elegant and pale, with the expression of a man who has led a plague itself into the house.

"What did you promise him for coming here?" you ask, suddenly humorless.

Feofan’s eyes flick away, and you feel the room grow colder.

"Feofan–"

Il Dottore steps closer.

"She is worse than you described," the Doctor says in Snezhnayan. And, despite the meaning of his words and the whole situation unfolding, you find his accent unnecessarily soothing. 

"The muscular atrophy is advanced," the Doctor continues. "There are signs of neurological degradation, irregular respiration, and probable cardiac involvement. How long has she been bedbound?"

"Three years," Feofan says.

"Two years and seven months," you correct, making both men look at you. “And when His Lordship is done, Feofan, you and I are going to speak very seriously about your friends.”

For the first time, the Doctor’s gaze truly catches on your face. Something shifts behind his eyes. A recalculation, perhaps. His head inclines by a fraction, almost avian in its precision. The corner of his mouth changes, not enough to become a smirk, but just enough to make you suspect one.

Good, you think darkly. There aren’t many pleasures left to you, and stunning the Second Harbinger remains one of them.

“She’s lucid,” the Doctor murmurs to himself. “Remarkable, given the extent of systemic collapse.”

“I’m still very much present, Doctor,” you whisper, a thread of wry defiance lingering in your fading voice. “Most physicians at least feign some semblance of bedside manner.”

“And I am not most physicians.” With ritualistic movements, he peels off his gloves. His hands are long-fingered, aristocratic – the hands of a master surgeon, a virtuoso pianist. You briefly wonder if he could wrap them around your neck to strangle you.

He places his gloves neatly beside your laudanum bottle and the dog-eared collection of Snezhnayan tales that have been your solitary companion through countless sleepless nights. The objects look suddenly provincial beside him, a bit pathetic in their domesticity.

The Harbinger takes your wrist. The contact is so clean and impersonal that at first, you feel nothing but the shock of temperature. Then you feel his full attention. 

"Don't perform stoicism for me," he says.

"Excuse me?" you frown.

"Pain is useful. Concealing it is inconvenient. When something hurts, you will say so. When you feel numbness, pressure, dizziness, heat, cold, or any change in sensation, you will describe it as precisely as you can. If you attempt to impress your brother with your unnecessary stoicism, you will waste my time."

Feofan’s face darkens when you lean back against the pillows, bracing yourself when your lungs are beginning to burn. The room swims at the edges, firelight smearing gold across the ceiling. Yet some wicked thread of amusement moves through you.

"I won’t lie to you," you say. "But please, Lord Harbinger, pay me back with an honesty of your own. I’m tired of being comforted by cowards."

“Understandable. Most people lie to the dying,” he replies, his garnet eyes locking with yours in the dim light, “because they can’t endure the sight of their own inevitable end mirrored in another. You, however… don’t seem afraid of your own fate.”

“I’ve been dying for many days,” you answer, offering that same crooked smile that had once calmed your little brother during the cruelest winters. “Fear is a luxury I can no longer afford. I prefer… spite.”

There it is again. That almost-smirk. Small, sharp, and gone at once.

Then, the brutal examination begins. The Harbinger listens to your lungs for a long time, his head bent close enough that you can see the fine shadow of his lashes on his cheeks. The metal of the instrument bites your skin. You inhale when he tells you to. The breath catches halfway down and breaks into coughing so violent that your eyes fill with tears. 

Feofan takes a step forward, but the Doctor raises one hand without looking at him. He presses along the wasted muscles of your legs until sparks of pain leap white behind your eyes, while he asks when the weakness began, and many more similar questions. 

When you whimper yet another time, Feofan turns his face toward the window with rigid shoulders. In the glass, you see his reflection, pale and furious, his hands locked behind his back as if he distrusts them. Your brother can’t bear to watch you suffer, yet he can’t bear to leave the room. 

After that, the whole world narrows to touch, breath, pain, and even more questions. Outside, snow darkens the window. The lamp on the table throws the Doctor’s shadow across your coverlet, long and distorted, reaching over your bed like some shadow monster. His face is close enough that you can see how unnatural his stillness is. You briefly wonder what he has done to become so free of human hesitation. 

By the end of the examination, you are shaking beneath the blankets. Your hair is damp at the temples. Every nerve seems to have been lifted from your body, inspected, and put back in the wrong place. Feofan comes to you at once with a glass of water, but your hands are too weak to hold it. He supports your head while you drink.

"I will require further tests," The Doctor says, pulling his gloves back on. "A complete neurological assessment. Every record from every physician who has examined her. Dates, treatments, dosages, failures, changes in symptoms. If anything has been discarded, recover it."

"There are crates," Feofan says. His voice has gone hard again, businesslike from necessity. "I’ll have them sent to your laboratory."

And then the Harbinger is gone, the door clicking shut behind him with a soft sound, and the room seems suddenly emptier, as if he’s taken all the air with him.

Feofan sinks into the chair beside your bed, and then, as if all the strength had drained out of him at once, he buries his face in his hands.  You look at the top of his bent head, at the dark hair still tousled from the storm, at the proud line of his shoulders curved in supplication, and you feel an exhausted pity open inside you. 

Pity and a faint unease, like the first sound of ice cracking far beneath one’s feet.

“He is surely…” Feofan whispers at last, his voice muffled by his palms. He stops, breathes once, and when he continues, there is an odd strain in the words. “Quite an unusual one, is he not?”

“Yes,” you say, and your voice is softer than you intended, almost a caress. “But I like him.”

The words fall between you with a delicacy that makes them worse.

Feofan lowers his hands and raises his eyes then. His gaze drops to your hands, where they lie helpless atop the blanket, then to your throat, where the pulse flutters too visibly, then back to your face. He looks at you as he did in childhood when a neighbour’s boy once offered to carry your pail from the well — with gratitude in his manners and murder, small and ridiculous and childish, in his eyes.

“I’m glad,” he says and reaches out to take your hand. His thumb moves across your knuckles in slow, rhythmic circles. The gesture is gentle. He lifts your hand to his mouth. His lips brush your knuckles, dry and warm. When he pulls back, you see the faint shine of moisture on your skin.

“Feofan,” you murmur.

At the sound of his name, something in him gives way again. Still holding your hand, he leans forward until the upper half of his body comes to rest upon the edge of your bed. It’s an awkward position, undignified and childish: his knees still bent beneath him, his coat falling in dark folds around his wide back, his cheek turned toward the blanket near your ribcage. He exhales there, and the breath warms the wool over your skin. 

“Just a moment,” he begs, though you haven’t denied him anything. “I've been awake since yesterday.”

Feofan presses closer by imperceptible degrees, as if even in exhaustion his body remembers the old law: where you are, there is warmth. His breathing slows against the blanket. One of his hands remains wrapped around yours, but the other, empty and restless, curls into the sheet near your shoulder. His fingers flex once, then still, as though they have found the hem of a dream.

Slowly, because your arm aches and your hand obeys you poorly, you lift your fingers to his hair. At first, you only touch the crown of his head, lightly enough that he wouldn’t wake even if he weren't so exhausted. 

His hair is messy, so you smooth it back from his brow. Feofan shifts under your hand, and a faint sound escapes him, low and broken. Then he settles more heavily against the bed, his face turning instinctively toward you, toward the warmth.

After a while, his breathing deepens.

“There,” you whisper, though he can’t hear you. “Sleep.”

You sit there for a long time, stroking his hair with the last of your strength.

Outside, the snow continues to fall.

By morning, the harbour will be completely hidden.

The Doctor gives you years.

Not a cure, “because the illness is too old”, he says, “woven into the marrow of you and can’t be unmade without unmaking the whole.” 

He explains this on a moody afternoon, in your room that still smells of the lavender water the maid sprinkles on the sheets, while the snow outside has finally begun to melt into a thousand silver trickles. The light through the window is thin and watery, and it catches the pale blue of his hair. 

“How long do I have?” you ask, and your voice is steadier than you expected.

“With treatment, I can’t say. The variables are numerous.” He pauses, and then his gaze lifts to meet yours. “Without treatment, you would’ve been dead within the year.” He says it as if he is discussing crop yields, and somehow that is more comforting than any gentle lie could ever be.

“So you aren’t giving up,” you ask, still cautious of refusal.

“No,” he replies, and there is irritation in his voice – how dare you not believe in his capabilities, how dare you lump him with the smaller-minded physicians who came before – and that flicker of egotistical pride makes you trust his garnet eyes more than you’ve ever trusted anything. “Giving up is for those with considerably less intellect.”

And you, against all odds and all expectations, begin to improve.

It isn’t easy. There are days when the treatments leave you so weak you can’t lift your head from the pillow, your limbs heavy as stone, your thoughts drifting in a fog of painkillers and exhaustion. There are nights when the pain is so bad you bite through your lip to keep from screaming, and the taste of iron fills your mouth, and you stare at the ceiling and count the cracks in it until dawn bleeds grey through the curtains. 

The Doctor, Zandik, comes once a week, then twice, then thrice. You learn the rhythm of his footsteps in the corridor and the scent he brings with him: clean and chemical, with an undertone of fragrant wood, old paper, and the elusive warmth of baked pastries. 

Then, one morning, eight months into your treatment, you wake up and realise you can feel your toes. Not the muffled echo you’ve grown accustomed to over the years, but a real sensation. You wiggle them beneath the blankets, and you can feel the slide of the linen against your skin, the flex of muscle and tendon that you’d thought lost forever. 

It’s such an ordinary thing, something a healthy person would never even notice, and yet it breaks you open like a dam. You weep with great heaving sobs tearing out of your chest, and when the maid rushes in, her face white with alarm, you can’t explain to her what has happened. You just keep weeping, tears streaming down your cheeks, your whole body shaking with the force of a joy so vast it has nowhere else to go.

Zandik isn’t impressed when you tell him about this. He’s in the middle of checking your vital signs, his garnet eyes fixed on the barely-working veins that trace intricate paths beneath your skin. The window is open a crack, and a breeze stirs the tendrils of his pale hair, and you watch the way the light catches the sharp line of his cheekbone. 

“The neurological regeneration is proceeding as expected,” he says, without looking up. “I noted last week that the nerve conductivity in your lower extremities had improved.”

“It feels like a miracle,” you say, and your voice is still thick with the aftermath of tears.

“You are very sentimental.” He doesn’t meet your eyes when he says it, and you think that you hear a lilt of satisfaction in his voice. You don’t mention it. You’ve learned, over the months, that the Doctor doesn’t respond well to being observed too directly. He is like a wild animal in that way: if you look at him too openly, he’ll retreat into the safety of his clinical manner, and you’ll lose the small glimpses of the man beneath the Harbinger’s mask.

But you notice, all the same.

Yet another handmade miracle happens on an ordinary Tuesday, in the watery light of early evening. The room smells of the first spring air drifting through the crack in the sash, damp and alive, mingling with the familiar notes of that sharp scent that always clings to Zandik’s coat. He’s there, watching from the corner of the room with his arms crossed over his chest and his expression deliberately blank. 

Luckily, Feofan is absent. Urgent matters at the bank chained him to his desk, and the only thing you feel about it is a quiet relief. His protective gaze would’ve weighed upon this fragile moment. Alone with the Doctor, you may surrender to the experience without shielding your little brother from the sight of your struggle. 

After all, you’ve been working toward this moment for a year, a long and aching year of small victories and bitter setbacks, and now, with your heart fluttering like a caged bird against your ribs, you push yourself upright.

Your legs tremble like a newborn foal’s, watery and strange beneath you after years of stillness. Your arms shake with the effort of holding yourself steady against the carved oak bedpost, the wood worn smooth by years of your own desperate gripping. 

The world tilts and swims, the faded floral wallpaper blurring into a wash of colour, and for one moment, you think that gravity will reclaim you as it always has. But then you stand on your own two feet, the soles pressed flat against the cold wooden floor, and you can hear the erratic beating of your heart, so alive that it almost hurts.

You manage three miraculous steps before your knees buckle like wet paper, but Zandik is already there. He moves faster than you’ve ever seen him move, crossing the space between you in a fluid motion. His hands are on your shoulders, steady and sure, and your body is pressed against his. The world steadies around you, anchored by the solid reality of him. Your cheek falls against the blue of his dress shirt. 

The moment stretches, fragile as spun glass, and you find yourself counting the beats of his heart, matching them to your own. Then, very slowly, as if reluctant to break the spell, The Doctor helps you back to bed. His arm slides around your waist, supporting your weight with an ease that speaks of hidden strength, and he lowers you onto the mattress.

“You overexerted yourself,” he says accusingly, while busying himself with adjusting the pillows behind your head, his long fingers smoothing the linen.

You lean back against the mountain of softness, your breath coming in ragged gasps. The pain is already beginning to bloom in your joints, but you don’t care. Despite the exhaustion, a wide and foolish grin pulls at the corners of your lips.

“Well,” you say, still breathless, still shaking, “now I can visit Her Majesty’s ball.”

For a moment, Zandik doesn’t seem to understand what you have said, which is remarkable given the vast machinery of his intellect. His brow furrows, his garnet eyes narrow, and the confusion on his face is so genuine that you feel a startling rush of laughter bubbling up in your throat. For one fleeting instant, the mask of cold detachment slips.

“Ball,” he repeats, flatly, as if tasting the absurdity of the word.

“Of course! I’ve been practicing my curtsey for years. Lying down, mostly, but the spirit was there.” You gesture weakly at your trembling legs, still grinning. “It’d be a shame to waste all that effort. I may need a slightly sturdier partner, but I’m certain Her Majesty the Tsaritsa won’t mind if I sit out the faster dances.”

Zandik stills there at your bedside, his hands hanging at his sides. The firelight flickers across his face, casting shifting shadows in the hollows beneath his cheekbones, painting his pale hair in shades of amber and gold. 

“You are utterly ridiculous,” he says at last, but his voice has lost its sharp edge. 

“I stood for the first time in years,” you reply, and your grin softens. “I’m entitled to be a little ridiculous!”

Outside the window, birds are singing the first song of the year, and the snow continues its quiet melt. In the warmth of the room, with the scent of spring and him still clinging to your skin, you let yourself believe, just for a moment, that the future might be something more than a child’s gaudy dream.

Within eighteen months, you are walking. Slowly, painfully, with frequent rests, but walking nonetheless. You can even walk down the corridor to Feofan’s study, leaning heavily on your cane.

The first time you do that, your brother tears up. He tries to hide it, of course, standing up, turning away, and pretending to examine a tasteless painting on the wall while clearing his throat and making some gruff comment about the dust, but you know him too well. You’ve known him since he was a red-faced infant, squealing in your arms, when the vast coldness of your motherland bit him too hard on his small nose. 

Now your little brother is a person with a big dream. A frightening one in its vastness, sure, a dream with blood hidden very neatly beneath signatures. But it’s his dream, and so you support him with what remains of your strength.

“Don’t cry,” you murmur, easing yourself into a chair with a sigh of relief. Your legs are aching from the walk, but it’s a good ache, the ache of muscles that are working again after too long asleep. “It’s unseemly for a future Harbinger. What would the Tsaritsa say?”

“She would say nothing.” He turns back to you, his eyes red-rimmed. “She–” He stops, swallows, and his voice cracks when he speaks again. “You gave me the strength to become what I am. I’ll never forget that. I’ll repay you tenfold. Whatever you want, whatever you need, just ask and I–”  

“Feofan.” You hold out your hand, and he takes it, kneeling beside your chair. His hands are still trembling, and you hold them tightly, feeling the calluses on his fingers from years of writing. “You don’t owe me anything. I protected you because I…” The pause makes his hands tremble in your hold.  “I love you. And now look at you, ready to serve under Her Majesty’s rule.”

His gaze moves to the cane beside your chair, and then to your legs, and then to the open door through which you entered.  

“You must be tired,” he concludes, gulping down the bile in his throat. “You shouldn’t have come so far.”

“I wanted to see you,” you murmur back at him with a weakened voice, tilting your head to rest against the chair’s back.

Feofan, as always, understands your exhaustion. He presses his forehead to your hand, and for a moment, he isn’t the cold-eyed banker who moves money like Morax himself. He’s just your little brother, and you’re just his sister, and the years fall away like snow melting into spring.

The day they move you to the Zapolyarny Palace, the sun is shining. The sky is an aching blue, and the sunlight falls across the snow-covered streets in golden slabs, turning the ice on the rooftops to dripping diamonds.

Feofan has been planning it for weeks, ever since the Tsaritsa placed the Harbinger's cloak upon his shoulders and he became, officially, The Regrator.

"It's a good omen," he says, standing at the window of your room, watching the sunlight glitter on the harbour. He is dressed in his new uniform – the heavy black coat, the silver rings, the fur trim that frames his clever face – and he looks like a prince from one of the old fairy tales. "The weather. It's a sign that things will be better now."

"You don't believe in signs, Feofan," you remind him from your chair by the fire. You are wrapped in your warmest shawl, a thick woollen thing the colour of winter berries, and your cane is leaning against the arm of the chair. You feel tired today, the excitement of the move has been building for days, and your body is already protesting the coming exertion, but you are also, despite yourself, excited. 

"I don't," Feofan admits, turning from the window with a sheepish smile. "But today, I want to believe in some kind of divine intervention".

You smile back at him, and you don’t say what you are both thinking: that there have been no divine interventions in your life so far. There has only been luck – the bad luck of your broken body, and the good luck of your clever brother, who is now a Harbinger and still worries about whether you’ll be warm enough on the train.

The carriage that takes you to the station is black and gleaming, its wheels crunching over the packed snow with a sound like grinding bones. Feofan helps you inside, his hand steady on your elbow, his other hovering at your back as though you might shatter at any moment. 

The interior smells of leather and the faint scent of the alchemical heating device hidden beneath the seat. The windows are frosted at the edges, framing the snowy streets like a painting, and as the carriage lurches into motion, you watch the house that has been your prison and your sanctuary for years recede into the distance, until it’s just another snow-covered rooftop among hundreds.

Il Dottore is already at the station when you arrive. He’s standing on the platform, a solitary figure in silver against the grey stone and the glittering snow. A small cluster of Fatui agents hovers nearby, subordinates by the look of them, their faces obscured by masks. The Second is speaking in a low voice, gesturing with one gloved hand, but when he sees your carriage approaching, he stops. The agents are dismissed with a curt wave, barely acknowledged, and he turns to watch as Feofan helps you down onto the platform. 

He wears some kind of bird-like mask, you notice. That makes you smile, because under it, due to his striking profile with an aquiline nose, he indeed looks like a carnivorous bird from warmer lands.

Which, of course, only adds to his overall attractiveness. 

“The patient is travelling well?” he asks, falling into step beside you as you make your way toward the train. There is weariness in his voice, faint but persistent, and you wonder, idly, if he has been sleeping.

“The patient is fine,” you say, before Feofan can answer for you. “The patient also reminds you that she has a name and is capable of speaking for herself.”

“I am aware. I simply don’t trust you to give an accurate assessment of your own condition. You tend toward understatement.” He pauses, and the corner of his mouth twitches. “And spite.”

You laugh breathlessly, and the sound turns into a cough halfway through. Feofan’s hand tightens on your elbow, but you wave him off with your free hand. “I’m fine, really. It’s just the cold air. Let’s get on the train before I freeze to death and make you both look bad in front of your subordinates.”

“An unlikely outcome,” Zandik says, but he gestures toward the carriage door with a brisk motion. 

The private carriage is beautiful. You didn’t expect anything less because Feofan has never done anything by halves, and his new position has only amplified his natural tendency toward excess. 

The walls are panelled in dark wood, polished to a liquid gleam, and the seats are upholstered in blue velvet that matches the Snezhnayan sky outside. The fabric is soft beneath your fingers, plush and yielding, and you sink into it with an almost physical gratitude. There is a small table between the seats, set with a silver tea service that gleams in the amber lamplight, and a plate of foreign pastries. The windows are large and spotlessly clean, and as the train pulls away from the station, you watch the landscapes slide past.

You are seated opposite Zandik, with Feofan beside you. It’s a strategic arrangement, you suspect – Feofan wants to be close enough to help you if you need it, and the Doctor, across the table, can observe you without being too obvious about it. Not that Zandik is ever obvious about anything. 

He’s drinking a deep brown brew that he pours from a separate pot, its fragrance sweeter and more complex than the black tea Feofan has ordered for you. With it, The Doctor eats honey-soaked pastries studded with pistachio and rose petals. He offers you one, wordlessly, pushing the box across the table with a single finger, and when you shake your head, he pulls it back just as silently. 

The train rocks gently as it picks up speed, and the tea in your cup shivers. Feofan and Zandik begin discussing a dispute between two minor noble houses. Their voices wash over you in a gentle murmur, and you let your eyes drift half-closed, lulled by the warmth of the carriage and the soft vibration of the train.

Beneath the warmth, your body is reaching its limit. Your lungs are beginning their familiar burn, the fluid shifting inside them like an uneasy tide, and your heart is skipping enough to make the world tilt at the corners. 

But you’re so tired of being the one who always needs to stop and rest. Today, you want to be normal, even if only for a few hours, so you say nothing. You curl your fingers around your teacup, feeling the warmth seep into your cold hands. You listen to Feofan explain the intricacies of Snezhnayan trade law, and you try to ignore the creeping exhaustion that is spreading through your limbs like ice forming on a winter pond.

The first hour passes without incident. The second hour is harder. By the third, you’re struggling to keep your eyes open, and the teacup in your hands is trembling so badly that you have to set it down before you spill it. Your breath comes in shallow sips, and your chest feels tight, as though someone has wrapped a band of iron around your ribs and is slowly turning a screw.

You lean forward, just slightly, hunching over your lap as though you’re simply adjusting your position. Your eyelids are heavy, and the world blurs at the edges, and somewhere, very far away, you can hear Feofan’s voice, still talking, and Zandik’s voice, still answering, and neither of them has noticed—

The brakes engage with a sighing hiss, and the carriage lurches. Under any other circumstances, you would’ve barely noticed it. But you are already leaning, and the lurch is enough. 

You pitch forward, colliding with something solid and warm. Hands catch you, quick and sure, gripping your upper arms with startling strength. There’s a dizzying moment of disorientation, a blur of pale blue and garnet red, and then your cheek is pressed against a heartbeat that is steady. 

The world snaps back into focus, and you realize, with a humiliating flush, what has happened. You have fallen onto Zandik across the narrow space of the compartment, directly into his lap, your hands clutching weakly at the front of his coat. The box of Sumerian sweets has toppled over, scattering pastries across the table in a shower of honey and pistachio, and Feofan is already on his feet, his face pale with alarm.

“Sister!” His voice cracks on the word, and you hear in it the echo of every dawn when he woke and was scared to look at your face, afraid that this time, you wouldn’t open your eyes. “What happened? Is she–”

“Quiet.” Zandik’s voice is flat, but there is a sharpness that cuts through Feofan’s panic like a scalpel. “Your fussing isn’t helpful.”

The Doctor shifts his grip and eases you back onto the seat beside him. You try to explain that you are fine, really, just a little tired, but your voice comes out as nothing more than a weak rasp.

“Lie down,” Zandik says, and his hand presses gently but firmly against your shoulder, guiding you down until your head comes to rest on something warm and solid. 

Feofan hovers at the edge of your vision, his hands clenched at his sides, his jaw tight with worry. “What is it? Is it her lungs? Her heart? Should we–”

“It’s exhaustion.” Zandik’s fingers are pressed against the inside of your wrist, checking your pulse. He counts the beats, his lips moving silently, and then he shifts his grip to your forehead, pressing the back of his hand against your skin to gauge your temperature. His touch lingers. “Her pulse is rapid but steady. The shivering indicates a drop in core temperature, likely exacerbated by the stress of travel.”

He pauses, and then, very quietly, adds: “She’s tired. That’s all.”

Feofan is already reaching for his heavy black overcoat, but Zandik is faster. Without a word, he reaches up and unfastens the clasp at his throat. His Harbinger’s coat slides from his shoulders in a rustle of wool and silver. Before you can comprehend what is happening, he has draped it over you, tucking the edges around your trembling body. 

The said coat is enormous, and it envelops you completely. The fur lining is soft against your cheek, and the fabric still holds the warmth that seeps into your frozen bones like a balm. You inhale, his scent fills your lungs, and some of the tension in your chest begins to ease.

Feofan stops, his own coat half-off, and stares. For a moment, the compartment is silent, save for the hiss of the wind outside and the mournful whistle of the train. His expression is unreadable, caught somewhere between surprise and recognition.

“You will carry her to her chambers yourself when we arrive,” Zandik says, without looking at Feofan. “I’m not a porter.”

A classic Zandik maneuver – retreating into the safety of his own inscrutability. But his hand comes to rest on your hair. His long fingers brush against your temple, smoothing back a strand of hair that has fallen across your forehead. Then he draws his hand away, quick and sharp, as though he’s been burned, and he clasps it together with the other in his lap.

You want to thank him, or tease him, but your eyes are already closing. You feel the last of your strength drain away, and you let it go without a fight. 

“Rest,” Zandik says at the edge of your consciousness, “I will wake you when we arrive.”

Feofan observes this small exchange with an unnerving stillness.

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Likes, comments and reblogs are appreciated!

Well, Zandik’s end truly broke my heart. It happened right before a very important exam, and I genuinely couldn’t concentrate, so this fic was born from that sheer emotional damage. There will be 4 parts.