Good Grief

Day 0, the Beginning

As he shut the door, Angus felt the wrongness of the place. This was their home. It was theirs. But now half of them was gone, and it was only his. No one had bothered to tell that to the apartment, though.

It was immediately an assault on fried nerves. He'd been so numb through the funeral, but the anaesthetic was gone now. This was his new reality. Every day he would wake up in this place and it would remind him of every way he'd come up short. He had not been enough to beat the cancer that ravaged Bennett. He had not been enough to figure out how to solve that ancient and unsolvable puzzle. And now, he wasn't enough to fill this space.

When he was still making the funeral arrangements, he'd thought maybe taking the photos down would make this easier. Bennett's face wouldn't be smiling at him as he arranged a cremation. It seemed respectful.

Now the walls seem to impose the absence front and center. "Remember, we know the truth," they seemed to say. "We saw the life lived here and even if you take those pictures down, we will remind you of each moment. You are less, now."

So he painstakingly hung the photos back where they'd hung for years. And he was forced to relive those times, the laughter and the joy. And then to sharply remember that was in the past.

An hour and a lifetime later, he collapsed on the couch, the bed feeling too far away and too familiar. He thought he cried. He wasn't sure anymore, assuming that his eyes would permanently be bloodshot and tears would stain his cheeks like tattoos.

Angus never really minded working at hospitals that weren't his, it was a part of being a good nurse. But he never felt at home. There was always an underlying sense that this was not His Place. Which was normal enough, he knew. He wasn't as familiar with this hospital's floorplan, nor with the eccentricities of the doctors on staff.

Lincoln wasn't the worst satellite assignment he'd had. Some of the nurses had accepted him as a friend and always greeted him warmly and that made it easier. Five hours into his ten hours shift and he was feeling as close to comfortable as he ever did. It was a strangely quiet day, even in the ER. Good for people, bad for making his shift not feel empty and slow.

Cleaning out one of the patient bays was when he first heard it. It was a sound that chilled him to the core. Incessant and implacable, it was almost mechanical in it's perfection. Someone was keening, the wail causing his blood to run cold, especially when no one else reacted.

Some part of his brain, the part that sounded like his Gran, said "Banshee." He wasn't sure the fae were in the new world, but he couldn't ignore that fear. He didn't fear for himself, but for Saoirse. It didn't even cross his mind that the cry was for him. Not until an actual scream pierced the moment.

Then things happened too fast, all at once. An alarm was sounded, the word nuke echoed like a heartbeat begging to be heard, and people panicked. Understandably so, but it was more than he could track. He watched it all like Ebeneezer Scrooge, a helpless observer wishing he could just do something. But he didn't remember how to walk, or speak, or breathe.

He felt every person's heartbeat, beating out a primal drumbeat, singing danger and fear. Some base instinct in him began a chant in Gaelic, his voice responding to that ancient command. Fingers found the amulet under his scrubs and squeezed until his palm bled. He couldn't protect the building. It was too much, more earth than his magic could reach. But if he willed hard enough, he thought he could protect each heartbeat he felt. His chanting increased and he channeled his ancestors, voices joining in with his, a chorus that knew disaster. He quested for connection with the living people around him, and found it as he felt the rumble in the earth.

He felt each heartbeat and understood his mistake. This hadn't been a ward to keep them all safe and alive. It connected the energy of everyone within his reach and made them feel less alone. The screaming stopped, and people huddled together. It wasn't keeping them safe from harm, but it allowed them all the illusion of hope.

But it winked out when the lights did, building shaking from it's foundation up. Glass shattered and Angus felt the breath leave his lungs as he collapsed in a heap, too much spent in a spell he didn't understand.

He didn't know how long he was out. Consciousness came slowly, starting with a drone almost like the banshee's wail. But it was too flat, too human. It was the sound of flatlining EKGs. Back-up power was trying it's best but it couldn't handle the human need.

TW: Cancer, Death

Growing up in Rochester, Angus O'Brien knew that magic was real from a young age when his paternal grandmother Saoirse started teaching him about the potions she would brew, before his own magic had even manifested itself. Once it did, she instructed him in White Magic and helped him grow in their heritage.

Angus proved adept at light magic, but excelled at ancestor magic far and away, using the heirlooms Saoirse and her mother brought from Ireland when they immigrated. When he came of age, she gifted him with a few of those items and with the truth about his parents.

Desperate for a grander life, his father Cedric started studying black magic and eventually met his mother Rona, who wanted the same things. They married and began taking more and more from the magic, especially after Ang was born. And it worked for a time, but the cost was too great and there was no way they could outrun it. Saoirse wouldn’t give specifics, just that it consumed them.

Still, it provided a good starter and she managed to save enough on top of it that Angus could go to college and pursue whatever dream he wanted. Before he left home, she gave him a spell book she’d been making for him, full of the ancestral white magic he’d been learning, and she gave him the black magic spell book his parents used. It was his choice, and she couldn’t make it for him. He chose white magic, but took both books as he made his way to New York City.

He made it through nursing school and got a job at Lenox Hill Hospital after he graduated. It was there while working a rotation in the ER that he met Bennett, a human who’d come in with a broken arm. Turns out, setting a broken arm makes for an incredibly romantic setting and the two started dating shortly thereafter.

They had three happy years of marriage, building a life in a small Greenwich apartment, before Bennett got the diagnosis: advanced metastatic melanoma. It was already in his liver and other organs by the time they caught. Inoperable, they tried chemo and healing magic. But it wasn’t going away. The couple had their worst fight when Angus suggested using one of the spells in his parents’ book, offering some of his own lifeforce in exchange for giving Bennett more time. Bennett lived another year despite all predictions without Angus having to resort to the magic that had consumed his parents.