self-insert hell

You levelled your gaze in the bathroom mirror as you adjusted the fit of your uniform. The wrinkles within the fabric smoothed out beneath your firm palming, nary a button nor strap out of place.

You had recently returned from a covert operation in France, successfully capturing Amélie Lacroix and bringing her into Overwatch custody. During the course of the mission, however, you learned the true identity of your Commander. Not only was the late, great Jack Morrison alive and kicking, but so was his ex-partner, Gabriel Reyes, an Overwatch-leader-turned-international-terrorist in possession of biotech you didn’t believe humankind would be capable of inventing within your lifetime. To add insult to injury, shortly after you returned to base, Soldier 76—no, Morrison—stepped down as your commanding officer without so much as a single word of warning.

A laundry list of recent events.

Had you forgotten anything?

Athena delivered your request to meet him at sundown, and you took his subsequent silence as an agreement.

There was no planning to your conversation this time, no flowcharts or emergency courses of action. Your dialogue would be directed by the worry in your bones, the weariness brought on by Amélie’s murderous gaze, by Reaper’s aura of death, by the feel of Morrison’s blood pouring down the front of you as you carried him back to the dropship.

With one final adjustment to your jacket, you crouched down and laced up your combat boots.

You dressed like you were on a mission.

That’s precisely what this was.

-

The training grounds felt familiar in a way little else did. The mechanical hum of bots reached your ears and gave you a boost of adrenaline, preparing you for intense drills, the preemptive rush almost pavlovian. This was where you first hauled out the gun you built, the one you could barely lift on your own. This was where you trained, where you improved your endurance, your strength, and your aim. Just yesterday, a few floors up from where you stood now, was where you got drunk and tossed bottles for McCree to pick out of the air with his revolver.

This was where it started, and this was where it would end, one way or another.

Another deep breath to steel yourself as you rounded the corner.

You almost didn’t recognize him.

Clad in cargo pants and a plain black t-shirt, Morrison leaned against the metal barrier bordering the cliff’s edge, keeping his back to you as he looked out over the landscape. No jacket or visor, no mask or pretense—just him and his presence, whole.

“Thank you for meeting me,” he said, not turning to face you.

You did not reply.

His voice had a warm clarity you hadn’t heard unhindered by the mask since you sat back-to-back on the hotel room floor in France.

It felt like such a long time ago.

(Him and his damn frozen burritos.)

Your thoughts poured in with varying levels of patience, filtered through the consideration of how many emotions you would let yourself bring to the conversation. You had questions, many questions, questions you made a point not to plan beforehand because he did not deserve the courtesy of your organization. As frustrated as you were, you had to maintain composure, as revealing how much his actions had affected you would have compromised your position. These mistakes were his to resolve, after all. Not yours.

Keeping an arm’s length from him, you approached his side, gripping the railing with both hands.

“I’m sorry,” he said at once.

You kept your tone even. “Do you know what you’re apologizing for?”

“Too many things to count.” He breathed out, slow and deep. “I warned you that I—”

“Don’t turn this on me.”

“I didn’t mean to,” he replied, coolly. “I’m bad at this, Reader. I didn’t used to be, but I’m a few years out of practice.”

He was trying to be placating, you could tell, but the informality of his tone only served to annoy you. “Why are we here, Commander Morrison?”

He bristled at the sound of his name; it sounded so foreign, so distant on your tongue. “I stepped down as your reporting officer.”

“I know.”

An unfamiliar emotion—unfamiliar to you, at least—flickered across his face. The sudden set of his jaw, the slightest tug of a grimace at the corner of his mouth, both subtle traces of annoyance, but as his every microexpression was new to you, any reaction he let slip may as well have been spelled out before your eyes. It was satisfying, in a way, to see something other than the cherry-red vacancy of his visor across his face.

“I wanted to be the one to tell you, so you would at least know why.” His brows drew together in that old, familiar way they did when they still peeked up above his mask. “I stepped down so we could talk. Any questions you have, I’ll answer them the best I can. No secrecy. No bullshit.”

“You had to step down to do that?”

“I don’t make the rules anymore, Reader. I just play by them.”

The implication was not lost on you.

As a Commander within the organization, it went without saying he couldn’t speak openly because of his position. You were still new to Overwatch, and he was given orders to restrict what information you had access to; without him as your direct superior, however, he no longer had any obligation to stand in your way. Regardless of what Morrison told you today, Strike Commander Oxton was going to be under the impression you left this conversation knowing more than you should.

So you figured you might as well ask whatever the hell you want.

“...where’s Amélie?”

For a moment, Morrison looked surprised, as if that wasn’t the question he’d been expecting. “She’s in secure holding. Angela’s trying to figure out how to reverse what Talon’s done to her.”

“But she’s safe?” you pressed. “We’re not...interrogating her, or anything?”

“No,” he assured. “She’s been a prisoner of war for over a decade—Lena’s putting everything we have into her care. As a matter of fact, Amélie...” Hesitance gave him pause as he reconsidered his phrasing. “She asked about you the other day. ‘The one from Quebec.’ Wanted to know how you were doing.”

(Amélie was looking for you, too?)

Blindsided by the revelation, you were sure your expression of bewilderment had already given you away. No use trying to lie about it, now.

“We...had a few words on the ship,” you said, dismissively.

“That wasn’t on your mission report.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

You volunteered no further information. To your relief, he decided not to push.

Not right now, at least.

“I think she wants to talk to you,” was all he said.

“...can I do that?”

“Don’t see why not. Make sure you’re on Angela’s good side before you go asking her for favours, though. Take it from me.”

(Memories of you and McCree breaking into Dr. Ziegler’s office flashed through your mind, and you hoped you were half as stealthy then as you would have been if you were sober.)

After the events of Le Havre, you felt responsible for Amélie’s well-being; although she was in more-than-capable hands, that didn’t mean she wasn’t being harmed. Who had the final say in what was best for her, anyway? Had anyone asked her what she wanted, or did her condition render her incapable of providing informed consent? Did the countless attempts to reverse Talon’s procedure cause her any pain?

Would she even tell you if it did?

Weary, you dragged a hand down the front of your face to reorient yourself, covering your mouth as you stared out at the view beyond the training facility. Ice floes drifted at the foot of the distant mountains, the rocky landscape carving jagged edges into the horizon.

“You chased Reyes after we promised not to be reckless,” you mumbled into your hand, sounding bored.

“I did,” he replied. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m your strategist. I’m your escape plan. Not communicating your change of objective was stupid as hell.”

“It was.”

“You put both of our lives in jeopardy.”

“I’d be dead if it wasn’t for you.”

“You know, agreeing with me still takes all the fun out of standing up to you.”

“But you’ve gotten so good at it.”

You sneered. As quick as he’d always been to own up to his mistakes, acknowledgement alone wouldn’t be enough, this time. “I’m going to need more than that, Commander.”

“My intel had Reyes on a different continent at the time of our mission,” he explained. “I wanted to make sure we hadn’t been compromised, but it was my chasing him that ended up compromising us. He let himself be seen because he knew I’d follow. I should have known better.”

“Couldn’t just rack up the sighting to bad intel?”

He shook his head. “The intel I had on him’s never been bad before.”

“Really?” you said, incredulous. “Who’s your source?”

“Sombra.”

“...oh.”

“Once in a while,” he sighed, “she’ll find me and tell me where he is, what he’s up to, where he’s going. Thinks that counts as me being indebted to her. I told her it doesn’t. That’s why she contacted you in Romania. She knew I wouldn’t take the algorithm, so she got you involved to grab it for me.”

You thought it over for a moment. “Then why lie about Reaper not being in France?”

“Maybe to prove how much I’ve relied on her intel up until now. Maybe just for the hell of it. I’ve learned to stop trying to rationalize her motives a long time ago—whatever they are, they’re for her own benefit. No one else’s.”

Everyone was connected in one way or another, you realized. By virtue of being an agent of Overwatch, you were just as much a part of this tangled web of complicated pasts and ulterior motives as anyone else was, like it or not—and like or not, you’d entered this game at a disadvantage, as everyone involved seemed to have some history with one another you were forced to learn about on the fly.

The most pressing question of all leapt from your throat, quicker than you could think to contain it. “Was I the only one who didn’t know?”

“About Reaper?”

“About you.”

You knew the answer, of course—McCree had told you the previous day—but you wanted to hear it from him, if only to test the waters of his honesty.

And he nodded again.

“You were the first recruit we picked up after we got the team back together,” he said. “Everyone here’s from the old days, or related to someone from the old days. When I came back into the picture as Soldier 76…the rest of the world may have had no idea who I was, but they did. How could they not? We were family.”

“Was that why you liked having me around?” You felt your grip on the railing bar tighten. “Because I was the only one who didn’t know?”

His face fell.

“It wasn’t the only reason,” he said, “but it was a reason.”

(No bullshit, indeed.)

You weren’t sure if you had a right to be as frustrated as you felt. His identity was his own to protect, after all; as hard as it was to admit, he never owed you the truth. Even so, you felt like an idiot. You hated being caught off-guard. You hated not knowing all the facts.

McCree’s words rang through your thoughts, clear as day.

So are you mad at him for not tellin’ you, or mad at yourself for not figurin’ it out sooner?

From the corner of your eye, you noticed Morrison shift his weight, leaning heavier against the railing as he folded his hands together.

“I’m sorry you found out the way you did.” His voice was soft, but earnest. “I put on the mask to separate the man I am now from the man I used to be. You didn’t know who that was, but you took my lead, anyway. Spoke with me. Enjoyed my company. It...made me feel new again. I was afraid I was starting to consider you in ways I shouldn’t.”

“I’m pushing thirty, Commander, you can stop treating me like a child.”

“That doesn’t make the problems go away. I’m not your boss anymore, but I’m twice your age and I still have rank on you. There’s a difference in power dynamics, in experience—you might not see it as taking advantage, but that’s exactly what makes it dangerous.”

“I know,” you snapped in frustration, running a hand through your hair. “I know it does. How do you think I felt, crushing on my superior like some kind of tired cliché? I’ve gotten this far in my career without ever—I thought I was better than that. I tried to convince myself out of it. I thought working by your side would be enough.”

“But it wasn’t, was it?”

Your stomach sank. He hadn’t sounded accusatory, but somber, almost sympathetic.

“And by the time you realized it wouldn’t be enough,” he continued, “it was too late to say anything. Not without undermining all you’ve done and making it seem like your emotions were the only thing keeping you around.”

You watched him stare down at his hands, as if the words he was searching for were held somewhere between his fingertips.

“You’re smart. Tenacious. Diligent. If I were to...if I did anything that might’ve suggested I brought you on for a reason other than you deserving to be here—”

“I know I deserve to be here,” you interrupted. “Had my doubts for a while, but that was before I saved your ass.”

He chuckled, and the sound was music to your ears.

His striking blue eyes shifted to glance in your direction, the remnants of his laughter lingering in his smirk. “Guess there’s nothing stopping me now then, is there?”

“...stopping you from what?”

“There’s another reason I stepped down, Reader.” Wavering under the intensity of your gaze, he was no longer quite looking you in the eye. “I don’t want command over you, anymore. I don’t see you as my subordinate. I haven’t for a while.”

You had to keep yourself from trembling. “What am I to you, then?”

“An equal,” he said. “A partner.”

The bottom of your stomach fell out and shattered, filling your insides with slivers of ice as something dense and panicked tightened within your chest. There that word was again. ‘Partner.’ What he hadn’t had since he went rogue. What Winston once said Morrison had always been training you up to be. Your mind grew overwhelmed with the memory of a clawed, shadowed stature and a dark voice and a life-changing chance once gambled on.

How could you ever measure up?

“I’m not Reyes, Commander,” you whispered.

“I never wanted you to be.”

Vulnerability weighed upon his shoulders, the likes of which you’d never seen him bear, before. The gears in his head were turning, you could tell, thinking of you, and of him, and of where you would go from here. His eyes alone were so expressive, you noticed—a stark contrast from the statuesque carbon-fiber stoicism you were used to. You hadn’t realized how much the mask was hiding until it was off.

Maybe that was why he wore it so much.

“I’ve betrayed your trust,” he said, firmly. “I know that. I would like to work on getting it back, if you’ll let me.”

From where you once placed him on a pedestal, recent events had cast him in a lower, imperfect, more mortal light. The man you once idolized stood before you, nearly wringing his hands in anticipation, as human as you’d ever seen him. You respected him more, but you revered him less. You figured that was a good thing.

It was then when he looked away from you, returning his gaze to the absence of answers held within his barren palms.

So you gave him one.

Reaching to cross your forearm over one of his own, you wove your fingers between his, your silent gesture unapologetic and sure.

His hand curled back around yours at once, like a reflex.

He laughed quietly in disbelief. “Didn’t think I’d get a chance to feel this way about anyone, again.”

You felt him run a thumb across your fingers, the gentle motion making your breath catch in your chest. You glanced up at him; though he’d kept his voice steady, his eyes were glazing over, and the unexpected reaction decimated what remained of your resolve. The warm smile he gave you wrinkled the corners of his eyes, his expression giving you the briefest glimpse into a man many years younger.

“Truth is,” he beamed, “I’m crazy about you, sweetheart.”

You felt your heart seize within your chest.

The weight of his words collapsed on you all at once. It was you who made him feel hope, you who affected him so profoundly, you who made him question what he once swore off for the sake of self-preservation. You’d imagined him confessing before, but no amount of idle thoughts and private daydreams would prepare you for hearing the words out loud.

There was something settled behind his eyes, as well—something unsettling you couldn’t ignore. This was a man who didn’t seem to be afraid of anything, who made a career out of staying level-headed in the toughest of situations, and here he was before you, absolutely terrified. The last time he gambled on something like this, life and circumstance dealt him a poor hand; now, all these years later, he wanted to try again.

With you.

It was only when he brushed a finger to your cheek did you realize you were crying.

He breathed another small laugh, shaking a few of his own tears loose from the corners of his eyes. He could see you replaying his words inside your head—he could always tell when you were overthinking—and he squeezed your hand tighter to let you know how much he’d meant it.

You wanted to hold him close, to burrow deep inside his chest, to reach straight into his heart and fix whatever it was that made him so goddamn scared. But he would have to let you, first. You couldn’t do that if he continued keeping you guessing.

“Stop isolating yourself when things go wrong,” you said, the first on your list of ground rules. “You did it after Romania. You did it after Le Havre. I don’t need to know everything, but you need to stop disappearing on me.”

He nodded with total understanding. “Force of habit from going solo. I’ll work on it.”

“And I need you to talk to me more,” you continued. “If we’re doing this, you can’t keep me wondering where your head’s at.”

“You got it. That does go both ways, you know,” he teased.

“Hey, I never said I was any good at this, either.”

You gave him a sly smile and wiped your eyes on the back of your sleeve. Earlier that day, you didn’t think you would be standing in full uniform before your casually-dressed Commander, the two of you recovering from tears as he took orders for what he could do to restore your trust in him. A rare opportunity, indeed.

It would be a shame if you didn’t take advantage.

“...one more thing.”

“Name it.”

You levelled his eyes again. “Do you really want to be with me?”

He didn’t shy away from you, this time. “I do.”

You let go of his hand and took a few slow steps backwards, sliding away until your fingertips broke contact.

You hoped the smirk you gave him was half as playful sober as it would have been if you were drunk.

“Prove it.”

His look of confusion turned to surprise, then to determined understanding as he watched you walk away.

There had been a resolve in his voice, a finality, the kind that made you realize he would move mountains for you if you so much as wished it.

You had issued him a challenge. It was his turn to give chase.

Even in high concentrations, Qliphoth pollen was hard to see with the naked eye, but V could still sense the thick of it in the air. It was heaviest wherever civilians had grouped up but hadn’t made it out alive, such as traffic-jammed roads and community buildings used as safehouses. Where there were corpses, there was pollen.

Where there was pollen, there were demons.

V traversed the shattered streets of Red Grave while Griffon scouted overhead for more enemies to hunt down. In the near distance, a shred of lush green and stark white interrupted the dreary landscape of dust and haze. It sat on a small balcony several floors up an intact apartment building, the plant’s colours standing out from its dull surroundings as bright as Christmas lights in the dark.

Nearly two weeks had passed since the first attack. Without proper maintenance, something as insignificant as a personal planter should have withered away days ago.

Someone must have been taking care of it.

V pointed at the balcony with the tip of his cane. “There.”

“You got it,” Griffon said, and he was away.

V waited for his familiar to return, offering an arm for him to land on once he did so.

“Well, it’s a human.” Griffon perched and shook out his feathers. “Ain’t gonna last much longer, though.”

“Injured?”

“Nah, but humans ain’t supposed to be around Qliphoth pollen for this long. Whoever’s up there reeks of it. Fully infected with the stuff. Might have another few weeks—a month, tops. That’s if the demons don’t get to ’em first.”

V made a thoughtful noise. Though this was the first instance of Qliphoth poisoning they discovered so far, the nature of the situation didn’t come as a surprise. Civilian evacuation may have once been a priority, but two weeks into the disaster, most people they found were either dead or close enough to it.

“Let’s get goin’, V,” Griffon said, shrugging his head. “We shouldn’t bother with this one. Ain’t nothin’ we can do.”

Logically, V knew Griffon was right—they were halfway to their deadline, and they needed to optimize their time wherever they could. However, V couldn’t ignore his curiosity about the stranger in the apartment. They were someone who managed to survive this long on their own. Someone who didn’t know they were terminally contaminated by the very resources keeping them alive.

Someone who took care of flowers in their spare time.

Letting go of Griffon, V retrieved his book, as he often did in times of indecision. The words of William Blake held no prophecy for him, but it was a far more elegant solution than a coin flip.

“A flower was offered to me; such a flower as May never bore. But I said I’ve a Pretty Rose-tree; and I passed the sweet flower over.”

Griffon flew in place. “So...we move on?”

“On the contrary,” V smirked, shutting his book. “This means it is within our best interests to have a closer look.”

-

A few minutes ago, you had woken by V’s bedside with your hand in his, and your hair full of bloody, bent feathers Griffon crowned you with while you were asleep.

Now you felt like you were piloting a body that didn’t belong to you.

The two of you were standing on your balcony, watching the rising sun slip between spaces granted by the half-demolished buildings across the landscape. Dark clouds hovered ominously in the distance. Under the weight of V’s words, you went from gazing at the sky to glancing down over the railing in front of you, thinking that if you jumped from this height, you would only be saving yourself some time.

The headaches, you realized. The constant waves of pain that ebbed and flowed but never disappeared, were just forecasted echos of your own death rattle.

Bile rose in the back of your throat. Your vision drifted from the dizzying heights to the planter by your feet. The flowers there were tall and strong and so very much unlike you.

“I am sorry I did not tell you sooner,” V said.

A smile ghosted across your face. “Not really something you can bring up in casual conversation, is it?”

“I am not one to shy away from death. I have seen much of it during my time here, helping others escape the city.” Lowering his head, he pinched the bridge of his nose. “I feel guilty for never having extended you the offer.”

“You didn’t help me escape because I was sick?”

“I do not know the nature of your condition. If there was the slightest chance it could result in further pollination of the Qliphoth, I could not risk having you leave city bounds.”

Understandable, you thought. When you first met him, he mentioned the disaster was contained to Red Grave—jeopardizing that just to buy some time for a then-stranger made no sense. You were a ticking time bomb, poisoned by the air you breathed and the water you were once thankful to still have running through your building. Be it death by demon or by hell-plant, you realized there was nothing you could have done to survive this ordeal. Your fate was sealed the moment you woke up in the recovery ward.

You fidgeted with the hospital band still around your wrist. “I think I knew.”

The words escaped you without thought. You felt the green depths of his eyes on you, and you really, really wished you couldn’t.

“I don’t know how to explain it,” you muttered, “but I think I just...deep down, I knew something was wrong. That’s why I told you I wasn’t interested in leaving the city. Because I knew I wouldn’t be able to.”

The thought filled you with a graceful sense of finality that eased your dissociation, and the electricity of your anxiety settled to a crackle within your bones. The trembling world around you still didn’t feel like your own, but at least it was starting to jitter back into place.

You folded your arms on top of your balcony railing. “You know, sometimes I think I died back in that car crash and woke up in limbo, and you’re some psychopomp sent here to take me home.”

V rested both hands on the grip of his cane. “His eyes, like hollow furnaces on fire; a girdle, foul with grease, binds his obscene attire. He spreads his canvas, with his pole he steers; the freights of flitting ghosts in his thin bottom bears. He looked in years; yet in his years were seen; a youthful vigor and autumnal green.”

Amused, you cast him a sidelong glance. “A little pompous to make up poems about yourself, don’t you think?”

“It was written by a Roman poet named Virgil,” he smirked back, “about the ferryman of Hades.”

“If I give you a quarter, will you let me pass?”

“You are not dead, starlight.”

“Not yet.”

You continued looking out across the distance: the morning sun, the broken buildings, the grey clouds approaching on the wind. There was sure to be a storm tonight, and only one question left on your mind.

“...why did you knock on my door?”

You didn’t need to explain yourself further.

After Griffon’s first visit, V knew that you were alone and irreversibly poisoned by the demon tree. At that moment, he could have walked away without a word, knowing your infection would die in isolation with you, and you would have been none the wiser of his existence.

But V hadn’t done that.

Instead, he chose to visit you, finding your building’s front entrance completely barricaded with anything on the first floor you had strength enough to move. He chose to climb six flights of fire escape stairs up the side of your complex—he chose to knock on your door, to introduce himself, to accept your half-crazed invitation for tea.

Why?

It was your turn to keep your eyes on him now, and to your surprise, he would not look at you. He seemed reluctant to respond, but yours was the first truly personal question you asked of him in the days you had known each other. You would not back down without an answer. He owed you that, and he knew as much.

“I felt a kinship with you,” he settled on.

“You had no idea who I was.”

“Perhaps not at first.” More hesitance graced his features, drawing his brows together and wrinkling the corner of his nose. He gripped the railing before him tightly, as if he were bracing himself to speak. “As I have told you, I was placed within this realm to serve a purpose. What you do not know, however, is that if I am successful on my quest, I will...cease to exist.”

Your thoughts glazed over as you felt your stomach drop.

“When I learned of you, I saw myself,” he continued. “Frightened. Alone. Not long for this world. I believed helping you would assist in the navigation of my own shadows. Alas, I did not expect to find an evening star within the darkness.” With a somber smile, he turned to look at you. “My reasons for finding you were less than altruistic, I admit. In my selfishness, I withheld something important from you—something that was a matter of life and death. I understand if you are unwilling to forgive me for that.”

For the first time since the conversation started, you met each other’s eyes.

For the first time since you met, you understood that you and he were the same.

“Do you know why I came back for the flowers?” you asked.

He tilted his head ever-so-slightly in curious attention, his dark bangs brushing along the side of his face.

“Even before all this went down, I...didn’t really have anyone. I was alone. Being alone got hard, sometimes. So I, um.” You started fiddling with your wristband, again. “I bought some seeds. I learned how to plant them. How to take care of what grew. It probably sounds stupid, but...it was nice, you know? Having something that counted on me. When things got really bad, I would just think, ‘I can’t kill myself now. Who would take care of my flowers?’ And after everything that’s happened...I didn’t want to give up on the one thing that needed me. If they somehow managed to survive, I couldn’t leave them to die alone.”

Your throat suddenly felt tight. You turned away from him, lowering your head and pressing your palms into the corners of the balcony railing. Everything within you felt like it was welling up at once, but you willed yourself not to cry. Not here. Not now.

“You could’ve left me, back then.” You tried to keep your voice from wavering. “You could’ve left me to die alone, but you didn’t. You don’t have to be alone, either. I can be here until the end of us, if you’ll let me.”

You felt a hand rest on top of yours.

“The privilege is mine,” he said.

Somehow, the weight of his hand felt heavier than before.

Letting your eyes slip shut, you took a deep, shuddering breath, focusing on nothing more than keeping yourself from breaking down. You wanted to turn around and reach out and hold him—he would be a much better anchor than the railing, you were sure of it—but the headache still flashing lightning behind your eyes was blinding, an unholy mixture of demonic migraines and unprocessed grief.

“Can I have some time alone?” you asked. “Not long, I just. I need to think.”

“...I do not think it wise to leave you to your own devices at the moment.”

“I’ve made it this far, you really think I’m gonna throw it all away by killing myself? How boring of an ending would that be?”

You meant for the joke to lighten the mood, but the way he was looking at you now made your heart sink. The concern in his eyes was uncompromising.

“I can’t kill myself now,” you said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “Who would take care of you?”

He smirked. “Who, indeed?”

V released your hand to tuck your hair behind your ear, and the sweetness of his touch was almost enough to dull the pain.

-

It took some convincing to assure V you weren’t a danger to yourself, but he eventually agreed to give you space that afternoon—on one, non-negotiable condition.

The idea of being babysat by a demon didn’t sit right with you, but you appreciated the concern.

With Shadow never more than a few paces behind you, you tried to go on with the rest of your day, rumination over the morning’s events serving as background noise to the idle buzzing of your headache. You changed out of your soiled clothes. You took a shower to rid yourself of last night’s blood stains. The water was ice-cold like always, as you had no electricity to warm it, but you sat on the shower floor and stayed under the stream until you were as numb as the thoughts bouncing around your throbbing skull made you feel.

You were going to die.

You were going to die and there was absolutely nothing you could do about it.

The revelation didn’t affect you the way you thought it would. You felt like you should have been sadder, angrier, more indignant about the whole situation—but the truth was you came into this mess pre-saddled with learned helplessness. In the weeks before V arrived, you thought the chances of being rescued were slim to none, and you held no illusion about being able to survive indefinitely without demons closing in on your position. For you, dying wasn’t so much a matter of if as a matter of how.

Now you knew.

The rest of your day was spent curled up in bed, your head buried beneath your pillows as Shadow kept a watchful eye on you from her guard at your bedroom door. Rain had arrived with the evening and it made you feel as unsafe as it always did since the attack. Being unable to see or hear anything beyond the storm sent your mind reeling, imagining what manner of hellish creatures could be closing in on you without your knowledge. Every clap of thunder seemed to rattle the hive inside your head, and you wondered how long the infection would take to eat away at you. You wondered if you would lose your memory.

You wondered if it would hurt when you died.

This is how V must have felt, too, you realized—knowing the end was coming, like a stormcloud on the horizon, keeping you resigned to the inevitability of its arrival. Still, where you were once terrified, trying to survive behind barricades and stolen rations, it was almost freeing to know nothing you did mattered, anymore.

Shadow gave a quiet growl at your door. You poked your head out from beneath the covers. She looked at you, took a few steps from the doorway, then glanced over her shoulder to look at you again.

She wanted you to follow her.

There was no urgency to her steps as you took the familiar path through the dark hallways to the fire escape. The window was open when you arrived, letting rain pool on the floor. You recognized the figure standing outside long before he came into view.

V leaned against the window frame under no cover from the rain, fully soaked from head to toe. His skin and leathers alike were slick with water, and his wet hair stuck to the sides of his face, the black strands appearing a deep blue beneath the moonlight.

He reached a hand through the open window. “You told me you missed the rain.”

Your knee-jerk thoughts kicked into overdrive—this was absurd, you’d get drenched, you’d catch a cold if you went out in this weather—but you noticed the carefree glint in his eyes and you were reminded of the briefness of your shared timeline.

(Nothing you did mattered, anymore.)

Charon offered you his left hand, and you accepted it, with vigor.

“Hold tight,” he said.

Your first mistake was assuming you would take the stairs.

With your still hand in his, V leapt over the fire escape railing. An embarrassing shriek tore from your throat as your guts gave a sickening dip during the six-story drop. Shadow morphed into a cloud of black smoke and shot out beneath you, faster than anything, her form a dense fog beneath your feet that guided your fall and allowed you all a soft landing. You landed with far less elegance than V did, but his hand within yours kept you steady on your feet.

“Jesus christ,” you chuckled nervously, near trembling from head to toe. “Warn me before dragging me off a fucking building next time, will you?”

“Now, where’s the fun in that?”

In a billow of dark vapour, Shadow returned to her sigils tattooed across V’s skin.

The streets around your building were still a destroyed mess, with large sections of pavement a rough puzzle of split pieces beneath your feet. The pouring rain was cold against your skin, but still warmer than your earlier shower; it didn’t take long for you to get completely drenched as you walked alongside V.

V ran a hand through his sodden hair, flipping it back and out of his face, and the sight of him had you hypnotized. His eyes drifted to meet your stare before sliding down to take in the sight of you—and you were suddenly very aware of how your soaked top was clinging against your skin.

“The rain suits you, starlight.”

“That makes two of us.”

A sly smile, and he turned away from you, again.

V kept several paces ahead of you as you continued your leisurely stroll. He began twirling his silver staff in his hand and placing one foot directly in front of the other, heel to toe, as if he were walking the length of an invisible string. There was a sudden bounce in his step you weren’t sure what to make of, at least not until he started strutting along low walls and uneven chunks of debris with perfect balance. Spinning his cane between his fingers with practiced ease, he performed choreographed steps to some silent rhythm playing in his head, moving confidently beneath the rain as if he were the star of a showtune.

You couldn’t believe your eyes.

He doubled back to quite literally dance circles around you. You couldn’t hold back your laughter, and the sound was music to his ears.

You applauded. “All you need is a top hat and you’ll be ready for Broadway.”

“Indeed.” Coming to a stop in front of you, he gave a gentle bow as he offered you his hand. “Care to join me?”

Once again, your immediate thoughts were of embarrassment, rejection, impracticality—but once again, you thought better of it, and you took his hand without objection.

V guided your arm, holding your hand up and a little off to the side of you. The hand that held his cane rested closed-fist against your waist; you could feel the length of steel along your back, and it kept your posture straight.

“I’ve never really done this before,” you mumbled.

“Not to worry,” he replied, guiding you closer to him. “Just follow my lead.”

(Didn’t you always?)

Without warning, V started to move.

Step, one, two. Step, one, two.

The moves weren’t complicated—he took you on a slow, informal sort of waltz, his swaying steps back and forth simple and easy to follow. Though you somehow managed to keep both your left feet from stepping on his, there was an effortless fluidity to his movements that made you feel clunky and square-wheeled in his arms.

“Shouldn’t there be music?” you teased, trying to hide your self-consciousness.

“Ah, I knew I was forgetting something. Let’s see, now...”

And he began to hum the first few notes of Singin’ In The Rain.

You could not stop yourself from shying away, from pressing your forehead to the crook of his neck to hide your smile against him, for the way he looked at you as he hummed the melody was enough to set your cheeks on fire. Not one to be deterred, he rested his chin on top your head and continued the song in its entirety, syncing your gentle, swaying motions to the tune. You could feel the resonance of his voice vibrating beneath his chest.

He sounded happy, or something like it.

In a moment of bravery, you stepped back and raised your held hands as far as they could go. Laughing, V took your cue and twirled—at his height, you had to tiptoe and he had to bend down for him to make it all the way under your arm.

The sound of his laughter, the sight of a smile that actually reached his eyes—knowing you were responsible for both made your pulse thunder more than normal within your head.

You rested a hand against his cheek and he leaned into your touch as he did the previous night, affectionate and undeniably cat-like.

“...can I kiss you?”

The words fell from your mouth, rushed and uncertain, emptying all the air from your lungs. The confidence in his eyes flickered and filled with questioning—that same innocent curiosity from your very first meeting, as if he were surprised to be seen this way.

As if he’d never done this, before.

“Please,” came his whisper, gentle and sure.

So you tiptoed.

Soft was the first word that came to mind—from the careful press of his lips to yours, to the feeling of his rain-soaked skin beneath your fingertips, to the way he eased so completely beneath your touch. It surprised you, how someone who seemed all sharp angles and rough edges could feel so delicate in your hands.

He hadn’t realized his eyes were shut until he opened them. He was not sure if he forgot to breathe, or if you simply took his breath away. Multitudes of experiences lingered within his memories, but few had been realized by this vessel; this felt far more powerful to him than any single memory he came equipped with, for this was a moment he made entirely for himself.

He may not have been his own, but you, you were—his and his alone.

Holding his face in your hands, you laughed softly with a happiness you hadn’t known yourself capable of, the sudden tears spilling down your cheeks indistinguishable from the rain.

V stares at the violin.

He stares at it for a very long time.

The instrument was beautiful: 4/4, full-sized, made from a polished, glossy brown wood which was now reflecting light from the early morning rays. There were no fingerprints or nail scratches along its neck, nor was there any wear on the chin rest; the only indication it had ever been touched at all were the three strips of masking tape spaced out near the end of the neck, marking basic finger positions for a beginner.

Whoever owned the instrument had been learning how to play.

Griffon flew into the vacant apartment where V had taken refuge.

“You were right,” he said, perching along the balcony railing, “broken locks on every floor. Must’ve turned the whole damn building upside-down looking for that thing.”

“But why waste the time?”

“Only you would figure someone doin’ you a favour is a waste of time.”

“Cruelty knits a snare and spreads his baits with care.”

“Or—here’s a crazy friggin’ thought—maybe they were just being nice.”

V lifted the bow from the violin case. On instinct, his fingers fell around the end of it in perfect positioning, his hands full of memories that did not belong to his body. “Perhaps returning here was not such a good idea.”

“You’re killin’ me, V, you know that?” Griffon scowled. “May I remind you that you’re the one who hasn’t told the human why we’re here, yet? Who’s really ‘cruelty with a snare,’ here, huh?”

V tensed. At once, Griffon could feel him bristling, a sudden rush of static in the air that whipped the demonic familiar back to humility.

“Uh-oh, did I hit a nerve?” Griffon gave an apprehensive little chuckle. “Sorry, boss. Didn’t mean anything by it. You and me, we’re in this together. I’m behind you whatever you wanna do. Even if that means not showering for another week.”

Keeping silent, V twisted the screw at the bottom of the bow to tighten it. He retrieved the chunk of rosin from a pocket inside the violin case, and glided the small amber brick along the now-taut length of horsehair strings.

From the moment he was given life, V had conceptualized himself as half of a whole, the opposite side of Urizen’s coin that minted the currency of Vergil. Every waking moment was dedicated to a paradox, righting wrongs that were somehow both his own, and not his own. But you, in all of your panicked, twitchy, lone-survivor glory, ended up showing him a kindness he hadn’t come to expect of anyone before or since.

Such gestures were afforded to the living, and living was not the reason for V’s existence.

(What would you think of him if you knew the real reason he knocked on your door?)

Your unexpected gift was based on the ghosts of his memory, an unintentional parallel to the contradiction of his own reality—V knew how to play the violin, but at the same time, he had never held one in his hands.

You said you missed music.

Could he give you that much?

Standing at the balcony, V rested the violin on his shoulder and drew the bow across the strings, adjusting the pegs every so often until the notes of his scales felt proper.

“Soundin’ a little flat there, Shakespeare.”

“It may require further tuning.”

V could sense your presence in the neighboring apartment. You were around the corner, hiding from him, and that’s where he thought you would stay...until several minutes later, when you emerged onto your balcony holding two mugs of steaming liquid.

As your balconies were only an arm’s length from each other, you reached over your side’s edge to hand him his cup. He took it, and the brief, gentle caress of his fingers against yours marked the first physical contact with you he’s ever had.

“It’s hot chocolate,” you said, shyly. “I remember you saying you liked chocolate, so...”

Another small token. Another kind gesture.

The feeling of your hand beneath his touch lingered long after you pulled away.

-

V came and went all hours of the day and night.

Military efforts to take back Red Grave did not seem to wane, in spite of their consistent, predictable failures. V helped as much as he could—clearing the most densely-infected pockets of the city, advising those in charge time and time again that traditional artillery would do nothing against the plague—but the armies continued to be sent in waves, as if throwing more bullets, more guns, more bodies at the problem would eventually prove itself a viable solution.

The stagnation was frustrating, but V couldn’t accomplish much by way of progress until Nero returned.

In the meantime, V strategically controlled clusters of demon spawn before the herds became too much for him to handle alone. He tore down creeping Qliphoth roots to prevent them from branching outside city bounds. He fought alongside military personnel whenever he found them, until they fell back or were wiped out trying.

Through it all, he cannot keep his mind from the memory of his fingers against yours.

The walk back to the apartment building became his respite, the six-floor climb up the fire escape as good a reprieve as any. Regardless of the day’s events, regardless of whether or not he had yet slept, he would go out to his balcony and pick up the violin, every morning without fail. Playing for you was like rousing a bird from its nest. You would be drawn out by his melody, curious and weary, and you would listen.

You would not ask him where he had been. You would not ask him where he was going.

You would just listen.

A routine was birthed within this small sanctuary, a routine that started with music and ended with you reaching out to him, a warm mug in hand—sometimes tea, sometimes chocolate, depending on what you could find.

He ignored the way his pulse would quicken whenever your hands touched.

You were an indulgence, he rationalized.

Nothing more.

-

Shadow was growing unsettled, V could feel it.

Due to the nature of their contracts, inactivity would sometimes cause his familiars to grow restless, especially if one was being summoned more frequently than the others. As of late, Griffon had rarely been dismissed; if he wasn’t at V’s side in exploration or battle, he was in the apartment, napping on a pet bed he’d found in the corner and claimed for himself. Naturally, this made Shadow jealous.

There was no danger in calling upon Shadow outside of battle to appease her agitation. Though she was far more primal of a demon than Griffon was, she never acted out of alignment with V’s motives—his familiars were extensions of himself, which meant they were always in-tune with what he wanted.

So, when the panther burst forth from her sigils and ran out to V’s balcony to leap onto yours, to say V was surprised was an understatement.

He barely had time to process what had happened before he heard you screaming.

“Holy SHIT—NONONONONONONO—”

In the moments it took V and Griffon to reach you, you had already been pinned to the ground—you looked horrified as Shadow stood on top of you, nuzzling her face against yours hard enough to keep your head pressed firmly to the floor.

“What is happening?!” you shrieked, your voice shaking with terrified confusion.

Griffon wasted no time laughing his ass off.

Having a fully-grown black panther charge through your sixth-floor window was quite low on your list of expectations, but it didn’t take you long to regain your bearings.

You sat on your couch as Shadow loafed in your lap, the feline familiar big enough to take up all the remaining seats. Within minutes, you went from a state of shock to burying a cheek right into her fluff, using the vibrations of her deep purring to try and alleviate your perpetual headache.

You could tell something was wrong with V, be it from how he hadn’t moved from your balcony, or the expression of deep concern he wasn’t containing as well as he would’ve hoped. He was emanating an aura of unease you’d never felt from him before. You couldn’t shake off the feeling you’d done something wrong.

“So,” you started, trying to lighten the mood and getting a mouthful of fur in the process, “any other familiars I should know about?”

“...perhaps in due time.”

Griffon chuckled. “Oh man, you’re gonna love Nightmare.”

“Nightmare,” you repeated. If the giant demon bird was named ‘Griffon’ and the giant demon cat was named ‘Shadow,’ you tried to imagine what nature of creature ‘Nightmare’ could have been. Your overactive imagination combined with your chronic headache shorted out your brain. “Cool. Cool cool cool cool cool.”

Shadow chuffed in your lap. You jumped at the noise.

V kept watch from afar, leaning heavily against his cane.

There had never before been such egregious dissonance between V’s expectations and Shadow’s actions. Shadow existed in light of V’s best interests—she acted on what he wanted—and though you were blissfully unaware of the implications, being confronted by the sight of his own longing disgraced him in a way he didn’t think possible.

His familiars were extensions of himself, after all.

Instead of Griffon, V imagined being bold enough to have visited you first.

Instead of Shadow, V imagined himself spread across your lap, your hands through his hair, you smiling down at him as you were now.

Only then did V realize the depth of the problem.

-

V did not touch his violin the following morning.

In his entertainment of idle pleasantries, he had forgotten himself, and why he was here. His purpose in life was to reunite with Urizen to become whole again, to salvage what remained of Red Grave, to earn some semblance of atonement by purifying what he himself had poisoned. He was a splintered fracture of Vergil—he was not meant to have desires of his own, as he was not his own.

He was not his own.

V yanked the length of his silver cane from the demon’s flesh, tossing its mangled carcass aside with graceful ease.

From the break of dawn to the glint of twilight, he made rounds throughout the city, reminding himself with every battle what he was responsible for unleashing upon the world. With the demons’ current respawn rate, he knew his efforts were an exercise in futility, but he continued the onslaught without pause, until every demon type in existence blurred together in a bloody palace of blades and wings and carapaces.

He would find catharsis. Eventually.

As he felt his vision blur and his power begin to wane, V unearthed a massive nest of dormant Furies, crowded behind a hidden wall of rubble and debris.

“V,” Griffon warned, still trying to catch his breath, “I don’t know what’s going through that head of yours, but we’ve been at this all damn day. You sure you wanna keep goin’?”

V’s hand tightened around his cane.

This is why he was here.

This is all he was good for.

-

It was curious to see where his legs had taken him without him knowing.

Griffon’s talons wrapped tight around V’s shoulders as he carried him over the fire escape railing. Shadow supported V’s lethargic landing on the metal grates, propping him upright with her own body. All three of them were covered in blood.

“Up and over,” Griffon groaned, dragging V in through the open window. “C’mon, kid, on your feet—”

V collapsed into the hallway, falling into a tangled heap on the ground.

“—alright, close enough.”

Shadow hopped in after him, once more letting V use her as leverage to stand until he could right himself with his cane.

Whatever came next was a haze.

Footsteps from down the hall. Muffled conversation. Someone rushing to his side, slinging his arm around their neck to support his weight and help him find his footing again, like a bird on his wings for too long.

Of course it was you.

Who else but you?

The two of you made it to his bed, eventually, and V landed on the mattress with a heavy sigh.

“Are you guys hurt??” you asked in a panic, looking over the blood on all three of them.

“Don’t freak out, gravedigger, the blood’s not ours.” Visibly frustrated, Griffon nestled on his bed atop the nightstand. “Shakespeare bit off more than he could chew tonight and now he’s payin’ for it.”

“I overexerted myself,” V corrected. “I simply need to rest.”

Your brows drew together. “You want me to just leave you like this?”

“I will be fine.”

“Let me help clean you off, at least.”

“I will take care of it in the morning.”

“Look—I know you’re pissed at me, but you’re not going to get any proper rest passing out in your own filth.”

The frustration in your voice was sobering. From your point of view, he had slighted you, somehow—yet, you were still seeking ways to help him.

“What makes you believe I am upset with you?” he asked in concern.

Confusion flickered across your face as you spoke. “When Shadow came over yesterday, you spent the whole time standing on my balcony looking like someone pissed in your cereal. And this morning—I made you tea, but you didn’t show up to our...”

You stopped yourself, not knowing what to call it.

“Rendezvous,” he offered.

“...yeah.”

“I am sorry for misleading you,” he said, softly. “I assure you, you have done nothing wrong—my quandaries are purely my own. There was an urgent...dilemma that required my attention.”

“Did you figure it out, at least?”

V turned to examine you, seeing one side of you stained red from where you held him as you helped him walk. The moment you saw he was in trouble, you had no reservations about getting blood all over yourself, and even now, you had no hesitation in getting even more of it on you. You had no idea you were at the heart of his predicament.

You had no idea of the predicament in his heart.

In the face of every apprehension sounding alarms within his head, V stood resolute, and asked precisely what he wanted to. “May I be so bold as to request your assistance?”

You lit up in surprise, and you nodded.

You pulled the bedroom chair towards his bedside and took a look at what you were dealing with. Upon closer examination, he wasn’t so much drenched in blood as he was heavily splattered, like he was on the losing end of a particularly nasty paintball ambush. He didn’t seem to have any injuries, but you didn’t know what an overnight soak in demon blood would do to a person, and you had no intention of finding out.

“I need to take your jacket off,” you said. “Is that okay?”

“Such polite bedside manner,” he smirked.

You rolled your eyes, but he was pleased to notice the shade of red he brought to your cheeks. With steady hands, you untied the string at the front of his coat; he could feel your fingertips brush against his bare skin, and the contact made his stomach flip.

“Can you sit up for me?” you asked, not having noticed a thing.

Still exhausted, V trembled slightly as he lifted himself on his elbows and gathered the strength to follow your request—then your hand was on his back, above his coat, helping him move upright. Your other hand tucked along each collar bone, sliding his jacket from his shoulders, one arm at a time. You removed his glove and unclipped his bracelets from his wrist.

Then your hands were off him, again.

You left the room and returned with some supplies: a large bowl of water, several small towels, and a flashlight you stood up on a nearby table to cast light towards the ceiling and illuminate the room.

You rolled up your sleeves and pushed your hair back before setting to work.

With V covered in his mess and his familiars as soiled as he was, the bedroom was thick with the stench of demon blood, rotten and strangely acidic—thankfully, it seemed to wipe away easily with a damp cloth.

There was a clinical detachment in the way you moved around him, aided by the fact you would not meet his eyes. Even so, V was painfully aware of every gentle motion your warm hands made against him, clearing bright red smears from the pallor of his skin. Cloth in hand, you made soothing, repetitive movements down the lengths of his arms, across his palms, between each of his fingers, careful and thorough. You moved down the dip of his collar bones and travelled across the width of his chest; you reached the hollows beneath his ribs and he wondered if you could feel his heart beating.

He could tell how hard you were trying to detach yourself from the moment, but your worry was obvious in your tenderness, your care evident in your gentle attention.

As his eyes drifted shut, he did something he hadn’t since the day he was forced onto this plane of existence.

He let himself feel safe.

Your every movement against him felt deliberate and reverent, as if the demon’s blood had vandalized his canvas and you were working to restore the artwork underneath. Even you, in all your modesty, couldn’t tear your eyes from the artwork spanning the length of his body, studying the maze of ink tangled across his skin as if he were a masterpiece.

He felt you work your way back up his neck. As you took a fresh cloth to the blood across his nose, you used your other hand to touch the side of his face, trying to turn him towards you. Keeping his eyes closed, he instead took it as an invitation to lean fully into your palm, until you were cradling his face in your hand.

When he finally glanced up at you from beneath his dark lashes, he realized you were holding your breath.

He felt you brush your thumb along his cheek to move his hair away from his eyes.

And in that moment, you were everything.

“I made the mistake of denying myself the possibility of new experiences,” he said, voice drowsy with exhaustion. “I feared having purpose outside of my calling would prove to be a distraction, and I feared it presumptuous of me to interpret your acts of kindness as anything more than gracious gestures. I hope for nothing more than to be wrong on both counts.”

Your heart was mounting beneath your chest. His words felt dizzying, even after you remembered how to breathe.

“I have been granted a short breath of time to rectify transgressions resulting from my selfish desires, but during this quest, ironic as it may be, I will dare to be selfish.” He held a hand over the one you had against his face. “If you would indulge me.”

You could think of nothing you wanted more.

You turned your palm over to hold his hand, threading a few of your fingers between his own. You hadn’t realized how tense he was until your acceptance seemed to make his whole body sigh, a breathless smirk tugging at the edge of his lips as he gazed at you with half-lidded eyes.

“Like the morning star arising above the black waves, when a shipwrecked soul sighs for morning,” he breathed, beaming. “No matter where I go, I am drawn back here, to you, like gravity.”

He pressed a kiss to the back of your hand.

“Thank you, starlight.”

His hand was still wrapped in yours when he finally drifted off to sleep.

After some time, a beak gently nudged your shoulder from behind. When you turned around, Griffon’s eyes were shying away from yours, as if he’d just witnessed something he wasn’t supposed to to.

“We can take it from here, gravedigger,” he said, shrugging his head. “You go on, get some sleep.”

Your heart fuller now than it had ever been, you smiled back at him, not wanting to move your hand a single inch away from where it was now. “Would it be alright if I stayed?”

Griffon snorted, knowing he should’ve known better. “Yeah, kid. You do you.”

-

V was surprised to wake with you by his side. You were still sitting in the chair as you slouched over his bed, your arms and clothes still blood-stained from the previous night’s events. Griffon appeared to have preened himself and had stuck random damaged feathers in your hair throughout the night as you slept. Shadow was curled on the floor at the foot of his bed. Both of his familiars were fast asleep.

You hadn't let go of his hand.

As he stirred, you roused from your slumber, and the first thing you did was smile at him.

“Good morning, starlight.”

Your eyes lit up, but the tremendous guilt behind his own must have been obvious, as your expression fell at once. “What’s wrong?”

He squeezed your hand a little tighter.

The weather remained stormy throughout the first week of November.

After Halloween night’s break-in, the atmosphere at Hogwarts grew tense with rumors. Sirius Black had somehow managed to get into the castle and attack the Fat Lady—Gryffindor’s common room portrait—when she refused to grant him entry to the dormitories.

As a result of the incident, dementor activity increased tenfold.

Though the dementors weren’t supposed to cross into the grounds, they disrupted Saturday’s Quidditch match mid-game, making Gryffindor’s seeker pass out on his broom a hundred feet in the air. If Malfoy hadn’t still been milking his injury and gotten Slytherin’s match rescheduled, the victim that day could have just as easily been a Quidditch player from your house.

How could such an accident have been allowed to happen?

The incident made you even warier of the dementors’ occupation; you never felt safe from them, especially not when you could still catch them out the corner of your eye, drifting aimlessly like enchanted smears of ink across the distant landscape. Even from afar, they filled you with unease. You were finding it more and more difficult to concentrate.

On the night of your first Animagus transformation with Snape and McGonagall, returning to your human form took an hour of careful focus. Not being able to use your wand to revert back made the task exponentially more difficult; though you were warned of this beforehand, it didn’t make the inability to change at will any less terrifying. You needed practice, practice you couldn’t do on your own, as you had to wait for your Ministry of Magic registration to go through before transforming without supervision.

In the meantime, you trained with McGonagall as often as her schedule would allow.

The exhausting drills of transforming from one form to the other and back again took place in her office. Once you got the hang of it, she started transforming alongside you, leading you on excursions on lunch break or between classes. As a raven, you would follow her around the school grounds, through small spaces and crevices you would have never noticed otherwise, mapping out shortcuts around the castle. Sometimes, you even got the chance to terrorize Mrs. Norris. McGonagall would pretend not to notice.

McGonagall’s Animagus was that of a sleek grey tabby cat. Her movements were graceful, postured, and sure, which was a stark contrast to your novice, unwieldy handling of your own feathered mass. You were still getting used to maneuvering properly—sometimes, you would clip a pillar mid-flight, or misjudge your landing and fall off a given surface. On one occasion, you flew straight into a library window and shattered it into a thousand pieces; when you heard Filch’s curses of frustration approaching from a distance, you and McGonagall exchanged glances, and ran.

Above all, you found the hardest thing to reign under control was the powerful animal instinct nagging at you from inside your head. If the voice wasn’t trying to get you to fly higher or draw your attention to random shiny objects, it was alerting you to McGonagall’s presence.

Fake cat. Fake cat. Fake cat.

‘I know,’ you kept telling yourself. ‘Shut up, already, I know.’

The most memorable outing occurred the following week.

To familiarize you with navigating natural terrain outside the castle, McGonagall took you just outside of Hogwarts grounds, where you found a dementor floating directly in your path. It was the closest to one you had ever been—the massive black wraith hovered in place, wearing cloaked, tattered robes whose edges faded into billows of ever-moving smoke. Whenever a human passed it, you noticed, it would give a slight turn of its hooded head, like a dog checking a scent in the air.

You and McGonagall walked directly in front of it.

The dementor did not notice either of you.

You couldn’t get your mind off the revelation throughout the remainder of your classes. Strangely enough, being in your Animagus form was the one instance you had ever felt safe around a dementor. You did not ask McGonagall about it, lest she suspect you of wanting to sneak away from the grounds on a regular basis&mdash. Somehow, the discovery felt like forbidden knowledge you weren’t supposed to have.

Dementors could not tell the difference between Animagi and normal animals.

You were still thinking about it when Defence Against the Dark Arts ended. By the time you handed in your spell theory essay, you were the last person in the classroom.

“Just the Slytherin I wanted to see,” Lupin spoke up, taking the parchment from you. “You seem a bit distracted, today. Everything alright?”

You'd let idle thoughts cut into your attention in-class. That was a problem. “Sorry, Professor. Lots of studying this week. I feel like the moment I stop, everything I’ve learned will come pouring straight out of my ears.”

“The joys of seventh year. Might I recommend earmuffs?”

You smirked, and he smiled up at you warmly.

“Well, now I feel terrible asking this of you,” he started, “but would you be able to meet me after classes this evening? I was quite ill last weekend and could do with some help catching up.”

The request took you by surprise—his proposition to have you as an assistant had only come a little over a week ago. “You’ve already spoken to Professor Snape?”

“Oh, yes. Seemed thrilled with the idea, actually. Did he not tell you?”

“It...must’ve slipped his mind.” You knew full well that was a lie.

To say you were astounded was an understatement. Though you picked up on Lupin’s sarcasm—it was impossible to imagine Snape being ‘thrilled’ about anything—the fact remained that Snape had given Lupin his approval to take you on as his teaching assistant. No summoning you for a meeting in his office? No passive-aggressive remarks during Potions? No pushback at all? You couldn’t imagine what Lupin may have said or done or promised to get Snape to agree so readily. The thought alone was oddly terrifying.

“I know you’re busy,” Lupin winked. “Think you can pencil me in?”

The wink he shot you was like an arrow to the heart.

How could you say no?

-

Being a teacher’s assistant was dreadful work.

As November trudged on, you were visiting Professor Lupin’s office after school two to three times a week. Half of your time was spent helping him organize sixth-year curriculums, while the other half was spent grading assignments to his unreasonably thorough specifications. Terrible as it may have been, you couldn’t help but think that if Lupin's standards for helping his students were just a little lower, assisting him wouldn’t have proven to be so tedious; you hadn't realized there was so much work behind the skilled instruction he made seem so effortless.

Still, you had accepted the position for completely selfish reasons, and those reasons were proving worthwhile.

You enjoyed receiving the random owl at lunchtime asking if you could help him after classes. Grading through twenty essays on the same topic was just another form of rote repetition for your own studies. Marking sixth-year answers wrong, but also having to detail why they were wrong, did much to help cover the gaps in your knowledge from your academically void year with Lockhart. The trouble was worth seeing what pun would appear on Lupin’s tea mug that day, and the stolen glimpses of him at his desk, focused, nibbling at the end of his quill as he read across parchments.

The bits of colour you had during your week made the rest of it feel that much more desaturated.

Today, you were studying outside, a large table all to yourself due to the colder weather keeping everyone indoors. You were running through multitudes of steps and ingredients for Potions, your many notes spread across the wide stone tabletop. Before your N.E.W.T. classes, you had always thought Potions was an exact science with no room for variation or interpretation, but Snape had done well to prove you wrong. Skipping a single one of his classes would have proven disastrous to your studies, as the majority of the material he provided had absolutely no mention in the assigned textbook; it was frustrating, but following Snape’s generous liberties to the book’s instructions yielded flawless results, results he would be expecting you to replicate from memory.

You looked over the Shrinking Solution recipe for the thousandth time, seeing but not reading any of the words.

You’d rather be flying.

Being an Animagus was invigorating in ways nothing else was. Everywhere you looked, the world around you was recontextualized with new possibilities. What would it feel like to fly over there? Could you reach that point without getting tired? How long would it take to touch that tree in the distance and come back? Five minutes? Ten?

McGonagall had warned you of this, of how addicting your Animagus form could be at first. She told you it was important to regulate your thoughts, to have strict control over your random urges to transform and escape. You had the rest of your life to fly, after all. You just had to stay grounded for another couple of weeks.

Another couple of weeks...

Breathing in a lungful of crisp autumn air, you tried once again to focus on your Potions studies. You realized Snape’s in-class instructions for the Shrinking Solution was almost completely different from the textbook’s—quite literally, all they had in common were the damned ingredients.

Already overwhelmed, you glanced up from your notes.

You spotted Lupin across the field.

He was clearly in a hurry, carrying stacks of parchment and fast-walking down the corridor, when a first-year stopped him to ask something. A split-second of exasperation flashed across his face before melting away, all at once—then, he was talking, his explanation to the young student full of kind smiles and enthusiastic hand gestures. Even when he was stressed, he was happy to be helping.

You found his unbridled enthusiasm enchanting.

To your surprise, you sensed someone approaching you from behind; the sense itself was a weaker, more diluted version of the same instincts you had when you transformed.

“Afternoon, Professor Snape,” you greeted without looking.

You felt a swell of pride at how you managed to give him pause. All it took was years of study and the ability to turn into an animal to keep him from sneaking up on you.

“Afternoon,” he said, flatly. “How is the assistant’s position faring?”

“Very well, I think. Unless you’ve received news of the contrary.”

He acknowledged your attempt at humour with a sarcastic little hum. “You may be wondering why I approved the request.”

“I’ve learned not to question your judgement, sir.”

“Though wise of you, in this instance it would be useful for you to know my reasoning.”

You were both watching Lupin from across the field, now. At this point, Lupin had taken a seat on a nearby bench with the first-year, placing his papers aside completely to review something in their textbook.

“I trust you are familiar with the recent incident involving Sirius Black.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Suspicions and security alike have been heightened across the board,” Snape continued. “As Professor Lupin’s aide, I will need you to keep an eye on him. Report to me of anything...suspect you may find. Understand?”

You kept your reaction neutral, though your mind began racing at once.

So Snape approved Lupin’s request just so you could spy on him? This seemed to be coming out of nowhere. Yet, if Snape was resorting to asking you for help, it meant he had suspicions that weren’t being taken seriously by other members of the faculty. That included the other teachers. That included Dumbledore. Though you had no idea what led Snape to believe Lupin had anything to do with Sirius Black, Snape would not have brought his concerns to you lightly.

He also would not have trusted you, lightly.

You had several questions. Now was not the time to ask them.

“Understood, sir,” you said simply. “I’ll keep you informed.”

-

To your mild frustration, being mysteriously enlisted to keep secret tabs on Professor Lupin only served to make the man more attractive. Snape would not have levied his wariness without good reason. You always had the sense there was more to him than he let on—now you were sure of it.

But what on earth could he have been hiding?

Several days had passed since your conversation with Snape, and all you saw of Lupin thus far was one severely overworked teacher trying to manage way too many students at once. Were all the teaching positions at Hogwarts this strenuous? McGonagall’s iron temperament and Snape’s perpetual state of irked impatience suddenly made a lot more sense—it was a wonder any of your professors had free time, at all.

You were grading papers at the small side-table and extra chair Lupin had brought into his office for you. Your stack of assignments was running as thin as your tea was empty; it was getting late, and you were on your last paper. Quill in hand, you read the next answer on the exam before you.

You snickered, louder than you intended.

The sound of your laughter put a reactionary smile on Lupin’s face. “What is it?”

“‘Why are they called The Unforgivable Curses?’” you read aloud from the parchment. “‘The Unforgivable Curses are named as such because they are curses that are unforgivable.’”

“Well. It’s not wrong.”

“It’s not right, either,” you said, marking the paper. You flipped through the textbook beside you to cite the exact page where the proper answer could be found. “You’d think being thrown into Azkaban would be a more memorable punishment.”

“Things like the Unforgivable Curses and Azkaban are abstract concepts to those who have no knowledge or experience with them. They're little more than scary stories, to most.”

“I never thought of it that way,” you admitted. “I suppose most people have never seen an Unforgivable used, before. I know I haven’t.”

Lupin made a thoughtful noise. “Pray you never have to.”

You glanced at him. This was the second time you’ve heard him make a vague reference to some terrible experience, voice laden with an unexpected severity that carried an unspoken weight. He had some personal experience with the Unforgivable Curses, that much you could gather. The morbid curiosity of the revelation had you treading lightly.

You tried to keep your tone curious. “Don’t you think it’s something we should see?”

“How do you mean?” he asked, still scratching at his parchment.

“You’re the most practical Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher I’ve ever had, Professor. Wouldn't you agree that we should see every spell and its effects, so we would know how to recognize them in a duel?”

“You’re suggesting I ask for a volunteer?”

There was a gentle edge to his voice that wasn’t there before.

“Well, not a student,” you said. “Maybe a Doxy, or something.”

“No living creature deserves to suffer an Unforgivable Curse. Not even a Doxy.” He sounded final. “Ethical considerations aside, there’s a certain level of intent required to cast such spells—an amount of darkness within you needed to make it work. To speak plainly, I don’t believe myself capable.”

You raised an eyebrow. “How do we defend against them, then?”

“You run.”

The sudden ice in his tone made your blood run cold. You wanted to ask him of his experiences. You wanted to ask him what he’d seen. With a few well-placed questions, you had stolen a glance into a depth of him—the same depth he kept well-hidden, the same depth that drew Snape's suspicions.

Lupin suddenly looked rather tired, as if he knew he’d revealed too much, and you realized too late that you had given him the wrong impression. You had no interest in the Dark Arts, yet your house colours betrayed you; if your questions had come from anyone else, it was curiosity, but because they came from you, it was a warning sign.

“It’s getting rather late,” he said, rising from his desk. “I need to return some creatures to the lake before it gets dark. We can finish up next time.”

“Would you like me to come with?”

“No need. It’s a simple errand, I can manage on my own.”

Lupin had his back turned to you as he gathered several large glass jars from his bookshelf, a large cloth draped over each to shield their inhabitants from direct light. You had encroached on a sensitive topic, and now he was trying to put distance between the two of you to dispel the awkwardness.

You didn’t like how that felt.

“I’m sorry, Professor, it was ignorant of me to suggest—” The apology tasted too much like self-pity, so you stopped yourself and rethought your words. “Like you said, Unforgivable Curses are just scary stories for people who have no experience with them. But I’m sure they’re nightmares, for those who do. I should have kept that in mind before speaking of them so lightly.”

You noticed he stopped shuffling through his shelves.

Getting up from your desk to approach him, you made sure your hands were outstretched by the time he turned to face you.

“Let me help, Professor.”

He stared at you for a moment before handing you a jar.

-

The walk down to the Black Lake was cool and quiet; the temperature continued to dip as the sun lowered, the slight breeze now biting against your exposed face and hands. You carried two large glass jars apiece, with each jar containing a different-coloured Hinkypunk from third-year lessons from the previous weeks. Hinkypunks were somewhat dangerous pests that were easy enough to dispose of, and though you didn’t question his decision, you were surprised Lupin was going through all the effort of returning them where he found them. Somehow, you imagined he was also the kind of man who escorted wandering spiders from his home without harming them.

One at a time, you released the creatures with no issue. Though they were normally aggressive little tricksters, the Hinkypunks didn’t seem too keen on attacking you once they were set free, instead taking their miniature lanterns and disappearing with a puff of smoke and a squelching shriek.

On the way back to the castle, through the thin layer of fog floating above the Black Lake, you spotted a large cluster of what appeared to be slimy balloons floating in the water.

“What are those?” you asked.

Lupin peered over to where you were looking. “Plimpies, I reckon.”

You approached the waterside to get a closer look. You were familiar with Plimpy eyes as a potion ingredient, but you had never seen the whole animal before. “What happened to them?”

“Merpeople handiwork, from the looks of it. They consider them a bit of a pest, so they tie their legs in knots and let them float away. As you can see, Plimpies inflate when they get stressed—they gather along the shoreline, eventually, and are left to the mercy of nearby predators.”

You thought getting the opportunity to see the Plimpy close would make them look less like balloons, but it had the exact opposite effect. They looked like regular fish hit with Inflating Charms and frog legs cobbled to their undersides—only, their long, skinny legs were tied up in complicated nautical knots that shouldn’t have been possible with organic appendages. There were about twenty of them, give or take. The longer you stared, the creepier the scene became.

Rolling up your sleeves, you squatted by the shoreline and grabbed the one nearest to you. You pulled out your wand from your inner robe pocket. “Deimplicitus.”

The Plimpy’s tangled legs untied. You tossed it back into the lake. It bobbed around for a bit before deflating with a very rude noise and disappearing beneath the water.

You grabbed another Plimpy and started over again.

Lupin called at you from a distance, a small laugh in his voice. “What are you doing?”

“You go on ahead,” you called back, throwing the second freed Plimpy into the lake. “I’ll catch up.”

“It’s nearly dark. If you’re caught outside the castle without a teacher at this hour, you’ll get detention.”

“It’s alright, just go back without me. I won’t be long.”

Unable to leave you alone in good conscience, Lupin watched as you repeated your process, over and over again, with several more of the magical fish floating helplessly at the shoreline. You would grab a Plimpy, perform a Detangling Charm on it, and hoist it back into the water, where it blew a giant raspberry before sinking below the surface. You were ankle-deep in the lake. The bottom of your robes were getting soaked.

Burying his hands in his pockets, Lupin walked over to you. “You really should just let nature take its course, you know.”

“I doubt I’ll disrupt the magical ecosystem by doing it just this once.”

“But why bother?”

“Because I saw them. So I can’t just leave them.”

To your surprise, Lupin pulled up the knees of his trousers, and he knelt down to help.

The two of you continued the task in silence, the quiet broken only by the occasional, hilarious sound of a Plimpy deflating. The sun had already dipped below the horizon by the time you cleared out the cluster. The last fish in sight bobbed in the crook of a large log nearby. You leaned further into the shore, reaching out to get it.

The log moved.

In an instant, the large, wood-like creature rounded on you and snapped at your outstretched arm, sinking its teeth into your wrist. You shouted in surprise—the shock of it sent you reeling backwards, and you landed on your bottom as the creature waded off into the fog.

“Are you alright?” Lupin asked, already at your side.

“I’m fine,” you hissed, quickly getting back on your feet. “Just a Dugbog, I think.”

“Probably here for the Plimpies. We appear to have interrupted dinnertime.”

“How rude of us.”

“Not to worry, Dugbog bites aren’t venomous,” he said, already reaching for your arm. “They tend to get a little nasty if not looked after properly, though.”

Lupin held your wrist in his hands, rotating your forearm to examine the wound. To both of your surprises, there didn’t seem to be any blood or broken skin.

That’s when you noticed what saved you.

You cursed. “The bloody thing made off with my watch!”

“Quite quickly, too. Perhaps it was on a time crunch.”

The snort of laughter you gave was most unbecoming.

From the corner of your eye, you saw a familiar giant of a man approach the two of you from afar.

You turned to him and smiled. “Evening, Professor Hagrid.”

He called you by name. “And Professor Lupin! Blimey, it’s after sundown. What are yeh doin’ out ‘ere so late?”

“My assistant and I were returning some creatures to their natural habitat,” Lupin explained. “What brings you to the lake tonight, Hagrid?”

Hagrid raised the net he was carrying. “Harvestin’ Plimpies.”

You paled, but Hagrid misinterpreted your look of shock completely.

“Now, don’t you look at me like that,” he said defensively. “They make a fine soup.”

Lupin leaned towards you so only you could hear. “Told you we should’ve let nature take its course.”

You couldn’t help but burst into laughter, which was met with Lupin trying—and failing—to hold back the cheekiest grin you’d ever seen on the man. Unconsciously, perhaps, he hadn’t yet let go of your hand, and in a rush of fleeting courage, you let yourself curl your fingers around his own for a moment.

Your headache had never really gone away.

Since the moment you awoke alone in the hospital, the ringing within your skull only ever seemed to ebb and flow in tides. On good days, the ache would retreat to a dull buzzing behind your eyes—an annoying, albeit tolerable inconvenience.

But today was not a good day.

You weren’t sure how long you’d been lying here, spread-eagle on the floor beside your open balcony. When your eyes were open, pain blurred the edges of your vision; when you closed them, sparks flashed behind your eyelids in time with every aching throb. Having already exhausted your stock of pain medication, you had little energy to move, let alone hunt around neighboring apartments searching for more.

You were lying perpendicular to the balcony’s sliding door, angled so that your view of the outside was upside-down. The hardwood floor was cool against your skin, the morning breeze soft and welcoming. You watched through narrowed eyes as your flowers swayed in the wind, their freshly-misted petals glinting in the cloudy sunlight. They were holding up well, all things considered—they were weaker than you would’ve liked, but they were surviving. Existing.

That was the best you could do, for now.

With great effort, you sat up to grab a small bag of chips from your scattered piles of scavenged supplies. You probably shouldn’t have been eating these, sick as as you were, but junk food would help you feel better in all the ways Ibuprofen could not.

You lied back down on the floor, and as the upside-down vision of the outside returned to view, you realized a familiar feathered form had appeared on the flat of your balcony.

“Still alive, gravedigger? You’re more stubborn than I thought.”

“Oh, hey,” you brightened up. “You again.”

“In the flesh!” he said, puffing up. “Miss me?”

“Like a pebble in my shoe.” You popped open the bag of chips on your chest. Several spilled onto your shirt. Your life was an abyss. “Not dead yet, sorry to disappoint. Come back in a few hours, you have full permission to chow down on my rotting corpse then.”

You had no idea a bird could look so offended.

“Do I look like some kinda vulture to you?” he snapped. “Rather starve than resort to eating your nasty ass, thanks. I happen to have a very refined palette.”

(He was definitely eyeing your chips.)

“Don’t you have anything better to do than come up here and pick on me?” you asked, possessively hugging the snack to yourself.

The way you closed the bag on him seemed to ruffle his feathers. “Don’t flatter yourself, treefucker. Wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t V askin’.”

“...you know V?”

“Did he not tell you about me? Figures.”

Though he was clearly trying to shrug it off, the smallest hint of disappointment tainted his voice.

All at once, you felt terrible.

You reached into the crumpled bag on your chest. Stretching an arm out above you, you held out a single, nacho-cheese-flavoured olive branch, and you told him your name. “What’s yours?”

The demon’s beady golden eyes glanced at you, then at the chip. Wary, he waddled forward a few steps to approach your outstretched arm. You found his caution hilarious, as he was the one with the serrated, razor-sharp beak that could tear your arm clean off in half a moment’s notice; dangerous as it was to have your fingers anywhere near the demonic bird’s mouth, he took the snack from you with a mindful gentleness that was damn near adorable.

“Name’s Griffon,” he mumbled, holding the chip between his beak. “I’m one of V’s familiars.”

“The most handsome one, I’m sure.”

“You’re goddamn right.”

You continued feeding him for a while, offering one chip at a time. Griffon really was a gorgeous bird, in a terrifying, haunting sort of way, like a cryptid from some forest folktale told to frighten children. A ‘familiar,’ he’d called himself. Like the kind witches had. At this point, your theories regarding V’s identity had ranged from vampire to angel to warlock—and after the taste of supernatural phenomenon you had thus far, you no longer wrote anything off as impossible. Had V sent Griffon to see you the first time, too? Why send him again, several days later?

“Y’know, gravedigger,” Griffon said, mouth half-full, “maybe I had you pegged all wrong.”

You sneered. “Food changed your tune pretty quick.”

“Not as fast as yours did when you found out I knew V.”

Your surprise must’ve been obvious—he responded with a sinister chuckle filled with too much mirth for comfort.

“Oh sure, I know all about that awkward fiasco. Sharin’ your tragic backstory, makin’ goo-goo eyes at him over your little tea party. ‘Will you read to me?’ Eugh. Like Shakespeare needs any more enabling.”

You were mortified. Where could Griffon have possibly been hiding at the time? Had he overheard everything? And what of the impression you made? Had you really been so transparent, egregiously outing yourself as some sad, lonely weirdo desperate for human contact? Just because it was true didn’t mean you had to be so obvious about it.

Ignoring your reaction completely, Griffon approached the bag you let slide off to the side of you. “I mean, don‘t get me wrong, he’s a good kid—but what you see in him, I do not know. Maybe all that pollen’s finally gone to your head.” He nudged through the bag’s contents with his beak. “Anyway, V ain’t the brightest bulb in the toolshed when it comes to this kind of stuff, so I spelled it out for him, nice and clear. You’re welcome.”

“...what did you say?”

“That you’ve got the hots for him, what else?”

That’s what you were afraid of.

“This is ridiculous,” you said, unsure of who you were trying to convince. “We’ve had one conversation. He wouldn’t give a shit what I think, he’s got more important things to deal with.”

“Then why the hell’s he been standing outside your door for the past ten minutes like he’s forgotten how to knock?”

Paling, you bolted upright. “Why didn’t you open with that??”

Griffon had his head fully in the bag, now. “Just wanted to watch you panic!”

The mental image of V standing nervously outside, so reluctant to bother you he sent Griffon up first, made your heart race in way that only worsened the painful pulsing in your head.

As you scrambled to your feet and approached the door, you became hyper-aware of the sleep in your eyes, the chip dust on your shirt, and the general dishevelment of your entire being. You tried to get your act together as quickly as you could without a mirror—patting off your shirt, adjusting your floor-flattened hair—all while trying to suppress your headache through sheer power of will.

Taking a deep breath, you opened the door.

The dark-haired stranger had indeed returned to your doorstep. The soft shadows around his eyes made him look slightly more tired than before, but he didn’t look like he was anxious to knock, and certainly not like he was any the wiser of your heart’s premature betrayal. As you stood there before him, flushed and flustered for no apparent reason, the most obvious questions sprang to the forefront of your worry: did V not know, after all?

Had Griffon made all that stuff up just to mess with you?

As if on cue, you heard a nasty little cackle from behind you.

To think you shared Doritos with him.

The treason.

You tried to keep your tone nonchalant. “Good morning.”

“Salutations,” V said, because of course he was someone who still used that word. “Glad to have caught you at home.”

The blatant sarcasm put a smile on your face. “You know, I was just about to head out.”

“Ah, a pressing engagement? Shall I try again later?”

“No need, I should be able to reschedule.”

A slow smirk graced his lips at your banter, doing nothing to ease your still-quickening heart. You felt an unexpected, overwhelming sense of gratitude towards Griffon, of all creatures, for having known of your inclinations but choosing to keep his mouth shut. You didn’t want V to think differently of you.

You didn’t want to scare him away.

V shifted his weight, leaning more heavily on his cane. “I was hoping you would grant me the opportunity of repaying you for your hospitality, the other day.”

You laughed, going a little red around the ears. “You don‘t have to, it was just a cup of tea.”

“A cup more than I had prior, nonetheless.” He stepped aside and gestured beside himself, making room for you through the doorway. “Will you walk with me?”

“What—you mean like, outside?” The thought alone made you take a step backwards into your apartment—your safe, well-stocked, demon-free-except-for-the-one-bird apartment. “Yeah, no, I—I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“The surrounding area is safe, for now.”

Griffon swooped over your shoulder and into the hallway. “Oh, yeah. We made sure of that.”

As V walked away, he shrugged his head, motioning for you to follow. “Come.”

The instant rise of panic was at odds with the sudden urge to follow his lead. Had you heard them correctly? Had they killed a bunch of demons together for the express purpose of walking with you? Was this some kind of trap—trying to get you to a secondary location, maybe? But if they wanted you dead, why go through all this trouble? Were they just being nice? To what end?

You swallowed, hard.

Only one way to find out.

-

As you had barricaded the main entrance to the apartment building, the fire escape was the only way in or out.

From the moment you stepped foot onto the winding steel staircase, your internal switch flipped back into frantic survival mode, a behaviour you hadn’t adopted since the night you escaped the hospital. You made as little noise as possible. You checked your corners before rounding them. You kept your eyes and ears strained for signs of movement in your peripheral, almost too afraid to blink in case you missed something.

V seemed to pay your high alert frustratingly little mind; leading with his cane, he strolled at a leisurely pace without a single care in the world, as Griffon kept watch from overhead. At one point, Griffon snuck up and scared the shit out of you, cackling madly and gliding away when you weren’t fast enough to smack him in retaliation.

You stayed close to V at first, following his flat-sandaled footsteps through crushed streets of rubble and exposed wires. However, as several minutes passed and the complete absence of enemies allowed your mounting caution to ease, V noticed you straying further from him.

He watched with careful interest as you processed the wreckage of your new reality.

Gradually, your attention shifted from your own frenzied survival to the extent of the damage done to the city, taking in the scale of chaos you hadn’t yet seen beneath daylight. These were places you knew well, streets you crossed every day, rendered unrecognizable by the carnage of recent events. He watched you drift through broken alleyways like sections of a museum, from the frantic graffiti of the now-dead to the hollow, blood-drained shells of the civilians left behind, as you maintained a silent reverence for the destruction all the while.

You spotted a crowbar sitting on cracked cement, beneath the broken window of a shop you’d passed by often but never had the chance to visit.

“Where are we going, anyway?” you finally asked, crouching down to pick up the length of metal.

“You tell me.”

You weren’t sure when you’d taken the lead on this excursion, but V had given it to you, willingly, curious to see where your legs would take you without you knowing.

A glance across the street made your blood run cold.

The nearest landmark was a single-story brick building, half-collapsed and lifeless, a large section on the far end somehow still on fire. Colourful drawings lined what was little was left of the tall windows. Papers and textbooks layed scattered and singed around the grounds. Though the field was slightly uneven, the playground out front was surprisingly intact.

Noticing you’d stopped and stared, Griffon flew down and hovered next to you. “Little old for fingerpainting, ain’t you?”

“Quiet, you,” you mumbled, and you headed for the swings.

As you took a seat, Griffon landed on the support pole above you, his talons sounding heavy as they clasped around the metal bar. You hadn’t expected V to claim the swing next to you; he leaned on his cane for support as he sat down, retrieving his book from his coat and reading from it in silence. You were side-by-side on the swingset in the middle of a half-ruined field, facing the flaming wreckage of an elementary school in all of its still-blazing glory.

And it was peaceful, somehow.

“Are you feeling better?” V asked, not looking up from his book.

“I am, yeah.” You didn’t bother questioning how he knew you’d been ill. “Do I look that bad?”

“No, but I cannot imagine forced isolation does one’s health any favours.”

“I think I just needed some fresh air.”

Griffon scoffed from above. “Fresh air ain‘t gonna cure what you got.”

Embarrassed, you thought he was taunting you, making a sly reference to what he knew, but you noticed V’s expression had gone rather stern.

“A moment of privacy, if you would be so kind.”

With those words, V raised his arm and withdrew Griffon, dematerializing the bird into a cloud of black particles; the vapour then redrew itself onto patches of his skin you hadn’t realized were barren, with the demon’s swirling sigils camouflaging effortlessly within the rest of his tattoos.

You didn’t even bother trying to look away. “Woah. Just when I thought I had some part of you figured out.”

He smirked, returning to his reading. “You are in no danger of that, I assure you.”

Tearing your eyes from him, you prodded the rocks beneath you with your newfound crowbar, rocking gently back and forth in your swing. Every moment you spent with him seemed to raise more questions than answers. Who was this guy? And why was he here, with you? From what you gathered from his demeanor, you knew he wouldn’t be inclined to answer any prying questions from a complete stranger he’d met all of twice. Besides, he hadn’t asked you anything too personal yet, either—who were you not to extend him the same courtesy?

You enjoyed his company, even if most of him was a mystery.

“How goes the demon-exterminating?” you asked, trying to make conversation with what little you knew of him.

“I have been gathering as much information as I can about the current plague,” he said. “Extermination is endgame, but we are still far from finding permanent resolution.”

“Anything I can do to help?”

The question seemed to amuse him, more than anything.

He was just about sure what to make of you.

Since the attack, V had spent the majority of his time assisting with citizen evacuations and military efforts, as futile as the latter continued proving to be. And here you were, one of the final living civilians in Red Grave, a human who escaped a hospital and traversed a demon-infested city to barricade themselves in their apartment and live on stolen rations, asking if they could help with his quest. The past two weeks had given him much experience dealing with humans in terror, humans in grief, humans who believed being bold and trigger-happy was enough to keep them alive, but he hadn’t yet met anyone quite like you—someone so desperate to survive, yet so indifferent to the prospect of their own demise.

He chose his words carefully, keeping his eyes to his book as he spoke. “You have no intention of leaving this city, do you?”

Your initial silence spoke volumes.

“Can’t,” you settled on, finally. “I’ve got a garden to tend to.”

“Those flowers must be very important to you.”

“They’re all I have left.”

He did not pry further.

Your passive suicidality already confirmed his suspicions. You only fought to survive because you wanted to die on your own terms. It was something he recognized quite clearly.

It was something he saw in himself.

Even though it was barely noon, you already felt like the day had gone on for far too long. You weren’t sure what you were expecting from this walk, but you certainly hadn’t expected V to read you so goddamn clearly, outlining your existential crisis while you didn’t even know if he had a last name. What you wouldn’t give right now for one minute without a headache. One shower with heated water. One good meal that didn’t come out of a can.

“God, I miss french fries,” you said.

That seemed to get his attention. “Pardon?”

“French fries,” you repeated. “I would kill for some french fries right now. What’s your favourite food?”

(Did he even need to eat?)

“...I must admit, no one has ever asked me that before.”

“...you don’t really talk to a lot of people, do you?”

“Not if I can help it, no.” V considered your initial question, even taking a moment to look up from his book and focus on some indeterminate point in the sky, like he was recalling something long-forgotten. “Chocolate, I suppose.”

“Chocolate?”

“Yes.” He returned to his reading and flipped the page—his expression was somber, as if the memory he’d uncovered was bittersweet. “I remember quarreling over it, as a boy.”

Though you figured you should’ve known better than to assume anything about him, you didn’t expect him to have a sweet tooth. You tried not to think about just how adorable him liking chocolate was. You failed.

“Is there anything else you miss about your old world? Other than food?” he added with a smirk.

‘Your old world,’ he’d said. Such detached phrasing. As if he hadn’t been a part of it.

“Of course,” you replied. “They’re...not the things I thought I’d miss, though. Everything before the accident—everything I stressed over and worried about, every day of my life—it’s all so meaningless, now. I’m not thinking about my job, or my debt, or my future. It’s all the little things I’ll miss the most.”

“Such as?”

“I don’t know,” you muttered, your hands tightening around the chains of your swing. You suddenly felt sheepish. “Late-night trips to the corner store? Hanging out with my neighbor’s cat. I miss listening to music. I miss how the rain used to be. It used to make me feel happy, excited for the start of a new day—now whenever it rains, it feels...dangerous. Like it’s hiding something.”

“Some things are not shown proper recognition until they are gone,” he said. “Having such experiences to miss in the first place is something worth cherishing.”

Your brow furrowed—he was using weird, abstract language again, like he had nothing tying him to this world. “There must be something you miss, too.”

Closing the book in his lap, he nodded, wearing the same forlorn look as before. “I used to play the violin.”

“Really?”

His dark green eyes drifting shut, V straightened his back and positioned his arms just so; he tilted his head onto an unseen rest, fingers poised around a non-existent bow and ghosting over invisible strings. You could tell it was a resting position he was intimately familiar with, his form and posture practiced and precise, and the ease with which he transitioned into the stance was mesmerizing.

“I would study the same piece for hours, days on end, until I was confident enough to perform it for others,” he whispered. “It was something I was good at. Something that was mine.”

Getting a glance into something so important to him made your heart swell beneath your chest.

“Sounds wonderful,” you said, trying not to make yourself so damn obvious. “I’d give up french fries to hear you play.”

The sentiment put a smile on his face as he eased his posture. “My past is not a destination I seek to visit often, but speaking with you appears to have brought back memories from...better times.”

“...is that good?”

He turned to look at you fully, now; the crowbar still in your hand, the hospital band still on your wrist, the gentle expression of genuine concern no one had cast his way, before now.

‘The little things,’ as you called it.

“I daresay it is.”

-

By the time you were escorted back to your building, early afternoon had arrived. Griffon was back out on surveillance, gliding around closeby. You and V were walking side-by-side now, contrary to your less-than-fearless formation from when you first set out.

The fresh air had done you good, as your chronic headache had graciously retreated to its mild, manageable buzzing within your skull. You were still carrying your fancy new-but-slightly-used crowbar; you’d been dragging it across random surfaces the entire way home, as you would a very large stick.

“Thanks again for walking with me, you two,” you smiled. “I didn’t realize how much I needed this.”

Griffon hovered by your head. “I didn’t have much of a choice, but you’re welcome.”

“Do not attempt to repeat this on your own,” V warned. “Some demons have been known to respawn from time to time. I expect they will continue to do so until we destroy the source.”

You held your hands up, placating. “Trust me, I’m not going anywhere. You let me know if any of your friends aren’t pulling their weight, though. I’ve got a weapon, now—I can take their places, easy.”

He eyed your crowbar with a sarcastic little smile. “I may take you up on that offer. My allies are not in town for another fortnight.”

“So you are here by yourselves.” When he mentioned his allies before, you assumed they had already set up some kind of camp or headquarters in the city, somewhere. “Wait, so where have you been sleeping?”

“When night comes, I‘ll go, to places fit for woe; walking along the darkened valley, with silent melancholy.”

Griffon made an exasperated noise. “Translation: wherever’s horizontal and not covered in blood.”

“Why don’t you stay with me, then?” You paused for a moment and shook your head. “Not with me with me, but my entire building is full of empty bedrooms. Electricity’s out, but all the water still works—you could shower and wash your clothes and everything.”

“Holy fuck, score!” (It was the first time you ever heard Griffon sound so pleased.) “Finally, some proper compensation for all the shit we do. A dead human ain’t gonna miss their condo. C’mon, V, whaddya say?”

“...I’ll consider it.”

You weren’t sure who was more surprised by his answer, you or the bird.

“Are you kidding me??” Griffon snapped. “Free room and board and that’s all you gotta say?? I can’t even remember the last time I saw you drink water! When have we ever found a place with a friggin’ blanket, for crying out loud?!”

Seemingly accustomed to Griffon’s outbursts, V was already walking off in the other direction, twirling his cane in his hand. “Come, now. We’ve work to do.”

You watched the two of them take their leave, the echoed sounds of Griffon’s loud complaining following them all the way down the block.

You climbed back up the fire escape, now on a mission.

The crowbar would come in handy sooner than you thought.

-

Someone was bound to have one.

Twelve hours of searching. Twenty-nine forcibly-opened locks. Thirty-seven abandoned apartments turned inside-out.

By sheer chance, you found what you were looking for.

You leave it outside your front door, in case he returned sometime during the night.

-

You awaken in the early morning to the sound of a nearby melody.

Anticipation yanked you from the confines of your bed like Christmas morning excitement. Still half-asleep, still half-hugging your pillow, you rushed out from your bedroom to make sure you weren’t just hallucinating the music; not wanting to alert him of your presence, you pressed your back to the wall nearest your balcony, sliding to sit on the floor.

The violin sounded beautiful in his hands.

Music spilled in from the balcony next door, the notes crisp and prolonged; he was practicing what sounded like a set of advanced scales, sequential in tone, but embellished enough to form a simple melody.

“Soundin’ a little flat there, Shakespeare.”

“It may require further tuning.”

Sitting with your back to the wall, you hugged your pillow and smiled.

The flowers kept you going.

Kneeling on your balcony, you pressed a finger to the soil, ensuring the loose earth was damp enough to the touch. Every flower had been misted, their white petals bright against the backdrop of a half-ruined landscape. Their stems were more frail than they were the last time you checked, weakened by a lack of sunlight; the thick fog of clouds blanketing the sky only seemed to be getting worse by the day.

An occasional sound would pierce the silence—the unearthly reverb of a demonic roar, the thunderous collapse of another distant structure to rubble and dust.

The earth had her orbit. You had your routine.

The city could be destroyed if it wanted to be.

Eventually, you looked up from your handiwork, only to be met by a massive demonic bird perched atop your balcony railing.

“Hello,” you said, dumbstruck.

“Heya,” it said back.

The bird’s beak split into three as it spoke, its masculine voice laced with an unnatural echo. His dark, iridescent plumage shined a royal azure beneath the polluted sunlight, boasting stripes of electric blue bright as beetle shells across the length of his feathers.

You tried not to panic. All you had was a spray bottle, and unless you wanted to spritz at him like an unruly housecat, not much could be done if he suddenly decided to tear your face off.

“You’re very beautiful,” you observed.

“Yeah, wish I could say the same about you.” He cocked his head, his eyes a pair of gold beads behind a bony crown. “Soooo. Whatchya doin’ down there?”

“Gardening.”

“Gardening!” he cackled. “Trimmin’ the hedges, even in the apocalypse. Talk about priorities. Look, pal—not sure if you noticed, but your entire city’s gone straight to hell. Last place on earth a human like you should be playin’ around in the dirt.”

You offered an uneasy smile. “You’re not gonna kill me, are you?”

“Ohoho, someone thinks highly of themselves! Nah, you ain’t worth my time. You’re as good as dead hangin’ around a place like this, anyway. Might as well be diggin’ yourself a little grave down there.”

“A grave, huh?” You looked back at the flowerbed with mock concern. “I’m gonna need more soil.”

“You’ve really got no sense of self-preservation, do ya?”

“Now you sound like my surgeon.”

“Whatever, buddy. It’s your funeral.”

With that, the bird took from your railing, sinking away from view with several beats of his great wings.

As you returned to your work and daydreamed about the hypothetical dimensions of a planter large enough to bury yourself in, there was a knock at your door.

Your stomach dropped.

There was a knock. At your door.

You rushed to the kitchen, grabbing a knife with the blind, reckless determination only shown by those who had no idea what they were doing.

More knocks followed—slower, louder than before. You could tell they were using some heavy, blunt object to tap against your apartment door.

You kept several feet between yourself and the locked entrance, as if it were liable to implode at any moment.

“How did you get past the barricade?” you demanded.

“I used the fire escape,” a dark voice answered, with a lilt that sounded almost playful.

You spat out a curse. You’d forgotten about the fire escape.

“Pardon my intrusion,” the stranger continued, “but I couldn’t help but notice those delightful flowers adorning your balcony.”

“You climbed six stories to talk about my plants?”

“Of course. They are deserving of proper compliment, though such curated beauty would not have survived unaided. And, as demons don’t typically make a habit of keeping gardens…”

“You knew someone was here.” You ran a hand through your hair. Not blocking the fire escape, leaving your greenery out in the open—you’d been careless about your continued presence here, and now you were going to pay for it. “You here to kill me, then?”

“What makes you say that?”

“Par for the course for everything else in this fucking city.”

“I assure you, I mean you no harm. I am simply...curious.”

“You know, curiosity didn’t do any favours for the cat.”

“And yet satisfaction still brought it back.”

“What would satisfy you, exactly?”

“A proper introduction.”

The nerve.

Ignoring the pounding of your pulse in your ears, you approached the door to sneak a look through its peephole. The fisheye lens gave you a muddied view of a man in black; he held an open book in one hand and a steel walking stick in the other, the handle of which he must’ve been using to knock on your door.

Whoever he was looked human, at least.

You took a deep breath.

Slowly, carefully, you unlocked the door, keeping the chain lock in place as you inched it open.

The man stood taller than you, slender and well-postured, his dark, sweeping hair looking impossibly soft. Though he was wearing a pair of black jeans, he was shirtless beneath a sleeveless leather coat, showing off tattoos swirling across the pallor of his skin like ink bleeding in water.

You stared up at him through the gap in the door. “And you are?”

Drifting from his book, his eyes met yours—a green so deep they were almost black.

“My name is Wonderful. Inquire not after it, seeing it is a secret.”

“I...what?”

“Just kidding,” he smirked, snapping his book shut. “Call me V.”

You felt like he was telling some kind of joke you weren’t in on.

Trying to hold your nerve, you introduced yourself in return. He repeated after you, and hearing your name in his voice made something warm stir inside your chest.

“Thank you for indulging me,” he said, giving a slight bow of his head. “My apologies for the disruption.”

To your surprise, he turned heel, using his cane to lead himself back down the hallway.

“Wait,” you sputtered, still trying to peek after him through the two-inch gap of the chain-locked door, “where are you going?”

“I’m on a timeline, I’m afraid,” he called back.

Panic set in at the prospect of being alone again, the sudden fear of it rattling like ice in the hollows of your ribcage. You hadn’t seen or spoken to a single living person since the catastrophe started, and the powers that be were gracious enough to dropship you someone who spoke like a poet and dressed like a victorian harlot—who were you to not welcome the distraction?

A fleeting thought had you wondering if vampires were real, too.

(Was that what the ‘V’ stood for? It was a little on-the-nose.)

You unchained the door and swung it open, half-stumbling into the hallway, catching him before he rounded the corner and disappeared from your life, forever.

“Would you like some tea??” you shouted after him.

V stopped in his tracks and turned to face you—you, with your hopeful expression, your knife by your side, your fingertips still caked with garden soil.

He smirked at the sight of you, and your heart skipped a beat.

-

The electricity in your complex had been out for quite some time, but the plumbing was still fully functional: you could fill a kettle with water and light a burner of the gas-powered stove without issue.

“Sorry for being an asshole,” you said from the kitchen. “I’m a little...well, you’re the first thing with the right number of limbs I’ve seen in a week.”

“Do not apologize for your caution,” he replied. “It is what has been keeping you alive, after all.”

V looked a little out of place on your living room couch—such elegance and proper posture sitting amongst a dragon’s hoard of supplies you’d stolen from neighboring apartments. He was surrounded by small hills of plastic water bottles and canned food, but he didn’t seem to pay the mess around him any mind. You noticed he was wearing sandals. Who wore sandals to the apocalypse?

“Have you been here long?” he asked.

You took a seat across from him and tried not to look at his feet. “Since a few days after the incident, I think.”

“Is there a reason for not evacuating with the others?”

“Oh. I, um.” Hesitating for a moment, you pulled back your sleeve and held up your arm, revealing a band still wrapped around your wrist. Why you hadn’t removed it yet, you didn’t know. “I guess you could say I missed the boat.”

He glanced at your wristband, putting two and two together. “You were in the hospital.”

“Car accident. I remember an ambulance, being taken to a room...a lot of it’s hazy, but by the time I came to, everyone was already gone.”

He raised an eyebrow. “And you figured simply getting up and walking home was your best chance of survival?”

“I needed to get out of there one way or another.” You tried to laugh it off, but you just ended up sounding terrified. “Those creatures weren’t as rampant then as they are now, but I was still dodging hellspawn armed with a hospital gown and the worst headache of my life. Felt like I was in a fucking horror movie.”

“Impressive. For a civilian,” he amended.

The qualifier annoyed you. You thought it was pretty damn impressive for anyone.

“Only people who aren’t civilians use the word ‘civilian,’” you said, irritated. “Who are you, anyway?”

“I am many things,” he explained, and you wondered if he was being deliberately obtuse. “For one, I am tasked with purging this realm of the evil that’s befallen it.”

“Yeah? How’s that going?”

His expression flickered. “There is...much work to be done.”

“No kidding.” Glancing away, you tried to keep your anxiety about it from being too obvious. You’d still get the occasional mental flash of the monsters you encountered during your escape—too many eyes, too many legs, too many goddamn teeth. “Is it like this everywhere?”

“No, the breakout has been contained to this city alone.” He tilted his head towards you, a sudden glint in his eyes. “Which is precisely what makes your survival so remarkable.”

“Lucky me.”

After your recent series of unfortunate events, suspension of disbelief was a luxury of the past: if this guy had dropped in telling you he was the King of France, you would've swapped his pronouns for ‘Your Majesty’s without a second thought. Deep down, you knew the true, supernatural, cataclysmic magnitude of the situation was far beyond your understanding, but you still couldn’t help but wonder about the man sitting in front of you. With the way he spoke, the way he carried himself...if he really was ‘tasked with purging evil,’ as he put it, maybe he was an angel of some kind.

If demons existed, angels did too, right?

“Thank you,” you started, feeling a sudden wave of humility, “for taking the time to talk to a complete stranger. I’m sure you’ve...y’know. Got more important things to do.”

“You seemed like you needed the company,” he said. “I imagine it gets quite lonely.”

A nervous laugh escaped you. “I just never knew how quiet the world could be.”

“You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough. The sentiment resounds doubly for silence.”

You could tell by his tone he was quoting something, but wherever it was from was lost on you.

Until this point, the disasters you witnessed felt like an adrenaline-induced fever dream, mostly because you’d experienced them alone—but being seen, being acknowledged by someone else gave it all a gravity it didn’t have before. As your state of constant terror and survival began to fray at the edges, the full weight of your catastrophe settled somewhere between your shoulder blades, and you felt as if you’d aged the entire week’s events at once.

Eventually, you met his eyes again, and there was a warmth in them that wasn’t there before, as if he, too, had heard the quiet of a barren world and knew just how loud it could be.

“Are you alone?” you asked, finally. “Doing the whole demon-killing thing?”

He shook his head. “Not exactly. With regards to the city, my allies and I have chosen to divide and conquer.”

‘Allies,’ he called them. Fellow hunters. You wondered what they were like. Did they all dress and speak like he did? They probably had matching tattoos. And motorcycles.

“And what of you?” he asked. “Do you know anyone who may have escaped the city? Friends? A loved one, perhaps?”

(The way your eyes flickered to your balcony did not escape his notice.)

“No,” you settled on. “Do you? Have any loved ones, I mean.”

He hummed. “Love is but one of many luxuries time has not seen fit to afford me.”

The weight of his statement gave you pause. A handful of words birthed a hundred implications, none of which could be clarified in any marginally polite manner. You hadn’t even known he existed fifteen minutes ago—it wasn’t any of your business, if he’d ever loved anyone before. If he’d ever been loved in turn. If time itself was a mitigating factor, or if he was simply running out of it.

“You seem surprised,” he said, snapping you from your reverie.

“A little.”

“Why?”

At this point, you were sure he was teasing you, just a ploy to trick you into a compliment—you’re impossibly attractive, V, how could you not have the world at your feet—but you found his expression of earnest curiosity catching you completely off-guard.

Did he not recognize himself as someone who could be loved?

The kettle whistled.

You were quick to your feet.

The way he’d looked to you for an answer—it wasn’t a matter of low self-esteem or self-deprecation, it was a moment of sincere confusion from someone who had never considered himself in that light. He was ethereal. Alien. An entity from some other world, some alternate plane, naive to his effect on mortal beings on this earth, and by some horrible twist of fate, the universe saw you fit to be the first to bring it to his attention.

Heat rose in your cheeks.

If he were an angel, there would a very special place in hell, reserved just for you.

You busied yourself in the kitchen for much longer than necessary, in an effort to put as much space between you and the conversation as possible. As you had no milk or cream to speak of, and the sugar was already in its own little jar, you spent an agonizing four minutes rifling through the cupboards, pretending to decide between tea mugs as if it were the single most important decision of your life.

By the time you returned to the living room, V was reading. You could see his book more clearly, now, bound in brown hardcover and embellished with gold embroidery.

“Is that your journal?” you asked, setting a mug down in front of him.

“A collection of poetry.” He smiled a little, pointing to his initial on the cover. “Fifth volume.”

You couldn’t tell if he was joking. You found yourself returning his smile, anyway.

Keeping your cup in your hands, you slid back into the seat across from him. “Will you read to me?”

“No need to fear, I will spare you the tedium.”

“No, I mean.” You looked everywhere, anywhere but him. “I—I’d like to hear it.”

He glanced askance at you from above the edge of his book, but your slightly-flustered look of interest eased his suspicions at once. To his pleasant surprise, you were being serious.

“Well then,” he teased, a slight smirk curling at the edge of his lips, “since you asked so politely.”

You wrapped your fingers around your steaming mug to keep yourself from fidgeting. You watched his slender fingers turn the pages, slow and deliberate, until he found what he was searching for.

And he spoke.

“Love seeketh not itself to please,

Nor for itself hath any care,

But for another gives its ease,

And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair.”

He continued on, speaking as if his voice wouldn’t still your heart to silence, glancing up between verses as if the deep green of his eyes wouldn’t make you feel like you were drowning.

He was enchanting.

Amato Animo Animato Animagus.

You were normally still in bed at sunrise, before being jarred awake by the bone-conducting vibrations of your enchanted watch, the Animagus spell becoming a quiet ritual in an otherwise sleeping dorm room. Sunset’s observances were performed in a variety of places, depending on where you were at the time—sometimes whispered behind library bookshelves or in bathroom stalls, or enunciated loud and joyously in whatever isolated corner of the grounds you found yourself studying in.

You were proud of how far you’d come, and each repetition of the spell made you feel more and more alive.

You would repeat the incantation twice per day, pointing the tip of your ebony wand towards at your heart. Sometimes, when you cast it, you could feel the surreal echo of another heartbeat syncing itself with your own, like the ghost of a second consciousness growing inside of you.

As you waited for the lightning storm, you wondered which beast laid dormant within you.

You knew from your studies that one’s Animagus form was assigned, not chosen, based on how facets of your personality intersected with the nature of your own magical energy.

Still, you worried.

Millions of species lived on this planet, most of which you’d likely never even heard of. Statistically speaking, what were the chances your new form would be something awkward, like a cockroach, or a garden slug? Or something even more dangerously impractical, like an elephant, or an ant, or literally anything that lived underwater?

Years upon years of study just to turn into a sea bass.

You might have enough time to be disappointed before dying of embarrassment.

All your worries notwithstanding, you continued your scheduled spellcasting without fail, with your wand to your chest and your heart pounding to the rhythm of another. You resolved to trust yourself and whatever new image was forthcoming—which, you knew, were one and the same. The form you were to become was not the emergence of something other, but an emergence of the self.

And for better or for worse, you would be worthy of it.

-

In the early morning hours of the second of November, you were woken by a Head Slytherin in their pyjamas, a lit wand in their hand.

“Professor Snape wants to see you,” they said, keeping their voice low to not disturb your roommates. “Says it’s an emergency.”

As you tried to clear away your sleepy stupor, it took a few moments for you to understand the sympathetic sense of panic weighing in the other student’s eyes: an emergency call at this time of night usually meant a serious injury or death in the family.

Thunder clapped outside your window, striking you with sudden clarity.

You knew better.

-

You were led to Snape’s office at once. You’d hastily thrown on your school robes before heading out—you didn’t feel like facing the upcoming task, or Snape, wearing nothing but your nightclothes.

Snape was at the center of his stone-flask office when the two of you arrived, keeping his shoulders square and his hands folded behind his back. His black night-robes looked only marginally more comfortable than his day ones.

“That will be all,” he said to the other student. They nodded and left, making their way back to the dormitories.

As soon as you were alone, Snape turned his heel and approached a wall of his office, taking out his wand and making a small, complicated movement you didn’t recognize. A small stone brick dislodged itself from the wall, allowing him to remove your crystal phial from behind it. Hidden from sunlight and left to cure for several weeks, the once random slurry of ingredients had transformed into a homogeneous, deep-red liquid.

“Follow me,” he ordered.

You obliged.

Sounds of the incoming storm followed you down the hallways. For how real this was becoming, you still felt as if you were navigating a dream, wandering through dungeon corridors at the tail of someone carrying a vial of spit mixed with a dead insect and an old leaf.

Though you had no wand pointed at yourself, your heart was already beating fast enough for two.

The large, empty hall he led you to was as frigid as the rest of the dungeons: not a classroom, but one of the many spare chambers kept cleared for various use. The torches lining the stone walls were already lit, revealing the silhouette of a rather tired-looking McGonagall, standing nearby in her night-robes.

“Professor,” you beamed. “You’re here.”

“Of course,” she said, as if it were obvious. “I’ve spent the last four years preparing you for this—it would be a shame to miss the debut.”

“Procedure mandates a minimum of two witnesses for the first transformation,” Snape drawled. “Nothing more than a requirement for your registration with the Ministry.”

McGonagall clicked her tongue. “Come now, Severus, I think you can afford to be a little more excited.”

Snape remained expressionless.

Somehow, having McGonagall present dulled the anxious edge of the situation. Though you would never admit it, if something went wrong and you had to choose between the two of them for help, you would choose McGonagall without hesitation. You wouldn’t be able to handle impatient ridicule for any missteps tonight, not while you were already teetering on the precipice of a faltering confidence.

“The potion appears adequate,” Snape said, examining the phial closely beneath the torchlight. “I take it you’ve performed the incantation?”

“Twice a day,” you nodded. “Sunup and sundown.”

“Never missing an instance?”

“No, sir.”

“On your life?”

“...yes, sir.”

“Hm,” he sneered, sounding unconvinced. “We shall see.”

He handed the potion to you. You looked at it as if it were a live grenade.

Reaching into your robes, you pointed your wand to your heart and recited the spell, one last time.

“Amato Animo Animato Animagus.”

Years of study, of patience, of vigor, all leading up to this moment.

You uncorked the phial and braced for the worst.

As the blood-red concoction hit your tongue, you found Snape’s words inside your head, words you carried with you these past two years like a mantra.

Hold your nerve.

The potion ran thin and tasted stale, imbued with the faint flavour of Mandrake leaf drowned in standing water.

The reaction was immediate.

The second heartbeat rematerialized beneath your chest, pulsing distinct and out of time with your own, growing faster and more powerful with every beat. The wand and phial fell from your hands; you dropped to your knees and pressed both hands over your heart, convinced it was going to burst from your chest if you didn’t try holding it in.

It should’ve hurt, you thought, but it didn’t. None of it did.

Pins and needles tingled at your fingertips, surging up your arms and spreading through your body like waves of static. An immense pressure was suddenly bearing down on you from all sides, as if a magical gravity was pushing against you, into you, forcefully reshaping you into a mold that was not your own. Too many strange sensations happened all at once, in an instant—your glasses sinking into your face, your robes seeming to melt against the surface of your skin—it was horrific, otherworldly.

But then it wasn’t.

Your out-of-sync heartbeats harmonized until you felt only one remain.

You opened your eyes. You were lower to the ground than before, much lower, but whatever body you occupied now felt just as natural to you as your first.

A secondary consciousness swiftly joined your normal thoughts, snapping at you in quick, sharp compulsions.

Inside. Indoors. Danger. Get out. Out, out. Now.

The sudden urge to escape was overwhelming, enough to move your body on its own accord; torn between the instinct to run and the rationality to stay, you stumbled over your own feet and fell over.

‘I’m safer here,’ you told yourself. ‘It’s okay. I’m safe.’

Up, then. Up.

That, you couldn’t ignore.

Before you could stop yourself, you lifted yourself up, up, up. You were lighter than you could possibly imagine. Lighter than air. Almost hollow.

Stand high. Stand high and look.

You landed in an archway of the chamber, your feet-turned-talons scraping around a corner edge of stone. Being high up felt more comfortable than being on the ground, and it set your panic at ease.

It might as well have been daytime for how clearly you could see into every corner of the dimly lit room. Not only could you see better in the dark, but you could somehow see more than you used to, as if your peripheral vision had been widened by several degrees. The sheer scale of your new optic scope was so much to take in all at once, you found yourself moving your head every few seconds just to properly process all the details.

From below, McGonagall conjured a small puddle of liquid silver on the floor.

Shiny. Get it.

You let yourself come down from the ceiling to investigate. The mystery substance was highly reflective, allowing you to see yourself clearly as you approached it.

You tried to make a noise of surprise, but a garbled croak escaped you instead.

You were bigger than you thought you were—at least two feet long, if not longer. A slightly curved beak took place where your nose and mouth had been. You were completely covered in sleek, oil-black feathers, with the ones around your neck fluffed out in all the wrong places. Uncanny markings lined your eyes where your glasses had been, and there was a thin band of grey around one of your scrawny black ankles, the closest thing to a wrist you had now from where you wore your watch.

The longer you stared in the makeshift mirror, the more relieved you felt. You were a bird—and a common one, at that. Not embarrassing or impractical in the least.

A whole new world of possibilities sent your mind racing. An inconspicuous Animagus form would actually prove useful for a position at the Ministry of Magic, instead of just something impressive to pad your application. With a skill like this, you didn’t need to settle for the mere goal of ‘detective.’ You could be a Hit Wizard.

You could be a goddamn Auror.

-

Being sure to give you enough space, your professors watched as you carefully examined your own reflection.

“A crow?” Snape asked.

“Too big to be a crow,” McGonagall said, shaking her head. “A raven, I believe.”

“How ominous.” He lowered his voice. “When shall we let them know that turning into the animal is the easy part?”

Using the fireman carry on a grown man double your weight and at least a head taller than you was no minor feat. As you held your Commander’s body around your shoulders, blood from his wounded leg now leaking steadily down the front of you, you shuffled your way up the ramp into the waiting dropship, making a mental note to thank Zarya for her training.

You punched the inner hull to pop down a medical table folded into the wall, and you rested him down as carefully as you could.

“Athena?” you snapped, out of breath.

Several nearby devices activated, springing out of the wall at the ends of mechanical arms. One of them performed a full-body scan, while another projected the numbers of his vitals on a mid-air screen. A third device appeared above him, casting a familiar, biotic-yellow glow across his injury.

Athena’s voice sounded from overhead. “The biotic field will control the bleeding, but it appears unable to close the wounds alone. Extraction of foreign matter is needed for full recovery.”

“Should I go in, then?” you asked, already rifling through the first aid shelves for the proper tools. You hadn’t had to perform emergency field surgery in ages, but your knowledge was still there, as was your knee-jerk reaction to get busy before things took a turn for the worst.

“Analyzing...immediate action not required. The interaction between the biotics and the SEP treatment will be enough to keep him stable until landing.”

Your hands fell limp against the shelves. You hung your head, wearily, still catching your breath.

‘SEP treatment.’ You had no idea what that was. You weren’t sure if you wanted to know.

“Vitals are stabilizing. Status: breathing and unresponsive. Please place the Commander in the recovery position and ensure clearance of his airways to prevent fluid or mechanical obstruction of his breathing.”

‘Clearance of his airways.’

You had to remove his mask.

You turned towards him, wiping your brow across the back of your hand. Logic dictated that the hesitation you felt right now was stupid, nonsensical. This was a medical emergency, neither the time nor place for pride; if he were to choke on his own vomit and die in his sleep because you thought seeing his face was a violation of privacy, that would be on you. You doubted he would’ve cared at this point, anyway. Especially not now. Now that you knew.

You just imagined this going differently, somehow.

Adrenaline kept your pulse pounding in your ears, loud and headache-inducing, as if your heart had leapt straight into your skull.

With careful, still-bloodied fingers, you felt along the sides of his mask for the release trigger. The faceplate seperated with a soft click, deactivating the red glow of his visor, and leaving the jawstrap of his mask framed around his face.

And there he was. Overwatch’s original Strike Commander. War hero and international celebrity.

He looked older than you remembered from the posters, his hair and brows having gone from bright blonde to stark white. He had the same strong jawline, now peppered with stubble, and the same slight curve in the bridge of his nose. Deep scars had been slashed across his face, as if the claws of some great predator had taken swipes against him; the thought evoked a memory of Reaper’s talons, black and lethal and a perfect fit.

His lips were slightly parted in his unconsciousness. The ghost of his visor was on your mouth, again, and waves of unease crashed within you at the reminder of how foolish you’d been.

How could you not have seen it?

You adjusted his arms and legs into the recovery position and turned his unconscious body towards the wall.

You do not look upon his face again.

With the Commander’s body secured, the dropship rumbled beneath you during takeoff. You turned to steady yourself on a bar affixed to the wall, and the sight of the figure now sitting up in her holding cell gave you a jolt of surprise.

“Salut,” you offered, meekly, because what else did you say to a deadly brainwashed enemy assassin staring at you from behind glass?

The greeting in her native tongue gave her momentary pause, but she did not look away from you.

“I never touched the Atlantic, did I?” she asked, her voice dark and crisp.

“...you don’t seem surprised.”

“This isn’t new to me, moving from one set of incompetent fools to the next. The only difference is I’m no longer getting paid for it.” Her gaze on you softened, her golden eyes laced with such sudden informality it made you doubt your own safety. “Am I under arrest, chérie?”

You opened your mouth before closing it, again. You didn’t actually know the answer to that question.

She sneered at your silence. “You’re new, aren’t you?”

With your Commander incapacitated, you mentally ran through every security feature aboard the dropship. The multiple panes of heat-strengthened glass surrounding her. The knockout gas lines lining the cell. The sidearm on the wall filled with Commander Amari’s sleep darts.

You made the call and walked, slow and deliberate, towards Amélie’s holding cell.

You hadn’t had a chance to get a proper look at her during the panicked rush of earlier events. She was barefooted and clothed in a white wraparound hospital gown, the colour a stark contrast against the pale blue of her skin. Her untied dark hair was a straight, sleek mess of strands, long enough to bunch around her as she sat. You noticed a tattoo around her right forearm—araignée du soir, cauchemar—a rhyme, playing on an old French expression.

Unblinking and stone-still, she kept her eyes fixed on you as she tracked your gradual approach. You could feel her bristling, the electricity in the air growing with the inches closed between you, but that wasn’t what you wanted at all. Instead, you angled your approach to give her a wider berth, stopping only when you reached the opposite wall, several feet away from her cell.

You sat on the floor. “What’s your name?”

“Don’t speak as if you haven’t read my file.”

“Not your birth name, your real one. The one they won’t tell me.”

You could still feel remnants of the earlier static between you, filling the silence with its sparks.

“Fatale,” she said, finally. “Or, ‘Widowmaker,’ for those who refuse to pronounce it properly.”

“It’s an honour to finally meet the person everyone’s been fighting so hard for.”

“Fraternizing with the enemy will get you no answers from me.”

“You’re not our enemy.”

She sneered, again. “You are new.”

“Let me rephrase,” you offered. “The Commander never spoke of you as an enemy.”

“Oh,” she pouted, making a sardonic, mocking expression of interest, “and how did he speak of me?”

“Like a prisoner of war.”

“And how does it feel to be led by someone that profoundly naive?”

“He may have led me here, but who’s the one half-dead on a table and who’s the one sitting in front of you? I was given a mission to bring you back. And I succeeded.”

“Yes, you have me,” she said, a slow smirk on her lips. “Your grand prize. And you’ll kill me, again. Isn’t that enough?”

“No one’s going to kill you, Fatale,” you said, but you couldn’t even convince yourself that much was true.

Amélie rose to her feet as if lifted by a breeze, her elegant movements pronounced with the grace of a woman in command of every fiber of her being. As she stood tall and stared down at you, a triumphant smile playing at the small curves of her mouth, you were once again struck with the feeling you were in danger.

“I have been killed many times, chérie. I will be born again in the morning.”

She turned her back to you and sat down against the glass of the holding cell, leaving you silent, hopeless, and aching with the inexplicable guilt of having done something wrong.

Reaper’s words accompanied the heartbeat in your head.

There will always be people they need to do their dirty work.

People just like you.

-

Winston, McCree, and Dr. Ziegler were there to greet you when you arrived back at headquarters. The impromptu welcome party wasn’t unexpected, as no mission reports had been filed on the way back; the only updates your team had to go on regarding the status of your assignment were returning flight paths and readings of your vital signs.

So, as you disembarked, their reaction didn’t come as a surprise.

“We—welcome back,” gaped Winston.

“What in the hell happened to you?” McCree asked, loudly.

You hadn’t slept and you looked it, your eyes dark and your line of vision the slightest bit unfocused. You walked down the ramp wearing nothing but cargo pants and a tank top, as your tactical jacket was still wrapped tightly around 76’s thigh to help apply pressure to his still-open wounds. Most noteworthy of all, however, was the blood all over you, now dried and dark; a flaky mess of smears formed a gradient from your fingers to your forearms, alongside a massive stain down one side of you from where your Commander bled as you carried him on board.

You weren’t injured, however, and you tried not to make a show of carrying yourself down to the tarmac, keeping your back straight and your tone matter-of-fact. “Commander Morrison needs surgery. He sustained a severe shotgun wound to the upper thigh that the biotic field won’t close.”

“That—that doesn’t make sense.” Winston glanced back at the ship. “The biotic field should be able to—unless—”

“Reaper was there,” you said. “Whatever’s in his bullets is keeping the Commander from healing up. I’m sorry I haven’t completed my mission report, I’ll have it finished within the hour.”

Bewildered, McCree tipped his hat up as he scratched at his forehead. “That’s all fine and dandy, but are you—”

A slender hand grabbed your bare shoulder from behind, clutching onto you for purchase.

“You found her?” Dr. Ziegler asked, breathless.

And suddenly, no one’s eyes were on you.

Everyone’s attention was redirected towards the holding cell within the dropship. You turned to look as well, and the unbridled hatred sparking in Amélie’s eyes was unlike any you’d ever seen.

This was a reunion for them, you remembered.

You didn’t belong here.

You shrugged off Dr. Ziegler’s grasp and headed back towards base.

“Please take care of the Commander,” you repeated.

-

76’s surgery took less time than your paperwork.

Though your report and post-mission medical examination were both complete, Dr. Zeigler refused to clear you for active duty. She reminded you that you only had a week’s rest between Romania and Le Havre, a week which was almost entirely spent healing and preparing for your next mission, and after this ordeal, you needed some actual time to recover.

What was supposed to be an extended break ended up being nothing more than an exercise in worry.

Every idle thought would drift back to the memory of Amélie’s murderous gaze when she first laid eyes on the rest of your crew. You realized that, for some reason, she’d afforded you a patience during your conversation that she had no intention of sharing with anyone else. Reaper’s words to you were on repeat, again—you felt as if you were the only person on-base none the wiser about Amélie’s case, or about what Overwatch was planning on doing with her now that she’d been rescued.

Whenever you sought to ask details from Dr. Ziegler about Amélie’s situation, or her progress, or even where she was being kept, the good doctor would quiet you with a tired smile, every single time.

“You’ve done your job, Reader. Let me do mine.”

But you couldn’t sleep.

Most of your time was spent squirreled away in your personal quarters. When you weren’t comparing the Le Havre mission reports from yourself and your Commander, searching for hints about Amélie you might’ve missed, you were staring at the contingency plans you’d made in France, seeing where you could’ve done better, gradually sinking under the weight of your own anxieties.

Where was Amélie? Was she safe here?

Several days had passed since you returned, and the one person you trusted enough to answer your questions still hadn’t bothered to summon you, or find you of his own accord—and the act of you seeking him out after everything that happened would’ve felt like surrender.

Was he angry with you?

The thought made your blood boil. He had no right or reason to be upset, least of all with you.

Why else would he be avoiding you?

A knock sounded at your room one night, and the voice that followed was not the one you were expecting.

“This mopin’ of yours’s gone on long enough,” McCree said through the door. “Get dressed, you’re comin’ with me.”

Buried within the contents of several journals spread across your desktop, you kept very, very still. Maybe if you were quiet enough, he would think you weren’t here.

“...don’t make me drag you outta there.”

“Alright, alright, jeez.”

So you put on pants.

You followed McCree’s wordless lead to the practice range. You figured he was taking you for aim training—nothing gets your mind off things like shooting other things, after all—but you were guided away from the distance markings on the floor, past the training bots hovering in fixed path rotations around the grounds, and up several flights of stairs.

Eventually, you arrived at an open balcony at one of the highest points of the range, overlooking a large portion of the facility.

McCree sat down against the wall, to one side of a plastic container. “Have a seat.”

“...am I in trouble?”

He looked up at you, his brows knitting together. “Y’know, there’s something to be said about the fact that’s the first place your mind jumped to.”

“I’m support,” you said, taking a seat next to him on the other side of the box. “Worst case scenarios are kinda my thing.”

McCree reached for the sealed container, which popped open with a gentle hiss.

It was a cooler.

He grabbed a bottle of beer from inside, uncapped it with his metal hand, and handed it to you. You accepted it, gratefully.

And you drank together in silence.

The stars were out in full force tonight, twinkling pinpricks in the blanket of a moonlit sky. The pitch-black shadows of mountains were silhouetted the horizon, while sheets of ice drifted across the surface of the distant water. The alcohol was smoother than you were expecting—strong, but sweeter than most. One drink turned into two, into three, into four. A warm, familiar buzz soon blurred your thoughts, soothing you from the inside out.

Several empty bottles piled up between the two of you before McCree broke the quiet.

“Pull,” he called, another drink raised to his lips.

You blinked at him, slowly. The place better have been as abandoned as he thought it was.

You grabbed an empty bottle and threw it as hard as you could over the balcony, high into the air. You hadn’t even registered him pulling his weapon from his holster before he’d shot the damn thing with a single bullet, pieces of glass raining like stardust onto the barren ground fifty feet below.

‘Nice shot,’ is what you thought.

“I can’t believe zombies are fucking real,” is what left your mouth.

He chuckled. “Pull.”

You tossed another bottle. Again, he hit it spot-on, first try.

“If it helps,” he started, cracking open another couple of drinks for the two of you, “whatever’s goin’ on with Reaper ain’t exactly widespread technology. He’s one-of-a-kind. That’s what makes him so dangerous.”

You downed half the bottle before speaking. “He promised he was gonna kill me.”

“Don’t take it personally, that’s just how he says goodbye.”

“You’ve met him, then?”

“I have. Knew him before the mask, too.”

The memory of the cloaked, clawed, dual shotgun-wielding man floated through your mind like a passing ghost, and you found it difficult to imagine there was ever a ‘before.’ “What was he like?”

“Reyes?” McCree considered your question, nursing his drink as he did so. “A hardass with a good sense of humor. Got the job done at all costs. And quite the family man, believe it or not.”

“...he had a family?”

He nodded. “Civilians, though. Moved on after the Fall.”

You continued drinking. Somehow, you hadn’t considered Reaper was once a regular person with a life all his own. A spouse. Children, maybe. If they were civilians, did that mean they believed him dead, like the rest of the world? If he still remembered them, did he care for them, even now? Did he have a family before his relationship with your Commander? After?

...during?

McCree noticed you’d gone quiet. “What’re you thinkin’?”

“Just trying to wrap my head around it,” you admitted. “Never had a dead guy point a gun at my face, before.”

He clicked his tongue before taking a swig. “Welcome to Overwatch.”

Slouching over a bit, you ran a hand over your face. “If I knew about Commander Reyes from the start, I could’ve been better prepared in Le Havre.”

“None of us had any reason to believe Reaper would be runnin’ interference down there. Our intel had him halfway around the world when you and Sarge left for France.”

“So it was bad intel.”

“Yep.”

You kept a hand over your mouth as you stared into the distance, thinking it over. Reaper was the one 76 cared about finding, so of course he’d have updated knowledge of his whereabouts. That’s why 76 hadn’t told you about him from the start, and that’s why he was so shocked to find him there—maybe even enough to reevaluate his mission objectives and go after him without a second thought.

“What do we want with Amélie, anyway?” you asked.

“Couldn’t tell you,” he shrugged. “Probably classified.”

“‘Classified.’ Of course it is. Meaning she could be being tortured or murdered underground somewhere and I would’ve been complicit in that.”

“...bein’ a little overdramatic, don’t you think? Not exactly in the business of kidnap and torture, here.”

“Yeah, not anymore.”

“Now, now.” McCree flashed a grin from the lip of his bottle. “Our hands might not be clean, but these things ain’t ever black and white in the long run, either. All we can do is make sure our shade of grey’s lighter’n most.”

“How do I know we’re doing the right thing if there’s this much I wasn’t told?”

“You’re forgettin’ the obvious.”

“And that is?”

“You’re new,” he enunciated. “Everyone but you’s been here from the start of it all, years and years ago. What’s ‘classified’ now is just a bunch of random, tragic shit that happened to us once upon a time. It’s on a need-to-know basis, and you don’t need to know for the things we brought you on for.”

“I know,” you said, emphatically, “I know I don’t need everyone’s life story to work here, I’m just worried there’s more things I should’ve known from the start, things that...could’ve helped.”

“You talkin’ ‘bout Sarge?”

You didn’t respond, instead opting to take a very long sip from your bottle.

“If I’m bein’ honest, the whole ‘Soldier 76’ thing is more of an inside joke here than anything else. We keep it up to protect his pride, ‘cause pride’s just about all he’s got left. His callsign’s a cover for the outside world, but everyone here knows who he really is. And he knows that.”

“He knew I didn’t.”

“You sure?”

“He knew,” you repeated, more forcefully this time.

McCree raised an eyebrow. “So are you mad at him for not tellin’ you, or mad at yourself for not figurin’ it out sooner?”

Frustration burned your cheeks. Without warning, you chucked two empty bottles over the balcony at the same time; he shot both, dead-on, one after the other in less than a heartbeat.

“He waited for me,” you growled.

“Come again?”

“After Romania. He waited for me to recover because he wanted me in France. And I was so damn worried, you know? Was I going because it was important, or was I going because it was important to him? He says he doesn’t want to lead me on, he says he doesn’t want me to make a decision based on him alone—but regardless of how I felt, or how he felt, he waited. And it was the first time I felt like he saw me. Not as a new hire, or as a subordinate, but—”

“—as an equal.”

“Then when we’re over there,” you rambled, voice breaking, “he says shit like he’s ‘at his best’ when he’s with me? And we promise not to be reckless, but two hours later, he does just that—and I have to save him, even if it means walking into a trap, even if it means carrying his bleeding ass back to the ship, because I said I’d protect him and I don’t break my fucking promises.”

You didn’t give permission for the angry tears to stray from your eyes, but you were already too tipsy to care.

“And for what??” you snapped, voice growing louder. “To bring back a full-fledged Talon agent for reasons I never understood in the first place. And now that she’s here, I can’t log into my computer without wondering if Sombra’s tracking my movements, trying to make contact again. I can’t stop thinking about how much time I have left until Reaper makes good on his promise—and I know you said not to worry, but you didn’t hear what he said to me, and god, you didn’t hear how much he meant it.”

McCree didn’t say a word. He gave you a few moments of silence to collect yourself, to catch your breath, to get it all out of your system.

Then he reloaded his revolver, and handed it to you.

The initial shock of him letting you anywhere near Peacekeeper was immediately drowned out by the sheer weight of it in your hands. The gun was massive, twice the size of any normal revolver—much heavier, as well, but somehow still balanced within your hold. You cocked it, and the heavy click of the hammer was incredibly satisfying.

McCree tossed up an empty bottle. It took you three tries, but you managed to shatter it.

Nothing to get your mind off things like shooting other things, after all.

“I don't have time to worry about something like this, you know?” you said, sniffling. “I—I just don’t have the time.”

“The time to what? Figure out the feelings of a dumbass givin’ off more mixed signals than a traffic light? I don’t blame you.” McCree lit a cigar and held it between his teeth. He flipped another bottle over the ledge, watching you catch it in two shots. “Least he bought us booze.”

You glanced back at the cooler. “The Commander bought all this?”

“A fine cider I recommended,” he bragged, tapping the ash from his first drag away. “You should be thankin’ me, too, the man’s got shit taste. Likes that sex-on-a-boat type beer.”

“Sex on a boat?”

“Fuckin’ close to water.”

You snorted an ugly, too-loud laugh through the last few of your tears. McCree smiled from behind his cigar.

“Look, Sarge wants to talk to you,” he said, “but he wants to talk to you on your own terms. Told me so himself. Didn’t wanna ambush you if you weren’t ready, all that shit.”

“So he sent you as a messenger?” you scoffed. “Why couldn’t he just tell me that himself?”

“Scared, I reckon.”

“Scared of what?”

McCree threw one final empty bottle into the air. Having gotten used to Peacekeeper’s weight, you finally managed to shatter it in one shot, with the very last bullet in the chamber.

“Thought that much’d be obvious,” he said, wryly.

You turned your nose. Maybe it was the pent-up frustration, maybe it was the one-too-many bottles of cider swimming around inside you, but something about the Commander leaving the ball in your court rubbed you the wrong way. You were tired of sitting around. You were tired of worrying. Above all else, you were tired of not knowing.

You stood up, which in itself was an accomplishment. You weren’t drunk—it took a bit more than that to really knock you on your ass—but you were hovering at that wonderfully hazy point where you were intoxicated enough to lack better judgement, but sober enough to make bad decisions.

You wobbled your way towards the stairs, keeping one hand on the building for balance. “If no one’s giving me answers, I’ll just get them on my own.”

McCree made a little noise of disapproval. “I wouldn’t have that conversation drunk, if I were you.”

“No,” you snapped, “I’m going to the medbay to see if I can find Amélie’s intake files.”

“Reckon the doc’ll just hand them over if you ask nicely?”

“Kinda counting on her not being there.”

He laughed, burying his face into his palm. “Oh, lord.”

“I’m not asking you to help.”

“Now, what kind of friend would I be if I got you drunk then didn’t help you break into somewhere you shouldn’t be?”

“You coming, then?”

“Depends. Can I have my gun back?”

“...oh. Right.”

-

As you navigated the barren hallways of the base, trying to move as silently as you could from corridor to corridor, you became certain that McCree’s spurs were the loudest objects known to mankind.

Dr. Ziegler’s office was located towards the back of the hospital wing. To your surprise, the door of her office was left unlocked, but as you made your way inside and hit the light switch, you suddenly understood why. She kept absolutely everything in neat, impeccable order—not a single pen or scrap of paper out of place—with an impressive array of individually fastened drawers, locked filing cabinets, and padlocked storage units located all around the room.

You booted up the computer at her desk, only to discover that the words across the loading screens weren’t even English.

“It’s all in German,” you sighed, shutting down the computer at the password window. “Even if we figured out the password without triggering a lockout, it’d be hard to navigate.”

“Shouldn’t there be an original form, though?” asked McCree. “A physical one?”

As you explored the office and examined the many filing cabinets, you finally came across a set labelled with letters.

You grabbed a paperclip from the magnetic holder on the desk and unfolded it, running through the alphabet under your breath.

“It’s this one,” McCree interrupted with a snicker, knocking a knuckle on the drawer with the ‘G - Mc’ label. “Sorry—should I have let you finish your ABCs?”

You angled the straightened paperclip into the lock. “Leave me alone, I can barely see straight.”

Once you popped open the lock, you found the drawer’s contents separated even further, dividing individual letters throughout the row of files. A particularly overstuffed folder at the very end had a tab that read:

McCree, Jesse

McCree reached over your shoulder to grab it. “Yoink.”

You feathered through the folders under ‘L.’

Lacroix, Amélie Lacroix, Gerard

So she had a family, too.

With a rush of excitement, you pulled Amélie’s file.

The first page had a photograph clipped to it, a picture of her from when she was younger. Her skin was a more human, peachy colour, and instead of a sharp gold, her eyes were dark, and lively.

As these were Dr. Ziegler’s files, you quickly discovered that her hard copy medical documentation was also in German. All you could read were the dates, and all you could gather was that, aside from the first few pages, the majority of contents in Amélie’s file had only been created within the last week.

With the amount of medical examinations you had, from agent onboarding to post-mission observations to scheduled weekly checkups, you were sure that even your file had more content than hers did before she was brought here. Her having a file in Dr. Ziegler’s office at all meant she was known to Overwatch before the incident with Talon, but the lack of documentation implied she wasn’t a field operative.

Had she been a civilian before the incident?

You continued searching through the German archives, picking out roman numbers and borrowed English words but understanding none of it for the most part, until you got to the very end of her file.

A thirty-page copy of a scientific report in English, addressed to Winston.

The report itself was extremely dense, filled with equations, diagrams, and scientific terminology you didn’t understand, but you skimmed through it as best as you could.

“...experimental technology…”

“...inoperable neural implant…”

“...resistant to outside observation or interference…”

“...primary concerns regarding legal responsibility for acts of terrorism…”

“...reversal not feasible…”

“...attempts to replicate initial procedure…”

“...erasure of terrorist associations from memory…”

“...implant triggers electromagnetic restoration of neocortex to prior neural state…”

“...to correct the experiment we must repeat the experiment in full…”

“...can’t help but feel as if somewhere, Dr. O’Deorain is laughing at us.”

“Christ,” McCree’s hearty laughter tore through the silence. He held up an old picture of himself. “A soul patch. The hell was I thinkin’?”

“I found what I needed,” you said, trying to keep your voice steady. Your hands trembled as you shoved Amélie’s file back into place. “We should go.”

Picking up on your urgency, McCree slid his file back into the cabinet as well, shutting the drawer as you prepared to leave.

He called after you before you left the office. “Hey, now—we can’t leave this unlocked. She’s gonna know someone was in here. They’ll review the security footage, then we’ll both be in shit.”

You wiped the sweat from your forehead, and nodded. You hadn’t thought of that. “You’re right, but...I’ve never picked a lock closed, before.”

“Good thing you’ve got me around then, ain’t it?” he winked, before grabbing another paperclip from the desk.

-

In spite of the night’s events, you slept more soundly than you had in weeks. Although the thirteen-hour cider-induced coma was a nice break, the anxiety came flooding back with a vengeance as soon as you woke up, only now accompanied by a nasty hangover that made your brain throb.

You stayed hydrated and tried to walk it off, entertaining the fresh wave of thoughts in your head.

Overwatch wanted to help restore Amélie’s old personality from before she was kidnapped and brainwashed by Talon. When that didn’t work, they just tried wiping her memory clean all over again—but the implant in her head wouldn’t let them.

I have been killed many times, chérie. I will be born again in the morning.

Any reprogramming done to Amélie’s implant would just be reversed by the implant itself.

As nefarious as it was, it was also absolutely incredible technology, the likes of which you had no idea existed in your world. Who was Dr. O’Deorain, and how were they able to develop this tech in the first place? Did Talon really have the resources to allow that level of experimental technology?

Did Dr. O’Deorain have something to do with Reaper’s condition, too?

You turned a corner and came face-to-face with a giant gorilla.

You both jumped.

“I—I’m sorry,” Winston laughed. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“Sorry,” you smiled back. “I’m a little out of it today, should’ve watched where I was going.”

“It’s...good to finally see you up and about, Reader.” He paused for a moment and cleared his throat, looking a little too sympathetic for your liking. “I know it must be hard, but...you’re a fine agent. This recent development is in no way a reflection of your performance,” he finished, in a tone he appeared to think was reassuring.

“Recent development?” You looked confused. “I know we had some hiccups, but the Le Havre mission was a success. We got Amélie back, didn’t we?”

“Oh.” His expression went blank. “Um.”

“...Winston, what happened?”

“My apologies, I thought you would’ve been told by now.”

“Told what?”

“I—it’s really not my place to—”

“Tell me what happened,” you demanded, your voice suddenly shaking with the worry of a million possibilities.

Winston looked more solemn than you’d ever seen him before.

Somehow, you thought ‘safehouses’ were supposed to be inconspicuous.

Though nowhere near as grandiose as Stark’s home in Malibu, the place you’d taken temporary refuge could still house a family of twelve quite comfortably. The elegant outdoor landscaping and impeccable interior design made the building feel more like a four-star hotel than covert asylum, but you figured it made sense—if Stark had to go into hiding, he’d be doing it in style.

You and Hansen sat across from each other, a small table and two untouched coffees between you. You both looked little worse for wear, but you’d been lucky to escape the day’s events with nothing more than a handful of scrapes and bruises. Stark wasn’t looking much better himself, but unlike the two of you, he was on his feet and moving, pacing around the room with all the patience of an anxious cat; you could practically hear the gears grinding in his head, processing everything Hansen had confessed about Killian and their company on the car ride over.

It was strange to think that, less than a couple of hours ago, you were leaving the hospital with Stark, having successfully convinced him to take a break and let you handle the meeting with Hansen.

Five henchmen and one destroyed cafe later, you knew he must have been regretting that decision.

“So the Mandarin is using your Extremis for his attacks?” Stark asked.

“Yeah,” said Hansen. “Those bombings? That’s exactly what happens when you let it get unstable enough.”

“Incendiary devices leave remnants. A million-acre forest fire can be tracked down to a single lit cigarette—it’s forensics, it’s a science. That means there’s evidence at the theater explosion. Something I can use to connect the attacks back to AIM.”

“You won’t find any evidence. Just like they wouldn’t have found any at any of the other sites.”

“Yeah, why’s that?”

“Extremis isn’t just some incendiary device, like a bomb or a flare, it’s.” She folded her arms and shifted in her seat. “It’s a form of genetic manipulation. It needs a living host for the thermodynamic hypercharge to work. If the host can control it, Extremis can give them regenerative abilities, enhance their physical performance—but if the host can’t control it...”

Stark made a comical explosion noise.

She shut her eyes and winced away from him, as if the thought alone made her sick. “Point is, the Mandarin is weaponizing my tech to make super-soldiers and living bombs, tech Killian just handed to him on a silver platter. And I don’t know what I can do.”

Keeping silent, you’d watched the two of them go back and forth since Stark started his pseudo-interrogation. Still fueled by outrage over Hogan’s incident, Stark was looking for information, for inconsistencies, for anything he could use as an excuse to get out there and track down the perpetrators. Hansen, on the other hand, was wondering if seeking help was worth the trouble if all they were going to do was talk in circles.

The entire situation was way above your paygrade—but the gears in your head were turning, too.

“You said Extremis is a form of genetic manipulation,” you spoke up. “How is it administered, exactly? Radiotherapy?”

Hansen turned back to you, blinking the weariness from her eyes to try and refocus on your conversation. “Uh—no, intravenous. It’s an intravenous agent.”

“So it works like a virus? Enters the bloodstream, attacks the brain, creates a biochemical reaction.”

“More or less.”

“Then, hypothetically,” you straightened up, “you could develop a vaccine for it.”

The suggestion gave her pause. “I don’t know, maybe? I haven’t gotten anywhere with Extremis’s development in over a decade, I’m not sure how plausible it is to try reverse-coding a half-finished product.”

“I think I might be able to help.”

Your words had gotten both Stark and Hansen’s attention.

You cleared your throat, mulling the words over in your head to make sure you got them right. “If Extremis evokes a thermodynamic reaction that accelerates cellular function, reversing it means causing mass cellular deceleration, which...just so happens to be the unwanted byproduct of my current experimentation.”

The sudden light of inspiration in your eyes now sparked in hers. “You can’t maintain neurogenesis because of entropic decay.”

“And entropic decay is exactly what you need to reverse Extremis’s unstable effects,” you continued. “Obviously, the numbers will need major tweaking, and we’ll need to run some tests—”

“We’ll need samples,” Hansen agreed, shuffling forward in her chair. “There’s not enough time to recreate Extremis from scratch, not with the Mandarin’s recent threats.”

“Where would we get those?”

“Closest AIM headquarters would be in Houston, but...you don’t understand, Killian’s got eyes everywhere—if we hop on a plane, o—or a bus, he’ll see us coming from miles away.”

“Honey,” Stark interrupted, rather loudly, “can I speak to you in private for a moment?”

You were so wrapped up in your discussion with Hansen, you’d forgotten Stark was even there.

His request took you by surprise, but you followed his lead down the hallway. The way Hansen watched in confusion as the two of you disappeared around a corner did not escape your notice.

You entered the room, and shut the door behind you.

Segments of Mark 42 had been disassembled and spread across the floor for post-battle diagnostics. Toeing around the maze of parts, Stark reached the nearby couch, and lazily straddled the armrest. He stretched an arm out in front of him; one of the suit’s gloves flew across the room and attached itself to his hand like a magnet, red and silver metal spreading across his fingers and up his entire forearm.

“Haven’t seen that trick before,” you said, impressed.

“Neat, right? Had to bring the baby—he’s the only one who’d fit in your trunk.”

A mass of images projected themselves from his forearm panel, drowning the room’s ambient lighting with the bright blue glow of various interfaces. Stark gestured through the windows and touch screens, navigating the arrays of diagrams and news articles filling the room around him, his attention maneuvering quickly from one set of panels to the next.

“What are you thinking, doc?” he asked, without looking at you.

“About what?”

“About Maya.”

“I want to help her, if I can.” You made your way over and sat by his side, folding up your legs off the floor. “I mean, having the worst, most volatile parts of your research stolen by a bunch of power-hungry men and used in terrorist attacks? That...fucking sucks.”

“So you trust her?”

“You don’t?”

He clicked his tongue. “Just feels like there’s something she’s not telling us.”

Falling silent, you watched as he conducted his wordless research. Hansen hadn’t given you any reason not to trust her—but in Stark’s world, you realized that must have been tragically naive.

“What do you think we should do, then?” you asked. “Send her back to Killian?”

“No, but I don’t know if getting you involved in this is the greatest idea.”

“I’m already involved. I was involved the moment I went to meet her instead of you.”

“That was a mistake,” he snapped. “I should’ve never let do you that, I should’ve never—”

“You didn’t let me do anything,” you shot back. “We’re both adults—we made a decision, together, and like it or not, here we are.”

“I definitely don’t have to like it. And I definitely don’t have to sit quiet while you hand over your life’s work to someone you just met two hours ago.”

The words took you by surprise.

Stark was worried about you, of course he was, but he was also worried about the integrity of your research—and his concern made sense. At the heart of it all, he was a fellow scientist who’d been with you every step of the way—from your University research proposal, to your doctoral thesis, to the months upon months of sleepy, unproductive nights filled with failed experiments and paperwork to nowhere. He was just as invested in your work as you were.

And he didn’t want to see you compromised.

“I’m not like you, Mr. Stark,” you said. “I’m not a genius in any sense of the word. I don’t have a lot of things to offer.”

“That’s not—”

“You know what I mean,” you interrupted. Fishing for compliments wasn’t what you were aiming for, here. “My research...hasn’t gone anywhere. It hasn’t gone anywhere in a while, and I’ve been worrying a lot about whether or not I’m wasting my time. But Doctor Hansen—she’s been working on this one project for over ten years. That’s how much faith she has in it. In herself. Maybe I have something she needs. Maybe she knows something I don’t. You know my work almost as well as I do, Mr. Stark—if you think any part of my research can help her, I need you to let me try.”

Though he continued staring at the projected screens ahead of him, you could already read the answer in his expression.

Leaning up, you gently cradled a hand against his cheek, turning him to face you properly.

“You have to let me try,” you whispered.

“...you know, the last time I took your advice, you got a cafe blown up.”

You narrowed your eyes. “That cafe would’ve blown up with or without me there and you know it.”

“Crazy things happen once these suits get involved, sweetheart. It’s going to be dangerous.”

“I’m in a relationship with you, it comes with the territory.”

He smirked, softly.

And then his lips were on yours.

It felt like it had been ages since you’d last done this, but he kissed you, hard, and the contact set your nerves alight, just as it did every time.

He touched his forehead to yours, resigned, the worry weighing heavy in his eyes.

You rested another kiss against the side of his nose. “Stop thinking you have to do everything on your own. You’re not alone, remember?”

Realization dawned across his face like a new day.

Stark righted himself on the couch arm, clearing away the projections with an impatient swipe of his hand before replacing them a number pad and hitting speed-dial.

Before you could register what was happening, a video display appeared in the air as someone picked up the line.

The man on the other end glanced at Stark, then at you, and already looked exhausted.

“Evening, Colonel,” you said, sheepishly.

“Hi, Doctor. Tony. What’s up?”

Stark’s tone was clear and deliberate. “I have it on very good authority that your buddies over at Advanced Idea Mechanics have something to do with the Mandarin attacks.”

“Oh yeah, what authority?”

“An AIM executive told me so. She’s my hostage now, by the way—you sure you still don’t want me in on this?”

“Are you serious right—” With a loud, frustrated groan, Rhodes rubbed a hand over his face. “I told you, I am not in charge of this operation anymore.”

“But you’re second-in-charge, right? That’s almost as good.”

“Look, just because you can piss all over protocol, that doesn’t mean the rest of us can get away with it scott-free. There’s a chain of command—I cannot be discussing this with you on my own.”

“Well, not with that attitude.”

“I’m bringing him in.”

Stark’s face fell. “Wait, what?”

“You haven’t given me a choice, Tony.”

“Wait wait wait—nonononono—”

But the line was already dialing.

A second video screen appeared next to Rhodes. Bright blue eyes and short blonde hair came into view—a handsome face, boyish but strong, and trustworthy in a way you couldn’t quite explain. The man seemed out of breath as he answered the call; you could see a punching bag behind him, and a gleam of sweat on his brow.

You couldn’t have stopped yourself if you trIed. “Holy shit, it’s Captain America!”

Still catching his breath, Rogers gave you an impossibly charming smile. “Evening, ma’am.”

Meanwhile, Stark’s eyes rolled to the back of his skull. “Yeah—she’s easily impressed, don’t read too much into it—can we focus, here?”

“Captain Rogers,” Rhodes started, “Tony here’s captured an AIM executive who says the company’s dealing with the Mandarin.”

“What—you’ve taken an AIM rep hostage? Is this a civilian we’re talking about? Is that her?”

Rogers pointed at you with a boxing-wrapped hand. Your brain shorted out and you waved back, nervously.

Rhodes had a smile in his voice. “No, Captain, that’s Tony’s girlfriend.”

“Oh.” Smirking, Rogers offered you a nod. “My condolences, ma’am.”

“Watch it,” Stark warned.

“So you mean to say you brought two civilians into my investigation without my knowledge?”

“Sure did, mom. Hey—could you let me explain before you jump down my throat, maybe? The two of you might learn something.”

Rhodes looked as exasperated as always, but Rogers kept his patience, his composure clearly tempered by many past experiences with Stark.

“We’re listening.”

“The AIM exec is an old friend of mine who came to me for help, Dr. Maya Hansen. She says it’s their tech behind the bombings. There’s been three of them so far, right?”

“Only three have been made public. There’s actually been—”

“—nine attacks worldwide.” Stark brought up a holographic projection of a globe; certain areas around the world were marked with a bright red glow. “I found out the Mandarin attacks have a distinct heat signature—a very balmy 3000 degrees. Not many natural phenomena match the time frames and radii of impact from the Chinese Theater bombing. Why haven’t the other six been made public?”

“We’re trying not to cause a panic,” said Rhodes. “Especially since we don’t know how he’s doing it. We’re calling them bombings, but none of the fire investigations have turned up remnants of explosive devices.”

“It’s because he’s using people as bombs. Not suicide bombers—people injected with some kind of performance-enhancement virus, something that blows them up if it runs too hot. ”

“...you’re kidding.”

“Dr. Hansen told you this?”

Stark nodded. “Mandarin’s associated with the Ten Rings, same guys who threw me in a cave and wanted me to build things for them. Weapons of mass destruction are their bread and butter. Looks like they finally got their hands on something big.”

Rogers nodded again. “Any leads?”

“AIM has a global network with two headquarters in North America, Houston and Miami. Both good places to start digging.”

“And the third?”

“There’s a tenth heat signature that matches the profile, but predates all recent Mandarin attacks. It was marked as a suicide bombing, in some backwater town in Tennessee. I’m thinking it was ground zero. Might be worth checking out.”

“Understood. Colonel Rhodes will stay at his post with the President and continue trying to isolate the source of the Mandarin’s broadcast. I’ll investigate places of interest and get back to you with what I find.”

“Got it, Captain.”

“If you give me ten minutes, I can. Y’know.” Stark made little typing motions. “Sneak into AIM’s databases, save you guys some time.”

“You’ve done enough,” said Rogers. “Dr. Hansen is a person of interest in this investigation, and you’ve somehow managed to get your girlfriend involved. Your job right now is to keep the civilians safe until this is all over.”

“Yeaaaah, about that. There’s little thing I need to take care of in Houst—”

“Don’t let them out of your sight, Stark. Over and out.”

Both video feeds disconnected at once, throwing the bedroom back into its normal ambient lighting.

“You’re welcome!” Stark shouted at the now-empty room. He threw an arm up, hopeless. “Unbelievable.”

“At least you got help,” you offered, trying to cheer him up. “Now you don’t have to be in three places at once.”

“Nope. Just one. Ever been to Houston?”

“Um...” You weren’t sure where this was headed. “No, why?”

“Captain’s orders, remember? Can’t let either of you out of my sight.” He tilted his head to look at you. “Think that car of yours can make the trip?”

You returned his smile of malicious compliance tenfold.

The most unexpected side-effect of carrying a Mandrake leaf in your mouth was the way it poisoned every swallow with bitterness.

Each sip of drink, every bite of food was tainted with a medicinal acridity that made your nose twitch and sent a shiver down your spine. You quickly made the transition to the plainest foods possible to prevent yourself from developing aversions, and six days into the endeavour, all you wanted to do was remember what non-Mandrake-laced roasted chicken tasted like.

The second most unexpected side-effect was how hard it was not to play around with it. With McGonagall’s approval, you’d used a Sticking Charm to keep the leaf affixed to the roof of your mouth, but you kept finding yourself tonguing idly at the thing, like a mouth wound you just couldn’t leave alone. Though the charm had to be reapplied multiple times throughout the day, it worked well to prevent accidents, especially while eating and sleeping.

With your mouth full of Mandrake and your gut constantly swirling with quarts of bitter saliva, you didn’t speak much for the remainder of September.

Snape and McGonagall, the only professors of yours who knew of your Animagus training, didn’t give you any preferential treatment, but at least extended you the courtesy of not asking you direct questions in-class. McGonagall only called on you when it was your turn to cast spells, which were performed non-verbally, while Snape took the simple approach of pretending you didn’t exist.

Flitwick and Vector were more difficult to handle. On the occasion you were called upon for an explanation, you kept your answers short and to the point, as your every other syllable was softened by a heavy lisp you clearly didn’t have before.

Not speaking in Lupin’s class, however, proved to be the biggest challenge.

You were studying advanced theory that month, starting with a thorough review of all offensive and defensive spells you’d learned since year one. The bizarre focus on wand movements would’ve been tedious under any other professor’s instruction, but Lupin had a way of making the most mundane of subjects fascinating; you were convinced he could’ve read the dictionary aloud and still had his class hanging onto every word.

Yet, Lupin encouraged class discussions more than any other teacher--the more you tried to keep to yourself, the more he’d pick on you for answers. You were sure he thought your reservedness was residual shyness from the Shield Charm incident earlier that month--a thought which only frustrated you even more, as you wanted to contribute--but every class, you were forced to choose between pretending not to know the answer, and speaking with a new speech impediment.

You didn’t want to answer any intrusive questions about it, and you certainly didn’t want to risk the leaf falling out, losing all your progress for the sake of engaging in some class discussions.

Idle thoughts of your next Defence Against the Dark Arts class distracted you during Potions one day, almost enough for you to miscount the rat spleens you added to your cauldron--but as you brought a stoppered vial of Shrinking Solution to the front after class, Snape jolted you from your anxious reverie by calling your last name.

“Wednesday,” he said, once again not bothering to make eye contact as he spoke. “Astronomy Tower. Eight o’clock.”

And just like that, your month was up.

-

Bzzt.

Your enchanted watch gave you a jolt, marking 7:45pm on the night of October 6th.

You were already here.

As the Astronomy Tower was off-limits outside of class time, you hadn’t stepped foot in this place since your finals in fifth year. The tower was just as you remembered it, though, with the familiar wooden floors creaking beneath your feet, and the massive floating gyroscopes rotating silently in the middle of the room. Open stone arches made the tower a bird’s nest, granting a breathtaking 360 degree view of the grounds below and the sky above. The stars were not yet at their brightest, and the pitch-black sky was broken only by the pale glow of the full moon.

You leaned against a railing. The scent of night autumn air was intoxicating--clean and cold and vaguely nostalgic. A stray intrusive thought urged you to jump.

“Clear skies,” said a dull voice behind you. “How fortunate.”

(How was he so damn quiet?)

“Good evening, Professor.”

Snape swept to your side, beneath the open archway with the best view of the moon, and offered up a crystal phial without looking at you. You accepted it. At this point, you didn’t need to exchange words--if you hadn’t memorized these steps by now, you had no right being here.

Holding the phial directly under the moonlight, you finally, finally removed the cursed leaf from your mouth, now dripping with spit, and slid it into the phial, careful not to get anything gross outside the lip of the bottle. You plucked a single one of your hairs from the root, adding it in as well. Snape pulled a second small bottle and a silver teaspoon from the inside of his cloak, measuring out a clear liquid onto the utensil before tipping it into your phial.

Reaching back into his pocket, Snape pulled out a dark, pod-like object and held it up between his fingers. Under the low light, the size and shape of it sort of reminded you of a Licorice Snap.

You offered your phial, but he shifted his arm away from you, as if he were playing keep-away with a child.

You realized he was making eye contact, now. You were not to take his next words lightly.

“The ingredients needed to create this potion are notoriously difficult to obtain,” he said, slowly. “Keep that in mind before doing anything that would warrant asking me for a second chance.”

You blinked.

The incantation. He must’ve meant the incantation.

From tomorrow morning until the next thunderstorm, you would need to recite a very specific spell, every sunrise and sunset. Failure to do so even once would mean having to get a fresh Mandrake leaf and starting the entire process over again.

That was why keeping time was so important this year.

You would charm your watch tonight to give you a five-minute warning before every sunrise and sunset. You would add bone conduction to the enchantment, if you had to, which would rattle you to your core any time the alarm went off. You would have to be incapacitated or dead to miss the alerts, and either fate would be through no deliberate doing of your own.

“I understand, sir.”

Still staring at you, unblinking, Snape took the crystal phial from you and plunked the moth chrysalis inside, before slipping the concoction into an inner pocket of his robes.

He turned his heel and strode away. “You are not to leave school grounds until the ritual is complete.”

“Yes, sir,” you called at his back. “Thank you for your help.”

“Don’t disappoint me,” came his reply, as he descended the steps of the Astronomy Tower.

-

On Monday afternoon, Lupin limped into the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom with a cane in his hand and colour in his cheeks, seeming much lighter and brighter than the exhausted wreck of a man who’d instructed you the previous Wednesday, if not somehow more disheveled.

“Good afternoon, class!” he said, cheerfully.

‘Good afternoon,’ chimed the room.

“We missed you on Friday, Professor,” said a girl in the front row. “Are you quite alright?”

“Ah, yes--thank you for your concern, Miss Perrot.” He rested his cane against the side of his desk, and began unpacking his briefcase. “I should’ve told you all sooner so it didn’t come as such a surprise. I deal with a...chronic illness, though I’m sure you couldn’t tell just by looking at me.” (A sympathetic laugh from the room.) “On the occasion I am too unwell to teach, Professor Snape has kindly agreed to substitute. Now,” he added lightly, facing the class, “how did he do?”

Silence swallowed the room like a Lethifold.

When he wasn’t asking deliberately absurd questions on material you hadn’t yet covered, Snape had used every opportunity to make rude comments about Lupin and his curriculum. Sure, it was a well-known rumour among the older students that Snape had been gunning for Lupin’s job for years. Sure, Snape was probably still raw about the whole Boggart-in-a-dress incident that happened in one of Lupin’s third-year classes earlier last month. As seventh-years, you were all well-accustomed to Snape’s baiting tactics whenever he was in a foul mood, knowing the best way of dealing with them was to keep your head down and your mouth shut.

But no one wanted to break the news to Lupin, especially not when he seemed to be feeling so much better.

“We’re just happy to have you back, Professor,” you finally said, breaking the silence, to the emphatic agreement of the rest of the class.

It was the first time you’d spoken in his class in over a month.

He met your eyes, and all you could see was the pale green, green, green of his own.

“Well, then,” he smiled at you. “It’s good to be back.”

You were just being honest, but the way he beamed at you made your heart leap into your throat.

You looked down at a particularly fascinating scratch mark on your desk, trying to will away the steam you swore was pouring out of your ears.

“Now,” he continued. “It’s been a little over a month since the start of term. I have a fair idea of how we should advance.

“The standard Defence Against the Dark Arts curriculum for your first several years entails a balanced mixture of spells and dark creatures. Your sixth and seventh years, however, have a much stronger focus on practical defensive magic. Professor Lockhart was on the right track, I think, starting a Duelling Club--though, my idea involves a bit less showboating.”

Lupin walked around to the front of his desk, leaning back against it to face his class.

“When it comes to this level of study, there is a level of understanding I must help you achieve. Yes, to pass your N.E.W.T.s, of course--but for real life application, as well. You’re far more likely to face another witch or wizard in combat than a Hinkypunk, after all. As with all things within this classroom, I pray you’ll never need this knowledge outside of it, but if you do...I want you to be prepared.”

A boy sitting near you raised his hand. “What is it we’re preparing for, exactly?”

Lupin shrugged, his shoulders shifting with the ominous weight of a history he would not share. “Whatever wicked this way comes.”

-

The purpose of your earlier spellwork review became clear as you spent the next few weeks practicing the identification of an opponent’s spell based on how they moved their wand. Of course, the readings only worked with spells that required more complex movements than point-and-cast, but once you knew what to look for, it was a surprisingly useful ability.

“Spellcasting is, in part, a visual skill,” Lupin had said, pacing through the classroom of duelling pairs, “universal across all spoken languages. When you cast a spell, you are writing your intentions in mid-air, plain as day. We each have our own little differences, our own styles--almost like a signature. With enough practice, you can learn to read an opponent’s moves as easily as their handwriting.”

Professor Lupin was a phenomenal teacher.

Though topics grew more complicated, he would do his best to ensure everyone’s understanding before moving on to something new. His exams and essay gradings were tough, but fair--whenever you received a paper back, you could expect the margins to be filled with his neat handwriting, containing helpful notes and further readings to help you going forward. During practical exercises, he would give careful attention to every student he passed by, providing praise and advice alike, adjusting the wrists and hands of those whose stances were a little off--and over time, you found yourself getting your stances wrong on purpose, just to have an excuse.

Defence Against the Dark Arts quickly went from your worst subject to your most anticipated class.

“Today,” he began one day, “we will be learning about one of the most satisfying techniques in the art of duelling: spell chains.

“Now, without getting too much into the details of wand movement theory and multi-spell compatability, spell chaining is exactly what it says on the tin--chaining spells together, one after the other, for faster casting and maximum effect. Before today, when you performed spells, each spell was exclusive from one another, yes? You’d practice a charm, reset your wand, and practice the charm again.” He exaggerated waves of his own wand as an example. “This gave you the habit of resetting your wand to center between every single spell. Wastes quite a bit of time, if you’re battling it out. If spell one ends here,” and he pointed his wand off-center, “spell two can be started instantly, right at this point. Spell chaining. Understand?”

The class gave murmurs of general agreement.

“Good. Who can tell me about Hobblemane’s Fourth Law?”

You and a few of your classmates raised your hands. He called on you, and you tried to ignore the way his eyes seemed to brighten as he did so.

“Hobblemane’s Fourth Law of Magical Energy,” you said, “states that a deflection of a spell, followed by a chained cast of that same spell, will use residual magic from the deflected spell to increase the chained spell’s strength.”

“Excellent! This is a very important concept to remember, mind you--I would be surprised if it wasn’t a question on your N.E.W.T.s. If I cast a Stunning Spell, and you deflect it with a Shield Charm chained into a counter Stunning Spell, that chained Stunning Spell will be much more powerful than you rebounding my spell back at me, or performing a Stunning Spell all on its own. Let’s give it a go, shall we?” he asked, and he motioned for you to come up to the front of the class.

The way your stomach churned made you feel full of Mandrake spit, again.

For some reason, you glanced around the room before you walked up, as if searching for someone else to volunteer as tribute. Your classmates were already muttering amongst themselves. You tried not to think about what they were saying about you.

Lupin offered a small smile. “The theory’s more complicated than the execution, I promise you.”

His hand rested against the small of your back to guide you, and your heart lodged itself somewhere in your windpipe, again.

All too quickly, he positioned himself several feet across from you.

“Very straightforward,” he assured, pulling his wand from his robes. “I will cast a spell. You will shield yourself and chain cast the same spell back at me, without repositioning your wand to center. Simple enough?”

“Yes, Professor.”

“Good. Wand at the ready, then.”

You drew your wand from your robe pockets--jet-black, a little worn--and raised it, swallowing hard. He wasn’t giving you much time to be nervous, but you figured that was his point.

“One spell into the other,” he repeated, his own wand raised in return. “Just like a signature.”

You nodded.

A beat of silence.

Lupin’s movements were brisk and immediate, but a month’s worth of practice had you recognizing the shape of his spell moments before blue light erupted from the end of his wand.

You focused to make sure muscle memory didn’t bring your wand back to center--you made a slashing movement for the Shield Charm, flowing straight into the wispy movements for the chained Knockback Jinx. Another blue light, much more intense than the first, shot from your wand almost instantly.

Lupin shielded himself, and the spell dissipated with a deafening crack.

The duel had taken less than a second.

The sheer speed of the exchange, in combination with the enhanced power of the chained spell, drew amazement and applause from the rest of the class.

“Brilliant!” Lupin cheered. “Fantastic work, ten points to Slytherin.”

You broke into the biggest smile you’d felt on yourself in months.

You could still feel the ghost of his hand pressed against your lower back, and you had a feeling it might be there for a while.

-

Halloween brought with it the first Hogsmeade visit of the year.

As per Snape’s instructions, you weren’t allowed to leave the castle grounds until the next electrical storm. You were almost frustrated about not being able to make the day trip until you realized that, since the potion was made, Snape and McGonagall were also having to coordinate one of them being at the castle at all times, entirely for your supervision. Frustration gave way to overwhelming gratitude. Once this was over, you definitely needed to show them how grateful you were.

You had too much work to do to go to Hogsmeade, anyway.

In lieu of an in-class exam, Professor Vector wanted a historical number chart plotted for the entire year of 1872. Professor McGonagall wanted a roll of parchment on the Principle of Artificianimate Quasi-Dominance by Friday. Professor Snape expected his entire class to brew the Volubilis Potion from memory tomorrow morning, which was already difficult without him adding multitudes of instructions that weren’t even in the textbook he assigned. And you were behind on your Protean Charm practice for Professor Flitwick--you still hadn’t managed to get your second match to catch fire when the first one was lit, though you thought you saw it at least smoking a little last time you tried.

Your steady improvement in Defence Against the Dark Arts made it easier to see the gaps in your knowledge: things you should’ve known from earlier years, but never fully grasped. You added your previous years’ notes and books to the pile of things you needed to study, only to realize you didn’t have any proper material from year six--just a stack of discredited autobiographies from an old fraud.

Maybe Professor Lupin had some textbooks you could borrow.

As you made the familiar trek down the second-floor corridor, you spotted a third-year Gryffindor leaving Lupin’s office. The boy had unkempt dark hair and round glasses, and as his bright emerald eyes flickered up at you in passing, you couldn’t help but feel a little starstruck, like you did whenever you passed him in the halls.

If the rumors were anything to go by, Potter had been through the goddamned ringer since he arrived. You found it a wonder he kept coming back to Hogwarts, as you would’ve packed up ages ago if you’d seen half the things he saw at this school; two years in, and stories of what he’d done here were already legend. The famous jinx on the Defence Against the Dark Arts professorship was in effect long before he arrived, but he’d still killed Professor Quirrell-slash-You-Know-Who in his first year, and sent Professor Lockhart to St. Mungo’s long-term care in his second.

...you really, really hoped Harry Potter liked Professor Lupin.

Lupin was at his office entrance when you arrived, seeing Potter off. He didn’t seem to notice you at first, and you failed to ignore how charming he looked just standing there, half-slouching against the doorway with his hands in his pockets. He wasn’t wearing his robes, just a loose cardigan over a dress shirt and tie, with wear and tear in all the wrong places; he wore his dishevelment on his threadbare sleeves, and he made it work, somehow, wholly comfortable in his own skin.

His pale green eyes fell on you, and you remembered his hand on your back, again.

“Oh, hello,” he beamed. “Surprised to see another student not at Hogsmeade.”

“It loses its novelty after the first few years,” you lied, smiling back.

“Really? I’d think Honeydukes alone is worth the trip. What I wouldn’t do for a square of Pink Coconut Ice...I’ve been clean out for a while, now.”

“Why aren’t you at Hogsmeade, Professor?”

He suddenly looked rather tired. “I’ve got my own fair share of work to do, here.”

“Oh!” You pointed over your shoulder, into the distance behind you. “If you’re busy, I can come back later--”

“Not at all, I could use the distraction. I’ve just put on some tea, actually.” He jerked his head towards his office. “Come, keep me company.”

Your heart fluttered as you followed his lead.

Professor Lupin’s office smelled like freshly laundered linen and old parchment. A large, gilded window kept the room well-lit. Dark bookshelves lined the walls, overstacked with old, battered tomes of all shapes and sizes. A massive water tank took up a whole corner of the office, its small, tentacled occupant swimming in agitated circles behind glass. You had a sudden flashback to the first time you tried to visit; if Lupin kept live dark creatures in his office, you figured having a magical seal on his door made sense.

“Please, have a seat,” he offered.

You parked yourself in the squishy armchair in front of his desk, as he rounded his office to the still-steaming kettle nearby. An empty goblet sat on his desk, surrounded by rolls of half-marked student papers, and you couldn’t help but notice that the goblet was identical to the ones lining the shelves of the Potions classroom. Professor Snape was already substituting for Lupin’s classes--was he helping him manage his illness, as well?

Before that train of thought could develop much further, Lupin leaned right over your shoulder, setting a chipped mug in front of you. For the briefest of moments, you caught his scent: clean and cold and vaguely nostalgic.

He smelled like an autumn night.

(A stray thought urged you to jump.)

Sometime within the past couple of months, you’d come to terms with the fact that you may have fancied your professor. It was harmless, in the grand scheme of things--it wasn’t as if you were ever going to tell him, nor were you absurd enough to think it could ever be reciprocated. As it stood, it was something that made you eager to come to class, something that made you work just a little bit harder--and with the amount of studying you needed to do as-is, you would take every bit of motivation you could get.

You definitely had this under control. Definitely.

Sipping your tea, you watched him take the seat behind his desk. Cursive words faded onto the surface of his own mug as the ceramic warmed up in his grasp.

Your such a teas!

“Interesting cup,” you smirked.

“Oh, this old thing?” Lupin turned it towards himself, reading what it said. “Yes, it tells a different tea pun each time you use it. A friend gave it to me, years ago--I daresay the enchantment’s wearing off, though, that grammar is atrocious. How are your studies?”

“Fantastic,” you said, a touch more resolute than the situation warranted.

He raised an eyebrow. “Unusual word to describe your seventh year.”

“If I say it enough, maybe it’ll come true.”

“Given, it’s not the strangest coping mechanism I’ve seen so far.”

“Are you making fun of me, Professor?”

“I would never.”

You smiled at one another from behind your mugs.

Lupin set his back on the desk. “Well, if you’re here to inquire about your grades, you’ve nothing to worry about. Your in-class performance left a bit to be desired at first, but you’ve shown significant improvement this month. It’s wonderful to see you coming out of your shell.”

You bristled. There was no shell, you just had to carry a disgusting leaf in your mouth for four weeks and couldn’t talk properly, but you couldn’t very well tell him that now. If he interpreted this as improvement in his class, however, that was to your advantage--improvement stood out more than consistency, after all.

“Thank you, Professor. That’s good to know, but that isn’t why I’m here.”

“What can I do for you, then?”

“I’m reviewing my old Defence Against the Dark Arts notes, and I realized I don’t have any…” You chose your words carefully. “...credible materials for year six. I was wondering what textbook you assigned your sixth years, and if you had a spare copy I could borrow for a while?”

“I do, actually,” he said, brightening up. “I assigned Arsenius Jigger across classes. Sixth year would be Defence Against the Dark Arts: An Introductory Guide for Practical Use--and I’m sure I have an extra copy lying around here somewhere...”

He rifled through his desk drawers, and the hasty ruffle of parchment filled the room. Muttering to himself, he ducked to continue his search through the drawers, lowering further and further until you could barely see the top of his head behind his desk. He shoved a drawer closed with too much force; rolls of parchment went tumbling across the desktop, and on reflex, you stretched your hands out to keep them from falling off the edges. They were all labelled ‘N.E.W.T. Progress Guide,’ in Lupin’s careful handwriting, each a different version marked with roman numerals.

“‘Progress Guides’?” you read, aloud.

Lupin popped up from behind his desk, a book in hand. “Oh, yes. I’ve got my work cut out for me, as you can see.”

“There are fourteen versions here,” you said, reading the numbers as you tried to stack the rolls back onto each other. “Are you running fourteen different N.E.W.T. classes, Professor?”

“Gracious, no--just three, in total. But with Lockhart’s curriculum...well, everyone I teach is almost a year behind.” He gave a tired laugh, and a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Catching up seventh-year students with sixth-year concepts isn’t too complicated, as sixth and seventh year N.E.W.T. curriculums tie into each other. But catching up sixth-years with fifth-year content in addition to what they should be studying for the N.E.W.T.s is...rather challenging.”

All too empathetic with his dilemma, you nodded. “With all due respect to Professor Dumbledore, I’m surprised someone like Lockhart got hired in the first place. The teachers I’ve had for Defence Against the Dark Arts have all been pretty abysmal so far, but he was really...something else.”

“Dumbledore did his best with what he had, I’m sure. This post is an extremely difficult position to fill--it is jinxed, after all.”

“At least he got it right this time,” you said, unable to stop yourself.

“That’s...very kind of you to say.”

You continued busying yourself with the small tower of rolled parchment. You could hear the warm smile in his voice, coating his words like a happy secret, but you couldn’t bring yourself to actually look at him, not after such flagrant flattery--you were here for a little self-indulgence, sure, but now you were just being careless.

“You can borrow this one, by the way,” he offered. “It’s my personal copy, you may find the notes helpful.”

Your eyes flitted over to the textbook he was handing you. The book was bound in dark hardcover, its edges worn and its title glittering silver. Accepting it, you chanced a glance up at him, only to meet his eyes as he considered you--really considered you--his mouth rounding some word he hadn’t yet voiced.

“This might be unconventional,” he started, sounding wistful, “but I think I may have a solution that would work out for the both of us.”

“...sir?”

“How would you like to be my teaching assistant for the sixth years?”

“Me?”

“Why not?” he offered, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “You’ve shown the most improvement in your class over the past two months. And you’ve demonstrated an earnest, self-motivated drive for learning, just by coming here today and asking me for this book.”

You gave a small, uncomfortable laugh. “But that hardly makes me qualified to teach.”

“Not teaching,” he corrected, pointing a finger in the air. “Teaching assistant. Going over assignments, grading papers, gathering resources for my classes. You would be studying the same curriculum as my sixth-years in real-time, which is--if I’m not mistaken--where you need the extra study. And you would be helping me just as much,” he sighed, motioning to the rolls upon rolls of his multiple curriculum revisions. “I could do with another pair of eyes on this. Only if you had the time, of course.”

You did not have the time. You did not have the time.

You definitely did not have the time.

“I’d be honoured,” you accepted, stupidly.

“Excellent! I’ll need to clear it with Dumbledore and Professor Snape, but I’ll let you know as soon as I do.”

Your heart sank as quickly as it had lifted. “Professor Snape?”

“I can tell you’re worried,” he smiled. “I’ll need to speak with him, yes--he is your head of house, after all. But let me take care of that. I’m only glad to have some help.”

Lupin offered a handshake over his desk, and you took it.

In three hours’ time, you would find yourself at the Halloween feast down in the Great Hall, surrounded by dancing ghosts, delicious food, and far too many sweets to not stuff your pockets for later. In five hours’ time, you would find yourself ushered back to the Great Hall from your dormitory, quarantined to a sea of squishy purple sleeping bags, as news of a break-in that evening instigated a school-wide manhunt for Sirius Black.

But in that moment, his hand was in your hand and his smile was in your eyes.