#selfpara;

It’s a familiar thing. It’s a house too quiet, the light out over the kitchen sink when Claire always left it on for him. It’s broken glass on his living room floor, a picture shattered that echoes the broken family he comes home to. The unease is the same. The sense of dread, crawling slowly up his spine. Barely able to breathe, because he’s waiting for the next painful blow to fall.

His hand hovers over the door. His skin left crawling, because he knows he will open it, and everything will change.  

It makes Daniel want to turn around, to leave and go back the way he came. Retreat down the hallway, find Ezra, gather Naomi back into his arms. Her blood is still staining the floor on the other side of the door. He still feel the life leaving her small frame, the sensation of blood spilling over his fingers no matter how hard he tried to press it back into her veins. And that alone is enough to make him want to run, because he can barely feel anything but that awful sinking sensation, and he thinks now that it’s death breathing down the back of his neck. Something is wrong. Everything is wrong. 

His fingers tighten on the door. His heart thunders in his chest, he can hear his own blood rushing in his ears. He turns the handle and pushes it open.

-blood, staining the carpet-

There’s blood on the floor. He sees that first, a flicker of red at his feet that he saw slip from between Naomi’s hands before she fell like a broken bird before him. His gaze follows it, only now there’s more of it, a wider trail winding its way past the couch. Too much, thick and dark, smeared across the ground by someone’s worn soles, all of it ending at the only inevitable conclusion. The dark lump near the bed. 

Somewhere outside the window a cloud shifts, moonlight slips through and silver light settles on crumpled mass.

His eyes catch that bright blonde hair first. Splayed across the floor and streaked with red, and it's painful just how familiar that image is. Her eyes are open, orbs like frosted, shattered glass. A bright red line drawn across her throat, covered by someone else's calloused fingers. Her hands are still grasping at Ezra’s arms.

They’re curved protectively around her, one hand still trying to hold the wound across her neck closed. Daniel's eyes find his in the darkness, searching for that light to shine back at him. But there’s nothing, eyes just as wide, just as open and dead. The same red line across his throat, and his gaze shifts away. Finds the tattoo on his neck instead, traces the path of them, memorizes every sharp curve with a forced detachment because it’s easier than looking at his face. 

The scene’s familiar. Every part of it, they way they curl against each other, the coldness in the air from the absence of life or breath. 

He could run to them, but they’re already dead.

Daniel doesn’t move. He stays in the doorway, gaze skating away from the fallen bodies, because he doesn’t want to see anymore. He doesn’t want that image in his head, when he knows it isn’t real.

That at least, he knows with absolute certainty. 

If it were he'd already be screaming, grasping at the bodies and begging them not to leave him. Not to be the only one left in this wasteland, that bracelet around his wrist and pale memories left to hold onto. He doesn't want this one added to it. He lets out a breath, shuts it away, lets his gaze skate across the bloody stain on the floor, because even that isn’t real.

And then something changes. 

The atmosphere shifts. It’s a subtle change, but he’s too aware of it, brow furrowing as he watches the light in the room seem to waver. Like someone changing channels, a flicker across his vision, a moment out of time that he’s missed.

His gaze moves back to the bodies.

And his blood runs cold. This time, it’s a more familiar sight. This time, it’s Claire. Smooth, dark skin, curls splayed across the ground, the rest matted to the side of her head with blood. She’s still wearing his tee shirt, soft gray heather, Batman symbol emblazoned on the front, checkered pajama shorts, ring around her finger. 

His chest constricts tightly, and he knows this isn’t real either. She’s already dead and gone. He knows it’s just as much of an illusion as the sight of Ezra lying in her place.

But it’s the first time he’s seen her in years. And he misses her. The sound of her voice, quietly singing beneath her breath. The softness of her hands, thumbs smoothing the lines between his brow, interrupting the fierce concentration he devoted to files filled with bloodied portraits of death.  

Some desperate part of him wants to close that space between them, as if this time when his hand grasps at her shoulder it’ll be enough to wake her back up.

It’ll be enough to save her.

Only his gaze shifts, follows the curve of her arm, the way it wraps around the body of their son, and the urge to wail follow. His boy. His son, the kid that used to clamber onto his shoulders, fingers grasping too tightly at his hair. The child that used to laugh too loudly, genuine glee lighting up his face, sparking in eyes the same shade as his mother’s. And now they’re the same kind of empty. 

-at this point the son attempted to hide under the bed, while Claire-

-don’t-

He can’t breathe. He knows it isn’t real. He knows this has already happened, and there’s nothing here that he hasn’t seen before. But it still hurts, he still feels like screaming, he still can’t tear his gaze away from the yellow and black pattern of his child’s pajamas.

-while the mother went for the gun kept in the top drawer of the dresser. the assailant caught up to her before she could get the case unlocked, stabbing her three times in the lower back before she collapsed-

-the son must have cried out at that point, evidence suggesting he was then dragged out from underneath the bed. judging by the blood trail and the wounds on her hands, we believe the mother then attacked her assailant. she was stabbed again in the abdomen-

-he then turned the knife on the boy-

-his throat cut from ear to ear-

-the mother’s hand was still on his neck in an attempt to hold the blood in when their attacker slit her throat-

The image in front of him isn’t real. Daniel knows that. Even through the aching breaths he struggles to draw, he knows none of this isn’t real.

The memory is.

He holds onto it for too long, like some form of self-punishment, and then he shuts them tightly. Blocks out the image, shuts down all the grief and the pain that threatens to come crashing down around him all over again. None of it is real. Everything in this place is wrong. 

And it’s with his eyes closed that he becomes slowly aware that he isn’t alone in this room.

It isn’t the bodies he thinks will still be there when he opens them. It’s something else, the presence of someone else. Like quiet breaths, the sound of white static on a dead television, an electronic hum that echoes through telephone wires. Someone else is in the room.

His eyes slide open. There’s still blood on the floor. It’s Ezra and Naomi curled around each other near the bed. His gaze skates over them, past them. To the bed sitting empty, back over the blood stains to the couch sitting in the middle of the room, the chair arranged next to it. The shadows that seem somehow thicker, somehow darker.

“Who’s here?” he demands.

His own voice almost startles him with how loud it is, enough to crack ice, and he’s aware of an abrupt silence following. His fingers settle on the handle of his gun, thumb unlatching the holster.

“I know someone’s here,” he tries again. “Show yourself.” 

Another breath of silence. A heartbeat. He stands, tense and anxious, gaze darting around the room for that something, that sign that he isn’t alone here. 

The man appears in the blink of an eye. Daniel’s lids slide closed, and when they open again someone is sitting in the chair next to the couch. He knows him the second he lays eyes on him, or at least who he’s supposed to be. And the thoughts are at odds with each other, something surreal and supernatural about every second ticking by in this room.

He looks like Sykes. He holds himself the same, smiles the same. He looks like he did his last night on earth, cocky, self-assured, watching Daniel with a vague curiosity reflecting back at him, as if daring him to step outside the hard lines drawn around him.

“Hello detective,” he says.

Daniel’s fingers don’t stray from his gun. “Who are you?"

Laughter greets him. He winces at the sound of it, because it’s a grating thing, nails over a chalkboard, the snapping of guitar strings. “That’s it? No hello, no nice to see you?”

Once he might’ve played alone. When he’d been Detective Tseng, the man who hadn’t already lost everything at the hands of the monster standing in front of him. He can’t summon anything now except that same question. “Who are you?”

The smile widens. Silence greets him for a moment, a beat out of time. “You don’t recognize me?” His head tilts to the side, and then he’s pressing himself from the chair. The motion slow, and he thinks it’s a purposeful thing, because the urge to draw that weapon at his side is stronger than it’s ever been. “Maybe this will jog your memory.” 

His head straightens. Red begins to bloom across his chest. 

-the muzzle flash is bright and loud in the dark alleyway, three quick blasts that echo off the walls, the scent of gunsmoke hanging thick and heavy in the aftermath. they punch holes in his chest, the man crying out in pain, feet stumbling backwards-

-it isn’t enough. there are still bullets in his gun, the man’s still struggling for air, his family’s still dead, they’re dead at his hands, his son’s throat cut open.-

-the next two punch holes in his stomach. Sykes falls to his knees after that. he says something, it might be a plea for mercy, it might be curses, Daniel never hears any of it. the next shot tears a hole through his neck. blood hits the ground in brighter waves after that. he’s stepping closer, he pulls the trigger again, there’s a bullet tearing through the man’s forehead, blood and brain matter scattering across the ground behind him. he shoots him again, and again, and again-

-and he should be satisfied, it should count for something, but he doesn’t feel anything-

They appear one by one, wounds inflicted by Daniel’s gun, at Daniel’s hands, flesh melting as he mimics the bullet that tore through his throat, a hole appearing in his forehead. Another through his eye. He’s rotting in front of him, the body of a dead murderer standing in front of him. A haunting image that shouldn’t exist.

And it doesn’t. None of it’s real. At least, none of what he sees, but there’s an awful pressure bearing down on him, the certainty that someone or something is standing there in front of him. The rest is just a show, and Daniel holds his gaze and his voice steady. 

“Sykes is gone. Who are you?” 

There’s a flicker, something like fury slipping across the face of Jeffery Sykes, a crack in that illusion that he can’t tell is revealed intentionally or not. It shifts, contorts, like a black-eyed man who didn’t know how to wear human skin. And the voice that comes from his throat sounds nothing like his rasping tones. It’s something far worse. “I am the road into madness, child. To gaze upon me is to gaze into the abyss.” 

Daniel’s spine stiffens the moment he hears that voice. Something inhuman, ancient and old, and there’s a fierce and violent reaction somewhere inside his chest. A sensation that’s becoming more and more familiar, something set aflame behind his ribs 

His eyes slide closed, the rush of blood in his ears trying to combat the screeching of something metallic and discordant ringing in his ears. 

He isn’t aware of it, but when his eyes open they’re burning gold.

And he can see.

Everything shifts, an illusion stripped away, and it isn’t a welcoming, clean room anymore. The floors are stained with red and black, old blood long dried and covered again with fresh crimson until the ground’s made tacky with it. The walls are shredded, lines drawn over and over again against its surface like someone or countless someones trying to claw their way free. The bed is rotted, the couches the same, and the room smells like sulfur and ash.

It isn’t a man that stands in front of him. He doesn’t look like Sykes anymore. It resembles a man only in the most basic sense, the limbs all in the same place, the head where it’s meant to be. Those feel like the only similarities, because when his mouth curves in a smile, it’s something wicked and feral, the edges of his mouth dragging up too far, until his skull itself looks split in half. Features barely visible behind the shadows that rise and collect around him, like smoke rising off a burning ember.

His eyes, the gaze that greets Daniel’s, are burning red pits, and he thinks yes, this is what it means to gaze into the abyss. Because there is only death and horror reflecting back at him, the murder of his child committed a thousand times. Ezra’s father, his mother, his brother, the two women that took him and claimed him as their own, slaughtered again and again. Naomi’s mother, sliding that knife in between her ribs until there is only red staining her hands.

It’s the screaming of dying loved ones, trapped in flames. It’s every parent that abused their child, and left them huddled and terrified with too many scars littering their skin. It’s the death of everyone here, everyone they ever knew, a thousand ghosts dancing in those red flames.

He can taste the ash on the air, falling slowly from the ceiling, and it’s a long time before the question finally escapes him, some odd role reversal taking place. 

"What are you?

The creature takes a step forward. His spine stiffens, hand curving tighter around the gun at his side. Black malevolence rising off it in waves, and he can feel it, spreading through the house, playing at the edges of every thought and every sight he’s witnessing now. “I am a Marquis of Hell.” There’s a shaking in the walls when he speaks. Another step forward, that pressure bearing down on Daniel’s shoulders until he can barely breathe.  “You should kneel before me.”

Another step, and instead Daniel’s drawing his gun. “You should put your hands on your head.”

A noise rips from the throat of the thing in front of him. Something like laughter, awful and vicious as it shakes the foundations of the house. “You dare? You are nothing to me. You worry for that blonde child of yours? You worry for how much she sees?” He tips his head forward, the flash of white teeth in the darkness. “I’ll tear her eyes from her skull. I’ll break every bone in her body and leave her helpless and blind until the hounds of hell devour her.”

There’s another step forward. It’s an effort to hold his place, but there’s a dull burning fury roaring to life in his chest. Something violent and cold, the certainty that some things were too dangerous to let live. 

“The man you brought back here. You want his heart? I’ll rip it from his chest, and then I will feed it to you a piece at a ti-”

It’s enough. He doesn’t wait for the words to finish falling like an order of execution. The second he shifts closer Daniel is pulling the trigger. Three quick shots, fired into his chest, the blast bright and loud, echoing in his ears afterwards.

Black scatters away from the bullets, like firing into shadow.

March 10, 2009

Though Esther had a long day of school and studying, her mother still had scheduled a tutoring session for her once she arrived home. The older lady tutor had a sole purpose: to help Esther train to be the perfect wife. The foretold marriage maintained the two company's connection, preventing their parents from having to do much trouble in negotiations. Though her parents took care of her needs with no fuss, Esther, in the end, was to be a well-tuned investment. A perfect wife furthered the company's needs.

Without a valid reason, the tutor seemed to despise Esther, no matter how kind or sweet she was. Esther, clumsy at times, seemed to be her worse in front of the tutor, and her tutor's response included a variety of ruler slaps and lines writing until her hand turned numb. Day after day, Esther grew to dread the evenings, knowing it will just be another night of failing to meet their standards. Tonight had been different but not for her benefit. Accidentally spilling the drink she was to serve the tutor, the tutor's punishment escalated, a strong slap to her right cheek.

"Useless." The tutor muttered, and as tears swelled in the demigoddess's cheek, a maid, who overheard the noise, pulled Esther out and went to report to her mother. Esther finally broke down as she waited outside door, and it would only be a few moments before she was summoned to see her mother.

Esther appeared quietly, looking in her large office as the woman stayed devoted to her work. While Esther tried to stop, tears still streamed down her cheeks. "Go to your room. Stay there till you can be a good girl again." Her mother demanded, eyes fixed to the report she truly devoted her time to her. Voice drenched in irritation. "Wait." However, her mother spoke, and she looked up to see her daughter with a swollen red cheek and the aftermath of sorrow. "Crying makes you look ugly. Fix your face."

Out of sight, out of mind. In no way did Esther dare retort back, for in many ways, she believed that her mother was under stress yet still trying to be helpful, something she clung to as she would find the next day that the tutor was fired and replaced with a sweeter lady who did actually end up helping her etiquette. For now, the demigoddess did not utter a word, instead going to her room to stay until she felt comfortable that she would not cry again nor look unsightly to her mother.

-----

It has Monty hiding a quiet smile behind his hand, watching the glint of the metal shaker and spinning glasses as he lays out shots for his adoring crowd. But if he often suffers from the ugly sting of jealousy, it's easier to ignore now when there are still glances stolen in his direction, a hidden smirk when they're both aware of the way a glass tilting dangerously off course corrects itself with the smallest nudge of Monty's fingers.

Besides, Isabel is next to him, and if there's a good list of people in Asphodel that he'll miss, she sits at the top of it. Even with promises to visit from both of them, there’s no pretending it isn’t still a separation.

There's a smile on her face as they toss back another shot together, tequila sunrise that goes down bright and warm. But it fades slowly as her gaze shifts behind him, wetting her lips before she reaches out to squeeze his arm. "I'll give you a minute," she says, and when he looks to the man settling next to him he understands why. Because it feels long overdue for Phillip Brody to sit down next to him, to steal a shot from right in front of him before he even meets his gaze.

“So. Rumor is you’re moving,” he says. The shot goes back with a familiar ease, a glassy look in his eyes that promises it’s not the first of the night. He can’t help but wonder how much of it is his fault, a heart he’s sure he’s broken twice. “That’s cool.”

“Yes. Next week.” He spares them both any elaboration, that it’ll likely be a drawn out process, in part because he’s struggling more than he expected to turn everything over into Rebecca’s capable hands.

The glass gets settled carefully upside down on the bar in front of them before the man’s leaning heavily onto the bar stool. “Were you ever gonna tell me?”

Monty feels something unfairly defensive rising in response, one he tries to dull with a shot of his own, empty glasses starting to outweigh the full ones in front of him. It’s more than he usually drinks in public, or Asphodel, and he’s starting to feel it, a shrug and simple honesty leaving his lips. “I didn’t know if you’d care.”

A bitter scoff comes from the man next to him; a flash of hurt contorting his expression, but Monty can’t tell if its real or if he’s just too used to being the cause of it. A familiar guilt settling in his stomach, and he doesn’t need to question what it’s for because Brody is reminding him with the simple question that follows. “Why not?” he presses. “Because we broke up? Because I wasn’t good enough for anything but a booty call?” And he spirals quickly from there, a why? that stretches back over two years and spills from his lips like he’s giving confession; why couldn’t you just tell me the truth, why did you think I wouldn’t understand, why did you break my heart, why did you keep stringing me along, why wasn’t I enough, why him, why not me, why couldn’t you love me?

Monty’s lips part but nothing comes, even liquor not enough to loosen his tongue enough for the truths Brody is asking him for. Because he doesn’t know how to be both honest and kind this time. It’s not you, it’s me is true, but useless, you were an escape is pointlessly vicious, he sees me clearly and I see him just sounds pretentious. There’s no blame he wants to put on the man’s shoulders when it wasn’t his fault Monty gave him so little of himself, no fault he can find in him for believing his lies. Only that he played the same role for Brody he played for so many others; someone steadfast, dependable, even when they were both drunk and high, he was still the solid shoulder to lean on. 

So he says the only thing worth saying. “I’m sorry.” No offer of excuses or elaboration, not until he hears the quiet scoff, Brody’s gaze shifting away, but still wounded when his attention only settles on the Italian farther down the bar. “I was a terrible boyfriend to you.”

The man visibly rolls his eyes, pulling his gaze from Emil to look back at the doctor next to him. “See, that’s what makes it so hard, ‘cause I wish I could just call you an asshole and move on, but... you weren’t, Monty. You really weren’t.” Which seems kinder than he deserves, but it’s a comforting thought, that at least the good outweighed the bad. Before he tilts his head from side to side with a necessary correction. “Not when you were there.”

“Hm. An important qualifier though, isn’t it?”

His deprecating humor earns him a short laugh and another shake of his head. “Sure is, Doctor Monty.” Silence settling briefly between them, even with the clatter of glasses and music and laughter rushing to fill the space. Monty doesn’t know quite what else to fill it with, fingers toying with an empty shotglass before Brody sighs and straightens his spine. “I guess the mature thing is to tell you I’m glad you’re happy and blah blah blah but honestly your boyfriend sucks and it’s your loss that you’re passing on all of this.” His hand gesturing at his frame.

Monty can’t help but laugh, even if he tries to stifle it quickly when he doesn’t want the man to think it’s at his expense. “Maybe we could try and actually be friends this time?”

“Yeah, yeah maybe. Maybe I’ll see you around, Monty.” There’s a certain insincerity to it, and despite the words he thinks this feels like the most definitive goodbye he’s exchanged with anyone so far. And he thinks the gentle pat of his arm and the way the man slips off the stool is the end of it, a bittersweet ache left in his wake, but he pauses before he gets far, turning back with something more fragile written in the lines of his face. “Hey, you don’t call him the thing right? Mon beau?”

Angela made sweaters, scarves, mittens, socks, and cardigans that she gave her own attention, while Siwoo seemed content to draw pictures to accompany every gift. He had taken up a knack for drawing, and the young child made sure that everyone would have their own picture. Angela’s knitting started as an attempt during a rough time of year to keep her mind clear to a mission to provide her loved ones with something etched in every stitch with her love. No one would be left out from her love, and this time consuming task seemed beneficial for both mother and son. 

So, as Angela finished her last sweater and gently folding and put it into a gift bag, she looked over at her son who had finished long before her. “Siwoo, baby.” She called to him, opening her arms to him. Drawing the squealing child up, she carried him over to a smaller tree in his room that now had gifts for him as well. “Go ahead. You have been such a good boy this year.” She speaks softly, pressing a few kisses to his head. 

The child opened them happily, pulling out a variety of toys and drawing supplies that the woman had collected for him. Yet, his final gift was that of a matching beanie for the both of them. “Mommy did not forget you.” She smiles, helping the young boy put his hat on. “You look so handsome. Come on. Let’s go deliver our gifts.” She states, motioning for him to follow. 

“Wait!” He exclaims, hurrying under his bed as he struggled to drag out a wrapped picture. Yoongi had helped him, it appeared, to get one of his drawings of his mother framed. Even she had not seen the pictured, surprise evident on her features as she was overwhelmed by how thoughtful he had been. She nearly could not speak before she collected the child in her arms, covering him with a thick level of kisses. “Oh, I love it!” She finally manages as she gives him a squeeze. 

“New plan! Let’s hang this up, and then, let’s make out friends just as happy as we are!”

Still, the illusion helps, opting in the end not to try and impersonate anyone he knows, just a stranger with a strange face and hands he doesn’t recognize even when he’s pushing open a back door in one of Mortensen’s hotel casinos. Lighter hair and glasses settled on his nose like that was every enough to secure a secret identity, but he’s dressed all in black and trying not to consider the hilarity of how similarly he’s dressed to the night of Mortensen’s birthday party, not even a year gone but it feels like a lifetime.

There’s a burner phone in his pocket, just in case it all goes to shit, only one number programmed in and a man on the other side he knows won’t be thinking of anything else. Because it’s a familiar kind of anxiety, a helplessness Monty doesn’t want to make him feel but can’t be helped, because regardless how much better he thinks Emiliano is at this kind of espionage, how much better he would be if he were here, he doesn’t want the man he loves anywhere near any of these people again.

So instead he sends him small updates, faces he recognizes when he manages to slip his way in, past black tie security guards who still remind him uncomfortably of men dressed in gray. His head held down against a table, hands at his wrists, and he holds his head a little bit higher like he can leave the memories behind him. 

MPower’s claimed two event spaces on the first floor, the first set up with three tables to show off products that are already trying to crawl their way into circulation and a fourth against the wall to hold food and coffee. He helps himself to the coffee while he listens, pausing on the outskirts at first just to observe as a man enthusiastically explains the matching set of metal cuffs that can cut one of the Gifted off from their power. And for a moment, the greatest threat to his safety is himself, because it’s more of an effort than it should be to simply stay quiet and sip from his paper cup when the man studying them asks his question. 

“Does it hurt?” he says. His head lifting from the metal bands in front of him. Monty makes a mental note to ask his name later, when there’s potential just in his asking, but for now he settles for memorizing details. Hair that’s gone silver and white, money that’s clear just by the cut of his suit, cufflinks emblazoned with an R and polished wingtips on his feet. “The Gifted, I mean. Does it hurt them to be cut off like that?”

Monty has one answer. It directly contradicts the one the slick, smiling man holding onto them gives. “Not at all.”  

The second room is set up for a demonstration that’s still to come. He steals a glance inside when a tech opens the door to run cords beneath it, and Monty finds it jarring how much it looks like any other corporate event. A small platform set up at the front of the room, two monitors on either side, rows of chairs split down the center by a single main aisle. MPower’s logo is already set up on a drape behind the podium, and he wishes the taste of coffee could erase the bitter taste in the back of his mouth.

It’s still another half hour before any of them are allowed inside the room. He fills it with casual conversation, trying to catch names and occupations, skimming as close to the truth as he can with his own. He works at the hospital, yes, he knows Dr. Mori, he saw the damage one of the Gifted did to the place with his own eyes, and yes, it was terrible. But he’s not here to make judgements, just to report back to the board of directors on his impressions. 

The last one’s a more blatant lie, and it feels like a page stolen straight from Emil. Playing down his own importance so important people would flaunt their own.

When they do open up the second room for their big presentation he takes a seat in the back corner, and if it might raise suspicion, it still seems preferable to be as close to the exit as possible. One more in case of emergency, but there’s a growing hope that this a gamble that will  actually pay some dividends, and for once they only paid with a few hours of sleep. It seems a fair trade when they’ve been forced into worst ones.

He listens while an unfamiliar face gives an initial presentation, a mission statement, a few video clips that highlight the danger of the Gifted and what MPower can do in the name of equality and safety for all. It’s a familiar sales pitch that loses something when Monty’s spending his time scanning the videos for his own face, but he never finds it.

“For the next part, I’d like to introduce you all to our president and founder, Mr. Henrik Mortensen.” And that gets Monty’s attention, even if he doesn’t join in the polite applause, but when the man comes he’s at least by himself, no sign of his seneschal or his nephew.

Still, as he enters the room from a door behind the podium, he’s smiling far too easily for a man with so much grime on his hands, never bloodying them himself, but too much around him to stay clean. Monty’s jaw clamps tightly shut, he shifts in his seat, but he is nothing if not restrained, and he stays where he is, he keeps his thoughts to himself, and he simply listens as Mortensen starts to give the real pitch. “This company was founded on the principles of equality,” he claims, and Monty says nothing. “It stands on the front lines of a movement that’s going to change the world.”

He smiles a little bit wider and then he nods at his prospective buyers and gathered disciples. “Please turn your attention to the ceiling.”

Monty almost refuses out of some stubborn rejection of anything he has to say, but this is why he’s here. To watch, to listen, to learn, and so he looks up. Above him on the ceiling is a wide circle that spans the length of it. Alchemical circles drawn within, and he tilts his head curiously as he tries to identify just what it’s made of. Fiber optic lights, he thinks, because then Mortensen is pulling out a remote and pressing a button and it’s lighting up above him in blue.

The image by itself would be enough to leave him cold; the feeling that follows in its wake is so much worse.

Does it hurt them? a man at the front asked, and not in the way he thinks, but yes, he finds himself answering again, yes it hurts, a feeling he doesn’t know how to articulate when language is so imprecise and the sensation runs so deeply. Something stripped away, a piece of himself gone quiet and heavy and dead, and feels it now. A dull ache in his chest, his hand moving to press against his sternum before he can think about it and that’s when he notices it.

He can recognize his own hand. Already still, it makes his movements impossibly slow when his fingers move to his hair, tugging at a lock and finding the strands of it dark as he remembers.

“By combining magic and science, we’ve created a space that’s safe for everyone to be in,” Mortensen is telling the room. “While it remains active, any magic within that circle is negated.” He holds his head a little higher. “This is only a prototype for now, but this is what the future looks like. One where you don’t have to be afraid in your place of business, or even your own home.” 

It has the first real taste of fear rising to his tongue. Monty lets his hand fall slowly to his lap, fighting the urge to run for the door before he loses the chance altogether. At the front of the room, Mortensen is still smiling, gaze scanning them all and seemingly doesn’t linger on the doctor near the back. “The floor is now open for questions.”

A woman sits forward, a journalist maybe, but Monty is only paying attention to the way Mortensen’s gaze shifts towards her. “What would you say to those who claim your company’s products can be viewed as discriminatory?”

“I understand the concern,” he says, all kindness and false empathy. “But I would suggest that society as a whole is already discriminatory towards those without Gifts. We are simply offering solutions so that we can all exist on equal footing. And how many of the Gifted are afraid of their own power? How many have hurt their own families, even unintentionally?” 

Monty doesn’t bother listening to the rest. Slipping out of his seat and making his way quietly towards the exit, and for a moment he thinks he’ll make it. Feeling the rush of magic returned, flooding through his veins again as he escapes the circle, passing through their demonstration room and towards the exit. But there’s a security guard curving a hand around his arm the second he’s through those doors, and then there’s a familiar voice calling him by name. A man he thinks has been waiting for this, and he thinks he has too, because it’s Hugo Hellström coming to stand in front of him.

“Dr. Lacroix,” he says smoothly. “If you could just come with us.”

There is a careful weighing of his options, but the only conclusion Monty can come to is that none of them are good.

There is the threatening press of something solid and metal digging into his ribs, half hidden by the hand of one of those security guards holding onto his bicep. Guiding him along the outskirts of the casino, and while he’s unsure of the destination, he is absolutely sure it can only end poorly. Somewhere quieter, maybe, and maybe he’ll find himself playing the role of his father, put on his knees and two bullets fired through the back of his skull. He wonders with some strange, morbid humor if he’ll be better mourned.

Hugo Hellström is somewhere at his back. There is pressure in his head that promises he’s seeing these memories too, thoughts that slide from those photographs of his father’s corpse, to sitting on the floor of the records room at Mount Sinai, his mother’s voice, thrown over her shoulder like a dismissal; usefulness was always your best trait.

“How did you imagine this would go?” Hugo says, almost conversationally. It feels jarring somehow, because there is a world still going on around them, a room full of people sitting at slot machines and throwing away their money on roulette wheels, all just on the other side of a half wall. A pane of glass with water pouring in a constant cycle over its surface providing the only barrier between them. And he thinks that there’s an opportunity there, glass he could shatter or security guards he could throw across the room, but he thinks it’ll only serve their purposes better than his own.  Some added proof that the Gifted were thoughtless and violent, and it wouldn’t matter if he could claim his life was threatened, because the scales between them aren’t balanced, and he knows that too. 

“You interrupted my date once,” he says dryly. “I thought I’d return the favor.” 

The pressure in his head intensifies, like a migraine waiting to spilt his skull open, and he grits his teeth against it, focusing on the lights lining the walls. The carpet beneath his feet, the steadily closing distance between the four of them and the room ahead, and he can see now where it leads. A small lobby and an elevator, but if it’s an opportunity, he’s half afraid to start formulating a plan because the second he settles on anything, the man behind him will see it, and there’s Emil’s voice in his head; I mean I couldn’t really think that hard about any of it. That was the point. That’s why I didn’t tell you about any of it.

Were you afraid? That I would hurt you?

Yes.

He doesn’t expect the huff of laughter behind him, gaze focused ahead of him and trying not to get lost in the pull of memories that he thinks the man is trying to drown him under. “Let me tell you the ending,” he tells him. Casually and all too firmly, with the kind of certainty that swears the man believes every word that follows. “You’re going to die today. No one will notice, not at first, because you’ve disappeared without much word before, haven’t you?” Monty’s jaw clamps firmly shut, but he doesn’t need to answer. The memories are there, his history is there, and he doesn’t ask if that’s something Emil told him or if it was Cecilia, because it doesn’t really matter. “And when they do finally find your body, it’ll obviously be the work of one of the Gifted. Turning on one of their own for his sympathies.”

He keeps his mouth shut, feet slowing as they finally reach the elevator lobby. And if he can’t stop himself from trying to figure a way out of the future Hugo is currently painting for him, he decides to indulge in all of them instead. A version of this where he turns the gun pointed at him on the Prime instead, a version where he shatters all the glass in the room and shreds all three of them. Bloody images that might come too easily, because the awful truth of it is that it’s far from the first time he’s imagined killing Hugo. Only the first time in a long time he’s been close enough to get the chance.

Then his thoughts slip sideways, images replaced by someone else’s thoughts, crowding into his mind and pressing against his skull, drowning out everything messier with something far colder. An image of Jiro at first, one that Hugo pulls from his memory, and then it flickers and changes into an image of Emil instead. Lying on a metal slab, burn scars across his shoulders, his arm, banded around his wrist. Looking so much older than he is, beauty and light stripped away, skin dry and desiccated, eyes turning opaque from corneal clouding as his cells break down in his body because it’s been rendered nothing more than a husk. 

“And when you’re no longer there to protect him,” Hugo says. “Emiliano will pay the cost of his betrayal.” 

There’s a twisting in Monty’s stomach, fear and horror and rage coalescing in his gut, but it’s only after the hand tightens around his arm and forces him forward that he realizes exactly what it was meant to accomplish; his distraction. Finding himself forced forward into an empty elevator, the possibility of his escape closing faster with the sliding of the doors. He can see them shutting in the reflection of a full length mirror along the back of the elevator, but even with the illusion stripped away, for a moment he doesn’t recognize himself. Eyes distant and lost, stuck on a repeating image of the worst version of the future. Where this has only ever been a tragedy, where he simply bought into the delusion that it could ever be something brighter, and this was the punishment for his hubris.

His lungs ache, he takes in a heavy breath, and he can see that sliver of light disappearing as the doors finally slide closed.

The second they do, the room erupts in motion, Monty twisting his body away from that pressure of metal against his ribs, a desperate burst of power escaping him and flinging the guards in opposite directions, slamming into the wall on either side of the elevator. It shudders beneath his feet, the whole thing rocking even as it starts to move upwards. But if there’s any satisfaction in Hugo’s back striking the metal panel, he’s responding just as quickly, and Monty can feel the answering psychic energy striking him with all the force of a moving vehicle. A loud crack echoing through the small space as he violently crashes against the mirror, shoulder first, and then the back of his skull. And he tries to turn, tries to get his eyes on Hugo, but he feels that brutal pressure intensify.

It shifts, changing into something more precise, and it’s around his throat, the man visible just a few feet away with his fingers flexing and an answering pressure against Monty’s windpipe. An invisible grip crushing the breath from his lungs until he’s left gasping and desperate for air, and he can’t think straight, not when the man is burrowing into his head once again, latching onto a memory of fear and horror and dragging it to the forefront of his mind.

Ti prego, ti prego, ti prego.

The smell of burning skin, acrid and heavy in the air, but he can’t focus on that yet, he just wants to see his eyes, he just needs him to know it’s over, he’s safe now-

His back arches painfully but his feet are barely touching the ground and he can’t find leverage when there’s unrelenting power pinning him in place, and it’s here, the reason for their caste system, why he’ll never be more than a right hand, because he’s not a Prime, he can’t tear into someone’s head at the same time he crushes the life from them, and somewhere in the room he can see the two security guards getting back to their feet, but it’s all background noise when he can’t breathe.

His head tips back, lights in his eyes and a dull, distant sound of the most mundane elevator music humming in the background. Gaze catching on Hugo’s reflection and it’s broken, distorted by the fractures in the mirror, glass splintering out behind Montgomery in a branching spiderweb. Cracks stretching out above him towards the ceiling, and that’s what he latches onto. 

It shatters behind him, his favorite trick and a desperate gamble now, broken glass filling the air around him as he scatters it blindly. And he hears a sharp cry from Hugo as it embeds itself in his neck, and he fucking hopes it kills him, but he isn’t going to wait to find out. Because he’s dropping to his knees, that thread of power momentarily broken, the elevator’s coming to a stop, and it doesn’t matter what floor, he just bolts for it.

For a moment there’s a flicker of hope, that if he gets out of such close proximity than he can disappear. Use the ring that saved his life once before and keep a promise to always come home, but he never gets past the door.

Because he finds himself face to face with Reginald Belvedere.

He always struck Monty as a severe man, but not necessarily intimidating. Any unease was from how little he let show, something familiar about a man who spent his life obscuring anything real beneath polite smiles and a dedication to the man he’d sworn his service to. But he looks terrifying now. Too calm, too in control, just a hand reaching out to curve around his arm, and Monty never has a chance to unleash his power, because Belvedere is releasing his own.

And it hurts.

There are teasing words floating somewhere in the back of his memory, telling Emil he had a higher pain tolerance than him, but if Monty could scream in this moment he would. Instead his mouth opens and nothing comes out, throat locking up, muscles tensing and tightening and for a moment he thinks he simply blacks out from it because he doesn’t know when his knees hit the ground.

Something is being torn right out of his skin, and every inch of him is in wretched, agonizing pain from it. He doesn’t think this is how Jiro died, he doesn’t think this is how I’m dying, those thoughts all come later, all he can think is the same desperate outpouring of words that spilled from Emil’s lips. Please, please, please, make it stop.

He doesn’t know how long it lasts, only that when it’s over, he isn’t moving. He’s on his knees just in front of the door of an elevator and that’s as much as he’s aware of his surroundings, staring at the carpet below him and wondering distantly who’s bleeding, because he can see red dripping to the ground in front of his eyes but there’s too much pain still crackling along his nerves to figure out where it’s coming from. There’s white noise somewhere in the background, voices talking and groaning curses, but he’s only half aware of them. He reaches for the magic in his veins, for anything that will help him get away, but the sensation that greets him as familiar as it is horrifying.

Nothingness. Emptiness. No spark of power, no thrumming of it in his veins, just a hollow, empty void carved out of the center of him, and a noise escapes him, something all too desperate because this time, he doesn’t know if he’ll get it back.

“My apologies,” Belvedere is saying. “I had another matter to take care of.”

“More important than this?” There’s an undisguised bitterness and anger echoing in Hugo’s voice, and it sounds like a familiar brand of hatred. There’s the sound of fabric shifting, movement in the corner of his eyes, and then he sees metal. The guard next to him groaning in the back of his throat as he tries to get upright, but all he cares about is the gun in his hand.

He makes a desperate lunge for it, Monty’s body feeling too heavy and foreign, but he gets one hand curved around the man’s forearm, the other ripping the gun from his fingers before he’s rolling over and firing blindly.

The gunshot’s loud in the enclosed space, it bursts violently in his ears, muffling the sound of shattering light and glass that follows. Belvedere flinches, but the bullet misses him and he’s stumbling backwards, hands raising instinctively as he backs up, back out into the hallway waiting for them beyond the door. Monty doesn’t follow, forcing himself to his feet and ignoring how he sways on them, keeping the gun trained on him. “Back,” he says, his voice unrecognizable and harsh. 

Out of the corner of his eye he sees Hugo’s hands start to move. There’s blood on him, on his face, small cuts that ooze red, but there’s hate in his eyes and power at his fingertips that Monty doesn’t wait to feel the strength of again.

He takes a single step forward and a single blow, the butt of the gun cracking down against his skull, an echo of memory and some fitting repayment for the concussion Emil was left with, even if the man in front of him wasn’t the one standing in the Voodoo that night.  

The guard to his right is shifting, reaching for the weapon at his side and Monty fires a warning shot into the metal next to his head. Still too loud, to deafening, and it makes it even harder to hear himself, no idea how loud the words are or how grating his voice is.

“Don’t,” he orders. “Get your friend. Get out.” 

“Dr. Lacroix,” Belvedere drawls. “You’re making a mistake.” 

Monty doesn’t respond. Talking hurts, his head hurts, his skin feels raw and it’s enough of an effort just to keep his hand unwavering as he points the gun at Belvedere. Waiting until the two guards are past the door before he slams the button, right next to Hugo’s head.

It’s tempting. The second the doors are closed and it’s just the two of them, Hugo barely conscious and Monty holding onto his own by a thread, but the other man is on his knees and he’s the one holding the gun. It leaves his gaze settled on him, finger tight around the trigger and feeling a familiar anger rising up, like smoke in his lungs, poison in his veins, but he has never pretended he wanted any other fate for  Hugo Hellström but his execution.

There’s a ding as the elevator hits the first floor. He twists the ring and disappears before the doors slide open. And there are guards waiting for him, and he can hear it when Hugo curses at them, words slurred and hand pulling at the wall to try and get his feet beneath him. “Wait,” he tells them. “He’s still here. He’s invisible, don’t-”

But they’re all moving to help him, and Monty’s already slipping past the door.

It doesn’t catch up to him until he’s in his car.

It’s the adrenaline that’s got him this far, because the second the door is closed, the gun thrown almost carelessly to the floor of his passenger seat, he’s shaking. His hands, trembling, just trying to get his key in the ignition, and even then he doesn’t know if he should be driving. Medically, he knows what kind of dangers he’s looking at from his head hitting that wall of glass, he knows that his muscles are weak and his throat aches.

He doesn’t know what kind of repercussions come from having his power torn out of his skin. Old history books and fraying pages suddenly feel like less comfort, promising that it was something that returned over time, but it doesn’t change the empty ache in his chest.

He doesn’t make it all the way home. He catches himself once almost driving off the road, and as desperate as he is to put distance between himself and Mortensen’s hotel, as desperate as he is just to be home, he doesn’t think crashing his air into a tree will get him there faster. So it’s with some small reluctance and waning coherency that he pulls into a small, road side gas station.

It’s later than he promised and he feels a wretched kind of guilt for it, but he calls Emil anyway. His hands are still shaking, his throat still hurts just to talk.

It was, objectively speaking, a terrible idea. For a number of reasons that came quickly and didn’t require any great amount of overthinking on Montgomery’s part this time. If it were only Isabel, there wouldn’t be a question, a promised bottle of Patron that he’d offered to bring to her tonight, a long overdue escape that he thought they both might need. Drinking with Selwyn, however, carried a number of complications, even if it was solely for her status within the Magistrate. A string he’d already pulled on a few times, bullets dodged thanks to sympathies she pretended she didn’t have. Which still didn’t make it wise to let go of his firmly held self control, not in front of a telepath or a friend, when there was an expansive list of secrets he carried, both damning and personal. 

There was one reason stacked against it, a side effect of the forced distance between himself and Emil. One he hadn’t anticipated, because it had never been a problem before, not really. He might have had a strained relationship with sleep, a tendency to overthink that kept him up until strange hours of the morning, but he’d learned to function on the bare minimum. It was time alone that was disappointing, sure, but it wasn’t an overwhelming kind, at least it wouldn’t have been before. 

Before the Institute. Before cuffs around his wrist and white walls around him, memories that crept into his thoughts when he was staring up at the ceiling in an empty bed, finding himself stretching his mind out to move the bed, or a book, or anything so long as he could assure some irrational part of his mind that there wouldn’t be a blue flare across the ceiling the second he did. Memories that found those cracks in his unconscious mind, a few confusing moments when he first awoke that he couldn’t remember where he was. A brief second of panic, of his heart pounding as he tried to blink the grit from his eyes and focus on his bedroom. Bed empty, but his, scars on his wrists, but no cuffs.

It was a reassurance that got him through the day, but hadn’t helped the last three nights, and it left him staring at his phone for a moment before he replied.

[ monty → isa 💕 ] be there in twenty, chérie. 

The game was never have I ever, and after the first three shots Montgomery decided it had been chosen with the specific purpose of fucking with him. Enough sins already shared between the two women sitting around the table with him that he suspected most of what they said was either an inside joke, or in Selwyn’s case, a chance to figure out just how much Monty had changed. Because she’d recognized a shift in him as much as he had in her, pinpointing it the first time he’d seen her at the Pit, just by the way he smiled. Even if she didn’t know why he hadn’t before, even if she didn’t know why it hurt to hear himself called a robot. And maybe it was because she’d paid more attention, because Dom had looked up to him, but not at him, and Dev might’ve forced her hobbies on him, but she’d found him boring.

“Never have I ever been arrested.” Isabel’s offering, accompanied by a muted grin in his direction. His response an easy roll of his eyes before he tossed the shot back, aware that there were three empty glasses hitting the table afterwards.

“Why Dr. Monty, I’m shocked.” Selwyn, putting a hand to her chest and looking at him with mock surprise. “Scandalized even.”

“Are you though?” Brow raised in a challenge before he nodded his head to the dark haired woman on his left. “We have the same friend.” A point proven solely by the ease of his posture, back against the chair and Isabel’s feet crossed and resting in his lap. Palm curved around her shin with easy affection he didn’t give most.

Something just as endearing in the way she cursed him afterwards. “Hijo de puta I did that for you.”

“Oh, I know, that’s why it’s funny.” A grin flashed at her that dissolved into a laugh as she kicked at his knee, and a memory of a holding cell that shouldn’t have left him with so much warm fondness sitting on his chest.

It didn’t surprise him when the game started devolving into questions of love and sex and heartbreak, and he lost track of how many he tossed back alongside them. Ignoring that three months ago he wouldn’t have been able to drink to half of them, heartsick before, but never heartbroken, a list of lovers but never in love. Somewhere along the line it drowned out some of his fear, leaving a secret out on the table among empty shot glasses. One he’d kept so long he thought it had become part of him, but there was something liberating about leaving it on the cutting room floor.

"It makes sense,” said Sel. A response that had Monty lifting a brow, a tone far too innocent as she toyed with a shot glass. “No wonder you were so oblivious to my charms.”

It made him laugh, something too relieved in the sound, head resting against the back of the chair. “Obviously. The only reason.” Because some secrets were easier to let go of than others, and he found this one didn’t hurt as much as he’d feared.

He was still grateful when they broke for food, a chance to let the tequila settle, Isa complaining about the poor quality of her weed before she remembered why, and he blamed both the liquor and the smoke hanging thick in the air instead of her for the bluntness that followed. “Tell your boyfriend to stop avoiding me.” 

“We’re too old to pass notes, chérie.” Said as gently as he could, not wanting to sit in the middle even while feeling as though it was a space he firmly occupied.

“Dile a ese cabrón, stop being a little bitch.” A curse accompanied by a gesture of the lighter, and he knew he was drunk because he found himself biting back a laugh, even while fully aware it wasn’t funny. That his trust wasn’t the only one left shattered, too many messages in her phone that Monty hadn’t written, and if there was the faint prick of guilt that he might’ve helped ruin something between them, he couldn’t remember how to lie to her, or if he even wanted to.

It left him with a quiet longing, missing the man abruptly when he’d managed to keep himself distracted most of the night. Not for any comfort he wanted to steal, but for the absence of him, the certainty that Emil would fit easily into place around the table with them. A familiar fantasy of their lives intertwining, and after a moment he pulled himself to his feet and reached for his phone.

Monty didn’t regret the decision to call Emil, not while he was on the phone with him. It wasn’t until after, sitting there on Isabel’s fire escape with nothing but the quiet sound of voices and laughter behind him and the distant hum of a car in the distance that it finally set in. Trying to replay a conversation where already the details were slipping away, and he was just left with a growing unease and the ache in his chest, a quiet voice swearing that he’d somehow fucked up. Sinking guilt following when he thought it was for the conversation itself, Emil miles away and trying to balance his life and his family. He didn’t need Montgomery falling apart.

He was slow to untangle himself from his place on the metal grate, vertigo hitting him hard and leaving him with a hand pressing against the side of her building to keep himself steady. A brief laugh following, an instinctive reaction that lacked real humor, and then he was trying to navigate his way back through the window.

It went worse this time, one leg getting caught on the edge, body tilting to compensate for it, and ending with Monty on his back staring up at Isabel’s ceiling with one foot still sticking out into the cold air. He heard laughter somewhere behind him but he didn’t look back, a distant awareness of burning in his eyes and the sensation of something stuck in his throat. Making it harder to breathe, to talk, to think, and he couldn’t tell if it was regret or despair.

Only that it hit in waves, his own voice in his head, am I different?

Do you want to be the same?

The answers slipping in easier now, one after another, when he wasn’t trying to hold onto something more fragile through the thin connection of a phone call. I just don’t want to be weaker. I don’t want to be ruined. I don’t want to feel that powerless ever again. I don’t want nightmares and I don’t want fear and I don’t want to wake up and not remember where I am. I don’t want to wonder if everything good about myself already got destroyed years ago and if Hugo just finished the job.

I want to know who I am.

Monty’s palms pressed against his eyes, self restraint doing a poor job of holding himself together when there was so much tequila stripping it away, so he tried to cling to it with the pressure of his hands and desperate, steadying breaths that got cut off again when it just left room for something worse to slip through. Every memory he’d tried to put aside, to strip whatever useful information he could before discarding them, a month of his life that still clung to him like smoke. A logical dissection of events and an illogical shaking of his frame, trying to hold in the wretched sob that wanted to rip from his chest, because what good is that? 

“Monty?” Isabel’s voice breaking through first before he felt fingers in his hair, a soothing comfort that he flinched away from before settling under her touch. “Hey. What happened? What did he say to you?” 

“No, no, he didn’t do anything wrong.” Words that came quickly and thoughtlessly, escaping somewhere between ragged breaths to stall any anger before it came. Even if it felt like a blatant lie after it was past his lips, because Emil had left one of the deepest scars, that feeling of betrayal, of trust shattering, one he hadn’t given blindly, but with too much hope. And the man had burned it all down, maybe destroyed them both, and it left Monty with too much hurt pressing down on his chest, a brutal crushing ache in both heart and his lungs that wasn’t just for himself, his prison stark and white, Emil’s looking like a rotting mockery of his own bedroom. 

He didn’t know if he could forgive, but he’d wanted to forget, and found it still all too close the second he stopped packing those wounds with something golden and kinder. Reaching out his hand to grasp at her arm, the other dragging across his face again, trying to ignore the warm wetness slipping down his cheeks, a memory of sitting on his couch trying to stem the same flood. “Can you just... hug me?” 

There was no hesitation, just Isabel shifting behind him, pulling his head into her lap and arms curving around his shoulders. A comfort that made the shaking of his frame worse before it got better, fingers tight around her arm and wishing he could explain to either of them why he was crying. But if Emil had told him to talk about it, he couldn’t find the words, just the distant awareness of a wound that hadn’t healed and her voice, telling him “I’m here.” 

His awareness of Selwyn was just as removed, barely aware of her settling down on the carpet next to him. None of the same easy affections given, but after a moment her hand settled on his shoulder, her voice “do you want to see more of memories of you?” and no real chance given to answer before the world faded away.

Isabel’s living room was made black, soft and encompassing, like dreamless sleep, a darkness that Montgomery felt himself sinking into. Warmer for the comforting contrast to stark white, muscles untensing and going liquid as he stretched out onto the carpet. Wondering if he didn’t fall asleep in the brief moment before nothingness and the sudden emergence of memories, cast in bright technicolor even if his own were black and white. An intense projection of thought, of someone else’s life, none of the images belonging to him, and he didn’t know if it was comforting to see it all again, but he thought it was meant to be.

Because there was a version of himself in Selwyn’s memory, the version she saw, of someone calm and composed even as a child. Always the babysitter when he was older than the rest, always the one taping up wounds and skinned knees, and there was a flicker of his own memory in the back of his head, putting them on his own scrapes and scars too, but alone in the bathroom. A version of himself he’d thought was so dissonant from who he was now, but there was too much familiar, beyond the simple physicality of the boy in her memory. The starkest difference in the eyes, because they looked impossibly vacant, and part of him wondered distantly how she hadn’t seen it, how no one had seen it, why no one could hear him silently screaming when he’d still been young and new. It was a feeling that was all too familiar, like it had echoed through the years until history repeated itself, taking new form; how did no one notice I was gone?

The tug on curled locks distracted him, tipping his head back to see a smile so much brighter on Isabel’s lips as she watched the images around them, invited in by the woman who controlled them. “Look how young you were. Look at your hair,” she said. A different echo this time, like family, like a mother sharing stories about her only son, the warm smell of coffee and old books. And those were present too, an image of a lanky, teenage version of himself, still curled in a chair with a book in his lap before he was interrupted. He closed his eyes briefly to hold onto it, to hold onto Isabel, letting the world shift on its axis beneath his spine, the kind of vertigo that made him wonder if he wasn’t in danger of spilling off the earth altogether. A distant, nostalgic ache that always came with missing a home that he’d never had. 

And he knew when it faded, light pressing against his eyelids before she was prodding him gently. “Do you want to talk about it?”

He stayed quiet for a moment, blinking away the darkness and left staring up at the ceiling that was too bright in comparison, but he reached out, floating the bottle of tequila off the table. Thoughtless and casual and his, no flicker of blue, no yawning emptiness greeting him in place of his gift. He wasn’t trapped, not in a cell, not in his own home, not by anything but chains of his own making, and if he’d changed, if he was different, it wasn’t the first time. A painful echo of empty eyes looking back at him, and he finally nodded his head. Tilting it back to look up at her, a grateful squeeze of her arm. 

“No,” he said. “But I feel a little better.” Sitting up slowly, hand reaching out for the bottle as it drifted into his grasp, a swig straight from it before he turned and passed it to Selwyn like quieter gratitude. Letting the taste of something sharp and sweet ease the dull and distant ache in his chest when he couldn’t quite name its form. If it was for what he’d lost or never had, if it was for who he’d never become and who he wished he was, for a moment all he had was another memory, her voice somewhere in the back of his head, and he didn’t know if it held hope or just another hurt. Although, who knew you would change so much, after all these years, making jokes and all. No longer quite the robot.

Despite his assurances, Monty didn’t feel better, not right away. Tequila that was compromising his faculties, but kept him hovering on that line between bleak despair and a reckless, boundless happiness that he’d wanted to hold onto. A quieter thought that he’d wanted to share that with Emil more than anything, a version of himself that didn’t carry cuffs around his wrists or the scars from it, but he’d warned the man about delusion and he should’ve known better. There was more comfort from simply passing the bottle around like he was back in college again, the first time he hadn’t felt like an outsider staring in from behind two way glass. 

“I want ice cream.” Decided abruptly, unsure if it was true until he was saying it.

And that was how Montgomery Lacroix ended up in the Circle K sometime after midnight, a mess of snacks and ice cream scattered across the counter, and Sel plopping down a slushie next to it. “It’s not a Slurpee,” she said. “But it’ll do.” 

This time the nostalgia made him laugh, something easy and simple from his childhood that didn’t demand anything more complex, a joy so small it hadn’t been worth stripping away from him, and he nodded his head at her once it settled into an easy grin. “Get me one too, yeah? The blue flavor.” Turning afterward to the poor kid working behind the counter, a little wide eyed as he stared at the three of them. Finding himself unconcerned for now about whatever rumors spread tomorrow, the kind of thing he’d always avoided and always feared, never letting anyone see a single crack in the man he’d made himself into.