#suffering even

Fortunately or unfortunately, Ace spent most of his time sleeping. When he wasn’t, he mostly just lay there quietly. He had always been the less outgoing of the two of them, always trailing behind and keeping everyone else in town at arm’s length. But around Basil, once they’d revealed their secret to each other, Ace had always opened up like a flower at the first sign of spring. Now, the silence felt oppressive. If Basil let it drag on long enough, his mind would drift back to all the things that frightened him. So he kept himself talking, even if Ace was barely keeping his eyes open.

“You would like the community garden,” he said. “I’ll show it to you soon. Maybe once you’re— you’re not listening at all, are you?”

“I am,” Ace insisted. He regarded Basil wearily from across the room, green eyes bloodshot and drooping. Basil wondered if he had looked that bad when he’d first arrived in Verdigris. Knowing how bruised and malnourished he’d been—and how small—he must have looked even worse.

What a terrible image.

Ace didn’t seem frightened, though. He never shied away from Frida or Basil. Instead, he only seemed to regard the situation with resignation. On a few occasions, Basil caught him staring straight ahead with a hardened expression, but he always dropped it the moment he noticed Basil enter the room.

Basil sighed.

“You really could have died, you know. It’s a miracle your lungs weren’t punctured.”

“I know.”

“Do you… want to talk about what happened?”

Ace slid his gaze away from Basil.

“No.”

Basil didn’t push him to talk. He briefly considered telling Ace everything, but then thought better of it.

“You’re lucky,” he said instead.

Ace barked out a laugh and then coughed weakly, staring at the ceiling.

“I’m serious. Most people wouldn’t survive a wound like that. We’re both lucky you did.”

“I don’t feel lucky,” Ace muttered.

Basil frowned. He stretched out his leg and the muscles twinged with the motion. Wincing, he rubbed at his knee.

“Well, whatever happened, you’ll be safe here,” he said. “I know Frida already told you that. But it’s nothing like Amistadia out here.”

Ace gave him an odd look. Then he turned away again, expression strangely wistful, laying a hand over his chest.

“You don’t know that,” he said softly.

Basil didn’t reply. He wasn’t sure what he should say. He wanted to grab Ace by the shoulders and shout at him, wished he could project eight years directly into his brain like a beam of heavenly light. He wanted to take his pale, clammy face between his palms and cry out, don’t you know we never deserved it? Don’t you know it was never true? Don’t you understand that this is what real acceptance and safety feels like?

But it didn’t seem proper. So, Basil said nothing.

“It’s not so bad,” Ace said. He shut his eyes and settled down into the blankets. “Amistadia.”

“What?” said Basil, but Ace had already drifted off. That tended to be the way their conversations went these last few days—he would stay awake for brief periods at a time, mostly listening to Basil run his mouth, only to fall asleep mid-way through a thought. Basil let out a sigh and rubbed at his eyes with the backs of his hands.

Sometimes, when he looked at Ace, all Basil could see was the child he’d once been, eyes blown wide with terror as he’d looked on from afar that day so many years ago. The boy that lay before him now was bigger and taller, with lean muscle that had to have come from years of archery practice. But though they were hardened now, those eyes were much the same. When Ace had opened them like a haunted corpse that first day, lying half-dead in a pool of his own blood, they had been unmistakable. Time and tide may have worn away much of their youthful innocence, but Basil would recognize those eyes anywhere.

He was ashamed to admit, even in the privacy of his own thoughts, that it frightened him.

*

Basil’s parents were dead.

This should not have been a surprise to him, and, in fact, it wasn’t. Basil had assumed them dead for years, because it had been easier than facing the alternative: that they had moved on without him.

However, when Ace revealed this fact to him, it reopened a jagged wound that had been left to fester for eight long years. Basil had never expected an answer. The reality of it—that they had been killed by the king’s royal guard, for the simple crime of letting Basil live—stung far more than he’d imagined it would. He’d assumed they were dead, yes, but he had never wanted it to be true.

It wasn’t the only thing Ace had told him. Once lucid, he had become somewhat of an open book, spilling to Basil with alarming desperation the path that had led him back home to Swallow’s Point. The path that had led him all the way to the castle, that distant towering spire that only seemed like a mirage to Basil now. The path that had led him to killing the king, avenging their parents’ deaths but sentencing himself to bleed out alone deep in the woods.

The whole thing made Basil’s head swim, made his blood run white-hot and his hands tremble. He wasn’t even certain what he was angry at, only that he’d tried so hard to run from this thing inside him, this guilt and shame he’d tried to escape from for years and years, with limited success, but could never truly shake. He didn’t even know what he was afraid of. That it was all his fault? That they’d come for him again? That this new life, the one he’d so carefully built, would crumble, leaving him with nothing once more?

After all that, Basil couldn’t find it within himself to tell Ace the truth: that the curse had never existed, and it didn’t matter.

He thought it best that Ace figure it out on his own. He felt guilty for the subterfuge anyway.

(As it turned out, Ace already knew, and had been struggling to keep it from Basil as well. They were, after all, both very well versed in keeping secrets. Just never from each other.)

The day Ace had his stitches removed, they set up a cot on the other side of Basil’s room for him, freeing up precious clinic space, should it be needed. Frida promised him a proper bed eventually, but Ace merely laughed awkwardly and waved the offer off.

Basil felt strangely embarrassed by the whole affair, surrounded by the humble array of possessions he’d amassed over eight years, while Ace occupied a corner of the room with his small cot and only a few hand-me-down shirts from the neighbors and a cloak to his name. He still had a quiver of arrows, but no bow. (Ann had offered to find him a replacement once he could shoot without ripping open a hole in his chest, but Ace had gone a little bit green at the suggestion. That made sense in retrospect, knowing what he’d done.)

The tension between them had eased substantially ever since they cleared the air regarding all that had transpired, but at times like this Basil still felt like Ace was the ghost he’d once assumed, passing through like a whisper until he was gone. If Basil so much as blinked, Ace would disappear again, fallen to some other sword, some other cruel twist of fate.

Basil was, by necessity, a stubborn optimist. But it didn’t stop the fear from strangling him from time to time, even still.

“Basil,” Ace said. “Basil. Hey.”

With a gasp, Basil jolted awake, hands wound tight around his quilt. The room was pitch black, the howling wind outside heralding the season’s first snowstorm. Basil blinked, willing his eyes to adjust to the darkness. His leg ached something fierce, and he curled in around himself with a stifled groan.

“Basil. Are you okay?”

Something touched Basil’s arm, and he flinched. The hand quickly withdrew.

“Sorry,” Ace said.

“Careful,” Basil coughed out. “I’ve been known to hit.”

(It was true—he had lashed out and smacked Frida once while coming out of a nightmare—but since he was twelve at the time and not particularly strong, he hadn’t left a mark.)

“Right, sorry,” Ace said again in a whisper. Basil couldn’t see him in the dark, but he could sense him there, just beside the bed. “Nightmare?”

“Hush,” Basil said. “Frida doesn’t know I still have them.”

“Why not?”

“She worries.” Basil shook out his hands. “You know how she gets.”

“Right.” Ace paused. “I have them too, you know. Always have, off and on.”

“Really?”

“Oh, yeah. Bertrand—the potion master I live with, you remember—I woke him more than once absolutely screaming.”

Basil took note of the use of present tense—live, he’d said—and breathed through a wave of nausea that passed over him.

“What— Can I ask— What are they about?”

“Well… You, mostly,” Ace confessed, the hint of a smile in his voice. “I never stopped wondering where you were, if you’d lived. What I could’ve done. Should’ve done.”

“You were ten years old, Ace.”

“So were you. You wanted me to run, I could tell. I shouldn’t have listened.”

“You couldn’t have done anything. I just didn’t want them to hurt you.”

Ace huffed. “You’re a better person than me, Basil. Always were.”

“Don’t talk like that,” Basil choked out, wrapping himself around his knees while the storm raged on outside.

“Why not? Basil, I killed a man.”

“He deserved it,” Basil shot back, briefly startled by the vitriol in his own voice.

“I don’t care,” Ace said, unfazed. “What good is petty revenge? I’ll bet you they’ve already crowned another. So what’s it matter?”

“I’m not what you think I am,” Basil said, blinking away tears. “I did this to us, Ace. None of this would have happened if I’d been a little more careful like I was told.”

“Scoot over.” The mattress dipped when Ace sat down, still unseen in the dark. “It’s not your fault. They were stupid kids just like us, cruel because they didn’t understand. That’s what you told me, remember? It was just a cruel lie. You didn’t deserve it. Neither of us did.”

“I know,” Basil whispered. A sob bubbled up out of his throat before he could squash it.

“Hey, you’re alright. It’s okay.”

“It’s just— Sometimes I get so angry, and it terrifies me. I don’t even know why I’m so mad. It’s like…”

“Like being strangled from the inside? By something you can’t control?”

“Yeah,” Basil said, sniffling. “Yeah, that’s exactly it.”

“C’mere,” Ace said softly, and before he could move, Basil launched forward in the direction of Ace’s voice. His arms found purchase around Ace’s back, and he clung tight, weeping, while Ace wrapped him in a hug in turn. He chose not to comment on the way Ace was trembling, just slightly, and if Ace noticed the same, he said nothing.