It's been a long time since I last wrote...
Family fluff I guess?
Fulgrim complained from the moment he put the keys in the ignition.
“This was not my task,” he said for the fourth time, one hand on the wheel and the other lifting in offense. “This was Sanguinius’s task. He asked me with no warning. No warning. He said, ‘Fulgrim, dear, could you please take Konrad to his follow-up, I’ve been pulled into a meeting.’ As if I have no life. As if I sit around waiting to ferry tragic little boys to neurology.”
Konrad sat in the passenger seat with his knees drawn up enough to keep his shoes from touching the floor mat. He was seven years old and small for it. His dark coat made him look smaller. He held Sevatar, his stuffed mouse, by one worn ear and rubbed the velvet body with his thumb until the fur lay flat.
He did not answer.
Fulgrim glanced at him. “Do you have anything to say in defense of your favorite brother?”
Konrad looked out the window. “You are not my favorite.”
“I know,” Fulgrim said. “That was the joke.”
Konrad pressed the mouse to his chest. “There will be red lights ahead.”
Fulgrim sighed. “There are always red lights ahead. This is the city. It is built entirely out of bad timing and poor civic planning.”
Konrad said nothing after that. He only watched the road with the distant, tired look that always made strangers stare too long. Fulgrim had learned not to snap at them for it in front of Konrad. He saved it for afterward.
The first red light appeared three blocks later. Then a second. Then a construction crew with little blinking barriers and a police car stopped sideways across one lane while an ambulance waited to turn.
Fulgrim clicked his tongue. “Fine. Very impressive. A triumph. You have once again bested traffic.”
Konrad tucked Sevatar under his chin. “It was louder in the vision.”
Fulgrim’s mouth thinned. “Do not call it that in public.”
Konrad turned to look at him at last. His face was pale and serious. “But it was.”
Fulgrim looked back at the road. “I know what it was.”
That was the thing. They all knew.
Not all at once. Not all from the beginning. At first it had been bad dreams, or odd guesses, or Konrad saying not to use a certain staircase because someone would fall. Then Ferrus had slipped on those exact stairs an hour later and caught himself only because he had already been holding the rail. Then there had been the lost dog two streets over, and Konrad saying it was in the drainage ditch behind the pharmacy, and it had been. Then the kitchen fire. Then the seizure in the supermarket before it happened. Then too many things to dismiss and too many nights with Konrad awake and shaking and describing things in a flat, frightened voice.
They all knew now.
They had rules.
No making him perform.
No asking him about the future for fun.
No treating him like a broken machine.
No pretending it was nothing.
Sanguinius had made the rules and written them on the whiteboard in the kitchen. Vulkan added a fifth in bigger letters: He is seven.
Fulgrim had rolled his eyes at the time, but he obeyed all five.
At the hospital drop-off lane, he swung the car into a legal space with annoyance. “Come along,” he said. “Let us be medically confirmed as functional and then leave.”
Konrad unbuckled himself carefully. He always did things carefully, even before the appointment had started. Fulgrim got out and came around the car before Konrad had touched the handle. That was habit too. So was the hand at the back of Konrad’s neck as they crossed the lane to the entrance.
The children’s hospital smelled like sanitizer, crayons and old coffee. It was bright in the lobby in a way Konrad hated. Too much white. Too much polished floor. Too many cartoon animals smiling from wall decals.
Fulgrim checked them in with the front desk while Konrad stood so close to his side that the hem of Fulgrim’s coat brushed his face. The receptionist smiled too brightly at Konrad and asked, “And how are we today?”
Konrad looked at her name tag.
“Ms. Belle,” he said, “you're going to scratch your car and cry in the parking lot after work.”
The smile vanished.
Fulgrim closed his eyes. “He means,” he said smoothly, “that we are all holding up under modern conditions.”
Ms. Belle blinked. “I... yes. Of course.”
Konrad leaned against Fulgrim’s arm.
Fulgrim took the clipboard, signed what needed signing and guided Konrad away before the woman could ask another question. “You cannot simply say those things to people.”
“She asked.”
“That is not what she meant.”
“She should ask only true questions.”
Fulgrim looked down at him. “You make it very hard to win arguments with you.”
Konrad hugged Sevatar tighter. “I do not try. It happens on its own.”
They sat in the waiting area under a mural of a forest full of wide-eyed rabbits. Konrad stared at the rabbits with open dislike. Fulgrim crossed one elegant leg over the other and checked his phone. Messages from Sanguinius continued to arrive in a stream of apology.
Is he all right?
Did he eat?
Tell him I left the notebook by his bed.
I owe you.
I really do owe you.
Fulgrim typed back: You owe me several lives and possibly a vehicle.
“What did Sanguinius say?” Konrad asked.
“That he is eternally grateful and insufferably busy.”
Konrad nodded, as if this confirmed something already settled.
A nurse called his name. “Konrad Curze?”
Konrad stood at once. Sevatar went under his arm. Fulgrim rose after him and followed them through the double doors.
The examination itself was ordinary by the standards of their household. Height, weight, blood pressure, questions about medication, sleep, appetite, headaches, seizures. The neurologist was kind and efficient. She had met Konrad several times before and had learned not to fill silence just because a child was quiet.
“Any episodes since the last visit?” she asked.
“Two,” Fulgrim said.
“One and a half,” Konrad corrected.
The doctor paused. “One and a half?”
“The first one was real. The second was trying to be one but stopped.”
Fulgrim leaned back in the chair. “You see what I manage.”
The doctor smiled slightly. “I do.”
She turned back to Konrad. “Did anything feel different before the real one happened?”
Konrad nodded.
“What did it feel like?”
He picked at a seam on Sevatar’s side. Fulgrim watched his hands and gently moved them away from the thread before he could worry it loose.
“It felt,” Konrad said slowly, “like the room was wrong first. Like something had already happened and the room knew it but I did not.”
The doctor wrote that down. “And after?”
“Very tired. Sore mouth. Fulgrim was upset.”
Fulgrim made a sound. “I was not upset. I was correctly alarmed.”
Konrad looked at him. “Your eyes were wet.”
The doctor lowered her pen and looked politely away. Fulgrim cleared his throat.
“Yes,” he said. “Well. Children should not convulse in kitchens. I hold that as a principle.”
The check-up ended with no dramatic changes. Medication would stay the same. More sleep. Stress should be reduced where possible. They were given a printout Fulgrim did not want and a follow-up date he immediately forwarded to the family calendar so this exact situation would never happen again.
On the way out, Konrad was given a sticker from a bowl at the nurse’s desk. He chose a black star.
“Of course you did,” Fulgrim said.
“It is better than the smiling sun.”
“Most things are.”
They stopped in the pharmacy section to pick up a refill. Konrad stood with his shoulder pressed to Fulgrim’s hip while Fulgrim signed. An old woman nearby smiled at the stuffed mouse and told Konrad, “That’s a sweet little friend.”
Konrad looked down at Sevatar. “He bites.”
The woman laughed, thinking it a joke.
Fulgrim ushered him out before he could clarify.
By the time they got back to the car, the afternoon had gone gray. Fulgrim settled Konrad in, checked the seat belt himself, and started the engine.
The first part of the drive home was quiet.
Konrad watched houses and shop fronts pass in a blur. Fulgrim drove with his shoulders still high from hospital air and hospital forms and the memory of pale little hands jerking in kitchen light two months ago. He disliked those memories. He disliked many things, but those most of all.
Konrad spoke when they were halfway through an intersection.
“There is a banana car.”
Fulgrim did not look away from the road. “A what.”
“A banana car.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“That is not a category.”
“It is yellow.”
“So a yellow car.”
Konrad’s fingers tightened around Sevatar. “No. It is long.”
Fulgrim frowned. “That narrows it down to every taxi, van, and municipal disaster in the district.”
“It is our father.”
Fulgrim’s hands locked on the wheel.
For one second he thought he had heard wrong. He looked sharply at Konrad, who had gone still in the way he did when something was about to happen and he hated it already.
Then Fulgrim looked ahead.
A bright yellow bus turned into view from the opposite lane, polished enough to throw back the weak daylight. Not a school bus, but one of the private shuttle coaches that did routes between the airport and the business district. It was absurdly yellow. Banana yellow, if one insisted on childish terms.
And behind the wheel—
Fulgrim swore and jerked the car hard into the next lane.
The tires shrieked. The car rocked so violently Konrad’s shoulder hit the door. A horn blared somewhere to the left. Fulgrim corrected, overcorrected, then seized the wheel with both hands and dragged them back into line. His heart hit so hard against his ribs that his breath turned thin.
The yellow bus swept past.
For a single sick second Fulgrim saw the driver’s face.
Their father. Older. Leaner. One hand on the wheel. Looking straight ahead as if none of them existed.
Then he was gone.
“Fu- Damn him,” Fulgrim said, voice sharp and shaking. “Damn him. Damn him.”
Beside him, Konrad had curled around Sevatar so tightly that the mouse’s nose was bent flat.
Fulgrim forced air into his lungs. “Konrad.”
No answer.
“Konrad.”
“I am here.”
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
Fulgrim checked the mirror, changed lanes properly this time and pulled into the nearest side street. He parked badly and turned the hazards on. Then he put both hands on the steering wheel and lowered his head for two long seconds.
When he raised it again, he looked directly at Konrad.
“Did you know it was him?”
Konrad nodded.
“Why did you not say ‘our father is driving a yellow bus directly into my day’ instead of ‘banana car’?”
Konrad’s face stayed solemn. “I thought you would still see it.”
Fulgrim stared at him. Then, against reason and temperament, he laughed once. It came out frayed.
“That,” he said, “is not the point.”
Konrad blinked at him. His lower lip had gone white where he had been pressing it in.
Fulgrim’s anger dropped at once.
“Oh, no, don’t do that,” he said softly. “Do not think I am angry with you.”
Konrad looked at the dashboard. “You swerved.”
“Yes, because I saw a man I never wish to see again and responded with excellent instincts and some artistry.”
“The car almost tipped.”
“It did not.”
“It thought about it.”
Fulgrim let out a breath that was almost another laugh. He reached over and fixed Sevatar’s squashed nose with two careful fingers. Then he touched the back of Konrad’s head.
“You warned me,” he said. “Twice. I should have listened better.”
Konrad turned his face slightly into the touch before he could stop himself. “It was loud in my head.”
“I know.”
“He looked the same.”
Fulgrim’s expression hardened. “Yes.”
“Does he know where we live?”
“No.”
Konrad did not look convinced.
Fulgrim understood why. Children remembered danger in clear pieces. Doors. Voices. Tires on gravel. A father leaving. A father not returning. A father becoming the sort of absence that still felt present.
Fulgrim unbuckled, leaned over the console, and kissed the side of Konrad’s hair. He would deny doing it if any of the others asked.
“He does not know anything worth having,” Fulgrim said. “And if he ever tries to know it, he will have to get through all of us first. Including Dorn, who is basically a wall with opinions.”
Konrad looked at him at last. “And Sanguinius.”
“Yes,” Fulgrim said dryly. “The wall and the swan. Everyone.”
“And you.”
Fulgrim sat back, one hand still resting on Konrad’s shoulder. “Especially me.”
Konrad was quiet for a few seconds. Then he said, “I do not like when you are frightened.”
The words were plain. They landed all the same.
Fulgrim smoothed the collar of Konrad’s coat where it had twisted. “I do not like when you are frightened either. Yet here we are, endlessly inconvenienced by love.”
Konrad considered that. “That sounds true.”
“It is true.”
After a moment, Konrad held out Sevatar to him.
Fulgrim looked down. “What is this.”
“You may hold him if you need moral support.”
Fulgrim took the stuffed mouse with solemn care. “I am honored.”
“You should be.”
He held Sevatar through the rest of the drive, balanced one-handed against the gear shift whenever he needed to change. Konrad watched this with silent approval.
When they got home, Ferrus was already in the kitchen, sleeves rolled, taking something apart that probably still needed to exist. He looked up at the sound of the door.
“You’re late.”
Fulgrim came in like a storm cloud in expensive boots. “I have had a day.”
Ferrus took one look at his face and set the screwdriver down. “What happened.”
Konrad slipped off his shoes in the entryway and picked Sevatar back up from where Fulgrim handed him over.
Fulgrim threw his keys onto the counter. “We saw him.”
Ferrus went still. “Who.”
Fulgrim stared at him.
Ferrus’s jaw tightened. “Right. Him.”
“In a yellow bus,” Fulgrim said. “Driving like some grim joke made flesh.”
Ferrus looked toward Konrad at once, but Konrad was already moving past the kitchen, small and quick and silent in the way he became when adults started talking in voices that were too controlled.
“Konrad,” Ferrus called.
Konrad paused by the stairs.
“Are you okay?”
Konrad nodded once. “Yes.”
Fulgrim, still shaking with anger, said to Ferrus, “He warned me. He said ‘banana car’ and I, for some reason, did not interpret this as paternal horror.”
Ferrus pinched the bridge of his nose. “You swerved.”
“Yes, thank you, there was swerving.”
“Did he see you?”
“I do not know. I do not care. If he comes near this house, I’ll—”
“Not in front of him,” Ferrus said quietly.
Fulgrim’s mouth snapped shut.
On the stairs, Konrad did not turn around. “I’m going to my room.”
Ferrus’s voice gentled. “All right.”
Konrad went upstairs without another word.
His room was at the back of the house where the light was weakest in the late afternoon. He liked that. The curtains were thick. The lamp by his bed had a low amber bulb. There were boxes of thread stacked beside the dresser, folded squares of fabric on a chair, a pincushion shaped like a tomato, sewing scissors locked in the top drawer because adults were cowards and pieces of half-finished projects spread with exact care across the desk.
He closed the door softly behind him.
The house still carried voices through the vents and floorboards. Fulgrim downstairs, bright with anger. Ferrus lower and steadier. Pots on the stove. Pipes ticking. The world went on.
Konrad took off his coat and dropped it over the chair. He did not put it properly on the hanger. He was not in the mood.
Usually sewing helped. The order of it. Needle in, needle out. Thread pulled through. In and out and in and out. The way cloth behaved if treated correctly. Today he looked at the waiting fabric and felt nothing.
So he got down on his hands and knees and crawled under the bed.
Dust lived there in soft gray drifts despite all efforts. Konrad reached past a flat shoebox, a missing slipper and the plastic coffin-shaped pencil case Corvus had given him as a joke, and pulled out the diary Sanguinius had hidden there with him three weeks earlier.
It was black, with no lock. Sanguinius had said locks made some children more anxious because then the thoughts felt important in the wrong way. “This is only a place to put things,” he had told Konrad, sitting cross-legged on the bedroom rug while helping him choose a notebook. “When your head is too full, the page can hold some of it for you. Then you do not have to hold all of it alone.”
Konrad had asked, “Will the page mind?”
Sanguinius had smiled and kissed his temple. “No. That is the page’s whole purpose.”
Konrad slid back out from under the bed and sat against the side of it with the diary in his lap. Sevatar rested by his left knee. He opened to the last page he had written on. His handwriting was neat when he forced it and jagged when he did not. Today it wanted to be jagged.
He uncapped the pen.
For a while he only listened.
Downstairs, Fulgrim was still speaking.
“I nearly rolled the car.”
“You didn’t.”
“I nearly did.”
“You got them home.”
“I hate that man.”
A pause.
Ferrus said, quieter, “I know.”
Konrad lowered his head over the diary and began to write.
Today Fulgrim took me to the hospital because Sanguinius had work and said sorry many times on the phone. Fulgrim complained in the car for most of the drive. This was normal and not a problem. He also drove acceptably.
He stopped and frowned at the page. Then he added:
He was careful with me when we crossed the road. He likes to pretend he is not soft but this is not true.
The pen scratched on.
The hospital was too bright. The rabbits on the wall looked dishonest. Ms. Belle at the desk cried because of her car, but I was not supposed to say that. The doctor asked sensible questions. I told the truth. Fulgrim almost cried again when she asked about the kitchen seizure. He says he was alarmed. This is technically true.
He paused and listened to the house again.
The voices downstairs had gone lower. Cups clinked. A cabinet shut. Ferrus was probably making tea because that was what he did when emotions became too large for the room.
Konrad wrote:
On the way home I saw the banana car. I warned Fulgrim before and he did not understand because adults need things said in very dull ways. The banana car was a bus and our father was driving it. He looked the same and older at once. I do not know how that works but it is real.
The pen pressed harder.
Fulgrim swerved and the car thought about falling over. I was not hurt. Fulgrim was frightened. I did not like that. He said our father would have to get through all of them first if he tried to come near us. This is also technically true. Ferrus would break his hands. Vulkan would open the door and smile in the very bad way. Sanguinius would say something kind and terrible. Corvus would already be behind him. I do not know what Lion would do because nobody ever does, including Lion.
His mouth twitched. That almost counted as a joke.
He shifted against the bed frame and kept writing.
Fulgrim held Sevatar for moral support. He did it correctly. Sevatar did not mind.
The next line came more slowly.
I was afraid when I saw him. Not because I thought he would follow us home right then. Because I remembered things I do not want. The smell of his coat when it rained. The sound of the front door. The way everyone got quieter after. I do not like remembering with my whole body.
His hand had begun to shake. He put the pen down for a moment, pressed both palms flat against the paper, and breathed the way Sanguinius taught him. In for four. Hold. Out for six. Again.
When he picked the pen back up, the shaking was smaller.
But we came home. This is important. Sometimes my head shows me things and it feels like they are happening forever, but they are not. The hospital ended. The road ended. The bus passed us and kept going. We came home.
He looked toward the window. The room was dimmer now, almost the right kind of dark.
Downstairs, footsteps crossed the hall. Then came the familiar pattern on the stairs. Not heavy like Ferrus. Not soft like Sanguinius. Fulgrim, still in shoes because rules about indoor dirt became flexible during emotional distress.
Konrad bent over the diary and wrote quickly.
I think Fulgrim was more frightened for me than for himself. That is irritating because I do not want him hurt. It is also nice. I do not know if both can happen at the same time. Probably yes.
A gentle knock came at the door.
Konrad did not answer at once.
The knob turned anyway, slowly enough to allow refusal. Fulgrim opened the door a few inches and peered in. “May I enter this cave of gothic industry.”
Konrad considered, then said, “Yes.”
Fulgrim came in carrying a mug that steamed faintly.
“I brought hot chocolate,” he said. “Ferrus made it, which means it is practical and sincere. I added the small marshmallows, which means it is civilized.”
Konrad closed the diary at once and slid it under his thigh.
Fulgrim noticed. He noticed everything. But he only set the mug carefully on the floor beside Konrad and lowered himself to sit across from him with more grace than anyone had a right to on hardwood.
“Your brother,” he said, “would like to know whether you are hiding because you are upset or because you prefer this location.”
“Both.”
“Yes. Fair.”
They sat in silence for a moment. Fulgrim looked around at the boxes of thread and fabric pieces.
“No sewing?”
“No.”
“Good. I would hate to think a traumatic reunion with a bus-driving father led directly to quilting.”
Konrad touched the edge of the mug. “I wrote instead.”
Fulgrim nodded. “Sanguinius said that might help.”
“It does.”
“I am glad.”
Konrad looked at him. “You are still upset.”
Fulgrim leaned his head back against the bed frame and stared at the ceiling. “I am furious. But the dramatic part has passed. Ferrus made tea and spoke to me as though I were the unreasonable one, which I resent but often need.”
“He is good at that.”
“He is unbearable at that.”
Konrad wrapped both hands around the mug. “I'm sorry you saw him.”
Fulgrim’s gaze dropped at once from the ceiling to Konrad’s face.
“Oh, no,” he said softly. “No. You do not apologize for that. Not ever.”
Konrad looked down at the marshmallows beginning to melt. “I should have said it better.”
“You warned me perfectly well. I am the fool who dismissed ‘banana car’ as nonsense when in fact it was precise prophecy.”
“It was a bus.”
“Still shaped like a banana if one is distressed enough.”
Konrad huffed a small breath through his nose. Another almost-joke.
Fulgrim smiled when he heard it. Then he reached forward and brushed a thumb under one of Konrad’s eyes. Konrad had not realized they were wet until then.
“There you are,” Fulgrim murmured. “I knew you were holding too much.”
Konrad sat very still. “I did not want to make it worse.”
“My darling, your job is not to make adults comfortable.”
Konrad blinked.
Fulgrim held out his arms a little, not quite an order, not quite a question.
Konrad put the mug down and crawled across the short space between them without another word.
Fulgrim gathered him in at once, one hand on the back of his head, the other around his shoulders. Konrad fit there too easily. He was all elbows and cold fingers and hidden tension. Fulgrim could feel each careful breath.
“It was ugly,” Fulgrim said into his hair. “I know. But it is over.”
“For today,” Konrad said.
“For today,” Fulgrim agreed. “And when tomorrow comes, there will still be all of us.”
Konrad pressed his face into Fulgrim’s shirt. “Even Lion?”
“Especially Lion. He would be terrible in a useful way.”
After a moment, Konrad said, muffled, “I wrote that Corvus would already be behind him.”
Fulgrim made a startled sound of laughter. “Excellent. See, this is why the diary is good. It preserves your best insights.”
Konrad pulled back just enough to study his face. “You are not angry that I went away.”
“Of course not. You wanted your room.” Fulgrim smoothed his hair off his forehead. “But I am selfish enough to come after you once I’ve regained my composure.”
“You did not fully regain it.”
“No,” Fulgrim admitted. “But I improved.”
Konrad leaned into him again. Fulgrim held him and said nothing more for a while.
The room darkened another shade. Somewhere downstairs a door opened and shut. A floorboard creaked under Ferrus’s weight. The house settled around them with all its old sounds.
At last Konrad said, “Sanguinius left the notebook by my bed.”
“Yes. He texted me six times about it.”
“I found it.”
“And?”
Konrad hesitated. “I think the page does not mind.”
Fulgrim’s arms tightened a fraction. “No. I imagine the page is honored.”
Konrad nodded against him. Then, after a pause: “Will you stay until I finish my chocolate.”
“I suppose I must.”
“And maybe until Sanguinius comes home.”
Fulgrim made a show of thinking hard. “That is a long sentence of time.”
Konrad waited.
Fulgrim kissed the top of his head. “Yes. Obviously yes.”
Konrad closed his eyes. “Good.”
After a while he climbed back to his place against the bed, and Fulgrim remained seated across from him with his long legs stretched out and his back against the dresser. Konrad drank the chocolate in small careful sips. Fulgrim, finding himself without a task, began sorting a tin of buttons left open near the sewing basket into color families because idle hands offended him.
Konrad opened the diary again, glancing up once as if asking permission.
Fulgrim only lifted a shoulder. “Write whatever slanders you like. I know I am beautiful under scrutiny.”
Konrad bent over the page and added the last lines of the day.
Fulgrim came upstairs with hot chocolate and marshmallows. He said the page is honored, which is not how pages work, but I understand what he meant. He held me when I was too full of remembering. I think this is why Sanguinius said to write things down. Not only the bad parts. Also the true parts after.
He looked at Fulgrim, who was currently arranging pearl buttons by size with intense concentration.
Konrad wrote one more line.
The true part is that I came home, and my brothers were here.
Then he underlined it once, very carefully, and closed the diary.
