-clones chapter, then kills it, then kills its clones, then revives said chapter to do it all over again- That having been said, before you all move on to read the much-delayed chapter – and I’m sure you’ll all see in no time at all why I was so reluctant to work on this – I just want to express my utmost, heartfelt gratitude to everyone who left comments on the last update. Thank you so much for your kind words, your understanding, and your patience, guys. Seriously. You’re the best. –heart-

NOTE: I’ve been noticing some system-inflicted typos popping up involving the thoughts, so from here on out, instead of the thoughts being bracketed by “/”s, they’re just gonna be italicized, okay? Hopefully it won’t confuse anyone – I know between UG and Redux I was confusing myself, haha. Now you may read, and thanks again! :D

Lyrics: “Anthem” © Kamelot

“Who Knew” © Pink

Unwanted Guardian, story and characters © Snyffles

Unwanted Guardian

Chapter Forty-six

To his credit, for once he was actually awake before his alarm even had a chance to go off, and when it did, he let its obnoxious, bleating demand entrench him further in the lucid world instead of simply ignoring it and going back to sleep as habit had dictated since as far back as he could remember. For what quickly began to feel like an eternity, he lay in the silence lurking just beneath that unbearable, droning beep, staring out across the shadowy clutter forever obscuring his floor from plain sight, contemplating everything and nothing until he heaved a muted sigh and melted down into his blankets in defeat. The cool, pallid arm draped over his side remained motionless as he began to stir, lifting his heavy head from its pillow to squint through the darkness at the digital numbers glowing at him from amongst its cockeyed perch on the cluttered bookshelf near the foot of his bed.

Twenty after six.

Definitely time to get up, sad as he was to acknowledge it. With a glance back over his naked shoulder, he saw that Rori was still fast asleep, his face nuzzled into Jason’s pillow, his shoulder and arm naked, snowy white phantoms in the murky gloom of dawn. His form was motionless, a cool marble statue moulded against his back without the disturbance of breath or idle, somnolent shifting. To be perfectly honest, he was kind of surprised the vampire wasn’t already awake, mumbling heavily accented profanities into the back of his neck, not bothering to rise from the bed as he silenced the alarm in his own unnatural way.

No, Jason realized; Rori was still very dead to the world.

Not very long ago, he pensively mused, the minute Jason began exhibiting signs of consciousness, the Englishman would have followed, greeting him with a lazily slurred bit of affectionate vulgarity to start off and in effect ruin his morning. He would have slipped that large, chill palm of his down Jason’s chest, ribs, and stomach before twisting to delve, full of nefarious intent, beneath the waist of his boxers. But now… Now, he was silent, still. Nothing more than a statue sleeping firmly nestled into his naked back with an arm draped over his side and tucked against his chest. And the fact that he could sleep through that damnably aggravating alarm without even so much as twitching…

Jason saw, all over again, the haunting despair that had been present in pained garnet irises the night before – the telling columns of darkness that had been running down from his eyes – when he’d found the vampire kneeling on the shimmering aquamarine surface of the pool like a god, face tilted towards the uncaring night sky, begging… Pleading to hear his brother’s voice, just one last time…

“Please, say something… Anything, I care not what. I need to hear your voice…”

Torn from the moon-stained memory by another obnoxious squawk from his alarm – slighted by even the smallest suggestion that it might be forgotten – Jason gave another tired sigh before easing out from beneath Rori’s limp, heavy arm and the warmth of his thick blankets to crawl stiffly to the foot of his bed and silence his bleating clock. Against his will, however, as he sagged back down onto the rumpled sheets, his mind wandered back to that night, helplessly drawn to its events by sorrow and intrigue.

He still didn’t know what had made Rori so upset – he’d never told him outright, never even so much as hinted at what had happened. Whatever it had been, though… It had injured him, and greatly. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen the vampire so visibly upset about something without knowing the source of it, but clearly… Clearly, it had shaken his entire world, right down to its very core.

And that song… What was that all about?

Something had happened when Rori had asked him to sing for him. He’d seen something, part of his dream of the barren garden that he’d never experienced while he was sleeping. There had been a man – he knew there had been a man – but after that first brief glimpse, he found he couldn’t remember with any great amount of detail what he’d looked like, or why he’d been sitting by that lonely window, staring out at an equally lonely world from within that familiar white house. Perhaps he’d never known who he was, or why he was there… but it felt as though he had, at one point. He felt like he should have recognized that weary, ashen face, and understood why the look in those aching eyes had wounded him so – as though, perhaps, that dream was more than just another dream.

Reaching up to close numb wooden fingers around the metal tags hanging about his neck, wishing that something so simple could just as easily smother the flare of pain in his chest, Jason could do nothing more than sit there, slouched, staring distantly into the darkness for the longest of moments, lost within the chaotic whirlwind of his thoughts and the half-faded remnants of fragmented, disorienting memories.

I don’t want to remember anymore…

Memories of the young woman who would become his next master finding him in that dumpster. Flashes of blood, and steel, a child’s bone-chilling scream; he vaguely recalled the flashing beacon of lights above him, muffled voices, and faces partially obscured by blue masks…

He remembered Luke’s pained expression as he struggled to console an ache Jason couldn’t let him know even existed.

I don’t… Touch shifting down to clutch at his wrists, Jason clenched his sore eyes shut and leaned his forehead against the bony ridges of the knees he’d gradually drawn into his chest. I thought if I started remembering things… I thought it would all start making sense, tell me who I really am, but… it’s not. It’s just leaving me with more questions I can’t answer, and… Sucking in a strained, shaky breath, swallowing back the uncomfortable knot that had tied itself in his throat, his body withdrew into itself yet further, toes curling into the folds of his blankets as he nuzzled deeper into the small warm crevice between his knees. I don’t want any more answers, not if they’re like the ones I’ve already gotten.

Shifting his brow on his knees, lids bruised with sleep deprivation cracked open for weary disks of platinum and chocolate to slide to their corners, sifting through the dark in sullen contemplation for the familiar figure that had lain with him during the long, silent night.

Ror…

"Am I? Human, I mean," the redhead softly amended, and Jason could only watch from beneath his brows as he tilted his head again, just the slightest bit to the side as he lingered on the water's surface.

The vampire was still sleeping, still lying in the exact same position he’d been in when Jason had sidled out from beneath his arm; his chest and shoulders were motionless, barren of even their habitual mimicry of a mortal’s breathing. For the first time, the Englishman truly resembled a corpse nestled into his bed – his guardian angel with tattered and blackened wings, he idly mused. He didn’t shift, didn’t make even the tiniest of sounds as he slept; his eyes were still beneath perfect white lids and lips leeched long ago of their rosy color remained frozen, parted ever so slightly in repose.

"Is that how you think of me?"

I forget, sometimes…

When Rori was awake, he was always doing something – his gaze was forever wandering, his expressive body fluidly melting from one stance into another during conversation. His smile, his voice, had always been distracting Jason from noticing just how motionless he could be, how unnatural his appearance suddenly seemed to be when left unattended by his conscious mind. The expression and life was gone from his perfect ivory mask, his figure as still as those of the statues decorating the Manor’s halls. His skin, Jason recalled, had been hard and chill to the touch when he’d eased out from beneath the Englishman’s arm. And it was then, partnered with the shimmering memory of naked white feet walking atop the water, that he was made aware anew of a reality he’d overlooked time and time again.

You’re not human at all, his thoughts absently murmured into the gloom. Not anymore.

In reality, the image that Jason had always had of the man in his mind was nothing more than an elaborate façade. All of his humanity was born from a conscious effort – an absent reminder to fidget lest he become too still, to breathe when he had no need for it outside of facilitating speech, or song. Even the way that the vampire blinked, Jason suddenly realized, didn’t possess the same natural nonchalance it should have.

As he sat there, however, quietly observing the slumbering Englishman, Jason shifted his cheek onto the supportive beam of his crossed forearms and gently sighed. When it all comes down to it, though… Does it really matter? I mean…

Rori was trying so hard to live again, to grasp once more the mortality that had been leeched from his veins more than three hundred years ago in a last, desperate attempt to exist normally amongst those he held dear.

Jason’s mind gave itself pause for a moment, and as he sat in the silence, watching the vampire sleep, a mute, self-deprecating grin edged onto the corners of his lips. It’s not like he’s not the only one in this house who isn’t human. If anything, he’s more human than I am. He kills to survive, but me… The smile withered on his lips and faded away into the shadows. I killed for pleasure, for fun… I’m the last person who should be trying to judge anyone on how human they are.

Sighing into the hush as he pensively observed the vampire’s motionless form, nuzzling the lower half of his face into the arms he’d folded atop his knees, Jason allowed the smallest of helpless smiles to creep onto his mouth. My life’s so messed up. Staring with a contemplative intensity at the vampire nestled into his bed, Jason snorted a muted laugh and let that tiny smile widen just slightly at one corner. But I guess it can’t be helped. He’s still just Rori to me, an’ if people find out and want to call me a necrophiliac or something… Whatever. To me, he’s just as human and alive as the next person. That’s all that matters, right?

Without fully realizing how his body had gradually begun to lean its weight onto his hands and knees, Jason cautiously crept back up towards the slumbering vampire, crawling just close enough to be able to brush the hair back from his expressionless face as he hunkered down on his folded calves and – after a moment of awkward nerve and hesitation – pressed a lingering kiss to the cool flesh of his temple.

You’ll always be just Rori to me, He murmured silently to himself. You make mistakes, just like anyone else. You laugh and you grieve. You love, and you hate. Jason sniffled back a tiny breath in the quiet sanctuary of his bedroom as he trailed the tips of his fingers lightly down the immortal’s firm cheek. You’ve saved my life on more than one occasion and you just accept me as I am. You’re a complete enigma to me but… The faint phantom of a grin twitched at the corners of his lips as he pulled away and settled on his elbows, letting his fingers trace idle patterns across the back of the vampire’s motionless hand. Hell, far as I’m concerned, and I can’t see myself admitting it out loud anytime soon, but… Far as I’m concerned, you’re my enigma, and as long as you’re around… Maybe things’ll be okay.

Slowly leaning in, hesitant to rouse the vampire from his leaden slumber, Jason’s tired lids drifted shut as his lips lightly brushed the corner of the Englishman’s mouth, and hovering there for just a moment longer, he gently kissed him before retreating and carefully pushing himself to his feet. After all, that alarm had been set for a reason.

Whether he liked it or not, he had to get ready for school… and Derek’s memorial.

-x-

He could feel his warmth there, lingering just beside him as a soft mouth grazed his brow – a hand decorated with heavy rings resting lightly on his mussed hair – banishing the steel bonds of sleep that had enshrouded him within an impermeable blanket of darkness. He could sense the sunlight just beyond his lids, the gentle illumination of the waking hours of the day where He waited patiently, perched on the edge of the bed with a watchful smile serenely painted across soft lips, wisps of lusciously dark chocolate hair falling forward into a face rendered void of features…

“Wake up, little brother…”

Bruised lids struggled to lift, inching open scarce slivers at a time for bleary mint green irises to wake to nothing but a swirling pool of indiscernible shapes and color – a mass of nonsensical blobs, melted into one great puddle of confused objects. But even so, he knew with a disheartening certainty that it was not the same world he’d longed to wake to. Instead of the warm, luminous gold he’d seen in his dream, his surroundings were flooded with the pale grey illumination of a dawn marred by glum skies, and the ever-lingering threat of rain. Instead of the spacious chamber decorated by rich, dark fabrics and skilfully dyed tapestries, occupied by only the most necessary of furniture, he woke to a room dominated by anarchy. Everywhere his weary eyes wandered, they found a cluttered collection of clothing, pens, and paper, CDs and DVDs mingling in a riot of dog-eared paperback novels and magazines; each of the four walls where the furniture did not reach had been plastered with posters of heavy metal bands, exotic cars – and their equally exotic female decorations – or various paper notes and magazine clippings. And when his gaze, still misted by slumber, staggered across the guitars hanging between two doors, and the large amp that sat beneath them, Rori felt his motionless heart clench in his chest.

When he’d still been a young, impetuous boy, he remembered watching Dante play his lute, a mask of absolute serenity worn upon his face even while wisps of dark hair escaped from behind his ear. It was one of the few times when he’d refrained from causing some sort of calamity or scandal to simply loiter in his brother’s presence, listening to his music, losing himself in it and following his nimble, calloused fingers as they waltzed across the strings. His brother’s heart had always been in his music, and how often Rori had envied him for that – the way he could conjure the most potent of emotions with so little effort, and lasso even the most callous of hearts with his inimitably beautiful voice…

“What’s a miracle, if Life itself is not?
Who am I to praise its worth with a hymn?”

But then, Jason had done just that, last night by the poolside. Painfully aware of the muse’s absence when his roving fingers found nothing next to him but the faded warmth the blankets had absorbed from Jason’s body, only the softest of breaths escaped him as heavy lids ghosted shut and he nuzzled deeper into the boy’s pillow. Jason, his dear muse, had possessed the very voice he’d so longed to hear, and with it, he’d sung a song that Rori could imagine so vibrantly his brother pouring his heart and soul into that it made him want for nothing more than to weep.

There were no words to describe the scars that Jason had inadvertently torn open when the lyrics of that song had spilled from his lips. The very instant the muse’s voice – Dante’s voice – had swelled up from within his human confines, Rori’s heart had been gripped within a fist disfigured by the shattered blades protruding from its flesh, and the doors to the past that had thrown themselves shut burst open again with a flurry of forgotten memories and emotions.

It had been the very tenor he remembered so vividly singing his troubled childhood self to sleep, luring his mind into a blissful oblivion where his brother’s voice was the only thing that mattered. It was the warm, rich tenor that had chastised him for being rude or foolish, purring praise and consolation when his mind was wrought with feelings of inadequacy or discontentment. He remembered hearing Dante’s soft beckon from a doorway limned by candlelight after a harsh scolding from his father, and he remembered listening to the beating of Dante’s heart beneath his ear as gentle fingers stroked his hair. He remembered walking through the cobbled streets of London, laughing and making scathing jests over the newest gossip every other noble in the city seemed to thrive on save for them. He remembered waiting impatiently beneath a dying tree and dismal skies, scanning the horizon for a glimpse of his brother’s mount carrying him swiftly, safely, home.

“I may stumble over words that I forgot,
Just as life itself slowly begins…”

He remembered Dante’s warm palm against his cheek as they laid, naked bodies intertwined with one another, in the rough sheets of an inn that had accepted the coin of two young men without question, and he remembered the endearingly solemn look in those murky blue eyes when his brother first murmured a single poignant phrase that had changed everything.

For a fleeting moment, Rori thought he could still feel his brother’s hot fingertips thoughtfully caressing his cheek – could have all but sworn that he could still feel Dante’s firm body sprawled beneath his own, their legs tangled in an intimate weave, as he gazed up in rapture into those dark eyes overwhelmed by an affection that knew no boundaries. He thought he could still feel the phantom of his brother’s lips as they tenderly captured his own…

“One day you’ll wonder why I try read between the lines,
And you will sing for me, the way I sang for you…”

The world was flooded with darkness once more, and he could see only his beloved’s savaged body slumped against the wall with his head hanging, dark strands of hair falling freely into an ashen, blood-splattered face… And he felt the pain all over again when he heard his own tattered voice scream his brother’s name. He felt the weight of his body in his arms, and was forced to witness one last time as the lingering remnants of life in his gentle sapphire irises were smothered forever.

“Dante…!”

Sagging deeper into an empty bed beneath the mantle of sorrow, clinging to the comfort that began to fade with the warmth of Jason’s body, Rori clenched his lids tighter shut and fought to subdue the ominous, pricking warmth he could feel building in the corners of his eyes. Oh, forgive me, brother, I was such a fool… Able to do nothing but lie in quiet submission in the presence of the ever-watchful silence, Rori struggled to lift aching lids and peered with grieving crimson irises out across the chaos of Jason’s bedroom. I should have listened to you – I should have heeded your warnings, but… And yet, even now… Even after all these years, you’re out there somewhere, aren’t you? Wandering some ethereal plane of existence where I cannot reach you, but somehow you still manage to breach the barrier to comfort me and guide me home when I’ve gotten myself lost… Staring through an undulating blanket of moisture, he swallowed back a wall of knotted memories and took a small, tremulous breath as a frail smile found itself plucking tentatively at the corners of his lips. You always were watching over me. Ever the diligent guardian, and I’ve caused you nothing but trouble as thanks.

You cannot fight what is in your blood, little brother… You were born into this world a fiery little hellion, and you will pass from it all the same when the time comes.

Lids drooped in a wretched, contented yearning for things long passed when there was the briefest ethereal hint of his brother’s hand on his hair again, gently stroking it back from his face as he’d done so often when they were children. Help me, brother… Tell me what I must do. For a flickering instant, he felt as though time had bent backwards unto itself, returning him to a time when he was nothing more than a boy desperate to be seen as a man, and his brother the ever-watchful shadow in whose lap he’d laid his head.

Be strong, love, the phantom whispered, its presence nothing more than a feeling that curled around his heart, gently squeezing it, just to remind him that it was there. Do not mourn the past, no matter how it pains you, for you are left with no means to change it. What’s been done, is done. Your loved ones, your most cherished mortals… I’ve been dead for many years, Rori, but they still live. Protect them. They need you now, more than ever.

Calming beneath the warmth of his brother’s ghostly voice, finding some frail sense of consolation in the barely corporeal presence of Dante’s touch on his hair, Rori nuzzled desperately into the depths of Jason’s pillow, certain that within a moment he would feel for himself some evidence of a physical being… But he should have known better when he found nothing but cooling fabric, drenched in Jason’s scent.

Be strong, dear one. There are still those depending on you…

And a moment later, when weary lids opened, the innate awareness of his brother’s presence disappeared, disintegrating into the atmosphere as though it had all been no more than the whimsy of a grieving madman.

They need you…

I know, but… Letting a slow, heavy sigh timidly ease its way into the silence, Rori gingerly kneaded the leaden flesh of his lids, melting into the welcoming confines of Jason’s empty bed and longing, more than anything in that moment, for the muse’s presence. What he wouldn’t have given just then to be able to wind an arm around the sleeping mortal’s warm, pliant body, to nuzzle into the fragrant flesh of his neck as a slight groan of protest breached the silence and fall away once more into an oblivion of safety and serenity. I don’t know what to do, brother. I’m lost…

He didn’t know when he’d suddenly become so reluctant to have anything to do with reality – perhaps it’d been when he’d looked into Gabriel’s glacial eyes again for the first time in over three hundred years. Or perhaps this hesitance had begun sidling into his psyche much earlier, discreetly melting into the fabric of his being and fermenting, simply waiting for its moment to blossom, since the night he’d witnessed Gabriel’s secret greeting slipping beneath his front door.

’Even as the rest of the world wilts with time and eventually shatters, the immortal rose will forever remain as beautiful as the day it came into being.’

His thoughts silently scoffed at the romanticism of it now, but even so, there was no ignoring the tiny, creeping chill that brushed against his heart. Bitterness surged through the confines of his being and flooded him with a familiar acrimony when he became aware anew of his sire’s presence tainting the aura of his home. Feh. I’ll give you nothing, you foul, manipulative heathen.

“He promised he would protect me!”

Biting back the wash of pain that threatened to roll over him once again, Rori quashed the reluctant tremble sinking into his limbs and gradually pushed himself up from Jason’s bed, abandoning his scent to the blankets and staring blindly for a long while into the depths of the muse’s bedroom. Against his will, his jaw clenched itself until the joint ached from the strain he’d unconsciously applied to it, muscles bunching beneath firm ivory flesh as his teeth clamped together. Only when it began to feel as though they might shatter beneath the pressure did he force his jaw to go lax, but the tension was still there, strewn throughout the muscles of his body and digging its claws into his very bones as numb fingers gradually curled into loose fists in Jason’s bed sheets.

Julian…

He wrenched himself from his thoughts before they could wander any further, brusquely robbing them of the opportunity to gnaw in unfounded paranoia over something he might have overlooked. Secret meaning lurking beneath the sweet guise of words he’d trusted without fail; peculiar actions, or abrupt, nigh imperceptible disturbances in the life he’d come to know too well. Without even realizing it, his chest slowly began to heave with the breaths he sucked in through flared nostrils, and without realizing it, his nails began to bite sharply into his palms as he glared at the memory of his sire’s condescending smile.

His puppet told him exactly what he wanted to hear, nothing more, His mind growled to itself. It’s nothing more than an empty promise coated in sweet words of affection, an attempt to win over a heart left vulnerable and in need to endear himself to those under my protection. I’ll not play this game with him again and I’ll not stand for it. Not from the bastard who’s already once robbed me of everything I held dear.

Nonetheless, no matter how much effort he put into the task, he found he couldn’t banish the recollection of the harsh, defensive light that had taken to his lover’s eyes when those words had burst from his lips, the way Rori had seen then and there how Julian truly believed in the promise his sire’s plaything had made to him. And this time, when that frigid, pulsating ache flared within the core of his being, Rori could not smother it. He wanted to be angry with Julian for being so naïve – he wanted to strike him and shake into him the sense that had so obviously fled during his absence. He wanted to wallow in the misery whispering to him of his failure to protect the ones he loved more than life itself.

Instead, he resigned himself to a detached oblivion, enshrouding himself in a blanket of ice and burrowing deep into the heart of a seclusion that would not be breached by the emotions he found he could no longer trust.

Sweeping back the muse’s sheets and untangling himself from the maudlin sentiments that had bogged him down in a mire of self-pity and remorse, he spent one last moment absorbing Jason’s presence from his belongings, taking comfort from his human scent and his impeccably chaotic aura, before he rose up and drifted to the door. He could feel something bright taking root within him, something as cold and malicious as the sun glinting off the crystalline surface of a jagged icicle whose infectious touch systematically devoured the parts of him that had been left tremulous, and treacherous. And soon enough, he could feel himself becoming separated from those parts of himself, barricading away the most tender sections of his being in a thick, uncompromising diamond cage even as they shrieked and pounded defiantly against the walls imprisoning them.

What was left was the creature his sire had groomed him to be during the years Rori had spent in his company. Unaffected, merciless, and cruel.

It was the only way he knew – the onlyway possible – to defend himself against Gabriel’s machinations, and if securing his family’s safety meant abandoning himself once more to the embrace of that manipulative monster he’d struggled so desperately to slaughter…

So be it.

Melting through the bedroom door, everything within him gave a bone-jarring shudder when he roughly collided with the graceful, distracted being on the other side, knocking a basket piled high with laundry from the grip of startled fingers. Reacting before his mind was even offered a chance to register the situation, a long ivory hand dove beneath the basket and caught it on an open palm, silently lifting it back up to a level where the flushing blonde could reclaim it.

Wide, pallid brown eyes stared down at the basket’s confines for a time, crawling up in uncertainty to meet his gaze before flashing back down as Julian woodenly grasped its plastic handles, his chest seeming to heave even though his breaths were silent. His brows began to furrow as Rori took his hand out from beneath it, and every shift in Julian’s stance was made painfully obvious to him when the blonde’s arms dipped slightly with the full weight of their burden. His shoulders stiffened by a fraction of an amount, and his head bowed just the slightest bit as the crease in his brows deepened, his soft mouth gently tensing itself; tarnished gold waves of hair, most of which had been tied back against the nape of his neck with round, amber-tinted glasses perched atop his head, tumbled forward to frame the long pale oval of his face. After a moment longer, dispirited brown irises still staring hesitantly downwards, his arms relaxed and the basket sagged to a level parallel with his thighs. “Thank you.”

The crystal walls gave another violent shudder when Rori saw himself in vibrant detail in his mind, reaching out to tuck a rippling curtain of Julian’s hair behind his left ear, trailing fingertips tenderly along the line of his jaw before tipping up a bruised face too beautiful to look so melancholy to reassure him with a soothing smile. Instead, his countenance remained frozen in a mask barren of expression, and, desperate to occupy his hands with something before they could act of their own volition, he clasped them with a forced nonchalance behind his back as he continued to watch his beloved through distant, unfeeling eyes.

Awkwardly clearing his throat after a time, a corner of his mouth tugged sharply to the side before it relaxed again, Julian glanced up at him with meek, tawny orbs and managed a feeble smile as he braced the basket against his pelvis and shifted his hands together on the lip directly opposite him. “I was wondering where you might’ve wound up last night,” the blonde murmured, his voice nothing more than a soft, mild suggestion of sound in an otherwise overwhelming silence.

A hint of a smile draped itself across his lips. “Why, if I didn’t know any better, I’d think the tone of your voice suggested that you missed me.” Listening to the cruel, casually caustic words that escaped him in a voice that sounded all at once foreign and surreal, Rori found that the reins controlling the creature he’d beseeched to aid him were suddenly wrenched out of his grasp as he was brusquely shoved into one of the icy chambers within himself. No…! No! Leave him out of this, you duplicitous pandering whoreson!

He could do nothing but watch as Julian’s head bowed further, his expression crumbling deeper into despair. Elegant fingers tightened themselves around the lip of the laundry basket, and it was all too obvious how his lover had to struggle to swallow back the waver that wanted to seep into his speech. “I did miss you, Rori.”

“I can’t possibly imagine why. After all,” That small smile broadened to something vile and frigid and Rori could do nothing to stop the poisonous words spilling relentlessly from his mouth. “Gabriel seems to suit your tastes – your… requirements, if you will– much better than I ever could.”

“No-”

Rori impatiently cut the distraught blonde off with a callous laugh, flesh warm and soft against the skin of his cold fingers as he lifted his lover’s face with a finger crooked intimately beneath his chin. “Please. Save yourself the indignity of trying to lie to me, darling.” His voice dipped into a sultry murmur, thoughtfully brushing the pad of his thumb against trembling lips as he met eyes filled with pain and welling with tears, “I fear the embarrassment would be simply too much to bear.”

Don’t listen to him, love. Don’t- Aching at the sight of his lover’s wounded, wide-eyed expression and rendered numb to the agony it revealed at the same time, Rori was left helpless against the dagger twisting itself maliciously in his heart as his greater self dropped its venomous smile and removed his hand, clasping them once more neatly behind him. “If that’s everything, I’m afraid I must be on my way. I’ve more important matters demanding my attention. Good day.” Giving his silenced lover the slightest gentlemanly bow of his head, Rori sent him a final glimmer of a wolfish smirk and savage green eyes before he turned his back in a single fluid stride, straightened, and walked away.

And despite the fact that Julian’s soft, heartbroken whisper of his name brushed against his ears with a profound, painful clarity, he didn’t stop or send even so much as a last rueful glance back, no matter how desperately he yearned to do just that.

-x-

The very instant Jason sidled through the doors of the Academy’s gym – surrounded on nearly all sides by schoolmates, teachers, and his friends – the nausea that had been obstinately writhing in his gut worsened. Talons slashed themselves across his stomach without drawing even so much as a drop of blood before they clenched themselves into the organ and gave it a sickening, agonizing squeeze. It took all of the strength he possessed to restrain himself from reflexively lifting a hand to his abdomen, but the wince that gripped his carefully maintained expression of neutrality manifested in spite of his efforts, twitching a brow down into a furrow while a corner of his mouth jerked itself to the side. For a moment, the discomfort in his throat intensified, and he was all but certain that it would be only a matter of minutes before he started gagging and inevitably retched. But he didn’t. He simply gritted his teeth, fought to level his breathing, and tried to work some warmth back into his fingers as they curled into the clammy palms hanging uselessly by his side, praying that the dim lighting in such a vast room would hide the way he knew he must have blanched.

Thankfully, given the purpose of this assembly, no one seemed to take notice.

There was Derek’s photo again, staring at him from the front of the room where a projector was beaming it up onto a large canvas screen. The tables that had been placed in the cafeteria and by his locker had been moved, and now they stood by, lit by those same candles and carrying other delicately framed photos of the young man, still with so much life to live, that had been lost before his time. In the silence, there was weeping – small, hushed scatterings of crying friends and family. Even the unyielding and sour principal was hovering at the front of the room, haggard and ashen-faced despite the warm, faint lighting; a handkerchief was clutched in the withered hands she held suspended at her waist as she softly conversed with her second in command, and before his very eyes as he discreetly watched on in the distance, Dachenheimer gave a tremulous nod, bent her head, and delicately dabbed at the tears gathering under her narrow glasses.

Even Dachenheimer…

Unable to do anything else as they slowly filed into the gym filled with the soft glow of candles, heart knotted in his chest, Jason kept his gaze down and quietly tucked his hands into his pockets, fighting with all of his might to smother a riot of memory.

“Wh-what have you done?” He could hardly hear the words that left his lips above the frantic pounding of his heart, a cold dread washing over him in an oppressive wave, threatening to smother his very being. Time had seemed to freeze in that moment, glazed, vacant crimson eyes locked with horrified brown and platinum, silence settling between them in a suffocating cloak.

But he could not ignore the gore he beheld – the blood, the lifeless, mutilated body lying sprawled on the cement, the soiled jacket declaring the man’s identity. . .

“What have you done!?”

“So, uh, if I start snoring or something,” Randy mumbled to them out of the corner of his mouth, casting wide, dark eyes about the gym as they waded deeper into the sorrow, “smack me.”

Skye dealt him a sharp back-handed cuff to the bicep regardless, pinning him with a quick, pointed glance of disapproval. “Don’t be an ass, Randy,” he grumbled under his breath.

“Well come on…”

“It won’t kill you to at least try be a little respectful,” the redhead mordantly admonished him, folding his arms tightly against himself. A single, abruptly sullen blue eye wandered about their surroundings, taking in the faces of the bored, the grieving, and the sympathetic, before shooting the bassist a sidelong glance saturated with grim meaning. “Believe it or not, some people here actually lost a friend. How would you feel if it were the other way around?”

Randy fired him a black glower, lips pursed as he speechlessly levelled a calloused finger at him, shaking his hand in mute frustration before he ground out, “That is not fuckin’ fair Skye and you know it. That is ten different kinds of dirty fighting and that is just not cool, man.”

“Look, I know he was a dick to us, but just…” The drummer paused, his shoulders sagging as he sighed and dejectedly rubbed his fingertips against his brow. “Look. All I’m asking is to have a little consideration for the ones who’re mourning, okay? We might’ve disliked him-”

“Ch’yeah, understatement of the year, that one,” Randy wryly mumbled, decidedly going quiet when Skye shot him a dark look.

“But that doesn’t change the fact that he’s got friends and family in here who just lost part of life as they know it. Be nice or suffer the consequences.”

The bassist simply gave a moody roll of his eyes as he tucked his hands in his pockets and scowled.

“I mean it, Randy.”

The musician lifted his palms with expressively wide eyes and hunched shoulders to ward off his friend’s growl.

Barely even registering the soft, slowly building crescendo of feet thumping towards his back, sheathed within the impermeable haze of his own thoughts, Jason violently jolted when a hand sharply connected with his ass. Bursting out with a vile enough swear to draw the attention of everyone in the immediate vicinity, staggering aside into his startled friends and clutching desperately at his chest with clawed fingers, Jason righted himself just in time to see Artemis jogging off into the crowds after Kali, shooting a teasing grin and a playful wink at him from over her skinny shoulder. Doing his level best not to yell a stream of obscenities after the impish German, no matter how irresistible it happened to be, Jason clamped his teeth down on the sides of his tongue and settled instead for a decidedly offensive gesture involving a fist and his arm.

Jesus fucking Christ Artemis… Are you trying to give me a heart attack!?

“Well that was… random.” Luke absently mused, sending an estranged glance after the two girls before they waded into the crowd.

Coaxing his coughing and sputtering heart out of his throat, hoping in vain that it might acquiesce to return to its natural habitat in his chest, Jason shot the older man a taut smile only after taking a long, centering breath. “Yeah well in Artyschnitzelland it’s the norm,” he croaked. “Just be glad you don’t live with her, ‘cause every day is shit like that times ten.”Distractedly wetting his lips as he raked his fingers back through his hair in a bid for composure, he watched her vibrant head of hair melt into the distant crowd of students. Fuck… Struggling to still his pounding heart, he gently rubbed the heel of his hand against his chest, only distantly aware of the presence of the metal tags beneath his palm. Sucking in another slow, steady breath, oblivious to his friends’ muted jests as the crowd began moving forward again, filing students into their seats, Jason shot a discreet sidelong glance up at Derek’s portrait.

It was kind of funny actually, in a way. In the brief time that he’d known the athlete, in all of their innumerable and often volatile encounters, he’d never realized Derek had freckles, but now, seeing his likeness blown up on the projection screen like that… There they were, staring him in the face. There was the tiniest smattering of them – faint, barely noticeable sun-freckles – spanning across the bridge of a nose that Jason had broken with a malicious glee more than once, reaching out with diminishing arms towards cheekbones that had often been left the bruised victims of their fistfights. He’d never realized until now how only one of Derek’s irises seemed more grey than blue; how – even in the warm, diffusing glow from the sunlight in the photo – there were the same dark, telltale circles under those eyes that Jason had always seen under his own.

He’d never noticed when the blonde had fired him just another snide smile that his teeth weren’t the perfect ivories one would expect from the child of a privileged family, and in spite of all of the times they’d been fisting their hands in one another’s shirts, snarling taunts and threats into the other’s face, he’d never realized that there had been a deep, short scar slashing itself through the flesh above Derek’s right brow. And in spite of himself, in spite of the guilt weighing heavily upon his leaden heart, Jason couldn’t help but wonder how that scar came to be.

He couldn’t help but wonder whether Derek had ever wandered his house in the dark of the night, uncaring of where he went, biding his time and waiting for sleep’s fickle embrace all the while knowing that it might never come. Whether he’d ever look at himself in a mirror fogged by steam from the shower and just stare at the eyes that didn’t quite match, wondering if maybe one of those eyes belonged to someone deep within himself that he’d never meet.

Barely even conscious of his body settling itself into a seat between Randy and Luke, surrounded on all sides by a sea of students, Jason forced down the painful tightness cinching around his throat and tore his gaze from the screen, humbled by the frozen stare of someone who’d – just like him – been robbed of a lifetime of memories and possibilities.

-x-

“I would like to thank everyone who offered their aid in this project, the friends and family,” The principal paused for a moment, her watering gaze flicking down to stare at the paper resting quietly on the podium as withered hands tightened around one another and she forced herself to swallow before continuing with a thick, wavering voice, “for bringing forth the material to celebrate the life of a young man lost to us before his time. As a friend of Derek’s family, I have been there with them, working through the daunting and painful task of compiling photos and video clips into a presentation in honour of his memory.” Dachenheimer briefly wet her thin, shrivelled lips before lifting her reddened eyes from the podium to look out over the crowd through half-moon spectacles. “I would like to call upon Sonya Melantiuk now, who’s been by the side of Derek’s parents and his siblings every step of the way, sharing in their loss and offering whatever consolation she can, to lend us her voice in the musical accompaniment for this presentation.”

Trembling hands that had been lying numbly on his thighs tightened as heavy iron lids struggled to blink only once before silver and brown irises crawled tentatively upwards in the relative darkness. He could merely watch – oblivious to Randy’s mumbled inquiry over the girl’s abrupt ability to sing – as the slight young woman embraced the Academy’s commonly irascible principal, lingering for but a moment longer before releasing her, approaching the microphone, eyes downcast, and apprehensively wetting her lips. Small, pale hands distractedly lifted to adjust the microphone, brushing dark hair back from her forehead, and while someone sitting near the projector readied the slideshow, Jason felt his heart painfully freeze within his chest when the full weight of the situation struck his dazed mind.

He should have known that there would be something like this; he should have anticipated the possibility that there would be music to at least some part of the memorial service, but to call upon someone who had truly loved Derek to dedicate a song to his memory… Fighting down the knot that had tied itself in his throat, restricting his breathing and straining nerves already wrenched to their breaking point, quivering fingers furled into shaking fists on his thighs. Having to watch Derek’s face flashing across the screen would have been bad enough, but to add music… To add the voice of a grieving loved one…

I don’t know if I can…

His chest began to heave, sucking in carefully silenced breaths in through flared nostrils when the music began, wistful strums of a guitar filtering gently through the air of a gymnasium drenched in grief, and the first image of the slideshow – a photo of Derek hunched over with two young children piled onto his back outdoors, making a comically unimpressed face at the camera – melted onto the screen. Sonya didn’t look at it, and by the carefully controlled quiver Jason could just barely see in glossy lips, the sheen of moisture in her painted eyes and the sudden flare of small, pale nostrils, he knew somewhere deep within himself that she couldn’t.

Oh god I don’t know if I’m gonna be able to do this. I can’t handle this shit right now.

But you don’t have a choice, a soft voice uttered from the back of his mind. If he left, it would arouse suspicion, wouldn’t it? After all, he and Derek had never been on good terms with one another, not since Jason’s first day at the Academy. To claim that he’d ducked out of the slideshow to collect himself – presumably out of grief spurred by a comrade’s death– would be an obvious lie, a mere façade erected to hide something others were already wondering about. It would justify their reasons for suspecting that he…

Ror… Help me…

“You took my hand,
You showed me how
You promised me you’d be around;
Uh-huh, that’s right…”

Another photo faded into place, a busy restaurant filling the background as the athlete wrapped an arm around Sonya’s shoulder, pulling her in close to press a playful kiss to her cheek as she tried to shrink away, laughing. The next was of the jock and the petite musician sleeping together on a sofa, her dark head tucked under his chin, his arms surrounding her in a warm, protective embrace.

Taking a breath from singing, the girl wet her lips again, glistening lashes drifting shut as she gently took hold of the microphone, brows furrowing for a fleeting moment in pain before she started again in a voice that would have been smooth and rich, were it not for the quiver of mourning trying its absolute hardest to strangle it.

“I took your words and I believed
In everything you said to me;
Yeah-huh, that’s right…”

There was a soft, delicate sniffle in the fleeting break just then, and even though he was trying so damned hard to hold his head above the surface of the music, clinging with all of his might to a rock already slick with his own guilt and remorse, he found he couldn’t. With one swift jerk, the current of emotion roaring beneath it – the tide of longing and love and unutterable despair screaming at him from within her voice – wrenched him under.

“If someone said three years from now,
You’d be long gone,
I’d stand up and punch them out,
‘Cause they’re all wrong;”

He could feel a blanket of moisture burning on the surface of his eyes, and suddenly, he couldn’t see Sonya anymore – couldn’t see the slideshow or the photos and muted videos gracing the screen and spurring soft laughs and bouts of weeping from the audience. He saw… No, he felt the crisp chill of autumn. He felt joy and adoration and euphoria as someone roughly kissed him on the cheek and trapped him in strong arms, swinging him off of his feet around and around, laughing, even though it was a laugh that didn’t belong to him… It was too high, too feminine…

“I know better,
‘Cause you said forever,”

Soft whispers, the warmth of thick fingers wandering over his own, tracing the length of them as he did, and a gentle smile resonating within grey and blue eyes.

“We’re gonna get out of this place…”

“And ever,
Who knew…?”

Surfacing above memories that weren’t his own, Jason all but gasped a breath amongst the audience of friends, family, and schoolmates, his mind flailing, slapping madly at the current trapping him within its grip, feebly hoping to find something solid, something real to take hold of and pull himself out before it destroyed him. But there was nothing. There was Sonya’s voice, the sparkling trail of moisture on her cheek, and the broad smile of his victim in child form amongst grins of his friends and costumes of vampires and mummies and a lone Frankenstein. Fingers scraped a fragment of reality, nails catching and scratching uselessly, before he was torn under once again.

“Remember when we were such fools,
And so convinced and just too cool?
Oh no, no no…”

It was hot, sunny. He was leaning against a friend he’d never had and he was laughing, watching through tinted lenses as a familiar figure clad in swimming trunks grappled with another young man, only to suddenly have a leg swept out from under him and drop heavily to the white sand with the other atop him. There was a burst of concern for a moment, when that face crumpled in pain, but a fraction of a second later it was brushed aside for humour as it begged for mercy. Everything was dark – he was in a movie theatre, terrified, his heart racing miles every second as he clung to a muscled arm and relaxed only when a warm voice jested comfortingly in his ear.

“Dunno ‘bout you but if I were them I woulda run away screaming like a little girl by now.”

“I wish I could touch you again;
I wish I could still call you a friend;
I’d give anything…”

Moonlight, concrete… Blood. Finally it was a memory that belonged to him, but he would have given anything to see something else. Anything else. Anything but the dark form huddled over a mangled body. Anything but the depraved smile worn on a white mask dripping with crimson. There was nothing but overwhelming grief as he crumbled to the ground, clutching at himself, wailing, phone discarded and forgotten; inconsolable, even when feet pounded across a wooden floor and a motherly embrace gathered him into the warmth of someone’s bosom.

“When someone said count your blessings now,
‘Fore they’re long gone,”

He couldn’t sleep, not for nights afterwards – he could only relive past memories, could only hope that he would cry himself to exhaustion and gradually fade away into dreams of a smile he would never see again.

“I guess I just didn’t know how;
I was all wrong;”

He couldn’t feel anything anymore. Couldn’t cry. Couldn’t grieve. There was simply… Nothing. Nothing but a hollow encasement of flesh and bone as he stepped forward to lay with a shaking hand a single flower on the coffin now holding someone he’d planned on spending the rest of his life with.

“But they knew better,
Still you said forever,”

“I’m never gonna leave you, Sonya… I promise.”

“And ever,
Who knew…?”

The pain wouldn’t go away. No company could ease it. No frail jesting could alleviate it. He was gone, forever – but he’d promised… He’d promised he wouldn’t leave! He promised…!

“I’ll keep you locked in my head
Until we meet again…”

“It’ll be just you ‘n me. Together… Forever.”

Laying in bed, he still saw those mismatched eyes smiling at him in the darkness. He still felt the warmth of those fingers as they traced his own – still felt the heat of lips kissing his skin. Tears gathered on his lashes in the shadows, and there was nothing he could do anymore to stop them from falling. Nothing he could do to keep the sickening grief and guilt from writhing in his gut, clawing its way up his throat until he could no longer breathe around its bulk.

“Until we, until we meet again…”

His hands were shaking as they convulsed and tightened on his thighs, his knuckles aching and white; his jaw screamed in pain as it clenched even harder against his will. He couldn’t breathe, even though he was trying… Even though his nostrils were flared and his lungs gasping, he couldn’t breathe…!

“And I won’t forget you, my friend;
What happened?”

“… love you-“

Crimson lips parted in a cruel, grotesque smile, demonic, blood-red irises glittering malevolently in the darkness.

“If someone said three years from now,
You’d be long gone,”

Shoving himself up from his seat, legs buckling and a hand whipping out to grasp desperately onto the back of the chair nearest him, Jason didn’t wait for the haze of black to clear from his vision before he began staggering towards the aisle. … have to get out of here! His legs were shaking – hell, his entire body was shaking, but he couldn’t make it stop. Not with all of those feelings pounding through his veins, crawling over his skin. Not with all of Sonya’s memories shrieking through his head. Not while he could still see Derek’s face, maimed beyond recognition while knowing it was all because of him.

“I’d stand up and punch them out,
Cause they’re all wrong, and,”

Bursting free of the entanglement of students and chairs, stumbling aside and struggling to regain his balance as a memory that didn’t belong to him lanced painfully through his mind, Jason was rendered deaf for a moment as his hand flew to the phantoms screaming in his head.

“That last kiss I’ll cherish
Until we meet again,”

He couldn’t hear anything over the pounding of his heart in his ears – over Sonya’s voice, overflowing with feelings of loss and love that he could feel tightening around his chest like barbed wire, cutting through flesh, biting into bone...

“And time makes it harder,
I wish I could remember;”

He could barely see through the images of Sonya’s past that threw themselves over his eyes like a blanket, blinding him to all else as he bolted to the men’s change room, oblivious to the curious stares trailing after him and deaf to the spectres of trauma shrieking hysterically in the back of his mind.

“But I keep your memory,
You visit me in my sleep;”

Jason threw himself against the door, breath punching itself out of his chest upon impact as Sonya’s voice and its memories chased him into the change room. For a single, terrifying instant, he was left sightless by the burst of fluorescent white illumination…

“My darling,”

“… love you…”

And in that blinding nothingness, he was subjected once again to the crime that had been committed in the very area in which he now stood.

“Who knew…?”

Without entirely realizing it, his body staggered to the side, crushing its back firmly against the wall, his chest heaving, eyes clenched shut against the disorienting flashes of images both painful and violent.

The fist landed in his gut, knocking the air clean out of him in one fell swoop. Doubling over with a harsh cough, an arm pressed against his abdomen… A hand on his forehead, slamming his skull back into the locker, a forearm shoved against his throat to hold him in place-

… finally thrown with great effort into the wooden bench, its edge colliding roughly with his ribs. A choked, gasping breath. He wasn’t allowed a moment longer to clutch at his stomach before he felt hands shove him up onto the wooden slatted surface-

Despite how he ferociously jerked his body to and fro, he found there was no way for him to assail his attackers, no way to defend…

Time and time again he had to feel… most secret parts, striking him, leaving raw and bleeding scratches on his skin. Arms bound behind his back, hauling him against one of their chests… Roaring, thrashing… Legs held wide-

No matter how he screamed for help, no matter how much he tried to fight back… It wouldn’t stop…

He began to tremble when he felt the phantoms of those rough hands on him again, raking nails over his skin, wrenching his head back by his hair and closing around his throat like a noose. Again he felt the searing pain of something tearing him in half – felt the hot, damp path of a tongue over his cheek and blood trickling down his thighs. Felt uneven teeth biting into the skin of his shoulder and the excruciating, debasing touch between his legs

… scorching tears streaking down his face…

Jason didn’t have the strength to walk through the area where he’d been

Savaged. Brutalized.

He couldn’t even force himself to look at it, remembering all too well the pain that had shot through his face when it had been slammed down against the wooden slats of the bench there. The frigid surface of the tile beneath his chest and the chill, unyielding presence of the leering witnesses leaning against the lockers.

Scrabbling hands slipping over slick flesh, thrashing within meaty arms, beneath greedy, biting mouths; feeble attempts to shrink away from the thing violating him…

Edging quickly around the banks of lockers, Jason thrust himself away clumsily from the wall and raced into the washroom, flinging himself against the counter hard enough to double over from the impact with white-knuckled fingers clutching desperately at the porcelain rim of the sink. With ragged, wheezing breaths sucking themselves into his lungs as a clammy sweat beaded his brow, a great white void yawning in his mind, he lasted only a minute longer in the overwhelming silence before his body convulsed over the sink with an ugly, gut-wrenching sound and a wash of rancid bile surged up his throat, scorching sensitive tissue and leaving him raw in its wake. He didn’t smell the acrid, biting stench of his stomach’s contents as they splashed into the sink; for a moment, the entire world had vanished around him, abandoning him to a darkness that knew no warmth, and no limits.

Ruined.

God, his entire body was shaking. Every last muscle was gripped with a tremble he couldn’t control. He clung to the sink as though his very life depended on it, coughing and choking, as the vertigo tightened its hold, beads of nauseous sweat accumulating on his skin. His throat was burning from the acidity of his own bile, but Jason simply hovered there, weakly hunched over the porcelain bowl in spite of the stench. Dirty. Quivering. On the verge of collapsing beneath the weight of his own body. Violated all over again by the creatures lurking within his own mind.

“… ‘bout time someone got revenge, Riley. It feels good, knowing how much you’re going to suffer.”

He barely even realized that he’d begun moving of his own accord until he felt the cool textured metal of the faucet’s dial beneath his hand, unleashing a flood of water to wash away the by-product of his guilt. He could hear nothing but his own breathing, ragged and wheezing in his ears as each inhalation raked its fingers down the raw passage of his throat.

“I have avenged you, my love…”

“I know better,
‘Cause you said forever,
And ever,
Who knew?”

Discoloured lids clenched themselves shut as he leaned his forehead gently onto the cold metal of the tap, the noose tightening itself around his throat anew, tears burning at the backs of his eyes, when his mind revived the memories that had accompanied Sonya’s song. He’d felt her joy, her sorrow… Every emotion, he had felt as though it were his own. Her memories… They’d been inside of him. He’d seen things he shouldn’t have been able to see, remembered sensations he’d never experienced first-hand.

I never asked for this…

Fingers curling into loose fists atop the counter’s surface, Jason sniffled back a breath and forced himself to break away from the faucet’s cool, grounding touch against his clammy forehead. His jaw worked itself uselessly beneath skin he knew would be pale and sickly in the light of the washroom if he looked at his reflection in the mirror… But he didn’t dare.

“When someone said count your blessings now,
‘Fore they’re long gone,
I guess I just didn’t know how;
I was all wrong…”

I never wanted this…

“But they knew better…”

He didn’t dare meet the dark, haunted gaze of the spectre that would be staring back at him from within that inverted world. He didn’t dare glance up and chance seeing who he’d been when he was sixteen, smiling at him from a mirror in the past, blood spatters on his cheek and black hollows around eyes that had been left detached and depraved.

“Still you said forever…”

“It’s such a waste to break something this pretty.”

“And ever…”

I never wanted any of this…!

Crumpling around the sink, crushing a fist to his lips when he felt them shiver with the effort of restraining the sob he could feel clawing at the insides of his mouth and throat, Jason kept his eyes clamped shut tight for a long, painfully silent moment before he stuffed cupped hands under the flow of frigid water and splashed it against his face. Little by little, with each frantic burst of water, he felt it wash away the grime of his past life oozing from his skin anew – felt it erase the mask of someone haunting his every thought with his own likeness.

“You’re a born fucking murderer!”

I… am not… like you…! No matter how desperately his thoughts growled that mantra, however, he could feel the maniacal, grinning gaze of his doppelganger boring into the top of his head from inside of the mirrors standing spread in a pristine and silver wall before him, waiting. Waiting for him to lift his head, to look through sopping, ropy strands of brown hair and lose himself to the monster trapped behind the glass.

“And I won’t forget you my friend,
What happened…?”

Eyes easing themselves open to stare through a scant crack at the pearls of water collected in the bottom of the sink – numb to the silence as he cut off the rushing hiss of the faucet, numb to the droplets of moisture falling away from the contours of his face – Jason’s heart clenched in his heaving, panting chest when a child’s terrified scream lanced through his mind. It would have been impossible to keep himself from wincing, from squeezing his lids shut and turning away from the memory of a clean, liquid glint of silver across a bared throat – the wound that opened there like a blossoming flower, the flood of crimson.

“But I keep your memory;
You visit me in my slee-”

Gruesome, gurgled breaths, a weak, pulsing fountain of blood…

I’m not like you… Expression crumbling in on itself, Jason’s head bowed once again as he shakily pressed his knuckles to his lips, wishing for all of the world that he could blind himself to the recollection of the things he’d done the night his entire world had been erased. I’m not…

“You don’t know anything about him…”

How ironic that Luke’s own words should be echoed back to him.

“My darling,”

Unable to smother the agony that seized his entire body, wracking it with an uncontrollable shudder, Jason sank slowly and without ceasing to his knees on the tile floor of the washroom, clutching at the edge of the counter with clawed fingers, giving birth to a low, grieving moan as new traces of moisture gathered in the lashes of eyes clenched shut.

“Who knew…?”

-x-

All right, that was it. He couldn’t take this anymore. He didn’t know what it was, but something wasn’t right and he’d had enough of just sitting around and acting like he hadn’t noticed the gradual deterioration of one of his closest friends over the course of the year. The random, prolonged absences had been one thing; the way Jason had been flaking out when it came to practises had been another. But the secrets that Luke could all but taste in the air surrounding him, the way he skirted around the subject or shrugged it off with that fake plastic smile when someone asked about him… Shit, the way Jason’s personality had done a total one-eighty without warning or explanation…

No doubt about it, Luke had been worried about him, but this…

Jason and Derek had never gotten along, not since day one of Jason’s tuition at the Academy. They took shots at each other whenever an opportunity arose, and Luke didn’t dare count the number of times he’d had to muscle his way between them and defuse the situation when things started to get too serious. They were polar opposites when it came to social standing and their places in the Academy’s little hierarchy. The enmity that existed between them, and their respective cliques – more specifically, the popular crowd (Jocks, Plastics, etc…) versus Jason, the band, and Jason’s housemates, although some more than others – was practically legendary within the Academy. Everyone knew their story.

Some no-name showed up out of the blue one day in the same car as the metal-faced German girl who’d been enrolled only a few months beforehand. Derek’s goons had taken to harassing her, making brief, lewd passes at her and mocking her steely attitude while knowing that she wouldn’t fight back. After all, she hadn’t been able to speak more than a few basic words in English at the time – they probably thought it was hilarious, the way she would mutely brush them off or pretend to ignore them. Luke had seen the fury in those amber eyes as she walked away, the way her jaw was clenched beneath her cheeks. But when Jason had arrived… He’d put an end to all of it – the catcalls, the confrontations...

Luke remembered the first time Jason caught them at it – he’d been with him at the time, showing him around the school, having avid conversations about music and guitars and about how maybe they should do some jamming after school – and they’d ignored his initial, laid-back interference. Jason and Artemis hadn’t appeared very close at the time, but even so, when things began to escalate into a brawl, she’d worked her way between them and silently muscled him out of the situation, angrily shepherding him away. Luke lingered behind for a moment to offer some cold words of deterrence to their aggressors, but even then, he’d heard the two bickering further down the hall – and he remembered hearing Artemis, for the first time, arguing in a furious, confusing amalgam of English and German with her housemate.

It didn’t stop – didn’t even slow them down. When Jason stepped in a second time, and then a third, and then a fourth, to “politely convince” the jocks to back off, he’d unknowingly made things personal. They lost interest in Artemis, but, that having been accomplished, all of their attention had become focussed on Jason, one of the few students within the Academy who had no qualms with talking back. Or fighting back, for that matter. Luke knew that in their eyes, Jason was out of line, and he needed to be taught a lesson about how things worked within the Academy. Jason, however, took that lesson, torched it, and threw it back in Derek’s face.

After that, the whole situation had gone straight to hell, which was precisely why this entire mess was stressing the ever-loving fuck out of him. Because none of it – not a single lick – made any goddamn sense whatsoever!

Jason had been shaking in his seat beside him, his fists clenched until his knuckles were drained of color, even in the darkness of the gymnasium. Just before he’d shoved himself to his feet and turned to stagger hastily towards the aisle, Luke had managed to catch a glimpse of his face, and, god… The musician had looked like he was going to be sick. He’d never seen Jason so… so…

There wasn’t a word for it – not a single word in the entirety of his vocabulary that could properly identify what he’d witnessed lurking within Jason’s expression. It had been similar to a mixture of grief, horror, and shame, but even then, it had been so much worse than any of those terms could portray by themselves. None of them could do justice to the pain he’d seen rioting just beneath the surface of his friend’s countenance.

Something was definitely wrong. He could feel it in his bones. And he wasn’t so sure anymore that it had anything to do with family.

Tilting his mouth to Skye’s ear, giving the hand held subtly between their thighs a light squeeze, he whispered, “I’ll be right back; I’m just gonna go check on Jason, alright?”

A single pallid eye turned to him in the murk, drawing itself away from the screen as the last image faded in time with the music and left the gymnasium in a grim silence. “Should I come too?”

Luke gave a slight shake of his head as he pushed himself to his feet. “It’s probably better that I go alone.” Sparing a moment just long enough to return to drummer’s faint, reassuring squeeze before separating from the warmth of his fingers, Luke shot him a frail smile and set off through the tangle of displaced chairs and sprawled student legs. Randy, he noticed, was – as he’d predicted earlier –fast asleep, slumped down in his seat with his arms folded across his chest and his head tilted back in repose; he barely even twitched when Luke reached out to flick at his nose. A startled snort, a wriggle of his nose – the bassist squirmed a bit in his seat and then went back to drifting blissfully through his dreamscape.

Well, at least he’s not snoring, his thoughts uttered gratefully. Right now it’s probably a good thing that he’s asleep. Means he’s less likely to get all sarcastic and then get punched in the head by someone for being an ass.

Not to say that he hadn’t felt the urge to mutter some choice words himself during parts of the memorial, because he had, but the biggest difference between himself and the band’s bassist was that the latter hadn’t been born with the instinct that would kindly recommend when it would be wise to keep his mouth shut.

Slinking silently towards the men’s change room, mumbling a quick, quiet, and utterly bullshit excuse to a teacher on his way by, Luke’s mind was gradually rendered oblivious to the ceremony being held at the front of the gym with each step that brought him closer to the door Jason had vanished through. He didn’t know what to expect behind that door, whether Jason would be simply leaning against the bathroom counter and staring at the floor or whether he really was keeling over one of the toilets vomiting his guts up, but somehow… Somehow, he felt as though either of those situations would be worlds better than the cruel reality of the secret Jason was trying so desperately to hide.

He promptly kicked that thought square in its face, hauled it into a closet, and locked it in there behind a steel-plated door, hoping with everything he had that the feeling writhing like a dying cobra in his gut was wrong.

Edging quietly through the change room door, pausing for a moment and listening – although he couldn’t have been less certain as to what he was listening for – Luke eased the door shut and carefully locked it behind him for privacy. In here, even the soft click of the deadbolt sliding into place sounded like a gunshot, and that alone, never mind the worry and nerves dancing through his system, quickened the beating of Luke’s heart.

“Jace? You in here?” Swallowing in a feeble attempt to moisten his throat, Luke anxiously wet his lips and took a steadying breath, bracing himself for whatever he might find as he quietly navigated through the banks of lockers. “Jace?” Resting a single hand on the wall – relishing the touch of cool tile beneath his warm, slightly sweaty palm – Luke poked his head around the corner into the washroom.

What the…?

For a time, Luke could only stare at the damage that had abruptly transformed the men’s room into a manifestation of nightmarish rage. At first glance he saw nothing but the massive web of cracks in the mirror, shards of silvery glass littering the counter and the sink and glittering malevolently beneath fluorescent lights. A moment longer, and he registered the wads of tissue, paper towel strewn haphazardly across the tile floor with the overturned metal garbage can left a quiet, empty means of destruction, displaced onto its side deeper into the washroom. And beneath it all, he could smell the putrid, lingering bite of vomit.

Lungs struggled to remember to breathe in that asphyxiating silence, the pounding of his heart scarce more than a whisper beneath the cold fear that had engulfed him. Denial and disbelief coursed thick through his veins even as some tiny fragment of rationale hiding in the back of his mind, muted by the shock gripping his body, urged him to accept that what he saw was real. This wasn’t a scene from a horror movie – it wasn’t a bad dream. It was terrifyingly, ruthlessly, heart-wrenchingly real, and Jason was in the middle of it.

His peripherals were the first to pick up the dark, bundled form of his friend sitting against the wall he was leaning around, knees drawn into his chest, arms wrapped around his head.

Jesus…

Jason was shaking. Even furled into a ball that made him look unnaturally compact, Luke could see how his entire body was trembling, how he was minutely rocking himself. His hands were visibly shuddering, the knuckles of his fingers white as they curled into taut half-fists and went lax, a hysterical cycle without rhythm and without end, around the nape of his neck.

Easing himself around the corner, Luke forced down the weighty boulder of apprehension sticking in his throat and warily willed his voice into the hush. “Jace,” and if he could have winced when it came out as a feeble croak, he would have. He tried to wet his mouth and addressed his unresponsive friend a second time. “Hey, you okay?” Sure, it was a stupid question to ask someone balled up against the wall like that, but what the hell else was he supposed to say? ‘Want me to get the men in white coats?’ He waited patiently, eyes scouring his friend’s tightly furled form, for an answer. There was nothing but the brunette’s laboured, unsteady breaths – breaths that, all at once, sounded too much like sobs he could barely keep contained. Luke’s stomach clenched in his gut.

Without knowing what else to do, he began to approach him, taking slow, careful steps before he lowered himself into a squat at his friend’s side, head tilted in a concerned, but ultimately futile attempt to steal a glimpse of his face around a barricade of arms and knees. “Hey…” Keeping his voice soft and low, brow creased in worry, a lone hand cautiously lifted itself from his side. “Jace, what’s wrong? What happened?” Ashen eyes were locked to where Jason’s face should have been as fingers unfurled and drifted towards the distraught musician’s trembling shoulder.

“Don’t…” The brunette winced into himself, away from Luke’s touch, before his fingertips could even graze the material of Jason’s uniform jacket.

Startled by the sudden movement, retracting his hand as though he’d been burned, Luke felt that seed of worry burst into adulthood within him, burying its roots deep and soaring to a whole new level of severity nourished by Jason’s strangely reserved reaction.

“Jason, what’s wrong?” Without fully realizing how his voice had dipped to a pitch of deeply concerned solemnity, Luke remained by the musician’s side, head tilted, hand trembling as it curled into itself, still straining to see his face.

But the brunette didn’t lift his head. Instead, it gave a weak, tight shake before he furled yet more tightly into himself, his breathing heavy and tremulous as shaking fingers raked, over and over again, across the back of his scalp and neck. “Don’t, please…” Came a frail, agonized moan, and from the tone of his voice alone Luke could tell with a painstaking certainty that Jason was crying as he continued to gently rock himself. “I don’t wanna hurt you… I don’t wanna… oh god…”

Faltering when the vocalist’s strangled words finally breached the veil of concern misting his thoughts, Luke frowned, tearing his eyes from his friend and letting them rip across the garbage littering the floor for the longest of moments before they found the nerve to crawl back up to his balled, rocking figure. “Jace,” He carefully murmured, afraid of the answer but knowing that he had to ask regardless, “what’re you talking about? What do you mean you don’t wanna hurt me – what’s going on?”

-x-

“C’mon, talk to me, Jace. You know you can trust me. What’s wrong – what do you mean you don’t want to hurt me?”

Jason could feel the words pressing against the back of his teeth; he wanted to tell Luke so badly, to just let those words escape him and leave him be… but he couldn’t. He knew he couldn’t. If he did, it would ruin everything he had left in this life. It would destroy everything, piece by piece, devouring it like a rot working its way from the inside out, until he was left with nothing but ghosts. He didn’t know what he’d do if he had to witness that look of horror and betrayal taking root in Luke’s eyes; he didn’t know if he could bear the slow, all-consuming alienation from one of the only people he loved like family outside of the Manor.

One of the only people in the world that made him feel… normal.

So he kept his lips clamped shut, denying those words their freedom even though he could feel them crushing against his teeth, threatening to shatter them if he didn’t obey and unleash them of his own volition. He pressed them tightly together, clenching his jaw until it ached as he fiercely shook his head again and buried his fingers into his hair, eyes squeezed shut in the darkness of his lap, ignorant to the paths of moisture trailing down his cheeks. “I can’t…” The words barely qualified to be called such as they burst into the silence on the arm of an uncontrollable sob, gasping in what breaths he could. “I can’t I’m sorry… I… I…” I can’t I can’t I can’t…

“Jason…”

Jason froze when he thought he heard someone murmur his voice, his entire core frosting over with dread and fear as lids were wrenched open in the darkness. He recognized that voice – no, not just one… It wasn’t just one voice. There were more of them, different voices, at the same time, murmuring his name in the silence, beckoning him. But he knew the voice that lingered at the core of them all. He knew that voice…!

Barely even breathing, wide, terrified eyes crept up, scant millimetres at a time, until enlarged pupils contracted into mere pinpoints against the sudden onslaught of illumination, and there, inches away from his face…

Soulless, bloodshot eyes.

Gentle, a tawny shade of brown that smiled in spite of the

Face mottled with the pallor of death.

Dark, ugly – a hybrid of black, purple, and sickly brown, lurid against olive skin. Skinny fingers, wrapped in bandages, lifted as though to brush against the bruise courting his cheekbone before furling into themselves. “It’s not that b-

Tarnished blonde hair matted with sweat and blood.

So warm, moist against the corner of his mouth as he pressed his cheek to his forehead, flesh shivering with euphoria, buried in convulsing, burning heat…

Clotted curtain of blood painted down a smooth chin. And

A sudden slash of light. A scream. “RUN, Ash-!”

The gaping wound, a hastily-born, morbid grin stretching across the length of a bruised throat.

Wet, choking breaths; garnet pulsing free, abandoned to furl onto a side as he scrambled off a rumpled bed, knife in hand, and raced after the small white nightdress, dishevelled waves of auburn hair, streaking down the midnight hall like a ghost.

In a horrified reflex, Jason clenched his eyes shut again and crushed them against his knees, body trembling worse than ever before as his fingers buried themselves into his hair, clawing at the sides of his head even as it shook itself in mute, pleading denial. No… Fast, shallow, laboured gulps of air were gasped into lungs straining within a vice of terror as his mind was forced against its will to witness all over again the hunt of the innocent child and her scruffy brown teddy bear.

“No…”

Scorching, panted breaths, naked chest heaving, kneeling over a small, still body. Numb fingers locked around a handle slick with blood. White dress blossoming in crimson

“No, no…”

Dark, mismatched eyes, void of life and feeling, staring back at an ashen countenance freckled with blood. A slow, lethargic smile-

“Why’d you do it, Jason? After I helped you…”

“No, no, you’re not real… You’re not real,” he unsteadily moaned, voice pinching with the precursors of hysteria as he tightly rocked himself. “You’re not real you’re not real oh god you’re not real…”

-x-

“Jason, c’mon man you’re startin’ to scare me here – knock it off.” Uncertainly hovering at his friend’s side, weak, humourless smile withering on his lips, Luke fell deeper into the open maw of alarm when Jason failed to react to his voice. He’d lifted his head for just a fleeting moment, and Luke had been helpless, able to do nothing but stare as haunted, bloodshot irises widened, face naked with fear, locked on the open air before him – seeing everything and nothing at all – until he’d given a low, grieving moan and buried himself once more into his nest of limbs.

He kept rocking himself, kept digging violently trembling fingers into his hair, uttering things both breathless and inaudible in rapid, hysterical succession in a diminishing voice until it had broken down into a strangled sob.

Chest heaving, body uselessly petrified by the events unfurling before him, Luke’s hands hung frozen in the air, wanting so badly to reach out and touch Jason’s shoulder, the back of his white-knuckled fingers… Something. Anything that would get him to snap out of it.

“Don’t…”

Remembering how the guitarist had recoiled from him before, Luke eased closer to his trembling friend and swallowed back the hesitations cinching themselves ever-tighter around his throat. He had to do something about this, now. He didn’t know what was wrong but he had to do something before Jason hurt himself. Uttering his name one last time, silently begging the musician to react to his voice – begging him to give him some sign that he was aware of his surroundings – Luke nervously wet his lips and reached out with a trembling hand towards him.

He froze, heart stopping in his chest when Jason winced away from him again, his voice a mere spectre of its natural self as it escaped in a choked sob. “I’m sorry… I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I… I didn’t mean to – I didn’t… oh god…”

Locked in place by the agony coating Jason’s strangled, damning words, Luke hardened his resolve, locking away the cherished image of his friend and faltering only for a moment longer before he guided his trembling fingers warily to one of the convulsing hands clutching at the brunette’s head. “It’s okay, I’m not gonna hurt you, Jason. Just…” His voice was devoured by the silence, devoured by his friend’s gasping breaths and his terrified utterances. Trembling fingers stretched tentatively towards Jason’s hand – if he could just get him to look at him… “Look at me, Jason. Just look at me, okay? I’m not gonna hurt you…”

The very instant he brushed against Jason’s cold hand, however, an arm lashed out, whipping backwards and catching him painfully in the face, temple cracking into the tile of the wall, as the brunette screamed in a panic-stricken voice left high and hoarse. “Get away from me!”

A wave of all-consuming nothingness swept over his vision, a lance of pain shrieking through the side of his head as brilliant white stars danced drunkenly before his eyes. Hissing in a sharp breath, clutching at his head, Luke hunched into himself, waiting for the initial wash of blindness to subside with bared teeth before he squinted towards his friend with a single watering eye. He’d scrambled back into the front partition of the nearby bathroom stall, staring at him – no, not at… through him – with huge, wild silver and brown orbs, his face barren of color, his chest heaving with breaths strangled by panic and terror.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry… Please, I didn’t- I never…”

He doesn’t even see me. He doesn’t…

Luke choked back the pain that was no longer physical, the cold, burning fear, and prepared to ease towards him again, eyes stinging with tears and throat cinched shut. “It’s me, Jace – Luke. Remember me?” His voice was scarce more than a wavering breath in the smothering atmosphere of the washroom, his beseeching hand trembling worse than before as it extended itself towards the hysterical, petrified musician. “I’m not gonna hurt you, Jace. I’m your friend, remember? You’re safe here – I’m not gonna hurt you… It’s just me! C’mon listen to the sound of my voice, you know me!”

Slowly, painstakingly, the gloomy shroud was torn down from its place over his eyes, clinging like thick curtains of cobweb as Luke struggled to bring his friend back. Silently pleading with those frantic, bloodshot eyes, Luke couldn’t tell anymore if he was still uttering gentle consolations, soft reassurances, as the haunted veil in Jason’s gaze slowly crumbled. He was too focussed on the figure of his friend, the way his entire body seemed to resonate with pain and terror as he was gradually reawakened to reality.

Tormented platinum and chocolate orbs seemed to finally focus on him – seemed to finally see him – filling with tears as Jason’s haggard expression crumbled around a single, choked word. “Luke…”

And Luke could do nothing for the longest of whiles but hover, staring, breathless, as his friend broke down sobbing anew before he crawled over and pulled the shaking brunette into a desperate, frightened embrace.

-x-

To Be Continued…

-x-

So, like it? Hate it? Wish it would spontaneously combust? Leave me a review and tell me all about it! C’mon, I wanna hear everything! –maniacal cackle-

(Thank you so much once again, everyone. I don’t know what I’d do without you. Seriously. –hugs all around-)

Oh. Lawdy. This was supposed to be longer but I figured that I’ve kept you guys waiting long enough, and honestly, the mass quantity of angst in one chapter was starting to get to me. Particularly the scene in the gym with the song, and... -sigh- Seriously, the crap that we’re going to be dealing with is… Oi. If you think what’s happening now is bad, you just wait. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

Heavy, heavy angst. Very difficult, and generally not fun to write, particularly since real-life shit is still hitting the fan and seems to have no intention of stopping anytime soon, so the chapters from here on out may end up being a little shorter and more broken up, but if that’s the case, I may also end up updating more frequently. Yay for you guys, right? :D

Um. Yes. Anyways, I think that’s all from me for now.

… Although I’m looking at that ending now and thinking I may just end up coming back to it later to tweak it or add more, but I don’t know. We shall see. THANK YOU AGAIN!