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wife-of-all-dilfs · 24 days

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the five stages | f. odair

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summary: a journey back to a golden period of time of polaroid pictures, white knitted sweaters, and lively sea-green eyes. why? because in the present, those same pair of eyes are ruthlessly unrelenting and you have no other chance of their escape.

pairing: finnick odair x fem!reader

warnings: heavy angst, vomiting, implied smut, depression, maggots, hallucinations, relieving fluff, mild horror. I don’t want to spoil the story too much, so I won’t be adding any more warnings, sorry y’all. this could be very triggering so please read at your own discretion. some descriptions are quite graphic!

notes: I’m super proud of this one—it’s sorta based off “little talks” by of monsters and men and “on the nature of daylight” by max richer. this fic probably won’t get many views, so I’ll be incredibly grateful for any—if any at all—type of engagement! <33

word count: 8k

The bedroom was cold; dark; empty. Empty even though I still resided in it.

My alarm had gone off two hours ago, yet I hadn’t moved an inch. When I finally turned my head to the side, I found that the space beside me was vacant. Cold; dark; empty—I reached out my hand anyway.

Thirty minutes passed before I wrestled myself out of bed and started making breakfast downstairs. The otherwise warm and flavourful plate of fruit-filled yoghurt and scrambled eggs on toast left my mouth feeling dry and my throat lodged.

It used to be one of my favourite meals. At least, when he was around.

Dishes were piled in the sink, dirty and untouched. I sat on the couch, pondering whether today was the day I would finally get to cleaning them. It wasn’t. I couldn’t. We always did that together. I wondered—if I left them in the sink long enough, would he return? Even just for five minutes to help me put them away? One month and seventeen days had passed, and yet I still entertained this thought religiously.

I wasted an hour running circles round the same contemplations before deciding fresh air, as cliché as it was, might do me some good.

Grey clouds concealed the sun’s warm golden light when I stepped outside, but that was fine—I didn’t like anything golden anymore. But he would want me to leave the house at least once a day, so that’s what I would do. I would go down to the beach beside our—my house and feel the sand collect between my toes as I walked to the water’s edge.

But wasn’t that where he was when it happened? Wasn’t he in water? Didn’t those things pile on top of him? Didn’t they sink their fangs into his neck and tear at his flesh until he was blown to…

Bits of egg, yoghurt and stomach bile sat at my feet. My legs buckled, and I collapsed to the ground in a sandy, tear-stricken heap. Since my lower body had refused to cooperate any longer, it took me until midday to crawl back up the dune and to my front doorstep.

Fuck. I needed to rest.

“I need you to rest, sweetheart.”

“I told you, I’m fine,” I whined. “I’m not sick.”

Finnick placed a bucket on the ground beside the bed. The room smelled of lemon disinfectant—a joy I often found in being sick… That is, if I were sick, which I was not. I must have drunk spoiled milk or eaten something bad during breakfast. Nevertheless, Finnick was not having it.

“You’re throwing up everything you manage to get down, and you’re shivering like it’s the middle of winter,” he said adamantly, tucking the comforter up to my chest. “It’s summer, and you’re very much not fine.”

I sat up, ready to heatedly debate the subject, but the room began swirling, and my ears were hissing like a staticky television channel without a signal. A quiet whimper buzzed in my throat as I hunched forward. Damn him, I was sick.

The mattress dipped as Finnick sat beside me. His hand was on my back, rubbing it soothingly as he used his other hand to tuck away the curtain of hair concealing my face. I huffed, half in annoyance, half in an attempt to suppress the nausea rising in my throat, and then sunk back against the pillows.

“Not sick, she says,” he jested, smiling down at me. I rolled my eyes, though unable to hide the weak, betraying smile creeping across my lips. “Close your eyes, sweetheart,” he said, a gentle command. “I’ll see you when you fall asleep.”

The wooden flooring welcomed me with hard, cold arms as I hauled my sandy body through the front door. Images of fangs, bloody flesh, and panicked sea-green eyes flooded my mind.

More breakfast, more bile. No lemon disinfectant.

My knees were folded beneath my body; my body was hunched over my knees. I was sobbing now, so hard that I threw up again (was there even anything left in my stomach at this point?), creating a thick puddle of vomit and tears beneath me. Cries and gasps for air bounced around the house. To call me a mess would be an understatement. I was a disaster. A disaster wrapped up in an unmendable tragedy with a ragged, threadbare ribbon barely holding me together.

And in case I wasn’t aware of this fact, the floorboards were so shiny that they mirrored a reflection of myself. My hair was a being of its own, all wild and unkempt, and my face was another story entirely—a red, blotchy thing I wasn’t too interested in delving into.

But the most unsettling aspect had nothing to do with me, it was that there was someone else in the reflection. Two green balls of light were glowing above my head.

Dishevelled golden hair…

Dimpled cheeks…

My forehead was pressed to the floor as I screamed.

“I don’t want to make you sick as well,” I said, contrarily enjoying the feeling of Finnick’s skin warm against mine, hot blood flowing through his veins.

A day had passed since I first became unwell, and the sickness had continued to wreak havoc inside me.

We were both under the thick covers, our limbs tangled together as he held me atop his chest. (my body didn’t register the scorching summer temperatures. I actually felt as though my core temperature was a few degrees below freezing. Meanwhile, Finnick was characteristically toasty warm. It was perfect for me, but not so much for him, evident in the beads of sweat collecting on his forehead. Nevertheless, he made no complaints).

My body rose and fell with each breath he took. I was trying to inhale whenever he exhaled in a weak attempt to prevent the festering sickness in my body from entering his, and though it was a futile gesture, I did it anyway.

“In sickness and health, remember?” he said.

I smiled. “We’re not even married.”

“Yet, you mean,” he countered. “I plan on spending the rest of my life with you, sweetheart. You know that.”

My heart fluttered at the thought of spending an entire lifetime with him—waking up in each other’s embrace each morning, the warm sunlight peeking through the blinds of our bedroom; Finnick calling me “Mrs. Odair” or “My wife” at every opportunity because doing so made us both giggle like two moronic, love-struck teenagers; and being unable to prevent the deep smile lines on both our cheeks as we age, a constant display of our perpetual happiness.

“Sixty more years of having and holding you,” he continued with a gentle musing in his tone. “For better or for worse... For richer or for poorer.” He then stroked the side of my face and brushed away the sweaty strands of hair sticking to my forehead. “In sickness and in health…”

“…Until death do us part,” I finished, my voice slow with fatigue.

Two fingers sat beneath my chin and tilted my head upward. My eyes connected with Finnick’s. They were soft. Heartfelt.

“Not even then. I’ll love you beyond the grave,” he murmured. Then his lips were slowly curving into a pensive smile. “When we’re both ghosts and haunting the next owners of this house.”

I was now smiling, too. “I’d hoped you would say something like that.”

How could he lie like that? There was no we. There were no next owners. There was only me, alive and alone in a comatose house. And mind you, I was sane enough to know that it wasn’t actually his ghost haunting me, though I wish I weren’t because having that knowledge was even worse. It meant he was truly erased from existence.

“Go away,” I whispered to the reflection on the floor.

He didn’t. His vacant green eyes kept staring down at my crumpled figure.

I shot off the floor and spun around, hot tears streaming down my face. “Go away!” His face remained expressionless. He looked like himself, only colder. “You said sixty more years! You said we’d be together!” I mindlessly picked up and flung a small picture frame at him, only for it to pass through his body and shatter on the floor behind him. “Why did you lie to me?!” My voice was frayed with fury, though underlined with grief.

He said nothing, did nothing. All he did was watch.

My legs buckled, and I was on the floor again. I was whispering, half-sobbing, the same question over and over until the words slurred together. “Why’d you lie? Why’d y’lie?” The only time I stopped was when my tongue grew too heavy to move anymore.

To my surprise, he eventually came and sat beside me, remaining cold and silent—as I too had become.

Glass fragments from the picture frame were scattered across the floorboards. The photo within had fallen out and, ironically, drifted towards me. I didn’t bother acknowledging him as I moved onto my hands and knees and began crawling forward—my palms slicing open and blood seeping out—until the photo was in my hands. My shins had granules of glass pricking into them, but I couldn’t feel the pain; all I could do was stare at the memory in my hands.

The picture had been taken in District Thirteen, a day before he signed up for… the mission.

I was drifting in and out of sleep when a sudden bright flash lit up my eyelids.

“Oops.”

Heavy eyes fluttering open, I was met with a small camera pointing down at me, which was being held up by a lengthy muscular arm, which was connected to an even more muscular and broad shoulder, which was connected to—okay, sorry, I think you get it.

“Finnick!” I shrieked, pulling the covers over my naked figure.

He laughed, the vibrations rumbling deep within his chest, beneath my ear. A soft whirring sound accompanied the polaroid sliding out of the camera, its black film hiding the doubtless embarrassing picture beneath. He placed the film on the sheets beside him, letting the photo develop in darkness.

“I was supposed to cover the flash,” he said, still chuckling.

I rubbed my eyes, which were twinkling with little sparkles of light. “I think you blinded me.”

“Lucky you,” he jested. “You’re finally free from my repulsive exterior.”

I started to reach for the picture beside him—“You’re an idiot”—but then he was rolling us over until his arms were pillared on either side of my head and he was hovering above me.

His hair was a mess, a testament to the night before (and very early hours of the morning), and he was sporting a beautiful, lazy grin. “Yeah? Well, you’re engaged to an idiot,” he said, tilting his head in an arrogant manner. “So what does that make you?”

The sea-glass ring hugging my finger gleamed in the lamp’s dull light as I reached out to touch his face, my fingertips brushing along the edges of his pronounced jawline. Tangled strands of hair and a beaming smile were reflecting back at me in his eyes. No one had ever loved anyone as much as I loved Finnick—disregarding the one exception that was staring down at me.

“Blinded by love,” I whispered.

Brief yet poignant emotion trickled through his features, his eyes. Then, like a flick of a switch, he covered it up and lowered his face into my neck, groaning the words, “So corny.”

My fingers were tangled in his hair, holding him close to me. “Liar,” I laughed. “You loved it.”

“I love you, which is why I put up with your corniness,” he murmured into my skin.

Even after all this time, my heart still leapt whenever he said those three words, even when he was being a jerk about it. I kissed the top of his head. “I love you, too.”

We laid like this for a short while longer—Finnick keeping his face buried in the warmth of my neck, his arms curled beneath my body; me playing with the golden waves of his hair that were somehow softer than my own. He was so heavy on top of me that it was starting to become difficult to breathe, but in no universe would I ever tell him to get off. It was a blissful sort of suffocation.

A sort anyone would snap a picture of just to keep as a reminder of how beautiful it feels to be smothered with love. With that being said, the picture that lay awaiting beside me was brought back to mind.

“Oh no,” I moaned, picking it up and taking a short glance at the developed photo. I covered my face with my hands, repeating the words, “Oh no.”

The photo was plucked from my fingers, and Finnick began humming contentedly to himself.

In the photo, my face had been nuzzled into his bare, muscular chest, eyes closed in sleep-drunken serenity, hair thrown over my shoulder and spilling across the pillow. My hand rested on his contoured stomach with just enough of my upper arm and low light to conceal my breasts. Finnick had a delicate hand draped over my waist. He was gazing down at me with a smile that was just… full of pure love.

I had to admit—it was a beautiful picture. Despite my initial disapproval.

“Beautiful,” I heard him echo my thoughts, his eyes still scanning the photo. Then his brows furrowed, and his head slightly inched forward as though he had just noticed something peculiar in the picture. “Oh, and you are too, I guess.”

My head tilted back against the pillow with an abrupt laugh. I shook my head, looking back at him. “I hate you.”

“Liar,” he said, leaning in closer.

His lips were on mine for what must have been the millionth time in the past few hours. The bedside clock announced that breakfast was soon approaching, though it was clear neither of us would make an appearance within the next hour (or two).

“You love me,” he whispered as he slid inside me.

And I did.

I really did.

The muscles in my cheeks were straining due to how hard I was smiling.

It wasn’t my idea to keep a picture of us half-naked in the entryway of our home. He always was a bit unusual like that. Completely unashamed of who he was and how he acted. Sometimes a little too boisterously, but that’s what I loved so much about him—how confident he was in his love for me, so much so that nothing else mattered, no one else’s opinion.

God, I love him so much.

Love…?

Wait.

That’s not right.

Shouldn’t it be “loved”?

And why was I smiling? I didn’t have anything to smile about anymore. He was gone. Our wedding never occurred. Our faces never wrinkled with smile lines. Our clasped hands never weathered with age. He was gone.

The polaroid slipped from between my fingers. My hands were covered in glass and blood, blood that had painted a dark red splotch in the middle of the shiny film. Figures.

After a short while of staring blankly at the scattered debris decorating the floor, I finally found it in myself to start climbing back onto my feet. My straightened legs wobbled and ached beneath me with the little energy I had. That’s what happens when you can barely stomach food anymore: no energy, always sleeping, always swamped by nightmares or bittersweet memories—at this point, they were one and the same.

Not a strand of gold or a fleck of green was in sight when I glanced over my shoulder. For now, at least. He liked making an appearance once or twice a day.

Pieces of glass crunched beneath my bare, stinging feet as I made for the stairwell. A mess for another day, I reasoned. Just like the dishes. Sticky red footprints stamped each wooden step I ascended, growing less prominent as I reached the second floor.

After taking a right down a short hallway, the encompassing walls littered with magnificent seashells and dried ocean flora, I turned the knob to the furthest room and entered. The floor was landscaped with mountains of clothes which drenched the room in a familiar, all-consuming smell. The scent kind of reminded me of receiving a warm hug, albeit from someone you know you should let go of in more ways than one.

His hair, golden and tousled, caught my eye as I passed the wall of string-hung polaroids in our… sorry, my bedroom. His smile was all dimpled and brilliant, and he had his tanned arms wrapped around my middle. Just moments after the picture was taken, he had tackled me into the water and rightfully earned a smack on the back of the head. In turn, he did it again.

But before that, we were both looking into the camera with the most joyful expressions—huge grins, bright eyes. Frozen in time.

I never let myself look too long at that picture anymore. And I never, ever looked into his eyes. Green used to be my favourite colour. I didn’t have a favourite colour anymore. It was safe to say I didn’t have a favourite anything anymore; everything favourable was a reminder of him.

I picked up a white knitted sweater off the ground and tugged it over my head, staining it with splotches of dark red. Knowing him, he would wear it regardless—whatever was mine, was also his, and was equally the same in reverse, even things as grotesque as blood.

Well, he would have worn it, I should have said.

The sweater had been specifically tailored for him. I remembered how the soft sleeves hugged his arms so well that every fluid curve of his biceps was visible, similar to a building wave before it crested. On me, the sleeves swallowed my arms whole, which I liked to think in their own unique way had also been unintentionally tailored for me, like someone out there knew one day I would need some way to drown in him when he was gone.

Finnick’s fingers tugged at the silk ribbons, unwrapping the opulent gift box that sat on our dining table. Capitol devotees would send extravagant parcels weekly, turning up in abundance on our doorstep. Sometimes Finnick didn’t even bother opening them; sometimes we opened them together just to get a good laugh out of whatever ridiculous item was inside.

He never, though, opened the perfume-scented letters marked with lipstick stains.

“Oh,” I said in surprise as he lifted the lid. Inside was a folded piece of fabric, knitted and cream-white and intricate, though still simple. It was soft to the touch; thick enough to retain warmth. I held it up with two hands, admiring the hand-sewed threads of cotton. Whoever’s handiwork this was, it was nothing to laugh at.

Holding it up to Finnick’s torso, I smiled and said, “Try it on.”

“What?” He shook his head and smiled quizzically. “No.”

“Yes. I think it will look good on you.” I pressed it further against him with conviction. “Try it on.”

He tilted his head and exhaled deeply through his nose, giving me a begrudging, squinty-eyed look. From that, I already knew I had won him over, and watched as he snatched the sweater from my grasp and tugged his shirt off with one hand. I averted my eyes, feeling the tips of my ears flush with heat—we’d been together for over a year now; you would think I’d have grown accustomed to seeing him shirtless.

His head slipped through the neckline and he pulled the sweater down his body. I was right. It looked really good on him. Perfect, actually. The measurements were so precise that the fabric sloped off his shoulders like a compact mountain of snow. The thick-knitted collar dipped into a deep, uneven neckline that partly revealed his chest and made his neck look like a strong, contoured pillar. He looked at me expectantly, as though to ask, “Well?”

“It makes your neck and shoulders look really nice,” I blurted out, instantly cringing inside.

His expression contorted into something of amusement and surprise as he took a slow step towards me. “My neck and shoulders, huh?” he said, grinning devilishly. Oh, now I’d done it. Leave it to me to rocket Finnick Odair’s already atmospheric ego. “Anything else?”

I began backing away, but his prowling strides were so long that the space between us only shortened. When my backside hit the edge of the dining table, I knew I was done for.

“You know,” I began, avoiding his unrelenting stare. “I think it was just a momentary lapse of judgement.” He was closing in now, placing his hands on either side of my body to trap me in place. “It—It actually looks terrible on you,” I said, feigning sincerity and adding a little nod to help further my case.

His eyelids drooped as he gazed down at me, lips curving into that seductive smirk he had mastered long ago. “No takebacks,” he purred, voice low and gravelly. Dear God, I could only pray I wasn’t going to melt into a puddle on the floor. He always did this—took every opportunity to flirt and render me a stuttering, bashful mess. It was his favourite game to play. “This is now my new favourite shirt. All thanks to you, sweetheart.”

But, given the right timing and ever-wavering amount of confidence, I liked to play too.

I inhaled deeply, hoping my voice wouldn’t betray me. “Maybe you should take it off then,” I said, cocking my head to the side. “So you don’t ruin it.”

His mischievous expression revealed his next words before he even spoke them. “Maybe I will,” he said, and then he was tugging his sweater over his head, and I was tearing off my own. As his hands slipped beneath my thighs and lifted me onto our dining table, I prayed the wooden legs wouldn’t collapse under the weight of our next actions.

My fingertips ran over the soft, rippling patterns on the knitted sleeves, my arms crossed in a self-soothing manner. After that day, the sweater had become a sort of good luck charm—or so we agreed upon as we lay panting on the tabletop. He started wearing it to a multitude of events and parties in the Capitol (basically any place in which he needed a pick-me-up, a reminder of what he had to come home to, who he had to come home to).

He even wore it the day we got engaged.

So many happy memories were associated with this one white sweater. So many times, those cloud-soft sleeves were wrapped around my body, suffocating me in the scent of him—if nothing else, at least that remained.

The last time he had worn it was the day of the Reaping for the Quarter Quell; the last time our lives were ever semi-normal. I had fought tooth and nail to reach him before he was escorted onto the train, despite being ordered, “No goodbyes,” by one of the Peacekeepers. In modest terms, I had significantly decreased his chances of reproduction.

When I reached Finnick, he had brought me into a kiss so harsh and fervent that my lips were bruised the next day. He then yanked off his sweater, leaving his upper body completely exposed to everyone around us in complete disregard for his trauma-induced fear of doing so, and shoved it into my hands.

I had just stood there frozen in bewilderment, watching as he called out, “I love you, sweetheart!” Two Peacekeepers were forcing him onto the train, but he too fought for the last word. “Don’t forget—I’m always with you!”

That statement had never been truer than it was now. For better or for worse.

My vision unblurred as I returned to reality. Dismal, grey light was peeking through the shutters that formed the balcony doors, the daylight hours seeming to tick away at a snail’s pace. I used to wish for the days to be longer, for time to move slower, so I could savour the moments I had of happiness and sunlight which used to be plentiful.

Why do wishes only come true when you grow to desire nothing but the opposite?

Slothfully, I crawled onto the unmade king-size bed, my limbs crumpling and balling to my chest as the side of my head hit the pillow. The imprint on the mattress beneath my body didn’t match my own. It was much larger and broader. How long would it take for the springs to forget his body weight and recoil back into place as though he never existed at all?

I inhaled the sweater’s scent with every breath I took (and I tried not to wonder how long it would take for his scent to disappear as well) and hugged my arms around my waist. No pain was worse than the fleeting moments I forgot the embrace was my own and not his.

Hours passed, and so did the evening. A beautiful orange sunset hadn’t slipped through the shutter’s cracks because the clouds never dissipated. Night-time brought no consolation either. Not even the stars or moon made an appearance. Everything that once gave me a shred of optimism was hidden behind a veil of gloom.

I knew tomorrow wouldn’t be any different—the weather, my mood, his absence. Because the end of autumn was closing in, and the days were becoming bleaker. Trees would start shedding their leaves; the leaves would start to die.

I hoped I would too.

I was still curled up on my side, my body aching with stiffness, when my face began scrunching into this ugly, twisted mess of despair. My tears were slow yet heavy, synonymous with the day I had incurred.

But then something strange happened.

Someone called my name.

No. That couldn’t be right. I was the only one who occupied a house in the Victor’s Village; the others had either relocated after the war or were… dead.

But there it was again—my name, distant and eerie, yet spoken with a tone people often used to beckon over and aid a frightened, injured animal. My vision blurred, both from tears and concentration on the voice.

“Hey.”

I couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment my surroundings transformed into a kitchen, just that they had and that I was no longer in my bed but standing upright.

Ahead of me, in the distance, the sun was beating down on the crystalline water, and white frothy waves were cresting on the smooth, golden sand. It was a perfect day; not a cloud was in sight. The only blemish that smeared the blue sky was the reflection staring back at me from the window I gazed out of.

In my hands was a soup bowl and a damp dishrag.

“Sweetheart?” That once distant voice, concerned and beckoning, was standing right beside me.

Blinking, I snapped out of my daze and turned away from the window.

He stood tall beside me, despite being half hunched over the kitchen sink and scrubbing the last of the few dirty dishes stacked neatly on the bench top. His head was turned towards me, his enamoured sea-green eyes peering into my own as though he was searching behind them for what troubled me.

“Hey,” he spoke softly, standing up straight. His touch was warm and gentle as he reached for my hand, leaving soapy bubbles on my palm and fingers. “Where’d you go?”

Three odd things seemed to occur at once: first, I flinched away from his touch, overwhelmed by its paradoxical unfamiliar familiarity; second, I felt an inexpressible relief from seeing him standing before me, seeing his cheeks painted with a soft pink hue as though blood-red roses were hidden just beneath his skin.

The third was an onset of disorientation. I couldn’t tell you why I felt disorientated standing in my own kitchen with the love of my life, just, simply, that I did. There was an answer—it was close by, right under my nose, yet unreachable. We did this every day, didn’t we? We would eat meals together and then wash up together. So, why did I feel so unsettled?

I shook my head, dispelling the confusion that muddled my brain. “Sorry,” I whispered. “I don’t know what happened.” I laughed uneasily, without a hint of mirth.

He laughed too, not to poke fun or because he found my obvious turmoil amusing, but rather to comfort me, so I would feel less alone in my unease. “It’s alright,” he said gently.

Neither of us addressed what had happened; we simply resumed our routine of washing and drying in domestic silence. And as seconds turned to minutes, and as the sky remained sunny, I found myself smiling. All that mattered was that he was standing beside me and that the sun was beaming in the sky. So, I kept smiling.

After I finished drying the last dish, we began placing the plates, bowls, and an abundance of cutlery in their assigned drawers and cupboards, weaving past each other and giggling anytime we got in one another’s path. I was carrying a stack of white plates, eyeing the high cupboard they needed to go in, but before I could even attempt straining onto my toes, the plates were out of my hands and taken into another much larger pair.

The smell of sea salt and expensive cologne wafted from behind me as he towered over my shorter frame and placed the plates in the cupboard.

“I could have done that,” I said, smiling as I turned around to face him.

He had a playful glint in his eye. “Yeah, right. What are you, like, four feet tall?” he joked.

It was an extreme exaggeration since I was no way near that height, but I suppose everyone was miniature in comparison to him, being over six feet tall and all. I feigned open-mouthed offence, to which he gave the side of my head a quick, playful kiss of apology.

He then leaned against the counter with crossed arms. “Plus, when was the last time you actually put these dishes away? I’m surprised you even remember where they go.” He was grinning at me in a teasing manner, but every ounce of humour had drained from my body.

My eyes drifted to the floor.

Well, that was the question, wasn’t it—when was the last time I put the dishes away?

I couldn’t remember. In fact, I couldn’t remember what had happened this morning or the day before. Hell, I couldn’t even remember what we were doing before the dishes.

To be standing in a room, in a place you call home, and have a sense that nothing is in its right place, even though that is where everything has always been, is a disconcerting feeling beyond belief. To be perplexed by your own state of being—your existence—is even worse. I could almost describe it as a nauseating bout of vertigo.

My hands found the counter’s edge behind me, and I exhaled a shaky breath.

He stepped in front of me, one large and gentle hand reaching up to cup my jaw. “Are you okay?” he asked, his forehead wrinkling with shallow worry lines as he inspected my face. I hated that. I hated that I worried him so much. Sure, partners were supposed to lean on each other for support in a relationship (as he too did with me when needed), but I always felt so guilty doing so. Hadn’t he already suffered enough… pain in his lifetime? Who was I to cause him any more?

A sunbeam suffused the room, oozing across his face. The illumination lightened his eyes into a refreshing mint green, though, in contradiction, unearthed a pain that had been previously been concealed. Pain from what, I wasn’t sure. From concern regarding my unusual behaviour? Maybe a thought that was troubling him? Or perhaps he too was enduring a spell of confusion and had an inexplicable feeling that he was out of place.

Whatever his pain regarded, seeing it had rattled the deepest structures in which held my mind together.

It was then that I suddenly realised I hadn’t answered his question, so I gave him a wan “I’m-not-too-sure-myself” smile and then began slinking back to the sink window.

He followed behind me. I could feel him staring into the back of my head, could feel his brows draw together and his lips pull into a tight line, patiently waiting for a further explanation, though I wasn’t sure I could offer him one.

I hadn’t noticed before, but on the windowsill was a small picture frame containing a polaroid picture of us in bed—I was lying on his chest, half-naked and asleep, and he was looking down at me, smiling fondly yet with a sort of mischievous knowability. Running down the middle of the protective glass was a small, jagged crack.

I plucked the frame from the windowsill, inspecting the picture in my two hands. It seemed to uncover a place in my mind—once clouded by disorientation—I’d forgotten. Whether this place was real or imaginary was beyond me, but the fear I felt upon its recollection was incandescently genuine.

“Do you think,” I spoke tentatively, “people can have nightmares while they’re wide awake?” My thumb ran over the crack.

I might have heard him inhale a quiet, sharp breath, but it also could have just been the waves breaking on the distant shore. “Like a flashback?” he asked, an unidentifiable unease in his tone.

“No, not exactly.” I searched my brain for the right words, the right way to tell him how I was feeling, but it was difficult when I could only conjure vague fragments. And it was all I could do to tell it to him elliptically, as I knew saying the words in any other manner would shatter my heart.

“I had this vision,” I began, my words apprehensively staccato, “where I was somewhere else.” My eyes flickered over the picture. “Somewhere… bad. Everything was grey and heavy, and I was alone. Sometimes you were there, but you—you weren’t really you anymore.” I paused and looked up to find him staring at me in the reflection of the window. He looked pained; it was then suddenly hard to recollect a time when he didn’t. My throat started to constrict. “You were gone and…” my voice quietened to a broken wisp of wind, “you were haunting me.”

The room was silent.

He said nothing in response

The transparency of his reflection in the glass was so familiar—so haunting—and it was like another forgotten matter had been dredged from the depths of my mind. Stinging tears brimmed my waterline, and, due to my inability to bear the sight of his translucent appearance, I forced myself to turn around.

I glanced up at him, smiling weakly as I whispered, “I’m sorry.”

He shook his head as if my need to apologise was nonsensical (even I was unsure of what I was apologising for), and he then pulled me into a tight embrace. His chin rested atop my head; my face was buried in his chest, and his arms held me like I was some dilapidated structure that relied on his support to remain upright. Part of me knew this sentiment was correct.

I expected his next words to be ones of consolation or reassurance, maybe an “I’m right here, sweetheart” or an “I’ll never leave you”. Instead, I felt his head turn and heard him say, “Think it’s going to storm?”

With a sniffle, I turned my head towards the window. The arms wrapped around my body tightened as if he somehow knew I would need the extra support. Because when I saw the wall of dark, opaque clouds rolling through the sky towards us, an unshakeable dread zapped through my heart.

My hands clung to the fabric of his cream-white sweater, which then brought to my attention that an inexplicable tingling sensation was spreading down the fingers of my right hand, numbing them.

Lightning flashed on the horizon, and the once serene waves began cresting violently on the shoreline. The dread grew.

Before my attention could drift too far, my name was called again.

I looked up to find those green eyes gazing down at me, swelling with tears. He was crying. Why was he crying? And why was his hair wet? His usually golden strands had darkened to a deep brown and were drenched with cold water that dripped onto my cheeks, and his hair was swept haphazardly across his forehead, a reflection of someone who had just endured an intense storm or had just been fighting for his life against a swarm of—of—

No.

My own eyes began to burn.

“It’s killing me to see you this way,” he spoke, every second word breaking and wavering in volume.

The world seemed to tilt on an axis. Return did the disorientation, ravaging my mind more violently now. “What do you”—My chest was rising and falling with heavy breaths—“What? What do you mean?” My lower lip was quivering, and my eyebrows were scrunched together in confusion. His words replayed in my head: It’s killing me to see you this way.

It’s killing me.

His hair was dripping—no longer with water, but with a thick, red substance that both dripped down and clotted on his skin. He didn’t look pained anymore; he looked like he was in pain.

It’s killing me.

But that can’t be right, can it?

It’s killing me.

Why?

It’s killing me.

Becausemy Finnickwas already dead.

I staggered backwards and out of his, no, this imposter’s arms. He stared at me as blood streamed down his forehead, pouring over his eyelashes and down his cheeks. I was going to be sick. This had to be some sort of cruel joke, a newly invented punishment from Snow. But that wasn’t right either: Snow was dead too.

“F…Fi…” I tried saying his name, my top teeth prodding the inside of my bottom lip, but I couldn’t make a sound.

He took a step towards me, and I almost stumbled onto the floor. “Remember what I told you?” he asked, though it sounded more like an urge.

I frantically shook my head. No, I didn’t remember. I didn’t want to remember anything.

Something dark and mountainous appeared in my peripheral vision, and an odious smell singed my nostrils. My head snapped to the left. Stacks upon stacks of plates and bowls mounded the kitchen sink, each crawling with maggots that were falling to the floor in white, wriggling heaps.

Nausea boiled in my stomach; horror brimmed my eyes.

I quickly turned away, my eyes meeting green again. His face was no longer stained with blood, and his hair was dry, shiny, and golden with life. I was as speechless as my face was drained of blood.

He took one more step toward me, but this time I didn’t back away, either frozen with fear or desperation for one last experience of closeness with him. My heart thrummed as he reached out to cup my face. It isn’t him, it isn’t him, it isn’t him, I repeated madly in my head. Oh, but it felt so much like him when his warm hand met my skin.

“I told you I’m always with you, sweetheart,” he murmured. And I knew engaging with him, in whatever form he took, affirmed my mental unwellness, but I couldn’t stop from leaning into his touch anyway. “Remember that.”

My cheeks were wet with tears. “I love—”

A bolt of lightning flashed, and thunder boomed throughout the house.

I was back in my bed.

My eyelids were heavy with sleep as they fluttered open. I felt detached, destabilised, and unsure of my existence in the world for I wasn’t sure which of the twoI was currently in. Real or fake?

A few minutes went by before I managed to get a grip on reality, which, in fact, was the real one. The Somewhere Bad. I pinched the corners of my eyes, not only finding them damp with fresh tears but also realising that my right hand—previously tucked beneath my head—was numb.

None of it had been real…

The entire time, my body was trying to alert me, to save me from the inescapable heartache I would feel upon waking. He hadn’t held me in his arms. He hadn’t cupped my cheek nor helped me wash the dishes. He wasn’t here. He wasn’t anywhere (not even in his own marked grave because there was nothing left of him to be buried).

Even despite seeing the familiar tall outline standing in the doorway, his features illuminated with each flash of lightning, I knew it wasn’t really him.

Rain was pummelling the roof, almost loud enough to subdue the perpetual rumbling of thunder (apart from the one sky-splitting thunderclap that had woken me). In another time, I would’ve been scared—of the raging storm, of my phantom lover who was watching from the shadows of our bedroom. But not now.

In recent months, I had found that no emotion, not even fear, surpassed the soul-crushing realisation that you have irretrievably lost the one thing you lived for.

On a defeated whim, and for the first time since his death, I let the singular, weighted word breeze past my lips.

“Finnick.”

It was a trembling plea, a desperate beckon.

And he indulged.

His footsteps were silent as he walked towards the bed. I couldn’t see his legs from my position, prompting me to wonder if he even had legs at all. Or did he only have legs when I could see them? That would then insinuate that if I couldn’t see him at all, he didn’t exist.

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? In my case, the answer was simple: no, it didn’t.

It wasn’t really Finnick. It wasn’t even his ghost. It was my mind.

He reached the bed’s edge, and I scooted over to my side of the mattress, allowing him enough space to lie down on his. His weight neither dipped nor shook the bed as he laid down and turned on his side to face me. His eyes were sad, and I’m sure mine were too. We stared at each other for a long, long time, long enough for my fatigued body to start playing tricks on me.

If I focused hard enough, I thought I could hear the sound of his breathing (the wind was picking up outside), feel the warmth of his skin spreading onto the sheets (the remnants of my own body heat were left behind each time I moved), and smell the musky scent of cologne and sea-salted hair (the sleeves of his sweater were tucked beneath my nose).

Maybe for a moment—just one sickly, self-indulgent moment—I could pretend it was really him.

I inhaled deeply through my nose. “You really weren’t kidding when you said you would haunt the next owner of this house,” I whispered as light-heartedly as I could, my voice obscured by the heavy rain pouring onto the roof.

He smiled, and it was one of the most heart-wrenchingly beautiful things I had ever seen. I think I might have given him one in return, though I couldn’t be too sure because the concept of smiling had become so foreign. The last time I was truly happy was… the last night we spent together. In each other’s arms, safe and warm and together.

And then he was gone. Just like that.

Cressida, whom I had only spoken to once in Thirteen when the war ended, was the one to tell me how it happened. Katniss was too personal, too close to him; Peeta’s instability rendered conversation futile. So, I had asked Cressida to tell me every detail—every expression on his face, every word he screamed. I don’t know why. Maybe it was so I could cling onto those last few minutes where he was still alive and breathing, despite dying and bleeding; or so I could replay the moment over and over in my head, as if somehow, someway, I could change his fate.

“He talked about you all the time,” she had told me. “Actually, I don’t think he ever spoke of anything but you. No one minded, though. While we were out there, no one ever really smiled, but every time your name was mentioned, Finnick would get this great big grin on his face, and it was impossible not to look at him and start smiling as well.

So, we all started asking questions about you: ‘What colour is her hair? Her eyes? Where did you meet? What are her hobbies?’—just to see him smile… A week passed, and it was like we all knew you inside out. It was all we could do to hang on to some shred of happiness, even if it meant talking about a girl who, to all of us, was a stranger.”

I was inconsolable after that.

She kept talking, but my sobs had drowned out most of her words, so much that I had asked her to retell me everything later in the day, despite inducing the same outcome. So, she told it to me again, just as she did the day after that and the day after that and so on until I returned home to District Four.

“He also spoke about how you never felt comfortable living in the Victors Village. He had this idea that the two of you would move somewhere far away, outside the borders of District Four, though he emphasised remaining by the sea was very important—something about how you looked while swimming during sunset and the water was all sparkly around you.”

At this point, she had been holding my hand, knowing full well how debilitating it was for me to hear. Then she had spoken with a quiet incredulity and a facial expression to match, as though she’d never encountered a love like ours before. “He wanted to build a house for you…”

He wanted to build a house for you.

And now he never would. Our love was too ephemeral for that to happen; destined to remain history; to be a memory.

Finnick's eyes stared into mine, the green hue now a dark grey from the overshadowing dimness of the room.

“I would’ve gone anywhere with you,” I whispered to him, placing my hand on the sheets between us. “I would’ve travelled thousands of miles away from this place. Would’ve lived in solitary, just the two of us, for the rest of our lives.” A warm tear tickled the bridge of my nose. His eyebrows scrunched together in shared anguish. “God, Finn, I miss you,” my voice broke. “I miss you so much.”

I contemplated crying, sobbing, screaming, or begging for him to come back, but I was just too tired. All my energy had been spent on grievance throughout the following day, and my eyes were growing heavier by the second as my body was sinking further into a state of relaxation.

Between slow blinks, I watched Finnick’s large hand move to rest atop my own, and at that point, I knew sleep would soon catch me because I swear I could feel his warm touch.

Images flashed through my mind—incomprehensible and melting together, yet somehow still graspable.

Sky blue water rippling with calm waves, the surface glittering in the setting sun. A white stonewall cottage fronted by soft, white sand and tall palm trees. Two plates of fruit-filled yoghurt and scrambled eggs on toast. Three pairs of footprints in the sand, one larger, one smaller, and another between them so delicately tiny I could fit them into the palm of my hand.

Sea-green eyes above me. Golden hair tangled between my fingers. Finnick standing in the wooden doorway of our white stonewall cottage wearing a cream-white sweater and rolled-up slacks. Finnick grinning deeply and then throwing his head back with laughter. Finnick standing in front of our bed, taking my hand in his and guiding me towards him. Finnick. Finnick. Finnick. Finnick. Finnick.

Finnick holding our child.

I was between worlds now, both indistinguishable from the other. My eyelids were drooping, and I was quickly growing insensate. Just before my eyes closed completely, I saw Finnick’s—he who wasn’t really my Finnick—lips move. It wasn’t in my bleak reality in which I heard him speak, but rather in my mind, and God, did his words offer the sweetest relief.

“I’ll see you when you fall asleep.”

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rel124c41 · 28 days

Text

SCHISM. jade leech

You could not grab a full-bodied mushroom, that had already lived a life outdoors, and stick it into a terrarium. "I know the pieces fit because I watch them tumble down" - TOOL, Track 5 on Lateralus

tags: established relationship, relationship issues, soul bond, ghost camera, angst w a happy? ending, character study, parental crewel, mental breakdown(s), crowley finds a way to send the prefect home, grimms fairytales, tattoos

word count: 16,920

“No! NoNONO! Wait, Jade! Cut it out Jade! Jade!”

The words you let out are overflowing with terror. Fear makes itself familiar and known in your vocal cords.

Out of you comes one last fruitless, ignored shriek of his name before you cry like a child on a rollercoaster. With you in his arms, Jade falls back first off the cliffside.

Catlike, you cling onto your boyfriend. Pointed nails dig deeply into his neck, causing little injuries and indents. The fall is short and, before you know it, you are both underwater, weightless.

It is freezing and awful and warm and great all at the same time. You want to resurface immediately. Which you do, kicking yourself out of the constricting arms around your waist. Lake water ripples and billows. Once you surface, you expect to hear that mocking laughter. Rivulets of water cascade down your neck and face as you bring two soaking wet hands up to your temple to wipe away water – rather fruitless. But you clear the skin over your eyes and open them, searching for what you thought you would find in sound.

“My clothes are drenched, Jade,” you whine, knowing he can hear you no matter if he is underwater.

The lake remains a calm surface, no body popping up. Kicking your legs and waiting, you glance up at the cliffside Jade had thrown both of you off of. Sun burns the palm you face up to its golden rays, protecting your eyes. There is, sitting all pretty. The mushroom you had been going to collect lies unplucked. Next to it, your pair of sunglasses that had fallen off your nose when you were lifted as easily as a mischievous cat.

Though, you are not the mischievous one in this. That description belongs to another: the one sly predator swimming underwater and avoiding surfacing for mischievous reasons most likely. Who were kidding, you think watching still waters, definitely for those types of reasons.

And you only get one warning – a hand pinched on your nose and a hand cupping your mouth – before you are dragged right back underwater.

You thrash wildly. A lean body folds and tilts itself over you. You punch at where you think his shoulder or rib-cage is. He spins you once then twice underwater, disorienting you. You clutch at his shirt and pull. He kicks at your right leg and bends your body as if it is a bow. Wrestling against one another, your objective to resurface and his objective to dance clash until finally Jade pulls you up for air.

This time mocking laughter accompanies the cool sting of air. “Ugh, you jerk! You absolute – ugh!! My clothes!” Your punching fist is caught. Jade twists it and wraps it around his neck in an amorous hold like you two were going to start tango-ing. He laughs, subdued chortling at your furious expression.

“Fufufu, you should’ve seen your face.”

“This is Floyd level behavior! I cannot believe you!”

“Come now, (Name). You were just complaining about the heat.”

You gasp, offended. “The heat?! You did this because –”

“Because I wanted to assist my love however I could? Yes, of course. I do need to take care of you after all.”

“Oh, you ass,” you growl and dig your nails in the back of his neck.

Jade is unaffected by your humane strength. Instead, Jade smiles at your attempt to inflict any harm on him. His lips pull up and you are struck breathless by the visage of him. Sunlight falls on his glass-clear skin in an evangelical way. Teal hair is pressed down by water, slick with a rare shine. Even with black eyeliner smudged raccoon-esque, his eyes are piercing and vibrant. A lemon and an olive, rich like plucked from a painting. You punch his latissimus for being so effortlessly handsome at times.

With clipped and vexed words, you say, “I’m cool now. Thank you.”

“It’s my pleasure.” His white smile is aggravatingly handsome too. “Don’t I get a reward for my consideration,” Jade asks, not missing a beat, simply floating with you in his arms.

“Take me back to the shore?”

“Of course I will.”

“Okay, here’s your reward,” you say, pecking him on the lips. “Now then.” Your gaze sharpens. “Shore. Now.”

When you two finally reach the lake’s sandy border, you start to wring out your button-up. You will not walk around in wet clothes. The dripping fabric of your tank top suctions itself to your skin in an unrelenting, octopus-like grip. You glare when Jade openly stares. Half-lidded eyes trace up and down the curvatures of you. Taking the shoulder ends of your button-up, you whip the material down hard once then twice then thrice, watching as water droplets splash your boyfriend.

Take that, you think triumphantly as you remove another article of clothing.

Jade gets back at you by taking his own wet button-up and wringing it out over your head rather than over the dirt like you had done. Dropping the shoe you were shaking water out of, you attack him and his self-satisfied, coy smirk.

It takes about five minutes of horseplaying until you two get back on task.

You sit on shore, squeezing water out of socks and mourning when Jade was more cowardly about touching. All two sets of teeth yet no bite. Endearing courting methods involved gifts, and even then, he was earnestly timid about it. Hand like a shield on his heart all the time as if to translate, be gentle with me.

Rolling a still damp sock back on your foot, you think that message was truly worth ignoring. Jade Leech and gentle were antonymous.

Still, there was a certain charm about his slyness. The fake humanitarianism he wore in his finely pressed uniform and neat bow was attractive. The glowing, angular silhouette of those sharp, up-turned eyes could still make you swoon. Something about him being out of reach was magnetizing.

But … you watch as Jade walks up to you, your mushroom and sunglasses in his hand, there is something equally magnetizing in unlocking this part of him.

And you have to admit the dip into the lake did wonders dropping down your temperature. Now you were not losing by such a large margin in the battle against heat stroke.

You let him have this win. And you let him come to you. Accepting your sunglasses, you lay them to perch on the crown of your head. Before he offers a hand out to you, Jade carefully places your mushroom in the bucket you two have been wandering around with. He drapes his wet button-up over the button, electing to stay in his own tank top.

“Not going to dry out your socks?”

“No, I happen to enjoy the feeling of walking around in wet socks. Reminds me of home”

“You’re incorrigible.”

A smile splits across Jade’s face at your harsh words. Stalactites and stalagmites of razor enamel shine in his mouth, menacingly. And yet he offers out a hand to you, nails trimmed down to the plate, safe and warm even if it is calloused a bit.

Your eyes trail over him. Past shoes and compression tights and white cargo shorts. Gliding over the palm of his pallid hand and over the black eel skeleton made of tattoo ink which wraps itself from elbow to shoulder. Up to his collarbone, to his face, and to his eyes.

A fond thought arrives in the mailbox of your mind. It is a letter perfumed in heart, base, and top notes of aquatic and woody scents. The smell of stepping on the beach and breathing it all in so deeply that your ribs ache. As the letter’s wax seal melts off, you read and transcribe the letter into the passionate smile on your lips and the way you trust yourself with holding Jade’s hand. The letter reads: I think I want to spend the rest of my life with him.

That was only yesterday.

That was only yesterday. Now, that mental letter means nothing to you.

How quickly our opinions can change, you reflect, standing in Crowley’s office with a pearl of torment clutched in the bowels of a stomach ready to puke.

When you were summoned to Dire Crowley’s office, you were vexed more than anxious. In your head bounced around the theories on what under-the-table job the Headmaster was kindly electing for you to take care of. Another thirty plus stack of papers he did not want to write his signature on or another school activity that you would be generously put in charge of. You weighed the options of work as Grim (perched on your shoulder) weighed the options of what you would ask for as a reward.

“Tuna croquettes, Henchman, imagine the taste of those! When Crowley gives us our job, ask for those! Ask for tuna –”

“What even is a croquette? When did you learn a French word?” You can already guess the answer to the second question: if it involves food, not even a language barrier can stop Grim from learning about it.

“They’re these breaded balls of tuna that are deep-fried.” You stick your tongue out in disgust. “They look delicious. You can dip them in honey or put them on crackers. Oh, Henchman, you have to ask for them. And we should pick up more honey for home.”

“I’ll remember to pick up honey. I can’t promise any tuna coqu –”

“Croquettes.”

“Croquettes. You know, you need to stop watching food blogs or going on websites like Food & Wine. I found my phone opened up to twelves tabs of just food blog recipes last week.”

“I’m not the one browsing them. Jade is.”

“Well, I’m cutting both you and Jade off. You’re grounded from looking at food blogs together. I can only handle so many different ways to organize a bento box before I go crazy.”

“Henchman,” Grim whines, nuzzling his fur against your cheek. “But they all look so yummy.”

“Grounded,” you had declared just before pushing open the door to Dire Crowley’s office, knowing he was already expecting you. How you wish you could re-spark that easy conversation between you and Grim. How you yearn to have the foresight to ignore his summoning.Now, you stand in front of Crowley, frozen.

“He-Henchman,” Grim whines, trying to get you to speak or at the very least blink.

Blind-sighted is the only accurate description for you. Your eyes sit in your skull like wispy white spider eggs, paralyzed. If breathing were not a necessity, you would dare not even breathe. Vision blurring, you focus on the thin lips of Crowley underneath his raven masquerade mask, replaying all he had said. Salted water twitches on your bottom eyelashes.

After seven volatile overblots, the too close for comfort spell of comatose casted over the entire world, and two years of rapidly draining hope, you had a way to go home through the assistance of the Dark Mirror and Dire Crowley.

You think you really are going to puke.

The only thing that halts your throat from cleaning itself of previous dishes is the bite of Grim’s fangs on your cheek. Like four tiny needles, his fangs sink in with a vengeance. You startle back with a yelp, stepping back, fruitlessly because your attacker is still laying on your shoulder. “Grim, ouch!” Blood holds itself unsteady in the puncture mark before one droplet slides down your cheek. You bat him off your shoulder. “That hurt.”

Grim lands gracefully in the space between you and the Headmaster. He turns around on two legs, neck craning to look up at you. His eyes are wishing wells of cerulean blue. You know what that sorrowful color means without his frowning eyebrows telling you his thoughts indirectly. “You’re not planning on going are you, (Name)?”

You are not a fantastic multitasker but you might just find yourself puking and crying. The wobble in his voice as if his emotions were an earthquake. How were you to explain what it was to yearn for family when Grim’s only family was … his only family was you.

“Gr-Gri,” your bottom lip trembles.

You find yourself unable to do anything but react to physical pain. Speaking meant acknowledging it. Ignoring Grim’s question, you look up at Crowley, past his lips to those glowing eyes. “Headmaster, I –” Your words pitifully stop there. No section of your mind can construct a sentence and you cannot even say Grim’s name fully.

You look at him with child-like vulnerability. Vulnerability seen in the eyes of kindergartens who are squeamish that the world has become big — the world offering more than just their four walled home — and thus look up at their teachers for guidance. Nervous without their parents around. Sevens, you are only nineteen.

You cannot lie; I want to see them again.

Perhaps the desperation in your eyes is prominent because Dire Crowley quickly amends, “Now, this is not without some wiggle-room. I am not an unreasonable person! According to the Magic Mirror, you have exactly a month before the carriage arrives. Plenty of time!

“Now, I have done my part in delivering the news,” Crowley says jovially. Jovially as if he has not turned your entire world on its head.

“Wai –”

You stutter. A hand is already pressed firmly on the small of your back. Your body shudders with a riptide of thoughts. Thinking about the conditions of how you will get home, thinking about asking for an extension, thinking about how unfair it all is. After Tsunotaro’s overblot, you managed to accept your place in Twisted Wonderland and one raindrop day causes all that to shift into a storm.

All the conditions of Crowley’s instruction fight in your head. Five talons on your back fight to move your catatonic body. You feel as elastic as rubber and as stone as granite. Somewhere far away, you think you hear Grim hiss. What are you going to tell Jade? And with that horrible thought, you allow yourself to be pushed out of the office.

You think you feel Grim crawl back up to your shoulder but you feel as if some supernatural force has kicked you into the back of the line, kicked you out of your mind.

“Now (Name), please remember the Dark Mirror says this event only lasts for four hours. Think of it like a solar eclipse; it is a change of elements allowing this method to work. The carriage will ride past the –'' The rest of Crowley’s words waterfall out his mouth like white static. There is a strange ringing in your ears. You think you might pass out.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” you wag your tongue, speaking words you will not remember tomorrow.

Crowley says something more but it is a breeze, wordless and untranslatable, before closing his door. You stare at the gradient of wood. There is an urge to knock on it again, worrying your memory is wrong and now is the first time you were called into Crowley’s office. But you know … how you know what reality this is. It feels like you left parts of your brain lobotomized and body amputated, lying beyond that gradient wood; missing parts of yourself.

You rub your cheek, a little blood gathering on your knuckle. Grim’s bite, you remember, bleeding as if you had dug into a pimple. “Huh? I.” Without fully gathering all the parts of yourself back up, you walk off after a breath of hesitation.

Grim hops off your shoulder as you two glide away. The physical burden of this situation is already a heavy weight on your shoulder, you do not need him adding to it. Observing that, Grim stays quiet on his two legs, keeping stride.

He feels his skin bubbling with questions. Your eyes are full of water refusing to fall. Will you two be returning to class or Ramshackle? You were called into Crowley’s office in the middle of Magic Analysis class. Would you really still have the fortitude to write up answers?

Your mind was swimming with something much more tantalizing than the differences of divination magic in users like the Fates to users like Jafar.

Grim watches you stop in the corridor. About two hallways away from Magic Analysis class. You stare ahead, blank and dollike; then, as if a horrid thought has passed into your mind, you move as fast as a scorpion.

For the briefest moment, horror is in your eyes. A tight, clenching hand flies up to your face, slapping itself over your mouth as if you are going to vomit or scream. You squeeze your eyes tightly together, doubling over at the hip. Nails dig (four on the left and one thumb on the right side) into your cheek, forceful enough to leave marks.

The pain is grounding.

Hyperventilating for no more than ten seconds, you suddenly straighten up, taking a deep breath. You put the thought away like a child pushing their shoes into a cubby. When you look down at Grim, your eyes are dry as his big blue eyes implore you to speak. Your body shakes slightly like you have goosebumps running up and down your skin.

“Henchman?”

“Tuna croquettes. What would you say if I made some tonight,” you give Grim an unsteady smile but your voice is magically even. “You’ll have to pull your weight and help me. It’s been a while since we cooked together, right?”

Heartslabyul is the first to know. Thus is the natural law of order.

There is probably an unconventional rule written down: lies can only be told on a Tuesday if the liar has prematurely prepared mealworms for the hedgehogs during noon … or … something eccentrically long like that. A rule only plausible for Heartslabyul standards. But you predicted, walking into Magic Analysis class yesterday, that Ace and Deuce were going to find out the truth first. Even if you were not prepared to tell them it.

The reveal was a far leap from graceful. Unplanned, your woes spilled out of Grim’s mouth, something about you not being there for finals. Sudden cobblestone hits your back. Wincing at the bite of the school wall, you wilt at the rapid fire of Ace and Deuce, not even getting space to speak, Ace starting:

“You only get a month! How long have you known!”

“Grim just told us you aren’t going to be here for finals, and he well – he!”

“He’s gotta be joking, right?”

“After Draconia’s overblot, I thought it was impossible to –”

“Prefect, I can not go through that again. I know I joke about sleeping forever. But those are jokes!”

“Ace! … But really how did Crowley and the Dark Mirror figure it out?”

“They haven’t contacted Briar Valley have they? Not even Crowley can be that suicidal.”

“I mean, I can totally understand if you want to go; we all have families but –”

“But you don’t want to go right, Prefect?”

“Ace, don’t just ask them that!”

“Oh shut it! Why shouldn’t I ask, you coward? No one else is gonna but us!”

“Wait, does anyone else know, (Name), besides Grim.”

“So no one else knows.” You nod. “Wait, when will you tell Jade?”

Never, a part of you thinks. Wanting to save yourself from the hurt, you judge wrongly that you can continue through this month without having to face Jade and tell him. You just want to avoid the pain. Cobblestone-made bruises hum on your shoulders, deep in reminder.

You did not even get to break the news in Ramshackle, away from prying eyes. When you finally got a word in edgewise, you were still pressed against the outdoor wall of Night Raven College. The walking crowd was gratefully small … yet you stayed anxious over the idea anyone else would find out. The college was a hunting ground for weakness and each dorm was not above spreading a rumor.

Your anger at Grim for revealing your predicament lasts only ten minutes. What good was fruitless anger when these might be your last days in Twisted Wonderland?

Eventually, the group of five in Heartslabyul come to know. If Ace and Deuce knew something, the information eventually falls like dominoes to Cater, Trey, and Riddle.

Even with two of the three away on their internship, the information was passed over. Your favorite cake appears glittering with magic residue on the porch of Ramshackle with a letter signed by Trey that leaves you shaking. Quotes on eternalism – specifically time’s finiteness – from books and poetry start to bloom on Cater’s Magicam stories, not enough to change his feed but enough to stir up suspicion, and you feel that pit in your stomach deepen.

Other than the five in Heartslabyul, you keep the predicament from everyone else. Tears welling up in Kalim’s eyes; disbelief writing itself on Ruggie’s face; the volume of Sebek’s concern mounting in your ears. You do not want to deal with any of it.

Jade … you do not want to even think of how that will blow over. Would you get tears? Most likely not. Would you be shouted at? No, you have not heard Jade really shout. Would his expression reveal his inner turmoil and disbelief? No, he is a master at schooling his expressions. So predictable yet not, you mourn, walking down the hallways to your next class.

When we are at the height of our most paranoid, we think that every conversation that we cannot hear is about us.

You reflect upon this philosophy as you walk. Whenever glancing or idle eyes fall upon you, you get this stabbing pain running itself through your spinal cord. Your heart spikes when you see Riddle interact with Silver in class, jumping to the obvious: they are talking about me. Lips move yet sounds are unheard; in response, your heart drums a solo of fortissimo fear.

About three-fourth through the day, you leave Grim who has been gluing himself to your side with Deuce. Citing that you are feeling unwell and need to go to the nurse. No one argues with your firm insistence that you do not need a guide.

Your feet carrying you to the Mostro Lounge is simply muscle memory. If you want to calm down, you go to Jade. Knowing his schedule too is all ingrained in you.

The host sits you in a booth pressed snuggly against the aquarium’s glass. Upon your request, he neglects to give you a menu or coaster. This one time you will not be dining. You know it will vex Azul, taking up space where a paying customer could be, but you will make him forgive you.

Underneath electric, pulsing blue lights, you sit like an egg in an incubator. Facing the stretching walls of a sixteen foot tall aquarium. Shielded and blanketed by cerulean and black shadows. Entirely still.

What are you going to do? More people will come to know – people you care for and would not like to be torn from. And they will try to gauge or guide your decision, perhaps do both at once. You abhor that idea. All you really want right now is someone to be your rock to latch to when there is a riptide around you, someone who will be calm in the stare of a calamity.

Questioning, your eyes trace the motions of a codfish. It is odd for one of them to be swimming off from the school. He swims on the very belly of the conjoined body the school has made, pressing the limits of harmony.

The yellow-olive codfish starts to break the formation completely. Curious thing. You wonder if it has a disease. Determined, the codfish swims to the bottom of the aquarium, tail dilating back and forth as it heads down. But if a fish has an illness, usually they float? Ah, you are no marine biologist so you can never tell.

Then, you finally spot what it wants. A mollusk resting against a rock formation, just shy of a fake shipwreck punched full of holes. The codfish descends down to it. Cold fingers go up to your lips, concealing a smile, effortlessly. Adopting his mannerisms, you think with a laugh. Ah … you really have been spending far too much time with Jade to the point where you mimic him.

You anticipate it this time. Sediment explodes in a puffing cloud. The codfish retreats almost comically. And, slowly like savoring his success, the moray eel slinks his head back through the cavern of the starboard, mollusk caught in his mouth.

“Chamomile tea. It is known to soothe even the most anxious of souls.”

To be honest, you would have expected that voice to be much closer. His chin hovering over your shoulder and teeth too close to your ear is typical. Turning to drink in the sight of him still in his waiter attire, you concede that you will have to get closer to him later.

You glance down at the ceramic, steam still rising from its watery mouth. “And you just happened to have it on hand?” It looks to be the perfect temperature too. The stream is not excessive or lacking.

“On hand, why of course. I anticipated you coming here today.”

You raise a brow.

“It actually belongs to Table 5.”

Smiling, you pick up the teacup. Warm ceramic nuzzles into your palms and you take a generous sip. Near you like a guiding presence, Jade watches with one hand over his heart and the other holding the tray behind his back. “Well, I say my soul is subsequently soothed now. Thank you.”

He bows, bent at the hip, like a chivalrous knight. “Now,” he says as he tucks the tray under his arm, pulling out his notepad, “I sure hope the scenery alone hasn’t brought you to us today. Would you like to order now or later?”

“Aw, why do I get on the clock Jade and not boyfriend Jade.”

“Because I am paid by the customer.”

“But aren’t I just priceless?”

“The special of the day is also priceless. Monkfish. Though I’m assuming lobster rolls sound more appetizing to you than monkfish piccata.”

You hear your stomach growl at the notion. You gasp when Jade’s pen starts to move across the paper. Leaning off the booth, you push at the side of his stomach, glaring playfully. “Hey, no writing! I’m here to freeload; don’t ruin that for me.”

Chuckling, Jade starts to lean down to you, teeth all on his display. He looks ready to bite at your lips, all mischievous and elevated that you will definitely bite back. Staring each other down, you startle suddenly at Jade’s next move. Quite quickly, Jade shoots back up, wincing with his gloved knuckle pressed under his nose.

“Jade?” You blink up at him as he furiously rubs the bridge of his nose. “Do you need a tissue?”

“No, I'm fine, my love.” He gives one last rub to his nose. “Felt a sneeze coming on.”

Looking at him unconvinced, you hum when Jade pushes your teacup of chamomile closer to you. Then, he grabs your right hand sweetly, squeezing it. Your eyes meet again. Sevens, you could fall into those eyes as easily as a suicidal man falls into a noose.

“Why don’t you drink some more and I’ll be back shortly with food for us?”

“Us? Aren’t you on the clock?”

“You’re stressed,” he states like he is noting that you are wearing a certain article of clothes. As if it is obvious. His thumb runs itself up and down the ladder of your tense knuckles. “It’s a little evident, dear.”

Panic writes itself on your face. “Is it really?”

“Hm, now it is.” Referring to the way your eyebrows clench and your voice whispers in fearful tones. A manipulative, proud smile crawls onto his face. “But I know your soul after all, so it is evident to me.”

Jade lets your hand go, making sure you rest it on the teacup. Urging you one last time to drink, he stalks off to get you both some food for an impromptu lunch together. You watch his back as he disappears into the kitchen, blue light raining down on him.

Sweet and mild dyed water runs down your throat, on a mission to relieve you of stress. When you have about half a cup left, you set it down, contemplating.

You were so grateful for Jade. If you were only friends with him, you would have told him about this first. Advice from a Leech with benevolent intentions is often the best advice. Even Floyd, who is very go with the flow, is so emotionally intelligent. And Jade … Jade would not pressure you to give his details about your misfortune but he would also not allow misfortune to ruin you. Refusing to intervene too early or too late. He is like that sacred rock in the riptide.

However, you and him are dating. That makes certain topics difficult to breach.

Chamomile tea still the ideal temperature, you stare back at your reflection in the liquid. They pull down their lips. Worry has gathered fast and voluminous in their eyes like ants crawling all across a dead mouse on the ground, coating the brown fur to a patchy, thick black. Sizing up a reflection, you reflect on previous conversation.

Chamomile tea. It is known to soothe even the most anxious of souls.

But I know your soul after all.

Souls. Soul.

Perhaps you can tell Jade what is going on, just without directly telling him.

The Ghost Camera is a bulky thing. All heavy brass, that precious metal silver, and nickel. It almost tumbled out of your hands and into water during Camp Vargas; you could only imagine the speed it would have sunk at if Floyd had shorter arms. Eventually, you stop carrying it daily after your first year. Yet, you refuse to part from it entirely, still taking photos when you have it on you.

Perhaps it is an effect of being born in the very early 2000s but you adore having photo albums. Your parents had ten of you alone, separate from your siblings, and half of your childhood on camcorder films. It is in your DNA to keep memories.

Or Memories as the fragments are called.

Though, you sympathize with Grim that a whole room of photo albums might be extensive. But you have a whole house to yourself! And Sam sold you photo album books at a very cheap price because no one at a college wants to have physical reminders of being at college.

And how they could become physical reminders.

There is no system for the room crammed with albums. You do not have not enough time to delegate a day to organize each album by person, dorm, or month. So, letting fate guide you, you pick up three books, cradle them in your arms, and announce to an unimpressed cover, “Okay, let’s do this.”

The Ghost Camera is unique. Takes ordinary, unsuspecting photos then does a full 180 by being enchanted with magic.

When the user photographs a subject, it photographs a part of their soul along with the physical form. Memories are those soul fragments. If a soulbond between user and subject comes to be, it allows Memories to move across the surface like twenty second animated clips. If a soulbond between user and subject deepens, Memories can slip out of the photograph and take on corporal forms.

One night you dreamt of chasing a rabbit and woke to Ace, who had slipped out of the photo, standing over your bed. How you screamed. Until he floated silently back into the photo you had on your nightstand.

Once, a fake Floyd had tried to juggle three glasses of spice in your kitchen before one had fallen through his flickering, tangible then not-tangible hand. Then, the Memory had the nerve to melt away, leaving you with three broken spice jars.

Malleus had once strolled down the hallways of Ramshackle, mumbling over the decorations you hang onto walls of a once abandoned building, before sliding down a hallway, never to be seen from again that day.

The only way you can feel a Memory from the real person is the lack of warmth. It is like stepping out of a toasty car at the peak of winter. Memories carry along with them an icy breeze, unable to be fully human.

Grim is in bed asleep, warm, and you really only have time to do this now. Walking down to the lobby, you slide your hand over the spine of the albums. If you can ask whoever is in here for their advice, you never have to reveal the situation until you are at the ready.

A dodge on your part but who readily jumps into despair?

You collapse on the couch. With the weight of the albums in hand, a horrid thought passes in your mind. Cinderella’s stepsisters and the glass slippers.

Cinderella’s stepsisters, you will always be like them. You will have to slice off your heel and toes — as if you are carving into an apple or slicing down into a row of carrots — to fit into the glass slipper of Twisted Wonderland. Of Sage’s Island. Of the Coral Sea and Queendom of Roses, if you ever visit. You walk magicless in a world of magic, limping while blood soaks the inside of your crystal heels.

The thing about mushrooms is that you cannot just plant one into a terrarium.

Originally, you were under the assumption that it was like moving flowers from bed to bed. Jade cleared up the misinformation for you. You could not grab a full-bodied mushroom, that had already lived a life outdoors, and stick it into a terrarium. Full-bodied mushrooms would come to reject the ecosystem. The key to get them to stay? The key was to get the mycelium into the ecosystem; without the support system underneath the soil, the mushroom would wither and leave in a few days.

As you rummage around in the bucket from your recent Sunday date with Jade, you know there is little you can do. Some would take and others would not. Shifting, latex-covered fingers stir through the rather common mushrooms, passing over maybe only two or three rare ones.

Apparently, the one you tried to pluck off the cliffside six days ago was poisonous to the touch. Not enough to be fatal but you would have gotten a nasty itch coating itself over your hand. Even with the latex on, you avoid touching it. Jade’s hand is still a pinkish-red after all.

Stupid Jade, you think fondly on the protective eel and take a mushroom out of the bucket.

Terrariums are beautiful but mushrooms are rather fleeting. As you start to crumple up the gold-hued chanterelle mushroom in hand, you reflect upon the matter. Take for example the terrarium tank you are working on currently in Jade’s dorm. He has three on his bed-side shelf: one cylinder, one spherical, and one square. The one you laid on his desk is the spherical one.

This one terrarium has housed pholiota adiposa, then albino pleurotus ostreatus, and now gomphus clavatus mushrooms (known as pig ears), and has probably housed more before you even knew Jade.

Mushrooms are decaying plants. It is nearly impossible to curate an enclosure that can house a certain fungi all year round. After a while, Jade simply scraped all that death up in his hand, threw it into the compost bin of the botanical gardens, and departed from it.

A part of you would never understand how Jade could deal with it. All that hard work only for it to naturally wither and go. You suppose he dealt with it because he adored change. Who would have thought? The always-in-control Jade Leech actually enjoys seeing things shift and change. You understood his love of a challenge though. His unfinished magnum opus was a terrarium breaking the laws of nature, trying to get nine species of mushrooms that mimicked a coral reef in one single environment.

“Each species of fungi have different growing conditions that they favor, so it is impossible for me to recreate all of these in the same ecosystem,” he once said.

“So why even try?”

“I think it is most enjoyable and eye-opening to covet after the impossible.”

He then looked at you like you were a meal, speaking double meanings with a honeyed tongue. Scandalous yet not, so you could never accuse him of being scandalous at any moment. Ah … even the memories of Jade could make your face feel warm.

Distracting yourself, you start to add little bites of the gold-hued fungi in hand, tucking them under the moss and placing them on the tree bark.

Jade’s unfinished magnum opus involved this glasshouse– the pig ears, gomphus mushrooms. Gomphus mushrooms could not be successfully cultivated as they are mycorrhizal, meaning they form a special relationship with their host plant. Two of the nine species he was working with for his coral reef terrarium were mycorrhizal, pig ears and indigo milky. And Jade finally got a mycorrhizal species of mushroom to sustain itself in an ecosystem made of glass. Proving the impossible was possible. A smile reaches your features, feeding more of the common mushroom in the terrarium so the pig ears could feast.

Though that one project was going to have a long way to go, you had faith Jade would be able to complete it, despite the ecosystem and biology of fungi fighting against him. Would you be there to share in that victory? You dip your hand back into the bucket, ignoring the squirming of your stomach.

The door clicks open.

You look up to be greeted with the sight of teal hair and spindly limbs reaching up to six feet and one inch. Tongue already forming around the ‘J’, you stop suddenly. One then two Dunhill shoes – costing more than you will ever keep in a month’s pay – are kicked across the pale lilac floor. You watch cap-toe shoes sumersault and tumble.

As he falls into bed with a groan, you greet, “Hi Floyd.”

“Shrimpy!” You blink in surprise as the exhaustion seemingly disappears out of Floyd. He props himself on his elbow, legs shuffling a bit further up the bed, and a predator’s smile pulls on his lips. Energetic at the sight of his twin’s significant other.

“Was wonderin’ why my bed was so neat,'' Floyd hums … and oh, he must still be exhausted, you observe. Lying back down in the bed you cleared of candy wrappers and sheets you straightened, Floyd slightly props his head up with his crossed elbows and a pillow so he can keep talking to you. “What ya doin’ here?”

“Just helping Jade with his terrariums. I wanted to repay him for the chamomile tea.”

“Shrimpy’s so sappy.”

“Hey, I just adopted the Octavinelle values. Can’t be walking around with a debt. Got to keep us on an even playing field.”

“Mmm … which ones?”

“The pig ears. They’re so volatile. I’m worried if they’re going to stay or not.”

“Is that what has Shrimpy so stressed?”

“Hm? I wouldn’t say stressed. Just trying to figure out how I should handle them.”

You pick another mushroom out of the bucket. Gomphus mushrooms were so sensitive. Cousin to chanterelles mushrooms, you could safely add the gold mushroom in – as you had just done. Looking down at the mushroom you now hold, you consider if it would be safe fertilizer for the pig ears. You do not want to jeopardize the delicate balance.

Under Floyd’s watchful eyes, you put the mushroom you picked up back into the bucket. You start to rummage again before the eel’s words interrupt your work. “So what’s got ya so stressed?”

Not catching his drift, you say, “Nothing? I’m not too stressed right now.” It is a true statement. Your body feels entirely at ease, just measuring how you can help here and there with the terrariums. You cap the glass enclosure with the glass cover. If Floyd wants to sleep, you should not impose.

“Ya smell stressed.”

“You’re a real gentleman, you know that, Floyd?”

Ah, that old reliable nose of an eel. Hiding a playful smirk, you sing, “Well, I’ll get out your hair so my musk doesn’t ruin your sleep. I was just about done with everything anyways. I think Jade’s going to use the rest of the mushrooms from our hunt to cook something.”

“I’m serious. Ya stunk ever since Tuesday and ya stunk real bad on Friday,” Floyd says in a low tone, eyes glued to your back. “Kinda still smells now too. Not as bad but still.”

You are glad you get the terrarium down safely on Jade’s bed-side shelf because your hands shake at Floyd’s words. Ah, that vexingly reliable nose of an eel. Trust their olfactory system to even pick up the stench of tension like a dog picking up frequencies unheard. You sit back down on Jade’s bed, spine facing Floyd.

“Just school stuff. Crewel’s been on my ass about a test. I need to get mine and Grim’s shared grade back up in Animal Languages. Things like that.”

You can lie successfully with your body, keeping it from tensing in betrayal. You can lie successfully with your vocal cords, keeping them even and precise. However, you found you can never lie eye-to-eye with Floyd. It did not matter whether the golden eye was on the left or right. Somehow that flaming, glittering sun burns you to the core and figures out the undeniable, obsidian truth.

Already, you are mapping the escape route. Just a quick spin off Jade’s bed, grab your phone from his desk, and exit out the door. Avoid his eyes at all cost as if is a predator, and that he is. Moving off the bed, you say, “Like I said, I’ll leave so my musk doesn’t –”

“(Name).”

Your eyes snap up; a gasp is pinched tight in your mouth. Floyd challenges you back with his luminesce eyes. Bristling a hissy cat, the back of your thighs hit Jade’s mattress and you whine, “I hate when you two do that!”

Floyd laughs. He laughs in his normal, nasally drawl instead of the deep, sinister tone that Jade has. As Floyd takes pleasure in your surprise at his perfect impersonation of his twin, you refuse to look at him. The gloating jerk. In a rush, you grab your phone just as Floyd starts to speak, “Ya always fall for it, Shrimpy. It’s cute.”

“Yeah, whatever.”

“Ya stressed around Jade?”

“No.”

“Really? Ya reek right now. All stressed out after hearin’ ‘Jade’ speak. Smells like wet dog and cigarette smoke.”

“I’m not stressed,” you argue, flipping on your phone to check the time. Above Jade’s head, white numbers stare back at you, 4:43, and you watch it change to the next minute with a scowl. The screen goes black; angelic numbers and the photo of Jade leaning over Ramshackle’s oven, cooking a meal for your one year anniversary, disappear. “Look, I’ll –”

The words die in your throat when you and Floyd lock eyes. He knows I’m scared but just not of what. You cannot blame Floyd with the way his mismatched eyes narrow, little squinting fireballs of suspicion. He is only looking after his twin.

“I just need a little time before I can tell him, okay?”

“Kay, Shrimpy.”

Glance around the bedroom; check that you got everything in hand. You lock eyes with yourself, heart agonizing in your chest like a clawed talon has made it its footstool. Your happier, lighter face smiles back at your crinkled expression. Frozen in mirth. Stuck in a moment of easy breathing and thoughts. The photograph on the desk of you and Jade taken from the Ghost Camera. Only one of you looks at the lenses and the other stares down at the person pulling them into the surprise photo.

Uneasy thoughts fill your head. This is the photograph Jade wakes up to every morning. He had even cut Azul and Floyd off the edges of the polaroid, chuckling evilly when Floyd gapped and Azul sneered, instead of just folding them off the edges. Always wanting to get a reaction.

Would the facsimile of your soul one day be all that was left for Jade to keep? A photo that might fleetingly speak the words of your heart to him. You imagine it with a wince: Jade talking to a facsimile of you, empty of your warmth, but still there. Staying when you would not.

I don’t want that for him. I don’t want that for me!

I want to see them again.

Gomphus mushrooms. School assignments. The dinner you have to cook. Whatever lingers in your brain, you try to focus on it to distract yourself from the conflicting yearnings of your soul. Eventually, you will come to tell Jade. It might be procrastinated upon already, but better late than never. When you left the Leech twins shared bedroom, you did not realize how right you were. Eventually, you did come to tell Jade. You told him that very night, at 2:13 A.M., on the porch of Ramshackle.

You have not been sleeping well since Crowley broke the news to you. Everyone knows this. The concern is clearly written in Ace and Deuce’s faces when you two have classes and lunch together. Epel gives you the caffeine and Vitamin C eye-roller that he never used his first year. Sebek and Jack take to allowing their large hands to be the barrier between your cheek and a cold desk that might startle you awake.

Crawling out of bed, swollen eyebags aching like a bruise, careful to let Grim sleep, this is normal now.

Stumbling feet successfully walk themselves down spiraling stairs. One foot by one foot. Out of the corner of your lidded eyes, ghosts move like the undulating waves of a storm, pellucid bodies pulsing without a heartbeat. Sweat rolls down your neck, soaking into the nook of your collarbone. You miss the last step, bump hard into the wall, and that is all it takes. You start crying.

Uncertain of why you are down on the first floor instead of the second, you cry and cry, confused. When did you get out of bed? Your only answer is the raspy noise your mouth exhales. The loose t-shirt that is three sizes bigger than yourself is constricting and choking you.

The waterfall on your face continues steady even when the warm breeze of spring-turning-summer fights against it. You would take in a deep breath of fresh air if each breath you did take did not feel like drowning. Engine lungs refuse to start smoothly, instead churning with gasps and coughs of water.

I want my Momma. I want my Jade. I want my Dad.

Your butt falls heavy on the steps of Ramshackle, knowing there is no one coming for you. There will no longer be any hortative, glowing green fireflies coming to save you tonight. You sit there, presuming you will fall asleep from the exhaustion of weeping.

You feel like you are on a boat. A boat in the middle of a snow-globe. Turning and turning is fruitless because the sight is never changing eternalness: blue waves and a lighter blue sky. Color that cuts into sadness. Color that swallows. You can pirouette, jump, do handstands, but the sight remains. Blue on blue. On a boat that you do not even attempt to steer because there is no direction you want to go in.

Your mother once said she was so in love with your father that she knew he was the one because she would put him above her parents. Never getting enough of each other. Time spent with him was just better than time spent without. Better than being with her own parents.

That is love; when you find your person, you put them above everything else.

The iron gate to Ramshackle creaks.

You would like to say you watch Jade Leech climb up the cobblestone path to Ramshackle, thinking about the definition of love, but you cannot see past your tears. All you see is an emulsified blur of black, teal, and dark green water. Furious hands whip at your face. Eyes red and face warm, you look up. He is still a haze of skin, hair, and clothes sliced into little horizontal lines of color.

“Ja-Jade?”

“Pardon me if it sounds odd … but I heard you crying in my dorm. Of course, you weren’t there. But it still made me anxious so I decided to check.”

You sniff, scrubbing your eyes harshly to clear them.

“And here, I do find you crying in the exact same volume and manner.”

“Sorry. I —”

“Nonsense. You need not apologize for your tender disposition.”

“Sorry,” you say again. You drop your head at Jade’s exaggerated look. The exaggerated look on his face is only a squinting of his eyes. However, you can decipher and tell the differences between the twenty eye-squints Jade Leech can make.

You keep wiping away tears as Jade sits down by you on the porch. Vision clear, you smile at the rare sight of Jade in his pajamas. Oh, those are the fleece pants you bought him with a blue flannel pattern. A bit comforted by that, you lean into him as he rests an arm upon your shoulder.

“If my own disposition is not seen as rude, what is troubling you? You are not known for being so out of sorts. Crying is one thing, crying outside Ramshackle at 2 o’clock is another.”

“Do you think I smell?”

The smile grows a bit on your face as Jade quickly tries to submerge a laugh with his hand.

“Sorry, that was ah, a bit unexpected.”

“Heh, I know.”

“But?”

“Floyd made a comment early. I smell like stress.”

“Well, I would be lying if I said I hadn’t noticed too.”

“I think I could tell when you pull back from that kiss all the sudden. The sneeze excuse wasn’t very convincing.”

“Come now, I am an excellent actor.”

“Not around me.” You warm up when Jade trails his hand up and down your arm. Not around me. I can always read what is on your mind, Jade.

“Ah and there goes my dreams of being the first eel-mer movie star. Why are you so cruel, my love? Crushing a poor eel’s dreams?”

“Ah, my apologies,” you say remorselessly. Playful, your hand falls into Jade’s hand. You take to drawing swirls and seashells into the rough, warm center of his palm. Above, a few droplets of water start to sprinkle out of the sky. A slight change in the weather as you start to draw more seriously.

“Thank you.” He plants a kiss on the crown of your head. It settles on you like a flower petal, soft. “Now, would you like to tell me what has made you so incredibly stressed? I can be very patient, forewarning.”

“When you graduate, where do you want to live, land or sea?” You watch three droplets hit Jade’s hand, feeling a few pepper themselves on your shoulders and back. You take one droplet and smooth it out into the image of a starfish. That is not what you wanted to come out of your mouth. However, the chronic worry you have had about graduation slides out of your mind easily.

In the dust of rain, you listen to Jade’s answer. “If I were to choose … between land or sea … why that certain is a weighty question. And to think you have been all alone in your musing about it. How sobering, I cannot even imagine such a barnacle of a thought.”

“You’re stalling.”

“Hah, I can never keep things hidden from you, can I? Let me think.” He cannot draw up an arm to his chin but he definitely has that same contemplative look on his face. As rain kisses his crown, he slowly says, “Both land and sea come with advantages. Though I have only known land for three years, it has gifted me with wonderful consequences that I have never thought I of all merfolk would know.”

“I’m a consequence?”

“Quite. My favorite consequence,” Jade replies tenderly. “The sea can be seen as inhospitable to visitors. I happen to enjoy the cold and dark where others do not. I suppose I would have to measure the decision through memories. Am I fonder of the memories of my childhood or am I fonder of the memories of my education?

“I still have the chance to cultivate and reap the benefits of my education, unlike my childhood which is long gone. But, in the end, I would want both land and sea. And somehow, I would find a way to make that possible, no matter ecosystemic limits.”

You wilt as the rain starts to grow more constant. A few twenty or so dots of water are not gathered on Jade’s palm. Taking the abundance of paint, you draw the face of an eel with the water. “But it would matter: the consequences and the people you could possibly leave behind.”

“Your worry is about whether I would stay with you or my family?” You cannot nod because that is selfish of you, pushing your dilemma onto your boyfriend. Jade can tell what exactly the root of your stress is even as you draw. Leaning to be heard better over the rain, he says, “I would never leave you, (Name).”

“Crowley found a way to send me home.”

Jade tenses up. You wilt when the canvas of his hand suddenly changes , hand gripping your hand in a tight, binding hold.

“Pardon?”

“Crowley, he found a way to send me back to my home. I–” The clouds of your eyes grow heavy. “I don’t know what to do, Jade.”

Holding hands, you look up, hoping the answer can be found on Jade’s face. He is the decision maker in the relationship, picking the food you eat, offering advice on homework; Jade always has this way of knowing how to solve anything. His expression; you need to see so it can guide you.

Oh.

Oh. That is not good.

Profile stone and staring off into the dark beyond Ramshackle, Jade is unreadable to you. You wilt a third time.

“Cater’s been talking about getting Kalim to throw one huge going away party. I told him you would really enjoy it if the Pop Music Club played Supertramp’s Goodbye Stranger during it.”

That sentence gets you to stop cutting the strawberries. Jaw dropping, you turn towards Trey’s villainous smirk as he pretends to innocently pipe frosting on the second cake. Only his profile faces you, acting arrogant to your mortification. “You … absolutely did not.” The response you get is the crinkle of Trey’s cheek as he tries to push down his smile.

You whack him, taking vindictive joy in the icing that runs down the side of the mousse cake, and shout, “You jerk!”

“Hey, I just think the Ramshackle Prefect should go out with something memorable.”

“Isn’t being magicless enough?”

Trey takes to fixing the frosting as he replies, “You know Cater won’t do something so big without permission. He might just livestream all of it.” He picks back up the icing bag to resume and cover up the slight imperfection. “Would a party really be so bad?”

“Goodbye parties defeat the whole purpose of the word party,” you grumble. One by one, you plant the scales of cut strawberries on top of the strawberry tart. They extend out in the space of a lotus. “I’d be covered in tears and snot by the end of it. Ugh.”

“Hm, I suppose I see what you mean.”

Trey and Cater, after being alerted of the news with your permission, manage to return to Night Raven College from their internships for the weekend. The use of magic makes it easy for them to travel in quickly, popping by for an unbirthday party.

Currently, you and Trey prepare the strawberry tarts (as is customary for unbirthday parties) and a chocolate mousse cake (as is customary for you to enjoy). Riddle has meticulously plotted out each faucet of this unbirthday party. Nostalgically, he reminds you a lot like his old tryantical self, barking orders as his stress rockets, meticulous to give you the perfect unbirthday party. When asking where you were wanted, Trey happily scoops you up before anyone else can.

Playing catchup, you and Trey talk about a wide variety: how his internship is going, new recipes or meals you two have been introduced to or learned, the shenanigans of Ace and Deuce that Trey missed, and how your shared friend Jade Leech is doing.

To be frank, you enjoy Trey’s company a lot. Despite being a graduate of NRC, he makes you feel the closest to home. Normalcy. He expels this aura of normalcy that is absent from the rest of the student body. Pearly white, non-serrated teeth smile at you. Regular brown eyes shimmer behind his glasses. Within his presence, it is easy to masquerade around with the facade that NRC is a quotidian college. Protected by the walls of the kitchen, you can forget about the flamingos being used as croquet mallets and the magic pens waving through the air.

You are kicked from this fantasy comfort when Trey asks you for a favor. As Grim happily slurps up the leftover frosting from the plastic bag, a question is posed. “Can you do me a favor and grab the chocolate sprinkles?”

“Ah, of course.” Back on the paper plate goes your knife and quarter sliced strawberry.

You turn to where the shaker of chocolate sprinkles lies. Ah, unfortunately it is on a pretty high up shelf. No matter, you stretch out your body and reach. Fingers only scrap the glass surface. You move to your tiptoes, stomach pinched by the countertop.

“Don’t worry, Henchman! I got it!” On stubby legs, Grim stands up from his spot on the counter. He squints at the cabinet overhead and stands on his tiptoes too. He makes it about halfway less than your reach. Ribs pressing into Grim’s fur, you stretch out like an uncoiling snake.

You watch your finger slide down the glass. So close. You stretch when the sprinkles container suddenly starts to move. Putting your hands in front of your face in the shape of a triangle, you instantly coil back into a tight position and squeeze your eyes close. The impact never comes.

A wary eye opens and watches as the red glow of Trey’s pen and the sprinkled shaker that floats over the mousse cake. No matter how much you pretend, no matter how many times you stumble into your boring Wonderland, hoping all the magic is gone, it always comes back to catch you by surprise. Normalcy … you cannot get that back unless you go home.

Trey notices how eerily silent you are as you go about cutting up strawberries and hanging some of the banged up fruit to Grim. There is only one mousse cake but plenty of tarts waiting to be served in the kitchen. Well, it can’t hurt. “Here. For you.” You blink as two empty plates are put in front of you. “The piece of cake, or tart, typically goes to the Housewarden. However, I doubt Riddle will be too mad at this development.”

“Only been gone from Heartslabyul one semester and you’re already breaking rules,” you gasp with fake terror.

He simply puts a finger to his lips, eyes shining under his glasses. Trained, he empties a slice from each sweet with deadly, applause-worthy accuracy. Two confectioneries are put on the plates in front of you. As calm as an executioner, you stare at the two slices: a tart with scales of strawberries running across it and a cake with layers of mousse and bread laddering across it.

And you suddenly know this is something deeper than just picking which treat you want to eat. Ah, Trey Clover is a Night Raven graduate after all.

Under watchful amber eyes, you pick up your fork.

“Ha greedy, aren’t you?”

You admonish Trey for his teasing comment. Balancing the two sweets on a fumbling fork, you take the biggest bite of the overlap. Chocolate stains your lips. Despite that, it is the strawberry tart that you taste first.

“Aren’t I the unbirthday girl/boy? I get to be greedy!” You grin like Grim does and stab back into the confectioneries. Your fork picks off a bit of the mousse then moves to scoop off a bit of the tart before returning to your mouth. So what if you are greedy for wanting both? You can make a Wonderland for yourself.

Right?

A week and a half left. A week and a half passed. Time falls on a perfectly split down the middle day. Wednesday, the day Mountain Lovers club meetings fall on.

As time marches on, voices become more vocal about wanting you to stay. The Unbirthday party had gone swimmingly with a few rough waves. You sympathize with it. Yet you feel you have to be so careful when conversing about it, any wrong word might cause anyone to jump to a conclusion. So, with the loss of sleep, you are also talking less.

You wonder if everyone takes your silence as a sign you have made the definite answer.

Not everyone though. Jade Leech. Jade is the only one not acting erratically. When no filter Ace had asked him to agree with them he wanted you to stay, the eel-mer had only put a hand on your shoulder, picking you up after the Unbirthday party, and said, “Why that is not in my expertise to answer. I’m afraid that I would have to vote for a no comment statement.”

Calm, level-headed Jade. Calculating Jade. How you adore that detached yet sly nature of his. He is the sight of land after days of aimless traveling blue waters. He is chamomile tea on a sleepless night. He is a neat white pill of xanax.

And today, you are blessed to bask in that tranquil presence after school. Waiting to be received after knocking on his dorm door, you think upon it. No interrogation. No stress. Just you and him, hunting and sketching mushrooms. You even picked up a new set of charcoal pencils at Sam’s Shop for today. You light up when the dorm door opens.

“Ja – oh, hi Floyd.”

Something has set off Floyd. It is evident in the deep scowl cutting itself on his face. His discord eyes are dull. His posture is slouching like a deflating house made of bad wood. When you spoke, you even saw his hand twitch into a fist. Instead of attacking, Floyd blinks down at you and sighs out, “Sorry Shrimpy.”

Your grip on your bag tightens. “Um, why are you apolog –”

“Hello (Name).”

A little of that happy fire comes back to your soul. Smiling, you look behind Floyd to see Jade dressed in his pair of cargo pants and lightweight thermal henley. Foraging bag slung over his shoulder, he is like a breath of fresh air, the normalcy that sweats from him. “Hi honey,” your smile is innocent.

You only notice it for a brief flicker of time: a nasty glare directed from olive and gold eyes to mirroring gold and olive eyes, so hateful that your heart pats in worry that you might witness a fight between them. Then the loathing bleeds out of Floyd. He nudges you out the way, stomping down into Octavinelle’s halls.

“I’ma go. Can’t stomach watchin’ this.” Words that depart with Floyd.

“Jade?”

“What are you doing here, (Name)?”

Your stomach drops. “I - uh,” your neck is growing foolishly warm, you have not heard Jade speak so monotone in a while “, well, today is Wednesday and so I came to – uh.”

“Did my lack of response not clearly indicate that I would not be needing you for this hike?”

Further and further, your stomach sinks. You know what he is referencing, the single text you sent about thirty minutes ago: Did you want me to bring anything for tonight? It was just a quick check-up on your part. It is unlike Jade to take more than ten minutes to respond to you.

“I just thought you were busy.”

“No. I was trying to indicate that I would not need you on this particular night.”

“But … but this is our thing.”

Much like Floyd, Jade nudges you on the way. You stumble, staring at the expanse of his shoulders and back. He refuses to turn around, “Yes, but if I am to be alone in the Mountain Lovers club for the rest of my third year, then I should slowly wane off your company. A rational decision, yes?”

A hairline fracture snakes itself up your heart. Splatting, your stomach lands on the ground. Jade will not turn around to look at you. You look down your own foraging bag where those new, suddenly silly charcoal pencils lie.

“Um, yeah, that does actually make a lot of sense.”

“I will see you tomorrow though. So don’t fret so much.”

“I’m not fretting.”

“I know you won’t. That’s what I admire about you.”

And then, he leaves, back still a wall facing you. Perhaps you do not adore that detached yet sly nature of Jade’s in its entirety.

It is only natural that things decay. Jade knows that. Observed it happen with mushrooms a hundred plus times. Brown rot, soft rot, white rot. The fear of rot gives way to the fear of death. Death: that final departure. He wonders if when you inevitably step through into the carriage, ebon stallions with steely gray eyes as cold as the Grim Reaper’s scythe carting you away forever, if it will be like death or decay.

Jade knows you will not stay. Who would? So he is going to do better by you right now, be kinder and more unaffected, after tonight. He just needs this solitude for a few hours.

Memories of his twin’s face are dancing in Jade’s mind when he really wants to be focusing on you. It cannot be helped. They fought physically before, but never departed from one another still needing to fight. They would have fought. They should have fought. It was only the knowledge that you were arriving in fifteen minutes that kept them shouting at each other.

Floyd thought Jade was doing wrong by you.

Jade told Floyd to stay the fuck out of his relationship.

“Dad always said you were the fuckin’ coward of the family.”

Jade should have thrown a punch there. Walking down the hiking trail, he feels the knot of nails into palms. Easily falling back into the therapy of forming fists, Jade relocates his hands to the strap of his bag. Not yet. He cannot get destructive yet.

“You’re not gonna even fight for them!”

No. Jade was not because he knew your soul. It would only be natural for you to return home. It would only be natural for him to return to the sea. It is only natural for things to decay, Jade reminds himself as he finally makes it deep enough into the thicket of Sage Island’s forest.

Not this though. I wanted this to stay.

“Nothing to be done except support them.”

Jade says this to a peculiar looking tree as he removes the forage bag off his shoulder. He deposits it down by a peculiar looking rock. He is a master of nature but it is better to have landmarks for his belongings. Rolling up the sleeve of his thermal henley, the skeletal eel tail and filigrane ends of the waves tattooed on his left side peek shy from the rolled cotton.

“Nothing to be done.” He finalizes the word with a nod. Then, he breaks off the path into a brisk jog.

Jade has gotten much better with the usage of legs since freshman year. Experience conducts improvement. None of them had quite taken to it fluidly. Jade can still remember when he tried stairs for the first time, shaking like a lamb, yet still finding the ability to laugh smoothly when Floyd fell down them. Though Floyd had laughed even harder at Jade when he experienced his first calf cramp, thinking he had been shot. Thank the Sevens most of their blunders had been in training camp, away from ill-intent eyes.

I hate fighting with my brother, Jade thinks as he moves slightly to the right to avoid a rock too big to jump over. He keeps pumping his arms and jogging.

Fighting is natural for moray eels. You have to fight in the Coral Sea to keep what you covet. It is not like Jade is lacking that urge to change the situation and make you stay. But this situation? It is too close to resembling a scenario where a person quits a job for the sake of their wife’s promotion; or someone changes their dream college to settle with the one their boyfriend is choosing to attend.

This is something I cannot put up a fuss about. Jade passes a blackberry bush and tries to stomp out the memories that come with it.

Your excited face — hand-feeding him some berries — laughing as you gather them up — pouring them into a muffin tin — a sweet and tart memory

You have to do what is right for you, not him, not Grim, not anybody else. He should not infer or try to influence you this upcoming week and half. Jade takes a meaningless right turn, trying to get lost deeper in the woods.

Yet as he falls deeper into the thicket of trees, spores, rocks, and leaves, he finds memories returning to him:

The smell of you, distinctive like red to a bull, swimming in the college hallways or in Mostro Lounge.

The look of pride on your face when you find yourself able to read his true intentions better than all but two of the student body.

The feel of the first time Grim chose his lap over yours, a reluctant purr vibrating against the cotton of his gloves.

The sound of you shuffling morning sheets and the sensation of the kisses you press to his face to arouse him from sleep.

Your smiling voice left like a voicemail —

— That happy world tumbles down upon Jade like a Jenga tower, suddenly unreachable, as he too tumbles. A loose tree root snags his foot; ground flies towards him. Barely expecting it, Jade gasps as cold and wet hits his face.

Mud. Mud from the previous days’ rain presses itself to his face, soaking into his cuts and unraveled hair. Throat undulating, Jade starts to spit back the wet dirt he had taken from the earth. The crust of sediment coats his lips like a cosmetic. He watches brown saliva bubble under him.

Jade’s hands embrace the ground as he positions himself up on all fours. He watches his hand. Cold blue of his veins like the tassels of a jellyfish. Red-pink heat of his knuckles and palm bed. Contrast to the pale calcite-like bloodlessness of his skin. All of his skin ill-fitting. Pale dough splitting apart in gaping ovulate mouths. Himself. Splitting apart down to the last atom.

I – I – I –

He can barely feel his frozen body move as he lifts up one fist. Mud-stained teeth grit. His fist flies in a frenzy. Two, five, seven, eleven, twelve, fifteen. Moving like an electric chisel, Jade punches and punches and punches into the ground until a tiny crater is left into the earth where he fell.

It is not enough and Jade knows it. He pulls his hand back, chocolate-dipped with mud and leaking from the new wounds a rock had given him, as he sits on his haunches.

Both of his hands go up to his face, covering off where open mouth breathes flicker out of him. It is not enough.

As if he was kicked into the back of line; as if he has lost his mind; Jade jumps up with a spark, turns towards the nearest tree, and punches it. Pain splits down his arm like lightning and it feels calming. Now, red is flowing in equal measure with the brown. He wants to do it again. He wants to fight until his fiery soul is extinguished.

People think him so different from his twin. Floyd and Jade are the same; both yearn for a good fight now and then. Jade simply hides just a small percentage better than his brother, under a sheep’s skin like an ill-fitting and tearing apart in oval holes.

There is no need to wear that soft suit when he is alone, in a far off corner of Sage’s Island that no one is going to be at this hour.

Jade goes through the motions of his emotions, all of them rocking him as violently as Charybdis’s whirlpool. His fist falls like a meteor into tree bark. Hair is pulled and yanked, just to give him the satisfaction of pain. The ground stirs at the violence of his long legs. Finds a rock, kicks it. Finds a bigger rock, kicks it harder. Trying to break one of his toes.

His hand flows through wet leaves and mud, grabbing a stray branch. Jade turns towards a different tree. “FUCKING SHIT!” Slices his branch down like a claymore, a hum of satisfaction blooms up as the thick twig breaks into an explosion of wooden chunks with a deafening crack.

“FUUUCKAAAARRRGGG!” He shouts back at the answering wilderness, two inhuman sets of teeth on display. A vein in his neck strains with the pressure of his harrowing, soul-tearing screams.

When Jade returns to his dorm, covered in mud and blood, he finds Floyd asleep. It seems his twin found his own way to relieve himself from the cliffhanger urge to fight. Jade mourns that because he has not. His own energy and need to fight seems as vast as the ocean in his anxiety of losing you.

He wants you to stay.

“He wants me to leave. I can see it in his face. He wants me out of his life, and this is the ideal situation to do it without directly saying it. Agh, he is such a coward at times. And what’s worse! Is that he keeps acting like nothing is wrong. He took the hike alone and came back like nothing was wrong. Same old Jade. Not a word of the situation. Oh God, what if he does want me to leave,” you lament, shaking.

A tissue box is nudged closer to you. You stir, looking up from the hands you had shelled up your crying face into. With a sniff, you grab a tissue, “Thank you.” You blow your nose and settle back into the loveseat.

Kleenex clutched tightly in hand, you continue speaking a voice clogged with tears, “You know, I’ve been wondering why Jade won’t let me in. He obviously has an opinion on the situation yet he isn’t saying it. So then, I start thinking he is being petty because I didn’t come to him about the situation first. Like maybe he thinks I don’t trust him with that information. But it was so hard to talk to him about because he’s my boyfriend. And I just want to talk now but I’m so scared about what he will say.

“I could always read him before. I just somehow knew what he was thinking at times. Now, I feel like he’s a jigsaw puzzle missing a piece yet I don’t even know what the picture is of anymore.”

You hesitate and pass the moment by blowing your nose again. “Honestly, I feel like that too.” With teary eyes, you look towards your confidant. He gives a tiny huff of his snout, chin resting on the loveseat’s armrest between you. His big brown eyes simply stare wistfully at you.

“Are you going to communicate that to him or just to Pongo?”

Eyes drawn away from Pongo, Crewel’s dalmatian, you glance towards the opening of the kitchen connecting to the living room. Your professor is deep enough inside the adjacent room where you cannot see, only hear him. You reply, “I’m trying to keep us on amicable terms. I don’t want him to think that I’ve made the decision to leave.”

“Then, tell him that very sentence, pup: I have not made the decision to leave yet. If you start off with that then you can continue on with explaining the rest. Do you think he has already thought you have made the decision yet,” Crewel says as he walks out of the kitchen.

He carries a platter out in his lavious living room. Crewel is much more of a casual manner of dressing; a devil-red button-up with a silk evening tie, ebon with engravement of flora. He puts the platter down on the table in front of the two chairs, scolding Pongo off his chair.

“That’s just the thing: I can’t tell what he is thinking anymore. I never really understood what Ace, Deuce, and Grim meant when they said they couldn’t really read Jade’s true intentions. Now, I feel the exact same way. Just second-guessing everything that comes out of his mouth,” you vent as Crewel accesses your bad posture.

He must feel generous because he makes no note of it. “Well, mind-reading is a magical skill that not many mages master. So, though it is unfavorable, we have to learn to trust words at face value.”

“You say that if he is not Octavinelle’s vice-housewarden. Words are Jade’s sword. And he knows better than anyone that words can be manipulative, exploitative, and false. Since I didn’t come to him first, he is going to think –”

“Octavinelle students at their best are deeply intune with the world around them. That young pup is Octavinelle’s vice-housewarden because he is deeply observant and intuitive … and deeply sympathetic. I agree that words are his sword. A sword can be used to defend and help too. Do not restrict it.”

You wait until you have finished chewing around the carrot chip in your mouth before you speak, “I know that. To me, those are some of his best qualities … But! Octavinelle students work to solve problems. Jade hasn’t even given me his thoughts on my problem.”

“Perhaps he feels that if he says a certain thing, you will resent him. Or you will suddenly pick your decision because of what he says. I’m certain he wants you to make the decision for yourself.”

“But he’s one of the main reasons this is so hard to decide upon. Him and Grim.” Crewel’s face scrunches at the mention of your troublesome cat. “I love Jade dearly and I think of Grim as family. I know Grim’s thoughts. I cannot read a single thought on Jade’s face.”

Your eyes fall down to the floor, suddenly too damp to maintain proper eye-contact. “It is like he is shutting me out while staying robotically in the same relationship we had.”

In your ribcage, the valves and arteries of your heart give a painful jerk of agony. As if noticing, Pongo empathically rests his head upon your knee. You greet him with a soft whisper, stroking down the crown of his head to his neck. You are still shaking.

“Nothing happens when you do nothing, pup. If you keep shuffling your feet upon the matter, eventually, when it comes for you to decide, you will be making a decision purely from your soul and nothing else. But that won’t give you closure. It won’t be good for you.”

“I don’t want Jade to resent me. I don’t,” you bit back a cry. Harshly, you pick up a tissue and press it over your eyes. After a few deep breaths, you manage to gain yourself before you slip down a watery, steep incline of the mountain of your emotions.

“If neither of you talks to each other, nothing grows. Nothing changes unless one of you manages to talk to the other.”

“It’ll be such a painful conversation.”

“The ones that reap the most rewards are often the most painful of them all.”

You look up, eyes still incredibly wet. Crewel’s eyes resemble something like dark storm clouds. That color would suggest a bit of hardships but his advice flows off him naturally. You cannot look at Crewel like he is a surrogate father if you chose this world over your own. But, you will hold onto this relationship fondly, if this world is the one you stay in.

“I want him to know my soul again. I want to be able to read his soul again.”

Sometimes, Jade seems like a mountain. A bit too poetic comparing a hiker to the very structure they climb but it is suiting. Height aside, he is out of reach frequently. Scaling him – boots slipping on sediment walls, fingers bleeding with each desperate grab of sharp rocks – had been a trail as harsh as Everest. The view from above is breathtakingly beautiful and a sweet reward trumping all others.

Your first kiss felt like being on top of a mountain.

Mountains are rewarding but they are still mountains. A simple slip on slick rock and you bust open the crown of your head like a senile king or an old ram. Incredibly foolish of you to trust a jagged summit to keep you safe.

Right now, he seems quite like a mountain. You worry over each of your premedicated steps in approaching this. Sizing up which indent of rocks you are going to trust putting your weight on. One breaking underneath you will not end it. Two breaks though … Jade might pull away from you.

Studying the eminence of his back, you pick yourself up from Ramshackle’s couch and start the hike.

Jade does not even jump when you wrap yourself around his torso. You trap him in with an embrace, X-ing arms over his chest, underneath his arms. Steadfast, Jade continues with slicing long strips of fat into precise, 12 millimeter squares. Over the side of his arm, you look at the air-tight bag of hog casing and chop onions sizzling on the stove.

“Smells delicious. You look really good when you cook.”

“You say that no matter what I do.”

“Well, I can’t help that my boyfriend’s good-looking and I have to tell him so. It is just natural that I let you know.”

“Ah, then I thank you for the wonderful insight,” Jade says, all coy allurement in his voice. His knife falls and repositions itself to the start of the sausage, again and again like a guillotine at the height of revolution. “Can I ask you to add these in the skillet? I think you happen to look delectable when cooking too.”

“Good enough to eat?”

All you get is a quick flash of teeth, playfully biting air, as you reach over Jade’s body to grab the bowl he gestured to. You smile warmly. In the bowl lies chopped shallots, parsley, scallions, and a dozen more minor ingredients that you can identify. You take them, dumping them into the skillet. A tantalizing smell rises up to you along with a cloud of steam.

Taking a spatula, you start to stir the mixture. What is on the pan bubbles and cooks. As you maneuver the ingredients to burn evenly, you cannot help but think this is exactly what you wanted to avoid.

The environment of normalcy.

The ease of talking to Jade.

What a foolish thing to want to ruin, you sneer as you push at ginger and grounded cloves. But those two things have a masquerade mask slipped over them. Neither of you have brought up the issue once since the time you spent past midnight on Ramshackle’s porch.

“Jade?” Jade hums, letting you know he is listening. Your hundred questions feel like acid in your throat. “What are we making?”

“It is Boudin Noir de Lyon. A French blood sausage. I’ve only attempted it twice before.” With his knife, Jade points at the long glass of goose blood that you have on your counter, next to the bag of hog casing.

“Ah, I see.”

To be honest, you were unaware you had the components in stock to make Boudin Noir de Lyon. Sometimes, Grim and Jade just showed up with bags upon bags of food or food ingredients. You could understand why Azul wanted Ramshackle as a second Mostro Lounge. Shelves are bottomless and the kitchen is so spacious after your remodel.

It is a house wasted on you. You can easily look around and imagine all those industrious chefs roaming around, cooking and serving. Would Jade be content with the tradeoff?

“Jade?” This time you are going to try to go in and not dodge the subject again.

“Yes, my love?”

“You once said eels mate for life. Was that just sweet talking or is that a fact?”

“I thought the biology of merman species didn’t interest you much.”

You remember that, saying that you did not need biology to let you know that Jade liked you very much and you liked him very much. So what if there were hints and nuances to learn about his biology. You just liked him; you felt at ease around him. “Just please … Please answer the question, Jade.”

“Eels and eel-mers usually pick only one to spend their life with.”

“Usually?”

“In the occurrence of a death or loss of a mate before one reaches adulthood fully at twenty, some eel-mers find someone else.” Jade elects to hold your hand instead of his knife, halting your worry-energized stirring and letting the spatula rest. The only thing you notice about his touch is that he is as cold as a December death. “We were only seventeen and eighteen when we met.”

“So you could find someone else if I left,” you say with a mix of relief and sadness. Then, your hand slips through Jade’s hand. You look at it with a gut-wrenching guilt, the collision of flickering skin and your tangible skin.

“No,” he says firmly, just barely managing to keep a growl out of his voice. “No, I couldn’t find anyone else but you.” And as if saying those words restore some of the bond you had, your hand floats back up as fake bones, muscle, and skin reappears. He squeezes your hand tightly.

You take Crewel’s advice. “Jade, I haven't made my decision whether I’m going to stay or not. I want you to know that: I haven’t decided yet.”

“I know.” He says those words. But he looks at you like you are something fleeting, like you are a mushroom collapsing in on itself, mildewed and smoldering, premature decay. His ice cold hand around yours is painful tight.

“If I leave,” you choke on your words. With a gasp, you quickly pull away from him to wipe away the tears you were unprepared to feel fall. Ice rises up to press its thumb to wipe away the water. “I-If I leave, I want to know you’ll be okay. I want to know that you aren’t hiding away all your anguish from me.”

Clipped and short: “I can’t burden you with that. The weight on your shoulders is enough.”

“You ignoring this situation is a burden. I want us to talk. I want to know what’s on your mind, what’s in your soul.”

Jade holds his tongue. You try to pull your cheek away from him but that just worsens the misery in his eyes. You fall still, waiting.

“Jade?”

“I’d never be able to recover.”

“Huh,” you gasp breathless.

Even after such powerful words, Jade still holds his tongue in the cage of his mouth. The influence of words is not lost on a man such as him. If anything it is evident as emotions are on his twin’s face, unhidden. So very unlike Jade who keeps everything hidden to a certain degree.

Lifting a rock off his chest, unburdening himself, Jade confesses, “If you were to leave, I’d never be able to recover. There would be a hole in my heart always ready to receive you again.”

Disconnected, you feel one tear race down the right side of your face and another tear catch on the curve of your left cheek, hanging and warm.

You were not ready to hear that. You thought you could handle hearing Jade’s true emotions but you had expected him to be losing interest. In his first year, he was fascinated with manholes; in his second year, he was fascinated with mushrooms; you expected this romantic interest to be fleeting. He learned to play bass in middle school then never picked it up again. Jade grows bored, he tosses things away, thus is nature.

He still has an interest in mushrooms, you think, he is settling down with his interests.

Were you two fleeting? An insecure part of you expected to be fleeting to him. I’d never recover. That is a far cry from a passing fancy that washes and recedes like the tide.

“I’m sorry for saying my true feelings.”

“There’s nothing to apologize for,” you say, blinded by tears.

“But I’m making you cry. I’m cruel.”

You take his face in your hands, fingers clumsy due to impaired sight. “I’m glad to know it though. I’m glad you can say that.” Then, shaking, you go in for a kiss. And the fake Jade vanishes back into the photograph, leaving you puckering up for cold air.

With the sweet smell of a French meal you do not know how to cook lingering in the air, you cry and cry.

You only have three days left to make a decision.

I’d never be able to recover.

You have been rotating those words around in your head for thirty-eight hours. Moving the sentence around like it is a puzzle piece in a game. Dissecting it like it is the evidence that a serial killer left in the heat of crime. Even considering the weight of the punctuation mark.

The true feelings of the soul of Jade Leech.

Grief comes without any sort of recovery. Instead, hurt erodes from the turret of time that passes through and splashes about but ultimately without cure.

I’d never be able to recover? Who’s to say that’s true?

But, the same sentiment rings true in your soul. Whichever you choose, the recovery path for the only choice will be fierce and full of regret. You will slice a part of your soul up and crush it no matter whether you go home or you stay in Twisted Wonderland. You pluck yourself out of the memory as you pluck a bottle of nightshade off Professor Crewel’s supply rack in potionology.

Despite everything, you attend classes and unbirthday parties and … well, you would have attended club meetings, to procrastinate on the decision. If you leave, you leave with nothing but the skin on your back. You pour the deadly nightshade in the cauldron as Riddle, your lab partner, keeps stirring. You only have a day left. The phone in your pocket has been buzzing all day with concern but among the ladder of contracts you slide through you never see Jade 💕 among them.

Pulling away to save us both the hurt, you think with a smile. That is so Jade, I should have been able to predict that. You watch the whirlpool of the gray mixture. Yeah, I’d never recover either. Then your lab goggles slowly but surely start to fill with tears.

Riddle stops stirring, tool falling from his hand, when he sees you remove your goggles out of the corner of his eyes. You push them up and reveal bright red eyes brimming with tears. Tears so glutinous and heavy that it almost looks like melted wax.

You cry because you know what you are going to pick. Your soul may fiercely want both options, impossibly greedy. Yet, now in the blimp of time, this pocket of your life, you have chosen the one you will go with. Removing the gloves from your hands, you start to furiously scrub away the ocean draining from you. It is so difficult to see.

“Prefect, do you need to use the eyewash station? (Name)?”

“Ri-Rid,” you wheeze out. The waterfall is cascading down your face, clogging your voice. Gradually, the sound of you crying is starting to pick up a bit in volume.

“Prefect, what’s wrong? Here, I can use a spell to get it out of your eyes if you need. Did something splash up from the mixture?” You feel his smaller hand timidly rest on your quivering bicep. Sevens, your entire body is shaking like a power-drill.

Students are starting to look in your direction. Morbid curiosity draws their eyes to you, listening to the gut-wrenching sobs you expel. Riddle’s face hardens in a glare. Frustration lies pink on his cheeks. With the force of your sobs, your knees start to tremble, tipping over the fence edge of buckling. You are a wreck.

“Professor Crewel –.”

“Every single pup is excused from class. Right now.”

The door is already magic-ed open. It takes a minute for others to pile out, some lingering in curiosity and some leaving steadfast in their recoil to no longer hear your cries. The click of the door breaks you and you finally collapse. Riddle goes down with you, gentle hand glued to your arm.

“I need to make a call,” you manage to get out from your wet throat, crying as if you are grieving. You suppose it is appropriate. You are grieving someone who you will lose tomorrow and never see again. “I need to –”

“Who do you need to call, (Name)? I can call them for you.”

“Pup.” Crewel does not finish his thought.

You are back to being incomprehensible, crying like you have never cried before. Water coats your face and no matter which direction or what material you use, you cannot dry your face against the assault. Jade. You want Jade so badly.

Riddle – top of his class yet failing the grade of life – stares, not knowing who you want or how to solve this. He grew up isolated; comforting others is not his specialty. “I could call Ace and Deuce. I can –” Riddle quickly locates his phone, fingers frantic. The phone slips out of his grip when a hand starts pounding against the classroom door.

Beyond the tears, you hear:

“Class is dismissed –”

“Striped beakfish, move it.”

“Pup, I’ll have you –”

“Professor Crewel, I need to –”

“Shrimpy’s in there move it.”

“I don’t have time for this – move.”

The arm in Riddle’s hand is suddenly wrenched away. You puppet your head up forcefully despite your tears. You should have known. Jade knows your soul after all.

If it was under any other circumstances, it would be either terrifying or oddly hilarious, the open concern on Jade’s face. He collapses right down on the ground in front of you after pushing Professor Crewel out of his way. His face is taut with the emotions on it, a far cry from the always composed look he has. Only you could get such a reaction. His knee bumps your knee but you do not mind, throwing yourself on him and crying yourself dry of grief.

“It’s okay. I got you. I’m not going to let you go, my love. I got you in my arms, okay?”

Jade’s single yellow eye manages to catch the bewildered look on Riddle’s face. There is a question in the housewarden’s expression: what’s wrong? It is obvious to Jade. You picked whether you want to stay or go.

A soul bond is engrained in the two holders. It allows them to read each other easily when they are at their strongest in a relationship. Thus, Jade knows exactly what you cry for. Riddle misjudges it as stress or a laboratory accident. Jade knows exactly why those tears fall down your face. You are staying in Twisted Wonderland. He knows in the beautiful, snotty, and wrinkled mess on your face: you are staying with him.

It is odd; all you wanted before was to talk, discuss, have a heart to heart vocally. You wanted so badly to restore your crippled communication. Now, you do not need a single word to let him know the entire situation, all the nuances are laid bare on your soul.

“I got you. I’ll always be here, my love.”

He wipes flushed, wet cheeks and pulls you back in for a tight hug. You know when you feel tears fall onto your collarbone that they are his own soul thanking you for trusting him.

The hand on Jade’s bicep is like ice.

Jade twitches, nose scrunching up. His bed tries to lure him back and make him ignore the comatose-cold hand on his arm. It is not a hard task; he is exhausted beyond belief and wants to sleep. His head tousles in the lilac pillow, falling back off the cliff into dreams, when the frozen hand starts to shake his arm.

“Mmm.”

“J … Ja … Jade.”

“Mmmmmm.”

Leave him alone. He is tired. Binding his pallid arms around the pillow in an amorous hold, he tries to dream. The room swelters with summer heat and the silk is like a balm to him. His bare stomach lies the inner sheets and the muscular expanse of rhomboids block out whoever is calling his name. Leave him alone.

“Jade, wake up please. Please Jade.”

“Leave me alone,” Jade groans into the pillow, words distorted with fatigue.

Above him, a sniffle and pathetic hissing cry breaks the heat. The sound is familiar. Out of mouth that is stringy with prison bars of salvia, tears, and snot, his name is called again. Around his eel sleeve tattoo, the hand remains shackled to him, gently shaking with each hiccup of tears.

“Jade. Wake up.”

“Love?”

He blinks and there you are. Blue tears fall down your face and ice fingers pinch into ink. Jade is suddenly awake, releasing the pillow he was embracing and turning on his back, motions hazy with sleep. “Love?” His warm fingers reach up to thumb away the steady waterfall on your cheeks. Sevens, you are freezing.

“What’s wrong,” he asks as he sits up in bed. For some odd reason, you are dressed up in your white button-up and slacks like you have somewhere to be going. His other hand reaches up and then he cups your face in his embrace. “What’s wrong, (Name)?”

“I wanna go home. Oh, Jade, I really want to go home,” you blubber breathlessly between your bawling. “I just – oh God – I want to go home.” Then, you fall into his shoulder, squeezing him tightly and sobbing anew. Sobbing inconsolable for your mother.

Jade knows that there are fresh tears wetting his bare collarbone but he feels distinctly out of his mind. Like his skin is not really his own, floating in a stranger’s body. Grasped in the throes of selfish panic, he pushes you tighter into his shirtless torso. Sleepy strands of hair are in his mouth; haunted eyes are unfocused in the dark of his room. Despite his large height, he truly does feel like he cannot come to terms with your words and is kicked out of his body because of it.

Subconsciously, his dominant hand runs over your back in circles. Trying to use it as a rope to come back to his senses more than to comfort you.

Home? But he had thought — had he mistakenly pushed his own soul’s objective onto you — you cannot go home!

“(N-Name). (Name), love,” Jade says into your ear. You do not respond, hysterically loud enough to drown out his voice.

He is surprised that Floyd has not woken up. The pitch and volume that you cry at is like someone screaming in a cave, knowing they are in solitude and can let it all go. Even when your teeth bite into his shoulder, your cries are far from quieting.

It does not matter if Floyd was a deep sleeper — which he isn’t, Jade is the deeper sleeper of the two — no one should be able to sleep through this.

Yet, grateful Floyd is asleep, Jade hugs you tightly to his warmer skin. Shushing, he runs a hand down the crown of your head to your shoulder, hoping his touch will ground both of you from the cloud of agony. His grip is piercing, dug tight into your skin, but you do not bleed. Holding you so you do not escape him and leave for your home world. Selfish Selfish Selfish.

Eventually you fall asleep; no one can cry like that without exhausting themselves.

Eventually he falls asleep, blinking watery at his desk, thinking something is wrong with the image and doubly petrified for the morning.

When he wakes up, there is no one in his bed.

#jade leech #twisted wonderland x reader #jade leech x reader #twisted wonderland

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