Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

They never made it back to the Society, the eve that Lucy died. It was a miracle they even survived, Henry supposes. But he’s learnt not to trust miracles so much anymore. Not to trust that they would ever be saved again. 

They convened at Henry’s house, in the meantime, and have since stayed there. But, just as Henry had kept leaving it all the times he never came home after work- much to Poole’s dismay- the house never warmed or lived, or felt safe. In any case, he’d ordered Poole to stay firmly put, not to leave the house no matter what needed doing, and had temporarily dismissed him from his duties while the situation was unsettled. 

It may have been some kind of half-misplaced guilt for Robert… or Lucy, but Henry felt a greater duty to look after Poole now, especially if anyone came after him.

The cold never leaves, Henry has since deduced. Sure, the fireplace is now burning alight, warming the living room conventionally, but Rachel’s tears dampen its warmth, the weary look Robert gives him bears through him, the quiet snaps of Poole’s old, restless fingers disrupt any peace that might’ve ordinarily come from the situation. Hyde’s insistent memory drowns the house in winter darkness amidst the summer.

Henry has not slept in two days. No one has. 

Rachel had been quieter by the time they were safe, eyes wide in full blown anxiety at what had happened to her brother, heart stuttering with her grief for both him and Lucy, so much so that Henry’s chest heaved when he realised he didn’t know what to do for her. Quietly, the first night, through Robert’s critical, if nervous, murmurings and thoughts said aloud, Rachel had cried in Henry’s arms. A woman had died that day to save Henry. A girl he held dear would never forget it. And he would never forget the eyes of that woman when the bullet shot through her chest. 

The restlessness that emanated from Robert was less the tearing hurt that urged Rachel impossibly still when she could send no letter or telegram, and more something haunted and helplessly searching for an answer. For stability. Henry disbelieved anymore that stability could accommodate the likes of them- but he supposed that Robert might’ve had less reason to do so. Maybe more capacity for younger hope. 

It didn’t sit right with Henry. That Robert might think there could be possibility for change even after what had happened was too impossible. London’s most powerful, defiant Mage is dead. A liberator if they ever had one- gone. Henry doesn’t think anything can change anymore. 

All hope is lost. There is no more saint blazed in glass for them to pray to, for them to seek refuge in. Henry has never felt more stranded, he thinks. Maybe it's because he saw Lucy, when she was standing proud with glowering eyes, when she was urging him to stop being afraid, when she was choking the life from a murderer, when she was sternly oblivious to the Angel of Death hanging over her shock of loud hair. She had died saving Henry. And now he doesn’t know what to do with the life that she saved for him.

He sits instead with that same foreboding book Robert had brought to him late one stormy night in London’s hate. It’s open, the chapter reading Magic Poisoning and Inability in loud, curving letters, just below the elaborate runes of the Mage script. The pages are yellowing, dusty, brushed along with gold, but he reckons this is the most they’ve ever been handled, since they sat idly on an incriminating shelf in the Lanyons’ manor, and since untouched in Robert’s satchel. Henry tries not to think about how, were she not dead, Lucy would’ve been flicking through the pages in wonderment. 

But it happens anyways, and Henry finds himself speculating whether or not she’d understand the foreign lettering of the original manuscript. Vague memories are resurfacing as he stares at it now, and somewhere in the back of his mind, his mother sings a song that feels like home, but doesn’t quite sound like Scots. A dialect; and the words make sense but the meaning slips before he can reach them. Edward hums quietly along to the tune. 

With a heavy sigh, the Honer at his chest leaden with ever-surmounting regrets and detachment, he brushes the page, lets his eyes read the words to him again, ignoring the way they feel so cold. 

With what is understood of Magic, its workings are natural; a seamless mutation in the body which, other than the occasional random erasure along a family line, cannot be removed. However, through unsafe and harmful means, one can hinder their access to Magic severely and irreparably enough that a similar effect to the entire nullification of the Mage Symptomatic Gene is induced. 

Such is the way through the use of Magic Poisoning, whereby additional, intentional strain is placed upon a casting Mage during a spell or ritual, to physically harm their body. The consequences of this are constricted, painful Magic access, or rather, a weakness in the Mage’s Magic. 

This harming effect of Magic Poisoning; a natural risk to emotionally unstable Mages or previously Dormant Mages, is brought on easily by casting spells beyond one’s capacity, not wearing a Honer, or both. 

Little more is known about Magic Poisoning, but its noted side-effects are:
Incredibly Volatile Magic that is difficult to harbour 

Magic could have an easier response to Honers or calming spells
Chronic Nightmares connected to the discovery or loss of one’s Magic
Fatigue
Pain
Death

The page teeters off into blank, cream paper and words Henry doesn’t care for, his dread catching up with him as he shudders. Here he is, sat before the answer to one problem that has been consistently tearing him to bloodied shreds for the past two days. The predator has caught up, but all Henry has are the meagre lines bursting uncertainty into ink. There is no more guidance besides those words, and every logical thing that got him to where he is today; safe in a city that wants him dead, a doctor who vowed no one he protected would ever get hurt, blares red light at the last side-effect of the most dreadful ritual a Mage could perform.

His mother’s voice, days before her death, is so clear in his head, it’s as if he’s stood right in front of her all over again. Her omen whispers to him; “ Where flows the energy of living things, tainted is its flesh.” An old, integral teaching, and translated easily: Magic Poisoning is hell incarnate, and oh so hungry. Make a mistake and fall to it, and a Mage is ruined. It has torn grown men apart in sorrow, agony, restlessness. Prayers against ill fate befalling oneself were a regular in Mage religion. Somehow, however, it would always be impossible to entirely escape that ill. For all the cursing of non-Mages, to be a Mage was to have incredibly rotten luck, massacre or no, and to be subject to your own body betraying you at the slightest mistake. It was an unnatural mutation, afterall.

She told him, once upon a time, her harshest warning. “ But, my Henry, heed this: the one worst thing that can happen to a Mage other than Magic Poisoning, is inflicting it on yourself. You do that, and you will know you have nothing to live for, if you survive.” Her voice had been so severe and cut through him like a sharp dagger, etched into all his memories of her. He remembers her glittering, serious eyes, all the love and care she’d ever given her son intermingled there with a sternness that still chilled him to the core, reminded him of who he was, where he’d come from. He was her son; and that week, he’d lost her, aged eighteen, to a lyching on the nonexistent village he grew up in. 

He took the funds she had left, sold their home, left for university, never looked back.

Then, even that had surmounted to nothing: tirelessly, he had worked to be here, to survive, to protect anyone he could. But he’d still endangered Jasper and Rachel, which resulted in him endangering himself and then Lanyon, killing so many others. Lucy still died- died saving him, no less. And it already felt like there was nothing left. Amidst all the carnage, losing the cause of so much destruction seemed like a blessing. 

Somewhere, condemned to a dishonourable, tortured death, his mother’s spirit laughs savagely at the man her son’s become and Edward burns inside out with shame. 

He cannot regret his actions, as he slowly starts inching his sleeve up, off his arm. He will lose this curse that is a part of him; and if he dies? He can only hope Robert’s stubborn optimism will keep the Society (and himself and Rachel) afloat. 

With the lack of details or directions in the book, Henry had deduced that two primary things must be done in order to poison himself: one, that he undergo some flooding of his emotions, majorly, so that any will he has is put into undoing this; two, that he attempt something ridiculously ambitious (obviously fatal) without wearing his Honer, as to actually harbour that will.

Edward is silent, still simmering with his guilt and shame and delirium, as Henry’s hands meet the cold chain of his Honer, and carefully undo it from around his neck. The phantom of it pulses at his chest, as if he was still fleeing through the streets, grip a vice on Rachel’s hand. The simple, rounded edge of the ring catches the dull light slipping in through the pinprick windows on the wall. Its inner edge is appropriately inscribed in the script Henry’s mind strains and hurts to remember, fading into clarity the more he uses it. His heart drops at the realisation that he may very well be halting its formation in its tracks, one way or another, but his own hesitation is his deadliest enemy. 

He takes his seat at his desk, eyes downcast as he lets the ring drop onto the tabletop, bitter with the memory of Lucy gifting it to him, giving Robert his own which was the mirror image of Henry’s, the overwhelming connection ignited anew between them as he watched Robert slip the Honer onto his nimble fingers. Henry’s Magic flares deep, angry purple, as something seizes in his chest. Edward springs from his shame, voice quiet. None of him is here.

‘ You can’t.’ He refutes softly, before Henry has even started, and it strings him still in the action of beginning the ritual. Henry has never been strong enough to overcome Edward; has never been strong enough to hide himself away. Perhaps, then, this is him getting rid of it all so he doesn’t need to be strong anymore. ‘Remember what she said.’ Edward tries again, flooding Henry’s senses with the smell of his mother’s rose petal perfumes, the sound of her voice breathing the warning to him. 

Henry is vaguely aware of himself shaking his head, as he recounts the logical steps in his mind. His hands ache as he pushes linen gloves away from himself on the desk. 

There is nothing like this moment, he thinks, and steadies his hands, pushes his cowardice down- ‘ Letting it control you simultaneously,’ Edward reminds him. He thinks about Lucy’s falling body, he thinks about Robert shaking beneath his hands, he thinks about the girl with her earrings meeting his eyes. Removedly, he supposes that whoever wrote the vague notes in the tome beneath his fingers must’ve died a horrible death. He doesn’t want that to happen to Robert, to Rachel, to the Lodgers all relying on him. He doesn’t want it to happen to himself. The sentiment drowns in poisonous irony. 

Henry opens the draw at his desk, stares down at the shining doctor’s tools in their sterile cloth. He was never one for dissection or biology, but he’d used them scarcely in his earlier studies. Now, he draws the sterile scalpel with its gleaming, short, razor blade from its packaging, and stares it down. He’s not a coward, he tries to convince himself. This is where all this suffering must end- and if one last act of pain is to bring it, then so be it. 

He exhales, buttons his sleeves well away from his forearms lest they get covered in blood, and with that rushing sense of finality, he cuts. Vaguely, Edward’s uproar is audible in his ears- the visceral screeching of wrongness crashing over him like a wave but Henry is doing it, he’s cutting away all this suffering, all this pain, every single last drop of hate left in him. It reminds him of the thrill the first night he mixed his poison, the glowing green tincture that had morphed itself into some unholy remedy for everything that he was lighting his face in its luminescence. It had gone down bitterly, forcefully, clawed him apart mercilessly as it made him anew but it was freeing. 

It’s almost disturbing, how the feeling that surges stinging, forceful power through his fingers is just as intoxicating. Henry does not care. His blood is hot and red on the pale of his skin, and despite the rush of adrenaline, he cannot quieten Edward’s repulsion and horror, as it stares out with him, makes him hesitate on the next cut when he’s already undoing himself.

It isn’t enough, so he strikes again, expertly avoiding the fatter blood vessels, using his doctor’s precision amidst his heady panic. He was wrong, then, about the world not knowing how to eradicate them. It had given him all he ever needed to do the dark deed himself.

He switches to his shaking left hand, trembling with shock through the riptide of energy fizzing amidst his nerves. Dark violet hisses around him, and his eyes tear up, purple liquid dripping down and framing his jawline. He is minutely aware of Edward's surrender as he laughs, carves a graceful curve in his flesh and watches his skin give way to the blade. The previous wounds are stinging now, burning with consuming ferocity, and the anticipation of what awaits him- the wreckage and curiosity that is a Magicless Mage- feed it like kindling, letting the purple loose around him, wringing his noose tighter. 

He stands, in his mind's eye, on the precipice of a new, terrible discovery, and his bones ache with that thought because how long has it been since he’s done this? Since he’s given in to sinister curiosity and gave light to the terrifying ritual that is logical destruction? It’s his own voice in his ears- where Edward has always been his own- but it is not sobering or seductive. Only cruel and enticing, and shrouded. 

He will die a mystery. The realisation is as sweet as brimming nectar, and the plea of his body to stop , written in blood and the final taints of his unadulterated, angry Magic does nothing to quell its pull. He pushes that blade down one more time, pain flooding his senses in greedy, simple waves, sensual in all the taste and smell of burning metallic in his throat.

Henry’s trembling hands drop the bloodied scalpel as he shakes and heaves uncontrollably. Irreparably, Magic slips from him, tired and unattainable. There is no more pressure behind his glowing eyes, nothing more to raise him to control. 

Loudly, to his ears only, the seething voice of a snapped soul beckons; ‘ How could you?!’ Edward is sobbing, and Henry? Henry can’t stop his laughter when his hands still pathetically light with lilac. Confusion gives way to a hard ache as his blood drips to the ground. Magic riles unchecked and every part of him hurts because it was all for nothing, then. There, his Magic still licks at his fingers like some unfettered, screeching thing. It is lonely.

The realisation shoots through him like ice, and Edward’s anger flares. But it does nothing for the Magic when it should’ve overridden Henry’s pain and finished the job of killing him. Where there used to be an accompaniment reaching out with him, his Magic is weak and alone- only his pain fuels it. It’s wrong. It’s all wrong wrong wrong. 

Henry laughs again, emotion seeping away into distorted emptiness. He feels his throat tighten like hands around his throat and Edward cuts through like a knife. ‘You’ve ruined me. Henry, you’ve broken me. How dare you!? ’ 

He knows this. Henry knows now, what he’s done, sapped the last of Edward away. All his emotion frayed and gone. Nothing to fuel the Magic but an expanse of pain and the steady, dwindling drip of Edward’s lifeless hunger for justice. But it’s over. An apparition flashes before him, bloodied, blonde hair unruly. He looks like an angel. 

‘I can’t feel you.’ It’s the panic setting in now. ‘I can’t feel myself- we’re the same but I can’t feel myself, and you’re not there anymore, and what have you done, Henry? ’ Desperation drives Edward’s voice when only death shadows it but Henry can’t bring himself to care as he looks at the man, ringing his hands together, his screams etched permanently into Henry’s soul- because he doesn’t have any care left. Edward was his care, and he’s right. He can’t feel him anymore.

Experimentally, Henry casts light with all he has left. A beaming white floods his palm, scorches him outside in, and then sputters woefully. Himself, only- no: not even that. 

He huffs out another fracturing laugh, and it hinges on a sob, scaring Edward from view. He feels dizzy; light as if he could fly and then nothing all at once. Empty. The loud sound of three quick raps on the door of his lab sting sharp through his head, and they should be sobering. There is no emotion- it leaps from his chest, heart in his throat as his breathing is impossibly quick, dissipates coldly and leaves the knocking on the door stopping only to let a silent warning through, as the rattle of the doorknob comes loose. Henry is nothing, and his own mistakes crumble around him.

His head is concerningly quiet when Robert steps into the room. 

“Henry?!” He all but gasps, eyes widening, and Henry thinks that name doesn’t belong to him anymore. The sound of his quick footsteps is far too loud against the hollow wood floor, and he would’ve torn himself apart for it. No more. 

“What’s going on?” Robert is gentle when he comes to cradle Henry’s arms, pulling him away from the desk and into a secure embrace to check him over. His shirt is bloodied in the process and Henry doesn’t even have any guilt left in him for it. He coughs out that voiceless laugh instead and shakes his head as Robert begins fumbling to clean the wounds. “Stop.” He commands, weakly. It’s a surprise he was ever the leader of anyone. 

Robert’s voice is vehement. “Henry.” He snaps, concern lacing the syllable like it’s toxic. “Sit. And don’t do anything. We can- talk when this is…” He seems to lose the words to express the wreckage of the laboratory. Red stains Henry’s desk, and the scalpel glimmers tremblingly as Robert picks it up from the ground. It’s obvious to him what Henry has done, and his eyes are glowing amber from called on Magic. Henry can’t feel Edward fall apart when he realises how faint the link to the scarlet at Robert’s fingertips has become. He shudders, and draws his arms, streaked with stinging wounds, into his chest.

Those same glowing eyes skim the book as Robert gathers bandages and alcohol. He turns Henry’s chair away from the mess, pointedly doesn’t look at him, or the Honer abandoned on the desk, and sits amidst the untouched space on the floor. Robert works methodically, like he has done this all his life, and the tainted memory of him in the practice theatre returns from their university days. He doesn’t show it to anyone, but there has always been surgical ease in Robert. 

The alcohol stings, but the feeling comes through a wire sieve, and snags Henry’s skin on it with piercing precision. Lavender prickles at his skin, and there is hopelessness. Quiet. Silence, silence, silence, in the room that has broken him apart.

Edward can’t take it anymore. “Stop.” He says again, pulling his arms from Robert’s hands. He tightens his grip on Edward’s wrists firmly, but it does not hurt. Magic dies with Edward’s dismay. “I don’t know what you did.” Robert at last bites out, still thoroughly engrossed in wrapping the bandages around Edward’s arms, not looking up even when tears drip down Henry’s face- clear and not tinted, but cold to anything of a soul left in him. Edward realises, belatedly, that Robert might be lying. He saw the book set amongst the ruin of Henry’s desk. He sears with shame. Always shame.

“But you’ve hurt yourself.” He wants to imagine the words are easy on Robert’s lips. They’re not. A previous sentiment breaks, and Robert Lanyon is no longer untouchable. He writhes uncomfortably beneath the understanding, and beneath Lanyon’s gaze. He frowns. “I-” and at last meets Edward’s brimming, leaf green eyes. “Edward.” He breathes quietly, almost surprised, before worry pinches his brow again. “I can’t…feel your Magic.” He forces, glaring at Henry’s bandaged arms. The words are a shot through his heart, and now, Edward can’t deny it at all. 

He wants to lash out, burn the lab down with all the residual anger and pain left in him, contour it into flames and let his grief consume him. All that comes out are tears and his lips set into a snarling frown. “It’s gone.” He fumes. He refuses to be the coward Henry was- he refuses to turn away from this. “I- I took it away.” But every man has a breaking point, and numbness starts to seep in when his hands succumb to aggravating purple, five shades too deep. 

Robert’s surprise is his harsh breathing. “No… it’s not.”
“But it is.” Henry says, voice ruined and fizzling out all quiet. “Edward can’t cast anymore.” It is easy on Henry’s tongue. So easy that the purple constricts around his wrists like chains. Robert reaches out, presses firmly on Henry’s hands and closes his eyes. 

Magic pulses between them, and despite its ruin, Henry’s answers obediently, yet it is flailing, to Robert’s. Where the other might’ve been able to conduct Henry’s with all the ease of his breath, there is a new layer of concentration needed to achieve something as easy as a pulsing heart, beforehand. Before Henry broke. Still, Lanyon does it, face numb. He wonders idly where and when Robert learnt to harbour his Magic with the expertise that tries to move it back towards Henry’s mind- but it’s a writhing, fallen thing, and Henry remembers that there is only so much desperation can do for a man.

It’s helpless, the way Robert tries to repair this mistake, tries to guide Henry’s Magic to settle within his skin again. For all the care in his movements, for all the comfort of his low glowing eyes, the damage is permanent, and Robert’s inexperience is painfully clear. Henry thinks the mask of Robert’s calm expression might snap when he gently pries his fingers off him and tells him to stop. He thinks Robert might cry. He doesn’t.

He busies himself with reaching for Henry’s Honer instead, clasping it around Henry’s neck with still, still fingers. 

“Henry. What did you do?” 

Again, the room is silent, as the Honer sits heavy at Henry’s throat, drawing the last of his Magic up in a nauseating, tiring haze. A Magicless Mage, hurt by a Honer? His ending is ironic, but the humour dies in his throat when Robert looks directly at him. He seems to notice something, because tender hands come to brush away his fringe. “Your hair’s streaked with white. Your blood is on the ground. Your Magic is weak and you keep looking at me with dead eyes. Henry; what did you do? ” Robert tries again, resignedly. 

Henry sits paralysed, with those strong, burning eyes on him, and that gentle hand in his hair. He shakes his head detachedly. “I got rid of it. I got rid of my Magic.” There’s a quiet gasp and a painful pause.
“Why?” 

If Henry counts slowly enough, he might match the unnaturally languid pace of his heart, strumming along to dead Magic. If Henry counts quickly enough, he might be able to list all his reasonings before he dies.

Instead, he settles on: “I was afraid.”

Robert steps away, and Henry feels cold. He blinks, and pins him with a hard, critical glare. “Afraid.” Robert echoes back to him, and the way he says it makes Edward want to fall through the floor in embarrassment. “Yes.” Henry breathes, as if it's the most obvious thing in the world.

“Afraid of them ?” Edward winces at the way the words string into harsh judgement. He makes himself nod, mechanically, the motion swaying the room. “So…you gave in.” Robert turns away, takes the heavy book from the table, and flits through the pages to find the last one Henry had read. After a short beat of indescribable silence, he barks a not-laugh. “Henry, this is-”

“You’ve… poisoned. I-” 

There is no more eloquence to them, Henry supposes, when Robert takes his hand again, pressing too hard on the fresh cuts as he turns the palm up to the sky. He pushes a warm thumb into it, lights it ablaze with Magic, but nothing responds. Robert huffs, and lets go.

“I thought you were stronger.” He says, shakily. Now, there is no mistaking the cracks in Robert’s visage, the sudden tears that spring to his vivid eyes. His hands ball into fists, Edward tracking his movements carefully. He looks like he has only half comprehended what Henry has done to himself, but it’s enough.

“But instead, you took it away because you were afraid of them.”
“I didn’t mean it.” Edward rushes, pulse frantically thudding through him. “I tried to stop myself- I did. I… couldn’t.” He stares down at the pale skin of his reddened hands, and hisses through clenched teeth. “It was all for nothing. I just… Henry isn’t even sorry .” 

Robert purses his lips, pacing in front of the desk. He drops the book heavily onto broken glass. “There’s just nothing.”
“No.” Robert seethes. He’s angry. “There can’t be.” He whirls on Edward. “Have you really just-… gone? ”

Edward can’t reply, so instead he finds the final thread of his anguish and pulls. “I’m still here. I’m stood right in front of you but I don’t understand how you deny it so easily. Have you not seen the bodies? Did you not see Lucy die? Hear Rachel sobbing through the night?!”
Robert breathes hard. “So that’s what it is.” He concedes quietly. “Of- of course I have.” His voice is softer. But not quite defeated. “I’m here, I’ve seen it all, I’ve seen it with you and I promise you I understand.”

“Then how can you still hope?!”

His voice breaks on the final syllable, and Robert’s shock is so painfully obvious, he expects him to stumble or simply leave. However, with piercing certainty, the response is strong.

“There is still control.” He acknowledges. “We still have control.” His register is profound, electric. Edward’s eyes blur with its clarity. “We don’t.” He refutes, vilely, loathingly. Ever steadfast, ever certain. Lanyon stands before him like he’s untouchable. Edward is hopeless.

“You’re letting them take it from you, but think , Henry- Edward- all of you- think. The last thing that you have- that I have: this is my only prospect left of something to control in this mess, something to use, something that means we can survive- and the thing they fear most about you; you're letting them take it away for a cheap promise of no safety? ”

“….what else am I supposed to do?” Asks Henry, lost. 

“ Fight back.”
“Didn’t you see how that ended? Lucy’s dead.”
“Dead. She died for a cause. She died for you. And what have you done?”
“Nothing! But it’s not like you’ve done anything either.” 

Robert’s eyes light up at the fierceness in Edward’s words. He considers him, on the backdrop of the broken glass bottles and bloodied scalpel trashing Jekyll’s desk. Edward considers him in the storm of London’s fury, in the light of the stained glass dawn. He considers him, and the stern set of his face at last breaking, with bewilderment, need. Hope. 

Robert exhales. “You’re right. I haven’t done anything yet. But I keep thinking of that odd, haunting sound, out on the street. I keep thinking of all these new, cold sensations that suddenly seem so open to me- because of you. I keep thinking of this new part of myself that had been hidden away by them and I think; is this all worth fighting for? The dead Mages on the street are worth it. The thrumming power that seems so ready to consume me feels like it’s worth it, too. But you; this. A world where none of it would’ve hurt so much? I think that’s the ultimatum…I don’t know how you gave up on it so easily.” Robert breathes. His eyes sparkle furiously, and Edward’s resolve is slipping from aching fingers. The fire in him mirrors the fire Edward might’ve felt years ago, before his mother’s death.

It’s run out of kindling. The song’s run out of words. Distantly, he wonders why the sombre melody of the dead doesn’t haunt it. He thinks of their faces; recounts the jagged lines of his mother’s dead body, all bloodied and violated; he thinks of that helpless, burning woman with her glinting earrings and her will to survive even when darkness had chased her down; he thinks of his mother’s stories of a young girl who tore herself into something great and indestructible, all to save her village- her sanctified face now cast in pretty glass fragments. He thinks of the thick grasp of soulless Magic as it begged to be saved. He thinks of Lucy, of the bulging blue eyes of the man who took her life, of her sparking figure protecting him before she fizzled out into hot embers. 

It can’t have all been for nothing, he realises, belatedly, when Henry’s numbness stares right back. He remembers his fear- eating him alive when Robert had been found out. The prayer room had fractured them, as Edward’s Magic reached out in tandem to save him and condemn him all at once. But here he is now, standing before him, bloody and determined, and his eyes cut harshly through the dim of Edward’s grief. 

It can’t have all been for nothing.

 “We’ll do something.” Edward finds himself saying, after the silence and the world has eaten him all away, a severe look etched into his face; it has not known joy in so long, and he was moments away from letting it be snatched from him forever. All over again. He nods slowly, saying the words again, boring through Henry’s head and eyes. All of him needs to understand this- there has to be something left to fight for. There has to be something. 

“We’ll do something.”

Steadily, he lets the aching of his broken palm press into the incandescence of Robert’s own.

There is so much work to be done.