Chapter Text
Despite Dedalus’ claim, there aren’t many stars in the window of this room. Bartemius can count two, maybe three, dim and straining to be seen between the buildings. He makes a show of staring out, fingers pressed against the cold glass, mouth slightly open, while Dedalus hovers in the doorway. Really, he’s feeling along the window. There’s a latch. He’s on a second storey.
The lack of stars is fortunate. Instead, there’s the greenish white glow of streetlights, the flags protruding from the buildings, people hurrying by storefronts in twos and threes. It’s much easier to vanish in a city. Occasionally, a bus, double-decker and bright red, roars down the street. The street signs are too distant to make out, but there’s a store boasting health foods and natural remedies on the ground floor opposite the hospital.
“Good, isn’t it?” Dedalus says, hovering in the doorway. A woman laden with shopping bags clatters her way down the street. Bartemius tears his eyes away from the window.
“London?” He ventures. The city’s name is thick on his tongue. Dedalus nods.
“Right in the heart of it.”
Bartemius has memorised the route from his room to this one. A left, down one flight of stairs, third door down. This window does not have a lock. He seats himself on the very edge of the chair in the centre of the room. His throat throbs with the cold. Susan had him take a large dose of Warming Solution a half hour ago. It doesn’t seem to be doing much.
The door slams open.
Dumbledore sweeps in first. Bartemius’ fingers itch for his crumpled articles.
“Punctual as usual, Dedalus.” Dumbledore tips his head at Diggle, who beams.
“Thought he might want to see London, sir.” Dedalus says. He glances at the window. A crease forms between Dumbledore’s brows. But before anyone can say another word, the door is swinging open again, welcoming a flood of beige robes and spectacles and flashing cameras. Bartemius squints into their lights. Cameras take photographs, which move. There’s a bang, a flash. Bartemius picks out the shadows of the journalists. A woman with a pinched face. Her colleague, with his camera clicking and rattling about as he moves. Three more in dark robes. A group of witches dressed head to toe in red lace. And last, behind them all, a woman like a hummingbird. She wears blindingly green robes trimmed with feathers and her hands zip from spot to spot in the air with scarlet nails. The right thumb is chipping.
She looks him full in the face and smiles.
They’re supposed to ask questions. Bartemius is not supposed to answer.
Dumbledore’s got an iron grip on his shoulder. His nails press through Bartemius’ robes, through to the pressure building in his chest alongside the cold. The contact is eating away at him. But it would be stupid to do anything with the room so full and Dedalus on his other side, so Bartemius rests his hands on his knees and counts to ten and back again under his breath and ignores the pressure screaming through him.
The green-robed woman is digging for parchment in her purse. An acid green quill flits at her shoulder. It shakes itself out like a dog. The woman with the pinched face shudders, mutters something to her colleague. Bartemius breathes out. He counts the cracks in the tiles, gets to twenty-three before he hears Dumbledore speak again.
“…Mr Crouch is in full control of his mental faculties–”
“Of that, I have no doubt,” mutters the green-robed woman. Her quill has jumped to attention.
“–with the exception of his memory,” Dumbledore finishes. The woman laughs.
“Rita Skeeter, Daily Prophet. Do you really expect anyone to believe that story?” Her jewelled spectacles slip down the bridge of her nose. “I mean, within the space of three years, two Defence Professors mysteriously afflicted with long-term amnesia following a series of attacks on students… convenient, wouldn’t you agree?”
The journalists murmur as the woman crosses her arms, smirks. The red-robed witches are muttering to each other in a huddle.
“Of course, Fudge believes Crouch is insane, desperately deluded, some kind of curse-induced hallucination with the Potter boy… yes, the Boy-Who-Lived, Cedric Diggory and Crouch here, an accidental death, a cover-up…” Rita’s fingers stab at the air. Like a dying beetle’s legs. The quill jumps up and down. He files away the terms in his mind as she speaks, twists the bracelet around his wrist. Fudge (chocolate) (sugar, butter, milk) (July 31st crossword, 6 Down, 5 letters). Potter (Boy-Who-Lived) (hallucination) (6 letters). Cedric Diggory (name) (unknown).
“Thank you, Rita.” Dumbledore raises a hand. “I will remind you that in the days following his arrest, Mr Crouch was thoroughly examined by the Ministry, and although we have concluded that any events prior to the evening of the twenty-fourth of June lie outside the scope of his memory, we can confirm the reliability of his initial testimony under Veritaserum–”
“Then You-Know-Who’s returned?” The pinched woman’s voice is tense.
The cloaked wizard beside her shifts.
A hush falls over the room.
Outside, a bus heaves to a stop just out of view. The name feels familiar, achingly so. Bartemius traces the shape of it out on his tongue. His mouth is dry.
“I believe so.” Dumbledore says.
The silence shatters.
“Fudge claims–”
“…resurgence of Death Eater activity?”
“Mr and Mrs Diggory lost their only son, would you say–”
“Will additional investigation take place?” A red-robed witch snaps her fingers. Smoke explodes from a camera with a bang. “–remain eligible for the Dementor’s Kiss?”
Rita’s mouth is moving. Her feathers lurch with her shoulders. Flecks of spit fly from the bearded wizard’s mouth.
“…public health system–” Ink flicks onto the pinched woman’s collar. The flash of a camera dazzles Bartemius’ vision. “…appropriate for Mr Crouch to be treated at the same hospital as Alice and Frank Longbottom?”
“Does Mr Crouch show any signs of regret?” The shortest red-robed witch yells.
Dumbledore’s got a hand raised for silence, but nothing of the sort happens until Dedalus’ wand goes off in a massive bang of yellow smoke, which sets Bartemius into a fit of coughing, and settles the journalists into muffled discontent. They eye him with expressions ranging from pity to disgust until Dumbledore mutters something and Bartemius’ throat settles. He swallows and feels something cold slide down his throat. Bartemius runs his tongue over his teeth. He mustn’t glare at the journalists. He stares blankly at the wall through the gap between the red-robed witches’ heads and the bearded wizard’s shoulder, and begins to order his new words in his mind, left to right, three neat columns. Death Eaters, You-Know-Who, Frank and Alice Longbottom. He’ll comb through his articles searching for them, pick through the crosswords with new eyes. Dumbledore’s hand is heavy on his shoulder.
“We will attempt to recover Mr Crouch’s memories as evidence, as soon as the Ministry deems it appropriate. Rest assured that investigation into Mr Diggory’s death will continue.” Dumbledore says. Rita scowls, though the others appear satisfied. The red-robed witches murmur among themselves. “I believe that Voldemort,” the room shudders at the name, “has already resumed undercover activity, though I cannot say for certain what that may entail.”
Bartemius watches the feathers on Rita’s robes gleam as the room erupts again, as Dumbledore quells the noise, answers, is drowned out by a fresh wave of questions. Bartemius lets his vision blur over. In his mind, he plucks the feathers out one by one and sorts them by colour and size.
He listens.
The sun has set entirely and Bartemius has lost count of the number of bright red buses he’s seen roaring down the street by the time the journalists are ushered out, the witches in red lace squabbling, Rita’s quill bobbing at her side.
Rita is the only one to glance over her shoulder as she leaves. Her teeth gleam, stretched into a sharp grin, her spectacles sliding down her nose as she turns. He catches her eye. Stares. She tips her head at him, curls bouncing, opens her mouth as if to speak, but the door is swinging shut, the sliver of corridor shrinking, and Bartemius is left staring at the shiny silver doorknob that had swung into the space formerly occupied by Rita’s head. Dedalus dusts his hands off and steps away from the door.
Rita Skeeter is a good name to say. It would roll over his tongue without hesitation.
The mark on his arm twinges.
Bartemius is cold. Much colder than he’d realised. He swallows. Dumbledore is watching him. Bartemius fiddles with his bracelet. The looping handwriting wraps around his wrist. The new plastic is stronger, tougher. Voldemort, Boy-Who-Lived, Cedric Diggory.
He wants to know, beyond just the shape of it, the hollow in his head. He wants it filled in. In glorious colour.
Susan’s always saying he ought to write new things down.
“I think I’d like to start writing,” he tells Dumbledore, five or fifteen minutes later. Dumbledore examines him. Blinks slowly, owlishly, peers over his spectacles. Bartemius counts to five.
“That might be wise, Mr Crouch.” Dumbledore says, like he expects pages and pages of Bartemius’ private thoughts, neat and dissected and laid out on parchment. He will be disappointed. Bartemius does not want Monday, ate breakfast, tired, did the crossword, felt remorse. Bartemius wants an encyclopedia. He wants to pour out everything he could ever want to know, organised into neat categories and subheadings and diagrams. He’ll let Vance and Dedalus and everyone else flick through it, let them believe he doesn’t care for the past, only hummingbirds and fudge and ceiling plaster. When his head’s scraped empty, Bartemius will fill it with real information. Who he is, what he was. Where he’s been stolen from.
“But Vance has to stop going through my shelf.” He says. The ice in his throat pulses as he swallows. “And I want a jumper. Something warm.” Dumbledore pauses and tilts his head. The tassels on his hat swing. Bartemius meets his eyes, piercing blue, holds his gaze until the crease between Dumbledore’s brows softens.
“Very well. I’ll speak to her.”
By the slight curve of his mouth, Bartemius knows he’s being honest.
***
The Healer has added a sixth potion to the tray. It’s purple and smoking slightly at the rim and smells like the flowers dying in the vase by the door. It sits, innocent as anything, between the watery red Pepperup and the pale blue Haleurus Draught. Like they’re expecting him not to notice, like he’ll just go along and knock back all six of the glasses without bothering to check. Bartemius’ throat is dry. The skin is probably peeling away. He glowers at the offending glass. There could be anything in there. He coughs, holds his nose, tips the last of the flavourless gold potion down his throat. Coughs again.
Susan doesn’t look up from where she’s fussing with her trolley.
He glances up at his calendar. August 1995’s bird is a house sparrow. An inoffensive little bird with dull brown feathers and black markings. Dedalus has promised to bring the encyclopedia in next Monday. The hummingbird is tacked up on the wall beside it, but the sticking charm must have interfered with whatever motion spell Dedalus had tried, because the only thing it does is hover with its wings whirring endlessly, like it’s stuck in a web.
“Drink up.” Vance says, without pausing in her knitting.
“Careful,” Susan says, over her shoulder, as Bartemius raises the glass. Bartemius swirls the new potion in its glass. It moves like cold porridge. The colour of rotting plums, not quite a rich purple. “It’s reactive. Anything magical sets it off.”
“What does it do?” Bartemius asks. The smell of it is making his head swim.
“In theory, it fixes your memories more firmly inside your head,” Susan or Heidi or Hestia says. She’s pulling a meal off the trolley. Sandwiches again. Withered cucumber and cream cheese. “It’ll help prepare you for the Legilimency. We’d need Ministry approval, of course, and there’s mountains of paperwork, but we’d like to find someone appropriate to have a look inside, see if your subconscious remembers anything.”
Something is stirring in his chest, something like smoke clogging his throat, heating behind his eyes. It’s too much to think about all at once, memories and Ministries and mornings. He fiddles with the sleeves of his new jumper. It’s thicker than his robes, though it bears the same stripes.
“There’s plenty he remembers, trust me.” Vance sniffs. The needles click viciously. She’s in a foul mood this week. It’s probably because she can’t dig through Bartemius’ nightstand anymore. She’s been casting longing looks at it all morning. Vance glances at him. Imperious. Her nose wrinkles. “Drink up, won’t you?”
Susan isn’t looking, but she’ll take issue if he slams the heel of his hand into Vance’s nose.
Instead, Bartemius lets the glass slip from his fingers. It cracks in two. The potion spatters over Vance’s boots, thick and lumpy, like a cat’s been sick on them. Vance swears, totters backwards. Her mouth is wide. Bartemius grins, just long enough to catch Vance’s eye. Her face twitches, but by the time Susan whirls around, his expression is blank, faintly horrified. Her eyes meet his, then flicker across to the floor, up to Vance. A few droplets have stained Vance’s robes a sickly purple. Vance sits down.
“I’ll have you sent back, I swear.” She stomps a globule of potion off the tip of her shoe, and it lands, smoking at the edges, on the fabric cover of the armchair. “I swear it, Crouch, I’ll tell Dumbledore you’re remembering, I’ll say you’re obsessing over snakes, that’ll do it–”
“Now,” Susan says, hurrying over, shooting Vance a warning glance. She plucks her wand from its place tucked behind her ear. “It was only an accident, after all.”
“He meant it.” Vance’s jaw is tight. Susan huffs. Bartemius presses his tongue into the back of his teeth as Susan flicks her wand at the spilled potion. It vanishes, leaving only the stains in the chair’s fabric, the stains speckling Vance’s robes. The broken glass slithers together, knits itself back into a whole. It clinks on the tray. Another flick. The dosage pours itself out again.
“There you go.” Susan says, handing him the purple glass. There’s not even a seam where the shards have joined back together.
This time, she doesn’t drift away to the trolley. She watches him raise the glass to his lips.
The potion tastes exactly as it smells. Rotting flowers. It burns, cold, through his teeth. He wipes his mouth on the back of his hand as the cold spreads down his throat and into his chest. Vance is glaring. Bartemius sets the glass on the tray, and smiles at Susan, sheepish and apologetic. Vance turns her eyes down to glower at the knitting in her lap.
The tips of her shoes are discoloured, peeling where the potion splashed across them. Bartemius grins and reaches for the Warming Solution.
Later, when Vance has left and the hospital is emptied of staff, but for the occasional night Healer who drifts past his door like an acid-green ghost, Bartemius sits cross-legged in the dark and pulls his parchment from his nightstand.
He flicks through the pages to find his newest batch of crosswords slotted between two blank sheets. He’s begun several entries and finished none of them. Hummingbird, sparrow, Rita Skeeter. His writing’s stilted, childish. It doesn’t flow across perfectly neat lines, not like Dedalus’ encyclopedia. The pages are dotted with fingerprints, and the ink keeps smudging between sentences, spotting the side of his hand with ink.
It shouldn’t matter. The encyclopedia is only a distraction. Real knowledge, real power, doesn’t live in this crumpled parchment. Even still, Bartemius has to flip the pages over to hide the stains from the light. He adjusts the stack, shifting pages in and out of alignment until every last blot is hidden.
Then, he checks the corridor and makes sure to stack his pillow innocently at the end of his bed before shaking out his crosswords. Flips them over to the article side.
He hunts for the words in the watery light, runs his fingers down the page. Voldemort, Boy-Who-Lived, Cedric Diggory. The startled face of the bespectacled boy stares up at Bartemius. His eyes move, following Bartemius’ fingers across the backs of the crosswords, tracing through recipes and opinion pieces and unsubstantiated rumours, until… Cedric Diggory, death, June 24th jumps off the page. A comment squeezed into a larger paragraph of Bartemius’ last article, something about Dumbledore and his role in the Wizengamot.
A thrill runs through him. Bartemius folds over the corner of the crossword. Reads the snippet through. His pulse is racing. The paper is thin, fragile, but there, he’s certain, is a mention of himself.
…June 24th brought the tragic death of seventeen-year-old Cedric Diggory during the final task of the Triwizard Tournament. Yet the headmaster remains insistent on blaming You-Know-Who for the tragedy; an unsettling pattern of behaviour which has emerged in recent years…
…two years ago, Dumbledore alleged that the attacks on Muggle-born students at Hogwarts were the work of You-Know-Who himself, despite evidence to the contrary… indeed, Defence Professor Gilderoy Lockhart remains in St Mungo’s undergoing treatment for memory loss, a disturbing parallel to the experiences of the latest Defence professor…
How long will the Ministry allow Dumbledore to shift the blame?
Bartemius brushes trembling fingers over the words. Latest Defence professor, he files away, beside You-Know-Who, deceased and Cedric Diggory, seventeen. He cannot picture a face to accompany Diggory’s name, but he must’ve known him. He tries to imagine being a teacher, conjures up an image of a dark hall packed with rows of wooden desks, but all the faces of his students are blurry, shifting, and he stands stiffly at the front of the room, like he’s suspended in a web, heart thrumming, eyes darting.
He twists the red bracelet around his wrist. Vance will give in eventually. She’ll end up digging through his encyclopedia, Dumbledore’s approval or not. He’ll never get another crossword. Bartemius breathes out.
There’s only one thing for it. He reads the paragraphs again, feels the rhythm of the words. Word by word, phrase by phrase, he commits each sentence to memory, until the lights in the corridor shut off and plunge him into darkness.
***
Hummingbird: a group of small birds in the family Trochilidae. They are named after the humming sound their wings make, beating at eighty rotations per second. They are the only birds which can fly backwards.
***
Dedalus has been trying to fix the hummingbird’s motion for over an hour. There’s nothing to be done. It’s stuck. Whirring endlessly in place. Bartemius watches it while he eats a breakfast of dry toast. August 1995’s sparrow watches the bird with him. It would be sad, if it wasn’t so fascinating. He’s memorised every flicker, every angle of the feathers.
“Here.” Dedalus says, mopping his brow with a canary yellow handkerchief. “I’ve got you something.”
He hands over a leaflet. Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. There’s jam on the corner and a sparrow on the front page.
“Thought it might interest you, what with that project of yours.” Dedalus gestures towards Bartemius’ nightstand, where the ink and quill rest on the surface. It’s a little too low for a desk when Bartemius sits in Vance’s chair. He supposes it’s better than writing on the bed. “Got all sorts of information in there, you know.”
Bartemius takes the leaflet and stretches his face into a smile. Dedalus seems satisfied with this, so Bartemius flicks the leaflet open. Habitat, Diet, Appearance, in printed blocks of text. Like an article, only with nothing of relevance to him or his memory. The pictures don’t move. The paper is strangely glossy. Bartemius runs a thumb over it.
“…it’s a real pity, don’t see much but pigeons out near the city, but when I was a boy, why, out in the country, you’d see all sorts of birds.” Dedalus is musing, his moustache twitching. Bartemius nods politely, even though Dedalus can’t have been born that long ago, and he doesn’t imagine or care that bird distribution has changed drastically since then. He flicks through the leaflet again.
“Where’d you grow up?” Bartemius asks him, scanning the rest of the page.
“Kent.” Dedalus says, rather thoughtfully. “Never left.”
“It’s nice out there?”
“Oh, yes.” Dedalus says, and launches into a long-winded spiel about some orchard or other near Ospringe, cataloguing thousands of apple varieties. Bartemius nods along, barely listening. Vance will want to tear through every inch of his encyclopedia, that’s for sure, so he makes up his mind to save the leaflet for Friday.
It comes around sooner than he thinks.
“They’re pests.” He tells Vance, without looking up from the leaflet. Unlike a hummingbird, a sparrow is a dull creature. There’s little of interest to its appearance or its behaviour. Eats insects, sings a plain song, eaten by cats and corvids alike. He’s copying the sentences out onto his parchment. Vance’s fingers twitch towards the stray pages he’s left scattered on the nightstand before she seems to think better of it. She takes a breath. Unclenches her fists.
“You like birds, do you?” She picks up her knitting. Studies the stitches. Her jaw is clenched, but her voice is controlled.
Too controlled. He can fix that.
“I like them more than snakes.” He watches her face. It twitches slightly. He thinks her eyes dart down to his forearm. He runs his tongue over his teeth.
“Snakes?” Her voice is clipped, cold. She raises her eyes. There’s something new behind them, beyond the anger. Bartemius shrugs. Looks across at the hummingbird on the wall, the sparrow beside it. It’s astoundingly pedestrian, this fascination with birds he’s supposed to be cultivating, built up out of habitats and diets and the same grey-brown feathers in every picture.
“Well, birds fly.” He twists his bracelet around his wrist. “Isn’t that interesting enough?”
Vance’s eyes shift to his calendar, back to the leaflet in his lap. She takes another breath.
“Tell me.” She reaches for his hummingbird page, picks it up as if it’s a shard of broken glass, stares down at it for a moment. She doesn’t look up from the page. “Is all of this–” she gestures vaguely, as if to indicate the sheets, the calendar, the pages on the nightstand, the whole room from floor to ceiling, “–all of this just a joke to you?”
Nothing Bartemius says will make her believe him, but he has no issue there. It wouldn’t be half as entertaining, getting crosswords from Dedalus and smiling at Susan, all polite and please and thank you, without Vance there to glower and scowl from the corner. He stays silent.
“It must be.” She breathes out. His hummingbird page is creasing in her hand. Vance’s voice is soft when she speaks again. “You ruined my shoes, you know.”
He wets his lips.
“Brilliant.”
Vance’s lips press into a thin line.
“I don’t care what Susan says, you haven’t changed.” She leans forward. The knitting in her lap tips with her. He’s seized with the image of slamming the heel of his hand into her nose. He curls his fingers into fists. His life begins on a floor scattered with papers. Cold, heavy, throat full of gravel.
“I wouldn’t know, would I?” Bartemius’ voice is low. Vance scoffs.
“Oh, that would amuse you, wouldn’t it? Making me retell it.” Her words hiss through her lips like steam. She brandishes the page. His page. It’s crumpling, creasing, ink smudges and crooked writing and all. Fire is building in his chest.
“Why not?”
“I’m not stupid, Crouch.” Vance’s eyes narrow, gleaming and sharp. Flecks of spit build in the corners of her mouth. “Dumbledore may entertain it, Diggle treats you like a child, but I won’t. I’m not falling for it.”
The burning spreads. Right down through his ribs to the tips of his fingers. Her blood would be warm, would drip from her nose into her hands. But Dedalus might listen to Vance, if Bartemius broke her nose, and Bartemius would lose what little power he has.
He’ll find another way. A name to sink between her ribs.
“Who’d I kill?” he begins, but Vance’s face doesn’t change. “Was it Diggory? How old was he, seventeen?”
She barely scowls. It’s all surface bluster, nothing deeper. Nothing personal. Bartemius scrambles for a new name. Comes up with a pair. They claw their way out of his throat.
“Or was it the Longbottoms?” Bartemius leans forward. Vance’s eyes have widened, very slightly, almost unnoticeable, and sharp satisfaction curls in his chest, so sudden it’s almost painful. “A shame about Alice, was it?”
Vance’s breath catches. He feels his lips curl back, baring his teeth. A triumphant grin.
“Did I hurt her? Poor, darling Alice.” He’s snarling now. There’s something leaping up, burning against his throat, pressure building in his chest. He grins. “Did she go out screaming? I think so. Can’t quite remember. It was pathetic–”
Vance’s wand slashes before he can take another breath. Force slams into his neck. He chokes. An invisible hand is around his throat, stopping the words. His voice is gone, his breaths, already shallow, coming in fits and gasps. His fingers claw at the skin. There’s nothing to loosen. His pulse hammers in his ears. Vance’s eyes are blazing. Her face is pale, bloodless.
“Don’t you–” Vance is shaking, her knuckles white, and Bartemius’s throat is closing in on itself, tightening and tightening, twisting. He makes a strangled noise. His head spins. “You–” and her mouth keeps moving, opening and closing, inaudible over the rush of blood through his ears. Fire erupts inside him, swelling, like there’s smoke curling around the edges of the block in his throat, hissing through his teeth with the spit he can’t swallow. His fingers scrabble at his throat. His lungs are emptying. The sudden hollowness tugs at his ribs, like his chest is imploding. He needs air, he thinks, wheezing, he needs to breathe.
He lurches towards Vance, but he can’t move. Vance’s face is blazing with her fury. He needs her to crumple, needs the spark to dim in despair, but her wand is trembling, still pressed into his throat, and he can’t breathe.
Darkness is creeping over the edges of his vision.
Two things happen at once. Something shifts inside his chest, a plume of smoke rushing up against the burning cold, like the wet snap of a rib breaking–
And his water jug explodes.
Vance stumbles. Her wand twitches. Bartemius falls backwards. Gasps for air. Clinical, cold air that burns at his throat. Whistles through his ribs. Shallow, sharp breaths. His chest throbs. There isn’t enough air.
His knees are aching. He must’ve hit the floor. His vision swims and he digs his nails into his palms, fights against the throbbing.
Something is gleaming on the tiles before him. There’s water dripping from above. Slow, steady dripping.
Bartemius looks up.
A mass of water, a sphere the size of a ribcage, frothing and twisting, churns in the air, hissing, spitting like oil, inches from Vance’s face. Shards of the jug are aimed at her. Jagged white and blue floral. Halted centimetres from her face. Murderous.
There is a shallow cut across her cheekbone. Crimson. Beaded with blood. Vance’s hand trembles. The water is hissing into steam, spiralling up, framing her face. The heat of it sears the back of his hands. Vance staggers backwards. Her eyes are darting about, to the shards hanging in the air, beginning to clatter to the floor, shatter on the tiles, to Bartemius crumpled beneath them, coughing, wheezing. There’s a spark of wild terror buried in her eyes, in the trembling of her hands and the short bursts of her breath.
She takes a single step towards him. The click of her heel echoes.
Her fist opens. His hummingbird page falls to the floor like a mangled butterfly. Water soaks into it. A vicious, wild loathing erupts in his gut. He wants nothing more than to seize a shard and lunge across the room, to hack away at Vance until she’s nothing more than wreckage on the tiles, but his limbs are frozen, his fingers won’t move, and the only thing he can bring himself to do is watch the dust, the porcelain dust, swirl and settle in stops and starts, as if the whole room has been suspended in time.
Vance opens her mouth. Her hair is coming loose. Wild threads of it hang around her face.
Bartemius spits at her feet. As vicious as he can.
Vance’s face hardens. She spares him a final glance, a disgusted, disparaging look, like he’s already rotting and decaying, a crawling bug, a plague on the earth. Bartemius glowers at her as the last of the porcelain rains down around him, cracks, pounded into grit. Vance kicks his hummingbird page aside.
The door slams behind her. The sound echoes.
His heartbeat lurches. In between blinks, he sees blood spattering across his knuckles. The shards of the jug burying themselves into Vance’s throat. Slashing through her face. Lying unstained on the floor.
Somehow, he remembers the smell. Metallic. He wets his lips. The walls are a blinding white, the floor gritty and glittering. He presses his fingers into the bridge of his nose, presses into the bone underneath his skin.
He hadn’t meant for the jug to explode. His blood thrums in his ears.
Bartemius shuts his eyes. Breathes in. A whistling, shallow breath. He sees the jug on the back of his eyelids. Whole, unbroken. Trembling, shattering. He traces the arc of the shards and the water. He’d know if he’d meant it.
His hands shake. There’s the shape of the feeling, deep in his chest, a shift, like a wall collapsing inwards, like air rushing under wings, like the roar of some ancient beast. The wordless ache of power. He tries to hold onto it, to remember the feeling and tug it back to himself, but it’s slipping away with every blink, and he’s curling his fingers into fists, and tracing the path of the jug, and he must’ve meant it, he must have. That was the point of it all. He picks at Vance. He stays rational. The conductor, the mastermind. She scrambles like an animal.
The shards of the jug rest on the floor. Like teeth wrenched from their sockets.
He must’ve meant it. It’s the only explanation.
He moves slowly. Onto his knees. Breaths still coming in fits and gasps. Coughing.
He reaches up, limbs heavy, head spinning, for the Haleurus Draught. His fingers are clumsy. The bottle rattles as he lifts it, deafening, metallic, the glass fogging up with blue smoke. Bartemius raises it to his lips. Fumbles off the cap. Breathes in. Cold air, tastes like clinical light and metal, reaches down the back of his throat. He shuts his eyes. Counts ten carefully spaced-out seconds. He breathes out.
His hands are still shaking when the lights flick off.
He shuffles forwards. The cold leaches off the floor, digs into his knees. Carefully, he sweeps the shards into a pile. His chest aches. Under the bed. The shards scream as they scrape against the tiles. He can’t look away.
Bartemius reaches out. He picks out the largest one, holds it between his forefinger and his thumb. The grit clings to his skin. He cradles it against him. His gut twists.
White ceramic, blue floral details, the weight in his palm. The edge, when he brushes a finger along it, is sharp. Sharp enough to draw blood. The thought doesn’t calm him. Quite suddenly, he is seized by a revulsion beyond all measure, such that all he wants to do is fling the shard across the room, grind the wretched thing into sand, obliterate the blue florals forever. Instead, he slides it carefully between the nightstand and the wall. It clinks as he sets it down.
He finds he can almost breathe again once it’s out of sight.
Careful.
Onto his knees again, then up to his feet. Hands braced on the bedframe as his vision swims. There’s a tiny cut across his knuckles, red and raw and bleeding into the grit covering his hands, staining the white dust pink, then red.
The bed creaks. It’s deafening.
Unsteady hands, digging through the nightstand. The rustle of parchment. The creak of the drawer. He finds a blank sheet, slightly folded, crumpled at the edges, the smoothest one he can find.
There’s a speck of ink on the corner. He sets the page in front of him. Presses the creases from the page, but the grit is scratching on it, catching on the surface. The wound leaves a red speck on the bottom-right corner. Sinks into the parchment, stains it.
Bartemius prises the lid off the inkwell. It takes him three seconds longer than it should. Dips the quill in. It rattles against the inkwell. Ink drips down the sides. He takes a breath, still more like a wheeze, heaving in, never quite filling his chest.
The quill scratches on the parchment. He means to write Vance’s name across the top of the page. It won’t come.
Knitting, he writes instead, and it feels ridiculous even in the darkness, but his grip on the quill is firm and each word comes in measured strokes, and it scrawls over the porcelain in his mind, a method of fabric production.